ã€ŠReincarnated With The Van Helsing Systemã€‹


 Chapter 1 Living Hell

    The wind was blowing, the insects were screeching, on a mountain in the grey ash continent a young kid kneeled down surrounded by a devastated scene, there was blood dripping from his violet colored eyes as if he was shedding blood tears, the rain made his silver hair to cover his face and his hands were shivering while he was processing what just happened, he remembered all the things that led to the current situation.

    After he was born, his father the head of the Naktis family Victor Naktis had high expectations of him but all went to hell when he turned five and participated on the talent evaluation, needless to say that his result was horrible, his body was weaker than the average vampire and his magic core was filled with impurities and so he was thrown aside.

    In fact, he would have been "disposed of" if his mother hadn''t taken him and leave the Naktis mansion, while fighting with Victor and some of the elders of the family she suffered inner wounds and cracks on her magic core due to the use of a forbidden spell to escape.

    But the nightmare had only started, he and his now almost crippled mother appeared midair on a mountain on who knows where, luckily his mother still had some conscious left and she hugged her son and received the impact instead of him, Daimon only reacted after they havended and seeing his mother current status he felt his blood boiling, he hated his father for the way he discarded them as if they were trash, he hated himself for being useless but he had no time to think in things like that.

    One''s magic core is a part of the body like a second heart which function is to regte the magic flow, without it a person will be poisoned by the mana in the air and turn into a mindless beast like the monsters that prey on the forests and seas of this world before dying, his mother was now suffering something like that, luckily her body was stronger due to her vampire inheritance or she would have died immediately.

    At the very least he had the things his mother had in her storage ring, since his mother couldn''t move anymore as she had fainted from protecting him from the fall, he wiped his tears off and started collecting wood in the nearby area to build a small log cabin to shelter them from the rain, how would a five years old child would have the nerve to think in building a shelter instead of falling prey to the panic you might ask.

    Well, although his body was that of a child he had a secret, he used to be a 17 years old human that lived on a called earth where even if there wasn''t magic nor aura, they were able to flourish thanks to knowledge and something called science, and as a university student he had somewhat knowledge about what to do on emergency situations.

    The weather was quite cold on the mountain so the first thing he did was light a fire to prevent his mother to suffer hypothermia, next he looked for a big tree, luckily the nts on this world were super developed thanks to absorbing mana from the air so he found some oak looking like tree with a huge trunk space.

    He cut the bark and dug the inside of the tree just enough for him and his mother to fit in, he also made some holes to avoid suffocation, the timing seemed to be almost calcted because it started raining not too long after he finished, he ced the "door" he made with the bark and sealed the entrance to his improvised shelter.

    After some time, he felt his mother moving a bit and he turned to see her, although there was almost to no light inside the tree, they were vampires so they could normally see in the dark, his usually lively mother asked.

    "Sweetie where are we, are you okay?", Daimon almost lost it listening to her worried voice but he managed to calm down before answering.

    "I don''t know, wended on a mountain and I found a ce to stay because it was getting cloudy¡­ how do you feel mom?", Aisha heard her son''s words and she inspected her own body "well it is not that bad considering what happened" she thought but on the outside she smiled.

    "I''m fine, can you look in my storage ring for a blue bottle with a whitebel and help me drink its content please?", Daimon nodded, he took out what she asked but before giving it to her he asked.

    "What does this potion do?", he was internally worried that this liquid could be some kind of suicide potion, Aisha saw her son concerned face and she felt warm, "don''t worry it''s just a recovery potion".<sub> </sub>

    Daimon believed her but just to be safe he took some drops of the liquid and drank it, after confirming the positive effect of the potion he helped his mother drink it, a couple of minutester Aisha was able to move again although she still had a pained expression due to the cracks on her magic core.

    "It''s okay now honey, I don''t hear any rain outside so let''s go out to see if I can recognize where we are", Daimon removed the door of the shelter and they left, Aisha started looking at the surrounding terrain and vegetation but she didn''t recognize where they were, after a moment of contemtion she took a decision.

    "I don''t know where we are but it doesn''t matter, we can''t go back anyway so let''s build a house for the time being and we will decide what to doter, ok?", Daimon noticed that his mother was restraining her pain reactions to not worry him and he gritted his teeth but when he was about to suggest hier to rest on the tree some more, he felt his body going rigid, he slowly turned to the left and his eyes widened.

    A dozen of meters away there was a horrible looking beast, its body and head were that of a lion with the exception that it had a pair of wings that resembled the ones of a bat and its tail looked like the one of a scorpion, its fur was ck and there were some bone tes covering its back.

    "A dark manticore!!!" eximed Aisha, she hurriedly moved her fatigued body in front of her son while trying to find a way out of this situation, a manticore is a beast that normally would be at the same level as her if she was in her peak, but a dark manticore is a variant that is known to be at least twice as strong as the normal one and not only that but her current state was horrible.

    After a moment Daimon bit his lips to make his body react and it worked, although he was barely able to, he could move again, when one is in front of a predator that outpowers you in all sense, the intimidatory suppression you experience is no joke, normally even adult men would freeze in the spot but although Daimon was weak, he was not a coward.

    After taking a deep breath he saw his mother expression and he knew it was probably a terrible situation but he still asked.

    "Mom¡­ is there a way to scare that thing away?", Aisha came out of his daze and seeing her son''s determined expression she seemed to take some kind of decision, she smiled and kissed Daimon''s forehead.

    "Of course, I might be wounded but I''m quite strong you know but I need you to distance a bit from me because the magic I''m about to use will cause a strong blowback, okay?", Daimon nodded but when he was about to move the manticore rushed towards them.

    Aisha didn''t seem surprised, her expression turned sad, she used the magic she prepared beforehand to send her son flying and then turned to face the manticore face to face.

    *Booooom*

    In daimon''s eyes it was as if things moved really slow for a moment, he saw his mother mumbling something and then a huge explosion followed by a gigantic wave of fire and lighting consumed almost one kilometer of the mountain and the surrounding forest.

    "Nooooo mother" he screamed and then everything turned dark as his consciousness faded away.

 Chapter 2 A Bloody Awakening

    After an unknown amount of time passed, below some trees and dirt the figure of a little boy suddenly rose like an undead leaving a grave, once he regained some of his senses back the figure started running and even when it fell, he quickly got back up as if it was possessed by something, this boy was Daimon of course.

    Once he woke up, the pain was killing him, there were some burning marks on his clothes but he didn''t have any fatal wound, then the image of his mother facing the manticore shed through is head and he immediately stood up and started running back to where they were before all this happened.

    "Move stupid body¡­ even if I die, it will only be after I look for her" he thought, he spat some blood along the way due to the agitated state in which he was and his legs gave up a lot of times but he still somehow managed to reach his destination, once he arrived the reality struck him like lightning¡­ there was nothing, the ce waspletely destroyed.

    Daimon fell on his knees, for a moment he remained in silence, the smoke that resulted from the explosion had formed clouds and it even started raining but he didn''t move at all, then he remembered the kind woman that had taken care of him since he was born into his world and tears started flowing from his eyes.

    Back on earth he was left with his father who was in short terms a scum, he drank everyday and then he will beat him up until he couldn''t move, this kept on until one day while being drunk his father slipped in the stairs and broke his neck putting an end to his miserable existence.

    He was already twelve years old and when it happened, he called the police and since he didn''t have any living rtives, he was adopted by an old couple which took care of him until he was sixteen years old before they passed away.

    He continued with his studies and one day when he was walking to the school a building copsed and tons of metal and concrete fell over him thus killing him, but he then opened his eyes and saw himself as a baby, there were some weird looking people surrounding him which made him feel apprehensive until he felt a warm pair of arms embracing him and all his worries faded away.

    He turned his face up and saw¡­ an angel, the woman in front of him had silver long hair and violet amethyst like eyes, she looked a bit tired but her beautiful face was filled with the most tender love he has ever experienced, while he was wondering who was this woman, he heard some words he couldn''t recognize and then his head started hurting which naturally made his baby current form cry.

    After a moment the pain stopped and once, he calmed down he realized that now he could understand what the woman was saying.

    "It''s okay, my dear son, mommy is here ?", Daimon thought he either was crazy or he might have¡­ reincarnated, as time passed the reality didn''t change so he eventually epted his new life as Daimon Naktis the youngest son of a noble family, everything was normal until one day he saw his mother drinking some red like liquid which he initially thought it was wine but she exined him that it was blood, this new body of him turned out to be a vampire!!!

    All this time the only one that took care of him was his mother, for some reason he didn''t understand his father never spoke to him nor gave him a second look until one day when he turned five years old, he was taken to a room where his father and other old looking people were observing and then all this started.

    Remembering the contemptuous gazes of his father and those old farts, his anger overcame his sadness, he clenched his hands so hard that his nails pierced his flesh and his tears were reced by blood, he then looked at the clouded sky and shouted.

    "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy", he kept screaming until his throat went sore, while he coughed to get rid of the feeling, he heard some movements near him which made hime out of his trance, when he looked for the source of the sounds, he saw it¡­ the dark manticore was trying to move while it limped towards him.

    Daimon felt his lungs filled with anger, "how dare you still be alive" he shouted forgetting that even if it was fatally wounded the beast could turn him into meat paste with only a hit of its paw.

    "Roooaarrr", the manticore shouted back as if it was answering him, Daimon started looking for something to fight back, he knew it was not possible for him to escape so he steeled his resolution and then he noticed something in his pocket, when he took out the object, he started crying again it was¡­ his mother''s storage ring.

    That''s right, when Aisha kissed her son''s forehead, she secretly put her ring on one of his pockets, from the very beginning she had already decided to sacrifice herself and thest thing she did to help her son survive on this forgottennd was leaving him all her treasures with the hope that he could use them.

    And herst will paid off, Daimon took out a sword from the storage ring, his body was feeling numb and he was tired after all that has happened but he gritted his teeth and firmly held the sword''s handle, even the clouds disappeared from the sky allowing him to see that there were three moons on the sky which made him realize this was not the grey ash continent.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon shook his head "I don''t care" he thought before turning to face the dark manticore and pointing at it with the sword before saying.

    "Even if its costs me my life, I will take you down", the manticore seemed to understand his words as it started to move its wounded body faster than before, Daimon quickly analyzed the wounds on the beast, one of its front legs was gone, the left side of its face along with the eye turned into a bloody mess, the sides were filled with third grade burns and the tail was also nowhere to be seen.

    The explosion result of Aisha self-detonating her magic core should have actually made the dark manticore vaporize, but almost half of her cultivation leaked through the cracks that appeared after using that escaping forbidden spell and that allowed the manticore to survive although it was half dead already, Daimon knew he only had one chance he took a handful of dirt from the ground and started running, the manticore also forced its body to run faster while it prepared for a sh.

    Daimon grinned, when he was almost one meter away from the beast, he suddenly throwed the dirt at the right side of its face and the left his body fall backwards while the sword was pointing at the sky, his n seemed to work the manticore closed the only eye it still had due to the dirt but its body kept advancing.

    "Growllrrrr", the manticore let out a pained roar¡­ the sword pierced its flesh and the momentum made the sword to rip apart the stomach of the beast, after letting out some screeching sounds its organs spilled on the floor.

    *thud*, the manticore copsed on the ground, Daimon stood up, his hands were bleeding due to the force he had to use to kept the sword from moving, he saw the sword which de was a bit dull, in his hurry he didn''t notice it before but this was the sword his mother also used to defend against Victor when they were fleeing, his eyes got teary again but he shook his head this was not the time to cry, the smell of blood will probably attract other animals so it was better for him to hurry and leave.

    But when he was about to run, he felt as if a truck had hit him and his body flew away until it shed against a tree almost 100 meters away from his original position, Daimon almost fainted but he forced his eyes to not close and while he felt as if his organs were crushed, he stood up.

    "Ahhhhhh", he finally lost it, he rushed towards the manticore that somehow managed to move one more time before losing the any left energy, seeing beast that caused his mother''s death his eyes turned bloodshot, in his berserk current state he wished to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the manticore, he wanted it to feel the maximum pain possible.

    Daimon started stabbing the manticore with the sword repeatedly while screaming for who knows how much time, when he regained some ofposure the head of the beast was a mess of blood and meat, his breathing rhythm was out of control and the adrenaline of the moment left his body which made him fall on his back.

    After a couple of seconds tears dripped from his eyes as he started mumbling.

    "Kuhh¡­ give her back¡­ give me back my mother!!!!, you freaking monster!!!", now that the manticore was as dead as something could be he let out all his frustration and sadness forgetting the current situation, luckily without him knowing that same manticore was the overlord of all the surrounding area so all the other magic beasts didn''t dare to approach this ce.

    While Daimon was trying to get some control over his emotions when he heard a sound which he was quite familiarized with, followed by a robotic voice.

    *Ding*

    "Congrattions the host had fulfilled the requirements to¡­.", the robotic voice stopped midway as if it was considering some things and then the tone changed to a girl''s one.

    "What the hell, this body is too shitty, how is someone able to fight with such a thing, the system will perform a free physical reformation as¡­ uhh, a wee gift, yes, a one-time wee gift, ahem host please nod if you ept it".

    Daimon was in awe "what the hell is happening", he thought.

 Chapter 3 What Kind Of System Are You?

    <o>,m After a moment of silence Daimon tried tomunicate with the voice he heard.</o>

    "Hmmm, who are you?", the voice snorted.

    "Humph, shouldn''t you present first before asking ady her name, who taught you manners, whatever there is room for development I guess¡­ thisdy''s name is Evangeline, I''m the one who manage the almighty "Van Helsing System", I don''t mind keeping youpany host but at this rate you will die due to blood loss and internal traumatism, I have scanned your belongings and there is not enough medicine to heal your organs I suggest you to ept the gift from the system to restore your body".

    Daimon was baffled, but he was cautious after all some unknown voice suddenly appeared on his head, since he was a vampire, this so-called system could be a trap from a demon or something like that.

    "My name is Daimon and no thanks I will only use the potions left behind by¡­ my mother, to heal myself", remembering his mother''s death he felt the hatred burn deep inside his heart while he took out some medicines of the storage ring.

    Evangeline waited for a moment before sighing, "kid if I wanted to harm you then you wouldn''t be able to stop me¡­ I can see you don''t trust me but what if I told you, you can bring that woman back to life?", Daimon stopped what he was doing he thought that her words were like the tempting whispers of a devil but he couldn''t help but ask.

    "What''s the trick?".

    Evangeline was getting annoyed "for fucks sake, the system was designed to be easily used by you, I''m bound to you which means that if you die, I will also die, now repeat after me "status", and just check the reward box, then you can decide whether you want to die or not".

    Daimon shrugged "I don''t have anything to lose anyway" he thought before saying out loud.

    "Status", then in front of him floating it appeared a translucid blue screen simr to the ones you can see in video games, there was three bars marked ad "HP, MP, AP" with some numbers on it and a lot of tabs but most of them had a lock symbol which he supposed it meant those options were not avable, he directed his attention to one of tabs that were unlocked with a symbol that resembled a mailbox which had a yellow sign blinking.

    He extended his hand and clicked on the mailbox the icon then the screen changed and a list was deployed, there was only one message which said.

    "Miracle Victory: against all the odds the host achieved something that shouldn''t be possible and yed an enemy that was way beyond the current level of the host, as a reward the system bestows the host the title "The one who has ovee destiny", for more information check the titles tab".

    Daimon nodded so far this was like a game achievement message so he continued reading the message.

    "Since the first victory of the host is ssified to be a "SSS Divinity" difficulty rank a special one-time reward is awarded, please choose between the following options:

    |SSS Roulette free spin x1|

    |Divine rank cultivation manual x1|

    |Divine Nirvana Rune x1| (I know you are a crybaby so just choose the rune and revive your mother so we can continue with our lives).

    Reading thest part which Evangeline clearly added to the message he felt a blood vessel popping on his forehead.

    "Oi, what do you mean with crybaby, maybe I should just ignore you and die huh?".

    Evangeline couldn''t hold back her reaction.

    "Hahaha,e on I was just trying to break the ice, the third reward is a one-use item that allows the one that owns it to revive someone that hasn''t died for more than 12 hours, but you can only use one per year so¡­".

    Daimon didn''t let her finish, "Give me the damn rune" he shouted, he didn''t know how much time passed when he fainted due to the explosion caused by his mother self-destructing her magic core so he wanted to hurry up.

    The screen disappeared and a little gift box appeared in his hand, when he opened, he saw the item, it was a golden medal with a phoenix engraved on it.

    "Evangeline, how do I use this thing" he asked.

    "Just think on the person you want to revive and the item will do the rest", Daimon nodded but before he did anything he said in a threatening tone.<sub> </sub>

    "This better not be a joke or I swear I will jump from the highest part of the mountain and drag you to hell with me understood?".

    Evangeline sighed, "Humph, just use the stupid rune already, your HP is reaching a critical amount".

    Daimon did as she told, he closed his eyes and started thinking on his mother while he held the rune in his right hand, after a moment the rune cracked and a magic circle appeared on his hand then he felt something soft but a bit heavy lean against him, he opened hie eyes but his legs gave away because his body was weak right now.

    Once he was in the ground, he tried to push away what was above his body but then he heard a weird sounding from "it".

    "Hnnnn ?", Daimon reacted immediately, he opened his eyes and he froze in the spot, on top of his body he saw a girl of about 14 years old, which looked like a younger version of his mother, but that was not what shocked him but the fact that¡­ she was naked and not only that but his hand was firmly holding one of her bare breasts, he tried to push her away but his vision was blurring due to the loss of blood, then he heard Evangelineughing at him

    "Hahaha, turns out my new host is a mother-con, now hurry up and ept the physical reformation if you don''t want to die and leave your mommy alone".

    Daimon gritted his teeth before saying.

    "Fine I ept the reward, seriously what kind of stupid system are you!!!", a little window with a circle and the number "001 %" was thest thing he saw before his eyes closed, only silence remained for a moment until Evangeline spoke.

    "What an interesting host I got, I guess I''ll be on guard while the process ispleted, pfft although he is quite handsome, he is a pervert hahaha".

    And so, time passed, it was almost midday when the "young" girl started moving until her eyes opened, at first, she seemed confused.

    *yaawnnnnn ?", Aisha felt as if she had woken up from a bad dream, her body was a bit stiff so she stretched but then she felt weird.

    "Hmm? Why do I feel as if I was nak¡­.", she looked downwards and then she noticed it "why the hell am I not wearing anything!!!" she eximed, not only that but she saw her son covered in wounds and using ragged clothes below her and her sword was a few meters away from them which caused her to start panic.

    "What the hell is happening, did I be an astray¡­ and attacked my own son, no if that was the case then I would have feast on his blood and he doesn''t have any marks on his neck¡­", Aisha stopped for a second because she felt something pressing against her lower half, her eyes slowly turned downwards and it took her a moment to react.

    "Kyaaaaahhh, wh¡­w¡­why is it hard, what happened when I was out of my senses!!!!!", while Aisha was going crazy imagining what she might have done to her son when she was out of her mind, Evangeline wasughing her ass at the situation.

    "Hahaha, I can''t take it, that is just a normal reaction caused by the body reforming but the situation aligned perfectly to cause this kind of misunderstanding, seems like you are quite a "lucky" fellow Daimon hahaha I can''t wait to see how will all this turn out when she sees her new body".

    To be fair, it wasn''t Aisha''s fault to misunderstand the situation, her memory was a bit off because she had juts revived a few hours ago and she confused the symptoms with going "astray" a particrity of the vampire race that urs when they are too hungry and need to drink blood to the point where they lose their rationality and attack whatever is near them.

    Of course, this most likely happened to those low rank or half bloods but even a high vampire can suffer from it if they are cornered, although for theter is more like a survival state, something like what happened to Daimon after the manticore hit him, at that moment he finally couldn''t hold back all his anger and hatred so he utterly destroyed the head of the beast, while drinking some of its blood in the process.

    After a moment Aisha started reconstructing in her mind what she thought it might have happened, "I remember fighting a variant dark manticore I should be dead because I used a self-destruction spell because I had no mana left and that was the only choice, somehow, I managed to survive and then Daimon returned to look for me¡­ I went astray due to my heavy wounds and attacked him or something to heal myself".

    The more she thought of it the more guilt she felt, after struggling trying to remember more but not being able to, she could only give up and wait for her son to wake up and exin the situation to her.

    *fwosh", Aisha took a deep breath as she said to herself "calm down¡­ what is done is done, for now let''s get dressed and look for a ce to stay", when she thought about the improvised shelter her son built for her, she felt her heart warm and she couldn''t help but smile and caress his face.

    "It doesn''t matter what those Naktis bastards think of him, he was smart enough to first look for a way to shelter us and¡­ even when facing the manticore he didn''t cower nor he tried to run away, humph I can imagine those old farts crying and giving up if they were in his ce", then her face turned dead serious.

    "Victor I never got along with you but¡­ how dare you try to harm my son, you are dead meat", she then checked to see If her storage ring was on her son''s pocket and she was happy, he still had it, she took out some clothes to use, due to her body being covered in dirt, she didn''t try to put on any underwear instead she wore a nightgown dress but she noticed that her clothes were too big for her.

    Aisha took out a little mirror she had in her ring and when she looked at herself, she froze¡­ "what the hell is going on!!!", she thought.

    Needless to say, but Evangeline was watching everything and being amused by the whole situation as if she was watching a movie.

 Chapter 4 Soulmate & Skill Tree

    Daimon was surrounded by darkness, in his mind all the things that happened today were repeating in front of him as if he was watching a movie but there were some differences on it, this time whenever the manticore moved he could clearly see the trajectory of its movement as if he was foreseeing it, once the fight against the manticore ended he saw the darkness fading away not before listening to the system''s notification.

    *Ding*

    "Physical reformingpleted; the host has sessfully attained the "Apex Predator Physique", please consult the details on the "Innate talents" tab of the status window".

    Once he opened his eyes the first thing, he saw was Aisha''s back view and he couldn''t help but throw himself at her.

    "Mother¡­ I''m d you are alive", he hugged his mother tightly as if he was afraid that she would disappear if he let go, Aisha felt her son''s emotions and her eyes got teary, she turned around and hugged him back before saying in a broken tone.

    *sniff*

    "My darling¡­ I thought I would never see you again", they embraced each other to the content of their hearts, Daimon felt a huge sensation of relief, before he was worried that the "Aisha" in front of him was some kind of fake but there is no way someone could fake the warmfortable feeling his mother gave him.

    Daimon suddenly realized something and he asked in a hurry.

    "How do you feel mom, are you still wounded, how about your magic core!!!"

    Aisha heard her son''s worried tone and she smiled and ruffled his hair.

    "I''m fine sweetie ?, even the cracks in my core were healed but as you might have noticed I look quite different, can you tell me what happened¡­ did I do anything weird to you?".

    Daimon almost choked, although he looked like a kid since he was a reincarnated teen of course he understood what Aisha thought when she woke up naked on top of her son, while he was contemting how to exin his mother what happened he heard Evangeline mocking him.

    "Hahaha, how are you going to get out this I wonder, if you don''te up with a good story then mommy will be mad at you", "this stupid system" thought Daimon, but then he internally grinned and asked her.

    "Will it be bad if I tell her about the system?", Evangeline kept silence for a moment before answering in a serious voice "there is no penalty, after all the system only exists thanks to the host and no one can take it away now that it''s linked to you, actually I encourage you to tell her about it", then her voice returned to her usual teasing tone.

    "Hehehe, but first I suggest you to check the "Soulmate" tab of the system", Daimon suddenly had a bad premonition, he opened the status and went to the tab Evangeline told him and indeed there was a yellow sign with a number "1" on it.

    "Mom, can you give me a second please I¡­ need to go to the bathroom and when I return, I will tell you what happened", without waiting for Aisha''s answer he ran away and hid behind a tree that was about 100 meters from where Aisha was standing, he then opened the clicked on the tab and read the description.

    *Ding*

    "Congrattions to the host for unlocking the Soulmate function, Abraham Van Helsing wasn''t just talented at monster hunting but he was also quite skilled with women, rejoice as you have inherited that same talent, don''t forget to constantly check on the status of your soulmates".

    Being honest that wasn''t a bad feature he thought but then he deployed the list and there was only one slot with information which said.

    |Current soulmates: 1|

    -----------------------------

    |Aisha Silverheart|

    |Race: High Vampire???|

    |Age: 14 years old (reborn)|

    |Emotional status: Happy/Confused/Worried|

    |Description: You truly are a mama''s boy, huh|<sub> </sub>

    Daimon couldn''t stand it he closed the screen and kept silent for a moment.

    ¡­"Are you kidding me!!!, Evangeline what the hell is this, I don''t remember epting to do such a thing to my mother".

    "HAHAHA, technically you epted it when you used the Divine Nirvana Rune, the system''s mission is to protect the host and just in case you didn''t know returning someone to life without any side effects like what you did, is not something that could be aplished by anyone below a certain level¡­ and so some kind of security was needed and those who are your soulmates can never betray the host, also as a special service I took the liberty to adjust her age to match yours better hehehe".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, "I¡­ do think she is beautiful bute on I have never had that kind of thoughts towards Aisha".

    For once Evangeline didn''t mess with him, "whatever there is no point in crying over spilled milk, it was a requirement for you to help her or would you rather not have revived her?".

    "Never", he answered, Evangeline internally nodded "nice answer, now that I think about it this will also be her first impression of the system so let''s put on a good show", she proceeded to give Daimon some instructions and once she finished, he returned back with Aisha.

    He took a deep breath and then started exining her all what happened after the explosion with only a change on the story, he made the system sound like a magic grimoire which only he could use because that would be easier for his mother to believe, when he finished the story Aisha had aplex expression on her face.

    "Who would have thought that this disaster was actually a blessing in disguise, that grimoire must have belonged to someone that broke through the boundaries of this dimension to ascend to a higher realm¡­ after all in the long story of the crimson mist which is the strongest of the immortal gxy no one has ever being able to bring someone back to life, without losing its original personality and turning into a disgusting undead".

    Daimon internally let out a sigh of relief, she bought the story of the grimoire but to be honest it was not hard to believe because some people will actually leave their inheritances behind for the future generations, so the excuse of him finding an inheritance was somehow convincing since Aisha was alive.

    "Darling, can you show me the grimoire, I need to make sure that is not harmful to you".

    He and Evangeline already discussed what to do beforehand, the system was able to adapt to the needs of the host but that required time and resources like mana stones, blood and other materials from magic beasts, luckily changing the design of just one tab was within the possibilities of Daimon''s current achievements.

    And so, they changed the design of the tab he will show to Aisha "The skill tree", the system didn''t include the words "Van Helsing" for nothing, the skills or in this case "magic" he will obtain thanks were called "Anti-monster Arts", there were an infinite number of them and they had different requirements to be unlocked or created, in this case for the sake of putting on a convincing front he needed the corpse of the manticore.

    "Of course, mom, but I need to use the corpse of the manticore to open it because its main focus is to imitate the innate talents of magical beasts, since I haven''t started training yet my mana is too low so I need the corpse as a recement for it".

    Aisha nodded, this was not even close to the most entric conditions she has seen a grimoire or even some spells demand their users to meet, as a great magic theorist once said "the world is filled with things that should be impossible and yet they exist".

    Daimon approached the corpse and when he was about 3 meters away, he heard it.

    *Ding*

    [Dark Manticore (variant) obtained, absorb Y/N?]

    Daimon nodded and a rune circle appeared on the ground below the corpse, after a moment the corpse disappeared and a new screen appeared in front of him.

    [New skills unlocked]

    [Enhance Series: Sixth Sense (Passive), Overlord''s Pride (Passive), Mythic Vitality (Passive)]

    [Elemental Series: Darkness affinity (Passive), Poison affinity (Passive)]

    [Beast Series: Hell Scorpion¡äs Poison, Manticore ws]

    Daimon was in awe, "Woah there are so many skills and they all look really cool!!!" he thought, but Evangeline broke his bubble in an instant.

    "You are quite lucky, the number and rank of the skills obtained depend on the monster and its rarity/strength, not only that but your contribution also affects it, if you don''t to at least 50% of the damage then you won''t get any skills, ripping its stomach apart and then stab it to death was barely enough for you to extract most of its skills".

 Chapter 5 Demonstration

    Daimon returned to where his mother was standing and then allowed the skill tree screen to be seen by her, Aisha curiously started inspecting the skills, since she was one of Daimon soulmates as long as he allowed it, she would also be able to interact with the system.

    After seeing the skills, and some of their information she nodded.

    "Mm, what an interesting thing, using illusion magic to show the contents of the grimoire to others while the actual thing fuses with the owner to avoid being stolen, I don''t see anything bad but can you really use these spells that derive from the dark manticore?".

    Daimon was secretly anxious after all he just obtained the skills so he didn''t know how to activate them, but for once Evangeline fulfilled her job as the manager of the system.

    "Later you can learn to use the skills as a non-chanter, for now just say the name of the skill you want to use out loud and it will activate, I suggest you to use "manticore ws" because the poison is quite strong".

    "Thanks" he internally answered, he took some distance from Aisha just in case before saying.

    "Manticore ws", a secondter the nails of his two hands turned ck and curved while also extending about two centimeters, both Aisha and Daimon examined the nails until Aisha gave her opinion.

    "They look simr to the nails of the Werewolves, interesting¡­ I remember seeing a poison element spell on the grimoire can you apply it on the nails?".

    *Pheww* "Your mother sure has good ideas, since you don''t have a tail like the manticore and if others think you are a werewolf, they would not be aware of being poisoned and that little mistake will be fatal for them".

    Daimon was actually expectant of what he would be able to do with his skills but then Aisha''s voice made him return to reality.

    "Ok, everything seems to be good darling but I still have onest question, why am I younger than before, also my cultivation regressed to when I was a teen and¡­ why was I naked".

    Daimon doubted for a second before mixing the truth with some inventions.

    "That''s because¡­ the thing I used to revive you had a lot of conditions, it was not able to restore your full cultivation so instead your new body would be adjusted to match the maximum cultivation you could get which seems to be when you were younger¡­I fainted due to fatigue while your body regenerated that''s why you were naked", he hesitated before continuing.

    "Sigh, also there was a condition I had to ept to bring you back¡­", Aisha waited for a moment but her son didn''t say anything which made her thought he might have given up on something important like his lifespan or something like that.

    "Darling, just tell me I promise not to get angry, if it is something bad, we will find a way to fix it ?".

    Daimon mumbled something in the lowest voice he could use and of course Aisha couldn''t hear it.

    "I couldn''t hear you sweetie, speak louder please", Daimon would rather fight against the manticore again but he had no choice but say.

    "S..s... soulmate, I had to make mom one of my soulmates for the revive spell to work".

    Aisha looked a bit confused "What does that mean darling?", Daimon didn''t dare to look at her directly, he only showed her the soulmate screen.

    [Soulmate: A woman with whom you are tied for life, be sure to treasure them as their role] [is to act as your confident and even more importantly your love partners (soulmates will  ] [feel attracted to the contractor on a regr basis)                                                              ]

    [Current soulmates: 1]

    -----------------------------

    [Aisha Silverheart]

    [Race: High Vampire???]

    [Age: 14 years old (Age adapted to be morepatible with the contractor)]<sub> </sub>

    [Emotional status: Happy/Confused/Shy]

    [Current Bond: Maternal love]

    ¡­ It took Aisha a moment to process what she read and her face immediately turned red.

    "W... w¡­what kind of grimoire is this!!!".

    If what it was written was true then she would have to be intimate... with her own son, seeing the ashamed expression on Daimon''s face she understood this was not something he did on purpose so she tried to control herself, "you are an adult, control yourself Aisha" she internally repeated a few times.

    It wasn''t her fault to lose herposure for a moment, since she has returned to be a teenage her emotional state wasn''t as stable as an adult one, after taking a deep breath she calmed down, "this is not the time for this we are still in this god forsaken mountain who knows were" she thought, before returning to her usual smiling self.

    "Don''t worry about it darling we will face it when the timees, for now we need to move because the blood of the manticore might attract other beasts and I''m not strong enough to fight against another beast on the same level".

    Daimon cleared his throat before answering.

    "Okay¡­ I have an idea, that dark manticore was the overlord of this whole area so none of the other beasts will approach this ce as long as we keep something that will remind them of its "presence" here", he took some distance from Aisha and extended his left hand, "Hell scorpion''s poison", he said in a low voice, a momentter a drop of ck liquid appeared on the tip of one of his nails.

    *hisss*, when the liquid touched the ground a low corroding sound could be heard along with little amounts of white smoke, since Daimon was closer, he could notice a bitter smell simr to vinegaring from the area where the poison was spilled.

    "This Is the same poison the manticore had so we can use it to mark this territory so other beasts won''te near here, although we still need to find a better shelter than a tree".

    Aisha was surprised by her son''s idea because it was fool proof, even if other beasts were not scared by the smell of the manticore''s poison they will still avoid the poison itself, she took out an empty ck bottle from her storage ring and handed it to her son.

    "That''s a good idea darling, this bottle is made out of a corrosion resistant material, try to fill it while I look for a good ce to build a shelter ?", Daimon nodded and sat cross legged, he stuck his index finger in the bottle and kept on producing the poison while Aisha started to evaluate their surroundings.

    While his mother was gone, he decided to clear some doubts with Evangeline.

    "How can I use the skills if I haven''t even started cultivating my magic core, I shouldn''t have mana to use them", a momentter she answered him.

    "The skills you learned don''t use mana to activate, while some of them may need it the ones you just used consume "AP", the real name is Anti-Energy but to match your "modern" way of thinking it was renamed as "AP", basically is the energy the host produces".

    Evangeline seemed to doubt but after a moment she added "There no use in hiding it, before the body reforming the reason as to why your magic core was practically useless was because this energy was colliding with your mana, but before you get angry let me tell you that this energy has always been with you "Mr. reincarnated" and just in case I don''t know the origin of it nor the origin of the system".

    Seeing his mothering back and maybe because he was too tired to discuss with this stupid system of him, Daimon just shook his head.

    "You and me will have a long talk¡­ter", he stood up and handed the bottle full of poison to Aisha which sealed it before putting it in her ring.

    "Thanks darling, I found a cave with a small entrance but a lot of space on the inside, if we hurry, we will finish the shelter in an hour and then we''ll take a bath and rest, ok?".

    Daimon nodded and followed her to a cave which entrance was only big enough for an adult to barely fit, once they were inside, he noticed that the cave was actually quite clean a clear sign that it was a naturally formed one instead of the one''s animals do.

    "How can I help you mom?", he knew that Aisha will probably use some magic to adapt the cave but he didn''t have any mana so there was no room for him to help on that part.

    Aisha took out some metal ingots from her ring along with some cksmith tools and a medium sized furnace, she pointed at one of the corners of the cave and spoke.

    "For now, help me to melt these ingots while I use earth magic to adapt the cave".

 Chapter 6 Aishaâ€™s Past & Daimonâ€™s Conception

    Daimon did as she told and turned on the furnace, luckily this magic device worked with fire mana stones and magic formations instead of the user''s mana and he would only need to regte the temperature of the furnace to not burn the metal.

    The Silverheart family had the rare elemental affinity "Metal", unlike earth magicians they were able to manipte all kinds of minerals and metals that existed so it was normal for Aisha who was the former youngdy of the Silverheart family to have some cksmith experience.

    While Daimon supervised the furnace, he also saw his mother using the earth magic "terraforming" a low rank spell which allowed one to manipte small quantities of earth, with it she started transform the cave into something more like a room.

    All the living creatures had different elemental affinities, luckily to use non offensive spells you didn''t need to have the corresponding affinity and on top of that Aisha''s metal affinity had some rtion to the earth element so it didn''t take her too much time to finish.

    She used the spell to remove the irregrities in the floor and the rock formations on the ceiling and walls, then created a partition from the main space and dug a small well next to it, Aisha checked if the ingots already melted, she handed Daimon the bottle of poison and told him to spill some of it on the area surrounding the cave.

    Once Daimon was outside, she used the spell "Metal bending" to cover the floor and the ceiling with the metal before forcing it to cool down, while she thought "who would have thought that I who used to be an archmage would need to melt the metal before manipting it because of manack¡­ sigh".

    If it was yesterday, she would have been able to coat the cave internal space with just a movement of her hand but now she has returned to be a one-star mage, and not only that but she didn''t have too much mana left in her core because she hasn''t cultivated since she was revived.

    "Cheer up Aisha, you were given a second chance to start over again and¡­ that boy needs you", remembering the relieved expression on Daimon''s face when she hugged him back, a smile that could light even the darkest ce flourished on her beautiful face before saying.

    "It''s done darling you cane back", Daimon entered and he was marveled at the sight of the room but he didn''t understand why his mother took all this trouble for a temporal shelter.

    "I did what you asked me to but¡­ why did you coated the floor and the ceiling with metal?".

    "To stabilize the structure of the cave and I returned to be a one-star mage sorge creation magic is tiring for me now so in case there is an emergency I can use the metal on the floor or the ceiling to protect us" she answered but internally added "and I can''t stand getting all dirty due to a floor made out of earth".

    All her life Aisha lived as a noble and although she wasn''t haughty nor arrogant there were some things she couldn''t stand and dust was one of them, Daimon saw the separated room where there was the well or it might be more urate to call it a water tank since its surface got coated in metal to avoid the water to mix with dirt.

    It was getting cloudy again so it will probably rain any time soon and it was also getting darker, Aisha used "terraforming" to build a little step at the entrance to avoid the rain to enter the cave before taking out a couple ofmps that were powered by light magic stones and pacing them at various points of the room to illuminate the whole ce.

    She nodded and for the final touch used the spell onest time to turn the entrance into a vertical crack about two meters high but only about 3-4 centimeters wide to allow the air to flow inside the cave.

    Daimon noticed his mother was tired and he felt guilty, "I need to start cultivating with my magic core¡­" he remembered how he was unable to do anything when the manticore attacked them and he clenched his teeth "I don''t want to go through that again" he thought", he looked at Aisha''s eyes directly and spoke.

    "Mom, I want to start training, I will be strong enough to fight side to side with you¡­ strong enough so that I will never have to see you suffering for my sake again".

    Aisha couldn''t help but be surprised to see the mes of determination burning like the sun in Daimon''s eyes, she felt really proud of him, after all if you are weak, you can always train and be strong but none of that matters if you don''t have the courage to face adversity.<sub> </sub>

    She smiled while nodding, "that''s good my darling, be sure to never forget that burning desire to be stronger, I will give my all to help you too ?".

    "Leaving that aside let''s go take a bath¡­ it has been quite a long day", she said.

    Daimon was agreed, although his physique was way better now, he was exhausted all he had experienced in just one day, he took off his clothes which were worn out and stained with blood while Aisha did the same, luckily, she had a few sets of clothes for her and Daimon in her ring.

    Once they were naked Aisha used a spell called "nerou" which created water using the humidity in the air to fill the water tank and the bathtub she created beforehand using earth and coating it with metal.

    They both entered the bathtub and Aisha caressed Daimon''s hair while she remembered how she had been taking care of him since he was a baby, "who would have thought that being forced to marry that piece of trash was what allowed me to be happy".

    Although the Naktis were the strongest force of the Immortal faction formed by all the vampire race they weren''t the only main noble family that existed, there were another two which practically had the same level of authority, one of them was the Silverheart family and the other one was the Nosfear family, each of them had other lesser families or family branches that were under their management.

    One hundred years ago using the excuse of "creating a better future for their race" the Naktis proposed a marriage between their young sessors, both the Silverheart and the Nosfear families had female sessors so the question was who would marry Victor Naktis, unfortunately both Aisha and the Nosfear youngdy hated Victor''s guts since he was known for being¡­ a yboy, so they rejected him.

    But things weren''t as easy as that, the Naktis offered a really tempting wedding gift, a spirit herb called "Blood Lily", the Nosfear were a matriarchal family and the matriarch of course despised the Naktis for doing such a low move but¡­ the Silverheart patriarch on the other hand was blinded by greed and although Aisha was his only daughter, he still had his young son and so he decided to marry her daughter off to the Naktis.

    Even then Aisha never epted Victor as her partner so she never allowed him to touch her nor drink her blood (for vampire females, the act of willingly offering their blood to a male vampire was a wedding ritual) and because of that she was never acknowledged as Victor''s wife, but that didn''t matter for the elders of the Naktis family.

    Their objective was to form a bond with one of the other noble families which was achieved thanks to the Silverheart patriarch epting the Blood Lily from them, but that was not the end of the trouble for Aisha, as time passed Victor started lusting after her and this time around the reason was to "create a future leader for the vampire race".

    Since the Silverheart had metal affinity they weren''t vulnerable against high purity magic silver also known as "mithril" and the Naktis had darkness affinity, they were high vampires (day walkers) and so the sun didn''t harm them on any way  already so thebination of all that should have resulted in the best vampire that has ever existed, of course Aisha utterly refused "I would rather die than letting you touch me" she said to Victor in front of the Naktis family elders.

    And thus, they decided to have a duel, the elders only wanted the result of the mixture between both lineages and sex was not needed for that, in fact vampires could use their blood essence, an especial type of blood that resided in their hearts and was only produced with the pass of the years, to reproduce, if Victor were to win the duel, he would be allowed to do whatever he wanted but if Aisha won the duel, then they would use the blood essence method to conceive.

    Needless to say, but Victor lost, although their magic cultivation was on the same level, Aisha''s battle prowess was higher because she trained her whole life while Victor dedicated to debauchery, since Aisha won the duel, she personally ripped a hole in Victor''s chest to take some of his blood essence and absorbed it while mixing it with hers to create a new life.

    But this method also had some other disadvantages, losing blood essence caused inner damage to a vampire body and if the loss was big enough it even shortened their lifespan causing death on the worst-case scenario, Aisha being the mother needed to use almost double the amount that Victor used, the result was that her cultivation stagnated and that was also the reason as to why Daimon resembled his mother that much having the same eye and hair color as her without any of the visible characteristics of the Naktis.

    After that Aisha practically severed any rtion she had both with her family and with the Naktis, Victor already had other women and some of them actually were bearing his children so after being humiliated he dered one of them as his wife and forgot about Aisha''s existence, until Daimon was born.

 Chapter 7 Lykos & Nightmare Dwellers

    It was the first time that a descendant was born out of two main families and the Naktis elders were shameless enough to organize a celebration ceremony tomemorate this "historical moment", although Aisha hated those two-faced old farts, as the time passed Daimon was taught noble''s etiquette and basic knowledge about the world, all his teachers agreed that he was an excellent student and so expectations for him kept growing day by day.

    Although Aisha hated the Naktis she had to admit that they at least didn''t made things hard for her son until the talent evaluation day came and everything went to hell, Victor never approved this "son" of him as he was a sign of his disgrace and so when the elders practically discarded him as a sessor candidate then¡­ he decided to get rid of him.

    His error was that since he never bothered to learn anything about Daimon and Aisha''s daily life, he had no way to know that Aisha always slept with her son, so when he tried to sneak in the room and "eliminate" the sign of his humiliation with his own hands Aisha was there to stop him.

    Although Aisha couldn''t progress in her cultivation on thest 6 years she was still on par with Victor and their fight dragged on until the elders were rmed and hurried to the ce, needless to say but they sided with Victor and since Aisha wasn''t going to let them do as they wished she fought against many of them while protecting Daimon, she actually could have escaped the castle if not for the supreme elder of the Naktis family (Victor''s father) blocking her way which resulted in her using the forbidden spell "Space rupture" to flee.

    Aisha shook her head "it''s all in the past" she thought, once they finished taking a bath and drying off, she helped her son dress again and they bothid down in the improvised bed before falling asleep, the weather was quite cold and it was also raining outside but they were too tired and feeling each other warmness was enough for them to enter thend of dreams.

    As the night went on Aisha had a weird dream in which she was alone in a dark space, at first, she was enjoying the feeling of resting, until an unease sensation rose in her heart as if she was being observed and her supposition turned to be true.

    "grrrhahzzz", the surrounding area became colder and screeches started sounding at different distances¡­ countless bloodshot eyes appeared in the darkness and all of them directly gazed at her, one would have normally been shaken but Aisha smiled as if she wasn''t affected by the eerie atmosphere of this ce,

    "Humph even if I''m weaker now, don''t underestimate a former Archmage!!!", she raised her hand and shouted.

    "Myalo".

    A silver light surrounded her body and the darkness that was trying to engulf her a moment ago shattered, which allowed her to open her eyes in the real world, her breathing was a bit erratic and she was drenched in cold sweat, it took her a moment to fully regain control of her body, feeling the movements next to him Daimon also woke up but when he noticed his mother''s state, he immediately turned on themps.

    "Mom, what happened¡­ do you feel sick or something?", Daimon was worried that her new life was temporary or something like that.

    "Evangeline, what is happening you told me there won''t be any side effects!!!?"

    ¡­ A momentter Evangeline''s sleepy voice sounded in his mind.

    *Yawwnnn* "can you shut up, I was having such a good rest¡­ besides this has nothing to do with her reviving, mmm she was targeted by some kind of creature that attacks through dreams or something along the lines".

    Daimon was half convinced by her exnation.

    "But then why did it not happen to me, I''m for sure weaker than mom?".

    "Well, this type of creatures doesn''t care about strength, they feel attracted by those whose minds are in a fragile state and your mother hasn''t fully recovered¡­ just make sure she rests, those things won''t target you since you have darkness affinity so just keep her even closer to your body, enjoy it hehehe".

    Daimon felt a headacheing at him¡­ "forget it I don''t have the energy to discuss with you", he held his mother''s hand and helped hery down in the bed again, Aisha finally reacted when she felt her son amodating her on the bed.

    "Did I wake you up darling? Don''t worry I just had a weird dream that''s al¡­.", Daimon interrupted her midway.

    "Mom, I know you were attacked by something¡­ you can rely on me sometimes, ok?".

    Aisha sighed "this kid surely has changed¡­ but I like seeing him being so confident on himself", she thought.

    "I''m sorry¡­ I didn''t want to worry you, those were nightmare dwellers a type of creature that doesn''t have a physical body, they attack people through their dreams, normally they prey on little children but seems like mommy is too mentally exhausted¡­".

    "Let me recover a bit and I will cast a protective spell", Daimon shook his head.

    "No, you are not in the state to be using any magic, your mind is too exhausted¡­ I have a way to protect us both from those things", he firstid down next to her before hugging her tight.<sub> </sub>

    Aisha felt her son warmness and it was sofortable she felt her eyes closing by themselves, even as she was speaking the nightmare dwellers were trying to enter her mind but all that stopped when Daimon embraced her.

    "Darling¡­?".

    Daimon cleared his throat before exining "my affinity with darkness keeps those low rank things away, I just need to be close enough to you to share this protection with you¡­ let''s go to sleep we can discuss everything on the morning".

    Aisha smiled and dly epted the hug.

    "Well, I don''t mind my darling being close to me ?", they both closed their eyes and fell asleep

    The rest of the night calmly passed without any incidents, Aisha woke up a few hourster feeling rxed and well rested, these past years she didn''t have a night on where she couldpletely rest because she was afraid of the Naktis doing something to her son, but now none of that mattered anymore.

    She stretched her body which woke Daimon up jut to catch a glimpse of her elegant yet lovely figure.

    ¡­"Good morning mom, did you sleep better?", Aisha smiled back at him before answering.

    "Of course, my darling was standing on guard for me after all ?".

    Daimon felt happy that it worked, luckily since they had the shelter and there was no need for his mother to use magic, she could rest for a couple of days just to make sure she wouldn''t damage her magic core.

    *Ding*

    [A New skill has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    "Huh?", seeing the notification from the system Daimon opened the skill tree to check what was going on.

    [Anti-monster Arts]

    [Elemental series: Low darkness camouge (allow the user to cover his body and people surrounding him in a thinyer of darkness to prevent darkness nature creatures to notice them)]

    "Well, that is convenient I guess".

    While Daimon was reading the skill description, Aisha stood up from the bed washed her face before approaching the entrance of the cave just to see that it was still raining,

    "Stupid weather, where did wend?", she said.

    Daimon remembered something from when he was fighting the manticore.

    "Speaking of that, I don''t know if it helps to find out where we are but I saw three moons instead of one the past night".

    Aisha seemed to contemte things for a moment before answering.

    "If that was the case then we probably are in the White Fang gxy that is upied by the Beast faction¡­ and this should be Lykos".

 Chapter 8 Current Situation & Magic Cultivation

    Since it was raining outside Aisha sat with her son on the bed, now that he has asked her to rely on him then it was important to evaluate their current situation, what resources they had and how will they proceed from now and onwards.

    "The first thing I want you to know darling are the magic cultivation realms, for you to be aware of our current position¡­ from lower to higher:

    Apprentice

    Novice mage

    Formal Mage or simply called Mage

    Magus Lord

    Archmage

    Magus King also known as Thrones

    "Each realm is divided in three stages, early, middle and peak with the exception of the Mage realm which consists in nine levels or nine stars, for example mommy used to be a peak rank Archmage but now¡­ I''m only a one-star Mage.

    Daimon nodded this was some of the basic knowledge he was taught back then on the Naktis family, he also felt a bit bad for his mother, she had to go through a lot to reach the Archmage realm at the young age of 200 years old just to lose almost all her cultivation in one day.

    Aisha felt her son''s worries and she hugged him.

    "Don''t worry darling, mommy is young again and I still have my experience as an Archmage, it''s the best of both worlds ? so don''t feel bad, okay?".

    Daimon knew he shouldn''t be depressed; he had a second chance to be with his loved one which is something most of the people can only wish for and his worries faded away when he heard Evangeline saying.

    "The system always does what is better for you, in fact tell your mother to not start cultivating the manual she used on her "past" life, just enter the apprentice realm and you will understand why".

    "I guess it wouldn''t do any harm listening to your advice this time, on any case it will only take me a few days to enter the apprentice realm anyway".

    Evangeline smiled and said to herself "a few days my ass, you underestimate the power of a Chaos tier physique such as the Apex Predator Body".

    "Mom¡­ don''t start cultivating with the manual of the Silverheart family, I have a surprise for you but you will have to wait until I enter the Apprentice realm".

    Aisha didn''t even doubt her son for a second.

    "If that''s what you think is the best then I will believe you darling ?, besides a few days won''t make a difference in my recovering".

    "Now that we have settled that, we have to consider what will we do, the Beast faction and the Immortal faction are enemies so we don''t have to worry about being persecuted by the Naktis for a long time, also I have an¡­ old friend from the fox tribe here in Lykos, I can contact her in a few days when I have umted mana, so we can stay with her for the time being".

    Daimon doubted for a second before asking.

    "Mom, is this friend of yours trustworthy?".

    p Aisha understood her son worries, after all usually those from the beast faction won''t be too friendly with vampires.</anda>

    "You could say that she is a¡­ special case, I met her back on a tournament between high-ranking magic academies and we shared somemon interest in cksmithing so it wasn''t hard for us to get along, besides we both shared another thing inmon we both had idiots trying to approach us hahaha".

    "On any case we have always been in contact since that moment and she is actually your¡­ birth godmother, unfortunately since I was unofficially tied to Victor, we weren''t able to see each other in person on thest 6-7 years but I never lost contact with her, you could say that she is my oldest friend".

    Daimon saw his mother''s nostalgic expression and he internally sighed, "another reason to kill that bastard", he thought.

    "Ok, if you trust her that is enough for me mom".<sub> </sub>

    Aisha smiled, while tightening her arms around her son.

    "Thankss darling ?".

    Daimon was drowning in sugar but he was enjoying the fact that Aisha seemed quite happy to reunite with her friend, "seriously who is the child here" he thought, even Evangeline agreed with him.

    "Your mother seems to be quite a lively person, are you sure you aren''t adopted or something?".

    Daimon didn''t bother to answer her, it was time for him to start being instructed on how to cultivate his magic core, until you be a one-star mage you don''t need a cultivation manual so being an apprentice or a novice mage are basically training realms on where you learn how to gather mana and absorb it.

    Aisha stood up from the bed to start his first training session.

    "Ok darling, first sit on a position which you findfortable, then close your eyes and focus on your own body".

    He did as she told and sat cross legged on the bed before closing his eyes, a few secondster his vision changed to a white empty space, the only thing he could see was a floating ck orb coated in red light in the middle of the space.

    "You should be seeing a white space with only a floating orb in it, that is your magic core, now what is the color of it? the color of your magic core is normally a way to determine your elemental affinity¡­ but that might not be the case for you".

    Daimon nodded, "it''s pitch ck and there is some kind of red brightness around it".

    Aisha seemed confused.

    "I haven''t heard of a ck magic core before¡­ darkness affinity should be a dark gray color".

    Evangeline interrupted them to exin, "don''t worry about that, this is only an effect caused by the special physique you have since the body reformation, let''s just say you won''t have trouble with any element¡­ I think".

    Daimon internally sighed, "what kind of system are you, really?" he thought, he opened his eyes and asked.

    "Apparently, it''s thanks to my grimoire¡­ mom is it weird to be able to use more than one element?".

    Aisha waved her right hand and a portion of the metal covering the floor separated from the rest and moved around her as if it was some kind of liquid until it became a little solid ball of metal, while on her left-hand electricity started to crackle.

    "It''s not exactlymon but there are people who are skilled in more than one element, technically we have affinity with all the elements that exist, that''s why you are able to use simple spells from every element, the amount of affinity is what determines what will your path be, in my case I''mpetent in metal and lightning elements".

    Daimon nodded, "at least I won''t have to keep a secret the fact that I will probably use more than one element I guess, although I will have to choose what I can show in public and¡­ what to keep as my hidden cards", he thought.

    A strong mage should always have a couple of tricks up its sleeve is one of the things Aisha taught him and that is one of the reasons as to why they were able to escape from the red mist due to the forbidden spell she had always prepared beforehand.

    "Ok darling, now close your eyes again and focus on the mana that surrounds us, then try to direct it towards your magic core, that is how everyone below the Archmage realm gather mana".

    Daimon followed her instructions first he focused on his surrounding until he was able to see little blue particles floating everywhere which he supposed were the mana that was created by the nature.

    After a couple of tries he managed to pull some of those particles towards his body, the magic core was positioned below the navel so it was a correct supposition to try to press the mana against that area in order to absorb it but then¡­ he saw his magic core started radiating a ck and red light and the mana in the whole area started to float towards Daimon just to be absorbed by his magic core, or a better way to describe it would be that his magic core started devouring the mana as if it was some kind of insatiable beast.

    Daimon was too concentrated to notice it, but as a former Archmage Aisha could feel all the mana being forced into her son''s body and her eyes widened due to the surprise.

    "Impossible, this absorption rate is on par with an Archmage, not only that but he is not even putting on any effort!!!".

    Evangeline was watching everything and she couldn''t contain herugh, "as expected of my host, he is quite a monster hahaha".

 Chapter 9 Novice Mage & Item Shop

    While Aisha was wondering what was happening, Daimon was focusing all his attention on his magic core that it was absorbing mana as if there was no tomorrow.

    "It looks more like ck hole than a magic core¡­ Evangeline is this thing safe?".

    Evangeline doubted for a second before answering.

    "Well¡­ it should be fine, to be honest your physique is quite unique it can be considered a growing type which means you will be stronger as long as you fulfill the requirements but it shouldn''t do anything that is harmful to you".

    Daimon was baffled "what the hell have you done to my body¡­ whatever as long as it is not something negative it can keep on absorbing mana for all I care, I wonder if this will help me to rank up faster than others".

    Evangeline was also curious of how it worked, luckily their questions were answered not too long after, the magic core suddenly stopped absorbing mana and then the dark and red light got absorbed back into it before it started growing up, previously the core had a diameter of about 5 centimeters but after having his fill it grew up to be about 30 centimeters of diameter.

    Daimon tried to inspect his magic core but it didn''t react at all as if it was taking a nap after eating until it was full, "why is everything I get from this stupid system against me", he thought.

    He opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was Aisha''s face close to his which made him stutter.

    "M¡­mom, what are you doing?".

    Aisha didn''t say anything, she kept evaluating her son for a moment before letting out a sigh of relief.

    "Darling is this truly the first time you absorb mana?".

    Daimon understood her confusion, even him was having a hard time believing how much mana he absorbed a moment ago.

    "Yes, my magic core seems to be quite¡­ special".

    Aisha shook her head, "that goes way beyond that definition darling, do you know why although Archmages aren''t the "highest" ranked mages they are the most respected ones and also the strongest on a one vs one battle?"

    Daimon denied, "no, please tell me".

    "Because it is way harder to be an Archmage than a Magus King, to be an Archmage you need to stablish a connection between your magic core and the "external" world, so that your magic core will automatically absorb mana without you needing to do anything, that is what we call a "Domain", this Domain is also the pride and the strongest weapon of an Archmage because it manifests all the knowledge and experience in magic of its owner".

    "On the contrary, the ones who decide to be a Magus King don''t have a Domain¡­ they link their magic cores to other people ones, so that the mana absorbing is in charge of their "subjects", in simple terms they are poor imitations of Archmages but this method also have its advantages, the "king" can temporarily boost his strength by sacrificing one of his subjects".

    "That is the sole reason as to why they consider a Magus King above an Archmage but in reality, if your Domain is strong then you can wipe the floor with them, it''s important for you to know that if you be an Archmage you can''t be a Magus King and vice versa".

    Daimon started sweating a bit, his stupid core was already absorbing mana by itself so he already fulfilled half of the requirements luckily there was no one else to see that show off his magic core realized a moment ago.

    "I understand mom, I will be careful to not absorb mana in front of others¡­ leaving that aside what was your Domain like?".

    Seeing the curiosity on her son''s eyes she smiled.

    "My Domain was called "Silver Judgment", it was a mix between metal and lightning whichplemented each other quite good, that was one of the reasons as to why I was considered to be on the top 100 strongest Archmages although I was still one of the youngest vampires to ever reach that rank".

    Daimon was marveled, "my mom was such a celebrity", he thought.

    *Ding*

    [The system has been updated; the shop has been unlocked¡­ calcting initial funds]

    [Calctionpleted; the current bnce is "10" million coins]

    He was confused, if this is what Evangeline told him to wait for then, that meant he already became an apprentice.

    "Mom, besides using magic device that is designed to measure your cultivation, is there other way to know what is your current realm?".

    Aisha nodded.

    "Yes darling, for each realm there will be a change on your magic core, for apprentices and novice mages it is the size of the core itself, each stage on the apprentice realm is equivalent to an augment of five centimeters to the core as for the novice mages each stage augments ten centimeters".

    Doing a basic sum Daimon determined that since the size of his core was of 30 centimeters then¡­ he was an early-stage novice mage!!!

    "Then I guess I kind of skipped the apprentice realm¡­ my core''s diameter is of 30 centimeters already".<sub> </sub>

    This time Aisha wasn''t surprised.

    "Well¡­ I expected something like that, still you absorbed a huge amount of mana for someone in your level, I wonder if your mana pond is also "special", focus on your magic core and inside of it you should see a little pond of blue liquid, that is basically a mage''s mana reserve"

    "An apprentice doesn''t have a mana pond but for a recently ascended novice mage the size should be about 30 meters".

    This time Evangeline interrupted, "there is no need to do all that, just check the details of the MP bar on the status screen".

    Daimon opened his status and did as she said.

    [MP: 3000] (?)

    He noticed there was a question mark besides the field so he clicked on it and a little description of it deployed below.

    [MP: 3000]

    [Mana points are calcted in a ratio of 1 points per every meter of the mana pond]

    ¡­ Evangeline didn''t miss the chance to mess with Daimon, "Uwahhh as expected of a pervert like you, you certainly are a freaking monster hahaha".

    "What the hell does being a pervert have to do with having arger mana reserve, also I''m not a pervert¡­ seriously what the hell did you do to my body?", he replied.

    Evangeline shrugged, "you can''t me me for that, you were already abnormal even before the system, what I did was only unleash some of your potential, besides if you were able to contain such a chaotic thing as Anti-energy without dying, then it makes sense that your capacity for mana is on a different level than other people".

    Daimon could only sigh, "I can feel my humanity fading away¡­ although I''m a vampire now", he thought before telling his mother.

    "3000 meters"

    Aisha had an ironical smile on her face, "of course it had to be like that", she said to herself while shaking her head beforeying down on the bed again and dragging her son into her embrace.

    "It''s fine, that just mean my darling will be stronger than his peers ? and that is a good thing".

    Daimon was enjoying the calm and warm feeling he had every time Aisha was close to him, until he heard Evangeline''s voice in his head.

    "What happened to your deration of "I''m not a pervert" from before?".

    Daimon decided ignored her, as long as he was with Aisha, the whole world could crumple apart and he wouldn''t give a damn about it.

    Once he had enough of the wholesome sensation that being in his mother''s embrace brought to him, he unwillingly separated from her to look into the system''s shop for the thing that Evangeline mentioned earlier.

    "Give me a moment mom... I will prepare the surprise I told you before".

    Aisha smiled; she even yed her part on the show by closing her eyes to wait for whatever her son was nning.

    Daimon opened the system main screen and a list of different tabs appeared in front of him, until now he has unlocked the status, tittles, skill tree, soulmate and finally the shop functions, he clicked on thetter and a screen with different options was deployed.

    [Items]

    [Spells]

    [Books]

    [Mysterious]

    [????]

    ...

    Apparently, there were some categories that he still had to unlock, which made him remember his system was really based on something like a video game.

 Chapter 10 Fragment Of Laplace

    Seeing the various options, he said.

    "Oi Evangeline, where do I find the cultivation manual for my mom?".

    "Enter the mysterious category and look for a thing called "Fragment of Lace"; the rest is up to you".

    Daimon did as she told and navigated through the list of icons until he found one that resembled a tablet stone with a symbol that looked like a magic circle ?, once he clicked on it a description of the item appeared on the screen.

    [Fragment of Lace]

    [Price: 8,000,000 coins]

    [A stone tablet which contain an unmeasurable number of possibilities, when used it will transform in a grimoire that matches the one that uses it, depending on the user it can be something incredible or a useless trash so try on your luck!!!]

    ¡­ "So basically, you are telling me that the result is random, it could be something good... or not".

    Evangeline yawned, "Yeah technically, all the things in the mysterious category have some kind of random element involved, it''s a gamble but in the worst case I think the result will still be better than the manuals you can find right now, besides don''t forget your mother''s new body was also created by the system hehehe".

    Listening to her words, Daimon had a bad premonition, "you better don''t do anything weird to her".

    Evangeline shrugged, "I didn''t do anything, all the system does is adapt to the potential of the user, she is your soulmate and thus she is bounded to you in more ways than you think".

    Daimon stopped for a second to contemte things, he also checked on the other categories but a lot of things showed the same message.

    [Restricted due to the current level of the host]

    The fragment of Lace was avable because the result could be either bad or good and even then, the price for it was quite high almost using all his current coins, after all his initial funds were calcted based on the achievements he has gotten so far and killing an Archmage level magical beast like the dark manticore although it was heavily wounded was what gave him such a big number of coins.

    "I guess this is the best I can do for now, if that thing reacts based on the user''s potential, then I refuse to believe that my mom is not one of the most talented people that exists", he thought.

    *Ding*

    [Thanks for buying the "fragment of Lace, to use it just hold it in your hands and say the activation phrase "Realize", the system will manage the rest of the process (warning only those who have a bound with the host can]

    [A new function has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [The Inventory is now avable, all the things bought by the host will appear in the inventory, remaining empty slots "29"]

    "I mean, after spending so much on my first purchase it would have been an insult to not get something as a bonus", he thought.

    Daimon extended his hand a tablet of stone appeared on it, after giving it a couple of gazes he handed it to Aisha.

    "You can open your eyes now mom".

    Aisha did as he told and curiously started inspecting the thing her son gave her, it was a stone tablet of about 30 centimeters of high and 20 centimeters of long, approximately the size of an average notebook, she tried to decipher the magic symbol that was engraved on it but after a moment of contemtion she couldn''t find anything like that on her memory.

    "What is this darling, is it a spell book?".

    Daimon proceeded to exin her how to use it.

    "It is called "fragment of Lace", you just need to hold on to it and say "Realize" then you will get a cultivation manual from it", "which I hope is a good one" he internally added.

    Aisha seemed quite interested on the stone tablet, a mage is someone who seeks for knowledge and she enjoyed her days when she was still inexperienced in magic when each discovery represented new possibilities, now that her son was introducing her to a new world of unlimited new things, she couldn''t help but feel the same thrilling emotion she had back then.

    "Realize", the magic circle in the stone tablet illuminated and the whole thing started changing until it became a golden medal with a sword engraved on one side and a helmet on the other one.

    *Ding*

    [Congrattions, your soulmate has gotten the "Record of the War Goddess" first tome]

    [Record of the War Goddess, first tome: Morrigan''s Trinity]

    Daimon was happy something with the word "Goddess" on it should be considered a high-level thing but when he turned to see his mother, he noticed she was¡­ blushed?<sub> </sub>

    "Mom?"

    Aisha heard her son calling her but instead of answering, she handed him the golden medal which contained the Record of the War Goddess.

    When Daimon touched the medal a screen with a little description of the Record appeared in front of him.

    [You have perfectly met the requirements of Morrigan''s Myth, the Goddess of War, Love and Renovation, the trinity of Maiden, Mother and Lover (It can only be learned by its legitimate owner Aisha Silverheart)]

    [Rank: Unknown (Growing Type)]

    ¡­ "Pffttt, hahaha, seems like you two are truly meant to each other"

    Listening to Evangeline''sugh Daimon felt his blood pressure rising butstly, he only sighed while thinking "stupid system".

    "Mom, you don''t have to learn it if you don''t want to".

    Aisha smiled while extending her hand.

    "Darling I''m sure that grimoire of yours will help you to go further than anyone has gone before and that worries me, because it means that you will go to a ce where I can''t reach you¡­ so if this thing will allow me to be at your side on the future, then I will dly ept it".

    Silence fell on the room for a moment, even Evangeline didn''t say anything, although she liked tough at Daimon sometimes, Aisha''s words and determination were worthy of admiration.

    Think of it for a moment, if you had already walked a path that you know has good results and you are able to go through it again while maybe even improving it, and then someone offers you another which is covered in darkness and unknown dangers will you be able to decide without any doubts in just a couple of minutes like her?

    Daimon gave her the medal and unlike him Aisha had an extra dialogue below the description.

    [Do you ept the contract Y/N]

    She nodded and the medal turned into golden particles that entered her body.

    *Ding*

    [Your soulmate has learned the Record of the War Goddess]

    [The new function "Shared View" has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Those who are in a soulmate rtionship will now have ess to their own status and skill tree tabs (the other functions will only be essible through the host)]

    Daimon was surprised, "that for sure is convenient I guess", he thought.

    Aisha on the other hand was curiously inspecting the weird "illusion" that appeared in front of her after forming a contract with the grimoire her son gave her.

    [Aisha Silverheart]

    [Race: High Vampire???]

    [Age: 14 years old (Age adapted to be morepatible with the contractor)]

    [Emotional status: Happy/Excited/Surprised]

    [Cultivation Technique: Record of the War Goddess (first tome)]

    Aisha''s eyes lit up while she started navigating through the status screen, seeing his mother acting like a child at Christmas, Daimon let out a sigh of relief.

    "At least she looks happy about it", he thought.

    This time Evangeline answered him.

    "She would have been a better host than you if you ask me, at least in attitude".

    Daimon smiled for the first time following her game "you aren''t exactly the better system I can think of also¡­ but still thank you for helping me bringing her back".

 Chapter 11 Magic Knight

    While Daimon was busy speaking with Evangeline, Aisha kept exploring the status window until she found the skill tree and there were some things, she didn''t understand so she decided to ask her son.

    "Darling¡­ can youe here for a moment? I have some questions about a few things".

    Daimon nodded and sat next to her, as the owner of the system he could see the status and skill tree of Aisha without needing to ask her to make it "visible" unlike her.

    He focused his attention on the skill tree and he was in awe by what he saw.

    [First tome''s innate talents]

    [War Goddess Divine Body (Passive): With each battle you face your body will grow stronger, once enough battles are fought you will obtain the life spark of the war]

    [Maiden of the Battlefield (Passive): when on a battle all the stats will be augment by 5% per every enemy you are facing (Max amplification 200%)]

    [Current spells avable]

    [Renovation Rune LV 1: by applying the rune to a weapon, each attack yound on your enemies will drain their vitality and stamina and transfer it to you]

    [Duration: 20 minutes] [Cooldown: 1 hour] [Price: 10 AP]

    ? [Crow mantle LV 1: creates ayer of darkness to protect the user while also increasing the agility and time of reaction]

    [Duration: 10 minutes] [Cooldown: 1 hour] [Price: 20 AP]

    "Wow those are some nice skills "he thought, "Evangeline why do the spells use AP instead of mana, and how is she supposed to get AP if her magic core is not like mine?".

    "Well, her grimoirees from the system so it is only logic that you need AP to use its skills, but that won''t always be the case some of them might use mana instead, as for the AP part, looks like you are pervert up to your very "core" hahaha, to transfer AP you will need to spend some time "bonding" with her.

    Daimon doubted for a second before asking.

    "I''m genuinely afraid to ask, but what the hell do you mean with "bonding", be more specific"

    Evangeline smiled, "unfortunately for you, just some hugs and kisses will be enough to give her AP hehehe".

    Daimon felt a blood vessel pulsating on his neck, "can''t you be a normal system, only one freaking time?".

    She shrugged, "there is another way which would actually made her magic core generate AP on her own, without you needing to supply her".

    Daimon nodded "okay¡­ and that method is?".

    ¡­ "Just change your current soulmate bond with her to "lover", and the system will do the rest¡­"

    She didn''t even finish her sentence when Daimon immediately denied "forget I asked¡­ why do you want me to do that kind of things to my own mother anyway?".

    Evangeline''s tone became serious for a moment.

    "Because having her as your partner will only benefit you both, also being a soulmate is not something that can be forced, she could have refused if she really wanted to but since she didn''t at some point you will have to do it whether you want it or not, the part of a soulmate being a lover is not only to show you know?".

    "And in case you are worried about future gic problems with your offspring, let me tell you that won''t happen because your mm "DNA" was it? changed since you got the Apex Predator Physique".

    Daimon was perplexed, "I¡­ will cross that bridge when it is needed, I wonder what will I be in the future", he thought.

    "The spells you got look quite useful, what are your doubts mom?".

    Aisha doubted for a moment before making the number two with her fingers.

    "First, I guess that "passive" means that I won''t have to do anything for the spell to work which is thetest magic theory that is being currently developed by the "Greenwich Sage" the best magic theorist in all the gxies that conform our ster chart, but why does it say that I will get a life spark after facing enough battles¡­ only those who focus on body cultivation also called "knights" can light up their life sparks to develop "Aura" but no one has been able to be both a mage and a knight at the same time".

    Evangeline interfered to help Daimon solve this question.<sub> </sub>

    "That is easy, as something bestowed by the system of course the Record of the War Goddess will not be a half-assed manual unlike the ones you can normally find, this ster chart must be really isted if they haven''t seen the birth of dual concept cultivators or "magic knights" before".

    Daimon shook his head, "so what if we are in an isted ce¡­ who in the vast universe can assure that knows everything", he thought before answering to Aisha.

    "Seems like the path mom is walking this time is not exactly a mage''s one but something called "Magic Knight", so you will be able to use both magic and aura in the future¡­ probably the same applies to me".

    Aisha couldn''t hide her smile, the thrilling sensation of being a pioneer in a non-explored field of knowledge is something that many Archmages will exchange all their belongings for.

    Satisfied by her son''s answer she proceeded to ask her second question.

    "My other question is, what is AP and how do I get it, I really want to try these new spells ??".

    Daimon saw the happy and exited expression on Aisha''s face and he

    "Ahem, AP is something generated by my unique magic core, the way for mom to get some of it is having physical contact with me¡­ a hug should work fine", "for the time being" he internally added.

    Aisha smiled, she dragged her son into her arms and caressed his hair.

    "You know darling¡­ I''m really happy that all this happened ?, even if we might face a lot of hardships in the future, we are no longer tied to those selfish idiots anymore se we can live the way we want to".

    Daimon tightened his arms around her, all this time Aisha has been on extreme alert against the Naktis and their schemes, due to the greed of the Silverheart family she had to live as an exotic bird in a cage "beautiful but not free" and yet she neverined even once, instead she always showed him a smiling face even when she¡­ died.

    He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again, but this time his gaze was fierce and determined, "I won''t let you suffer anymore¡­ if someone tries to harm you, I will personally rip their flesh and spread their bones on the ground", he silently swore to himself.

    And so, a few days passed in the blink of an eye, on a remote mountain at some far from any civilization ce in Lykos a pair of silver haired boy and girl were training, these two were of course Daimon and Aisha.

    "Darling put on your weight on your left foot and hold on firmly to the handle of your sword, then swing your sword, this fighting stance is the most basic one and yet it is also one of the mostplete and bnced ones for those who use sword as their main weapon".

    Daimon didn''t know whether tough or cry they have been training for almost 6 hours on thest few days, all started when he asked his mother to teach him, Aisha was easy at first but then she remembered that her son will also use battle aura in the future so her training method changed to a spartan one.

    Knights are people who for a variety of reasons can''t learn magic, it could be due tock of resources, damages on their magic cores or low talent in magic which tend to be the mostmon reason, so instead of cultivating their cores they cultivate their bodies until they are able to light their life spark to produce battle aura, the method was invented when some youth human from a renowned family discovered his low talent on magic.

    The story tells that the youth looked for another way to be strong and one day he got an idea by seeing how others could advance on their magic cultivation when eating high ranking magic beast''s meat, some rare magic beasts have something like a magic core called "beast core" but its function is not the same, the beast core is developed once a beast unlocks wisdom thus allowing it to be a rational being, the core contains the knowledge from the beast''s ancestors which is passed through their bloodlines.

    So, unlike other living being''s magic beasts store magic in their bodies, flesh, organs, blood and even in their bones, the youth started researching this phenomenon and a couple of yearster he was able to replicate it on himself bing the first knight in the story of this ster chart, this first knight shared his discoveries with the magicmunity earning fame and wealth.

    As the time passed, he took disciples to inherit his legacy and body cultivation started to flourish, there were some really outstanding knights on the history which were able to advance further away until knights were on equal standing as mages thanks to the development of battle aura which could even bebined with the element, they have affinity with.

    On modern days both mages and knightspeted against each other to determine the better path, but up to this day there was no winner decided yet.

    Aisha saw her son''s technique getting a bit better with each training session and she nodded.

    "That''s enough for today darling".

    *Thud*

    Daimon fell on his back while gasping a bit.

    "Haaa¡­haaa, mom I think we should take a couple of days off the training".

    Aisha smiled and shook her head.

    "Nope, mommy wants you to be the most outstanding vampire in all the history, but don''t worry today I will call my friend so we will be leaving this mountain at noon hehehe, I will create a more efficient training regimen for you ?".

    Daimon for once was d his body was abnormal "thank goodness I have such a monstrous physique or I wouldn''t be able to endure this", he thought.

 Chapter 12 Short Term Goal

    While Daimon was recovering his breath, Aisha sat on the ground next to him, she extended her arm and a little rune that resembled a circle with two vertical lines ? appeared on her hand which she proceeded to apply to the sword her son was using for training before handing it to him.

    "Here you go darling", Daimon took the sword and then stabbed it on a nearby tree, this was an idea Aisha had not too long ago, the weapon on which the rune was applied could drain vitality and stamina from the things that were hit with it so she was using it as a way to help her son recover from the harsh training he had to do and at the same time the skill leveled up each time she used it.

    After about 10 minutes Daimon looked way better than before, his breathing was stable and he looks as if he was brimming with energy, on contrast the tree looked a bit yellow it wasn''t dying but certainly it will take some time to recover the vitality that was drain from it.

    Aisha nodded satisfied with the results of this double benefit training method she thought.

    "This tree is quite big and it was affected quite a bit so the draining ratio is really good, although your enemy won''t stand still to let you stab it each touch with a rune enhanced weapon is quite dangerous, now let''s go take a bath before I call my friend".

    They both stood up and went inside the cave before taking off their clothes, Aisha filled the bathtub and entered before inviting him to apany her, Daimon sat on herp and his mother hugged him, since she obtained the Record of the War Goddess, they have made a silent agreement to have as much physical contact as possible for "AP farming" purposes, or at least that was the excuse they decided to use.

    "Darling, you will be meeting herter but I think it''s a good idea to tell you more about the person that wille for us, her name is Elizabeth Revy, she is the younger sister of the current head of the Twilight Alluring Fox n mmm, more urately she is a sun alluring fox while her older sister is a moon alluring fox".

    Aishaughed a bit as if she was remembering some funny things from her past.

    "Mm, if you need to know something before meeting her it that she is quite¡­ "lively" but she is a troublemaker so try to not learn anything from her hahaha".

    Daimon had a hard time imagining how was this godmother of his, once they finished bathing Aisha dressed him before doing the same, she decided to call Elizabeth today because she already gathered enough mana to extend the range of her sigil lector to reach her as long as she was on Lykos.

    A sigil lector it''s a magic device that was simr to a phone but instead of a number it used a sigil created by the other part to stablishmunication at long distances, Aisha only had a couple of sigils registered on her lector so it she selected one that looked like a sun before she started pouring her mana on the device.

    A momentter the sigil illuminated which meant that the connection was correctly stablished, not even a secondter an exalted female voice was heard speaking from the sigil lector.

    "Aisha!!!, is that you, are you two, okay? I heard some stupid news that you rebelled against the Naktis and were executed at the spot".

    ¡­ Aisha waited until Elizabeth stopped screaming before answering.

    "Are you alone Liz?".

    The woman on the other side seemed to calm down a bit before continuing with the conversation.

    "Yes, it''s safe to speak, what happened¡­ I tried to go and dere a war against that Victor asshole but my sister stopped me saying "we are already at war with the vampires, h, h, h", and then she told our mother to not let me leave Lykos, sigh".

    Aisha shook her head.

    "We are okay, it''s a long story to be discussed in this way, due to some circumstances I¡­ am not an Archmage anymore so I need you toe for us, the coordinates of the ce we are staying are 40o 52'' 51'''' N; 73¡ã 56'' 19'''' O".

    "Mm, okay, don''t worry I won''t be taking anyone else with me, I will be there in an hour¡­ also I will bring a gift for my cute godson ?".

    Aisha turned to see Daimon and gave him an apologetic gaze, although he didn''t know about Elizabeth, she sent some portraits of him to Elizabeth in secret once before.

    "Okay, be careful I had to fight against an Archmage level manticore when we firstnded on Lykos".

    After saying that the call ended and Aisha kept the sigil lector on her storage ring beforeying down on the bed next to Daimon.

    "Ahem, I''m sure you will get along good with her darling".

    They both used the remaining time to rest, although the renovation rune helped Daimon almost fully recover, the mental fatigue didn''t disappear so the only option was to rest, he decided to explore the shop in the time being while Aisha gently hugged him.

    He entered the book section of the shop and started navigating through the options that were currently avable.

    [Magic forge fundamentals]

    [Alchemy fundamentals]

    [Potion master fundamentals]

    [Appraiser fundamentals]

    [The way of the sword fundamentals]<sub> </sub>

    There were a lot of books avable but all of them had one thing inmon they were all the fundamentals of their respective subject, Daimon thought about for a second before clicking on the appraiser fundamentals to see the description of it.

    [Appraiser fundamentals]

    <o>,m [An appraiser is someone that has good eyes to identify any material be it herbs, rare ores or magic beasts etc. this book will allow the user to develop the job skill "Truth seeker eye" once its knowledge is assimted]</o>

    [Price: 30,000 coins]

    "Mm, I still have two million coins so a mere 30 thousand won''t really make a difference, I need to earn some money to buy a fragment of Lace for me in the future, still I wonder what does it mean by "knowledge assimtion" but I guess this is a good chance to find out how it works".

    *Ding*

    [Thanks for buying the "Appraise fundamentals", do you wish to learn it right now?  Y/N]

    Daimon clicked yes and the book turned into light particles which entered his body.

    *Ding*

    [The knowledge assimtion has started, current progress: 1% (remaining time 24 hours)]

    "Well, I guess there is no other choice but to wait".

    Daimon changed to the item section of the shop, the other day he saw an item which coulde handy for themter and he wanted to know what were the requirements to buy it.

    [Bracelet of the god of mischief (Restricted due to the current level of the host)

    [A magic bracelet which allows the user to change his appearance, its effect is infallible for anyone that is at most two greater realms above the user (required level to use: one-star mage]

    [Price 1,000,000 coins]

    This was the goal Daimon has set for himself at short term, he didn''t want to stay down so the obvious option was to disguise his true appearance but when he assists an academy on the future there will be strong people who would be able to see through a normal disguise and since he will for sure stand out then his characteristics will spread to others which could lead to the Naktis finding him.

    So, this item was a need for both Aisha and him.

    "Well seems like I will have to work my ass to get more coins, Evangeline what is the most effective way to get coins?", he asked.

    ¡­ "Hunt beasts and sell the corpses to the system, advance on your cultivation, defeat strong enemies, achieve things that are hard for other people and other tasks like that, this applies for both you and your mother, since she is your soulmate, her achievements will also count as yours".

    Daimon suddenly got a good idea, "since I don''t meet the requirements to use the bracelet then¡­ I can buy it for mom and she can use it to go hunt magic beasts to sell their corpses to the system, besides the fights will also count as training for her to light her life spark".

    Evangeline agreed with his n.

    "Sounds good to me, just remind her that she needs to be the one killing the beasts or they won''t be epted by the system".

    [Thanks for buying the bracelet of the god of mischief]

    He took it out from the inventory, the thing had quite a modern design, it was made out of some kind of jade with ck and green colors mixed to form a cloud pattern, "at least it''s not too shy", he thought.

    "Mom¡­ I have a present for you", he handed the bracelet to while he exined what was its use and the idea, he got to take advantage of the fact that she needed to fight a lot to light her life spark.

    Once he finished his exnation, Aisha nodded.

    "It''s a good idea darling, I was actually struggling to find a solution to hide our true appearances from curious eyes and this is perfect, if what the bracelet states is true then me a one-star mage should be able to trick an Archmage,ter we can confirm it with Elizabeth if it works".

    When Daimon was about to answer, as if being mentioned had summoned her a flying carriage approached the mountain where they were staying which made Aisha smile.

    "She is here, let''s go out to greet her".

 Chapter 13 Elizabeth Revy

    Once they were outside of the cage Daimon''s eyes lit up at the sight of Elizabeth''s flying carriage which Aisha noticed.

    "Are you interested on the carriage darling? As I told you before the Revy n is known for their talented magic cksmithing, the technology used for magic carriages was invented by humans originally but some races got interested on it so they bought the theory behind it, unfortunately it is not easy to replicate so besides the Revy n only the dwarves are able to create flying carriages and other kinds of air ships".

    Daimon knew there existed a gxy ruled by humans but he already confirmed that it wasn''t the milky way were earth resided, so he was not really interested on them but it seems like even on a magic oriented culture humanity still focused on technology developing.

    One of the doors of the carriage opened and a silhouette shed off beforending on the ground 10 meters away from where they were standing, Aisha couldn''t help but smile "as dramatic as always", she thought.

    Before Daimon could react, he was already in the arms of the woman that was in the carriage a moment ago.

    Elizabeth turned to see Aisha before rubbing her face against daimon''s.

    "Hooo cuteeee!!! ?, not fair Aisha you should have tried to sneak out of the red mist to visit me before".

    Daimon was feeling a bit dizzy, a few seconds ago he was standing on the ground but then his vision blurred and the next thing his eyes registered was him being moved around as if he was some kind of stuffed animal toy.

    Aisha noticed theplex expression on her son''s face and she was amused by it.

    "Hahaha, Liz don''t move around too much and be careful, you are an Archmage and I would appreciate you not identally breaking Daimon''s bones, you know?".

    Elizabeth immediately let down Daimon before she started moving in circles around him as if she was evaluating him, while Daimon did the same.

    The woman in front of him had light brown waist-length hair, a beautiful pair of eyes which color reminded him of maple leaves, but the most striking thing about her was that pair of ears and the four foxlike tails that gave her an exotic charm, it also caught his attention that unlike the people on the red mist she was wearing eastern-like clothes.

    While Daimon was lost in his thoughts Elizabeth stopped in front of him before smiling.

    "Umm, thanks to the heavens he seems to only have inherited things from you hahaha¡­ speaking about it why are you disguised as a teen? It kind of reminds me when we met though".

    It''s not like Elizabeth didn''t notice Aisha''s current appearance but she thought it was only a disguise.

    Aisha pointed at the carriage before answering.

    "I told you it''s a long story let''s enter the carriage and leave; I still feel that this ce is quite dangerous even with you around".

    Elizabeth nodded, as an Archmage she was able to fly while helping others to float without any problem, she ced her hand on Aisha''s shoulder to take help her, as for Daimon, she pressed him against her which left him no other choice but to hold onto her body to not fall.

    While they were floating to reach the carriage, he couldn''t help but think "what lively, she is crazy" and as expected Evangeline answered him, "don''t lie to yourself I can clearly see you are enjoying it so I guess we found your next prey hahaha".

    Once they were inside the carriage Elizabeth closed the door before clicking some buttons in what looked like some kind of keyboard, Daimon felt the carriage smoothly moving for a second before everything returned to normal, Elizabeth covered the keyboard with a ss case and then sat cross legged on the floor.

    Aisha also sat on the floor and Daimon followed her not too long after, Aisha started telling Elizabeth all the things that happened to them on the past days, including the fact that she actually died and Daimon getting a unique type of "grimoire", of course she asked her son while they were still on the cave if it was okay to tell Elizabeth the truth and he left the decision up to Aisha.

    Needless to say, but Aisha had total trust in her friend due to some past life and death experiences they have gone through together and the same could be said of Elizabeth, after all if you didn''t have full trust on your friend would you go alone to meet it on a secluded ce knowing that she is part of the faction your n is on war with?

    Once Aisha finished speaking Elizabeth had aplex expression on her face, she was really angry considering how the Naktis treated them and all the things they have to suffer due to that but on the other hand her friend had finally severed any ties with them so it was also a motive to celebrate in her opinion.

    "What a crazy adventure you had Aisha, at least now you both are fine¡­ if you want why don''t you stay with me, although my sister might argue against it, I''m an Archmage too so she can''t ignore my opinions, besides no one knows you are here so there shouldn''t be any problems".

    Aisha nodded and took out the bracelet of the god of mischief before using it.<sub> </sub>

    "Yes, that was the n, Daimon is still young so he can take lessons at home for the time being, as for me the n is using this magic device to disguise myself and train to recover my cultivation, since I have gone through it once, it shouldn''t take too much time".

    Aisha activated the effect of the bracelet and her appearance changed, her hair color war ck and her eyes turned red, these weremon characteristics of vampires, werewolves and demons so no one could identify her just based on that and since it has been almost two hundred years since she was a teen then she didn''t bother to change her face at all.

    "This is the look I will be using in public, now try to see through the disguise to test if the bracelet works like it should".

    Elizabeth used a spell called "Adna" which was used to identify wanted criminals, so it was the best and most used spell to see through disguises, after trying a few times Aisha''s disguise didn''t change at all.

    "Incredible, to think there is an item which canpletely ignore the identifying spell specially created by the Greenwich Sage", where did you get such a thing?".

    Aisha turned to see her son, which Elizabeth noticed before she smiled and waved her hand at Daimon.

    "Heh, so it was little Daimon the one who got that bracelet,e here sit in big sister''sp".

    Daimon internally sighed but he still stood up and sat on Elizabeth''sp while listening to Evangelineughing like crazy by hearing the words "little Daimon".

    "That''s it, from now and onwards I will be your big sister, two hundred years might sound like a lot but a normal vampire can live up to one thousand years and a being a mage gives you a really long lifespan so you can consider me being on my twenties hehehe ?".

    "You shameless", thought Aisha but Elizabeth was right, unlike humans, vampires and other races had longer lives and on top of that an Archmage had a lifespan of about fifty thousand years so Elizabeth could be considered really young on that scale.

    Elizabeth revolted Daimon''s hair before taking out a long case from her storage ring.

    "To celebrate our first meeting, big sister brought a gift for you ?".

    Daimon received the case and when he opened it, he was surprised by its content¡­ there was a something that looked like a gun along with some bullets.

    "Big sister¡­ what is this?", he asked just in case he was wrong.

    Elizabeth smiled from ear to ear.

    "This is a magic weapon called "gun", the concept was created by humans but big sister got the blueprints thanks to a bet hahaha and this is the first fully operative prototype created by me, do you like it?".

    Daimon couldn''t contain his excitement, as a former teen boy fire weapons were really to his liking.

    "Yes, can you teach me how to use it?".

    Seeing Daimon''s hopeful expression Elizabeth almost suffered a heart attack, "how cute, luckily, he doesn''t resemble¡­ Victor", suddenly Elizabeth had a wonderful idea.

    "Of course, in fact how about I be your tutor since your mother will be busy with her training, I as an Archmage I''m well qualified to teach you magic, what do you say Aisha?".

    Aisha saw her son really interested in that gun thing and she sighed, but it was true that she needed to focus on advancing.

    "Fine but¡­ don''t teach anything extreme and he will still have to do some field training with me, okay?".

    Elizabeth nodded.

    "No problem, in fact I will apany you on your trainings outside because I''m also interested in that weird grimoire you mentioned".

 Chapter 14 Sisterly Reunion

    Since Daimon wanted to learn how to use the gun as soon as possible Elizabeth decided to use the time of the flight to exin some things about it while Aisha asked her for some low rank mana crystals to cultivate her core.

    "Human Archmages are really low in number since their race is mostly oriented to the knight''s path, but bing a knight is quite hard since it requires to make the body go through a lot of tension to light up the life spark so the idea of the gun was conceived to help those who are yet to be knights or maybe even low ranked knights".

    "To use the gun, you don''t need mana nor battle aura, instead of that fire magic crystals are processed to be igniting dust which is then poured into a little container to beter sealed with the projectile, the result is what we call a bullet, the gun itself is just a frame to contain and then shoot the bullet without the user exposing to any idents, just like a bow is needed to shoot an arrow".

    Elizabeth took out the gun from the case to exin Daimon the steps needed to shoot the gun.

    "Now the first thing you need to do is introduce the bullets in this space called "receiver", this gun''s magazine tube can contain up to five bullets, after that you need to slide the forearm backwards you will hear a characteristic clicking sound that tells you the bullet was properly moved to the chamber, remove the safe lock and then just pull the trigger, the gun will do the rest".

    Daimon carefully inspected the weapon which was somehow a mix between a shotgun with a rifle since the bullets used were not shotgun shells but normal bullets, the way to use it was actually quite simple at least for him who has seen fire arms a lot of times on his past life.

    "Can we shoot itter, I want to see the power of the gun?", he asked.

    Elizabeth happily nodded.

    "Of course, big sister built a personal area to train in the usage of guns, since I can see they have a lot of potential, once we reach the Revy n grounds, we''ll shoot it".

    Elizabeth finished her exnation because they were already at the entrance of the Revy n, normally due to her position in the Revy family the guards wouldn''t bother her but since they were ordered by the n head to report if she left her mansion, the one weing her right now was¡­ her older sister.

    Daimon observed through the window of the carriage and saw a tall gray-haired woman hiding her face with a veil floating a few meters away from them.

    Elizabeth gently lowered Daimon from herp before leaving carriage, she approached her sister and they seemed to discos something before the guards allowed the carriage to enter the Revy n, Aisha stopped absorbing mana from the crystals before calling Daimon to sit next to her.

    "Don''t worry darling that veiled woman is Elizabeth''s older sister, she was also a friend of mine but¡­ as the n head she couldn''t be seen on public with a vampire so we parted our ways a long time ago".

    Daimon noticed the sad hidden tone on his mother''s voice and he understood that it was not something they wanted to do, but something they were forced to do, he held Aisha''s hand before saying.

    "Mom¡­ you are no longer a member of the Silverheart family and since you have the bracelet of the god of mischief then I don''t see a reason not to get along with her".

    Aisha smiled.

    "You are right darling; besides I need to get you another "big sister" ?".

    Daimon shook his head,

    "I don''t think my bones can endure another Archmage moving me around, you know?".

    ¡­"Hahaha"

    They bothughed which made the tension on the air disappear, the carriagended on the ground in the back of a huge mansion at the left side of the Revy n grounds.

    Aisha opened the door of the carriage and entered the mansion followed by her son, Daimon thought the mansion will be filled with maids or servants based on what he knew about the Naktis but there was no one around, also it seemed like his mother was familiarized with the ce because she followed a very specific path without any doubts.

    After walking for about five minutes, they reached a big open room on which Elizabeth was sitting in front of the veiled woman Daimon saw before, Aisha sat next to her friend and Daimon was about to the same but Elizabeth smiled.

    *Tap*

    *Tap*

    "Come sit on big sister''sp", the veiled woman focused her attention on Daimon which made him feel a bit shy but he still walked towards Elizabeth and sat on her legs.

    After a moment of silence Aisha took the initiative speak.

    "It''s been a while¡­ ine, you probably guessed it but I''m no longer tied to the Naktis nor the Silverheart families".

    *sigh*

    "It''s nice to see you again Aisha, my stupid sister told me some of the things that happened¡­ but I want to hear the whole story before if you don''t mind".<sub> </sub>

    Elizabeth interrupted.

    "Are you really doubting on letting her stay, the three of us swore to support each other like sisters!!!".

    ¡­

    It took a moment for ine to react, although Elizabeth has always been quite rebellious, it was also true that she always respected her as her older sister so this was the first time, she actually raised her voice while speaking with her.

    ine took the veil off, which allowed Daimon to see her true appearance, she had long stray gray hair, her eyes were of a beautiful deep blue with little purple tones on them

    "It''s not like that, I just want to understand what happened¡­ I once let her down because our father ordered me to sever any ties with vampires but now, I''m an Archmage and I won''t let such a thing to happen again".

    Elizabeth''s angry expression rxed a bit.

    "I''m sorry¡­ I didn''t want to raise my voice".

    ine shook her head, she stood up and lowered her head towards Aisha.

    "It''s fine, I once broke my promise can you forgive me Aisha?".

    The truth was that as the older daughter of the Revy n she had to inherit the head''s position, her father who was the former head of the n ordered her to never befriend a vampire specially one from a high noble family like Aisha, since ine was just a magus lord on that moment, she had no other choice but to obey him which led to the current situation.

    Unlike Elizabeth who was always free to do practically what she wanted, ine had to focus on managing the n which slowed down her cultivation, not too long ago she finally became an Archmage but when she was about to try and reach her friend again¡­ she died or at least that was what she heard but now there she was sitting in front of her looking like the first time they met.

    Aisha smiled.

    "I never med you for anything and do you think I don''t know you asked Elizabeth to give you one of the portraits of my son hahaha".

    ine turned to see her sister.

    "Liz, you promised me you wouldn''t tell her that!!!".

    Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at her.

    "That''s what you get for not telling me our father forced you to stop seeing Aisha, I became an Archmage almost 10 years ago, we could have reunited with her before and all this might not have to happen".

    She rubbed her face against Daimon''s before continuing.

    "And more importantly I could have been present the day my little Daimon was born ?".

    ine shook her head.

    "I swear, you will never change¡­ I also wanted to see the son of our little sister all these years you know".

    She approached Elizabeth before ruffling Daimon''s hair.

    "What do you say little Daimon, do you want to stay with your "big sisters" ??".

    Seeing Aisha''s happy expression there was no reason to refuse, besides he was also interested in magic cksmithing and the fact that they were already developing fire arms, "two birds one stone I guess", he thought before answering.

    "Yes".

    Of course, Evangeline didn''t miss the chance to mess with him.

    "Ding, tittle acquired "Womanizer, hahaha", she said imitating a notification from the system, which made Daimon wish to be able to put her on mute or something like that.

 Chapter 15 Hot Springs

    Now that everything was cleared ine and Elizabeth guided them to the room they will be staying, since this was Elizabeth''s personal mansion no one will enter here without permission and Elizabeth lived alone since she used magic formations to maintain the mansion clean.

    Daimon was the first one to enter the room, it was a quite spacious room with a couch, a closet and a desk, the beds on used by the Revy family members were quite big since below the Archmage rank they could not hide their tails away so they needed some extra space for them, the room also had its own bathroom which Aisha was happy to see, after all she was ady of noble birth and it was getting a bit ufortable to shower without shampoo and soap.

    But Elizabeth stopped her.

    "I built a special area to bathe, you know the culture of my race is quite fond of nature since we use spiritual magic, so I have a hot spring of my own which was conditioned to be a bath, what do you say Aisha want to try it?".

    Aisha smiled.

    "Yes, that is one of the things I missed back on the red mist".

    ine nodded.

    "I need to rx too so will I will also go; besides it''s been a while since we took a bath together,e with us little Daimon I''m pretty sure you will like it ?".

    Daimon could see the predatory gaze on both Elizabeth and ine and he knew this will not have a good end for him, but his mother already agreed so he had no other option but to ept.

    "Fine", he answered.

    Elizabeth dragged him along while guiding them to a hidden stair which led to the basement of the mansion where the hot spring was, the whole area had a barrier set up to avoid "curious" eyes, although Daimon was quite hesitant first once he saw the scenery of the hot springs, he was marveled.

    The basement was a huge open space that was practically upied by a natural formed pool, surrounded by trees, the floor was made out of some kind of wood and there was also a garden the whole ce was designed to rx and enjoy the calmness, Daimon noticed there was a slight amount of steaming from the water.

    "This is a paradise", he thought, Lykos had a low temperature by nature that''s why Aisha heated the water in which they bathed on the cave but now the water of this ce was naturally heated by the itself and the temperature of it was perfect.

    ine saw Daimon admiring the ce and she regretted not having built a ce like this on her own mansion.

    "Tsk, I bet this was nned by Elizabeth since she spoke with Aisha".

    One they reached the entrance of the pool Elizabeth showed them someundry baskets before she started undressing,

    "You can leave your clothes there, now let''s go in¡­ Daimone with take a bath with big sister ?".

    Once Elizabeth finished taking off her clothes, she also undressed Daimon even when he tried to refuse iming he could do it himself, ine and Aisha followed did the same and the four of them entered the pool, as expected the warm water gave a reallyfortable feeling.

    They leaned against one of the rock walls of the pool with the exception of Daimon that was sitting on Elizabeth''sp.

    Speaking of Daimon, he closed his eyes first because it was quite a rxing sensation and second because he didn''t know where to look at, no matter the direction there were beautiful naked bodies at both his sides and not only that but Elizabeth''s bare breast were pressing against the back of his head.

    Surprisingly Evangeline didn''t say anything so after a moment he calmed down remembering that right now he was a little child so there wasn''t anything bad with him taking a bath with them, "it''s just a bath, I always enter with mom so there is nothing to worry about".

    At some point ine took out a bottle from her storage ring and a couple of little cups.

    "Let''s drink some wine to celebrate the three of us calling each other sisters again". she poured some wine into the cups and passed them to Aisha and Elizabeth.

    "Cheers", the three said before drinking the wine.

    Elizabeth didn''t finish the wine on his cup, instead she gave it to Daimon.

    "Try it little Daimon, it''s important for a man to learn how to drink if you want to be popr with girls ?, you don''t mind right Aisha? It''s not a strong wine after all".

    Aisha considered it for a moment but she allowed it, this wine was called soft blossom and its alcoholic content was quite low so there was nothing wrong on letting her son try a bit of it.

    "Fine but only a bit", having gotten his mother''s permission Daimon drank a sip of the left-over wine in Elizabeth''s cup, the taste was quite sweet and he couldn''t feel the alcohol so he drank the rest of it without any problems, in fact drinking the wine added some extra charm to the whole experience of the hot spring.

    Elizabeth patted his head.

    "That''s good, from now on how about we bath here every time, after all sister doesn''t have a personal hot spring like this so you cane here with us to rx and forget about all that political nonsense".<sub> </sub>

    ine stretched her body a bit before pouring more wine on her cup.

    "Yeah, it''s a good idea, besides I''m sure our mother will be happy to see us spending some time together, Aisha I noticed that your current appearance is not a disguise and you seem to be only a one-star mage now so¡­ please tell me what happened".

    Aisha turned to see her son and Daimon nodded, just like when he met Elizabeth, he could tell that ine was honestly worried about his mother and he was happy she had some good friends to trust.

    "Basically, the day on which the Naktis evaluated Daimon''s talent for magic they considered him not fit for it and his body constitution wasn''t also particrly inclined to develop battle aura so they decided to abandon him¡­ Victor tried to take advantage of the situation to get rid of my son but I stopped him, some elders arrived at the scene and they sided with Victor but thy were still only tied with me, the problem was Victor''s father Velian Naktis".

    ¡­

    ¡­

    ine slightly frowned her face.

    "Wasn''t that old monster on a life and death meditation to try advancing?".

    Aisha shrugged.

    "Well, it seems like he failed but he still managed to put a step into the next realm because he was able to corner me to the point where I had no other choice but to use a forbidden spell to escape"

    Daimon got immediately interested hearing the word "advancing".

    "Mom¡­ I don''t want to interrupt but, you only told me the realms until the Archmage or the Magus king rank, what are the realms after that?".

    Elizabeth patted Daimon''s head.

    "You are too young to know about that, for now just focus on enjoying this bath with your big sisters ?".

    Daimon wasn''t convinced by her answer.

    "No¡­ big sister Elizabeth, if you want to be a part of my family, I don''t want secrets between us".

    "Hahaha, he got you there Liz", said Aisha before exining her son.

    "It''s not that I didn''t want to darling but we all signed a magic contract when we assisted the academy which forbid us to reveal information about anything beyond the Archmage rank to people below it".

    Evangeline interfered this time.

    "That kind thing doesn''t work on your soulmates, when she became one any ill "status", disability or restriction on her body were eliminated.

    Daimon smiled.

    "Mom, you remember the soulmate thing I show you before?".

    Aisha nodded.

    "Yes, why?".

    "You are no longer bound by that magic contract since you became one", he answered.

    "What!!!", eximed both Elizabeth and ine.

    Aisha was also surprised, the contract signed was supposed to be definitive because you actually needed to ce a little portion of your soul into it which guaranteed that if you broke the contract then¡­ you will die.

    But now they listened to a little child saying that the collective contract orded by all the rational races was somehow nullified so of course they were surprised beyond words, even Elizabeth who knew that Aisha revived was in awe because bringing someone back from the death was hard but possible, but manipting the soul was out of question even¡­ for those above the Archmage realm.

 Chapter 16 Stories From The Past (Part 1)

    After a moment of Aisha broke the silence that had fell in the room.

    "If what that is true then I might have underestimated the grimoire you inherited, Liz, ine¡­ I have full confidence in my son, if you don''t want to get involved then¡­"

    Before Aisha could finish her sentence, she was interrupted.

    "I won''t be leaving my friend aside again, so you can forget about asking me to not participate in this, besides I finally got to meet the son of my sister so how can I leave such a bad first impression ?", said ine while revolting Daimon''s hair.

    Elizabeth leaned her body against Daimon who got startled by the sudden softness that enveloped him, "don''t tell me these soft pointy things in my back are¡­", he thought.

    "When have I been known for following the rules hahaha, besides no one can separate me from little Daimon, humph", added Elizabeth.

    Aisha shook her head somehow, she expected Liz to react like that since she knew how attached she was to her son and it seemed like ine was also the same.

    "Liz, can you reinforce the barrier just in case please?".

    ine smiled; she took Daimon away from her sister and ced him on herp.

    "Now, little Daimone with big sister ine while Elizabeth secures the area", Elizabeth mentally sighed before standing up and taking some materials out of her storage ring, a hand sized red crystal cube and a bottle of transparent liquid.

    "That crystal cube is a magic device called intervention monolith and the bottle contains a potion called shadowless trail, using these two materials you can create apletely isted space", exined ine to Daimon.

    Elizabeth poured the potion all over the cube which absorbed it before starting to float and project a red area which covered the whole basement.

    Aisha nodded.

    "Thanks Liz, with that now we can speak without any worries¡­ let''s start with the basics darling, our Wonder Myriad ster chart is conformed by the immortal gxy ruled by vampires, white fang gxy ruled by the beast faction, ck marsh gxy ruled by undead and demons and finally the blue-sky gxy ruled by the humans".

    "70,000 years ago, the gxies were in a full-scale war, until the border area of the ster chart cracked and we were invaded by the natives of another ster chart, at first the leaders of the local factions didn''t care enough to stop fighting against each other but that changed when they were ambushed by the ruler of the other ster chart which imed to be a "Magus Emperor", on that battle eight Archmages and three Archknights were assassinated by him while the remaining ones managed to escape with different degrees of injuries".

    "The ruler of the invaders started transporting his troops from the other side and they initiated a merciless carnage in thes that were near the border, even when they were battling each other the local factions respected some agreements, like not mass murdering the civilians and things like that but the invaders didn''t care, wherever they attacked the blood will flow as an endless sea and the corpses will pile up¡­ theypletely exterminated all the living beings of manys just for their amusement".

    "The remaining Archmages who were able to survive allied to look for a way to end the horror, the predecessor of the current Greenwich Sage created a spell to seal the crack in the border of our ster chart, after being taken by surprise the first time the leaders created an strategy to deal with that Magus emperor guy, they noticed that on his presence the mana of the surrounding area waspletely under his control which was the reason as to why the number of casualties on the mage''s side was higher than that of the knights".

    "After taking that into ount they were able to ambush him and while twelve Archknights contained the Magus emperor another six Archmages bombarded him with their strongest spells from the distance, the battlested almost ten hours until they were able to knock that guy out before imprisoning him, the rest of the troops were easy to dealt with since they consisted majorly on six-to-nine-star rank mages, a couple of dozens of Mages lords and two Archmages".

    "The battle ended and they sealed the crack on the border, of course the leaders were interested in that new realm which they have experienced its might on first person so they "interrogated" the now prisoner Magus emperor and they learned that after the next rank after being an Archmage was the Magus emperor and not only that but since there was no magus emperor on our ster chart then¡­ turns out we are on the lowest ranked ones".

    "Unfortunately, that guy used a curse he had prepared beforehand to destroy his own soul to avoid the leaders getting more information from him, still some fragments of his soul remained and the little information they were able to get from them was the base for the creation of Magus kings as a failed try to advance to the next realm".

    Aisha sighed.

    "This episode of the Wonder Myriad ster chart was buried in the history to avoid public panic, after all Magus emperors had grasped some control the space so¡­ they will be able to create a tunnel to invade other ster charts if they found a ce that connected one side to the other".

    "The collective contract was created by all the forces that survived the war and since Archmage level people are needed to reinforce the seal every 10 years, the magic academies were created and everyone that wanted to receive education in magic had to sign a contract which effect will activate when you be an Archmage to prevent you from spreading this information".

    ¡­

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    It took Daimon a moment to process the story his mother told him, basically the forces that ruled the wonder myriad ster chart were afraid that the history will repeat itself so they have been maintaining the seal on the border but that also meant that the path to advance was blocked for them since they didn''t know hot to surpass the Arch ranks.

    Evangeline suddenlyughed.

    "Hahaha, if that is the case then your mother will probably be the pioneer in this ster chat because the Record of the War Goddess is not limited to the Archmage realm, the system restricts the information I can give you but I can confirm that once your mother reaches the peak of the Archmage realm then¡­ the second tome of the record will allow her to advance".

    Daimon smiled, "seems like you are not such a bad system after all huh?".

    "Hehehe you are going to make me blush, as an extra service I will tell you that once your mother reaches that point, she will need to leave this low ranked ce to sessfully advance ?".

    Daimon felt his blood pressure rising¡­ "I take that back you are still the worst" he answered.

    "Mom¡­ when was thest time the seal was reinforced?".

    Aisha was curious as to why her son was asking that but she still said.

    "One year ago¡­ I didn''t to assist to the seal ceremony because you were still too young to apany me and I wasn''t going to leave you alone with the Naktis no matter what".

    ine patted Daimon''s head, incredible I had my worries but it seems like your mom is actually free from the magic contract¡­ you can''t tell anyone about this little Daimon, Elizabeth and me are your family but if other people find out about this ability of yours then¡­ bad things could happen.

    Aisha smiles while shaking her head.

    "You don''t need to warn him like that, he might be young but he was brave enough to keep hisposure against an Arch level dark manticore, in fact he was the one that killed it after I¡­ died".

    ine''s eyes widened.

    "You w-what?", she eximed.

    This time Elizabeth took the initiative to exin the rest of the story about why Aisha was now a teen and all the things from the system that Daimon epted to reveal to them which made her sister almost faint from the surprise.

    "Well¡­ certainly Aisha has always been propense to crazy things like this happening to her, just like back then, sigh it seems like your son inherited that from you hahaha".

    Daimon was curious about the past story of his mother, Elizabeth and ine.

    "Mom, I want to know how did you three became friends, after all vampires and the races from the beast faction had never been able to co-exist on a friendly way so I can''t hardly imagine a situation that could unite you three like this".

    Elizabeth deactivated the intervention monolith and kept it on her storage ring before stealing some nces at her sister, ine understood her intentions and she sighed before letting go of Daimon.

    "Fine you can have him¡­ for now".

    Daimon felt like a toy being moved around between these two but he didn''tin when Elizabeth amodated him on herp like before.

    Elizabeth poured some more wine into her cup before drinking it.

    "Ok, now is my turn, make yourselffortable on big sister''sp little Daimon ?".

    Evangeline couldn''t miss the chance to mess with him, "Uwahh these women are perverts, well they do have the word "alluring" on the name of their race I guess¡­ they match perfectly with you "l-i-t-t-l-e Daimon, hahahah".

 Chapter 17 Stories From The Past (Part 2)

    Daimon ignored Evangeline and focused his attention on Elizabeth''s story.

    "A long time ago me and ine use to study on the Wild w academy managed by the beast faction, we qualified to be part of the elite ss since our first year and so we were the ones responsible of representing the academy on the inter-academy tournament against other first years".

    Elizabeth smiled.

    "Back then your big sisters were known as "The twin princesses of twilight" because our unmatched beauty and talent¡­".

    ine cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, Liz forget about those useless things and continue with the story".

    Aisha covered her mouth with her hand andughed on a low tone.

    Elizabeth shook her head while looking at Daimon.

    "Can''t you let me brag a bit you boring big sister, don''t listen to her little Daimon she has always been a boring old woman on the inside hahaha".

    ine felt a blood vessel popping on her forehead.

    "Who are you calling "old woman" youzy ass little sister!!!".

    Aisha decided to step in before those two started arguing.

    "If you don''t stop fighting, I will take Daimon and go to our room, I can tell him the rest of the story while we cuddle in our bed, you know?".

    Feeling her interests being threatened Elizabeth continued with the story.

    "Whatever, once we assisted to the where the tournament was going to be held, the stupid teachers left us alone after confiscating our storage rings and saying that the event was "surprise survival of the fittest", of course there were only first years on that so it was technically a fairpetition".

    "We got into a fight with the guy that was supposed to be leader of our ss because he was an asshole and we separated from them, unfortunately that same guy instead of aiming at the students of other academies he decided to go after us and so he and some other idiots formed a team to try and do horrible things to us".

    ine interrupted.

    "Yeah¡­ but you forgot to mention that it was your fault we were persecuted by them, because you nearly castrated him just for trying to hit on you".

    *cough*

    "He tried to put some weird things on my drink so it was just self-defense, anyway while we were being hunted, we met Aisha for the first time and she was gong through something simr but in her case the persecutors were students from the Wither Bone academy".

    Aisha took over for a moment.

    "Just to rify on my case, mommy found a rare magic herb but when I retrieved it a member of the demon race saw me and tried to rob me so I kicked his ass but he managed to escape and although I left that ce immediately, they tracked me down and that was when I met these two".

    "We ended up escaping on the same direction only to find ourselves trapped against a dead end together, we hid in a cave andbined our magic to seal the entrance, after all we were all girls who were persecuted by a lot of guys by greed and so we reached an agreement, work together to survive¡­ students are allowed to kill each other as long as they are not from the same force".

    "Aisha actually gave up on the herb she risked her life to get, for ine to refine it since she was the closest out of the three to be a two-star mage, but while she was still on the process of advancing, we were discovered and that led us to fight against both sides the vampires and the demons, Aisha even protected me from some fatal attacks".

    Elizabeth pointed one of her fingers at the roof and a little me appeared before taking the form of a bird.

    "This is your big sister''s spirit fire magic; I have always focused on offensive and back then I used to have a lot of blind points so eventually I was careless enough to be ambushed by both the beast and demon leaders and I would have died if not for your mother saving me on thest second taking one of the attacks for me from that moment, I decided to befriend her no matter what, inepleted her advance and wiped the floor with them".<sub> </sub>

    "Since we were not allowed to kill the beast faction guys that hunted us, Aisha took care of them and we did the same for her since demons have an alliance with vampires, once all that finished, we became sworn sisters, we stayed together during the rest of the tournament and no one ever knew who was the one that exterminated those guys".

    Aisha had a nostalgic smile remembering the past.

    "After that we started to spend more time together and since Liz''s field of specialization was magic cksmithing and my metal affinity was extremely useful for that I even helped her on some specific projects, those good days kept on even when we all graduated our respective academies until¡­ ine reached the peak of the Mage lord realm and you know what happened after that darling".

    Daimon was quite surprised by their story, the chances to meet each other while escaping on a whole are quite low so their meeting was practically orchestrated by fate.

    "Now that you know the origin of our friendship is time to speak some serious matters¡­ little Daimon can you show big sister some of those "skills" you mentioned back then on the carriage, I''m quite intrigued on the fact that you got them after defeating the manticore".

    Daimon nodded, since he has already told them basically everything besides the fact that the system is not a grimoire then there is no problem to show the skills maybe they will be able to help him discover more things about them, he stood up from Elizabeth''sp and took a few steps until he was in front of them.

    The only problem was that¡­ they were naked, the water waspletely transparent so he had a full view of all their female actives, even if Daimon tried to ignore it, he was still a male so he couldn''t avoid to steal some nces at them.

    The first thing that caught his attention was that both ine and Elizabeth had some kind of tattoo in the form of a crescent moon and a sun below their navels, as for Aisha even the little amount of hair she had down there was silver, which made him imagine him having the same on the future.

    "I didn''t even kiss a girl on my past life and now I''m seeing three beauties naked, sigh I guess this is the heavens making up to me for the shitty father they gave me¡­ two times in a row hahaha", he thought.

    He internally shook his head knowing that Evangeline was going to use this to mess with him for a long time so he did his best to not look at the beautiful scenery in front of him and just show his skills.

    Daimon extended his hand, since it will be troublesome if the poison, he produced fell in the water of the pool he only used the manticore ws as a demonstration, luckily, he already dominated non-chant activation of this skill because it was a pain in the ass having to shout the name of the skill.

    Elizabeth and ine were focusing all their attention in Daimon so they immediately noticed the nails of his fingers turning ck before extending some centimeters and curving to look like the ones of a predator.

    Thy both stood up and walked towards Daimon and as if they have discussed it beforehand each one took one of his hands and started inspecting his nails, after a moment they nodded at each other and Elizabeth took out a piece of a gray material.

    "Little Daimon do you mind trying to pierce this with your ws, of course if it hurts on anyway you don''t need to".

    Daimon had to admit that it was good having more people worrying for you, when he was with the Naktis he could only trust Aisha but now he had two new members of his family and it was quite afortable feeling¡­ or so it would have been if he didn''t get captivated by the fact that these two new "big sisters" were practically showing him their sexy bodies so close that he could even smell the sweet lingering natural fragrance of them.

    And as expected Evangeline put thest nail on his coffin, "At this rate you are truly going to get the tittle of "womanizer", you know? This is only my humble opinion but have you considered the fact that at some point you and your mother will have to leave this ce and they won''t be able to see you maybe never again?"

    ¡­

    ¡­

    Daimon knew it was a trap and yet he didn''t have any option but to walk in it.

    "So, what are you trying to say, I can''t have them lose their cultivation just with the premise of me wanting them to go with us to some faraway ce, you know?".

    Evangelineughed.

    "No-no-no, there is no need for that, you still haven''t understood the might of the system yet, with your mother was like that because she had to be revived you can''t even imagine how many realms you skipped by doing that while not being even a mage at that point, however these two are different, the answer to all your problems is easy¡­ just make them your soulmates hehehe".

    Daimon wanted to refuse but deep in his heart he actually liked the idea, as if his most hidden desires were trying toe to the surface.

    Evangeline felt his inner debate and she smiled, "holding back is not healthy, as your personal assistant is my duty to help you realize all that before it builds up until one day you finally explode, sigh it is so hard to have a pervert as a host hahaha" she thought.

 Chapter 18 Variant

    Daimon calmed down before taking the material from Elizabeth''s hand, he tried to pierce it with the ws and it was surprisingly easy for him to do it, the ws sink into the ore without any resistance which made Elizabeth feel surprised.

    "Incredible, this ore should be easily resisting the ws of a peak apprentice rank werewolves or¡­ maybe even those guys from the tiger tribe and you were able to pierce it as if it was butter!!!".

    Even Daimon was surprised, the tiger tribe was the strongest force of the beast faction judging by the number of Arch ranks they had, but unlike the vampires who used the noble ranks system the beast faction was a democracy so each race that conformed it had a representative.

    Still within the beast faction they were known for having the highest physical strength out of all the different races, their innate strong physiques made them perfectly suited to be knights.

    To be sure this time ine took out a little dagger and handed it to Daimon.

    "That is a one-star rank dagger, try to cut it with your ws little Daimon".

    He did it and the sound of metals colliding echoed through the room, although the dagger showed some resistance and some sparks were produced due to the impact, he still split it in half easily before returning it to ine.

    She inspected the now useless dagger and nodded.

    "This is definitely above even the most talented tiger men¡­ and just like them or the werewolves he doesn''t seem to need mana to use his ws which is one of the advantages beast races have over other species".

    ¡­

    ¡­

    For a moment silence fell on the room while Elizabeth and ine exchanged a couple of gazes with Aisha, until Elizabeth patted Daimon''s head before dragging him along and returning to their past position where he was sitting on herp.

    ine doubted for a moment but she still said what was on her mind.

    "Aisha¡­ will you allow little Daimon to marry with a girl from our twilight fox alluring n?".

    Aisha had an idea of what they were thinking but she still wanted to hear more details.

    "The only one who can choose partners Daimon is himself¡­ that being said I want to know why are you making such a proposal?".

    This time Elizabeth was the one to answer.

    "Our family is being pressed by the tiger men tribe to agree to a political marriage to "reinforce" the unity of the beast faction¡­ of course the targets are ine and me, as for them the one being promoted as the male part of the deal is the youngest son of the current n head an eight years old kid named Alexander Jolbaris".

    Since ine was the one that managed all the political rted things in the n, she took over the exnation.

    "The bnce of power in the big four forces has been maintained thanks to the inner conflicts between the races that conform each force, for example in the ck marsh gxy although the undead and the demons are the ones that rule it, they tend to constantly fight each other and simr situations ur on every force".

    "But that changed when the Naktis "allied" with the Silverheart family¡­ thus bing the only ones that had the full support of other ruler level family, the Jolbaris family has always been adamantly against vampires so to counter this new trend they also want to stablish a marriage rtion with us".

    Elizabeth interrupted her sister.

    "When our mother told all about all this, I almost lost it, they are obviously trying to get their hands over us only because we are Archmages and they also want to humiliate us due to the guy you killed for us back then who was also a son of that old bastard patriarch of them¡­  Arthur Jolbaris".

    Her previously serious expression changed to a happy one before she rubbed her face against Daimon''s.

    "But now we have our own "champion" hehehe ?, the reason as to why the Jolbaris family is bing more arroganttely is that the past year their previously supreme elder managed to be a half-step Magus emperor thus making them the only n in the beast faction that has two ancestors guarding their fort".

    "Luckily our mother is in good terms with matriarch of the werewolves the Argent family, and little Daimon has some of their characteristics so¡­".

    Aisha interrupted this time.

    "Basically, your n is to make Daimon pass as a variant of a werewolf and that would make the Revy and Argent families be on the same page, right?".

    ine nodded.

    "There have been marriages between members of our family with the Argents before so we can use that as a premise to create a new identity for little Daimon, of course our mother needs to discuss it with their matriarch but I can guarantee she will ept it because his ws look the same as a werewolf''s ones, not only that but we can hit two birds with one stone, because like this Daimon will be protected by us and the Argent".<sub> </sub>

    ¡­

    Aisha seemed to contemte things for a moment but she couldn''t find any negative thing on their n, having the protection of two half Magus emperors for free and getting an identity which would allow her son to use a variety of his skills in public was practically the best oue possible.

    "Darling, what do you think¡­ variants which result of thebination of two races tend to be normal as the strongest side of their blood usually dominates the other half, but there are some extremely rare cases where the child would develop special traits akin to both of the parents and even some unique new characteristics so that would be a good alibi for the skills you might need to show in public".

    Daimon was half convinced, with the bracelet of the god of mischief and this identity they were suggesting he would be free to grow up stronger under the noses of the Naktis and Silverheart family, but there was one condition which worried him.

    "I only have one doubt about all this mom¡­ what about the marriage part...".

    Elizabeth smiled.

    "It will only be a marriage in name so there are only b-e-n-e-f-i-t-s for you in this n¡­ on the other hand little Daimon can always truly marry me or ine or even both in the future, that would be a good way the be actual family with Aisha too ? hehehe".

    Aisha shook her head.

    "It is up to you darling but I do certainly think is quite a good idea".

    Daimon nodded, since the marriage thing was going to be feigned then this was practically a cake falling from the sky.

    "Fine, I''m in".

    As always Evangeline acted as a demon whispering in Daimon''s ears.

    "I swear you are one lucky bastard, just like that you got two new victims on the list and you will even get benefits from their family hehehe".

    "I wonder if this is the effect of the title reward you got by having ovee a certain death situation".

    Instead of discussing with Evangeline Daimon opened the tittles tab, with all that has happened he has actually not explored all the tabs from the system and the tittles were not his top priority back then, so far, he had only one tittle unlocked.

    [The one who has ovee destiny]

    [Only avable for those who had managed to ovee a situation no one in his position has ever been able to before]

    [There is no limit for you who have ovee destiny, the heavens and the earth revere your determination, the seas and mountains part to make way for you, no matter what situation you are in you will always have a chance of victory, you will have luck and prosperity as you have earned the right to (Blessing of the destiny)]

    Daimon was in awe¡­ "What the hell is that overpowered thing", he thought.

    Evangeline proudly answered.

    "I told you I''m the best... also I guess all that luck wille handy when you are "hunting", haizzz I feel bad for all the poor girls who will fall prey of you".

    "Shut up, one day I will get a mute function for the system I swear".

    Although they were enjoying the bath, now that it has been settled, they needed to do a lot of things, ine took out her lector and send a message to her mother to request an audience with her, after a moment she got permission so they dried off before leaving the bathroom.

    Elizabeth and ine went to their respective rooms to dress up while Aisha and Daimon did the same, of course since they were sharing a room Aisha helped her son to put on a good set of clothes as he will be in presence of a half Magus emperorter.

    While his mother was dressing him up, Daimon asked.

    "Mom¡­ are you sure we should show my skills to big sister''s mother, it''s not that I don''t trust them but¡­".

    Aisha smiled.

    "Don''t worry darling, Liz''s mother is a good person unfortunately she wasn''t the n''s head before but her father or ine would have not needed to cut off her ties with me, I''m pretty sure she will be happy to get to know you, in fact I''m sure she already knows we are here¡­ half emperors are on a different league after all".

 Chapter 19 Meeting A Half Emperor

    Once they all were dressed up Elizabeth guided them to the mansion that was on the central spot of the Revy family grounds, previously Daimon was curious as to why the mansion of a peak Archmage like her was on the left side of the city instead of being in the middle, originally, he thought that it was because ine was the current n''s head but he was wrong.

    "There is a giant magic formation embedded below the whole city which function is to create a barrier in case of emergency, this formation has a total of four nodes on different positions, ine as the n''s head lives on the right side of the city, I''m the strongest Archmage on the family so I manage the left side of the city, our mother is the pir of the family so she upies the very center of the city".

    Daimon had a confused expression.

    "But that only ounts to three of the four nodes you mentioned big sister?".

    Both ine and Elizabeth seemed to doubt but Elizabeth exined in a disgusted voice.

    "Thest node is the that is upied by the supreme elder¡­ our father, I guess there is no point in hiding now that we are family ?, originally our father took the position of the strongest Archmage after he passed the title of n head to ine, to be honest we never got along since we were little but we never had any problems between us until he stopped being the n head".

    "Little by little our father became more of an idiot, he was the one that suggested our mother the stupid idea of marrying us off to the Jolbaris to form an alliance, so that same day I kicked his ass to take over his position, but he still got the supreme elder spot as the former n''s head and so he resides in the mansion at the back of the city, that is thest node".

    "And now I have another grudge with him since it turned out that he was the one that forced ine to stop seeing Aisha".

    ine sighed.

    "Our father is a friend of Arthur Jolbaris that is why he is so adamant on the idea of us marrying his youngest son who is said to be a genius that onlyes every one thousand years".

    Listening to that Evangeline snorted.

    "Humph, in front of the host of thisdy no one is qualified to be called genius, not only that but he is also the one with the most potential in all the possible ways, look at his pervert potential for example, in just a few days he has already gotten three beauties as his future victims hahaha".

    Daimon was happy at first thinking that Evangeline was praising him until heard thest part, "can''t you be serious for once god damnit", he thought.

    "What about the other elders of the family?", asked Daimon.

    ine answered this time.

    "This is the main territory of our family since Lykos is one of twos with the highest quality of mana on its atmosphere it is shared by us and the Argents, the Jolbaris have theplete control of the other one"

    "There are my cities under the management of our family here and each of them is under the supervision of an elder, of course there are other races who live in this but if they want to be city lord''s they must get our approval and pay tribute to us".

    ? "Not only here, we have others that are fully owned by us so there are elders dispatched on every one of them, on the other hand, the ancestors, the n''s head, the strongest Archmage and the supreme elder have to stay on Lykos unless they have something important to attend".

    Daimon nodded and he felt admiration towards ine, although she probably had assistants managing such a big scale family was not an easy thing to do.

    Since they were using Elizabeth''s flying carriage, they arrived at the mansion in the center of the city quite fast and just as Daimon expected the whole surrounds where free of any other building as if it was some kind of private garden.

    ine took out a light blue token with the word "Revy" embedded on it and the doors opened by themselves, only the highest-ranking elders had the right to ask for an audience with the ancestor but it was up to her to decide whether they could enter or not, on the other hand ine as the n head had the master key to enter but out of respect, she always asked her mother before paying her a visit.

    Unlike Elizabeth''s mansion that had a lot of rooms there was only a couple of doors connected by a hallway which led directly to the main room of the mansion, the door was open so they entered, the room was quite big and there was an elevated tform without stairs and veil covering the person that was behind sitting on something that looked like a throne.

    Elizabeth smiled, she dragged Daimon along when she floated all the way up to the tform while ine shook her head and helped Aisha to reach the top, once Daimon was on the tform, he noticed that it was more spacious than it looked from below.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he listened a soft melodious voiceing from behind the veil.

    "How many years has it been since my two girls havee together to see me,e here and let mother see you".

    The veil opened for them to and Daimon was in awe, behind it there was no throne instead the silhouette that could be seen from the front was formed due to some decorations on the wall behind, when Daimon stepped inside the area behind the veil he noticed that the floor was covered in some kind of soft material which made sense since there was no coach or chairs.

    Apparently, it was a cultural thing for the Revy n to sit directly on the floor but none of that was important right now, what caught Daimon''s attention was the woman sitting cross legged in front of him, long ck hair adorned with some hairpins, a beautiful pair of blue eyes, in general words she looked like abination of both Elizabeth and ine but she gave off a more mature feeling while still looking young in Daimon''s opinion.

    Unlike Elizabeth or ine, she seemed to only have one tail but it was bigger than the ones of them and it looked so fluffy he had the urge to touch it, finally as the icing on the cake... a pair of breasts that threatened to burst out of her clothes, the only word that came to Daimon''s mind was "beautiful", but Evangeline had other opinion.<sub> </sub>

    "Uwaah, now that is what you truly expect by a race that has "Alluring" in its name hahaha".

    "Mm?", the woman seemed to notice Daimon''s curious gaze and she smiled one of her fingers made some movements and Daimon started floating towards her, she wrapped her big tail around her body and let Daimon sit on herp.

    Speaking of Daimon at first, he was surprised by her actions but when he sat on herp over her tail the fluffiness of her furr was sofortable that he felt his bones melting, "what the hell is this soft sensation", he thought.

    The woman patted Daimon''s head a couple of times before saying.

    "You are Aisha''s child, right?"

    Daimon came out of his trance to answer.

    "Yes, my name is Daimon".

    The woman nodded.

    "Hehehe how cute, my name is Erin Revy but you can call me auntie".

    ine saw her mother doing exactly what she supposed and she couldn''t help but internally sigh.

    "Ahem, Mother¡­ we came here to discuss something serious".

    Erin shook her head.

    "ine I''m the older one here so why are you acting like an old woman?".

    Elizabeth couldn''t hold back herugh.

    "Pffftt, hahaha, I always tell her the same, mom".

    ine felt a headacheing her way, this is one of the reasons as to why her mother didn''t became the n head back then she was¡­ to free spirited to manage political matters just like Elizabeth.

    Aisha watched the scene and she felt nostalgic, she visited the Revy n in secret a couple of times and she got to know Erin before, that is why she told Daimon to not worry about anything since Erin was like a second Elizabeth on personality terms at least, she never got discriminated by her, instead she treated her as if she was another of her daughters.

    "It''s been a whiledy Erin; I apologize for noting to visit before".

    Erin was caressing Daimon''s when she heard Aisha speaking to her.

    "Don''t worry about that little Aisha, you are like a daughter for me so it is good to see you again¡­ in fact I should be the one apologizing since I wasn''t able to help you when you needed it".

    Aisha knew what she meant but she never ced any guilt on any of them, no one could have guessed that Victor was shameless enough to try to kill a child who hasn''t even started cultivating and even if she knew, if an ancestor like Erin invaded the castle of the Naktis a total war would have probably started at the spot.

    Aisha shook her head.

    "That is all in the past, what is important is that both my son and I are good and healthy and now Daimon will be able to live surrounded by a true family".

    Erin rubbed her face against Daimon''s as her tail wiggled a bit.

    "Well said, I can''t believe how someone would even think on trying to harm such a cute boy like little Daimon ?, so now what did you wanted to discuss with me?".

    Daimon was in awe, he thought that a half emperor would be a serious and dignified person but Erin turned out to be like an even more affectionate version of Elizabeth.

    "I hate to admit it but I guess I truly have luck for this kind of things".

 Chapter 20 Preparations For The Future

    Elizabeth started exining her mother about the n they had thought, as the conversation advanced Erin was getting more and more surprised by what her daughter was telling her.

    "So that is why Aisha is young now again¡­ she revived".

    Once Elizabeth finished her exnation Erin focused her gaze on Daimon before she asked.

    "Little Daimon, can you show auntie your ws please?".

    Daimon who was still enjoying the fluffiness of Erin''s tail nodded, he showed her his right hand before activating the skill which turned his nails into ck ws simr to those of a predator.

    Erin held Daimon''s hand and carefully inspected his ws, it seems like although the skill was called "manticore ws", they were not exactly the ws of a manticore because Erin nodded after she finished inspecting them.

    "They are not different to werewolf ws, if anything they surely seem sturdier and sharper than the ones I have seen on their children, the fangs of a high vampire only lengthen when they bite someone, he isn''t weak against light which would eliminate any rtion to him with vampires, thanks to Aisha''s blood he isn''t affected by mithril which should be effective against werewolves but we can shield on the fact that he is a "variant" without any ws which would also increase his importance for that old witch", she thought.

    ¡­

    After contemting things for a moment, she looked at Aisha.

    "Honestly it would have been hard to believe Liz''s story if not for the fact that I got information from a trustable source of what happened on the red mist and they truly saw Aisha using the forbidden spell "space rupture" so she should have her magic core¡­ destroyed".

    "But she is here in front of me totally fine, and there is no other exnation as to why a purebred vampire as little Daimon have the ws of a beast race, still this grimoire you mention must be far above the level of our ster chart, little Daimon how about you marry auntie instead of Liz or ine hehehe ?".

    ine somehow expected this to happen.

    "Mom, y-you¡­".

    Erin smiled.

    "What I never got along with your father and it''s been more than two hundred years since I cut off any ties with him so I''m free to do whatever I want; humph I would like to see who dares to say something about it in my face".

    Although Aisha was having fun watching the show, she still interrupted them.

    "Ahem, miss Erin¡­ although my son is free to love whoever he wants it is still too early for him, so for the time being the marriage will only be in name that is my only condition for the n, as for why the suggested "partners" are Liz or ine it''s because they are ones that the Jolbaris have as their targets".

    Erin shook her head.

    "Tsk, fine I agree with the n, now we just need to get a new identity for little Daimon mm, maybe the hair color should be changed, it is a normal thing to dye your hair so it would not raise any suspicions unlike disguising the color of the eyes, the fact that he has ws will be enough to make everyone discard him as "Daimon Naktis" and since little Daimon would only start attending the academy when he is 13 or 14 years his teen appearance might resemble his child one a bit but nothing that could rte him to the Naktis".

    Daimon was relieved, one bracelet of the god of mischief was quite expensive so if he had the option to not need to buy one for himself then that was perfect, "speaking of the bracelet I wonder if it can trick a half emperor¡­".

    "A-auntie can you help me confirm something?".

    Erin felt her sugar levels going up when she heard Daimon calling her "auntie".

    "Of course, whatever you need just say he word and auntie will do her best to help you ?".

    "Thanks, mom please activate the effect of the bracelet, I want to confirm if it works on¡­ half emperors".

    Aisha did as he told and for everyone else her characteristic silver hair turned ck and her face changed a bit, not enough to not look like herself but enough to be just a "coincidence" in case someone might remember how she looked as a teen.

    Erin focused all her attention on the current "Aisha" in front of her until she gave her verdict.

    "Mm¡­ no, I don''t notice anything weird, what a convenient magic treasure, it is rare to find something that can trick a half emperor and one from a beast race which have sharper senses than other races on top of that, if you don''t mind can you tell me on which magic ruin did you found it, or maybe it was on a secret dimensional space?".

    Aisha shook her head, since they were beingpletely honest then she could tell her the truth.

    "Nothing like that, although I have some treasures capable of affecting a half emperor no one has ever found something like this bracelet, it was a gift¡­ from my son".

    Silence fell in the room for a moment until Erinughed.

    ¡­

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    "Aisha, are you trying to make me truly fall for little Daimon¡­ because if that is the case let me tell you it is working ? hahaha, you two take note that is an actual gift a son should give to his mother".

    Elizabethughed but ine was ashamed by her mother words, "little Daimon is a special case, who in their right mind would give away such a useful treasure so easily".

    Erin took out her lector out of her storage ring, she selected a sigil which resembled the silhouette of a wolf''s head.

    "Let''s quickly settle this up so we can enjoy some food together as a family ?".

    Erin''s lector illuminated and she started the conversation, since she didn''t have anything to hide from Aisha or Daimon she spoke clear and loud in front of them.

    "Hey, are you still alive you old witch?".

    ¡­

    After a moment a sleepy voice could be heard from the other side of the lector.

    *Yawwnnn*

    "I was wondering who had the audacity to wake me up while I''m taking some vacations from my job and it turned out to be you, what do you want old vixen?"

    Listening how they were so casually speaking to each other Daimon was speechless, "I guess birds of the same type flock together", he thought.

    "I''ll go straight to the point; do you remember the thing about the Jolbaris trying to get a marriage contract with my daughters?".

    "Hahaha, how can I forget it, when they offered the same thing to me, I told them I would put one of the macho sons of the previous leader on a pink dress and give him to be the bride, Arthur''s expression was priceless, although they are still insisting that two of the ruling ns should join hands for the "glory" of the beast faction h, h, h".

    ¡­

    Erin saw Daimon''splex expression and she cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, a yes would have been enough¡­ Aura, whatever I have the perfect solution so they stop bothering us and at the same time I bet you are not going to be able to refuse even if you want to".

    The woman on the other side seemed to be truly interested in Erin''s words.

    "Oh? that sounds fun, fine I''m all ears".

    Erin proceeded to tell then the orded story on which Daimon was an orphan descendant of a werewolf and a member of the Revy n which they recently found on the annual talent evaluation who turned out to be a variant, as expected the other woman was immediately interested when she heard from his special "werewolf" characteristics such as the ws, but at the same time the high magic innate talent of the Revy family.

    "Wait a second Erin, basically you got a priceless gem from one of my kin¡­ that''s not fair I only have useless sissies on the male side of my n''s current youngest generation, present him to me if he is worthy then I will personally teach him how to fight¡­ not only that I will be his sponsor".

    Erin internally smiled, "hehehe, I got you", she thought before saying.

    "That is the other reason I''m reaching out to you, the deal is that the child will live in my family main territory, don''t worry he will stay in my mansion to train so no one would be able to harm him", she directed a cunning smile at her daughters before continuing.

    "And when he reaches the proper age he will attend the Wild w academy, since you are the principal there should be no problem at all, this way he will form a bond with our two ns and at the same we would be able to protect him at all times, what do you think?".

    ¡­

    ¡­

    The other woman took a moment before answering.

    "Since you are a cunning old vixen, I know you are winning some extra benefits but honestly the deal is perfect for me, we can reject the Jolbaris with a perfect logical reason and at the same time all those old farts from my n will be satisfied knowing we formed a marriage bond with your family¡­ but I want him to also look for a partner from my n, it doesn''t have to be right now but a strong descendance is always weed you know".

    Evangeline was delighted listening to the conversation.

    "Pfffft, at this point I don''t know if it is the effect of the tittle or if it''s what you would call "the luck of a reincarnated", anyway I suggest you to focus on improving your physical body because I can see a lot of "hard work" on the bed in your future hahaha".

    Daimon felt his blood pressure rising, "I hope that luck allows me to teach you a lesson in the future", he thought.

 Chapter 21 Family

    Erin considered the condition Aura wanted to add to the deal as something good, after what man would not like more than one lover, even in her n there were some elders who had two or three wives although some of them were just for the purpose of having children to try and see if they get a talented offspring.

    There were a lot ofs on the White Fang gxy that were not colonized due to theck of manpower and that situation repeated on all the gxies of the Wonder Myriad ster chart because a lot of people died back on the invasion and even if it was a long time ago, the average people would not have a such a long lifespan so they were still recovering from that.

    "I don''t have a problem with your condition, but the final decision is up to the child so you can''t force him, ok?".

    ¡­

    "Fine¡­ you seem quite protective with him; don''t tell me he is the son of your secret lover or something like that hahaha, I don''t me you though after all the guy you had to marry back then was a jerk if you ask me".

    Erin sighed, unlike the personality her friend show to the world she is actually quite open minded, that is why whenever the have a conversation is natural for them to joke with each other but right now the boy from who she was talking was listening to everything so she was wondering if it was a good idea to not tell Aura that other people were listening to the conversation.

    "Ahem, he is not my biological son if that is what you ask, but I certainly took quite a liking to him so I do consider him a part of my family, leaving that aside I will visit you with him in a couple of days for you to meet him and then decide when we should make the public announcement", she said.

    Aisha was amused by all this, "who would have thought that the matriarch of the Argent family who is known to be a battle maniac had such a¡­ sense of humor, I guess half emperors tend to be entric", she thought.

    The transmission ended and Erin kept her lector on the storage ring while she hugged Daimon.

    "It''s done, now little Daimon we have a couple of days to refine the n a bit more, I have the solution for your hair color so we just need a newst name for both you and Aisha, also since your current physical age is not too different then she can act as your big sister on the academy, she can even enter the same ss as you since the limit for being a first year is being less than 30 years old and being below the three-star mage rank".

    Besides humans, who only changed their aging ratio by cultivating, the other races aged slower by nature so for them anyone below one hundred years old was considered a part of the younger generation, Daimon was relieved when Aisha exined that their appearance matched the concept on "young generation", so there won''t be old men nor grannies attending the same ssroom as him.

    Magic was aplex study so the fact that one quickly advanced through the initial ranks didn''t mean that he was granted to be a powerful mage on the future, it was amon thing that youngsters who were considered geniuses stagnated at some point and then were surpassed by others who at the start were slower to cultivate, so academies were more open minded on that aspect.

    Especially due to the current Greenwich Sage who was the perfect example of that, it took him almost one thousand years to reach the Arch ranks which is considered slow but once he did it¡­ his magic cultivation advanced by bounds and leaps to the point that he reached the peak of the Archmage realm in a mere five years something never seen before, so if anything was true on the miraculous field of magic is that, nothing is absolute.

    Erin smiled.

    "But all that can wait forter, little Daimon what do you say if we go to eat some delicious food right now ??".

    "Yes", he answered.

    Elizabeth guided them to the dining room, as the only half emperor of the Revy n Erin had all her meals prepared by a selected staff which took turns to be avable 24 hours the seven days of the week, she didn''t even need to leave the mansion, there was a short-range transportation magic formation which allowed the chef''s to sent the food whenever Erin asked for it.

    ine ordered the food while the rest of them took seat to wait, of course Erin kept Daimon sitting on herp which made Elizabeth remember her conversation with the werewolf matriarch.

    "Mom, what did you mean when you said to that woman that little Daimon will live in your mansion¡­ he and Aisha already amodated at my ce".

    Erin put on a cunning smile.

    "Nope, for "security" reasons little Daimon will live with me ?, but I''mprehensive so if you want you can also stay to sleep here if you want, it''s not like you have anything to do anyway".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, "the only danger for him right now were them", he thought.

    Having gotten the answer that she wanted, Elizabeth didn''t continue with the discussion, after a moment ine returned with a lot of dishes floating around her, Erin saw Daimon''s curious expression and she exined.

    "Those who reach the Arch ranks generate a field around their bodies which allow them to have control over things as long as they don''t resist, this "field" is whattely evolve to be their domain and it is also the reason as to why they are able to flight, however I will not exin much about it since it is a subject too advanced for you right now, learning all this is part of the fun you will get in the academy ?".<sub> </sub>

    With every thing Daimon discovered, his interest in magic grew more and more, luckily for him there was always something new to learn, some new application to a spell or some new magic technology that needed to be studied.

    Unfortunately, Evangeline''sugh sounding in his mind broke his bubble.

    "I''m so eager to when you go to the academy, a pervert which would also be a teen at that moment on a ssroom surrounded by a lot of girls what could possibly go wrong hahaha".

    Daimon wanted to reply but then he realized that she was right, currently he was still a kid and yet he already found the woman around him quite¡­ attractive, "luckily mom will be with me so there is nothing to worry, it''s going to be hard to find a girl as pretty as her", he thought while not noticing that unconsciously he started seeing Aisha on a different light than before.

    Evangeline felt the change in his mood.

    "Little by little you will get a hang of the soulmate function, after all on the future you are going to need their¡­ support", she thought.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he heard Erin''s voice saying.

    "Little Daimon say "ahh" ?".

    He felt a bit weird; it''s been some time since Aisha fed him personally so he was already used to do it himself, still he epted the food on the fork since it would rude to reject her offer.

    "Woah, this tastes really good", he eximed.

    Erin smiled and her ears moved a bit to show her happy mood.

    "It''s good that you like it, auntie will order lots of delicious food for you every day hehehe ?".

    Seeing their little exchange Elizabeth couldn''t stay out of it so she also used her fork to pick a little piece of meat and offered it to him, since Daimon epted the food from Erin, he had no other choice but to do the same with Elizabeth and before he noticed even ine and his mother were doing the same.

    Daimon was enjoying this a lot, back when they lived with Naktis Aisha was the one that prepared all his meals since she always had to be on alert in case Victor tried to put something funny in their food, so it was quite refreshing to see his mother also enjoying something so basic as eating with people she considered family.

    He stopped them from giving him more food before saying.

    "I''m really happy that you have epted me and mom as part of your family, my words might not worth anything right now but¡­ if a day where you need helpes, then you can always count with me".

    Aisha was happy that her son didn''t develop confidence issues due to the actions of Victor, she never told her son to be on guard with the Naktis so she supposed he probably was in shock when they tried to kill him.

    Little did she know that since Daimon''s mind was older than his body, he could notice how she was always on full alert against them so even when they feigned to me friendly with to win him over, he never let himself be deceived by them.

    Not only that but after seeing Aisha die in front of him, he had a deep burning hatred against the Naktis to the point where he wished he would be able to rip them all to shreds right now.

    Erin shook her head, she made Daimon turn around to directly see her and while holding his face with her hands she said.

    "There is no need to say something like that between family, do you know why Liz, ine and me liked you since the first moment we saw you?".

    Both Elizabeth and ine exchanged gazes while smiles also flourished in their beautiful faces, Daimon nodded since that was also one of the questions that were bugging him, after all even if he was Aisha''s son, treating aplete stranger so kindly was a bit suspicious.

    "Because we know you are a good boy ?", said Erin with a yful voice.

 Chapter 22 Investment

    Seeing that Daimon was confused by her affirmation Erin decided to exin a bit more of her judgement about him.

    "Auntie and your big sisters have the highest blood purity among the members of our race, so we have a special kind of magic called "heart mirror" that allow us to see the true intentions of other people, back when I was a little child our n was in war with the undead and it was this ability which helped auntie manage to survive up to this day.

    "Unfortunately, is not something we can activate or deactivate at will, instead it only triggers from time to time and is either for those who will have a positive effect on our life or those who seek to harm us".

    "I don''t know about Liz or ine but for auntie, the very moment I saw you the heart mirror went crazy, so I know you will be an important person for me in the future ?".

    Even Aisha was surprised this time, Elizabeth didn''t tell her about the "heart mirror" before.

    Erin saw Aisha''s reaction and she added.

    "Don''t me Liz or ine, I prohibited them to speak about it because if other families get to know it, who knows what they would try to do to get their hands on my daughters¡­ it''s already hard to deal with the Jolbaris and they are supposed to be our allies, of course this little secret of us pales inparison to what little Daimon can do and since he is truly treating us as family then there is no need for secrets between us ?".

    Daimon felt warm in his heart, the word "family" was used carelessly but in reality, it was hard to find people that truly cared about other than themselves, just look at Aisha''s own father who sold her off to the Naktis, it was reassuring knowing that he could trust his back to someone without having to worry about being stabbed while not paying attention.

    Even Evangeline agreed with him on that.

    "Do you know why I suggested you to make them your soulmates?", she said.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "I don''t know because you like to mess with me?", he answered.

    "Well, that was also a part of why but the main reason is that the system can judge whether a person is a potential "partner" or "threat" to you and it would never be wrong".

    "Unless they are above the source of the system which is¡­ impossible", she said to herself, before continuing.

    "I maintain my previous affirmation you are truly one lucky bastard; I can''t even imagine how many people would kill for the opportunity to be with any of the woman around you, so don''t waste the opportunity, at the very least you should made them your soulmates so they don''t get taken by some other guy, it''s a good future "investment" hehehe"

    Just like the whispers of the devil, Evangeline''s words made Daimon consider her idea, "I hate to admit it but¡­ she''s got a point god damn".

    "Mm?", Erin seemed to notice something and she smiled.

    "Right now, whatever you had in your mind made the heart mirror activate just like when I first saw you ?, can you tell us what are you thinking little Daimon?".

    Daimon who was lost in his thoughts returned to reality when he heard Erin speaking to him.

    "Ahem, it''s just something I obtained thanks to my inheritance which allow me to help other people¡­ but I''m not sure if it is a good idea to try it because there might be some "inconveniences" in the future".

    Aisha remembered the soulmate thing and sheughed in a low voice.

    "Darling, if your idea is that soulmate thing then Ipletely agree¡­ I only see benefits on that anyway".

    Aisha knew that maybe she was being selfish but, Elizabeth and ine were the only friends she had made in her whole life, of course the decision was up to them but on her side, she gave her full support to her son offering them the chance to go further than what anyone on the wonder myriad ster chart has ever gone.

    Daimon sighed, "Evangeline I''m pretty sure this is what you wanted to happen from the beginning but honestly, I''mpletely fine with it¡­ this time".

    "Auntie, big sisters¡­ there is a way for me to help you break the shackles of the Arch ranks on the future but the conditions are not set by me but the inheritance I have so I will show you the "contract" and you will decide whether you want it or not, in mom''s case I didn''t have a choice because it was needed for me to bring her back but this time it will be up to you".

    Erin smiled and shook her head.

    "Little Daimon I have lived for more than two thousand years and I have seen a lot of weird conditions to use some kind of spells, besides I don''t think it can be something bad if you did it for Aisha".<sub> </sub>

    Instead of speaking about he showed the soulmate tab so they could judge it themselves.

    "This is what I''m talking about¡­ read it carefully".

    Elizabeth''s eyes lit up as soon as she saw the weird "projection" in front of her, as a magic cksmith she was interested in mastering every new application that magic might have, just like the gun design she got from the human race.

    "Wow is this some kind of image done with light magic, little Daimon, you must teach it to your big sister!!!".

    ine shook her head, although she was also curious about the screen from the system, unlike her sister she paid more attention to what was written on it, just like her mother told Daimon before, her heart mirror also went crazy when she met him but she thought that it could have been a coincidence since he was rted to Aisha but now¡­ she changed her opinion.

    "Little Daimon, correct me if I''m wrong but this is basically a contract to be lifelong partners, right?".

    <o>,m Daimon nodded.</o>

    ¡­

    "And you said you signed this with¡­ Aisha".

    Unlike what he expected he didn''t feel ashamed of having Aisha as his soulmate anymore, "stupid Evangeline corrupting me", he thought before answering.

    "Yes, although for mom it was not an option but a necessity".

    ine didn''t say anything else, she turned to see her mother and Elizabeth who stayed silent all this time and seeing their smiling expression she internally sighed, "looks like these two didn''t even bother to hide their opinion".

    Erin read the conditions of the soulmate and she was a bit surprised; her supposition was more oriented to some type of ritual spells that normally needed the caster to do some preparations or maybe even sacrifices to work, although they were not taught in the academies, spells that burned the life force in exchange of a stronger offensive, healing etc. existed.

    So, she couldn''t help but smile when she read that the "conditions" were basically things that she already was doing for Daimon, with the exception of the lover part of course but she understood why he doubted about telling them of this, "he is still a little child after all, it''s normal he feels shy about this kind of things ?", she concluded.

    Elizabeth on the other hand was still focused on how the screen worked, she just quickly read what was written on it and she didn''t bother to give it a second nce.

    Aisha nodded.

    "Before you decide let me show you something interesting", a thin dark mist appeared around her body before it took the form of a ck mantle, Aisha turned to see Erin and asked.

    "Did you feel any mana a moment ago?".

    Erin shook her head.

    "No¡­ wait was that even a spell?".

    Aisha smiled.

    "It''s called "Crow mantle" and it is a booster type spell I got thanks to my darling ?".

    This time the pair of sisters and mother were in awe, a spell used without mana was something technically impossible¡­ of course you could use a substitute to your own mana like mana crystals under certain circumstances but it was just another form of mana at the end of the day.

    But just right before their eyes, Aisha used a spell were there weren''t any traces of mana on its execution, not only that, as far as they knew Aisha didn''t have darkness affinity and she used a non-chant spell as if it was her main element instead of metal.

    Erin wrapped her tail around Daimon a bit before saying.

    "Oh my, you really like to surprise others, right? little Daimon hehehe ?".

 Chapter 23 The Early Bird Gets The Prize

    Once they read the conditions that they would be attached to, Daimon closed the soulmate screen which made Elizabeth return to the reality, seeing her aggrieved expression he could only say.

    "I don''t mind you studying the screenter, but for now I want to know what do you think about all this".

    Elizabeth smiled.

    "I like how that sounds, on regards to the other thing I don''t think there is anything to consider I ept, my n was going to marry Little Daimon in the future anyway ? so this is like a plus for me".

    Aisha couldn''t help but think, "I knew she was going to say that".

    Erin nodded.

    "Liz is right, every cell in my body jumped in happiness when I saw that screen thing, as a half emperor my heart mirror is on apletely different level than they so I''m 100% sure that bing your "soulmate" will be the best decision I could take in my life".

    Although she said that with a serious expression it didn''ts long before she returned to her usual rxed one.

    "That being said, the main reason as to why I''m epting this is because you are the one offering it hehehe ?".

    Since those two already made their decision, everyone turned to see ine who had aplex expression on her face.

    "I¡­ need some time to consider it, I don''t dislike the idea or anything like that it''s just a bit too overwhelming for me".

    Erin sighed.

    "I know you have always been the cautious one and that is a good thing considering how reckless Liz tend to be, but sometimes you have to trust your instincts".

    Seeing that things were getting a bit tense Aisha decided to step in.

    "There is no need to rush things, darling is there some kind of time limit to stablish the contract?".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "No, in fact even if they ept bing my soulmates, I will need some time to get fragments of Lace for them¡­"

    Daimon stopped midway, "what am I saying, I''m about to make a half Emperor and a peak Archmage my soulmates, just a couple of beasts hunted by them will for sure get me a lot of coins".

    Evangeline pped her hands.

    "Thank to the heavens, you finally are starting to see the potential of the system¡­ well more like your potential since the system was created to adapt to your "tastes" hahaha".

    Daimon decided to ignore her.

    "Auntie, big sister Elizabeth can you two leave this ce at your own will or¡­ other people need to know about it?".

    Elizabeth snorted.

    "Humph if I want to leave no one can stop me¡­ besides mom of course".

    Elizabeth''s words made the tense atmosphere disappear immediately, which made Daimon feel relieved, he just met them not too long ago and here he was proposing some "shady" deal to them.

    "That is good, I''m going to need your help to gather some things¡­ I will tell you the detailster, if my supposition is right then I will be able to give you two a grimoire just like I did with mom sooner than I originally expected.

    ine shook her head before stealing some nces at Aisha.

    "I swear you never think before acting,st time I had the chance to make an important choice I let my position as the n head to take away something important for me and I¡­ won''t make the same mistake again, count me in ?".

    Elizabeth smiled.

    "Well said, I take back all the times I called you boring old woman hahaha".

    Aishaughed.

    "There you have it darling, I didn''t see how the contract is madest time so I''m a bit curious about it".

    She was not the only one, in Aisha''s case Daimon wasn''t the one who performed the contract to ept her as his soulmate, it was the system, he only needed to agree due to the especial situation back then.

    "Oi Evangeline, what do I have to do to ept them as my soulmates?".

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    Some secondster, he heard the unmistakable teasing voice of Evangeline.

    "Well¡­ there are two options which do you want to try the boring one or the fun one?".

    ¡­ "I''m afraid to ask but what is the difference between one and the other?", he said.

    Evangelineughed.

    "The boring one just require you to offer them a contract, the voicemand is "vertrag", just think on the person you want to form the bond with and the system will do the rest, doing it this way it will take a couple of hours for the system to form the connection, quite boring and one sided if you ask me".

    "Now for the fun way to do it, you just need a sign of intimacy between you and the person you want to ept as your soulmate, it could be a kiss or something along the lines of that, also this way the contract will be formed immediately".

    Honestly Daimon was expecting to hear something more extreme but, what she said wasn''t so bad.

    "Why does it work like that, I mean why one of the methods need some time to seed while the other one is instantaneous?".

    p If Daimon could see Evangeline''s expression right now, he would have noticed the cunning smile that was blooming on her face.</anda>

    "I told you, the system works based on your desires so you should know the answer to that better than me ?".

    ¡­

    Daimon shrugged.

    "That phrase won''t always work, however I will go with the second option, just because I¡­ don''t want to waste time".

    Now that he convinced himself about that being his only reason, he turned to see Elizabeth who was in front of him.

    "For this to work we need to share a moment of¡­ "intimacy", a kiss on the cheeks will be enough, of course I need to have the intention of offering you a spot as my soulmate or it won''t activate".

    Aisha doubted for a second but she remembered the nature of being a soulmate which was basically a lover and she didn''t find strange the condition her son said, in fact she noticed thattely she has been more affectionate towards him.

    Elizabeth was about to reply when Daimon''s body started floating again, he froze when he felt something soft pressing against his lips.

    "Mm ?".

    After a couple of seconds Erin saw a simr screen as the one Daimon showed her before and she unwillingly stopped the kiss, after licking her lips she directed a triumphant smile at Elizabeth before saying.

    "The early bird gets the prize".

    Daimon was still processing what just happened, "I¡­ missed something as good as this on my past life!!!", he thought.

    Evangeline smiled.

    "That''s why I told you this was the fun way".

    Daimon came out of his trance when he listened to the iconic sound of a notification.

    *Ding*

    [Erin Revy has epted the contract]

    [A new title has been awarded to the host due to a specific action]

    ¡­

    Daimon had a bad premonition so he opened the tittle tab and he was speechless, there was another unlocked slot.

    [New tittle unlocked: Casanova]

    [The host has sessfully seduced a being of the opposite sex with high gap on both age and cultivation thus earning the tittle of Casanova, a man with charisma can convince others of anything, the words of the host will now have a tempting and convincing effect on members of the opposite sex (cupid whispers)]

    Evangeline couldn''t hold back herugh.

    "Hahaha, I didn''t expect that to happen but I guess that is a bonus reward".

 Chapter 24 Charm

    It took Elizabeth a moment to realize that her mother not only noticed her intentions but she acted faster than her.

    "Oi aren''t you the more "mature" here, so why are youpeting with your own daughter?".

    Erin shook her head.

    "All is fair in love and war isn''t it little Daimon ?".

    Speaking of Daimon, he was the most surprised one by the current situation, a kiss on the cheeks is what he expected and instead Erin kissed him for real, if not for the soulmate contract screen that appeared in front of her, she would have not let him go so easily.

    For some reason he felt worried about Aisha''s reaction to what just happened but when he turned to see her, the only thing he could see was her showing a smile ofplicity in her face, which made him understand that she knew this was going to happen.

    Although there are spells to amplify or change your voice, only Arch ranks can transmit their voices directly to other people''s ears using mana vibrations as the conduct, so Erin probably told Aisha that she was going to kiss him beforehand.

    Aisha saw her son''s happy yet confused expression and she internally smiled, "well he for sure liked it, what I shame I didn''t have to¡­ go through this "ceremony" to sign the contract".

    After a moment of contemtion Daimon reached a final conclusion, "why am I acting so surprised, they basically epted to be my lovers so a kiss it''s not something to fret over¡­ but I also have my pride as a man so a provocation must be answered in the same kind".

    "Auntie¡­ I don''t mind the kiss but can you put me on the ground please?".

    Erin let himnd on her tail again but then something that no one expected happened, Daimon¡­ kissed her.

    Erin''s eyes widened by the surprise but she didn''t do anything to stop what was going on, instead her tail wiggled to show her current happy mood.

    Originally Daimon was just going to give her a short kiss, just touching her lips and that was going to be end of it but once he was there his mind drifted away¡­ at least until he heard a familiar voice speaking to him.

    "Ahem, darling that is enough for now don''t you think?", said Aisha.

    He separated from Erin only to be dragged by Elizabeth.

    "That''s not good little Daimon, showing favoritism is wrong...unless the objective is me hehehe ?"

    At this point no one cared if what they were doing was correct or not, Elizabeth kissed him a couple of times before ine did the same, once he had gone to the whole circle of mother and daughters, he ended up¡­ falling in Aisha''s embrace, after all that he felt as if he was drunk, his mind was a bit dizzy and his heart was beating really fast.

    "Evangeline, what the hell is happening, I might not have kissed anyone before but I don''t think I''m supposed to be¡­ enjoying it to this point?".

    "Well, you are a pervert who got excited thinking of receiving a kiss from the beautiful women on this room, what did you expect hahaha", she answered.

    Seeing that Daimon was not in the mood for jokes she finally exined.

    "You are no fun, it''s not anything bad, don''t forget you are an "apex predator", basically your body is producing a lot of pheromones to entice your partners, that is why they suddenly also let their inner desires unleash without any restrain, as for your dizziness it''s probably because it''s the first time your physic activates".

    Daimon sighed, "seriously what kind of system are you¡­ whatever I don''t have time toin right now, how do I recover the control?".

    "Just take a deep breath, only the first time it activates is a bit chaotic for future situations you will be able to decide if you want to use this or not¡­ on most of the cases".

    ¡­

    "What the hell do you mean with "most of the cases" ¡­ forget it I have to stop this before things get out of hands", he thought.

    He did as Evangeline said, he closed his eyes and after a couple of seconds, he felt his heart beat returning to normal which made rx a bit, the dizziness was slowly fading¡­ until he felt someone kissing him again.

    Daimon opened his eyes only to see a face he was very familiar with covering his entire field of vision.

    "Mom is kissing me!!!!", was the only thing in his mind right now.<sub> </sub>

    *Ding*

    [A new skill from the Apex Predator physic has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Charm (Passive): when the host is excited his body will release pheromones to erase all the inhibitions on the members of the opposite sex around him (It only works on those who have romantic feelings for the host)]

    Although Daimon finally got some control when the skill was registered, he was still overwhelmed by the feeling of his mother lips pressing against his.

    A momentter Aisha separated from her son; she patted his head a couple of times before saying.

    "Did you like it darling? one thing is being surprised by Erin and another one is willingly kissing her¡­ if you were going to do that then the first one on the list should have been me ?.

    Daimon was having an inner debate, this was bound to happen sooner orter, since Aisha was his soulmate and she indeed has been closer with him on the past few days than when they lived with the Naktis, on the other hand the condition for "charm" to affect her was that she must have romantic feelings towards him and the soulmate function didn''t force her to develop that.

    ording to Evangeline, the soulmates were on equal standing with the host of the system and thus they won''t have their mind, emotions or personalities affected by it, if anything they will only start showing their inner desires but that will be all.

    To be honest even Evangeline was surprised by the current situation.

    "I have to say that your mother is quite daring¡­ I didn''t expect her to express her "love" for you so easily and in front of others this soon, maybe she got motivated because you were doing it with other women in front of her".

    Daimon shrugged

    "Don''t act as if this was not your purpose from the very beginning¡­ but she does look happy and that is all that matters for me", he said before focusing his attention on Aisha.

    "Yes, it felt¡­ good".

    Aisha smiled, for some reason when she saw the Revydies kissing her son, she felt a bit of jealous which led her to think "I''m also his soulmate and not only that I''m his mother so I should be the first in line".

    And before she noticed, their lips were pressed against each other when she reacted the deed was already done so she ignored the slight shyness she was feeling and let herself enjoy what was also her first kiss.

    "That''s good to hear, some good skinship is needed from time to time ? so whenever you feel like it you can always ask for a kiss from me".

    It was gettingte and a lot of things happened in just one day so Daimon went to the bed early this time, there was only one bedroom on Erin''s mansion and it was hers so he ended up sleeping on her bed which luckily quite big.

    The girls stayed behind on the dining room for a moment, they remained silent until Erin''sugh broke the weird atmosphere.

    "Seems like by all means we are a family now hahaha, to think that Aisha''s son would end up being "our" future partner ?".

    Her mother words made ine remember that she just kissed a little boy who is two hundred years younger than her and she felt ashamed, "Sigh I thought that he was going to be the surprised one and yet I ended up acting as a little girl in love¡­ although it was my first kiss".

    Elizabeth noticed her sister expression and she was quite amused.

    "Come on sis don''t tell me you are getting cold feet now hahaha, besides you seemed to enjoy it as much as mom and me¡­ also Aisha, I didn''t expect you to do the same, not like I''m one to judge though".

    Aisha cleared he throat.

    "Ahem, let''s not speak about that right now¡­ instead why don''t we go all go to sleep, tomorrow we have a lot of things to do".

    They al shared a smile ofplicity before standing up and leaving the room.

    Daimon wasying down in Erin''s bed, after all it has been some time since he enjoyed theforting feeling of a bed, when he suddenly felt chills running through his spine.

    "Why do I have the feeling that something bad is going to happen?", he thought.

 Chapter 25 Reassuring Sleep & Preparations

    "How the hell am I supposed to sleep like this", it''s what Daimon was thinking right now, his current situation was that his body was resting on top of Erin, Aisha was hugging the right side of his body while Elizabeth was doing the same on the left side, he had already shared a bed with his mother so that was not what was keeping him awake but the fact that all of them were¡­ naked.

    A moment ago, after only 30 minutes of him resting alone in the bedroom, Aisha, Elizabeth, ine and Erin entered the room and said something along the lines of "there is only one room so we will all be staying here from now on".

    And yet he didn''t really mind, in fact sleeping while surrounded by beautiful girls was quite afortable feeling but all that changed when they suddenly undressed, of course ine turned off the lights but¡­ they forgot his body was that one of a predator, the skill "sixth sense" allowed him to "see" every little detail of the paradisiacal scene that was unfolding around him.

    At first, he asked why did they took off their clothes and the collective answer he got was "we feel morefortable like this, and we already took a bath together so what should we be ashamed of"

    Well, that was not really exact since Erin gave a different answer, "because I''m trying to seduce little Daimon ?" or so she said.

    And that is what led to Daimon''s current situation, no matter where he looked at the only thing on his field of vision were beautiful women naked and of course Evangeline didn''t miss the chance to mess with him.

    "Well, that was faster than I thought, but I guess no woman can be safe from a pervert which also has the system at his disposition hahaha".

    Daimon wanted toin but to be honest this was in part his fault because they did say that if he was ufortable with them staying here, they could also sleep on the throne room and even if he knew they were only exaggerating things as they could have ordered some more beds from the staff at Erin''s disposition, he decided to follow their game.

    Feeling Erin''s soft pair of mountains which he was using as pillow Daimon shook his head, "these four surely are doing this on purpose, not that I''m not enjoying thought".

    His eyes turned serious for a moment.

    "Evangeline how long will it take for me to be strong enough to¡­ kill a peak Archmage?".

    Although Evangeline liked to joke and everything, she was surprisinglyprehensive some times.

    "Don''t worry, this ster chart is nothingpared to the vastness of the universe, it won''t be too long before you be strong enough to do whatever you want", she said.

    Daimon closed his eyes.

    "I''m not nning to be a big fish in a little pond, every debt needs to be paid at some point, so once I''m strong enough¡­ Victor and that old man who cornered my mother are dead meat".

    Evangeline could feel the hatred, burning inside Daimon''s heart and she wondered if it was a good thing or not, revenge might be one of the most powerful incentives but on the other hand it is quite easy to be consumed by it.

    "You will get your revenge soon¡­ but don''t let such a thing to control your life".

    Daimon was surprised, she actually seemed to be worried by him.

    "Don''t worry, I''m not that stupid, although I hate the Naktis from the bottom of my heart they are just a stone in the road for me".

    Evangeline smiled.

    "As long as you understand then it''s all okay".

    Daimon amodated his body to be morefortable which was easy considering the soft bodies that were surrounding him in all directions before he entered thend of dreams.

    He slept like a log which was understandable considering that he was finally on a safe, with Erin here even if another half emperor appeared there was nothing to be afraid, on the other hand it''s been sometime since he slept on a real bed wo all thatbined allowed him to rest really well.

    While Daimon was enjoying his night on the immortal gxy, more urately in the red mist, inside the main castle of the Naktis family on a secret isted room Victor was being scolded by an old man that shared some resemnce with him.<sub> </sub>

    "You stupid fool, what the hell were you thinking when you attacked that little girl from the Silverheart family? although their ancestor didn''t care about her disappearance, that old cunning bastard used it as an excuse to bribe some resources from me, we are getting closer to our goal and thanks to your idiocy he is now threatening me with waking up the ancestor to handle the situation".

    Velian Naktis was furious, all his life his idiot son let his dick control his actions and that wasn''t that bad considering his noble status he didn''t really care, until Victor got obsessed with the princess of the Silverheart family to the point where he begged him to arrange a marriage with her.

    At first, Velian rejected his son''s pleas until he created a n which needed two half emperors to work, he secretly visited the ancestor from the Silverheart family and they signed a contract, in exchange to some benefits the young miss from their family will marry his son and he will get the help he needed, after that he entered seclusion to reach the half emperor realm.

    Seven yearster he woke up and the first thing he saw was his idiot son getting his ass handed by the girl from the Silverheart family, so he had to interfere in the fight just to see her disappearing in front of his eyes, when he interrogated Victor about what happened he felt the urge to strangle him to death, his son actually tried to kill the "sign" of his deal with the Silverheart in other words the son of Aisha.

    "I don''t how the hell that girl escaped, although I managed to wound her mark my words if she manages to recover and reach the half emperor realm, I will cut off your dick and make you eat it so then you will be able to think with your upper head for once in your life!!!".

    Forbidden spells like the "space rupture" Aisha used were spells found on magic ruins or secret dimensions so they were not amon thing, space rupture was a forbidden spell only known by Aisha, Elizabeth, in and Erin since it was found in one of the many times Aisha and the Revy sisters went on an adventure.

    Half emperors were able to transport in short distances but it was only an imitation of teleportation that used the little understanding of space they had to shorten the distance of the entry point and the exit, on the other hand space rupture was a genuine teleportation which allowed one to travel between gxies at the cost of suffering damages on the user''s magic core of course.

    Velian noticed that Victor wasn''t reflexing on his actions and he felt a vein popping in his neck.

    "Get out of my sight, I don''t want to see your face until you confirm with your own eyes what happened to those two!!!", Velian saw Victor leaving and he internally thought "why do I have such a fool as a son¡­ and that greedy Silverheart bastard if he opens his mouth the ancestor will probably rip off my head from my body sigh, I''m surrounded by idiots".

    Oblivious to everything that was happening on the red mist, Daimon woke up after a reassuring night of good sleep and the first thing he saw was Erin''s beautiful sleeping expression a few centimeters away from his face.

    He tried to stand up from the bed only to be dragged back by her.

    "Now, now, where do you think you are going without greeting me with a morning kiss hehehe ??".

    Daimon was speechless.

    "Good morning, I need to go to the bathroom so¡­", he tried to escape from the bedroom with an excuse but Erin didn''t fell for it, instead she closed her eyes again and remained quiet waiting for him to kiss her.

    Daimon shook his head before giving Erin a short kiss which she really seemed to enjoy

    "Mm ?"

    "That''s more like it, I wonder if I should start calling you darling like Aisha", she said.

    Due to that little episode, his mother and the Revy sisters also woke up and made a morning kiss request, which he felt happy to oblige.

    They all dressed up and Liz ordered breakfast for all of them, while they were waiting in the dining room Erin took out a little crystal bottle with a ck liquid inside before handing it to Aisha.

    "That is the ink of a peak Arch ranked deep bottom octopus I subjugated some time ago, just apply a couple of drops on little Daimon''s hair to change the color to a ck one, don''t worry the ink is not washed away with water, you need a special solution so he will be able to bathe normally after using it".

    Aisha did as she told and they all witnessed how Daimon''s silver hair turned deep ck after being covered by the ink.

    Erin nodded.

    "Perfect, it lookspletely natural, and more importantly the ck hair also suits little Daimon quite good ?, now we only need to think on a new surname to use for his new identity".

 Chapter 26 Space Shift

    Once Elizabeth returned with the food they started eating while, while Daimon was eating, he tried to think on what his new surname would be, unlike what Erin proposed he wanted to change his surname permanently to cut off any rtion he had with the Naktis, it took him some time to decide until he suddenly got some inspiration thinking on the

    Aisha saw her son smiling and she was a bit confused.

    "Darling what happened?".

    Daimon turned to see his mother before saying.

    "I decided, from now and onwards my surname will be "Licht".

    Aisha smiled.

    "It''s not a bad surname, but why did you choose it out of all the options?".

    Daimon pointed at himself.

    "The nemesis of vampires is light, although high ranked ones are not affected by the sun, the light projected by mithril is still lethal to them, Licht means light¡­ also this way my own existence will go against the Naktis".

    Aisha was surprised, she knew Daimon had a deep grudge against Victor since his actions were what mainly caused her death but, listening to his words it seems like he hated them even more than what she originally thought.

    Erin nodded.

    "Daimon Licht, I like how it sounds ?, Aisha are you okay with it? after all you two will be using the same surname during a lot of time".

    "I don''t have a problem with it, the only one from the Silverheart family who actually cared for me was my mother and¡­ she is no longer with us so I don''t have any affection to them, besides with this I will share the same surname with my darling ?", she said.

    Erin shook her head.

    "Alright, I will take care of the background story for you two so looks like we all set".

    Elizabeth interrupted her mother.

    "Nop, there is still one thing we need to do¡­ we need to get some clothes for little Daimon hehehe".

    Listening to Liz''s words Daimon had a bad premonition and he was right, once they finished eating the girls dragged him along to Erin''s room, luckily, he didn''t need to go out of the mansion, instead Elizabeth took a set of clothes from the ones Daimon had and went out to one of the stores in the Revy family grounds.

    A couple of hourster she returned and that was when the "fashion show" started, Elizabeth brought almost 50 different sets of clothes, but from all of them only one called Daimons attention, normally the clothing style on almost all the gxies was simr to the one on the European medieval times although some races had their own unique styles just like the Revy n where they used more eastern oriented clothes.

    Although Elizabeth made him try on every set so she could see what was the style that suited Daimon the most the set of clothes he chose was somewhat simr to the modern clothes used back on earth, a ck long sleeve shirt, white pants and a white jacket with purple decorations, once he tried them, he immediately liked the set of clothes.

    Liz nodded.

    "It suits you pretty nice, I guess humans do make some of the mostfortable clothes".

    The rest of the day they just kept on preparing for their meeting with the matriarch of the Argent family, Daimon''s hair was a bit too long so Aisha cut his hair like she has always done, at the end they just returned to sleep together but this time Daimon told them to at least keep some underwear on.

    Unfortunately, he miscalcted, they actually looked more tempting using slight lingerie than just being naked, it was almost midnight when he managed to finally fell asleep.

    ? The next morning Daimon woke up early because he felt Erin standing from the bed to speak with someone on her sigil lector and judging by her indifferent expression, she was not speaking with someone she got along with.

    Once the transmission ended Erin noticed Daimon was awake so she returned to her previous position while cing him on top of her body.<sub> </sub>

    "I''m sorry, I identally woke you up".

    Daimon noticed her serious expression and he asked.

    "Is everything okay?".

    Erin caressed his hair before answering.

    "Yes, it''s just that dealing with despicable people first in the morning puts me in a bad mood so¡­ little Daimon will have to spoil me or I might stay all day in bed ?".

    "What are you a kid", he thought

    Daimon knew what she wanted so he just gave her a quick kiss to avoid waking the other girls, he already learned his lesson, the others would only kiss him individually unless they saw him doing it by his own will, in that case they will act as a pack of ferocious beasts which prey on him.

    Today was colder than previous days so they stayed in bed more time than usual, especially Liz it took Daimon almost ten minutes to make wake her up.

    Erin decided to visit the Argent n with Daimon and Aisha today since they were all ready and she had already told them their invented story background, they basically were the son of an unknown werewolf and a member from the Revy n who died some time ago when "Daimon" was born, so his older sister "Aisha" took care of him, thanks to the money their mother left them they didn''t need to work, the young brother arrivedte at the annual talent evaluation but coincidentally Elizabeth was there so she personally witnessed with her own eyes his unique characteristics as a variant.

    The story was quite simple and no one could rte him to Daimon Naktis since he had ws, once the preparations were finished Erin gave some instructions to her daughters before using a spell to hide Daimon and Aisha before she left the Revy n flying with them.

    Erin''s attribute was darkness, the spell she used was called "Dark curtain" which allowed her to create a field that deflected light thus making them "invisible" to others, also as a half emperor her technique to fly was on a better level than an Archmage she created something like an invisible dome where Aisha and Daimon could sit and just enjoy the travel without being affected by the pressure of the air or anything.

    While they were on their way to the Argent n, Aisha activated the effect of the god of mischief bracelet and her hair color among with some minor aspects of her face changed, to be honest Daimon and her shared some resemnce and now that their ages were not too far from each other they truly looked like siblings.

    At some point when they were far from the Revy n Erin suddenly stopped, she took out a map where there were some ces marked in red circles and after confirming her surroundings, she dispelled the dark curtain and both Daimon and Aisha became visible again.

    "We are out of the detection range of the elders stationed at the outer area of the n, I will use "space shift" from this point on, you should be fine since there is a barrier protecting you but just to be safe close your eye until I say so".

    Space shift was the spell unique to half emperors which allowed them to connect one point with other for a few seconds to shorten the distance, the space was still a mystery for all the people of the Wonder Myriad ster chart and although Erin has taken her daughters with her before while using space shift, they suffered some minor side effects like dizziness although they were Archmages.

    So just to be safe she asked them to close their eyes, Daimon and Aisha did as she said and Erin ced her hand on top of the barrier that was helping them to fly before they disappeared from the ce, they were floating a moment ago, Erin kept on repeating this while being unaware that Daimon was "seeing" everything with his sixth sense.

    Unfortunately, sixth sense was a passive skill which meant he could not deactivate it, at first Daimon was more or less fine but after the six time he experienced the space shift his mind started getting dizzy.

    "Oi E-Evangeline, can''t you do something about this? I feel like my head is going to explode".

    Evangeline who was seeing everything refused.

    "No, this is good for you believe me, others need a lot of time to enter in contact with thews of space but sixth sense allow you to "see" more than other people, you already know how this works after some specific actions you might develop a skill, just think how useful would be if you learn how to move using space as the method".

    ¡­

    Daimon hated to admit it but she was right, if he could somehow learn how to use space shift then he would have a triumph card to use in dangerous situations, so he gritted his teeth and tried to adjust his breathing to calm down, needless to say but it was futile, his senses were experiencing an overwhelming amount of information every time Erin used the spell and this kept repeating for almost 30 minutes until suddenly everything around him silenced.

    *Ding*

    [A new skill was created due to a specific action]

    "Finally, god damn I feel as if my head is splitting apart", he thought.

 Chapter 27 Aura Argent

    Now that he was not being affected by the pressure of the space Daimon checked the skill tree tab to see what did he obtained and there were two new slots added which were marked with a yellow warning signal.

    [Blink LV 1: Allow tele transport within a range of 100 meters on every direction]

    [Cooldown: 30 seconds] [Price: MP* (Undefined depends on the traveled distance)]

    [Space affinity (Passive): Improves the capacity of the user to understand the spacew]

    Daimon nodded.

    "Now that is one hell of a skill¡­ I can''t wait to test itter", he thought.

    Without him noticed they arrived at a white castle; Daimon expected that the werewolves intercepted them midway to see their matriarch but that wasn''t the case.

    Erinnded on the roof of the castle before dispelling the barrier, she noticed that Daimon had his eyes open and she immediately got close to him.

    "Little Daimon¡­ why did you opened your eyes; do you feel okay?".

    Listening Erin''s worried voice Aisha also opened her eyes and focused her attention on her son.

    Daimon smiled.

    "Don''t worry I''m fine, in fact I got quite an unexpected benefit from experiencing the space shift, I will show it to you once we return, by the way auntie, I thought the werewolves would intercept us but there is no one here?".

    Erin shook her head.

    "Things are a bit different on the Argent n, here the hierarchy es extremely strict to the point where no one dares to approach that old witch''s castle, not that it affects her though, since most of the time she lives on her personal mansion in the Wild w academy".

    Erin doubted for a second before adding.

    "She is quite entric but I can guarantee that she is not a bad person, she has even saved my life once before so she is my closest friend, just act like normal and everything will be fine".

    Erin took out a silver te with the same sigil with the form of a wolf''s head that Daimon saw the other day and a door opened for them, they directly went downstairs until Erin opened a specific door, the inside of the castle was quite simple, the most interesting thing were disy cases with swords mounted on the walls, some of the swords were clearly damaged or even broken.

    Erin saw Daimon''s curious expression and she exined.

    "Those are her trophies, the swords she has been using since she became a mage¡­ don''t ask her about their story or we will be here for a long time".

    Once they were outside the main room of the castle Erin knocked on the door and waited.

    ¡­

    A couple of minutes passed and there was no response, Erin sighed before opening the door and shouting.

    "Wake up youzy old witch!!!".

    Once Daimon was inside the room he saw it, in front of him there was a bed in which a young-looking woman wasying while showing some signs of being just waking up, she had a slender figure, long messy white-silverish hair and a pair of yellow eyes which reminded Daimon the ones of a wolf, on her right eye there was a thin vertical scar but that didn''t change the fact that she was a beauty, instead it added a wild charm to her appearance.

    As a member of the werewolf race, she had a pair of wolf ears and a tail, whichbined with her sleepy expression, the slight clothing she was wearing and the bed sheets half covering her lower body made Daimon think, "cute".

    Of course, he didn''t say it out loud because the sleepy woman in front of him was¡­ Aura Argent the strongest member of the werewolf race that has ever existed on the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

    "Yaawwn, what day is it¡­ weren''t you going toe here in two days or was I dreaming that conversation?".

    Erin sighed.

    "That conversation was real, also I tried to contact you a couple of times since I decided toe one day early but you didn''t answer the call".

    "Hmmm ?", Aura stretched her body

    "Whatever, let''s just go straight to the point, the cute boy behind you is the child you mentioned before?".

    Erin nodded.<sub> </sub>

    "Yes".

    As they discussed beforehand Daimon took the initiative to present himself.

    "Daimon Licht, greets the matriarch of the Argent family".

    Aura smiled, her yellow eyes seemed to glow for a moment before she stood up and moved in circles around Daimon which would have made him feel a bit tense if not for the fact that she was only wearing a white shirt and¡­ panties.

    Erin scolded her.

    "Oi you old witch, can you put on some decent clothes for heaven''s sake?".

    Aura ignored her, she grabbed Daimon''s arm and started touching his muscles as if she was looking for something, before doing the same on his neck.

    Once she finished her "inspection" Aura nodded.

    "You got a nice build kid, how old are you and in what stage are you?".

    "5 five years old¡­ early stage of the novice mage realm", Daimon answered.

    Aura''s eyes widened a bit but she hid her surprise a secondter, she turned to see Erin and gave her an envious gaze, "I can''t believe such a talented child from my kin was born outside the n, she thought.

    Erinughed.

    "Hahaha, don''t give me that look I''m giving you the chance to meet a child with a potential that probably surpasses yours so show some gratitude".

    "Tsk", Aura focused on Daimon again before saying.

    "Can you show me your ws?".

    Daimon did what she asked and his nails turned ck before changing their form to the ones of a predator, Aura did the same but just on one of her fingers beforeparing them.

    "Woah, the sturdiness and sharpness of this kid''s ws are practically on par with a two-star rank werewolf while only being an early-stage novice mage!!!", she said.

    Aura put on a cunning smile.

    "Kid don''t you want to live here in my Argent n, I will dere you as my first direct student, I will also fulfil any requests you might have as long as they are within my power".

    Listening to her shameless words Erin interrupted.

    "Hey, what do you mean with that you old witch, Daimon will be staying in my n¡­ let me tell you that he is getting along quite good with both of my daughters".

    Aura shrugged.

    "You can''t me for trying, fine I ept the deal¡­ from this point and onwards my Argent and your Revy families will be one and the same", Aura took out a ck piece of paper from her spatial ring before biting the tip of her finger and letting a couple of blood drops fell on it, Erin did the same and then Aura handed the paper to Daimon.

    "This blood contract stablishes our alliance, you can see the privileges and benefits assigned to you, once you finish reading it just give it to Erin so she can protect it".

    Daimon received the thing and he just kept it in his storage ring to carefully read itter.

    Aura took outrge case from her storage ring before saying.

    "I have a present for you but first you will need to pass a little test", she opened the case to show its content, a one edge sword, its handle was made out of ck leather, it had a small guard and the de had a mixed pattern of ck and blue.

    Erin immediately stood in front of Daimon and shouted.

    "Are you out of your mind, Aura!!!".

    Aura smiled.

    "No, I have always reserved this for a special asion¡­ the magic sword "Disaster".

 Chapter 28 Disasters Origin

    At first Daimon was confused about why did Erin suddenly stood in front of him as if she was protecting him from a fierce beast, but then he noticed that cracks started appearing on the floor and walls of the room.

    "Auntie what is happening?".

    Erin turned to see Daimon.

    "Right¡­ you can''t see it yet".

    She ced one of her hands on Daimon''s head and his vision immediately changed, before he could only see Aura and Erin stood in the room with along with him but now¡­ his eyes widened, he could clearly see Erin''s ck mana and Aura''s white mana shing against some kind of ck mist with red borders that wasing from the sword as if they were trying to restrain it.

    Erin saw Daimon''s surprised expression and she exined.

    "That sword is not called Disaster for no reason, you could say that is unique, as you know mithril is the purest metal that there exists and the light it radiates is lethal to all the races that are rted to the night, on the other hand the best magic conductor is not mithril but orichalcum, about 500 years ago some idiots tried to fuse those two characteristics and they seeded but the result exceeded whatever expectations they had".

    "Using a mountain sized amount of both mithril and orichalcum they could only create a block of about 1 meter of the new material, the problem was that just being near to it was lethal as it seemed to make the mana on its surrounds to go crazy¡­ unfortunately like always people don''t cry unless they see a coffin.

    Aura smiled and took over the exnation.

    "An Archmage cksmith stole the material and hid away on a low-level, he used his domain to protect himself and forged a sword with the material, once he finished his work the result was this sword, his idea was that since he added other materials along with his blood, he could be able to control it but the sword immediately drained his body from his mana, vitality and even his soul was extinguished thus killing him".

    "After that the sword started absorbing all the mana and vitality of that ce until¡­ the whole turned into a desert with no living beings on it, it was then when other nears noticed it and some Archmages approached it to find out what was happening only to suffer the same horrible death as the cksmith which earned it the name of "Disaster", after that half emperors had to take care of the situation.

    "That time the old monster from the Naktis family, Erin and me were the only ones designated to solve the problem with this thing, can you imagine three half emperors had to join hands to suppress the sword, the Naktis ancestor was careless and the sword wounded him so he had to enter a semi-death state to recover and that''s how Disaster ended up in my hands".

    "After that all the half emperors reunited and the method to create that material was destroyed in front of us, the guys who created it were all executed to pay for their sins, because among the Arch ranked people that died there were some rtives of at least 4 half emperors".

    "We wanted to destroy the sword but no one was able to touch it for more than a few seconds before it started affecting them and when we tried to bombard it with magic it absorbed the attacks, so atst we could only use a rare material that is found in the core of a one million years star called antinite which is supposed to seal off any kind of energy be it mana or battle aura to cover the de of the sword".

    Aura approached her hand to the sword before continuing.

    "Antinite is blue so¡­ this ck and blue pattern it''s because after 500 years it had already eaten away a part of the antinite cover, no one but me wanted to keep it because antinite is a strategic resource and the owner had to reinforce the cover when it started causing problems again", she then looked at Daimon and her eyes seemed to glow for a moment.

    "But now¡­ I think there is a chance to find a proper owner for Disaster ?".

    Erin almost lost it.

    "You are crazy, if you think I''m going to let little Daimon approach that thing!!!".

    Aura shook her head.

    "Erin, you almost tricked me a moment ago, but although I can''t identify what is that kid but I''m sure he isn''t a werewolf nor a twilight alluring fox, you know, I have fought against a lot of races, magic beasts and even monsters that go againstmon sense but I have never seen something like him".

    Erin cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, so what are you saying that he needs to be able to control Disaster for you to support him?".

    Aura smiled.

    "Nah, as I said I have never seen something like him and I like the fact that I can''t even imagine how strong can he be, that is why I believe he will be able to do something none of us can, it''s hard to exin I just feel like that will be the case, a hunch I guess".

    While Daimon was lost in his thoughts, he heard Evangelineughing.

    "A predator can recognize another predator huh? Hahaha, this woman has actually fought so many different things on her life that she developed a sensibility against different species, that is¡­ incredible".

    Daimon interrupted whatever n Evangeline could be scheming.

    "Can you protect me against that sword?".

    ¡­

    After a moment Evangeline answered.

    "No problem you are an apex predator so there is nothing that can prey on you in any mean of the word, however I can''t help you tame that thing at least not right now, so it is up to luck¡­ if my supposition is right then that sword might already developed a consciousness so it will only ept you if it finds you to its liking, pray to the heavens that it is woman hahaha".

    Daimon internally sighed, e on can''t you take it seriously".

    He took a few steps ahead but Erin tried to stop him.

    "Little Daimon¡­ it''s not necessary to take this risk".

    Daimon smiled.<sub> </sub>

    "Don''t worry, I wouldn''t do it if I weren''t sure that the sword can''t¡­ harm me".

    He then approached the case and after taking a deep breath he ced his hand on the handle the sword, for a moment he felt as if his body was losing all its strength but then it stopped, he thought that was the end of the situation but as if it felt provoked his magic core woke up from its slumber and started rotating again.

    Both Erin and Aura were in awe, they saw Daimon touching the sword and like always it seemed that Disaster was about to start draining his mana but then¡­ the energy being radiated by the sword started being absorbed by Daimon''s body.

    Erin couldn''t help but raise her voice.

    "What the hell is happening!!!".

    Aura was frozen, although she expected that Daimon would be able to resist Disaster, she only thought that he could stand its effect for a longer time than other people but instead¡­ he was overwhelming it!!!

    But the most surprised one in the room was none other than Daimon.

    "So now my stupid magic core decided to work again", he thought.

    Still even if it looked as if he was absorbing the energy from the sword, his magic cultivation was not going up at all, so he didn''t understand what was happening.

    "Oi Evangeline is my magic core rebelling against me or something?".

    Evangeline shook her head.

    "Mm not really, the energy of that thing is too far above what you can handle right now, so it is probably being stored inside your magic core forter usage".

    Their conversation was interrupted by another female voice that sounded in Daimon''s head.

    "Stop, stop please, I surrender I don''t want to lose control again!!!".

    Daimon smiled.

    "I guess you are Disaster, why should I stop? you tried to kill me a moment ago".

    The woman replied in a pleading voice.

    "It is not something I can control¡­ it''s like breathing for you, I have never attacked anyone that didn''t try to harm me, my name is Narasha not "Disaster", please stop stealing my energy".

    Evangeline stepped in.

    "She is telling the truth¡­ the decision is up to you".

    Daimon contemted things for a moment before ordering his magic core to stop, surprisingly this time it seemed to obey him as it stopped absorbing the energy from the sword.

    ¡­

    After a moment of silence, the same voice spoke again.

    "Thanks¡­ I told you my name but you haven''t told me yours?".

    Daimon was a bit perplexed, for being such a horrifying weapon it had quite an easy-going personality.

    "Daimon Licht, I guess you can call me Daimon, and now what?", he asked.

    Narasha doubted for a second before saying.

    "It''s the first time I have been able tomunicate with anyone so¡­ if you don''t mind will you listen to my story?".

    Daimon turned to see Aura and Erin who were still trying to process the fact that the energy radiating from Disaster was calm instead of its usual aggressive behavior.

    "Auntie, miss Aura¡­ it seems like I''m not affected by the sword, I''m going to try making a contract with it".

    They exchanged gazes before nodding, Aura shook her head.

    "Seriously what kind of little monster did you found¡­ you old vixen", she said.

    Erin smiled.

    "You wouldn''t believe me if I told you hehehe ?".

 Chapter 29 Narashaâ€™s Past & Contract

    Aura waved her hand and the case that contained the swordnded on the ground, previously she was using her magic to maintain it floating but now that Disaster seemed to be calm there was no need for her to keep wasting mana since the sword was extremely heavy.

    Daimon sat cross legged, "I''m talking with a sword¡­ certainly is something you don''t get to see every day", he though.

    While he was feeling a bitplex, Narasha started her story.

    "You probably already know the origin of the material used to create my physical form, so I will skip that part, contrary to what other people might believe I came to existence a couple of hours after the material was created, have you ever heard of elementals?".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "No, I''m stillcking a lot of knowledge", he answered.

    Narasha exined.

    "Basically, on areas rich in mana and another element, given the correct circumstances an elemental might be born, an elemental is an embodiment of an element¡­ it might be fire, ice, nature etc. however an elemental requires hundreds of thousand of years to develop rational thought, so at first, they would only act by instinct and hide on their source of origin, for a fire elemental it will probably be a volcano and so on".

    "In my case, since that material absorbed huge quantities of mana, vitality, blood and even the souls of those who approached it, I was created, from certain point of view I used to be like an artificial elemental, after I came to my senses the damage was done and those researchers ced me in a safe to think what they would do, the material had already devoured to its heart content so it stopped causing problems for some time".

    "Then that cksmith stole the material and forged this sword, he didn''t take into ount that the material would be more aggressive since it had been given a warlike purpose, during all the process I tried to warn that idiot but he wasn''t able to hear me and once he finished the forging process it''s when the nightmare started".

    "The material became uncontroble it devoured the cksmith and in a couple of hours the same happened to the whole to the point where it even started crumbling apart, previously I was still able to keep myself separated from the innate instincts of the material but when the sword was finished, I could no longer do anything¡­ you have no idea how it feels to be a prisoner in your own "body", the insatiable hunger that didn''t calm down no matter how much mana it devoured".

    Narasha took a moment before continuing.

    "Then those Archmages came to investigate what was happening only to be devoured by the sword, on the other hand once they were drained the sword calmed down enough for me to regain some control over it, I tried to runaway to a ce where there were no living beings but I was intercepted by those two women that are in the room right now¡­ ah there was also a creepy old man who wanted to keep the sword for himself and that was the first time I attacked someone out of my own will".

    "Since the other women didn''t want to use the sword but restrain it and the material was still "enjoying" the huge amount of mana it had stole from that old man I was able to cooperate and the sword was sealed with antinite.

    "I was in a semi sleep state for some time but the sword ate away the firstyer of the antinite in less than 10 years so I recovered my senses, luckily there was enough energy stored so the sword didn''t get out of control during thest 400 years¡­ at least until a moment ago when you absorbed one eighth of the sword''s energy reserves".

    Narasha changed her serious tone for a more curious one.

    "Speaking of that, what kind of monster are you, if the knowledge I got from the souls of those researchers is correct then you are only novice mage and yet¡­ you absorbed enough energy to blown away a country and you don''t seem to be affected by it, to begin with how are you able to overwhelm the sword?".

    Before Daimon could say anything, Evangeline interrupted the conversation.

    "He is the kind of monster that no one can never know what will his limits be... a "Pervert", as for your other question that is easy, he is my host so of course he can control a little rebellious sword".

    Daimon have already learnt to ignore Evangeline calling him pervert but he still had to keep his face in front of others.

    "Ignore her, she is just a crazy person, the truth is that even I don''t know what can I be considered anymore but that doesn''t matter, be it a demon, monster, abomination, I''m willing to be called any of them if that allow me to never lose someone dear to me ever again", he said.

    Narasha was surprised by the words of the "young" kid, what could have he experienced that would make him form such a firm resolution to be strong and how far can he go was something that even she wanted to see if possible.

    "So, you had another entity with you, don''t take it too personally but she seems to be quite arrogant if you ask me hahaha".

    Daimon nodded.

    "I totally agree, you can''t choose to whom you will be tied so I understand a bit of your pain hahaha".

    Evangeline was speechless.

    "Oi, you are my host so why are siding with some shady sword you just met humph", she said.

    Both Narasha and Daimonughed at her reaction before things returned to be serious again, Narasha contemted thing for a moment before saying.

    "Unlike those half emperors I can feel that you should be able to destroy the sword so if you don''t have a way to control it then please as a one-time favor¡­ destroy it, even if that also ends my existence it is better than being forced to be a prisoner of an unsatiable hunger and not being able to do anything about it".

    ¡­

    For a moment silent remained on Daimon''s head, he seemed to consider everything before he spoke exclusively to Evangeline.<sub> </sub>

    <o>,m "Evangeline, you previously said that AP is far better than any other kind of energy there might exist right?".</o>

    Evangeline smiled.

    "So, you did pay attention to what I say huh? As the administrator of the system, I can''t tell you all the secrets to unlock functions nor the actions needed to unlock certain skills but I can give you hints about them¡­ still your idea might work, there is no way to know unless you try hahaha".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Narasha, if you absorb more energy than the sword can you control it?", he asked.

    Narasha was surprised by his idea.

    "Originally the sword is my physical form so I should be the one in charge, but as an existence akin to an elemental I''m too young and the innate "instincts" of the material the sword is made are too strong for me to control¡­ however if I have a stronger source of energy then things are different, as long as I can keep myself on top then I should have the control, but you will need something stronger than mana or battle aura".

    Daimon smiled.

    "Ok, then it''s all settled but first I need to know, are you willing to form a contract with me? be aware that it will be a contract that won''t be dissolved even if one of us ceases to exist¡­ not like I will allow something like that to happen, what I mean is that you won''t be able to separate from me".

    Narasha first got excited since she might have a chance to finally have a decent live but she calmed down and asked.

    "If I ept, how would I be treated, I don''t mind fighting at your side but I¡­ don''t want to be a deprived from my freedom never again".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "I might not be a good person but fairness is one of the things I strongly believe in, besides from killing mindlessly or negatively affecting me or those who are rted to me I won''t limit you on any other way, of course you will have to help me to fight if I need you to".

    Narasha smiled.

    "I ept!!! But how are you going to form a contract, normally magic weapons form a bond with their masters through blood, that''s how the cksmith was nning to control the sword but it was instead absorbed the very moment it touched it".

    Instead of Daimon, Evangeline answered

    "It will work because the contract won''t be between the sword and the user but between you and Daimon, I have to say thaty your hands on your own weapon you keep surpassing my concept of a pervert".

    Narasha was confused,

    "Lay his hands on me¡­ although I don''t mind serving the man that will be my only partner ever, I don''t have a physical body you know?".

    "I told you before, there is no limits to what my host can achieve when a woman is involved hahaha", said Evangeline.

    Daimon felt an iing headache, unfortunately Evangeline was right, the only way he had to give Narasha his Ap was¡­ turning her into his soulmate.

    "Ahem, just like you said there is no need to worry about that since you don''t have a human form", Daimon showed her the terms of the soulmate contract and before he could exin anything else the iconic sound of a notification echoed through his head.

    *Ding*

    [A new soulmate has been registered, congrattions to the host]

    Evangeline was amused by the fact that Daimon thought Narasha was free of the duties of a soulmate just because she didn''t have a body.

    "You are underestimating the system little Daimon ?, after all your mother received a new body thanks to it hahaha", she thought.

    But then something that even she didn''t expect happened.

    *Ding*

    [A new skill has been unlocked due to a specific action]

 Chapter 30 Core Synchrony

    Evangeline who wasughing before now had a serious expression, as the administrator she can more or less predict when Daimon is about to get a new skill but a moment ago¡­ he got a skill which she didn''t "foresaw".

    When Daimon was about to check both the skill tree and the soulmate tab, he listened Erin and Aisha saying

    "Wow, what is this?".

    p Daimon stood up and asked in a worried tone.</anda>

    "What happened?".

    Due to her current happiness Erin ignored the fact that Aura was still present in the room and said in an excited voice.

    "Is this some kind of wedding gift from you hehehe ??".

    "Huh?".

    Daimon was confused by Erin''s words, he turned to see his mother and she also had a happy butplex expression on her face, as if she couldn''t believe something that was happening in front of her eyes.

    The only thing that changed was the new skill or the fact that Narasha was now his soulmate so he opened the skill tree and he froze when he saw the new skill, unlike the other skills he had gotten so far, this one had golden and purple light surrounding it.

    [Love conquers all, in less than a week the host managed to obtain the hearts of five female existences, all stronger than the host thus fulfilling the requirements to obtain the Irregr skill "Core synchrony"]

    [Core synchrony LV 1 (Passive/Active): The soulmates will form a secondary core which will allow them to generate their own AP (the bonding condition remains) this core will also allow the share of energies between them and the host for a certain period of time, (the soulmates will only receive mana, aura or AP from the host, while the host will receive mana or aura from every soulmate), the current limit is taking 5% of each soulmate]

    [Price: none] [Duration: 1 hour] [Penalization: 24 hours] [Cooldown: 1 week]

    ¡­

    Evangeline also saw the description of the skill and she was in awe, "what the hell is that, there is no records of such a skill existing in the data base of the system, did he create it on his own?", she thought.

    Once a skill was unlocked or created, the data of said skill was immediately avable for Evangeline to see but right now, no matter how se tried to look at it there was no information regarding "Core synchrony".

    Narasha also found rather interesting that after bing Daimon''s soulmate she got little ck core which this one seemed stronger than her original one even if it was smaller, not only that but once the secondary core appeared and started radiating some kind of energy she hasn''t seen before, she immediately gained full control of Disaster as if the sword was afraid of it.

    She was really happy.

    "Daimon, you are the best ?, just like that I''m no longer in the need of fighting against the sword, in fact now it is willingly showing submission as if it wants me to have the full control".

    It took Daimon a moment to process what that skill truly meant, with each realm the increment in physical strength, mana capacity, magic attack etc. was not as simple as adding one plus one, for example there is a huge gap between a mage lord and an Archmage and now he had ess to a part of the strength of two Archmages and¡­ a half emperor.

    Narasha was a special case since he didn''t know how to ssify her and Aisha was starting her cultivation again but still just the 5% from Erin will probably push him over a six or even seven-star mage and adding Elizabeth and ine to the mix¡­ he could not imagine what would be the result.

    ¡­

    Daimon had aplex expression

    "Evangeline¡­ I know the system is awesome and all that but isn''t this a bit too much?".

    Evangeline shrugged.

    "You ask me but, I also don''t have any information about that, there is a good reason as to why you don''t have ess to certain skills¡­ a "penalty" means you will be in a weakened state after using it because the tension this temporary boost in your strength puts in your body will be no joke".

    Daimon nodded.

    "I will try it once when we return but it will probably be ast option to use when there is no other choice".

    Now that the contract was stablished Daimon tried to take Disaster from the case but no matter how hard he tried he could barely move the handle.

    "What the hell this sword is too heavy!!!".<sub> </sub>

    Narasha immediately replied.

    "Hey you shouldn''t say something like that to ady you know? Besides it''s not my fault, antinite is the material with the highest density known, after all it''s only created in the core of stars under an unmeasurable quantity of pressure and a really long time¡­ and Disaster has absorbed a lot of it during the past years".

    Daimon contemted things for a moment.

    "It''s actually not a bad thing, I will just need to train a lot to use the sword so that will be my short-term goal before entering the academy".

    He touched the case and it entered his storage, unlike a ring which was another a little separated space, the storage he got from the system was a space practically inside of him so he could stillmunicate with Narasha, of course to avoid unnecessary attention he was wearing a storage ring as a cover.

    Once the case containing Disaster disappeared Aura finally came out of her daze, she shook her head before saying.

    "Incredible¡­ you actually did it, I can''t wait to see how will you do in the academy hahaha".

    She turned to see Erin who had the brightest smile Aura has ever seen and she sighed.

    "Yes, yes, I know you found a gem, now returning to reality we need to made a public announcement, I don''t have anything to worry on my side after my voice is thew here but you¡­ how are you going to deal with those stubborn old geezers in your family?".

    Listening to her friend Erin''s smile changed to a serious expression.

    "They don''t have a say on this, maybe I need to remind them that thest word on the family is a right only I have, specially to that idiot "supreme elder" who seems to be bing closer with the Jolbaristely humph".

    Aura''s eyes glowed for a second, as a battle maniac she was always ready to fight, up to this day she was the only one that has been able to fight against two half emperors and stilling on top, she licked her lips.

    "If you need, I can help you to do some "cleaning".

    Erin gave her a weird gaze.

    "Forget it I still need some of the elders to be alive and knowing you the first thing you will do is cutting off some heads¡­ like thest time".

    "Tsk, you are not funny, however things on my side will be settled in a moment and I will go with you to your n, lets make a little bet about how many of those elders will piss their pants when they see me hahaha".

    Erin guided Aisha and Daimon to the roof of the castle to wait while Aura was putting on some clothes and taking a few things she might need for their travel, after all the Revy n was not like the Argents and there will be a bigmotion once they see another half emperor arriving at their main territory.

    Now that they were alone Daimon wanted to confirm his doubts about his new skills.

    "Mom, auntie do you have a secondary core now?".

    They both nodded and Aisha patted his head.

    "Yes, I got a¡­ "notification" was it? saying that I received a secondary core thanks to you darling ?, and I''m now producing the energy needed for the spells of my grimoire on my own".

    "The same happened to me, so the energy contained in that small ck core will be the one I would need for the spells that Lace thing will give me in the future?", asked Erin.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Yes, after we hunt some magic beasts, I will give auntie and big sisters a fragment of Lace¡­".

    Erin smiled and ced her index finger on her lips.

    "Shhh".

    They stopped their conversation and after a moment, footsteps could be hearding from the castle.

    Aura finished preparing and when she was going upstairs her wolf ears moved a bit as she listened some interesting things but they suddenly stopped talking.

    "Tsk, that old vixen is as sensitive as always, I''m also part of your little secret now so we need to get to know each other "little Daimon" hahaha".

 Chapter 31 Public Announcement

    Once Aura was on the roof of the castle, she directed an usatory gaze at Erin who only turned her head to not see her directly.

    Aura smiled and suddenly the world seemed to transform into a silver space.

    "All the Argent family listen to my words, I Aura Argent epted a direct disciple which will also marry the daughters of the Revy n, all of you greet Daimon Licht!!!", Aura''s voice echoed through the whole Argent family territory thanks to her amplifying it with mana.

    As expected after such a loud deration the higher ups of the Argent n immediately rushed to the origin of the voice but contrary to what Daimon thought, not only they stopped at a certain distance but all the ones that appeared immediately kneeled down.

    Aura saw Daimon''s surprised expression and she smiled "you seem captivated by that old vixen, but she is not only half emperor you will be seeing often".

    She pointed at Daimon before saying.

    "He is your new young master, you must treat him with the same respect you show me, any questions?".

    ¡­

    Silence,plete silence reigned over the ce, the previous ruler of the Argent n was a magus king which "subjects" were all Arch ranked werewolves, before Aura took the throne about 1000 years ago, the position of the n head was passed down in a specific family, unfortunately theirst half emperor passed away due to an unheble wound which made him lose his vitality until there was nothing left.

    After that, the family of the deceased half emperor took over the position of being the rulers and it was not something bad since they knew how to govern¡­ but there is always a "ck sheep" on each family, the oldest son of that family turned out to be talentless but cunning so when he noticed that he would never be able to be an Archmage he tricked his youngest brother who was said to have a high possibility of bing a half emperor to be his "subject".

    Using his own brother as hostage he got both his father and mother an Archknight and an Archmage respectively to be his subjects, from that moment onwards everything went to hell, the oldest son became a tyrant turning other Arch ranks into his subordinates, he even killed his own brother since a magus king can only have up to 10 subjects.

    Hisst target was a rising star in the n who had just reached the peak of the Archmage realm not too long ago, a distant rtive of a half emperor from ancient times¡­ that was Aura, since she valued her freedom, she resisted and ended up fighting for her life while running away from the subjects of the magus king, as if it was destiny, she hid in a secret dimension which entrance suddenly opened only for a couple of seconds before disappearing.

    She was dered death because once the entrance to a secret dimensionpletely closes that ce will suffer due to the chaotic space which will surround it but contrary to all expectations 80 yearster, she returned to the Argent n¡­ as a half emperor, without wasting a second, she shed the magus king in half with one swing of her sword ending the most miserable epoch in the history of the werewolf race.

    When a magus king falls all his subjects will perish with him, so even if at that point the Argents now had a half emperor their Arch rank numbers suffered a huge lose so they became an easy target for other forces¡­ or so they thought.

    Since the ck marsh gxy was the closest to the white fang gxy, a couple of dayster two ruler families from the demon race were in front of the Argent n but unlike what they expected both of their half emperors weren''t able to defeat Aura.

    As the battle dragged on some people from the Revy n leaded by Erin arrived and since the Revy family had a deep grudge against the undead who were allies with the demon race, Erin helped Aura to scare them away and that''s how they became friends, however the Argent n was on a weakened state and it was Aura who restored the glory of the n, thus bing the ruler.

    And now almost 1000 yearster no one has ever tried to defy her, in fact since she was known for her incredible battle prowess both the Argent family and the Revy family proposed her the position of headmaster in the Wild w academy, although the Jolbaris shamelessly refused, two votes against one granted Aura the victory.

    Daimon could see the respect and admiration in the eyes of all the people that was now kneeling in front of Aura and shouting.

    "WE OBEY, greetings to the young master!!!".

    Aura nodded.

    "Everything is settled on my side Erin, now it''s when the fun starts hahaha".

    Erin felt a bit worried, "I feel like maybe I shouldn''t bring her with us¡­ I know that she is going to cause a ruckus like always", she thought before saying.

    "Let''s go, the sooner the better I guess".

    Both Aura and Erin formed a barrier around Aisha and Daimon and immediately started using space shift, after almost half an hour they were arriving at the Revy family main territory, Erin used her spell "dark curtain" to hide them from others at least until they reached her mansion.

    "Mm?", Erin stopped for a moment to check her sigil lector before frowning her face, which made Aura smile.

    "Seems likeing was a good idea after all", she said.

    Erin shook her head.

    "Well, I certainly think that a battle maniac like you is really going to enjoy what is about to happen".

    She showed the message Elizabeth just sent her which said.

    "The supreme elder is here with Arthur Jolbaris asking for an audience".

    Aura''s eyes glowed.

    "Old vixen let''s make things more interesting".<sub> </sub>

    ...¡­

    A moment ago, Elizabeth and ine were waiting outside of her mother''s mansion, if everything went right then Erin should be returning in a couple of minutes, unfortunately things tend to not go as nned, Elizabeth saw from the corner of her eyes one of the people she couldn''t stand¡­ her father which was now the supreme elder Edgar Revy and he was not alone, another one of the idiots she didn''t want to see was happily speaking with him, one of the half emperors from the Jolbaris family, Arthur Jolbaris.

    Liz and ine exchanged a quick gaze, Elizabeth immediately sent a message to her mother through her sigil lector before standing in front of her sister and shouting.

    "I don''t know what the hell is one of the half emperors from the Jolbaris family doing here buting to our Revy family main territory without announcing it''s never a good sign!!!".

    Edgar frowned his face.

    "Elizabeth, I was the one to invite Arthur here so don''t be rude¡­".

    He didn''t even finish his sentence when Elizabeth interrupted him.

    "How weird, if I remember correctly only the n head or the ancestor have the authority to bring a half emperor from another family up to this ce, inside the legacy barrier of our Revy n, am I right big sister?".

    ine nodded, now that she was also an Archmage her status as the n head put her authority over the supreme elder.

    "That''s right, I''m sorry if it seems "rude" to the supreme elder but these rules were created for a reason so unless you have our mother''s invitation then please take your leave".

    Edgar gritted his teeth, "so now you even ine is rebelling against me, damn Elizabeth you are always meddling in my business", he thought.

    Arthur ced one hand on Edgar''s shoulder and spoke in a rightful voice.

    "Well, my old friend, it seems like you have some trouble with your daughters, perhaps you would like me to help you teaching them some respect for their elders?".

    Elizabeth was about to summon her domain when an angry female voice made all the members of the Revy family to go in a turmoil.

    "And who gave you the right to "teach" something to my daughters, Arthur Jolbaris?".

    Elizabeth smiled, her mother arrived in the perfect moment and not only her, Daimon and Aisha were behind her.

    Once Erinnded on the ground, all the elders and the upper echelons of the Revy n who were on the Arch ranks approached flying, after all as far as they knew the Jolbaris might even dere war against them since their half emperor arrived without being invited.

    Edgar saw the beautiful woman which was now standing in front Elizabeth and ine and he had a bad premonition, "out of all the moments she had to appear right now".

    Even Arthur changed his rxed attitude to a more serious one, there was someone who stood at the same level as him now after all.

    "Matriarch of the Revy n I¡­ I didn''t want to offend you nor your daughters but they didn''t show the proper respect to a half emperor and that is a punishable crime".

    Erin didn''t even flinch hearing his usations, she instead put on a cunning smile.

    "You must give respect if you expect to be respected Arthur Jolbaris, as far as I know neither me nor my daughter who is the n head invited you, so the real question right now is "what are doing here" and who let you inside our barrier without my consent?".

    Edgar froze, it was he the one that bribed the guards and some elders to not notice the arrival of Arthur so if Erin was going to pursue that matter, then the one suffering will be him.

    Arthur''s expression became a bit cold but when he saw a lot of the important members of the Revy family reunited around them, he smiled, "let''s see how will you reject my offer in front of all your family", he cleared his throat before saying.

    "If I''m not really weed here, then I will just say what I came to discuss and then take my leave, as a half emperor you should give me at least this amount of face".

    Erin frowned her eyebrows but she nodded.

    "Go ahead, what do you want?".

    Arthur pointed at Elizabeth and ine.

    "As you know my youngest son, Alexander is the most talented member of my Jolbaris family since its foundation that is why I came here to personally propose a marriage between him and your daughters, I think you will agree after all this is all for the "future of our beast faction".

    All the members of the Revy family were surprised, if they get the support of another ruler level family then their future will be really bright!!!

 Chapter 32 Confrontation

    Erin smiled perfectly knowing what Arthur was trying to do.

    "I appreciate your offer but my daughters have already chosen a future partner on their own will, I think you as a father can understand it".

    Arthur''s cocky expression disappeared the moment he heard Erin''s answer.

    "Revy matriarch, I hope you reconsider, after all a union between two ruler families is not something to be taken so lightly".

    Erin nodded.

    "Yes, I recognize the importance of such a thing, little Daimone here for a second please".

    Daimon took a few steps until he was standing next to Erin before rising his hand and showing his ws to all the present people.

    Edgar felt his heart sinking while Arthur''s expression turned ugly before saying.

    "A werewolf huh? ¡­ I think it''s been stablished already that no one from the young generation of the Argent n is at the same level of my son, are really that desperate to refuse my offer that you prefer your daughters marrying some weakling instead of a genius?".

    Some of the members of the Revy n looked a bit worried, the n head and the "champion" or the strongest Arch ranked person in the family are the main pirs beside the ancestors, so if both ine and Elizabeth marry some talentless guy the family will weaken in the future, contrary to what they expected Erin kept her smiling expression which made Arthur have a bad premonition that was confirmed a couple of secondster.

    "Ohh, so now my n is inferior to the Jolbaris?".

    Everyone turned to see the sky and their eyes widened a bit, her beautiful white-silverish hair whichbined so well with herst name, her yellow eyes who were akin to the ones of a wolf and that indominable presence only reserved for those that had ovee death more times than what one can even imagine¡­ the matriarch of the Argent family, Aura Argent.

    Auranded on the ground next to Daimon before pointing one of her fingers at Arthur.

    "I admit it, you must have iron balls to call my first and only disciple a "weakling" right in my face, specially considering that I personally tested him and he is far superior to that kid from your family".

    All the present members of the Revy family including Edgar felt chills running through their spines, the woman in front of them had a lot of bad habits, she liked to sleep almost all her free time, she was short tempered and took revenge over the smallest grudge but if you were to speak about her virtues the most outstanding one besides her monstrous battle prowess was that¡­ she has never bragged about her n members not even once, in fact she is always the first one to criticize them, so if she said that kid was better than Alexander Jolbaris then it was probably true.

    Arthur saw all the Revy family members who were having some doubts, now changing their attitudes and he gritted his teeth, "this cunning woman¡­ made fell into a trap", he thought.

    And he was right, previously Aura just wanted to use Erin''s dark curtain to surprise Arthur but instead of that, in a couple of seconds Erin created a n to not only to make Daimon popr among the upper echelons of the Revy family but also decreasing the authority of the supreme elder and having a good excuse to make Arthur Jolbaris leave in disgrace.

    Speaking of Arthur his lungs were filled with Anger right now, he shouted at Aura.

    "You damn crazy woman, I still remember your answer about the proposal I made you and now you are getting in my way today!!!", the atmosphere seemed to suddenly change and dark clods appeared on the sky while Arthur left some of his mana run wild.

    Aura smiled and drew her sword, her body started glowing in silver light.

    "You think thatme lightning of yours will scare me? you are not the first lightning BEAST I have seen or fought before, if you want to fight then shut up and follow me", she said before flying above the clouds followed by Arthur.

    Daimon was in awe¡­ this was not part of the n; he turned to see Erin and saw her shaking her head before saying.

    "ine, activate the barrier, little Daimon, pay attention to what is happening, shes between half emperors are hard toe by nowadays ?".

    The next thing Daimon saw was a thin crystal-like semi dome with some symbols moving all over it as if they were swimming surrounding the whole Revy family grounds, and it was activated exactly on time because outside of it, after both Aura and Arthur disappeared into the clouds, the ground itself started shaking, the surface of the sea that was almost 200 kilometers away started revolting due to the strong gusts of wind, the magic beasts on the forest areas nearby ran away as fast as they could.<sub> </sub>

    "It looks as if the world was about to end", was the only thing Daimon could think right now, even with the barrier protecting the whole area, the sound of thunder exploding outside made those with low magic cultivation feel a bit dizzy.

    Luckily Erin was still maintaining her protection around Aisha and Daimon so they were not affected unlike others, suddenly a huge lightning impacted against the barrier making it wave a bit while absorbing the impact without any signs of breaking, then the dark clouds illuminated in a silver light before they were split in half and a loud scream echoed through the sky.

    "Ahhhhh!!!!".

    Erin smiled and patted Daimon''s head before saying, "It''s over", the clouds disappeared and everything returned to normal and ine deactivated the barrier, a momentter two figures descended from the sky, Aura looked exactly the same as before she left, on the other hand Arthur Jolbaris¡­ looked miserable, his clothes were worn out and there was big sword wound on his right shoulder.

    Seeing the current status of his friend Edgar felt his legs trembling remembering some bad memories, he once acted high and mighty in front of Aura just because he thought that as the supreme elder Erin would not let her do anything to him and the result was that Aura nearly broke his legs, still in front of a half emperor he came to the conclusion that it was an unavoidable result but now, the result was the same and her opponent was¡­ another half emperor.

    Aura kept her sword in her ring before saying.

    "The next time you insult my kin in front of me I will cut one of your two "heads" humph".

    Arthur gritted his teeth, the wound caused by Aura''s sword was hurting like hell and no matter how much mana he was using to elerate his natural recovery, the cut was not closing nor stopping bleeding, he gave all the presents a poisonous gaze before saying.

    "So be it, I won''t insist in this matter anymore¡­ Edgar since I''m not weed here, I will take my leave".

    Edgar noticed that Arthur was giving him an excuse "apany" him to the exit and at the same time avoiding the consequences of inviting him but unfortunately Erin''s words made thatst chance disappear.

    "We won''t send you off, speaking of our "current" supreme elder both me and the n head have some matters to discuss so he won''t be going anywhere until that is settled, now please leave".

    At this point Arthur couldn''t care less about Edgar''s pleading gaze, this day he lost his face un front of too many people, he exchanged blows with Aura and not only he could notnd anything but he got a wound visible for everyone which was probably the most humiliating thing he has ever experienced.

    Still, he couldn''t do anything, he was the one who started the fight and unless he really wanted to start a war by activating his domain, he could only swallow hisins, Arthur flew until he was far from the Revy family grounds before using space shift to disappear.

    Now that the main threat was gone, Erin, Aura, ine and Elizabeth all focused their attention on Edgar which made his back cover in cold sweat.

    Erin shook her head.

    "The supreme elder has put the n in danger by bringing a half emperor without the consent of the n''s head or mine so from this moment onwards his status will be revoked along with all his privileges and he will be demoted to a third rank elder, I will personally investigate how did Arthur Jolbaris managed to bypass all the security points of our n, does anyone have anything to say about this decision?".

    Edgar almost lost it, he used to be the n head and before stepping aside from the position because her daughter was proposed by Erin to rece him, he did all he could to maintain a high-status thud bing the supreme elder but now he was being degraded to a mere third rank elder which meant he at most had the authority to rule a small on the border of the jurisdiction of the Revy family in the white fang gxy.

    He turned to see some of the elders that had connections with him but none of them dared to look at him directly, the matriarch just said that she will personally investigate how Arthur could enter the city without her being notified so many people were going to lose their positions for sure and speaking right now was the same as admitting to be involved.

    Erin nodded.

    "If that is the case, punishment elder please take the former supreme elder to the detection hall for further interrogation", she then pointed at Daimon before continuing.

    "As for everyone else, just like the matriarch of the Argent family said, her disciple Daimon Licht will be marrying both of my daughters in the future, I personally have seen his potential and I can assure you that he will surpass Alexander Jolbaris once they encounter in the academy, so now go and pass the notice to all the branches of the family, let everyone know that our Revy family is now united with the Argent n!!!".

    A middle-aged man with long ck hair and scars on his face and neck ced his hand on Edgar''s shoulder before making him walk along with him, after that all the other people that arrived due to themotion returned to their daily activities, it was only midday so there was still a lot to do.

 Chapter 33 Curiosity Killed The Cat

    Daimon was quite intrigued in how Aura fought against another half emperor and came out without even the slightest wound while her enemy received a heavy wound that although it was not lethal¡­ the battle onlysted a couple of minutes.

    Aura noticed his curiosity and she smiled.

    "Don''t worry, as my "disciple" of course I will teach my fighting style, you have Disaster as your weapon so I''m pretty sure it will be useful for you".

    ine and Elizabeth were smiling a moment ago since the Jolbaris will leave them alone from now on, also they saw the small ck core besides their original one and they wanted to ask Daimon more about it, but when they heard Aura saying that he managed to obtain Disaster they froze.

    "M-mom, is that true¡­ little Daimon made a contract with that sword?", asked Elizabeth.

    Erin sighed.

    "Yes, don''t ask me how because even I don''t know how but not only, he obtained Disaster but he actually overwhelmed it even before it became his".

    Erin turned to see Daimon.

    "Speaking of that, I believe a certain someone owe us an exnation of what happened right ??".

    Daimon felt their gazes piercing him and he cleared his throat.

    "Ahem¡­. Auntie shouldn''t we enter the mansion first, besides¡­".

    He suddenly noticed that unlike Erin, Aura hasn''t told him how to call her, to be honest he was already considering calling them by their names at least when they were alone, they kissed him and he already "saw" them naked so what was there to be shy about how to address them, on the other hand Aura wasn''t his soulmate, "I could call her master, since she is treating me as her disciple I guess", he thought.

    Aura noticed her predicament and she ruffled his hair.

    "I don''t have the same weird fetish as that old vixen, you can call me Aura with the only exception that on the academy you will need to call me master to keep on the act ?".

    They entered the mansion and sat on the main hall, ine brought some drinks and pastry which she ordered to the chefs assigned to her mother, this time it was Aisha''s "turn" to have Daimon sitting on herp so she was happily holding onto her son.

    Aura noticed the strangely harmonious atmosphere they gave off even on their slightest interactions such as Erin pouring the tea on Daimon''s cup and Elizabeth feeding him some of the cookies personally and she doubted for a second before asking.

    "Erin, it might be me overthinking but¡­ did you got some kind of revtion from your heart mirror? Because instead of people who just recently got to know each other not only your daughters but also you look like little girls in love".

    Daimon almost choked with the cookie he was eating right now, "wasn''t the heart mirror a huge secret thing? and not only that, somehow Aura was actually right".

    Erin took a sip of tea from her cup and looked at Daimon before saying.

    "You probably already know the answer yourself or you would have not mentioned the heart mirror, right?".

    Aura''s eyes narrowed a bit.

    "I want to hear it directly from you¡­ you know your ns and schemes don''t work with me and I can clearly see you are hiding something important from me".

    Erin smiled, "it worked on you this time though", she thought.

    "As long as little Daimon doesn''t mind me telling you then I don''t have a problem, but once you hear it, there is no going back".

    Aura was dying of curiosity, she has known Erin for more than one thousand years and they never kept anything secret from each other, to the point where they both knew their most important secrets, in Erin''s case is the existence of the heart mirror and as for Aura it will be¡­ the origin of her incredible battle prowess.

    Aura directed her attention to Daimon who was trying not to look nervous, for some reason it was hard to look directly at Aura''s eyes without feeling as if she could see through you".

    After a couple of seconds which seemed to be hours for Daimon, Aura finally couldn''t hold back her curiosity.

    "Fine, I''m ok with whatever the consequence might be, knowing you it won''t be anything bad anyway, so tell me what could be amazing enough to captivate not only two Archmages but even an old cunning half emperor like you?".

    Daimon pretty much could foresee how this was going to end but there were only benefits for him on any case so when Erin asked him permission to speak about his past he agreed to it, not only because they already had a blood contract which didn''t allow them to betray each other, but because even before that such a cautious person like Erin trusted the existence of the heart mirror to Aura¡­ when she prohibited her daughters to speak about it with Aisha.

    Having gotten his permission Erin told Aura theplete story, including the fact that Daimon was actually Aisha''s son instead of her brother and the existence of the system in the way that Daimon interpreted it to them, a "grimoire" inherited to him by some unknown high existence, she put a special emphasize on the fact that the heart mirror went crazy the very moment she and her daughters met him.

    Contrary to Daimon''s expectations Aura didn''t seem to care too much about the system, instead she was truly interested on the part when Erin told her about how she was now his soulmate and all the things that it meant being it, including the second core she had now.

    "Wait!!!", Aura extended her hand to stop Erin from continuing with the story.

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    "You cunning fox woman¡­ you did all this "y" so I would get interested to the point where I wouldn''t have any other option but to ask you about all this!!!".

    Erinughed.

    "And youpletely fell for it ?", she answered.

    ine shook her head, although the idea of it passed through her head, she discarded it as fast as the thought appeared in her mind, but it turned to be true, her mother never tried to hide anything from Aura¡­ instead all this n was to made her meet Daimon and "appreciate" his potential, and shepletely fell in the trap.

    Aura was baffled, "I have never fell in any of her ns nor she has been able to trick me before so how?".

    Erin could guess what was she thinking.

    "The best ns are those who don''t seem like one until their purpose is already fulfilled, I might not be as strong as you in battle but when ites to craftiness if I dere myself to be the second no one can be the first".

    She smiled before continuing.

    "On any case I got you the best option for a partner you will ever see I''m your best friend after all, and just like I told you now that you know it there is no going back, the curiosity killed the cat¡­ or in this case the wolf ?".

    Aura shook her head.

    "I need a new best friend¡­ he is too young for me you shameless fox woman, in fact he is too young for you too!!!", she said.

    Erin shrugged.

    "So what? we are half emperors, although we often die in battle or due to the schemes of our enemies, normally our lifespan is above 80 thousand years, what does a mere two thousand years of difference ount to?".

    The only one that was having troubles keeping up with their conversation was none other than Aisha, "Ughh, I''m already sharing my darling with too many girls and you are trying to get another one¡­", she thought.

    Even Evangeline had to admit she didn''t expect Erin to try bringing her best friend into Daimon''s "ws", sheughed

    "I have to say, you got one of the rarest "species" between all the types that exist¡­ a woman that is actually helping you getting another one"

    This time Daimon had no other option but to agree with her.

    "Yes, even I''m surprised about that, but I have already decided to let it be, I don''t lose anything and now that I have core synchrony having more girls is the same as having enough strength to protect them".

    Evangeline was happy, "I guess that is why he somehow managed to bypass the restrictions of the system, the women around him are far stronger than him so he''s got no option but to work hard if he wants to catch up to them".

    Aura stopped discussing with Erin for a moment and she directly asked to Aisha.

    "You are his mother, right? are you okay with all this situation".

    Aisha smiled.

    "As long as my darling is happy, I have noins¡­ but I hope miss Erin tell me before trying to do something like this on the future".

    Aura now just wanted to confirm if Daimon knew about this.

    "Kid¡­ are you aware of what Erin is trying to do?".

    Daimon leaned against Aisha''s chest before answering.

    "It also took me by surprise but I can understand why is she doing all this, unlike other people of this ster chart we will be going to a more interesting ce in the future and auntie probably wants her best friends toe with us".

    Aura calmed down.

    "That might be true but, being the lover of such a young boy is still a bit¡­".

    Now that the they havee all the way to this point, Aisha decided to give Erin a helping hand just this time.

    "I''m also my darling''s soulmate but all what the matriarch of the Argent n is imagining hasn''t happened¡­ yet, mmm the best way to describe it will be "all at its due time" I guess.

    For the first time in her life Aura felt defeated, "I don''t know whether I''m the strange one here or them", she thought

 Chapter 34 A Peacock Showing Its Feathers

    Aura was in a predicament.

    "He managed to tame Disaster, also all of you look reallyfortable with hispany so I won''t deny that if he was a bit older, I would have probably epted the offer immediately but¡­".

    To be honest Daimon actually had a really good impression of Aura, you can always call yourself a friend of someone but the truth alwayse to light when there are hardships or troubles, just look at Arthur, if he wanted, he could have tried to give Edgar a way out of his precarious situation but instead he simply washed his hands off the situation and abandoned him to his luck.

    On the other hand, Aura didn''t hesitate to fight against a half emperor for her friend, and it was not a lone one but one who had its own force behind him so the consequences of offending it were being enemy to a whole organization instead of one person and on top of that in Daimon''s eyes¡­ she was quite cute, such a good woman was worth trying to convince.

    Evangeline could more or less guess what he was thinking and she decided to give him a little push.

    "I know beauties keep falling in your arms without you doing anything but why don''t you do it different this time, if you are interested in that wolf woman then¡­ promote yourself or something, perhaps this is a good chance to test blink or even core synchrony, I know you have a thing for beast race girls so go get her ?".

    Although Daimon didn''t ept her derations, he didn''t deny them also, instead he stood from Aisha''sp before saying.

    "Auntie do you have a private training room? ¡­ I want to show you all something really cool".

    Erin smiled; she had an idea of why Daimon suddenly asked for a training room.

    "Of course, let''s show that stubborn werewolf woman how awesome is our little Daimon ?".

    They moved to one of the most important rooms in Erin''s mansion, as a half emperor building a space where she could train her magic without destroying the whole ce was quite expensive so that was one way to measure the wealth of a family or force, luckily the Revy family was among the richest forces since they were the most renowned magic cksmiths of the whole beast faction most of the magic weapons, equipment and other magic devices were created exclusively by them.

    When Aisha told Daimon about the flying carriage and how only the Revy family and the dwarves could build them actually, he asked her where do the dwarves lived and it turned out that dwarves reside in the blue-sky gxy and work with the humans, the reason as to why Elizabeth could get their hands in the blueprint of the gun was that the humans are allied with the beast faction to fight against vampires, demons and undead.

    While the ck marsh gxy is close to the white fang gxy, the blue-sky gxy is the closest to the immortal gxy so, basically the beast faction keeps in check demons and undead while the humans and other minor human like races such as dwarves fight with the vampires.

    The reason to that is that undead and vampires both feed on humans and other living rational beings in general, demons on the other hand have a big variety of species and some of them also feed on human flesh so they form part of the same team while beast races and the rest form the other side of the coin.

    Once they were in the training room Erin closed the door while Daimon appreciated the whole ce, there were a lot of magic devices with different purposes such like physical strength measuring, mana capacity measure, spell damage measuring and the list keeps going, a paradise for battle maniacs such as Aura, in fact since Erin was Aura''s best friend, she has always personally ordered all the training devices that she has in her castle.

    Daimon took a few steps ahead to distance himself from the girls, his image suddenly shed and a secondter he was standing on the other side of the room.

    Erin had high expectations but this¡­ this was beyond her imagination; she immediately used a movement spell called "instant step" to appear a couple of meters away from him and walked until she was next to him.

    "L-little Daimon what was that, unlike a movement spell you¡­ ignored the obstacles in the way and just appeared here?".

    The difference between moving at high speed or in other words a movement spell, and the space shift unique to half emperors was the fact that with a movement spell you could not bypass any objects that were in the way of your final destination, for example if there was a wall in front of you and you used instant step you would not go through the wall, instead you will sh against the wall or just appear in front of it.

    Meanwhile, space shift didn''t have that disadvantage as you moved using space as the medium.

    Daimon smiled.

    "That is one of my skills, "blink", it allows me to move however I want using space as the medium on a 100 meters range".

    Let alone Aura who was the main reason of this "show off", all the girls were in awe, moving living beings through space without having to create a magic device called spatial gate with a lot of magic transportation formations and other expensive materials was supposed to only be possible for half emperors¡­ until a moment ago.

    Aisha had a proud expression on her face.

    "That is my darling for you ?", she said.

    Elizabeth''s eyes were in fire.<sub> </sub>

    "That is such a useful thing for a magic cksmith!!! being able to freely move when working on a big scaled project sounds incredible¡­ little Daimon you are my future husband, so you must teach big sister how to do it ?".

    Daimon was surprised for their reaction; he didn''t have too much knowledge about half emperors since he just learned about them not too long ago so he supposed there were other spells that worked simrly to space shift on a small range like blink but it seems that was not the case.

    Evangelineughed.

    "You are just like a peacock showing its feathers to attract possible partners, that wolf girl already had a good impression of you due to the thing with the sword so I can hear her heart beating faster than before hahaha".

    Daimon felt a bit happy about impressing them, he indeed liked Aura''s both personality and appearance so causing a wave in her heart even if it was a little one was a good thing.

    "And now for the finishing touch", he thought.

    Before walking towards a magic device that looked like a crystal ball mounted on a stone pir, it was called "orb of the truth" and its function was to show others the magic cultivation realm of anyone who touched it.

    He ced his hand on the orb and after a moment it illuminated before it showed a text above it which said "Early-stage novice mage realm", suddenly Daimon''s body radiated silver-purple lightnings, his hair color returned to its original silver tone but that was not what caught the attention of the girls, but the fact that the text showed by the orb of the truth changed.

    Aisha, Erin, Elizabeth, ine and even Narasha felt afortable warm feeling in their bodies, as if they were being embraced by the softest silk, but right now they didn''t pay too much attention to that, there was a more important thing to discuss right now, the orb of truth showed that Daimon''s current magic cultivation was¡­ "Eight star ranked mage realm".

    For a moment silence remained on the room, until Aura came out of her daze remembering that there existed techniques that augmented cultivation for a short period of time but the bigger the boost the worst the side effects would be, like burning away vitality or damaging one''s magic core.

    Aura immediately ced her hand on Daimon''s lower abdomen at the area right below the navel.

    "Daimon!!! hurry up stop this spell¡­ there is no need to go to such extremes, I will ept to be your soulmate or whatever, so don''t you dare to waste your potential just to cause a big impression", she said.

    ¡­

    A couple of seconds passed and Aura saw that Daimon was not returning back to normal but when she was about to scold him, she heard Aisha, Erin, Elizabeth and ineughing at her.

    "You¡­ how can youugh? he is going to suffer damages on his magic core if he keeps this up".

    Erin shook her head, before answering.

    "If you were one of us you would have immediately know that he is not using a self-harming forbidden spell to obtain such an incredible boost¡­ it took me by surprise though, but you remember that I told you about the secondary core we got thanks to little Daimon?".

    Aura nodded.

    "Yes, but what does that have anything to be with the current situation?".

    Erin smiled.

    "It''spletely rted¡­ he is somehow lending a part of our strength thanks to that and there are no side effects, we didn''t have our cultivation diminished due to that nor we are being harmed on any way, it''s more like we are all connected now ?".

    Aura almost forgot how to breath, her gaze changed from being serious and worried to a softer and gentle one when she looked at Daimon.

    "Now I understand how was he able to tame Disaster¡­ he is even more of a monster than that sword".

    Evangeline pped.

    "She is in the bag,dies and gentlemen", she shouted in Daimon''s mind.

 Chapter 35 Auraâ€™s Observations

    Today in the white fang gxy, more urately in Lykos a scene that would turn the whole ster chart upside down was developing in the mansion of the Revy n''s ancestor, Aura Argent the matriarch of the Argent family who is known for her courage and bravery is¡­ covering her face so others can''t see her blushed expression?

    A few minutes ago.

    After Aura calmed down, Daimon decided to deactivate the active part of core synchrony, thinking that since he didn''t use it for more than a couple minutes maybe the penalty will not be as harsh as it was supposed to be.

    *Ding*

    [The effect of core synchrony will finish in 5¡­4¡­3¡­2¡­1¡­0]

    Once the countdown reached zero, Daimon felt his legs trembling a bit, his vision blurred for a moment but he shook his head and managed to stay awake, his body hurt a bit but it was not to the point where couldn''t stand it still he only used for a really short period of time and he didn''t use any spells nor skills while in that state so it was easy to know that he would have probably fainted once the effect finished if that was the case.

    He opened the status window and on the top left corner of it there was a little red exmation mark with a clock.

    [Penalization on going, time left: 1:00 hour (the penalization time has been adjusted due to the null usage of the synchrony state)]

    Daimon took a deep breath; Aisha gave him a bottle with a green slightly transparent liquid".

    "Drink this "spring blessing" potion darling, it will nullify any physical pain you might feel while also repairing internal injuries".

    "A mother''s intuition", thought Daimon before gulping down the contents of the bottle in one go, the taste was refreshing and it had a fruity scent, the potion worked quite good even if the penalty was still on going the pain disappeared immediately.

    "Thanks mom", he said.

    Aisha hugged him.

    "It''s fine, I will buy more of this potion for you, just be careful and promise me you will only use that skill if it is necessary, okay?".

    Daimon nodded; the boost was incredible but the after effect will leave him defenseless so he was not too inclined it to use unless it was the only option left.

    Erin smiled and leaned her elbow on Aura''s shoulder.

    "Now, now, isn''t it time for you to do the deed with little Daimon?".

    Aura reacted like cat whose tail is stepped on.

    "What do you mean with "doing the deed", I indeed epted to recognize him as my future partner but¡­ we just met today and he is too young for that you shameless fox woman!!!".

    Erin quickly added.

    "You need to kiss him to form the contract".

    Without processing Erin''sst sentence Aura answered.

    "Erin I might have been single my whole life, but I''m not going to take advantage of a little child and¡­ wait did you say kiss him?".

    Erinughed, "she is so easy to tease, who would have thought that this battle maniac''s weakness would be love", she thought before saying.

    "Of course, you only need to kiss him, I wonder what were you thinking on doing to little Daimon ?".

    ¡­

    And that''s what led to the current situation where one of the strongest existences in this ster chart wanted to dig a hole to hide.

    Daimon had to admit that he found the current ashamed Aura quite cute, but he wanted to sit and rest for a moment because although he was not feeling any pain it was a bit hard to be standing while the penalty was active.

    "On any case my stupid magic core is sleeping again and I wanted to train my body to wield Disaster, so I guess improving my physical condition will definitely be my main focus for the next years¡­ and I need to get coins as soon as possible", he thought.

    ording to Evangeline there was no difference whether he light up his life spark thus bing a knight or focused on cultivating his magic core since the manual he will get will allow him to walk in both paths anyway.

    His magic core was currently not absorbing mana again, but when he used blink a moment ago his MP didn''t go down at all so unlike other people who needed to take some time to recover their mana, he will probably have a virtually endless quantity of it.

    The only problem was that he will only improve his magic cultivation whenever his magic core started working again, so since he couldn''t do anything about it then the best solution to not waste time will be training to be a knight.

    "Auntie don''t tease¡­ Aura too much please", he said.<sub> </sub>

    Erin shook her head.

    "That''s not good, showing favoritism to the new girl is not fair little Daimon ?".

    Daimon cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, it''s not that, although I don''t look like it, I really need to rest for a moment to recover from using core synchrony".

    He took a few steps until he was right in front of Aura, although she was not really tall only reaching about 1.68 meters, she was still quite taller than him so she had to bend down a bit for Daimon to kiss her.

    Since Daimon nor any of the other girls with the exception of Erin were paying attention to her precious wild suppositions, Aura calmed down.

    "Control yourself Aura, with all the death situations you have faced before how could you be afraid of something like a k-kiss¡­ but it will be my first one".

    Before she started feeling shy again, she shook her head, closed her eyes and softly pressed her lips against Daimon''s.

    "Mm? this is not bad at all, in fact I¡­ kind of like it", she thought.

    Without noticing Aura''s tail was waggling a bit, luckily, she was too engrossed in the moment to notice it or she would have regretted showing such a girly reaction in front of Erin.

    Aura only stopped the kiss when she heard a curious sound.

    *Ding*

    [The conditions were fulfilled; do you wish to be Daimon Licht soulmate? Y/N]

    "Oh, what an interesting thing, it looks like the image projected by some magic devices like the orb of truth but it is also different", she thought.

    The notification was quite intuitive so she just epted and a momentter she had ess to her own status and skill tree tabs just like the rest of the girls.

    While Aura was curiously exploring the information shown in the interface of the system, Daimon sat down on the floor give his legs some rest, of course Evangeline didn''t resist the urge to mess with him.

    "For someone who didn''t even touch a woman''s hand on a romantic way in his previous life, that wolf girl¡­ no all of them actually seemed to enjoy kissing you, that''s some potential you got there".

    Daimon was too tired to pay attention to her jokes so he only shrugged, "yeh, yeah, I''m a pervert I know, let me rest a bit¡­", he actually fell asleep, even if he had the potential of a monster, he was still a little child so of course after making his body go through a lot of tension he needed to rest, and Aisha''s potion also had a rxing effect, in fact it was incredible that he could still remain awake for a certain period of time even after all that.

    "Today you actually surprised me so I guess you deserve a break¡­ Daimon", she thought.

    Noticing that Daimon was sleep, Aura closed the status tab and sat in front of him before ruffling his hair, "he looks so peaceful right now that you wouldn''t believe he managed to do something as crazy as taming Disaster and even convincing me who resigned a long time ago, to act¡­ as a woman", she thought.

    The rest of the girls also sat next to Aura, no one said anything until she stopped caressing Daimon''s hair and Aisha took the initiative to break the silence.

    "Seems like the Argent''s matriarch now understands, how special is my darling ?".

    Aura smiled.

    "Yes, he is certainly different to other men I have seen on my life, when he was in front of that Jolbaris idiot I carefully judged his expressions and he didn''t even flinch a bit, although he knew Erin and me were there, even Archmages feel intimidated by just being in the presence of a half emperor, it''s only natural... but this child instead looked as if he was ready to fight until the end if needed while constantly lookig at us, like he was more worried about us than him, and yet¡­".

    Aisha sighed, she was well aware that the reason of that was that her son was still suffering since she died protecting him before, although he didn''t show it on the outside, when they were sleeping in the cave, he unconsciously clung to her as if he was afraid, that she might suddenly disappear.

    After a moment of silence Aura continued.

    "How should I say it, unlike when there were "enemies" in front of him, once we entered the mansion, he gave off apletely different aura, it''s a weird feeling as if there is no need to hide anything in front of him¡­ because there is not even the slightest ounce of malice towards us in his heart".

    "It''s quite a joyful feeling, right?", Erin added.

    Aura nodded.

    "Yes, also Aisha, you can call me Aura, I don''t care about formalities when it''s with people I can trust and¡­ we are on a simr standing now anyway".

    They allughed, at Aura''s words but she was right, they all were in the ship now, one that will take them to ces that none of them could have even imagined before.

 Chapter 36 Every Woman Is One Of A Kind

    After Daimon fell asleep without noticing, he didn''t dream anything, instead he found himself in aplete dark space, it was not a bad feeling, he felt his whole body embraced in a soft warm feeling, it was a weird thing, it remembered him when he waspletely surrounded by the naked bodies of his mother and the Revy girls.

    Daimon moved his hand a bit and he felt something soft but firm and squeezable.

    "Mm? what is this, for some reason it feels so satisfying to touch, it''s kind of familiar but at the same different, it''s almost like¡­".

    Daimon suddenly opened his eyes, and he immediately knew why the feeling was somehow familiar he was indeed surrounded by almost naked girls, but this time they were at least wearing some slight underwear, and the difference was that unlike the previous night instead of him being on top of Erin the one below him right now was¡­ Aisha.

    His line of sight followed his right arm until he saw the origin of that "satisfying" soft, firm and squeezable feeling¡­ his hand was fondling his mother''s right breast.

    "M-mom, why are we in auntie''s bedroom¡­ and why are you all barely using any clothes?".

    Aisha had one of the brightest smiles that Daimon has ever seen her making.

    "You fell asleep so we brought you to rest in the bedroom, it is quite cold today so we all wanted to cuddle all together to warm each other¡­ this time it was mommy''s turn to take the middle ce because, what couldfort a child more than the body of his mother".

    Although Aisha didn''t make him release his hand from her breast she still said.

    "Speaking of mommy''s body, I don''t mind it but you are still too young to be touching me like that darling ?".

    Daimon immediately let go of her and his reaction made all thediesugh at him, even Aura was participating on this, due to Erin insisting that this was a good way to form a closer "bond" with him which was needed to generate AP anyway so it was a win-win situation.

    Although he has seen more of them before, seeing them in that lingerie had its own charm, especially Erin since what she was wearing barely covered her "female actives".

    "I don''t know how am I going to survive puberty with all of them being like this", he thought.

    Evangeline didn''t mess with him before so she decided it was time to make up for it.

    "Don''t lie to yourself I can feel you are dying for the moment that thing under your pants fulfill its purpose in the future hahaha".

    Daimon shook his head to get rid of the thought, he carefully tried to stood up from the bed only to be wrapped by Erin''s big fluffy tail and dragged towards her.

    "That''s not good little Daimon, it took me some effort to convince Aura so if you are going to grope someone it should her", she said before cing him on top of Aura.

    ¡­

    After spending one night sleeping with other girls besides Aisha, Daimon confirmed that every woman is one of a kind, when Aisha hugged him, the predominant sensation was an easingfortable feeling, probably because she was his mother, even now that her body was not the same as before that didn''t change.

    The Revydies on the other hand had simr characteristics¡­ pretty good curves on the right ces which made him want to hold on to them, the champion in that field was of course Erin, her different tail also was one of the things Daimon loved about her, apparently once Liz and ine be half emperors in the future, they will have one like their mother so that was something he was expecting quite a lot.

    Still even if their mother was the most voluptuous out of the three, each one had their own "talent", Liz''s body had an innate higher temperature due to her fire spirit magic and when they slept together, she made sure to keep Daimon warm with her own body.

    ine on the contrary had a lower body temperature which was the reason why she didn''t hug Daimon to sleep the past night, still being near her made you feel refreshed as if all the problems disappeared, on the future Daimon nned to find a solution for that, there was probably something in the shop of the system to help her with that.

    And now that he was experiencing such an intimate contact with Aura, he had to admit that she was at the same level as Erin but unlike her, Aura''s body was more on the slender side, of course she had a nice noticeable feminine figure but due to all the training she does, her body was beautifully toned while still maintaining curves where there should be, her waist was thin but her hips were big and although her breasts were not really big, they had the perfect size to match her appearance.

    Daimon noticed Aura giving him an usatory gaze and he avoided direct eye contact with her before he slowly got off her.

    "Damn, I''m starting to believe Evangeline is right about me being a pervert, bute on I doubt anyone could resist the urge to peek at this paradise if they were in my ce", he thought.

    But then something that he didn''t expect happened, this time Aura used her wolf tail to made him stick close to her body.

    With a slight blush in her face, she said.

    "Erin told me you like the feeling of the beast races furr, I might not look like it but I have always taken care of mine so¡­ do you like it?".

    ¡­

    Not hearing an answer from him, Aura looked downwards and saw Daimon''s joyful expression while being embraced by her tail and she couldn''t help but smile.

    "I will take that as a yes ?", she said.

    Liz and ine bit their lips, "that''s not fair, they have better control over their bodies just because they are older than me!!!", it''s what they thought.<sub> </sub>

    Beast races had a long lifespan, especially those who cultivated, their youth period was also really long, even if Erin and Aura were about two thousand years old right now, if you were to measure their age in human years they will be in their early twenties, and they will remain like that until they reach almost 70 thousand years, that is considering they never advance on their cultivation anymore which was not going to happen since they were Daimon''s soulmates.

    Mana is life, it''s amon thing to hear and one of the best examples is what happen when someone who is near the end of his lifespan manages to advance, even an old man can recover a middle age appearance using mana to replenish vitality, although some people chose not to do it because that will slow their mana absorbing ratio, most of female cultivators didn''t care about that side effect.

    Lately there has been a bigger number of female knights because those who lit up their life sparks will not be old until they were nearly at death''s door.

    Evangeline saw Daimon engrossed in the moment and sheughed.

    "Everyone has their preferences but I will advise you to not be so obvious hahaha".

    He sighed, she was right this is not the time for this, right now he needed to get coins, he had to buy four¡­ no more urately, five fragments of Lace including one for Narasha, and also gather enough funds to buy one for himself in the future when he bes a knight or a one-star mage whatever happens first.

    He looked directly at Aura before saying.

    "A-aura, it''s not that I''m not liking this but¡­ we need to go hunt magic beasts so I can give you all the grimoire for you to use the same type of spell mom and I use".

    Aura nodded, her tail unwillingly let go of Daimon and they all stood up from the bed, seeing they only wearing underwear Daimon sighed.

    p "Luckily, they didn''t undress me", he thought.</anda>

    A couple of secondster all the girls were properly using their clothes again, while Daimon was putting on his jacket, Aura asked.

    "How many magic beasts and of what realm do we need to hunt?", everyone was well aware that if anyone knew were to find strong magic beasts in the white fang gxy that was Aura.

    Daimon shook his head.

    "I''m not sure, but I guess the stronger the better, probably if they are high ranked ones, we will need to hunt less of them".

    Aura smiled.

    "I know the right ce for that, and don''t worry the magic beasts we will be hunting are a type that need to be controlled anyway so they are regrly hunted by most of the forces in Lykos, we will go to tri-horn valley".

    Erin smiled.

    "Sounds good to me, but first there is a little thing we have to deal with¡­ what would Edgar''s punishment will be".

    ine sighed.

    "I can''t believe he tried to force us to the point where he even brought a hostile half emperor all the way here¡­ we have to be strict against him".

    Liz shook her head.

    "What''s there to debate, he should normally be executed for his crimes, but I''m pretty sure he will cry to the elders so they imprison him, humph".

    Aura saw that Daimon was not affected by Elizabeth''s words and she nodded.

    "Gentle with the people he is close with and merciless with those who harbor any ill intentions towards him or those he appreciate, that''s how a man should be".

    They left Erin''s mansion and after walking for a couple of minutes they arrived at the detection hall, where all those who needed to be judged waited for the n head and the ancestor to decide their destinies".

    Once they were inside, Daimon noticed that it was simr to a court just like the ones he saw on T.V shows back on earth but instead of the ce where the judge will sit, there was three separated thrones, the middle one was the biggest of the three, at both sides there were seats which were already upied by some of the people that approached flying when Erin confronted Arthur, and in the middle of all that there was a lone seat to which Edgar was chained at.

    Seeing Erin entering the room, all the elders stood up and greeted her.

    "Greetings to the matriarch!!!", they said out loud.

    Daimon had an amused expression on his face.

    "The people on this world surely like¡­ drama".

 Chapter 37 Sentence

    Erin nodded and all the elders sat down again, normally the three thrones are reserved for the ancestor in the middle, the n head at the right and the champion of the n at the left but today while they were all upying their respective seats ording to the hierarchy, there were extra people along them.

    Aisha was standing next to Elizabeth, Aura simply sat on the floor right next to Erin and Daimon¡­ he was sitting in Erin''sp out of her petition of course, some of the elders found the current scene a bit weird but no one said anything, being in presence of a half emperor is normally a big honor and right now they seeing two of them up close.

    Even the punishment elder who was known for always following the rules, was adamantly ignoring the fact that someone dared to sit on the floor next to the Revy family''s matriarch, "who in this world would want to provoke Aura Argent for such a trivial matter", he thought.

    Erin looked at the punishment elder before saying.

    "Let''s start now, have you gotten any information from him while I wasn''t here?".

    The punishment elder stood up to reply.

    "Yes, apparently, he was offered some kind ofpensation by Arthur Jolbaris if he persuaded the matriarch to marry either miss Elizabeth or the n head to her youngest son, but since his opinions were being ignored, Arthur Jolbaris convinced him to take him to the n, to personally discuss said about his proposition".

    Erin nodded.

    "So far, it''s what I thought it happened, did he say who coborated with him to bring a hostile half emperor inside the barrier?".

    The punishment elder doubted for a second.

    "No, he didn''t mention any names¡­ and threatened with biting his tongue if I tried to get that information out of him, so I waited the matriarch to keep with the interrogatory".

    Erin shook her head.

    "To be honest I don''t care about little fishes, the main culprit was Edgar and for the crime of putting the ancestral territory of our family in danger he will be executed".

    The elders suddenly started discussing with each other until the detection hall was full of noise, Erin pped and everyone stopped speaking for a moment until an old man stood up.

    "Matriarch¡­ Edgar''s crimes are quite serious but he is still an Arch rank in our family, so I beg the matriarch to please reconsider her decision".

    Erin knew this old man would speak in Edgar''s behalf, because he was from the same family branch as Edgar, after that some other elders also said some simr things, about 10 of them in total.

    Erin smiled.

    "The detection hall was created to seek justice for those who cause harm to the n, all of you who are asking me to spare his life must be ready to pay for a fraction of his crime, the ten of you will drink one dosage of her poison" and will have your positions revoked, then Edgar will be imprisoned forever, what do you say?".

    ¡­

    The same old man that first spoke had an ugly expression when he replied.

    "That is not fair matriarch, please think on the family instead of just the wellbeing of your daught¡­".

    He couldn''t finish speaking before Erin pointed at him and the pressure of her mana made the old man kneel in the ground while his bones made some cracking noises.

    Erin''s expression turned fierce.

    "Think on the n before my own daughters you say? I''m already doing that, if not for my duty to maintain the rules of the family, I would have personally killed Edgar in the spot when I saw him next to Arthur Jolbaris".

    She pointed at Edgar before continuing.

    "I think you are forgetting that; he brought a half emperor to threat my daughters while I wasn''t here, have any of you stopped to think what would have happened if I didn''t return at the correct time?".

    All the ones who spoke in behalf Edgar before sat down again to express their wish to not interfere on whatever turned out to be his sentence, but a woman still said.

    "ording to the n rules, you must give him the chance to exin his own version of the story¡­ matriarch".

    Erin stopped suppressing the old man, she leaned against her throne before speaking to the punishment elder.

    "Fine, punishment elder please remove the limitations on his head only, let''s listen to what he has to say".

    The punishment elder did as he was told and after a moment Edgar could speak, he gave Erin a gaze full of hatred.<sub> </sub>

    "You who were supposed to be my wife are sentencing me to death", he then looked as Daimon who wasfortably sitting on herp.

    "And you never allowed me to touch you¡­ but suddenly you let some random kid be so close with you, to the point where you even gave him your precious daughters!!!".

    Some of the elders sighed, in their opinion Edgar did all this just because Erin never recognized him as her husband, they never have any kind on intimacy nor she allowed him to live on the same mansion as her, the twilight alluring fox n members had the capacity to procreate without sex as long as they performed a certain ritual on a sr eclipse.

    Lykos has three moons and Erin was asked by her now deceased mother to have offspring, to keep on with the main branch of the Revy family, and that is how both ine and Elizabeth were born with just some years of difference because two of the moons covered the sun on different dates.

    Only those with a high status and resources can perform this ritual, because in the Revy family folklore, those who are born thanks to this method are blessed by the sun and the moon, curiously ine was a moon alluring fox while Elizabeth was a sun alluring fox.

    Erin''s expression turned cold.

    "And that is the reason as to why you decided to betray the family that has given you all you have, then I will reform my sentence, your cultivation will be abolished and you will spend the rest of your days in prison, just to see how the Revy family flourish, punishment elder execute my order right now".

    The same old man was trying so hard to find something to argue but no matter how much he tried, Edgar was a traitor and letting him live was already merciful.

    The punishment elder walked from his seat until he was in front of Erin, who handed him a bottle with a ck and red liquid, that washer poison, an extremely hard to refine toxin that ate away the mana in the magic core and infected it so that the person who swallowed the correct quantity would lose all his cultivation and would never be able to absorb mana anymore.

    Edgar was trying to scream but the cor''s magic formation didn''t allow him to do so, the punishment elder made him drink the poison and instantly Edgar''s hair turned white and lifeless, his skin also sagged a bit, his mana started leaking from his body and returning to the havens and earth.

    He got old in a couple of seconds, which meant he no longer had the huge lifespan of an Archmage.

    Everyone felt chills running through their spines, what made this poison so expensive was that the effects were permanent, once you drink it there is no going back.

    Edgar''s gaze became lifeless, he had lost everything he had just because he was tricked by Arthur Jolbaris, subordinates from the punishment elder took Edgar and dragged him to his new "mansion", a cell in the prison of the Revy family.

    Erin nodded.

    "If there are no other cases to discuss then, everyone is dismissed".

    The elders started leaving one by one, until the only Daimon''s group remained in the room.

    Erin felt a bit worried that her sentence would not be of Daimon''s liking but she instead saw him smiling.

    "Little Daimon, are you happy since auntie punished the bad guy?".

    Daimon seemed to suddenly came out of a trance, he only answered.

    "Yes¡­ he was going to try again if he managed to not be punished so he got what he deserved.

    "More like you couldn''t contain your happiness knowing your beloved fox woman has only been "groped" by you", Evangeline added.

    But Daimon immediately replied.

    "That''s not true, I don''t care about Erin''s past, only the future and as long as she is only mine on it, I''mpletely okay.

    Aura suddenly yawned.

    "Meh, I would have sentenced him to be hanged from his balls on the outer walls of the family, instead of just imprisoning him.

    Everyoneughed at Aura''s proposition but now it was not time for that, they left the detection hall, Erin used dark curtain and both Aura and Erin created a barrier around Daimon and the girls before they all disappeared thanks to space shift.

    Now that Daimon had space affinity, he no longer suffered headache due to the travel, so he decided to use this time to speak with Elizabeth about their destination.

    "What kind of ce is that "tri-horn valley", he asked.

    Elizabeth smiled.

    "It was named like that due to the magic beast that inhabits the ce, "Keratos", you will understand once you see them.

 Chapter 38 Being Surrounded By Strong Beauties Has Its Advantages

    The travel was not too long, after almost 30 minutes Daimon could see a ce that fitted perfectly with the name "tri-horn valley", it was a innd made out of rocks without any tree or other vegetation, due to the current cold weather there was snow here and there but what truly caught the attention of Daimon was the three mountains that surrounded the whole ce.

    "I guess it''s not called tri horn valley only for those magic beasts called keratos", he thought.

    Theynded on top of a big rock besides one of the three mountains and as soon as their feet touched the rock, the ground started tilting as if something really big and heavy was approaching.

    Daimon''s eyes widened a bit, rushing towards them he saw a huge gray skinned beast, it had four legs, with three big ws on each one of them, its back and shoulders were covered in spiky bone tes, of course it had three horns, well more urately it had three big horns and a little one on its forehead, one thing that caught his attention was that the beast didn''t have eyes.

    Aura saw Daimon''s curious expression and she exined.

    "Keratos don''t have eyes, instead they "see" thanks to vibrations, that''s why it detected us really fast once wended, I told you that there is no problem in hunting this type of magic beasts before right?".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Yes".

    "Keratos are basically a gue, they are hard to kill for those who are not specialized inbat due to their hard skin, they reproduce without the need of mating, they eat everything including earth, rocks and even other members of their own race, unlike other magic beasts although they reach the Arch ranks quite easily, they never develop rationality".

    "Luckily, they only like to live in secluded ces where there are not too many other living beings, so they rarely cause trouble in towns or cities, for some unknown reason if their poption is not properly controlled, they migrate to other ces¡­ the most epted theory is that they don''t like crowed ces even if the only species are them".

    Aura stopped the exnation, she disappeared from where she was standing and the next thing Daimon saw was that the Keratos which was rushing at them tripped and rolled a couple of meters breaking the ground and on its path before its body didn''t move anymore.

    Then Daimon saw one of the weirdest scenes he has witnessed so far, Aura''s slender tiny figure dragging the huge beast by its tail was quite a funny situation but he didn''tugh, instead he focused his attention in the notification that appeared in front of him.

    *Ding*

    [Aura Argent has yed early Arch ranked Keratos X1, do you wish to sell it to the system?]

    Daimon nodded and the girls were surprised seeing the huge corpse of the beast disappearing without leaving any trace, after a moment there was a new notification.

    [The host didn''t participate in the fight so the selling price will be reduced in half]

    [50,000 coins were sessfully added to the bnce]

    Aura returned to her previous position next to him and asked.

    "So, did it work?".

    Daimon was more or less convinced by the result, when he killed the manticore he got quite a big sum for its corpse but the difference in strength was also quite big, on the other hand Aura was far stronger than the Keratos so the number of coins he got was not that bad.

    "Yes, but we are going to need to hunt quite a lot of them¡­ wait can you try this time with a stronger one?".

    Erin answered.

    "I will do it this time", without waiting for Daimon to say anything she dragged him along and flew until they found another Keratos who was fighting with other one.

    Erin smiled before she pointed her hand at the ground below the Keratos, a giant ck magic circle appeared on the ground and before the Keratos noticed hundreds of ck spears pierced through its bodies.

    Just like when Aura did it, the beasts died immediately without time to fight back.

    *Ding*

    [Erin Revy has yed middle Arch ranked Keratos X2, do you wish to sell it to the system?]

    Daimon epted and this time the coins were immediately added without any notification, so he checked the bnce on the status window.

    [Current bnce: 1,250,000 coins]

    ¡­

    "Oi Evangeline, be a good girl for once and help to automatically sell the corpses of the Keratos without me confirming it".

    Evangelineughed.

    "Done, you see how easy it is when you treat thisdy kindly".

    Daimon shook his head, "whatever".

    "That was better auntie we got four times the amount than before, let''s return with mom and the others, I want to see how much will we get if the one hunting is big sister Liz or ine".

    Erin was not really too interested in beast hunting unlike Aura, but she enjoyed "keeping" Daimon for herself so she unwillingly took him back to the rock where they were at before but while in the air, Daimon suddenly received a lot of notifications.<sub> </sub>

    *Ding*

    [Elizabeth Revy has yed middle Arch ranked Keratos X5]

    [ine Revy has yed early Arch ranked Keratos X3]

    [Aura Argent has yed peak Arch ranked Keratos X1]

    He felt amused by their reactions, "girls surely arepetitive".

    Erin saw Daimon''s expression and she could more or less guess what was happening, "that''s good, those three will do all the hard work while I rx and drink some tea with little Daimon ?"

    Once they were back on top of the big rock, the only one left was Aisha, of course Aura maintained a barrier covering the whole rock to avoid idents, since Aisha couldn''t participate in the fight she just sat down and cultivated, her magic core had apletely different mana absorbing ratio than before so she was actually calcting how much mana should she absorb to not surpass the two-star mage rank which will make her not be in the same ss as her son.

    Daimon opened the status window, since there was no need for him to confirm the sale of the corpses to the system the notifications also stopped after each of the girls killed a Keratos, but there was a log where he could see all the activities registered by the system.

    Seeing the lines appearing one after another, and his bnce going up like rocket he didn''t know what to think anymore.

    "I guess being surrounded by strong beauties has its advantages", that was his conclusion.

    Erin took out arge piece of padding from her storage ring, she ced it on the ground and sat down over it, of course Daimon had his own special "spot", he sat on herp while Aisha also joined them.

    Although in Erin''s mind Daimon was too little to understand some things about rtionships between men and women, she still wanted to exin her past story with Edgar, Daimon didn''t ask but she agreed with the policy of "no secrets in our family".

    ? After contemting things for a moment, she spoke.

    "Little Daimon are you not curious about that guy who was judged by me before¡­ from certain point of view he is Liz and ine''s father".

    Aisha slightly opened her eyes, interested in what her son''s answer will be like.

    Daimon who was checking the shop of the system until a moment ago closed the interface and turned his head up to see Erin''s face.

    There was silence for a moment until he spoke.

    "Do you like that Edgar guy?".

    Erin shook her head.

    "No¡­ in fact I never got along with him, since the first time I met him".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Then it''s okay, auntie has treated me really good since the very first time she met me so, even if that guy got to know you before than me¡­ I''m still the winner".

    Aishaughed a bit, that was a quite a childish way to see things but it was also a good answer.

    It was clear for everyone that Daimon acted older than what he was, but it was not to the point where they should expect him to give a philosophic answer about love, so he tried to use a more "selfish" way of approaching the subject and it worked.

    In fact, he has been trying to leave that impression in them, that''s why he "showed off" his skills for Aura, like how a child would brag about any little thing he achieves, the only difference was that, the things Daimon could do were worth bragging about.

    Still, showing some concern about how they felt was also understandable, considering how all the girls already epted bing his future partners and he was aware of it since that was one of the conditions to be a soulmate.

    "If auntie wants to tell me about her past, I''m more than happy to listen to your stories but even if I don''t, that won''t change the fact that I enjoy spending time with you, just like I do it when mom, big sisters or¡­ master Aura are with me".

    "Hey, what about me?", said Evangeline.

    "You are a pain in the ass to deal with, but I guess that¡­ when it matters you are quite trustable", he answered.

    Daimon felt a strange familiar gaze focusing on him and he smiled.

    "You too Narasha, I hope we get along since I will be trusting my back to you in future battles".

    Narasha was surprised; she felt jealous for the first time in her life!!! and Daimon somehow felt it.

    "Y-yes¡­ thanks Daimon", she said.

    Daimon was rxed on the outside but in his mind, he was jumping of happiness.

    "Thanks to the heavens that using core synchrony also made easier for me to understand how they feel¡­ probably because we are now closer than before", he thought.

 Chapter 39 Erins Past

    Erin patted Daimon''s head; she was happy that her future partner had a good way to see things even when he was at such a young age.

    One often tends to envy those who are considered geniuses, but what other people doesn''t know is that those who are outstanding might have privileges but sometimes they also have obligations, such was the case of Erin.

    "I''m one of the few that survived of my generation, when I was younger the Revy n was in an open war with the undead, all because the son of the person who used to be the ancestor in that moment killed the sessor of another half emperor, my mother was the strongest within the Arch ranks in our family at that time so of course I was also a target for them".

    "After many of the outstanding members of the young generation died due to the conflict, all the eldersined, the ones dying were their sons, daughters, little brothers and sisters¡­ while the ancestor was not doing anything but excusing his son and not participating in the war".

    "Finally, the ancestor couldn''t ignore the n''s opinion and the final decision was that one representative from each family will be sent to fight to decide a winner, but the undead half emperor somehow managed to kill the son of our ancestor and after that the fight became bloodier".

    ¡­

    "The ancestor died in battle and my mother took the lead in the war whichsted almost 20 years, both sides ended losing a lot of Arch ranks and there were many other who suffered horrible wounds due to the corpse poison used by the undead¡­ my mother among them".

    Erin stopped for a moment as before continuing.

    "During the war the n head position was unupied, but once my mother was weakened and bedridden, the elder that supported Edgar a moment ago suddenly appeared with young man and a letter written by the ancestor stating that the young man was his missing son¡­ Edgar Revy".

    "Although my mother was not a peak Archmage anymore, the respect that many of the surviving elders had for her was so high that, even if Edgar''s family branch was one of the few that didn''t suffer heavy losses, they had no other option than convince my mother to support their ascension as the main branch of the family".

    "My mother knew she didn''t have too much time left and the n wouldn''t have survived an internal strife for power so, for the first time in her life she asked something, she wanted me to be the one to unite the strongest branch of that time and the one that had the trust of almost the whole n"

    "Of course, my mother wasn''t willing to ignore my will so instead of marrying Edgar the solution was to perform the sun and moon ceremony, there was going to be an eclipse that year, so the deal was that I and Edgar will participate to create a new life thus showing the n that we supported him bing the new n head".

    Erin smiled.

    "That''s how your big sister ine came into my life, I was an early-stage mage lord when I had my first daughter, my mother died not too long after and perhaps the sun and the moon did bless me, because after ine''s birth my cultivation speed increased by a lot, to the point that a couple of yearster, I was at the peak of the mage lord realm".

    "Unlike what Edgar thought I didn''t like him one bit and since he was dered the n head, he tried to force me to marry him, the punishment elder you saw before was the only survivor from the pre-war generation, he was my mother''s friend and that''s why he didn''t allow Edgar to do what he wanted".

    "He treated me as if I was his own daughter and protected me from Edgar''s family, there was another eclipse that year, thest one in thest 2000 years in fact we performed the ceremony again and after that I cut off any ties with Edgar or the n and focused in my daughters and my cultivation".

    "Peace brought prosperity to our n and as time passed, I became stronger, my goal was that my daughters didn''t have to go through the same things as me so I trained and cultivated with all my heart, at some point I upied my mother''s former position as the champion of the n and eventually I managed to break through and became a half emperor".

    As if she suddenly remembered something she added.

    "Ahh I almost forgot, along the way I met Aura and since at that point of my life I was also a battle maniac like her we easily became friends, that''s a short but urate summary of my lif¡­".

    Before Erin could finish speaking, she was interrupted when Daimon suddenly hugged her, the story might look short but how could he not know she skipped some of the worst things that happened to her, core synchrony was more than an incredible skill, while Daimon was listening to her story he could feel Erin''s strong emotions, as if he was in her shoes.

    The hatred she felt when that despicable old man suddenly decided to participate to get power in the family after Erin''s mother ended bedridden due to all the battle she had to fight, the sadness and sorrow she felt when her mother passed away and the impotence she felt when Edgar''s family tried to force her to marry someone she didn''t love.

    Daimon felt as if his heart was breaking, through the whole first part of the story, luckily not everything were bad things, he could also feel the relieve Erin experienced when the punishment elder took her as his daughter, the determination she forged in her heart to give ine and Liz a better life and the joy of getting a friend in whom she could trust from the time she met Aura.

    While was still hugging Erin, Aisha''s voice made him wake up from his daze.

    "Darling, did you know thatmon people in the Wonder Myriad ster chart, believe that depending on your element of affinity you are destined to go through different things in your life, for example those with fire affinity are said to be involved in a lot of battles, wind element mages are bound to travel and things like that¡­ those with dark element affinity are supposed to be prone to suffering".

    Aisha stopped for a moment before smiling.

    "Perhaps you came to this world to be our light darling", she added.

    Erin hugged him back, to be honest although she indeed had to go through a lot of bad things, she also had good memories like when Aura visited her for the first time and nearly half killed Edgar for acting all high and mighty despite being only an early Archmage, just because he thought he was some big shot due to being the n head, but it was true that when she met Daimon, she felt a huge positive changeing to their life, and so far, that was the case.

    Arthur Jolbaris had no longer an excuse to pester her anymore, Edgar got his cultivation abolished and he was going to be imprisoned while his family practically lost the support of other elders due to his mistake, her daughters were no longer in a fight and they even reunited with their only friend, not to mention that it has only been a couple of days since he became a part of her life.

    Erin gave Daimon a kiss before saying.

    "You are right Aisha; little Daimon is my lucky charm, so of course he will have to be close to me at all times ?".<sub> </sub>

    Of course, Aisha couldn''t be left behind so she stood up and also kissed her son, they only stopped when Aura''s angry voice interrupted them.

    "Ahem, I just left for a couple of minutes and you are already flirting with each other¡­ Erin I understand that Daimon and Aisha don''t participate, but why the hell are you sitting all rxed while we are dealing with the stupid magic beasts?".

    Erin shook her head.

    "Don''t be angry, you like to fight anyway, I was just telling little Daimon about my past and I have to admit that now I feel refreshed as if a weight was lifted from my shoulders, so I only gave him a kiss as a reward, I don''t see any problem in that".

    Aisha nodded.

    "He is my darling so I couldn''t leave Erin have all the fun for herself", she added.

    ine sighed.

    "I expected that from my mother¡­ but since when you became selfish like that Aisha?".

    Aisha smiled.

    "Since I became his soulmate", she answered.

    Lizughed.

    "Well said, Aisha but you are forgetting we are all the same now, so you will have to share him with us now".

    She descended from the sky and also kissed Daimon.

    "We hunted a lot of Keratos, do you have enough of those coins to get big sister a good grimoire ??".

    Aura felt a vein popping in her neck, "you both mother and daughter are both shameless", she said, and ine nodded.

    Daimon''s suddenugh made all the girls smile, this was a good family to belong to, even though he was all, a son, nephew, little brother, disciple and future husband.

    He checked the current bnce and he almost choked whileughing, he counted the zeros just to be sure he didn''t see it wrong but the result was the same.

    [Current bnce: 45,000,000 coins]

    ¡­

    "How many Keratos did you three killed?", he asked.

    The sisters and Aura thought for a second and they all reached the same conclusion.

    "I lost the count", they all said.

    Daimon opened the log of the system and there was a lot of new lines, the didn''t kill as much as he thought, for some reason the peak Arch ranked ones that Aura hunted were sold by 800,000 coins each one and that''s how the number of coins reached such a high figure.

    "I have enough to get one fragment of Lace for the five of you".

    "Mm?", all of them were confused by what he said.

    Aura took the initiative to ask.

    "The five of us you say but including that pair of shameless foxes, ine and me, we are only four?".

    Daimon suddenly remembered that he hasn''t told them about Narasha, seeing even his mother giving him an usatory gaze he sighed.

    "Don''t look at me like that, the one missing is for Disaster, no for the spirit that resides within Disaster, her name is Narasha and¡­ she is also my soulmate".

 Chapter 40 New Grimoires

    Listening to Daimon''s exnation, Aura had a weird expression on her face, "is that how you managed to tame that sword?", she said.

    Daimon shook his head.

    "No¡­ she needed a source of energy which was stronger than mana to take control of Disaster''s erratic nature and the only thing I had that fulfilled that was AP, you can imagine the rest".

    Aisha nodded.

    "If it''s done it''s done, can you make hermunicate with us? we have to make sure she is good for you darling".

    Evangeline couldn''t hold back herugh.

    "I wonder, what will happen when you tell them about me, will I be interrogated like that too hahaha".

    Daimon ignored her and took out Disaster from his storage, since he wasn''t strong enough to even lift the sword right now, he made it appear on the ground, luckily Erin''s paddling was made out of a special material which absorbed impacts and Aura was using her mana to made Disaster lighter, or the rock they were using as their pic ce would have crumbled apart due to the current weight of the sword.

    "Narasha, can speak out loud or do you need me to help you?", Daimon asked.

    A couple of secondter a female voiceing from Disaster could be heard by all the presents.

    "It''s my first time speaking with so many people so please bear with me, as Daimon said my name is Narasha, you might think I''m Disaster but I''m a separate existence with my own thoughts and emotions¡­ just like other living beings".

    Narasha proceeded to tell all the girls her story, Erin smiled remembering when how Disaster actually only fought back when the old ancestor from the Naktis family tried to keep the sword for himself.

    Once the story was over Aura was the first one to give her opinion.

    "If your story is true then I don''t have any problem with you, what does your heart mirror say, Erin?".

    Erin nodded.

    "No negative reaction and she seems like a good girl so I''m also okay".

    Aisha sighed.

    "Seems like my darling has a thing for older women¡­ perhaps being young is not an advantage as I thought, besides that I also don''t see any problem".

    "Pfft", Evangeline was enjoying this improvised "soulmate round table" and so far, Aisha''s answer was the one she liked the most.

    "She is your mother for a good reason", she said.

    ine felt a bit weird since she knew that there was no limit to what Daimon could achieve so maybe one day Narasha¡­ might be present among them.

    "I agree with mom, my heart mirror shows no negative reaction".

    Last but not least Elizabeth who had Daimon sitting in herp spoke.

    "You will apany little Daimon every second of the day and that makes me jealous, but noins besides that I guess".

    Narashaughed, she was more than happy to have more people to talk with, she had ess to the knowledge from the researchers and the Archmages and Archknights that Disaster absorbed, so she knew about things like friends, lovers and family, but knowing about it and experiencing it arepletely different things.

    "It''s a pleasure to know you all, I hope we can get along in the future", she said.

    All the girls smiled, for being someone that inhabited such a monstrous thing as Disaster, Narasha was quite a good girl.

    Now that they knew about Narasha, Daimon decided to buy the fragments of Lace for each one of them, but first they needed to return to the Revy n, this ce was quite cold, although right now he was being warmed up by Liz''s embrace, he was sure the girls were going to be curiously seeing the skills they get so it was better to be in a private ce just in case.

    "Let''s go back to the mansion", he said to the girls.

    Daimon put Disaster back in the storage again, and they left the tri horn valley using space shift, the travel back was quite short, maybe it was Daimon''s imagination but he felt like both Erin and Aura were going faster this time because they were excited to see what kind of spells they would get thanks to their fragments of Lace.

    "I like that they are happy about it, I just hope they get something good out of it", he thought

    "Don''t worry, for a ce so isted and with such a low mana quality like this ster chart, it''s actually quite hard for them to reach this half emperor thing while being young, the same applies to those sisters I''m pretty sure that if they were to have born in a better ce, they would be far stronger than this, luckily they have you now, the host of the mightiest system", said Evangeline.

    Daimon smiled.<sub> </sub>

    "I don''t know if you are trying tofort me or to praise yourself, but I guess you are right, they all are awesome girls, I''m juts going to give them a little push so they can advance together with me¡­ forever".

    Evangelineughed.

    "I''m sure you are going to "push" them a lot in the future hahaha".

    Daimon sighed, "what are you an elementary school boy?", he thought.

    They arrived at the Revy n, Erin being the ancestor had a token which allowed her to bypass the barrier with at most ten people apanying her so they directly appeared in front of her mansion.

    ine opened the door and they all entered, it was funny to see how they made themselvesfortable now that they were back in the mansion.

    Elizabeth''s shoes disappeared the very moment the door was closed leaving her beautiful bare feet in in view, Aura, lowered the front closure of her jacket that practically covered her body from the neck to her hips, revealing that she was wearing nothing more than something simr to a sports top to cover her upper body and a short that didn''t reach her knees to cover the lower part.

    Feeling Daimon''s curious gaze, she blushed a bit.

    "These clothes are designed to not interfere in my fighting style¡­ of course I properly always wear my jacket in public".

    Daimon felt amused by her sense of shame, "I already saw more than that before, when you were hugging my on Erin''s bedroom", he thought.

    Erin noticed that little exchange between them and she smiled before saying.

    "Don''t worry little Daimon, Aura it''s not an exhibitionist, werewolves tend to be body maniacs so it''s normal for them to wear revealing clothes like that, although it''s moremon on males I would say".

    Aura immediately replied.

    "Hey don''tpare me to them, the ones you are talking about are those of my kin who follow the knight''s path, I do train my body but I''m still an Archmage¡­ besides how dare you say someone is wearing revealing clothes when those things are about to burst from your dress?", she said while pointing at Erin''s chest.

    "These two loke more like dogs and cats than a wolf and fox", said Evangeline.

    Daimonughed, "maybe but I like to see them acting like this, although they seem to be arguing I''m sure this is something only friends do between each other".

    Instead of the main room, they went all the way to Erin''s bedroom, well it would be more urately to say it was "their" room now since everyone was sleeping together anyway, once all the girls were sitting on the bed, he opened the shop and after entering the mysterious category he found what he needed, after a couple of seconds five stone tablets with a magic circle in them appeared in Daimon''s hands.

    "Here you go, just ept the thing, like when you became my soulmates", he said before handing one to each of the girls, in Narasha''s case he put Disaster in the bed and ced the tablet on top of the sword.

    The girls nodded and the stone tablets disappeared after bing little particles of light that entered their bodies.

    After a moment Daimon got five different notifications.

    *Ding*

    [Congrattions, your soulmate has gotten "Invincible Odyssey" first tome]

    [Congrattions, your soulmate has gotten "Immemorial Darkness" first tome]

    [Congrattions, your soulmate has gotten "Sun Divine Cycle" first tome]

    [Congrattions, your soulmate has gotten "Moon''s Gentle Ode" first tome]

    [Congrattions, your soulmate has gotten "Sword of Origin" first tome]

    ¡­

    Looking at the names of the grimoires they got and their happy expressions, he let out a sigh of relief, "seems like they got what they wanted", he thought.

    Evangeline agreed.

    "Yes¡­ you are going to have to train a lot if you want to catch up to them though".

    Daimon smiled.

    "I have you right? with such a cheat like system I don''t see any problems with that".

 Chapter 41 New Skills (Part 1)

    Daimon prepared himself for the avnche of answers he was about to get before asking.

    "So how did it go, are you happy with the grimoire you got?".

    After a moment all the girls turned to see him.

    "Yes, I love it"

    "It matches my way of fighting quite good"

    "I can''t wait to try these new spells!!".

    "I want to fight right now"

    "It''s going to be fun when you use it Daimon".

    ¡­

    He sighed, they all spoke at the same time so ultimately, he couldn''t understand anything of what they said, he could only distinguish Narasha saying his name at the end, "they are like children at Christmas¡­ but I guess I will be the same when I get mine", he thought.

    "Okay, let''s check one at a time, first Narasha".

    Erin shook her head.

    "Favoritism for the new girl, no fair", she said.

    Daimon smiled.

    "Technically the newest is master Aura though".

    <o>,m Erin didn''t say anything and Narasha took over, a screen visible to all the presents appeared floating in the air.</o>

    [Sword of Origin, first tome: Darkness Vanishing Sword Gram]

    [Light is born from darkness, you have met the requirements of the legendary sword Gram, be witness to its might and let all the evil creatures suffer under its edge]

    [Rank: Unknown (Growing Type)]

    Once they finished reading the little description, she changed to her skill tree tab so everyone could what she got.

    [First tome''s innate talents]

    [Blessing of light (Passive): Both the wielder and the owner of the grimoire will be immune to harmful negative effects caused by darkness elements, the damage dealt is doubled when fighting in a dark space (Only usable in Gram''s form)]

    [Light branding (Passive): Wounds dealt by the sword will leave a light burn that weakens the strength of the enemy (Only usable in Gram''s form)]

    [Current spells avable]

    [Gram Transformation: Allows the weapon to take the form of the legendary sword Gram (the original weapon''s stats will be maintained but you will ess the innate talents of Gram)]

    [Duration: 1 hour] [Cooldown: None] [Price: 30 AP]

    [Light Conversion LV 1: The wielder can convert any kind of energy into light to use it as a wave attack (current maximum 10% of the wielder''s reserve)]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: 1 minute] [Price: Undefined (depends on the amount of energy converted)]

    Daimon was baffled, "she is a perfect match for me¡­ with this it would be easier to deal with the vampires when the timees", he thought before asking.

    "Can you please use Gram''s form? I want to see how the sword will look like".

    "Mm", after a moment Disaster changed from an oriental one-edged form to a European broadsword design, it had a golden guard with a blue gem in the middle of it, the de was made out of a silver metal which reflected light.

    Aura nodded

    "With this you can fight alongside Narasha and keep the fact that you own Disaster as a secret, since you have the Revy n head, the champion and¡­ the ancestor as your supporters it will be easy to exin saying that they forged this sword for you".

    "Yeah, it will be troublesome if others get to know that I have Disaster so I was only nning on use it when¡­ there won''t be any witnesses left to speak about it but I think this is a better option, still I will need a lot of strength to properly use the sword", said Daimon.

    Erin smiled.

    "You shouldn''t have said that little Daimon, now you gave a certain battle maniac a chance to make you go through some barbarian hellish training".

    Aura shrugged.

    "A good man must be strong, there is nothing wrong in having a good training regimen, besides he will spend more time with me thanks to that, and you can''t interfere".

    Before those two continued discussing Elizabeth interrupted.<sub> </sub>

    "My turn, my turn!!", she said before opening the description of her grimoire

    [Divine Sun Cycle, first tome: Eos''s Graceful Dawn]

    [Having a strong bond with the sun along with a graceful beauty, you have met the requirements to receive the title of "Eos" the goddess of the rising run]

    [Rank: Unknown (Growing Type)]

    ine read the description and she sighed, "she is going to brag about this for a long time", she thought.

    With a satisfied smile, Elizabeth showed them her skill three.

    [First tome''s innate talents]

    [Maiden of the sun (Passive): ording to the position of the sun in the sky the strength of the user will be temporarily augmented (Maximum 300% of the current maximum output)

    [Sun forge (Passive): The hands of a skilled cksmith transmit some characteristics in each of her creations, as long as the user desires things created by her will have the protection of the sun (Only Elizabeth Revy can allow others to ess her creations)]

    [Current spells avable]

    [Dusk Renewal LV1 (Passive-Active): During the day the body of the user absorbs the light of the sun to create a rune, once per day the user can break a rune to heal all the wounds suffered]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: 24 hours] [Price: None]

    [Crown fire LV1: It allows the user to gather the light and heat radiated by the sun in order to create fire with its properties)]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: None] [Price: Unknown (depends on the amount of condensed fire)]

    Elizabeth was all smiles, the innate talent sun forge was especially of her liking, she couldn''t help but tighten her arms around Daimon and kissing him a couple of times.

    "You are making big sister fall deeper for you with each day that passes ?"

    With the exception that Elizabeth was unconsciously using quite a bit of force to hug him, Daimon was enjoying her affection, until Aisha interrupted them.

    "Ahem, Liz, are you trying to crush my darling to death?", she said.

    Elizabeth immediately let go of him, although Daimon did feel a bit pressured his body was not normal so he didn''t feel any pain.

    "I''m fine mom, still I hope Liz can take into ount my current realm".

    All the girlsughed, since they already understood that Daimon didn''t like to see them discussing, they decided to follow the order in which they became his soulmates to show their newly acquired "toys".

    So now it was ine''s turn, she was happy about her grimoire but she kept her cool unlike her sister.

    [Moon''s Gentle Ode, first tome: Selene''s Crescent Moon]

    [Love, a serene mind and a bond with the moon, you have met the requirements to receive the blessing of Selene the goddess of the moon]

    [Rank: Unknown (Growing Type)]

    ine blushed a bit, out of the three Revydies she was the only one that still felt ashamed due to having epted Daimon as her future lover despite the big gap in their ages.

    She changed the screen to the skill tree.

    [First tome''s innate talents]

    [Moon Enhancement (Passive): Although the moon is inclined to peace, those who are blessed by them are also skilled inbat, when the moon is in the sky the user will have all her senses improved and her body will heal itself]

    [Sleeping Lover (Passive): When sharing a bed with her lover, the user will be able to heal andfort her chosen partner (It only works with Daimon Licht)]

    [Current spells avable]

    [Rising Tide LV1: As the avatar of the moon, the user can control the sea and other water bodies at will]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: None] [Price: Unknown (Depends on the quantity of water manipted)]

    [Moon Summoning LV1: The user can summon a little moon to benefit other people by boosting their stats for a period of time (Maximum boost 15%)]

    [Duration: 1 hour] [Cooldown: 1 hour] [Price: 20 AP]

    Elizabeth patted her sister''s shoulder.

    "It''s like this skill were created for you sis"

 Chapter 42 New Skills (Part 2)

    "Ahem", Erin cleared her throat to draw everyone''s attention but she didn''t stop there, she also extended her hands towards Daimon without saying anything.

    "These two are for sure mother and daughter", thought Daimon but he still walked and sat on herp.

    Evangeline was amused by the whole situation.

    "Every one of them wants a piece of you, the difference is that some are quite open about it like your mother and those two fox girls hahaha".

    Erin smiled seeing that her "invitation" was epted, while her tail waggled a couple of times, she showed them the description of her grimoire.

    [Immemorial Darkness, first tome: Leto''s Duality]

    [Protecting the maiden of the sun and the moon due to maternal love, you have met the requirements to receive the blessing of Leto the progenitor of both night and day]

    [Rank: Unknown (Growing Type)]

    Daimon already understood more or less how the fragment of Lace worked, the grimoire they got was not only rted to their elements or their specializations, it also took into ount their personalities, hobbies and other things.

    Erin was happy with the description of her grimoire, her daughters were the reason of her past efforts to reach the pinnacle of this ster chart, but it was also true that right now sitting in herp she had found a reason to surpass her current limits.

    She rubbed her face against Daimon''s before closing the description and opening the skill tree tab.

    [First tome''s innate talents]

    [Eclipse Weaponry (Passive): When the sun is in the sky the user will have ess to the bow and arrows of the sun, when the moon is in the sky the user will have ess to the spear of the night]

    [Mother of Darkness (Passive): Before there was night and day only darkness existed, all the energies controlled by the user will have the corrosive effect of the Immemorial darkness (It doesn''t affect other soulmates or Daimon Licht)]

    [Current spells avable]

    [Dark firmament LV1: Summons a dark veil to cover 50 meters around the user, all the elements or energies surrounded by this veil will transform into darkness under the control of the user]

    [Duration: 30 Minutes] [Cooldown: 12 hours] [Price: 200 AP]

    [urate Shot LV1: Shoots and arrow using the fire of the sun, the arrow won''t miss the target as long as it''s shot during the day (Only usable with the bow and arrows of the sun)]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: None] [Price: 1 AP]

    [Freezing Pierce LV1: Covers the weapon in the coldness of the night, each wound dealt will cause internal damage in addition to slowing down the enemy''s senses (Only usable with the spear of the night)]

    [Duration: 1 hour] [Cooldown: None] [Price: 10 AP]

    Daimon was curious about why Erin had three skills instead of only two like the other girls so far, and not only that but the spell "dark firmament" was incredible, the domain of an Arch rank will enhance the power of the mage or knight and in some cases, it had other effects of wide range, on the other hand transforming all the mana in an area into darkness at theplete disposition of one was¡­ outrageous for the enemy at least.

    Of course, you could say that the enemy will instead use the mana in its magic core to attack, but once its out it will also transform into darkness, the conversion might not be immediate but that would be a nightmare for the enemy because his attack would end up being controlled by Erin.

    Still the area was only 50 meters which was the principal w but the skill was only level one so who knows how much will it improveter.

    Liz had aplex expression on her face.

    "That spell it''s¡­ unfair, I wonder if you got it because you are a half emperor, what do you think mom?".

    Erin shrugged.

    "It could be, a half emperor domain is far stronger than the one of an Arch ranked and this spell seems to be a direct boost to my domain, it''s going to be a good surprise for anyone that tries to mess with me, considering that my domain already involves using dark element".

    Daimon nodded, he basically gave wings to a tiger, he turned to see Aura, only she was left and seeing how good were the skills that Erin got, she as the other half emperor within his soulmates for sure have something on the same level.

    Unlike Erin, Aura didn''t asked Daimon to sit on herp, instead she proudly smiled before opening the description of her grimoire.

    [Invincible Odyssey, first tome: Peerless Devi]

    [A beauty in either of her forms whom no enemy on the same level has ever been a match for, you have met the requirements to receive the title of Devi]

    [Rank: Unknown (Growing Type)]<sub> </sub>

    Daimon felt interested in the phrase "beauty in either of her forms".

    "Master what does it mean that part of "either of her forms", can you transform in a wolf like in the stories of the werewolf race?", he asked.

    It was a normal supposition, werewolves believed their ancestors were able to transform into aplete wolf form, unlike the modern ones that only kept some wolf characteristics like the tail and ears.

    Erinughed.

    "Not exactly a wolf but she does look different than the current "Aura", I guess it will be an advantage when shepletely be yours little Daimon ?".

    Aura who was about to answer almost choked with her words.

    "Hey Erin, what kind of nonsense are you spouting? don''t listen to her Daimon, it''s not another "form", it''s the same me but¡­ a bit older".

    She sighed, "stupid Erin it was going to be a surprise for when the time came¡­ I really need another best friend", she thought.

    Daimon couldn''t help but imagine Aura''s face in Erin''s body and the result was surprisingly¡­ tempting.

    Evangeline sometimes wanted to see the world burn but she also knew there were some limits to how much she could mess with Daimon, so she warned him.

    "If you keep thinking on that, "charm" is going to activate you know?".

    He shook his head to get rid of the thought, before saying.

    "Someday I would like to see it¡­ when master is ready for that of course".

    Aura nodded, it''s not like she nned to hide it anyway but Erin spoiled the surprise, "whatever, I will have more time alone with my cute discipleter", she thought before opening her skill tree tab.

    [First tome''s innate talents]

    [Supreme Radiance (Passive): No defense can stop the attacks of the user (they need to be performed with a weapon and can still be avoided by the enemy)]

    [Sword Deity (Passive): All the wounds dealt with a sword to an enemy won''t be able to heal during one day, (with enough training the user will be able to get the invincible sword life spark)]

    [Current spells avable]

    [Sharp Sky LV1: Allows the user to use all the things as weapons in a 50-meter range (all the elements and energies included)]

    [Duration: 30 Minutes] [Cooldown: 12 hours] [Price: 200 AP]

    [Critical Series LV1: The next attack will deal 100% more damage than the previous one (it can be chained up to 5 times)]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: None] [Price: 10 AP (The price will double with each attack)]

    p [Invincible Aura LV1: ds the weapon in energy that make it sharper and stronger, once per day if the weapon were to be destroyed the d takes its ce]</anda>

    [Duration: 1 hour] [Cooldown: 30 minutes] [Price: 30 AP]

    Erin was perplexed, Aura has never been defeated nor fell behind in a one-on-one battle but now¡­ she felt sad for anyone that tried to challenge her to a duel, and unfortunately for all the people of this ster chart that was the way how half emperors solved differences nowadays.

    Daimon smiled, a team must be bnced and all the girls now had their roles in the team, Erin would be control, ine is the support, Aura and Liz are the attackers, now the only one left was him.

    There was also one thing he noticed.

    "Evangeline, you told me they all would get the life spark thing so why only my mother and Aura have it on their skills?".

    ¡­

    "The first tome focuses on creating a good base for their future cultivation, your mother was centered inbat just like that wolf woman, on the other hand the fox girls seem to have a better talent for magic, still the second tome will cover that for the ones that didn''t get it on the first".

    "As for the sword girl¡­ she is a special case so I don''t know how will she change in the future".

 Chapter 43 Show Of Talents

    What do children like the most besides getting new toys¡­ ying with them, now that the girls got their grimoires of course it was time to try on their skills, Aura and Erin especially wanted to see how their domains will be affected by the area skill they got.

    If anyone in the wonder myriad ster chart were to know that two half emperors were nning to use their domains just to y around, their image of dignity and elegance as the strongest mages and knights would break.

    Erin used space shift to take them to the training room, as the owner of the mansion the magic formations didn''t limit her usage of the spacew to move, after a second, they appeared in the training room where Daimon used core synchrony before.

    Aura smiled, the walls of the room were reinforced with antinite so they could use their domains on a nonbat way of course, without having to worry about destroying the whole ce.

    Of course, as the host the first one to try was Erin, Daimon saw the whole room covering in darkness, for a moment he felt as if he was being pressed by an invisible weight, although Erin didn''t have the slightest intention to harm him, the sudden change in the mana surrounding him was too abrupt so it took him a couple of seconds to adapt.

    Erin saw Daimon inhaling and exhaling a couple of timed before calming down and she nodded, "as expected of the kid that will be my lover in the future ?", she thought.

    Daimon turned to see the roof of the room, unlike the rest of the darkness that was surrounding them that one looked different, first there were little wisps of light floating like stars, "I guess that''s why it includes the word "firmament" on its name", he thought.

    Erin was marveled at the new aspect of her domain.

    "It''s incredible, my domain perfectly fused with the "dark firmament", before there weren''t any stars on it, I think I will use dark firmament as its new name!!!".

    Curiously the grimoire of Narasha wasplemented by Erin, the effects of the darkness created by Erin didn''t affect Daimon or the other soulmates, but Gram was boosted due to it.

    Luckily Erin was inplete control of the darkness created by dark firmament or many of the equipment would have been corroded by it, she extended her hands and a golden bow appeared in her left hand while a golden arrow was in the right one.

    She threw a coin at the air before turning around and shooting the arrow, the arrow left the bow and it turned into a line of fire which moved through the air shing against the coin destroying it in the process.

    Aura pped.

    "Okay that''s enough, stop bragging and let me show mine to Daimon".

    Erin snorted.

    "Humph, I hope you don''t get cold feetter when we go to sleepter".

    Aura sighed, "how is that rted to this", she thought.

    The darkness faded and immediately dazzling silver light covered the room, Daimon supposed something like that would happen so he closed his eyes beforehand, once his eyes adapted to the change in illumination, he opened them and saw the room covered in silver light.

    Aura smiled, she waved her right hand and out of thin air tons of swords made of silver light appeared all over the room.

    Daimon was actually curious, previously he saw Erin using dark element but until now he wasn''t sure what was the element that Aura used.

    "Master, what is your element¡­ I thought it was some kind of lightning but it feels different?".

    "Just like you, I''m a variant, well more urately my element is a variant since both of my parents were werewolves, originally my affinity was lightning thanks to my father and wind due to my mother but¡­ the result made my lightning erratic, it took me almost 30 years to learn how to control it.

    "I''m not a scientist but¡­ that sounds like sma", he thought.

    That would exin why it was erratic at the beginning, sma has a really high energy capacity but it is also quite unstable, somehow Aura managed to learn how to use it without hurting herself or anything she didn''t want to.

    "Were you able to use this silver light to make swords like this before?", he asked.

    Aura shook her head.

    "No, I was only able to control it around my body and to cover things I touched, that''s why my domain used to be the only one among the half emperors which didn''t have an area effect, until now, I guess that I will also rename mine, before it was Silver Armor but now¡­ it will be "Silver Sky".

    Daimon felt sorry for anyone who tried to cross swords with Aura, the only "weakness" she had was that her domain didn''t affect one area but now... she could create hundreds of weapons with that dangerous energy of hers.

    Aura was about to dispel her domain, unlike Erin she hasn''t "bonded" that much with Daimon so her reserve of AP wasn''t too big, she nearly used everything to activate sharp sky, but before giving the stage light to the other girls she tried using invincible aura.

    One of the many swords suddenly doubled its original size, it also changed its color to a mix between silver and gold.

    "Quite dramatic if you ask me", said Erin.

    Aura dispelled her domain and everything returned to normal.

    "Don''t tell me you are jealous of me now?".

    Elizabeth interrupted them.

    "I do, those area spells are on a whole new level to be honest¡­ little Daimon can''t you help big sister to get something like that?".

    Daimon had a weird smile on his face.<sub> </sub>

    "Liz¡­ it''s almost midday so if my calctions are correct, without using any spell or anything right now you are more than twice times stronger than before".

    ine sighed.

    "Control yourself sis, we have to train a lot to use the gifts that little Daimon just gave us, besides if you look carefully the spells seem to be on the "level 1", which means they will be stronger, who knows maybe there will be fundamental changes on themter".

    Daimon agreed with her, so far, the system followed a very game like logic and ording to that, the skills will evolve with each level, he didn''t know whether there will be a limit to how much could they level up, on any case, there will be new tomes avable for the girls once they reach the peak of the current one''s potential.

    Elizabeth swallowed herins.

    "Fine¡­ still I want little Daimon to teach me that "blink" thing he showed us before, pleaseeee ??".

    To be honest Daimon didn''t even know if he could teach them his skills, he got them due to some specific actions but they didn''t have that ability.

    "Evangeline is there a way for me to transfer my skills to them?".

    Evangeline smiled.

    "Everything is possible, you are already closer to them thanks to core synchrony, maybe when you "unite" with them something cool will happen".

    "I kind of expected an answer like that from you, let''s leave that aside for now", he said.

    Since Daimon couldn''t wield Disaster right now, Narasha didn''t change to Gram again so it was ine''s turn to shine.

    There weren''t any water bodies here and the sun was in the sky so, the only skill she wanted to try was moon summoning, a little ball of light left her body before it exploded and expanded to form the silhouette of a moon behind ine.

    All the presents felt their bodies lighter and stronger, there were faint traces of white light surrounding their bodies, this skill was an area boost, of course ine could control to who she wanted to help, the white light disappeared from Liz''s body to show that she wasn''t being boosted anymore.

    "Hey sis, that''s not fair", she said.

    ineughed a bit.

    "It''s only a test so bear with it", she answered.

    A couple of secondster the moon disappeared as she dispelled it.

    "Your turn Liz".

    Elizabeth took over, although it was not visible to other''s eyes, since she got her grimoire, her body has been absorbing heat and light from the sun, next to her magic core besides the small secondary core there was also an orange stone with a sun engraved on it.

    "Mm, I don''t think testing dusk renewal is a must right now so¡­ let''s try crown fire", she thought.

    Daimon felt the room temperature suddenly going up a lot.

    Above them a miniature sun appeared but it was quickly suffocated by Erin''s darkness.

    "Liz, are you trying to burn little Daimon and Aisha or something like that?", asked Erin.

    Elizabeth shook her head with an ashamed expression.

    "Sorry, I didn''t take into ount the "maiden of the sun" thing so¡­ the result got out of my hands".

    Aisha sighed.

    "We are fine so there are no problems but be careful in the future Liz".

    She saw Daimon sweating a bit due to the sudden augment in the temperature and she smiled.

    "Leaving that aside, I think we will need to take a nice bath right now ?".

    Erin serious expression turned amused, she turned to see Aura before saying.

    "Sounds like a good n for me, there are new "additions" to the team since thest time".

    Daimon couldn''t help but steal a couple of nces at Aura which she immediately noticed; her tail unconsciously waggled a bit.

    "It''s been some time since I visited the famous springs from the Revy n anyway", she thought.

 Chapter 44 A Villain Must Be Patient

    The paradise is a concept often used to describe a ce where there is no suffering nor hunger or war, although its characteristics tend to change from one culture to the other, there is always supposed to be a reward for those who earned it.

    But if you were to ask Daimon, he would agree that the scenery in front of his eyes right know was the paradise, pale smooth skin wherever he looked at with some pinkish tones on the mix here and there, different figures some slender full with a young innocent charm and others who were voluptuously tempting enough, to make even the most chaste man burn in the fire of lust.

    A few moments ago.

    Now that everyone in the Revy n knew about Daimon''s existence, there was no need for him to stay all the time in Erin''s mansion anymore, since it was a bit past midday Liz wanted to take Daimon to eat in one of the many restaurants that where in the city but before that, they all agreed to take a bath together.

    Erin guided them to the hot spring under her mansion, just like Elizabeth she had one, in fact hers was even bigger but the design was more or less the same, it looked like a huge natural pool with a garden which helped those bathing to rx.

    Once they closed the door of the bathroom, the fun started, Erin, Aisha and Liz quickly undressed without thinking about it for even one second, ine also did it but she was shy enough to at least cover her pussy with her hands, leaving only her nipples in in view, to be honest Daimon found her shyness cute.

    Aisha helped her son to undress and now the only one using clothes was Aura, Erin turned to see her friend and she proudly exhibited her naked body.

    "We are only waiting for you, old witch", she said.

    Aura sighed, she decided to not make things bigger than they actually were, "he might be a man but he is still too young so, there is no harm¡­ this will make us closer as master and disciple", she convinced herself and started taking off her clothes until she waspletely naked.

    Aisha and Aura had one thing inmon, their hair color was simr, although Aisha had a pure silver and Aura had a mix of white and silver, Daimon didn''t ever pay attention to his mother''s pubic hair when they bathed together while living in the castle of the Naktis, and the first time he actually stole some nces at her mother''s private ce she was young again so there wasn''t any hair down there.

    The same applied for ine and Liz, they both werepletely hairless, the only exception before was Erin who had a little amount of ck hair which augmented her charm as a maturedy, but now there was another one.

    "So¡­ it is true that the hair down there is of the same color as the one on the head, mm it doesn''t look like hair though it''s more simr to the furr of her tail", thought Daimon while stealing a swift nce at Aura''s pussy.

    Of course, how could Aura who had the sharpest senses out of all the presents not notice the curious gaze directed at her most important ce.

    p "To think that the first "man" to look at my body naked, would be a young boy two thousand years younger than me¡­ Erin told me they already bathed together before so it''s probably just curiosity towards someone new", she said to herself.</anda>

    Leaving aside that little episode, they all entered the spring to enjoy thefortable temperature of the natural pool, unlike what Daimon expected Erin insisted that this time he should sit with Aura since she was the only one that wasn''t present before.

    Seeing that she didn''t refuse he sat on herp and closed his eyes to enjoy the bath.

    Evangeline was smiling from ear to ear.

    "That''s some weird fetish you have there, you know?".

    Daimon didn''t open his eyes.

    "It''s sane curiosity, you have seen my memories from when I lived on earth¡­ I didn''t even have a girlfriend so this is all new for me", he answered.

    Evangeline did her job as the devil that whispers in the ears of a man to tempt him.

    "Well, I don''t think they mind you seeing or touching a bit anyway".

    There are somethings that once you be aware of, there is no way to ignore them anymore, now that she mentioned it Daimon couldn''t stop his imagination from going wild, he was sitting just a few centimeters away from Aura''s pussy and it would be a lie to say it didn''t cross his mind "identally" touching it.

    "Stupid Evangeline¡­ now I can''t take that image out of my head", he thought.

    He opened his eyes and saw Aura smiling at him, she patted his head and amodated her body in such a way that she was leaning against the wall of the pool while Daimon was leaning against her.

    Thefortable and rxed expression on her face made Daimon regain his cool, "to be honest I''m so going to enjoy my puberty with all of them around, on the other hand there is no need to rush things¡­ for now at least", he thought.

    Now that he avoided falling into Evangeline''s provocation the rest of the bath went on without any problems, the girls stood up to leave the bathroom, without anyone noticing Aura stopped Daimon from getting up.

    "If you were to try and y a trick on me, I would have been a bit disappointed but since you didn''t, I think you deserve a little reward", she said before giving Daimon a short kiss.

    While he was still processing what just happened, Aura smiled before saying.

    "Once you have grown up a bit more, I don''t mind if you want to¡­ express your love to me, but for now you will have to settle with kissing one of the only five female half emperors that exist in the whole wonder myriad ster chart ?"

    "Well, maybe two out of five since you also have Erin, I guess¡­"

    "Mmph?"<sub> </sub>

    She couldn''t finish her sentence because contrary to what Aura expected instead of freezing due to her actions, Daimon kissed her out of his own will, but to not let the other girls see them he stopped after a couple of seconds.

    "I hope you don''t forget what you said today, my beautiful master", he answered before standing and following the rest of the girls to dry off, leaving behind a dazed Aura.

    ¡­

    After a couple of minutes contemting things Aura heard Erin shouting.

    "Get off the bath already Aura, we need to get going to the restaurant".

    Aura''s face was blushed but she was also¡­ smiling.

    "I guess that''s why you shouldn''t y with fire, turns out he doesn''t like to be the passive one huh¡­ I like it", she thought, before shaking her head a couple of times.

    When Aura reached them, Daimon and Aisha were already dressed while the Revydies were still drying off, it took a bit more time to dry the water off their tails, especially for Erin since her fur fluffier than her daughters.

    Once they were ready, Erin used space shift and after a couple of seconds they were in front of a restaurant called "Moon Gazing".

    Elizabeth smiled.

    "Good choice mom, little Daimon this is the most popr restaurant in the city, just wait big sister is going to order something delicious for you", she said.

    Appearing out of nowhere was shy by itself and if you added the fact that all the people eating in the first floor of the restaurant saw the matriarch, the n head and the best magic cksmith altogether along with another half emperor of course a ruckus was bound to happen.

    "I wonder if this is how it feels to date a celebrity", thought Daimon.

    Still there were some differences, although all the ones eating were amazed seeing such a group formed by important people, they didn''t approach them nor they tried to get close to them out of respect.

    Not even a couple of seconds since they appeared, a middle-aged woman from the moon alluring branch of the family came out of the restaurant to greet them.

    (In case you have forgotten, the moon alluring side of the Revy family have grayish-white hair color, the same applies for their tails and ears)

    "It''s a pleasure to have the matriarch attending our restaurant, we always reserve a private room in the third floor just in case, please follow me", said the woman with a humble voice.

    Erin smiled, she held Daimon''s hand before all of them went upstairs, of course that little action didn''t go unnoticed, so everyone in the lower floor started discussing about how close looked their matriarch with her future "son inw".

    The woman who turned out to be the owner of the restaurant guided to them to a door which had an emblem with the form of a sun and a moon.

    "This is the best private room in our restaurant, it was created to be exclusively used when the matriarch, the n head or miss Elizabeth decided to honor us with their presence".

    When they were about to enter the room Erin frowned her eyebrows seeing a non-weed person approaching them, it was the old man that first spoke in behalf of Edgar in the detection hall and at the same time, the one that started chasing after political power when her mother ended bedridden¡­ Ernest Revy.

    The old man stopped a couple of meters away from them, he slightly bowed his head before saying.

    "Greetings matriarch, I hope you can spare a couple of minutes of your time for me".

    Erin shook her head.

    "Tell me your objective and I will decide whether I listen to you or not", she answered.

    Ernest felt his blood pressure rising but he calmed down and continued putting on a smile.

    "I would like the matriarch to let Edgar fulfil his imprisonment in a house instead of a cell, he is no longer an Archmage¡­ no he is no longer a mage so his days are numbered and I would like him to at least enjoy them before he leaves us".

    Erin smiled.

    "He has "enjoyed" his past days quite a bit, the punishment won''t change, if you excuse me, we are about to eat so I don''t want to keep speaking about unsightly things".

    Without letting Ernest say anything else Erin entered the private room followed by the other girls andstly Daimon, when he was closing the door Daimon noticed the furious expression on the face of the old man and he smiled.

    "If you want to be a viin you must learn to be patient, unfortunately I don''t think you will have the chance", he thought before closing the door in Ernest''s face.

 Chapter 45 Food And Walk

    Daimon put the whole situation with Ernest in the back of his mind, back when they were bathing Erin gave Aura the stage light but this time that wasn''t the case, she extended her arms.

    "Come sit with me little Daimon", she said.

    Daimon sat down on herp which made the owner of the restaurant who was waiting to take their order almost forgot how to breath, "the matriarch seems to be really close with this young boy", still she knew this was not her ce to speak so she limited herself to smile.

    Elizabeth has ordered food from this restaurant before so they left her decide what would they eat, Elizabeth smiled, she pointed at some of the options in the menu while being careful enough to avoid Daimon see what they were, the owner of the restaurant nodded and left the room.

    Aura who was sitting on the right side next to Erin stole a couple of nces at Daimon, she was still surprised by his boldness before, being kissed and kissing are two different things, especially when you''re the one receiving the kiss is a half emperor.

    "Erin, that old bastard is going to do something stupid sooner orter you know?", she said.

    Erin smiled.

    "It''s easier to avoid a spear in daylight than an arrow in darkness, of course Ernest and his supporters are going to be nervous since I''m ignoring their voices, they will start making mistakes which will allow me to identify every one of them and¡­ deal with them".

    Their conversation was interrupted by someone knocking at the door, after getting Erin''s permission three waiters carrying a lot of tes with different kinds of meat and vegetables, the owner ced arge grill over the table while the waiters amodated the tes around it.

    The waiters bowed once and left the room without raying anything and the owner exined.

    "This is a tradition we copied from the humans, when they are with their closest friends or family, everyone is free to eat from each other''s te to demonstrate how much they trust themselves".

    "The meat is selected by its taste not by the rank of the magic beast they belong to¡­ still there is ninth star ranked meat on the tes marked with a red stripe so please be careful", said the owner while looking at Daimon and Aisha.

    Erin nodded and the owner retired, without waiting Aisha took a fork and used it to take a piece of meat, she put some spices on it and ced it on the grill, she changed the side that was cooking after a couple of seconds and once it waspletely done, she extended her arm and offered it to Daimon.

    "Say "ahhh" darling ?"

    Daimon epted her offer, the meat was quite tender and the taste was really good, the spicesbined perfectly with it and the fact that he was personally feed by a beauty like Aishaplemented all.

    "It''s quite tasty, thanks mom", he said.

    Hearing that of course all the girls wanted to try doing the same so one after the other took different portions of meat and cooked them for him to eat, until it was Aura''s turn, she decided to make things interesting.

    ? She took a piece of meat from one of the red stripped tes and cooked it, she bit it and then offered the rest to Daimon.

    "I wonder will you ept the food personally cooked by your master?".

    Daimon sighed, she was clearly trying to get back at him for the kiss in the bathroom, unfortunately things were not going to work as she expected.

    Evangeline surprisingly took it as a challenge.

    "Humph, you are the apex predator, it will be a joke for all the existence if you ever feel bad because you ate something, don''t worry and eat it".

    Daimon smiled and before Aura reacted, he ate the meat.

    ¡­

    Eating meat of magic beasts with a higher realm than the one you are will have two probable ends, first you will get a simple stomach ache or secondly if the difference is too much then¡­ you will explode due to the excess of mana that eating it will apport to your body.

    Of course, Aura carefully selected one that would at most give Daimon an upset stomach instead of a horrible death but contrary to what she expected, nothing happened Daimon even took other pieces of high-level meat and ate them.

    Aishaughed.<sub> </sub>

    "Common sense doesn''t apply to my darling; I suggest you to stop treating him like a novice mage¡­ Aura".

    Erin smiled.

    "Speaking of not treating little Daimon as a little kid, I think you owe him a "little reward" again, he managed to do something you didn''t expect, right?".

    Aura was speechless.

    "This cunning fox¡­ she actually saw everything that happened back in the bathroom", she thought, still she wasn''t known for her bravery for nothing.

    Aura approached Daimon and gave him a short kiss, of course the other girls couldn''t be left behind and did the same, even ine kissed him once.

    "It''s easier when there is no reason to be ashamed since everyone is doing it", it''s what all of them thought.

    Having feasted on both the food and the girls Daimon felt satisfied, they finished eating and the owner of the restaurant didn''t charge them anything, now that other people saw the matriarch eating here, there will be lines forming to get a table on the first floor just in case they have the luck to see Erin and her group here again.

    Now that everyone had their fill, ine wanted to show Daimon some of the interesting ces of the Revy n, still it was gettingte so they only visited the area near the n head''s mansion.

    They arrived at a big white house, on they could see a lot of children, some looked to be in the same age as Daimon, but there were others who were older, they entered the house and Daimon could see there were a lot of ssrooms, in some of them the kids were learning the basics of magic theories, while in others there were some easy practical examples.

    "It looks like a kindergarten", he thought.

    ine smiled; this was something she implemented.

    "This is a pre-academy, since everyone just start assisting the academy once they be one star ranked mages which often happens when they turn 13 or 14 years old, what do you say little Daimon would like to try it?".

    Erin immediately refused.

    "What can they teach little Daimon that two half emperors can''t teach him, besides since we became soulmates we are no longer affected by the collective contract, so there is a lot of things we can talk about¡­ like forbidden spells".

    Aisha agreed.

    "Erin is right, if someone is going to help my darling on his magic theory foundation, two half emperors are the best one can probably get¡­ well with the only exception of the Greenwich Sage maybe".

    Aura interrupted this time.

    "Nah that weirdo, loves books and knowledge more than his own life but he is not the type to share them with others, I remember that some of the old farts in my academy tried to invite him over to give conferences and his answer was "if you want my knowledge then you must offer me something I don''t know yet", the dumbfounded expression in their arrogant faces was priceless".

    Daimon agreed with Erin, although he looked like a kid, mentally he wasn''t one so spending time in a ce that looked like a kindergarten would be boring, besides why would he choose to pass the time with kids when he had some of the most beautiful women at home.

    "Auntie and mom are right, I think it would be better for me to learn at home, I will go to the academy once the timees", he said.

    Erin saw the sun setting and she smiled.

    "Speaking of the time, I think is time to sleep now¡­ Aura are you going to stay?", she asked.

    Aura yawned.

    "Yeah, I decided to live in your mansion from now and onwards, my presence is only required in the academy from time to time anyway, now I have something more important to give my total attention ?".

 Chapter 46 The Pass Of Time (Part 1) Aisha & Elaine Days

    Order is peace so when they returned to Erin''s mansion the first thing the girls discussed was, how will they split the days of the week, since Narasha couldn''t be "physically" present, she was temporarily excluded from the calendar.

    Respecting Daimon''s opinion to not fight between them, they arranged a schedule of who will have the day to teach Daimon about magic and upy the main spot in bed, Aisha took Mondays.

    "He is my darling so I will be taking the first day", she said.

    There was no way to argue against that so no oneined, next ine took Tuesdays, at first Lizined since she was the first of the Revydies to know Daimon, but since ine had to attend to her duties as the n head and Tuesday was the day of the week where she had less work to do, she had no other option but to ept.

    Wednesdays were taken by Elizabeth, as the champion of the Revy n she didn''t have any duties with the exception of being Lykos in case she was needed, but she was also the best magic cksmith of the n so she gave some conferences to other members of the Revy n Mondays and Thursdays, that''s why she chose Wednesday to spend the day with Daimon in her workshop, since they still had some pending issues regarding the magic gun.

    Contrary to what everyone expected Erin didn''t fight with Aura for Thursday, so Aura was assigned them as her days to train with Daimon, he didn''t know it yet but now that she knew he had a better endure and condition than others his age, she was preparing a "especial" training session just for him.

    Erin got Fridays, of course how could the most cunning woman in the whole Wonder Myriad ster chart get the shortest end of the stick, the best library and training room in the whole n were in her mansion so, Aura, Aisha and ine were going to stay with Daimon in the mansion most of the time and there was no rule that forbid her to assist their lessons.

    As the ancestor she didn''t have anything to do unless something really urgent happened, the punishment elder was in charge of everything, and she was only required to assist in case they needed to sentence a first rank elder to be imprisoned or drink neither poison which has happened just once in more than one thousand years, and it was today when Edgar was sentenced to it.

    Finally, weekends were to be spent together and the one to chose who to hug to sleep was Daimon.

    Speaking of Daimon, he was amused listening to the whole schedule, "they can be quite organized¡­ when ites to this".

    Evangeline agreed.

    "Order is important in the harem, good luck keeping all of them happy".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Children back on earth go to school since they are my age anyway, I''m having it easier, if you ask me all of the "activities" are things I wanted to do anyway, and adding the fact that I will spend time with each one of them makes it even better".

    Evangeline nodded.

    "Yup, and if you consider that they adamantly agreed to share bath time all together, you are going to have such a good childhood, hahaha".

    Daimon ignored thatstment, "I will worry about it when the timees", he thought while looking at ce between his legs.

    And so, time passed, to start the week he learned magic basics with his mother, since Aisha''s element affinity was metal and lightning, she taught her son about the theories behind the original spells she created as an Archmage.

    Now that a few weeks have passed since she returned to be a one star ranked mage, she stabilized her cultivation, so now she could use magic without exhausting herself so easily.

    "Pay attention darling, this is my original spell "Myalo", it allows me to manifest and amplify the effects of any magic metal or mineral in my body, but I need to study and understand the properties of the material I want to copy".

    Aisha''s left hand suddenly covered in some kind of ck material, she created electricity in both of her hands and Daimon clearly noticed that the electricity on her left hand was stronger than the one in her right hand.

    p "Right now, I''m imitating orichalcum in my left hand, since that metal is the best magic conductor although I''m using the same amount of mana and the same spell "lightning bolt" on both of my hands, the result is quite different, as you can see the spell gets amplified because orichalcum makes it easier for mana to externally manifest".</anda>

    Daimon was actually quite interested in his mother''s lesson; this is a spell that wasn''t registered in any book since Aisha didn''t teach it to anyone before, so no body knew she could do something like this.

    Aisha smiled seeing her son''s curious gaze.

    "This is what I used to defend myself against the nightmare dwellers back when we were staying in the cave, but that time I imitated mithril''s property to purify and drive away any kind of night inclined creature".<sub> </sub>

    "That night I got inspiration to create the next step of this spell, the n is to apply the properties of magic metals not only to the external body but the insides too and who knows maybe even the soul one day".

    What started as a lesson ended up with Aisha and Daimon enjoying the whole day talking about possible ways to improve "Myalo", when the lesson finished Daimon received a notification.

    *Ding*

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [Metallurgy Mastery LV 1 (Passive): Anything rted to metals and their properties will be 20% easier for the user to learn]

    "Not bad, that is basically a shortcut for me since I will be using mom''s spell in the future".

    The day ended with Aisha giving her brilliant son a kiss as a reward for his efforts and Daimon happily hugging his mother''s warm body to sleep.

    Next day it was ine''s turn to spend the day with Daimon, unlike Elizabeth, Aura or Aisha, ine didn''t focus onbat, her calm and analytic nature made her perfect to lead and take decisions.

    She took Daimon to her office as the n head, there he could see many staff members taking care of the different management areas of the n, human resources and job assignment, treasury and budgets, agriculture and livestock, inventory and resource management andst but not least information gathering, military actions and retaliation.

    Of course, every one of them had their own sub categories but those were the main divisions used, ine as the n head supervised and evaluated the results of each area at least once a month.

    Her lesson consisted in teaching Daimon how to react to different situations, the example she chose was a dispute the Revy n currently had with the humans over a recently discovered mine of mana stones.

    "An elder of our family, identally discovered the mine in a dested asteroid, so in that sense it should belong to the Revy n, the problem is that the elder left to give notice the n about it and when he returned with other members, an exploration team of the humans was upying the asteroid, so how will you deal with it?".

    Daimon took the inform about the case from ine''s desk and gave it a quick look, once he found what he was looking for he returned to its ce.

    "In the inform I just read there is different information apported by the different areas, to make it short, treasury and resource management omitted something that the information gathering did mention, the asteroid orbits blue-sky gxy most of the time so while it might bring benefits to fight over the ownership of it, it''s too much of a hassle to operate on another people''s territory".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Instead, why not let the humans do the work and sign a contract to get a percentage of the mana stones they get in exchange for giving up on the mine, by doing it like that you will only need to leave one representative from the n instead of a whole team, so there won''t be too much operation costs and also you keep a good rtionship with humans while gaining mana stones without doing basically anything".

    ine pped.

    "Good answer, we don''t lose anything and get all the benefits, as leaders our job is to see more than what those who depend on us see, resources are important but diplomacy is also important, so finding a bnce between them is in part our job".

    ine smiled; she couldn''t help but kiss him after making sure no one was looking.

    "In the future, you are going to lead all of us, so important for you to have a good criterion, focus on the little details and take the best decision for the situation you might find in¡­ of course you can''t make some exceptions like choosing your big sister ine to take the main spot to hug you to sleep on weekends ?".

    Something that Daimon learned about ine on the past days he has been spending time with her, was that she also had the characteristic shameless attitude courtesy of Erin''s genes but unlike her mother and her sister she only manifested it when there wasn''t anyone around.

    Or at least that was the case before, after Daimon used core synchrony, he was no longer affected by her naturally lower body temperature so she started bing a bit closer to him, with time she also opened to him more and that''s how things ended up like this, the once timid and reserved ine now flirted with him, when they were alone of course.

    That day ended with Daimon enjoying the fresh yetfortable feeling of ine embracing him to sleep.

 Chapter 47 The Pass Of Time (Part 2) Elizabeth & Aura Days

    The so awaited day came for Elizabeth, she stood up early and prepared herself for it, she chose her best clothes, washed her face and returned to her mother''s room and woke up Daimon who was peacefully sleeping in ine''s embrace.

    Daimon rubbed his eye a couple of times, he saw the clock in the wall and he almost swore, it was 7:00 AM.

    "Liz¡­ it''s too early, let''s go back to sleep", he said.

    Unlike earth, here the day starts a bitter for everyone, at 9:00 AM to be precise, Lykos is a where eight out of the twelve months of the year have low temperature, on four of them it actually snows from time to time, the other four were rain season and thest four are hot, right now they were in July which meant it was clouded most of the time and today was no different.

    Elizabeth wanted to argue but all the other girls who were also woken up by her, simply cuddled with Daimon and went back to sleep.

    "Fine¡­ let''s sleep a bit more", she said before taking off her clothes and finding a free spot under the nket with Daimon and the others.

    A couple of hourster they all woke up, one thing Daimon loved about mornings was seeing the slight messy appearances of the girls, two of them especially, the first was Erin which had tob the fur of her tail on a regr basis, during the night her tail fur fluffed up a bit whichbined with her sleepy expression made her look cute when she recently woke up.

    The other one was Aura, unlike Erin who slept naked, she wore her panties and an unbuttoned shirt, simr to what she was wearing the first time Daimon met her back on her castle, it was especially hard for her to woke up early since she was used to sleep most of the time she wasn''t training.

    I her case, her shirt tended to hang from her small shoulders, which allowed Daimon to catch a glimpse of her nipples whenever she moved, to top it off when she yawned her slightlyrger than human canines were fully visible making her look adorable.

    This time Elizabeth waited until Daimon had breakfast before dragging him along to her workshop, today she didn''t have to give any conferences to the magic cksmiths in training so she was free the whole day.

    Daimon took out the gun prototype she gave him, now that Elizabeth had the sun forge passive skill, any new things she created as long as she wanted could be blessed by the sun enhancing their endurance, damage and other aspects.

    She has been experimenting using crown fire along with her original spirit fire magic to forge, she stood next to a medium sized metal melting furnace before starting her lesson.

    "Today big sister will teach you the basics of a magic cksmith, unlike other professions for a magic cksmith empiric knowledge is far better than theoretical knowledge, for example the reason as to why only our Revy n and dwarves were able to create flying carriages although other races also bought the blueprints designed by the Greenwich Sage it''s because you need a specific way to prepare metal which makes it lighter while maintaining a high structural strength".

    Liz smiled remembering how many people up to this day are still having headaches trying to figure out what is "wrong" with the blue prints.

    "You see, that scammer sage likes to call himself "neutral", so while he sells his public designs to practically everyone who can pay the price, there is always a catch, in the flying carriage case unless you have worked with a specific kind of metal on a specific way before you would not be able to create the main frame of the carriage".

    She took a piece of a brown metal ore and ced it inside one of the many separated sections the furnace, the temperature of the room went up a bit when she summoned both her magic fire and crown fire before she made them go inside the furnace, the process repeated but this time the put a little piece of ck metal the size of a coin instead of the brown ore.

    "Even the best magic cksmith can''t create something out of nowhere, so first you need to use the correct material for the job, the first metal is called brikt and is the base metal used to construct almost everything since it''spatible with any other metals, while being quite easy to find and cheap, the second metal is traul a cheaper alternative to orichalcum with a decent mana conduction property".

    Daimon saw the brown ore melting leaving behind a gray piece of metal, Elizabeth used a pair of gloves made out of a material which insted heat and took out the metal with a tweezer, she then put it in the same section where the little piece of ck metal was being heated.

    She augmented the output of her mes and after a couple of minutes both metals melted and fused together, Elizabeth took out some kind ofrge tool which consisted in a pair of tes each one having the one side of a conic figure, both of the tes were united with a hinge at the end and each had a handle attached.

    Elizabeth took out the whole section of the furnace which turned out to be a vase now containing the melted metal and then poured it on the tool, Daimon could see how the metal filled the empty spaces in the tool and it was easy to guess that the purpose of it was to function as a mold.

    Once all the metal was poured in, she ced the vase on top of an anvil and then immersed the mold in cold water, to cool down the metal, the result a lot of ck bullets.

    Elizabeth had prepared the containing cases beforehand, so now she only inserted the bullet on them and used a little hammer to make sure they were properly attached to the case, of course the primer along with the fire magic crystal powder was added after that since friction could made the bullet explode if it was done the other way around.

    Visibly the unique difference between the two bullets that were in front of Daimon was the color of the projectile but one was created after she had the sun forge passive skill and the other one not, so now it was time to test the results.

    Elizabeth ced a target 20 meters away from them, she inserted one bullet of each kind in the receiver of the gun and with a clicking sound the first one passed to the chamber, she pointed the gun to the target and with a low exploding sound the bullet as sessfully shot.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon saw the result which was a crack in the target, Elizabeth changed the target to a new one and then returned to her previous spot before shooting again, the difference was that this time instead of just a bullet¡­ a line of fire left the cannon of the gun and the result waspletely different also, the target waspletely destroyed and the line of fire kept moving until it shes against the wall of the room.

    Both Elizabeth and Daimon were in awe.

    "The second bullet was blessed by me due to sun forge and the projectile contained a little amount of traul but still¡­ that target had the defense of a fourth star ranked knight and it was utterly destroyed", she exined.

    Daimon smiled, a gun might not be useful in high-ranking battlester but right now it was going to be a triumph card for him, but what made his smile expand even more was Narasha saying.

    "That''s not fair, I''m your partner for battle!!!".

    Daimonughed a bit.

    "Don''t worry, the gun will be my secondary weapon, you will always be the first".

    He felt Narasha''s happy mood due to his answer and he shook his head, "I need to start training, it''s not fair for Narasha to always be in the storage just because I''m physically weak", he thought.

    Fortunately, or more urately unfortunately for his body tomorrow was Aura''s turn to train him but for now he spent the rest of the day discussing new ways to improve the design of the gun, like adding a cartridge and eliminating the forearm while also reducing the size of the gun, Elizabeth was fascinated by his suggestions.

    "I knew you will like the gun but to think you will get so many ideas to improve it, as expected of my little Daimon, you deserve a reward ?", she said before kissing him.

    The day ended with Elizabeth firmly hugging Daimon to sleep, even when she was asleep there was a slight smiling expression on her face.

    Thursday came and it was Aura''s turn to spend the day with Daimon, she told him to have a light breakfast and wearfortable clothes since they will be exercising a lot, this time the lesson will take ce in Erin''s training room.

    While daimon was using shorts and a loose shirt along with something that seemed to be tennis shoes, Aura was wearing a ck set of spats shorts and a sleeveless sports top, which fitted perfectly to her body, highlighting her curves.

    After she got her grimoire, she has been training to strengthen her body since she has the option to light up her life spark which will allow her to be a knight, so she has been using a magic device called "shackles of despair," which constantly make her weight augment, of course she can take them off unlike the prisoners for what they were designed but she can''t reduce the amount of weight the shackles put on.

    So basically, she has to improve her strength on a daily basis or she won''t be able to move while she trains, it''s a barbaric and yet way to be stronger since it forces the body to improve, why is it barbaric you ask, because she is not wearing one but¡­ four of them, one on each of her legs and the same on both of her arms.

    Aura smiled, while she took out four shackles of despair from her spatial ring.

    "My man has to be strong so, from this moment onwards and until you are finally able to wield disaster without affecting your movements speed or reaction you will be using these shackles every moment of the day, with the exception to when you bath and sleep since that will be the time your body will rest and adapt ?".

    Daimon saw her smile and he had a bad premonition.

    "Ahem, if you want to get back at me for the kiss, you can always kiss me back you know Aura?".

    Auraughed a bit, she told Daimon to only call her master when there were strangers near them, so he started calling her by her name all the time now.

    "I wonder what are you talking about hehehe, now let''s start with the basics of swordsmanship, my cute little disciple", she said.

    Daimon sighed, "she is definitely enjoying this", he thought while he put on the shackles to start with the lesson.

 Chapter 48 The Pass Of Time (Part 3) Aura & Erin Days

    Once Daimon had the shackles on, he immediately noticed that his body felt heavier, it was harder to move but it was still manageable, Aura nodded seeing him following her instructions, she took two training wooden swords from the wall of the room and handed one to Daimon before she positioned next to him.

    "There are three basic poses for a swordsman, preparation, attack and block, we will start with pose and attack", she said.

    Aura ced her left foot a few steps ahead of her right, and pointed the wooden sword forward holding the handle with both hands.

    "This is the basic preparation pose for swordsman, you must support all the weight of your body on your left foot, lean your body slightly forward and make sure that your sword points to the sternum or throat of your enemy", Aura dashed forward and swung the sword creating a slight amount of wind due to the movement.

    "That is the basic attacking movement, we will practice this until your body gets used to it, a good swordsman doesn''t need to think, your muscr memory should help you, besides if you master it there will be no need for you to block your opponent''s attack, because he will be dead".

    Aura smiled, her fighting style was quite an aggressive one, whenever she swung her sword, her enemy was bound to bleed, specially now that her attacks won''t be stopped by any defense due to the supreme radiance passive skill.

    The training sounded easy but if you add the fact that his body was getting heavier with every minute that passed things changed, after repeating the same movement almost 200 times he calcted that his weight was about 10 times his original one.

    Every time Aura saw that Daimon''s rhythm slowed down, she scolded him.

    "Don''t fall behind, your enemy won''t let any mistake slip away!".

    Daimon waspletely drenched in sweat, but little by little his body was adapting to the stress that the weight augmentation made it go through, once Aura considered he has progressed enough for the first session she told him to stop.

    "You can stop now, sit down and rest for a moment".

    Not even a couple seconds passed after she spoke and Daimon let his body fell backwards.

    "Ha¡­ha¡­ha", Daimon looked at the roof of the training room while he gasped for air which made Aura nod.

    "That''s good, your body is starting to pump more oxygen through your veins to help you adapt, before you enter the academy, I promise you would be able to properly wield Narasha ?".

    Daimon saw her amused expression and he didn''t know whetherugh or cry, "I guess cute girls are quite vindictive too", he said.

    Aura smiled when she heard him call her cute, she looked at Daimon''s current tired expression and she felt a bit guilty, "maybe I¡­ exaggerated a bit, back when I trained using the shackles of despair for the first time, I was only able to do 150 repetitions after all", she thought.

    She sat down next to him and gently started massaging his arms and legs to relieve his body a bit, her eyes widened when she felt the changes currently happening in Daimon''s muscles.

    She couldn''t help to gently press her fingers on specific parts of his arms and legs.

    "Woah, your muscle fibers are incredibly resistant, like steel wires, perhaps you have a really high talent in the knight''s path!!!".

    Daimon smiled, she seemed to be more excited than him about what she discovered, he changed his position to a cross legged one before saying.

    "I think, a certain someone owes me a reward, don''t you agree?", he said.

    Aura remembered the kiss they shared before in the bathroom and she blushed.

    "A-are you sure that is what you want?".

    Daimon nodded and she mentally sighed, "I will be spending more time with him from now and onwards so a kiss from time to time won''t hurt I guess", she thought.

    Aura closed her eyes and let Daimon kiss her, an invitation he was happy to ept, for some reason he enjoyed quite a lot teasing her, maybe because she was shy about it.

    "Mmm ?", while Daimon was pressing his lips against hers, he saw from the corner of his eyes, how her tail waggled a couple of times which he found really cute.

    Evangeline who was watching everything, didn''t miss the chance to give her opinion.

    "I wonder who will you choose to be your first "night partner" in the future, my money is in either your mother, the fox woman or your cute wolf girl, what do you think Narasha?".

    Without including Daimon, Evangeline could talk with Narasha and they easily started bing friendly with each other since they had something inmon, neither one of them had a physical form.

    Speaking of Narasha, she has been feeling a bit jealous of the other girls since she couldn''t spend time with Daimon like them, but remembering some things that Evangeline told her regarding that, she smiled before answering.

    "I think that Aisha has the bigger chance but¡­ who knows maybe Aura or Erin can take the leadter".

    Daimon felt a bit weird listening to those two suddenly being all friendly, but it he would be lying if he said that the subject, they were talking about hasn''t crossed his mind at least once before.

    "I think that it''s better for things to naturally happen, I guess I will have to speak with them about this at some point".<sub> </sub>

    Without him noticing he has been kissing Aura for quite a bit of time, it wasn''t his fault though, the softforting feeling of her lips was something any man could get used to enjoy on a regr basis.

    Daimon stopped the kiss, he got temporarily lost in her dazed blushed expression, "she freaking adorable I swear", he thought.

    It took a moment to Aura to regain herposure and once she noticed she let him kiss her for such a long period of time she wanted to dig a hole to hide.

    "I can''t believe it, since when I''m as shameless as Erin¡­ but it felt quite good ?".

    That day ended with Daimon feeling his body was going to break due to the hellish training, but his heart was soothed by Aura''s gentle embrace and her soft tail wrapping around him to keep him as close to her as possible.

    The next day started like any other one with a cold weather, he woke up in Aura''s warm embrace,pared to yesterday his body felt sofortable after a good night of rest that it took him almost 15 minutes to finally decide to separate from her and get up to go take his breakfast.

    Since he was quite tired due to the training, he woke upter than what normally does, so Aura and him were the only ones remaining in the room, before he left, he made sure to cover Aura with the nket since she usually keeps sleeping for one or two more hours than the rest.

    When Daimon arrived at the dining room, he was marveled at the sight of all the girls happily taking their breakfast together, of course they noticed that he finally woke up and Aisha was the first one to greet him.

    "Good morning darling ?, do you feel better now? yesterday you looked quite tired".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Good morning mom, yes I feel quite rested".

    Once Daimon finished his breakfast Erin dragged him along, they left the mansion and she used the spell dark curtain to make them invisible to others.

    "Unlike Liz or ine, I normally don''t have any duties to attend beside listening to some of the elder''sins¡­ whenever I feel like doing something, but since that is also boring, I decided that today we will have a date ?", she said.

    Daimon felt a bit weird, "she could still teach me darkness element magic, I have the affinity after all, although I will be focusing more on lightning", he thought, but still what kind of man will he be if heined about spending the day just hanging around with a beauty like Erin, so he followed the act.

    Erin smiled.

    "The first stop will be the n training grounds; I have prepared a little surprise for you".

    Daimon had a bad premonition but he didn''t say anything, he held to Erin''s body and they flew for a couple of minutes until they reached something that looked like a sportsplex from earth.

    It was a big building with a lot of different facilities, pools, archery ranges, etc. they even had their own hot spring, exclusively for those who trained there, originally Daimon thought she nned to make him try all the facilities but that theory was discarded when he saw that she didn''t dispel the dark curtain and he started sweating a bit when he noticed that¡­ there were only women here.

    Erin saw his confused expression and sheughed.

    "I saw all the things you did during the week, learning magic theory with Aisha, leading and management with ine, magic cksmithing with Liz and that hellish training Aura made you go through so I prepared something special to make you rx and forget about all those things".

    She pointed at the entrance of the hot springs.

    "An all you can see buffet of naked girls ?".

    Daimon almost tripped when he heard that she was nning to keep using dark curtain for him to spy on the girls of the Revy n that were enjoying the hot spring.

    Evangeline almost lost it.

    "Pffft, she understands you quite good hahaha".

    He didn''t bother to argue with Evangeline, instead he replied to Erin.

    "Auntie¡­ I appreciate the offer but I don''t think it''s a good idea", he said.

    Erin shook her head.

    "Don''t worry I previously discussed it with the others, besides unlike what you did with Aura thest time, you will only see but not touch so there is no problem ?".

    Daimon had serious doubts about her logic but she finally convinced him by saying that they will also take a bath so while he might "identally" see some other girls, the main purpose will be to enjoy the hot spring.

    "This is only the first stop¡­ what in the world will she do for the others!!!", he thought.

 Chapter 49 The Pass Of Time (Part 4) Everyoneâ€™s Day

    Before they entered the hot spring Erin dispelled the dark curtain covering her, so the spell was only covering Daimon now, she did it because the other girls would find weird to see the water moving and waving while there was "no one" in that spot, so now that Erin will be visible that point was covered.

    Of course, many of the girls were fascinated seeing the matriarch attending the hot spring still they maintained a respectable distance from her, they simply returned to whatever they were doing before.

    It hasn''t even been ten seconds since they entered the room where the host spring was and the sight in front of Daimon was already something amazing¡­ cute naked girls everywhere, a paradise full of variety.

    Slim athletic bodies, voluptuous mature figures, cute little builds, there were a bit of everything in the room, as someone that has gone through puberty once before, Daimon nurtured has seen this type of scenes through a screen a couple of times but it was the first time he experienced something like this in person.

    Of course, he had seen Aisha, Liz, ine, Erin and Aura at the same before but this was a bit different, first he didn''t know any of the girls that were in front of him and second¡­ they weren''t aware of his presence.

    "I hate to admit it but seeing a lot of girls naked even if I don''t feel anything for them, does have a certain charm¡­ sigh first Evangeline and now even Erin is making me have this kind of ideas", he thought.

    Evangeline was smiling from ear to ear.

    "At the rhythm you are getting soulmates, I bet in the future you will bath with this number of girls while being visible hahaha".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "If it happens then it happens, I''m not hypocrite enough to say that I don''t like bathing with mom and the others".

    Narasha heard their little exchange and she sighed, "one day I will participate too", she thought.

    While they were walking towards the natural pool, Daimon noticed that the design of this hot spring was different than the ones in he has seen before, instead of trees and the little garden that adorned Erin and Elizabeth''s bathroom, here the scenery was simr to a grotto.

    The walls were rocky, while the natural water pool epassed the entire room, there were some elevations made of stone from which the water ran continuously, if you added the fact that there were tons of fox girls bathing on the water or sitting over one of the many natural rock formations, the result was a beautiful portrait worthy of being immortalized by the best painter.

    Since dark curtain was her spell, of course Erin could see Daimon, she smiled seeing his surprised expression.

    "All this room was a natural cave before, in my mother''s generation a pair of architects designed the ce and the result was so beautiful that it hasn''t been modified since then¡­ still I wonder what amazes you the most, the hot spring or the girls bathing on it hehehe ?".

    Daimon feigned ignorance, he remained in silence until they entered the pool, Erin guided him to a secluded spot where he will have a panoramic view of the ce while being at a safe enough distance for them to speak without other girls noticing their matriarch speaking to the "air".

    The water level wasn''t too high so when Erin sat it only reached a bit upper her waist, Daimon sat next to her but in his case the water covered almost all the way to his chest.

    He was about to answer Erin''s previous question when he saw the rest of the girls entering the hot spring too, the first one to approach them was Aisha, although she couldn''t see Daimon, she noticed the little movements in the water next to Erin and she smiled.

    "Darling, let me sit next to Erin and you can sit in mommy''sp", she said.

    The little waves that formed in the pool made Aisha understand her offer was epted so she sat down and a momentter she felt her son sitting on herp.

    Liz sat next to Aisha while ine sat next to Erin, out of all predictions Aura sat in front of Aisha, so now her beautiful naked figure was blocking a bit of the panoramic scene but being honest Daimon enjoyed more the current "scenery".

    Still, he was confused about why they were here, they clearly didn''t use the facilities of the training grounds so it was obvious they came here to be with him, he leaned his body against his mother before asking.

    "Mom, why are you all here?".

    Aisha smiled.

    "Well, basically when Erin told us her idea, we did ept but we all wanted to participate too, in my case I just wanted to make sure my darling wasn''t "captivated" by some unknown girls ?".

    Daimon had a weird smile on his face, "the only ones that tempt me on a daily basis are you all though", he thought, but he didn''t argue.

    Unlike the other girls, he noticed that Aura''s eyes had a faint glow in them and he supposed she was able to see him even through the dark curtain and Erin confirmed it a couple of secondster.

    "Aura, that is cheating, since when you dominated an eye spell?".

    Aura shook her head.

    "Since a certain someone used dark curtain to y pranks on me", she answered.<sub> </sub>

    Erinughed a bit.

    "You should have seen Aura that time little Daimon, the first time she stayed to sleep in my mansion, I sneaked in her room and painted cat''s whiskers in her face when she was sleeping, unfortunately humans hadn''t created cameras yet back then".

    She was able to trick Aura''s senses because dark curtain hides almost everything, your presence, voice, breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, any sounds you make and even your smell, the only exception is that other things can still touch you and vice versa,

    Of course, if Erin were to have malicious intentions Aura would have probably felt something was wrong and woke but it was only a harmless prank, so she didn''t notice it until she looked at the mirror the next morning.

    Daimon alsoughed; the image of Aura''s painted face appeared in his mind.

    "What a shame I would have loved to see that", he said.

    They spent almost one hour speaking about past funny stories they had, Daimon actually paid more attention to their conversation, more than to the naked girls decorating the background.

    One they finished bathing, they left the hot spring and went to the dressing rooms, the girls formed a circle around Daimon and Erin dispelled the dark curtain, all of them took turns to help him dry off before he took out a set of clothes from his storage ring to dress up again.

    Seeing that he was ready Erin used her spell again and he disappeared from their line of sight, the girls also dried off while Daimon sat on a bench next to them to wait.

    When they finished dressing, they left the training grounds and once they were outside Erin dispelled the dark curtain for good this time before she asked with a grin.

    "So how was it, did you like it? if you want auntie will bring you from time-to-time hehehe".

    Daimon felt a couple of gazes piercing him like daggers, one was from Aisha, the other was definitely Aura and surprisingly even ine who normally is neutral was giving him an usatory gaze, he pretended not to notice as he cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, I''m d for the offer but I honestly enjoyed more spending time with all of you while we were there¡­ although the hot spring scenery was indeed incredible".

    Aisha nodded.

    "Good answer darling, you made me fall a bit more for you ?".

    Daimon had learned his lesson, one Aura getting back at him was enough, he felt a chill running down his spine imagining his mother making read an insane number of books, or ine making him review the limitless cases that needed the approve of the n head for her.

    The rest of the day was less excitingpared to the hot spring, although Erinined all the girls tagged along, "who knows how will you corrupt little Daimon if we leave you run wild", they said.

    Some of the stops included the moon gazing restaurant where they ate before, Daimon quite enjoyed the many types of meat from magic beasts that they offered, Aura challenged him to try mage lord grade meat only to lose again and reward him with a kiss.

    After that Liz chose the next stop in their group date, as a magic cksmith she tends to wander around in themercial district of the city to look for some things, besides studying and creating new kinds of magic technology she also likes to look for "diamonds in the sand".

    Although all the merchants that were in the city were members of the Revy n, some of them represented other external merchant groups, so there were things from other races also being sold, one good example were the clothes that Daimon was wearing which came from a store that sold imported goods from the blue-sky gxy.

    So, Liz''s hobby was to visit locals like that and look for the newest things, most of the time the things were just curiosities like the kind of toy you will find in a gift shop, but there were also some good discoveries.

    Daimon left themercial district with a little rectangr ss te in his hands, it was something called "light album", cameras already existed and with this little thing you could ce a photo below the album and the magic formations will create a light projection of the image.

    Basically, it was like a prototype of a projector, the difference was that instead of a 2D image, it was more like a 3D hologram, "I never went on a date with a girl back on earth so¡­ I want to experience watching a movie with my girls in this one", he thought of studying the principles behind the album to see if he could create something like a movie yer.

    Speaking of studying the next stop was the knowledge hall, a building where there was a huge library with books from the four gxies, Daimon wanted to know more about how advanced were the humans so he bought the newest version of "record of the human world", a book written by the Greenwich Sage.

    Thest stop was the beast taming pce, the section of the city destined for the sole purpose of breeding and nurturing magic beasts that were tame friendly, of course unlike what Daimon expected there weren''t any hidden overpowered ultrarare magic beasts for him to find, like dragons that are yet to hatch or phoenixes that were confused for normal birds.

    Normally magic beasts are wild, the only exceptions are those who unlock their wisdom and although they are not that rare to find, they are extremely hard to tame since a rational magic beast has to acknowledge you as its master for it to be tamed.

    So far through selective breeding the many forces had created a couple of magic beasts species that are easy to tame, but they are herbivores used for transporting things in ces where carriages can''t be used or livestock to feed the masses.

    Unfortunately, this time he left empty handed, it was also gettingte so they returned to Erin''s mansion, they ate dinner and went straight to sleep since they were tired due to all the different things they did today.

    The day ended with Daimon enjoying the fluffy feeling of Erin''s tail fur and thefortable softness of her bare skin while she embraced him to sleep.

 Chapter 50 The Admission Exam (Part 1)

    Today was a busy day for all the people that live in Lykos, not only because it was march which meant that the weather was warm but because today was the start of a new school cycle for the wild w academy and all its branches all over the white fang gxy.

    Although there are admission exams every year to ept new students, this year was special since there was going to be a lot of descendants from high status people assisting.

    For those who were of noble status, there was nothing as important as "reputation", so the first dive the younger generation will have into this vain world was their entrance to the academy.

    Once you crossed the external doors of the academy your family or backing will be left behind and the new authorities you will have to respect will be the teachers, prefects, the rulemittee and finally the vice principals and the principal.

    But all of that only started once you became a student, as a sign of that, the admission exams were done in temporal mounted tents in the external grounds of the academy and that''s how a tradition of "showing off" was created among nobles.

    There was a person whose job was to announce the arrival of those with a high status, of course it should be notified in advance because that person should be told how to present whoever arrived, along with the emblem of the family or force to which he belonged.

    As the student applicants were arriving, they had to line up waiting to be evaluated, the applicants were only given until 11:00 AM to line up, after that time no one else was epted.

    And that''s how Daimon''s problems started, today was Monday and normally the girls and him would have woken up early, but they fooled around the whole Sunday which ended up in them waking up at past 10:00 AM, once they realized it, Erin immediately prepared the flying carriage and they left the Revy n.

    Inside of the carriage there were four people, Aisha, Daimon, Erin and finally Aura, out of the four, the girls remained basically the same, even Aisha more or less looked as young as before although it has been almost eight years since she returned to be fourteen.

    If you were to ask about what changes she has undergone, the only answer will be that¡­ she had developed some of the curves she used to have back when she was an Archmage, there were some minor changes in her face but they only made her look like a beautiful youngdy of about 18 years old.

    One thing she did notice and was d about was that in this new body she was bing even more beautiful than before, but that could be attributed to her grimoire since all the girls noticed their skins bing smoother, their hair being silkier and even their presences seemed to had be more impressive.

    Daimon once asked Evangeline and the answer he got was, "their grimoires don''t include words like "divine", "goddess" and so on, for nothing".

    On the other hand, Daimon did change quite a bit, unlike his previous childish appearance, right now he looked like a teen of about 16 years old although he was only 13.

    Maybe due to the hellish training Aura has made him go through, he was quite tall for his age reaching almost 1.7 meters, but it was okay, werewolves had biggerplexionspared to other races anyway and he was going to pass as a variant of werewolf and a member of the twilight alluring fox like Erin, which justified his current ck hair color and the darkness affinity.

    Aisha was all smiles for two reasons, first she will now assist the academy as Daimon''s ssmate and second, they were now using clothes with the same thematic, white and purple, which added to the fact they shared some characteristics made them look like a pair of siblings.

    Thinking about that made Aishaugh a bit.

    "I wonder if should start calling you "brother", to get used to it and not slip, what do you think darling?".

    Daimon sighed.

    "Mom¡­ Aisha, we agreed to call each other by our names in public".

    Erin smiled.

    "I wouldn''t worry too much about it, you two have your own private house within the academy anyway¡­ I can''t believe you forbid me to stay in the academy Aura!!!", she said, up to this day she was still angry due to Aura not letting stay in the academy with Daimon.

    Aura shook her head.

    "It would have been a pain in the ass to be supervising you the whole day to avoid you destroying someone over the slightest offence towards Daimon, not all the beast races are friendly with us since the little incident with Arthur Jolbaris".

    Erin sighed, although there wasn''t an open conflict, the Jolbaris were making troubles out of anything that happened, the beast faction was formed out of many races after all, some of them were allied with the Jolbaris, others cooperated with the Revy n and some were neutral, minor races didn''t ally with the Argent because Aura had the bad habit of causing troubles.

    Speaking of the Jolbaris Erin saw through her mana sense, a white flying carriage which was flying near them, recognizing the lightning w emblem on it she smiled.

    "It''s time for the first lesson little Daimon, the one that believed it''s the most outstanding has the right to arrive thest and other people that are waiting in line tend to give up their ces to them, but there is an exception, you can block that self-proimed outstanding person by arriving a bit earlier".

    Daimon saw from the corner of his eyes the emblem of the flying carriage that was on par with them and he immediately knew who was in it¡­ that lightning w symbol was the family emblem of the Jolbaris.

    The people in the other carriage also noticed the sun and moon emblem which identified them as the Revy n, so they immediately tried to leave them behind, unfortunately the Jolbaris chose the wrong target this time.

    Erin smiled, she saw the keyboard where the coordinates to the desired destination have to be entered and pressed a red key which was separated from the rest, not even a secondter the carriage nearly doubled its speed.

    Daimon was surprised, all this time he was inpany of at least one half emperor so when he wanted to go to a ce Erin or Aura used space shift to take him there, and the current speed of the carriage was not too far from the one a half emperor could reach using space shift.

    Even Aura was in awe.<sub> </sub>

    "Oi Erin, since when flying carriages have such speed?", she asked.

    Erin triumphantlyughed.

    "Unlike a battle maniac like you, my daughters and me have been preparing for this day since a couple of years, although it''s an unwritten rule if you want to show your status you need to arrive in a flying carriage and that''s were Liz suggested to add this function, quite good right?".

    Daimon was amused, "they for sure put a lot of effort in hiding this from me¡­ luckily, I have also prepared a good gift for them but I will wait a bit more", he thought.

    Due to the sudden augment in the flying speed, they arrived at the outer area of the academy at 10:50 AM exactly, the announcer saw the emblem of the Revy family and checked his list to refresh his memory, then with a loud elegant voice spoke.

    "Young master Daimon Licht and the Young miss Aisha Licht from the Revy and Argent families have arrived!!!".

    Many curious gazes fell in the ck carriage which was descending from the sky, the door opened and all the people looked at the two people leaving the carriage, a tall handsome young man apanied by a beautiful young girl.

    Although there were some differences like the hair color, not only their eye color was the same but they also shared some resembles, so it was clear for everyone that they were rted, the many members of the Revy and Argent families that were waiting in line were aware of Daimon''s status so they slightly bowed their heads and shouted.

    "Greetings to the young master and the young miss!!!".

    Daimon mentally sighed, "this scene seems pretty familiar", he thought, Aisha naturally grabbed his arm and they walked to join the line, before they stopped at the end of it all the members of the Revy and Argent families respectfully offered their ces in line for them.

    While they were advancing in the line, the announcer spoke again.

    "Young master Alexander Jolbaris from the Jolbaris family has arrived!!!!".

    The white carriage from before stopped floating but since Erin didn''t move her carriage, they had no option but to descend a couple of meters behind, its door opened and an orange haired youth with some white stripes in his hair left the carriage.

    The members of the Jolbaris n in the line bowed their head.

    "Greetings to the young master", they shouted.

    Alexander Jolbaris ignored their salute and instead started looking for whoever had the guts to block him in thest second, it wasn''t hard for him to notice who was, Daimon and Aisha didn''t even bother to look back, they just kept advancing in the line until they were in the second and third position respectively.

    Alexander gritted his teeth, he also advanced through the line and when he was behind Aisha in the line he said.

    "Oi, you two get the hell out of my ce".

    ¡­

    Silence, no one said anything, in fact Daimon and Aisha didn''t flinch nor they answered him.

    Seeing that he was being ignored he extended his hand as if he was going to push Aisha aside but before he could touch her, a cold voice echoed through the whole ce.

    "If you want your to keep your hand attached to your body, I suggest you to shut up and stop moving".

    Daimon slightly turned his head around and gave Alexander a cold serious gaze.

    The atmosphere became tense but when Alexander was about to reply, a man''s voice interrupted them.

    p "Fighting in the line isn''t allowed, if you break the rules, I will immediately fail you".</anda>

    Daimon and Alexander saw the origin of the voice, an old man wearing a tunic.

    Alexander snorted, "whatever, since you two don''t want to move I just need to get the first ce, hey girl give me your spot and I will pay you whatever you ask", he said while trying to get the attention of the girl that was upying the first ce.

    The girl turned around after a couple of seconds, she looked quite average, short brown hair and light brown eyes, she wasn''t ugly nor beautiful nothing outstanding, the girl focused her gaze in Alexander for a couple of seconds before she did the same but this time looking at Daimon.

    "What would the ck-haired guy from the Revy offer me in exchange for the first spot in the line", she asked.

    All the people started to discuss, they were about to find out who will get the reputation of being the most outstanding in this year''s admission exam.

 Chapter 51 The Admission Exam (Part 2)

    Daimon had a weird expression on his face, the girl that was upying the first ce in the line not only ignored Alexander, but she asked him for his offer instead.

    He extended his hand to offer a handshake.

    "I offer not being a condescending arrogant asshole when talking to you, in exchange for you to give the first ce to my sister Aisha", he said while pointing at his mother.

    ¡­

    All the presents were speechless, but inside Erin''s flying carriage, Aura who had a faint glow in her eyes suddenly smiled.

    "As expected of my disciple¡­ and lover", she said while nodding.

    Erinughed.

    "So, you ept it now huh? something tells me that, the other students security wasn''t the main reason as to why you don''t want me to stay in the academy".

    Outside the scene was quite different though, the members of the Revy and Argent families didn''t say anything but... those who were allied to the Jolbaris on the other hand criticized him, not only because he indirectly insulted their young master but because he even mentioned that the first ce wasn''t for him.

    "What kind of man doesn''t strive for the glory of being recognized as the most outstanding".

    "I bet he is just trying to tter that girl with him".

    And otherments of the like, were being directed at Daimon, but he didn''t care about those nobodies, he just stood still there with his hand extended and his usual rxed smile.

    All the discussions stopped when they heard the girlughing.

    "Hahaha, what an interesting answer, very well I ept your offer "kid" from the Revy family", she said while her body dispersed in light particles.

    The old man who interrupted them nodded.

    "You can advance to the next point".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "My words from before were not empty, I don''t give a damn about being the first or anything like that, but since many people does then I''m willing to give it as a gift for someone I care about".

    Previously when the girl''s body dispersed everyone could guess it was some kind of trial, so they were in awe wince Daimon passed it somehow, but not listening to his answer even the old man was speechless.

    Something like this had no precedents, "someone who rejects the chance to be admired by others¡­ what a weird young man", he thought, still his job was only to keep the order in the line so if that''s what the one that passed the trial wanted then he had not choice but to ept.

    When the old man was about to give way to Aisha, he received a message through his sigil lector, "let them both pass at the same time if you don''t want to clean bathrooms for the rest of the year".

    ¡­

    The old man mentally sighed, the academy is on the surface a ce where connections don''t have too much importance, but that only applies to those without a backing strong enough to not alter the rules¡­ and Daimon was not included in that list.

    "Knowing the principal, she is for sure going to make me clean the bathrooms, sigh, having a crazy boss is too stressful for an old man like me".

    The old man didn''t let his emotions show in his face, he instead put on a wise smile before saying.

    "No need for that kid, you exceeded this old man''s expectations and for that you shall be rewarded, both you and your sister can advance".

    Then the old man turned to see the rest of aspiring students.

    "Learn the lesson young mages and knights, in this world everything is possible, never underestimate someone just by how it looks!!!".

    Seeing the convinced expressions in the youngsters waiting in the line, the old man nodded.

    "That should be enough to fulfill the order of the principal".

    Daimon directed a ridiculing gaze towards Alexander and walked with Aisha at his side towards the first tent.

    Alexander clenched his fists but there was nothing he could do about it, since the prefect allowed them to advance first.

    Once Daimon and Aisha entered the tent, they saw a veiled woman sitting cross legged in the middle of the room, the only thing in the room was a spheric magic device mounted in a little table in front of the woman.

    "That old man has gotten soft over the years¡­ whatever just ce your hand on the orb of truth, the first test is to see if you are qualified to join the academy, if you are older than 30 years old and you aren''t at least a one-star mage or knight then you fail".

    Daimon took the initiative to take the test first, this orb of the truth was different than the one he used once for the first time in Erin''s training room, over the years new functions were added, now besides your current realm it will also show your elemental affinity and age.

    The orb illuminated for a couple of seconds and Daimon felt a wave of mana scanning his body, of course he prepared beforehand to only show what he wanted others to see and so the result shown by the orb was.<sub> </sub>

    "13 years old, peak stage one-star mage, elemental affinity¡­ darkness and lightning".

    The woman was surprised, first the orbgged a bit to show Daimon''s affinity and second¡­ while there are cases of people having more than one affinity, it is extremely rare to see two high level elements in one person, that''s why Aisha who had metal and lightning affinity was considered on the top of the pyramid in terms of potential.

    The veiled woman nodded.

    "Pretty impressive kid, perhaps that''s why that stubborn old man allowed two people to do the firs trial together for the first time in the history of the wild w academy".

    Daimon nodded and moved aside for Aisha to take the test, she ced her hand in the orb and got her result.

    "22 years old, peak stage two-star mage, elemental affinity metal and lightning".

    The instructor was a bit confused.

    "Good result girl, but why don''t you go to second grade directly? it won''t take you too much time to reach the third star rank anyway, if you want, I can give you a rmendation since you also have dual affinity and both are rare elements just like your brother".

    Aisha shook her head.

    "No thanks, I want to be in the same ss as Daimon, but I appreciate the offer".

    The instructor sighed.

    "What a weird pair of siblings", she thought, before saying.

    "No worries, you two approved, advance to the next tent for the second test, I will wish you the best of the luck".

    Now that they got what they needed, Daimon and Aisha left the tent.

    Without them knowing the woman was smiling behind her veil.

    "Seems like this year is going to be full of interesting things", she mumbled before sending a message through her sigil lector.

    The old man which was supervising the line outside, saw a one message word "next", he then told Alexander to enter the first test to continue with the process.

    Daimon and Aisha who left by the back door of the tent walked towards the next one, this time what was waiting inside was a middle-aged man with a full body armor.

    "Wee to the second test, you have thirty seconds to attack me, if you manage to make me take at least one step backwards you pass, of course I won''t move nor retaliate¡­ if you specialize in theory or you don''t have an attack-oriented spell then wait outside and someone will take you to another instructor".

    Aisha smiled.

    "Let me take the first turn this time¡­ Daimon".

    Daimon nodded and Aisha pointed at the instructor with two fingers from her left hand, sparks of electricity gathered on the tip of her fingers before a small ball of electricity was shot from them.

    The instructor shook his head, he simply rose his arm to block the attack but contrary to what he expected once the ball was a couple of centimeters away from his body it expanded and exploded.

    His body was sent flying almost 1 meter away from his original position, although there was no wound nor any damage done to his armor, it was clear that the instructor was surprised.

    "Little girl¡­ how do call that spell? At first, I thought it was just a low level "lightning bolt", but damn I nearly lost my eyebrows thanks to the explosion caused by it".

    Aisha moved aside for Daimon to take over but she still answered.

    "It''s called "Eins", it means "impact".

    The instructor nodded.

    "Nice name, you pass, your turn kid", he said while looking at Daimon.

    Daimon smiled, he pointed two fingers from his right hand at the instructor as if he was copying Aisha''s pose, of course this time the instructor prepared properly but what he expected didn''t happen.

    Instead, the instructor jumped before tons of spears made out of dark element appeared from the ground, hended a couple of meters away from where he was standing before.

    "A bit of a cheat but you also pass¡­ go to the next test you two".

    Once they left, the instructor copsed in the ground.

    "What the hell was that!!! I was going to block those weird spears with my body but¡­ I actually felt a light sense of danger from them, what kind of monsters has raised the matriarch of the Revy n", he thought.

 Chapter 52 The Admission Exam (Part 3)

    Daimon and Aisha entered the third tent, this time there were two people waiting inside of it, one was easy to recognize, a middle age man with orange hair, tiger like ears and tail, a member of the Jolbaris family without any doubt, the other person on the other hand was a race Daimon hadn''t seen before.

    A woman that seemed to be in her early twenties, long silver-grayish hair, light blue eyes but although she also had feline like characteristics, her ears and tail had fluffy fur of the color of her hair but there were ck spots all over them.

    It would be a lie if Daimon were to deny he didn''t look at her twice, if his memory was not ying him tricks that girl was a member of the snow leopard tribe, one of the highest ranked neutral races within the beast faction.

    Still like a rose you might see in a road, you would probably stop to admire it but that is all, especially because he could feel Aisha''s gaze carefully inspecting his reaction, it was not a secret for any of the girls how much Daimon liked Erin or Aura''s tails fur after all, also she was inpany of a Jolbaris.

    But now it was not the time to think in such things, the man from the Jolbaris family had an unsightly expression on his face, the first one supposed to reach this test should have been Alexander but it was this pair of siblings which meant his Jolbaris family had dirt thrown to the face in front of all the aspiring students and other teachers.

    "This is the third test, it''s supposed to be optional, only those who aim to be selected for the elite ss have to take it, because if you fail then you won''t enter the academy ad punishment".

    "Still, the test should be quite easy to pass for those who managed to get the first ce, you only have to support a moderate amount of my mana pressure for 10 seconds¡­ and be able to answer a question made by her", said the man while pointing at the other instructor.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Fine, I''ll go first".

    <o>,m The instructor smiled, without any notice nor warning his mana pressure fell over Daimon''s body, "let''s see what you are made of, tough guy", he thought.</o>

    Mana pressure is something only those on the Arch ranks or above can use, a short exnation is that when one reaches the Arch ranks, his magic core goes through some fundamental changes, one of them being the creation of a domain and the second important one is the ability to exude its own "gravity", that''s the concept behind the ability to fly, but let''s not enter into too much detail for now.

    While Daimon was being suppressed by the man''s mana pressure, the other instructor spoke.

    "What will you do if you were in a situation where someone give you the choice to save yourself or save someone you care about?".

    Not even a secondter Daimon answered.

    "I will kill both of the people who suggest me such a thing".

    The woman was speechless, not only because the young man in front of her didn''t seem to be slowed down by the other instructor''s mana pressure, but his answer wasn''t exactly what she expected.

    "He didn''t doubt when he was answering and the word "both" was not a misspell, he is considering us as the ones making the suggestion¡­ threatening an early stage Archmage and a peak stage Mage lord, I have to admit it he''s got some guts".

    Unfortunately, the other instructor did not find the answer worthy of praise, but of expulsion, without lessening his pressure he snorted.

    "Are you threatening me kid? I can fail you if I consider it necessary, so maybe you should show some respect to your elders".

    Daimon smiled.

    "Well, I heavily doubt the academy expects a one-star mage to resist the pressure of an Archmage, maybe I would have believed it if you kept the pressure at the mage lord realm¡­ and yes, by all means I''m threatening you".

    "But don''t take it too personally, those words are directed to anyone that has even the slightest malicious intentions towards me or my family, so if you aren''t one of them, then I don''t see why would get upset by my answer¡­ "instructor" from the Jolbaris family".

    Mana pressure is basically gravity applied over other people''s bodies, although it has other effects like affecting the mental state of others, after eight years of using the shackles of despair Daimon''s physical strength was not something to joke about, besides that how could the mana pressure of a mere early stage Archmage affect his mind, since he resisted the one of Arthur Jolbaris when he was only five years old.

    The male instructor''s expression turned hostile, "I''m a vice principal and a respected Archmage, since when a brat on the one-star realm can insult me like this!!!", he thought.

    But when he was about to augment the output of his mana pressure, the girl from the snow leopard tribe interfered.

    "You approve, I will be the one evaluating the other girl, Aaron Jolbaris vice principal, how about you¡­ go take some fresh air outside?".

    Aaron doubted for a couple of seconds before he left the tent while mming the curtains in the entrance, if he knew that Aura was observing all the situation from Erin''s carriage, maybe he would have thanked the girl from the snow leopard tribe for saving him, instead of throwing a tantrum.

    Aura was known for not being in the academy most of the time, so how could anyone know that in the same carriage that brought Daimon to the academy, there were two half emperors ready to rain down cmity on anyone who tried to harm their "darling".<sub> </sub>

    Now that Aaron left, the girl from the snow leopard tribe continued with the test, just like Daimon said, the original difficulty of the test was to use mana pressure at the ninth star rank or maybe at the mage lord realm on exceptional cases, at first the girl didn''t interfere because although she is also a vice principal, messing with the Jolbaris is never a good idea.

    Although Daimon included her in his threat, she didn''t have anything against him, so she decided to interfere before things could get out of hands.

    The snow leopard girl used a mage lord level mana pressure to test Aisha, needless to say but she resisted it without any problems, due to Aaron''s childish actions they have been in the tent for quite some time so the instructor didn''t bother to made Aisha a question to approve her.

    "You perfectly resisted my pressure, wee to the elite ss, you can return to your carriage and wait for the admission exams to finish", she said before giving them a white medal with a w on it.

    "This is the sign that you approved thest test, keep it with you, the prefect will ask you for it once the admission exam is over".

    Daimon epted the medals and he left the tent followed by Aisha, they both walked towards the ce where the aspiring students were forming the line, contrary to what he expected there were few people left in the line, although he did saw Alexander walking to the third tent from where he wasing.

    It was not hard to understand what was happening, both the first two tests were obligatory but the third one was only offered to those who fulfilled certain requirements, that''s why there wasn''t a line of people waiting to go to the third tent, out of the corner of his eye he only saw alexander and 7 or 8 other people.

    If you take into ount that there were thousands of applicants here, and that they were selected from the whole white fang gxy since only the best of the best was allowed to apply for a spot in the main campus of the academy here in Lykos, it is easier to know how hard was to enter the elite ss of this specific campus, the requirements varied in the secondary branches but one thing was sure, this wasn''t the main campus for nothing.

    Daimon saw the other applicants waiting in two different groups, in one of them the applicants had a proud and happy expression so it was easy to guess those were the ones thatpletely fulfilled the requirements, on the other hand the other group most of them had downcast expressions, while a few still showed some faint traces of hope.

    The doors of Erin''s carriage opened and they both entered, after the doors closed the first thing Daimon saw was Erin dragging him into her embrace, she pressed his face against her breasts before saying.

    "Come here, tell auntie how did you do in the tests ?".

    This was the new method for most of the girls to show affection to him, since grew up quite a lot in the past years he could no longer sit in theirps like before, well he could do it but it was embarrassing considering he looked old enough to be a teenager, not only that but he now considered himself to be continuing in more or less the same spot in his life were died before.

    Up to this day Erin, Liz and Aisha were practically naked most of the time they were alone with him, while ine and Aura kept some thin lingerie unless they were bathing with him, as expected his body has started reacting to the beautiful women that surrounded him but he more or less could control himself¡­ most of the time.

    Daimon smiled; he separated a bit from Erin before sealing her lips with a kiss, Erin''s tail wrapped around him which has be a habit after all this time, feeling his mother and Aura''s jealous gaze, he stopped the kiss and then extended his arms towards them.

    Without a second of dy Aisha jumped into his right arm, while Aura did the same.

    "Mmm ?", he enjoyed pressing his lips against his mother''s first, before doing the same with Aura.

    Luckily the carriage of Erin waspletely covered in magic formations to hide what happened inside of it, or all the presents would have gone crazy seeing that a one-star mage was now holding two beautiful half emperors in his arms while they lovingly leaned their heads against his shoulders¡­ and the one who they thought it was his sister while in reality was his mother sitting in his legs.

    Of course, Evangeline also had to participate or she would get bored.

    "Perhaps your "predator" senses had be stronger over the years, I''m quite impressed that you haven''t devoured any of them yet, perhaps you were waiting to enjoy your life academy to the fullest?".

    Daimon gave Aisha onest kiss, while he ignored Evangeline for the time being.

    "Mom, Aura¡­ I will give you all my attentionter, for now let me have this moment with Erin since I will be staying in the academy for a long time, okay?".

    Aisha nodded, she stood from hisp an sat in front of them instead.

    "That''s something I really like about you darling; you always think on all of us ?".

    Aura doubted for a moment but seeing Daimon''s firm expression she sighed and sat next to Aisha, "Humph, seems like I have been too soft with himtely,ter I will be sure so "train" him harder", she thought.

    Erin smiled; she took Aisha''s previous position sitting in Daimon legs.

    "To think that the little Daimon who used to sit in myp all the time, is now the one taking the lead, but I like it this way too ?", she said before kissing him.

 Chapter 53 Entrance Ceremony (Part 1)

    Now that Daimon had a body that more or lessplemented his mental age, he became more proactive when it came to being intimate with the girls, before he limited to only be the one kissing instead of the one receiving the kiss, a habit created thanks to how much he enjoyed teasing Aura.

    But now here he was, holding Erin by her waist while actively participating in the kiss.

    "Mmm ?", Erin was enjoying receiving Daimon''s full attention so much that her tail was firmly wrapped around his body, he once asked Erin why she did that, and the answer he got was that girls from beast races considered an intimacy act to let their partners touch their ears and tails since they were sensitive ces.

    At some point Daimon couldn''t hold back and he started using his tongue, an invitation Erin happily epted, their tongues started fighting for supremacy until they reached a mutual agreement.

    Erin broke the kiss when she felt something hard pressing against her crotch, her smile widened when she touched Daimon''s nose before licking her lips and "identally" grinding her ass against him.

    "Are you sure you don''t want auntie to give you a nice parting "gift" hehehe ?".

    Aisha cleared her throat to interrupt them.

    "Ahem, Erin we already talked about that, no pressuring, whoever my darling chooses will be the first, okay?".

    Erin sighed, when Daimon started growing so much in the past eight years, the girls had a reunion where they discussed what would they do once he showed sexual interest in any of them, of course the first one to offer herself to take the role of his first partner was none other than Aisha, but at the same time Elizabeth and Erin did the same.

    Even ine showed and Aura showed interest on being the first, although Daimon had already stablished that he will give equal love to all of them¡­ including Narasha who didn''t have a physical body for the tome being, it would be a lie if they didn''t say that each one of them wanted to be the first also.

    Everyone of them had a good reason to be the first, so the discussionsted almost a week, atst they decided to let Daimon choose who will be the first, no hard feelings and noins, that was the deal.

    Of course, they properly "taught" Daimon about sexuality, since he started getting erections one year ago, which was to be expected considering he cuddled with naked beauties every day, it was a bit hard for Daimon to feign innocence during their lessons since he already had a lot of knowledge about the subject from his previous life.

    Still, up to this day, besides kissing and some touching here and there he hasn''t done anything else, not because he didn''t want to, but because it took him the whole eight years to finally reach his goal of being able to properly wield Narasha, the reason¡­ Disaster and thus Gram, weighted nearly 40 tons and that was only the beginning, since there was a lot more of antinite to be absorbed by the sword.

    If you take into ount that a knight lord only had a strength of about 25 tons without using battle aura to enhance its body, then you would understand how big of an achievement was for him to reach that goal, and it was only possible thanks to his body adapting to the huge amounts of tension core synchrony made it go through.

    Contrary to all expectations, Daimon fondled Erin''s ass which took not only her but his mother and Aura by surprise.

    "Kyahh ?".

    Erin let out a weird sound due to the sudden surprise attack, no matter how much she tempted him, on previous "sessions", Daimon only kissed her and touched her breasts from time to time so this was a first, and not only for her, even Aisha who was the only one that had touched her son''s thing to "teach" him about masturbation, hasn''t received such caresses from him.

    Daimon felt the bitterness being exuded by his mother and Aura and he didn''t know whether he to cry orugh.

    "I won''t be seeing Erin for a long time, while you two will sneak in my bed no matter what I say, so don''t be jealous", he said.

    Erin stuck her tongue at them.

    "Humph, don''t forget that Daimon will be going home in weekends, you two".

    Unfortunately, all good thingse to an end, they were so engrossed in enjoying each other lips that they didn''t notice it has been quite some time, until the prefect knocked on the door of the carriage.

    "Are you two siblingsing or not? I need to see your tokens and take you to the proper part of the campus where your introduction will begin", said the old man with a somewhat annoyed voice.

    It''s been 15 minutes since all the applicants finished taking the tests and Alexander Jolbaris has been pestering him the same amount of time, because Daimon and Aisha didn''t leave the carriage, of course the old man didn''t want to interrupt whatever was going inside of that carriage because he already guessed that Aura was there since she sent him that message before.

    But it was gettingte so atst he didn''t have any other choice but to bite the bullet, and pray to the heavens that the principal didn''t take her anger out on him.

    "Stupid Jolbaris brat, if it weren''t for your father you wouldn''t dare to mess with this old man", he thought.

    Inside of the carriage Aura smiled, "nice one, I will have to augment your sry, old man".

    She turned to see Erin and triumphantly said.

    "You heard him Erin, the entrance ceremony is starting so it''s time for them to leave".

    Erin snorted.<sub> </sub>

    "You are quite eager to see me leaving humph, whatever, if you feel lonely don''t hesitate to call me little Daimon, auntie will take you to some fun ces ?", she whispered in his ears.

    Daimon almost choked, every time Erin mentioned fun, nothing good happened, he still remembers when she used dark curtain to take him to one of the cities under the management of the Jolbaris family, just to make him spy on Arthur Jolbaris daughters¡­ while they bathed.

    Heughed a bit.

    "Don''t worry, I will return to the n on weekends and don''t pay too much attention to Aura''s prohibition¡­ if you promise to not wreak havoc within the academy, then you can visit me if you want to".

    Erin gave him onest kiss and then directed a proud gaze at Aura.

    "You see, little Daimon loves me so much that he doesn''t want to be separated from me for too much time ?".

    Aura sighed, "he is always a bit nd when ites to us¡­ but at least he didn''t show any mercy when facing possible enemies even if they were girls", she though referring to the scene, where he threatened the snow leopard vice principal which she saw through her mana sense.

    Daimon said goodbye to Erin and he left the carriage followed by Aisha, the old prefect was waiting for them outside with a not so happy expression so they immediately showed him the medals they got after approving the third test which made the old man rx.

    He took the medals from their hands and guided them to the little group which included Alexander Jolbaris and two members from his family, three girls that were forming their own little group and two guys which were justzing around.

    As expected, when Alexander saw that he had to wait for the pair of siblings that blocked his path before, his lungs were filled with anger.

    "Oi you two, why the hell didn''t you wait with the others, thanks to you we are arrivingte to the entrance ceremony!!!".

    Daimon saw that besides them, the other now confirmed students already left.

    "Oh, so it turns out you are the one in charge of the elite ss right old man? that exins why a middle stage Archmage will have to be a babysitter for idiots like this guy from the Jolbaris family", he said out loud while looking at the prefect.

    Needless to say, but all the other presents were surprised, in their minds the magic cultivation of the old man was only at the ninth star rank realm, that''s why most of them didn''t bother to show him any respect.

    The prefectughed.

    "Kid, I''m quite proud of the control I have over my mana, so how did you know I''m an Archmage, perhaps you got someone to give you a hint?", said the old man referring to Daimon''s rtion with Aura.

    Daimon shook his head.

    "When you spend so much time surrounded by Archmages, it bes easier to identify them", he wasn''t just bluffing for nothing, he already made one Archmage enemy in the academy in the form of that vice principal from before, so now it was time to find an ally, this was something Aura taught him.

    In the academy there was a limited number of Archmages, and in special cases they had thest word when it came to taking a decision about a situation which involved two students in conflict, so basically, he was preparing for the time someone messed with him or Aisha.

    Of course, the old man knew what were Daimon''s motives, but that didn''t make the fact that he saw through his cultivation, less worthy of praise.

    "Not bad kid, my name is Boris Ogien and I''m in charge of the security of the elite ss in the main campus and your tutor, it seems you took my advice of not judging a book by its cover".

    "For that, you and only you in this group is allowed to call me "prefect Boris", the rest will know me as "prefect Ogien", am I clear", said the old man while directly looking at Alexander.

    Clearly feeling the aura around the old prefect which was now the one of an Archmage, the rest of the group with the exception of Daimon and Aisha, nodded in recognition, even Alexander clenched his fists but didn''t have any other option but to ept that he yelled at an Archmage because he previously disdained the old man.

    Contrary to what the Boris expected, there was someone who didn''t agree, but it wasn''t Alexander as he thought, but Daimon.

    "I don''t agree, my sister and I can be considered one and the same, if you want to give me that privilege, then it''s either for the two of us or nothing".

    Aisha smiled, he probably said all that to make her forget that he invited Erin over, but it didn''t change the fact that it made her happy.

    The old man had weird expression on his face.

    "I already made an exception allowing you two to enter the test at the same time, so what does it matter if I do it again, you two can call me by my name, now let''s go to the entrance ceremony, I will show you what does it mean to be a part of the elite ss hahaha".

 Chapter 54 Entrance Ceremony (Part 2)

    Seeing that Boris was now publicly acting as an Archmage, Alexander swallowed hisins, but that didn''t prevent him from giving Daimon a furious gaze before he focused in his own little group.

    Daimon mentallyughed, "it seems that no matter in which or gxy you are, there is always these kind of idiots at school", he thought.

    Boris waved his hand and a barrier made out of mana condensed around them, they all started floating towards the campus, Daimon stole onest nce at Erin''s carriage before he smiled, it would be a lie to day that he wasn''t excited to attend to a "magic school".

    After a couple of minutes, they arrived at the entrance of one of the buildings that conformed the campus, the style was pretty much that of a middle age castle, probably because the academy was created a long time ago before human modern architecture became popr among other races.

    Contrary to the outside facade, the insides of the building were quite new which made sense considering how expensive was to study in the main campus, that''s why all the ones studying here needed a back up to pay for them, in the rare cases where somemoner turned out to have a big talent, it will be recruited by one of the families or forces and receive the proper support.

    The other option was being sent to one of the many branches of the academy, since only those with a good enough background were allowed to study in the main campus in Lykos, of course that was clearly elitism but it was also a good way to get young unknown talents join the family.

    While Boris guided them to the ceremony hall, Daimon curiously looked at the many ssrooms and other facilities that were visible from time to time, like a library, the training grounds, etc.

    The old man stopped walking when they reached the entrance to a big hall, a lot of noise could be hearding from it and most of it were discussions about the elite ss which was making them wait.

    Borisughed.

    "First lesson, you might think that being in the elite ss give you a lot of privileges, reputation and things like that, and it technically does, but ites with a price¡­ all the other sses will be chasing after your spots, right now there are ten of you ranked from the first to tenth ce ording to the judge of the instructors that evaluated you".

    "The elite ss must consist in 30 people before the end of the first year so you can participate in the interschool tournament, but the other twenty people will be those that advance from the first ss; however, they can challenge you at least once a day to upy your position".

    Alexander''s eyes lit up.

    "What is the current ranking¡­ prefect Ogien?", he asked.

    The old man had a ridiculing grin in his face.

    "I don''t think you will like the answer, so I will tell it to you right away, the first one is not you hahaha".

    The other members of the elite ss resisted the urge tough, with the exception of Daimon, which of course earned him a hateful gaze from Alexander.

    Still, Daimon didn''t know that they will be targeted by the students from other sses, which was honestly a pain in the ass to dealt.

    "Old man, is there a way for us to stop others from challenging me?".

    Boris put on a wild smile on his face.

    "Of course, you just need to teach them who is the boss and they will stop aiming for your spot and target others or just fight among themselves for one of the other twenty free spaces".

    One of the two guys that were with Alexander spoke.

    "Can we challenge any of the other members of the ss to get their rank?".

    Boris shook his head.

    "Not right now, for the time being you will only be allowed to defend the rank which was assigned to you by the instructors, some time before the interschool tournament begins, there will be a period where you will fight to decide the final rankings".

    Alexander wanted to ask something else but the old man refused.

    "Now shut up and enter the ceremony hall, go and see your new "fans", hahaha".

    "You are supposed to be the tutor of the ss, so why the hell do youugh at our misfortune?", said Alexander.

    Boris didn''t bother to answer, he entered the hall followed by the other members of the elite ss, the group from the Jolbaris family was left behind until Alexander mumbled.

    "Be as arrogant as you want old man, I will make sure to make you pay in the future¡­ let''s go you two!!!", he said to hisckeys.

    Inside of the ceremony hall, there were four separated groups, the sses "A-B" which or the first rank students, followed by the sses "C-D" forming the second rank students and finally the ss "E" or the third rank students, which were those that barely approved the tests.

    Of course, besides them, there was the "S" ss also known as the elite ss, even in this ceremony it was clear the distinction between the sses, first rank students had some luxury seats, the second rank students were using decent chairs but the third rank students were sitting on benches or on the floor.

    Some of them were wearing high ss clothes and the emblems of renowned forces and still, their results were so poor that they had no choice but to enter the third ss and try to go up from that point.

    Once the members of the elite ss entered the room, all the gazes fell on them, some of them were of admiration, others were of jealousy but the majority were annoyed, specially the first rank students who were aiming to enter the elite ss.<sub> </sub>

    Their designated area was totally separated from the others, it was not an exaggeration to say that they were looking at the other from above, since their seats were in a private second floor from which they could see the whole ce.

    Boris gave the tutors of the other sses a mocking gaze before he went upstairs followed by his ss, once they were in the second floor Alexander took the initiative to take the seat that was perfectly in the middle of the room, which also had the best view, unfortunately his happiness was interrupted by Boris''s voice.

    "Jolbaris brat, I know you are a first year but we expect our new students to know how to read and write".

    Alexander was confused by the old man''s words until one of hispanions told him in a low voice¡­ that the seats had number and name, which meant they were assigned already, in his hurry to take the better spot he didn''t see it.

    To top it off the seat he was using wasbelled to say "Rank 1 Daimon Licht", he gritted his teeth and under the eyes of the whole hall had to leave the seat to look for the one that was assigned to him, the group of three girlsughed in a low tone but the other two guys didn''t care about Alexander andughed uproariously.

    Daimon took his designated seat, Aisha sat at his right which meant she had the second rank in the ss right now and surprisingly the seat at his left wasn''t upied by Alexander but a skinny guy which was one of the two thatughed out loud before.

    Only after them it was Alexander sitting with an unsightly expression on his face, after that the group of three girls, the other two members of the Jolbaris family andstly the other guy thatughed at Alexander before.

    Daimon didn''t pay attention to the others, so far, the only one with which he spoke turned out to be an asshole so he wasn''t too inclined to meet the rest of the ss for now, Aisha leaned her head against his shoulder and then the entrance ceremony started.

    The girl from the snow leopard tribe which evaluated Aisha before was the one weing the new students, she stood in behind of a little podium and used a magic device simr to a microphone to amplify her voice.

    "All of you surpassed your peers and got epted in the main campus, for the next years this will be your home and pride, in representation of the beast faction, I wee you to the Wild w Academy, young mages and knights never forget to strive for the glory of the White Fang Gxy!!!".

    Unlike what everyone expected the speech wasn''t too long, instead of that after the snow leopard girl finished speaking, some staff members entered pulling tables with tons of different dishes, each tutor gave the its ss the green g to participate in the banquet and start knowing new people, this day there was no sses, instead there will be students from second or third year giving orientation to anyone that asked for it after the freshman''s party so everyone was free to wander around the academy.

    Well almost everyone, Boris gave his ss onest warning before leaving them to whatever they wanted.

    "You guys can go downstairs, if you need help, I will be eating with the other tutors¡­ also don''t you dare to lose in your first challenge or I will personally kick your asses out of the elite ss understood?".

    All of the ss nodded before going downstairs, as expected they were still the hot topic among the other students, something that Alexander will normally enjoy if it weren''t for the fact that he heard many of the students from B ss calling him "elite clown".

    While Alexander''s group started discussing with some random guys, the rest of the ss each took their separate ways, apparently the ranked 3 guy wasn''t in a group with the ranked 10 contrary to what Daimon thought, since he saw him sitting alone in a table to eat only desserts.

    Aisha dragged her son all the way to the table where meat was being grilled by the staff ording to the petitions of each student, she ordered something for both of them and once she got it, they both sat to eat.

    Without caring that other people were seeing them, Aisha cut some pieces of meat before personally feeding them to Daimon.

    "Say "ahh", darling", she said.

    Daimon happily epted the offer and while he was enjoying the perfectly cooked meat of a fourth star ranked magic beast, he saw a disturb arising between the A ss and Alexander''sckeys.

    Daimon was a firm believer of murphy''sw, "if anything can go wrong, then it will", that''s why he wasn''t surprised when he heard someone yelling at him.

    "You the ranked one from the elite ss, I challenge you to a duel!!!".

    Daimon sighed, he stood up from his chair and shouted towards the table where the tutors were eating and watching the show and shouted.

    "Oi old man Boris, how much am I allowed to harm those who challenge me?".

    ¡­

    Silence fell into, until Boris''s ruthlessugh echoed through the room.

    "As long the other guy is still breathing and can be patched up in the infirmary, I don''t care about what you do hahaha".

    Daimon nodded, he turned to see the guy that was challenging him.

    "You heard him, are you sure you want to be the first one to challenge me?".

    The other guy felt a bit intimidated, in the eyes of most of the A ss students, those in the elite ss were only there thanks to nepotism, his friends convinced him to challenge one of them to prove they were right¡­ but he wasn''t so sure anymore.

    Aisha was amused by the whole since she had to go through something simr back when she used to be a student in the red mist.

    "Finish it soon, so we can keep eating".

 Chapter 55 The Dog And The Owner Are Equally Guilty

    Now that Daimon knew the rules, he epted the challenge, of course they couldn''t just start fighting in the same ce where the other students were eating, one of the teachers created a temporal tform with earth magic.

    Once they went up the tform, the tutors gave the green light for them to start, apparently the guy that challenged Daimon, had affinity with water because not even ten secondster he used the spell "water whip", an offensive spell which created a long and flexible flow of water to attack your enemy.

    Unfortunately, his opponent was Daimon, he snapped his fingers and a huge scream echoed through the hall, most of the students felt their eyes widen while some teachers and the tutor of the A ss frowned their eyebrows.

    "Aghhhhh!!!", the poor guy had his four limbs pierced by ck spears which elevated from the tform, he was trying to give up when suddenly a lot of ck spikes emerged from his own feet and hands.

    "Ghaaaa!!", this time the scream was more guttural, tears and mucus were flowing from his eyes and nose respectively, while his hands and feet were bleeding due to the hundreds of little wounds.

    The room was in silence, some of the girls from other sses paled a bit, most of the students that got into this academy were of noble status so when have they witnessed such scenes.

    The tutor from the A ss hit the table where they were eating and shouted at Boris.

    "Ogien, tell that psychopath from your ss to stop, he already won the fight!!!".

    Boris snorted.

    "Humph, who are you to give me orders? If you knew your student was trash, then why didn''t you stop him from challenging the highest ranked freshman of this year?".

    Among the many teachers that were watching the show, the one that was in charge of the second test was sweating bullets, "I knew that kid''s attack was dangerous", he thought.

    Daimon saw that his actions produced the effect he wanted and he cancelled his spell, the ck spears and all the spikes disappeared and the body of the poor guy who fainted some time ago due to the shock fell to the ground.

    *Thud*

    The dull sound of a body hitting the floor drew everyone''s attention, whenever the guy was going to give up, Daimon made the spikes move which caused him enough pain to interrupt his midway, his feet and hands were a messy disaster after all that.

    Daimon saw that all the eyes were on him and he nodded.

    "If you don''t want to end up like that, I will give you two advices, first, don''t bother me when I''m spending time with my sister, second if you give my sister a gaze which I don''t like prepare yourself to lose a limb or two depending on my mood".

    ¡­

    Silence,plete sepulchral silence was the only thing that could be heard in the whole room, until Daimon continued.

    "Old man Boris, you told me we can''t challenge other members of the elite ss, but can we challenge those from other sses?".

    Boris had a weird expression on his face, "what is this kid up to", he thought but he still answered.

    "Yes¡­ in fact the first ranked has the privilege to force a duel with whoever he wants as long as it is someone in his same realm or above, but it is limited to one per day".

    Daimon smiled, he pointed at the group of students from the A ss with whom the guy which was nowying in the ground bleeding, was sitting before.

    "I challenge him", he said.

    Everyone followed Daimon''s finger and their gazes fell on a blonde guy which had feathers mixed in his hair, a sign that he is a member of the Risha family a n formed by races with bird characteristics.

    The tutor of the A ss, almost lost it.

    "I reject his challenge; he is just trying to harm my students!!!".

    Daimonughed.

    "He was the one that incited the other guy to challenge me, if a dog tries to bite you, the owner is also responsible¡­ don''t you agree Jolbaris "tutor", in any case I use my privilege as the first ranked student to force the duel, so your opinion doesn''t matter".<sub> </sub>

    Alexander wanted to interfere, the one being challenged was one of his subordinates after all, but he couldn''t do anything, how could he lower himself to ask something from the guy that stole him the first ce.

    The other tutors didn''t interfere, they perfectly understood that "the peeking bird is the first to be shot", who knows if they spoke on behalf that kid from the A ss, that monster from the elite ss might target their students instead.

    Without any other choice the new participant went up the tform while some other students of the A ss took the wounded body of their ssmate to the infirmary.

    Once the fight started, the member of the Risha family immediately tried to give up.

    "I surrend¡­ aghhhh".

    But he was interrupted by spikesing from inside his shoulders and knees, losing the support points in his legs, he fell to the ground and the only thing he saw was Daimon getting close to him, each step he took was like a knife stabbing his heart.

    Contrary to what the instructor that evaluated him thought, this spell was not a second part of the ck spears that Daimon used before but apletely different spell called "shadow spikes", courtesy of the system.

    The blonde guy tried to speak but as soon as his voice was about toe out, he felt the spikes moving and piercing his bones deeper so he understood that the only way to put an end to this was waiting for his enemy to leave him go.

    Daimon stopped walking and crouched down next to him; another ck spike appeared in his hand which he stabbed in the right shoulder of the blonde guy.

    "I don''t care if you were ordered by someone to cause me troubles, the reason as to why you are suffering this much is because I could clearly see your intentions towards my sister".

    "I''m quite a vindictive person, so I suggest you to not let me see your face again because I will challenge you every time, I see you".

    Without giving the Risha family member time to answer, Daimon kicked his face with enough force to send him flying off the tform, his body fell in the middle of his "friends", who now were cowering thinking they could be the next ones on the chopping board.

    Daimon left the tform, Aisha pped a couple of times and handed him a cup with some kind of drink which he rose towards the other sses.

    "In my eyes both the dog and the owner are guilty, so think it twice before sending someone to do the dirty job because I will know, there is enough days in two years for me to "challenge" everyone of you, and I promise that the next time I won''t be as merciful".

    His serious expression suddenly changed to a grin.

    "That being said, I wish you all a good year".

    All the other sses remained silent, what was being domineering, this was being domineering!!!

    There were different reactions to what Daimon said, some were angry, some were in awe, some felt intimidated but they all agreed on something, "how the hell was that merciful?".

    The snow leopard vice principal sighed, contrary to what most of the people were thinking, she more or less guessed this was going to be the result, hell that kid dared to threaten two vice principals one of them being an Archmage from the Jolbaris family, so what could other students in the one- or two-star mage realm expect.

    The tutor from the A ss took his other student to the infirmary while Boris also rose his cup to ept Daimon''s toast, "this is going to be such an interesting year hahaha", thought the old man.

    Daimon sat down next to Aisha and continued eating as if he just didn''t half kill two guys a moment ago, Aisha kept happily feeding him while thinking, "my darling stood up for me hehehe ?".

    A couple of minutester the party kept going, after all the monster from the elite ss didn''t seem to care about anything else than the girl that was sitting with him, so the students from the other sses just minded their own things.

    At some point music started sounding in the room, to make the atmosphere festive again the snow leopard vice principal ordered the academy''s marching band to y something to entertain the new students and teachers.

    Daimon took a couple of desserts from a table and this time he was the one feeding Aisha, with the pass of the years he started treating his mother more like a normal girl with who he was dating, it had a special kind of charm to see her epting his cares.

    Besides that, the envious gazes he got from the other guys were a nice fuel for his ego, not like that was his intention but it was a nice bonus.

    And so, the party continued, this day two members of the elite ss got a tittle, Alexander who was now called "elite clown" and Daimon the one that theing generations will know as the "Demon of the elite ss".

 Chapter 56 Hazing Ritual

    The party was going tost the whole day but the new students didn''t have to stay here, they were free to wander in the academy, after Daimon enjoyed the cute scene of Aisha eating the little portions of a cake, he was giving her they finished their meal and decided to walk and see what the academy had to offer.

    When they passed next to the table of the tutors, Boris threw a letter and two badges at Daimon.

    "That is your schedule, the sses you have the attend at which hours and the ssroom where they would take ce, normally you will have to ask the orientation guys, but considering you might try to rip off their heads¡­ due to a conflict of "interests", I''d rather save myself some headaches and directly give it to you, the badges are your identification token as students, there is no obligatory uniform but you must use the badge in a visible part of your clothes".

    Daimon smiled.

    "I''ll ept your offer then, enjoy the party old man, I prefer less crowded ces".

    After saying that, Daimon left the ceremony hall followed by Aisha, he could feel some gazes falling on him but surprisingly none on Aisha.

    "It''s good to see that, I didn''t bother in doing all that for nothing I guess", he thought.

    ording to what Aura has told them about the academy there were a lot of good ces to see in the main campus, they even had a private forest and ake for recreation purposes, which was their current destination.

    Along the way Aisha saw a lot of new students, some were talking to each other or simply hanging around together, surprisingly there were eve some couples which were clearly enjoying a date but most of them weren''t first years but students from superior grades.

    They arrived at theke, it wasn''t midday yet but the sun was up in the sky so theyid down at the shadow of a tree, of course Aisha didn''t miss the chance to lean her body against her son''s.

    Seeing the joyful expression in his mother''s face Daimon asked.

    "Why are you smiling like that¡­ Aisha".

    Aisha covered her mouth andughed.

    "You are still getting used to call me by my name right darling, anyway I''m quite happy because a certain overprotective son was so gant before ?".

    Daimon felt a bit embarrassed; it was a bit hard to say things like that, but on the other hand it was somethingmon in this world.

    "Ahem, I wanted to give them a message, while there might be some stubborn guys who will still try to challenge me¡­ or get close to you, still I bet there will be only a few now and if that wasn''t enough then I don''t mind giving another demonstration".

    Aisha turned to see their surrounds and after confirming that there wasn''t anyone near them, she gave her son a kiss.

    "That was an advance of your reward, we will continue with thister¡­ in our room ?".

    Daimon returned her the kiss, simple pleasures like hanging around with a girl he likes in a school, were things he didn''t get to experience on his past life so all this was new and he was enjoying every second of it.

    Evangeline''s thunderousugh, interrupted their moment.

    "I wish I could eat some snacks while seeing the show, "if you direct your disgusting eyes at my beloved Aisha, I will tear them out of your face", was it? hahaha, it''s like watching a movie from your old world".

    Besides his physical appearance, another big change that happened in the past eight years was that the girls now knew of the existence of Evangeline, they have even talked with her, it was easy for them to ept Evangeline as the "spirit", of the power Daimon has inherited.

    They thought of her like an entity simr to Narasha, contrary to what Daimon expected when he presented Evangeline to them, they just said "as expected of little Daimon".

    Still unlike Narasha who could talk with Evangeline without Daimon interfering, for Evangeline to speak with the girls he had to function as the canal ofmunication, which of course he didn''t do unless there was something important.

    Aishaughed, with the pass of the time she could more or less know when Evangeline spoke to her son, because his reaction was usually getting angry at her.

    "Oi Evangeline don''t tease him too much¡­ and don''t you dare to spy on uster okay?".

    Evangeline had a weird smile on her face, this time Daimon did the connection so that his mother could listen to her voice.

    "Yeah, yeah, I''m not particrly bond to see you pair of pervert mother and son getting all clingy between each other anyway".

    Aisha put on a grin on her face.

    "I would like to see if you can say the same in the future¡­ my darling even turned his sword into his soulmate and Narasha now longs for a physical body just to be with my darling, so I''m sure you would be the same hehehe", she thought.

    And so, with the slightly cool wind blowing around them, they enjoyed a good time just talking, until Daimon caught a glimpse of a group of students approaching them, ording to their badges they were second grade students.

    Daimon sighed, "the man proposes, God disposes and the demon dposes... luckily, I''m the demon this time around", he thought.

    The group was formed mostly of people from the Risha and Jolbaris families, but among them there were a couple of members of the Argent family, which was nothing to be surprised, not everyone obeyed Aura, since Daimon didn''t have the characteristics of the werewolves with the only exception of the ws, many of them were in disagree with him being the young master.<sub> </sub>

    Specially among the older ones in the young generation, before the ones that respectfully greeted him were the youngest generation which sometimes saw Daimon training with Aura so they were aware of how much of a monster he was, which earned him their respect.

    Honestly it could have been avoided, in the Revy n there wasn''t anyone besides the little faction of the elder Ernest that didn''t show him respect, he was the future husband of both their n head and the champion after all, if he decided to publicly arrange a marriage with a high-status member of the Argent n then thigs would have turned out different.

    A representative of the each of them took few steps ahead of the rest and surrounded Daimon and Aisha, so right now there were girls from the Jolbaris and Argent families and a guy from the Risha family in front of them.

    Daimon shook his head while saying.

    "It seems that what I did at the weing party hasn''t reached the ears of those in superior years¡­ if not you would not interrupt my time with Aisha".

    The guy from the Risha family clenched his fists.

    "I can assure you it did reach my ears¡­ the one you tortured in front of the whole new students and tutors is my younger brother after all, every year there are arrogant brats like you who need to be taught their ce by their superiors, it''s a hazing ritual", he said.

    Daimon decided to follow the act a bit.

    "Really, do the teachers allow this? and what is all this ritual thing about?".

    The girl from the Jolbaris family took over.

    "The teachers don''t care about anything happens outside the ssroom unless there is something quite serious happening, besides you just need to strip yourself and run all the way to the front of the ceremony hall, that will be quite entertaining to see right? You can go first and then it will be the turn of¡­"

    *Bang*

    *Ssh*

    Before she could finish her sentence, two different sounds interrupted the conversation, first some kind of low power explosion and then the sound of something falling into the water of theke.

    The two girls turned their heads to look for the guy of the Risha family but¡­ they couldn''t see him anywhere, there was only an empty space between them, the next thing they saw was Daimon who was aiming at them with a gun in each of his hands.

    The girl from the Argent family was trembling, she has seen Daimon using that thing that shoots metal from its cannon once before in the n and the power behind it was quite brutal, in her mind Daimon just killed a second-grade student and a fourth star ranked mage.

    "I felt like ying with you a bit, what shame you had to mention something like that¡­ but I do agree with you in something, it will be funny to see a naked person running around the academy", said Daimon with a grin.

    p The girl from the Jolbaris suddenly tried to attack them with a whip she had hidden in her belt, just to receive a shot from Daimon and be sent flying all the way to theke.</anda>

    Daimon stood up and dusted off his jacket, without forgetting to point at the remaining girl with one of the guns.

    "You are thest one, give me the answers I want and then you won''t need to run naked around the campus".

    The girl immediately nodded.

    "Please ask¡­ young master".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Nice answer, who is the one that asked you all to do this?".

    The girl immediately replied.

    "No one, Julius¡­ the guy from the Risha family got notified by the infirmary that his brother was badly injured, so he indagated on the situation and found out it was you who did it, you can imagine the rest, second years do have a hazing ritual for the new students but it only consists in throwing them buckets of water or things like that, nothing too serious".

    Aishaughed.

    "The result would have been the same", she said.

    The werewolf girl hesitated.

    "Killing someone¡­ for such a little thing like being thrown some water, don''t you think it''s a bit exaggerated?".

    Daimon snorted.

    "Nah, but unfortunately they aren''t dead, those were impact pullets so they just fainted due to the shock but they might drown if you don''t take them out of theke hahaha".

 Chapter 57 A Creative Punishment

    While Daimon was talking with the girl from the Argent family, he saw from the corner of his eyes that some of the other second grade students were taking their ssmates out of theke.

    Since they were still fainted, he decided to change their punishment.

    "Since you guys spoiled my fun, a punishment is in order, strip those two and hang them over this tree branches, call some members of the Argent family to spread the news, I will leave but believe me when I say that if you ignore my orders I will know it, and your punishment will be the double as them", he said to the girl from the Argent family.

    The other second grade students froze at the spot, they were nning to immediately run away after taking their bosses out of theke, but now they just wanted to flee for their lives, that kid which they supposed was an easy prey, turned out to be a fierce predator instead.

    The girl doubted for a couple of seconds before she sighed.

    "Arianna¡­ my name is Arianna, I will make sure your orders are followed up to thest detail, in exchange let any misunderstood that might have happened between us in the past".

    Daimon smiled.

    "Deal, I''ll leave it to you¡­ you know what, for me the dog and the owner are guilty so do the same to those who took out those two from theke, my suggestion is to add some cameras here and there, I bet there will be less "hazing rituals" from now and onwards".

    After saying that Daimon left the ce followed by Aisha who was stillughing at the thought of her son''s idea.

    "A tree that bears naked people instead of fruits, that is some creative punishment you imagined darling", she said.

    Seeing the back view of Daimon and Aisha, Ariana knocked out the subordinates of her ssmates before sending a message through her sigil lector, e to theke¡­ we have a task personally given to us by our young master".

    Daimon and Aisha walked around the campus but they weren''t in the mood to wander around in the outside anymore, there were too many students doing the same since today there weren''t sses.

    "Darling, let''s go see the mansion that Aura prepared for us, we rushed all the way here from the Revy n so I''m a bit tired".

    Daimon nodded, he was also getting tired of idiots bothering him whenever he was enjoying his time with his mother, besides it was getting clouded so there was a possibility that it might rain anyway.

    They walked towards the area where Aura''s office was located... well, more than an office, it was aplete building exclusive to the director of the academy, unlike other teachers that only had their personalboratories or offices inside of the campus, the vice principals and the principal had their own separated buildings.

    Daimon was amused by Aura''s clear intentions, their mansion was a few meters next to her office, so it was pretty obvious that she nned to stay with them.

    Aisha had the master key of both the magic array that was protecting the whole area and the ce where they will be staying, she opened the door of the mansion and they both entered.

    The inside of the mansion was pretty much simr to the modern design of the academy, but a bit simpler to not make it look too shy.

    Daimon took off his jacket and threw it away, his shoes also disappeared the very same moment he entered the house, a habit he has acquired due to Liz''s influence over the years, he heard a little clicking sound which meant that Aisha closed the door.

    He turned to see his mother only to be tackled down by her, they both fell over the couch which luckily didn''t break due to the impact, of course Daimon held onto Aisha''s waist so she didn''t hurt herself, the result is that he was halfying in the couch while Aisha was sitting on hisp.

    "Don''t do that mom¡­ you could have hurt yourself if I didn''t catch you in time", he said, but still he wrapped his arms around Aisha''s waist to keep her in ce.

    Aisha smiled.

    "A certain someone prioritized Erin over his own mother earlier, so I won''t ept anyins now".

    Daimon sighed, he gently moved Aisha''s body a bit downwards so her face was closer to his before he kissed her.

    "Mmm ?".

    Aisha didn''t resist at all, she left her body fell on top of her son while she epted the kiss, they previously couldn''t "express" their love when they were near theke but still the atmosphere was quite good, until they were interrupted by Arianna and her ssmates.<sub> </sub>

    The kisssted a couple of minutes until they needed to breath, when Daimon stopped the kiss he was charmed by the beautifully blushed face of his mother, her chest was moving up and down faster than normal and her eyes were filled with love.

    She rested her body on top of Daimon and made little circles on his chest with her fingers, these kinds of interactions have be usual between them, out of all the girls the most daring was probably Aisha followed by Erin and Elizabeth.

    "Mm?", Aisha felt something hard poking her belly and she smiled.

    "I wonder why is my darling so lively down there, are you perhaps enticed by your beautiful mother, or maybe you are thinking on that snow leopard girl from before?".

    Daimon didn''t do anything to hide the fact that he got a hard on due to the contact he was having with Aisha, at first when she became his soulmate, he was against the idea of turning his own mother into his lover, but what was done was done, the status of soulmate can never be removed and he did love Aisha from the bottom of his heart anyway.

    Sometime ago Evangeline once asked him why he had such strong feelings for Aisha, and the answer she got was.

    "How can I not love her, it''s easy to speak but it''s quite hard to act and yet¡­ she gave her life for me, I will always watch over her and protect her from all evil, regardless of whether I am her son, a reincarnated one, or her lover, because how could I consider myself a man if I don''t respond to her feelings in the same way".

    To be honest, he reached the conclusion that he wanted Aisha to be with him as a lover after he used core synchrony for the first time, core synchrony creates a bond between their magic cores and their minds in general so after using it, is easier to understand how the other participants feel.

    Daimon being the center of that ", could understand what the other girls were feeling, in his mind it was like he saw lights of different colors ans sizes, all of them were quite big but... Aisha''s one doubled the size of the others, her love for him was way beyond what he thought and since that moment things naturally advanced, he started to feel attracted to her like any of the other girls.

    "Of course, it''s like that because I have my beautiful mother on top of me right now", he answered.

    Aisha smiled; she rested her head against his chest to hear his heart beat which was a bit faster than the usual.

    "Well, it seems that both you body and your heart are happy to be close to me, I still haven''t given you a proper reward for standing up for me earlier, do you want to take a bath with me?".

    Daimon knew it was a trap, but it was one he was happy to voluntarily fall in it.

    Evangeline knew things were going to get serious so she wasn''t going to keep watching them but onestment didn''t hurt, or so she thought.

    "It seems I was wrong back then, even if you are the apex predator, I have found something that can "prey" on you, more urately someone hahaha".

    Daimonughed, "this time I have to agree with you, but she is not the only one, Erin, Aura, Liz, ine, Narasha¡­ and you, all are a part of my precious family".

    ¡­

    Contrary to what Daimon expected Evangeline didn''t reply so he focused on Aisha instead.

    "Yes, a bath will be nice, we are not going to leave the mansion for the rest of the day anyway".

    While they stood from the couch and walked towards the bathroom, in a ck space a blurry figure covered in light was floating there, although it wasn''tpletely visible, it was clearly a female entity, if her face weren''t covered by that weird blurriness, you would see that she had aplex expression as if she was evaluating a lot of things without reaching a proper conclusion.

    "Control yourself Evangeline¡­ he is just the pervert that became your master, there is no way you could start liking him, it must be one of the effects of that lewd constitution of his, my stupid heart had to react to someone that is having fun with girls while I''m trapped here".

    Aisha dragged her son to the bathroom while she undressed in the way, this was apletely safe ce so there was no need for her to be aware of her surroundings, Daimon saw the clothes falling off her body one per one and he enjoyed the show, while he also did the same.

    By the time they both entered the bathroom, Aisha was only wearing her underwear while Daimon only had his pants left, he closed the door of the bathroom just in case Aura decided to give them a surprise visit earlier than what he expected.

    Without knowing, this day Daimon started something that will change things for the good in the future, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 58 Bath Session R-18

    People tend to say that when you see the same scenery many times it stops being special, but Daimon firmly disagrees with them, especially because the view in question is the beautifully delicate naked body of Aisha.

    Now that the door of the bathroom was closed, Aisha walked a few steps ahead Daimon, she slightly turned her head backwards and with a tempting voice said.

    "Why don''t you help me finish undressing darling ??".

    Daimon walked until he was a few centimeters away from her, his hands extended towards her back but contrary to what Aisha expected he didn''t start undoing the littleces in the back of her bra, instead of that he hugged her from behind while wrapping arms around her thin waist.

    Aisha felt his hard thing pressed against her ass and a bright smile flourished on her face.

    "There is no need to rush, mommy won''t be going anywhere darling ?".

    Daimon took a moment to smell her hair, the natural soft flower-like scent of Aisha has always made him feel at ease, even when they were living at the castle of the Naktis, even when they were staying in a cave in that god forsaken forest¡­ Aisha''s warm embrace has alwaysforted him.

    While he kissed her neck, Daimon whispered in her ears.

    "Mom did you ever thought things would end up being like this?".

    Aisha felt the gentle caresses of her son and sheughed, "well, I certainly did think you were going to be handsome the very second, I saw you, and as you know I would have never chosen a mate¡­ if it weren''t for you appearing in my life".

    Daimon moved his hands upwards and undid theces on her bra, Aisha extended her hands so her son could take it off, due to the movement her breasts dangled a bit, which allowed Daimon to catch a glimpse of her little light pink nipples.

    Aisha felt her son''s gaze glued to her body and she couldn''t help but feel proud, although she hasn''t recovered the mature proportions, she used to have which rivaled with Erin, she was still proud of her figure, specially since she enjoyed teasing her son with it.

    She grinded her ass against Daimon a couple of times before saying, "Darling you can see and touch as much as you want, but first help me take my panties off so we can enter the bath ?".

    Daimon cleared his throat "Ahem, mom please don''t move so I can take them off".

    Aisha stopped what she was doing and Daimon crouched down to take her panties off, she raised her feet one after the other, she feigned ignorance to the fact that her son''s line of sight lined up perfectly with her bare ass.

    Daimon gulped down, he noticed that there was a little moist spot in Aisha''s panties, his mind was suddenly overwhelmed by one thought and a new fragrance he has never smelled before¡­ those were Aisha''s love juices.

    On top of that, when he moved his head upwards a bit, he was received by one of the most beautiful sights he has ever witnessed, Aisha''s naked ass up close and the back view of her pussy which was deliciously wet.

    For one moment his mind went nk, then from the bottom of his heart he could only think one thing, "I want to taste hew¡­ no I have to taste her".

    But then he returned to reality when he listened Aisha''s amused voice.

    "Darling, we can have all the fun you wantter but let me bath first, I have sweated a bit so¡­"

    The say goes that one should not y with fire because it might burn you, most of the times that would be something bad, but right now Aisha discovered that there is always an exception to the rule.

    *Gulp*

    "Hnnnnng ?".

    Little swallowing sounds apanied by the sweet moans of Aisha echoed through the bathroom, it took her a moment to process what was happening right now, her son which has neverid a hand on her with sexual intentions before, was now¡­ licking her pussy.

    "D-Darling¡­ hnnn ?, wait a moment, let me clean myself first, I won''t stop you after that".

    Aisha who is always the one that tempts her son, was now feeling embarrassed, but ignoring her protests Daimon kept enjoying the sweet enticing taste of her nectar, to be honest he started doing it on a whim and when he heard Aisha''s shy voice, he thought of stopping¡­ for a couple of seconds, but after getting to taste the forbidden pleasure of his mother''s private ce he lost any sense of shame.

    Daimon stopped licking her flower petals and seeing the sweet fragrant liquid that was now drenching Aisha''s pussy he smiled, "there is no need for that mom, you taste so good that I assure you¡­ you aren''t dirty at all".

    Aisha''s heart was pounding so fast she thought it was going to explode out of her chest, so far, she has only kissed Daimon and helped him ejacte once, so this was quite a big step ahead of that, "ahh I don''t care anymore, if that''s what he wants then I''m happy to oblige", she thought.

    Without saying anything she used her hands to spread her butt cheeks a bit, only enough for her son to have a full view of her privates, but what she didn''t expect was that Daimon would also give his attention to the other hole which was a bit further behind.

    Aisha felt Daimon''s finger making circles at the entrance of her back door and she was speechless.

    "W-wait darling, that is the wrong ¡­ hyaaahng ?".<sub> </sub>

    She was interrupted when Daimon inserted the tip of his index finger in her ass, feeling her insides twitch and coil around him, he started moving his finger around and he nearly lost control of his lust, but he immediately stopped when he saw Aisha''s legs tremble a bit and a little slightly pained moaning from her mouth.

    "Nnnn ?".

    He stood up and supported his mother''s body, his heart clenched a bit, in his hurry to explore new things he might have hurt his partner and that was selfish in the best-case scenario and scummy in a more realistic approach.

    "Mom, are you okay? I''m sorry I will listen to you¡­".

    Before he could react, Aisha turned around and kissed him, Daimon fell backwards due to the momentum and a dull sound could be heard due to his naked back hitting the floor, fortunately his body was quite sturdy so he didn''t care about that right now.

    Aisha stopped the kiss and the teary eyes that Daimon expected were nowhere to be seen, instead she was smiling from ear to ear, Daimon looked downwards because he felt his pants which he was still wearing, getting wet, they still haven''t entered the shower so the only source of liquid near him was Aisha, and her next words confirmed his theory.

    "I''m sorry if I scared you darling, but mommy just climaxed and it took me by surprise ¡­I told you I''m all yours so we can do whatever you want, but the next time please tell me beforehand so I can prepare myself better hehehe ?".

    Right now, Daimon experienced an emotional roller coaster, first he somehow was blinded by lust, then when he started to enjoy ying with Aisha, he suddenly thought he hurt her but it turned out to be a fake rm, it wasn''tpletely his fault though, Aisha touched herself for the first time in her life just after she became a soulmate and she did it in secret.

    Daimon on the other hand hadn''t saw a woman having an orgasm until today, not in person at least, so when he saw Aisha''s legs trembling, he thought it was due to pain since he inserted his finger in her ass.

    Aisha noticed his relieved expression and she was amused by his reaction, "he might look older than his true age but he is still my cute little son", she thought.

    She moved her hands downwards and started touching his penis which was still as hard as a rock, although she has lived for more than two hundred years Daimon''s thing was the only one that she has seen or touch¡­ and it will be like that for the rest of her life.

    Daimon felt the soft touch of his mother''s hands on his thing and he was in the paradise, she already "taught" him how to masturbate before but this time there was no excuse, she as a woman was touching a man''s thing and Daimon as a man was enjoying his lover''s caresses.

    The difference was that this time Aisha had other things in mind, "you never know, let''s try something and see, maybe my darling will be bing a man today¡­ and I will be his first ?".

    Daimon felt Aisha''s hands stopped moving but when he was about to ask her what was wrong, he saw his mother moving her body downwards, all the way until her face was in front of his penis.

    Aisha was marveled at the view, just like Daimon found her pussy one of the prettiest things he has ever seen, she was also convinced that her son was perfect in every aspect.

    "He is only thirteen and yet he is this big, if it keeps growing then¡­ it''s going to be hard to do it the first couple of time, whatever I''m sure my darling will perfectly match me down there, he is my son after all ?".

    Even Daimon was surprised by the growth spur he experienced in the past eight years, but his height was not the only big thing about it, his little brother reached about 18 centimeters, something all butmon on a thirteen years old boy.

    Aisha closed her eyes, she stuck her tongue out and started licking the tip of Daimon''s penis, now she understood why her son was so engrossed in licking her love juices before.

    "it''s a weird taste, but I like it, it''s quite manly", she thought before she opened her mouth wide and gobbled the whole tip.

    Daimon was in bliss, right now his mother was sucking his thing, he could feel her little tongue moving all over the tip of his penis, and the soft and warm feeling of her mouth enveloping his ns was something out of this world.

    He has been building up his load for a long time so after a couple of minutes of Aisha sucking harder on his penis, he finally couldn''t hold back anymore.

    This time he didn''t let his lust dominate him.

    "Mom, I''m about to cum".

    Aisha smiled while she still had his thing in her mouth, she moved her head downwards a but more until half of his shaft was in her mouth, then she started moving her head up and down, as she augmented the pace sloppy sounds could be heard due to her saliva and the precuming from Daimon''s penis.

    With a low growl, Daimon gently held Aisha''s head in ce and unleashed his load in her mouth, the sperm flowed down his mother''s throat as she swallowed every drop of it as if it was the most delicious thing in the world.

    While he gasped for air, his hands lost strength and he let go of her but Aisha didn''t stop, she instead sucked any leftover sperm until his thing waspletely clean, and after licking her lips she asked her son.

    "How was it darling? Did you enjoy it?".

    Daimon only nodded, although he was still hard, that was only the second time he has ejacted in this life, so it was quite intense.

    Aisha doubted but she decided to give it a try.

    "If you want¡­ then I can be your first ?".

 Chapter 59 Bath Session (Part 2) R-18

    Daimon was in a predicament right now, in front of him it was the beautiful naked body of Aisha, her long silver hair was neatly spread over her back and shoulders, she had a charming tempting expression on her face as if she was saying "eat me", or at least that''s what Daimon thought.

    Besides that, her cute nipples were stiff and her flower was dripping with nectar, in other words his mother was freaking hot, for a moment Daimon considered taking on Aisha''s offer, but they were suddenly interrupted.

    The sound of metals colliding drew their attention, Daimon saw a sword cutting down the door of the bathroom, in normal circumstances if you see someone barging in your bathroom with a weapon it would something to worry about, but after eight years Daimon could recognize every centimeter of that sword.

    *Thud*

    With a dull sound the pieces of what used to be a door, fell to the ground, luckily the floor was made out of a resistant material or it would have been a mess, once the door was gone, they saw Aura entering the bathroom.

    Originally Aura came to the mansion to speak with Daimon, she was in her office reviewing the reports that the vice principals and other high-ranking instructors prepared in her absence, when she got a notice on the sigil lector of the principal''s office.

    Apparently, there was amotion in the area near theke, amotion which involved some members of her Argent family so she decided to take a look at it, but when she arrived, she was weed with a strange sight, a tree near theke with students hanging downwards from its branches, something unusual maybe, but not to the point that it should cause amotion.

    But that was not all, all of them were three or four star ranked mages, so they were clearly second grade students and the reason of themotion was that they were¡­ naked.

    Aura could more or less guess who did this, but what she didn''t understand was, why all the "spectators" were members of the Argent family, most of them were from the youngest generation in other words newly epted students but between then there was someone she could recognize, the only daughter of the supreme elder of the Argent family¡­ Arianna Argent.

    She approached Arianna and as she walked, all the members of the Argent family parted way and bowed towards Aura, even if they were in the academy and they didn''t have the obligation to treat Aura as the matriarch, she was the principal so it was more or less the same.

    Once Aura was in front of Arianna, she asked.

    "Little girl, tell me¡­ what happened here?".

    Arianna slightly bowed towards Aura, as the daughter of the supreme elder she has seen the matriarch before at a respectful distance of course, the reason as to why she came to see Daimon in the first ce wasn''t to fight with him, she was also surprised when the girl from the Jolbaris family suggested something so despicable but before she could interfere Daimon took care of the situation.

    Her original intention was to see the kind of man that became the only disciple of the woman she admired, Aura might not be the only female half emperor in the wonder myriad ster chart, but she was for sure the strongest in battle terms among them.

    Unlike the Revy n were the supreme elder was an asshole, in the Argent n the supreme elder was a firm follower of Aura, and Arianna always took Aura as her model of life, so when Aura suddenly brought an unknown kid and dered him her disciple, she felt a bit disappointed.

    And now here she was, speaking with her idol in person.

    "Greetings matriarch¡­ this was done by me, so please don''t get angry with the other guys, they just followed my instructions".

    Auraughed.

    "Little girl, when you spend too much time with someone, you get to understand how he thinks, and this "punishment" has the name of my disciple written all over it hahaha, that being said I do recognize your courage¡­ lying to a half emperor to help him, I will make sure to tell him about it".

    Arianna smiled.

    "It was nothing, previously I doubted the judgment of the matriarch but now that I have met him in person, I understand why was he chosen¡­ the Argents might have conflicts between them but we never go against the family".

    Aura saw the honest look in her eyes and she nodded, after the fiasco of thest ruler, when she became the matriarch, she stablished ideology, Arianna''s father was one of the few survivors of that time and that''s why he was Aura''s follower.

    She patted Arianna''s shoulder.

    "Since no one but our family members have seen this, just put those guys down¡­ you have the photos anyway hahaha".

    After saying that she left to look for her cute disciple, "knowing him after being interrupted twice he should have gone to the mansion¡­ to be alone with Aisha", she thought.

    Realizing that, Aura used space shift to appear inside the mansion, she then saw the trace of clothes in the floor which pointed at the bathroom, since the door was closed, she simply used her sword to "open" it.

    Still the scene in front of her was quite surprising, all the time they have been living together, none of the girls has done anything sexual with Daimon, but right now she saw him naked¡­ with an erection, and her nose caught a strangely enticing smelling from his penis which was also covering Aisha''s body.<sub> </sub>

    With a weird smile in her face Aura spoke.

    "What happened to "no pressuring Daimon"?".

    Aishaughed.

    "Everything was consensual, besides I just did it with my mouth, there is nothing in the rules against that ?".

    Aura was speechless, "I guess both mother and son are equally shameless", she thought.

    Daimon stood up and walked towards Aura, this was not the first time she has seen his thing hard like right now, but it was certainly still a surprising sight.

    He caressed Aura''s face which made her face blush, he then smirked before saying.

    "Since you interrupted my fun, why don''t you join us then, as a man I must be fair with all my girls after all".

    Aura sighed but she epted the offer, her clothes left her body one by one until her naked figure appeared for Daimon''s delight.

    Feeling the hot gaze Daimon was directing at her, Aura''s tail waggled a couple of times, she doubted for a moment before she moved her hands towards his penis, she carefully touched it to the content of her heart.

    Although she has seen it before, this was the first time she has touched it directly, the feeling was curious, it was hard and it had a higher temperature than the rest of his body.

    Daimon was amused seeing her curiously ying with his penis, he suddenly dragged Aura into his embrace, since he was now taller than her his thing was pressed against her belly.

    Aura felt her heart beating like a drum, they had cuddled in the bed before but she always used some light lingerie to cover the most important ces, and Daimon didn''t have an erection¡­ most of the times.

    Some time ago Daimon learnt a new way to tease Aura, they made a bet which of course he won, the prize was that since that moment onwards she would let Daimon touch her ears and her tail.

    To be honest she was going to let him do it anyway, she had epted being his lover after all, but since he won that bet, he started caressing her ears quite often, the soft feeling of her fur was something addictive.

    He carefully used his right hand to fondle Aura''s ears, and as expected he got a reaction out of her almost immediately.

    "Mmm ?", Aura tried to hold back her voice but Daimon has be quite good after all these years, her little moans filled the bathroom and made Aisha feel a bit jealous of all the attention she was getting.

    "This was a time for me and my darling¡­ but I guess sharing is also not that bad, as long as he is happy ?".

    Daimon moved his head downwards just enough for his face to be in front of Aura''s, he inclined forward and sealed her lips with a kiss, of course his hands weren''t justzing around while the right one was still gently touching her ears, the left one moved all the way to her ass.

    "Nnnghh ?".

    The sudden stimtion of having her ass fondled by Daimon, made Aura let out a big moan.

    Daimon smiled feeling Aura''s pussy getting wet, her juices drenched the point where their bodies made contact, on the other hand Aura was so embarrassed she wanted to dig a hole to hide.

    "W-Wait, let me recover a bit please hnnnn ?".

    The sudden flow of love juice that dripped her pussy, made Daimon notice she came; he kissed her one more time before whispering in her ears.

    "We are only starting; my beautiful master, I hope you are prepared".

    Aura had a bad premonition, "maybe I should have let Aisha take care of this horny disciple", she thought.

 Chapter 60 Bath Session (Part 3) R-18

    ? Daimon was charmed by the tempting view of Aura''s blushed face, he couldn''t resist the urge to kiss her lips again, before he did the same to her neck, her smooth skin was a pleasure to feel, he continued kissing all the way down to her breasts, although she had the smaller proportions out of all his soulmates, they were by no means small, it was more like the others were¡­ big.

    In Aura''s case, her breasts perfectly fitted in Daimon''s hands, without saying anything he started licking her cute nipples, Aura bit her lips to hold her voice back, she ced her hands on Daimon''s head in a try to stop him, but it was futile, she felt her nipples getting hard due to the stimtion and finally she couldn''t stop her moans toe out.

    "Mmm ?".

    Daimon listened to her cute moans and he smiled before gently biting her right nipple, normally the bodies of Arch ranks and half emperors are quite sturdy, and their physical strength is also in another levelpared to lower-level mages, although they don''t focus on reinforcing that, that''s why a couple of times before when Liz didn''t control her strength properly, Aisha was worried that she might identally hurt Daimon.

    Luckily for every problem there is always a solution, with all the physical training Aura made Daimon go through he was able to light up his life spark thus bing a knight, whichbined with the forceful strengthening caused by the constant use of core synchrony, made his body reach a sturdiness equal to that of a Knight Lord.

    Which was something good because if not for that, he would have had problems at the moment of true, if the girl had a big gap in cultivationpared to her partner they might fall in the ufortable situation where the man wouldn''t be able to¡­ break the hymen of the girl due to theck of strength.

    Once Daimon sucked on Aura''s breast to the content of hie heart, he continued kissing all the way down her body, he made a quick stop to tease the area below her navel, before going downwards until he reached her pubis, the little amount of silverish fur she had down there, waspletely soaked due to her love juices.

    Aura saw Daimon licking his lips whichbined with his previous deration that he was fair with all of them made her have a bad premonition, "If he licked Aisha down there¡­ then¡­ he is going to do the same to me!!!", her supposition was immediately confirmed when Daimon stuck his tongue out and started licking the outer area of her vagina.

    "Mmm ?".

    The sudden attack made Aura''s legs tremble a bit, but that was nothingpared with what was about to happen, Daimon gently spread the petals of her flower and inserted his tongue inside of her.

    "Kyaahhh ?".

    Aura felt Daimon''s tongue twirling around inside of her, and the stimtion was so hard that her toes curled a bit, the amount of pleasure she was experiencing right now, was something she never thought it could be possible.

    Her tail waggled to show her current happy mood, if before she tried to resist a bit due to her shyness, right now there was no traces left of that, she just closed her eyes and entrusted her body to her lover.

    Daimon saw it and he smiled, this day he has tasted the love juices of two beautiful girls and it would be a lie to say that didn''t give him a certain feeling of conquer, the sweetness of their nectar was something out of this world, the lewd enticing taste made his penis so hard that it was starting to feel a bit ufortable.

    With a sudden movement of his tongue, Aura felt a bolt of electricity running through her body, she let out a cute sound due to her orgasm while her love juices naturally squirted drenching Daimon in the process

    "Wuhhhh ?".

    Her legs gave in but Daimon held her so she didn''t fell, instead her body slowly slipped down until she was resting against Daimon while they both were sitting in the floor.

    Daimon saw her expression of ecstasy, her slightly erratic breathing and her gaze that was brimming with love and he gave her a kiss, Aura allowed him do as he pleased with her while she was recovering from her climax.

    Still from the corner of her eyes saw that Daimon''s thing looked as if it was about to explode, and she decided to return the favor, "I wonder if it will fit in my mouth¡­ whatever if Aisha could do it, I should be able to".

    Up to this day Aura hasn''t shown Daimon her other form which Erin mentioned previously, she has been saving the surprise for a special asion since it''s not something she can do whenever she wants, but for now nothing of that was important, her priority right now was to please her lover so she let her body fell downwards until her face was in front of his dick.

    Aura gulped down, if from a distance it looked quite big, up close she was marveled by the imponent sight of the first and only penis she will ever see, not only that but with her face so close to it, her nose was filled with the enticing manly scenting from his ns, Aura felt her insides twitch a bit as if her body was telling her to take him inside.

    Daimon saw her admiring expression and that only made him feel even more excited, as a man of course he was proud that his size was to her lovers liking.

    Aura saw Daimon smiling at her, and she blushed, she closed her eyes and started licking the tip of his thing, as if she was eating a popsicle, all the soulmates have discussed these kinds of things before, that''s why Aisha knew how to do it.

    While she was licking it, Aura was surprised, "This is nothing like I expected, this tastes so good ?", she felt as if she was getting drunk due to his manly scent.<sub> </sub>

    She changed her focus to the shaft, moving her little tongue up and down she gave her all to please her mate, at some point Aura suddenly gobbled the tip of his penis inside her mouth, of course she was careful enough to not let her slightly big canines touch it since she knew it was a sensible area.

    Daimon was speechless, he didn''t expect his normally shy wolf girl, to suddenly drown in pleasure and forgetting about any worries starting sucking him in such a good way, although her technique was a bit clumsy, she was putting so much effort that it was impossible to not feel good from it.

    Without any warning Aura moved her head downwards a bit more until half of the thing waspletely buried in her mouth, the sudden warm and soft feeling of her mouth enveloping his penis made Daimon shiver.

    At first, he thought that maybe he was using charm to make Aura forget about any inhibition, but that wasn''t the case, the skill wasn''t active so Aura was doing it out her own will, what Daimon didn''t take into ount was that as a werewolf her sense of smell was stronger than other people so basically her body reacted on its own¡­ the mission was to please her partner.

    Sloppy wet noises were the only thing that could be heard in the bathroom, Aisha was in awe, at first, she thought that Aura will take it slow since her current body was the less "mature" among them, but then she suddenly started going at it quite rough, she was giving her all for her lover and that was something worthy of admiration.

    Daimon gently patted her head while she kept sucking him off, at some point Aura felt the thing throbbing in her mouth but instead of letting go she sucked on it harder, Daimon understood the message and held her in ce while he let out his load deep inside her mouth.

    *Gulp*

    *Gulp*

    Aura swallowed his thick sperm, she seemed to enjoy it quite a bit since her tail was moving around, Daimon found the scene of her mouth slightly stuffed with his penis and her tail waggling really cute, while she used her little tongue to lick any leftover sperm, he caressed her silky hair.

    Once she finished cleaning his thing, with a little popping sound she finally let go of his penis, her face waspletely red, now that she returned to her usual self, she felt so embarrassed thinking an all the things she did a moment ago.

    "Ughhh, what am I a dog in heat?", she thought.

    Daimon saw that she looked as if she was about to cry and heughed.

    "That was awesome, I knew my cute Aura who always gives her all on everything she does, will not disappoint me".

    Aura''s ears twitched a bit, she hid her face in Daimon''s chest while she hugged him.

    "Did you really like it that much?", she asked in a low voice.

    Daimon kissed her forehead before answering.

    "Yes, you were really good, from now and onwards I want you to do it for me every day¡­ what do you say?".

    Aura didn''t say anything, she only nodded her head a bit, but that was enough to make Daimon smile from ear to ear, of course he didn''t forget about his mother, he could already feel the jealous gaze of Aisha piercing his back so he extended one of his arms towards her, an offer she dly epted.

    With two naked beauties in his embrace, this precise moment was pure bliss for Daimon, on his right arm it was his mother, and on the left one he was holding his cute wolf girl, of this was not heaven then he didn''t know how to describe it.

    Both girls raised their heads just to see Daimon smiling at them, he gently caressed their faces and while he enjoyed the sight of their naked bodies, he got hard again but this time he managed to control himself properly.

    "Let''s take a bath first and then¡­ we can try some other fun things in the bedter, what do you saydies?".

    Aisha and Aura nodded, they stood up and rinsed their bodies under the shower, Daimon filled the bathtub with water and the three of them entered, while he upied the middle spot, each of the girls leaned their bodies against him, they closed their eyes and just rxed, but in their minds, just imagining what would happen in the bedter made their pussies tingle in anticipation.

 Chapter 61 There Is Always A Way

    While Daimon was letting the water of the bathtub and the smooth sensation of his mother and Aura''s bare skin rx him, in his mind he was evaluating what to do next, a moment ago he got to enjoy the pleasure of doing lewd things with them and to be honest he didn''t want to stop.

    His hands who were previously firmly ced in their waists slowly moved downwards until he fondled their asses, the soft sticity of Aisha''s but cheeks were amazing, his hand was practically sinking in that marshmallow, she might not be as big as Erin but she was so young that she was fated to reach that perfectly curvy body in the future.

    Aura on the other hand had a slim waist but her hips were quite big, all the exercise she does made her buttocks had a perfect bubble shape, her ass was firm and her skin was so smooth he wanted to tub is face in there and use it as a pillow.

    The girls felt Daimon groping them, but they feigned to ignore him, unfortunately their smiling expressions gave them away.

    Daimon was feeling unusually horny today, so with a quick maneuver he started sucking on Aisha''s breasts, the feeling was quite nostalgic, even when he was a baby, he had use of reason so of course he perfectly remembers being breastfeed by his mother, originally Daimon wanted to stop drinking from her when he was nearly two years old, but Aisha insisted so it dragged on for one more year.

    An Archmage has a good control over its body so she kept producing breast milk until the situation when they fled from the Naktis castle, unfortunately her current body wasn''t the same as before so she now was no longerctating.

    Aisha felt her son gently sucking on her nipples and she was also reminded of that time, unlike other babies Daimon never bit her nor hurt her in any way, he always drank her milk like a good boy, a big smile flourished on her face as she caressed her son''s hair.

    "Darling nothing wille out¡­ if you want to drink from me then, there are some previous "requirements" that need to be fulfilled hehehe ?".

    Aura who was still recovering from the intense orgasm she experienced before, almost choked when she heard Aisha''s words.

    "Ahem, Aisha don''t you think it''s a bit too early to be thinking in that?".

    Aisha shook her head.

    "I don''t know what are you talking about, out of all of us, the only one that has ever took care of a child is me, so you might not know that there are magic potions to help women produce milk, if my darling wants it, then I don''t mind doing it, he used to enjoy drinking from me after all ?".

    Daimon was speechless, although he was still technically young, his current body was mature enough to be called an adult, so making his mother breastfeeding him was a bit embarrassing, but being totally honest the idea sounded appealing.

    "If it isn''t detrimental to your body¡­ I would like to try itter mom".

    Listening to her son''s request, Aisha was smiling from ear to ear while Aura sighed.

    "This pair of perverted mother and son are quite something¡­ but I wonder how would it feel to if he were to drink from me too?", she thought.

    Daimon noticed the curious expression in Aura''s face and heughed.

    "Of course, if my cute master wants to join in the fun, I would be more than happy to taste the breast milk of a half emperor hahaha".

    Luckily Evangeline was taking a nap, or there wouldn''t have been an end to the future teasing she would have done thanks to that phrase.

    Aura turned her head to the other side so Daimon couldn''t see her happy smiling face, and she only nodded, she has been experiencing new things since she met Daimon which was refreshing considering she has been living for more than two thousand years, and before meeting him she only had Erin as a friend, but since that day in her castle her whole world was turned upside down in a good way of course.

    Aisha seemed to doubt for a moment, she kissed her son before asking the question that was bothering both Aura and her.

    "Darling¡­ are we doing it once we leave the bathroom?".

    Although Aura was still looking to the other side of the bathroom, her ears twitched a bit as all her attention was directed at what would Daimon''s answer will be.

    Daimon gave their asses a gently squeeze and waited for the magic to happen.

    "Hiiiii ?".

    "Mmm ?".

    Two different but equally enjoyable moaning voices made their way to his ears, which was enough to make him smile.<sub> </sub>

    "We will have to leave it for another day, although I know you have a littlepetition ongoing about who will be the first, at this point I don''t particrly mind doing it with any of you because there is no order from me¡­ you are all mine and I enjoy being with each one of you, that being said I did think of a solution to our predicament".

    The pervert smile on Daimon''s face made both Aisha and Aura had a wild sudden imaginary scene in their minds, which was confirmed a couple of secondster.

    "I will simply do it with you all the same day, in the same bed while I use core synchrony to make you all experience it at the same time hahaha".

    After all these years of training, core synchrony hasn''t changed its original traits, instead of that the effects got stronger so although none of the girls with the exception of Aisha had advanced on their magic cultivation, even Aura still has yet to light her life spark, since she was a half emperor it was harder for her to meet the requirements, Daimon was now able to drawn out a bit more of their strength.

    Before the limit was 5% but after leveling up twice, he managed to reach a 10% of their total strength, which made him surpass the previous eight star ranked realm to reach the early stage of the mage lord realm whenever he used core synchrony.

    It might not look like too much of a change, but the difference between a ninth star mage and a mage lord is as big as the difference between a candle and the sun, the word "Lord" wasn''t just added for nothing after all.

    Leaving aside the strengthening effects, using core synchrony created a link between them even before, but now it was stronger, to the point where they could share their senses through it, Daimon has been considering this crazy idea of using that to make all the girls experiencing being the first at the same time.

    Because no matter how much thought he put into it, he couldn''t choose just one between them, Aisha was his mother and probably the closest to him, Elizabeth has always been infatuated with him since the very moment they met, Erin has always done her best to give him the bests "gifts" a woman can make to her lover.

    ine showed him a side of her that nobody had seen before which was a sign of how much she trusts him, Aura has been giving her all to help him improve, going as far as to use her body to reward him whenever he achieved something, and although Narasha didn''t have a body, she has been training to not be a weight for Daimon, he was now able to wield her but she also developed a way to fight on her own to be a battle partner on whom he can rely.

    Aisha and Aura exchanged gazes and they smiled, all of them knew that Daimon has never liked seeing them discussing, so it was more or less something they expected, the problem now was that, none of the other girls were here right now, so they will have to leave empty handed, or so they thought until they felt Daimon''s hands moving until he reached their back doors.

    "Mm?".

    "Darling?".

    They both felt his fingers making little circles around their little tight assholes.

    Daimon licked his lips as if he was in front of a delicious meal just waiting for him to eat it.

    "I''m a firm believer of the saying "there is always a way", so If you two feel like you can''t wait for the moment where we would all be together, we can have some fun here, it would be a good preparation forter anyway".

    Both of them saw the big erection Daimon had right now, and their cute holes twitched a bit, especially Aura since her constitution was smallerpared to Aisha.

    She didn''t stop him from touching her, but she still expressed her worries.

    "Y-you really want to do it there¡­. won''t it hurt?".

    All what Daimon could hear was that she wasn''t against the idea, which was half of the victory, this time Daimon took the role of being the devil that whispers in their ears.

    "Of course, we will have to do some preparations before, but it will be fine and I will be careful enough to do it gently anyway, so there is no need to worry about it".

    Aisha had a feverish blushed expression, the mere though of takins her son''s thing in her ass was enough to make her mind fell into chaos, but she also didn''tpletely refuse to the idea.

    "I''m all yours darling, so if that what you want, then I''m happy to oblige ?".

    Daimon kissed them both, they werepletely clean so the bath time was now over, it was yet a mystery how far would they go today, but the slight nervously anticipation was making their love juices flow from their pussies.

    They all dried off and they even put on some clothes, they have decided to leave the rest of it for when the night fell, Aura hasn''t eaten anything yet and Daimon and Aisha left the wee party before they finished eating so now, they will have an early dinner before going to bed.

    It was already past 6:00 pm so it was getting darker, besides that, looking through a window Daimon saw that it was raining outside and the weather was colder than before which made him smile, cold nights were a delight for him because he always had his girls to help him keep warm.

    "Tonight, I''m going to cuddle with them to the content of my heart", he thought.

 Chapter 62 The First Night In The Academy R-18

    Aisha didn''t let the fact that they decided to continue what they were doing in bathroom for theter, stop her from tempting her son, although Aura did put on some proper clothes, Aisha only wore a shirt, since she wasn''t using panties nor bra, her bare ass and the little elevations that her nipples caused on the shirt were a delight for Daimon''s eyes.

    And that was not all, during the past eight years she gave herself the mission to improve her cooking skills, back in the Naktis castle or in Erin''s mansion their food was prepared by professional chefs, but Daimon once mentioned he wanted to try his mother''s home cooking and that''s why she dedicated some time while her son wasn''t in the mansion to practice.

    And it paid off, right now the sight of a half-naked Aisha moving around while preparing a simple yet good looking meal, was making Daimon drool for her, something that both Aura and Aisha noticed.

    While Aisha was smiling from ear to ear while feigning ignorance, Aura on the other hand felt defeated, all the girls at some point noticed what Aisha was doing, so they tried to copy her but¡­ they basically sucked at it, even Erin who has already had children wasn''t too skilled in cooking skills, probably because of her carefree tendencies.

    Aura sighed, but remembering what she ha nned forter she smiled.

    "Whatever, she has her ways and I have mines¡­ I bet he will be all hard and excited due to meter", she thought.

    The true winner here was actually Daimon, his mother''s charming newlywed act and Aura''s cute jealousy were every man''s dream and they were only for his eyes.

    Aisha finished preparing the dinner and she ced the dishes in the table, but instead of sitting in a chair she sat down in one of Daimon''s legs, of course Aura didn''t want to be left behind so she did the same.

    Daimon could lift more than 40 tons, so the two beauties in hisp were as light as feathers for him, both his mother and Aura personally fed him, since the weather was quite cold due to the rain that was falling outside, Aisha prepared a white stew, which was apanied by some bread she had bought on a bakery beforehand.

    Now that she has taken the role of cooking for her son, she was using a second storage ring which was full of ingredients and other things, little by little the three of them finished their dinner and went straight to the bedroom.

    This was the first of the many nights they will be spending here, Aura made sure that the bed was especially big andfortable for obvious reasons, beforeying down Daimon took out a big crystal te and stuck it to the wall that was directly in front of the bed.

    Since the moment he bought the light album many years ago, the idea of creating something simr to a TV, or a movie screen, took ce in his bran, of course technology hasn''t reached that point yet but there is always a solution for every problem.

    In this case it was quite easy since he had ess to the shop of the system, apparently there were things from earth in sale but only those he has ever seen or used before, of course even if he were to buy a TV there was no signal in this ce, so instead he bought a screen with a CD reproduction function included and a lot of movies.

    The girls were marveled by the "magic device", Daimon suddenly "created" for them, so the past years every night before they went to sleep, they will watch a movie, following the schedule they previously decided, the girl that was in charge of Daimon''s training in that day was the one to chose what they would watch.

    Today was Monday so it was Aisha''s turn and like always she chose one with a hero thematic, once the movie started, theyid down in the bed, like back in the bathtub, Daimon upied the middle spot while each of the girls took one side, they covered themselves with the nket and cuddled while watching the movie.

    Unfortunately, the three of them weren''t paying too much attention to the movie, half way through it, Daimon felt Aisha guiding his hand to her crotch, since she wasn''t wearing anything but a shirt, he could directly feel the smoothness of her pussy on his fingers.

    Although Aisha didn''t show anything on her face nor she moaned, Aura could notice the little movements Daimon was making under the nket and judging by the spot where the nket waved it was easy to guess what he was doing.

    But a part of the charm of the situation was feigning ignorance so instead of "discovering" them, she joined in the fun, the only one that was not following the act was Daimon, he was smiling while his fingers were gently rubbing their pussies, it didn''t take too much time for his little brother to react, a bulge on the nket at the space between his legs kept on augmenting.

    After a couple of minutes of slight teasing, Daimon suddenly inserted the tip of his middle fingers in their pussies, which immediately earned him a sweet moan from both his mother and Aura.

    "Nnnhg ?".

    "Mmm ?".

    The nked was thrown away and the sight on Aisha''s slightly wet pussy weed Daimon, Aura on the hand had a little wet spot which was showing even through her shorts.

    Touching their flowers was a pleasure by itself, but since they weren''t going to advance more in the front it was time to change positions, Daimon stood up and told them toy face down in the bed, Aisha wasn''t wearing anything so her ass was in in view, but Aura has been waiting for this moment toe since they left the bathroom.

    She knew that Daimon loved her tail, and he also liked when she acted cute and spoiled so instead of directly facing her ass towards him, she remained in the missionary position while she took off her bra before removing her shorts andstly her panties, her tail was waggling through all the process, and the same could be said of Daimon''s gaze which was glued to her.

    Daimon saw Aura clearly doing that on purpose and he felt his dick getting harder than before.<sub> </sub>

    "Mom has her own charm¡­ but Aura is freaking cute", he thought.

    No one would ever imagine that the normally aggressive, publicly recognized as the strongest woman in battle terms, would be acting docile and submissive towards a young boy which was two thousand years younger than her, that contrast added an extra charm to the whole situation.

    After sessfully tempting him, Aura also changed her position to be face down in the bed, the delicious sight of their bare asses was filling Daimon''s visual field, he licked his lips and prepared to dig in.

    Although he didn''t have sex on his past life, Daimon had watched his fair share of "informative" videos on inte, so he knew that to use the back door there were some preparations needed, in order to not hurt his girls, he first needed to stretch their assholes a bit and in Aura''s case using some lube seemed to be a good idea.

    So, for now Daimon decided to focus on the first part, witch a quick maneuver he buried his face in Aisha''s buttocks, after he enjoyed the soft feeling of her skin, he gently spread her ass a bit and immediately inserted his tongue inside of her, thebination of her natural flower like scent and soap was quite enjoyable.

    Aisha let out her moaning voice, but she didn''t try to resist, back in the bathroom her son already had a taste of her ass, which was embarrassing at first but he seemed to enjoy it so much that how could she spoil his fun, besides she also started to feel it to the point that the stimtion of his tongue moving inside made her climax.

    Of course, Daimon didn''t forget about Aura, while he was immersing into his mother''s tight hole, he used his hand to tease Aura by making some circles around her entrance, or gently inserting his index finger inside her, the sudden invasion made Aura let out a cute moan.

    "Wuuuh ?".

    She was so tight that it was hard for Daimon to even fit one of his fingers, so after making sure he has given enough attention to his mother he changed targets, Aura felt something soft and wet entering her, while Aisha felt her son''s finger taking rece his tongue.

    Aura was using a pillow to suffocate her voice, but Aisha didn''t care, so the room was filled with their sensual moans, after a good amount of teasing their pussies were drenched with love juices, which Daimon happily drank to his heart content.

    Surprisingly the first one to reach climax was Aura, her insides twitched around Daimon''s tongue and her body trembled as she orgasmed.

    Aisha on the other hand Aisha needed Daimon to put on some more effort, after he left Aura rest to recover from her climax, hepletely focused on his mother, he twirled his tongue inside of her ass while he rubbed the outer area of her vagina with his fingers, with a little amount of stimtion on her clit, Aisha let out her love juices as she came.

    Daimon drank their nectar with the excuse of preventing the bed from getting wet, but to be honest he simply enjoyed the sweet taste of their juices.

    While the girls were resting Daimon took off his pants and let his body fell backwards in the bed, after a couple of seconds both Aisha and Aura moved downwards all the way to his crotch, getting a blowjob was already pleasing, but right now two girls were looking at his erected penis and it was obvious what they were thinking.

    Aisha smiled at him before she used her tongue to lick the tip of his thing, Aura on the other hand focused on the shaft, the sight of two beauties using their tongues to service hm was out of this world.

    As if they had discussed it before hand, Aura swallowed the half of his dick inside her mouth and moved her head a couple of times before she shifted with Aisha, the two of them continuously sucked him off until they felt Daimon''s thing twitching.

    Daimon felt as if his soul was trying to leave his body, the different techniques they had just augmented the amount of pleasure he was experiencing, when he felt he was about to finish he ced a hand on each of their heads, Aura was the one sucking the tip while Aisha was licking the shaft, so the first part of his load flowed down Aura''s throat.

    Of course, since they were sharing, Aura let go of his penis after drinking her share and immediately Aisha took her ce to swallow the rest of his sperm, gulping sounds echoed through the room, covering the audio from the movie who was still being yed.

    After Aisha let go of his thing both of them licked him until it waspletely clean, although Daimon could still continue, the girls were a bit tired, a woman''s orgasm is far more intense than a man''s one, and today they already experienced it two or three times already so it was normal for them to feel sleepy.

    Daimon was aware of that and there was no need to rush things so they went to the bathroom, the girls cleaned themselves while Daimon washed his mouth and returned to the bedroom, both Aura and Aisha did the same before following him.

    The day ended with the three of them naked enjoying each other''s warmness under the nket, Aura even wrapped her tail on Daimon''s body while Aisha used her breasts as a pillow for her son.

    Daimon was smiling although his eyes were closed, "what a good start of my academic life hahaha".

    The turned off the lights and their breathings slowed down, as the three of them entered thend of dreams.

 Chapter 63 A Pleasant Way To Start A Day R-18

    As the night passed the temperature kept going down, while others had some magic formations to avoid suffering due to cold, Daimon was happily sleeping while embracing the warm naked bodies of both his mother and Aura.

    The silky fur of Aura''s tail which was wrapped around him and the softforting feeling of Aisha''s breasts which he was using as pillow made this one of the most pleasant nights he has ever experienced.

    But not everyone was having such a good night, Alexander Jolbaris was in his personal mansion which was in the city that surrounded the main campus of the academy, today was a horrible day for him.

    His n to be the first in the admission exams was blocked by the same guy that "stole" the girls he had set his eyes into, his application to get a private ce to live in the campus was rejected and the woman that was supposed to be his fianc¨¦e didn''t agree toe with him to "get to know each other".

    He gritted his teeth.

    "I can''t believe I wasn''t allowed to build a mansion in the grounds of the campus, to think they wanted me to live in a room like those other peasants, I the most talented one in the strongest family of the beast faction, have to spent a night alone, in such a lowly ce¡­ UNFORGIVABLE!!!".

    Have a separated mansion within the grounds of the campus, instead of the academic city, is a sign of status, even if most of the students are nobles of high rank, all they get is a room in the dormitories,nd is limited after all, but there are some exceptional cases where some people are allowed to have a mansion in the campus.

    When Alexander tried to argue with Boris since he got information from one of the vice principals, that another person did get a mansion, the answer he got was "he is the first ranked student, return when you achieve the same thing".

    When had he received such an insult? he was livid but he had no choice but to swallow hisins and order one of his subordinates to go and prepare a ce for him to stay in the academic city.

    While ones were having sweet dreams others had revengeful thoughts, and so the night went on, when morning came it wasn''t raining anymore but the sun was covered by gray clouds, in a mansion near the principal''s office in the wild w academy, Daimon opened his eyes it was still a bit dark in the room, he yawned and rubbed his eyes.

    "What a great night¡­ mm?", he felt a pleasant familiar sensation on the lower part of his body, Daimon looked at his sides and there was no trace of Aisha or Aura, he turned to see the space between his legs and there was big bulge from which the nket was waving.

    He put on a grin on his face before taking the nket off, as he expected his mother and Aura were currently using their mouths to take care of his morning wood, Aisha was sucking on the tip while Aura was licking the shaft with her tongue.

    "What are youdies doing so early in the morning?", he asked.

    Without letting go of his penis, Aisha answered.

    "Gwoof morig drlinhg (good morning darling)".

    Aura only gazed at him for a couple of seconds before focusing his attention back on his shaft, Daimonughed a bit.

    "Mom¡­ don''t talk while you are eating".

    He saw the rm clock that was in the night stand and they still had almost two hours before the start of the first ss, making a quick calction they had time to y a bit, take a bath and have breakfast so he patted Aura''s head to draw her attention.

    "My cute master please face your as this way, I feel a bit thirsty hehehe".

    Aura''s face blushed, "What is this pervert thinking on doing to me", she thought, but her tail which was wagging gave her away, she did as he told and rode on top of Daimon, while her head was still buried in the middle of his legs as she kept licking Daimon''s dick, her ass was over Daimon''s face.

    Daimon smiled, since none of them were wearing any clothes, the only thing in his field of vision right now was the up-close view of Aura''s deliciously wet pussy.

    He dragged her lower half closer to him and started licking the outer area of her vagina.

    "Mmm ?", Aura felt the sudden stimtion and she stopped moving her tongue to let out a moan, but after regaining herposure she continued with what she was doing.

    Aisha on the other hand had her eyes closed, she was engrossed in sucking off her son, she was the one that woke up first, then she noticed Daimon was quite lively although he was still sleeping, so she decided to have a taste of his morning wood.

    Unfortunately, when she moved downwards, she identally touched Aura''s tail, although Aura was a heavy sleeper, her tail was one of her more sensitive ces so she noticed it and woke up, they exchanged gazes for a couple of seconds before reaching a silent conclusion, "let''s share the meal".

    And that led to the current situation where Aisha was gobbling on half of Daimon''s dick, while Aura was doing her best to lick the shaft, only to be interrupted by Daimon inserting his tongue inside of her warm pussy.

    "Hnnnngg ?".

    Daimon twirled his tongue inside of her and after a couple of minutes of that, he felt her insides twitch and her nectar started flowing out, he drank every single drop of it, just like the girls liked to swallow his sperm, the sweet lewd taste of their love juices seemed to be addictive for Daimon.<sub> </sub>

    While was still gulping down Aura''s nectar, Daimon felt his mother going wild on his penis, she started moving her head up and down faster than before which made him let out a low growl as he ejacted in her mouth.

    Aisha just stood still and took the whole load of her son deep in her mouth, although she has only tasted it a couple of times, the manly scent of Daimon''s seeds was so intoxicating she felt her pussy tingling and getting wetter than before.

    Shepletely cleaned his ns of any leftover sperm before letting go of it, she saw Aura''s excited but usatory expression and she cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, don''t look at me like that¡­ I''m sure my darling will be more than happy to let it out in your mouth too, he is still hard after all".

    Aura was a bit angry because they were supposed to share, but now that she looked at it, Daimon was clearly ready for a second round so it was a win-win situation for her.

    Speaking of Daimon he had a weird expression on his face, "thanks to heavens that my body is quite abnormal, if not these two would have let me dry hahaha", he thought.

    Just thinking on the future where all his soulmates will be participating in the night activities, was enough for him to be thankful that the apex predator body constitution made him had a huge amount of endurance.

    Daimon patted Aura''s ass a couple of times, like saying "go for it".

    Aura''s tail wagged and she changed positions with Aisha, the new formation was like this, Aura wasid down face down with her head in the middle of Daimon''s legs, on the other hand, out of Daimon''s petition Aisha was¡­ sitting on his face.

    "Hyahhh ?".

    ? When Aisha lowered her ass on top of Daimon''s face, she suddenly felt her son''s breath hitting her sensitive ce and that made her let out a sweet moan, she tried to separate a bit, but Daimon grabbed her by her waist to held her in ce.

    She looked downwards and saw him smiling at her, before she felt something soft and wet invading her insides.

    "Mmm¡­ Darling ?".

    Aisha''s back arched a bit due to the stimtion that her son''s tongue moving inside of her pussy brought to her, after a couple of minutes she unconsciously started grinding her hips against Daimon as if she was begging for him to go rougher on her.

    Daimon got the message and inserted his tongue as deep inside of her as he could, it was getting harder for him to focus because Aura was sucking him off so hard his legs were shivering.

    Aura''s mouth was smallerpared to Aisha, so her blowjob felt different, the sensation of her little throat enveloping his penis was simply heavenly, besides that she was carefully avoiding her canines to touch his ns to not hurt him, while also sucking on it so hard that Daimon felt his soul leaving his body.

    With onest movement of his tongue, Aisha reached her limit and her juices drenched Daimon''s face, a loud moan escaped from her mouth as she had an intense orgasm, her body lost all its strength, she got off her son andid down next to him with a happy satisfied expression on her face.

    Daimon caressed her hair a couple of times before he changed his position to a be sitting instead of beingpletelyid on the bed, Aura felt his hot gaze focusing on her and she mentally smiled as she augmented the pace of her blowjob.

    "Ughh".

    With a slightly guttural groan, he ced his hands on Aura''s head and made her drink his load, at first, he was a bit worried that she found it hard to take the big amount of sperm that he was letting out, but the movements of her tail assured him that she was happily gulping it down without any problems.

    Aura moved her head up and down a couple of times and sucked the left-over sperm from his ns before taking it out of her mouth, this time Daimon came so much that she was still swallowing it.

    Daimon stopped her from gulping down, he had a pervert smile on his face when he spoke.

    "Open your mouth¡­ I want to see my cute Aura drinking it".

    Aura blushed, to be honest even Daimon felt a bit embarrassed for asking such a thing, but deep inside he wanted to see it, so he decided to just follow his inner desires.

    For some reason Aura also enjoyed doing what he asked, so she opened her mouth, the exciting sight of her mouth full to the brim with his sperm was so sexy, that Daimon felt his thing getting hard again, but he had to control himself since they still had a lot things to do.

    "Calm down my little brother, they are all mine so I will make lots of love to themter", he thought as he saw Aura gulping down every bit of his seeds.

 Chapter 64 Second Lesson

    The adorable sight of Aura putting some effort to swallow his thick sperm, made Daimon want to jump an devour her, but the say that a mother knows her son better than he knows him himself isn''t a lie.

    Aisha hugged her son from behind and ced her hands on his chest.

    "We will bete if we don''t get up, you can have both me and Aura for dinner, but for now let''s take a bath and eat something darling ?".

    Daimon sighed, it was only the first day in school and he was starting to think on skipping sses, they stood up from the bed and went straight to the bathroom.

    This time, they weren''t going to use the bathtub so Aisha turned on the shower and the three of them rinsed their bodies, the water was perfect nor too hot but not too cold, although Daimon couldn''t enjoy their bodies to the content of his heart while they bathed.

    There was other kind of pleasing things to do, for example Aisha who stood behind of him, used her breasts tother his back, the soft slippery sensation of her skin and her slightly stiff nipples was awesome, Daimon on the other hand let his hard thing press against Aura''s ass while he gently applied shampoo on both her silky hair and the smooth fur on her tail and ears.

    "Mmm ?".

    Although Daimon wasn''t doing it with that intention, his caresses on her tail and ears made Aura let out a little moan due to howfortable she felt.

    Unfortunately, all the good things muste to an end, they slightly extended their bath time but Aisha wasn''t going to let her son skip his sses, so once they were clean, she turned off the shower to avoid them making excuses just to keep touching each other.

    They helped dry each other of before putting on some clothes, Aisha prepared a quick breakfast, scrambled eggs, bread and the juice of a fruit which had a simr taste to orange.

    There was still some time left so they had enjoyed their breakfast, washed their teeth and prepared to leave the mansion, since Aura was the principal it would be bad if others saw her leaving the mansion where a male student lived so early in the morning, not like she really cared but she didn''t want to cause more troubles to Daimon.

    She used space shift to go to her office, not without receiving a passionate goodbye kiss from Daimon of course, for the first time in her life she was in a really happy mood, her tail waggled as she transported to the principal''s office.

    Aisha hugged her son''s arm and they left the mansion, outside it was clouded and the wind was quite cold, the sight of them carelessly walking clung to each other like a couple attracted some envious gazes from the other students.

    Fortunately, the rumors of Daimon half-killing some guys in the wee party just because they interrupted his time with his "sister" and also knocking out two second grade students, before ordering his "followers" to strip them and hang them from a tree had already spread through the whole campus, so none of the new students had the guts to look at the girl that was walking at his side.

    Now that they weren''t in their "love nest", Evangeline returned to her usual self, she chuckled seeing the terrified expressions on the faces of the male students, and the slightly curious expressions on the female students.

    "Woahh, in just one day you have be "the alpha", that should have given you a tittle or something like that hahaha".

    "Hahaha", even Narashaughed at herments.

    Daimon shook his head, after all these years he has started to enjoy Evangeline''s jokes, she was going to be with him for a long time, so it was better if they were friendly to each other at least.

    "Good morning to you two, how did you sleep?", he mentally asked.

    Evangeline smirked.

    "Not as good as you¡­ even if I wasn''t paying attention, it was hard to not hear those two "singing" in the bath or the bed, you know?".

    Narasha could also watch things from the storage, and although her senses weren''t as sharp as Evangeline, she didn''t bother to block it, instead of that she curiously looked at their "night activities", since she had the status of soulmate, she also participated in the conversation the girls had about how they will handle Daimon "needs" in the future.

    Besides that, she was still learning more about feelings and emotions, because most of her life she was either in a berserk state or inma due to the seal of antinite, due to that although she had the knowledge of the people Disaster killed, shecked a bit in personality aspects.

    <o>,m Narasha nodded.</o>

    "I did watch everything, although we previously talked about it, seeing it in person ispletely different, both Aisha and Aura looked quite happy".

    Daimon was amused by Narasha''sck of shame.

    "I''m d you two enjoyed the "show" hahaha".

    Leaving aside that little mental conversation, they arrived at the ce where the elite ss will be having most of its lessons, the academy used a letter system besides the ranks, so in front of Daimon there was the door to a ssroom which had a big sign that said, "ss 1S".

    Daimon opened the door and entered the ssroom followed by Aisha, there were still a few minutes left until the ss started but most of the other students of the elite ss were already there, with a quick gaze he saw that the only ones missing were Alexander and his group ofckeys, the design of the ssroom was simr to the one of a university, there were rows of three seats together separated by spaces at both sides, all amodated in cascade style.

    The three girls were together like always, the guy who got the third rank was in a corner at the backside of the ssroom while the tenth ranked one was sat right in the front row of seats.

    Daimon and Aisha sat in one of the rows in the middle of the ssroom, as they upied their seats, the door opened and everyone''s attention was drawn by the one that entered, a young-looking white-haired girl with red eyes, normally they wouldn''t have focused on her but the fact that she took the seat of the teacher was enough to make her stand.<sub> </sub>

    Just as the girl was about to spoke the door opened again, this time Alexander entered followed by the other two guys from the Jolbaris family, his unsightly expression made obvious for everyone that he wasn''t having a good day.

    And his expression became even worse when he saw the girl that was upying the teacher''s seat, but he didn''t say anything, instead he limited to sit at the other corner of the room and hisckeys sat in the row right beside him.

    Now that all the current students were present, the girl spoke.

    "My name is Aliya Rubreum, I will be your main teacher for this year, my lessons will include story, magic theory, spell basics and potion brewing", as if talking too much took a toll on her, Aliya stopped for a moment, she coughed a couple of times before continuing.

    "Tutor Ogien told me you all registered as mages, so there won''t be too many physical activities here, although there is another ss which is magicbat, the one in charge of that is your tutor, besides that, you can take one optional ss from the list that is below the table of your seats, any questions?".

    Everyone already knew the distribution of the sses so there were no doubts about that, but Alexander seemed angry, he hit his table before saying.

    "Why is a normal person teaching magic¡­ if I''m not wrong this is the elite ss, so howe our teacher isn''t even mage?".

    Aliya sighed, she already expected this reaction, specially since she has only been teaching to third ranked students so far, so none of the ones with high status knew about the exceptional case of her as a "magicless teacher".

    Before things could het out hand, Boris entered room as if he was waiting for Alexander''s question.

    "Don''t worry about that miss Aliya", he said.

    Boris took a chair and sat in front of all everyone before saying.

    "What do you think is the main reason as to why this academy was created?".

    ¡­

    After a couple of seconds Aisha answered.

    "In simple terms¡­. survival".

    Boris smiled.

    "That''s right, everyone talks about the beauty of learning and improving the quality of life with magic technology, but all that is a lie, the reason as to why we strive to keep advancing in magic is because we want to survive".

    Boris stood up and walked all the way until he was in front of Alexander.

    "The peace you take as granted was earned through the sacrifices of a lot of people, the reason of the test you took while still being in the line yesterday was to teach you a lesson¡­ but it seems your skull is too thick".

    The atmosphere of the ssroom suddenly changed, everyone felt the oxygen getting thinner and the temperature rising, Boris ced his hand on Alexander''s shoulder and although visibly nothing happened, Daimon could hear a little cracking noise.

    While Alexander was unsessfully trying to get away, Boris continued with his exnation.

    "Do you see the red badge in her sleeve?", he said while pointing at Aliya''s right arm.

    "That is the medal given to a veteran who has been honorably discharged from duties due to uncurable wounds, let this be your second lesson, if I ever see any of you being disrespectful towards someone using that badge, I will personally beat some sense into you¡­ am I clear?".

    Silence remained in the room until Daimon spoke.

    "Old man, I get the point¡­ I suggest you to stop increasing the temperature, in case you forgot she doesn''t have a high quantity of mana to reinforce her body".

    Boris immediately stopped what he was doing, he turned to see Aliya which was sweating a bit, and he feigned ignorance of the fact that he got a bit too heated and ended up causing troubles for the same people he was talking about.

    He let go of Alexander and returned to his seat.

    "Ahem, you get the point¡­ anyway that remembers me, we still need to chose a representative for the elite ss, volunteers?".

    Daimon shook his head, "what a crazy old man", he thought.

 Chapter 65 The Members Of The Elite Class (Part 1)

    After waiting for a couple of seconds one of the three girls that are always together spoke.

    "Could you tell us, what are the responsibilities of the representative and what are its privileges?".

    Boris nodded.

    "The representative is the authority when I''m not here, of course that doesn''t mean he can do anything he wants, I will receive a report of his actions to deem if they were correct or not, it''s basically a preparation to be a leader¡­ and it will be the priority when ites to choose the one that will lead the ss in the inter-academic tournament".

    After Boris exnation, more people got interested in the position, the guy that got the third rank in the ss and of course Alexander too, but the same could be said of the girl that asked first.

    "I want to be the representative".

    "I''ve always leaded others, the best option is me!!".

    "Firste first served, chose me tutor Ogien".

    As if suddenly being the representative was the goal of their lives, the three of them postted themselves, which made Boris smile, he with a calm and firm tone said.

    "It sure brings joy to my heart to see the young generation having some good initiative, the representative will be Daimon".

    ¡­

    Not only those who asked to be the ss representative were speechless, Daimon who wasn''t even paying attention while he flirted with Aisha, was also in awe.

    "I refuse, I''m not interested in bing a babysitter", he said while looking at Boris.

    The old man had a cunning smile on his face when he exined.

    "Don''t jump to conclusions so easily, being the first ranked student makes you the representative anyway, besides if you chose to reject the position you would have to obey othersmands, are you okay with that?".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Luckily even if other bes the representative, I will just ignore him, I did the same when the opponent was an Archmage and a vice principal on top of that, so do you expect me to receive orders from someone I don''t respect? dream on".

    The girl who was the fifth ranked and the third ranked guy sat again, but Alexander gritted his teeth.

    "He doesn''t want the position, so why are you so adamant on giving it to him, that is nepotism!!!", he eximed.

    Boris had a weird smile on his face.

    "So, what, what are you going to do Alexander, are you perhaps going to use with the vice principal which is your uncle¡­ like yesterday when your petition was rejected?".

    While Alexander froze in the spot, Borisughed out loud.

    "Being a leader is not something that can be "assigned", its something you are born with, a moment ago, when the temperature of the room rose up, the only one that spoke on behalf miss Aliya was Daimon¡­ you allck conscience of your surroundings which a must for someone that leads".

    The old man turned to see Daimon and threw a note at him, when Daimon saw the message written on it, he mentally sighed.

    "If things are like this I ept, but I won''t be responsible for those three", said Daimon while pointing at Alexander and hisckeys.

    Borisughed.

    "No worries, to be honest your only duty for the time being is making sure that no one causes troubles to your teacher¡­ for obvious reasons".

    Daimon felt exasperated, "just assign a bodyguard for her, I''m a student you know?", he thought, but there was no point inining, the note he got was written by Aura, being the ss representative will have a deeper meaning this particr year, so she wanted Daimon to get the position no matter what.

    Boris pped.

    "Well, that finishes my part for the time being, once your ssroom lessons are over, miss Aliya will take you to the training grounds for the magicbat lessons, I look forward to see everyone''s performance hahaha".<sub> </sub>

    After saying that Boris left the ssroom, not without reminding Daimon he was allowed to respond in the way he considered optimal, in case of any "trouble", basically he could act first and reportter.

    Now that Boris was gone, Aliya took over again, this was the first ss of the whole year, and apparently the first activity is always the same no matter in which ne of existence you live¡­ presenting yourself to your ssmates.

    Aliya drank the liquid from a little crystal bottle she had hanging on her belt, her expression which was a kind of lethargic got a bit better, she then spoke.

    "As I was saying, I''m Aliya Rubreum and I will be your teacher for this year, since you already heard my story from tutor Ogien, then present yourselves, from the lowest ranked to the highest ranked¡­ but don''t get mad if I forget your names, I''m quite terrible at things like that".

    This time Daimon did pay attention, if Aura wanted him to be the representative, so much that she personally sent him a note instead of leaving it to his criterium, then it was not going to be as simple as just ying to be the ss president like back on earth, so if he had to do it anyway, then he might as well be distinguished instead of mediocre.

    The tenth ranked guy stood from his seat and spoke.

    "My name is Calvin Ghrish, I''m 23 years old and Ie from the dessert coyote n, my affinity is earth, I''m currently the tenth rank and¡­ I''m single hahaha".

    Calvin was a tall brown-haired man with slight signs of a beard, unlike others who were wearing more modern like clothes he was using a mix between leather and metal armor and a robe.

    Leaving aside the fact that the guy seemed like an airhead, Daimon was confused by the fact that Calvin didn''t have animal characteristics, but since it was not his problem then he ignored it.

    Following with the presentation the two ckeys" of Alexander continued.

    "My name is Jason Jolbaris, I''m 18 years old, my affinity is wind, I''m the ninth rank and Ie from a secondary branch of the Jolbaris family".

    Jason was like other members of the Jolbaris family, tiger characteristics like the ears and tail, unlike alexander his hair wasn''t orange but dark brown, a sign that he wasn''t part of the main family.

    Daimon smirked, "well next is misterckey number two I guess", he thought.

    After Jason finished his presentation, the other member of the Jolbaris family took over, unlike the previous one, this was less talkative.

    "Daniel Jolbaris, 20 years old, affinity water¡­ I''m the eight rank and like Jason Ie from a branch of the Jolbaris family".

    Unlike Jason, Daniel''s hair was a mix between brown and orange so he did have blood from the main family, from his father probably, but unfortunately his affinity wasn''t lightning

    The next in line was one of the three girls.

    "My name is Leslie Risha, I''m 14 years old, ranked seventh, my affinity is fire and Ie from one of the three main branches of the Risha family, the Fire Crane n!!!".

    Contrary to what Daimon knew about the Risha family, the girl that present just now didn''t have any bird characteristics¡­ at least not visibly, some races manifested changester when they reached certain realms, when their mana manifested or even when their mood changed.

    "Well, she for sure is quite energetic", thought Daimon.

    She had a slender agile figure which did make her look like an elegant delicate bird, her hair was light brown with a reddish tone that reminded Daimon the color of leaves in autumn.

    A momentter everyone understood why those three girls were always together despite the fact that they didn''t look alike, the next girl stood and presented herself, unlike Leslie she was more on the gloomy side.

    "My name is¡­ Yvonne Risha, I''m 15 years old, I upy the sixth rank, my affinity is darkness and I''m also a part of the Risha family like Leslie, but Ie from the Night Sparrow n".

    Yvonne was a tall girl with long ck hair, she had slight bags under her eyes, and was wearing ck clothes, she looked a bit depressed.

    Thest girl of the group which was also the one that tried to postte for the ss representative position earlier, stood up and spoke.

    "Liliana Risha, I''m 14 years old, my affinity is ice, I upy the fifth rank¡­ for now, I''m also from one of the three main ns of the Risha family like Leslie and Yvonne, but Ie from the Snow Eagle n".

    Liliana had long white hair and her eyes had a strange color between ash and blue, she wasn''t as tall as Yvonne, but even when she was the same age as Leslie, she looked older than her.

    Daimon was amused by her words, when she said that she was only temporarily the fifth ranked, she directed a sharp gaze at Alexander which clearly meant she was aiming for his spot.

    "Well, he deserves it for being an asshole¡­ the guy from the Risha family that tried to mess with me was somehow rted to him after all", he thought.

 Chapter 66 The Members Of The Elite Class (Part 2)

    The next one was Alexander, but to be honest he has mentioned he is the young master of the Jolbaris family enough times that everyone knew it already, still he stood up from his seat and spoke in a proudly tone.

    "I''m Alexander Jolbaris, as of right now I''m 15 years old, my affinity is lightning but not a normal one, but the beast lightning of the storm tiger, a sign that Ie from the main lineage of the Jolbaris family, the strongest in the whole beast faction".

    Alexander was tall, he had orange hair with some white stripes, ears and tail like the ones of a tiger.

    Daimon smirked, "looks like he loves the sound of his own voice", he thought before saying.

    "With all the useless information you added, you forgot to mention you are the fourth ranked".

    ¡­

    Alexander gritted his teeth but the lingering scorching sensation that the exposition to Boris''s mana on the area of his shoulder made him calm down, he silently sat back for the next one to present himself.

    This time the guy that stole the third rank stood up; his voice was a bit hoarse, quite different from the past one when heughed at Alexander in the wee party.

    <o>,m "My name is Mikael Lockstar, I''m 14 years old, my affinities are fire¡­ and wind, I hold the third rank, as for the family I never got to know them but a gentle old couple raised me".</o>

    Mikael had blue hair, he was a bit skinny and maybe because he was on the young range of students, but out of all the members of the elite ss he was the shortest one.

    Needless to say, but everyone was quite surprised, first Mikael had a dual element affinity, which by itself is surprising enough and second, he managed to surpass Alexander in the entrance tests while not being a noble.

    Although at this point it was hard to find someone that didn''t know the pair of "siblings" that came from the Revy n, the show must go on, so Aisha stood up and presented herself.

    "My name is Aisha Licht, I''m 22 years old, my affinities are lightning and metal, I upy the second rank and Ie from the Revy family".

    Long silver hair, amethyst-colored eyes, a voluptuous yet elegant figure, her skin was pale but not to the point where it would be considered unhealthy, instead it was the smooth jade like tone of a noble youngdy.

    Finally, it was Daimon''s turn, once Aisha sat down again, he stood up and took over.

    "I''m Daimon Licht, 13 years old, my affinities are darkness and lightning, I''m the first ranked as everyone know, and just like my sister I alsoe from the Revy family".

    Unlike Aisha, Daimon did change his hair color to a deep ck one, but his eyes kept having the same purple tone as his mother, he was quite tall reaching 1.7 meters and his body constitution was athletic but not bulky, in Aura''s words it was as if his muscles were perfectlypressed to surpass any strength limit.

    Now that the presentations were over, Aliya could finally start with her lessons, it was only the first day, so she nned to start with the basics.

    She went to the chalkboard and drew a model of a normal magic core, basically a sphere, but unlike the previous exnation given by Aisha so many years ago in that cave when Daimon absorbed mana for the first time, this design had little spots with the shape of stars.

    Aliya pointed at her draw before exining.

    "Since you are all at the one-star mage real at least, we''ll start at this point, when a magic core reaches a certain contention capacity it forms a star shaped spot, this little spot allows its owner to reduce the casting time and tounch spells continuously, in other words it''s when a novice mage bes a one-star mage".

    Daimon was hoping to listen to a different exnation, his magic core wasn''t exactly normal, because his magic core didn''t develop the star shaped spots akin to a star ranked mage, instead his magic core literally created small copies of itself which orbited the main one, so far there was only one of them since he was a one-star mage.

    Jason was going to directly interrupt Aliya, but he felt Daimon''s gaze piercing him so instead of that, he properly rose his hand to ask the teacher something.

    "Teacher¡­ why are we seeing such basic things, everyone here already knows that, isn''t it a waste of time?".

    Aliya smiled.

    "The young generation of nowadays underestimate the power of knowledge, tell me, if you were in a hopeless situation where your options are dying in battle or being captured and suffer a destiny worse than death, what would you do?".<sub> </sub>

    Alexander answered instead of Jason.

    "An honorable death is something to be proud, only cowards will choose to be captured".

    Aliya shook her head, she stood up from her seat and her eyes glowed for a second before the projection of a magic core with eight stars and some slight cracks appeared floating in the middle of the room.

    "Dying isn''t something to be celebrated, the true victory lies in winning and returning alive to your home, if you knew as much about the star spots in your core as you think, then you wouldn''t have died in that situation, I who once used to be a middle stage mage lord managed to fight head on against an early stage Archmage which shouldn''t have appeared in a battlefield created for training purposes".

    "The stars spots are like small sections where mana is concentrated, refined and stored, only a mage with the perfect amount of control over its core has the ability to implode one of its stars, like when a dam breaks, the contents will violently flow out of it¡­ this is not a forbidden spell as using it won''t directly kill you, it''s a technique called "temporal booster", something created and reserved for the elite of the beast faction".

    Aliya coughed a couple of times and the projection of her core disappeared; she drank a sip of the potion she had hanging on her belt before continuing.

    "The hot-blooded selfish idiots from the Jolbaris family never change¡­ the difference between a soldier and a general is the capacity to think and act depending on the situation, a war is not fought by only one man, when you are in a team your actions also harm others around you".

    Without anyone knowing, Boris was standing outside the ssroom with a wistful expression on his face.

    "That''s why this time I chose the leader more wisely than before, everyone learns from its mistakes, but learning it''s not the same as atoning for them, but who knows, a kid which can make both the strongest and the most cunning women in the whole ster chart, stand at his side¡­ can basically achieve anything".

    This time no matter how much thick skulled was Alexander or hisckeys, they had no way to refuse Aliya''s lesson, so they just shut their mouths and let her continue with the ss.

    "As I was saying, the star spots in a magic core are developed with the purpose of gathering, refining and storing mana at a higher ratio, the more you advance the more changes your magic core will go through, but for now let''s focus in exploring all the potential of the star ranks".

    Unlike Daimon who wasn''t too interested in this technique, Aisha was paying all her attention to the ss, as a vampire she didn''t know of this technique so this was apletely new kind of knowledge, something she totally loved.

    Daimon felt his mother hugging his arm tighter and he was amused by her reaction, "for someone who was more focused in battle, she for sure enjoys theory quite a bit", he thought.

    The first ss finished after almost one hour of theoretical knowledge about magic cores and the star spots, unfortunately nothing Aliya mentioned matched Daimon''s situation but that was something to be expected, even he couldn''t control his magic core as he pleased.

    "Stupid magic core¡­ with the mana gathering ratio I have, at this point I could have reached at least the second star mage realm"

    Narasha who was also "attending" to the school with him, answered.

    "I''m grateful to your abnormal magic core though¡­ if it weren''t for that you wouldn''t have advanced that much in the knight path, and without that I wouldn''t be able to be your battle partner".

    Daimon nodded, although his magic core was for some reason preventing him from advancing on the mage path, the body constitution that came along with it was different, luckily the bracelet of the god of mischief could trick the orb of truth, or the result the screen would have shown would have been quite different.

    Aliya looked at her watch and decided to finish her ssroom lessons, the elite ss was essentially a team for the inter-academic tournament, the first step to create a team is that their members were aware of their characteristics, affinities etc.

    And the second step would be to see their fighting styles, that''s why Boris entered the room and with a grim spoke.

    "Now my favorite time of the day, let''s go to the training grounds for the magicbat ss¡­ miss Aliya pleasee, I will be arbitrating so I need you to take the notes".

    Aliya sighed, she was nning to use that time to study magic herbs but to be honest, her old battle instincts were aching to see how those who were acimed as the "elite" fight.

    "Fine, I will also go, I''m their teacher after all".

    Boris nodded and left followed by the whole ss, seeing the training grounds appearing in his field of vision made Daimon remember that time when Erin brought him to spy on the other girls of the Revy family.

    "I guess this time I can''tin about my childhood", he thought.

 Chapter 67 Combat Lessons (Part 1)

    With Boris as their guide, the elite ss arrived at the training grounds, the facilities were shared by all the sses so they could see other students with their respective teachers, normally the elite ss has its own private ce to train, but Boris took them to a public ring so others could see what was about to happen.

    Boris pped to draw his student''s attention.

    "The best way to get to know each other is a good fight, so for your first lesson you will form pairs and fight against each other, magic that directly hits your opponent is forbidden¡­ needless to say but any try to cause a lethal wound will be rewarded with me beating the crap out of the perpetrator".

    "Do you have an opponent in mind, or do you want me to do the pairs?".

    Since Boris didn''t bother to speak in a low tone, many students from other sses gathered near them.

    The only one that rose his hand to ask for a specific match was Alexander, something everyone expected, unfortunately for him Boris ignored him, since it was more than obvious who he was aiming for.

    "Tutor¡­ I know you have your favorites but at the very least, let me choose my opponent!!!", eximed Alexander, since a lot of people was now witnessing the situation, he decided to y the "victim" role.

    Boris snorted.

    "Jolbaris brat, let''s make a deal, if you can beat the person that is directly in front of you in the ranking, then you can choose your next opponent¡­ but if you lose as miserably as I believe you are going to lose then you will shut your mouth and follow the instructions given by your teacher for the rest of the year, do you ept?".

    ¡­

    Alexander was perplexed, Boris literally gave him the chance he wanted, so he immediately nodded.

    "Deal".

    Aliya who was observing the whole situation shook her head, "what a fool, he didn''t even stop to think in twice¡­ as expected of a Jolbaris I guess", she thought.

    The first match was already set, Alexander against Mikael, they both went up the tform and distanced from each other, the conditions for the win were quite basic, either knock the opponent out of the tform of make him surrender, no lethal attacks, no magic devices or magic weapons andstly no direct hitting spells.

    Boris gave the green light and the match started, Alexander immediately charged at Mikael, as a member of the Jolbaris family he was quite confident on his physical strength, there was no rule against him using his ws so he decided to focus on that since casting a spell which couldn''t directly damage his opponent was a waste of time on his mind.

    The crowd that was watching the fight was fascinated seeing the famous tiger ws of the Jolbaris family appearing on Alexander''s fingers.

    *sh*

    The whistling sound of wind being teared apart by the quick movement of something sharp, made clear to everyone that Alexander''s ws were quite dangerous, but while others were surprised, Mikael just slightly moved sidewards to avoid the attacks.

    Aliya who was writing some observations in a little notebook suddenly stopped, although she now wasn''t on duty anymore, she had her fair share of experience inbat, so with that little exchange she already decided that¡­ Alexander was going to lose.

    And just like she predicted, Alexander tried tond a hit on his opponent only to be easily avoided by Mikael''s footwork, of course it was not only a physical achievement, while Alexander approached him, Mikel used a wind element spell to augment his agility.

    The exchange continued by a couple of minutes, without Alexander noticing he was led by Mikael to the border of the tform, he was frustrated because no matter how much he tried he didn''t manage to hit Mikael.

    Normally he would have overwhelmed his enemy with continuous lightning discharges, unfortunately that wasn''t allowed and since they started exchanging blows Mikael has been interrupting him every time, he tried to cast an elerating spell.

    Without stopping his assault Alexander shouted in a try to take Mikael by surprise.

    "Is avoiding the only thing the man that got a rank above me can do!!!".

    Mikael snorted, his image suddenly shed and then Alexander fell sidewards, of course he wasn''t that much of a fool, if he were topletely fall then the result of the fight will be set in stone, so he used his hand to impulse himself in a try to get back on his feet.

    "Gahhhh".

    As soon as his hand touched the floor of the tform Alexander screamed, he felt as if his skin was melting due the scorching high temperature, of course his body reacted on its own by trying to distance itself from the source of pain which ultimately made his try to get up fail miserably.

    *Thud*

    A dull sound echoed through the whole area which now waspletely in silence, Mikael kicked Alexander on his ribs with enough force to knock him out of the tform.

    "Young master!!!", it took Jason and Daniel a couple of seconds to process what just happened, once they reacted both ran at Alexander''s side, Daniel inspected his young master''s hand, besides some bleeding the outeryer of his skin waspletely scorched, but that was all, the kick he took to the ribs didn''t affect him at all.

    Boris indifferent voice drew everyone''s attention.

    "The winner is Mikael, miss Aliya please share your observations with us".

    Aliya nodded.<sub> </sub>

    "Starting with the loser, his fighting style is full of ws, thoseme shing attacks for example didn''t have even the slightest trace of technique, he wasted too much energy on making unnecessary movements, but the mistake which made him lose was that he didn''t used a spell before recklessly charging towards Mikael".

    Boris pped, he turned to see the rest of the students of the elite ss before saying.

    "You are mages, not knights, for mages preparations are a must, think what would your opponent do and anticipate that, your first movement can decide whether you die or win¡­ of course if you are strong enough ns and schemes mean nothing, but the people that can affirm that have reached that point can be counted with the fingers of one hand, so I suggest you to stick yourselves to preparations".

    The old man threw a little bottle at Daniel.

    "Made that brat drink it, it''s a special healing potion with an anesthetic effect, its price will be charged to him at the end of the moth, of course he can refuse to drink it and go to the infirmary if he can withstand the pain".

    Alexander gritted his teeth, he couldn''t even think clear due to the pain he was feeling, so he took the potion from Daniel''s hand and gulped down in one go, after taking a couple of breaths he felt the pain finally going down, he stood up and shouted at Mikael.

    "What the hell did you do, those weren''t normal mes, there is no way I who have a superior body constitution will suffer so much without a direct exposition to fire!!!".

    Mikael shook his head.

    "My elements are fire and wind, needless to say but wind helps fire grow stronger¡­ however that "superior body" constitution was what made you suffer that much pain, a direct exposition to my fire wouldn''t have caused you that much damage, but with enough heat your outer skin stuck to the floor and when you used all your strength to impulse yourself, you basically teared it apart".

    Many people in the crowd frowned their eyebrows, that sounded quite painful but still one would think that such a high-status person like the young master of the "strongest" family within the beast faction would be able to tolerate that much without losing his cool.

    Among the elite ss students, Liliana was impressed by Mikael''s methods, he nned everything since the fight started, Calvinughed while he waves his hands as if he was mocking Alexander for not being able to withstand just a small non-lethal wound.

    Alexander saw many of the spectators giving him disdaining gazes and he felt insulted, without saying anything he left the training grounds followed by hisckeys.

    Boris shook his head.

    "Well, since the Jolbaris family retired from our lesson, let''s continue, the next match will be Calvin against Liliana, any objections?".

    Calvin sighed, e on tutor Ogien, I''m striving to get a girlfriend and you make me fight a girl which is five ranks above me¡­ and with ice attribute on top of that", he thought.

    Still, none of them said anything, they went up the tform and waited for the green light.

    Boris nodded and with that the second match started.

    This time both of them prepared something beforehand, but no one but them knew what it was, they weren''t part of the elite ss for nothing, so most of them have learnt to use non chant casting in at least one spell.

    Calvin wanted to finish as soon as possible so he tried to make the area below Liliana quake to make her lose her bnce but nothing happened, on a closer look he noticed that the floor below her feet waspletely covered in ice which made him sigh.

    Ice is a rare affinity for a good reason, with the correct amount of purity, ice can be as strong as steel and Liliana was a two-star ranked mage while Calvin was a peak one star, so there was a slight difference in the quality of the mana that their mafic cores refined, resulting in the current situation.

    Of course, if Calvin was allowed to create spikes to directly attack Liliana, things would be different but unfortunately for him that wasn''t the case, as Liliana was preparing to make her move Calvin shouted.

    "Time out, I give up".

    ¡­

    "Huh?".

    Even Boris was surprised by the result, the reason as to why he matched Calvin with who in his mind was the fourth ranked in the ss, was because he felt that Calvin was hiding his true abilities.

    "What the hell do you mean with "I give up", brat?", shouted Boris.

    Calvin shamelessly smiled.

    "Who in their right mind would want to get his handed by a girl, besides my fighting style depends on attacking with lethal force¡­ a bad habit which I''m aware of, so I retire from this fight".

    Boris felt a vein popping on his neck, but there was so much he could do.

    "Fine¡­ the winner is Liliana, Calvin you and I will have a nice chatter".

    Calvin almost tripped when he was going down the tform, "god damn I wanted to go look for a cute girl and now I have to spend my free time with an old man¡­ sigh what bad day", he thought.

 Chapter 68 Combat Lessons (Part2)

    Boris was doing his best to not choke Calvin with his own hands, "people from every ss is looking, where am I going to put my face after this", he thought.

    "Miss Aliya¡­ your observations before we got to the next match".

    Aliya nodded.

    "It was a decent exchange of spells, while Calvin aimed to interrupt the bnce of the opponent, Liliana made sure to secure her area of movement considering that her opponent was an earth element mage, although I don''t understand why someone whoes from the Ghrish family didn''t use sand to confuse others instead of directly confronting its enemy".

    Calvin''s eyes widened a bit, he tried to run away from the training grounds only to be captured by Boris a secondter.

    "Brat, you dare to lie me¡­ I will give you a "special" training routine only for you, I hope you don''t have ns for your weekends for the next six months", said Boris with a sinister grin on his face.

    Leaving aside Calvin''s future suffering, the next match was announced, Aisha against Leslie, Daimon shook his head feeling a bit bad for Leslie, even he would find hard to win against his mother in a confrontation without any direct hitting spells.

    He might be physically stronger, but Aisha had more experience in battle than him, although Aura trained him, Aisha didn''t pass the past eight yearszing around, she also practiced a lot in order to get used to her new body.

    Both girls went up the tform and stood at a distance from each other, with a gesture from Boris the match started.

    Orange mes covered Leslie''s body and her surrounding area, the rule was to not use spells that directly hit the opponent but she was using her mes to envelop herself, so Aisha will have to be careful when she attacked her.

    Or at least that was her idea, unfortunately for her, Aisha had her own trick, as a metal element mage she always wore a couple of essories, which had double functions, first it was a part of her look and second¡­ they were excellent conductors of electricity.

    The characteristic humming noise made by electricity echoed through the area, Aisha''s body was covered in purple electric streams which made her look like the goddess of lightning, with a little tap Aisha disappeared from where she was standing.

    Leslie tried to track Aisha''s position following the little exploding sounds that were created each time she took a step on the tform, but by the time she reacted Aisha was already grabbing her neck with her hands.

    Of course, she lowered the intensity of her lightnings to not hurt Leslie, but the exposition to electricity numbed her nerves which signaled the end of the match.

    Leslie sighed, she rose her hands and gave up.

    "I concede¡­ next time let me fight against that Alexander guy, so I can consider myself the fourth ranked for some time before sis Liliana officially gets that pce hehehe".

    Some of the students from other ssesughed, with the exception of those who came from the Jolbaris family of course.

    Some of them even started yelling some provocations at the ring.

    "It seems like the Risha family who doesn''t even have a half emperor suddenly became quite bold, I wonder if they need a little reminding of who is the real ruler of the beast faction!!!".

    And things like that could be hearding from students not only from the Jolbaris family, but all those who worked for them.

    The Risha family was among on its core neutral, although some have started to get close to Arthur Jolbaris, the leaders have stated that they would not meddle into the disputes of the three big families, (Argent, Revy and Jolbaris).

    There was only one match left, so Daimon and Yvonne went up the tform but before Boris could tell them to start, Daimon snapped his fingers and all the noisy people in the crowd fell to the ground, some of them had blooding from their mouths or even their eyes.

    Those who were rted to the ones that got affected tried to help them stand up but no matter how much they pulled they couldn''t move their friends, so they had no option but to resort to words.

    "Hey, why are you attacking our friends, they haven''t done anything?", they asked.

    Daimon smirked.

    "As the representative of both the Revy and Argent matriarchs, I can''t allow the Jolbaris family and theirckeys to call themselves the "ruler or the beast faction", in my face, or at least that''s the excuse¡­ but personally I did it because their yells were bothering me".

    His sharp gaze fell on all the presents before he continued.

    "Do any of you has a problem with that?".

    ¡­

    Silence, no one dared to speak, "what a joke he destroyed two four-star mages with just one attack", it''s what was in everyone''s mind, and it''s also what was making all of them swallow theirins.

    Borisughed.

    "Well said Kid, the elite ss is the top of the food chain, if you can''t even control those who will be working for you in the future then, how can the academy expect you tomand troops if the need arises".<sub> </sub>

    Although it would seem like Daimon was being a tyrant, that was his purpose, on these past years with the help of the girls, he found a way to ovee the memory of Aisha dying in front of him¡­ he just has to be the strongest.

    If that is not achievable for the time being, then he will make others fear him, to the point where the sole thought of Daimon pointing his sword at them will make them tremble, so that they won''t ever think on trying to harm his precious family ever gain, so that another situation like the one that happened with the Naktis won''t ever happen again.

    Evangeline who was watching the whole show,ughed seeing Daimon being so dominant.

    "That''s how it should be, how can a weakling be my master¡­ train, fight and keep on advancing, there will be a day where your sole presence will make the heavens themselves tremble", she thought.

    Boris made sure that none of the guys that have fainted at this point had any severe wounds, and that was not the case.

    "Whatever that kid did, it was perfectly calcted to make them miserable without causing a long-term wound¡­ I wonder how many "test subjects", he had to destroy in order to get this much control over this particr spell", thought Boris.

    Leaving that aside, the final match started, contrary to what Daimon expected Yvonne didn''t move nor she used her darkness element like Leslie, she just stood there which allowed him to look her face to face.

    Yvonne had long ck hair, although she wasn''t as curvy as Aisha, she had a well-developed figure for her age, something he didn''t notice before was that her eye color seemed to change from time to time, from a light brown to a yellowish tone, the slight bags under her eyes were barely noticeable and they didn''t make her look bad, at most it added an extra charm to her.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt something trying to enter his mind and he didn''t bother to resist.

    A couple of secondster the whole scenery changed, instead of the tform where they were previously standing, they now were now on top of a volcano, Daimon came out of his daze when he heard Yvonne''s voice exining.

    "I don''t stand a chance against you on the real world¡­ but this is my yground, let''s see if your mind is as strong as your body".

    Daimon had a weird smile on his face, unlike on the outside where Yvonne was wearing a skirt and a white shirt, here she had a weird hat which reminded him to the one a witch wears, but that was not what caught his attention but the fact that she mentioned something about his body being quite strong.

    "I wonder why do you suppose that my body is strong?".

    Yvonne shook her head.

    "You probably already noticed, but my eyes are special, I can more or less see the flow of mana within other people bodies, while I have seen some people that have a strong flow of it, like knights¡­ yours is on apletely different level, it''s more like a devastating tsunami than just a strong flow, so it''s only logic to think that your physical body must be incredibly tough to resist something like that".

    Daimon was actually surprised, his knight realm was hidden due to the bracelet of the god of mischief, so the amount of mana that others could see "circting" through his body, was limited to what he wanted to show, but even then, his natural flow of mana was not the same as others, not that it mattered since others would only consider him quite talented which was already a thing since he didn''t bother to hide his darkness and lightning affinities.

    Yvonne seemed to be quite wary of him, since Daimon saw that she didn''t try attack him, they just exchanged gazes for a couple of minutes, until he decided to break the silence.

    "If you aren''t going to attack, then tell me how time works on the outside, how much time has passedpared to the five minutes you have been staring at me?".

    Yvonne shrugged.

    "You can''t me me for that, I have been trying to see what scares you¡­ but I can''t see it no matter how much I try, luckily the time flows ten times slower here, so while we have been here for five minutes on the real world it has only been thirty seconds".

    Daimon smiled.

    "You taught me something new, so let me give you something in exchange¡­ I can see those ghastly things that are haunting you, so let me get rid of them".

    Yvonne''s eyes widened, for the first time Daimon saw her lose her cool.

    "You can also see them!!!", she eximed in a surprised voice.

    Daimon nodded before adding.

    "Yes, because I have seen them attacking others before¡­ but the ones around you are quite different to the ones I know, I wonder what the hell did you do to make them so angry?".

    On the real-world Daimon didn''t notice them, but now that they were in this illusion created by Yvonne, he was able to see some creatures that were trying to harm her mind, they were simr to the nightmare dwellers that attacked Aisha so many years ago, but unlike that time these ones did have a form.

    They looked like hundreds of skeletons burning in a purple me which were revolting around her, Daimon extended his hand at the sky and on his mind, he shouted, "Myalo".

    The next thing Yvonne saw was that the whole world illuminated which forced her to close her eyes.

    "Well, turns out he does have a spell to affects the mind", was thest thing she thought, before the illusion world cracked.

 Chapter 69 Friendly Meal Time

    While on the illusion world the scene was quite epic, on the outside people just saw both Daimon and Yvonne closing their eyes and standing still for almost one minute until something finally happened.

    Daimon opened his eyes while Yvonne rubbed her face a couple of times, although she felt like her head was splitting, she had a smiling expression which surprised Leslie and Liliana.

    "Thanks¡­ I don''t know how you did it but it means a lot for me", said Yvonne before leaving the tform to reunite with her friends.

    Boris had no clue of what happened but considering all the surprised Daimon has given him, he just felt the girl from the Risha family using some kind of mind spell and then a minuteter, he saw arge amount of mana gathering near Daimon before they both woke up.

    "The winner is Daimon¡­ well omit the observations for this one, it''s time for your lunch break so go eat at the restaurant of the academy, you have one hour and then return to the 1S ssroom got it?".

    Everyone nodded and they dismissed, while the students followed Boris''s suggestion, he and Aliya went to the teachers exclusive dining room.

    As they were walking to the restaurant, Aishaughed.

    "So how was it, did Myalo worked as intended in that mind illusion, darling?".

    Daimon nodded, Myalo was a spell which needed the caster to have metal affinity, luckily, he wasn''t limited in that aspect like other people, up to this day he could use skills rted to a variety of different elements, that''s how he managed to learn the original spell of his mother.

    "Yes, it worked as it was supposed I used the purifying property of mithril to get rid of the both the illusion and an unexpected problem, the only problem is that for it to affect at a spiritual level, it requires a big amount of mana, luckily the mana storing capacity of our cores is quite bigger than other people".

    Aisha agreed with her son, unlike when it was used it on the body, when Myalo was used on the spirit, the amount of mana needed was incredibly higher, but it was also true that the magic cores of the soulmates improved after using their grimoires, they all evolved.

    Without noticing they arrived at the restaurant of the academy, it was quite crowded since it was every ss''s lunch break, practically all the tables were already upied, of course there was space for others to sit but it will be ufortable to eat with students from other sses.

    Luckily Daimon saw from the corner of his eyes a table which was distanced from others, it had a magic barrier around it with the symbol of the first ranked whichbined with the token of identity he was given by Boris.

    "I was going toin with that old man¡­ but it seems everything was calcted", he thought.

    Daimon took out his token and the barrier opened for him and Aisha to enter, the table was big enough for at least twenty people but of course Aisha sat right next to her son, unlike others who had to go and get their food on their own at a counter that was at the other side of the restaurant, there was a magic formation on Daimon''s table simr to the one that Erin used to order what she wanted to eat.

    All this was new for Aisha, back in her school days the academy for the vampire race was quite different, the beast faction Wild w academy fiercely encouraged their students topete with each other to get more "privileges".

    And the culmination of all that was the elite ss, they had a private ring, the first ranked had a private mansion within the academy grounds and he even had an exclusive table¡­ something that none of the other first year students had, including the other members of the elite ss.

    Speaking of the other members of the elite ss, the girls from the Risha family and Calvin tried to look for a table which wasn''t already upied but they didn''t find one, so Calvin shamelessly approached Daimon, of course he asked first since he saw what happened to the guy that interrupted his time with his sister, back at the wee party

    "Daimon, can you let me sit with you¡­ the table is quite big and I won''t bother you two, so what do you say bro?".

    To be honest Daimon was going to refuse but then he heard Yvonne also speaking.

    "Before you say that guy from the desert coyote family to fuck off, take into ount whose fault is it that the other sses hate us".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "I don''t know, probably Alexander, I just pointed my sword at those who tried to mess with me after all".

    Leslie also tried to convince Daimon.

    "Come on, food tastes better when you havepany!".

    "I already have a goodpany before you all came though", thought Daimon, but then Aisha took the initiative to invite the girls to sit with them.

    "You are right Leslie, you threee sit with me and my brother".

    "Thanks sis Aisha", said Leslie as she sat down in front of Aisha followed by Yvonne and Liliana.

    Calvin on the other hand wasn''t included in Aisha''s invitation so he just stood there until Daimon opened the barrier for him to enter.

    "I knew you had aprehensive heart bro; you aren''t the first rank for nothing hahaha".

    Ignoring Calvin''s shameless words, they all ordered what they wanted, unlike the other students the table reserved for the first ranked had magic formations so after a couple of minutes the dishes appeared in front of each respective person.<sub> </sub>

    Without any dy everyone started to dig in, the matches made them use part of their mana reserves, for those below the Arch ranks gathering mana was a manual process but eating anything which contained mana was also a way to recover, in this case the food in front of them tasted even better than it would normally do, due to that.

    As they enjoyed their meal, Aisha noticed that while Yvonne made some slight conversation with Liliana, Leslie was having a hard time not talking, something she found amusing, apparently, the girl from the fire crane n, took Daimon''s threat quite seriously.

    Aisha knew what her son wanted to achieve, but still as his mother she wanted him to fully enjoy his time on the academy, just like she did so many years ago, making friends and things like that were also important experiences, so she decided to give him a little push.

    "Don''t take Daimon''s words too seriously, I invited you to eat with us so it''s not like he is going to attack you if you speak you know?".

    Leaving aside Daimon''s current weird expression, for Leslie It was a relieve, as she returned to her usual self, without them noticing everyone started participating on the conversation, the subject was the matches that Boris made them go through.

    Of course, the first one toin was Calvin.

    "That old man is unfair, first he made go against Liliana which is five or more urately six ranks above me, and just because I gave up now, I''m going to have "special sses", on weekends with him¡­ sigh I can see my dream of getting a cute girlfriend fading away".

    Everyone found quite funny all the "misfortunes" Calvin had to experience, Liliana even gave her opinion about it.

    "That''s in part your fault though, you should have fought seriously, but I''m also quite surprised that our teacher knew that much about the fighting style of your family", she said.

    Calvin shook his head.

    "I was reserving that for when someone hard to deal with challenged me to a duel, as a surprise, but miss Aliya gave me away in front of all the people from other sses so now I''m screwed".

    "I''m still amazed by sis Aisha''s speed, sure I''m only a peak one-star mage but still I didn''t have time to react before our match ended", said Leslie.

    Aisha smiled.

    "Lightning element mages who use a movement spell are hard to deal with in a short-rangebat, that Alexander guy would have had a slight chance to win against Mikael if he used his head for once".

    Even Yvonne who normally doesn''t talk too much, suddenly became more talkative.

    "On a serious side note, your brother is a monster Aisha, I was quite confident on my illusion spell since most guys are muscle heads like Calvin, but not only I couldn''t properly affect him with it, but he broke the spell quite easily too".

    Calvin nearly choked with his food.

    "Oi, why the discrimination, I get the insult while Daimon gets thepliment, that''s not fair".

    This time even Daimonughed, he noticed what his mother was trying to do, "on my past life I wasn''t able to make friends due to my circumstances¡­ I guess it won''t hurt trying, I''m going to have to deal with them for quite some time anyway", he thought.

    Now that he decided to try and see what happens, he also participated on the conversation.

    "Speaking of that Yvonne, I''m also a bit curious about how did you make those things be so angry with you?".

    Yvonne smiled; all this time Daimon was only listening but not saying anything so she took this as a little victory, she answered while sheughed.

    "So, you aren''t a decorative statue, those weren''t "real" nightmare dwellers, it was a punishment curse casted by¡­ someone of my family, so thanks for that, tonight I''m going to have a good rest for the first time in a couple of months".

    Both Liliana and Leslie were surprised, they knew about their friend''s situation but supposedly, only the one that casted the spell or other member of the Night Sparrow n with the same realm could dispel the curse that has been tormenting Yvonne for quite some time.

    Leslie hugged her friend; she was truly happy for Yvonne.

    "That''s amazing Yvi, that punishment was unfair".

    Daimon had grin on his face.

    "Whoever did the curse it''s going to have a fun sleeping time tonight hahaha".

    Yvonne alsoughed imagining the one that casted the curse getting a taste of its own punishment, curses were powerful spells but most of them have big drawbacks when they are countered.

 Chapter 70 Changes In The Elite Class

    Aisha was happy to see Daimon socializing, although as a lover she enjoyed being the focus of his attention, as a mother she wanted her son to enjoy his life at school as much as possible.

    The restaurant had many floors, each one was destined to different grade and above the student''s floors there was one exclusive to teachers, prefects and other important staff of the academy.

    In one of the tables Aliya was waiting for her food, many other teachers were looking at her, while most of the gazes were full of disdain, some others were of sympathy, still she ignored every one of them.

    Boris approached her table with two different dishes on his hands, he ced one on her side of the table and the other one was for him.

    Aliya smiled.

    "Thanks uncle Boris¡­ but I''m not too hungry".

    Boris shook his head.

    "Lass, I was there the day you were born, if there is someone in this world who you can''t lie to, that is me¡­ how is your magic core, has your investigation progressed?".

    Aliya sighed, she started eating the food on her te before answering.

    "Not too much, I improved the potion but I''m not recovering, although now I''m able to use some spells again, the most the potion does is keeping me on a stable condition".

    Boris nodded.

    "Some improve is better than nothing, before you couldn''t use any magic which didn''t let me sleep at night¡­ I''m not always near you after all".

    Aliya smiled.

    "Uncle, this is the wild w academy, if I''m not safe here, then there is no safe ce for me in the whole white fang gxy¡­ speaking of that, why did you ask that kid from the Revy family to act as my bodyguard?".

    Borisughed before hitting the table.

    "Because in this academy, there is no one who would dare to act against him, at least not on the surface hahaha".

    Boris''s thunderousugh drew other''s attention, especially the attention of the ss A tutor.

    "Oi Ogien, can you shut up, there are other people eating here¡­ it''s already bad enough for you to bring someone who can''t properly use magic to the teacher''s floor!!!".

    Boris snorted.

    "No one is missing anything from life by not listening to your voice "tutor Syrus", besides you are just mad because two of those pieces of trash you call students got their asses handed by the little monster of my ss".

    Syrus stood from his table which made Boris do the same, they walked until they were a couple of steps away.

    Aliya sighed.

    "These two have always been fighting for every little thing", she thought.

    Luckily their fight was interrupted by the arrival of the vice principals, one of them was the girl from snow leopard n and the other was the guy from the Jolbaris family which had a slight disagreement with Daimon before.

    "Can''t you stop fighting for one day?", asked the girl from the snow leopard n.

    Boris shrugged.

    "He is the one that provoked me¡­ vice principal Leeris".

    Before the girl could answer, the vice principal from the Jolbaris family interrupted.

    "Tutor Ogien, I got ain due to your attitude towards your students, do you have anything to say?".

    Boris smiled.

    "My attitude you say¡­ vice principal Nics Jolbaris, that little nephew of yours sure likes to lie on a daily basis, so what are you using me of this time, favoritism?".

    Nics frowned his eyebrows.

    "What''s up with that tone, this time there were witnesses so it''s not "my usation", but one made by a variety of people".<sub> </sub>

    "My tone? You might be a vice principal but I''m a middle stage Archmage, if someone needs to watch his tone that would be you, leaving that aside what the hell do you want from me, I''m not going to tter that arrogant brat from your family just because his daddy is a half emperor".

    ¡­

    The vice principal surnamed Leeris saw that things were getting out of hands so she interfered.

    "Ahem, the vice principals and the principal reached an agreement¡­ the elite ss will be divided in two sections each one will be conformed of fifteen students, tutor Ogien will keep being in charge of his ss, but the other section will be in charge of tutor Syrus, I will deliver the details to you and teacher Aliya tomorrow".

    "Alexander will be transferred to the other section, so from now and onwards tutor Ogien please refrain from giving him any of "lessons"", added Nics.

    Boris had a disdainful expression on his face.

    "I have no problems with that, he wasn''t going to be able to keep the pace of my ss anyway, I''m pretty sure he will fit quite good in that "lower elite ss" hahaha".

    Both Syrus and Nics gave Boris a poisonous gaze, but they decided to ignore his provocations and just sat down in a separate table.

    Boris also sat down in front of Aliya; he had a grin on his face as he continued eating his food.

    "Uncle you look like a viin with that sinister expression you know?", said Aliya.

    Boris feigned ignorance.

    "I''m happy, because now that the nuisance is gone, both you and me will have it easier".

    Aliya nodded.

    "He''s got a point, the rest of the ss doesn''t seem to have a problem with the representative so it will be easier for them to act as a team", she thought.

    The rest of the lunch break went on without any problems for both students and teachers, the elite ss returned to their ssroom and waited for Aliya to return.

    Now that they weren''t justplete strangers sitting in a room, they changed their seats to not be so distanced from each other, the girls from the Risha family sat in a row right next to Daimon and Aisha and Calvin chose a seat in front of Daimon, the only exception was Michael, since he didn''t appear on the restaurant, he was sitting in a corner at the backside of the ssroom.

    The door opened and they saw Aliya and Boris entering, Daimon noticed that the old man had a grin which he couldn''t hide no matter how much he tried and he had a weird premonition which was confirmed a couple of secondster.

    "I have good news for you all, the brats from the Jolbaris family aren''t part of this ss anymore".

    Daimon more or less expected something like that to happen, besides him, the only other new year student which was backed by a half emperor on the academy was Alexander, so it was obvious he wasn''t going to tolerate being below anyone".

    "Excuse my ignorance tutor Ogien, I know that Alexander guy really sucked in the previous ss¡­ but howe he was expulsed just due to that?", asked Calvin.

    Boris shook his head.

    "Unfortunately, he wasn''t expulsed from the academy, the elite ss was divided in two separated sections, this one will remain the same and the other one will be created around your former ssmates, we will have theplete details tomorrow but I guess you all can imagine what would happen right?".

    Yvonneughed.

    "Let me guess, we will nowpete to see who is the real elite ss, what a pain".

    Boris nodded.

    "Basically yes¡­ there are other things on going, but before anything I want to ask if anyone else wants to be transferred to the other ss, keep in mind that if you stay you agree to listening to miss Aliya''s teachings, attend to my lessons and being led by the ss representative", said Boris while looking at Calvin.

    Calvin cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, can''t we reduce my future weekend lessons to only Saturdays, I want to have at least one day of rest¡­ for personal reasons".

    p Borisughed.</anda>

    "I''m feeling quite happy right now, so I will go easy on you just this time, the Sunday will be your day off".

    Calvin let out a sigh of relief, at least he will have the Sunday to go skirt chasing¡­ or so he thought, if he knew what Boris had in storage for him, he wouldn''t have been so rxed, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 71 Potion Brewing Introduction

    Seeing that no one had any otherments, Boris nodded.

    "From now and onwards, the people that it''s present here isn''t just a ss, it''s a team, you will watch each other backs, winning or losing everything will be done as a team¡­ but if you lose, I''m going to kick your asses, so I suggest you to stick to the winning part".

    Daimon noticed that the old man red at him a couple of times while he spoke, which was understandable considering how he has been acting.

    "Yeah, I get it, I will be responsible for them¡­ tonight I''m going to punish that cute master of mine for not telling me about this beforehand", he thought.

    Boris left and Aliya took her students to the ssroom that was next to the one they were currently at, the sses were left to the consideration of the teacher, they previously studied some basic theory about the magic core, so now Aliya wanted to give them a little introduction to potion brewing.

    As soon as they entered, they saw that this ssroom was different, it was more like aboratory, there were no chairs instead of that there were tables for two or three people separated by a couple of meters each.

    Daimon saw the many shelves filled with different ingredients, herbs and materials like ss ks and magic ovens, everyone chose his work space, the little groups were basically the same, Leslie, Yvonne and Liliana in one table, Daimon and Aisha in another one andstly Calvin who dragged Michael with him.

    "We will be dealing with each other so don''t be a grumpy ass guy", it''s what Calvin said to convince Michael of making team with him.

    Aliya gave each team a big book with green cover on which was written, "Magic herbs and their usages for those below the mage lord realm".

    "That''s quite specific", thought Daimon.

    Aliya took a green herb from one of the shelves and the ss started, she showed to everyone and asked.

    "Do any of you recognize this herb?".

    Surprisingly the first one to answer was none other than Calvin.

    "That is green river grass¡­ it doesn''t have an effect by itself but it works as a catalyst for a lot of different potions".

    "Anyone else?", asked Aliya before confirming or rejecting Calvin''s answer.

    Yvonne doubted for a moment but she still spoke in a dubitative tone.

    "It looks paler than green river grass, I think it''s a stalk of yellow swamp bush, something used in the concoction of poisons".

    Aliya smiled; she showed the base of the herb which also had a couple of little ck spots to everyone.

    "That''s correct Yvonne, the paler tone and these little ck spots are the indicators of the yellow swamp bush, essentially, it''s also a catalyst¡­ but it''s poisonous when ingested so the result of using it by mistake in one of the many potions that include green river grass, like one of the mostmonly used, a healing potion it''s a strong stomach ache and muscle pain¡­ followed by some internal bleeding".

    Calvin sighed, "Thanks to the heavens I don''t even have to cook my own food", he thought.

    Aliya returned the herb to the shelve and took out another one which was simr but the color was slightly darker and it didn''t have the little ck spots on the base.

    "You might be wondering why I used this specific herb as an example and the answer is quite simple, both the green river grass and the yellow swamp bush are easy to find, and they look alike, not only that but you can find them both near water bodies be it rivers,kes, swamps etc. so in an emergency knowing the difference can save your life or kill you".

    "Open your books in the page ten, I will teach you how to do an easy emergency healing potion".

    Aisha opened the book, the page teen was a detailed description of the green river grass, but unlike the technical exnations mentioned in the book, the recipe for the potion Aliya mentioned wasn''t listed on it.

    Aliya took out a little bottle full of a red liquid, she ced the contents of the bottle along with the green river grass in a small mortar, and began to mix them together using a pestle.

    "This is something so you don''t see in the textbooks, by mixing the blood of a magic beast and the green river ss you get a solution which can be refined into a healing potion".

    Once the herb was properly integrated into the blood, she took a lighter that worked with mana stones from one of the shelves, and ced the now red and green paste in a sk on top of the lighter, the me heated the sk and a few secondster a reaction separated the contents of the sk in two different parts.

    On the base of the sk the remains of the grass and the blood became a dark brown paste, while on top of that an orange liquid started to boil due to the heat generated by the lighter.<sub> </sub>

    "Once the contests separate let it boil for two minutes and it''s ready, the paste is used to help external wounds stop bleeding and the liquid has the same effect as a normal healing potion¡­ although the taste isn''t exactly the best, since Calvin gave a wrong answer, he will be one trying it".

    ¡­

    Calvin didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he just wanted to participate to impress the teacher and instead of that he now had to drink some shady potion he didn''t know of until a moment ago.

    Still there was no point inining, he followed Aliya''s instructions and used a needle to make a little wound on his left hand, the wound was superficial but it was enough for the demonstration, he took a sip of the potion and the wound closed it immediately.

    Contrary to what Calvin expected it didn''t taste that bad, it had a metallic taste probably due to the blood used on its preparation but nothing too horrible, not that he would like to drink it again if he was a given the choice though.

    Everyone took notes of the boration while Liliana had a slightly confused expression on her face, something Aliya noticed.

    "Do you have a question, Liliana?", she asked.

    The girl from the Risha family nodded.

    "Yes, I get the part where this knowledge can save us in a critical situation, but why did you teach us this specific potion for the first ss¡­ mages tend to prioritize mana recovering potions over healing ones since a water or wood element mage is included in a team to take the role of healing others".

    Aliya smiled.

    "This potion will be an advantage over yourpetitors of other sses, because on the inter academic tournament, you will only be allowed to bring a weapon of your choice and nothing else, the mana of a star ranked mage is quite limited and the enemy will always target the healer first, but now all of you became "healers" in a way".

    Daimon agreed with her, now they wouldn''t have to worry if the healer is eliminated from the equation, of course that is if there is green river grass near them, which is likely to happen since the locations chosen for the inter academic are alwayss where jungles or forest can be easily found.

    "Mm¡­ is there a way t give it a better taste?", asked Leslie after smelling the blood like scent of the potion.

    Everyone with the exception of Calvin which still had the aftertaste found Leslie''sment amusing, Aliya shook her head, she handed a portion of green river grass and a bottle of magic beast''s blood to each team.

    "That is all for today take the books and practice making this potion at your rooms, the next ss I will evaluate your results¡­ and just in case I remind you to not mention this to anyone besides the presents here, this will be a potion exclusive to the elite ss".

    Aliya waited for her students to leave before she drank a sip of the potion which hanged from her belt, Boris entered the room and saw her slightly pale face which made him sigh.

    "Come onss¡­ go to rest at your room, I will take care of the rest for today".

    Now that the sses of today were over, Daimon and the others were free to do whatever they want until tomorrow morning, so of course Calvin suggested them to hang around together in the academic city near the campus.

    "If no one has anything important to di, why don''t we go take a little walk in the city¡­ the old man told us to get to know each other better anyway, what do you say Daimon?".

    Daimon felt his mother''s sharp gaze on him and he shrugged, "hanging around with friends after ss sounds interesting¡­ besides mom seems to enjoy interacting with those three", he thought before answering.

    "Fine, I don''t have anything to do for the time being, but just a couple of hours okay", this time he gave Aisha some space to hang with the other girls of the ss while he walked next to Calvin and Michael

    Speaking of that the girls, Leslie immediately dragged Aisha to the conversation, Calvinughed, he patted Daimon and Michael shoulders while pointing at the city.

    "Come ondies and gentlemen, the city waits for us!!!".

    It hasn''t even been 30 seconds since he let go of Aisha, and Daimon was already regretting his decision of walking next to Calvin, but seeing her mother happily talking with the other girls made him smile.

    "We will be all going together anyway, and mom seems like this a lot¡­ besides she and Aura will have a busy nightter hahaha".

    Aisha felt her son''s slight hit gaze and she mentallyughed.

    "Seems like my darling won''t let me sleep tonight¡­ sigh the things a mother has to do ?".

 Chapter 72 The Happy Wanderer

    The wild w academy is an agglomeration of young people whiches from important families, while most of them have to face the reality that without their backings they wouldn''t be too much, there was a ce for them to unty their wealth as much as they wanted¡­. the academic city which surrounded the campus Latiz.

    When merchant groups and families which dedicated to the manufacturing of many different goods noticed the potential, they immediately proposed a deal to the academy, they would pay to have the selling rights if the area, thend would still be property of the academy but the stores will be in charge of them.

    After so many years the city flourished, which resulted in the current scene, raw materials, magic herbs, weapons and equipment, clothes, information, restaurants, there was a bit of almost everything to see in Latiz.

    Apparently, Calvin arrived at Latiz earlier than he expected so he lived in the city until the start of the school year, the same happened to Yvonne so the girls separated from them and went straight to their area of choice leaving the boys alone to "get along".

    It was a bit weird to hang around with people you just met and if you add to that the fact that Michael wasn''t too fond of talking, then things got awkward quite soon, on the other hand, now that the girls weren''t here Calvin had a suspicious smile on his face.

    "Come with me my fellow students, I will take you to the best ce in the city".

    Daimon had a bad premonition but since he had nothing else to do, then he shrugged and just followed Calvin, on the way he saw some ces which had guards at the entrance, some of them had the emblem of a specific family on their front doors.

    Calvin noticed Daimon''s curiosity so he exined.

    "Those are private clubs, only the members of those families and their allies can enter, they are like social clubs, most of them are managed by third year students, you don''t miss anything they basically reunite to badmouth others and dome parties".

    *Pfft*

    Calvin''s humor made everyone rx, even Michael who at first looked quite forced was nowughing from time to time, without noticing they arrived at something that looked like a modern tavern, on the front there was a big signal with the form of a scepter on which was written, "Happy Wanderer".

    The ce looked quite nice, it was a big white building with three floors, the door was closed and there was a guard at the entrance so it looked like a ce where you can''t enter without an invitation, luckily for them Calvin had one.

    He approached the guard and showed him a little ck card with the image of a dune and they were allowed to enter, the inside was quite modern looking, there were tables and an elegant bar made out off some kind of ck mineral, although it was day on the outside, the lights were dim on the inside.

    There were no waiters, but the barman immediately received them, well more urately he greeted Calvin.

    "Calvin my friend, howe you are here so early, did you skip your sses or what?".

    The three of them took a seat at the bar and Calvin presented them.

    "Lucas you unhappy bastard, I came here with my ssmates, give us something nice to drink to we can start calling ourselves friends".

    The barman nodded and started preparing some drinks, on the mean time Daimon saw that the ce wasn''t too crowded, some of the tables were upied and everyone looked quite happy, all in all the ce had a rxed calm atmosphere.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he heard Calvin asking.

    "This ce is managed by someone from my family, what do you think, it''s quite nice right?".

    Both Daimon and Michael nodded, Lucas finished preparing the drinks and handed them to Calvin.

    "Your father told me to not serve you any alcohol, so only soft drinks for you".

    Calvin sighed, still the idea wasn''t to get drunk but to start getting along with Daimon and Michael so he didn''tin.

    Everyone took their ss and with a toast, they drank the contents, it was something citric and refreshing, Daimon liked it quite a bit.

    "Not bad, maybe I will bring mom hereter", he thought.

    After a couple of drinks Calvin patted their shoulders and invited them to the second floor, apparently only those who were friends of the members of Calvin''s family could go upstairs.

    "Come with me, the second floor has an incredible view of the city", he said as they went upstairs.

    The second floor was different from the first floor, there was a corridor with only one door at each side of it, the first door had a yellow sign which ording to Calvin meant that someone was already using it that private room.

    The other one was always reserved for Calvin; in fact, he used the same ck card which he showed to the guard as the key to open the door.

    "Cool right, while others use medals and other archaic things which can be stolen, this magic formation needs this special card and my elegant presence to work hahaha".

    The door opened and they entered, the inside of the room was quite elegant there was a big couch, a little bar in one of the corners and even something that reminded Daimon a pool table, just like Calvin mentioned there was a two-sided window which upied a third part of the wall that looked at the street.

    "We can look at the city, but those on the other side only see a wall", said Michael.

    Calvin pped.<sub> </sub>

    "Exactly my friend¡­ it wouldn''t be funny otherwise".

    Daimon was about to sit on the couch when the door opened and a woman with a white mask entered the room.

    "Oi brat, your father told me that if I saw you on the second floor, I had to kick your ass all the way to the street, I can''t believe it, you have malepany, I wonder when did your tastes changed so much?".

    Michael who was drinking on the bar nearly choked with his juice, Daimon on the hand was confused, when the woman entered, he thought Calvin brought some "entertainment", but apparently that was not the case.

    Seeing his little reunion going to hell Calvin sighed.

    "They are my ssmates¡­ can''t you be moredylike for once, you wild woman?".

    ? Daimon and Michael approached Calvin, if they weren''t weed there was no need to stay, but Calvin mediated.

    "Please don''t take her words too seriously, she is the younger sister of my father and the owner of this bar¡­ my aunt Mireya Ghrish".

    Mireya inspected the young men in front of her, at first, she thought they were just skirt chasers like her nephew, but that didn''t seem to be the case, in fact the boy with ck hair wasn''t even paying her any attention, while the blue haired one did look at her but he was indifferent.

    As she was about to properly present herself, a cold sensation filled the room, she saw the ck-haired young man frowning his eyebrows, it wasn''t only her, Michael and Calvin who were closer to Daimon recognized the feeling pretty well, it was the same as that time at the wee party, so they knew someone was about to suffer.

    Calvin thought Daimon might have felt offended due to his aunt''s previous words, so he decided to interfere.

    "Daimon, she like to joke around, but she isn''t a bad person, don''t take it too personally¡­".

    Daimon interrupted him.

    "It''s not that, I return in thirty minutes¡­ there is something I have to take care of".

    Surprisingly Michael spoke this time.

    "Something¡­ or someone? we aren''t close enough to call each other friends, but isn''t that the point of this whole thing?".

    Calvin nodded.

    "Is something happening to your sister and the girls? They are also our ssmates so count us in for the fun hahaha".

    Daimon sighed, he has given Aisha so many treasures from the system to protect herself, that he wasn''t worried about her safety, but he had a slight feeling of difort, and there was no harm in double checking.

    "Fine you two alsoe, but it''s just a hunch, I might be wrong so don''t me me if it''s just a waste of time, okay?".

    Calvin and Michael nodded, as they were about to leave the room Mireya spoke.

    "I can''t believe my eyes, you are actually not being azy ass for the first time since I have known you¡­ although there are girls included which exins a lot, I will also go with you, your father asked me to prevent others from breaking your neck".

    Calvin wanted to refuse but Daimon interrupted him

    "Let here, an early stage Archmage will be a good reinforce in case things go to hell".

    While Mireya was surprised that a star ranked mage could see through the disguising effect of her mask, Calvin shrugged.

    "Fine let''s go".

    Without saying anything else, they left the happy wanderer and followed Daimon, thanks to core synchrony he could more or less feel where were his soulmates, the closest one of course was Aisha, when he arrived to his destination there was amotion going on, some students wereying on the ground while Aisha, Leslie, Yvonne and Liliana were fighting together.

    The other party was conformed by second grade students, a couple three star ranked mages and a four-star ranked knight.

    "Now that is something new", thought Daimon as he walked next to his mother.

    The knight unsheathed his sword but before he could say anything, Daimon''s voice drew everyone''s attention.

    "The next time you all will being with me, running all the way here isn''t healthy".

 Chapter 73 Conflict At The City

    Listening the voice of her son interrupting the current situation, Aisha smiled.

    "I was wondering howe you all didn''t appear sooner, but I guess that is Calvin''s fault, so we will talk about thatter".

    Feeling the usatory gazes of all the girls of the elite ss, Calvin felt a slight shiver running through his spine.

    "Come on I also came here to help, give me some credit for that at least", he said.

    Daimon smiled for a second but then his face turned cold.

    "Perhaps I was too merciful on myst warning to the second-grade students, a mistake I will never repeat again, but before we get to that part, what happened here?".

    He noticed that both Yvonne and Liliana had an unusually angry expression while they were standing in front of Leslie which on the contrary didn''t look as energetic as she usually is.

    Aisha walked all the way until she was next to her son.

    "That knight and those two mages are humans which have some rtion to the Risha family, we were seeing some things on a store when he suddenly appeared and spouted some nonsense¡­ then some of hispanions tried to grab Leslie so we kicked their asses".

    Daimon frowned his eyebrows, at this point the guards of the academy should have noticed themotion, but there was no oneing to see what was happening, something probably done by the Archknight who was watching everything from the shadows.

    "I have a lot of questions to make, but we can wait for that, Calvin, Michael you take care of the mages, Aisha you watch over them¡­ I will deal with the knight".

    Daimon wasn''t trying to show off or anything like that, on the contrary in normal situations he firmly believed that Aisha and the other girls were more than enough to deal with two three-star mages and a four-star knight, but Liliana, Yvonne and Leslie didn''t seem to be in a stable mental state, and casting spells like that was dangerous.

    Both Michael and Calvin stood at both sides of Daimon as they prepared to fight, this time Daimon didn''t use guns, instead he took out a sword from his storage ring, it wasn''t Narasha but a sword he normally used for practice.

    Daimon looked at a house which was at the end of the street and shouted.

    "The pervert in the white house,e out already you suck at hiding and you aren''t the only Arch ranked present here".

    ¡­

    After a moment the door of the house opened and a man wearing a full body armor appeared on everyone''s field of vision, Daimon didn''t know too much about the human factions but apparently Calvin did.

    "Now I understand, being disgusting is the personal brand of the dius family, they are allies in the surface, but below the table they are vers¡­ and their favorite "product" are girls from the beast faction".

    The four-star knight pointed his sword at Calvin.

    "Now that is defamation, thest time the one in charge of the investigation, dered that my dius family hasn''t done something like that, in any case I was invited to the wild w academy as a transfer student today, I casually saw some old friends and when I tried to say hi, I was suddenly attacked, I wonder how is the Risha family going topensate for this?".

    Yvonne gritted her teeth but before she answered Daimon interrupted her.

    "How about ten milligrams of orichalcum?".

    The knight from the dius familyughed.

    "Not bad freshman, I''m Tayler dius the youngest son of Tiberius dius, the head of the dius family, I ept yourpensation".

    Daimon nodded; he then pointed the sword on his hands at Tayler.

    "Perfect, where do you want to receive them, right arm, left leg or maybe directly on that disgusting face of yours?".

    Calvinughed out loud.

    "Turns out you do have some sense of humor huh? Mr. ss representative, aunt take care of the Archknight please, this is going to be fun".

    The three star ranked mages stood at both sides of Tayler but they didn''t do anything, the atmosphere tensed as everyone took their fighting stances, the ones that were previously observing the show were now gone, there were two Arch ranks here and if they started fighting then things will be bad for them.

    With a little tap Daimon''s image shed and the sound of metals colliding echoed through the whole street¡­ for a couple of seconds before Tayler was sent flying into one of the stores breaking a lot of things on the process.

    The two mages pointed their hands at Daimon but their spells were interrupting by a spike of earth and a fireball directly shoot at their chests.<sub> </sub>

    On a rare asion Michael actually bragged.

    "Weaklings¡­ who the hell tries to cast a three-star spell on a closebat fight, even if we didn''t interfere, Daimon would have destroyed you before the spells could beunched".

    Still the fight wasn''t over, the mages were wearing clothes with defensive magic formations, and the spells with which they were hit were only one-star spells, so it didn''t take them too much time to recover from the shock.

    Tayler on the other hand didn''t have that much luck, he did manage toe out of all the debris that fell over him after his body shed against a house, but the whole armor of the arm he used to block Daimon''s attack was now all twisted, the magic formations blocked most of the impact but it he still felt his bones cracking.

    Needless to say, but the Archknight tried to interfere the very moment Tayler was sent flying with a simple attack, but Mireya didn''t allow him to do so, unlike Calvin who for some reason didn''t want to use the tactics of his family, Mireya used a variation of earth magic to create a sand storm and dragged the Archknight inside of it along with her.

    Tayler was in awe, he saw that his precious sword was now slightly deformed, as if it was hit by hammer instead of another sword.

    "What kind of trick is this¡­ that sword of yours what the hell is it!!!", he shouted.

    Daimon smiled, not because of Tayler''s barking, but because he felt another the mana pressure of an Archmage trying to suppress him only to be nullified by another one.

    On the sky above the academic city, the tutor from the A ss was facing Boris.

    "Ogien!!!! Why are you meddling into this, your students attacked an honorable guest of our academy, so they will need to give a proper exnation for this".

    Syrus wasn''tpletely focusing on Boris, instead he was looking at the battle in the ground, he was the one who invited the young master of the dius family to the academy, so if something happened to Tyler, he would be responsible for it.

    "Aghhhh!!!".

    A sudden scream made Syrus have a bad premonition, which was confirmed a secondter when he looked at Tayler, only to see Daimon twisting his arm on a strange angle.

    Calvin and Michael were pointing their hands at the mages from the dius family to prevent them from moving, Mireya and the Archknight also stopped their fight, the winner was clear for everyone but it wasn''t over yet.

    Aloud cracking sound made the Archknight finally speak.

    "Stop!!! Don''t hurt my young master, speak what do you want aspensation?".

    Daimon smiled.

    "I changed my decision, previously I was just going to remove an arm or maybe a leg, but that is easy to restore for someone with money like him¡­ besides it wouldn''t be a proper punishment for how he looked at the girls of my ss".

    Syrus noticed things were about to go to hell so he decided to use his domain, but Boris was faster, before he could react there was a sword pointed at his neck.

    "We shouldn''t interfere in the fights of the young generation, let''s stay here and watch¡­ you are going to be in deep shit after this, so I suggest you to rx while you still can".

    The Archknight of the dius family saw with terrified eyes how Daimon''s sword fell on the area between the legs of his young master, the de cut the armor as if it was butter and blood spilled on the ground.

    "I bet the next time you will use the one above your shoulders to think", he said in a low voice.

    Tayler''s eyes rolled back, the shock was so big that he fainted, foam came out of his mouth, so Daimon released his grip, the armor had a deformation with the shape of a hand but that wasn''t too important now, Syrus eyes widened¡­ the young master of the dius family was castrated right in front of him.

    Boris put on a grin.

    "That kid is freaking crazy¡­ but he fulfils his promises, that wound isn''t lethal, it can be cured but the trauma will haunt the victim for quite some time, maybe the dius family head will have a new "daughter" hahaha".

    Daimon kicked Tayler on the face which sent him flying to the same building, he returned to Aisha''s side, on the way the mages that were being held down by Calvin and Michael trembled when they saw him walking near them, but he didn''t do anything besides give them a message.

    "Everyone on the wild w academy knows at this point, that messing with me isn''t a good idea, so all the me for this fall on whoever told you to do this", he said while he gave Syrus a threatening smile.

    "When that idiot wakes up, tell him that the next time he looks at someone from my ss with those intentions, he will lose his other head".

    With thosest words the whole elite ss included Boris and Mireya left the scene, leaving behind what would made the "Demon from the elite ss" to be famous on the human factions, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 74 Undercurrents

    Since the Risha girls needed a little break to recover, Calvin asked her aunt to leave them use the private room on the second floor, which she of course epted, on the way Aisha walked next to them while Daimon, Michael Calvin and Boris watched to see if someone was following them, they slowed down their pace to distance from the rest of the ss.

    Daimon''s slightly angry voice broke the ufortable silence.

    "Old man, tell me what the hell is happening before I change my mind and return to rip of that bastard''s head, one thing is being an asshole¡­ but what would have happened if that Archknight decided to go crazy!!!".

    Boris sighed.

    "The principal noticed a new firm of mana and she immediately sent me to check, apparently that brat from the dius family arrived a few minutes ago at Lykos¡­ it was a coincidence that he encountered those three from the Risha family on the way to the academy, the transference was signed by two vice principals, and the humans are our allies so in paper there was nothing wrong".

    Daimon couldn''t me Aura for this, no one knew that Tyler had some rtion to the Risha family or that they coincidentally would meet in the academic city, but he still was confused about something.

    "What happened to the guards? Don''t tell me that amotion like that didn''t get their attention".

    "There were some third-grade students fighting far from them, so the guards were busy¡­ but that was obviously not a coincidence, so for the time being I suggest you to look over those three, although that brat for sure won''t be a problem for some time, he wasn''t the only one that came here".

    The conversation ended and Boris left since they arrived at the happy wanderer, Mireya guided them to the second floor and gave them some privacy because it was obvious, they needed to talk about what happened.

    Leslie looked better so Daimon decided to start, Calvin brought some cold drinks for everyone and they sat down near the girls, Aisha nodded at him and Daimon spoke.

    "I won''t force you three to tell me the back story, but it would be good to understand why all this happened, the old man told me that others arrived here so if there is something I need to know please tell me right now".

    Calvin wanted to say something but Yvonne spoke first.

    "The dius family was thest human faction that joined the alliance, back then the Risha family was the weakest out of all the noble families in the beast faction, although no one could confirm it, we are sure that those pigs captured people of our family and sold them as ves to the demons, most of them were members that lived on the borders of the gxy but¡­ among those who "mysteriously" disappeared, there was Liliana''s eldest brother and Leslie''s older sister".

    ¡­

    After a moment of silence, Yvonne continued.

    "Then as if that transgression was casually forgotten, our shitty elders suddenly became friendly with the dius family¡­ so right now they are discussing a political marriage to unite the families, that Tayler guy was the one selected to "court" Leslie".

    As if she remembered something, Yvonne added.

    "Also, that was the reason of the curse you helped me to get rid of, I went to the council of elders and spat in their seats, I was punished but also due to that, our mothers got us ourselves the chance to avoid that miserable destiny as long as we managed to enter the elite ss¡­ the whole time we are in the academy".

    Daimon looked at Leslie who still had a slight distressed expression and he smiled.

    "Well¡­ he won''t be marrying anyone for quite some time, besides you three are in the elite ss, so I''m the one responsible to watch over you when the old man isn''t around so there is no need to worry about it okay?".

    Aishaughed a bit.

    "That is Daimon''s way to say, he will watch over us because we are trying to be friends".

    Calvin rose his cup.

    "That''s right you three have nothing to worry about, after all our ss representative as your ally, a monster who easily dealt with four-star mages and knights, the mighty young master of the Ghrish family, andstly a dual element mute guy too hahaha".

    Ignoring Calvin''s nonsense, Michael also rose his cup, Aisha patted Leslie''s shoulder.

    "You three have my contact sigil now, and my brother will also give you his, so cheer up, okay?".

    Leslie looked at all the people that were around her and her eyes got teary, besides Liliana and Yvonne all the members of her n feigned ignorance about her older sister''s situation, for one reason or another, but how could she ever forgive the dius family for that.

    When she was told that her family was considering making her marry Tyler, she fell into despair, Yvonne noticed it and she went toin which resulted in both she being punished but also, they getting a way out of their predicament.

    Out of the three she was the weakest, so she trained as much as she could and managed to get into the elite ss, even if her rank was on the low side, she was truly happy¡­ but then Tyler suddenly appeared in front of her, dering she will be his wife and that he came all the way from the blue-sky gxy so she could live with him.<sub> </sub>

    Of course, she refused and when Tyler''sckeys tried to force her, Aisha, Yvonne and Liliana defended her, after that Aisha''s brother, Calvin, Michael and even the tutor arrived to help, so right now she felt moved.

    Leslie hugged Liliana and hid her face on her chest, after a moment besides the little crying sounds, she spoke in a broken tone.

    "Thanks".

    Daimon sighed, "this might be a word of magic, but I guess idiots exist no matter where you live", he thought.

    Leaving that incident aside, they spent the rest of the noon at the happy wanderer, Calvin''s aunt listened to Leslie''s story and she told them, they could alwayse here to hang around together, of course she ordered Calvin to escort them or she would kick him out of the second floor.

    It was gettingte and after all the roller coaster of emotions, everyone needed to rest so they left the bar and walked together all the way to the campus, Michael and Calvin were the firsts to get to their rooms, so Aisha and Daimon apanied the Risha girls to their dormitories.

    On the way Daimon noticed other students looked at him with terror filled expressions, so it was obvious that his actions somehow spread through the academy, but that was the intention anyway so he didn''t care.

    Boys weren''t allowed to enter to the girl''s dormitories so they said goodbye to Daimon, while Aisha apanied them all the way until they reached their room.

    Daimon stayed outside and simply sat on a bench, wherever he gazed at other guys would avoid looking at him, but he could clearly hear them whispering to each other.

    Now that they were alone Evangeline spoke to him.

    "I wonder if you were always so dominant, or if this is an effect of your grimoire, perhaps you don''t stand "hostile" males to be near Aisha¡­ or other possible partners hahaha".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "I''m not an animal you know? but I do certainly tend to be a bit prejudicious against other guys, while it feels easier for me to hang around with girls¡­ still Calvin and Michael aren''t bad choices to be friends with, they didn''t coward in front of an Arch ranked after all".

    Narasha also wanted to participate in the conversation.

    "I thought you were going to wield me earlier", she said in a slightly sad voice.

    Daimon smiled.

    "You are my precious partner, that guy wasn''t worthy of being cut down by you, in fact I didn''t want his disgusting blood to touch you".

    Narasha blushed a bit, "Erin is right, you have be quite a sweet talker¡­ but I feel happy for that ?", she thought.

    It didn''t take too much time for Aisha toe out of the girl''s dormitories, so now it was time for them to return to the mansion, Aisha naturally held her son''s arm as the walked towards their home.

    Once they were inside of the mansion, the first thing Daimon did was passionately kissing his mother right in front of the door, outside they couldn''t do it but this ce was their love nest so there were no inhibitions while they were here.

    "Mmm ? darling", Aisha enjoyed the gentle caresses of her son, they were so engrossed on the moment that they didn''t notice that Aura was waiting for them in the dining room, until she cleared her throat to draw their attention.

    "Ahem, I''m sorry to interrupt this lovely scene but this day has been a pain in the ass¡­ go change your clothes so we can have a little conversation pleas¡­ mmph".

    Aura was interrupted by Daimon suddenly dragging her into his arms and pressing his lips against hers, although she feigned some resistance, her tail wagging round made clear that she was waiting for this to happen.

    Daimon fondled her ass with his hands a couple of times before letting go of her.

    "Didn''t we agree that we will kiss the very moment we arrive at the mansion, when we go to sleep and when we wake up in the morning, if you don''t follow the rules of our family, I will have to punish you, my cute master".

    Aura felt her legs trembling a bit, but she did her best to regain herposure.

    "Sorry¡­ I had quite an annoying day".

    Daimon smiled, he gave Aura onest kiss and then went to the bedroom to change his clothes followed by Aisha.

 Chapter 75 The Era Is Changing

    Inside the bedroom, Daimon took off the rest of his clothes, to be honest he wanted to have a nice long bath with the girls, but apparently Aura had some urgent matters to discuss with them, so the order would be inversed, for the time being he just put on shorts and a loose shirt.

    If someone were to see the current rxed Daimon, they would believe he is a totally different person,pared to the "bloodthirsty demon" who incapacitated two four-star mages stripped them naked and hanged them to a tree, the Daimon right now was looking at Aisha with such a love filled gaze that it made her heart beat faster.

    Aisha was wearing only underwear, since she knew, Daimon was going to take it off soon anyway, she didn''t miss the chance to tempt him, predictable maybe, but it was working quite well, she felt Daimon''s eyes glued to her and she loved it.

    "Darling, I''m going to blush if you keep looking at me like that ?".

    Daimon smiled, Aisha enjoyed tempting him, but the same could be said of him, with a swift maneuver he hugged his mother from behind, the fruity scent of her beautiful silver hair, filled his nose and made him feel drunk, besides that, the pale delicate skin of her neck seemed strangely attracting for him

    Up to this day Daimon has never needed to drink blood, his body waspletely different from a vampire, even those with the highest purity had the need to drink blood from time to time, but he never did, the same applied to Aisha since she became his soulmate, she hasn''t drunk any blood.

    But that didn''t mean the taste for it wasn''t there, it was more like he could drink it if he wanted, andtely he has been having the sudden urge to try Aisha''s blood.

    Daimon gently kissed her neck a couple of times, he felt the soft bouncy sensation of her ass pressed against his crotch and he immediately got hard, it was like being in a trance, having Aisha in his embrace was simply intoxicating.

    "Mom, I have been having the urge to drink your blood¡­ would it be detrimental to you if I¡­".

    As Daimon was lovingly whispering to Aisha, she interrupted him, the hard thing pressing against her ass was making her insides tingle in expectation, and listening to her beloved son wanting to drink her blood made her feel like a little girl in love.

    "Don''t worry darling, I''m all yours, but if you want to do it you must be prepared to go all the way, because for us vampires, drinking blood has an aphrodisiac effect¡­ so you are going to give me lots of love every time you drink from me ?".

    Daimon gave his mother''s beautiful neck onest kiss, he also fondled her ass a couple of times thinking on what he was going to do to itter before he reluctantly let go of Aisha, he promised to take the first of one of the girls while all the others were here, to share that moment with everyone, but nothing tied him to not have some fun with his mother and Aura''s pinkish back doors.

    "Later we''ll give it a try¡­ I wonder if there is any problem if I do the same to Aura".

    Aisha smiled.

    "A vampire''s bite has many purposes, between lovers it''s a way to be closer, like consummating your marriage on a wedding night, for enemies you can take their freedom away due to addictive feeling of having their blood drained from them, or you can kill them by absorbing all the vitality and mana in their bodies to help you advance faster".

    "But there are pros and cons on using thatst method, your mana purity will be low if you advance by doing it, besides the amount of mana and vitality obtained isn''t that big because it needs to be refined for you to absorb it".

    Daimon wrapped his arm around her waist.

    "Well, it seems I will only use my fangs to pleasure a certain group of girls", he said as they left the room, as expected Aura was sat on the dining room waiting for them, she could smell their scents mixed so it was clear Daimon did something to Aisha but she feigned ignorance.

    "Whatever, he is going toy his hands on both of uster anyway", she thought.

    Normally Aisha and Aura sit at his sides so he can have the two of them on his arms, but since Aura needed to exin some things then she took seat in front of them, needless to say bot Aisha didn''t show her any consideration as she leaned her head against Daimon''s shoulder making sure that her body was as close as possible to him.

    Daimon was amused by his mother''s childish actions, and the slight jealousy he felt from Aura, "these two are quitepetitive, I wonder if that would change after all the embarrassing moments they are going to shareter", he thought.

    Aura felt Daimon''s hot gaze and her ass twitched a bit, she perfectly recognized that pervert expression he had right now, but although she looked so against it the slight wagging movement of her tail said the contrary.

    Aura cleared her throat, it was for the best of her interest, to start with this little conversation so they could advance to more important "matters".

    "Ahem, you probably noticed that today many things happened, I sent you a message with that old man for you to be the representative, which I suppose was no problem since you are the first ranked anyway".

    Daimon nodded, "Yes, I was honestly going to refuse but the old man handed me the note you wrote, but why is it important to be the representative?".

    Aura sighed.

    "Because there is a possibility of a war starting again".<sub> </sub>

    ¡­

    It took Daimon a moment to actually, process what Aura just said, Aisha on the other hand was confused about something.

    "But what does that have to do with us, unless the situation is desperate star ranked mages and knights won''t participate in the battlefield, since they can''t survive in the outer space?".

    "That''s normally the case, but this conflict is slightly different than previous ones, as you know the knowledge from ancient times was lost and that is why half emperors have been the limit some can reach in the wonder myriad ster chart¡­ apparently an expedition group identally found what seems to be the entrance to a ruin, but when they tried to enter most of them immediately evaporated", said Aura in a solemn voice.

    "One peak stage Archmage and a middle stage one, one knight lord and bunch of scouts from the sixth to the ninth star mage realm, the only ones who survived were a few five-star mage ves which were brought to carry luggage and other misceneous activities, one of the Archmages was on our side but the other apparently had some connections with the vampires so when their lives extinguished, their soul tokens broke and the news are already circting".

    Aisha sighed, she more or less knew where this was going, but she left Aura continue with her exnation.

    "Tomorrow all the half emperors will have a meeting to decide what''s going to happen¡­ something that can immediately kill a peak stage Archmage is a huge prize after all, it might even be something from the ancient age which means a chance for half emperors to breakthrough, so of course everyone wants a piece of it".

    "The Greenwich sage was already notified and it''s currently being escorted by peak Archmages from all the ruler forces to inspect the ruins, still the thing is practically on the edge of the of the wall that prevents others from invading us, so it''s going to take some time for them to arrive, a couple of weeks at least and after that it would take more time for that book maniac to decipher what it''s inside of it".

    "The only thing we are sure of right now, it''s that only those below the sixth star mage realm can enter without immediately dying, but that doesn''t mean it''s a free meal for them, after their owners died, the ves tried to adventure inside of the ruin, thinking they found a rare opportunity just to die miserably a couple of secondster in a trap, one managed to escape and waster captured and interrogated".

    Daimon smiled.

    "So, we are going to be sent there to get whatever is inside of the ruin, right?".

    Aura nodded.

    "It''s going to depend on the results of the investigation of that guy, but most likely yes, that0s why I wanted you to be the representative, because then you will be the one giving the orders¡­ unfortunately the Jolbaris didn''t take itying this time, Arthur Jolbaris and all the ones that are allied with him demanded a leading position for someone of their faction and that''s why the elite ss was split in two".

    Aura''s expression rxed.

    "That being said, while others will be forced to go whether they like it or not, you have me and Erin to back you, so if you don''t feel like it, just say the word and you will out of all this madness".

    Daimon could feel the excitement that the whole situation brought to Aisha, and to be honest he was also eager to adventure, this was a chance to expand his horizons after all, and they still had time to decide what would they do anyway.

    "Let''s wait for now, depending on the results of the sage''s investigation I will decide if I go or not, leaving that aside why are humans suddenly being transferred here?".

    Aura snorted.

    "Everyone is "reinforcing" its connections, in preparation because for the first time since the knight''s path was discovered¡­ the era might undergo a drastic change, speaking of that, since there are going to be more Arch ranked people in the area of the academy, you will also have one to watch over you since Boris is busy supervising other things, but I bet you are going to like it".

    Daimonughed; he only knew one Archmage which basicallyzed around the whole day so the answer was obvious.

    "Liz is going to join us huh? That''s good the more the better", he said as he licked his lips.

    Aisha shook her head.

    "It hasn''t even been a week since we left the Revy n, and we are almost all together again¡­ well my darling looks happy so I guess it''s something good", she thought.

    Daimon stood up, now that the conversation was finished it was time to attend to more important matters, he took off his clothes and after a couple of seconds Aisha and Aura did the same.

    Although the girls felt a bit weird to be naked in the dining room, Daimon didn''t really care, he wrapped his arms around their waists and dragged them to the bathroom with him, on the way they saw his thing getting hard and they both knew the fun was about to start.

 Chapter 76 A Long Night (Part 1) R-18

    This morning Daimon didn''t have the tome to enjoy the bath as much as he wanted, so all the day he has been waiting for the moment they return to the mansion, but the same could be said of the girls, Aisha made him sit on a bath chair as she turned on the shower.

    Daimon curiously saw them applying soap all over their bodies, Aisha stood behind of him while Aura took the front, then without any warning they started to rub their slippery bodies against him.

    It was a bliss to feel the soft smooth and now slippery due to the soap, bare skin of the girls rubbing against his, their breasts were acting as a sponge forming foam all over Daimon''s body due to the movements, at some point he also felt their stiff nipples rubbing against both his chest and his back.

    "I wonder when did they orded to do this", he thought.

    The stimtion was enough to make his dick throb, but he didn''t do anything and just let his mother and Aura serve him, once the soap waspletely used, they simply waited for the water of the shower to wash off all the foam, leaving their bodiespletely clean.

    The three of them entered the bathtub and just let their bodies rx in the water, or at least that was the idea until Daimon saw the slightly blushed expression of Aura and couldn''t resist the urge of teasing her.

    "Ahhn ?", Aura let out a cute moan, she felt a bolt of electricity running through her body, when Daimon gently bit one of her ears, but he didn''t stop there, his left hand moved downwards as he started to rub the outer area of her vagina with his fingers.

    "W-wait Daimo¡­".

    Aura tried to "resist", but her lips got sealed with a kiss, her mind was in chaos right now, the stimtion on two sensitive areas of her body at the same time, was a but too much to handle, for a girl who only started enjoying the touch of a lover recently.

    Of course, Daimon knew her ears were quite sensitive so after a little teasing, he decided to give her the coup de grace, he moved his fingers a bit upwards and gently caressed her clit while at the same time he stopped the kiss and instead sucked on her right breast.

    "Mmmgh ?", with a muffled moan, she reached her climax, they were in the bathtub so her nectar mixed with the water, but no one cared, they were going to end up drenched in each other''s fluidster anyway.

    Aura felt embarrassed although it wasn''t visible, she let out quite arge amount of love juice, her breathing was a bit erratic and her face had a charming reddish tone, which she tried to hide with her hands.

    "I can''t believe it¡­ he made me climax so easily", she thought as she tried to regain herposure.

    Now that Aura was taken care of momentarily, Daimon focused his attention on his mother, on the surface Aisha patiently waited for her turn, but her body was aching for her son''s touch.

    Without a second of dy she sat on Daimon''sp, due to difference in height her breasts were now leaned against his face, which was like an invitation for him, as he immediately started licking her nipples.

    "Mmm ?", every time her son sucked on her breasts, she was reminded of how she used to breastfeed him when he was a baby, it was a warm nostalgic feeling that made both Aisha and Daimon feel closer.

    But right now, they weren''t just mother and son, but a man and woman who longed for each other''s touch, so Daimon grabbed Aisha by her waist and gently made her pussy rub against his penis, of course he was careful enough to not put it in by mistake.

    "Nnngh ?", Aisha felt the hot and hard thing of her son rubbing against her and she grinded her hips to feel it even more, the stimtion was so incredible that they augmented the pace making the water of the bathtub wave due to the movements.

    Daimon let go of her nipples and before kissed all the way from her breasts to her lips, their tongues intertwined as the "dance" started, Aisha crossed her legs around her son as she pressed her whole body against him.

    Aura who was finally regaining herposure, saw how mother and son were basically clung to each other and she was speechless, "uwahhh, these two are more like newlyweds than rtives¡­ did I also look that lewd when he was ying with my body", she thought.

    Daimon felt his mother''s body tremble and he stopped the kiss to let her moan to the content of her heart, as he gently bit her neck, his fangs erged and then an incredible sensation of euphoria overwhelmed his mind, as he drank a little amount of Aisha''s blood.

    "Darliiing ?", Aisha couldn''t handle the stimtion, her body stopped moving, her back arched as she reached her climax, for a moment her mind went nk¡­ but she wasn''t the only one, Daimon was so engrossed in the sensation of drinking blood for the first time that he also ejacted.

    Their bodies lost all strength as they leaned against the bathtub, well more urately Daimon leaned against the bathtub, while Aisha was leisurely resting over her son''s body, both of them were gasping, apparently Aisha underestimated the pleasure that drinking the blood of a lover would bring, since she hasn''t done it before.

    After that Daimon couldn''t hold back anymore, he was so excited that if not for his strong will, he would have jumped over the two beauties that were resting next to him.

    Still both Aisha and Aura noticed the beastly gaze he was directing at them, and they smiled, the three of them rinsed off their bodies under the shower onest time before drying off and going straight to the bedroom.

    Aura doubted for a second before she threw herself at Daimon.

    "I-If you want, you can also drink my blood¡­ Aisha told me it''s something vampires do to their lovers".

    Daimon found her embarrassed yet hopeful expression quite cute, he caressed Aura''s face and then gently shoved his fangs on her neck, the sensation was simr to when he did it with his mother¡­ a huge feeling of bliss.

    "Wuuuh ?", Aura felt her legs shiver, her juices started flowing from her pussy, Daimon on the other hand got hard, his penis pressed against Aura''s belly, still this time he managed to more or less keep hisposure and let go of her after drinking just a couple of sips of her blood.<sub> </sub>

    A vampire''s fangs were the toughest part of its body, as they were used for survival purposes, if you add the fact that Daimon''s body is abnormal, he didn''t have any problems to pierce Aura''s skin with them, surprisingly his bite didn''t let any marks on Aura''s neck, nor she felt any ufortable sensation or pain, just like Aisha said it was a warmfortable feeling as if her whole body was enveloped by her lover.

    Aura exchanged gazes with Aisha before the two of themid face down in the bed, they slightly rose their asses and just entrusted their bodies to Daimon, an invitation he happily epted.

    Starting with his mother Daimon spread her ass cheeks just enough so he could have a clear view of her back door, feeling her son''s hot gaze on her made Aisha''s hole twitch a bit.

    "D-Darling don''t stare at it so much, it''s embarrassing", she said with a shy voice.

    Daimon licked his lips before he started licking her ass hole, the sweet and enticing taste of her natural fragrance and the fruity scent of soapbined was so delicious that without noticing he kept going at it for quite some time, until his penis was so hard it felt a bit ufortable.

    Aisha just swayed her hips as she said.

    "Come for me Darling ?".

    Daimon stood up behind his mother and rubbed his penis on her ass a couple of times before pressing the tip against her entrance, she was so tight that it was hard to push it in, after a couple of tries he managed to put the tip inside, he stopped to let Aisha get used to it.

    "Mom, how is it, does it hurt?".

    Aisha was hiding her face who was hiding her face with a pillow, shook her head.

    "It doesn''t hurt, but you are bigger than I thought darling ?¡­ give me a moment to prepare myself, then you can go all the way".

    Daimon nodded, he remembered something from one of the "informative" videos he watched back on earth, and ced a couple of pillows below Aisha which allowed her to be in a morefortable position for him to prate her.

    He gently left his body rest over his mother''s, as he moved his head upwards until they were face to face, Daimon kissed Aisha and held her hand as he pushed his hips forward making his penis go further inside of her ass.

    "Wuhhh ?", Aisha let out a slightly pained moan as she clenched her son''s hand, she felt as if she was splitting in half, Daimon was so big that he only managed to put half of his thing inside it was so tight he felt his mother''s ass was squeezing his dick

    "Mom¡­ rx your body, or it''s going to hurt", he whispered on her ears.

    Aisha took a deep breath and she personally moved her hips backwards to put the whole thing inside, Daimon felt her body shiver, he looked downwards and saw his penispletely buried in her ass, the pleasure was overwhelming, her insides were so warm and tight he felt his thing was melting.

    Aisha''s eyes were a bit teary, but it wasn''t due to pain, she was happy that she finally became one with her beloved son.

    Daimon helped her wipe her tears and sealed her lips with a kiss, his heart had an incredible feeling of bliss, the delicate body that was below of him right now was the one of his mother, the woman that gave birth to him, the one that not only raised him but even protected him with her life.

    They were now connected not only physically, even their heart beat seemed to have synchronized, for a moment they forgot about everything else, right here and now only the two of them existed in this whole universe.

    After letting her get used to his penis, Daimon slowly started moving back and forth making sure to not hurt her in the process, his precum slowly but surely made her hole slippery enough for him to move without applying too much force, and soon her moans filled the room.

    "Ahhhnnng ?", Aisha was a bit embarrassed, not only she was having anal sex with her son, she was enjoying it even if it was her first time, her body happily epted his advances, and soon the slight ufortable feeling of being prated for the first time disappeared and only pleasure remained.

    "Mmmm ?",

    Although Daimon hasn''t moved that much, her insides felt so good he couldn''t back, with a little growl he let out his load deep inside of her mother''s ass, the warm feeling of his sperm made Aisha feel intoxicated, her pussy was drenched with love juices and her son''s erection wasn''t going down, so this was only the beginning.

    Daimon took his penis out of her ass, but the lewd appearance of her hole which was brimming with his sperm made him want to put it back inside again, Aisha smiled, she moved her ass sidewards as she spoke with a charming tempting voice.

    "Give me lots of love darling ?".

    Daimon gently spanked her, "be good, now it''s Aura''s tu he said, it''s not that he didn''t want to keep doing it with Aisha, but Aura also needed some attention, specially because she was touching herself as she watched how he made love to Aisha.

    He put on a grin as he moved until he was behind Aura.

    "We have all the night to enjoy, so there is no need to rush, I will make sure to fill you both to the brim".

 Chapter 77 A Long Night (Part 2) R-18

    Normally Daimon finds the scene of Aura''s tail wagging quite cute, but when you add the fact that she is in all fours with her deliciously looking wet pussy and twitching ass hole exposed just for him¡­ then the result is one of the most exciting sights every man can wish but not get to see on his entire life, with the exception of Daimon of course.

    He kneeled behind Aura and fondled her ass a couple of times, the feeling of his hands on her ass made Aura''s tail wag, Daimon gently spread her ass and started to lick her pussy, the sweet enticing fragrance of her love juices was enough to make Daimon get so hard his dick started to leak precum.

    "Mmmm ?", Aura let out a cute moan feeling Daimon gently using his tongue to please her, she couldn''t help but sway her hips around along with her tail which was happily moving sidewards.

    Daimon used his hands to held her in ce, he gently caressed the silky fur of her tail a couple of times which made Aura moan, once he yed with her tail to the content of his heart, he licked his lips and made circles around the entrance of her ass hole with his fingers.

    "Hiiiiiii ?", Daimon suddenly inserted his finger in her ass, which took her by surprise but it wasn''t an unpleasant sensation.

    "Ughhh, it feels a bit weird¡­ but I like it", she thought.

    With a pervert smile, Daimon took his finger out of her ass, her body was smallerpared to Aisha and her insides were so tight it was hard to move his finger, so before he could put it in, he needed to stretch her a bit.

    And the best way he could think of was of course¡­ licking her until she was slippery enough for him to use two fingers and so on, Aura''s insides trembled when she felt something soft invade her ass.

    "W-Wait Daimon that''s too much... ahhhnnn ?", Daimon moved his tongue from one side to the other, just like his mother, Aura had her own natural taste whichbined with the scent of their soap, created a fruity yet enticing fragrance.

    Daimon''s saliva acted as lubricant, slowly but surely, he was able to stretch the entrance of Aura''s ass hole, he tried to use his finger again and the result was better, this time he managed to move his middle finger more easily inside of her.

    He kept massaging her insides for a couple of minutes before inserting a second finger, Aura buried her face in a pillow to prevent her moans to be heard, she already came once just because of his fingers alone.

    Daimon noticed she was more rxed now, so it was time for the fun to begin, he gave her ass hole onest lick before getting in position behind her, Aura felt Daimon''s hard penis rubbing against her ass cheeks and she rose her lower body to make it easier for him to prate her.

    Daimon rubbed the tip of his dick against the entrance of her ass a couple of times, before he moved his hips forwards, even after all the forey her anus was extremely tight to the point where he actually had to use a bit of strength to force the tip in.

    "Guuhhh", Aura let out a pained sound, she felt as if she was being split in half, Daimon saw her eyes getting teary and he immediately thought of something ease her pain, he rested his body on top of hers and licked her neck a couple of times before he gently bit her.

    "Ahhnnn ?", Daimon used the overwhelming pleasure that getting her blood sucked by him made Aura feel, to make her forget about the pain she was feeling, of course he limited himself to drink just a little amount of her blood, the euphoric sensationsted as much as his fangs were inside of her so Daimon only stopped when he felt her body rxing again.

    "You can put it in deeper ?", said Aura in a lust filled voice, right now her body felt reallyfortable and light as if she was resting on top of a cloud.

    Daimon nodded, he pushed his hips forward and after applying a bit of force he was finally able to put half of his thing inside of her, but that was the limit, it was only the first time so Aura was too tight, and his penis was too big, if her tried to go deeper there was a big chance of hurting her which was thest thing he wanted.

    That being said, her insides felt incredible, his thing was being practically squeezed down by her, Aura had a high inner temperature and she was a bit slippery due to all the precum his penis had leaked.

    "Kuuuh, it feels as if I''m melting¡­ perhaps she''s got some talent for this", he thought as he started slowly moving back and forth.

    "Mmmph ?".

    Aura couldn''t hold back her voice anymore, the room was filled with her moans, after being bitten by Daimon, she no longer felt pain, although her body was still resisting the "invader", she started feeling pleasure by his thrusts.

    Now it was just a matter of time and lots of practice for her to get used to it, and luckily that was the n all along, something Daimon learnt on the past eight years was that as a half emperor both Erin and Aura could hide their beast race characteristics, it''s just that they never did it because Daimon liked their cute tails and ears.

    But in this case for practical purposes, Aura hid her tail so Daimon could rest his body morefortably over her, this was the easiest position for her to do it since it was her first time,ter when she had a bit more of experience Daimon wanted to do her in the doggy style so he could y with her tail while prating her.

    As time passed, Daimon could move more easily, the sight of his penis nearly going out of her ass just to be shoved back inside was quite exciting, sloppy wet sounds echoed through the room as he augmented his pace.

    With ast thrust Daimon ejacted as deep inside of her as he could.

    "Nnngh ?".

    Aura felt as if her ass was burning as she took his seeds in her ass, Daimon came so much that she felt a bit stuffed, needless to say but she also reached her climax, her juices drenched the bedsheets, she enjoyed her orgasm while being kissed by her lover.

    Daimon waited until they both finished their climax, but when he tried to take it out of her ass, he felt how her insides coiled around him as if her body didn''t want to let him go.

    He put on a grin as he whispered on her ears.

    "What a capricious master I have, first she resisted and now she doesn''t want to let go of me hahaha".

    Aura blushed, this was the first time she did something like this, but apparently her body epted Daimon as her "mate", so now it was trying to tempt him into keep going at it.

    Aisha''s amused voice interrupted them.

    "Female werewolves are quite horny when they are in heat, so don''t tease Aura too much Darling, or she might attack you ?".

    Daimonughed, he gently took his penis out of her, with a little "pop", as soon as he pulled out, her ass hole closed as tight as before, the only difference was that now his sperm was oozing from it.<sub> </sub>

    Just like with Aisha the scene was quite erotic, but it was time for Daimon to do his mother again, and Aura needed to rest a bit before she could take a second round, so he gave her onest kiss and fondled her ass before going back with Aisha.

    "How do you feel mom¡­ are you ready for a second round?", even if he was all ready to continue, the girls might not want it, so he just wanted to be sure, luckily the lust filled expression on his mother''s face gave her away.

    She amodated in all fours this time, and swayed her ass, an invitation which Daimon was more than happy to ept.

    He grabbed his mother by her waist and slid inside of her, although it was hard to put it in because the entrance was as tight as before, this time it was easier for him to move once he was inside.

    The sudden stimtion made Aisha let out a lewd moaning voice.

    "Mmmm, kiss me while we do it darling ?".

    Daimon was happy to oblige, he mounted his mother as he left the weight of his body rest on her, so that he could not only kiss her but even use his hands to fondle her breasts.

    "Ahhnng ?", Aisha felt her son ying with her nipples and her back arched a bit, she nearly came just because of that, but Daimon didn''t stop, he massaged her breasts while his dick moved in and out of her.

    While Daimon was engrossed in thrusting hi hips back and forth, Aisha''s sigil lector which was over the nightstand illuminated with a symbol simr of a sun, when Aisha tried to move to either take the call or turn the thing off, Daimon pinned her down.

    With a perverted grin he gently bit one of her ears before whispering.

    "That''s Liz''s sigil, I wonder what would she think if she hears your cute moaning voice¡­ shall we give it a try mom?".

    "Ahhnng ?", Aisha felt her son suddenly augmenting his pace and she couldn''t contain her voice.

    "Luckily I didn''t take the call".

    But then, out of all her expectations, Aura who was somehow able to move again smiled at her and epted the call.

    "Humph that''s what you het, for saying I''m in heat, I''m not a dog you know?", she thought.

    Aisha immediately hid buried her face into a pillow, to muffle her moans, while Liz''s voice could be hearding from the lector.

    "Daiiiimoon, guess who got permission to live in the academy ?".

    Daimonughed, without stopping his thrusts, he answered.

    "Aura just told me a certainzy Archmage offered herself to be "supervise" me".

    Liz''sughing voice echoed though the room.

    "Whatzy, I''m "free", whatever I''ll arrive tomorrow, so be prepared to give me some love okay¡­ also you can tell Aisha she can stop holding her voice back, because that''s bad for health hehehe, luckily, I''m in my workshop so mom and ine aren''t here".

    Aisha heard Liz''s making fun of her and she immediately replied.

    "Shut up¡­ anhhhg ?".

    Daimon saw the opportunity and with ast thrust he released his load inside of his mother, making her reach her climax in the process.

    Liz was speechless.

    "Uwahh, who would have thought that the proud vampire princess could make such a lewd voice".

    Aisha wanted to dig a hole to hide, she didn''t mind Aura listening her moans because they were both in the same situation, but Liz on the other hand would for sure make fun of this for quite some time.

    Daimon wanted to tease Aisha, but that like he previously stated, he was fair with all the girls, he smirked as he said.

    "Now that you mention it Liz¡­ I''m hoping to hear the lewd voice a certain sun alluring fox princess will make tomorrow hehehe".

    Liz felt her legs tremble a bit, "You bully ?", she said in a slight shy voice before ending the transmission.

    Daimon gave Aisha a kiss on her neck, he was amused by the triumphant smiling expression she had.

    "Only I can tease my cute mother", he thought.

 Chapter 78 While Some Enjoy Others Suffer

    Daimon kissed Aisha onest time before taking his penis out of her, he left his body fell on the bed while he extended his arms, an invitation both the girls happily epted.

    Both Aisha and Auraid down in his embrace as they leaned their heads against his chest, Daimon gently caressed their waists to help them rx.

    Their cute love filled expressions were so charming he couldn''t help but kiss them both a couple of times.

    Although he was still hard, they both just did it for the first time, Aisha managed to do it twice, but Aura still unconsciously did slight pained expressions when she moved, so he decided to wrap things up for tonight.

    "That''s enough for tonightdies¡­ I want you two to rest and recover, okay?".

    The girls happily nodded; their hearts felt sweet knowing Daimon cared more about their well-beings than carnal pleasure.

    "Mm ?".

    "You sure take care of me darling ?".

    Their answer might have been different but they both transmitted the same feeling, love.

    Daimon smiled, parts of the bed were wet with their fluids and they even sweat a bit, in their hurry they forgot to use special bedsheets which prevented the mattress to get wet, but right now they didn''t care, after such an intense love making session, cuddling together to sleep was the best solution to recover.

    And so, both Aisha and Aura amodated using Daimon''s body as a pillow and fell asleep as they enjoyed his gentle caresses.

    Daimon was still a bit energetic so he waited until his mother and Aura fell asleep, seeing their satisfied and rxed expressions made him feel proud as man, this was the first time he had sex in both of his lives so of course he was worried.

    Things like "what if I ejacte too fast, what if I can''t make them cum" and the like kept circting through his mind, at least until he entered his mother, after that hepletely forgot about everything and just focused on both enjoying and making them enjoy it to the best of his capacities, and judging by their current expressions his efforts paid off.

    He shook his head a bit, "The sex was amazing¡­ but to be honest, the feeling of bliss that cuddling with them brings to my heart is simply intoxicating".

    All this made Daimon''s eyes fill with resolution, this precise moment of peace was the reason as to why he neverined no matter how harsh was his training, or how many times he felt as if his bones were about to break due to the extreme amount of weight applied to his body.

    The thought of being able to live freely, to spend his time with the girls, without having to care about others, made him grit hiss teeth and keep going forward.

    Daimon suddenly felt sleepy, his eyes closed as he fell asleep not without thinking.

    "Someday¡­ I will be the strongest, so that none of them had to suffer nor worry about anything, because no one would dare to oppose me".

    Evangeline who this time "spied" while they were doing it, heard his thoughts and she smiled.

    "Having me already makes you the most talented existence, I wonder what changes will you bring to the limitless creation¡­ Daimon".

    The night went on without any problems, at least for Daimon and the girls, but somewhere in Lykos there is a city on a mountain, where one of the three main branches of the Risha family lives,

    The n head of the Night sparrow branch of the Risha family, Ferdinand Risha, was having one of the worst nights in his life, the day started like every other one, he spent the whole day in his private studio to "enjoy" thepany of one of his personal maids.

    But that wasn''t what really mattered, he was brimming with happiness because, after nearly 500 years of being stuck in the middle stage, he finally managed to have a chance of breakthrough to the peak stage of the Archmage realm.

    The Night Sparrow n had the ability to gather mana faster at night, so as soon as the sun set down, he used a magic herb he has been saving for this moment and entered seclusion toprehend more about his domain and finally advance.

    Everything was going fine, he closed his eyes and focused on refining the herb, but then when his breathing slowed down due to the peaceful state, he reached¡­ he suddenly vomited blood.

    His vision blurred, and without noticing he fainted, then he saw hundreds of thousands of skeletons burning in violet mes, without any other choice he fought for his life, the effects of the magic herb were wasted and he even suffered inner wounds, when he woke up it was nearly midnight.

    His lungs were filled with anger and the only way to avoid vomiting blood he found was shouting as hard as he could.

    "That little bitch always meddles in my path to glory!!!!", without any dy he tried to move but he tripped and fell, while gritting his teeth he took out his sigil lector and spoke.<sub> </sub>

    "Guards, bring the punishment elder to my chamber¡­ and also bring that ungrateful ex-wife of mine!!!".

    While the guards fulfilled his orders, he sat down and tried to regte his flow of mana which was erratic due to the backsh he just suffered, after a couple of minutes a bit of color returned to his face, he heard the doors of his chamber opening and saw an old man and a woman which looked like a mature version of Yvonne, both escorted by the guards.

    This time Ferdinand managed to properly stand up, following the etiquette he greeted the old man while ignoring the woman.

    "Greetings elder of punishment".

    The old man had a slightly annoyed expression but he limited to nod.

    "What does the n head want from me thiste in the night?".

    Ferdinand snorted, "you won''t be acting so high, when you hear what''s about to happen, to your dear granddaughter you old bastard", he thought, before saying.

    "I called you because someone has broken the rules of the family by lifting the punishment curse, I applied on that rebellious girl".

    The woman frowned her eyebrows.

    "Heh, so your curse bacshed? That''s what you deserve for being an asshole¡­ I still can''t believe you punished your own daughter just for trying to preserve her dignity!!!".

    Ferdinand snorted.

    "Don''t lecture me Irina, besides the two of you no one on the n would have helped her lift the curse¡­ you have spoiled her too much, her actions caused me to lose the opportunity to advance, our Risha family needs to get stronger and your selfishness prevented us to gain a new peak stage Archmage, so this time there will be consequences!!!".

    The old man interrupted the usations of the n head.

    "Ferdinand, I know we don''t share the same vision¡­ but using me or my daughter of something we didn''t do is low even for you, if you want to talk about "consequences", then let''s bring this case to the punishment hall, but if it turns out we didn''t do anything, I will ask for you position as the n head to be revoked, we can''t have someone so narrow minded leading the n".

    Ferdinand nearly choked, he noticed that both the punishment elder and Irina weren''t feigning, they were so confident that it was clear, he will be the one losing if he decided to drag this further.

    "Could this be a trap, maybe that girl found someone on her own to lift the curse¡­ but for someone who doesn''t have the lineage of our night sparrow n to do it, then it must have been a half emperor, why such an important person would help a mere star ranked mage?", Ferdinand unsessfully tried to imagine how Yvonne lifted the curse, only to not reach a logic conclusion.

    "If that''s the case then I will just have to ask her personally, I will bring thew enforcing elder with me to the academy tomorrow, if what you say is true and no one from the n helped her, then all this will be left behind, but if that''s not the case then¡­ prepare to be isted in the nightmare jail".

    Irina had a disgusted expression as she answered.

    "I will be going too, I don''t care who you think you are, I won''t allow you to falsely use my daughter".

    After saying that, Irina left the chamber followed by the punishment elder, leaving behind an angered Ferdinand, which felt a vein popping on his neck, he simply threw himself at his bed as he tried to calm down to avoid suffering inner bleeding.

    "What a fucking horrible day", he thought.

    In contrast with what happened in the Night Sparrow n, back in the wild w academy, more urately in the female dormitories, Yvonne was having afortable resting time, for the first in so many days she could close her eyes without being haunted by the curse her irrational bastard of a father casted on her.

    "I bet tomorrow that guy wille all the way here to find out what happened, but mom won''t let him do as he please, he might act all high and mighty at home, but I would like to see him dare to even raise his voice here¡­ specially since we have a "guardian demon" at our side" hehehe.

    She couldn''t help but chuckle a bit, remembering how Daimon turned Taylor into a eunuch and called it a "warning", although it was a bit gory for Leslie, both Liliana and her agreed that it was a perfect solution.

    "I don''t even want to think what would have happened to Leslie¡­ if that bastard took her home with him".

    Yvonne sighed, she closed her eyes and slowed down her breathing.

    "Perhaps mom was right¡­", she thought as she unconsciously fell asleep.

 Chapter 79 A Good Way To Wake Up R-18

    The sun rose in Lykos, although the weather was rather cold, it was a good daypared to the previous clouded ones, in a mansion near the principal''s office in the Wild w academy, Daimon was peacefully sleeping, his eyelids trembled a bit as he felt the two soft naked bodies at his sides move.

    Daimon slowly opened his eyes, it took him a couple of seconds to fully wake up, he looked at the two beauties in his embrace which were still sleeping, Aura''s tail was lovingly wrapped around his arm, while Aisha was basically clung to him, the soft feeling of their bare skin rubbing against him was simply heavenly.

    "Ahhh, what a good way to wake up".

    He gazed at the clock and it was still quite early in the morning, to be honest he was considering arrivingte at sses, right now all his body felt reallyfortable, "it would be a crime to get up right now".

    Just like that, he closed his eyes and let his body be varied away by theforting sensation of sharing his bed with the girls, unfortunately Aisha thought different, she stretched her body and rode on top of her son, before she pressed her lips against his.

    "Wake up darling ?".

    Daimon mentally sighed, "she is strangely stubborn on weird things like not skipping sses".

    Still, he used his free arm to caress all the way from her back to her ass, the sensation of his fingers sinking on her supple big ass, was sublime, he returned the kiss before saying.

    "Mom¡­ are you okay, does it hurt back there?".

    Aisha smiled feeling the gentle touch of her son, she let him spoil her as much as he wanted.

    "It''s weird, I feel like you are still inside of me darling, I was a bit sore before, but I drank a bit of your blood when you were sleeping, and magically my bodypletely healed¡­ after that I felt sofortable that I slept like a log, also you taste really good hehehe?", she said as she licked her lips.

    Daimon was marveled by the charming blushed expression of his mother had, he touched his neck but there were no traces of a bite, which was to be expected since he didn''t leave one when he did it to her.

    "Hyaaa ?". Aisha let out a low moan, when her son gently spanked her ass, she gave him a confused gaze, only to receive a little scold from her son.

    "A little punishment for assaulting you own son while he sleeps hahaha".

    Aisha pouted; she left her body rest on top of her son and made little circles on his chest with her fingers.

    "Don''t get mad darling, you already drank from me so ording to vampire traditions, I''m officially your wife now ?, of course you should spoil me and let me drink from you hehehe".

    Daimon was speechless, but to be honest a bit of blood was a low price to pay, to get the love of such a beauty like Aisha, also now he understood why he felt sofortable, he was experiencing the remaining pleasure of having his blood sucked by his mother.

    He shook his head and kissed Aisha, his morning wood pressed against her belly.

    "Mm?", Aisha felt something hard and hot poking her and she looked downwards just to see Daimon''s raging boner.

    "Of course, my cute mother has the right to drink from me, but blood won''t be only thing", he said with a cunning smile on his face.

    "Yawwnn ?", with a cute sound Aura opened her eyes, she woke up earlier but she was quite weak in the mornings so she decided to rest a bit more, until she saw Daimon and Aisha flirting with each other so much that she felt a bit jealous.

    "Can''t you two keep your hands off each other for a couple of minutes?", she said in an usatory voice, unfortunately her tail which was still tightly hugging Daimon''s arm didn''t allow her to look angry.

    Aisha moved aside a bit so that Aura could also get up on top of Daimon, so now the two of them were resting on him.

    Daimon caressed Aura''s ears before kissing her, it didn''t escape his eyes that she moved a bit slowly, probably because she was a bit sore back there, which was understandable considering how hard was for her to take his penis inside of her.

    Aura frowned her eyebrows; she sniffed a couple of times and looked intoxicated.

    "Daimon¡­ you smell really good ?".

    Daimon was about to answer when he was interrupted by the sudden sound of a notification.

    *Ding*

    "A new skill has been created due to a specific action".

    [For vampires blood is life, the vitality in the blood of the host has overflowed to the whole body, for your lovers your body is now a treasure.

    [Mystic Vitality LV 1 (Passive): When drank by soulmates, the bodily fluids of the host will cure and soothe any non-lethal wound]

    Daimon smiled from ear to ear, he kissed Aura and whispered on her ears.

    "I have a solution that will benefit the two of us".

    ¡­

    *Slurp*<sub> </sub>

    *Slurp*

    Sloppy wet sounds filled the bedroom, Daimon had a blissful expression on his face as he saw his mother and Aura sucking on his dick, after he got the notification, he decided to immediately test how viable was for him to heal Aura with "love".

    When he told them to give him a blowjob for "medical purposes", of course nor Aura or Aisha believed it, still they didn''t refuse and instead started to use their mouths to please their lover.

    The scene of Aura''s tail wagging as she gobbled on his dick was out of this world, Aisha on the other hand was licking the shaft, her tongue moved around from one side to the other.

    "Hmm¡­ why does it taste sooo good ?", thought Aura, her nose was filled with a delicious smell, as if she was eating a meal prepared by the most outstanding chefs.

    Without she knowing, her body was craving for Daimon''s sperm, of course her efforts were rewarded by a thick load of it deep in her little mouth.

    *Gulp*

    *Gulp*

    Aura swallowed twice, before Aisha took over to get her share of her son''s sperm, then she understood why Aura was so engrossed in sucking Daimon''s penis¡­ the taste didn''t change too much, if anything it was sweeter, what truly changed was that as soon as she swallowed her body felt incredibly good.

    "Woah, Darling how did you do it? this feels as if I drank some kind of recovery potion¡­ but better, as if all my fatigue suddenly faded away".

    Aura on the other hand seemed to be in ecstasy, the new smell and taste of Daimon''s sperm was making her feel intoxicated, she saw that Aisha had let go of him, so she immediately started licking the tip again.

    Daimon smiled from ear to ear.

    "So how is it, did the sore feeling disappear?".

    Aura blushed, she looked at him but feigned ignorance as she kept blowing him up, still, her tail which was happily twirling around, easily revealed her mood.

    Once Aura finished her "meal", she cleaned her mouth with a napkin like a properdy, apparently the passive skill worked like a charm because her movements weren''t clumsy anymore.

    Aura couldn''t help but say.

    "Seriously what kind of monster are you, I''m a half emperor, so the medicines that should affect my body are all high ranked ones, but just by drinking your¡­ seeds, I feel like new, just like Aisha said now that we have done the deed you must take responsibility for me ?".

    Daimonughed.

    "Really? if that''s the case I want you to properly call me "husband" like a good wife".

    Aura listened to his request and she was red as a tomato, unlike Aisha who was always called Daimon "darling", she has never called him nothing but his own name, so this was a bit embarrassing for her.

    She turned her head around but still spoke with a shy low voice.

    "Take care of me¡­ h-husband ?".

    Daimon felt his heart drowning in sugar, this shy side of Aura was something only he knew, no other man has or will ever see her acting like this, and he loved it.

    He couldn''t help but drag her into his embrace, Aura even considered having a quickie, but it was gettingte and Aisha made them get up to take a bath.

    They were covered in each other fluids, especially Daimon, the girls drank up to thest drop of his sperm, but in his case their love juices sprayed all over the bed drenching Daimon in the process.

    They were actuallyte so Aisha helped her son clean his body and avoided any other kind of "interaction", she prepared a grab to go breakfast, basically some toasts sweetened with jelly and a ss of juice.

    Daimon drank his mother''s blood so right now he wasn''t hungry, the same applied for both Aisha and Aura so they just quickly ate their "second breakfast" and left the mansion, Aura went to her office not without giving Daimon a farewell kiss like good diligent wife.

    Aisha hugged her son''s right arm and they also left, on they way Daimon saw that if yesterday five out of ten people intentionally or unintentionally gazed at him, today everyone did it, so it was obvious that the news of what happened at the city hadpletely spread in the academy.

    Admired by some, envied by others and feared by all of them, that was the goal, and apparently it was going quite well, once they reached the ssroom 1S, Daimon saw that everyone was already there, including Aliya and Boris, there was still a couple of minutes left until the sses started, but it was clear they have been waiting for them.

    Boris had a slightly annoyed expression on his face.

    "Oi kid, as the representative shouldn''t you be an example for the others, what are you going to if Calvin bes more useless than he already is?".

    Calvin sighed, "why am I always the bad example".

    Daimon shrugged; he just took a seat with Aisha right next to him as he thought.

    "If you knew what it did this morning, you would have already considered me an example for all the men in the wonder myriad ster chart"

 Chapter 80 Homework Results

    Now that all the members of the elite ss were present, Boris doubted for a moment but looking at Daimon who didn''t seem to be worried at all, he shrugged.

    "You brats probably already got news of what is happening, but I will say it anyway, in a couple of weeks you will be facing the other section of the elite ss, due to the difference in members no one will be joining this ss for some time, only the other one will augment its members until they are the same as you".

    "The second thing in the list, is that a magic ruin was discovered¡­ for the time being it''s believed that only those in the fifth star mage realm or below can enter, but it''s still being analyzed, once we get the verdict from the Greenwich Sage, there are two possible oues".

    "Either many of you will be forced by your families to enter, or you will enter by your own will¡­ only a few really selected people will be able to decide whether they want to go or not", said Boris while stealing some nces at Daimon.

    Calvin sighed.

    "What''s inside that ruin that might be as important as the lives of the members of the elite ss?".

    Boris shook his head.

    "No one knows, but ording to the rumors, it''s a legacy from ancient times, whatever the case might be, your ss schedule has been modified, miss Aliya will change some of the subjects to others that are more battle oriented¡­ and your magic training time will be doubled, any questions?".

    Surprisingly Michael interrupted this time.

    "Why were there students of the human academy in the city, and more importantly why was there an Archknight without any restrictions in a ce full of star ranked students?".

    The old man scratched his head a couple of times before answering.

    "I''ll be frank, there is a considerably high chance that a war might wreak havoc due to that magic ruin, so everyone es trying to win over as much allies as possible, that''s why there are going to be quite a few transfer students here, humans aren''t prohibited in our academy¡­ there is a lot of people in Lykos which descends from a human and a member of beast races like me for example".

    Daimon nodded, not all the beast races had special characteristics like werewolves for example, and for those who descended from humans it was even moremon to not inherit them, that''s why on the surface hybrids like Boris looked like normal humans, although that wasn''t the case.

    p Liliana immediately stood up and spoke.</anda>

    "That''s one thing, but why the hell there weren''t any guardsing yesterday, when a foreigner was clearly being hostile towards a student, the rules specify we are protected within the territory of the Wild w academy?".

    Boris felt a headacheing his way, but Liliana was right, one thing are conflicts between students, the academy actually encourages its students to fight, as long as it doesn''t result in death or permanent wounds there won''t be "official consequences".

    That being said Taylor isn''t a student of the Wild w academy, so of course Boris reported the situation to the pertinent authorities, in this case the vice principals and the principal, half the votes condemned Daimon''s actions as it might create friction with the dius family, needless to say that group was practically conformed by the Jolbaris family vice principals and their supporters.

    The other half instead apuded him for defending a ssmate from a member of another faction, their argument was rather solid "The dius family hasn''t ever sent help nor cooperated with the beast faction, at most their concept of being "allies" it''s just not kidnapping our kin anymore and even that it''s just on the surface".

    There was no argument to refute that, besides Daimon followed the "rules", Taylor''s wound could be healed¡­ but it will take at least a couple of months, and so to satisfy both parties the whole situation was thrown under the carpet, the dius family could only swallow theirins, unfortunately the same could be said of the girls from the Risha family.

    Boris knew that Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie were not satisfied with the solution, but there was so much he could do, he wasn''t a noble that''s why he stayed and worked for the academy.

    "Little girls, I know this isn''t fair, but the world has never been fair, at the very least that brat from the dius family didn''t go unpunished, so I doubt he will ever dare to approach any of you¡­ since there is a certain "blood thirsty demon" watching your backs".

    Boris turned to see Daimon.

    "Speaking of that, a leg or an arm would have been enough¡­ why did you suddenly changed your target?".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "The purpose of a punishment is to make people regret their actions, an arm or a leg would have only made him feel pain, even when I kicked his ass, the way he was looking at the girls didn''t change".

    That was true, even when he was getting beat up, Taylor still looked not only at Leslie but the other girls with lust filled eyes¡­ the problem was that he also targeted Aisha and that was what sealed his destiny.

    Daimon smiled before continuing.

    "He wasn''t learning the lesson, and where would I put my face, if others believed they cane here and cause troubles in my ss, so that''s why I decided for a more "suitable" punishment".

    Boris sighed.

    "Whatever, if theye with bad intentions then you can deal with the situation however you want¡­ as long as you don''t cross the line, but if they don''te looking for trouble then let it be".

    Daimon snorted.<sub> </sub>

    "I already warned everyone back at the wee party, it''s not my fault they were transferred after that, but I guess they properly received the message this time around, "if you want to keep your limbs attached to your body, keep them as far as possible from me and those around me".

    Calvin nodded.

    "It''s good we are included, imagine some of those guys having a "weird" taste and going after shorties like Michael".

    Michael was agreeing with Calvin, until he heard thest part.

    "What the hell you Calvin bastard!!! Don''t drag others into your weird fetishes", he said in a sarcastic voice.

    Boris was amazed at their interactions, "yesterday they were treating each other like strangers, and now they are interacting like friends¡­ nothing like an enemy inmon to make people unite I guess", he thought.

    After what happened yesterday, Boris wasn''t as confident as before so this time he didn''t leave the area of the ssroom, instead he stood outside to wait for the lessons to be over.

    Now that Boris finished with the announcements of the day, Aliya took over.

    "I know yesterday wasn''t exactly a good day, so in case you forgot your homework I''ll overlook it just this time, did any of you seed in brewing the potion?".

    Listening to their teacher''s question, everyone took out the results of their first time brewing a potion, starting with Calvin''s one which was a mess.

    Aliya saw that liquid part of the potion had little brown particles floating around and she shook her head.

    "You didn''tplete the refining process, so the solid remains didn''t properly separate from the potion¡­ drinking it like this might heal you, but the remains of unrefined river grass and magic beast''s blood, will be detrimental to your body".

    Aliya drew an approximation of the internal organs in a body, she made a circle in the kidneys before continuing with her exnation.

    "While the magic core might be most important for a mage, mana flows through all the body, you all were born into a decent family¡­ it might be unheard for you, but low-quality potions like the one Calvin brewed aren''t exactly umon, all those who don''t have enough money have no option but to sacrifice their well-being in order to survive".

    "Of course, it''s not something that happens with a mere healing potion like this one, breaking through bes harder the more you advance, so of course one of the most important fields for alchemists is creating potions to help both mages and knights to advance".

    "While those who are born in a noble family, or those who end up signing a contract with an organization¡­ like the academy for example, will not have to worry about money and other resources, those whose talent is limited,moners and those who don''t like to be tied, often end up dying not in battle or reaching the end of their lifespan".

    "They die due to the umtion of residues in their organs, in order to advance they use low quality potions and even experimental recipes, they be strong, some form a lesser noble family and then die, others try to look for a cure, which doesn''t exist yet and end up dying in some forgottennd, or in a magic ruin".

    Aliya sighed, that could have been her fate, if not for Boris adopting her when her parents died.

    The rest of them showed Aliya their results, surprisingly Yvonne, Aisha and also Michael managed to properly brew the potion, the quality wasn''t the best, but at the very least Aliya confirmed there won''t be any side effects of using them.

    But what truly caught her attention was the bottle which Daimon was holding with his hands, the color of the content was more like copper than orange, Aliya frowned her eyebrows and took the bottle from Daimon.

    Aisha saw the proud smile on her son''s face and she smiled, "Using the job skills from both an appraiser and a potion master together¡­ that''s cheating darling ?".

    Daimon felt his mother''s usatory gaze, luckily, he was shameless enough to not care bout using the system for something as little as homework, up to this day he didn''t pay much attention to the potential of the truth seeker eyes in alchemy, but judging by Aliya''s amazed expression the result was quite something.

    "D-Daimon, did you refine this¡­ tell me was there even the slightest solid remains at the bottom of the sk, once the process was finished!!!!", forgetting about her usual rxed self, Aliya asked in a hurry.

    The slightly metallic color, was a clear sign that the potion she taught them had reached perfection, absorbing all the properties of the magic beast''s blood and the green river grass, thusbining both the external and internal healing effects, that are usually separated in the orange liquid and the dark brown paste.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Everything integrated into the potion, there was no trace of the green river grass nor the blood once I finished creating it".

    Aliya''s eyes sparkled, she looked at both the potion and Daimon as if she has found an unvaluable treasure, still since all her students were looking at her, she tried her best to regain herposure.

    "Ahem, this is the best oue for the recipe I created¡­ you have a nice potential to be an alchemist, so I hope to keep seeing you showing this kind of results".

    Although she said that, in her mind she was jumping around like a little girl, "to think that I would fins such a rare talent, he is a bit¡­ rebellious, but to have such a genius as my pupil is a once in a life opportunity, sigh I hope he isn''t a muscle head like uncle Boris".

 Chapter 81 A Bet

    Daimon was surprised feeling the intense gaze Aliya was directing at him, "My intention was to outstand to get the support of the alchemist association¡­ but it seems I might have overdone it".

    "Still being in good books with the teacher that will be in charge of your ss, isn''t a bad idea", said Evangeline.

    Daimon nodded, unlike the results of the other students, Aliya kept the elixir refined by him in her storage ring before she continued with her lesson.

    "The sses have changed, magic theory will be left aside for the time being, and we will only focus in spell basics, potion brewing and¡­bat theory".

    Aliya sat down and continued.

    "Can any of you tell me in your own words a definition of what is a spell?".

    Aisha smiled as she answered.

    "A spell is created when webine the use of imagination and ancientnguage, to give "instructions" to the mana we store in our magic cores".

    Aliya nodded.

    "That''s a perfect answer, many people would ignore the fact that "imagination", also contributes in both the creation and casting of a spell, and that''s why many mages have problems when they want to use non chant casting".

    She drew an example of many elements, fire, wind, water, earth, metal, lightning, etc.

    "I witnessed you all using non chant spells in thebat training of yesterday, but ording to my observations, everyone of you still needed about five to ten seconds to use a one-star spell¡­ which is a decent standard, but it''s not good enough for you all to be considered elite".

    "That''s why I will teach you all how to reduce that to three or four seconds at most".

    This time even Daimon was in awe, he could use non chant spells but doing a fast calction his casting time was between five to six seconds, and that was quite outstanding, of course the skills from the system activated instantly, but he couldn''t only rely on that, that''s why he trained but he advanced way more in the knight''s path than the mage one, so he had a loot of room for improvement.

    Aliya smiled.

    "Judging by your reaction, you are all thinking that I''m asking for too much, considering you are first years, and normally it would be true since reaching such a high mastery of non-chant casting¡­ would mean you are ready to graduate, but like when taught you my original healing potion recipe, I will give you another "tool" for you to have an advantage over your peers".

    Daimon agreed with Aliya, he still hasn''t decided if he will go to the magic ruin or not, but in any case, having advantages over other mages, it''s not something bad, specially since all the "official" fights in the academy, must be between people in the same realm or at least not so far from it.

    Calvin didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, mana control was one of his weakest points so non chanting was hard to master for him.

    "Teacher¡­ the old man might kick my ass for saying this, but how do you expect us to reach third years level in non-chanting, while we are at most one or two star ranked mages?".

    Aliya smiled.

    "Well one wouldn''t expect a one-star mage to beat a four-star knight, and still ording to all the academy, something like that happened yesterday, isn''t it?".

    Calvin sighed.

    "Not everyone is a monster like Daimon¡­whatever forget I asked, I came to the academy to rx and meet cuties, and instead seems like fate is ying with me to be what my father wanted to".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Who told you to enter the elite ss, I bet you wanted to impress one of the female teachers that were in charge of the admission tests".

    Calvin almost fell from his chair, Daimon was right, back in the tests he saw a veiled woman and his "beauty detecting senses" tingled, so of course he as the young master of Ghrish family couldn''t help but brag, unfortunately the woman didn''t look impressed, instead he was sent to the next test which he approved.

    "Ahem, that''s not exactly true, I just wanted to see that arrogant vice principal from the Jolbaris family put on an annoyed expression", he said with an upright expression on his face.

    Michael snorted.

    "Yeah right, and the elegant girl from the snow leopard tribe of course didn''t make you show off, just enough to get the tenth position of the elite ss".

    Yvonne shook her head.<sub> </sub>

    "Calvin if we lose against Alexander''s group ofckeys, just because you are azy ass, I will tell your aunt to dress you up as a girl and make you work in the happy wanderer for a week as a punishment".

    Listening to Yvonne''s threat Calvin felt his body shiver, "That brute woman will actually make me do it¡­ God damn it, now I can''t rx even in the ssroom", he thought.

    With Calvin''s worries "settled", the ss continued, Aliya drew various symbols in the chalkboard, fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, darkness, metal and so on.

    "Those whoe from big families tend to put more attention in advancing fast, or rather in getting a bigger reserve of mana, which is not a bad thing, but what does a huge mana pool amounts for, if you can''t follow your opponent''s rhythm".

    Aliya put on a nostalgic expression as she pointed at the symbols she drew and continued.

    "I used to be a meremoner¡­ and not only that but a mixed blood, that''s why I don''t have any beast characteristics, so Icked potions and magic herbs to be "outstanding" in the same field as other students from the academy, then I looked for another way to not just be another mage of the heap".

    She extended her hand and a little wisp of me light up, fire normally has a red/yellow tone, but the mes in Aliya''s hand were of a bright orange color, one would normally think it''s just a mere trick, but as a member of the fire crane n, Leslie couldn''t stop her admiration.

    "No way!!! that color of mes is the same as the peak Archmage elders of my family¡­ miss Aliya, are you perhaps rted to me?".

    Aliya had a weird smile on her face as she exined.

    "Leslie, I just said I''m amoner, the fire crane n has a high affinity with the fire element, so I''m not surprised that their Archmages had reached this¡­ level".

    The mes in Aliya''s hands dispelled and she immediately drank from the potion she had hanging in her waist, after taking a deep breath she continued with her exnation.

    "What is fire, why does it burn, what does make it stronger, what does extinguish it? I dedicated all my free time to investigate fire and all its properties, until one day I finally understood my own "concept" of fire, and since that moment any me I created with my mana became like that".

    Aisha smiled, "this woman is truly a theorist, fire is not a rare element, but without any lineage, she still managed to understand something only those old monsters from races with high fire affinity, learn after thousands of years¡­ not bad", she thought.

    Aliya was proud seeing the surprised expression in her student''s faces, and their reactions were understandable, not even the Greenwich Sage knew about what Aliya just talked about, some people''s magic changes after bing Archmages, but everyone only took it as a side effect of getting a domain.

    And yet, Aliya discovered that wasn''t the case, against all predictions and all the records in the history of the Wonder Myriad ster chart, she reached the same level inprehension of her element as those talented experienced elders.

    Daimon frowned his eyebrows; something was bothering him so he asked what was on his mind.

    "Why are you teaching us something like this? such a valuable "knowledge" which is yet to be published could have been bought by any big family at an incredibly high price¡­ but here you are speaking of it so freely, it doesn''t make sense".

    Aliya nodded.

    "You are still the only one in the elite ss which ispletely aware of his surrounds, that''s right I thought of never revealing this to anyone, I''m from thest generation that fought in an all-out war¡­ so thest thing I wanted was to stir up another one".

    She stopped for a moment and then smiled.

    "But now, there is a possibility of another war starting, for resources as always, yesterday I witnessed people who were total strangers not too long ago, fighting side by side and decided to make a bet, all of you are part of a big force or family, and yet I can see that you aren''t rotten¡­ like others, so I decided to make a bet".

    "I will teach you how to be better than others, because I want to see if my students can maintain the peace with our White Fang gxy, in case we don''t get a share of whatever might be in that magic ruin, there will be a way out for us".

    Aliya gazed at Daimon.

    "Besides, I won''t ept asceticism from someone which castrated the son of a peak Archmage, just because "he looked at my sister", was it?".

    Daimon froze for a moment, he looked at the rest of the members of the elite ss before he smiled.

    "I guess I''m not the only crazy one here¡­ whatever, leaving Calvin aside everyone here is trust worthy".

    Calvin shook his head.

    "You are always so scary, and when you suddenly decide to joke¡­ why am I the target?", he thought.

 Chapter 82 I Felt Like It

    Aliya continued with her exnation.

    "Although I said all that, my experience is limited to the understanding of fire, so the only ones that would directly benefit from this lesson, will be Leslie and Michael¡­ the rest of you might find some inspiration on it, but it will be up to yourprehension talent, to reach the "concept" level".

    There was no official name for what Aliya discovered or at least there was not on in the Wonder Myriad ster chart, so she named this level ofprehension "concept", Evangeline on the other hand was listening to the lesson and she sighed.

    "Stupid limitations of the system, if it weren''t for them, I could just tell Daimon about a lot of things¡­ on the other hand, I can''t influence him, his path has to be created by himself, or it will crumple apart", she thought.

    "Besides the change in the color, what other changes will our elements have if we reach a deeper level ofprehension?", asked Yvonne in an interested voice.

    Aliya shook her head.

    "The change in the color isn''t important, the Jolbaris for example, their "beast lightning" is yellow instead of the normal purple color of those who have lightning affinity, and still, it isn''t superior to normal lightning on any aspect".

    She rose two fingers before continuing with her exnation.

    "Higher destructive force and a more precise control over it, I don''t know if it would be the same for other elements, but regarding fire those are the changes my mes developed, the change in color was a result of the first since my fire burns at a higher temperature than others".

    Daimon was also quite interested in this "concept" thing, Aliya was teaching them, because he probably already experienced something like this without noticing, or it would be more urate to say he didn''t pay too much attention.

    He looked at his right hand which was now covered in little bolts of electricity.

    "The color is purple", he said to himself, Daimon perfectly remembered that in the state of core synchrony, his lightning wasn''t blue¡­ it was abination between silver and purple, Aliya''s theory opened the path to a lot of new possibilities.

    For example, ording to Aisha the lightning she used back when she was an Archmage was silver colored, but in her current state her lightning was purple, so she thought the reason of it was that her lightning was affected by her domain whichbined both metal and lightning elements.

    But now Daimon more or less understood how the thing worked.

    "Mom reached the "silver lighting" after gaining her domain, even when she was in the early stage of the Archmage realm, she could easily cross levels and defeat opponents above her stage¡­ in other words she had a battle prowess that surpassed her actual realm".

    "She lost her powers as an Archmage, but everything she learned is still there, and when I activate core synchrony, I get a part of that prehension" which results in that mix between silver and purple¡­ but if that''s the case why mom''s lightning isn''t silver? What am I missing?", he thought.

    Daimon''s eyes light up for a second before he said.

    "Highly destructive spells require the caster to have a decent physical condition, that''s why even when it''s not the main focus, once we surpass the star ranks, our bodies get reinforced, the same happens to the Arch ranks, but the change is on another level¡­ so if we advance in this concept thing would it not put a lot of tension in our bodies?".

    Aliya smiled, she was getting more and more impressed by Daimon''s way of thinking, "others would only focus in the benefits, but he wasn''t blinded by that and instead thought about possible side effects", she thought.

    "I was about to get to that part, think of it like this, you have a homemade bow but a high-level arrow, you might be able to shot the arrows but the bow would get easily worn out, the same applies for this, although you don''t need to be a knight, your physical constitution would need to be strong enough to withstand the use of a higher destructive version of your element".

    Daimon nodded, "That resolves the mystery", he thought, in his "normal" state his body is already abnormal, when he uses core synchrony it goes beyond that, and yet his lightning is purple because hisprehension isn''t high enough, unless he activates core synchrony.

    Aisha on the other hand is the other side of the coin, she has theprehension but her body isn''t strong enough to withstand the silver lightning, which results again in the normal purple lightning.

    Aliya was happy to see her students interested in her theory, Daimon wasn''t the only one, the others also seemed to be contemting things, "that''s good, think outside the box¡­ if we keep doing the same things how can we expect to improve", she said to herself.

    Aliya decided that it was enough contemtion for one day.

    "Before Calvin''s brain melts, we will stop here for now, but you will have homework during the rest of the year, I want you to go the library of the academy and select books about your own elements, read them, augment yourprehension¡­ it took me nearly ten years to learn my concept, but I didn''t have anyone to guide me, so I believe you will be able to get some results in only one year".

    Now it was time for thebat lessons, so everyone stood up, Boris was already waiting for them outside of the ssroom so they all went to the training grounds, unlike yesterday this time they went to the private facilities that were designated for the elite ss.

    Daimon was expecting to see Alexander and hisckeys there, but apparently, they were also assigned their own facilities to avoid, "unnecessary" conflicts, but even then, there were some people waiting for them at the entrance of the facilities.<sub> </sub>

    One of them which left as soon as they appeared was wearing the badge of a vice principal, the feathers on his hair identified him as a member of one of the many ns which conformed the Risha family.

    Since that guy left, everyone''s attention focused in the ones that stayed, they were clearly separated in two groups of two people, a ck-haired man which looked a bit haggard along with two old men which looked simr, they both had white hair and a cunning smile on their faces.

    The other group was formed by an old man with beard and mustache, inparison he didn''t look as old as the other, instead he was quite tall and had a muscrplexion, and finally thest one was a ck-haired woman¡­ which resembled Yvonne.

    Daimon mentally shook his head, "that was faster than what I expected", he thought, his supposition was confirmed a secondter when he heard Yvonne saying.

    "Mom, grandpa, what are you two doing here?".

    The woman smiled, she approached Yvonne and hugged her.

    "I was going to pay you a visit anyway¡­ but we have something to deal before we can have a proper conversation", the old man didn''t say anything but he still stood a couple of steps in front of the Yvonne and her mother.

    Boris frowned his eyebrows.

    "Ferdinand Risha¡­ it''s been some time since I saw you, so tell me why are you interrupting my ss?".

    Ferdinand whose eyes seemed to be on fire a moment ago when he was looking at Yvonne, heard Boris''s voice and he snorted.

    "Ogien, I didn''t expect you to be in charge of the elite ss, it seems that the Wild w academy has lowered its standards for tutors nowadays, however I''m not here to waste my time talking with you, this time I came to punish my rebellious daughter for causing me problems".

    He then looked at Yvonne with an anger filled expression.

    "Do you know how much trouble you caused this time? Not only you lifted the curse without the permission of the n, you caused me to suffer deviation and wasting a priceless magic herb, do you have anything to say in your defense?".

    Yvonne shrugged, she noticed her father was truly angry this time¡­ and she was quite happy for it.

    "Why is it my fault that you suck as an Archmage, in any case, we both know who was the one that requested such an irrational punishment in the first ce, so I don''t understand why I''m suddenly the one in fault".

    Ferdinand felt his blood pressure rising, he gritted his teeth and then shouted to the two old men that were standing beside him.

    "Law enforcing elders, you heard this little girl''s disrespectful answer, as the n head I ask you to take her under arrest for interrogation, we need to find out who was the one that helped her dispel the curse, that spell was developed by our ancestors and no thanks to her itsposition might have been exposed to outsiders".

    Irina saw that things were going south and she was about to use her domain when the voice of a man interrupted the conflict.

    "That curse was an eyesore for me, so I asked a "friend" to remove it, do you have a problem with that?".

    With the exception of Aisha, all the other people turned to see the origin of the voice, a ck-haired young man with mesmerizing violet eyes, which was Daimon of course.

    Ferdinand frowned his eyebrows, but when he realized the one interfering was a "mere" one star ranked mage, he shook his head.

    "Kid who do you think you are, watch your tongue when you are talking to an Archmage¡­ why did you help my daughter to lift the curse, you will have topensate for this crime, which family do youe from?".

    Daimon smirked; his next words made everyone speechless.

    "My surname is Licht, and the reason as to why I helped to erase that trash curse was¡­ because I felt like it".

    Boris sighed, he immediately lifted his guard, "These brats are going to kill me someday", he thought.

 Chapter 83 Overlordâ€™s Pride

    It took Ferdinand a moment to process what just happened, a one star ranked mage spoke to him in such an unrespectful way, and that was not all, he tried to remember a big force which was ruled by a family surnamed Licht but he realized there was no such a thing.

    So, in his mind he was basically insulted by amoner, which had enough luck to enter the elite ss somehow.

    Ferdinand took a deep breath; he then nodded and spoke.

    "Very well, if that was the case, the one at fault here is not just my useless daughter but you, and since your selfish actions harmed the head of a n from the beast faction, I can take you prisoner to be interrogated, elders please proceed".

    The atmosphere suddenly tensed up, the two old men and Ferdinand let out their pressure in the surrounding area in a try to suppress Daimon and the other students, of course Irina, Yvonne''s grandpa and Boris let out their own to counter them, but there was noticeable gap.

    Daimon evaluated the current situation, "two middle stage and peak stage Archmage in their side, and one peak, one middle and one early stage one in ours¡­ it doesn''t look good for us", he said.

    Calvin saw that even right now Daimon was smiling, and he sighed.

    "Oi ss rep, if you have a card up your sleeve, the sooner the better, I''m proud of my guts, but I don''t want to see them outside of my body you know?".

    Daimonughed.

    "Calvin, do you know what time is it?", he asked in a rxed voice.

    Before Calvin could answer Michael interrupted.

    "It''s nearly midday¡­ but what does that matter".

    "Well, let''s just say that these guys from the Risha family have a bad timing".

    The two old men in Ferdinand''s side suddenly ced their hands over their chests as if they were feeling pain, their faces turned pale as paper before they spat out blood.

    "Uncles!!!", screamed Ferdinand in a terrified voice.

    "How interesting, apparently the Risha family is now the ruler of the White Fang gxy¡­ if not they wouldn''t be acting so dominant in front of the young master of both my Revy family and the Argent family".

    Daimon smiled, he looked at the roof of the training facilities, just to see the origin of the pressure that made two peak Archmages vomit blood, a beautiful light brown-haired girl, she was using an outfit thatbined both western and eastern styles, her eyes had a bright red tone, but probably the most outstanding characteristics¡­ besides her perfectly curvy body, were the foxlike ears and the four tales whichpleted her look.

    Ferdinand''s eyes widened.

    "Isn''t that the champion of the Revy family!!! ¡­ wait did she just said "young master" of the Revy and Argent family, then this kid is¡­", he couldn''t finish his thoughts when he felt his heart sinking, unlike the two elders which somehow managed to stay up, he directly fell to the ground.

    *Crack*

    "Aghhh!!!".

    The sound of bones cracking and Ferdinand''s screams made the girls turn away their faces, well with the exception of Yvonne and Aisha.

    Daimon cleared his throat, to draw Liz''s attention.

    "Ahem, that''s enough if he faints, then how do you expect me to threaten him?".

    Liz smiled, she stopped using her pressure on Ferdinand, before winking and sending a kiss at Daimon, her image shed as she disappeared from the scene not without saying clear and loud.

    "If that''s what my future husband wants, then as a diligent wife I will obey ?".

    ¡­

    Daimon shook his head, "Punishment tonight, definitely", he thought.

    He then walked until he was a couple of meters away from Ferdinand and spoke.

    "The next time you want to bully someone, make sure you have the higher ground, also whoever they used to be, they are now my ssmates¡­ friends, and I''m already starting to have fun with them, so it would be a pain if I end up having to look for new ones".

    Ferdinand which was having problems to breath, heard Daimon and he nearly fainted due to the excess of anger, he coughed a couple of times before forcing himself to speak.

    "This is an abuse of authority¡­ you have no right to interfere in the matters of my n".

    Daimon looked at Yvonne and spoke.

    "Yvonne, are you rted to this man?".

    Yvonne shook her head.

    "No, the only ones in that ce which I recognize as my family, are my mother and my grandfather, since I was born up to this day, the only ones that have ever worried about me are them¡­ even now my school fees are being covered by my mother alone".<sub> </sub>

    Daimon smirked.

    "You heard her, there is no ce for you to interfere in the matters of my ss", after saying that out loud he approached Ferdinand and said in a low voice.

    "To be honest that''s just an excuse, I''m clearly bullying you¡­ but what can you do about it, never appear in front of me again if you value your balls that is, go ask to that vice principal that allowed you to enter, what happened to that idiot from the dius family".

    Ferdinand didn''t understand why, but when he looked upwards and saw Daimon''s eyes, he felt his whole body shiver a bit, his back was drenched in cold sweat as he thought.

    "This makes no sense, I an Archmage am being intimidated by a star ranked youth!!! ¡­ no, this kid isn''t normal, this feels as if I''m being targeted by a monstrous magic beast".

    Unlike the previous idiots Daimon has fought, Ferdinand is an Archmage, so normally he would of course not feel pressured by him, luckily his mind is quite agitated, he failed to break through and then was humiliated by Liz after all, so right now he was quite susceptible.

    Daimon looked at the little window which had a description written.

    [Overlord''s Pride LV 2 (Passive): Your sole presence makes your opponents tremble in fear, the more others fear you the stronger you will look for them, absolute submission is possible given the proper amount of pride]

    [The user gathers the fear caused by his actions to others, and wears it as part of its natural aura, which is only detectable by enemies or those who harbor ill intentions, it also protects the user from mental attacks]

    "Out of all the skills I got from the manticore¡­ this is the one I like the most, it originally only gave me a strong presence in front of others, but it changed quite a bit after levelling up", thought Daimon.

    Evangeline of course took the chance to brag.

    "Of course, I told you the system will always adapt to your desires, since you wanted to make others tremble just by the mention of your name, then this particr skill has the potential to help you achieve that".

    Others can''t see it, but in Ferdinand''s eyes, there was a huge dark shadow whose figure is unrecognizable behind Daimon, the only exception were the eyes, which were clearly visible, the shadow''s murderous sharp violet gaze fell over Ferdinand making his heart clench, he felt as if he was going to suffocate.

    Ferdinand looked at Yvonne and found a way out of this terrifying situation.

    "I-I as the n head dere that this incident will be totally forget¡­ Yvonne entered the elite ss, so the family will give its support to her!!!".

    After finishing speaking, Ferdinand unconsciously looked at Daimon and saw him nodding, that horrible shadow disappeared and the sun seemed to illuminate the world again.

    Daimon patted Ferdinand''s shoulder as if he didn''t threat to castrate him a few moments ago, before saying with a calm smiling expression.

    "That wasn''t so hard, was it?".

    "Be sure to show your support to those who stand at my sides, and your Risha family will of course bepensated, who knows what we might find in that magic ruin¡­ if Yvonne feels "loved" by her family, a couple of gifts might find their way to those who support our ss".

    Ferdinand''s eyes light up likemps, a wise person once said "There are no eternal enemies, just eternal benefits", and he was a firm believer of that.

    "That girl managed to get in the good books of this monster, perhaps Irina was right to send her to the academy¡­ I have to talk with the other n heads", he thought.

    Daimon saw the reaction he was expecting and he mentally smiled, "The carrot and the stick, what a wonderful method to get subordinates".

    Ferdinand slightly nodded, he helped the two elders stand up and the three of them left, not without giving Yvonne aplex gaze as he thought, "To think the fate of my Night Sparrow n will be in the hands of Irina''s daughter¡­ sigh"

    The previous scene looked quite incredible for Ferdinand, but the members of the elite ss, Irina and the old man, only saw Daimon approaching Ferdinand which made him look as if he has seen a ghost, before he left withoutining or even showing the slightest anger.

    Yvonne knew there was more to Daimon than what meets the eye, so the most surprised out of everyone was none other than Irina and the old man that was with her.

    "One thing is having a high status, but making an Archmage retreat with the tail between his legs¡­ what did this kid told to Ferdinand", they thought.

    Now that the situation was over, Daimon shook his head as he gazed at his ssmates.

    "You guys are for sure a headache¡­ but it wouldn''t be fun to hang around with you if that wasn''t the case", he said with a rxed expression.

    Calvinughed.

    "Come on, you like to cause problems anyway, so why not use that scary personality of yours to help your friends hahaha".

    On a rare asion Michael agreed with Calvin, even Aishaughed at his observation.

    The only one which wasn''tughing was Boris.

    "You get a headache, bullshit, I''m going to have to deal with the aftermath¡­ what the hell is the champion of the Revy family, a peak Archmage, doing here?", he thought.

    Aura requested Liz toe, but she kind of forgot to tell Boris about it.

 Chapter 84 Adultâ€™s Conversation

    While Daimon was dealing with a panic-stricken Ferdinand, Liz was happily walking while sheughed, "Somehow calling him husband makes my heart beat faster and with that those girls would think it twice before trying to seduce my little Daimon hehehe ?".

    The scene of a slightly jealous Liz would be quite charming¡­ if not for the fact that she was dragging someone from the neck, the vice principal from the Risha family which told Ferdinand were to find the elite ss to be more urate.

    Felix Risha was having quite a bad day, first the n head ordered him to guide their group at the ce were the elite ss trains, to be honest he didn''t want to do it as he knew it would cause problems¡­ but his direct ancestor was thew enforcing elder which came along with Ferdinand so he had no choice but to obey.

    Still, he retired as soon as he could, with the intention to notify the principal just in case, unfortunately just as he was hurrying to the principal''s office, he suddenly felt as if a carriage had hit him, his body flied all the way until it crashed against a tree.

    With a pained expression he tried to stand up just to receive a punch in the face, only after that he could finally recognize who was attacking him, a smiling light brown-haired woman with fox tails and ears, which gave her away as a member of the Revy gamily.

    There were only two people rted to the Revy family in the elite ss, and one of them was the infamous disciple of the principal, which has been causing others to feel miserable, since the very moment he set foot in the academy.

    So of course, Felix immediately tried to exin himself, to avoid a cmity falling on him, but it was toote, no matter how much he yelled that he had no bad intentions towards Daimon, Liz just kept beating the crap out of him until she was satisfied.

    Once the beating was over, she just said one thing before dragging him to the principal''s office.

    "It is easy to invite misfortune, but to getting rid of it¡­ that''s apletely different story".

    So now he respectable peak stage mage lord was being dragged through dirt, grass and stones all the way to the office of the principal, his body was hurting like hell, but he didn''t have any really important wound, so it was clear he had a chance to redeem himself.

    "Sigh¡­ if this happened to me just by causing a little trouble, I can just wish luck to the n head and my grand uncles".

    Back in the training facilities Boris invited Yvonne''s mother and grandfather to "witness" a training session given by him, of course they first sat down to take a quick breath, everyone was still quite tense after a situation which involved Archmages after all.

    The adults including Aliya sat together while the student formed their own group and upied a separated space to recover.

    Apparently, Ferdinand wasn''t the only one which knew Boris, because the old man which was with Irina looked quite happy to speak with him.

    "Little Ogien, it''s been what five hundred years since thest time I saw you?".

    Boris nodded.

    "It''s been quite some time¡­ instructor Richard, how has the retired life been treating you?".

    The old man shook his head.

    "Even after I retired from military life, I still have to deal with brats causing troubles, it''s just that now they are from my own family hahaha".

    Boris put on a nostalgic smile, Yvonne''s grandfather used to be a military instructor, unlike others he didn''t discriminate anyone by status, up to this day he still remembers the first lesson he taught to all of them.

    Richard stood in front of all its students and shouted.

    "A sword won''t avoid your neck thanks to your surname, in my eyes there are only two types of people live or dead".

    Boris shook his head, he looked at Aliya as he thought, "Bing old for sure makes one nostalgic¡­ I hope those two in heaven can see how amazing their little girl turned out to be".

    Richard noticed Boris mncholic expression and he also sighed, Boris and Aliya''s parents were the best students he has ever had, and he was quite fond of them to the point that when Aliya''s parents died, he ignored orders for the first time in his life and personally traveled all the way to the battlefield to massacrer a whole brigade of the undead army.

    He returned covered in blood and with the heads of the undead officials in charge on his hands, he presented them to the empty graves of his students before immediately quitting his position, although it was supposed to be a dishonored discharge, no one dared to bad mouth Richard for what he did.

    Aliya more or less knew what happened to her parents, Boris and even the instructor always med themselves for it, but she forgave them long time ago, both of them one day visited her to not only give her the bad news, that day she witnessed a respectable peak Archmage and a noble on top of that, bowing his head to her amoner which was only a star ranked mage at that point.

    Aliya saw those two getting depressed and she sighed, Boris took her in as his own daughter and Richard always acted as her back up, that''s why she also joined the army, it was thanks to him that when she injured herself, there was a position in the academy waiting for her, and although others disdained her, no one objected when she became a teacher.

    "Uncle¡­ senior Richard, that wasn''t your fault okay, let'' not think on such gloomy events, this is a happy situation, I think we have finally found an opportunity to end all this conflict", she said while looking at Daimon and the rest of the elite ss.

    Richard frowned his eyebrows.<sub> </sub>

    "Speaking of that¡­ little Aliya who is that kid? I heard that the son inw of the Revy family was quite something, but lifting the ancestral punishment curse of my family goes way beyond that".

    Boris looked a bit confused.

    "Instructor, that kid said he didn''t do it personally considering his status, either the Revy matriarch or the principal helped him on that".

    Richard shook his head, his eyes seemed to change their color for a couple of seconds.

    "None one besides Irina, little Aliya and you, know that I also have special eyes, although I can''t use them as I please like Yvonne, I can still see faint traces of that kid''s mana in Yvonne''s head, also considering how fierce is the mana of that kid, the curse wasn''t lifted¡­ it was obliterated".

    Listening to Richard''s exnation, Boris, Irina and even Aliya who already considered Daimon an abnormal existence due to the result of his first time brewing a potion, couldn''t help but improve their impression of Daimon.

    Since no one said anything, Richard continued.

    "I trained mages as an instructor for more than one thousand years, I saw many geniuses dying in their first real battle, and othermoners reaching glory after experiencing a lot of hardships, when little Aliya offered to teach a few selected people from our family her theory, I refused".

    "Not because I didn''t want my family to be stronger, but because we weren''t able to take on such a heavy weight alone and our rtions with other families aren''t exactly harmonious, but now I see the young masters of at least five big forces being led by just one kid".

    Boris smiled.

    "Aura Argent, Erin Revy, Charles Ghrish and probably some entric old monster which is the backer of Michael, as of right now, that kid has more than half of the beast faction behind him¡­ and it has only been a few days since he set foot outside of the Revy family territory".

    Irina doubted for a moment but she still said what was on her mind.

    "Aren''t you forgetting something¡­ all the potential and talent in the world doesn''t mean that kid is trust worthy, I''m for sure thankful that he helped my daughter but how can we just side with someone we just met?".

    Richard shook his head, he has always been a man of action instead of words, some people might think he is a muscle head, but he is quite aware of his daughter''s worries, and hepletely understands them, however that doesn''t mean he agrees with her.

    "Normally you will be right Irina, unfortunately given the current situation where, depending on the results of the Greenwich Sage investigation, an all-out war might start again, we can''t afford to waste time, what do you say Boris?".

    Boris contemted things for a second until he reached a conclusion.

    "That kid is rebellious, he does whatever he wants, but he isn''t reckless, unlike all the other students I have seen so far including even third grades, for some reason he is always aware of surrounds¡­ as if he has already been in a life-or-death situation before despite being so young".

    Aliya also stepped in for Daimon.

    "Also, he isn''t blinded by glory or things like that, I was the one that designed the test of the first one in line for the admission exams, he didn''t want the spot for himself but for his sister, his methods are¡­ a bit violent, but when hispanions are in trouble, he was the first one to jump in, in other words he is uncontroble but loyal".

    Irina didn''t lookpletely convinced, "My daughter will be at his care you know?", she thought but the decision was already taken, and her father has always had a good eye for people anyway.

    Speaking of Richard, he suddenlyughed out loud which not only took by surprise the adults, even the members of the elite ss turned to see the old man which now looked quite enthusiastic.

    "Those are the perfect qualities for a leader, so that settles it¡­ now we just need to see if such a fierce kid, wants to team up with us!!!".

    Daimon couldn''t hear their conversation, he was just talking about some random things while looking at Calving with dagger-like eyes, to avoid him asking about Liz previous "introduction", Evangeline on the other hand could hear every single word and she wasughing at the situation.

    "To think that showing off will bring you such an "opportunity", it seems like women are always a turning point for you, as I expected of a "predator" hahaha".

    She wasn''t the only one listening to their conversation, from the principal''s office Aura smiled.

    "Well, it seems, Arthur Jolbaris was right in one thing¡­ the one marrying Liz and ine was going to bring a bright future for the beast faction, luckily those two aren''t the only ones marrying him ?".

    Today Daimon will learn an important lesson, he might have the system and many other things that surpass the level of this ster chart, but no matter how strong or talented one might be¡­ women attract problems.

 Chapter 85 Richardâ€™s Training (Part 1)

    Richard''s sudden ruckus, made everyone look at him, Boris was baffled at the reaction of his instructor but he already had anticipated something like this happening, so he took care of the situation.

    "The break is over,e here¡­ today we have an honorable guest attending ourbat lesson, so you will learn one or two new things".

    The members of the elite ss stood from where they were and approached them, the lesson was about to start or so they thought, but instead Richard took the initiative to present himself.

    "Good evening young mages, my name is Richard Risha, as you might have already guessed, I''m Yvonne''s grandfather, it''s a pleasure".

    Everyone epted Richard''s greet, since Boris was looking at them with dagger-like eyes, they also presented themselves, just the name was enough for Richard to know more or less their status, with the only exception of Michael, Daimon and Aisha who had surnames others might haven''t heard off.

    Richard evaluated the "recruits" in front of him, it didn''t escape his eyes that Daimon and Aisha were practically glued to each other, but the same could be said of his granddaughter, Liliana and Leslie, Michael and Calvin were joking with each other, it was like any other ssroom.

    "Not bad, they have their little groups but no one is ignoring the others¡­ it''s just that they met not too long ago, so there are still some "limits" between them, what a shame there isn''t a knight to bnce things a bit, but an all-mage team is not bad at all".

    Richard''s attention was drawn by Calvin''s rxed appearance, he couldn''t help but shook his head.

    "To think that the libertine grandson of Charles Ghrish would end up entering the elite ss, I wonder why is he only in the tenth ce?", he thought.

    Calvin felt the old man looking at him and he had a bad premonition, e on why do you look at me, I haven''t tried to hit on your granddaughter".

    The other one that felt Richard''s evaluating gaze was Daimon, he already knew how it felt when the special eyes Yvonne looked at him, so he could easily detect that the old man did something simr.

    "This old man seems quite enthusiastic; I wonder what did the tutor discussed with them earlier".

    Yvonne on the other hand knew what was going to happen, her grandfather has always doted on her, but he also taught them how to defend herself, military customs doesn''t disappear just by retiring after all.

    Richard nodded before giving his verdict.

    "For those who doesn''t know, I used to be a military instructor, little Ogien asked me to teach you a couple of things, I see there are no knights between you so the first lesson a mage must learn is¡­ how to fight without magic".

    The idea wasn''t bad, many mages have died because theypletely relied on spells, the only problem is that the body of a mage isn''t as resistant as the one of a knight,ter at the mage lord realm and above there is a natural strengthening to withstand more powerful spells, but for star ranked mages there is not such a thing,

    Self-strengthening spells do exist, but again the dependance to magic takes over, so for low ranked mages, the style of fighting is usually the same, throwing spells at the enemy, of course now there are more options since weapons like the gun, spells engraved in scrolls and things like that were used to make up for that temporal weakness.

    Daimon smirked, right now the best user of magic guns was for sure him, Liz was one of the best magic cksmiths in the wonder myriad ster chart, and they both put on a lot of work on the improvement of it.

    Richard enthusiastic expression suddenly changed to a slightly malicious one when he looked at the male students.

    "You three take off your upper clothes and go up the training tform".

    ¡­

    Daimon gave Boris a weird gaze, like saying "what the hell is this", unfortunately Boris only shrugged.

    "He is the best instructor I have ever seen, give it a try¡­ in any case you and Michael aren''t too needed of training and Calvin is already doomed to have extra lessons, so you have nothing to lose".

    Calvin sighed, "This vindictive old man is never going to forgive me for holding back in my previous fight", he thought.

    Daimon took off both his shirt and his jacket and handed them to Aisha before going up the tform, it felt a bit weird being half naked in front of people he met not too long ago, but he wasn''t exactly a shy person so he simply stood still and waited for the training to start.

    Since the ss representative was following with the act Calvin and Michael have no option but to participate, they took their upper clothes off but unlike Daimon Boris was the one that received them.

    While Michael didn''t pay too much attention to it, Calvin felt miserable, "I also want a cute girl to hold on onto my clothes sigh".<sub> </sub>

    Now that the three of them were standing next to each other, their different type of bodies were easy to distinguish, Calvin was the tallest and his muscles were the bulkiest out of the three which was understandable considering he was also the oldest, Michael on the other hand was quite short and his body constitution was more on the slim side, he didn''t look weak but agile.

    Andstly Daimon, which was in the middle of them, his muscles seemed to have been carved in marble, he had a perfectly bnced shape, not too thin but not too bulky either.

    Richard walked around them for a couple of minutes as he evaluated their constitutions, he nodded as he told them his verdict.

    "A sneaky one and a tank, not bad¡­ as for the kid from the Revy family in my one thousand years as an instructor I never saw someone having such a bnced body constitution, as far as I understand you are the leader, but besides that you can fulfill the role of the vanguard".

    Richard pointed at the girls as he continued with his exnation.

    "There aren''t knights in your ss, and of course that will be exploited by those shameless guys from the Jolbaris family, so you three will have to make up for it".

    Calvin rose his hand to interrupt Richard.

    "Mm¡­ I have a question, I understand that a couple of knights are needed in a well-bnced team, but we are mages, if we suddenly try to change our fighting style wouldn''t that be a disadvantage?".

    Richard nodded.

    "Normally you would be right, but are you telling me you who have such a sturdy constitution will hide behind the girls and let them be in the front of the battle instead?".

    Calvin felt a ton of gazes piercing his back, there was an especially strong one which made him shiver, Irina was looking at him with murderous eyes, which made him swallow hisins.

    "Ahem, of course not, I the young master of the Ghrish family I''m the most gant among the male students of the Wild w academy".

    Michael smiled.

    "I guess you mean the most womanizer", he said in a sarcastic voice.

    Daimon which wasughing before suddenly felt his mother looking at him due to Michael words, luckily, he was shameless enough to feign indifference, "In public I don''t have a lover, although Liz and ine are engaged to me the marriage is set for the future", he thought.

    Calvin patted Daimon''s back but he unconsciously used a bit too much force, a blunt sound caught everyone''s attention.

    "Woahh, what the hell is your body made off¡­ I''m not a little shrimp like Michael and yet my hand feels numb just for a little pat!!!".

    Boris eyes light up, he suddenly remembered how Daimon fought hand to hand with a fourth star ranked knight, and not only that but in a sheer strengthpetition he easily won.

    "Instructor¡­ it seems we already have a "knight" in the team, I saw Daimon overwhelm a knight in a sword fight, and it was the young master of the dius family which is known for their swordsmanship".

    Richard grinned.

    "Really?".

    *ng*, the sound of metals colliding echoed through the whole training facilities, Aliya shook her head, she saw Richard using a metal staff to hit Daimon''s back, the result was that the staff bent against Daimon''s skin while there wasn''t even the slightest scratch on his body.

    Daimon cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, I don''t mind the training and all that, but if you leave a bruise in my back, I know a couple of people that are going to get mad at you¡­ instructor".

    Richard was marveled by the results; this was a method he used to set the pace of the training.

    "Hahaha kid what kind of mage are you, not suffering the slightest wound being attacked with the strength of a five-star knight".

 Chapter 86 Richardâ€™s Training (Part 2)

    Calvin mentallyughed at Daimon for having caught the attention of the instructor.

    "Being a monster isn''t always good Daimon, now this crazy old man will focus in you, while I rx and look for a cutie to talk about the viscidities of life¡­ aghhhh!!!".

    While at the beginning Calvin was only thinking, the scream was shouted clear and loud, he turned around to see what happened, and saw Richard hitting him with the same metal staff he used to test Daimon''s body sturdiness.

    Calvin saw the red mark that the staff let on his shoulder and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry.

    "Oi old man, not everyone in the ss is as abnormal as the ss rep you know?".

    Richard smiled.

    "I''m lucky because the instructor will focus on Daimon for having such a strong constitution", it''s what you were thinking right? unfortunately for you, it''s the total way around, unlike other members of the Ghrish family, your grandfather doesn''t use sand for control, instead he uses a rock armor to pummel his enemies".

    "And ording to little Ogien, you didn''t use sand in you''re the first lesson, so it''s safe to assume you follow the steps of your grandfather, and that is perfect since you will be the tank of the team".

    Calvin was speechless, in his family the only one that used the same fighting style of his grandfather was him, both his father and his aunt used sand which was the method passed down by the side of the family of his grandmother, it was supposed to be a secret but apparently Richard was an acquittance of his family.

    Seeing Calvin''s depressed expression Richardughed.

    "Old men are quitepetitive kid, I have drunk some wine with Charles a couple of times before, and he bragged quite a bit about his grandson, you can me him for making you look like the most outstanding youth in the beast faction hahaha".

    Calvin sighed, "You are just taking revenge on me, because you couldn''t brag about Yvonne in front of that old man", he thought.

    Richard then walked towards Michael but unlike before hi used the staff to hit Michael''s legs, contrary to what one would expect Michael didn''t seem to suffer due to the impact of the staff against his body.

    Michael rose his pants above his knees and contrary to the rest of his body, his legs were actually quite toned.

    Calvin didn''t miss the chance to mess with him, because he saw Michaelughing at him when Richard smacked the staff against him before.

    "Howe you only trained that, do you have a leg fetish or something?".

    Both Richard and Michael ignored Calvin''sment, Richard actually nodded seeing Michael withstand the impact of the staff without any problem, of course he used different amounts of strength to test each one of them, for Daimon it was more or less the one of a five-star knight, for Calvin, he lowered it to four star andstly for Michael it was with the force of a three star.

    "Not bad, given your body constitution your fighting style should require a decent footwork, so a strong pair of legs is a must".

    Richard contemted things for a moment before he looked at Boris.

    "You''ve got a good batch¡­ let''s y a game, little girlse up the tform please".

    Aisha, Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie did as he told and stood a couple of meters in front of Daimon and the rest.

    With a little nod, Richard exined the rules of the "game".

    "An amateur mistake is to not "get in the way" of your teammates, but the correct thing is to adapt, a team must fight as a whole, when casting a long-range spell, one must have enough control to not hit a teammate even if the target is in a close confrontation with them".

    "But to achieve that everyone must be on the same page, so the first step to get used to being bombarded with long range spells, little girlsunch as many one-star spells as fast as you can towards these three".

    ¡­

    Calvin nearly tripped.

    "What, we will just stand still here and receive a ton of attacks directly?".

    Richard shook his head.

    "Of course not, that would be too boring, you can avoid the attacks as long as you remain in front of the girls, given the amount of mana of a one-star mage, we will limit this exercise to five minutes, for the boys if two of you get hit you lose, for the girls if you can''t hit the two of them you lose¡­ to make it more interesting the team that loses will have to do push ups until all of them are sweaty".

    Yvonne wanted to dig a hole to hide, "You want me and my friends to do this kind of hellish training", she thought.

    Leslie doubted for a moment but she still said.

    "I''m pretty sure we can destroy Calvin within those five minutes, but Michael specializes in moving and I can''t even imagine my attacksnding on a lightning element mage like Daimon".<sub> </sub>

    She still remembers how she couldn''t even keep up with Aisha''s speed, back when they fought, so it was only logic to suppose Daimon could move as fast as his sister or maybe even faster considering his abnormal performance so far.

    Yvonne smiled.

    "Don''t worry, we also have our triumph card, Aisha can you focus on hitting Daimon while we go for Michael after Calvin is out of the way?".

    Aisha nodded, "Of course leave him to me ?".

    Calvin felt aggrieved, "So I already lost for default¡­ well it''s not like I focus on speed anyway".

    Richard left the tform and the five minutes started.

    Daimon and the others immediately dispersed, while the girls started to throw spells as if there was no tomorrow, of course they first targeted Calvin since he was the easiest one hit.

    Even then Calvin managed to avoid quite a bit of their attacks, Leslie actually was the fastest one to cast spells, but her fireballs were also not hard to avoid.

    "Hahaha,e on you were the ones that said I was easy to hit, so howe I''m still in the game".

    Yvonne heard Calvin''s provocation and she snorted as she extended both of her hands, unlike fire element, darkness is harder to detect, so before Calvin could react there was a ck arrow a few centimeters away from his balls.

    "Woahh"

    Calvin unconsciously jumped to avoid a catastrophe falling on his little brother, but while he was midair, a fireball and a piece of ice impacted him making his body flew out of the tform.

    Liliana patted Leslie''s head.

    "That''s what you get for mocking our Leslie".

    Michael saw Calvin half ckened half frozenying in the ground and he felt a vein popping on his neck.

    "Calvin you useless bastard, If you kept your mouth shut you could havested a bit more!!!".

    Michael stopped scolding Calvin, because the pressure on him suddenly rose, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were now focusing on him, but that didn''t prevent them from stealing a couple of gazes at the electric show that was going around between Daimon and Aisha.

    Even in the fight they were in their own world, thanks to the soulmate status and core synchrony they could share their thoughts with each other, that''s how the other girls could talk with Evangeline through Daimon.

    Aisha smiled as she augmented the rhythm of her attacks, while Daimon was using a movement skill which made lightning cover his body to augment his speed, Aisha was shooting lightning bolts at him.

    "Darling are you really going to make your beautiful mother do push ups until she sweats in front of other people?", said Aisha with a feigned pitiful sad voice.

    Daimon almost lost his focus due to his mother''s words, which made a lightning bolt almost hit his shoulder, but he managed to lower his body in time to avoid it.

    "Mom, that was a low blow".

    Aishaughed; she stuck her tongue at her son.

    "You can punish meter ?, but for now we are in a little war so everything is fair darling".

    Daimon smiled, "Well that makes two in the "bad girls list" of today, I guess", he thought.

    While Aisha and Daimon were flirting and trying to get a win for their respective teams, the adults were having their own conversation.

    "That''s my girl, that old man from the Ghrish family will have to listen to you next time father", said Irina with a proudful voice.

    Richard was stillughing at Yvonne''s way to make Calvin lost his cool.

    "It''s good to see she remembers what I taught her for self-defense when she was younger, "always aim for your enemy''s weak spots", hahaha".

    Boris shook his head.

    "Instructor¡­ everyone would react the same if a corrosive arrow was shot at that ce", he thought.

 Chapter 87 Richardâ€™s Training (Part 3)

    While the adults kept on casually chatting, as if the students of the elite ss weren''t giving their all to win a game, Daimon noticed his mother augmented the speed of her casting once again.

    The difference was of a mere second, but even such a little change made the whole rhythm of the "battle" change, Daimon augmented the output of the lightning around his body, the sound of electricity humming echoed through the whole ce.

    Calvin which was stillying in the ground near the tform suddenly "revived", when a missed lightning bolt hit his body.

    "Ouch, hey I''m already out why I''m still being attacked!!!".

    Boris stopped talking with Richard, he somehow forgot to move Calvin out of the nearby area of the tform, but at this point he just shrugged.

    "Move your ass out of the way if you don''t want to be fried by the lightnings of those two!!!".

    Calvin sighed, his body was still numb due to the impact, he overestimated the power of a one star ranked spell, Leslie''s fire wasn''t that hard to resist with his own body, fire is not solid after all, and Leslie didn''t want to burn her ssmate so her spell was controlled to explode instead.

    Liliana on the other hand didn''t mind to give Calvin a little lesson, so her attacknded with enough force to make Calvin flew a couple of meters away from the tform, he wasn''t really wounded, so he justid down to recover from the shock.

    Since no one seemed to care about his well-being he stood up, dusted off his clothes and walked towards Boris and the others before he sat on the floor to wait for the oue of the game.

    Michael saw Calvinzing around and he gritted his teeth, but he couldn''t lose his focus, Yvonne kept trying to make him lost his cool, her attacks always aimed at the face of the chest, Leslie focused on cutting any escaping routes and Liliana was in charge of looking for an opening to finish him off.

    "God damn, sooner orter these three are going to get me", he thought, Michael was using wind not only to make his body lighter, he even used it to avoid the attacks, by creating little gusts of wind he was able to make his body float for a couple of milliseconds, to avoid attacks bending his body in weird angles.

    Richard nodded.

    "I don''t remember ever witnessing such an interesting technique, so it seems you were right little Ogien, that kid is being sponsored by some hidden old monster, the question is if it is a hermit half emperor, of it it''s just some grumpy antisocial Archmage hahaha".

    Just as Michael thought at some point he couldn''t keep up, but his defeat was different than what he thought, Yvonne shot a dark arrow at his neck which he could avoid, the problem was that when he tried to step in the floor he slipped because Liliana''s previous ice attacks melted in the ground.

    Still, he reacted in time and threw his body forward sessfully avoiding Liliana''s attack, but in a funny turn of events Leslie''s fire hit his back putting an end to the game, since Richard didn''t dere the winner, all the girls now focused on Daimon.

    Aishaughed as she coordinated with the others to caught her son.

    "A bunch of girls and only you in the stage, just how you like it darling ?".

    Daimon mentally sighed, before things could get out of hands he disappeared from where he was standing and the next thing the girls knew was that Daimon was standing behind them.

    "I retire", he said with a slightly tired voice.

    Only after that, Richard shouted.

    "The girls win, so the loser side will have to do push-ups until they sweat".

    "Mm?", without any warning Boris put on a device simr to the shackles of despair in Calvin''s arms and threw him to the tform, at this point Calvin was well rested so he managed to graciouslynd on his two feet, only to lose bnce due to the sudden increase on his weight.

    Richardughed.

    "Thanks, little Ogien, as I was saying the loser side has to do the push-ups, Daimon, Michael how much do you weight?".

    "54 Kilograms".

    "70 kilograms".

    They respectively told Richard their weights and the number "124 kg", appeared in the chackles Calvin was using.

    Boris nodded.

    "Okay now the "whole" loser side is going to do push-ups until Calvin ispletely covered in sweat, and if he stops midway then he will stay here for the rest of the day, while we take a little break".

    Calvin nearly fainted, e on how is that fair, at least make Michael receive the same punishment, he also got done in by the girls".<sub> </sub>

    Unfortunately, everyone ignored Calvin''sins, both the adults and the students sat in the floor over a nket to have some drinks and snacks.

    While Michael was eating some cookies and enjoying Calvin''s misfortune, Daimon got to see apletely different side of Richard, apparently outside of training time, he was just a doting grandfather.

    Like always Daimon and Aisha were sitting next to each other, Michael was looking directly at the tform as if seeing Calvin being punished was some kind of tv show, the Risha girls were sitting one after the other in front of Daimon, well two of the girls at least, because Yvonne was surrounded by her mother and Richard.

    While Irina was peeling some kind of fruit for her daughter, Richard poured in cup of tea for her.

    "Yvi, tell grandpa everything, how has the academy treated you, I brought the spring dew tea you like so much".

    Yvonne felt Daimon and Aisha looking at such a "lovely" familiar exhibition and she wanted to dig a hole to hide, normally these two are so fierce in public, but when they are with her things change quite a bit, Liliana and Leslie are used to it, but for others it''s quite surprising.

    Aishaughed at her friend ufortable situation, Daimon on the other hand only shrugged, he also enjoyed spoiling his "family" members, Aisha and Aura specially, in fact he took a piece of cake from the snacks that were free for everyone to eat and cut a little piece with a fork before offering it to his mother.

    "Mm ?", Aisha of course epted her son''s offering, the girls were used to see them doing this kind of things, Richard was too focused on listening to his granddaughter, but Irina on the other hand saw that little interaction and she felt a bit confused.

    "These siblings are quite close, I wonder in the name of mana, did the Revy matriarch found them¡­ and in what situation, the younger brother is always in guard, he might seem rxed but even now I can feel he is paying attention to his surrounds".

    Since the day Aisha fought against the manticore Daimon gave himself the task to always be aware of his surroundings, what Irina and others with high perception could feel was faint traces of the passive skill "sixth sense", the same skill that allowed Daimon to understand a bit about spacews to learn "blink".

    In fact, Daimon learned how tobine it with the truth seeker eye, to produce an incredible effect, he could see in his mind the whole area around 30 meters from him, as if he had eyes in the sky, he could see even the tiniest details so there were no blind spots for him in that state.

    He could still use only sixth sense to avoid Aisha''s attacks even when she augmented her casting speed, but if he wanted to keep up with his mother, Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie without the option to retaliate, he would have needed to use also the truth seeker eyes at the same time.

    The only problem was that such an amazing skill also had a high cost, the huge amount of data processed by Daimon while he used that put on quite a bit of tension on his mind.

    The first time he activated it he had a headache thatsted almost a week, and even after training for almost three years the most he can use it without suffering any side effects is just thirty minutes.

    The pic continued, Calvin had a good physical condition, but this time it yed against him, because even with the extra weight it would take some time until he was fully covered in sweat.

    Now that Richard finished listening to his granddaughter''s academy life, he focused his attention on Daimon again, and like before he was quite frank with his words.

    "Kid, are you going to participate in the exploration of the magic ruin?".

    Everyone stopped what they were doing to listen to his answer, especially Aliya, but as if he didn''t care about the serious mood, Daimon just shrugged as he answered.

    "I don''t know, it''s going to depend in how I feel like, the day when the results of the investigation of the Greenwich Sage arrive to Lykos".

    This time even Richard was speechless, when he heard "depending in how I feel like", Aisha hugged Daimon''s arm and gave him a hopeful gaze which he perfectly understood.

    "Of course, if our friends are forced to go, then I will have to take that into ount¡­ my sister is having quite a fun time with Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie after all".

    Michael rose his cup.

    "That''s good to know ss rep, don''t forget I alone can''t prevent Calvin from tripping with a stone and dying like an idiot at the entrance of the magic ruin hahaha".

    Calvin which was trying to force his sweat toe out of his body couldn''t help but reply.

    "Oi I''m not such an idiot to die like that, let me inform you that the only moment where I''ll be willing to bite the dust, is after I have had at least one hundred children to inherit my legacy!!!".

    "Aghh¡­ what the hell these things are defective".

    Boris shook his head, he waved his hand and the number on the shackles Calvin was using changed from 124 kg, to 248 kg, which made Calvin fell face down to the ground.

    "May the heavens protect us from seeing a day where you have that many direct descendants", thought Boris.

 Chapter 88 Birds Of The Same Flock Together

    Exercising makes one burn calories, so after resting for about thirty minutes to refresh themselves, the members of elite ss felt hungry, it was almost midday so it was time for the lunch break, in a rare asion Boris left the training for another day with the condition that they ate here in the training facilities, which was of course epted by everyone.

    Since the pic was going to continue, they needed to go get some proper food, the restaurant of the academy offered take away, so there were no problems regarding that, Aliya wanted to stretch her legs and Yvonne wanted to escape from Irina and Richard so they offered to go get the food.

    Richard nodded.

    "It''s okay Yvi you and little Aliya can go, but I will apany you, birds of the same kind flock together so if the scum from the dius family is here, that means the brats from the Grayer and Ascott families were also transferred to the academy".

    Yvonne was in a predicament, she wanted to breath some fresh air, the incident with the dius family was supposed to have happened because they weren''t in the campus but the academic city, here in the campus if a foreign Arch ranked were to even use its mana pressure¡­ the principal was allowed to instantly kill it to preserve the safety of the students.

    So, there was no problem as long as they remained within the campus, but her grandfather was a bit too overprotective, in fact she was doubting if Richard will return to the Risha family or if he will stay here to "supervise" her.

    Aisha smiled, she stood up and proposed a solution.

    "How about I go too, so we can watch each other''s backs".

    Richard wanted to argue but Boris sent him a mana transmission which only he could hear.

    "Then it''s okay, don''t worry instructor if she is going that means Daimon will of course go, so everything will be okay".

    Richard doubted for a second but after contemting things for a moment he nodded.

    Aisha smiled at Daimon which could only also stand up to go with them, and so the four of them left not withoutughing at the scene of Calvin trying his best to start sweating by only doing a simple exercise like push-ups.

    Once they were out of the training grounds Yvonne stretched her arms, she ced her hand in Aisha''s left shoulder.

    "Thanks for the help back there, the old man can be a bit annoying sometimes but I know he is only worried about my safety¡­ now that I think about it you still call me by my full name, if you want to you can also call me Yvi, my friends and family call me that after all".

    Aisha nodded.

    "I''ll do it then, thanks, I don''t have an abbreviation for my name though so you will have to make up with calling me Aisha".

    Yvonneughed.

    "You will probably get er, Leslie was the one that first called me Yvi back when we were still kids¡­ Daimon you made my father leave with the tail between his legs, so you can also call me Yvi".

    Daimon smiled.

    "Okay "Yvi", still getting rid of the curse casted by an Archmage wasn''t enough for you to consider me a friend though?".

    Yvonne shrugged.

    "How was I supposed to know that your sister was such a good girl, besides don''tin you are the first guy besides my grandpa that calls me Yvi".

    Aliya was happily seeing her students getting along regardless of status and things like that, and she couldn''t help but a feel a bit jealous.

    "If only back in my generation there were people worthy of being friends with, like these kids¡­ maybe I wouldn''t have ended in this state".

    Aliya was so lost in remembering her past that she didn''t pay attention to her surroundings and bumped with someone, while the other party didn''t get too affected Aliya''s physical condition was rather fragile so she tripped and nearly fell, luckily Aisha managed to react on time and helped her regain her bnce, but the little bottle in her waist fell and rotated until it was stopped by the feet of the person that bumped into her.

    While Aliya was tiding up her clothes which got a bit messy, Daimon frowned his eyebrows, he saw the guy that bumped into Aliya, unsessfully trying to crush the bottle with his foot, before lifting it from the ground and saying.

    "Oh my, it seems the god of light has decided to reward my faith, by allowing me to meet an old "acquittance", how have you beendy Yvonne?".

    Yvonne heard the voice, she turned to see the origin of it and saw a blond-haired guy using a mostly white outfit, and her expression turned cold.

    "I don''t remember allowing you to call me by my name¡­ Leir Ascott, give that bottle back to my teacher and get out of my sight".

    Leir smiled he started ying with the bottle as he looked at Aliya.

    "Lying isn''t gooddy Risha, if you want to send me away at least make up a good excuse, are you really trying to make a meremoner with zero cultivation pass as a teacher here, at the main campus of one of the four biggest academies in the Wonder Myriad ster chart?".<sub> </sub>

    Aliya felt the disdain in Leir''s eyes and she snorted, and showed the badge that identified her as a teacher.

    "Give me that back, you should recognize this badge, right?".

    Leir was genuinely surprised when he saw Aliya''s identification, ording to its design he could notice that not only Aliya was a teacher, the big "S" engraved on it made obvious for him, that she was in charge of the elite ss.

    "To think that the Wild w academy has decayed enough for a magicless person to teach those who stand in an equal position as my pdin ss, what an insult", he thought.

    Each one of the academies had their own way to call the best of its students, for the Wild w academy is the elite ss, in the Blue-Sky academy their elites were the pdin ss, for the ck Grave academy the undead and demons call their elites the abomination ss andstly for the Crimson Blood academy, the vampires call their elites the eternal ss.

    Leir felt annoyed that amoner was making him waste the chance to have a little moment with Yvonne, but the other part was a teacher so he had no choice but to pay attention to Aliya''s words, that being said he noticed her weak body and considering how he couldn''t destroy the bottle he got a good idea to get back at Aliya.

    "This is what you get for getting into my way", he thought as he throwed the bottle with all the force he could gather without using the battle aura of a four-star ranked knight, hoping to see her avoid the bottle since she wouldn''t have enough strength to receive it.

    Unfortunately, the scene which he expected didn''t happened, a dull sound made its way to his ears and the next thing he saw was ck haired guy easily catching the bottle with his right hand.

    Daimon''s image shed and a secondter his fist connected with Leir''s face making flew a couple of meters and collide against a tree breaking it on the process.

    "If you wanted to see someone flying due to a strong impact you should have said so, I can show it to you in first person as much as you want", said Daimon before he handed the bottle to Aliya.

    "Fuckkk!!!", Leir which wasying in the ground suddenly stood up and shouted, his clothes weren''tpletely white anymore, his hair was messed and there was blooding from his nose.

    He had a silver cross earring which was now letting out a slight white-yellow light, Daimon inspected with his truth seeker eyes and he thought.

    "I thought that his nose didn''t break because I held up too much of my strength in that punch, but apparently it wasn''t that".

    He could see thanks to his eyes the name and a little description of the earring.

    [Light protection earring: it stores the battle aura of its user to create a protective barrier around the body of the user]

    ? Both mages below the Mage Lord realm and knights below the Knight Lord realm were vulnerable if they didn''t have some sort thing to automatically protect them, once they reach the "Lord" realms, their mana and battle aura will automatically act as a defense against attacks.

    But before that, mages had to cast a protection spell while knights had to rely in the use of a battle technique or a magic treasure, like the one Leir was using, to imitate said automatic defense characteristic.

    That being said, such treasures were hard to create because they will grow with the user, which means getting one will be enough for a life unless it breaks of course, but in exchange it can only be filled with the mana/battle aura of the user, so the protection will only be as strong as the user.

    That''s why Daimon could bypass it and still make Leir bleed with his bare fist.

    Leir spat the blood that was going down his mouth and he looked daggers at Daimon.

    "Hitting the young master of the Ascott family without any, you have some guts, tell me who the hell are you!!!".

    Daimon smiled.

    "Where did that "gant" attitude of yours go?".

    "Not moving aside when you see me, you have some guts, unfortunately¡­ you don''t have the qualifications to hear my name from personally from me".

    Before Leir could react, Daimon appeared behind him, and without any warning he used his hand to crush Leir''s face into the ground.

    *Crash*

    The impact of Leir''s face against the ground made a lot of dirt to move, seeing that Leir wasn''t trying to get up Daimon nodded.

    "You can go ask that Taylor guy who I am, but I suggest you to stay a couple of hundreds of meters away from my sight", he said out loud with a grin on his face.

    Themotion drew the nearby student''s attention, but when they saw Daimon standing there with a threatening smile on his face, they kept their distance as they thought, "That poor guy, out of all the people he had to get in the way of that demon".

 Chapter 89 Corrosive Light

    Seeing that more and more people kept being attracted by the ruckus, Daimon called the girls to go leave this ce and go get the food from the restaurant.

    "This guy''sckeys will arrive, and I''m too hungry to hear the phrases, "how dare you, our young master" h h h, so if none of you have any inconvenient let''s go".

    "Hahaha", in a weird turn of events Yvonne couldn''t hold back herugh, she only stopped when she felt a slight pain in her stomach, Aisha also had a bright smiling expression on her face while Aliya had a slight grin, but she coughed a couple of times before drinking from the bottle which Daimon returned to her.

    Before leaving Daimon took the earring that Leir was using, and kept it on his storage for "investigation purposes", he happily walked towards the girls as he thought.

    "Consider yourself lucky that I found this little thing interesting, thanks to it you still have your balls attached to your body".

    Everyone saw Daimon tantly robbing the guy that was now fainted in the ground and they felt sad for him, but they also agreed that losing a magic treasure was better than bing a eunuch even if it was just temporarily, like the guy from the rumors.

    Aisha of course hugged her son''s right arm and the people made way for them to leave, no one looked at any of them directly, as they were afraid, they would be targeted by Daimon.

    As they walked towards the restaurant contrary to her joyous amused attitude of before, Yvonne had aplex expression on her face now, she doubted for a moment before she said.

    "You probably already guessed it but that guy was the one my father tried to make me marry, the young master of the Ascott family, dius, Grayer and Ascott, those three families conform a big force of the humans¡­ unlike Taylor, Leir has a half emperor ancestor, that''s why he had that earring and you not only kicked his ass, you even robbed him in front of everyone".

    Daimon didn''t stop walking he just shrugged as he replied.

    "So, what, Alexander Jolbaris is the direct descendant of one, and I still told him to fuck off in front of everyone, I don''t care who they are, if they want troubles or if I simply don''t like what they do, I will point my sword at their necks, because if I ever show weakness, they will stop being afraid of me".

    He turned around and saw Yvonne directly to her eyes.

    "And that would be bad considering the trouble attracting friends I recently got".

    Yvonne was speechless, messing with the descendant of an Archmage and doing the same with the one of a half emperor were twopletely different things, and yet she noticed he wasn''t bluffing nor he was putting on a show.

    "He isn''t reckless, as far as I can see, he always has a reason for what he does, and he has been in contact with half emperors before, so it''s not that he doesn''t know what bing enemies with one implies, then why does he act as if there was nothing to worry about¡­ how interesting", she thought.

    No matter how much thought she put into it, she reached the same conclusion.

    "Sigh, I guessmon sense doesn''t apply to a monster like you", she said with a feigned defeated voice.

    Aishaughed.

    "It''s better if you get used to that, Daimon said you all attract troubles but the same applies to him, so if you want to be friends with him¡­ well you better be prepared to never get bored again".

    Listening to Aisha''s words, Daimon sighed, "Which side are you with", he thought.

    Previously the only Aisha was walking next to Daimon, Yvonne and Aliya kept a little distance, but after what happened they all walked next to each other, and it worked like magic, because now everyone clearly saw thy were walking with "the demon of the elite ss".

    It was the first time Yvonne and Aliya saw the effect Daimon caused in other students, the sight of everyone moving aside to make way for them, was quite something, but it was also understandable considering all what has happened in a few days since he arrived at the academy.

    Yvonne shook her head.

    "Calvin is going to be mad at you, I don''t believe any girl will go out with him once they realize he tags along with you, you know?".

    It didn''t take too much time for them to reach the restaurant, Aisha and Yvonne ordered the food while Aliya took a seat, since she bumped with Leir, Daimon noticed she has been coughing more than usual.

    Daimon frowned his eyebrows.

    "Teacher are you okay? the old man is going to get pissed if I return with you in this state".

    Aliya shook her head.<sub> </sub>

    "I''m fine, even when I''m like this, my body can resist the exposition to mana or battle aura¡­ tutor Ogien knows I sometimes get these little episodes, where my medicine can''t help me, it will finish in a couple of minutes".

    Daimon nodded, but he was still a bit curious about something, the bottle looked like normal crystal and yet the strength of a four-star ranked knight didn''t make the slightest scratch on it.

    "The content of this bottle is basically my life, so of course I made sure immature brats couldn''t cause me troubles, this material won''t break by anything with less destructive force than a peak stage knight lord", said Aliya as she handed the bottle to Daimon.

    Daimon inspected the thing, it had some symbols engraved on it which he recognized as runes, out of them he could distinguish the runes for "expansion", "temperature" and "stabilization".

    "That is a bit of an overkill for a simple container, but I guess this medicine might need a certain specific ambient".

    Aliya smiled.

    "As expected of someone that could perfectly brew a potion of my creation, that''s right this medicine is a bit too delicate, so it needs the perfects condition to be stored in a container, that''s also why I can''t keep it in a storage ring, the spatial fluctuations that are produced whenever you take something out of it, will corrupt the medicine".

    Daimon gave the bottle back to her; he still had the truth seeker eyes activated so when he looked at Aliya, he noticed something was trying to invade her magic core.

    "That can''t be caused by just physical contact with a knight", he thought, it was then he remembered the white-yellow light that was being radiated from the earring.

    ck mist covered Daimon''s right arm, without saying anything, he ced his hand on Aliya''s head.

    "Mm¡­ Daimon?", Aliya was a bit confused about his actions, but a secondter her eyes widened when she saw a little amount of white light which was now stuck to Daimon''s hand.

    Daimon closed his hand and crushed the light into nothingness, as it disappeared Aliya recovered some color on her face, before Aliya could say anything, Aisha''s voice interrupted her.

    "Corrosive light¡­ well humans call it "holy light", something they developed to fight against the demons and the undead, the problem is that also it also affects beast races with inclination to darkness affinity".

    Daimon frowned his eyebrows.

    "That Leir guy said some nonsense like "the god of light", so I guess this light is something exclusive to those who believe in that "god", right?".

    Aliya nodded.

    "Yes, light affinity is as rare as darkness affinity, corrosive light is supposed to only be usable for those at the "Lord" realms and above, so it didn''t cross my mind that the young master of the Ascott family had managed to use it, my mana sense is ruined so I didn''t detect it".

    She directly looked at Daimon and continued.

    "Thanks¡­ that disgusting light could have worsened my condition if it went unnoticed".

    Yvonne snorted.

    "That''s why I hate the Ascott family, they are fanatics of some shady guy from the ancient age which left some legends about his powers for future generations, the Ascott and other families derived the corrosive light from that and called it holy light".

    Daimon was amused by the whole situation, some guy in the past got magic and of course other normal humans started revering him as a god which is understandable, but for the people of the current age it is obvious that what others think gods are¡­ they are just stronger mages or knights.

    For example, a half emperor might look like a god for normal mages, and yet it can be killed, and the situation repeats the more you advance in the path of magic.

    Now that Aisha and Yvonne had the food they left the restaurant, on the way back to the training grounds, Daimon saw that Leir was still where he left him, there were some spectators left, but for some reason no one hase to take him to the infirmary.

    Once they left that area behind Daimon snapped his fingers and the people which were still looking at Leir suddenly saw how a ck mist covered his whole body, when the thing dissipated¡­ both his clothes and hair were gone.

    By the corner of his eyes Daimon saw the result and he smirked.

    "Now you look more like a believer of the "God of light", pray that you never encounter me in a situation where there aren''t others looking... because if that happens I will personally send you with your god", he thought.

 Chapter 90 The Wrath Of A Veteran

    The girls didn''t notice what Daimon did, and they all returned to the training facilities not too long after that, by the time they arrived Calvin was finally sweating so Boris let him off the hook with that.

    Yvonne and Aisha took out the food from their storage rings and ced them in the nket for everyone to pick what they wanted.

    Unfortunately for Calvin the girls said, "You stink so go eat in the tform", so he had no choice but to oblige.

    Everyone picked what caught their interests, surprisingly Michael only took vegetables which earned him some mocking from Calvin.

    "Oi Michael, if you ever want to grow to be a man, you must eat some meat if you don''t want be a little shrimp forever hahaha".

    Michael ignored Calvin''sments and kept eating what was on his te.

    "I have a strict diet given to me by my master to keep an agile fatless body, unlike a muscle head like you, so I just eat fish for protein¡­ it''s my fault because I forgot to tell you".

    Everyone was enjoying their food, until Aliya''s fork slipped from her hand as she coughed consecutively, Boris frowned his eyebrows, he actually forgot to call Aliya "miss" and directly called her by her name.

    "Aliya, what happened, now that I pay more attention, you look rather paler than before¡­ did something happen?".

    Yvonne sighed, but since it was impossible to avoid, she told everything that happened when they were going to the restaurant, of course she didn''t forget tell what Daimon did to Leir¡­ and the fact that Leir used corrosive light to harm Aliya but it waster removed by Daimon.

    The temperature of the room suddenly went up, Boris stood up and his eyes were filled with bloodlust.

    "Hoh, so the brat from the Ascott family tried harm Aliya on purpose¡­ it seems that this time I will have to break the three legs of that bastard".

    Aliya knew this was going to happen, so she tried to resort to the only person she knew Boris always listened to.

    "Uncle Richard, please tell uncle Boris to calm down¡­".

    Aliya stopped midway because she saw Richard''s body trembling due to anger as faint traces of darkness leaked from his body, but Irina stopped him from doing something stupid.

    "Father if you go cause troubles, I won''t let you see Yvi for the rest of the year¡­ thest time I had to listen to theins of the elders because you nearly caused a war when you were drunk!!!".

    Richard cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, that wasn''t my fault, I was happily drinking when you called me to tell me that Ferdinand casted a curse in Yvi, because she refused to marry into the Ascott family, what did you expect me to do?".

    Irina snorted.

    "I don''t know, maybe you not causing an intergctic conflict, but reprimanding Ferdinand instead".

    As Yvonne previously exined, it was her mother and Liliana''s mother, the ones that got them the chance to avoid a forced marriage with the condition of entering the academy, but the merit was not for them.

    Liliana''s mother told her father to take Richard to a drinking party and once he was drunk enough, Irina called him to inform about the forced marriage possibility, the result¡­ an army knocking at the doors of many of thes that were under the rule of the Ascott, dius and Grayer families.

    Aside from the families, the academy and the council that rules the beast faction, there is another force to be wary of, the army which was originally created bymoners to also have a voice, the number of nobles that manage to get a rtively high position at the army is really low and even then, their superiors aren''t members of big families, of course there are always exceptions.

    The neutral families like the Risha and Leeris have always supported the army so they have a good rtionship with them, for example Richard worked as a military instructor for more than one thousand years.

    Among the countless students he had, there is a bunch who nowadays became peak Archmages thus achieving the tittle of generals¡­ the rumors said that even the current field marshal which is the highest ranked person in the army and a half emperor, respectably calls Richard "Instructor Risha" whenever he greets him.

    So, when he got word that his precious granddaughter was going to be forced into marriage, he called all his students which were stationed at the borders, or at the outposts near the blue-sky gxy and they besieged about 300s controlled exclusively by the families that were trying to "bully" Yvonne, to demand an exnation.

    And that''s how Ferdinand and also the other n heads, had no option but to swallow their pride and ept a deal, in which if the girls entered the elite ss, they will be free from a political marriage.

    Needless to say, but there wereins from some of the members of the council, what Richard did almost create a conflict with a force that had a half emperor guarding their fort, that being said, all of them shut up when the field marshal personally spoke on behalf of Richard.

    Up to this day his words still hummed at the ears of those who wanted to punish Richard, "If the instructor didn''t voluntarily retire, he will be the field marshal, every one of us owe him more than what we will ever be able to repay so no matter what, if he gives the call we will follow hismand, if anyone has a problem with that, thene and say it in my face and let''s see who wins".<sub> </sub>

    The only one that ended having to make amends to the affected families from the blue-sky gxy was Ferdinand, and that is also how the idea of transferring their heirs to the Wild w academy was born¡­ unfortunately they weren''t doing it exactly good so far.

    Richard did calm down but Boris still looked quite upset, so Daimon decided to tell him the second part of the punishment he gave to Leir.

    "Old man, Yvonne told you about the part where I broke that guy''s face, but the holy light thing was another fault, so of course a second punishment was needed, use your mana sense to cover from here to about 300 meters away from the restaurant and judge it by yourself".

    Boris did as Daimon told and after a couple of seconds his serious expression changed to an amused one, before heughed out loud.

    "What the hell, since when the Ascott family became monks, I know they worship their god of light, but that is a new level of faith hahaha".

    <o>,m Richard felt curious and he used his mana sense to see what was causing Boris so much fun, and then he saw it, there was a naked bald young manying face down in the ground, and a lot of people were watching the scene and talking about it.</o>

    Richard gave thumbs up at Daimon as he joined Boris in the moment.

    "Well done kid, it seems that trusting these two''s safety wasn''t a bad idea after all, I want to see the face that bastard will make once he gets to know about this hahaha".

    Yvonne let out a sigh of relief, "Whatever Daimon did, it seems it was enough for these two stubborn old men to calm down", she thought.

    But that also made her wonder what was the second punishment Daimon mentioned, because she didn''t saw him doing anything else.

    "Daimon, besides beating the crap out of him and robbing, what else did you do?", she asked.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Let''s just say his new appearance fits more with the image of someone that worships a god, and he is going to have a hard time trying to revert it hahaha".

    Aishaughed, she had an idea of what her son did, Daimon''s darkness was simr to Erin''s one, so Leir was probably going to remain bald for a couple of years at least, nothing lethal but still humiliating specially for a womanizer like him.

    Now that the atmosphere was festive again, everyone continued their meal without any worries, the only oneining from time to time was Calvin, but the others ignored him, once the lunch time was over everyone was free to leave to do whatever they wanted.

    Calvin was the first one to take his leave.

    "See youter I need to take a shower, Michael I''ll drop by your room so we go to the library".

    Michael sighed, somehow Calvin managed to convince him to go with him to the library, with an excuse along the lines of "If I go alone, I''m just going to flirt with girls, so I need a boring guy like you to force me to study".

    Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie on the other hand decided to stay here with Richard, Boris, Irina and Aliya, so Daimon and Aisha said goodbye to them and also left.

    Once they were gone, Richard contemted things for a moment before saying.

    "Little Aliya, was he affected by the corrosive light when he helped you?".

    Aliya shook her head.

    "No, his dark attribute is incredibly strong, it dealt with the holy light as if it was nothing¡­ I have never seen something like that; besides he touched the holy cross of the Ascott family and wasn''t burned by it, I can''t imagine what race does he belong to, we only know he has ws that are in equal standing with the ones of the Jolbaris".

    Irina''s eyes widened.

    "I thought the Revy matriarch took a liking to him because he has darkness affinity which makes him a twilight alluring fox like her, but if he canpletely ignore the effects of the corrosive light and also has ws then¡­ he is a variant, and an extremely strong one on top of that".

    Richard nodded.

    "That exins why that kid is so abnormal crossing three stages to easily defeat a four-star ranked knight, he was born to fight¡­ students like him make me want to return to being an instructor".

    Yvonne listened to her grandfather and suddenly had a bad premonition, about the near future but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 91 The Library

    Outside of the training facilities Daimon walked with Aisha clinging to him, it was still early to return to the mansion, so they decided to copy Calvin''s idea and also go to the library, everyone had the same homework of studying their own elements anyway.

    Daimon''s happy expression suddenly changed, he rose his left arm which was free and a millisecondter the de of a spear shed against the ck gun he was now holding on his hand.

    *ng*, the collide resulted in the sound of metals colliding among with some sparks, unfortunately for the owner of the spear, by Daimon''s petition the barrel of his guns was reinforced with orichalcum, so the de of the spear was destroyed due to the impact.

    Daimon focused his attention on the one that was attacking him, but he had no idea of who it was, a tall guy with brown hair and green eyes and a two-star ranked knight.

    "So, you are the one that used dirty tricks to knock out my friends, I''m George Grayer the young master of the Grayer¡­ aghhh".

    Before George could finish his sentence, the impact of a bullet on his chest made him flew backwards, luckily, he was using a chest te, which now had a big dent the size of a fist.

    Aisha let go of her son, and Daimon walked towards George which was trying to get up, but the shock made his body go numb, he tried to grab his spear but a foot falling on his hand, prevented him from doing do.

    "Aghhh", the sound of bones breaking made all the spectators feel as if they were the ones suffering.

    Daimon applied a bit more of force and George''s right hand ended up in a miserable state.

    "Dirty tricks you say, should I ignore the poison that was coating that trash spear of yours?" he said before kicking George in the face making a couple of teeth flew out of his mouth.

    Daimon grabbed George''s spear from the ground and stabbed it on his right leg, he looked at him with disdain as he left with Aisha not without saying out loud.

    "I hope the poison in your spear is lethal, so that I won''t be seeing your hypocrite''s face ever again".

    George''s face paled.

    "No, what the hell did you do... aghfgh".

    On the surface Daimon showed "mercy", but he could discern the kind of poison applied on the spear thanks to the truth seeker eyes, and the effects were¡­ nasty, still it wasn''t a scene he wanted Aisha to see so he hurried up and left with her.

    But the ones that were seeing the "show", put on disgusted expressions when they saw George foaming from his mouth as he lost control of his bowels, in other words he throwed up and shat himself.

    The young master of the Grayer family soiled himself in front of the other first year students, which meant that the whole younger generation of the beast faction will talk about this in the future.

    Aisha was happily hugging Daimon''s arm again as they walked to the library, she couldn''t help butugh.

    "Two idiots in the same day, that is a new record darling ?".

    Daimon sighed.

    "That was Liliana''s suitor I guess, and since he was a two-star knight, then it was also a member of Alexander''s loser ss, I don''t think he will stay in the academy after this though".

    "At least that guy was supposedly thest one of the idiots from the blue-sky gxy that shoulde looking for troubles¡­ for the time being", he thought.

    Leaving aside that unsightly episode, it didn''t take them too much time to arrive at the library, in front of Daimon there was a big white building with two groups o guards protecting the entrance, which was understandable considering that what mages valued the most besides resources was knowledge.

    They showed the guards their tokens and were allowed to enter the library without any problem, inside there were a ground floor and four superior floors, out of them three were essible for students each one for each grade and thest one was exclusive for teachers.

    This was easily the biggest library Daimon has seen, there were indicators to help students find what they were looking for, but since that was a pain in the ass, they approached the counter were the librarian pass most of its time.

    Surprisingly the librarian was a familiar face, the woman vice principal from the snow leopard n which Daimon met back at the admission exams, up to this point he didn''t know her name, but the surname of that family was Leeris.

    "Good evening Ms. librarian, where can we find knowledge regarding darkness, lightning and metal elements?".

    The vice principal was somewhat distracted so it took her a couple of seconds to notice someone was talking to her.

    "Mm?... go to the first floor third and four bookshelves, there is a magic formation, just ce your token of identity and a projection will appear, it''s quite intuitive so there should not be any problem, the elite ss has a private room for reading at the first floor, I suggest you to use it".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Can we take the books with us?".

    "Yes, but not more than five per person and you have to return them in two weeks, there is a record of everything so don''t lose track of the time or you will be sanctioned¡­ also don''t call me librarian, I''m the vice principal which is in charge of all the knowledge that has umted in the academy, Daimon Licht".

    Daimon shrugged.<sub> </sub>

    "Miss Leeris will be then, thanks for the information", he said before leaving followed by Aisha.

    Once they left the left the vice principal sighed, "I knew that kid was problematic, but to think that in a mere couple of days he would make all the academy fall into such chaos¡­ what a monster".

    Daimon and Aisha went upstairs, there were big tables were other students were reading their books, some of them saw Daimon and they immediately left, while others simply focused in their own business.

    Aisha took the initiative to look for the books they needed, the magic formation was actually quite simple to use, she just ced her identity token and a projection of the many books avable appeared in front of her.

    Daimon just took a seat and enjoyed the back view of his mother happily contemting which books she will choose.

    "I will have to build a library just for her in the future", he thought.

    Daimon felt a couple of different gazes on him, besides the usual afraid ones, he felt some hostility, but since no one tried anything stupid he didn''t pay them any attention.

    Aisha returned carrying eight books in her hands.

    "It''s done darling, do you want to use the private room or should we return to the mansion?".

    Daimon smiled, "Let''s study here, because I bet Liz is already waiting for us at the mansion, so being honest I don''t think we''ll focus in doing homework once we return".

    Aisha stuck her tongue at him.

    "That''s your fault for spoiling us too much ?".

    Daimon dragged his mother to the private room of the elite ss, of course he had to use his token for the door to open, the insides of the room were quitefortable, there were a couple of big couches and arge table which could amodate at least twenty people without any problems.

    "Kyaaa ?", without any warning Daimon let his body fall backwards on the couch, of course he didn''t forget to gran Aisha to drag her with him, so that he was sitting on the couch while Aisha was sitting on his legs.

    Aisha smiled.

    "Wasn''t the idea focusing in our homework darling ??".

    Daimon felt the soft touch of Aisha''s ass on hisp and he cleared his throat.

    "That''s the idea, we both have lightning affinity so I thought this way we can read the same book".

    Aisha would have been convinced by his logic if it wasn''t by the hard thing that was poking her ass right now, she "identally" grinded her hips against her son as she opened the first book regarding lightning element.

    She turned her head to see Daimon and sent a kiss to him.

    "If you can hold back until we return to the mansion, mommy will give you a reward, so let''s see how much you can focus on your "studies" darling ?".

    Daimon felt his dick getting harder but he refused to give in so easily, instead he used his hands to change positions so that he was sitting on the couch and his mother was horizontallyying on top of his legs, this position was less suggestive in case any of the others students suddenly entered the room.

    Of course, he didn''t forget to fondle her ass while he did it, Aisha handed him the book and Daimon opened it on the first page, there was a big tittle written in purple ink.

    "The secrets of lightning Vol.1", besides the tittle there was only another phrase in the first page which was the name of the author, Andras Griffin.

    Daimon''s eyes widened a bit.

    "Isn''t that the name of the Greenwich Sage?".

    Aisha nodded.

    "Yes, do you know why that guy is so indifferent towards humans, while he has instead good chemistry with the beast faction, to the point that any of his theories or inventions is sold at double the price in the blue-sky gxy?".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "This book and many others can only be found in the library of the wild w academy, while humans only started knowing him after he became an Archmage, the cksmiths of the beast faction took interests on his designs, so he signed a life contract where he has to be "friendly" with us for the rest of his life¡­ well more urately with the Revy family".

    Daimonughed, "That''s my Erin for you".

 Chapter 92 Two Different Reactions

    While Daimon was enjoying his time studying in the library, in the academic city more urately in an area reserved for "guests", there was a turmoil in two of the three mansions that were built there.

    In the first mansion the guards had disgusted expressions as they used a gurney to transport a brown-haired young man from the entrance to a private room where a bunch of doctors, potion masters and nurses were waiting.

    The guards handed the gurney to the nurses and spoke in a low voice.

    "We already administrated the young master with the antidote so his life is not in danger anymore¡­ go and clean him so the medics can properly treat him".

    The nurses took George which was still fainted to the bathroom, as soon as the nurses left a middle-aged man with a furious expression kicked the doors of the room and shouted.

    "Everyone but the guards get out!!!", the pressure of a middle stage Archknight made the mansion tremble a bit, of course the doctors immediately left to avoid any problems, the potion masters also left with the exception of one.

    The Archknight is George''s uncle, Hector Grayer the one in charge of his safety, he was chatting with an old friend, when a guard entered the room and informed that his nephew got beaten up so bad that he "soiled" himself.

    Needless to say, but he was furious, his first reaction was to hurry to the academy to demand an exnation, unfortunately all his impetus disappeared the moment he tried to set foot into the campus¡­ because he nearly suffocated.

    His heart nearly stopped feeling a pair of murderous gazes on his back, his back covered in cold sweat, no matter how much he tried his body didn''t obey his orders, then the voice of a woman which he couldn''t recognize made its way to his ears.

    "Take your little bastard and get the hell out of my sight, we will demand an exnation to that old patriarch of yours, what a disgusting poison".

    After that Hector could move again but he didn''t dare to enter the campus, instead patiently waited for the guards toe out pulling a gurney on which his nephew wasying covered in vomit and feces.

    Hector lost all the color of his face, he knew those were the effects of a certain poison borated by the potion master of his family, he was doubting to inform this to his older brother when his sigil lector illuminated.

    The thunderous voice of the n head of the Grayer family, Gerard Grayer, could be heard at the entrance of the academy.

    "What the hell did you two bastards do!!!".

    "I got a notification that due to George''s actions he will be suspended from the academy for one month, along with a "penalty fee" of five hundred thousand mana crystals aspensation for staining the image of the beast faction".

    Hector hesitated, he had two options, first inform the whole true to his brother and receive a punishment from him and the family, or second pay from his own pocket and distract his brother from this situation.

    He gritted his teeth and ended up choosing the second option.

    "Don''t worry brother, apparently that Hector brat caused a fight in public, leave everything to me¡­ it''s not a good idea to stir up problems with the beast faction right now".

    ¡­

    Gerard remained silent for a moment before he gave his consent, without knowing he basically epted that his son got a beat up.

    "Fine, you deal with that brat''s mess, I have more important things to discuss with the those two, don''t contact me unless it''s extremely urgent".

    That led to the current situation where George was sedated and being treated by the doctors, while Hector was discussing with the creator of the poison to see if there will be side effects.

    "The young master wanted a longsting effect so¡­ he won''t be able to control his bowels for at least one week, even after using the antidote".

    Hector had a headache but after contemting things, he shrugged.

    "Whatever he is suspended from the academy anyway, just put him a diaper, this stupid brat costed me five hundred thousand mana crystals".

    While in the mansion of the Grayer family the situation ended there, for the subordinates of the Ascott family things weren''t so simple.

    For those who believed in the god of light the worst sin was to be "contaminated" by darkness, when the bodyguards of Leir saw him naked and bald they felt angry for their young master being humiliated.

    But then when they noticed there were faint traces of darkness on his body, their faces paled, before anyone could notice they immediately dragged their young master back to the mansion to be treated.

    The one in charge of Leir''s wellbeing, is a female cardinal from the church of light, a veiled woman which hands were shining with white light, but no matter how much she tried she couldn''t get rid of the darkness that was invading Leir''s body.

    After nearly one hour of trying the woman shook her head as he gave her verdict.

    "This is not the darkness we know of, it''s not harmful to the body as it''s only preventing this child to grow hair¡­ it''s more of a joke than an attack, my healing light is the strongest among the members of the church and I can''t do anything".<sub> </sub>

    Listening to the woman''s answer an old man which was across the room gritted his teeth.

    "Is that your answer? the Ascott family respects the church of light, so our young master came to this academy due to that bullshit of prophecy, and now you are telling me you can''t do anything to help!!!".

    The floor below them cracked as the pressures of two peak Archmages flooded the room, but after a little sh they both retracted their powers to not make the mansion copse.

    The woman shrugged.

    "Since his light is not strong enough to ovee darkness, the church of light hereby strips Leir Ascott of its right as an apostle of the god of light".

    The old man felt a vein popping on his neck, but there was so much he could do, his only course of action was to send his young master back to the family to see of maybe the ancestor could solve this situation.

    "The bastard that did this will pay¡­ I have to find a scapegoat", he thought.

    While two big families of the light faction were dealing with the humiliation of their young masters in a different way, back at the library of the academy Daimon closed the book he was reading, at first it was easy to focus on the text but as time passed, he caught a faint trace of a familiar sweet fragrance.

    So, he immediately closed the book as there were more urgent matters to attend, but it wasn''t only him, Aisha had a slightly blushed expression, after nearly thirty minutes of teasing she got a bit wet.

    "Darling¡­ let''s return to the mansion, I want to take a shower to refresh myself and then we can keep reading in the bedroom ?".

    Aisha tried to get up from her son''sp but Daimon grabbed her by her waist, she saw him smiling from the corner of her eyes and had a bad premonition.

    Daimon kissed the back of her neck as he whispered on her ears.

    "I wonder, should I eat you right here?".

    Aisha felt a bolt of electricity running through her spine, her back even arched a bit.

    "Darling we could be seen here, what if there is some kind of spying formation set in the room?".

    Daimon gently bit her ear as he answered.

    "Evangeline already checked the room and there is nothing of the sort hehehe".

    Aisha felt her ass twitching a bit, "Stupid Evangeline", she thought.

    Luckily for Aisha Daimon suddenly let go of her, an opportunity she happily epted to get up from hisp, as she tidied up her clothes, the door of the room made a slight clicking sound as Calvin and Michael entered while arguing.

    "I get you are a horny dog, but can''t you wait to be alone to try and flirt with every girl you see, my reputation is gone thanks to you, I have a fianc¨¦e you asshole".

    Calvin snorted.

    "What kind of man doesn''t want one or two extra wives? Let this senior teach you the way of a proper gentleman".

    Their conversation momentarily stopped when they noticed that Daimon and Aisha were also in the private room, of course Calvin decided to include Daimon since they are the only guys of the elite ss.

    "Yo ss rep, I know you aren''t a fag like Michael, what do you say isn''t it every man''s dream to have a room full of beauties waiting for you?".

    Daimon felt Aisha''s gaze piercing his back, but he feigned ignorance.

    "Everyone has its tastes".

    "In my case it is indeed a bed with all my girls cuddling with me at the same time", he mentally added.

    Michael nodded.

    "You see, not everyone is a horny dog like you".

 Chapter 93 Nostalgia

    Daimon noticed Aisha''s needy gaze and he smiled.

    "We finished our "study" for the day, so we will take out leave, there are some guys spying on us so Michael don''t let Calvin do anything stupid in my absence".

    Although Calvin had quite an easy-going personality, when it came to fight, he was always ready, Michael on the other hand was more observative in that aspect, it was not probable for those guys who were seeing him to cause troubles in the library considering there is a vice principal in charge, but one can never be too cautious.

    "Don''t worry I will beat him up if he causes any trouble Daimon", said Michael.

    Calvin snorted.

    "You think you are stronger than me just because you are the third rank, if I had shown my awesomeness to the teachers back at the admission tests, I might no be able to steal the stage light to Daimon or Aisha, but I will have easily taken your spot".

    While those two starting arguing again, Daimon left followed by Aisha, the books were already registered so there was no problem to take them home.

    The walk to the mansion was quite silence, Aisha just leaned her head against her son''s shoulder causing others who watched them act so close, to feel miserably jealous of him.

    It didn''t take them to much time to arrive at the mansion, and it did take them even less time to start stripping as soon as they closed the door behind them, piece by piece, the clothes were thrown around until they were only using underwear.

    Aisha blushed when she felt Daimon''s eyes glued to her body, she didn''t miss the chance to tease him.

    "Come with me darling ?", she said as she swayed her hips while walking to the bathroom, the back view of Aisha was enough to make Daimon feel his dick getting so hard it threatened to pierce a hole through his shorts.

    Of course, he followed her and didn''t forget to close the door which was reced after Aura cut thest one with her sword, inside of the bathroom Aisha was already rinsing her body under the shower.

    Daimon smiled, he took off his shorts and entered the bath with her.

    "Mm ?", Aisha let out a soft moan when she felt the hands of her son ced on her belly while his thing was pressed against her ass, his hands slowly moved downwards until he was gently caressing the outer area of her vagina.

    After a couple of seconds Daimon stopped moving his fingers, he noticed there were two different kinds of "wetness" on his hands, the water of the shower and a stickier kind of fluid, of course he licked the left-over juice that remained on his fingers making sure Aisha saw it.

    "I saw the little wet spot on your panties, but I didn''t think you were this prepared hehehe".

    Aisha pouted.

    "You are in no position to say that, all the time we were reading in the library you were hard¡­ mmm ?".

    Daimon found this cheeky Aisha quite cute, so he couldn''t help but seal her lips with a kiss, they slowly walked until Aisha was leaning her body against the wall of the bathroom.

    He used his hands to fondle her breasts as he kept her lips closed with a kiss, Daimon started rubbing her nipples with his fingers while kissing her neck, as soon as Aisha felt her son approaching her neck, her insides tingled a bit.

    Daimon shoved his fangs on her neck and took a little sip of her blood, the euphoric feeling of having her blood sucked by her son made Aisha nearly reach her climax.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt something wetting his hands, which took him by surprise, in their current position they weren''t under the shower so whatever it was, it wasn''t water.

    He let go of Aisha''s neck and looked from over her shoulder, his hands were still groping her breasts, the origin of the wetness was¡­ a white liquiding from her nipples.

    Aisha kissed Daimon''s cheek.

    "I told you I had a reward for you if you managed to hold back darling".

    Daimon returned the kiss.

    "When did you get the potion to produce breast milk, I haven''t separated from you?".

    "Oh that? I just said I didn''t have the potion to trick Aura, if you were going to drink the breast milk of someone of course I had to be the first ?".

    Daimonughed, he turned her body, right now he had the sudden urge of burying his face between her breasts, Aisha caressed his hair while he rxed feeling the warm of his mother enveloping his body.

    Daimon''s actions made Aisha remember the first time she saw him as a baby, at first when she was forced to have offspring, deep in her heart she felt a bit aggrieved, but any slight negative feeling disappeared when she saw the little boy, she gave birth.

    "Apparently, I fell in love with my darling way before I all this happened¡­ but I have to admit that I never thought we would end up being lovers", she thought.

    Daimon heard Aisha''s heart beating faster than before and he started sucking on her right breast, unlike others he was aware of his surroundings since the moment he was born, so of course he remembered everyst detail of his years as a baby, which of course included the taste of her breast milk.

    Although the taste was as delicious as he remembers, this time it had a different feeling.<sub> </sub>

    "Back then I didn''t think of her as a woman¡­ and now I can''t even imagine not having her in my arms", he thought.

    Daimon drank from her breasts to the content of his heart, unlike what he expected, doing this didn''t make him lust for Aisha, instead it had afortable effect on him.

    "Darling?", Daimon stopped sucking her breasts and carried Aisha like a princess, which took her by surprise, he entered the bathtub and let Aisha rest on top of hisp, while he hugged her tight.

    Aisha rested her head on her son''s chest, she closed her eyes and listened to the sound of his heart pounding, while Daimon caressed her beautiful long hair, there is a believe that breast feeding is what makes a mother and son develop a strong bond, that being said normally the bond remains as filial love which wasn''t the case here.

    Still after drinking from her breasts again, right now from the bottom of his heart Daimon was experiencing a weird feeling of bliss.

    Aisha noticed her son was thinking about what happened when they fled from the Red Mist, at first, she felt a bit confused about why he was suddenly so clingy, not like she wasn''t enjoying it, but she knew the scene of her death still haunted him from time to time.

    Daimon wrapped his arm around her thin waist and dragged her closer to him.

    "I just felt a bit nostalgic¡­ apparently everything from you tastes quite sweet".

    Aisha used her hands to caress her son''s face.

    "You silly boy, you might be the strongest in the future but you can''t hide things from your mother, in fact if I were given the chance, I wouldn''t change a thing of how we are right now¡­ now I don''t have to see you being stolen by some random girl, because you were stolen by me ?".

    Daimon sighed.

    "I''m sorry, you were the one that suffered so I shouldn''t be so stuck into that¡­ but I can''t just let it go, not until I shove my sword into Victor''s head, while I hold you in my arms".

    *Pfft*, with that little joke the serious atmosphere disappeared and they bothughed at the imaginary scene of Victor vomiting blood due to the excess of anger.

    "By the way how much does the potion effectsts mom?".

    Aisha shrugged.

    "Half a day more or less why?".

    "I haven''t forgotten how you really tried to hit me with your lightning when we were training, so tonight both you and Liz will get punished".

    "Nnnghh ?", Aisha let out a loud moan when she felt Daimon''s finger invading her ass.

    Daimon didn''t want to do it in the bathroom, so they dried off and went to the bedroom, but for their surprise, both Aura and Liz were sat on the bed reading books waiting for them.

    Liz stood from the bed and saw them holding hands like a lovely couple.

    "You were right Aura, these two can''t keep their hands out of each other not even for five minutes".

    Aura nodded.

    "Yeah, Aisha has an unfair advantage since she can be with Daimon the whole day, luckily the only ce in the campus where they can go all the way without worrying about anything, is the mansion in front of my office hahaha".

    Before Daimon could reply, both Aura and Liz took off their clothes and threw Daimon to the bed before they got up on top of him.

    Liz turned her head around towards Aisha and she smiled.

    "What are you waiting Aisha,e here and let''s deepen our family bond ?".

    Evangeline sighed; she was about to close her senses to not watch what was about to happen but Narasha''s voice stopped her from doing so.

    "We might not have bodies right now, but this is also an advantage, because once we get them, we will know what our man likes".

    Evangeline cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, unlike all of you I''m not crazy for Daimon you know?".

    Narasha smiled.

    "I might not understand a lot about other living beings, but you suck at lying Eve".

 Chapter 94 Reward And Punishment R-18

    Daimon enjoyed the sight of Liz and Aura naked next to each other, but there was still something missing to be a prefect portrait, he patted his leg a couple of times and smiled at his mother.

    Aisha blushed a bit, she slowly approached the bed like a timid animal in front of a predator, just to be suddenly grabbed by her waist by Daimon as he pressed her against his body.

    Of course, it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that the other two cuties on front of him, looked slightly jealous of Aisha, he extended his arms towards them, an invitation both Liz and Aura happily epted.

    "Ahhh ?"

    "Hmm ?"

    "Nnngh ?"

    Three different cute moans made Daimon grin, he moved his hips which made his hard thing poke Aisha''s belly while he used each of his hands to fondle Liz and Aura''s asses.

    Aisha and Aura expected something like this, but Liz was startled because in all the time they lived in the Revy n, besides a kiss here and there, Daimon never actively touched their bodies.

    Liz moved upwards and pressed her lips against Daimon''s, before she spoke with a charming voice.

    "Perhaps a couple of days away, made you value this big sister''s beautiful body, little Daimon annhhh ?".

    Daimon suddenly augmented his grip on Liz''s ass which made her let out a loud moan, since he got his current body, the girls stopped calling him "little Daimon" as much as before, so now it was more used as a way to joke with him.

    "Don''t think I forgot the "greet" you left behind earlier at the training grounds, my cute fox wife, tonight both you and mom will get a little punishment".

    Aisha who was enjoying the manly scent of her son rose her head and put on a pitiful expression.

    "Are you really going to punish your poot mother?".

    ¡§Hiiiii ?", Daimon spanked Aisha which earned him a cute sound from her.

    "I won''t fell for this a second time, tonight the first one will be Aura since she was the only one that behaved like a good girl".

    Listening to Daimon''s words, Aura''s tail wagged a couple of times, she moved Aisha aside and took the middle spot on top of Daimon as she gave him a tempting gaze.

    Daimon caressed her face before he sealed her lips with a kiss, Aura desperately grinded her body against his, since she saw Daimon''s hard thing, she has been feeling horny, now that she has started experiencing the pleasures of having a lover, her body felt aroused at the sole thought of receiving Daimon''s attention.

    "Hmmm ?", Aura was shorter than Daimon so unlike Aisha who felt his dick poking her belly, Aura had the thing rubbing against her pussy, the thought of his thing "identally" sliding inside made her nectar flow out of her flower, creating lewd wet sounds.

    Daimon intertwined his tongue with hers as he enjoyed the soft pleasuring feeling of her pussy rubbing against his thing, of course he was careful enough to not push it in, as he has already decided to only use the front hole when all the girls are present.

    The kiss ended up being so messy that when Daimon stopped it, a long transparent string of saliva formed between their mouths, the sight of an excited blushed Aura was so charming he couldn''t help but change positions so she wasying face down on the bed while heid on top of her lower body

    Daimon licked all the way from her back until he reached her ass, the soft bouncy feeling of her butt cheeks was a so good he couldn''t help but kiss them before he continued his way to the pink paradise of her deliciously wet vagina, feeling Daimon''s tongue invading her insides Aura used a pillow to muffle her moans.

    Unfortunately, or more urately luckily for her, Daimon took it as a challenge because after she did it, he started twirling his tongue making her moan due to the sudden stimtion.

    "Nnnnngh, don''t be so rough h-husband ?".

    Daimon smiled, hearing Aura call him husband was the straw that broke the camel''s back, he took his tongue out of her pussy and instead focused his attention in the main star of the night¡­ her cute pinkish ass hole.

    Just as his tongue made contact with that beautiful back door, Aura couldn''t contain her climax anymore, her love juices spilled all over Daimon''s face, something he not only didn''t mind, but he liked as he got to drink the sweet enticing taste of her nectar.

    "If I call him husband, I get punished but if the wolf girl, does it she gets rewarded, not fair", thought Liz looking at the satisfied expression Aura had on her face right now.

    Daimon was a firm believer of striking while the iron is hot, so he gave Aura''s ass hole a couple of licks to lubricate her, before he positioned behind her, Aura knew what he wanted and she was happy to oblige so she got on all fours and swayed her hips to tempt him.

    Daimon rested his body on top of her back.<sub> </sub>

    "Good girls deserve to be rewarded", listening to him a shiver ran down Aura''s spine as he pressed the tip of his dick against the entrance of her ass before he gently slid inside of her.

    "Mmmph ?", the feeling of her tight insides being separated by Daimon''s rock-hard thick penis, made Aura feel her brain was melting, but the same could be said of Daimon, Aura''s ass was so tight and warm he nearly came just by putting it in.

    They weren''t the only ones lost in pleasure, Aisha had long stopped paying attention to the fact that Liz was also here, she started ying with herself to made the tingling sensation in her pussy go down at least until her son finished doing it with Aura so she could take over.

    Liz on the other hand was speechless, she saw Daimon''s big thing go inside of such a little hole, and her own ass twitched a bit imagining she would get the same treatmentter, originally when she heard Aisha''s moans through the sigil lector, she though Daimon was having regr sex with his mother.

    But once she was alone with Aura, they talked about it and she got to know Daimon was instead using their back doors, at first the felt a bit scared, she has seen his morning wood a couple of times before so it was hard for her to believe that something like that could fit inside her ass,

    And yet she was now personally witnessing Aura taking it inside and judging by the happy expression she had on her face, she was clearly enjoying it.

    Daimon stopped advancing when half of his thing was shoved inside Aura, he didn''t move to let her adapt to him, although he could now prate her without causing her any pain, her body was quite smallpared to him, so he preferred to let her get used to him before moving.

    Of course, he didn''t justze around, Daimon kissed all the way from her back to her beautiful neck before he shoved his fangs to drank a little amount of her blood, although Daimon wasn''t too fond of his vampire original nature, he had to admit that the euphoric pleasure of drinking their blood was addictive.

    Evangeline which was somehow convinced by Narasha to "peek" at Daimon felt the ce between her legs itch a bit, but she shook her head to get rid of the feeling.

    "Be grateful that you have the apex predator body constitution, if it weren''t for that any vampire would have exploded just by drinking a few drops of the blood of a half emperor, while being a star ranked knight and mage", she thought.

    Not only Evangeline, Liz was also surprised to see Daimon drinking Aura''s blood, but seeing that Aisha didn''t stop him from doing so, she didn''t say anything and just kept watching them making love.

    "Ahhhh ?", once Daimon took his fang out of her neck Aura let out a loud moan, her pussy waspletely drenched and her insides were rxed now, which was the goal of the bite.

    Daimon started slowly moving his hips back and forth making his dick move in and out of her anus, the bead creaked as he augmented his pace, he kept his body as close to Aura as possible, it was as if they were fusing together, not only their lower bodies were connected, even their upper parts were joined as they shared a passionate kiss.

    "Hmmm ?", Aura let Daimon dominate her tongue, her insides coiled around his penis as she did her best to please her lover, she the matriarch of the Argent family and a proud half emperor was acting like a little girl in love as she offered her whole self to the man she loved.

    The reason as to why Daimon liked Aura calling him husband was because unlike Liz or Erin, she was more on the shy side in terms of their love life, so he found irresistible the scene of a blushed Aura shily directing at him as her husband.

    At some point Aura also moved her hips to make Daimon''s thing go a bit deeper inside of her, the more he advanced the tighter her ass squeezed down on him, it was so good that Daimon thought her body was trying to milk him.

    "Annnghh ?", with onest push Daimon growled as he let out a huge load inside of her, the warm feeling of his sperm flooding her ass made Aura''s back arch as she reached her orgasm.

    They stayed connected until their climaxes finished and even then, Daimon didn''t take it out, Aura''s legs gave in, she let her body fall on the bed, she felt Daimon was even harder than before and a charming smile formed in her face.

    "How about we go for a second round, h-u-s-b-a-n-d ?".

    Daimon smiled he kissed her lips, with a little "pop" he took his penis out of her before he got off her body toy down next to Aura.

    "The sun hasn''t set yet so we have a lot of time, you will be the one leading today, so it''s up to you how many times we go at it before your sisters get my attention".

    Aisha looked at both Aisha and Liz which looked as they were about to cry, and she sighed.

    "I''ll be magnanimous this time, go and make love to them, before these horny fox and vampire girls go berserk¡­ but I will be taking the main spotter when we cuddle to sleep ?".

    Both Aisha and Liz didn''t hesitate, Aisha immediately buried her face in her son''s crotch as she started licking his dick, while Liz pressed her lips against Daimon to soothe her desire for him, of course she didn''t forget to tease him from time to time.

    "I came all the way here and instead of covering me with love, you punish me sigh the things a young wife has to endure for love ?".

    Daimon smiled; he gently pinched her nipple as he whispered at her.

    "Punishments aren''t always bad you know? I''m a bit thirsty right now, so as a good diligent wife let me drink something sweet from you".

 Chapter 95 A Pleasant Reaction (Part 1) R-18

    Liz blushed, she noticed Daimon''s eyes were glued to her lower body so it was easy to understand he wasn''t referring to sucking her blood when he said he wanted to drink something sweet from her.

    That being said he didn''tin, Liz changed position so her face was pointed towards his dick while her lower body was right in front of Daimon.

    This is the first time Daimon looked at Liz''s pussy up close, and he had to admit that it was quite pretty, her light pink petals were deliciously drenched due to her love juices.

    Daimon used his hands to drag her ass closer and started licking the outer area of her vagina.

    "~~Ahhnngh~~", Liz tried to contain her voice, she has touched herself before when she was younger out of curiosity, but she now discovered that the pleasure caused by Daimon''s tongue waspletely different.

    She tried to cover her mouth with her hands just to see Aisha smiling at her list filled expression.

    "Who would have thought, the most rebellious girl of our generation would be so innocent".

    Liz blushed, "S-shut up Aisha, you are also a virgin like me, you got ahead of me just because of the academy nnnghh ?".

    Liz''s argues were interrupted by the sudden feeling of something soft and wet invading her pussy, Daimon was so in trance by the sweet taste of her nectar, he unconsciously shoved his tongue inside of her to drink more of her juices.

    "I can''t believe girls can taste so different but so good at the same time!!!".

    This is the third pussy he has licked and so far, he regretted not having done it before, and his body agreed with him as precum was leaking from the tip of his dick.

    Aisha was still getting back at Liz forughing at her before, she gave her a proud gaze as she gobbled the tip of Daimon''s thing before she started moving her had up and down, her tongue moved around his shaft as she used her mouth to please him.

    The warm slippery sensation of Aisha''s mouth made Daimon let out a low growling sound, Aisha already learned some of his weak points, every time her tongue focused its attention on his ns, she felt the thing twitching inside her mouth.

    Liz on the other hand watched her friend now "sister" giving head to her lover, and she was surprised by Aisha''s lewd side, back then she didn''t even think on finding a partner and if someone would have told her, she will be sharing her mate with her best friend she would haveughed.

    "In the future when Daimon decides to show how awesome he is to the world, I''m so going to rub it on those bitches faces, unlike those boring guys I got the best man of the whole ster chart ?".

    Aisha noticed Liz expression changed and she stopped sucking Daimon''s thing.

    "Now that is the Liz I know, I already showed you how to do it so give it a try".

    Liz slowly moved her mouth towards his penis, she stuck her tongue out and then licked the tip a couple of times, Daimon couldn''t see what was happening because all his attention waspletely focused on the dripping wet pussy that was in front of him.

    Liz continued licking the tip until she heard Aisha saying.

    "If you only lick the tip my darling won''t cum, use your mouth to envelop the whole thing".

    Listening to her a shiver ran down Liz''s spine imagining such a humongous dick going down her throat, she took a deep breath and swallowed nearly half of the thing with her mouth.

    Of course, the size was too much for someone who has never done it, so the feeling of an external body invading her mouth made Liz gag¡­ for a couple of seconds before a manly smell filled nose,

    "No way!!! wasn''t a guy''s thing supposed to taste bad? Then why does it taste so good ?".

    Daimon suddenly stopped moving his tongue, his attention was drawn by Liz''s tails which were now wagging as she slowly started moving her head up and down trying to imitate Aisha.

    "She is doing her best, how cute", though Daimon, she had no technique since this was the first time, she was doing it, but her clumsy tries gave him a different kind of pleasure, she a proud Archmage was giving her best to please him.

    "Mm?", Liz felt Daimon''s penis trembling inside her mouth, she knew his sperm was about toe out.

    "If his precum tastes this good¡­ how would the real thing would taste?", the sole thought of Daimon reaching his climax thanks to her, made Liz augment her pace.

    "Annghh ?", with onest lick Liz enjoyed the biggest orgasm of her life, her juices flowed from her pussy drenching Daimon in the process, she unconsciously grinded her hips against him.<sub> </sub>

    The sweet enticing taste of her nectar made Daimon let out a big load of sperm inside her mouth, she tried her best to swallow his seeds, but she couldn''t so once she had her share Liz took his dick out of her mouth.

    Aisha of course took the chance to receive the rest of his cum, without forgetting to suck any leftover sperm.

    "Ahh this is addictive ?", thought Aisha as she savored the taste of her son''s warm things.

    While Liz was overwhelmed by the first orgasm caused by her lover, Aisha moved her aside.

    "I can''t believe you favored Liz over your own mother humph".

    Daimon smiled, he teased her quite a bit in the bathroom so she was the one that had to endure her horniness while she looked at him making love to Aura.

    "That''s the point of a punishment¡­ but I guess I did take it a bit too far", he said as he caressed her face.

    Aisha let her body rest on top of her son, she licked his neck and looked at him as if she was asking for permission, Daimon nodded and she shoved her fans on his neck.

    "Hmmm ?", Aisha slowly drank his blood, she felt as if her body was on fire due to the euphoric sensation caused by Daimon''s blood.

    The same applied for Daimon, for vampires the pleasure caused by drinking blood was incredibly intense, Aisha stopped biting him, she witnessed the little marks left by her fangs closing as if nothing happened and she licked his lips to enjoy the aftertaste of her son''s blood.

    After drinking the blood of their partners vampires entered a period of excitement, Daimon and Aisha exchanged stared at each other with lust filled expressions before Aisha amodated in all fours to invite her son.

    Daimon gasped, the sight of his mother''s big round ass somehow made his dick got so hard it starting to hurt, he positioned behind of her as he ced the tip against his asshole, with a push his penis slid inside of her, the warm tight feeling of her insides wrapping around him was heavenly.

    "Mmmm ?", Aisha''s legs gave out and they fell on the bed, the "impact" made Daimon go deeper inside her ass, nearly three quarts of his thing were buried into her anus.

    "D-darling don''t push it in that much", said Aisha in a somewhat broken voice, but her request wasn''t attended as Daimon started moving his hips back and forth making Aisha let out loud moans.

    Liz who was still recovering from her orgasm saw Daimon pounding Aisha so passionately and she felt her ass clenching as she thought, "Can it even fit inside of me?".

    Aisha tried to hid her face with a pillow but Daimon didn''t allow her to do so, instead he sealed her lips with a kiss as he augmented the pace of his thrusts.

    Sloppy wet sounds echoed through the room, Daimon noticed his mother was tighter than before, her insides were coiling around him so hard that it was taking everything he had to not cum.

    "Mom, do you perhaps prefer me to do it rough?".

    Listening to him,plicated emotions rose up in Aisha''s heart, her mind was a mess right now, the excitement caused by having her blood drank or drinking Daimon''s basically eliminated any sensations of pain, so after that she liked him to put a bit more force.

    Right now, she felt incredibly good as Daimon''s penis separated her insides, the only problem was that once the euphoria was over, her body would resent the it, so Daimon was careful enough to not overdone it.

    "~~Ahhnnn~~", Aisha came out of her trance, when she felt Daimon pushing his thing a bit further inside, there were still a few centimeters out but this was the most he has pushed it inside of her.

    It was getting harder for Daimon to contain his ejaction, he pressed his mother down and moved his hips faster than before, the bed creaked following the rhythm of his thrusts, his gaze became a bit wilder as he bit her neck.

    "Nnnngh ?", Aisha''s insides tightened as she reached her climax, which was also strengthened by the burning sensation of Daimon''s sperm flooding her ass.

    Aisha''s back arched a bit, Daimon wasn''t drinking his blood he just shoved his fangs on her neck but that also made her feel as if her brain was melting, they stayed connected in that position for nearly five minutes before Daimon got off her.

    "Haaa¡­ haaa", they both gasped for air, this was the most intense lovemaking session they have had, Daimon had the sudden urge to jump over his mother again, his erection wasn''t going down at all, but Aisha needed some time to rest.

    His lust filled gaze focused on Liz making her feel as a little rabbit observed by a fierce predator, that being said she was actually okay with that, and her pussy which was soaked with her love juices was a proof of it.

 Chapter 96 A Pleasant Reaction (Part 2) R-18

    "Come here "big sister" Elizabeth, let me show you how much I have grown in these past eight years", said Daimon with a smirk.

    Liz looked at the current confident Daimon, there was a big contrast inparison with the young cautious boy she met that day in the mountain.

    "If you want me to submit, you will have to stablish your domain in the marriage, my future husband ?".

    Daimon smiled, he pressed Liz on the bed as he kissed her lips, his hands started touching her whole body from her little nipples to her navel all the way to her flower, the soft feeling he got by rubbing his fingers against her private skin was simply heavenly.

    "Nnngh ?", Liz stopped kiss to let out a little moan when she felt one of his fingers going entering her vagina, Daimon gently moved his finger inside of her being careful enough to not harm her in any way.

    Although they were going to have anal sex, Daimon wanted Liz to be as rxed as possible so she won''t feel too much pain, since it was going to be her first and he is quite big after all.

    "Liz, I can bite you first, so that you will feel close to no pain when we do it if you want¡­".

    "I want to experience the whole process, even the pain is a proof that I have be one with you¡­ just be gentle with me, okay?", said Liz as she used her fingers to interrupt him.

    Daimon shook his head, "Somehow I knew you were going to say that, fine well do it without the bite, but if it''s hurting you, we will immediately stop".

    Liz continuedly kissed him.

    "I have you to take care of me, so let me be as stubborn as I want ?".

    After a couple of minutes of kisses and caresses, Daimon felt she was rxed enough so it was time to start with the main event, while still kissing Liz saw him cing a pillow on the mattress right in front of her.

    "Mm? what is the pillow for?"

    Daimon smiled, "You will see in a couple of minutes".

    With all the care of the world Daimon made hery face down on the bed, while Aisha was more or less as tall as him and Aura was shorter, Liz, ine and specially Erin were taller than him by significantly gap.

    Daimon and Aisha were more or less 1.7 meters, Liz and ine reached nearly 1.85 andstly Erin which was about 1.95 meters tall, not all the beast races were so tall, but apparently Erin''s genes were exceptionally good, which was reflected in their extremely "generous" figures, that''s why many people wanted to court them, because few women couldpare with their beauty in the Wonder Myriad ster chart, Aisha and Aura were in that category of course.

    Liz now understood the use of the pillow, while her upper body was resting on the bed, the pillow made itfortable for her to rise her ass, so that it was easier for Daimon to prate her.

    The sight of her round ass pointed at him made Daimon get a furious erection, her pretty pink ass and pussy made a cute contrast with her white skin, Daimon smiled, he couldn''t help but give her asshole a couple of licks before he shoved his tongue inside of her.

    Liz let out a loud moan when she felt Daimon''s tongue twirling inside of her, she felt embarrassed by the fact that she was actually enjoying having her ass teased, so she used a pillow to muffle her moans.

    Now that she was lubricated, Daimon grabbed her thin waist with his hands as he ced the tip of his dick against her asshole, the sole feeling of Daimon''s hard thing made a shiver run down through Liz spine, but she just took a deep breath and looked at him directly as she nodded.

    While originally Liz found Daimon cute when he was younger, she soon realized he was different than any other guy she has ever met before, he didn''t harbor any ill intentions towards her despite her beauty which was what earned him her attention.

    Then the more she got to know him she realized how much she enjoyed spending time with him, from silly things like taking a bath to serious matters like the magic smithing projects they worked on over the years, being with Daimon made her heart feel at ease.

    Of course, although she imed she liked him and all, she didn''t show sexual attraction towards him since Daimon was still quite young, but then he went through a drastic change and that cautious boy became a full-fledged man which radiated an aura of mystery and dominance.

    Her heart was already upied by him, but after that even her body couldn''t escape from his ws, even then Daimon didn''t do anything to them, of course she noticed he looked at their naked bodies when they bathed but instead of lust, the feeling she got from it was that of a man appreciating the beauty of his lover.

    Liz wasn''t the only one lost in her thoughts, Damon also remembered the first time they met, he paid a lot of attention to Aura and Erin, but Liz also had a special ce in his heart, because she was the first woman he met in this world besides his mother.

    After going through so many things in one day, a beauty literally descended from the sky with that characteristic bright smiling expression, he remembered how she hugged him even before presenting herself, and all the things that led to this moment where they were about to take a big step ahead in their rtionship.

    "I love you", they said while staring at each other, before Daimon put more force into his hips, which finally allowed him to put the tip of his penis inside.

    "Wuuuh ?", Liz let out a slightly pained sound, the feeling of her insides being separated by such a big thing was both painful but surprisingly pleasing for her, Daimon''s saliva perfectly worked as a lubricant as he managed to slowly put half of his thing inside of her.

    Liz back was slightly arched, her eyes were teary but it wasn''t due to pain of being prated for the first time, but because then joy of being one with her lover, even if it wasn''t in the front, her heart was filled with the bliss of a woman.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon let his body rest on top of her, he gently kissed her back a couple of times, it would be a lie to say he wasn''t happy, no other man but him, has or will ever make the normally rebellious Elizabeth Revy act like a little girl in love.

    Unfortunately, in this position they couldn''t kiss due to the difference in height, but Daimon gently held her hand as he waited for her body to get used to his size, her insides extremely tight and maybe because of her affinity with fire or some other unknown reason she had a higher inner temperature than Aisha or Aura.

    "She might not be as doted as Erin in body proportions, or make me feel that taboo pleasure that embracing mom gives me, but being with her does really make not only my body but even my heart feel warm¡­ perhaps not only her grimoire but even her presence is that of a sun for me", he thought.

    Liz thought she somewhat got used to the "strange" object that was invading her body, so she said in a low voice.

    "Y-you can move now, just start slow ?".

    Daimon massaged the back of her hand with his thumb, after doing it with his mother and Aura he could now more or less tell when they were prepared for the thrusting or not.

    "Rx your body, don''t think on anything and just leave it to me¡­ it will help to lessen the pain".

    Liz nodded, she entrusted her body to her lover and then felt how Daimon started moving his hips back and forth, at first the feeling of her insides being rubbed by his big thing still felt slightly panful, but as time passed the pain disappeared and only pleasure remained.

    "~~Ahhhh~~", she let out a cute sound when she felt Daimon fondling her breasts with one of his hands, while used the other to grab her waist and thrust his penis deeper inside.

    Soon the only sounds that could be heard in the room were Liz''s moans and the bed creaking at the rhythm of their movements, at some point Daimon suddenly had a good idea, ording to Aura the tails and ears of the girls from beast races were sensitive spots, and unlike a half emperor a girl from a beast race didn''t have that much control over her body.

    "If Aura came when I yed with her tail while making love to her, what would happen if I do the same to Liz", he thought.

    Needless to say, but the curiosity won, he let go of her right breasts and instead grabbed one of her tails before he gently pulled it.

    "Hyaaan ?", a sudden high-pitched moan echoed through the room, followed by a low growl made by Daimon, when he pulled her tail Liz''s insides coiled around his dick so tight, he felt as if she was about to squeeze him.

    "D-don''t y with my tail¡­ mmmph ?".

    Liz tried to stop Daimon from ying with her tails, but her "resistance" was futile, especially considering how her ass was clinging to his penis due to the strong stimtion she was feeling.

    That moan was so loud even Aisha and Aura who were recovering from their orgasm, opened their eyes and looked at Daimon "mounting" Liz.

    Auraughed, "Apparently she likes it rough, just like you Aisha".

    Aisha smiled, "Well, Liz has always liked strong experiences, besides once you get to try it, you will also get hooked on the feeling of my darling pounding you".

    *Shlick*

    *Shlick*

    All the precum Daimon was leaking from his ns, made wet sloppy sounds as he moved in and out of Liz''s ass, with onest pull of her tail her love juices flowed from her pussy as she reached her climax.

    Liz lost any strength in her lower body and let her ass rest on the bed, while Daimon was on top of her, as his dick was twitching due to the ejaction.

    "Nnnngh ?", her orgasm augmented its intensity when she felt the warm sperm of Daimon filling her ass so much, she thought it would have been enough to get her pregnant if she would have taken it in her pussy.

    Right now, both Daimon and Liz were in ninth cloud, their breathing was erratic as they enjoyed their orgasms.

    It took some effort but with a little "pop", Daimon pulled out his dick and got off her, heid down next to Liz as he was marveled by her current state.

    Liz wasying on the bed her legs were spread apart while a white fluid was flowing out of her ass, the bedsheet below her was covered with abination of both sperm and love juices and she was huffing for breath, her face waspletely blushed, this was her first time and she never imagined she would end up enjoying anal so much.

    Daimon kissed her lips and dragged her into his embrace, Liz rested her head on his chest and thefortable rhythm of his heart beat made her close her eyes as she fell asleep in the arms of her lover, of course Aisha and Aura alsoid down at Daimon''s sides.

    When they gave Daimon their firsts, they both cuddled with him so it was Liz''s turn, besides it was still quite early so they silently agreed on taking a little nap¡­ so that they could continueter.

 Chapter 97 The Benefits Of Friendship

    While Daimon was happily taking a nap with three beauties on his embrace, back at the training facilities the Risha girls, Richard, Irina, Boris and Aliya were still continuing with the lesson.

    Irina received a message through her sigil lector which made her frown her brows, Richard noticed his daughter''s current expression and he asked.

    "What''s the problemss, is Ferdinand trying to cause troubles again?".

    Irina shook her head, "No¡­ in fact this is actually something I would have never expected to happen not even in a million years".

    "Ferdinand called the other n heads to change the inclination of our family¡­ from the neutral faction to the side of the Revy/Argent alliance".

    Richardughed out loud, "And what was the conclusion those guys reached?".

    Irina stole a couple of gazes at her daughter before she replied.

    "The other two n heads wanted to meet that kid before giving their answer¡­ but in front of everyone Ferdinand contacted the patriarch of the Ascott family and told him to never approach Yvi ever again".

    ¡­

    "Whatever that kid did to Ferdinand it was surprisingly effective".

    Richard turned to see Boris and dered.

    "Little Ogien, it''s settled, I will stay to help you train this monstrous ss of yours".

    Boris nodded, that was intention from the very beginning, with Richard here the training will go smoother, besides another Archmage guarding the fort was always weed.

    Aliya also felt relieved, she had no ties with Liz so it wasn''t likely that she could ask her for help in case it was needed, but Richard was different she could trust he wille to her aid.

    The only one which wasn''t so excited by the notice was Yvonne, of course that didn''t prevent Leslie and even Liliana to mock her.

    "What do you think Yvi, your grandpa will stay with us for the rest of the year", said Leslie as she chuckled.

    Yvonne sighed, "I''m never listening the end of this", she thought.

    At the library Michael was regrettinging to study with Calvin, the first hour everything was okay, they just remained silent and focused in their respective books, the problems started when they went out of the private room assigned to the elite ss.

    They both felt hostile gazes directed at them, while Michael ignored them, Calvin responded to their hostility in his own way¡­ basically he went and flirted with one of the girls that was in the hostile group.

    Between them they recognized Daniel Jolbaris, so it was obvious they were part of the guys chosen by Alexander for his elite ss, things got heated when Calvin said something along the lines of "Don''t hang out with the loser ss".

    And then one of the guys challenged Calvin to a duel.

    Which he epted but with one condition, "This young master is in need of a studypanion that is pleasing to the eyes, so if you lose Loren will "read" with me as much as I want".

    The girl blushed seeing Calvin winking at her, she previously met him at the admission exams so she already had a good impression of him, unfortunately although her results were outstanding enough for her to reach the A ss, she stillcked a bit to enter the elite ss.

    But now when she came to the library, one of the guys which was in the top ten approached her little group to offer them a chance to join the "elite ss", she was considering epting to meet the funny guy she met before but out of nowhere he appeared and started hitting on her.

    The tense atmosphere disappeared when they heard the voice of a woman saying.

    "Fighting is prohibited in the library, if you cause troubles, I will personally send you to the disciplinarymittee".

    Calvin saw the vice principal from the Leeris family looking at them with an annoyed expression and he shrugged.

    "Let''s solve thister at the little tournament that will take part between the elite ss, and your loser ss¡­ Loren, I suggest you to not hang with those guys, their boss can''t evenpare with the weakest guy from our ss", he said as he looked at Michael.

    Daniel noticed the only one that he actually wanted to recruit being convinced by Calvin to not do so, and he gritted his teeth.

    "Be careful with your decision¡­".

    Calvin interrupted Daniel, he snorted and spoke in a disdaining voice.

    "You talk quite big, for someone who is theckey of a sore loser".

    Lorenughed, for some reason she found Calvin quite funny, she looked at Daniel and shook her head.

    "I won''t be joining you¡­ so please leave me out of your ns".

    Daniel felt his lungs filled with anger.

    "Very well, I hope you don''t regret your decision of today, the rest of you let''s go!!!".<sub> </sub>

    Michael waited until Daniel and the other guys left to speak

    "Calvin, you just caused this girl problems, what do you think will happen considering her ss will be practically ruled by Alexander?".

    Calvin smiled at Loren, he took out his sigil lector and sent a short message.

    Back at the mansion Daimon was peacefully sleeping when he was woken up by the sound of his sigil lector, he opened his eyes and read the message.

    "I need a little favor, tell the principal to transfer a girl to our ss¡­ Alexander was interested in her, so it''s within our best interest to screw his ns".

    Daimon looked at the clock and he felt the urge to strangle Calvin, It has only been thirty minutes since he fell asleep, but on the other hand it seemed important because he warned them to not contact him over something which wasn''t important.

    Atst he just shrugged and send a short answer before turning the sigil lector off.

    "Got it".

    Calvin received the answer he expected and smiled as he showed it to Michael.

    "You see these are the benefits of friendship".

    Michael sighed, "Pray that Daimon wasn''t doing something important, or he is going to kick your ass tomorrow".

    Calvin cleared his throat, he looked at the girl and spoke.

    "Don''t worry about those idiots, our ss rep is a monster so they won''t dare to do anything".

    Loren had a weird expression, like every other new student, she has heard the rumors of the demon from the elite ss, but apparently Calvin was in good terms with him.

    "Calvin¡­ am I causing troubles to you?".

    Calvinughed.

    "Nah, just a mere Jolbaris family isn''t worth being considered troubles, that guy beat up three big human families without sweating".

    Michael kept silent, Calvin wasn''t a fool, if he was interested in this girl there must be something outstanding about her, but since everything will be discovered sooner orter, he just shrugged.

    "If Daimon doesn''t mind, then I don''t care", he thought.

    Leaving that little episode aside, Daimon stood up from the bed and went to the bathroom to take a leak, by the time he returned both Aisha and Aura were awake, the only one which was still peacefully sleeping was Liz

    Aisha stretched her body, while Aura let out a cute yawn.

    "Mom I''m feeling a bit hungry, let''s take a bath and have something to dine".

    Aisha smiled.

    "Sounds like a good idea darling ?", she said as she stood from the bed and went ahead to the bathroom.

    Aura on the other hand was still a bit sleepy but she also wanted to participate in the bath, so she extended her arms towards Daimon, which made him smile as he carried her like a princess.

    As they walked towards the bathroom, Daimon told Aura about what Calvin asked, and as he expected she just indifferently nodded.

    "Consider it done, if I remember correctly Boris told me about some possible candidates for the elite ss and the one on the top was a girl from the Lefay family¡­ so it''s a good idea to have her in the team".

    Daimon made memory, there were some families which were worth remember, in the beast faction although the darkness affinity is considered probably the strongest, the rarest is not that but the light affinity.

    "Apparently Calvin has a good eye for people¡­ well more urately for girls", he thought.

    When they entered the bathroom, Aisha was already rinsing her body under the shower, Daimon let Aura down and they joined, of course Aisha took the initiative to apply soap over her son''s body.

    Daimon felt charmed by her actions, even if she was his lover, she was also his mother and he found rather cute when she acted like this, just like when she didn''t let him skip sses, or when she personally feed him.

    "Mm?", Aisha noticed her son''s lovely gaze and she looked upwards just to be captivated by his amethyst eyes, she couldn''t help but appreciate his perfect figure, his muscles which seemed to be chiseled in marble, his handsome yet manly face and of course that big thing that hung between his legs.

    She hugged Daimon and with a swift maneuver she bit his neck to drink some on his blood, the sweet enticing taste of his blood made Aisha got shamefully wet, but she didn''t stop, instead her hand moved downwards as she gently grabbed his dick which was getting hard and gave it a couple of pumps.

    Daimon had a satisfied expression as he enjoyed the caresses of Aisha, he never showed favoritism to any of the girls, but even he had to admit that having intimacy with her gave him a certain feeling of fulfillment.

    "I wonder what would Victor''s face would be, when he sees that the woman, he desired so much is and has always been mine", he thought.

 Chapter 98 Dinner And Bedtime (Part 1) R-18

    Daimon closed his eyes, the feeling of the water falling over his body, and Aisha''s soft hands pleasing him was simply heavenly, suddenly he felt another pair of hands curiously ying with his thing, and that was not all, although his eyes were closed his sixth sense passive skill detected someone sneaking in the bathroom.

    He sighed "looking" at the weird walking of Liz, Archmage or not she just had her first so it was better for her to rest at least a couple of hours, but apparently, she was too stubborn for that, luckily, he now had something to help her recover from the slight soreness that remained after their lovemaking session.

    "That''s not fair, if you were going to bath you should have woken me up too ?", said Liz as she hugged Daimon from behind and pressed her breasts against his back.

    Daimon opened his eyes, he kissed Aisha''s forehead which she took as sign to stop biting him, her fangs returned to their normal size and the marks of the bite disappeared immediately without leaving any wound.

    Aura put on a needy expression which earned her a kiss on her neck and a little spank as Daimon whispered to her.

    "Don''t be so childish, after I give it to Liz of course I will give my cute master all my attention".

    Aura blushed; her heart beat felt in bliss every time Daimon told her lovely things and that resulted in her tail wagging to show her current happy mood.

    Daimon smiled, he patted Aura''s head a couple of times, "Next I''m going to y with her tail", he thought.

    Still right now Liz was the priority, he turned around and walked until he was standing behind Liz, he hugged her used one of his hands to fondle her breasts, while with the other one he caressed her big round ass.

    He extended his hand and took out a little bottle from his storage, although he had a spatial ring, he took it off for bed activities and bathing, luckily his most important things were safely kept in the storage where they couldn''t be stolen.

    "Wuuuh ?", Liz let out a soft moan when she felt Daimon''s fingers gently rubbing her asshole, she noticed he was applying some kind of ointment because she felt afortable fresh sensation back there as he massaged it.

    Daimon saw her cute hole twitching due to the ointment and he smiled, the slight reddish tone caused by the "friction" gave in thanks to the medicinal properties of the ointment, once he was satisfied with the results, he stopped his fingers and then focused on her neck.

    Feeling Daimon kissing her neck, a little bolt of electricity ran down Liz''s spine, she was somewhat expectant after seeing how pleased were Aisha and Aura when he drank their blood.

    And her expectations werepletely fulfilled, when Daimon shoved his fangs on her neck, her love juices spilled as she reached her climax, an overwhelming amount of pleasure flooded her mind making her forget about everything.

    Just like with Aura, the euphoric excitation caused by his bite worked like a charm, any remains of the pain caused by her first time disappeared and only pleasure remained, Liz felt her legs wobbling, she rested her body against Daimon until she somewhat regained herposure.

    "I should have epted the bite before, I bet it would have been superb to do it while you drank my blood ?".

    Daimon kissed her lips one more time begore he focused of cleaning her body, Aisha had already taken care of his, so the only one that needed to bath was Liz.

    "Let''s grab something to eat and then we''ll see if you can take a second roundter, okay?".

    Liz smiled, she stood still and enjoyed Daimon''s gentle caresses all over her body, once the bath finished, they dried off and left to the dining room, back at Erin''s mansion they just wore underwear most of the time¡­ but right now they werepletely naked.

    Aisha gave her son a tempting gaze, she swayed her hips and started preparing the dinner, her seduction worked because Daimon''s eyes were glued to her charming back view.

    Both Liz and Aura saw Daimon drooling over Aisha and they exchanged smiles, they stood up and did the same.

    "Aisha let us help in something", said Liz with a cunning smile on her face.

    Aura nodded and so the three of them focused in preparing the dinner, of course Daimon didn''t forget the enjoy the view, Aura and Liz were wagging their tails to "captivate" him, while Aisha had to focus on truly preparing the dinner since she was the only one of the three that knew how to cook.

    Aisha saw her interests being threatened and she snorted.

    "Oi you two, if you are just going to be moving your asses to tempt my darling, then return to your seats".

    Liz stuck her tongue at Aisha, "He is eating us with his eyes right now, so just prepare something light to dine".

    Aisha sighed, from the beginning that was the n, for vampires drinking blood can rece eating or drinking, so the dinner would consist in some pastry, fruit jelly and milk, her eyes light up when she suddenly got a good idea to make both Liz and Aura feel jealous of her.

    The three of them ced the dishes on the table, while Liz and Aura sat at Daimon''s sides, Aisha sat on his legs.

    "Say "ahhh" darling".

    Daimon epted the offer and had a taste of a muffin her mother bought back when they were at the academic city, the taste was actually quite decent, but then when he tried to grab a ss of milk, Aisha stopped from doing so.

    "No, no, no, Darling, if you want milk then I can assure you mine tastes way better ?".<sub> </sub>

    Liz nearly choked with the little tart she was eating.

    "Aisha, since when did you started producing milk¡­ don''t tell me you are pregnant?".

    While Daimonughed, Aisha interrupted Liz before her imagination ran wild.

    "I''m still a virgin, my darling wanted to drink from me so I just used a pill to produce breast milk for a short period of time".

    "Weren''t we going to do that at together though?", said Aura in sightly angered voice.

    Aisha smiled, "Firste first served, he is my son, so of course I have some privileges".

    "Hmmm ?", Aisha moaned, the sensation of her nipples being sucked by Daimon was quite pleasing, and her body rewarded his efforts with its sweet maternal milk.

    Aura pouted; she gave Aisha a jealous gaze which was of course noticed by Daimon.

    "Mom, if you still have some of that medicine give one to Aura, please", the original n was to drink from both of them anyway.

    Aisha handed A little bottle with two pills to Aura.

    "We need to buy more, take one and give the other to Liz".

    Aura did as she told and swallowed the pill in one go, Liz took the bottle from her and did the same, unfortunately for them the medicine needed some time to kick in, so they could only continue with their dinner while Aisha looked at them with a triumphant expression.

    Once the dinner was over, they returned to the bedroom, Liz still needed some rest so Daimon focused his attention on Aisha and Aura, the sight of their naked bodies next to each other was a bliss.

    Aisha moved her hips sidewards.

    "Come to me darling ?", she said with a tempting voice.

    Aura blushed, normally when her tail wags it''s a reaction, but this time she did it by her own will because she knew how much he liked to see it.

    Words weren''t needed, Daimon immediately jumped over her.

    ? "Kyaah ?", Aura''s body fell backwards on the bed while Daimon was resting on top of her, she felt something weird on her chest and when she looked downwards, she noticed there was a white liquiding out of her nipples.

    Unlike Aisha she never produced breast milk before, so it was a new experience for her, Daimon was a firm believer of striking while the iron is hot, so of course he didn''t let such a good chance slip.

    With a smirk, he started kissing all the way from her neck to her chest, her breasts might not be as big as the other girls but they perfectly fit on his hands, he licked his lips and then started sucking on her nipples.

    "Hmmm ?", Aura moaned, the feeling of Daimon licking her nipples was quite pleasing.

    Speaking about Daimon he was marveled by how sweet it tasted, without him knowing it''s the first time in hundreds of thousands of years someone has drank the breast milk of a half emperor.

    The more you advanced the harder was to have offspring, that''s why female mages or knights had descendants when they were at most in the Arch ranks, since the half emperor realm was achieved there hasn''t been a case of one giving birth.

    At some point Daimon was so excited he started rubbing his dick against Aisha''s pussy, her love juices started flowing whichbined with the movement resulted in sloppy wet sounds.

    Aura let out a loud moan, her body trembled as she reached her climax, while she was gasping, Daimon turned her body around and rubbed his penis against the entrance of her ass.

    With a single push half of his thing slid inside of her, all the pleasure he has built up so far overwhelmed him, with a low growl Daimon let out a big load of hot sperm inside Aura, but he wasn''t nearly satisfied.

    "Ahhnng ?", Aura was enjoying the warm feeling of his sperm filling her, when she suddenly let out loud moan, her love juices drenched the bedsheet below her and her insides clung so hard Daimon thought she was going to squeeze his dick.

    She looked from the corner of her eyes that Daimon was smirking as he yed with her tail.

    "D-Daimon don''t y with tha¡­ nnnghh ?".

    Before she could finish her sentence Daimon started moving back and forth making her press her face against a pillow to muffle her moans.

 Chapter 99 Cuddling With Beauties R-18

    "Ahhh¡­ahhh¡­ahhh ?".

    Loud moans filled the room, the bed creaked following the rhythm of their lovemaking, Daimon was in the ninth cloud right now, every time he pulled Aura''s tail her insides tightened around his dick so hard, he had to stop moving but that didn''t interrupt them.

    Daimon yed with her breasts which made her milk leak out of her nipples drenching the bedsheet below them.

    "Nnnngh ?", with onest thrust Daimon couldn''t hold back anymore, he gently pushed Aura down and filled her ass to the brim with his warm seeds.

    Aura tightened her hands around the bedsheet as she reached her third climax of the night, her mind went nk and her body felt light, once her orgasm finished her legs gave in, her chest moved up and down as she gasped for air.

    Daimon got off her, he drank a bit more of her milk and then gave her ast kiss, she closed her eyes to stabilize her breathing.

    He then looked at Aisha which was feigning giving him the cold shoulder, and smiled as he dragged her into his embrace, the flower-like scent of shampoobined with her natural fragrance filled his nose making him get awfully hard.

    "Mm?", Aisha which was trying to be angry at her son, suddenly felt something poking her belly, she looked downwards and gulped down, his dick was so rock hard.

    "No way¡­  he got even bigger than before!!!", she thought.

    Daimon licked Aisha''s breasts before he moved all the way to her neck, after a little kiss he gently bit her neck and drank a bit of her blood, Daimon smirked feeling his mother''s body trembling.

    He let go of her and looked at her blushed face before he sealed her lips with a passionate kiss.

    "Hmmm ?", Aisha finally couldn''t hold back her voice, she closed her legs around Daimon''s body and grinded her hips against him.

    Daimon felt her love juices drenching him and heughed.

    "Mom, are you trying to mark me or something like that?".

    Aisha''s face waspletely red, being bitten by her son made her feel so horny she actually rubbed her pussy against his body, but after a moment she shrugged.

    "You are my darling so what''s the problem if you smell like me¡­ I''m yours anyway".

    Daimon smiled, he turned her body around and pinned her don, thebination of her pink pussy and asshole and the sweet enticing fragrance of her love juices created one of the most exciting scenes he has ever witnessed.

    Daimon let his body rest on his mother''s back, he rubbed his dick on her ass a couple of times, the soft sensation of her skin was enough to send shivers through his spine, today he was feeling quite horny so even if he has ejacted about five times in a couple of hours he wasn''t satisfied yet.

    Aisha felt his thing rubbing against her entrance but whenever she thought he was about to put it in, Daimon instead changed the angle to not prate her and keep teasing her, this continued for nearly five minutes until she finally gave in.

    "Darling don''t tease mommy and put it in pleaseee".

    Daimon smiled listening what he wanted, he fondled her ass and without any warning he pressed the tip of his dick against her cute twitching ass hole.

    "Wuuuh ?", Aisha felt her son''s thick penis spreading her insides as he entered her, and she let out a loud moan as a bolt of electricity ran through her whole body, but she wasn''t the only one, Daimon felt her warm insides enveloping his thing and he let out a satisfied sound.

    "Kuuhh¡­ this feels so good", he thought.

    Aisha tried to move her hips just to be held down by Daimon.

    "I''ll do the moving mom, just leave everything to me", he said before kissing he back.

    Aisha nodded and just entrusted her body to her son, which turned out to be a good decision, Daimon started moving his hips back and forth, but this time he was doing it a bit rougher than on their previous session.

    "~~p~~"

    "~~p~~"

    "Ahhhng ?".

    The sound of their thigh colliding against each other, followed by the cute moans of Aisha filled the room, Daimon was in trance enjoying the tight insides of his mother to the point that he didn''t pay attention to the fact that she already came and just continued pounding her from behind.

    Not like there was any problem with that, especially because Aisha seemed to be in ecstasy, her eyes were filled with lust and she was even drooling a bit due to the excessive amount of pleasure she was feeling.

    "Hyaaaa ?", Aisha''s eyes widened a bit, she let out a high-pitched moan when she felt Daimon pushing his whole thing inside of her.

    Although she didn''t feel pain, Daimon normally limits himself to only put half of his dick inside the girls because he is quite big, except when he is about to cum because he likes to fill them as deep as possible always taking car of not hurting them of course.<sub> </sub>

    But right now his whole dick was repeatedly going in and out of Aisha and she felt as if her brain was going to short-circuit, her ass hole was well lubricated thanks to all the precum that was Daimon''s ns was leaking and every time he moved inside sloppy wet sounds echoed through the room.

    At some point Daimon grabbed Aisha by her waist and augmented his pace.

    "Ahhh...ahhh¡­ahhh darling, I''m going to nnngh ?".

    Aisha pressed her ass against her son at the same time he moved his hips forth, Daimon let out a low beastly growl as he ejacted as deep as he could inside of her.

    Aisha felt arge amount of his warm sperm flooding her ass and she hid her face against the pillow as he body trembled in the most intense orgasm she has experienced so far.

    Daimon thrusted a couple of times and then with a little "pop", he pulled his dick out of her, Aisha''s hole closed immediately and his sperm started to leak from it.

    "Haa¡­haa¡­haa".

    This time not only Aisha but even Daimon was out of breath, he was still hard the pleasure was overwhelming him, he tried to see if maybe he identaly used his charm skill but that wasn''t the case and since there was no notification from the system he just shrugged.

    ? "Perhaps puberty is hitting me quite hard¡­ not that I care considering I have my cute girls to help me", he thought.

    Aisha moved her exhausted body and rested her head on his chest, she drew little circles on his chest with her fingers.

    "That was awesome darling ?", she said with a charming voice.

    Daimon kissed her forehead although he was still erect, he knew when to stop, the girls were still quite new to this so he set his limit to two or maybe three rounds with each, with the exception of Liz since she was a virgin a couple of hours ago.

    Speaking of Liz she felt her pussy tingle in expectation after looking at Daimon basically mounting Aisha, but she took a deep breath to control herself, her ass hole was not sore anymore but she was still quite tired since her sleep was interrupted earlier.

    When she was about to go and cuddle with Daimon, Aura moved faster and upied the middle spot, in other words while Aisha was hugging one of his arms, Aura was resting on top of him.

    "Hey that''s not fair, you had him yesterday Aura", said Liz in a slightly aggrieved voice.

    Aura stuck her tongue at Liz before she rubbed her face against Daimon''s chest.

    "Like Aisha said, "firste first served", next time don''t waste time if you want to have the middle spot".

    "Hmmm ?", Aura let out a cute sound when Daimon gently spanked her ass.

    "Aura don''t bully her, Liz it''s easier for us to sleep if Aura is in the middle", he said as he extended his free arm towards Liz.

    Aura smiled, "You all mock me for having a small body in this form, but being a "cow" like you or Erin it''s not always the best humph".

    Liz sighed she hugged Daimon''s left arm and rested her head on his shoulder, it was true that it was easier to amodate if the smallest girl was in the middle, on any case Daimon had them all on his embrace, Aisha covered them with a nket since the nights at Lykos are quite cold.

    Daimon was marveled at the cozy feeling of having three beauties warming him up, still he was rather amused by the fact that while Aisha and Liz had the upper part of their bodies exposed, due to her short stature for Aura only her shoulders and head were outside the nket.

    Daimon looked at the roof of the room, Erin and ine''s images shed though his mind, he contemted things for a moment before saying.

    "By the way Liz, how are the things going back at the n¡­ has that guy made his move yet?".

    Liz shook her head, "No, but it''s normal, due to the recent discovery of a possible inheritance from the ancient age, no one is stupid enough to cause internal strife at least not until the results of the Greenwich Sage tests be public".

    "If you want to see Erin just give her a call, she is an honorable "external assessor", of the academy so I gave her a token that allows her to use space shift inside the barrier of the academy", said Aura as her tail wagged as if she wanted a reward for her actions.

    Daimon smiled, he kissed Aura and then shook his head.

    "Erin stayed back at the n for a reason, I don''t want to give her any problems, besides this weekend we will pay her a visit anyway".

    Liz smiled, "That means you are exclusively ours for the rest of the week ?".

    Aura and Aisha finally found something theypletely agreed on¡­ they all wanted to monopolize him.

    Daimon shook his head, he closed his eyes and dragged them all closer to him as he entered thend of dreams.

 Chapter 100 New â€œMembersâ€ Of The Elite Class (Part 1)

    As the night went on the weather got worse, and when morning came there was no sun visible in the sky, instead it was clouded and little drops of rain fell which was usual in Lykos.

    While others might have woken up due to the temperature going down quite a bit, Daimon happily continued sleeping thanks to the three beauties that were sharing their body warm with him.

    He slowly opened his eyes and yawned, the very first thing he saw was Aura''s cute sleeping face just a couple of centimeters away from him, even when she was asleep her tail wagged from time to time which made obvious for him that she was having a good dream.

    He felt afortable warm sensation so he turned to his left and saw Liz hugging him tightly against her body, her big breasts enveloped the upper part of his arm while his hand was trapped between her thighs.

    "Mm?", suddenly white and pink filled his field of vision when Aisha ced her breasts over his face as a way to draw his attention, a secondter her melodious voice made its way to his ears.

    "Good morning darling".

    Daimon smiled, he moved his right hand downwards and started fondling her ass, seeing that Aisha didn''t get of him, he gently bit one of her nipples getting a cute moan from her.

    "That''s cheatin¡­ mmmph ?".

    Before she couldin Daimon pulled her towards him and sealed her lips with a kiss, Aisha closed her eyes and intertwined her tongue with Daimon''s as they participated in a passionate "dance".

    "Nyaaah ?".

    The kisssted quite a bit and it would have continued even more but Aura''s cute yawning voice interrupted them, she was having a good dream where she was having a date with Daimon, when suddenly she woke up because she felt something hot and hard rubbing against the petals of her flower.

    She smiled thinking that Daimon was eager to make love to her even so early in the morning, but when she opened her eyes, she saw Aisha and him kissing as if there was no tomorrow.

    Daimon noticed her slightly jealous expression and he stopped kissing Aisha, and smiled at her, Aura immediately moved her face towards him and "stole" his lips from Aisha.

    "Hmmm ?", unlike Aisha, Aura wasn''t that proactive at kissing, her tongue was rather shy as it simply stood still and let Daimon dominate her, the nket moved along with Aura''s tail as she enjoyed being kissed by her lover the first thing in the morning.

    Just like with Aisha the kisssted quite a bit, but this time Liz was the one that interrupted them, she was sleeping and the waving on the nket caused by Aura''s tail wagging was what woke her up, of course she wasn''t going to let them leave her aside.

    "Ahem, did I miss something?".

    Daimon stopped moving his tongue, but Aisha didn''t stop the kiss until she felt Daimon patting her head, she reluctantly let go of him as she stole a gaze at Aisha before she got off Daimon''s body.

    Before Liz could move Daimon lifted her with his arms and ced her on top of him, although it took her by surprise she didn''t resist, instead let out a low moan as she felt his hands caressing her back all the way down her ass.

    Daimon kissed her neck a couple of times before he pressed his lips again her not without asking first.

    "How do you feel, does it hurt back there?".

    Liz shook her head, "Even though a certain someone went quite hard at me yesterday, I''m fine, instead I feel my secondary core rejoicing as if it had a delicious meal ?".

    Daimon smiled, "bonding" was the condition for the soulmates to produce "AP", so of course after a lovemaking session it''s normal for Liz to feel her core full of energy.

    Now that all the girls had their "good morning kiss", they had to get up, although it was raining quite hard outside the sses weren''t affected by that, so it was gettingte.

    They got up and went straight to the bathroom, while the girls used their bodies to apply soap all over Daimon''s body which worked both ways, Daimon gently massaged Aura and Liz''s tails and ears with shampoo which earned him some cute sounds from them.

    Their silky fur was a bliss to feel, of course Aisha wasn''t left behind, since she didn''t have beast race characteristics, Daimon only focused on her hair before they all washed away the soap under the shower.

    Aisha dried of first and went ahead to prepare the breakfast, without forgetting to sway her hips as she left the bathroom of course.

    Daimon smiled as he enjoyed the naked back view of his mother, unfortunately they were short on time butter¡­ things will be different.

    As they dried off Daimon remembered Liz was going to be watching over them, but he didn''t know what would be the conditions of that.<sub> </sub>

    "Liz will you be watching from the shadows or¡­".

    Liz smiled as she answered with a yful voice.

    "Of course not, I mainly epteding here because I also wanted to attend sses with you ?".

    Daimon sighed, "You could be a teacher here you know?".

    Liz stuck her tongue at him, "What teacher, I''m look young enough to pass as a student".

    Daimon contemted things, he looked at both Liz and Aura from head to toe, and then nodded.

    "You are right, I wonder if should make both you and Aura wear school uniforms just for my own amusement".

    Aura blushed, imagining herself wearing something as girly as a skirt or a dress, she has always used more sportive clothes like shorts or spats to not limit her movements, her eyes suddenly sparkled as she got a good idea to surprise Daimonter.

    Leaving that little episode aside, they all put on their usual clothes, Daimon wore his white and purple get up, Liz had a mix between eastern and western style, while Aura used ck shorts a sport and a long jacket which covered her whole body.

    They went to the dining room, where a sumptuous amount of delicious looking dishes was ced on the table.

    Daimon sat down and dug in, Aisha sat in front of him and happily ate her breakfast as she looked at her son enjoying her cooking, Liz felt a bit jealous she also wanted to prepare something but her cooking skills were¡­ horrible, Aura on the other hand didn''t put too much attention into that.

    *Phew*, with a satisfied sigh, Daimon drank a ss of juice as he finished his meal, Aura gave Daimon a goodbye kiss and she used space shift to disappear from the room.

    Liz and Aisha grabbed each one of Daimon''s arms and they left the mansion, since it was raining outside Liz used a little amount of mana to create a semi dome over their heads to prevent the rain to affect them.

    Some of the freshman looked at them, at this point it was hard to find someone among the first years, that haven''t heard of the pair of "siblings" from the Revy family, so seeing Aisha clinging to Daimon wasn''t something strange.

    But no one knew who was the other girl that was walking with them, Liz had a good control over her mana so star ranked mages couldn''t discern her realm, in their eyes the "demon" of the elite ss probably seduced a beauty from the third grade.

    They soon arrived at the 1S ssroom, the Risha girls and Michael greeted them, not without showing curiosity towards the new girl that Daimon brought with him.

    Although Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were the young misses of their respective family branches, the Risha family wasn''t close to the Revy family so they didn''t know Liz¡­ until yesterday when she dered herself as Daimon''s future wife which identified her as Elizabeth Revy a peak Archmage.

    Aliya had a weird expression on her face, although she was happy that a peak Archmage was going to be "attending" her sses, she originally felt a bit pressured by her presence, but looking at how she was smiling and chatting with Daimon she let out a sigh of relief.

    "Aliya Rubreum greets the champion of the Revy family", she said as she slightly bowed her head to show the proper respect that someone of her status deserved.

    Liz shook her head, "I don''t like formal stuff, since Daimon told me you shared some interesting knowledge with him, you can call me Liz¡­ the same for the others, if you are his friends then you are also mine".

    Leslie''s eyes sparkled, her easy-going personality helped her ignore the huge gap in cultivation, and just approach Liz to casually talk with her.

    "Leslie Risha, it''s a pleasure, I have heard a lot of cool things about the spirit fire of the Revy family!!!".

    Liz smiled, "Youe from the fire crane n, right?".

    Leslie nodded, "Yes, my mother is Reyna Risha¡­ she was the one of the first years that witnessed some of the incredible feats that the "twin princesses of twilight" achieved back then at the inter-academy tournament of the third years".

    Liz felt slightly embarrassed remembering her days back when she was a student of the academy, both she and ine were admired by girls and guys equally, so it wasn''t weird that Leslie''s mother knew about her, that being said she didn''t know Reyna, nor Irina or she would have greeted her yesterday at the training grounds.

    As a fire user of course, Leslie admired an outstanding woman which used fire as her main element like Elizabeth¡­ sometimes your idols turn out to be quite different to what you imagine, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 101 New â€œMembersâ€ Of The Elite Class (Part 2)

    Now that the atmosphere was more friendly, Yvonne, Liliana and even Michael greeted Liz, Yvonne was especially happy to meet her in person.

    "Thanks for teaching those old bastards a lesson¡­ Liz, to think you will be able to suppress another peak Archmage so easily, I guess no one rted to Daimon can be normal".

    Lizughed, she looked from the corner of her eyes at Daimon and smirked.

    "Yeah, that''s a thing inmon "we" all share", she said in a suggesting voice.

    Yvonne had a weird smiling expression, her words made her remember Daimon was engaged not only to Liz but the current n head of the Revy family which was her sister too.

    Daimon feigned ignorance and he instead changed the subject to prevent Liz messing with him.

    "Ahem, leaving that aside where the hell is Calvin?".

    Michael sighed, "That idiot went to pick up the girl from the library¡­ he told me everything was settled and that she will join us today?".

    Aliya frowned her brows.

    "Who will be joining us, tutor Ogien hasn''t told me anything about it?".

    As if he was waiting for other to speak about him, the door of the ssroom opened and Calvin entered followed by a girl.

    "Good morning!!!", said Calvin with a strangely enthusiastic voice which vanished as soon as he saw Daimon sitting with a new "student", Liz was sitting backwards to the door so he could only see her back appearance.

    "Come on ss rep, can''t you leave the stage light for me once?", he said in an aggrieved tone.

    Michael shook his head.

    "Calvin unless you want to die just sit down and shut up".

    "Mm?", Calvin noticed not only Michael but all the others including Aliya were looking at him with pity filled gazes.

    It was then he noticed the foxlike ears and tails on the girl that was sitting next to Daimon, and the memory of the scary woman that kicked Yvonne''s dad ass yesterday appeared on his mind.

    Calvin cleared his throat; he approached Liz and slightly bowed his head.

    "The young master of the Ghrish family greets the respectable champion of the Revy family".

    Daimonughed, "Since when you became so proper?".

    "He is just bluffing because of that girl from the A ss", said Michael with a ridiculing voice.

    Aliya took out her sigil lector, she sent a message and got an answer almost immediately, the girl that Calvin brought to the ss got a "re-evaluation" of her results from the admission tests, and with the approval of one of the two vice principals of the third test she was promoted to the elite ss.

    Aura didn''t interfere when Alexander got his own "elite ss" so the Jolbaris couldn''tin.

    Calvin sat down next to Michael and the girl went to the front of the ssroom to present herself.

    "My name is Loren Lefay, I''m 18 years old and my affinity is light¡­ it''s a pleasure to meet you".

    Loren was a tall girl with brown hair and blue eyes, she was wearing a light green and white dress which gave her a certain calm and gentle appearance.

    Listening to her surname Aliya understood why the principal pulled some strings to transfer this girl with them, the Lefay family was a low range noble family as they have few Archmages, but they are recognized because they have one of the rarest affinities in the beast faction which is light.

    Unlike the corrosive light developed by the human "light faction", the light element of the Lefay family isn''t used for offensive but for support, which on lower realms isn''t too appreciated but for the army and those who are in high realms they are treated like treasures¡­ because the best healing spells belong to the light element.

    Of course, the girls didn''t miss the chance to greet their new ssmate, including Aisha, which took Loren by surprise, although Calvin assured her that his ss was different than others, she thought he was just being positive.

    The one "ruling" this ss was someone from the Revy family with a not so good reputation, she already had the displeasure of meeting someone form the Jolbaris so she thought it would more or less the same at the end of the day.

    But things weren''t like that at all, no one looked at her with disdain for her "useless" affinity, or the current situation of her family which was struggling to keep its noble status, even the rumored demon from the elite ss was joking with Calvin like any other friend would do.

    Originally Loren was going to sit with Calvin and Michael, but Leslie dragged her with them.<sub> </sub>

    "Come with us Ren, staying too close to Calvin is not good for your health", she said as she chuckled.

    While Michael nodding totally agreeing with Leslie''s opinion, Calvin sighed.

    "What am I some kind of pest for you?".

    "Yes¡­ you are an enemy of women", said Yvonne with a grin.

    Calvin turned to see Daimon with a pleading expression.

    "Daimon, give this "brother in weapons" a little help here".

    Unfortunately for him, Daimon ignored him, while on the surface he didn''t look nor act like a skirt chaser¡­ he had six girls on his life already, one of them being is own mother, and he didn''t want to be publicly known as a womanizer at least not for the time being.

    Seeing that the only one that could lend him a hand was ignoring him, Calvin sighed and sat down feeling depressed.

    "I just wanted to experience the joy of Loren leaning her head against my shoulder as we studied, or maybe helping her understanding some difficult matters about magic¡­ sigh I''m wasting my school years", he mumbled.

    Michael shook his head, "An idiot like you exining magic to others, that is something I will pay to see".

    Now that everyone was upying their seats, Aliya started with the ss.

    "Loren you are new, so first tell us what have you seen in your previous ss".

    Loren nodded, "We started learning theory to augment our reserves of mana, that''s the only thing we have learned so far".

    Aliya shook her head, "That''s such an amateur mistake¡­ whatever forget about that, for the next months and until the two sses fight with each other, we will focus on spell casting, potion brewing and magicprehension".

    "Speaking of that, did you already started reading books about your respective elements?".

    Everyone but Loren nodded, Daimon and Aisha took the books home, Calvin and Michael read at the library, while Liliana, Yvonne and Leslie were gifted some books by Richard and Irina so they could study in their rooms.

    Aliya nodded in recognition, her students might be problematic but at least they did put effort into their lessons, even Calvin started taking things seriously, especially after Richard told him.

    "I have a good training regimen for rebellious silk pants¡­ perhaps that old man will be grateful or me if I help his grandson correct his ways".

    Aliya suddenly seemed to remember something, she looked in her storage ring and then took out a series of simr looking scrolls and a crystal ball.

    "Although I did say we will focus in more practical lessons, there is one thing we need to see as it refers to why the academy was created".

    "These are copies of a contract every student has to sign and the crystal ball, is a magic device called orb of loyalty¡­ some of you might have heard rumors about some secrets kept by the academy, everything will be cleared after you sign".

    She handed a scroll to each of them and then exined the process.

    "First read the terms of the contract and once you are ready you must ce on of your hands on the orb to sign, I can''t tell you about what the secret is, but I assure you the contract is just for the security of everyone and there are no side effects¡­ in fact once you be Archmages it will be meaningless".

    Daimon opened the scroll and carefully read the uses of the contract; it wasn''t too borated as it just stated that the students were prohibited to speak about the knowledge, they will be granted in the next two hours with anyone that isn''t an Archmage".

    "Evangeline this thing won''t affect me, right?", he mentally asked.

    "Of course not, your soul and the ones of the soulmates are protected by the system, so this crappy contract won''t be able to mark you¡­ I will take care of tricking it into believing it did work though".

    Daimon nodded, when the girls became his soulmates, they were freed from any illness, bound or negative effect that were ailing them, that''s why he already knew they will be told about the past history of the Wonder Myriad ster chart and the invaders that came from outside the ster chart.

    "I guess I will go first since I''m the representative", he thought before standing up and approaching Aliya.

    He made a slight cut on his left index finger and then ced his hand on the orb of loyalty as he pressed his bleeding fingertip on the scroll to sign the contract.

    The orb illuminated in yellow light and he felt a slight ufortable feeling which was immediately erased by the protection of the system, the orb changed its color to green and then Aliya nodded.

    "That''s all I will keep the scroll as proof that you epted the collective contract¡­ who wants to go next?".

 Chapter 102 Agreements From The Past

    After Daimon returned to his seat, the next ones to stand up were both Calvin and Michael, there weren''t too many guys in the elite ss, but they already became brothers in weapons, so if one of them took a step ahead be it Daimon or one of the others, the rest will follow.

    That being said Calvin ended up being too heated for the moment that he cut his finger a bit too much and dripped blood in the floor, making Michael sigh as he signed the contract first while Calvin went to get a mop.

    Daimon judged their reactions and unlike him they didn''t show any ufortable expressions which caught his attention, but Evangeline exined to him that in their level is normal to not feel things rted to the soul with very rare exceptions, one of them being of course those rted to the system.

    Calvin cleaned the floor and then signed the contract, "Damn I just wanted to look cool in front of Loren why does the world doesn''t want me to get a cute girlfriend", he thought.

    The girls followed after that, Daimon already told Aisha the contract won''t affect her so she didn''t doubt to sign it, as for Leslie, Yvonne and Liliana they didn''t feel the contract activating so there was no problem on their side.

    Aliya took the scrolls signed with blood, she had special care to grab Calvin''s one which was slightly bloody and then threw them into her storage ring.

    "Congrattions, you have all be "official" students of the Wild w academy".

    "Mm?", Yvonne was quite interested in thatst sentence so she asked what was in her mind.

    "What would have happened if we decided to not sign that contract thing?".

    Aliya shrugged, "You would have been expelled from the academy, ording to the rules to which all the noble families have agreed¡­ there won''t be any opportunity for you to return, that''s the origin of the rumors that there are secrets kept by the academies".

    Yvonne nodded, it wasn''t hard to understand the origin of the rumors now, of course those that belonged to high ranked families wouldn''t refuse signing, themoners had no option but to ept anyway.

    So, the ones that probably spread the rumors where those whose families were at the brink of losing their noble status, thinking that they were being tricked into losing their freedoms or something along the lines they rejected the contract and stayed out of the academies.

    Aliya sat down and started her exnation.

    "You alle from noble ns, tell me have you seen knowledge about the Arch ranks in the libraries of your families?".

    It didn''t escape everyone''s eyes that the only one that didn''t nod was Loren, Aliya sighed.

    "When the academies were created¡­ the weaker families had to give up all their knowledge that surpassed the Lord realms, and those who were in the power at that time had to agree to not inherit their knowledge to their younger generations".

    Loren had aplex expression on her face, this story is well known in her family, they became weaker because after their books and records were confiscated, some radical guy destroyed them to prevent those with light affinity to "threat" the beast faction.

    Of course, her family was given a marypensation and an agreement was also reached, so that when their Arch ranks were about to meet the end of their lives¡­ they will be allowed to pass down their inheritance and it has been like that for at least ten generations of the Lefay family.

    That''s why there are few Archmages on her family up to this day, because one needs to die for another to arise and this cycle will only break if they get a half emperor, for other families their situation wasn''t that horrible, they just had to enter the academy and their young generations will get the chance to reach the Arch ranks, the same formoners.

    Calvin frowned his brows.

    "And why did they do all that, control?".

    Aliya shook her head, "No, the correct answer is "fear", of what lies outside our ster chart to be more urate".

    ¡­

    All the students remained silent, four gxies are already quite big, up to this day there are ces that haven''t been explored, just like the magic ruin that was recently found, and now it turns out there is apletely unknown world out there.

    Aliya told them the story of how the Wonder Myriad ster chart was invaded once a long time ago, about the existence of the magus emperor and all the dagame it caused, the seal created by the ancestor of the Greenwich Sage, and the responsibility that each Archmage has to help reinforce the seal after a certain amount of time.

    The version told by Aliya was practically the same Daimon knew, there were only slight details omitted like the fact that the magus kings were born thanks to the remains of the magus emperor of that time.

    So far no one knew the requirements to be a half emperor once there was a person that shared its experience with its descendants but it was worthless, apparently everyone has different requirements, so while the Arch ranks are "monopolized" the half emperor realm is open or everyone.

    Aliya judged the reactions of her students, on the girl''s side, Leslie was slightly pale after listening to all the massacrer caused by the magus emperor and his army, Yvonne looked rather indifferent and the same could be said of Liliana,stly Loren seemed to be contemting things.

    Which was understandable, leaving aside the fact that her family was affected on purpose, she now understood why no one seconded their motion of abolishing the contract their family had.<sub> </sub>

    Arch ranks already started touching thews of space and after years of resentment umted no one in their sane judgement will give them the key to be powerful, that being said for the first time in the history of the Lefay family, someone of the young generation entered the elite ss, so who knows things might be different this time.

    Aliya saw the gaze of Loren changing from aggrievance to determination and she smiled, "Calvin might be an idiot, but apparently he''s got a good eye for girls, perhaps the Lefay family might be able to rise in the future", she thought.

    The rest of the ss was a repetition in what they have already seen previously, since they had a new ssmate, Loren needed to catch up, the only exception was that Aliya decided to wait a bit more before teaching her theory concept to her, but the recipe for the recovery potion and the part of focusing on improving casting time was properly exined again.

    Once the time for the ss finished Aliya stood from her seat.

    "Loren if you have questions, you can ask any of your ssmates, for potion brewing I suggest you to ask Daimon, for casting I would say either Yvonne or Michael".

    Michaelughed at Calvin, which made him feel miserable but then he smirked.

    "Well, well, well, Michael my friend, since you are a trustable tutor, then I think you can also help me improve my casting time".

    Aliya nodded, "That''s a good idea Calvin, uncle Richard will be happy to know you are taking things seriously now".

    Michael nearly choked, he was just trying to mess with Calvin and suddenly he ended up being his tutor, the same applied for Daimon, he wasn''t fond in teaching others but Aisha gave him puppy eyes so he had no choice but to oblige.

    "Happy wife, happy life", he thought.

    Although it was raining outside, the training grounds were roofed so they would be sheltered, maybe because Liz was with them Boris didn''t came to pick them up today, so Aliya guided them to the elite ss training facilities.

    On the way they saw other students walking with umbres, Calvin "casually" had one in his storage ring but when he approached Loren to try and share his shelter from the rain with her, he noticed the rain seemed to avoid their group.

    "Mm?", Calvin turned to see the sky and noticed it was still raining, but the drops of water seemed to be stopped by an invisible dome above their heads, he then suddenly remembered they were apanied by an Archmage.

    Michaelughed at him, "That''s what you get for annoying an Archmage", he thought.

    Once they reached the training facilities, Aliya used her token to open the barrier, inside they saw both Boris and Richard drinking and chatting.

    Richard stopped drinking, he rose a badge that looked simr to the one used by Boris and then shouted.

    "Yo brats, let me give you the good news, from this moment and onwards I will be in charge of giving you special survival-oriented training in preparation for the magic ruin exploration¡­ in fact you won''t be the only ones, the elite sses of the second and third years will be the same".

    Calvin wanted to shout to the havens, previously the lessons imparted by Richard were extraofficial so there was no obligation to attend, but now that he was assigned by the academy then he had no choice but to obey.

    Richard noticed the new face and he frowned his brows.

    "Someone from the Lefay family¡­ little girl please state your name".

    Aliya sighed; Richard had known two people from the Lefay family before, one of them left a good impression but the other one didn''t.

    Loren took a few steps ahead and presented herself.

    "Loren Lefay, it''s a pleasure to meet the legendary instructor Risha".

    Richard''s expression had a 180¡ã change, heughed out loud and then said.

    "Little girl how is your father doing, has he bezy after marrying?".

    Loren shook her head, "Father told me to give senior Risha his respects, he wille to pay a visit as soon as he has a chance".

    Richard nodded, "Everyonee here, today it''s raining so we will stay at the training facilities, but that doesn''t mean you will save from sweating".

    The sinister grin on Richard''s face made all the students had a bad premonition.

 Chapter 103 Hand To Hand Combat (Part 1)

    Previously due to Boris urge to evaluate and the sudden visit of Richard, the elite ss had to take their lessons in the normal clothes they use to attend to their sses, but this time they were given special uniforms to train.

    Three months before the admission exams, every applicant has to send information to the academy such as their measurements, age, the n to which they belong etc. there are many reasons to that one of them being these special uniforms.

    Or at least that was Aliya''s exnation as she distributed them, something Daimon found weird because on the surface they just looked like the ones used back on earth for physical education sses.

    For the boys, it consisted in loose pants, a short-sleeved shirt and tennis shoes, for the girls it was more or less the same with the difference that they had shorts instead of pants.

    They went to the changing rooms and after a couple of minutes returned using those uniforms, Richard nodded seeing them.

    "Every year the uniforms are better, this time they are embedded with some magic formations to increase the mana gathering ratio and the natural recovery of those who wear them".

    As soon as Calvin left the changing room his eyes focused on Loren, but the same could be said of Daimon, the only difference was that he paid all his attention to Aisha, the uniforms¡­ fitted to their bodies perfectly making their beautiful figures obvious to the eyes of others.

    There were two different reactions, Loren blushed and covered her chest with her hands, as for Aisha she enjoyed being seen by Daimon so she didn''t do anything.

    Leaving that little episode aside, Richard told everyone to go up the training tform.

    "As I said before, our sses will focus on survival techniques since we don''t know that is hidden in that magic ruin, the main reason of death for young mages is the incapacity to defend without magic".

    "Yvi please take a few steps ahead", said Richard in a proud voice.

    Yvonne sighed, but she did as she was told, Richard pointed at his granddaughter and then continued with his exnation.

    "People often believe that a good fighting style needs to have several movements to react to different situations and that is not necessarily wrong, but it is also not exactly true".

    Richard changed his pose, his left foot was two steps ahead of the right one, as for the upper part of his body he took a guarding pose simr to those of a boxer, his right fist was ced a few centimeters in front of his heart and the left one protected his chin.

    "This is the standard pose for hand-to-handbat I only teach to my most trustable students, we from the beast races have a high vitality and although for some rare talents it might not be the end¡­ for others suffering damage on the heart or the head is lethal", said Richard as he stole a couple of nces at Daimon.

    Michael rose his hand and then asked what was on his mind.

    "I don''t mean to offend, but isn''t that the pose for amateurs and street fighters?".

    Richard smiled, "Yes, this pose is generic by all means, but that is the point, you know what is the problem in following a style that already exists?".

    "You make the same mistakes as the creator, and can be countered as easy a him too", answered Yvonne.

    Calvin shrugged.

    "When ites to fight, I think I''m not that useless, the old man has beaten me a couple of times to prevent me from being predictable, but even then, how are we supposed to create a new style in a month or so?".

    "A one-eyed man can be the king in and of blind people", mumbled Daimon.

    Richardughed out loud, "Kid I swear I will break my own promise just to witness how will you do when you attend to the obligatory service at the army".

    Richard''s logic was simple, others always follow the style taught to them, their movements will be easy to read if you have some knowledge about said style, then what happens if you can to some degree predict your enemy''s but your opponent can''t¡­ a huge advantage.

    Calvin was speechless, "That sounds cool and all that, but I don''t think we are the only ones that try something like this".

    This time Boris answered.

    "Of course, it might be possible that others have the same idea, but how many have the courage to keep walking through a path created by themselves, do you know why I''m intentionally keeping myself from advancing to the peak of the Archmage realm?".

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    "Because I still need to find the next step in my path, the number of people that have created their own way can be counted with the fingers of two hands, one of them resides in this academy¡­ no one has ever been able to counter the style of the principal".

    Richard nodded, he is way older than Aura but he hasn''t been able to advance because he is in the same predicament of Boris, but if there is something he takes pride in, is that one of his students achieved what he couldn''t, just like Aura, the current field marshal has never been defeated in battle.

    Richard directly gazed at the students he had in front of him.

    "Just like the knowledge little Aliya has granted to you, what I''m going to teach you can be an advantage over others if used correctly, that being said I won''t force you to learn, out of respect for those who already have a master like Michael".

    Michael let out a sigh of relief, he has been following his master since he was a little kid, and he is convinced that in a one versus one fight his master will in the worst-case scenario tie.

    Besides Michael the others had no objections in developing their own hand to hand fighting styles, so the pairs for sparring were settled, Daimon and Calvin, Leslie and Liliana andst but not least Aisha and Yvonne, Loren stayed out of the training too her family also had their own fighting and she didn''t want to change it.

    "Although I will only teach you this generic pose, that doesn''t mean you can''t integrate the weapon you use or your element also, the limit is you imagination, I guess there is no need to mention it but don''t aim at any vital spots during the sparring, just make your opponenty in the ground for five seconds, leave the tform or surrender by their own will".

    Calvin wanted to curse Michael, if he didn''t step aside from this training, he would have been his sparring partner instead of Daimon, but now he was trapped with a monster like him.

    "ss rep, be gentle with me okay¡­ I have a girl I want to impress".

    Daimon sighed, he wanted to train with Aisha, but it was true that Calvin was a good match for him, earth mages have the best defenses among mages after all, to the point that they can rival knights.

    With Richard''s green light the sparring started, magic was forbidden with the exception of Calvin which was allowed to use a self-strengthening spell, because Richard calcted just using his physical body Daimon had a strength simr to that of a five-star ranked knight.

    <o>,m Richard left the tform and sat down with Boris and Aliya to evaluate the sparring, the first match they paid attention to, was Leslie versus Liliana and just like their elements, their styles seemed to bepletely different.</o>

    While Leslie moved in circles around Liliana and threw punches and kicks from time to time, Liliana focused on blocking her attacks and then look for an opening to finish the fight.

    Boris shook his head, "She''s too impatient, fire users tend to be either aggressive or energetic, that girl from the fire crane n is quite agile but shecks strength so her attacks can''t break the defense of her opponent".

    Richard smirked, "I remember a certain someone which even up to this day "heats up", at the slightest provocation though".

    Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of something falling, but the image they saw one they focused their attention on the tform was rather different that what they expected.

    Both Leslie and Liliana were in the ground and both got up before the five second mark passed.

    Leslie stuck her tongue at Liliana.

    "Lili, when I lost again Aisha, I noticed I wasn''t aggressive enough in my attacks¡­ and that led me to freeze when that idiot tried to force me go with him, but that won''t repeat ever again".

    Liliana saw her leg which now had the mark of a foot, she found hard to believe that Leslie used a feint to sweep and kick her leg so that they both fell to the ground, but she took more of the impact and her leg was now trembling a bit due to that.

    She looked at Leslie''s eyes which now seemed to be on fire, and she mentally thanked both Aisha for teaching her childish friend the difference between someone that takes training seriously and someone who doesn''t¡­ and to Daimon for showing her some of the cruelty of the world.

    The cycle started again, Leslie moved around Liliana to confuse her but this time things went different, Liliana interrupted her pace by cing her foot in Leslie''s way and when she moved to not trip over, Liliana held her arms and pressed her against the floor.

    *Thud*, with a dull sound Leslie fell to the ground and whenever she tried to stand up, Liliana ced her knee on her back, so she had no choice but to surrender after the five seconds passed.

    "Oi Lili, you were quite brute, I''m going to have a bruise in my back you know!!!".

    Liliana shrugged, "I remember you bragging about making me fall, so it''s only retribution, I have a bruise on my leg thanks to that".

    They left the tform as they argued about who was more "vulgar" on the fight.

 Chapter 104 Hand To Hand Combat (Part 2)

    Although Leslie surpassed his expectations, Richard was more eager to see the next match mainly because Yvonne was participating.

    Boris also focused his attention on the match.

    "Thest time, Aisha didn''t have to put too much effort to defeat Leslie, but I also didn''t see her using any fighting style, she just took advantage of her superior speed, let''s see how things go".

    Unlike thest time where magic wasn''t allowed, if there is something Yvonne learned from her little fight against Daimon, is to always expect something unrealistic from him and the same probably applied to Aisha.

    Contrary to what Aisha expected, the Yvonne of right now was more aggressive than her usual self, as soon as she revealed an opening, she saw Yvonneing at her with a fierce kick, but it wasn''t hard for to dodge it by moving her body sidewards a bit.

    Boom!!

    When Yvonnended, the ground shook a bit from her attack,

    Aisha frowned her brows.

    "Yvi, are you perhaps a knight feigning to be a mage or something like that?", she asked.

    She wasn''t the only one surprised, although the strength of her kick wasn''t enough to crack the tform, it was still something which no one would from a mage and a girl which didn''t look too keen on exercising.

    Richardughed out loud, "That little girl has been reserving this surprise for someone worthy, it seems she has chosen her rival hahaha".

    Boris sighed, "Instructor¡­ what the hell did you teach Yvonne?".

    Richard smirked, "Well, I taught her a little trick so that she could increase her physical strength without gaining muscle volume, that being said it hasn''t been too much time since she learned this, because Irina prohibited me to train her like that until she was twelve years old"

    Returning to the fight, as soon as Yvonne touched the ground she jumped towards Aisha again, and again, each time she increased her pace, faster and faster with each try.

    However, no matter how fast she was, Aisha was always just a fraction of a second faster than her.

    "Yvi, you are going to have a tough time if you want to overwhelm a lightning mage in reaction time", thought Aisha as she avoided a sudden jab from Yvonne.

    Yvonne''s mind was working as fast as she could, if the fight dragged on, she was going to lose for sure.

    "I already supposed it, since Daimon used a movement spell in our fight, but to think she can get this much advantage just by mere foot work without a self-strengthening spell¡­ when it costed me two years to reach this level".

    She steeled her resolution and then increased her speed again; she stepped on the ground and then propelled her body towards her enemy.

    Aisha used her forearm to block Yvonne''s punch, a dull sound echoed through the tform, but that was not all, since her first attack didn''t work, Yvonne spun her body and then threw a heavy kick which Aisha managed to block with her shin.

    *Tap*

    *Tap*

    They both jumped backwards to distance from each other.

    Aisha felt a little cramp in the leg she used to block thatst attack, although she has also trained her body her focus was offensive not defense and she hasn''t light hup her life spark unlike her son.

    That being said, she has only been defending this whole time, but Yvonne was actually quite skilled in hand-to-handbat, so she decided to fight seriously.

    "Yvi, don''t lower your guard", said Aisha a she stretched her arms a couple of times.

    This time Aisha rushed towards Yvonne, her attack was so fast that Yvonne could barely use her elbow to block a punch and even then, she was pushed back by it.

    "Ouch", Yvonne moved her arm a bit, that attack made her whole forearm get numb by the impact, on top of that her breathing was starting to be heavier than before.

    They exchanged movements for nearly ten minutes, it was quite remarkable from Yvonne that she managed to redirect most of the impacts caused by Aisha''s attacks, but in exchange her left arm and right leg were sore right now.

    *Thud*, with onest attack Aisha made Yvonne lose her bnce, but before shended on the ground, Aisha helped her stand up.

    Yvonne rose her hands.<sub> </sub>

    "I give up, I firmly believe I can fight head on against a two-star knight for at least one hour¡­ and yet I didn''tst 30 minutes against you".

    Richard nodded, although his granddaughter lost, she fought with everything she had, besides it was easy to notice Aisha has also trained before, so it wasn''t a shame to lose against her.

    Unlike Leslie and Liliana, their match was fiercer so their uniforms were a bit dirty due to all the times they exchanged kicks, they left the tform and just sat down to rx and adjust their breathing.

    Now it was time for thest match, Calvin looked at Daimon and he immediately used the original spell created by his grandfather "Gaia''s armor", some of the materials of the tform separated from it and then covered his arms, legs and chest.

    The current Calvin was quite different than normal, on a rare asion his expression was quite serious.

    "Daimon¡­ I''m not focused in strength but defense and this armor amplifies that, honestly, I don''t believe I can defeat you but out of respect for the old man and this spell which he taught me, I will still give it my all so please don''t restrain yourself".

    Daimon smirked, in terms of body cultivation he has be the five-star ranked knight, although his physical strength was way beyond that, he decided to limit himself to that level.

    They stared at each other for a couple of seconds, before they both threw a punch.

    *Crack*, once their fists connected, the sound of two solid things colliding made its way into everyone''s ears, followed by the sound of rocks breaking.

    Calvin looked at the armor which covered his hands, he reinforced it previously but the result was still the same¡­ the armor cracked after just one hit.

    The main disadvantage of using this armor was that his speed was reduced, something that was solved after mastering the spell, but for now Calvin was burning big amounts of mana to maintain the armor attached to his body.

    Richard stood from his seat, there was still a few things he wanted to see, the reason as to why he chose Calvin to be Daimon''s sparring partner instead of Aisha, was because he wanted to see how strong was Daimon and judging by the previous exchange, he was at least simr as a sixth star knight.

    "You two can finish it early, but I want you to see the sh between what''s recognized one of the strongest defenses, against an abnormal variant like Daimon".

    Calvin smiled, a sudden wave of mana covered his body and the armor changed, before it was just a thinyer of rock covering his body, but now more of the material used for the tform was absorbed by the armor.

    Daimon looked at the result, now Calvin''s hands were covered un what looked like box gloves, but made out of rock.

    "ss rep, let''s finish this already so I can go flirt with Loren", he said out loud making Loren feel a bit shy.

    With a little exploding sound Daimon disappeared from where he was standing and their fists collided, pieces of rock were shot due to the impact, but Calvin simply used more mana and the armor repaired itself.

    p *Boom*, Calvin''s eyes widened, hended a kick on Daimon''s abdomen, but the result was quite different to what he expected¡­ the armor broke against his body without causing him any harm.</anda>

    Daimon sighed, he could reduce the strength of his attacks but his body was still abnormal, so when Calvin hit him, it obviously didn''t affect him at all.

    "What the hell is your body made of ss rep¡­ I was the one attacking and if it wasn''t for my good constitution, I could have broken my leg".

    From the spectators, Michael saw the huge difference between Daimon and Calvin and he felt a bitplex, he was enjoying the show of Calvin being a punching bag, but on the other hand, he also wanted to measure himself against the one considered the strongest among the first years.

    The fight ended when Calvin suddenly copsed, the armor crumbled and he fell to the ground while gasping for air, at first everyone thought he was just joking around, but his breathing was a mess and he sweating a lot.

    Richard went up the tform but contrary to what one expected he literally kicked Calvin out of the tform.

    "You can''t trick me twice Calvin¡­ everyone but Daimon go take a shower".

    Aisha didn''t care about whatever Richard had to say, she was all sticky due to the sweat so she needed to refresh herself.

    Once only the guys were left, Richard extended his hand towards Daimon and spoke.

    "Hit my hand as hard as you can, I need to know to develop the tactics for the team".

    Daimon nodded, he took a few steps to distance himself from Richard and with a swift movement, his fist shed against Richard''s hand.

    *ng*, Richard frowned his brows, the impact was way harder than what he expected.

    "Kid what kind of training did you do?", he mumbled.

 Chapter 105 Girls Talk

    Richard moved his hand a couple of times, and then looked at Daimon.

    "Kid, what kind of hellish training did you gone through to get that amount of strength while not being a knight¡­ perhaps being a variant gave you a special muscr constitution, but even a knight at your age wouldn''t be that strong".

    Werewolves had innate strong bodies, but not to the point that Daimon was showing, luckily Aura had already thought about that, Daimon took out the shackles of despair form his storage ring and threw them to Richard.

    The sudden increase in weight which he wasn''t expecting, made Richard''s eyes widen, he looked at the number on the shackles and he nearly forgot how to breath.

    "1T", Richard looked at Daimon, he had four shackles on his hand right now, which meant the kid in front of him trained using four tons as weights.

    Leaving aside the innate strength of a person, just bing a knight gives you an increase in physical strength of one hundred kilograms and with each advance that amount augmented exponentially, so a two-star ranked had an increase of two hundred, a three star four hundred, a four star eight hundred and so on.

    So, following that pattern, Daimon had a strength equivalent to a sixth star ranked knight.

    "Kid when did you started training?".

    "Since I was five years old, my master put me the shackles and I was supposed to use them all day every day with the only exception of when I bathed or slept, the more I used them the more the weight augmented".

    Calvin nearly choked, "It''s not a surprise that you are a monster¡­ eight hours of sleep and maybe one to bath, which means you used those shackles for about fifteen hors a day, during eight years".

    Michael patted Daimon''s shoulder, "I get you Daimon, my master used to take me to ces which were full of magic beasts and then leave me alone, "there is no better inspiration than wanting to live to move faster", he said".

    Calvinughed, "I used toin because the old man beat the crap out of me to help me be sturdier, but apparently you two had it worse".

    Boris frowned his brows, "No offense to the principal, but if you managed to do such a harsh training, it would have been better for you to be a knight".

    Daimon shrugged, "I wanted to be a mage, my body is strong enough to make me stand out of others anyway".

    Narashaughed, "And they haven''t seen you using your battle aura to wield me yet".

    Richard sighed, "As expected of the Revy n''s matriarch¡­ she is always one step ahead others", he thought.

    Liz remained silent, she just observed Daimon interacting with the other guys and she felt happy, besides his soulmates, she never saw him being friendly with anyone so it was a breath of fresh air to see him like this.

    While the boys were having a nice conversation about how their masters trained them, the girls were also chatting¡­ in the bath.

    Just like the training facilities of the Revy family, the ones of the academy also had dressing rooms and a bath area, the only difference was that instead of a spring there were only showers.

    Aisha took her the uniform and put it on theundry basket, the students of the elite ss had the privilege of having one uniform for each day of the week, so they didn''t need to wash it, the staff of the academy will take care of them on Saturday and then deliver them clean on Sunday.

    Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana grew together, so they have already shared a bath quite a few times before, so their attention was drawn by the "new" girls.

    Leslie looked at Aisha''s naked appearance and she eximed.

    "Uwahh, Aisha what the hell did you do to have such a good figure!!!".

    Yvonne nodded, "Be a good sister and share your secret with us could it be that the rumors are right and the hot springs of the Revy family help your hair and skin be as smooth as silk?"

    Aisha shook her head, it''s not like she could say "I got prettier thanks to my son''s love", so she med the hot springs.

    "Yes, you know the matriarch of the Revy family took a liking to Daimon, so we were allowed to enter her private hot spring on a regr basis, and the water of that ce is special".

    Leslie looked rather interested, "It makes sense, everyone says that the matriarch of the Revy family is one of the most beautiful women on the four gxies".

    Aisha smiled, "If you want, we can go there, I can''t assure you we will be allowed to use that hot spring since it''s located in the mansion of a half emperor¡­ but Liz''s one is not bad at all and she can''t deny".

    The girls kept chatting about other things that supposedly helped them get a fairer skin and things like that, Yvonne noticed Loren distancing herself from them and she smiled.

    What about you Loren, Calvin seems to be crazy for you¡­ I''m not sure if that is a good thing though".<sub> </sub>

    Loren covered her face as she blushed.

    Liliana had a weird expression on her face, "Loren don''t tell me you really like Calvin, if I were to guess I would bet you''ll prefer Michael''s type?".

    Loren felt everyone''s gazes on her and she spoke in a low voice.

    "I don''t know, Calvin is quite funny and before I met him¡­ no one showed even the slightest sign of disgust after listening to my surname, that''s why I was surprised when he told me you all were the same".

    All the girls smiled, one way or another, they have all faced hardships, Yvonne due to her father, Liliana and Leslie lost their brother and sister respectively, not to mention Aisha which actually died once before.

    "We have all gone through a lot before, maybe that''s why we get along so good", Said Aisha as they entered the showers.

    The conversation stopped for a moment while they started showering, the sound of water falling over their bodies was interrupted when Yvonne giggled before she groped Leslie''s breasts from behind.

    "Kyaah!!!", Leslie was startled by Yvonne''s sudden assault, but apparently it wasn''t something that umon because Liliana didn''t interfere and just kept applying soap over her body.

    "It has been some time since we sisters shared a bath, but howe you grew this much, the now fit in my hands, Leslie?", asked Yvonne in a yful voice before she stopped groping Leslie.

    Leslie blushed, out of the three she was the less curvy, just like Aura she was more on the slim side, at first, she thought it was a characteristic of the female side of the fire crane n¡­ but her mother was aplete exception of that.

    So, she once asked why she was so different, and her mother handed her a potion which was her original creation, it helped women naturally improve their figures, but it could only be drank once per year for the body to absorb all the benefits and adapt itself.

    Leslieughed.

    "You know my mom is an alchemist, gifted me a potion with the condition that I entered the elite ss¡­ it helps me escape the sad destiny of being an ironing board the rest of my life".

    Yvonne shook her head, "And you didn''t think on sharing it with us?".

    Leslie snorted, she looked at Yvonne and Liliana.

    "With this potion I will catch up to you, besides it took my mom nearly one hundred years to create this cosmetic potion which doesn''t have side effects, the only problem is that it only works with her and me.

    Aisha felt a bitplex, potions that enhanced beauty weren''t umon but they had wide range of bad side effects, from making the girl suffer slight pain in her periods to shorten their lifespan and be sterile, the list was quite big.

    And even that, many women didn''t hesitate to poison themselves just for vanity, but apparently Leslie''s mom created something that didn''t have said side effects just for her and her daughter.

    Loren looked at the other girls treating each other as if they were true sisters and she doubted for a moment before she asked what was in her mind.

    "I get that Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana had been together since they were little, but howe you look so familiar even with Aisha?".

    Yvonne smiled, "Do you not know that you should always befriend the strongest in the ssroom, in this case we knew that if Aisha became our sister, we would get the protection of her brother".

    Leslie chuckled, she decided to get back at Yvonne for groping her earlier.

    "Don''t lie Yvi, you got interested in Daimon when he removed the curse your father casted on you, who was the one that said "He was awesome", when he fought against Leir Ascott hehehe".

    "Hiiii!!!", Yvonne spanked Leslie.

    "Just because you grew a bit, you think you can go against your big sister Yvonne huh?".

    "Besides he also saved your ass back when the idiot of the dius family appeared so following your logic both you and also Liliana fell for him?".

    "Hey, don''t drag me to your quarrel you two", said Liliana before she left the shower to dry herself.

    The girls finished bathing and returned to the tform area, where guys, Liz and Aliya were waiting for them.

    Daimon noticed his mother looked closer with the other girls and he smiled, "Moms is for sure having fun thanks those three", he thought.

 Chapter 106 An Unexpected Meeting

    After seeing Daimon''s performance, Richard had many things to process, like the fact that a one-star mage was physically strong enough to overwhelm a sixth star knight, specially because he knew that wasn''t Daimon''s limit.

    "This kid is not an amateur, so I''m pretty sure he''s got some tricks up his sleeve", he thought before dismissing the lesson.

    "Brats, you are free for the rest of the day, your teacher Boris and me will stay to discuss a couple of things".

    Since they were dismissed Daimon and the others left the training grounds leaving behind a handful or work for their teachers.

    Aliya looked at them leaving and she turned to see Richard.

    "Uncle Richard what was the result¡­ between the armor spell created by the Gaia''s Emperor and our representative variant factor?".

    Richard smiled, "It''s¡­ incredible, contrary to what we thought, the origin of his abnormal strength seems to be a really harsh training regimen created by miss Aura, but that''s even better, an innate increase in strength is something fixed while it might be useful at the beginning it will be meaningless at higher realms".

    He then told them about the shackles of despair Daimon showed to them, and how he started using them since he was five years old.

    Boris nodded, "So basically he has an abnormal amount of vitality and a body helps him not copse and instead improve his strength".

    "And the will to stick to such a barbarian training even when he was quite young", thought Aliya.

    Richard shrugged, "Well it hasn''t even been a day and your bet seems to be paying off, little Aliya, I can''t wait to see what that kid bes in the future, but for now let''s focus on the present".

    While Richard, Boris and Aliya discussed about what the tactics for the elite ss would be, the students went to the restaurant of the academy to eat something.

    Yvonne smiled, "Loren since the instructor gave us the rest of the day, let''s go hang around at Calvin''s family tavern, you have to meet his aunt she is such a good person".

    Calvin nearly tripped, he tried by all means to prevent Loren to know his aunt, because he was sure she was going to badmouth him for her own amusement.

    "Bad idea, Lucas knows how to make good drinks, but the one in charge of the kitchen isn''t as skilled as the chefs of the academy so¡­".

    Before he could finish his sentence, Michael put thest nail on his coffin.

    "No problem, we can eat here at the academy and then go to the happy wanderer, your aunt told us to drop by whenever we wanted anyway right Calvin?".

    ? Calvin gritted his teeth, "Wait till I meet your fiancee you short bastard, she is going to fall in love at first sight with this young master", he thought, but right now seeing Loren''s curious expression he had no choice but to bite the bullet.

    "Sounds like a good n, "thanks" for the idea Michael", he said with a smile that wasn''t a smile.

    While everyoneughed at Calvin''s misfortune, they arrived at the restaurant, just like always the ce was crowded, practically every table was either full or was already upied by a few people.

    Apparently, Loren didn''t know the first ranked of the elite ss had a table exclusive for him, previously she saw Calvin, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana sitting with him, but she thought they just got here earlier.

    But now she saw that in a corner there was a table which wasn''t upied, more urately it was avoided as if it was something dangerous, her question was answered a few secondster when Daimon''s badge glowed, and some kind of semi-transparent barrier became visible around the table.

    They all took a seat and ordered what they wanted, while they waited for the food to be delivered at them, Loren stole a couple of nces at Calvin, until the she couldn''t hold her curiosity back anymore.

    "Calvin since I''m going to meet your auntter, why don''t you tell me something about her?".

    Calvin had aplex expression, but since she liked Loren, she was going to meet his aunt anyway, so it was better to get that out of the way as soon as possible.

    "Well, there is not that much to say, she is the younger sister of my father, she used to be gentle when I was a kid, but now she just a ruthless woman¡­ that being said she is not a bad a person and I know she is going to like you".

    Loren smiled, "I hope so".

    Daimon was amused by Calvin''s situation, he didn''t have to go through something like that with any of the girls, in fact he hasn''t met the parents or other rtives of them, with the exception of Liz and ine since Erin was their mother, but he didn''t have to pass the rite of "meeting the family".

    "Well sooner orter I will pay a visit to both Naktis and Silverheart", he thought.

    The food appeared on the table not too long after they ordered, Loren was surprised that the academy actually used a short teleportation formation for something as mundane as ordering food, but it was also not that umon considering the weight that being the first ranked in a whole grade meant.

    Everyone''s attention was suddenly drawn by Liz''s yful voice.

    "Say "ahhh" Daimon ?".<sub> </sub>

    Daimon looked at Liz but contrary to what she expected, he epted the offer and the others didn''t look surprised.

    Yvonneughed, "I''m sorry Liz but the very first thing Daimon and Aisha did at the wee party was feed each other¡­ before he beat a pair of guys so bad that everyone nearly pissed their pants".

    Aisha gave Liz a triumphant smile, "They might not know about us, but that doesn''t change I arrived first to the academy", she thought.

    Since Michael on purpose made things hard for him, Calvin decided to get back at him.

    "Oi Michael now that we are closer, why don''t you tell us about your fiancee, I guess is normal for someone as boring as you to be engaged, but who is the luckydy?".

    In a rare asion Michael was actually shy, he doubted for a moment before he said.

    "As I previously told you I never got to know my parents, "Lockstar" is the surname given to me by my master which has been taking care of me since I was three years old, when I passed his tests and since we grew together¡­ his granddaughter became my fiancee".

    "She is the same age as me, but my master only allowed her to enter the academy when she bes a peak one-star mage¡­ she will probably join in a couple of months".

    Loren looked confused, "I didn''t know you could enter the academy once the year has already started?".

    Michael shook his head.

    "She is a special case, just like Daimon, Aisha and me, she has dual affinity, but in her case is wood¡­ and poison, besides she is a descendant of a half emperor and the academy can never have enough favors from them".

    Calvin had goosebumps remembering a "friend" he met in the past which turned out to have poison affinity, she didn''t take the break up too good, so he ended having fever and a terrible headache due to a little "gift" she left behind.

    "Now I understand why you act so loyal and that, she got you from the balls".

    Michael nearly choked, "She is not like that, in fact I have never seen her use poison for anything¡­ and I''m not acting you bastard".

    They kept talking about other things while enjoying their food, the other students looked with envious filled eyes how Daimon was personally feed by two beauties.

    Once everyone had their fill, they stood up, the girls went all together to the bathroom for some reason which Daimon, Michael and Calvin didn''t understand, so they just stood still and waited for them.

    While the girls were gone, a couple of people approached them, their badges were different to any of the ones Daimon have seen before, which meant they could only be third grade students.

    In total there were three guys who approached them, two of them didn''t have any visible characteristic from a beast race while thest one was a member of the Jolbaris family, but unlike Alexander which hair was orange with white stripes, for him it was the other way around.

    Calvin saw the badges and he sighed, "Well I can cross fighting against sixth star mages out of my list I guess".

    Then something no one expected happened, this guy from the Jolbaris family slightly bowed and presented himself.

    "Gabriel Jolbaris greets the young master of the Revy and Argent n¡­ please rx I didn''te here to fight and I would like to keep my balls attached to my body".

    Daimon frowned his brows, "What does a member from the Jolbaris family wants from me?".

    Gabriel looked at the other new year''s which were curiously looking at them, and he shook his head.

    "If you don''t mind, can we go to a ce where we can talk without being interrupted, your friends cane too if you want, of course you can choice the ce".

    While Gabriel was speaking the girls including Liz returned from the bathroom, just in time to hear his proposition.

    Gabriel noticed Daimon didn''t look convinced and he used hisst resort.

    "I''m not sided with Alexander, you can go and ask anyone that knows anything about the Jolbaris, I hate him to the point that even my hair is naturally contrary to his, okay?".

    Liz''s eyes glowed for a moment, she sent Daimon a message with mana that only he could hear.

    "He is telling the truth, there are two half emperors in the Jolbaris family and they aren''t friendly with each other ording to mom, that doesn''t mean he is trust worthy tough".

    Daimon nodded, besides the guy which Aisha killed back when she met Liz and Alexander, Arthur Jolbaris only has daughters, something he learnt that time when Erin took him to spy on them.

 Chapter 107 Gabrielâ€™s Request

    Daimon contemted things for a moment, his future ns will go smoother if he has the support of other families, that''s why he used the carrot and the stick method with Yvonne''s father.

    Evangeline judged the situation and she offered her opinion, "This isn''t necessarily a bad idea, the enemy of your enemy is your ally".

    "I guess you are right, besides having ears in the Jolbaris family would for sure be helpful for Erin and Aura".

    "And the fact that you like to see those two''s tails wagging doesn''t have anything to do with your decision of course", said Evangeline as she chuckled.

    Narasha alsoughed, but she on the inside she thought.

    "I wonder if my physical form will be that of a beast race girl".

    Ignoring Evangeline''s jokes, Daimon nodded.

    "Fine I will listen to what you have to say, do you guys want toe?".

    Gabriel let out a sigh of relief seeing that his invitation was epted, he turned to see the others and only recognized a girl from the Revy family which looked somewhat familiar but her couldn''t pinpoint who she was, the others didn''t have any beast characteristics and, on his urge to find Daimon, he didn''t have time to investigate their names and backgrounds.

    A member of the twilight alluring fox n that has be an Archmage has some control over his body, Liz didn''t want to stand out that much so she kept two or her tails hidden, that''s why others thought she is a student or a lover, brought by the demon of the elite ss.

    The members of the Revy family grow their first tail after reaching the novice mage realm, and that repeats with each big advance, meaning that two tails are equal to being in the star ranks, three tails are for the lord realms and four means an Archmage.

    Daimon felt curious about this, but when he asked Erin why she only has one tail, she exined that it happened when she became a half emperor, and since there is no records of a Magus Emperor in the Revy family no one knows the reason of that change.

    Since no one had any objection the next would be for them to decide where the reunion would take ce.

    Calvin shrugged.

    "Let''s go to the happy wanderer, it''s not a secret that it belongs to my family anyway".

    Daimon nodded and they all departed, Gabriel was surprised, if what he knows is correct then, the guy that just talked is a member of the Ghrish family.

    "It''s not necessary the case but if Daimon Licht gets this guy to join him, then there will be three half emperors allied, uncle Arthur always brags about Alexander, but that idiot just because of a childish tantrum, lost the chance to get a powerful ally".

    It didn''t take them too much time to leave the campus behind and reach the city, once they arrived at the happy wanderer Calvin proved his identity and they were allowed to enter.

    Just like the previous time they came, the barman greeted Calvin as soon as he saw him.

    "I thought you woulde, miss Mireya isn''t here, but she told me that if you dropped by without your ssmates, I had to kick your ass out of this ce".

    Calvin sighed, "I swear she''s got something against me¡­ whatever I came here to discuss a few things, just prepare some good drinks and send them to the second floor".

    Lucas nodded and they all went upstairs, while Daimon and Gabriel sat in a table, Yvonne, Leslie, Liliana, Calvin and Michael just sat on the couch to wait for the drinks, the only one which was going to talk with Gabriel was Daimon after all.

    Or at least that''s what Gabriel thought until he saw Aisha and Liz sitting next to Daimon in front of him, but seeing that Daimon didn''t mind he just put it on the back of his mind and instead focused on what he wanted to talk about.

    "I''ll be frank, I know you have the good habit of protecting those in your same ssroom¡­ or in the worst-case scenario you take others targeting your ssmates as an insult, whichever might be the case, I need you to ept someone in your ss".

    Gabriel stole a couple of gazes at Loren and then continued.

    "ording to what I heard each elite ss will have fifteen members, I know that girl from the Lefay family wasn''t originally a part of your ss, that guy from the Ghrish family stole her in the face of Alexanderckey''s¡­ and one of my henchmen".

    Gabriel took out a storage ring and a photo out of his pocked and handed it to Daimon.

    "Of course, I''m not here to ask a favor but to negotiate, I''m not asking you to help the person of the photo, just ept it in your ss and the things in the storage ring are yours, also I as the president of the student council and as the son of a half emperor¡­ will owe you a favor".

    Daimon looked at the contents of the ring and the photo and he was genuinely surprised, the things he was being bribed for weren''t something someone from the young generation, son of a half emperor or not could give away so freely.<sub> </sub>

    Still, he wasn''t interested in epting someone he had no rtion with or which doesn''t have a decent talent to apport to the team, in Loren''s case Calvin was the one that spoke on her behalf, and Aura also seconded the motion due to her rare affinity.

    Daimon ced the ring and the photo on the table and then leaned his back against the chair, Aisha and Liz leaned their heads against his shoulders as he spoke.

    "I wonder why do you think I can help someone the son of a half emperor like you can''t, also as "cruel" as it might sound for you, I don''t need baggage in my team, everyone one of them has something on which they specialize¡­ well maybe Calvin doesn''t but he is funny enough to make up for it".

    Gabriel was speechless, the things on that spatial ring were enough to hire an Archmage as a bodyguard for a month, and the kid guy in front of him just looked at them and didn''t seem impressed, even he would need to save for a couple of years to get that much resources.

    "Fine you win, publicly I can''t go against the one that has been chose as the heir of the Jolbaris family so Alexander doesn''t respect me¡­ but there is no one among the first years that isn''t afraid of you".

    ¡­

    Daimon shook his head, "Unfortunately for you I don''t like to be used, so if you want a favor from me, you will have to it better than this, I have two ruler families backing me so why would I need the resources of the Jolbaris or being in the good books of the student council?".

    Gabriel gritted his teeth, he had nothing else to offer and normally he would have gotten angry, but the hard way didn''t work with the person in front of him, and thest ones who tried¡­ were peeing through a hose ording to his information sources of the light faction.

    He took his cup and gulped the drink Lucas previously brought to the room in one go, the slightly bitter but refreshing taste make him rx.

    "Since the things on the ring are not fit to your liking, then tell me what do you need as a sing of goodwill from me?".

    Daimon smiled, but for Gabriel it was like the grin of a demon which was about to make him give up his own soul.

    "Well, since I''m going to do something that you, a second generation of a half emperor can''t, then the price is of course on the same level of difficulty, a "request" in my terms from the one that gave you that ring, of course a contract will be signed because I like formality in this kind of things".

    "Cough!!!", Gabriel nearly choked with his drink when he heard Daimon''s words.

    "I knew you were crazy, but this is something else, you want a free favor from a half¡­".

    Gabriel reacted a bitte, when he noticed he just spilled the beans, he felt a headacheing his way, the kid in front of him made him voluntarily ept that the one that gave him the things which with he was trying to bribe him, was none other than the other half emperor from the Jolbaris family.

    "Sigh, I don''t have the authority to agree with that, can''t you ask for something else, I can get you a peak Archmage as your personal bodyguard for the rest of your stay in the academy, you can even choose from a group which I''m sure will find "eye catching".

    Daimon smiled and two tails Liz was hiding appeared behind of her, they were long enough to be seen and of course Gabriel immediately noticed them, as if something made click on his mind, he finally understood why she looked familiar¡­ the strongest Archmage of the Revy family and also one of the bests magic smiths of the whole ster chart.

    "Elizabeth Revy", he said as he took a deep breath of cold air realizing that if he lied or tried to trick Daimon, with her mana sense she would have noticed it thanks to his heart beat and although he would have probably lived¡­ the result wouldn''t have been exactly good.

    Daimon nodded seeing the reaction he expected.

    "As you can see, I don''t need an Archmage from your family, but I do appreciate the offer, also it is not me the one that is asking for help but you, still I recognize you are different to Alexander so I will give you the chance to go and talk it with that half emperor".

    He took out a ime sigil lector from his storage ring and gave the contact to Gabriel, basically it was something like a disposable cell phone, after one use it will be trash.

    "In three days, I will be back at the Revy family for the weekend, if you agree to my terms then go with that half emperor to see me there, call first of course and I trust you had a way to get at our door without being noticed".

    Gabriel had aplex expression, he was led by the nose by someone younger than him, and the worst part is that¡­ there is a big chance Daimon''s request is epted.

    He nodded and the stood up to leave the room and return to the academy but he stopped near the door before saying.

    "Just by curiosity, would things have gone different if the one that wanted the favor would havee personally to ask instead of me?".

    Daimon shrugged, "The price would have probably been the same, but I guess we could have seen each other in a neutral ce instead of the Revy family".

    For a half emperor to go all the way to the territory of other and then ask for a favor, it was a bit humiliating, not enough to cause a problem, but it would set the said half emperor in a lower moral position, people with high statuses tend to pay attention to things like that after all.

 Chapter 108 Afternoon At The Happy Wanderer

    Gabriel nodded, thanks to Daimon he now had a lot of things to do so he said goodbye and left the happy wanderer, not without thinking about the scene of Liz being all clingy with Daimon.

    Marriages between a high ranked woman and a young heir aren''t umon, but what is a rare sight is for the difference to be as big as a star ranked mage marrying an Archmage, still just like the rest of the world he thought that Liz and ine just chose Daimon topletely reject the proposition of Arthur.

    But today that believe shattered when he saw how Liz behaved with Daimon, before she showed her remaining tails which proved her identity as an Archmage, she had the same vibes as any normal girlfriend.

    Gabriel nearly tripped when he reached a conclusion which would for sure shock the wild w gxy, his eyes glowed with surprise and admiration.

    "That is not a marriage out of convenience, somehow in these past eight years, that kid managed to win the heart of such a rebellious woman like Elizabeth Revy, which means is more than probable the same happened with the n head of the Revy family¡­ what a dangerous fellow".

    While Gabriel was trying to review all what happened since the moment he approached Daimon at the restaurant, the person in question changed spot from the table to the couch where the other girls were sitting and feigning to not pay attention to what they heard a moment ago.

    Well, most of the girls feigned ignorance because Yvonne didn''t bother to do it.

    "A star ranked mage negotiating with a half emperor¡­ I guess at this point being surprised by anything you suddenly pull is a waste of energy".

    Aisha smiled, "I told you that if you became our friend, you would never be bored right?".

    Calvin stretched his legs, "Still a favor from a half emperor, damn that is like having a free wish".

    Liliana shook her head, "It''s not free though, interfering in a situation where there are half emperors involved will always have consequences¡­ don''t take it personally Daimon".

    Daimon drank from his cup and then leant against the couch, "No problem, inf act I agree with you, but in this particr case whether I participate in this or not, there will be consequences, because the Jolbaris are not exactly the forgiving type".

    Calvin suddenly felt a slight shiver, he looked at Daimon and saw him smiling, his violet eyes seemed to glow for a second which made Calvin feel a little apprehensive.

    Daimon grinned, he looked at Liz which was a part of the reason of why Alexander hates him¡­ and he totally didn''t care, instead he rose his cup to toast with everyone.

    "If they are going to be my enemies anyway, why would I not take advantage of every possible situation to mess with them, while also getting the favor of a half emperor, from their own family on top of that".

    Liz rose her cup to ept the toast, "Still I didn''t expect you to invite them to the family grounds, you are going to tell mom about itter you know?".

    Daimon smiled, he was sure that Erin will agree, to have a half emperoring to ask for something is already something to be proud of, and the oneing one is someone Erin knows because they are from the same generation, so it''s going to be interesting seeing how would things turn out.

    Leslie took a little sip from her drink and the looked at Aisha, "Speaking of that¡­ Aisha isn''t this weekend the one we were nning to go and visit the Revy family?".

    "Mm?", Daimon gave Aisha a confused gaze which made her remember she still hasn''t mentioned the subject to Liz and Daimon.

    She gave cleared her throat and shrugged.

    "Well Daimon invited a half emperor and one from the Jolbaris family on top, so I don''t think there will be a problem for any of youing over, what do you say Liz, they want to try the hot springs of the Revy family?".

    "I don''t have a problem, but the hot spring at my ce is being remodeled and ine doesn''t have one so... we''ll have to use the one at the training facilities, or ask mom to let us use hers".

    Daimon shook his head, "The mansion of the supreme elder is still unupied, I think we can use it as a guest house, I was nning to receive Gabriel and that half emperor there anyway".

    Liz contemted the idea for a moment, since the situation with Edgar, the node of the barrier was changed from the mansion of the supreme elder to the ce where the punishment elder lives, so Daimon''s idea was actually not bad.

    "Sounds good, although I don''t mind them staying in my mansion, there is people bound toin since I''m the champion and all that stuff, but the mansion of the supreme elder isn''t being used so no one can say anything".

    "And the family branch of Edgar is going to be so pissed they might finally act so we can erase them all", she thought to herself.

    The girls seemed happy with the answer, although they still had to ask permission from their families, Calvin on the other hand stole a couple of gazes at Loren like a hungry wolf would look at an innocentmb.

    The dormitories are separated, there are few exceptions like Daimon who had a private ce which doesn''t follow the rules of the academy, but now the heavens are bestowing him a chance to live under the same roof with Loren.

    "Ahem, Daimon aren''t you going to invite your most trusted brother over to your house?".

    Daimon frowned his brows, "You guys cane if you want to¡­ but just in case let me tell you that Liz and Aisha are also going to stay with the girls, for the weekend".<sub> </sub>

    Michael looked at Calvin as if he was looking at an idiot.

    "Let me simplify it for a muscle head like you, the only skin you''ll see are a bunch of naked dudes at the hot springs of the Revy family".

    Calvin snorted, "That sounds like something more fitting to your likings you short bastard, besides I''m more interested in the rumored shooting range of the Revy family than the hot springs".

    Although Calvin said that, he was heart broken knowing he won''t get to enter the hot spring with Loren.

    Loren looked at Calvin which was clearly trying to feign innocence and she chuckled, she found Calvin quite funny, while also being honest¡­ a bit too honest with what he likes, but still a good person.

    She saw Calvin and Michael insulting each other, Leslie being slightly blushed because she identally drank something with alcohol and Liliana giving her water to help her sober up, even Yvonne which she thought was quite quiet was happily talking with Aisha.

    Not to mention Daimon which did scare her at the beginning, and now he wasughing at Calvin while Liz was leaning her head against his shoulder.

    "If people like them were in charge of the big forces, I bet my family would have not fall in such a precarious situation", she thought as she felt her eyes getting a bit teary.

    "Mm?", Yvonne noticed it and she let her cup on the table.

    "Do you feel bad Loren?".

    Everyone''s attention was drawn to Loren which made her feel a little embarrassed, but before she could exin Leslie interrupted her.

    "Ahh I know, you are scared thinking Calvin will be staying with us, don''t worry if he tries anything, we will follow miss Mireya''s suggestion and dress him like a princess to make him reflect on his actions".

    *Pffttt*

    Everyoneughed imagining Calvin wearing a pink dress.

    "No, it''s not that¡­ I was just thinking that I''m happy to have entered the same ss as you all", she exined in a hurry.

    Calvin smiled, "I told you they are different the other people you have met before".

    He then turned to see Leslie and shook his head, "And you don''t take after that violent woman, let me tell you she has remained single her whole life because of that same attitude of hers, no matter how many dates my grandfather has set for her, no one wants to marry such a...".

    Calvin suddenly stopped, he turned his head around and felt a shiver ran through his spine seeing his aunt silently leaning her back against the wall while she looked at him, her veil made it so only her eyes were visible, but he could tell she was¡­ smiling.

    "Such a skilled and gentle woman", said Calvin in a try to mitigate the beating he was going to receiveter.

    Mireya approached them and seeing Loren was a new face, she presented herself.

    "I''m Mireya Ghrish, a pleasure", she said in a polite friendly tone.

    She then turned to see her nephew, and nodded.

    "My father told me to make sure you were following the training, soter we will do a little "test" to see how are you doing".

    Calvin didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, the training she mentioned was basically being beat up to augment the toughness of his body, which he has been neglecting for some time.

    "I''m so screwed", he thought.

    And just like that the noon passed, to Calvin''s displease, Mireya stayed with them and not only that, she even told a few storied of when Calvin was younger back on their n.

    Once everything was over, they left the happy wanderer, they were having so much fun that they stayed more time than what they expected and it was getting dark, so they decided to walk together to the campus.

    Loren was now a part of the elite ss so she also changed from her old room to one that was right next to the one of the Risha girls.

    As they passed next to an alley, Daimon frowned his brows which both Liz and Aisha immediately noticed, but nothing happened and Daimon didn''t say anything so they just kept walking until they arrived at the campus.

 Chapter 109 Demon Light (Part 1)

    The first ones to go to their room were Calvin and Michael, at first Calvin wanted to go all the way to see Loren off, but he caught a glimpse of a couple of girls with which he flirted before when he was waiting for the day of the admission exams, so he did a "tactic retreat" and Michael followed not too longter.

    While Aisha apanied the other girls to their dormitories, Daimon and Liz waited outside sitting on a bench, Liz stretched her arms thinking about the situation back at the alley.

    Her voice echoed through Daimon''s mind.

    "What happened earlier, for you to frown your brows it must be something serious?".

    Daimon dragged Liz closer to him and whispered to her.

    "We''ll pay someone a little visitter, there are people spying on us, but they were easy to see through¡­ but that guy is apletely different thing, I couldn''t see it until I felt a slight ill intentioning from the alley".

    After the shes he experienced with Alexander and the people from the blue-sky gxy, Daimon noticed some gazes directed at them here and there, but with the truth seeker eyes he could easily guess which force sent them.

    He didn''t take action against them because they were star ranked students, and none of them posed a threat, but the one at the alley was different, when Daimon noticed it, he scanned the guy with the eyes of truth and couldn''t see any cultivation signs, which should be impossible if he could avoid being detected by Liz.

    Aisha returned from the dormitories and they left to the mansion, while Liz felt a bit angry thinking that someone managed to escape from her scope, Daimon''s eyes glowed in violet light for a moment, he looked at the sky, the clouds covered the three moons and the cold night wind was blowing making the other students shiver.

    He then looked at the girls and nearly cancelled his ns, as he imagined cuddling with his mother, Liz and Aura on the bed fully covered with a nket.

    "Whoever sent you will pay for interrupting my fun", he thought.

    They arrived at the mansionter than usual so Aura was already waiting for them, they changed clothes or in Liz case she just threw hers around and stayed in underwear, Aisha sighed as she went to prepare a quick dinner.

    Seeing the needy expression on Aura''s face, Daimon lifted her and ced her on hisp, since he spent the whole day with Aisha and Liz, it was only fair for him to spoil his cute master a bit, besides he had some things to discuss with her anyway.

    Aura''s tail wagged, "How was your day", she asked as she leaned her back against Daimon and enjoyed being on his embrace.

    Daimon smiled at her cute act of a wife weing her husband, he then started telling her the conversation he had with Gabriel.

    The more Aura listened to him, the more her smile grew bigger, the payment prepared in the storage ring was enough to make an Archmage salivate, but instead of being blinded by greed, Daimon instead made Gabriel reveal his hand¡­ and then he basically exploited him.

    Aura turned around and kissed Daimon, "Although I don''t like you bing crafty like Erin, I do think you deserve a reward ?".

    Daimon shook his head, that''s why he was angry, because normally this would have been a fun night, but now there were other things that required his attention.

    "We''ll leave that for tomorrow¡­ there is something we need to confirm, it''s far from the academy so we''ll use space shift".

    Aura nodded, if Daimon asked her toe then it was probably something serious.

    "Do you want me to call Erin too?".

    Daimon shook his head, "No, I have a slight idea of what is happening, I only need your help to confirm a few things, I will take care of the rest".

    Aisha ced the dishes on the table and everyone dug in, as always, her cooking was quite good, once they filled their stomach Daimon everyone took out a ck case from their storage rings.

    Seeing the contents of the case Daimon remembered the most important lessons he was taught by Aura¡­ killing.

    Daimon publicly became the young master of two big families, so it was probable that he might be a target of other family''s assassin attempts, just like Erin was when she was younger.

    In this world where dog eats dog, everyone was bound to go through life and death situations at some point, so it was important for Daimon to learn how to kill because enemies won''t hesitate to do it.

    A few years ago:

    After Daimon went through the drastic change of his body adapting to his mental age, which changed a few things on his daily life, among them Aura increased the difficulty of his training regimen.

    *sh*, the sound of wind being teared echoed through the training room, a young man with silver hair and violet eyes was swinging a broad sword with intricate patterns on the hilt.

    His image shed from time to time around the training tform, with each swing the air trembled a clear sign that the sword generated a huge impact force.<sub> </sub>

    This young man was of course Daimon, after he light up his life spark his body started maturing at a fast rate, and now after one or two years, he looked like a 16 years old teen, nut not only his physical appearance changed, his body condition and physical strength also increased exponentially.

    "Phew", Daimon stopped what he was doing, he ced the sword on the ground in front of him, his shirtless figure was glistening as sweat ran down from all his body.

    "This change is quite something, now I''m able to move more freely than before thanks to increase in physical strength, what do you think Narasha".

    After a couple of seconds, a voice could be hearding from the sword in front of him.

    "Yes, I can feel the change, before there was a slightg on your movements, because the drawback of each swing was a bit too much for you to handle, but now you can constantly attack without any problem".

    Daimon nodded, he stretched his body to help his muscles rx, he took off the shackles of despair and then dispelled Gram''s transformation so Disaster returned to its original form, before he kept it on his storage.

    While he was drinking water waiting for his body to cool down to take a bath, Daimon saw the girls entering the training room.

    "Mm?", he was a bit confused, today was Aura''s turn so while seeing Erin and Aisha also attending his training, Liz and ine had other things to do, not only that but they had a slightly solemn expression which made him worry a bit.

    "What happens you all?", he asked.

    Aisha took a few steps ahead of the others and looked at her son directly to his eyes.

    "Darling, I talked with the others and since we aren''t that far from leaving the Revy family to attend the academy¡­ it''s time for you to learn how to kill".

    "On these past years I have taught you how to wield a sword, but all the training of the world is meaningless if you are not ready to finish your enemies off", said Aura with a solemn voice.

    Erin saw Daimon frowned expression and she sighed.

    "Even if we are not in war, outside of the Revy family you''ll be more exposed to other people''s schemes¡­ back then I nearly lost my life because I hesitated to cut the throat of someone".

    Daimon shook his head, he knew this day woulde sooner orter and to be honest he has thought of this for a long time, the hatred he had for the Naktis family won''t disappear until he shoves his sword in Victor''s heart.

    That being said, thinking and acting are twopletely different things, even if back on earth when that scum of a father he had got drunk and beat him, he fought back, it wasn''t to the point where they aimed for the lives of each other.

    "It''s fine, if you didn''t mention it, I would have asked for it anyway¡­ but what do you have in mind, it''s not like we can just go to a random vige to kill someone?".

    Aura nodded, seeing Daimon''s reaction, she was proud of the strong will, the youth who would be her mate in the future have.

    "We will take you to a special ce for that, but I won''t give you any more details, and you will be on your own once we get there, okay?".

    Daimon contemted things for a moment, he now understood why Aisha looked worried, but he knew none of the girls will do anything to harm him intentionally.

    "Okay, let''s go".

    Erin saw the fire of determination burning on Daimon''s eyes and she smiled before suing dark curtain and space shift, they all disappeared from the training room.

    Daimon took out a shirt of his storage ring, there was no need to bath since he would be getting dirty in a moment anyway, instead he closed his eyes and meditated to prepare himself for what was about to happen.

    After an unknown amount of time, Liz''s voice woke him up from his trance.

    "We are here little Daimon".

    Daimon opened his eyes and he saw they were floating above an ind in the middle of nowhere, the sea around had such a horrible current that when it hit the rocks near the shore, they exploded due to the impact.

    They descended from the sky and Erin handed him a badge with the sun and moon emblem of the Revy family.

    "We won''t be apanying you¡­ just follow that trail and you will reach a ck fortress where you will get instructions", said Erin as she pointed at a trail which crossed the forest of the ind.

    Daimon nodded and the girls disappeared from his sight, whether they were hidden using dark curtain or they truly left using space shift, he didn''t know it since he was yet to develop the truth seeker eyes.

 Chapter 110 Demon Light (Part 2)

    Seeing that the girls were gone Daimon turned around and followed Erin''s instructions, the more he walked down the trail, he noticed the forest was rather quiet, which would have normally been good but in this particr case it was tenebrous.

    The sunlight didn''t reach the parts which were covered by trees and the temperature kept dropping the more he went deeper into the forest.

    After walking for about half an hour, he reached his destination, in front a huge ck wall which extended as far as he could see stood still, Daimon frowned his brows, there were no trees near the wall so he should have been able to see the wall when they were floating in the sky above the ind.

    So, the only thing he could think was that there was a magic formation which hid this ce, so that those who passed flying near the ind would not be able to notice anything.

    Daimon started looking for an opening on the wall, but there was no such a thing, instead he noticed a little cabin about three hundred meters away from his current spot.

    He approached it and was weed by the sight of an old man which was sitting on the ground warming up near a campfire as he drank some kind of hot drink.

    "Mm?", the old man gave Daimon an apathic gaze as if he has seen been in this situation quite a few times already, still he seemed to evaluate Daimon from head to toe before he left his cup.

    "Wee to the Caedes Fortress, I wonder what kind of sin have youmitted to be sent here¡­ judging by your looks I guess you slept with the wrong woman?".

    "Huh?", Daimon was confused by the old man''s words, he took out the badge Erin gave him and showed it to him.

    "I was given this token and told to ask for instructions here".

    The old man nodded, as if he understood what was happening, "Oh, sorry about my previous assumptions kid, normally those who arrive at this ce are prisoners".

    "Still, it''s been quite some time since someone came here by his own will¡­ are you aware of what lies behind those walls?".

    Daimon shook his head, apparently, he was here to kill someone, but the girls didn''t give him any details so he was in the dark.

    The old man sighed, "Youngsters nowadays are reckless, whatever, this ce is a prison for those who havemitted horrible sins, to the point that death isn''t a harsh enough of a punishment¡­ and they don''t have a strong enough background to pressure the beast faction to release them".

    "So, their lives are free to take for any member of a family or force of the beast faction, of course it''s not as simple as that, you need the permission of either a n head or someone of a simr status".

    Daimon looked at the token which Erin handed him, apparently this was the "pass" he needed to enter this ce.

    "Okay and what are the rules, how do I enter there and how do I leave?", he said.

    The old man handed Daimon a ck coin and then exined its function.

    "Only I can open the entrance of the prison from the outside, once you are inside you will have to stay for at least three hours, once you finish what you havee to do, then just break the coin and you will transported back to this same ce for a safety check".

    "You are one star ranked mage so you will be going to the first area of the prison, fill this form and then let a drop of blood fall on the coin so that only you''ll be able to use it", said the old man as he handed a paper to Daimon.

    The form was basically for him to fill his name, the family to which he is affiliated and things like that.

    Daimon did as he told and the coin changed its color from ck to red, now that preparations were done, the old man did a few symbols with his hands and a bunch of runes illuminated on the walls.

    "Don''t lose the coin or you''ll be trapped inside for one day, because there is a safety lock of 24 hours between each trial¡­ by the way you''ll appear at a random spot so be prepared to run for your life".

    "Also, you''ll see it once you are inside, but don''t try to leave by digging on the ground or flying or you''ll be killed by the magic formations".

    Daimon nodded, he kept the coin on his storage and only then the old man waved his hand and Daimon disappeared from his sight.

    Silent remained in the cabin until the old man let out a sigh, he opened a desk which was at the corner of the room and threw the form Daimon filled, inside of the desk there were an unmeasurable number of simr papers.

    "I hope that kid knew what he was getting into, because there won''t be enough of him left for a coffin if he didn''t", thought the old man before he returned to his previous spot near the campfire.

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    The transportation took just a couple of seconds, the next thing Daimon saw was that he appeared on top of a mountain, he kept his guard up since he didn''t know what was waiting for him.

    He turned to see the sky and his eyes widened a bit, instead of the sky of Lykos the only thing visible was a huge magic formation which covered the whole ce.

    "Mm?", Daimon noticed that the mana concentration in the air was really thin, to the point that it would take a few days to recover the amount used to cast a one-star spell.

    The mountain gave Daimon a good perspective of the ce, but the only thing he could see were trees and a river, the only difference to is that the trees inside of the walls were of a ck color and were covered with thorns.

    The breeze at the top of the mountain was quite cold, apparently the magic formations made this ce harsh for those who lived here.

    "Let''s go near the river, if there are people here then I should be able to find them there", he thought as he went down the mountain, once he was at ground level a strong stench of blood assaulted his nose.

    Although he knew it was probably a bad idea, he looked for the origin of the smell and found a trace of blood, there was signs of something being dragged through the ground, so he followed the trace.

    After walking for a few minutes, he found what he was looking for but unlike what he expected, the responsible for the blood trace wasn''t a prisoner but a magic beast¡­ which he has never heard off.

    It was a ck beast which had four legs with three fingers on each and the ws of a predator, but that wasn''t all, besides the four legs it had two arms with longer fingers, its mouth was incredibly wide and it had spike like teeth and a variety of eyes of different sizes simr to those of a spider.

    "What the hell is that, it looks like a mix of several beasts", thought Daimon.

    *Crunch*, the thing moved its jaws and the sound of bones cracking echoed through the forest, Daimon looked downwards and he noticed there were rests of a corpse and a lot of bones, which was the result of that beast hunting its meal.

    Contrary to what he expected, the scene of a magic beast munching on someone didn''t make him feel anything, at most he was a bit disgusted by the foul smell of rotten meat and death which filled the ce.

    The thing suddenly screeched and turned around, somehow it noticed Daimon and jumped disappearing into the trees, apparently the long ws were not only to gut its prey, but to move through the trees.

    *Screech!!!*, with a high-pitched sound the beast propelled itself towards Daimon with its jaw opened as if it was trying to engulf him in just one go.

    Daimon''s image shed from where he was standing, the beast crashed against the ground and Daimon appeared behind it, with a snap of his fingers the thing exploded in white mes.

    *Roarrrr*, the beast went crazy, it tried to crash against the trees and roll in the dirt to set off the fire but nothing worked, Daimon jumped and sat on the branch of a tree, he just stayed still while the beast kept screaming until it consumed itself leaving nothing but a burn corpse.

    *Ding*

    [You have sessfully yed mad chimera, no skills attainable due to gic and brain damage]

    "Chimera huh¡­ more like a defective experiment", thought Daimon.

    ording to Evangeline, the system used the vital energy and memories of the beast which was yed by Daimon to recreate the abilities as skills, that''s why the corpse disappeared when he wanted to learn their skills because it was scanned and converted into skills.

    This beast was created artificially and it was defective, so there weren''t enough "materials" for the system to do its magic, even the corpse was apparently useless for him.

    *Thud*, Daimonnded on the ground he looked on the bones and rests left behind by the beasts and recognized a few things, there were badges with the emblems of different families, with a wave of his hand the pit on which the beast umted its "trophies" light up in white mes.

    He then approached the corpse and inspected it, there were seams on the limbs the creature used as arms, so clearly someone took them from another magic beast and literally attached them to this one.

    The creature didn''t have any cultivation but its physical body was enough to overwhelm one and maybe even two star ranked mages.

    Daimon sighed.

    "I wonder if this thing is a "guard" of the prison, or if it is something created by one of the prisoners¡­ whatever might be the case I now understand what the old man meant when he said this ce was a punishment for those which didn''t deserve to be so freed by having an easy death".

 Chapter 111 Demon Light (Part 3)

    Daimon looked at the now burned pit where the remains of those who fell prey of the chimera were, just to see if there was something else the beast hid in there but it was futile.

    Evangeline yawned.

    "Why didn''t you turn that disgusting thing to dust, it doesn''t have any worth for the system?".

    Daimon smirked, "It''s a bait, if this thing is a guard of the prison, then it doesn''t matter, but if it was created by one of the prisoners then¡­ I already found my target".

    After saying that he started walking directly to the direction where the river which he saw previously when hended on the mountain was.

    On the way Daimon looked here and there trying to find any signs of living beings, but besides trees there was nothing.

    "Well that chimera thing probably eliminated any other magic beasts or persons in the area", he thought.

    It didn''t take long for him to reach his destination, Daimon''s eyes glowed, his supposition was correct because near the river bank there were footprints, the only problem was that there was no trace to follow there was only two footprints and nothing else.

    Daimon frowned his brows, ording to the size of the footprints they belonged to either a woman or a really short guy.

    "To be so careless as to not erase its footprints, this guy is probably the one that created that monster¡­ mm, the ruler of this area is either a wind or water mage".

    Daimon started reconstructing the scene on his mind, due to the limitation in the mana concentration and the fact that there are only one and two star ranked people in this level of the prison, there are few ways to move without leaving a trace.

    One is of course is moving between the trees like the chimera, but if that was the case there will be leaves spread around near the trees and that wasn''t the case.

    The other option is moving through wind, flying isn''t possible, but wind mages can glide for a couple of meters applying wind on their feet a basic movement spell so to speak, the only problem is that it requires a lot of mana for a two-star mage, which discards it as an option.

    Thest option he could think of, is moving above the water, unlike using wind the spell used to do that doesn''t require the mage to create anything, it''s just a simple maniption to augment the resistance of the surface of the water to step on it, so the amount of mana needed is not that high.

    "A water mage huh, it makes sense that this guy created the chimera, low ranked water spells aren''t too fit forbat, so it an "assistant" is needed¡­ and that also means it''s probably a vampire or an undead".

    The two alliances had their areas of specialty, the beast faction and humans are known for their warriors and their magic cksmiths, the other alliance which is formed by vampires, demons and undead focuses more in magical biology and necromancy, in other words they focus in manipting both living and death beings.

    Now that he more or less knew what to expect Daimon walked upstream, being careful to not fall in any trap along the way, nearly three kilometers away he found what he was looking for.

    "This for sure brings up some unpleasant memories", thought Daimon, using sixth sense he noticed that in thedder of a little hill there were some signs of the spell "terraforming", simr to what Aisha did back then when they hid in a cave.

    He approached thedder and looked for the entrance, after tapping the wall here and there he found the opening, the weakness of terraforming is that since the rock isn''t formed naturally and it''s a low rank spell, the part which is affected by it isn''t as thick as the rest.

    Just when he was about to use terraform to widen open the entrance of the cave, Daimon frowned his brows the area near thedder suddenly illuminated, red symbols appeared on the walls before a lot of skeletal arms rose from the ground and held Daimon''s legs, arms and neck.

    *p¡­ p¡­p*

    The sound of slow ps and steps made their way to Daimon''s ears, he turned his head around and saw a skinny figure fully covered in a mantle.

    Its identity was easily given away by the feminine yet unpleasant to hear voice.

    "Oh my, it must be my lucky day, to think such a delicious meal would deliver himself to my door, I don''t see any characteristic but you smell like a member of a beast race¡­ the hateful Revy family", said the woman in a hatred filled voice.

    Daimon which was practically held in ce by hundreds of skeletal hands didn''t answer, so the woman in the mantle extended her hand and thedder opened.

    "You don''t want to talk huh, don''t worry I have a special treatment for handsome men like you, which I''m pretty sure will make you talk whether you want it or not", she thought.

    The woman entered the cave and the skeletal hands moved Daimon inside before thedder closed.

    Once Daimon entered the cave, he was assaulted by an intense flower smell, which made a huge contrast with the "decorations" that were hanging from the walls or piled up at the corner of the cave¡­ skeletons of different sizes and types along with some gnawed corpses.

    "Undead have such a strange fashion sense", said Daimon in a bored voice.<sub> </sub>

    The woman took off her mantle to reveal her appearance, a woman who looked to be in her twenties with a slender figure and short gray hair, but that was not what caught Daimon''s attention.

    She did have the characteristic unhealthy pale skin tone of the undead, but she also had horns and a tail made out of bones which were akin to one of the ruler families of the demons.

    ¡­

    Daimon smirked.

    "Corpse sandalwood but horns and a tail, now I understand why you were kept like an animal in a cage¡­ you are a variant between an undead and a bone collector, that is a rare sight".

    The woman gritted her teeth, she signaled her left leg which had a different skin tone and some scale patterns.

    "Some of the members of your family killed my servants and captured me, just because I was gathering some "toys" in a faraway at the border of the white fang gxy, how is that fair?".

    "Due to the low mana of this stupid ce I had to use my own flesh to create a servant in order to not be used as food by the idiots of this prison!!!".

    *Pfftt*

    The screams of the woman were interrupted by Daimon''s sarcasticugh.

    "So, when you chase after other people''s lives it''s just ying with "toys", but when the one suffering is you then is unfairness¡­ that''s some".

    The expression of the woman twisted in hatred, but after a moment she calmed down and licked her lips.

    "Whatever, it''s been some time since I had some fun, myst y mate was a girl from the human race, first I''ll remove your legs so you can''t escape just in case, let''s see how much can youst after that", said the woman as she pointed at a cage which was hanging from the roof of the cave.

    Daimon looked in the direction of the cave and he saw a woman which was in a horrible state, her body was covered in wounds and biting marks, her eyes were dug out and all her limbs were missing, the blood waspletely dry so it has been some time since she died.

    The temperature of the room suddenly went up, Daimon''s body exploded in what seemed to be white mes melting the skeletal arms which were keeping him in ce, before some kind of ck smoke was expelled from him.

    The woman''s eyes widened in shock, she tried to take a step back to retaliate but a sudden burning sensation made her scream in pain.

    "Impossible¡­ you were about to use a spell earlier, so howe you are now using battle aura and what element is this it hurtssss aghhhh!!!".

    The woman''s mind was moving at all speed, the undead were weak against light, but not to the point where just being in presence of it would hurt, besides the incense created with corpse sandalwood it''s supposed to poison and block the mana cirction of those who aren''t undead, but the kid in front of her simply expelled it from his body as if it was nothing.

    Daimon looked at the woman which was rolling on the ground in pain due to the exposition of his battle aura with disdain, he approached her and spoke clear and loudly.

    "Like pet like master, your servant had the same reaction when my "Demon Light" touched it".

    The woman heard the word "demon" and she tried to use herst resort.

    "W-Wait, if you would have told me you were part of the demon race, I wouldn''t have attacked you, are you Lord Nergal''s descendant? or maybe Madam Saphina is your sponsor, I''m rted to Lord Arashiel, if you let me live¡­ I will dedicate my soul and body to serve you!!!".

    Seeing that Daimon''s expression didn''t change even after dering her origins, the woman spat and gave him a poisonous gaze.

    "Traitor, a member of the demon race feigning to be a good guy just because I yed with that girl, I curse you to have a horrible death!!!".

    Daimon shook his head, "Good guy huh? How childish, I''m not killing you because of what you did to that woman, why would I get angry due to the fate of someone I don''t know".

    He took out a sword from his storage ring and shoved it on the chest of the woman, he carefully witnessed how life left her.

    "You tried to kill me, I don''t need another reason, now go to hell", he said before using his battle aura to cover the whole ce erasing everything including the cage on which the human woman was kept.

    After a couple of seconds, the white mes disappeared and Daimon left the cave which walls were red hot now.

 Chapter 112 Demon Light (Part 4)

    Once he was outside of the cave Daimon covered his body with his battle aura, not even a second passed when he saw a little amount of red smokeing from the soles of his feet.

    Daimon remembered thest words of the woman and he carefully inspected his body, after not finding anything else he snorted.

    "Turns out she was indeed rted to a high ranked demon, but If you were trying to cause fear, you chose the wrong target bitch".

    Thanks to the Greenwich Sage, both humans and members of the beast faction insulted the undead referring to them as third-rate mages.

    ording to Erin, back when the Revy family was still in an open war with the undead, every victory was bloody and seemed to be meaningless, because the one that killed a noble from the undead¡­ died not too long after.

    The rumor was that the undead found a way to curse whoever killed them, so that they would follow them to the underworld, the time varied but the result was always the same in other words death.

    The whole ster chart was in fear thinking the undead developed a curse which could basically guarantee them to win the war.

    Curses are one of the strongest kinds of magic, but they also have many weaknesses, light and lightning element are natural counters for most of them due to their inclination to yang, but contrary to all the records, those who were "cursed" by the undead even after being treated by the priests of the light faction died.

    This belief continued bringing fear to others, for a long time until one day, the one who was supposed to die was the one who will soon be known as the Greenwich Sage, he revealed that the so called "curse" was nothing but smoke and mirrors.

    The reality of the curse was a spell called "death mark" created and casted by a demon half emperor, the only function of the spell was to give away the position of the one marked with it, so that an assassin could finish the jobter.

    Before that, demons weren''t actively participating in the war, so all the attention was on the undead, and they used that to mount a little magic show, the spell needed to be casted by a half emperor and only the caster could decide who would perceive the mark.

    At first everyone refused to believe the theory of the Greenwich Sage, the light faction especially used him of defamation, because their half emperor affirmed having used detection spells on the victims and not finding anything.

    Then the answer of the sage left them in ridicule, "Did you scan their clothes, weapons, storage ring and essories?".

    That''s right, the trick behind the death mark was that it wasn''t applied to the body, instead it attached itself to the clothes, weapon or something which the victim wore, said thing was probably kept in a storage ring which never left the side of its owner giving away its position.

    The priests never found about it because for the purifying session one needed to be naked, or wear a sterilized robe proportioned by them and nothing else, so the mark escaped their detection spells.

    When Daimon shoved his sword into the chest of the woman, he was using his battle aura, so the mark she tried to attach to it was immediately erased, but when she spoke all that nonsense about cursing him to die, she attached the mark to his shoes.

    Not all the undead nor all the demons had this mark applied on them because in exchange to the practically limitless reach, the number of marks which a half emperor can cast on their subordinates is limited, also nowadays it can be blocked thanks to magic formations nowadays.

    This prison was one of the ces which prevented the mark from working, so the woman expected that Daimon didn''t discover the mark which she thought, will lead to his death at the hands of an assassin in the future.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon''s sixth sense made him detect something which wasn''t there before on his shoes, and that''s how he discovered the mark which was eliminated not too long ago.

    "Other prisoners won''t approach this ce knowing that woman lives here, so I won''t have to worry about them if I just stay around this area, until the three hours pass".

    Daimon remembered the extremely sweet smell which filled the cave, undead tended to work at ces where corpses and things like that were amon sight, so to counter that they used a special kind of incense which was borated with a three called "corpse sandalwood", which had two functions covering the smell of death and poisoning those who smelled it and weren''t undead.

    To emphasize the dramatic taste the undead, have, corpse sandalwood was hard to detect because it only grew about one meter and before being processed into incense it didn''t stand out by its smell nor appearance, it looked like any normal three which was recently growing.

    The seeds of this three are strategic resources for undead because they require an extremely hard process to be created, which is unknown to other races and even to undead with the exception of those with high noble status.

    "A corpse sandalwood would be a good gift for Erin to study", Daimon recognized the smell of the incense because Erin taught it to him, after so many years in war with the undead, she managed toy her hands on a few pieces of the incense but no one outside of the undead has ever owned a tree of it.

    Of course before he blew the cave he inspected it and didn''t found nothing simr to a tree, the woman had to had a seed of the corpse sandalwood because all her belongings were confiscated, so there was no way she brought incense from the outside, but a seed could have been contrabanded¡­ in her stomach, under her nails etc.

    While Daimon scanned the whole area and removed the brambles and weeds, to look for the tree, he decided to clear a doubt which has been pestering him today.

    "Evangeline¡­ tell me if the system is interfering with my mind, if I was a native of this world then I would probably not think this whole thing is weird, but since Ie from earth, it''s not normal for me to not feel anything about both the woman which was in the cage, and the one I killed".

    Evangeline shrugged, "The system isn''t allowed to directly influence you, but I do get what you say, it''s probably a condition of the apex predator physique¡­ what predator would have mercy of its "prey" after all".<sub> </sub>

    "It''s helping you adapt to the cruel reality of this world, but it doesn''t make you blood thirsty, ultimately the decision is up to you".

    Daimon nodded, up to this day he hasn''t noticed any change on his personality, he only doubted today because he didn''t feel a thing about what he witnessed a moment ago, not like he pitied them, but honestly, he expected feeling nauseous or maybe some kind of unease and that wasn''t the case.

    "Look what we have here", Daimon smirked, hidden between tall weeds he found a little tree of about forty centimeters, he also noticed there was a self-immting magic formation engraved with red ink on its trunk.

    In a rare asion Evangeline took the initiative to lend Daimon a hand without him asking for it.

    "Undead really like to keep secrets, if someone which doesn''t have simr blood to the one used for the magic formation approaches the tree it will burn, if you try to destroy one of the runes it will burn, if any external element touches it¡­ it will bu she said.

    Daimon agreed with her, this level of magic formation is not something a star ranked mage can achieve, probably the seed had the magic formation engraved by at least an Archmage rune master, before it was handed to others.

    Still, he just pointed his hand at the three and white mes mixed with grey covered it, the formation tried to activate but as soon as the runes glowed, the mes consumed the blood which acted as the energy source nullifying the magic formation.

    Seeing that his n worked, Daimon looked at the tittle tap of the system.

    [The one who has ovee destiny]

    "What an incredibly useful thing, the chances of failing when I created demon light were 99% and yet I seeded, there is no way they have a way to counter it".

    Demon light is a result of Daimon bing a knight, when a knight has more than one elemental affinity, they had to choose which one will be the one integrating with their battle aura, although rare there have been knights who have managed to create another battle aura for their secondary affinity.

    But Daimon did something outrageous, fire, light, lightning, darkness and battle aura, all werebined to create demon light.

    Evangeline shook her head, "Even your battle aura is monstrous, having several affinities and integrating them in a functional way are twopletely different things you know?".

    Daimonughed out loud, with a wave of his hand the whole tree and a portion of earth disappeared entering into his storage, since the old man will scan him and his belongings before he leaves the ind for safety reasons.

    Evangeline sighed.

    "Well now you have a souvenir for your fox wifey, so let''s leave this disgusting ce already".

    Daimon took out the coin which the old man handed him, ording to his instructions after three hours inside he would be able to leave, the coin turned green and he broke it, a magic formation appeared on the ground and he disappeared.

    The next thing he saw was the old man heating some kind of soup on his campfire, but this time the girls were also there waiting for him.

    The old man nodded took a sip of his drink, without any warning he used his mana sense to scan Daimon, not finding anything he nodded.

    "Kid show me your storage ring and the badge you were given before".

    Daimon handed the ring and the badge to the old man which seemed apathic as ever¡­ until he saw the color of the badge.

    His eyes widened, he looked at the badge which now waspletely ck and had a horn and bone, then looked at Daimon to see if there was any visible wound and didn''t find anything.

    The old man smiled, he took out a little medal and threw it towards Daimon along with his ring, but kept the badge.

    "Kid if you ever get into trouble with the military, show them this medal¡­ you got rid of one of the worst in the first level".

    Daimon nodded and they left, leaving behind an old man which figure blurred before he disappeared leaving behind onest phrase.

    "A one-star mage killed a peak two-star mage and a variant of demon and undead¡­ young generations nowadays are freaking scary".

 Chapter 113 For The Sake Of My Family (Part 1)

    Daimon''s resemnce of the past was interrupted by Evangeline''s yful voice.

    "Does this get up remind you of the special "reward", Erin gave you thanks to that tree you got in that prison?".

    Daimon shook his head, back then when he gave Erin the corpse sandalwood as a gift, she was so happy she prepared a reward for him, that was the time she used dark curtain and took him to spy on Arthur Jolbaris daughters.

    "That wasn''t my intention you know?".

    "And, of course you didn''t enjoy the view back then hehehe", said Evangeline with a smirk.

    Daimon cleared his throat and then took out the contents of the ck case, a set of ck clothes, boots, gloves and a mask which was only big enough to cover the upper part of his face.

    [Hollow Suit]

    [Eliminates, traces, presence, and prevents others from tracking the one who wears it (the concealment is limited to a maximum of two greater realms above the user)]

    <o>,m Daimon took off his clothes and changed into the suit, then looked at himself on the mirror, with a wave of his hand, the bracelet of the god of mischief glowed and his hair returned to his original silver color.</o>

    "ck is not my favorite color, but I guess my usual white and purple clothes are too shy for this kind of activities", he thought looking at his reflect on the mirror.

    Aisha looked at her son and she nodded.

    "As I expected, my darling looks awesome no matter what he wears ?".

    Daimon put the mask and his look waspleted, Aisha, Liz and even Aura wore simr clothes, the only difference was that they weren''t using masks, because the only one who will be "publicly" acting will be Daimon.

    This item was something Daimon bought from the shop of the system to counter any kind of tracking spell, because there will be ces to visit and things which Daimon would have to do without others knowing.

    One thing is being outstanding in the academy where the only fights are between young kids without battlefield experience, and anotherplete subject is to fight on equal standing with professionals, which he will be doing for sure.

    So, he decided to separate his abilities in two, in public as a mage he will focus in lightning because that''s what his mother inherited to him and darkness because he wanted to humiliate the Naktis in their own specialty.

    Then for "private" matters he will be a knight, demon light was based in the light element, and as far as everyone in the Wonder Myriad ster chart knows, no one can have both darkness and light elements because they repel each other.

    So, there won''t be anything which could rte his two identities giving him freedom to do whatever he wanted, without any consequence because the culprit they will be looking for doesn''t exist.

    Daimon told the current approximate location of their target and using space shift they disappeared from the room.

    ¡­

    For security, besides the academic city of Latiz no other settlements were allowed in a radio of two thousand kilometers, Lykos is a which is predominated by forests which are used for field tests and other outdoor sses by the many teachers of the academy.

    There is no rule which prevents towns to be stablished near the area of the academy, because after some sses, the students often need a ce to rest, replenish their provisions¡­ or find some fun.

    The existence of these towns is acknowledged by the academy, in fact some of the outstanding third year students are chosen to manage some of them, as a test for theirnd administrating capacities.

    If anyone looked at the sky above one of the many towns that existed, they would only see a clouded sky and nothing else, but in truth, Daimon, Aisha, Liz and Aura were there silently floating.

    Aura frowned her brows, "Are you sure this is the ce Daimon? Judging by the distance from the academy to this ce and the amount of time which has passed since you arrived at the mansion, the opponent should be an Archmage¡­ unless there is a transportation formation involved".

    Daimon understood her worries, although Aura couldn''t use her mana sense to scan the academy all the day, there were devices for that which were active 24/7 and she would immediately get a notification if any of the searching parameters were met, among them of course Archmages or any spatial formations which haven''t been registered are included.

    But she didn''t get anything, so there was something fishy going on, but now it wasn''t time to worry about that.

    "He isn''t an archmage, or I would have noticed it back when I felt its presence at the alley, at the worst-case scenario is a mage lord which is harder for my eyes to see through, since it doesn''t have a domain".

    Aura nodded, "So spatial formation it is¡­ I bet one hundred mana stones that the culprits are the demons, since they like to gather information".

    Liz shook her head, "Demons don''t tend to do anything themselves, they prefer manipting others, so my money is in either an undead or maybe a human".<sub> </sub>

    Aisha doubted for a moment, before she looked at her son, "Darling how about I can take care of the uing events¡­".

    Daimon interrupted her before she could finish her sentence.

    "I''m not as innocent as to believe that guy will speak just because we caught him, still I will personally make him tell us everything, I only noticed it because he focused his attention on you and me, which means someone wants to harm my family¡­ and I''m not going to let that happen".

    Daimon pointed at one specific house in the outskirt area of the town, and Aura took them there, only peak Archmages and half emperors could notice how the space waved when space shift was used, and since they were wearing the hollow suits, no one noticed them appearing inside of the house.

    The first thing Daimon noticed was that there weren''t any magic formations here, in fact the house waspletely normal, the lights were out with the only exception of one, so the path to follow was clear.

    They walked towards the only room which was illuminated, the boots which were included in the hollow suit cancelled sound, to their steps werepletely silent, once they reached their destination.

    They saw it, a middle-aged man without any cultivation wearing clothes simr to those of a merchant just sitting in front of a desk writing in an ounting book, everything was perfectly normal with the exception that¡­ he was eating raw meat, and judging by the smell, Daimon easily noticed it didn''te from a magic beast.

    Daimon nodded at Aura and she covered the house with a barrier made out of her mana, being careful enough so others couldn''t notice, unless there was a half emperor nearby or a peak Archmage which focuses in sensorial spells maybe.

    *Bang*, a suffocated explosion echoed through the room, followed by a hoarse scream in a tone which wasn''t possible for a "normal" human like the one that was in front of them.

    "Aghh!!!", the "merchant" tried to turn around but his body didn''t answer him, then he felt steel like grip on his neck before a cold voice made its way into his ears.

    "Acuyo herb, also known as sacred leaf, with correct dosage directly entering the body, even a mage lord can be contained, let alone a magicless type of undead like you¡­ a disgusting skin tailor".

    A skin tailor is a special type of undead that would never be able to be a mage nor a knight, but in exchange they have a really unique ability, they can fuse their bodies with the corpse of other races and assimte their memories by eating the brain, so that they practically be a member of the race with which they fuse.

    They can trick magic formations and even an Archmage can''t detect them unless they are really close to them, it''s a race perfect for spying, the only problem is that their lifespan after fusing with another race is really short, about five years at most, so they are hard toe by since they normally die before getting caught.

    The man''s eyes widened, he tried with all his might to destroy the fake finger which contained poison to kill himself, but not only he couldn''t, the hand on which the poison was, suddenly exploded in white mes and disappeared.

    The undead wanted to scream to lessen the pain he was feeling, but the effect of the herb didn''t allow him to have that relief, that being said he kept repeating one word in his mind after seeing the thing that destroyed his hand, "inquisitor".

    Daimon dragged the man through the floor all the way to the dining room, because he didn''t want him to be near any of the books in case, the skin tailor had a way to destroy them.

    He made the skin tailor sit on a chair and then took seat in front of him, he shoved a little needle right above his lips and then pointed at him with a white gun.

    "Good evening Mr. undead, we are going to have a little conversation, if your answers are to my liking then this would end soon, if not¡­ well, I have time".

    ¡­

    After a moment the lips of the man slowly moved, apparently the needle on his lip partially neutralized the paralyzing effect of the sacred leaf, still he only said three words.

    "Go to hell".

    After saying that the man had a bad premonition seeing the smile on the face of the man that was sitting in front of him.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and one of the toes of the man was engulfed by white mes, but this time he was able to speak¡­ or in this case scream.

    "Aghhhrhhh!!!".

    Daimon perfectly controlled his battle aura so that it only consumed one toe and then waited a couple of seconds until the skin tailor stopped screaming, to speak.

    "How about we start with something easy, who sent you to Lykos¡­ if you don''t answer me in five seconds well, you will be losing another toe".

    The man looked at the rxed expression in Daimon''s face and he felt a shiver running through his spine.

    "He is a demon", he thought.

 Chapter 114 For The Sake Of My Family (Part 2)

    There is a say, that a living being can get used to everything but hunger, that principle is often applied in many fields of life, for example spies are trained to tolerate different kinds of pain, it''s not an exaggeration to say that practically they go through hell during training.

    For undead, the definition of hell is the pain inflicted by the corrosive light, which was created by the light faction of the blue-sky gxy, but even that can be taught to tolerate, that''s why the best choice for a skin tailor to fuse is a human.

    Because like that, their innate constitution will be simr to a human reducing their weakness to "holy light", making them feel just a little fraction of the usual pain.

    Unfortunately for the skin tailor, Daimon didn''t know which race will be his enemy in the future, that''s why he made a bet and used both light and darkness as the base for demon light, then added he fire and lightning which are known to be extremely destructive to the mix.

    And considering how the skin tailor in front of him was sweating and didn''t hesitate to speak after a little "demonstration", made Daimon consider the result better than what he expected.

    Before the five seconds passed, the skin tailor immediately answered with a trembling voice.

    "W-Wait, wait, I will talk".

    ¡­

    Daimon nodded, he leaned his back against the chair and took out notebook and a pen.

    "I''m listening, in case you even think in lying I suggest you to remember your disguise is nothing for my eyes, and the previous was just a demonstration, I won''t be as merciful next time".

    The man gulped down, imagining what this demon in front of him would do when he was not being "merciful".

    "My name is Ereman, I''m the one assigned to inform about the talented youths in the main campus of the wild w academy¡­ I don''t know who receives my reports, but I was sent by a bone collector called Narel".

    Daimon frowned his brows.

    "When did youst informed your superior and how you do it?".

    Ereman hesitated for a moment but seeing Daimon''s unfriendly expression, he answered.

    "I can only inform at the end of each month, the sses recently started so I''m still preparing my report, to not raise suspicions they are codified and sent in a physical form instead of a message through a sigil¡­ the books in my studio are what I have gathered so far".

    Daimon stood up, walked into the studio and took a random book from one of the shelves, then showed the first page to Ereman.

    "Tell me what does this whole page say".

    Ereman sighed and started decodifying.

    "First target of observation: Alexander Jolbaris, current heir of the Jolbaris family, thest remaining son of Arthur Jolbaris".

    "Current realm: peak one star ranked mage, affinity lightning, estimated battle prowess middle stage two-star mage, ranked four of the elite ss".

    "Personality analysis: proud, impulsive, arrogant and easy to provoke".

    "Enemies: All the other members of the elite ss, specially the first ranked Daimon Licht".

    "Diagnosis: high danger level but corruptible with the correct type of payment".

    "Special observations: has been asking for indications to find an underground brothel, reason currently unknown".

    Daimon had the sudden urge tough out loud reading thest part, since he knew the reason, but right now it was not the time for that, he was surprised by the deepness of the information Ereman gathered in such a little amount of time.

    "Are there other ones like you here and is this code the same everyone uses?".

    Ereman shook his head, "No, each skin tailor has its exclusive code, only I was assigned to this because there aren''t many of us¡­ alive".

    Daimon nodded.

    His glowed for a moment, but it wasn''t visible due to the mask, he turned the page but instead of asking Ereman to read, he did it.

    "Second target of observation: Daimon Licht, current heir of the Argent and Revy families, due to being a variant between a twilight alluring fox and a werewolf has strong ws and body, other innate traits unknown".

    "Current realm: Peak one star ranked mage, affinity lightning and darkness, estimated battle prowess peak stage three-star mage, ranked first of the elite ss".

    "Personality analysis: Aggressive, extremely protective towards his older sister and cold blooded".

    "Enemies: Alexander Jolbaris, members of the Risha family".<sub> </sub>

    "Diagnosis: Extremely high danger level, eliminate as soon as the chance is given".

    "Special observations: Has been seen using magic guns of unknown origin, request of investigation".

    If Ereman could move right now, he would be shaking in fear, the code used wasn''t as simple of just changing letters into a differentnguage, height, inclination, extra characters, everything was used to prevent others to easily decodify their secrets¡­ and yet with just one time listening to it, the man in front of him was able to learn the code.

    Daimon carefully inspected Ereman''s reaction to what he just said, heart beating, sweat production, iris dtation and he mentally smiled.

    "Well, it seems I''m right, eyes of the truth seekerbined with sixth sense¡­ what a wonderful skill", he thought.

    Daimon closed the book and ced it on the table, he remained silent thinking what his next move would be.

    Skin tailors hold a special position in the undead society, they are basically under few people and above thousands, because they "sacrifice" themselves for their race.

    "Killing him will only make his superiors send another one, which will be more cautious¡­ make him fear you like you did with Ferdinand", said Evangeline.

    Daimon''s body let out faint traces of white mes, which made Ereman immediately scream, although he knew it was futile, he didn''t want to die.

    "Wait, let''s make a deal, I will erase the records of the youths whiche from the human race¡­ an inquisitor like you would onlye if an important member of the light faction, feels threatened, I will never approach the Ascott family!!!".

    "Imagine having an undead as your servant, you will get the recognition of your superior, just don''t burn me with that!!!".

    Daimon smirked listening to a familiar sound which he has learn to appreciate over the past years.

    *Ding*

    [A new skill has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Terror Contractor: Allows the host to enve those who fear him more than what they respect their figures of authority (limited to those of different races than the host)]

    [Those who be subordinates can''t go against the orders of the host, nor betray him in anyway, the host can terminate the contract whenever which will also finish the live of the subordinate]

    [Avable candidates: 1]

    [Current subordinates: 0]

    [Low level undead "Ereman" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Daimon looked at the te from which Ereman was eating before he arrived, and he had a slight doubt.

    "Who provided you with "food", skin tailors have zero battle prowess".

    Ereman knew his end wasing soon, so at this point he resigned to his destiny.

    "I didn''t kill anyone since that would attract attention, my identity is the one of a rich merchant, corpses of delinquents are often used by alchemists to test their new potions and poisons, so I just bought a couple through legal ways".

    Daimon nodded, he clicked "yes" and ck cor made out of bones appeared on Ereman''s neck.

    "You will work for me from now and onwards", said Daimon as he injected the antidote for the Acuyo herb in Ereman''s shoulder.

    Ereman was in awe, he recovered the capacity to move, the first thing he did was touch the cor on his neck, which made it disappear leaving behind just a little skull tattoo which was visible only for Daimon.

    "You aren''t an inquisitor", mumbled Ereman.

    Before when he said all that nonsense about making a deal, he was just trying to earn a few more seconds of life, even on his wildest imaginations he didn''t think a "corrosive light" user will not kill him after getting what he wanted.

    Daimon threw a piece of paper at him with a list of names, as he pointed at the book on the table.

    "Your operation won''t change, but you will focus in the names of that list, also I want you to hand me the decodified version of that book, I will review it and give tell you what will you send to your previous supervisor".

    Ereman felt his body and mind act on its own, he kneeled down and then answered.

    "I listen and obey".

    Although he said that, on the inside he thought, "What the hell are you!!!", the contract he unknowingly offered forced him to obey, whether he wanted it or not, not only that but he couldn''t evenin, and when he tried the cor on his neck tightened making him suffocate.

 Chapter 115 For The Sake Of My Family (Part 3)

    Daimon was a bit confused at Ereman''s reaction, even if he didn''t get the terror contractor skill, of he decided to not kill him, he would have made him sign a contract simr to the one used by the academy anyway.

    "Why are you so shocked, of course I wasn''t going to leave you freely wander around, you know?".

    Ereman tried to resist, but his body didn''t obey him as he answered in a monotone voice.

    "That''s because without anyone knowing, we skin tailors aren''t affected by soul contracts¡­ not even other undead know about this, we work for the sake of our race only because we will die in a short period of time and we can''t cultivate, so we have no chances of ruling the ck marsh gxy".

    "So even if on the surface you made me sign a soul contract, I would have only feigned to be bound by it and then I would have notified my superior, so they will send someone to take care of you".

    "But now I can''t find the strength to go against your orders, I''m willing to show my loyalty by confessing my most guarded secret, we skin tailors have formed a secret society with the pass of the years, we gather from time to time and badmouth other undead and look for ways to extend our lives".

    "Oh?", Daimon looked rather interested in Ereman''s words.

    So far, the only race where there haven''t been internal strives are the undead, unlike other races they are ruled by just one existence, Szar Inferas also known as the Lich Emperor and the eldest "living" being in the whole ster chart.

    It''s not like there aren''t other half emperors between the undead, but they all respect Szar since he is the wisest among them, and the one who created their noble like lifestyle.

    Contrary to what one would expect, not all the undead look like rotten corpses or abominations of created by sewing parts of different creatures, there are some species which doesn''t look different than humans with the exception of their naturally pale skin tones and different eyes.

    But that only applies for undead who can think which are the minority formed by the species that have always existed, or the "original" undead, all the others were created through experimentation or selective breeding.

    The mad chimera which the hybrid woman created inside of the prison was a degraded version of that, and of course the result was a mere imitation since she wasn''t strong enough to create a decent undead.

    Still, whether they are original or not, thanks to the lich emperor everyone has the right to ascend in the ranks¡­ everyone but the skin tailors which were created to be special, but ultimately disposable.

    And after tens of thousands of years that grievance has created the first known w in the unity of the undead society, but no one cared because skin tailors sign a soul contract to pledge loyalty, or at least that''s what everyone thought, but now Daimon discovered that wasn''t the case.

    The sinister smiling expression of the masked man in front of him made Ereman confirm his previous believing that Daimon isn''t an inquisitor from the light faction, but that only made him fear Daimon even more.

    "Someone who has a light element that harms undead more than the corrosive light of the humans, but without their moral brainwashing¡­ to the point that he didn''t seem to care about my diet as long as I''m not the one killing, in other words he is an unleashed monster", he thought.

    And he was right, while Daimon did feel disgusted by the undead''s custom of eating the meat of other "rational" living beings, it''s not like the guy who became Ereman''s dinner was an acquittance of him, nor a friend or a member of his family¡­ so he didn''t give a damn.

    There was so many things going on in Daimon''s mind, he found an opening the iron wall of the undead, but without further investigation it was just a mere illusion.

    He took out a generic sigil lector and ced it on the table.

    "You will receive further instructionster, for the tiMe being besides the list I gave you, I want a specific report of the people that buy corpses from prisons like you and a detailed list of your sources of information understood?", he said before activating the hollow suit again this disappearing into thin air from Ereman''s point of view.

    Ereman didn''t see anything but he still bowed his head towards the ce where Daimon was a moment ago and then returned to his studio to start working on his new assigned task.

    Aura used space shift and they changed positions from the inside of Ereman''s house to the sky above the town.

    Daimon saw Liz''s confused and slightly angered expression and he sighed.

    "You are wondering why I didn''t kill that guy right?".

    Liz doubted for a moment but she still said what was in her mind.

    "Undead are the worst, a skin tailor was involved in the ambush on which my grandmother was lethally wounded¡­ sis, mom and me don''t want to have anything to do with them".

    Daimon dragged her into his embrace, he understood how Liz felt, because he has the same kind of hatred towards the Naktis, the kind that won''t disappear unless they rip the flesh of their enemy and spile their blood on the ground.<sub> </sub>

    But something Daimon learned thanks to Evangeline was that being blinded by hatred is never a good thing, hatred is a motivation and good weapon against your enemies as long as the one in control is you.

    "And that''s why we will make them pay, using that guy we will discover whoever was involved in that and I will personally hand them to you three, even if have to turn the whole ck marsh gxy upside down to find them".

    "But for now, those guys will be useful to secure the future of our family, okay?".

    Daimon caressed Liz''s face a couple of times, although she acts childish and all that, she has neverined nor said anything about his decisions before.

    Liz rubbed her face against Daimon''s hand and after a moment of contemtion, she nodded.

    "You are our husband, if you say it is for the sake of our family then I won''tin¡­ but you will have to exin it to mom?", she said as she stuck her tongue at him.

    Daimon smiled seeing Liz returning to her usual yful self, but her words were actually true.

    Liz and ine didn''t get to know their grandmother, so while they have something against undead for that, their hatred for them is just a little fraction of what Erin must feel, on the other hand, Erin is not recognized as the most cunning woman in the whole ster chart for anything, there is no way she is as narrow minded as to deny a chance to find out who caused her mother''s death.

    In other words, just by letting the small fishes free to wander around, they will bait and catch the shark.

    He kissed Liz and then nodded at Aura, it was nearly midnight by now and they still had to return to the mansion and take a bath, because who knows what the things that he touched in Ereman''s house might have covered with.

    Daimon shook his head to get rid of the thought and instead focused on all the things he will have to take care of this weekend when they return to the Revy family.

    "Sigh, scheming is not as fun as shing swords for me, luckily, I have Erin and ine for that¡­ I have to prepare a good gift so those two don''t use me of favoritism hahaha".

    The rest of the travel back was just the usual, both Aisha and Liz clung onto Daimon while Aura pouted, because she couldn''t do it since using space shift required her to focus all her attention on the points, she connects to create the shortcut.

    But then she licked her lips and her tail wagged as she spoke out loud.

    "Since you two are taking advantage of the situation, it''s only fair that I get to have the first turn once we arrive at the mansion, or more urately once we are in the bathroom ?".

    Aisha who was kissing Daimon, nearly bit his lips due to Aura''s shameless words, she stopped the kiss and replied.

    "No way, it''s a mother''s duty to help her son bath, besides it''s quitete already and my darling needs to rest after using demon light, so tonight we will only pamper him ?".

    Liz saw Aisha separating from Daimon to argue with Aura and she didn''t miss the chance to "monopolize" him.

    She dragged him into her arms and buried his face between her breasts.

    "If that''s the case who can be better than this older sister, to spoil "little Daimon", just like back then hehehe ?".

    Both Aura and Aisha turned to see Liz and as if they have practiced it before they said.

    "You cunning fox woman".

    Lizughed, "Arguing between each other is prohibited in the family, right Daimon¡­ hyaaa ?".

    Daimon smiled, he firmly spanked Liz, as he whispered.

    "Calling me little Daimon is also asking to be punished".

 Chapter 116 Relaxing In The Bath R-18

    After using space shift a couple more of times, they returned to the mansion, and as expected it was past midnight already.

    Daimon and the girls undressed as soon as they set foot into the mansion, the hollow suit was proof of stains and odors or anything else that could be traced, so there was no need to wash it, they just returned it to the ck cases and then walked towards the bathroom.

    Just like Aisha previously stated, it waste so tonight they would just go to sleep without any "family activities", but that didn''t prevent them from having a bit of fun in the bathroom.

    Before Daimon could react, his mother and Liz were each using their bodies to soap both of his sides, while Aura rubbed herself against his front body.

    With each move, the foam increased giving Daimon a slippery yetfortable sensation, as their smooth skin rubbed against him.

    Daimon closed his eyes and simply let the girls spoil him, although he is the one who normally takes the lead, this kind of y isn''t bad from time to time.

    He got so engrossed in the moment, that without noticing he got an erection.

    "Mm?", Aura who was using her whole front body to clean Daimon was the first to notice it, due to the difference in height, she felt something hard poking against the upper part of her stomach.

    Aura stopped moving her body and used her hands to massage his dick.

    "Hehehe, if you ask me, he doesn''t look that tired Aisha ?", she said as her tail happily wagged seeing Daimon reacting at her body.

    Liz licked her lips; she turned to see Aisha and then spoke in a pleading tone.

    "Let''s help our hubby calm down, just one time and then we go to sleep pleaseee".

    Aisha sighed, "Fox and wolf in heat", she thought.

    "Fine, but we''ll only use our mouths, the goal is to please my darling without him doing anything got it?".

    Daimon was quite amused by the situation, but he just followed the act by sitting on a little bath chair in the corner of the bathroom.

    The girls sat on the floor between his legs, Aura gave his dick a few strokes and then started licking the tip as if it was a popsicle.

    Since Aura was focusing on the ns, Liz and Aisha used their tongues to lick on the shaft, Daimon was marveled at the enticing sight of three beauties giving him head.

    Without any warning, Aura suddenly swallowed the whole tip, her cute little mouth was stuffed with Daimon''s dick.

    "Kuhh", Daimon let out a pleased sound feeling Aura''s warm slippery mouth enveloping his thing, not only that she also moved her tongue around his ns to increase the pleasure.

    "Hmmm ?", Aura looked upwards just to see Daimon smiling at her as he patted her head.

    She smiled and ced her hands on his thighs then started moving her head up and down, swallowing nearly half of his dick which was her limit for the time being, but it was more than enough to make Daimon feel a shiver running through his spine.

    While Aura kept giving him head, Liz and Aisha focused on licking the base of his shaft, at some point they also started touching themselves making the bathroom fill with wet sounds and the sweet enticing fragrance of their nectar.

    ? Liz looked at Aura hugging all the fun for herself and she smirked.

    "Hyaaa", Aura suddenly stopped what she was doing and let out a high-pitched sound, she turned her head and saw Liz pulling on her tail.

    "What the hell are you doing Liz?".

    Liz shrugged, "We all sisters have to share and you were keeping the best part for you".

    In a rare asion Aisha nodded agreeing with Liz.

    "That''s right, I also want to taste more of my darling ?"

    "My tail is quite sensitive you know? I''m not using mana to reinforce my body right now", she mumbled as she gave Daimon an aggrieved gaze, she was trying to please him and Liz interrupted her.

    Daimon found this "bullied" Aura rather cute, "Don''t fight you three, Liz don''t y with other people''s tail without their permission, let''s all y together".

    Aura smiled, she stuck her tongue at Liz and then continued sucking on Daimon''s dick, but this time around after a couple of minutes, she switched and Aisha took over, she licked her lips and then slowly swallowed her son''s thing.

    Aisha felt as if she was drowning in the manly smell of Daimon''s penis, but she didn''t stop for too long because soon Liz willin if she didn''t switch.<sub> </sub>

    *Shlick*

    *Shlick*

    Unlike Aura, it was a bit easier for her to take Daimon''s thing and soon, sloppy wet sounds echoed through the bathroom, as she sucked on it.

    She was going so rough at it, that Daimon had to ce his hand on her head to make her reduce her pace, in order to not immediately cum, the sight of his mother sucking him off was enough for him to feel his ejaction building up.

    Aisha didn''t mind, she let her son use her mouth as he pleased and instead focused on fingering herself, making her pussy get wetter.

    After a couple of minutes, she unwillingly let go of Daimon''s dick and then Liz took over, being thest one was bad because she has been dying to participate, but on the other hand she will be the first to get her share of Daimon''s white fluid.

    She gave Daimon a charming gaze and without saying anything she swallowed his whole thing down, out of the three she had the bigger body which allowed her to take it nearly to the base.

    Liz felt the thing inside her mouth throb a bit and she closed her eyes and immediately moved her head up and down; the idea was to finish it as soon as possible to go to sleep after all.

    Daimon knew he was not going tost too much, so he waved his hands and his mother and Aura hugged his harms, before he used his middle fingers to rub the outer area of their vaginas.

    This time Liz didn''t say anything, while Daimon was making Aisha and Aura moan, she was enjoying the taste of his precum, just the smell was making her juices drip form her pussy.

    Daimon smiled, "I used to not like "Charm" since it caused me problems the very first time it activated, but they seem to enjoy it quite a bit", he thought.

    After so many years, his pheromones naturally enticed his girls, without activating the skill it didn''t affect them to the point where they drowned in lust, but it was enough to make them horny just by smelling his scent.

    "Mm?", Liz felt Daimon''s penis tremble and then a firm pair of hands pushing her head down, although it was a bit rough, she didn''t feel ufortable, instead she stood still and just received Daimon''s sperm deep in her throat.

    Just by drinking his white stuff, her body reacted by letting out arge amount of love juices as she reached her climax, and she wasn''t the only one.

    "Ahhh ?".

    "Nnngh ?".

    Aisha and Aura moaned, they came together with Daimon, because he suddenly rubbed their insides with his middle finger, while also massaging their little pink pearls with his thumbs.

    Once Liz ha her fill, Daimon removed his hand and she pulled out his thing out of her mouth, Aisha grabbed it with her hands and then shoved it down her mouth, she happily hummed as she drank his sperm.

    She unwillingly let go of it for Aura, which only put the tip inside her mouth and then sucked on it to have her share, while being gentle and careful enough so her canines didn''t hit him.

    *Phew*, Daimon let out a pleased sigh, he smiled at the girls, while Aura was making sure to not waste even a single drop, he dragged Aisha and Liz into his embrace and caressed their hair.

    They leaned their bodies against Daimon and simply enjoyed his caresses, even if before they "argued" a bit, at the end of the day they all ended resting in his arms together.

    With a little "pop", Aura took stopped sucking on him, she sat on hisp and hugged Daimon, to enjoy the aftertaste of her orgasm.

    Daimon felt his whole body rxing, terror contractor was connected to overlord''s pride, so he needed to let out some steam after using it, and the girls dly helped him to calm down.

    "Let''s clen ourselves and then straight to the bed okaydies?".

    The girls nodded, they quickly washed their bodies and mouths and then left the bathroom.

    Inside of the bedroom they all dried off and without putting any clothes theyid down together on the bed, today Aisha took the main spot sleeping over the body of her son, while Liz and Aura rested their heads on his shoulders while hugging his arms.

    Daimon gave a goodnight kiss to the three of them, they closed their eyes and their breaths slowed down as they entered thend of dream, not without also saying goodnight to Evangeline and Narasha of course.

    Inside the storage, Narasha sighed, "I hope I get my physical form soon¡­ I also want to join in the fun".

    Listening to what her partner in situation was saying, Evangeline felt a bitplex, she has somehow started longing to have a real body too, but on the other hand she was a bit afraid to see Daimon face to face, since she wasn''t sure what would her reaction be like.

    "Sigh, whatever it''s not like I can go out anyway, so there is no use in worrying about it for now", she thought as she closed her eyes to go to sleep.

    As off right now she didn''t know that destiny often likes to y with everyone, and that her words of today will bring her a big surprise, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 117 Survival Class: Cold Weather Version (Part 1)

    The night seemed to pass rather quickly, like most of the days in Lykos when morning came, the sky was clouded, but not everything was the same because unlike yesterday today wasn''t raining but snowing.

    While others had to use more than one nket to prevent being frozen, Daimon had three beauties to keep him warm and cozy.

    "Kuhh", Daimon slowly opened his eyes, feeling fresh as a lettuce, at his right, he saw the cute sleeping face of Aura, her tail was firmly wrapped around his arm, giving him afortable fluffy sensation.

    At his left Liz was clinging to him like with a somewhat smiling expression as she rubbed her thighs together andst but not least, on top of him, Aisha had her face hidden on his chest as she mumbled.

    "Mm darling touch it moree ?".

    Daimonughed, "These three seem to be having quite a nice dream", he thought.

    "Yawnnn ?", a cute yawning sound made Daimon turn to his right just to see Aura cutely rubbing her eyes.

    "Good morning", she said in a sleepy voice.

    Daimon gently moved her body upwards and kissed her pretty lips.

    "Good morning, you are really weak at mornings aren''t you my cute master?".

    Aura stuck her tongue at him, "I only sleep at ces where I feel safe anyway".

    Daimon smiled, he noticed that both Aisha and Liz woke up thanks to him flirting with Aura, but they feigned to be sleeping, which of course meant they were waiting for something.

    "In the tale there is only one sleeping beauty, howe I get two of them", he thought.

    Aura let go of Daimon, she stood up and went ahead to the bathroom, because she knew that staying in the bed would only make her want to sleep more, of course she didn''t forget to sway her ass as she was leaving the room just to sweeten Daimon''s sight.

    Daimon felt amused by her tries to tempt him, unfortunately they woke up a bitte, so the fun would have to wait forter, he dragged both Aisha and Liz into his arms and then kissed one after the other.

    "Good morning you two".

    Aisha was the first one to "wake up", she happily epted her son''s kiss and then opened her eyes.

    "Good morning darling ?".

    Daimon caressed her face and then continued with Liz, but his method was slightly different.

    "Hyaa ?", Daimon spanked her and then pressed his lips against hers.

    "Come on you two, Aura is waiting for us in the bath", he said and then followed Aura.

    Liz rubbed her butt, "You better take responsibility if I start liking this kind of y".

    ¡­

    Leaving that little morning episode aside, they took a quick shower ate their breakfast and took their ways, Aura went to her office while Damon, Aisha and Liz walked to the 1S ssroom.

    Since it was snowing the weather was colder than usually, a perfect excuse for Liz stick as close as possible to Daimon, not like she didn''t do the same on normal days though.

    It didn''t take them long to reach the ssroom, surprisingly they were weed by not only their ssmates and Aliya, even Richard and Boris were already waiting for them.

    "Thanks to the heavens you arrived ss rep, these two old geezers are trying to make us freeze to death", said Calvin which was sitting at Loren''s desk, when he saw them entering the room.

    Richard nodded, "Little Aliya told you before, didn''t she, we don''t know what lies inside of that magic ruin, because none of the scouts were able to even cross the passage near the entrance".

    He then put on a sinister smile, "Lykos has gifted us a perfect chance to take a special outdoor ss, so today there won''t be any theorical ss, instead we will go a tundra so you can get some experience in that scenario".

    Seeing that the students weren''t exactly convinced about it, Boris also shared his opinion.

    "Brats, the sess of instructor Richard is that he thinks outside the box, while others will prefer to just rx and waste the whole day, you will get a valuable experience, besides it''s not like you can refuse anyway".

    From all the students the one which looked morefortable with the idea was Liliana.

    "Sounds good, let''s do it".

    Listening to her friend, Leslie snorted, "You aren''tining because your affinity is ice".<sub> </sub>

    Yvonne sighed, "Forget it Leslie, look at the smiling expression on the face of our ss rep, we are doomed".

    All the attention was suddenly focused in Daimon which was indeed smiling from ear to ear, but the reason wasn''t the current conversation but a familiar feeling inside of his body, he came out of his daze when he felt Aisha tugging on the sleeve of his jacket.

    Noticing that everyone was looking at him, he cleared his throat and answered without knowing thinking about it twice.

    "Yeah sounds like a good idea, there are two fire users among us so we shouldn''t have problems to prepare a campfire".

    Richardughed out loud.

    "Well said kid, just ones thing your storage rings will be confiscated, you will only be able to bring a weapon with you, the ce where I will be taking you all has all the resources you might need, so there is no need to worry about it".

    Calvin nearly fell from Loren''s desk, out of all he was the most screwed since he lived all his life in a extremely hot ce, the which is the main base of the desert coyote n is basically a huge desert with several oases spread through everywhere.

    But since Daimon didn''tin he had no choice but to ept, on the other hand he noticed how Aisha and Liz were hugging Daimon and a bright smile suddenly made its way to his face as he stole a couple of nces at Loren.

    "Ahem, as the young master of the Ghrish family I must serve as an example for others, let''s go".

    Loren chuckled at Calvin''s obvious intentions, but she didn''t say anything.

    Since Daimon agreed that meant Aisha would do the same, the same happened to Leslie and Yvonne since Liliana already spoke on behalf of them, thest one which had a say on the subject was Liz.

    Which just shrugged, "I will go too, of course I won''t use any magic; my only reason to go is to be Daimon''s hugging pillow ?", she said in a yful voice.

    Now that everything was settled, they left the ssroom guided by Boris, which took them to a ce of academy where none of them havee before, because the area is designated only for tutors.

    In front of the member of the elite ss there was a big storage with a letter "S" engraved on the door.

    Boris took out his token of identity and the magic formation scanned it before the door opened for them.

    "Damn!!!".

    That was the collective reaction, of all the students of the elite ss, the only exception was Liz which was smiling, inside the storage there was just one thing¡­ a boat, but that wasn''t the reason of the surprise, but the fact that it not only had sails but some kind of structure attached to the sides.

    Daimon was more than surprised, the structure consisted in sails position in horizontal direction, to resemble wings was and there were also four cylinder like things, two at the end and two at the back.

    He turned to see Liz which had a proud smile on her face, just to hear her saying.

    "That is the first fully operative version of the "antigravity turbine", I mentioned before, surprise!!!".

    Leslie''s eyes sparkled.

    "Is that some kind of flying carriage?".

    "Yes and no, since we have the one that designed it with us right now, then I think the honor of exining that doesn''t belong to me".

    Boris didn''t answer, he instead took a step back and gave the stage light to Liz.

    "This little toy, is a "flying ship", the idea itself isn''t mine though, the humans managed to create one exactly one year ago, but I improved their design¡­ let''s just say that in a race I''m pretty sure we will go and return before they finish their first turn".

    "It''s a project which was assigned to me by the principal, for the time being only the elite ss has this at their disposition, because it is not exactly cheap to make", she said while looking at Daimon.

    Daimon felt the gazes of all his ssmates on his back and he sighed.

    In one of the many sessions of magic forging he took with Liz, he saw her getting a headache on how toplete a project, but as far as he knew it was just a way to create a bigger flying carriage.

    What has been limiting aerial transport is that there is a really low limit on how much weight a flying carriage can carry, also the stability of the fly and things like that, so he just gave Liz a hint.

    Humans don''t sell their blueprints to other races until they have designed a better version for themselves, so this kind of ships aren''t avable in the market right now.

    But apparently, Liz got inspired by Daimon''s words and managed to create her own design¡­ so things will be changing in many ways.

    Besides Liz, Aura and a couple of vice principal which were part of either the Revy or Argent family, no one else knew about this, so you can imagine how surprised were Richard, Boris and Aliya when they were notified about the existence of the flying ship.

    Boris shook his head, "The era is changing so fast¡­ I can just hope we old men can adapt before it''s toote", he thought.

 Chapter 118 Survival Class: Cold Weather Version (Part 2)

    While everyone was going up the flying ship, Daimon couldn''t resist the curiosity and used the truth seeker eyes along with sixth sense, to inspect some parts of the structure, as he expected he found a crap ton of magic formations all over the thing.

    He more or less recognized some of them, he turned to see Liz and mentally sighed.

    "Weight reduction, optical camouge, material solidification, aerodynamic, lessen wind resistance, fireproof, enhanced surface¡­ this girl must have worked really hard on this and she even did it when I wasn''t looking for it to be a surprise".

    Once everyone was on board a transparent dome covered the deck leaving the sails out to fulfill their purpose.

    Boris was the one which received the operation manual of the ship and seeing that Liz didn''t show the slightest interest in piloting he walked towards the captain''s cabin not without saying.

    "Brats the dome reduces the impact caused by the pressure of the wind, but you will still feel it so I suggest you all sitting down until we reach a stable pace, there is apartment inside of the ship, but for this ss you''ll have to stay on the deck".

    "In any case miss Elizabeth and instructor Richard will stay with you, but don''t cause them troubles¡­ that is for you Calvin".

    Not even a few seconds passed when the roof of the storage opened, the ship trembled a bit and then everyone saw the turbines illuminating in a dim blue light before the ship started floating upwards.

    Following Boris advice, everyone sat down and just enjoyed the first trip of the many they will be taking part of in the future, before they left the storage which worked as a hangar, the optical camouge formation activated and the ship became "invisible" for the those which were not travelling on it.

    This ce was isted from the rest of the campus and since the ship was registered under Aura''s authority, only she could see it in the detection formations which covered the academy.

    The ship started advancing forward as it gained height, Richard and Liz remained stood up, the sight of the academy and the city of Latiz from above was quite something else.

    For the students it was different though, the ship was quite stable but there were some slight turbulences from time to time as it gained altitude, the more they went upwards the colder and stronger got the breezes of wind.

    The dome protected them from the snow wince it was a "solid" thing, but the weather was getting colder, and once Boris dived into the clouds the cold reached a point where everyone but Liz and Richard, needed a coat or a jacket.

    As he previously expected, Calvin was the one which was suffering more, he felt a shiver due to the cold, so he took out a coat from his storage ring and wrapped himself on it leaving only his face visible.

    Michaelughed his ass at Calvin''sical appearance.

    "For someone who always brags, you are acting like a wuss Calvin".

    "Try to say that without using mana to warm up your body, you shrimp bastard", said Calvin looking at Michael which had a dim orange brightness around his body.

    Leslie saw Loren''s body trembling and she smiled.

    "Come with us, Leslie will be a heater for us sisters¡­ although Aisha doesn''t seem to need it".

    Yvonne waved her hand at Loren, Leslie was using the same spell as Michael, so she stayed close to her, Liliana on the other hand was indifferent towards the cold weather, so there was a free space which was offered to Loren.

    Loren nodded and she sat next to Leslie, a decision she immediately liked, unlike the others Daimon was the epitome of rx right now, he wasying down on the deck with Aisha using his right shoulder as a pillow both of them sharing their body warm.

    Aliya kept her distance from her students, although she couldn''t use high ranked spells, using fire mana to keep her body warm didn''t affect her.

    Calvin sighed he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, his idea was to do something simr to what Daimon was doing, with Loren of course, but cold hit him like a truck so right now he couldn''t think on something else.

    "Not fair while my ass is freezing, Daimon is living the dream, also that damn old man is doing this on purpose", he thought seeing that they weren''t leaving the clouded area.

    Liz soon got bored of seeing the limitless sky, so while Richard remained on guard in case a flying magic beast casually intercepted them, she alsoid down next to Daimon as feigned to be trembling due to coldness.

    "Warm me up Daimon ?", she whispered while she hugged him.

    The rest of the travel was quite smooth, the flying ship used a simr system to the flying carriage so after entering the coordinates of their destination, the only thing Boris had to do was supervise that they didn''t distance themselves from their path and correct the direction if needed.

    After nearly two hours of flying the ship stopped moving, Boris left the captain''s cabin and he was amused by the different situations in which his students were in, but right now it wasn''t the time for that.

    As the ship descended, everyone stood up and gathered around Boris and Richard.

    Daimon tried to see if he could recognize where they were, on past years Aura took him to a coupe of ces but they weren''t that far from the Revy n, also thanks to the magic formations he couldn''t really calcte how fast they were moving.

    Richard judged their reactions and he smirked.<sub> </sub>

    "I''m pretty sure none of you have been here, this ce extends for thousands of kilometers, the frozen fields of Halia, in my whole time as an instructor no one has cleared this training".

    "The mission is to find some certain things that were hid here back when I was younger, in less than 72 hours of course, also you will have to reach the peak of the biggest mountain, because we will pick you up there".

    "Just so you know this will be the easiest among the many scenarios I will bring you to, the idea is for me to see what are your current survival capabilities".

    "Flying is not allowed of course¡­ also I won''t interfere unless you are about to die so be careful", he added while stealing a couple of nces at Liz.

    "If you don''t have any questions chose the weapon you need and then give me your rings, so that the ss can start".

    Narasha''s eyes glowed.

    "Daimon, I want to go out to y".

    Daimon smiled, from the very beginning he was going to use Disaster or more urately Gram, because of two reasons, first because Narasha wanted to and second because he was supposed to not have a storage item, so the guns were out of question since the bullets will be "limited".

    Richard frowned his brows, Liz forged a special sheath which changed its shape along with the form used and also covered the aura radiated by Narasha, so only Gram''s hilt was visible right now, but that was enough to make Richard feel threatened since his affinity is darkness.

    Surprisingly the only ones using broadswords were Daimon and Aisha, Calvin had a Warhammer, Yvonne used a bow, Leslie had a fan with metal spikes, Liliana chose a rapier, Michael a dagger andstly Loren who used a Morningstar.

    Calvin nodded seeing Loren''s weapon of chose, "We are made for each other after all", he thought.

    As they handed their rings to Aliya, Yvonne suddenly remembered the mission assigned to them by Richard.

    "We are supposed to bring some things back from the tundra, but without our rings how are we supposed to carry them?".

    Richard nodded, "You are right, here take this", he said as he handed everyone a bag.

    "I nearly forgot to mention it, but each one of you must retrieve something, because this is both a team and individual test, anything else you want to say?".

    Daimon and the others shook their heads, the shipnded and they got off the deck, Boris purposely left them at the entrance of the tundra, so they will have to walk all the way towards the mountain.

    The ship floated again and the concealment formation activated thus making it disappear from the eyes of others.

    Unlike back at the academy, the snowing in this ce was quite heavier and due to the difference in the horary zone, it was earlier here.

    Daimon looked at their surroundings, there were a lot of rock formations about one kilometer away from them, so it was important to decide the next course of action.

    "Liliana, Yvonne can you two feel how strong will it snow in the next hours?".

    "Mm?", they both nodded nodded, she closed her eyes and focused her attention on the sky, the snow eagle n has a high affinity with ice and Yvonne has an excellent pair of eyes, so while one felt how strong was the ice mana of the clouds above them, the other saw the flow of the mana.

    They discussed between each other and then reached a conclusion.

    "It''s going to be snowing like this for about four hours, then it should go down".

    Calvin stretched his body feeling all stiff due to the cold, luckily Richard didn''t take his coat away, so at the very least he could manage to not freeze.

    "ss rep, let''s find a ce to stay while this stupid weather gets a bit better, we don''t have mana recovery potions, so it''s better if we travel in a moment where we don''t need to use that much mana to protect our bodies".

    Daimon nodded, he pointed at one of the small rock formations and gave his orders.

    "We''ll make a temporal camp in that ce".

    From the sky Richard and Aliya were evaluating their decisions.

    "Not bad, others would have tried to advance as much as they could before finding a ce to rest, but to fight one must think first¡­ and believe me you will need to fightter", thought Richard.

 Chapter 119 Survival Class: Cold Weather Version (Part 3)

    The snowing was getting worse so the elite ss started walking towards the rock formations, Michael apparently had quite a bit of experience camping outdoors, so he offered himself to make an improvised map.

    The snow was going to cover any traces, so Michael instead took note of certain specific things as referenceter, it didn''t take them too much time to reach their destination.

    Now it was Calvin''s turn, he ced his hands on the rock and checked to see if the structure of the rock was safe to dig a cave, after a moment of contemtion he nodded.

    "Ladies give me some space please, my ass is freezing so I will go as fast as I can", said Calvin as he started using terraforming to open a breach on the rock, this was just a resting point so with a shallow cave would be enough.

    Yvonneughed seeing that Calvin was actually putting some effort into finishing the cave soon.

    "The next time we see Calvin being azy ass, we''ll just ask Liliana to turn him into a popsicle".

    While everyoneughed, Daimon called Michael.

    "I saw some small trees on the way so let''s go collect branches for a campfire, I don''t want you and Leslie wasting mana, since only you two have fire affinity, Liliana youe too just in case".

    They both nodded, the others stayed behind and they went to get some materials, the floor of the tundra was treacherous and irregr, while some parts had rock below, there were hole which seemed normal due to the thickyer of snow which covered thendscape.

    That''s why Daimon brought Liliana with them, she used small amounts of mana to solidify the snow as she walked to prevent an ident from happening, soon they reached a small batch of trees which were near their previous position.

    *sh*

    Daimon''s nails changed into ws which he used to cut the branches of the tree, Liliana and Michael were surprised at how easily the wood was being cut, which made Daimon remember this was the first time they saw him using his "werewolf" characteristics.

    Michael sighed, he instead used his dagger to remove the sharp ends of the branches and then put them on the bag along with some rocks, for easy transportation.

    "Mm?", Daimon noticed a little waving movement in the snow near Liliana, he extended his hand towards Michael who handed him his dagger, with a swift maneuver he threw the dagger and the snow was suddenly dyed in red.

    Liliana''s eyes widened, she approached the dagger and saw the thing which was impaled with it, a white snake of about two meters long with a t triangle like head.

    Michael retrieved his dagger and cleaned the blood with snow and then inspected the snake, to see if it was edible.

    "Its quite long and the fans aren''t hollow so its not poisonous, looks like we found our lunch, I will clean it now so there won''t be blood near the cave".

    Daimon nodded, he using the truth seeker eyes he confirmed Michael''s supposition just in case, stomach ache or food poisoning would be ame way to fail the trial after all.

    While Michael made some cuts on the body of the snake to bleed it out which prevented the meat to keep a bloody stench, Liliana gathered some mushrooms, one of the best ways to warm up the body is a good te of soup, besides they didn''t have spices so boiling the meat along with some other ingredients will give a better result than just grilling it.

    Evangelineughed at Daimon''s assigned task, since his ws were really sharp then he carved spoons, bowls and cups using pieces of wood

    "What kind of werewolf makes bowls and spoons with his ws", she said in a yful voice.

    "The kind that doesn''t like tasteless meals I guess¡­ also in case you forgot I''m a vampire", Daimon thought.

    After nearly twenty minutes, everyone finished their tasks, Michaelpletely cleaned the snake now he only needed to peel the skin and cut it into cubes but that will be done in the cave for now he just ced the snake on his shoulder.

    "Calvin should have finished by now, let''s go back".

    <o>,m Daimon was happy with the results so they returned with the others, Calvin did a good job making a shallow space in thedder of the rock formation, spacious enough to shelter them from the snow and wind.</o>

    Leslie took the bag with the branches and rocks and moved to the center of the shelter to start preparing the campfire.

    Michael started peeling the snake not before giving some work to Calvin.

    "It won''t be long before I finish preparing this, make a pot with a rock so everyone can eat, we will move as much as we canter, so it''s better for us to eat and rest while we can".

    Daimon already did his part so he sat down and just remained on guard, of course Liz sat down next to him to make himpany, the magic beasts of this ce had white skin or fur to camouge themselves, to if you weren''t paying attention, you''ll be bitten by something.

    Calvin also finished the pot, he ced the rocks around the branches to make an elevated tform on which he put the pot, Leslie lit up the fire and once it was hot enough Liliana created a piece of ice which melted in the pot.<sub> </sub>

    "The water created with mana is safe to drink, Lili''s ice is clean", said Leslie.

    Aisha smiled, she, Yvonne and Loren took the meat and the mushrooms and washed them taking some water from the pot with a cup.

    "Leave the rest to us".

    While the girls prepared the soup, Calvin let out a sigh of relief he sat near the campfire to warm his body and recover his mana.

    Liz inspected the rough craft of the wood spoons and tes and she chuckled, as she imagined Daimon carving them.

    Daimon sighed, "Next time I will condition those old men to leave us bring some things, I can''t stab someone with a spoon anyway", he thought.

    After some time, the cave was filled with a faint but appetizing smell, since Yvonne was the one that did less, she was in charge of serving the soup to everyone.

    They sat around the fire and ate, it was rather simple since they didn''t have spices at their disposition, but Aisha and Loren managed to make it tasty by grinding the mushrooms and adding them to the soup.

    As always Daimon earned Calvin''s admiration when he saw both Liz and Aisha personally feeding him, he turned to see Loren and coughed a couple of times.

    "Ahem, I feel a bit tired of using terraforming to create the cave".

    Yvonne smirked, "What tired, terraforming consumes such a little amount of mana, stop whining and drink the soup directly from the bowl".

    Calvin gritted his teeth, "Come on I just mocked Leslie once, leave me alone already".

    Lorenughed, she hit Yvonne''s shoulder and then to everyone''s surprise she actually offered Calvin a spoon of soup, which he happily epted.

    Leslie shook her head, she swallowed her soup and then patted Loren''s shoulder.

    "Ren be careful to not fall in the ws of a Calvin, coyotes are sly creatures".

    Liliana nodded, "Indeed, beasts from the desert are trickery".

    Calvin snorted, since Loren stopped feeding him, he gulped down the contents of her bowl in one go and thenid down on the floor.

    "Oi, what kind of delinquent do you think I am, I the young master of the Ghrish family I''m the most chivalrous first year student".

    As always, the atmosphere of the elite ss became more rxed thanks to Calvin''s antics, just like Liliana and Yvonne predicted the weather got worse, the wind howled and the light dimmed as the sky got even more clouded than before.

    It was to the point that the campfire projected their shadows in the wall of the cave as if it was night, Calvin added more branched to the campfire and then everyoneid down near it.

    Daimon frowned his brows, if it kept snowing so heavily then it was going to be a pain the ass to move, also there were magic beasts which emerged when the weather was worse to hunt just in case and the campfire was easy to detect.

    "We''ll take thirty minutes turns to watch the entrance, Calvin and Loren you two take the first, then Liliana and Yvonne will take over, okay?".

    Calvin gave thumbs up to Daimon and closed the distance between him and Loren, for munication purposes" of course.

    Liz saw Daimon''s serious expression and she hugged him.

    "Don''t forget I''m here, besides those two old men are still supervising this whole thing, so nothing will happen".

    Aisha also clung to her son, the warmness of their bodiesbined, giving them afortable sensation as they cuddled.

    "Let''s rest a bit darling, we can''t go outside anyway, so the best thing we can do right now is wait".

    Daimon doubted for a moment but he still nodded, even with sixth sense, he didn''t feel any danger, but he had a slight ufortable feeling which he couldn''t exin, so he kept one hand on Gram''s hilt just in case.

 Chapter 120 Into The Storm (Part 1)

    Outside of the tundra or more urately on the sky above it, Boris and Richard were drinking and chatting.

    Boris frowned his brows at the current scene below them.

    "Now that I think about it, what are the things hidden in this ce, back then we didn''t find anything besides low rank magic beasts?".

    Richard shrugged.

    "I don''t know, back then the teacher which designed the test used a magic formation to spread a variety of "prizes" across this ce and we didn''t find anything".

    "Mm?", Aliya took a sip of her potion.

    "Uncle Richard, weren''t you the one that created this exploration ss?".

    Richard smiled, "No, the author was a guest teacher called Andras Griffin".

    Boris nearly choked with his drink.

    "Instructor¡­ if you would have told me that, I would have put more effort in the test back then".

    "Don''t think on trying to use your mana sense now, the Greenwich sage visited this ce after bing a peak Archmage to change the prizes, "A gift for the younger generation of the beast faction", he said before leaving without exining anything else".

    Richard smirked as if he suddenly remembered something funny.

    "Did you know that Arthur Jolbaris once tried to "cheat" and took whatever was left here, the result was that not only he didn''t find anything, but all the stores and goods produced by the Jolbaris suffered a penalization in the blue-sky gxy".

    Aliya sighed, "That guy likes to mess with others, I''m pretty sure that if Arthur Jolbaris tried that before he became a peak Archmage, he could have gotten something, but the Greenwich sage wasn''t famous before, so no one cared about him".

    Richard nodded.

    "Exactly, that''s why when the news of him spread, the first thing he did wasing here and leave some of his books for the library, then he changed the prizes of the trial so that only star ranked mages could detect them".

    "I have high hopes for these brats, let''s see if they can unveil the mystery and also be the first ones to approve this game set by the Greenwich Sage".

    Aliya''s eyes seemed to glow for a moment, "With Daimon''s talent for alchemy, if the Greenwich Sage left something rted to that, he should be able to find it", she thought.

    While the teachers were talking about the origin of the trial, in a cave about two kilometers away from them, Daimon and the others weren''t having it so easy.

    After Yvonne and Liliana took the turn to be on guard, the storm became worse to the point that it wasn''t snow but hail, big pieces of ices impacted against the rock formation in which the cave was carved making it tremble from time to time.

    Calvin rose the floor to make a barricade to prevent the snow from flooding the cave.

    "I know the instructor wants to train us, but this isn''t a test but a murder attempt, the hail out there can crush us to death".

    Daimon agreed, ice can be stronger than steel so without using battle aura even with his monstrous physique he could get hurt by the car size hail which was falling from the sky, but that wasn''t what worried him the most¡­ but the fact that Richard and the other teachers should have stopped the test by now.

    He turned to see Liz, unlike the students of course she didn''t hand over her ring so she had her sigil lector with her, although she didn''t have the contact of Boris, Richard, she had the one of Aliya.

    "Liz, I want to confirm something, try contacting Aliya".

    Liz nodded; she took out her sigil lector but then her expression became serious.

    "It''s not working, there is interference maybe due to the storm outside¡­ but we are not that far from where the flying ship should be floating, so I don''t think that''s the case".

    The atmosphere of the cave became tenser, if they couldn''t contact those outside of the storm and apparently the storm didn''t look bad enough for Richard to interrupt the ss, then it was obvious things weren''t so simple.

    Daimon contemted their options for a moment, and then stood up.

    "Given the current situation we won''t care about the rules of the test anymore, Liz let''s go outside to see if we can send some kind of signal so the instructor can know what is happening".

    Daimon and Liz jumped over the barricade, then Liz extended her hand towards the sky and a column of fire was shot from her hand, the best method to draw the attention was a simple re.

    The only problem was that as soon as the fire left her hand¡­ it extinguished, Liz snorted and then used the fire she can create thanks to the heat and light of the sun she has absorbed.

    Her body covered in a thinyer of yellow/orange mes as she mumbled.

    "Crown fire".<sub> </sub>

    This time the re properly soared upwards but about three hundred meters the mes suddenly impacted against something.

    Liz immediately stood in front of Daimon and looked at her surroundings.

    "Let''s go back inside the cave, I can''t feel where is thising, but that wasn''t a barrier¡­ it''s a domain, also I felt some weird mana radiations across the ce, but I can''t investigate more without exposing our position".

    Daimon nodded and they slowly returned to the cave where the others were prepared to leave if it was needed, but apparently that wasn''t going to be the case.

    Yvonne looked at Daimon''s serious expression and she frowned her brows.

    "What is happening outside, were you able to send a signal to the flying ship?".

    Liz shook her head, she looked at Daimon for confirmation, her supposition wasn''t exactly positive and panic is thest thing needed in this situation.

    "Tell them, it''s not like we know exactly what is happening anyway".

    Liz nodded, "I couldn''t, my mes got blocked at a certain height¡­ to be honest I consider myself to be among the strongest Archmages in the ster chart and I couldn''t see where does the domain originates from".

    "But I did feel some faint traces of other existences spread across the tundra, luckily my mes didn''t draw their attention because the domain extinguished them,

    Calvin sighed.

    "So, in other words, we are trapped with an unknown really strong Arch ranked, or maybe a possible new half emperor?".

    Daimon nodded, "Yes and that is not all, there are others inside this domain besides us, so we might have identally gotten ourselves involved into something shady, so now the question is do we try to escape or we go ask those guys what are they doing here".

    Liliana doubted for a moment before looking at Liz.

    "In your opinion what is dangerous, those weird mana radiations you felt or the owner of the domain?".

    Liz shrugged.

    "Well, I could feel those guys whoever they are, so at the very least I can confirm they are below me in battle prowess, the only problem is that I can''t pinpoint how strong they are, but judging by how they were spread across the ce, they are looking for something so it''s only a matter of time before they find us".

    "On the other hand, the owner of the domain could have probably attacked me when my mes shed against it, but nothing happened so at the very least I can say that we aren''t its enemies¡­ or its main focus of attention aren''t us".

    Michael shook his head, "I think we should try to leave, it''s not like we are going to ignore what is happening, but I think we should bring another Archmage at least, no offenses miss Revy".

    Liz didn''t take it personally, fighting while protecting others it''s hard to do after all, and her affinity is not exactly good in defensive terms.

    Leslie, Loren, Yvonne, Liliana and even Calvin agreed with Michael so the decision was taken.

    "Ok, we retire, Liz protect us with a barrier, we will take advantage of the hail storm to return from where we came, no flying just in case", said Daimon before he looked at Michael.

    "Michael you are in charge of guiding us".

    Since no one argued they left the cave, it would be a waste of time to use terraforming to cover the it, so Liliana just created ayer of ice to cover their trace.

    Although the hail destroyed many of the reference points Michael took note of, some were still intact, so even when the visibility was reduced due to the strong windbined with snow, it didn''t take them too long to reach their starting point.

    "Everyone stop", Daimon told the others to stop moving and then extended his hand until he felt it touching something, the thing was transparent as he could see what lied ahead, and it was cold to the touch.

    "This is ice¡­ Liz try to make a hole in this thing", mumbled Daimon.

    Liz''s hands covered in yellow/orange mes and she ced them on the ice barrier, after a couple of seconds it started showing some signs of melting as water ran down the ce where Liz''s mes were touching but it didn''tst long.

    As if time was rewinding, the water returned to the barrier and it solidified again, Liz increased the output of her mes and managed to create a hole with a size of about 30 centimeters, then the same thing happened again.

    Just as Liz was about to use a proper spell for her third try, everyone heard a loud cracking sound.

    "Mm?", Daimon looked downwards.

    "Everyone watch out¡­!!!".

    The floor cracked below them and before anyone could react, they fell into the darkness of the bottom of the earth.

 Chapter 121 Into The Storm (Part 2)

    After the floor split apart Daimon''s vision cked out for a second but then everything became clear, he was inside of some kind of hollow space with walls made of ice and he was falling at a strangely slow speed.

    Seeing that the others weren''t at his sides anymore he immediately tried to contact Aisha and Liz, thanks to core synchrony they couldmunicate using their minds which maintained a slight connection even when the skill wasn''t active due to the secondary core in their bodies.

    "Mom, Liz!!!", he shouted on his mind.

    "I''m ok darling, I''m falling but the speed is actually slow so there won''t be any problems to safelynd".

    "Me too, I can''t see the end of this tunnel though¡­ and I can''t fly nor use a movement spell for some reason".

    Daimon heard Aisha and Liz''s answering in his mind and he let out a sigh of relief, core synchrony proved to be his best skill one more time, he shook his head and then tried to use blink only to sh against the ice wall.

    He dusted off his clothes and used the truth seeker eyes, there were some kind of silver particles integrated in the ice which somehow reminded him what he saw back then, the first time Erin used space shift to take to the Argent family.

    "The ice is blocking teleportation, no flying or movement spell¡­ what the hell is going on?", he thought.

    "Evangeline howe themunication with core synchrony isn''t blocked but I can''t get out of this ce?".

    "If I use core synchrony, can I force my way out?".

    ¡­

    After a moment Evangeline answered in a doubtful voice.

    "Core synchrony is an anomaly even for the system, but blink is the lowest form of teleportation, whoever created this ice added a spatial lock so you can''t teleport¡­ it''s not a matter of strength, unless yourprehension in thew of space is higher than the creator of this ice tunnel you won''t be able to teleport".

    "Now if you really want to leave this ce then, you know what to do".

    Daimon frowned his brows,prehendingws isn''t simple, it''s been eight years since that day he got inspiration due to Erin''s space shift, and although he got affinity with the space his progress hasn''t gone up, the proof is that the skill hasn''t leveled at all.

    He has realized that the system is a great cheat indeed, but it is too square in some aspects, getting a skill of an element doesn''t mean he gets the mastery of said element, so he hasn''tcked off in any sense when ites to his studies in magic or the knight path.

    That''s why his battle prowess outsses those on his same level, even as a five star knight his body can easily outpower that of an eight-star knight, and using his battle aura he isn''t afraid of no one below the lord realms.

    Do not underestimate the strength gap between one star, an eight-star ranked knight has a strength of about 12 tons using his battle aura while a ninth star knight doubles that amount reaching an incredible number of 25 tons when using battle aura of course.

    Daimon doubted, he had a way to flee but only he and his soulmates wille, the others had no rtion to him in the terms of the system so they would be left behind.

    "Wait a second, sixth sense didn''t activate, truth seeker eyes could see through the spacew particles in the ice, so the only reason for sixth sense to not work is¡­".

    "There is no threat, as expected of my host, you managed to notice that little but quite important detail, so as a reward I can confirm that there is no malice in what happened, the floor gave in as a result of Liz trying to break a hole in the domain", said Evangeline in a melodious voice.

    Daimon sighed, there was no guarantee that sixth sense was fail proof, someone way stronger than him might be able to trick him, as it is bases in Daimon''s instincts after all, but Evangeline on the other hand couldn''t be deceived.

    The only problem is that the system prohibited her from giving him all the answers, he had to put some effort and only then she could give him a hint, ultimately Evangeline was there to help him, not to solve his problems for him, or he would just depend on the system for everything and that wasn''t the goal.

    There were exceptions though, if his life was imminent danger for example, but he hasn''t been in that kind of situation¡­ since that day when he fought against the manticore of course.

    Daimon shook his head,

    "That restriction is a bit annoying if you ask me, but I guess I can''t rely on the system for everything, whatever I guess I will have to go and see, why were we brought here instead of being attacked by the domain".

    "Mom, Liz, follow the ice tunnel to the end, I will se you there¡­ if something happens don''t worry the thing, I gave you will keep you safe, okay?".

    "Mm".

    "Got it"

    "Now I can just hope the others are okay too, don''t die yet I''m starting to enjoy hanging around with you all", he thought.

    Although Daimon couldn''t use blink to get out of the ice tunnel, nothing prevented him from using it to fall faster, so his image repeatedly shed downwards, the tunnel was quiterge as it took him about twenty times of using blink to reach the end of it, if you take into ount that he advanced 100 meters per use¡­ then that was 2 kilometers below the surface of the.

    "Damn, the highest skyscraper back on earth wasn''t even half of the distance of this stupid tunnel".<sub> </sub>

    Once he reached the bottom of the tunnel, just as he expected there was a path already set for him to follow, the floor was made of ice too, and there was a "convenient" breach in one of the ice walls that led to another ce.

    After inspecting it with truth seeker eyes he didn''t see any traps hidden, so he walked into it, on the other side there was a spacious cave which led to another and that kept repeating, it was basically a system of caves connected to each other.

    But no matter how much he advanced, he didn''t see another path opened for the others to encounter with him, also the caves seemed to have a specific same size, which led Daimon to think this was some kind of illusion, until he reached a different space.

    "What the hell is this", in front of him there was a huge gate made of ice with an inscription on anguage he couldn''t understand, even using truth seeker eyes, the words just blurred as if something prevented him from reading it.

    Apparently, it wasn''t on purpose, because he took out a camera from his storage and the photo properly captured the weird inscription without any blur.

    "Mom is for sure going to love investigating this", he thought.

    "Are you two still in the tunnel?".

    "I reached the bottom darling; I''m following the only path avable for me".

    "I''m still falling, in fact I can''t see the end of this thing".

    Daimon contemted things for a moment, he only reached the end of the tunnel so fast because he could use blink, but his mother is already walking in the cave system without having elerated her fall.

    "Mom, how long was the tunnel approximately?".

    Aisha doubted for a moment and then gave him her answer.

    "About eight hundred meters or one kilometer at most I would say".

    "It could be that the tunnels were designed ording to our realms, besides Liz I have the highest realm if we consider I''m a five-star ranked knight, mom I will wait here, please tell me when you reach the end of the path".

    "Okay".

    After saying that, they stopped themunications, Daimon sat down on a rock and simply waited, Aisha is a peak two-star mage, so if the same applied to the others, they should arrive at the gate almost at the same time, the only exception was Liz.

    After nearly ten minutes a breach opened in the ice and Aisha''s lovely figure appeared from it, the first thing she did was hug Daimon.

    "It''s good to see you darling ?".

    Daimon frowned his brows; he then spoke in a loud indifferent tone.

    "I don''t consider you an enemy since this doll of yours didn''t harbor any bad intention, but if you try to trick me again, I will personally melt this whole ce down"

    ¡­

    Silence, sepulchral silence remained the "Aisha" which was hugging Daimon disappeared leaving behind just a little doll made out of ice which broke after the illusion ended, then a hoarse but calm voice echoed through the cave.

    "I noticed you had a strangely strong soul, but to think you easily saw through my mirage spell, remarkable indeed, who are you kid?".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Shouldn''t you present yourself first, before asking another their name?".

    The voiceughed out loud.

    "Sorry, it''s been some time since spoke with someone, also that is a human custom, and in case you doubt it I''m not human, but you aren''t also¡­ how weird I can''t pinpoint to which race to belong to, are you a hybrid perhaps".

    "Ahh I nearly forgot, you can call me Dimas, also now that I confirmed you aren''t part of those guys, your friends will be arriving soon¡­ even the woman with that scary fire".

    Treat others like they treat you, it''s a good philosophy.

    "My name is Daimon; we''ll continue this once they are here".

 Chapter 122 Unknown Undercurrents (Part 1)

    After presenting himself Dimas remained silent, until the others including Liz arrived at the same ce where Daimon was, this time they were the real deal.

    Everyone looked at their surroundings, of course what attracted the most attention was the giant ice door, with the exception of Liz and Aisha whose vision was filled with just one thing¡­ Daimon.

    They immediately sat next to him, besides the truth seeker eyes, Daimon previously made sure, that the other "Aisha" was just an illusion because he talked with her through the connection of core synchrony.

    "Whatever there is on the other side of the door, it doesn''t know we canmunicate with each other, so let''s keep it that way".

    Aisha and Liz which he took as a yes, Daimon turned to see the others just to be sure they were alright.

    "Are you guys, okay?".

    Calvin nodded.

    "Yes, it''s actually less cold here than outside¡­ so ss rep, into what weird situation we got ourselves involved?".

    Daimon pointed at the door behind him.

    "Apparently, we were brought here by the guy which is on the other side of that door, because we tried to make a hole on its domain¡­ speaking of that does any of you recognize those words?".

    Only now Aisha focused her attention in the inscription above the ice door, her eyes seemed to glow as she made memory trying to remember if she has seen something like that before, but after a couple of seconds she shook her head.

    "Not anguage I have seen nor heard of before".

    The others also had no idea, but to be honest Daimon expected as much, something that even his truth seeker eyes couldn''t decipher at his current level, could be everything but normal.

    It doesn''t necessarily mean it''s a high-level thing, truth seeker eyes are a skill which derives from the appraisal knowledge, while they vision property is only limited by my realm¡­ the appraising property needs Daimon to have knowledge which is at least rted in something, to what he is trying to analyze.

    In other words, he can''t decipher something he doesn''t have any clue about, that being said, in eight years Daimon has scrolled through so many books about materials, magic beasts, history and the like, that on the surface he should have knowledge about practically almost everything, not like he reminds it but if he looked at anything rted to what his eyes had seen before he should be able retrieve the information from it.

    As if something made click on Daimon''s mind, he spoke in a low voice.

    "Dimas, you aren''t a native of the Wonder Myriad ster chart, right?".

    The other students were confused about what Daimon said, but their doubts were solved a momentter when a hoarse yet calm voice echoed through the cave.

    "Well, I for sure don''t belong to any of the races that live in this gxy, but I guess it would be easier to exin if you see me¡­ I just want to talk with someone, after you hear to my story, I will open a path for you to leave".

    Right after Dimas finished speaking, the floor trembled as the giant ice doors slowly opened just enough so three people could walk next to each other through a long passage.

    Michael shook his head.

    "Why should we trust you, you brought us here without our consent, how do we know you are going to let us leave?".

    ¡­

    Dimas remained silent for a moment, then he answered in a somewhat rxed voice.

    "Damn you are right¡­ I have no way to prove it, however that miss''s mes are strong enough to fry my ass if try something anyway, besides you should be more worried about the guys who are wandering outside, if they scape from my ice prison then your will burn".

    Daimon stood from the rock, he dusted off his jacket and then looked at Aisha and Liz, which nodded at him.

    "We will go, if you trust me thene, if not then you can stay here and wait until we retu he said.

    Surprisingly the others didn''t hesitate, they took a step ahead and walked towards Daimon, Calvin and Michael stood in front of the girls.

    Calvin smiled.

    "We aren''t cowards, if you go, we will follow you".

    His moment didn''tst long, because Michael revealed his true intentions.

    "Trying to show off in front of Loren won''t take you anywhere".

    Daimon couldn''t help but see them in another light, only in moments like these, one can really know whether those who call themselves your friends are real or not.

    Leaving that emotional episode aside, they walked through the passage until they reached the other side, unlike the previous caves this one had a different form, it was designed to look like the inside of a castle, but it was all made out of ice giving it a fantasy touch.<sub> </sub>

    But what truly caught their attention was the creature in the middle of the room, it had a long body of about twenty meters, its skin consisted in a mix of scales with different shades of blue and there were bone formations on its back, it was surrounded by a magic formation.

    "A serpent?", said Calvin in a confused voice.

    "What serpent, you are a serpent, your whole family are serpents!!!", the "serpent''s" mouth didn''t move but it''s voice could be heard by everyone.

    "Dimas?", Daimon had a weird expression on his face, previously he thought it was going to be some kind of old monster due to the hoarse voice, but now that they were inside of this room, it sounded quite different, it was a juvenile voice just like the one of a high school student.

    Dimas pointed his head towards his shoulders, but instead of answering Daimon, he replied to Calvin''s previous deration.

    "Don''t you see these beautiful arms of mine, I''m not a serpent but a proud member of the ice mirage basilisk race".

    Although he couldn''t leave the designated space inside the magic formation, Dimas flexed his body to show off his arms which differentiated him from a serpent.

    The ice of the floor suddenly changed forming a bench, which everyone took as an invitation to sit down.

    "I''m sorry for myck of manners, if we were back at my family, I would have offered a great banquet after meeting such interesting guys, but I don''t have anything to offer unless you want food made out of ice hahaha".

    Michael sighed, "Dear heavens, why must you punish me like this¡­ it''s like a second Calvin".

    Daimon was also confused but by a different thing.

    "Judging by your voice and the size of your body, you aren''t even an adult, so why did you call me "kid" earlier?".

    "Mm?", Dimas shrugged.

    "I wanted to sound cool, besides even if I''m actually considered young in my family, in human terms I''m about sixty thousand years old, on the other hand I was in atent state most of that time, until I found something interesting hidden in the ice".

    This time everyone was in awe, fifty thousand years and still not being considered an adult, that kind of lifespan surpassed the one of an Archmage, which meant they were in front of either a half emperor¡­ or an emperor level magic beast.

    On the other hand, that wasn''t what was making Daimon frown his brows, but the fact that such a thing was sealed below the surface of Lykos and on one has found after so many years.

    As long as fifty thousand years sounded, there were clear records of that time, and there was no one strong enough to seal something like Dimas, not without others realizing it, unless a magus emperor was involved which should have been impossible.

    "So how did you end up trapped here?".

    Dimas nodded, "Straight to the point huh".

    "I was partying with some friends and then I fell asleep, the next thing I knew was that I was in this ce sealed by this formation, at first I thought it was my old man trying to teach me a lesson, but after one thousand years I realized that wasn''t the case".

    "I was bored, so I put myself to sleep until I was strong enough to break this stupid seal, but then someday I noticed someone hid some interesting things on the ice of this ce, so I woke up and brought those things here, you are my guests so you can see them if you want".

    Daimon looked in the direction which Dimas pointed with his tail, one of the corners of the room separated showing its contents, a bunch of different things everythingbeled with the initials "A. G.".

    Most of it were books, there was also some forms for potions and a coin with the word "Andras" written on it.

    Daimon took the coin and inspected it, surprisingly it was made of orichalcum, no one on his right mind would throw away such a valuable material, but Andras Griffin was known for being entric, so it perfectly fitted his personality.

    "So, the Greenwich Sage was the one responsible for this guy''s awakening", he thought.

    The roof of the cave shook, making everyone focus on it.

    Dimas sighed.

    "Those guys are losing their patience, of you want to leave this is the moment, I suggest you to call the ancestor of that fire crane descendant, or another expert with fire affinity".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "What are those guys, ording to Liz their mana radiations arepletely different to anything we know".

    "They used to be from a race native of this, but now they are possessed by fire spirits¡­ they probably came here for me, although I didn''t see them before, my father once told me a story, they destroy anything that isn''t rted to fire and apparently, they serve a higher being but no one knows who".

    "The inscription on the doors is a way to prevent them from noticing this ce, but I didn''t make it and I don''t know in whichnguage is written, also this formation around me is a prison but it''s also a protection¡­ that''s why I used my domain to trap those guys, because whoever ced me here, didn''t do it to mess with me".

 Chapter 123 Unknown Undercurrents (Part 2)

    Dimas''s story was quite short and to be honest Daimon thought it was false, partying in one ce and then waking up sealed on aplete unknown was hard to believe, but on the other hand he couldn''t detect any sign of Dimas lying.

    His heartbeat was stable, and he was totally rxed, Liz''s heart mirror also didn''t react at all, so there was no malice on his actions so far.

    Dimas looked at the roof of the cave which trembled from time to time, a sign that on the surface there was something wild going on.

    "Daimon if you are going to leave, this is the moment, although I''m a marvelous ice mirage basilisk, my mana is blocked by the formation so I can barely affect the outside world and it''s getting harder to maintain it".

    "Come on, aren''t you an emperor level magic beast?", said Calvin with a sarcastic voice.

    Dimas''s expression filled with confusion, he the pointed at Liz with one of his hands and replied.

    "Emperor?... ahh right I almost forgot we aren''t in my native hahaha, you guys have divided the mortal realm into many steps right, for example that sister with the scary fire would be at the peak of the mortal realm".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, this information was pretty valuable.

    "So, what''s your realm called in the ce youe from?".

    "I''m at the early stage of the subjugation realm, if it weren''t for the magic formation my domain would have easily covered this little, that being said I barely started cultivating when I ended up locked up here".

    "There is always a higher mountain huh", it''s what everyone was thinking, not too long ago they learned of the existence of a magus emperor and now it turned out even that far realm wasn''t too much into other people''s eyes.

    Michael couldn''t resist the curiosity so he asked.

    "And what are the realms after the one you just mentioned, how do you reach them?".

    Dimas shook his head.

    "I can''t tell you that, this ster chart of yours has very strict rules, even if I leave this magic formation, I would at most be able to use half of my powers, speaking about anything beyond theary subjugation is forbidden and I don''t want to be struck by lightning".

    Daimon sighed "Of course there is always a catch¡­ whatever, for now I want to see those fire spirits you mentioned, can you drag one of them to this ce without the others noticing?".

    Dimas doubted for a moment, his serpent like eyes directly looked at Daimon as he spoke.

    "You are asking me to bring one of the guys that is trying to kill me, that will cost you, I want¡­ something to eat it''s been ages since I ate a delicious meal and using mana as a substitute is getting boring!!!".

    "Also, those guys are only scouts if I were to say, they will be at the middle part of the mortal realm, but their fire is really dangerous".

    Daimon had an amused expression, for a moment he thought Dimas was going to ask him to free him from the magic formation, which of course he would refuse, but he only asked something to eat.

    "If he said Liz is at the peak of the mortal realm, then those guys should be at the mage lord realm¡­ it''s manageable even without core synchrony,", he thought.

    A living creature at the emperor level was priceless, while others would try to kill Dimas to use him as resources, Daimon had a different idea, by bing friends with him, the Revy family¡­ or more urately his family would win an ally.

    Lately strange things have been happening, the ruin discovered near the border of the ster chart for example and now an emperor level magic beast sealed right below the surface of an important like Lykos.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Deal, if your story about the fire spirits possessing natives of Lykos is true, then we''ll treat you to a meal".

    Dimasughed out loud, "Don''t forget your promise, I like medium term meat".

    Now that the "terms" of the agreement were settled Dimas focused his attention on the surface, the guys who were looking for him were divided in pairs, his domain was blocking any kind ofmunications so he only waited until two of them were separated from the others, enough so they couldn''t feel the ruckus caused by them being dragged into the ice.

    Dima''s scales illuminated in a dim blue light and the roof of the cave trembled, after a couple of minutes a breach opened and a cage made out of ice fell from, the impact of the cage against the floor made little pieces of ice to fly all over the ce.

    "Sorry, they were moving all the way down, so the impact was worse than I expected".

    While Dimas apologized, Daimon saw that the cage was constantly being melted and reformed, but he was now more rxed, the mana he felting from the cage barely reached the mage lord realm.

    "Let one of them out of the cage".

    Dimas nodded and the cage divided in half, so now one of the so-called fire spirits was in in view for them, surprisingly it looked like mix between a human and a reptile with scales all over the skin, but that wasn''t so weird considering they were in the beast faction.

    "This guyes from the rock lizard n, the Caddle family¡­ but they can''t tolerate low temperatures so they would nevere to a ce like Lykos, unless they have be Archmages", said Calvin.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon frowned his brows on the outside the person in front of him looked like a normal member of the Caddle family, but using the truth seeker eyes he could see a red tattoo with the form of a me printed on his forehead.

    The lizard man looked at all the presents with disgust written all over his face, especially when he saw Liliana and Dimas, since Liz was hiding her true realm, his gaze was full with confidence as he spoke.

    "Natives of gxy, rejoice for you have been chosen by lord Efres, those which element isn''t rted to water or ice stand at my right and I will grant you the blessing of lord Efres, as for the ice woman and that disgusting snake¡­ death is their only salvation".

    ¡­

    Seeing that no one was moving, the lizard man snorted, mes covered his body and then concentrated on his hands forming a whip which he swinged towards Liliana as he shouted.

    "Obey, members of lowly races!!!".

    Liz snapped her fingers and the mes of the whip dispersed before the body of the lizard man was engulfed by fire.

    "Trying to burn a servant of lord Efres, what a foolish wom¡­ aghhh!!!".

    At the beginning the lizard man seemed to not be affected by Liz''s mes, but then when she changed from normal fire to crown fire, the effect that immediate.

    The lizard man threw himself at the floor and rolled his body trying to put off the fire, but the only thing he managed to do was increase his suffering, the floor was made of ice, so when it melted it turned into water which boiled after a couple of seconds.

    Dimas nodded.

    "See I told you, that sister''s mes are freaking scary, even my domain was affected by them, ahh also don''t worry about hurting him, the original owner of the body died the very moment he was possessed, so the only one suffering is that fire spirit".

    Daimon gazed at Liz and with a wave of her hand the mes disappeared leaving behind a half-burned lizard man, needless to say but the smell wasn''t exactly pleasant, on the other hand all the presents understood that if it weren''t for Liz, Liliana would have been wounded by the me whip, so no one pitied the lizard man.

    Daimon approached the now convulsing lizard man and pointed at the me mark with Gram.

    "Who are you, what is your goal and who sent you?".

    The lizard man looked at Daimon but he remained silent with a defiant expression on his face.

    "Although I can''t tell mypanions, when we are killed, our memories will return to where lord Efres is, you will be marked to die, your whole gxy is doomed hahaha".

    Daimon smirked.

    "Thanks for the information, now I know you can''t contact that lord whatever, nor yourpanions, what a shame your soul won''t return to his hands".

    Before the lizardman could say anything, Gram''s tip pierced his forehead killing it in the spot, but unlike what the spirit expected when the host died he also died, the reason is very simple¡­ a thinyer of demon light applied on the surface of Gram.

    "Lightning is the nemesis of all spirit type creatures it doesn''t matter if your attribute isn''t darkness, you chose the wrong target to mess up with", he said in a low voice.

    While the lightning of a star ranked mage couldn''t have done it, demon light was fierce enough topletely obliterate the fire spirit.

    Daimon noticed Dimas opened a small window to allow the other guy in the ice cage to witness the death of hispanion, which earned him thumbs up.

    He approached the ice cage and then spoke with a rxed voice.

    "You know what I want to know, so are you going to talk, or do you prefer to end up like your friend from before, I guess you can kill yourself but your spirit will also disappear".

    The lizardman inside of the cage tried to squeeze his brains to find a way out of this predicament, but the best scenario was him dying and not being able to give information to his master.

    Seeing that youth in front of him was about to use that bizarre sword to kill him just like he did with his partner, he immediately shouted.

    "Wait, I will talk, I will talk!!!".

    Daimon smirked.

    "Yes, you will", he thought as the unmistakable sound of a notification from the system made its way into his mind.

    [Fire djinn "Caldras" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

 Chapter 124 The Might Of A Terror Contractor

    Daimon nodded and the message disappeared before a cor made out of ck bones which only Daimon could see, formed around the neck of Caldras.

    The lizardman suddenly felt shivers running through his spine, he tried to scream but his voice didn''te out, his eyes widened, no matter how much he tried his body didn''t move.

    Daimon didn''t need to say his orders out loud, the cor was linked to him so with just a thought, Caldras was deprived from his freedom.

    "Let him out", he said to Dimas.

    The ice cage opened, this time the other students were paying all their attention to the lizardman, especially Liliana, but contrary to what they expected Caldras didn''t speak in that disdaining tone, in fact he just stood still until Daimon spoke.

    "Let''s start from the beginning, your name and race".

    Deep inside of his mind Caldras tried to resist, but his body didn''t obey him.

    "I''m Caldras, a member of the fire djinn race under themand of lord Efres¡­ a noble of the spirit faction and a dark ifrit".

    "Djinn, spirit faction?".

    All the other students reacted the same way, they were surprised, in the wonder myriad ster chart such a thing as spirit races or a spirit faction didn''t exist, even the undead which specialized in the study of dead entities, had no way to manipte souls.

    Calvin shook his head.

    "We already have enough problems going on between ourselves and now outsiders areing for us¡­ damn".

    Daimon agreed, the strongest people of the wonder myriad ster chart were half emperors, and ording to Dimas they would be considered children in the scale of power out there.

    "Whatever I can just advance step by step, eight years ago I would have been defenseless against a mage lord, but here I am ordering around one, while I''m only a five-star ranked knight", he thought.

    Evangeline smiled, "No one is strong from the very beginning, so being weak isn''t bad, what''s bad is remaining weak".

    "Eve is right Daimon, we''ll be the strongest with you", added Narasha.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, if he wasn''t strong enough, he just had to train more, if that wasn''t enough, he will double the pace, if that wasn''t enough, he will triplicate it, but right now he had other things to take care of.

    "Caldras, how many of you came to this ce, what is your mission, how strong are them?".

    Caldras tried to not answer but his monotone voice could be heard after less than one second of futile resistance.

    "We ended in this gxy by ident, me and Fredran¡­ the guy who died a moment ago and another eight of us are part of the same scouting team, we were exploring an isted cave in an ind we found at the star sea and magic formation activated, the next thing we knew was that we appeared in a deserted ce".

    Calvin asked Michael to hand him his knife and then used it to draw something on the ice ground, it was some kind of tree without leaves and spikes all over the trunk, leaving aside the fact that Calvin artistic skills weren''t exactly good, the draw was decent enough to be recognizable.

    "Do you remember having seen a tree that looked like this?".

    Caldras saw the drawing but he didn''t say anything.

    "Answer the question", with Daimon''s order the cor around Caldras neck made him experience a piercing pain before he immediately replied.

    "Yes, they were all over the ce, we found these hosts near those trees!!!".

    Calvin nodded.

    "That tree is called thorn juniper, it grows in the native of the rock lizard n, so theynded at Gurun".

    Michael shook his head, "I know the Ghrish family is at the top of all the desert races, but how are you so sure that it wasn''t another?".

    Calvin looked at Loren and then coughed a couple of times.

    "Ahem, that tree has no properties for anyone but the rock lizard n¡­ the aged sap of it works as an aphrodisiac for them, no one else cultivate it so it grows enough as it needsrge quantities of water and other cares to produce sap".

    Leaving that aside Caldras continued with his story.

    "We are only disposable scouts, so no one is looking for us we are all middle stage mortals¡­ but our captain is an illegitimate son of lord Efres, that''s how he has reached the peak of the mortal realm, our mission was to look for hidden realms and things like that".

    "Our race is especially sensible towards ice affinity creatures, and our captain felt a remarkable presence of that kind at this, so we killed these lizards and possessed their bodies".

    "The captain apparently knew the race of that serpent, because he looked really excited when we arrived at this tundra, he probably wants to kill it and offer the corpse to lord Efres to win his favor", said Caldras as he pointed at Dimas.<sub> </sub>

    "Ice mirage Basilisk, stupid fire spirits can''t you see my handsome appearance!!!", apparently being called a serpent is some kind of insult because Dimas was angrier at that, than the fact that they aimed for his life.

    "How strong is that Efres guy", asked Daimon.

    Surprisingly Caldras resisted to continue for a couple of seconds before the cor forced him to talk.

    "Lord Efres has reached the Reality¡­ arghhh!!!".

    Liz suddenly created a barrier with her mana, a red lightning fell appeared out of nowhere and impacted Caldras making his body explode into little pieces or ck coal.

    ¡­

    Red currents of electricity dazzled on what was left of Caldras until even that transformed into ck thin dust.

    Yvonne''s face was a bit pale, she turned to see the roof of the cave but there wasn''t any hole on it.

    "What the hell, that lightning appeared out of nowhere!!!".

    Dimasughed out loud.

    "That fool actually decided to kill himself in one of the worst ways possible, being struck by regtion lightning means dying without a grave".

    Daimon frowned his brows remembering what Dimas mentioned earlier, "Speaking of everything above theary subjugation realm is prohibited".

    Unlike Dimas, he knew that Caldras didn''t chose to die, he now confirmed the extent of the authority he had over those under the terror contract, Caldras knew he was going to die and still he followed his order.

    "What a useful skill", he thought.

    Liz let out a sigh of relief as she dispelled her barrier, that red lightning didn''t attack them at all, it only focused on destroying Caldras and then disappeared.

    Daimon turned to see Dimas with a smirking expression.

    "What do you say if we bring that captain here to ask him a few questions, apparently, he knows about your race, so he might have information on how you ended here?".

    Dimas contemted things for a moment, although thousands of years were just a nap for him, he was getting really bored, but if he cooperated with Daimon, he might have someone to talk with.

    Leaving the magic formation was out of question, because someone who managed to imprison him without him noticing had to be way above the people of the wonder myriad ster chart.

    Dimas nodded, his scales illuminated and a fortress made out of ice rose from the ground.

    "Hide in the fortress, I will bring all of them at once, while the others won''t be able to resist, the peak mortal fire djinn will be troublesome to deal with¡­ fox sister can you lend me a hand, your fire is a good counter for them?".

    Liz looked at Daimon nodding at her, and she epted, all the others entered the fortress and Liz''s body covered in yellow/orange mes, which made Dimas reaffirm his believe that Liz wasn''t a native of this ce.

    Inside of the ice fortress Daimon silently activated core synchrony the range of their connection depended on his mage realm, so his unusually high realm as a knight didn''t help, but if he activated core synchrony things changed.

    Aisha which was next to her son, Liz which was outside of the ice fortress, Narasha which was hanging from his waist in Gram''s form, Aura in her office at the wild w academy, ine and Erin which were doing their tasks at the Revy family grounds.

    Everyone of them felt the sudden change in their magic cores as core synchrony activated but it didn''tst long because Daimon only spoke a few words before cancelling the skill.

    "Aurae to the frozen fields of Halia, use your eye spell to look for something that looks like an ice wall, we are inside of it".

    "Okay".

    "I want to go too!!".

    Besides Aura, only Erin spoke but Daimon shook his head.

    "Only Aura¡­ I have present for you Erin, but we''ll talk about itter okay".

    "Mm", with a half-convinced sound, the conversation ended.

    A loud explosion made the fortress tremble as the whole roof of the cave suddenly exploded, many ice cages fell from it, along with an ice block.

    "It''s starting", said Dimas to Liz.

 Chapter 125 A Pet For The Elite Class (Part 1)

    The ice cages safelynded on the ground and even if they shook from time to time, the ones inside weren''t strong enough to break free from them, the giant ice block on the other hand illuminated in an orange tone before it exploded into many pieces of ice.

    Mist was created due to the sh between Dimas''s ice and the high temperature mes, of the captain Caldras mentioned, while the vision was blocked due to a curtain of mist, Liz and Dimas heard a disdaining voice mocking them.

    "Humph, lowly ice creature, how dare you use these puny tricks with a descendant of a noble fire spirit!!!".

    Liz waved her hand and the mist was dispersed revealing the owner of that voice, just like Caldras, their captain was also possessing the body of a lizardman but this one was different, it was way taller than Caldras reaching about 2 meters and its whole body was covered in me like tattoos.

    The Lizardman evaluated its surroundings, he noticed all his subordinates were captured by Dimas and also saw the ice fortress in which Daimon and the others were hiding.

    Then focused his attention on Liz.

    "Natives of this poor gxy, you have colluded with an ice basilisk to harm me, Agramy a member of the spirit army of lord Efres, the punishment is death¡­ but considering you didn''t know who you were attacking, one thousand years of servitude under me will save you from destiny".

    Although the fortress didn''t have windows courtesy of Dimasmon sense, Daimon was using truth seeker eyes and sixth sense at the same time to watch what was happening, and his gaze turned hostile as he easily recognized the intention in Agramy''s eyes¡­ lust.

    "Liz don''t kill that idiot¡­ I have something better reserved for him", he said through their mental connection.

    Agramy ignorant of the horrible destiny which awaited him, got angry seeing that Liz didn''t even bother to answer him, but on the other hand he found her captivating so instead he tried to use the "soft" way to get her.

    The tattoos on the lizard man glowed and then the body felt inert to the ground, allowing Liz and Dimas to see the true appearance of Agramy, its body had a basic human figure, but it waspletely red-transparent as if it was made out of fire, including his hair and eye sockets which were only pure fire.

    He was just wearing some kind of cloth to cover his lower body while his upper body was in in view, Agramy''s eyes were filled with pride, for spirit races the more solid their the better their pedigree was, although he was born from an affair, his father is a noble so he inherited a basic human form from him.

    And he was right to be proud, fore djinns without a noble lineage need to reach theary subjugation realm to get a semi solid body, while he had one even as a peak mortal being, although it wasn''t aplete one, his starting point was higherpared to his peers.

    Agramy smiled at Liz and made a noble like gesture.

    "You have a decent affinity with fire, why don''t you follow me, if you help me kill that disgusting snake, I will share some of the merit with you, what do you say, don''t you want to see a bigger world instead of being trapped in this deserted ce?".

    Liz kept her indifferent expression, but Dimas on the other hand talked back since Agramy called him "serpent".

    "Who are you trying to fool, that half assed solid form of yours isme, one of the advantages of spirit races is that they get to chose the form that fits them the best, but you gave up that just for the easy path¡­ your potential as amon spirit is ruined and your lineage as a noble is diluted, in other words you are the worst of both worlds".

    Dimas thenughed out loud and pointed at himself with his tail.

    "Not to mention you are so ugly, if you want to be proud of something then be proud on the fact that you got to see such a handsome ice mirage basilisk like me".

    ¡­

    This time even Daimon couldn''t help but mentallyugh.

    "What an interesting guy", he thought.

    Agramy on the other hand didn''t find it funny, his true self was exposed by Dimas and in front of the female he was trying to bring to his side, what was worse is that it was an ice attributed entity the one that did it.

    Seeing that Liz was alsoughing at him, his whole body exploded in mes making the temperature of the room to suddenly increase like crazy.

    "Die, you filthy animal".

    Agramy''s mes condensed into a line of fire which was shot directly at the fortress, although Agramy made it look as if he was going to attack Dimas, his true target was whatever was being protected by the fortress.

    Surprisingly Liz didn''t even flinch, she crossed her arms and simply let the fire impact against the fortress, but the explosion Agramy was expecting didn''t happen, he gritted his teeth and turned to see Dimas.

    "I wonder what''s inside that fortress for you to protect it with that force?".<sub> </sub>

    Dimas smirked, his snake like eyes seemed to glow with cunningness, but unlike the previous times he used his magic, his scales weren''t illuminated which meant¡­ he didn''t do anything.

    "Fire djinns apparently have a poor vision; I didn''t do anything, it''s just that your mes are no match for those¡­ whatever they are".

    "Mm?", Agramy focused his attention on the ice fortress again, his eyes narrowed as he noticed a thinyer of white fire blocking his mes, no the correct thing to say was that his mes were being engulfed by that white fire.

    A small space with the size of a gate opened on the wall of the fortress from where the figure of a young man with a cold expression appeared before the wall closed again, unlike his normal appearance in public Daimon''s hair had his original silver color.

    Not only that, the mana of the world seemed to harmonize with Daimon, as if it danced around him creating a veil of different elements, among them there was fire, lightning, darkness and even light.

    Liz smiled from ear to ear.

    "Harmonizing with the mana of the world, which gather the elements to which the mage has a high affinity with, the precursor of a domain¡­ "Manifestation".

    In other words, Daimon was using the strength of a mage lord, thanks to core synchrony, although his knight realm didn''t go up because none of his soulmates was a knight, his control and power over the elements that conformed demon light with the exception of his battle aura did increase a lot.

    Liz nodded.

    "As a star ranked mage, he was able easily to kill Caldras''s partner, so in his current state his mes can overwhelm the ones of this guy without any problem", she thought.

    Daimon looked at Agramy''s unsightly expression and he snorted.

    p "Flirting with my girl in front of me, is the same as asking to die¡­ but since you didn''t know who you were offending, I will give you a chance, an eternity of servitude as the lowest kind of vassal would be enough for you to keep one of your two heads".</anda>

    Agramy nearly lost it, a native of a low ce just returned his words to him, and what was worse was that he noticed the "maiden in love", expression in Liz''s face, which meant the woman he was trying to court was already taken.

    "In that case none of you needs to survive, get burn to a crisp!!!".

    With a loud shout, Agramy''s mes exploded in all directions forming a huge fire tsunami, the walls and the roof of the cave started melting due to the high temperature, but before he couldunch his attack the sound of fingers snapping echoed through the cave.

    As if it was heavenly mandate, Agramy''s fire disappeared and the cave returned to its usual silent state, Daimon stood still with a rxed expression while he held a ck/ blue sword on his right hand, from which a ck threatening mist was leaking.

    The strongest magic sword known in the wonder myriad ster chart¡­ Disaster, and even more importantly Daimon''s precious battle partner, Narasha which used the natural ability of disaster to devour Agramy''s mes as if they were nothing.

    Daimon smiled, "Well done Narasha", he thought before his image shed as he used blink to appear in front of Agramy, which was still processing what happened.

    "Impossible, besides those anomalies which have set a foot into theary subjugation realm, no one should be able topletely negate my attack!!!", he mumbled.

    Still, he wasn''t an Arch ranked for nothing, Agramy saw Daimon appearing in front of him and he immediately retired a couple of dozens of meters, not feeling like ying anymore his eyes glowed with fierceness.

    "Domain!!!", he shouted and the world seemed to be red for a moment, the cave was fully engulfed in fire making all the ice within five kilometers to melt, creating a huge shocking wave due to the abrupt change from cold to hot.

    When the cloud caused by the evaporation of the ice finally dispersed, what appeared was miserably beaten Agramy with burning marks on his face, which was chained by yellow/orange chains made out of fire.

    Dimas sighed, at the look of his "home", besides the gates which seemed to have been protected by the inscription, the magic formation and the ice fortress which was protecting the other students of the elite ss, his castle became currents of water which were running through the many holes left behind by the activation of Agramy''s domain.

    "What an uncivilized guy, I have to recreate my den you know?".

    Unfortunately for Dimas, Agramy''s mind wasn''t in a correct state to answer right now, a moment ago when he was activating his domain, his mes were cancelled by Liz''s mes, and then his body froze as he felt an overwhelming amount of killing intention targeting him.

    Daimon punched his face with his fists which were covered in demon light, making him experience just a bit of hell, Agramy which wasying on the ground powerless felt his heart clenching when he heard footstepsing his way.

 Chapter 126 A Pet For The Elite Class (Part 2)

    The Agramy of right now waspletely different to the one of ten minutes ago, not only his mes were devoured by a "low ranked" weapon of a trash tier ne, he a peak ranked mortal realm fire djinn was actually punched in the face.

    "Impossible, my fire which descends from a noble lineage was overwhelmed by a middle mortal ranked human¡­ this has to be a nightmare!!!".

    Unfortunately for Agramy the nightmare was just about to start, Daimon stopped walking right next to him and with a wave of his hand a particle of demon light positioned itself on top of the fire djinn''s head.

    "What a shame your subordinates are too weak, I would have rather kept one of them as a hunting dog, that Caldras guy was quite realistic what a shame he was destroyed by regtion lightning, I guess you all have no value for me".

    Agramy''s eyes widened knowing what was about to happen, his body trembled and he immediately shouted.

    "W-Wait, I''m sorry, I didn''t recognize your noble status, someone with such a powerful fire must have an ancient dignified lineage¡­ if you leave me go, I will ask my father to give you this whole gxy, it will be only for you so please spare me!!!".

    Daimon smirked at the message that appeared in front of him.

    [Mixed Ifrit "Agramy" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    "Fine I won''t kill you", he said in a low voice.

    Agramy suddenly had a bad premonition, but before he could say anything else a cor made out of ck bones appeared on his neck, which made him shut his mouth.

    "I will take you in as my second "subordinate".

    Agramy mentally let out a sigh of relief.

    "One thousand years is not too much time for a revenge, just you wait I will¡­ aghhh!!!".

    Daimon saw Agramy using his own hands to crush his balls and he shook his head.

    "I forgot to tell you, while my other subordinate will feel as if his brain is exploding at the slightest thought of betrayal, I changed your punishment to a more fitting one, but I have to say that was quite fast".

    "Whatever that will be your first andst rebellious thought, now get the hell out of here, go to this ce and find a merchant called Ereman, tell him to lend you a room to stay", he said as he handed a map of Lykos with a red mark on the town where Ereman lives

    The now eunuch Agramy wanted to cry, he castrated himself and what was worse was that he couldn''t prevent his body from obeying Daimon''s orders, Liz dispelled the fire chains which were keeping him in check and he returned to the body of the lizard man which surprisingly didn''t turn into coal, probably because of the fie tattoos which were covering most of its skin.

    Even if his mental state was horrible right now, his body perfectly fulfilled the orders of his new "master" and left the now destroyed ice cave.

    ¡­

    An ufortable silent fell on the ce, Daimon took a deep breath and deactivated core synchrony, the manifestation phenomenon of a mage lord disappeared as he returned to be a peak one-star mage.

    Liz hugged Daimon and repeatedly kissed him.

    "Getting so angry because that asshole tried to make a move on me, what a possessive boyfriend ?".

    Daimon took a moment to rx in Liz''s embrace, he buried his face in her breasts and let her soft bodyfort him, after the sudden increase of mana in his body caused by core synchrony, he felt a bit tired.

    "Fifteen minutes of continuous use, potentiated blink and demon light¡­ the drawback is manageable", he thought, once his breath returned to normal, Daimon let go of Liz, he took out a little bottle from his storage and applied the content on his hair to make it ck again.

    Then his eyes focused on Dimas.

    "I wonder why didn''t you act when that guy attacked the fortress, if my evaluation isn''t wrong, that fire was enough to destroy the ice wall and affect the ones inside wasn''t it?".

    Dimas shrugged.

    "None of them would have been harmed by the mes, the ice wall was thick enough for that¡­ I wanted to confirm something, I hope you don''t take it personally, but that threatening aura around you is quite peculiar".

    "And you just wiped the floor with a peak mortal realm when you are only an early mortal realm, well I don''t know maybe you are a middle stage mortal realm, a moment ago it felt like that, I needed to make sure you weren''t¡­ forget it, I owe you one and can we call it even?".

    Daimon didn''t really care, in any case Dimas didn''t have the obligation to protect them, that responsibility fell on the leader which in this case was him, but he was still curious about why Dimas didn''t stop Agramy''s attack.

    "Well, he doesn''t know us and has been trapped in this ce for who knows how many years, I guess it''s normal to not thrust in us", he thought.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon saw the sky and he smiled, a portal opened and Aura arrived using space shift, which signaled the end of all this situation, then he turned to see Dimas and spoke in a serious tone.

    "Fine we''ll all forget about what just happened, but since now we are in a somewhat friendly rtionship¡­ I don''t want something like that to happen ever again, or you will be my enemy understood, and as you saw that is not a good idea".

    Dimas looked directly at Daimon, and his serpent like head nodded, no matter in which ce you live, the golden rule is always the same, only strong people had the right to speak.

    And now Dimas was sure Daimon had what it takes to be on equal standing with him.

    "I thought that sister''s mes were scary, but I guess the real monster was you all the time, to get her and also that scary woman on the sky to follow you¡­ I get it, no joking around with your ss, just don''t break your promise and bring something delicious to eatter".

    Daimonughed, he felt as if he was talking with a basilisk version of Calvin.

    Dimas mentally let out a sigh of relief.

    A moment ago, he felt a shiver on his scales, although Liz''s mes were enough to threat him, it wasn''t to the point where he was really afraid of her, but the frightening pressure he was feeling from Aura was on apletely different level.

    "Damn, since when a mortal realm can be so strong, even if I weren''t limited by the formation, I''m not sure if I will be able toe put on top if we were to fight¡­ I guess every ce has talented people", he thought.

    Aura descended from the sky, her sharp gaze was directed at Dimas, with the pass of the years she has fought with a lot of magic beasts, including the only three half emperor magic beasts known in the whole ster chart.

    But she could easily tell the serpent in that magic formation was stronger than them, to the point that she was sure it would take her all to "hunt" it.

    "A decent prey", she mumbled with a smirk in her face.

    Dimas felt a bit intimidated by Aura''s predator like gaze so she turned to see Daimon and cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, my friend Daimon, please tell that girl I''m not an enemy".

    Daimonughed.

    "Take down the fortress, the others are not going to be happy if you keep them trapped inside".

    Dimas nodded, his scales illuminated and the fortress returned to the ground leaving the other students of the elite ss including Aisha free.

    Needless to say, but everyone had a lot of questions, a gate opened and Daimon suddenly left the fortress without saying anything, then not too long after the floor trembled and after that everything returned to normal, but they were still inside the fortress so they didn''t know who won.

    And now the first thing they saw after leaving the fortress was that the principal, a respectable half emperor came all the way from the academy to this ce for them¡­ or more urately for Daimon.

    Yvonne frowned her brows, she didn''t see Agramy among the presents and she was worried that it escaped, since one of his subordinates tried to kill Liliana just because of her affinity with ice.

    "Where is that spirit guy, did he flee?".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Don''t worry, he was taken care of¡­ in fact our elite ss will be getting a "pet" soon, but for now let''s take the things the Greenwich Sage left and take our leave".

    Calvin sighed.

    "We didn''t do anything though, when it was important, we weren''t able to contribute at all", he said as he stole a couple of gazes at Loren.

    He could more or less understand why Daimon left the fortress, because the expression on his face was the same as when they were at the happy wanderer and he somehow noticed someone was messing with Aisha.

    And he could respect that, but then he asked to himself, "What would happen if it was Loren the one in trouble¡­ will I be able to help her?", and that''s what was running on his mind right now.

    Daimon could notice how his ssmates felt, because he felt the same when hepared himself with his soulmates, everyone of them was far stronger than him, if not for core synchrony he would have been limited to stay in the fortress and be protected by Liz.

    "Don''t say that, didn''t we agree to be the strongest elite ss in all the history?".

    Everyone''s mood got better, so what if they weren''t strong right now, that''s why they came to the academy anyway.

 Chapter 127 Amphora Ring

    Leaving aside the fact that Calvin and the others didn''t do anything in the fight against the fire djinns, previously they managed quite good when they had to improvise a shelter against the snow and that was the original purpose of the training.

    Besides they "found", the things the Greenwich Sage hid in the ice, so technically they fulfilled the conditions to approve the survival ss, so now there was no point in staying at this ce.

    Still, they couldn''t just leave, Aura came here secretly so Richard, Boris and Aliya weren''t aware of her presence and all the situation surrounding Dimas was a sensitive subject, so for the time being it will be considered a top secret.

    Daimon understood Aura''s intention and he nodded as he turned to see his ssmates and spoke.

    "Don''t ask me about what happened here today, also we''ll keep Dimas''s existence as a secret¡­ for everyone that isn''t present right now okay?".

    One by one all the other members of the elite ss nodded, Dimas has been hidden for a good reason, if other races get to know about his existence, then a war will start, a living emperor level creature is basically a treasure.

    While he might not cooperate and teach them how to reach the emperor realm, his flesh, blood, bones, ws, fangs, scales and even more importantly his magic core, were things that would make all the factions drool due to greed.

    Although the magic formation will prevent them from killing Dimas, it would be a pain in the ass to deal with the ruckus that his mere existence will cause, especially the magic bests which have maintained out of the picture, will probably enter a war either to drag Dimas to their side or to consume him and evolve.

    Yvonne doubted for a moment before she pointed at what used to be a mountain scenery.

    "How are we going to deal with the rest of the ss¡­ the mountain mentioned by my grandfather is gone?".

    Daimon looked at Dimas which made him nod, his scales illuminated and the floor trembled as new mountains made out of ice rose to rece the ones that were destroyed due to Agramy''s mes.

    Even the cave reformed as if nothing happened, of course Dimas left an opening on the roof so that they could easily leave anytime.

    Liz noticed what Daimon was about to do and she called the other students.

    "Let''s go, I''ll take you to the surface with me", with a wave of her hand everyone but Daimon floated towards the open space Dimas left on the roof, the distance between the cave and the surface was about five kilometers so Daimon waited about ten minutes.

    He walked towards the cages that were imprisoning the other fire djinns, of course he couldn''t let such good servant materials go to waste, especially because he was interested in getting all the information possible about their nativend and how they appeared in the of the Caddle family.

    And he wasn''t sure if the regtion lightning will kill them, so Daimon wasn''t going to test it with Agramy since he has the power of an Arch ranked, and he had a long life to atone for looking at Liz.

    With a wave of his hand, screams came from the inside of the cages, as Daimon used little amounts of demon light to give them a little taste of hell.

    "You captain has been dealt with by me, do you want to die or do you prefer submission, you have five seconds to choose", he said in a loud voice to make sure they could hear him.

    Considering the other option was killing them, letting them be his servants wasn''t that bad, the only problem is that they needed to fear him and Daimon didn''t want the others to think he was torturing the djinns for fun, while he also couldn''t just say "I can make thempletely obey me if they fear me".

    So, Liz took the others with her, while Daimon did what he needed, that being said not even ten seconds after Daimon spoke, many notifications appeared in front of him.

    [Fire djinn "Gars" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Fire djinn "Dalton" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Fire djinn "Samna" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Fire djinn "Paindra" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Fire djinn "Alesh" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Fire djinn "Sagar" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Fire djinn "Lasaar" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [New items avable in the shop]

    With a nod all the messages disappeared and he also dispelled demon light, then opened the shop to see what were the new things, but there was just one thing which had a yellow admiration symbol on it.

    [Amphora ring: Made out of a special material which can contain any spiritual creature as long as it has submitted to the user (max number of spirits 10)]<sub> </sub>

    [Price: 100,000 coins]

    Daimon was slightly surprised, over the years he has explored the items avable in the shop, most of them were locked since he was too weak to use them, but this ring wasn''t there.

    "The system has a lot of data, but just like how you unlock skills after certain actions, the shop will update itself ording to the knowledge you get and your current level¡­ you could say that the items which were avable since the beginning were a "courtesy", the rest you will need to unlock them yourself", said Evangeline.

    Daimon nodded, there were so many aspects of the system he still had to learn, but for now he bought the ring since he needed it.

    "You can let them out now, he said to Dimas.

    The cages disappeared letting the remaining fire djinns "free", surprisingly they had no wounds, but their faces as lizardmen were pale, demon light didn''t actually touch them, but just being exposed to it was enough to cause their true forms as spirits a fearsome amount of pain.

    Something that Daimon noticed thanks to Agramy separating from the body he was possessing, was that the lizardman was only a mage lord when it was alive, so apparently the body didn''t affect their strength.

    "All of you leave the lizardmen bodies and enter this", said Daimon to the djinns as he pointed at brown ring, he was now wearing on his left index finger.

    The djinns obeyed they separated from the lizardmen, unlike Agramy they had no solid form and just looked like wisps of fire, which was the basic form for the fire djinn race.

    The amphora ring glowed and the seven djinns entered it, leaving behind the corpses of the lizardmen, Daimon confirmed his previous theory since they were all star ranked members of the Caddle family.

    "I guess this is convenient, the death of an Arch ranked would have attracted a lot of attention, but one mage lord and a few star ranked disappearing is not that umon considering all the magic beasts that live underground in deserts", he thought.

    Needless to say, but Dimas was surprised, he had no idea of why the djinns suddenly decided to obey Daimon, to the point that they discarded the bodies they possessed, as he ordered.

    But ultimately it wasn''t his ce to ask about it, everyone has its secrets after all, and Aura was still giving him a cold sharp gaze, so he only said goodbye not without saying.

    "Don''t forget to bring some nice food, also I don''t mind you taking those things I found in the ice, but also bring some books or something to spend time the next time youe, this ce is freaking boring".

    Daimon smiled and Aura which stayed helped him float towards the hole on the ice roof, after a couple of minutes Aura created a small barrier around them with her mana and then said what was in her mind.

    "Why didn''t you let me "hunt" that serpent¡­ it''s been sometime since I found an interesting prey, I''m pretty sure that if I se my domainbined with "supreme radiance", I will be able to finish it".

    Daimon wrapped his arm around Aura''s waist and dragged her into his arms, her tail wagged as she felt the warmness of her lover enveloping her body.

    "If I had felt the slightest ill intention, I wouldn''t mind you eliminating him, but that wasn''t the case, even Liz''s heart mirror didn''t have a negative reaction, besides I think there is something weird going on¡­ that magic ruin, and now this ice basilisk no one has heard of along with the djinns, it''s too much to be a coincidence".

    Aura nodded.

    "I guess he can be an ally some powerful expert left behind for our wonder myriad ster chart, before leaving that would exin that weird inscription and that magic formation I have never seen before".

    "Still the next time both me and Erin wille, I want her to confirm that serpent isn''t scheming something just in case, okay?".

    Daimon smiled, he kissed Aura and then caressed her ears a couple of times.

    "Everything for my cute master".

    "Hmm ?", Aura let out a cute sound due to thefortable feeling of having her ears teased by her lover, she felt the urge to jump over Daimon, but they were reaching the surface so she gently bit his neck as she whispered.

    "Teasing your master, I will have to "punish" youter".

    After saying that they returned to be a "normal" master and student as they left the breach in the ice which Dimas opened for them, on the surface Liz, Aisha and the others were waiting for them.

    As soon as Daimonnded on the ice floor, Aura used space shift to return to the academy, not without giving Daimon a suggestive gaze, which Lis and Aisha perfectly recognized.

    "We were here freezing in the ice and you two were flirting with each other", they both said through the mental connection making Daimonugh at their reaction.

 Chapter 128 The End Of The First Survival Class

    Since Aura left then the next thing will be reaching the top of the mountain mentioned by Richard so that they can put an end to this ss, but first they had to agree on a story to exin| how they found the things left behind by the Greenwich Sage.

    ¡­

    After discussing about it for nearly twenty minutes they reached an agreement.

    "So basically, Daimon''s monstrous luck helped us find the things, starting with thedder of the mountain in which we made our shelter, where we found a set of forms", said Calvin as he took a few scrolls from the bunch of things Dimas handed them, not without giving one of them to Loren and Michael respectively.

    Next, Leslie, Yvonne and Liliana took a blueprint each and then Yvonne continued with the story.

    "The next thing we did was look for something to eat, which led us to the den of a snow snake at the peak of the two-star realm, after killing it we found these blueprints in a hole a few meters way, we also ate the snake in a soup¡­ in bowls made with the ws of a werewolf", she said as she chuckled.

    Daimon sighed, "Thatst thing isn''t part of the orded story Yvi, stick to the n".

    Yvonne stuck her tongue at Daimon, but she still nodded, they will be half lying half telling the truth which would prevent Richard, Boris and Alita to notice they invented a story.

    Lastly Aisha took the remaining thing, a book while Daimon patted his pocket where he put the coin with the word "Andras" on it.

    "The book and a coin ere an unexpected gain, the snow storm knocked down some trees which we used as wood for the campfire and inside one of the trunks we found them", said Aisha as she leaned her boy against Daimon feigning to be suffering due to the cold weather.

    Of course, Liz didn''t miss the chance to do the same, Daimon knew these two were just having their "revenge" since he flirted with Aura a moment ago.

    "Well, after being in this cold ce I guess cuddling with my cute girls is a must", he thought.

    While the others didn''t notice anything, Liz and Aisha felt Daimon''s intentions but that only made them expect their return to the mansion even more.

    Everyone''s attention was drawn by Dimas speaking to them through the mana.

    "Cool story, I''m going to maintain my domain and make those people outside see that, you can just start walking towards that mention¡­ but to make the illusion realistic you will need to spend a couple of hours in this ce".

    Dimas wasn''t an ice mirage basilisk just in name, his domain had illusion properties so for those outside, the scene of the tundra never changed and Dimas created illusion versions of each of them which started doing exactly what they told him so that Richard would see exactly what they wanted him to see.

    "Hey basilisk bro, can''t you make the snowing stop, I have been freezing since we arrived at this ce", said Calvin as he rubbed his hands to warm them.

    Dimas shook his head, "I remember you calling me "serpent", so no favors for you, if you bring me something to entertain myself next time, I will make it less cold for you".

    Calvin didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he was being ckmailed by a magic beast.

    "Next time I will utterly refuse toe to this kind of ce", he thought.

    Although Dimas refused to stop the snowing, he did lower the intensity, so that they could easily reach the mountain where Richard would pick them up.

    Everyone stopped to rest at the base of the mountain, since they had to wait anyway, it was a good moment for them to inspect the things left behind by the Greenwich Sage.

    Starting with the three forms for potions, Calvin, Loren and Michael read their finds.

    "Binding potion: Upon contact the liquid changes it''s form to a sticky foam which can immobilize someone below the middle lord realms (try it on a knight and enjoy the show)".

    "Parasite fire potion: It generates a me that grows by devouring battle aura, and other organic materials around (it can be dispelled by a mage lord as long as it doesn''t use a water spell, otherwise¡­ you''ll see)".

    "Weakness smoke potion: Upon breaking the potion will spread on both the ground and the air as gas, those affected by it will have their mana flow interrupted causing loss of bnce and pain, the higher the vitality of the objective the stronger the effect will be".

    Leslie took the form from Loren''s hands and she giggled.

    "Uwahh, this sage guy seems to have a grudge against knights".

    Apparently, all the potions were designed to deal with knights, but still the effects were limited to the lord realms and below, which was understandable considering the restriction over anything rted to Arch ranks.

    The next thing on the list were the blueprints, the Risha girls were going to publicly own them, but they willingly handed them to Liz, since she was considered the best magic cksmith of the beast faction and they could trust her due to her "connection" with Daimon.

    Liz inspected the blueprints, Andras Griffin was known for leaving some aspects of his designs hidden, just to mess with others, decipher theplete potential of the design required a lot of the old "try and error".<sub> </sub>

    So, for now the uses for the things described on the blueprints, will only be limited to what''s written, only after creating them, they could now if there were more uses for them.

    The first design was something that looked like a belt, but it was made of metal ording to the definitions mentioned by the blueprint, besides the list of materials it also had a little description of the resulting device.

    "Sword breaking whip: Click on the first activating button to change it to sword form, then use it as a cold weapon, forst resort mode turn the hilt sidewards and click on the second button for it to explode (Use parasite fire potion as the fuel for the explosion)".

    "It''s a hidden weapon designed to easily take down someone who relies too much on his weapon, not bad", thought Daimon.

    The next item was a bit weird, on the surface it was just a ne, with a pendant containing a small yellow gem as the embellishment, which drew the attention due to the small details engraved on it.

    "Beacon ne: Upon contact with anyone that isn''t the owner, the magic formation will activate creating an intense blinding light and loud shockwave (rmended for tracking people with sticky hands)".

    Thest blueprint was the one that drew the attention the most, not because of the device itself, but because of what implied, the design was for a pair of gloves with a magic formation engraved on them.

    "Prototype Device Withering gloves: Creates a special radiance which dispels battle aura at the cost of using mana as fuel (Defective, it needs double the amount of manapared to battle aura, abandoned project)".

    Liz couldn''t help but smile, the gloves weren''t what interested her, but the magic formation which was engraved on it was apletely different thing.

    "Girls, I want to keep this one for me¡­ in exchange I will make a few toys for you, what do you say?", he asked to the Risha sisters.

    Leslie shook her head.

    "Don''t worry Liz, you are also a part of our ss now, so just take it¡­ on the other hand if you could help me train my fire that would awesome!".

    As for the coin which Daimon already inspected, he found it didn''t have any property besides the metals which were used for its creation, so thest thing was the book in Aisha''s hands.

    Unlike what they expected, the book didn''t have any magic theory or an original spell created by the sage, instead it was a work diary which detailed the process of how all the other things were created.

    Liz''s eyes glowed, the diary of a theorist like Andras Griffin although obsolete, it was something priceless, apparently the things left behind were old projects which probably didn''t meet the requirements of the sage, so instead it decided to gift them.

    "Well, looks like she found something new to y with", thought Daimon seeing the expression in Liz''s face.

    Without them noticing time passed and soon the voice of Dimas drew their attention.

    "Now you can start climbing the mountain, for those outside of my domain your illusion selves are positioned in the exact same way you are right now, I will dispel my domain now¡­e visit me soon".

    Daimon stood up from the rock he was sitting on and waved his hand at the others.

    "Time to leave", Dimas had the courtesy of creating little support points for them to step, which made it easier to climb the mountain.

    Once they reached the peak, Liz used her mana to create a re and not too long after the flying ship appeared near them.

    Richard evaluated the students, their clothes were a bit messy, with the exception of Liz of course, and that wasn''t all, he saw they were all holding something in their hands besides the bags he gave them.

    Since the test was over Liz helped them board the flying ship.

    "Brats it hasn''t been even a day, did you reallyplete the task I gave you?".

    As they previously discussed, the first one to brag had to be of course Calvin.

    "We aren''t the elite ss only in name you know, with Daimon''s monstrous luck and the guiding of the young master form the Ghrish family nothing is impossible", he said as he showed the form for the parasite fire potion.

    After Calvin everyone showed their own things, Richard, Boris and Aliya nearly forgot how to breath, although Richard expected them to find something, at most he thought they will just retrieve one.

    "Hahaha".

    Richard thunderousugh echoed through the tundra before he smiled at his students.

    "You little monsters".

 Chapter 129 Returning To The Academy

    Normally when the students of the academy find some kind of resource or treasure there are a few possible scenarios, depending on the value of the thing the teacher has the right to confiscate the it, of course the academy won''t rob its students.

    But there are some materials which enter in the strategic resource category, such as mithril, orichalcum and antinite for example, so in those cases the academy had an agreement with the big forces and families.

    The force from which the student who found the thing came, would receive half of it, the other half was kept by the academy not without giving a properpensation to the student in mana stones or other things.

    That being said the teacher didn''t always do it, ultimately it was up to its criteria, in the case of the elite ss, Boris and Aliya of course didn''t have any ideas for the things Daimon and the others found.

    But they still felt curious about them, the prizes were left behind by the Greenwich Sage after all, Aliya specially felt attracted by the forms since she is an alchemist.

    Seeing the slightly childish and excited expression on the face of Aliya, Daimon handed the forms to her, so she could make an idea of how they worked.

    Aliya epted the offer and started inspecting andparing the forms with the exciting potions she knows, and after nearly fifteen minutes she reached a happy conclusion.

    "I don''t remember having ever seen potions with these effects, although there are some simr, none of them has those extra effects directly designed to deal with knights".

    Boris smirked, "If that''s the case, those potions wille handy during the exploration of the magic ruin, your "teammates" will be the guys from the blue-sky academy".

    Aliya doubted for a moment before she looked directly at Daimon.

    "Can you leave these forms in my care¡­ I will start working on them as soon as possible and I promise to have a batch ready for the exploration¡­ I can sign a secrecy contract of you want".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "That was the idea to begin with, also there is no need for a contract, I don''t think you will value some mid level potions like there more than your own theory".

    While Aliya might not be the only alchemist Daimon can arrange, she had one advantage over others, he could trust her, so Daimon already considered her the "private alchemist" of the elite ss.

    Calvin sighed

    "The forms were supposed to be our trophy though".

    Aliya chuckled, "Maybe, but I''m pretty sure you aren''t going to refuse, now that your ss representative has given them to me, right?".

    "Ahem, of course not, I as the most loyal member of the elite ss, will of course fulfill the orders of our representative".

    The other things didn''t get the attention of the teachers, everyone agreed the blueprints were better in the hands of Liz, the book was the same it had a high theoric value for both Aliya and Liz but that was all.

    Lastly the coin, Andras Griffin was known for bragging, so it wasn''t rare to see a literal piece of metal with his initials, but in this case the metal was orichalcum, Boris and Richard just evaluated the coin before returning it to Daimon.

    "About one hundred grams of orichalcum¡­ that''s some nice stuff you got there kid, my suggestion is to use it to forge a weapon", said Richard.

    Daimon smiled, since he had both the Argent and the Revy families, he had no need to use the coin for its material, so he already decided to keep it as it is, who knows it mighte handyter.

    The rest of the travel was quite boringpared to what they went through before, Daimon didn''t miss the chance to request that they are allowed to bring daily life equipment, like bowls, cutlery and stuff like that.

    By the time they arrived at the academy the sun was setting already, everyone said goodbye and went to their own dormitories, this time Daimon didn''t apany the Risha sisters, the task was given to Calvin which was more than happy to do it because Loren was staying next to them now, and Michael who tagged along just in case.

    ¡­

    *Thud*, Daimon closed the door of the mansion, Liz and Aisha went to the bedroom to change their clothes while Daimon only took off everything and just put on some shorts, Aura was waiting on the living room and she watched everything.

    Daimon sat on the couch next to Aura and dragged her into his arms, to wait for his mother and Liz, they had a lot of things to discuss, but everyone needed to be "present", so once they also sat on the couch, Daimon contacted both Erin and ine to tell them about what happened the past few days.

    "Let''s start with what will be happening the weekend, we will pay a visit to the Revy family grounds, and our ssmates wille with us, we will stay at the mansion that used to be exclusive to the supreme elder".

    "I don''t mind, but you know those old bastards are going toin", said Erin.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon smirked, "When they do it just tell them who is using the mansion, the direct disciples of two half emperors, the young misses of the three main branches which lead the Risha family and the heir of the Lefay family".

    Erin''s eyes glowed, "Those are some decent ssmates, but that''s not enough to leave me speechless as you said before".

    "And what if I add a half emperor from the Jolbaris family, going to your mansion to ask for a favor?", said Daimon with a yful voice.

    "What!".

    Both Erin and ine reacted the same way, total surprise, they even thought their ears were deceiving them.

    Daimon proceeded to exin how Gabriel Jolbaris came to offer him something in exchange for him epting someone in his ss, just to be rejected and sent back with the condition of bringing a half emperor to negotiate.

    This time Erin was indeed speechless, there was only two half emperors in the Jolbaris family, one was Arthur which everyone here already had the displeasure of knowing, but the other one was more reserved, to the point that no one besides other half emperors knew.

    "I will prepare everything¡­ but I doubt you get what you asked, a favor from a half emperor is not something which can be assigned a price you know?".

    Daimon nodded.

    "I don''t think it will be a problem, in fact I can assure you the deal was practically set in stone since that guy came to speak with me, because they don''t have another option".

    Erin had a proud smile on her face, "Putting a half emperor in check¡­ as expected of my lover ?".

    Daimon''s face then turned serious.

    "Changing the subject, a bit, things are getting out of hand¡­ we found an emperor level magic beast sealed below the frozen fields of Halia and it''s just someone from their young generation".

    He yed with the amphora ring a couple of times before continuing with his exnation.

    "And that''s not all, we were attacked by a race which doesn''t exist in the wonder myriad ster chart, "fire djinns", they weren''t exactly strong but there are just mere scouts, for the time being we are probably safe since they arrived here by ident".

    "I managed to capture a few of them an Archmage included, so I think inspecting the ce where they appeared it''s a good idea¡­ we might even need to seal the ce just like at the border".

    Erin sighed, "How strong is that emperor magic beast Aura¡­ will you be able to defeat it in a fight?".

    Aura contemted things, Dimas didn''t use his spells seriously, but she could more or less guess his battle prowess.

    "If I go all out, I think at the very least I will be able to stop him, the next time you wille with me Erin, I want you to confirm that guy''s intentions with your heart mirror, if the result is negative, then we''ll join hands and eliminate it at the spot".

    Erin nodded, "How is the training going, ording to our elder which is apanying the Greenwich Sage, they have already traveled a quarter of the way".

    Daimon smiled remembering the familiar sensation he had before they went to the frozen fields earlier.

    "My magic core is showing sings of waking up, so I think I will soon break through".

    All the girls felt happy, when Daimon''s core decided to obey him, the result was always incredible, thest time he advanced from being novice mage all the way to the peak of the one star ranked mage, where he has stagnated since then.

    Now that all the serious mattes were dealt with, the conversation took a different connotation.

    Erin licked her lips, it didn''t escape her that Liz and Aisha will be staying at the mansion of the supreme elder since they are a part of the ss, but ine and her won''t be participating in that.

    In other words, this weekend Daimon will spend all his time with her and her daughter.

    "I''m looking forward to it", she thought.

 Chapter 130 Condition Of Activation R-18

    After assuring Erin that he will spend the weekend with her and ine, Daimon ended the call, it took twenty minutes of sweet talking to convince her of not using space shift toe and "cuddle" with him.

    As soon as the call ended, the girls stared at each other for a couple of seconds before the three of them jumped over Daimon, Aura reacted a bit faster so she managed to "steal" the middle position from Aisha and Liz.

    Aisha pouted, "That''s not fair Aura, after one day in the frozen fields I want my darling to help me warm up".

    Liz nodded, "A half emperor using her superior reacting time to bully two juniors humph".

    Aura put on a pitiful expression; her big eyes looked at Daimon as she ined" in an aggrieved voice.

    "Husband, those two are being mean to me".

    Daimonughed at the drama these three were putting on, one by one he kissed them and then caressed their faces.

    "Be nice with each other you three", he said as he stood up from the couch, with Aura still clinging to him like a ko.

    Seeing the unconvinced expressions on both Aisha and Liz''s faces, Daimon grabbed their asses and dragged them with him towards the bedroom.

    Originally, they were going to take a bath first, but to be honest Daimon was horny right now, and the same could be said of the girls because as soon as they entered the bedroom, they immediately amodated on the bed in all fours next to each other.

    The scene of three beauties ready to ept his love made Daimon feel excited, starting with Aura he moved her panties aside, revealing that pretty pink flower which was already a bit wet just from the expectation.

    "Mmm ?", Aura let out a cute moan when she felt Daimon gently licking her private ce, unlike Aisha and Liz, she couldn''t be with Daimon the whole day, so all the waiting made her excitement build up.

    Although Daimon was now focusing in Aura, he didn''t neglect Aisha and Liz, while he was busy drinking the sweet nectar Aura''s pussy was leaking out, he used his hands to tease them.

    "Ahhnn darling ?".

    "Hnngh D-Daimon ?".

    Two different but equally charming voices filled the room as Daimon used his fingers to please his mother and Liz at the same time, their love juices started dripping, wetting the bedsheet below them.

    After nearly ten minutes of teasing Daimon stopped his hands, he spread Aura''s ass cheeks and then gave her cute pinkish hole a couple of licks to prepare it for what was about to happen.

    Although Aura had a curvy figure, her body constitution was on the slim side, so to make it easier for him to put it in, a good amount of forey was a must.

    Feeling Daimons tongue twirling inside of her made Aura repeatedly moan, her toes curled as she came a little just from the stimtion.

    Daimon stopped what he was doing, after all the forey his dick was so hard it was starting to get ufortable, Aura saw from the corner of her eyes how Daimon took off his boxers and her tail wagged as she moved her hips to "invite him".

    Daimon smiled, he grabbed Aura by her waist to keep her in ce, his dick rubbed against her ass a couple of times before he pressed the tip against her entrance, with a bit of force he managed to push half of it inside.

    "Nnngh ?", Aura felt Daimon spreading her insides and her hands clenched on the bedsheet, after all the teasing it didn''t hurt at all but she was so tight Daimon felt as if she was going to squeeze his penis.

    Daimon let his body rest on top of Aura''s back and kissed her before he shoved his fangs in her pale neck, the pleasure of her lover drinking her blood overwhelmed Aura, her insides coiled around Daimon''s thing as she reached her first climax of the night.

    Aura''s legs gave in with Daimon still connected to her, her body fell on the bed as she enjoyed her orgasm.

    Daimon smiled, the cute blushed expression of Aura excited him even more and now that she got bitten by him her body waspletely rxed.

    He started moving his hips back and forth, making his dick go in and out of Aura, the enticing melody of her moans and the creaking sounds of the bed echoed through the room creating a lewd atmosphere.

    Suddenly Aura changed the position a bit, she lifted her ass to allow her lover to prate her deeper, her tail was wagging as she invited Daimon.

    "Hyaan ?", with a dingle trust, Daimon pushed nearly three quarters of his thing inside of Aura, her tight and warm insides enveloped his dick making him feel in bliss.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon felt his ejaction building up, so he started trusting his hips, his hands caressed Aura''s body until they reached her breasts, while Aura might not be as voluptuous as the other girls, her breasts were big enough to fit in Daimon''s hands.

    Her little nipples were stiff as a proof that she was enjoying the caresses of her lover, with each trust Daimon was brought closer to his climax until he finally couldn''t hold back anymore.

    With ast trust Daimon let out a big load of sperm deep inside of Aura, the warm feeling of being filled by her lover made Aurae again, her love juices spilled all over the ce as she epted his seeds.

    Aura fell on the bed helplessly, with a little "pop", Daimon pulled his dick out of her, the lewd sight of his white stuff leaking out of her was enough to make him want to go another round, but Aura needed some rest before she could continue.

    Daimonid down next to Aura as he caressed her silver hair and her cute wolf like ears making her let outfortable sounds as she closed her eyes to rest, his gaze then focused on the other two beauties which were waiting to receive his love.

    Aisha and Liz smiled at each other, they noticed Daimon''s eyes was glued tot heir bodies and they loved the feeling, as if they have previously reached an agreement, Aisha used her breasts to cover her son''s face while Liz moved downwards until her face was a few centimeters away from his dick.

    Liz licked her lips as she admired Daimon''s thing, his manly scent made was enough to entice her to the point where she got wet just by it.

    Daimon whose field of vision was totally covered by his mother''s breasts smiled, the message was clear so he started sucking on her nipples, Liz on the hand licked the tip of his penis a couple of times before she gobbled nearly half of the thing in one go.

    The warm and soft mouth of Liz made Daimon let out a satisfied growl, Aisha moved downwards a bit just enough so that she was face to face with her son.

    "Darling¡­ are you really going to ignore us while we are at the Revy family and just y with Erin?".

    Daimon saw Aisha giving him a hopeful gaze and he couldn''t help but find her cute, he grabbed her wait and made her rode on top of his stomach, so that Liz could continue without any interruption.

    He dragged his mother closer to him and gently pressed his lips against hers, Daimon has never said it out loud, but even if he shows the same amount of love to all of the girls, there is an extra "feeling" whenever he does lewd things with Aisha.

    Maybe it was the taboo of doing this kind of things with her, or maybe because she was his first soulmate and at the same time the first woman to get a ce in his heart, but Aisha felt like a perfect match for him.

    His eyes moved all over his mother''s body admiring her from head to toe, her silky silver hair, the soft and pale skin which was akin to the most refined nobledies, her amethyst like eyes which were filled with love every time she looked at him, her beautiful face which could make other women envy her.

    Of course, he also enjoyed the sight of her naked voluptuous figure which she maintained even after she got a new body, andstly her privates which were pigmented in one of the prettiest pink colors.

    "Mmm ?", although Daimon was not touching her anywhere else, while they were kissing, Aisha felt as if their hearts were connected, so she could feel the deep love her son has for her making her heart drown in sugar.

    "You have me all the week, it''s only fair that I dedicate the other two days to Erin and ine", he said in a gentle voice as he stopped the kiss.

    ? Aisha pouted, she knew she was being selfish wanting to keep him for her, but she couldn''t help it.

    "Fine¡­ but you better not let yourself be bewitched by Erin, my darling''s first is mine ?", she mumbled.

    Daimonughed, "If only they knew", he thought as he saw from the corner of his eye, the skill tree tab, more urately to the grimoire he got from the fragment of Lace which up to this day still shows him only one thing.

    [#$#"%#&/!"#?, First tome: #$#"%#&/!"#?]

    [Activation conditions: The soulmates must retain their purity until the host has achieved a SSS Divinity feat (The condition can''t be known by anyone but the host)]

    Although it was true, he hasn''t decided who of the girls will be the first, there was another reason as to why he hasn''t crossed thatst line with them and it was his own grimoire.

    Even when he asked Evangeline her answer was, "Even with your permission I can''t see the activation condition, but I can assure you the reward will overwhelm the difficulty of the condition".

    Daimon came out of his daze when he felt Liz increasing her pace, he moved his right hand downwards and ced it on her head to help her take it a bit deeper.

    "It better be worth all the trouble", he thought.

 Chapter 131 Soft & Rough R-18

    Liz felt a firm and big hand holding her head and she mentally smiled, out of the three girls with which Daimon has been doing lewd things, she is the one who likes it rough the most, the feeling of being dominated by her lover excited her quite a bit.

    As a proof of that now that Daimon ced his hand on the back of her head, her tails which haven''t shown any reaction, suddenly wagged to show the current happy mood of their owner.

    Daimon felt Liz''s little tongue twirling around the tip of his dick, licking all the spots which she knew were pleasurable for him, making him feel as if his thing was going to melt.

    He was still a bit sensitive after finishing with Aura after all, so he had a slight urge to ejacte which made him not only kiss Aisha as if there was no tomorrow, but grab Liz''s head and made her blow him faster and deeper.

    "Hmm ?", Liz normally stops once she has half of Daimon''s big thing inside of her mouth, but right now with a bit of "insistence" she was taking almost the whole thing down, of course Daimon''s purpose wasn''t hurting her, so once he noticed the slightest sign of resistance, he marked the limit.

    "Slurp¡­Slurp¡­Slurp".

    Thebination of Liz''s saliva and the precum which was leaking from Daimon''s ns created sloppy wet sounds every time Liz moved her head up and down which added an extra lewd charm to the situation.

    Aisha could hear the messy blowjob her son was getting from Liz and she also yed her role, her lips hungrily pressed against his and her tongue intertwined with Daimon''s.

    They kept doing it until Aisha noticed Daimon''s body trembled a bit, she stopped the kiss and after licking her lips, she gently bit her son''s neck, her little fangs pierced his skin as she took a sip of his blood.

    The sudden stimtion made Daimon let out a little growl, his used both of his hands to hold Liz''s head in ce as he unleashed a thick load of white sperm deep inside her mouth.

    "Gulp¡­ gulp¡­gulp", the room was filled with two different gulping sounds, one of them was Aisha which was drinking her son''s blood and the other one was Liz which was being "forced" to drink his warm seeds.

    One of the good things of the Apex predator body was the anormal vitality that Daimon had, both blood and sperm were produced based on the vitality of the person, so Daimon simply closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of feeding both of the girls without any worries.

    Aisha noticed she let herself be carried away and drank more than normally so she blushed a bit, but seeing that her son didn''t seem to be affected by it she took just a bit more before stopping.

    After drinking the blood of her lover, her body waspletely turned on, her nipples were stiff and her pussy was dripping with love juices which were covering the stomach of Daimon due to their current position.

    Liz wasn''t in a better position too, while Aisha got turned on by drinking the blood of her lover due to her vampire ascendence, the passive skill "charm" made his other fluids have simr properties for all his soulmates¡­ in other words when she swallowed his sperm, also she came a bit.

    "Darlinggg ?", Aisha grinded her ass against Daimon''s body, her lower body was aching for the touch of her son.

    Seeing that Aisha was going ahead of her, Liz finally let go of Daimon''s dick, not withoutpletely sucking any leftover sperm, the manly scent which was filling her nose made her rub her thighs together, as her love juices were leaking from her lower body.

    "Me too please ?".

    Daimon smiled, although they haven''t been doing lewd things for too long, that didn''t mean he couldn''t please two of his girls at the same time, since Liz serviced him, then it was only fair for her to be the next, but he of course couldn''t leave Aisha aside.

    "Liz your turn, mom youe here", he said as he patted his shoulder, while Liz turned her body around so that her ass was pointed towards Daimon''s dick, or the "reverse cowgirl" position, Aisha positioned her lower body on top of his face.

    Daimon was marveled by the "pink paradise" which was covering his field of vision, his dick throbbed a bit just by looking at the beautiful privates of his mother.

    "Nnngh ?".

    "Hmmm ?".

    Two different but equally enticing moans echoed through the room, as Daimon dragged Aisha''s body towards him and started licking the outer area of her vagina, while Liz lowered her hips by herself thus putting the tip of his dick inside of her ass.

    Daimon grabbed Liz''s waist with his hands and pulled her down, her whole body trembled as he spread her insides.

    For a moment Liz nearly forgot how to breath, Daimon actually put it in in one go making a course of electricity run through her spine.<sub> </sub>

    "Ahhhn ?", once she finally reacted, Daimon had already started moving his hips upwards while also pulling her down with his hands to attack her back door by "two fronts".

    Daimon''s precum and the leftover saliva from Liz''s blowjob made it easier for him to move inside of her, but every time he reached deep, her ass tightened making it hard for Daimon to continue with his trusts.

    While Liz was letting out loud moans without any reserve, Aisha was trying to hold back her voice, as if she was challenging her son to make her moan like Liz, an invitation Daimon was more than happy to ept.

    Since now Liz was also moving her hips up and down by herself, Daimon used his left hand to drag Aisha''s lower body closer and then without any warning he inserted his tongue inside of her pussy until he felt a soft thing blocking his invasion.

    "Hyaa ?", Aisha was taken by surprise, the pleasure of her son''s tongue twirling around inside of her vagina made her toes curl up, and that was not all, her juices started to flow just to bepletely drank by Daimon.

    Speaking of Daimon, he was having one of the better times of his life right now, the sweet taste of Aisha''s nectar was making him hornier, and on the other side he was enjoying the warm and tight insides of Liz.

    "W-Wait darling mmmgh ?", it didn''t take too much for Daimon to lick his mother to climax, her juices drenched his face in the process but he didn''t care.

    Aisha''s body fell powerless as she was overtaken by pleasure, Daimon gently ced her next to him and then focused his attention on Liz.

    Without pulling out, they changed positions so that Daimon was pressing Liz below him, due to the difference in height Daimon''s face perfectly reached her neck which now looked really attractive to him.

    Daimon moved his hands all over Liz''s body until he found their final destination at that big pair of breasts of hers, he gently pinched her nipples and fondled her breasts, before shoving his fangs in her neck.

    The sudden stimtion was too much for Liz, her insides coiled around Daimon''s dick as she reached her climax, Daimon wasn''t better, the pleasure brought by drinking her blood and thefortable feeling of his penis being tightly enveloped by her insides made him growl as he ejacted.

    Even when Daimon was letting out one of the biggest loads of his life, he didn''t stop moving his hips, which ultimately extended both of their climaxes.

    "Haa¡­haa¡­haa", Liz gasped for air, her stomach felt stuffed and warm as she epted even thest drop of his seeds.

    Daimon stopped biting her neck and then gently kissed the ce where he shoved his fangs just to see the mark disappearing.

    "How was it, did you like it?", he sweetly whispered at her ears, at some point he got a bit carried away in the heat of the moment and went at her quite hard.

    "Mm ?", Liz made afortable sound, she liked it rough but what made her even happier was the gentle caresses Daimon gave her, even now he was holding her hand as they stayed connected.

    That being said, Daimon could feel the hot gaze of his mother on his back, so with a little "pop", he pulled his thing out of Liz and then amodated her tired body next to Aura, so that she could rest while he took care of Aisha.

    "Darling!", Aisha threw herself at her son making them both fell on the bed, as she repeatedly kissed him.

    Daimon smiled, he held Aisha by her waist and then stood up from the bed, Aisha wrapped her legs around her son as he walked towards one of the walls of the room.

    Aisha let go of her son and leaned her body against the wall, she spread her ass and then invited her son.

    "Come here darling ?".

    Daimon got a raging boner seeing the charming blushed appearance of his mother, he hugged her from behind ad rubbed his dick against her ass a couple of times before he slowly slid inside of her.

    "Wuuh ?", Aisha let out a cute sound, the feeling of Daimon''s huge thing invading her insides was simply heavenly, her body tensed up as he reached deep inside of her.

    Daimon only stopped after three quarters of his dick were buried deep inside her ass, her insides were so warm and tight he felt his dick was going to melt, the sight of his penis connected to his beloved mother made him have the urge to cum but he managed to hold back and instead started moving his hips back and forth.

    "Ahhhn ?", the room was suddenly filled by Aisha''s moans as she epted the love of her son.

 Chapter 132 Intense Session R-18

    "Ahnn¡­ahhh¡­ahhn ?".

    Inside the bedroom Daimon kept moving his hips back and forth, both of them werepletely engrossed in each other, with each thrust Aisha''s cute moans filled the room.

    Although it hasn''t been too long since they started doing lewd stuff, Daimon has already gotten a hang of it, each time he pushed his dick inside he made sure to rub her sweet spots.

    Aisha didn''tze around, she also grinded her ass against her sonplementing his rhythm so that when he pushed, she lowered her body to help Daimon go deeper inside or her.

    After all the moving, sloppy wet noises came from the ce where they were connected due to Daimon''s precum, Daimon slowed his pace for a moment and then whispered at Aisha.

    "Mom¡­ I want to push the whole thing inside".

    Aisha smiled and nodded towards her son with passion-filled eyes.

    <o>,m "I''m all yours darling ?".</o>

    Daimon ced his hands on Aisha''s belly and then tightly hugged her, as he caressed her soft skins, their bodies were stuck together as if they wanted to fuse.

    His hands moved downwards until his fingers were gently massaging her vagina, after all they have done Aisha waspletely wet.

    "It got bigger", she thought as she felt the hard and hot penis of her son rubbing against her ass, she gulped her saliva in excitement and her face blushed a bit.

    Normally Daimon takes it slow with her, but she could notice there was something worrying him and as his mother she was more than happy soothe her son with her body.

    Aisha spread her legs to make it easier for him to prate her, Daimon smiled and he slowly pushed his huge dick inside of his lovely mother, only stopping when his thing waspletely buried in her ass.

    "Wuuuh ?", contrary to what Aisha expected, although her son had to use a bit of force to push thest five centimeters, it didn''t hurt her it was just a bit ufortable at first.

    But Daimon knew the perfect solution for that, without any warning he shoved his fangs in the neck of his mother, he didn''t drink her blood at all, instead he just used the aphrodisiac effect of the bite to help Aisha rx so that he could start moving.

    Aisha''s toes curled up, the first thrust sent shivers through her spine, Daimon huffed and using her waist as a support point started moving his hips back and forth, increasing his pace with every thrust.

    "Hnnng ?".

    Not giving his mother any time to rest Daimon pulled his dick out and then pushed it inside in one go again making Aisha loudly moan.

    The sounds drew the attention of Liz and Aura who were still recovering from their orgasms.

    "Those two always get engrossed into each other", mumbled Aura.

    Lis nodded, "As you can expect of a mother-con and a son-con I guess".

    While Aura and Liz were gossiping, Daimon and Aisha were lost in the moment, their bodies were covered in sweat as they pressed against each other as much as they could.

    Soon enough Aisha let out a loud moan, her eyes widened and she climaxed again squirting on the floor while Daimon came inside of her.

    Both of their bodies slowly slid all the way from the wall to the floor, Daimon held his mother''s hand as theyid down next to each other gasping for air.

    Aisha turned to see her son and caressed his face with her hands.

    "That was amazing darling ?".

    Daimon smiled; how could he not know his mother was worried about him.

    It could be because all the thing about the djinns and the existence of a superior ne which could invade them, if the wonder myriad ster chart had some bad luck, but he felt the urge to hold Aisha in his arms more than normal.

    He shook his head and then stood up, whatever happens he could only take one step at time, for now he focused his attention in the three beauties which were leisurely resting after an intense session of lovemaking and his mood got better.

    "Let''s take a bath and then straight to bed, I think it''s been enough for one day".<sub> </sub>

    The girls nodded and they all went to the bathroom; their bodies were covered in sweat and other body fluids so a good bath was needed before they went to sleep.

    Aisha, Liz and Aura all helped Daimon wash his body like good wives making sure to clean him from head to toe, the same applied for Daimon, he personally applied soap all over their bodies and shampoo in their hair and fur respectively.

    Daimon especially enjoyed the cute sounds both Aura and Liz let out when he washed their tails and ears, it was always a bliss to feel their silky fur on his hands.

    Once they were clean Daimon dragged the girls into the bathtub to rx, their bodies which were a bit stiff after all that "exercise", easily rxed thanks to the warm water.

    This time Liz took the chance to sit on hisp while Aura and Aisha both hugged one of his arms as they rested in the bathtub.

    "Is something worrying you?", said Liz as she made little circles on Daimon''s chest with her pretty fingers.

    Daimon looked at the girls, all of them had that same worried expression which made him feel warm in his heart, they were all part of his precious family, the thing he treasured the most.

    "It''s nothing, I was just considering if I should just go and kill Dimas".

    A chill light shed on Daimon''s eyes, thest time he got a SSS Divinity feat was when he killed the manticore while he wasn''t even a mage, over the years he hasnded the killing blow on a lot of magic beasts including some peak Archmage ones.

    Aisha was the one that half killed the manticore which allowed him to kill it, so now the system didn''t consider "especial" for him to fight an enemy wounded by an ally, so he has been squeezing his brains to find a way to achieve something considered impossible by others.

    Demon light being his recent and closer attempt, but even something like that wasn''t enough, he got generously rewarded by it though, but it wasn''t enough to unlock his grimoire.

    And then today he found a perfect chance, a magic beast which couldn''t leave a small space and was particrly weak against fire, in core synchrony state Daimon was sure he could use demon light to finish him, that''s why he didn''t suggest a soul contract to bind Dimas, in case he decided to kill him.

    The problem was that his instincts told him to not take the easy way, and that''s where the internal conflict started, by unlocking the grimoire he would get stronger immediately, but if he forged a friendship with Dimas, it will be helpful for his future.

    Aura contemted things for a moment, "As much as I would like to hunt a new kind of magic beast, I think it would be better to focus in those disgusting djinns you mentioned¡­ at least until we know what is the meaning of the inscription".

    She then smirked as her eyes glowed with a yellow light, "That being said, if that''s what you want, I don''t mind if we go right now to the frozen fields to get it done".

    Daimon thought about it for nearly ten minutes but ultimately, he shook his head.

    "The easy way tends to be the incorrect one, I have other ways to get stronger, those djinns and Ereman will be quite useful for that", he thought before answering.

    "We''ll stick up to the n, the next time we go if Erin''s heart mirror shows no negative reaction, then our family will have a new ally".

    Daimon didn''t know it but inside that ck space where Evangeline resided, she let out a sigh of relief after listening to his decision.

    "Thanks to the heavens, rushing things is never a good idea¡­ stupid restrictions of the system", she mumbled.

    It was gettingte so after a couple of minutes inside of the bathtub they got out and dried their bodies before going to the bedroom, theyid down on the bed fully naked, tonight Aisha got the main spot so she got on top of her son and hugged him to sleep.

    Daimon covered all of them with a nket and they entered thend of dreams cuddling together as they shared their warm to counter the cold of the night.

    While Daimon was happily hugging three beauties to sleep, inside a mansion in the academic city, the studio where Leir Ascott spent his free time was a mess, there were a lot of broken things, papers and other decorations were spread on the floor.

    Leir was sitting on a chair behind his desk, his eyes were bloodshot as he read a report from his information gathering team.

    "It seems those peasants think I will justy down and tolerate this insult¡­ Mayer I have a job for you!", he shouted.

    A ck figure separated from the shadow at the corner of the room taking the form of a man with a mask covering his face.

    "What are your orders young master?", said the man in a hoarse voice.

    Leir gritted his teeth as he gave his orders in a low voice, the masked man disappeared leaving only the figure of a bald young man with hatred filled eyes.

 Chapter 133 Cunning Subordinates

    The night passed without any urrence, for a change the weather got a bit better so although it was a clouded morning, the snowing had stopped leaving behind ayer of white snow on the surface of Lykos.

    That being said, the thaw made the weather even colder than usual, so today even Daimon shared Aura''s morning weakness.

    Daimon''s eyelids trembled a couple of times before he opened his eyes, just to be blessed with the beautiful sleeping face of Aisha, they were fully covered by the nket, but he could feel the smooth sensation of her naked skin on his body.

    He turned to the sides to see the other two sleeping beauties, Liz was holding his arm between her breasts sharing her body warm with him, andst but not least Aura who was wrapping her cute tail around his arm.

    "Ahh I freaking love this new life", he thought, back on earth polygamy wasn''t publicly epted, although those rich and famous people probably had some lovers besides their legal wife, none of them was as open as the people of this world, where if you were strong or talented having two or three wives was a given.

    "Mmm darling ?", Aisha felt her son''s love filled gaze and she slowly opened her eyes and gave him a good morning kiss.

    Right now, Daimon felt sofortable, enjoying the pretty lips of his mother first thing in the morning made him feel at ease in his heart, of course he didn''t forget about his other girls.

    Aisha reluctantly let go of her son, but she didn''t get up and instead just rested her head on his chest, rxing at the rhythm of his heart beat.

    Daimon smiled, he moved his left arm upwards and dragged Aura closer to him, he gently pressed his lips against hers stealing a kiss from his cute wolf girl.

    "You can keep your eyes closed, but your tail gives you away my beautiful master", he whispered at her ears.

    Aura feigned to still be sleeping to receive more caresses, unfortunately for her, her tail wagged a bit giving her away as the nket waved due to the movement.

    She opened her eyes and stuck her tongue at him.

    "So, what, if I want you to spoil me, as my husband you should be happy to oblige ?".

    Daimon kissed her forehead and then changed targets to Liz, unlike Aura she didn''t let go of his arm and was firmly keeping it in ce between her big breasts.

    "Hyaaa ?", Liz''s eyes suddenly opened as she let out a surprised moan, since she wasn''t letting go, Daimon skillfully turned his hand around and then shoved his middle finger inside her vagina.

    "Daimon, you should be gentler when you are waking up an elegant and refineddy like me", although she said that, Liz closed her legs trapping his hand between them in the process.

    "Well, for me it looked like you liked it", said Daimon with a smirk.

    Liz just giggled and they just stayed on the bed a bit more, Daimon woke up early so there was plenty of time, Aisha gave her son ast kiss, she put on a semitransparent negligee to cover her naked body and then went ahead to prepare the breakfast.

    Not without gracefully swaying her hips as she left the room to sweeten Daimon''s sight with her sexy back view.

    Aura and Liz followed not too long after, the difference was that they remained naked, as peak Archmage and a half emperor, they could easily handle the cold, but the main reason was.

    "We can also y that game", they said as they both wagged their tails for Daimon''s delight.

    The three of them went to the dining room, the appetizing smell of Aisha''s cooking came from the kitchen making them eager for the result.

    Aisha brought te after te of different dishes, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, pancakes, bread, fruit, milk and orange juice, everything looked delicious.

    Of course, she took the "honor seat" on her son''sp as she personally fed him.

    "Say "ahh" darling, you need to eat to recover from yesterday''s "exercise" ?".

    Daimon smiled, he epted the offer and ate what Aisha gave him, to be honest he was actually quite hungry, not only because all the things he did, a high vitality required a good source of nourishment, so Daimon ate a lotpared to his peers.

    Although he drank some of their blood, his magic core didn''t ept any extra mana for the time being, so he just did it for the sake of pleasure.

    Once everyone ate to the content of their hearts, they put their usual clothes and a coat or jacket on top of that for the cold weather.

    Daimon focused his attention in Aura, she rarely wore anything else besides her usual get up to be in public or being naked in private, so it was interesting to see her using something different.

    Aura kissed Daimon and then used space shift to disappear, the others left the mansion and walked towards the ssroom, on the way Daimon noticed there were more students than normal, probably because this time they left the mansion early.

    But then he frowned his brows, when they arrived at the 1S ssroom, there was a small crowd congregated outside.

    "Come out, I want to challenge you!".

    "You cowards, why are you staying inside that turtle shell!".<sub> </sub>

    "Elite ss my ass, the pdins are the true elite!".

    Apparently, there were new students and none of them seemed to know about the reputation of Daimon, or maybe they were just feigning, the 1S ssroom was only essible to those with an elite ss token, to the most they could do was shout outside.

    Suddenly all the presents felt a chill running through their spines, before an indifferent voice drew their attention.

    "Get lost".

    ¡­

    All the students turned to see the origin of the voice and they saw it, a handsome ck-haired youth apanied by two of the most beautiful girls they have ever seen, a scene which normally would have been worthy or admiration, if it weren''t for the intimidatory aura which was being radiated by Daimon.

    One of the guys doubted for a moment before speaking.

    "W-Who are you to order us, we were told everyone is allowed to challenge the members of the elite ss, so here we are".

    The voice of the student was clearly trembling, so it was more than obvious that they weren''t here by their own will.

    Daimon ignored them and opened the door of the ssroom, as he expected there was no one inside, which was too much of a coincidence, Aliya always arrivedst but at this point the others should be here.

    Aisha''s expression became hostile, her image shed and then she grabbed the one who talked by his neck and lifted him from the ground a couple of centimeters.

    "Who sent you here?".

    The poor guy nearly pissed his pants, everyone knew Daimon was merciless, but Aisha hasn''t acted before, let''s just say the dead serious expression of a former Archmage was no joke.

    The student gulped down, he mustered his courage and then bowed his head.

    "I''m sorry, we were forced toe here and cause troubles¡­ wee from families and forces which are affiliated to the Ascott family, so we hand no choice!".

    Surprisingly just a little scare was enough for them to spill the beans, turns out Leir Ascott woke up from the beating Daimon gave him, needless to say but his new appearance wasn''t exactly to his liking, so he left Lykos enraged, but not without ordering anyone who came from his faction to go and bother the members of the elite ss.

    "To be honest we were ordered to challenge you¡­ "if you can exchange your life just to wound them, that is a win", those were his words, but we all know about the demon of the elite ss, so unless we want to die of course we won''t challenge anyone".

    Aisha let him down, she was a bit confused.

    "Then why were you shouting all that outside of the ssroom?".

    "We were just putting up an act, we came here way earlier¡­ all the ones present are affiliated to the Ascott family, so there are "witnesses" just enough to argue we followed the orders of that idiot".

    "So that''s why I didn''t recognize any of them", thought Daimon.

    "God damn my luck, I just wanted to walk holding hands with Loren and I lost my chance due to some annoying bastards!".

    Calvin''s voice made Daimon let out a sigh of relief, not only him, all his other ssmates were just arriving, which meant that guy was telling the truth, they were justte because they were intercepted on their way to the ssroom.

    Leslie saw all the guys surrounding the ssroom and she joked with Yvonne.

    "Yvi, your suitor is quite persistent".

    Yvonne snorted, "He fled like a coward, I bet he is just mad because now he looks like a monk which will scare all the girls that normally surround him".

    Since now they "fulfilled" their orders, all the subordinates of Leir immediately left, but Daimon stopped the one who talked before he disappeared from the scene.

    "What''s your name?", he asked.

    "Hector Damascus", said the guy with a slightly afraid voice remembering the way Aisha looked at him as if he was dead for sure.

    Daimon nodded, "Your idea was not bad, I bet it''s enough to trick that idiot¡­ unfortunately for you, bothering me in the morning a terrible mistake".

    Hector saw the smiling expression in Daimon''s face and he had a bad premonition.

 Chapter 134 A Decent Subordinate

    Hector turned to see his surroundings just to make sure there was no one besides the members of the elite ss and him.

    After confirming it, he sighed and then bowed his head.

    "As long as it is within my possibilities, I''m willing topensate¡­ just don''t take it against my friends, the idea was mine and mine alone".

    Daimon didn''t want to stay outside when it was this cold, as members of the elite ss they could bring others inside their ss, so he opened the door and everyone entered followed by Hector.

    Aisha approached the girls just to make sure they were alright, although it hasn''t been that much since they met, they already treated each other as friends.

    So, while Aisha and the other girls were chatting, Daimon, Calvin and Michael confronted Hector.

    "ss rep, shouldn''t we teach them a lesson¡­ luckily, I was cautious enough to go pick Loren at her dormitory for safety reasons".

    Listening to Calvin''s shameless words Michael snorted.

    "Safety reasons my ass, you just wanted to wander around at the campus to enjoy the frozenke scenery".

    Hector was perplexed, ording to the rumors the whole elite ss was filled with bloodthirsty individuals, that''s why he specifically told everyone to be careful with the words they used, to make it seem credible but to not really offend them at the same time.

    In fact, he was so worried to incur in Daimon''s wrath that he made sure to arrive at the 1S ssroom way early, since it was said that he always arrivedte, but to his bad luck today that wasn''t the case.

    Daimon''s voice interrupted Hector''s thoughts.

    "The way I see it you have two choices now, I force a duel with you and then you disappear from my sight, or you work for us, you have ten seconds to decide".

    "10"

    "9"

    Hector''s eyes widened; in his mind he was ready to request to be transferred back to the blue-sky academy and give up on the chance of participating in the exploration, but apparently there was a different path opening for him.

    Still it wasn''t as easy as just nodding, if he decided to ept then¡­ it would be the same as saying that he was now an enemy of the Ascott family.

    "I can''t miss the chance to enter the magic ruin that is said to be an era changing event¡­ fuck the Ascott, that asshole wanted to use us a cannon fodder anyway".

    Hector''s eyes glowed with a resolute light and then he kneeled down.

    "Hector Damascus is willing to obey".

    Daimon nodded, "Are you sure, that means you''ll have to sign a soul contract, I don''t trust you after all".

    Hector sighed, "I know it, but I can''t allow myself to be returned to the blue-sky academy, I''m not talented enough to get a spot for myself in the next exploration, my hope was to enter as a part of Leir''s entourage".

    "Those guys you saw previously and me, are the ones who were left behind without any warning¡­ just because wee from the families who doesn''t have an Arch rank in their files, in other words in their eyes we are disposable pawns".

    When Leir left the, he only contacted those who he considered important for his ns, and those with a poor backing weren''t among them, so instead he gave them onest task, a petty revenge on the ones who humiliated him.

    Of course, Leir knew they won''t seed but he didn''t care, if he as the master was humiliated then why would his servants should be any better.

    Hector looked at Daimon''s eyes directly and the gave his final answer.

    "Even if I have to make a deal with the devil himself, as long as I''m allowed to grow stronger that is fine by me".

    "What a good choice of words", thought Daimon as he took out a scroll from his storage ring.

    "Sign it, then you are free to leave I will think on what to do with you¡­ as for the exploration that will depend on your performance".

    Hector gave a quick read to the terms of the contract, contrary to what he expected the only condition was "loyalty", as long as he didn''t try to harm Daimon nor the ones around him, then he was basically free to do whatever he wanted.

    "Compared to the contract needed to be a part of the "trusted" henchmen of the Ascott, this is way better", he thought before biting the tip of his finger and letting a drop of his blood to fell on the contract thus signing it.<sub> </sub>

    To get the "protection" of the Ascott family, others submitted to them, the treatment varied depending on what they had to offer, those with Arch ranks were not that bad, besides some tribute they didn''t have to act as servants.

    But the families without an Arch rank were epted only if they epted to be practically ves of the Ascott, with the help of the Ascott they will probably produce an Arch rank, but in exchange their fates will be linked to their masters, in other words if the one with whom they signed the contract died¡­ the contract will kill them too.

    Not only that but they will have to follow all the orders given to them, even if that implied, they will have to do things they didn''t want, or simply die if they were ordered to, inparison what Daimon asked was only loyalty, the difference was clear.

    Hector handed Daimon the contract and then left without saying anything else, he knew it was pointless since the one he will be working for is the disciple of the principal anyway, so any information about him will be delivered in a matter of seconds if needed.

    "Heh, if this guy knew you are also a terror contractor, I think his reaction would have been way different", said Evangeline in an amused voice.

    Daimon shook his head.

    ? "Maybe, but this guy doesn''t deserve that, someone that is willing to protect his friends and take all the me is decent enough to be my first proper subordinate, besides I now will have ears and eyes at the Ascott family, two birds one stone".

    Now that Hector was gone, the girls joined them, although Ivonne wasn''t as talkative as Leslie, this time it was clear she had something to say.

    "I¡­ I''m sorry, we dragged you all into our problems".

    Leslie and Liliana remained silent, but they were aware that it was true, today was nothing serious and they were rtively safe in the territory of the beast faction, but no one could say what would happen in the future.

    Daimon shook his head, he sat down with Aisha and Liz at his sides.

    "That day the idiot from dius family wasn''t only targeting Leslie, so in any case I would have interfered, the same happened with Leir, the old man told me to watch over the teacher, the impact of something throwed with all the strength of a four-star ranked knight, is no joke after all".

    "As for that George guy, he attacked me first and with a poisoned weapon too, so I kicked his ass, nothing would have changed even if you three weren''t involved", he said as he looked at the Risha sisters.

    "Humph, what does a mere Ascott family amountspared to my Ghrish family, my old man has fought against their half emperor before so our rtionship isn''t harmonious anyway".

    "I''m not fond of humans and my master hates them anyway, we were bound to be enemies".

    Both Calvin and Michael made their stances clear, in this world you were destined to have enemies no matter what you do, there will always be someone that wants what you have, or simply doesn''t like you, so aggrupation is a must in order to survive, unless you can outpower a whole faction alone, but no one has achieved something like that¡­ yet.

    The Risha sisters smiled, besides their mothers they never got along with anyone, Yvonne even had a lot of troubles with her father, so having people they could call friends was something new for them.

    Leslie looked at Loren and chuckled.

    "I can trust Daimon and Michael, but I bet Calvin only said it to look cool in front of Loren".

    Their conversation was interrupted when the door of the ssroom opened, surprisingly Aliya wasn''t apanied by Boris or Richard as usual, instead it was Yvonne''s mother who tagged along.

    "Good morning, everyone stand up today we will have an outdoor ss".

    Aliya saw the unconvinced expression on the faces of her students and sheughed.

    "Don''t worry, with "outdoor" I mean in the campus, more urately near the frozenke".

    Everyone let out a sigh of relief, after yesterday''s adventure they didn''t want to be dropped in some faraway ce to train, a regr ss was all they wanted for today.

    The only one who had a bad premonition was Yvonne.

    "Mom didn''t you return to the family grounds?".

    Irina smiled at her daughter.

    "Of course, I returned because your father organized a meeting for all the ones with elder rank, but now that it finished of course I came here to make sure you three are properly studying, in fact your aunts will pay a visitter because we have something to discuss".

    This time not only Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana also had a somewhat worried expression.

    "Come one give me a break", they thought.

 Chapter 135 Clash At The Lake (Part 1)

    Aliya guided her students towards the ce where they would be taking the ss today, which turned out to be rather familiar, near the edge of the now frozenke, there was a tree which Daimon recognized.

    It was the ce where he ordered Arianna to hang some second-grade students naked, that was probably why even if the view was incredible, no one approached this tree as if it was cursed or something like that

    Apparently, they weren''t the only ss which decided toe to this ce, along the edge of theke there were two different groups besides them, one of them was the A ss guided by their new tutor.

    The other group was formed by people who weren''t wearing the badge of the wild w academy, so it wasn''t hard to guess they were transfer students from the blue-sky academy.

    But they were separated in two mini groups, one was formed entirely by humans but the other two were formed by the other two humanoid races of the blue-sky gxy, alfear and dwarves.

    The alfear are said to descend from a race which supposedly lived in the wonder myriad ster chart in the ancient age¡­ the elves, unlike the elves which are said to havemon blond hair and either blue or green eyes, the alfear were born with a mix of brown and blond hair and their eyes were always brown.

    Something simr happened to their ears, although they were longer than the ones of a human, it wasn''t the same as the elves of the stories, instead they were shorter and with pointy ends just like the ones of vampires.

    They were led by a middle-aged man which had nearly half blond hair a symbol of nobility among the elves, where blond hair meant a stronger connection with their ancestors.

    The dwarves on the other hand are were practically the same as the stories, none of the students surpassed the 1.5 meters in height, and their skin tone was tanned by nature, a secondary effect of their unusually high affinity with the earth and metal elements.

    Their tutor was a bulky bearded man which seemed to be in his forties, unlike the students he was about ten centimeters taller.

    Both the A ss, the alfear and the dwarves exchanged gazes with the elite ss for a moment, before the instructor of the A ss said something to the other tutors and then they simply ignored Daimon and the others.

    Irina turned to see Aliya with a confused expression.

    "I didn''t know the alfear and the dwarves also came to Lykos, what is happening here Aliya?".

    "Me neither, they probably arrived today¡­ that''s why uncle Boris and instructor Richard were called to the principal''s office along with all the other tutors and high ranked staff of the academy".

    There was a slight conflict between the beast faction and the humanoid races, for example the Revy family and the dwarves had been at each other throats in the field of magic technology.

    And the alfear didn''t get along with carnivore races¡­ like the werewolves, the only good thing was that they also didn''t like the Jolbaris nor other races which were rted to beasts, luckily, they hated the vampires and undead enough to ignore their prejudices.

    That''s why Irina was a bit surprised to see theming to the wild w academy, as the ss was about to start, two guys and one girl from the Jolbaris family which were members of the A ss pointed at Loren.

    "Isn''t that Loren¡­ who would have thought she would sell herself just to enter the elite ss".

    "Well, her family is at the verge of losing their nobility, so it''s understandable that she looked for a backer".

    "The rumors say the demon was the one who bribed the principal and some of the examiners from the tests, to transfer her to the elite ss, just because he wanted to annoy young master Alexander".

    Daimon chuckled, the image of the vice principal from the Jolbaris family shed through his mind.

    "Spreading rumors huh¡­ two can y that game asshole, let''s see whoughsst", he thought as he yed with his storage ring.

    Calvin looked at Loren who had an angry expression and he patted her shoulder.

    "Don''t pay attention to those assholes and that ugly bitch, she is just jealous that her talent is so poor that even Alexander didn''t take her as hisckey!".

    Calvin didn''t bother to control his volume, so his insults were heard by all the presents, including the A ss, the alfear and the dwarves.

    ¡­

    Silence fell in the ce, until the ones who were insulted took a few steps ahead of their group and shouted, especially the girl whose gaze was poisonous as she yelled at Calvin.

    "You are the worst ranked among the elite ss, so why are you acting so high and mighty".

    "I challenge you to a duel, when you lose, your position will be mine and then I will be epted in young master Alexander''s inner circle".

    One of the two boys even challenged Calvin.

    Aliya saw things were getting out of hand and she looked at the tutor of the A ss.

    "Tutor Lamber, control you students they are interrupting my ss".

    Ramon Lamber frowned his brows, he took the position of tutor for the A ss after his older brother Syrus Lamber was promoted to supervise the new elite ss, so how could he be bossed around by a magicless girl.<sub> </sub>

    "Well, well, well¡­ if it isn''t "miss Aliya", since when a teacher can order a tutor what to do?"

    "Besides it was your student the one who insulted mine, so why should I reprimand them, send that ruthless brat to the disciplinary council before I do it".

    Before Ramon could continue spouting more nonsensical stuff, he felt as if a bucket of cold water was poured on him, when an indifferent voice made its way to his ears.

    "How curious, my memory must be failing me, because I remember your students badmouthing my ssmate first".

    Daimon who was ying with Aisha, red at them as he spoke with a rxed expression, but no one believed he was as calm as he appeared, the students of the A ss still remembered what happened thest time someone interrupted his time with his "sister".

    The same girl that insulted Loren before gritted her teeth before she mustered her courage.

    "That wasn''t an insult, I was just saying the truth¡­ others might be afraid of you but I''m not going to be so easily intimidated by someone who won''t be the first ranked for too long!".

    Irina was getting annoyed by the current situation, she wanted to see her beloved daughter studying and then all this happened.

    "Since it hase to this let them solve their differences in a duel, let''s end it quickly so that we can continue with the ss", she said.

    Daimon was about to step ahead to take on the other guy which insulted Loren but Aisha stopped him from doing so.

    "I will close that bitch''s mouth; you just enjoy the show".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Fine, I will stand aside this time".

    Michael also walked until he was standing next to Calvin, there were two guys after all so another challenger was needed.

    "Aisha is right, we can''t have you dealing with these small fries after all".

    After the situation with the fire djinns all the other students didn''t want to feel useless anymore, although they knew Daimon was out of their league for the time being, that didn''t mean they were weak.

    Aliya sighed.

    "Fine but don''t take long¡­and don''t take things too far", she said as she looked at Aisha,st time Daimon half killed someone and she didn''t look ufortable at all, so it was obvious she was also merciless with others.

    Calvin, Michael and Aisha walked towards the frozenke, there wasn''t a tform here, so the ice will function as the tform for their duels, the opponents followed them not too long after, the girl who insulted Loren stood in front of Aisha and the other two each faced Calvin and Michael.

    ? Since Boris wasn''t here, Irina took the ce of the supervisor on the side of the elite ss, while Ramon did it for his students, in case something happened they could stop the duel.

    "Start!", With Irina giving the green light everyone started their respective fights.

    Calvin craned his neck and simply walked towards his opponent.

    "What a fool", thought Harris Jolbaris, his body suddenly covered in electricity which was shot towards Calvin with the intention of frying him.

    But then his eyes widened as his lightning hit Calvin''s body just to be dispersed without hurting him at all.

    "Impossible, I''m part of the main branch why is he isn''t affected by my beast lightning!".

    Calvin sinisterlyughed as he rushed towards Harris, when he was nearly one mete away from Harris, his fist covered in rock.

    "Aghh!!!", Harris screamed when Calvin''s fistnded on his arm dislocating it in the process and sending him flying a few meters away.

    A rock hammer formed on Calvin''s hand, before Harris could give up, he threw it hitting his face with it.

    The result was a bloody mess and a few teeth flying from his mouth.

    "That will teach you to keep your mouth closed when you are in front of the young master of the Ghrish family".

    Ramon clenched his fists seeing the fight ending so fast, what he didn''t know is that Calvin got too heated and finished earlier than what he wanted, because he was furious.

 Chapter 136 Clash At The Lake (Part 2)

    Calvin walked towards Harris, the duel will only end after one of them faints or surrenders, and even in his angered state, Calvin made sure to not finish Harris with thatst attack, but with his mouth wounded, he couldn''t articte his words thus impending him from giving up.

    Harris got up and tried to run, just for Calvin to appear next to him and crash his face against the steel like ice floor.

    The ice actually cracked a bit due to the impact and blood leaked from the crash area, Calvin crouched down next to Harris and then spoke in a clear loud voice.

    "You know, if I wanted to, your "almighty" young master Alexander wouldn''t have been the fourth ranked of the elite ss, I''m an earth element mage after all, so unless your lightning is as monstrous as Daimon''s, someone who depends only in lightning spells has no chance against me".

    Calvin grabbed Harris by his left leg and dragged him all the way towards his ssmates before throwing him in front of them, before he returned with Daimon and the others.

    He then smiled at Loren and flexed his arms.

    "What do you think, aren''t I awesome!".

    "Well, he isn''t exactly gant¡­ nor refined, but you can''t never get bored when he is around", thought Loren as sheughed at Calvin''s antics.

    Yvonne rolled her eyes at Calvin.

    "And just like that you killed the moment", she said as she shook her head.

    Calvin shrugged and then sat on the ground next to Loren, to watch the remaining fights.

    The next one was Michael and apparently it was a duel of speed, his opponent used a movement spell to d his legs in lightning to elerate himself, while Michael used his own self boosting wind spell.

    Gusts of wind and currents of electricity appeared every time they moved.

    "Your friend was lucky to have elemental advantage over Harris, but in speed terms lightning overwhelms wind, so you are dead meat!!".

    Trevor Jolbaris was really pissed, from the corner of his eyes he saw the current state of his friend, nearly half of his teeth were missing and his face waspletely swollen due to the impact against the ice.

    <o>,m Michael smirked, for assassin style mages or knights, speed is the golden rule, his master is also a double affinity mage, but unlike him, his master has wind and lightning affinity, his footwork has earned him the tittle of the fastest man in the white fang gxy.</o>

    Michael took off his shirt and threw it aside, showing his toned body.

    "You are right, in terms of raw speed lightning overwhelms wind¡­ but in explosiveness fire is the king!".

    A loud explosion sound drew everyone''s attention, Michael disappeared from the ce he was standing, leaving behind a cloud of fire and smoke.

    Trevor''s eyes widened, in thest moment he managed to move body sidewards avoiding Michael''s kick.

    "Boom!".

    Another explosion was created by Michael making him propel backwards, hitting Trevor''s back with his elbow.

    "Aghh!", the impact made Trevor fly a few meters until he managed to recover his bnce, there was a sordid pain on the part of his back where he was attacked.

    Michael didn''t continue with his attack; he instead stood a few meters away from Trevor as he gave him a disdaining gaze.

    "I don''t really get along with Calvin, but people like you who has never had to put effort to reach his goals disgust me¡­ Loren is my ssmate now, and I can see in her eyes the same determination, I have, so insulting her is the same as insulting me!".

    Trevor gritted his teeth, the electricity around him increased creating humming sounds.

    "So, what, an imitation of a lightning assassin is still an imitation!".

    Trevor disappeared,pared to his previous speed he was twice as fast as before, the spell was the same but the amount of mana poured on it waspletely different.

    "Sacrificing control just to increase speed, what a fool".

    Observing from afar, Aliya shook her head when she saw Trevor forcing his movement spell, take a basic fireball spell for example, if you inject more mana than what is required, the size and the strength might increase, but the spell will be unstable, it might explode in your hand or deviate from its original target and hit yourrade.

    She who used to be part of the army, has seen the consequences of people forcing their spells, but those were life or death situations, doing it in a duel, is despicable in the best-case scenario.

    Her words were proven to be correct, although Trevor was faster, he wasn''t able to control his movements as precisely as before, so when Michael avoided his attacks, he kept moving a few meters due to the momentum, a couple of times he even tripped and fell just to get up and try again.

    Michael snorted.

    "The lightning assassin style requires you to finish your opponent in a single movement, without wasting mana or time, a few seconds could mean the death of your team¡­ you aren''t worthy of this fight style".<sub> </sub>

    After saying that, two explosive sounds echoed through the ce and before Trevor could react, he was kicked in the stomach by Michael.

    "Crash!!".

    The propulsion created by two fire explosions plus the wind movement spell made Trevor''s body fly all the way from where they were fighting to a tree near the area where the A ss was observing the fight.

    When the snow which flew all over due to the impact settled, everyone saw Trevor, his eyes were rolled back and blood was leaking from his mouth.

    Michael stood there on the ice, his pants were slightly burnt, showing his legs which were musclypared to the rest of his body.

    "You see, that''s the difference between someone who takes things for granted and someone who has fought to be outstanding".

    Michael remembered the hellish training his master made him go through, even without lightning affinity, he created his own fighting stylepensating theck in speed with explosions, the problem was that he also received a part of the impact, since he used the force created by it to impulse his body.

    As an assassin type, his body couldn''t be heavy, so his master made him reinforce only his legs and focus the explosion in that specific part, and after many years of suffering he could now withstand continuous explosions to further increase his speed.

    "Fire whirlwind step", mumbled Michael, remembering the surprise on the face of his master when he showed him, the method he thought to reach the speed his master asked him to achieve, before he could get his permission to "officially" date his granddaughter.

    Calvin nodded at Michael before he shouted.

    "That''s a cool and all ¡­ but you look like a voyeur, so put on some clothes for fuck''s sake!".

    Michael felt a vein popping on his neck, "Calvin bastard, next time I won''t help you!", he said as he took out a new set of clothes and put them on top of his now burnt ones before he walked towards the elite ss.

    Daimon was amused by the fact that even after insulting each other, Michael still sat down near Calvin, he then focused all his attention on the remaining fight.

    Helen Jolbaris just watched her n members being wiped and she was now regretting having insulted Loren.

    "God damn¡­ isn''t this woman the second ranked", she thought as she looked at Aisha,st time at the wee ceremony, Daimon stood up for his mother which led others to think she wasn''t too skilled inbat, but after seeing Michael and even Calvin who was supposed to be the "weakest", easily overwhelming her friends she was afraid of suffering the same fate.

    Unfortunately for her, to prevent duels just being used to annoy others, before both participants have exchanged movements, no one can surrender, so she had no choice but to bite the bullet.

    Both Aisha and Helen used a lightning d spell, but while Helen''s lightning was unorganized and messy, Aisha seemed to be enveloped by it as if each current of electricity was a soldier in a formation ready to obey the orders of his queen.

    Unlike the previous fights Helen took out her weapon, a metal whip which conduced the electricity, making it lethal, she charged towards Aisha while preparing her whip to hit her.

    "If I cannd one hit, then this bitch is finished", she thought.

    Aisha indifferently stood still just waiting, which made Helen get angrier.

    "Don''t me if you get disfigured!", her whip viciously dashed towards Aisha''s face¡­ but then she simply extended her hand and caught it.

    "ng", the sound of metals colliding made everyone look at Aisha''s hands which were now covered in silver-colored gloves.

    "Aghhh!!!", Helen let out a loud scream, as Aisha''s lightning ran through her whip electrocuting her in the process before her image shed.

    "Pahh!!".

    With a loud pping sound, Helen was sent flying with the whole left side of her face swollen.

    "Don''t me if you get disfigured", said Aisha as she returned with her son.

    "Mm?", Aisha frowned her brows when she saw some kind of vinesing her way, but before she could do something the unmistakable sound of a gunshot interrupted her.

    "Aghh!!".

    From the group of the alfear a guy with a quarter part of blond hair was rolling on the ground holding his stomach with his hands as he screamed in pain.

    The other alfear followed the direction of the shot and saw a ck-haired youth pointing at them with a gun and a cold expression.

    Daimon stood up and walked towards Aisha, once he was next to her, his eyes glowed before the world seemed to lose all its bright, the other alfear fell to the ground touching their chests trying to force the air to enter their lungs, Daimon''s aura was suffocating them.

    He then looked at the tutor of the alfear as he spoke.

    "I don''t care how things are done at the blue-sky gxy, but here we call that "treason attack", and the punish is one hundredshes¡­ so who will take the remaining ny-nine bullets?".

 Chapter 137 Suppression

    The normally rxed atmosphere near the edge of the frozenke changed to a tense one, the fights that took part a moment ago were agreed by both parties, in other words besides looking at the winners with hate filled eyes, the A ss couldn''t do anything else.

    But what happened after Aisha''s fight was apletely different matter, a member of an outer force attacked a student of the wild w academy without a reason, if things weren''t dealt correctly then a conflict might arise.

    The alfear tutor frowned his brows, his students weren''t the cream of the crop, he had some lesser nobles with a quarter of blond hair, not only that, the one who is now rolling on the ground and whining is a peak two-star mage.

    The tutor then focused his attention on the weapon on Daimon''s hand.

    "An advanced magic gun model¡­ this kid isn''t simple, if don''t manage the situation correctly, we might be in deep shit", he thought before he crouched down near his student to inspect the wound.

    "You want to apply reverse enginery to my bullet, dream on", thought Daimon when he saw the alfear put on a frustrated expression, not because of the wound but because there was no projectile.

    As of this date, Liz had developed a variety of bullets for Daimon, for situations where there will be witnesses and the target needed to survive, the first kind are air stunning bullets which explode at contact creating a shockwave to incapacitate the enemy.

    Those are the bullets he''s been using at the academy; they can''t be recovered because the bullet turns into thin dust at contact, the jacket wasn''t expelled and instead was stored inside the gun.

    The teacher could only ept his defeat and afront Daimon.

    "I''m rens Thairen and I hold the title of marquis in the alfear kingdom, may I ask who am I talking to?".

    Daimon smirked, the alfear took the lineage pretty seriously and there weren''t that many of them, so they were all governed by a royal family and other noble houses as well.

    "Answer me rens, what is the punishment for those who attack a direct descendant of the one in power, let''s say like a princess?".

    rens eyes narrowed as he slowly answered.

    "Execution, but in this case, there was no harm done¡­ are you implying that just for a little prank a young student must pay with his life?".

    Listening to the upright voice of the alfear tutor, Daimon smirked.

    "Well, to be honest thatme attack wasn''t going tond so I guess one arm and one leg will be enough, as a courtesy you can do it yourself within the next ten seconds, or I will do it my way".

    rens nearly lost it.

    "What kind of idiocy is that, you want to sever one leg and arm of someone just for one attack which wasn''t lethal!!!".

    Daimon extended his hands and started the countdown, rens gritted his teeth seeing that he was just being ignored.

    "I would like to see how is a one-star mage going to cut the limbs of my student in my presence!".

    The mana pressure of a middle stage Archmage fell over Daimon just to disappear in the bat of an eye.

    "Bleh!", rens vomited blood and then kneeled on the ground.

    "A peak Arch ranked¡­ this kid has a peak Archmage as his bodyguard!", he thought.

    Previously rens scanned all the presents, ording to his mana sense the only middle Arch ranks here were him and the tutor of the dwarves, so he tried to put on a show to intimidate the kid which was getting into his nerves, just to be forced to kneel down in front of his students.

    "What the hell are you doing Egyon, are you just going to stay looking like an idiot?", rens shouted at the dwarf tutor, two middle Archmages joining hands could resist the pressure of a peak one at least for some time.

    Unfortunately for him the dwarf tutor didn''t move an inch, his face actually showed he was enjoying the disgrace of the alfear.

    rens also noticed the students of the A ss looked at him in a weird way as if they were looking at an idiot, but it wasn''t his fault, after all they just arrived today so none of them knew about the situation at the wee party.

    Daimon walked towards the alfear, the aura created thanks to the passive skill overlord''s pride was still suppressing the students, so only rens was taken care of un the shadows by Liz.

    "Crack".

    "Aghhh!!!".<sub> </sub>

    Two different sounds sent chills down the spines of the presents, the first was a loud cracking noise, produced by Daimon''s foot breaking the leg of the alfear which he shot earlier and the second was a high-pitched scream.

    Daimon waited until the alfear stopped screaming before speaking, there was something bothering him.

    "I wonder why did you attack my sister, I could understand if you challenged us, but a treason attack is not something you suddenly do on a whim".

    "F-Fuck¡­ aghh!!!".

    The alfear couldn''t finish his sentence when Daimon stomped his right shoulder breaking it in the process.

    "Stop it God damn it, the n was only to cause some troubles to that girl, falling in cold water would be enough, I was going to receive a spot in the following exploration by the Ascott family that is all I swear!".

    Daimon nodded, he crouched down next to the alfear and spoke in a voice only he could hear.

    "That is actually a good deal, what a shame you aren''t going to be able to walk for the next couple of months¡­ maybe one year".

    The alfear suddenly convulsed, foam came out of his mouth before his eyes rolled back as he fainted.

    Daimon smiled happy with the results of a little experiment which would be showing resultster, and then returned with his ssmates.

    Liz lifted her index finger and the pressure over rens disappeared, Daimon did the same releasing the alfear from his aura.

    rens let out a sigh of relief, his previously bravery was nowhere to be seen as he approached his student.

    "He really did it¡­ one leg and one arm, what a crazy fellow", he thought as he inspected the wounds of the guy, the bones were totally crushed to prevent an easy recovery.

    Water healing magic was perfectly capable of regenerating the bones and damaged muscles, but the fragments of the previous bones needed to be extracted to prevent negative side effects.

    Also, there was a limit as to how much healing magic could withstand the body in a certain amount of time, to cure big wounds healing magic used vitality, so even if the healer was willing to use his own vitality topensate, the treatment needed to be split in several sessions.

    rens felt he had no face to be here anymore, he gave instructions his students to bring the wounded guy and leave theke, not without stealing some gazes at Daimon which now waspletely ignoring them.

    "This time I can''t do anything since I''m not strong enough, but there also experts in our alfear kingdom¡­ let''s see how you handle them, prince of the Revy and Agent families", he mumbled.

    "I wonder Marquis rens, does every alfear have nature affinity?".

    rens shook his head but he still answered considering there was a peak Archmage looking at them.

    "No, I only those rted with the royal family¡­ like the one you hurt, take me as an example, my affinity is fire".

    Daimon nodded and then waved his hand.

    "Today''s matters will end here, if you want to fight, I don''t mind it though, but the next time I won''t be this merciful".

    Daimon turned to see the dwarves which remained neutral during the whole time.

    "That goes for you all too, whatever the Ascott family offers¡­ you need to be alive to enjoy it, so I suggest you to think it twice".

    rens and his students left, and the A ss followed not too long after, leaving only behind the elite ss and the dwarves.

    Aliya sat down on the ground and called her students.

    "Well, now that we finished that part of the day let''s start with our lesson, a moment ago you all witnessed the result of a spell being forced past its limits, so I would like to make a side note on that".

    "Unless your life is threatened don''t do something so stupid, an overcharged spell can easily get out of control damaging your core, and I guess I don''t need to exin how much of a hassle is that".

    After finishing that little exnation, she took a sip of her medicine to emphasize the seriousness of the matter.

 Chapter 138 Elemental Resonance

    Since the ss was starting Calvin had the courtesy of rising a small part of the ground to create a tform where there was no snow to function as a bench, of course he did the same for the teacher.

    Everyone took seat and focused their attention on Aliya, which right now rose two of her left hand''s fingers.

    "I previously taught you about how to reduce casting time and the way to "boost" the power of a spell, without causing it to be unstable right?".

    Seeing her students nodding, she pointed at Calvin and then continued with her exnation.

    "The way of a mage is to always look for an advantage over its enemy, preparations are the golden rule, never forget that, taking Calvin''s fight for example, earth element does counter lightning element, but it''s only to a certain extent".

    "An amateur mistake I bet you all have noticed on the young generations of the Jolbaris you have seen or fought so far, is that they tend to depend on long range attacks".

    "If that kid would have concentrated its lightning in apact form, maybe around a weapon, cutting down Calvin''s rock armor would have been possible, other way to counter it would have been the "hit and run" tactic".

    "Never take for granted that your affinity gives you an unbeatable advantage over your enemy".

    She then focused her attention on Michael and spoke.

    "I was going to wait a bit before teaching you about this, but I guess after Michael''s fight, there is no need for that".

    <o>,m Aliya extended her hands, above one of them a fireball appeared and a small amount of wind twirled around the other one.</o>

    "I don''t have a second affinity, but basic spells like "breeze" are avable for everyone and when you use them at the same time like this", Aliya joined her hands and then threw the result against theke.

    A small patch of the ice light up on fire before the exchange between heat and cold put off the fire leaving behind a hole on the ice surface.

    Aliya recovered her breath for a second and then exined what just happened.

    "A fireball is an impact type spell, although the contact point will be affected by the fire, there won''t be mes appearing unless it falls on certain materials, like dried herb or other highly inmmable things".

    "But then right now you saw fire appearing on ice, which isn''t inmmable, the reason is easy, breeze stoked the mes of the fireball causing that spreading effect even if there was nothing to consume".

    "Elemental Resonance, using different spells whichplement each other at the same time to produce a better result".

    Everyone looked Michael, thatbination among a wind self-boosting spell and an explosion caused by a fire spell, produced an eleration which overwhelmed lightning which is the publicly recognized "fastest" element.

    Michael had a proud expression on his face, and it was understandable, the principle behind elemental resonance is easy to guess, but extremely hard to execute as it requires both a high experience in the use of the two separate spells and a high precision over at the moment ofunching them.

    Calvin looked at the sufficient expression in Michael''s face and he grinned.

    "I don''t think you should criticize privileged people if you are a dual affinity mage though".

    Michael shrugged, "Even then, not all the people with more than one affinity can use elemental resonance, it''s a matter of hard work¡­ besides it''s not exclusive to dual affinities anyway".

    Aliya smiled and pointed her index finger at theke before a dazzling line of fire was shot from the tip of her finger, a small hole appeared on the ice and then the surface exploded releasing lots of ice shards around the area of the impact.

    "Michael is right, elemental resonance isn''t reserved for those with more than one affinity, believe it or not, that was a one star ranked spell, but it''s the result of using both "burst" and "fire dart" at the same time".

    A sh of curiousness shed on Daimon''s eyes.

    "That attack wasparable to a three-star rank spell, so the result is not as simple as adding one plus one".

    The reason of why Daimon was interested in elemental resonance was that it somewhat reminded him of demon light, but there was a fundamental difference, demon light created something totally new based on different elements, while elemental resonance was ultimately only two spells used at the same time.

    In a rare asion Daimon rose his hand to ask something.

    "Teacher, is it possible topletely fuse two different spells of two different elements?".

    Aliya''s eyes illuminated.

    "That''s a good question Daimon, and it''s also one of the greatest unknowns of the current magemunity "spell fusing", giving a bit of context, dual affinity mages are rare toe by and even then, among those who manage to be Arch ranks not all develop a dual element domain".<sub> </sub>

    Daimon stole some nces at his mother who was happily hugging his right arm, Aisha was included in that category, since her domain used tobine metal and lightning.

    "Unfortunately, as of right now, the only way in which fusing two spells of different elements is possible, is a domain which is created naturally without the mage interfering and no one has been able to "artificially" fuse spells till this day".

    Aliya noticed Leslie and also Loren seemed to be confused and she further exined.

    "An easy way to see it is that elemental resonance is only synchronizing two spells to produce a better result, and to be considered a "fusion" of spells, a totally new effect should be produced by it".

    Daimon nodded as he was lost in his thoughts.

    "Well, that exins why I got a nice reward when I created demon light, but it wasn''t enough to unlock the grimoire¡­ fusing elements is probably only "impossible" in the wonder myriad ster chart I guess".

    "Mm?", inside of her private space, Evangeline felt Daimon''s mood sky rocketing, although she couldn''t read his mind, as the administrator of the system she was there to be his advisor, so she more or less could know how he was feeling.

    "I guess he deciphered something new about the system, this host of mine is really something else", she said as she giggled.

    By the time the first half of the ss finished it was midday, everyone was getting hungry so they all went to the restaurant of the academy, surprisingly Aliya didn''t go upstairs to the teacher''s floor and instead apanied her students to eat.

    So, she and Irina also took seat at the table reserved for the first ranked of the elite ss, Irina of course sat next to her daughter, with the excuse of supervising she was following a healthy diet.

    Aliya on the other hand sat next to Aisha which was at Daimon''s right side, after using spells for a variety of examples during her lesson, her face was a bit pale, even when she drank her medicine, she still looked a bit sick.

    Daimon which was about to order his food, noticed it and he sighed.

    "Are you really sure you don''t want to take a rest at the infirmary, I don''t want the old man to get mad at me?".

    Aliya shook her head before saying.

    "I just need to eat something rich in mana¡­ mana gathering is almost impossible for me, but I can still replenish it ingesting foods rich in mana".

    Daimon nodded and they finished their orders.

    While they were waiting for their food, Calvin looked at Daimon and doubted before asking.

    "We were too far and that alfear spoke in such a low voice I couldn''t hear, so why did it attack Aisha?".

    The Risha sisters, Michael and also Loren looked at Daimon waiting for an answer, at this point they knew that Aisha was his reverse scale, so seeing him breaking that alfear leg and arm wasn''t that shocking.

    But that didn''t mean they weren''t curious about why an alfear would just attack a student of another academy and a member of the elite ss on top of that.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Apparently, he was offered a spot for the exploration in the team of the Ascott family in exchange of messing with me, or something like that, ording to that rens guy, that alfear is rted to their royal family so I guess that''s why he was offered that".

    "Because Leir thought I would not be so heavy handed when I dealt with it".

    Calvin had a weird smile on his face as he drank from his cup.

    "Well, that guy clearly misjudged our ss rep".

    The food didn''t take long to appear on the table, so everyone focused on eating their own meals, until an announcement sounded on the restaurant.

    "Daimon Licht, please go to the office of the principal¡­ Daimon Licht please go to the office of the principal¡­".

    The message kept being repeated for a couple of seconds before it stopped, Daimon didn''t care and just kept eating his food until he was full before standing up.

    "I''ll return in time for the physical training part of the ss", he said before leaving, surprisingly Aisha and Liz didn''t go with him.

    What they didn''t know was that Daimon already knew what was happening, because he used the mental connection to speak with Aura.

 Chapter 139 Discussion At Auraâ€™s Office (Part 1)

    After leaving the restaurant Daimon calmly walked towards Aura''s office, it didn''t take him long to reach the entrance of the office, surprisingly Aura didn''t have a secretary or something like that, instead there was a doorbell which he pressed.

    A momentter the gate opened by itself and he entered the building, the ce was rather simple there was a big hallway which led to the only door visible, and some decorations here and there.

    It looked as if Aura didn''t bother to change anything since she took the charge, which was understandable considering she didn''t spend too much time in the academy at least until this specific year when Daimon became a student of course.

    As Daimon was about to open the door of Aura''s office, he heard a familiar voice speaking in a loud tone.

    "This is uneptable, having to wait for a mere one-star mage!".

    "That one star mage is also the first ranked of the first year, something you couldn''t achieve back then, so I would suggest you to shut up".

    "Vice principal Jolbaris, tutor Ogien please don''t raise your voices".

    "I wonder is this a coincidence or is there some kind of agreement between the Ascott and the Jolbaris", thought Daimon.

    One of the voices belonged to the vice principal from the Jolbaris family with whom he had some shes at the admission exams, then it was the voice of the vice principal from the snow leopard tribe andstly Boris also seemed to be there.

    Previously when Daimon spoke with Aura through their mental connection, only the tutor of the alfear was here, so they probably arrived here after that.

    As soon as he entered, Daimon felt a lot of gazes focusing on him but hepletely ignored them and just sat on a free chair which was in front of Aura''s desk.

    Nics Jolbaris gritted his teeth as he demanded an exnation.

    "If you don''t mind me asking why the hell did you take so long to arrive?".

    "I was eating so of course it took me some time to finish my meal, so why was I called here, I don''t remember doing anything wrong?".

    Nics nearly lost it, the Jolbaris were trying to bring some of the alfear noble families to their side, so when he received a call from rens saying that one of the students which has some connection with the royal family was beaten like a dog, he was furious.

    "What kind of answer is that, how dare you make a vice principal waste time, I suggest that we revoke his status as a member of the elite ss immediately!".

    The same applied to rens he was standing next to Nic with an unsightly expression on his face, he was the one in charge of the safety of his students, and was specifically assigned to that group because some of the students had some connections to the royals.

    "It seems the discipline in the wild w academy is deficient to the point where a first-year student doesn''t bother to show the proper respect needed towards a vice principal".

    Peak stage Arch ranked aren''t cabbages, even the elite ss only have a middle stage Archmage which is Boris as their tutor and the alfear that came aren''t pdins of the blue-sky academy, the only reason as to why rens became their tutor was that connection.

    So now if he couldn''t find a scapegoat, the one who will be punished is him and the king isn''t known for beingprehensive.

    Boris saw that Daimon wasn''t worried at all and he also calmed down, at this point he knew that kid always had a hidden card up his sleeve.

    "Silence".

    With a single word from Aura, both Nics and rens immediately shut their mouths.

    Aura then looked at them and spoke.

    "You two came directly to my office without any proper request, the minimal waiting time to request an audience with me is one day, so I won''t ept anyins regarding who arrived earlier and who didn''t¡­ now tell me exactly what happened".

    rens nodded but inwardly he gritted his teeth.

    "It all happened earlier when I took my ss to experience the rumored beautiful scenery of the frozenke inside the campus, then¡­.".

    rens basically told all the presents what happened, not without adding a few extra things to make Daimon look like the main culprit.

    Aura stole a couple of gazes at Daimon before saying.

    "So, if I''m correctly understanding, your student yed a harmless "prank" on one of the girls of the elite ss and in exchange he was brutally beaten up is thar right?".

    rens had an aggrieved expression as he answered.

    "That''s rightdy Argent, I understand that the young generation is hot blooded, but breaking someone''s limbs just for a little prank which had no consequences is too much".

    "Bullshit".

    Daimon snorted listening to the nonsense rens was spouting.<sub> </sub>

    "I wonder if marquis rens would think the same if he was the one at the receiving end of that kind of "prank", the duel was over and the alfear didn''t have anything to do with the result and yet that guy attacked my sister, not breaking his neck is already being merciful".

    Before rens could argue, Daimon stroke while the iron was hot.

    "If you are demanding an exnation over a distant member of a royal family, then I thing I should do the same, my sister is the young miss of both the Argent and Revy families, in any ce attacking a princess is a capital crime!".

    "I wonder what will matriarch Erin would say once I inform her of this "assassination attempt", against us".

    Both Nics and rens nearly vomited blood.

    "Since when a two-star ranked vine spell counts as an assassination attempt", they thought, as their faces ckened.

    Daimon had a ridiculing smile on his face.

    "You want to try suppressing me using politics and schemes, dream on, Erin and ine will be mad at me if I lose against two idiots after all what they taught me".

    After thinking about it for a couple of minutes rens then changed his approach.

    "Okay you made your point clear, but still your way of dealing with things wasn''t the correct one".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "So, what do you suggest, I already gave you enough face leaving that guy one arm and one leg".

    rens felt his lungs filled with anger but he still managed to calm down and answer.

    "An apology, the beast faction and the alfear are part of the same alliance, so a sincere apology and a smallpensation in the form of healing potions, that''s the least you can do".

    To everyone''s surprise Daimon seemed to be actually considering the conditions stated by rens¡­ or so they thought until he spoke.

    "The apologize is out of question, since the alfear royal family can''t afford a healing potion for their members, how about I give you a couple of bottles of light bandage potion?".

    "Pfffft".

    Boris finally couldn''t hold back hisugh, the potion mentioned by Daimon is the worst healing potion that exists and is only effective for those below the star ranked, the reason as to why it exists is because it''s the only potion whichmoners non mage people can afford.

    Even the normally serious vice principal Leeris from the snow leopard tribe couldn''t prevent a softugh to escape from her mouth, but she recovered herposure once she felt Nics looking at her.

    They kept arguing for about twenty minutes, every time rens demanded something, Daimon turned it for the worst, which made clear for them that he wasn''t going to concede at all, unfortunately besides some empty threats they couldn''t do anything, the one who acted first was the alfear after all.

    Once Aura felt Daimon had made them suffer enough, she gave her verdict.

    "This incident will be left behind by both parties, treason attacks after a duel are enough to be expelled, however the student in question isn''t part of the wild w academy, so as a sign of "good will" I won''t demand apensation from the alfear kingdom".

    Aura let out a slight trace of her mana pressure as she red at rens and Nics.

    "Does anyone have aint with my decision?".

    How could Nics and rens dare to object now that they felt Aura was getting angry, originally, they thought they would at least get an apology or something to use as an excuse for that alfear wounds.

    "Damn, I''m going to have to use a treasure from my own reserves as an excuse", thought rens, if the alfear notified his family the only one in deep shit would be him, so he was going to bribe him, for someone with royal blood the price was going to be a high ranked magic treasure so his heart was bleeding right now.

    Aura then waved her hand at rens and Nics as if she was chasing them away.

    "If that''s all you two may take your leave, Daimon, tutor Ogien and vice principal Leeris please stay behind".

    Nics gave Daimon a poisonous gaze before leaving the room followed by rens.

    Daimon didn''t care, he leaned his back against the chair and then looked at Aura.

    "So besides dealing with those clowns, what was the real reason for me toe here?".

    Aura smiled, she pointed at the vice principal from the snow leopard tribe and then spoke.

    "New information about the exploration¡­ and also, I wanted you to meet someone".

 Chapter 140 Discussion At Auraâ€™s Office (Part 2)

    Daimon rose one of his brows, the only people present in the room were already in a way or another his acquittances, Boris was the tutor of the elite ss and the vice principal from the snow leopard n, which he has somehow bumped into quite a few times.

    Aura stretched her arms and then waved her hands.

    "You two also take a seat, there are no stranger here anymore".

    Boris and the vice principal surnamed Leeris nodded and took a seat next to Daimon, Aura then snapped her fingers and a magic formation engraved on the floor of the room activated.

    Daimon looked at the symbols and recognized the use of the formation thanks to the truth seeker eyes.

    "Anti-spying, istion and soundproof, what can be so serious for you too be this wary", he thought.

    Aura pointed at the snow leopard vice principal and then said.

    "For starters why don''t you properly introduce yourself?".

    The woman nodded and then spoke in a calm melodious voice.

    "Ste Leeris, the young miss of the snow leopard¡­ it''s a pleasure".

    Daimon nodded at her, and then turned to see Aura.

    "What could be so important to mount all this "show", is it rted to that new information you mentioned about the exploration?".

    Aura smiled; her eyes seemed to have a cunning glow as she answered.

    "Yes, the team that went with the Greenwich Sage discovered something that is making the whole ster chart shake, first the ruin only opened because its days are counted, once the timees it will self-destroy".

    Daimon wasn''t surprised to hear that, what made magic ruins and secret realms so coveted was that they only appeared under certain circumstances, and their time was limited, once they close their treasures and legacies will be buried with them.

    "That''s not something new though?", he said.

    Aura tapped her fingers on her desk before continuing.

    "Normally yes, but there is another rule this time¡­ the more people enter, the less time it will remain open, originally, we were going to send about 240 students, in other words the elite sses of both first and second years of each one of the four academies".

    "But ording to the calctions of the sage that will mean the ruin would have self-destroyed in three days, so all the gxies reached the agreement of cutting the amount in half, the sixth star ranked from the second-year sses couldn''t enter anyway, so now it will fifteen from the first year and fifteen from the second year".

    Daimon now understood why that alfear would risk to create a conflict just to earn a spot at the exploration, if before everyone was trying to win over a ce by doing some ass licking or bribing, now things got dead serious.

    But then he shrugged after thinking more about it, he didn''t see anything changing for his ns, there weren''t that many members of the elite ss after all.

    "I get it, but it''s not like it affects me, all my ss needs at most ten spots anyway".

    Boris sighed.

    "Kid, at least show a bit of concern for an event that will change the whole ster chart".

    Aura took out a ck badge and threw it to Daimon.

    "Mm?", Daimon inspected the thing, there was only one word written on it "ck".

    "What is this", he asked to Aura.

    Aura noticed the now interested expression in Daimon''s face and he inwardly smiled.

    "Something that changes the whole idea of the exploration we had, changing the number of participants was within our predictions, but now ording to the "rules" discovered along with these badges¡­ the one who hold onto it can allow a mage lord to enter as long as it passes some kind of trial".

    Daimon''s eyes widened a bit, a mage lord among a bunch of star ranked mages was like a wolf in a sheep flock.

    "Okay, that is actually a big change in the n¡­ and I suppose the mage lord selected toe with us is this vice principal, right?".

    Ste frowned her brows.

    "Hey, I understand my proximity with vice principal Jolbaris is not appeasing for you, but at the very least follow the standard rule of calling someone by theirst name".<sub> </sub>

    Aura knew Daimon didn''t like formalities, specially with those who are not rted to him, so she interrupted them before things got out of hands.

    "Ahem, it was orded by all the half emperors that the mage lord going, couldn''t belong to any of the main families or their allies¡­ vice principal Leeris was chosen because her n is neutral and she has a perfectly clean record".

    She then took out a piece of paper which looked somewhat familiar.

    "Or at least that was the idea but as soon as the notice was passed down to all the members of the council at the beast faction, vice principal Leeris approached me and signed a soul contract, to assure she won''t do anything harmful to any of the students of the elite ss".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Well, that should have been a given from a teacher of the academy, but I guess it''s good to hear I won''t have to watch my back against one of the four mage lords that will probably appear in the magic ruin".

    Ste didn''t know whether she shouldugh or cry, but ultimately, she came here to find an ally, so she didn''t forget to mention what she offered.

    "There is an extra use in the contract, I won''t interfere in "personal feuds" between the students¡­ unless Daimon Licht is in trouble, if that was the case, then I have to offer my help in every way possible".

    Daimon saw Aura smiling at him, if they were alone, he was sure her tail would have been wagging, she basically got him a bodyguard which couldn''t betray him, but that also confused him a bit.

    "That sounds good vice principal Leeris, now tell me why would you chose to do that when you seem to enjoy being inpany of the Jolbaris?".

    After the couple of times, they have met before, Daimon already formed a mental image of Ste''s personality, even when he threatened her back at the admission exams, she didn''t lose herposure nor showed any hostility, but now she had an angered expression on her face.

    "That''s because I hate Carm Jolbaris and this is a good chance to get back at her, even if it''s just a bit".

    "Carm Jolbaris?", said Daimon in a confused voice.

    "Arthur Jolbaris wife and Alexander''s mother", mumbled Boris.

    With his usual indifferent expression Daimon looked at Ste as he slowly spoke.

    "So, you want me to kill her son to lessen your hatred?".

    Ste immediately shook her head.

    "Hell no, my goal is to crush that woman''s pride, I just want you to prevent Alexander from getting any decent treasure, that will be enough".

    "So, she is remaining technically "neutral", as long as I don''t get into any trouble", Daimon thought before inwardly shrugging.

    "Whatever I wasn''t counting with a mage lord before, so having one as an ally is just a bonus for me".

    As if she suddenly remembered something, Aura scratched the back of her head.

    "I nearly forgot about it¡­ thepetition to decide the participants will be held the next week and we will depart by the beginning of the next week after that, second grades will have their tournament first and then first years".

    Boris was especially against thepetition being so rushed, their training barely started and there was a lot of things they still had to learn, unfortunately there was nothing he could do.

    Ste stood up from her chair and then she slightly rose the sides of her dress.

    "Now that everything is settled, I will take my leave, I pray for a good cooperation between my Leeris and the Argent and Revy families".

    Daimon nodded, he stood up and then slightly bowed with his right hand ced where his heart is positioned, a gesture of goodwill among nobles.

    "I hope so too¡­ miss Leeris".

    Ste left, leaving behind only Boris, Daimon and Aura, of course Boris noticed Aura red at him so he immediately stood up and excused himself.

    "Principal, I need to check up on my niece, so I will also take my leave".

    As soon as Boris left, Aura stood up and then walked towards Daimon, she then put a hopeful expression like a little girl who wants to be praised.

    Daimon tapped his leg and Aura immediately sat on hisp, just to be kissed by Daimon, her cute wolf ears twitched as she enjoyed the kiss.

 Chapter 141 Irinaâ€™s Lesson (Part 1)

    Daimon saw Aura''s cute tail wagging as she pressed her lips against his, after a couple of minutes she waspletely blushed, while Daimon was intertwining his tongue with hers, but before things could get serious, he stopped.

    "Mm?".

    Aura gave Daimon an interrogating gaze, she was starting to get in the mood when he suddenly stopped the kiss.

    "I have to return to the ss and you also have a lot of work to do right?".

    Aura had an unconvinced expression, she looked at the bunch of papers on her desk and sighed.

    "You better spoil meter, the bodyguard I got you has an extra benefit which she didn''t mention¡­ the fact that she has allied with us is a direct insult towards the Jolbaris".

    Daimon saw the wild smile in Aura''s face and he was d that she was his lover and not his enemy.

    "Why?", he asked.

    Aura chuckled before answering, "Because she is the new target chosen by the Jolbaris to be Alexander''s wife, unlike before, this time it isn''t Artur Jolbaris, but his wife the one that is in charge of wedding matters though".

    Although Ste didn''t mention it, how could Aura as the ancestor of a family that is openly in conflict with the Jolbaris be aware of every notice, rumor and gossip about them.

    On the surface it hasn''t been officially dered that Ste will marry Alexander because they didn''t want to repeat the same mistake,st time Arthur Jolbaris was so sure that Erin would ept his marriage proposal that he announced it, so when he got rejected both father and son were humiliated.

    Carm Jolbaris on the other hand remained silent¡­ at least until she was sure Ste will fall in the hands of her son, unfortunately for Carm, among the information gathered by Ereman''s spies in the underworld, it was written that Alexander has been asking for a ve from the snow leopard tribe.

    Which alone didn''t mean anything, everyone has its preferences after all, but if you add that to the fact that Ste hates Carm Jolbaris, then it wasn''t hard to guess, the one being targeted by her is Ste.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, he kissed Aura onest time as he praised her.

    "I thought my cute Aura hated schemes, but you are pretty much good at it too, if that woman tries something funny, we can use this against her".

    Aura had a proud smile as she epted his caresses.

    "Of course, we are talking about the security of my only disciple and future husband, so of course I found someone who can''t betray you no matter what happens".

    After sharing another passionate kiss, Daimon left Aura''s office, on the way back to the restaurant he had a grin which made everyone that saw him move aside to not get in his way.

    "That woman is probably thinking she can remain neutral and just let me do the dirty work, what a shame, it would be an insult for a predator like me to be taken advantage of¡­ if I''m not wrong the snow leopard tribe has a decent amount of peak Arch ranked, it will be a good addition to our forces".

    Inside the library, Ste was reading a book when she felt a slight shiver running through her body, she looked at every direction trying to find out if she was being observed, but she didn''t notice anything.

    "Maybe it was just my imagination", she thought as she continued reading her book.

    ¡­

    The meeting did take a bit of time so when he arrived at the restaurant everyone had already finished eating, Daimon handed Aisha his token so Boris was sitting next to Aliya as he ate a piece of grilled meat.

    Boris gulped down his food, he took the ce and then stood up.

    "Let''s go brats, we don''t have time to lose so your training has to continue".

    Surprisingly no oneined even Calvin looked rather serious, as soon as Boris found them, he told them that the next week thepetition to decide the participants and who will be leading will be held.

    Although Aura handed the badge to Daimon because she waspletely sure he was going to win, Boris didn''t know the extent of Daimon''s battle prowess, so in his mind there was still a chance for Alexander to win.

    Boris guided them to the training grounds, while they were walking Daimon felt Aisha and Liz gaze'' piercing him, but he feigned ignorance.

    "I wonder why did that old man returned but you still took a few minutes, on which I''m pretty sure you were alone with Aura", mumbled Liz.

    "What are you saying Liz, my darling probably just walked slower and that''s why he arrivedter".

    Seeing the smile which wasn''t a smile in Aisha''s face, Daimon dragged them both closer to him.

    "Ahem, I just stayed back because Aura had some thing which couldn''t be mentioned while other people was there¡­ we''ll talk about thister okay?".<sub> </sub>

    Satisfied with his answer bot Aisha and Liz smiled and hugged his arms tightly, making others envious of their lovely scene, especially Calvin which looked as is he was about to cry, as he saw Loren walking next to the Risha sisters instead of being all clingy with him.

    Michael chuckled at Calvin.

    "Once you be as strong as Daimon, then you will naturally be as surrounded by girls, just like him".

    Calvin sighed remembering the scene back at the frozen fields when they were useless at the hour of the truth.

    "Shrimp, we need to be stronger, else I won''t be able to show my face to my old man".

    Michael felt a vein popping on hic neck, his short stature was a sour point for him.

    "I told you to not call me that you Calvin bastard¡­ but you are right on the other part, to be honest I never thought I will be admiring someone from the same generation as me, I guess there is always a higher mountain".

    Boris was noticed there was a different vibe ongoing for Calvin and Michael, since they returned from the training at the frozen fields, which he wrongly attributed to Richard''s methods.

    Once they arrived at the training grounds, Boris sat on the floor and didn''t say anything, to everyone''s surprise the one giving the training ss this time was none other than Yvonne''s mother.

    Irina got up the tform and then started her lesson.

    "This lesson was going to be reserved for when you all have some time to get to know each other better, but given the urgency of the situation, we will skip a few steps".

    Irina waved her hand at Yvonne and she also got up the tform and stood next to her mother.

    "Your teacher previously exined you about elemental resonance, an advanced technique which only those talented people can dominate, so I''m going to exin you the other side of the coin".

    Irina smiled before she continued with her exnation.

    "Do you know why the army is so feared even when most of its members doesn''te from high ranked noble families?".

    No one answered, with the exception of Yvonne which is Richard''s granddaughter none of them had any rtion with the army after all.

    Irina raised her hands, in the left one there was a single orb of darkness floating, on the other one there were a few beads of darkness slowly rotating.

    "Quantity and Quality".

    "The army represents quantity and the academies represent quality¡­ while the academy focuses on selecting and supporting the cr¨¨me of the crop, the army is not as elitist, they share the resources evenly, of course the higher the rank the more resources, but ranks are earned".

    Noticing she was divagating, Irina exchanged gazes with her daughter, they held hands and then pointed at the sky above Daimon and the others, before they both shouted at the same time.

    "Nightmare canopy!".

    Yvonne''s hands glowed with a dark light before a ck veil covered about fifty meters of the training grounds, making Leslie and Liliana a bit surprised, they knew this spell which is exclusive to the night sparrow n.

    Leslie''s eyes sparkled.

    "Incredible, Yvi is only a peak one-star mage, so her nightmare canopy should only cover at most twenty meters, howe it more than doubled its size!".

    Irina had a proud smile while she looked at her daughter.

    "This the counterpart of elemental resonance, something created for and bymoners, "Team spell", it allows two mages with the same affinities to amplify a spell of their choice, this nightmare canopy should only cover about forty meters even at its two-star ranked version, and Yvonne surpassed that".

    Daimon was particrly interested in this team spell mentioned by Irina

    "Unlike elemental resonance the same persona had to dominate two spells toplement them, this team spell thing seems easier to dominate¡­ specially by those with a good understanding of each other and the same affinity".

    Irina and Yvonne are mother and daughter, they both are part of the night sparrow n and they both have darkness affinity, so it was easy for them to do it, Daimon stole a couple of nces at Aisha and saw her also staring at him, making him notice they both had the same idea.

    In terms of lightning they were aspatible as possible after all.

 Chapter 142 Irinaâ€™s Lesson (Part 2)

    Irina noticed her daughter was a bit pale and she told her to leave the tform, so she could continue with her exnation.

    "I told you this technique was crated for and bymoners, but there is a reason as to why it''s only taught to those with a high rank in the army, team spell requires the one using it to have a decent body build".

    "The one whounches the spell will receive a recoil depending on the force of the team spell, the number of people participating on it and their realms of course¡­ the current record is held by the field marshal who can join hands with up to six peak Archmages using their maximum power tounch a coordinate attack".

    "Damn!".

    Everyone''s reaction was the same, they know knew the hidden story regarding how the magus emperor was defeated, the six strongest peak Archmages practically bombarded him at the same time while he was contained by twelve Archknights.

    So, you can imagine how destructive the attack created by a half emperor and six peak Archmages can be.

    Even Daimon was frankly surprised, to withstand a recoil of that caliber, the field marshal must have a monstrous body.

    Daimon had a contemtive expression on his face,tely he has been wondering why after all his provocations, the Jolbaris haven''t started a true war against the Argent and Revy families.

    "So that''s why there is a rtive peace among the noble families, they are afraid that if they kill each other too much, the army will take over¡­ not bad".

    Liliana who saw Yvonne a bit out of air, rose her hand to ask something.

    "Aunt Irina, you reduced your power to one-star rank couldn''t you take the recoil instead of Yvi?".

    Irina shook her head before answering

    "Yes, but what would have been the point, of course an Archmage can take the recoil of a one-star team spell, what I wanted to show you was¡­ that my Yvonne is awesome ?".

    Yvonne felt her ssmates looking at her and wanted to dig a hole to hide, but then she let out a sigh of relief.

    "At the very least grandfather isn''t here¡­ or I wouldn''t be able to show my face in public anymore", she thought.

    This time Calvin rose his hand, as he looked at Loren.

    "There is only one problem though, not everyone of us has a someone to team with, Loren, Liliana and me are the only ones with our respective elements in the elite ss".

    Irina shook her head.

    "That''s not necessary the case, there are still spots left for your ss, so now you will have to find someone that has the same affinity as you, for now those whose elements match pair up".

    And so, the teams formed, Leslie and Michael and Daimon had to be shared between Aisha and Yvonne.

    To be honest Daimon could pair up with everyone, he got light affinity thanks to Gram, darkness and lightning were his innate elements and thanks to all the magic beasts he hunted with Aura, he also had the basic elements like fire, wind, earth and water.

    If anything, he didn''t have ice affinity like Liliana, but that could be solved with one travel to the frozen ins.

    Loren, Calvin and Liliana sat next to Boris and Aliya while Daimon and the others went up the tform.

    Irina had a weird glow in her eyes as she saw her daughter standing next to Daimon, but it onlysted a second before she exined the basics of team spells.

    "For this technique the most important is cooperation, both if you need to be in the same page, the flow of your mana and the intensity needs to be as close as possible".

    "Let''s start with mana flow, close your eyes, press your hands together and feel the mana flow of your partner".

    Yvonne looked at Daimon, her eyes seemed to glow for a moment as she tried to discern his mana flow like the first time they met, but now it waspletely different to what she remembers.

    After she had the courtesy of telling Daimon his mana flow waspletely out of this world, he of course disguised it with the bracelet of the god of mischief, so now for curious eyes, Daimon''s mana flow was still strong but not the point that it would raise waves on the ster chart like before.

    The first ones to start were Michael and Leslie, they both closed their eyes and pressed their hands together, while others couldn''t see anything, in their minds both of them imagined a red stream running through their bodies respectively.

    "Mm?", Leslie focused on Michael''s mana flow, unlike her, his had a mix between red and a light green tone, also its current intensified around his legs creating waves here and there.<sub> </sub>

    Michael on the other hand was having a bit of trouble following Leslie''s mana flow, unlike his explosiveness, her stream was fluid and agile, as if it was elegantly dancing through her body.

    They weren''t actually seeing their real mana flows, since that was only possible with an extremely rare eye spell which specialized in that, or people like Leslie who had that ability thanks to her different eyes.

    Irina nodded seeing they didn''t immediately reject each other, although she didn''t mention it to not discourage them, not all the mages werepatible, some which had simr mana flows repelled each other and the same happened if they were too different, the key was to find a midpoint.

    She then focused her attention on Daimon, her daughter and Aisha.

    "What!".

    Irina''s eyes widened, she nearly forgot how to breath, without she noticing, Daimon joined hands with both Aisha and Yvonne at the same time.

    "Are you three crazy, hurry and let go!".

    Irina rushed towards them in a try to separate them, mana flows reacted to each other, if they weren''tpatible a small drawback would make them feel dizzy, but the more people was participating the higher the drawback will be, with three people at the same time they could get hurt if they weren''t careful.

    "No way!!!".

    Irina stopped a few centimeters away from Daimon and the girls, on his right side where Aisha was standing, lightning mana was gathered around them, as for the left side where Yvonne was, a thin amount of ck mist was taking form.

    There was only one problem, while Aisha was calm and rxed, Yvonne was having a bit of trouble to keep up with Daimon''s pace, but then Daimon opened his eyes and her frowned expression disappeared.

    At this point Irina was speechless, she looked at the ck-haired youth in front of her as if she was looking at some kind of legendary monster.

    "P-Perfectpatibility at the first try and between different races on top of that", she mumbled.

    Daimon turned to see both his mother and Yvonne, a moment ago he got carried away and although his magic core wasn''t active, mana still gathered at a fast rate around him, Aisha was okay since she had her grimoire, but Yvonne was starting to feel ufortable, so he immediately stopped and then adjusted his mana flow to a more stable pace.

    Irina couldn''t see what was happening, but Yvonne on the other hand was more sensitive towards mana flow, and she was in awe.

    "What the hell, he can control his mana flow at will as if it was nothing!", she thought.

    Modifying one''s mana flow was possible, but it required a lot of training and it couldn''t be done in a small amount of time¡­ or there was a possibility of their mana circuits breaking and their organs failing.

    "I guess nothing he does should surprise me at this point", thought Yvonne before she let go of Daimon''s hand.

    Aisha on the other hand extended her free arm and then pointed at the sky before shouting.

    "Tempest!".

    A cloud formed above the training grounds and lightning fell on a wide area of about 100 meters.

    Boris waved his hand and a barrier made of mana protected all the presents form the electric currents that ran wild through the floor of the training grounds.

    Daimon''s body was also assaulted by electricity since he took all the recoil of the technique, but he didn''t flinch, this level of lightning was nothing for him after all.

    The other students on the other hand were in awe, tempest is the lowest tier of wide area lightning element spell, it''s a one-star spell which is supposed to cover about a thirty meters area with lightning¡­ but Aisha tripled its reach.

    Only after the spell finished, Aisha let go of Daimon''s hand, not without making sure he was fine.

    "Are you okay?", she asked to her son.

    Daimon nodded, "Yup, it felt weird to have my mana reserves decreased but notunching a spell, but besides that the recoil is nothing".

    For Daimon who used to feel as if his body was going to break after Aura''s training or those times when he used core synchrony, this recoil was like a soft breeze.

 Chapter 143 Irinaâ€™s Lesson (Part 3)

    After thoroughly inspecting Yvonne to make sure she didn''t suffer any kind of damage, Irina approached Daimon and held his hand.

    Currents of electricity crackled on Daimon''s skin from time to time, but after inspecting his body with her mana sense, Irina reached a shocking conclusion.

    A glow of surprise shed through her eyes for a second as she thought.

    "Father already told me he had an incredibly strong build since he is a variant, but the recoil of a team spell doesn''t affect the outeryer of the body, but the inside¡­ even if you were to be a knight, only those at the lord realms have started to reinforce their organs".

    Irina let go of Daimon and she shook her head.

    "Kid what is your body made of, whatever, next time at the very least let me know before doing something reckless¡­ specially if Yvi is involved".

    Daimon heard the serious yet worried tone in Irina''s words and he could rte to it, just like for him, Aisha and the other girls were his treasure, Yvonne was the same for Irina.

    "It wasn''t my intention, I just thought it was going to be faster if I tried with both of them at the same time, I''ll take note for future cases".

    Irina''s impression of Daimon went up a bit after that, she then looked at her daughter and got lost in her thoughts for a moment.

    "Forget it, you seem to have a really high control of your mana, do you think you can resist a second team spell cast, this time one of darkness element?".

    Daimon nodded.

    "No problem, but I tell me what spell will be, I first did it with Aisha because we both know the same lightning element spells".

    Irina smiled and then called her daughter, nightmare canopy was out of question because only those from the night sparrow n knew it, in fact most of the spells Yvonne knew were exclusive of her family.

    "Mm", Yvonne was listing the spells she knew in her mind, when she remembered the wee party.

    "How about "dark spears", it was the one you used against that guy before right?".

    Daimon walked towards Yvonne and stood next to her.

    "Okay", dark spears were also a wide range spell, but unlike tempest it only covered an area of 10 meters, the reason was that their damage was concentrated and also they appeared out of nowhere which made them hard to dodge unlike lightning which was easily noticeable.

    As soon as Daimon held her hand, Yvonne noticed their mana flows were in the same frequency, so she extended her arm and casted the spell.

    "Dark spears!"

    Lots of ck spears rose from the ground covering an area of about forty meters, in terms of range could seem to beckingpared to the long area affected by the tempest Aisha casted¡­ but in terms of danger the spears overwhelmed lightning.

    Darkness wasn''t a rare affinity for nothing, some people had the capacity of infecting others with it, simr to what Daimon did to Leir, while suppressing it with a big amount of mana is possible,pletely eliminating it, needs a specialized potion or a healer which used the light element.

    While Yvonne didn''t have that attribute in her darkness, Daimon did and as long as he wanted, being scratched by his darkness would cause a severe pain simr to being burned with acid.

    Simr to how corrosive light worked against races oriented to the night¡­ but the difference was that darkness didn''t differentiate.

    That being said of course Daimon didn''t use something like that, this was just a demonstration after all.

    After a couple of seconds, the spears disappeared, Yvonne let go of Daimon''s hand, surprised by how strong was the spell she casted with his help and also how easy it was for them to cooperate.

    "Even with mom it took us some time before we seeded, he even took all the recoil", she thought.

    Irina''s emotional status was over the moon right now, although she knew it was probably Daimon''s doing, that they could seed in their first try, it was also true that her daughter was now part of the few members of the young generation that could cast a team spell.

    She couldn''t contain her smile as she thought.

    "Finally, everyone will see how talented is my Yvi".

    Yvonne felt a shiver run through her spine as she felt her mother''s gaze, which made her remember when she was little how she wanted her to participate in beauty contests.

    "Ahem, mom are we finished here?".

    Irina saw her daughter giving her an usatory gaze and she feigned ignorance.

    "Of course, dear, this lesson was just an introduction, so you three can go and rest".

    Originally the idea was for them to just feel their mana flow, just like how Michael and Leslie were still focusing on it, but then Daimon pulled something as outrageous as a first try sess in team spells.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon, Yvonne and Aisha walked towards the ce where the others were sitting and sat next to them, Liliana smiled at Yvonne, although she didn''t show it, she was truly happy for her friend.

    Calvin on the other hand chuckled.

    "ss rep, leave something for us brothers, at this rate we won''t be able to brag in front of others".

    Daimon was in a good mood after confirming he could team up with Aisha even without core synchrony, so he just shrugged at Calvin.

    "After we kick Alexander''s ass, you can brag about having the young master of the Jolbaris family as yourckey during the exploration".

    Calvin''s eyes glowed.

    "With that my old man will stop nagging me for some time".

    The lesson stopped once Leslie and Michael started showing signs of exhaustion, previously they were too concentrated to notice Aisha and Yvonne casting spells, so both of them were confused when they saw the them resting, while only they were still on the tform.

    Needless to say, both of them were in awe when Irina told them how Aisha and Yvonne managed to cast a team spell.

    "That''s not fair, if Daimon had fire affinity, I bet I would have been able to do the same", said Leslie as she pouted, of course she was just joking around, feeling happy for her friend.

    Listening to Leslie, Michael had a bitter expression on his face.

    "Ahem, that is a bit insulting¡­ but I guess we should have expected it from Daimon".

    Now that the lesson was finished, Boris took over, he still hasn''t told them about the newest changes in the exploration and how thepetition was moved to the next week, and they were still curious about why Daimon was called to the office of the principal.

    Boris stood up in front of his students and then proceeded to tell them, about how the number of participants was diminished and also the thing about how a mage lord from every academy has the chance to enter.

    "On our side the mage lord who will be entering is the vice principal from the snow leopard tribe which evaluated us at the third admission test, Loren might have seen her as she is also the one in charge of the library".

    Daimon then remembered that Loren didn''t pass through that, so heplemented his exnation.

    Liliana saw the word "ck" written on the badge and she frowned her brows.

    "Why does it say ck, is it perhaps rted to the test the one holding it will have to go through?".

    Both Boris remained silent for a moment, before replying.

    "It wasn''t written in the rules found with them, the other badges are "red", "green" and "white", they were randomly distributed under the supervision of the sage as it was previously agreed".

    Michael doubted for a moment before saying what was on his mind.

    "If we win thepetition the next week, can''t we leave Alexander and his loser ss outside of the exploration and choose who wille with us?".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, he was thinking the same, if he was honest then the Jolbaris and him were bound to sh at some point, so of course he didn''t want them to get anything from the legacies that might be hidden inside the magic ruin.

    Boris saw their hostile expressions and he sighed.

    "Unfortunately, that''s out of reach¡­ unless something extreme happens, the best of the elite ss is what should be sent, if by any chance you were to lose your match, then you''ll be out of the exploration".

    Daimon''s serious voice caught Boris''s attention.

    "Something extreme huh, what if they are too beaten to participate?".

    Boris smirked.

    "Kid all the tutors, the vice principals the disciplinarymittee and the principal will be witnessing the matches, on the other hand I think with the exception of the Jolbaris brat the others aren''t priority".

    Liz leaned her head against Daimon''s shoulder as she spoke.

    "So, Arthur Jolbaris has already bought a spot for his son, is what you are trying to say".

    Boris nodded, with a tired expression.

    "The dissuasion of two half emperors can''t be simply ignored after all".

 Chapter 144 The Way To Use A Djinn

    Boris had a dead serious expression as a he dismissed the ss.

    "Anyway, I suggest you brats to stay together this weekend, if possible¡­ things are quite tense since the participants got reduced and if you can think on getting rid of thepetence to select your own teammates, other people had the same thought".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Don''t worry, unless they want to die, I will like to see someone trying to barge in a ce where three half emperors are on guard".

    After saying that, Daimon and the others stood and left the training grounds, even Irina followed them leaving only Aliya and Boris which were a bit confused right now.

    After a moment Boris could only shake his head in defeat.

    "Three half emperors reunited in one ce by a kid from the younger generation¡­ this era is changing too fast for my liking".

    Aliya had a strange glow in her eyes since the moment she saw Daimon easily coordinating with Yvonne and Aisha.

    "I need to go uncle, there are some things I have to prepare for Monday''s ss", she said before taking her leave.

    Boris knew what Aliya was thinking and he sighed.

    "If only that kid had fire affinity".

    ¡­

    Normally Daimon and the others would spend some time at the happy wanderer, but since tomorrow they will all be leaving to the capital of the Revy family, everyone had their own things to do.

    Irina dragged her daughter, Leslie and Liliana along with her, not before asking Liz for permission to visit the Revy family.

    "Mis Elizabeth, will it be a problem if me and these two''s mothers tag along to the little visit of tomorrow".

    Liz nodded, many people will be arriving at Lykos before thepetition starts, so a couple extra Arch ranks wasn''t a bad idea.

    "Sure, but I hope they are already here since we will be leaving early in the morning".

    Michel and Loren followed Calvin to the happy wanderer, since he forgot to tell her about this and Loren was "lucky charm" to convince her, as for Michael he didn''t have anything else to do so he just tagged along.

    And so, Daimon stayed behind with his mother and Liz, he yed with the amphora ring a couple of times before saying.

    "First let''s go to the mansion, we are going to pay a certain someone a visitter".

    "Mm", the girls nodded, each one hugged one of his arms and they walked towards the mansion.

    Once they were inside Daimon extended his hand and the amphora ring glowed for a moment before a wisp of me was expelled from it.

    Unlike Agramy, the other djinns Daimon captured were at the lord realms and they were basically umtions of fire with conscience, at least until they decided the forms they wanted.

    While for others what came out of the ring was a simple wisp of fire, Daimon could know everything of the djinn since it was under hismand.

    "You are Gars right, I have a few questions for you".

    The wisp of m floated there for a couple of seconds before replying in a humble voice.

    ? "How may I help lord Licht?".

    Daimon felt a bit weird being called by his surname, but it was probably something done by the terror contract, so he ignored it.

    "If I remember correctly, you are the strongest of the group besides Agramy right?".

    "Yes, this humble one is at the peak of the middle stage of the mortal realm".

    Daimon nodded before asking what really interested him.

    "Tell me everything about the conditions for that ability of yours to possess other people''s bodies".

    The wisp of me followed Daimon''s order and spilled the beans.<sub> </sub>

    "For starters we have two ways of doing it, first we kill the owner of the body and then take control of it, that way the possession is instantaneous, we use it for targets who aren''t valuable".

    "The second way to do it takes more time, but in exchange we can more or less get some information about the body we are possessing, enough to rece it for some time, the only problem is that¡­ this technique drains us of our vitality, so after using it we will die in a couple of months, not all the djinns can do it, it''s an innate trait which randomly appears in some of us".

    "Also, if the gap between the owner of the body and us is too big then even if we try to possess it, our soul energy won''t be enough to control it, our ability to possess others disappears after we reach theary subjugation realm too".

    Daimon contemted things for a moment before he adjusted his question.

    "Based on the body Agramy possessed will you be able to take over one with the same level and if you are able to use the second method how much time do you need to do it?".

    Gars nodded.

    "Even Agramy isn''t aware of this, but I have the ability to use the second method, as long as it isn''t at the peak of the mortal realm, then I shouldn''t have any problem and a couple of hours should be enough".

    While Daimon was processing the information he just got, Aura appeared a few meters away from them using space shift, she immediately noticed Aisha and Liz giving her some usatory gazes which she ignored.

    Aura curiously looked at the wisp of me which was floating there in the middle of the room.

    The djinns were a new kind of lifeform for the natives of the wonder myriad ster chart, if Daimon were to sell them, they will fetch a huge price for collectors or researchers like the Greenwich Sage.

    But Daimon had other ns for them, just like how he used Caldras to get information of what lied ahead of the magus emperor realm without being punished by that thing called regtion lightning.

    Daimon turned to see Aura and asked.

    "Aura, do you know where are the alfear staying, I have something to discuss with that marquis, everyone change to the hollow suit".

    Aura smiled; her eyes glowed with a dim yellow light like the ones of a predator who has spotted its prey.

    "I was worried you weren''t going to ask, a mere alfear dares to demand my Daimon to apologize¡­ luckily you were there or I would have shredded him to pieces".

    Daimon dragged Aura into his embrace, while others would be trembling in fear after hearing Aura Argent the matriarch of the Argent family saying something like that, he found this aggressive side of her rather cute.

    He caressed her cute ears and then his hair changed from the disguised ck color, to his original silver tone.

    "Let''s go".

    The academic city had a rich night life, many of the establishments only opened after the sses were over, for first years that was early, but for the other grades things were different.

    Right now, inside of a mansion at the east area, rens was drinking inside his room, this was a horrible day for him, he got humiliated in the morning when an unknown Archmage made him powerless in front of the members of the young generation.

    Then he was forced to leave empty handed after demandingpensation for the wounds dealt to someone rted to the royal family, so he had to pay for it by himself in order to not incur in the wrath of a duke and a cousin of the king.

    Unfortunately, he was forced to inform his superior, his position as marquis isn''t hereditary as he hasn''t contributed enough to the alfear kingdom, while his supervisor can inherit his position to his offspring.

    And of course, he got yelled for being "ipetent".

    "Fucking idiot, attacking someone inside the campus ruled by the same half emperor which backs your target", mumbled rens while he gulped down a ss of liqueur made on the alfear kingdom.

    "I agree with you on that, but what can you expect of someone who made a deal with Alexander Jolbaris".

    A distorted voice made rens feel a chill running through his spine, he immediately jumped from his chair and tried to activate his domain, but then a familiar sensation assaulted him and he fell to the ground.

    "Help, assassins!!!".

    rens screamed, trying to draw the attention of the guards outside of the room, but his hopes were crushed when he saw a red crystal cube floating near him.

    His face paled as he gritted his teeth.

    "Intervention monolith¡­ youe from the Revy family, do you think you can eliminate me, if I don''t go to the exploration my supervisor wille to ask questions!".

    Daimon smirked, "I wouldn''t worry about that, "you" will go".

 Chapter 145 The First Spy

    Listening to the words of the masked youth in front of him, rens face turned pale as paper, clearly the people that came here had some kind of n for him, the worst part was that he couldn''t discern which expert was suppressing him, because the only one in the room was a knight.

    When Daimon wore the hollow suit, he adjusted the bracelet of the god of mischief to hide any traces of mana and let out his cultivation as a knight to be visible, like that no matter how much others might try to rte his two identities it was "impossible" since no one could be both a mage and a knight.

    "W-wait, I''m a marquis I can offer you resources, information, even my prowess as an Archmage, how about I sign a soul contract to work for you¡­ I just ask to keep my freedom".

    Daimon pointed at him with his left hand on which the amphora ring was glowing and then grinned.

    "You people from the alfear kingdom surely like to bargain, unfortunately for you, in a couple of seconds whether you like it or not, everything you have will be at myplete disposition, your life included".

    rens body trembled, on hisst seconds alive his eyes widened guessing who was the masked youth.

    "Y-You are Daimon...aghhh!!!".

    A wisp of fire was shot from the amphora ring and entered rens''s head through the ce between his brows, not even a second passed when rens started retorting, his skin got a reddish tone as if he was being burned from inside.

    With a snap of Aura''s fingers, a barrier made of mana locked rens in ce, so that he didn''t cause a ruckus, although the intervention monolith made it so no one noticed what was happening, listening to the alfear screams wasn''t of her interest.

    Daimon sat on rens''s chair and then inspected the things on the desk but besides the liqueur he was drinking a moment ago, there were just some useless papers which was understandable, everyone knew they should put their valuables in their storage rings.

    Depending on the rank of the ring, a series of defenses to avoid robbery were engraved, so to open other people''s rings, the help of a magic cksmith specialized in inscriptions was needed, normally Liz will need a few hours to break the protections in rens''s ring, but now that he will be "willingly" obeying Daimon there was no need for that.

    Surprisingly it didn''t even take one hour for Gars to finish appropriating rens''s body and memories, unlike the previous body he upied this time the weird ming symbols didn''t appear, although his eyes looked a bit off focus that changed after a couple of seconds.

    Gars then kneeled down in front of Daimon and spoke.

    "The process was a sess; this man was already tired after going through a lot of things so he couldn''t resist me for too much time".

    Daimon chuckled, causing his enemies fear seemed to be favorable for him in more ways than one.

    "Then how much of that guy''s memories do you have?".

    "Everything except the first twenty years of this body''s existence".

    Aisha which was sitting on her son''sp nodded in approbation.

    "It''s perfect darling, the alfear have a growth rate which is a bit simr to what happened to yours, their first ten years they have a mentality simr to a little child, the next ten they are like pre-teens, then from twenty to one hundred they will be in their prime, their middle agests another one hundred and their elderly stage starts at two hundred, that is of course if they don''t be mages or knights".

    "So, he basically couldn''t recover his childhood memories, quite convenient for an Archmage who has lived a couple of hundreds of years, he can always im to have forgotten about it, quite a decent spy", thought Daimon before saying.

    "What were this guy''s ns?".

    Gars bowed his head and answered.

    "Originally this body wasn''t going to be sent, but the n changed due to the intervention of a duke from the alfear kingdom, this group of alfear was sent as a front screen to make others underestimate the ones that will be sent with the pdins of the blue-sky academy".

    "Also, his job is to take note of the strengths and weaknesses of the members of the elite ss, basically an envoy which also works as something like a spy".

    Liz snorted.

    "A middle stage Archmage was deployed just for a distraction, I heard the alfear kingdom had serious problems of nepotism, but this is just being stupid".

    Gars seemed to go through rens memories before replying.

    "The original owner of this body had some friction with his supervisor, apparently there is a limited number of what they call an "hereditary marquis", so for one to rise another one must fall, rens has been trying to gain the approval of the higher ups to take over his own supervisor''s title".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Whatever, since the guys that came with him aren''t going to participate and the selection will start the next week, then just stay here and follow the original n, keep me informed of everything that could be a nuisance, I allow you to contact Ereman and use his informationwork if needed, as soon as you learn about anything that could affect anyone on my circle, you must report it to me understood?".<sub> </sub>

    "Your servant listens and obey!"

    The servants which were under the terror contract couldmunicate with each other and with their master, as long as Daimon allowed them to, it was a bit simr to the mental connection Daimon had with his soulmates, but the purpose was different as it served as a way to order the servants even if he wasn''t near them.

    Aura waved her hand and everyone but "rens" disappeared from the room, Gars then acted just like rens would have and kept drinking while resting on his chair.

    After a couple of seconds Daimon and the girls appeared inside the mansion, the girls went to the bedroom to change their clothes while Daimon simply kept it on his storage and then sat on the couch.

    "Mm?", he took out the disposable sigil lector which was linked to the contact he gave to Gabriel Jolbaris and saw the sigil blinking, which meant someone tried unsessfully to contact him many times.

    Daimon took his time to answer and then the slightly annoyed voice of Gabriel came from the sigil lector.

    "I was starting to think you weren''t going to answer Daimon Licht".

    Daimon leaned his back against the couch before replying.

    "What can I say, I have other things to do so I can''t just be waiting until you decide to call me you know?".

    Gabriel felt the urge to strangle Daimon but then remembered the price he had to pay for not being "honest"st time and he immediately calmed down.

    "I apologize it''s certainly veryte in the night, however it took me some time to get the green light¡­ is the deal still avable".

    Daimon smiled, the other party probably thought he was just acting tough, until the night of Friday came and they didn''t receive anu message from him, so the half emperor on Gabriel''s side had no option but to agree.

    "Yes, I will be staying at the Revy family grounds for the weekend, tomorrow we can discuss the terms of the contract, there will be someone waiting for you at the entrance of the capital".

    A sigh came from the sigil lector.

    "Thanks, have a good night".

    After saying that Gabriel ended the call, Daimon threw the sigil lector in his storage ring and then stood up from the couch, since the moment the call started, he could hear the sound of water fallinging from the other side of the mansion.

    "Those three left the door of the bathroom open on purpose", he thought, still he walked towards the source of the sound and his clothes disappeared along the way.

    Once he entered the bathroom, he was received by the beautiful scene of his girls washing their naked bodies under the shower, their pretty pale skins glistened due to the soap and the bathroom was filled with a fruity enjoyable smell.

    The girls feigned to not notice Daimon was peeking on them, instead they started to make some alluring poses, their angles perfectly let their privates in in view for their lover.

    Aura threw her bath sponge on the floor and bent down to pick it up, the sight of her pretty flower and her cute tail wagging was a killerbo.

    Liz took a different approach, there were some ces she couldn''t easily reach due to her curvy body.

    "If only someone could help us wash our delicate parts", said Liz, her pretty eyes winked at the entrance of the bathroom as she spoke in a feigned worried voice.

    Aisha on the other hand massaged her shoulders, the movement made her big breasts sway.

    "Mm, my shoulders feel a bit stiff due to my size, this brings me back some memories of the time I was breastfeeding my darling ?".

    Daimon smiled, he entered the bathroom "stealthily" and then walked towards the girls, to their surprise he ignored them and just washed his body, before he hugged his mother from behind.

    "Hmm ?", Aisha let out afortable sound when she felt her son gently massaging her shoulders.

    "You three don''t need to do all this, while for the weekend I will focus my attention in Erin and ine, tonight I''m all yours".

    Aisha blushed a bit feeling her son''s thing getting hard as he whispered at her.

    Without letting go of Aisha, Daimon extended his arms and grabbed both Aura and Liz by their waists, before the three of them entered the bathtub together.

 Chapter 146 A Quickie At The Bathroom R-18

    Not too long after Daimon entered the bathtub with the girls, the bathroom was filled with moans and giggles, this time the three girls seemed to have reached an agreement as they all grinded their bodies against Daimon.

    While Liz and Aura "locked" his hands between their legs, making sure to rub his fingers against their pussies, Aisha rubbed her whole body against her son.

    "You look especially delicious today darling ?".

    Aisha licked her lips; her fangs then erged a bit as she gently bit his neck.

    "Hmm ?", Aisha''s face blushed, her thighs rubbed together, the sole act of drinking her son''s blood made her body heat up, to the point that her juices were already dripping from her pussy.

    "Hnngh ?".

    "Hmmm ?".

    "Wuuuh ?".

    Three different cute moans sounded as Daimon shoved his middle fingers inside Aura and Liz, while moving his hips to rub his dick against Aisha''s ass.

    Due to the sudden stimtion, Aisha stopped drinking her son''s blood to moan, Daimon smiled seeing the three girls bing docile on his hands.

    "You three are rather aggressive today".

    After drinking Daimon''s blood and being teased, Aisha was too horny too answer, she just looked at him with needy eyes as she grinded her ass against him.

    Daimon let go of Aura and Liz, he ced his hands on Aisha''s waist and then turned her body around.

    Aisha''s back pale back and her big round ass were a delight for Daimon''s eyes, but he also couldn''t ignore that pair of breasts from which he used to drink.

    Daimon moved his hands all over his mother''s voluptuous body, from her thin waist up to her breasts, with a grin Daimon fondled her breasts a couple of times before gently pinching her little pink nipples.

    "Don''t tease me darling ?".

    Aisha felt as if she was gong to go crazy, her lower body was aching for her son.

    Daimon lifted her a bit and then with a single thrust, his dick was pushed all the way inside her anus.

    "Ahnnn ?".

    In the horny state caused by drinking Daimon''s blood, Aisha''s body was totally rxed, so taking the whole thing in one go wasn''t ufortable, she felt a as if a current of electricity ran rampant through her whole body, her toes curled up as she climaxed.

    "Kuhh", Daimon had to use all his concentration to not immediately cum, Aisha''s insides were already tight, but when she orgasmed, they practically clung to his dick as if she was trying to milk him.

    He dragged his mother closer to him, her fruity natural scent and the sweet enticing smell of her love juices filled Daimon''s nose making him want to devastate the woman in his arms.

    Aisha noticed her son''s thing twitching inside of her and she smiled before she moved her hips as if she was dancing on his dick.

    Daimon epted the challenge; without any warning he started pounding her from behind.

    "Pah~Pah~Pah".

    "Hmm ?".

    The sound of Daimon''s thighs hitting against Aisha''s assbined with moans filled the room, they were so engrossed in each other that they kept at it for nearly half an hour before Daimon couldn''t resist the urge to ejacte.

    With his dick buried deep inside of his mother''s rectum, Daimon growled as he let out a big load of his white things, he wasn''t the only one, the burning feeling of her son filling her with his sperm made Aisha''s body spasm as she reached her orgasm.

    They stayed connected both enjoying the aftertaste of their climaxes, while Daimon seemed fresh and ready to go, Aisha was gasping for air, her body was still quite sensitive since she drank her son''s blood, and Daimon didn''t let her rest in between.

    But now she simply remained quiet in her son''s embrace enjoying his warmness, until her body rxed.

    Aisha turned around, she kissed her son and then walked towards the shower to clean her body, they did it at the edge of the bathtub to not dirty the water.

    Daimon stole onest gaze at her mother''s big ass which swayed as she walked away before he focused his attention on Aura and Liz, making their pussies tingle in expectation.

    A predacious light shed through Daimon''s eyes as he stood up and called the two of them.

    "Come here you two, I''m feeling a bit thirsty".

    Liz understood the message, she walked towards one of the walls of the bathroom and leaned her body against it while sticking her ass towards him.<sub> </sub>

    "Hyaa ?", without saying anything, Daimon spread her legs a bit and then licked her pussy, feeling the familiar touch of her lover, Liz''s body started leaking out her nectar.

    While Daimon was drinking Liz''s love juices, Aura saw his raging erection and she smiled cunningly before crawling over to where they were.

    Although Liz was noticeably taller than Daimon, in the position she was, Daimon had to crouch down behind her so that his face was at the same height as her ass.

    This was one of those situations, where Aura''s small body was an advantage, sheid on her belly with her head between Daimon''s legs.

    Seeing the imponent huge erected dick of her lover, Aura licked her lips, her nose was more sensitive than the other girls, and right now she was intoxicated due to Daimon''s manly scent.

    "Ahhngh ?", Liz suddenly rose her voice when she felt Daimon''s tongue twirling around inside of her.

    But the same applied to Daimon, he felt a shiver running through his spine when his dick was suddenly enveloped by something warm and soft, from the corner of his eyes he saw Aura gobbling on his thing.

    The sight of Aura moving her head up and down, the sloppy wet sounds produced every time fingered herself while sucking on him and her cute tail happily wagging while she did her best to please him, it was simply heavenly.

    "How cute", thought Daimon, his hands which were free moved downwards, he ced them on Aura''s head and then made her suck on his dick harder, of course he was careful enough to not hurt her, stopping when he felt her unconsciously gag due to the invasion.

    Liz''s back arched, her juices spilled all over the ce drenching Daimon''s face in the process as she came, her legs gave out and her body slowly slid down until she was resting on the floor.

    Aura then felt the Daimon''s hot gaze focusing on her which made her blush, but she didn''t let go of his dick, she was having quite a lot of fun sucking on it.

    Daimon chuckled seeing her hogging his dick as if she was telling him to not interrupt her, his hands then moved towards her tail.

    "Hyaaa ?".

    Aura stopped what she was doing, feeling a shiver running through her body, she actually came a bit due to the sudden stimtion, she looked at Daimon which was smiling at her as he gently pulled on her tail.

    Something all the girls knew about Daimon was that he loved to caress their tails and ears, so it wasn''t a surprise for Aura to see him ying with her tail, her eyes had a cunning glow on them as her tail clung to his arm, she then turned her body around and rubbed the tip of his dick against her ass.

    Daimon smiled, he let his body rest on top of Aura, with a bit of strength he forced half of his dick inside of her, making Aura''s eyes widen a bit, the feeling of Daimon spreading her insides made her hide her face with her forearm but that couldn''t suffocate her moans.

    "Wuuuh ?".

    While Daimon pressed Aura below him, Liz regained some of herposure, she moved towards them and kissed Daimon while he moved his hips back and forth.

    From the other side of the bathroom Aisha saw her son tangling up with two girls at the same time and she chuckled.

    "To think the day where not only me, but Liz and even the matriarch of the Revy family would be sharing a husband¡­ I guess nothing is impossible in this world of ours".

    "Hmmm ?", Aisha came out of her daze, when she heard Aura trying to muffle her moans just to miserably fail every time Daimon increased his pace, until she couldn''t hold her voice anymore.

    She then shrugged and joined Liz in kissing her son.

    Daimon alternated between kissing Liz and his mother, while at the same time he kept moving his hips back and forth.

    "Ahhng ?".

    With onest thrust Aura reached her climax, her insides felt warm as she took till thest drop of Daimon''s seeds.

    With a little pop, Daimon pulled out his thing, leaving a "devastated" Aura which was gasping on the floor of the bath while his sperm was flowing out of her cute ass.

    Aisha made way for her sister to take her turn, she already washed her body and shew knew, Liz liked to do it rough, so she distanced herself a bit from them

    Ans her decision proved to be right, Liz threw herself at Daimon, she lowered her ass making his dick enter her in one go, before she started moving her hips up and down as she loudly moaned.

    Daimon used his arms as pillows and enjoyed the sight of the beautiful woman dancing on hisp with a list filled expression.

    "I don''t know what mom has nned for the weekend, but I won''t let her outshine me", thought Liz as she rested her body on top of Daimon, due to the difference in height, her breasts covered his face.

    Which she knew he loved as she felt him sucking on her breasts as soon as he had the chance.

    "Even if you suck so hard on them nothing is going toe out you know ?", mumbled Liz when she felt Daimon licking her nipples.

    "I can fix that, tomorrow I will tell Erin to get more of those potions mom gave you before".

    "Hmm ?", Liz didn''t answer and instead kept riding on top of him, if she were to know the things Erin will prepare for Daimon then she wouldn''t have been so rxed, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 147 Returning To The Revy Clan (Part 1)

    Liz and Daimon engaged in a passionate love making which filled the bathroom with moans and other lewd sounds.

    Once the turmoil ended, Aisha, Liz and Aura were all resting on Daimon''sp with happy satisfied expressions in their faces as they enjoyed Daimon caresses.

    They stayed inside of the bathtub rxing together until Daimon gently spanked their asses.

    "Let''s go to sleepdies, tomorrow we are going to be quite busy".

    Liz pouted, she made little circles on Daimon''s chest with her fingers.

    "You better not be bewitched by mom tomorrow".

    Daimon chuckled he then stood up, the girls helped to dry him before doing the same and they all left to the bedroom, cuddling together naked they closed their eyes and fell asleep.

    While Daimon was enjoying being surrounded by soft naked beauties, at the academic city inside of a room in a mansion, Leslie, Yvonne and Liliana were packing some things in preparation to spend a weekend at the Revy families.

    The door of the room opened and Irina followed by two other women entered the room.

    Leslie and Liliana immediately shouted when they saw the two women apanying Irina.

    "Mom!".

    Leslie looked at a woman with long orange hair, her eyes had a pretty copperish color, she was wearing an eastern style white dress which let a lot of her pretty pale skin in in view, including her breasts which seemed to be about to burst out of the dress.

    "Mother".

    As for Liliana, the woman reflected in her eyes had long white/gray hair, her eyes were as blue as the sky and she was practically covered from head to toe with different capes of clothes as if she lived in a ce which was extremely cold all her life.

    Most of her body was covered in a long white dress with ck decorations, she was also wearing a long winter coat, gloves and a hat, even then all the clothes couldn''tpletely hide her well proportionated figure.

    Veronica walked towards Leslie with a bright smiling expression.

    "Leslie,e here, let mom see how much have you progressed.

    One of the two women approached Leslie, she then made circles around her as if she was evaluating her, before she used her hands to fondle her breasts and then her waist.

    "Not bad, the potion seems to be really helping you, just give it some time and you will be as beautiful as me, tell me do you have a boyfriend already?".

    "M-Mom what are you saying!", Leslie took a few steps back distancing herself from her mother, just like her, Veronica was also quite talkative, the difference was that she also quite shameless unlike her daughter, which always cause Leslie headaches.

    Leslie looked at the daring get up her mother was wearing and she couldn''t help but sigh.

    "Please tell me you didn''t wear that all the way from the n to the academic city, put on more clothes for the love of the heavens".

    Veronica snorted, she made a little turn and then entuated her curves.

    "Humph, I''m proud of my figure, unlike a certain block of ice, I don''t have any trouble in bragging about it".

    The block of ice she was talking about was of course Liliana''s mother.

    Anya ignored Veronica and instead hugged her daughter, a slight smile bloomed in her serious face.

    "I missed you Lili; don''t listen to your aunt Veronica she is only jealous because you got a higher rank than Leslie and Yvi".

    Listening to Anya both Veronica and Irina reacted like a cat whose tail is stepped on.

    "What did you say you ice woman!".

    "You say that because you didn''t see my Yvi sessfully casting a team spell at the first try"

    Soon the three mothers were arguing with each other about which of their daughters were the prettiest, the one with higher talent and even the one with the best skin tone.

    Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana stayed out of the catfight that was taking part in front of them with defeated expressions, only when they started mentioning some embarrassing stories about their childhood when Yvonne interrupted them.

    "Ahem aunts, mom, let''s go to sleep, tomorrow we are going to visit the Revy n, aunt Veronica you will meet miss Elizabeth and aunt Anya will get to know miss ine too".

    Veronica and Anya immediately stopped arguing, Elizabeth and ine respectively were their idols from their teenage years, they were fire and ice mages too after all.

    A somewhat simr scene was developing at the happy wanderer, Michael and Loren left some hours ago and now Calvin was sitting with bitter expression, his aunt "generously" allowed him to go to the Revy n, with the condition that she will go too.<sub> </sub>

    "Why do you want to go, it''s a trip for ss purposes, we are going to stay all the day on the library".

    Mireya ignored Calvin while she packed a few different swimsuits.

    "What do you know, the hot springs of the Revy n are said to have good effects on the skin, so of course I will be going".

    Calvin saw his aunt putting a variety of different swimsuits and he gritted her teeth.

    "Why do you need a better skin, there is no man who is willing to date such a barbarian woman like you".

    Unfortunately for Calvin, his father gave Mireya the authority to supervise him, so he had no other choice but swallow hisins and go to sleep at his own room.

    ¡­

    When morning came Daimon''s eyelids trembled a bit before he opened his eyes, no matter where he looked, he was surrounded by naked beauties, Aisha wasying on top of him, her pretty amethyst eyes directly looked at her son, her gaze was filled with love as if she could look at him the whole day without getting bored.

    "Good morning mom", he said as he ced his hands on her back before kissing her pretty lips to enjoy a morning kiss.

    "Good morning darling ?", Aisha epted her son''s kiss and then stood up, today they will be leaving early to have breakfast together at the Revy n, the meeting point was the happy wanderer so she didn''t want to drag things too much.

    While Daimon enjoyed the sexy view of his mother putting underwear before her usual white and purple get up covered her beautiful body, Liz and Aura hugged him tighter to draw his attention.

    Daimon chuckled, it was obvious those two wanted to receive a kiss or they will keep "sleeping".

    He gently moved Aura''s body upwards and then kissed her, her cute tail wagged creating waves on the nket which was covering her lower body.

    "Yawn ?", Aura let out a cute sound, she rubbed her eyes and then kissed Daimon one more time before letting go of him, she also left the bed to put some clothes on.

    Lat but nor least Daimon focused his attention on Liz, but instead of kissing her to wake her up, he moved his left hand downwards and firmly fondled her ass.

    "Hyaa ?".

    Which of course got him a nice reaction from her, then when Liz was about toin, he pressed his lips against hers, their tongues intertwined as they shared an intense kiss.

    Daimon patted her ass a couple of times and then Liz unwillingly let go of him, she then also stood up and followed her sisters to change into some clothes.

    Daimon was left alone in the bed, he smiled and then checked his sigil lector, there was no messages on the one that was linked to his "subordinates", but there was one on his personal one.

    A single message with the symbol of a ck sun, in other words a message from Erin.

    "I can''t wait for tonight ?".

    Daimon had a weird smile on his face as he read her message

    "Well, she is quite straight in what she wants", he thought.

    Once the girls finished dressing up Daimon did the same and with a wave of Aura''s hand they disappeared from the mansion and appeared inside of the happy wanderer, Daimon had previously warned Calvin so today the business was closed for everyone which didn''te with a member of the elite ss.

    Surprisingly even Calvin wasn''t here yet, so the one that weed them was Mireya.

    "Good morning, Liz and¡­ miss Argent".

    Although Mireya already knew Aura woulde, she couldn''t help but be a bit stiff in front of a half emperor.

    Aura shook her head.

    "Just Aura is fine, you are the younger daughter of the Rock Dreadnought from the Ghrish family, aren''t you?".

    Mireya happily nodded, calling a half emperor by her name was a big honor even if her father was also one, she was only an early stage Archmage.

    "You shrimp, can''t you read the mood, I woke up so early to go pick up Loren, so why the hell are you tagging along".

    "I live next to you idiot, it''s your fault for waking me up with all that noise".

    The door of the bar opened, Calvin, Loren and Michael entered, but their arguing was interrupted when they noticed the principal was ring at them.

 Chapter 148 Returning To The Revy Clan (Part 2)

    As soon as Michael and Calvin saw Aura looking at them, their hearts nearly stopped, Calvin scratched the back of his head before slightly bowing his head and cing his hand on his chest like a proper noble.

    "Calvin Ghrish greets the principal".

    Michael and also Loren did the same.

    "Michael Lockstar greets the principal".

    "Loren Lefay greets the principal".

    Aura limited to nod at them, although she is not really on the conservative side when ites to being a half emperor, as the principal of the academy, all the students had to present their respects at her, it''s a rule which has existed since the foundation of the academy.

    With Mireya''s permission, Calvin walked behind the bar and took out a few different elements to prepare nonalcoholic drinks for everyone.

    Daimon chuckled seeing Calvin juggling mixing sses and bottles while preparing the drinks.

    "I''m not as good as Lucas, but this is a drink from my nativend called "Oasis", please give it a try".

    Calvin ced a few sses with blue liquid inside of them, a fruity scent filled the bar which made everyone feel thirsty.

    "Mm?", Daimon drank it and he felt a coldforting feeling running through his body, this drink Calvin offered them was actually something simr to a potion with a calming and rxing effect.

    "Not bad, if I remember correctly the of the Ghrish family has a horrible summer temperature, so this drink is something used to help those who can''t withstand the heat".

    Leaving aside that little episode, before everyone finished their respective drink, the door opened again and the Risha girls apanied by their mothers entered.

    Leslie pointed at Loren and then at Calvin.

    "See I told you Loren was already here, Calvin finally couldn''t resist it and made his move, when no one was looking".

    Mireya gave her nephew an usatory gaze which made Calvin sigh.

    "She is just joking, why don''t you trust on your own nephew".

    Veronica''s eyes glowed in admiration as soon as she saw Liz, she immediately approached her and offered a handshake.

    "I''m Leslie''s mother, Veronica Risha, it''s a pleasure!".

    Only after that, she noticed Aura was standing next to Liz and her eyes widened a bit.

    "L-Lady Aura, my apologies I didn''t see you".

    Aura inwardly chuckled.

    "These pair of mother and daughter are so alike", she thought before replying.

    "The three of you can speak freely, I''m not here as a half emperor but as Daimon''s master, the same for when you meet Erin so don''t worry about it".

    "Thanks", Irina, Veronica and Anya slightly bowed as recognition.

    Veronica then focused her attention on the ck-haired youth which was standing there with a rxed expression and she smiled.

    "ck hair and violet eyes, you should be the famous "Demon" of the elite ss, my daughter has told me a lot about you, thanks for lending her a hand with those assholes of the dius family".

    "Mom, I''m not going to talk with you anymore!", Leslie stomped and then ignored her mother.

    Veronica giggled; her eyes had a strange glow when she said.

    "My Leslie is a bit troubling, so please keep an eye on her".

    As Daimon was about to reply, Anya also approached him and the corner of her lips formed a little smile.

    "Anya Risha¡­ thanks for helping Liliana, please keep doing so".

    Liliana sighed, she looked at Daimon with an apologetic expression.

    "Forgive her Daimon, my mother is a bit blunt with her words".<sub> </sub>

    Daimon had a weird expression, "Aren''t you the same", he thought but he still answered.

    "Don''t worry, now that you three are here let''s leave, there are people waiting for us at the Revy family after all".

    He then nodded at Aura and a barrier made of mana surrounded them

    To prevent any idents, Aura exined them what she was about to do.

    "Don''t resist, I will take you all to the Revy n, just stay rxed and there shouldn''t be any trouble".

    The three mothers changed their usual expressions to serious ones, each one of them stood behind their respective daughters, besides Daimon, Aisha, Calvin and Michael, the others haven''t travelled with space shift, so this was a new experience for them.

    Aura waved her hand and they disappeared from the happy wanderer.

    A few momentster a small crack in the space above the Revy n opened and everyone appeared floating there, besides a bit of dizziness no one had any trouble, they were protected by a half emperor after all.

    Normally the magic formation shouldn''t have left them appear inside of the Revy n unless it was Erin the one transporting them, but Aura had the same level of authority as Erin, the same applied for Erin with the formation of the Argent n of course.

    The guards of the Revy family of course noticed them, but seeing Aura was the same as seeing their matriarch, also Daimon was with them so they didn''t dare to question them, they just bowed their heads and kept a respectful distance.

    The Risha sisters and Loren were marveled by the sight of the Revy n from above, as a family with a half emperor guarding the fort, their capital city was of course many times better than the one of the Risha n, not to mention the Lefay n which was declining.

    They slowly descended from the sky and then Liz guided them towards the mansion which used to belong to the supreme elder, which was now functioning as a guest house.

    "Mm?", Daimon noticed something and he smirked, without anyone noticing he walked a bit slower than the rest so that they all were ahead of him.

    Then without any apparent reason he moved his hand as if he was coping something.

    "Hyaa ?", a cute low sound made its way to his hears, making Aura''s ears twitch a bit, she looked at Daimon from the corner of her eyes but after a split of a second she didn''t say anything and just kept walking, Daimon did the same but his hand was still at the same position while he followed the rest of the group.

    "You know I can feel where are you thanks to core synchrony right¡­ Erin", mumbled Daimon.

    After a couple of seconds, Erin became visible only for him, her face was a bit red while Daimon''s hand was caressing her long fluffy tail.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, although he had an approximate idea that Erin was near him, he only caught her when she purposely rubbed her tail against his body, to tease him.

    After years of sleeping enveloped by that fluffyfortable feeling how could he not recognize it.

    Erin smiled and her tail wrapped around Daimon as they kept walking.

    "Ahem, since when my little Daimon became so bold, touching ady''s private parts in public like this¡­ ahhnn ?".

    Listening to her calling him "little Daimon", Daimon slightly pulled her tail making Erin let out a cute sound which only he could hear.

    Daimon got a but startled by the loud moan, he looked at the others to see if they heard it, but no one seemed to notice it so he let out a sigh of relief before he focused his attention on Erin just to see her cutely sticking her tongue at him.

    "Trying to take advantage of me is not that easy ?".

    Daimon saw her cunning yet charming smile and he didn''t know what to think, ultimately, he could only let go of her tail and let her do what she wanted.

    p "In terms of cunning, I may not be at her level yet, but I will teach her a lessonter at the bedroom".</anda>

    Erin noticed the "weird" smile in Daimon''s face and she felt a little shiver running down her spine, but she didn''t understand why.

    Daimon caught up with the rest to not raise any suspicions, and Erin only let go of him when they were about to reach their destination.

    She disappeared and a momentter both Erin and ine weed them all in front of the supreme elder mansion.

    Erin gently smiled at them as if she wasn''t flirting with Daimon a couple of seconds ago before greeting them.

    "Wee to the Revy family, I''m Erin Revy, it''s a pleasure".

    Aura inwardly snorted.

    "You cunning fox woman", she thought.

 Chapter 149 Let The Negotiation Begin

    Seeing Erin and ine this time Irina and Anya were the ones that acted like fangirls.

    Irina approached Erin and rose the sides of her dress as she introduced herself.

    "Irina Risha, it''s a pleasure to meet an eminence for darkness mages likedy Erin!".

    Even the quiet Anya had a respectful expression as she slightly bowed her head.

    "Anya Risha, it''s a pleasure to meet the "ice princess of twilight", of the wild w academy".

    Both Yvonne and Liliana sighed, the moment they heard their mothers wereing with them, they knew this was bound to happen,

    Erin epted Irina''s gesture with a smile, nowadays the younger generation was not aware of the prowess of a half emperor, there haven''t been new half emperors in a long time after all.

    But Erin became a half emperor after her daughters were born, so her poprity among the girls with darkness affinity of generations which were close to the ones of Liz and ine, is incredibly high.

    ine on the other hand couldn''t help but feel embarrassed listening to that tittle other people used to call her in her teenage years, especially because she saw Daimonughing at her.

    Of course, she did her best to keep her cool and just nodded at Anya, as the n head she needed to keep a calm and dignified attitude in front of people from other ns.

    Erin looked at the other youths near Daimon, her eyes stopped at Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie for a split of a second, before she smiled.

    "Don''t be so stiff,e let''s have breakfast together, I want to hear how has Daimon been fairing at the academy".

    Erin guided them to the dining room of the now guest''s mansion, where a banquet was already waiting for them.

    Everyone took their respective seats and started digging in, one side of the table was upied by the members of the elite ss and thedies of the Risha family and Mireya, the other one was for Daimon''s family.

    This time Daimon sat with Erin at his right and ine at his left, Erin even gave her a proud gaze as she got closer to Daimon.

    Something that made Liz feel a bit bitter, but she could only sigh and munch her breakfast, while they were at the Revy n, her mother and sister had the priority.

    "Hmph once we return to the academy, I will ask him to take me to a date", she thought.

    "Say "ahh" Daimon ?".

    Under the surprised gazes of Daimon''s ssmates, Erin cut some pieces of grilled meat and offered them personally to Daimon, Yvonne and the other girls were used to see Aisha and even Liz doing it, but this time it was a half emperor which was doing it.

    Irina was lost in her thoughts seeing her idol acting so close with a member of the younger generation.

    "How many people in the whole wonder myriad ster chart can say a half emperor has personally fed them¡­ this kid is for sure something else".

    Still for Irina, Veronica and Anya this wasn''t weird, Daimon''s publicly known background was that he and Aisha were adopted by Erin when they were little, so they just thought Erin treated him as her son, just like they were a bit too motherly with their daughters.

    The breakfast went on without any problems, Yvonne and Leslie told Erin about all the things that happened at the wee ceremony, and the incidents with the dius, Ascott and Grayer families.

    As the stories continued, Erin giggled at some and then looked at bit serious as others, Daimon knew she had a lot of questions for him, but that will have to wait because he saw the screen of his sigil lector showing him a three-word message.

    "We are here".

    Erin also saw the message and she stood up along with ine and Aura.

    "Feel at home and enjoy the many ces to see at my Revy n, Liz and Aisha will be your guides for the rest of the weekend¡­ now if you excuse us, we will borrow Daimon for a couple of hours".

    Daimon nodded at Aisha and Liz, he stood up and they left the guest''s mansion.

    Irina, turned to see her daughter with a slightly confused expression.

    "Yvi, I thought this was something like a ss trip, so why is that kid leaving?".

    "Mm?", Yvonne suddenly remembered she didn''t tell her mom about how Gabriel Jolbaris approached Daimon to ask for a favor, on the other hand she didn''t know if it was okay for her to reveal something like that without Daimon''s permission, so she decided to avoid the subject.

    "Well, originally it was Aisha the one who invited us, Daimon told us he had some things to attend here, anyway we came here to enjoy the hot springs".

    Irina exchanged some gazes with Veronica and Anya before replying.

    "You are right dear, let''s go see the many attractions of one of the two strongest families in the beast faction".

    Veronica then looked at her daughter and giggled, before hugging her daughter.<sub> </sub>

    "A mother and daughter weekend with my Leslie is also not that bad, I needed something like this to forget about all those stubborn old geezers".

    Leslie tried to get her mother off her, but as a star mage how could she possibly break free form an Archmage, so at the end she could only ept it.

    "This is going to be such a long weekend¡­ at least those two will share my pain", she thought looking at Yvonne and Liliana which were also being toyed by their mothers.

    ¡­

    Outside of the guest''s mansion Erin and ine were each one hugging Daimon''s arms as they walked towards Erin''s mansion.

    Erin noticed Aura''s slightly jealous expression and she stuck her tongue at her, sparks seemed to fly between them which made Daimon sigh.

    "Be nice you two, we have some guests to deal with right now¡­ speaking of that who is that hidden half emperor, do you know him?".

    Erin snorted.

    "How could it not know her; she is from the same generation as me after all".

    Daimon frowned.

    "She?".

    Aura chuckled.

    "Right, I forgot to tell you, the other half emperor of the Jolbaris is the woman who used to be Erin''s rival at the academy".

    Without noticing they arrived at Erin''s mansion where a white carriage with an emblem which had a tiger and lightning patterns was waiting for them.

    The door of the carriage opened and Gabriel came out from it, followed by a tall woman which was wearing a white long dress.

    For a moment the world seemed to lost its color, Daimon''s sixth sense made him rise his guard, with his truth seeker eyes he could see that woman''s mana shing with Erin''s, it didn''tst for too long just a split of a second because Gabriel tugged the sleeve of the woman.

    The woman then looked at Erin before her gaze focused on Daimon,

    Daimon returned the gaze to the woman while he evaluated her without letting her intimidate him.

    The woman had long white hair with ck stripes simr to Gabriel''s, her tiger like ears and tail identified her as a member of the Jolbaris family.

    The woman''s sharp eyes glowed with admiration for a moment before a melodious but sharp voice could be heard.

    "It seems we are still tied Erin¡­ how many years has it been since we saw each other, two or three hundred years?".

    Erin smiled before saying.

    "Don''t misunderstand Leena, I gave you a friendly reminder a moment ago, your mana has gotten weaker so I can assure you are no match for me right now".

    Leena''s eyes narrowed a bit before electricity started crackling around her body, Erin responded in kind as a ck mist gathered around her.

    But before things could get out of hand, a rxed voice interrupted their quarrel.

    "Enough".

    Daimon''s voice was calm, but his tone was firm, Leena was about to reply when she saw Erin dispelling her mana, then when she looked at Daimon just to feel a shiver running down her spine.

    There was a dim violet glow in Daimon''s eyes which made Leena feel as if a powerful magic beast was targeting her, the electricity also dispersed and she remained silent.

    Gabriel on the other hand was screaming in his mind.

    "No way, they both actually stopped".

    Right in front of his eyes, two half emperors listened to a star ranked mage so of course he was going crazy right now, what he didn''t know was Erin would of course listen to Daimon, as for Leena¡­ her instincts made her feel the aura produced by Overlords pride which was boosted by the fear Agramy and rens felt due to him.

    Seeing that both of them took a step back, Daimon dispelled his aura and then pointed at Erin''s mansion.

    "If there is nothing else, then I suggest we start with our negotiation".

 Chapter 150 Deal

    Luckily it was early in the morning and the area near Erin''s mansion was forbidden unless you have her permission, so no one besides the presents noticed the little sh between half emperors that just happened.

    Before something else happened, Gabriel took the initiative to enter the mansion, as a sign of goodwill.

    Leena followed not too long after and Daimon along with the girls also entered the mansion behind them, on the way to the main hall of the mansion, Daimon tried to discern what was the rtion between Gabriel and Leena.

    Previously with his truth seeker eyes, he noticed how careful was Gabriel when he touched the sleeve of Leena''s dress.

    "That guy was really careful when he tugged her sleeve, as if he was afraid to be too close with her, but at the same time he is trying to make it looks as if that wasn''t the case".

    Daimon still remembered more or less how strong was Arthur''s mana pressure from the time Aura kicked his ass and Leena shouldn''t be weaker than him, so he didn''t understand why would she resort to an external force rted to her rival, just to keep Alexander away.

    Ultimately, he couldn''t get an answer so he just shrugged.

    "We''ll see how it goes", he thought.

    As the host Erin created a tform to take everyone upwards where her "throne" was, then she took seat, Aura sat at her left while Daimon took the right spot, with ine next to him.

    Leena sat in front of them and Gabriel sat at her left but nearly one meter away and a few centimeters behind her.

    Daimon rxed on his chair before saying.

    "Gabriel has already told miss Leena what are my conditions right?".

    Leena stared at Daimon for a split of a second before she gazed at Erin.

    "Erin, I recognize the braveness of this kid, but this is a negotiation between two half emperors, or are you scheming something to get more things from me?".

    Erin smiled and then shrugged.

    "Unfortunately for you, the merit of making you show your tail for the first time in hundreds of years doesn''t belong to me, Daimon outwitted you, so the reward is for him, I''m only here as a spectator to enjoy the show".

    Leena''s eyes narrowed, she tried to discern if Erin was lying but seeing her rxed expression, she reached the conclusion that Erin was telling the truth.

    Although it was hard for her to believe a member of the young generation was the responsible of all this, she didn''t let it show it on her face.

    "Two can y like this Erin", she thought before focusing her attention on Daimon.

    "Yes, he told me you wanted a to have the right tomand me once am I right?".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Yes, is the base of the deal".

    A dangerous glow shed through Leena''s eyes, a faint trace of her mana leaked out of her body, causing some yellow lightning sparks to explode in the air.

    "The base you say?".

    Daimon grinned, while other star ranked mages could have been intimidated by this little disy of lightning, for him this was a paradise, in fact his magic core immediately absorbed all the lightning mana.

    Leena saw her mana disappearing and she red at Erin thinking it was done by her.

    "Humph "spectator" my ws".

    She then turned to see Daimon and asked.

    "What do you want then?".

    Daimon tapped his fingers on the table a couple of times before replying.

    "You will have to sign a contract of amnesty with the Revy n, also I want to know why are you going to ept my conditions withoutining, when they are so irrational".

    A sepulchral silence fell in the room, even Erin was a bit surprised by Daimon''s words, getting Leena to fulfill one petition was already a great achievement, but this was something that went beyond that.

    "That''s my Daimon, teach that tiger woman who''s the boss!", she thought, of course she made sure to let others hear her thanks to the mental connection.<sub> </sub>

    Gabriel on the other hand was sweating like crazy, his hands were firmly holding onto some kind of magic treasure, waiting for things to go to hell.

    Surprisingly what he expected didn''t happen, Leena instead remained quiet sitting there with a contemtive expression, but no matter how much thought she put onto it, she reached the same conclusion.

    "I can ept it, but I will add another condition to the deal, if you don''t agree then forget we had this conversation".

    At this point Gabriel felt he was going to faint; all this situation has gone way different than what he expected.

    Daimon looked at Erin and saw her nodding at him, she took out a ck scroll and started redacting the soul contract, only a half emperor can make another half emperorply after all.

    "So, what is the condition you want to add", asked Daimon.

    Leena rose two of her fingers and stated her terms.

    "A spot in the exploration and you protecting the girl of the photo, the amnesty willst as much time as you keep her away from Arthur''s family branch¡­ of course this is aplete separate matter from the single wish you can ask me".

    "For that you can''t ask me to harm myself nor the members of my family branch¡­ unless they try something against you, I leave the rest to Erin she knows about these kind of things".

    Erin snorted, but she didn''t say anything and just kept creating the contract.

    Daimon extended his hand towards Leena and offered her a handshake.

    "Deal".

    Leena doubted for a second but she still epted the gesture, what she didn''t know was that Daimon confirmed his theory thanks to that single handshake.

    "The contract is going to take some time to be finished, I want to hear why going to such length for¡­ someone who isn''t your direct rtive".

    Leena''s gaze narrowed, but since she epted to tell Daimon the truth then she had no option but to honestly answer him.

    "How did you reach that conclusion?".

    Daimon pointed at Gabriel while he chuckled.

    "Normally a son wouldn''t have been afraid of his own mother, and if you were that type of person then why would you want to protect the girl of the photo so much¡­ also you didn''t refuse the handshake so you can have direct contact with others".

    There are cases of mages which develop a hyper sensibility towards other people''s mana, so they can''t have contact with others, that''s why Daimon used the handshake just to make sure she didn''t have that problem.

    Leena angrily looked at Gabriel which made him scratch the back of his head.

    "Sorry¡­ aunt, I screwed up".

    Leena sighed while waving her hand.

    "I will deal with youter", she then looked at Daimon and nodded.

    "You are something else kid¡­ the answer to your question is that both Gabriel and Dana are the children of a good friend of mine which gave her life for me, so I don''t care if have to join hands with the Revy or the Argent for that goal".

    "But I''m not going to always be here for them and also half emperors might not be enough to survive the era which ising, that''s why they need to find their own fortunate encounters".

    Aura was a good example of what Leena wanted to say, she was an Archmage which emerged as a half emperor after entering a secret realm, and the biggest chance to get a life changing encounter was the magic ruin.

    Unfortunately for Leena, Arthur was the one in charge of practically everything in the Jolbaris n, so while Gabriel''s sister could have gotten a spot, there was no guarantee that Alexander and hisckeys wouldn''t hurt her¡­ or worse, because she was the equal of Alexander, the most talented female member of the Jolbaris in thest one thousand years.

    Of course, she could have negotiated with Arthur but she knew what his terms would have been, in the best-case scenario she would have ended up being his subordinate, then Gabriel came up with an alternative.

    Daimon already frustrated Arthur''s ns once, he didn''t care about the Jolbaris family nor was he intimidated by them and ording to the rumors he was by all means superior to Alexander.

    With onest movement of her hands, Erin finished the contract and threw it at Leena.

    "Read it, if you are okay with it then sign it".

 Chapter 151 Dana Jolbaris

    Leena thoroughly read the contract, the terms were what they orded with only one extra thing, Erin took the liberty of adding the Argent n in the amnesty, so if Leena signed it, she could not go against them in any form.

    "Tsk, cunning fox woman", she thought looking at Erin''s smiling expression, she made a little cut in her index finger and signed the contract, then handed it to Daimon.

    "I agree with the conditions, your turn kid".

    Daimon took the contract from her directly signed it, Erin is his girl so there is no way she would add something that might be detrimental for him.

    A contract with a half emperor apparently was different than the one of the academy, after Daimon signed it, a magic symbol floated from the scroll and entered Leena''s right hand, the same happened for Daimon.

    Leena showed the reverse of her hand to Erin, where the magic rune which meant "thrust" glowed for a couple of seconds before it disappeared.

    "It''s done, I need to return to the Jolbaris family grounds, so I will take my leave, but Gabriel and Dana will stay here this weekend¡­ just in case Arthur decides to try something funny".

    Daimon rose his left eyebrow, but after a moment of contemtion he agreed, after this weekend, getting any "obstacles" out of the way was going to be impossible, since at least another two half emperor were going to be present for thepetition week.

    "That''s okay for me, if she''s going to go with us to the exploration then I need to see her abilities, there is no guarantee that I can be with her at all times after all".

    "Also, I''m not a babysitter so I hope miss Leena''s niece knows how to properly behave".

    Daimon had many bad experiences with the Jolbaris and Dana was younger than them, so his expectations were a spoiled brat version of Alexander.

    Leena snorted.

    <o>,m "Don''t mix Arthur''s family branch with mine, I personally made sure to teach both of them how to properly behave", she said while stealing a couple of gazes at Gabriel.</o>

    "She says that, but the only one that suffered was me", thought Gabriel

    It still makes him fell a chill running down his spine, he also used to be a bit despotic when he was younger, until one day Leena saw it not only, she scolded him but she made him go through a hellish corrective treatment.

    Although now that he was older, he could perfectly understand why she did it, he was still a bit afraid of the fierceness of his aunt.

    Erin waved her hand as if she was chasing her away.

    "Go get that girl and return you aren''t the only busy one here you know?".

    Leena ignored Erin, she floated towards the door and after leaving for a moment she returned while holding the hand of a little girl of about 12 years old.

    Leena returned to her seat, while the girl presented herself, she rose the sides of her coat and slightly bowed her head, before saying.

    "My name is Dana Jolbaris, it''s a pleasure to meet you aunties and big brother from the Revy and Argent n!".

    Daimon evaluated the little girl in front of them, she was wearing a white short coat and a blue skirt, just like Leena she had blue eyes and white hair but it was shorter reaching only a few centimeters down her shoulders and there were no ck stripes on it yet, she also had tiger like ears and tail.

    Also considering she and Alexander''s ages weren''t that far from each other, there was a big contrast in their attitudes.

    Erin used her mana sense to inspect Dana and she frowned her brows.

    "Leena this girl is lovely, are you sure you were the one that taught her¡­also are you really going to send a peak novice mage to the exploration¡­ you know how bloody things are going to be this time right?".

    Leena snorted at Erin.

    "If I didn''t need someone to protect her then why would I have epted joining hands with you, anyway go bring someone with the same age and realm as her, then you''ll see why I''m willing to let her go".

    Erin''s gaze narrowed, she already knew someone whose age and realm didn''t match his actual strength, which is Daimon, and judging by Leena''s proud expression she decided to give this little girl a go.

    "Fine, let''s see how she fairs against her peers of my n".

    With a wave of her hand a barrier covered them all before she used space shift to transport everyone, to the preparation school were all those who haven''t reached the star rankings study for the day where they fulfill the requirements to attend the academy.

    Even at weekend there were activities, but only for those who were considered the cr¨¨me of the crop, after all the objective of this ce was to prepare the younger generation to outstand at the academy.

    The teachers saw Erin outside and they immediately stopped what they were doing and left the building before kneeling in front of her.

    "Greetings to the matriarch!".

    Inside of the school all the students were looking through the windows.

    A young boy with red hair stood out from the rest, he moved some of his ssmates to get a better view of the situation.<sub> </sub>

    ine did some visits from time to time, but getting a visit from the matriarch was the highest honor they could receive, if they managed to impress Erin, they will be nurtured by the family.

    Erin waved her hand, this overbearing attention she got in the n was the reason as to whys he normally moved using dark curtain to hide her presence.

    "Stood up, I''m here for some important matters, bring the best students here, the conditions are twelve years old and peak of the novice mage realm".

    As soon as Erin''s words sounded, all the students nearly went crazy they all tried to leave the ssrooms to promote themselves, but under the supervision of the teachers, only the ones considered the best were allowed to stand in front of Erin.

    There were five young members of the Revy family three boys and two girls, among them the boy with red hair seemed to be the leader since he was standing a few centimeters in front of the rest.

    The teacher immediately presented them to Erin.

    "As the matriarch knows, we only have five ssrooms which are reserved for the best of the younger generation and these are the representatives of each ss, from left to right".

    "Easan Revy".

    "Gerard Revy".

    "Ernest Revy".

    "Susan Revy".

    "Anna Revy".

    Erin looked at the boys and girls which were in front of them and she couldn''t help but find them¡­ disappointing, although they had a decent amount of mana, it was obvious they haven''t been in a real fight ever before, when Daimon was their age, he already had fought against countless magic beasts.

    But these children were the sons and daughters of the elders so they grew like flowers in a greenhouse, beside some friendly spars none of them had real experience.

    "Whatever, that little girl shouldn''t be that different", she thought before nodding.

    "We have some guests who want to exchange a few pointers, so I brought them here for a one versus one match, the winner will get a reward from the n, so what do you say?".

    All the students nodded with happy expressions, but that changed as soon as they heard Leena saying.

    "That is too boring, let them all fight against Dana if you want the fight tost a bit that is".

    The red-haired boy who turned out to be called Easan gritted his teeth and gave Leena a hateful gaze, he used to be acimed as a genius among the younger generation, recognized by the supreme elder himself, but since Daimon appeared and after the supreme elder fell in disgrace, no one paid him any attention.

    And now he was being looked down and by someone from another family, still he wasn''t stupid enough to lose control in front of the matriarch so he forcefully suppressed the anger which was invading him and just remained silent.

    Erin shrugged at Leena and then pointed at the tform in the backyard of the school.

    "If that''s what you want then fine by me, the match will be five versus one, magic weapons aren''t allowed lethal attacks are forbidden and the perpetrator will be punished by me".

    After saying that the teachers and their students walked towards the tform, although magic weapons weren''t allowed, the school had a variety of weapons which didn''t have any inscription, so they could use them to exhibit their battle skills.

    Dana looked at Erin and asked with her innocent voice.

    "Aunt Erin, can I also use my weapon?".

    Erin felt weird listening to Leena''s niece calling her aunt, but there were no bad intentions in her words, so she took it as a little girl''s demeanor.

    "Of course, there is aplete storage of magicless equipment for training so just tell the teachers what do you want and they will bring it for you".

    "Mm", Dana happily nodded and approached one of the teachers to ask what she wanted.

    Something that caught Daimon''s interest was that the weapon of choice of Dana wasn''t in the visible options.

    "Sword, spear, bow, hammer, knives and throwing things, I can see many versions of those and yet she didn''t take any of it¡­ I wonder what is her weapon then?".

    Soon the teacher returned with a big pair of metal gauntlets, with a weird expression he handed them to Dana and then stayed aside.

    Dana approached Gabriel and showed him the gauntlets.

    "Brother can you please pierce the protections of the fingers?".

    Gabriel did what she asked and then helped her put on the gauntlets, which were clearly not of her size as they covered almost all her arms, creating a childish scene as if a little girl was trying to use the armor of her father.

 Chapter 152 Danaâ€™s Lightning

    The backyard of the school was used for exercising and spars between students, so there was no ce to sit, but since Erin was visiting them, the teachers brought chairs without Erin asking for it.

    Erin took seat, Daimon naturally sat at her right while ine did it at her left, Aura upied the seat next to Daimon, as for Leena and Gabriel they sat next to Aura.

    The young students still gave Leena some hateful gazes from time to time as they went up the tform, making them fight five versus one was the same as saying that Dana could defeat them in a fair fight.

    Gabriel chuckled at them as he spoke.

    "I wonder what would their reactions would be if they knew who are they being disrespectful with".

    Once the five students were on the tform Dana also went up, the teachers stood at the sides ready to interrupt if the situation required it.

    Daimon stayed silent; his eyes glowed with a dim violet light as he used the truth seeker eyes to watch what was about to happen.

    With Erin''s green light the match started.

    Easan immediately yelled at his ssmates.

    "Ernest, Gerard you twoe with me, Susan Anna suppress her!".

    Out of the five students, Easan used a sword, Ernest and Gerard were axe users, Susan used a bow and Anna a spear.

    "Two fire, one earth, one wind and an ice user¡­ the team is well bnced", thought Daimon.

    Dana stood still and let Easan and the other two nk her, then as if the sky rumbled yellow currents of electricity appeared around her body.

    "Humph, so what if you have lightning affinity, do you think you are the only one with a self-boosting spell, you two do the same".

    Easan snorted; mes exploded around him, he was part of the sun alluring side of the Revy family and his affinity was fire.

    Ernest was an earth user, so his body was naturally sturdier, he only applied ayer of rock on top of his axe, Gerard and Susan on the other hand casted their own boosting spells making fire and wind cover their bodies.

    Without any warning Susan pulled the string of her bow and a barrage of wind arrows was shot towards Dana.

    But what happened next made Easan and the other students widen in surprise.

    Dana didn''t move at all, when the arrows reached ten meters from her¡­ they simply dispersed, not it would be more urate to say the arrows were crushed.

    Easan gritted his teeth.

    "Do it again Susan!".

    Following Easan''smand, Susan condensed a big arrow in her bow before shooting it at Dana, but the result was the same, as soon as the arrow reached ten meters from Dana it disappeared.

    "Damn it, Ernest, Gerard follow me!".

    p Easan shouted and he fiercely rushed forward leaving a trail of mes burning on the tform.</anda>

    With a loud roar Easan swung his sword at Dana, Ernest and Gerard attacked her from the sides with their axes, behind Anna which wielded a spear blocked her way of retreat.

    The teachers exchanged gazes between each other.

    "It seems our school will be getting more resources from the n from now and onwards", they thought.

    A little smile flourished on Dana''s face, she punched the floor and a big impact shook the tform creating making it crack and rising a huge amount of dust.

    "Aghhh!!!".

    From the within the dust a loud scream made the teachers focus their attention on the fight, but their fields of vision were blocked by a curtain of dust, once the dust was blown away the teachers were in awe at the current scene.

    Anna''s spear was piercing Gerard''s shoulder while Ernest wasying on the ground, half of his face waspletely swollen and his eyes rolled as he fainted, his axe was twisted to the point where it was unrecognizable.

    Before they could react, a thunder sounded and Gerard flew out of the tformnding on the floor, with a slight dent on his chest in the form of a little fist.

    Anna and Easan immediately took a few steps back, with surprise and caution written all over their faces, even their spells were cancelled due to themotion.<sub> </sub>

    While the teachers were lost, Daimon had an interested expression, with his truth seeker eyes he could perfectly see what happened.

    After she punched the tform her little image shed avoiding Anna''s spear which made it pierce Gerard instead of her, Ernest saw it and he used the blunt side of his axe to hit Dana.

    Up to that point Daimon thought she was a speed type mage like Michael¡­ but then things made a 180¡ã turn, for a split of a second the lightning surrounding her body seemed to undergo through a fundamental change and when the axe shed against it, it was as if it was mmed against an invisible wall, it was stopped cold which destroyed it.

    Then her lightning changed back and she recovered her speed, with a swift movement Dana hit Ernest with her elbow which was protected by the gauntlet knocking him out.

    Daimon nodded reaching his conclusion.

    "Lightning with substance, now that is a kind of variant I have never heard of".

    Gabriel''s body trembled, his eyes had a terrified expression, Leena also looked at Daimon with a narrowed gaze.

    Daimon ignored the dangerous expression in Leena''s face.

    "Why are you so serious miss Leena, we both signed the contract so we can''t harm each other".

    Leena snorted.

    "Unfortunately, you are only half right, Dana''s lightning is different but she isn''t a variant¡­ anyway let''s leave that forter, the fight is about to end".

    Out of the presents here Daimon wasn''t the only one who noticed something weird going on with Dana''s lightning, Aura which''s element is something simr to sma also noticed it, but she couldn''t discern what was the difference while Daimon perfectly exined it.

    In this world only Leena and Gabriel knew the truth behind Dana''s lightning and just by seeing it once, Daimon could decipher it, that''s why Gabriel was terrified.

    Erin saw the interested expression in Daimon''s face and she smiled before rising her hand.

    "The fight is over; the winner is Dana".

    The teachers nearly fainted, in their eyes the matriarch decided to stop the match to not lose more face, in the first sh two of the five best students were knocked out after all.

    Dana nodded, she exhaled and her lightning disappeared, her face was a bit pale, apparently activating that weird lightning made her tired.

    For Easan it was as if his world crumbled apart, his chance to be recognized by the matriarch and be a candidate to be a high ranked elder or maybe the next supreme elder disappeared with that sentence.

    His eyes became bloodshot, his sword exploded in mes and without wasting a second he swung it at Dana.

    "Bang!".

    The iconic sound of a gunshot drew everyone''s attention at the honor seats, the teachers noticed Daimon holding a gun in his hand, they followed the direction of the shot and saw Easan kneeled on the ground.

    There wasn''t any blood but judging by his pained expression and how he was gasping he was having trouble breathing due to a strong impact.

    Then Daimon''s cold voice made both teachers and students shiver.

    "Lethal attacks were forbidden and you were only allowed to point a weapon at her while the match was ongoing, out of that you are getting into the way of my deal".

    The base of the deal he made with Leena was that he could keep Dana safe, of course it was limited to when he was near her.

    Erin nodded at Daimon, she could have acted but it was better for him to do it, to show Leena he wasn''t going to close an eye even if it was someone from the Revy family the one trying to harm Dana.

    Then her gaze fell on the teachers which now felt as if their hearts were going to stop.

    "It seems the younger students arecking discipline, all the privileges will be revoked for the next six months, and the training will be doubled, now take this disgrace out of my sight".

    The teachers didn''t dare to reply they just took the students and left as fast as they could, the matriarch didn''t punish them so they didn''t want to be here just in case.

    Dana left the tform and stood next to Gabriel not without thanking smiling at Daimon.

    "Thanks for the help".

 Chapter 153 Atavism

    Now that they didn''t have anything else to do here Erin transported them back to her mansion.

    Seeing Dana''s slightly tired expression Leena patted her head as she spoke with Gabriel.

    "Gabriel take Dana with Erin''s younger daughter so she can rest and get to know her new team mates".

    "ine show them the way to the guest''s mansion please, tell Liz to help them settle their things for the weekend".

    Erin understood Leena''s intentions by sending away, just to avoid any "ident", she asked ine to escort them.

    ine nodded, she stood up and guided Gabriel and Dana to the exit of the mansion.

    "This way please".

    Gabriel seemed to have something to say, but ultimately, he remained silent and left the mansion with his little sister.

    Once they left Leena focused her attention on Daimon.

    "Kid how did you know the peculiarity of Dana''s lightning¡­ even that Arthur bastard was only impressed by Dana''s battle senses and reaction time".

    Of course, it''s not like a half emperor with lightning affinity such as Arthur or Aura couldn''t see there was something different, but they couldn''t pinpoint what it was so they discarded it.

    Leena was a bit worried that her niece''s secret might be seen through by others, so far in the eyes of others Dana used some kind of defensive magic treasure to defend from physical attacks, which isn''t umon among the heirs of big families below the lord realms, since they can''t automatically protect themselves with a defensive spell.

    She even has made some tests in the presence of a mage with special eyes simr to Yvonne and the result was the same.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon''s truth seeker eyesbined with sixth sense under certain situations could discern the basics ofws, that''s how he learned blink, so there was something besides lightning at the moment the axe shed with it.

    Daimon chuckled, he took out the earring he "confiscated" from Leir and showed it to Leena.

    "I think others get swayed away thinking that something like this is protecting her, but my eyes are special and even if it was for a split of a second, that little girl''s lightning became "heavy", also they way she dispersed the wind arrows¡­ it''s a simr to how a knight protects himself with battle aura".

    Mana and battle aura are the weakness of each other, it''s easier for a knight to disperse a spell than to a mage, the same applies for a mage, the defense of battle aura is easier to pierce with a spell.

    Not to the point of crossing realms to defeat each other, but that''s how things are and that''s why there is an eternalpetition between mages and knights, but in words of the Greenwich Sage, each one has its own pros and cons.

    However, Daimon was both a mage and a knight, the first of its ss in the wonder myriad ster chart, since for some reason nor Aura or Aisha had lightened up their life sparks yet.

    That''s why Daimon was a bit interested in Dana''s variation, because she created an effect simr to battle aura with mana.

    Leena''s eyes glowed for a second, yellow electric currents appeared on her hand which she showed to Daimon.

    "Do you know what is the story we tell the younger generation about the origin of the Jolbaris family?".

    Daimon shook his head, every family has some records about their past, unfortunately for some reason all the records end a few generations after what is considered the ancient age.

    The races of the beast faction all shared the believe that their ancestors were magic beasts which took human form, but not all had records of their origin, the Revy n for example didn''t know the name of the beast from which they supposedly descended, the same for the Argent family.

    "If I remember correctly, Alexander mentioned something called "storm tiger", so I guess that''s the story everyone knows".

    Leena nodded.

    "It''s not exactly a lie, but it''s also only half right, the Jolbarise from the union of a Storm Tiger and¡­ a Star Lioness, the storm tiger has the normal orange and ck fur known by everyone, but ording to the record a Star Lion has white fur".

    Erin frowned, she tapped her finger on the table and then said.

    "If I remember correctly in the whole Jolbaris family, only those two kids and you have that characteristic white and ck color, everyone thought it was just a pigment problem since there wasn''t any difference in your lightning".

    Leena smiled, the yellow lightning in her hand changed to have a copperish tone, then Daimon felt as if his body was being pressed downwards, it was simr to the effect of the shackles of despair, but instead of being applied in only living objects, all the room was affected.

    Of course, nothing happened since Leena wasn''t trying to harm Daimon and the things in Erin''s mansion were of the highest quality.

    This time Daimon took his time to inspect Leena''s lightning.<sub> </sub>

    "As I thought there is something mixed in that lightning, it looks like earth element but it''s different at the same time¡­ could it be gravity?", he thought.

    While others only saw electricity, Daimon could see things with a different perspective, although he couldn''t understand it, there were some symbols floating here and there inside the elements.

    By raw observation he saw the symbols any lightning has but there were also some other things mixed with it.

    Erin contemted things for a moment before giving her verdict.

    "Now that you mention it, your parents which were from the same generation as my mother, had normal orange hair¡­ atavism, you and those two children are presenting characteristics which have beentent in your family for who knows how many years".

    Leena stopped what she was doing, her lightning changed back to its original yellow tone and then disappeared.

    "Something like that, but unlike Dana I only learned how to do this when I was an Archmage, also for some reason Gabriel doesn''t have this ability".

    "The record that exins the origin of the Jolbaris has always been in the hands of my mother''s family branch, when my parents died, the record ended in my hands¡­ unfortunately the ancestor which survived of that time was Arthur''s father, so I just stepped aside and he ended up having almost none influence in the n, until he died and I became a half emperor in secret".

    Daimon suddenly remembered something and he interrupted Leena.

    "Wait, the stripes on Alexander''s hair aren''t ck but white".

    "Arthur''s main wife is a distant rtive of mine, when he saw my white hair, his supposition was that I was I variant, so his father arranged a marriage with a cousin from my mother''s side of the family".

    "So, Alexander inherited that too, but just like Gabriel he doesn''t have this ability, that''s why Arthurs still believes it''s just a change in the color of our hair¡­ of course he attributed the "great talent" of his son, to himself".

    Daimon leaned his back against the chair and then looked at Leena directly to her eyes.

    "Why are you telling us all this?".

    Leena snorted.

    "Because you probably already have an idea of it, besides with the contract I can''t do anything to you¡­ I never imagined a little kid would see through a secret I kept for hundreds of years after seeing Dana fighting once".

    "Anyway, you already have bad blood with Arthur and the fact that your condition for the contract was to have an amnesty with me, means co-existing is possible".

    Daimon saw Erin nodding at him, although Leena and her have fought andpeted against each other, none of them tried to kill the other.

    With Arthur things were different, he tried to force Liz and ine to marry Alexander, and things could have gotten out of hand if it wasn''t for Erin returning in time.

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Making enemies without having allies is going to be your downfall Arthur Jolbaris".

    Erin hugged Daimon with a smiling expression.

    "That was my first lesson to you, an extra ally is a future possible enemy less".

    Aura inwardly sighed.

    "Well, that same "ally making" is what worries me¡­ those three women from the Risha family aren''t here just to visit the hot springs".

    The atmosphere of the room became rxed again, it''s easier to get along when people have something inmon, Arthur being an idiot with all of them was themon factor here.

    This time Leena took out a bottle with a bright red liquid inside from her storage ring and poured its content in a few sses.

    "This is Blood Tiger juice, a specialty of the Jolbaris family, give it a go".

    She then rose her ss at Erin and took a sip of it, as a sign of goodwill between nobles the one serving always had to drink first.

    Daimon epted her toast and drank the juice in one go, the vor was simr to cherry but it also had a bitter aftertaste.

    "For a happy cooperation".

 Chapter 154 Auraâ€™s Worries

    Since Leena decided to be a bit honest with them, things stopped being so tense, now that she shared something as important as the secret behind both Dana and her lineage, she was in the same boat as them.

    Erin drank the juice and then frowned.

    "Hey wait a second, that means we both never gave our all when we fought each other".

    Leena nodded, her previously stiffness disappeared as she rxed on her chair.

    "I guess we both had something to hide¡­ or are you telling me you could predict all those ambushes we went through back at the academy without any kind of special technique?".

    Erin hid her expression with her ss, although she never admitted anything nor boasted about it, back when she was younger, she didn''t have the privilege of hiding her heart mirror as much as she would have liked.

    It only activated when she was in a life and death situation, the problem is that such cases repeated way too much during the war.

    Just like the Revy family was in war with the undead, the Jolbaris fought against the demons at the same time, so both Erin and Leena had to survive a lot of assassination attempts and other.

    The difference was that the Jolbaris always have two half emperors guarding the fort, so besides Arthur''s father, Leena''s father was also a half emperor granting her a better protectionpared to Erin, a couple of times undead and demons joined hands to get rid of both of them, and Leena witnessed how Erin avoided their traps without anyone''s help.

    That''s how their rivalry started, both princesses of their ns, both targeted by the enemies of their families and both considered among the most outstanding women in their generation.

    Aura chuckled at the scene of Erin and Leena remembering their time at the academy, then she talked using the mental connection.

    "Who would have thought the day wille where three out of the five female half emperors of the whole ster chart will be physically present in one ce, that is something you don''t see every day".

    Daimon inwardly shrugged.

    "Yeah, but it was hard to prevent them attacking their throats at first sight you know¡­ speaking of that what actually surprises me is that, my normally fierce andbative Aura is behaving so good".

    "Humph, that''s because is Leena instead of Ang, if not you would have enjoyed the scene of a werewolf and a vampire trying to destroy each other, without any reason or provocation".

    Erin''s voice interrupted Daimon and Aura, since Aura wasn''t exclusively taking with Daimon, Erin heard them and she also replied.

    If Daimon learned anything due to this experience was that he needed to investigate more about the other half emperors, even then he has somewhat heard of the woman Erin was talking about¡­ since he is also a vampire.

    That''s why he was a bit confused.

    "The matriarch of the Nosfear family¡­ isn''t she known for being the one sent to negotiate for the vampires, do you have pending matters with her?".

    Out of three ns, the Naktis and the Silverheart families have always had a warmongering approach thanks to their rulers, inparison the Nosfear were kept in control thanks to the matriarch.

    Aisha had a basic respect of her because she protected her daughter from Victor while her father abandoned her in exchange for some benefits, that''s why Daimon was a bit confused about why Aura would have a feud with such a person.

    Aura sighed.

    "Not really, it''s a bit hard to exin but since we saw each other we simply didn''t get along, in fact most of the half emperors hate each other, that''s why we normally just talk with each other through something simr of a sigil lector".

    "And we only meet in person when there is a situation that could destroy the ster chart, like that time when Disaster ran rampant, making Leenae here is a bigger of an achievement than what you think".

    Erin''s eyes seemed to glow for a second as she spoke with a charming voice.

    "She is right, fortunately I have a reward waiting for youter".

    Once ine returned from the guest''s mansion Leena stopped drinking, she stood up and said goodbye to them.

    "I need to leave, it would be a hassle if Arthur goes to my mansion and I''m not there, I leave Dana under your care kid, I''m eager to see how your ss will fare at the tournament the next week".

    Erin waved her hand and opened a path in the barrier for Leena which she used to tele transport with space shift.

    "Daimon go see your mother and Liz, you need to exin them why that little girl will go¡­ but after that you are ours".

    Erin''s gaze was a bit intense as she spoke with a smile, she wanted Daimon to clear all his pending matters so he could spend the rest of the weekend with her and ine.

    Erin and ine stayed behind, but Aura apanied him, with how things will be getting, the only way to feel safe during this weekend will be having a half emperor near at all times after all.<sub> </sub>

    On the way Aura hugged Daimon''s right arm, while at the academy she publicly had to act as the principal, when she was at the Revy or Argent ns, she could act the way she wanted.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt Aura''s gaze on his back which made him turn to see her.

    "What''s the problem Aura, you seem to be worried about something?".

    Aura smiled, she hugged his arm and cheered up.

    "It''s nothing, it''s just that after the situation with Disaster, nothing big happened in the gxies and now in just a matter of a few years a lot of things that can change our whole life are appearing one after each other".

    Daimon caressed her cute wolf ears, how could he not notice she was worried about the exploration, Erin wasn''t present when Aura met Dimas, so she couldn''t understand the shock Aura felt when she met an emperor level magic beast.

    Her reasoning was simple, "If something like that was hidden in a, we have colonized for so many years, what could be inside a ce that hasn''t been visited for who knows how many time".

    Aura''s tail wagged as she enjoyed Daimon''s caresses, until she heard his next words.

    "There is something you aren''t telling me, is it because of whatever happened to you when you were trapped inside that secret realm?".

    Aura stopped in cold, besides Erin no one knew what she went through which forced her to be a half emperor¡­ or die.

    She pointed at her eye which had that slight scar Daimon has been curious off for quite some time, before saying.

    "This is a reminder of how things can go to hell in a matter of seconds inside a secret realm, no one knows the grade of the ce where I was trapped because the entrance opened and closed before anyone could measure the manaing out of it".

    "I also didn''t know it until a few days ago when I met that serpent guy at the frozen in¡­ I''m eighty percent sure that ce was destined for someone with at least that amount of strength, I only managed so survive because I was stuck at the first part of the trial".

    "Not only that, inside my mana was sealed I could only trust in my battle reflexes and my sword and I was already an Archmage at that point¡­ what I''m trying to say is that would you consider not entering that ce if me and Erin evaluate it to be too dangerous?".

    Daimon remained silent for a moment before he shaking his head.

    "You know I can''t do that, as long as others enter that ce there is a possibility of one of our enemies getting stronger than us, you know it once someone hesitates in taking risks to be stronger, that''s the end of the road".

    Aura smiled; her worries disappeared as soon as she heard Daimon''s answer, she was just testing him, ording to what she went through.

    "Everyone puts too much importance on mana, talent, affinities and the like¡­ but at the end of the day all of that can be changed, that''s what a fortunate encounter is, but a strong will can''t be obtained by external means or luck", she thought to herself.

    "If the record of that ce was right, I was the weakest out of all the ones that entered that secret realm and yet I''m the only one that managed to survive".

    Now that she cleared her doubts, Aura happily clung onto her lover until they reached the guest''s mansion, there was a familiar person waiting at the entrance¡­ Ernest Revy, the old man which had a grudge against Erin for the punishment Edgar had to go through.

    Apparently, the old man didn''t expect to see Aura, because his face paled as soon as he caught a glimpse of her, still he gritted his teeth and said.

    "I want to see the matriarch, I went to the mansion of both the n head and the champion and no one answered my call, then I found this interesting scene of people from other families upying the supreme elder''s mansion".

    Daimon smirked.

    "Why would that worry you, it''s not like this is your mansion or anything like that am I right?".

    Ernest felt his lungs filling with anger, but her knew the ck-haired youth was provoking him, if he fell for that, then he will die without a tomb, so instead of acting he slightly bowed his head.

    "I ask the young master to not be offended by my words, as an elder is my duty to see for the interests and rules of the family, in any case I''m not here for that".

    Daimon took out his sigil lector and sent a message to Erin with it, then he waited to get an answer which he immediately showed to Ernest.

    "Not interested".

    Those two words made Ernest clench his fists so hard his nails dug in the palm of his hands, but he simply did his best to smile and then left.

    "Thanks for the matriarch for answering me, I will take my leave".

    Daimon observed the back of the old man, a strange light glowed on his eyes for a moment before he entered the guest''s mansion followed by Aura.

 Chapter 155 Distributing The Spots

    Once inside of the mansion Daimon noticed the mansion was remodeled to be more like a hotel, the main hall was demolished and instead there were some rooms created in that space.

    But only one seemed to be upied since the door was open,ughs and giggles could be hearding from it.

    When they reached it, Daimon was weed by a weird scene, in one of the beds Veronica, Irina and Anya and Mireya were surrounding Dana.

    Either talking with her, giving her candies or evenbing her hair, it was as if those three were reminding how they took care of their daughters when they were younger.

    Loren, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were upying another bed leisurelyying on it as they were reading some kind of magazine from the Revy n.

    Lastly Aisha and Liz were both chatting with each other, the whole room was like entering a feminine dimension, a bit different from what Daimon is used to.

    "Ahem,dies what is happening here¡­ where are Calvin, Michael and Gabriel?".

    Daimon cleared his throat to get their attention, he also noticed none of the boys were here.

    Yvonne pointed at the wall before replying.

    "Liz brought that little girl and that guy from the Jolbaris family, originally they were both going to wait in another room, but our mothers went crazy as soon as they saw her so¡­ the guy was kicked at another room with Calvin and Michael".

    Daimon chuckled, he looked at Aura which made her nod and sat on the same bed with Aisha and Liz, he on the other hand opened the door of a room two doors away from the one where the girls were.

    Inside Gabriel had a slightly worried expression while Michael was exasperated listening to Calvin''sins about the others interrupting his sweet time with Loren.

    Calvin stood up as soon as he saw Daimon opening the door.

    "Daimon, thanks to the heavens you returned, my crazy aunt locked us up here".

    Daimon couldn''t help butugh, Mireya surely liked to mess with Calvin, but she probably did it due to Gabriel, the male side of the Jolbaris family didn''t have a decent reputation after all.

    "Come you three, we have some things to discuss, also Gabriel your sister is fine so don''t put that worried expression, miss Leena and me have reached an agreement and our families are somewhat in an alliance".

    After saying that Daimon returned to the girls room, since they all knew Daimon came here for a reason, everyone stopped what they were doing and sat on the borders of the beds.

    Gabriel saw his sister and he didn''t know what to say, while he was in distress thinking they might fell into a trap, Dana was here enjoying a candy while happily humming as if they weren''t in a n which was hostile until a few minutes ago.

    Daimon waited until everyone was sitting to speak.

    "I guess you all more or less can guess what happened, but I will exin it just in case, the other half emperor of the Jolbaris family and me have reached an agreement, she will be our ally under the condition that I bring her niece with us to the exploration and help her if needed".

    Dana stood up and bowed towards Aisha and the other members of the elite ss.

    "Dana Jolbaris, please take care of me".

    As expected, the reactions were quite varied, the Risha girls weren''t that surprised, Daimon practically got a free wish from a half emperor so they supposed he used it to create an alliance.

    Their mothers on the other hand were in awe, if what the ck-haired youth said was true, then he now had the direct support of three half emperors, one should know that the only family with more than one half emperor in the beast faction used to be the Jolbaris.

    Veronica''s eyes seemed to be on fire.

    "He said "the half emperor and me", so the whole deal was managed by him! ¡­ I will punish that little girl for not informing me of this", she thought as she stole a few gazes at Leslie.

    Irina seemed calm on the outside, but in her heart, she was jumping and celebrating.

    "I was already impressed by how he persuaded Ferdinand, but reuniting five half emperors under the same g¡­ I need to talk with these two".

    Anya simply nodded with a slight smile in her face.

    Loren didn''t have much to say, Daimon has proven to be trust worthy and Calvin respected him, so she didn''t have reason to object.

    Michal on the other hand doubted for a second before saying what was in his mind.

    "Daimon, if my senses aren''t failing, this girl is still a novice mage, right?".

    Daimon nodded, while looking at Aura.<sub> </sub>

    "Yes, but her battle prowess is enough to deal with a two-star mage, my master can confirm my words if needed".

    Michael shook his head.

    "I didn''t mean it like that¡­ would it be possible for me to bring the granddaughter of my master with us, I will be responsible for her".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "I don''t mind, as long as the onesing are below the six-star realm and they are trustable, then thest four spots are free to use, just tell me before hand and we have to see what they are capable of".

    Michael nodded, although with Dana they were only nine, Daimon probably had another person in mind for the tenth spot.

    "Thanks, I would tell my master and he should be here by tomorrow, I will keep you informed¡­ also I can convince him to sign a contract without any problem, this exploration is really important after all".

    Gabriel couldn''t help but interrupt them since he wasn''t following the conversation.

    "Excuse me, I don''t understand, ording to what my aunt told me, fifteen people from each year will be sent, besides Alexander who has a secured spot, all the empty spaces from your ss should be filled by his ssmates".

    Daimon sat next to Aisha before replying.

    "That would be the case if they are in conditions of going and that''s not going to be the case, as the representative of the elite ss I have the authority to rece those who aren''t "apt" to participate, and no one has a say in my decision".

    Gabriel nearly fell from his chair, if what Daimon said was true, then besides Alexander all the other fourteen participants will be on his side, so the only worry would be the second-grade students.

    Surprisingly Calvin said something serious.

    "I don''t have a candidate for our ss, but for the second years a friend of mine should be getting a spot, I will present her to you all during the week".

    Calvin''s words made Aura remember something, she talked with Daimon through the mental connection.

    "Speaking of second year students, that little girl Arianna is a five-star mage and a candidate to be the team conformed by the second year''s elite ss, she is a good girl so go to see her match too".

    Daimon nodded before he stood up.

    "Okay, if that''s all then I will take my leave because I still have some things to do, get along with Dana and Gabriel in the meantime and I will catch up with youter, my master will stay here just in case anything happens".

    Leaving aside Aisha, Liz and Aura who knew what were those "things" he had to do, the others thought Daimon was going to go through some kind of harsh training or something like that.

    After saying that Daimon left, he guest''s mansion and went straight to Erin''s mansion, on the way he noticed there were some curious gazes focused on him, but he ignored them, after meeting Ernest it was obvious, he was having a hard time restraining himself.

    "Just act already old bastard, so that Erin can get rid of you all at once", he thought.

    Unfortunately, nothing happened so it didn''t take him too much time to reach Erin''s mansion, as soon as he entered, he noticed the lights were off, it was still day so there was a dim light entering from the double view windows.

    Then he saw a pair of arms appearing out of nowhere hugging him something that would have scared him, of he couldn''t feel Erin''s presence thanks to core synchrony.

    Daimon felt something soft and perky pressing against the back of his head, he turned his head around just to see Erin smiling at him¡­pletely naked, due to the big difference in their heights, her breasts were resting on the back of his head.

    Erin''s hands moved downwards all the way to his crotch, she whispered at him with her charming voice.

    "You know I could smell your scent practically covering those three from head to toe, I wonder how far have you gone while I wasn''t there".

    Daimon smiled, he turned his body around and kissed Erin, which too her by surprise but she just stood still and epted the kiss, while big fluffy tail happily wagged.

    "Oh my, you surely became quite bold in just one week, so that''s why you didn''t like me calling you little Daimon¡­ hyaa ?".

    As Erin expected, she got a little spank as "reprimand" as soon as she called him "little Daimon", but instead ofining she enjoyed it.

    Daimon shook his head and dragged Erin with him towards the bedroom.

    "We can talkter, I can feel a certain someone spying on us with her mana sense", he mumbled, referring to ine which was waiting for them in the bed.

 Chapter 156 A Night With A Mother And Her Daughter (Part 1) R-18

    As soon as Daimon opened the door of the bedroom, he was weed with the weird scene of inepletely covering her body with the only exception of her head with the bed sheet.

    Daimon closed the door and let go of Erin''s waist before approaching the bed, with a smirk on his face.

    "What are you ashamed off, I have seen all what''s there to be seen in the past years, haven''t I?".

    Erin rested her body on Daimon''s back, her big breasts pressed against his body giving him a try of the extremely soft andfortable feeling of her naked skin.

    She then giggled and nibbled on his ear before saying.

    "She is like that, because I waited till thest second to tell her we won''t be using our pussies today".

    Daimon felt a bit weird listening to Erin''s shameless words, but it was also part of her charm and to be honest it was also refreshing, out of all the girls she was the most daring.

    He coughed a couple of times to clear his throat before looking at ine.

    "You two weren''t there when I¡­ did it with mom, Liz and Aura, but I already decided we will be all together when the time for thates, with core synchrony activated everyone will share the experience no matter who I chose as my first".

    ine nodded, she understood Daimon didn''t show favoritism for any of them, and tried to be equal with how he treated them.

    Still, she had a certain resentment in her eyes when she looked at her mother, her face was red as a tomato as she shily spoke.

    "Regarding what you said earlier, I don''t mind showing you my body, I''m your fianc¨¦ anyway, but mom made me t-touch myself back there to prepare for you".

    Daimon turned to see Erin which onlyughed before kissing him.

    "Unlike my rebellious Elizabeth, ine has always been quite demure, so of course I wanted her to be ready to enjoy her first experience".

    Daimon chuckled, although Erin made it sound nice, she probably just wanted to tease her daughter, not like he didn''t enjoy the currently blushed expression of ine.

    Without any warning he removed the bedsheet revealing the beautiful naked body below it, maybe due to Erin''s good genes, both of her daughters had a perfectly curvy figure which was only second to their mother''s.

    Daimon couldn''t help but lick his lips, his eyes looked at every centimeter of her pale skin, obviously stopping at certain parts like her breasts which were crowned by little pink nipples and her crotch which she hurried to hide with one of her tails.

    Daimon extended his hand and moved her tail aside revealing her pretty flower which was already flowing with love juices due to the expectation.

    "How cute", he thought before letting his body rest on top of ine, he started by slowly kissing her lips making her ease up, then his lips kept moving down making a small stop at her neck.

    As a vampire he had a certain fixation to the pretty skin on the neck of his girls, so after preparing it he gently shoved his fangs on it.

    "Hmmm ?", ine was a bit surprised feeling Daimon suddenly biting her neck, but she knew he would never hurt her, and her faith was immediately rewarded with a warm andfortable sensationing from the bottom of her body, it was so pleasant she couldn''t help but let out a cute moan escape from her mouth.

    Daimon didn''t bite the girls for their blood it was only to help them rx their bodies, but he still took a couple of sips of ine''s blood, before stopping, as soon as his fangs left her neck, the wound closed without letting any mark on her neck.

    The effect he wanted was immediately shown as ine started rubbing her thighs against each other, while her breathing became a bit erratic.

    Daimon smiled and then continued moving downwards, he kissed the area below her navel where the tattoo of a crescent moon gave her an extra charm, both Liz and ine had a birthmark with the shape of a sun and a crescent moon respectively.

    For some reason it was invisible unless they allowed the person to see it, still right now the mysteries of the sun and moon ritual weren''t Daimon''s priority, so after a bit of caressing he kept moving down until he reached her pussy.

    Daimon''s nose was filled by her enticing fragrance, which naturally made him get an erection, with his right hand he gently spread the petals of her flower before he started licking it enjoying the sweet taste of her love juices.

    While ine was moaning without any restrain, Erin stayed aside and simply observed Daimon ying with the body of her daughter.

    "Anngh ?", ine''s toes curled up when she felt Daimon''s tongue twirling around inside of her, her body spasmed a couple of times as she reached her climax drenching Daimon''s face in the process.

    While ine was still in an orgasm state, Daimon turned her body around so that she was now face down with her ass pointed at him.

    Even in while still orgasming, ine felt Daimon''s hot gaze glued to her and her cute pinkish anus twitched a bit.<sub> </sub>

    "Use this Daimon, I secretly ordered it for us".

    Erin threw a bottle at Daimon, which he inspected, it was some kind of lotion which prevented irritation, in other words it was lube.

    "It''s cold!".

    Daimon let some drops of the lube fall on ine''s ass which got a reaction from her, with his middle finger he rubbed the entrance of her ass a couple of times before putting his finger inside.

    "Hyaah ?", the stimtion made ine moan, although the lube was cold at first, Daimon noticed it warmed up after a couple of seconds.

    After stretching her hole for a couple of minutes Daimon decided it was time for the main event, he rubbed his now about to burst hard dick against ine''s ass before slowly sliding the tip inside of her.

    Although he had to apply some force to push it in since it was in''s first time, due to his bite and the lube, she didn''t feel any pain, Daimon on the other hand was having a hard time not ejacting.

    The tight and warm feeling of her insides coiling around his dick was simply heavenly, ine was hiding her face with a pillow but she couldn''tpletely suppress her moans.

    "Ahhhn ?".

    Then without any warning Erin suddenly hugged Daimon from behind and made him push his hips forward forcing the whole thing inside of ine in the process.

    Daimon turned to see her with a doubtful expression, Erin smiled at him in response.

    "She wanted it to be rough, just like Liz, that''s why I bought that lube so that we don''t have to worry about anything, but turns out you now learned to use your fangs for that".

    Daimon chuckled, her words made sense, while Liz was quite open with her desires, while ine only showed her true personality when she was alone with him, and she was as shameless as her sister so it wasn''t hard to believe she had the same kinks as Liz.

    Without pulling his hips back, Daimon left his body rest on top of ine''s back and then started moving his lower body back and forth.

    "Schlick~Schlick~Schlick".

    "Ahhh¡­ahhh...ahhhng ?".

    Sloppy wet soundsbined with loud moans filled the room, each time Daimon thrusted his hips ine felt her mind was going nk, unlike what she expected using her back hole wasn''t unpleasant at all¡­ in fact she was enjoying it quite a bit.

    Even then it didn''t change the fact that it was her first time so it wasn''t too long before she couldn''t hod back anymore.

    "Nnnngh ?"

    With onest thrust, ine''s back arched a as she climaxed, her orgasm intensified when she felt Daimon''s warm sperm filling her, her juices spilled all over the ce soaking the sheet below her.

    Daimon held her in ce while he ejacted as deep inside of her as he could, their bodies were glistening due to the sweat and they both were gasping trying to catch up their breath.

    While Daimon has done it with Aisha and the other girls before, his pleasure also intensified after biting ine, so he couldn''t help but let himself be carried away by lust.

    After a couple of minutes, he pulled his thing out, his white stiff leaked out of ine''s ass creating a lewd scene, which only made him hornier, but now he had another girl waiting for him.

    Daimon turned to see Erin which was ying with herself waiting for her turn, she let her body rest face down on the bed, with her ass pointed at him, her long fluffy tail moved aside to let her privates in in view for her lover.

    She looked at Daimon from the corner of her eyes and then spoke with her naturally alluring voice.

    "Please be gentle ?".

    Daimon''s eyes were burning with lust, in body regards, he had to admit that Erin was the epitome of a beauty, but that wasn''t all, her natural charmbined with an innocent demeanor was simply too much.

    In past years Erin was only teasing Daimon, but today he will learn how bewitching can the women considered the most cunning in the whole ster chart can be.

 Chapter 157 A Night With A Mother And Her Daughter (Part 2) R-18

    Seeing the enticing scene of Erin''s naked body presented to him, it took Daimon a couple of seconds to wake up from her charm, then without any warning he firmly spanked her ass.

    "Pah!".

    "Hyaa ?".

    Daimon enjoyed both the soft sticity of her big round butt and the melodious sound of her moaning voice at the same time, it was obvious by her amused expression that she enjoyed it instead of taking it as a reprimand.

    Erin cutely stuck her tongue at him and giggled.

    "Hehehe I was discovered, this is a spell which was in the records of the family to which only the ancestor has ess, I practiced it exclusively for you ?".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, this spell Erin mentioned had a simr effect to his passive skill "charm".

    "Like mother like daughter", he thought without stopping his hand from fondling her, Liz and ine were already quite voluptuous¡­ but Erin was in another level, her figure was simply the peak of both elegancy and sex appeal.

    Her pale skin which was as white as snow and seemed to glow with a healthy tone, her long hair ck as the night which cascaded all the way down to her ass, her thin waist which looked fragile as if it could break with a bit of force, giving her an elegant and prim charm akin to ady of noble birth, something ine inherited from her.

    Then her generous curves added her an incredibly high sex appeal, she perfectly represented the meaning of "alluring" in the name of her race, that was also the side of her which Liz inherited.

    That didn''t mean the other girls weren''t as beautiful as her, it''s just that while Liz and ine and even Aisha still had that youthful vibe around them, like flowers which are still in their way to blooming, Erin was like a proudful rose in her prime,bining both elegancy and sex appeal.

    And thanks to the grimoire she was getting even prettier, it was like giving wings to a tiger.

    Of course, she only showed this side of her to Daimon, knowing her reputation if any other man dared to look at her with lecherous eyes, she would have probably dug out the poor bastard''s eyes.

    Daimon smirked, all his girls were aware of his skills, so of course Erin knew his truth seeker eyes could see through any illusion or mischief as long as there wasn''t that big of a gap, so she knew that spell wouldn''t work on him¡­ too much, any other man below the peak Archmage realm would have drowned himself in lust and carnal pleasures.

    So, she basically did it just to tease him, which was something he really enjoyed of Erin, although at first her jokes and "rewards" were a bit too much for someone like him who didn''t even hold hands with a girl in his past life, but he got used to them after all these years.

    Daimon gazed at ine which was still recovering from having anal sex for the first time and heid down face up on the bed, making Erin feel a bit confused, until she saw him tapping hisp.

    "Come here", he said with a calm voice, the best way to "punish" Erin was doing exactly the contrary of what she wanted, so instead of mounting her like she wanted he decided to try something else.

    Erin smiled, she crawled in all fours until her body was on top of Daimon''s, her huge breasts swayed due to the movement Drawing Daimon''s attention, but it didn''tst long because his eyes couldn''t help but be attracted but the small amount of pubic hair, or more urately fur which crowned her pussy giving her a mature charm.

    Up to this day Daimon doesn''t know why, but out of all the girls only Aura and Erin have hair down there, probably because in terms of age they are the oldest of his soulmates, so they can be considered "young adults".

    Erin lowered her body letting her soft naked skin make contact with Daimon''s, of course she didn''t miss the chance to "identally" rub her pussy against Daimon''s erected dick, making both of them feel good.

    "Hmmm ?", Erin miscalcted thinking Daimon will be most affected by her teases, but as Daimon''s soulmate herpatibility with him was as high as possible, so she felt as if her legs were melting due to the stimtion.

    She could act sassy and tempting but in reality, she was also a virgin since she conceived thanks to the sun and moon ritual, not only that, besides Daimon she has never seen another man naked, nor touched one his body.

    Daimon chuckled, he ced his hands on her waist and dragged her closer to him, until her face was a few millimeters away from his.

    He then pressed his lips against hers, before he intertwined his tongue with the Erin''s, the soft sensation of her body and the passionate kiss, made Erin feel in heaven, her tail wagged and her pussy got wet as if it was begging for some attention.

    Whenever Daimon tried to stop the kiss, she looked at him with needy eyes which made Daimon feel his blood boiling, although he wasn''t affected by her spell, his instincts as a predator were telling him to devour the beauty in his arms.

    "Ahhn ?", Erin stopped the kiss to let out a cute moan when she felt Daimon ying with her tail, as if he was used to do it.

    "Now that I think about it, he also did it when I tried to tease him earlier¡­ Liz probably told him it is a sweet spot for us when we are with our lovers", she thought.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon smiled, every time he gently pulled on her tail, he felt Erin''s body trembling, but he didn''t want to finish things so fast, so after doing it a couple of times, he changed targets, to her pretty neck.

    First, he started gently kissing her pale neck before shoving his fangs in her skin, but then when he drank the first drop of her blood, he couldn''t help but think.

    "She tastes so damn good!".

    Blood for vampires was not only their vital fluid, under the correct circumstances it was a delicacy, age, gender, race purity, everything affected the taste, and in Erin''s words her lineage was the purest among the members of the Revy family, surpassing even her daughters.

    Even Aisha''s blood was a bit lower in the amount of pleasure it brought him when he drank it, so far only Aura was at the same level, which could be easily exined by the fact that she is also a half emperor.

    Still, he didn''t let himself get carried away and after drinking a couple of sips he stopped, his fangs shrank to their normal size and the biting mark disappeared.

    Daimon looked upwards and saw Erin''s blushed face, which made him smile.

    "Heh, you managed to resist it¡­ then what about this", he thought, before moving Erin''s body upwards so that his face was now buried in those magnific pair of breasts of her.

    "Mnnn ?", Erin couldn''t hold back her voice when she felt Daimon sucking on her nipples, after being teased so much her body was aching, she was only able to resist the urge to cum, because Daimon was going easy on her.

    But that didn''tst long, after sucking on her breasts to the content of his heart, Daimon gently bit on her right nipple making Erin let out a high-pitched moan as she reached her climax, love juices spilled all over Daimon''s lower body.

    "Annn ?", Erin''s toes curled, she used her love juices as lubricant and rubbed her pussy against his dick while she gave him a charming gaze.

    "Don''t tease me anymore pleaseee!".

    Daimon caressed her face with his hand, she was now rxed so it should be easier for him to prate her, after giving her onest kiss, he grabbed Erin by her waist and made her turn around.

    So that they were both sitting on the bed while Daimon hugged her from behind, her big fluffy tail wrapped around him as if she was urging him to embrace her.

    Daimon rubbed his hard hot thing against her the entrance of her ass a couple of times before he pushed the tip inside, her warm tight insides resisted the invasion at first but with a bit of force he managed to push half of his dick inside of her.

    "Wuuuh ?", Erin felt Daimon''s thing spreading her and she let out a cute sound, her body spasmed as she came a bit, she originally was eager to be one with Daimon whichbined with the bite and all the teasing made her body ept his lover without too much problem.

    Even then she was surprised it wasn''t hurting her at all considering how big is Daimon, but she knew vampires could do things like this, so she didn''t think too much of it and focused on enjoying her first time.

    Without any warning Daimon grabbed her waist and moved her lower body downwards while thrusting his hips forward.

    "Hmmm ?", Erin loudly moaned, in one thrust Daimon fit the whole thing inside of her, due to the height difference and the position in which they were, they couldn''t kiss, but nothing stopped Daimon from ying with her breasts, fondling them and pinching her cute nipples from time to time.

    "Pah!~Pah!~Pah!".

    At some point Erin started moving her hips in her own, the sound of her ass shing against Daimon''s thighsbined with her moans filled the room creating a lewd enticing atmosphere.

    Even ine which finally recovered some of herposure couldn''t help but feel a bit horny, seeing the show her mother was putting on while being embraced by Daimon.

    Daimon had a lust filled expression, while he enjoyed the sight of his dick going in and out of Erin''s ass,

    "Kuhhh, why does this feel so good!", with a low growl Daimon couldn''t hold back anymore, he pushed hid dick as deep as he could before unleashing a big load inside of Erin''s ass.

    "Hnnnn ?", the warm feeling of Daimon filling her with his sperm made Erin orgasm, her body trembled while she epted till thest drop of it, her body then fell powerless on the bed, the lewd sight of his white stuff leaking out of her hole made Daimon get harder.

    But then he noticed ine was looking at him expectant which made him smile, as he realized he still had to take them both at the same time.

 Chapter 158 A Night With A Mother And Her Daughter (Part 3) R-18

    Besides the exciting stimtion of having a mother and her daughter in his arms, another benefit Daimon could enjoy was that he could let one rest and focus on the other, so far, he hasn''t been even close to reach his limit probably because how monstrous was his body.

    Daimon smiled at ine and thenid down face up on the bed, he dragged Erin which was still enjoying the aftertaste of her orgasm and closer to his upper body and pressed his lips against hers.

    "Hmm ?", although Erin felt a weak right now, she properly corresponded, her little tongue was immediately dominated by Daimon''s while she happily epted the kiss.

    A half emperor gains a better control of its body, that''s something Erin has already exined Daimon, that''s why Aura and her could freely manipte their tails while Liz and ine couldn''t.

    If she wanted to, she could have sobered up by circting mana which would interrupt the pleasure she was feeling, but of course that wouldn''t be fun at all.

    So instead of that shepletely lifted her natural defenses and experienced having sex like a normal woman, something only Aura could have imitated but didn''t dare to due to the¡­ difference in their sizes.

    While Daimon enjoyed the bliss of passionately kissing with Erin, his hands didn''tze around, he moved them from her shoulders all the way down to her ass, before he caressed her tail.

    In the previous session Daimon didn''t y with Erin''s tail because it would have been too much for a first experience, although Erin had the tough body of a half emperor, the idea wasn''t pushing her to the limit¡­ yet.

    But nothing prohibited him from enjoying the fluffy feeling of her fur while he was kissing her.

    "That''s not fair, it was mom''s turn a moment ago!", said ine with a childish jealous tone while pouting, her usual serious self was nowhere to be seen.

    Daimon tried to speak but Erin increased the intensity on the kiss to not let him do it, her cute tail wagged while she gazed from the corner of her eyes at her daughter, as if she was saying "He is mine".

    ine wanted toin but then she saw Daimon''s dick hard and erected like a sword which was ready to pierce the sky, and she noticed that when he dragged her mother into his embrace, he was careful enough to leave enough space for someone tofortablyy on his lower body.

    Having received the "message", ine blushed a bit, one thing was seeing from the sides how her mother was making love with their lover, and anotherpletely different case was to participate in the action at the same time.

    But her doubtssted less than a second when her nose caught a faint trace of the manly scent Daimon naturally produced in the presence of his girls, she slowly approached him until her face was only a few millimeters away from that splendid thing.

    "Is a man''s thing supposed to smell this good¡­ I want to taste it", she mumbled before sticking out her tongue and shily licking the tip, then it was as if something exploded in her mind.

    Just like the soulmates were perfectlypatible with Daimon, the same applied to him, so all his fluids were practically a delight for his lovers, a proof of that was that after that shy first lick, ine immediately gobbled the whole tip, her little tongue twirled around for a couple of seconds before she started moving her head up and down making Daimon feel as if his legs were going to give in.

    "I hope I''m doing it right", she thought as she pleased her lover with her mouth, in preparation for this day, all the girls discussed about things like this so even if none of them had real experience, they at least weren''t totally lost.

    While the daughter continuously sucked him off, the mother was wildly kissing him as if there was no tomorrow.

    Erin even took Daimon''s hand and ced it between her legs, an invitation Daimon was happy to ept, he felt the silk like fur that she had down there before his fingers started caressing the entrance of her vagina.

    "Nnnn ?".

    "Hmmm ?".

    This time ine didn''t let her mother outshine her, although she couldn''t use Daimon''s hand to touch her pussy like Erin due to her position, she did it by herself, surprising not only Daimon but even Erin in the process.

    She stopped the kiss to look at her daughter which was engrossed in sucking Daimon''s big hard thing and she clicked her tongue.

    ? "Tsk, tsk, the dignified n head of the Revy family known for her serious and demure personality is making such a lewd face".

    ine ignored her mother and kept moving her head up and down while fingering her pussy.

    "No fighting, be nice and y together, I want to taste my Erin''s nectar too anyway", said Daimon with a smirk.

    Erin bragged of knowing about night activities so she perfectly understood what Daimon meant, and she was happy to oblige.<sub> </sub>

    She got on top of Daimon with her lower body directly above his face and her head a few centimeters away from his crotch.

    ine felt her mother''s gaze piercing her but she feigned ignorance and kept sucking on it, as if she was trying to get back at her for hogging Daimon for herself earlier.

    Unfortunately for her, in terms of shamelessness none of the other soulmates were even close to Erin.

    Under the surprised eyes of both Daimon and ine, Erin shoved her middle finger in the pussy of her daughter making ine''s face became red like a tomato.

    "M-Mom what are you¡­ ahnngh ?", ine immediately stopped what she was doing, but before she could do anything, Erin twirled her finger inside of her touching her sweet spot, before taking advantage of her surprise to swallow half of Daimon''s dick in one go.

    Once ine recovered from the surprise, she looked at her mother with a somewhat angry expression.

    "That''s cheating!".

    Erin listened her daughter and she knew this time she exaggerated a bit, they exchanged gazes before reaching a mutual understanding, under the surprised eyes of Daimon Erin kissed her daughter before she started licking the right side of his penis while ine focused on the left one.

    Daimon was genuinely surprised by the scene which developed in front of his eyes, but seeing mother and daughter being so lewd just to please him, just excited him more.

    "Damn I''m not going tost with these two working together", he thought.

    Daimon was ecstatic, while ine gently caressed his dick with her tongue, Erin was sucking on it as hard as she could, the blowjob effectuated by mother and daughter was simply out of this world.

    But Daimon wasn''t known for being passive so he immediately put hands to work, he changed his attention to the beautiful pussy which was a few centimeters away from his face.

    He took a whiff of her sweet enticing scent which instantly aroused him, his dick throbbed a bit just because of it, with his hands he gently spread the petals of her flower revealing her perfectly light pink inside.

    Just the sight was enough to make him almost cum, but he suppressed his ejaction and instead gave her pussy a little lick.

    "Hmmm ?", Erin let out a cute sound, her love juices started flowing, just to be drank till thest drop by Daimon, sloppy slurping sounds filled the room as Daimon drank the nectar of her flower to the content of his heart.

    Erin unconsciously tried to get away but Daimon ced his hands on her ass and held her in ce, while he licked her as if there was no tomorrow.

    With each move of his tongue, Erin felt a shiver up her spine, since she knew she will be climaxing anytime she decided to give her all.

    ine noticed the urge in the eyes of her mother and she allowed her to take the lead, after kissing the tip, she slowly swallowed Daimon''s penis until three quarters of it werepletely inside her mouth.

    Daimon felt a bolt of electricity running through his body, the soft and wet feeling of Erin''s throat enveloping his dick was too much.

    He couldn''t help but thrust his hips upwards a bit before letting out a big load of sperm right into her mouth, but Erin wasn''t any better, her juices spilled all over Daimon''s face as she came.

    "Mnn ?", she gulped down her share before copsing on the bed, her body felt light as a feather right now.

    ine took over and swallowed the rest of his seeds making sure to lick it clean, since Erin was in ninth could right now, then it was her turn.

    Previously Daimon took the lead, so this time she rode on top of him, before taking his dick to the entrance of her ass.

    "Wuuh ?", she then lowered her hips, the feeling of Daimon spreading her insides made her back arch a bit.

    Daimon simply amodated a pillow below his head and watched how ine started "dancing" on hisp grinding her ass against him.

    "This is life", he thought.

 Chapter 159 A Night With A Mother And Her Daughter (Part 4) R-18

    "Pah!~Pah!~Pah!".

    "Ahh...ahhh¡­ahhh ?".

    Something ine has always been proud of is her learning capacity, she became the n head at a rtively young age after all.

    Her originally clumsy hip movements kept changing, she adjusted the angle and the force which she used to smack her ass downwards on Daimon''s dick, everything with the goal of pleasing the youth below her.

    The ecstatic expression in Daimon''s face assured ine she was doing a good job, when she was about to increase her pace, she felt a firm pair of hands grabbing her by her waist.

    "Mm?", she was stopped midway which confused her, but then she felt a strong pull which made her lower body move downwards to the point that her ass cheeks touched Daimon''s thighs.

    For a split of a second ine stopped breathing, her mouth opened widely before she let out a high-pitched moan, Daimon actually pushed his whole thing inside of her!

    "Hyaaa ?".

    Her moan was so loud that even Daimon thought he identally hurt her, at least until he saw therge amount of love juices that soaked his lower body near the ce they were connected.

    Daimon inwardly let out a sigh of relief, in his excitation he treated ine the same way he treats Liz, which wouldn''t be to worry if ine had a bit more experience.

    "My heart nearly jumped out of my chest", he mumbled before using his hands to lift ine''s body and then let it fell down.

    "Hmm ?", ine which came a bit a few seconds ago was now really sensitive, she wanted Daimon to give her a second to catch up her breath, but judging by the blissful expression he had she knew he wasn''t going to stop.

    So instead of resisting she focused on pleasing him, while the feeling of a hard hot big thing going in and out of her anus was still a bit weird for her, her body hungrily epted the dick of her lover, with each thrust her insides tightened more and more to the point that Daimon felt she was going to squeeze him out.

    "Ughh!", with onest thrust Daimon growled like a beast and ine felt something warm filling her rectum, her body spasmed as she responded in kind reaching her climax, her love juices flowed out of her pussy.

    ine helplessly copsed on top of Daimon''s body, her generous chest moved up and down as she gaped for air, her body was glistening due to all the "exercise".

    "Hmm¡­ I''m going to need a good bath after this ?", mumbled ine before closing her eyes to rest.

    Daimon smiled; he caressed her pretty face for a couple of seconds before gently amodating her on the bed next to him.

    Then his attention was drawn by the big round pale ass which was pointed at him on the other side of the bed, clearly Erin hasn''t had enough, her tail moved aside to give him total ess to her privates.

    With a smirk Daimon rested his body on top of Erin''s, since she was tempting him to "mount" her, then why should he refuse the invitation, making one of the few female half emperors of the ster chart act docile was something to take pride in anyway.

    Erin felt Daimon''s hard thing pressing against her ass and she smiled from ear to ear, this was going to be thest round for today so she grinded that huge bouncy ass of her against Daimon as if she was saying e in".

    Daimon ces his hands on her ass, even after his body matured and considering his naturally tall build, his hands were far from being big enough topletely cope that peach like butt.

    His fingers literally sank on that soft stic meat, it would be a lie to say it wasn''t a pleasure just touching it.

    Erin knew it and she was proud of her body, she simply stood still and epted Daimon''s caresses, not without taking the chance to tease him of course.

    While still being fondled by Daimon she looked at him from the corner of her eyes and giggled.

    "I was wondering why we were using the back door, turns out our little Daimon has thing for asses hehehe".

    "Pah!".

    "Hyaah ?".

    A loud pping sound and a moan sounded, Daimon spanked Erin so hard, his hand actually numbed a bit, even if Erin lowered her defenses to the minimum possible, she was still a half emperor after all.

    Seeing his "reprimand" being taken so lightly, Daimon softly snorted before spreading her ass cheeks with his hands and then pressing the woman below him as he whispered.<sub> </sub>

    "If the exterior is too strong the how about here", then with a bit of force his dick forced its entry, spreading her tight insides little by little until the thing waspletely buried inside of her.

    "Kuuhh", Daimon couldn''t help but softly growl, even after the lubing it, she was so tight it was hard to fit the whole thing inside.

    Feeling Erin''s body trembling below him, Daimon gently bit one of her cute fox ears before saying.

    "Did you know that ording to Evangeline I''m not considered even a teen for my race, which means I will grow even more in the future, who knows after my next growth spur I might reach you in height".

    Erin felt a shiver running through her spine, the current Daimon was already quite big, to the point where experienceddies will drool looking at his erected dick and virgin girls will cry imagining it entering them.

    Even her with her nearly two meters of height felt a bit stuffed when Daimonpletely pushed his thing inside.

    "Damn how did Aura managed to fit this inside of her", she wondered, unaware that Aura''s sensitiveness towards pheromones made her body loosen up as soon as she smelled Daimon''s manly scent.

    "Mnnn ?", her train of thoughts was interrupted when she felt Daimon starting to move his hips back and forth, the total length of his penis was nearly pulled out just to be pushed it inside in one go.

    Daimon saw the beautiful woman below him amodating to make it easier for him to prate her, and he smiled, if anyone in the long list of suitors she has had in her life were to know, the goddess of their hearts was conquered by a young boy which isn''t even twenty years they might hit their heads against a wall until they die.

    "Ahhh¡­ahhh¡­ahhh!".

    Daimon increased his pace, with each thrust Erin''s melodious moans filled the room, he even fondled her breasts with his hands and pinched her nipples, which were definitely a sweet spot for her, because every time he did it, her moans increased in volume.

    "Anghhh ?".

    ¡­.

    At some point ine opened her eyes, she heard not only the bed creaks but the moans of her mother, then she looked at the clock and saw she had slept for nearly forty-five minutes.

    And yet Daimon was still pounding Erin, since she teased him, then he decided to not let her off the hook so easily, in thest thirty minutes she has came twice while Daimon managed to hold his ejaction.

    Daimon saw ine was now awake and he decided to end it, he grabbed Erin''s waist and pulled her towards him before unleashing a big load of his white stuff inside of her.

    ine saw the small puddle of love juices below her mother''s pussy and she chuckled.

    "It seems this time mom''s charm yed against her", she thought.

    Erin felt Daimon finally stopping his assault and she felt a bit relieved, if he continued then she would have had no choice but to use her mana to recover, any normal woman wouldn''t have resisted such an intense lovemaking.

    Daimon pulled his thing out and his sperm overflowed out of Erin''s anus, no matter how many times he sees simr scenes it never lost its magic, he got off Erin''s body andid on the bed.

    While he could have continued, he was also getting a bit tired and both of his girls needed to rest, but before that they all needed a bath because they were covered in the bodily fluids of each other.

    Both Daimon and ine stood up from the bed, Erin only gave Daimon puppy eyes and he carried her like a princess which earned her a slightly angry gaze of her daughter.

    The three of them then walked towards the bathroom while beingpletely naked, once they reached their destination Daimon turned on the shower and helped his girl wash their bodies, putting special attention to their tails and ears of course.

    The girls entered the bathtub first to rx their bodies, waiting for Daimon which was now rinsing his body.

    Once he finished, he took his rightful ce in the middle of mother and daughter before wrapping his arms around their waits and dragging them closer to him.

    Erin leaned her head against Daimon''s shoulder and giggled.

    "You were quite rough with me; I''m not going to be able to properly sit down tomorrow ?".

 Chapter 160 A Conflict Is Brewing

    While Daimon was rxing in the bathroom with two beauties in his arms, at the other side of the city, the old Ernest Revy slowly walked through the streets, the sun was about to set and the n was as lively as possible.

    "Hey did you hear, they say the matriarch visited the preparation school!".

    "That''s already an old notice, I heard the best five students got their asses handed by a little girl in a 5v1 battle".

    "The matriarch was so angry that she suspended the privileges of the sses and increased their training".

    Ernest heard all the people gossiping with each other, although there were a lot of rumors and other things, everything had one thing inmon, the matriarch was always involved.

    He gritted his teeth and as he was about to take his anger off on some random person, he felt his sigil lector vibrating and immediately disappeared, no one noticed it.

    The next time he became visible it was at an underground basement below a store which buys and sells meat of magic beasts and other materials.

    Besides Ernest there were other people here, among them some of the elders that spoke on behalf of Edgar some years ago.

    The woman that used Erin of not properly judging Edgar saw Ernest and her eyes glowed for a second.

    "Uncle, how did it go, did you manage to change the sentence?".

    Ernest shook his head before replying with a solemn voice.

    "That woman didn''t even concede me an audience, I''m afraid Edgar is bound to die alone in that jail".

    "No way", the woman''s eyes got teary before her expression turned from sadness to hatred.

    "That bitch is abusing of her position to harm Edgar, they don''t even let me visit him!".

    Ernest carefully evaluated the expression of the woman, then he looked at his sigil lector and with a snap of his fingers an intervention monolith appeared floating in the air in front of him.

    The other elders were in awe, the intervention monolith is a legacy of the Revy n, and supposedly only the n head, the champion and the ancestor have one.

    Ernest saw the elders were talking to each other and he shouted.

    "Silence, this monolith onlyst for five minutes and then is unusable for one month!".

    The elders shut their mouths and waited for Ernest to continue.

    "That''s better, as everyone here knows, since Edgar was arrested our influence in the n has decayed, everyone who isn''t in the same page as that woman has been reced from any important position".

    "So, I reunited everyone here today to discuss about a way to recover what was taken away from us¡­ we have to deal with him".

    Everyone followed the direction to which Ernest pointed and saw big scale photo of Daimon.

    "The matriarch has a deep affect for this kid, it wouldn''t be weird if he turned out to be her illegitimate son, or maybe a lost brother".

    One of the elders hesitated for moment before saying.

    "But elder Ernest¡­ the matriarch probably has casted a lot of protection spells on that boy, at the slightest assassination try, we will all be exterminated without any judgement".

    "Yes, the matriarch has been waiting for an excuse to get rid of us", said other elder agreeing with the opinion of the first one.

    Ernest felt disgusted by the elder''s attitude but he didn''t show it on his face and instead pointed at his sigil lector from which a message read in a distorted could be heard.

    "I have what you need, but it isn''t cheap, twenty million mana crystals no discounts, you have twelve hours to send the money or forget this offer was ever done".

    Ernest then took out a storage ring from his pocket and showed it to all the people in the room.

    "Since we got discharged from our positions, I had to use a lot of mana crystals of my own pocket, so currently I only have ten million of them¡­ those who want things to return to normal are you willing to cooperate?".

    The elders stared between each other until the woman spoke.

    "Here uncle, these are my savings, one million of mana crystals¡­ the rest was lost when the treasury of Edgar was seized".

    As if the woman''s words were some kind of signal, all the other elders also started willingly donating their mana crystals until Ernest had twenty millions of them in his ring.

    Ernest nodded in recognition with a proudful expression.

    "Very well, once we recover the control over the n everyone here will be properly rewarded".

    He then sent his own message through the sigil lector.<sub> </sub>

    "Deal, I will see you at the designated point,e as soon as possible".

    "Now I just nee to find an opportunity to be a couple of minutes alone with that boy¡­ Erin enjoy your petty victory, by tomorrow''s night you''ll beying on Edgar''s bed humph", he thought.

    All the other elders felt a chill running through their spines when they saw the sinister expression in Ernest''s face.

    While Ernest was preparing for his n, back at Erin''s mansion Daimon and the girls stood up, dried off their bodies and went straight to the bed.

    Daimon cuddled with both of them, their soft bodies made him feelfortable and after a couple of seconds his eyes felt heavy.

    "Ahh, I nearly forgot¡­ Michael''s master wille tomorrow, so we will meet with another half emperor", he said in a sleepy voice before closing his eyes.

    Erin caressed Daimon''s face a couple of times before looking at her daughter.

    "He looks so cute when he is sleeping ?".

    ine couldn''t help but agree with her mother, when Daimon was sleeping his expression was the one of a normal teenager, unlike the usual serious or intimidating aura he radiated, while sleeping he was calm and rxed.

    After gently kissing Daimon''s forehead Erin closed her eyes and also fell asleep, followed by her daughter.

    ¡­

    The night went on without any other important incident and when morning came, the weather was rtively good, it was clouded but not enough to be a problem.

    Daimon''s eyelids trembled a bit, he slowly opened his eyes and looked at his surrounds, it was weird to wake up without Aisha near him, but he was instead received by the beautiful sleeping face of Erin.

    She was smiling and mumbling some things like, "No there" and "It''s too son to have babies¡­ but if you tant to", while her tail happily wagged.

    Daimon chuckled.

    "She is for sure having some weird dream".

    He then focused his attention at his left side, ine was clinging to him, but unlike her mother, even while sleeping her expression was dignified.

    Or that would have been the case if they were truly asleep, after eight years of sleeping together and with sixth sense, Daimon perfectly knew their breathing and even the rhythm of their heartbeats, so it was easy for him to notice they both were just feigning to be asleep.

    With a smirk on his face, his hands moved downwards as he fondled both of their asses at the same time.

    "Just as I thought, Erin''s size and sticity is out of this world, but ine''s skin is so smooth, I feel like touching an ice crystal".

    Seeing the proud smile and the slightly blushed expressions in their faces, Daimon rose his hands and then smacked them down.

    "Pah!".

    "Pah!".

    "Hyaah ?".

    "Hmm ?".

    Two different spanking sounds and moans echoed through the room, then he felt the gazes of the two girls glued at him, while Erin had that usual yful smile, ine looked at him aggrieved.

    "I still feel as if you were inside me you know", she mumbled while she massaged her ass.

    Daimonughed before kissing them both.

    "Good morning,dies, were you perhaps waiting for something to happen to the point that you both woke up so early?".

    Erin softly snorted.

    "My ass still stings a bit; you can forget to get anything from me¡­ unless you personally apply some ointment on me back there of course ?".

    Daimon sighed, just like with the other girls he applied them some medic ointment to prevent irritation and tears in private skin, and of course Erin didn''t miss the chance to tease him saying.

    "You were prepared, just what one should expect of an ass fetishist".

    To be honest with their naturally high vitality due to being part of a beast race, both Erin and ine werepletely recovered from yesterday''s crazy love session, but the intention was what mattered.

 Chapter 161 Michaelâ€™s Master

    After some kisses and caresses in the bed, Daimon, Erin and ine stood up and went to the dining room, Michael already sent Daimon a message to his sigil lector to tell him, that his master will be arriving in about one hour.

    On the way to take their breakfast while Daimon was feasting on the naked back view of Erin, which she of course noticed and liked.

    With an almost undetectable smirk Erin swayed her hips making sure to entuate her curves, her long fluffy tail naturally wrapped around her waist as if a it was a fur cor, she was simply a beautiful charming little fox.

    ine looked at her mother''s shameless behavior and she couldn''t help but sigh, before they left the bedroom Daimon put on some casualfortable clothes, and she thought she was being "daring" by only using a nightgown¡­ but then she saw Erin leaving the roompletely naked.

    "Mom¡­ put on something for heaven''s sake".

    "Humph, why should I, Daimon isn''tining anyway".

    Daimon chuckled, Erin''s yful attitude was always refreshing, but the same could be said about ine, her tries to be open about her feelings were rather cute.

    He took approached them and wrapped his arms around their waists before dragging them closer to him.

    "Let''s take our breakfastdies, we can have funter, but right now we''ll have a meeting with another half emperor".

    While Erin looked at her daughter with a content smile, ine pouted but none of them said anything and they simply let Daimon take them to the dining room.

    Of course, as soon as Daimon sat down Erin gave him puppy eyes wanting him to pamper her, while saying things like, "I can''t properly sit, since a certain someone was quite wild with me yesterday".

    Which ended in the current situation were Erin was sitting on Daimon''s right leg while she happily hummed, originally, she was upying Daimon''sp, but ine also stared at Daimon until he had no chance but to amodate the mother on one of his legs and the daughter on the other one.

    Although the scene of Daimon having two women which were older than him both in age and physical appearance on hisp as if they were little girls was a bit unusual, it had a certain charm to it.

    Using the service magic formation, they simply ordered what they wanted and not even five minuteter their dishes appeared on the table, Daimon inwardly let out a sigh of relief when he saw Erin cutting and eating by herself instead of asking him to feed her, but her next words made him think she read his mind.

    "I''m only eating by myself because there is a guesting our way, but my husband must feed me to help my frail body recover ?".

    Daimonughed at Erin''s request, to be honest he didn''t mind fooling around with her, that was the purpose of this weekend visit anyway.

    Once they finished their dishes, they changed clothes to their usual get ups, Erin used a long ck dress with golden decorations shaped as suns and crescent moons, ine on the other hand used a simr mix between eastern and western dress like Liz but in white color, as for Daimon he chose his usual white and purple get up.

    ording to Michael his master wasn''t going to stay for too long since he had some things to do, so the reunion was going to take ce at the guest''s mansion.

    By the time they arrived at the mansion, all the other members of the elite ss, the Rishadies, Dana, Gabriel, Liz and Aura were already waiting for them.

    Aisha and Aura immediately noticed the changes in Erin and ine, although they were still virgins, after spending so many years together it wasn''t hard for them to notice the slight differences.

    But right now, it wasn''t the time for that, Michael nodded at Daimon and after a quick exchange of gazes with Erin, she snapped her fingers and a small opening opened on the barrier.

    Not even a secondter, both Erin and Aura looked at the east before a middle-aged man appeared out of nowhere, besides him there was young girl with short green hair.

    Michael approached the middle-aged man and bowed.

    "Greetings master".

    Unlike what everyone expected, the man didn''t answer and instead hugged Michael beforeughing out loud.

    "Hahaha, what master, I''m your grandfather inw now!".

    Michael sighed, his master was quite energetic sometimes, so he only waited until he calmed down and let go of him before extending his hand towards the young girl.

    The girl sweetly smiled and epted the offer, then Michael introduced her to Daimon.

    "Daimon, this is my fianc¨¦ Haylee Blitz".

    Haylee rose the sides of her blouse like a nobledy before speaking in a soft voice.

    "It''s a pleasure to finally meet the famous "Demon of the elite ss", please look after me".

    Although Daimon found that introduction a bit weird, he limited to smile and nod.

    The middle-aged man cleared his throat before saying.<sub> </sub>

    "Ahem, Michael I know Haylee is your priority but aren''t you going to introduce your dear grandfather inw?".

    Michael sighed, finally understanding why he shed so much with Calvin¡­ there was a certain resemnce between his master and him.

    Even Haylee couldn''t help but say.

    "Grandpa, please act ording to your age".

    Michael then pointed at his master before saying.

    "He is my master, the publicly recognized as the fastest man in the white fang gxy, Zein Blitz".

    Zein then looked at Erin and Aura and greeted them with the proper etiquette.

    "Greetings to the Revy and Argent matriarchs".

    Both Erin and Aura returned the greet.

    "Greeting to the lightning assassin".

    For half emperors they were either addressed by the forces to which they were affiliated or their titles, never by their first names unless they allowed it of course.

    In this case, Zein was one of the few half emperors that didn''t act as the backer of a force or family, at least publicly.

    Erin invited Zein to enter the mansion and the rest followed them, while the others rxed in the living room, Erin, Aura and Daimon guided Zein, Haylee and Michael to one of the many rooms.

    Everyone took a seat and then the negotiations started, Zein was the first one to speak, he directly looked at Daimon before saying.

    "I have never liked to beat around the bush, kid are youpletely sure you have the right to assign a spot for the uing exploration, the side of the Jolbaris also have some decent seedlings".

    Daimon had a good first impression of Michael''s master, straightforward people was always nice to ally with.

    "Yes, I don''t have even the slightest doubt, the next week during the tournament we are going to crush thepetitors, then I as the captain will have the right to choose their recements".

    Zein looked at Daimon''s expression trying to discern any signs of lies, but he didn''t see something like that.

    "Okay, you look really confident and the rumors about your strength had reached my ears, then my second question, what is the price for this spot you are offering?".

    Daimon grinned, he took out a soul contract which Erin prepared beforehand and handed it to Zein.

    "Michael is a friend of mine, the only condition I have is for you to sign an amnesty with the Revy and Argent families and their respective allies of course, among them the family of the second Jolbaris ancestor".

    Zein''s eyes slightly widened, he didn''t pay too much attention earlier, but making memory he saw two kids with white hair and one of them had ck stripes on it, then a realization hit him like a bolt out of the blue.

    "The Ghrish monster has always doted on his grandson, then that fierce woman from the Jolbaris and also the two matriarchs of the Revy and Argent families¡­ this kid has gotten the support of four half emperors!".

    Zein looked at his granddaughter, he has always remained neutral acting like a free spirit, travelling betweens, but now thanks to the uing exploration he received offers from many families and forces to join them.

    It was then his disciple sent him a message, someone was actually willing to sell a spot in the exploration and ording to his disciple it was thrust worthy, he then gazed at Michael and saw him nodding.

    Inwardly sighing he made a slight cut on his finger and let a drop of blood fell on the contract.

    "I guess no one can remain neutral in this change of era", he thought before returning the contract to Daimon.

    He then stood up and spoke to Haylee.

    "Little girl, I have some business to finish at the blue-sky gxy, you will stay with Michael, okay?".

    "Mm", Haylee nodded, she didn''t need a reason to be with her future husband anyway, she also wanted to show him how strong she has gotten in thest month.

    Zein said goodbye and then with Erin''s permission he left the Revy n before disappearing into the horizon.

    Daimon was drawn at the faint mana lightning trace left behind by Zein, it was different to usual lightning, just like Michael said there was some wind element mixed in between.

 Chapter 162 Poison Spells

    Now that his master left, Michael let out a sigh of relief, deep in his heart he was worried because he once asked Zein why he focused in speed and his answer nearly made him vomit blood¡­ "to flee from angry fathers, boyfriends and husbands".

    When Zein was younger, he was quite a yboy, so it wasn''t unusual for him to end up in a quarrel due to having spent a night with a girl which was already in a rtionship.

    Just like Michael, Zein was amoner which only talent was his speed, he was a rare case of a second affinity manifestingter, so at the beginning he was only a wind mage, so it was normal for fathers to prohibit their daughters from falling for him.

    Even now that he was a grandfather and a half emperor Zein had the bad habit of acting like a womanizer in front of pretty girls, of course Haylee had the task keeping him in check.

    Still Michael didn''t know if Zein had previously met Aura or Erin and her daughters, so he was a bit worried that the bad habit of his idiot of a master would make the negotiations fail, fortunately it seems that wasn''t the case.

    Haylee saw the relieved expression in Michael''s face and she giggled before hugging one of his arms.

    "You always be so tense when grandpa is around".

    The corner of Michael''s lips trembled as he remembered one time Zein disguised of him to flirt with the wife of a five-star fire mage, only to leave him to his fortune saying, "Nothing like a life and death situation to make you run faster".

    Michael shook his head to forget about those traumatic memories and instead looked at Daimon.

    "Is there a ce for us to see Haylee''s abilities¡­ it would be better if there aren''t others around due to her unusual affinity".

    Daimon nodded, the training grounds had private training rooms which were exclusive of the elders since not all had the right to buy a mansion in the capital city of the Revy family.

    "Yes, we can go to the training grounds for that".

    The eyes of Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana and their mothers illuminated, the rumored natural wonder of the hot spring exclusive for women of the Revy family was also at the training grounds, so it was two birds one stone for them.

    Calvin saw Haylee acting all clingy with Michael and he sighed.

    "Even the shrimp is getting more action than this young master, why must the heavens must be so unfair?", he mumbled.

    Mireya which was standing next to her nephew softly snorted.

    "Humph, it''s a well-deserved punishment".

    On the way to the training grounds, Liz, Aisha and Aura walked next to Daimon, for Aisha it was the first night in practically her life that she wasn''t with her son and she didn''t like it, the same applied for Liz and Aura, after eight years of cuddling with him, sleeping alone was simply not up to their liking.

    Unfortunately, yesterday when theyined about it using their mental connection, Erin put an end to theirments saying "I had to sleep alone a whole week, so shut up".

    Aura''s little nose wrinkled a couple of times, before she intensely stared at Daimon.

    "You smell like Erin¡­ way too much".

    Listening to Aura''s jealous filled voice, Erin softly giggled.

    "Of course, he does, I made sure to mark him so other "females" doesn''t approach him".

    Sparks seemed to fly as Erin and Aura exchanged gazes, Liz on the other hand was having a simr conversation with her older sister, in a rare asion ine actually bragged about her night which of course made Liz snort and reply.

    "Luckily they are using the mental connection to discuss", thought Daimon as he chuckled, before Evangeline''s sleepy voice interrupted him.

    "Luckily my ass, they forgot to leave me out of it, so their yells woke me up".

    But then Narasha''s uratement made Daimonugh.

    "Who told you to stay awake to watch the show".

    "Ughh", being exposed Evangeline feigned ignorance and just focused on telling Daimon what she originally wanted to.

    "Since you got in contact with that ice basilisk guy the system will update, just keep it mind".

    "Mm, thanks Evangeline", said Daimon, besides unlocking more things on the shop, in the past eight years Evangeline has never gone out of her way to mention an update, so whatever was going to change it was going to be something important if she mentioned it.

    All the discussions ended as soon as they reached the training grounds, unlike Dana who wasn''t taken into ount for team battles due to her lower mana capacity, Haylee was a star ranked mage, so Daimon needed to assign her a role in the team.

    Using her token of identity, Erin reserved a private training room for them, the insides of the room were simr to a court, there were also some equipment destined to measure the strength of both spells and physical attacks and a tform.

    Haylee smiled at Michael before letting go of his arm, she went up the tform and then exined a bit about their fighting style.<sub> </sub>

    "As brother Michael has already told you beforehand, I''m a wood and poison dual element mage, for the wood element my focus is support which includes defense and crowd control".

    She extended her hand and softly spoke.

    "Vine entangle", then green vines as wide as the waist of a teen appeared from the ground covering about ten meters, their flexible bodies danced like snakes, Haylee moved her hand and the vines followed her movement.

    Then without cancelling her spell she casted another one.

    "Thorn bramble wall".

    After casting the spell, a dome made out of brown branches with spikes surrounded her, after that she did some other demonstration, but the concept was pretty much the same, either blocking the enemy or shielding and helping the allies.

    Daimon nodded in recognition ad of right now, Haylee was a decent support mage, but there was still more toe, affinities which aren''t elemental are as hard toe by as the rare elements like lightning or ice.

    Haylee snapped her fingers and flowers grew on her vines as she mumbled.

    "Spore rain".

    The flowers opened and countless of little yellow spores flew from each flower bringing a sweet fragrant to the room.

    While it didn''t affect anyone of the present people, Daimon observed the spell with the truth seeker eyes, which let him know the effect of the spores, anyone that breathed them will be paralyzed for the next minutes.

    Of course, the result depended in a variety of things, the realm and the natural defenses of the ones breathing the spores.

    Haylee''s face then turned serious, before she only used her poison element through her wood element just like previously, but recently she managed to dominate a spell purely based in poison.

    "Acid arrow".

    Before her voice turned off, a viscous green arrow was shot from her hand, the thing flew about twenty meters beforending on the ground, the arrow exploded at the contact with the ground spilling it with a green liquid.

    "Shhh!", the sound of the ground sizzling came from the ce where the arrow exploded, although there wasn''t too much destruction it was because the tform as reinforced, so besides shaving a thinyer of concrete there weren''t any other damages.

    "I have wide range spells with the same effect¡­ of course the consumption of mana is equally big, and that is basically all, there aren''t too many spells designed for poison element".

    Everyone was pretty much okay with her, she had a strong defense and a strong offensive, adding to that the fact that she had long range attacks, she was well bnced to fight alone against many.

    Michael had a happy smile seeing Haylee not being shaken at all even after using a poison element spells.

    "She has gotten stronger", he thought before looking at Daimon waiting for his verdict.

    Daimon assigned tasks in his mind, Calvin and Michael were of course the vanguards.

    Then the Risha sisters were the mages of the group and their task was of course long-range attacks.

    Loren was a special case, because she had closebat skills to protect herself, but she was also the healer, so technically she didn''t have ay job but to keep herself alive

    Lastly, Aisha and him which could fulfill any of the other roles with the exception of healers.

    "She''ll be in the backline providing support, is that okay with you two", said Daimon to Michael.

    "No problem", answered Michael.

    While others were marveled by seeing a non-elemental affinity the only one suffering was Calvin, those poison spells gave him a bad memory after all.

    Haylee got off the tform only to be dragged by the rest of the girls.

    "Come with us, let''s try the hot spring", said Leslie with her usual energetic voice.

    Calvin saw Loren leaving and he sighed, the thought of spying on them shed through his mind, but Daimon poured cold water all over him with his next words.

    "There is an anti-spying magic formation, if you try it the formation will leave a mark on you and then thousands of angrydies wille to kick your ass".

    Calvin felt a chill running through his spine.

 Chapter 163 Eliminating Loose Ends (Part 1)

    While Aura stayed behind, Aisha, Liz followed Yvonne and the others including Mireya and Dana towards the changing rooms of the training grounds, but before their figures disappeared, they heard Erin speaking in their minds.

    "Tonight we have something to attend to, be prepared to leave at any moment".

    "Mm", both Aisha and Liz mentally nodded.

    Daimon then looked at Michael, Calvin and Gabriel which were left aside.

    "You three can go to the men''s changing room, there is also a spring there".

    Calvin sighed before leaving with a defeated expression, Michael followed him just in case Calvin decided to try something stupid, as for Gabriel he didn''t feel taking a bath so he returned to the guest''s mansion to wait for his sister.

    Once they all left only Daimon, Aura, ine and Erin remained.

    Erin gave Aura and interrogative gaze, ording to the deal only her daughter and her were supposed to apany Daimon for the rest of the weakened.

    Aura softly snorted feeling Erin''s slightly hostile intention.

    "Don''t look at me like that you old vixen, we both have a way to detect when that intervention monolith of your ex''s family is deployed, your heart mirror should have activated too right?".

    Erin pouted before she clung onto Daimon''s right arm.

    "Aura is being mean to me, my husband you must stand up for me".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, not because Erin''s act, but because of what Aura mentioned, if Erin''s heart mirror activated then there was something which could be troublesome happening soon.

    It was specially like that because ine also looked surprised by Aura''s words, which means her heart mirror didn''t advise her, like it happened for her mother.

    Daimon then extended his free arm towards Aura, since Erin hasn''t told him anything about her heart mirror reacting, then he decided to tease her a little and the best way to do it was to spoil Aura while ignoring her.

    Aura smiled when she felt Daimon dragging her into his arms, her cute wolf tail wagged when she felt the warm of her lover enveloping her, and her heart felt sweet when she heard him tenderly speaking at her as he caressed her ears.

    "My cute Aura is the best".

    Aura gave Erin a condescending gaze, before saying.

    "Although I don''t have the ability of that old vixen, I already know how the space protected by an intervention monolith looks like, and since only three people should have one and none of them lives in the ce where I saw it, then there must be something important happening soon¡­ unfortunately for the details you will have to ask Erin".

    Daimon patted Aura''s head a couple of times before turning to see the other woman in his arms, Erin was looking away as if she was ignoring Daimon, but she couldn''t remain like that when she felt Daimon caressing her long fluffy tail.

    "Be a good a girl and tell me".

    "Wuuhh ?", Erin cutely bit her lower lip, but after one second, she couldn''t resist to let out afortable sound before giving up.

    "I was going to tell you after the meeting with the lightning assassin, but Aura ruined the surprise, my heart mirror gave me a warning that something could potentially affect us, is going to happen tonight, approximately at one thousand kilometers from the city".

    "If webine the timing and the fact that I noticed the activation of an intervention monolith made me realize that old bastard Ernest is making some kind of move tonight".

    Ernest Revy thought he managed to steal the prototype of an intervention monolith by making it look as if the thing was destroyed in a test, a long time ago.

    Unfortunately for him he fell in a trap, Erin ced a spying magic formation linked to a special sigil lector inside the core of the monolith, so that whenever it got activated, she could know where.

    The best way to stop someone from trying to achieve something was to make him believe he made it, so she turned a blind eye to Ernest stealing the prototype.

    In other words, Ernest basically dug his own grave so many years ago, which was understandable considering he fell in the schemes of the most cunning woman of the gxy.

    Daimon contemted things for a moment, to be honest with the punishment Edgar got was enough, although he tried to marry Liz and ine with Alexander, he didn''t directly harm them.

    Also, however things were, the truth was that Edgar was Liz and ine''s father, that''s why Daimon didn''t bother to get rid of him, but now things were different, given the current state of the ster chart, there was no ce for unnecessary risks.

    A cold light shed through Daimon''s eyes, attacks from outside of the wall are easy to defend, but an internal strife is not the same, since he will be leaving to the exploration then it was time to get rid of any lose ends that could be a threat.

    Daimon smirked, remembering a certain gift he gave Erin some time ago which wille handy in this situation.<sub> </sub>

    "Erin prepare some "evidences", tonight we''ll get rid of the spine that has been bothering us, one thousand kilometers isn''t a small distance for someone that can''t use space shift so that guy''s house should be empty right now".

    Erin nodded knowing what Daimon meant, she already gave Ernest a chance to repent of his actions out of respect to her mother which wanted the n to stay in one piece, so now that they were getting funny ideas¡­ it was time to remove the infection from the root.

    A faint trace of a conflicted light appeared in ine''s eyes, but then she remembered the miserable fate that would have awaited her and Liz if Erin wouldn''t have returned in time, when Edgar sneakily brought Arthur into the n.

    Then her gaze became determined, off course that little moment of hesitation didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes, but that''s how things needed to be, in this world strength is the golden rule, if they were weaker then Daimon didn''t doubt that Edgar would have killed him if he had the chance.

    Erin then giggled; her next words broke the serious atmosphere that had been building up.

    "We''ll leave in a couple of hours, but for now, what do you say, do you want to steal a peek to the hot spring for the old times".

    The corner of Daimon''s lips trembled as he shook his head.

    "No thanks".

    Aura gave Erin an usatory gaze before sighing.

    "Sometimes I really wish I would find a new best friend who isn''t crazy you know?".

    Erin shrugged at Aura.

    "If we don''t enjoy life then what''s the point of living for thousands of years".

    The rest of the day was quite normal, the girls enjoyed their time at the hot springs, Michael had a small date with Haylee to Calvin''s disgust.

    In a weird turn out of events Veronica, Anya and Irina separated form their daughters to not "bother" them, although Yvonne and the others felt a bit suspicious about it, they took the chance to have a girl''s day with Aisha, Loren and Dana.

    Mireya on the other hand dragged Calvin to be her "assistant" as she visited the fashion area of themercial district, as a punishment for having being too slow to tell his grandfather about the alliance Daimon was creating.

    After seeing the lightning assassining all the way from wherever he was, then she of course advised her father toe, but due to thete notice she got lectured which transformed into anger towards Calvin for not having told her, that Michael''s master was also a half emperor.

    She didn''t pay too much attention before, but now she noticed there was a representative of each of the families or forces which backed up all the members of the elite ss, with the exception of Loren which''s family had some internal troubles.

    As soon as the sun settled, Aisha and Liz excused themselves and returned to their room before taking out a ck case out of their storage rings, a simr scene happened back at Erin''s mansion where Daimon, Aura, ine and Erin spent the day.

    ¡­

    The night at Lykos was cold but well illuminated thanks to the three moons what were near the, but today it was clouded, thunders reverberated through the sky whichbined with the whistling sound of the wind made all the habitants of the to seek refuge in their houses.

    About one thousand kilometers away from the Revy family main grounds, there was a neutral city called Redven, it was neutral because none of the bigger families was in charge of it, instead it was managed by amercial association.

    Inside the mansion of the Redven''s city lord, something like a social event was currently being upheld, maids wearing revealing outfits twirled around like butterflies as they brought food and sses containing different drinks for the guests.

    Some of them even gave seductive gazes at the guests before apanying him or her upstairs, in some cases the guest in question simply dragged the maid and started engaging in intercourse with them.

    The room was filled with moans and a strong lewd smell, asscivious as the previous scene might seem it wasn''t something umon, many nobles indulged in the pleasures of flesh.

    The door of the mansion opened and a tall handsome man entered followed by two figures fully covered with ck robes, without anyone paying special attention to them, the three new guests entered the kitchen and after taking out a medal with skull engraved on it, a magic circle illuminated on a wall revealing a secret passage.

    At the other side of the passage, Ernest and his supporters were sat on a table with slightly angered faces.

    Ernest looked at the handsome man and snorted.

    "You arete".

    The handsome man smirked revealing his teeth were ck instead of white and simply ignored Ernest''sins before taking a seat.

    "Of course, I''m, I felt hungry so I stopped to take a snack in the way".

    The sinister voice of the manbined with that smile full of ck teeth made Ernest''s supporters tremble.

 Chapter 164 Eliminating Loose Ends (Part 2)

    Seeing the ck smiling expression in the "face" of the man in front of him, Ernest felt all the hairs on his body stand on end, it took him a couple of seconds to regain hisposure.

    "Fucking disgusting monster", thought Ernest, he as an Archmage was still affected by the eerie aura radiated by the smiling man.

    That being said, he didn''t show his real thought on his face and instead cleared his throat.

    "Ahem, it''s good to hear you ate beforehand¡­ Falco, did you bring the thing we talked about?".

    Falco''s smiling expression didn''t wave, under the surprised eyes of Ernest supporters he shoved his hand on his stomach before taking out a bottle with a peculiar design, the body of the thing was made out of a transparent material, but the clog was made out of wood and a small skull.

    Inside the bottle there was a single drop of a grey liquid, although there was only one drop of liquid, it seemed to be boiling as it produced some kind of gas.

    Ernest''s pupils contracted to the maximum seeing the object in Falco''s hands, he basically ruined himself for that bottle, mana crystals were the "evolution" of mana stones, only Arch rankeds could use them to cultivate given the strength and purity of the mana contained in them.

    All the magic equipment, weapons, formations and the like which was of the Arch rank, needed mana crystals to power it, and a ton of them were burned everyday to maintain formations, cultivate etc.

    Ernest as a high ranked elder had saved quite a hefty sum of them over the years, the problem was that most of them were "safe" in a vault at Edgar''s mansion, after all who in the world would have tried to irrupt in the mansion of the supreme elder.

    The problem was that after Edgar was dismissed from his rank and sent to the jail, all the things in his possession were seized and became part of the treasury of the family, including nearly eighty percent of the personal savings Ernest build up since he became an Archmage.

    No matter how much he tried to demand for his saving to be returned, ine rejected him with a single sentence, "Can you prove they are yours and not part of Edgar''s property?".

    That sentence made Ernest lungs fill with anger, how could he prove a certain amount of mana crystals inside the vault of another person were his, so feeling his heart bleeding he had no choice but to swallow hisins and hold on to his remaining wealth which was inside his storage ring.

    Then after the being revoked from his authority as an elder, he basically lost all the ies he had and since he was the tutor of Edgar, for him to be fed in his cell, the n didn''t maintain traitors after all.

    And now after eight years of getting only mana stones from some deals he made under the table; his reserves were drained until he had only about ten million of mana crystals which were all spent to get the sole drop of "gray death" in Falco''s hands.

    Ernest handed the ring which contained the payment to Falco and then extended his hand to take the bottle, but then Falco retracted his hand which now Ernest noticed was longer than that of a normal proportioned human.

    Ernest''s expression became cold as he spoke while gritting his teeth.

    "What is the meaning of this?".

    Falco''s smile wasn''t affected by Ernest''s hostility, he then pointed at the woman who seemed to be attached to Edgar.

    "You know my conditions to make deals with people of the Revy family, besides the formal payment there is a tax you must pay, that woman seems "delicious", so I will have her too".

    The woman''s face paled, she gave Ernest a worried gaze, which made Ernest hit the table.

    "Falco, don''t take things too far, she is my distant rtive, change your target or¡­".

    Ernest couldn''t finish his sentence, when Falco''s eyes turnedpletely ck, there was no pupil just aplete ck empty space as he shouted.

    "You Revy people killed my father and his father before him, I want that woman or the deal is cancelled, I would like to see where are you going to find anyone willing to give you even a drop of "gray death" besides me".

    Seeing that Ernest was fighting with himself to not ept his demands, Falco med down and used a soft approach too.

    "We have benefitted from our business rtionship over thest one thousand years Ernest, so just because today I feel especially kind, I will add a heart clouding pill to the deal, without any cost".

    "You know how hard is the "gray death" to get, it requires the gray matter of both a human and a demon Arch rank after all, I only managed to get this drop because it was the left over throwed away by an alchemist friend of mine".

    The woman saw that Ernest''s expression calmed down and she inwardly let out a sigh of relief before shouting at the still smiling Falco.<sub> </sub>

    "Humph, dream on you pervert, I was raised to be the wife of lord Edgard, while right now that is not possible, with my talent I will be an elder and find a way to take revenge on those bastards, so there is no way my uncle¡­".

    The woman suddenly stopped speaking, she looked downwards just to see a knife piercing the area below her navel where the magic core is positioned, she followed the knife all the way to the one who was wielding it and the people at the other end was none other than Ernest.

    The woman lost all the strength in her legs but before she fell to the ground, Ernest used his mana to make her body float as he delivered her to Falco.

    His face had a slightly regretful expression but that immediately changed to indifference as he spoke.

    "I''m sorry, you were supposed to have Edgar''s children, unfortunately you weren''t lucky enough, at the very least with you magic core now destroyed you won''t suffer more than what is needed, don''t worry your sacrifice will bring prosperity to the family so you can leave in peace".

    Falco''s smile widened, he threw the bottle at Ernest and then licked his lips while looking at the desperate expression in the woman''s face, before shoving his hand on his leg to take out a box with the size of a palm.

    "I knew you will not let go of this chance, here this is the heart clouding pill, now if you excuse me, I''m not a sher so I don''t like others see me while eating".

    p Just as Falco was about to stand up to leave, a ck dome covered the room, then all the presents fell as if an invisible hand was pressing them down, all the ones that were standing immediately fell on their knees, the ones sitting hunched in their seats.</anda>

    While Ernest was thinking Falco set him up, and Falco was thinking he was yed by Ernest, a cold and disdaining voice echoed through the room.

    "Don''t leave so soon, a smiling ghoul is such a rare sight nowadays, specially one that deal with people of the beast faction".

    Although their bodies were paralized, both Ernest and Falco managed to see from the corner of their eyes a silver haired young man wearing a ck get up and a mask, the youth was there simply looking at them from one of the corners of the room.

    "Who the hell are you!!!", shouted Falco before his "body" exploded revealing his true appearance, it was a humanoid creature, its whole body was covered in grey skin which was a bit rotten, his arms were longer than normal reaching at least twenty centimeters below his knees.

    Both his hands and feet ended withrge ws which were clearly designed to cut and rip off meat, but the most notorious aspect of the creature was that it had no lips or nose, instead the whole area of its mouth was uncovered showing its teeth and the inside of the mouth.

    Due to the disposition of its teeth, the creature seemed to be smiling all the time.

    "Impossible why did I return to my original appearance; I''m using a high ranked disguising treasure" he mumbled with a hoarser voice.

    The silver haired youth was none other than Daimon using the hollow suit with his original hair color of course.

    Daimon took a few steps and approached Falco, he put his hand on his chin and then seemed to evaluate him before saying.

    "Undead are ugly, but you go beyond that, you are simply disgusting".

    Falco''s body trembled due to the wrath of being insulted, but no matter how much he tried he couldn''t move at all.

    Daimon''s eyes which were visible thanks to the mask glowed, he looked at the ck robed figures at both sides of Falco, and then with snap of his fingers, they exploded in white mes.

    "Aghhhh!!!!".

    A beast like growl followed by a hoarse scream filled the room, the eyes of all the presents were drawn by the two ck robed figures which were now being consumed by white mes, as they screamed but weren''t even able to move.

    The creature which used to have the form of Falco, was terrified looking at his bodyguards, two middle stage Archmages, were being tortured in front of him.

    A single word was born in his heart after listening the pained screams produced by the two bodyguards.

    "Demon!".

 Chapter 165 Eliminating Loose Ends (Part 3)

    While demon light was slowly burning the two ck robed figures, Daimon ignored them and focused his attention on the smiling ghoul in front of him.

    A smiling ghoul can be considered an endangered species among the undead, they have a really annoying innate ability called "empty bones", it''s an ability that allows the ghoul to hide a certain number of things inside its own body.

    The number of things was limited to the realm of the ghoul, ording to the information secretly kept in the private library of the Revy family, an Arch ranked smiling ghoul could hide up to 10 objects inside his body, hiding them from the eyes and mana sense of others.

    Don''t let the fact that storage rings exist lessen the importance of the "empty bones" ability, when representatives of races in conflict meet, their storage rings are confiscated as a sign of "goodwill", of course that is an excuse just to prevent someone bringing something that could put others in danger.

    In the previous war between the Revy family and the undead there was a moment where some elders tried to negotiate a truce, following the custom everyone left their rings at home, but an Arch ranked smiling ghoul brought the weapons of the other undead representatives.

    At higher levels even the smallest difference can decide the winner, so in a fight where one side doesn''t have a magic weapon and the other has them, the result is pretty obvious, a one-sided ughter.

    Of course, there are exceptions, like Daimon whose monstrous body is a weapon itself, anyway after that insult the Revy family got back at the smiling ghoul race, killing them as soon as they were discovered, cing rewards in their head and the like.

    So, during the number of smiling ghouls decreased, all the Arch ranks of their race were exterminated leaving behind only a few spread child''s ghouls which hid for the rest of the war.

    Since they are an "original" race of undead they can''t be produced in aboratory or through experimentation, luckily for them a couple of females were preserved or the race would have extinguished.

    Nowadays smiling ghouls are still hard toe by, the rumors say they often work as contrabandists, since they can hide precious objects in their bodies, so even if the guards of a city inspect them, they won''t find anything, of course their true appearance will give them away as undead, but there are disguising treasures for that.

    From a certain point of view, they had something simr to the "inventory" granted to Daimon by the system, that''s why Daimon was slightly interested in Falco, or more urately he wanted to see if killing him will give him a skill simr to the inventory or maybe improve his inventory.

    Although Falco couldn''t discern the expression behind the mask of the hollow suit, the cold indifference light in Daimon''s eyes made him tremble in fear, his disproportioned mouth opened as he shouted.

    "Your excellency is a demon right, why are you attacking me!!!".

    "Ohh?", Daimon raised an eyebrow, this was the second time he was confused as a demon from the point of view of an undead, well the past time it was a hybrid between an undead and a demon, so he had no doubt for some reason undead confused him as a demon when he was using demon light.

    "Your name is Daimon and you are pervert, I guess you can be considered a demon from a certain point of view", mumbled Evangeline.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled.

    "Just wait until I take you out of the ce you are hiding, I will spank your ass until its red, while I gently caress Narasha".

    While Narasha smiled thinking that sooner orter, she will also be able to experience living like a human, inside of the space designated to her by the system to live, Evangeline couldn''t help but cover her butt imagining the scene Daimon described, she pouted without answering.

    Seeing that Daimon waspletely ignoring him, Falco gritted his teeth.

    "Fucking narcissist demon bastard", he thought before adopting a humble attitude.

    "Your excellency may I know who is your sponsor, we might be allies which fell in a misunderstanding¡­ my backer is lord Krag''rz the mad alchemist, among the many demon lords anddies, he has a decent rtionship with the ancestors of the ns, Arashiel, Fallcrest and Nidorath".

    Theck of response from Daimon made Falco nearly lost it, demons are known for being arrogant, narcissist and scheming, they tend to consider themselves above others, but he is an Arch ranked for the love of all the impure.

    The only reason as to why he was acting so humble was because he thought he was dealing with a demon prince from one of the big families that was bored and just wanted to wander around, since demons always hide everything, he didn''t find weird the fact that he has never seen or heard about Daimon.

    Daimon suddenly got an interesting idea, he didn''t n to make himself pass as a demon, but since the opportunity presented why not try to find out why this ghoul thought he was one, and also nt some dissension between undead and demons while doing so.

    Still, he couldn''t just directly ask it or his cover would be blown away so instead of that he adopted the ssic "arrogant young master" attitude.

    "Humph, a mere flesh eater dares to stain the honorable names of the noble families with its rotten mouth, whatever if you tell me how did you discover my noble status, I shall spare your worthless life if I feel happy with your answer".

    Listening Daimon''s answer, far from being angry by the insults Falco inwardly let out a sigh of relief, ultimately, he is a business man, so if he managed to stablish a connection with a demon prince, he will be rewarded by his superior.<sub> </sub>

    Falco thought about how to answer in the most possible ttering way before saying.

    "Pardon myck of manners, if I were able to move my body, I would of course use the proper etiquette while speaking with your excellency".

    "Although I''m only an early stage Archmage, due to my special ability I havee in contact with a couple respectable demon lords from afar of course, that''s why I could recognize the extremely destructive devil fire auraing from your excellency''s noble self".

    "Such a remarkable feat can only be possessed by a first or second generation offspring of a demon lord, whichbined with the fact that my bodyguards are no match for the respectable senior that is travelling with your excellency, convinced me of being in the presence of a noble prince".

    Daimon was satisfied with the exnation, leaving aside the ttering words, he now understood why undead thought he was a demon, the oldest lineages of demon lords had fire affinity, and just like humans have their corrosive light, demons have developed a spell called "devil fire" which is exclusive of the ten bigger forces or the ns of the respective ten demon lord.

    And apparently demon light gave off a simr feeling to that devil fire, something Daimon didn''t know since he hasn''t fought against a noble demon up to this day, they always act under the table after all.

    Seeing Daimon slightly smiling, Falco finally rxed, but then his now calm expression froze, he looked downwards just to see a silver broadsword stabbing his chest.

    Before he could scream due to the pain caused by being wounded by a light oriented sword like Gram, his body exploded in white mes killing him in the spot, then the sweet sound of a notification ringed in Daimon''s ears.

    [Ding]

    [You have sessfully yed "smiling ghoul", do you wish to absorb it Y/N]

    Daimon of nodded and both Falco''s body and the message disappeared before a new one took its ce in his field of vision.

    [New skills unlocked]

    p [Undead series: Dull Nerves, Flesh Conversion]</anda>

    [The inventory will be updated in 24 hours]

    Daimon had the sudden urge tough out loud, but he decided to keep the celebration forter, his eyes moved downwards and he saw a few itemsying on the floor where Falco was earlier.

    With a wave of his hand, he kept them in his inventory to check themter, there was a storage ring among the items, which probably contained some good things.

    Feeling like a kid in Christmas, Daimon forgot about the guys covered in ck robes which were still slowly being tortured by demon light, until he heard Aisha speaking to him inside his mind.

    "Ahem, darling, of you don''t hurry up then there won''t be anything left of those two, to be controlled".

    Daimon came out of his daze, with a snap of his fingers the white mes which were covering the bodies of the two ck robed figures immediately dispersed.

    Their hoarse screams stopped and then two new messages appeared in front of his eyes.

    [Bone General "Horals" has offered its loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Bone Sorcerer "Rita" has offered its loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Although Daimon felt a bit disappointed seeing the name of the race to which his new servants belonged, he still epted them, more Arch ranks are always weed after all.

    With a thought the two ck robed figures also disappeared from the still shocked eyes of Ernest and the others.

    Daimon then focused his attention on Ernest which made him tremble in fear.

 Chapter 166 Eliminating Loose Ends (Part 4)

    When Ernest felt the indifferent gaze of the masked youth on him, for the first time since the war against the undead, he felt fear for his life.

    Demons and undead are allies but they also only worry about their own kin, Falco worked for the best alchemist among the undead race, the so called "mad alchemist", a well known but at the same time mysterious powerhouse.

    The mad alchemist earned its tittle because its research is centered in using live subjects to create potions, poisons, pills and even consumables.

    For example, the poison which Ernest wanted to buy "gray death" required gray matter of the brain from an Arch ranked human and an Arch ranked demon.

    Which means he offends both enemies and allies by equal, that''s why its identity is a secret, that being said the products created by him are of a high quality, and since the specific ingredients are a secret, then his buyers turn a blind eye at his actions.

    In other words, as long as they aren''t affected then the demon lords won''t act against him, or that should have been the case, but right now Ernest witnessed a demon killing Falco even after he stated his background.

    Ernest wanted to cry but he didn''t have the time to.

    "That psycho alchemist must have messed with the wrong person and since he is untraceable, then his subordinates are being hunted, fucking Falco brought death at my door", he thought.

    Daimon saw Ernest was about to piss his pants and he decided to keep on with the act.

    He took the seat Falco was using before, he rxed on the chair as if he just didn''t kill an Archmage a second ago, core synchrony was activated so for the eyes of others he was young mage lord.

    "That ghoul was my target, so I wonder what should I do with you?", he said as if he was thinking out loud.

    Ernest heard Daimon''s words and he immediately replied.

    "Your excellency, pardon my rudeness but aren''t the demons enemies of the Jolbaris family?".

    Daimon limited to nod interested in what Ernest was about to say.

    Ernest''s eyes glowed with hope as he continued.

    "I can arrange a meeting with one of their half emperors, then your excellency canmand an ambush against it, the merit of killing a half emperor should guarantee wealth and fame for your excellency".

    "Ohh?".

    "Interesting, but I don''t believe you are willing to do it for free, speak what do you want in exchange for delivering a half emperor in a silver te for me?".

    Ernest nearly shouted due to the extreme happiness he was feeling.

    "You see Erin, the heavens also want your demise", he thought before answering in a ttering voice.

    "I would like to request your excellency to grant the well being of me and mypanions, as well as stablishing as requesting some help to deal with another half emperor, in exchange both corpses will be handed to your excellency".

    At this point Ernest was willing to get the short stick as long as he was able to live and getting back at Erin, a proof of it was that he gave up on the possibility of obtaining a share of the blood, flesh and magic core of a half emperor.

    To Ernest''s surprise he saw the "demon prince" considering his offer for a moment before nodding.

    "Deal".

    Ernest didn''t rx, he saw how Falco was killed after thinking he was safe, so instead of that he spoke in a low voice.

    "Then, please undo this paralyzing spell, we both need to sign a soul contract to formalize the deal¡­ right?

    Daimon snapped his fingers and Ernest noticed he was finally able to move again but before he could celebrate, Daimon''s next words put him in a predicament.

    "The less people know about this the better, I only want one signature besides mine in the contract, you take care of the rest".

    Ernest''s face darkened, once again he was being toyed with, but he didn''t dare to get angry and instead tried a different approach as he pointed at the rtive which he crippled with his own hands.

    "Esteemed prince, can you spare her, she had to suffer due to that disgusting ghoul, you can take her as your concubine, women from the main branches of the Revy family aren''t avable in the ck market after all, take it as a sign of goodwill".

    Daimon smirked, knowing what Ernest was trying to do, a political marriage is one of the best ways to stablish a good rtionship between people who used to be enemies.

    Daimon looked at the woman who wasying on the table, because Ernest was when he was about to deliver her to Falco.<sub> </sub>

    The woman noticed Daimon looking at her and unlike when she was looked by Falco, she put on an innocent pitiful expression before saying.

    "If lord prince epts me, I will do my best to repay the favor".

    While on the exterior the woman acted as docile as possible on the inside, she stole a couple of gazes at Ernest.

    "I was blind to believe in you pieces of trash, just you wait I will seduce this prince and with his help I will have my revenge!".

    The wrath of a woman is no joke, and that is something Ernest will learn soon, but not by the hands of the woman that was now seductively ring at Daimon, but by one that has been watching the show since the very beginning.

    A small smile formed at the corners of Daimon''s mouth.

    "A woman from one of the main branches of the Revy family, is not a bad acquisition but I heard you saying she was the woman of another man".

    Both Ernest and the woman replied at the same time.

    "No, she isn''t".

    "It''s a misunderstanding lord prince".

    Daimon pointed at the woman and she immediately exined in a soft feminine voice.

    "Ernest wanted me to marry that loser, but he was jailed even before we started dating, I haven''t been touched by a man before".

    Ernest paled a bit noticing the woman wasn''t calling him "uncle" anymore, she also referred as Edgar as "loser", so he had a bad premonition, unfortunately since he wasn''t allowed to speak, he could only swallow hisins.

    After a moment of hesitation which made the heart of the woman nearly stop, Daimon nodded.

    "I will see for myself whether you are lying or not".

    The woman understood the message, her face slightly blushed but she didn''t say anything else.

    Finally rxed each one with their respective ns, Ernest then redacted the soul contract, he signed it and then handed it to Daimon which gave it a quick read, just as he expected Ernest basically only asked for his life to be spared, the drop of "gray death" which ended in Daimon''s hands and help to take down Erin.

    So of course, he signed it and returned it to Ernest which kept it in his storage ring, he then stood up from his chair and took out a sword before walking towards his supporters which were still paralyzed.

    "I''m sorry you all, this is all for the sake of the family", he said in a self-justifying tone, before the other elders could reproach him for being a hypocrite, with a swing his sword Ernest beheaded them all.

    Among the elders he was the only middle stage Archmage and the others couldn''t move so it didn''t take even a couple of minutes for Ernest to kill them all, as stated on the contract he kept the corpses to give them a proper burialter.

    "Your excellency I have fulfilled my part of the deal, now I will take my leave¡­".

    When Ernest turned to see the demon prince, he was talking with a moment ago, he was instead weed with the scene of a ck-haired youth looking at him as if he was looking at an idiot.

    Daimonughed before imitating the slightly hoarse voice that is produced when he speaks while using the mask of the hollow suit.

    "Thanks for your cooperation elder Ernest, with the whole previous scene properly filmed and the "evidences" nted in your house, as well as that secret room, then you will all be erased from the records of the Revy family, including that Edgar bastard".

    ? Ernest felt as if his heart was freezing, his face paled and his body trembled, he then realized all this time he was yed like a fool which made him spit out blood due to the excess of anger.

    "You... how is it possible I clearly felt the mana of a mage lord", he mumbled before shouting.

    "You vile creature, are you going to raise your hand against a man who doesn''t have any strength anymore!!!".

    Unfortunately, just as he was about to jump and bite Daimon to death if needed, his body froze again, and then he listened a cold snort before a voice he knew spoke.

    "My mother couldn''t move and you still sent assassins against her, just to pressure me, I bet you didn''t even imagine one day you''ll be getting a taste of your own medicine".

    Ernest''s face lost all the color it still had as he saw Erin literally appearing out of nowhere with a murderous expression.

 Chapter 167 Eliminating Loose Ends (Part 5)

    Seeing Ernest desperate expression Daimon leaned against the back of his chair, he already did his part so it was time for Erin to reap the results.

    But then something he didn''t expect happened.

    [Ding]

    [A new skill has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Desperation Creator LV1: Those enemies from the soulmates of the host whose spirits are broken by the host without physical pain involved will be ingredients to create monster servants (The victim must be killed directly by the host or the soulmates for it to count)]

    [Victims avable: 1]

    [Servants Avable: Hellhound, Elemental Golem, Harpy, Blood Bat, Two-headed Fish, Iron turtle (Each monster servant can only be created once and will start as a chrysalis)]

    Daimon nearly fell from his chair, but given the seriousness of the current situation he controlled himself and instead focused on Erin.

    At this point Ernest noticed this was the end of the road for him, so at the beginning he tried to shout and insult the woman who was probably responsible for all this, but no matter how much he tried the words that he had in his mind didn''te out.

    He felt empty as if he had lost something important, but he confused it with the feeling of knowing the grim reaper wasing for him.

    Erin saw the suffering expression in Ernest''s face and she felt as if a knot in her heart was dispelled, while she was indifferent towards Edgar since she considered him a mere peon, Ernest was different.

    He took advantage of the precarious situation in which her mother ended after the war, and used other underhanded methods to pressure her into epting his conditions to not revolt.

    It wouldn''t be an exaggeration to say she hated his guts, but then she now felt as if she was freed from her hatred.

    From the corner of her eyes, she looked at Daimon and she felt sweet in her heart, her intuition told her this was somehow rted to him,

    "Aisha was right, you came to this world to be our light", she thought before focusing her attention on Ernest.

    "There was a time where I would have peeled your skin and cut your tendons for all the things you did, but now I understand you are a mere stone in the road, so go to hell".

    Erin waved her hand and a ck spear pierced Ernest''s face killing him in the spot, Daimon received a notification but he ignored it, this was an important moment for Erin, and he as her life partner of course gave all his attention to her.

    The ck spear disappeared and a dull sound echoed through the room as the corpse of Ernest fell to the ground.

    Only then Daimon stood up, the other girls also took off their masks of the hollow suits and became visible.

    Daimon silently hugged Erin from behind, he rested his hands on her belly and simply remained silence while having her in his embrace.

    Erin was nearly 30 centimeters taller than him so from behind he barely reached the height of her neck, but right now Erin felt as if her whole body was being enveloped in the warmness of her lover.

    Liz and ine also approached their mother and hugged her just like when they were little girls, the moment was short but precious, they didn''t know their grandmother but Erin told them stories of her, when they were children.

    Erin patted the heads of her daughters and they let go of her, she then turned around kissed Daimon.

    Just like how Daimon took revenge for what Ernest did, without she asking him to do it, she didn''t say thanks nor mentioned it, because she knew things like that weren''t needed between them.

    "This is part of my duties as the head of the family", is what Daimon would say if she thanked him.

    Daimon let go of her and then put on his mask again, surprisingly the woman wasn''t count as material for his new skill, probably because Ernest destroyed her core so she suffered physical pain even before being tricked by him.

    So, he simply pointed at her and small ck needle pierced her head, it wasn''t hard to notice she was probably manipted by Ernest due to her admiration towards Edgar.

    Unfortunately, she took her own decisions and these were the consequences, maybe if she repented of her actions, he would have ced a terror cor on her neck, but she simply tried to seduce him for her own goals, and a crippled enemy was of no use for him.

    Still Daimon wasn''t going to let her live to avoid unnecessary troubles, so a painless death was the best he could do for her.

    "Let''s go", said Daimon before snapping his fingers, the whole room was covered in white mes consuming any evidences left behind, before Erin used space shift making them disappear.

    ¡­<sub> </sub>

    A momentter they appeared above the Revy n inside of the barrier, there was still onest "loose end" to get rid of.

    Aura nodded at Erin and she took Liz and Aisha to their rooms at the guest''s mansion, ine returned to her mother''s mansion leaving only Daimon and Erin behind.

    This was something they previously discussed, Liz wasn''t interested in seeing how Edgar was dealt of, ine also decided she didn''t care, so Erin was going to take care of it, but Daimon also wanted to go.

    Without a second of dy, they also disappeared from the sky and appeared inside the jail, of course for security there were guards but Edgar didn''t have any strength so he wasn''t particrly supervised.

    Daimon carefully scanned the whole ce with his truth seeker eyes, there were cameras and a ton of mafic formation to detect intruders, luckily Erin had the master control for all those things, because he needed to be visible to aplish what he wanted.

    He then focused his attention on the man inside the cell, Edgar was now a mortal and has aged since he stopped being a mage, while on the outside he looked depressed, Daimon could see he was nervous as if he was eager for something to happen.

    With a smirk he looked at Erin and they both deactivated the hollow suit before she used her spell dark curtain to cover the room just in case, for other people eyes Edgar was simply sat there with an expressionless face.

    But the reality waspletely different, Edgar saw Daimon and Erin appearing in his cell and he immediately stood up, his face paled, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "You look as if you saw a ghost, were you perhaps waiting for someone else toe?".

    Listening to Daimon''s disdaining voice, Edgar''s heart sank when he had a bad premonition which was confirmed a momentter when a couple of things appeared on the ground a few centimeters away from him.

    "Ahhh!", Edgar shouted seeing the severed heads of the ones that were supposed free him after getting rid of Daimon.

    But he then gritted his teeth and gave Daimon a hatred filled gaze only to be reproached by him.

    "Now, you don''t have to look at me like that, I didn''t do this, it was Ernest the one that beheaded all these guys".

    Edgar''s eyes narrowed but he snorted.

    "Do you really expect me to believe such an obvious lie, uncle Ernest has known them for such a long time that they are practically part of the family, there is no way that¡­".

    Edgar couldn''t finish his sentence when Daimon showed him the scene of Ernest crippling the woman and offering her to Falco, before skipping to the part where he beheaded all his supporters with a calm expression.

    Edgar nearly fainted, he couldn''t believe what he was seeing, but then what happened in front of him made his eyes be bloodshot.

    Daimon wrapped his arm around Erin''s waist, which Erin responded enveloping him with her long fluffy tail.

    With a smiling expression Daimon put thest nail on Edgar''s coffin.

    "Of course, all of that happened because I tricked that idiot into believing he would live if he killed them, once he finished a spear pierced his stupid face".

    Edgar''s eyes seemed to spit fire; he saw Daimon caressing Erin''s face before he kissed her.

    "He deserved it for all the troubles he caused my cute Erin don''t you agree?".

    "You bastard!!!".

    Edgar finally exploded, he was seeing the woman he has desired his whole life being touched and kissed by another man in front of him, the worst was that since Erin was actually letting him touch her tail, he knew this wasn''t feigned.

    She was conquered by a member of a young generation which appeared out of nowhere, while when he was an Archmage and tried to court her in every possible way, didn''t even got a smile from her in hundreds of years.

    He was furious, but then he felt as if the world lost all its color, a giant dark shadow with violet eyes appeared behind the smiling ck-haired youth and he fell to the ground feeling as if he was suffocating.

    Overlord''s pride is a skill who affects other regardless of their rank, it''s easier for those with weak or affected minds to be overwhelmed by Daimon''s aura when he unleashes it, and Edgar practically went crazy a moment ago.

    Then the sound of the notification Daimon was expecting rang on his ears.

    [Ding]

    [Sun alluring fox "Edgar" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

 Chapter 168 An Unexpected Visit

    Daimon epted and then deactivated overlord''s pride; Edgar''s pupils shrank like needles as he saw a ne made out of ck bones appearing on his neck.

    Without letting go of Erin, Daimon then gave his first andst order to Edgar before they left the ce using space shift, not without activating all the cameras and other magic formations.

    For the records it was as if Edgar didn''t move at all during the time Daimon and Erin were inside his cell, he then went to sleep following Daimon''s orders.

    Erin and Daimon appeared inside her mansion; it wasn''t thatte at night so they were just in time to dine before going to sleep.

    Erin giggled before leaving her body rest on Daimon''s chest.

    "I didn''t know you were the possessive type hehehe".

    She was actually surprised when Daimon dragged her closer to him before kissing her in front of Edgar, but she did her part and responded in kind.

    "Pah!".

    "Hmmm ?".

    Daimon saw the cunning glow in Erin''s eyes and he spanked her ass before saying.

    "I perfectly recognize that gaze, you little fox, if you try any trick watch how I make you beg for mercy".

    Erinughed, she stuck her tongue at him and then rubbed her face against his chest.

    "I wonder what are you talking about, I''m a good girl".

    Seeing that Erin returned to her usual yful self, Daimon smiled, today a circle was closed putting an end to the feud she had with Ernest and all the others who took advantage of her mother''s situation to get authority and wealth.

    Erin suddenly jumped out of Daimon''s embrace, she then looked at him with her pretty eyes, her gaze was charming as she left to the dining room, not without swaying her hips making sure Daimon noticed her curves.

    Daimon of course didn''t resist her seduction, she wasn''t using a spell or anything, this was her natural charm.

    "Truly worthy of the words "alluring fox", thought Daimon before keeping the hollow suit in his inventory, he then stretched his body and as he was about to go to the dining room, he heard someone knocking on the door.

    "Mm?", Daimon frowned, no one in the Revy family approached Erin''s mansion, with the exception of Liz and ine, but they had the key of the door so they wouldn''t knock on the door.

    He used his mana sense to see who was just in case and he got even more confused, the presences were simr to Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana but due to the intensity of the mana radiated by them and¡­ their "measures", he could easily tell they were their mothers.

    While still a bit confused, he opened the door taking the threedies by surprise as they thought ine would wee them, but that didn''t seem to affect them too much.

    Veronica took the initiative to speak, her voice was melodious like a bird''s singing.

    "Well, aren''t you going to invite these prettydies toe inside, if others see us waiting outside of your door at night wouldn''t it be bad?".

    Daimon had a weird smile but he did move aside.

    "Pleasee in, do you want to see ine or maybe are you looking for Erin?".

    As if they discussed it beforehand this time Anya answered in her serious yet soft voice.

    "We came here¡­ for you".

    Daimon had a hard time imagining Liliana having a long conversation with her mother, she was a bit too direct, luckily Irina knew this was going to happen as soon as Anya answered to anything so she borated.

    "Ahem, I''m sorry for those two Daimon, we actually came here to discuss something withdy Erin, but I think it would be good if you also participate in the conversation".

    "Okay, please follow me", he said as he guided the threedies towards the throne room of the mansion while avoiding the dining room, since he wouldn''t be surprised to see Erin naked waiting for him there.

    On the way he noticed the gazes those three were giving him, Irina somewhat dissimted making it look as if they were curiously seeing the decorations of the mansion¡­ but Anya and Veronica were terrible at it, their eyes were literally glued to him.

    One would think that having a beautifuldy looking at you would be nice, but in this case, it was a bit ufortable, although it wasn''t on purpose, Anya''s gaze was both cold and interested, it was like having some kind of stalker walking right behind him.

    As for Veronica her gaze was way too intense and enthusiastic, making Daimon feel as if he was about to be molested, it was weird to say the less.

    "Now I understand the hardships those three have to go through", he thought.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, so he simply feigned ignorance and kept walking without looking back.<sub> </sub>

    Once they reached the throne room, Daimon used the master key of the mansion to activate the tform which helped them go up to the where Erin receives guests, once inside the mansion unless the owner allows it others will have their powers suppressed so the Rishadies couldn''t fly.

    That''s why Leena confronted Erin outside of the mansion and only entered after being convinced it wasn''t a trap, although as a half emperor she wasn''tpletely affected by the magic formations, it would still give her a hard time.

    The threedies sat down next to each other before Daimon excused himself.

    "I''ll go for Erin, please make yourselvesfortable".

    As soon as Daimon left, Irina sighed while looking at her cousins.

    "Can''t you two be a more obvious, I think he just¡­ noticed everything!", she said in an usatory tone.

    Veronica giggled at Irina; her eyes seemed to glow as she replied.

    "Iri, you are too serious, you need to find a new man before you be an old bitter woman".

    Aya nodded to express she agreed with Veronica.

    Irina felt a vein popping in her neck.

    "I don''t want to hear that from you, in case you forgot we divorced at the same time!".

    Unlike the actual young generation where Yvonne is the one that teases Leslie, Veronica is the one that messes with Irina.

    While Irina was doing her best to suppress the urge of choking her cousins, Daimon went to the dining room and just as he expected he was weed by ine only wearing underwear and Erin totally naked as they ordered dinner.

    "Luckily mana sense can''t pass through the walls of the mansion", he thought seeing them carelessly sat leaving their beautiful bodies in in view.

    Daimon closed the door before approaching them and whisper at their ears.

    "Ahem, you two dress up, we have some unexpected guests waiting in the throne room".

    ine''s face got red as a tomato, she immediately took out a dress and put it on as fast as she could.

    Seeing her daughter looking as if she was about to cry Erin chuckled, she stood up while still naked and wrapped her tail around Daimon.

    "Why are you worrying little girl, do you think our possessive boyfriend will let anyone peek at us?".

    Daimon sighed; he patted Erin''s ass a couple of times, making sure to enjoy the soft stic feeling before saying.

    "We''ll continue with thister, those three are waiting for us¡­ and it seems to be a serious matter".

    Daimon wasn''t tricked by Veronica''s rxed attitude, although he didn''t know what they wanted to discuss, the fact that the three of them came here at night and without their daughters, instead of waiting until tomorrow morning, made it clear they were eager to talk with Erin.

    Erin also knew when it was time to y and when she needed to be serious, with a wave of her hand she changed into a ck dress which adjusted to her body, simple but at the same time elegant, before they left to the throne room.

    Seeing Daimon return with both Erin and ine, the Rishadies stopped talking between each other and slightly bowed to greet Erin.

    Erin smiled before shaking her head.

    "That''s no needed, you are the mothers of Daimon''s ssmates and I''m Daimon''s tutor, so our status is the same in that aspect".

    "I wonder what would mom say about that", thought Daimon but he still took a seat at Erin''s right with a calm expression.

    ine took the initiative to serve some drinks as courtesy before Erin started with the conversation.

    "Is there something you three wanted to speak with me about?".

    Irina, Ver¨®nica and Anya stared at ine and doubted for a second, but now that they were here it was toote to take a step back.

    "We want to publicly bring the Risha family to the side of the Revy n".

    The three of them spoke at the same time, surprisingly their voicesplemented each other, creating a pretty melody, it was like listening to three birds singing.

 Chapter 169 Three Worried Mothers

    Listening to the Rishadies request Daimon inwardly frowned, all his ssmates were in the boat as him already, that of course included Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana, so it was weird for their mothers to go through so much troubles just to speak about such a thing.

    But then he remembered how they looked at him before and things became clear¡­ this was probably an engagement discussion.

    From the corner of his eyes Daimon saw Erin smiling and he knew she could read between lines.

    Of course, as the publicly recognized most cunning woman of the gxy, Erin didn''t answer immediately, she took a sip of her drink before speaking in a soft voice.

    "That sounds perfectly fine for me, let me prepare the soul contract".

    Although Erin was a good host, she as a woman of course protected her "interests", and since those three were clearly proposing their daughters as possible partners for Daimon, she couldn''t help but make things a bit difficult for them.

    And it worked, the three Rishadies seemed to have something to say, but they remained silent, refusing the offer of a half emperor they just met yesterday was a bad idea to say the less, besides they noticed ine seemed to be a bit in a defensive stance with them.

    But then they all smiled as if they have aplished what they wanted before nodding.

    "We thank miss Erin for her understanding".

    Irina previously spoke with her cousins, being too direct after such a short time would only made them look as gold diggers, and that wasn''t the idea.

    After Ferdinand returned, an assembly was upheld between all the ns that conform the Risha family, the subject was to join the side of the Revy and Argent families.

    Besides the patriarchs of the three biggest ns, which are Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana''s fathers respectively, there was a council of elders formed by the strongest representative of the other family branches.

    Besides Ferdinand''s father and his uncle on his mother''s side, Richard, as well as Liliana and Leslie''s father side granduncles and grandaunts, a total of seven peak Archmages from the three bigger ns, there were another seven peak Archmages from the minor families which formed the council of elders.

    Ferdinand exposed the situation to the family, of course he only said that after personally "meeting" Daimon, he firmly believed it was better for the family to side with the Revy family.

    Unfortunately, besides him, his father, granduncle, Richard, Liliana''s grandaunt and one elder from the minor families, all the others voted against it.

    So, the verdict was, one of three big patriarchs and five peak Archmages which supported the motion, against two big patriarchs and nine peak Archmages which rejected it.

    For the first time in his life, Ferdinand got into a fight with his "good old friends", the other two patriarchs because they were contacted by the Ascott, dius and Grayer and offered something they couldn''t reject, a spot in the exploration for someone of their choose and¡­ a favor from a half emperor.

    In exchange of course that they needed to publicly ept their marriage proposal and there was a new condition, which was siding with the Jolbaris family.

    Everyone was trying to make more allies because one more ally means one less enemy to worry about inside the magic ruin, which will naturally lead to a higher chance of returning alive with treasures that would help their respective forces dominate others.

    And so, the Risha family was divided, luckily as Veronica and Anya were about to rush from the family to go and protect their daughters from the elders that wanted to ept the deal from the human light faction.

    They got a notice from Irina that the girls got invited to the Revy family, as "brave" as the patriarchs and elders of the Risha family were, let alone demand the return of the youngdies, they didn''t even dare to show their faces at the Revy family grounds.

    So, Aisha''s invitation, was unintentionally a lifesaving for Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana.

    Then when Veronica and Anya arrived, they noticed both of their daughters seemed to have a good impression of the little monster from the Revy family.

    Originally, they both were d with him because he helped them when the bastards of the Grayer and dius families came to cause troubles to their daughters, Daimon stood out for them.

    But after seeing they also seemed to be rtively close to Daimon, they decided to take things a bit further, so with Irina''s help, the three of them judged every little interaction between their daughters and him.

    And they reached the same conclusion, "Let''s try to pave the way for the future happiness of those girls".

    The problem was that they didn''t know how the rtionship between Daimon and the Erin''s daughters worked, that''s why they came here at night to discuss with Erin about it, but the n was ruined because ine was also here.

    And none of them was shameless enough to promote their daughter in front of one of the actual fianc¨¦es, not only that, they were genuinely thankful for the Revy family to provide protections for their daughters, and so the three of them agreed to leave this discussion forter.

    In any case, feelings need time to be developed, and unlike what happened to them, Veronica, Irina and Anya were decided to help their daughters be happy, unlike what happened to them.

    A momentter Erin handed them a soul contract, the terms were the same as always, an alliance which didn''t let them harm each other.<sub> </sub>

    After signing it, the threedies slightly bowed again¡­ but this time they did it towards Daimon.

    "Thanks for helping Yvi¡­ I know this is not your duty, but please if you have the chance, lend her a hand inside the magic ruin".

    "Same here, after being depressed since she got the notice of the dius family proposal, my Leslie started smiling again thanks to you!".

    "Liliana is a good girl, keep her safe¡­ please".

    They understood that if they directly proposed a marriage, they''ll be seen as invaders, especially since their daughters met Daimon not too long ago.

    That being said it would be a lie to say they didn''t expect Daimon to get the message.

    The three women in front of him might havepletely different personalities, or ways to express it, but right now, they weren''t part of the high echelon of the Risha family, nor Archmages, they were bowing their heard as mothers to the youth who helped their daughters when they needed it.

    At first Daimon was a bit surprised, but then remembering how Aisha didn''t hesitate even for a second to give her life to protect him.

    "No matter in which gxy or you live, mothers are incredible", he thought before saying.

    "Please raise your heads, they are friends of both my sister and me, inside of the magic ruin I can''t guarantee anything, because I don''t know whether I would meet them or not¡­ but I won''t sit idly by, if I''m there to help".

    The Rishadies smiled, while also giving an apologetic gaze at ine before leaving the mansion.

    ine didn''t know what to say, she felt a bit conflictive right now, if they were plotting against her, her heart mirror would have warned her, so they clearly weren''t here for greed but instead for a decent reason.

    But understanding their reasons and agreeing with them were twopletely different things.

    She stared at her mother before using mana to send her a message which only Erin could hear.

    "Mom, you look calmer than what I expected, those three seem really decided to bring their daughters to the family".

    Erin remained silent for a moment before shrugging.

    "Ultimately that decision is not up to us, but up to Daimon¡­ we shouldn''t worry about that anyway, has he ever put any of us above the other?".

    ine immediately shook her head, Daimon always tried to be fair with them, resources from the system, gifts in their birthdays, even spending time with them, he always did his best to show them the same amount of care, of course his interactions were different with each one, just like how Liz was too clingy or the way Erinpeted with Aura.

    Erin turned to see Daimon which seemed to be lost in his thoughts before saying.

    "Regardless of what happened here today, you were going to give them a "life insurance", right?".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed for a second before standing up from his chair, he then dragged both mother and daughter into his arms.

    "Of course, but they aren''t the only ones, Calvin, Michael, Loren¡­ even that little girl from the Jolbaris family, I will help them all, but I won''t say a thing about it, they can''t depend on me all the time".

    Even if Daimon was the captain of the team and he epted the responsibilities that came with the position, he wasn''t a babysitter, and that was something all the members of the elite ss understood.

    Of course, if the person in question was Aisha or any of his soulmates, he would turn the whole gxy upside down if needed, and he didn''t consider it hypocritical, everyone had something which weighted more in their heart.

    If he had to choose between Aisha and his other ssmates¡­ he wouldn''t doubt it even for a second, that was the reality of the cruel world in which they lived, and Daimon was aware of it.

    But that''s why he was aiming for the top, to be strong enough so that he didn''t have to choose one thing or the other, instead of that, others would have to follow the options he set.

    Evangeline as the manager of the system could feel Daimon''s current mind state, she then looked at the notification which appeared in front of her eyes and she couldn''t help butugh.

    In that isted space where no one could see her nor hear her, sheughed out loud to the content of her heart, before waving her hand making the notification to shatter, that''s right it didn''t disappear like normally, it was destroyed.

    "I''m wishing to see those bastards faces in the future, against all the chances¡­ their own actions made an abnormality which can''t be restrained nor controlled to be bo she thought in silence.

 Chapter 170 The Night Before Returning (Part 1) R-18

    Outside of Erin''s mansion, the three Rishadies slowly walked towards the guest''s mansion.

    Veronica hummed a soft melody before saying.

    "So, what do you think Iri, did miss ine got offended by our little suggestion?".

    Instead of Irina it was Anya the one that immediately spoke.

    "I hope not¡­ I wish to fight side by side with the ice princess of twilight".

    Irina raised an eyebrow at her cousins, although they were talking about an important matter, they were acting as if it wasn''t such a big deal.

    On the other hand, she remembered Daimon''s answer and she felt relieved for some reason she couldn''t exin.

    "I think the result wasn''t that bad, we already created a small chance for those little girls, whether they manage to seize it, is up to them".

    Both Veronica and Anya nodded at Irina, it wasn''t hard for them to notice their daughters developed a sense of respect for Daimon, heck they even admired and felt thankful towards him.

    Now only time would say if that admiration could be love, or if they would stop at the point of being "friends".

    Veronica suddenly giggled making Irina sigh.

    "Hehe, still, that boy is quite handsome if you ask me, if that little girl doesn''t want to, I wouldn''t mind giving it a try, a couple of hundreds of years as age gap doesn''t seem to be a problem for him anyway".

    Irina nearly tripped, she turned to see Veronica and gave her a fierce gaze.

    "Will you really try to flirt with the possible love interest of your own daughter?".

    "Why not, that kid brought two half emperors to his side after a week at the academy, a king has arge number of wives and concubines anyway", said Veronica as she shrugged.

    "Daimon¡­ interesting".

    Irina felt her lower lip trembling, Veronica might act all daring and all but is a side effect of the potion she drank to develop a curvier figure, as for Anya, she has never heard herpliment a man in her whole life until now, in fact there was a time everyone believed she had a preference for women, because she only hanged around with Irina and Veronica.

    She couldn''t help but snort, not knowing if they were just joking or not.

    "You two better not cause problems to my Yvi, or I will personally kick your asses, just like back then".

    While the Rishadies were remembering their time at the academy, back at Erin''s mansion, Daimon, Erin and ine were enjoying their dinner.

    Specially Daimon which was having a feast for both his stomach and his eyes, because as soon as Irina and the others left, she threw her clothes aside and then wrapped her long fluffy tail around Daimon lifting him in the process before letting him rest on herp.

    But that wasn''t all, after noticing the intention of Irina and the others, she decided to take an aggressive approach.

    So right now, she was alsopletely naked while she personally fed Daimon like a good diligent wife.

    Besides that, the dinner was quite normal, until they finished eating and Erin suddenly took out a small box which Daimon knew pretty well.

    Daimon saw the "reward box" of Erin and he couldn''t help but remember that time she took him to peek on Arthur Jolbaris daughters, that idea came from this same box.

    She then agitated the box before offering it to her daughter.

    "I wanted to make this day special for Daimon, so I added a few new options, let''s see how good is your luck dear".

    ine sighed, but remembering the three Rishadies she decided to follow the game, so she put her hand inside of the box before taking out what she got from it.

    Erin smirked at the sight of the paper in her daughter''s hand.

    "Body dessert huh, I guess that is not a bad choice, we''ll take a bath after this anyway".

    Just as the name suggested, the idea in that paper was to put something sweet on ine''s erogenous zones, to let Daimon enjoy of both the dessert and her body at the same time.

    Daimon was a bit speechless, as he tried to imagine how did Erin get these ideas she put into that box.<sub> </sub>

    Although ine felt a bit shy about it, she didn''t let that stop her from her goal, so she took out a jar of jelly made out of a spirit fruit and spread a bit of it on her neck first.

    Erin giggled seeing her daughter entering in the mood.

    "I guess that''s an erogenous zone for little Daimon", she thought.

    Daimon chuckled, he lifted ine by her waist and ced her on hisp before he started licking the jelly from her pretty neck.

    "Hmmm", even if Daimon wasn''t doing anything else, the sole expectation made ine get a bit wet, which normally wouldn''t have been noticeable¡­ if she were wearing clothes, but since that wasn''t the case, Daimon immediately noticed the slight moistness on his leg and he licked his lips.

    This time he took the initiative of applying some of the jelly in her nipples, the sensation of Daimon touching her sensitive area made ine blush.

    Daimon started gently fondling her breasts making ine softly moan from time to time, until he finally decided to take things a bit further.

    "Ahhhn ?", ine let out a loud moan when she felt Daimon''s tongue licking her nipples, the feeling of having her breasts sucked by him made her body jolt.

    Daimon was quite enjoying this little game, his girls were already sopatible with him, that their naturally sweet feminine scents were enough to excite him, now add the delicious taste of the jelly to that and the result was surprisingly pleasant.

    Before he noticed half of the jelly waspletely gone and that was not all, the beautiful girl in his arms was gasping while her face was a bit red.

    ine now had a needy expression in her face, which made Daimon feel a bit bad when he saw the clock, without noticing he has been teasing her for nearly thirty minutes, the stimtion he gave to her was enough to entice her, but not enough for her to climax.

    All this time Erin watched them with an amused smile, at first her daughter seemed to be against all this, but now she was clearly into it.

    Daimon ced ine on the table, at this point the jelly was meaningless as there was something tastier and sweeter already waiting for him to enjoy.

    After nearly thirty minutes of teasing her pussy waspletely drenched in her love juices, making the room to be filled with an enticing flower like scent.

    Daimon made ine rest face down on the table, he then spread her ass to have full ess to her privates, feeling her lover''s intention ine moved her tails aside as if she was inviting him.

    Erinughed at her daughter''s change in attitude, unlike Liz who was shameless all the time, ine only became honest with herself after some teasing.

    "Wuhh ?", ine let out a cute sound when she felt Daimon licking the outer area of her vagina, she tried to muffle her moans, but she was simply too excited after all that teasing to resist.

    But she wasn''t the only one, after drinking a bit of her nectar Daimon felt his dick was getting so hard it was starting to feel ufortable, so he looked at a certain fox girl which was only looking from the sides.

    Erin smiled understanding the message, although she looked calm on the outside her hard nipples stated the contrary.

    "Slurp~Slurp~Slurp".

    While Daimon was busy drinking ine''s juices directly from the source, Erin slid under the table before crawling until her face was a few centimeters away from Daimon''s crotch, her little nose wrinkled as she caught a whiff of Daimon''s manly scent.

    She couldn''t help but rub her thighs together, feeling her body burning with desire she undid the zip of his pants letting his big thing out of its prison.

    "No matter how many times I look at it¡­ isn''t too big?", she mumbled seeing the imponent erected thing in front of her.

    She noticed the table was trembling which meant her daughter was about toe and her turn will be starting soon which made her smile from ear to ear.

    Erin was right a second ago Daimon shoved his tongue inside of her pussy and started moving it sideways, which earned him a big reaction from ine.

    Her body trembled and her insides tightened as if they recognized who was paying them a "visit".

    Daimon kept licking her until he saw her cute anus twitching, calling for some attention.

    "Ahhhn ?", the very moment Daimon pushed one of his fingers inside her ass, she felt a shiver running down her spine as she reached her climax, her juices spilled all over Daimon''s face but he didn''t care.

    Instead of that he drank them to the content of his heart extending ine''s orgasm at the same time, only when he stopped ine closed her eyes to rest and recover from such an intense feeling.

    Daimon let go of her and then looked downwards just to see Erin smiling at him, to his surprise she actually waited until he finished ying with ine, but the small puddle of transparent liquid which umted under her legs made it clear she wasn''t in a better statepared to him.

 Chapter 171 The Night Before Returning (Part 2) R-18

    Seeing the provocative little smile in Erin''s face, Daimon couldn''t help but want to tease her.

    "Mm?", Erin saw Daimon smiling and she had a bad premonition, which soon became true as he started caressing her cute fox ears.

    "Hmm ?".

    After waiting for so much time, Erin was really sensitive so just the feeling of having her ears teased made her moan.

    She tried to counterattack by licking the huge erected thing a few centimeters away from her face, but she noticed Daimon firmly held her head in ce as he yed with her ears.

    Of course, she could have broken free from his grip but what would be the fun in that, her tail wagged as she found the situation rather amusing.

    So instead of insisting she decided to follow the game, her pretty lips opened a bit as she softly blew.

    Daimon felt his legs shiver as soon as the small current of air hit the tip of his dick, he saw Erin innocently smiling at him, her long eyshes fluttered as she gave him puppy eyes.

    Although the idea was to tease her until she begged, he had to admit that he found this "serious" Erin irresistible, she was simply too alluring, every expression, every single gesture she made right now would have been enough to make any male go crazy due to lust.

    Whatever spell she learned it certainly increased her already innately high "charm", of course she only learned it for Daimon''s sake and will never use it with any other person.

    And for Daimon''s bad luck or not, since it wasn''t a "mental attack" because Erin didn''t have even an ounce of malice towards him, his overlord''s pride passive didn''tpletely block the effect.

    It only worked so that his mind wasn''t clouded by lust, the lingering feeling of attraction remained, it was a racial characteristic, simr to how Daimon''s body could produce pheromones to entice his partners, the difference was that since he had the system, for him it was presented as a passive skill.

    Daimon moved one of his hands a bit downwards, before he gently pinched Erin''s right nipple making her body jolt due to the sudden stimtion.

    "Ahnnn ?", the loud moan that escaped from her mouth was a bit too exaggerated on purpose, making Daimon chuckle as he retired his hand.

    "You little lewd fox", he mumbled before giving Erin enough space so that she could stand up.

    Her beautiful naked body was now in full disy for Daimon''s delight, as she smiled with a satisfied expression.

    "Heh, you are still too young to tease me ?", she thought seeing Daimon''s eyes glued to her body.

    Erin turned around to show Daimon her naked back view, while making sure to cover the important parts with her long fluffy tail.

    She then took out something from the little box, just like ine, the result made her giggle as she showed it to Daimon.

    Daimon on the other hand nearly choked.

    "How did she know about that", he thought as read the paper which only had two words written on it, "breast milk".

    Erin smirked at Daimon''s reaction, she took out a pill from her storage ring and swallowed it before sitting on Daimon''sp, her tail wrapped around him making as she waited for the medicine to take effect.

    "You now, this specific game was a bit pricey, I had to bribe Liz to tell me about this "taste" of yours hehehe".

    Daimon cleared his throat in response to Erin''s words, while inwardly swearing to punish Lizter.

    Erin felt the pill making effect and she pressed her huge breasts against Daimon''s face, the soft and smooth feeling of her skin was a delight by itself, if you add to that, the sweet scent of the nectar that was leaking out of her nipples, Daimon was simply in cloud nine right now.

    Daimon stuck out his tongue and gave one of her cute nipples a lick, the taste was amazing, it was sweet and it made him feelfortable, from an objective point of view, only Aura''s breast milk was at the same level as Erin''s, probably because both of them are half emperors.

    Whatever caused it, he put that at the back at his mind and simply focused on enjoying it, Erin moaned from time to time, originally, she thought it was going to be simr as how she breastfed her daughters, the reality was different.

    "Hmmm ?", every time Daimon bit her nipple she was reminded that the one leading wasn''t her, but the youth on which''sp she was sitting, and that he wasn''t a baby.

    Not only that, while he was sucking on her breasts, his hands weren''tzing around, as they started to roam her curvy and soft body.

    Slowly but surely Daimon''s hands found their way to her ass, the smooth and bouncy feeling of that huge marshmallow was incredible, each time he fondled it, Daimon felt as if his fingers were winking on it.

    Erin noticed that even when his focus was on her breasts, Daimon still liked to y with her ass and she giggled, as a woman she was of course proud of her figure, and as a lover she was on the moon at the thought of Daimon being entranced by her.<sub> </sub>

    Without caring about the game anymore, she started grinding her ass against Daimon, due to the position they were currently in, her pussy lips rubbed against his hard dick covering it with her love juices, as if she was marking it as hers.

    "Kuhh".

    "Hmm".

    <o>,m Daimon couldn''t help but let out a soft growl when he felt his dick being rubbed by something soft and wet, which he of course recognized, it would be a lie to say he for a moment didn''t think on "identally" sliding inside of Erin''s pussy.</o>

    He actually stopped sucking on her breasts to regain some of hisposure, he looked upwards just to see Erin''s lovely blushed face, her chest was moving up and down and her eyes were brimming with love.

    Daimon gulped, it took him all his control to not devour the beautiful charming fox in his arms, once he calmed down a bit, he couldn''t help but swear in his heart.

    "Originally I thought I had already decided for mom to be the first but¡­ damn she is just too bewitching".

    For the time being he decided to ignore all that and instead focus on enjoying the pleasure that embracing Erin brought him.

    Daimon dragged her face closer to him before pressing his lips against hers.

    "Mm!"

    The sudden kiss woke Erin up her daze, she tried to "resist" at first as if she wanted to say something, but after a couple of seconds, her resistance weakened as she adapted to Daimon''s rhythm, making her little tongue yfully intertwine with his.

    The kiss would havested longer but right now both of them were craving for each other''s touch.

    "~Ahn~!", a cute moaning sound escaped from Erin''s mouth, she stopped the kiss as she felt Daimon''s finger invading her ass.

    Daimon moved his finger in and out of her ass which was lubed thanks to her love juices, due to the previous grinding, her lower body and Daimon''sp were drenched.

    Once he felt she was rxed enough for the main event, Daimon stood up from his chair, surprisingly Erin didn''t let go and instead wrapped her legs and tail around his body, making Daimon smile.

    ine has been watching them make out, since the very beginning as she feigned to be resting from her orgasm, Daimon grinned as he winked at Erin before saying.

    "What a shame ine is too tired, well I guess I will have to give all my love to you tonight".

    Erin giggled before kissing him.

    "That sounds perfect to me, I can hog you for myself ?".

    Just as Daimon was about to take the first step towards the bedroom, he felt ine grabbing his arm as she mumbled.

    "I want it too".

    Daimon red at Erin which made her pout, but she still moved a bit aside letting some space for her daughter to hop on, as she literally sat on Daimon''s right forearm.

    Since she was suppressing her mage realm, her body was as light as a feather, also Daimon physically strong to begin with, so it wasn''t ufortable at all.

    Just like that ine also stood up from the table and jumped she sat on the other arm.

    Daimon then walked all the way to the bedroom, ine felt her mother''s piercing gaze on her which made her sigh and stand aside, she already came once but Erin hasn''t so it was still her turn.

    And judging by how she and Daimon were looking at each other, this was going to be quite an intense love making session.

    Only after ine sat on the other side of the bed, Erin let go of Daimon, she put on all fours and swayed her ass as her tail wagged.

    Daimon positioned behind her, he rubbed his dick against her pussy covering it in her love juices, before he grabbed Erin''s waist with his hands pulling her body backwards as he pushed the tip of his thing inside her ass.

    "Wuuuh ?", Erin let out a cute sound as she felt Daimon''s hard hot thing spreading her insides, then her toes and fingers curled, her insides contracted as she reached her climax.

 Chapter 172 The Night Before Returning (Part 3) R-18

    Daimon felt Erin''s warm insides tightening around his dick and sucking him as if they were trying to milk him, and his legs wobbled.

    He let his body rest on top of her back as he shot his sperm inside of her.

    "Ahhh!", Erin felt her stomach burning as her body hungrily epted Daimon''s white stuff, her legs gave out and she fell face down on the bed.

    Daimon stayed still for a couple of minutes, after all the teasing he was really excited so the pleasure brought by finally letting out, was quite intense.

    That being said, he still used the time to whisper sweet words at Erin as he kissed her neck.

    "You don''t have to do that, I''m not letting you off the hook so easily", he said as he fondled her right breast making her cute nipples let out a couple of drops of milk.

    Even if he for some reason tried to separate from her, he couldn''t, because her tail was firmly wrapped around him

    Erin cutely giggled feeling Daimon''s dick still throbbing inside of her.

    "I won''t go anywhere you know?".

    Daimon chuckled, he suddenly moved his hips back and forth making Erin moan, with his monstrously high vitalitying once didn''t affect him at all, he only stayed still to enjoy the aftertaste of his orgasm.

    Of course, he could feel ine''s slightly bitter gaze on his back which made him smile, while still mounting Erin, he called her.

    "Come here, tonight I will spoil both of you together".

    A bright smile immediately flourished in ine''s face; she crawled over from the other side of the bed until she was next to Daimon.

    Seeing ine''s needy expression, Daimon dragged her closer to him before pressing his lips against hers.

    Daimon then grabbed Erin by her thin waist and thrusted his hips as hard as he could, burying his dick as deep as he could inside of her ass.

    "Ahhh!".

    "Mm".

    Two different moans sounded, one lewd and the other one almost imperceptible filled room as Daimon started pounding the mother while kissing the daughter.

    With each thrust Erin felt a current of electricity running down her spine, she clenched her hands on the bedsheet and tried to muffle her moans, but every time she did it, Daimon simply pushed his dick deeper inside, earning a cute moan from her.

    "Wuuh ?".

    While still receiving Daimon''s "love", Erin turned her head around and smiled at him, her eyes had a faint trace of a cunning light in them.

    "You bully", her soft charming voice made Daimon feel as if his bones were going to melt.

    Without any warning Erin moved her hips backwards grinding her ass against Daimon, her insides coiled around him so hard, it took all his control not to cum at the spot.

    Daimon had to stop kissing ine to focus on the alluring fox which was trying to bewitch him.

    But instead of trying to resist he simply went with the flow, with a small grin, his hands moved from all the way to her ass and before Erin could notice it, he pulled on her tail and pushed his hips forward at the same time.

    "Hyaaa ?", a high-pitched moan echoed through the room, taking ine by surprise, she looked at her mother which now was in bliss, love juices leaked out of her pussy, the stimtion of having her tail yed with while also being prated made her cum a bit.

    But Daimon didn''t stop there, he let his body weight rest on Erin pinning her down below him, before he started moving his hips back and forth.

    "Pah~Pah~Pah!".

    "Ahh~ahh~aahh!".

    The sound of meat colliding and moans filled the room creating a lewd symphony, when Daimon finally couldn''t hold back anymore, he gently bit Erin''s neck for the finishing touch.

    "Hnnngh ?", as expected the very moment Daimon''s fangs pierced her skin, Erin felt her mind going nk before an overwhelming amount of pleasure invaded her body.

    Her back arched a bit, love juices spilled all over her lower body as she reached the most intense orgasm of her life.

    But she wasn''t the only one, Daimon pressed down the beautiful woman below him as he unleashed a thick load of sperm inside her.

    Surprisingly his body felt light as an incredible sensation of pleasure filled his body, with his dick still hard inside of Erin, his body fell on her back as he caught up his breath.

    Erin wasn''t any better, her chest moved up and down, she was gasping for air while she tried to regain herposure.

    After a couple of minutes Daimon pulled his thing out of Erin, he then kissed her and caressed her long ck hair before letting her rest.<sub> </sub>

    "Mm", Erin made a cute sound before closing her eyes, she of course could have recovered by circting her mana, but that wouldn''t be fun at all, so she simply enjoyed the post orgasm pleasure and tiredness like a normal woman.

    Daimon got off her back andid down face up on the bed, his body was built different so even if he wanted, he didn''t feel tired at all¡­ in fact the sword between his legs was as hard as before even if he already came twice.

    ine slowly approached him and rested her head on his chest, using her soft body to soothe her lover, her heart was beating faster than normal and her face was slightly blushed

    "I¡­ want to be on top this time", she said in a low voice as she drew little circles on Daimon''s chest with her fingers.

    Daimon smiled, his hands caressed ine''s back all the way down her ass, but he didn''t stop there and instead rubbed the petals of her flower which were already drenched.

    "Mmm ?", ine moaned feeling Daimon touching her lower region, not only she was burning in excitement after watching her him doing it with her mother, the mix of Erin''s nectar and Daimon''s sperm created a lewd enticing smell which was now filling the room.

    ine looked upwards giving Daimon a needy gaze, her body was aching right now, to the point that she felt as if she was going to go crazy.

    Daimon kissed her before amodating his body to be in a morefortable position for what was about to happen.

    ine got the message, moved her body backwards and changed her position to be riding on top of him, of course while she did it, she took advantage of the moment to rub her pussy lips on Daimon''s dick covering it with her juices.

    Daimon looked downwards, there was a pleasing soft and wet sensationing from his lower body.

    He then saw ine giving him aplicity gaze as if she was saying, "just say the word".

    "Like mother like daughter I guess", thought Daimon before softly spanking ine.

    "If you aren''t going to put it in, I will go and assault Erin you know", he said with a yful voice.

    ine giggled while stealing some gazes at her mother, the corner of her lips trembled as she saw her tail wagging, even in that "worn out" state she was clearly keeping an eye on them, waiting for an opportunity to take over.

    She used her hand to guide Daimon''s penis to her back door before lowering her hips, after a bit of resistance she took nearly half of the thing inside of her.

    "Kuhh", Daimon softly growled feeling his dick being enveloped by her tight insides, ine managed to contain her voice but her back arched a bit, just my putting in, she felt a huge sensation of relief in her lower region.

    "Annngh ?", before she could react, Daimon pulled her body downwards inserting his whole dick inside of her, making her insides jolt as she moaned.

    Feeing ashamed of the loud beastly sound that just came from her mouth, ine looked at Daimon usatorily, just to see him smiling as he enjoyed her tightness.

    "I just helped you take the first step, the rest is up to you", he said, but contrary to his words, his hands moved upwards and started fondling her breasts.

    ine softly snorted before she tried to move her hips up just to notice her insides were¡­ clinging to Daimon''s thing.

    Her face became red as a tomato, she could feel both her mother and Daimon smiling at her, she softly hit Daimon''s chest with her hands before she tried a different approach.

    Instead of trying to move up and down, she swayed her hips sidewards.

    "Hmmm ?", the idea worked, as she grinded her ass against Daimon, waves of pleasure ran through her body, only then she could also move up and down.

    Daimon was in bliss right now, ine''s movements were a bit clumsy which was understandable considering she literally lost her anal virginity the previous night, but still this "dance" she was doing made her insides squeeze his dick, giving him a huge amount of pleasure.

    As if some kind of rm clicked in her mind, Erin immediately opened her eyes, she smirked at the scene of her daughter riding Daimon in such a naughty way.

    She then threw herself at Daimon and kissed him, her little tongue intertwined with his as they passionately exchanged saliva.

    Without stopping her hips ine saw her mother "invading" her turn and she pouted.

    "Mom that''s not fair!".

    Erin giggled and then stuck her tongue at her daughter.

    "I seem to remember a certain someone kissed Daimon while I was being "assaulted", so noins would be epted now ?".

    ine was speechless, she tried to reply but Daimon moved his hips upwards making her moan, while at the same time he bit Erin''s right nipple to drink some of her delicious breast milk.

    "Ahhh ?".

    "Hmmm ?".

    Two different but equally cute moans sounded as Daimon interrupted their quarrel.

    "No fighting, be good girls or I would punish you", said Daimon with a grin as he kept sucking on Erin''s breasts while moving his hips upwards.

 Chapter 173 The Night Before Returning (Part 4)

    The melody resulting of thebination of moans, meat shing and the bed creaking, could be hearding from Erin''s bedroom, only after two hours the peace returned to the mansion.

    Inside of Erin''s bedroom, at the huge bed which could fit at least ten people, three naked people were leisurely resting.

    The one in the middle was a ck-haired youth which body seemed to be chiseled in marble, his built was well toned without being bulky, creating a perfect bnce between agility and strength.

    At his right side a tall woman with long ck hair which cascaded down all the way to her thighs, was lovely hugging his right arm while resting her head on his chest, her incredibly curvy figureplemented her beautiful face in which a happy satisfied smile flourished, on top of that her long fluffy fox tail of the same deep ck color, wagged from time to time as the youth caressed her silky hair.

    At the left, another woman which shared some resemble with the first one was hugging the left arm, her white-grayish hair which reached her lower back was neatly spread over her shoulders, her face made her look a bit youngerpared to the other woman, besides that her slightly blushed yet happy expression gave her a more innocent appearance, her tails fluttered from time to time as she rubbed her face against the chest of the ck-haired youth.

    Daimon lovingly gazed at the two beautiful fox girls in his embrace and he couldn''t help but feel a lingering sensation of pride, which he immediately discarded as a sweet feeling filled his heart.

    He never experienced love back at earth, Daimon tried to make memory but he couldn''t remember ever falling for a girl, of course he was interested in them like any other teen, but not to the point that he wanted to be in a rtionship with anyone.

    "Perhaps I was a bit apathic back then", he mumbled.

    Evangeline which has been watching and listening the whole "show" from the space in which she resided, couldn''t help but open her mouth as if she was trying to say anything, but ultimately, she remained silent.

    "Mm?", Erin looked upwards, she giggled ant then moved her face closer to Daimon''s to kiss him.

    "Did something happen, you seemed to be lost in your thoughts¡­ let auntie ease up your mind ?".

    The soft feeling of Erin''s lipsbined with her flower like fragrance, woke Daimon out of his daze, he ced his hand on her ass and dragged her closer to him, before he caressed her tail to enjoy the pleasing sensation of her fur.

    "I was just thinking on the new skills I got, you three can youe to our bedroom, there are some things I want to discuss with you all", he said through the mental connection, making sure all the girls heard him.

    Although it was almost midnight after he finished making love to Erin and ine, Daimon was sure none of the others were asleep yet, and his supposition was confirmed, after a couple of seconds a crack above the bed appeared from where Aisha, Liz and Aura came out.

    Daimon''s eyes widened a bit, not only they were falling exactly on the bed, which made him wonder if Aura memorized the dimensions of the bedroom, but because they were all naked.

    The fall wasn''t even of one meter so the impact was not strong, the bed did wave a bit, but Daimon didn''t pay any attention to that, and instead focused on the naked small body which was nowying on top of him.

    "Mm ?", before he could say anything, Aura took the opportunity to kiss him earning the discontent of Aisha and Liz.

    "Hey Aura, that''s not fair, I said I was going to kiss my darling first!".

    Liz didn''t say anything but she still nodded, agreeing with Aisha.

    Daimon watched his girls acting as lively as ever and heughed from the bottom of his heart, making them all smile.

    He patted Erin and ine''s back, which made them unwillingly let go of him, then he changed his position to be sitting on the bed with his back leaned against the headboard, before extending his arms at his mother and Liz.

    Aisha and Liz happily epted the offer, they threw themselves at him, but Liz was a bit faster which was understandable considering she is an Archmage.

    She softly pressed her lips against Daimon''s to enjoy a kiss, only after she did it to the content of her heart she stopped, that and because Aisha''s gaze was piercing her back.

    Daimon chuckled at the sight of Aisha pouting, he dragged her closer to him, Aisha''s long silver eyshes fluttered before she kissed her son, her little tongue was immediately dominated by Daimons as they "danced".

    Aisha didn''t let go of him until she felt it was enough, even then she would have continued with the kiss if not for she remembering, that she will go with him to the magic ruin exploration anyway.

    Now that all the girls had their share of Daimon, it was time to focus on serious matters, Daimon opened his skill tree and studied his newest acquisitions.

    [Dull Nerves Lv1 (Passive): All the negative physical sensations will be reduced by 20% (The causes will still affect the body of the host)]

    [Flesh Conversion Lv1 (Passive): It allows the host to recover from wounds by ingesting the meat of other living beings (The amount of recovery depends on the mana contained in the flesh)]<sub> </sub>

    [Desperation Creator LV1: Those enemies from the soulmates of the host whose spirits are broken by the host without physical pain involved will be ingredients to create monster servants (The victim must be killed directly by the host or the soulmates for it to count)]

    [Victims avable: 0]

    [Materials avable: 1]

    [Servants Avable: Hellhound, Elemental Golem, Harpy, Blood Bat, Two-headed Fish, Iron turtle (Each monster servant can only be created once and will start as a chrysalid)]

    Daimon nodded in recognition, these were for sure good skills which were hard to get, originally, he thought that with some years of hunting magic beasts he will be loaded with good skills at this point, but that was really far from reality.

    The skills he could get depended on the difference in rank between him and the enemy, the "rarity" of the enemy andstly his contribution on the fight.

    Due to his low realm, he could at most kill mage lord realm magic beasts, and the skills he got from them were worthless most of the time which was understandable considering the difference in level when and the rarity weren''t high, that being said he got the elemental affinities from those beasts, so it wasn''t that bad.

    The other side of the coin was what happened when he got the help of the girls to kill Arch ranked beasts, demon light was strong enough to kill an Arch ranked that was a given, the problem is that without the suppression of either Erin, Aura or Liz, he couldn''t follow the speed of such a high ranked enemy.

    In those cases, the contribution he could get was at most about 30%, and the chances to get a good skill diminished because of that.

    Last time the manticore was an exception because he wasn''t even a mage at that point, his mana circuits were blocked so he was worse than a normal vampire, whichbined with the fact that the manticore was an incredibly rare variant and a recently ascended peak Arch ranked beast, resulted in his sole SSS Divinity achievement so far.

    Up to this day Daimon didn''t know how the "rarity" of an enemy was decided, he asked Evangeline but she told him that information was restricted, but even if he knew, a rare enemy yed wasn''t equal to a powerful ability.

    For example, he once tried a test in which he killed what could be considered a rare species of magic beast, but the result was a useless skill.

    Luckily apparently a smiling ghoul was "rare" enough to make up for the fact that Erin was suppressing his freedom, so he got those two skills.

    Leaving that aside, he showed the girls the skill "Desperation Creator", which he found rather simr to "Terror Contractor", in terms that there was an emotion provoked to an enemy involved in the condition of activation.

    Of course, the girls were immediately attracted to the "monster servant" part, in this world taming a magic beast was impossible unless a magic beast which had unlocked its wisdom thus developing a beast core, recognize you as its master.

    The other option were those beasts which through selective breeding had lost their beastly instinct and became docile, but they aren''t really tamed so they won''t follow orders nor support you in a fight.

    But right now, in front of them there was a third option¡­ the problem is that understanding what the skill said, Daimon could only create one for the time being, and they are six counting Narasha.

    Erin put on a cunning smile before saying.

    "Judging by the time and the condition, that material should have been created thanks to that bastard Ernest, so technically the one getting this should be me".

    Her tail then wagged as she rubbed her head against Daimon''s chest.

    "But for the family''s sake, I''m willing to let it to fate, so how about we roll a dice to decide?".

    "You cunning little fox", thought Aura, although Erin said that, it was obvious for the girls she was just trying to get Daimon''s favor, and it seemed to work as Daimon smiled before he caressed her cute ears.

    "If you are okay with it, then I don''t mind, any objections?".

    None of the girls said anything so it was decided, Liz liked board games so she proportioned a dice, and a number was randomly assigned to each one of them.

    Daimon took the dice; he inspected it just to make sure there wasn''t any trick on it before he rolled it on the nightstand next to the bed.

    After a couple of seconds which seemed like hours for the girls, the dice stopped in the number four, making the girl at Daimon''s right smile.

    Aisha kissed her son with a triumphant expression, with that the chance to get the monster servant was given to her.

 Chapter 174 The Night Before Returning (Part 5)

    With the exception of Erin which had fulfilled hermitment and Aisha who won the monster servant, the other girls weren''t that happy but then they all seemed to have the same idea.

    "I just need to find one bastard to exchange for a material", they thought.

    The only one which didn''t follow the same pattern was Narasha, because even if she left the inventory, in her current sword form a monster servant wasn''t really helpful for her, if anything she wished to get her own body.

    "Ahem, don''t worrydies, I don''t think there will be a shortage of enemies, so you will all get one, mom which of the monster servants do you want?", he said as he showed Aisha the list of servants avable.

    [Servants Avable: Hellhound, Elemental Golem, Harpy, Blood Bat, Two-headed Fish, Iron turtle (Each monster servant can only be created once and will start as a chrysalid)]

    "Can you see the details of the servants, darling?", asked Aisha with a dubitative expression.

    Of course, if she was given the chance to choose first, she wanted to take the best decision, there was a "friendly"petition between all the soulmates ongoing, to be Daimon''s first after all.

    Unfortunately, Daimon shook his head in negation, these "emotion" skills were a mysterious even to Evangeline, although they weren''t irregr skills like core synchrony, apparently, they weren''t in the data base of the system.

    "No, they don''t have one".

    "Mm", Aisha carefully read the names of the servants a couple of times, trying to discern any difference between them, before giving up and just choosing what she thought would suit her the best.

    "I want the blood bat, I''m still a vampire¡­ mostly".

    Daimon chuckled; he couldn''t help but steal a gaze at the soulmate tab where his mother''s basic information was recorded.

    [Aisha Silverheart]

    [Race: High Vampire/???]

    [Age: 22 years old (Age adapted to be morepatible with the contractor)]

    [Emotional status: Happy/In Love]

    [Current Bond: Lover]

    He nodded and then clicked on the desperation creator skill before selecting the blood bad servant. Which triggered a notification from the system.

    [One material will be consumed; do you wish to proceed with the creation of "Blood Bat" Y/N]

    After confirming it, the notification disappeared and then a few centimeters in front of him a small magic circle formed by a series of different geometrical figures appeared glowing in yellow light, once the magic circle disappeared a hand sized blue crystal with an emblem which looked like a bat appeared in Daimon''s hand.

    Daimon curiously inspected the thing in his hand.

    [Blood Bat Chrysalid: Contains the essence of the monster servant "Blood Bat", it must be nourished with the mana of the one that will be its master, to tie it just let a drop of blood fall on it (Only the soulmates are fit to own the servant, besides its master only the host can control it)]

    He handed the crystal to Aisha which immediately bit the tip of her finger to let a drop of her blood fall on it, then the crystal surprisingly disappeared leaving behind the same bat emblem on the backside of Aisha''s left hand, before a notification appeared.

    [The link has been stablished, the blood bat can be stored in the contact crest, nourish it with your mana to hatch it (the servant will be helpful the very moment it materializes)]

    [Remaining hatching time 24 hours (The conversion ratio is 10 mana points per every minute of hatching)]

    "Damn!", Daimon couldn''t help but swear at the amount of mana that the thing needed to hatch, a day had 1440 minutes which multiplied per 10 gave a result of 14400, that meant Aisha had to inject 14400 mana points in the crystal.

    Back then when Daimon was an early-stage novice mage, he had a reserve of 3000 mana points, but he was an abnormality which''s mana pond used to be about one hundred times bigger than his peers, reaching a state in which it''s nearly impossible for him to run out of mana, because even if his magic core doesn''t actively allow him to absorb mana to advance, it passively replenishes any mana spent by him.

    That doesn''t mean he can cast spells infinitely, there is a limit as to how much the body of a mage can handle manipting mana within a period of time.

    What surprised him was that the blood bat will have more than four times the amount of mana reserves he had when he was a novice mage, although for the current Daimon that amount wasn''t that much, after some years he has more or less deduced the amount of mana pointsmon mages have in their realms.<sub> </sub>

    A normal peak one-star mage has about 6000 mana points, and the amount doubles per every realm it goes up, simr to how the strength of a knight doubles witch each advance, of course there are variances, depending on race, talent, body constitution and the like.

    Anyway 14400 mana points for a newborn magic beast was a simply outrageous, on the other hand it could be possible for the beast to have a higher start, for example although is rare, there are magic beasts which are born at the novice mage realm.

    "I guess we''ll have to wait to see what will be the strength of the thing", he thought.

    The contract crest in the backside of Aisha''s hand could be hidden or shown ording to what she wanted, so there won''t be any problem to keep it a secret to be used only if needed.

    Also, the 24 hours of hatching was a countdown, although it only advanced if Aisha injected mana, even if she finished nourishing the blood bat, she will still have to wait for the respective amount of time to pass.

    Leaving the monster servant matter aside, there was another thing Daimon wanted to discuss with the girls, what would the life-saving treasure he will be giving his ssmates will be.

    To begin with most of the items sold by the shop of the system are only usable for the host and the soulmates, which limits the options, after surfing through the catalog, Daimon reduced the possible options to three:

    [Talisman of the silent protector: It allows the host to ce a hidden seal on the target, which will protect it for ten minutes against enemies one bigger realm above the target''s one, or for one minute against enemies two big realms above of it, the effect will activate automatically if the life of the target is endangered past a certain point, additionally the one with the seal will be able to feel the approximate location of the host, as long as the seal hasn''t been consumed (If used, other items provided by the system won''t be avable for the target)]

    [Price: 1,200,000 coins]

    [Gauntlet of re: A piece of armor which can block attacks up to five times, after the first usage a signal of help which can only be detected by the host will be triggered (If used, other items provided by the system won''t be avable for the target)]

    [Price: 500,000 coins]

    [Stone pendant: This essory will project a barrier around the body of the one wearing it, the barrier will protect it against attacks up to two big realms above the one wearing for five minutes, but the wearer won''t be able to move while the barrier is up If used, (If used, other items provided by the system won''t be avable for the target)]

    [Price: 800,000 coins]

    This time everyone looked at Aura for her opinion, out of all the girls she was the one with the highest amount of battle experience after all.

    Aura''s current contemtive expression would have been serious if it weren''t for the fact that she was naked and her cute wolf tail was wagged from time to time.

    After thinking about it for a couple of minutes she decided for the first option, of course she exined her reasons.

    "The talisman is the best option, you can make it look like some kind of tracing magic so that they wouldn''t get cocky thinking they are being protected, also the fact that it activates without the need of them doing it manually is probably the reason as to why it''s so expensive, although the time of protection isn''t that big, the best way to deal with mages are ambushes which will be useless with this talisman".

    Daimon nodded, Aura''s words were quite urate, it''s easier to avoid a spear in the light than an arrow in the shadows, also the idea wasn''t to go looking for the others as soon as the exploration started, with the exception of Aisha for personal reasons and Dana for business purposes.

    Everyone will have to go through their own tribtions to be strong, with this talisman Calvin and the others will have the chance to go looking for him if needed and also venture themselves while also having a life saving grace, although they would not know about it.

    With a thought Daimon bought twenty of the talismans and stored them in his inventory, due to the tracking function he will only give them to his ssmates once they are about to enter the magic ruin.

    That was thest thing in today''s list, so Daimon was about to tell Aisha, Liz and Aura to return to their respective rooms, since tonight was still part of the time he owed to Erin and ine, but seeing their adorable needy expressions he chuckled.

    "You three can stay but we''ll go to sleep¡­ tomorrow the tournament will start, we have to leave early and it''s already past midnight".

    Surprisingly Erin didn''tin, she instead smirked before saying.

    "Since Daimon will be leaving the next week, then I hope you don''t mind me paying a visit during the next days".

    Having reached an agreement, all the girls cuddled with Daimon, they closed their eyes and entered thend of dreams.

    Daimon sent a message through one of his many lectors before joining them.

    "I can''t wait to see that bastard''s reaction tomorrow", he thought as he inwardlyughed.

 Chapter 175 A Lively Morning

    Normally Daimon would have asked either Liz or Aura to return to the guest''s mansion just in case, but without Ernest and his supporters there was no need to worry about any internal strife, besides although Calvin''s aunt and the Rishadies were only early stage Archmages, they were four so in case of an emergency they should be able to hold the fort.

    As expected within the Revy family grounds the night went on without any problem, the same couldn''t be said about the rest of Lykos, the spatial gate magic formations in the major cities kept illuminating as batches of people arrived.

    In a few selected private formations instead of groups of people, proudly marked with emblems flying carriages of big proportions appeared before most of them started flying towards the same destination, the main campus of the academy.

    Luckily Aura changed the configuration of the barrier surrounding the academic city and the campus too, so the power of all the ones inside the effect would at most be able to excel the power of early-stage Arch ranks.

    Also, lots of people of different races but wearing white uniforms with blue decorations, were dispatched to maintain the public order¡­ the army also arrived for the asion which meant the legendary field marshal was also watching everything from the shadows.

    So, no one dared to cause problems, for the time being, who knows the first one to act might be suppressed by all the others after all.

    ¡­

    Completely oblivious to the slightly chaotic situation in Lykos, Daimon was cuddling with the dreamed lovers of many of the people that just arrived, anywhere his hands touched there was soothing soft sensation.

    When morning came, Daimon''s peaceful sleeping expression was suddenly interrupted, he wrinkled his nose feeling a ticklish sensation assaulting his face, he slowly opened his eyes just to see Erin teasing him with the tip of her tail, her silky fur was rubbed against his face causing him tickles.

    Daimon chuckled, but instead of stopping her, he grabbed her tail and ced it next to his face, Erin''s fur was softest than the most expensive silk, it also had a sweet flower like scent, so it was extremelyfortable to the contact.

    "I wonder, should I make a pillow using the tail fur of a certain yful fox girl?", he said making sure Erin heard him.

    Erin of course yed her role as the "victim", her tail immediately retracted, before she begged with a pitiful yet adorable expression.

    "No please Mr. hunter, my tail is for the exclusive use of my husband, if you do that, I won''t be allowed to get married!".

    Daimon had to admit that her act was quite convincing, if this was a real situation his heart would have probably softened and he would have let the little fox escape¡­ if it weren''t for the fact that Erin''s tail was wagging, a clear sign that she was happy for something.

    "Pah!".

    "Hmmm ?".

    A loud pping sound followed by a slightly exaggerated moan echoed through the room, as Daimon spanked the charming fox girl in front of him, but even then, her cunning smile made clear she got what she wanted.

    And the moan woke up the rest of the girls, their gazes then pierced Daimon likesers, so he took the initiative to greet them in the special way which is a rule set by himself for the family, with a passionate good morning''s kiss.

    In a matter of minutes Daimon got to enjoy, the taboo yet warm feeling of pressing his lips against his own mothers, followed by the slightly clumsy but cute little lips of Aura being dominated by his, then the messy and naughty kiss caused by Liz''s intertwining her tongue with him andst but not least the shy and soft kiss given to him by ine as there were other people besides her and Daimon in the room.

    He then caressed Liz''s ears, Aura''s wolf''s tail and Aisha''s face before sending them back to their rooms at the guest''s mansion, for observers they slept there all the night after all.

    Just in case they put on some night clothes before disappearing from the room thanks to Aura''s space shift.

    Daimon then let his body fall on the bed for a couple of seconds, an opportunity both the mother and daughter remaining took advantage of, to hug him.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow before saying in a yful voice.

    "You two are quite clingy today, what are you trying to achieve you little foxes?".

    Even if he said that, he still dragged both of them into his embrace, which earned him a smile from both mother and daughter.

    Surprisingly they didn''t say nor try anything, they simply hugged him in silent while hiding their faces in Daimon''s chest.

    After a couple of minutes, Erin''s soft melodious voce made its way to Daimon''s ears.

    "You know, sometimes I envy Aisha¡­ she gets to attend to school with you and all that".<sub> </sub>

    "Mm", ine made a little sound as she nodded agreeing with Erin.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, what happened with his mother wasn''t an option, she died and she could only be brought back in that state, well ording to Evangeline getting her original body was a possibility but her powers wouldn''t have returned, so it was better for her to be young again and use that time to recover, also to be honest Daimon liked the feeling of having her growing along with him.

    Daimon caressed their cute ears which made both mother and daughter wag their tails, as they enjoyed thefortable feeling of their lover touching their sensitive ces.

    "To be honest with you two, I don''t think we''ll stay in this ster chart until the end of my three years at the academy".

    Both Erin and ine looked at him, Daimon had a slightly serious expression as he spoke.

    "Although mom wanted me to enjoy life school, I don''t want to stay in a ce which can''t provide me with challenges, and now even if I don''t use core synchrony and without the help of Narasha, I''m pretty sure I can fight head on with the most talented guys among the second-year students".

    "Considering my magic core has been showing signs of waking up, by the end of this year I should be a four or more likely five star ranked mage and at least an eight-star ranked knight, which will mean I would outpower early-stage lord ranks in my normal state".

    Erin heard Daimon''s confident words and she couldn''t help but agree with him, although she ispletely aware that there are talented students which can cross realms to fight among the second years, but to hold their ground against a monster like Daimon, a group of at least four with battle prowess which equals eight-star ranks is needed.

    And that is considering he doesn''t use Disaster and they either are mentally strong enough to resist the aura radiated by overlord''s pride or fast enough to avoid being hit by the magic elerated bullets of Daimon''s guns.

    Daimon''s violet amethyst eyes glowed for a moment before he kissed Erin and ine.

    "Being a big fish in a small pond has never been my goal, once I can rip off Victor''s and his bastard father heads off, we''ll leave".

    After saying that, he spanked them again and then got up the bed, he still had to take a bath to wash off thebination of love juices and sweat in which he was covered after yesterday''s love making session, although he didn''t smell bad, all the contrary it had a sweet scent, a good bath would help him be clean and fresh.

    Erin and ine exchanged gazes before following him to the bathroom, due to the tournament which will be starting today they will also go to the academy with Daimon and the others this time around¡­ there was going to be quite a fine selection of important persons attending after all.

    After taking a short but pleasing bath, in which Daimon teased both of them, they left the mansion wearing their usual outfits, Erin was using a long ck dress with purple decorations it was clearly made to match with Daimon''s white and purple get up, as for ine she wore a simr outfit to Liz''s one, a mix between easter and western clothes with white and blue elements.

    On the way to the guest''s mansion, the punishment elder with his imponent presence approached them, after slightly bowing his head towards Erin, he gave them a "shocking new.

    "Lady Erin¡­ that bastard Edgar hanged up himself in his cell, we already investigated the scene, there was nothing recorded by cameras nor the rm magic formations reacted, so the verdict is that he finally decided to put an end to his miserable existence".

    "We also found evidences in the house of the elder Ernest, it seems he and his close circle had escaped from the n, I will put a bounty in their heads and hang the mission on the task hall for every elder in the Arch rank to kill them at the spot".

    He then presented a document to Erin, which contained the order for the mission he mentioned, the only thing left was to receive the seal of the matriarch and the n head for it to be approved.

    In the whole n besides Daimon and the family, the only one who would dare in a mix between formal and informal ways to Erin, will be this scarred old man which took care of her when her mother died.

    Without any surprise, Erin received the document, she gave it a quick read before stamping her identity token on it, ine did the same and then she returned it to the punishment elder.

    The punishment elder kept the document in his storage ring before asking onest thing.

    <o>,m "What should we do with the that guy''s corpse?".</o>

    Erin hugged Daimon''s right arm as she started to walk along him, not without saying.

    "Burn the corpse and give the announcement to everyone, also investigate all those which used to have close rtionships with Ernest and his supporters, I don''t want even the smallest fish to escape the".

    While it might sound cruel to just dispose of Edgar''s corpse like that, since he died literally without a tomb, it wasn''t in revenge or anything like that, he drankher poison which abolished his cultivation, the poison will spread and infect the ground if he was buried, so burning the body was the standard process.

    The punishment elder grinned.

    "What a lively morning", he thought before craning his neck as he walked towards the punishment hall, it was time to clean out the trash.

 Chapter 176 The Gathering At The Academy

    The previous night Daimon already told Liz and ine that Edgar was already dead, so the notice didn''t surprise ine, as for Erin she waspletely indifferent about it.

    After Daimon helped her undo the knot in her heart, she considered Ernest and his little schemes as just a stone in her path.

    Once they reached the guest''s mansion, all the others were already waiting for them at the entrance.

    Calvin had a surprisingly happy expression, yesterday he finally got the chance to be alone with Loren, of course besides chatting and eating some snacks nothing else happened, but he was enjoying the slow process of "courting", instead of simply flirting like he used to.

    "Yo, ss rep, next time let my Ghrish family be the host".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at his seemingly good humor, he stole a gaze at Loren but she was simply happily chatting with Leslie and the other girls.

    "Sure, after returning we''ll celebrate in the famous oasis of the Ghrish family".

    He then turned to see Dana and Gabriel.

    "What did miss Leena said to you, will youe with us to the academy, or is sheing here for you?".

    "She''ll see us there, if it''s not too much to ask let us go with you", said Gabriel with a slightly tired voice, unlike Dana who easily mixed with the group, he was basically left out, Michael spent the day with Haylee and Calvin did the same but with Loren.

    He instead had no one to talk with and when he walked through the streets, the members of the Revy family gave him strange gazes, so after a quick walk, he returned to his room and stayed there.

    "I''m popr among the girls of many families, howe I''m a weirdo here", he wondered.

    Ignoring Gabriel''s emotional state, Daimon looked at Aura and she nodded before using space shift to bring all of them to the academy.

    ¡­

    Of course, Aura took them to a restricted area where no one else could be around without her consent, her office, a portal appeared from which everyone came out.

    Aura took seat in her chair while Erin sat next to her in her desk.

    "Oh, I can feel some annoying guys in the academic city", said Erin with an amused expression.

    With just a single nce she recognized Arthur Jolbaris and Also Leena, besides that there was other two specially attention drawing presences, one radiated battle aura with faint traces of light element, the other one was a raging water-oriented mana.

    Aura frowned, although she didn''t recognize the ones to whom those presences belonged, as the principal of the academy she of course knew which families were staying in those areas.

    "These mana pressurese from the area designated to the "guests" from the blue-sky gxy, if I remember correctly, the ancestor of the Grayer family Gd Grayer, is a half emperor with water affinity".

    Erin nodded, although the human half emperors haven''t been in Lykos in thest one thousand years, given the "alliance" between the beast faction and the blue-sky gxy, they have seen or heard each other through a magic device which allows people in different gxies to talk with each other, in simple words something like a video conference.

    Of course, the consumption in mana crystals is quite high, but when has a half emperor ever worried about mana crystals.

    Erin contemted things for a moment before adding.

    "The other one should be the father of the guy, a certain person turned bald, there are only two half emperors which walk through the knight''s path and have light element battle aura among the humans, one of them has never left the blue-sky gxy for some unknown reasons, so the only option left is Wilbert Ascott".

    Just by the mention of the name, the Rishadies clenched their fists, everyone knew that Leir Ascott already left the white fang gxy, so there is only one reason as to why his father a half emperor woulde here¡­ the offer received by the light faction to the Risha family included a favor from a half emperor, and now there were two of them here.

    The three mothers couldn''t help but give some worried gazes at their daughters, but then their eyes changed targets to Daimon and after seeing he didn''t seem to care about it, they calmed down remembering that now they also had the back up of the both the Revy and Argent families.

    Aura suddenly tapped her finger on the desk, seeing that the elite ss was still idly chatting in her office.

    "You all go to the ceremony hall, there are some announcements to be made before the sses start".

    Mireya then took the initiative to invite Irina, Yvonne and Veronica over to the happy wanderer.

    "If you want, you cane with me in the meanwhile, my father should arrive anytime soon too, so we can have a drink and wait while the kids finish their sses".

    The Rishadies exchanged some gazes between each other before nodding.<sub> </sub>

    "We''ll take up the offer thanks", said Irina.

    Veronica smiled, she ruffled Leslie''s hair earning a slightly annoyed pout from her daughter but she ignored it, as for Anya she just nodded at Liliana before the three mothers left with Mireya.

    Seeing that they were the only ones left Daimon walked towards the door not without saying.

    "We have to go too, or the old man is going to be mad at us".

    Aisha grabbed Daimon''s right arm, while Liz took the left one as they walked along with him, surprisingly even ine tagged along, but Erin stayed back.

    Calvin, Michael, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana presented their respects at Aura and Erin before following Daimon.

    "You two can stay here, I already told Leena toe pick you up", said Aura as she looked at Dana and Gabriel.

    She then stared at Erin and sighed seeing her cunning smiling expression.

    "Every time I see that smile, I really think on getting a new best friend you know".

    Erin giggled, she waved her hand and her figure dissipated as she casted dark curtain on herself, her voice echoed through the room as she left.

    "I will go to take a small walk Ms. Principal, see you around".

    Dana calmly took a seat in one of the couches in Aura''s office, she then took out some of the candies the Rishadies gifted her before offering some to Gabriel.

    "Older brother, you look tired, here this candy tastes like strawberry, the auntie from the fire crane n told me it will help me after using my special lightning".

    Gabriel raised an eyebrow but he still epted his little sister''s offer, then his eyes widened in surprise.

    "How is this a candy, this effect is clearly on the level of a low ranked pill¡­ but the effect it''s smoother", he thought, the candy he was chewing had a simr effect to a mana replenishing pill, although it was a low ranked medicine, a bottle of it still costs a few mana stones.

    "Wait, Dana how many of these candies have you eaten?", he asked to his sister.

    "Mm?", Dana tried to make memory but she only shrugged.

    "I don''t know maybe ten or fifteen this morning, they taste really good".

    Gabriel was speechless, if a novice mage were to eat sixteen mana replenishing pills in a couple of hours, its mana circuits will explode.

    But he inspected Dana and she was clearly fine which meant these candies didn''t put stress on her mana circuits.

    "The fire crane n has a good control over fire, perhaps thatdy is a talented potion master, I will have to tell aunt Leena about thister", he thought.

    Outside of the principal''s office, Daimon and the others took their time to walk towards the ceremony hall, unlike the past week where the students of the other gxies could only be seen here and there, right now there were a bunch of them.

    But what caught their attention was that besides the white uniform wore by the human students of the blue-sky academy, there were at least another four different uniforms.

    Seeing the confusion in the eyes of Daimon and the others, ine took the initiative to exin.

    "You see, this tournament will only be upheld by the members of the elite ss, something which is notmon, specially because the year has barely started, so of course it attracted the attention of members of lower ranked academies".

    Although the four academies were considered the best ones, that was because the principals of their main campuses were all half emperors, but that didn''t mean other academies were worse in terms of their students or resources, it''s just that their principals weren''t as popr as half emperors for a simple reason¡­ they were magus kings.

    "Everyone wants a piece of the treasures this time around huh", mumbled Daimon before shaking his head.

    He guided the rest to the ceremony hall where Aliya and Boris were already waiting for them at the entrance.

    Boris''s serious expression rxed as soon as he caught a glimpse of his students, this weekend was a madness.

    "You brats surely know how to make me wait, perhaps I need to make you all go through a hellish training so that you remember to tell me beforehand that you are still alive", he thought while gritting his teeth.

 Chapter 177 The Start Of The Week

    Calvin which was happily twirling around Loren as he invited her to a tour through the Ghrish family, suddenly felt hiszy schedule being threatened and he immediately noticed the origin of that feeling.

    "Ahem, tutor Ogien, it''s too early to be angry, if you keep doing that, you''ll grow old earlier".

    Boris inwardly sighed, he knew his concerns were unfounded, they spent the weekend at the Revy family after all.

    "Go to your designated ce with your teacher, I have to go meet the other tutors for the announcements of the week, Daimon you are in charge".

    After saying that Boris immediately left, leaving behind a slightly ufortable Aliya, because now besides Liz, there was a second Archmage apanying Daimon.

    Although ine was hiding three of her tails like her sister to not draw too much attention, she looked too simr to Liz for it to be a coincidence, in other words for those who recognized Liz as the champion of the Revy family would also know ine is the n head.

    With Liz things were a bit easier, after all is a well-known fact that the champion of the Revy family is an easy-going person, at least she doesn''t actively take part in conflicts unless there something rted to magic cksmith involved.

    But the n head of the Revy family is the clear opposite of her sister, calctive, serious and cold, that is the image of ine, the world has.

    "Are my lessons and knowledge being evaluated?", is what Aliya was thinking right now, it wasn''t her fault though, given the urgency of the situation about the magic ruin, the teachers had to be selective in the things they taught their students.

    It wasn''t hard for Daimon to notice Aliya''s difort, and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry as he felt something soft and silky rubbing his back.

    "I wonder what would her expression would be, if she knew there is a half emperor observing her too right now", he thought.

    After leaving Aura''s office, Erin was following them like a guardian angel, she of course took advantage of the situation to tease Daimon with her tail from time to time.

    In any case, since Aliya''s lessons weren''t being doubted, Daimon took the initiative to introduce ine to her.

    "Miss Aliya, let me present you, this is ine Revy¡­ Liz''s older sister and at the same time my fianc¨¦".

    ine followed the proper etiquette of a noble, she rose the sides of her dress as she said.

    "It''s a pleasure to meet Daimon''s teacher, I was told a bit about your theory "concept", and it''s quite amazing, I hope you don''t mind me listening to your lessons".

    As soon as her research was praised, Aliya couldn''t help but smile and see ine in a different light as she replied in kind.

    "Miss ine tters me, it would be an honor to have the n head of the Revy family as a listener of my lessons".

    Now that the greets were properly exchanged, Daimon interrupted.

    "We can catch upter at the ssroom, let''s take our seats before the ce gets crowded".

    Everyone nodded and then they went to the area designated for the Elite ss, on the way they saw Alexander giving them some hateful gazes.

    He was having a shitty day, due to a certain notice he received this morning and the fact that he couldn''t use the seats of the elite ss, because his authority and the one of his subordinates was eliminated the moment, he started his own elite ss.

    Which meant there were three free seats, as if everything was perfectly calcted, now there was a chair for Liz, ine and one for Loren, although there was a couch besides the main seats, it would look bad if either the students or two Archmages were sent to seat behind the others.

    As for Aliya, there was a special seat for the teacher of the ss, which wasn''t upied thest time they came for the weing ceremony, so no one had to remain standing up.

    Out of consideration Michael moved to leave space for Liz and ine to be as close to Daimon as possible, and his gesture was well weed by them, as Liz sat on Daimon''sp, to leave one seat for Haylee to apany Michael.

    "Senior lightning assassin is still processing the documents, but she is part of this ss too", she said in a righteous voice.

    Which earned her an usatory gaze from Aisha and ine.

    "You just wanted to sit on Daimon''sp", they thought but didn''t say anything.

    And just like that, Daimon now had Liz sitting on hisp, while Erin was standing behind him with her head leaning on his shoulder, at his left ine and at his right Aisha.<sub> </sub>

    It didn''t take long for the small ceremony of the beginning of the week to start, the vice principals went up the stage, it was the first time Daimon saw the ten of then reunited in one ce.

    But he only recognized half of them Ste, the vice principal from the Risha family, which was now on their side since Ferdinand also came to their side and the two vice principals from the Revy and Argent families, the other five were two from the Jolbaris family which included Alexander''s uncle, then there was also a veiled woman which was clearly affiliated to the army since her uniform had some badges and medals and thest two had no visual characteristics which indicated their races or the forces to which they were affiliated.

    ? Considering the bnce of power in the academy, thest two most likely belonged to the neutral part of the beast faction.

    Daimon couldn''t help but frown at the variety, he didn''t understand the requirements needed to be a vice principal, Ste for example is just a peak mage lord, the others are all early stage Archmages but the woman from the army is surprisingly a peak Archknight!

    "That was unexpected¡­ she is the veiled woman of the admission exams, she wasn''t wearing those badges that day, but that exins why she seemed to know our tutor", thought Daimon.

    Not too many people seemed to be in friendly terms with Boris, so it''s not hard to remember the veiled instructor, which called him "stubborn old man", since the woman was rather polite Daimon didn''t bother to inspect her cultivation back then.

    And she turned out to be a peak Archknight, probably she also worked as the envoy of the army in the academy, the students had to serve in the army for a period of time before the graduation after all.

    Unlike what the students expected the vice principals didn''t say anything, instead they parted way and slightly bowed their heads to the back of the scenery.

    Ste then spoke in a calm but firm voice.

    "Students stand up to greet the principal!".

    As soon as Ste''s words ended, all the students present stood up from their seats, of course the tutors and other staff did the same although they weren''t specifically mentioned, what a joke, they were about to be in the presence of a half emperor.

    A space crack opened from which Aura came out, unlike normally, she was wearing a ck one-piece dress with white decorations, but she alsobined it with a long-sleeved ck coat with the emblem of a w on the back, which she simply let rest on her shoulders.

    Aura slowly walked towards the podium, while both students, teachers, tutors and the vice principals shouted.

    "Greetings to the principal!".

    Once Aura reached the podium every sound stopped, as they respectfully waited for her to speak.

    Daimon chuckled, originally, he thought that the people of this world really over exaggerated, but considering the power and status a half emperor represented, it was as if normal citizens met the president back at earth.

    Although Aura was shorter than Ste, everything was prepared beforehand, from the front it couldn''t be seen but there were a series of stairs, so that she would reach the voice amplification device on the podium.

    "Seats", Aura''s little lips opened as she let out a single world, her voice wasn''t serious nor rxed, but the authority behind it was indisputable.

    Besides the vice principals which were the next in the hierarchy, all the others returned to their seats.

    Then Aura proceeded with the announcements of the week.

    "As everyone already knows, the next week the exploration of the magic ruin will start, to decide who will upy the thirty spots which my Wild w academy has, a tournament will be upheld".

    Aura''s eyes gazed at Daimon for a split of a second before she continued.

    "Due to the special circumstances of the first year''s elite ss, the second years will be the first ones to fight, the matches will start today and the tournament will continue until Thursday".

    "The sses won''t be affected by this tournament as it is scheduled to take ce after the lessons end, the details and rules will be given to all the participants by their respective tutors, all the students are free to go and enjoy the matches".

    "That''s all from my part, vice principal Leeris you are up", after saying that and without any warning, Aura disappeared as she returned to her office.

    Ste had a slightly weird expression as she cleared her throat to draw everyone''s attention.

    "Ahem, we also have visitors from the Ocean''s Heart, Earth Pce and the Furious Whirlwind academies, past week we had some incidents with the visitors from the blue-sky academy, so I will say this beforehand, any conflict will be seriously investigated and both parts will be punished ording to the rules".

    Daimon felt Ste''s gaze piercing him, but he shrugged, he never started the conflict, if others didn''t bother him then he wouldn''t just casually kick their asses just because he could.

 Chapter 178 Negotiations (Part 1)

    After giving some misceneous announcements, Ste finished the meeting and dismissed the students, not without stealing a gaze at Daimon.

    She couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, at the sight of Aisha sitting on hisp while Liz and ine were each hugging one of his arms with happy expressions.

    "All men are the same", she thought as she softly snorted before returning to her only safeguard in this, the library of the academy.

    Aliya didn''t say anything before because the weekly meeting was about to start, but now that it was time for the ss, she red at Haylee which didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes.

    "She is Michael''s fianc¨¦, originally she wasn''t going to join the academy, but given the current circumstances, that changed".

    Haylee stood up from her seat and took the opportunity created by Daimon, to introduce herself, she slightly rose the sides of her dress as she spoke.

    "My name is Haylee Blitz; I''ll be in your care".

    Aliya''s eyes seemed to glow as she evaluated the girl in front of her, others might not know the surname of the Lightning Assassin, since he doesn''t publicly have a force of his own, but due to Boris which shares as master-disciple rtionship with one of the biggest veterans, she of course recognized it.

    "I''m Aliya Rubreum, wee to the elite ss¡­ are you perhaps rted to senior lightning assassin?".

    "Yes, but please keep it a secret".

    Aliya nodded, having a loose tongue is a bad habit after all, but she misunderstood Haylee''s reasons.

    "Grandpa, is for sure flirting with some girls at the academic city, I don''t want angry boyfriends causing Michael troubles¡­ again", thought Haylee as she sighed.

    After the presentations finished Aliya guided them to the 1-S ssroom where Boris was already waiting for them, once everyone took their respective seats, he walked to the front of the ssroom.

    "Brats, things are going to be troublesome¡­ the other academies are demanding to get some spots for the exploration".

    Boris was genuinely angry, the reason as to why Aura left so fast was that the half emperors had to virtually meet the magus kings, normally when there is an event at the biggest academies, it''s like the Olympic games back at earth, people from other academies all over the gxy cane if they want as ultimately, it''s an ie for the academy.

    But this time things were different, the strongest magus kings actually arranged a meeting with the representatives of the wild w academy in Lykos, so the principals of the three academies mentioned by Ste were the ones that came to discus things with the three half emperors of the biggest families.

    Daimon couldn''t help but gaze at Erin which was leisurely floating behind Daimon while wagging her tail.

    "Are you sure you don''t need to attend something?", he asked in a voice only Erin could hear, only to see her cunningly smile as she moved her right index finger sidewards.

    "No, no, no, what would the fun be in openly letting Arthur know that Leena is on our side before it is obligatory needed".

    "Currently there are only three magus kings which stand on equal power half emperors without sacrificing their subordinates, so only three half emperors are needed to contain them just in case, so I asked Leena to take my ce this time, so that Arthur Jolbaris will believe he''s got the higher ground, in any case in a rare asion our stand is the same".

    Erin then threw a kiss at Daimon as she winked.

    "Of course, the main reason is that like this, I can be with my Daimon while that old wolf woman can''t ?".

    ¡­

    While Daimon was inwardly chuckling at Erin''s words, at an unknown distance above the main campus of the wild w academy, where no one on the ground could catch a glimpse of them, there were two groups of three people each floating at about fifteen meters from the other.

    One group was conformed by Aura, Leena and Arthur Jolbaris, as for the other one, its members were a blue haired woman which had her eyes closed wearing a warrior attire, a tall man with a muscr figure, brown hair and a short beard andstly an erudite looking slim green haired young man.

    "So, what bad wind brought you three here, don''t tell me you want to get your ass handed by Erin again, Lars?", asked Aura in her usual indifferent voice.

    The erudite frowned, green mana started leaking out of his body as he gave Aura a sharp gaze, which she of course answered by letting some of her mana run wild too.

    Two different lights illuminated the sky one light green and the other one silver colored, but then the bearded man also let out his brown mana as he joined hands to suppress Aura.<sub> </sub>

    "Stop it you two, my ocean heart academy didn''te here to fight, if you start a battle then be sure I won''t step in unless you are about to die".

    The calm voice of the blue haired woman echoed through the sky making the other two guys stop, but judging by their expressions they weren''t convinced at all, especially because Aura looked at them with disdain.

    Arthur then stepped in to "mediate", since his Jolbaris family had the highest power out of all the presents, thanks to the two half emperors representing it.

    "Ocean Queen Lydia, is still the voice of reason among the magus kings, let''s not waste each other''s time, you three for sure want a spot in the uing exploration, but let me remind you the rules epted by all the forces".

    "Only the three strongest forces of the beast faction which are part of the council had the right to demand a spot to enter the ruins or realms found by the others, and you three rejected the invitation to be part of the council if my memory doesn''t fail me".

    The magic ruin was found at the same time by members of the human, beast, vampire and demon races, but all of them were affiliated to the four biggest academies, so the magus kings and their academies had no right to explore it.

    Before the erudite or the bearded man could speak, the principal of the Ocean Heart academy, Lydia Frost slowly took out a small hand sized jade box from her storage ring.

    She then showed the content to Aura, Leena and Arthur, it was a blue flower which''s petals seemed to be made out of crystal, as soon as the jade box opened, the temperature on the surrounding area dropped.

    "The rules only says that we can''t demand a spot, but buying one isn''t prohibited, my Ocean Heart academy is offering this snow lotus from the frozen dew pond in exchange for a spot in the exploration, one for a spot in the first years and one for spot in the second years".

    Aura''s eyes glowed for a second, to form an academy not only strength was needed, each academy had its own sacred grounds, ces which were only essible by the cr¨¨me of the crop, which granted some benefits to them.

    The frozen dew pond mentioned by Lydia is one of those ces, and the snow lotus in her hands is a magic flower which only blooms once every one thousand years in that ce, it''s one of the biggest treasures in Lydia''s academy.

    Lydia saw that her offer caught the attention of the three half emperors and she borated on it.

    "If refined by an early-stage Arch ranked mage with water or ice affinities, this lotus can immediately help it advance a minor realm and also increase its affinity with ice or water elements".

    Aura''s interest in the snow lotus immediately increased, there was one early stage Archmage in the family, ine, but she didn''t say nor show her interest in her face, she instead told Erin what was happening through their mental connection.

    Then the erudite and the bearded guys also took out their respective treasures, a bottle of two thousand years old stctite milk, a condensation of the mana produced by an area rich in earth element, an elixir naturally produced in the Gaia cave of the earth pce academy.

    And a piece of a thunder nimbus vine, an umtion of wind and lightning mana produced in the Storm region of the furious whirlwind academy, the three treasures were at the peak of the Arch ranks, and on top of that they have never been avable in the market.

    Both Arthur and Leena were immediately attracted by the thunder nimbus vine, the other two things were also incredibly valuable things, but couldn''t be directly used by them or their offspring.

    Unfortunately, before they could ept the offer of the erudite man, Aura''s voice made them speechless.

    "The offers are interesting indeed, but unfortunately for you three the only one who has the right to give you a spot in the exploration is the captain of each team, it''s an agreement signed by all the half emperors".

    Arthur immediately gritted his teeth remembering how her son wasn''t the first ranked of the elite ss right now, as for the second year the son of his sister was still fighting for the captain''s position with someone from the Argent family.

    The two magus kings and the magus queen frowned, this information was exclusive of half emperors, of course Daimon, his family, his ssmates, Aliya and Boris also knew it, but they three didn''t so their ns had to change.

    Lydia kept the lotus in her storage ring again as she nodded.

    "Very well, if that''s the case, we will wait for the captain of each team to be decided and then we''ll negotiate with the respective family backing it".

    But then Aura suddenly shook her head before saying.

    "There is no need for that, at least not for the spots in the first year''s team, I can represent the captain to ept the offer right now".

    "What!", Arthur, the erudite and the bearded guy eximed at the same time, while Lydia and Leena remained silent, by different reasons of course.

    Lydia knew Aura will never brag about anyone which wasn''t her, as for Leena¡­ she knew Daimon was a monster which was peerless among those in his same group of age, so she didn''t doubt even for a second that he was going to win in the tournament, if not she wouldn''t have epted to leave Dana in his care after all.

 Chapter 179 Negotiations (Part 2)

    The erudite looking guy which''s name is Lars Farens frowned at Aura''s words, but he still decided to clear his doubts.

    "If we ept your deal what will the conditions be?".

    Aura inwardly smirked but on the surface, she kept her calm expression.

    "Of course, you''ll have to pay beforehand, as it is normally done between half emperors, the one asking for the favor has to show some "goodwill", I''m sure even a sly serpent like you know that, Lars".

    Lars felt a vein popping on his neck but he endured the urge he had of start a fight and instead simply shook his head.

    "Forget it then, I will wait for the captain of the team to be decided", he said as he coldly snorted.

    The brown-haired muscly guy, Maxim Limestone nodded agreeing with Lars, although Aura was sure to return them the payment in case the captain, she spoke about lost, paying beforehand would be the same as admitting defeat and lowering himself.

    Who among the presents wasn''t a powerhouse, which''s years lived aren''t in the four digits, they all had their respective prides, if they were worthy to have them was apletely different story though.

    Aura smirked, they reacted just like Erin told her they would, so she continued with the next step of the n.

    "That''s perfect by me, but since you are making me waste my time as I could be doing something more important right now".

    "Like being in between that old vixen and Daimon", she mentally added before continuing.

    "Once my disciple crushes the idiots that defy him on the tournament, if you want the spot the price will be doubled, for both first and second year spots".

    Needless to say, but Aura''s words were like adding fuel to the fire, even Lydia couldn''t help but frown but then she seemed to contemte things before she decided to take the bullet.

    While inwardly sighing she took out the two jade cases and made them float towards Aura.

    "I ept the deal¡­ with these two snow lotuses I pay for one spot in both teams".

    Aura opened the jade cases and inspected the lotuses with her mana sense before nodding and keeping them in his storage ring.

    "As expected of the "only" reasonable Magus Queen, now if you excuse me, I have other things to do so I will take my leave, if you want you can stay to see the tournament in my academy".

    Aura''s eyes glowed with a sharp light as she looked at Lars and Maxim before saying.

    "If you cause even the slightest trouble, don''t me me for being ruthless", then without waiting for them to answer, Aura used space shift and disappeared leaving behind two magus kings whose lungs were filled with anger.

    Arthur was also displeased with the result, if Daimon truly became the captain, then his Jolbaris family would lose a big opportunity, if he gives the two pieces of thunder nimbus vine to his son, then his lightning will for sure be the strongest in the story of the ster chart, there might even be a chance for him to develop wind affinity and be a rare dual element mage!

    "I must speak with that boy, even if his tastes are¡­ weird, he is still my son and the hope of my Jolbaris family", thought Arthur with a weird expression on his face.

    Leena followed Aura not too long after, although she took Arthur''s "side", she remained silent all the time, but in her heart, she was already thinking on a series of things she could use to exchange for one piece of the thunder nimbus vine which Daimon was sure to get, that is if the furious whirlwind academy wanted a spot in the exploration of the first years course.

    As for Lydia, Maxim and Lars they soon descended from the sky and went to their respective mansions in the guest''s area of the academic city to wait for the tournament to start.

    ¡­

    Back at the main campus of the wild w academy, more urately in the 1-S ssroom, Daimon was grinning as he leaned his back against his chair, what could be better than a piece of cake falling from the sky.

    Without doing anything he good a nice gift for ine in the form of a snow lotus, as for the second one its ownership wasn''t secured, but one person could only refine one every one thousand years anyway, so if he were to get the second one, he will probably change it for some other resources ording to his needs.<sub> </sub>

    He has seen ine focusing more in her magic cultivation in the past eight years, but to make up for one hundred years of dedicating her life to manage the n, she still needed a couple of years more to advance to the middle stage of the Archmage realm, and that is with the help of the grimoire Daimon gave her.

    So, the snow lotus was going to be a perfect gift for her, that''s why Aura and Erin only included Daimon and Aisha in their previous conversation leaving aside both Liz and ine.

    The idea of doubling the price came from Daimon of course, since he didn''t know who were the ones fighting for the captainship of the second-year team, then he wanted to secure one thunder nimbus vine for him and one for his mother of course.

    Unfortunately, the highest ranked magic herbs which could be found in the whole ster chart were peak Arch ranked ones, the same applied for the system, and they weren''t exactly effective for half emperors, or he would have tried to get another piece of the thunder nimbus vine for Aura, her affinity was a fusion of wind and lightning after all.

    Boris suddenly felt his sigil lector received a message so he took it out and read it before letting out a sigh of relief.

    "Apparently the problem has been solved, the principal is calling me so I wille for you all when the lesson finishes so we can go observe the tournament", said before as he left the ssroom.

    Now that Boris was gone, Aliya started with the lesson.

    "As you heard other academies havee, I''m pretty sure you already know that they aren''t ruled by a half emperor like the four biggest academies, but by magus kings and queens, the subject of today''s lesson is coincidentally rted to the path chosen to be a magus king".

    Aliya then stood up from her seat and walked towards the chalkboard before writing something on it.

    "Can any of you give me a small exnation of what is a mana circuit?".

    Surprisingly Haylee took the chance to answer.

    "Mana circuits are a series of invisible non-physical "channels" which exist inside of all the living beings, inbination with a magic core, the mana circuits are what one need to use magic or battle aura, the most eptedparison is Cardiovascr system conformed by the heart which is in this case would be the magic core, the veins and arteries which would be the mana circuits".

    Aliya nodded, Haylee''s answer was quiteplete and it wasn''t directly taken out of a book, instead she exined it with her own words which was praise worthy considering she is just a one-star mage, and the younger generation doesn''t tend to investigate and instead just focuses in mana capacity or non-chant casting.

    "Well exined, if I were to add something to what Haylee said, it would be that the mana flow which you "saw" in the previous ss, follows the path traced by your mana circuits, also everyone''s mana circuits are different, some have more some have less, and not all the circuits are the same".

    "For example, for knights, the mana circuits in their bodies focus in the internal organs, muscles and the skin, which results in the incredible physical strength they can excel".

    "For mages, their mana circuits tend to focus in the head, the area below the navel and the chest".

    Daimon was rather interested in Aliya''s exnation, due to his truth seeker eyes, he could see the mana flow, just like Yvonne, but his eyes were different in the aspect that the more mana he directed towards them, the more detailed things in his field of vision would be, in other words the truth seeker eyes not only focused in one aspect of vision, distance, details, properties, secrets, everything will be unfolded by them with the correct amount of mana of course.

    Once the idea was born in his mind, he couldn''t help but want to give it a try, a dim light glowed in his violent amethyst eyes as Daimon circted mana from his core to his eyes, being careful so that others wouldn''t notice a sudden outburst of it.

    Of course, Aisha, Liz and ine noticed it, Aisha because she was at his face from up- close so she noticed the violet light which was glowing in his eyes, as for the two Revy sisters they are Archmages and soulmates so they were sensitive towards Daimon''s mana, even if it was an internal process.

    But they didn''t interrupt him, Daimon kept looking at his own hand to notice how his vision was changing with the umtion of mana on his eyes.

    Once Daimon injected enough mana to cast at least thirty, two star ranked spells, his vision changed, he looked at his hand and instead of seeing flesh and his mana flow, he saw four different series of circuits.

    First a series of blue "veins" in which mana circted, second series of them which were red colored instead of blue, although in a small quantity, there was battle aura circting through them, probably because unlike mana which always is circting in the body of both mages and knights by nature, battle aura only automatically circtes through the body of knights on the knight lord realm and above.

    Among those red and blue circuits there were some parts which were instead gray colored as if they were lifeless, in fact only about five percent of the blue circuits was illuminated, as for the red circuits about ten percent seemed to be "active".

    Those two series of mana circuits were expected, mana and battle aura repel each other so it was normal for them to circte through different channels after all and a one star ranked mage but what did surprise him was the fourth type, which unlike the others instead of a circuit was a single line about three times wider than the other two, also its color was ck with red borders.

    "Now that is a familiar tone", he thought, that''s right the fourth type had the same colors of his magic core.

 Chapter 180 A New Type Of Skill

    Just when Daimon was about to follow the path traced by his mana circuits, the unmistakable sound of a notification rang in his ears.

    [Ding]

    [A new type of skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [The host has sessfully adapted a skill from the system to fit his needs creating a "Independent skill"]

    Daimon then changed to the skill tree tab and saw a yellow "!" symbol blinking under the skill truth seeker eyes, after clicking on it a small list disyed below the skill.

    [Independent skill unnamed: Depending on the amount of energy injected in the mana circuits of the eyes, the host will be able to see the differentyers of the visual spectrum]

    For a split of a second Daimon was speechless, so far, he has treated the skills as a "constant," during the past years he consumed the respective amount of mana or AP depending on the case and the skill was activated, it was as simple as that.

    That''s why he didn''t put all the eggs in one basket and instead also focused in learning spells, which were able to be molded given the proper training, just like how Aisha changed the one-star spell "lightning bolt" to produce a shockwave which allowed her to surprise the instructor back at the admission exams.

    "Am I too naive, or perhaps is my knowledge too shallow and that''s why I didn''t think on trying this earlier?", thought Daimon.

    But then he immediately discarded that thought, unlike spells which could be overcharged making them stronger but unstable, the skills didn''t have that property, at least the few times he has tried nothing happened, on the other hand he hasn''t been in the need to do it.

    "What changed¡­", Daimon''s eyes suddenly glowed, he harshly turned around and looked at Yvonne.

    The truth seeker eyes allowed him to see hidden things or inspect the details of something, but he never focused in the mana flow until he met Yvonne, after she told him how "special" was his mana flowpared to others, he tried and then managed to see his mana flow.

    The other situation he could think of was the inscription engraved where Dimas was imprisoned, he tried to decipher it a couple of times but it didn''t work.

    Daimon chuckled remembering Evangeline''s words at the huge change after overlord''s pride leveled up.

    "The system will register your desires, experiences and actions and create a path ording to them".

    "So, what was not possible before became possible because I wanted it, in other words I''m evolving due to my interactions with others".

    There was also another thing which has been bugging him about skills, some of them had a "frame", like the skills rted to an emotion, "Terror Contractor" and "Desperation Creator", had dim ck light surrounding their names, as for "Core Synchrony" the colors were a mix between golden and purple, not only that but it was granted the ssification of "Irregr Skill".

    And apparently, he now discovered another ssification in the form of an "Independent Skill".

    Having reached a vague conclusion of it, and since Evangeline wasn''t saying anything, Daimon realized this was some of that information she as the manager of the system was "restricted" to speak about, so there was no point in asking her.

    "I need to further investigate this, for the time being let''s give this skill a proper name".

    [Ding]

    [The skill will be registered under the name "Infinity Eye" Y/N]

    With a little nod, Daimon confirmed it as he was lost in his thoughts.

    Evangeline which was listening to his thoughts from her isted space couldn''t help but feel a bit afraid and expectant.

    "What a monster¡­ a kid which hasn''t even discovered his own path nor started to walk in one of the ones previously created, is actually wearing down those things", she mumbled as she gazed at the sky of her space where there were countless of golden spiked chains, gathered around something creating a cocoon of chains.

    Among them there were thin,rge, wide, long chains, a variety of all forms and sizes, all of them were imposing, but now among thatplicated of chains there was one in which small ck spots had started appearing, as if it was being corroded from the inside.

    Evangeline thenughed out loud, as a proudful expression flourished in her face which was blurred, making it impossible for anyone to see it in detail.

    "Truly worthy to be my host!".

    After saying that, the space surrounding Evangeline trembled and then a small piece of the blurriness that covered her body faded, leaving some strands of ash-silver hair to be visible.<sub> </sub>

    Once the tremble finished, Evangeline touched the strands of her hair which were now visible and after ying with them for a couple of seconds, she saw the notification which appeared in front of her.

    With a wave of her hand the notification exploded, but then her legs seemed to lose their stand almost making her fall on her ass.

    "Sigh, this troublesome "outstanding" host of mine surely likes to make this poordy overwork", after mumbling some insults like "pervert", "skirt chaser" and the like, Evangelineid down and fell asleep.

    Oblivious to all the changes that his "obvious" deduction caused, Daimon focused his attention in Aliya''s lesson again, luckily although what happened took some time to describe it only took one minute or so to happen.

    "Can anyone of you tell me which is stronger, a magus king or a half emperor?", asked Aliya as she pointed at Calvin.

    The corner of Calvin''s mouth trembled.

    "I know Haylee which isn''t even part of the ss, answered the previous one¡­ but why did you have to choose me", he thought before clearing his throat.

    "Ahem, my money would be on the half emperor".

    "Sit down Calvin", said Aliya as she sighed.

    "Anyone else?".

    Michael gave Calvin a disdainful gaze as he took the initiative to answer this time.

    "The answer is "undefined", not all the half emperors are equally strong and the same applies to magus kings".

    Aliya nodded with an approving expression on her face.

    "That''s right, let''s focus in the magus kings first, some of them are at the same level of the Arch ranks, but others had managed to surpass that limit and reach a strength in the same category as a half emperor".

    "A clear example of that would be the principals of the three academies, in previous quarrels they have fought in equal standing with half emperors, or even managing to get the upper hand against them without the need to sacrifice their subjects, like the principals from the Ocean Heart and Earth Pce academies".

    "That being said, a magus king has a huge disadvantage in a fight with a half emperor, since theyck a domain, they can''t automatically absorb mana to replenish their reserves, although they have a way to bypass that obstacle, their subjects gather mana and send it to them, the process is much slowerpared to when a domain is involved".

    Aliya then stopped the lesson for a moment as she drank a sip from the bottle which hangs of her waist, before continuing.

    "Unlike the method to be a half emperor, the one to be a magus king is actually avable to the public, as long as a mage lord joins their academies and signs a confidentiality contract, then they can easily be magus kings, any ideas of why that happens¡­ Daimon?".

    Aliya noticed Daimon wasn''t paying attention to her lesson a moment ago, so she decided to get back at him a bit, although he is the student, she is the most eager to work with in potion brewing, not paying attention in the ss is something she who takes pride in her knowledge and profession as a teacher doesn''t like.

    Daimon noticed the slightly annoyed gaze of Aliya and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he learned something really important a moment ago thanks to her mentioning the mana circuits, but apparently, he dazed off enough for Aliya to notice it.

    Not only that, he felt the two amused gazes on his back, one of them was definitely Liz and the other one was surprisingly ine.

    "Laughing at your husband''s misfortune, watch how I take care of you twoter", he thought before answering.

    "They want more magus kings to be born, not only for the power''s bnce but to study why some are able to surpass the limit of the Arch ranks, while others can''t, if we are being subject, bing a magus king does increase the battle prowess, lifespan, mana capacity and the strength of spells, so ultimately it is an advance".

    "While others might consider magus kings failures, I think that is not an iron rule, but more of a personal issue¡­ wasn''t the first knight also called a failure for not being able to use magic, and now there are half emperors which walk in the knight path".

    Aliya''s slight bad mood immediately faded as she listened to Daimon''s answer, she couldn''t help but nod in recognition, is quite praise worthy for someone of the young generation to have a decent understanding of the bigger picture after all.

    Knights originally could only fight in closebat and mages despised and even chased them, due to the versatility of their spells, but then one of the students of the first knight barged into one of the bases of those guys and with a wave of his sword he cut in half a whole city with barriers, walls and other defensive formations.

    That''s how people learned that battle Aura was mana''s weakness, and also that''s how martial arts, the substitute of spells for knights were invented.

    In other words, in this world of magic everything is possible.

 Chapter 181 Aliyaâ€™s Curiosity

    After giving Daimon a gaze, like saying "Don''t distract yourself in my ss", she continued with her lesson.

    Daimon was rather amused by her attitude, she seemed to take her job as a teacher quite seriously, but that is something praise worthy, after losing the capacity to use magic she didn''t give up and instead put her all in research and investigation, to the point that she managed to understand the theory of "concepts".

    Something even the Greenwich Sage haven''t thought about, was discovered by a magicless girl which has problems in her daily life due to a wound in her magic core, Aliya was the perfect example of the saying "necessity brings out talent".

    Aliya looked in her storage ring before taking and then putting on some kind of gloves which let her fingers visible.

    "These are called "mana sensing gloves", and they are the next best option after the incredibly rare eye spells", Aliya couldn''t help but steal a couple of gazes at Yvonne making her turn her face away as she feigned ignorance.

    One of those times when Richard was drinking with Boris, his tongue slipped and he casually bragged about his granddaughter, because unlike him, Yvonne had that trait since her birth.

    Her ability to see the mana flow of things wasn''t exactly an eye spell but something along the lines of pupils which were hyper sensible to mana, in any case, since that moment Aliya wanted Richard to help her in some of her experiments.

    As an alchemist it would be a dreame true for her to be able to see the mana inside of the materials, as many things affect the quality of a potion, even the slightest detail might drastically increase or decrease the result.

    Unfortunately for her Richardcked the patience and seriousness needed to be an alchemist, so he always declined her invitation, but now that Yvonne is her student, she has been trying to find the opportunity to organize a "help your teacher brew a potion" ss.

    Normally magic equipment had a formation engraved so that the owner can inject mana into it, which works also as a safety measure, like the key of a car, but Aliya''s gloves were adapted to fit her condition.

    She inserted a mana crystal in a slot on the back of each glove before cing her left hand on the chalkboard, the lines around the source of power of the gloves glowed for a couple of seconds, before something which Daimon could only describe as a 3D model was projected above her right hand.

    Daimon''s eyes slightly widened, as he recognized the rtive form of the thing projected by the gloves.

    "Mana circuits¡­ no, only living beings have mana circuits, but they are really simr", he thought.

    "These gloves have two levels of the same function, by using mana to produce small nearly undetectable vibrations, which at contact create an image of the physical structure of things, that is the first level, for the second one I need a volunteer, pleasee to the front of the ss Daimon".

    "How is that a volunteer", thought Daimon but he still stood up and walked towards the front of the ssroom.

    "Please uncover your arms".

    Daimon did as she asked and folded the sleeves of his jacket letting his well-toned arms in in view.

    Aliya then grabbed Daimon''s forearm with her hand before the gloves started doing their job.

    "What a curious feeling", thought Daimon, leaving aside the soft and nearly bordering zero strength grip of Aliya, as the gloves worked, he had a slightly ticklish sensation running through his arm.

    That being said, the bracelet of the god of mischief properly blocked the effect of the gloves so that others could only see what Daimon wanted them to see.

    After a couple of seconds, a projection of the inside of Daimon''s arm appeared for everyone to see, besides the bones which were clearly thicker than normal ones, there was also a detailed image of his muscles which were perfectlypacted and a blurry image of some mana circuits here and there.

    Aliya tried to tighten her grip on Daimon''s arm but she noticed nothing happened.

    "How is this muscr tissue¡­ this feels like steel wires while also maintaining the flexibility of a muscle unlike the races which develop hard bodies like the lizardmen", she thought.

    At this point everyone supposed Daimon''s characteristics as a variant was his body, which could rival the one of a knight while he was a mage, but it was different knowing it and feeling it in first hand like Aliya was doing right now.

    Aliya then remembered the scene when Daimon sent flying Leir Ascott with a single punch.

    "No wonder the brat from the Ascott family was no match for him¡­ with a body like this while being only in the first star mage realm, I seriously doubt anyone below the seven-star realm, be it mage or knight".

    "Ahem, miss Aliya?".<sub> </sub>

    Aliya was suddenly brought back to reality by Aisha''s voice, she then looked at her hands which were unconsciously moving all over Daimon''s arm as if she was massaging it.

    Daimon thought she would feel shy or something along the lines, but instead of that, the way Aliya looked at him, was as if she had found some kind of rare mythical beast, the curiosity in her eyes was overflowing.

    She only let go of his arm after inspecting the image projected by the glove for a couple more of seconds, but the result was unsatisfying, unfortunately the image created wasn''t too detailed nor exact and it couldn''t be amplified.

    To be put in simple words it was like an inferior version of an anatomic ultrasound, but it was understandable, because the mana in the body interfered, that is also why the mana circuits were blurred and only the most external ones were slightly visible.

    Even the mana sense of a half emperor which can fully scan the physical body of someone, isn''t capable of mapping the mana circuits in its own body let alone the bodies of others.

    In the history of the ster chart there were records of someone from1 the now tenth noble demon n, the race called "evil eye" demons, which''s founder was able to see the mana circuits of members of his and other demon races.

    And only that earned him the title of venerable demon alchemist, he was able to see the affectations caused by years of bad habits and create pills to specifically cure them, giving old tired demons who had nearly spent their potentials have another chance to advance and extend their lives.

    That''s why the evil eye n which''s surname is Arashiel, is rumored to be one of the three strongest families with the highest number of peak Arch ranks in the ten demon ns, because a lot of ancestors of other minor demon races swore their loyalty in exchange to be treated.

    Then Aliya''s happy mood was interrupted by a sudden cracking noise, she slowly turned her face towards the back of her hands just to see the mana crystal which was working as the power source of the gloves shattering and falling to the ground.

    Normally mana without any attribute has a light blue color and mana stones and crystals are the same, but the broken pieces of the mana crystal had turned lifeless gray while also bing fragile as the pieces broke again as they touched the ground.

    ¡­

    Aliya was speechless, unlike mana stones, mana crystals which are used to power up formations and treasures from the Arch ranks, can replenish the energy stored inside of them after a long time inside a mana gathering formation, that way the crystal won''t disappear.

    Of course, the quality of the crystal will suffer with each one of those cycles as it isn''t a naturally formed mana crystal, but that is amon practice among the lower ranked families to not go bankrupt.

    Aliya felt her heart bleeding a bit, low ranked mana crystals are easy to get, the market and the mines are full of them, middle can be found with some work or connections, while high and the extremely rare peak quality ones are kept by the families that mine them, since some things like the most powerful defensive formations require a certain purity in the mana used to power them.

    "What is your body made of¡­ those were two new middle ranked quality mana crystals, and just to make a projection of an arm they broke", she mumbled, but this only made her curiosity about towards Daimon to grow.

    Daimon scratched the back of his head, the Aliya of right now reminded him of those guys who believed in aliens back at earth, she was looking at him as if he was some kind of unidentified magical creature.

    "Ahem, here these ones should be of the same quality", said Daimon as he handed Aliya a couple of mana crystals, he took out of his storage ring.

    After epting the crystals from Daimon, Aliya this time put low ranked ones on the gloves and then all the other students had their turn, there were others with different internal body structures but nothing as abnormal as Daimon.

    For example, Leslie''s bones were thinnerpared to even her cousins from bird races, something Yvonne immediately took advantage to tease her saying, "Even your bones are t Leslie".

    Aisha''s body was also simr to Daimon''s but in a lower level, which was understandable considering she hasn''t light up her life spark yet to get the constitution her grimoire should give her.

    "I will give my new eye skill a try with Aura", thought Daimon remembering the mystery about her other form.

    There was also another case, but this time it was "artificial", when it was Michael''s turn, Aliya inspected his right leg, and the bones were definitely sturdier even though his constitution is slim, the reason was simple, his master made him run until his bones literally broke, before he used pills and potion to recover before repeating the process, it was a requirement for him to use his original movement spell.

    Before anyone noticed the lesson ended, but as they were about to leave the ssroom to eat together, two exalted voices came from outside.

    "What the hell do you want here Kirik!".

    "Get¡­ lost".

    Leslie and Liliana immediately stood up from their seats and ran towards the door, with somewhat worried expressions, those voices belonged to their mothers and the name Kirik was quite familiar for Leslie, since it was the name of her father.

 Chapter 182 Galad Grayer & Wilbert Ascott

    Before Leslie and Liliana could open the door of the ssroom, Yvonne grabbed them by their shoulders stopping them in the spot.

    "Calm down you two¡­ miss Aura is watching over the academy, and I''m sure she would have stepped in if needed, the ssroom can withstand the pressure and attacks of Arch ranks so let''s not give more troubles to our mothers".

    Liliana and Leslie exchanged gazes before they both nodded.

    "Thanks, Yvi¡­ I got a bit too excited", said Leslie as she hugged Yvonne, she still hasn''t forgotten her father for ignoring what happened to her older sister, just because she wasn''t her real sister, that and because he wanted to hold onto of the dius family''s leg of course.

    Liliana was the same but, in her case, the one she addressed as her eldest brother was actually her mother''s little cousin which grew with her, due to the small gap in age they treated each other as siblings.

    Daimon who listened to Yvonne''s reason felt a bit weird, although her logic was correct, Aura wasn''t in the academy, he couldn''t feel her presence so she had to be at least one thousand kilometers away from his current position.

    p He stood up and then walked towards the Risha sisters, Daimon didn''t stop and instead passed them but not without saying.</anda>

    "Come, let''s teach those two a small lesson just like it happened with Ferdinand".

    Yvonne chuckled listening to Daimon calling her father by his first name, she was still dying of curiosity about what could have he told him, to make him suddenly be a decent "father", to the point that Ferdinand has been sending her potions, pills and even equipmenttely.

    "If it''s him then¡­ everything is possible", she thought looking at the wide proud back of the ck-haired youth in front of her.

    But then she saw how the distance between them grew as Daimon kept walking and she felt motivated, for some unknown reason she felt that if she was left behind, it would be something she would regret all her life.

    "Let''s go", Yvonne grabbed Liliana and Leslie and followed Daimon, which made Aisha who was holding onto Daimon''s right arm look at her from the corner of her eyes.

    It was just a peek, something Yvonne didn''t notice but there was a small smile on the corner of Aisha''s mouth.

    The first one to jump to the action was of course Calvin, he literally jumped from his seat which was at one of the corners of the backside of the ssroom, all the way to the front before he shouted at Michael.

    "Oi, shrimp, what the hell are you doing still sitting, are you really going to let the girls of the ss stand in front of you, don''t be a sissy and move your ass!".

    Michael felt a vein popping on his neck, he was of course going to participate in what was about to happen, Calvin just happened to react faster this time.

    "Shut up, and if someone here is a sissy, I think it would be the guy who is still single", said Michael as he looked at Haylee.

    Calvin''s eyes nearly became red like an angered beast, Michael just added salt to the wound, but then he looked at Loren and the angel like image he had of her was enough to bring peace to his heart.

    "If I wanted my old man would have arranged a marriage for me, but I decided to be a true man and look for my fated partner", he said in an upright voice, shamelessly ignoring the fact that he just wanted to fool around with a lot of girls before having to marry some nobledy.

    While those two were busy arguing with each other, Loren and Haylee stared at each other before exchanging a little nod as if they were saying "I get you".

    After opening the door Daimon raised an eyebrow, besides the crowd formed by some students from all the academies which were watching the "show", Irina, Veronica and Anya were blocking the way of two guys.

    One of them was tall and bulky, with long gray-blue hair, the other one was slim, no it would be more urate to say he wasnky and had short orangish hair.

    "A middle stage Archknight and a middle stage Archmage¡­ well, at least is easy to know who is who", thought Daimon, those two were Leslie and Liliana''s fathers.

    Still Daimon didn''t immediately interfere, due to the suppressing formation of the academy, the highest strength usable within the campus and the academic city was the early-stage Arch rank, and surprisingly the three mothers were holding their ground against the two middle Arch ranks.

    Of course, they weren''t openly fighting yet, the air trembling between the two groups made clear they were just making their mana sh.

    While the other students couldn''t see nor feel anything, for Daimon the scene was simr to what happened back then when Erin and Aura suppressed Disaster with their mana.

    The mana of the two guys was clearly bigger and denser, but it still didn''t manage to gain even a centimeter of advantage in front of the tricolored agglomeration formed by Irina, Veronica and Anya.

    "Those three are really used to work together", thought Daimon, ording to Yvonne their mothers knew each other since they were about five years old, after two hundred years they could fight whilepletely trusting their backs to each other, to the point that when one was attacked other defended.

    And their mana reflected that too, whenever the mana of the two guys tried to advance, Anya and Veronica''s did the same while Irina''s one pushed from behindpensating for the difference in strength.

    Something truly praise worthy, crossing realms became harder with each realm, and a recently ascended middle Arch rank is normally able to suppress at least five early-stage Arch ranks, and yet three early Archmages were keeping on with two middle stage ones.<sub> </sub>

    The bulky gray haired gritted his teeth before giving Anya a hateful gaze.

    "Anya¡­ that girl has duties with the family".

    In a rare asion Anya''s normal expressionless face, actually showed one feeling, disgust.

    "Screw you Horace, all this time while you were living under the skirt of that bitch, I spent thest five years fighting against beasts in the frozen wastnds, you are no match for me now".

    Thenky guy previously called Kirik, interrupted, his voice was strangely high pitched, not feminine it was more like nails scratching a chalkboard.

    "Humph, that''s why I told you that letting these three interact with each other would only lead to problems!".

    Veronica couldn''t help butugh out loud, ignoring the seriousness of the situation she mocked Kirik.

    "For having stolen all the resources of the family for yourself, you haven''t been able to dispel my "Idiot''s retribution potion", that''s what you deserve for being ap dog for the dius family".

    Kirik nearly lost it as Veronica rubbed salt on the wound, back then since the first moment he started being in friendly terms with the dius family, she started adding some kind of potion to his food and drinks.

    His previously slim but athletic figure changed to anky one, and what was worse was that his voice became something more simr to the chirps of a carrion bird.

    No matter how many alchemists or doctors he visited no one knew how to cure him, which was perfectly normal considering all the time of researching it took Veronica to understand how to alter the innate characteristics of the people of the fire crane n, from which she derived the potion she used on herself and the one she gave her daughter.

    Kirik gritted his teeth.

    "If that bastard Ferdinand wouldn''t have lost his mind, we could have suppressed these three bitched and get this whole situation over with, so that we can get that thing to reach the peak stage of the Arch rank", he thought before he looked backwards.

    "Esteemed seniors, please lend us a hand".

    Daimon''s sixth sense immediately warned, he looked back and saw Erin nodding at him before he focused his attention on the battle again.

    Then the world seemed to stop for a second as two heavy pressures fell on the 1-S ssroom and the surrounding area, even without being specifically targeted, some of the students which were watching the show directly fainted¡­ these were the mana pressures of two half emperors, even suppressed they were in a different levelpared to Arch ranks.

    A couple of people from the spectators left the crowd, a brown haired "young" man, with green eyes wearing casual clothes, his eyes reflected raw disdain towards Kirik and Horace, that is Gd Grayer, the other one was a solemn looking bearded man with dirty blond hair who seemed to be in his thirties fully d in a silver armor and a longsword with its scabbard hanging from his waist, faint traces of light yellow battle aura shed around him from time to time, giving his identity as Wilbert Ascott away.

    The brown-haired young man sinisterlyughed as he looked at Irina, Veronica and Anya.

    "You people from the beast faction seem to have problems controlling your women, if you want, my dius family won''t mind lending you a hand to teach you a couple of tricks kekeke".

    Wilbert frowned but he didn''t say anything, they weren''t in the blue-sky gxy, so he didn''t care if Gd let his bad "habits" explode here, there won''t be humans harmed anyway.

    That being said he still interrupted him as his face contorted in hatred.

    "That''s enough Gd, don''t forget the objective, increase your pressure and make that little bitch who made my son fall from the grace of the god of lighte out so that I can seek justice for him!".

    As the two half emperors were about to increase their pressures a different voice interrupted them.

    "I guess the doubled faced "gant" attitude is something inherited in the family".

    Recognizing the voice which came from the ssroom that was behind them, Irina unconsciously let out a sigh of relief, although they gritted their teeth and managed to resist, a moment ago the three of them felt a bit suffocated due to the mana pressure of two half emperors.

    Even then, that moment of resistance and the fact that they didn''t loo afraid but frustrated due to the difference in strength made Daimon''s impression of them skyrocket, due to the suppressing formation the half emperors couldn''t use their mana to the fullest, but mana pressure is more simr to a mental attack than to a spell.

    The feeling of being in front of an enemy which is far superior to you, Daimon knows it pretty well, only those with a strong will, can ovee the natural fear caused by a far superior creature, bing strong is possible by external means, but having some backbone isn''t.

    Daimon red at the sky, he was now able to feel Aura which meant that she was within one thousand kilometers of distance and judging by Erin''s cunning foxlike grin, there was a reason for her to not have appeared yet.

 Chapter 183 Size Competition (Part 1)

    From the very second Gd looked at Daimon his eyes became cold, when he arrived at Lykos, the first thing he got to know of his grandson was that he¡­ soiled himself in front of others.

    How could he who descends from long line of half emperors which originated in a legendary hero of humanity, tolerate such an insult, originally, he didn''t care whether Liliana married his son George, as the whole idea of a political marriage was managed by his son, the ancestor of the dius family and Wilbert.

    But since someone from the beast faction humiliated his dearest grandson in representation of Liliana, then he will make sure that the one who caused this repent to have ever messed with him, and the first step would be bringing the girl that rejected George and giving her as a gift for his recovery.

    "So that is the "knight in a shinning armor" that got into the way of George", thought Gd as a cold light shed through his eyes, but before he could explode, Wilbert ned a hand on his shoulder.

    Gd was about toin when he felt Wilbert clenching the grip on his shoulder as he spoke with a hatred filled voice.

    "Wait Gd, that kid has darkness affinity, so he is most likely the one that dared to corrupt my son''s light making the cardinal assigned to him strip him off his apostle status".

    Gd calmed his impetus, as he gave Daimon a condescending gaze.

    "Two half emperors want you to suffer kid, that''s what you get for meddling into other people business", he said as he increased his mana pressure by reducing the area of affectation.

    The air around two meters from Daimon trembled, the pressure wasn''t physical but due to the interaction with the mana in the atmosphere small thunder-like sounds reverberated through the area.

    Gd expected to see the ck-haired youth kneeling down while suffocating, before snatching away the girl from the snow eagle n in front of him and bring her to her son''s room, with the "consent" of her father of course.

    "Trying to impress a girl, youck strength humph", he thought.

    But then nothing happened¡­ well that wasn''tpletely true, Daimon yawned before ridiculing Gd.

    "The grandfather of a trash is trash too I guess, are you also going to shit yourself now that your n isn''t working?".

    Gd felt his lungs filling with anger, his pressure should have squashed a one-star mage against the ground considering how many enemies he has killed and ruined in his long life.

    "You want to intimidate me with this half assed killing intent¡­ when I was five years old, I could already resist the pressure of Arthur Jolbaris", thought Daimon as he looked at Gd with disdain.

    Back then he got slightly affected by Arthur''s pressure but he could stand it, now that he had overlord''s pride, mental attacks were practically useless, unless of course they added mana to the mix.

    Seeing that Gd wasn''t achieving anything, Wilbert jumped in the fun, unlike mana, battle aura is showier, so when he used his pressure to the maximum of what he was capable within the suppressing formation of the academy, light yellow sparks surrounded Daimon.

    Not only that the ground below Daimon started to crack, the pressure of those who walk on the knight''s path is different to the one of a mage, the area is way smaller but in exchange the "density" is higher, in simple words, their pressure is heavier.

    Even then, without actively adding battle aura the most Wilbert could affect was a about a five-star ranked knight, so Daimon easily withstood the pressure with a crossed arm pose and a proudful expression.

    After about thirty seconds Wilbert realized it wasn''t working and he felt humiliated, since when he a respectable half emperor had to put effort to crush a one-star ranked bug.

    Wilbert''s gaze became cold, he knew killing was totally out of question, but a little "reprimand" from a senior was eptable, he is a half emperor after all.

    "Kid, it seems your parents failed to teach you, so let this old man give you a lesson of humbleness, when you meet a senior, you must bow out of respect", said Wilbert with an upright tone as he let his battle aura leak out of his body.

    *Boooom!!!*.

    A bright light-yellow torrent of battle aura advanced towards Daimon with the intention of forcing him to bow and also suppress Irina, Veronica and Anya, but it was intercepted midway by a wave of deep ck mana, creating a huge shockwave as they collided.

    Gusts of wind were liberated due to the impact sending some of the students in the crowd flying, realizing things were getting serious they immediately ran away, so that the only ones left were the ones involved in the situation.

    "I wonder since when the light faction has the right to discipline the young master of my Revy family".

    Wilbert''s eyes narrowed after listening to a melodious voice which seemed toe out of nowhere, before a woman appeared out of thin air, the woman was tall reaching about two meters, her ck hair made a perfect contrast with her pale skin tone, cascaded down all the way to the upper part of her thighs,<sub> </sub>

    Her sapphire like eyes which had a cold light in them didn''t lessen her charm, but gave her a proud dignified charm whichbined with her beautiful face and her curvy figure which was perfectly d in a ck long dress with purple decorations, would make even the most chaste man had the urge of conquering her.

    But probably the most eye-catching characteristics she had, were definitely the pair of ears and the long fluffy foxlike tail which made her already charming appearance even more perfect, it was as if a goddess had descended and yet Wilbert instead of being happy to be lucky enough of witnessing it, was frowning feeling the dangerous darkness which was shing against his battle aura.

    "Revy matriarch, perhaps it was you the one that nted that disgusting darkness in the body of my son", said Wilbert as he gritted his teeth before increasing the output of his battle aura.

    Wilbert might be angry but he wasn''t stupid, Daimon was just a one-star mage, although he refused to believe the idea of his son being defeated in a "fair" fight, against him, with some tricks even a one-star mage could bet a four-star knight like Leir.

    But it didn''t make sense that the darkness of a one-star mage could infect his son causing him to lose all his hair, and no matter how much light healing spells were casted on him, the infection didn''t disappear, but things changed if a half emperor was involved.

    And the feeling Erin''s darkness gave off was simr but obviously stronger than the one of Daimon''s, which was understandable considering Daimon managed to imitate her darkness thanks to his naturally high affinity with it.

    To begin with Daimon had darkness affinity, then he got the darkness affinity passive from the manticore andstly adding the eyes of the truth seeker he managed to grasp something from Erin''s special darkness.

    It was simr to how he learned blink after experiencing travelling through a breach in space due to space shift, the difference was that this time he asked Erin to crate a "room" with her darkness in which he spent a couple of hours every day, it took him two years of that to finally listen the sweet sound of a notification.

    [Ding]

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [You who have received the affect of the "Mother of darkness" and showed a constant interest on it, had been granted its favor]

    [Lover of darkness Lv1 (Passive): After observing the darkness of Erin Revy, the host has gotten a minor sess on understanding it, thus getting to imitate 20% of the effect of her "Immemorial Darkness" (The effect will increase the more Erin Revy advances in herprehension of Immemorial Darkness)]

    Evangeline was speechless when she saw that skill, not because learned how to imitate Erin''s darkness, but because ording to the description the effect of the skill increased not ording to Daimon''s growth but to Erin''s, in other words, Daimon''s darkness had 20% of the corrosive effect Erin''s had.

    So of course, Leir had no way to resist its invasion, and since no one in this ster chart has seen this kind of darkness before, they had zero understanding of it, it was simr to how races oriented to the night suffered when corrosive light was invented, the humans enjoyed a period of extra prosperity due to that as they extorted some benefits from demons, undead and vampires.

    "We aren''t leaving empty handed", mumbled Gd as he took a step ahead and added a stream of his water mana to fight against Erin''s darkness, even if it had to be a 2v1 fight, he was decided to take Liliana as an offering for his grandson, while "teaching" Daimon a lesson.

    "Well, you are right in that, you will leave with a new "decoration" in the form a sword''s wound in that disgusting face of yours".

    Before anyone could react, a new contender added her mana to the sh in the form of a silver sh, but instead of creating an impact, it directly cut the stream of water mana reaching Gd in a split of a second.

    "Fuck!", Gd shouted, the sky clouded as he released mana which rotated around him like water in a try to fend off from the sh, but it only slowed down the sh and ultimately Gd had to move aside and take some distance to not be split in half.

    The silver sh then changed its trajectory soaring to the sky splitting the clouds before dissipating.

    Gd felt a shiver running through his spine but the fear turned into indignation as he yelled at the woman who recently arrived.

    Long messy white-silverish hair, a short slim figure with curves in the right ces, creating a perfect bnce between athletic and feminine builds, a thin vertical scar in her right eye added a wild charm to her pretty face, andstly wolf like ears and a tail, the battle maniac of the Argent n, and the woman with the highest battle prowess in the White Fang gxy, Aura Argent.

    "Are you crazy, Argent matriarch¡­ were you really trying to wound a half emperor of an allied force, without any real provocation!!!".

    Aura which was holding one of her many swords in her right hand, coldly snorted as she pointed it towards Gd.

    "You caused problems in my academy, affected the students and tried to kidnap someone from one of my elite sses, and you dare to say you didn''t provoke me?".

    She then smiled at Daimon before saying.

    "Not to mention you threatened my beloved disciple, humph leave an arm behind as an apology", said Aura as a dazzling sharp silver light surrounded her.

 Chapter 184 Size Competition (Part 2)

    Gd started sweating bullets, unlike Wilbert which was among the strongest five half emperors of the blue-sky gxy in closebat prowess, he was more oriented to long range fights, even the water rotating shield he was slightly proud of, wasn''t strong enough to stop the fiercest woman of the beast faction.

    Aura has never been defeated after all, even when she fought against two of the ten demon lords, she was able to hold her ground and with Erin''s help they ended running with their tails between their legs.

    And now that she had "Supreme Radiance", defending was nearly impossible, her attacks had to be either dodged or taken front faced with another attack, the other option was if the difference between her and the enemy was too big, but that was temporarily impossible given the current level of the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

    Just as Wilbert was about to unsheathe his sword and send formalities to hell, another voice barged in.

    "Such an attitude isn''t fitting for the principal of the Wild w academy; don''t you think so?".

    Arthur descended from the sky as he nodded at Wilbert, his younger brother Nics which is a vice principal was the one that guided Gd and Wilbert towards the 1-S ssroom, how could he miss the chance to cause troubles to Aura after all.

    But as he was about to go meet his son, he saw that things didn''t look well for his "allies" of hatred, so he decided to lend a hand with some words to apply pressure.

    Seeing a third half emperor on his side Gd gave Daimon a gaze of sufficiency.

    "So, we arepeting in size huh, you chose the wrong enemy", mumbled Daimon in a voice high enough so all the presents could hear it.

    Calvinughed out loudpletely ignoring the tense situation, which earned him a poisonous gaze from Gd, but before he could say anything a second thunderousugh made everyone cover their ears.

    The ground trembled as a tall old man with a goatee beard wearing a mixture of armor with some w marks and desert clothing, slowly walked towards them, with every step the ground below his feet cracked and brown mana was radiated from his body each time he breathed.

    "Hahaha, what an interesting friend you found Calvin brat!".

    "Grandfather", unlike the way he talked to Mireya, Calvin seemed to respect the old man that just arrived.

    "R-Rock Dreadnought¡­ Solomon Ghrish", Wilbert immediately changed his stance, this time he didn''t bother to show any superficial gantry and drew his sword, the old man in front of him was known for having the best defense in the whole White Fang gxy.

    Solomon''s rxed smiling expression immediately died and instead a severe frown appeared on his face.

    "You have grown a decent pair of balls after bing a half emperor huh¡­ "little Willy", even if your father were alive here in your stead, he would have to respectfully call me venerable uncle"

    Wilbert gritted his teeth, Solomon wasn''t bragging, beast races have longer lifespans than humans and Solomon is one of the oldest half emperors alive, in terms of seniority the only one which was above him was probably Szar Inferas, but since he is a Lich, he is technically not alive.

    Then another person arrived but this time it wasn''t a half emperor but Calvin''s aunt, Mireya stayed behind to close the bar and after leaving she saw from afar that the three Risha mothers, were now facing two middle stage Arch ranks

    But when she was about to go help them, her father appeared out of nowhere¡­ drunk and only after convincing him to use mana to sober up, he joined in the fun, of course her speed couldn''tpare to a half emperor so she arrived a couple of minutester.

    Looking at her slightly messy hair although her face wasn''t visible due to the white mask she wore, it was clear that she rushed all the way from the happy wanderer to the campus, which earned her a grateful gaze from Irina and the others.

    Daimon then noticed three more presences above them, but they felt different to any other mage or knight he has met before.

    "Three magus kings, this is getting even more interesting", he thought.

    Without noticing, six half emperors and three magus kings gathered in front of the 1-S ss, the question here was, what would happen now.

    Then he saw the green haired magus king descending from the sky wight in front of Erin, before slightly bowing his head while cing his left hand on his chest.

    "It''s been some time since we saw each other,dy Revy".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at the "friendly" voice of Lars, but he didn''t say anything and instead waited to see how things unfolded.

    "Get lost", Erin''s indifferent cold voice made its way to all the presents, Maxim which was still floating in the air couldn''t help but sigh, this old friend of his simply couldn''t ept the fact that the Revy matriarch despised him.

    Thest time Lars confessed his feelings and got rejected, then he tried to get closer to Erin and got his ass handed by her, that time she was an early stage Archmage while he was a recently ascended magus king.

    As expected, Lars froze in the spot, originally, he thought that although she was cold towards Edgar, she had some feelings for him and that''s why he was rejected, but now yearster everyone knew that wasn''t the case.

    Lars bitterly smiled; he didn''t expect to win the heart of the beauty that no one managed to conquer in two thousand years so easily anyway.<sub> </sub>

    "Ahem, I just happened to pass by and saw that there was a turmoil ongoing here, what do you say, if you want to, I don''t mind lensing you my bow in this small discussion".

    "Heh, that''s why you aren''t popr with thedies back then, Lars".

    Everyone turned to see the origin of the new voice, a middle-aged man fully d in wind and lightning shed before appearing next to Michael.

    This time even Arthur couldn''t help but get into a defensive stance.

    "Lightning Assassin, what the hell is a womanizer like you doing here, since when you take part in conflicts?", he said while gritting his teeth.

    Zein snorted at Arthur as he pointed at Michael.

    "I''m here to protect my grandson inw of course", his determined expression was only ruined by the lipstick marks on his neck, which made Haylee want to dig a hole to hide.

    Arthur then looked at Lars''s idiot in love face and he smirked.

    "Whirlwind king, Jade king, Ocean queen, if you help me in this little conflict, I give you a spot in the exploration for each one of your academies, free of charge of course".

    The principal of the Earth pce academy was immediately interested in the deal, he gazed at Aura before descending from the sky next to Arthur.

    "Argent matriarch, next time don''t be too overbearing with your words, remember greed leads to misfortune".

    Suddenly all the eyes focused on Lydia, making her shook her head.

    "Leave my ocean heart academy out of this", she said clearly not taking any side, so thest participant turned out to be Lars.

    Lars felt troubled at first, but after seeing that Erin didn''t even look at him, he smiled apologetically as he walked backwards.

    "Personal matters shouldn''t mix with business,dy Revy, how about you convince the representative of you family to give me two spots, then I promise to help you out in this conflict, it''s not a bad deal right?".

    "Five times", a sudden voice interrupted the conversation this time, now that Daimon had the attention of everyone, he spoke in a calm but firm voice.

    "The price for a spot has changed from twice the amount of the treasure offered, to five times for the earth pce and the furious whirlwind academy, also there won''t be second year''s spot avable for them".

    Arthur, Wilbert, Gd, Kirik and Horaceughed with disdain, a mere one star ranked mage was talking in such a great manner.

    But then Kirik and Horace both took out their sigil lectors and theirughs were interrupted, before their faces paled, they then looked at Veronica and Anya with ck expressions before saying.

    After a moment they both seemed to have gotten a few years older, but that onlysted a couple of seconds before they spat on the ground.

    "Today''s matter we''ll end it here", they said before they flew away leaving Wilbert and Gd dumbfounded.

    And that wasn''t all, as they were considering to chase after them, a heavy pressure fell from the sky, the clouds dissipated as three figures descended between the two groups, well more urately two standing figures and one which was being dragged by the neck.

    Daimon recognized two of them, the one who was in a miserable state was the vice principal Nics Jolbaris, the one dragging him from his neck was the veiled woman which Daimon recently learned was affiliated to the army.

    As for the third one it was a tall man wearing a blue uniform with a lot of golden medals and badges, but the most eye catching one was a big star pendant with wings and ws engraved on it, an emblem Wilbert and Gd immediately recognized.

    This time they didn''t even bothered to say anything and instead immediately flew upwards throwing their dignified attitudes to the sewer.

    The uniformed man extended his hand towards the sky and then said a single world.

    "Punishment".

    While for others a huge amount of Mana gathered on the sky at certain point, Daimon and Yvonne saw different kinds of "flows"ing from six directions of the city, merging into one point under themand of the uniformed man.

 Chapter 185 Size Competition (Part 3)

    All the residents of the academic city suddenly looked upwards; a dazzling blue light illuminated the sky before a sad angry scream could be heard.

    "Arrggghhh!!!".

    Then another dazzling light appeared on the sky, this time it was yellow light which took the form of a sword before shotting itself towards the horizon disappearing after a couple of seconds.

    Daimon which was using injected about ten thousand mana points into his infinity eyes, as he tried to inspect what was happening, there was no spell called only "punishment", that and Daimon could see the mana flow of the uniformed man, and unlike the flows of others this one was light blue colored.

    The color of the mana flow indicates the affinity of the mage or knight, but the "neutral" color of mana is light blue.

    "What is happening here", wondered Daimon as he kept injecting mana in his eyes, after he reached one hundred thousand mana points, he finally became able to see the external mana circuits in the body of the uniformed men along with his magic core, for a split of a second.

    "Mm?", the uniformed men felt a faint trace of difort, but he discarded it immediately, he just used abination spell with the help of six people to teach those guys from the light faction a small lesson, so it was normal for him to feel tired.

    The uniformed man then turned to see Arthur and with a wave of his hand Nics which was unconscious was thrown at him like trash.

    Arthur noticed that his younger brother wasn''t in danger at all, but his face was swollen and a couple of his bones were broken, he gritted his teeth and then shouted at the uniformed man.

    "What is the meaning of this Parzival!".

    "Since when the army takes part in the feuds between families, are trying to start a war?".

    Seeing Arthur''s bloodshot eyes, the uniformed man snorted as his mana exploded out of his body.

    "Don''t forget who you are talking to Arthur Jolbaris, I Parzival Harizel not only am the field marshal, but also the designated executor of the White Fang gxy, which means that if someone breaks the rules, I have to administrate a proper punishment".

    "Don''t tell me that you think I didn''t notice that idiot brother of yours guiding two foreign half emperors all the way to the elite ss''s ssroom".

    He then pointed at Irina and Yvonne before saying.

    "While the army doesn''t interfere in the fights between the noble families, unless they affect themoners past a certain point, they are the daughter and granddaughter of instructor Richard, so I''m not here as the field marshal but as Parzival Harizel, a half emperor".

    Arthur gritted his teeth but he calmed down not too long after, this time they gave Parzival a good excuse to step in, so he had no other choice but to swallow hisins, he turned around but as he was about to leave, he heard Aura speaking.

    "Nics Jolbaris has put the students in danger, I hereby strip him of his position as vice principal, and he is now banned from the grounds property of the academy in the whole gxy".

    Feeling his body shaking due to the anger, Arthur gave Aura a hateful gaze before leaving with his brother.

    "I will remember this humiliation", he said as he left.

    Parzival then turned to see Lars and Maxim which had hard to read expressions.

    "Magus kings, you came here for something which is unrted to me, I will take my leave now, please give instructor Richard my regards", he said to Irina as a crack opened in which he entered before disappearing.

    The veiled vice principal also bowed towards Aura and Erin before returning to her usual tasks.

    Lydia now descended from the sky; Aura agreed to let her meet Daimon so she could rest assured knowing this wasn''t a scam, also she had a couple of things she wanted to confirm.

    Mireya, Solomon and Zein left since all of them had some other things to do, as for Irina, Veronica and Anya they all rushed towards their daughters before hugging them as they dragged them into the 1-S ssroom.

    The other students, including Erin and her daughters also followed them, the only ones which purposely stayed behind a bit were Daimon and Aura, Daimon wanted to do onest thing and Aura of course stayed behind just in case.

    Once the others were already inside, Daimon gave Lars a condescending gaze before he smiled.

    Lars frowned bas he saw the ck-haired kid looking at him as if he was looking at a loser, but his next actions made him grit his teeth.

    Daimon pulled the right side seam of his pants, making the big thing which was normally hidden in his boxers to be pressed against his leg, showing the silhouette of its doted size even when it was dormant.

    Then without saying anything Daimon turned around and returned to the 1-S ssroom, Aura which wasughing at Daimon''s actions, followed after coldly ring at Lars and Maxim.

    Needless to say, but Lars was furious right now, a one-star mage mocked him, he a magus king which is on par with half emperors.

    A cold sh of killing intent dazzled in his eyes, but he was brought back to reality when Maxim ced his hand on his shoulder.

    "Forget it, we didn''te here to fight, Lydia isn''t cooperating, and just the two of us aren''t enough to ensure a defeat against those two¡­ you have waited one thousand years, so what does a couple more of years do amount for?".<sub> </sub>

    Lars seemed to be in conflict for a moment, but ultimately, he gritted his teeth while swearing to take his revenge at its due time before he turned around and flew in the same direction as Arthur, Daimon demanded five times the original price, which means he would have to give away five pieces of thunder nimbus vine if he wanted a spot.

    "Fucking crazy brat", swore Lars, before Maxim also followed him, but unlike his friend, Maxim had a contemtive expression.

    ¡­

    As Daimon went to the ssroom, Aura walked next to him with a weird smile in her pretty face.

    "What was that for?", she asked.

    Daimon had a small grin on his face as he answered.

    "I opened a faucet slightly so that it drips on his head, eventually the drops of water will break his skull, a broken spirit without physical pain¡­ it''s not that easy to achieve but that''s what makes it interesting".

    Daimon smirked remembering how Lars looked at Erin, and how his expression became twisted after beingpletely ignored.

    "Rare Arch ranked materials fell from the sky directly into my hands, and now I found a new material to create a monster servant too, what a good way to start the week".

    Aura chuckled, although counting earnings before getting them is a bad practice, she agreed with Daimon this time, the position of captain of the first year''s team was his for sure, as for the one of the second years¡­ she had a little surprise forter.

    Before Daimon entered the ssroom, he turned to see Aura and after making sure no one was looking at them, he slightly bent down and kissed her pretty lips.

    "Mm~", although she was taken by surprise, Aura didn''t resist at all, her cute wolf wail wagged as she enjoyed being kissed by Daimon.

    The kiss didn''tst too much, Daimon did it because he noticed the slightly jealous gaze she had after he took it against Lars for trying to hit on Erin, although he indeed felt angry at first seeing some random guy trying to get close to Erin, for some reason today he realized that he was being a bit childish regarding his soulmates.

    Of course, he as their lover had the responsibility to step in if they were in trouble, the truth was that none of them had been in a situation which truly required him to defend them.

    Although they liked when he was protective or even slightly possessive, they were his lovers, nor things or decorations.

    He will act if he feels it''s necessary and then he will make sure to make the other party regret having ever set their eyes on his girls¡­ or if there is a good reason to interfere, like today.

    "It should have been like this from the very beginning", he thought as he stopped the kiss, earning a needy gaze from his cute wolf girl.

    "Don''t look at me like that, you''ll get the first turnter, okay?", he said as he caressed her fluffy ears.

    "Mm ?", Aura nodded, her tail wagged continuously, then with a happy renewed smile she hummed before using space shift to return to her office, not without saying.

    "You seem different today¡­ I like it, go see the matches of the tournament today, there is a little surprise I have been preparing for you ?".

    Daimon nodded and he entered the ssroom which had a little ufortable atmosphere right now, Erin and the blue haired female magus queen Daimon saw earlier were having some sort of "stare contest" which was interrupted by his entrance.

    Lydia immediately focused her attention on Daimon as she started evaluating him, but the contrary also applied.

    The woman in front of Daimon was tall to the point that she was on par with Erin, she had shoulder length blue hair, its color also became lighter towards the ends making it look like a calm sea.

    Her eyes were also of a pretty light blue color, her generous figure was tightly d in a sleeveless blue dress, with a ckbat suit below of it, it was a slightly strange fashion sense as it didn''t let one guess whether she is a mage or a knight.

    The small exchange of "evaluations" didn''tst even one second, and after they both confirmed what they wanted, Lydia nodded.

    "I guess Aura Argent''s reputation of never bragging about others is true after all, pardon my intrusion, I will take my leave now, I hope to see an interesting match in a couple of days to make our deal official".

    Erin softly snorted at Lydia, she stood up and brought Daimon into her arms.

    "Humph, I told you so, no one among the freshmen of this nor any of the other academies is even near Daimon''s level".

    Lydia raised an eyebrow, her words meant that even the talents of her academy were no match for Daimon, but she didn''t enter into a discussion with Erin and instead just looked at Daimon.

    <o>,m "As long as he is stronger than Arthur''s son then our deal stands".</o>

    After saying that Lydia left the ssroom, leaving behind a Daimon which was lost in his thoughts and a certain pair of fox daughters and mother, which were cursing her in their hearts.

    "Let''s see if you can keep that calm exterior once you see the results of the tournament", mumbled Erin without letting go of Daimon.

 Chapter 186 The Start Of The Tournament

    Not even a couple of minutes after Lydia left, the door of the ssroom opened again but this time it was Boris the one who appeared apanied by Richard which was smiling from ear to ear.

    Without caring about Boris, Richard pushed him out of his way as he rushed towards Yvonne and the others, only after seeing they werepletely okay, gave a thankful gaze at Daimon before he patted his shoulder so hard that a loud pping sound filled the room.

    "Kid, I don''t know what you did, but I saw Kirik and Horace rushing back to the Risha family main ground as if their asses were on fire, so of course I kicked their asses on the way until they had no option but to use their escaping scrolls hahaha".

    Richard''s loudugh made the room tremble a bit, he was faraway when all this happened so by the time he arrived, all the previous situation was over, unfortunately for Kirik and Horace, Richard still caught a glimpse of them and decided to vent some of his anger on them forcing them to use a precious spatial scroll which transported them back to the Risha family, but not before they got beaten ck and blue by him.

    Daimon simply shrugged.

    "I didn''t do anything, instructor Richard probably still doesn''t know it, but earlier there was a sudden agglomeration of half emperors and even a couple of magus kings in front of our ssroom, even the field marshal from the army appeared".

    Richard''s eyes widened a bit, he did feel a huge amount of mana being manipted in the direction of the academy, but he thought it was probably two half emperors facing off, and turns out even his most renowned student made a move probably to lend a hand to Irina and Yvonne.

    But then he frowned, the only half emperors which he could think were interested in the three little girls of his family, weren''t from this gxy and shouldn''t be here considering their heirs were having their own tournament back at the blue-sky gxy.

    Which led him to wonder, why would they go through all the trouble just to get them Yvonne and the others to marry someone from their families, but knowing Wilbert Ascott and his friends it was probably just for face, after some of the members of their young generation were humiliated by Daimon.

    Aliya shook his head seeing Richard interrupting her uncle.

    "Ahem, instructor, we are going to bete for the start of the tournament if we don''t hurry up".

    Richard chuckled, somehow Aliya seemed more talkative today which was for the better.

    ¡­

    The training grounds of the academy had a differentpletely different atmosphere today, normally only the students which have theirbat lessons are allowed to enter, unless they have some privileges like elite ss, the reason is obvious, all the equipment, and the self-repairing magic formations engraved on the tforms, practically burn resources.

    But today the gates were open for anyone that wanted to watch the matches, of course there were different kinds of seats to watch it, and the number of free ones was limited.

    To avoid any problems staff from the academy and the army were dispatched, to watch over the lines of countless of students that wanted to get a free seat, and even those who were willing to pay had no other choice but to wait.

    There was still about ten minutes for the people to be allowed to go inside, so everyone was silently protecting their spot in the line while waiting for it.

    And that''s why such arge group of people arriving thiste was so eye catching, especially because they ignored the waiting lines and went directly to the main gate which had thergest amount of people waiting to enter.

    Most of the people felt outraged, they have been waiting in line for about two to three hours, and some people simply passed them like that.

    Nevertheless, some of them recognized the demon of the elite ss walking among the group and wisely remained silent, but the students of the other academies and other visitors immediatelyined.

    "Hey, what the hell, why can they jump the line!".

    "Only second years are participating today, so why are those first years being given priority?".

    "Is this how the Wild w academy treats my Faresh family?".

    "Silence!", after listening to the ruckus, the guard of the main door, a tall man with a moustache and a uniform from the army, shouted in an authoritative tone, the pressure of an early stage Archknight suppressed those who were yelling a moment ago, making them pale.

    The man saw that all their bravado was suddenly gone and he coldly snorted.

    "That''s why I hate fucking nobles", said the man in a voice loud enough for others to hear, while normally he would have to be a bit careful with those who had strong backers, but today was different, many forces were gathered in the academy and the agreement gave the academy the maximum authority.

    So, if someone were to break the rules, all the other forces will join to punish it, the man then looked at Daimon, and he frowned, supposedly all those who had priority ess should already be inside, but he didn''t jump into conclusions and instead asked.<sub> </sub>

    "This gate is reserved for teachers, staff of the academy and a few selected people, can you show me your identity token?".

    Daimon nodded, he took out the token he was given which had the number "1" engraved on it and showed it to the gate keeper, then the others did the same, as for the Risha mothers, Haylee, Liz and ine which did not have them simply stood next to their respective rtives in the academy.

    The man inspected the tokens and although he frowned seeing that not all of them had tokens of identity, they were probably family of them, so after a moment of contemtion he nodded at the other guards.

    "Open the gate, they are the elite ss of the first years, cross their names from the list".

    Ignoring the envious and hateful gazes directed at them, the elite ss entered the training grounds which have be something like a stadium for the event.

    "Woaah, when did the academy made so much changes", mumbled Leslie surprised.

    Instead of the tform and the equipment normally used for training, there was only a single arena which was surrounded by stands and even skyboxes which were separated from the rest of the seats.

    Most of the skyboxes had an emblem corresponding to a family or force, there was even one for the Revy family where the punishment elder which was going to be ascended to supreme elder among with some other peak Arch ranks were waiting for the tournament to start.

    The same applied for the Argent family because Aura had her own skybox which she wasn''t using anyway, as the principal she had the seat of honor after all.

    Daimon immediately spotted the one which was destined for the elite ss, but as he was about to ask Liz to help them float towards it, a sarcastic voice could be hearding from behind of them.

    "How lucky, there is onest skybox which isn''t being used".

    The faces of the girls form the elite ss became a bit hostile, Loren specially, they turned around to confirm their supposition and as they expected, it was Alexander and his subordinates, which were now looking at them with disdain, what did surprise them was that there was no other student of the academy with him.

    Instead of that Daimon recognized the pattern of two big academies, one of them was a brown castle and the other one was something that looked like a hurricane.

    But then Boris''s next words stopped him from saying anything else.

    "You three aren''t considered part of the elite ss since you left, so you can go and take some regr seats or pay for some of the avable ones".

    A girl with the uniform of the earth''s pce coldly red at Alexander, they agreed toe with him together since there was a possibility of them working together.

    Alexander gritted his teeth, but he knew Boris wasn''t lying, his authority as the fourth ranked of the elite ss was revoked after his own ss was formed, and now since he had the bad luck of meeting the elite ss, he had no choice but to swallow hisins.

    Richard took the initiative to raise everyone from the ground using his mana, leaving behind an angry Alexander which was abandoned by his new "friends".

    The door of the skybox opened and they all entered it, inside was like apletely different world, besides the ss wall, everything else was luxurious without making it look too exaggerated.

    Everyone took a seat while they inspected some of the things left behind for their entertainment.

    The loud sound of footsteps could be heard as everyone pushed others to find the seat they wanted, sooner thanter all the other students and visitors were allowed to enter and find their respective ces.

    Once more than three quarters of the stadium were filled with people, then it was time for the show to start, Aura''s voice filled the stadium as she said.

    "Wee to all the visitors and members of other academies, I hope the event seen my Wild w academy is sponsoring".

    Daimon then remembered Aura said she has a surprise for him, he turned to see Erin as he asked.

    "So, who are the participants of today''s match?".

 Chapter 187 The Rules Of The Tournament

    Without any surprise Aura went back to the honor seat after weing the visitors since that was the tradition, then one of the now nine vice principals took over, more specifically Ste which seemed to be not only the librarian but also the spokesperson of the academy.

    Ste cleared her throat once feeling that Aura should have said a couple more of things, after inwardly sighing she pressed a button which was attached to the podium in the skybox of the vice principals.

    All the people inside the remodeled training grounds looked upwards where four huge t curved objects suddenly appeared, but their appearance wasn''t what surprised them but the fact that now everyone could clearly see the whole arena in an up-close way, and there was also a take of the inside of the skybox of the vice principals so everyone could see and hear Ste.

    Daimon saw it and he nearly choked, those were clearly stadium screens, he couldn''t help but steal a couple of gazes at Liz and just as he expected she turned her face away and feigned ignorance.

    Outside of the skyboxes there was also a ruckus, this was a new magic device which no one has seen before, abination of the surveince cameras recently released in the market by the Greenwich Sage, image projection magic, a magic formation called "eagle vision", which in simple words was the "zoom" function of cameras back at earth andstly camouge functions.

    Although Liz obviously took the "TV" Daimon has shown them as her inspiration, it wasn''t as easy as just gather some other technologies and call it a new invention, Liz had to recalcte the magic formations and integrate them to work all together without interrupting each other, in other words she created a new "circuit" which covered the functions of a several ones.

    Ste smiled happy with the reactions of all the spectators, as the main campus of the number one academy in the White Fang gxy, they had to show that their advances in magic technology weren''t behind their "allies" in the Blue-Sky gxy.

    "Luckily thanks to the connection between the principal and the Revy family, Elizabeth Revy which is known for her¡­ entric attitude, eded to create a couple of things to demonstrate for the exploration", she thought as she remembered the little surprise they had in storage for the next week.

    "Everyone calm down, these are "Watchtower Screens", a new magic device created by miss Elizabeth Revy in cooperation with the Wild w academy, we''ll be using them to improve the experience of the spectators in this tournament".

    Inside of the elite ss''s skybox Daimon saw a little cunning smile forming in the corner of Liz''s lips and he inwardlyughed, after this tournament there will be a lot of new ie in the market aspect of the Revy family.

    Seeing that the spectators had calmed down again, Ste continued with her speech.

    "The tournament had been divided in four days, two for the second years and two for the first years, we''ll leave the rules and specifications for the first years aside for the time being, as for the second years¡­".

    Ste pointed at the east and west areas of the Arena and two gates from which students came out appeared.

    Both groups were using standard equipment granted by the academy to maximize the "fairness" of the matches, the idea was to see the true skills and battle prowess of the students instead of the advantages wealth can give them.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow looking at the grouping from the east, he recognized the one leading them, it was a tall girl which seemed to be about 18 years old just like Aisha, she had long brown hair and eyes with a peculiar tone between honey and red, her wolf like ears and tail gave her away as a member of the Argent family, the daughter of the supreme elder of the Argent family, Arianna Argent.

    Liz which was shamelessly sitting on Daimon''sp, nodded in recognition.

    "Ohh, that girl has reached the five-star mage realm at the beginning of the second year, not bad".

    Daimon red at Aura which was smiling at him.

    "So, this was the surprise she was talking about, it''s indeed quite impressive considering the past week she was at the four-star mage realm, it seems I have a "sister" disciple now", he thought.

    Aura would have not gone out of her way to train Arianna unless she managed to leave a good impression on her, the reason is that a master is like a parent, it''s a rtionship that is supposed tost for life, a good example of that is the field marshal which even after surpassing Richard in strength terms, still respects and treats him as his instructor.

    So those who study under the same master are considered to be brothers and sisters, like that''s why Boris sees Aliya as her niece even though they don''t share the same blood, because her parents were students of Richard.

    Of course, not everyone follows that ideology willingly, but for half emperors at least there is a contract involved, so that the disciple won''t betray its master.<sub> </sub>

    Besides Arianna there were other two men members of the Argent family, a girl and a man with a human body but a bull''s head, which Daimon recognized as members of the Faresh family, a girl from the Leeris family like Ste and two more guys which didn''t have any visible beast characteristics.

    The other group was leaded by a member of the Jolbaris family, just like Alexander his hair was orange and he had their characteristic tiger like ears and tail, if there was a difference then that would be that he was bulkier which probably meant he was a knight instead of a mage, ording to Aura he was the son of Arthur''s sister making him Alexander''s older cousin, Samuel Jolbaris.

    Besides Samuel, there was a girl with short dark brown hair and light brown scale patterns on her arms and neck besides a lizard tail, unlike the lizardmen of the Caddle family which were possessed by the fire djinns, she was from the Ramir family which imed to descend from a magic beast of ancient times called earth smander, also besides those scales and the tail the rest of her body was the same of a human.

    There were also two guys from the Risha family, one from the snow eagle n and one from the fire crane n, the next one was a tall guy which looked like a tower, surpassing two meters of height, with ck hair all over his arms, a member of the werebear n the Arkuoda family, thest ones were a pair of male twins withvender color sclerotic and blue pupils, the characteristic of the illusory silk worm n, the Allier family.

    The freshmen were surprised to see the second-year students of "new" races, but that wasn''t the case, it''s just that some families only chose to send those who consider good enough to invest their whole resources in, with the goal to make them enter the elite ss, and apparently this year none of those families was sent to attend the admission exams.

    Also, normally second and third years stay in their own areas with the exception of the wee party, which was when Daimon and Aisha were targeted for the "hazing ritual".

    Samuel Jolbaris separated from the group he came with and then both groups joined and sat on a bench in front of the arena, making it obvious that they were told what to do beforehand.

    "As I was saying, the matches for the second years will be divided in two days, the first ranked of the ss will be given a direct pass for the finals, while the other fourteen participants will be randomly selected to fight each other, today we''ll have four matches, and tomorrow after thest three matches there will be a revenge match only for those that the judges and referees deem capable of getting a better result than their current".

    The stadium vibrated for a split of a second while the ground opened to reveal a stone tform with a size of 300 meters length and 150 meters wide, about three times the size of a football field, there were two people standing on the tform wearing uniforms of the army.

    Then the four screens were divided to show Ste in half of them and the two people from the army on the other half.

    "The rules are pretty easy, the conditions of victory are knocking down the opponent from the tform, or make it unable to continue fighting, one of the participants can also willingly forfeit the fight but that will immediately ban it from the revenge match".

    "Only the equipment proportioned by the academy will be allowed, pills, elixirs, scrolls or other eternal means are forbidden, mortal attacks are forbidden and any try to breach these rules will be punished on the spot by the two colonels which are our acting referees".

    "Besides that, everything is allowed including the use of race characteristics, referees please start the matching process".

    The two men nodded, and went down from the tform, then a small space in the wall opened and a big metal box with two slots at both sides appeared for everyone to see, the two men pressed a button in their respective sides and a ball with a number was expelled from the slots.

    "Rank number 2, Arianna Argent".

    "Rank number 5, Cayden Arkuoda".

    Two different voices echoed through the whole ce, then the four screens showed the image of Arianna and the tall guy with hairy arms.

    The crowd immediately went crazy, the first match was between two students from the top five, although the ranks are a hierarchy within the ss, truth to be told, only the first rank was supposed to be significantly stronger then the other top five members of the elite sses.

    The others supposedly have simr strengths and skills, that''s why Alexander only directed his hatred towards Daimon, as he was the only one that "truly" surpassed him in the eyes of others.

    As Arianna and Cayden were going up the tform, the image shown in the screens changed one more time to only focus on the area of the tform, Arianna stole a couple of gazes at the skybox with the emblem of the academy before doing the same at the one with the emblem of the first''s year elite ss.

    "Lady Aura, let me show you the results of my training", she thought as she looked at the almost unnoticeable strap marks in her wrists and ankles above the area covered by her tennis shoes.

 Chapter 188 Ariannaâ€™s Strength (Part 1)

    Cayden saw the calm expression in Arianna''s face and he frowned, after having attended sses with her for one year he already had a profile of her in his mind, unlike what one might believe, the tower-like guy from the werebear race wasn''t a musclehead.

    That''s why he got the family to support him, unlike his peers who only worried about strength, Cayden knew that information and strategy was also important.

    So, he has been feigning to be a muscle head for about one year waiting for the moment when something worth of blowing up his cover appears.

    And now with the exploration at the doorstep it was do or die, but then just when he believed to have understood his ssmates perfectly, Arianna which used to upy the third rank in the ss without showing any sings of wanting to fight for higher ranks, suddenly challenged the second ranked in private and by the words of it, she won.

    Unlike first years, second years weren''t given that "period grace" for the ranks to remain the same, so as soon as the year started, they could challenge each other, the only difference was that after challenging one person regardless of the result the same two couldn''t fight with each other for the next month.

    The reason of it was that from the second year and above the academy proportioned a certain benefit which varied depending on the rank of the student, the opportunity came once a month so only after that the same two students could fight again.

    Cayden inwardly shook his head, now there was no use in thinking about it, the referees gave the green light and their match started, since personal belongings weren''t allowed for the match none of them had a spell stored beforehand.

    Arianna remembered the first lesson Aura taught her, "In a fight of between two people with simr strength, the one moves first will have the advantage".

    A white ring in her right index finger glowed before a halberd appeared in her hand, of course Cayden didn''t take too long to react, a simr ring in his left hand also glowed and his weapon was drawn out, arge club with a spiked metal head.

    "Booom!", his body instinctively reacted as he put the club in front of his chest, the beak of Arianna''s halberd shed against the club creating currents of air due to the impact, but that wasn''t all, the crowd suddenly went crazy by what was happening.

    "N-No way she actually pushed that bear guy one step backwards!".

    That''s right, Arianna''sparatively smaller body which seemed to focus more in agility, actually produced enough strength to push back the tower-like Cayden one step backwards, making everyone think their eyes were deceiving them.

    Why do you ask, the reason is quite simple, Cayden Arkuoda is a¡­ five star ranked knight, and a mage which can overpower a knight even if thetter isn''t using battle aura, it''s not asmon as Daimon makes it look like.

    Needless to say, but Cayden was having trouble to believe what was happening right now.

    "Her element isn''t even focused in strength!!", he shouted in his heart before a wave of dark brown battle aura exploded around his body.

    "Haaaa!!!", Cayden shouted, he took a step back and then swept his club smashing it against the position where Arianna was standing.

    "Booom!", the tform was reinforced to not immediately fall apart from anything below the lord realms, but even then, the club managed to break some small pieces of it while also raising arge curtain of dust.

    Since having his vision blocked with an enemy which surpasses him in agility is dangerous, Cayden swept his club again creating a strong current of wind which dispersed the dust, revealing Arianna''s perfectly tidied appearance, not even her clothes had the slightest scratch.

    All the spectators including the Arch ranks and even most of the half emperors were confused about what was happening, the only exceptions were the field marshal which was seated in the skybox reserved for the army, Aura who was the one that trained Arianna and the proud owner of an eye spell, andstly a ck-haired youth in the skybox of the first year''s elite ss.

    "This day has been full of surprises", thought Daimon, the spectators weren''t allowed to use mana sense on the participant since that could distract them causing an idental lose, that''s why the watchtower screens were specially prepared and had such a strong impact, cause now everyone could enjoy a more detailed "show".

    But with his infinity eyes he could see and more or less understand what was Arianna doing, the reason as to why boosting spells have an external phenomenon is because the body of living beings is naturally weak on the inside.

    So, what mages do is d themselves in their respective elements, for example Daimon and Aisha who use the star ranked spell "lightning light armor", to cover their bodies in lightnings to increase their speed and add elemental damage to their attacks.

    Knights are a bit different; battle aura uses a different set of mana circuits which allows it to circte not only in them but even impregnate their skins with it, creating a "virtual armor" which protects them from attacks which had physical repercussions.

    If a mage tries to receive a fireball with his body covered in mana, the elemental damage will be negated, but the impact on the other hand will still affect it.

    Knights on the other hand are the other way around, their hardened exteriors will dissipate the impact, but the elemental damage will still affect them, so both use different type of equipment, mages protect themselves against physical damage and knights do it against elemental damage, that''s why they are both the weakness of each other.<sub> </sub>

    But what Daimon was seeing right now was boosting spell which worked differently, he couldn''t help but steal a gaze at Aura.

    "I could sue you for imitating my core synchrony you know?", he said through the mental connection.

    Aura inwardly giggled before answering.

    "I would call it "inspiration" instead of imitation though, the source of the power isn''t the same, she is just mimicking a couple of the effects".

    Core synchrony isn''t an "Irregr skill" for nothing, the reinforce of the insides is only done naturally as the mage or knight advances, but Daimon managed to do it "artificially", every time he activated core synchrony his body forcefully became the one of a higher ranked mage.

    Of course, that power wasn''t his, but the progress he made while using it stayed with him, Aura made him train in in core synchrony state which had an effect in his normal state, all that tension he forced his body to endure was what helped him to lit up his life spark.

    In a mere five years he reached the five-star knight realm, something that normally takes about fifteen years, you can imagine the amount of tension his body has gone through.

    And now, apparently Aura recreated a simr effectbining two different things which had something inmon, Aura knows more about the strengths and weaknesses of the different races than anyone from a battle aspect at least.

    A werewolf''s most outstanding trait isn''t the ws, as the Jolbaris outss them in that aspect, but in terms of vitality they stand at the top of all the beast races rivaling with the vampires which are known for their obsession with immortality.

    Since Aura met Daimon, she knew they would not stay in the wonder myriad ster chart for too long, and as the matriarch she had the duty to help the n survive even after she leaves, so she created a new spell based not in what she has learned from Daimon and her own experience.

    After that she just needed someone to teach it to, all the candidates were given instructions to prepare them in case they were selected, without knowing about it, courtesy of Erin of course.

    Then a week ago Aura finally decided who was going to be the one that will learn it first, Arianna left a very good impression, after she tried to take the me from Daimon''s actions, whichbined with her affinity which was what discarded most of the candidates gave her the win.

    Just like Daimon, Aisha and Aura if it wasn''t for her variant element, Arianna had lighting affinity, a surprisingly high vitality and she wasn''t a knight, a rarity among werewolves, she perfectly fitted to learn Aura''s original boosting spell

    Ariana saw Cayden trying to hide his panic and she smirked, but inwardly she swore.

    "Damn, master Aura is really a sadist, my muscles are killing me", she yelled in her heart as she thought, "Bio Booster ten percent!".

    In Daimon''s the currents of electricity that were running through Arianna''s arms and legs increased, then not only inside, even her skin was d in lightning, she stamped her left foot on the ground making it crack before she pounced towards Cayden.

    "Boooooom!!!", Arianna''s body was suddenly shot like a bullet, by the moment Cayden reacted, the only thing he could do was use the metal head of the club to block.

    "Crash!!!", when the beck of the halberd shed against the club the sound of metals colliding made the lower ranked spectators go deaf for a couple of seconds, before both weapons exploded due to the impact.

    Then a figure flew backwards for about two hundred meters, leaving behind two traces on the tform as it broke the surface of it.

    "WOAHHH!!!", the crowd went crazy, while Arianna was standing still in the same spot where the fight started, Cayden only managed to stop about five meters before falling from the tform, there was blooding from his shoes as if he used even his toes to reduce the impact.

    Daimon was frowning, as someone who has gone through the hellish training schedules created by Aura, he was sure that she has been paying some attention to Ariana for at least a couple of years, probably sending her some advices through her father the supreme elder of the Argent family whose expression was worth seeing right now.

    From the corner of his eyes Daimon saw the tall bulky man which was shirtless with the exception of a chest te that covered the area where the lungs and heart are positioned, suddenly stood up from his seat and thunderouslyughed.

    "HAHAHA, show them the strength of the Argent family!!!".

    Ulises Argent was truly happy, before Daimon appeared, the younger generation of both the Revy and Argent families was considered to be below the Jolbaris one, but now his daughter was showing them that besides the young master there were other outstanding people.

 Chapter 189 Ariannaâ€™s Strength (Part 2)

    Seeing the results of the collision, Arianna had the urge tough out loud, she remembered how her idol, the strongest woman in battle terms of the whole White Fang gxy, suddenly appeared in front of her a week ago.

    And after making her show the results of some kind of training which her muscle head of a father taught her, Aura nodded in recognition before saying.

    "Are you willing to be my second andst disciple?".

    Even before her voice coulde out, Arianna immediately bowed three times as she epted Aura as her master, her idol wanted her to be her disciple it was like a dreame true.

    Then Aura gave her a gift for bing her disciple, a spell with an effect she has never heard off, it consisted in two parts, first, by using small quantities of electricity to stimte the muscles, they will break and then reform, which unlike the battle aura of a knight it affected not only the externalyer of the body but even reached the most hidden muscle fibers.

    Of course, this was all a theory which Aurapted throughout some years, she even developed the process to follow in case someone wanted to train on it, and she was about 90% sure that it would work.

    But she was still honest with Arianna, mana circuits exist within the muscles, bones, skin, organs etc. So, any boosting and reinforcing is normally done using those mana circuits as conducts.

    The downside is that mana circuits don''t cover the whole part so their effect is limited, the solution Aura thought is simple, don''t use a spell which uses mana circuits, but an external mean that affects the muscles as a whole.

    And that''s how she modified the shackles of despair to not only increase the weight of the one using them, but also release currents of electricity of a certain voltage during a determined period of time, then with practice the effect could be reproduced with electricity produced by mana.

    The hard part which conformed that 10% of uncertainty Aura had, started, if the recovery and regeneration of the muscle fibers couldn''t keep up with the pace of the training, then there was a risk of damaging the body and even the mana circuits as the electricity will fry the muscles, nerve endings and everything in its way.

    That''s why Aura only selected Arianna from all the candidates she had, and even then, she was told that it was only a trial week, if by the end of the next week''s same day where she learned it, there were to be any damage to her body, then the spell will be banned, if not she will be taught the second part of the spell.

    Today when they returned to the academy, Aura quickly visited Arianna and after inspecting her, she knew the werewolf girl has perfectly followed her instructions, the muscle fibers in her arms and legs had gone through a fundamental change.

    Normally about thirty percent of whatposes the body of a human woman is muscle tissue, werewolves are not adept to the knight''s path just because of anything, their muscle tissue reaches about fifty percent at most.

    And something Daimon noticed is that in a lot of beast races there is at least branch in which women have bigger constitution than men, in the Revy n for example, the tallest of them all women and men included is Erin who reaches about two meters, her tail is also the biggest¡­ and the fluffiest in Daimon''s opinion.

    Liz and ine are also taller than the peers of their same generations also ording to Erin, Aura doesn''t lose with her physically, and while in the werewolf race men are taller, in terms of muscle tissue percentage women actually surpass them by a small five percent.

    Leaving that aside, men can use at most about a third of those muscles actively, women on the other hand only use about one quarter of theirs, of course there are exceptions, but that is the mostmon case.

    But now thanks to Aura''s instructions, after years of training without knowing Arianna was able to use about half of her muscle tissue, and then with the stimtion of electricity she activated ten percent more.

    Of course, that by itself wasn''t enough to make up for the difference in strength of a knight using battle aura, as she hasn''t actively trained those muscles for more thana a mere week since Aura took her as her disciple and gave her those modified shackles of despair.

    That''s why Arianna dodged Cayden''s attack; how did she manage to overwhelm him in the previous confrontation then you may ask.

    The answer is simple, how can a bullet with the size of a finger destroy things many times bigger than it, "eleration", Arianna used lightning to create momentum and then shed against Cayden, all that umtion was liberated at the contact and that''s why the point of contact in this case their weapons exploded due to the impact.

    Now you might imagine the scene of a bullet colliding against a wall, normally the bullet would shatter due to the impact, but then what happens when the bullet is designed to pierce through, like an antimaterial one, the bullet will destroy whatever is its path and continue advancing until it loses its momentum.

    The training didn''t increase Arianna''s strength yet, but it increased the density of her muscles without affecting their size, her element was lightning which was the best possible source of eleration, whichbined created an explosive liberation of energy upon contact, just like being hit by the bullet of a cannon.

    Then after the impact, her body which was reinforced inwardly instead of externally dissipated the drawback, resulting in the current situation in which Arianna was perfectly fine, while Cayden was bleeding from his nose and mouth.

    His reinforced body was enough to not explode due to the impact, but his organs were still shaken causing him internal bleed.<sub> </sub>

    "Huff~huff~huff", Cayden was gasping for air, he looked downwards and saw small holes on the chest te, which made him take a breath of cold air, while metal and probably wind were the known elements with the sharpest properties, lightning had the highest prative force.

    Normally that small amount of elemental damage would not be too much of a problem, but due to the impact his chest was hurting like hell, and that was without a proper attack spell.

    "If that bitch were to be using an offensive type of booster, due to my own carelessness she could have ripped a hole in my chest!", concluded Cayden, after that thought shed through his mind, his eyes became bloodshot, he a member of the obsidian armored branch of the werebear race, was defeated in an upfront confrontation, it was an utter humiliation.

    "Haaa!!!", Cayden shouted, with him as the center, the ground started trembling, then the hairs of his arms hardened, this was the characteristic of the Cayden''s family branch, just like how the horn of a rhinoceros is formed of hardened keratin, the protein that forms hair of animals and nails, the hair in Cayden''s arms is works the same way, as long as battle aura is injected on it, it bes a weapon.

    And that is not all, the tform below his feet cracked due to the sudden increase on his weight, then his battle aura exploded around him, since Arianna is a lightning user, he knew there was no point in chasing after her, so instead of that he increased his defense while he charged a wide area martial art he learned to deal with fast enemies.

    The sight of dark brown battle aura radiating from his body was quite impactful, but Arianna''s situation didn''t lose at all, currents of electricity covered both her arms and legs.

    Half of the tform was trembling and the other half was covered in electricity which crackled as it impacted on the ground, after five seconds both of them had their respective attacks ready.

    "Obsidian Devastation!".

    "Charge".

    Two different voices could be heard, one angry and loud, the other one calm and soft, Arianna disappeared from where she was standing, which made Cayden thunderouslyugh.

    "You fell for it, go die!", unlike what others might expect, Cayden''s attack didn''t only consist in a mass of battle aura being throwed at the enemy as everyone thought, battle aura is heavy so it would be hard to caught a lightning mage off guard with it, so what was used for the attack were those ck needle-like hairs of his arms.

    All of them were shot from his arms forming a ck which covered everything in his field of vision, some of them hit the ground breakingrge pieces of it, others impacted the walls at the other sides of the arena making the spectators worry for their lives, until they saw the defensive magic formation activating protecting them from missed attacks.

    The natural reaction of a mage would have been to dodge the attacks unless one wanted to be a sieve, but Arianna not only didn''t stop, she even elerated one more time.

    As if they could already see the tragic scene of Arianna''s body being stabbed by the countless number of ck needles, a lot of the students sighed.

    "What a shame, such a pretty girl will be disfigured", and other simr things could be hearding from the stands, even the referees decided to interfere as they couldn''t imagine a way to get out of the that situation without jumping from the tform, unless she could fly which was impossible for those below the Arch ranks.

    But as they were about to protect Arianna from the attack Aura send them a sound transmission saying.

    "Don''t interfere, I will take responsibility in case anything happens".

    The referees doubted but since Arianna is part of the Argent family, then Aura as the matriarch of the family could represent her, so while thinking that maybe Aura had a grudge against her, they simply shrugged and stayed still.

    But then the situation changed again, most of the spectator were low ranked mages and couldn''t see it, but Arch ranks, half emperors, a certain ck-haired youth and his mother did notice¡­. the slight smirk that formed in the corner of Arianna''s mouth.

    The space between every needle was about forty centimeters and behind of it the wave of battle aura followed, the needles had the job of restraining the moves of the enemy and the wave of battle aura will impact it making it fall and then being hit by the rest of the needles.

    Daimon also noticed Aura was smiling and then when he focused on Arianna''s body, his pupils widened a bit, she¡­ was perfectly dodging all the needles while parrying the impact of Cayden''s battle aura.

    If others had Daimon''s infinity eyes, they could have seen in slow motion how Arianna "danced" though the rain of needles, dodging them by a few millimeters as she advanced towards a still smiling Cayden as his eyes couldn''t follow her movements.

    "Now that is something even I didn''t expect", thought Daimon.

 Chapter 190 Ariannaâ€™s Strength (Part 3)

    A few seconds ago, just when Arianna elerated for the second time shooting herself towards Cayden, without anyone knowing she shouted in her heart.

    "Mind Booster, first stage¡­ Perception!", her pupils dted and then world seemed to stop for a second before things returned to "normal".

    Arianna inwardly let out a sigh of relief, this was only the third time she used the second effect of the spell granted to her by Aura and it was still incredibly hard to control it, when a person is going through an extremely dangerous situation its body will naturally produce adrenaline with the purpose of surviving.

    The heart rate increases, blood flow elerates, pupils dte and glycogen reserves are mobilized giving the muscles the maximum possible amount of fuel, in other words the body''s natural limiters momentarily disappear.

    Back at earth there are stories of mothers who in a moment of distress have managed to lift objects many times heavier than their own bodies, a phenomenon called "hysterical strength", which is the result of an adrenaline discharge.

    Then how did Arianna managed to enter into such a state if she wasn''t in any real danger at all you may ask, the other method to make the body produce adrenaline is moremon, high demand exercises had that effect too, like extreme ones.

    And right now, her muscles were being put through a lot of tension, that''s why she kept the output of her lightning mana under a certain point, which she surpassed on purpose after using the spell "charge", the intention was to make her body release adrenaline at will.

    An adrenaline discharge could help a normal human do amazing things, and Arianna is a werewolf, her instincts are already sharp due to that and as a lightning user her time of reaction is also higher than other people, you can imagine the effect being multiplied many times.

    So, she could now see every needle in her way, and still have enough time to see from the corner of her eyes the smile of sufficiency in Cayden''s face, the shocked expressions of the spectators in the stands, the frowning faces of her ssmates etc.

    Arianna was smiling as she dodged all the needles happy with the results of her training, but then midway she had a slight weird sensation of being observed, which seemed ridiculous, of course she was being observed as there were a lot of Arch ranks, half emperors and even magus kings, even if she was moving really fast right now, that was only from the point of view or star ranked mages.

    Anyway, this particr sensation was different it was as if she was being seen through, although mana sense was banned, being stared by a higher ranked mage still made you feel slightly ufortable, but this wasn''t the first time Arianna participated in an event like this, so she has learned to ignore it.

    What was weirder was that she couldn''t pinpoint the origin of this strange sensation, and it disappeared as soon as it appeared, leaving Arianna no choice but to put the subject at the back of her mind for the time being.

    "I should ask master about itter", she thought, besides this wasn''t the time for that, she could feel the tension in her muscles increasing, and her heart beat also elerated to pump blood faster to all her body, it was time to finish this fight.

    A moment ago, at the skybox of the elite ss, while on the outside Daimon remained calmed, on the inside he was genuinely surprised, he could clearly see all the movements of Arianna, but unlike others she could also see the changes in the mana of her body.

    "She increased the output of electricity once again, her speed is equal to the seventh, no an eight-star ranked realm mage using a movement spell¡­what the hell did you teach to that girl, Aura?", he wondered before he tried something different.

    This time he decreased the amount of mana points he injected into the infinity eyes skill, he passed from seeing the external mana circuits to see the inside of the body, organs and bones to be more specifically, that''s how he noticed Arianna''s heart suddenly seemed to elerate.

    Interested in this new discovery, he decreased the amount of mana in his eyes once again and then her muscle and circtory system became visible, unlike before he couldn''t see her mana flow or anything rted to mana, which allowed him to focus in the physical changes her body was going through.

    "Her veins have dted, the same as her pupils, but her muscle fibers are being thorned apart by the tension¡­ how can she ignore the downside just like that", he thought but as if hir mind was being read, Aura''s voice sounded in his mind.

    "She can''t feel pain right now, in the state she is, even if she were to lose an arm or something simr, she would be able to keep fighting, that''s what this spell was designed for after all, but don''t worry I only handed her the first part of it, because I''m sure her vitality is high enough to recover in a matter of hours without any side effect".

    "As long as she doesn''t use it for a prolongated amount of time", said Aura to herself.

    Daimon had no other choice but to praise Aura, this was truly a decent spell inspired in core synchrony, it was a general boosting spell which affected not only the body but even the mind of the one using it, and just as Aura stated the source of the boost was different.

    In fact, although in a minor level, the discharge of adrenaline sharpened Arianna''s senses to the point where she developed something simr to his sixth sense, or at least Daimon theorized that after a little ident with his experiment using infinity eyes.

    He decreased the mana one more time and the result was that he saw what was being covered by clothes and armor¡­ in other words he caught a glimpse of her naked body by mistake.

    "Ahem, the fight is about to end", mumbled Daimon, he deactivated infinity eyes, after noticing Arianna seemed to notice something was off as she started looking in every direction.

    And that was the origin of the "weird" feeling Arianna had, luckily the base of infinity eyes was the truth seeker eyes and sixth sense used at the same time, so his field of vision covered 360¡ã degrees, that''s why Ariana couldn''t pinpoint from what was the origin of that sensation she had.<sub> </sub>

    ¡­

    Once Arianna put beside her doubts, she continued with her charge, the needles formed a of about one meter wide but with her enhanced senses and speed she managed to avoid everything, as for the impact caused by Cayden''s battle aura, she used her own body to parry it.

    Once she bypassed Cayden''sst attack, she took another step on the tform before bing a shooting star covered in lightning which shed against Cayden.

    "BOOOOM!".

    "Ughh!".

    Arianna''s shoulder which was protected by the armor shed against the chest te protecting Cayden and just like before, both pieces exploded at contact, but this time the impact and the momentum were all transferred to Cayden which made him vomit blood, his eyes rolled backwards as he flew out of the tform.

    "Damn!", one of the referees immediately moved, with the impulse Cayden''s body had, if it crashed against the wall protected by the barrier behind, his bones will be dust, maybe he won''t die but he would not be able to fight on the revenge match.

    The referee caught Cayden''s body and even he couldn''t frown, at contact he used his mana sense to inspect how bad where his injuries and, he noticed there was a lot of internal bleeding, a couple of broken rips and a lot of bruises caused by his veins copsing due to the impact.

    "As expected of the Argent family¡­ they are all crazy", thought the referee as he nodded at hispanion, the injuries weren''t life threatening nor there will be permanent side effects, so by all means Arianna won the match.

    Having received the confirmation from hispanion, the other referee pointed his hand at Arianna before shouting.

    "The winner¡­ Arianna Argent!".

    "Wooaaaahhh!!!", Ulises acimed so hard that the skybox of the Argent family trembled, making the other elders to cover their ears, nevertheless they also apuded Arianna for her win.

    The crowd also went crazy, the result of this match waspletely out of their predictions, they supposed that Arianna and Cayden were on equal stand, so although there was bound to be a winner, they thought it would be a close call, but the previous fight was too one sided.

    And they weren''t the only ones thinking about it, all kinds of different gazes fell on Arianna, surprise, admiration, jealousy, caution etc. Arthur frowned as a slight killing intent appeared in his heart, that way of fighting perfectly reminded him of Aura when she was still an Archmage, it was like witnessing the birth of a second battle maniac.

    "Humph!".

    Aura noticed the expressions that some of the "guests" had after witnessing Arianna''s battle prowess, and she coldly snorted from her seat, which of course caught the attention of the field marshal.

    "Argent''s matriarch, it seems you found a second gem among the younger generation of your n, please ept my congrattions".

    The voice of the field marshal wasn''t too high nor to low, but all the half emperors, peak Arch ranks and the magus kings perfectly heard it as if it was made on purpose.

    Aura nodded following the game.

    "Yeah, I was truly lucky to find a second disciple", she said, making everyone understand the message, "you want to suffocate a young talent from my n in my watch, dream on!".

    Arthur gritted his teeth in secret, he stole a gaze at Daimon finally understanding why he was so confident.

    "Turns out, that crazy woman has been secretly training another disciple¡­ god damn it!", without noticing he fell for Erin''s n, and now they believed that Arianna has been training with Aura for some time, the reason of this was simple, if she were to show this power only after they were inside the ruin, everyone would think she got it from there which would end up in a war.

    So instead of an instant power up like it is, everyone thought that it was something developed after years of training with Aura, in other words all this "show off" was for the sake of creating an alibi for Arianna.

 Chapter 191 The Second Match (Part 1)

    Now that the winner was dered, Arianna got off the tform and left the arena, not without coldly ring at Samuel Jolbaris which''s expression was that of someone that identally ate a fly.

    "You were coward enough to not ept my challenge before, let''s see how you get off this time", she said in a voice high enough so that the people in the stands near them could hear.

    Needless to say, but amotion raised as soon as Arianna left the scene.

    "The first ranked only managed to keep his position because he used his right to decline a challenge once a month!".

    "The Jolbaris family surely talks big, but their "geniuses" have been throwing dirt at their reputationtely".

    "Yeah, I heard from a good friend of mine that the young master of the Jolbaris had a peculiar hobby¡­".

    "Shhh, don''t speak about that, his father might kill you in a moment of rage, his lineage might be stopping in this generation after all".

    Different conversations could be heard, and just like the previous guy stated, Arthur was boiling with rage, but no matter how angry he was, there was at least six half emperors ready to suppress him if needed, in fact he knew that some of them will do it just for fun, so he had no choice but to take a deep breath, swallow hisins and keep watching the tournament.

    Back at the skybox of the elite ss Daimon was both surprised and intrigued, surprised due to Arianna''s fight, the way she moved was quite amazing, especially considering that she just learned that crazy spell of Aura''s.

    "If my calctions are okay then¡­ she can fight at the same level as me, as long as I don''t use my battle aura, Narasha or core synchrony, not bad considering she is an early stage five star ranked mage while I''m a middle stage five-star knight".

    That being said, there was still one more aspect which he decided to ignore, his body was many times tougher than Arianna''s, her style based on short explosive impulses, so a battle of endurance was her weakness, and Daimon was sure that he could stand still all the day without moving and she would not be able to defeat him.

    Because unlike that bear guy, his body was reinforced overall and not only externally, so the shockwaves produced by her attacks would be dissipated.

    "By the time of the exploration, some will already be prepared to deal with that spell¡­ but I don''t believe this was all her strength, lethal attacks were prohibited and she was chosen by Aura after all", he concluded.

    Daimon guessed that since Arianna wasn''t using her own equipment which was prepared specially for her, her battle prowess was way below her prime.

    Lightning mages aren''t the fastest due to their element, as wind mages move really fast too, what makes them faster, is the fact that lightning mages have quicker reaction times.

    Of course, there are other aspects which affect their speed, even if the elements are the same, the level of affinity differs from person to person, not to mention those whose lightnings have special properties, like Dana or Aura.

    But ultimately what dictate the maximum speed a lightning mage can reach is its own reaction time, if the body moves at a speed in which the brain can''t process what''s happening then the result will be crushed bones.

    While this problem was reduced thanks to the use of mana sense, there was a limit as to how much could that make up for theck of thinking speed, and that''s what the adrenaline discharge was for, so surpass that limit.

    <o>,m To be honest Daimon wasn''t really interested in the rest of the matches, but since he had nothing else to do and Boris would have not let them go, he simply leaned against the back of the seat and enjoyed having Liz sitting on hisp while Aisha and ine hugged each one of his arms.</o>

    Also, he would have the opportunity to see their fighting styles and weaknesses, which woulde in handy at the exploration, if Arianna could jump realms with her battle prowess, it was also possible for others to do it, so there wasn''t any harm in being cautious.

    Meanwhile, after Arianna entered from the door that opened on the wall of the stadium, she walked with a calm expression all the way until she reached a door in which there was a que with her name.

    With a little "click" she entered the room and closed the door, then without any warning her legs gave in making her body copse on the ground.

    "Haa~haa~haa", Arianna''s chest moved up and down as she panted, she moved her fatigued body to the center of the room before letting herself fall backwards.

    "Using both of the body and mind boosters at the same time is still a bit too much to handle", she mumbled with a bitter smile as she took out a chronometer and pressed the start button.

    With her eyes closed she slowly inhaled and exhaled, until her heart which was still a bit elerated eventually returned to its normal rhythm, only then she let out a sigh of relief.

    If she wanted to, Aura gave her some pills which would help her recover in a matter of minutes, but what would be the point of having be stronger if she could not use her own strength.

    Besides the bottle of pills, she had only contained five of those, because they had to be personalized to work specifically with Arianna''s body, and she didn''t want to waste them.<sub> </sub>

    Arianna clenched her teeth and controlled the trembling of her body; she got up and walked towards a bed which was at the other side of her resting room as she looked at the chronometer.

    Her body nearly fell sidewards on the way, but she managed to regain her bnce.

    "Ten minutes to stop the aftermath contraction on the muscles, I can move again but¡­ fighting in the immediate hour or so, is out of question", she concluded.

    The nail in her index finger changed to a w as she scratched a small mark on the chronometer, there were another six or seven of those, but the distances between them wasn''t that big, until this one, thest mark she did covered about one quarter part of the chronometer.

    Only after that she threw herself at the bed and fell asleep, Aura told her that the tournament was being filmed anyway and she didn''t want others to see her weakened current state.

    Back at the arena, the magic formation which covered the whole stadium glowed and all the signs that a fierce battle took ce here a few minutes ago disappeared, then the image of the screens focused on the referees once again as they repeated the selection process.

    "Rank number 13, Wade Risha".

    "Rank number 9, Caleb Allier".

    After the participants were decided, the other students of the second year''s elite ss returned to the bench, and the two selected went up the tform.

    Wade Risha is a short but bulky guy, his hair is white a characteristic of the snow eagle n of the Risha family, but unlike Liliana, his eye color isn''t that pretty ash-blue color, but a moremon brown tone.

    As for Caleb Allier, it''s a slim guy with long hair whichbined with thevender tone of his sclera, his skin was rather paledpared to other guys, the calm smiling expression on his face made a lot of the female spectators on the stand immediately go crazy as they saw him winking at them.

    "Kyaaah, how handsome!".

    "As expected of someone from royal family from the Illusory silk worm race".

    As if he was used to getting attention from girls, to the disgust of the male students near them.

    On the seats for honored guests, a peak Archknight from the Faresh family, huffed from his bull''s nose, as he snorted.

    "Humph, just a silk pants from the Allier family, what does appearance ount for, when your head is about to be separated from your neck".

    "Heh, saying that makes you look like a sore loser, supreme elder of the Faresh family, are you perhaps still angry because I stole your crush from you back then?".

    A strangely soft voice called out the bull-headed guy from the Faresh family, which made him grit his teeth as she turned to the direction from which it came.

    There sitting with a smiling expression was a young-looking man which looked about eighty percent simr to Caleb, the only difference was that he was taller and he had a thin mustache which made it look older and his eyes were closed.

    The bull-headed man felt a vein popping on his neck, but to everyone''s surprise controlling his short temper, a cunning smile appeared on the corner of his mouth as he shook his head.

    "No, no, in the end she wasn''t anything mine, I''m more worried about you elder Trevor, having to see your own wife being banged by your older brother everyday is for sure a hard "duty", you and your "son" have my support".

    An ufortable silence fell on the area, before a few mockingughs sounded making the previously rxed Trevor to explode,vender colored mana leaked form his body making the area tremble but it was immediately contained by the surrounding Arch ranks, so that none of the students was affected by it.

    Trevor slightly opened his eyes, unlike Caleb although his sclera had avender color, his pupils had a red tone instead of blue, he also opened his mouth revealing that his teeth weren''t t but spiky giving him a threatening appearance.

    But before things could get out of hand, a single wording from the row where all the half emperors were sitting, stopped all the ruckus.

    "Enough", listening to the indifferent and authoritative voice of the field marshal from the army, all the peak Arch ranks behaved well and amodated on their seats, as the next match was starting.

 Chapter 192 The Second Match (Part 2)

    Since the bull-headed man felt quite angry at Trevor Allier, his words were spoken in a volume high enough so that the students on the stands could hear it.

    And the result was as he expected, one of the members of the Faresh family caught the hint and immediately exined.

    "Ahh, right, now that you mention it, the Allier family has a weird tradition, for some unknown reason, the heirs of their royal family are always male twins, the younger one is always the weaker between them but he older one has the potential to be a half emperor".

    "What the hell does that have to do with wearing a green hat due to your own brother?", asked one of the spectators to the guy from the Faresh family.

    The bull-headed youth inwardly smirked, since he caught the attention of others, then the supreme elder will of course reward him in kindter, so he continued trying to make the story as colorful as possible.

    "Easy, the reason is that the older twin bes the ancestor while the younger one bes the n head¡­ and they share the same wife, not only that, the rumors say that they have to take the same woman at the same time in order to have offspring, but the domineering will always be the older brother".

    "Then when the next twins are born, the older one will be the father of the older twin, at the same time the younger one will be the father of the younger twin, the cycle continues infinitely, also the woman grows attached to the older brother".

    "Uwaah, that sucks, it means that once they are born, their destiny is to get cheated on", concluded the same guy who asked.

    After listening to the story, all the female students immediately stopped supporting Caleb, in this world having more than one partner isn''t weird, and this applies to both men and women, the reason is quite simple, their lives are really long so at some point they have to deal with being bored.

    But while sisters are not that against sharing the same husband, brothers would totally don''t do it, not willingly at least, so you can imagine how conflictive is for the twins of the Allier family know they will end up just like their fathers.

    Back at the tform Caleb gritted his teeth, while his brother was indifferent on the bench, that was because he was the older one, while Caleb was the younger one, this has been something that weighs in his heart since he learned about it.

    "Forget it, I can deal with thatter¡­ members of the Faresh family, I will remember this", he thought before focusing on his opponent, just to see Wade disdainfully looking at him.

    "What the hell are youughing at, you pussy-whipped bird asshole?".

    Needless to say, but all the other males from the snow eagle n reacted as if someone just killed their parents, different kinds of insults filled the arena until the staff from the army interfered to prevent a riot.

    Inside the skybox of the elite ss, Daimon had a weird expression, previously he didn''t notice it as the members of the snow eagle n weren''t that numerous in the academy, and all of them were guys with the exception of Liliana, that or all the other girls didn''te to see the tournament.

    Also, all of them shared a couple of things inmon¡­ all of them were knights and all of them could be considered short, even that Wade guy was about ten centimeters shorterpared to Liliana and he was way older considering he is a second-year student.

    Daimon couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, until he hard Aura''s amused voice.

    "Female eagles are about one third size bigger than even theirrgest male counterparts, and the members of the snow eagle n follow that same trait".

    As he was about to agree with her, he remembered that Horace guy from earlier and if his memory didn''t fail him, he was slightly taller than Anya reaching about 1.85 meters height.

    Noticing Daimon''s gaze, the corner of Anya''s lips trembles as an almost unnoticeable smile flourished in her face.

    "tform shoes¡­ he is as tall as Liliana".

    ¡­ For a moment silence fell in the room before Calvin finally couldn''t hold back hisugh.

    "HAHAHA, Michael are you perhaps part of the Risha family?".

    Michael felt a vein popping on his neck, but he didn''t say anything.

    Daimon shook his head, apparently all the families had their own little not so secrets, which he never paid attention to before.

    "Anything I should know about the Revy and Argent families¡­ I''m considered a variant of both races", asked Daimon through the mental connection.

    "Werewolves tend to be muscle head exhibitionists just look at their supreme elder", said Erin with a yful voice.

    "As for the guys of the Revy family, they are considered scheming and arrogant, although that''s not always the case, there is an exception among the third years and that is a direct rtive from that scarred old man".<sub> </sub>

    Listening to Erin answering in the name of the werewolves while Aura did it for the Revy family, made Daimon inwardlyugh, but he was also interested in these peculiar characteristics which probably had something to do with their respective races.

    This worldcked a lot in some areas of research considering for how long has the civilization existed, for example in medicine, they didn''t even have x-ray machines.

    On the other hand, since doctors can use mana sense to detect the source of problems, there was not really a need for such technologies, but it''s that same ideology which had been stopping them from a lot of useful discoveries, like gic investigation for example, luckily the Greenwich Sage picks up any random interesting thing, which from time-to-time leads to a new advance.

    Back at the tform, feeling the ridiculing gazes of the spectators, Wade''s eyes became bloodshot, the eagle is a king among the bird races so why must he be humiliated by a mere insect (Caleb is part of the illusory silk worm race), who used to be lower than him in the ranks.

    For second years, when two of the members from the elite ss have a duel, their ranks are swapped ording to the result, in other words the winner takes the ce of the loser and vice versa, and he was defeated yesterday by the current rank eight.

    Wade stole a gaze at the guy from the fire crane n which looked at him with an amused expression, and he gritted his teeth.

    "Whatever I can destroy this sissy as a warm up, then it will be your turn, Jester", he thought.

    "Whoosh~", gusts of wind twirled around Wade as he activated his battle aura at the maximum output right from the beginning, surprisingly small signs of freeze appeared on the tform after entering into contact with his battle aura.

    "What!", most of the freshmen were in awe thinking that the guy who they mocked before was apparently a dual elemental knight, something even rarer than a dual elemental mage.

    But those who knew more about the snow eagle n and those with a high enough perception in either wind or ice elements, among which Michael and Liliana were included, shook their heads.

    "That''s not ice element".

    "That''s not wind element either".

    They both said practically at the same time, helping Daimon confirm his supposition.

    "It''s simr to what happened to Aura''s lightning, a variation of elements".

    Liliana looked at her mother and seeing that she didn''t seem to want to talk anymore, she took over.

    <o>,m "The members of the snow eagle n either have wind, water or ice affinities, being ice the rarest, but there are alsobinations of them due to generations of families that chose their partners based on that, that''s because it''s easier for them to inherit abination than to awaken ice affinity".</o>

    "Among the main branches of the snow eagle n, their "ace" developed for the male heirs, is thatbination of wind and ice affinities, they call it "blizzard" element, as for women they usually get "snow" element, the result of a mix between water and ice elements".

    Seeing her students have doubts, Aliya took the chance for a little lesson.

    "Living beings have more than one affinity that''s why daily life spells are avable for everyone regardless of their affinity".

    "It''s just that one element is dominant and the others are dormant to the point that using magic from the others is practically impossible, the reason as to why dual elemental mages are rare isn''t the number of affinities, but the amount of tension their mana circuits can endure", she said as she stole a couple of gazes at Daimon, Aisha and Michael.

    "Twice the affinity it''s the same as twice the amount of stress on the mana circuits as two different elements had to circte through them, which often results inbinations like blizzard element".

    Seeing that some of them still showed confusion in their faces, Aliya decided to aboard the subject from a different point of view.

    "Let''s say one affinity amounts to 100%, then having two affinities is the same as 200%, but abination it''s just the original 100% distribute in two different elements¡­ in this case wind and ice, by the looks of it I would say it''s about 80% wind and 20% ice".

    Daimon nodded agreeing with Aliya''s exnation, in his infinity eyes he could see the mix of two different types of mana, but unlike Aura who got her own element potentiated, the one in the battle Aura of Wade wasn''t as fast and sharp as wind, nor as cold and malleable as ice, in other words he would never be as fast as a wind mage nor as good in crowd control as an ice mage.

    "Mm¡­ now that I have infinity eyes, I should inspect Aura''s element, and also that little tiger girl too, it should be helpful for me to understand more about demon light", he concluded.

    That time when he was forming his battle aura, although the achievement wasn''t high enough to unlock his grimoire, he still got a decent reward after creating demon light but as strong as it might be, he still thought it wascking something and now there was a new path opening for him, whether he manages to surpass his own limit or not, only the future would tell.

 Chapter 193 The Second Match (Part 3)

    Back at the tform, seeing that his enemy wasn''t doing anything, Wade got angrier, to make up for the difference in height most of the males from the snow eagle n be knights, so mentioning that was rubbing salt on the wound.

    Still knowing the specialty of the illusory wilk worm n, he didn''t rush, instead of that, he punched the air making waves of his battle aura fly towards Caleb.

    Caleb coldly snorted and under the surprised eyes of Wade, he blocked the waves of battle aura with his bare hands, it would be more urate to say that the battle aura simply bounced back without affecting him at all.

    "What!", Wade couldn''t help but exim, a physically weak race like the illusory silk worm which is a mage actually blocked his attacks without using any spell, it was ridiculous.

    But then he remembered how Arianna overpowered a knight while being a mage too, and he gritted his teeth.

    "Spoiled idiots¡­ anyone can be strong with a half emperor training it", he mumbled.

    While Caleb was technically the son of the supreme elder, the father of his older twin is a half emperor, so it wouldn''t be surprising that he got some high leveled training.

    Inside the skybox of the elite ss, Daimon shook his head, the scene in his infinity eyes waspletely different to what others were seeing.

    There was only one thing on the arena¡­ a huge cocoon made out ofvender colored silk, the thing covered the whole tform and while others could only the cocoon from outside, Daimon could see what was happening inside.

    "This match is over", he openly said.

    While Wade was insulting Caleb, thetter was spreading his silk throughout the area, and after Wade activated his battle aura, Caleb casted his spell.

    As a knight Wade is less perceptive towards mana, unless he actively uses mana sense, which he for some reason didn''t, probably because he was too busy getting angry due to the people on the gradesughing at him.

    Yvonne nodded at Daimon''s deration, races which are talented in mind and illusory type spells are rare, even in her night sparrow n, only the best of the best can use them, among which her parents and her are included.

    "Spells that affect the mind are hard to fend off, besides those who are skilled on them by innate, the only way to resist is either having a lot of realbat experience, not training but situations where you could die¡­ or using a magic treasure which keeps your mind clear".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, mind or illusion wasn''t considered an element and yet it was rare for someone to be skilled in them, knights were especially susceptible to that kind of attack too, and an agitated mind only made Wade be easier to trick, to top it off this tournament banned personalized magic treasures, on other words from the very beginning, the guy from the Risha family was fighting against his natural predator.

    "What a shame I can''t see the illusion", he thought, although the infinity eyes allowed him to see through the cocoon, the only thing he saw was Wade using the martial art "aura fist" to hit the ground like an idiot, while Caleb calmly walked sidewards towards his enemy.

    It was also interesting, how the illusory silk worm race could create illusions using their silk as a "green screen".

    Then Daimon saw Caleb using the spell "Earth hands", but before they reached Wade,vender colored silk covered the hands and only then the attack was directed at Wade.

    ¡­

    Inside the cocoon Wade was starting to panic, no matter how much he attacked Caleb simply dispelled his aura using his left hand, it never crossed his mind that he was under an illusion.

    Not everything was his fault though, just like how the guy from the Arkuoda family, Caleb and his brother have been reserving some of their strongest spells for the tournament.

    He stole a gaze at the direction in which the bench for the other participants was and coldly snorted.

    "From the seventh ranked and below everyone has proper experience, so tricking them would not be that easy and with this I have taken away a powerful spell from your repertory¡­ right my "dear" older brother".

    As he spoke his face twisted in hatred, just because he was born a few seconds after his brother he was treated as a shadow of him, no matter how much he trained, his older brother easily surpassed him.

    There was a time where he admired his brother¡­ but then he became arrogant to the point that he was treated as a servant; with time he started hating his own reflect on a mirror as it remembered the person, he hated the most.

    His "father" also exined his theory of why he couldn''t surpass his brother no matter how much he tried, somehow the father of his brother made him lose part of his affinity and passed it to his older brother, otherwise it wouldn''t make sense that two exactly simr people could be so different in potential terms.<sub> </sub>

    Once he had made about one hundred earth hands, he inwardly grinned.

    "Silk World!", he mumbled.

    With thatst thought, in Wade eyes countless of earth spikes came from above so he pointed at the sky and swayed his sword towards it, although his attacks flew and shed against the roof of the cocoon thus breaking it, by the time he realized, the hundred earth hands which he couldn''t see since they were concealed with Caleb''s silk, all shed against him.

    While one hand only weighted about ten kilograms, one hundred of them at the same time amounted to an impacting force of one ton, and an eight-star ranked knight can produce about eight hundred kilograms, so when the hands shed against him¡­ he vomited blood.

    "Aghhhh!!", a miserable scream filled the arena, in the eyes of the spectators, that weird cocoon split apart and the battered figure of Wade flew out of it beforending at the border of the tform.

    The cocoon disappeared as Caleb walked out of it.

    "I can''t go past the eight ranked, but now your "Silk World" won''t surprise your opponent, with this your chances to get he first ce have lessened my dear older brother", he thought as he waved his hand towards Wade.

    Wade was unconscious after having being taken with the guard down, then a whip made out of silk hit his body making him fall from the tform.

    While the referees were confused about what was happening, their duty was to only make sure the rules were followed so after making sure that Wade wasn''t attacked by anything that broke the rules nor suffered permanent wounds, Caleb was dered the winner.

    "The winner, Caleb Allier!".

    The spectators didn''t know what happened inside the cocoon, but since the winner was already decided they had no choice but to ept the result, some of the girls actually cheered him, a win is a win after all.

    Without saying anything else, Caleb left the tform and after stealing a gaze at his older brother which was frowning, he inwardlyughed beforeving the arena to the resting area.

    Cnt Allier gritted his teeh as he cursed his younger brother who was leaving the arena.

    "That useless fool, using Silk World to deal with a nobody out of the top ten¡­ whatever I guess that''s what that inferior imitation had to do in order to win".

    Just like Trevor told to Caleb, his older brother didn''t think he revealed one of the two most powerful spells avable for star rank mages in the Allier family on purpose, instead he believed that due to his natural lower battle prowess he had to do it in order to win, although his opponent used to be only one position below him in the ranks.

    Back at the row of honorable seats, where most of the half emperors and those with simr status like the magus kings and queen are, a tall man with a slimplex, longvender hair a refined face and a small crown, frowned.

    And his expression became even darker when he heard a hoarse but ridiculing voice,ing from the person sitting at his left side, where a two-meter tall, bull-headed man with a long spiky mane was sitting cross legged without any chair.

    "Hahaha, what''s wrong Sawyer, are you angry because that son/nephew of yours had to use his triumph card against a member of a family which doesn''t have the support of a half emperor?".

    Apparently the Faresh and Allier families have a terrible rtionship at all levels, the ancestor of the Allier family called Sawyer, simply shrugged as he pointed at the two members of the Faresh family which were still sitting on the bench.

    "You sure talk big for someone whose both younger sons aren''t even in the top five, despite having your guidance, did you perhaps got cheated on by that old cow woman of yours¡­ Kirdun Faresh?".

    The bull-headed man immediately stoppedughing, his whole body trembled and a secondter his figure grew taller until he was about three meters height.

    "Are you perhaps feeling itchy Sawyer, if you want to, I don''t mind teaching a lesson to your sissy ass".

    The atmosphere became tense when the mana of two half emperors started leaking from their bodies, more urately mana and battle aura, luckily their powers were still being suppressed by the sealing formation of the academy, so at most they could excel the power of an early-stage Arch ranked, which wasn''t enough to destroy the stands nor the training grounds.

    Also, the field marshal was actively creating a barrier with his mana around the area just in case, after letting their mana and battle aura sh for about one minute, none of them got a noticeable advantage over the other, and after snorting both calmed down, not by their own will, but because they noticed Aura ring at them, as the principal she had the authority to ignore the suppression of the sealing formation, so if they took things too far, they couldn''t me her for beating them up.

 Chapter 194 A Peculiar Way Of Fighting

    The previous fight was rather one sided and the tform didn''t suffer that much, so in a couple of minutes it was back to normal, then the referees repeated the process of selection.

    "Rank number 3, Lana Ramir".

    The people in the stands went crazy hearing the first participant, it was another member of the top five and a girl after all.

    The second referee then shouted the other participant.

    "Rank number 7, Minadine Faresh".

    Although there were some cheering ups here and there, it wasn''t as loud as with the first participant.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, these supposedly random selections had dispatched two of the top five in the first day, it was a bit too much to be considered a coincidence, but no one cared, for the sake of making the tournament faster, only half of the second year''s elite ss was participating.

    Of course, the half that was chosen was the upper one as those above the rank fifteen weren''t priorities to be the captain of the team, in other words this tournament was for the sake of choosing the captain.

    The reason is very simple, the captain will be carrying the badge which supposedly would allow it to bring a mage lord inside the magic ruin, it was the top priority of the exploration because the first one to clear that trial would have the advantage over the others.

    Luckily the year recently started so there were no six-star mages nor knights among the second-year elite ss yet, so everyone had the chance to go, but for those from the sixteen to the thirty ranks, were only allowed to challenge someone in the revenge match of tomorrow, and they could only ask for fight for those below the top five.

    "I guess we''ll know it, if thest fight of today includes the fourth rank", he concluded.

    Back to the arena, the girl surnamed Faresh was easy to spot since she had a cow''s head instead of a human one, as for the other girl which now had the rank that used to belong to Arianna, it was the girl with a reptile tail and some small, scale patterns on her neck and arms.

    Daimon turned to see the half emperors and didn''t see someone with simr characteristics among them, but on the stands where the peak Arch ranks were sitting, he saw an old woman with a simr tail.

    Not all the half emperors attended the tournament but it was slightly weird to not see one that backed someone in the top five noting, those old monsters tend to value their faces quite a bit after all.

    The two girls went up the tform, Minadine immediately took out her weapon a two-handed heavy axe, as for Lana¡­ her ring illuminated and a piece of some kind of crystal materialized leaving all the first-year students confused.

    "What the hell, is that some kind of throwable weapon?", they wondered, but then their eyes widened as they saw he¡­ biting it.

    "Crunch~Crunch~Crunch", loud crunch sounds filled the arena as Lana literally munched pieces of the crystal, then the scale patters on her neck and arms illuminated and then she stomped her left leg on the ground before rushing towards Minadine.

    The bull-headed woman changed her stance and then her battle aura exploded out of her body, simr to what happened with the Faresh ancestor earlier, her height increased about thirty centimeters and the clothes on the area of her stomach broke to reveal her toned figure.

    "Haaaa!", with a loud shout she swayed her axe towards Lana, to everyone''s surprise she wasn''t slow and to top it off, her element was wind.

    "Boooom!", a crystalized little fist and a heavy metal axe shed causing a loud explosion, the tform under their feet cracked and both of the girls were sent back a couple of meters without none of them getting a clear advantage over the other.

    Or that''s what most people thought before shaking their head, because while Minadine used her battle aura in the previous sh, Lana didn''t.

    On the skybox of the elite ss, Daimon inspected both of the participants with his infinity eyes, keeping such an extreme distinctive trait as a bull''s head is rare, as normally the path of evolution makes races be more and more human like.

    Compared to other people he has observed she had thrice the amount of mana circuits in the head, there was obviously a reason for that, but he didn''t feel too interested in that, instead what was reflected in his infinity eyes when he saw the girl from the Ramir family was more eye catching.

    She had the mana circuits of a mage, but even if she had mana in her body, it wasn''t circting and yet her whole body was shining.

    "I guess all the races had their own things", he thought.

    Back at the tform, Minadine moved as fast as she could, her axe left after images but no matter how much she tried Lana simply blocked them with her arms causing sparks to fly with each impact.

    "Damn they move too fast I can''t see anything", and other simr things could be hearding from the stands, their exchange was literally physical as none of them used any martial art or spell.

    Lana suddenly dodged one of the attacks instead of blocking it for the first time.<sub> </sub>

    "Whooosh!", the sound of air splitting apart echoed through the whole ce as Lana used her reptile tail as a whip.

    Minadine felt her hairs stand on end, she forced her body to stop midway and jumped backwards, unfortunately she was still touched by the tip of Lana''s tail, right on her left thigh.

    "Aghhh!!", a loud high-pitched scream nearly made the ears of those in the stands to bleed, when they focused on the fight again their eyes widened in shock¡­ Minadine''s whole left leg was gone.

    The cow headed woman saw Lana walking towards her as she munched another piece of the same crystal and her whole body trembled as she looked downwards.

    There are a couple of important veins on the legs, the only reason as to why she isn''t screaming to the content of her heart is because her wound was sealed by some kind of crystal.

    "Give up, I can remove the seal on your wound if I want to, and believe me when I say that even a current of air will feel like hell if it touches your raw meat".

    The Faresh ancestor clenched his fists seeing his younger daughter now missing a leg, loud explosions came from his body, but he had no choice but to calm down, there was supposed to be a big gap between the top five and the others, even if Minadine was the not that far from them.

    Noticing the dangerous glow in Lana''s eyes, Minadine sighed, she guesses she was going to lose anyway, but not this miserably, with the first serious attack from her opponent she lost a leg.

    The worst part was that she had to give up which meant she would be prohibited to challenge anyone on the revenge match, unless she continued fighting until she passed out, as jumping from the tform by one''s own will was the same as giving up anyway.

    "I forfeit", she said with a defeated voice.

    The referees went up the tform and after inspecting what could be considered the most serious wound so far, they nodded at each other before saying.

    "The winner is Lana Ramir".

    "Woaahhh!!!", the crowd went crazy, the only ones which seemed more serious than before where the others left of the top five, Samuel Jolbaris and Cnt Allier, it was the first time they saw Lana using her tail like that and the result was horrible.

    The Faresh family''s trait is body magnification, their cells expand with mana of battle aura making their body grow taller, essentially, they be giants which increase their physical attributes.

    And yet that tail whip turned a reinforced leg into blood mist, it was terrifying to say the less, Lana stole a gaze at Samuel before she jumped from the tform and happily hummed as she left the arena, it was a big contrastpared to the threatening expression she had when she fought against Minadine.

    But unlike others, Daimon saw the shine in her body disappear after that attack with her tail.

    "She uses those crystals as some kind of fuel¡­ what a peculiar way to fight", he thought.

    The referees were about to select the participants for the next match since the tform didn''t look too damaged, but as soon as Lana closed the door to the resting area, ayer of the tform crystalized and then became brittle.

    "I guess we''ll have to wait", said one of the referees to the other, the ones that haven''t fought from the second year''s elite ss all seemed stern, well everyone but the other Allier twin and the girl from the Leeris family.

    Cnt Allier is thest one left out of the top five, the fourth ranked to be more specific, so if he was chosen to fight today, the best opponent for him was the sixth ranked.

    The referees repeated the process of selection and even they couldn''t help but inwardly sigh.

    "Rank number four, Cnt Allier".

    "Rank number six, Gina Leeris".

    Daimon gazed at Aura, this was a bit too much, but apparently all the half emperors agreed so no one dared to say anything, instead the remaining Allier twin gantly greeted Gina as he waited for her to go up the tform.

    A gesture which seemed to move the heart of the female students, unlike Caleb which had a certain air of bitterness around him, Cnt was all smiles whichbined with his refined appearance made him look like a blue prince.

    Unfortunately for him, his opponent didn''t seem to be on the same page as the other girls, her expression only showed disgust as she red at him.

 Chapter 195 The Fierce Fourth Match (Part 1)

    For the first time since the matches started Ste frowned.

    "Out of all the possible enemies she had to fight one of the two that I specially didn''t want her to", she thought as she inwardly gritted her teeth.

    Then she stole a gaze at the ce where the half emperors were sitting and a bitter light glowed in her eyes as she red at Sawyer and Arthur, but it wasn''t even a second before she buried her thoughts deep in her heart.

    The referees stepped down the tform and the match officially started, not even wasting one second an ice mask appeared on Gina''s face, unlike the weak freezing effect of the blizzard element Wade showed before, this was true ice element.

    "Woaahhh!", the people on the stands majorly the male students cheered, ice is a rare affinity after all and a pretty girl was the one that had it too, it was perfect.

    But then the girls also went crazy, Cnt gantly smiled before taking out a hand sized gray ball from the storage ring proportioned by the academy.

    With a wave of his hand the ball changed its form to a semi liquid one, then a dazzling light blinded everyone before the metal covered his chest, shoulders, arms and legs taking the form of a non-detailed armor, that''s right, his element was metal.

    The supreme elder from the Allier family gritted his teeth, even in affinity terms the older twin got the better one, metal affinity was considered the direct upgrade of earth affinity after all and this pattern of weaker element and stronger element has been repeated through a lot of generations.

    Behind her ice mask Gina frowned, apparently Cnt had chosen that gray ball made out of metal instead of a weapon, but that exined also why he was only using leather armor instead of a more protective one.

    The metal directly manipted by a mage was way lighterpared to a pre-fabricated metal armor after all, and they were only allowed to choose a thing besides the armor of their preference, Lana chose that crystal she munched, and this time Cnt chose that ball of metal.

    Of course, an expert in the respective field made sure that the quality of the things was the same, for fairness''s sake.

    Cnt then snapped his fingers before he said in a calm voice.

    "Silk Knight".

    p andvender colored silk covered the raw armor and after a couple of seconds, the armor changed from that rough appearance to refined one with lots ofvender colored decorations.</anda>

    "Kyaaaa!!!", some of the first-year female students had little stars sparkling in their eyes as they looked at Cnt, in a matter of seconds he changed from a handsome youth to a refined brave knight.

    At the skybox of the elite ss, Calvin snorted, he as someone who appreciated female beauty, felt disgusted by the noble front Cnt was putting on, and he wasn''t the only one, Yvonne also raised an eyebrow, with her eyes she could deduce that even before he took out that ball of metal, he was already using a spell, thanks to his mana flow.

    Daimon on the other hand was slightly amused by what he was seeing thanks to his infinity eyes.

    "The whole area around five meters of him is full of metal threads covered in that silk, to make them invisible".

    Back then when the ball of metal shone, he separated tiny bits of it and changed them into metal threads which he covered with his silk to make them invisible, then all the spectacle of the knight armor took part, in other words the threads were the true purpose of that spell and the refined armor was just a distraction.

    Although this spell seemed rather two-faced, as the say goes "everything is fair in love and war", so Daimon didn''t find it despicable, instead he was more interested in why the girl from the snow leopard race didn''t take the opportunity to attack him.

    The formation of the armor was purposedly done slow, the idea was for the opponent to underestimate Cnt and attack him while he was "careless", and then the metal threads will take them by surprise with their pants down.

    And yet while Cnt was putting all that show, Gina didn''t move from where she was standing until the armor was formed.

    "It might have something to do with that ice mask", wondered Daimon, he could see some traces of manaing from the mask which had no holes even for the eyes, nose or mouth.

    "We''ll see, if I can''t understand what''s going on, then I will use the x-ray effect of the infinity eyes", he concluded.

    With x-ray effect Daimon meant the idental discovery he did back when he was inspecting Arianna''s mana circuits, after lowering the amount of mana to a point where he could only see-through external elements like armor and¡­ clothes.

    Back at the tform, Cnt was externally all smiles, but inwardly he was cursing in his heart since his opening movement didn''t have the result he wanted.

    And he was even angrier after noticing that there was white misting from the tform due to Gina lowering the temperature, until it showed signs of freezing.

    "Crack!", little cracking noises echoed through the arena confusing the spectators as they couldn''t pinpoint where they originated, Cnt on the other hand was inwardly gritting his teeth.<sub> </sub>

    "That bitch froze my metal threads until they broke!", he thought, still the silk was still covering them, so even if they broke others didn''t see the little pieces of them which were now spread through the ground five meters around him.

    "Where is your weapon" said Gina in an indifferent voice.

    "Acting so high and mighty, just wait until the exploration" thought Cnt but on the outside he smiled as she answered.

    "How could I dare to use a sharp object against you".

    Gina''s face was covered by the mask so no one could see it, but she felt the urge to puke, Cnt has been courting her since they first met one year ago, and while gant attitudes were popr amongdies of noble birth, she knew that wasn''t his true self and she hated hypocrites the most.

    She extended her hand and white mist came from it whichter condensed into an ice trident, after making it roll with her hand, she jumped towards Cnt making him grin.

    As he changed his stance to a defensive one, he was waiting for the moment she stepped on one of the many shards of metal which were hidden thanks to his silk, then he would change it into a spike to make her lose her bnce to finish the battle.

    But his smile froze when he saw her make a roll on the air, what touched the ground around five meters of him was the prongs of her trident.

    "Haaa!", Gina shouted as he used the momentum to impulse herself into the air again, her body did a perfect turn midair and before Cnt could react shended behind him.

    "sh!", the sound of air being split apart woke Cnt from his trance as he saw the tridenting his way, but as he was about to materialize a weapon with the leftover metal of the ball which he was hiding below the chest te, his eyes widened as the trident grewrger.

    From his point of view, it was as if the trident teleported from being one meter away from him, to be a few centimeters away from his face.

    "ng!", the sound of metals colliding echoed through the arena as he managed to use the armor of his arm to block the trident, the impact sent him back two meters, his arm was trembling.

    "What!", the spectators where amazed by what they saw, not only Gina had a really high purity ice, she had an amazing control over her body to maneuver like that.

    An almost unnoticeable smile flourished in Ste''s face, ording to the records of her family, the ancient magic beast snow leopard lives in frozen mountain areas, besides being well adapted to low temperatures, its body is naturally flexible and strong as it has to jump from risks and walk in rocky inclined areas.

    Cnt looked downwards and his pupils widened, the trident was so sharp that although he managed to block the attack, there was a perfect cut in the armor from which his blood was oozing, he felt his face burning, he the fourth ranked which was supposed to be in a position to challenge Samuel Jolbaris she was actually wounded in the first move.

    Feeling the ridiculing gazesing from the members of the Faresh family, some of the people in the stands and even the area where the half emperors were sitting, Cnt gritted his teeth and then all the little shards of metal on the ground became needles.

    He then changed the armor on his right leg into arge il with three spiked heads, he then rushed towards Gina to return the previous humiliation.

    The heads of the il in his hands rotated umting impulse and when they hit the prongs of Gina''s trident, they broke.

    "You are mine", he inwardly shouted, Gina took a step backwards to put some distance as she created a new trident, but then Cnt shot the invisible needles at her.

    Unfortunately, once again his n didn''t work, Gina contorted her body as she dodged most of the needles while using the rod of the trident to block the others.

    Once the attack ended, there was only a small piece of ice left of the trident, a proof that those needles were quite dangerous, but none of them touched her body.

    This time Cnt finally couldn''t keep hisposure.

    "Impossible!", he shouted, the speed of the needles wasn''t that high, but they were invisible, while it was possible for her to dodge some of them if she had a good perception or a good hearing sense.

    They were shot from both the front and the back, so even if she dodged the front ones, she shouldn''t have the time to dodge the others, it was as if she grew a pair of eyes in her back.

    The trident in Gina''s hands reformed as she pointed it at Cnt.

    "Use the other legacy spell of your Allier family, right here in front of everyone¡­ I will crush it".

 Chapter 196 The Fierce Fourth Match (Part 2)

    Cnt felt his blood boiling as soon as he heard the words "legacy spell and I will crush it" in the same sentence.

    A big force normally doesn''t appear out of nowhere, years of umtion, talented individuals, good management and luck, that''s how strong families are built, although they might be some¡­ exceptions.

    A legacy spell is a spell that was created and has been perfectioned by at least twenty generations, if you add to that the fact that the lifespan of Arch ranks which tend to be the peak of strength for those of noble birth, can be counted on the thousands of years.

    Then you can imagine how much thought, experimentation, review, redo and realization, does a legacy spell require, the result is often the foundation of a big family as there is an upgraded version of the same spell for upper realms.

    The spell used by Caleb for example "Silk World" has a limited range in the form of the cocoon, but that inconvenient is eliminated for the advanced version used by mage lords, as well as adding more properties once the user bes an Archmage.

    In other words, legacy spells can face Daimon''s skills as they also "level up", the difference is that they are created manually through the years while the skills naturally evolve after meeting their respective requirements.

    There are also divisions among legacy spells, those which have been reviewed more times are naturally superior, and they are all in the hands of those families which have had half emperors since that realm was discovered.

    That''s why Cnt was furious, a descendant from a family which has never had a half emperor is demanding him to use the spell reserved for the one who will inherit his Allier family, he was basically looked with disdain.

    Also using it against someone which isn''t in the top five meant he was as "trash" as his younger brother, the problem is that unlike Caleb he didn''t focus into illusion spells, but closebat mixed with surprise attacks, so besides that and other metal element spells he could only use legacy spells of his family.

    And Caleb already showed silk world to everyone so he had only one option left, while gritting his teeth and swearing to wash off this humiliation with blood, he inwardly shouted.

    "Silk Centurion".

    Under the expectant eyes of the students and the proud gaze of the Allier ancestor, little pieces of Cnt''s hair separated from him before they became perfect copies of him.

    From the skybox of the elite ss Daimon finally showed a mall tinge of interest in Cnt.

    "If I don''t use enough mana in my infinity eyes, those copies would appear to be exactly as him, not bad but expected since it''s a legacy spell", he thought.

    Shape, smell, mana, even shadow, the copies were really simr as Cnt, the shape was the basic illusion of the Allier family, as for the smell and mana, these copies were created with his hair and other silk so they were like a part of Cnt and after being showered in his mana for such a long time they also contained mana, the shadow was probably created with the same illusion that created the shape though.

    Unfortunately, no matter how much they resembled and even shared mana which would probably confuse even Yvonne''s vision, Daimon''s infinity eyes could see things that even Cnt himself couldn''t, his mana circuits.

    So, he just adjusted the infinity eyes and immediately identified the real Cnt, of course it might sound easy, but considering not even half emperors could map the mana circuits in other people''s bodies without direct contact, and even then, the image will be vague and inexact, this spell was worthy to be called a legacy spell.

    The Allier ancestor proudly smiled seeing his son using the spell silk centurion, illusions of living beings were harder to master than inanimate objects, that''s why the second legacy spell, silk world was created.

    While Caleb could only create one illusion of himself within the cocoon, Cnt created exactly one hundred copies with the same mana, scent, shape, and even shadow as him, unfortunately he couldn''t use the spell at its maximum as magic treasures besides one weapon and armor were banned, but it was still a good advantage.

    Back at the tform all the "Cnts" turned to see Gina at the same time, then everyone of them changed a piece of their armor into a different weapon, some used part of the chest te, others the armor of the arm, the remaining armor of the leg etc.

    The weapons produced were also different, swords, spears, maces, hammers and other kinds of weapons with different lengths sizes, it was basically an army ready to drown Gina in a sea of metal.

    Ste saw that from the skybox of the vice principals and she showed a slight tinge of worriedness, which disappeared as soon as she saw Gina sticking the ice trident into the ground.

    "Is she giving up?", wondered the students in the stands, but again they didn''t me her, all those copies looked quite real and all those different weapons would make you fail at the moment of dodging or blocking, so continuing with this fight was just asking to be wounded, or that''s what they believed.

    Under the surprised eye of everyone, Gina''s nails changed to be ws, unlike therge and imposing ones of the Jolbaris or the Argent, hers were shorter like the ones of a cat, but there was also another difference¡­ blood was dripping from them.

    Apparently, her ws wounded herself when she used them, so they weren''t fit forbat which exined why she created a weapon with ice.<sub> </sub>

    Feeling that something was off, Cnt immediately ordered all his copies to attack while also moved, this fight wassting more than what he expected.

    Cnt''s copies rushed from all sides towards Gina, from both sides, the front and the back, some of then even jumped to attack from above, she was basically surrounded.

    Behind the ice mask Gina disdainfully smiled, she took her trident from the ground and then with her as the center waves of mana ran rampant through the whole tform.

    The spectators saw Gina took her weapon and then little crystal-like red shards appeared all over the arena, then as if she foresaw it, she ced the trident on her back and blocked a specific spear from one of the many Cnts.

    "ng!", the sound of metals colliding made sure that was a real spear, without any rest she rolled her trident and this time blocked a sword which was stabbing her from the side followed by a mace which came from above andstly a hammer which aimed at her right leg.

    Gina then jumped in the air avoiding the metal spikes which appeared out of the ground, and with a disdainful smirk behind her mask, she twisted her body to the right dodging a metal arrow.

    "Bullshit!", all the Cnts opened their mouths and shouted feeling outraged, as all his attacks were dodged, but he didn''t give up, more copies wielding different weapons jumped towards Gina.

    "ng~ng~ng", sounds of metal colliding echoed through the arena, Gina ignored some of the attacks while she blocked others, as shended safely on the ground, her trident was a bit worn out but she simply passed her hand all over its surface and the cracks were repaired.

    "Whoosh!", she suddenly arched backwards avoiding a scythe which appeared out of nowhere a couple of centimeters from her chest, then without a second of dy she used the momentum to throw the trident which pierced through a lot of Cnts, until it hit one which was standing almost at the end of the one hundred army.

    "Arghhh!".

    A loud scream filled the arena followed by blood spilling on the tform, then all the copies immediately disappeared leaving behind only pieces of silk and a few metal weapons spread around.

    While Gina was still standing in the same spot, Cnt was nowying on the tform with a trident piercing his waist, out of all the armor which used to cover him he only had the chest te remaining, there was a small pool of blood forming below him, but what truly made him look miserable was his twisted expression.

    "What the hell are you, how could you see through my perfect illusions!", he shouted.

    Gina started walking towards Cnt, the ice mask she was using shattered on the way revealing her pretty face which was a bit pale as there was a faint thread of blooding from his lips.

    Still, she was calm andposed as she approached her opponent, another trident formed in her hands which she pointed at Cnt as soon as she was within its reach.

    Then without answering to Cnt''s question nor caring about the fact that he seemed to be about to suffer a mental breakdown, she said just two things.

    "Say the words", she said as she dodged sidewards avoiding a metal whip with razors which was aimed at her face.

    Cnt nearly lost it but as he was about to surrender, Gina stabbed the trident into his shoulder, pinning him to the ground.

    "Aghhh¡­ you bitch!!!", besides screaming due to the pain he cursed her from the bottom of his heart, while he tried to retaliate, spikes of metal emerged from the ground below Gina, but she simply stuck the prongs of the trident into the tform making it freeze and shattering the metal spikes in the process.

    Cnt''s eyes were bloodshot, no matter what he did he didn''t evennd one attack on her, his face was twisted making his previous gant image shatter into pieces.

    Gina didn''t show any reaction towards his words, instead of that a third trident formed in her hands but as she was about to stab it on his other shoulder a cold voice in an usatory tone filled the stadium.

    "I''m also interested in how we reached this conclusion, Argent matriarch, I can''t help but suspect of the usage of a forbidden spell in this match, since not even the famous eyes of the night sparrow n can see through the silk centurion legacy spell of my Allier family".

    Gina raised her head to see the origin of the voice, a man which was quite simr to Cnt, sitting on the area where the half emperors were enjoying the tournament, Sawyer Allier, the ancestor of the Allier family and Cnt''s father.

 Chapter 197 Aftermath Of The First Day

    A turmoil immediately raised upon the words of the Allier ancestor, forbidden spells weren''t allowed in the academy, the reason is very simple, they tend to have horrible and permanent side effects, regardless of the tournament being discovered using them would mean be instantly expelled.

    Then everyone saw that small but still noticeable thread of blood in Gina''s lips and they couldn''t help but think that the Allier ancestor was saying the truth, most of the students in the stands tried to look for another member of the Leeris family among them, but only now noticed there wasn''t any.

    So, all the gazes fell on Ste which was calmly judging the current situation, seeing the dubitative gazes of other half emperors on her, Ste got back at Sawyer.

    "That is a harsh usation against my little sister, Allier ancestor, if you are right then everything is okay, but what if you are wrong, how do you n topensate for such defamation and also for demanding me to exin a legacy spell of my Leeris family?".

    The atmosphere tensed up, one side had doubts of the result of the match based on the usage of a forbidden spell, while the other affirmed it was a legacy spell which practically meant they would not openly exin how it worked.

    Sawyer Allier frowned, a mere mage lord young girl was talking to him in such a "disrespectful" manner, hisvender eyes glowed as he tried to teach her a little lesson, but just as he was about to shoot mana from his eyes, he felt something sharp and cold pressing against his neck

    Sawyer froze on the spot, he slowly turned to see the origin of the de which was now threatening with cutting his head off, just to see Aura which was sitting in her throne a split of a second ago, now standing next to him with a cold light in her eyes as she pointed her sword at his neck.

    "What is the meaning of this Argent matriarch?", asked Sawyer in a cold voice.

    Aura shrugged as she answered.

    "I can''t let a guest bully a vice principal of my Wild w academy in front of me"., of course this was just an excuse, if Ste wasn''t hired as Daimon''s "bodyguard" for the exploration, she would have also interfered but not so fiercely.

    "As for this situation, we''ll discuss it in private with the parties involved, Marshal Parzival can be the mediator".

    Sawyer frowned but feeling the sword in his throat he nodded, falling out with the principal within the territory of the academy wasn''t a wise decision after all, and he was given enough face as the matter will be discussed, so he only nodded before rxing on his seat again, Aura also kept her sword in her storage ring and returned to her throne.

    Gina snorted as she took out the tridents out of Cnt''s body making him scream again, she could have simply dispelled them but instead she took them out with force tearing some of his flesh in the process.

    And with this thest match of the day ended, the referees went up the tform to avoid any revenge attacks from both of them, but that didn''t stop Cnt from poisonously gazing at Gina which was leaving the tform without seeing back as if he didn''t exist.

    He got up enduring the pain of his wounds while gritting his teeth, but besides cursing her in his heart, he didn''t do anything and also left leaving a trace of blood where he walked.

    The oldest referee then gave the verdict.

    "The winner will be decided after some deliberation, all the spectators in the stands please leave, the announcement will betermunicated to all the academy", this wasn''t the first time something like this happened, so there were already protocols for this.

    The spectators all had not convinced expressions, thest match was quite intense, Gina dodged all those metal weapons showing how perfect was her control over her body, also her physical condition seemed to be incredibly high as every time she jumped, she reached about fifteen meters and there aren''t physical boosting spells of ice element.

    Only those elements which have propel properties can boost the movements of a mage, wind, fire, lightning and the like, she could have made ice pirs to move upwards, but that wasn''t the case, so her swift movements were all based in her own body, which was praise worthy.

    At the skybox of the elite ss, Calvin and the others were also discussing about thisst match, Liliana specially paid attention to this fight in particr as she is also an ice mage.

    "What do you think Daimon, that cutie was rather fierce, do you think she used a forbidden spell?", asked Calvin as he rubbed his chin.

    Daimon shook his head, he also paid some attention to the match and after Gina used her ws to wound herself, there was a huge outburst of mana which he saw thanks to his infinity eyes, others probably thought it was just the activation of the spell which produced those red crystal-like shards, but he knew that wasn''t the case.

    Anyway, he couldn''t just tell his ssmates about it as he would need to exin about infinity eyes, luckily there was a second thing which many people apparently ignored.

    "She would have won anyway, unlike that Allier guy, she didn''t use the item of her chose, whether it was a weapon or not, she did not take it out of her storage ring, which means¡­ she wasn''t giving her all in that fight".

    After seeing all these matches Daimon confirmed what he already knew, there are talented people everywhere, so even with the system victory isn''t granted, luckily, he wasn''t arrogant enough to becent with just skills and also trained to master spells and martial arts.

    Although in his eyes Alexander was a clown, he didn''t underestimate the whole Jolbaris family because of that, who knows what monsters stayed in the dark until they needed to appear in public after all.

    "Speaking of that, Ereman should have finished the task I gave him¡­ I wonder what would your expression be like tomorrow", thought Daimon as he chuckled.

    Back at the area where the half emperors where sitting, Aura stood up from her throne and gazed at the other half emperors and magus kings present before sending a message through her sigil lector.<sub> </sub>

    "Ste you and that girl go to the conference room, three doors after the resting area I already added you to the authorized list".

    At the skybox of the vice principals, Ste read the message and nodded at Aura before she followed her little sister to the resting area.

    Aura then looked at Sawyer as she pointed at the resting area.

    "Sawyer, Parzival let''s go, the rest of you can stay to hear the result or you can return to your own designated areas".

    The other half emperors with the exception of Kirdun Faresh, weren''t particrly interested in the result of thest match so they immediately left flying towards the academic city.

    As for the bull-headed ancestor of the Faresh family he mockingly gazed at Sawyer before he also left, not without thunderouslyughing as he shouted.

    "I''ll be looking for the good news about your "former" top five-member son who got his ass handed by someone who doesn''t even have the backing of a half emperor hahaha".

    Sawyer gritted his teeth, he ignored Kirdun and then flew towards the resting area followed by the field marshal and Aura.

    Once they caught up with Ste and Gina, they all entered the conference room, and the first thing Aura did was taking out a contract from her ring.

    "Given the sensible naturality of the subject we will be discussing, you all have to sign this contract, the conditions are easy, if Sawyer Allier is right, Gina Leeris will be expelled from the academy, but if that''s not the case anything discussed here will remain a secret".

    "As for thepensation that will be discussed after we reach a verdict, that being said Sawyer if you are just stirring up problems for nothing and even more importantly wasting my time, the consequences won''t be shallow".

    ¡­

    And so, their conversation started, the people in the skyboxes and those who fought and were now resting, didn''t leave as they had all thefortabilities they needed, so they instead waited to hear the announcement directly from Aura.

    Apparently, the situation was taken care off really fast, because about ten minutester all the participants along with Sawyer, Ste, Aura and the field marshal returned to the arena.

    Aura then flew back to her throne before her image was projected in the watchtower screens which soon spread through the academy, then she amplified her voice with mana as she gave the results of the first day of the tournament.

    "The winners of the first four matches are: Arianna Argent, Caleb Allier, Lana Ramir and¡­ Gina Leeris".

    As Aura finished her words, the screen divided in four parts and focused the four winners showing their proud stances to all the people in the academy and the academic city, the screens were big enough so that they could be seen from quite arge distance after all.

    Not too much time after the announcement was made, a festive atmosphere filled the campus and the academic city, the families to which the winners belonged immediately started a party in their respective areas, the stores, restaurants and other ces became crowded.

    But for winners to exist losers are a must, but even then, not all the losers were feeling depressed or at least not all the members of the families to which they belonged, the Faresh ancestor for example was rather happy that the biggest proud of Sawyer was defeated, as for the backer of Wade Risha, it was the n head Horace which was nowhere to be seen.

    As for the patriarch of the Arkuoda family, he was neither depressed nor happy, although their representative lost, it was against someone ranked higher than him and unlike Cnt who was pushed out of the top five, he kept his rank in the eyes of others.

    To conclude, the true loser of this day was Sawyer Allier, his "nephew" won while his son not only miserably lost, he was now the sixth ranked and he also had to givepensation for causing troubles, so right now his heart was bleeding.

    Without saying anything he grabbed Cnt and left with an angry expression, in contrast his younger twin Trevor was all smiles as he helped Caleb fly out of the stadium.

    Ste thankfully gazed at Aura before she took her younger sister and left, the others also followed their respective rtives out of the stadium, the only exception was Arianna.

    Aura smiled happy with the results she showed earlier.

    "Come, let''s go meet your new older brother, also I need to check your body just in case".

    "Okay master", although Arianna felt a bit weird having to call someone younger than her as "older brother", Daimon is the first disciple while she is the second one, so there is nothing wrong in him being considered the senior despite being younger than her.

 Chapter 198 Solomon Ghrish

    As Aura was about to bring Arianna with her to the skybox of the elite ss, the supreme elder Ulises Argent descended from the skybox of the argent family with a big smile which didn''t fit his tower like body built.

    After respectfully bowing towards Aura which resulted in a weird scene as there was about one meter difference in height, Ulises thunderouslyughed as he patted his daughter''s back.

    "HAHAHA,ss you could have told me you were chosen by the matriarch, I nearly got a heart attack seeing you moving like that!".

    Arianna bitterly smiled, Aura told her to keep the secret until the day of the tournament, for a simple reason¡­ her father is a muscle head, if she told him in less than five minutes, she was sure the whole n would get news of it.

    But it was that same straightforward honest personality what allowed him to be the supreme elder, before Aura met Daimon, she spent almost all her free time sleeping and she had no interest in being drown in work of the n, most matters are managed by the council of elders which were chosen by her.

    In other words, she chose people in which she could trust wouldn''t have hidden agendas, and the one in the top of that list was Ulises, that didn''t mean he is an idiot, but he has proven to be loyal over the years, as he was one of the few that raised his sword against the tyrant that ruled the Argent family before, even before Aura showed her prowess as a half emperor.

    That''s also one of the reasons as to why Arianna was chosen as her second disciple.

    Ariana inwardly sighed feeling her back a bit sore due to her father''s pats.

    "Dad, I''m not a knight", she mumbled.

    Ulises scratched the back of his head, in his whole family branch the only one who isn''t a knight is his daughter Arianna, so he forgets it from time to time which earns him a beating from his wife.

    "I''m sorry,ss, I was just a bit too excited, have fun with the matriarch, I will return to the academic city before your motheres looking for me".

    After saying that Ulises flew away as if there was fire on his ass, leaving an amused Aura as well as an ashamed Arianna behind.

    In the meantime, Daimon and the others left the skybox and reunited with Aura in the arena.

    Daimon which was being teased by Erin in the dark curtain state, turned to see his ssmates as he spoke.

    "We''ll be going to the happy wanderer, if someone has other things to do, feel free to leave".

    Daimon thought that Aliya and Boris would leave but surprisingly the Michael was the one that after exchanging gazes with Haylee took the initiative to speak.

    "Haylee and me have to go with my master, but if everything goes well, we will catch up with youter".

    Daimon nodded, since no one else seemed to back off, Aura used space sift and they disappeared from the stadium.

    Not even a couple of seconds passed when a lightning fell from the sky as Zein arrived in front of Michael and Haylee, judging by his smiling expression whatever business he had was already taken care off.

    "Let''s go you two, I brought you some souvenirs", after saying that Zein ced a hand in each of them and they became shes of light which shot towards the academic city.

    ¡­

    Using space shift Aura brought all the others to the happy wanderer, Boris carefully used his mana topletely protect Aliya from the chaotic space, while she was excitedly inspecting the process.

    This was the first time she has experienced travelling with a half emperor and her innate knowledge hungry nature was stimted, unfortunately the travel didn''tst as much as she wanted but she didn''tin, travelling with a half emperor isn''t something everyone can experience after all.

    Since the city was in a turmoil right now with a lot of people celebrating as the matches were being reproduced in a loop on the watchtower screens for the entertainment of those who couldn''t get a spot in the stadium, Aura directly transported them inside of the happy wanderer.

    The bartender Lucas saw people appearing out of nowhere and he nearly dropped a ss he was cleaning due to the surprise, but then his pupils widened as he saw the one that was leading them.

    "L-Lady Argent", Lucas gazed at Mireya which was leisurely resting on one of the couches, feeling tricked, she made hime to work instead of letting him attend the tournament, but then closed the bar saying "We''ll have a private eventter".

    And turns out the principal himself was going to enjoy his drinks, it was an honor to say the less.

    "Damn it, if I knew it beforehand, I would have ordered some nice materials from my native town", he thought.

    Calvin facepalmed as he saw his aunt trying to move Solomon with an exasperated expression while theter was fainted on the ground hugging a barrel of some kind of some kind of liqueur.

    "I got such an uncool family", he mumbled as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.<sub> </sub>

    "Please take a seat¡­ my grandfather will sober up in a couple of minutes, in the meantime Lucas and I will prepare some drinks and food for us".

    Mireya sighed no matter how much she tried, her father seemed to be attached to the ground, probably something he did with his mana before he fell asleep on the ground, not to mention his weight was insane due to a variety of reasons.

    Daimon chuckled finding that old man quite interesting, even while being drunk he was circting mana from his body to the ground and vice versa, it''s just that there wasn''t any visible phenomenon, unfortunately when he tried to use infinity eyes, the most he could see was the mana being injected into the floor.

    "I guess it would have been too much to see through a half emperor with the maximum amount of mana I can inject in my eyes right now¡­ unless the target willingly lowers its defenses", he concluded.

    "Rumble!", the whole bar seemed to shake for a split of a second as Solomon loudly snored, his eyes then opened and a dim brown light glowed in them as he directly gazed at Daimon.

    But after a split of a second he simply stretched his arms, others didn''t notice it but Erin which was hidden using dark curtain was ready to act in case something happened, the only other ones that noticed that little exchange were Aura and the one that caused it, in other words Daimon.

    "This old man has such a sharp sense of awareness!", yelled Daimon in his heart, his infinity eyes were supposed to be hard to feel, he was using the bracelet of the god of mischief as concealment for his mana, so that others only saw what he wanted them to see.

    "Wait, something like this also happened before", he thought as he stole a gaze at Arianna, back when she was fighting, he used his infinity eyes to watch the match and she didn''t seem to notice it¡­ until he identally saw her naked chest as he was experimenting with the amount of mana injected in his eyes.

    It was a phenomenon worth testing, so Daimon took note to experimentter with Erin and Aura.

    Fortunately, Solomon seemed to take the previous event as a drunkard''s imagination, he got up from the floor and greeted everyone before sitting next to Mireya, he tossed the barrel which was apparently empty now before taking out another one from his storage ring.

    After removing the clog on one of the corners of the barrel, Solomon gulped down almost half of it in one go before he ced the barrel on the ground.

    "Phew¡­ss, I told you to not interrupt me when I''m "training", unless there is a life and death matter ongoing of course".

    Mireya was speechless, that barrel had about fifty litters of capacity and she saw Solomon finishing a few dozens of them earlier and here he was drinking more of it again.

    While others might find the old man quite rxed, Daimon had a pretty serious expression on his face, he already learned his lesson so he reduced the mana on his infinity eyes to be just a bit higher than what Yvonne can see.

    Solomon had mana running through his whole body, but that was understandable as he doesn''t mind containing it unlike other half emperors, what truly caught his attention was the thing he was drinking, instead of liqueur it would be more urate to call it¡­ poison.

    Solomon then turned to see Aura and his expression changed from dizzy to serious.

    "Argent matriarch, my grandson told me there is an interesting "alliance" ongoing, apparently the lightning assassin and that little girl from the Jolbaris had joined while I was for some reason oblivious to all this subject".

    An invisible pressure seemed to fall in the room for a split of a second before Solomon saw Lucas putting drinks on the table for everyone, including one for him.

    The old man took his ss and swallowed the content in one go, then under the surprised eyes of everyone a red me escaped from his mouth, which made Leslie who was about to sip from her own drink leave the thing on the table with a slightly awkward expression.

    Solomon then thunderouslyughed amused by Leslie''s reaction.

    "Little crane girl, my drink is special, so don''t be afraid and give it a go to yours, Lucas is the best bartender I have ever met, that''s why I chose him as my disciple even before Calvin was born HAHAHA".

    "You haven''t taught me that much though¡­ master", said Lucas as he reced the empty ss in front of Solomon while also leaving a bit of his mana pressure out.

    "A peak stage Archmage, he broke through", thought Daimon, he already knew Lucas was an Arch ranked since the first time he met him, but judging by what he felt back then, he was at most a middle stage Archmage.

    Solomon which was drinking from the barrel again, noticed that Daimon wasn''t as surprised as the others and he pointed at Calvin before saying

    "Oh, so it was true you have really sharp senses, Daimon Licht, I thought that brat was just making up excuses about why he didn''t aim for the first rank".

    Daimon stole a gaze at Calvin which feigned ignorance about the fact that he mentioned how Daimon recognized Boris as an Archmage although he was concealing his mage realm, in a try to not be punished for not giving his all in the admission exams.

    Not like he cared, there were others present that day where he blew Boris''s cover, what truly surprised him was that Calvin''s grandfather noticed he was just feigning to be surprised by Lucas''s revtion, which made him frown.

    "This old man is on a different level, the feeling he gives is¡­ close to the one of Dimas".

 Chapter 199 Ceremony

    Daimon was again convinced that half emperors tend to be quite entric, Calvin''s grandfather seemed to be serious but then he became as rxed as Calvin a secondter.

    Aura already prepared onest contract knowing Solomon will join them too, so she simply took it out of her ring and handed it to him.

    Surprisingly Solomon didn''t read it but instead passed it to Mireya, which thoroughly reviewed the uses before nodding.

    "Just sign it already old drunkard", she said in an annoyed voice, while she inwardly cursed her older brother for using the excuse of being busy as the n head, to avoid having to deal with their father.

    Solomon chuckled, to be honest he already decided to sign it, reuniting five half emperors under one g is something no one has ever achieved before, and yet the ck-haired youth in front of him did it.

    Not only that, the team that gathered around Daimon wasn''t simple at all, two disciples of half emperors, the princesses of the Risha family which have the backing of the most respected veteran and the youngdy of the only family with light affinity in the whole beast faction.

    Solomon returned the contract to Aura before he said goodbye to them as he went upstairs, not without stealing a gaze at Daimon as he left.

    "Someone outstanding draws outstanding people at his side, I have lived so many years and experienced so many things in my life, to the point where I can''t remember thest time, I was truly surprised by something, let''s see if you can create a "wave" big enough to make the stagnated waters of this gxy flow once again¡­ Daimon Licht".

    "Cough!", Mireya nearly choked with her drink, since when her fatherplimented someone while still being sober, she asked to herself.

    Her impression of Daimon went up another notch, her father is one of the few people that can treat other half emperors as juniors after all, if he was impressed by Daimon, that meant there was more to him than what meets the eye.

    Calvin brought the dishes to the table for everyone to eat what they wanted, although the food wasn''t luxurious as it consisted in some meat from magic beasts, stew, some sd, mashed potatoes, bread and otherplements which were snacksmonly seen in bars, like fries, everything was rather tasty.

    "Calvin when is your friend arriving to Lykos, we still have to see whether his skills are up to the task¡­ the second years have their own missions after all", said Daimon as he chewed a piece of grilled meat.

    "Mm?", Arianna who was enjoying a bowl of stew, raised an eyebrow at the current subject, Daimon was talking about giving away one spot for the exploration of the second years, while the current captain was Samuel Jolbaris, but since she was going to follow them back to the academy, she decided to wait to clear her doubts.

    Calvin scratched the back of his head as he answered.

    "She will arrive tomorrow, sorry about that, there was some "inconveniences" which made her stay behind one day more".

    Calvin then felt all of his ssmates weirdly looking at him, which made him frown.

    "What did I spill sauce in my clothes or something?", he asked confused about why he was being looked as if he said something incredible.

    "It''s not that, we are just genuinely surprised that you can have a female friend", they all said as if they have discussed it beforehand.

    Mireya couldn''t hold back herugh; she patted Calvin''s shoulder before exining.

    "Let''s just say that if that rtionship were to exist, the one ying the role of the woman would be Calvin hahaha".

    Calvin felt a vein popping on his neck, but in a rare asion he seemed to agree with his aunt, which caught Daimon''s interest.

    Calvin is quite tall and although he isn''t a macho guy, he is rather bulky, so for him to be outshined by a girl, thetter must be a knight and probably not from the desert coyote race, where females have slim constitutions.

    "Ahem, my old man and her father are friends, she has saved my ass a couple of times before so I''m only returning the favor, that''s all", said Calvin as he gazed at Loren.

    Loren covered her mouth with one hand as she giggled, finding the whole situation rather funny, but she was also interested in knowing more about Calvin, Mireya had told her some stories of when Calvin was younger so she already knew about said friend.

    After they finished their meal, Calvin and Loren stayed behind with Mireya, the Risha mothers and daughters returned to the girl''s dormitories, Daimon and the girls including Arianna were transported back to the mansion in the academy by Aura using space shift.

    Before Arianna could react, the surroundings changed from the main hall of the happy wanderer, to a modernly designed living room.

    She then turned to see the others, and only now noticed that besides Liz, ine and Aisha, Erin was here too.

    "Miss Erin were you here all this time?", she asked, genuinely confused about why she didn''t show herself earlier.

    Aura shook her head; unlike the others she could see through the dark curtain so she watched Erin flirting with Daimon during the past two hours or so.

    "As your master let me give you an advice, don''t put too much attention to that cunning fox woman", said Aura as she sat on the couch, making Erin softly giggle.<sub> </sub>

    Arianna bitterly smiled, ignoring a half emperor it''s easier said than done, but she also took notice that her master and Erin seemed quite close and informal between each other.

    Aura then pointed at Daimon as she cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, leaving that aside, go and present yourself properly to your senior brother".

    Arianna walked towards Daimon, she then rose the sides of her skirt and presented herself.

    "We already met before young mas- senior brother, I''m Arianna Argent, I''ll be in your care".

    Daimon nodded in recognition, he stood up from the couch and epted her gesture by cing his hand on his chest as he slightly bowed his head, with this they were officially sister and brother under the same master

    "It''s a pleasure, also just call me Daimon as we now share the same master¡­ I don''t like formalities".

    Arianna put on a surprised expression,pared to the scary cold blooded young man she met before, the Daimon of right now seemed more mature and rxed as if he had grown in just a matter of days.

    She previously thought this was going to be more awkward so she was prepared to be looked down on, but to her surprise that wasn''t the case.

    Seeing her surprised expression, Daimon scratched the back of his head, back then he slightly over-reacted, the "he" of right now would have let Aisha handle those guys by herself, she wasn''t a defenseless girl after all.

    Erin smiled, feeling the slightly stiff atmosphere she offered Arianna a seat as she patted her shoulder.

    "Don''t worry about him little girl, Daimon is a bit rude with everyone, he even calls me by my name, I wonder where did I go wrong at raising him", said Erin as she put on an expression like the one of a mother who has to deal with a rebellious son.

    Arianna saw Daimon chuckling and she more or less understood that even if in public they kept some distance, in private they acted more like a family, which made things easier for her.

    "Okay, you can also call me Arianna".

    Aura smiled, she also stood up and with a wave of her hand a small cut appeared on Daimon and Arianna''s right hands.

    "Join hands you two".

    Daimon already knew this was the tradition among werewolves, so he simply followed the instructions, it was just a symbolic exchange of blood between two people.

    "From now and onwards even if you two don''t share the same blood, you are brother and sister under me Aura Argent".

    <o>,m Now that the ceremony was over, Daimon let go of Arianna''s hand and he returned to his seat, Arianna did the same after looking at her palm which had a small stain of blood on it, but he didn''t clean it.</o>

    As a werewolf she clearly understood the meaning of the previous ceremony.

    "Earlier you mentioned something about a spot in the exploration of the second years, but only students of the academy can use the spots and if there were to be spaces left, they would normally be assigned to other students of the elite ss?".

    Before Daimon could say anything, Aura took out a pair of jade cases and ced them on the table in front of her.

    "Speaking of that, here are the lotuses that the ocean queen used as payment for the spot you offered".

    "Oh?", Daimon took one of the cases and he slightly opened the lid, which let a faint trace of cold air to leak out of it.

    Daimon then stole a gaze at ine, he got this specific resource for her after all.

    "S-Snow lotus!", eximed Arianna, her pupils contracted a bit, as the descendant of the elder with the highest authority of one of the three biggest families, she of course recognized the exclusive resource of the Ocean Heart academy.

    Then she made memory and earlier after her match was over, she remembered having caught a glimpse of a woman with shoulder length blue hair and blue yes, sitting at the same height as the half emperors and the only one which matched that description with such a high status was the principal of the Ocean Heart academy.

    "If the Ocean Queen was there then the principals of the Earth Pce and the Furious Whirlwind academies should havee too, what a shame master didn''t get a piece of the thunder nimbus vine", she said as she looked at Daimon.

 Chapter 200 Auraâ€™s Little Test

    Aura nodded satisfied with her knowledge, those from second years have already entered in contact with the students of other academies of their native and other gxies due to the inter-academic, which unlike tournaments is an exam meant to help form bonds with their respective allies and to temper the young generation.

    It''s just that this time the magic ruin exploration would take that role to a certain point, since in the face of the benefits that could be found inside, alliances were as good as nothing.

    "Do you think having gotten these two lotuses is a good price for one spot in the uing exploration?", asked Daimon with a calm voice.

    "Mm", Arianna nodded, these resources weren''t avable in the market, while inside the magic ruin there might be higher ranked ones, it''s a bet, let alone finding something useful, if one was unlucky there might be nothing valuable and those who enter might even die.

    Daimon inwardly smirked, Aura obviously purposedly showed the snow lotuses while Arianna was still here, it was her way to say "she is trust worthy", so he also yed his part.

    "If you get the first rank and give at least three participants a good beating, then you can get a piece of thunder nimbus vine".

    "But, if you get two pieces of it like the lotuses then¡­ wouldn''t you give the other one to Aisha?", asked Arianna, she wasn''t as innocent to believe Daimon would put her over his own "sister" and Aisha is known for having lightning affinity too.

    And she was right, but at the same time since Daimon was going to extort Lars to his heart''s content with her help, she also deserved her share, that and Aura seemed to be genuinely interested in teaching her or she wouldn''t have minded to celebrate that ceremony, so as his "disciple" he would also lend her a hand.

    "One can only use one piece of the thunder nimbus vine and I already have wind affinity anyway", thought Daimon.

    Arianna contemted things for a second before saying.

    "I already fought my match today, and since I''m the second rank, my only opponent left is Samuel, while I can beat his ass so hard, he will have to use some high ranked potions to recover, his spot is secured just like Alexander''s, due to Arthur Jolbaris backing".

    "If you need three people to be left in a miserable state that means the Earth Pce and the Furious Whirlwind academies need a spot, as well as one more for the friend of the guy from the desert coyote n¡­ if you can spare some drops of the stctite milk and one petal of a snow lotus, I can get the cooperation of those two".

    "Oh?", Daimonid back against the couch interested in what Arianna was proposing.

    "You mean the girls from the Ramir and Leeris families?".

    "Yes, I''m pretty sure they will be able to do the job, now that his brother was humiliated, Caleb will try to upy a spot in the top five so I''m pretty sure he will challenge Lana since she is weak against illusions, as for Gina, she has a personal feud with the son of the Faresh ancestor".

    "That makes two spots, for the third one, one of my cousins will take care of the guy from the fire crane n to get the eighth rank, he is part of the n so there is no need to worry aboutpensation, I will just tell him this is an order from master".

    Daimon nodded, a few drops of stctite milk and a petal of a snow lotus were meaninglesspared to the what he will get from Lars and Maxim.

    Still, he couldn''t help but feel disdain for the young generation of the Revy family, even if Arianna isn''t taken into ount there are another two of the Argent family in the top fifteen of the elite ss, one of them is apparently strong enough to beat senseless the current eighth ranked.

    But there is not even one from the Revy family listed there, which ultimately will cost him some resources as hecked manpower among the second years.

    Seeing that things were settled, Aura stood up, she still needed to check Arianna''s body to see if there was any serious damage.

    "Come with me I need to check on you", said Aura as she walked towards one of the many unupied rooms.

    Arianna followed Aura in silence, closing the door behind her, she undressed leaving only her underwear before sheid down on the bed.

    Aura''s eyes glowed in a yellow light as, she palpated the muscles of her arms and upper back applying force in some of them, which made Arianna put on a slightly pained grimace.

    "Master can''t you be a bit gentler?", she said as she tried to stay quiet.

    Aura raised an eyebrow before she changed target to her calves and thighs, while Arianna managed to not make a sound, her body trembled as a sign that her muscles were killing her.

    "You didn''t use the pills I gave you, why?",

    Arianna had a troubled expression as she exined her reasons.

    "I just need a couple of hours of sleep then my body will be at its best capacity¡­ I wanted to save the muscle recovery pills for the exploration".

    Aura nodded in recognition.

    "Put on your clothes", she said as she handed her a bottle which she took out from her storage ring.<sub> </sub>

    Master this is?", Arianna received the bottle and her mouth widened in surprise, inside there were about ten of the pills she needed to recover instantly.

    She felt confused.

    "If there were more of them, then why¡­".

    "Why did I give you only those five and even told you there weren''t any more of them?", said Aura with a smile in the corner of her mouth.

    Aura is someone who has endured the hardships life has ced in her path, and she can affirm that the easy way is never the correct answer, but who would choose to suffer if they had the option to not.

    That''s why she did this little test to see whether Arianna would take the easy way or not, she has used the spells she taught her quite a few times already and yet she hasn''t taken even one of the pills.

    "I simply wanted to see the result of a little test, that''s all, you can use the pills freely now, I will get more of them for you by the end of the week, so put on a good show tomorrow, okay?".

    Arianna kept the bottle in her storage ring, not without swallowing one of the pills, although she didn''t show it, her muscles have been killing her all this time.

    "Go say goodbye to Daimon and the others, I will take you to your mansion in case someone tries anything funny, don''t you dare to lose tomorrow or I will increase the harshness of your training times three".

    Arianna which was finishing tidying up her clothes nearly tripped, what a joke she could barely follow up with the current regimen Aura created for her.

    "Ahem, master please don''t bully me".

    Once Arianna finished dressing up again, she and Aura returned to the living room and after saying goodbye to Daimon and the others, Aura used space shift to take her back to her own mansion.

    "Finally, I was suffocating".

    As soon as Arianna left Liz threw her clothes on the floor as she walked naked towards the bathroom.

    Daimon smirked, seeing the other girls doing the same he followed them just to be stopped in cold by Aura who appeared in front of him.

    "I''m the first today, right?", she said as her cute wolf tail wagged.

    ¡­

    Academic city at the area designated for the Jolbaris family in a big imponent mansion, Alexander was kneeled in the middle of the living room, his expression was a mix of confusion and aggrievance.

    Arthur on the other hand was standing in front of his son, livid, earlier he found a package in the front of his door with a little ribbon.

    When he opened it, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, inside of it there was a session of photos of his son¡­ being in the embrace of some random guy in the middle of an abandoned alley.

    Besides that, there was a note which had a few instructions and demands, someone was actually ckmailing him!

    So, he obviously let out his anger on Alexander, his son which is supposed to pass on his lineage was doing such kind of things behind his back, and the worse part is that he was discovered.

    Not only that when he confronted it, Alexanderpletely denied it with a panic-stricken expression, what truly angered him was than in his eyes, his son fell on a honey trap of some kind, to the point that he was covering that man.

    "If you don''t want to talk then so be it, I don''t care with who you¡­ spent your free time, just have an heir when the timees and that''s all, also since there is some guy spying on you, you won''t be leaving this mansion without mine or your uncle''s supervision", said Arthur with a defeated expression.

    "F-Father wait I¡­".

    "Enough, I know you have been going to brothels but haven''t touched a single woman there¡­ I''m not mad at you for that, I''m angry because you were fooled and now, I need to clean up your mess!".

    Arthur felt his blood pressure rising, he took a deep breath to calm down, since he couldn''t bear to see his son right now, he set up a barrier with his mana, before leaving as there was some guests arriving right now at his door.

    After his father stormed out of the room Alexander was furious, he also saw the photos and recognized the alley, it was from one of the many brothels he has visited trying to find a girl that fitted his likings, not a man.

    "Whoever did is, I will rip you to pieces!", he shouted.

 Chapter 201 An Agitated Morning

    At the main campus of the Wild w academy, in a mansion near the office of the principal, a silver haired young man was leisurelyying down on a huge bed, surrounded by naked women.

    Below him Erin was using her soft and curvy body as a pillow for him, her long fluffy tail was gently wrapped around Daimon''s shoulders like a scarf, at both sides Liz and ine were each hugging one of his arms, and on top of him Aura and Aisha were each upying half of his front body as their bed.

    After they bathed together Daimon thought the girls would want some love, but to his surprise they just wanted to cuddle together with him.

    "Luckily Aura was rather smallerpared to the other girls, or this would have not worked", mumbled Daimon as he caressed Aura''s cute wolf ears.

    "You still need a spot for me though", said Narasha in her usual rxed voice.

    Even Evangeline participated in this "family" moment.

    "I wouldn''t worry about that, if you think Daimon is quite tall currently, let me tell you he can still be considered a newborn of an apex predator".

    "¡­", Daimon raised an eyebrow, but knowing that Evangeline couldn''t answer his questions due to the restrictions of the system, he put the subject at the back of his mind and instead focused on enjoying the softness which was enveloping his body in every direction.

    Erin purposedly moved her tail from time to time rubbing Daimon''s body with it, which was a pleasure due to the soft silk-like sensation it had.

    Daimon saw the hour of the clock in the wall and a little smirk appeared in the corner of his mouth.

    Aura saw it and she sighed.

    "I should have warned you like I did with Arianna, that smirk is one of Erin''s bad habits".

    Erin on the other hand giggled taking Aura''s words as apliment.

    "Your steel is sharp and so is my mind, Daimon has both of our "specialties", I consider that as win~".

    While Daimon was happy with the results, Agramy and Ereman felt the urge to puke just by looking at each other.

    A few hours earlier¡­

    After the tournament ended, at some point while the little reunion of the elite ss in the happy wanderer was still being upheld and the sun already set, Daimon''s attention was suddenly drawn by the iconic sound of a notification.

    [Ding]

    [The inventory has been sessfully upgraded; the function "Sharing" has been added]

    [The host can now assign slots of his inventory to those he shares a link with, if there are objects in the slots assigned, they will be destroyed or transported to the addressee and vice versa, the cost in mana will be covered by the host, (Maximum slots avable for the function, half of the current inventory)]

    Once Daimon finished reading the notification, an interesting idea struck him like a bolt out of the blue, originally, he was just going to return the favor to Alexander since his uncle spread some rumors about him.

    Thanks to Ereman he had the information about Alexander''s secret hobby of looking in brothels for a very specific "partner", of course it was a girl but he didn''t say it and instead just looked through their list of avability, with the idea of not giving others material to gossip about him.

    Unfortunately, it turned out ying against him, in the past eight years Daimon farmed enough coins to have in reserve just in case, and today he bought two extra pieces of one of the most useful items in the store of the system, the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    By default, the things bought in the store appeared in Daimon''s inventory, so the only thing he needed to do was assign that specific slot to Ereman, and order him to follow his instructions.

    In other words, Ereman and Agramy went to a faraway abandoned alley, disguised of Alexander and some random appearance of a "man" and¡­ feigned to be lovers meeting in secret.

    What was worse is that Daimon told them to make it look as real as possible, so they truly caressed each other with lovely expressions as the camera took the photos, after that Ereman put the photos in the slot of the inventory assigned to him, and Daimon retrieved them,

    Then he simply handed the photos to Erin, which was supposed to just leave the package in the door of Arthur''s mansion, but apparently, she added the finishing touch by adding the ribbon and the note with the demands.

    Needless to say, but all the girlsughed after seeing this little n Daimon had, especially Liz since she knew Daimon was messing with Agramy just because he could.

    "At this point that guy must be grounded until Arthur Jolbaris finds his "lover", so that''s a nuisance less in the academy", thought Daimon as he covered all of them with the nket, Lykos had a really low temperature most of the year, and the nights were even worse.<sub> </sub>

    Luckily, he had one of the most pleasant ways to keep himself warm, having a lot of beauties in his embrace.

    The night went on without anything else happening and soon morning came, like other days it was pretty clouded, but the campus and the academic city were quite lively.

    Some of the people which enjoyed the rich night life were just leaving the many night clubs to return to their daily lives.

    Back at the mansion, Daimon felt something moving on top of him, he opened his eyes and was weed by Aura''s pretty face up close, in a rare asion she woke up without the need of a morning kiss.

    Noticing the reluctance in her expression, Daimon caressed her face before pressing his lips against hers, the nket waved due to the wags of her tail, unfortunately today she had some matters to attend to since early, so she unwillingly let go of him and while gazing at him from the corner of her eyes she wagged her tail showing her naked back view as she went ahead to the bathroom.

    "I can''t believe that wolf woman which was closer to a sword than to any male, will actively try to seduce you, that''s my Daimon for you I guess~".

    Daimon who was still repeating the scene of Aura cutely swaying her ass to sweeten his morning, was suddenly dragged backwards by a soft pair of arms, as Erin dragged him closer to him.

    His headnded on something soft and bouncy, before his vision was covered by a ck silky fur.

    "Who am I?", said Erin in a yful voice as she covered Daimon''s eyes with her tail.

    Daimon tried to move his arms but they were firmly held in ce by Liz and ine, apparently this was an operation executed by mother and daughters as a team, Aisha on the other hand limited to observe how her son would deal with those three.

    Still for Daimon this was more of a reward than a challenge, up to this day he can safely affirm that Erin''s tail is the fluffiest and softest thing in this gxy.

    While the threesome of mother and daughters were inwardly celebrating this little victory over their lover, Daimon chuckled.

    "Hmm~".

    The three fox girls suddenly felt a little ticklish sensation between their legs, as a familiar smell flooded their noses.

    "Hey, using charm is not fair!", said Liz and ine at the same time as they let go of Daimon, Erin on the other hand stuck her tongue at him, as a user of a bewitching spell herself, she developed a certain degree of tolerance against Daimon''s pheromones.

    That being said, she still rubbed her thighs together, being directly in contact with Daimon while he used charm multiplied the effect, so right now her whole body was aching.

    On the other hand, Daimon was more than willing to lose but in exchange he stole those pretty lips of hers, to enjoy a deep kiss with Erin whichsted until they both couldn''t endure the piercing gazes of Liz and ine.

    "Come here you two", said Daimon as he kissed the fox sisters one after the other, enjoying the characteristic wild shamelessness of Liz and the gentle shyness of ine.

    Last but not least he focused his attention on his young vampire mother which has been observing them, with her head resting on her hands and a lovely smile.

    Erin patted their daughter''s shoulders and the three of them went ahead, leaving only Daimon and Aisha in the room.

    Daimon helped Aisha brush some of her long strands of silver hair behind her ears, revealing those beautiful amethyst-like eyes of hers.

    Aisha smiled and then jumped onto Daimon as he kissed him to her heart''s content, she then licked her lips and bit her son''s neck to take a few sips of his blood.

    An expression of delight appeared in Aisha''s eyes as soon as she drank the first drop of Daimon''s blood, but she stopped before things got out of hand, it was easy for vampires to lose themselves in the pleasure that drinking blood brought them, although Daimon''s body was abnormal enough to not feel the lose of some litters of it, this wasn''t the moment for that.

    Enjoying the aftertaste of Daimon''s blood, Lilia charmingly smiled as she went to the bathroom too.

    After a quick shower and taking their breakfast, Aura left to her office, Erin covered herself with dark curtain while Liz and ine hid three of their tails and apanied Daimon and Aisha to the 1-S ssroom.

    As soon as Daimon opened the door of the ssroom, the first thing that appeared in his sight was a hand with ck ws aiming at his shoulder, mana circted in his eyes and the world seemed to slow down which allowed Daimon to see the apologetic expression of Calvin which was standing a few centimeters behind the owner of the hand.

    "What an agitated morning", thought Daimon as he intercepted the wed hand with his own.

    "Booom!", a shockwave created a current of wind due to the sh of both hands while sparks flew due to the friction of their ws.

 Chapter 202 Aleah

    Daimon raised an eyebrow feeling the other part of the confrontation putting more strength, what was more surprising was that he was actually feeling the pressure, although he was restraining his strength, none of them was using battle aura¡­ in other words, the girl that was shing with him head on, has an innately strong body.

    A glint of surprise shed through the eyes of girl, then an excited expression ofpetition appeared on her face, she stopped the sh and returned to her previous stance, this time a metallic silver glow covered her hand.

    "Metal affinity", mumbled Daimon, but he epted the challenge as currents of electricity crackled on his hand.

    "Ahem, that''s enough", Boris which was watching from the sides noticed both parts were starting to get serious so he interfered before things got out of hand.

    However, his words seemed to be ignored, the girl nodded at Daimon and both of them shed frontwards, the sound of metal colliding echoed through the ssroom as their ws shed against each other.

    Even then none of them stepped back, the sh continued for about another minute until the girl suddenly retracted her hand, taking Daimon by surprise, he was enjoying letting loose his physical strength, when the opposition suddenly disappeared

    His body lost its bnce and moved frontwards against his control, which made him softly snort, he stomped with his right foot, redirecting the momentum towards the ground and recovering his stance.

    And that wasn''t all, the ws of his left hand ended a few millimeters away from her neck, only then he stopped as he gazed at Calvin.

    "I guess she is the one that wants the spot for the second years, right?".

    Calvin sighed; but his face had surprise written all over it, he scratched the back of his head as he answered.

    "Sorry ss rep, don''t take it personal, she is like this with everyone".

    Michael who was sitting near the door and now had his hair messed up due to the shockwave, yelled at Calvin.

    "God damn it Calvin, couldn''t you have told me she was going to do this beforehand; I should have expected it¡­ a madman gets along with other psychos".

    Calvin simply shrugged, he also didn''t know this was going to happen, he only expected a sh of mana and battle aura, not a literal contest of raw strength.

    ''Now that I think about it, I have never seen her testing her physical strength against anyone like that''.

    Daimon slightly shook his head, although the first attack was a surprise one, it had no malicious intent behind, even if it would havended, it would have not hit any vital spot and due to the trajectory, the ws wouldn''t have pierced his skin, at most the momentum would have made him step back.

    Only now Daimon focused his attention on the girl that tested his strength a moment ago, she was rather tall being on par with Liz and ine, she had long messy dirty blonde hair which reached her middle back, her eyes had a honey like color, as for her get up she was wearing a white shirt and a ck leather jacket, if anything Daimon thought she looked like a rebellious girl.

    But what drew his attention more were her ears and tail; they were somewhat simr to the ones of the Jolbaris but different at the same time.

    ''Werecat, no her tail is more like the one of a¡­ lioness, a variant?'', thought Daimon confused, there aren''t any lion families among the feline rted beast races in the wonder myriad ster chart.

    The snow leopard n also called Leeris family and the storm tiger n in other words the Jolbaris family are the major feline races, there are others but apparently the records of their origins were lost in the ancient times, so they were all ssified as "werecat".

    And as the name implies their ears or tails are simr to the ones of a cat, also werecats are physically weak but talented in mana, but this girl was clearly more simr to a lion and she is walking in the path of a knight.

    The lion girl as Daimon baptized her in the meantime, hit Calvin''s shoulder as sheughed out loud.

    "And here I thought you became a wuss for not getting the first rank".

    Calvin sobbed his shoulder, while thanking the heavens for his strong defense for preventing that hit from breaking his bones.

    The lion girl then turned to see Daimon; she extended her hand offering a handshake, which Daimon epted.

    "You are Daimon right, I''m Aleah, you can consider me Calvin''s older sister, since I saved his ass more times than what I can count, when we were younger".

    Calvin bitterly smiled, back then he epted to take her as her older sister after she saved him from some wild magic beasts,ter he realized his life was never in danger since he had some life saving scrolls and other treasures.

    But his father saw Aleah''s potential and took her in, surprisingly the girl which lived in the wilderness with no money nor family, surviving thanks to her own strength, refused to ept charity and instead asked for a job in the border patrol.

    Anyway, Calvin used to hang around with her but their little adventures ended in fights against magic beasts¡­ or other people.

    "Aleah, your ws", mumbled Calvin, she was too enthusiastic after meeting someone with a physical strength that could match up with her, to the point that she forgot to retract her ws.<sub> </sub>

    "Oh, my bad", she said, but then looking at Daimon''s hand which had no wound, she smiled showing her slightlyrger canines.

    Seeing that there was no wound in Daimon''s hand, Calvin let out a sigh of relief, remembering how he lost ayer of skin in a simr situation.

    "She is a bit wild, but her strength is no joke, twenty-five years old and she is a peak five-star knight", said Calvin, which earned him a re from Aleah.

    Boris felt his blood pressure rising with every second.

    "Oi brats, one thing is ignoring me, but wasting the time of the ss, maybe I need to ask the instructor to take you all to a little "nice trip" once again!".

    "If you don''t mind let''s have some sparster Daimon", said Aleah as she excused herself.

    Daimon nodded, he was also curious, without using battle aura Aleah was able to fight head on with him, being in the same rank as a knight as him.

    To not make Boris suffer a stroke, everyone returned to their seats for the ss to start, Aleah left as she wanted to stroll around the campus.

    ¡­

    As soon as Aleah left the area where the 1-S ssroom is, she looked at her hand, her ck nails changed into ws, she then noticed there were slight scratching marks on them and an excited smiling expression appeared on her face scaring away the students that were about to hit on her.

    ''Finally, someone that can match up to me without using any reinforcement!'', she yelled in her heart.

    When Calvin told her he had changed his n of rising from the tenth rank position to the first one in a single jump, she nearly beat him up.

    But then to her surprise she saw that Calvin had genuine respect for the rumored "demon" of the elite ss, which made her feel curious, what kind of person could earn the respect of someone like Calvin, who feigns to be a moron just because he is toozy.

    Remembering the gaze in Daimon''s eyes Aleah felt her fighting spirit rising, the first attack she did was to see whether he was like her¡­ someone who has survived through a life and death situation.

    Even then she purposedly stopped her attack to see what his reaction would be, and the result sealed the deal, in her eyes Daimon is someone with real experiencebat, not like those young masters who had grown like flowers in a greenhouse.

    Without noticing Aleah wandered until she was on the area designated for the third-year students.

    "I guess, not all the descendants of high ranked families are herbivores, like I used to believe", she concluded, only then she noticed she had no idea where she was right now.

    Some of the students couldn''t help but frown, since Aleah wasn''t wearing a uniform nor anything from the academy, it was obvious she wasn''t a student, so they were insulted right in their faces in their own academy by a stranger.

    "Hey you, herbivore, where is the public arena of the academy?", she asked to a bull-headed man which was already angry, his eyes became bloodshot as she called him "herbivore".

    He took out his spear and pointed at the right where a tall building could be seen from afar.

    "Follow me ruthless woman, let me Haraldian Faresh teach you some manners".

    Aleah snorted, but she followed him.

    ''A little warm up before Daimon finishes his sses doesn''t sound that bad''.

    Back at the 1-S ssroom, Calvin was being stared by all his ssmates, the girls specially, Aleah didn''t turn out to be as they expected, in their minds for Calvin to not show interest in a woman, they imagined someone from the races that have really "outstanding" characteristics, like the Faresh family.

    But Aleah was way different to that, ignoring her unusual personality, she was quite beautiful and since she could stand up to Daimon, she was quite strong too.

    Calvin understood what they were thinking, he looked at the clock in the wall of the ssroom and inwardly sighed.

    "It''s been five minutes since she left, if tutor Ogien can spare a moment, you''ll understand".

    Boris looked at Aliya and saw her nodding at him, her knowledge hungry self was interested in Aleah too, as she seems to be the only one of her race.

 Chapter 203 The Disastrous Lion Girl

    Boris saw his nice knowledge excited expression and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he was happy that since she started teaching to Daimon and the others, Aliya seemed to have regained a lot of her old self, it was as if a weak me suddenly exploded burning with life again.

    Reaching the peak mage lord realm, being just a bit far away from bing the glory of the Arch rank, just to lose most of her powers, was a strong blow for Aliya, while most of people wouldn''t have been able to recover from that, after she recovered the capacity to move.

    She dedicated all her time to create a medicine that could allow her to use magic while avoiding mana poisoning, with ruined mana circuits and a cracked magic core, and after years of trial and error she developed a prototype.

    But after that she couldn''t improve it and no mater where she tried to get knowledge, nothing helped her, it was as if something was deliberately blocking her path, it was then when she asked Boris to get her a spot as a teacher in the academy.

    And after some troubles, pressure from Richard and the support of Aura, since Boris is one of her trusted henchmen, she ended up being assigned to the elite ss, from that point onwards Boris has seen her getting minor episodes of inspiration, and more importantly she has even smiled from time to time.

    ''Whatever if it works it works'', thought Boris as he gave the green light.

    "Fine, since your teacher agrees, you can leave one hour earlier to the lunch break, now you better put attention to the lesson brats", said Boris as he left the ssroom to attend to his other tasks.

    While he would normally stay near the 1-S ssroom for security reasons, the champion and the n head of the Revy family were both here, so unless something really extreme happened everything would be okay.

    Aliya saw her normally strict uncle being quite flexible and she inwardly smiled before she focused on her students.

    "Today''s ss will be thest for the week, since tomorrow your matches will start and Friday will be free for everyone to do their preparations", she said as she took some books from her storage ring.

    "The academy has handed us these books which will be helpful for the exploration, Daimon please help me distribute them".

    Daimon stood up from his seat and handed a copy of the book to each one of his ssmates, while keeping one for himself.

    "Valuable materials and objectives, special edition Wild w academy", all the students had the same reaction after reading the title on the cover of the book, everyone herees from a noble family or had a decent backer, even Loren whose family is declining is the daughter of a peak Archmage.

    And previous to their entrance to the academy, they had home tutors which taught them the basics, at the very least they should be able to discern valuable materials, it was done like that so they would not miss a fortunate chance.

    For example, it would be a disgrace for the son of an Arch ranked to not recognize a piece of mithril or orichalcum.

    The problem here was that besides the images of the materials and their descriptions as well as the method to collect them, there was some extra information.

    "Orichalcum: 10,000 contribution points per gram".

    "Mithril: 10,000 contribution points per gram".

    "Bone Orchid: 30,000 contribution points, negotiable with vice principal Diana".

    "Blood Lily: 30,000 contribution points, if not attainable must be destroyed at first sight (A reward will be given if a proof is brought back)".

    "Eliminate a member of the abomination or eternal sses and bring back its head as proof, the reward will be calcted based on the rank and importance of the target for their respective gxies".

    Since Daimon has never liked to beat around the bush, he directly said.

    "So, we aren''t going to be able to keep what we find".

    Calvin and the others gazed at Aliya which quickly exined.

    "Yes and no, every one of the participants will have their storage rings confiscated and then given one crated by the magic cksmiths of the academy, as soon as you put something inside, the item will be recorded".

    "Once youe out, you''ll have to return the ring and the contents will be registered in front of your respective family or force as well as the treasurer of the academy, then you''ll be given the chance to keep ten of those items for yourself, the rest must be sold to the academy of those affiliated to it".

    "Don''t worry the prices are very fair and you can use the points to get other things from the treasury of the academy, besides the transaction will be held in secret so that no one would know the origin of the resource".

    ''I guess it''s not that bad, they protect the student, leave them chose their rewards and if they got things that aren''t useful for them, they can use the points to exchange them'', thought Daimon.<sub> </sub>

    "And what happens if we use some of those things, like what if we need to use them in order to survive or something like that?", asked Calvin.

    "No problem, if used then it won''t count, of course you''ll be scanned to make sure there aren''t any "idents", make sure to read the book in your free time, the ss of today is a little exam to see how many of those materials you recognize".

    After saying that, Aliya told them to keep the books in their rings and handed everyone a written test with several images, the idea was for them to write the name of the material and a description of it.

    The rest of the ss consisted in Aliya checking their answers and exining them their mistakes, surprisingly the average of correct answers was about eighty percent, even Calvin had a decent number of good answers.

    She already expected Daimon to have full score and her expectations were answered, but to her surprise Leslie was the same.

    ¡äWell, she is a second generation of an alchemist, but then why did she didn''t have experience refining potions¡ä, wondered Aliya.

    This test wasn''t done on a whim, she wanted to find potential alchemists among her students, Daimon was already on the top of the list, but there was a second spot,st time Yvonne outstood in the results of the potion they needed to refine as homework, but now Leslie outshined her.

    ''Whatever there is still some time, we''ll se how it goes after they return from the exploration''.

    Without noticing the time for the ss ended and Boris returned, with a somewhat annoyed expression as he gazed at Calvin.

    Something thetter expected.

    ''Leaving Aleah without supervision for a couple of hours is a really bad idea'', thought Calvin.

    He took out his sigil lector and sent a message which was immediately answered with just a few words.

    "Public arena".

    Boris immediately frowned at Calvin''s words, the public arena is exclusive for the second- and third-year students, but since the elite ss of the second year is participating in the tournament, then only third years should be using it in the meanwhile.

    And the condition to be a third year and stay in the main campus is¡­ to be a seventh star ranked mage or knight and be able to beat a "normal" eight ranked being.

    "Well, if she is as troublesome as you im, she should have no problems unless the top of the elite ss from the third years fights with her, since the year is still starting there aren''t eight star ranked students yet".

    With Boris leading Daimon and the others entered the area designated for the second and third years, which earned them some weird gazes from the students that were in their breaks, but no one came to cause them problems, they had a tutor guiding them after all.

    Soon they reached the public arena where as Calvin expected there was a crowd gathered, student from different sses and even some from the three guest academies where filling the stands.

    When Daimon''s gaze fell on the tform of the arena a glint of surprise shed through his eyes, the size of the tform was the same as the one currently being used for the tournament, and thatrge area was filled with beaten up studentsying all over the ground, surrounded by churned up pieces of broken armors and other equipment.

    In the middle of all those swollen faces and bruised bodies, the proud and tall figure of Aleah stood out like a sore thumb, she casually grabbed some of the many weaponsying around and yed with it before her ws cut them apart.

    The ones watching from the stands had terrified expressions, most of them were from the C and D sses, while thoseying on the ground were all from the B and some of the A sses, in other words a single five-star knight wiped the floor with about fifty seventh star mages and knights, it was ridiculous.

    "A walking disaster as always", mumbled Calvin.

    Aleah noticed Daimon and the others and her bored expression changed to an expecting one.

    "Daimon, I was starting to get bored, those herbivores didn''t even serve as a warm up, I can''t believe that even in groups of ten they can''t even push me back one step".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, if numbers could make up for battle prowess, then Half Emperors wouldn''t be so respected.

    As Daimon was about to jump to the tform feeling expectant of the little spar, he was going to take part in, a voiceing from the entrance of the arena drew everyone''s attention.

    "I was told there was a massacrer ongoing in the arena, and of course it had to be someone rted to your monster''s ss, old Boris".

 Chapter 204 A Clash Between Two Overlords (Part 1)

    Daimon turned to see the neer which turned out to be the veiled woman Archknight, that was also the principal who was inpany of the field marshal yesterday.

    ''Now that I remember, she seemed to know our tutor'', thought Daimon.

    Boris had a slightly weird expression after listening the woman calling him old.

    "Brat, you might have recently broken through, but I''m still your superior in rank you know?".

    The woman shrugged as she took a seat on the front row of the grades.

    "Well, I can''t call you "uncle" like Aliya since we both studied under instructor Richard, but you are indeed older".

    The veiled woman then red at the other students that were sitting on the grades before.

    "All of you get out¡­ also take your ssmates with you", she said as she pointed at the guys that wereying on the ground around Aleah.

    Surprisingly no oneined, instead they did what they were told and ran away as if their lives depended on it, then with a snap of her fingers a barrier made out of battle aura blocked the entrance of the arena.

    Her gaze then fell on the students of the elite ss stopping a few seconds on Daimon before her image shed, the next thing everyone saw was Aliya being thrown around in the air by the veiled woman.

    "It''s been some time since we saw each other Ali, how have you been~".

    ¡­ "Huh?".

    Everyone had the same reaction, the veiled woman suddenly became all friendly, judging by Aliya''s slightly ufortable expression and Boris''s amused one, that this was amon thing between them.

    "Ahem, Diana, remember that Aliya isn''t in a good condition", said Boris worried that her niece could end up feeling dizzy, an Archknight''s strength is no joke after all.

    The veiled woman who was apparently called Diana, suddenly stopped her joyful reunion with Aliya, seeing her slightly pale face she apologized.

    "Sorry, I still can''t get used to the thought that the youngest member of my old regiment¡­".

    Aliya saw the depressed expression of Diana and she shook her head.

    "Don''t worry about that sister Diana, if I were given the chance to choose, I would still do the same once again".

    Although the face of Diana was fully covered by a veil, making her expression impossible to see, the harmonious atmosphere they had made clear for Daimon and the others that their teacher and this vice principal were more like friends thanrades in arms.

    Diana noticed Aleah was dying to start her spar with Daimon and she chuckled.

    "Sorry for the interruption, although I''m not the tutor of the third years elite ss, I can''t help but feel interested in a five-star knight who can deal with dozens of seventh star individuals".

    "And of course, the famous "demon" among the freshman, who has been mentioned in the same sentences as our little prodigy".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at Boris which scratched the back of his head as he exined.

    "This magic ruin is rather capricious, the army also has an academy it''s just that unlike others it''s militarized, in other words they have to follow a strict discipline which means they aren''t allowed to leave or fool around until their three years are over".

    "As you can already guess, the students there arepletely different to the "young masters" of this ce, if I''m being honest, the first years of the military academy can defeat the second years of the Wild w academy, even if their realms are lower, since their battle experience makes up for it".

    "That being said, that difference disappears for third years, in fact the third years of the Wild w academy are on par with the third years of the army''s academy, or that was the case until this generation".

    "A certain monster appeared in thest days of the previous year, someone that never stood out defeated the whole elite sses¡­ of all the academies in our White Fang gxy, the disciple of the field marshal and his adopted son Damian Arizel".

    Daimon was a bit interested in the story but he still didn''t understand what it had to do with him or Aleah, making Boris sigh.

    "Don''t look at me like that, basically everyone isparing you with him, because he can also cross realms quite easily, the difference is that he is already a seventh star mage, so he can''t enter the magic ruin¡­ if not the badge that was given to you would have ended in his hands, or at least that''s what most people think".

    Diana was carefully evaluating the ck-haired youth''s expression, trying to discern what he was thinking, but Daimon''s next words made her speechless.<sub> </sub>

    "Can he fight against a mage lord?".

    Diana nearly tripped, while Boris had an expression which meant "as expected".

    "Well, I have seen him fighting head on with nine-star mages and knights without too much problem but¡­".

    "What''s the big fuss, I could do the same since I became a peak five-star knight", Aleah who finally lost her patience stepped in, since she was getting bored, her eyes were burning with battle intentions and her battle aura was leaking from her body.

    Calvin felt Boris''s gaze piercing him and he could only pray that their tutor didn''t take it against him for Aleah''s, rebellious attitude.

    Daimon also put the subject on the back of his mind, and jumped onto the stage making Boris remind them.

    p "Brats, this is just a spar, Daimon you need to be on your best condition for the tournament, just be aware that if don''t like what I''m seeing I will stop you the fight".</anda>

    Although Aleah was unhappy, she had no other choice but to agree with Boris, but in the inside, she was cursing Calvin for not telling her how physically strong was Daimon.

    ''It seems I need to remind him who is the boss'', she thought making Calvin feel a chill running down his spine.

    Aisha and the other girls went to the stands to have a better vision of the fight that was about to start, while Boris, Diana and Aliya sat on the floor near the tform.

    "No weapons?", asked Daimon as his nails turned into ws.

    Aleah''s smile broadened as she did the same, her battle aura also covered her arms adding a metallic glow to them.

    With a loud explosion both Daimon and Aleah dashed forward, one being d in silver light and the other in purple lightning.

    Not even a couple of secondster, they shed creating a huge shockwave, it was as if a thunder reverberated through the whole arena making some of the girls cover their ears.

    Back at the tform Daimon''s pupils contracted as he moved his shoulder a couple of millimeters to the right barely avoiding Aleah''s tail which was sharpened as a spear thanks to her battle aura.

    Instead of being disappointed that her surprise attack failed, Aleahughed as she rotated her body, gaining momentum before her ws shed with Daimon''s once again, forcing him back a few steps as sparks flew due to the friction, creating skidding noises in the process.

    Daimon looked at his hands, although there was no wound, he did feel that attack, especially the friction created by the sh of their ws, after taking a deep breath, he maximized the output of his lightning to the pint that crackling noises filled the tform.

    ¡äLet''s try this again'' thought Daimon, his image shed and before Aleah could react, she only managed to use her left arm to block, Daimon appeared on the air next to her, his body rollednding a heavy kick which sent her a few meters backwards.

    Daimon saw the grooves she left on the ground, only now he noticed she wasn''t wearing shoes anymore, her pretty bare feet were in in view, but that wasn''t what caught his attention, but the fact that she had ws in her toes too.

    Daimon frowned, as far as he knew none of the feline races had ws in their toes, something he couldn''t help but think was that Aleah didn''t mention her surname, but ording to Calvin when they met, she was living in the wilderness training even if she was a little girl.

    "Mm?", Daimon suddenly felt a change in the atmosphere, he focused his attention in Aleah, which was now dazzling in silver light, her originally messy hair was now a bit spiky; she also took out her jacket and threw it out of the tform.

    The silver light then condensed behind Aleah forming the image of a lion roaring, she stomped the ground and propelled towards Daimon, the ground actually cracked a bit due to the impulse.

    This time Daimon was taken by surprise, metal boosting spells increase either strength or defense, but so does the weight of the one using it, and yet Aleah reached an insanely high-speed using just a physical technique.

    "Booom!!!", the ground trembled and a huge amount of dust raised after a loud impact filled the arena, when the dust dispersed, everyone followed the cracks on the ground to their origin just to see Aleah''s arm piercing the tform all the way to her elbow.

    Daimon managed to dodge her attack in thest second, but even then, he had a surprised expression on his face, he looked at the now ragged left sleeve of his shirt and smiled.

    "You changed directions midair, only a knight lord can do that", he mumbled.

    Aleah on the other hand slowly took out her arm out of the tform, her smile was a bit stiff but she was clearly enjoying the whole situation, her right sleeve was ragged giving her a wild charm.

    "You redirected my attack, only a mage lord can do that".

    "Rumble!!!", the air seemed to tremble as Daimon''s mana shed with Aleah''s battle aura, dividing the tform, half of it was covered in silver lighting while the other half was like a sea of purple lightning.

 Chapter 205 A Clash Between Two Overlords (Part 2)

    While their energies were fighting against each other, Daimon repeated what happened previously.

    He was preparing for a second head on sh against Aleah, when she suddenly smiled, her foot tapped the air and she changed her direction, in other words she moved by kicking air, something only possible for Knight Lords.

    While Mage Lords can use the mana of the atmosphere to glide for a certain amount of distance, Knight Lords have reached a high enough physical strength to kick the air and propel themselves.

    That is the previous version of the flying techniques both paths can achieve after reaching the Arch ranks.

    Daimon''s battle aura in other words "Demon Light", doesn''t focus in increasing his physical strength, is a battle aura purely centered in destructive force, his abnormal physical strengthes from thebination of the natural increase each realm as a knight grants him, pushing his body to the limit by using core synchrony and the hellish training Aura has made him go through.

    But Aleah''s battle aura was different, each time she punched a shockwave followed not too long after, if it wasn''t for his abnormal body which protected him, his arms would be broken by now.

    Then an idea struck Daimon like a bolt out of the blue, while Aleah''s ws were incredibly sharp, the pieces of armor were destroyed due to strong impacts as they were churned up to the point of being unrecognizable.

    He wanted to take a moment to confirm his theory using infinity eyes, but Aleah was getting more and more excited to the point that her battle aura was overflowing from the tform.

    Diana waved her hand creating a barrier with her battle aura to contain the Aleah''s which seemed to be running wild.

    "How much battle aura does that girl has¡­ old Boris why is she not studying here, I hope you don''t mind me stealing her hehehe".

    Before Boris could answer Calvin interrupted them.

    "She could have joined the academy directly, my grandfather has a direct pass to the elite ss which he offered to Aleah, because he wanted me to go through the whole process, but she refused", he said with an aggrieved voice.

    "Ahem, she simply said it was boring, in fact she didn''t came because of the exploration, I only managed to convince her toe, because I told her Daimon is a monster just like her¡­ and judging by her expression now that she has found a spar partner, no one can make her leave the academy, as long as Daimon is here of course".

    Diana frowned, but after a close inspection not only she saw Aleah letting out even more battle aura, to the point that her reserves should have already outssed the ones of an eight-star ranked knight, she was clearly smiling.

    "We''ll seeter", she said as she inwardly snorted, in terms of battle techniques she believed the academy of the army was the best option.

    Completely ignoring the impression that their fight was leaving in others, Aleah''s aura changed one more time.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow seeing her pupils changing to look like the ones of a feline, then her battle aura condensed into des which extended from her forearms and knees, what caught his attention was that they were dull.

    "This is still a spar", mumbled Aleah, contrary to what Daimon expected she was properly keeping her reason even if she seemed to be in a battle state.

    ''Time to get serious'' thought Daimon as a dark mist started twirling around his body, darkness element is a good example of the saying "a good offensive is a good defense", at least his darkness worked as a defense too, since it had the capacity to erode things thanks to Erin.

    Of course, he adjusted it to only affect metal, simr to how he only made it so Leir''s hair couldn''t grow back, this was a spar and he didn''t want to end up burning Aleah''s skin by ident.

    As if they discussed it beforehand, both Daimon and Aleah moved at the same time, followed by a trail of mana and battle aura respectively.

    Aleah punched downwards aiming at Daimon''s chest, but to her surprise Daimon didn''t dodge nor he redirected her attack, instead he also clenched his fist and impacted it against Aleah''s.

    ? "Boooom!!!", a loud sound of metals colliding followed by an explosion and violent currents of wind filled the arena.

    Aleah tried to knee Daimon, but her attack was responded in kind making their knees also sh creating another explosion.

    "Hahahah, this is so fun!", shouted Aleah as she let her body fall downwards using her arm to support her body she rolled and used the impulse to kick Daimon.

    Daimon stomped the ground making it crack, with his stance he blocked the kick with theteral side of his arm, Aleah then let her body roll on the tform passing between Daimon''s legs.

    Daimon managed to turn around but she grabbed him from his shoulders, and gave him a headbutt, their foreheads shed creating another shockwave, but apparently none of them was really affected.

    Daimon saw Aleah''s eyes from up close, she seemed to be having a lot of fun with each hit her attacks became heavier and heavier, after a split of a second which seemed tost more time, they both took a step back getting some distance, before repeating the process, if one attacked with a kick the other responded with a kick and so on.<sub> </sub>

    Needless to say, but Calvin and the others were in awe, in their eyes Daimon and Aleah shed through the whole arena, continuously shing, it was as if they were having some kind of really dangerous dace.

    Out of all the members of the elite ss, only Aisha and Yvonne were able to see al their movements, one because her reflexes were fast enough to follow the battle at such a high speed, due to her lightning affinity and the other thanks to her eyes, although she couldn''t see "them", she saw their mana flows colliding.

    As for the teachers, Aliya''s eyes were burning with curiosity.

    ''A body strong enough to endure two three star boosting spells, and such a strong darkness and lightnings too!'', she thought, it also didn''t escape her yes that whenever Daimon punched the des forming on Aleah''s body, they became brittle before shattering into little pieces.

    Boris had a bitter smile realizing he underestimated Daimon¡­ one more time.

    "A body innately strong enough to match up with a knight and also the flexibility in manipting mana of a mage, that kid is a monster", mumbled Diana.

    Boris nodded, that was the huge potential in which he was betting, it''s what made him allow Aliya to teach them about her incredibly valuable theory.

    "I should stop them before things go out of hands", said Boris as he stood up but Diana stopped him.

    "They are clearly enjoying this fight, let them sh big time again and then we''ll stop them¡­ if there isn''t a winner decided yet".

    Boris contemted things for a moment, although the fight was getting heated, both Daimon and Aleah were still restraining themselves enough.

    "Fine".

    ¡­

    Back at the tform Daimon blocked Aleah''s ws with his, making sparks flew all over the ce, before both of them distanced from each other again.

    "Let''s finish it with one more attack, I''m getting hungry and the second part of the tournament is starting soon too", said Daimon, which earned him a pout from Aleah.

    "¡­ Can we spar again before going to the magic ruin?", she asked in a strangely expectant voice.

    Daimon nodded without a second of doubt, he could feel his battle aura boiling inside of his body, this little fight with Aleah seemed to have helped him in his knight path, he was also interested to see if he could learn something from her, as he had metal affinity and her fighting style was quite something.

    Aleah was unwilling to finish the first fun fight she has had in such a long time, but she could only content herself thinking that now she had found a good spar partner.

    She jumped twenty meters backwards and suddenly all the battle aura she was using externally was absorbed back into her body.

    The ground below her feet started cracking, she smiled showing her teeth at Daimon, a silver light glowed in her eyes.

    Daimon''s eyes slightly widened as he felt a weird sensation, the aura granted by the skill Overlord''s pride activated on its own, as if it was being stimted by something.

    He finally understood why he was enjoying fighting Aleah so much, the skill he got came from a manticore which is in part a lion, that doesn''t mean every lion would be the same, as not all of them can be alphas, but apparently whichever the race of Aleah might be, she is an alpha of them.

    "A lion princess so to speak, your luck with women is truly something else", said Evangeline in an amused voice.

    But the most surprised one was none other than Aleah.

    ''So, you are actually like me'' she thought as she charged even more battle aura into her body, she used her own metal to look at her reflect, just to confirm that her eyes had that silverish light in them.

    Calvin which was watching everything from the stands rubbed his chin, over the years he has seen Aleah using that weird presence of hers to intimidate and suppress enemies, and this is the first time he has seen someonepletely resisting it.

    As even those from higher realms were affected by it although in a smaller almost unnoticeable quantity, he has seen his father showing a slight difort thanks to it¡­ a star ranked being affecting an Arch rank, Calvin used to believe Aleah was the only one capable of that¡­ until that day when Yvonne''s father came to cause troubles.

    "Yup, they are both monsters", mumbled Calvin as he confirmed his suspicion about that ominous feeling he noticed back then.

 Chapter 206 A Clash Between Two Overlords (Part 3)

    Daimon saw Aleahpressing all her battle aura around her body, the pressure emitted by her also increased to the point that the others in the stands felt it.

    "Even through the barrier of an Archknight, I feel as if I was being spotted by a powerful magic beast", mumbled Michael, a rare expression of interest appeared on his face as he felt motivated to fight.

    "A little shrimp like you isn''t a good match for Aleah, how about we give it a goter after the sses are over?", asked Calvin taking everyone by surprise.

    "Uwaah, thatzy ass of Calvin, is actually wanting to train by his own will, the world must be about to end", said Leslie as she giggled.

    While the girls included Lorenughed andpletely agreed with Leslie, Michael ignored the insult to his height and nodded, seeing Daimon having such an incredible fight, reminded him of the promise they made to not be a dead weight ever again.

    Boris nodded in recognition, while Aliya was happy to see her students so motivated, but the most surprised one was Diana.

    Her eyes glowed as she gazed at Daimon, she couldn''t help but improve her impression of him a bit more.

    ''To actually inspire the grandson of the Rock Dreadnought who is known for being a skirt chaser who hates training and problematic things, to ask for spar out of his own will... Daimon Licht, no wonder you seemed to have caught uncle Parzival''s attention''.

    ...

    Back at the tform Daimon was in a little predicament, judging by the amount of battle aura Aleah was pouring into her attack, he discarded each and all of the six, seven and even eight starred martial arts he knew of for metal affinity knights.

    But that wasn''t all, since she was purposedly slowing the process in her excitement, Daimon focused his attention in the intense but still faint pressure she was exuding.

    ''She is imbuing that pressure into her battle aura, it''s different to how I use overlord''s pride, it''s as if she was yelling "I am here" to the world'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "That martial art is it an original?".

    ? A glint of surprise glowed in Aleah''s eyes, but her expectation simply grew even more, a bright smile appeared on her face as she answered.

    "Yes, you said onest sh and we''ll wrap things up for now, and I want to test mytest creation~".

    Daimon nodded, not surprised by her answer, while for others creating a spell or a martial art might be difficult, it will be hard to believe that someone with such incredible battle instincts like Aleah, couldn''t create a martial art that fitted her fighting style.

    "In that case I should respond in kind", mumbled Daimon, with him as the center lighting and darkness started rotating, while at the beginning both elements kept a certain distance with each other, after a couple of seconds they finally ovepped at a certain spot and then... the air rumbled creating a loud explosion.

    Aleah''s expression became instantly serious, a dual element mage is troublesome but manageable with the correct preparation, but a dual element mage whose affinities canplement each other is unpredictable and extremely dangerous.

    "Regulus Charge!".

    "Hell Storm Javelin".

    Two voices, one loud and the other one calm echoed through the arena, a silver sh with the form of a lion''s head with its jaws opened shed against a giant pir of darkness and lighting which resembled a spear, then it was as if time stopped for a split of a second before a white dazzling light made everyone cover their eyes.

    "Boooom!!!", a loud explosion made the ground tremble, even Diana felt the impact on her barrier, although it didn''t crack, the strength of the collision surpassed what a star ranked mage should be able to produce.

    In other words when their attacks shed, the energy liberated was simr to a spell from a mage lord!

    A thick curtain of dust raised from the ground due to the impact, making it impossible for those sitting on the stands to see the result.

    Inside the cloud of dust, Daimon which was sitting on the ground coughed a couple of times, since a bit of the dust got into his throat, he looked downwards and saw that all his upper clothes were torn apart, there was multiple scratches on his skin but no one was deep enough to make him bleed.

    Nevertheless, the result was beyond his expectations.

    "A tie", he mumbled after looking at the tall girl sitting next to him with a happy smiling expression on her face.

    Aleah was massaging her left shoulder and her neck as she repeated the scene of theirst sh in her mind, once that weird spell of Daimon''s shed against her Regulus Charge, the image of a huge shadow figure with amethyst eyes appeared in her mind.

    Then she felt a shiver running through her body, but it didn''t make her feel afraid, no, instead of that she had a thrilling sensation of fulfillment, Star ranked, Lord ranked, Arch ranked, Magus King, Half Emperor, mage, knight, male or female, no matter how many people she met, she never identified herself with anyone.<sub> </sub>

    Until a moment ago, when they shed, her instincts told her that she was in presence of someone born to be above others, her blood boiled, her heartbeat elerated and she had to suppress the urge to breakthrough to the six-star knight realm, that suddenly filled her body.

    Aleah, gazed at Daimon who was no putting a new shirt and her eyes evaluated his perfectly chiseled muscles, his wide back and those shoulders which seemed to be able to support the world.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt Aleah''s gaze piercing his back and he turned to see her, just to see her curiously "appraising" his body built.

    "I wonder what kind of predator are you... you certainly don''t look like a "wolf" to me", she said with a strange glint in her eyes.

    Daimon shrugged as he pointed at her.

    "I don''t want to hear that from you, I originally thought you were a lion, but what I saw when our attacksshed wasn''t exactly a lion".

    Aleah''s little mouth widened a bit, she then grabbed Daimon''s shoulders with a surprised smiled.

    "You saw it?".

    Daimon was now regretting having mentioned it, her eyes were literally sparkling and without noticing, her ws were pressing against his skin, although they didn''t pierce it, it was still a not so pleasant sensation, like having a razor about to cut your skin.

    In any case he inwardly sighed before answering as he knew she would not let go of him, until he did it.

    "More or less, it was blurred but judging by the general form of the figure it wasn''t exactly a lion, also... I don''t mind it, but shouldn''t you change your clothes too?".

    Aleah''s happy smile froze, she looked at her clothes which were not that destroyed a second ago, but after she moved so suddenly, they gave in practically leaving her almost naked, and her face slightly blushed.

    Although the important parts were still somehow covered by what was left of her underwear, the rest was in in view.

    She cleared her throat and a wall of metal rose from the ground as she used a new set of clothes to cover her body, that being said while she was dressing up, she kept with the conversation.

    "Yours was a limitless dark shadow with eyes of the same color as the ones you have... are you really a variant of a werewolf and a member of the Revy family?".

    Her curiosity was burning her from the inside, but then she remembered it was rude to ask his origins to someone, specially because she didn''t tell him about hers.

    "Sorry, I''m not too used to deal with people, besides Calvin and sister Mireya I never got along with anyone else, you don''t need to answer that".

    The metal wall got absorbed into the ground and an Aleah wearing a simr set of clothes as the ones that got destroyed appeared in front of Daimon, her hair was a bit messy, but that was all, she looked perfectly fine even after using such arge amount of battle aura.

    If anything, she felt the left side of her body a bit sore, due to the impact, normally Daimon would have sharpened the Hell Storm Javelin to pierce through his enemy, but this was a spar so the tip of the spear was normal, still the impact made Aleah fell the air forcefully being expelled out of her lungs.

    Luckily her attack also reached Daimon at the same time but she only directed half of the shes created by the fangs of her regulus charge towards him, ultimately both of them let the attack of the other impact against their bodies as theirstpetition.

    And the result was a tie, the shes which would have normally turn her enemy to shreds only left shallow scratches in Daimon''s body, and Daimon''s hell storm javelin which he has used to pierce the armor of a nine-star ranked rock turtle before, became a blunt weapon after shing against Aleah''s body.

    Once the dust dispersed, the rest of the elite ss saw Aleah standing next to Daimon, but judging by their tidied appearances, they couldn''t guess who won, until Diana spoke.

    "After all that, it turned out to be a tie, I guess for a winner to be decided it would need to be a life-or-death fight".

    "Maybe but I would never allow that to happen, this world will be so boring if the only one that has and will probably ever match me in physical strength were to disappear", said Aleah as she stretched her body trying to get rid of the after impact of Daimon''s spell.

    "Calvin, tell the old man I''ll enter the Wild w academy, but only if I can be part of the first year''s elite ss, I don''t care if I get the spot for the second year''s exploration, but once wee back, I want to be in the same ss as Daimon".

    Diana who was about to offer Aleah to enter directly as a third year on the academy of the army, nearly choked, but after seeing her determined expression she knew she would not change her mind and she could only resign herself.

    ''Worthy of someone called "Demon" ... someone that was able to surprise even my uncle Parzival in one of his patrols'', she thought.

 Chapter 207 The Second Phase Of The Tournament

    Calvin listened to Aleah suddenly asking to enter the academy and the first year''s elite ss on top of that and he bitterly smiled.

    "We still need to beat the other elite ss, and I doubt any of them has the balls to fight against you though".

    Seeing Diana''s eyes glowing with hope, Boris interfered.

    "Don''t worry about that, tomorrow''s matches have another meaning for the first years, those who lose will be removed from the elite ss¡­ the principal will make the official announcement, so I won''t say more".

    "Besides, Daimon will have the right to bestow a position to others in the elite ss, as long as he remains as the first rank", added Aliya to seal the deal, how could she let a new source of "knowledge" such as Aleah escape from her eyes after all.

    Diana didn''t know whether she shouldugh or cry, that pair of uncle and niece didn''t even let her put up some fight and directly cut her chances of getting a talent as big as Aleah.

    ''Whatever, the inter-academy at the end of the year will be a good moment for her to see the superiority in battle techniques and tactics of the army''.

    Aleah then turned to see Daimon and she smiled at him.

    "Then it''s settled, you''ll give me a position in the elite ss right Daimon?".

    Aisha, Liz, ine and even Erin raised an eyebrow, normally people don''t be so casual after meeting, specially among nobles, Daimon is an exception as he for some reason doesn''t like etiquette, something the girls rte to the hatred he has towards the Naktis, vampires do tend to act in a noble and refined way after all.

    If they were to know he simply isn''t used to such stuff due to his past life, their expressions would be quite interesting to see, leaving that aside, apparently Aleah was the same, in fact she seemed to be quite informal andfortable with Daimon after their spar.

    Daimon nodded as he jumped out of the tform.

    "Sure, you''ll have to wait until we return though, if you apany us to see the tournament, I can introduce you to my "junior sister", with whom you''ll be making team inside the magic ruin".

    Aleah''s eyes glowed as she heard the words junior sister, she saw his perfectly toned body which wasn''t too bulky nor to slim but perfectly bnced while still having such an imposing physical strength, so it was obvious his training regimen isn''t by any means normal.

    "If she is simr to you, then I don''t mind lending a hand¡­ but if she is an herbivore then forget it, I''ll rather hunt solo, than having someone dragging me down".

    Calvin facepalmed, thanking to the heavens that Aura wasn''t here to hear Aleah call her disciple "herbivore".

    Daimon on the other hand chuckled, her tone was full of pride but it wasn''t arrogant at all, it was as if she was just stating the truth.

    He couldn''t help but find Aleah''s personality rather fresh and amusing, someone so straightforward is easy to befriend, at least for him who wasn''t used to the scheming way to be, of the nobility of this world, until Erin taught him of course.

    "You''ll understand after seeing today''s matches", said Daimon which made Aleah feel a bit expectant, as there might be other people with which she could warm up before fighting against Daimonter.

    After that everyone went to the restaurant to grab something to eat, on the way Daimon noticed other students giving him some weird gazes, which made him think that maybe someone was spreading rumors about him, but after putting some attention to some whispers here and there, he chuckled.

    "You see, the demon has brought another two girls from the outside".

    "A werecat and another member of the Revy family, lucky bastard".

    "I mean he is the first ranked of the elite ss, it would be weird for him to be single".

    And other simrments were being gossiped between the other students, normally such things don''t cause any reaction, the teachers simply take it as something normal, and the other girls can''t hear it, but this time one of the people in question had a really good hearing sense.

    Aleah''s hears slightly twitched and she couldn''t help but steal a gaze at Daimon, only now she noticed that he was indeed surrounded by girls, earlier she didn''t pay any attention, since Calvin and Michael were also in the same "position", as all the other members of the ss were girls.

    But to her surprise Calvin was keeping some distance with the girls, the only the exception was Loren, and Michael had Haylee holding onto his arm.

    "It seems that even your reputation is outstanding, Daimon", she said in a yful voice.

    While the other members of the ss thought Aleah was referring to the fact that other students opened a way for Daimon as soon as they saw him, Aisha, Liz and ine softly giggled at it.

    "Ahem, everyone is free to believe whatever they want", said Daimon avoiding the bullet.

    ''The people of this world surely like gossiping, go train you freaking magic or something'', he thought as he red at the other students.<sub> </sub>

    Boris, Aliya and surprisingly even Diana stayed with them for the lunch break, luckily the table assigned to Daimon was made to fit the whole ss which is about thirty people, so everyone could sit wherever they wanted to.

    Besides some chatting about random subjects, what stood the most was therge number of empty tes that piled up next to Aleah, but no one found it weird, unlike mana who can be taken from the surroundings, battle aura is produced within the body, and knights can take more advantage of the nutrients contained in the flesh of magic beasts than mages.

    Daimon was the same, in fact he has never reached the point of feeling "stuffed", even after eating the meat of high ranked magic beast at most he was satisfied.

    ''I wonder were all the mana that my body absorbs but is rejected by my core goes'', thought Daimon as he munched a piece of grilled meat.

    Once everyone had their fill, Boris guided them to the stadium, just like yesterday there was a huge line of students that wanted to get the free seats, the difference was that no one tried to cause problems to Daimon and the others.

    "How weird, isn''t this the time of the day when Alexanderes to be a pain in the ass", said Calvin, he recognized some of the guys that were hanging around with Alexander yesterday, but he wasn''t anywhere to be seen.

    ''I don''t think, he''ll be allowed to be near any man for q long time'', though Daimon as he inwardlyughed.

    Diana said goodbye to them and went to the skybox of the principals, not without stealing ast gaze to Aleah.

    "Two of the participants of todaye from the army''s academy, just a little reminder, the techniques they will be using are just the basics".

    Aleah didn''t pay too much attention to Diana''s words, although she didn''t know who fought yesterday, she knew who were the top ten of the second year''s elite ss, and all of them were nobles and were affiliated to the Wild w academy one way or another.

    And she wasn''t interested since those from the ranks eleven to twenty were probably all middle stage four star ranked mages or knights, and if they had abnormal fighting skills that surpassed their realms like Daimon, they wouldn''t be that low in the ranks.

    "I don''t think you should underestimate those guys from the army, they are among the top fifteen despite them being an early stage four star ranked mage and a knight", said Daimon as he remembered the two people without any beast characteristics from the two groups that appeared yesterday.

    Aleah leisurely sat on the couch as she stretched her arms, as she spoke with all naturality.

    "That''s what I''m talking about, to be considered decent you need to be able to cross at least one major realm".

    Noticing the weird gazes, she was receiving, Aleah scratched the back of her head.

    "¡­ That''s what I believe at least".

    Daimon and the others didn''t know what to say, luckily everyone here had a higher battle prowesspared to their realms, so there were no hard feelings, in fact the only one surprised here was Calvin.

    ''Since when you take into ount how other people feels about your sharp tongue?'', he thought.

    Many memories shed through Calvin''s mind in a split of a second, before he looked at Loren''s calm and refined appearance.

    ''I guess she and that wild aunt of mine are guilty, for my strike zone''.

    ¡­

    While the first year''s elite ss was enjoying the time previous to the start of today''s matches, in the resting area, the second year''s elite ss was sitting, the tense atmosphere was suffocating.

    Arianna, Gina, Lana and one of the two guys from the Argent family were sitting next to each other, while the Jester Risha, Caleb Allier, Harald Faresh and Samuel Jolbaris were ring at them.

    Even before the matches started everyone already had their own grudges to resolve, and they were all ced in the same room for thest one hour prior to the start, so you can imagine the smell of powder that was present in the resting room.

    But then a sudden voice interrupted the atmosphere as someone entered the room.

    "You all look really confident in getting the spot, that this is a merepetition for your ranks at this point am I right¡­ and you call me arrogant humph!".

    Arianna raised an eyebrow at the neer, the foxlike ears and tail gave him away as a member of the Revy family.

    ''I guess that just like among the Argent there are always people that doesn''t agree, the same happens in the Revy family'' she thought seeing the neer sitting next to her other cousin.

 Chapter 208 The Pride Of The Argent Family

    It didn''t take too much time for the stadium to be at its max capacity, the watchtower screens above it kept repeating some of the scenes of the previous matches, to keep the crowd entertained while they waited for the matches to start.

    The different families which owned a skybox kept arriving until the appearance of the honorable Half Emperors and Magus Kings, the entrances were closed signaling the start of the event.

    The screens suddenly mirrored the skybox of the vice principals and Ste appeared not too long after.

    "Wee to all the students and guests that came to witness the second day of the tournament, today we have three different events prepared, but for the time being, we''ll finish with the remaining three matches left".

    The expectation of the crow grew with Ste''s words, even the half emperors showed some interest in what was about to start.

    "Argent matriarch, do you mind sharing with us what''s the other event besides the matches left and the revenge match?", asked the ancestor of the Faresh family.

    Aura shrugged, there was a barrier surrounding them, so there was no problem in telling the half emperors beforehand.

    "It''s the match between the first and second ranks, it will be a tag battle, apparently some of the students had a specific person they wanted to challenge, so we made the arrangement, there was also a new addition the participants to fill in the empty spot, I will leave the rest for vice principal Leeris to exin when the timees, in any case I suppose you all have your own guesses".

    Aura''s words took some of the half emperors by surprise, the position of captain was what was being disputed here, the authority that it came with it was no joke, and now there was a variant in the equation.

    Unlike a normal one versus one battle, two "weak" fighters whose team work is good enough, can overwhelm two strong people who aren''tpatible, unless the difference is too big of course.

    Aura saw all those old monsters being showing a bit more of interest and she inwardly smirked.

    ''If you taught your younger generations to not get dragged by their impulses in previous years, giving Erin any information about personal feuds¡­ is a really bad idea''.

    Since the very moment the students entered the resting area, they were isted from everyone outside of the room, so this little tag battle was decided after that, the rest of the top then who were considered to still have more to show were handed a little survey in secret, "Who would you like to challenge".

    Thanks to Arianna''s affirmation about who would challenge who, Erin suggested Aura to not limit the options in case someone wanted to call them out for "arranging" the results.

    Caleb Allier challenged Lana, Harald Faresh challenged Gina and of course Samuel targeted Arianna.

    As for Jester Risha he was the joker, ording to Arianna he was too coward to challenge someone else besides Wade in the top ten, as heid down till thest second to take away Wade''s position, but he still wanted to maintain some face so his most obvious target would be the next one to the top ten, and the rank eleven is Arianna''s cousin.

    And everything went ording to the n, Gina and Lana were told beforehand to make sure they "coincidentally" selected those who also wished to fight them, as for Arianna''s cousin he was told to select whoever with the exception of Jester, so that they would not be included in the tag battle.

    In other words, with the inclusion of Jester Risha, the "requirement" the academy could im was the trigger for the option to select a specific opponent, was being in the top ten, and the condition to participate in the tag battle was that both parties selected each other.

    As for sorting who will tag with who, tag was left in the hands of the students, Samuel was given the chance to choose fist, since he had some sort of friendship with Harald, that was one for his team, he also tried to bring Lana over to his side just to be rejected, which made him then chose Caleb as he was Lana''s counter.

    The result was the division in two groups and the tense situation of before.

    While still thinking that Erin was quite scary to ns things so far ahead after listening to Arianna speaking of her ssmates just once, the two referees entered the arena followed by the participants as for the new addition it was none other than the guy from the Revy n that arrivedst to the resting area.

    The referees walked towards the wall where the box with the two slots was and pushed their respective buttons, after a moment each of them took out a ball with a number.

    "Rank number 8, Jester Risha".

    "Rank number 11, Reiner Argent".

    Then the screens changed their focus to two young men which were standing up from their respective seats.

    Jester Risha had a slim built, his hair and eyes had a simr color to Leslie''s, a light brown slightly reddish tones somehow simr to leaves in autumn, which was understandable considering Jester is also from the main family of the fire crane n, his get up consisted in a white and orange robe with some light armor protecting his vital points.

    Reiner argent on the other hand was a tall guy with some signs of a beard here and there, following the saying that the male werewolves tend to be "exhibitionists", he was wearing a sleeveless shirt with leather armor which only covered his upper chest leaving his abs in in view.

    While Jester was thanking to the heavens that the opponent, he got was who he wanted, Daimon evaluated the strength of both of them

    ''A middle stage four star ranked mage against an early stage four star ranked knight, normally the result shouldn''t be a surprise but since Arianna specifically said that Jester was no match for her cousin, I guess there is more to that guy than what meets the eye''.<sub> </sub>

    Since he didn''t want to spoil the surprise, he didn''t inject more mana into his eyes and just waited for the show to start.

    Jester and Reiner went up the tform and after receiving the greenlight from the referees the match started.

    Reiner saw the disdaining gaze in Jester eyes and he snorted.

    "What, you think that just because your affinity is fire and mine is wind, you have the advantage?".

    Jester smirked, dark orange mes covered his body and his mana pressure filled the area.

    "Not only that, in case you forgot, you are still an early-stage knight, even if you defend yourself with fast currents of wind, the heat of my mes will still roast you".

    "Fire Wave!".

    Without waiting for Reiner''s answer, Jester practically became a methrower, a sea of mes of about twenty meters wide and ten meters height was shot towards Reiner.

    Wind affinity mages and knights are fast, so the best way to deal with them are attacks that affect a wide area, Jester wanted it to be a fight of attrition, since his reserves of mana would of course be bigger than Reiner''s.

    Unfortunately for him, Reiner had a different n, his storage ring

    "Pressure de!", windbined with battle aura swirled around Reiner''s left arm before he punched frontwards, under the surprised eyes of the people in the stands, the wave of mes was split apart like it was nothing.

    "Fuck!", Jester felt all the hairs on his body stand on end, abandoning his previously confident attitude he jumped sidewards avoiding by a few millimeters an invisible line which left behind a whistling sound, until it shed against the wall of the arena leaving a deep scar on its surface.

    Jester''s pupils contracted, he slowly looked at his shoulder where a cold sensation was assaulting him, just to see his robe cleanly cut, the previous white cloth was stained with blood.

    ''If I didn''t hear the whistle caused by that attack, my arm would have ben sliced'', he yelled in his heart, but then he frowned, a four-star knight shouldn''t be able tounch a long-range attack with that much strength, unlike a mage who can gather mana of a specific element and throw it at the enemy without any other process than casting a spell, a knight''s martial art requires the body of the knight to do a certain amount of work, also there is a limit as to how much of the element can a knight and a mage manipte, and normally mages outss knights in that aspect.

    In this case Reiner concentrated all the wind he could manipte on his arm, then he had to punch the air which he artificially elerated, to shot it.

    ''But if that was the case the pressure of the attack should have wounded him too'', thought Jester.

    He looked at Reiner and saw he was wearing gauntlets which covered his arms and shoulders, there was also blood and a faint trace of smokeing from his left arm and the ends of his hair, all this while he had a threatening smile on his face.

    "What happened little bird, that expression of yours makes you look as if you have seen a ghost, do you perhaps forgot what we the Argent family take pride in the most¡­ among all the beast races in terms of vitality we are the peak of the pyramid!".

    "We the Argent family might have troubles to advance early, but a lower realm doesn''t mean we are weak!".

    By the time Reiner finished speaking, the wounds that the stronglypressed wind left in his arm werepletely healed.

    "Now shall we see who can resist more wounds", said Reiner as wind started rotating in both his left leg and arm this time, the wind was moving so fast that a twister formed on the left side of the arena.

    Jester felt his blood pressure rising, he was being looked down by someone whose rank and realm couldn''tpare with his.

    "Since you want wo fight in such an uncivilized way, then go to hell!", he shouted, knowing that if the battle dragged on, he would end up in pieces, Jester decided to give his all.

    "Fire Dome!".

    All the fire he could manipte exploded around his body, covering the whole tform and avoiding the spectators to see what was happening.

    At the skybox of the Argent family Ulises was smiling from ear to ear, he was so excited that the air around him was trembling, then while looking at Arthur he shouted.

    "I would like to see those tiger assholes calling the young generation of my Argent family trash again HAHAHA".

 Chapter 209 The Importance Of Battle Techniques (Part 1)

    Arthur''s expression became grim, being shouted by an Arch ranked was an insult to him, the problem is that if he did anything Aura was sure to stop him anyway, also it was a well-known thing that Ulises Argent has more balls than brain so there was no use inining.

    "Argent matriarch, tell your subordinate to watch his mouth, this isn''t a third-rate brothel but the Wild w academy", still he had to say something to keep his face, especially because the other half emperors were just waiting for an excuse to speak behind his back.

    Aura saw Arthur trying to make himself look refined while if not for the ce he would have definitely attacked Ulises, and she smirked.

    "Why didn''t you act this "sensitive" back then when you called the young generation of my Argent family trash?".

    Arthur was livid, he simply snorted and stopped paying attention to Ulises, but inwardly he poisonously yelled.

    ''I will remember this Aura, Ulises, a hundred years isn''t too much for a gentleman to take his revenge!''.

    Daimon which was feeling interested in Reiner''s fight, injected mana into his eyes so that he could see through the fire dome.

    "Leslie, that guy is rted to your father, right?", he asked while seeing what was happening inside the fire dome.

    "Mm", it took her a second, but Leslie nodded, Jester is part of the same family branch as her father, which makes him her cousin.

    "Then why is his fighting style so different to yours?".

    This time Veronica which was just arriving along with Anya and Irina, took the initiative to answer.

    "That''s because he isn''t using the techniques that have been passed down from ancient times in our fire crane n, but ones that were created just a few generations ago by Kirik''s family branch".

    "Why the hell would one do that?", asked Calvin as he frowned, the Risha family might not have a Half Emperor, but they aren''t pushovers by any means, in fact you could say that they are better than some families which do have them, in some aspects.

    The records of their family go back quite a bit, a couple of thousand years more than most families at least, of course having the notes and techniques doesn''t equal to being able to master them, but their potential is quite big, Richard didn''t be the most respected instructor in the army for nothing after all, he is the one that has managed toprehend the most from the records of the Night Sparrow n.

    Leslie took out her fan which had some metal instead of feathers here and there and pointed at it as he exined.

    "It''s because our traditional techniques have some requirements, a "soft" weapon and agility are the basics, also for amateurs the performance isn''t any specialpared to other modern techniques".

    Veronica shook her head before hugging her daughter from behind.

    "That''s only half right, but since my little Leslie wants it to be a surprise for her "Hero", I won''t say a thing~".

    "Mom!", Leslie pouted knowing her mother was teasing her.

    Daimon looked at Leslie''s fan and he formed his own theories, but there was no point in guessing, their tournament started tomorrow, and since he told them to utterly destroy their opponents, then they would need to fight seriously.

    ''Now that I think about it, I haven''t seen anyone of them giving their all'', he thought, although Michael showed his movement technique, knowing that his master is the renowned "Lightning Assassin", there is no way that was the only card up his sleeve.

    He also couldn''t help but steal a gaze at Calvin and Aleah, although Aleah treated Calvin as her subordinate, she never called him "herbivore", so considering his master is that strange old monstrous grandfather, he was also hiding something.

    Anyway, for the time being Daimon put the subject at the back of his mind and focused his attention on the tform.

    Inside the fire dome Jester kept shooting fire balls and other kinds of attacks towards Reiner, just to swear as he dodged or parried every one of them, ultimately, he decided to suffocate Reiner.

    Using what was left of his mana, he raised fire walls to surround Reiner and increased the heat as much as he could, to the point that even he started to sweat due to the high temperature.

    "Muscle heads are always hard to deal with, now stay there and be a fried dog¡­".

    The words in Jester''s mouth nearly made him choke when he saw all his fire started slowly rotating, the dome itself was being sucked in, by the strong twister that suddenly increased its force.

    Jester couldn''t do anything but watch horrified, how the dome was broken into smaller mes which were then redirected by the wind upwards, but what truly made him despair was that besides some patches of slightly burned skin, which were healing at a visible ratio, Reiner was perfectly fine.

    "H-How can it be¡­ you must be cheating; referees he has an item which protects himself against my mes!".

    Jester finally couldn''t keep it together, he purposedly created the walls of fire far from him, so that the oxygen near Reiner would be consumed before, the mes should have heated up the air to the point that breathing would be a torture for his lungs and yet, he looked so calm as the twister on the left side of his body kept liberating his mes upwards.

    "Cheating huh¡­ I guess for a loser like you it might look like that", said Reiner as he craned his neck.<sub> </sub>

    "I was well aware that fire was my weakness, that''s why I trained a whole year so that I would be able to endure higher temperatures to the point that I burned my skin at least a couple of hundreds of times, the second weakness was that fire mages would always try to suffocate a wind affinity knight, since the amount of wind we can manipte isn''t as big as a wind mage".

    "So, I just needed to increase the amount of time I could hold my breath, I fainted a lot of times at the beginning, but I managed to train myself to not breath for about five minutes¡­ fighting you is just a formality, I surpassed you a long time ago".

    After saying that Reiner''s image shed, before Jester could react, all the wind gathered in the tip of Reiner''s index and middle finger, before he liberated everything in one go as soon as his fingers made contact with Jester.

    "Twister Breaker!".

    Jester''s eyes rolled back; blood spewed out of his mouth as his body rolled while being dragged away by a huge horizontal twister.

    A loud whistling sound and an explosion echoed through the ce as Jester was sent flying out of the tform, the referees prevented him from turning into minced meat against the wall of the arena, but even then, due to the momentum his body made a loud sound of impact against the mana of the referees.

    Reiner stood there on the tform while heavily breathing, the nails of his index and middle fingers were a bloody disaster, he turned them into ws in thest second but they still exploded due to the pressure of the wind.

    The referees inspected Jester''s condition, there were cuts all over his body but no one was lethal, there was blooding from his mouth and ears, probably due to the pressure his eardrums exploded which made him faint.

    Although he looked miserable and was going to need a lot of medical attention, there was no threat to his life nor permanent damage, so the referees jumped into the tform and gave their verdict.

    "The winner, Reiner Argent!".

    As expected, the crowd went crazy, one of the members of the top ten was reced, also Reine''s story about how he overcame the natural weakness of a wind knight, was quite inspiring too.

    At the seats for honored guests, some of the half emperors were casually chatting about the previous match, even the field marshal said a few words ofpliment, the only one who didn''t seem to be in the mood to exchange courtesy words was none other than Arthur.

    "Pretty impressive, what a shame the Argent below the Lord realms have it tough at the moment of advancing, or that kid might have been a decent opponent for Samuel".

    Listening to Arthur''s condescending tone, Aura frowned but ultimately a small smirk appeared in the corner of her mouth as she replied.

    "Words are cheap, if you have that much confidence into that nephew of yours, how about we make a bet?".

    Arthur felt the gazes of all the other half emperors focusing on him and he gritted his teeth, to be honest even he wasn''t confident that his son and nephew would win, but how could he retract now, so while imagining Erin''s disdainfully smiling at him for falling into an obvious trap he nodded.

    "Fine, how about one million mana crystals?".

    Aura shrugged as sheid back on her seat again.

    "Forget it, if the Jolbaris have so low funds to the point that they can''t even make a decent bet, then¡­.".

    "Count me in for the bet Argent matriarch, one million mana crystals for the Jolbaris youths", Lars suddenly stepped in for Arthur, but to his surprise Aura shook her head.

    "Two million mana crystals aren''t worth enough, it''s my two disciples the ones fighting after all".

    Lars turned to see his friend Maxim and Lydia trying to get them to join the bet, Lydiapletely ignored them, she already paid for a spot so she didn''t want to get involved in Lars schemes.

    Maxim on the other hand inwardly sighed as he raised the bet.

    "I will participate too, is three million mana crystals still not enough for you, Argent matriarch?".

    Aura yawned, for a half emperor one million mana crystals is nothing, those three were simply trying to bet low in case they lost, but she was decided to make them bleed.

    "Make it fifty middle ranked mana crystals and we have a deal, otherwise you better recognize here and now that you are afraid of my disciple beating your son to a pulp".

    Arthur felt his heart stopping for a split of a second, although middle ranked mana crystals are still within what can be bought in the market with some connections, each one of them has an approximate price of one hundred thousand low mana crystals and there is an extra fee if you want to buy them with low ranked mana crystals, in other words Aura wanted them to practically double their bet, but at this point he didn''t care anymore.

    "Fine, but I will add my own condition, they have to be new", said Arthur as he inwardly snorted.

    Aura nodded, while she stole a gaze at the skybox of the elite ss, her eyes glowed for a second which allowed her to see through Erin''s dak curtain, just to see her smiling at her.

    ''This tournament is quite lucrative'', she thought.

 Chapter 210 The Importance Of Battle Techniques (Part 2)

    Oblivious to the fact that his fight motivated Half Emperors to bet, Reiner jumped out of the tform and went to the resting area not without nodding at Arianna before his figure disappeared into the gate.

    Jester on the other hand was in a so miserable state that he was brought by two assistants in a stretcher towards the infirmary, normally Kirik, in other words the n head of the fire crane n of the Risha family would have taken him to the family grounds so that he would personal treatment.

    But since he and Horace were still busy dealing with something, the representatives of the Risha family were Veronica, Anya and Irina and none of them cared about Jester.

    The referees repeated the selection process for the next match and after a second they got the participants.

    "Rank number 12, Felix Argent".

    "Rank number 15, Erick Gillian".

    The screens changed to mirror the newly chosen participants, Felix is simr to Reiner in the aspect that he also has wolf like ears and tail, his body isn''t slim nor too muscr, making it hard for others to realize if he is a mage or a knight.

    Erick on the other hand was a tall slim man, his hair is a mix between dark brown and some blue strands, and his eyes were light blue, his skin was also a bit pale making him look slightly haggard.

    While most of the people in the stands thought Erick could trip due to a small rock or maybe get flown away by a casual current of air, Diana stole a gaze at the skybox of the elite ss as she nodded.

    ''I hope that girl realizes her future will be bright in the academy of the army after this fight''.

    Back at the tform, the referees returned to their positions giving the greenlight for the match to start.

    Although Felix thought this fight was on the bag, he didn''t underestimate Erick, Jester was beaten to a pulp by someone who technically was weak against his affinity after all.

    ''You stole the stage for you as always Reiner, but I won''t be ending second to you this time'', he thought as he let out his battle aura flooding half of the tform with a dark brown light.

    Erick didn''t show any reaction, but there was water condensing on the floor near him, a sign that he is a water affinity mage.

    Even if Felix was trying his best to not look overconfident, he couldn''t help but let a glint of disdain sh on his eyes.

    "Water¡­ what are you going to do heal me to death?", he said as he snorted.

    "Rock w!", Felix stomped and arge spike of earth raised from the ground, aiming at Erick''s leg.

    Erick calmly stood there with a bored expression, only when the spike of earth was a few centimeters away from him, a single word came from his mouth.

    "Jet", the water under Erick''s feet seemed to havee to life, propelling him as if he was sliding on the floor.

    His image dashed sidewards perfectly avoiding not only the spike of earth that wasing at him frontwards, but a second one that that sneakily raised from his back making the previous a pincer attack.

    Felix frowned, water mages are known for being "slippery", unlike wind mages which are fast, water mages are hard to hit, but in exchange their offensive is rather weak until they reach the Lord realms, but at that point other affinity mages have developed better offensives than them.

    In other words, a water mage is a good support including healing spells, but they aren''t apt forbat, or at least that''s what Felix believed until this day.

    "If two aren''t enough to get you then how about twenty", mumbled Felix, the ground trembled as a bunch of earth spikes raised form the ground surrounding Erick.

    Erick''s eyes finally showed some reaction, but it wasn''t the panic that Felix expected but¡­ disdain.

    The ring in Erick''s index finger glowed and a pair of gloves with small holes on the tip of his fingers covered his hands.

    He then tapped the ground with his right foot and started rotating, the water of the floor sshed all over the ce, until a wave was shot form his still rotating body.

    "Rupture", as Erick''s voice echoed through the arena, the earth spikes were cleanly cut in many little dices.

    Felix used his arms to protect his body, while also raising a wall of earth in front of him.

    "Boom!", the wall crumbled apart and the impact made Felix step back a few meters, leaving behind a trace of broken rocks, because he attached himself to the ground but was still forced backwards.

    While Felix looked at his arms which earth armor had deep scar from which water was oozing, Erick stopped rotating, his face was a paler than before and a momentter he covered his mouth with his hand barely resisting the urge to puke.<sub> </sub>

    "No way!", the reaction from the people in the stands was all simr, originally, they believed Felix''s skin tone was due to abination ofck of exercise and a weak body, two things prettymon in water mages, but it turned out to not be the case.

    At the skybox of the elite ss, Aleah showed a slight bit of interest in the current fight.

    "What a weird technique, pressured water can make holes in steel, but it requires a really high pressure for it to work, to be able to imitate it while being a mage and not a knight, although he used some tricks it''s not too shabby".

    Calvin nearly choked at Aleah''s words, a mage with the element known for being the worst in offensive literally obliterated the defense of a knight which used the best element for defense, and her verdict was "not too shabby".

    "Not everyone can be a monster like you or Daimon, you know?", he mumbled.

    Speaking of Daimon, he now understood why Diana was so keen in bringing Aleah to the academy of the army, if they were able to create such a technique for a water mage, what could they do with someone with such a high battle prowess as Aleah.

    As for the "trick" mentioned by Aleah, it was the water on the floor, it didn''t only work as a medium for that weird movement spell which consisted in sliding on the floor, but it helped to reduce the friction at the moment of rotating while also being used as a support so that his body didn''t randomly wander on the tform.

    ''Even those gloves had really small holes from which the water was shot at an incredibly high pressure, forming shes¡­ truly creative'', thought Daimon as he injected mana into his eyes.

    ¡­

    Back at the tform Felix was dumbfounded, a water mage made he, a knight with earth affinity step back and not only that, his arms were a bit numb due to the impact.

    "Fuck!", he shouted, the earth armor which was d around his arms restored and also ques of earth covered his neck, chest, legs and face as she jumped towards Erick.

    ''If a long-range battle isn''t fitting, then how about a closebat, I would like to see a mage beating a knight up close'', he thought as hended a few meters away from Erick.

    "Let''s get rid of that annoying movement spell of yours", said Felix as he waved his hand and little bits of earth mixed with the water on the floor turning it into mood.

    But as Felix was about to pounce onto Erick like a wolf which bites its prey, he suddenly lost the bnce on his right leg and his body inclined towards it.

    Feeling that if he didn''t move, he would lose, Felix jumped backwards with his left legnding a few from his original position.

    He then looked at the armor on his knee which now had a small almost unnoticeable hole from which blood wasing, he gazed at Erick just to see him pointing his ten fingers at him.

    "Water bullets".

    While others only saw Erick pointing at Felix and thetter jumped with an angry expression, Daimon could see the ten drops of water which were shot at a fast enough speed so that they couldn''t be seen without using mana sense.

    Felix managed to dodge some of the bullets which impacted against the ground carving holes of about five centimeters deep.

    Felix looked at his arms, legs and stomach on which there were now a few holes of about one centimeter of diameter and his face lost his color.

    Erick slowly walked towards Felix as he spoke.

    "What the hell is that spell, how can a water mage use such a destructive attack... that is what you are thinking right?".

    Erick saw that Felix wasn''t showing any reaction and he shook his head, he had lost his will to fight, so the match was over, but since he now revealed his true fighting abilities a bit of propaganda was in order.

    He pointed at Felix with his index and thumb which were imitating a pistol, but unlike before he did the process slow for everyone to see.

    Arge amount of water condensed on the tip of his finger before itpressed to the maximum possible, creating a little drop of water which then rotated before it was shot at Felix''s chest.

    "Booom!", the drop of water shed against the earth armor making it explode at the contact,unching Felix''s body backwards.

    By the time hended outside of the tform he had already lost consciousness, the referees approached him and inspected his wounds.

    Since they were also part from the army, they knew this was going to be the result, although they couldn''t show any favoritism, they couldn''t help but give thumbs up at Erick.

    "The winner is Erick Gillian".

 Chapter 211 The Importance Of Battle Techniques (Part 3)

    Erick epted the goodwill of the referees, before he slowly got down of the tform, although the way he won was quite cool all the hype of the spectators, disappeared as they saw him walk swaying as if he was drunk.

    The other guy without any visible beast characteristics which was left to participate, sighed and stood up to help Erick get to the entrance of the resting area.

    The referees facepalmed feeling ashamed but they feigned ignorance about it, this time there was no need for them to go through the selection process as there were only two participants left, besides the ones that will be participating in the team battleter of course.

    "Rank number 14, Paul Ileas".

    "Rank number 16, Kyle Revy".

    While the spectators in the stands and the people at the skyboxes were confused about why the referees simply stated who will fight without the selecting process, no one said anything, if the Half Emperors didn''tin how would they dare to raise their voices against it.

    That being said Aura told ste to exin why it was done like that, but only when it was the time for the team battle.

    The screens changed their focus to the new participants, Kyle Revy was from the sun alluring side of the Revy family, but unlike Liz whose lineage was probably the most concentrated, Kyle''s hair was dark brown, he was tall reaching about 1.75 meters but his body constitution was slim, like all the members of the Revy family which were in the star realms, he had two foxlike tails.

    The other guy reflected on the screens was about the same height, Paul had shoulder length green hair, and sses, he was wearing a white robe with some metal elements here and there.

    Once both of them were on the tform, the referees gave then greenlight and the match started.

    Not even a secondter the area ten meters around Paul glowed in a red light before a pir of mes emerged from the ground engulfing him.

    Silence fell into the arena for a moment before some of the students shouted.

    "That''s cheating!".

    "He used a fire spell which was stored in a scroll!".

    And otherments like those kept being shouted, all that while Kyle extended the duration of the fire for about ten seconds, before he stopped, a hairless slightly burned body fell to the ground and didn''t move, making others believe Paul was done for and that this was the shortest and probably the most disappointing match so far.

    Kyle heard the people shouting and he snorted.

    "Bumpkins who haven''t heard of the spirit fire of my Revy family!".

    Kyle''s voice was loud enough to be heard by all the people in the stands, and as expected they didn''t take the answer in a good way.

    But as they were about to answer him, one of the second-year students exined to the first years, with a slightly disgusted expression on his face.

    "That wasn''t a scroll¡­ some of the members of the Revy family have what they call "spirit magic", not too much is known about it because only those of the main branches can use it, but it is said to allow them to prepare spells which will activate with conditions".

    "B-But that is still cheating isn''t it¡­ preparing a spell before the match starts is against the rules, right?", asked one of the many first years who thought Kyle broke the rules, just for Kyle to directly answer him.

    "I knew there was people from low ranked families who attended the Wild w academy, but to think they can''t even read properly, the rules only state we can''t cast a spell before the referees give the greenlight, but while about 90% of the spell was prepared beforehand I only "casted" it after the match started".

    Seeing that the referees weren''t interfering Kyle smiled with sufficiency.

    "See if I was lying then the referees would have kicked me out of the tform but they aren''t doing anything".

    While Kyle''s attitude left a pretty bad taste in the mouth, and his actions might seem despicable, he didn''t break any rules, so the referees didn''t say anything.

    From the skybox of the elite ss, a glint of disdain shed in Liz''s eyes as she heard Kyle saying that was spirit fire.

    Since Daimon''s ssmates seemed to be curious about it, she took the chance to show a bit of her skills to them.

    A wisp of mes appeared in front of her which changed its shape to be simr to a bird, without she saying anything, the bird flew around the room before returning to her and exploding into mes which formed a few words in the air.

    "17 people".

    "That is spirit fire, exined in a few words is fire which can follow a certain number of orders to fulfill a purpose, the previous is the most basic fire spirit spell, used for recognition".

    "That Kyle guy''s fire isn''t spirit fire, only the punishment elder, his son andstly me can use spirit fire in the whole sun alluring side of the Revy family, what he used is a simple imitation called "trap magic", while they can prepare the spell beforehand like us, they have to set a condition and only then their spells would activate, also their range is limited and they have to be close to their target for it to work".<sub> </sub>

    While Liz didn''t exin what her spirit fire was capable off, she did speak about the limitations of Kyle''s magic.

    Daimon who didn''t take off his eyes of the tform interrupted them.

    "The match isn''t over yet, but it will be soon, look at that", he said as he pointed at the tform.

    Kyle''s smile froze, he felt the ground below his feet and his pupils contracted as he tried to jump away, unfortunately he was a second slower than what he should, and spikes of earth pierced the soles of his feet and came out the other side, sttering blood and pieces of flesh on the ground.

    "Aghhh¡­ illusion mage bastard!", Kyle rolled on the ground trying to make distance from where he was standing, mes raised all over the ce as he tried to hit Paul thinking he was standing somewhere on the tform.

    A couple of secondster the mes extinguished as all the traps he prepared beforehand were triggered.

    Kyle gritted his teeth and used his mes to cauterize the wounds on his feet, before he stood up to look for Paul''s body which should be charred by now.

    ''I won''t let you off so easily, you dared to pull a trick on me, I will break you fucking legs and arms before kicking you out of the tform!", he swore in his heart.

    But after a couple of seconds, he frowned not finding any trace of Paul, with the exception of some dust remaining from the robes he was wearing.

    "W-Wait, earth spikes and burned clothes, don''t tell me!", he shouted realizing where was Paul, but it was already toote.

    The ground behind Kyle waved as a Paul who was only wearing boxers and his sses, when Paul tried to turn around, he suddenly vomited blood as fist made out of earth hit him on the chest, sending him flying a couple of meters away from where he was standing.

    Paul then stomped and the ground below him cracked, a few sparks floated as specs of mana came out of it.

    "You know, for someone who thinks so high of himself, you surely are a letdown, yours isn''t spirit magic but trap magic, and unfortunately for you¡­ my eyes suffer from hyper sensibility to mana", said Paul as he took out his sses, showing his eyes which seemed to be glowing in a dim blue light.

    Kyle still couldn''t ept he lost to miserably, not only that he was tricked by something as basic as a decoy made out of earth wearing a robe, while Paul dived into the ground and lead him by the nose to use all the traps he prepared.

    Paul cleaned his sses with the corner of his boxers before he slowly walked towards Kyle.

    "I forfeit¡­ ughh!",

    Kyle tried to give up but he couldn''t finish his sentence before the ground moved andpressed his body making his words die in his throat.

    "Shhh, my sensibility might only allow me to detect sources of mana, but my training with the army allows me to feel bloodlust, and your face was quite scary when I pierced your feet, it seems you didn''t even consider the possibility of getting harmed in this match¡­ you aren''t a strategist, you are just an idiot who thinks he is smart while others are fools".

    Without allowing Kyle to answer, Paul kicked him out of the tform, and the referees didn''t stop him from falling to the ground, the screens also focused in his now miserable state.

    Only after a couple of seconds, the referees approached him, which was clearly a small revenge for having looked down on them earlier.

    After confirming he wouldn''t die, the referees gave their verdict.

    "The winner, Paul Ileas".

    The crowd went crazy, and so did the Half Emperors, some of them were especially happy for thest results.

    "Well, Argent matriarch, it seems the young generation of both yours and the Revy family are a bit disappointing", said Arthur as he smirked.

    Unfortunately for him, Aura simply ignored his petty tries to insult their families, but the field marshal did say something.

    "Big words for someone who only has one member of his family in the to fifteen of both first- and second-year''s elite sses".

    The other Half Emperors nearly fell from their seats.

    ''That Parzival has answered to a provocation!", they all yelled in their hearts.

    The man who is known to be always taciturn and strict, actually spoke on behalf the Revy and Argent families, making Arthur grit his teeth.

 Chapter 212 Team Battle (Part 1)

    Lars heard Parzival stepping in for the Revy and Argent families and he frowned.

    "I though the field marshal was supposed to not show favoritism to any faction?", he said trying to test the waters.

    The field marshal red at Lars for a second before he focused his attention back on the tform, not without saying.

    "If you wish to brag in my presence made sure you have the capital to".

    Leaving aside that little exchange between the Half Emperors, the screens mirrored Ste again, surprising the spectators one more time.

    "As you already noticed the referees didn''t follow the process to randomly select two participants in the previous match, the reason is because we''ll have a special event today, a tag battle!".

    "This match will be centered in deciding who will be the captain for the second year''s exploration team, as well as the first rank position for the rest of the year".

    As one would expect, let alone the students in the stands, even some of the low ranked teachers, the Arch ranks and other staff of the academy were surprised by Ste''s deration.

    The academy has been following the system of challenges for so much time, that they couldn''t imagine why would they change it so suddenly, but since it didn''t affect them who held the first rank position until the inter-academic, no one said anything, Half Emperors bever do things for nothing so they must have their own reasons.

    Ste then pointed at the arena''s left side where three people was getting up the tform.

    "The first team is leaded by the current first rank, Samuel Jolbaris, the ninth ranked Caleb Allier and the tenth ranked Harald Faresh".

    Half of the screen mirrored the three mentioned before, Samuel was practically the definition of the main branch of the Jolbaris family, orange hair and tigerlike ears and tail, he was wearing light metal armor over and from the very beginning he had his weapon in his hand, a long spear.

    Caleb Allier had a certain air of pride around him today, he sometimes gazed at the bench and seeing Cnt still wearing some bandages on the parts of his body were Gina''s ice trident pierced, he couldn''t help but inwardly smile, also he was wearing an attire simr to Cnt and leather armor, as for his weapon of choice he was holding a saber on his left arm.

    The third participant, Harald Faresh is the only one that has yet to fight so far, as a member of the Faresh family he had a bull''s head and a tall bulky constitution, he was wearing heavy metal armor an had a double handed war ax on his back.

    Once they were on the tform, the other half of the screens mirrored the members of the other team as Ste continued with the presentation.

    "Leading the other team, the second ranked Arianna Argent, the third ranked Lana Ramir and the recently ascended fourth ranked Gina Leeris".

    Although Ste did her best to not let her happy mood show in her face, a small smile still flourished in her face as she mentioned the words "recently ascended" followed by her little sister''s name.

    Arianna was the first to got up the tform, she was using light metal armor over a blouse and a skirt, her weapon was another halberd but unlike the one she used yesterday, this one had more material while still being of the same quality as the other weapons provided by the academy for the tournament, it was done like that probably to resist more than one impact.

    Lana followed not to long after, besides her casual clothes she wore a chest te and a leather skirt adorned with little metal decorations, something that caught Daimon''s attention was that her hair had a different color, unlike the previous dark brown color, today it had a faint light green tone which deepened towards the ends, the same applied for the small areas where scales covered her skin on her arms, neck and tail.

    Last but not least Gina, she was basically a younger version of ste, she had grayish messy hair and feline like ears and tail of the same color with some ck spots giving her away as a member of the snow leopard race, she was wearing a leather armor to not limit the movements of her body, today she was properly wielding a weapon, a metal trident to be exact.

    Ste then proceeded to mention the rules that were added for the team battle.

    "Besides knocking out the opponents, leaving them out ofbat or forcing them to forfeit, if the leader of the respective team gets eliminated, the whole team will immediately lose, also to not drag things too much, the battle will be limited to twenty minutes".

    Seeing Ste nodding at them, the referee gave the greenlight thus marking the start of the second event of the day.

    ? Not even a secondter arge amount of steam suddenly appeared on the tform, the spectators looked at the origin of it and saw a wave of mes shing with a wall of ice in the exact middle of the tform.

    Gina red at Harald as her trident was shoved on the ground, while at the same time the head of Harald''s war ax was also touching the tform, ice and mes were leaking from both of the weapons.

    Both of them had the elements which centered onrge area of effect spells, and both of them tried to give their respective teams a certain advantage which ended in a sh between fire and ice.<sub> </sub>

    Lanaughed before jumping towards Samuel, an emerald like crystal covered her right hand as she punched frontwards.

    "Booom!", her little fist shed against an invisible wall, making pieces of rocks and silk fly all over the ce, but at the same time giving Samuel a chance to dodge her attack without any problem.

    Lana raised an eyebrow at Caleb, she clenched her fist and the now two meter tall and four-meter-wide earth wallpletely crumbled apart releasing her fist.

    The next thing the people on the stands saw were a yellow and blue source of light colliding a few meters separated from the other four participants.

    Blue and yellow lightnings crackled as Arianna''s halberd shed against Samuel''s spear, both were lightning users and used weapons with simr designs, if there were to be a difference it was that Arianna is a mage while Samuel is a knight and yet there wasn''t an obvious winner in their exchange.

    "Mm?", both Arianna and Samuel looked upwards just to see a fire ball which was aimed at Arianna being cancelled by an ice spear which was aimed at Samuel, then as if it was discussed beforehand, Caleb''s saber covered earth which was invisible a split of a second ago, was blocked by Lana who appeared in a blink, using her arm which was covered by a thinyer of a light green crystal.

    Sparks flew all over the ce due to the impact and the thermic wave made both of the parties distance from each other to regroup with their respective team members, so far both parties had a decent performance, their long ranged attackers aimed for the captain of the other team blocking each other in the process.

    Lana wasn''t the type to use sneak attacks but she was fast enough and her body was tough enough to easily intercept Caleb, as for the captains, their only duty was to fight each other to decide a winner while leaving the support to their respective teammates.

    "Humph".

    "Humph".

    Both captains snorted and this time they aimed at the long-range opponents, Gina left the metal trident on the ground near her and instead formed one with her strange red colored ice.

    Samuel aimed the tip of his spear at her chest but Gina skillfully dodged and trapped the spear with the prongs of her ice trident.

    ''You fell for it bitch'', thought Samuel, ice is made of water and water is a good conductor of electricity, so he simply used his battle aura which was lightning oriented to cover his spear.

    Just as he was imagining Gina''s body being assaulted by strong currents of electricity, he felt something obstructing his battle aura.

    "No way!", he shouted seeing that when his lightning touched the ice trident, it was stopped cold.

    "You Jolbaris bastards think too high of yourselves", mumbled Gina as she applied some strength on her arms pining Samuel''s spear on ground.

    She then immediately formed another trident ant swing it towards Samuel who managed to dodge it, or that''s what he believed, until he felt a slight cold sensation on his left cheek.

    Samuel touched his left cheek and saw a few drops of blood staining his fingers which made him give Gina a hateful gaze, unfortunately he had no time to get back at her for scratching his face because a loud sound followed by the tform trembling drew his attention.

    "Haaaa!", at the back area of the tform, Arianna''s halberd shed against Harald''s body which had grown to be about three meters tall, her lightning dispelled the mes which were covering him and the impact made him fall on his ass.

    He looked at the armor on his arm which he used to block Arianna''s attack and his pupils contracted, the whole thing was now dent inwards, although he didn''t suffer any cut, his arm was a bit numb.

    "God damn it, Caleb do your fucking job!", shouted Samuel, while Harald was basically a living tank with a high defense thanks to his sturdy body and a high offense thanks to his fire magic.

    Lightning mages were his perfect counter, he wasn''t fast enough to react on time to Arianna''s attacks and lightning has the best piercing property of all the elements too, so his defenses were useless against her.

    "Shut up, do I look like I''m fooling around!", answered Caleb as he dodged Lana''s tail whip, his eyes had a terrified expression as he saw a deep scar appearing on the tform where he was previously standing.

    While his illusions tricked her from afar, there was a two meter "killing zone" around her, where she somehow could feel his attacks, and she simply obliterated them with her bare hands.

 Chapter 213 Team Battle (Part 2)

    At the skybox of the elite ss, Aleah curiously looked at the current fight, although she found a bit interesting the techniques used by the guys of the army, it wasn''t to the point that she felt tempted to ept Diana''s invitation.

    "Daimon, do you know that girl from the Argent family?", she asked.

    "She is the daughter of the Argent''s supreme elder and also the second disciple my master took in, making her my junior sister".

    A faint glow shed through Aleah''s eyes as she saw Arianna overpowering Harald even after thetter used the body magnification anility of the Faresh family.

    "She must have recently advanced, not bad, in a rough estimation I think she can fight head on with a seventh star".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow noticing Aleah had the same kind of expression as when she fought with him, but that was a good thing, if she had a decent impression of Arianna, it wouldn''t be hard for them to team up at the exploration.

    "Those two aren''t bad too, even I would bleed if I were to take the attacks from that earth smander girl without any preparation, and the agility and coordination of the snow leopard girl is no joke, although they seem to understand each other, they don''t seem to have been training to fight as a whole".

    Calvin softly snorted listening to Aleah speaking of teamwork.

    "The world must be ending for you to criticize other people''s teamwork¡­ when you used to boss me around to be the bait whenever we hunted magic beasts".

    "It''s not my fault that you always lost against me in arm wrestling".

    Michael nearly lost it, imagining Calvin running away from some wild beast, leaving aside that little interaction, Daimon agreed with Aleah, although Arianna, Gina and Lana currently had the upper hand, it wasn''t due to their teamwork, but due to their personal strength.

    ¡­

    Back at the tform Samuel cleaned the blood on his cheek before he jumped backwards, making Arianna stop her assault against Harald, Caleb also suddenly disappeared before appearing next to Samuel regrouping.

    "So, what now Mr. leader, our "team" has suffered unlike theirs, so even if we drag things to meet the twenty minutes limit, we will still lose based in our participation so far", said Caleb with an usatory voice.

    Samuel red at Caleb.

    ''Acting so high and mighty when you were barely able to keep up with Lana which is weak against your illusions", he thought, but right now wasn''t the time to fight with his allies, so he swallowed hisins and instead decided to start actively leading them since in a one-on-one fight, they weren''t doing it exactly good.

    "Caleb, can you buy is thirty¡­ no fifty seconds against those three, Harald and I have arge area spell which should knock Arianna out of the tform".

    Caleb frowned, although he has done the preparations to use silk world since they got up the tform, Arianna and the others would at most be tricked for thirty seconds, for the rest he would need to take the risk to fight them head on.

    On the other hand, if Samuel''s n seeded it would be thanks to him, so he would be taking Lana''s third rank for himself.

    "Fifty seconds starting now", said Caleb, the invisible silk which he hid on the borders of the tform formed a cocoon and now what Arianna, Gina and Lana saw was under his control.

    Still unlike what happened with Wade, he knew that if he simply attacked them with illusions, they would find out in a matter of seconds, so he activated the second legacy spell that those in his same position of the younger brother have developed.

    Earth covered his hands forming big gauntlets with ws, which were then d in silk, another thread of silk held onto his saber acting as a third arm, the process repeated but this time the silk thread coiled forming the tip of a spear, this was the counterpart of Cnt''s silk knight spell.

    "Silk demon", he mumbled before rushing towards Gina.

    In Gina''s eyes instead of Caleb, she saw Harald jumping towards her, and she rolled her trident on her hands preparing to redirect his war ax instead of taking the attack head on.

    "Mm?", when Harald''s ax was a few meters away from her, her instincts yelled making her do a back-flip avoiding Caleb''s saber which was aiming for his shoulder by the skin of her teeth.

    A strand of Gina''s grayish hair fell to the ground, she frowned before turning around to see Arianna and Lana, but she couldn''t find them, which made her inwardly curse.

    ''So, we are in that cocoon of yesterday and I can''t attack in all directions with my ice or I could hit Arianna, damn it''.

    Even as she was thinking what to do, her body moved sidewards dodging what seemed to be Samuel''s spear which was Caleb''s saber disguised.

    While Gina was busy dodging and blocking the saber, Arianna and Lana were both fighting against Samuel.

    Arianna felt something was off, since Samuel''s lightning wasn''t as strong as before, her pupils contracted as she jumped into the air, dodging earth spikes which raised from the ground.

    "So, it was all a trap, be careful you two!", shouted Arianna, she felt a sensation of resistance hit her back before the scenery in her eyes changed.<sub> </sub>

    Arianna looked downwards and saw a cocoon made out ofvender colored silk, inside which Gina and Lana were fighting against Caleb and some silk threads which were imitating Samuel and Harald fighting styles.

    But judging by his sweating expression, his mana reserves were about to run out, making the three of them see illusions, maintaining the silk demon state and the silk world while he was manipting the silk threads, consumed a lot of mana after all.

    From the spectator''s point of view, half of the tform was again covered by thatvender-colored cocoon, then nearly a minuteter the roof of the cocoon exploded and Arianna came out of it.

    But that wasn''t important right now, the other half of the tform was flooding with lightning and fire, and just as Ariana came out of the silk cocoon, both Samuel and Harald finished casting the best wide area martial art and spell they had.

    "Lightning ws!".

    "Fire Meteor".

    Arianna saw tworge waves of lightning followed by huge fire balling at her, things slowed down and her pupils expanded as she activated both Bio Booster and Mind Booster at the same time.

    Her body was suddenly covered in lightning, her body rolled in the air using the weight of the halberd to get away from the attacks, but even then, she realized it wasn''t enough topletely dodge the uing explosion.

    "Booom!!!", a loud explosion filled the arena, followed by mes and lightning spreading around the air above the tform, but as everyone thought Arianna was done for, they also saw little shards of red ice also flying all over the ce.

    When the explosion dispelled Samuel nearly lost it as he the melted and broken rests of what used to be a wall of red ice, and Lana which''s clothes were ragged, she was crossing her arms in front of her blocking the explosion in front of Arianna, there were some currents of electricity running wild in her arms but there was a light green light blocking them.

    The silk cocoon disappeared revealing Caleb which was fainted on the tform, there were bruises all over his boy and his face waspletely swollen, he even lost some teeth and was bleeding with his eyes rolled backwards.

    "Aghhhh!", Harald which was also in awe, suddenly screamed, his knees were pierced by red ice tridents, which formed out of the water that melted after blocking Harald''s mes.

    "B-Boss", Harald tried to ask Samuel to help him, but he saw him dashing sidewards barely avoiding a slightly melted metal stick d in lightning, which was what was left of Arianna''s halberd after blocking the remaining explosion which Lana and Gina couldn''t block due to the sudden situation.

    "God damn it!", Samuel increased the output of his battle aura and distanced himself from Harald, only to see both Gina and Lana appear in front of thetter.

    "Ice age", Gina shoved her trident on the ground and ice raised form the ground turning Harald into a giant red ice cube, behind her mask her face paled a bit as she gasped for air, but she did her part.

    ? Lana nodded, her whole body shone in light green light which then condensed in her tail, she jumped in the air and rolled downwards hitting the ice cube with her tail.

    The cube crumbled even before her tail made contact with the ice, revealing a slightly froze Harald, which was then hit by Lana''s tail, his heavy armor exploded and his chest was dent inwards as his body flew out of the tform.

    "Aghhh", the referees stopped him from shing against the wall of the arena, but the force of the impact was so strong that his eyes, nose, ears and mouth had blooding out of them.

    "You!", at the ce where the Half Emperors were sitting, the Faresh ancestor suddenly let out some of his pressure looking at the state in which his youngest son was, but he was immediately suppressed by Aura and the field marshal.

    "You didn''t show any sign of being worried when your son and Arthur''s nephew both aimed at my disciple, so what is this big fuss about?", said Aura with a sharp voice.

    Besides the Faresh ancestor, Lars, Maxim and also Arthur were gritting their teeth knowing they probably lost the first round of bets.

    And they weren''t wrong, a few secondster, Arianna appeared like a ghost behind Samuel and kicked his back with the maximum strength she could gather in bio boosting state.

    Blood escaped out of Samuel''s mouth but he resisted the urge to faint and the mind-blowing pain that he was feeling in his back, unfortunately a secondter Lana punched his face smacking his boy against the ground, and for the finishing touch Gina pinned his four limbs to the tform with her tridents.

    Arianna immediately stopped her spells, her muscle fibers were tearing due to the sudden activation, but she was smiling as she kicked Samuel on the face.

    "Do you think I purposedly used myself as the bait without a n, from the very beginning "falling" in Caleb''s illusions was within my calctions".

    Samuel''s face paled as he fainted, realizing that from the very beginning he was dancing in the palm of his opponent was too much to handle in his current state.

    Arianna still kicked him out of the tform which signaled the end of the fight for the captain''s position.

    The referees inspected the wounds in Samuel and the other two and they immediately frowned, Caleb and Harald were in a worse state than any of the previous participants which lost, but they were alive and they wouldn''t suffer permanent damage.

    "The winners, Arianna Argent, Gina Leeris and Lana Ramir".

 Chapter 214 The End Of The First Half Of The Tournament

    After the winners of the match were dered silence fell on the arena for a split of a second, before the students in the stands cheered the three girls, at the beginning they seemed to not be in the same page, but apparently, they were just feigning as they perfectly blocked the best attacks of Samuel and Harald.

    And while those who supported Samuel thought that the result might have been different if his teammates were "better", those who paid attention simply countered them saying "Even in a one on one, Samuel suffered a wound while Gina didn''t".

    Due to their wounds, Samuel, Harald and Caleb were taken to the infirmary, Arthur, the Faresh ancestor and the supreme elder Trevor Allier immediately left the stadium.

    Of course, before leaving and with a poison filled expression, Arthur handed Aura the fifty new middle ranked mana crystals of the bet, while Lars and Maxim also left while remembering the words of the ck-haired youth of which theyughed before.

    "There won''t be a spot in the second year''s exploration team for the Furious Whirlwind and the Earth Pce academies".

    Lars stole a gaze at the skybox of the elite ss as he flew out of the stadium and for a split of a second, he swore he saw Daimon smirking at him, but after a close inspection he inwardly shook his head.

    ''How can a mere one star ranked mage be able to follow my flying speed, I better make sure that Arthur''s son has what it takes to win'', he thought as hew became a sh of green light surrounded by gusts of wind and shot towards the academic city.

    At the skybox of the elite ss, Daimon chuckled, Arianna and the others won, so now everything was settled.

    ''I wonder what would that guy''s expression is going to be tomorrow", he thought.

    Erin saw Daimon ring at Lars and she giggled while wrapping her tail around him, while using dark curtain of course.

    Leaving aside Daimon and Erin''s flirting game, back at the tform, Arianna Ginna and Lana went to the resting area and the screens changed their focus to Ste.

    "Thest event for the first half of the tournament will be starting now, those who are apt to fight among yesterday and today''s participants will be allowed to challenge each other, additionally the students ranked seventeen to twenty-five will have a chance to challenge those at most ten ranks above them".

    "The rules are the same, but the matches will have a time limit of ten minutes, the winner will exchange rank with the loser, the top three in other words Arianna Argent, Lana Ramir and Gina Leeris are exempted from the revenge match".

    Ste''s words caused an uproar, Samuel was degraded from the first rank to the fourth rank!

    The guards from the army had to let out a bit of their mana pressures, to make the students calm down after that shocking new, the team fight practically doomed him for the rest of the year as the top three, top five, top ten andstly top fifteen receive benefits from the academy in different degrees.

    That''s why there were some among the spectators of the Jolbaris family which were outraged by the result, but under the pressure of the guards they didn''t dare to create any troubles.

    The gates of the resting area opened and another fourteen second year students came out of them, among them, there was a group of four whose expressions were bitter, and considering that there was one member of both the Revy and Argent families among them, it was safe to assume they were part of whatever the n of Kyle Revy was.

    The only happy here was Cnt Allier, because he wasn''t expelled from the top five, or at least he was happy until he heard someone calling him out.

    "Cnt, bring your ass here".

    Cnt saw the tall tower like figure in the tform and he gritted his teeth, it was Cayden who even after losing against Ariana managed to recover enough to fight today.

    ¡­

    The revenge matches started and while the majority of spectators were interested at first, mostly because they thought Erick or Paul would aim for a higher rank, but that wasn''t the case the only noticeable thing was that the sixteenth ranked defeated Wade Risha taking his thirteenth rank.

    After giving the announcement that the new ranking list will be released tonight, the Half Emperors left followed by most of the Arch ranks, the vice principals and other staff of the academy.

    "Don''t go to sleep tote at night brats, tomorrow it will be your time to shine, I''ll see you at 9:00 PM tomorrow at the ssroom".

    After saying goodbye, Boris took Aliya with him and they left, surprisingly, Calvin and Loren, Michael and Haylee even the Risha sisters immediately excused themselves, leaving only Daimon, Aisha, Liz, ine, Erin which was hiding with dark curtain and Aleah.

    Speaking of Aleah, she suddenly looked at the gate of the skybox from which Aura was currentlying in with a tired Arianna, Lana which was happily humming and a slightly serious Gina apanied by Ste.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at Aura, although he nned to present Arianna to Aleah, the other two weren''t in the scope.<sub> </sub>

    "Don''t look at me like that, I just went to get your reckless "junior sister", but these two and vice principal Leeris tagged along", said Aura as she shrugged.

    "The following seems to be important so I guess I should be present", Erin''s melodious voice filled the room as she appeared out of thin air, while Aleah, Arianna, Gina, Ste and Lana thought Erin used space shift to appear in the room, Daimon and the girls knew she just became visible.

    "Ahem, pardon our intromission Lady Revy, principal, my little sister wanted to talk with Arianna and we ended tagging along".

    Daimon turned to see Arianna and saw her nodding at him, originally, he was going to give her the petal of the snow lotus once the tournament ended, because he still had to get the stctite milk, but apparently there was a little change in the ns.

    "I want to advance to the five-star mage realm before the exploration¡­ that''s why I epted to cooperate with Arianna", said Gina in a calm but slow voice, after looking at her up close Daimon noticed she was quite pale, to the point that she looked a bit anemic, which confirmed his previous theory about that strange red ice she used.

    Anyway, now orter it didn''t make any difference since they already got him the spots needed for Aleah, and the ones that he will be using to extort¡­ negotiate with Lars and Maxim, so Daimon took out one petal of the snow lotus which he plucked and sealed in a special case beforehand and threw it at Gina whose eyes were sparkling as she saw the content of the case.

    Lana also curiously looked at the priceless treasure Gina was holding and she extended her hand at Daimon.

    "Give me", she said with an expectant voice, but her hopes were crushed as she saw Daimon shaking his head.

    "I will get yours after the tournament ends like it was originally discussed, besides you are already a five-star mage, so if you refine the stctite milk you won''t be able to enter the exploration".

    Daimon expected Lana to show at least some signs of being angry or disappointed, but she instead simply nodded.

    "Mm, fine".

    ''What a weird girl'', thought Daimon.

    "Anyway, if you three don''t have anything to do right now, I would like to introduce the one that will be using one of the spots you got today", he said as he pointed at Aleah.

    "Aleah, you three had an interesting fight back there, so I guess we can team up".

    Gina raised an eyebrow, Aleah wasn''t bothering to hide her realm, so it was clear that she was a peak five-star knight, but that wasn''t what caught her attention, but her beast characteristics, as a part of one of the only two feline races which had a proper name, besides the werecats, she has never seen or heard of a lion like race.

    Also, she offered a handshake something which isn''tdy-like, surprisingly the first one to ept the gesture was none other than Lana, but it wasn''t a simple handshake, both Aleah and Lana applied some strength to their grips, a silverish light covered Aleah''s hand while a dim light green light covered Lana''s, they only stopped after hearing Daimon clearing his throat.

    "Ahem, it''s nice that you two seem to be in the same page, but there are sparksing from your hands you know".

    Daimon wasn''t exaggerating, whatever was the element of Lana, it was sturdy enough to be on par with Lana''s metal-oriented battle aura causing sparks and the sound of metal scratching each other, which wasn''t exactly pleasant to hear.

    Those two stopped and looked at their hands, while Lana was a bit numb due to Aleah''s physical strength, Aleah saw some shallowcerations on her palm.

    Arianna couldn''t help but turn to see Daimon.

    "Oh great, two battle psychos", she mumbled.

    Aleah chuckled as she nodded at Arianna.

    "I''m sorry, you are Daimon''s junior sister right, that boosting spell was quite something, and it''s hard to believe that a mage''s body could withstand such a high tension too".

    Thest one was Gina who was even more interested in Aleah''s race, she was well aware of Lana''s abilities and someone in the same range of age who can receive an "attack" from her head on and not bleed, should be renowned, but she couldn''t think of anyone.

    Aleah noticed Gina''s curious filled eyes and she felt amused by it, instead of taking it as an offense it was a motive of pride for her.

    "Snow leopard girl, no matter how much you think about it you won''t guess my race, because there is no one else like me".

 Chapter 215 The Risha Girls Fighting Styles (Part 1)

    Aleah''s words took Gina by surprise.

    "I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to be rude, it''s just that your aura is incredible for a five-star knight¡­ I wouldn''t be surprised to see you outssing an eight-star knight".

    "Oh?", silverish glint shed thought Aleah''s eyes, in thest match, she noticed in which areas they outstood the most, Arianna''s speed and strength were ridiculous, Lana''s attacks were practically impossible to fend off while at the same time she used those same attacks as defense, as for Gina her agility, perception and reaction time were incredible.

    "Are you three the ones that will be teaming up with me?", asked Aleah feeling excited for the uing exploration atst.

    Gina and Lana exchanged gazes before they both nodded, besides the guys from the army and Reiner, they practically offended every other member of the elite ss, so it wasn''t hard to guess that they will be targeted, and while in a fight head on they weren''t afraid of them, without someone to watch their back, who knows, they might fall into a trap.

    Arianna was the most surprised here, Lana has always been carefree, she didn''t even mind about losing her second rank a few days ago, although they couldn''t be considered friends at least they weren''t enemies, as for Gina she was always on guard, so it wasn''t easy to get close to her.

    Surprisingly, Aleah invited the other girls to the happy wanderer, while Calvin was busy right now, nothing prevented her from chatting and sharing a meal with them.

    "Daimon, do you want toe with us, we''ll also be in the same "team" inside the magic ruin, right?", said Aleah with a big bright smile.

    Daimon chuckled, it wasn''t hard for him to guess what Aleah was thinking, she literally had "I want another spar" written all over her face.

    "Next time, try to not be so obvious, I have other things to do, but I tell you what, we can all meet at Friday, once me and the others had wiped the floor with Alexander and hisckeys".

    "I need to rest too, sorry about that", Arianna also excused herself, Aura brought her with them because she activated her spells too fast, which resulted in a few muscles tearing due to the sudden increase in the tension, it was praise worthy that she could still properly walk to the resting area before swallowing one of the pills to recover.

    Still Aura wanted to inspect her body, and that''s why she would being with them.

    Aleah sighed, knowing that her "n" didn''t work out, after that the everyone parted ways, Ste apanied her little sister, Aleah and Lana who also tagged along, to the happy wanderer.

    Once they left, Aura waved her hand and they all disappeared, Arianna''s father was told beforehand so there wasn''t any problem with that.

    A momentter they all appeared inside the mansion and like yesterday Arianna was dragged by Aura to an empty room.

    The difference was that when she undressed, Aura immediately frowned, she didn''t receive any wounds in her fight and yet there were some small bruises in her thighs, due to the tension she wounded herself after using bio boosting, surprisingly her arms were perfectly fine.

    Ariannaid down on the bed and Aura palpated the bruised areas, there wasn''t any serious damage, but she will have to rest for the rest of the day.

    "You know, if you keep harming yourself, it''s going to be hard for you to find a husband in the future", said Aura in a try to lighten the slightly tense atmosphere in the room.

    And it worked, Ariannaughed until she felt her stomach hurting a bit.

    "Master, don''t make meugh so hard, my body hurts".

    Aura shook her head, she handed Arianna a bottle with a potion to mitigate the pain, the pills only helped her recover but the pain didn''t disappear after all.

    "You''ll be fine, don''t forget toe see tomorrow''s matches, dress up and I will take you home".

    Aura left the room to give Arianna some privacy, and was weed by the scene of Erin sitting on Daimon''sp while her tail was firmly wrapped around his body.

    "Come on, I just left five minutes, can''t you wait until we are alone in the mansion?", mumbled Aura, which made Erin giggle as she pointed at Aura.

    "You say that, but isn''t your tail wagging with expectation?".

    Still Erin heard the door of the room where Arianna was dressing up, opening and she simply disappeared from everyone''s field of vision using dark curtain.

    "Make sure to destroy those guys tomorrow", said Arianna as Aura took her to where her family is staying.

    As soon as they disappeared, Erin dispelled her spell and immediately jumped to action, pressing her pretty lips against Daimon''s.

    "Mom, that''s not fair you have been flirting with Daimon all the day!", said Liz as she clung onto Daimon''s right arm, a secondter she was dragged closer by Daimon and kissed which of course made ine want some attention too.

    Daimon then felt a soft pair of hands making his head move backwards, his field of vision was covered by a familiar pair of breasts.

    "Mom, you wille with me to the magic ruin, it''s only fair for me to spoil the others", said Daimon while enjoying the softness of Aisha''s breasts covering his face.

    Aisha pouted before answering.

    "Following the order, I should go first darling~".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, he gently bit Aisha''s right nipple making her smile, she then bent down a bit and kissed her son.

    A crack in the space opened and Aura came out of it, as she expected the others started without her, but she then saw Daimon waving his hand at her and her cute wolf''s tail wagged as she jumped to the couchnding on Daimon''sp, moving Erin a bit to the side.<sub> </sub>

    After some giggles and caresses, they ended on the bedroom, the mix of creaks and moans filled the room for a couple of hours.

    ¡­

    By the time they finished their lovemaking session, the sun was already setting, Daimon wasying down on the bed using Erin''s body and especially her tail as the most luxurious pillow that exists, Aisha was "generously" sharing Daimon''s front body with Aura, while Liz and ine were both hugging him from the sides.

    "Darling~"

    "Hmm~".

    Aisha and Aura were both enjoying while Daimon stroked their hair, when they were suddenly interrupted by a sigil lector''s notification.

    Aura unwillingly got up Daimon''s body and quickly read it as it was her exclusive lector only reserved for her duties as the principal of the academy.

    While she was inwardly cursing whoever interrupted her time with her lover, she couldn''t help but smile after reading the message.

    The whole campus and even the academic city was in a turmoil right now, the watchtower screens which have been repeating the best matches of both days, suddenly stopped then a list of names with images next to them appeared.

    "First rank: Arianna Argent"

    "Second rank: Lana Ramir"

    "Third rank: Gina Leeris"

    "Fourth rank: Samuel Jolbaris"

    "Fifth rank: Cnt Allier"

    "Sixth rank: Reiner Argent"

    "Seventh rank: Cayden Arkuoda"

    ¡­

    The people went crazy, the ranking changed a lot after the matches, but some of them weren''t satisfied with the result, Reiner for example was being used of taking advantage that Cayden wasn''t at his prime, but it was him the one that challenged Reiner, so they couldn''t do anything about it.

    While the academic city had a festive atmosphere, Daimon and the girls took a bath and went straight to bed, the night went on without anything happening and when morning came, Daimon slowly opened his eyes and was weed with the beautiful scenery of the girls'' sleeping faces.

    Unfortunately, today he needed to get up early, so after kissing the sleeping beauties they dressed up and left to the 1-S ssroom, of course Aura separated from them as she had other things to do.

    It didn''t take them too long to arrive at the ssroom where Calvin and the others were already waiting for him, in fact even Boris and Aliya were there.

    ''I guess I''m thest one to arrive'', thought Daimon, but he remembered the girls pining him on the bed for some little games, of course he arrivedst even after waking up quite early.

    The girls felt Daimon''s gaze on them but they feigned ignorance, Boris then took them to the stadium, but this time they entered through the back door which was reserved for the participants and led to the resting area.

    "Brats, today''s matches will be quite fierce, after the rankings of the second year were revealed, everyone went crazy, so you can forget the possibility of you enemies admitting defeat¡­ unless they can''t move anymore or something like that".

    "That was the idea to begin with", said Daimon as he stretched his arms.

    "The rules will be revealed by vice principal Steter, you have to stay here until the tournament starts, and I have to supervise you, it''s a rule against the usage of pills or potions".

    Luckily everyone had their breakfast beforeing, because they couldn''t drink or eat anything, besides some snacks and water which were proportioned by the academy.

    Unlike what Daimon and the others thought, sounds starteding from the arena way earlier, and not even two hourster after their arrival, they were told toe out.

    The first thing they noticed was that the ce was already crowded, apparently the schedule of the tournament changed to take ce early this time, not only that, the first match was already decided.

    "Rank number 7, Leslie Risha".

    "Rank number 8, Daniel Jolbaris".

    Leslie took a deep breath; she stole a gaze at Daimon and then her eyes became determined.

    ''I will win¡­ I will never be a dead weight for him again'', she thought as she went up the tform.

 Chapter 216 The Risha Girls Fighting Styles (Part 2)

    Daniel saw Leslie taking her sweet time to go up the tform and he frowned, but since they couldn''t start the fight until Ste announced the rules, he remained silent.

    The screens changed their focus to Ste, making all those who were talking among the spectators to stop.

    "Wee to all the students and guests, today the second half of the tournament will take ce, and so we have new rules for the uing matches".

    "Unlike before, the participants are formally separated in two groups, the formal elite ss leaded by Daimon Licht and the trial elite ss leaded by Alexander Jolbaris, for a total of sixteen people, just like yesterday the match for the captain''s position will be upheld atst".

    "Now for the new rules¡­ there won''t be the option of forfeiting, the match will only end when one party can''t move anymore or has left the tform, also the matches will have a limit of thirty minutes, without further ado let''s start with the first of today''s four matches".

    The referees jumped out of the tform and the screens changed their focus to the participants.

    From the bench, Daimon observed Daniel with a slightly frown on his face.

    Daniel Jolbaris has a mix between brown and orange hair, he is rather tall and judging by his metal armor a knight, a wise chose considering he didn''t want to be a support and his affinity is water, but the most important thing was that he was already a middle stage two-star knight.

    ''His base is unstable, he pushed himself to advance with pills, what a fool'', thought Daimon, the star ranks are meant to be foundation of mages and knights, the better their bases the easier it will be for them to advanceter on.

    The problem was that the star ranks were the only that could be easily swept using alchemic products, so the temptation of advancing faster was quite high for the beginners.

    Daimon stole a gaze at Alexander and saw him ring at him, with a hatred filled expression, it was obvious that the option to forfeit being removed had something to do with him.

    ''Idiot you just made your tomb deeper'', thought Aster as he focused his attention on Leslie.

    While her appearance hasn''t changed that much, with his current eyes he could notice that although she still had that slender agile figure, there was a slightly noticeable increase in her curves, but that wasn''t what caught his attention but the fact that her autumn leave colored hair seemed to had a certain bright, something he never saw before even when he was actively injecting mana on his eyes.

    "Oh, are we on the hunt again?", asked Evangeline in an amused voice as she noticed Daimon looking at Leslie.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled as he answered.

    "Are you feeling jealous?".

    Evangeline froze, choosing to remain silent, Daimon finally learned the best way to get back at her, whenever she tried to tease him, he just had to do the same.

    ¡­

    While Daimon and Evangeline were having a little discussion, the referees gave the greenlight and the battle started.

    Although Daniel despised Leslie for being only a one-star mage, he didn''t underestimate her, a light blue colored battle aura covered his whole body, he took out his weapon, a whip which was covered in a current of water.

    Leslie on the other hand took out her weapon of choice, a fan with metal spikes, as orange mes gathered, before they condensed in a few streams that swirled around her body.

    ''A battle of opposites'', thought the spectators, when fire and water sh, normally the winner is the one with the highest realm, specially when ites to mages and knights fighting.

    "Haaa!", Daniel didn''t wait for Leslie to do the first move, he let out waves of his battle aura as he rushed towards Leslie, in a long range battle a fire mage has a huge advantage, so he wanted to make this a closebat.

    ''You are dead meat'', he thought as heunched the first punch apanied by the martial art, aura fist, aimed directly at Leslie''s chest.

    Just when everyone was imagining the horrible image of a slim girl like Leslie taking the punch of a knight, mes covered her legs and her figure shed as she dodged sidewards.

    Leslie closed her fan and a wave of mes was shot from one of the metal spikes, taking Daniel by surprise, he jumped backwards but was a bit slower which caused a couple of his hairs to be burnt.

    "Woaaah!", the spectators went crazy, Leslie''s feet elegantly slid on the tform whichbined with her mes and the movement of her fan, made it look as if she was dancing.

    Daniel frowned, looking at the armor on his arm he noticed a few burn marks, where he was exposed to those streams of fire.

    He stomped creating waves of battle aura that flew towards Leslie, although it was water oriented, it was still battle aura which is known for having mass, and so the waves left behind traces on the tform.

    Leslie jumped sidewards but the waves followed her, water''s property is flexibility it was easy even for a knight to manipte the trajectory of their attacks.

    "Humph", Leslie softly snorted, she rolled her body and used her fan to shot one of the streams of fire which were floating around her, the mes and the battle aura shed cancelling each other and creating arge amount of steam.

    While most thought it was a tie, those who were paying attention noticed a big detail, Leslie has a lower realm and yet her mes were on par with Daniel''s battle aura.

    Leslie saw the ends of her dress that were a bit wet due to the steam and she waved her hand, using her fan to disperse it before using the heat of her mes to dry up.

    Daniel felt Alexander''s gaze on his back and he gritted his teeth, if he lost, he could forget about having a decent position in the Jolbaris family.<sub> </sub>

    His battle aura flooded the scenario as he changed his stance.

    ''I was going easy on you, since you are a woman, but you all are getting in my way'', he shouted on his heart as he swung his whip towards Leslie.

    Leslie simple dodged it, but the current of water on the whip then changed directions and tore a piece of her skirt leaving a slight red mark on her leg.

    Leslie made a small pained expression, although the whip barely touched it, and the cut was quite stretch it was rather deep, Daniel clearly aimed at her legs to immobilized her.

    "Stop restraining yourself, burn his ass!".

    "Destroy him".

    From the benches, Yvonne and Liliana cheered Leslie, which seemed to be not giving her all for some reason.

    Daniel felt insulted and while he was being pressured by Alexander, his opponent was receiving support from her ssmates, something other spectators also noticed.

    ''Whatever, let''s put an end to this'', he thought, his whip made circles around him as more battle aura was poured in, until the current of water took the form of a water tiger.

    Daniel''s face paled a bit, this was his best movement, a legacy martial art passed down by his father''s family, since they were all born with water affinity.

    Leslie saw the three-meter-tall water tiger and she steeled her heart, her eyes hair and eyes glowed with an orange light and mes exploded behind her, after a couple seconds the mes changed their shape into a pair ofrge wings.

    Daniel knew this exchange will decide the winner, so he retreated and then swung his whip which was connected to the tail of the water tiger to make it rush towards Leslie with its ws ready to tear her to pieces.

    Leslie tapped her right foot on the tform a couple of times, she jumped upwards and used the wings to glidepletely avoiding the tiger, if she tried to evaporate the tiger, she would copse, as her reserves of mana weren''t as big as Daniel''s reserves due to the difference in their realms, with spells or martial arts like that, the best option was to attack the one controlling it.

    As soon as shended, Daniel smirked, the tiger suddenly changed the position of its head and tail, before Leslie could react, she was hit on her back by arge paw making her body fly a few meters until she regained her bnce.

    Daniel spat some blood, due to the reaction of manipting his martial art in such an extreme way, but Leslie was the same, she had three marks of ws on the back of her blouse which pierced the leather armor leaving behind bloody cuts.

    Still, she clenched her fists and enduring the pain, made the mes which she purposedly scattered to form the wings again, but there was a difference, their color became brighter and they also seemed to be¡­ running wild.

    Leslie smiled while a faint trace of blood came out of her little lips, mes exploded on her legs and she disappeared from where she was standing, Daniel realized this was herst resort so he did the same, the waterbined with battle aura which was giving form to the tiger, dissolved and gathered around Daniel forming a dome which then started rotating.

    "Tiger cascade shield!", he shouted.

    Leslie didn''t stop her charge, but instead of shing against the shield, shended a few centimeters away from it, then with her fan on her hand she started making circles around it, with time, streams of mes hit the dome making it tremble, the spikes of her fan one by one were shoved on the dome, then the streams of mes propelled them creating a loud impact.

    "No way!", Daniel nearly lost it, practically all his reserves of battle aura were condensed to form the shield and it just cracked, but he stillughed as the spikes were stopped cold by a second hiddenyer of the dome.

    "You lost¡­ aghhh!!!", Daniel''s eyes were suddenly shed by a dazzling orange light, before tons of feathers pierced the secondyer of the domending directly on his body before they exploded.

    "Damn", one of the referees immediately swept the mes that exploded revealing a Daniel which was burnt to the point that was unrecognizable, the metal armor melted and stuck to his skin, and most of his body had third degree burns, it was quite a horrible sight.

    Leslie covered her mouth with her hand resisting the urge to puke while she also gasped for air.

    An ufortable silence fell on the arena, even the spectators which were cheering Leslie before, couldn''t help but find her vicious and cruel now, but not everyone thought the same, Aleah on the skybox of the elite ss along with Aliya and Boris were convinced by the result, unlike those who were raised like flowers in a greenhouse, she showed the decisiveness of someone that has been in a critical situation and managed to survive.

    Let alone Calvin or Michael, even Daimon was surprised by the oue.

    ''What a dangerous kind of ballet is that, she purposedly received the attack of the tiger and that somehow made her mes be stronger'', he thought.

    The referees were used to see real fights, so besides the ufortable smell of burnt flesh, they ignored the wounds and inspected Daniel, although healing was going to be painful as he had metal melted on his skin, he was alive and the mes didn''t burn his internal organs, his eyes on the other hand were gone, but nothing that couldn''t be healed.

    "The winner, Leslie Risha".

    Only after hearing the announcement, Leslie let her body copse on the tform, but before closing her eyes she looked at Daimon, just to see he didn''t have any kind of disgust towards her, in fact his smile was thest thing she saw before she fell asleep, due to the exhaust of depleting her mana reserves.

    "Yvi, Liliana, you two take her to the resting area", said Daimon without caring about that no one had done that before, it was always the staff chosen the ones that had to take the students to the infirmary or at least out of the tform.

    The referees frowned, but there was no rule against it too, and the winner was already dered so they allowed it.

    At the skybox of the elite ss, the three Risha mothers were impressed by Leslie''s performance.

    "That girl has grown up quite a bit", said Veronica as she smiled from ear to ear, unlike her, her daughter was a bit soft hearted, and their mes were more destructive than normal due to their lineage.

 Chapter 217 The Risha Girls Fighting Styles (Part 3)

    After Yvi and Liliana returned, Daimon waited for a moment before saying.

    "Is Leslie okay, the shockwave behind that tiger''s paw wasn''t light at all and she isn''t a knight?".

    Yvonne sighed remembering the three w marks which were still bleeding on Leslie''s back before they

    "She will be fine, the mes of the women of the fire crane race are affected by strong emotions, pain and anger are like fuel for them¡­ if it weren''t because she got practically her counter in the form of a water attributed knight and the time limit, she could have won with just "Phoenix Dance" without relying on "Feather Massacre".

    Daimon agreed with them, that battle technique which resembled some kind of dance, focused on graciously redirecting the attacks of the enemies and take advantage of the momentum tounch a counterattack.

    And that wasn''t all, she condensed all the mes she could manipte into those streams that swirled around her body like gymnastics ribbons, the heat generated by all that fire condensed in such little shapes was enough to burn through Daniel''s battle aura and damage his armor.

    ''That dance should have required quite a lot of practice to take it to a realbat state, if Daniel didn''t have water affinity, she could have easily dealt with a three-star knight, and with those me wings she should be able to at least stall a fourth star ranked'', concluded Daimon.

    He couldn''t help but praise Leslie for taking the attack of the paw on purpose, dispelling the protection of the fire wings just enough to receive the damage she needed to increase the power of her mes.

    This time the referees did the selection process and a momentter the next participants were selected.

    "Rank number 5, Liliana Risha".

    "Rank number 9, Jason Jolbaris".

    "Another idiot who forced his advance", mumbled Daimon as Liliana was going up the tform, making sure she heard it.

    Originally Liliana should have the advantage as she is an early stage two star ranked mage, while Jason used to be a middle stage one star ranked mage, but just like Daniel, Jason pushed his advance with some pills.

    On the other hand, judging by Liliana''s expression she wasn''t worried about her opponent at all, from the very beginning she took out her weapon of choice, a rapier, for this fight she was using sport leggings below her skirt which had a few straps hanging from some of the pleats, a blouse and on top of that a light metal armor which protected her chest, arms and legs while leaving space for her to maneuver however she wanted, besides that, her usual emotionless expression was now slightly tinged with anger.

    "You''ll pay for Leslie''s wounds", she said as she pointed her rapier at Jason.

    As for Jason, his weapon was a spear and was wearing a green robe with leather armor, a normal choice for mages since most of them didn''t have a high physical strength, he rolled his spear a couple of times creating a current of wind as he answered Liliana''s gesture.

    The referees gave the greenlight and the match started, not even a secondter ice spiked raised from the ground aiming at Jason''s legs, mobility is all for wind mages, to it''s a standard move to aim at their legs.

    ''Humph, I''m not as stupid as Daniel'', thought Jason as he used his movement spell to easily avoid Liliana''s ice spikes, but as soon as hended, he hurriedly crossed his spear in front of him, barely blocking Liliana''s rapier.

    "ng!", a loud chirp produced by two metals colliding filled the arena, Jason''s face paled although he blocked that attack, he was pushed back a few centimeters, but that wasn''t what was worrying him, but the fact that he didn''t see how Liliana suddenly appeared near him.

    Without giving Jason a chance to rest, ice spikes raise from the ground making Jason jump backwards to avoid them, but then a whistling sound left him deft for a split of a second as he moved his head sidewards barely avoiding the tip of Liliana''s rapier.

    Even then, a small cut which immediately froze appeared on his right cheek, Jason''s pupils contracted as Liliana retracted her arm and then thrusted forward, this time Jason properly used his spear to block the rapier and again felt his hands trembling a bit due to the impact.

    "ng~ng~ng".

    Lilia used a barrage of thrusts to force Jason back again and again, loud sounds of metals colliding at a really high speed made some of the weakest students cover their ears.

    Daimon on the other hand was quite surprised that Liliana was so fierce, she wasn''t leaving any time for Jason to cast a spell, and since her rapier was lighter than his spear, although he was blocking her thrusts, Jason had no time to swing his weapon.

    "God damn it!", Jason noticed he was getting closer to the border of the tform and after blocking onest thrust from Liliana, he jumped sidewards while casting a spell, once hended, he swung his spear and a wave of sharp wind was shot towards Liliana at a close distance.

    But then Jason''s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, and he wasn''t the only one, the spectators went crazy as they saw Liliana using her hand to block the wind de.

    "Boom!", the wind shed against her pale hand and besides making her step back a bit, nothing else happened, after a close inspection everyone noticed ayer of transparent ice covering Liliana''s hand like a gauntlet with spiky finger protections, little shards of ice separated from the part which blocked the ice de a sign that the gauntlet was damaged due to the impact.

    "No way!", Jason was baffled, metal and wind have the sharpest properties and yet she dispelled a two-star spell just like that.

    Suddenly augh from the benches drew the attention of not only Jason but the first years among the spectators.

    "Without impurities ice can be even stronger than metal, it seems your ss iscking some basic knowledge", said Calvin with a ridiculing voice.

    Unfortunately, the signs of reverence that some of the first years started to develop towards Calvin after he "shared" his wisdom with them, immediately disappeared as they heard Michael saying.<sub> </sub>

    "You only said that to excuse yourself from that time you gave up without fighting Liliana".

    While those two started arguing, Yvonne smiled seeing Liliana being merciless as she assaulted with a continuous series of thrusts, from time to time the rapier bypassed Jason''s defenses leaving a little puncture mark on his leather armor.

    Daimon was more interested in the movement technique she used, ice mages don''t have movement spells, instead of that after using the ice spikes to distract Jason from her, she created an ice trail on which she slid as if she was ice skating, her movements were swift and well calcted so the previous would unleash the next.

    "Another dance type style", he mumbled making Yvonne giggle.

    "The ancient battle techniques of the Risha family were developed by women, and while my Night Sparrow race is a sister race of those two, they are slightly closer to each other, even if their elements are totally different, both of their styles are based in graciousness and agility¡­ well in a fight head on Lili is the strongest out of the three".

    Daimon couldn''t help but softlyugh.

    "I don''t imagine you "dancing" on the tform like those two, Yvi".

    The corner of Yvonne''s lips trembled, luckily the technique of her family wasn''t like that.

    ¡­

    Back at the tform Jason was slowly going crazy, each time Liliana bypassed his defenses, the tip of her sword just sightly pierced the armor and his skin barely making him bleed, it was like being punctured by countless of needles.

    Still, he noticed a sudden opening in Liliana''s attacks and he took the chance to jump out of her reach, even before hended on the tform, gusts of wind gathered around his body creating a ball of rotating sharp air.

    "w Scythe!", he shouted as he jumped towards Liliana, now that he activated his best closebat spell, he felt confident in fighting head on against Liliana.

    "Humph", Liliana stomped and spiky icebergs raised from the ground and shed against the ball of wind des, the wind rotating at such a high speed was basically a slicer, so as soon as the ice entered into contact it was sliced and crushed into little snowkes, creating a pretty sight which didn''tbine with the current serious situation.

    Although the ice slowed Jason a bit, he still advanced slicing everything in his way, he confidently swung his spear at Liliana only to be stopped by two rapiers, one made out of metal and the other condensed with ice.

    Sparks and little shard of ice flew due to the impact, the razor like wind that formed the sphere was also slightly dispersed making Jason frown as he added more mana to his spell elerating the wind des once again.

    "Tsk, I really didn''t want to use it, but if I don''t utterly destroy you, how am I going to face that crane girlter", mumbled Liliana, a huge amount of mana leaked out of her.

    This time Jason noticed things were different, his instincts screamed that if he didn''t protect himself, he could actually die, so without any hesitation he poured all his mana into the wind sphere making it rotate so fast that his figure was hidden from time to time.

    Ice des condensed on the straps that were hanging from Liliana''s skirt, and the same happened at certain spots of her arms, if you connected the des, the resulting shape would be the wingspan of an eagle.

    Before Jason could react Liliana''s body spin, then a rain of thrusts fell on his wind sphere.

    "ng~ng~ng!".

    Starting from the ice des on her arms which shattered into ice shards as they fulfilled their purpose to cut open a space in the wind sphere, then the des on her skirt bypassed the wind protection slicing the leather protection andstly the ice rapier pierced Jason''s chest.

    Every attack was perfectly chrono metered and executed, she looked like a majestic eagle diving to hunt a helpless prey.

    "Aghhh!!!", but that wasn''t all as Jason screamed but tried to get away to cast his spell again, he realized his feet were attached to the tform with ice.

    Then blood was expelled from his mouth as a second rapier pierced his body¡­ followed by a third, a fourth and series of ice des that also cut his body, it was like a rain of shes without any opening, thest rapier barely dodged his heart but there was no time for Jason to rx as he was kicked on the face making him fly out of the tform.

    The people on the stands were terrified by Jason''s "pincushion" appearance, he had so many cuts that it was hard to find an unaffected area, surprisingly he wasn''t bleeding, but it was because each cut was sealed with ice, causing a huge amount of pain to Jason, enough for him to faint.

    "Now you understand how I felt when Leslie was wounded earlier", Liliana''s words made the people on the stands to feel a chill running down their spines.

    The referees approached Jason and even they couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow at the result of their inspection, spleen, lungs, liver, galldder and pancreas perfectly prated by the rapiers, the only reason as to why Jason wasn''t suffering massive organ failure was that the ice was also sealing the wounds, but that didn''t mean it was a long-term solution, if there is something fire and ice have inmon that is that exposing to them causes burns.

    Still, the wounds weren''t lethal due to Liliana''s rapiers so there was nothing wrong, she cruelly but efficiently immobilized her opponent before throwing him out of the tform.

    "The winner, Liliana Risha".

 Chapter 218 The Risha Girls Fighting Styles (Part 4)

    Liliana stole onest cold gaze at Jason, before she jumped out of the tform, thatst spells she used basically depleted her reserves of mana but that wasn''t the only "side effect", as soon as she was out of the tform, her normally fresh and cool personality was nowhere to be seen.

    She looked at the bench where Daimon was sitting before running away like a scared rabbit, to the resting area.

    "What¡­ just happened", asked Daimon to Yvonne, he didn''t understand why the sudden change in personality.

    Yvonne facepalmed, truth to be told the three of them had agreed to not to use their legacy spells which were linked to their lineages, but since Leslie gave her all to the point of using those mes she hated, how could they not get an overwhelm victory for their sister''s sake.

    "You should have noticed by now, but we don''t have any characteristics of our races, well, besides the type of body constitutions we have, but that changes when we use the legacy spells of our respective family branches".

    "You didn''t get to see Leslie''s change because she fainted, "Feather Massacre", "Ice de Rain" and "Nightmare Demon Arrow", although those are the names of our legacy spells, in truth we are only stimting our lineages and using that impulse in our original spells".

    "The problem is that, the result also affects our mentality for a short period of time, Leslie can be rather violent, which is why she hates to use it, Liliana loses her usual cool and gets concerned over everything, as for me¡­ well, I be "yful" I guess, we don''t realize the changes, unless others tell us, luckily it doesn''tst long".

    "In other words, you be the contrary of your usual selves?", asked Daimon, feeling rather interested in Yvonne''s exnation, some people tend to have personalities akin to the characteristics of their respective races, but the Risha sisters weren''t like that.

    "Basically yes, normally we wouldn''t use our legacy spells unless it is needed, because we can''t control the side effect unlike our mothers, I guess it isn''t a bad thing to tell you beforehand, since we''ll be risking our lives together at the magic ruin".

    Daimon nodded, he as the captain had to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his teammates, to know who will y which role.

    "We''ll talk about thister, maybe at Friday when we celebrate out victory", said Daimon as they both changed their attention to the referees which were selecting the next participants.

    The members of the elite ss were now slightly interested in the result, because besides Alexander, the only others who they somewhat knew were Daniel and Jason, and they were out of the way, from now and onwards their opponents would be a surprise.

    "Rank number 6, Yvonne Risha".

    "Rank number 12, Misha Ferial".

    "I guess it''s my turn now¡­ in case I say or do something weird after using my legacy spell, do not take it in mind", mumbled Yvonne as she jumped towards the tform

    The screens then focused on the two girls that were going up the tform, Yvonne was wearing a white blouse along with a ck skirt, light leather armor with metal protections on the chest, a pair of white gloves used for archery and a bow without a string, her long ck hair cascaded down to her lower back, her eyes seemed to have a certain yellow glow at them which disappeared once you looked at them a second time.

    Misha on the other hand had brown-red hair and tanned skin, her slightly muscr constitution gave her away as a knight, as for her equipment of choice, she was wearing heavy metal armor, gauntlets and a tower shield which was attached to her back, she looked like a moving fortress.

    "Your two friends handled my ssmates pretty roughly, so I hope you understand that crushing you is not personal", said Misha as she stomped.

    Yvonne inwardly chuckled, thinking she was fighting the "Calvin" of Alexander''s ss.

    The referees then gave the greenlight and the match started.

    As Yvonne expected, Misha''s affinity was earth, not even a second after the match started, she felt the ground below her feet trembling and immediately jumped backwards, avoiding earth pirs that raised not too long after.

    ''That bitch isn''t trying to finish this fast, she wants a battle of attrition, or maybe hit me ck and blue'', thought Yvonne as she condensed a string made out of darkness on her bow.

    While still being midair she slightly pulled the string with her right hand and a ck sh was shot from it, destroying a boulder which Misha throwed at her.

    Misha smirked, therge pieces of rock which resulted from the explosion of the boulder, suddenly seemed to develop a mind of their own as they continued flying towards Yvonne, just to be obliterated by arge number of ck arrows that followed the first one.

    Arge cloud of dust covered the tform, but was immediately dispelled by a wave of battle aura created by Misha, the result of the previous confrontation, was a wall of earth in front of Misha which had countless ck arrows stuck on it, releasing ck smoke probably due to the innate corrosive effect of the darkness element.

    Yvonne graciouslynded on the tform again, surprisingly even if none of her arrows managed to bypass Misha''s defenses, she didn''t seem worried by it.

    "Haaa!".

    Misha grabbed her tower shield, her legs exploded with battle aura as she charged towards Yvonne, if her opponent specialized in long range attacks, then making it a closebat fight was the best choice.

    Yvonne frowned, despite being her tanker appearance, Misha turned out to be quite fast, which indeed took her by surprise.

    With a snap of her fingers a wall of darkness rose between them, forcing Misha to change directions, although she believed that her defense was high enough to not be too affected by the corrosive effect of darkness, her vision would be blocked which would put her in a dangerous situation.<sub> </sub>

    Still nothing prevented her from punching the ground making it rumble in a try to make Yvonne lose her bnce, as she kicked a piece of earth towards her.

    "Nightmare Canopy", with two single words a ck veil covered an area of around twenty meters of Yvonne, the rock entered the veil, bot nothing came out of it, with the exception of an arrow which aimed at Misha''s arm.

    "Come here and fight, coward!", Misha redirected the arrow with her shield making it fall on the ground some meters away from her, before she stomped making pirs of earth to raise inside the ck veil, but contrary to what she expected, the second the pirs raised she wasn''t able to feel their existence, nor the veil showed any signs of being affected.

    The only thing that assured her that she really used a martial art, was the fact that her reserves of battle aura decreased.

    "Fucking annoying darkness user", shouted Misha as she grabbed her shield and ced it in front of her, then her battle aura leaked out of her whole body, covering her along with the shield with a thickyer of earth.

    Arrows kept being shot from the Nightmare Canopy, shooting down pieces of the earth armor but they weren''t enough topletely destroy it, still Misha poured more of her battle aura to elerate her only fourth star level martial art.

    "Panzer Rhinoceros!", she shouted, then the ground trembled as the construction which was shaped in the form of a rhinoceros with the tower shield as the forehead, charged forward.

    "Booom!", Misha pierced the Nightmare Canopy from one side to side, breaking a hole on it, the canopy dispersed after that revealing Misha''s rhinoceros construction which had some crumbling parts due to the exposition to darkness.

    A small opening appeared on the head of the earth rhinoceros from which Misha, looked at her surroundings, her pupils contracted as she immediately closed the opening, barely doing it on time to block an arrow which was aimed at her right eye.

    The rest of the canopy dispersed and the people of the stands started discussing with each other, while Misha was taking the fight quite seriously, Yvonne on the other hand¡­ created a throne with darkness and was leisurely sitting on it as she yed with her bow.

    Even Daimon and the others felt a bit weird looking at Yvonne''s current slightly haughty expression.

    ''I guess that''s what she meant with "yful'', thought Daimon as he injected mana into his eyes, previously he wasn''t ready for the sudden burst that Leslie and Liliana showed, but now he wanted to see if there was some phenomenon, he could see with his infinity eyes.

    And effectively, there was a strong source of darknessing out of that throne, in fact he discovered it wasn''t a throne.

    Back at the tform, Yvonne yawned as she looked at her nails before she got up, the throne changed its shape into arge pair of ck wings which enveloped her upper body with a dark mist.

    The earth rhinoceros immediately charged towards Yvonne, but she simply jumped backwards, the wings didn''t allow her to fly but they did slow down her fall, helping her elegantlynd on the ground about thirty meters away from her original position.

    The wings then pped frontwards dissolving an earth pir which was aimed at Yvonne''s face.

    "Humph, are you that jealous of me, aiming at my face is quite low of you, you gori woman", said Yvonne as she softly snorted.

    Battle aura exploded around the earth rhinoceros, of course Misha was furious after being called gori.

    Then the whole area around twenty meters of Yvonne trembled, walls of earth raised enclosing her as the rhinoceros charged too, even if Yvonne somehow destroyed the walls, she would not be able to dodge her in time.

    "I will tear you to pieces, you presumptuous bitch", mumbled Misha while she gritted her teeth, she joined Alexander''s ss in a try to get close to him, and now ording to some rumors, it turned he liked men and not only that, she was being insulted by a some miss of a noble family.

    "Boom!", when the rhinoceros was a couple of meters away from where Yvonne was contained, the front wall exploded as it was pierced by arge ck arrow, Misha noticed it was different than the previous ones which probably meant her opponent poured all the mana she had left into it.

    So, she did the same focusing on the tower shield at which the arrow aimed, she elerated the rhinoceros and then prepared for the impact, but when the arrow made contact with her, it vanished.

    "What the hell...aghhhhh!", as Misha was wondering what happened, her eyes blurred and while still inside the rhinoceros she started hitting her head against the walls as she screamed.

    The screams continued for about thirty seconds, until they stopped, the rhinoceros crumbled apart and blood came out of the remaining rocks, the spectators stopped making any sound.

    Yvonne slowly walked out of what was left of the earth cage which contained her a moment ago, and after disdainfully looking at the heap of ruble that used to be the earth rhinoceros, she waved her hand at the referees.

    The referees raised an eyebrow, but they still approached Misha and after removing the rocks, they revealed her current appearance, her legs and arms were twisted in a horrible way, and she had blood on her forehead along with arge wound due to a blunt impact.

    Noticing that Yvonne seemed to be urging them to dere the winner, the referees inwardly shook their heads at her attitude before saying

    "The winner¡­ Yvonne Risha".

    Yvonne jumped out of the stage and walked towards the resting area, but she stopped for a moment, she slightly raised the sides of her skirt at Daimon, greeting him like a nobledy as she winked.

 Chapter 219 Lorenâ€™s Wit

    Daimon softlyughed at Yvonne''s behavior, she indeed actedpletely different to her calm and rational self, and became not only more talkative but even a bit shameless.

    At the skybox of the elite ss, Irina had a hard time notughing out loud as she saw her daughter, utterly destroying her opponent without any problem.

    ''Let the world see how awesome is my Yvi'', she thought, but her sweet imaginations were interrupted by the voices of her sisters.

    "Yvi, managed to slightly control the cheekiness of night sparrows, unlike you Irina~".

    "You were a sadist".

    While the Risha mothers started arguing about some matters of the past, Aliya and Boris were surprised by the performance of the girls, Boris specially as he already had evaluated them once before, but his previous calctions were shattered to pieces.

    "Even if Daimon didn''t interfere, those three should have been able to deal with their respective "suitors" from the light faction, then why¡­", mumbled Boris only to be interrupted by the three mothers.

    "Luckily our girl''s teacher isn''t you!", said the three of them at the same time.

    While Veronica and Anya ignored Boris after saying that, Irina did exin as her father is also Boris''s instructor.

    "Do you think they wouldn''t have used those spells earlier if they were able to, those spells have a strong impact in our minds and emotions, those girls needed a strong enough motivation to control themselves enough to use them, something not hatred oriented and now they found it".

    After saying that, Irina couldn''t help but steal a gaze at the ck-haired youth which was sitting on the bench with a contemtive expression on his face.

    ''I wonder if things would have been different for us¡­ if we had met someone like you'', she silently thought for herself.

    ¡­

    Back at the arena, some assistants carefully took Misha to the infirmary, besides her limbs which werepletely twisted, her head also suffered quite a bit.

    The referees ignored themotion that was going on the stands and continued with the selection process, for the next match.

    "Rank number 11, Loren Lefay".

    "Rank number 13, Ramon Lastres".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at the weird surname, apparently Alexander brought some people from small families, probably attracting their most talented member of their young generation with some benefits, while also affiliating their families to his.

    Calvin also frowned, her opponent was some tall bulky guy and Loren is a support type mage, but Loren simply nodded at them and went up the stage.

    The screens changed their focus to the participants of thest match of the day, Loren had brown hair and blue eyes, she was using a green and white get up and leather armor as well as metal protections on her shoulders, a little shield attached to her left arm and a chest te, her weapon of choice was a Morningstar.

    As for Ramon, he was a tall guy with bags under his eyes and a pale unhealthy skin tone, despite his bulky constitution he looked rather sick, he was wearing a ck robe and had arge needle-like sword without a guard.

    ''A darkness affinity mage'', thought Daimon, as he felt Alexander''s condescending gaze on his back.

    But he not only ignored him, but he even vilely smirked seeing that his team was mostly conformed by guys, even Misha wasn''t exactly feminine.

    "You think you are some big shot, just because you got a darkness affinity mage as ackey", he said with a ridiculing voice, loud enough so that Alexander''s team heard it.

    The referees gave the greenlight and the match started, Loren raised her left arm and blocked the needle like sword of Ramon which he thrown at her.

    Sparks flew as Loren was forced back a bit, but the attack ceased and the needle was suddenly pulled back, Loren''s eyes narrowed seeing a ck thread attached at the hilt, then she looked at the small shield on her arm and let out some of her mana to cleanse the ck stain on it.

    Looking at the shield closely she noticed a small burning mark on its surface, unlike Yvonne''s darkness, Ramon''s one wasn''t as strong, the problem is that as a light affinity mage, she was susceptible to it.

    To top it off, most of the light element spells of her family were confiscated, so besides radiating mana to cover her body and a low ranked shot type spell called without offensive properties called "re", she only had healing spells.

    Noticing theck of a counterattack from Loren, Ramon let out a wave of his mana and shot it towards Loren, before rushing at her.

    "A declining family like yours should be a trampoline for my Lastres family!", he shouted as the wave of ck mana blocked Loren''s field of vision, he threw he swirled the needle using the ck thread as an extension of the hilt beforeunching it towards Loren.

    A dazzling yellow light made the wave of dark mana to fade away, Loren came unscathed from the impact but she was then assaulted by the needle, which was aimed at her chest.<sub> </sub>

    With a quick maneuver, Loren used her Morningstar which was glowing with yellow mana, to repel the needle, even then she was overpowered in terms of physical strength so after blocking, she still had to move aside to avoid the left-over impulse of the needle.

    Loren shot a yellow light ball at Ramon, which simplyughed and received it without blocking.

    As he expected the ball of light didn''t do anything to him, which made him snort.

    "The captain told me your family had no offensive spells under the Lord realm, and it turned out to be true, in fact I feel refreshed by it, light affinity while being from the beast faction, what a disgusting family".

    Daimon noticed Calvin clenching his hand and he inwardly sighed, who would sit idle while someone important to you is being insulted, still he gave Calvin a little hint so that he could calm down.

    "That wasn''t a re spell¡­ just wait for it".

    Calvin nodded and then focused on the tform again.

    Loren kept redirecting the needle with her shield, with every sh a piece of it was destroyed until she had only a small disk of about five centimeters of diameter.

    Ramonughed as he created added darkness spikes to his needles before throwing it at Loren, this time although she blocked the impact, some of the spikes scratched the leather protection leaving arge burn on it.

    Loren''s arm trembled a bit, the leather which was melting burned her skin, but she inwardly gritted her teeth and didn''t show it on her face.

    She kept doing the same until she hadnded about twenty res on Ramon, some missed and he even dispelled some of them with his darkness, for a total of about forty times on which she casted that spell.

    Loren panted a couple of times, before she took the initiative to get into a closebat, making Ramon mock her.

    "You are nearly out of mana and now you want to fight head on, dumb bitch", he swirled his needle before rushing frontwards.

    "ng~ng~ng!", the repeating sound of metals colliding filled the arena as Loren''s Morningstar and Ramon''s needle kept shing.

    Unfortunately, due to the difference in length and the variety of spells, although Loren wasn''t losing, she wasn''tnding any hit on Ramon, while with every sh, a piece of her leather armor was melted due to the corrosive effect of darkness, leaving some marks in her skin.

    The result was quite horrible, after a couple of minutes of that crazy exchange, Loren''s arms were trembling and it was getting hard for her to sway her Morningstar, there was also a faint trace of blooding from her lips, because she had to bit her lips to prevent her body from going numb.

    The only thing she did this whole time was casting res and using minor healing spells on her, when there was a heavy wound in her arms.

    Ramon was sweating as he inwardly cursed, with the amount of darkness he has used, let alone a girl, even a knight should be screaming of pain while not feeling his whole body anymore, but his opponent was still enduring it, which made him feel insulted, specially after seeing Yvonne easily destroying the defenses of Misha with an arrow.

    Although he miraculously awakened darkness affinity, the amount of it which he could manipte was quite low, that''s why he focused in increasing its corrosive effect, and as a result of that, his skin became unhealthy pale and he lost some weight, but the result was worth it.

    Seeing Alexander nodding at him, Ramon decided to finish things at once, he used all the mana he had left and condensed about tenrge dark needles around him, with a wave of his hand they were shot at Loren, which dodged the first ones but was hit by about four of them, making her spit a bit of blood.

    "Now''s my chance!", shouted Ramon, he dashed frontwards and with his needled he pierced Loren who seemed to be unconscious on her chest.

    But then as soon as he was about to smile and celebrate the first victory of his ss, his pupils contracted, Loren which had already dropped her weapon, looked at him as he was looking at a fool.

    "Haaa!", she closed her little hand and punched Ramon on the face.

    Ramon suddenly froze¡­ he stepped back a bit, but besides that nothing happened.

    "So weak, your family deserves to be declining¡­. Aghhhhhhh!", while he was talking, Ramon suddenly let out an ear tearing scream, under the surprised eyes of everyone blood exploded out of every part of Ramon''s body before he copsed on the ground.

    Aplete silence fell on the arena, Loren gave a defiant gaze at the area where the half emperors were sitting as she took out the ck needles out of her arms and legs, revealing the purple burns they left due to the corrosion.

    "Fountain of life", she softly casted the best healing spell she could use and all the burns disappeared, her skin even looked smoother than before as if she had rejuvenated.

    Inparison, Ramon looked as if life was escaping from him, the referees immediately got up the stage and administrated a blood replenishing potion, but the only result was that more blood came out of his body, then they noticed all his external veins and some of therge ones practically exploded out of his body, destroying his skin and muscles, it was as if he was peeled.

    From the area where the half emperors were watching, Aua inwardly nodded, besides Daimon asking her, this was why she fought with the council to transfer Loren at Daimon''s ss.

    ''Someone who can do so much, with so little is worthy of being called a genius'', she thought.

 Chapter 220 The Aftermath Of The Third Day

    At the area where the half emperors were sitting, Lars had a bad premonition after seeing all the participators from Alexander''s ss miserably loosing, so he tried to stir up some troubles.

    "Argent matriarch, I though the Lefay family was punished by their ancestor''s betrayal and had their offensive spells confiscated, perhaps there has been a "breach" in the seal which wasn''t notified to us?".

    Aura snorted at Lars suggestive tone.

    "Since when your Furious Whirlwind academy has a say in the matters of my Wild w academy, Lars?".

    Listening to Aura not even giving him the minimal respect of calling him by his tittle, Lars felt his supposition hit the spot, which made him inwardly smile, but he kept a calm expression on the surface before saying in a rightful voice.

    "All the forces of the White Fang gxy supported the motion of stripping the Lefay family out of their offensive spells as well as their Arch ranked records, so if anything like that happened it would affect us all, why don''t we¡­".

    Lars fell a sharp gaze piercing him and he noticed the field marshal ring at him, which killed his courage in a split of a second, but he refused to back off this time, until he heard Aura saying.

    "The forbidden knowledge level of the library isn''t just guarded by the principal, vice principal Diana and Vice principal Leeris had the other keys, and without using the three of them at the same time, no one can get ess to it, your usations are quite serious this time".

    Lars gritted his teeth, using the academy was one thing, but including the army and also the Leeris family made it a serious matter, especially because the Jolbaris also had some connections with the Leeris family.

    "Ahem, if that''s the case then I can only praise that Lefay girl from having created her own spell", said Lars as he inwardly cursed the universe for putting things difficult for him in thesest days.

    ¡­

    Back at the tform the assistants took Ramon''s battered body to the infirmary, while they wondered how could a girl that looked so gentle like Loren had such a vicious spell.

    Even the referees raised an eyebrow, the Lefay family had aplicated history, so it was a bit worrisome to see their young generation be so cruel, still their job was done so they remained silent while taking note to mention it to the field marshalter.

    Loren slowly got off the tform only to be received by Calvin with a worried expression as he looked at the ces where the needles pierced her, only after he was sure she didn''t seem to present necrosis due to the exposition to darkness corrosion he let out a sigh of relief.

    Loren blushed as she saw Calvin''s making sure she was fine, but right now it wasn''t the time for that, she felt an intense gaze on her back and looked at the stands were a middle-aged woman was staring at her with a frowned expression.

    "So that woman was the one that came", she mumbled.

    Calvin noticed Loren didn''t seem to be happy even if she won and he chuckled.

    "Today we should celebrate, how about we go to the happy wanderer, Lucas is there so we''ll enjoy some of his cocktails, Daimon you and the shrimp cane too".

    Michael snorted but he nodded, his master was lost somewhere so he had nothing else to do, and Haylee liked the snacks and drinks of the happy wanderer.

    Daimon also agreed, since the tournament was done earlier than yesterday, it was about time for them to eat.

    But as he was about to ept, he noticed all the spectators had already left and the staff was in the process of doing the same, Boris and Aliya as well as the Risha mothers, Aura, Aleah and even Arianna wereing to see them.

    "Let''s check on Yvonne and the others first", he said, which earned him a giggle from Aisha.

    Daimon then stood up and walked to the resting area, followed by the others and Calvin which was giving him a "knowing gaze" and thumbs up, until Loren nudged him.

    Besides, Daimon and his ssmates, only the Risha mothers, Aura and Aliya entered the resting area to see how were the Risha sisters doing.

    There was a private room for each participant, and also amon area, as soon as Daimon reached themon area, he was weed by the three sisters sitting on a couch each with their own situation to deal with.

    Yvonne was covering her face with her hands and looked as if she wanted to dig a hole to hide, Liliana who although seemed to have regained her cool was slightly blushed, andst but not least, Leslie who wasying down using Liliana''s thighs as her pillow and was looking intensely at the roof.

    "Are you three, okay?", the three of them were suddenly startled by Daimon''s voice, only then they noticed their mothers and the others came to see them.

    Yvonne immediately looked at Aura with a hope filled expression before saying.

    "Miss Aura, could it be possible for my match to not be repeated in the screens?".

    Aura raised an eyebrow, before shaking her head as she smiled.

    "I''m sorry, that is a contract we have with the other families that came, but don''t worry, the repetition onlysts until you leave the tform".<sub> </sub>

    Yvonne remembered the embarrassing things she said and did after using her legacy spell, especially how she acted towards Daimon before leaving.

    "Thanks, for your understanding", she mumbled with a defeated expression.

    Daimon offered them toe to the Happy Wanderer to eat with them, but their mothers kindly rejected him, saying that their daughters needed to rest a couple of hours just to make sure everything was okay.

    After saying goodbye to them, Boris and Aliya also excused themselves, the rest of them were transported by Aura using space shift and appeared inside the Happy Wanderer not too long after.

    Mireya and Solomon weren''t here, but Lucas was behind the bar cleaning some cups, so he greeted them and started preparing some drinks for them.

    Calvin on the other hand went to the kitchen to prepare some food, while Daimon and the others took a seat at one of the tables.

    Aura couldn''t help but look at Loren before saying.

    "Little girl, your performance back then gave some old farts something to argue about, while I wouldn''t normally inquire into someone''s spells, I will have to answer at some point".

    Loren took a sip of the drinks that Lucas just ced on the table, as she answered.

    "Miss Aura¡­ will my spell bring troubles to my family?", Loren didn''t see anyone from her familying, that''s why she showed the result of her modified spell in the previous fight, but after the match ended, she saw the wife of the supreme elder from her family and knew things would get spiky.

    But to her surprise Auraughed as she patted her shoulder, resulting in a slightly weird scene, considering that in this form she was shorter than Loren.

    "Don''t worry about it, you developed that spell yourself so there is nothing they can say about it".

    Loren let out a sigh of relief, Calvin also returned with some snacks and other dishes and she asked him to stay.

    "To be honest it was an idental discovery, it isn''t like the corrosive light that humans had created, light element healing spells stimte the natural recovery of the body, I just learned a way to "heal" just what I wanted, so that the vitality kept umting until the body couldn''t contain it, it''s like filling a glove with water until it''s about to explode".

    "The only problem is that while I''m doing it, I can''t use major healings on anyone else but my target, or I would lose my focus and the result will be the contrary, I would just end up helping my enemy".

    Mireya entered the bar just in time to hear Loren''s exnation and she sighed.

    ''Of course, someone that finds Calvin attractive can''t be normal'', she thought as she joined them to eat.

    The rest of the noon went by quite fast, besides Aleah asking Daimon to spar with her, just to be scolded by Mireya since tomorrow Daimon had to participate in the tournament, they spent a couple of hours discussing about the matches that were left, and the performance of Yvonne and the others, until it was time for them to leave.

    While Daimon and the girls returned to their mansion, this time Loren asked Mireya if she could stay with them, probably because she didn''t want to be aborded by the wife of the supreme elder, Mireya epted to leave her upy her room while warning Calvin to beat him if he tried to sneak in.

    Meanwhile at the female dormitories, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were sitting in front of their mothers, an awkward atmosphere filled the room until Irina broke the silence.

    "Little girls, you should have told us that you were able to use your legacy spells now¡­ we would have exined more about them to you".

    Even the normally carefree Veronica had a serious expression as she looked at Leslie.

    "Especially you, it''s easy for us to lose control after using "Feather Massacre, our crane lineage makes us really "passionate" you know, I was tempted to stop your match since you could have killed that brat", although Veronica tried to keep a serious face, she couldn''t help but smile by the end of her speech.

    Anya on the other hand sat Liliana on herp and stroked her hair as if she wanted tofort her.

    "To think someone melted Lili''s heart already", she said in her slightly cold but gentle voice.

    Irina cleared her throat as she tried to keep her calm self.

    "I know young people nowadays are quite¡­ open about some things, but to think the three of you found your "center" in the same person, I guess we have to have another talk withdy Erin".

    The three Risha sisters exchanged gazes and seeing the suffering in the eyes of the other they all sighed.

    ''Someone please help me'', they thought.

 Chapter 221 The Calm Before The Storm

    While the Risha sisters were trying to find a hole to hide, the reason of their embarrassment, in other words Daimon was calmlyying down on his bed using Erin''s fluffy tail as his pillow, while Liz, ine and Aura wereying down on top of him, Aisha on the other hand was sitting next to her son with a slight pouting expression.

    "I know I will be the only one going to the exploration, but I also want to cuddle with my darling", she mumbled.

    Daimon who was caressing the girl''s tails while he enjoyed Erin''s silky fur, chuckled, previously when they returned to the mansion, Aura immediately clung to him followed by Liz and ine, their excuse was actually quite reasonable, since Aisha will have Daimon for herself, then it was only fair for them to hog him in for the rest of the week.

    "Speaking of the exploration, besides Ste, who else will be apanying us?", asked Daimon.

    Aura who was rubbing her face against his chest a second ago, looked upwards before saying.

    "To avoid unnecessary conflicts, only the teachers of the elite sses, the designated mage lord and the respective principal of each of the big four academies as well as the field marshal will be attending".

    Erin''s tail wagged a bit as she interrupted Aura.

    "Besides Aura, probably only that guy from the army can detect my dark curtain, so I can go if you want somepany during the travel~".

    Daimon shook his head making Erin pout.

    "Nop, you be a good girl and stay to guard the fort, who knows what trick can Arthur and that Lars guy try to pull, tomorrow is going to be a really bad day for them after all".

    Erin giggled and then tightly wrapped her tail around Daimon''s upper body.

    Aisha softly snorted, a magic circle illuminated on the back of her hand and a little light red bat appeared above Daimon''s face.

    "You know I can also order the monster servants, right Mom?", said Daimon as he smirked, Aisha tried to get back at him for not giving her some attention by summoning the blood bad on top of his face, but Daimon changed the summoning ce to the air above him.

    Liz looked at the little thing which was exuding the aura of a nine-star mage and she sighed.

    "That thing is a cheat you know, using blood to increase it''s strength, without any cap but the realm of its owner, that means Aisha will have a peak level bodyguard regardless of her realm, not fair, Daimon I also want one", said Liz as her long eyshes fluttered in a seductive way.

    ''Not anyone can get enough blood of magic beasts to feed that glutton thing'', thought Daimon, despite the current size of the blood bat, the little thing drank the amount to fill about four Olympic pools with blood from nine-star magic beasts.

    It took it about another 24 hours to finish digesting and now suddenly the blood bat was at the peak of the nine-star realm, it was ridiculous, on the other hand Daimon was happy because now his mother will have anotheryer of protection inside the magic ruin.

    Although he didn''t show it on the exterior,tely the scene in which Aisha self-destructed her magic core has been appearing in his mind from time to time, as if something was trying to make his resolution quiver.

    The girls cuddled with Daimon and soon enough they fell asleep along with him, although it was barely past 9:00 PM, this night was especially cold so while enjoying each other''s embrace, they naturally entered thend of dreams without realizing.

    Meanwhile at the academic city most of the streets were filled with people drinking and eating while they observed the repetitions of the matches, the exceptions were those streets reserved for the guests, the Jolbaris and the other academies being one of them.

    Lars which was paying a visit to Arthur, suddenly hit the table.

    "Arthur, you told me your son''s ss was made out of the most talented people from a lot of families, then howe they were utterly destroyed in their fights, even those two from your family horribly lost to some girls from a family without a Half Emperor!".

    Arthur frowned, he was being yelled at, at his own mansion, but on the other hand there were two Half Emperor level, Magus Kings asking for an exnation, so he remained calm on the surface, still he let out some of his mana pressure as he answered.

    "Whirlwind king, don''t forget who you are talking to, besides the only fight you need to care about is the one for the captain''s position, my son will win and our deal will stand".

    The normally stern Maxim interrupted Arthur, with a serious expression on his face.

    "You say that, but didn''t your nephew lost said match for the captain''s position on the second year''s team¡­ we allied with you and if your son loses, that kid is going to make us pay a ridiculous price for a spot".

    Lars gritted his teeth as he remembered how when he was leaving, he thought seeing Daimon mocking him.

    ''If the worstes to happen, I''ll let that brat think he won¡­ but I will tell Rasor to fucking kill him inside the magic ruin, the resources of my Furious Whirlwind academy can''t be stolen so easily humph!'', he thought.<sub> </sub>

    ¡­

    The night went on without anything else happening, and when morning came, everyone in the academy and the academic city was weed by a snowy day, nothing too umon at Lykos but still slightly inconvenient for the event that was going to be upheld in a couple of hours.

    Daimon slowly opened his eyes as he felt someone pressing her lips against his, when his eyes regained rity the first thing he saw was Aura''s pretty face up-close, he followed the flow and continued to kiss her until she had enough.

    "Good morning~", she said in a happy voice while her tail caused waves on the nket as it wagged.

    Daimon smiled back at her, but was immediately made to look upwards by Erin''s tail, still before getting to her, he needed to free his arms from Liz and ine so he woke up the sleeping fox sisters before going for the mother andst but not least, Aisha, whose mood was slightly bitter for being left "aside" for the past night.

    Daimonughed as he got up the bed while carrying his mother like a princess towards the bathroom, since they had some time before they needed to arrive at the ssroom, some fun in the bath was a must.

    After a small session of kisses and caresses a brightly smiling Aisha went ahead to prepare a light breakfast for them, since they will be fighting in a couple of hours.

    Aura said goodbye to them as she used space shift to go at her office, while the rest of them went to the 1-S ssroom, Liz and ine hid two of their tails while Erin used dark curtain to hide her presence like other days.

    At this point Daimon noticed she didn''t have the need to, but did it anyway just because she liked to tease him.

    It didn''t take them too long to arrive at the ssroom, where surprisingly besides their ssmates and Aleah who tagged along, Mireya, Solomon, Zein and even Richard who hasn''t been present in the previous days of the tournament were all waiting while chatting with Aliya and Boris.

    "Are those three noting today?", asked Daimon noticing that Yvonne, Leslie and Lilia as well as their mothers weren''t here, although they already fought, they still could to see the matches of the others from the skybox, like Loren who was shily talking with Mireya was going to do.

    Richard approached Daimon and smacked his shoulder as he greeted him.

    "Don''t worry kid, they will just arrive a bitte, there is now ay they would miss the chance to see your match Hahaha".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow feeling there was more to those three not arriving early, but since Yvonne already exined him that those spells took a toll on them, he just thought they were tired.

    Besides the Risha sisters, Calvin also seemed to not be having a good morning so far, there some slight signs of bags under his eyes and his hair was a bit messy, but he was smiling from ear to ear, which made the others look at him as if he was weirdo.

    "Don''t tell me you did look for a chance to sneak into the room where Loren was sleeping?", asked Michael.

    Calvin immediately shook his head with an offended expression and as he ignored Mireya''s usatory gaze, he said.

    "Of course not, this young master is the most gentlemanly among the younger generation of the beast faction, I stayed awake to study my possible opponents for today''s tournament".

    Solomonughed at her grandson as he took out a barrel of liqueur and drank it in one go, since Loren technically spent a night under the same roof with Calvin, he already started calling her granddaughter, which resulted in Loren furiously blushing while Calvin limited to nod and smile like an idiot.

    Boris saw his students being so carefree despite the fact that today''s matches were quite important and he shook his head.

    "I hate to interrupt but we have to go, Aliya and instructor Richard will apany those will be participating, while the others wille with me to the skybox".

    Aleah also approached Daimon with an expectant expression on her face.

    "I hope you give us a good showter", she said as she walked towards Boris.

    After saying that, Boris and the other adults helped Loren and Aleah fly with them, while Richard did the same with Aliya, Daimon and the others who will be participating.

    On the way they actually saw Alexander being escorted by Arthur and his gaze met with Daimon''s as they arrived at the stadium at the same time.

    There was a difference, while Alexander''s were filled with hatred, Daimon didn''t even look at him twice, something that didn''t escape Arthur''s eyes, but while normally he would have said something, he simply snorting while inwardlyughing.

    ''I would like to see you remaining so confident, when the matches start in a couple of hours''.

 Chapter 222 The Best Defense

    Richard too wasn''t allowed to enter the resting area, so after leaving Daimon and the others he flew towards the skybox of the elite ss, not without nodding at him with a strange smirk on his face.

    Ignoring whatever was making Richard have such a good humor, Aliya and her students entered the resting area and sat on the couches to wait for the matches to start.

    Daimon was about to sit when he noticed Aliya was looking a bit more tired than normal, but he decided to ask Boris about itter, since this wasn''t the moment nor the ce to talk about such things.

    Aliya looked at her students and then remembered the grin she saw in Arthur''s face earlier, and couldn''t help but remind them.

    "I know you all are confident in your battle skills, and to be honest after seeing the previous matches even I don''t know where your limits are¡­ be cautious, I recognize someone desperate to win when I see it, so I can assure you today''s matches will be wilder".

    Daimon nodded totally agreeing with Aliya, yesterday he saw Daniel and Jason who had forcefully advanced using a half assed method which weakened their foundations, but they were mere pawns, the girl with earth affinity and the guy with dark affinity which were from some of the minor families, didn''t resort to that.

    They were talented enough to be part of the elite ss, but for one reason or another, they didn''t enroll in the academy, but instead joined the Jolbaris everything with the goal of getting a spot for the exploration.

    So, following that logic, today, they will have to fight talented people who probably used something to improve their powers.

    Even the normally carefree Calvin took things seriously this time.

    "Don''t worry miss, I still have a grudge against those guys for how they treated Loren, this young master will teach them some proper manners".

    "I bet your aunt thought the same after you tried to sneak in¡­ but this time I agree, we have to teach them to not mess with out ssmates", mumbled Michael with a sharp light on his eyes as he yed with a dagger.

    ¡­

    Soon sounds could be heard from outside of the resting area as the stands were hurriedly upied by those who waited in line, after hoe the girls performed yesterday, everyone was expecting to see a good show, especially because the representatives from the three biggest families will be shing again.

    The Half Emperors arrived atst and took their respective seats, but as Aura was about to give Ste the greenlight, Solomon returned from wherever he was and his eyes fixed on Arthur as he drank a barrel of his usual liqueur.

    The distribution of the seats wasn''t done in any particr order, but Arthur thought the contrary, Erin didn''t bother to sit with them so the ones in the middle were Aura, Parzival and Arthur.

    "Jolbaris brat, why aren''t you moving aside, leave an old man sit down to watch his grandson crushing some fools".

    Without waiting for Arthur to answer, Solomon snapped his fingers and the reinforced ground which was supposed to not be affected, by the current power restricted Half Emperors, was easily manipted moving Arthur''s seat aside as Solomon sat cross legged on the floor.

    Arthur knew arguing with Solomon was pointless, so he inwardly snorted remembering the "surprise" he prepared with some help, for his son''s enemies.

    Solomon suddenly threw a barrel of his liqueur towards the field marshal who effortlessly caught it, and gulped down in one go before nodding at Solomon.

    "Hahaha, nice guts brat, even my son can only drink a few sips of this before fainting".

    Leaving aside Solomon''ste arrival, Aura nodded at the skybox of the vice principals and the screens focused their attention in Ste.

    "The Wild w academy wees all the students and guests to thest day of the tournament, there will be a celebration upheld in the campuster, without further ado, referees you may go ahead".

    The referees walked towards the selection box and pushed their respective buttons, a secondter two spheres with different numbers appeared.

    "Rank number 10, Calvin Ghrish".

    "Rank number 14, Edmond Castle".

    Calvin craned his neck and then got up from the bench after nodding at Daimon and his other ssmates he jumped on the tform, Edmond on the other hand did a salute towards Alexander before getting up the tform.

    The screens then changed their target to the new participants, Calvin''s tall figure was easy to spot, he shaved for the asion so the signs of a beard were gone, even his brown hair was somehow less messy than earlier, he was wearing the casual clothes and leather armor, his weapon, a Warhammer which was about two metersrge was being held against his shoulder.

    Edmond on the other hand was also tall, he had ck hair and was fully d in heavy metal armor, as for his weapon of choice, it was a metal staff with pikes on both ends.<sub> </sub>

    The referees then gave the greenlight and the match started, Calvin''s carefree expression disappeared, it seemed as if he had be a different person, his mana exploded covering the whole tform as he slowly walked towards Edmond before letting go of his Warhammer.

    "You look like a tough guy, that''s good, let me tell you that besides our ss rep and a certain monstrous woman, there has never been anyone that could withstand ten of my hits directly".

    Edmond snorted, he also tossed his weapon aside and started walking towards Calvin, the deep brown color of his mana made clear for everyone that his element was also earth, but there was a small tinge of silver mixed on it.

    Both of them stopped a few centimeters away from the other, their heights were practically the same so they looked at each other in the eyes.

    "Booom!", Calvin and Edmond clenched their fists and punched frontwards, their manas and fists shed creating a huge shockwave and a loud exploding sound that made the weaker students cover their ears.

    Both Calvin and Edmond took a few steps back and looked at their hands, there were some signs of dust crumbles on Calvin''s knuckles while Edmond''s metal gauntlet was dented.

    Daimon had refrained from using his infinity eyes on his ssmates until the fights, because it would be funnier this way, so now what he could see instead of Calvin was brown, gray and blue figure, which was moving using mana, of course that didn''t mean Calvin was a golem or something like that.

    "A suit¡­ he wearing a suit made out of earth and other things", he mumbled earning a smile from Aliya.

    "That''s the dreadnought armor spell of the Ghrish family, it consists inpressing a lot of earth and other specific elements in millimetricyers and then using then as a second skin".

    Daimon nodded and then focused his attention on the tform again, Calvin''s armor reformed and so did the metal gauntlet of Edmond.

    "Heh, so the Jolbaris are so desperate to win that they got you some drops of stctite milk", said Calvin in a ridiculing voice.

    Edmond''s pupils narrowed, he unconsciously gazed at the area where the Half Emperors were, before shaking his head.

    <o>,m "The Ghrish family is so high and mighty, but their young master is jealous of a minor noble like me, to the point that he can''t ept my talent is higher than his".</o>

    Calvin smirked, without releasing any mana, the ground started trembling to the point that event the walls started vibrating after a couple of seconds, forcing the referees to cast a barrier to prevent the fight from affecting the stands.

    "Well, let''s see who''s the hardest one, a dreadnought or a castle", said Calcvin as he jumped towards Edmond.

    Edmon suddenly felt as if a rock was pressing down on his chest, he blocked with his two arms taking Calvin''s punch, and was sent flying back about twenty meters, his feet left a trace on the ground but he managed to parry the attack.

    "Ughhh!", or so he thought until blood exploded out of his mouth.

    "What the hell!", Edmond was angry, he was using both earth and metal elements but his armor couldn''t withstand a single hit, he rushed towards his weapon and after grabbing it, he smashed the spiked end towards Calvin who didn''t move.

    The staff shed against Calvin''s face, a vicious yet legal move, the air rumbled and pieces of rocks exploded all over the ce, both due to the impact and Calvin''s armor crumbling apart.

    But as Edmond was about to smile, he froze on the spot, there wasn''t any blood on the ground, he slowly turned to see impact point and then his hands started shivering.

    Theyer of rocks which he destroyed with his attack¡­ wasn''t the only one Calvin had, below it there was another one and that was perfectly fine even after taking a hit directly on the face.

    Calvin smiled, he grabbed spiked staff and easily bent it backwards giving it a half moon shape.

    "You know, I''m a firm believer that the best defense is a good offensive", then before Edmond could react, he took Calvin''s punch on the shoulder.

    "Aghhhh!!!", a lung tearing scream filled the tform, Calvin''s hand made a hole through his armor, skin, flesh and bones and appeared on the other side.

    "Oh,e on, Loren took about twenty needles with darkness element and didn''t let out a sound, don''t tell me a tough guy like you can''t even resist one punch from me".

    Calvin''s calm yet cold voice made the other students fell a chill run down their spines.

    ''How can he be the tenth ranked!'', they yelled in their hearts.

 Chapter 223 The Monstrous Three And The Wild Card (Part 1)

    Edmond grabbed Calvin''s arm and smashed his elbow against his forearm in a try to take get back at him, but the result was his armor ttening against his skin, making him grit his teeth as he jumped backwards, not without taking the Warhammer which Calvin chose as his weapon.

    Calvin calmly stayed where he was standing, after waving his hand to get rid of the blood that was covering it, he cracked his knuckles and then stomped making the whole tform quake.

    "Boom!", a loud sound apanied by a huge amount of mana which shot upwards creating a pir of about fifty meters, made the people of the stands shiver in excitement, even with the barriers the weakest ones felt as if they were suffocating, until one of the referees used a tiny bit of their pressure to cover them.

    Edmond on the other hand couldn''t help but tighten his grip on the weapon while his face paled a bit.

    ''He was supposed to be just a clown'', he shouted in his heart.

    Having achieved what he wanted, Calvin dispersed all the mana he was leaking and returned to his usual carefree expression as he raised three fingers at Edmond, with a friendly smile on his face.

    "Three minutes, I will stay still for three minutes for you to attack me, if you make me step back even a centimeter, then you win, if not... I''ll beat you to a pulp~".

    Edmond felt his blood pressure raising, he was being looked down by someone he hated, a descendant of a major noble family.

    "Don''te crying to me when you lose!", he shouted, his body then expanded and was d in a brown silver light, the veins on his arms and legs bulged making him look full of vigor.

    "Haaa!", Edmond''s legs flexed as he jumped, reaching about thirty meters into the air, he rolled his body and then smashed the Warhammer downwards against Calvin''s head.

    The referees raised an eyebrow wondering if they should interfere, however you looked at it, taking a hit from a blunt weapon even if wearing armor is a possible death.

    ''Leave the brat let out some steam'', just as they were about to act, Solomon''s voice made its way into their ears making the referees freeze on the spot.

    The Warhammer which weighted a couple hundreds of kilograms impacted against Calvin''s head, making a loud dull sound echo through the arena, but the two scenes which others imagined didn''t happen, Calvin''s head didn''t split open, hell he didn''t even bleed, and his body wasn''t hammered into the ground, the tform didn''t even crack.

    He just stood there feigning to yawn, as he gave Edmond a ridiculing gaze.

    "Fuck, what is happening!", Edmond''s eyes became bloodshot, he used the Warhammer to propel himself backwards before charging towards Calvin one more time.

    The Warhammer shed against Calvin''s chest, the impact was so strong, that a current of wind was created from it, disheveling Calvin before the wind shockwave shed against the wall of the arena.

    "Oi, my hair is quite rebellious so it''s a pain in the ass for me tob it, you know?", said Calvin.

    "Shut up!", Edmond stepped back and took impulse to repeat his attack, this time he aimed at his knees, but the result was the same.

    "Haaaa~haaaa~haaa!", for the next three minutes or so Edmond kept attacking Calvin, aiming at many parts which should be "weak", feet, hands, face even his crotch, but Calvin didn''t even flinch.

    At the end of the three minutes period, Edmond was sweating, his hands were bleeding due to how hard he was grabbing the rod of the Warhammer, speaking of the Warhammer its head waspletely destroyed, there were many pieces which were now spread across the ground and what survived was full of cracks.

    Edmond''s expression was death ash, as he kept bbering.

    "How can it be, I am a genius which was only blocked due to theck of resources unlike those guys from major families, after drinking the stctite milk I even broke through to the middle of the two-star mage realm... SO WHY, WHY I COULDN''T EVEN MAKE HIM BLEED aghhhr!".

    Calvin punched Edmond in the face making him fly about thirty meters, breaking his nose and making a few of his teeth fly out of his mouth.

    Calvin looked at his upper clothes and the leather armor which were now all worn out and he sighed as he dusted off whatever was left of them, as he walked towards Edmond.

    "Ahh, look at this mess, a gentleman must always be tidied up... also keep all that whining about not being privileged for yourself until you have trained 20 hours a day in a rock mountain for a whole god damn year without someone to talk to, but rocks!".

    Calvin''s voice became aggrieved at the end as he gazed at his grandfather while stomping on Edmond''s legs, arms and chest until he vomited blood and fainted, the referees jumped on the stage which signaled the end of the match, but before Calvin jumped off the scenario, he looked at the bench where Alexander seemed to be about to lost and showed him his middle finger.

    "Soldiers fight soldiers, generals fight generals and a king must fight a king, this time Daimon is the one in charge of crushing you, try to pull something on Loren again and I will personally go for you.

    "The same goes for you, Daimon is the king but none of us is a pushover, we have a queen... a princess in the form of Michael and me, the Ghrish young master and the wild card of the elite ss".<sub> </sub>

    After saying that Calvin walked towards the resting area, as he imagined having a nice date with Loren once the tournament ended, but he nearly tripped as he heard Michael shouting.

    "I knew you were shameless, but to think the hammer broke instead of your face, I guess we found something in which you are better than Daimon".

    "Oi, you shrimp bastard, can''t you let me have a "hero walk away" scene in peace!", Calvin and Michael started arguing with each other until the referees made him enter the resting area so that they could continue with the next match.

    After the assistants took Edmond''s battered body out of the tform, the process of selection was repeated and the referees got the next participants.

    "Rank number 3, Michael Lockstar".

    "Rank number 15, Gerome Rajin".

    Michael stretched his arms which were getting numb before he got up the stage.

    "Thunder nimbus vine", mumbled Daimon which earned him a nod from Michael.

    The screens focused on the new participants, Michael was the shortest out of all the male participants so far, he had short blue hair and was wearing an assassin type get up which consisted in shorts, and a sleeveless shirt along with light leather armor, as for his weapon he took out a belt which had a lot of daggers attached to it.

    Gerome on the other hand was quite tall, still his body was slim, he had shoulder length blond hair, with every step he took, blue sparkles of electricity followed him making it obvious he had lightning affinity, his weapon of choice was a short sword.

    While normally Gerome is quite carefree, and after having refined a piece of the thunder nimbus vine, he was really confident, after witnessing the previous fight, he couldn''t help but think they were tricked.

    Alexander''s father came to them and offered them a deal, in exchange for really rare treasure they had to beat their opponents so bad, that they couldn''t go to the uing exploration, he even made sure that the option to forfeit the matches was abolished.

    Of course, he and his friends which had already sided with the Jolbaris epted such a great offer, they immediately broke through without any side effect and their elements got much stronger.

    Everything was going so well, until the fight that took ce a moment ago, right now everyone finally started to realize that while their attentions were drawn out by the demon of the elite ss, the other members were also monsters, it''s just that they didn''t stand out that much, which was understandable considering it has only been a week since the sses started.

    If anything, it was Daimon''s fault for getting into so many eye-catching situations.

    The referees gave the greenlight and the fight started, and as Daimon warned him, Michael saw Gerome immediately dding his body in lightning as he charged towards him, from the very beginning he didn''t dare to underestimate his opponent.

    Michael smirked, he tapped his left foot a couple of times and wind gathered around his legs followed by a loud fire explosion.

    "Boom!", Michael''s body suddenly shed making Gerome who was about to reach him dodge at the left avoiding by a few millimeters a dagger which was aiming at his left shoulder.

    "Got you!", Gerome took the chance to attack Michael which was about half a meter away from him, his short sword which was covered in electricity swung frontwards.

    But as it was about to slice Michael''s chest, it was blocked by a pair of daggers before a fire explosion sent Gerome flying away a couple of meters, with a slight burn mark on his hand.

    As he wasnding, he jumped backwards once again, dodging a pair of daggers which would have pierced his feet, but he had no time to charge against Michael again, the previous explosion produced a smoke screen which Michael went through, to appear in front of Gerome with another pair of daggers on his hand aiming at his neck.

    "Damn, this is only apetition" mumbled Gerome, as he blocked the daggers but he only managed to stop one as Michael skillfully twisted his hand shoving the dagger on Gerome''s shoulder.

    At the seats of the Half Emperors, Arthur red at Zein before he snorted.

    "Lightning assassin what the hell is your disciple doing on a friendly match?".

    Zein shrugged as he epted a cup of Solomon''s liqueur.

    "When an assassin draws out its weapon, something must die, you should know that by now, whether my grandson inw kills that brat''s self confidence or his wishes to keep advancing in the path of magic, ispletely up to him... my only job is to put the knife on his hand".

 Chapter 224 The Monstrous Three And The Wild Card (Part 2)

    Seeing Arthur''s grim expression, Zein smirked.

    "Did I perhaps rub salt on the wound?", he said as he drank the contents of his cup.

    Arthur gritted his teeth before he ignored Zein and focused his attention back at the tform.

    The other Half Emperors had different reactions, some remained silent while someughed at Arthur''s misfortune, there was a reason as to why Arthur hated Zein from the bottom of his heart.

    He "killed" Arthur''s confidence in an old partner he had, in other words one of his many night stands turned out to be Arthur''s girlfriend, back when they were younger of course.

    ¡­

    Gerome felt a searing pain on his shoulder, he bitted his lips to contain the scream and tried to kick Michael to force him to let go, but his kick missed.

    Michael simply left the dagger on Gerome''s shoulder and took a step backwards before he drew out another dagger from his belt.

    Gerome gritted his teeth as he took out the dagger on his shoulder before he throwed it on the ground, lightning exploded around his body, while in the long run he could maintain a higher speed than Michael, in limited spaces like the tform, his explosive increases in speed gave him a crushing advantage.

    "Lightning sphere".

    "If I can''t out speed you in a short amount of time, then how about this", he mumbled his lightning spread around five meters of his body.

    Even if the strength of the lightning diminished the farther it went from Gerome, even in low quantities, electricity could numb an opponent''s muscles and an assassin who can''t move, it''s as good as dead.

    Gerome then rushed towards Michael, he pointed his short sword at him and when he was about ten meters away from him, a lightning de extended with the short sword as its base, aiming at Michael''s chest.

    With his improved reaction time as a lightning mage, Gerome saw the tip of his sword scratching Michael''s leather armor, but the feeling of stabbing a body which he expected, didn''t happen, instead of that, Michael''s image shed sidewards avoiding the sword while entering the area of the lightning sphere.

    Gerome''s pupils contracted, he saw Michael not hesitating to enter the lightning sphere taking the shock just to throw his daggers at him.

    Still, he simply jumped backwards while giving Michael a ridiculing smile, since the daggers were made out of metal, the lightning interfered with their trajectory.

    "What!", under Gerome''s shocked eyes, a fire explosion renewed the impulse of the daggers and that wasn''t all, they abruptly changed their trajectory reaching their target as they stabbed Gerome''s feet.

    "Aghhh", Gerome couldn''t contain the scream this time, the daggers were scorching hot due to the exposition to fire, still he didn''t have time to lose to suffer enough, because Michael didn''t stop his assault.

    "You beast, you forced me".

    Gerome''s eyes were bloodshot, his teeth became spiked and his skin color became green, his blond hair fell off, but in exchange the output of lightning that was surrounding his body tripled and ignoring his wounds he jumped towards Michael.

    A curtain of dust raised as Gerome''s speed increased, Michael blocked his short sword with his daggers, but the short sword actually cut through the daggers sending half of their des flying away in a ball of electricity.

    "ng~ng~ng!", Gerome was just starting, after his first attack failed, he continued shing his weapon at Michael, with each attack another piece of the de was sliced until only the hilts were left forcing Michael to use another pair of daggers.

    Alexander smiled with sufficiency, besides his preference for those who have lightning element, this was the reason as to why he chose Gerome, the Rajin family are members of the Green Eel tribe.

    While in their normal state they aren''t at the same level of the Jolbaris or the Argent, they are one of the families which can manifest beast characteristics depending in their current mood, in this case the trigger is rage, they literally change into a hybrid of their human appearance and a green eel.

    In exchange of some rationality, they gain a strong impulse in their lightning and battle skills, the only problem is that they will keep fighting until they faint, so it''s ast resort kind of technique.

    Michael frowned noticing the killing intent shing in Gerome''s eyes as he opened his jaws and to bite down on his neck.

    "Humph", with a loud explosion Michael became a sh which appeared behind Gerome, before he could react Michael stabbed one dagger in each of his knees, forcing him to lose his bnce, before he grabbed Gerome''s face with his hand creating an explosion which smacked him against the ground.

    "Aghhh", a guttural scream escaped from Gerome''s mouth as he got up and continued with his assault.

    In this state the members of the Rajin family didn''t care about themselves, so ignoring the pain Gerome''s hand which now had bone needles on his knuckles, moved backwards trying to crush Michael''s skull only to kicked by Michael as he jumped and stabbed a dagger this time at a precise nerve which rendered his arm useless.

    Arge amount of wind gathered around Michael''s body and he then shed around Gerome''s body, stabbing a dagger at different parts, shoulders, knees, feet, hands, ankles, tendons, around the area of his neck etc.

    When the wind dispelled Gerome fell to the ground with about fifteen daggers stabbed on his body.<sub> </sub>

    "H-How did you expel all the lightning that I injected in your body", Gerome returned to normal due to the loss of blood and couldn''t help but ask.

    Michael stretched his arms to get rid of the numbness, before he calmly answered.

    "I didn''t".

    "Bullshit, how could you move if your muscles were being tortured by my lightning!", he screamed.

    Michael shrugged as he slowly removed the daggers from Gerome''s body so that he wouldn''t faint¡­ yet.

    "My master often hid on the clouds while I was training to increase my speed, with the intention of throwing lightnings at me".

    "In other words, I was literally struck by lightning on a daily basis, for about ten years, while I tried to runaway from a magic best or some angry guy, if I didn''t learn to ignore the numbing feeling of electricity, I would have died".

    Daimon couldn''t help but look at Haylee which had an ashamed expression on her face.

    "My grandfather said, that an assassin must be capable of concentrating on his target no matter the obstacles, and that being attacked while running will help Michael reach that state".

    Daimon found the method quite strange, but the results convinced him, contrary to what others might believe, the most troublesome opponent isn''t a stronger one, but a determined one, someone that can''t ignore pain and wounds enough to survive and still cut your throat, the idea is terrifying.

    "Being cruel to oneself, and crueler towards your enemies, what a weird method of assassination", he concluded.

    At the seats of the Half Emperors, Solomon gulped down a whole barrel of liqueur, before he nodded in recognition.

    "Zein brat, what was the "target" you induced into that kid''s mind?".

    Zein raised his cup at Solomon offering a toast before looking at his reflect on the liqueur.

    "Survive¡­ I taught him how to kill while surviving, my Haylee will cry if he were to bite the dust after all".

    Back at the tform Gerome felt his body recovering some of its mobility as the daggers kept being pulled out by Michael and he inwardly snorted.

    ''What kind of assassin doesn''t finish off his target, you are just an overconfident fool''.

    As Michael took out thest dagger, Gerome shed his bone knuckles at Michael''s face, the wound would not be lethal, but it would for sure give him a chance to win.

    Michael didn''t move and when Gerome''s hand was about thirty centimeters away from his face, it suddenly stopped.

    "Urrghhh!", arge amount of blood exploded out of Gerome''s mouth, he retorted on the ground feeling an incredible amount of pain running through his body, he smashed his head against the ground trying to lose consciousness but no matter what he tried it didn''t work.

    He even tried to move to jump out of the stage but his limbs didn''t obey him, it was then when he noticed Michael ridiculing smile and realized he was just being yed with, the "chance" he thought he had due to Michael showing mercy didn''t exist from the very beginning.

    "You are psycho", he mumbled with a defeated voice, and a desperate expression on his face.

    Michael shook his head, as he grabbed Gerome from his neck before punching his chest using an explosion to send him flying off, he tform, not without saying.

    "No, I''m an assassin".

    The referees inspected Gerome and were shocked by the result, the wounds of the daggers were all made in non-lethal areas, but they were only a distraction, some very specific nerves were cut which probably exined why after a burst of pain, no matter how much he tried Gerome couldn''t make himself faint.

    ''After this trauma, this kid will never be able to reach the Lord realm¡­ a life worse than death for a mage'', thought one of the referees after seeing Gerome''s current state.

    Even they couldn''t help but feel a slight shiver imagining what Michael might be able to do in the future, they also looked at Zein as if he was a madman.

    "The winner, Michael Lockstar".

    Michael did some stretches to get rid of the remaining feeling of numbness before he jumped off the tform, not without looking at Alexander and making a throat slicing gesture.

    Unlike Calvin he didn''t say anything but the result was more or less the same, a crushing victory and another nail on Lars''s coffin.

 Chapter 225 The Monstrous Three And The Wild Card (Part 3)

    The assistants took the newest "victim" of the tournament to the infirmary, this time the referees skipped the selection process, as there was only one match left besides the one for the captain''s position.

    "Rank number 2, Aisha Licht".

    "Rank number 16, Riley Heller".

    Aisha smiled at her son and then graciously went up the tform, from Alexander''s side, a girl with long auburn hair followed not too long after.

    The screens focused on the neers, and the students on the stands were marveled by the two beauties that were now on the stage.

    Aisha had long silver hair which reached her lower back, her pretty amethyst eyes stood out like always, she was wearing her usual get up which consisted in a skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse with violet borders, on top of that she used a light metal armor which protected her chest, arms and legs leaving enough space for her to maneuver, as for her weapon she used a one-edged sword.

    Riley''s most notorious trait was her long auburn hair, her eyes had the same color, she was wearing a ck top and shorts, for protection she just used leather armor to protect her chest and surprisingly she didn''t have any weapon, in fact she wasn''t wearing shoes, in other words her attire was quite minimalist.

    But out of all the members of Alexander''s ss, she was the first that made Daimon frown as he injected mana into his infinity eyes.

    ''A dual affinity mage'', he thought.

    One must know that the possibility of having more than one affinity is lesser than having a rare affinity, and having affinities which ovepped to get a stronger result are even rarer, a variant so to speak, Aura being a perfect example of that.

    The referees gave the greenlight and Riley''s mana exploded out of her body, for a couple of seconds a silence fell on the arena.

    "I''m sorry I can''t allow myself to lose¡­ I will try to push you out of the tform", mumbled Riley as tapped her left foot on the ground.

    A heat wave assaulted those near the tform as a wave of bright red magma advanced with Riley as the center.

    Alexanderughed as he red at Daimon.

    "What do you say Licht, very appropriate right, a fight between the queens before the kings have their showdown, I was lucky enough to find a "pearl in the sand", I have yet to see anyone at least four or five realms above Riley, who can put up a fight against her".

    ''And things should be even worse for you, now that she refined some stctite milk as well as a seed from the Sun Lily, from the zing Peacock academy'', inwardly added Alexander.

    While Daimon normally didn''t pay any attention to Alexander''s provocations, he found rather amusing that he was already talking as if the win was in the bag, after a few seconds into the match.

    "I don''t consider myself a king, but I can assure you, that you aren''t one, you aren''t even the strongest in your ss".

    "Y-You!", Alexander''s cocky smile froze, but he forgot to answer as the hairs on his body stood on their ends, making him look at the stage.

    Purple lightning crackled on half of the tform, shing against the magma, but that wasn''t what caught his attention, but the fact that the lightning was¡­ burning the magma.

    Aisha stabbed her sword on the tform and used it as a conductor for the lightning that was covering her body, making a beautiful contrast with her eyes, normally the tform wouldn''t act as a conductor, but she covered half of it with metal.

    Riley''s pupils contracted, her magma originally surpassed the heat of the fire used by star ranked mages quite a bit, the normal orange fire reached at most 500¡ã C, but her magma nearly doubled that, with an impressive 960¡ã C at her maximum, but now after refining the treasures handed by Alexander''s father, she surpassed that getting about 1300¡ã C.

    She even used a wave of magma to force Aisha out of the tform, without having to directly attacking her as she knew her element was incredibly destructive.

    Daimon smiled as he saw theyer of metal covering the tform, and the soles of her heels.

    Aisha used Nickel and aluminum on the ground and the heels to resist the heat and gold on the sword to use it as a conductor.

    At the area where the Half Emperors were sitting, Zein couldn''t help butpliment Aisha.

    "Normally no one dares to use "hot" lightning, and just focus in their piercing property¡­ did you perhaps took that girl as your disciple, Argent matriarch?".

    Everyone gazed at Aura, especially Arthur, how could he not remember after experiencing with his own flesh, the searing pain of being cut with Aura''s sword.

    Although Aura nodded to keep up the show, that wasn''t the case, Aisha looked for a way to replicate one of the better properties of her domain from when she was a peak Archmage, the capacity to strike her enemies with a lightning at a terrifying temperature which could double the heat of the surface of the sun, that is about 10,000¡ã C.

    It was that spell which earned her a position in the history books of the vampire race, and made her the strongest in terms of long-range fights in her gxy, second only to Half Emperors, and also one of the few that has managed to harm a Half Emperor while not being one, a feat which wasn''t known by the public as it happened when she was feeling with Daimon, due to Victor''s father trying to capture them.<sub> </sub>

    Of course, she was way far from that right now, even if her reserves of mana were huge, a trait shared by all the soulmates, the most she could produce right now was 1400¡ã C, and she had to d her body with a heat isting metal, since she hasn''t gone under the reinforcement that a mage gets after reaching the Arch rank.

    Riley saw Aisha calmly pointing her pretty index finger towards her and her instincts screamed, making her raise a wall of magma, one of the advantages her affinity had above fire, was that since magma has mass, it can be used to defend unlike fire which is incorporeal.

    "Thunder Arrow".

    This time all the students in the stands covered their ears, some even had to close their eyes as a bright line was shot from Aisha''s finger.

    "Boooom!", a loud thunder sound reverberated through the whole arena, as the purple line of light advanced at an insane speed, shing against the magma wall instantly ripping a hole through it.

    Riley immediately covered her hand with magma, since she couldn''t dodge in time, she had to redirect it, but she soon realized how bad of an idea it was.

    The line of purple light pierced right through her hand along with theyer of magma and only stopped after shing against the barrier created by the referees, even then the impact created a scratch on it, making everyone''s jaws to drop in surprise.

    Even Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, Aisha basically used a ser" and made look easy, of course he knew that wasn''t the case, it took her about five years to reach this level and it consumed a ridiculous amount of mana to use.

    Still the result was worth it, Riley bit her lips and endured the urge to scream, besides the burned hole in her hand, her ears were also bleeding, thunders are created by the heat of a lightning which passes through the air.

    And if hearing one far from you is already hard, imagine a thunder which sounds louder with every second that passes, until it reaches you.

    Alexander''s face paled, with just one attack his possibilities of getting at least one win before his fight practically disappeared.

    Still for some reason, Riley didn''t back off and instead let out all the mana she had, the tiles of the tform near her became bright red due to the increase in the temperature, to avoid being directly struck by Aisha''s spells, she waves her hand and a five-meter-wide magma wave twirled around her body.

    She gathered arge amount of magma using the surface of the tform as the material, making everyone doubt their eyes.

    "This¡­ this isn''t a fight that star ranked should be able to have", mumbled an Arch ranked of some minor family.

    Aisha stood there with a calm expression, lightning flooded her area making her look like a lightning goddess, in contrast the other half of the tform was a disaster as a wave of magma of about six meters of height raised.

    Riley literally dived inside that wave moving around just in case Aisha tried to attack while she kept umting more magma, but her worries were unfounded as Aisha just changed the position of her hand, from one extended finger, to an open palm.

    "I can''t control it, so if you can''t dodge, please get out of the stage!".

    "Molten Disaster", after shouting onest warning, the magma wave exploded upwards, it was as if a volcano was having an eruption, both the sky and ground were covered by magma.

    Aisha smiled, finding her enemy worth of using another of her original spells, this time a small sphere of purple light condensed in each one of her fingertips, before they were shot frontwards.

    "Thunder Barrage", upon contact with the magma, the small spheres contracted and then exploded, making the air tremble as a deafening thunder sound filled the arena, the shockwave even dispersed the wave of magma making it ssh outside of the tform, which forced the referees to block it with their mana.

    When everyone finally reacted, they were speechless, for the first time since the beginning of the tournament, a whole part of the tform waspletely destroyed, an eighth part of it to be more urate, it was blown away leaving spherical big holes on the ground.

    Although one could say that Riley removed a part of the tiles to use as materials for her magma wave, it was clear that Aisha''s spell obliterated a part of the stage which shouldn''t be possible for a star ranked mage.

    Aisha walked towards the new edge of the tform from where Riley which now had no clothes, but was using magma to cover her privates still did her best to hang from the tform avoiding touching the ground by a few millimeters.

    "You weren''t like the others¡­ unfortunately I can''t lose too".

    While Aisha admired Riley''s determination, she still pointed her finger at her and purple light gathered on it as she charged her thunder arrow one more time, but instead of using it, she just dispelled it and made some electricity hit Riley''s hand making her forcefully loose her grip, which made her body to touch the ground "outside" of the tform, signaling the end of the match.

    The referees looked at the disaster zone and they inspected Riley, besides some broken bones, teared eardrums and a contusion, she wasn''t in such a terrible state as they expected her to be, in other words her opponent showed her mercy on top of not being allowed to kill.

    ''What a monster'', thought the referees as they dered the winner.

    "The winner, Aisha Licht".

 Chapter 226 The Monstrous Three And The Wild Card (Part 4)

    For the first time since the first year''s tournament started, the loser wasn''t in such a horrible state, besides some slight bruises and the wound on her hand, only her eardrums suffered a beating.

    Slowly but surely, Riley stood up before she stumbled towards the rest area, without epting the help from the assistants.

    Aisha followed not too long after, she smiled at her son and then entered the resting area.

    Needless to say, but Alexander was now past angry, he red at Riley as she left and coldly snorted.

    "Useless, each and everyone of you are fucking useless!", he said as he jumped to the stage without waiting for the referees to announce the next match.

    The referees frowned, not because of them, but because there was a chance that maybe Ste needed to give an announcement before.

    Aura nodded and the referees then continued.

    "Rank number 1, Daimon Licht".

    "Rank number 4, Alexander Jolbaris".

    Only then Daimon got into the tform, the screens changed their focus to them.

    Daimon had ck hair which made others believe he was indeed rted to Erin, but his amethyst eyes undoubtedly rted him with Aisha, he was tall despite his age, his get up consisted in a white and purple jacket and pants, as well as a ck shirt, something drew everyone''s attention was that he wasn''t using any kind of armor nor he had a weapon.

    Alexander on the other hand, was the perfect representation of the Jolbaris family, tall and slightly bulky by innate, and with orange hair, if anything the white stripes on his hair separated him from the other people of the Jolbaris family, he was wearing heavy metal armor and his weapon was a longsword.

    At the seats of the Half Emperors, Arthur couldn''t help but clench his hands on the arm support, while Daimon looked calm andposed, his son was a clock bomb right now, and that wasn''t the image he wanted for the heir of the family.

    This tournament attracted the attention of the whole gxy, and while losing might be a disgrace, a captain must remain rational under the worst circumstances, while Daimon was known for retaliating¡­ with extreme force, he only acted when he was provoked.

    Still since Alexander is his son, he had to support him.

    "Argent matriarch, it seems your disciple has grown arrogant, even the grandson of the Rock Dreadnought was wearing some sort or armor".

    The other Half Emperorsid back against their seats as they waited for Aura''s answer, Lars was specially praying to the heavens that Daimon''s "overconfidence" ended in him miserably losing, because otherwise the coffers of his Furious Whirlwind academy will be taking a huge blow.

    "Last time you lost against me and I have never used an armor, besides you seem to believe that this is a match and it isn''t¡­ it''s an execution".

    Arthur''s expression became grim, the ce where Aura cut him eight years ago still itched from time to time.

    "Humph, we''ll see".

    ¡­

    "Tiger Storm!".

    Back at the tform, Alexander immediately released as much lightning and mana as he could, yellow electricity filled the whole tform, covered both of them.

    The referees reinforced the barrier as the yellow lightning shed against the walls of the arena.

    But as Arthur was about to smile, all the electricity was suddenly dispelled into small yellow particles, revealing Alexander who had a shocked expression on his face and Daimon who was calmly standing in the same spotpletely unscathed.

    "I-Impossible", bbered Alexander, he turned to see the referees and pointed at Daimon.

    "He is cheating, is impossible to resist the lightning of my storm tiger¡­".

    Alexander couldn''t finish his sentence when a ck cube raised from the ground trapping him inside.

    "Demon Coffin", with a snap of his fingers, lightning which was originally purple exploded out of the ck cube, turning ck in a split of a second, before it condensed into spears which impaled the coffin.

    The cube then slowly dispelled and Alexander who now had countless wounds copsed on the ground, before a pool of blood formed below him.

    "You talk too much" said Daimon as he walked towards him; lightning crackled with each step.

    "Booom!", Arthur who suddenly appeared next to Daimon and tried to punch him, was stopped in cold by Erin who materialized out of nowhere, her pretty hand was covered in a ck gauntlet which was now holding Arthur''s fist.<sub> </sub>

    Aura was standing behind him with her sword nearly slicing his neck, the sky darkened and the air trembled as they both asked in a calm and yet murderous voice.

    "What is the meaning of this?".

    The students in the stands were about to suffocate, although the referees and even the Arch ranked elders were actively protecting them from the sh that was happening on the tform, even after having their powers sealed by the barrier of the academy, their mana was in another whole level.

    The other Half Emperors didn''t interfere, with the exception of Parzival who descended from to the tform.

    Arthur took a deep breath every time he tried to release his lightning to force Erin to let go of him; his lightning was somehow dispelled.

    "He attacked my son when he was talking with the referees".

    Without waiting for Aura or Erin to say anything, Daimon spoke.

    "What kind of idiot suddenly starts talking and expects his enemy to not attack him".

    Arthur felt a vein popping on his neck.

    "He had a point, you could be cheating, how can a one-star mage bepletely unscathed after receiving the totality of my son''s mana and the lightning he could manipte, in a single attack, not to mention that was a legacy spell!".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "His lightning wasme that''s why I had no trouble to keep it away from me, he was agitated enough to lose control over his own spell, even a novice mage could have kicked his ass".

    Although Daimon said that, he might have identally fried Alexander''s brain because the aura of overlord''s pride activated on its own after detecting a possible "rival" predator, challenging his authority.

    That''s why he finished him with one of his experimentalbination spells, he had to use something shy enough to divert the attention from Alexander''s unusual mind state.

    "The winner is Daimon Licht", the field marshal dered the winner of the match, making Arthur re at him, Lars couldn''t keep his cool anymore too, he joined them and argued that the incident must be investigated.

    But Parzival''s next words shit their mouths.

    "Show me a one-star mage who can y such a trick, under my eyes and I will call you father".

    Arthur wanted to argue, but he noticed his son was literally beaten one inch to death, so he had no time for that, he retracted his hand but as he was about to take Alexander to leave, he crossed his arms in front of him and was suddenly sent flying out of the stadium due to Aura and Erin punching him at the same time.

    Only then Erin suddenly disappeared while Aura and Parzival returned to their seats, Arthur attacked first and the rules are one attack for one attack.

    Although the field marshal had already dered Daimon the winner, the referees still did theirst job.

    "The winner, Daimon Licht".

    The students at the stands went crazy, some cheered him, while others were unconvinced, "how could the difference be so big", they thought.

    While the assistants took Alexander out of the tform, Daimon''s ssmates came out of the resting area, even the Risha girls, Aleah and Arianna came down from the skybox to celebrate.

    They all approached Daimon and congratted him; Daimon saw Lars pale face and he smirked before adding thest nail to his coffin.

    "Originally I wasprehensive with the Earth Pce and the Furious Whirlwind academy, but since it seems you two have enough resources to waste them in Alexander''sckeys, the price has doubled, you have one hour to pay or the deal will be cancelled".

    Daimon left the tform apanied by his ssmates and their rtives, as well as Aura, before they left the stadium.

    Lars stood there alone with a pale expression until his friend Maxim approached him, with a defeated expression.

    "The kid got us good; I need the spot so I will reach out to the Argent matriarch¡­ we''ll recover from this".

    Only then Lars reacted, his eyes became bloodshot and he gritted his teeth, so hard, Maxim thought he might break them, but then he changed that to a cold gaze, he handed Maxim arge crystal chest before leaving, not without saying.

    "Hand them my part¡­ we must kill him no matter the cost Maxim, tell your disciple to also hunt him down in the magic ruin, I will hand Terry "that", you do the same".

    Maxim slowly nodded before he walked towards the exit of the stadium, hoping that Daimon and the others weren''t that far from him.

 Chapter 227 Celebration

    While Lars left Lykos as soon as he could, Maxim didn''t even have to fly two hundred meters, when he saw Daimon and the others happily chatting with each other.

    While he was quite upset since he was forced to hand over ten times the quantity of stctite milk, he originally intended, it was true that he didn''t take Daimon''s words seriously.

    Inparison Lydia took the risk and ended up being the winner, even if Maxim wanted to only throw the pay and leave, he couldn''t, first because he had to sign a contract and second because there were four Half Emperors present right now.

    "Ahem, Licht young master, I''m here to pay for the spots at the first year''s exploration team", said Maxim as he took out two metal cases containing the ten pieces of the Thunder Nimbus Vine and ten bottles of stctite milk.

    Daimon epted the cases and only after inspecting the contents, he casually handed Maxim a soul contract which Erin prepared beforehand.

    Maxim quickly read the contract and inwardly sighed, there were zero ws on it, he made a slight cut on his finger and let a drop of his blood to fall on the paper, as soon as the process ended, he took the contract and flew away without saying anything.

    Daimon kept the things in his storage ring and then turned to see the others, as expected, Zein and Solomon had approval expression on their faces.

    Calvinughed and ced his elbow on top of Daimon''s shoulder as he looked at his grandfather.

    "As expected of our ss rep, extorting two Magus Kings so easily".

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    ''What do you mean with "as expected", do I look like a ckmailer or something like that?, he thought only to beughed at by Evangeline.

    ''Well, you did extort that tiger woman''.

    Daimon chuckled and didn''t answer her, instead of that they walked towards the happy wanderer, since his fight with Alexander ended pretty quick, they were just about lunch time.

    Mireya went ahead to prepare everything too, so once they arrived, besides the party that was going on, on the streets as the matches were reproduced on the screens, they had their own celebration to attend.

    To everyone''s surprise, there were other people in the Happy Wanderer already waiting for them, Leena, Gabriel and his sister as well as Ste who was about to leave.

    "I just came to congratte you all for your victories in my little sister''s stead, she is refining the petal of the snow lotus so she couldn''te", she said as she excused herself.

    Daimon epted her goodwill and then she left, since she will be taking the role of tutor for the travel in a few days, she had to do a lot of things.

    Once ste left, Lucas dragged Calvin to the kitchen and they started putting the dishes on the table as well as a lot of different drinks, instead of the normal lunch, this time Mireya organized a small banquet for them.

    Daimon took a ss with some drink and then offered a toast, although his goal of being the strongest didn''t change, he had to admit that he has developed a certain level of respect for his ssmates, to the point that he considered them trust worthy friends.

    "For our victory", he said as he rose his ss.

    "Cheers!".

    Besides Solomon who was gulping down his usual liqueur out of a barrel, the others epted the toast and then the party started,

    Daimon finally understood why Aliya looked more tired than usual, she handed each one of her students a ring which contained one set of potions whose forms the found at the Dima''s cave.

    "Although you''ll be given a ring from the academy before entering the magic ruin, you will be allowed to bring one bottle of ten different potions or pills, these three are way better than most of the ones avable and since none of you is a knight, they are perfect, the others are up to you".

    Daimon and the others epted the gift and that also reminded Daimon he had a little gift for his ssmates too.

    "Here".

    Calvin, Michael and Liliana caught each what Daimon threw at them, and they were speechless.

    A bottle of stctite milk, a piece of thunder nimbus vine and a couple of petals from a snow lotus.

    "Daimon this¡­".

    The first one to try and say anything was Michael, since he had wind element, the thunder nimbus vine was quite good for him, there was even a small possibility that he could awaken lightning element.

    Calvin on the other hand was shameless enough to not try to return it, but that didn''t mean he didn''t give Daimon a thankful gaze.<sub> </sub>

    As for Liliana she had a small but pretty smiling expression on her face which she couldn''t hide, but it didn''tst long as she felt two different gazes piercing her back, which made her return to her usual neutral expression self.

    "Just ept it, you all did your part beating those guys up and I can''t use more than one anyway".

    He then looked at Aura who nodded before handing Loren a small scroll, Loren''s hands trembled as she respectfully epted it.

    "Burning Point¡­ an offensive type light spell who can be trained up to the Lord realm", mumbled Loren as she read the contents of the scroll.

    "Just im you found it on the magic ruin", said Daimon ignoring the slightly creepy happy smile in Calvin''s face.

    It might not look like something big, but there was a reason as to why Loren''s family were stripped out of their offensive spells, and within the beast faction light spells were banned from the market.

    Even the underground merchants wouldn''t risk to incur in the wrath of the whole gxy, just to earn some money from a declining family, and now Daimon handed her a chance to revive her family, of course she was happy, that also meant she was recognized as a member of the elite ss.

    "You two will have to wait a bit¡­ well if Leslie is lucky enough, I might get something by tomorrow, it depends on the principal of the Ocean Heart academy", said Daimon as he looked at Yvonne and Leslie.

    Leena seemed to have something to say, but she remained silent and decided to talk with Daimonter.

    Solomon was the same, the stctite milk was useless for him, but his daughter on the other hand could use it, he rubbed his chin for a split of a second before he continued drinking with Richard.

    <o>,m The celebration then continued for a few hours, tomorrow they will reunite to discuss about the fights, but for today the idea was just to hang around and rest, so they all let loose and enjoyed the food and drinks.</o>

    ¡­

    By the time the celebration was over it was already night, while Calvin and Lucas were dead drunk on the floor, the others were just a bit dizzy, on the adult''s table it was the contrary, Solomon, Zein and even Richard were all quite drunk.

    And while they could sober up just circting their mana, they chose to not do so, inparison the Risha mothers didn''t have any alcohol.

    Loren and Mireya started cleaning while the ones that were awake started leaving, Boris said goodnight as he left with Aliya, Leena was the was the same, she took Dana and Gabriel and also left, not without saying.

    "Kid, I''m interested in buying a piece of the thunder nimbus vine, you have my sigil, if you are willing to trade, tell me and I will send you a list of treasures I have".

    Erin who was eating a piece of cake, softly snorted.

    "Leena, in case you forgot, both Daimon and Aisha have lightning affinity, the same goes for Aura, so you better prepare some good stuff for the trade".

    Leena didn''t say anything and just left, Erin was only teasing her, she wasn''t the only one that saw the amount of each resource Maxim handed Daimon, in fact Maxim did it like that on purpose.

    The idea was that greed took over them, an alliance is hard to break from the outside, but easy to corrupt from the inside, or at least that''s what he thought, but no one fell for it.

    "We should get going too, see you tomorrow", said Daimon to the Risha sisters who were somewhat distant during the whole celebration.

    After saying that, Aura used space shift to transport everyone to the mansion, the girls had a few drinks, Liz being the most drunk out of them, which was proven as she jumped on Daimon as soon as they appeared on the living room of the mansion.

    "Cuddle with me~", she said with a loving voice as she rubbed her face against Daimon''s.

    Erin and Aisha who had slightly flushed expressions let their bodies fall on top of Daimon''s, as they gave him needy gazes.

    Daimon was about to get up to take the girls to the bed, when Erin and Aura also hugged him holding his body on the floor of the living room.

    "You two aren''t drunk, help me take these three to the bed¡­".

    Daimon was interrupted by Aura''s pretty face getting closer to him as she pressed her lips against his, the sweetness of her lipsbined with a little hint of alcohol were quite enticing.

    "I want some too~", Erin pushed Aura aside and then took her ce, her kiss was more aggressivepared to Aura''s but the sensation was incredibly pleasant too, while Daimon couldn''t get drunk due to his abnormal body, even he couldn''t help but feel dizzy after kissing those two.

    Feeling his little brother getting ready for the action he pulled Erin''s tail making her let go of him as she softly moaned.

    "Let''s go to the bed", said Daimon as he carried the girls to the bedroom, Erin and Aura exchanged gazes and then followed him with bright smiles in their beautiful faces.

 Chapter 228 Cute Wolf & Cunning Fox (Part 1) R-18

    Once they entered the bedroom, Daimon let Liz, ine and Aishaid down on the bed, while he took off his shirt and pants keeping his boxers only, since he didn''t sweat at all, he didn''t even bother to take a bath.

    "I wonder, what are youdies scheming", said Daimon as he saw Erin closing the door while she and also Aura undressed and walked towards him,

    Erin who wrapped her long fluffy tail around her body, swayed his hips as she hugged Daimon''s right arm, enveloping it with herrge breasts

    "We agreed that today you were ours, that''s why those three didn''t bother to sobber up with mana~", said Erin as she licked her lips.

    Aura on the other hand wagged her cute wolf''s tail as she rubbed her whole body against Daimon''s.

    "Who knows how many girls from the other gxies you''ll be trapped with, in a few days".

    Daimon chuckled, finding Aura''s jealousy rather cute, he caressed her ears and then wrapped his arms around both their waists as he let his body fall on thefortable bed.

    Their bodies bounced a couple of times as they took some distance from Aisha and the others, who seemed to be dead sleep.

    Daimon caressed Erin''s face before dragging her closer to kiss her pretty lips.

    "Mm~", Erinid on top of Daimon as she epted the kiss, her tail enveloped Daimon, allowing him to enjoy that silky and soft feeling he loved.

    The kiss wasn''t too aggressive, but rather passionate, their tongues danced together and entangled with each other as they drowned in the touch of the other.

    They only stopped when Aura literally pushed Erin aside and stole the position, her little body straddled Daimon before she gave him puppy eyes.

    Daimon gently raised Aura by her thin waist and her tail wagged with expectation, which was soon fulfilled as Daimon let her down closer to his face to press his lips against hers.

    Erin saw Aura enjoying herself and she pouted.

    "Aura, what happened to "we should share", you''ll be going with him".

    Aura suddenly stopped the kiss and pointed at Erin''s legs.

    "You were already rubbing your thighs together, while Daimon was kissing you, knowing how much of a shameless fox you are, you were about to jump into the action without letting me have some".

    Daimon who wasughing at these scenes of Aura and Erin arguing with each other, suddenly grabbed their asses and brought them into his embrace.

    "Be good you two, let''s y together".

    Feeling Daimon''s big hands groping their asses, both Erin and Aura let out low moans as they both pecked his cheeks before each one took one "battlefield".

    Erin focused on kissing Daimon from the side, while Aura slowly moved her body downwards until her head was between Daimon''s legs.

    Aura''s nose wrinkled a couple of times before she ripped Daimon''s boxers, revealing his now semi erect thing.

    Her nose was suddenly assaulted by Daimon''s manly scent which she loved, resulting in her eyes bing lust filled while her pussy started leaking its nectar.

    Aura was about to give Daimon''s dick the first lick when she heard Erin saying.

    "I still can''t believe you managed to make this violent wolf be in heat so easily".

    Aura softly snorted, but she then blushed noticing it wasn''t exactly a lie, female werewolves would sometime have years where they would feel the urge to find a partner, but that is usually something that happens to those below the one-hundred-year mark.

    Back then when she was younger, she didn''t experience that, and now every time she smelled Daimon, either she was in the mood or not, she couldn''t help but feel her pussy tingle, not like she didn''t like it, but it was certainly something weird for a two thousand years old werewolf like her, to be so "sensitive" towards her partner.

    Daimon smiled, he ced his hand on Aura''s head and touched her ears, enjoying the silky feeling of her fur, making Erin feel ignored which resulted in she cing her breasts on Daimon''s face.

    Daimon let go of Aura''s head and instead fondled Erin''s breasts before he started licking her nipples.

    "Hmm~", Erin let out a cute moan when Daimon gently bit her nipple, not without giving Aura a cunning smile.

    Aura ignored Erin''s provocation and instead gobbled the tip of Daimon''s dick in one go, she allowed herself to enjoy the taste and twirled her tongue around it, while she moved her hand downwards and rubbed the petals of her flower with her fingers.<sub> </sub>

    Soon wet sloppy sounds and soft moans filled the room.

    Erin felt Daimon''s piercing gaze on her and she smiled as she moved her body upwards, while Aura was lost in her own world sucking Daimon''s dick, Erin sat on Daimon''s face.

    Her body shivered as she felt Daimon''s breath on her pussy, but she bit her lips and suffocated the moan that nearly escaped her mouth.

    "Hyaa~", or at least that was the idea, but Daimon maliciously spread her pussy lips and shoved his tongue inside of her making Erin arch her back as she came a little, with Daimon''s sharp senses, he could differentiate the two different yet sweet and enticing scents of Erin and Aura''s love juices which were now lingering in the air and that only excited him even more.

    Aura felt Daimon''s thing getting bigger in her mouth and she closed her eyes before she increased her pace, swallowing nearly three-quarter parts of the whole thing.

    Daimon lowly growled, Aura''s warm and mouth got tighter the deeper he went, and she was sucking his thing quite hard, to the point that he knew he wasn''t going tost long, not to mention Erin grinding her pussy against him which was also a big turn on.

    He grabbed Erin''s ass and held he in ce as he twirled his tongue inside of her, while also squeezing her plumb ass with his hands.

    "Nnnngh~", Erin moaned, she has been enduring the urge to jump on Daimon since early in the morning, so she couldn''t hold back her orgasm.

    Her love juices drenched Daimon''s face, but he didn''t let even a single drop waste, and instead drank everything, the feeling of euphoria he got from it was on the same level as when he drank blood.

    Something that Erin exined to be in part due to her race, but it was hard to believe because, Liz and ine''s didn''t have this effect and this only started after Erin started practicing that charm spell, she used to tease Daimon from time to time.

    While Erin was in cloud nine enjoying her orgasm, Aura''s body trembled, her legs gave out as she spilled her juices on the bed sheets, she also took Daimon''s dick down to the base.

    "Kuh", Daimon gently moved Erin cing her next to them while she was recovering from her orgasm, and grabbed Aura''s head with his hands before he helped move it up and down to the rhythm that he wanted.

    One could say that he was going quite rough on her, but her tail happily wagging around and her fingers which didn''t stop rubbing her pussy, were an unrefusable proof that she was enjoying this as much as Daimon.

    Daimon changed is position to be sitting on the bed and pressed down Aura''s head against his crotch while he unleashed his load deep in her mouth.

    "Glup~Gulp~Gulp", gulping sounds echoed through the room as Aura enjoyed the "fruits" of her job, during the whole thing her tail didn''t stop moving around, even her cute ears twitched from time to time.

    Daimon let go of her in case she wanted to take a breath, but Aura kept sucking him until he waspletely clean before she let go of the thing.

    Her pretty yellow eyes were glowing a bit, as she gave Daimon a "predatory" gaze before she changed her position to be on all fours, her tail moved aside giving Daimon full ess to her ass and pussy.

    Due to her previous orgasm, the whole area waspletely soaked, even the little amount of silver fur that crowned her pussy was glistening due to her love juices.

    She moved her ass sidewards as if she was tempting Daimon to enter her, an invitation he was happy to ept.

    Daimon positioned himself behind Aura, before he let his body rest on her back, she was quite wet and all, but the fact that her body was quite small still worried Daimon a bit, but that could be solved with a little bite.

    His fangs erged and he shoved them on that pretty pale neck of Aura''s, her whole body shivered as her love juices dripped out of her flower.

    Daimon rubbed her pussy with his hand, before he spread her butt cheeks and to give her cute pink back door a couple of licks.

    "Hmmm~", as always Aura immediately reacted, which made obvious for Daimon she was weak to anal, or maybe it was just because they had only done that way, that she had taken a liking to it.

    Daimon couldn''t hold back anymore after onest lick, he rubbed the tip of his dick against her entrance, before he pushed it inside of her, like always Aura was tight beyond words, if it weren''t for this "heat" she had when smelling Daimon''s scent and his bite, then he was sure she would end up sore no matter how gentle they did it.

    "Wuuuh~", Aura let out a cute sound as she felt Daimon spreading her tightly shut insides apart, a huge sensation of bliss ran through her body every time they became one, it was something addictive.

    But what she loved the most was that even if Daimon knew she would be okay even if he went rough at her, he still waited for her to get used to it every time, it might be silly, if you think she is the older one here, but she simply liked to be spoiled by him.

    Daimon let his body rest on Aura''s back and he gently kissed her neck making her insides tighten around his dick, as he whispered.

    "Once I return from the exploration, I want to see my cute Aura''s other form, okay?".

    Aura shily nodded, Daimon smiled and then grabbed her by her waist as he started pounding her.

    Her sweet cries woke Erin up and she joined them.

 Chapter 229 Cute Wolf & Cunning Fox (Part 2) R-18

    "Pah~Pah~Pah".

    While Aura was pretty much pushing her ass backwards, helping Daimon to prate her deeper with every thrust.

    While Daimon''s penis moved in and out of Aura, his body was tightly wrapped in by Erin''s tail, while their lips were pressed against each other''s.

    "Hmm~", Erin suddenly stopped the kiss, her head moved backwards as she let out a cute moan, her eyes looked downwards just to see Daimon''s fingers ying with the petals of her flower.

    A cunning smile flourished in her face as she pecked Daimon, her tail let go of him before she used it wrap them both, making them closer than before, all this while she softly moaned and whispered at him.

    "You are always weed down there~", she said with an innocent voice.

    Daimon''s eyes blurred a bit, his heartbeat increased, the contrast created by Erin''s explosive figure and her yful behavior was a killer, still it didn''t take Daimon too much to realize she was teasing him with that charm spell, which earned her a spank in that plump ass of hers.

    "Hyaaa~", Erin let out an exaggerated moan that echoed through the room, she then put on an expression as if she was being intimidated and wrapped her tail around herself in a try to "hide" while peeked at him sometimes.

    Daimon was speechless, this side of Erin was something he really liked, while others would be probably driven mad by her innately high charm, he got a different reaction, he was tempted and he felt the urge to conquer her.

    Which ultimately was Erin''s aim, so in the end even he couldn''t escape from her ns.

    Daimon chuckled as he gently pulled on Erin''s tail, until she "opened" a small space from which her face was visible, her long eyshes flustered as she kept that faked bullied expression, even her fox ears were t against her head perfectlyplementing the scene.

    "You pretty cunning fox¡­ you win this one", mumbled Daimon as he sighed.

    "Hehehe, you are still too green to win against me~", said Erin, her previously sad expression that could have warmed the heart of the coldest person, was nowhere to be seen, instead of that, a shameless smile took its ce.

    "Kuuh", Daimon felt Aura''s insides squeezing down on him, then something smooth and silky suddenly wrapped around his arm, he turned around to see Aura''s tail firmly holding onto his arm, while she looked back at him, with jealousy written all over her pretty face.

    "I know it''s impossible for Erin to not flirt with you, but now it''s my tu she mumbled.

    Daimonughed and after kissing Erin onest time, he let his body fall on top of Aura''s, before he pressed her below him against the bed.

    "If you wanted it rough, you should have said so, my cute master", said Aster as he nibbled on Aura''s cute ears.

    Aura''s body shivered, their bodies were practically stuck to each other right now, and she loved this feeling of Daimon embracing her as close as possible.

    "Wuuh~", her sweet cries soon filled the room, making Daimon get even harder than before.

    He stopped teasing her and grabbed her by her waist, inparison with her short stature and her breasts which perfectly fitted in his hands, her hips and ass were rather big something that happened probably due to all the training she did.

    And it was quite a turn on for Daimon, of course Aura knew that and that''s why she was grinding her ass against Daimon with a needy expression.

    "Nnnngh~", Aura suddenly moaned when Daimon started moving his hips back and forth, while he whispered sweet words at her ears.

    Thebination of moans, the bed creaks and the sound of Aura''s ass shing against Daimon''s thighs created a lewd melody which soon led to they both reaching their limit.

    Aura grabbed a pillow and buried her head on it, she raised her ass and wagged her tail, her body suddenly jolted when Daimon pulled on her tail, making her insides tighten around his dick.

    Daimon ced one of his hands on Aura''s waist while he grabbed her tail with the other one, and then he lost himself in the pleasure of thrusting in and out of her tight ass.

    Not even a few minutester, Aura''s toes curled as she reached her orgasm, she was hiding her face with the pillow and somewhat muffled her moans, but therge amount of love juices that leaked out of her pussy gave her away.

    Daimon wasn''t different, he growled and held Aura''s ass in ce as he came inside of her, a huge sensation of relief and pride flooded his mind as he ejacted a big load of sperm in her ass.

    He only let go of her once his ejaction stopped, Aura''s legs lost all their strength and she fell powerless on the bed, the sight of her little hole from which his white stuff was leaking only got Daimon hornier.

    Daimon licked his lips but he regained his control and after kissing her nape he let her rest before he focused his attention on Erin.<sub> </sub>

    He has been listening sloppy wet noisesing from her side all this time while he was pounding Aura, and as a proof of it, there was a wet stain on the bed sheets around Erin.

    Daimon saw the predacious gaze in her eyes and he opened his arms just to be tackled by her.

    Daimon fell backwards on the bed with Erin riding on top of him, she rubbed her pussy lips against Daimon''s dick while she looked at his eyes.

    "Are you sure you want to leave such a beautiful woman alone, what if I look for a lover?".

    Daimon caressed her face before he dragged her into his embrace, his hands then moved backwards until he let his fingers sink in that soft bouncy ass of hers, the sensation was simply out of this world.

    "Your actions don''t match you words you know, besides forget about finding a lover, after I''m done with you all at weekend, you''ll have troubles to sit down".

    In a rare asion Erin''s big fluffy tail wagged on its own, meaning she was really looking forward to it,pared to Aura she had better control over it, so normally all its movements are made by her, but this time it simply escaped her control.

    Erin smiled; she kissed Daimon one more time before she turned her body around with her big ass pointed at him.

    Her hand moved downwards, after giving Daimon''s dick a couple of strokes she slowly lowered her hips, after fighting a bit to get it inside, she took some of her love juices and applied it on the tip of Daimon''s dick.

    "Mphhn~", this time it was rtively easier for Daimon to slid inside of her, her back arched a bit as Daimon rubbed a sweet spot making here a bit.

    While Erin wanted to stop for a second to catch her breath, Daimon smiled, he suddenly hugged her from behind and without any warning, he grabbed Erin by her waist and made her move up and down.

    "W-Wait Dai¡­ Ahhhng~", Daimon didn''t let Erin say anything and instead thrusted his hips upwards while he also moved her moved attacking her from both sides, what''s more he even gently bit her neck, using his fangs as he didn''t want to end things so soon, but the thrill Erin got, knowing he could literally make her cum if he wanted to was enough by itself to make her insides squirm.

    Ultimately, she started moving by herself taking Daimon''s thing as deep as she could, the big ass bounced on Daimon''sp and soon sloppy wet sounds could be hearding from where they were connected.

    After a couple of minutes of being teased Erin finally couldn''t hold back and reached her climax, her insides coiled around Daimon''s dick, but he managed to endure the urge to cum, and instead continued pounding Erin even while she was orgasming.

    Which resulted in an overwhelming amount of pleasure for both of them, at some point Aura regained her senses and hugged Daimon from behind while she observed how his thing was getting buried in Erin''s ass without mercy.

    "Schlick~Schlick~Schlick".

    Daimon felt her horny gaze piercing him, so how could he neglect his cute wolf girl, one of his hands found its way into her legs and before he noticed, Aura was rubbing her pussy against not only his hand but his forearm, spreading her nectar all over her it, as if she wanted to mark him other women knew he was her partner.

    Ignoring Aura who was pleasing herself with his hand, Daimon noticed Erin trying to slow down her pace a bit and he smiled as he whispered at her.

    "I can''t win you in shamelessness, but I can make you docile".

    Erin turned her head around and stole a kiss from Daimon, her little tongue entangled with his while she started to grind her ass against him.

    Daimon felt as if he was being distracted by her, but he inwardly shrugged and instead focused on enjoying the sweetness of Erin''s lips and the softness of her body.

    Today it seems the roles inverted, while Aura got off to some rough y, Erin soon reached her third climax in this lovey-dovey position, while being embraced by Daimon.

    But she wasn''t the only one, Daimon tightened his arms around Erin and stopping the kiss he bit her neck, the euphoria of drinking her bloodbined with the pleasure of sex, was simply too much to handle.

    Erin felt Daimon''s thing pulsating inside of her, before her stomach was filled with a warm sensation, needless to say but her love juices also spilled all over the ce, she stayed connected to him enjoying the aftertaste of her orgasm.

    Daimon slowly took out his thing and left her to rest, the happy satisfied smile in Erin''s face made him realize that even if he took the lead, she will win every time.

    "You little cunning fox", he mumbled as he caressed her long ck hair, before he jumped on Aura to continue where they left.

    For the next couple of hairs or so, the room was filled with moans and other lewd sounds, sometimes only from one girl, sometimes the other and sometime both of them.

    Liz, ina and Aisha who were still kind of drunk at the other side of the bed, had to block their ears in order tog et some sleep, but judging by their smiling expressions and the small wet spots on their panties, it was obvious their dreams weren''t far from reality.

 Chapter 230 The Last Preparations (Part 1)

    After a couple of hours of moans and giggles, the bedroom suddenly became quiet, once Aura and Erin managed to catch up their breath, they moved towards Daimon and hugged him.

    There on therge bed, Daimonid down with Erin and Aura snuggling on his chest, they stared at each other with apetitive but fully satisfied expression in their faces, until Daimon tightened his grip on their asses.

    "That''s enough for tonight you two", he said as he fondled their round butts, despite how different they were from each other, the feeling was amazing.

    Erin giggled as she moved her body upwards a bit enveloping Daimon''s right side with her tail, making Aura pout as she tightly clung to his left arm.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, these two have been draining the life from him for more than four hours, but were stillpeting with each other.

    Erin stuck her tongue at Aura and then got up the bed, she swayed her hips and her tail as she left to the bathroom, giving Daimon a tempting gaze.

    Daimon could feel Aura''s intense gaze on him and he chuckled before he kissed her forehead.

    "Let''s take a bath together, then time to sleep, okay?".

    "Mm", Aura nodded and they followed Erin to the bath, while on the bed theypeted with each other, in the bathroom they acted like diligent wives, properly cleaning Daimon''s body using theirs and liquid soap.

    Of course, Daimon returned the favor helping them apply shampoo on their hair and tails.

    ''Even wet, their fur feels so silky'', thought Daimon as he rinsed Erin''s tail, unlike what he originally thought when he first met them, their tails had nothing below them.

    The base of their tails was on the lower back and had many nerve terminations which was like the "control".

    "Pah!".

    "Come here you two", Daimon patted their asses as he finished washing off the soap and then dragged both Aura and Erin into the bathtub with him.

    Erin smirked imagining what would other people''s expression be like if they were to know, that two out of the five female Half Emperors which existed, were now sitting on thep of a member of the younger generation, it would for sure cause amotion and that is without mentioning the fact that they just had a passionate love making session a few moments ago.

    Once they had enough, they returned to the bed where the sheets were "magically" changed to clean ones.

    Daimon smiled, he got on the bed and gently ced Aisha, Liz and ine next to him, Erinid down and Daimon used her body as his pillow while the other girls hugged him, with Aura taking the middle spot.

    While enjoying the softness of their naked bodies cuddling with him, Daimon covered them with a nked and turned off the lights.

    ¡­

    The night went on, naturally the new ranking of the elite ss for the first year was released, causing an uproar as the top fifteen changed quite a bit, but it''s not like it mattered too much since Daimon wasn''t bringing anyone besides those to whom he sold spots, his ssmates and allies.

    Normally Daimon is never the first one to wake up, one of the girls takes the role to wake him up,tely it has been Aura since she has to leave early to her office, but this time when morning came Daimon''s eyes suddenly opened.

    His amethyst like eyes were glowing as he frowned, but after recognizing the familiar roof and feeling the supple skin of the girls which were now in his embrace, he let out a sigh of relief.

    ''Daimon, are you okay?'', Narasha''s sleepy voice sounded in Daimon''s head, since her connection is more direct with her, she can easily notice his mood, and the changed on it, and a few seconds ago, she felt him feeling agitated out of the blue.

    Daimon remained silent for a couple of seconds before he inwardly nodded.

    ''I''m fine, I just had a weird dream¡­'', he mumbled.

    He came out of his daze noticing that with his movements, a certain wolf girl was now rubbing her eyes as she woke up.

    "Yawnn~", Aura let out a cute sound as she opened her eyes, her hair which is a bit rebellious by innate, was now messy which only make her charmer in Daimon''s eyes.

    Since the girls will be waking up anyway, he dragged Aura closer to him and kissed her pretty lips, which immediately woke her up, once Daimon let go of her, he followed with Aisha.

    "Darling~", Aisha''s eyes opened as their lips pressed against each other, she caressed her son''s face and then lovingly kissed him to her heart''s content.

    Once Aisha had enough, Daimon continued with Liz, who honestly sucked at feigning to be asleep, even before he kissed her, she had a big smile on her face while her heart was beating too fast for someone who was sleeping.

    Still, Daimon kissed her before continuing with ine, a tender loving glint shed through his eyes as he kissed her, just by sharing a bed with her, her passive skillforted him, that same skill as well as the girls cuddling with him, was what helped him ovee the concurrent dream where he saw Aisha dying against the manticore.<sub> </sub>

    ine who was actually asleep felt the care and love in the kiss and her eyes slowly opened, as she was weed by the scene of her lover spoiling her first thing in the morning.

    Daimon caressed her face a couple of times before he focused his attention on the mother, Erin used her fluffy tail to lift Daimon''s body, just like when he was younger and turned him to fall on top of her as she tightly hugged him, burying his face on her breasts.

    "Hmm~".

    Daimon struggled to move upwards and then bit her neck so that she was forced to let go of him, a chance Daimon took to kiss her lips.

    Once the kiss stopped, Erin licked her lips and tried to drag Daimon''s into her embrace one more time, but failed because Daimon jumped out of the bed.

    "Get updies, we have a lot of things to do today", said Daimon as he went ahead to the bath, he wasn''t lying besides the reunion with his friends, he also needed to pay Dimas a "visit", to decide whether he was an ally or a threat, with Erin''s heart mirror help, he now also had infinity eyes, so he wanted to test if he could decipher the inscription from before.

    Since the reunion was decided to take ce at morning, they all took a quick shower before dressing up to go to the Happy Wanderer, however Calvin''s grandfather seemed to have blocked the space so Aura transported them outside.

    And they were weed by Mireya who greeted them as she opened the door, besides Mireya, the Risha sisters and their mothers were already there, Loren was helping Mireya set the table, while Calvin was sleeping upstairs.

    "Good morning", after exchanging greets, Daimon and the girls entered and took a seat, not without noticing the change in Liliana''s aura, she didn''t advance so she hasn''t refined the petals of the snow lotus, but the mana around her was denser probably because she kept it near her while sleeping.

    "Are you three feeling better?", asked Daimon to Yvonne and the others, they certainly looked better than yesterday, the slightly awkward atmosphere that was surrounding them also disappeared.

    "Yeah, thanks for asking~", answered Leslie with her usual energetic voice.

    "Yeah, we just needed some sleep¡­ also thanks for cutting that part of the repetition", even Yvonne seemed to have returned to her calm and self.

    ''I guess the side effects of their spells wore off'', concluded Daimon, everyone''s attention was suddenly drawn by a loud sounding from the stairs.

    "Ahh, damn my head is killing me", Calvin who apparently tripped and fell downstairs, got up while he rubbed his forehead, earning a scold from Mireya.

    "Who told you to drink until you fell asleep, I swear everyday you be more like that drunkard", said Mireya as she pointed at Solomon who was sleeping on the floor hugging a barrel of his liqueur.

    Calvin ignored his aunt and instead greeted Daimon and the others.

    "Good morning ss rep, I''m sorry that you have to hear my old aunt''s nags so early in the morning".

    Mireya snorted but was helped to calm down by Loren who was bringing the dishes from the kitchen, Calvin stopped arguing with his aunt and helped her too, the table was quiterge since there will be more people than yesterdaying.

    Aleah also came from upstairs, her eyes sparkled the very moment she saw Daimon, but her enthusiasm was stopped in cold as she heard him saying.

    "We''ll sparter once I finish some things I have to do".

    "¡­ Fine", she said with a small pout which made Calvinugh out loud.

    "As expected of the ss rep, even the wildest "beasts" can only resign and¡­ aghh!", Calvin couldn''t finish his sentence before Aleah smacked him on the ground getting thumbs up from Mireya and also waking up Solomon.

    "Brats you are too noisy¡­ let this old man join you for breakfast", he said as he gulped down whatever was left of liqueur in the barrel he hugged to sleep.

    Not even a couple of minutester, someone knocked at the door before three groups joined them.

    Zein who was followed by Michael and Haylee and Leena who brought Gabriel and Dana andstly the elder Ulises with Arianna.

    As Mireya was about to close the door a middle-aged man also approached the door, Mireya turned to see Loren and saw her nodding.

    The man closed the door behind him before he respectfully bowed as he introduced himself.

    "Vereth Lefay greets seniors Ghrish and Blitz as well asdies Argent and Revy".

    Calvin nearly tripped with his own feet after listening to the man''s name, he was none other than Loren''s father, in other words his future father-inw.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt Vereth''s worried gaze on him and he raised an eyebrow, since now everyone was here, then the reunion could start

 Chapter 231 The Last Preparations (Part 2)

    After Loren''s father arrived things got a bit awkward for a split of a second, especially for Daimon since Vereth couldn''t hide the worried expression he had every time he looked at him.

    But he also looked at his daughter smiling and chatting with Mireya and Calvin as they put the dishes on the table, and ultimately sighed, ignoring the five Half Emperors who could kill him on the spot he spoke what was on his mind.

    "Some generations ago, my ancestor trusted the wrong person and my family paid the price, I know that none of the people here were alive back when it happened¡­ or at least were not in a position to do anything about it".

    "But still, it''s a hard to swallow pill to get a call from my only daughter to be asked to trust the destiny of my family, to people she met not too long ago".

    Solomon who was drinking from his barrel turned around to see Vereth, back then when the Lefay family was set up and stripped from their records and spells, he was a kid, that''s right the only survivor from those times is actually him.

    "Lefay kid, did you know I had ten brothers and was considered the weakest and less talented out of them, my dad once told me I would achieve nothing in my life and would die as a loser".

    "And now 92,000 yearster, I was the only one that survived, took the control of my family and reformed it".

    "You said it yourself, back then even if I were to have any goodwill to your family, I had to way to help you, but that''s an error I''m correcting today, if I can bet all what I constructed in my life, in the monster little Erin and little Aura raised, then you can do the same".

    "Besides¡­ we''ll be family sooner orter Hahaha!".

    Mireya who was surprised to hear her father saying something serious, suddenly felt the urge to choke him, with her own hands.

    "Can''t you act ording to your position, you old drunkard¡­ where are you going to find other girl who can tolerate Calvin", she mumbled as she helped Loren who''s face waspletely red, sit down.

    Forgetting about their statuses, even the other Half Emperorsughed, including Leena who most of the times had a stern expression.

    Vereth, couldn''t help but change his vision of them, he knew the full story of how his family fell in disgrace, but this situation which was developing in front of him waspletely different.

    ''No one is looking down on anyone, nor trying to get the leader position or taking advantage of the others, how could this happen in a matter of days'', he thought.

    Thousands of years of "business bonds" only and indifference were left behind, just because of the ck-haired youth which was sitting a few meters away from him.

    "Licht young master, my daughter means to me more than my own life, she trusts you, so I''m the same, my Lefay family will fight for you".

    Daimon cleared his throat, that pledge sounded as if Vereth was handing his daughter to him, but that wasn''t the case.

    "Ahem, this is the contract that everyone has signed, once you are in, there is no going back".

    Vereth took the contract and after reading it, he was dumbfounded, unlike what he expected it wasn''t a master-servant contract, it was an alliance.

    "To give a family with very few Archmages and low battle prowess in general, the same standing as everyone¡­ you sure are quite different to the rumors", said Vereth as he signed it with his blood officially bing a part of the group.

    Daimon chuckled, ording the rumors he was blood thirsty maniac who tricked women and attacked anyone who didn''t align with his interests.

    ''That reminds me, that I still haven''t asked those two how is Alexander''s "affair" going'', thought Daimon.

    Now that her father signed the contract, Loren extended her index finger and white light gathered on its tip forming small marble sized ball of light, unlike the thunder arrow used by Aisha, she couldn''t throw it so instead she pushed it into a cup and burned a hole through it.

    Vereth''s mouth was wide open as she bbed.

    "O-Offensive type light spell, where did you get it¡­ why didn''t you tell me?".

    Loren scratched the back of her head as she stole a gaze at Daimon, Vereth got the message and was more than grateful, for the first time since they were betrayed, a star ranked member of the young generation had a spell to defend and it was a strong one on top of that.

    Now that Loren''s problem was solved, the breakfast started and everyone dug in, as always, the food prepared by Calvin was quite nice.

    "Mm?", while Daimon was munching on a muffin, he got a message on his sigil lector, the sigil was a blue heart with a crown on top of it, which drew Erin and Aura''s attention.

    "I got what you asked, open the door", the message was pretty straightforward, this time Daimon stood up and opened the door, revealing that Lydia was outside.

    Although she was offered to join them, she had to return to her academy so after handing Daimon andrge coffer and receiving a bottle and a small case, she left not without saying.

    "You got some guts, destroying Arthur''s pride like that in front of everyone, stealing from Lars and Maxim right in their faces¡­ be careful of their disciples inside the magic ruin".

    Daimon epted her warning and nodded in exchange.

    "The list of participants will be announcedter, just tell vice principal Ste the name of the guys from your academy, she''ll take them into ount".

    Lydia became a light blue sh which shot itself towards the sky, before Daimon closed the door.

    He opened the coffer and took out a case made out of red ss as well as well as two bottles, one containing a ck liquid while the other had a purple dust inside of it.

    Daimon handed Leslie the red case, as for the bottles one was for Yvonne and thest one was actually for Haylee.

    Of course, they didn''t resist the urge to see the contents of their respective things and opened the containers.<sub> </sub>

    "Sun Lily".

    "Water from the Nightmare Pond".

    "Purple Death Powder".

    The Half Emperors listed the names of the things, since the girls didn''t know some of them, needless to say but they were surprised, those three things were treasures from other academies led by Magus Kings, maybe weaker than Lydia but still able to stall Half Emperors.

    "Lydia wanted for some reason stctite milk and a piece of the thunder nimbus vine, so I made a deal with her, and she convinced those other stubborn guys to "share" some of their treasures with us".

    Yvonne and Leslie had slightly troubled expressions, but their mothers were smiling from ear to ear.

    The Risha sisters seemed to have something to say but they were stopped by Daimon speaking first.

    "We''ll discuss about itter, for now I need to ask you all something¡­ have you ever killed before?".

    A slightly awkward silence fell in the room, but Daimon didn''t like to beat around the bush, that question was specially directed to Leena, Dana was the youngest and the weakest, meaning that if she hesitated to attack an enemy, she will die, no matter if he gave her protection items from the system.

    She wasn''t a soulmate so there was a limit as to how much he could do for her and the same applied to the others, that''s why he shared the resources he got from Lars with them, even going as far as to trade with other academies with Lydia''s help, it was all with the intention that they had a better chance of survival, in Loren''s case it was impossible to find a light treasure in the White Fang gxy, that''s why he handed her that spell instead.

    Some of them actually nodded, Aleah, Arianna, Michael, Calvin and to Daimon''s surprise Leslie.

    "Normally I wouldn''t meddle in other people''s teachings, but those who haven''t, must get used to the thought or preferably "practice", before we go to the magic ruin on Monday".

    Of course, everyone didn''t know what to say, killing might bemon in this world but that doesn''t mean people is indifferent towards it, or at least those who are in this room aren''t like that, even Zein whose tittle involves the word "assassin", raised an eyebrow, because he tried to keep his granddaughter''s hands clean until she was an adult at least.

    "You all saw what I did to Alexander, I''ll be honest with you, no one below the seventh- or eighth-star rank, either mage or knight is a life danger threat for me and yet I have a bad premonition about that ce".

    The key point here was that a mage lord was allowed to go with them, as long as the badge bearer solved whatever test they had to, so it made sense that even someone as monstrous as Daimon was concerned about his ssmates.

    The adults ultimately nodded, in peaceful times mages were as good as scientists and theorists, but in war times, they were ultimately warriors too, so this lesson was bound to happen sooner orter.

    Everyone was lost in his thoughts as they continued with their meals, Leena soon approached Daimon with a smiling expression on her face.

    ? "I still want a piece of the thunder nimbus vine, in exchange I offer a bottle of one thousand years old Meteor Iron Essence, directly gotten from the principal of the Lancaster academy".

    Daimon''s eyes sparkled, that was the resource which escaped his hands, the one he wanted for Aisha, it was simr to the stctite milk but for metal affinity mages after all.

    "Deal", said Daimon as he handed Leena the thunder nimbus vine, which will probably be pushing Dana to the one-star mage realm during this weekend.

    Leena smiled and then excused herself with her niece and nephew, and they weren''t the only ones, Zein and Vereth did the same not too long after, leaving a slightly depressed Calvin who now had nothing else to do but to go upstairs and refine the stctite milk, surprisingly Solomon followed him, meaning he will be training him too.

    The only ones left were Aleah, Arianna, the Risha sisters and mothers as well as Daimon and the girls and Richard who was now giving Daimon a weird gaze.

    Again, Daimon went straight to the point.

    "You three have been acting weird since the tournament, so I guess it has something to do with that, am I right?".

    Despite they ying each with the treasures Daimon handed them, the three sisters answered at the same time.

    "Yes".

    But then their mothers took over, or more urately Anya and Veronica designated Irina to speak in behalf the three.

    "How much do you know about the Risha family?", she asked, making Daimon frown.

    After making memory, besides the fact that they were rted to bird type magic beasts, the Risha family seemed to be involved in some serious matters, despite them not having a Half Emperor, Richard for example was the instructor of the field marshal, there was also the thing about the light faction trying to get Yvonne and the others to marry their young generation.

    "Not too much, besides what''s public of course".

    Irina nodded; it was supposed to be like that after all, she then pointed at herself as well as to Anya and Veronica before saying.

    "Our branches descend from a legendary beast, which give us a big boost in battle prowess, but also takes a toll in our emotions, so we need to find a "center" to keep us in check¡­ or this happens".

    As soon as Irina finished speaking, the three of them used something simr to what Yvonne and the others used at their matches, resulting in they manifesting wings, but they were different.

    Veronica''s fire wings dimmed from time to time, also the mes weren''t bright like Leslie''s, in Irina''s case the ck mist feathers fell from time to time creating holes on them,st but not least Anya, the light blue crystal-like parts who should act as the base of the wings were all full of cracks.

    Their wings were pretty but at the same time evoked sadness.

 Chapter 232 The Last Preparations (Part 3)

    "Mom!".

    "Okay I get it".

    Four different voices could be suddenly heard, the first three were Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie whose faces were a bit pale, especially Yvonne whose eyes had a yellow glint shing on them.

    As for the fourth one, it was Daimon of course, as soon as he injected mana on his eyes, he could see the state in which some of the circuits of the Risha mothers were, the mana circuits on their shoulders were being damaged with each second that passed.

    Although it wasn''t to the point of being a life threat, it would for sure cause problems once it got past a certain level, Daimon actually turned to see Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana but didn''t find anything wrong with them.

    The Risha mothers dispelled their wings and then Veronica threw a bottle with a multicolored liquid, which they gulped down in a single go.

    Daimon''s pupils contracted in surprise, their mana circuits healed in a matter of seconds, which shouldn''t be possible, there were potions to heal wounded mana circuits of course, but the fastest one took at least a couple of days.

    Now Daimon was in a bit of a predicament now, because he saw something that not even Half Emperor could see, on the other hand judging by the smiles in Irina, Anya and Veronica''s faces, that was the idea, as they could have told him and he would have believed them.

    "I never bothered to hide I could see through others while being with them, so why go to such length just for an exnation?", asked Daimon as he looked at Yvonne.

    Since the first day they met, he publicly "unveiled" Boris''s disguise saying he was an Arch ranked, then when told him about his mana flow, he somewhat admitted his eyes were special too.

    "It was a "leap of faith", because our next petition might be a bit selfish", mumbled Irina.

    "I will assume you somehow could see what happens to our mana circuits when we use the legacy spells, the manifestations of our wings are corrupted too, so I guess it''s not hard to notice as well".

    "We three couldn''t find our "center", but needed the power in order to survive, so we cheated a bit, the requirements are full thrust, admiration and¡­ for the one who takes that role in our lives to be of the opposite gender".

    "So, we three ended up taking each other as the recement of our centers, and managed to somewhat use the legacy spells but the recoil stopped being only emotional and also affected us in other ways, in other words we are imitations".

    "We die a bit when we use our wings", said Anya with her unintentionally cold voice, dropping such a serious sentence without exining more about it.

    Seeing the grim reaction of the others, Irina bitterly smiled as she borated.

    "Ahem, Anya is wrong, we do get harmed by using our wings, but it''s only temporal thanks to Veronica finding a cure for it, it does hurt like hell though because our wings not only harm the enemy but us in the process, they are essentially a double-edged sword".

    Veronica then took over, her eyes sparkled with curiosity as she looked at Daimon.

    "If your eyes are as special as Iri thought, then you know that our daughters aren''t the same, they were capable of manifesting their wings without harming themselves, the emotional side effects are normal and can be learned to be controlled".

    "Thanks to you", added Anya.

    Daimon tapped his finger on the table while he was lost in his thoughts.

    He stole some gazes at Yvonne and the others from time to time, and noticed they had a mix of apologetic and ashamed expressions, something which others might confuse as love including him if it wasn''t for the eight years, he has spent every day with his soulmates.

    <o>,m He who has experienced the warmth of Aisha, the arguing and bragging of Liz, the gentleness of ine, Aura''s both tender and worrisome sides as well as Erin''s freedom and yfulness, even Narasha who was still learning about emotions expressed her support and love to him as her sole life partner, so he could tell they didn''t really love him, it was more of a crush, probably born out of that time when he helped them deal with the guys from the light faction.</o>

    It would be a lie to say he didn''t find them pretty, they were also good girls, into whom he has started to thrust enough for him to consider them friends, to the point that he was going to use the items of the system to protect them to the best of his capacities inside of the magic ruin.

    But at least for now that was the limit of how he felt about them.

    ''Everything seems to have changed since I got the infinity eyes'', he thought, since that day he felt different, leaving aside the creation of a new skill type, it was as if some kind of weight was lifted from his chest, there was also that weird dream he had recently.

    That being said Daimon didn''t doubt about his feelings for his soulmates, whether he got too close or epted them after knowing them for too little time, with the exception of Aisha of course.

    None of that mattered as they all entered his heart during the past eight years where he got to know them better than anyone, the sides that other people couldn''t even imagine existed, he knew them all.

    Daimon came out of his daze feeling a couple of gazes piercing him, one of them was of course Aisha, and the others were the Risha mothers, he turned to see Yvonne since she was the one that he more or less has had more contact with before saying.

    "Yvi, what is my favorite color, what is the book I have read the most, what are the spells I have learned, what is the thing I hate the most and the thing I like most¡­".

    While he was speaking, Yvonne understood the meaning of his words and a realization hit her like a bolt out of the blue.

    ''We don''t know much about each other'', she thought.<sub> </sub>

    Noticing Yvonne got his point, Daimon then turned to see Irina and the other mothers as he gave them his answer.

    "I don''t mind being their "center", I can assure you they can thrust me as I consider them my friends, and leaving the admiration aside which is up to them, I''m a guy so I guess I fulfill all the conditions, but it''s too early to go further than that¡­ I can''t just ignore the feelings of the others who are now part of my life", he said as he looked at Liz and ine as they were the only ones publicly recognized as his future wives.

    The others of course inwardly smiled knowing they were included.

    Richard who has remained silent just drinking on the other side of the table, rose his cup and thenughed out loud.

    "HAHAHA, kid you sure are one of a kind!".

    He then stood up and pointed at Yvonne which was still in introspection.

    "I do feel like punching you for not recognizing how beautiful my little Yvi is though, but it brings joy to the heart of this old man knowing you aren''t a silk pants, despite being engaged to those two at such a young age, maybe the curse of those who have the ability to learn those spells having marrying to idiots might find its end in this generation".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, still he epted Richard''s toast, finding thatst part about a curse a bit interesting, apparently the Risha family was quite more than what meets the eye.

    The slight tense atmosphere which was created, dissipated.

    The Risha sisters especially were more rxed around Daimon now, and he could understand them, being affected by your lineage is no joke, the memory of the first time the passive "charm" activated without his consent was till fresh in his mind.

    Although he enjoyed the result, Daimon couldn''t stand the feeling of not being in control, that was a part of why he strived to be stronger too, Yvonne and the others were experiencing something slightly simr to that.

    ''Being a teen is tough even in another world'', he concluded.

    "Wait, if they were able to learn these spells and use each other as a recement for the legacy spells, then why didn''t you teach them to them, I bet that if they used them in the admission trials, Alexander wouldn''t have gotten the fourth rank?", asked Daimon to the Risha mothers.

    Irina fidgeted with her fingers for a second before saying.

    "Whatever you already know the center thing so I guess there is no point in hiding it, we can''t "teach" these spells, nor record them, they are linked to our lineage and suddenly appear in our mind, our daughters are the third generation that has had them¡­ and the first ones to actually find a center".

    "And these three little girls didn''t tell us, so it was also a surprise for us to see the real appearance of the wings our races should have in action at the tournament".

    "Daughter grow and get married forgetting about their mothers, I guess that''s how it works", said Veronica with a feigned said expression.

    "Mm, Lili''s heart has melted".

    "Mom!", the three daughters yelled at their mothers, which made everyone in the room tough.

    Seeing Daimonughing at them Leslie decided to get back at him.

    "While others were ready to kill to get us, you actually turned us down, I bet there are some people revolting in their infirmary beds right now~".

    Daimon smirked and then stood up before he walked towards Leslie and leaned on her shoulder as he whispered.

    "Oh, I just said it was too early, your performance on the tournament was quite something, even I would have been in trouble by those mes you know?".

    Leslie''s face became red as a tomato, which made Daimonugh, but he stopped without taking things too far.

    "The ss would be less interesting, if you three suddenly be distant, refine your treasures and I''ll see you at Monday".

    After saying that, Daimon nodded at Aura and they all disappeared including Arianna and Aleah.

    Leaving only Mireya, and the Risha mothers and daughters.

    Veronica giggled as she hugged her daughter from behind, taking her by surprise.

    "Well, isn''t my Leslie bing a bit bold, let mom teach you a couple of tricks so that he can''t escape from you hehehe".

    Irina and even Anya also turned to see their daughters with a weird glint shing on their eyes.

    ''Help", the three sisters all had the same thought as they were dragged by their mothers to the dormitories, for some "lessons" as well as to refine their respective gifts.

 Chapter 233 The Last Preparations (Part 4)

    With Aura using space shift Daimon and the others didn''t take too much time to arrive at their next destination, which was a good thing considering Aleah seemed ready to fight with her life on the line, if she couldn''t spar with Daimon.

    Now that the tournament was over, the training grounds of the academy returned to what they used to be, so Aura simply transported everyone to the private training grounds of the elite ss.

    As soon as they arrived Arianna turned to see Aleah and couldn''t help but bitterly smile, the other day she spent some time with her, Gina and Lana, just to realize that they weren''t exactlypatible.

    They ended up being in friendly terms, but Aleah was¡­ problematic, no matter where they took her, she somehow managed to get in a fight with someone, due to her straightforward personality.

    While Arianna wouldn''t mind helping in the fight if it was justified, most of the times it was caused due to her no filter mouth, she simply criticized what she didn''t like in front of the one she was talking about.

    At some point some older generation people got involved so, Ulises had to interfere, she then understood why Calvin called her a "walking disaster".

    That being said, it was actually heart relieving to have her as an ally on the battlefield.

    Aisha and the other girls sat on the floor and started casually chatting with each other, while Daimon and Aleah went up the tform.

    "Master¡­ are we just going to sit and not train or anything, isn''t it a waste of time?", asked Arianna as she sat next to Aura.

    Erin who was talking with Aisha, suddenly giggled before she answered to her question.

    "Little girl, you are on the same boat as us, so I will tell you a little secret, if it''s about little Daimon, we could even watch him sleep all the day without getting bored~".

    She then pointed at the tform where both Daimon and Aleah were actually smiling, something which could have been normal, if it weren''t for the fact that their mana and battle aura respectively, were shing causing explosions here and there.

    "Besides he looks like he is having fun".

    Arianna was speechless, the more she got closer to them, she realized Daimon was quite important for them, but again if she put herself in their ce, ording to the story of Daimon''s life who was known by the public, Erin supposedly adopted Daimon, Aisha was his only living rtive, Aura was his master which is equal to a parent or tutor, not to mention Liz and ine who were engaged to him.

    Still one thing that caught her attention was how close they were after spending just a few years together, that was entuated a few minutes ago when she saw Daimon giving his ssmates those resources, which would cause friends and family to argue, without expecting anything in return.

    In Arianna''s defense, Daimon''s case was an exception, normally those who end up in the same ss at the academy don''t be friends, the "normal" is for those from the same family/force to group.

    In some cases, those who are from ally families might get closer but that''s as far as it gets, that or rtionships developed thanks to marriage are the other option.

    That''s why Aisha, Liz and ine appreciated their friendship so much and the same could be said of Aura and Erin, because friends who didn''t look for the other for benefits, or some other ulterior motives were hard toe by.

    It''s not made on purpose but everyone belongs to a force or family, so ultimately after graduating they will return to said family and upy a position, and in most cases those who they shared a ssroom with, would end up being their enemies, maybe not on a battlefield but in an economic or respect seeking way.

    Unless someone was special enough to break from their origin, like the Greenwich Sage for example.

    By coincidence, luck, fate or however you want to call it, a group of people who either weren''t forced to anything by families like Calvin or Michael, or had the support of their loved ones, like Yvonne, Leslie, Liliana or Loren, ended up in a single ssroom, and in another strike of luck, they found someone who was capable enough to lead them.

    <o>,m Resulting in Richard''s words "A ss full of monsters".</o>

    And this is what has been making Arianna be lost in her thoughts recently, now that she spent more time with Lana and Gina, she realized they could have done much more if they joined hands before, and now they realized they somehow enjoyed thepany of the other, resulting in them bing friends all of a sudden, after one year or being maybe not enemies but indifferent towards the other.

    Arianna turned to see the ck-haired youth on the tform who had an excited expression as abination of ck and purple mana was being radiated out of his body, and she couldn''t help but think.

    ''An alpha is someone who inspires others to follow him with his strength and actions, but you are different, your sole presence helps others be a better version of themselves¡­ I wonder what in the world are you, I guess you are my senior brother now''.

    Having reached her conclusion, Arianna sat closer to Aisha, she watched her fight as a lightning user herself she was marveled by her spells, although it didn''t go along with her closebat style which was the another one of the reasons as to why Aura took her in, she still admired Aisha''s spells.

    ¡­

    Leaving the girls aside, on the tform Daimon and Aleah were getting heated up more and more with each sh.

    Aleah punched the ground destroying the shadow spikes which Daimon used to attack her, before she took some distance.

    "That spell you used against that Alexander guy, "Demon Coffin" was it, you are still dominating it right, how about you use it against me?".

    Daimon bitterly smiled as he yed with some lightning on his left hand and darkness on the right one.<sub> </sub>

    "Bncing two elements to coexist in a single spell isn''t easy you know, especially two whose natures are so different like lightning and darkness".

    Aleah smiled showing her fangs at Daimon as she giggled.

    "Yeah, but that''s what you used as a fuel, the reaction of them entering into contact at an intricate level, creates something extremely powerful although a bit unstable, right?".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, she waspletely right, but again he shouldn''t be that surprised considering the martial arts Aleah used were all originals, since there was no one from her same race here, she has been learning how to fight since she had use of reason, or at least that''s how Calvin described the younger Aleah.

    "Aren''t you the same though, those shockwaves of yours made my fists itch with each sh, that''s something caused by your battle aura, right?", asked Daimon as he looked at his slightly red knuckles, the result of countering Aleah''s punches with his owns.

    Aleah chuckled, a portion of her hair gained a silvery bright before a silver amor covered her right leg and left arm.

    "You saw the true aspect of my lineage, the horn is the source of the shockwaves, as for you¡­ I can''t imagine what is that thing, but I guess your eyes are one of its strong points, since taking into ount what those women said, means you could see their mana circuits".

    Aleah then suddenly stopped charging her battle aura as she gave Daimon a weird gaze.

    "Honestly I thought you''ll use those eyes for other things, but I guess not everyone is like Calvin", she said as she looked at her own chest.

    Although Daimon didn''t show any reaction inwardly, he chuckled, he did watch one girl by ident when he recently got the infinity eyes and was experimenting with the amount of mana, Arianna was the "unfortunate" victim, that being said he only saw her upper body.

    Aleah''s eyes became feline like and then a huge wave of silver battle aura flooded with her as the center.

    "If you can see it anyway, then there is no point in hiding it", she mumbled, as two pairs of silver wings vaguely formed on her back as well as a small white horn on her forehead.

    Daimon''s pupils contracted, not because of Aleah''s appearance but because of the aura she was giving off now, her realm didn''t change at all, she was still a peak five-star knight, but just by being standing there, her aura was that of a Knight Lord.

    And as if to confirm his supposition those two sets of wings started attracting the metal affinity mana of the atmosphere.

    This time not only Daimon, even Erin and Aura frowned as they looked at the tform, but after a couple of seconds they stopped paying attention.

    While what those wings were doing was simr to the Lord realm exclusive trait of harmonizing with the mana, which resulted in the phenomenon called "Manifestation" where the mana with the same element as the one of a mage or knight resonates with the one in the atmosphere.

    Aleah didn''t be a Knight Lord, she was giving that feeling because of those wings, but she wasn''t one, nor her battle prowess increased that much, in a rough calction she could take on an early-stage mage lord, a bit more easily than when she wasn''t in this state, but she didn''t in fact advance like what happened to Daimon when he used core synchrony.

    "Manifesting traits of your lineage, it must be a legacy martial art, right?", asked Daimon as he evaluated Aleah''s current appearance, her body was brimming with vitality, he had to reduce the mana in his infinity eyes, because she looked like a silver sun for him, it was too bright.

    "Yup, I call it "Regulus Manifestation" pretty cool right, in this form instead of using my battle aura, I can take what''s in the air, so I don''t get tired no matter how much I use, unfortunately I can''t maintain it for too long, but it''s enough for today''s spar~", she cutely said.

    Daimon looked upwards and inwardly sighed.

    "That''s a bit too much for a spar you know", he said as he pointed at the one-hundred-meter-wide lion''s paw which was now descending from the sky.

    "Regulus Suppressing Palm, one of the three martial arts I can only use while in this form for the time being".

    Loyal to its name, Daimon felt some kind of pressure trying to tie him to where he was standing, of course it didn''t work since mental attacks were useless against him, thanks to Overlord''s Pride, but that didn''t lessen the merit of Aleah''s martial art, just imagine the weight of that thing multiplied for the momentum it gained and the gravity, she could tten a small city with that, it was crazy considering she is a star ranked mage.

    "Luckily Erin has the habit to use dark curtain around us all the time", mumbled Daimon as purple lighting and ck mist gathered around him, the amount was such that his mana literally raised upwards violently.

    The next thing Aleah saw was all that mana condensing in Daimon''s index finger, until three was only a small ck lightning crackling on his fingertip.

    "Obliterate", the small ck lightning shot upwards until it reached Aleah''s attack, upon contact everyone''s vision darkened as the lightning expanded into a huge ck sphere devouring the lion''s palm.

    Erin used her own darkness to create a barrier around them, not even a secondter a loud thunder reverberated through the ce followed by a strong gust of wind which collided against the tform, forming a twister raising dust.

    The Half Emperors who were still present on the academic city, suddenly looked at the direction of the training grounds, as there a sudden distortion in that area, but soon lost interest on it, they couldn''t find the exact ce since Erin was blocking them, well everyone but the field marshal who was having a lunch with the veiled vice principal.

    "That little friend has gotten stronger since thest time I saw him, that''s good, it means a bigger chance for us to survive what''s about toe", said Parzival before he focused on his lunch again.

 Chapter 234 The Last Preparations (Part 5)

    Inside of the curtain of dust which was covering the tform, Daimon looked at his surroundings, the dust blocked his view and when he tried to use infinity eyes, he could only see that silver brightness of before illuminating the whole ce.

    Evidently Aleah was spreading her battle aura to mislead him, which made Daimon nod in recognition, this was one of the reasons as to why epted spar with Aleah, nothing was perfect, even him with all the "cheats" he had, was improving with each day.

    Yvonne helped him take into ount the mana flow, and now Aleah made him realize, the spectrum of mana/battle aura in his infinity eyes had a w in the form that certain types of them had an unbearable glow.

    So, he lowered the amount of mana in his eyes even more and then stopped seeing the battle aura and instead detected the thermal spectrum, just in time to see Aleah''s figure stopping to attack him frontwards.

    A figure came out of the curtain of dust, Aleah whose hair which was rebellious by innate, was now a bit disheveled, some strands of it covered her face, but that wilder appearance added to her charm.

    Daimon saw the small horn on her forehead shining and then his pupils contracted as he crossed his arms in front of him.

    "Boom!", Daimon felt as if he was hit by a truck, the sleeves of his jacket were sted away and the impact pushed his body about one hundred meters backwards, and was strong enough to leave some scratches and a tinge of redness on the skin of his arms.

    Daimon then felt a sudden surge of battle aura at his right, his nails became ws and then used them to block Aleah''s.

    The sound of metals colliding as well as spark filled the still dust covered tform as Daimon and Aleah exchanged attacks for another thirty minutes not allowing the dust to settle, at some point Daimon noticed there was something off.

    Aleah stopped blocking his attacks and started taking them directly, to take the changend her attacks on him, resulting in their clothes having w marks.

    That being said, none of them actually caused real wounds in the other, at most there were some shallow scratches which healed right away, but still this wasn''t the same fighting style Daimon knew Aleah had.

    She took pride in suppressing her opponent and didn''t let their attacksnd without responding, but right now instead of that, it was more as if she was abandoning all defense with the intention of winning.

    Daimon dodged sidewards and noticing Aleah''s movements bing a bit slower, he grabbed her arm and stopped her in cold, her skin was glistening in that silverish light, and she still had the white horn but the wings were fading away.

    "That''s enough for today", said Daimon seeing her panting from time to time.

    Still Aleah didn''t answer and instead in a swift maneuver ced herself behind Daimon and kept him in ce with her free arm before she let her body fell to the ground.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he didn''t expect thatst move from her.

    Now that they wereying on the tform, Aleah''s transformation ended but she didn''t let go of him.

    "Even with that, I couldn''t beat you, just how much mana do you have", she said as she tried to catch up her breath.

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "Your battle prowess and mine are almost the same, the difference is that I can keep going for more time, but you actually made me use almost all my mana".

    Daimon wasn''t lying to make her look good, besides getting Narasha''s help, demon light or core synchrony he wasn''t holding back, and Aleah didn''t use her weapon too, so demon light and core synchrony were what made the difference between them.

    His mana didn''t diminish since his core''s reserves were virtually endless, but each time he "recharged" his mana pool, it took a toll on him, and at this point he has done it about twenty times, and his limit was around twenty-five, more than that and he would be forcing his mana circuits too much.

    And Aleah followed him through hall that amount of mana, just as she stated, with those wings she didn''t fell behind in terms of reserves, but just like Daimon she had a limit of other kind.

    Aleah let go of Daimon and thenid down with a tired yet happy smile on her face, her chest moved up and down as she recovered her breath, Daimon got off her body and sat down next to her.

    "My clothes aren''t a cat''s scratcher you know?", said Daimon as he looked at his get up which was now practically destroyed.

    "You say that, but those "wolf hands" of yours focused quite a bit on my chest as well", answered Aleah as she pointed at the area of her chest which had a lot of w marks revealing parts of her ck bra and also some of her pale skin.

    "Weren''t you the one who willingly allowed me tond those attacks though".

    ¡­

    "Pfftt", after a moment of silence, both Daimon and Aleahughed, Daimon could treat her like another friend ignoring the fact that she is a girl, it''s quite different to how he behaves with his other ssmates, maybe because he recognized as an overlord just like him.

    As for Aleah she had a lot of fun sparring with Daimon, she never met anyone who could keep up with her, and now she was excited for them to return from the magic ruin, so that she could join the academy, just to have more time to train with him, her instincts told her to stick around him and so far, she was enjoying it.

    Unlike Aleah whose clothes were barely keeping together after so many cuts, Daimon only had to change his jacket and shirt.

    Aleah created a metal cube and changed herself to new clothes, the curtain of dust dispelled in the meantime as they weren''t shing anymore.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon was weed by the slightly using gazes of the girls as well as Arianna''s dumbfounded expression.

    "So that was your true battle prowess¡­ even if I stack up my two spells, I don''t think I can match up to that", she mumbled.

    Aura patted Arianna''s head as if she wanted tofort her.

    "Don''t think on that, once you master the first two levels, I have something else for you, so do your best".

    Of course, Aura couldn''t just say "Daimon''s knight realm is higher than your mage realm, so it''s normal your battle prowess falls short", not to mention she had recently learned Aura''s spells.

    The metal cube disappeared revealing a fresh as a lettuce Aleah, besides her disheveled hair, there was no way to tell she just had such an intense closebat with Daimon.

    As Daimon was about to ask Aura to take Aleah back to the Happy Wanderer, so they could go meet with Dimas, she leaned herself on Daimon''s shoulders before saying.

    "I want to see what you found on the tundra".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, although Calvin and the others didn''t sign a contract, he was sure they wouldn''t reveal it to anyone without telling him first, especially because Aura was involved as she went to pick them up.

    But apparently that yed against him this time.

    "Something which made Calvin take a beating and still not loosening his lips, should be worth seeing~", she said as she giggled.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    ''So that''s what happened'', he thought as he shrugged, honestly her lineage whatever was, he was sure it wasn''t limited to the Emperor realm, same as Aura and Erin and Aisha even before he "entered" their lives.

    "Fine you cane, Arianna you cane too if you want to", said Daimon as he walked towards the girls.

    Arianna turned to see Aura asking for her opinion.

    "It''s a good idea, I was going to tell you father anyway, since I will be out of Lykos until the exploration finishes and he will be in charge of the n, while Erin guards the fort".

    "Speaking of that¡­ you know that to do if Erin''s heart mirror reacts negatively, right?", asked Daimon through the connection of core synchrony, so that only his soulmates could hear him.

    "I''ll suppress it".

    "I''ll chop the snake''s head off".

    Immediately answered Aura and Erin.

    Daimon nodded, as cold as it might sound, if he wasn''t sure that Dimas was harmless, he''d rather eliminate him before leaving to the magic rune.

    "Stay close to us", said Aura as she used space shift to transport them to the tundra, more specifically to the area where she met with Daimon that time.

    The weather at the tundra was as bad as thest time, the snow was pouring quite heavily and the strong wind howled, even without Dimas using his domain.

    "It''s still surprising, if it wasn''t for the fact that I know what''s below, I wouldn''t even bother to look below the frozen ground", mumbled Aura as she waved her hand cutting a fifteen meters diameter hole which they used as their entry point.

    ine blocked it with her ice to cover any traces as they descended into the ground, until they reached the cave which functioned as the gate to the area where Dimas was confined.

    "Daimon, you finally came, that''s good I was getting bored here", as soon as they set foot in the cave, Dima''s voice echoed through it, a clear sign that he only detected them recently.

    ''If he''s hostile, he is an airhead'', thought Daimon as they flew towards the wall where that weird inscription was engraved.

    "Yeah, I had some things to dotely, but I brought you some food and things to read", he said.

    With Aura''s help it didn''t take too much for them to arrive at the gates of Dimas''s "castle", and the first thing Daimon gazed at was the inscription.

    Without injecting mana, the thing was illegible just likest time.

    ''Let''s see if I can decipher you this time'', thought Daimon as he injected practically all his mana into his eyes, making a purple glint sh through them.

 Chapter 235 Dimas Joins The Alliance

    After injecting all the mana, he had in his mana pool about five times, the unrecognizable symbols on the inscription finally showed some changes, but only some parts "tranted" in his eyes.

    And no matter how more mana he injected into his eyes, nothing else was revealed, so Daimon concluded that was his limit, still he got to read three different words in the inscription.

    ''Eye, enemy, conceal¡­ it''s not too much but it''s better than nothing I guess'', thought Daimon, after making sure that his mother, Arianna and Aleah were standing behind Aura or Erin, they entered the through the gate.

    Needless to say, but as soon as Arianna and Aleah saw Dimas who was contained inside a spirit formation, they were dumbfounded.

    Aleah turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "A magic beast who can talk, since when there is a fourth beast half emperor and why is it caged in this tundra at Lykos?".

    Magic beasts were truly a mystery even up to this day, some had high realms but were basically animals, others would be cunning but weak and then there were those who had a beast core and were intelligent.

    But even then, the only magic beasts who could talk were those who have reached the half emperor realm, there are very few of them in existence since most magic beasts are hunted upon reaching the peak of the Arch rank.

    Lykos has the most of them due to the races here having lineages rted to magic beasts, and there are only three of them in the whole gxy and they have epted not interfering in the feuds between families and forces as long they aren''t bothered, or their offspring not being attacked unless they provoke others.

    "Oh, you brought new friends this time", said Dimas as he rubbed what would be his chin, not forgetting to show he had arms in order to not be called a snake.

    Daimon paid close attention to Erin''s reaction and only after seeing her nod he rxed, now that it was confirmed that Dimas had no bad intentions then he could treat him as a possible ally.

    "Yeah, they wanted toe this time, since seeing an Emperor realm magic beast is a new thing for us".

    Dimas posed as he flexed his arms and nodded at Arianna.

    "Good to know, I''m Dimas, a handsome ice mirage basilisk, Daimon''s friends are my friends¡­ as long as he brought me food hahaha".

    Daimon chuckled and then took out a storage ring with the things he has prepared for Dimas, most of its contents were food, but he also added a few books which didn''t have anything that could bepromising for their gxy, just in case.

    "Now that I think about it,st time, the things you gave us weren''t inside of the formation which is restraining you, how are you going to take the stuff inside the ring?".

    Dimas''s scales glowed in a dim blue light and a small hand made out of ice formed outside of the restraining formation around him.

    "Just put the ring in that hand quick, I can only affect the outside when I use my domain and it drains quite a bit of my mana".

    Daimon threw the ring and the ice hand caught it before it returned to the ground appearing inside the restraining formation in front of Dimas, who immediately rummaged its content.

    Not even a secondter he took out a fewrge pieces of grilled meat, and his eyes looked as if he was looking at the most delicious thing in the world, to the point that he was drooling.

    "Ahhh, it has been so much time since I had something cooked, thanks Daimon", bbed Dimas as he munched therge pieces of meat, with a gaze of delight.

    ''I guess everyone would be like that after spending for a couple thousands of years without eating anything'', thought Daimon after seeing his slightly exaggerated reaction.

    "Don''t mention it, we had a deal so it''s just me fulfilling my side of it".

    Dimas suddenly stopped eating, of course he could notice the message behind Daimon''s words, if he wanted more food then he had to offer something too, the problem is that he doesn''t have anything else besides the things the Greenwich Sage left behind and some minerals he found in the tundra.

    Nor he could exchange information with them, mostly because after so much time he couldn''t remember that much besides his family but he never got too involved in the things of it, he only remembered the fire spirits because they appeared and now Daimon had them serving under him, so there was not much he could use as a bargain chip.

    "Oi, Daimon, would you like to marry one of my sisters?".

    Daimon nearly tripped listening to that proposal out of the blue.

    "You really liked that food huh?".

    Dimas shook his head, realizing his words might be strange for the people of this ce, he borated.

    "In my culture, the best way to unite families is through a marriage connection, besides I had like five or six in the past, so now I should have about twelve, I''m pretty sure one would be willing to step in".

    Daimon shook his head and then took out a magic contract out of his storage ring.<sub> </sub>

    "In my culture both parties who share an interest, sign an agreement, take your time to read it and give me your answer¡­".

    Daimon didn''t finish his words, when Dimas took the contract and bit the tip of his tail letting a few drops of blood which had a light blue tone to stain the contract.

    To Daimon''s surprise the contract fulfilled its purpose, and properly made them allies, the rules were simple, to not harm the other and lend a hand if it was within their possibilities and was needed.

    "Deal, next time if you can bring me some bird''s meat, we ice basilisk are sworn enemies with them, because their meat tastes really good".

    Daimon gave up trying to find logic behind Dimas''s actions, although he said he was part of the younger generation of his family, Daimon has started thinking he was even younger, maybe what should be about 10 years old for his race.

    ''A pre-pubescent with the power to erase a, locked below the ground of Lykos¡­ whoever thought this was a good idea should receive a beating''. He thought.

    "Noted, I also brought some things for you to read, so you don''t get bored, I will travel for a week, speaking of which, does the words "eye, enemy, conceal" mean anything to you?", asked Daimon.

    Dimas got lost in his thoughts for a split of a second, but ultimately, he shook his head.

    "No, at the ce where I lived there were only members of the ice mirage basilisk race, I have only heard of other races thanks to my dad, but i was yet to see one until I appeared here.

    "Okay if I discover anything I''lle to ask you".

    Dimas nodded as he looked through some of the books, there was not really too much to do here, so after finishing their deal Daimon said goodbye as he noticed Dimas wanted to eat more, but he was holding back a bit in front of them, which was understandable, as intelligent as he might be, his instincts as a magic beast were strong.

    After saying goodbye, Aura took everyone outside of the cave before they returned to the academy, leaving Aleah on at the Happy Wanderer and Arianna at the entrance of her father''s mansion at the academic city.

    "Don''t forget to tell Lana she can''t refine the stctite milk until we return or she will surpass the five-star mage realm, whether she wants it or not".

    Arianna nodded as she kept the bottle in her storage ring, she had no other things to do, right now since Aura ordered her to let her muscles rest to recover to the fullest, so a quick visit to Lana''s ce would not hurt her.

    Daimon and the girls then returned to the mansion and as soon as they appeared in the living room, Aisha, Liz and ine hugged Daimon and gave him needy eyes.

    "Last time you did mom and Aura only, tonight is our turn, well Aisha doesn''t count, she will have you for herself during the whole thing~", said Liz as she rubbed her face against Daimon''s.

    "I want too", mumbled Liz with a blushed face.

    It was still sunny outside, but since the girls wanted some love, Daimon was happy to oblige.

    ¡­

    While Daimon was rolling on the bed with Liz and ine, inside her private space, Evangeline was in a bit of a predicament, as the administrator of the system, she was informed of the next function Daimon would unlock, if he met the requirements.

    ''Out of all the possible functions¡­ this one, the guy who created this system was a pervert, which is quite convenient considering my host is the same", she mumbled before she destroyed the notification.

    And so, the weekend went on, everyone was busy with their respective training, or refining their treasure to do ast-minute advance, with the exception of those at the five-star realm, because advancing would crew them over.

    As morning came, Daimon felt something tickling his face, and when he opened his yes, he saw Erin teasing him with her tail.

    Daimon chuckled and then dragged her into his embrace before he kissed her, he noticed that the other girls besides Aura and Erin weren''t in the bed, and judging by the delicious smell lingering in the air, they were preparing the breakfast.

    The waving moves on the nket caused by Aura''s tail wagging gave her away, so Daimon dragged her into his arms too, he rubbed both Aura and Erin''s tummies, remembering all what they did made himugh.

    Daimon kissed Aura''s lips and then got up.

    "Get up you two, we need to prepare to leave¡­ Erin you are in charge while I''m gone", said Daimon as he handed Erin a small ck box.

    In a rare asion, Erin put on a serious expression as she epted the ck box.

    "Mm".

    After that, they joined Aisha, Liz and ine for breakfast and a bath, once they were ready, they went to the Happy Wanderer to wait for the others, those who bought a spot from Daimon already left since the ce they were going was at the border of the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

 Chapter 236 Gathering At The Border (Part 1)

    This time Solomon didn''t block the space due to Daimon''s petition, so Aura could take them directly inside of the Happy Wanderer.

    To Daimon''s surprise, almost everyone was already there, the ones missing were Dana, Arianna and Lana as well as the two who wereing from Lydia''s academy and Hector, the guy who used to serve the Ascott but was abandoned and pledged loyalty to Daimon.

    "Good morning", Ste who was drinking a cup of coffee greeted Daimon and the others, she could barely contain her happiness, but that was understandable since her little sister advanced to five-star mage realm thanks to the petal of the snow lotus she refined.

    Gina on the other hand nodded at them and remained silent next to her older sister, as she doesn''t really know anyone here with the exception of Aleah.

    "I''ll go pick that your junior sister and the Ramir girl", said Aura before she used space shift to leave.

    The others took a seat to wait for those who were yet to arrive, Erin who wasn''t dark curtain for a change in the routine, giggled while she sent a message through her sigil lector.

    Daimon could perfectly recognize that cunning smirk in Erin''s face and he chuckled.

    ''What did you do?", he asked in a voice only she could hear.

    ''I told Leena and Lydia that if they don''t hurry up, you''ll leave without them~''.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, the only Half Emperors allowed to go to the entrance of the magic ruin was the principal of the academy as well as the field marshal, besides them only the designated mage lord who had the chance to enter and the teacher of the students could go too, at least until the students entered the ruin.

    But Aura wasn''t nning on taking Alexander and the other students who weren''t allied with Daimon, so they left beforehand since they would have to take arger route, and wait in a nearby until the field marshal allowed them to use the transportation magic formation which was now under the supervision of the army.

    ''She is going toin, because that would mean Dana will have to spend time with Alexander you know?''.

    Erin chuckled and then started a countdown with her left hand, but before she could finish, Leena with a hurried expression appeared with Dana, not even a couple of secondster, Lydia knocked on the door with an out of breath expression.

    Mireya opened the door and Lydia entered with her two students, a boy of about 14 years old and a girl who seemed to be in her early twenties.

    Both Lydia and Leena red at Erin, noticing that Aura wasn''t here which meant there was still time for them.

    "Don''t look at me like that, you should have been here earlier", said Erin as she shrugged.

    "I had a fall out with Arthur after the list of participants was released you know?", mumbled Leena as she rubbed her forehead, the past weekend was such a headache for her.

    Once the list of those who were going to the magic ruin was made public, Arthur thought Dana was going with Alexander, but when he went to talk with Leena, she made it clear that her niece will be apanying Daimon.

    Which of course made Arthur angry, but ultimately, she just had to say something along the lines of "Who can be a betterpanion than the one who defeated the previously acimed "number one" with a single spell".

    Unfortunately for Arthur no matter how angry he was, he could only swallow hisins and leave, needless to say but from that moment onwards things got pretty tense, so Leena had to watch over Gabriel and Dana.

    In Lydia''s case she waste because she had to rush to pick up her students, and judging by their auras Daimon supposed she had to wait since they were advancing not too long ago.

    "Come and greet Daimon you two", said Lydia to her students.

    "Samuel Frost, it''s a pleasure Demon of the elite ss".

    "Rachel Frost".

    Contrary to what Daimon expected, Lydia''s students were quite easy going, so he had no trouble exchanging greets with them.

    Someone knocked on the door again and Aura also returned with Arianna and Lana, this time Daimon opened the door.

    Hector Damascus who became Daimon''s follower due to a certain incident entered with a somewhat stiff expression on his face.

    "Hector greets young master Daimon", he said as he slightly bowed.

    Daimon nodded, while his ssmates still didn''t know why he gave a spot to Hector, Daimon had some ns for him, but it all depended on how things went inside the magic ruin.<sub> </sub>

    "Say goodbye, we are leaving no".

    While Aura prepared herself to take everyone with her to the gate station of Lykos, everyone said goodbye to their families.

    Before they left, Richard approached Daimon and dragged him to the other side of the room, as he showed him a huge scar he had on the left side of his chest.

    "Kid, be wary of the "Pirs" from the demon army, they all have a number tattooed on a visible part of their bodies, from the humans the Penddra family as well as the Argon family are psychos, they can''t bepared to the brats of the light faction and will actively hunt you down because you have darkness affinity".

    "Lend those three a hand when the timees", said Richard as he let go of Daimon.

    ''We''ll be waiting for your return at the border, if you can let us know how things are going'', said the girls to Daimon through the mental connection, since he will be inside the magic ruin, the most probable thing is that they can''tmunicate, on the brighter side, Evangeline told them that they could still feel Daimon''s state thanks to their status as soulmates, so they''ll know if he is in trouble or not, also Narasha and Aisha will go with him, so Daimon will havepany.

    "Let''s go", Aura finished her preparations and with a wave of her hand Daimon and the others disappeared from the room.

    "We should get going, I will see youter once they are about toe out", said Erin before she and her daughters left.

    Zein, Leena, Lydia, Boris, Richard, Mireya, Solomon and Vereth followed not too long after, each one had their own things to attend after all.

    ¡­

    After a couple of seconds Aura and the others appeared at the campus of the academy before she guided them to a secluded building near the area exclusive for the third-year students.

    Aura used her identity token and the gates of the building opened themselves revealing a portal inside.

    "This will take us to through the shortest route which is exclusive for the academy, for you it will be only a couple seconds since we will be moving at a speed that you would not be able to process it, I will create a barrier just in case so just close your eyes and everything will be okay".

    "Mm", the students nodded and then Aura created a spherical barrier with her mana, everyone grouped with their respective closerpanions and then Aura jumped into the portal followed by them.

    For Daimon it was as if he was shed by a brilliant light, the next thing he knew was that Aisha, the Risha sisters and surprisingly Aliya were clinging onto him, the world seemed to move in slow motion for him.

    "You are conscious!", Daimon saw Ste pointing at him with a surprised expression, which made Aura chuckle, she expected Daimon to be able to experience the high-speed transportation, as he has temporarily been harmonized wit the world while he activated core synchrony, not to mention he had a certainprehension of space.

    That being said, Daimon couldn''t move at all, because his mother and the other girls were holding him in ce, it was a surreal experience to see the blurred surroundings outside of the spherical barrier.

    "Lightning element user", said Daimon in a try to excuse himself, which made Ste raise an eyebrow, but ultimately, she couldn''t find an answer so she believed him, she saw the spell he used to finish Alexander with, and it was quite something so maybe his senses could sharpen enough to stay awake during this travel.

    ''How long will thisst?'', he asked to Aura, although Daimon was happy to see the process of the travel, if he couldn''t move or do anything it was going to get boring.

    ''About twelve hours, you are lucky that this gate was created, a couple of hundreds of years ago, to travel from the academy to the border, you have to be in a dimensional tunnel for about a week''.

    Daimon had a bitter expression, twelve hours without nothing to do were still not cool.

    ''Another reason to create a spaceship instead of just relying on the portals'', thought Daimon.

    For some reason the races of the Wonder Myriad ster chart had developed the means to teleport, but they had no spaceships, could be because of the existence of Half Emperors and the fact that runes existed before the material for the flying carriages were discovered

    So, all thes with a decent level of mana had formations hidden on them to be sued like a node in a to which only some had ess, in this case the was formed by the branches of the Wild w academy and the one in control was the main campus.

    Daimon closed his eyes and tried to meditate to pass on time, but as he did it, without noticing he fell asleep, making Ste sigh.

    "Such a rare experience like using the high-speed portal and he fell asleep", she mumbled making Aura giggle.

    ''Well, he didn''t sleep too much in the past two nights'', she thought to herself, remembering all the "love" he gave them.

 Chapter 237 Gathering At The Border (Part 2)

    Oblivious to the fact that he was probably the first person that didn''t care at all about the of portals for high-speed transportation exclusive to a certain number of people, Daimon had a peaceful time sleeping.

    He even hugged Aisha out of instinct since she was sitting in front of him, which made Steugh, to see the imposing and serious Daimon she met, looking so defenseless was something new for her.

    ''He acts all grown up, but here he is hugging his older sister, what a shame I didn''t bring a camera'', thought Ste.

    Aura on the other hand could more or less suppose what Ste was thinking and she giggled at the fact that she misunderstood it.

    Anyway, for both Aura and Ste travelling through space like this was good for their cultivation in the path of magic, being in contact with the space was actually helpful as long as someone was strong enough to endure the exposition.

    Of course, Aura''s barrier was blocking the chaotic mana which lingered in the dimensional tunnel, meaning they couldn''t restore their reserves of mana while travelling through it, but a Half Emperor had enough to endure the whole travel.

    ¡­

    About ten or so hourster Daimon opened his eyes feeling fresh as a lettuce, apparently while he could somewhat remain conscious inside the dimensional tunnel even as a star ranked mage, the weight for his brain was too much so he easily fell asleep as a way to avoid any damage.

    ''Your body keeps changing ording to your needs,st time you suffered to understand "Blink", but this time you didn''t have to go through that'', said Evangeline.

    Daimon inwardly nodded, he actually felt that the long-stagnated skill "Blink" was now showing some signs of leveling up, which didn''t happen no matter how many times Aura or Erin took him with them and used space shift to travel.

    ''Perhaps I need to expose myself to the space, I''ll give it a goter when we return'', he thought.

    Ste who was truly meditating also opened her eyes and seeing Daimon awake, she nodded.

    "It''s good to se you are up, we are about to reach the end of the road, to think the "Demon" of the elite ss has such an intimate rtionship with his older sister", she said with a teasing smile on her face.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon has never been the type to take thingsid down.

    "Those are some big words for someone who couldn''t hide her smile after her little sister advanced, don''t you think so, vice principal Ste".

    Ste who wasughing a moment ago, nearly choked, she slightly blushed but didn''t say anything as she was the first one to "attack".

    Instead of that she cleared her throat now feeling more rxed around Daimon,st time they didn''t exactly get along after all.

    "Ahem, speaking of that¡­ I haven''t thanked you for that, Gina told me she was only supposed to get one petal but you gave her two and she actually ended needing both of them, so you have my gratitude for that".

    Ste slightly bowed her head towards Daimon, who had a bitter smile on hi face, to be honest he was just going to give her one petal originally, but after observing her fight using his infinity eyes, he deduced she was going to need two to break through, the same applied to Lana, he doubled the drops, in any case he got those resources in part thanks to them.

    "You are my ally too, so don''t pay too much attention to that, if you feel indebted once you get into the magic ruin, don''t let the other mage lords bully us, okay?".

    Ste smiled as she looked at her sister.

    "Speaking of that, the mage lord from the Blue-Sky gxy is from their army¡­ a human from the Penddra family to be more urate, so despite how polite he might act when we meet her, don''t trust her, those guys were the ones who created "Holy Light" and unlike the guys from the light faction you met before, they are one of the two strongest forces in the human race".

    Daimon nodded; Richard also told him to be wary of the Penddra family, apparently, they had something against darkness element mages, but the same could be said about all the forces in the beast faction for light element mages, so it was reciprocal.

    "Thanks for the advice, what about the Argon family, Yvi''s grandfather told me to be wary of them too, the same for demons who have a number tattooed in a visible spot of their bodies".

    Ste shook her head as she answered.

    "The Argon are the other strong force among the humans, but they aren''t fanatics unlike the Penddra, at most they are greedy, so they ally with anyone who can give them benefits, easy to deal with if you know how to treat them, as for the demons¡­ they did something simr to you, not all the onesing are students from the Grave Stone academy".

    "The captain is an outsider this time, but I don''t know anything else, information about the demon race is extremely hard to get after all, in exchange the I know the undead lord realm that is going from their side is a Bone Collector".

    Aura nodded in recognition, she more or less had the same information, so Ste properly did her job getting intel on the enemies.

    "We are leaving the dimensional tunnel, there might be a small shock so prepare for it".<sub> </sub>

    Daimon and Ste nodded and prepared for it.

    The surroundings suddenly changed from the tunnel to arge room whose walls were filled with runes, the vey moment the portal closed, all the others came out of their dazes, the Risha girls saw that they were clinging to Daimon and their faces got red as they let go of him.

    ''Imagine of you told them, they practically hugged you for about half a day darling~'', said Aisha in a voice only Daimon and Aura could hear.

    ''So, you were conscious too mom''.

    Aisha cutely stuck her tongue at her son, unlike him whose body was abnormal enough to help him process the information, she would have needed to use a boosting spell to move and talk, but she was conscious, it was a strange experience but nothing a former Archmage couldn''t handle.

    Besides her beloved son had her in his embrace practically the whole time, so for her it was like cuddling and resting.

    Daimon noticed Aliya was a bit dizzy despite the barrier, so he turned around and helped her get up, she also clung to him, but unlike the Risha sisters who "identally" did it ording to what their mothers taught them, she did it out of necessity.

    Aliya slowly shook her head and then took a sip of her medicine, which helped her get react.

    "Thanks, for the help, I told my uncle toe instead of me, but he insisted that the teacher shoulde".

    Daimon chuckled, Boris wanted Aliya to be respected as a teacher, so of course she had to be present when the magic ruin finally opened.

    "Ahh, my legs are all cramped damn it", Calvin and the others got up and stretched their bodies, although their minds didn''t notice the time that passed since they entered the portal, their bodies did, so of course they were a bit stiff after not moving for half a day.

    Aura used her token to open the door and everyone came out of the room, they were at someoid near the border of the Ster Chart, so after leaving Calvin and the others recover for a couple of minutes, she called them.

    <o>,m "The Immortal gxy is the closest so the vampires are probably already there, Arianna no matter how much you feel disgusted by them, don''t be the first to attack, if they dare to raise their hands against you then you can beat the crap out of them".</o>

    "Oh, so it''s true that werewolves and vampires can''t stand each other", mumbled Haylee.

    "Yes, but not all vampires and not all werewolves, for example I hate the guts of the Naktis and Silverheart families but not because I''m a werewolf but because they are assholes, inparison I had nothing against the principal of the Crimson Blood academy, which is the matriarch of the Nosfear family, and she doesn''t have anything against me either, and yet we can''t see each other without wanting to cut the throat of the other, luckily we managed to use that for a good reason and turned that into our way to greet each other".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, that was Aura''s battle maniac self in all its bloom, luckily Victor nor Aisha''s father woulde, because he might have not been able to keep the hatred, he felt towards them in check.

    Aisha of course knew how her son felt, that''s why she dedicated herself to give lots of love to him the past weekend, the same for the others, it wasn''t an exaggeration to say that their love was a great help for Daimon to not be overwhelmed by hate.

    Aura waved her hand and they all disappeared from where they were standing, the door of the room closed and the whole building blurred before it became invisible.

    A couple of secondster they appeared above an asteroid which was covered by a transparent barrier, Aura used her token and a small space opened allowed them to enter.

    Just as Aura mentioned the students from the Crimson Blood academy were already there, Calvin had to do his best to notugh at them.

    While in the Wild w academy the students were allowed to not wear the uniform as long as they wore their identity tokens, the vampires were stricter in that aspect, so everyone had to wear their white and red western noble like uniform.

    Both groups stared at each other for a couple of seconds, before a dazzling red glow appeared on the sky where a blurred figure was visible from afar.

    Aura smirked and she transformed into a silver sh which shot itself upwards, both lights shed a few dozens of times, creating thunder like explosions.

    "Those two are going at it again", Daimon looked upwards just to see the field marshal appearing out of nowhere, without Alexander and the others, so apparently, they were yet to arrive, still he created a barrier to protect them from the waves of mana resulting from Aura and the Nosfear matriarch.

    At the same time a white-haired guy with red eyes wearing a gray uniform with a lot of medals did the same for the vampires.

    "It''s been a while Parzival".

    "Baron".

    While Daimon still didn''t know how the Nosfear matriarch looked, he did remember the guy who was protecting the vampires, as he visited the Naktis when he was a baby, the equivalent of the field marshal for them it was the Blood Chiliarch Baron Valliere.

 Chapter 238 Entering The Ruin

    A loud explosion followed by a sh between a deep crimson red mana and Aura''s dazzling silver mana, signaled the end of their "greet".

    Two figures perfectly tidied up descended next to their respective students, Aura had a slightly frowned expression as she gazed at Daimon, but she inwardly shook her head and put the thing at the back of her mind.

    Daimon on the other hand saw the red mana fading away to reveal the appearance of the Nosfear matriarch, it was a slender talldy who seemed to be in herte twenties or early thirties.

    Her hair had a white-silverish tone and her eyes were red colored, she was wearing a ck dress with red decorations and a floppy hat with the samebination of ck and red colors, she was also wearing white long-sleeved gloves, giving her a noble elegant look, which contrasted quite a bit with the fierceness she showed earlier when she and Aura shed.

    Aura looked at the sky and then snorted, before saying.

    "Miles I''m going to sh towards the area where you are hiding if you don''t bring your ass down here right now".

    A portal opened in the sky from which a group formed by students wearing a white and blue uniform and a middle-aged man wearing a white suit came out.

    "Miss Argent is as straightforward as always, I just didn''t want to interrupt to old friends reuniting in person after what, two or three hundred years?", said the white suited man as hended along with his group next to Daimon and the others.

    "Mm?", Daimon frowned, he looked at the recently arrived human majorly conformed group, but the strange sensation that he felt suddenly disappeared.

    "Oh my, it seems my ck Grave academy thest one to arrive this year, I beg your pardon but we had to deal with a small inconvenient in our way".

    Everyone''s attention was drawn by another portal which opened near the Nosfear matriarch from which another group came from.

    They were all wearing ck and red uniforms and had grinning expressions, among the four groups they were mostly conformed by male students, out of the fifteen thirteen were guys.

    "You were here earlier than us Crowley, so stop with your bullshit", the calm and elegant looking Nosfear matriarch, suddenly became sharp tongued as she pointed out that the demons and undead were hiding in the shadows all this time.

    The principal of the ck Grave academy called Crowley stoppedughing, his face contorted for a split of a second and his teeth became spiked, his narrowed eyes slightly opened as he looked at Ang.

    N/A (Ang is the name of the Nosfear matriarch).

    "Such a bad mood, how about I invite you a drinkter miss Ang".

    Daimon now understood why arge-scale war didn''t break out, everyone had problems with everyone, even within their own alliances.

    "Now that is enough Crowley, we aren''t here for that", a man wearing a ssy ck suit with a cup hat descended next to the principal of the ck Grave academy and tapped his walking stick on the floor interrupting him.

    A man wearing a full body white armor appeared next to the principal of the Blue-Sky academy, before saying.

    "I can''t believe I''m saying this, but Timothy is right, the four principals as well as the four executors didn''t gather just to mess around, where the hell is that bastard of a sage!".

    "Also, Argent matriarch aren''t you missing some students, if you arecking some talents, I can lend you a some of my pdins", added Miles as he smirked.

    Aura ignored the principal of the Blue-Sky academy and instead let the field marshal deal with him.

    Parzival waved his hand and a portal opened from which Alexander, the disciples of the Furious Whirlwind and the Earth Pce academies as well as the second-year students besides Arianna, Gina, Lana and Aleah, came from.

    Arianna already told Daimon beforehand, she basically sold the spots to those who were able to move among her ssmates, her cousin Reiner volunteered to travel with them to act as Arianna''s ears, so he got a spot, Aura also told her to include the two guys from the army free of charge due to a certain agreement she reached with the field marshal, and surprisingly the girl who fought against Aisha also got a spot.

    Normally a four-star mage or knight realm was needed to take a spot in the second year''s team, so Riley who reached the three-star mage realm thanks to having refined both some drops of stctite milk and a seed of the sun lily, shouldn''t have gotten a spot in the team, but since her element was strong enough to make up for the difference and because Aisha asked Arianna to, she got the spot.

    Arthur didn''t say anything as he has already lost too much face recently as well as money since he had to reimburse Lars and Maxim, the mana crystals they lost in the bet.

    "It seems we are all here, but where is¡­.".

    "Booooom!", as Ang was speaking in a soft voice totally different from how she spoke to the demon principal, a loud explosion followed by a huge shockwave and a tremor, could be seening from the south of the asteroid.

    A ball conformed of ck smoke and mes flew from that direction andnded in between the demon and vampire groups, creating arge crater raising arge amount of dust everywhere.

    "Cough, experimentalponent number 102,578, failed, less dust of fire mana stone proportion for¡­".

    A ckened figure came out of the crater a few secondster and started bbering as he wrote down some things on arge book, for about three minutes until it noticed the presence of the four groups.

    "You finally arrived damn it, I was so bored I started studying theponents of the magic powder to increase its strength, explosion ratio and¡­".

    The cked figure kept running his mouth for another whole five minutes, without stopping even when the executors and other students told him to shut up, until Aura smirked and said a single word.

    "Erin".<sub> </sub>

    The ckened figure stopped speaking in cold, he looked at all the directions with an afraid expression and only after making sure Erin wasn''t here, he let out a sigh of relief before he dusted off his clothes and face, revealing his true appearance.

    Disheveled hair and a messy short beard as well as a moustache, although his clothes were ckened due to the explosion, once he dusted them off, they were perfectly fine, he was wearing a brown robe as well as a white cape with few decorations, small tubes and other instruments, it was clear that he didn''t care about fashion and just hanged whatever he wanted.

    The guybed his hair behind his ears and then kept his book on his storage ring, changing from that haggard guy to an erudite looking man.

    Daimon saw the initials on his belt and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry.

    "Is that truly the Andras Griffin, the acimed Greenwich Sage¡­ I guess one shouldn''t judge a book by its cover", he mumbled.

    Aura giggled as she gave thumbs up to Daimon.

    The principal of the Blue-Sky academy rubbed his forehead, the greatest theorist and the publicly recognized as the smartest man was a human, which brought honor to the human race, but at the same time, Andras''s personality brought shame to the human race, to the point that he was banned from a majority ofs in the Blue-Sky gxy.

    Once Andras finished tidying up, he looked at the four groups and then pointed at therge arc of stones which was standing a couple of kilometers away from their current position.

    "That''s the entrance I ced a seal to stop it from decaying since those fools activated the countdown before dying, so just stand in the circle and you''ll be teleported inside¡­ ah right have this".

    Andras looked in his pockets taking out many different objects until he got what he wanted, a box with some t green bracelets, which he handed to the principals.

    "These are "You die if it''s red colored bracelets", each line represents a day, they are linked to the stability of the dimensional tunnel which leads to the entrance/exit of the magic ruin, good luck I have some stuff to do".

    Andras then flew towards the are from which he was blown away a moment ago and continued with his experiments,pletely ignoring anything else.

    Each principal created a barrier and then approached their students.

    Aura waved her hand and a bracelet flew towards each of the students, she then nodded at Ste who took out arge coffer.

    She opened it and revealed its contents, a couple of rows of white generic rings with the emblem of a w.

    "These are the special storage rings prepared for the exploration everyone grab one and use it instead of your normal ring, you already know what you can take inside of the magic ruin, and you''ll be scanned by the principals before entering so don''t try to cheat".

    Everybody already knew the ten potion and one weapon limit, as well as the rule that they couldn''t bring anything which surpassed the five-star mage grade, so they simply passed their stuff to the special rings provided by the academy as well as the book which Aliya gave them before and everyone was ready.

    Alexander grouped with the guys from the Furious Whirlwind and Earth pce academies as well as Arianna''s ssmates which included his cousin Samuel and distanced themselves from Daimon and the others which was what Daimon wanted.

    "Come her for a second you all", said Daimon.

    Calvin and the others approached Daimon just to him extending his arm with his hand towards them, one by one Calvin, Michael, the Risha sisters, Loren, Haylee, Aleah, Arianna, Dana, Hector, Lana and Gina all ced their hands on top of Daimon''s as he said.

    "I''ll do my best to finish the badge trial as soon as possible, watch each other''s back and don''t trust on the other groups understood?".

    Daimon''s voice became serious by the end, from this moment onwards he was the one inmand, his position as captain actually granted him authority over his ssmates, but he didn''t do this just for that, he took advantage of the moment to attach them the talisman of the silent protector to each one of them.

    Which of course they noticed because they suddenly felt as if they could somewhat know where Daimon was.

    "That would help us get together inside, it''s something Liz created for me".

    Everyone nodded and then the preparations were over.

    ''Be careful Daimon'', said Aura in a voice only he could hear as she saw them walking towards the arc which would transport them inside the magic ruin, Ste tightened her grip on the other half on the ck badge which Aster had with him.

    ording to the Greenwich Sage, once the badge bearer passed the trial, the one wearing the other half would be automatically transported inside.

    Daimon tenderly looked back at Aura and slightly nodded at her.

    ''Don''t worry we will be fine''.

    All the students arrived in front of the stone arc and inscriptions illuminated on it, thest thing Daimon noticed was that he could somewhat see the others who had a badge besides him.

    From the demon and undead side, it was a guy with gray skin and long ck hair, from the vampires it was a guy which he perfectly recognized, one of Victor''s children more urately the one he had with his concubine after Aisha but off any ties with everyone, from the humans it was blond guy with blue eyes which he didn''t see until now.

    Then his field of vision was filled with a white sh and they all disappeared.

    This day will mark the start of the wave that will bring huge changes to the Wonder Myriad ster chart, a wave that will sweep everything in its way and that no one can stop, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 239 The Ruins Of Drakolevia

    When the while sh of light finally faded, Daimon rubbed his eyes to adapt to the change of illumination, of course he didn''t lower his guard, but contrary to what he expected nothing tried to attack him.

    "What kind of wee is that damn it", he mumbled.

    Once his vision returned to normal, he evaluated his surroundings, besides the obvious fact that he was separated from the others, he also he was in a hall with zero sources of light.

    The first thing he did was trying to reach Aisha through the mental connection, but she was too far away from him, still he could feel she was okay, which made him let out a sigh of relief.

    Luckily his eyes functioned better in light reduced ces, so he was like a fish in water perfectly being able to see.

    ording to the how this ruin was discovered, the guys who entered all died due to the traps, also the badges were found by the sage way after that and no one used them since they were a one-time type of item, so he was the first one to be within this hall for who knows how many years.

    ''Anothernguage which isn''t known off in modern days'', he thought as he injected mana into his eyes, only after using about the same amount of mana he used to decipher the inscription outside of Dimas''s castle, a couple of words became readable.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow before he jumped sidewards, dodging an arm with spikes all over it.

    The arm again aimed at Daimon but this time he didn''t dodge and instead he grabbed it with his hand from the wrist, in an up-close view it was an arm with a gray skin tone, it had some ces where the bones were visible, but it didn''t reek of death, helping Daimon reach the conclusion that somehow whatever it was, it was alive.

    "Hsss!", Daimon''s hand lit up with white mes creating a loud burning sound, the arm which was burning in a ck smoke tried to break free but Daimon''s grip was like a steel w, and a secondter the arm was consumed by the mes leaving behind ck bones which then turned into dust on the ground.

    A broadsword appeared on the air and with it as the core a vague white feminine figure manifested, making Daimon smile.

    The darkness of the room was suddenly overwhelmed by the warm light radiated by the figure, revealing that the walls, floor and roof were all made out of ck stone and had tons of different inscriptions engraved on them.

    "That was a real arm you know, I would have freaked out if I had to touch it", while the vague light figure had no face, Narasha''s voice could be hearding from it, this was the spell she developed to be able to fight alongside Daimon.

    "Embodiment of light", using Gram''s form as the core, she condensed light mana to form a body, in this form Daimon couldn''t use Gram, but Narasha could manipte mana on her own, in other words she could cast spells, it was a temporary solution for herck of a body, normally she didn''t use it as she has been polishing the spell until she more or less managed to give it a decent shape.

    "It was just an arm with gic damage, simr to that chimera thing I killed back at the prison, it''s me who terrorizes others not the other way around".

    "The fact that you could see it from the very beginning, didn''t help you remain brave at all, of course", added Evangeline.

    Daimon chuckled as he tried to decipher more of the inscriptions on the walls.

    "So, our dear "Eve" has honored us with her presence, you didn''t say anything for the past three days, I was starting to think you somehow escaped or something".

    Narasha which was standing on guard using her light to dispel the dark element mana which kept trying to flood the hall, giggled.

    "Eve said you and the others were too noisy so she isted her senses".

    "Nasha, what''s the point on telling you to keep quiet about if you don''t pay attention".

    Daimonughed at how close those two got to the point that they used shortened versions of their names, originally Evangeline kept some distance from them, but over the time she became good friends with Narasha and then the other girls, as well as him of course.

    Although she still teased him from time to time, it was different to when they met.

    Anyway, this wasn''t the ce nor the time for that, Daimon focused his attention on the part of the wall from which that arm originated, besides the corroded state of the ck stone probably due to the aging, some of the inscriptions were destroyed by something.

    As the progenitor of Demon Light, of course he could recognize its burning marks, and so he could tell this wasn''t done by him, unfortunately no matter how much mana he injected into his eyes besides a few words he got nothing else.

    "This is getting annoying, I need to expand my knowledge", mumbled Daimon.

    The words he managed to grasp could be tranted as "Dormant", "Drakolevia", "Danger" and "War".

    Things didn''t look exactly positive for Daimon, of course there were unknown dangers inside a ruin, poisonous areas, magic beasts who no one has seen before as well as other creatures, but most of the time there is a reason for those things to be inside of the ruin.

    The worst-case scenario would be a ruin filled with things whose purpose was to kill outsiders¡­ and with this small interaction that was the most probable answer, but then what was the purpose of the badges then.<sub> </sub>

    Ultimately Daimon shrugged, he took out a notebook from his inventory and drew the original inscriptions and the deciphered versions of them on it, before he continued walking followed by Narasha.

    The hall extended for quite a bit and it was dismal to say the less, as other things kept sprouting out of the walls and trying to attack Daimon, arms, legs, some kind of insect limbs, and even weirdly shaped eyes popped out of the inscriptions, but all of them were burned to a crisp by Demon Light.

    The whole ce was like a haunted house, it''s not like Daimon was emotionless, but the darkness which lingered in this ce was apparently radiated by the walls and had an effect on the mind, which was rendered useless by Overlord''s pride.

    In other words, while trying to affect Daimon, the fear-oriented inscriptions nullified themselves, for him at least, even a strong-minded person would probably feel anxious in thispletely closed space filled with things that kept popping out of the walls, floor and roof.

    On the way he even saw a mirror which reflected a pretty decayed version of himself, which he totally ignored, once he was out of reach Daimon shot a small lightning towards it, destroying the mirror which triggered a trap behind it.

    Making bone darts to be shot from the wall as a trap door opened on the ground, others would have probably destroyed the mirror on the spot, which would make them fall on the trap door to their death, or if they dodged the trap, their attention would be on the floor which would make the darts be thest thing they would see.

    "What kind of idiot designed this ce", mumbled Narasha as Daimon kept destroying trap after trap, while fending off against the horrible manifestations from the inscriptions.

    After about thirty minutes which seemed tost more than what they should, Daimon reached the hand of the hall, but instead of a "light at the end of the tunnel", there was a deeper darkness lying ahead.

    Daimon rubbed his chin as he got an interesting idea, he dispelled Demon Light and instead let out his darkness element mana, then under the surprised "eyes" of Narasha and Evangeline, the condensation of darkness which was blocking the path parted ways revealing a ck gate with a socket with the shape of the badge.

    But that wasn''t all that darkness actually flowed towards Daimon and swirled around him, before it was absorbed by his magic core.

    "I guess darkness affinity plus the passive "Lover of darkness" can have that effect¡­ damn, you even managed to seduce an element, I fear for other people''s wives", said Evangeline with an exaggerated dramatic voice.

    Daimon shook his head, he didn''t expect that condensation of darkness to be suddenly absorbed by his magic core, he only supposed that since the badge was ck, it was meant to be used by a darkness element mage so to leave this hall, he had to demonstrate he was skilled in that element, and the result was better than what he expected.

    Still, he didn''t miss the chance to get back at Evangeline.

    "You should worry about yourself instead of others, who knows, someday I might be allowed to punish the administrator of the system", he said with a smirk on his face.

    "Uhhh", Evangeline''sugh stopped in cold, she mumbled some things Daimon couldn''t hear and then remained silent.

    Daimon walked towards the ck gate and stopped five meters away from it before he threw the badge making itnd on the socket, the whole ce suddenly trembled making some dust fall from the roof as the gate slowly opened.

    The first thing Daimon saw as the heavy door opened was¡­ a head, a head made out of some kind of ck mineral bricks.

    The hollowed spaces which represented the eyes of the head, suddenly lit up in ck mes and the head spoke in a slow robotic voice.

    "Wee to the Drakolevia ruin badge bearer, do you wish to receive your reward right no¡­ aghhhh!".

    Before the head could finish its speech, Daimon condensed a sword with Demon Light and stabbed it on the face, the bricks melted revealing a mass of gray meat below of it, in other words this head was another of the things which popped out of the inscriptions, but it was disguised to look like an automatic golem.

    No matter how loud the head screamed or asker Daimon to stop, he only did it when half of the head was gone, the white mes then retraced into Daimon''s body, without moving into the area about five or so meters, to the displease of the now half head.

    "Now, since you can feel pain, then you are sentient, tell me what is this ce and who are you", said Daimon with a calm yet cold voice.

    "How the hell did you know I wasn''t a golem, my disguise has helped me devour you greedy humans all the time!", bbered the half head head, making Daimon realize he might have damaged it a bit too much.

    Something he also noticed was that while it was in a "afraid" state, the notification for his terror contractor skill wasn''t appearing, which added to the mystery of this whole ce.

    The head kept bbering about its disguise for another whole ten minutes, until Daimon burned it down with Demon Light, a wholeyer of rocks fell from the gate revealing a skeleton which ended in the head, whatever that thing was it was only bones without anything else, besides the head.

    Also, the badge didn''t fulfill its function, meaning this skeleton head monster as Daimon named it, only imitated the true ce where it should be used.

    This time once the "corpse" of the monster fell from the wall, a gate appeared but without Daimon doing anything it opened and then light filled the hall, making Daimon raise an eyebrow.

    ''What the hell is wrong with this ce'', he thought as he looked at the ce to which the door led.

 Chapter 240 Differences

    The other side of the door which opened after Daimon killed that strange creature, was like apletely different world, it was a light blue colored room which only had one thing, a white jade pir with a socket whose form was pretty familiar for Daimon.

    Daimon thoroughly scanned the pir with his infinity eyes this time, there were some inscriptions on it, which were in a different nguage" than the ones he previously saw in the ck stone hall.

    This time when he tried to decipher the inscriptions he couldn''t, not even one of the "characters" changed, which made him frown.

    "This should be the true ce to use the badge", he mumbled and then entered through the door, which closed as soon as he stepped into this new ce.

    Narasha who was curiously looking the room suddenly remembered what Daimon did a moment ago.

    "How did you fid out that monster''s true nature, judging by the nature of the hall and the color of the badge it was natural to suppose that was the actual end of the trial?".

    Daimon raised two of his fingers as he answered.

    "First because that darkness which I absorbed was contaminated with something, if it was other people magic core, that thing would have rip a hole through theirs, unfortunately there is no mana I can''t consume¡­ as long as my stupid core decided to cooperate".

    "The second hint was actually a mistakemitted by that creature, what kind of golem would call their master''s den a "ruin", I guess that after other people''s minds got affected by that strange darkness as well as the anxiety and tension that the things engraved on the walls would put them through, they wouldn''t notice minor mistakes like that, so after years of getting used to those conditions, that monster grew confident".

    "Erin would have mocked me if I didn''t notice such amateur mistakes, when someone tried to trick me".

    Evangeline nodded from the space she resided in, while Aura was in charge of Daimon''s physical development, Erin poured all her time in teaching him how to analyze things, including behavior, reactions and every detail, as small as it could be, her title as the most cunning woman in the White Fang gxy wasn''t just for showing after all.

    Daimon walked towards the white jade pir and this time he personally ced the badge on the socket, unlike the previous time, the pir sucked in the badge and then the inscriptions came up to life¡­ literally.

    The inscriptions separated from the pir taking the form of a giant shark made out of small blue ques, which each contained a character of the inscription, it was a technique Daimon has never seen nor heard about before, and that is quite a bit to say considering he has worked with Liz who is considered the best magic cksmith in the White Fang gxy.

    The white pir emitted a dim light which covered the whole room, before some words appeared on it, this time in themonnguage used in the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

    "#$&% thirty minutes against the shredder shark".

    "Huh?", Daimon noticed the phrase wasn''tplete, but he had no time to think about it as the aggrupation of blue ques in the form of a shark, opened its jaws and rushed towards him.

    Daimon extended his hand at Narasha and she dispelled the light body, returning to Gram''s form.

    The sword then flew towards Daimon''s hand, Daimon injected mana in Gram just in time to block the jaws of the shark.

    Daimon''s eyes contracted a bit, although his strength was insufficient to cut through anything of Arch grade, without using core synchrony, Gram kept Disaster''s sharpness property, which meant that if a mountain were to fall on it, the de would cut through it.

    And now, these blue ques were shing against Gram''s edge making sparks flew all over the ce, without being cut even though the "jaws" applied pressure against the sword, making Daimon take a step back as none of them conceded.

    Daimon frowned, he injected mana into Gram and the sword lit up in white light, this wasn''t Demon Light but one of Narasha''s skills in Gram''s form, Light Conversion.

    The sword ate up 10% of Daimon''s mana pool and then a white sh was radiated from it, but to Daimon''s surprise the wave of light mana only forced the shark back, and then bounced upwards shing against the roof making some dust fall.

    ''What''s going on here'', thought Daimon, this time he didn''t inject any mana in the sword and just shed Gram against the shark, to his surprise he was able to easily push back the shark this time, contrary to when he used mana when attacking the shark was like swim against the current, there was close to zero resistance when he didn''t.

    "So, your weakness are physical attacks, what a shame", he mumbled.

    Narasha returned to the inventory and Daimon this time used his bare hand to punch the shark, which flew a few meters back due to the impact.

    Curiously although the shark wasn''t a living being, it shook its head a couple of times as if it was recovering from the impact, before it rushed against Daimon one more time.

    This time Daimon focused all his strength in his right hand, but as he threw a punch with the intention of destroying the shark, his instincts warned him to not do it, which made him frown.

    But he still changed the angle of his punch avoiding the shark.

    "Booom!", a punch with about twenty tons of strength behind, creating a st of air which traveled all the way towards the wall in front of Daimon.

    Daimon slowly turned to see the shark whose jaws stopped midway into biting his left arm, he retrieved his right hand and ced it on his sides, to his surprise the shark also stepped back.<sub> </sub>

    The eyes of the shark then became more "intelligent" and the thing actually swam in the air around Daimon, the white jade pir illuminated and then the ck badge was ejected from it.

    The badge floated towards Daimon and then shark became small blue light particles which entered the badge, before thetter fell on Daimon''s hand.

    The word "ck" which used to be on the center of the badge disappeared, instead of it, now there was a blue shark engraved on it.

    Daimon saw that the message on the white jade pir changed.

    "Be wary of the ck sea and look for the altar".

    Before Daimon could do anything, the ground below him illuminated and he disappeared, since the feeling of the dimensional tunnel was the same as when he entered the ruin, Daimon didn''t resist the transportation.

    Then as soon as he disappeared, the white jade pir cracked before it crumbled apart, followed by the whole room, leaving only behind a ck gate which had shark''s tooth embedded on it, floating in a white space.

    ¡­

    Unlike when Daimon entered the ruin through the arc, this time there was no light shing his eyes as he wans transported, he carefully evaluated his surroundings and was marveled by the starry sky scenery which surrounded him.

    That wasn''t all, he now understood what was that light which shed him before, while moving through this starry sky he was surrounded by a white sphere, making him look as if he was moving inside a shooting star.

    But that also made him wonder why wasn''t he shed this time, at least until he saw the ck badge radiating a dim blue light which was functioning as a secondyer of the white sphere.

    "Last time the travel was around five minutes, I hope it doesn''tst more than¡­".

    When Daimon was about to start speaking with Evangeline and Narasha to pass the time, the starry sky scenery suddenly disappeared, changing for a blue sky which would have been worth admiring¡­ if it wasn''t for the fact that he was falling right onto a rock in the middle of the sea.

    After making sure that the water was clear and not ck, Daimon looked at the east where he could see a mass ofnd with some trees here and there, and then used blink to go up one hundred meters before he repeated it frontwards this time.

    Daimon''s image shed through the air, whenever he lost altitude, he simply used blink to transport himself some meters upwards, before he kept advancing to the east, the skill blink was certainly useful, although he could not maneuver like Arch ranks who had the ability to fly, blink was instant meaning that if he wanted to dodge, this skill was better.

    After about ten minutes of constantly using blink, Daimon noticed the mass ofnd was actually further away from him than what he thought, he then remembered all the mana he injected into his eyes earlier, which he forgot to dispel, making things look closer than what they actually were.

    His vision returned to normal and then noticed how far was the mass ofnd from him, he has advanced a few dozens of kilometers, but there were about another twenty kilometers or so to reach the shore.

    "Mom, can you hear me?".

    Since he was now out of the trial, he tried to contact Aisha as a mean to see how far he was from her, since he didn''t receive any response from her, then that meant she was at least more than one thousand kilometers away from him.

    A couple of minutester Daimon safelynded on the mass ofnd, his feet slightly sank on the sand, but he didn''t just stop to rest and instead he entered into the jungle as there was a familiar smell floating in the air¡­ the smell of blood.

    There was no race better than a vampire to identify the characteristic smell of blood, so it wasn''t hard for Daimon to notice the smell didn''t belong to a magic beast, in fact it was the smell of human''s blood.

    And his supposition was soon confirmed as he reached what seemed to be a temporal camp in a clear space inside the jungle, there were signs of a bonfire and a tent created with the leaves of a tree which were nearly one meter sized.

    But none of that was importantpared with the left-over bones as well as the red colored sand, which resulted from litters of blood which spilled on the ground.

    Daimon recognized some pieces of cloth spread near the bones, and after making memory, he realized they matched with the uniform of the Blue-Sky gxy, so this poor bastard used to be a pdin.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow feeling the left-over warmth being radiated from the bonfire, which meant this guy died not too long ago, but whatever ate himpletely cleaned his corpse leaving only some bones, that or this camp didn''t belong to the pdin¡­ but to whatever preyed on him.

    Daimon''s mana sense spread across the area and he immediately heard some noisesing from a nearby bush.

    Purple lighting crackled on Daimon''s hand as he pointed at the bush, purple lightning was shot towards the bush, forcing the little spy toe out of his hiding spot.

    "Seriously what''s wrong with this ce", said Narasha as she saw the creature that came out of the bush.

 Chapter 241 Testing

    What came out of the bush was a headless skeleton with flesh only on its right arm, it was somewhat simr to the creature that Daimon killed before, but this one had an arm instead of a head.

    Or at least it looked like an arm, because once the creature spotted Daimon, a pair of eyes appeared on what would be the biceps and the arm opened sidewards revealing a mouth full of spiked teeth.

    It was bizarre to say the less, but even then, Daimon didn''t feel any fear from it, he was instead surprised by the discover that this creature was a living being, he could understand if undead were had this kind of physical disposition.

    But the creature wasn''t an undead race, and it didn''t seem to be artificially created, although he wasn''t able to use them to get skills, like the mad chimera, this was different, it wasn''t due to gic damage, instead there was no notification about it.

    And since Evangeline didn''t say anything, Daimon knew this was one of those mysteries of the system which he had to discover by himself.

    Daimon returned to reality when he saw the creature rushing towards him, strangely it didn''t directly attack him with its soleplete limb, and instead, the bones of the fleshless arm stretched out like a whip which was then swung at Aster.

    "Hsss", Daimon noticed a strange mana was attached to the bones and he easily dodged the bone whip, the next thing he saw was that wherever the bone whip touched, it left some kind of chemical burn as well as a ck trace.

    "Early five-star battle prowess", mumbled Daimon as he the creature kept attacking him, by swinging the bone whip repeatedly, as it chased after him.

    To be honest he didn''t pay too much attention to the other participants, besides those who had badges, but since a five-star grade creature was enough to send that pdin to the underworld, then he was probably a first grader.

    ''Next weakness testing'', though Daimon, dark mis gathered around him and the creature suddenly slowed down its movements.

    The thing actually stopped in cold but after a moment as if it noticed something it continued with its attacks, of course Daimon dispelled his darkness mana to avoid corroding the creature with it.

    Instead of that, this time he tried out lightning, purple electricity exploded out of Daimon''s body, making crackling sounds.

    "GFRFHGH!", the creature screeched some gibberish and then avoided Daimon''s lightning as if it was a pest, but that was to be expected considering this creature it was of an unharmonious nature, on a higher grade than the beast races and closer to the undead, while still being alive, it was something unseen in the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

    Noticing that the creature didn''t dare to approach nor attack him while his lightning was on the field, he absorbed it back and then changed to an element he rarely used, light.

    Surprisingly light didn''t have the effect he expected, every affinity varied depending on the user, unlike Loren, Daimon''s light was unable to heal and had a warlike nature, making it more simr to the corrosive light developed by humans, with the only difference that it burned everyone and not just those with unharmonious inclinations.

    And yet, this creature showed little to no reactions towards it, the eyes on the arm closed their eyelids, but after that it rushed towards Daimon again, making him dodge the bone whip.

    However, there was a difference this time, bones which formed the legs of the creature stretched, propelling it frontwards, then the arm suddenly expanded bing an adult sized monstrous mouth which tried to swallow Daimon whole.

    Daimon softly snorted, lightning exploded with him as the center showring the creature and making it scream, before it fell to the ground and withering a couple of secondster, just like the monster back at the ck hall, the bones turned ck before they crumbled apart into dust.

    "I guess that exins how did it eat that guy", concluded Daimon after seeing thatst attempt from the creature to eat him.

    "Mm?", Daimon saw something glowing on the sand near where the creature''s bones disintegrated, so he crouched down to pick it up.

    He curiously observed the thing, it was a small ck octagonal piece of some kind of bone-like material.

    Daimon felt an ominous sensation just by holding the thing, so he used his lightning to attack it in order to destroy it, but after a couple of seconds he noticed it was almost unaffected, instead of that, the ominous sensation increased.

    "Try to survive this", said Daimon as white mes covered his hand, this time the octagonal bone like material tried to escape from his hand, but a split of a secondter it was consumed by Demon Light, leaving behind small wisps of ck smoke which dissipated not too long after.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, normally the creatures inside a magic ruin custody some kid of resource, which bes the prize for the explorer, but the ring which the pdin should have been using to store his finds as well as the potions he brought to the exploration, was empty and broken on the ground.

    And that spelled problems for them, because it meant these creatures had the custom of using resources to be stronger, just like mages, so it was possible they even had some kind of civilization of their own.<sub> </sub>

    "Things are getting worse with each minute, damn it", swore Daimon, he took out the ck badge and saw a countdown being projected on it, marking 70 hours, which probably meant that Ste could only enter after that period of time passed.

    Daimon scanned every nook and cranny of this small ind and after not finding anything, he burned down the remains of that pdin.

    Although he wasn''t empathic enough to bring the bones of someone he didn''t know, back with him, as a former human he at least burned down the bones to prevent them from being used for other purposes.

    "This is as much as I can do for you", mumbled Daimon before he left the jungle and walked towards the highest ce of the ind, a few hundreds of meters at the east there was a rock mountain, which resembled an unactive volcano.

    With a couple of jumps Daimon climbed to the top of the mountain and then watched the horizon as he used infinity eyes to extend his field of vision, trying to find his next resting point.

    Although Daimon''s mana was virtually limitless, there was a limit as to how many times he could refill his mana pool, and so there was a limit as to how much he could travel using blink, and this seemed to be even bigger than Lykos, which was already too much to say, considering Lykos was about twenty times bigger than earth.

    Only after he reached the limit the limit of his mana sense which was about 1500 kilometers, he managed to grasp sings of a series of small inds near to each other, there was only one problem, he saw smokeing from one of them which meant there was someone or something already living on it.

    Daimon changed the configuration on the bracelet of the god of mischief and his image slowly faded away, this was a small w he found on the item, he set him to change his whole appearance to his surroundings which turned it into a perfect camouge.

    ''With some luck that smoke is a bonfire set up by mom or one of them'', thought Daimon as he used blink to gain elevation before he advanced straight towards that series of small inds, unaware by the fact that the ck badge now had a small an octagon mark on one of its corners.

    ¡­

    While Daimon was shing through the air, outside of the magic ruin, at the border of the ster chart, the scenery waspletely different to how it was when Daimon and the others entered.

    Practically a city was built here, with tons of locals as well as other establishments ofmon use like bars, restaurants and¡­ even brothels, the merchants didn''t leave aside any chance to make money after all.

    As soon as the students entered the magic ruin, the principals and the executors of the four gxies lifted the prohibition, and in a matter of minutes everything was settled down, there was a lot of activity since representatives from big families and forces as well as newspapers, decided to stay here until the students returned.

    What was more surprising was, that about ten minutes after the students entered, the first lord realm member of an academy was transported inside the magic ruin.

    The one sent by the humans was a woman wearing a white dress as well as a veil which covered her upper face, leaving only her nose and below to be visible, a member of the Penddra family.

    Which of course made the principal of the Blue-Sky academy, Miles, smile from ear to ear, a couple of minutester the mage lord from the vampires was also transported, and half an hourter the demon mage lord followed, leaving only Ster behind.

    Miles and Crowley couldn''t remain quiet and started running their mouths.

    "What do you think, maybe giving their badge to a first year wasn''t such a smart decision, who would have thought".

    "Principal Miles is right, luckily we didn''t mix personal affairs and business and properly gave the badge to a second-year student".

    Unlike those two, Ang remained silent, but even she couldn''t doubt about Aura''s decision, it has been a couple of hours by now and Ste was still outside, so it was normal for her to believe that the badge bearer selected by Aura eighter was taking too much time, or died.

    What they didn''t know was that both Ste and Aura were calm for a reason, Aura could tell Daimon waspletely fine thanks to her being a soulmate, as for Ste, the countdown also appeared in her part of the badge.

    As well as the shark emblem which reced the word "ck" on it, she managed to steal a peak at the badge of the human mage lord, and such a change didn''t happen.

    And in her experience, if there was someone capable of achieving what others deemed impossible, that was Daimon.

    ''I wonder, what kind of impossibility did you pull out this time¡­ Daimon'', she thought to herself as she sent Aura a message through her sigil lector to inform her of the changes on the badge and the countdown.

 Chapter 242 The Flow Of The Time Inside The Ruin

    While Daimon used blink to advance towards the small series of ind he saw earlier, he remembered the bracelet the Greenwich sage created which was linked to the integrity of the ruin.

    "Mm?", without stopping advancing, Daimon raised an eyebrow after seeing the current advance on the decay of the integrity, in a rough calction about five hours had passed since he entered the ruin.

    And yet the red part of the first day hasn''t moved at all, or the advance might be too small to be noticeable.

    ''Could it be that the time here flows differentlypared to the outside world'', thought Daimon.

    There had been such cases before, ruins in which a day inside is only half a day outside, but those ruins could only be essed by Arch ranks and most of the ones who ventured inside would most likely die.

    "Time altered ruin¡­ this keeps on getting better and better with each minute", he mumbled before he elerated.

    If that was the case, not only the difficulty of this ruins was bound to be pretty high, they would need to survive more time than what they expected, so finding the rest was a must.

    About an hourter, Daimon finally caught a glimpse at the inds up-close, most of them were small sand banks without anything besides some vegetation, but there were a couple who were big enough to contain a jungle as well as some mountains.

    One of those two was the one from where he saw smokeing from before, but now the smoke was gone without any trace, as if it was purposedly done.

    Daimon''s nose wrinkled a couple of times, with his sharp smelling sense it wasn''t too hard for him to detect a hint of iron in the air, but again it was disguised.

    So, it was less likely to be one of those creatures, and more probably one of the participants of the exploration, which to be honest meant no change for Daimon.

    He descended on the shore of the ind and then scanned it with his mana sense.

    "Damn", Daimon couldn''t help but swear as he rushed into the jungle, after avoiding a trap which was set on the ground, he approached a cave but stopped outside knowing that if he entered, he would be bombarded with long range spells.

    "It''s me, are you three okay?".

    ¡­ "How does my mind projection look like?".

    Daimon let out a sigh of relief, listening to Yvonne finally answering.

    "Basically, you but with a witch''s hat for some reason".

    "You cane in".

    Daimon entered the cave and was weed by the sight of the three Risha sisters, sitting on the ground with tired expressions, the one who looked worse was Liliana, she had bags under her eyes and her face was pale.

    Unlike her usual pale skin tone caused by her ice affinity, something she had inmon with ine, right now it looked unnatural and sick, it was clear she overexerted herself.

    Daimon took out the potions the academy gave them and handed them to Yvonne and the others.

    He could hear their stomachs making small noises, which made them blush, Daimon chuckled and then took out some food from his inventory, making it look like he had them in his storage ring.

    While the girls were curious as to how Daimon contrabanded food from the outside, right now they didn''t care.

    "Thanks", after thanking Daimon, the three of them immediately dug in.

    Daimon saw them devouring the food like hungry ghosts and he sat down in front of them, before he took out water for them.

    "Take it easy, once you finish eating then I want you to tell me what could have happened that brought you to this state in a day or two".

    The Risha sisters slowed down but without stopping eating their food, they all said.

    "It''s been nearly a month since we arrived here".

    Daimon who was drinking water nearly choked with it, he looked at the Risha sisters and noticed they looked at him with slightly ashamed expressions.

    He didn''t pay too much attention before, but they were quite untidied right now, their hair was disheveled and although they were clean, their clothes had signs of battle, like small cuts here and there.

    "¡­ Enjoy your food, we''ll talkter, tell me when you are finished", it''s all what he said before he left the cave to stand on guard.

    Judging by the fact that they hid themselves like this, it was obvious they were running away from something, which was surprising considering once he reached here, he used his mana sense to look for any nearby inds and there was nothing in 1500 kilometers around.

    After a couple of minutes Daimon''s ears caught the characteristic sound of clothes falling to the ground, it was very low and while others wouldn''t notice it, after eight years living with the girls, he was used to it.

    "We are okay now", this time Leslie was the one who called him.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon entered the cave again and as he expected, they were now wearing a new set of clothes they evenbed their hair, that as well as the food and probably the fact that Daimon was with them now, helped their nerves which were stiff rx, making them look less stressed.

    Daimon saw Leslie holding Liliana''s hand, small sparks appeared from time to time as well as some steam.

    He sat down near them and then waited for them to tell what happened.

    "I guess the first thing you should know about this ce, is that there are Lord level beings, that''s why we ended in such a state to begin with", mumbled Yvonne.

    ¡­

    For the next hour or so, Yvonne and the others told Daimon what they have experienced in the past month inside the ruin.

    Apparently, they appeared not too far from each other and were able to gather without meeting any of those creatures Daimon has fought, with Liliana using her ice to create a path on the ocean, they were able to advance without any problem.

    Fishing for food when they were hungry and things like that, until one day when they stopped in an ind which had a river to take a bath, they finally bumped into one of those creatures.

    Unlike the one Daimon fought, that one had a leg while the rest of its body was only bones, and it was about the fourth star ranked realm, after realizing that Yvonne''s darkness didn''t affect it, Leslie used her fire to attack the creature and the result was pretty good.

    After killing the creature, they continued minding their own business and then left, from that point onwards they were ambushed by more of those creatures, at any mass ofnd one of those creatures was always waiting for them, then the number increased and after they defeated the tenth, things changed.

    This time they were attacked while they were at the sea, a whole ship suddenly appeared from below the water, then dozens of those creatures led by one which had legs and one arm, attacked them.

    The normal creatures were still manageable, but once the one leading joined the fight, Leslie had no option but to use her legacy spell, to push it back, her attacks didn''t seriously wound it, but the creature was wary enough of her fire, to not directly attack them.

    But the creature was just ying with them, after receiving and enduring a burn due to Leslie''s mes, the creature jumped towards her and punched Liliana sending her flying backwards.

    But when she got up, she realized there was no wound, if that hitnded then Liliana would have died, so the talisman activated protecting her.

    Then Liliana used all her mana to imprison the whole ship and then created a small t structure of ice, which she controlled to get some distance and rest, for some reason the Lord realm creature couldn''t set a foot in thend, but the others could so from that point onwards, they were followed and attacked every day.

    The lord ranked creature had the ability to sink the inds in which they hid, so they had no option but to keep on moving, hiding and fighting when it was necessary.

    At some point, Yvonne acted as a shield since her darkness was harmless for the creatures, needless to say but her talisman activated too.

    That was a week ago and today Leslie''s talisman activated, but before its effect wore off, she who was thest one with the talisman, managed to feel Daimon''s approximate location, and convinced her sisters to go look for him.

    Luckily, they found this series of small inds and hid to rest, Liliana was the one who endured the most, since her ice was the best for defense among them, she overexerted her mana to protect Yvonne and Leslie.

    And she copsed in the middle of the battle, Yvonne then used her own body as a shield to block attacks directed at Liliana, she then grabbed Leslie and jumped to the sea, somehow, she managed to hide from them and then sneaked into one of the many small inds.

    Unfortunately, they were attacked once again, and after a month of constant battles and little rest, they finally couldn''t hold the line, Leslie used her wings onest time to attack the Lord level creature forcing it to retreat, but they had no energy left to flee.

    That''s why they set up a trap and prepared to fight for their lives, since the talisman already wore off, Leslie couldn''t feel Daimon''s approximate position anymore, that''s why they used the bonfire to create a smoke signal.

    The creatures already knew they were there anyway, so the smoke was used to get his attention, and their bet paid off.

    As for why Leslie was holding Liliana''s hand, it was because she used way too much mana and her body got a recoil due to that, so now her temperature decreased to dangerous levels, so Leslie helped her to warm up a bit.

    Daimon didn''t know what to say, as their story progressed, he couldn''t help but nod in recognition, these three as two-star mages (thanks to they breaking through before entering the ruin) managed to hold back a Lord level monster, it was praise worthy.

    And what''s more they did it for a whole month, eating poorly, resting poorly and watching each other back.

    Daimon suddenly frowned; his mana sense caught the strange scene of a ship emerging from below the water near the ind.

    He stood up but before he could leave the cave, the three girls also stood up, slowly but firmly.

    "We will never be useless again, if you are going to fight, we''ll go too!", said the three of them.

    To their surprise Daimon nodded.

    "Fine,e too, but to be honest I don''t think you''ll get the chance to do anything", after saying that, Daimon turned around and walked towards the shore, from the very beginning when he arrived, despite their tired and haggard appearances, the three of them didn''t show any fear, instead of that they were ready to fight, and that''s something he respected.

    Not giving up in front of adversities might sound easy, but how many can truly look at an imminent death situation and still be prepared to fight.

 Chapter 243 Fighting Against The Three Limbed Creature

    As Daimon walked towards the shore, he spread his mana sense all over the ce and couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, the ship was submerging into the water again, and as it did so, it somehow was able to escape his mana sense.

    ''It shouldn''t be possible, unless that ship is above the Arch rank¡­'', as his train of thought reached that, he immediately looked into his inventory before he regained his calm.

    For a second opinion, he instead used his infinity eyes to look into the water, and he chuckled.

    ''Cunning bastards, how can my mana sense detect something that isn''t there'', he thought as he turned to see the Risha sisters.

    "Leslie and Yvi you can take on the minions, leave the big guy to me, Liliana you rest, your mana circuits are still recovering¡­ also don''t ask me about what you are about to see".

    "Mm", the three of them nodded without any sign of doubt, making Daimon understand why their mothers were slightly worried about them, for the little amount of time they had shared, they trusted him quite a bit.

    Not like it wasn''t earned as he has helped them and does consider them their friends, but apparently since they took him as their "center", they were positively inclined toward him, and that is something dangerous in a world where others are always on the look to take advantage over you.

    "I''m not in the mood to y, all of youe out", Daimon pointed at the water, white mes appeared on his hand and gathered on the tip of his finger, before he shot it at the water.

    "That is light".

    "No, it''s fire!".

    "Battle¡­ aura".

    A white sh of light impacted the water creating a small explosion but a column of water of about thirty meters of height.

    The Risha sisters put the subject at the back of their mind, for the time being and instead focused on the battle that wasing their way.

    Not even a secondter, a ship made out of wood with some runes which Daimon found familiar to the ones on the ck stone hall, was expelled from the water column, some parts of it were burned but it was more or less fine.

    The ones riding it on the other hand weren''t that lucky.

    "Afrgghhr hresshgh!", Daimon saw the creature which had legs and an arm which functioned as the head, simr to the one he fought at the ind earlier, shouting in some strangenguage to the other creatures which all had a single flesh limb, some were blown into pieces due to the explosion, and others cowered on a corner of the ship.

    The leader managed to survive because the two creatures with two limbs blocked Leslie''s best attack, when she was angry due to Yvi and Liliana''s state, still she managed to turn the two creatures with equal strength to a seventh ranked mage into a burned crisp.

    The Risha sisters nearly lost it when they saw Daimon onto the deck of the ship, but they trusted in Daimon so instead of getting worried about him, they did what they were told.

    Daimon safelynded on the deck of the ship, apparently the one limbed creatures became violent when pushed to the limit, so after seeing Daimon getting too close they all jumped towards him.

    "Feather rain".

    "Nightmare Barrier".

    The creatures at the left were sted away due to an explosion of fire casted by Leslie, while the creatures at the right stopped in cold and tripped down onto the deck.

    While Yvonne''s darkness wasn''t corrosive enough to kill the creatures with a single attack, the Night Sparrow n specialized in a mix of physical and mental attacks, so she used a barrier to block the creatures and affected their judgement causing them to trip and opening up the path for Daimon.

    Still, a trap door opened on the deck and a two limbed creature with one leg and one arm, came out of it, with its ws aiming at Daimon.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed in an eerie amethyst light and the creature froze on the spot, its ws were still a few centimeters away from Daimon''s neck, when it suddenly exploded in white mes.

    "Arghfhh!", the creature howled in pain, unlike the one limbed creatures he killed before itsted a micro faction of a second more, but that only prolongated its suffering, before it became a bunch of ck bones which then turned into dust.

    Daimon stomped and crushed the octagonal thing which was left behind as it tried to escape, at this point he more or less had an idea as to why the Risha sisters weren''t able to escape from the pursue of the creatures, that octagonal thing acted as some form of tracking device.

    Anyway, right now he paid no attention to that, as there was a more urgent matter to take care off, the other one limbed creatures finally reacted, but as they were about to attack Daimon, the three limbed creature stopped them with its bone arm.

    "Arghr¡­ Arcanist", the mouth on the arm of the creature opened and after trying hard, it managed to say an understandable word with its hoarse voice.

    Daimon who was about to burn the other one limbed creatures with Demon Light, raised an eyebrow, and without dispelling the white mes in his hands, he pointed at the three limbed creature.

    "What are you, why are you chasing us?".

    The mouth on the arm of the creature creepily smiled showing its spiked teeth, but still answered a secondter.

    "Descendants of beasts taste good, strong prey on the weak, it''s thew of the jungle".

    Without any warn, the creature dashed towards Daimon and punched him with its bone arm which was coated in a green me.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon snorted and answered with his own punch, making the creatureugh with disdain, until their fists shed.

    "Crack!", the sound of bones cracking followed by a loud dull sound echoed through the whole ce, with that punch, the whole arm of the creature exploded and it was sent flying until it collided against the door of what seemed to be the captain''s cabin.

    The creature had a horrified expression on its face as it looked at the what was left of its shoulder.

    "Kill him", for some reason the creature now talked in themonnguage of the Wonder Myriad ster chart, as it ordered its underlings to attack Daimon, but two figures blocked them.

    Leslie and Yvonne got up the ship and used their spells to restrain the one limbed creatures, as Daimon walked towards their leader.

    Without giving it the chance to escape, he stomped on its right leg and then let out Demon Light from his foot, burning the creature with it, making it scream.

    After a couple of seconds, the limb was gone and Daimon frowned, at this point the notification of the skill "Terror Contractor" should have appeared, but apparently whatever these creatures were, they weren''t recognized by the system.

    "Whatever, let''s do it the old way", mumbled Daimon as he shrugged and then grabbed the creature from its face and lifted it.

    "Hsssss!", Daimon used a very low amount of Demon Light to coat his hand, slowly burning away the skin of the creature before saying.

    "Now, are you going to answer or not?".

    The creature screamed and then its left leg separated from the body and tried to escape just for it to be obliterated by Demon Light.

    Daimon saw the octagon thing emerging from the ck dust which used to be a leg, but instead of escaping it integrated into the arm, and then the arm doubled its size before it wildly tried to escape from Daimon''s grip.

    Unfortunately, its strength only reached about 28 tons, and while Narasha helped Daimon by reducing Disaster''s weight in half, its weight increased during the past eight years as it ate more of the antinite coat, so to wield the sword, Daimon built an incredible physical strength of about 32 tons, his arms still itched as he remembered how Aura increased the harshness of his training, after congratting him for the incredibly high offensive power of Demon light, which unfortunately barely increases his physical strength in exchange.

    "Agghrhrh, I curse you to die a horrible death Arcanist!", the creature shouted and then exploded in green mes which covered Daimon.

    [Ding]

    [An unknown curse was casted on the host but it was nullified by the passive skill "Overlord''s Pride"]

    [Analyzing¡­ Analysispleted]

    [The curse Diabolic Immtion has been registered¡­]

    Daimon dismissed the notification to read itter, he used Demon Light to dispel the green mes which were still lingering on the deck near him, and then noticed this time there was no octagonal thing left behind, probably that self-destroying curse used it as its fuel.

    Daimon turned to see the Risha sisters, and nodded in recognition, they killed the one limbed creatures one by one, by acting as a whole, while the three of them weren''t in good conditions, their team work was perfect.

    Even Liliana participated but still respected the rule to now use any spells, instead while Yvonne restrained the creatures she pierced their limbs with her rapier, and now that they saw the octagonal things, and deduced that was why they ended in such a bad situation, Leslie aggressively, destroyed them with her mes.

    "Humph", with a cold snort, Leslie destroyed thest octagonal bead, Daimon chuckled at her slightly heated up expression which cooled down when she looked at him.

    Daimon scanned the ship with both his mana sense and his infinity eyes just in case, and then sighed.

    ''I guess it was to be expected'', he thought as he observed apartment below the deck at the deepest spot of the ship.

    The Risha sisters all approached Daimon surrounding him in the process.

    "Are you Loren''s rtive?".

    "You can use fire too~".

    "Are you also a knight?".

    The three of them asked what was in their mind, with curiosity filled eyes.

    "Didn''t I told you to not ask me about it?", he mumbled before he looked at the sky which was darkening as wind currents started violently blowing.

    "We''ll talk about thister, a storm ising so let''s return to the cave, okay?".

    The Risha sisters pouted feeling Daimon was avoiding their questions, but he was right, the weather in this ocean was erratic sometimes it was perfect and then all of a sudden it rained.

    "Fine", they said at the same time as they jumped out of the ship, which Daimon then kept in his inventory.

 Chapter 244 Into The Storm

    After Daimon stored the ship, he followed the girls to the cave, they returned just on time as the rain started to fall, gusts of wind howled and the overall temperature went down quite fast.

    Daimon sealed the entrance of the cave with arge rock and then touched the wall of the cave, without the Risha girls noticing it he covered the outside of the cave with ayer of metal, to prevent the water from flooding them.

    He then turned around and was once again surrounded by those three, their expressions clearly said they wouldn''t leave this matter slip.

    Still given his current rtionship with them, Daimon wasn''t going to give them a detailed exnation, just something to soothe their curiosity.

    On the other hand, it''s not like he had to tell them about the system or anything like that, so he chose to the publicly known information about him, in other words the fact that he was a variant, which technically wasn''t a lie, as he used to be a vampire but that changed after he got the Apex Predator physique.

    "You three have seen how physically strong I am, right?". said Daimon as he took a seat on a rock nearby the Risha sisters.

    "Yes, even knights are no match for you", mumbled Leslie as she remembered how Daimon practically destroyed Tayler dius back then.

    "Well, basically my body is special enough to endure being both a mage and a knight, also I can learn to use more elements, without me exploding, it''s the easiest way to exin it".

    The Risha sisters were surprised for a split of a second, but then they remembered who they were talking about, someone who managed to extort Magus Kings and make a Half Emperor be indebted to him.

    Mireya once asked Calvin why he showed respect for Daimon, somethingpletely strange considering he didn''t even behave in Solomon''s presence, and the answer she got was something along the lines of "Our ss is full of monsters, but he¡­ he is on another level, when I met him, for the first time in my life, I felt that I had no way to surpass someone and that''s amazing, it''s the best motivation to have someone you look up to".

    "Seriously what kind of mythical creature are you", mumbled Yvonne as she looked at Daimon.

    Leslie pushed Yvonne aside and then looked at Daimon with her big eyes sparkling.

    "You can use fire too right, then we can usebined spells~", Leslie didn''t mention it, but she was charmed by those "pretty" white mes she saw Daimon using earlier, the female members of the fire crane n have a high interest in different and strong mes, that was one of the reasons as to why Veronica idolized Liz.

    Liliana then dragged Leslie backwards as she said.

    "Those weren''t mes Leslie¡­ that was some kind of battle aura, am I right Daimon?".

    All the male side of the Snow Eagle n chose to be knights, so Liliana was somewhat sensible towards battle aura, that''s how she grasped the battle auraponent of Demon Light, although she isn''t a knight.

    Yvonne then grabbed both Leslie and Liliana by their shoulders and moved them aside, before she took over.

    "You used light too, how high must your vitality be, to endure the recoil of twopletely contrary elements as darkness and light inhabiting the same boy", she said as she looked at Daimon with curious filled eyes.

    She is a darkness mage and so she has to be way of light mages, but now she witnessed Daimon being able to wield both without exploding, so she was genuinely interested in that.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry.

    ''These three are looking at me as if I was some kind of magic unicorn or something like that'', he thought, finding the whole situation rather funny.

    Since he gave them the talismans, he already decided to be a bit more open with them, because they were past the point of being ssmates and instead were his friends now, and his capacity to manipte more than two elements as outrageous as it might look or sound, it was one of his lesser secrets, so it was a good way to start.

    It''s not like Daimon decided it on a whim, previously he told the girls about it and recent events such as Arthur attacking him in front of everyone, as well as his dreamstely made him take thatst step.

    "It''s something like what I used to one shot Alexander, but on a moreplex level, also while my vitality is indeed quite high, that''s not what allows me to do it, it''s more like I''m patible" with all the elements".

    Daimon noticed Liliana''s eyes sparkled this time, and he chuckled, out of them, he has showed the capacity to use Yvonne and Leslie''s affinities, so of course now that Liliana knew he could potentially use ice, she of course wanted to see him doing it.

    "The fact that I have an "universal" affinity doesn''t mean I can use all the elements, it requires time to master them individually and I''m more skilled on ones than on others, that''s one of the reasons as to why I chose darkness and lightning as my main focus".

    Seeing Liliana''s expression sulking he inwardlyughed before adding.

    "But yes, I can use ice too", Daimon extended his hand which started letting out white mist, before it was d on ice, originally, he didn''t have ice affinity but he swallowed one of the petals of the snow lotus, to see if that stimted his magic core to finally advance, needless to say but it didn''t work, on the other hand ine was quite happy to see him getting ice, so Daimon counted it as a win in his books.

    "Booom!", a sudden thunder sound reverberated on the sky, it was strong enough to even get into the cave, also the sound of rain hitting the ground became louder all of a sudden.

    With his infinity eyes, Daimon could see through the walls of the cave, outside there was a horrible storm going on, the wind was so strong that some small trees were being pulled from the ground, before they flew away.<sub> </sub>

    "I guess we''ll have to stay in the cave until the storm subsides", with a wave of his hand Daimon took out two big tents out of his inventory as well as some mats and sheets, the temperature kept dropping and the cave wasn''t exactly good to keep them warm after all.

    The Risha sisters stared at each other and then entered the tent, but left the entrance open as theyid down on the mats, it''s been so much time since they had the chance to properly rest and had a decent bed, that this felt like heaven for them.

    Daimon did the same after he changed his clothes inside of the tent beforeying down on a mat in his own tent, since the cave was now a closed space, they couldn''t light a bonfire.

    "Mm?", Daimon suddenly noticed the temperature warming up a bit with Leslie as the center, she even extended it to cover his tent.

    ''This little girl¡­'', thought Daimon, although they drank the potions he gave them, their mana circuits needed some rest for them to properly recover, in other words they needed to sleep, that''s not something potions or pills can do, unless they are really high ranked ones.

    "Leslie, focus on keeping those two warm, this temperature isn''t enough to make me feel cold at all".

    "But¡­", Leslie pouted, she was doing it because she wanted to show her value, although none of them mentioned, it was true Daimon saved their lives, meaning that even after improvingtely they still ended up causing him troubles, or at least that''s what they thought.

    Of course, Daimon knew what those three were thinking, because he has experiencing it himself, Erin and Aura had protected him quite a few times already after all, but he learned to not see it that way.

    "If you feel that you are too weak to protect others use that as your motivation, so that one day you can stand in front of the one you want to protect¡­ but for now rest and recover, tomorrow we''ll have to fight and your fire is quite effective against those creatures".

    Daimon''s serious expression then became more rxed as he pointed at the casual clothes into which he changed before.

    "Besides, if you keep increasing the temperature inside my tent, I''ll have to take my clothes off, you know".

    The Risha sisters giggled and the atmosphere inside the cave became more rxed, they need it, after being on the run for a whole month, they finally were able to rest without being in full alert, it''s not like they lowered their guards, but having Daimon around make them feel at ease.

    "Speaking of that, how are you three dealing with the side effects of your legacy spellstely?".

    Daimon saw Leslie using her wings earlier to sweep the floor with some of the creatures, and unlike what he expected she didn''t be that much violent, it was safe to assume Yvonne and Liliana had been using their wings too, but they weren''t showing the side effects now.

    Yvonne covered her face remembering how she acted after her match on the tournament, seeing the opportunity of course Leslie didn''t let it slip.

    "They already wore off, you should have seen Yvi, we had to runaway once because she mocked those creatures in her "cheeky state", so the creatures got angry and fought harder~".

    Seeing her sister betraying her, Yvonne got back at her.

    "Humph, I remember a certain someone wanting to take on the three limbed creature in a fit of rage and then fainting due to having depleted her mana reserves".

    While those two argued, Liliana limited tough at them, at least until they both turned to see Liliana before saying.

    "Why don''t we talk about the small ice doll you recently developed to deal with the shyness that your wings bring you¡­".

    Before they finished speaking, Liliana covered their mouths with her hands.

    "That''s enough, let''s go to sleep", mumbled Liliana as she closed the entrance of the tent, only to open it again a couple of secondster.

    "Good night¡­ Daimon", she said before closing the tent again.

    Daimon softlyughed before he changed his position to beying face up on the mat.

    ''Now that I think about it, I don''t remember having ever slept alone¡­ until now'', he thought, even when he was living with the Naktis, Aisha always slept in the same bed with him, not to mention the past eight years where he was surrounded by the girls.

    He then looked into his inventory, the ship he confiscated from the creatures was there, Daimon had all sorts of things in storage, among them he had a flying carriage which was as fast as a peak Arch ranked, just in case.

    You might wonder why he used blink instead then, the answer is quite simple, because apparently the sky in this ce prohibited flying, he sort of cheated using blink but when he tried to glide using some basic wind spells he noticed the spell was interrupted by some kind of invisible force, at the same time he didn''t see any trace of flying magic beasts even after being up in the sky for so many time.

    Later after killing the first creature, he tried using the flying carriage but it didn''t work, only now after seeing the ship he understood transportation in this ce had to be done through the sea, either on the surface or below the water.

    "I wonder how is mom doing", mumbled Daimon before he closed his eyes and fell asleep, not without leaving something prepared outside of the cave, just in case.

 Chapter 245 Fierce Aisha

    While Daimon and the Risha sisters were resting inside the cave to protect themselves from the storm, at another part of the sea where it was barely getting clouded, there were two ships facing each other.

    The sounds of cannons roaring echoed through the sky from time to time, but the ship to which they were shot at wasn''t affected at all.

    Every time a cannon ball was about to hit the ship, a figure stood on its way and punched it changing its direction.

    "Ah, damn it, these bastards aren''t running out of those things", said the figure as it waved his hand.

    "This sea is rich in minerals; how do you expect a metal element mage to run out of ammo".

    A second figure appeared near the first one and threw a knife at another cannon ball making it explode midair.

    "Boom!", the ship which was shooting its cannons, suddenly rumbled before vines appeared from within it, the desk split apart and screams in a strangenguage could be hearding from the ship as it sank.

    "Watch out, the three limbed one is about to go crazy!".

    A woman''s voice warned the others, a pr of steam raised of the sea before a creature with two arms and one leg came out of the waterpletely d in green mes.

    "I curse you to¡­ aghrrrr!".

    As the three limbed creature was about to burn its life to destroy the remaining ship, it was hit by two-meter sphere of light-yellow light.

    The creature tried to fight stimting its green mes, but for some reason it couldn''t and was then consumed by the light sphere turning into a ck skeleton before falling to the water and dissolving into nothing a couple of secondster.

    The remaining ship then started advancing towards the northeast, leaving behind a new ship graveyard of about six ships which sank.

    "Damn, as expected of Daimon he was one step ahead of these fuckers", said Calvin as he left his body fell on the deck.

    Loren and Haylee who came out of the captain''s cabin, approached Calvin and Michael and carefully inspected their wounds to see if there was any infection, before Loren used a healing spell on them just in case.

    They were lucky enough tond in inds with less than one kilometer of distance between each other, Calvin fought against one of the creatures which was eating some unfortunate undead bastard.

    And he ended somehow sinking the ind, which drew the attention of Michael they joined hands and forced a three limbed creature to abandon its ship and stole it.

    Although the ship was damaged in the process, they picked up Haylee and Loren not too long after and Haylee used her wood affinity to repair it.

    Unfortunately, the three limbed creature returned with reinforcements and they were chased during thest two weeks, on the other hand Loren finally reached a decent mastery of the spell Daimon handed her and then the tables turned around.

    Calvin looked at his knuckles where his armor had be brittle, he peeled the first threeyers of it before pouring all his mana to rece them.

    "Even their cannons had that annoying decay magic".

    "Don''tin, I have used almost all my daggers already", Michael who was drinking a mana recovery potion, looked at his belt where there were only about six daggers left and sighed.

    A few minutes before thest enemy ship was destroyed, two of the three limbed creatures teamed up against Michael, while other two kept Calvin busy, he was able to dodge the attacks of the first one, but the second one managed to bypass his defenses.

    The talisman activated and since the creatures were suddenly stopped in cold, both of them were hit by Loren''s attack, at the same time Haylee sank their ships and the battle became way easier.

    Also, thanks to that, Michael now had an approximate idea of Daimon''s current location, soon they reached an area which was heavily clouded so they entered the captain''s cabin and the ship then dived into the water, leaving no trace of its existence behind.

    ¡­

    Further away from their position at the north, the sea waspletely different to what Daimon and the others had seen so far, the water was pitch ck and there was an eerie mist blocking the vision.

    A three-meter red bat floated five meters above the ck sea, a silver haired girl with amethyst eyes stood on top of it, lightning crackled on her pretty hands from time to time.

    She looked at the sea with disdain and suddenly tapped her left foot, and the bat dodged a bone spearing from underwater.

    "Humph", Aisha snorted, with a wave of her hand she created a metal spear and let it fall on the water.<sub> </sub>

    "Tribtion", Aisha elegantly made a gesture and a lightning fell from the sky, directly on the metal spear, currents of electricity spread all over an area of about three kilometers making the water boil.

    Not even a secondter a ssh gave away the position of the one responsible of the bone spear, a gray skin toned guy with a number "3" tattooed on his chest which was now exposed due to his armor having melted.

    "You bit¡­", the gray skinned guy suddenly stopped in cold in the air, blood exploded out of his mouth, he looked downwards just to see two lines of silver light piercing his chest and the area below the left lung.

    The blood bat descended and grabbed the gray skinned guy who used to be a pir of the demon race with its ws, little needlesing from the soles of its feet pierced the skin and a secondter, the demon had turned into a sack of bones which was then thrown into the sea.

    Aisha suddenly looked at the southeast, her eyes sparkled for a split of a second, although she wasn''t sure, her mother instincts told her to go that way.

    She frowned, the blood bat moved on its own avoiding a ck sword and a ck me spear.

    The mist was parted by a ship appearing from below the water, unlike the ones Daimon and the others had seen, this one wasn''t made out of wood, but of bones.

    And that wasn''t all, besides the creatures there were a couple of students from the demon race were leading them, but they looked strange.

    Instead of eyes, they had green mes burning in their eye sockets, also they had extra arms and legs conformed by only bonesing out of their normal limbs.

    One of them who had the number "8" tattooed on his left shoulder, walked out of the rest and opened his mouth to speak, but it was just a feint.

    Aisha jumped out of the blood bat and punched the air where the demon appeared just in time, to use his own fist to attack her.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding echoed through the sky as Aisha''s pretty hand d in silver metal shed with the bone armored fist of the demon, none of them stepped back due to the impact, but streams of ck smoke leaked out of the demon''s hand and his face twisted in pain which forced him to retreat.

    Aisha snorted, as theyer of mithril she used to d her hand changed its shape back to a bracelet her son gave her for one of her birthdays.

    The demonnded on the ship and after using green mes to suffocate the cleansing effect of the mithril, he opened its mouth.

    After a couple of seconds in which the wordsing out consisted on screeches and strange sounds, the words became understandable.

    "Arcanist woman, join me¡­", said the demon as he licked his lips.

    "BOOOOM!", with the ship as the center a fifty meters diameter sphere of silver light exploded, causing streams of steam topletely cover the area.

    The steam was blown away by arge quantity of green mes, revealing the tragic scene of what was left of the ship, just some pieces of ck bones ones belonging to the ship and others which were the leftover of the creatures.

    The only one who survived was the demon with the number "8", but half of his body''s flesh was burned away in that explosion, revealing a creature which only had a head buried inside the chest of the demon, the rest of its body was a skeleton whose arms and legs were destroyed a moment ago.

    It was simr to the one Daimon killed in the ck stone hall, but this one had no feet or hands and was only a head.

    "Arcanist!", green mes exploded all over the sky as the demon shouted, but suddenly everything returned to normal, the mes dispersed, the demon''s head turned around just to see Aisha using her sword to pierce the nape of the creature''s head from behind.

    "Who¡­aghhhr!", the creature managed to speak onest time, before Aisha channeled her lightning through her sword, burning the demon and the creature at the same time, until there was nothing left.

    Aisha gave the corpse a cold gaze before she sat down on the blood bat, which was trembling a bit due to its owner''s current bad mood.

    ''Dying my desired reunion with my darling, learn your ce'', thought Aisha as she tapped the head of the blood bat.

    "Let''s go little red, to the southeast as fast as you can".

    The blood bat nodded and it became a red sh of light which shoot itself towards the southeast.

    Once Aisha was gone, bubbles appeared on the ck water and a swirl swallowed the rests of the ship, leaving no traces of its existence behind.

    The mist covered the area once again as if nothing happened.

 Chapter 246 Setting Sail

    Back at the ind where Daimon and the Risha sisters spent the night, the stormsted the whole night and only when morning came the rain stopped, still the sky was quite clouded but the sea wasn''t as agitated as before.

    Inside the cave, Daimon who woke up against his will way earlier than what he normally does, wasying down with his eyes closed as he explored the new skill he learned when the strange curse the three limbed creature tried to cast on him bounced.

    There was a new branch in the skill tree titled with a yellow notification symbol blinking on its corner,

    [Anti-monster Arts]

    [Curse Series: Diabolic Immtion (!)]

    [Diabolic Immtion: Compresses the remaining mana and half of the vitality to create a concentrated attack, which will deal up to 500% the maximum damage the caster is currently able to deal, the ratio of sess depends on the mental strength and luck of the target,pared to the caster, if the curse is sessful the effect will be doubled, if not the caster would suffer a simr recoil (The side effect was modified due to a high life threat possibility)]

    [Duration: Null] [Cooldown: 24 hours] [Price: Undefined (Half of the current vitality and all the remaining mana)]

    ''For a curse with such an imposing name, the side effect doesn''t sound that horrible, that guy literally died even before he was consumed by Demon Light'', thought Daimon after reading the description of the curse.

    ''Well not everyone can recover vitality by just eating like you, this curse was meant to take one''s life in order to activate it, but the system wouldn''t allow such a thing", said Evangeline with a calm voice.

    But inwardly she was more than surprised, the system didn''t rate the skill by grades, only levels, because they had an unmeasurable potential and the capacity to evolve, just like it happened to Overlord''s Pride, its original effect wasn''t even close to what it was now.

    ''That tittle again, a certain death condition became a mere recoil'', she thought to herself.

    "I guess I''ll try it outter when I reunite with mom, just in case", mumbled Daimon, his vitality was originally abnormal and with "Flesh Conversion" he could recover at an even faster ratio, as long as he ate the flesh of other living beings of course.

    So instead of a curse it became more like a high requirement spell, for him, Daimon didn''t know it, but if the race to which the three limbed creature belonged were to know that one of their protected secret techniques was stolen and improved by an outsider after seeing it once, they would probably spit blood and then bang their heads against a wall tomit suicide.

    "You know I can see you have been moving in circles at the entrance of my tent for the past ten minutes right, Leslie?", said Daimon as he slowly opened his eyes

    "Why didn''t you mention it earlier then you¡­ ah no that''s not what I wanted to say, we prepared the breakfast", mumbled Leslie with a slightly aggrieved voice.

    Daimon chuckled, he woke up earlier than them, but that was only normal considering how tired they were, it was already praise worthy that they got up and prepared breakfast even for him.

    He then stood up and after putting on his shirt which he took out before going to sleep, he came out of the tent,pared to yesterday the three Risha sisters lookedpletely recovered, they even moved the huge rock Daimon used to block the entrance of the cave, there wasn''t any sunlighting from the outside, but it was enough so that the small bonfire they lit up, had an outlet for the smoke.

    Daimon''s nose wrinkled a couple of times, the food they prepared smelled quite delicious, which was quite a surprise for him.

    Liliana pouted as she noticed Daimon''s surprised expression.

    "Is it that hard to believe our food is good?".

    Daimon smirked as he took a seat in front of them, where the dishes were ced on top of a t rock which functioned as a table.

    "Well, I certainly didn''t expect you three to know how to cook,st time it was Aisha and Loren the ones who prepared the soup with the snake, Yvi was barely able to cut the mushrooms and she nearly dropped them twice".

    Yvonne slightly blushed, it was true that previously she didn''t know how to cook, so she was kindly asked to only help to cut some mushrooms to not cause a mess, but she wasn''t the only one, Leslie and Liliana weren''t skilled on that too.

    Somehow their mothers caught a word of that, and the lesson of how to "seduce a man''s stomach" was forcefully imparted to them the weekend previous to the exploration, as soon as they finished refining their respective resources of course.

    "Ahem, I was just a bit nervous that time since I wasn''t used to do it outside a kitchen¡­ so how does it taste?", asked Yvonne with an expectant voice.

    "It''s pretty good", answered Daimon as he chewed a piece of grilled fish, those three caught earlier.

    The three Risha sisters smiled and only then they dug in.

    Once Daimon finished his meal, he stretched his body and then left the cave not without saying.

    "The next time, you should wake me up instead, I have a lot of ingredients in my ring, so that you don''t have to fish for nearly one hour¡­ that being said, thanks for the breakfast".

    The three Risha sisters blushed, they hoped Daimon didn''t notice them, so that it would be a surprise, but this wasn''t the moment for that, they could have been attacked by the creatures after all.<sub> </sub>

    "I guess we should have saved it forter", mumbled Liliana.

    "He liked the food though~", added Leslie.

    ¡­

    While those three were gossiping inside the cave, Daimon inspected the ind, despite the fierce storm that took ce yesterday, only some trees were blown away, the rest was pretty much fine, he entered into the jungle until he reached a small hill with a cascade and a natural pool of freshwater.

    Although the pool was barely one meter deep and the water was as clear as a mirror, he still inspected it with his mana sense and infinity eyes just in case, besides a few small fishes there was nothing else.

    Daimon jumped into the water to take a small bath, the clothes he was wearing had a self-drying function and he didn''t smell or anything, but it was a habit he developed thanks to Erin dragging him to the bathroom at every chance that presented.

    Earlier he when he saw those three leaving the cave, he followed them using his mana sense, until they reached this area and started undressing to take a bath, and returned to the cave an hour or soter, the fish he ate was captured here too.

    A couple of minutester Daimon finished his bath and his clothes dried by themselves, he then walked towards the shore and took out the ship they stole from the creatures yesterday.

    The three sisters approached Daimon and they got up the ship together, while they inspected the captain''s cabin, Daimon went downstairs into the body of the ship, there was a clear division in what he supposed was the living area, which consisted in separated rooms.

    But he didn''te here for that, something that caught Daimon''s attention was that even the three limbed creature didn''t have a storage ring, and there was nothing hidden in the captain''s cabin as far as he knew.

    And down here there were two more rooms besides the ones designated as bedrooms, both of them had formation engraved on their doors, which required some kind of key to open them.

    Even from outside Daimon could feel the eerie sensationing from one of them, what was the thing every living being needed the most, food, and what did the creatures eat, other living beings.

    Daimon burned down the door with Demon Light and was weed by the grotesque scene, of bodies hanging from metal hooks, that being said there were only one or two and they belonged to the first years, of the human and vampire factions both of them were women, but no one he recognized or knew, so he didn''t particrly care about it, as he was about to burn everything in the room, he saw another corpse which was hidden from in view behind a curtain.

    He cut down the curtain and his eyes contracted a bit, the corpse behind the curtain waspletely different from any of the participants of the exploration.

    This one was a male, its characteristics were the same of a human with the only exception that it had light blue skin, also it was wearing some strange clothes simr to robes, making it look like an erudite.

    Daimon saw the Risha sisters entering the room but he didn''t say anything, prior to the exploration he warned them that they were bound to see death up-close, and kill others, it was thew of the jungle.

    That being said, he didn''t know what to expect from the "food supply" of the creatures, luckily it wasn''t as bad as he expected, apparently, they didn''t eat female as soon as possible, unlike that poor bastard who only left some bones behind at the first ind in which Daimon rested.

    Although their stomachs didn''t give in, they didn''t stay in the room and left a few secondster, Daimon used his mana sense to inspect the guy''s corpse and to his surprise, it took him some effort to see what was below the skin.

    ''Reinforced muscles and bones, these guy''s race is perfectly in line to be a knight¡­ the question here is, from where did hee'', thought Daimon, something that called his attention was that his magic core was gone, probably the creatures took it, to use it for something.

    With a wave of his hand, white mes flooded the room and burned everything, Daimon didn''t n to use any of the things here, but the space mighte handyter, since this ship was the only transport that seemed to be avable for now.

    He then went upstairs and joined the Risha sisters at the captain''s cabin.

    "Did youdies discovered how to drive this thing?".

    Yvonne nodded as she approached a panel with apass and a rudder attached to it.

    She ced her hand on thepass and then rolled it a couple of times, making the ship toe to life, the runes on the wood walls illuminated.

    "Where are we heading to?", she asked.

    Daimon was about to point at the west area of thepass, when the badge came out of his pocket on its own and floated right above the south area of thepass.

    "Well, I guess we''ll head to the south".

    "Mm", Yvonne nodded and then let got of thepass and then the ship started advancing towards their destination.

 Chapter 247 Third Party

    While the ship advanced towards the south, the Risha girls curiously looked at the badge that came out of Daimon''s pocket and was now floating above thepass.

    "What''s that countdown for, Daimon?", asked Leslie as she saw the now remaining 54 hours, prior to Ste''s arrival.

    Leslie''s question reminded Daimon that he forgot to tell them about the difference in time as well as the contents of the trial he went through, it wasn''t his fault though, the Risha girls were really tired yesterday and the battle against the creatures took ce not too long after he found them, after that the storm hit the ind too.

    "I passed the trial, and that is the remaining time before vice principal Ste is allowed to enter the magic ruin¡­ I forgot to tell you, time flows differently here than in the outside world, the month you all spent here was about half a day for me".

    "Damn, that means we''ll be trapped here for a whole year", mumbled Yvonne.

    The exploration was supposed tost for six days in the time of the Wonder Myriad ster chart, but here that would be about twelve months.

    "I wouldn''t worry about that, we''ll have to reunite with the others and the only way of transport here, are these ships, that blue skinned guy wasn''t from any race of our ster chart, so there is chance that there is a civilization living inside this ruin", said Daimon as he grabbed the ck badge to keep it in his pocket once again, thepass already registered the exact coordinates needed for the ship after all.

    "That, or there is another entrance to this ce in another ster chart", added Liliana, they all met Dimas so the fact that there was a world outside the Wonder Myriad ster chart was a truth for them.

    The three girls remained silent for a moment, they already had to worry about the people from the other three gxies, those strange creatures and now there was a possible third party to deal with.

    And what''s worse is that they haven''t found any resource so far, the flora and fauna of this ce was quite regr and although the sea had a decent mineral concentration, it wasn''t valuable at all.

    Seeing those three getting a bit depressed, Daimonughed.

    "There is no point in worrying about that, besides we still have one more room to investigate, I think these creatures have a pirate like culture, and since they don''t have storage rings, that should be the treasury".

    As expected, those three''s eyes sparkled after listening to Daimon''s theory, since the ship didn''t need them to drive, they went downstairs into the body of the ship and walked towards the second closed room, the first one where the corpses were stored had magic formation engraved on the door, but this one had two extra locks ced right in the middle of the door, not that it mattered since Daimon had an "universal" key in the form of Demon''s light.

    A small wisp of white mes burned down the whole door as soon as it touched it, making Leslie feel more curious about it.

    Although Daimon already exined her, Demon Light was abination spell, she still was marveled by it, it was true that fire was the element Daimon used to fuse the whole thing together, which resulted in the white me appearance it took, so he understood why others had confused it with some special kind of fire, like that smiling ghoul back then and Leslie now.

    Once the door was gone, the scene they expected didn''t appear, unlike the treasure filled room they expected there were only a couple ofrge coffers made out of the same kind of ck mineral, Daimon saw in the ck hall back at the trial.

    Daimon used his infinity eyes to inspect the coffers, just in case, and was shed for a moment simr to what happened when he sparred with Aleah, the contents were definitely metallic.

    "At leas it''s not an empty room", mumbled Daimon as he approached the first coffer, just like the walls of the ck hall, it had strange runes engraved on it, he deciphered some of them and the result was something along the lines of "Tribute Arks".

    Knowing he wouldn''t be able to fully decipher the runes in the coffers Daimon drew them in a notebook, before he burned the lids of the coffers.

    As Leslie and Lilia were about to lean out to see the contents of the first coffer, they were dragged backwards by Daimon and Yvonne, just in time to protect them from arge amount of ck mist which came out of the coffer.

    Yvonne was able to disperse the ck mist using her mana to guide it outside of the ship, while Daimon simply ordered his magic core to devour it, whichtely seemed to be a bit more cooperative as it followed his order.

    The room was soon clean again, but Leslie and Liliana still coughed a couple of times to get rid of the slight ufortable sensation in their tongues.

    "Cough¡­ what the hell, was that a trap to protect the treasures inside the coffer", said Leslie as she cleared her throat.

    Daimon grabbed one of the things inside the first coffer and showed it to the girls, it was a piece of dark metal ore, which was letting out some faint streams of ck smoke upon contact with Daimon''s hand.

    "This metal whatever is it, produces that ck mist, what you saw earlier was all the mist that as produced and stored in the coffer, it just exploded due it being liberated".

    "That being said, I don''t recognize this thing", said Daimon as he went through all the metals that he knew off, as well as the metal section of the guide the academy handed them.

    Daimon deduced it was some kind of refined version of the ck mineral used for the coffers, and that ck mist was simr to the one that umted in the ck stone hall too.

    Unfortunately, it seemed to not have breaking through properties, since Yvonne didn''t grab one and she also didn''t absorb the ck mist, so it was more likely a material for crafting.

    Leaving that coffer aside, the other one did have what they expected, it was half divided in pile after pile of ck crystal cases and some weapons with the same strange runes engraved on them.<sub> </sub>

    This time the girls did take one of the many ck crystal cases and opened to see their contents.

    "I have some kind of pearls", said Leslie, the content of the case she took were some pearls which had mana stored inside of them, they were simr to mana crystals in the amount and quality of mana contained.

    "Mine are bones of some kind of sea magic beast", the case Liliana opened had bones with a fait blue tone on them, among them she could see some fin shaped bones, and a couple of skills which belonged to a fish like beast.

    As for Yvonne, she had to carefully return her case to where she took it from, because hers contained a bottle of poison extracted from a magic beast, the smell itself was rather fish like which made her nose wrinkle a couple of times.

    Yvonne took a second case as her finding wasn''t up to her linking, while Daimon on the other hand was interested in the poison, just like Haylee he had that affinity too, thanks to the manticore.

    With the pass of the years, he learned that the condition to level up the skills varied, sometimes they were easy to guess and in other cases they were pretty random.

    The poison he could produce on his ws was in the second category, Daimon changed one of his nails into a w and then let a small drop of the poison in it, to fall in the bottle of poison, then he closed the lid of the bottle and kept it in his inventory.

    "Now this is a decent discovery~", said Yvonne as she giggled, the content of the second case she took was a small spyss with some gems embedded on it, it was more of a decorative item, but it was rather expensive looking.

    The other two Risha girls pouted and then looked at Daimon, they had "Yvi took two cases and we only had one" practically written on their faces.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    "You three seem to be having some fun opening the cases, so I''ll leave it too you", said Daimon before he went upstairs, leaving the Risha sisters alone.

    ¡­

    Daimon who just went upstairs was suddenly hit by a faint current of wind, he turned to see the origin and with his infinity eyes activated, he saw from afar that there were two ships facing each other, but unlike the ones he had seen before and the one he currently owns, those two had cannons mounted.

    Still the currents of wind didn''te from the explosions of the cannons, but from the sh of two figures who jumped using their respective ships as support.

    One of them was easy to recognize, it was a three limbed creature with a strength equivalent to an early-stage Knight Lord.

    But that''s not what caught his attention, but the one fighting against the creature, it was a simr to the light skinned guy, but this one had red toned skin and it was his fire attacks (explosions) which caused the currents of wind, unfortunately they were blown away by the creature using its bone arm enveloped in green mes.

    "Boom!", a loud explosion echoed through the sky as the ship of the creatures was sank in the battle, Daimon curiously observed how the creatures died screaming upon contact with the water.

    As for the three limbed creature once it was forced tond on the water, it jumped out of it, a couple of secondster, but there were ck smoke streamsing from its feet.

    ''So, they can''t touch water'', thought Daimon as he frowned, after the three limbed creature died, the other ship suddenly turned towards them.

    "What was that explosion?", asked Leslie as she came out of the door in the deck which led to the interior of the ship.

    "They areing for us¡­ prepare to leave the ship just in case", said Daimon as he raised his guard, the other ship was clearly faster than the one he stole from the creatures, and judging by the greedy expression of the red skinned guy who fought against the three limbed creature, his didn''te with good intentions.

    The ship stopped a few meters away from them, and then the red skinned guy spoke in themonnguage of the Wonder Myriad ster chart, but with a strange ent.

    "Prepare to be boarded, take out your possessions and you will not suffer any harm¡­ oh, look at that, guys, we have some found some decent "treasures" this time around", said the red skinned guy to the others who were on his chip as he licked his lips.

    Daimon frowned, judging by that guy''s speech, he wasn''t an adult and yet he was a Mage Lord.

    The red skinned guy saw that the other party wasn''t obeying him and he snorted, then the cannons of his ship were pointed at the one Daimon.

    "Fire", with a single word, the cannons roared and two balls of fire flew towards the area where Daimon was standing.

    But then under his surprised eyes, he saw Daimon punching the fire balls making them fly back at him.

 Chapter 248 Its Easy To Invite Misfortune But Hard To Get Rid Of It (Part 1)

    The red skinned guy reacted on time to dodge one of the fire balls that Daimon sent back at him, but the second one hit him on the face and sent him flying backwards until he was stopped by the other red skinned people.

    "I can get up myself, fire!", the red skinned guy seemed to get angry due to being literally pped on the face with his own attack, he could feel his face burning not because it hurt but because he was unable to react on time, so after pushing hispanions away he got up and then pointed at Daimon''s ship.

    Daimon was about to strike the uing fire balls down with his lightnings, when he saw a rain of ck arrows intercepting them midair making them explode before the fire was suffocated by dark mist.

    Daimon slightly turned backwards, just to see Yvonne smiling at him.

    "Go, we''ll protect the ship".

    Yvonne pulled the darkness concentration which formed the string of her bow before she unleashed another rain of ck arrows, since her element was in disadvantage against the creatures unless she used her wings, she has felt frustrated in the past days.

    Out of the three Leslie is the youngest and she was always protected by her and Liliana like the little sister of the group, but the tables turned around this time, and she was originally fine with that, until she noticed her attacks were barely doing anything.

    "Those guys choose the wrong target this time, when angry, Yvi acts just like when she uses her wings~", said Leslie as she sat down and rxed.

    "Poor guys", Liliana agreed with her, but she didn''t follow Leslie''s example, since the enemy used fire, she would have normally taken the role of blocking their attacks, but Yvonne was a bit pent up, so she instead became the back defense.

    Daimon shrugged, in that exchange before he noticed that while these red skinned guys had high realms all being between the five and six-star mage realm, they were pretty weak, even the Mage lord couldn''t react on time for an attack that any average eight ranked mage should have been able to.

    Daimon slightly bent his knees and then using the deck of the ship as support, he shot himself towards the ship of the enemy.

    "Boom!", a loud stomping sound echoed through the sky as Daimonnded on the ship of the enemy, two six-star mages nked him but as fire was gathering on their hands tounch their attacks, said hands were pierced by a ck arrow making them scream and interrupting their spells.

    "Damn it, kill those women first you idiots!", the leader shouted at the others who then focused their attacks on Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana.

    Daimon didn''t pay attention to that and instead dashed towards the mage lord, who snorted.

    "Don''t get cocky just because you used some tricks to change the direction of the cannon attacks!", the red skinned guy was suddenly d in red mes and then he also rushed towards Daimon.

    Daimon and the red skinned guy shed, creating a huge shockwave who sent some of the others flying away across the ship.

    And that wasn''t all, the red skinned guy had to take some steps back, his eyes contracted as he saw his knuckles which were now bleeding.

    "Impossible", he bbered before using his mes to propel himself upwards, as if he was trying to get some distance between him and Daimon.

    Daimon smirked, it was clear that guy wanted to use the bombard method to deal with him, which would have been effective if he was only a knight.

    Purple lightning exploded out of Daimon''s body and he jumped towards the red skinned guy, a purple sh shed against a red me dded figure, making mes and lightning fly all over the ce.

    While a purple sh and a red fireet collided in the air creating explosions, and lights of purple and red colors, all the other red skinned people focused their fire on Yvonne and the other girls.

    Yvonne gracefully pped her hands, tworge wings conformed by countless dark feathers appeared on her back, the bow she was using expanded itself and the string also became thicker.

    "Nightmare Swarm", with two words, she pulled on the string and then about fifteen four-centimeter pirs of ck light were shot from her bow.

    All the attacks standing on the pir''s way were pierced and destroyed upon contact, from the fourteen enemies who were attacking her, four got shot in the chest or head and died immediately, the other attacks decimated the cannons.

    When the pirs of ck light disappeared, the things that got hit by them now had new holes tore on them, the cannons corroded in a split of a second, as for the enemies their wounds became ck and they fell to the ground trembling before they stopped moving.

    "Humph", Yvonne softly snorted noticing that the others now took cover to avoid her attacks, her eyes glowed in a yellow light before she pulled the string of her bow one more time.

    The pirs pierced the chests of another nine red skinned guys, who immediately fell to the ground dead, the remaining two saw theirrades getting shot to death and their hearts clenched in fear.

    "Boss, help us!", they shouted in a try to get help from the mage lord, but their hopes were crushed a secondter when a battered figure fell from the sky,nding a couple of meters away from the ones who were hiding themselves to not get shot.

    The red skinned guy had a dent on his chest as well as bruises and fist marks on his arms and face.

    Daimon appeared on the enemy ship a secondter, he was perfectly tidied up, without any burn marks on his clothes.

    One of the guys who wasying down, suddenly got up and tried to stab Daimon with a hidden knife he has inside his sleeve, but he stopped in cold, even before he couldpletely get up, Daimon''s ws pierced his chest killing him in the spot.<sub> </sub>

    The mage lord coughed up blood and swore with his teeth clenched.

    "Freaking arcanist invader, my big brothers will avenge me¡­ ughh".

    Before he could finish saying his threat, Daimon kicked him on the face making blood and a couple of teeth to fly out of his mouth.

    "Shut up scum", without any warning, white mes burned down the remaining six-star mage, leaving only the mage lord behind.

    Daimon noticed that just like with those creatures, the system didn''t show the notification for the terror contractor skill, so the only option avable to get some answers was making the mage lord afraid of not answering his questions, besides that, even without his infinity eyes activated, his sense of smell was sharp enough to get a good idea of what lied below them in the inside of the ship.

    Liliana created an ice bridge to connect both ships and the girls crossed it to reach the enemy ship, they arrived just in time to see Daimon stabbing a sword in each of the four limbs of the mage lord, making him scream, while the other guy''s corpse was still burning on the deck.

    To Daimon''s surprise none of them showed any disgust to the scene, in fact Yvonne suddenly approached Daimon and leaned her body on his shoulder.

    "Getting all angry for us~, it seems we didn''t choose the wrong¡­ ahh stop you two!", before Yvonne could continue, Leslie and Liliana dragged her with them.

    "After using her wings, she is too self-centered, don''t pay her attention", Liliana sighed as she covered Yvonne''s mouth with her hand to keep her from saying things, she''ll want to dig a hole to hide for,ter when she returns to her normal self.

    Daimon was rather amused by the changes in their personalities due to their lineages, still he didn''t lower his guard so when the mage lord tried to secretly gather mana to lunch a surprise attack, a sword formed in Daimon''s right hand which he stabbed in the shoulder of the red skinned guy.

    "Aghhh¡­ three elements, you aren''t an arcanist, what the hell are you!", shouted the red skinned guy, previously when Daimon and him were shing, he used lighting, he then burned down hispanion using "fire" and just now he created a sword and stabbed it on his shoulder, meaning he also had metal affinity, something which shouldn''t be possible.

    "You are in no position to ask anything, now tell me who are you people and what do you know about this ce", demanded Daimon.

    Seeing that the red skinned guy was keeping his lips shut, Daimon was about to move the sword on his shoulder, when he felt a soft hand on his shoulder.

    "Sorry about earlier, but I''m back to normal now¡­ I can get answers which are guaranteed to be true".

    Yvonne whose face was slightly blushed, looked at Daimon as she offered her help to interrogate the red skinned guy.

    Daimon remembered the scene he saw below deck of the ship and he directly said.

    "If you are going to see this guy''s memories, I would suggest you to not do so, because he¡­".

    "Don''t worry, I saw how he looked at us earlier, so I pretty much know what he was nning to do¡­ luckily I have a way to do it which doesn''t include me seeing his memories, just break him something, his mind needs to be stressed for this to work".

    Daimon nodded, he strongly stomped on the right knee of the red skinned guy, breaking his leg in the process.

    "Aghhh!", a lung tearing scream escaped the red skinned guy, before Yvonne shoved a ck and red arrow on his forehead.

    The eyes and expression of the guy became lifeless, but he was still alive and breathing.

    "It''s all yours", mumbled Yvonne before she returned with Leslie and Liliana, just to fall asleep leaning on them, due to the excessive usage of mana, the wings also damaged her mana circuits, but they were already recovering so she just needed some rest.

    Daimon dragged the way along with him downwards into the ship.

    "You three stay here, we''ll be changing to this ship so you can get used to the controls in the captain''s cabin".

    "Mm", Leslie and Liliana nodded, without suspecting that Daimon didn''t want them to see, the tragic scene inside one of the many rooms below the deck.

    "Pieces of trash", both Narasha and Evangeline couldn''t help but swear upon the scene on disy in what seemed to be some kind of conference room.

    There were women chained to different structures, some seemed to be from the same red skinned race as the guy he was dragging along, while others had blue or light green skin, besides their gender, the only thing they had inmon was that they were covered in wounds.

    And to worse things up, the wounds were properly treated being cleaned and bandaged, there were some scars here and there too, meaning they were healed just to be beaten again.

    This also solved one of Daimon''s many questions, besides some light treatment there wasn''t a strong smell of medicine here, meaning these women were left to heal by themselves, so whoever these red skinned guys were, they have been here for more than a month, in other words they were here even before they arrived.

 Chapter 249 Its Easy To Invite Misfortune But Hard To Get Rid Of It (Part 2)

    Daimon threw the red skinned guy against the wall making him sh so hard against it, that he spat blood, before he saw the chained women, who were all prevented from speaking with masks that covered the lower half of their faces.

    They were all awake and although their eyes showed surprise, there was no fear towards the scene that was unfolding in front of them.

    With a simple move he ripped off the mask of one of the two light red skinned girls, Daimon frowned as he looked at his hand which was grabbing the mask, the thing had small needles which were piercing the area of the mouth, so that if they would have tried to scream the needles would have wounded them.

    He looked at the girl who now should be able to speak but chose to not do so, in fact she didn''t let out a sound of pain even when the needles were pulled out of her lower face.

    Daimon turned around and with quick maneuver a new sword condensed in his hand which he then stabbed on the right knee of the red skinned guy, not even a secondter he got a reaction from him.

    "Aghhhh you beast!", the red skinned guy trembled on the floor, both of his legs were now useless and every time he tried to gather mana, the swords moved causing him enough pain to make him wish to die.

    "Let''s start with something simple, your name and your race¡­".

    "He is called Eleazar, the youngest son of an archduke from the red bone tribe", a woman''s voice drew Daimon''s attention, he turned around on time to see the light red skinned woman who he took the mask off before speaking in a cold voice.

    Daimon perfectly recognized that expression in the woman''s face, it was obvious that if she had the chance to, then she''ll tear the red skinned guy''s flesh and scatter his bones.

    Noticing Daimon''s gaze on him, Eleazar spat on the floor before saying.

    "Fuck you, I won''t say¡­ aghhh!".

    Before he could finish, Daimon cut one if his toes and then cauterized the wound with Demon Light, making him scream from the bottom of his lungs.

    "On the contrary, I assure you, it''s going to be harder for me to make shut up from this point onwards, I will ask and if one of them answers before you then, you''ll lose something".

    Daimon then walked towards the other chained women, there were five of them in total, besides the two light red skinned ones, the other three had light green, light blue and light brown skin tones, something that also caught his attention was that they all had white hair, but it didn''t look natural and instead was probably the result of being forced through a lot of stress, which was understandable considering all the bandages and wounds they had.

    Surprisingly they didn''t look the same as neither the red skinned Eleazar, or the blue skinned guy''s corpse he found inside the room at the ship he stole from the creatures, their skin''s tone was not only lighter, they couldn''t block his mana sense at all unlike Eleazar and the blue skinned corpse.

    Daimon took the masks which prevented the women from speaking, and was again surprised to see they didn''t even let out a pained sound even though the needles were quite deep inside their skin.

    "Are you a native of this ce, if not how much time have you been inside this magic ruin?".

    This time, Eleazar wanted to answer, but he hesitated for a split of a second, which resulted in the light browned skin woman answering before him.

    "Hees from Rubrelia and has been here for about 2100 hours¡­ almost three months", the voice of the light brown skinned woman became colder towards the end, she then red at Eleazar with a hatred filled expression.

    "No wait I¡­ arrghhh!", Eleazar saw Daimon shing down his sword once again and he tried to stop him or dodge, but his body didn''t react, and so he lost another toe, but that wasn''t the worst, but the pain those white mes which followed caused.

    The other women saw Eleazar suffering and they stared at each other, before an almost unnoticeable smile appeared on their faces.

    ¡­

    And so, the rounds continued, most of the time Eleazar was too slow to answer which ended in him losing his ten toes, but now Daimon had a decent understanding of this third party that appeared out of nowhere.

    They came from a small gxy which consisted in about fifty habitables or so, but there were about one hundred which weren''t, due to a certain event in the past their bodies changed and they gained these peculiar skin tones.

    Their culture was divided in five parts, four of them had a Kings and Archdukes which by their description was¡­ a Magus Emperor level powerhouse, the fifth one was the magic beasts, in a short version of the exnation, they found a castle at the bottom of the sea of one of the inhabitables about four or five months ago, which led them to this ce and have been here since then.

    Unlike the ce from which Daimon and the others entered, they had not limit of time and the portal they used didn''t be unstable with time, even their limit of both people and realm was wayxer than the one for the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

    Although the current number might have diminished due to the creatures, there were about 100 teams of fourteen led by a high ranked noble, in other words 1400 star ranked mages or knights and about 100 Lord ranked people.

    Daimon nearly cursed when he heard that number, even he would have trouble dealing with more than ten or so mage Lords at the same time, unless he used core synchrony of course.

    "Onest question before I decide what am I going to do to you, why did you torture those girls?".<sub> </sub>

    This time Eleazar answered as if his life depended on it, which wasn''t a lie.

    "Because they didn''t give in, the ves that were gifted to me by my thirtieth birthday refused to let me have them making me lose face in front of my cousins, of course they had to suffer¡­".

    Unfortunately for Eleazar "honesty" was the incorrect answer this time around, that being said, if he lied Daimon would have noticed and killed him, on the other hand he wasn''t going to spare his life to begin with.

    But when he was about to kill him with Demon Light, the first girl who talked, interrupted him.

    "Wait, his father would know you did it in fact is possible that he has a lifesaving treasure, which would kill you while protecting that bastard¡­ let me do it instead, it''s a one-time thing".

    "You bitch¡­aghh!", Eleazar whose face lost all its color, yelled at the light red skinned girl, that was hisst resort, when Daimon tried to finally kill him, he would die instead and then he''ll steal the things on his ring to recover, then he will have those three girls who were the reason of this suffering he had to go through and made them scream under him.

    That''s why he yed along and spilled the beans, even swallowing the humiliation of being wounded by a member of an "inferior" race, but now, everything crumbled apart, his eyes became lifeless knowing he was dead for sure.

    The other light red skinned girl worriedly looked at the first one, for the first-time showing sadness in her eyes, but the first one shook her head and didn''t show any sign of regrets.

    Daimon evaluated them for a moment before he took Narasha out of his inventory, this time she was in Disaster''s form, with a single sh, Disaster''s tip pierced a shield pendant which hanged from Eleazar''s neck.

    The pendant illuminated trying to activate its function, but then Disaster let out a ck mist with red borders which devoured the mana that was being leaked from the pendant, it didn''t take Disaster even one minute to finish devouring the whole source of power of the pendant, which then broke after being drained.

    Eleazar who saw every second of what happened and was about to have a mental breakdown, wanted to cry but tears didn''te out.

    ''It''s easy to invite misfortune but hard to get rid of it'', that phrase he once heard one of the guards of the royal castle saying, finally made sense for him.

    That was hisst thought, because not even a secondter Daimon burned him to a crisp with Demon Light, starting from his legs, so that Eleazar didn''t die until the mes reached his chest.

    Once the white mes disappeared, there was nothing left from him besides his storage ring, after scanning it with both his mana sense and infinity eyes just to be sure, Daimon grabbed it and kept in in his inventory.

    He then turned to see the chained girls and saw the all had "I can''t believe it" expressions in their previously mostly emotionless faces.

    "That guy had a¡­ peculiar smell, so why did he mean when he said you didn''t "give in" to him, and why did you tell me about the pendant, if I were to die, wouldn''t you all be free after all?".

    The first to react was the light red skinned girl who was the first one to talk, her expression became bitter before she slowly answered.

    "Females are born ves from where wee, the only "Queen" that existed thousands of years ago which was also the strongest being in the whole gxy, died after being ambushed by all the other Kings and Archdukes, because she prevented men from taking us to help them advance faster".

    "But with herst breath she used a forbidden spell, which costed her, her body, life and soul, since that moment men couldn''t take us without or consent or they would die¡­ that''s why they now use every method they can imagine to force us to willingly give in, so that they can have offspring and also take everything away from us, our powers, vitality and all".

    "Some ept it and give in pretty easily and "enjoy" a short but not that horrible life, others don''t and the result is what you see, as for why I warned you about the pendant, it''s because if you died that asshole would have recovered and those girls whose voices, I can hear would end up suffering a worse than death fate¡­ he has captured a few of people from your tribes and showed to us what they did, before they disposed of the corpses".

    "The enemy of an enemy is a friend", mumbled Daimon, but the light red skinned woman shook her head before adding.

    "We just wanted to take him with us, that''s all", after saying that, the girl closed her eyes and so did the others, as if they were prepared to die but wouldn''t yield not matter what.

    Daimon frowned, to be honest he didn''t want to kill these women, and they actually had a lot to offer, in terms of information and knowledge from another ster chart, but ultimately, they weren''t his people and the submission type skills he had apparently didn''t work on them.

    The Risha sisters came downstairs to check on Daimon, they worried after the screams of Eleazar ended, and were weed by the scene of an indecisive Daimon and the chained girls.

    It wasn''t hard to guess what happened to them after seeing them covered in bandages and scars here and there, and as women they couldn''t help but feel empathy towards them.

    Their expectant eyes then fell on Daimon, although they had no way to help them or a way to make sure they wouldn''t betray them, they were sure Daimon could pull some trick up his sleeve, like he always does.

    Daimon fell the Risha sister''s gazes on him and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry.

    ''I guess they do deserve a chance, although I had already noticed the thing in that pendant, the fact that she warned me no matter the reason she had, means she could have potentially saved my life'', he thought.

 Chapter 250 Master-Servant Contract

    Daimon looked at the light red skinned girl number 1, who now that he noticed seemed to be the older one among them, even then maybe due to being fed just the minimum necessary to not die and all the torture they had gone through, theirplexions were skinny, but not enough to be unattractive, probably in preparation for the moment they decided to¡­ give in.

    He then took out a ck paper from his inventory, unlike the others who were limited on the things they could bring to the magic ruin, he had all sort of useful items in his personal inventory.

    "Unfortunately, I can''t let you leave just like that, but you tried to save my life even if it wasn''t needed, and I don''t like to owe anything to anyone".

    "This is a master-servant contract, if you are willing to work for me, in exchange you''ll live and have a rtively high freedom, besides obeying orders that don''t directly kill you and absolute loyalty towards me which means you won''t do anything that could affect me nor my family or friends in a negative way, I won''t force you to do anything, a life for a life".

    "Well let''s add one more thing, you would need to tell me everything about the ce you alle, I don''t think you are too attached to it anyway and for what I have seen even if we were to not be in a conflict of interests with them, they wouldn''t let us alone, so it shouldn''t be too much to ask, what do you say?".

    Daimon saw the dubitative expression in the eyes of the light red skinned girl and he, nearly facepalmed.

    "Now that I think about it, you seem to understand ournguage, but can you read what''s written in the contract?", asked Daimon.

    The red skinned girl shook her head, her eyes seemed to travel through her memories before saying.

    "We can, our races have a certain special trait which allow us to learn at a rapid speed, that is in part what the male nobles from the four tribes desperately want from us, did you know that so far none of the bearers of this learning capacity which are the what''s left of the royal families of our races had given in to those bastards".

    "The so-called nobles that currently live, with the exception of the four kings, descend all frommoners, and yet they unt their hos calling others "inferior", when I told those guys that, the needle mask was added to the party, but no matter what we didn''t yield, because that would bring shame to us".

    "That''s thest bit of pride we have left, if you allow us to keep that secret to ourselves, then I''ll ept it¡­ otherwise I ask you to let us leave this world in peace, that would be a new experience for any of us too since the Queen died".

    "Since you seem to care about those close to you, I will add that our secrets won''t affect others, all of our predecessors died taking it with them to their graves, until the next generation appeared".

    Daimon tapped his finger on his palm with a curious expression, not about whatever these women were hiding, but about why the red skinned girl was talking so much about it, it was obvious she didn''t trust him, and that was perfectly normal, in fact he would have been wary if it wasn''t like that.

    He saved their lives by a coincidence, it was a happy ident so to speak, originally, they only spoke because that meant Eleazar would suffer more, so he was genuinely surprised that one of them was actively talking with him.

    ''I don''t even know if they will be able to leave through where we entered¡­ ah whatever, the fact that the system skills don''t work on them is worth studying and more manpower is always weed''.

    Having made up his mind, Daimon modified the contract one more time to add both his condition and the one the red skinned girl asked for, making the Risha sisters let out a sigh of relief.

    Although they felt empathy towards those girls, ultimately their loyalty was with Daimon, so if he decided to not take them in, they would respect his decision.

    Daimon let out a drop of blood on the contract, and then offered it to the girl which was still chained, she bit her lip and a drop of a bright red blood which shone fell on the contract, finishing the process.

    The contract then burned itself and a crest entered Daimon and the light red skinned girl bodies, that being said, Daimon''s constitution made it so that he could be tied by any limitations, so while the other party had to respect the contract he didn''t, of course that didn''t mean he wouldn''t go back on his own words just because he could, he just wasn''t forced to.

    "#$&#".

    "Mm?", Daimon listened to the light skinned girl saying something, but he didn''t understand it, it was in anothernguage, so he just heard some weird sounds, it was different to the screeches of the creatures, but it was still not possible to be understood.

    "Scarlet¡­ my name in yournguage would be Scarlet".

    Daimon nodded.

    "You can call me Daimon", he then approached her and as he was about to break the chains, Scarlet spoke.

    "They have poison, the key should be¡­", before she could finish her sentence, Scarlet saw Daimon dding his hands on those white mes he used to burn Eleazar, but they didn''t melt the chains and instead just made it easier for him to break the chains

    Once Scarlet was set free from the chains which covered practically all her body besides her legs, arms and neck where the scars and other wounds were visible, her skinny figure powerlessly fell to the ground but was stopped by Leslie, who helped her sit down on a bench at the other side of the room.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon looked at the other girls and showed them copies of the same contract Scarlet epted to sign, apparently although they seemed to take her as their leader, they were free to take their own decision.

    "I won''t tell you to follow my example because something like this hasn''t happened in the whole history of our race, but you know we can''t get stronger at out gxy even if we somehow manage to escape from them, no matter how much we keep dying nothing will change, isn''t that what led us to try and sneak into this ce taking the risk of being captured, it''s not like we have anything to lose anyway".

    Scarlet who was trying to stretch her wounded body to regain her mobility after being chained for more than three months, talked to the others, exposing why she epted the contract.

    Her words solved another of Daimon''s questions, they had practically zero cultivation, they had mana circting through their bodies, but it was in a lower quantity than what normal people in the Wonder Myriad ster chart had, it was praise worthy that even without mana or battle aura they endured all those tortures without breaking.

    With his mana sense he could see a lot of bones in Scarlet''s body which were stronger than those of normal people, and it wasn''t by innate, but because they broke and healed¡­ more than once.

    The first one to ept the contract was the light red skinned girl number too, she resembled Scarlet a bit meaning she was probably a distant rtive, also, she seemed to be the youngest among them.

    "I''m Ruby", said the girl, her eyes closed as soon as Daimon broke her chains off, she actually fainted now that her body wasn''t being in a high amount of stress, Daimon moved in time to catch her so that she didn''t fall.

    ''I''m not even close to be a good person, but torturing a little girl like this just for fun¡­'', not only Ruby was shorter and skinnier than the others, she had more scars on her legs than the others too, they all looked pretty young, but if Daimon were to guess, Ruby was probably ten or eleven years old, being in the same range of age/appearance as Dana, she was quite light too, about twenty kilograms, or two thirds of what an average girl her age should weight.

    Daimon handed the now sleeping Ruby to Yvonne who carried her towards Scarlett, and then he looked at the other three, who also epted the contract.

    "Lapis¡­ it''s a pleasure", the light blue skinned girl actually said something else besides her name, but then remained silent while she was helped to take seat next to Scarlet and Ruby.

    "Jade", the light green skinned girl directly leaned against Daimon, because she had wounds on the soles of her feet, something that caught Daimon''s attention was that she was the only one that had them there, but right now wasn''t the time to ask about that, he helped her sit down next to the others and then broke the chains of thest girl, the light brown skinned girl whose chains were about twice wider than the previous ones.

    In fact, after Daimon freed her, she was able to stand on her own feet, although she nearly lost her bnce a couple of times, she didn''t fall, but her arms were hanging at her sides powerless, there were big nails piercing her shoulders.

    "Amber, thanks for giving that idiot what he deserved", thest girl was pretty talkative, but that made sense, since she was the second one to speak, and like Scarlet, she didn''t hesitate to do it after seeing that they answering faster, meant that Eleazar would suffer more.

    Amber walked by herself towards the others and also sat on the bench.

    Daimon looked in his inventory before taking out some potions and pain killing pills, he also looked at the room which wasn''t exactly the epitome of clean, as there were dry blood stains on the floor and he handed the medicines to the Risha sisters.

    "Give them these, I''ll go up to keep the other ship on my ring, we''ll be using this one instead, so I need to put on the coordinates, once I return, we''ll move them to a clean room, so you can help me clean their wounds".

    "Mm", Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana nodded and fed the neers with the medicines while Daimon went upstairs.

    The aftermath of the battle left corpses all over the deck, Daimon "confiscated" their rings after making sure they didn''t have any traps set of course, the contents will be evaluatedter, for the time being he just burned the corpses with Demon Light before keeping the other ship in his inventory.

    The captain''s cabin of this ship waspletely different, in the aspect that it was totally luxurious, to the point that It was tacky.

    "I guess that guy wasn''t the son of an Archduke for nothing", mumbled Daimon, luckily the navigatingpass was pretty much the same as the previous ship, so while the badge didn''t do the trick again, he manually set the coordinates and then went downstairs as he saw the ship submerging.

    On his way to the room where the Risha sisters took Scarlet and the others, Daimon noticed there was no treasury on this ship, so probably all the things were in the ring of Eleazar.

    While Daimon was lost in his thoughts, inside the space where she resided, Evangeline whose figure was blurred with the exception of a few strands of her hair, frowned.

    ''Wasn''t Narasha the one from that¡­ I guess it''s good that he doesn''t follow a path which was already traced, but damn these unpredictable changes".

    A bright smile flourished in Evangeline''s face, which unfortunately wasn''t discernible as she giggled, a notification appeared in front of her and she crushed it with her index finger.

    "This pervert of a host, making me work overtime", she mumbled before falling asleep.

 Chapter 251 Towards The South

    Once Daimon Arrived at the room where the Risha sisters took Scarlet and the others, he opened the door and saw that they were all resting on a couch, while Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana helped them drink the medicines.

    Per Daimon''s request, they were fed the pain killers first, because early when he broke the chains, he also noticed they all had some kind of nails in different parts of their bodies.

    The first one to be treated was Ruby, luckily, she was still asleep and with the medicine she will stay like that for a couple of hours.

    Yvonne removed the bandages on Ruby''s legs revealing those strange ck nails piercing her shins and calves.

    "We tried to take those things out¡­ but they are really deep in the flesh".

    Leslie gritted her teeth, as if the chains and the mask wasn''t enough, they even recurred to psychological torture, Scarlet told them why their wounds focused in different parts of their bodies.

    The reason was that they focused in destroying whatever they enjoyed or were good at, in Ruby''s case she liked to dance and that''s why Eleazar put those nails on her legs.

    "Doing something so cruel to a little girl, those pieces of trash didn''t deserve a quick death", she mumbled.

    Daimon sighed, in his experience, even those who should be family could be cruel towards you, so what could you expect from strangers, but the fact that there is scum like them, doesn''t mean good or at least decent people don''t exist.

    That was one of the first lessons Aisha taught him, only a coward prey on innocent people, and so despite how much Daimon hated the Naktis, he promised his mother he wouldn''t kill anyone who had nothing to do with what happened to them back then.

    That was a limit he decided to set for himself, to not point his sword towards those who didn''t deserve it, but at the same time he wouldn''t show mercy to anyone who had bad intentions towards him or his family.

    "You need the strength of a Lord rank, to take these things out, Eleazar put them on himself, after we rejected him in front of all his scum family¡­ including his father and uncle, in other words the King".

    Daimon nodded, he approached Ruby and then touched the head of one of the nails, they were made out of a metal which he hasn''t heard about, but his metal affinity was high enough to manipte it.

    But as soon as he tried, some kind of gray red me came out of the nail and tried to burn Daimon''s hand.

    "That''s the me of the red bone royal family, don''t let it touch you, it will only stop burning once it reaches your bones!", said Scarlet in a hurry.

    Daimon didn''t let go of the nail, the me was stored with runes that were engraved on the nail, and it attacked him because he was trying to take it out, but if he let go, the me would attack the one who has the nail, in this case Ruby.

    ''You like to devour, new variations of elements, right,e on, do your job'', Daimon ordered his magic core to devour those mes, and the thing for one reason or another it decided to obey him.

    Under the surprised eyes of all the girls, the gray red mes vanished into thin air, even the runes on the nail blinked before they extinguished, leaving the engravings behind butpletely cleaned out of any trace of mana left behind.

    ''It sure is a pain to not have a healing type skill for non-soulmates'', thought Daimon as he manipted the nail to make it the diameter of a needle andpletely smooth, the thing had spikes on its shank, so that if pulled out, they would tear the flesh with them.

    After doing that, he just took the nail out without any problem, of course that also made Ruby''s calf to bleed since the nail was blocking it, but that was easy to solve with a simr ointment to the one he used with Aisha and the others.

    ''Luckily I had it in my inventory, it would have been way easier with Loren''s help too'', thought Daimon, now that he learned the trick, removing the other nails from Ruby''s legs was easier, there were four in total which he kept in his inventory for investigation, it was a new metal after all, so Liz would probably study it.

    "I''ll put her new bandages", said Leslie as she carried Ruby to the bed across the room, to finish treating her, so she could rest and leave her body recover with the help of the potion.

    The next one was Lapis, the nails she had were in her neck and pierced her vocal cords, because she liked to sing, she was the most talkative among them too, but she only managed to thank Daimon, because speaking made her feel a lot of pain.

    Also, the nails she had were way thinner, to the point that their heads could be confused as moles, that being said, the amount of those grey red mes wasn''t any less, than the ones Ruby had, but still they werepletely dealt with by Daimon''s magic core devouring them.

    Besides Ruby who was asleep, the others could move by themselves, so Daimon gave Lapis the ointment and she herself applied it where she needed it, the next one was Jade the nails in her body were ced on the soles of her feet.

    The reason was that her senses were enhanced, as long as her feet touched the ground, that''s why her feet were bare all the time, but she lost that capacity after those nails pierced her soles, for someone like here who was used to have that enhanced perspective during her whole life to suddenly lose it, it was as if someone who could see, suddenly became blind, a torture the families of the four kings learned after having captured one of her predecessors, many generations ago.

    So once Daimon removed the nails, it was as if her the color returned to her world, little tears formed on the corner of her eyes, but she wiped them before she turned to see Daimon.

    "Thanks", with a single word, she let Liliana help her move to the bed to put the ointment on her soles.

    Thest ones were Amber and Scarlet, since Scarlet had the nails at different parts of her body, Amber took her turn first.<sub> </sub>

    Hers were on her shoulders, to disable her arms as her race was naturally gifted in physical strength, originally Daimon noticed the nails thanks to her, since the ones in her shoulders were visible through the bandages, because of their size, instead of nails they were more like drill bits.

    Daimon had to put more strength into changing their form, due to that, but ultimately once the grey red mes were depleted, manipting them was pretty easy.

    "Crack", a loud sound filled room as Amber amodated her shoulders which weren''t on their correct positions, before she walked towards the bed, leaving the Risha sisters dumbfounded.

    Scarlet chuckled at their reactions.

    "Terrarians are the toughest in terms of body among our race, even Eleazar had to use some of his strength to make the nails pierce Amber''s shoulders".

    Daimon nodded, let alone Eleazar, even he had to apply some force to take them out, also so far, she was the only one that didn''t bleed after the nails were pulled out.

    Thest one was Scarlet, she had nails in her knees, thighs, biceps and even tongue, unlike the others, although she was weakened, they didn''t prevent her from anything, it was for the sole purpose of causing her pain, because she was the one who insulted Eleazar the most.

    She had ten nails piercing her body, out of them, the hardest one to remove was the one in her tongue, but everything turned out fine.

    "Rest and recover, the ship is moving towards an specific direction but it will be a couple of days before we arrive, we''ll also stop to check on some inds on the way", said Daimon as he left the room.

    The Risha sisters followed him not too long after, each one chose their own room and entered it, the battle of earlier left them pretty tired and it was almost 6:00 PM by now.

    Daimon took out his own bed from his inventory, the Risha sisters also changed the sheets on the ones they will be using, because no one knew what kind of things had been done on those beds, during the past months.

    Daimon threw himself on the bed and as he amodated the pillow, an envelope fell from within the pillowcase.

    "What¡­", Daimon perfectly recognized the hand writing on the envelope, it was Erin''s, there were three things inside of the envelope, first a note.

    "Take this so you can remember me if you feel lonely~", there was also a kissing mark at the bottom of the note, and a small side note, "PS, Aura''s note is on the backside of mine".

    Daimon turned it to see Aura''s note, which was a simple "I miss you", short but sweet just like Aura, as for the other two things inside the envelope, they were a couple of photos of Erin and Aura, naked and posing.

    As it was clearly Erin''s idea, she had her characteristic cunning smile, as for Aura she was pretty embarrassed on it.

    "Seriously those two", Daimon couldn''t help butugh, he took a bed from the mansion, and he genuinely didn''t remember seeing them leaving this little gift for him.

    "Well, she isn''t the best strategist on a whole gxy for nothing", mumbled Daimon, before he closed his eyes and fall asleep without even noticing it.

    ¡­

    While everyone on Daimon''s ship was taking a well-earned rest, at an ind some dozens of thousands of kilometers away, a float of forty ships from the four tribes described by Scarlet was having an all-out war with thirty ships led by the creatures.

    But that wasn''t all, there was also a third faction participating in the battle, which had ships from both of the other two, and was formed by the pdins of the Blue-Sky academy and surprisingly the demons of the ck Grave academy.

    They only had about twenty ships, but the other two parties didn''t underestimate them, because they had two peak stage Mage Lords, who might have won easily if it wasn''t for the fact that the people of the four tribes had four special ships, with cannons that could threat them, because those ships were used by direct descendants of Kings.

    As for the creatures, they had their own secret weapon too, two of them had their four limbs and a head, the aura they radiated clearly positioned them at the peak of the Lord realms too.

    On one of the human ships, a tall blond haired guy with blue eyes, looked at the gray skinned demon with ck hair standing on the ship next to him.

    "Once we get rid of these nuisances, it will be your turn Marcus".

    "Dream on, Adam".

    Darkness and Light shed as those two red at each other, while from the captain''s cabins of their respective ships, they were observed by the Mage Lords, sent by their respective forces, who were both looking at everywhere as if they were searching for something.

    ''This is thest hint, soon the truth will be revealed'', they both thought.

 Chapter 252 Gathering (Part 1)

    Although Daimon didn''t set an rm because he fell asleep without noticing it, his biological clock did the trick, and nearly eight or so hourster he slowly opened his eyes, that and he noticed there was someoneing towards his room.

    Daimon stretched his arms and after keeping the little suggestive "gift" Erin somehow left in his pillow, he got up the bed and walked towards the door, opening just in time to see Liliana who was about to knock on the door, face to face a few centimeters away from him.

    "Good morning¡­", Liliana greeted him out of custom, but then she seemed to be lost in her thoughts, before she shook her head.

    "Ahem, the breakfast will be ready in a couple of minutes, we saw a big ind a few kilometers ahead of us with the periscope of the ship¡­ and we want to stretch our legs a bit".

    Daimon nodded, normal humans without any preparation would go crazy if they were trapped in a closed space for too much time, and the people from the beast races were even more hyperactive, due to their lineages.

    Of course, that''s something that training and other exercises can fix, but it would still feel as if they suffocated, only Arch ranks and above would gain basically full control over their instincts and impulses, and even they weren''t in total control of everything.

    For example, out of all the werewolves Daimon has met so far, the only one who he has seenzing around as she pleased was Aura, all the others, elders included were unable to be quiet for too much time.

    That being said, she assured Daimon that it wasn''t due to her being a Half Emperor but because she gained a really high level of control over her body, which was the base of the spells she taught to Arianna.

    "Okay, we''ll surface and have our breakfast at the ind then, thanks".

    Daimon saw a rare smile flourishing in Liliana''s face, before she left to help her sisters finish the breakfast.

    Daimon chuckled and then walked towards the room where Scarlet and the other girls were resting, the door was open so he only knocked on the wall once to let them know he wasing in.

    Compared to yesterday they looked way better, besides the fact that their wounds were mostly healed and even the scars were vanishing, their expressions overall weren''t so stiff, they were all sharing a bed while talking to each other.

    Apparently although they didn''t know each other prior to when they tried to sneak in the magic ruin, after going through hell together, they got close to each other.

    The first one to notice Daimon entering the room was Ruby, who was sitting on the border of the bed, while she swung her legs to recover her mobility after not being able to even feel them for thest months.

    "Good morning, Daimon¡­ young master, how should we call you?", asked Ruby, curious about Daimon, the Risha sisters came to check up on them earlier, and she asked them about him, but they didn''t say too much since they didn''t know what kind of dynamic would Daimon have with them, officially they were his servants after all.

    "You can call me Daimon; formalities aren''t my cup of tea", said Daimon as he looked at the other girls.

    "How do you feel, I was worried that the medicines of our gxy didn''t have too much of an effect on you, but luckily that doesn''t seem to be the case".

    "Way better, thanks for taking those nails out~", Lapis melodious voice, made its way to Daimon''s ears, and he couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, as he felt somewhat positively inclined towards her.

    Nothing too serious, it was just like not feeling awkward when alone with a total stranger, or at least that was the bestparison Daimon had.

    ''It''s not a mental attack, otherwise Overlord''s pride would have blocked it, a lineage characteristic perhaps'', thought Daimon, he had a lot to learn not only about them, but about the four tribes, which he would most likely be battling soon.

    Lapis noticed Daimon''s reaction and she avoided his eyes, as she mumbled.

    "I''m sorry, it''s not done on purpose, my voice has the ability to make other people rx and feel happy, but it only works on those who have no bad intentions towards me".

    Daimon shook his head.

    "It''s okay, if it was an attack, I would have known it¡­", Daimon felt the ship going upwards, which meant they arrived at the ind.

    "We''ll have breakfast outside today, if you can walk then let''s go, Amber you can carry Jade and Scarlet, I''ll help Ruby".

    "Mm", Amber who was the tallest out of them stood up from the bed and then carried Jade and Scarlet each on one of her shoulders, it was a funny scene which made Rubyugh.

    "Let''s go, I''ll help you walk", said Daimon as he extended his hand towards Ruby, she grabbed her arm and stood up with Daimon''s help, unlike Jade who literally couldn''t step due to her wounds, and Scarlett whose nails didn''t reach deep enough to make her legs go numb and instead just caused her shooting pain.

    She recovered some of her capacity to move overnight thanks to the medicines, as for Lapis and Amber they could already move almost normally although with some pain, after the nails were taken out.

    Everyone went upstairs, something as simple as the breeze in their skins, felt refreshing for Scarlet and the others after being trapped in dark room, Daimon looked at the ind which was a couple of hundreds of meters away from them and he used his mana sense to inspect it just in case, and found it was inhabited, there was a body of fresh water in it too, and that was good because the only fully equipped bathroom in this ship was in the captain''s cabin which was Eleazar''s room, the others only had a toilet and a washbasin.

    The ship approached the shore and then Daimon used the master key to disy the stairs which were hidden on a side of the ship, since Eleazar was a royal, they even added such a thing for hismodity.<sub> </sub>

    Everyone got off the ship and Daimon kept it in his inventory, before he took out some chairs and a table, since he travelled to the wilderness with the girls especially Aura, he had a lot of daily need furniture in stock.

    ''I swear, only you would use the slots of the inventory for themodity of your lovers'', said Evangeline as she sighed.

    ''I''m also in the inventory Eve'', added Narasha.

    ''Good morning to you too, Evangeline be a good girl and tell me when mom enters my detection range would you?''.

    This a trick Daimon learned because Evangeline slipped, apparently the system always was on watch but she couldn''t say anything unless he was in danger, but there was a w, and as long as the soulmates where within in the range of the mental connection they had, she could tell him.

    ''I''m not a "soulmate radar", you know¡­ but I have nothing else to do anyway''.

    ''You see, even Eve can be good if you praise her'', said Narasha as she giggled, she who still had to learn about emotions, has already learned how to tease Evangeline, due to their interactions in the past years.

    Daimon inwardlyughed at those two, before he helped the Risha girls ce the dishes on the table, yesterday he only gave Scarlet and the others some snacks because they were more tired than hungry, but today after such good-looking food, they immediately dug in.

    Leslie was specially heart moved seeing Ruby eating quite a lot for her short stature, but it was normal it''s not like they weren''t fed, but they just were given enough to not "look bad" for Eleazar, but at the same to not have energy to move or escape in case they somehow untied themselves.

    That being said, Daimon also ate quite a lot, using battle aura burned down a lot of calories as it was produced by the body instead of absorbed from the atmosphere like mana, and Demon Light required a lot, the Risha sisters were happy to see him liking their food, since their cooking lessons were a bit rushed, but the result was pretty decent.

    Once everyone had their fill, Daimon looked at Scarlet before he asked what was in his mind, although he agreed to not meddle into the secret of their races, everything else was on the table for discussion, they were his subordinates now after all.

    The girls stared at each other, before they took turns to exin the history of the gxy they came from.

    "Our gxy is called Melize, as I told you before we have fifty habitables and one hundred which aren''t, the four tribes which reign over most of the gxy are the Red Bone tribe, the Rock Hoof tribe, the Bamboo Sword tribe andstly the Tidal Wave tribe, as for the fifth force they are the spirit beasts led by a Star realm beast which took humanoid form".

    "Each tribe has eight noble families, one royal family and a royal family by marriage, one King and nine Archdukes as well as dukes and other lower ranked nobles, each of the ten families has a and an army too".

    "Ah, our races are Terrarian, Pyron, Tempest and Drea", Scarlet pointed at Amber, Ruby, Lapis and Jade in that specific order as she finished her part of the story, before Lapis took over.

    "The beasts normally remain neutral, but the four Kings are always fighting between themselves, mostly because they want to steal the resources of the other, the inhabitables are full of precious resources, but the mana there is poisonous for living beings, so only the Lord realm and above can be there without dying¡­ still they people from our races as disposable manpower to harvest resources, the metal used in those nails is something gotten from one thes property of the Red Bone tribe for which they mostly use the Tempest race to get".

    The next one was Jade.

    "In case you wonder why our races haven''t gone extinct by just epting death and not letting them have us, is because we are born without the need of parents, no matter how much of us die, the number is always the same, we just appear somewhere else in the gxy, there are exactly five hundred of each of our four races, 499 are moners" and we four are considered the royal families, we are always women too, now that I think about it, this time there was an unexpected new royal though¡­", Jade gazed at Ruby who was eating a candy, that Leslie had in her pocket.

    "Unfortunately for some reason we can''t get stronger in Melize, so even my race the Terrarian which are known for their physical strength, can''t stand up to anyone on the three-star realm, I''m a bit better having reached the five-star realm after training inbat since the moment I was able to, but we live our lives trying not to be captured and finding the new ones who appear after one of the captives dies".

    Thest one was Ruby, who although was the youngest still had something to add to the story, the races didn''t live together to lessen the risk of being captured, but Scarlet, Amber, Lapis and Jade had seen each other at least once before, Ruby on the other hand was born faraway from everything and joined the groupst, so she read all the records of the Pyron to catch up with them.

    "The beasts don''t hunt us down unlike the four tribes, but they don''t help us either¡­ I learned it the hard way, but was lucky enough to be saved by sister Scarlet, a few days after I "bloomed", we are born at five years old from cocoons that randomly appear, and grow differently to the tribes or the other member of our races, I''m eleven years old but I will look like this until I turn fifteen, before I reach adolescence like sisters, that''s how they knew I was a royal too~", Ruby was happy for a split of a second, before she remembered the other side of the aging records of their races.

    "Unfortunately, none of the royals has died out of old age and instead ended their lives upon being captured, because we can choose to not wake up one day if needed, so we don''t know how long are our lifespans, as for the others, it is said that the one thatsted the most after marrying one of the nobles was about forty years old".

    "Also, we have tried to flee from Melize before, but there is an invisible wall at the border of the gxy that even the Kings can''t bypass, so we are trapped, I appeared at the border and was shocked when he couldn''t advance anymore, although there was more ground to keep moving in my native asteroid".

    "I''m the oldest 22, but all theplicated stuff is in Scarlet''s charge", said Amber.

    "21", Scarlet sighed, as she looked at Amber, normally the rule is that the oldest take care of the others, but she was too focused on trying to find ways to increase her strength, so she took the charge in the short period of time they spent before being captured.

    "17, but I''m older than Jade~", Lapis seemed to take pride in being older than Jade.

    "17, Lapis is only a few days older than me", Jade whose eyes were closed, as she enjoyed the softness of the sand, which allowed her to step without feeling her feet hurt, calmly answered.

    Now that they have had a decent meal, their figures which barely scratched malnutrition, were changing for the better, adapting to reflect the ages they had.

 Chapter 253 Gathering (Part 2) R-18

    It took Daimon a moment to process everything they said, there were a lot of questions he had, but for the time being what mattered was everything rted to the guys that entered this ce.

    "How do you spot the members of the royal families and what''s the strongest guy that entered the magic ruin, like?".

    Scarlet made memory for a split of a second before she took a stick and drew four different emblems on the sand, the first one looked like a me crossed by a skull, the second one was the print of a hoof with a mountain on its back, the third one was a sword floating in a forest of bamboo and thest one was a wave breaking on the shore.

    "These are the emblems of the royal families, in any case you''ll be able to recognize the ships of the royals, because they are bigger and better equipped than the others, as for the strongest, in contrast to the realm limitation, on our side the limitation was in the age".

    "The four youngest princes are middle stage Lords, but they aren''t the real problem, a member of the death guard squad of the royal guard was sent to protect their respective prince, they used a forbidden spell to advance when the entrance to this ce was found, reaching the peak of the Lord realm".

    Amber who is one of the Terrarians that has escaped the ws of the death guards, added.

    "You should be way of them, Leslie told us you had no problem to deal with Eleazar although he is a Lord, and that is normal since he was just a silk pants, but the death guards are trained so that only the strongest in each group survive the selection process".

    "They are the descendants of the tribes with those of our races who gave in, that had the bad luck to be born resembling our races instead of the tribes, so they are trained to be loyal dogs for them".

    "There weren''t too many new recruits since they die too often due to assassination attempts from the other tribes, so at most another four might be sent depending on the situation".

    Daimon frowned, the creatures by themselves were a problem, the one he killed inside the hall was suppressed by the door, and it still had the strength of a Mage Lord, meaning there was probably an Arch rank among them, hidden somewhere in the ruin.

    And now there were another four peak Lord ranks in the shadows.

    "We''ll have a peak Mage Lord joining uster too, so there shouldn''t be too much of a problem, there is a body of fresh water at the center of the ind, you can all go take a bath if you want, I''ll be swimming here for a moment", said Daimon as he stood up and stretched his body, before jumping into the sea.

    The Risha sisters let out a sigh of relief the bath at the captain''s cabin was¡­ entric to say the least, it was barely enough for two people to fit in and there was no tub, also there was no door and it was practically exposed, probably some kind of kink Eleazar had.

    "Would you mind if we join too?", asked Scarlet, making Yvonne and the others toe out of their daze.

    "Sure".

    ¡­

    With that, the girls went to take a bath together, while Daimon dived, the water was so clear that the floor of the sea waspletely visible even from above, the deepest point was about thirty meters in the nearby kilometers.

    Once Daimon reached the floor, he looked at his surroundings, something that drew his attention was that he didn''t see any big creature lurking in the sea, the ship had windows, and in all the travel, the only beasts he saw were small schools of fishes here and there.

    He grew interested in the sea after seeing some creatures melting upon contact with it, in the battle Eleazar had earlier, but besides the water being fresh andfortable, there wasn''t anything else he could notice.

    Daimon injected mana into his infinity eyes until he reached the limit and only then he managed to see some of the mana that floated in the water, besides the normal water mana there were light particles here and there.

    But there weren''t enough to make the creatures disappear into thin air like what he saw earlier, or even Yvonne would have been affected by them since she has darkness affinity.

    "Mm?", Daimon suddenly felt something moving in his pocket, and he took out the ck badge, there was still about one day before Ste could enter, so the countdown wasn''t what was trying to get his attention.

    Instead of that, the shark emblem illuminated before the runes detached from the badge, bing the shark he saw back at the trial after he left the ck stone hall.

    Daimon looked at the shark which started swimming around, as if it was looking for something, before it suddenly shot itself towards the floor and dispersed the sand nearby, pulling out arge bone from the sand which swallowed with its jaws, growing about ten centimeters, before it disappeared into light particles which entered the badge again.

    "What the hell, there was nothing there¡­", mumbled Daimon, he inspected the floor of the sea with mana sense and his infinity eyes and there was no reaction, also the octagonal marks on the badge were gone.

    ''I guess everything will be solved once I reach the location pointed by this little thing'', thought Daimon as he shrugged and kept the badge in his pocket.

    He then emerged from the water to breath, now that he had nothing else to do here he decided to return to the shore and wait until the girls finished their baths, to take one himself, but as soon as he emerged, he heard something falling from above.<sub> </sub>

    "Mo¡­", Daimon couldn''t finish speaking when Aisha who literally fell from the sky,nded on top of him sshing water all over the ce.

    "Darling, darling~", the next thing Daimon felt was Aisha tightly hugging him while she repeatedly kissed him, luckily drowning wasn''t a fear for Daimon, since he had both water and wind affinities he created a small bubble around them, because due to the metal light armor and other decorations Aisha wore, they sank while enjoying each other''s lips.

    Once Aisha had kissed her son to the content of her heart, she licked her lips and then gently bit his neck, her pretty fangs erged allowing her to drink Daimon''s blood, her face flushed as soon as the familiar taste of her son went down her throat.

    Daimon didn''t stop her, since the sensation of Aisha drinking his blood was quite pleasurable too, and so once her turn was over, he dragged her into his embrace and had his fill too.

    The sweet taste of Aisha''s blood as well as the euphoria that assaulted Daimon after drinking it, was enough for him to get so hard it was ufortable.

    "It seems, I wasn''t the only one that missed you~", mumbled Aisha as she moved her hand downwards and touched Daimon''s thing over his pants, they reached the floor of the sea at the same time and the bubble stopped moving.

    Daimon had a lot of questions for his mother, but seeing she wouldn''t calm until she got some of his love, he smiled and ced her on top of him.

    "Just once, we''ll have time to catch upter in the ship in a proper bed, okay?",

    Aisha''s eyes sparkled, she giggled and then took her panties which were soaked in both water and love juices, then without any delicacy she ripped Daimon''s pants releasing his already hard dick from its prison.

    ''Luckily I have a lot of spare ones in my inventory'', thought Daimon as he grabbed Aisha by her waist and turned her around, making her insides tingle with expectation.

    Daimon rubbed the tip of his thing against Aisha''s back entrance a couple of times, making her bit her lips, she turned to see her son which was smirking enjoying teasing her.

    Her pretty long eyshes fluttered, as she gave her son a bewitching gaze, Daimon felt his heart melting, although Erin was probably the best in terms of seduction, Aisha had her own charm, one that made his hear feel a certain scratch every time she looked at him like that.

    "Hmmm~", Aisha felt a huge sensation of relief, as Daimon pushed his thing inside of her, the warm of being embraced by her lover, overwhelmed her and she actually came a bit just by being prated.

    "Kuuh!", while for Daimon it has been just a couple of days since he saw Aisha, for her it has been a month, and her body craved his, both literally and figuratively, her insides coiled around his thing and didn''t let go as if her body tried to make sure he didn''t leave her ever again,

    "Mom¡­ I''m not going to be able to move me if you don''t calm down", whispered Daimon.

    But Aisha simply leaned backwards, taking the whole thing inside and then entering into her son''s embrace.

    "I want you to spoil me darling~", she mumbled, making Daimon bitterly smile, he felt her body trembling a bit, while they both knew they were okay or they might have been able to feel something was wrong, despite the distance.

    It was the first time they were separated for such a long period of time, at least for Aisha, she just wanted her son to spoil her, and Daimon was happy to oblige, although he didn''t mention it nor he thought of them like that, he who is used to sleep hugging at least one beauty, couldn''t help but caught a faint trace of their naturally sweet scents, while they were inside the cave.

    And while he didn''t let his mind wander into that direction, he as a healthy young man of course had his own needs, specially since his body has gotten used to satisfy all his soulmates.

    Daimon changed one of his nails into a w and then cleanly cut, Aisha''s dress, bra included to reveal the pretty pale skin below it.

    "Mmm~", Aisha felt a bolt of electricity running down her spine as her son started kissing her nape, before continuing as he moved downwards.

    His hands didn''tze around as he sneakily moved them towards those soft big pair of breasts, he knows better than anyone, while Aisha became younger, she wasn''t far from Liz or ine, because in the bigger scale they were both considered in their early twenties, due to their lifespans.

    After fondling Aisha''s breasts to the content of his heart, he gently pinched on her nipples, getting a cute reaction from her.

    "Hnnn~", Daimon then grabbed Aisha by her waist and without any warning, started pounding her from behind.

    Aisha''s eyes widened a bit as she felt her son spreading her insides, her body which longed for his touch was in pure bliss right now.

    "Darling~", her sweet cries filled the bubble in which their bodies celebrated their union after a one-month separation.

 Chapter 254 Gathering (Part 3) R-18

    Luckily wasn''t a good water conductor, because for the past fifteen minutes Aisha straddled Daimon below her and rode him to the content of her heart.

    "Pah~Pah~Pah!".

    "Nngh~".

    Aisha raised her hips as high as she could without pulling Daimon''s dick out of her, before she lowered them in a single move using her weight to take the whole thing to the base, the sound of her ass bouncing on Aster''s thighs and her sweet cries filled the bubble.

    With each back-and-forth cycle, Daimon felt Aisha''s insides twitching and tightening, but he didn''t do anything and instead simply continued pounding her while giving his all to please her enough to calm her down.

    "Darling¡­ hnnn~", Aisha grabbed her son''s hands which were grabbing her waist and ced them on her breasts, her pretty pink buds demanded some attention from him.

    Daimon smiled, he changed his position to be sitting down and hugging Aisha close to him, making impossible for her to move as much as before.

    "Hmm~", Aisha let out a cute sound, a bolt of electricity ran down her spine as Daimon gently nibbled on her ear.

    Noticing he wasn''t leaving her too much space to maneuver, Aisha giggled and then grinded her ass against Daimon.

    She turned her head around and kissed her son as she moved her hips sidewards, "dancing" on Daimon''sp.

    Her little tongue first shily approached Daimon''s before they tangled, Daimon closed his eyes and enjoyed this passionate and slightly pushy Aisha.

    This continued until Aisha felt Daimon''s thing pulsing inside of her, she increased her pace and rocketed her hips to the best of her capacities, making Daimon stop the kiss.

    Their gazes met and they both knew what the other was thinking, Aisha exposed her pretty neck to her son and Daimon happily epted the offer.

    "Annngh~", this time Daimon didn''t suck her blood, but just as his fangs pierced Aisha''s skin, they both felt as if their minds went nk.

    Aisha felt a warm sensation filling her body as Daimon unleashed his load inside of her, her juices sshed all over the ce as she epted till thest drop of his sperm.

    Only then Daimon''s fangs separated from her neck and they both left their bodies fall backwards.

    Aisha snuggled on her son''s chest while still being connected, right now, only they existed in this little world, where they shared their warmth with each other.

    Aisha''s nose wrinkled a couple of times and then with a little smile, she drew circles on her son''s chest, while looking at him.

    "I smell other women''s perfume on you darling, did you perhaps deepen your rtionship with those three?".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he could already imagine Liz''s jealous when he suddenly brings five new girls with him, although Scarlet and the others aren''t in that type of rtionship with him.

    On top of that, the Risha sisters did demonstrate being interested on him, to the point that their mothers tried to set an engagement.

    Daimon softly patted Aisha''s plump ass, and then kissed her lips.

    "You know that''s not how things are between me and those three¡­ I happened to meet them earlier and we have been travelling together since that moment".

    Aisha giggled, although as a woman she wanted to keep him for herself, as a mother she was proud of him, in the Wonder Myriad ster chart for those whose lifespan was incredibly high, it wasn''t weird to enjoy debauchery, ves and brothels existed and were popr for a reason.

    But only those who stood above the others often convinced more than one partner to share the status of wife, that''s why when Daimon''s engagement to both Liz and ine became public, everyone''s mind was blown.

    The daughters of a Half Emperor, who weren''t moved even by the proposition of the younger son, of the Jolbaris, happily epted a kid who appeared out of nowhere as their future partner.

    While the members of the Revy family tended to scheme, the young generation of the werewolves directly challenged Daimon through the years prior to his entrance at the academy.

    And all the time he won without any doubt, which earned him their respect, as they noticed the gap between them was too high to be jealous of him so they instead took him as their role model.<sub> </sub>

    "Since I already decided to lend them a hand, I guess I should properly finish what I started'', mumbled Daimon, remembering a few pending issues he had with Kirik and Horace.

    Aisha unwillingly let go of Daimon and stood up with a refreshed expression, while she still wanted to jump on him, feeling the warm sensation in her belly she could manage until night fell.

    "I wonder how are you going to exin that we''ll be sharing a room~", Aisha stretched her body and put on some clothes, then without leaving him answer jumped out of the bubble to wash her body, of course since Aster had already told her there was a body of fresh water at the ind, then she was going to properly bath to clean the saltwater.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, the fact that Aisha was his soulmate didn''t bring him shame, he loved her and she loved him so there was nothing wrong in them being lovers.

    ''If they want to be with me in the future, then they should know about my rtionship with my "sister", if not now is a good time to for them to forget about me while the damage won''t be too bad'', thought Daimon ignoring how hard is for the Risha''s main lineage women to fall in love¡­ as well as how deep those feeling run.

    ¡­

    Their little encounter onlysted about thirty minutes, so when they both surfaced, the Risha sisters were still bathing, Daimon saw Aisha jumping into the air and using the blood bat as her transport.

    And now he understood how she literally fell from the sky, previously he thought she somehow entered a trial like him, but turns out that wasn''t the case.

    Still there was something that caught his attention, the blood bat was allowed to fly, but then he noticed that unlike what he has seen before, the thing was pping his wings constantly.

    ''Mechanical flying is allowed as long as it doesn''t use mana'', he thought, the blood bat used the vitality from the blood he absorbed to increase his size and as fuel for some of its attacks.

    Aisha cutely stuck her tongue at him and then the blood bat became a red sh which shot itself towards the shore.

    Daimonughed, his image shed as he used blink to advance in jumps of one hundred meters each, both of them arrived nearly at the same time, Aisha jumped from the blood bat with all the intention tond on top of him.

    But this time Daimon was prepared and he caught her midair before letting her go when they both were on the ground.

    Unfortunately, this time they didn''t flirt with each other, as they heard some voices and stepsing from the small jungle, which turned out to be Yvonne and the others who were returning from a rxing bath.

    "Aisha, thanks to the heavens that you are fine~", the first one to react was Leslie, after experiencing being targeted by the creatures due to her affinity, she could imagine Aisha and Michael experiencing something simr while being alone, so she was naturally worried about her friends.

    Yvonne and Liliana also approached Aisha and soon the four of them started chatting with each other, until they noticed Aisha was soaked in saltwater just like Daimon so they moved aside to let her take a bath, as girls their hygiene was really important, not to mention they all came from noble families and had strict habits regarding that aspect.

    Aisha saw Scarlet and the others and besides their unique skin tones, and their ears which were pointy just like hers and Daimon''s, a characteristic shared by some beast races, alfear, vampires and even demons, as well as the fact that they didn''t have any kind of cultivation, she didn''t find them too different from people from the Wonder Myriad ster chart.

    "I''m Daimon''s older sister, you can call me Aisha, it''s a pleasure".

    "The pleasure is ours", Scarlet and the others, easily noticed the similitudes between Aisha and Daimon, especially those amethyst-like eyes of them, so they tried to be friendly and respond in kind, but it wasn''t something easy for them who weren''t used to meet new people too often.

    "I''ll go take a bath, Daimon you cane and enter once I finish bathing", said Aisha with an unnoticeable smirk on the corner of her lips as she walked towards the small river of fresh water at the center of the ind.

    Daimon let the ship out of his inventory on the sand, while using some earth spell to raise a couple of pirs on both sides of the ship, so secure it in ce.

    "I''ll go wait to take my bath, feel free to rx either her or on the ship, once we return, we''ll catch up with Aisha and then decide what to do next".

    Originally Daimon nned to go straight to the location signaled by the badge, but now that he saw the rune shark growing and the octagonal marks being devoured by it as well as that bone that appeared out of nowhere, he was more inclined to kill those creatures.

    Besides, just like Aisha caught with them, the others would probably meet with them if they waited, not to mention Ste, everyone''s help would be needed for what was about toe.

    While Daimon followed Aisha into the woods, Yvonne couldn''t help but let her imagination run wild, now that she was aware of Daimon as more than a ssmate, she realized he was pretty close to Aisha, which could be due to their backstory as siblings who could only rely on each other.

    ''They always have the mana of the other lingering in their bodies'', thought Yvonne before discarding her crazy current thoughts, without knowing it was her instincts as a girl acting up.

 Chapter 255 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 1)

    Since there was a possibility that the others came to look for them, Aisha didn''t flirt with Daimon and just bathed quickly so that her son could take is turn not too long after.

    A momentter they both returned to the shore where the others were either resting or meditating, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were sat down cross-legged gathering mana, showing the results of having absorbed their respective resources.

    "Oh", although Daimon already noticed it earlier, while the Risha sisters originally had differences in their realms, the three of them were perfectly synchronized now, having reached the early stage of the three-star realm.

    If they were given more time to focus in absorbing and refining the resources Daimon gift them, he was sure they would have all reached the middle stage of the three-star mage realm without any problem.

    But that didn''t change the fact that they still surpassed every other member of their family in terms of age/realm, while keeping a strong base which meant their battle prowess didn''t became mediocre, allowing them to jump realms to fight.

    "What are you three doing gathering but not absorbing all this mana?", asked Daimon, making the Risha sisters stop what they were doing.

    "We wanted to show them how mages be stronger at our gxy¡­", Leslie fidgeted her fingers thinking that maybe Daimon was angry at them for not asking him first.

    Daimon chuckled as he shook his head.

    "I don''t mind if you do it, they got to learn it sooner orter, but it would have been a better idea to do it inside the ship, where all that mana wouldn''t draw unwanted attention", said Daimon as his mana sense noticed a ship which was now heading towards them.

    The Risha sisters blushed a bit, they of course inspected the nearby area with their mana sense, but they couldn''t reach as far Daimon, so there was no way for them to know about a ship about one thousand kilometers away from them.

    "It''s our fault¡­ I forgot to warn them that the ships from the Tidal Wave tribe have specialized long range radars that work using vibrations on the water instead of through the air", Lapis stepped in for the Risha sisters.

    Earlier Ruby who noticed Leslie had fire affinity asked her to show her how her fire worked, and one thing led to the other, until they did a small demonstration of how mages gather and absorb mana to be stronger.

    "It''s okay, it''s only one ship, we''ll steal it for us, as that radar should be helpful to locate the rest of our ss".

    The ships of the Red Bone tribe had the better long-range weapons, which were those cannons Eleazar tried to use to attack Daimon, and while the ones on the deck were destroyed in the fight earlier, there were some spare ones.

    So,bining that ship with the radar and installing the spare cannons on it, would give him the best of both worlds.

    ''Darling, should I use the blood bat in front of them?'', asked Aisha in a voice only the soulmates could hear.

    Aster nodded.

    ''Yeah, they already saw me using other elements and Demon Light, besides the skills that require zero mana or what you want to keep as a hidden card, feel free to use other things, in any case depending on how things go, I might even be forced to use Core Synchrony''.

    Only now Daimon remembered he hasn''t told nor the Risha sisters or Aisha about how many people of the tribes entered the magic ruin, nor about the ck stone hall and the monster guarding the door which practically confirmed the existence of Arch ranked existences here.

    "Let''s go get a new ship and then we''ll catch up with all what we have experienced so far", mumbled Daimon.

    Then under the surprised gazes of the two groups of girls, Aisha summoned the blood bat in its current biggest form.

    A red bat with a wingspan of about four meters appeared floating next to Aisha.

    "A contracted beast!", Yvonne couldn''t help but shout due to the surprise, while all the strongest families have bred spirit beasts docile enough to be used as cattle, they were all low ranked and not apt as battelpanions.

    Only a magic beast which has unlocked its wisdom and developed a beast core is able to form a bond with mages or knights by recognizing them as their masters, and while there have been a few very rare cases, there was an iron rule in all of them.

    The beast had to be weaker than the master, and now in front of them, the bat which seemed to be showing off a bit glowing in red light, was clearly an early-stage Lord magic beast!

    Yvonne stared at Aisha and then at Daimon and she sighed.

    "I guess the sister of a monster must be a monster too¡­ after seeing you using more than two elements, I thought I wouldn''t be surprised by whatever you two pulled out, but I was wrong", said Yvonne as she shrugged.

    Leslie curiously approached the red bat and touched its wings, unlike normal magic beasts, the blood bat was loyal to its name and could liquefy its own body, to change its shape and size.

    But as a proud monster servant it didn''t like anyone other than its master and of course its creator which was Daimon touching it.

    "Little Red, she is a friend so treat her well, am I clear~", as the blood bat was preparing to retaliate, Aisha''s calm voice made its way into its ears, stopping it in cold.

    The blood bat slowly turned to see its master and slowly nodded and its attitude took a 180¡ã change, it even swirled around Leslie and allowed Ruby who also was interested on it to touch its wings, while giving Daimon a "save me" gaze from time to time.<sub> </sub>

    Daimon inwardlyughed amused by the situation, his mother might be the sweetest but she also had a scary side, which he experienced first hand whenever he felt like skipping his training, or taking a rest in the middle of the week.

    "Let''s go, the blood bat will take us there, you three take the ship and nk them, Aisha and me will take care of the Lord ranked, Yvi, the cannons are yours, Liliana you defend the ship and Leslie the subordinates are yours okay?".

    "Yes!", the Risha sisters nodded, Daimon kept the ship in his inventory and then took it out again but on the water, while Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were boarding the ship, Scarlett, Amber and Lapis approached Daimon.

    "Let us participate too, at least we can shoot the cannons of the ship, those bastards must pay for what they have done", said Amber as she stretched her body.

    "The radar can be detached, so even if the ships sinks, we can just adapt it to the one we currently have", added Lapis.

    Scarlet on the other hand pointed at Ruby who was still ying with the blood bat, and Jade who was enjoying the soft feeling of the sand on her feet.

    "Ruby and Jade will rest since they can''t move too much for the time being".

    Daimon didn''t see any problem with them helping, he wasn''t going to give them a different treatment due to their past, nor show pity towards them, instead what they needed were battle experience and study to find a way to get stronger.

    Once everyone was on the ship, Daimon and Aisha jumped on the blood bat and they went ahead of them, with the Risha sisters and the other girls following them not too far nor too close.

    On the way Aisha noticed her son was a bit contemtive and she hugged his right arm, as she said.

    "What''s the problem darling, you seem to be lost in your thoughts?".

    Daimon came out of his daze and shook his head.

    "It''s nothing, my sixth sense has been going crazytely, nut in a danger rming way, it''s just as if something important is about to happen, but I can discern what it is¡­ whatever, the result will be the same".

    Aisha smiled at her son and then they both focused in the uing battle, after a few minutes of flying on top of the blood bat, Daimon could spot the enemy ship with his bare eyes, without injecting mana into them.

    Of course, the blood bat was smart enough to float way above the ship, to be out of the enemy''s field of vision.

    Daimon''s attention was immediately drawn after seeing there weren''t anyone on the deck, it looked as if it was abandoned, but of course that wasn''t the case.

    Then his infinity eyes glowed as he saw someoneing out of the captain''s cabin''s, a guy to begin with, and pretty familiar person on top of it, Calvin.

    The blood bat descended in front of the cruise and then stopped at a perfectly discernible position.

    "ss rep, is that you¡­ what are the names of your fianc¨¦es back home?", asked Calvin, he tapped his right foot on the deck and the cannons were disyed and pointed all at Daimon.

    "Liz and ine, you too, what is the name of the girl you like".

    Calvin scratched the back of his head, he already knew it was Daimon but he just wanted, to bepletely sure, since he saw how one those creatures possessed the body of a defeated enemy.

    "It''s Loren of course", Said Calvin without a tinge of doubt in his words.

    Daimon did the signal they orded, to not attack the enemy ship and then he just waited for Yvi and the others to approach them.

    The captain''s cabin opened and then, Michael, Haylee and Loren came out of it, besides the clear surprise of seeing the blood bat, they immediately smiled at Daimon and Aisha.

    "I''m d you are okay", said Michael, the other ship soon appeared next to them and then, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana jumped on the other ship.

    Of course, Calvin didn''t miss the chance mess with the Risha sisters, after seeing they already reunited with Daimon, even before them.

    "You see, love always find the way¡­", before he could finish speaking, Liliana froze the floor below him, and Yvonne used a whip to make him fall overboard, soaking in the process.

    Lorenughed at Calvin''s antics and she couldn''t help but say.

    "It''s good that we are together again".

 Chapter 256 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 2)

    Calvin jumped onto the ship and nearly slipped on the floor, as he was received by the sight Scarlet and the other girls holding onto the cannons and looking at him suspiciously.

    "Ahem,dies, I''m on Daimon''s side so don''t shoot those things", although Calvin could block the fire from the cannons, the things had the capacity to damage his armor and it was a bother for him to repair it.

    Only after seeing Daimon nodding at them, which he for some reason took a couple of seconds to do, making Calvin sweat a bit, they stopped aiming at him with the cannons.

    "You should have let them shot him a couple of times", mumbled Leslie, making the other girlsugh.

    "Let''s go to the shore of that ind, we have a lot discuss".

    "Got it".

    Following Daimon''s order, Yvonne and Haylee who were piloting the ships guided them towards the shore.

    Once they arrived, everyone got off and Daimon kept both in his inventory surprising Calvin and the others, but they left that subject aside for the time being, Calvin stomped and created a rock tform where Loren ced a nket to that everyone could sit.

    On the way, it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that the ship Calvin and the others were using, had a rough time, some parts of the deck had burning marks and one of the sides was patched, clearly using a different type of wood, probably Haylee''s work.

    He has yet to hear his mother''s experienced during the past month too, so it was a good time to ask about it.

    "How have things gone for you, have you fought the skeletal creatures or only the guys who owns that kind of ship?", asked Daimon as he pointed at the ship they were riding.

    "Our original ship was obtained from one of those creatures, although their captains have strength on par with early-stage Lord realms, they can''t maneuver on the air too well nor touch the water without suffering harsh burns".

    "So, while the shrimp and me kept the captain distracted and blocked the cannons and other attacks, Loren focused on gathering all her mana in the spell you gave her, the same for Haylee, one destroyed their ship and the other would finish off the captain".

    "Using that strategy, we easily defeated the creatures one after the other, unfortunately the ships are too big to be kept in the rings the academy gave us, so we had no other choice but to sink them, of course we changed the one we used from time to time".

    Calvin then gritted his teeth before continuing.

    "Everything was working pretty well, we also had an approximate idea of your location, but on the way, we were intercepted by one ship of the creatures controlled by the pdins of the Blue-Sky academy, and one led by guys with dark red skin¡­", Calvin couldn''t help but steal a gaze at Scarlet as he said that, clearly remembering how the guy leading them looked at Loren.

    Of course, that didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes.

    "They aren''t on the same side the ones you all met are from the Red Bone tribe, the "Tribes" are always guys and as you probably already noticed, they tend to be scum, Scarlet, Ruby, Amber, Lapis and Jade, were kept prisoners by them and after I got rid of the owner of my ship, they signed a contract with me, so I can respond for them, any objections?".

    Calvin sighed and then leaned his arm on Daimon''s shoulder.

    "ss rep, you should teach us good brothers some of your secrets".

    Seeing how Scarlet and the other girls looked at Calvin as if he was a weirdo, Michael facepalmed.

    "Please don''t judge our gxy based on that idiot¡­ I''m Michael, anyone who''s trusted by Daimon has my trust too".

    "I''m Michael''s fianc¨¦e, you can call me Haylee".

    "Loren Lefay, you can call me Loren".

    "And of course, the young master of the Ghrish family and the most gant gentleman of the White Fang gxy, Calvin".

    ¡­ Ruby tugged Daimon''s sleeve and then pointed at Calvin.

    "Daimon, sister Yvonne told us you are like a prince from two different forces, is the funny guy like your clown of the court?".

    The tribes kept a feudal-like system to organize theirs, so when Yvonne exined that Daimon was the young master of two of the biggest forces, she took it as if he was some kind of prince, which wasn''t too far from reality, if he would have kept his status as a vampire, he would have been the royal prince of the Naktis family.

    Ruby''s question made everyoneugh, Leslie specially gave thumbs up to the little girl for her urate observation.

    "Ahem, as I was saying, we were intercepted by those guys and managed to brush off the pdins, but the assholes from the other ship chased us, they had one cannon on that ship which was freaking strong, even with my tenyer armor I nearly lost my hand just redirecting the attack".

    "Anyway, we managed to make some distance from them and met the guys on this ship by sheer luck, so we kicked their asses and robbed this ship, still the red skin¡­ the guys from the Red Bone tribe caught up and this time they had two of those stupid cannons".<sub> </sub>

    "We managed to block most of the impact but I fainted, Michael took over and we escaped those guys, Loren healed me so everything is cool, also we discovered how useful were the radars on the ship and used them to track a ship which we hoped was taken by you".

    Daimon nodded, apparently the radar could only track inanimate things, so it wasn''t the fault of the Risha sisters that they encountered him, but his since he left the ship out of hi inventory, although it turned out to be a happy ident.

    Then as he was about to ask Aisha to tell them her experiences, his mana sense detected a small group of three ships, about one thousand kilometers at the east of their current position, one of them clearly had a stronger mana radiation and an emblem which caught Daimon''s attention.

    "Did the ship that chased you had an emblem simr to this?", asked Daimon as he drew the me crossed by a skull emblem which symbolized the royals of the Red Bone tribe.

    "Yeah, I remember that emblem, why?", answered Calvin.

    "Well, it seems it''s payback time", mumbled Daimon, before he looked at Haylee.

    "Can you manipte the wood to make a rudimentary ship, as long as it floats and it is big enough to carry all of us it would be enough?".

    Haylee nodded, as she pointed at the trees on the ind.

    "If I were to create the wood, I wouldn''t be able to build one in a single session, but if I have the materials then I''ll be done in about ten minutes, as long as you bring me the logs".

    "Okay, Michal, Calvine with me, the rest of you prepare for a battle, we leave in fifteen minutes".

    "Mm", the girls nodded, although they haven''t heard Daimon''s n, they trusted he wouldn''t mislead them, so for the time being focusing in recovering and preparing was their task.

    "Let me go too Daimon, I can help you choose the better trees", said Jade, her feet felt way better than earlier after being surrounded by trees and other vegetation, so she wanted to take a small walk to recover mobility.

    "Okay", having gotten Daimon''s greenlight, they entered the jungle to cut the trees Haylee needed.

    Daimon noticed Michael only had one knife left and he looked in his inventory, where he kept the things inside Eleazar''s ring.

    "Take this", Daimon handed Michael all the knives he found there, their grades varied from the three star to the eight star realm grade, although their designs were all different, they would work as a charm for what Michael needed.

    "That one is perfect¡­ if you can please leave the root intact", Jade pointed at a tree of about twenty meters tall.

    Daimon took out a sword from his inventory and with a single sh, the trunk fell down without affecting the root of the tree.

    The trunk then disappeared as Daimon kept it in his inventory, before they went for the next one, this time Michael cut it and Calvin used his body to kept it from falling and causing a mess, while Daimon stored it.

    Soon they returned with about thirty trunks which Daimon left on the sand for Haylee to work with them, he also handed Haylee a piece of paper with the design he wanted her to take inspiration on.

    Needless to say, but Calvin and the others were all intrigued by Daimon''s capacity to store things as big as the trunks, since the space of the ring granted by the academy wasn''t small, but he would have needed to cut them in half due to the quantity.

    "I guess there is no harm in telling you now, I can learn to use any element, also¡­", it was easier to show it than to exin it, so Daimon casted a wisp of Demon Light and as he expected, they all reacted differently.

    "Battle aura!".

    "That''s light element".

    "And fire too¡­".

    Calvin who has been sparring with Aleah since he was a kid, was the first one to recognize Demon Light''s nature was simr to battle aura, Loren noticed the strong light element in the mix and Michael the fire one.

    And the surprises weren''t over, Aisha then summoned her "tamed" magic beast, this time since they saw the blood bating out of thin air, they were sure it wasn''t a spell of some kind but a living being.

    "Being friends with you two is bad for our self-esteem¡­ but it''s also a good reminder to not fall behind", mumbled Calvin and this time the others couldn''t help but agree with him.

    "We''ll continue with our discussionter, the ships have stopped advancing for some reason, the n is pretty simple I steal those dangerous cannons, and then we take over the ship, leave the captain of the biggest ship for me, sis you deal with the other and Calvin and Michael will take the other one".

    "We can use our air transportation, but you''ll have to use the improvised ship to get there, since they can detect the ones created by themselves or the creatures, but this rudimentary one doesn''t radiate enough mana to be detected on the radar".

    "Okay", without any objections, Daimon exined the details of how to attack the three ships and then without a second of dy he jumped onto the blood bat followed by Aisha, and they flew away towards their objective

 Chapter 257 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 3)

    Following Daimon''s orders, the blood bat flew upwards, enough to not be detected from below, so far there hasn''t been any case of flying magic beasts anyway, so Daimon was pretty sure the skies weren''t taken that much into ount inparison with the sea.

    Aisha hugged her son tight and enjoyed being alone with him, although she wanted to flirt, right now wasn''t the time for that.

    "Darling, are we going to join hands with the pdins?".

    "Mm?", Daimon was confused as to why Aisha suddenly brought the subject, but he still answered.

    "Judging by what I have learned so far, we might need the help from their peak stage Lordter on¡­ that being said if they want to tag along it will be under my conditions".

    Aisha nodded.

    "That''s good, there is something fishy about this ce, the conditions of the part where I appeared were clearly tough enough for Arch ranks to appear and yet I didn''t see any signs of creatures in that level".

    Leaving aside that little episode, they soon arrived at where the three enemy ships were, just like his mana sense showed him before, Daimon easily noticed the ship in which the royal was travelling.

    Not only because it was twice as big as the normal ones, but because there were two mana fluctuations which surpassed Eleazar while being in the same realm, in other words two early-stage Mage Lords with decently high and pure reserves of mana.

    But there was no peak Lord ranked which meant, the one travelling in that ship wasn''t a prince, but probably one of the secondary branch royals.

    "Ready?".

    Aisha nodded and then the blood bat disappeared, leaving them on free fall.

    Aisha clung onto her son and when they were about one hundred meters above the ships, Daimon used blink to appear on the deck of the bigger ship.

    As soon as theynded, Daimon ced his hands on the big and archaic looking like cannons, and they were teared off from their metallic supports and kept in his inventory.

    Aisha on the other hand snapped her fingers and her body became a re, using metal particles she reflected the light of the sun to blind the people from the tribes.

    "Aghhh my eyes!".

    "What the hell".

    Daimon was standing behind Aisha so he wasn''t affected, but the guys who were looking at the deck were immediately blinded, their eyes were burning and before they could react, with a sh of her sword Aisha cut their heads, eliminating about five six star ranked tribe members.

    "Booom!", both Daimon and Aisha dodged at the left avoiding two me spheres which came from the captain''s cabin of the ship.

    Once the mes extinguished, Aisha''s spell also ended, revealing the result of the first step in Daimon''s n, about one third of the crew of the ship was dead, the others were either temporarily incapacitated or not ready to fight at the moment.

    They also got the attention of the two lord ranked guys, unlike Eleazar their skin tones were darker red and their hairs were the same, both were wearing some strange robes with a mix of ck and red colors and small crowns, which were being used as armbands instead of on top of their heads.

    "What did I tell you brother Nestor, back at Melize we have to chase after those bitches, but here, women are easy to get, nowe with this big¡­".

    "Boom!", before the dark red skinned guy could finish speaking, he was hit by a lightning and sent flying out of the ship, leaving behind a thunder like sound as well as a shockwave which made the sea be agitated.

    "I''ll kill that one darling~", said Aisha as she became a sh of light which shot towards the direction where the dark red skinned guy was sent flying.

    Daimonughed and then let his body be d with lightning and darkness mana, which twirled around him, once both elements collided loud crackling sounds filled the area, as the characteristic purple lightning of Daimon, changed to ck.

    "Arcanist!", the other high noble from the Red Bone tribe, called Nestor, immediately responded in kind, his skin seemed to flow for a split of a second, before his body exploded in dim red mes.

    Nestor took out his weapon, arge saber made out of the bones of a magic beast, the thing had a thick handle and a wide de making it look quite barbarian, then Narasha made her appearance in Disaster''s form.

    Seeing the refined and slim design of Disaster, Nestor snorted.

    "What are you going to do with that little toothpick".

    Daimon''s image suddenly shed, making Nestor jump to dodge the sh, unfortunately being midair, didn''t help him, using blink Daimon appeared in front of him leaving Nestor no choice but to attack him head on.

    Unfortunately for Nestor, the sh he expected didn''t happen, instead of that, Daimon shed through his saber cutting a third part of the de away.

    "W-What!", Nestor saw a part of the de of his saber being chopped away like nothing, and his eyes contracted like needles, while he might not be a prince, with his status, his weapon was among the medium high quality, only surpassed by the things given to a royal prince.<sub> </sub>

    Still, Daimon didn''t give him any time to think about it, he followed his sh with a punch whichnded full on Nestor''s face, making It swell.

    "Damn it", Nestor used the momentum to distance himself from Daimon, not without casting a fire ball at him.

    Nestor''s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as he saw Daimon casually blocking his attack with his bare hand.

    Daimon looked at the low-quality me in his hand and he frowned, before crushing the thing, leaving only scraps of mes floating in the air.

    "Weren''t you a high noble, that Eleazar guy had more to offer than thatme me", said Aster as he yed with Disaster.

    Overall, Daimon calcted that Nestor had better capacities and qualities than Eleazar, but his mes were surprisingly trashy, not even equaling to a six-star mage, it wasme to say the less.

    "What the hell are you waiting for, shot this bastard down!", shouted Nestor to the members of his crew, the ones that now had more lor less recovered stared at each other after noticing the main cannons were gone.

    But seeing that Nestor''s eyes were bloodshot, they didn''t dare to say anything and instead went for the secondary cannons, well knowing they didn''t have enough firepower to get rid of Daimon, still they could be used as suppression fire.

    Daimon became a ck sh while Nestor turned into a living shooting star which collided on the air above the ship.

    "Booom!", the result were loud thunders and gust of winds being created due to the strong shockwaves, the cannons were shot at Aster trying to give even the slightest advantage to Nestor.

    "Aghhh!!!", then all of a sudden, a lung tearing scream echoed through the ce, drawing the attention of everyone to the origin of it.

    The result was the incredible scene of Aisha smacking the other noble against the deck of the ship, before shended to kick him in the face.

    Nestor felt a chill running down his spine at the tragic state in which his cousin was, Aisha didn''t resort to use her sword, and instead beat him up with her bare fists, at first, he didn''t take her too seriously.

    But that changed as soon as her first punch connected, with the dark red skinned guy''s weapon, an axe, which started trembling due to the impact.

    What followed was a royal beating from Aisha, breaking so much things that it was hard to find an unwounded area on the body of the guy.

    ''Only my darling can look at me like that", thought Aisha as she kicked the poor guy like a ball.

    Daimon dodged another round of shots from the secondary cannons, operated by the rest of the crew members.

    "Hurry up and help the young lord!", shouted a middle-aged man making the others to wake up from their dazes, only to be blow away by a loud explosion which came from the other two ships.

    Calvin stood on the deck of the right ship, while Michael was doing the same on the other, there were corpses here and thereying on the deck too.

    As if it wasn''t bad enough seeing their strongest duo being easily beaten up, the two escorting ships were so easily stolen from them and now their cannons pointed at them, in other words they were overwhelmed in all the aspects for a battle.

    "Self-destroy the ship aghhhh!".

    Nestor tried to save the technology of Melize by sinking the ship, but Daimon was faster and before they could start the sequence of formation in the controls.

    "Woah", the three ships suddenly rumbled as their nearby areas was impacted by a barrage of cannon attacks.

    Daimon looked at the north and saw a small float of four ships like the ones used by the creatures, and one which was the same size as the one used by the royals,ing their way.

    But they weren''t being rode by the creatures, but the pdins and as if to support Daimon''s previous decision, the five ships started raining down cannon attacks on them.

    "I recognize three of the ships those were the guys we originally were facing, before we were forced to flee", said Calvin as he destroyed a cannon ball which was shot towards him.

    Daimon calcted things for a second, they had a spare ship from the creatures and so he only needed three more, including the double sizes one of course.

    Aisha noticed her son''s intentions and she hugged his right arm, while extending her right hand towards the closes small ship.

    "Lent me some mana darling~", whispered Aisha.

    Daimon''s body exploded in lightning, which didn''t cause his mother any harm, and they were easilypacted on Aisha''s hand as she condensed a small lightning bead.

    "Thunder arrow", Aisha''s soft voice was like an angel''s melody for Daimon, but the pdins will never forget about what was about to happen.

 Chapter 258 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 4)

    The small lightning sphere which condensed in front of Aisha''s hand became a sh of silver light that disappeared from everyone''s vision.

    Well, not everyone, Nestor which was the only one among the members of the Red Bone tribe alive left, managed to see the moment when Aisha''s attack collided with one of the ships.

    "Booom!", arge explosion followed by a spherical sh of light which engulfed the ship, made everyone cover their eyes.

    Then a strong gust of wind made the other ships move randomly, and also made water ssh all over the ce.

    "Chance", Nestor who managed to cover his eyes earlier, noticed that everyone was still a bit disorientated, and he sneakily moved his body through the deck, when he reached the border, he immediately stood up and jumped out of the ship.

    ''The enemies this time are too dangerous, I must warn cousin¡­aghh!'', just when Nestor was about to take a small boat from his ring, to escape from this ce, he felt a steel like grip strangling him and the next thing he knew was that his face was smacked against the deck.

    "So, Scarlet''s theory was right, your tribe depends on enhancing their eyes and don''t have mana sense", Daimon''s indifferent voice made its way to Nestor''s eyes making him tremble in fear.

    "I-I was already half way down the ship, how the hell did you caught up with me", said Nestor as he gritted his teeth, trying to contain the blood that wasing out of his nose and mouth.

    This was a theory Daimon had earlier, when he exchanged moves with Eleazar he noticed his time of reaction was worse than others he has fought before, also he didn''t cause a "manifestation" phenomenon, despite having a strength equal with an early-stage Lord rank.

    Originally, he thought that maybe the members of the red skinned tribe were knights, since the trait for Knight Lords is different than the one of mages, but they didn''t use battle aura and ording to Amber and Lapis, while knights did exist in Melize, only the Rock Hoof tribe and the Tidal Wave tribe had them, others were always mages.

    That also exined why the blue skinned corpse he found in the first ship he stole from the creatures, had a decent potential in the knight''s path, because it was meant to be like that.

    "Aghhh!", a painfilled scream drew everyone''s attention, as the light sh faded, Calvin and the others saw Daimon breaking Nestor''s arms and legs, before he kicked him all the way to the ship, which Scarlet and the other girls were in charge off.

    "Watch him for me, we have a long "conversation" to haveter".

    "Mm", the girls nodded and then chained Nestor with the same chains that were used on them before throwing him in the interrogation room.

    Daimon kept those chains, since the things actually restrained others from using mana, he stored a couple for Liz, because as the owner of Disaster he has seen and felt antinite before¡­ and those chains didn''t have it, it was a great discovery.

    "Cut their retreat!", Daimon shouted, and Calvin and Michael drove the two ships they just stole from the Red Bone tribe and surrounded the remaining three ships where the Pdins were, while Aisha moved the ship, they were in to block the way, Scarlet and the others did the same.

    So now the three enemy ships were surrounded and being aimed at, by cannons in all the directions, Daimon even took out the two main cannons he stole earlier and pointed them at the Pdins.

    The three ships were being protected by a dome of vines, whoever casted that barrier was a secondte, so the fourth ship was still blown into smithereens and while the vine barrier protected the other ships from the aftermath of the spell it also hindered their retreat, and now they were surrounded.

    Daimon jumped andnded on the beak of the ship, and then injected mana into his infinity eyes, to see through the vines that were covering the remaining enemy ships.

    Once he reached the amount of mana needed, he managed to bypass the physical barrier and see what was inside.

    Two of the ships were being upied by a couple first years each, an alfear and a human and a dwarf and a human respectively, they were all two starred mages, as for the one which size was on par with the ship from the royals Daimon was now using, there were three second year students, a dwarf, an alfear andstly a human, the one maintaining the vine barrier was the alfear.

    Something that got Daimon''s attention was that they were all women, the first years included, not like it affected his ns, he wanted the "cooperation" of the Lord ranked from the Blue-Sky gxy, so he wasn''t going to kill them all anyway.

    The only ship he asked Aisha to destroy was the one that tried to kill Calvin and the others before, he watched them carefully and that was the only one whose cannons aimed directly at them, the others aimed at the ships or the nearby area.

    "You know that barrier won''t change anything, even if you can block Lord ranked attacks it won''tst long against our attacks and the cannons of this ship", shouted Daimon making sure his voice reached the ones inside the vine barrier.

    "Humph, let''s see if you dare to do it, there are three descendants of Half Emperors here, if you try something, once you leave this stupid ce, it will be your death!", one of the three girls on the bigger ship shouted with an outraged voice.

    Daimon smirked, he slowly pointed at a specific area of the vine barrier, darkness and lightning exploded around him and a two centimeters line of ck light was shot from the point of his index finger.

    "Hell Storm Javelin", the line of ck light pierced through vine barrier and was blocked by something else just before it reached its target, the left side of the chest of the girl that threatened a moment ago, which happened to be the human.

    "Oh?", Daimon was actually surprised by the result, with his infinity eyes he saw the dwarf girl using a ck shield to stop his spell, unlike Aisha''s thunder arrow which focused onrge scale destruction, his Hell Storm Javelin focused in piercing defenses, it was a spell he created to deal with knights as he could easily maintain for as long as he wanted and even make it stronger by injecting more mana into it.<sub> </sub>

    Which he did right now, the originally two-centimeter ck light suddenly doubled its size, which allowed Daimon to feel the javelin slowly pierced the firstyers of the shield, and also, he saw the dwarf girl taking a step back due to the force behind the spell.

    "Go ask the Jolbaris if I dare to attack descendants of Half Emperors, or in your case it will be easier to ask the dius, Grayer and Ascott families", with an indifferent expression, Daimon doubled once again the force of the spell.

    This time the shield of the dwarf girl was practically pierced through, and although the original target which was the human girl already got out of the way, the attack would probably make a hole on the ship, so the dwarf girl did ast try and bashed the ck javelin sessfully redirecting it upwards.

    A pir of ck light pierced the roof of the vine barrier and disappeared into the sky not too long after, making the three girls but specially the dwarf girl to let out sighs of relief, at least until they saw another javelin condensing in Daimon''s right index finger.

    "Wait, Demon of the elite ss!", the alfear girl looked at the dwarf girl and noticing that she might not be able to block a second javelin, which was understandable, Hell Storm Javelin is a double element five-star spell, a spell which eats away more than half of Daimon''s abnormally high mana reserves for an eight centimeters javelin.

    Any starred mage would suffer a headache or even faint after using so much of their mana in a single attack, in Daimon''s case he didn''t suffer any recoil because even if his mana hit rock bottom, he still had his reserves of battle aura, that''s why he could use all his mana reserves before drawing more from the virtually endless amount stored in his magic core to refill his reserves.

    The alfear girl was told by a distant rtive of hers about a ck-haired youth which overbearingly got back at some alfear for attacking a silver haired girl, and she understood that by the still fear filled expression of the one telling her the story, the retaliation was really harsh, so she immediately raised her voice to draw Daimon''s attention.

    Daimon looked at the alfear girl, who felt as if some kind of fierce magic beast has fixated its attention on her, but she softly bit her lips and then returned the gaze at Daimon.

    "I was told you don''t attack those who don''t attack you, considering you seem to be able to see through my vine barrier, and since only that ship was sted away, I can assume you noticed we didn''t have the intention to kill anyone¡­ or was all that a lie?".

    Daimon chuckled, the javelin he was condensing was dispelled and the mana was absorbed by him.

    "Yeah, that''s my policy, those idiots tried to kill us so I killed them, but that doesn''t change the fact that you attacked us too".

    "I can promise topensate you for the trouble as long as you let us leave, besides the three of us, the others here are just first years who had zero battle experience¡­ and they were forced to see their ssmates suffering by the creatures or those strange guys in simr ships to the ones you have, I noticed that you weren''t part of themte and only managed to order them to attack the ship instead".

    "Wait, what the hell are you saying Tessa, why should wepensate, he killed Kyle", the human girl gritted her teeth and red at Daimon poisonously.

    "Pah!", Daimon saw the alfear girl pping the human girl which was throwing a tantrum.

    "I''m the vice-captain, if you have anyins, then you can expose themter, but for now, the one in charge is me, also in case you haven''t noticed Femi saved your life just a few seconds ago, and she is now wounded due to that, so unless you want to die, shut up!".

    "Demon of the elite ss, I canpensate with a fruit from the world tree".

    "I''ll add a piece of purified Silver Mercury".

    Both the alfear and the dwarf girls spoke, they werete for their destination and they needed to leave as soon as possible, because they were the reinforcements.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Deal, but the ships are mine now, and you''ll have to convince the Mage Lord sent by the Blue-Sky gxy to help if needed, and don''t try to tell me you don''t have that much authority¡­ princess of the Evergreen royal family and daughter of the chief of the Hepha tribe".

    The alfear girl agreed, but she also added her own conditions.

    "Fine, but you won''t attack our ssmates without any reason, out enemies here are those disgusting creatures and those savages¡­ also we won''t be servants but guests".

    Daimon nodded.

    "You can keep one of the other two ships as a temporal transportation mean, but the g ship is mine, now hurry up, we have a long trip ahead".

    The vine barrier disappeared revealing the three ships and their now ex owners, the first one Daimon noticed was the alfear princess, unlike other alfear her hair was a mix of blond and ck instead of brown, and a member of the royal family the blond part surpassed half of it reaching about three quarters, her eyes also didn''t match with themon green or blue, but were honey toned, and she was wearing a white detached sleeve dress with blue decorations, even when she had that wary expression, it didn''t hide the fact that she was quite a beauty, but what drew Daimon''s attention was that she was a dual affinity mage.

    And it was quite a strangebination, nature which was the rule for the royal family of the alfear and darkness which shouldn''t be possible for an alfear.

    Tessa stole a couple of gazes at Daimon''s group and noticed Scarlet and the other girls, which made her frown, but she also noticed they didn''t look exactly like the people from the tribes, so she didn''t say anything and instead jumped out of the ship to one of the other two, followed by the dwarf girl and after a moment of hesitation the human girl too.

 Chapter 259 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 5)

    Now that there was a second gship avable, Daimon for a split of a second thought about giving it to Aisha, but her expression clearly said "I won''t be leaving your side", so he gave the option to Calvin and Michael.

    "One¡­ two¡­ three!".

    "Damn it", with a quick rock paper scissors game, they decided the winner, which in this case was Calvin.

    "I''m never listening to the end of this", mumbled Michael, while Calvin and also Loren moved to the other gship, at the same time, Amber and Jade separated from Scarlet and the others and took each one of the two now empty ships.

    With a wave of his hand, Daimon made thest ship he owned, which was the first one he got, appear below the water, making it emerge a couple of secondster, creating the illusion that the ship has always been waiting below the surface, this time Lapis took control of it.

    The float now consisted in two gships upied by Daimon and Aisha, as well as Calvin and Loren, then there were six more normal ships, three from the tribes and three from creatures, that being said the third one from the creatures was now being used by the girls from the Blue-Sky academy.

    Daimon then pointed at the south and all the ships advanced in that direction, just as Daimon as about to enter the captain''s cabin with Aisha, he saw the alfear and dwarf girlsnding on the deck of his ship.

    And while didn''t show it, he didn''t lower his guard, someone that can block the aftermath of Aisha''s Thunder Arrow or his Hell Storm Javelin isn''t weak by any means, specially if it isn''t even a six-star mage or knight.

    "Demon of the elite ss, we want to discuss some things with you", said the alfear girl, making Daimon raise an eyebrow.

    But he still agreed to them.

    "I''m all ears, also stop calling me that, my name is Daimon Licht, formalities aren''t my thing".

    The alfear girl and the dwarf girl stared at each other for a couple of seconds, before they introduced themselves.

    "I''m Tessa Evergreen, the first princess of the alfear race".

    "Femi Hepha, likewise I''m the daughter of the ruler of the dwarf race".

    Tessa then pointed at the human girl which earlier threatened Daimon.

    "That girl is Jenna Penddra, she is also a princess in the territory.

    "Okay, so what you want to discuss with me?", slowly asked Daimon, Tessa then took out a small whitepass, whose arrow pointed at their overall direction.

    "There is currently a war among three sides, the human, the creature and us at an ind ¡­ and I noticed your current direction is headed perfectly towards them, so my question is, if that''s your goal too?".

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "No, but they happen to be in the middle of my final destination, so I would go through them, or at least that was the original ides, but since there seems to be something important ongoing there, then I don''t mind making a small store here".

    Tessa didn''t know whether she shouldugh or cry, she might have ended up inviting a shark without noticing.

    ''Whatever it''s not like I could do anything¡­ something tells me that to take this guy on, one must be as monstrous as Adam at least, so I will leave that problem for him to deal with'', she thought.

    After having asked what they wanted, Tessa and Femi returned to the spaceship they were assigned and then simply entered the captain''s cabin.

    Daimon and Aisha as well as the others soon did the same, ording to the radar, the next detectable ship was quite far from their current position, and it wasn''t just one, there were a lot of them gathered at some ce.

    "But that didn''t make sense, the location signaled by the badge doesn''t stop at that point at all, but directly goes through it", mumbled Daimon.

    ¡­

    And so, they travelled for the next couple of days or so without any problem, nor any new finding, just the vast sea, but at some point, everyone stopped their ships.

    Daimon who was sitting on a throne like seat at the captain''s cabin, with Aisha sitting on her son''sp while she snuggled with him.

    Their sweet flirting was interrupted by the shouts of the others, Daimon stood up and left the captain''s cabin.

    There from the deck, Daimon saw Calvin on the beak of his ship and Michael doing the same, both of them were evaluating a situation ahead of them.

    There were only two ships but both of them were as big as the ones, Daimon confiscated from the royals.

    To everyone''s surprise the demons in those two ships didn''t attack them, instead they instead raised a white g and approached Daimon''s ship.

    A dim gray skinned guy then came out of the captain''s cabin, and then evaluated all the people present here.<sub> </sub>

    But the opposite was also true, this neer had gray skin, short red hair and the number "2" tattooed on his forearm, which was visible as he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

    The demon, then looked at Tessa who was technically the strongest here, in terms of realm at least, and then made a gesture like a gentleman.

    "Greetings, alfear princess princesses, dwarf princess, I wonder, where you asked by them to be reinforces?".

    Tessa nodded.

    "Yes, the creatures and those strange guys already killed more than a half the guys that are fighting against them, if not they wouldn''t have asked for our presences".

    The demon nodded.

    "We are the same, can we tag along with you all, at least until we arrive at that ind, in a bigger group, the creatures and those savages won''t dare to aim at us, of course one we reach our destination, everyone is up to themselves, what do you say?".

    The expression in the demon''s face became grim when she saw Tessa shaking her head.

    "It''s not a bad idea, but I''m not the one in charge here so if you want answer to that, you should ask him instead.

    The demon then looked at Daimon who was evaluating them as well, and he tried his best to sound friendly.

    "I''m Akeem from the twelve-demon n, what are your thoughts about a temporal truce to deal with the immediate enemy?".

    Daimon rubbed his chin with a contemtive expression, on his face.

    "It can be discussed, as longa as you tell me what is making the vice leaders of two different teams to rush from wherever they were, can''t be possibly normal".

    The expression in the demon''s face became ugly.

    "I can''t answer to that¡­ it would be against the purpose of being reinforcements for my ck Grave Academy".

    Daimon''s eyes narrowed a bit, apparently there was something interesting going on in that ind, something that even Tessa didn''t mention him.

    "You can tag a long, but I''ll have you sign a magic contract beforehand, just to bepletely safe".

    The other demon nearly lost it after listening to that, but since the rumored, "demon" was in front of him, he just mumbled some words in a strangenguage exclusive to the demons.

    "Rfhggsh treefgsgsa¡­".

    For the others the words meant nothing, but the demon that was speaking with earlier, shook his head, not happy with whatever the other daimon said.

    "What kind of contract?".

    "The kind that doesn''t allow you to think on doing things like what that guy just spoke about a second ago".

    "Watch out!", the demon with the number two tattoo, felt a sudden raise in the mana around daimon and he shouted to warn his friend, but he was a step toote.

    By the time he reacted two ck lines of light, pierced the chest of the other demon, life immediately escaped from him and his corpse copsed on the floor.

    The sudden change in the situation made the Pdins feel ufortable, Daimon was talking with the demons and then he killed someone out of nowhere, or that''s what they thought.

    A rough trantion of what the other demon said would be:

    "If we act low, we can deliver them to lord Marcus as sacrifices and help him deal with that annoying human".

    Daimon managed to understand him for some reason, so of course he killed him, as for why the two small Hell Storm Javelins, the reason was very simple, demons had more than one heart.

    Some of them wouldn''t die if you destroyed their heads as long as their hearts were intact, most of the people from the younger generation didn''t know that and the first years had yet to see the anatomy of the different races,

    But Aura having fought, hunted or killed countless of different living beings, of course taught Daimon the weak points of them, including some words in their secretnguage, which he heard, meant he was being taken in for a sacrifice.

    "So now Mr. number two pir, are you going to sign the contract or not, I want the cooperation from the Lord realm sent by the ck Grave academy".

 Chapter 260 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 6)

    Akeem frowned, while he thought he could escape leaving behind the first years inside the captain''s cabin, these two ships he fought alongside with the fourth pir which was just eliminated by Daimon, to get, would be lost.

    Making his contribution to be lowered, unlike the current number one pir which isn''t part of the ck Grave academy, he who used to be the first pir for a whole year was suddenly stripped out of his status.

    And although he hoped for the first pir to die so that he could recover his position, the Lord ranked who entered with them, supported his opponent, so if he were to return empty handed¡­ she wouldn''t interfere in case Marcus tries to kill him to use it as a sacrifice.

    After thinking about it for nearly one minute, Akeem turned to see Daimon and shrugged.

    "I can''t help you with the Lord ranked, unfortunately that seniores from an organization which isn''t tied to our twelve noble ns, and while she can''t directly harm us due to a contract, she is pretty much free to help us or not¡­ and she supports the first pir as he isn''t part of the twelve ns as well".

    "But I can tell you why they are all gathering near that ind, as long as you agree to not tell anyone your source of information was me, in exchange I want to keep one of these two ships, you already killed the fourth pir so I can say his ship sank, he was a supporter of the first pir as you probably already guessed", said Akeem as he noticed Daimon frowning.

    From the corner of his eyes, Daimon saw the girl from the Penddra family gritting her teeth, and he smirked, Tessa and Femi immediately red at her, but that little hint was enough to assure Daimon the information was worth the price Akeem asked.

    "Deal, you can stay in that ship and take the in those two in the captain''s cabin of the other ship, all the loot in that guy''s corpse as well as the coffers in the ship that belonged to him is mine", said Daimon as he pointed at the corpse of the fourth pir.

    Akeem nodded and he called the people on the captain''s cabin of the other ship, which turned out to be two female first years, after listening to Akeem instructions they jumped onto the other ship.

    Daimon then threw a contract at Akeem, who perfectly reviewed it, before he signed with a drop of his blood, the first-year demons also had to sign it and they weren''t the only ones.

    "Hand it to them", said Daimon, Akeem nodded and threw the contract towards the Pdins.

    Tessa sighed as she read the contract, she skillfully dodged the subject in their previous agreement with Daimon, and was relieved to hear Akeem refusing to tell Daimon about it, so when she saw him gazing at Jenna who couldn''t keep herself from expressing hatred at Daimon getting some benefits, she knew her efforts were meaningless.

    Once everyone of them signed the contract, Daimon put it in his pocket and then, the question now was who was going to be on charge of the new ship.

    The Risha sisters were the obvious option, since they were three so upying a ship instead of being in the same one with Scarlet and Ruby was a better idea, but the three of them instead asked to be in the same one with Daimon and Aisha.

    "I want to catch up with Aisha~".

    "I''m still recovering".

    "I''ll drive the ship".

    The three of them used some sort of excuse to stay, and Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, on the other hand there was some merit in keeping them near him.

    "Let them stay, darkness to deal with the humans, fire to deal with the creatures and ice which is neutral and can protect from both of them, they have wide area spells which you can secretly help to power up just like you helped me with thunder arrow, now that you can''t use Demon Light in front of everyone, darling", whispered Aisha.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed for a second, Aisha was right, in the uing fight he would be limited to not use his battle aura, unless he was sure to not leave any witness of course, but there were two peak Lord ranks involved.

    "Fine you three can stay with Aisha and me, but then who will¡­".

    "I''ll take the g ship Daimon, they will focus their fire on them, so it''s better for Haylee to stay in this one".

    Michael jumped from the ship he was, to the g ship, and surprisingly Calvin also told Loren to change chips to make Hayleepany, because he knew Michael was right.

    The enemy will focus on the biggest ships first so they will attract more attacks.

    After that little episode, the ships started advancing towards the south one more time, Akeem then jumped from his shipnding on the deck of Daimon''s one to fulfill his part of the deal.

    He couldn''t help but inwardly raise an eyebrow at the sight of Daimon sitting with four girls at his side.

    ''We''ll he killed a pir with a single attack, I guess he is the equivalent of Marcus for the Wild w academy¡­ the strongest among the ones that are still considered students'', thought Akeem.

    Something the four academies share are the curricr program for third years, which is basically not being in the academy and participating in a training at their respective armies, the idea is for them to gain real experience after all.

    "Ahem, just take into ount that what I''m about to tell you is based on a spection made by the peak Lord seniors who tagged along, but they took it seriously enough to use a one-timemunication sigil the Greenwich Sage finished just in time for when the Lord rank experts were about to enter¡­ and the price was apparently quite something".

    "Anyway, the story is¡­".

    For the next twenty minutes or so, Akeem told Daimon everything he knew about the current conflict that was unfolding between the Blue-Sky gxy, the ck Marsh gxy and the creatures near an ind.<sub> </sub>

    Apparently, when the Lord ranks from the demons and humans entered the magic ruin, they found traces which matched some sort of ce which they have been looking for quite some time.

    But they weren''t the only ones who arrived at that ce, unlike others even in this restricted ce, the peak Lord ranks could slow their fall from the air, normally they would be able to glide through the air, which was close to fly but with low maneuverability.

    But that was enough for them to move faster than the ships, and the Lord ranks from two unknown forces were already scouting the area before they appeared, two guys wearing full body ck robes and two strange creatures which had four limbs and a head but no trunk.

    Needless to say, but a battle exploded in sight, which ended on a tie, so after seeing the situation wasn''t getting them anywhere and since the ind was inessible, they all left as fast as they could to gather their respective reinforcements.

    And that''s how two the maximum representatives of two academies, the princes of the two tribes and two variations of the leading creatures that often control a ship, ended up gathering in a sole ce, along with their respective subordinates.

    "And what''s supposed to be in that ind?", asked Daimon, Lord ranks were strong, but nothing they wished for, was valuable enough in Daimon''s eyes.

    As the young master of two of the three strongest forces in the Beas faction, he had ess to a lot of resources, anything below the Arch grade was easy to get.

    Unfortunately, Akeem didn''t have the answer to that.

    "I don''t know the members of the twelve noble ns don''t meddle with the church of cmity, and as far as I know the human nobles are the same with the church of light, although there are some who secretly support them".

    "Only their members know about it, but considering the Arch cardinal of the church of cmity is a Half Emperor, something they fight for must be a decent treasure, not to mention the natives of the ruin and those red and brown skinned guys were there first".

    Now that he had fulfilled his part of the deal, Akeem returned to his ship and left the group, unlike the Pdins he had no power over the opinion of the Lord rank, and publicly the ck Marsh gxy was a sworn enemy of the White Fang and Blue-Sky gxies, so he couldn''t be seen arriving with them without a really good reason.

    As Daimon was about to go downstairs to his bedroom to rest, Tessanded on the deck with a somewhat contemtive expression on her face.

    There was something she couldn''t stop thinking after seeing Daimon easily killing the fourth pir of the demons, and making them sign a contract to keep them shut about Akeem telling him about their little secret.

    "Why didn''t you include a no fight condition in the contract¡­ given the current situation, we would have been forced to ept it", asked Tessa with genuine curiosity, but Daimon''s answer nearly made her trip.

    "Because depending on the situation I might need to get rid of all of you,ter on, who knows".

    Truth to be told, Daimon and his soulmates weren''t really limited by the contracts, courtesy of the system, but in his case, it was a self-respect kind of thing, going back on one''s word isn''t a taboo for Daimon, but he still didn''t like the idea.

    Of course, anything rules could be broken for the sake of his family, but unless it was a must, he would fulfill his promises to the best of his capacities.

    After saying that, Daimon went downstairs into the body of the ship, and the girls followed him not too long after, leaving a dumbfounded Tessa which ultimately only sighed and then returned to her ship.

    While Jenna stayed away from them after they agreed to not fight with Daimon, the dwarf princess Femi seemed to have at least a respect-based friendship with Tessa, so she was on full guard until she saw her returning to their ship.

    "How did it go?", asked Femi while she repaired the shield Daimon''s attack pierced before.

    "Let''s just say I don''t want to fight him head on".

    "Yeah¡­ my defense is the best among the young generation of my race and he was able to cast a second spell like that, right away".

    Seeing that they weren''t too optimistic, Jenna snorted.

    "Humph, in case you two don''t remember it, brother Adam is invincible among the younger generation, once we arrive there, that psycho is dead, also you are supposed to support him".

    Tessa and Femi saw the fanatic expression in Jenna''s eyes and they inwardly shook their heads, as they thought

    ''Idiot''.

    But they still answered.

    "We agreed to help if possible and needed, but we won''t be cannon fodder for the humans".

    And so the ships kept advancing to the destination indicated by Tessa.

 Chapter 261 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 7)

    The hours passed and per Daimon''s orders, everyone entered their ships and made them submerge to travel unnoticed by others, because even if he were to strip others from their ships, with the numbers they have they shouldn''t spread anymore.

    The night soon came to the magic ruin and everyone went to sleep, since the pdins also signed the contract, they couldn''t escape even if they wanted to, so there was nothing to worry about.

    While Daimon went to his bedroom to meditate and prepare for the uing battle, Aisha paid a visit to the Risha sisters in their own room.

    As soon as she entered the room and closed the door behind her, the Risha sisters saw that Daimon didn''te with her and let out a sigh of relief.

    After they chatted about what they experienced in the past month when Daimon wasn''t around, a slightly awkward silence fell in the room, before Aisha looked at them directly.

    "So, how did it go when you were alone with him?", asked Aisha with a knowing smile on her pretty face.

    The three of them blushed, before Yvonne answered.

    "Are we that obvious?".

    Aisha giggled in response, she who once was inexperienced in romantic love, found their reactions rather amusing.

    "Yes, but I don''t see the problem in that, Daimon doesn''t seem to be against it anyway".

    "Maybe but isn''t he too insensible, I don''t like to sound like my mom, but we aren''t ugly you know", said Leslie as she pouted.

    "But¡­ it sure felt nice to see him worried about us", mumbled Liliana.

    Aisha bitterly smiled, maybe because she was a soulmate but it wasn''t hard for her to make the transition from mother to lover and even then, she noticed Daimon didn''t really advanced in their rtionship in any aspect until recently when they entered the academy.

    It was eight years, but certainly since she wasn''t as young as the Risha sisters, and she knew Daimon responded to her feelings, she didn''t experience what they were going through.

    Yvonne let herself fall on her bed and then used a pillow to cover her face.

    "Our mothers told us that since we are the first ones with the main lineage to experience love, it would be unpredictable¡­ bncing wanting to see him all the time and feel happy around him with not looking crazy it''s a bit hard".

    Aisha couldn''t resist the urge tough, she was reminded of a certain fox girl who doesn''t restrain in that aspect¡­ at all, but then not everyone can be as shameless as Erin.

    "Just keep pushing and he''ll reciprocate, didn''t he started joking with you three already, just be aware that he likes to tease Liz and ine, so you''ll be in for the same someday", said Aisha s she left.

    The Risha sisters stared at each other before they sighed and then went to sleep.

    Aisha returned to Daimon''s room, and entered just to see him sitting cross legged on the bed, Narasha who was using her light body form wasying on the bed next to him.

    "Daimon seems to be worried about something", said Narasha to Aisha when she saw her entering the room.

    "Mm", Aisha nodded, as her mother how could she not notice there was something bothering her son, but she missed the opportunity to ask earlier and they ended up not seeing each other for a whole month.

    With a little smile, she jumped onto the bed tackling Daimon on the process, so that she ended up resting on top of him.

    "I was meditating you know; I can feel it, I should be breaking through soon¡­", Daimon who opened his eyes after feeling the soft body embracing him, was silenced with a kiss.

    "Seeing you two kiss in "person" sure does feel different than when I observe along with Eve, from within the inventory", mumbled Narasha, she who still had trouble with emotions, was now experiencing jealousy.

    "Hey, don''t drag me in, Nasha, you are the one who likes to see the most".

    Even Evangeline joined the conversation, making Daimonugh, which was their purpose from the very beginning.

    Narasha couldn''t be touched in that form so she returned to Disaster''s form and instead of returning to the inventory, let Daimon ce her on the bed next to them, Aisha on the other hand cuddled with him and then they turned off the lights.

    ''Eve, I have been having a strange dream where I''m floating alone in an endless sea, and it happened before we came here, is it caused by the system?'', asked Daimon in a voice only the soulmates could hear.

    ''Mm?''.

    ''No, the system is restricted and can''t meddle with you mind¡­ I can''t be too specific but there is something new which is soon to appear, I can only tell you about it because you already fulfilled the requirements for it, but it''s not rted to what you mention''.

    Daimon thought about it for a couple of seconds before he put the subject at the back of his mind.

    "I guess everything will be solved at its due time", mumbled Daimon, he buried his face in Aisha''s chest and then closed his eyes to sleep, Aisha gently stroked her son''s hair, as her mother she takes pride in being the best atforting him.

    ¡­

    The night went on and Daimon suddenly found himself in that recurrent dream he has been having, about floating in an endless sea and just like the previous times, he woke up as soon as he became conscious about it.

    He slowly opened his eyes and was weed by the sight of Aisha''s beautiful sleeping face, after pecking her cheek which made her mumble in her sleep, Daimon got up the bed and went to the bathroom.

    But as he unzipped his pants, he suddenly turned around and took out one of his guns from his inventory, a crack on the space appeared next to him from where a feminine figure came out.

    "Finally¡­", Ste who was dragged into the entrance of the magic ruin a second ago, appeared inside the bathroom right next to Daimon.

    Needless to say, but Ste froze on the spot, the firs thing she saw after appearing was a shirtless Daimon pointing at her with a gun¡­ with his thing hanging out of his pants.

    ''Hahaha, I swear you and your luck with women, it''s worth being written into a story for the future generations~'', Evangeline couldn''t help butugh inside her space.

    Daimon zipped up his pants, and tried to not show any reaction, thinking that maybe that would help Ste, but this time things didn''t go ording to what he expected.

    "Y-You, why the hell did you brought me here when you were¡­ naked!", Ste blushed, even now that she wasn''t looking at it, the image was burnt in her mind.

    Aisha who listened another woman''s voiceing from the bathroom of their room, immediately rushed from the bed to the bath, since they didn''t do anything, she was properly wearingfortable clothes to sleep, Daimon was the same, while he was shirtless, he was wearing loosefortable pants, the timing was simply against Ste.

    Still, Ste was an adult and a Lord ranked, so after her initial shock, she managed to calm down, her mind didn''t register that Aisha was sharing a room with Daimon, instead since she saw hering in, she realized it wasn''t done on purpose.

    And she was right, Daimon stopped paying attention to the countdown, because based on what Akeem said the lord ranks wouldn''t appear next to them, but at a random location, that''s why the Greenwich Sage sold those one-timemunication sigils at an expensive price, they could use it to locate their respective students.

    Luckily the door of the room was closed, or even the Risha sisters would have listened to Ste raising her voice.

    "Miss Leeris, let''s wait outside of the bathroom", Aisha who was barely enduring the urge tough, took Ste out of the bathroom so that Daimon could finish what he came here for.

    Daimon took out the badge from his inventory, and effectively the countdown disappeared, the only thing left was the rune shark emblem which had be incredibly detailed after the shark got that bone from the floor of the sea.

    Once Daimon got out of the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of Ste who ran away like a scared rabbit, although Aisha talked to her to exin her the situation including the fact that the other Lord ranked didn''t appear near the badge bearers, she still couldn''t see anyone right to the face right now so she left to one of the many empty rooms.

    "Darling, did she saw¡­", asked Aisha in a low voice before she stood up to close the door.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Just a bit, I nearly shot her thinking she was someone from the tribes that managed to hide from my infinity eyes in the ship".

    This time Aisha giggled, before they dressed up and left the room, the rm of the ship just sounded which meant they were about to arrive at their destination, and it was better for them to emerge from the water.

    On the corridor they saw the Risha sistersing from their room, fully prepared for the uing battle.

    "You convince her froming out of her room, I''ll make the ship go to the surface and talk with Calvin and the others", said Daimon to Aisha before he left to the space that was right below the captain''s cabin.

    The Risha sisters were a bit confused about Daimon''s words, as far as they knew there was no one else in this ship besides them.

    "Miss Ste arrived just a few minutes ago", said Aisha as she knocked on one of the many doors in the corridor.

    Ste who wasying down on the bed lost in her thoughts, heard someone knocking on the door and she came out of her trance, she looked at her elegant slim fingers and the image of Daimon''s thing shed in her mind, making her face turn red as a tomato.

    ''Ahhh, what the hell am I thinking!'' she screamed in her heart, before she shook her head and he saw through the peephole in the door, just to make sure it wasn''t Daimon.

    Aisha saw the door opening and tried feign as if nothing had happened before.

    "We are about to arrive at our destination, so we''ll be surfacing and stopping to discuss the n, we all need to be present for that".

    Ste inwardly sighed.

    ''Control yourself Ste, it was just an ident, damn he even didn''t have any reaction as if he was used to be naked in front of girls'', the more Ste tried to forget about it, the more she ended up thinking about what happened a moment ago, but she still agreed with Aisha as she felt the ship going upwards.

    The sun was about toe out when the ships emerged from the water, all of them had that rm, so the ones in charge stopped their respective ships and ording to what they discussed before waited for Daimon to do the same, of course the Pdins weren''t invited to the meeting that was about to happen on the deck of Daimon''s ship.

 Chapter 262 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 8)

    Once Daimon''s ship hadpletely emerged from the water, Calvin and the others jumped onto its deck, a couple of secondster, Daimon, Aisha, the Risha sisters andstly Ste came out of the ship.

    "Vice principal Leeris, when did you arrive?", Calvin was the first one to notice the presence of a new face in the group, probably because it was a woman.

    Ste stole a gaze at Daimon before she cleared her throat.

    "I was finally able to enter the magic ruin about half an hour ago¡­ and apparently the badge brought me near the one who had it".

    The others just nodded without thinking too much about Ste''s slightly hesitant voice, they just assumed she was a bit dizzy due to the travel through the dimensional tunnel.

    "Mm?", Ste''s attention was drawn by Scarlet, Ruby, Lapis and Jade as she saw them getting onto Daimon''s ship, with Amber''s help.

    She turned to see Daimon with a frowned expression.

    "Natives of this ce?".

    Daimon shook his head as he told Scarlet and the others to join them.

    "No, apparently another ster chart is connected to this ce, the rulers of that ce are four tribes, which have attacked us from the very beginning, and they are their enemies, so I took them in".

    "What!", Ste''s eyes widened a bit, not because of the girls, but because of the mention of another ster chart, the only time the Wonder Myriad ster chart got into contact with a foreign ster chart or gxy, it ended up in a bloodbath on their side.

    Ste immediately became serious, they must het ahold of the entrance that the other party used to enter the magic ruin, thest time they were invaded it was a bloodbath.

    "What are their numbers, their strongest powerhouses, do they have Magus Emperors¡­".

    Ste suddenly asked a lot of questions, if what Daimon said was true then, this no longer was only an exploration, the rules of the academies stated that the students must either capture or neutralize people from other ster charts.

    "Judging from their exnations, there are four of them in that gxy, but so far their lord ranks have been disappointing, they don''t have mana sense nor the capacity to use the manifestation phenomenon to increase the power of their spells".

    "Yeah, Daimon is right, the shrimp and me can easily stall one of them each, if we join hands, we can kill them is less than an hour, as long as they are more or less in the same range of strength that the ones we have fought against before, they have close to zero battle experience although their realms are high".

    Scarlet and the others had no clue what they were talking about, but they did notice that Daimon and the others weren''t impressed by the members of the noble families that have caused them so much pain.

    Still even among the nobles there were divisions, so Scarlet didn''t forget to warn them.

    "The four princes and their first cousins in other words those whoe from the noble families that have marriage rtions with the royals, have personal instructors, so they aren''t as easy to deal with as the others¡­ that guy who you captured is one of them".

    Upon hearing that Daimon had a prisoner with potential important information, Ste couldn''t help but see Daimon in a different light, normally members of the young generation are too hot blooded to think in future prospects, they think that killing an enemy is the biggest victory, while in a war information is priceless.

    ¡­

    After about one hour of conversation, everyone was now in the same channel, Daimon even showed them the ck badge which now had the rune shark engraved on it.

    "Speaking of it, have you seen my little sister?", now that the magic ruin turned to have three parties in conflict including a lot more of Lord ranks than what was supposed, Ste couldn''t help but be worried about Gina.

    "I appeared on the north and travelled through arge part of it, without finding anyone but those creatures and a couple of demons, including one of those pir guys which happened to be possessed by them", said Aisha.

    "Same for us, we appeared near each other at the west and only found creatures, only when we started travelling to the south those tribe guys started appearing", added Michael.

    "It seems the entrance for the Melize gxy is on the south, I appeared on the east so the second years should be on the south", concluded Daimon, he also only bumped into the members of the tribes after he headed to the south, unfortunately Scarlet and the other girls, were already in a cage before they could reach the magic ruin.

    They were only able to not be separated and distributed among the royals, because they didn''t know they were the princesses of their races, and that was in part thanks to Ruby, because all the previous princesses isted from other members of their races, to somewhat lessen the chance of being caught.

    That''s how the son of an Archduke not rted to the royals like Eleazar managed to keep them, they were confused as simple members of their respective races and ording to thews of the tribes, they belonged to whoever captured them, in this case Eleazar''s father who then gifted them to his son.

    Seeing Ste''s worried expression, Daimon then added.

    "Why don''t you use the specialmunication sigil to contact her, although I don''t see any of them having troubles to deal with guys in the same range as the ones we have fought so far, specially if Arianna, Lana and Aleah appeared near her".

    Ste''s eyes illuminated for a split of a second, technically the one in charge here was Daimon, because the lord ranks couldn''t attack the students of any of the academies, so the one-time sigil could only be used with his permission.

    "Thanks¡­ Daimon", Ste thanked Daimon, she then remembered something that happened before she left.

    "Miss Aura secretly gave me this just when I was being dragged by the gate of the magic ruin", Ste then handed Daimon a small box with a ribbon.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow remembering the previous "gift" Erin left in his pillow, so he epted the little box and only after scanning it with his infinity eyes, he opened it, to reveal a little transparent crystal as well as note.

    "That is a one-time sigil, but the sage could only create four of them in the day and they were evenly split among the four academies!", Ste was in disbelief, each academy only got one of those sigils.

    Daimon read the note and couldn''t help butugh.

    "You should have already seen Erin''s gift, this is from me, Liz and ine (we threatened the sage with Erin''s name though), it was created in a hurry with a drop of my blood, so you can only use it to contact a werewolf, and that guy fainted due to it, but everything for our Daimon~".

    "Those three girls¡­", thought Daimon, apparently, they somehow ckmailed the Greenwich Sage into creating a fifth sigil, it had some limitations, but Arianna was perfectly in the range, the other option was Reiner, but his "junior sister" had priority in this case.

    Ste didn''t lose time and immediately contacted her little sister, the sigil she had was yellow instead of transparent, she inserted it into her sigil lector and after a couple of seconds, an emblem with the form of a snow leopard appeared on the little screen.

    "Sister, is that you?", Gina''s voice came from the sigil lector, making Ste let out a sigh of relief.

    "Yes, I just arrived, I''m with practically the whole first''s year elite ss, where are you, are you okay¡­ are the others with you?".

    After a few seconds of silence, caused by the interference that restricted the mana in the air, Gina''s voice was once again hearding from Ste''s lector.

    "I''m at the south area, Aleah and Lana are with me, we are okay but there is a lot of enemies in ships blocking the area, there are two Peak lord ranks among them and about forty early-stage Lord ranks, there were more, but we got rid of some while we were fathering, we had to hide after the peak ones started looking for us¡­ because Aleah half beat someone to death".

    "Humph, it was a weakling acting all high and mighty swinging a stick like a sword, those Lord ranks are just a bunch of herbivores".

    Aleah''s voice suddenly interrupted the conversation, making Calvin shrug.

    "See I told you she was a walking disaster", he mumbled.

    The crystal which Ste inserted into her sigil lector started to crack, meaning the time for the connection was about to end, Ste and Gina exchanged the coordinates of their destinations, and in thest seconds Daimon asked if they have seen Arianna or Dana.

    "No, but the area is divided in two different "camps", the one we are in has green gs with sword emblems all over the ce, the other one has blue gs and a wave¡­", before Gina could end her sentence, the crystal became thin dust and the call stopped.

    "Bamboo Sword tribe and Tidal Wave Tribe, they are controlling the gate, makes sense since the entrance was found below the sea of a which belongs to the Tidal Wave tribe and they are allies", said Jade.

    "Mm?", Daimon was about to contact Arianna, when he noticed two shipsing at full speed towards them, both ships stopped a few meters away from Daimon''s one, and then a blond-haired guy with blue eyes, who was wearing white clothes and armor, as well as a gray skinned ck long-haired guy with ck clothes, came from the captain''s cabin of each ship.

    Both of them had frowned expressions, the blond guy looked at the ship where the Pdins were, while the ck-haired demon focused his attention on the deck of Daimon''s ship.

    "Brother Adam, that guy tried to kill me!", the girl from the Penddra family immediately shouted as she saw the blond guy who turned out to be the captain of the second year''s Pdins, Adam Regen.

    Still Adam didn''t react until he saw Femi and Tessaing out of the captain''s cabin, his eyes narrowed after he confirmed something and then without saying anything he took out a white sword from the sheath which hanged from his waist.

    The ck-haired demon, who was the captain of the second year''s Abomination ss, Marcus Sicarel, gritted his teeth and then everything from his forearm to his fingers became ck and started leaking ck mist.

    "How dare you!".

    "Go to hell!".

    They both shouted and then jumped towards Daimon''s ship, Calvin and Michael were about to intercept them, but they managed to catch a glimpse of a lightning and darkness dded figure passing them, and exchanged smiles as they crossed their arms and stopped moving.

    "Booom!".

    "ng".

    A loud shockwave, followed by the sound of metals colliding and arge amount of mana shing on the air, drew everyone''s attention.

    There in the air, both Adam and Marcus were stopped midway by Daimon, Narasha in Gram''s form collided against Adam''s white sword, while Daimon''s ws shed with Marcus''s ones, sparks flew all over the ce, but Daimon didn''t pay them any attention, because right now, a familiar sound could be heard in his mind.

    [Ding]

 Chapter 263 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 9)

    Daimon nced sideways at the notification of the system for a split of a second, before he dispelled it and then turned his attention back to the current confrontation.

    Adam and Marcus on the other hand frowned realizing they didn''t effortlessly crush Daimon, like all their previous opponents.

    Adam tried to push his sword forward using the naturally increased physical strength of a five-star knight, but besides marking more sparks resulting from sh of the light that was dding his sword, against Gram''s de which Daimon reinforced with lightning, nothing happened, he couldn''t advance even a centimeter.

    As for Marcus, his ws leaked a ck liquid which upon contact made the air sizzle, but the scene of Daimon''s hand melting away he expected didn''t happen.

    "Using the strength of a regr five-star either mage or knight against me won''t take you anywhere".

    Daimon''s eyes amethyst eyes glowed, then his grip on Gram''s handle tightened while at the same time, he grabbed Marcus''s wrist.

    Adam felt the pressure being applied against his sword and he gritted his teeth, the sudden increase in the sh, slowly pushed him back, he condensed a sword made of white light on his other hand and swung it at Daimon''s neck.

    "Don''t get too cocky demon of the elite ss!".

    Marcus on the other hand formed a fist with his free hand and took impulse to hit Daimon''s arm.

    "Say goodbye to your arm you copycat!", theyer of ck mist which used to cover up to his forearm, extended all the way to his shoulder, making his arm look bulkier despite him not being a knight but a mage, Daimon noticed his physical strength increased quite a bit, also his gloves started melting away.

    For Daimon it was as if his everything slowed down as he injected mana into his infinity eyes, Adam''s sword slowly advanced towards his neck while Marcus''s fist was about to connect with his arm.

    But that''s not what got his attention but the three masses of manaing their way, two from the front and one from the back, but still he wasn''t going to leave things just like that.

    ''I''m the one who makes others suffer loses, not the other way around'', he thought as he kicked Adam on the stomach, while at the same time he dragged Marcus from his wrist and smashed him against Adam.

    "Ack!", Adam''s armor blocked the impact, but then he took the Marcus''s punch which was supposed to the hit Daimon, right on his face.

    "Watch where you aim that thing!", Marcus on the other hand got cut by Adam''s white light sword on the chest leaving a white burning mark, which seeped out a faint trace of dark red blood from it.

    Almost instantly, the three light dded figures appeared each in front of one of them, Adam''s face which suffered scratched immediately healed due to the while light radiated from the white dded figure.

    The darkness dded figure snapped her fingers and the white burning mark on Marcus''s chest was patched in darkness, the wound then disappeared without leaving a scratch.

    The third figure was Ste whose body was covered in a pretty light blue light, she scanned Daimon with her mana sense, but besides his gloves which now were worn out and a few cuts on the corners of his sleeves, he was perfectly fine.

    Each of them helped their respective student tond on the sea which was now frozen, courtesy of Ste.

    The three mage lords then stared at each other, before they deactivated their manifestation phenomenon at the same time, as a sign that they didn''t wish to fight with each other, part of the etiquette taught to nobles.

    "Thanks, miss Sera¡­ but I had it under control", Adam was the first one to react, he ced his hand on his chest and then slightly bowed towards the white dded figure.

    "Who the hell told you to interfere in my fight La!", Marcus whose eyes got bloodshot, instead yelled at the darkness dded figure.

    Daimon remained silent, carefully reading the expressions on Adam and Marcus''s faces for a couple of seconds, before he kept Gram in his inventory, while he gave them a disdainful gaze.

    "You lowly creature!".

    "Come here you fucker, I will peel your skin!".

    Apparently that little gesture, made both Adam and Marcus feel the urge to strangle Daimon, but they were stopped by the other two mage lords, whose real appearances became visible at the same time.

    The one who stopped Adam, was a woman who seemed to be on herte twenties, she had white fair skin and light gray hair which wasbed on the back but loose on the front, she had her eyes closed and had a sword in her hands, as for her get up, practically all below her neck was properly covered in a mix between a white dress and a silver armor, overall she looked like a gentle and demure nobledy, even the light she radiated earlier wasn''t the yellow corrosive light, but the healing white type, who could be used for both heal or attack.

    The other Lord ranked, was quite the opposite, she was rather tall reaching about 1.9 meters being the second tallest woman Daimon has ever seen only after Erin, her hair was of a pink blonde tone and her eyes had a peculiar magenta color, she was holding arge metal scepter which had the bones of some sort of creature on the extreme, her attire was quite¡­ tempting, a ck short dress withrge de-attached sleeves which reached all the way to her hands, the dress perfectly entuated her curvy figure and also left her cleavage in in view, ck stockings and high heels, and also metal decorations which were shaped to look like bones.

    Thetter stole a gaze at Daimon, as she saw him using his own darkness element to repel Marcus''s and while his gloves were worn out, the same would have happened to Marcus if he were wearing ones.

    "Miss Leeris, should know the situation in which we currently are, first and formal we have to deal with foreigners, those are the rules of our ster chart", the woman who Adam called Sera, slowly talked with her eyes still closed, her voice was soft and pleasing to the ear.

    "Yes, let''s kill those creepy bastards first, then we can aim for each other''s throat~", the other woman called La, kind of agreed with Sera, her voice had a slightly aggressive but yful tone, that perfectly matched her looks.

    As Ste was about to answer, Adam and Marcus but interrupted her as they pointed at Daimon.

    "I won''t join hands with him, his darkness mana, stained Tessa and Femi!".

    "He could smell the blood of one of my little dogs on the deck of his ship, I''m going to tear his throat out of his body!".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow confused by a pair of things, first, the only blood that was recently spilled on the deck of the ship was the one of the fourth pir, which was a guy so for Marcus to refer to him as a "little dog" was something he didn''t expect.

    ''Now that I pay attention, that guy does look a bit¡­ strange'', thought Daimon, but he didn''t think too much about it, the noble demon races always kept their practices in secret, so who knows what their customs and tastes were like.

    Second, he didn''t remember directly attacking the dwarf and alfear princesses.

    ''The Hell Storm Javelin did pierce the vine barrier of the alfear princess, and the same happened to the shield of the dwarf princess, but I didn''t leave any mana on them unlike what I did to Leir, what a weirdo, or it could be rted to that thing''.

    Seeing that the "peaceful" way wasn''t getting them anywhere, Daimon pointed back at them and the cannons of all the ships aimed at Adam and Marcus, including two of the special cannons of the royal ships which could threat even the peak Lord ranks, the third one aimed at the girl from the Penddra family whose face became pale as paper at the moment.

    "I have more important things to do than to listen to a pair of idiots who haven''t noticed their fleet is being destroyed as we speak, now we either join hands to get rid of the people from the tribes and the creatures or you get lost".

    La and Sera slowly moved to stand in front of Adam and Marcus, but the fourth andst of the special cannons which was being manipted by Aisha with Daimon speaking to her directly to her mind, then changed its aim to them.

    "If you think they can save you, think twice, one of them can be dyed by vice principal Leeris, while the other will have to take on the fire from the cannons, either way one of you will be turned into mince meat with a snap of my fingers".

    Ste bitterly smiled upon hearing Daimon''s words, but she still nodded and prepared in case a battle broke out.

    Tessa and Femi who were out of the line of fire so to speak, ignored the horrified expression in the face of the girl from the Penddra family and instead they jumped from the ship and approached them from the sides, to try and mediate.

    "Demon of the elite ss¡­ Daimon, even know reinforcements are needed to deal with the foreigners, so why don''t we leave this aside for now?", mumbled Tessa.

    Adam heard Tessa calling Daimon by his name, and he frowned but after a couple of seconds, he calmed down.

    ''Tess has always been a good strategist, maybe I got too heated because his affinity is darkness'', he thought.

    But Daimon''s next words, made the atmosphere tense up even more.

    "You are right, the strength of the Lord ranks would be a good help, but they attacked me first, so what use do those two have?", he said as he pointed at Adam and Marcus.

    "What did you say!".

    "I will rip your arms".

    Being mocked by Daimon once again, Adam and Marcus gritted their teeth, they both then did some kind of almost unnoticeable gesture and Daimon''s eyes glowed for a split of a second as he confirmed his suspicions.

    He remembered the notification that appeared back when they shed in the air, and got lost in his thoughts.

    [The host has entered in contact with the host of the "Hero of Light System" and the "Devil Ruler System", from this moment onwards, the host will be able to see through the protections of other system users as long as they are agitated enough (Others can''t see through the host)]

    [The Mission Temple function has been unlocked <!>]

    [New missions have been added]

    Daimon came out of his daze when he heard La giggling.

    "Then what do you want werewolf boy~".

    Damon raised an eyebrow at being called like that, but that wasn''t important right now, Erin warned him to not let the demons trick him, they only strategist that she has ever have troubles to deal with was from the demon race after all.

    "Easy, the treasure in that ind, half of it will be for us, I don''t mind not gaining anything as long as those idiots lose too", said Daimon with a smirk while he pointed at Adam and Marcus, trying to force them to slip.

    And they took the bait, as he intercepted Adam''s thoughts.

    ''Ariel, do you have something to kill that bastard without anyone noticing it?''.

    Then, Daimon caught a glimpse of a girl of about twelve years wearing white and golden clothes, shorts and arge long sleeved and loose blouse to be more urate, floating behind Adam, she had golden toned eyes, wings and a halo made out of light-yellow light too.

    ''Nah, stop ying the white knight role to get that alfear and do it yourself''.

    ''Never, I can''t look like a murdering savage in front of those two''.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, apparently, he wasn''t the only one who argued with the administrator of his system.

 Chapter 264 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 10)

    The angel girl started to fade away from Daimon''s vision, meaning Adam was regaining hisposure, he also stopped hearing their conversation.

    But now that he waspletely sure Adam had a system, Daimon had a lot of questions like why he could see through them, but not the contrary as well as why did the angel girl was clearly visible for Adam, but he couldn''t see Evangeline.

    He tried to see through that white sword with his infinity eyes, but the only thing he could see was that the sword was connected to Adam''s hand at a microscopical level, he also realized that now that Adam was calm, his infinity eyes couldn''t even see through his skin.

    ''That sword is like your apex predator body, a one-time high ranked reward granted to help the host survive'', mumbled Evangeline well knowing she''ll be interrogatedter.

    Daimon frowned, there are so few cases of things he can''t see through that a he has developed a theory, which he was eager to test, but right now wasn''t the moment for that.

    He had two system users in front of him, and while he had the upper hand currently, who knows what kind of tricks could they pull if needed.

    ''Well, I guess that exins why that white sword was able to survive a frontal sh with Gram, thought Daimon, so far there is no material that could endure Disaster''s de, one must take into ount that while the sword changes its form and gets apletely different set of abilities, its physical properties were based on Disaster, including weight and sharpness.

    He then gazed at Marcus from the corner of his eyes, unlike Adam who had calmed down at this point, he was getting furious with each second that passed, not only because Daimon mocked him, but because of the administrator of his system.

    ''One of your bitches was killed, you were pushed back by someone younger and lower ranked than you, and your darkness couldn''t harm it, I guess I need to remind you what happened to thest weakling that tried to wield the power of this queen~", she said with a threatening smile on her face.

    Marcus gritted his teeth, his eyes seemed to spew fire at this point.

    ''Shut up stupid woman, if you lent me your power without demanding a sacrifice then would I still be struggling with all these lowlifes!''.

    The administrator of Marcus''s system was a tall woman wearing a short ck sleeveless dress, her skin as paler to the point of looking a bit unnatural, her hair was of a deep ck and her eyes were blood red, her nails were a bitrge and ck colored, unlike the halo crowing the head of the little angel, she had a pair of ck horns, here barefoot where visible as she floated here and there around Marcus.

    Instead of a devil, Daimon associated her more to a ghost.

    ''Turns out I was quite lucky with you, right Eve?'', thought Daimon, making Evangeline snort.

    Inside the space she resided Evangeline slightly blushed, but she then snorted.

    ''Humph, you should appreciate me more, that devil administrator messed up the tastes of her host just for fun''.

    While Daimon was lost in his thoughts, La and Sera stared at each other, only someone with a decently high status in their gxies knew there was something important in that ind, so someone spilled the beans and that attracted a shark to them.

    Everyone''s attention was suddenly drawn to their feet, the sea which was frozen by Ste started trembling and from afar they saw a huge waveing their way.

    "S-Seaquake!", shouted Calvin to warn them.

    La and Sera nodded at each other and then they answered Daimon.

    "The best we can do is not chasing you away, whatever you get is up to your luck", said Sera with her gentle yet serious voice.

    "Leeching men aren''t attractive, werewolf boy~", added La.

    Daimon noticed they wouldn''t concede more than that, and he smiled.

    "Deal, but just to make sure you don''t guide me to a trap, those two will be my guests, also the creatures are mine, the members of the tribes are yours, take it or leave it", said Daimon as he walked and stood in front of both La and Sera.

    "Mm?", Tessa saw Daimon was pointing at them before he offered a handshake at the Lord ranks and she sighed.

    "What, of course no¡­", before Adam could refuse, La and Sera both epted Daimon''s handshake.

    "Deal", their answer of course made Adam once again be agitated enough so that Daimon could see through him.

    ''Idiot'', thought Daimon, but now that he aplished what he wanted, he called the cannons off, and then everyone rxed a bit.

    Specially Ste, who was calmer seeing Daimon conceding a bit instead ofpletely ckmailing the church of cmity and the church of light at the same time.

    Daimon then jumped back onto the deck of his ship and Ste followed them, the ice freezing the water dispelled, forcing everyone to return to their respective ships, Tessa and Femi followed Daimon, to Adam''s displease but right now the had no time to worry about that.

    The huge wave created by that seaquake bypassed them and instead advanced towards the ind.

    "Let''s go!", with Daimon''s order, the fleet followed thatrge wave who also seemed to ignore the current battle that was taking part near the ind, as soon as it reached the shore, the water was absorbed by the sand and then arge wave of mana came from the ind, illuminating the sky in a light blue light.

    The sudden phenomenon made the three parties which were already aiming at each other''s throat, to be fiercer with their attacks, some ships failed to block the cannons of others and were sank, increasing the number of deaths by a lot.

    Still, that was limited to the soldiers and subordinates, the four royal ships on the tribes side, and the tworge ships on the creature''s side didn''t interfere in the fight and watched form the sides.

    Their rest ended as soon as they saw the neers, while the members of the tribes cheered seeing their "reinforcements" arriving, the creatures roared.

    But theughs and cheers of the members of the tribes, stopped the very second, they noticed the ships of their royals, aiming the Lord ranked cannons towards them.

    "Oi, Randall, isn''t that your cousin''s ship why the hell is he aiming at us you bastard", shouted a tall shirtless guy with brown tanned skin.

    "That idiot Nestor didn''t answer to the emergency call, so it''s probable that he got done in by those bumpkins", answered a dark red skinned guy with long ck hair.

    "You know the deal Neal, I get to chose women from the loot first", said the tanned guy as he licked his lips.

    "Humph, you would have gotten along pretty well with that idiot of Eleazar, sure take the women you like, I want their treasures and fire element mages".

    "Boom!", the canons of Daimon''s gships roared and four lines of fire were shot towards the royal ships and the two ships with peak Lord ranked creatures.

    Two ck robed figures immediately jumped from the royal''s ships and used their mana to redirect the attacks of the cannons, but they had no time to rest because two figures intercepted them on the air.

    La and Ste each took one of the ck robed figures, and drove it away from the rest of the battle.

    "Foolish humans, sending their strongest warriors to a long-term battle", one of the creatures which had its four limbs and a headughed in a harsh voice as it chewed the leg of some unfortunate guy.

    "I disagree", Sera who sneaked past the detection of the creatures, appeared above them and then unleashed a wave of dazzling white light and mana, making the weaker creatures literally explode in mes.

    "Don''t underestimate us", the two creatures expelled green mes from their whole bodies, covering their subordinates as they jumped towards Sera each with a weapon made out of the bones of other creatures.

    "Boom!", two different explosions filled the battlefield, at the left, La and Ste were each taking on one of the death guards, while at the other side, Sera was using the advantage light had over the creatures to stall two of them at the same time.

    Adam and Marcus immediately took their ships to attack the tribes, rushing to get those "free" contributions and treasures that they could loot from the weaker members of the tribe.

    Only after using those two as guinea pigs to confirm there were no traps set on the sea, Daimon guided his fleet towards the creatures.

    "Fire!", the canons of the ships aimed at the farthest enemy ships and then rained destruction all over them.

    Some of the leading creature joined together were able to ward off a couple of the attacks from the special cannons, but then they felt dangering from above.

    When they turned to see upwards, their eyes widened as the saw a ck-haired youth carrying a slim orange hair girl on his shoulders.

    "Feather Massacre~", Leslie pointed her fingers at the ship of the creatures, and then tworge wings made out of fire appeared on her back, usually she would have had to be get angry for this to work, but right now she was receiving mana from Daimon while being carried by him too, so she was all smiles.

    "Aghrhfhfh!", the creatures on the other hand got the short end of the stick, horrible screams came from them as they were burned down.

    Once Leslie''s attack finished, the ship started to sink, Daimonnded on it and then used it as a jumping tform, to return to his own ship.

    Leslie stole a gaze at Daimon, remembering that sensation of bliss she felt when she used her legacy spell without getting tired, and on arger scale thanks to Daimon sharing some mana with her.

    The two peak Lord ranked saw their ships being destroyed one after the other and they fiercely attacked Sera to force their way out.

    Daimon regrouped with the others but as he was about to pass on another order, his pupils contracted and then he jumped grabbing Aisha an the Risha sisters with him.

    Then the world seemed to stop for a split of a second, as ast drop of blood from one of the many downs on the battlefield, fell to the sea, the lighting from the ind changed from that light blue tone, to an ominous red one.

    With the ind as the center a red light expanded, everything which was touched by it aged and then withered away.

    Daimon saw Adam and Marcus gazing at him from afar with mocking smiles before a small bead hanging from their belts broke and turned into a white and ck sphere respectively, but he inwardly smirked.

    ''Switch'', with a thought, both Sera and La who were flying towards Adam and Marcus, were forcefully transported, one appearing next to Calvin and his other ssmates as well as Tessa and Femi, and the other appeared near Scarlett and the girls.

    Before they could react their spheres also appeared covering the others too.

    As for Daimon, his body exploded in white mes creatingyer afteryer of shields with Demon Light, to protect the Risha sisters and Aisha.

    Thest thing he saw was the girl from the Penddra family whose face was twisted as she was engulfed by that wave of red light.

    ''me those two idiots for going through their n mentally'', thought Daimon.

 Chapter 265 Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Demon Decomposes (Part 11)

    Unlike Adam, Marcus, Sera and La whose fields of vision were blocked by those strange spheres that protected them from the wave of red light, Ste who was out of the range of the wave of light saw everything.

    And as a soon as she understood what was happening, she was about to jump to action and drag Daimon and the others out of danger, when she saw Daimon giving her thumbs up, before he pointed at his pocket.

    "Mm?", Ste noticed something appearing in her pocket out of nowhere, and the next thing she knew was that Daimon covered himself in a sphere made out of some kind of white mes.

    Fighting against the impulse of going to help them, ultimately Ste decided to believe in Daimon, she then took some distance from the ind, because once the first wave was over, a second way wider and more sinister looking one appeared, this time sucking the ind itself downwards, until there was nothing left.

    Ste got lost in her thoughts for a couple of seconds before she looked into her pocket, taking out a small note.

    "The ce hidden in that ind requires a sacrifice to open its entrance, and those women from the churches as well as the two idiots knew it but didn''t say a single word about it, because they are protected, this battle was all for the sake of getting enough fuel for the entrance to open, I couldn''t tell you because the women from the churches were listening to other people''s thoughts, nor bring you with us because a special token was needed for Lord ranks to enter".

    "We''ll be fine, if my calctions are correct, then the princes from the tribes, one of their guards and the two Lord rank creatures should be gone as well, kill all the survivors and then head to south and reunite with Arianna and the others, we''ll gather there, don''t forget to interrogate that guy chained in Scarlet''s ship".

    Ste finished reading the note and she had a troubled expression on her face.

    "He nned all this in a couple of minutes after seeing that strange wave, as expected of someone personally instructed by miss Erin¡­ what a monster".

    Ste shook her head and returned to reality, she saw the remaining creatures and the other people from the tribes pointing at her with the cannons of their ships and her expression became fierce.

    "Ice age", her voice became cold as her mana leaked out of her body, with her as the center, everything within one hundred kilometers was frozen to death, with only one exception.

    Nestor who was still chained inside the ship where Scarlett and the other girls were a moment ago, he was saved from the wave of red light by Daimon, and now his life was spared by Ste, but the oue might not be up to his liking.

    While Ste was dealing with the aftermath, a batch of spheres of different colors were being roughly transported through a dimensional tunnel, which unlike the previous ones Daimon and the others had seen, instead had water running at an incredibly high pressure inside of it.

    Sera who was englobed in the same sphere with Scarlet and the others, felt a constant weight on her chest which forced her to inject mana into the sphere to reinforce it.

    ''What in the name of the light is happening, not only I was forced to bring these girls with me, but the travel to the hidden city which should have been pretty smooth since I have one of the sea emblems, is burning away my mana reserves'', she thought, even if she didn''t want to help Scarlet and the others, she was forced to, because if the sphere broke, the only one suffering will be her.

    "Oi, sister from the cmity church, that side needs more mana", inside another of the spheres, a ck one to be more exact, Calvin who was sitting cross legged with a rxed expression, told La to pour more mana into the sphere, which made thetter frown.

    "What, we ended up being dragged into this mess by you, so ording to the collective contract if we were to be harmed by this dimensional tunnel, you''ll do down as well", added Calvin with a mocking expression.

    La snorted.

    "I heard that the grandson of the Rock Dreadnought was hard to deal with but to think that a few seconds here has made me wish to strangle you".

    Loren and Haylee chuckled, while Michael nodded.

    "That''s Calvin for you, a pain in the ass¡­ the left side needs more mana by the way".

    While La and Sera were doing their best to maintain the spheres, Marcus and Adam were being thrown around in their own ones.

    "What the hell, this stupid dimensional tunnel is so unstable, Lezabel fucking do something!", Marcus kept bumping onto the sides of the sphere, and he shouted demanding the ghost like girl which Daimon saw before to help him stabilize the sphere.

    But the girl who was softly giggling ignored him and just watched from the sides.

    ''Nah, this is a trial, you and the little hero are by yourselves unless there is a life and death emergency~''.

    "You bitch!!!", Marcus''s voice was so loud that Daimon could hear him, even without spying his thoughts.

    Adam wasn''t any different right now though.

    "What do you mean with "the light blessing didn''t activate", Ariel!", shouted Adam with a panic-stricken voice.

    The angel girl shrugged.

    "I didn''t feel the activation, but calm down, they are still alive, I don''t know how but they weren''t sucked dry of their vitality back then, unfortunately for some reason this dimensional tunnel has gone erratic so I can''t see nor detect others, but they should be fine".

    Adam then smiled from ear to ear.

    "You said that fate will always smile me the scion of light, wasn''t I favored by all the women from the Penddra family due to that, those two are meant to be my brides of course they will be protected too".

    The angel girl had a bored expression as she faded away.

    "Sure, sure, just remember that you aren''t at the peak of the younger generation yet, so while I can protect you from old guys, that demon guy can still get you, also that kid with the lightning affinity, he isn''t a system user but his lineage is pretty good, so don''t let your guard down".

    "Humph, once the inheritance of the blue knight bes mine, even Marcus won''t be a threat, as for that guy¡­ I will rip his head off for having stained by Tessa and Femi".

    ¡­

    ''It sure is tough to be you, as a pervert you''ll be many women''s enemy and as a skirt chaser, you''ll be many men''s enemy~'', since Daimon could hear what Adam and Marcus were thinking and saying to their systems while their emotions were agitated, so could Evangeline and she couldn''t help but find the situation quite amusing.

    ''They are both idiots, besides I still don''t understand what the hell does that blond guy means with "stained" with mana, I wonder what his face will be once he realizes that alfear princess has darkness affinity too''.

    Daimon was about to ask Evangeline something, when he saw two spheres advancing while getting closer to him, unlike others he could see outside due to his infinity eyes, that and because he created his own sphere using Demon Light, also while his mana sense was practically suppressed, he could still feel around one hundred meters, the same reach of his skill blink, probably because he had some understand of the spacews, thanks to it.

    In Marcus and Adam''s cases, he could see and hear them thanks to the system, but their spheres were far from him, because they were the first ones to be dragged by the portal in the ind.

    "Oh, so those guys and even the creatures had the same beads as them", mumbled Daimon, one of the two spheres that were randomly floating near him was red and with his infinity eyes, he could see the one inside of it was the prince from the Red Bone tribe.

    As for the other one was of an ominous green and the one inside was one of the creatures, one that Daimon didn''t see before, it had a head and two arms, the trunk was empty consisting in only bones, it also had but no legs, instead the skeleton below the waist joined to form what with flesh added should be a snake tail or something simr, also its bones weren''t white but cyan.

    "Mm?", Daimon frowned, the dimensional tunnel started trembling all of a sudden, and his eyes widened as he saw the roof of the tunnel cracked, leaving a ck hole with an eerie auraing from it.

    "Hrhsgsh!".

    "Invader!".

    "Die arcanist!".

    Three different but imposing voices came from the crack on the roof of the tunnel, as arge skeleton''s arm, a tail with a spike on its end and a leg formed of ck mist all were forced out of the space crack, aiming at Daimon.

    "Damn", as Daimon was about to take out one of his trump cards, the ck badge on his pocket flew by itself out of the sphere of Demon Light, the shark emblem glowed in dark blue light and the rune shark manifested itself.

    Then the water running at a high pressure bent and gathered around the rune shark, turning into the head of a shark that equaled the threeing attacks in size.

    "Booom!", the attacks shed creating arge disruption in the flow of the dimensional tunnel, and forcing the spheres to drift away from their original paths.

    "Aghhh!", the three voices which apparently only Daimon could hear screamed in pain, before the crack on the roof of the dimensional tunnel repaired itself, then the ck badge returned to Daimon, but the emblem of the shark was dimmer than before.

    "You are full of surprises you little¡­", Daimon couldn''t finish his sentence, because the dimensional tunnel rumbled one more time, making him inwardly swear.

    "Hold onto something", he shouted to the girls, and as if they discussed it beforehand, the four of them clung onto him, there wasn''t anything else to hold onto on the other hand.

    Before they could ask what was happening, they felt as if the sphere in which they were, was thrown by a giant hand, but it wasn''t'' that¡­ the dimensional tunnel split in four paths and everyone was drawn by one of them.

    Aisha, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana, saw Daimon suddenly grinning and then extending his hands and point at two different directions with his index fingers.

    "ck Hell Javelin", two lines of ck light passed through the sphere of Demon Light and hit the spheres of the guy from the Red Bone tribe and that strange creature, piercing a hole through them.

    Thest thing Daimon saw before his sphere was elerated to an unmeasurable speed, was that the two spheres copsed on themselves killing the ones inside of it, he managed to think in onest word before everything became blurred.

    ''Store''.

    All the spheres were then dragged by different paths and all disappeared.

    La who spat blood due to the sudden impact, finally realized what happened.

    ''Damn, thousand of years of preparation and search to get these inheritances and someone who isn''t apanied by a sea emblem bearer somehow sneaked in, causing the security means to activate!'', she screamed in her heart.

 Chapter 266 The Second Layer Of The Magic Ruin (Part 1)

    Luckily although Demon Light base shape was that of white mes, it wasn''t fire perse, and insteadbined the capability of battle aura of having a semi-corporeal state, because right now, Daimon could see the from time to time what was outside of the sphere he created.

    It was like being inside of a pipeline, with an inconstant flow of water, that suddenly elerated for a couple of minutes and then deelerated, forcing the sphere to stop in cold and causing Daimon''s back to hit the sphere at a high speed.

    The Risha sisters heard a sound simr to that of metals colliding each time that happened, and then turned to see Aisha who was leisurely hugging Daimon''s chest.

    "I don''t think people bodies should make that sound?", mumbled Yvonne.

    It wouldn''t be strange if Daimon was reinforcing his body with battle aura, a knight do increase its physical strength with each breakthrough, but the natural defense of one''s body doesn''t change until the Knight Lord rank, previous to that, they have to reinforce themselves with battle aura whenever they need it.

    If anything, she would have just assumed he was using metal affinity properties, which Daimon could do as metal was the third element in which he focused.

    But since they were in close contact, even without using her special eyes she could tell Daimon wasn''t circting mana or battle aura through his body.

    "Daimon''s lineage is grants him quite a tough body, the base for a regr mage or knight, attacks to start having some sort of effect would be the Lord rank~", said Aisha as she poked Daimon''s chest with her finger.

    "That''s a bit¡­ too much", Liliana who grew surrounded by knights knew the abysmal increase in physical strength granted to them by each breakthrough.

    Considering they were inside a magic ruin which for them was essible only for those below the six-star ranked, even if Daimon could be both a mage and knight, he would at most be a five-star knight, meaning he could jump half four minor realms and the gap between two divisions, it was outrageous, or at least she has never heard of someone achieving something simr.

    Daimon made a gesture with his hand and a wisp of Demon Light appeared floating on the air.

    "Unlike others I can increase my physical strength and defense by training, but in exchange my battle aura doesn''t help me reinforce my body, you wouldn''t believe the harsh training Aura made me do¡­ like lifting tons of weight while getting hit by a hammer".

    "¡­", the Risha sisters were speechless, ultimately, they shook their heads, the more they got to know about Daimon, the more they realized that trying to judge any aspect of him with the standards they knew, was a bad idea.

    ¡­

    That travel which involved them suddenly elerating to an insane speed only to stop for a few seconds before starting all over again, continued for about one day, the girls even fell asleep at some point, using Daimon''s body as a huggable pillow.

    "Hang on, we are about to reach the end of the dimensional tunnel", the sphere stopped moving at a high speed onest time, and Daimon saw the exit of the dimensional tunnel about one hundred meters ahead of them, so he woke up Aisha and the others, in case it was needed he could use blink to take them with him, but they needed to be in contact for it work.

    "Mm", the girls immediately opened their eyes and tightened their grips on Daimon''s arms and chest, as they prepared themselves just in case.

    Once the sphere passed through the exit, the disruption that was blocking Daimon''s mana sense disappeared, so he was able to see their surroundings, but he had no time to process it, his body trembled and his organs agitated as if arge boulder was suddenly dropped on his shoulders.

    Aisha immediately reacted, as she caught the smell of Daimon''s blood, she looked upwards just to see a faint trace of blooding from Daimon''s mouth, the Risha sisters noticed the sudden change in Aisha''s expression and they also turned to see Daimon.

    "Dai¡­", as the girls were about to ask what was happening, the white sphere vanished, and they were all now surrounded by water, and that wasn''t all, their bodies were put through an insane pressure and strong currents, that threatened with crushing their bones for a split of a second, before their images shed upwards.

    In intervals of one hundred meters, Daimon repeatedly used blink to make them get out of the whirlpool that was trying to suck them downwards to drown them.

    ''Darling!'', while they were forced to keep their eyes closed, Aisha noticed that with each use of blink Daimon''s body trembled a bit, and she was about to use one of her spells, when Daimon''s voice echoed in her mind.

    ''Don''t do it, this ce punishes you each time you use mana or battle aura, my natural recovery can out heal the damage of using blink, so I''m only suffering a bit due to having used Demon Light earlier''.

    Aisha slowly nodded, and she then focused on just hanging on tight to not be dragged by the strong currents, in any case she didn''t have water or wind element affinities to help in this particr situation.

    After a couple of dozens of times using blink, they were ejected from the sea, having gone through about four kilometers of water, the girls immediately took a deep breath and then looked downwards.

    What they came from was a huge whirlpool in the ocean whose total diameter was about one hundred kilometers, and the currents it produced were so strong that even above on the air where they were right now, there was a certain sensation of being dragged towards it.

    "Little Red!", Aisha shouted and the blood bat was summoned below them, once theynded on therge back of the blood bat, the girls immediately let go of Daimon and started inspecting him with their mana senses.

    Daimon who wasying backwards on the blood bat, spat all the blood that umted on his mouth and then changed his position to be sitting cross legged.

    "Damn, who the hell ced the exit of a portal at such a horrible ce", the normally cheerful Leslie couldn''t help but swear, upon seeing Daimon''s current tired expression and the whirlpool that now looked smaller because the blood bat immediately flew upwards to get far from it.

    Even Aisha who trusted the abnormal recovery capacities of her son, felt her heart clenching at the sight of Daimon coughing blood from time to time.

    ''Evangeline what the hell was that?'', she said through the mental connection.

    ''That ce was originally meant to be an exit, that''s why the dimensional tunnel ended there, but apparently someone sealed it and then casted a curse on it¡­ if any of you would have used mana there you would have lost a limb or two, I know how you feel but Daimon was the only one who could withstand the backsh''.

    ''Eve is right, I tried toe out from the inventory but Daimon stopped me from doing so'', added Narasha.

    After a couple of minutes, Daimon wiped the leftover bad blood on his lips and then took a deep breath, each time he used blink it felt like being stabbed on all his organs at the same time, and that was after it being reduced by his natural resistance against curses, and the Dull Nerves passive that lessened the physical pain.

    Seeing the girls whose expressions were like those wives who are worried about the wellbeing of their husband, Daimon bitterly smiled.

    "I''m fine¡­ it did hurt like hell though, but I just need to eat something and I will recover to the max".

    The Risha sisters let out a sigh of relief, Daimon wasn''t the type to brag, if he said something, then they believed he could do it.

    Lilia on the other hand took out a little box and then sat on Daimon''sp.

    "Here let me help you da¡­ Daimon", what Aisha took out of her ring was food she prepared and stored in her ring, she personally fed her son, knowing the Flesh Conversion passive would use the food to elerate his recovery.

    If they were in a safe ce, she would have asked him to drink her blood, but this wasn''t the moment to get romantic, they were in open sky on a hostile ce, and so recovering was first on the list.

    The Risha sisters watched Aisha feeding Daimon, and the three of them felt a bit jealous of how close they were, but ultimately, they were happy to see Daimon recovering some color.

    Once Aisha finished feeding her son, she tapped her hand on the blood bat and ordered it to look for a safe ce tond, while she amodated Daimon so that his face rested on herp this time.

    The blood bat obeyed, the restriction on the sky that affected them at magic ruin before, wasn''t present here, so the blood bat didn''t have to p its wings and instead smoothly glided on the air using mana and nearly doubling its previous speed.

    "Watch out!", Yvonne who was inspecting their surroundings with her special eyes, suddenly urged Aisha and the blood bat dodged sidewards avoiding a spear that came from below.

    Aisha snorted and then with a snap of her fingers, the clouds near them changed to a dark gray color, before electricity started flowing from them gathering on the tip of her index finger.

    "Thunder Arrow", Aisha''s soft voice was barely discernible as a loud thunder echoed through the sky, before a line of purple light was shot downwards to the approximate area from which the spear came from.

    Then a few figures came from below the sea and avoided the attack, but one was a step toote and was hit by Aisha''s Thunder Arrow.

    "Aghhhh!", a lung tearing scream filled the whole ce, the figure who was an armored humanoid person riding on top of what seemed to be a flying fish but of the size of an adult horse, became visible before it exploded in mes due to the heat of the lightning, dying in horrible pain.

    "Hurley!", the other figures, who were simrly wearing full body armors and riding flying fishes, shouted seeing theirrade dying so miserably before they surrounded the blood bat, but they weren''t the ones that drew the girl''s attention, there was one guy behind all of them floating on the sky by himself.

    A heavy pressure fell on the blood bat forcing it to go down a bit.

    "Archmage", mumbled the Risha sisters, although the pressure didn''t evenpare to the one of their mothers, it was still an Arch ranked, and just being affected by its pressure made it hard to breath.

    "I don''t like to bully juniors, surrender or die", the Archmage''s imposing cold voice made the air tremble, the blood bat was forced to step back again, but it still managed to not bepletely suppressed by the enemy.

    "Oh, really?", Daimon whose eyes were closed a moment ago, slowly opened them, then everyone''s eyes contracted as an even greater pressure fell from above.

    The armored guys on riding on their fishes tried to runaway but the three of them as well as the Archmage were all grabbed by a one-kilometerrge arm made out of green battle aura.

    From above a man''s figurepletely d in a ck armor which was leaking a green threatening battle aura, slowly descended until it was floating in front of the blood bat.

    "Horals listen to the young master''smand, how does young master want me to deal with those pests, can I suggest peel their skin and then bath them in a pit of salt?", by the end of his sentence, the ck armored knight took out a small bottle of salt and a knife from within its armor as he made the gesture of peeling and "seasoning".

    Daimon listened to the sadist suggestions of the Bone general he acquired that time he killed the smiling ghoul and he inwardly sighed.

    "Just keep them in check and go look for a safe ce to rest, don''t kill them understood!".

    "Yes¡­ Horals listen and obey", the now discouraged ck armored knight, flew upwards dragging the Archmage and the other guys with him, disappearing from Daimon''s field of vision a momentter.

    Daimon felt the interrogative gazes of the Risha sisters on him, and she cleared his throat.

    "I have never tasked him to do something like that, he was crazy before it became my subordinate".

 Chapter 267 The Second Layer Of The Magic Ruin (Part 2)

    It took a moment for the Risha sisters to process what just happened, the screaming voices of the guys that were riding the flying fishes,ing from afar returned them to reality.

    "Daimon, was that¡­ an Archknight?", mumbled Liliana, as the one with the most knowledge about knights among the elite ss, she could tell that concentration and quantity of battle aura surpassed that of a Lord rank.

    The enemy was an early stage Archmage, so to be toyed with so easily, the ck armored knight should be at least a middle ranked Archknight.

    Daimon nodded, knowing he would have to at leas exin some of the story about how he was able to bring in an Arch ranked with him.

    "Yes, we can talk about itter, for now let''s go take a rest somewhere far from this stupid ocean".

    Horals, suddenly appeared next to Daimon, still dragging the three armored guys and the Archmage, along with him.

    "Young master, I inspected the whole area around five thousand kilometers from our current position, I detected magic beasts below the water, but there weren''t any other signs of intelligent beings".

    "The shore is three thousand kilometers towards the southeast unfortunately I couldn''t find a castle or a mansion that fit your elevated status, so I gently asked those bastar¡­ "guests", about it and they told me this is the border of the civilization that rules this ce".

    "There are some rock formations near the shore where young master can camp", reported the bone general Horals, with a gant and respectful voice.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, Horals just looked for an excuse to mistreat those guys, anyway he wasn''t in the mood to deal with the strange attitude that this artificial undead which should have been more like a silent puppet, developed after he epted him through the terror contractor skill.

    "Whatever, take us there".

    Horals, nodded and then using his battle aura, he created a twenty-meter green skull that covered Daimon and the girls, before they became a sh of green light that shoot itself towards the south east.

    ¡­

    Inside the skull made out of battle aura that was protecting them, the Risha sisters couldn''t discern anything, it was all blurred due to the high speed they were moving.

    "It would have helped if you called this guy earlier you know?", mumbled Leslie.

    Daimon shook his head.

    "I did call him to watch over us when we were sleeping at the cave, but his existence itself was rejected by the magic ruin, besides his physical prowess as a knight he couldn''t even use battle aura, so it wouldn''t have changed anything".

    After a couple of minutes of flying they finally arrived at the shore, now that they were able to seend, they noticed two things, first the sand in this ce was gray, that and there were rivers that ended up on the sea.

    The green skull dissipated and Borals guided them to a rock formation one hundred meters from the shore.

    "Young master, allow me to do the interrogation, I''ll make them sing in no time, while you rest with the young misses".

    The prisoners heard Borals asking Daimon permission to interrogate them, and their faces paled, they tried to say something, but their mouths were covered by Borals''s battle aura which blocked their voices.

    Daimon shrugged, his body was still recovering and they all were soaked in sea water, so a bath sounded more interesting than an interrogation session right now.

    "Fine, but do it somewhere else, also be on guard just in case".

    "Understood!", as if someone had injected adrenaline in the bone general, his mood went through the roof, and then he disappeared along with the Archmage and the other guys.

    Daimon then ced his hands on the ground and used the spell terraforming to build arge pool, the water of the sea was cold like hell although there wasn''t any ice around, so everyone needed to warm up.

    With a water spell he casted arge amount of fresh water and then heated it with a simple fireball.

    Daimon gazed at the girls and then raised a division in the pool, they were inside a cave so what he created was simr to a spring.

    "Warm up, change your clothes and then we''ll continue our conversation".

    "Mm", the Risha sisters nodded, but as they were walking towards their side of the pool, they saw Aisha walking towards Daimon.

    "Aisha, what are you¡­", confused by her actions Yvonne was about to ask, what was Aisha doing, when her face turned bright red upon seeing her taking off Daimon''s upper clothes.

    "Woah", Leslie covered her eyes but left some spaces in between her fingers to see, she couldn''t help but admire Daimon''s perfectly toned body, his abs and chest seemed to have been chiseled in marble, nor too bulky, not too slim but perfectly bnced.

    Even the normally calm Liliana looked twice before turning her face away.

    "Don''t pay us attention, Daimon is still recovering I''m just going to help him bath, nothing I haven''t done in the past after he was beat up due to his hellish training", said Aisha with a calm voice.

    The Risha sisters didn''t know what to think, previous toing to the academy they never left the family grounds of the Risha n, they lived alone with their mothers, and they took care of them since they had use of reason, so while they were sure grown men and women shouldn''t share a bath in normal circumstances, they didn''t know the rules and traditions of other households.

    Upon seeing that Aisha was about to remove the rest of Daimon''s clothes, they ran away like scared rabbits, leaving Daimon and Aisha alone.

    "Don''t bully them too much mom", mumbled Daimon, but he still left Aisha take his pants and boxers down.

    Aisha giggled and then she undressed too, before she dragged her son into the now warm water.

    She made Daimon sit down and then she sat on hisp leaning her back on his chest, Daimon could tell she had something to say, so he waited in silence until Aisha moved her head backwards and looked at him.

    "I was a bit scared back there, after all these years and the miracles you have worked out, I forgot you can still get hurt darling¡­ when I saw you coughing blood my heart clenched".

    While Aisha never showed it, the image of Daimon''s body covered in wounds after he brought her back was still burnt in her memory, knowing that she couldn''t protect her son was a huge blow for her, over the years she suppressed that feeling and seeing Daimon win without any problem all the time, made her forget about it, until today.

    Daimon felt his mother''s body trembling and he brought her in his arms to hug her tight.

    "I won''t die, we''ll be together for the eternity, isn''t that why we are striving to get stronger".

    After a moment of silence, Aisha turned her body around and then softly pressed her lips against Daimon''s.

    Daimon responded in kind and they enjoyed the tough of the other as they warmed in the bath.

    At the other side of the pool which was separated by a wall of rock, the Risha sisters were sitting next to each other inside the water.

    ? "Are siblings normally that close?", Leslie finally couldn''t resist the urge to ask what was in her mind.

    Unfortunately for her curiosity, Yvonne and Liliana both shook their heads.

    "I don''t know¡­ normally I would say it''s not appropriate, but weren''t Daimon and Aisha alone with each other, sometimes she seems to be more like a mother figure than her sister, which makes sense considering she is the older one", mumbled Yvonne.

    "If my memory doesn''t fail me, they were only taken in by miss Erin after Daimon participated in the annual test of the Revy family, so they only had each other prior to that, it''s normal that they are way closer than normal siblings¡­ I guess".

    Having reached a conclusion, the three of them enjoyed the rxing bath and once they finished, they changed their clothes and knocked on the wall of the pool, to let Daimon and Aisha know they were ready.

    Daimon and Aisha who were embracing each other in the pool, exchanged onest kiss and then they both got out of the water, changed into somefortable clothes.

    "Come in", the Risha sisters rounded the wall and while in the surface were more rxed now that Daimon was wearing clothes, inwardly they felt a sensation of loss in their hearts.

    They sat together in a circle and Leslie lit up a bon fire, being near to the shore the wind was quite strong and the weather here was quite cold, in a different way than Lykos, the cold here tried to invade one''s bones, it was rather unnatural.

    Seeing the opportunity, the Risha sisters started preparing something to eat, nothing was better for the cold than a hot meal.

    Still, they didn''t forget to ask about Horals, the first one to ask was Liliana.

    "If you could bring an Arch rank, why not tell tutor Boris¡­ or our mothers for example?".

    Daimon thought about for a second, before he simplified it.

    "It''s not that I could bring anyone else into the magic ruin, Horals is an artificial undead, a bone general to be more urate, and I happened to have a way to take him here if needed, but it wouldn''t have worked with a "true" living being".

    It was a bit hard to exin, even Daimon''s inventory couldn''t store living beings inside, that was a limitation for storage rings too, Narasha was an exception because she was a soulmate and technically, she resided in an unanimated object in this case Disaster.

    Undead were the same, although they weren''t alive some aspects of them made them be considered living beings, and they couldn''t be stored in a storage ring, but the recent evolution of the inventory allowed Daimon not only to assign some slots to those subordinated through the system, giving them a temporal inventory.

    Horals discovered he could use the lent inventory as a portal toe next to Daimon, it only worked since he was an undead, because a normal living being would have gotten his skin and flesh teared away due to the travel, but he didn''t have it so there was no problem.

    The other condition was that he needed to be able to "navigate" all the way next to Daimon, and artificial undead weren''t intelligent, they just followed orders like robots, Daimon tried to do the same thing with a disposable artificial undead, and what appeared next to him were just pieces of bones, which were totally death.

    Also, he couldn''t take other artificial undead as subordinates for some reason, so if Horals didn''t somehow develop wisdom, then this whole thing wouldn''t have worked.

 Chapter 268 The Second Layer Of The Magic Ruin (Part 3)

    While Yvonne and Leslie were more interested in how Daimon brought an Arch rank into the ruin, which obviously had to involve some kind of spatial magic, the mostplicated and the less developed in the Wonder Myriad ster chart, what had Liliana lost in her thoughts was that an undead walked on the knight''s path.

    ''Bone generals are the peak of the artificial undead, they require very expensive materials and can''t never surpass the early stage of the Arch rank, they aren''t self-conscious and... undead can''t be knights'', she thought.

    Daimon noticed the confused expression in Liliana''s face, but he wasn''t any better, as a knight himself, he knows it better than them, battle aura is rted to vitality, that''s why knights have stronger bodies, long lifespans regardless of their races, their vitality is way higher than that of mages.

    Undead and vitality don''t go together, that''s an iron set rule, or it used to be until Horals who technically was an Archmage while serving as that smiling ghoul''s bodyguard, changed to have a more human like mind ser but also became a knight all of a sudden.

    From every point of view, Horals now didn''t match any of the characteristics of a bone general, with the only exception that below his full body ck armor, he was a skeleton with battle aura burning around it.

    "Speaking of that, I know you wouldn''t do it, but I suggest you to not mention it near your fathers... because Horals was the reason as to why the high-pitched voice guy and the bulky shorty guy left in a hurry that time", mumbled Daimon.

    The Risha sisters started at each other and then nodded, while they bitterly smiled.

    "I guess we should get used to all these weird things happening around you...", said Leslie as she poured the soup, they prepared in bowls for everyone.

    ''Good luck with that little bird girls, even I can''t keep up sometimes''.

    ''Eve is right''.

    ''That''s my darling for you''.

    Evangeline spoke in a voice only the soulmates and Daimon could hear, and both Narasha and Aisha agreed with her.

    Daimon chuckled, he epted the bowl of soup from Leslie and noticing the expectation in the faces of those three, he dug in.

    Aisha saw the Risha sisters smiling from ear to ear, and she also gave the soup a try, just to be positively surprised by their cooking and she gave them a knowing gaze.

    "So, you three even prepared for this", mumbled Aisha as she finished her meal.

    "Ahem, mom and aunts told us that that magic ruins are unpredictable, so learning some daily life skills like cooking was a good ides".

    The Risha sisters knew Aisha was just teasing them, but they still managed to avoid the bullet.

    Once everyone finished their food, Daimon saw a message popping up in his sigil lector.

    [Everything it''s done young master, maye in?]

    The bone general originally used his mana sense to watch over Daimon, but he ordered him to not do so.

    Somehow, he interpreted it like his young master might be engaging in night activities with one of the many women that surrounded him, so he developed the habit to always ask beforeing in.

    Daimon answered and not even a secondter, the ck armored Horals appeared and kneeled down in front of them.

    "Reporting to young master, I squeezed till thest bit of information from those guys, what does the young master want to know?".

    Daimon thought about it for a couple seconds, knowing perfectly that while Horals has be more human like, he is quite literal in many aspects, for example, he could bet, that Horals forced those guys to even tell him where and when they were born, in perfect detail.

    ? "I guess the most important question would be, where the hell are we right now, the sigil lector works but I can''t contact anyone besides those in this room, after all".

    Horals nodded, and then he took out a book out of his storage ring, after leafing through nearly half of it, he stopped on a specific page and answered.

    "To ensure the validity of this information I separated and interrogated them one at the time, making sure they knew the result of wasting young master''s time".

    After saying that, Horals proceeded to tell Daimon all the information regarding this ce.

    Turns out, the magic ruin is divided inyers, the one in which they used to be is the most external one, which is basically "inhabited", with the exception of fishes and other low level magic beasts.

    That also exined why Daimon didn''t find any kind of useful resource in the inds, and only got something decent after dealing with the creatures and the people from the tribes.

    Thebination of the harsh restrictions over anything above the Lord rank as well as theck of resources, was why these "natives" of the magic ruin didn''t appear before, in the case of the creatures, one of them happened to see a member of the tribes, and having found a new source of food, and a possible way out of the ruin, more were sent to scout.

    Those were the ones Daimon and the others have been dealing with, what could be considered low rank soldiers in the culture of the creatures.

    Anyway, they currently arrived at the secondyer of the magic ruin, which was the habited area too, consisting in four seas each ruled by a different force.

    This was the border of the Mermen Sea, and as the name implied it was ruled by a race which had characteristics of fishes and other sea beasts, some of them were pretty human like with the exception of scales or gills on their necks, but there were also some which were quite different.

    For example, out of the four they captured, after Horals took their helmets off, he discovered that the three which were riding on the flying fishes, had a head which resembled that of an octopus, on the other hand, the Archmage only had gills which were hidden due to blue ne, as they were a weak point, ording to a little test Horals ran on the spot.

    The other three seas, where the Bone Sea, that was ruled by the creatures, whose race was actually called "Skelefiend", and the third sea, the Elemental Sea is where things got pretty interesting, because apparently it was ruled by a race that was single element by innate... simr to the tribes.

    "I guess that''s how the princes of the tribes happened to have those beads that protected them from the wave of red light, they possibly had some connections with the rulers of the Elemental Sea in the past", mumbled Daimon before telling Horals to continue.

    The fourth sea is called the Maelstrom Sea, and it''s the most dangerous to navigate in, because there are countless of whirlpools, storms and other phenomenon happening on it all the time, still it is ruled by the many pirate crews that have escaped from the other three Seas for a variety of reasons, with the pass of the time they had offspring and produced new races, forming their own force.

    Horals also exined the true nature of the whirlpool that weed them, they were unlucky enough to appear in one of the worst three areas of the Maelstrom Sea, which casually shared a border with the Mermen Sea.

    Unlike the other two where some unknown magic beast was involved, this one was a permanent natural disaster, one that forbid anyone in its waters to use mana or battle aura and swallowed everything with its insanely strong currents, anyone that fell inside was never to be seen again, so Daimon and the girls were the first ones to actually escape from it.

    "What bastard set the exit of the dimensional tunnel in such a stupid ce", mumbled Leslie with an outraged voice, they nearly died at their arrival for no reason at all.

    "What''s their strongest powerhouse?", asked Daimon, if the externalyer allowed Star and Lord ranks then...

    Horals, then drew a couple of words with his battle aura on the rock floor.

    "Apparently they have different names for their realms here young master, Star, Lord and Arch ranks are all englobed in what they call Mortal realm, dividing them in three stages which each represent one of the divisions we know off".

    "But their leaders which are what they call "Ster" ranks... are the equivalent of Emperors, unfortunately those guys are lowlifes and don''t know too much about the higher echelon so their number is still unknown".

    As if Horals suddenly remembered something, he took out the armors and the other belongings of those Mermen which he "confiscated, from his storage ring and ced them on the floor.

    "I nearly forgot about it, we are currently inside what could be considered a prison, that is used by the Mermen citizens as a training and ying ground, those guys are mercenaries that came to lower the poption, with those tokens we can leave this ce, I took the liberty of retrieving the ring and the token of the guy that young miss Aisha killed before, so there is one for young master and the misses too".

    The Risha sisters stared at each other, although they might have those tokens, since this was a prison there is no way, they wouldn''t be scanned by a guard or some device before leaving, so it was more probable that they would have to fight their way out of this ce.

    And of course, Daimon knew about it too, but as they saying goes, goods exist to remedy problems.

    "Take one you three, with this we''ll be able to walk out through the front door without any problem".

    Daimon took three bracelets out of his inventory, their designs were of a mix of green and ck colors, and seemed to be pretty simple, but the Risha sisters knew Daimon wouldn''t bluff about anything... also they were jumping in their hearts over receiving what they thought was a little present for him.

    "Mm?", as soon as they put on the bracelets, their pupils contracted realizing the true nature of this "little gift", they were now using a bracelet of the god of mischief.

    "D-Daimon this magic treasure is...", the three of them seemed a it dubitative, normally this type of treasure has a limit of uses, and it will be handed down in the family as a legacy.

    Daimon smiled at them as he pointed at his own bracelet, that was visible for them right now.

    "With that you''ll be able to trick scans and other detection type devices and magic arrays, it''s what I used so that the academy wouldn''t notice I''m a knight, if you are my friends then don''t hesitate and ept it".

    The Risha sisters sweetly smiled and started inspecting their bracelets, needless to say they were marveled by the usefulness of it, the first one to start ying with it was Leslie, she changed the color of her hair multiple times before returning to her original color.

    "This time they are bracelets, who knows the next time it could be rings~", Aisha saw them all excited about the bracelets and she giggled.

    As soon as Aisha''s words made their way to their ears, Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie shily blushed, but their bright smiles gave them away.

    Horals who watched the whole scene, inwardly nodded.

    ''As I thought young master is quite fond of women, as his first general I shall present him the most desirable beauties and treasures, to celebrate his conquest!''.

    Ignoring Horals''s ns for the future, Daimon asked Horals to bring the Mermen so that they could disguise as them.

 Chapter 269 Black Fin City (Part 1)

    Per Daimon''s request, Horals dragged mercenaries who were pretty much fine on the outside, but judging by their ash dead expressions they were pretty much done.

    Just as Horals described, the three guys that rode on the flying fishes had heads that resembled an octopus, while the Arch rank was practically a human in his early thirties, all of them were guys too.

    He also brought the flying fishes that were chained to the rock formation, another new discovery in this magic ruin, was that these sea magic beasts were tamable despite them not having a beast core which meant they hadn''t unlocked wisdom.

    But they made up for it having reached the Lord rank, which in the Wonder Myriad ster chart was unknown off.

    Even the breeds that were created as cattle or transport would start showing signs of rebel upon surpassing the star ranks and that''s why they weren''t allowed to get stronger, and that''s why the blood bat was such a good asset too.

    The only inconvenient about these flying fishes was that Horals wasn''t able to make them obey, because they only listened to the Mermen Archmage, who apparently was the one that tamed them.

    "Young master, ording to these guys, they are sons of the sea and that''s why the sea magic creatures seem to get along with them, but that''s obviously bullshit, if my supposition is correct then it must be due to that guy''s strong water affinity", said Horals, with an expectant voice.

    Those fishes ignored his try to intimidate them, and actually were ready to ept death before surrendering to a non-water affinity being.

    Horals moved aside opening path to Daimon, who walked towards the flying fishes.

    The things watched a new face approaching them and just stared at Daimon, simr to what happened with Horals, they were ready to die,

    Daimon''s body suddenly leaked arge amount of light blue mana, although he hasn''t mastered other elements to use integrate them in his fighting style, his affinity was pretty high.

    "Come here", Daimon''s calm and firm voice drew the attention of the flying fishes, their eyes showed some curiosity before they actually swirled around him, as if they were evaluating the mana that now surrounded him.

    The fishes flew on the air by swimming on waves of water mana that they created, so those small waves hit Daimon, and while it didn''t have any negative effect it was a bit annoying.

    "Down", with a simple word, the fishes stopped circling around Daimon andnded on floor, bowing their heads towards Daimon.

    "Impossible!", the Archmage who was the only one that seemed to have some spirit left, shouted in disbelief.

    Even the people of the elemental sea with water affinity weren''t able to convince the sea magic beasts to serve them, because not only it required a decent water affinity but the lineage of nobles running through one''s veins.

    He who was a bastard son of a low ranked noble, managed to build a small mercenary group due to this ability that differentiated him from other Mermen¡­ and now he was witnessing a clearly not Mermen making the flying fishes he took about one year to convince, just showing off some mana and getting them to obey him so easily.

    His expression became twisted, in his mind he convinced himself that Daimon belonged to a high ranked noble family and just came to y around in the ck Fin prison, feigning to be weak inciting them to attack him, getting an excuse to kill someone.

    "You psych¡­", the Archmage tried to insult just to get his face smacked against the ground by Horals.

    "Young master didn''t give you permission to speak!", the bone general slowly tightening his grip, nearly cracking the Archmage''s skull in the process.

    But he stopped and turned to see Daimon to ask permission to eliminate these nuisances.

    Daimon thought about it for a second, even after Horals tortured the mermen the notification to subdue them didn''t pop up, just like how it happened for the creatures which he now knew were called skelefiends.

    Still, he was willing to give it a try to a regr soul contract.

    "Here if you can sign this with a drop of blood, then I''ll let you live", said Daimon as he threw a ck paper at the Archmage, unlike the one he used with Scarlet and the other girls, this was a ve type contract, where if he wanted to, he could order the other party to die.

    Normally he would have disposed of all of them, since they clearly wanted to kill them or worse, Horals handed the ring of the Archmage personally to Daimon, and there were a couple of corpses inside, which they would have exchanged for a reward once they left the prison.

    And that would have been their fate if they were weaker¡­ or worse considering, the state of some of the corpses.

    But he was willing to let the Archmage live longer to use him as a guide.

    Horals allowed the Archmage to raise his head, with his manapletely sealed, his flesh was too nd and so his face was full of scratches due to the previous impact.

    The Archmage read the contract and took a breath of cold air, he hadn''t seen an item like this one ever before, but he could guess that if he signed, he would be reduced to a ve, unfortunately the other option was to be a corpse, so he did as he was ordered.

    The blood of the mermen was red like normal, but had a faint trace of a blue tone too, the drop of blood fell on the contract making the Archmage inwardly swear.

    ''Just you wait, although I won''t be able to betray you now, the warden is my friend and he knows I would never team up with others¡­''.

    The train of thoughts of the Archmage suddenly stopped in cold, he looked downwards just to see Horals''s hand piercing his chest.

    "What a shame, as I expected it didn''t work", with Daimon confirming the Archmage couldn''t be controlled, he mentally ordered Horals to dispose of them.

    He also purposedly ordered him to do it only after the mermen showed some signs of feeling safe, just to cause him more fear to see if maybe with that the terror contractor skill would kick in, but it didn''t happen.

    He also now knew that the races of Scarlet and the other girls had something different,pared to the creatures, the members of the tribes and these mermen.

    The archmage saw with terror filled eyes, how the ck-haired youth and the other girls suddenly changed to look exactly as him and his subordinates.

    "Let''s go, each one of you take a flying fish, I will travel by gliding on the air", said Daimon who now was disguised as the Archmage.

    The Risha sisters and Aisha rode on the flying fishes but they showed some resistance towards them, until Daimon said.

    "They are your masters now, and you will treat them with the same respect you show to me".

    The flying fishes, immediately stopped their causing troubles and instead meekly started floating.

    "Blegh", the Archmage vomited blood on the spot, while he swore in his heart.

    ''Ordering a magic beast to obey others, a fucking direct descendant of the royal family!''.

    Ignoring the Archmage who was having a mental breakdown right now, Daimon and the girls flew out of the cave towards the direction where Horals told the exit was.

    "Young master, I will return after I finish cleaning the trash, if you need me just say the word".

    Daimon ordered Horals to return to the Wonder Myriad ster chart, so he could tell Erin and the others how they were fine, and report what they have discovered so far.

    Unlike he who is the host of the system and doesn''t have to use mana in exchange to use the inventory slot to bring Horals here, the soulmates did have to, and the only ones that had enough mana to perform the summon from such arge distance were Erin and Aura.

    The Archmage saw with dead eyes how Daimon and the girls who were perfectly disguised as them, left his field of vision and he felt his world copsing, even he couldn''t tell them apart from the originals, so there was no way the guards or even the warden would notice something.

    "D-Demon¡­ he is a demon".

    Horals who still have his hand piercing the chest of the Archmage wildly smiled behind his ck helmet.

    "How curious, just like in our native ster chart, here there are races who use the word "demon" too lightly, but now that my young master is here, you''ll all get to experience what a true demon is like HAHAHAH!".

    The cave rumbled as Horalsugh reverberated through the whole ce, and before the Archmage could say anything, his body was drained from all its vitality turning into a mummy that ultimately crumbled in thin gray dust, the same happened to the other mermen.

    Then the whole roof of the cave copsed burying the pool Daimon built earlier to erase any traces, that someone spent time here, before Horals exploded in green battle aura disappearing a secondter.

    ¡­

    Although by the moment Horals killed the Archmage and the other mermen, Daimon and the girls were pretty far away so they couldn''t hear him, Daimon was able to listen to him and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry.

    From the very moment Horals became conscious, he has treated him as if he was some kind of conqueror, maybe because whatever he has turned into, he was originally a bone general, an undead created to lead an army, and one that was supposed to only ept one master during its existence too.

    ''Well, the system supposedly advances in the direction I want, so there must be a reason for those two to differentiate from the others that were subdued due to the terror contractor skill'', he thought.

    The flying fishes might not be as strong as the blood bat in terms ofbat, but their speed was quite something, reaching the middle stage of the Lord realm even though they were in their infant years.

    And in less than half an hour they arrived at the sole exit from the prison, although there was no visible cage, with his infinity eyes Daimon could see there were magic arrays engraved on the ground, which were connected to a transparent double-sided barrier.

    In fact, what could be seen from this side, was totally different to what lied at the other side of the barrier and yet the "inmates" couldn''t see it.

 Chapter 270 Black Fin City (Part 2)

    Besides the guards and a portal, at the other side of the magic array, Daimon could see the real structure of the prison, it was basically an underground structure with different portals and they were inside one of them, meaning this ce was just a division of the prison.

    Seeing the guards ring at them, Daimonnded on the ground followed by the girls, without waiting to be asked for, they showed them their tokens.

    Daimon could guess the strength level of this division of the prison was in the middle, judging for the fact that these guards were only peak Lord ranks, that also exined why that merman Archmage was so confident when dealing with them, in this part of the prison he considered himself as the peak of the food chain, which ended up being his downfall.

    Another thing he noticed was that the mermen that had extremely noticeable fish characteristics, like octopus heads and the like needed water to breath from time to time, Leslie who was the first to try on the helmet discovered it t he bad way, the helmet she tried on had a formation that stored and expulsed water in periods, and she happened to put the helmet and got her face soaked.

    So, they only put the helmets after rendering the formations useless destroying some of the runes engraved on them.

    The Archmage on the other hand seemed to be able to breath on the surface without any problem, so it was probably a difference in the lineages,

    Unlike the mercenaries, although these guards had the head of a fish, a barracuda in this case, they didn''t use helmets but an essory around their necks which was simr to a water tank, overall, they looked quite fierce and their annoyed expressions didn''t help too.

    "You know the rules, show us your rings and put those flying fishes in your beast pouch", ordered one of the guards.

    Daimon already expected something like this, so with the bracelet of the god of mischief they hid their personal rings, and left the ones they stole from the mercenaries visible, and those were the ones they handed for inspection.

    Also, another device that didn''t exist in the Wonder Myriad ster chart was the "beast pouch", since the mermen could tame sea magic beasts, they put a lot of effort into how to transport them, which ultimately led them to create beast pouches, a device simr to a storage ring but that could keep living beings!

    Although the limit seemed to be five and the Archmage only had one of them, anyway, Daimon kept the flying fishes inside and then kept the pouch in his pocket.

    Once the guards finished their inspections, they threw the rings back at them, moved aside so that they could go through the portal and stopped paying Daimon and the girls any attention.

    Aster Daimon and the girls went through the portals, Daimon heard the guards whispering to each other.

    "I don''t understand why the lord warden prohibited us from getting some benefits from that fake noble".

    "Beats me, even if recently ascended, a high-level mortal expert hunting in the middle zone rank zones it''sme, not to mention he brought those tentacle faces with him, who knows maybe he is clinging to the boss''s leg or something".

    Daimon''s chuckled, even if these guys have Emperor rank existences, they still have internal conflicts like every other forces.

    ''Good to know, they will be harder to deal with if they werepletely united'', thought Daimon as they reached the other side of the portal appearing on therge underground facility he saw before.

    There was a line at the other side for those who wanted to enter, and they were on the one that was reserved for those who were leaving.

    Daimon inspected their surroundings for a couple of seconds before he advanced towards a table where an old man with the barbels of a catfish waszing around.

    "Huh, what do you want Tomas?", the catfish merman didn''t seem to be interested in dealing with Daimon, but he still asked.

    Daimon simply took out the corpses of the prisoners the mercenaries hunted; he saw other guys bringing their findings to exchange them for some kind of currency that looked rather familiar, so he did the same.

    The barbels of the old mermen moved as he took out arge book from below the counter, he then drained some blood of the corpses on the cover of the book and the book then automatically expelled a couple of pages without the need to open it.

    "Your loot this time is just a bunch of trash¡­ whatever here is your reward, five thousand sea crystals", the old man handed Daimon a leather pouch containing mana crystals with simr properties as the ones he knows but a more concentrated amount of mana and shaped in octagonal forms like the beads he has gotten whenever he killed the skelefiends.

    Daimon nodded at the girls and they all left this ce, leaving behind a slightly confused catfish merman.

    ''Since when that guy doesn''t bargain, I bet he asked a favor from the boss again and was put in his ce for it hahaha'', the old man then returned toze around waiting for his next client.

    Daimon and the girls walked following the indications Horals got from the mercenaries and soon they were out of the underground facility.

    The entrance to this ce were a set of stairs that went down from ground level, there were two early-stage Arch ranks guarding them, their eyes wandered around Daimon and the girls, but not finding anything out of the rule, they didn''t pay them any more attention.

    Daimon looked around, there were some small buildings and what seemed to be dormitories, because ording to Horals''s information the prison was built below the headquarters of the city guards.

    They walked towards the front gate and the after the gatekeeper checked on some kind of wanted board, to see they weren''t criminals they were allowed to leave.

    Outside of the city guard headquarters, the ce pretty much looked like a coastal city, there were fountains and other simr decorations here and there that portrayed some kind historical figures, or maybe the rulers of the Mermen Sea, besides that the city was pretty much like any other big city you could find at Lykos, having a mix of medieval and modern architecture.

    "What''s the n now?", asked Leslie, she was inwardlyughing at her voice that was modified by the bracelet of the god of mischief, to sound deep and hoarse.

    "For the time being we''ll go the inn where these guys were staying to get the rest of their assets, we''ll decide what to do after that".

    "Mm", the girls nodded and Daimon took out a piece of paper on which Horals wrote some important information, such as the currency, the inn where the Archmage was staying, and other stuff.

    Apparently that Archmage knew the guars would have tried to extort some money from him if there was a chance, so he left most of his valuables at the ce where he was staying.

    It didn''t take them too much time to arrive at a three-floor light blue building, with a sign that said "Mir Inn".

    "Here it is", with Daimon''s confirmation they all entered the inn, the one in charge was a guy in histe twenties, that looked at them when they entered but recognized they were already staying here, so he pretty much ignored them.

    Daimon and the girls didn''t pay attention to it and just went upstairs, at the second floor where the room that the mercenaries rented was.

    The inn was pretty much a cheap ce, just barely enough to not be considered run down, but not good enough to be average.

    After Daimon closed the door behind him and he inspected the room just in case, he nodded and everyone dispelled their disguise, the girls took out the helmets as they weren''t used to it.

    While they sat on the chairs in front of a desk at one side of the room, Daimon looked below the bed of the Archmage, and brought a small coffer from it, he then opened the lid using a key that Borals confiscated from the Archmage.

    Inside of it there was just a single dark blue storage ring, which Daimon grabbed, it was sealed using mana which clearly belonged to an Arch rank, which would have normally taken a lot of time to undo, if it wasn''t for the fact that his magic core was being a sweethearttely obeying him.

    With a mental order, the mana sealing the ring was fully absorbed by Daimon''s magic core.

    "Mm?", Daimon raised an eyebrow, the mana in the ring wasn''tpletely the same as the one the Archmage called Tomas had, there was a second different mana there, also once he looked inside the ring, he was speechless.

    The girls saw Daimon''s fluent expressions and they wondered what he found.

    "What, was that guy too poor or something?", asked Aisha as she stretched her body.

    "No¡­ I guess we''ll get rid of these identities after leaving this inn", what was inside of the ring, besides some low and middle ranked treasures, were rack after rack of coffers containing hundreds of thousands of "sea crystals" like the ones the old man gave them, but they all had seals on them and clearly werebelled.

    ''Thanks for your support'', thought Daimon as he kept the ring in his inventory, just in case, the inventory was simr to the innate ability of a smiling ghoul of hiding things, even if they were to have some kind of tracking mark, it won''t work inside it.

    Daimon saw that the girls were a bit tired, which was understandable after experiencing being inside that giant whirlpool, he wasn''t at his best and needed to sleep too, but now that they had really high budget they didn''t have to stay in this cheap ce.

    Still, there was onest thing they had to do using these appearances, return the keys of the room.

    "Let''s get out of here, Horals wrote of a ce where we can get trending news of other cities and even the other seas, we''ll go there and then we will also go to a decent inn".

    The eyes of the Risha sisters sparkled, it''s been some time since they slept in a proper ce, none of them came from sea races and they weren''t used to sleeping in boats, the movement was quite annoying, the other option was to sleep in the caves which wasn''t that bad, but a proper room in maind was the best.

    After inspecting the room to make sure they didn''t leave anything else behind, they went downstairs, the guy at the counter was reading some kind of newspaper and only looked at them when Daimon left the keys of the room.

    "Come again", with those single words, the guy continued what he was doing.

    Once outside of the inn, Daimon and the girls walked into an isted alley, he casted the ck curtain to hide them, and they changed their appearances to some random people they have seen at Lykos, because Daimon told them they would only use their real appearances after getting the information they needed.

    He who helped ine administrate the informationwork of the Revy family, knew that ces that sale information always have some link to the high echelons of the society, and they also gather information about their clients one way or another, so using random appearances he wouldn''t have to worry about anything.

    They got rid of the armor and helmets of the mercenaries and just wore generic clothes that wouldn''t stand out.

    "Let''s go", once they finished assuming this once time disguises, they left the alley and walked to the merchant''s district of the city.

 Chapter 271 Lineage Temple

    As they walked towards the merchant''s district, Daimon observed the city, spying on the realms of some of the bystanders that happened to be walking all over the ce.

    A city that has such aplex prison that connects with the border of another sea can''t be a non-important ce, so it would be not bad to assume they were in an important spot of the Mermen Sea.

    ''The concentration of Arch ranks is pretty much simr to a major city at Lykos, so leaving aside the Emperor ranks, they are in the same level as us'', thought Daimon.

    It didn''t take them long to reach the merchant''s district, it was easy to notice because the streets that conformed it, were pretty much crowded, with lines forming at some locals, and some street stalls too.

    Something that caught Daimon''s attention was that there were cages which contained members of the skelefiend race, but all of them were the humanoid type instead of the one that had a tail instead of legs, like the one he killed by destroying its protection back at the dimensional tunnel, which''s corpse he managed to keep in his inventory before they everything the tunnel split apart.

    "Don''t answer to anything they ask, just act curious and they''ll see us as people that either arrived from a secluded ce, or sheltered nobles".

    After giving the Risha sisters a little warning, they entered a four-floor building, on the outside it looked rather in, no emblems or decorations with the exception of a sign that said "ckfin Track".

    As soon as they entered, they looked at the insides of the store, there were racks which disyed newspapers simr to the one the guy at the counter of the inn was reading, but that was only in the first floor.

    The second one had series of people sitting on tables where others would approach to ask them whatever questions they had, in the open.

    The other two ones were different and couldn''t be seen from below normally, but with his infinity eyes, Daimon saw through the concealment formation and there were a series of private rooms in them, the third one had nearly twenty that could amodate ten people at most, and thest floor only had one single room that upied the whole floor.

    In thest one he managed to caught a glimpse of a man in histe twenties, it was pretty much a human besides the fact that he had a shark''s ck dorsal fin on his back at the same level of his shoulders.

    ''A peak Archmage'', the sensation Daimon got from that shark guy was on par with the one he got from Liz, and that was a lot to say considering Liz stood on the top of the list in terms of strength at this point.

    All the previous might have taken some time to describe, but it happened in just a couple of seconds, and Daimon stopped using infinity eyes, because he noticed the shark guy instinctively raised an eyebrow, there were other people entering the store at the same time as them so even if he noticed something, there was no problem, but one can''t never be too cautious.

    They then walked towards the racks and started looking at the different newspapers whose frontal pages were disyed in a ss showcase.

    But judging from the titles, most of it were generic news, besides some warnings about strong tides and something about people from what he supposed were important families achieving things, there was no much there, just a bunch of social things, like important events.

    On the other hand there were small book guides with maps and the basics of society, which were more useful for them.

    ''Well, I guess this ce is something like a kingdom'', thought Daimon, as he quickly leafed through the two different editions of the guide book, they were actually free so he took one of each.

    "Wee mister, is there something in specific need from our store?", noticing they weren''t getting anything from the racks, a guy with the head of a catfish wearing clothes simr to the ones of a librarian approached them, and politely asked if they needed something.

    "I want thetest important news, as well as the most interesting ces to visit, distance doesn''t matter", Daimon had previously decided to portrait him as a noble travelling, despite him being in a random appearance, the manners of a noble that were taught to him by ine and Aisha, differentiated him from others.

    And the catfish merman who was instructed in what clients he should guide to the upper floors, immediately noticed it, he pointed at the stairs that led to the second and third floors and spoke in a humble voice.

    "Perhaps, young master would like to have a more private service, as it seems to be a first time, how about giving a try to the high-level rooms on the third floor".

    Daimon nodded and the catfish merman, inwardly smiled, if the person in front of him weren''t a noble, he would have asked prices, so he confirmed his theory, he was dealing with an inexperienced noble exploring the major cities of the Clear Water kingdom.

    "Please follow me", the catfish merman escorted them all the way to the third floor, most of the people on the second floor were the type of merman that had pretty noticeable sea creature characteristics, and some of them gazed at them going to the third floor.

    Ignoring the unwanted attention, they arrived at the end of the stairs of the second floor and the merman catfish took out a hand bell, after ringing it, a gap opened in the concealment formation, revealing a way to get into the third floor.

    The other side was pretty different, there was a single corridor with wood doors that led to separated rooms, the decorations were quite luxurious, there were even girls wearing maid uniforms standing here and there calmly waiting outside of each door.

    What confused Daimon was that they were all the human type with gills or scales on their necks, like the Archmage they dealt with inside the prison.

    ''I thought they were the nobles'', he thought, some with sea creature heads he saw on the street were the center of their circles, but most of the time it was the other kind leading, what he did notice was that it wasmon for them to be mixed, and groups with only one kind like the one they were impersonating were rare, maybe that contributed to this kind of treatment too.

    "The private room number three is avable, please enjoy your stay", the catfish merman respectfully excised himself after saying that, probably he wasn''t allowed to enter the third floor.

    Daimon and the girls entered and the maid that was standing at the door of the third room, bowed before she opened the door for them.

    "Wee, esteemed customers, please enjoy your stay".

    They entered the room and the maid introduced the many amenities they had, she pulled chairs for each of them at the same time.

    "A senior informant wille in a moment, in the meantime feel free to try the local specialties of our ckfin city, for the young misses I would rmend calm current tea, as for young master the shark blood liqueur is the most popr among the nobles of our city, being served in the events upheld by the city lord".

    After saying that, the maid ced a tea pot and a small bottle on the table as well as some small snacks and then excused herself, closing the door to leave them alone.

    Daimon inspected the room, surprisingly there weren''t any spying arrays installed, only privacy rted like sound isting formations as well as a door at the other side of the room.

    Besides that, arge table with space for up to ten people, and a very well decorated room, there was nothing else.

    "There is no one listening, you can try the tea and the other things if you want to", mumbled Daimon, to be honest the pastry looked pretty good, like the kind served at high level events.

    "Mm", the girls poured tea for themselves and a sweet and rxing smell spread across the room, even Aisha decided to give it a try after smelling it.

    Daimon smiled seeing the girls enjoying the tea, all of them also were taught proper table manners, so just seeing them doing so simple as drinking tea was a pleasure to the eyes.

    He also opened the small bottle, personally he wasn''t interested in alcohol, because he couldn''t get drunk due to his abnormal vitality and metabolism anyway, but the concentration of mana in that little thing was crazily high, reaching the same amount of an elixir that could affect Arch ranks, drinking it would normally be a suicide for a star rank and yet it was served to him, so that was what got Daimon''s attention.

    After pouring a fourth of the content of the bottle in a ss, Daimon inspected the honey-red liquid, although he couldn''t recognize most of the ingredients, he could notice the main one was indeed the blood of a magic beast.

    Daimon took a sip of it and his eyes glowed as a warm sensation ran down his body, his knight realm which had been stagnated after he reached the middle stage of the five-star realm, without advancing in the mage path¡­ loosened up.

    The effect was pretty soft too, Daimon gulped down the content of the whole ss and could feel his body using the liqueur to strengthen itself, and then a familiar sound mad its way into his ears.

    [Ding]

    [The apex predator constitution has detected the concentrated vitality of a being in with ancient roots, entering the body of the host, the "Lineage Temple" has been unlocked]

    [Lineage Temple: certain blood types contain traces of races worth being assimted into the Apex predator, continue to find and absorb them to unlock race exclusive abilities]

    [Current lineages acquired]

    [#&%$# 1%]

    [Apex Predator: 1%]

    [Vampire: 10% concentration (Originally 100%) <!>]

    [ck Armored Shark: 0.01% concentration]

    Daimon couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, first of all, he was supposed to bepletely a vampire, although he got the apex predator body constitution, but apparently that wasn''t the case it was reduced for some reason, that exined why he didn''t feel the need to drink blood though, also with the lineages listed didn''t sum to 15% in total even.

    Let alone Daimon, even Evangeline was at a loss as she saw the new function unlocked, she didn''t know all the functions, she got information about some as they appeared, and although this one was in her books, what made her bitterly smile was the lineage listed at the top.

    ''The apex predator took over as the system was awakened, he should have reached at least 5%, also another chaos tier¡­ damn what kind of monster are you'', she mumbled as she looked at the sky of the space, she resided in.

    Another of those ominous chains let out loud cracking noises as it started to show signs of breaking.

    ''Well, I guess we are in the right direction, two functions in a row, you really like to make me work¡­ Daimon'', thought Evangeline, with a wave of her hand she destroyed a notification that popped up in front of her, which made the area where her chest was blurred to move up and down, showing signs of tiredness.

    In the outside world, Daimon came out of his trance as he heard the door at the other side of the room opening.

 Chapter 272 Information

    After a couple of seconds, Daimon and the girls saw the so-called informant entering the room, it was a woman who seemed to be in her middle twenties, Daimon quickly inspected her.

    First, she had characteristics of two different sea races, gills on her neck which were covered by a blue ne, and her ears were fan like fins too, the only other noticeable aspect about the woman was that she was a middle stage Archmage, but unlike the shark guy Daimon saw earlier her threat level was pretty average, Daimon was sure Horals could fight a lot like her without too much problem.

    But that didn''t mean he could lower his guard, some races might not be fit to closebat, but that didn''t make them weak at all, that was one of the first lessons Erin taught him.

    The Revy family at the beginning was considered weak as they had to resort to schemes and strategy, until the three ancestors whose descendants became the main family branch appeared.

    In other words, the sun, moon and twilight alluring foxes which were innately skilled in fire, ice and darkness magic, theybined their intellect and battle abilities to get a high position, fire as the main offensive, ice for the defense and darkness to destroy the fighting spirit of the enemy.

    "Good evening, I''m Mary Kales a senior informant from the Kales family, a second rank family subordinated to the ckfin noble house, at your service", the woman rose the sides of her dress as she introduced herself, before she took a seat in front of Daimon.

    "May know what kind of information, does young master need?".

    Daimon basically confirmed that she didn''t belong to the noble ss, so he simply acted distant to put on an act.

    "Latest important news of the four seas first, from the most relevant downwards".

    The woman evaluated the youth that answered her, although his appearance was nothing special, his bearing, manners and speech were of the highest order, probably cing him in a family that has some connections with the royal family, in other words someone at the same level as their master.

    The woman then took out a book from her storage ring, and after letting a drop of her blood fall on it, the book opened itself and expulsed about ten pages from it, which she then ced on the table in front of Daimon.

    "There are currently four important news creating waves at the four seas, I took the liberty to organize them starting with our Clear Water kingdom, his Majesty announced that the Trident of the Promise broke, at some moment between yesterday and today, meaning that the savior that would lead us out of this prison should appear anytime soon, a banquet will be upheld a week from now at the royal capital as a mean to wee our savior".

    ''That sounds like the cheesy kind of mission that would be assigned to that idiot hero¡­'', thought Daimon, since he unlocked the Mission Temple, which he hasn''t checked yet, it is safe to assume other system hosts should have one as well.

    And since they had the means to "officially"e to the secondyer of the magic ruin, without being rted to the tribes or the skelefiends, then, the only option left was this kingdom ruled by the mermen.

    While Daimon was inwardly surprised, he had already supposed those two or probably their systems had some sort of connection to this ce, so he didn''t show any visible sign of excitement.

    The woman respectfully handed Daimon two pages, where the notice was written and perfectly exined, there was even an illustration of a blue trident thatid broken on the ground of a luxurious room.

    "The second noticees from our business ally, the Elemental Sea, their shaman has suffered a heart attack the past night when one of their two ancient relics shattered in pieces, he survived but entered in aa, not before warning the patriarch of their four forces that rule the Chromatic Sect, that the evil has arrived at our, the ambassador of our Clear Water kingdom is negotiating a meeting between our Seas, to discuss the next steps of our alliance".

    This second notice did make Daimon raise an eyebrow, but then he remembered that one of the two guys he killed in the dimensional tunnel was¡­ the prince from the Red Bone tribe, as for the evil, it could refer to Marcus.

    The woman handed Daimon the written report which consisted in three pages this time, among them, the illustration of an old man with ck skin caught Daimon''s attention.

    ''Darkness affinity, or maybe a sum of fire, water, earth and nature'', thought Daimon, he passed the written reports to the girls, as he nodded to the woman so that she could continue with the news.

    "Please bear in mind that the next noticees from our anonym source at the Bone Sea, so there might be some discrepancies on it, but we have images to support the story, the statue of the Snakele deity that the south part of the Skalia continent as well as its temples were burned down by an unknown force, also the priests and other firm believers of Snakele were massacred".

    "As a courtesy, I can inform young master that a new belief is rumored to be spreading since a month or so ago, but no one paid it any attention until yesterday as they are the main suspects, unfortunately we can''t confirm it as our actives in a hostile Sea are too limited, and they are eliminated regrly".

    The report of the third notice was four page long, and it had more illustrations, just as the woman exined it was basically a bloodbath, burned down buildings, and a lot of blood that stained the ground,

    The third notice didn''t make sense for Daimon, even if Marcus were to get the full support of the woman from the church of cmity, there is no way she could cause that much damage in a matter of hours, as she was only a Mage Lord, even if she were to be able cross realms, her strength wouldn''t be above the early Archmage realm, simr to Ste.

    And they were among the strongest Lord realms, besides the ones directly subordinated to the army of their respective gxies.

    ''Someone¡­ or something else is pulling the strings behind the scenes too'', thought Daimon remembering the moment when the roof of the dimensional tunnel teared apart, and then attacks from different beings tried to pulverize him only to be cancelled by the rune shark in his ck badge.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    Daimon looked into his pocket where the ck badge calmly resided, since that moment the shark emblem hasn''t done anything else, on the other hand, the little octagonal beads that were absorbed by it were all gone, so it might have something to do with that.

    ''Those sea crystals have the same shape¡­ if not maybe I can try with one of those skelefiends''.

    Despite the fact that the woman supposedly ordered the news from the most relevant to the less one, it was just a scale made up for these events, truth to be told even the less relevant one, overshadowed all the other things happening in the Clear Water kingdom, besides the thing with the trident of course.

    Daimon also noticed the woman remained silent for a couple of seconds as if she was thinking on the best way to exin herself.

    "The fourth most relevant notice could have been the second, but its price and exposure was limited because we don''t have visual confirmation from anyone, as the Maelstrom Sea is by far the worst¡­ even the sea creatures that live there don''t respect the royal family, and there aren''t any fixatednd masses there as well".

    "Even then, we paid a hefty sum to get the information from a pirate, the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates, thergest crew was severely wounded in an ambush, and the Devil Stingray pirates had taken over, so all the truces and peace treaties that had been respected by most of the pirates were cancelled".

    "There is even an ongoing rumor that the Maelstrom Sea has received some benefits from the Bone Sea, and they are now plotting against both our Mermen Sea and the Elemental Sea".

    Loyal to the fact that thisst notice was a gamble, the written report only consisted in a page.

    The woman noticed that Daimon was satisfied with the information she provided and she sweetly smiled, as she asked.

    "Is there any other question, young master has?".

    Daimon grabbed thest page and after reading it for a couple of seconds he gave it to Aisha.

    "Yes, Besides the banquet being upheld in three days, I want to know other ces worth to see or events worth attending, the distance doesn''t matter".

    The woman nodded, nobles always travelled through the kingdom once they reached adolescence, visit other noble houses and make connections could be the difference between inheriting the position of their fathers or being dispatched to a secondary branch after all.

    She then took out a map, and drew circles at different spots before she wrote some things at each of the circled locations.

    "The banquet at the capital was nned to be one week from today, because the nobles from the farthest cities will take some time to arrive at the capital, as they all have their respective duties to attend to".

    "Some other events were cancelled due to the announcement of his Majesty, but these two weren''t as they are run by the oldest noble families, the annual magic beast hunt organized by the Malleus family of the minister of defense, will be held two days from now".

    "All the most important nobles will attend, because the prize is open to the will of the winner, as long as it is within the authority of the minister of course, but considering Lord minister is the Trident Marshal in charge of all the military forces of the kingdom, besides the royal guards, there are few things that escape his possibilities".

    "The other important event will be in four days, the three-art tournament held by the Arcarius family of the minister of development, where the young generation will be tested in duel, strategy and knowledge, the prize being an item of choice from a selected batch of items from the royal treasury itself".

    "On top of that, they will be upheld in the two most visited ces of our kingdom, only those who participate will be able to visit them for the rest of the month as they are opened only once a month, the Wild Tide Reef, and the Calm Tri-Lake Forest, respectively".

    The woman respectfully handed Daimon the map, and he inspected it, the woman marked the three ces, assuming Daimon will be going to them, as it went along with his current act as a noble gaining experience.

    And while he was interested in those ces, he was now inclined to attend¡­ because the ck badge moved a couple of times as soon as he touched the map with his hands, simr to how the thing acted as a coordinate when they were using thepass of the ships.

    Luckily it was running low on energy or something along the lines, so besides moving a bit it didn''t do anything else.

    Daimon turned to see the woman and asked hisst question.

    "Are the borders closed due to these recent urrences?", Daimon couldn''t directly ask how to go to the other seas, because that should bemon knowledge among nobles, but given the current turmoil that has raised in all the seas, he was able to get the answer to that.

    "The port at the east from where young master would normally be able to go to the Bone Sea, as well as the port in our ckfin city that leads to the Maelstrom Sea are closed until further notice, as for the port at the south that leads to the Elemental Sea, is restricted now but not closed, so young master would only need to submit a form for an exit permission at the external rtionship offices, and everything will be fine".

 Chapter 273 Influence

    Daimon took a moment to process the information he just acquired, there was still all the basics he could learn from the books he got from the first floor, so he pretty much got an idea of what would his next ns would be.

    "Officially that''s all, but I have a non-rted question, is it possible to buy some bottles of that liqueur?", asked Daimon as he pointed at the small bottle the maid handed as a courtesy earlier.

    The girls were a bit surprised to see Daimon asking for it, since didn''t show any interest in alcohol unlike Calvin, they did like the tea offered to them, but it wasn''t to the point where they would go out of their way to get it.

    Apparently, that tea had calming properties that would help water mages to increase the effectiveness of their mana gathering meditation, but none of them had water affinity so they just enjoyed the taste.

    The woman inwardly smiled, people frompetitors, ridiculed this small marketing trick their information store implemented, thanks to her family, since not everyone found pleasing the burning strength of the Shark Blood Liqueur.

    It was originally created to benefit the people of the young generation, but most of them couldn''t handle the side effect of it.

    So instead, it became a delicacy for older nobles that couldn''t receive any benefit, but enjoyed the taste for the same reason, as the burning sensation didn''t affect them, while a simplified version was created for others.

    It was a trial to see with what kind of noble they were dealing, just as Daimon previously exined, the people that ran informationworks, always had a way to pry into other''s backgrounds directly or indirectly.

    "The public version of this liqueur ca be found at any bar at the city, but if young master liked the one offered at out information store, we have a month stock assigned for selling purposes".

    "The price is¡­.".

    Before the woman could finish speaking, Daimon tapped his finger on the table and nodded.

    "I want it all, add it to the price of the information I requested".

    The woman was a bit lost for a couple of seconds.

    ''I guess¡­ some strong heirs hide themselves until the most important events happen'', she thought, on the other hand themission she would get almost made her jump, but she kept herself calm on the surface and then sent a message in some kind of device, simr to a sigil lector in function, but in the chape of an octagonal te.

    Not even a couple of minutester, the same maid that weed them opened the door pulling a service cart, she stopped at a respectful distance and presented what Daimon asked, as well as a bill.

    Unlike the small bottle he was served, the ones on top of the service cart were of half a liter each, and there were only eight bottles of it as well as a dark blue storage ring with a ck pattern.

    Daimon took the bill and he understood why it was presented in such a way, all the money that Arch rank got after hunting those prisoners, was five thousand sea crystals, and each of these bottles costed him ten times that amount, it was hell expensive, in fact the price of the information was deducted from the bill due to it.

    ''Well, it''s not like I''m spending my money anyway'', thought Daimon, that Archmage had some savings besides the closed coffers and yet it was only half of the money he will be paying right now, luckily, he opened some of the coffers, the crystals had no marks or a way to be tracked, so everything of that was engraved on the coffer.

    Daimon took out a random coffer from the ones he looted from the tribes, which contained pile after piles of perfectly lined up sea crystals.

    The maid epted the payment and after the woman informant inspected it with her mana sense, which did surprise Daimon, that Archmage didn''t show signs of having mana sense, just like the members of the tribes he met earlier, and yet this woman has that ability.

    Meaning other people here should have mana sense as well, and as if to confirm the previous, Daimon noticed that the maid left the door just slightly open and a strong but normally unnoticeable mana sense entered the room.

    It belonged to the shark guy he spied on earlier, still he remained calm and didn''t show any reaction, and the girls were the same, he could read Aisha''s expression and was sure she also noticed it, but since it wasn''t invasive and just looked at them before disappearing, Daimon didn''t pay any attention to it.

    ''I guess I stood quite a bit, but who cares, try and look for the identity of a random citizen of Lykos''.

    Daimon then took the ring and absorbed the bottles and pages of information inside of it, before she put it inside his pocket, and then sent it to his inventory, he already inspected the ring and it didn''t have anything hidden, it was just a gift given the amount of money he just spent in this ce.

    "It was a pleasure to serve young master, please visit us again, with that ring you''ll be directly led to the third floor, at any of the branch offices throughout the kingdom~", both the maid and the informant woman bowed their heads and then excused themselves.

    Daimon and the girls also stood from their seats and left the room, before going downstairs and leaving the store not too long after.

    A couple of seconds after they left, the woman that was sitting at a table at the other side of the door that was inside the room, suddenly stood up as an array illuminated on the floor, from where the shark guy appeared.

    "Greetings to the young Lord".

    "Mm", the shark guy just nodded in affirmation, as he took a seat in front of the woman.

    As if she was used to his cold attitude, the woman sweetly smiled and got up from her chair, she walked until she was standing behind the shark guy and started massaging his shoulder.

    "It''s rare for you to show interest in other people outside the members of the old four noble houses, were they perhaps your acquittances?", the tone and way to speak of the woman changed to a casual one, showing they were closer than master and subordinate.

    The shark guy shook his head, as he ced the woman on hisp.

    "No, that kid should be the hidden card of one of the neo noble faction, the bottle was opened and I didn''t see any signs of him just dropping the liquid to make it look as if he drank it, it seems the events of this year will be pretty colorful, my little brother will go too, so I was thinking on going there,e with me too".<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    The woman smiled and then pecked the shark guy.

    "Sounds like a date, so count me in".

    ¡­

    Ignoring the events that developed at the information store after they left, Daimon and the girls walked without any specific direction, while inspected their surroundings, just to make sure no one was following them.

    Also, Daimon wanted to know of the best ce to stay, although it would only be one night, they still deserved a good rest, so after leafing through one of the two books he got for free at the information store, he found what he wanted, there was even a map with indications of how to get there.

    But before that, they entered another alley and with Daimon using dark curtain to conceal them, they changed their appearances back, with the only difference that they simted the gills of the Mermen, as well as those blue nes that were used to cover them.

    "Shouldn''t we keep ourselves fully disguised?", asked Leslie.

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "No need, the only ones that can point us are those two guys from the pdin and the abomination sses, and none of them has arrived here yet, if not things in this kingdom wouldn''t be so calm, and that is going to y in our favor".

    Aisha saw the cunning smile in her son''s face and she giggled.

    ''That smile in my darling''s face means someone is going to suffer~''.

    "ording to the book, the best ce to stay is a hotel ran by that Arcarius family, let''s go".

    "Mm", the girls nodded and they left the alley, following Daimon.

    They soon arrived at an area that was clearly different from the rest of the city, there were less people walking through these streets, and most of them were riding in carriages pulled by flying fishes or other sea creatures.

    It wasn''t restricted or anything, but the stores were quite luxurious and most of the ones going in and out, were young people in small groups and bodyguards or other servants, a noble district clearly.

    Surprisingly no one tried to look for troubles with them, probably because their group was fully conformed by human like "mermen", at most the girls got some random gazes due to their beauty, and Daimon was the same.

    Once they arrived at a five-floor white building with a sign that said, "Sea Dream Hotel".

    The porter saw theying and bowed as he opened the door.

    The lobby of the hotel reminded Daimon of the high-ss hotels he saw on movies back at earth, quite modern unlike the inns he has seen so far.

    They approached the counter where a young girl, smiled at them.

    "Wee, how can I help you dear customers~", just like the woman informant, this girl had characteristics of more than one sea creature, including those fan-like fin ears.

    "We want two rooms next to each other, for one night", answered Daimon.

    The girl checked some kind of spherical device for a couple of seconds before she put on an apologetic expression before saying.

    "I''m sorry, the but there aren''t two rooms next to each other avable for tonight, we have two in the same hall on the first three floors, or the Trident Suite at the fourth floor with enough space for ten people, four bedrooms each with its own bathroom, amon dining room and living area".

    Daimon originally wanted to get two rooms, but they needed to be next to each other, just in case, but since the situation was like this, then he chose the second option.

    "We''ll take the suite".

    The girl on the counter nodded and after receiving the payment, which was of about two hundred thousand sea crystals for just one night, she gave Daimon a key and then an employee of the hotel guided them towards¡­ an elevator.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, although it was built using magic arrays instead of a mechanical system, it was the first time he saw an elevator since he reincarnated, at the Wonder Myriad ster chart high ranked nobles use transport arrays, or they simply fly.

    But this hotel design seemed to have been influenced by a modern culture, which caught his attention.

    ''If those guys had some connection to this ce, then¡­ could it be possible that a human from earth once came here''.

    Daimon''s curiosity about whatever this magic ruin was hiding, just kept growing with each discovery.

 Chapter 274 Commotion At The Morning

    With the guide of the staff of the hotel, Daimon and the girls soon reached their destination, the fourth floor consisted in arge and spacious corridor with only four doors separated by a long distance from each other.

    "Here we are, if the esteemed customer wishes anything just ask it and the room service will send it directly to your door, please enjoy your stay", the staff from the hotel gave Daimon a quick exnation and then left.

    Daimon opened the door of the room and they entered, although it was a "room", it''s size was enough to be considered a whole house, there was a living room, a dining room, four bedrooms and something that the girl at the counter didn''t mention, was that there was a rxation area with a jacuzzi.

    It made sense though, this city was near the sea, but it wasn''t a ce to go on a vacation if one wanted to go to the beach, being near to the border with the Maelstrom Sea, the water and the breeze were cold in a strange way.

    Even the mermen who evolved to not be affected by the coldness of the ocean, were affected by the Maelstrom Sea, something that the natives of the Mermen Sea attributed to the fact that their royal and noble families were unable to control the sea beasts that hid beneath the surface of the Maelstrom Sea, as if their status as "children of the sea" was null there.

    After making sure no one was spying on them, everyone dispelled their disguises, the Risha sisters immediately went to choose their rooms.

    "What happened to those three?", mumbled Daimon, making Aisha giggle.

    She hugged her son from behind before saying.

    "You don''t understand girls darling, Aura did make you spend nights and days in the wilderness and your body is quite tough so you didn''t feel any difference and got used to it quite easily".

    "But those three were practically used to live in their houses all the time, until they went to the academy, so a lot of things are new for them, and not having a roof with a bathroom and other appliance is a bit hard to get used to~".

    Daimon thought about it for a split of a second, even when he was a kid back when they fled from the Naktis, he didn''t feel ufortable in that mountain, although it was his first time leaving the Naktis castle, but that was because when he lived at earth, his scum of a father locked him out forcing him to sleep in the street, with time he learned to camp.

    Daimon came out of his daze, when he suddenly felt a bit dizzy, he rubbed his temples a couple of times and shook his head to get over it.

    "Damn, that stupid whirlpool is still affecting me", he mumbled, although his wounds were healed, the fatigue didn''t go away his body needed some rest toplete his recovery.

    "Let''s go to sleep darling, the room service is avable the whole day and night, so if you feel hungry, we can order somethingter".

    Daimon nodded and they both entered one bedroom, his mother helped him take off everything but shorts and they jumped on the bed.

    "Come here darling~", Aishaid down face up on the bed and Daimon snuggled on her chest, using her breasts and a pillow.

    Like that, with his mother caressing his head while he felt her warmth, Daimon entered thend of dreams without even noticing it.

    "I love when you spoil me, but this is not bad at all~", mumbled Aisha, with her beloved son in her embrace she also closed her eyes and fell asleep.

    At the other rooms the Risha sisters were the same, they took a well-deserved bath and they feel sleepy all of a sudden, so after bathing they but on some loose andfortable clothes,id down on the bed and fell asleep.

    Daimon was yet to read more about that whirlpool from where they appeared, so he didn''t know that normally the thing would have turned them into dry mummies upon touching its currents, but for some reason it didn''t happen and while Daimon took the toll of using mana inside of the whirlpool, the girls were just suffering due to the strong pressure.

    ¡­

    The hours passed without anything happening, and when the night had started to fade to open path for the day toe , Daimon who was cuddling with Aisha slowly opened his eyes.

    His amethyst eyes glowed in the dark, and his vision bypassed the walls of the hotel all the way to the street, just to see there was a ruckus outside, guard after guard wearing simr uniforms to the ones, he saw at the headquarters earlier were strolling, stopping and inspecting every one they saw.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, although the money he found so far in the coffers was quite a big sum, judging by the prices of the things he has seen so far, it shouldn''t be enough to cause such a reaction.

    "Wait¡­", he then remembered there was coffer he didn''t inspect so far, one whosebel said "ckfin".

    Daimon saw inside the inventory and located arge ck coffinbelled ckfin, after inspecting it up close, he smirked.

    ''The mana of a Half Emperor, apparently that guy was being used as a mule without knowing, what an idiot'', he thought.

    This time Daimon didn''t have to order his magic core to absorb the mana, the thing did it on his own, and after a couple of minutes he felt the lock on the coffer disappearing.

    ¡­. "Boooom!".

    "WHO DARES TO STEAL FROM THIS LORD!!!".

    A loud explosion followed by a deafening shout and a huge wave of mana echoed through the whole city, making the ground tremble for a couple of seconds, before the magic arrays on the hotel activated cancelling the impact.

    Needless to say, but the girls immediately woke up due to all the ruckus, they immediately left their rooms and prepared to escape, they might not have a Half Emperor in their family, but they could recognize a wave of mana from someone who has transcended what''s possible for Arch ranks.

    "Everything will be fine", the Risha sisters who had anxious expressions, turned to see Daimon who wasing out of his room followed by Aisha, and only then they rxed.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    "That was¡­ a Half Emperor, right?", asked Liliana, if they would have bee prepared their reaction would have been not too extreme, but they werefortably sleeping so being woke up by such a strong mana pressure made their hearts skip a beat.

    "Yeah, that Arch rank had something really interesting in his ring, I guess he was supposed to deliver it to that guy, and since he didn''t appear they were looking from him".

    "In my hands, they couldn''t use the mana with which was sealed to track it down, but apparently the Half Emperor did feel when his seal disappeared, not the location as it was concealed, but he should have had something like a hunch I guess".

    The Risha sisters stared at each other, and they sighed.

    ''Being with you is bad for my heart in both a good and a not so good way'', they thought.

    Now that the moment of adrenaline was over, the girls sat on a couch and then Yvonne looked at Daimon with curious eyes.

    "What the hell was inside that ring, to make a Half Emperor go crazy like that?".

    Leslie and Liliana also looked at Daimon with expectant eyes, even Aisha was the same, the things that could excite a Half Emperor were definitely priceless treasures.

    Daimon saw their curious filled expressions and he scratched the back of his head, before he took out the ck badge from his pocket and showed it to them.

    "It was a bone¡­ a vertebra as tall as me to be more urate, but this little thing absorbed it as soon as it appeared".

    Daimon then proceeded to tell them what happened inside the dimensional tunnel, about how the ck badge protected them, and how it dug out a bone from the sea when Daimon was inspecting the floor of the sea near an ind once before.

    The girls looked at the ck badge which had the rune shark engraved on it and they got lost in their thoughts.

    "I don''t particrly mind, but I suggest you to dress up, so we can order something to eat".

    "Mm?", the Risha sisters came out of their daze when they heard Daimon words, they slowly looked downwards and their faces turned bright red.

    They then saw Aisha giggling at them.

    In their hurry they forgot to change their clothes, so they weren''t using bras, and the little buds in their chests stood out through their blouses, not to mention they were in panties.

    They immediately took out clothes from their rings and covered their bodies with them, before they ran away to their rooms.

    "You see it''s fun to tease those three, darling~", mumbled Aisha.

    Daimon shook his head, his mother convinced him of remaining silent, because if he reacted too much it would be even more shameful for them, but she clearly just wanted to tease them too.

    ? "Let''s get dressed too, depending on what happens we might need to escape this city".

    "Mm", Aisha nodded and she went to change in the bedroom, leaving Daimon who just needed to put his boots and jacket to be ready.

    ''This hotel seems to have a special status, since those soldiers weren''t barging in, unlike the other stores even in this street'', thought Daimon.

    Being nervous would only make them look suspicious, so the best way of action was to act normal and calm, "they" had nothing to do with the current turmoil after all.

    The Risha sisters soon returned with still slightly flushed expressions, but seeing Aishaughing from time to time, they pouted and regained theirposure.

    "Let''s go downstairs, to the restaurant of the hotel, we can spy on some people''s conversations while we have our breakfast".

    Without anyone objecting, they left the room, in the fourth floor there wasn''t anyone else currently, but once they got to the third floor the result of the previous event was obvious.

    There were people sitting on the floor, some were pale due to the shock, but there were also a couple who were only curious about what happened, and most of them went to the lobby and the restaurant to discuss about it.

    ''Nobles love gossiping in any gxy I guess'', thought Daimon as they arrived at the restaurant, luckily not many were in the proper mental state to be enjoying a meal right now, so there were still a lot of free tables.

    They were assigned one by a hostess and then while reviewing the menu, Daimon started to silently listening to the conversations, not only of the nobles in the restaurant, but the employees of the hotel as well.

    "Did you hear, guards of the city tried toe in and were kicked out by the Lord manager".

    "Humph, of course, the city lord might be stronger, but in terms of status, he is at the same level of the Lord manager, so he can''t do as he pleases here".

 Chapter 275 Interrogation

    While the girls were looking and the menu Daimon more or less understood why the guards couldn''t barge in.

    Although this ce was a kingdom meaning everyone was subordinated to a royal family unlike the White Fang gxy, where the important decisions were taken by means of a vote, which included the patriarch of the different forces and the Half Emperors.

    They did follow a simr system regarding those who weren''t chosen to take the seat of head of a family, they were dispatched at other ces to expand the influence of the family.

    So that Half Emperor from before, in other words the city lord, isn''t part of the main lineage but a secondary branch of the ckfin noble house, and the manager of this hotel holds a simr status but in the Arcarius family.

    That didn''t mean they were low ranked nobles at all, in fact the with his infinity eyes he could see the guards inspecting all the stores, bystanders, inns and even houses all over the city by force if needed, the only exception was this hotel.

    ''Apparently it ismon that noble status weights as much as personal strength here'', thought Daimon, the city lord was a Half Emperor while the manager of the hotel was a peak Archmage ording to the conversations he heard.

    Back at Lykos, the situations where an Arch rank would have the same status as a Half could be counted with the fingers of a hand, Richard being one of those rare cases thanks to the backing of the field marshal and arge part of the army for example.

    In any other cases, unless an Arch rank had a really strong card up his sleeve, thetter wouldn''t get in the way of a Half Emperor.

    Daimon already inspected the formations of the hotel, and while they were enough to defend and drive away Arch ranks without too much problem, a Half Emperor was out of question, if that wasn''t the case, then they wouldn''t have felt that impact earlier.

    Daimon came out of his daze as he saw a tall man with a different bearing than the other staff of the hotel, his skin was rather pale for a man, but was no feminine in any aspect, about 1.9 meters tall, bulky but with the air of an erudite, it also has white hair and was wearing a blue and white get up.

    Over all it looked like a man in his early thirties, something that was worth mentioning was that the man was the first one Daimon has seen that doesn''t have any visible sea creature characteristics, not even the gills.

    "Good morning esteemed customers, first of all, let me offer my apologies by the inconveniences caused by "external means", apparently the city lord has lost something that was precious to him, which resulted in the previous situation".

    "Now, there are two options to decide from, while in the property of our Sea Dream Hotel, the Arcarius family offers protection to the customers, but once you set foot outside the city lord can demand to inspect you, just like what is happening to every single citizen of the ckfin city right now".

    "In exchange I can act as witness to make this process way smoother, there will be a small interrogation to each group and if nothing is found, then you''ll be given a token you''ll have to give to the guards before leaving the city and that will be all".

    "Again, this is situation that has never happened in ckfin city and as an apology those who are called for interrogation, will be refunded what they paid for the inconvenience, also don''t worry your backgrounds won''t be investigated for security reasons of course".

    After the man finished speaking silence fell on the room for a couple of seconds, before all the people present nodded.

    "We chose the second option, Lord Arcarius can rest assured that our opinion of the Sea Dream Hotel won''t go down, but the ckfin family will receive ain from my Danul family humph".

    "Count my Feligras family in, we wouldn''t havee to this prison city if we knew the ckfin family couldn''t maintain the public order!".

    Little by little all sort of characters raised their voices, but from Daimon''s point of view they were just bragging, their bodyguards were only early or middle stage Archmages, the few who had peak Arch ranks apanying them remained calm and silent.

    The man saw the popr reaction and he inwardly sighed.

    ''Timor, you better have a really good excuse to mess with my business, wanting to inspect nobles who have left their families to experience the kingdom, just because you were stupid enough to get robbed in your own city''.

    Daimon gazed at the Risha sisters, to see their reactions, and he nodded, he expected them to show some concern, but that wasn''t the case, as if they firmly believed in his previous words that everything will be fine.

    They were right in doing so though, because the bracelet of the god of mischief would take care of any kind of interrogation, if not Daimon would have taken the girls and disappeared from this ce at the spot.

    The man left and after a couple of minutes returned with some of the city guards, before he started saying some room numbers one by one, among which of course the one in which Daimon and the girls were staying was.

    ''People with middle or peak stage Arch ranks in their groups and those who arrived yesterday to the hotel'', it wasn''t hard for Daimon to discover the pattern, he recognized some of the ones that were called and they were talking with the girl at the counter prior to him, the others all had someone that could have easily killed that Archmage they met inside the prison.

    Soon all the groups that were called have stood up from their seats or came down from their rooms, they were all lined up in the lobby and only then the manager nodded at the guards.

    "You can start, if I see any irregrity, you can all say goodbye to your heads", under the supervision of the manager of the hotel, the city guards felt pressured because they knew he wasn''t joking, on the other hand if they didn''t follow orders their heads will roll anyway, so there was nothing they could do but try to not offend the man in front of them.

    The guards separated in pairs and each took out an octagonal device, with sea crystals inserted in all its border.

    "This is the mirror of truth, to respect your privacy by Lord Arcarius petition, we''ll only ask a few questions, if the mirror doesn''t show any reaction, then you''ll be freed from any suspicion".

    The nobles nodded and the interrogations started, Daimon and the girls waited for their turn and simply listened to the questions made to them, which basically focused in asking if they have something to do with the disappearance of the Archmage Horals killed, if they knew him, if they have heard about him.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    For those who didn''t have Arch ranks in their group they were asked if they knew about the ones who did it, making sure to cover every possible w there might be, there was even some kind of high ranked officer standing next to the manager of the hotel, making sure no one was using a magic treasure to cheat.

    Unfortunately, the bracelet of the god of mischief is something that didn''t belong to this nor any of the gxies known by Daimon, so how could they prepare against it.

    When their turn came, they calmly answered and the mirror didn''t show any reaction, soon all the people who were within the suspect range were interrogated and the result was that while some of the low-level nobles have heard about that Archmage, no one knew about what have happened to him, nor they plotted against him.

    The manager was clearly angry, he didn''t know why the city lord wanted to retrieve whatever that Archmage had, but in his eyes something too valuable couldn''t be trusted to such a person, so for him it was just the city lord making a big deal because he could, as it wasn''t the first time the ckfin family does something like this.

    "I told you, why would the customers of my Sea Dream Hotel stick around that lowlife, in my opinion he just took your money or whatever and fled taking advantage of the chaos in the four seas, he might have even joined the pirates or formed his own crew, nothing weird if you remember he was only an unrecognized son of a random low ranked noble".

    The officer next to the manager, who turned out to be the captain of the city guards, in other words the one who had some sort of friendship, or more urately a master-subordinate rtionship with the Archmage, touched his shoulder where there was once an arm but now it was severed by the city lord in his anger and he gritted his teeth.

    "That bastard wouldn''t dare to breath if I told him not to, I have always been against the idea of these greenhornsing to such an important city at the border, there should only be warriors here, I hope his Majesty approves thew proposed by our Lord".

    After saying that, and once every of the interrogated groups had a token which meant they were free of suspicion, the captain of the guard took his subordinates and left the hotel in disgrace, this was thest ce to check, so the chances of finding that Archmage were now extremely low.

    "Thanks for you cooperation, as I promised, all the costs of your stay will be covered by our Arcarius family, the numbers of your rooms were registered by the staff and you will be refunded upon your check out, please enjoy the delicacies of our restaurant".

    Although it was annoying to be interrogated, the prices of the hotel were insanely high, so being gifted their stays was apensation good enough, for the nobles to not cause any troubles and instead leave to their rooms with bright smiling expressions, or continue with their routine.

    Daimon and the girls went to sleep quite early, and they were pretty refreshed and well rested, so they returned to the restaurant and ordered something to eat, the costs will be covered by the hotel so they didn''t care about the price.

    Daimon''s eyes immediately focused on the drinks, there at the bottom he found the same liqueur sold by the information house, but they limited it to one bottle of 50 milliliters per room a day, and for the suites like the one he got, he could get one bottle of 250 milliliters.

    ''Better than nothing I guess'', along with his food Daimon ordered the Shark Blood liqueur, and once the waiter brought their food, they attracted the attention of others.

    The girls have been receiving some gazes from time to time, which was understandable as even among the young misses here, they stood at the peak in terms of beauty, manners and the bearing of a noble.

    Suddenly someone from the only two groups that had a peak Arch rank apanying them, stood from his table and walked towards them.

    "Yo, this little brother, there should be a limit as to how much one can brag, specially if you don''t belong to any of the shark families, why don''t you invite me a cup".

    Daimon red at the guy that approached them, it was slightly simr to the shark guy he saw at the information store, in the meaning that he had a dorsal fin simr to the one of a shark, but the color, size and design was different.

    Still, he had no intention to entertain some random idiot, so he ignored it and just continued to eat his meal, once they finished, he decided it was time to leave this city, to reach their next destination, he also had to check the mission temple since he fell asleep yesterday.

    Feeling ignored the guy smiled showing his teeth which were spiked simr to those of a shark, and then tried to grab the bottle in Daimon''s table, but before he could even approach it, the bottle disappeared and Daimon turned to see him.

    "Get lost".

    Listening to Daimon telling him to get lost, the guy first froze in the spot, before heughed.

    "Well, it seems the reputation of my Shredder family has diminished over the years, to the point that a neo noble doesn''t recognize my Fierce Tiger Shark lineage".

    Some of the other nobles turned to see the conflict enjoying the show, while they whispered between themselves.

    "Aren''t those guys along with the Berserk Bull Shark the right and left arms of the White Royal family?".

    "Yeah, they are also the ones who have the record in how much of the Shark Blood liqueur a member of the young generation can drink, that guy isn''t from the main family, but yesterday I saw him gulping down at least two bottles like the ones offered for the third-floor rooms".

    "What a madman, that thing can destroy your body".

    "Well, their lineage doesn''t include the word "fierce" by no reason".

    Daimon ignored the conversations and instead focused on the fact that for some reason, tiger rted guys seemed to have a vendetta with him or something like that.

    ''Be it on earth or underwater, these tiger race guys are annoying'', he thought.

 Chapter 276 The Caravan (Part 1)

    Feeling the bloodlusting from the shark merman, Daimon stood up from his chair and stood in front of him, making the other nobles realize things were getting out of hands, it was forbidden to fight inside of the hotel, so at most others would verbally fight, but it was clear as day that the ck-haired youth wasn''t in for a conversation.

    "Is he really going to¡­".

    "Well, neo nobles don''t respect the founding noble houses, so it''s normal for conflicts to explode between them".

    The shark guy who was all smiles as moment ago, frowned, the level of nobles in this city besides those from the ckfin family, was rtively low, so as part of a family that served the royals, he enjoyed the sensation of being in the upper part of the food chain as log as he was far from the capital.

    But now he met someone who didn''t give a damn about status, a clear sign of the neo noble faction, and things weren''t going as he expected

    Seeing that things were going south, the other nobles who were sitting with the shark guy stood from their seats and walked towards them, stopping a couple of steps behind him.

    In contrast the Risha sisters and Aisha looked at Daimon, but seeing him grinning, they continued eating their breakfast.

    Suddenly all the gazes turned to see the manager who arrived at the scene, who knows when.

    "Ahem, remember that it is against the rules to fight here".

    Listening to the manager interfering, the shark guy contemted things for a second, before he returned to his smiling expression.

    "It''s nothing like that Lord Arcarius, I was just trying to advice this little friend who clearly isn''t from any of the shark lineages, that the Shark Blood liqueur is too strong for "some" people".

    "But apparently my intentions were misunderstood, in my family we settle things with a cup, so how about instead of a fight, we just have a little drinkingpetition, I happen to have a one liter edition bottle of Shark Blood liqueur which was gifted to me by uncle, that will be my bet, as for that little friend¡­ how about paying for the stay of my group?".

    Some of the nobles raised an eyebrow at such a clear try to take advantage of others, those guys stayed at the hotel in group because that way they could split the cost of the room for arge stay, they have been here for about a month just to brag about itter.

    The one liter bottles were only to show off, the concentration made them undrinkable for anyone below the peak of the Mortal realm, so it was served to nobles for the taste and that was it, and yet they saw the ck-haired youth nodding.

    "I''m in".

    The manager inwardly let out a sigh of relief, and then he added in to thepetition.

    "It''s rare to see members of the young generation drinking the strongest liqueur avable for them, so my Sea Dream hotel will sponsor the bottles used for thepetition".

    ''It''s a good way to bury the incident with that idiot city lord'', thought the man as he gave some indications to the staff of the restaurant.

    A couple of waiters brought a te which had about ten of the 50 milliliter bottles.

    "The current record is half a liter drank in a day, but after that the one who holds the record had to wait about a month to drink again, so I only brought that amount for the two of you, the rule is that the ones who drinks the most of it wins, you must empty a bottle to grab another, any objection?".

    Daimon and the shark guy didn''t object and with the greenlight of the manager, thepetition started.

    Both of them grabbed a bottle and drank it in a single go, then repeated two more times, it was then that the shark guy slowed down a bit, he grabbed the fourth bottle and slowly started to drink the content only to spit it in disbelief.

    "I-Impossible", he saw Daimon emptying all the bottles in a split of a second, by the time he finished, all the other nobles and even the manager were in awe.

    Daimon looked at his body which was literally letting out steam, his blood was literally boiling right now, but it wasn''t unpleasant, not for him at least, but the chair in which he was sitting melted.

    The manager was about to create a barrier with his mana in case Daimon exploded, but the steam which was actually a known side effect of drinking too much of the Blood Shark liqueur too fast, suddenly vanished, Daimon stood up and red at the shark guy which was dumbfounded.

    "It''s over, hand what you betted and get lost".

    "What did you¡­", the shark guy felt insulted but before he could do anything, he felt a shiver running down his spine, the manager was now standing behind of him with a hand ced on his shoulder.

    "I''m the eye witness of thispetition, are you trying to throw dirt at my face?".

    The shark guy paled, maybe the young master of the main branch of his family would be in a position to sh with a senior from the Arcarius family, but he wasn''t.

    "That wasn''t my intention, please excuse me senior I remembered I have some things to attend to", after saying that the shark guy took out a wood case which contained thergest bottle of that liqueur Aster has seen, and then left in a hurry.

    Aster inspected the bottle and his eyes glowed for a split of a second before he kept it in his storage ring.

    "Let''s go", he said and the girls who have finished their meal stood up, the other nobles opened path for them, some of the ones that mocked them, even didn''t dare to look at Daimon right now.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    That amount of liqueur ingested in such a short period of time was unheard off, the record was much higher yes, but the one who had it was down on the floor after the fifth bottle, and they just saw someone gulping down six in a row, and be perfectly fine, in their eyes, they were in the presence of someone who descended from a family that has a Ster rank expert.

    The manager saw them leaving the restaurant and he couldn''t help but think.

    ''Heroes are appearing in the young generation once again¡­ just like that time, I wonder if that "person" will return along with the destruction of the trident of promise''.

    ¡­

    Ignoring themotion Daimon and the girls walked to the counter and returned the key of the room, they were then refunded what they paid for the stay just like the manager promised, and left the hotel.

    Outside the guards were still strolling around, but at this point there was no one left to inspect in these streets, so besides some gazes, no one paid them too much attention.

    Daimon looked at the direction where the entrance of the city was, and he frowned, there was a line of people leaving the city all at the same time.

    Apparently, all the nobles who were visiting the city had decided to leave after the outburst of the city lord earlier, others would have left anyway since they were headed to the magic beast hunt, but the whole situation elerated their ns.

    Daimon contemted things for a couple of seconds, unlike when they were in the outeryer of the magic ruin, there were flying magic beasts here, so travelling by air was troublesome, the blood bat wasn''t strong enough to protect them, also the marked the direction from the point of view of the trails on the floor.

    ''Since we are impersonating nobles, why not go all the way'', thought Daimon, he walked towards one of the stores and a couple of minutester he returned with the girls driving a carriage which was pulled by the flying fishes he got from the Archmage.

    He got off the driver''s seat and opened the carriage.

    "Come indies".

    The girls entered the carriage followed by Daimon and he also got in, closing the door behind of him.

    The insides of the carriage were quite spacious andfortable, instead of seats, it had arge sofa bed, as well as other small furniture like a tea table, a bar and small dressing room.

    "Wait if you are here, who is driving the carriage?", asked Leslie seeing Daimon sitting on the sofa next to Aisha.

    "This carriage has a golem integrated to deal with that, I just had to put the coordinates", for a moment he thought of calling Horals to fulfill that role, but on a second thought knowing the bone general, he would have gone straight to kill that shark guy who observed them earlier, thinking he couldn''t feel it.

    And that didn''t go along with Daimon''s n, the carriage started advancing towards the exit where the line had diminished quite a bit, and after the golem showed the proof that they weren''t under suspect anymore, they were allowed to leave the city.

    But then right outside of the city, the carriage stopped and the golem made the windows of the carriage which were doble sided, open, so that Daimon could see what was stopping him from moving.

    Those who had to walk had already left apanied by the ones who rode on a magic beast, but the few carriages had gathered at one side of the path, and one of the drivers approached them.

    "The friends inside the carriage, the pirates have been seen in the nearby areas of the Silver Scale city, which is the shortest way to arrive to the city of the Malleus family, so the head of the Malleus family has requested us to travel in groups, do you want to join us?".

    Daimon frowned, he looked in the map and the driver was right, the other routes took too many detours, doubling the time needed to arrive at their destination, on the other hand he was confused about why pirates would appear ind.

    After a couple of seconds, Daimon''s voice could be hearding from the carriage.

    "Yes, but if you drag me down, I''ll leave".

    The driver had a bitter smile, his group has been waiting for ast member to join, they were thest ones to leave and there weren''t any more carriages, until Daimon''s appeared.

    "We''ll leave now".

    Everyone of the drivers which were waiting returned to their seats and the carriages started advancing.

    Inside of the carriage, Daimon took out the ck badge and also a couple sea crystals and before he could do anything, the thing absorbed them.

    The girls curiously looked at Daimon feeding crystals to the ck badge, until it stopped absorbing them.

    He took out the map and this time the ck badge moved by itself just like that time at the ship, it positioned right above one of the circled zones, the one which had written "Warhammer City", in other words the city of the Malleus family.

    "I guess we''ll get a clue of what does this thing want me to find, there", mumbled Daimon.

 Chapter 277 The Caravan (Part 2)

    The caravan slowly started advancing through the path carved on the ground, maybe because the carriage was being pulled by the flying fishes or because Daimon chose one of the best carriages that were being sold in that noble store, but the travel was really smooth.

    Seeing the girls chatting between themselves, Daimon took out his sigil lector and tried sending a message to all of his ssmates, but he didn''t get an answer from any of them, which probably meant they were in one of the other three seas.

    Daimon looked at the crystal that Aura extorted from the Greenwich Sage, which was supposed to not only extend the range of the sigil lector, but also ignore interferences to a certain degree.

    ''That feeling I had about this thing not working isn''t there anymore¡­ but that would mean that Arianna was in the secondyer of the magic ruin, from the very beginning?''.

    Earlier when Ste gave him the crystal, he was going to use before they went to fight near the ind, but he refrained from doing it, because he had the feeling that it wasn''t going to work which would have just wasted the crystal.

    He checked a second time after listening to the ns that Adam and Marcus had, as he knew they will be going to another ce, but it was the same, when he thought of using the crystal, he had the sensation that it wouldn''t work, something probably rted to the sixth sense passive skill.

    His instincts have never failed him before, so he went through and kept the crystal forte, it''s just that after all the situation with the dimensional tunnel and the whirlpool, he forgot about it until now.

    And to his surprise that feeling was no longer there, which meant he could now use the crystal and there was a high chance that it worked.

    Daimon inserted the crystal and after finding Arianna''s sigil, which was a wolf howling to the moon, he started the call.

    The Risha sisters and Aisha, stopped what they were doing upon seeing the sigil lector properly working, and focused their attention on Daimon.

    "Is that you, Daimon?", almost immediately, Arianna''s voice could be hearding from the sigil lector.

    "Yes, no time to exin, in which one of the four seas are you?", answered Daimon, the crystal wasn''t designed for the secondyer, so although it was working, he could feel the connection was going tost less than what it was supposed to.

    "Seas?".

    "I''m indeed in a ce that is underwater¡­ but there is no way to leave, so I don''t know what''s around me, besides the sea of course".

    "That little girl from the Jolbaris was dragged here with me as soon as we entered the magic ruin, we are under a dome of some kind which keeps the water outside, there is a huge castle and a small city which has been abandoned for quite some time, but I don''t know if it''s visible from the outside, also there are sea magic beasts of the Lord and Arch ranks roaming all over the ce so we had to hide ourselves".

    Daimon frowned, almost all this was covered in water, so it was going to be tough to find a dome under the sea which isn''t already in use by the natives, he was sure it wasn''t in the Mermen Sea at least, since they made use of their territory maind or underwater, as they could thrive in both.

    Then an idea struck Daimon like a bolt.

    "Can you get yourself in danger, enough to threat your life, while you are sure to escape from it, the little gift I gave you will let you more or less feel my current location so I can lessen the possible ces where you two might be".

    ¡­

    There was a small silence before Arianna answered

    "Yes, the beasts don''t chase after you as long as you don''t get close to the castle", judging by Arianna''s voice she was already running towards those beasts.

    "Booom!", there as loud sounding from the sigil lector, and Daimon saw cracks starting to appear on the crystal.

    "Damn, Arianna, the connection is about to end and I won''t be able to call you again".

    "Sorry I was catching up my breath, we are straight to the south of your current position, the dome can''t be affected by Arch¡­".

    Arianna barely made it on time to tell Daimon where to look for them before the connection was lost, the crystal turned into thin dust which Daimon had to blow away from his sigil lector.

    "Of course, it had to be the damn Maelstrom Sea", mumbled Daimon, the ckfin city was Built at the border of the Mermen Sea which is situated at the north of the Maelstrom Sea, so the only thing at the south of the ckfin city had to be the Maelstrom Sea.

    That also exined why no one had found wherever they were, thus the abandoned city, navigating through the Maelstrom Sea was already a pain in the ass, exploring it underwater required a lot of manpower.

    "I''ll buy whatever these guys use tomunicate with each other, maybe I can make the sigil lector work with the other seas, luckily I spend some time in Liz''s workshop", mumbled Daimon.

    Although he isn''t an expert like Liz, he learned the fundamentals of magic forge and runes through the book section of the shop, and practiced assisting Liz in some of her experiments and projects.

    He still needed to practice more to be able to buy the low mastery knowledge book, but his main focus was battle so he left it for his free time, while he mostly spent the past eight years training.

    Daimon then took out the one-liter bottle he got from the shark guy, unlike all the others he had bought, the content of that one was on another level, with every ten milliliters of the Shark Blood liqueur, the amount of the "Armored Shark" lineage, increased about 0.01%.

    And at this point he has reached a 0.35% after thepetition at the hotel, but he could tell the liqueur in the bottle he got from that tiger shark merman would increase it more than what he already had, in a single go, but he was also sure it would require some effort on his side this time.

    ''Mom, I''m going to be out for some time, if anything happens you are in charge'', he said directly to Aisha through their mental connections.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    ''Ok, darling, I know there are some pests following us since we left, but nothing to worry about, leave everything to me~''.

    Daimon nodded at his mother and then turned to see Liliana.

    "Lili, can you build a dome with your strongest ice for me, I''ll give you some of my mana too?",

    Liliana''s generally emotionless expression, melted away as soon as she heard Daimon call her "Lili", she didn''t mention it, but she was a bit jealous of Yvonne since she got him to call her "Yvi" prior to all the situation with their lineages.

    "Mm".

    Daimon ced his hand on Liliana''s shoulder and lent her some mana, she was thest one to use abination spell with him, and she couldn''t help but be surprised as to how smooth was the process of lending some of Daimon''s mana.

    ''It''s even smoother than with mother'', she thought, but she came out of her daze, feeling the gazes of Yvonne and Leslie piercing her back.

    Daimon chuckled, his magic core was a bother some times, but the mana that was stored inside which hidden from curious eyes, was purer than any Arch rank Erin or Aura had seen before, which made sense considering that when he gathered mana the absorption ratio was on par with Arch ranks.

    A beautiful pair of ice wings appeared on Liliana''s back and with a gesture, she casted a spell around Daimon surrounding him with an ice dome, before she dispelled the wings.

    Daimon could still see them from within the dome and vice versa, because Liliana''s ice when she used her wings waspletely transparent like crystal.

    Daimon inspected the dome for a couple of seconds and nodded, while strength wise it cold at most block early-stage Lord rank attacks, it was cold enough to suffocate way stronger fire, which was what he needed, as his body was about to get really hot due to the blood boiling effect.

    "Here we go", Daimon took out the bottle and opened it, a strong alcohol scent filled the dome, luckily, he wasn''t affected by it, or he would have gotten drunk just from the smell.

    Daimon looked at the liquid inside of the bottle and unlike the one he has drank before, this one was redder, but he didn''t feel any adverse towards it, so he simply gulped down the whole thing, before closing his eyes and isted himself from the outside.

    Not even a secondter Daimon felt a warm sensation running through his body, it wasn''t unpleasant but it was indeed way stronger than what he previously experienced.

    Outside of the dome the Risha sisters saw Daimon literally exploding red mes, and they turned to see Aisha with slightly worried expressions.

    "Is he¡­ alright?", asked Leslie.

    Aisha giggled while she nodded.

    "Yeah, believe it or not, I have seen him bath in magma before, Aura''s training was quite something back then".

    Needless to say, but the Risha sisters were dumbfounded, upon hearing that, even Leslie was sure she couldn''t resist such a strong heat with her bare body.

    "Really what kind of mythical magic beast is he", mumbled Yvonne.

    "Pffft¡­", the four girlsughed and then continued with their conversation, bringing some stories from their past, they even asked Aisha about Daimon''s younger years, since they had arge gap in age, meaning she took care of Daimon when he was little.

    Ignoring the kind of ashaming stories Aisha was discussing with the Risha sisters, Daimon suddenly found himself in some kind of imaginary ce.

    He looked at his surroundings, he was standing on the water without sinking and besides a red sky, there was nothing but an endless sea.

    Daimon came out of his trance upon hearing the unmistakable sound of a notification.

    [Ding]

    [Wee to the special space of the Lineage Temple, here the host will have to tame the lineages that have reached a certain threshold in order to awaken an ability, (it is possible to leave at will, but the next threshold will be harder to reach) good luck]

    "Oi Eve why didn''t you tell me about this, it wasn''t on the description of the function either?".

    ¡­ Daimon waited for Evangeline to answer, but apparently, she couldn''t hear him here.

    "Whatever, let''s start", with Daimon''s approval, the waters parted to leave a giant shark with ck bone ques all over its body, appear in front of Daimon, the pressure exuded by the thing was on par with an Arch rank, and was clearly trying to suppress Daimon forcing him to bow.

    "Hoh, I will never be afraid of a magic beast again, bring it on!", although the pressure was quite heavy, he could tell the shark itself wasn''t that strong, maybe middle Lord rank, which was still manageable with Demon Light.

    Having said that, Daimon''s body exploded in white mes and he jumped towards the shark.

 Chapter 278 The Caravan (Part 3)

    While Daimon was busy dealing with the little surprise the Lineage Temple had in store for him, the hours passed and soon they finally left the in tropical area which indicated they were near the coast, for a more forest like zone.

    The only problem is that in the transition, there were some streams which shed with the tree predominantndscape, resulting in arge freshwater swamp that separated the coastal area from the regr ind area.

    "Stop!", the carriage which was leading the caravan stopped, and the driver warned the others.

    "Mm?", the girls noticed the carriage stopped and, looking through the double-sided windows, they realized why they have to.

    In a which is mostly covered by water, the rain tends to overflow the ind water bodies, in this case the swamp that was ahead of them which used to be ake, had gottenrger, to the point that the two sides had a separation of about 2 kilometers.

    But while that sounds like a problem, it should have not been the case since there was a bridge which connected both sides, but now that they arrived the bridge was destroyed leaving only the part that was attached to the ground, as for the rest it probably sank forever in the swamp.

    "How weird, the were carriage trails all the way ahead of us, so the others should have passed this spot too".

    "Look at the other side, there are carriage trails there", one of the drivers pointed at the other side, where there were signs of wheels that advanced from the shore to the forest a couple of hundreds of meters ahead.

    The drivers inspected their surroundings trying to see if they were being set up, but found nothing, then out of all of the drivers there were a couple which were able to use mana sense.

    "I¡­ can''t see inside the swamp, it''s more like mud instead of water".

    While the drivers were discussing about what to do, one of the carriages lowered the window, and the irritated voice of a man came from it.

    "Martin, why the hell are we not moving, the Lord Trident Marshall is said to pay more attention to those who arrive early, just carry the damn carriage and jump to the other damn side!".

    The people o the other carriages remained silent, and while the driver wanted to advice his master to wait for the group to reach a consensus, listening to the voice of his master, he sighed and then obeyed, getting condescendence gazes from some of the other drivers.

    The guy who was inside the carriage looked at the other drivers and carriages and he snorted.

    "Humph, bunch of cowards, why are you attending the hunt when you are so hesitant about a mere fallen bridge".

    With thosest words, the driver who was an early stage Archknight raised the carriage with his won hands and after taking some impulse, he jumped from one side to the other.

    The girls saw that all the other carriages lowered their windows too, the different nobles focused their attention on the one who was right now advancing towards the other side.

    "Grooowl", a loud beast like sound followed by a huge ssh drew everyone''s attention, as pair of giant jaws appeared from below the swamp, they were so huge that even after reaching one hundred meters of height, it barely showed to what animal the jaws belonged.

    It was some kind of huge green crocodile with foliage growing on its back, obviously with the intention of suing it as camouge.

    "Dodge you fool!", the guy inside the carriage yelled at the Archknight, but for some reason the driver didn''t pay him any attention, as if he wasn''t mentally present.

    Although the size of that crocodile magic beast was irreal, it wasn''t slow at all, and before the noble in the carriage could do anything, the jaws closed.

    "Ahhh!!!", a lung tearing scream came from inside the jaws of the crocodile, and its snout expanded a bit before smoke escaped from it, but the crocodile simply submerged its head back into the swamp.

    Muddy water sshed the shore as the shadow of the crocodile disappeared into the depths of the swamp, there were a couple of shes of light below the water, but surprisingly they couldn''t feel the manaing from below although they could see a couple of illuminated areas, before everything returned to calm.

    "Did you saw that?".

    "Yeah¡­ there are more of those things hidden in the swamp".

    "As expected, there were Deep Swamp Crocodiles, one of the most dangerous magic beasts that can be found ind in our Clear Water kingdom, the foliage in their back''s blends with the swamp, and even blocks the capacity of those whose families have had blood ties with Ster rank experts, to use mana to inspect their surroundings".

    "My guess is that some lowlife destroyed the bridge, probably the pirates, or the guys that passed through here before us".

    One of the two drivers which didn''t leave the carriage they were driving, interrupted the others exining what just happened.

    The other drivers frowned hearing that guy, they were all the bodyguards sent to look over their respective young masters, although most of them were early-stage Arch ranks and a couple of middle stage ones and weren''t part of their families, but under contract for security reasons, they were serving middle level noble families.

    "What do you mean¡­ did you know those things were there, if so, then why didn''t you say anything?", questioned one of the two middle stage Arch ranks, the one who died was someone he met back when he started, so they could be consideredrades to a certain extent.

    The peak Arch rank looked at the driver as if he was looking at an idiot.

    "It was just a hunch, if someone didn''t verify it, then how do you suppose I would be able to find the safest way to bring my young master to the other side?".

    "What!", as expected, the reaction of the other drivers was indignation, they were treated as fodder cannon without knowing, and those in the same caravan were supposed to watch each other''s back at least.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    "If you have the information why the hell didn''t you share it!".

    The peak Arch rank ignored theins of the others and instead bowed towards the carriage he was guarding.

    "Young Lord, those vile creatures shouldn''t be here and they wouldn''t normally attack us, someone must have infuriated them on purpose, maybe the group that went ahead of us, now that we know there isn''t a half Ster rank among them, we can use the bait young Lord''s older brother gave us, to easily reach the other side".

    After a couple of seconds, the window of the carriage lowered showing the sole passenger of it, a tall man in his early twenties with ck hair and ck dorsal fin at the height of his shoulders, a sign that he belonged to the ckfin noble house, and judging by his attire which consisted in a ck scale armor of the best quality possible, and the proud and cold expression on his face, he wasn''t from a secondary branch.

    "This has be a race, we don''t need trash dragging us down, find a good ce to cross and let''s go".

    Then as if his attitude underwent a 180¡ã change, the guy from the ckfin family looked at the other carriage which was guarded by a peak Archmage, before saying.

    "It would be an honor for me to escortdy Mellie of course", he said with a gant voice.

    "You!", the other drivers and their respective young masters, which now had lowered their windows to look at the one who was insulting them, nearly spat blood due to the anger, those two were the core of the caravan and they were the ones that gathered the rest.

    In other words, they now realized they were just used and throwed aside, by those two major nobles.

    "What, you should be happy that I even let you near me, all of you are all second-grade nobles who serve the bigger families, vassals in front of my ckfin family", said the man with a condescending voice.

    A couple of secondter, the voice of a woman came from the other carriage, but the window wasn''t lowered.

    "I prefer to travel at a normal pace since this is the first time I''m out of the main territory of my family, but I do appreciate young master Jin good intentions".

    The smiling expression in the member of the ckfin family, twitched a bit, but he just answered.

    "Lady Mellie should reconsider it, even if our two bodyguards join hands, they won''t be able to hold back all those savage beasts, the only way to cross the swamp in the short term is with my¡­".

    The words the guy stuck in his throat upon seeing at the carriage that joined the caravan at the end, which didn''t even have a driver, advancing through the swamp by creating an ice road on the surface.

    "Humph, bumpkins, did they think the crocodiles would just ignore them", coldly snorted the ckfin family member, but then his expression became ugly, the previous guy was eaten alive before reaching a quarter part of the distance, and yet the carriage that was using ice steadily advancing right now had reached half way through, without any retaliation.

    It was as if the crocodiles were avoiding them, their giant shadows were visible as they have gone up from the deep bottom, but nothing else happened.

    The other drivers and the nobles in their carriages stared at each other, and then turned to see Jin, with a mocking expression.

    "Well, if young master Jin, excuses us, there is a neo noble willing to guide us, good luck".

    After saying that, all of them immediately advanced towards the ice road and after verifying it was solid, they started crossing the swamp following Aisha and the girls.

    The ckfin guy was furious, he lost face in front of the woman he is courting, and the worst part is that it was due to a neo noble.

    ''Travelling without the emblem of your noble house just to draw attention, fucking neo nobles'', yelled the guy in his heart.

    Unlike the old nobles or the founding noble houses, the neo nobles who got noble titles due to their merits in the army or someone in their family reaching the Half Ster realm, all during the reign of the current king, travelled without an emblem in their carriages, clothes and the like, just to mess with others.

    A few wordsing from the other carriage next to his, put thest nail in Jin''s coffin.

    "I will also take my leave; I wish young master Jin good luck in his rush towards the Warhammer city".

    Without saying anything else, the other carriage quickly advanced following the others, leaving only Jin and his driver behind.

    After a couple of seconds, Jin snorted and ordered his driver.

    "That ice trail should be from a treasure simr to the bait my brother handed me, it''s good that, that idiot neo noble wants to brag, use it, we''ll reserve ours forter and we''ll see whoughsst".

    The driver nodded and then started advancing towards the beginning of the ice trail, but as soon as one of the wheels touched it, that part of the ice melted nearly causing them to fall in the swamp.

    Jin''s eyes became bloodshot, his body trembled due to anger.

    "What the fuck are you doing, are you trying to kill me, take some distance and use the damn bait!".

    The driver had a bitter expression, he just followed orders and was shame-scolded, but he still did as he was ordered.

 Chapter 279 Camping In The Forest

    Inside of the carriage, the Risha sisters looked at the ice dome which contained Daimon before looking at Aisha.

    Leslie ced her hand on the dome and then asked.

    "Is he truly alright, those mes feel different to the ones he showed us before?".

    Normally Demon Light has clean white color, despite it containing darkness element into it, but now they had ck patches spawning from time to time.

    Earlier, when Aisha was wondering in the better way to cross the swamp, she got a "call" from Daimon.

    ''Use this'', it was just a couple of words, and then the crimson mes that were covering his body vanished just to be reced by white mes, but unlike the usual they had those ck patches and also instead of the calm flow Daimon has had since their creation, the mes were enraged, as if they were roaring.

    Along with that pair of words, Aisha was able to feel Daimon''s current aura for a split of a second, it didn''t affect her nor the Risha sisters but she could feel it going downwards, threatening the crocodiles to stay away from them.

    Besides that, the mes which volume increased were limited to three or so centimeters of advance, and then no matter how much they tried they were unable to keep moving, as if Daimon has prohibited them from doing so.

    Which was probably for the best, as Liliana could immediately tell that the stress on the ice dome multiplied a lot when the mes changed, she had to reinforce it using the left overs from Daimon''s mana she was given, which made her feel a bit disappointed as she was saving it forter, to confirm something.

    A shocking discovery the Risha sisters made just recently, was that Daimon''s mana didn''t upy space in their magic cores, meaning that it was a surplus, so even if they have their reservespletely full, they can still ept Daimon''s mana, as if it was nonexistent, it was strange to say the less.

    Even Daimon didn''t know about it, while Daimon has given his mana to Aisha, her magic core absorbed like it was hers, probably because she is his soulmate, the other girls haven''t had a need to take Daimon''s maa lent, and when Daimon did abination spell with Yvonne, it didn''t work like that.

    Only when he helped Leslie rain down fire over the ships of the skelefiends at the battle near the ind, some timeter Leslie realized there was a bit of Daimon''s mana left, but she identally used it up when she was showing Yvonne and Liliana.

    "Yeah, if he was out of control those mes would have already melted the carriage¡­ also Lili, howe I could feel Daimon''s mana in you earlier when you reinforced the dome~", said Aisha in a yful voice.

    Liliana blushed a bit before she exined their discovery, it''s not that they were keeping it a secret, but it was such an irreal situation that when Leslie showed it, the three still had their doubts, their mothers exined them that since they were the first ever to find a proper center, then their situations were unique and unpredictable changes might happen to them.

    Aisha contemted things for a couple of seconds, it was indeed something unheard off, going up the limit of one''s mana reserves shouldn''t be possible.

    "Oh, I see, that sounds like a useful ability, maybe it is indeed rted to your lineages, since you feel at ease even after using your wings when Daimon is around".

    Liliana nodded as she stole a gaze at Daimon''s calm eye closed expression.

    "Mm, it''s a strange sensation, I think that instead of being absorbed in my magic core, his mana ends up staying in the mana circuits of my back¡­ the same ones that are used for my wings".

    "No fair, back then when we used abination spell, I still didn''t have the capacity to use my wings", mumbled Yvonne.

    "You can''tin, if it wasn''t for this travel, it would have taken more time for us to find out he could use fire and ice elements too, so for some time you were the only one with apatible affinity"

    "Mm".

    Both Leslie and Liliana stuck their tongues at Yvonne as they got back at her forining.

    "It''s an interesting ability, I suggest you three to tell Daimon so he can help you confirm it, he can see mana circuits to a certain extent after all".

    The Risha sisters exchanged gazes and then nodded.

    All the previous happened while they were crossing the swamp and by the time they reached the other side, the mes covering Daimon''s body calmed down, making the girls wonder if he was watching them over, although there were no signs of Daimon being aware of his surroundings.

    The other carriages that followed them were also able to safely cross the swamp, and as soon as thest one which was drove by a peak Arch rank, waspletely on the floor, the ice trail sank into the swamp.

    The other drivers slowed down after crossing the swamp, they saw Daimon''s carriage advancing without stopping and the drivers stared at each other with slightly hesitant expressions.

    "Wait, little friend in that carriage, there might be traps ahead, we should wait for a moment and inspect the forest before going it", the same driver that invited Daimon to join the carriage called them, to stop them for a moment.

    Unfortunately, just like Daimon said, they weren''t going to stay with the group if they dragged them down, so Aisha ignored them and their carriage didn''t stop.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    And that wasn''t all, the other carriage which was drove by a peak Arch rank also just kept advancing, but the driver at least turned to see the others to say.

    "The sun will settle in a couple of hours and being in the open is more dangerous than into the forest, I suggest you keep advancing, we''ll have to camp midway anyway".

    Without saying anything else the peak Arch rank drove the carriage into the forest, following Daimon and the girls with a distance of just a couple of meters.

    The other drivers exchanged gazes with each other, doubting what they should do, until the windows of the carriages lowered down and the nobles saw each other.

    "We are all from second grade families, and if I''m not wrong, none of us serve any bigger family, so that neo noble won''t look for troubles with us, as for the other carriage, whoever they are at least they didn''t treat us a fodder cannon unlike that fucker from the ckfin family".

    "The other carriage doesn''t have an emblem though, maybe both are neo nobles, but one is in decent terms with the ckfin family, since they have some connections to the army too".

    "I say we group with them, neo nobles only care about strength instead of status, if we contribute to the group there shouldn''t be any problem if we tag along until we reach the Warhammer city".

    Having reached a conclusion, the nobles all entered the forest too, the road was quite wide leaving space for at least five carriages to drive side to side, so a couple of carriages increased their speed and actually passed Daimon''s and the other positioning themselves in front of them.

    "The friends in the two carriages, there are no cowards in my Jube family, please let me open the path as a thanks for helping us back there".

    "Same here, I Fernando from the Venerel family always return kindness with kindness".

    The two carriages driven by middle stage Arch ranks willingly took the role of being the frontline of the caravan, the nobles inside of the carriages even presented themselves as that is the custom.

    The other four carriages that were custodied by early-stage Arch ranks took the rear of the caravan, so now Daimon''s and the other carriages were in what could be considered the safest spot of the caravan.

    "We might not be as strong, but my Rizar family is good at defending, so let me take care of the back".

    "My Damar family is good at dismantling and arming traps".

    "Troy Enoch at your service, my family specializes in tracking".

    "Aida Delieri, my family has one of the best restaurant chains, based in the capital, I know all the poisonous nts and magic beasts in the kingdom, and can handle them if needed".

    Inside of Daimon''s carriage Aisha raised an eyebrow at all those nobles presenting themselves, but remembering her darling needs more information she decided to give them a chance, in any case they weren''t in a rush, since Daimon was training right now.

    "I guess it''s fine as long as they don''t try to leech of us", mumbled Aisha.

    "If those pirates were the ones that destroyed a bridge strong enough to drive away those crocodiles, then being in a group seems to be a good idea", said Yvonne.

    "Mm", Leslie and Liliana agreed too so they didn''t try to leave the caravan, and the other carriage was the same.

    Seeing the carriages in the center don''t try to leave, made the other nobles let out a sigh of relief, it would be too shameful to be rejected even after introducing themselves and their families.

    ¡­

    Leaving that little episode aside, the caravan advanced deeper into the forest, the driver of the Enoch family who was the one with the strongest mana sense among the present Arch ranks, inspected the road ahead of them to make sure they were going in the same way as the previous caravans.

    And as the sun left the sky and the night came after about five hours of travel, they safely reached the middle point of the forest, the kingdom set up some indicators for travelers, in this case it was a small camping area in a clear with a small stream of fresh water running near of it.

    "The magic beasts are too active in the second part of the forest, I suggest we camp here at least until 6:00 AM, what do you think?", the driver of the Enoch family spoke out loud, but the caravan only stopped once the two carriages in the center stopped advancing.

    Taking that as a yes, the other carriages also stopped, the nobles came out of their carriages to stretch their legs and the drivers hurried up to settle a camp.

    The only ones who didn''te out where Aisha, the Risha sisters and the woman in the other carriage, but the peak Arch rank driver did lend the others a hand.

 Chapter 280 A Strange Mission From The System (Part 1)

    With all the drivers including the peak Arch rank cooperating, the camp was soonpletely set up, they set up a perimeter with traps to dy enemies in case of an ambush, some basic formations to hide the camp from magic beasts and also a bonfire.

    Only then the nobles got out of their carriages, five guys and a girl all of them seemed to be in their early twenties and all of them were five-star realm mages.

    Inside of the carriage Aisha looked at the Risha sisters before saying.

    "I think there are still a couple of hours more before Daimon wakes up, how about we stretch or legs a bit?".

    The Risha sisters exchanged some gazes before they nodded, though the carriage Daimon bough was wayfortable than normal ones due to the sofa bed, after nearly ten hours of travel they still needed to stretch their bodies and get some fresh air.

    "Mm".

    The door of the carriage opened and the nobles''s attention was immediately drawn towards it, since the moment thew saw that carriage ignoring a main branch descendant of one of the four founding families, the ckfin family to be more urate, they were curious about who might be travelling in that carriage.

    But the result was different to what they expected, the driver that earlier talked with Daimon expected to see a maning out of the carriage instead of Aisha and the Risha sisters.

    ''Well, it seems that young master¡­ surely knows how to enjoy life'', thought the driver before he approached Aisha.

    "Excuse me young misses, I remember having exchanged a few words with a young man earlier, or was I maybe speaking with the senior that is watching over you?".

    "Ourpanion is training inside of the carriage, we wanted to get some fresh air in the meantime".

    As the driver was about to invited them to join at the circle near the bonfire, the door of the other carriage also opened.

    "Y-You are¡­".

    The driver who was the first one to turn to see the personing from the other carriage, was speechless for a second.

    It was a girl in her middle twenties, with a tall figure of about 1.8 meters, she had a healthy pale skin with a slight pink tone, long dim blue hair that cascaded down her hips, a pair of fin like ears but different to the ones Daimon and the girls had seen so far, sky blue eyes and on top of that, she had a pair of horns simr to the ones of a deer but made of a material simr to coral, with a crystal like color, as for her get up, she was wearing a long light blue dress with white tones here and there.

    But while the woman was indeed a stunning beauty, she couldn''t overshadow nor Aisha or the Risha sisters, what truly made the other nobles be in awe was the identity of the girl.

    "We greet princess Delphini!", all the nobles, drivers included ced their right hand on their chests and bowed their heads, to greet the girl who turned out to be someone rted to the royal family.

    Aisha raised an eyebrow, she also leafed through the book that Daimon got from the information store, and the royal family of the Clear Water kingdom was supposed to be all from the White Royal Shark race.

    On the other hand, there was indeed a Delphini family, one of the old noble houses formed by the Crystal Dolphin race.

    Aisha then realized what happened, the family of the king and all his descendants were members of the White Royal Shark race, but his wife and probably concubines weren''t, so apparently the current queen was from the Delphini family, and this girl in front of them was her little sister bing a princess due to that.

    Of course, she wasn''t in the line of session of the royal family, but the fact that she was rted to the queen didn''t change, a princess for association so to speak.

    The girl noticed that Aisha and the Risha sisters didn''t react the same way, but she didn''t take it personal, they were supposed to be part of the neo noble faction and they didn''t respect any tradition, the only thing they paid attention to was strength.

    "Please raise your heads, we aren''t in a formal event", the girl''s voice was gentle and soft, bringing those who heard it a soothing sensation.

    The other nobles obeyed but one of them, the one who imed to be from the Rizar family still couldn''t help but ask.

    "Princess Mellie, pardon my intromission, but shouldn''t you be at the Crystal reef city under the protection of the city lord given the current situation of the kingdom?".

    Listening to the words of a random noble, the driver who acted as the bodyguard of the princess, inwardly sighed.

    But the girl shook her head.

    "No, if I let this chance to travel through the kingdom slip past me, who knows when will I get another one, don''t treat me like a princess but a fellow noble and that''s all".

    Needless to say, but the other nobles found the situation strange, a princess just randomly appeared in their group, on the other hand that exined why that guy from the ckfin family was so keen on apanying her.

    "If that what the princess wants, then we''ll oblige, please join us for dinner, I prepared some of the dishes that the restaurant of my family offers, the four sisters over there, feel free toe if you want to", the only girl in the group of nobles invited them to have dinner together.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    A couple of minutester they were all sitting across the bonfire sharing dinner, the girl from the Delieri family who name was Aida, wasn''t lying, the food she prepared was quite delicious, reaching the same level of the restaurant in the Sea Dream hotel, which was a lot to say considering she wasn''t an expert chef.

    "Wow, I once heard a cousin of mine saying that having a friend from the Delieri family is a blessing, but I thought he was just overreacting, but miss Aida has opened my eyes", the guy from the Damar family, Tyron, was pretty straightforward, but the other nobles did agree with him.

    "Mm, my older sister told me that the royal chef was instructed bydy Delieri, but not many people know about it", to the other nobles''s surprise the princess easily blended in the group, unlike what they expected she was pretty easy to get along with, if anything she wasn''t too talkative.

    But she was overshadowed by Aisha and the girls who limited to hear the conversation and eat their meal.

    The other nobles didn''t try to meddle with them, because neo nobles were openly against the old noble families, and they had a princess from one of them right in front of them, it was already good enough that they weren''t at each other''s throat.

    Once everyone had their fill, the Arch ranks who were escorting them had their turn, and then everyone prepared to go to sleep, the men prepared tents in front of their carriages, while the girls all entered their carriages.

    "I''ll take the first round, we''ll change the night watch in two hours", Sergio Rizar offered to take the first turn of the guard and then everyone went to sleep as it was past 11:00 PM, the Arch ranks all stayed awake around the bonfire, while they were the ones in charge of the surveince, they didn''t interfere.

    This travel their respective young masters were doing was supposed to be an eye opener, it was for them to gain experience in the real world, and they had fulfilled one of the many goals, since they learned one of the many important lessons¡­ there is always someone stronger.

    Inside of the carriage, Aisha and the Risha sisters amodated on the sofa bed and after saying goodnight they turned off the lights and went to sleep.

    "Now that I think about it, if Daimon was awake, he would be sleeping next to us¡­ right?", mumbled Leslie with the lights off.

    The other girls justughed and after some random chatting silence fell in the carriage as a sign that they have entered thend of dreams.

    ¡­

    While the girls were calmly sleeping, Daimon whose mind was inside the special space the Lineage Temple wasn''t having such an easy time.

    "Ahh, damn it, Evangeline I''m going to punish you once I''m out of this damn ce!", Daimon who was running suddenly jumped to the side, avoiding by the skin of his teeth a blue stream.

    "Booom!", although the attack didn''tnd on him, he was blown away a couple of hundreds of meters due to the strong impact that even raised one-hundred-meter waves, as soon as he was about tond, he saw the water splitting and changing its shape into sharp needless.

    Daimon who used blink to avoid the attacks, remembered how things got like this.

    The time in this ce didn''t work the same as the real world, so while on the outside it has only been about ten or so hours, it has been ten days here.

    At the beginning of the trial, Daimon had to fight with strange shark with ck bone ques covering its body like an armor, but although it looked threatening, its strong point was that suppressing capacity, so after a couple of hours, Daimon managed to melt the armor using Demon Light and killed it.

    But then as he was about to celebrate his victory, the unmistakable sound of a notification stopped him from doing so.

    [Congrattions to the host for having cleared the first part of the trial "Blood Suppression" has been acquired, the second part of the trial "Commander of the sea" will start now, the more the hoststs, the better the result will be (historical maximum eleven days), good luck]

    Daimon didn''t think too much about the second part of the trial and he epted it, what followed next was beyond his imagination.

    First the shark that he killed regenerated and started chasing Daimon, however this time he wasn''t able to damage it, and instead had to dodge or cancel its attacks while making sure the shark didn''t catch him.

    The only problem is that with each hour that passed another sea creature spawned out of nowhere and joined the chase, so as of current, Daimon was being chased by about 240 something sea creatures of different sizes and shapes, but all of them had the same strength as the initial shark.

    So, Daimon has been running through the endless sea, being chased by a couple of hundreds of middle stage Lord ranked magic beasts, the trial would only end once he is eighter captured or "killed", luckily his mana reserves were virtually endless, so he has been able to keep moving at a high speed or use blink when needed.

    Still, some of the attacks brushed him, ripping part of his clothes from time to time, so he was quite haggard at this point.

    Daimon suddenly let his body fall down, barely avoiding the horn of narwhal, which would have impaled his back of he didn''t react on time, but then with his eyes looking at the water, he saw a swordfishing from below.

    "Fuck off!", Daimon who was pretty angry at this point, covered his fist with metal mana and punched the swordfish sending it flying a dozen of meters, before he continued running.

    ''Just one more day¡­ Evangeline I''m going to smack your ass once I''m out of here'', he swore in his heart, why you ask, well while apparently Evangeline couldn''t hear him, she could see him, and he could swear his infinity eyes caught a glimpse of a blurred figure with a bucket of popcorn watching the whole thing.

 Chapter 281 A Strange Mission From The System (Part 2)

    About half an hour after most of the nobles went to sleep, the atmosphere in the forest suddenly changed.

    "Mm?".

    The Arch ranks all noticed there was something off, and then a cold mist raised from the ground, obstructing the view, it only stopped spreading across the forest when it hadpletely blocked the camp from the rest of the world.

    The peak Arch rank was the first to react.

    "We are under attack, make a circle around the camp and don''t lower your guard!", the peak Arch rank seemed to have a decent military background as he soon took the leading role.

    "Boom!", loud explosions what illuminated some spots of the nowpletely mist flooded forest, could be seen from afar.

    The arch rank from the Damar family, raised an eyebrow recognizing the areas where those shes of light kept appearing.

    "Those are the traps set by my young master, whatever they are, they areing without any care for their lives".

    At this point the nobles in their tents and carriages had already woken up, including the princess, Aisha and the Risha sisters, who noticed themotion outside.

    Liliana brought the ice dome where Daimon was cultivating with her, of course she changed the properties of her ice so that others couldn''t see from the outside

    The peak Arch rank frowned and then a realization hit him like a truck, he jumped to the center of the camping area and shouted.

    "All the youngsterse next to me; guards take a few steps backwards!".

    Noticing the situation was getting quite serous, everyone was quick in their feet, and the very second everyone was in the position the peak Arch rank took out a small blue marble and threw it to the ground.

    Then a light blue-transparent membrane spread across the camp, just in time to block what seemed to be a spearing from within the mist.

    "ng!", the sound of metals colliding echoed through the forest, but the "spear" couldn''t pierce through the protection created by that blue marble, but from the point of contact there was a green liquid oozing on the ground creating sizzling sounds upon contact

    Soon the owner of that "spear" became visible to the ones inside of the protection.

    "What the hell is that?", shouted the nobles.

    In front of then, there was a strange ck creature, its body had a half moon shape with two different pairs of tentacles ones short and the othersrge with spiked ends, thetter were that "spear" that shed against the protection, it had one eye in the middle of what should be its head and it had scales all over its body, making it look like the result ofbining a jellyfish with a reptile of some kind.

    Even Aida who is pretty knowledgeable about the magic beasts of the Clear Water kingdom, was at a loss right now, what they did know was that the creature was up to no good, since it kept trying to stab its way into the protection.

    It wasn''t her fault though, the other Arch ranks were as lost as her, the only exception was the peak one, who was working as the bodyguard of the princess, and judging by his grim expression, the answer wasn''t something he liked to know.

    "That is a Mist Horror, a creature from one of the forbidden parts of the Maelstrom Sea, and that can only mean¡­ some bastards from the Stingray Devil pirates are eyeing us right now".

    As soon as the peak Arch rank finished speaking, a hoarse male voice came from within the forest.

    "Kekekeke, a survivor from the Hazzlig incident, now that''s an even rarer sight than pirates appearing ind, if I say so myself, don''t you agree boys!".

    "You are right boss, there was one in a couple of thousands who managed to escape with the tail between the legs after all".

    "Hahahah!".

    Other voices including some loudughs also came from all the directions, making it obvious that they were surrounded.

    The peak Archmage gritted his teeth, and the princess was surprised to see her bodyguard, a veteran from the navy of the kingdom losing his temper, something she hasn''t seen in all the time he has been protecting her.

    "Uncle Spencer, what is that incident they talking about?".

    The peak Archmage noticed he wasn''t acting properly and he calmed down immediately.

    "It''s not something the young miss should be aware off, as it was ordered to us, from the very Lord Trident Marshal to keep it to ourselves¡­ but I guess none of that matters now".

    ''In case this old man doesn''t make it out alive this time'', he mentally added before saying.

    "As you all know, nobles have the ability to tame sea magic beasts to a certain extent, the capacity, races and quantity differs from one noble house to another, being the founding houses the strongest in that aspect as they can tamete-stage Mortal realm magic beasts with years of training of course".

    "The royals on the other hand, every now and then have the capacity to directly control a sea magic beast, from the moment they are born, but this is an extremely rare situation so much that only the king and his direct descendants are known to be able to do this, and it''s not all the generations".

    "But that belief was shattered in front of me when I was a greenhorn in a fleet that explored the wrong cave, mist covered everything, then we heard sshing sounds and the next thing I knew was that 90% of the presents had their heads and chests tore apart by spear like limbs".<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    "The three vice admirals in the fleet joined hands and blew everything away to take whoever was still alive, two of them gave their lives to leave the third one and about ten survivors to escape¡­ the worst defeat in the history of the navy".

    "A couple of dayster we got a letter with the seal of a stingray saying the Stingray Devil pirate crew was born, using the blood of twote-stage Mortal experts and thousands of other officers and soldiers".

    "Being strict about the capacity we the mermen race have, we can only control sea magic beasts, but the ones that live in the Maelstrom Sea are practically all mixed blood, the rumored captain of the Stingray Devil pirates imed to be a hybrid of a merman and a skelefiend¡­ with the ability to control a whole race of aerial magic beasts".

    "Mist Horror¡­", mumbled the princess.

    The peak Archmage nodded in silence, before he added.

    "Out of the ten that survived, only three remain, I''m the only one that overcame the fear caused by those things, and in honor to the vice admiral Ronz who gave his life to save mine, I fought my way to the peak of the Mortal realm".

    *p*p*p

    "What a lovely story, but you forgot to tell how afraid was the navy to keep exploring the Maelstrom Sea, so they signed the "Hazzlig" treatment, in honor to our boss, so that none of you would ever approach our little training grounds ever again hahaha".

    The same voice that spoke before mocked Spencer after listening to the story.

    Spencer felt the rage filling his whole body, but this wasn''t time for that.

    "What the hell do the Stingray Devil pirates want in the Clear Water kingdom, that idiot captain of yours assured that we stayed out of his trashcan, but that also meant you wouldn''t approach our territory!".

    ¡­

    A sepulchral silence fell in the area before the same voice of before answered.

    "Well, you know the say, there are no eternal enemies just eternal benefits, we have reached an agreement with those old boneheads, with the low price of a few heads from you fish bastards, we''ll get a good opportunity".

    Spencer who had started to built up his mana for a strong spell, followed the conversation.

    "Knowing you bastards, you wouldn''t be talking with us if we were your target, so what do you want with us?".

    "Well, unfortunately for you, the heads we need are those from all the nobles that are travelling to attend that banquet, so while you old fishmen are having tea parties, we''ll get rid of all your young generation kekeke".

    "And as a plus, we ended up finding some nice cuties to spend some time, hell the gem of the Crystal Dolphin family is as beautiful as the rumors say".

    "That other brat tried to act all tough, but as soon as he saw the Mist Horrors he cooperated and gave away your group, he bought the right to keep his head in exchange for that little princess, ah of course he mentioned there were women worth a second gaze, and damn he was sure!".

    Spencer spat on the floor and then his mana exploded out of his body, apparently mermen had the different affinities instead of only water, because he was surrounded by mes right now.

    The mes illuminated the whole ce and surprisingly the mist was driven back, although it was just a bit, it was enough to reveal the many pirates sitting on the branches of some trees around the camp.

    But then a scene that was enough to sent shivers down the spines of even an expert like Spencer appeared, besides the first Mist Horror that was still trying to get inside the protection handed to him by the father of the princess, a Half Ster rank, there were another two lurking in the mist.

    The piratesughed and then they all jumped from the branches revealing their numbers.

    "e and two early-stage peak mortal experts, plus three Mist Horrors¡­ damn it".

    Knowing that a fight was impossible to avoid, the other Arch ranks took out their weapons, and prepared themselves.

    "Take care of the pirates, I will hold the Mist Horrors¡­ young miss It''s been a pleasure to serve you, this marble was given to me by your father, so he will being here now that I have used it, but the barrier won''tst long if those things keep attacking it".

    The leading pirateughed onest time and then shook his head.

    "I wouldn''t worry about that, the whole forest has been blocked, so that help signal didn''t fulfill its purpose, no one will being, surrender and maybe we''ll let some of you live, who knows, the performance of those misses might soften our hearts hahaha!".

    Spencer didn''t pay attention to the taunts of the pirate, instead he turned to see two of the early-stage Arch ranks.

    "You two, while we hold the enemies, fly as fast as you can, get to a ce that isn''t blocked and call for help, here this is a direct contact to a Half Ster expert".

    The two that got the device handed by Spencer sighed, but they nodded.

    "It''s been three thousand years since that day and the aching in my fists hasn''t decreased at all, at the very least I''ll take some of you down with me".

    With thosest words, all the Arch ranks jumped out of the protection and shed with their respective opponents, the two middle Arch ranks went against the leading pirate, while Spencer attacked the three Mist Horrors, the others each chose a pirate to fight, or flew away to get help.

 Chapter 282 A Strange Mission From The System (Part 3)

    "Chase after them, they can''t break through the istion array so easy!".

    The leading pirate saw two of the bodyguards flying in different directions, and random patterns and he ordered some of his subordinates to follow them.

    "Where the hell do you think are you going".

    "Humph, stay here for this senior!".

    All the pirates were blocked by the bodyguards, so that they couldn''t chase after theirpanions.

    "Damn it, Mist Horrors get rid of these pests!", the leading pirate saw his subordinates being blocked and he tried to order the Mist Horrors to kill all the early-stage Mortal bodyguards.

    "Your opponent is me you fucking monsters".

    "Booom!".

    A line of fire blocked the path in front of the Mist Horrors, and before the things could react, Spencer had hit them all with his spear sending them flying.

    "Don''t let them go after the others, I''ll hold those things".

    After giving onest order, Spencer flew away, not without sending a mana transmission right to the ears of his young miss.

    ''Princess, if the situation demands it, don''t hesitate and use "that" ¡­ you can''t die in this ce no matter what''.

    ''Don''t say that uncle, sister wille you just need to resist until then, then these pirates will pay for this''.

    Spencer inwardly sighed at the positiveness of the princess, but didn''t say anything else.

    Inside of the barrier, the nobles all had dead serious expressions on their faces, the princess included.

    "That bastard from the ckfin family, if I make it out of this alive, I will skin him alive", Sergio Rizar, spat on the ground disgusted by the fact that they were betrayed by someone from the founding noble houses, the same that act as the pirs of the kingdom.

    And on top of that, it was someone from the ckfin family, the ones in charge of the prisons in all the kingdom.

    "His majesty must get a word of this, if the young master of the ckfin family is this much of a coward, then they aren''t worthy of holding the seat of the Minister of Security", added Tyron Damar.

    Aida looked at Mellie and then asked what was in her mind.

    "Princess, pardon my rudeness, but as a royal per association you should have a lifesaving talisman, I know it because my mother in her youth happened to be in the caravan with her majesty the queen and she used it".

    Mellie grabbed a pendant she had hanging on her neck and caressed it with her hands, before saying.

    "I''m sorry I don''t have that, ording to the rules of the kingdom, besides the royal prince and princesses, I other words the direct descendants of the king, all the others can only have one lifesaving talisman at the time¡­ and I can''t use mine".

    Aida and the other nobles looked at the troubled princess and they knew she must have a good reason to it, after all if she was able to use her lifesaving talisman all this situation wouldn''t have even started from the very beginning.

    "Not having a Half Ster rank in the family is surely a pain in the ass", said Tyron, all the second-grade families had at mostte peak stage Mortal experts guarding the fort.

    Originally, besides the royals and the founding families, only the old noble faction had Half Ster rank experts in their files, but that changed when the neo noble faction raised, tired of being treated like seconds, low ranked nobles and evenmoners became battle maniacs putting their lives on the line until they either died or broke through.

    The result was the formation of a faction strong enough to be on par with the old noble faction and the founding families, something unseen before, of course they legitimated themselves by joining the army and contributing to the kingdom, gaining merits until they got noble titles from the royal family.

    The current king saw their potential and allowed them to grow, because they didn''t pursue political power, they just wanted to be stronger¡­ and of course rub their achievements on the faces of the old nobles.

    Thetter thought made everyone remember there was another party here, one that hasn''t shown any worries nor said anything about it.

    The princess turned to see Aisha and the Risha sisters, which were all calmly waiting besides the ice dome that contained Daimon.

    "We need all the help possible; can you call the senior that is watching over you?", she asked with a slight tinge of urgency in her voice.

    The Risha sisters stared at each other not sure about how to answer, the only one from their group that could face those things outside the barrier was that strange guy, Horals.

    "The only one that has that authority is ourpanion, so you''ll have to wait for him toe outside,", Aisha was in charge and unlike these sheltered nobles that were experiencing a life and death situation for the first time, she as a former Archmage knew that the best way to keep your head attached to your body in a crisis was to be calm.

    The princess bit her lip thinking that they were just shrugging her petition because she is part of the old noble families, and on top of that she was being apanied by the guy that betrayed them.

    "Aghhh!", a sudden pained scream drew everyone''s attention to outside of the dome.

    They turned to see the current battle that has devastated the forest, although it hasn''t been that long, and then they found the origin of the scream.

    One of the two middle stage peak Mortal bodyguards who was holding the leading pirate, got hurt, and now they were being pushed back.

    "Old Ricardo¡­", the guy from the Venerel family, Fernando, saw his bodyguard parrying one of the attacks of the pirate to save the other and he clenched his fists while swearing to take down the guy who sold them.

    Aisha walked towards one of the walls of the barrier and touched it, her hand easily bypassed as its purpose wasn''t to trap those inside, but keep those outside from entering, meaning that since those Arch ranks left the protection, they had no other choice but to fight for their lives.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    "If you want to help, thene here", Aisha called all the nobles to approach them, before she nodded at Liliana.

    With a wave of her hand Lilia created a cube of ice covering them, which didn''t escape from the eyes of the pirates.

    "Look, those are the nobles you are risking your lives for, they are cowering in fear just after seeing a bit of blood kekeke".

    The leading pirate didn''t miss the chance to mock the bodyguards.

    ''Humph coward fish bastards, I wonder what those two guy''s faces would be once they reach the end of the forest just to find the little surprise, I left for them'', he thought.

    Inside of the ice cube the nobles listened to the pirates mocking them and they weren''t happy about it.

    "Miss, why did you do that, those bastards are lowering the morale of our side, as we speak".

    Aisha raised an eyebrow, maybe because this is a kingdom but she noticed the nobles here are not fond to the rules of the world, for example she could tell they were really surprised when that ckfin guy sold them to save his own skin.

    "The only way to help them is to take those pirates by surprise, in a high ranked battle a distraction of a fraction of a second can mean a death or victory".

    "So shut up and gather as much mana as you can for your better spell, we will only have one shot, and we''ll use it against their leader, earth element users make him lose his bnce, then everyone else attack his knees and lower back, understood?", Aisha''s voice was indisputable.

    The nobles were dumbfounded, Aisha went from having a calm and gentle aura, to a warlike aura simr to those who had fought thousands of battles.

    ''I guess it''s to be expected from one of those battle maniacs", they all thought.

    Still, they followed Aisha''s orders and gathered their mana, even the princess did it, revealing that she was actually a Lord ranked mage.

    While Aisha, Leslie and Yvonne also prepared one of their stronger spells, Liliana just kept injecting mana in the cube, to mask the sudden surge of mana inside of it.

    Aisha looked at a specific direction and waited for the perfect moment.

    "Now!", with Aisha''s order, Liliana dispelled the ice cube and then all the nobles used their respective spells.

    The first one to attack was actually the princess, swung her finger in the air a couple of times as if she was an orchestra director, as her fingers moved, she drew some notes on the air, before she yed them,

    "Restriction Waltz~", Mellie''s voice might be soft, but the leading pirate suddenly repelled the two bodyguards he was fighting with and covered his eyes, but then before he could react a barrage of many different spells hit him.

    "Landslide".

    "Rock Barrage".

    "Quicksand".

    "Water Jet".

    "Kelp Spike".

    "Dark Bolt".

    "Icicle".

    "Fire Spear".

    "Thunder Arrow!".

    "You fucking pests¡­ aghh damn it!", the leading pirate was taken by surprise, he stopped covering his ears and paid the price as his vision blurred, due to the high-pitched sound that was assaulting his eardrums.

    Then his feet lost their support and he slipped, and a ton of different attacks hit his knees and lower back, but the one that actually hurt him was a white line of light that hit him right in his spine, his clothes blocked most of the attack and yet he felt that a patch of his skin was burning.

    The bodyguards saw the opportunity and jumped into the action, they both aimed at the chest of the leading pirate, but thetter managed to move to dodge, but he was a second toote.

    "Aghhh!", a loud scream once again echoed through the battlefield, but this time the ones that turned to look for the origin of it were the pirates, because they recognized the voice.

    "Boss!", the pirates saw that their boss got his right arm cut off by his opponents and they retreated back to block them.

    The leading pirate''s eyes were bloodshot, he saw his severed armying on the ground near the barrier but as he was about to grab it, it was sent flying by a line of white light,nding far from them in the forest, probably burnt due to the explosion.

    The pirate saw the origin of thatst attack, it came from the fingers of a tall silver haired girl in her early twenties inside the barrier.

    "YOU!", the pirate felt a blood vessel popping on his neck, growing an arm is way harder than reconnecting one, judging by the explosion although his arm should still be in one piece, since it was attacked with a strong lightning spell, chances are, the nerves are fried now, rendering it useless.

    Aisha snorted.

    ''Serves you right, setting your eyes in my friends and wife candidates of my darling humph''.

 Chapter 283 A Strange Mission From The System (Part 4)

    Since the pirates regrouped, the bodyguards did the same, the man called Ricardo took advantage of this little break to bandage his wound.

    "Thanks for having my back, old man¡­ once we get out of this ce let me invite you a drink", the other middle stage peak Mortal bodyguard had a troubled expression.

    He was the youngest out of all the bodyguards, and got too confident in how they were holding back the leading pirate, the attack that the old Ricardo blocked using his arm, would have cut his neck, so if it wasn''t for that, he would have been dead right now.

    "You better open an ount kid", the old Ricardo chuckled, and the tense atmosphere lessened, they weren''t sure to make it out of this alive, so a bit humor didn''t hurt.

    At the other side of the battlefield, the pirates tried to help their leader get up just to be pushed away by him.

    "Get off me you bastards, I''m not weak enough to be whining just because of a severed arm!".

    The other pirates had hard to read expressions but they did obey their leader.

    ''Humph, don''t believe I don''t know what you are thinking, you all are just looking for a chance to steal my position'', thought the leading pirate.

    In the Stingray Devil pirates strength was the golden rule, for one to get a higher position, one must kill the one who hold it before, so of course this pirate who once killed the captain of his subdivision, to get this position didn''t have doubt that his subordinates will strike him down if he shows weakness.

    The leading pirate then looked at the east and west areas of the forest, from where constant waves of mana kept spawning from time to time, meaning the two bodyguards that left the battlefield were trying to break through the istion array that covered the forest.

    The leading pirate then grinned, with bloodshot eyes, before his subordinates could react, he grabbed one by its neck and then ripped its throat with a single bite.

    The other subordinates simply got away without trying to help theirrade who was desperately fighting back, and they surrounded their leader, blocking the bodyguards, the screams of the pirate only stopped when the leaderpletely torn his flesh apart with his mouth.

    Gulping soundsbined with the crunch of bones being crushed from time to time, echoed through the area, making the nobles and even some of the bodyguards to feel sick.

    "What the hell is he doing", seeing the leading pirate eating the throat of his subordinate, made Aida''s stomach revolt, she covered her mouth trying to not puke.

    The other nobles weren''t any better, but they managed to show it less than Aida, the Risha sisters just had disgust written all over their faces, andstly Aisha who was indifferent to the scene.

    As a vampire she has seen some of the cruellest undead eating their prey alive, or the demons sacrificing others, and although she despised them, she didn''t care about it as long as it didn''t affect her friends and more importantly, her family.

    ''Wait sacrifice¡­'', a realization hit Aisha like a truck.

    "Why the hell aren''t you attacking him!", the bodyguards who were using the time to catch up their breath, heard Aisha yelling at them from within the barrier and they immediately tried to break the blockade of the other pirates.

    Unfortunately, the other pirates right now had no care for their lives, and just focused on not letting them pass, probably because they knew that if they failed their task, the next ones to die will be them instead of the enemies.

    Suddenly an eerie sensation filled the whole area, before a huge pressure made both the bodyguards and the other pirates fell on their knees.

    "Blegh!", both the bodyguards and the pirates vomited blood due to the sudden change in the atmosphere.

    "HAHAHA, so this is what having a foot in the Ster rank feels like, it''s an amazing power!".

    The leading pirate focused his attention on his severed arm, and then with his shoulder as the base a new limb grew there, but instead of a human arm it was tentacle with a spear-like end simr to the ones of the Mist Horrors.

    "B-Boss, your pressure is affecting us too¡­", one of the pirates couldn''t resist the pressure anymore, but before he could finish his sentence, the spear like tentacle of the leader pierced his neck and then the thing changed to be a spiked tooth mouth, simr to some of the skelefiends Daimon and the others fought back at the first level of the magic ruin.

    "Fosch!", other pirate saw his friend being turned into minced meat, while the arm devoured him and he yelled with an outraged boss.

    "Oswald, what the hell are you doing, we are on the same fucking team", the other pirates alsoined by the actions of their leader, one sacrifice should have been enough, after that, he could just consume the bodyguards, that was the risk they epted, but the leader wasn''t following the agreement.

    "Shut up, I know you were looking for a chance to cut my throat, so now all of you will be nutrients so that this senior can reach the Half Ster realm, then I will be the captain kekeke".

    The leader pirate Oswald had an intoxicated expression as his arm devoured his subordinate, the other pirates felt despair, while he hasn''t reached the Half Ster rank, he went from someone who recently reached thete stage of the peak Mortal realm, to someone about to take the next step.

    "Run!".

    The situation changed so fast the bodyguards couldn''t react on time, but the pirates did, so they flew in all the directions trying to get away from their former leader who now wanted to consume them.

    Oswald saw them running and he licked his lips, showing that his tongue had berger just like the one of the skelefiends, but at the same time different.

    "Wait here like good boys, I will go take a little entry", Oswald became a sh of ck smoke that followed the pirates, leaving the bodyguards in shock behind.

    ¡­

    After a moment of silence, the oldest bodyguard besides Spencer who looked younger due to his high realm, in other words the old Ricardo, was the first one to react.

    "Young master, this old man has served your father in secret for a couple of hundreds of years¡­ please forgive me for I think this time I won''t be able toplete the mission".

    With a solemn expression Ricardo turned to see the other bodyguards before saying.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    "I don''t know what did that guy do, but I do know this, we are no longer in a position to hold him back, and if this continues, we''ll only be consumed by him¡­ so I guess I don''t need to tell you what to do right?".

    The other bodyguards looked at their respective young masters and then bowed towards them.

    "It''s been an honor", they all shouted.

    "Booom!".

    Almost at the same time, a figure fell from the sky not too far from the bodyguards, who immediately prepared to detonate themselves, but the one who emerged from the crater wasn''t Oswald, but Spencer.

    For a split of a second the nobles had a faint trace of hope, but their expressions chaged as the saw Spencer''s current state.

    "Cough¡­ damn it, those fucking monsters refuse to die", Spencer coughed blood, he looked at his own body and sighed, there were scratches all over his arms, some kind of chemical burns on his right shoulder and left leg, and a hole in his lower abdomen.

    "What happened here, where are the pirates?", he had t put all his attention on the Mist Horrors, so he couldn''t even spare a second to see what the situation was like at the other battlefield.

    Ricardo proceeded to exin everything to Spencer, and his reaction was worth seeing.

    "What!".

    "He grew a limb simr to the one of a Mist Horror, god damn crazy bastard, he lost himself in a power he doesn''t control¡­ only fire can weaken Mist Horrors and mine isn''t strong enough to suppress those middle stage peak Mortal Horrors, and that guy is ate stage".

    "Hahaha, that''s right resign to your destiny and be a part of my power!", Oswald returned just in time to hear Spencer, his body was covered in blood from head to toe, and he was munching the arm of one of the pirates.

    Although the bodyguards knew they were no match for Oswald they immediately surrounded Spencer.

    "Senior, drink whatever potions you have, recover as much as you can, we''ll get you at least a few seconds, if we feel we are dying we''ll self-detonate, at the very least we''ll take that monster down with us, please make that ckfin bastard suffer in our stead".

    The air suddenly trembled forcing all the bodyguards with Spencer''s exception, down to the ground.

    "What a shame, the current you is too tired to pose a threat, and the others are trash, just quietly be my food kekeke", as Oswald spoke, more limbs simr to the ones of the Mist Horrors appeared on his shoulders and knees and all of them advanced at an insane speed towards the bodyguards.

    Spencer''s face paled but he managed to squeeze onest spell.

    "Meteor Rain!", huge fireballs fell from the sky exploding the tentacles away, and sending Oswald flying backwards a couple of kilometers while he screamed due to being covered in mes.

    But in exchange Spencer was left with practically zero mana and his body copsed on the ground.

    "That was all I had left, run try to break the barrier, only one of you needs to make it, once the queen feels the princess''s location, she''ll be her in a split of a second, hurry up¡­".

    "THAT HURT YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!!", Oswald returned earlier than what Spencer expected, he had patches of burned skin all over his body, but they soon changed into limbs simr to the ones of a Mist Horror, unfortunately Spencer spell only had about half of his maximum strength due to theck of mana.

    "Every one of you go to heel!", Oswald''s limbs advanced towards all the bodyguards who couldn''t move, due to the pressure, they unfortunately weren''t even able to detonate themselves, some of the limbs actually changed direction towards the barrier, and were able to open a crack on it.

    Mellie approached Aisha and the girls and spoke with her soft voice.

    "You are neo nobles right, I know you hate the old nobles and the founding families as a whole, I get that¡­ but uncle Spencer never epted a noble title, he used to be a soldier from the army just like you, please help him!".

    "Princess, you¡­", the other nobles saw Mellie bowing towards the ice dome, which up to this point they didn''t know who was contained inside, and they were in awe.

    But this wasn''t the moment for that, the male nobles quickly stood in front of the girls.

    ''We might not be able to stop them, but as men it would be a disgrace to die after women'', they thought.

    "Crack!", but then as if the world slowed down, everyone''s attention was drawn at a loud cracking noise, Oswald included.

    Not because he wanted to, but because the limbs that were attacking the ones inside the barrier, suddenly dried up and became dust.

    Then, all the remaining mist surrounding the camp was blown away, as a pir of white mes raised from the ground, shing against the istion formation one kilometer above them.

    "Scghrrrrr!", the Mist Horrors that wereing to help Oswald, suddenly screeched and then retreated¡­ not they ran way as if their lives depended on it.

    The nobles, including the princess focused in the pir of white mes, from within a figure became slowly visible.

    It was a silver haired youth wearing a mask that covered his eyes, and ck clothes.

    "Sorry for the wait".

 Chapter 284 A Strange Mission From The System (Part 5)

    Aisha saw her son''s current appearance and she raised an eyebrow, he was wearing the hollow suit, but that''s not what got her attention, but the overall sensation her son was giving off right now.

    ''Darling, what happened to you?'', Aisha''s voice made its way into Daimon''s mind through the mental connection.

    Daimon smiled in response, as the memories of the past hour or so yed in his mind.

    ¡­

    "Ahh damn it!", Daimon who was running from the sea magic beasts suddenly found a dead end, the seemingly endless sea was still there, but there was an invisible wall that prevented him from advancing.

    Daimon jumped back wards avoiding by the skin of his teeth a shark that came from below with its jaws ready to shred him to pieces, he then looked at his surroundings.

    With the pass of the time in the special space of the Lineage Temple, the magic beasts became more and more clever, there were six whose sizes were rmarkable among them.

    The first one was that shark that he fought from the very beginning the one with ck bone ques on its body, the second was another shark but this one was slimmer andrger also instead of ck most of its body was white, and light blue with a strange mark on its forehead.

    The third creature waspletely different, it was an immense jellyfish onerge enough to cover a whole ind, surpassing the size of all the other four giants, unfortunately its element was lightning so all its attacks were useless against Daimon, but it knew how to use its body to cut Daimon''s way more than once, allowing the other creatures tond their attacks on Daimon''s body from time to time.

    Then there was a turtle that who had the capacity to control ice, Daimon was able to push all the other magic beasts aside, using either his insanely high physical strength along with a metal element boost spell, or by using Demon Light to chase them away, but this turtle covered itself with a thickyer of ice, which was enough to protect itself from everything.

    Next continuing with the shark races, there was a hammerhead shark, with the capacity to give shape to the water to create different objects, spikes, walls, spears, Daimon had to dodge or destroy a lot of them along the way.

    Thest of the giant magic sea beasts was a whale shark, and while it looked the less threatening among the three giants, it had the troublesome ability to gather the water mana of its surroundings,pressing it and then shooting it in a stream, out of all the four its attack had the smaller range but it was the hardest to dodge, every time Daimon felt the mana surge, he immediately activated blink at least three times in a row to get away from the shockwave.

    Besides the five giants, there were other smaller but equally problematic magic beasts which stood from the rest, swordfish and narwhals which didn''t stop trying to open a hole in Daimon''s body, a dolphin which coordinated others to attack in group and was responsible for most of the wounds Daimon received from the smaller magic beasts, and a sea snake that kept ambushing Daimon by spiting poison at him from afar.

    Of course, there were other sea magic beasts, but those were the ones that Daimon noticed the most, because there was only of each of them, while the other magic beasts came in group.

    Daimon looked at his surroundings only to find himselfpletely surrounded, he looked at the clock of the mission and gritted his teeth, he still needed a couple of hours to break the record.

    It would have been easier to end the trial right now, he has gotten to the maximum registered point anyway, but something told him that if he didn''t go all in, he would regret it.

    And so, he found himself in a limitless of attacks from the magic beast all at the same time, forcing him to fight with teeth and w, dodging the lethal attacks and parrying the weaker ones with his own body or redirecting them.

    Then after about three hours of that, Daimon who waspletely drenched in blood slipped and one of the many tentacles of the jellyfish managed tond a solid attack on him.

    "ng!", the sound of metals colliding echoed through the whole area as Daimon''s body was sent flying all the way to the other side of the battlefield,nding on the head of the shark with the ck bone ques.

    The impact was so strong that even the shark was forced backwards, let alone Daimon who was now coughing feeling his skin itching due to the impact.

    "Damn it, that fucking hurt!".

    Daimon took a second to recover and then got up again, preparing himself to continue with the trial, but what weed him instead was the sight of countless magic beasts, lining up in front of him and next to him.

    The six giant creatures lined besides him, then the others in front of him, but all of them had a thing inmon, they were lowering their heads, as if they revered him, and then the sound that he has been waiting since about ten hours finally blessed him with its presence.

    [Ding]

    [Congrattions to the host for having cleared the second andst part of the trial "Commander of the sea", the rewards will be calcted now¡­]

    [The host has surpassed the historical maximum, the rewards hadpleted a cycle and reached a higher grade, the host can now choose from the following options:

    [Maximum reward (low grade)]

    [Low reward (middle grade)]

    [Random reward (test your luck)]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the disy of the system changed, simr to that time he got the reward which allowed him to bring Aisha back to life.

    "That''s the interface of the mission temple, you should have checked it earlier, but I guess it was to be expected that you were to be so excited about finally finding a lineage with roots decent enough to be assimted for the first time".

    Apparently, Evangeline was now able tomunicate with him again, in fact even Narasha reached this ce.

    "Daimon, let me heal you¡­", the sight of Daimon covered in wounds was new for Narasha, and the feelings that came along it were hard for her who recently started to understand romantic love, to process, but all she new is that she didn''t like to see Daimon in that state.

    Daimon shook his head, in a split of a second all the wounds disappeared and even his clothes returned to its original state.

    "It''s okay, this is not my real body so all these wounds were non-existent, but thanks for being worried about me, unlike a certain someone".<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    Narasha giggled, but she still stepped in for Evangeline.

    "Don''t be angry at Eve, she freaked out first when she noticed she couldn''t speak nor see you, only when you reached the second part of the trial, she calmed down~".

    "Hey, Nasha we need to speak about boundaries, what''s the point in telling me you won''t tell him¡­ just for you to give me in at the first opportunity", Evangeline sighed at her friend giving her away.

    Daimon chuckled and then pointed at the screens from the system.

    "We''ll have a nice conversationter, for the time being, can you tell me what does this lower and middle grade reward thing means?".

    Evangeline remained silent for a moment before saying.

    "I can''t disclose too much, but in short, you can take it that the lower grade means¡­ all what should be within the rank of knowledge you have, the difference is that being of the maximum quality means you won''t find it in the shop as these things are only avable as rewards, you can treat it as the "peak" of it so to speak".

    "Then the middle grade would be next level stuff, which aren''t avable even in the shop for the time being, it''s a low regard because the quantity of it would be far less what you would get if you chose the other option, as for the random I guess it exins itself and I wouldn''t rmend it, unless you have more than one reward pending to be imed".

    Daimon nodded; Evangeline''s exnation convinced him that his decision was the correct one.

    [The Low reward (middle grade) was chosen, processing¡­]

    [The information of the Lineage temple has been updated]

    [Current lineages acquired]

    [#&%$#: 1%]

    [Apex Predator: 1%]

    [Vampire: 10% concentration (Originally 100%) <!>]

    [ck Armored Shark: 10% concentration]

    [Drakolevia: 0.1% concentration <!>:

    [By surpassing the limits of the species in the second trial, the host has received a hint of its ancient root, "Commander of the sea" ¨¤ "Ruler of the sea"]

    [Ding]

    [The reward mission "Stealing from the hero", was added to the mission temple <!>]

    Daimon frowned, he opened the mission temple since that symbol was starting to get into his nerves, and after reading the only two missions he had avable he was speechless.

    "Oi, Eve is this your doing?", asked Daimon.

    Evangeline who wasughing throughout the whole thing, only stopped to answer a couple of secondster.

    "I told you, the system grows ording to your necessities and wishes, the missions are designed to challenge you, but ultimately they don''t go against your principles~".

    Daimon felt a headacheing his way, but then he had a hunch that someone was calling for him, and since he stopped being able to know what was happening outside after the situation with the crocodiles, he thought that it was probably Aisha and that meant something serious was ongoing.

    With just wishing it, he left the special space of the Lineage Temple, and then as soon as he opened his eyes, his body was full of energy, to the point that right now he felt the urge to fight.

    He looked downwards just to see he was practically naked, his clothes disappeared thanks to Demon Light at some point.

    ''Whatever, I need to use the hollow suit anyway'', he thought, with a wave of his hand, the suit covered his body and then as he stood up, Demon Light roared and ended up shooting itself through the ice dome reaching quite a high distance.

    All the previous might have taken some time to be exined, but for Aisha it was just a split of a second since she saw her son smiled.

    "Horals, Ritae out", since the battlefield waspletely silent, Daimon''s voice echoed through the area, then to all the present people surprise, a green gate made out of battle aura opened at Daimon''s right, while Aisha''s shadow projected thanks to the bonfire, extended all the way to Daimon''s left side.

    "Horals, greets the young master", the ck armored Horals came out of the green aura door, and immediately kneeled in front of Daimon.

    "Rita, greets the young master", from Aisha''s shadow, a woman emerged, she was about Liz''s height reaching 1.85 meters of height, had long ck hair, pale/grayish skin and dim gray eyes, as for her get up, she was wearing a ck detached sleeve dress that left part of her hips and legs visible, the dress was decorated with some skulls on the chest too, but what drew the attention of most of the people, including Oswald was¡­ that she was peakte Mortal mage, in other words a Peak Archmage and one that he couldn''t notice all this time.

    And that could only mean two things, first she wasn''t here to begin with, or second¡­ she was stronger than him!

 Chapter 285 A Strange Mission From The System (Part 6)

    The Risha sisters looked at Rita with curious eyes, she had pointy ears like most of the humanoid demon races, her skin tone was more akin to undead but her aura was simr to that of a beast race.

    It was hard to describe what she was, also she appeared from within Aisha''s shadow, which meant she has been with them the whole time.

    "Wouldn''t it have been easier if she came to help before?", mumbled Leslie.

    Aisha bitterly smiled, her son assigned Rita to be her bodyguard and she melded into her shadow, and she indeed was pretty strong but just like Horals, her personality was a bit¡­ unique.

    "I wasn''t lying, although she was here, I couldn''t make here out, only Daimon can make do it, since she is a bit too shy".

    Under the surprised eyes of everyone, after presenting her respect to Daimon, Rita''s body shivered for a couple of seconds, before she jumped to the ground.

    "I can''t, there is too many people looking at me young master~", then without saying anything else, Rita''s figure disappeared into Daimon''s shadow this time.

    Daimon sighed, weirded at the fact that his left arm, the one in charge to watch over his beloved mother, had scenic panic and didn''t want others to look at her.

    That''s why she hid in the shadows, both literally and figuratively, of course if Aisha''s life were to be in danger, she''ll interfere but she wouldn''t physically appear unless Daimon told her to.

    "Oi you useless mage, what the hell are you doing, young master requested your presence, as the mage of the court, you must oblige!",

    "Shut up bonehead, young master trusts me more than you, go die for a third time and be a dog".

    "What!", Horals nearly lost it, he took out his sword and tried to stab Daimon''s shadow, but the thing moved every time, avoiding the tip of the sword.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, when she wasn''t physically visible, Rita waspletely different, also she and Horals were really against each other, since the very moment they signed a contract with him, and when Horals noticed Rita''s starting point was higher than his, that was the start of a fight.

    He always scolded her for not perfectly fulfilling the orders of their "king", even when she got his favor in that aspect.

    "Enough you two, Horals, the barrier, Rita, smack that guy against the ground".

    "We listen and obey!", both Horals and Rita immediately stopped their quarrel, Horals became a sh of green light that crashed against the roof of the istion array, forming an explosion with the shape of a skull.

    Oswald felt the strong vitalitying from Horals''s battle aura and he felt sick, with his current body vitality was like poison.

    ''Damn it, I could hear the array starting to crack, and I''m still too far from breaking through, if that bitch of a queenes, I''ll be in deep shit, better make a run''.

    "But first of all, I''ll replenish my reserves with you!", all the tentaclesing out of Oswald''s body retracted and then the one that reced his arm, tried to pierce Spencer''s chest, since thetter was copsed on the ground due to overexerting his magic core.

    But then his twisted smiling expression froze in cold, when he had to jump backwards to avoid a spear like tentacle aiming at his neck.

    "What the hell now", Oswald turned to see the origin of the attack and he felt his throat dry, upon the sight of the three Mist Horrorsing his way.

    "What''s the idea you bastards, we have a deal!", apparently Oswald was to some extent able tomunicate with the Mist Horrors, at least before, because now the things weren''t answering him now.

    "Shadow Heart Puppeteer", Rita''s hands came from within Daimon''s shadow, as she casted her spell, one that allowed her to force her will into the bodies of the Mist Horrors¡­ at the cost of destroying them since her orders weren''t "natural", so the joints, and flesh were bound to tear.

    Essentially by the time Rita finish her spell, the targets would end up turning into a bloody mess, or that would have normally been the case, but as Spencer described, they healed practically immediately, making it really hard to kill.

    Although Rita refused from the bottom of her heart toe out of Aisha''s shadow, it isn''t as if she was justzing around, she took note of everything in case Daimon were to ask about itter on.

    While Oswald was being attacked by the three Mist Horrors, Daimon looked at the bodyguards who were still trying to process what was going on and he shouted.

    "What the hell are you doing, help yourpanion".

    The first one toe out of his daze was Ricardo, he grabbed Spencer and returned next to the barrier, Oswald''s tentacles tried to take Spencer away, but the Mist Horrors 3v1 blocked him from doing so.

    And to worsen things from him, Oswald heard a loud cracking noise followed by a green sh of light as the istion array that caused the nobles so much desperation, shattered to pieces.

    "Impossible, it hasn''t been even five minutes!", Oswald was about to go mad, leaving cracks on the outer part of the array is the mostmon thing, but he saw that ck armored guy destroying the whole thing after just a couple minutes since he appeared.<novelnext>  </novelnext>

    "Fuck this, I''m not biting the dust after getting so far", with thosest words, Oswald turned around and flew away as fast as he could.

    To everyone''s surprise, Daimon didn''t order the Mist Horrors to pursue Oswald and instead he told Rita to made the Mist Horrors approach him.

    The three Mist Horrors slowly but surely came all the way next to him, they tried to break free from Rita''s control but they couldn''t.

    Once they were in front of him, Daimon smirked and he ced his hand on the forehead of one of the three things, and then without any warning, the Mist Horror exploded in white mes.

    "Screeech!", a loud screaming sound came from mouth of the thing, but it couldn''t scape no matter how much it tried.

    The white mes were like a fierce animal, devouring its prey whole until there was nothing else to burn, in this case the whole Mist Horror became fuel for Demon Light, and no matter how much the thing tried to put out the mes, it just increased their strength.

    [Ding]

    Daimon smiled upon hearing the notification from the system.

    [The host has entered in contact with the host of the "Hero of Light System", and thetter has proven to be an enemy, so the system has created the "stealing" mission series, starting from now, when the host interferers with a situation where the Hero of Light would improve, the host will get a change to steal an opportunity from him].

    [Stealing from the hero (Clear Water Kingdom): the hero of light Adam was prepared the stage to findpanions and allies in the Clear Water kingdom, but its way was blocked by the host at a critical part of the event].

    [Objectives:

    [Be well known among the four dominant factions (2/16)]

    [It''s too early for the host to show he possesses the system to other system users, proceed with the mission without being rted to your public self (1/1)]

    [Make a great entrance like a hero (1/1)]

    [Win the beast hunt (0/1)]

    [Win the three-art tournament (0/1)]

    [Get the hidden gem to join your side (0/2)]

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Hero of Light (0/1)]

    ''I wonder if all the missions that guy gets, are like these¡­ I guess it fits such a showy bastard like him'', thought Daimon, he basically had to win over the poption to get his

    Daimon was about to kill the other two Mist Horrors, to see if he could extract their skills since he had no luck with the first try, but the princess stopped him from doing so.

    "Wait a minute please, getting a living specimen of that creature would help our kingdom to counter those hateful pirates¡­ could you spare one for us, of course there will be a properpensation for it".

    Daimon shrugged, he killed the second one and was lucky enough to get a skill from it, although he didn''t participate too much.

    "Mm?", everyone felt a change on the sky, the clouds that were covering the light of the moon were suddenly dispelled as a woman 50% simr to Mellie older, descended from the sky.

    Her aura was calm andposed, but that didn''t match the half beaten to death pirate she was grabbing by its neck.

    The woman had long light blue/ white hair, she was wearing a blue short top and a skirt, her two-piece attire was decorated with holden things here and there, unlike Mellie she didn''t have those crystal/coral deer horns, but besides that she looked like an older version of Mellie.

    "We greet, her honorable majesty!", the nobles who were already told beforehand by Spencer, knew the queen was going toe as soon as the istion array disappeared, so this time they reacted faster".

    The queen left the battered body of Oswald on the ground before she approached Spencer, only after being sure that he wasn''t dying but just tired, she approached the young nobles, the barrier had already disappeared at this point after all.

    The queen hugged her little sister in silence for a split of a second before letting go of her.

    She then looked at the next thing that caught her attention, Daimon and the girls who not only weren''t bowing to her, but they held captive a creature the kingdom has been trying to capture for studies.

 Chapter 286 Meeting The Queen (Part 1)

    The queen observed Daimon for a couple of seconds before she gazed at his shadow because there was literally a handing out of it, not even a secondter, she saw a ck armored knight descending from the sky to kneel in front of him.

    "It''s done young master; how do you wish to deal with those little rats that are hiding underground?".

    The "gift" Oswald left in preparation for the bodyguards that were trying to break out of the istion array, was actually two of his subordinates who were hiding underground.

    Their role ended up saving their lives as Oswald devoured the others, but was more inclined to get rid of Spencer before consuming them, still they did saw him bing a crazy monster, and hid themselves to the point of even stopping breathing and slowing down their heart beat.

    Unfortunately for them, whatever Horals had be/might be bing after signing the contract with Daimon, he was incredibly sensitive towards vitality, a really strange trait for someone who used to be a bone general, but that''s how things were.

    Before Daimon could answer and seeing that they were not paying her any attention, the queen softly cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, excuse me little friend, before anything let me give you my most sincere thanks for helping these little seeds that will grow to be the pirs of my Clear Water kingdom in the future".

    The queen remained silent for a moment, before under the surprised eyes of all the ones present in the area, she bowed her head towards Daimon.

    "As a queen I could always reward you with money, resources, noble tittles and all of that stuff¡­ but as an older sister I will never be able to repay you for saving my little sister, please ept this bow from me, not as a queen but as Ae Delphini, sister who wouldn''t have forgotten herself for not arriving on time".

    "M-Majesty, please raise your head!", all the nobles saw the queen bowing her head and they didn''t know how to react, especially because they noticed Daimon showed little to no reaction about it.

    Out of all the people that existed in their, the ones who where worthy of receiving a bow from the queen who was also a Half Ster rank mage, could be counted in the tens, and even among those, there were some who wouldn''t dare to ept such a heavy award.

    On contrast, in a rare asion, Horals and Rita both inwardly nodded.

    ''That''s how it should be, queens, empresses, goddesses, all of them should recognize the greatness of young master''.

    Mellie approached her sister and helped her sister raise her head, while she stole a gaze at Daimon.

    "Sis, I''m not saying I''m ungrateful, but I think we should discuss this in a more private ce, we also happen to have a little feud to solve with the son of the ckfin patriarch¡­".

    "Ahhh, what is this, let me goooo!", as Mellie was speaking about it, a battered figure came flying from the north, in other words from outside of the area that was isted.

    And that was not all, the figure was being chased by a man who had a panic-stricken expression, to everyone''s surprise it was none other than the guy from the ckfin family, the only difference was he now looked miserable.

    His ck armor was practically destroyed, with just some pieces still attached to his body, his hair was disheveled and he had wounds all over his legs and arms.

    With a dull sound, the guy''s bodynded on the ground at Daimon''s feet, before a woman''s voice came from Daimon''s shadow.

    "Young master, I captured this idiot who was camping in a cave waiting to be the "fisher" after we half killed each other, he had ns to harm the youngdies, just say the word and I''ll turn him into a pulp~".

    The bodyguard of the guy from the ckfin family felt as if his soul was leaving his body, early he was going to attack all the presents in order to save his young master¡­ until he noticed a familiar figure standing there with a frowned expression.

    ''It''s over, the queen loves her little sister the most, I need to at least get her to spare young master''s life'', thought the bodyguard, not because he had special loyalty to him, but because his father would kill him if something were to happen to his youngest son.

    "Excuse me, thedy in the shadows, you probably misunderstood my young master, if you leave him go, we can still be good friends¡­ otherwise, I''m afraid the Lord Duke won''t take this lightly".

    The bodyguard betted that at the very least the queen who was the strongest people present, wouldn''t side with an outsider, since Daimon didn''t even have gills nor any sea beast characteristic right now.

    "Aghh!", but to his surprise, he saw a ck armored knight suddenly stabbing his young master''s left knee, but instead of a bloody scene, the whole leg turned into a dry mummified one.

    "How dare you threaten my young master in front me!", the air around Horals started trembling as the ground below his feet cracked, due to the sudden increase in his weight, finally revealing that his attribute is metal.

    Even Rita''s head peeked out of Daimon''s shadow, she red at the bodyguard and with a wave of her hand, the right arm of the guy from the ckfin family started retorting, making him scream as the muscles, nerves and bones were tore apart.

    "His life now belongs to my young master, what he does with him is none of your business humph".

    "What did you say!", the bodyguard trembled due to the anger he was feeling right now, he turned to see the queen and then said.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "My queen, internal affairs must be solved internally, please help my young master".

    Ae red at the bodyguard and then tapped her pretty index finger on her thigh, the next thing the bodyguard knew was that his eardrums exploded.

    "Aghh", the bodyguard lost his bnce and copsed on the ground, but he couldn''t stay still and instead started rolling on the floor while he screamed.

    "Do you think I don''t know that little bastards sold my sister so that he could save his skin, a leg and an arm, are nothing inparison".

    Ae then looked at Daimon before saying.

    "That being said, I will appreciate if you could allow me to give this trash a better use, the ckfin Duke who has been acting high and mighty, will be more "cooperative" now¡­ of course I''m not nning on letting him off the hook no matter what, not after what he did".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed for a second behind the mask, as the voice of the queen directly reached his ears, so that only he could hear her saying.

    ''The ones who brew the Shark Blood liqueur, are the ckfin family, with how much the Duke loves his son, I can get you their main ingredient aspensation, also I can give you my word that slowly but surely he''ll get what he deserves, the same for those two pirates, what do you say little friend it''s a win-win situation?''.

    The others, with the only exception of Aisha only saw Daimon nodding, without being aware of the queen''s proposal, the Risha sisters on the other hand, had a hunch that it wasn''t as simple as that, because they know how protective is towards Aisha¡­ and them too.

    They didn''t doubt he was going to kill that guy for pushing them into the fire pit, so they were sure, things wouldn''t end just like this.

    "Thanks for yourprehension, my little sister is right, this is no ce to be at this hour, I know this travel is important, but I would like to help you all reach the Warhammer city with my help, there might be more of those pirates lurking in the shadows after all".

    The nobles didn''t even discuss it, they immediately epted it, it wasn''t a secret among the nobles that the queen had a ring that allowed her to appear at practically all the important cities and ces of the kingdom, and they were getting an invitation to experiment it first-hand.

    Daimon looked at the girls who were clearly annoyed that all this happened at night, at the next day after they had a good rest at the Sea Dream hotel, this would also save them all the travel and he had some things to discuss with the queen anyway.

    "We''ll also go".

    The queen smiled as she took out a ck pouch from her storage ring and handed it to Daimon.

    "That''s a restraining beast pouch, you can keep that creature there, so it doesn''t cause panic at the city".

    Daimon nodded, he couldn''t store the Mist Horror in the pouch he got for the flying fishes, as its grade only allowed it to ept Lord ranked beasts.

    Now that everything was settled, the queen used her mana to imprison the two pirates, and the pair of young master and bodyguard from the ckfin family, before everyone gathered around twenty meters of the queen, the ground then lit up with an array that originated from a ring she had on her left ring finger, and they all disappeared from the forest.

    ¡­

    While they were travelling through the dimensional tunnel, Daimon observed his surroundings and the first thing he noticed was that this was an artificial way to travel through the space, meaning that Half Emperors or Half Ster ranks, as they were known here, from these races, including the tribes, didn''t have the ability to use space shift.

    ''How curious, some don''t have mana sense and they also don''t have space shift, are they weak¡­ or are those from the Wonder Myriad ster chart abnormal'', he wondered, before a realization hit him like a truck.

    ''The ancient age'', there was a hole in the history of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart, which might exin why they had these capacities as a norm, but at the same time didn''t have one Emperor rank, while they existed in these new ces that have been popping out of nowheretely.

    Daimon could feel his heart pumping blood on his veins, and he couldn''t help but grin, getting Aisha''s attention.

    ''What happened darling, you seem pretty different since you left that ice dome, not only the hollow suit, but there is a change in you¡­ although I can''t pinpoint yet''.

    Daimon slightly shook his head before answering.

    ''It''s not that, things are getting interesting, also don''t worry I''ll help you get "familiar" with the new meter".

    "Mm~", Aisha smiled from ear to ear as she heard her son.

    Their little exchange went unnoticed by almost all the other people, the only ones who noticed there was something ongoing between them were the Risha sisters, they somewhat saw Daimon just exchanging a gaze with Aisha, and then she smiled as if she has won the lottery or something like that.

 Chapter 287 Meeting The Queen (Part 2)

    Unlike a natural dimensional tunnel created by using space shift, the one used by the queen did have some advantages though.

    For example, thew of space was so minimal that it didn''t affect them, meaning the ones travelling like this could stay conscious through the whole travel, and the weaker people wouldn''t get headaches and the like from it.

    ''I guess they had to make do with what they had'', Daimon didn''t forget about the elevator built in that hotel they stayed before, and he was quite curious about to origin of the Clear Water kingdom, since it seemed to be somewhat influenced by people from earth or a simr culture.

    But then that kind of information would be controlled so that the public wouldn''t know the whole truth, in such cases only those with a high status would have ess to that kind of records, and while he had the hollow suit, he didn''t know where to look¡­ until a moment ago.

    Since he now had a pending matter to discuss with the queen, and judging by how interested she seemed to be on them, he might get a chance to get some privileged information about this, one way or another.

    After about half an hour of travelling in the dimensional tunnel with the help of the queen, they reached their destination.

    Once they left the dimensional tunnel, Daimon was weed with the sight of one of the most important cities in the Clear Water kingdom, the Warhammer city.

    To Daimon''s surprise, the queen didn''t bring them directly inside of the city, instead they appeared right at the entrance.

    "Come I''ll help you skip the line", with those words, the queen waved her hand and arge light blue carriage appeared in front of them, she also tapped her beast pouch and a pair of adult sized seahorses came out of it, to pull on the carriage.

    Apparently, the other nobles knew this would happen, because they weren''t surprised by the fact that Ae, in other words the queen wasn''t allowed to directly enter the city bypassing the entrance.

    ''I guess politics are way worse here than back at the Wonder Myriad ster chart'', thought Daimon as he entered the carriage with the girls, the prisoners on the other hand were dragged through the ground, intentionally so that everyone would notice it.

    As the carriage advanced to the path reserved for those with a level of authority that equaled the royals, many of the nobles that were waiting in line to enter the city either by foot or in their own carriages, noticed therge carriage of the queen.

    It didn''t have the emblem of the royals which Daimon knew of thanks to the books he got from the information store, which was practically a white shark with a trident mark on its head, but the figure of a dolphin wit horns on its head and arger lower body which ended on a tail.

    "That''s the emblem of the Delphini family, but he only ones that can use the entrance reserved for royals are eighter their patriarch, the princess¡­ or the queen".

    "I-Isn''t that Ralph ckfin!", one of the many nobles saw the haggard figures being dragged through the dirt and immediately pointed at the guy from the ckfin family, who turned out to be called Ralph.

    "Yes, it is him¡­ but that means it can''t be none other than her majesty the queen".

    To administrate such a punishment to the youngest son of the ckfin patriarch, only the queen of the Delphini patriarch would dare, but the Delphini patriarch was sworn brothers with the ckfin patriarch, so that reduced the options to the queen.

    From within the carriage, Daimon heard the intense gossiping from the nobles and then he saw from the corner of his eyes, that the queen was sweetly smiling and giggling from time to time.

    ''I knew dolphins were supposed to be smart, but this one in particr seems to be pretty cunning'', he thought.

    The carriage soon reached the gate and stopped for a split of a second, as the guards approached it to inspect what was causing all the ruckus in the waiting lines.

    Since Ralph isn''t exactly a nobody, the guards immediately recognized him through his haggard current appearance, but as they were about to start asking questions, the window of the carriage became transparent allowing them to see the queen.

    "The guard of the Warhammer city wees the queen!", both of the guards bowed their heads, to present their respect to the queen, confirming the supposition of the other nobles.

    "Mm, open the gate, and tell the city lord that I captured some things to discuss with him".

    "Yes!", listening to the queen, the guards opened the gate for them, without asking anything else.

    Once the carriage was inside, the queen set it so that it would go to a centric area of the Warhammer city.

    Inside of the carriage the queen turned to see nobles before saying.

    "If you don''t have a ce to stay already, I happen to have a pass for the Sea Dream branch in the city, please by all means ept it without any reserves".

    The queen offered each of the five nobles a small token with a number which probably indicated the ownership of a room.

    The nobles stared at each other, they were going to rent some ce to stay, but after seeing therge waiting line outside and how crowded the city seemed to be, they realized that due to the pirate attacks ind, a lot of nobles rushed to reach the city and it was going to be really hard to find an empty room in a nice hotel right now.

    "We''ll dly ept her majesty''s generosity", said the nobles as they took the tokens, the doors of the carriage opened and they left, not without Mellie saying them goodbye.

    "I hope to see you all once the magic beast hunt starts".

    Normally Mellie wouldn''t pay them too much attention after their travel as a group ended, but she didn''t ignore how they jumped in front of them when the situation was critical, at the moment of the truth it''s easy to know who is fake and who isn''t.

    Like Ralph a high ranked noble who sold them to save his ass, while these middle level nobbles instead did what they could to help, despite the fact that their death was practically assured.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "If the princess needs us, just say the word", the nobles bowed as they said goodbye before they left to the Sea Dream hotel branch in the Warhammer city, happy to have left a decent impression on the princess and probably even on the queen.

    Now that only Mellie, the queen as well as Daimon and the girls were left alone, Spencer was there too, but he was sleeping after taking some potions to recover, the atmosphere inside the carriage tensed up a bit for a couple of second, before Ae spoke with a soft smile on her face.

    "I''ll be d if you would ept to be honored guests at my Aquamarine mansion, here at the Warhammer city, you''ll be free to leave whenever you want to, of course".

    Daimon inwardly smiled; things were going the best way possible for his ns, he turned to see the girls and after seeing them nod at him, he epted the queen''s offer.

    "Thanks, we''ll ept the offer".

    The queen nodded and the carriage started moving towards the east side of the city, from the window, Daimon inspected their surroundings, besides the blue tones that were always present in the architecture of the Clear Water kingdom, he also saw decorations like statues, or stores and other buildings which had hammerhead shark emblems here and there.

    ''White shark, dolphin and hammerhead shark¡­ where have I seen them before'', he thought, remembering some of the sea magic beasts that stood out among the ones that chased him, during the trial at the special space of the lineage temple.

    Daimon came out of his daze as they reached their destination, arge mansion decorated with aquamarine toned crystal, they stopped at the gate which was custodied by a couple of women wearing blue full body armors.

    The guards saw the queen from the window and they immediately opened the gate for her, the carriage was weed by two lines of maids and other people that worked in the mansion, who came out to greet her.

    "We greet young miss Ae and young miss Mellie!", the maids and the other workers bowed an they greeted them, the doors of the carriage opened and Daimon, the girls, as well as Mellie and Ae came out of it, only then then employees raised their heads.

    "Mina, take those pieces of trash to the prison, make sure to keep an eye on them, as they will be interrogatedter, Aimee take senior Spencer to the infirmary and take care of him please".

    "Yes, my queen", following the orders of Ae, a tall woman wearing a blue armor with a more detailed designpared to the one the guards had, took the pirates and the pair of bodyguard and young master away.

    While there was a peak Arch rank among them, the queen didn''t have anything to worry, because the tall woman called Mina is one too, in fact she was rather stronger than the bodyguards.

    ''A knight'', thought Daimon, noticing the heavy aura around the tall woman, the aura she gave of was that of an experienced warrior.

    The other woman who was called Aimee, was shorter and was wearing a doctor''s robe, she didn''t say anything but did as she was told and dragged the still asleep Spencer with her in a gurney.

    "These people are my honorable guests, treat them with the same respect you show me, Martha please guide them to the best guest room".

    The head maid, a middle-aged woman with ck hair nodded as she turned to see Daimon and the girls.

    "Please follow me".

    Daimon and the girls followed the head maid, not without listening to the queen saying.

    "Once you have settled, just ring the service bell and Martha will guide you to the dining room, so that we can have a proper conversation".

    The queen waited until Daimon, the girls and the ck armored Horals disappeared from her vision, before she turned to see her little sister.

    "I nearly suffered a heart attack you know, the next time you leave the Crystal Reef city, Mina will go with you".

    "Mm, sorry I didn''t want to cause you more trouble sis", the princess had a slightly sad expression as she was scolded by the queen, making Ae sigh as she shook her head.

    "Don''t worry about that, all that matters is that you are alright¡­ speaking of that, what do you know about that masked kid?".

    Mellie raised an eyebrow, seeing the genuinely interested expression in her older sister''s face, she made memory of everything that happened before answering.

    "Not too much, he only appeared a few minutes before you arrived, or it would be more urate to say you were able to find me, because he appeared, there was also that strange looking woman who somehow dived into his shadow as well as that ck armored guy, they appeared out of nowhere once he called them".

    The queen frowned.

    "Appeared out of nowhere¡­ like what that man can do?", she asked.

    But the princess immediately shook her head.

    "No, it wasn''t through a crack in the space like what that guy does, but I''m pretty sure that at least the ck armored guy wasn''t there and somehow appeared when he called it, it was pretty strange".

    With each part of the story her little sister told her, the curiosity in the eyes of the queen grew more and more.

 Chapter 288 The Risha Sisterâ€™s Changes

    It''s not that the queen didn''t pay Daimon''s group attention earlier, she did inspect Horals and was surprised to notice she couldn''t see past through his armor, but then he didn''t hide his strength as a middle stage Arch rank, though she calcted he was far stronger than what his realm suggested.

    What really weirded her out, was that woman hiding in the silver haired kid''s shadow, she a Half Ster expert wouldn''t have noticed her existence, if not for the fact that her head peeked out just to teach Ralph a lesson.

    Mellie doubted for a second before saying.

    "Ah, right, there was this strange pir of white mes, that suddenly raised when he came out of that ice dome¡­ mom''s pendant reacted for a split of a second".

    A strange glow shed through Ae''s eyes; she dragged her little sister along with her towards the other side of the mansion.

    "Oh, really,e with older sister, we''ll have a nice sisterly conversation~".

    Mellie bitterly smiled seeing her sister being clingy with her, but she didn''t resist knowing Ae was still afraid from the little brush she had with death¡­ or an even worse fate.

    ¡­

    While Mellie and Ae went to the main rooms to discuss some things, the head maid Martha brought Daimon and the girls to the guest area of the mansion.

    "We have arrived, would you please tell how many rooms do you need?", asked Martha with a polite voice.

    Daimon turned to see the Risha sisters before saying.

    "Do you three want a room for each or are you sharing one?".

    "One is fine, we feel morefortable staying together", said Leslie, the three sisters even share a dorm back at the academy, so they are used to see the other around.

    "We need two rooms".

    The maid nodded, she took out a couple of blue keys from her pocket and handed one each to Daimon and Leslie.

    "When you are ready just ring the service bell, if you need anything please don''t hesitate to ask", the head maid bowed as she excused herself.

    Daimon who was still wearing the hollow suit, noticed the Risha sisters stealing some gazes at him and he chuckled.

    "Come in you three, I have some things I need to discuss with you".

    The Risha sisters smiled and then quickly entered Daimon''s room as if they were afraid others would see them, earning someughs from Aisha.

    Daimon closed the door behind of him, and then turned around just to see four girls intensely staring at him.

    "Ahem, have a seat you three", said Daimon as he pointed at a couch which was positioned in front of the bed.

    In the meantime, Daimon took out the mask from the hollow suit and timed it with the effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief, to change his hair back to its usual ck inked color.

    Earlier when he came out of the trial from the lineage temple, the ink was washed away just like when he uses core synchrony, but he didn''t mind since he was using the hollow suit anyway, and the mission asked him toplete it in a way that others wouldn''t know he is the owner of the system, to not let Adam or Marcus realize they weren''t the only system users.

    The Risha sisters saw Daimon returning to "normal" after he took out that mask and they had "curiosity" written all over their faces.

    "It''s a bit hard to exin, but the simplified version is that with this disguise I don''t need to worry about consequences for some of the things I need to do in this magic ruin, originally I didn''t need it¡­ because there weren''t going to be witnesses left once, I finished, but things have changed".

    "I can''t exin too much about it, but if you feel ufortable feel free to tell me and I won''t hold it against you if you want to go separate ways".

    The Risha sisters exchanged some gazes before they smiled.

    "You won''t get rid of us so easily~", Leslie stuck her tongue at Daimon, as she answered.

    "Our determinations aren''t so fragile, when you feel you can tell us, we''ll be here for you, just like you helped us when we needed it", Yvonne nodded agreeing with Leslie.

    "Mm", Liliana limited to make a soft sound of confirmation, but the stubbornness in her eyes, made it clear that she won''t leave no matter what.

    Aisha couldn''t help but smile.

    ''Give it up darling, these three won''t go anywhere¡­ I''m not saying you need to open up right now, but give them a chance, I think they have proved to be worthy of that~'', she said through the mental connection.

    Daimon chuckled.

    ''We''ll see how things go, I will talk with their mothers once we leave this ce, I don''t want to get their hopes high, just for them to feel devastated once they know about myrge "family", also I don''t know if the notice will affect them negatively, as they seem to be positively affected when I''m around now''.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Originally Daimon didn''t expect for the Risha sisters to be so close to him, in a matter of days, he didn''t want to take advantage of the changes their lineages brought to them, so he has kept things pretty chill between them, but it''s obvious they have grownfortable with him, to the point that they didn''t even hesitate to enter his room without even asking why.

    Not like he would do anything to them, but it was still a reminder that they were a bit overwhelmed by the sudden changes in their bodies.

    Daimon was suddenly hit by a realization.

    "Now that I think about it, Lili, when I finished my meditation, I noticed the ice was reinforced one more time, are you okay?".

    He shared his mana with her prior to his training, but she used them one more time after that, it hasn''t been that long since she was in a critical state, so he was worried that she might be putting too much stress in her mana circuits or overexerting her magic core, a crack in any of those was no joke after all.

    Liliana blushed, she was happy that she was worried about her, but she had to bite the bullet and tell him about their little discovery.

    "I¡­ we discovered we can store the mana you lent to us, as an extra besides our reserves forter usage".

    In a rare asion this time Daimon was the one to get surprised by them, exceeding one''s reserves is something unheard off, even he was no exception, he had to refill his reserves from what was stored in his magic core, when they were empty if he wanted to keep using spells, but in their case, it was as if they had two reserves instead of one.

    "Can you show me?", said Daimon as he extended his hand towards Liliana, this was something worth studying, specially as it could be a lifesaver in a dire situation, since with his mana they could use their wings without getting tired, something that didn''t happen when they drank mana replenishing potions.

    "Ahem, didn''t we agree it was my turn?", before Liliana could answer, Yvonne stood up and grabbed Daimon''s hand.

    Liliana pouted but she didn''t say anything, the only one that has yet to experience using Daimon''s mana to use her wings is Yvonne after all.

    Yvonne felt a warmfortable sensation in her heart as Daimons mana flowed towards the mana circuits in her back.

    Daimon used his infinity eyes to watch through the whole process, and was surprised to see they had an extra set of mana circuitspared to their mothers, they were also double the size of the normal ones, and had different colors to the regr ones, ck, light blue and orange/red respectively.

    "Mmm¡­ Daimon, I''m already at my limit", Yvonne''s shy voice woke Daimon out of her daze.

    "Sorry, Yvi", Daimon let go of Yvonne''s hand and she immediately used her legacy spell, a beautiful pair of ck feathered wings appeared on her back, reaching a wingspan of about four meters in total, taking Daimon by surprise.

    "Is it me, or they are bigger now?", he asked.

    Yvonne looked at her wings and she was surprised, they were indeedrger than before, but she didn''t use more mana than normal.

    "It probably has something to be with the fact that Yvi is using your mana instead of hers, back when I was attacking the ships of the skelefiends with you help, I thought mine grew more because I was putting my all-in-one attack, but when I realized I still had a bit left I managed to cast my wings and they had the samerger size", added Leslie.

    "I guess there is only one way to find out", said Daimon as he offered his hands to Leslie and Liliana, which both happily epted and so a couple of secondster, he was enjoying the view of the three sisters side by side with their pretty wings spread.

    "Woah, I feel even stronger than that time~", Leslie looked at her wings and was fascinated by the increase in the volume of the mes.

    "It could be that they have adapted to your mana", mumbled Aisha.

    Daimon nodded, that''s what he was thinking as well, but since there was no harm to it, then everything was fine.

    Once the girls dispelled their wings, Daimon gave them more mana to replenish what they used.

    Then the Risha sisters left to their own room.

    Aisha saw them being all smiles and sheughed before saying.

    "Those three have started to get curious about us, since they realized we bath together darling".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, he was trapped between the rock and the sword, although he already considered Yvonne and the others his friends, it was still too soon to tell them about his rtionship not only with Aisha but Erin and Aura, on the other hand, those three have indirectly expressed they have special feelings for him.

    And their mothers were more straightforward practically wanting to set a marriage arrangement for them with him.

    But for anything like that to happen, he needed to be quite clear about his current rtionships, so that they would decide whether they are still in for the ride, or not, the only problem is that he didn''t know if that would affect them, considering how his sole presence has a positive effect on them.

    "I guess, I will have to have serious conversation with their mothers once we are out", mumbled Daimon.

    "Mm, that would be for the better darling~", although Aisha could have given her son some advice, she wanted him to experience love from zero with girls in his same range of age.

    All of them took a bath and changed their clothes, before they rang the service bell and the head maid Martha came to escort them to the dining room, where the queen and Mellie where already waiting for them.

 Chapter 289 Founding Lineages

    The queen was the first to notice them entering the room, she quickly evaluated the silver haired youth from head to toe.

    Although Daimon wasn''t using the mask, or the hollow suit, he changed his usual get up style to only ck clothes, and kept his original silver hair color.

    Besides that, he modified some of facial factions with the help of the bracelet of the god of mischief, just enough to nor look exactly like himself.

    "Please take a seat", the queen smiled and then offered them a seat at the table.

    Daimon nodded and they sat in front of the queen and Mellie, the table was full to the brim with different dishes, though the vast majority of them were nt based, there were some meat and fish here and there.

    "Feel free to eat what you want, my race usually only eats vegetables but my little sister and me like meat too~", noticing the slight tense atmosphere, Ae took the initiative to grab a te and started digging in.

    ? Daimon raised an eyebrow, he expected the queen to ask some questions first thing, but now she seemed to be not only grateful as he helped Mellie, but genuinely friendly with them.

    Anyway, since that was the case, the girls didn''t hesitate and took a te, followed by Daimon and Mellie.

    "Woah, this tastes really good!", as soon as Leslie munched in some kind of sea vegetable, her eyes sparkled.

    Liliana and Yvonne were the same, they each grabbed a te of fish and meat respectively and were positively surprised by the singr but delicious seasoning.

    Only after everyone had their fill, the queen called the maids to retire all the dishes, they brought tea and other little snacks.

    "I guess we should start with the serious stuff now, since you are my guests, how about you start, feel free to ask what you want and I will answer to the best of my capacities", said the queen as she took a sip of her cup of tea.

    "Very well, then my first question would be, why did you suggest for me to get the main ingredient of the Shark Blood liqueur?".

    Previously when he was offered whatever that ingredient is, in exchange for Ralph and the bodyguard, he epted because he was going to kill them anyway, but that didn''t mean he ignored the fact that Ae knew exactly what he was interested in, despite it being the first time they''ve seen each other.

    Mellie raised an eyebrow at her older sister, she didn''t know about this little deal Ae made with Daimon, but then she now realized why she called the city lord of the Warhammer city.

    ''Sis¡­ what are you nning now'', she thought with a bitter smile in her face.

    The queen put her cup down on the table before saying.

    "Because I witnessed with my own eyes that a direct descendant from the hero of the founding era of the kingdom is still alive and technically the main ingredient used for that liqueur should belong to you".

    "Unfortunately, I don''t have the authority to order the ckfin Duke to give up on something his family "found", but since his coward of a son got busted, then I''m sure he will cooperate now~".

    Daimon cleared his throat a couple of times, he was Aisha''s son, a vampire, of course he had no rtion to someone from the merman race, it was more possible that Adam had something to do with them, considering he stole an opportunity from him.

    The queen saw Daimon didn''t seem to be convinced by her words and she giggled.

    "There is no need to beat around the bush, I know you have the lineage of the ck Armored Shark¡­ but at the same time you aren''t a merman, no in fat I think you aren''t even a native from this am I right?".

    Daimon frowned, in the books he got from the information store, he saw the names and races of all the noble houses, and the ck Armored Shark wasn''t one of them.

    Originally, he thought the members of the ckfin family belonged to that race, butter he found out that, they were members of the cktip Reef Shark race, a shark type whose dorsal fin was ck.

    And this it where things got interesting, when Daimon was facing the trial of the lineage temple, he saw that species and it wasn''t anything special, they were in the third or fourth wave, but here they were part of the old noble faction, having a high status in the Clear Water kingdom.

    Surprisingly both Mellie and Ae were rather calm considering they already guessed, they weren''t merman, so now Daimon had two options, feigning ignorance about it cutting his interaction with the queen right here, or epting it and see where things went after that.

    Aisha and the Risha sisters gazed at Daimon from the corner of their eyes, ready for to escape with him in case the fell out.

    Horals suddenly appeared behind Daimon, while his shadow extended showing Rita was ready for the action.

    "I think my disguise was pretty good, so what gave me away?", asked Daimon, taking a bet, if the queen were to be setting a trap for them, they would need to fight their way out.

    ¡­

    An awkward silence fell on the room, which was broken by Mellie sighing, she gave Daimon an apologetic gaze before saying.

    "Sis, you said you weren''t going to cause problems on purpose".

    Ae giggled as she shrugged.

    "You are too uptight Mellie, whatever, don''t worry I won''t tell a soul about it, also don''t worry your disguise is perfect, we discovered it by a certain coincidence".<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''Or perhaps I should say it was fate'', she mentally added.

    The queen then looked directly at Daimon''s eyes, her pretty aquamarine eyes sparkled with curiosity for a second before she asked.

    "How much of the ck Armored lineage have you inherited¡­ can you show it to me?".

    Seeing Daimon not being convinced, Ae took out a strange ne with a pendant that had the shape of a horn, simr to the ones Mellie had.

    She then made a slight cut in her finger and let a drop of her blood fall on it before she passed it to Mellie who did the same, before giving it to Daimon.

    "That''s the "Promise Regalia" of my Delphini family, made with the same material as the Trident of Promise, with it, Mellie nor me will be able to go back on our word, so you can rest assured that we won''t betray you".

    As soon as Daimon touched the pendant, the sound of a notification echoed in his mind.

    [Ding]

    [The mission has been updated]

    [Get the hidden gem to join your side (0/2) ¨¤ (1/2)]

    [Crystal Horn Pendant: A treasure borated with the bone of a beast with ancient roots, waring missing information, please get the second gem to ess the memories of the lineage <!>]

    Daimon''s eyes widened a bit, just like that hepleted another of the requirements of the mission.

    ''Wait¡­ that means the opportunity I stole from Adam was meeting Mellie, which will lead to this moment, and probably to get that main ingredient whatever it is'', he thought.

    "Okay, I''ll show it to you", after saying that, Daimon stood up from his chair and took some distance from the table.

    Daimon closed his eyes and then took a deep breath, the overall aura that surrounded Daimon suddenly changed, generating two different reactions.

    Aisha and the Risha sisters frowned, they for one reason or another have gotten used to the two different feelings Daimon gives off, either aforting calmness, or a terrorizing coldness, but now a third one appeared, it''s just that they didn''t know how to describe it.

    But Mellie and Ae were different, they stared at each other with surprise written all over their pretty faces.

    Daimon slowly opened his eyes, revealing that a yellow vertical line appeared in his pupils.

    "Ruler of the sea¡­ so you are the real deal", mumbled Ae, taking Daimon by surprise, the skill he got from the ck Armored Shark was "Commander of the sea", it only changed to "Ruler of the sea" after he got the Drakolevia lineage.

    So, it didn''t make sense that she knew about it, considering whatever "Drakolevia" are, it''s the ancient root and not the current lineages that exist in this.

    "There is no need to be surprised, because¡­ Mellie and me are the same~", as the queen finished speaking, a vertical yellow line appeared in her forehead and the same happened to Mellie.

    That wasn''t all, once they did it, their auras went through the roof, Mellie nearly reached the peak of the Lord realm, but what caught his attention was Ae, she didn''t have those crystal hors previously, but they appeared now, also judging by her aura she took another step closer to the Emperor realm.

    Thanks to having met Solomon, Daimon now knew what being one centimeter away from being in the Emperor realm looks like, that was the most one could advance prior to breaking through the zenith so to speak.

    Erin and Aura were at the peak of the Half Emperor realm for example, but Ae seemed to have advanced not too long ago, and she was way too far from reaching the next step, but now that she was stimting her lineage she jumped to the middle stage.

    "How weird, mine doesn''t give me a boost in my realm", mumbled Daimon earning a bitter smile from Ae.

    "That''s because you aren''t meant to be a soldier¡­ but a conqueror, the symbol of our kingdom is a trident not only because of aesthetics, the same applies to the founding families, the fact that there are four of them isn''t a coincidence".

    "A trident has three prongs and the handle, out of those "prongs", the ck Armored Shark is the one in the middle, an its ability is the one tomand all the living beings of the sea".

    "Then you have the prong in the right side, the one in charge of strategy, in other words my Delphini family, and our ability is "Analyzing Resonance", believe it or not, increasing our realm isn''t its purpose, just a side effect of using it".

    "Then we have the prong on the left, the one in charge of battle, which belongs to the White Royal Shark race, their ability is "Bloodlust", and it basically means they can jump up to three stages regardless of their current realm, that''s what the current king uses to keep all the nobles in check".

    "There is a fourthponent which is the handle, an its purpose is to keep everything united, unfortunately the only person who knew which race had it and what its ability was¡­ is dead".

    Ae''s voice became sadder as she finished her sentence, Daimon and the girls were beyond words right now.

    ''This ce is getting moreplicated with every day that passes'', they thought.

 Chapter 290 Cunning Queen

    Ae''s sad expression disappeared in a sh, before she returned to her usual rxed self, she took another sip of her teas before she continued.

    "Imagine my surprise when I saw one of the two extinct founding lineages¡­ the one who was considered the most important one for the, surge again in front of me".

    "I don''t think that''s what made you change your overall attitude regarding us though", said Daimon as he looked directly at Ae''s eyes.

    The queen was surprised for a couple seconds but then a bright smile flourished on her face, as she stole a couple of nces at her little sister.

    "You are quite clever for someone from the young generation¡­. You are right, that''s only a part of the reason as to why I decided to have this conversation without hiding anything".

    Ae tapped her fingers on the table a couple of times before saying.

    "But to be honest, the main reason is because I find you quite interesting, it''s the first time my Analyzing Resonance can''t see through someone~".

    Mellie sighed, as she gently nudged her sister''s sides.

    "Ahem, sis".

    Ae giggled and then she poked Mellie''s nose.

    "Come on, weren''t you the same, don''t ditch big sister now".

    Once she teased her little sister enough, Ae cleared her throat and then said.

    "There is also the fact that you appeared in our kingdom in this specific moment is too convenient to be a coincidence, specially because the Trident of the Promise broke not too long ago".

    "And basically, that''s the reason of my change of heart, now it''s my time to ask".

    Daimon nodded; she went beyond what he expected in her answer.

    The queen looked directly at Daimon''s eyes which still had that vertical yellow line in their pupils, before saying what was in her mind.

    "What is your goal here?".

    Ae''s question was pretty simple and yet it was probably the most important one, Daimon also noticed the mark in her forehead shone in yellow light, and the pretty crystal horns on her head glowed too.

    Although Daimon didn''t know how the skill of her race worked, his instincts told him that if he lied, she would find out, luckily there was no need for that, since his goal now was toplete the mission, he got from the system.

    "For a variety of reasons, I need to win the beast hunt and the three-art tournament too, also there is a friend who is trapped somewhere in the Maelstrom Sea, which I need to find in the next three or four months".

    Ae''s pretty eyes narrowed a bit as she said.

    "And what about our ner, or more specifically this kingdom?".

    Daimon thought about it for a split of a second before he answered in a firm but calm voice.

    "I''m not a pacifist if someonees to me looking for trouble I will cut their heads, that being said I have never pointed my sword at anyone who didn''t deserve it".

    Ae''s eyes glowed for a second, which seemed tost an eternity, before she leaned backwards on her chair.

    "Okay I believe you, your turn".

    Daimon nodded, as he pointed at the vertical yellow line in his pupils.

    "Since you know about "Ruler of the sea", what is a Drakolevia?".

    Ae frowned, she grabbed the pendant that was hanging from her neck, which was simr to Mellie''s.

    "Where did you hear that name?", she mumbled.

    "I read it in what you could consider the entrance to this ce", said Daimon, being careful with his words, technically he also read it from the system, but the first time he saw it was in the ck stone corridor where he appeared after entering to the magic ruin.

    "I don''t know too much about it¡­ in fact I''m pretty sure no one does, with the exception of the ancestor of the royal family, however in the myths, Drakolevia is a guardian deity, the incarnation of the sea itself and the ancestor of all the sea rted races".

    "But for some unknown reasons, it was erased from the history books, I only know about it because I heard someone mention it once when I was a little girl".

    "My turn, are you the only ones that entered our?", she asked.

    Daimon contemted things for a moment before saying.

    "No, but we aren''tpanions with most of them, there are four separated groups, and we are part of one of those, don''t aske what their objective is because I don''t know it".<novelnext></novelnext>

    te nodded in response, while she thought of her next question, it was Daimon''s turn.

    "Has there been other cases of peopleing from another gxies, before us?".

    Ae raised an eyebrow, but she still answered.

    "Well, the prior and sole bearer of the ck Armored Shark lineage was said to have been found unconscious on the shore, and ording to the history he wasn''t knowledgeable about our, the seas and manymon things".

    "Also, he didn''t have any sea beast characteristic at the beginning, and only manifested some when he awakened the ck Armored Shark lineage, so it''s safe to assume he wasn''t a native of this, unfortunately one day after repelling the army of the skelefiends, he vanished without a trace".

    After listening to Ae''s answer, Daimon was now 100% that this ce has been visited by people from other ster charts before, the only piece of information that he wascking now, was how was Adam, Marcus and the guys from the tribes rted to this.

    "What is your name?", this time it was Mellie the one asking a question.

    "You can call me Daimon".

    Daimon was about to ask his question, when the head maid Martha knocked on the door before, she entered the dining room.

    "Pardon the interruption young miss, the Lord of the city has arrived and is waiting in the living room".

    "Thanks Martha, I''ll be there in a second", after saying that, Martha bowed and left the dining room, Ae then looked at Daimon and said.

    "I''ll answer to the rest of your questionster, but I have onest from my side¡­ will you team up with Mellie in the beast hunt and the three-art tournament?".

    Noticing the surprise in Daimon''s eyes, Ae remembered they weren''t natives of the Clear Water kingdom.

    "Right, you don''t know the rules, the beast hunt requires a six people team, and everyone must be on the early stage of the middle Mortal realm at most, originally I was preparing some warriors to go with Mellie, but she says she thinks it''s safer if she goes with you, think about it~".

    Before Daimon could answer, Ae disappeared from the room, leaving a flushed Mellie.

    "My sister likes to mess with others, specially with me, but it is true that your group must consist on six people to participate in the magic beast hunt and the three-art tournament, and while my father forced me to join Ralph ckfin''s team originally, now that this happened, I''m free to go with whoever I want¡­ and I can tell you will never sell your teammates".

    Daimon exchanged some gazes with the girls, they were going to need an extra member in their team, and Mellie couldn''t betray them since he now had that pendant, while he was unable to sign a soul contract with anyone from this for some reason, so she was the best option avable, also it''s not like she was weak in any sense, so there were no downsides to it.

    Also, if they were apanied by Ae it was going to be easier to navigate in the Clear Water kingdom, which was good considering he still needed to find the second gem and he didn''t know where to start.

    "Sure, that spell you used was pretty interesting, was it a wind element one?", asked Daimon, he originally though the spell Mellie used to distract the leading pirate was an illusion or mind type spell, something like his Overlord''s Pride, but then he saw Ae tapping her finger before the eardrums of Ralph''s bodyguard exploded.

    So, he was thinking it was some kind of pressure generated through wind attribute magic.

    "Something like that but¡­", as Mellie was about to answer, the door of the dining room opened and Ae who was smiling from ear to ear, returned with them.

    "It''s done, the ckfin Duke was notified a moment ago that if he doesn''t pay¡­ pensate", his son will be punished ording to thew by tomorrow morning, I can''t wait to see his face hehehe".

    Daimon almost could see a fox tail and ears appear on Ae, just to fit with the cunning smile she had right now.

    ''I guess there is one Erin in every family'', he thought.

    The queen then walked towards Daimon and offered him a handshake.

    "So, what do you say Daimon, I think that in the same group of age, my little Mellie wouldn''t lose against anyone in the Clear Water kingdom, it''s not a bad deal right?".

    Daimon epted Ae''s handshake to formalize the deal.

    "Sounds good to me".

    The queen smiled while she inwardlyughed.

    ''I can''t wait to see, what thebination of Ruler of the sea and Analyzing Resonance can do'', she thought.

    "That being the case, feel free to ask whatever you might need, the beast hunt was moved for the day after tomorrow, ording to the Trident Marshal, so you only have one day to prepare".

    Daimon nodded, he already had a good idea of what he needed and a day should be enough anyway.

    "Do you have a library, I want to get a good idea of the history of this, so that my cover isn''t blown away by some random mistake, that and I want your help to find mypanions, I can give you some descriptions but it needs to be done in total secrecy, because some of the other guys that came with us aren''t exactly our friends".

    "Okay, I have a private library here, Mellie can take you there, as for your other request just write down the descriptions and I will use my ownwork to look for them".

 Chapter 291 Undercurrents

    Daimon wrote down a brief description of his ssmates and after handing it to the queen, he and the girls left the dining room guided by Mellie.

    Once they left, Ae gazed at the furthest corner of the room, before she grabbed her cup of tea, after taking a sip of it, she spoke.

    "So, what do you think uncle Vin?".

    The wall to which Ae was looking distorted for a couple of second, before the figure of an old man wearing blue robes became visible.

    Although the man had a tall built, his presence was rather thin, one''s attention seemed to flow around him, like a stream, to the point that with a blink he will disappear from one''s vision, making you doubt of his existence.

    "He wasn''t lying when he said he had no ill intentions towards us, that being said I couldn''t see through him, there was some kind of mist blocking my senses, what I could tell was that he disguised his face but just a bit, nothing too important".

    The old man then doubted for a second, before saying.

    "The prophecy of the Trident only stated that a savior and a destroyer would appear at some point, and yet you didn''t try to capture him nor put a restriction on him, this isn''t the little tyrant that has mercilessly kept the power bnce in the kingdom¡­ what are you up to this timess?".

    Ae stretched her arms and then looked at the roof of the dining room, just hummed for a couple of minutes while she yed with the pendant that hanged from her pretty pale neck.

    "You know how much I hate people, they aren''t trust worthy and will stab you at the sight of benefits¡­ but I''m willing to believe in Mellie''s eyes and in the first andst gift that woman gave us~".

    The old man listened to Ae''s yful voice and he sighed.

    ''If someone is to me about you sisters suffering is me, I should have been there as that was my duty¡­ I hope the dayes when you free yourself from that weight in your shoulders'', he thought before saying.

    "I''ll return to my castle to prepare for the beast hunt, when I receive the reply from the ckfin Duke I''ll contact you, if you need anything don''t hesitate to ask".

    "Mm", Ae simply nodded and stayed there lost in her thoughts, the old man tapped his right foot on the floor a couple of times and a portal appeared in the air in front of him, he entered and disappeared from the room, leaving Ae alone in the dining room.

    "Fate huh¡­ it would be nice to be wrong about something for a change~", Ae closed her eyes and leaned on the back of her chair, while some memories of her past yed in her mind.

    While Ae was resting in the dining room and Mellie was guiding Daimon to the library, at the northeast of the Clear Water kingdom, on a coastal city to be more urate, the sky was pitch ck and the sea was agitated, as if a hurricane was about to reach the shore.

    "WHAT DID YOU SAY!!!", a thunderous voice echoed through the entirety of the city, making the air tremble, some of the people turned to see the origin of the voice, and found it on a ck mansion in the center of the city.

    Even from afar, the people could see the walls of the mansion tremble from time to time, and they wondered what in the world could have made, the city lord, a respectable Ster rank and the minister of security, lost its temper in such a way.

    Inside of the ck mansion, a tall middle aged man wearing a ck armor with a cape, was going mad right now, what used to be a pretty tidied up office had turned into a disaster, broken furniture here and there, paintings that used to decorate the walls were now torn to shreds, even walls were now cracked ad fragile.

    The man only stopped trashing the ce after a whole ten minutes, he then took a deep breath and walked towards the only wall that was still intact.

    He tapped a series of certain spots on the wall making some strange symbols appear on it, after a couple of seconds the wall vanished revealing a mirror.

    The man made a cut in his palm and then pressed his hand against the ss, which absorbed his blood, the clear transparent mirror then turned inked ck and a momentter a voice could be hearding from it.

    "Why are you calling me right now, do you know how much¡­.".

    "SHUT UP BASTARD!", the ck armored man shouted interrupting the voiceing from the mirror.

    "Your stupid n got my son captured by that crazy bitch, and now they are demanding one of the two legacies of my family in exchange for not beheading him in a few hours!".

    "They only had one job, and they couldn''t even kill a bunch of kids, now the queen has captured a few of them along with my son, and his bodyguard, just because they couldn''t fucking kill the princess at the spot".

    Although the ck armored man was calmer than before, the more he spoke, the more he got angry again.

    The mirror stayed quiet for a couple of seconds before the voice answered.

    "What''s the problem, you have three sons, if one dies you can just make another, aren''t you quite fond of women anyway, if not then just give them what they want, you can make them spit out all the things they get from youter".<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Besides, don''t me others for the stupidity of your son, didn''t I tell you to order him to stay away from the sister of the queen, he tried to y the hero and instead got busted, what a fool".

    The ck armored man gritted his teeth, the ground below him cracked due to the mana that was leaking from his body.

    "Regardless of that, it was those idiots the ones that extorted my son, threatening to kill him".

    "Whatever, those pirates were disposable, so is your son in my eyes, the only one that needed to survive that was the little princess, there is a new event soon and idents are bound to happen, I will take care of her¡­ you find a way to keep that bastard son of yours alive on your own, I will deal with the lose ends on my side, unless there is something that will affect the n don''t contact me".

    The ck armored man was about to shout back at the mirror, when a strange red mark appeared on his face, smoke came from the red burning mark which made the man scream in pain and roll on the floor.

    "Don''t forget your part of the contract, give them what they want it''s not like they can use it, only we have the method needed", with those words, the mirror changed back to its clear transparent appearance, but it still took a moment for the mark in the face of the man to disappear.

    "Booom!", the man hit the ground with his hand, shattering arge part of it as he got up with a hatred filled expression.

    "Just wait you fucking bastard, I''ll cut your head and hang it on my door¡­ Timor!", the ck armored man shouted and then a dark mist materialized in front of him, from which a man wearing ck clothes and bandages covering all his head appeared.

    "Timor listens to the master", said the bandaged man as he kneeled down.

    "I will send a certain item to the mansion of the Trident Marshal, I want you to spy on their movements, if you get the chance then retrieve it, you have my permission to kill whoever stands in the way as long as you don''t leave witnesses¡­ also find out where is my son, I don''t care about the methods just bring me results".

    "Understood", for a split of a second, the teeth of the bandaged man showed, forming a sinister smile before he became a ck mist that dispersed in the room.

    ''You think you can use me, we''ll see whoughsst humph''.

    The man then looked into his ring and took out a small hand sized ck crystal box, with his heart bleeding, he walked towards his desk which was the sole piece of furniture that was still in one piece, and after injecting mana on it, a small transportation formation came to life.

    The man then threw the box along with a note attached to it, and then he left his office and walked towards his bedroom, he opened the door just to find a middle-aged woman wearing a ck dress, ying with a naked girl in her middle twenties, thetter was tied to the bed with her eyes closed, asleep, while the middle-aged woman touched and licked her private to the content of her heart.

    "My lord husband, what happened, you look worried?", the middle-aged woman stood from the bed and then walked towards the man, she started walking around him, undressing him and herself, until they were both naked.

    "What happened to me¡­ that boy got himself into trouble and with the queen to top it off!", the man''s voice still contained some anger, which was calmed as the woman talked to him.

    "Husband you must stand out for our son, I bet it''s that bitchy princess the one at fault, remember our other son is the most talented out of the three and he loves his little brother, you can use the other bastard''s life in exchange if needed too", said the woman as her hand reached downwards to the crotch of the man.

    "Don''t think about that now, look this little "toy" I bought in secret; she is all ready for you", the woman pointed at the passed-out girl tied on the bed, and the man smiled as he walked towards the bed.

    ¡­

    Back at the mansion of the queen, Mellie took Daimon and the girls to the library, and after they each took some books to read, they sat down on a table and chatted about random subjects from time to time.

    "Oh, so in your native ce the Mortal realm is divided and ssified in such a detailed way?", asked Mellie with a curious expression in her face.

    "Yeah, Star ranks, Lord ranks, Arch ranks and Emperor realm, the first one having nine stages called "stars", the others only have three stages, early, middle and peak".

    "Wow, I think it''s more organized than what we have, you have knights too right?", asked Mellie.

    "Yes", answered Daimon.

    Needless to say, but Mellie was pretty interested in learning about the culture of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart, just like Ae mentioned, her race was curious by nature and they who had the "Analyzing Resonance" ability went a tier beyond that, its just that they had to be really enthusiastic about something for it to show.

    Oblivious to the undercurrents that were running below the surface in the Clear Water kingdom, Daimon, the girls and Mellie kept talking about the culture of the two gxies, while they also read about the history of this, who turned out to be called Neptune¡­ of course Daimon immediately investigated to see if it was Neptune as in the Milky Way, but found that it wasn''t.

    Still, a curious fact, was that the was named precisely by the hero that vanished out of nowhere, in other words the one who manifested the lineage of the ck Armored Shark, back when the Clear Water kingdom was founded.

 Chapter 292 The Might Of The Ruler Of The Sea (Part 1)

    Daimon has always believed in equivalent exchange, when others treat him good, he''ll reciprocate, so since the queen has allowed him to take whatever book he might find interesting, in her library.

    And seeing that Mellie was genuinely interested in the culture of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart, he too out some of the books he bought to give Dimas in the future, as there was nothing sensitive written there.

    As soon as Daimon handed Mellie the he noticed, she used her innate ability, so that a vertical yellow line kept releasing wave after wave of dazzling light.

    "Mm?", although Daimon only stole a few nces at Mellie, which she wouldn''t have normally noticed, in this state her senses were incredibly sharp, and for the second time in Daimon''s life, someone noticed his gaze, the first one being Arianna back when she was using bio boosting and he identally peeked on her.

    Mellie noticed Daimon seemed to be interested in why she kept using her innate ability and after thinking about it for a couple of seconds, her pretty blue yes glowed with a curious light.

    "One of the abilities my Analyzing Resonance grants me, it''s an enhancedprehension and learning capacity, I can selectively store information and then consult it in my mind whenever I need to, so it has be a habit for me to use it when I read or hear something interesting which¡­ I don''t want to forget about".

    "That''s a bit too much of a cheat", mumbled Daimon.

    ''Says the one with Core Synchrony and the Apex Predator body constitution''.

    ''And Disaster, or should I tell me, on top of that~''.

    Listening to Daimon calling Mellie a cheater, both Evangeline and Narasha couldn''t help but tease him.

    ''Evangeline, stop corrupting my Narasha'', Daimon inwardly chuckled, those two had be quite closetely, which was good as it helped Narasha understand more about emotions¡­ though Evangeline might not be the best role model from Daimon''s point of view.

    "Daimon, have you tried to use the Ruler of the Sea already?", asked Mellie.

    The curiosity was killing her, but it was understandable considering, the ck Armored Shark''s lineage has been lost since the era of the foundation of the kingdom, and most of the records of that time were destroyed during the war.

    It wouldn''t be an exaggeration to say, it''s the first time in dozens of thousands of years since someone has even heard about it¡­ as if it was moped under the rug and forgotten purposedly.

    "No, I do have some lord ranked magic beasts, but I tamed them before managing to use this ability, so I don''t even know how to use it".

    Daimon then looked at the progress of the mission "Stealing from the hero", which had a warning symbol still blinking from time to time.

    [Crystal Horn Pendant: A treasure borated with the bone of a beast with ancient roots, warning missing information, please get the second gem to ess the memories of the lineage <!>]

    [Missing Information: Unable to retrieve the memories of the lineage, please get the second gem toplete the codex]

    For a change, although Daimon got the skill "Ruler of the sea", there was no description to it, probably because it was a reward from a mission which is iplete, the system stated that he needed to find the second gem.

    But that didn''t mean he couldn''t learn to use it by himself, the problem is that since he wasn''t born with it, he had no idea how it worked.

    Most innate skills which depend on the race are instinctive, for example vampires, once they reach a certain age, they''ll instinctively learn how to erge their fangs to suck blood from, or just how the Risha sisters suddenly learned how to use their wings, but weren''t able to teach it to others, the key was the memories of the lineage.

    Deep hidden in the gic codex of the race, the possibilities were limitless, some characteristics manifested with the pass of the years, or due to a certain situation, that''s also the origin of mutations in affinities, such as Aura or Dana, in other words variants.

    Mellie contemted things for a second, before she used an octagonal device to call her sister, of course as a Half Emperor, Ae appeared a secondter with a somewhat excited expression in her face.

    "Daimon, is it true you don''t know how to use the Ruler of the sea, nor have activated it in front of a sea magic creature even once yet!", in her enthusiasm she grabbed Daimon by his shoulders and shook him a bit.

    She only recovered herposure after feeling a lot of gazes piercing her body like spears, Horals and Rita''s ones included.

    "Ahem, sorry about that¡­ I was just worried that you''ll lose a huge chance by an ident", said Ae as she took a couple of steps back distancing herself from Daimon.

    "Thanks to the heavens, Mellie told me in advance, it would have been such a waste if you went to the magic beast hunt and used the Ruler of the sea".

    "Say Daimon, if I were to teach you how to use the first ability of the Ruler of the sea, will you help me keep an eye in a certain little sister who keeps getting into trouble~", said Ae with a yful voice as she gazed at her little sister.

    Daimon stopped to think about it for a moment, he has always reminded himself topletely depend on the system, and so far, that mentality has proven to be right, his abnormal physical strength as a result of taking advantage of the tension in his body caused by Core Synchrony and his Infinity Eyes were a perfect example of that.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Is that all you want in exchange, just to be clear I was already going to look for Mellie, since she will be part of my team?", asked Daimon, Ae might be a lot of things, but dumb isn''t one of them, so Daimon was a bit confused that she was willing to give him such valuable information just for something he was already nning to do anyway.

    And he wasn''t the only one that thought about it, Mellie stole a gaze at Ae as she thought.

    ''What are you trying to confirm sis¡­''.

    Ae simply nodded.

    "Yeah, that''s all, you just need to let a drop of your blood on the pendant I gave you, it will be a three-way promise to not harm each other and that''s about it".

    Daimon nodded, he took out the pendant which turned to be one of the two gems he had o find, and let a drop of his blood fall on it, without any hesitation, if it was something detrimental, the system or more urately Evangeline would have advised him against it, that and ay type of binding unrted to the system didn''t work on him nor his soulmates anyway.

    Not that like he wasn''t going to honor his word, but in case there was some kind of w in the contract engraved in the pendant, it wouldn''t restrain him at all.

    "Mm, now please close your eyes~", once Ae saw Daimon doing as she told, she asked him to close his eyes which he did.

    Then the next thing he knew was that there was a soft andforting feeling on his forehead.

    "Sis, what are you¡­".

    Daimon opened his eyes just to see Ae''s pretty face a few millimeters away from hi, but after all what he has done with his girls, this wasn''t enough to caught him out of guard, what did surprise him was that the Ruler of the sea activated by itself, making a yellow vertical line appear in his pupils.

    And that wasn''t all, the same happened to Ae, the difference was that her mark was on her forehead just like Mellie.

    As Daimon was about to ask what was she doing, a small flow of information entered his mind, or it would be more urate he had a sudden "inspiration" regarding how to use the Ruler of the sea.

    "I happened to be lucky enough to sneak a peek at a certain book my father had in his desk, when I was really little¡­ that''s in part how I know about the Ruler of the sea, I transferred what I saw that day to you, sorry in advance for the vagueness, most of it was encrypted so I only learned what I could understand".

    "I guess Mellie already told you about or capacity to learn andprehend, we can also share what we learn, but just to a very specific group of people, you are the first one I do this with, besides Mellie of course~".

    Listening to her older sister, Mellie bitterly smiled before saying.

    "Sis, you don''t need to be so specific¡­ forget it, how is it Daimon, do you now know how to use the Ruler of the sea?".

    Daimon waited a moment to order his thoughts and then he nodded, the information he received from Ae wasn''t exactly precise, since she probably acquired it at one of the first times, she got to use her ability if not the first one.

    But it was still good enough to give him an idea on how to use it, and he couldn''t wait to try it.

    "Yes, do you have any kind of sea magic beast with which I can try¡­ the stronger the better".

    Ae''s eyes glowed for a split of a second and then she took out a ck key from her storage ring.

    "There is, in the private prison custodied by me, where the son of the ckfin Duke, there is arge-scale section filled with sea magic beast up to thete stage of the peak Mortal realm, or the peak Arch rank was it?".

    "Sounds good, please take me there to see the strongest magic beast inmate you have trapped there".

    Ae nodded, she tapped her foot on the floor and a gate materialized a couple of secondster.

    She inserted the key in the lock and was able to open it in a couple of seconds, the inside of the gate waspletely different to their current sight, at the other side of the gate, there was a grim "warehouse" with tons of empty cages and zero sunlight.

    "Come with me", as the inmates turned to see Ae, she coldly red at them and the vast majority trembled and then looked aside, without even daring to look in the same direction as them.

    Ae guided them all the way to the basement of wherever this ce was, until they reached a gate with the same size as the one in the entrance of the city.

    "All of them are in a cage so feel free to check them out, good luck".

 Chapter 293 The Might Of The Ruler Of The Sea (Part 2)

    Before entering the basement of the prison, Daimon directly talked to Rita and Horals.

    "I''m only going to activate the ability once I find a decent magic beast, I''m pretty sure they''ll attack me, so be prepared to act".

    "Understood, young master".

    "Horals listens and obey!".

    "The beast had restrictions on their bodies, so they can''t move too much, but their pressures are still there¡­ because we use them to fuel some of the formations here, as long as you don''t approach them too much, you''ll be fine", Ae noticed she was a bit to vague so she further exined.

    "We''ll wait for you here, go get them~", said Aisha as she ced her hand on Daimon''s shoulder, the Risha sisters would be put under through too much pressure if they tagged with him this time, and Aisha had to reason to go too, instead she took it as something her son had to do by himself.

    "We''ll be able to see you though", Ae tapped her foot on the ground and a series of symbols appeared floating in front of her, apparently that was the master control of the prison.

    Ae touched a symbol that resembled an eye and then she pointed at Daimon, then a rune with the shape of an eye attached to his clothes.

    The queen then took out an octagonal adult sized mirror from her storage ring, and then Daimon''s surroundings from a third person point of view, appeared on the mirror.

    "We use something simr to watch on certain specific inmates with this we can even listen to what you say, of course in your case the link is just temporal and it will immediately disappear once you get out of the basement".

    Daimon was immediately interested in this device they used which could share not only image bur even sound, something that even the "Watchtower Screens", developed by Liz, couldn''t do¡­ yet.

    That reminded Daimon he needed one of the devices they used tomunicate in Neptune, to the other seas.

    "I nearly forgot about it, can you get me the device you use tomunicate with each other, if it can reach the other seas, it would be for the best", he asked as he entered the basement through the giant door.

    "Sure, you also seem interested in the "Reflection Mirror", it''s something that was crated by the expert magic cksmiths of my Delphini family, as it uses a certain specific mix of materials to create a special mirror, I''ll prepare some for you, maybe it will help you find yourpanions faster", mumbled Ae.

    ¡­

    Just like when Ae took them from the forest to the Warhammer city, Daimon went through an artificial dimensional tunnel when he entered through the gate, the difference was that this time it only took him a couple of seconds to reach the other side.

    Daimon was then weed by a strange sight, there was arge road in the center of some kind of underground facility, which was surrounded by water at both sides, with some divisions every certain distance.

    The best way to describe it was a bridge in the middle or a water body that has flooded due to the rain, as there was only about ten meters from the road and the water.

    Not even a secondter Daimon was hit by a plethora of mana pressures,ing from all over the ce, thebination of so much different pressures actually made Daimon feel a bit dizzy for a couple of seconds, before his Overlord''s Pride kicked in, cancelling all their effects.

    "Damn, there is as many Arch ranks here as there is in any of the big families", mumbled Daimon.

    He then saw the water at both sides of the road wave or show some bubblesing from below the surface, but he simply shrugged and walked towards the road in the middle.

    ording to the scarce information he got from Ae, he needed to see the magic beast and physically enter in contact with it, for the ability to work.

    Then under the surprised eyes of Ae and Mellie who were watching the whole thing, Daimon jumped into the water.

    "Did he just jump into the underwater cages¡­ the species and their descriptions were written in the tes in front of each cage", mumbled Mellie.

    "Well, that''s Daimon for you".

    "Mm, one gets used to it overtime~".

    The Risha sisters "unted" their seniority in knowing Daimon with Mellie.

    Back at the basement of the prison, Daimon submerged into the water, the first thing he noticed, was that there were chains floating all over the ce, and separating the different phone couldn''t take care of them.

    Without s second of dy, the first "tenant" weed Daimon as arge ck bank inked tentacle swung towards Daimon, then a series of formations illuminated generating a strong discharge of electricity which shocked the magic best.

    After some growls and roars, the tentacle simply stopped moving and Daimon was free tond on the floor of the underwater cage.

    "Fierce ck Octopus, a beast whose limit is the peak Arch rank, what''s the point in keeping you here, you have reached the end of your potential", mumbled Daimon, seeing the creature in the cage, it was a ck octopus chained to the floor of the cage, the thing seemed to be angry, but its mana pressure was too weak to even cause Daimon a slight headache, clearly it wasn''t worth his time.

    Daimon swam upwards until he was able to bypass the chains forming a wall to separate the one of the cages to the other one.

    This time, the magic beast didn''t try to attack him as soon as he entered its space, in fact he couldn''t notice the magic beast trapped here with just a quick view, but when Daimon used his infinity eyes, he noticed he was stepping onto some kind of rock formation.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Which turned out to be the magic beast in disguise.

    "Rock Bottom Crab, decent camouge abilities but not too strong inbat, not really my cup of tea".

    The crab clicked its pincers in response, trying to split Daimon''s body in half for insulting it, but the chains restricted its movements.

    So that Daimon was easily able to leave the cag and go to the next one, now the third cage was actually tricky, as he could hear a hissing sound since he entered it.

    This time the magic beast was a sea snake.

    "Oh, you look interesting¡­ it seems you were already tamed once before, so you won''t budge huh?", the sea snake simply observed Daimon from a corner, it had a mark burned on its forehead and showed no interest in him at all.

    Clearly the thing was too tired and in fact seemed to be enjoying being in this prison, so Daimon also skipped this one.

    Then he got to the fourth cage which was at the end of the road, this cage was different than the past ones, the water waspletely ck and cold, to the point that it was hard to see past a couple of meters in front of you.

    "How many years has it been, since someone dared to enter my little piece of paradise in this hell of a prison", a hoarse mocking voice echoed through the water from all the directions.

    Thebination of the pitch-ck water and that eerie voice would have been enough to cause goosebumps on anyone, but unfortunately for the magic beast which was actually able to rationally thinking, Daimon''s infinity eyes could see through the darkness that was imbued into the water of this cage.

    "Cut the crap, you are a Devil Goblin Shark, one of the renegade species¡­ meaning you live in the Maelstrom Sea, so you don''t socialize with the mermen, am I right?".

    ¡­ After a couple of seconds, the water revolted before an eye opened in front of Daimon, that''s right an eye with the size of a house opened a few dozens of meters away from Daimon.

    "So, we have a little brave one this time, you have some balls I will recognize that, but it seems you weren''t taught that we have some freedom even while being trapped here, why don''t you be this senior''s food".

    Arge mouth filled with spiked teeth opened and tried to swallow Daimon whole, to his surprise although the formations seemed to be attacking the Goblin Shark, he ignored the backsh and was keen decided to eat him.

    But then as Horals and Rita prepared to attack the shark, a yellow vertical line automatically appeared in Daimon''s pupils and the darkness which as imbued in the water, was dispelled in a matter of seconds.

    "Aghhhh, what the hell is this!".

    Daimon was now able to see the real appearance of the Devil Goblin Shark, pretty loyal to its name, it was a pitch-ck Goblin Shark, with symbols simr to the ones in the ck stone corridor, engraved in its whole body.

    But that''s not what was important right now, but the fact that it was bleeding from its eyes and nose, the thing tried to advance towards Daimon and then deep wounds opened in its skin, forcing him to retreat.

    Then the sweet sound of a notification rang in Daimon''s ears as he

    [Ding]

    [The host has instinctively activated the ability "Blood Suppression" from the Commander of the sea]

    [An enhanced version has been unlocked due to the existence of the Ruler of the sea, Blood Suppression ¨¤ Royal Aura]

    [Royal Aura (Passive): As the first son of the sea of the north, all the sea magic beasts must demonstrate respect in front of Drakolevia, any sea magic beast without an ancient root of the same caliber can''t attack the host and must abide by the orders of the host once they have tried to (Limited to two greater realms above the level of the original level of the host)]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, this wasn''t exactly the skill he wanted to unlock, he once heard that some members of the royal family have the ability to tame a sea magic beast regardless of its grade, since the moment they are born, though it''s an extremely rare situation, the current king as well as the crowned prince have that capacity.

    And now thanks to the information Ae transferred to him, he realized that is in part an ability of the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, the original "Commander of the sea", is supposed to give him the chance to tame magic beast to act as his "Commander", that''s also the origin of the name of that ability.

    The only one capable to control wild magic beasts are normally other magic beasts, the Commander of the sea allows you to raise a magic beast that obeys you, if you are lucky enough to tame a strong magic beast, then it can be an alpha and you''ll have a pack of magic beast at your disposal.

    Inparison the Ruler of the sea had a different approaching, with it you could skip the part of having to raise a magic beast to act as yourmander, and instead you could directly be the one to rule them.

    The only problem is that apparently, they needed to try and attack him, so that he could order them, on the other hand, he just got a pretty decent one, a magic creature which shouldn''t be able to be tamed since it''s a native of the Maelstrom Sea, on top of that.

    ''How interesting, I seem to remember there is another little thing from the Maelstrom Sea, which has some potential'', thought Daimon.

    The Devil Goblin Shark, saw the grinning expression in the face of the silver haired youth in front of him, and his colossal body unconsciously shivered.

    ''The mark of the king¡­ no this isn''t respect, I''m feeling fear!'', he screamed in his heart.

 Chapter 294 The Might Of The Ruler Of The Sea (Part 3)

    "No, I refuse to obey a mere brat, I''ll consume you and evolve to the next realm!!!", the goblin shark once again tried to devour Daimon, the chains that were attached to its body with giant harpoons piercing him, actually tensed up as the shark tried to move its body just enough to take Daimon by surprise.

    "Aghhh!", but then as soon as he reached a distance of about a couple of meters from Daimon, besides the wounds in its body that had already closed due to the massive vitality of a magic beast, re-opening, he was punched on the face by a giant green light arm.

    The strength behind the punch was so, that the shark was sent flying downwards shing against the floor of the cage, which at the same time was registered by the formations as a jailbreaking try, which ended in the goblin shark receiving an insane electric shock, that caused the shark to cough smoke.

    "Humph, how dare you disparage my young master, you should be honored that you were chosen to serve for the great conquer of my young master!", Horals whose eye sockets were literally spewing green battle aura which resembled mes, kicked the shark around using his battle aura to crate giant legs.

    The shark tried to retaliate but while in its prime it would have been probably stronger than Horals, after years of being imprisoned he was no match for the angered self-imed Daimon''s right hand, not to mention Horals had a sadist side when it came to deal with his young master''s enemies.

    "Hey bonehead, why are you acting out of line, young master didn''t order you to trash that idiot shark, what are you going to do if he is too out of shape to serve young master?", Rita''s voice took Horals out of his trance.

    "Ah right¡­ Horals has acted out of line and seeks disciplinary actions from young master", Horals immediately stopped beating the shark up, and kneeled in front of Daimon.

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, amused by the all this "henchmen" act Horals have, Rita acted like that too, but the bone general tended to be a bit too enthusiastic about it, not like Daimon had anything against it, since there were no downsides to it.

    "No need, maybe with that, he''ll learn to be more sensible about who is in charge here", said Daimon, only then Horals stood up and returned to Daimon''s side.

    It''s not like Daimon just let Horals beat the goblin shark on a whim, there was something he wanted to confirm.

    [Ding]

    [The skill "Royal Aura" has been updated <!>]

    Daimon listened to a notification and he observed the description of the skill "Royal Aura", one more time.

    [Royal Aura (Passive): As the first son of the sea of the north, all the sea magic beasts must demonstrate respect in front of Drakolevia, any sea magic beast without an ancient root of the same caliber can''t attack the host and must abide by the orders of the host once they have tried to (Limited to two greater realms above of the original level of the host)]

    [Information added: Beast Slots]

    [Beasts Slots: Magic beasts under the control of the host (1/4), (the host can release the registered beasts at any time)]

    ''So, the "must abide by the host orders", part doesn''t mean it can''t go against me, the shark will only receive a punishment if it tries to attack me, but he can to some extent withstand the backsh, on the other hand it has to obey my specific orders, but it isn''t forced to be loyal to me, unlike the terror contractor skill'', thought Daimon as he swam all the way to where the shark wasying after getting beat up by Horals.

    "Personally, I don''t care if you are willing to obey or not, I happen to need a guide for the Maelstrom Sea, and you will fulfill that role, if you do that for me, I''ll leave you alone, you''ll have to deal with the one who put you in this prison as that doesn''t have anything to do with me though".

    The shark had an angered and hatred filled expression in its face, but seeing Horals cracking his knuckles, he ultimately nodded.

    "Fine, but you''ll have to let me recover my strength, going through most of the Maelstrom Sea as something less than a peak Mortal magic beast is a suicide, without arge pack, also are you sure you want to go there, you can''t imagine the horrors that live beneath the surface there", said the goblin shark with a sinister smile on its face and a mocking voice.

    Daimon snorted.

    "It''s not that easy to frighten me, just do as you are told".

    "Hahaha, as you wish my temporary "young master", you can call me cktooth", said the goblin shark.

    Daimon then looked at the roof, so that Ae could see him.

    "Can you lend me a pouch simr to the one used to restrain the Mist Horror, I need to take this guy out from here".

    ¡­ After a couple of seconds of silence, a small portal appeared from where a ck chained beast pouch came out

    "So, you are one of the subordinates of that despicable woman, or perhaps a son out of an adventure, that would exin a lot", said cktooth with a resentful voice.

    Apparently, he had a grudge with Ae, which was probably because he was imprisoned here by her or something along the lines of that.

    A rune with the shape of a mouth suddenly appeared in the air above Daimon, and Ae''s voice could be hearding from it, as soon as he badmouthed her.

    "Oh, it seems I was too soft with you over the years by just letting you to rot in there, cktooth, don''t worry I will prepare a ton of fun activities as a wee back gift forter~".

    cktooh showed no reaction but inwardly he gritted his teeth.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''Just you wait bitch, both you and this little bastard will pay for this!'', he swore in his heart.

    "Unchain him Horals, don''t resist cktooth", Daimon asked Horals while he also firmly ordered the goblin shark to not resist.

    "At your order young master", Horals advanced towards cktooth and pulled the harpoons out o his body in a single go, causing the goblin shark to bleed and growl but he stayed quiet per Daimon''s order until Horals finished his task.

    "Now enter this pouch", Daimon pointed the chained beast pouch Ae gave him at cktooh and the goblin shark was absorbed by it.

    One of the many capacities the high ranked pouches had, was that the master could send other objects such as medicine and food inside, so that the beasts could rest and recover, the low ranked ones only allowed the magic beasts and to eat they needed to be taken out.

    Of course, the magic beasts aterge quantities of food, which couldst them for a couple of days, so it wasn''t that much of an inconvenient, but for recovery purposes the high ranked pouches were a must for those who had a strong magic beast as theirpanion, such as the royals and a very small group among the high ranked nobles.

    After that, Daimon checked on the other magic beasts, but apparently every one of them could feel when he activated the Ruler of the sea, and now they were avoiding him like the gue.

    Besides cktooth the other magic beasts didn''t have the capacity to speak and were rtively wild, but they instinctively simply didn''t approached Daimon and ignored him, even when he tried to provoke them, it was a strange sight to say the less.

    ''Whatever, I guess a peak Arch rank disposable guide is enough, besides no one of the rest really excel in any field'', thought Daimon.

    He jumped out of the underwater cages and returned to the drynd.

    "Miss Ae, please open the gate", said Daimon to the air, then a few secondster the gat from which he entered, raised from the ground.

    Then he apanied by Horals and Rita who was still hiding in his shadow left the basement of the prison.

    ¡­

    After going through the artificial dimensional tunnel, Daimon returned the upper level of the prison, where the girls were waiting for him.

    Daimon immediately noticed Ae seemed confused by something.

    "Is something wrong miss Ae?", he asked.

    "Mm, it''s not that, I was just wondering why did you choose that Devil Goblin Shark, personally I think the Snake Eeel would have been a better match since you have such a strong lightning affinity¡­ also just call me Ae, it''s not like you are one of this kingdom''s people and you already call Mellie by her name anyway".

    Daimon chuckled, although he hasn''t used lightning spells, Ae and Mellie''s innate ability probably allowed them to sneak a peek into other people''s affinities or something like that.

    In fact, it''s possible that she can see a lot more of things about others while using Analyzing Resonance, but in his case the system prevents others from seeing his spells and a lot of other information, the same applies for the soulmates, as for the Risha sisters, on the outside they look pretty normal, with the exception of the moments when they use their wings, which brings a fundamental change for their strengths and abilities.

    "Apparently my ability doesn''t exactly match the information you read on that book, that being said it did help me learn more about mine, I can''t choose the magic beast that will be tied to me, but at the same time I''m not limited to only one, which is good so I don''t have to waste time taming them".

    Since the ability "Ruler of the sea", was learned in the form of a skill, it was organized under the interface of the system, which was for the best, meaning he might be able to level up the skillter on, something others weren''t able to.

    Needless to say, but Daimon''s answer, took not only Ae but also Mellie by surprise, being able to control one beast was already an incredible advantage over others, and was one of the two things the royal family took pride in.

    But now in front of them, Daimon simply admitted he could control more than one at the same time without having to sign a contract with them, it was outrageous from the point their point of view.

    "I guess that''s to be expected from the lineage of the hero", mumbled Mellie.

    "Mm, lucky we found you first~", added Ae with her usual yful voice.

    "Speaking of that, I wasn''t going to ask since it''s none of my business, but something that cktooth mentioned has been bothering me¡­ you aren''t the mother of the crowned prince, or any of the princes and princesses, right?", asked Daimon.

    Ae''s pretty aquamarine eyes narrowed for a split of a second, but ultimately, she shrugged.

    "It''s not exactly a secret, the tittle of "Queen" in our kingdom doesn''t mean I''m the partner of the King, sometimes that''s the case, sometimes it isn''t, in this case it''s the second, I''m not married to that guy, nor I live with him".

    "I became the queen simply to create a bnce in the power, since my Delphini family is part of the old noble faction and not the founding families, this was when the neo noble faction didn''t exist, so there were only two sides".

    "Of course, the king wasn''t exactly happy, but ultimately he simply looked for wives in the other families to create alliances through marriage, and had children with some of them, one being the current crowned prince".

 Chapter 295 The Mission Temple

    "Speaking of that, now that you and Mellie will be in the same team, you need to know who to be aware of".

    "As the time went by, the families of the wives of the king wanted me to resign my tittle as queen to one of them, especially the mother of the crowned prince, whoes from the Arcarius family, but I refused which ended up creating fractures in the rtions that some of the nobles had with the royals".

    "I guess you already noticed that even as the queen I couldn''t directly teleport myself to this city, and the reason is very simple¡­ the niece of the current n head of the Malleus family or the Trident Marshal, is one of the three wives of the king".

    "Long story short I can''t directly appear in the cities of the families who had a marriage rtionship with the king, which include the Malleus, Vs and Keran families".

    "In total there are three princes and two princesses, the crowned prince Terry Malleus is the older of them, then we have the princess from the Vs family, Daphne Vs, the next is Mellie who got her tittle due to being my little sister andstly, the twin princes of the Keran families".

    Daimon frowned, there were more royals than what he expected, which meant there will be more troubles to deal with.

    "So, I guess, it''s safe to assume they will be going after us?", he asked.

    Ae shook her head.

    "Not exactly after you, both the beast hunt and the three-art tournament are team events, but nothing bans "alliances" between the teams, so as you can probable already guess, the royals are sort of like the "captains" of the teams, and they will first eliminate those who aren''t in an alliance before fighting themselves".

    Daimon shrugged, as he thought.

    ''So, I''ll be facing the whale shark, hammerhead shark and narwhal once again''.

    It didn''t really matter though, he had to win the beast hunt due to his mission anyway, so for him, regardless of Mellie being in his team or not, he''ll have to fight against everyone anyway.

    The queen saw that Daimon''s expression didn''t quiver at all and she inwardly nodded in affirmation.

    "That being said, there are exceptions who can keep up with the royals, the representative from the neo nobles and the middle son of the ckfin Duke are the ones thate to my mind right now".

    "Anything else I should know about the ones that will attend the beast hunt?", asked Daimon, but the queen as well as Mellie both shook their heads in response.

    "That''s as far as I can confirm, there is no list of the onesing and some years not all attend, but those are the ones who had never skipped the two main events besides the royal banquets".

    "If there isn''t anything else, we should return to the mansion, this prison isn''t particrly a good ce to be", mumbled Mellie.

    Ae smiled at her sister and then with a wave of her hand a portal transported them back to the living room of her mansion.

    She then took out hermunication device whish was a small octagonal te, and softly snorted.

    "I need to tend to some small matters, feel free to enjoy themodities of the mansion, if you need anything just ask Martha, she''ll also bring you what you asked me earlier in a couple of minutes".

    "Mina don''t let Mellie skip her training session, I''ll return for the dinner", after saying that and without leaving Mellie say anything, Ae disappeared from the room.

    As soon as the queen left, her security head, the expressionless Mina dragged Mellie who had a bitter smile expression with her.

    "We should return to our rooms too", said Daimon.

    "Mm", the girls had no objection so they walked towards the rooms the head maid assigned to them.

    Daimon stole a gaze at Aisha before he talked with her directly to her mind through the mental connection.

    ''Mom I''ll be catching up with the new abilities I got''.

    ''Don''t worry darling, I will pay those three a visit so we can have a "girls talk", butter you''ll have to spoil me in exchange~''.

    Daimon chuckled at his mother and they took separate ways, to the Risha sisters surprise, Aisha tagged along with them while Daimon stayed alone in their room.

    Or at least that''s what they thought, because as soon as Daimon closed the door behind him, Narasha came out of the inventory in her light body form.

    "Eve is sleeping, can I make youpany Daimon?", she asked.

    Daimon jumped on the bed and amodated himself face up, with the pillow reasting below his head.

    "Sure,e here", he said as he tapped the space next to him on the bed.

    Unfortunately, Narasha''s form had no facial factions, and was only femininely shaped because she wanted to look more like a person, Daimon once asked if she couldn''t imitate her true appearance, but her answer was pretty surprising.

    Basically, she didn''t have one, even she didn''t know how she "looked", since she was born, the only thing she had was her capacity to think and her voice, so technically her body was Disaster, but she existed apart from the sword.

    That''s one of the reasons that made Daimon put more effort into bing stronger, since Evangeline kind of mentioned, that her grimoire was supposed to cover all her "needs", but it will be faster if Daimon advances as he is the host of the system.

    Just like that extra skill Aura had, which practically solved her only "weak point" in other words, long distancebat, or Erin''s Dark Firmament which solved theck of darkness mana in sunny days, their grimoires existed toplement their paths, simr to how the system grew ording to Daimon''s wishes.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Still, that didn''t prevent Narasha from giggling and thenying down on the bed next to Daimon, she even rested her head on his shoulder, as she wouldn''t distract him because she had no weight being an agglomeration of light in this form.

    Daimon smiled and then he focused his attention on the interface of the system, there has been quite a lot happeningtely, so that he hasn''t properly reviewed thetest changes, like the mission temple.

    He only saw the lineage temple function, because it triggered the trial after he drank the Shark Blood liqueur.

    [Mission Temple]

    [Having entered into contact with other system bearers, the host has fulfilled the requirements to unlock the mission temple function, from now and onwards, missions will trigger due to certain specific actions or situations (The host will be able to reject, but some rewards won''t be offered twice, special missions will be avable for seven days, if not confirmed they will disappear)]

    Daimon then scrolled down and saw the three separated screens.

    [Ongoing Missions]

    [Stealing from the hero (Clear Water Kingdom): The hero of light Adam was prepared the stage to findpanions and allies in the Clear Water kingdom, but its way was blocked by the host at a critical part of the event (Completion rate 30/100) overscore possible <!>]

    [Permanent Missions]

    [Novice Appraiser Promotion¡­]

    [Novice Magic cksmith Promotion¡­]

    [Novice Alchemist Promotion¡­]

    [Novice Swordsman Promotion¡­]

    [Novice Gunslinger Promotion¡­]

    [Novice Melee Combatant¡­]

    Daimon stopped scrolling as the list continued, he already understood the concept of the second screen, what surprised him was that he was considered a "Novice" in swordsmanship, when ording to Aura his skill was refined enough to put most Lord ranked knights to shame, partly because he has trained a lot while in the state of Core Synchrony.

    Narasha looked at the screen Daimon was seeing and she shared her opinion with him.

    "I remember you told me you only bought the fundamentals from a lot of professions, because the books for the next level were locked in the shop, the evaluation of the system might be based on that instead of your actual skill".

    Besides Daimon himself and Aura who was the one that taught him, Narasha was the one that knew better how good was Daimon with the sword, and she was sure he was by no means a novice after all.

    Daimon nodded, his battle prowess wasn''t reflected by his actual either mage or knight realm, which was shown in his status screen, so the system couldn''t calcte some things, which was good as he didn''t want topletely depend on it.

    But what truly caught Daimon''s attention was the third screen of the mission temple.

    [Special Missions]

    [As a reward for having unlocked the mission temple, the system has awarded the host a one-time special mission without a penalty]

    [Unveiling the truth: Discover who is behind the chaos in Neptune and expose him in front of your allies <!>]

    Daimon clicked on the "!" icon and then the details of the mission showed.

    [Reward: Random Function Pass X1]

    [Penalty in case of failure: None]

    [Remaining review time: 5d 8h]

    Needless to say, Daimon immediately epted the mission, as there were no downsides to it, if he managed toplete it, he will get an interesting reward if not, then nothing happened.

    He also was interested in the overscore part, so he clicked on it and got a short exnation of it.

    [Overscore: Avable for some missions and trials, if the performance of the host goes over 100%, the count will re-start at the next reward tier (low, middle, high, irregr)]

    He was surprised to see the word "Irregr", which happened to be the same ssification as his most powerful skill¡­ Core Synchrony.

    Besides that, there was something that made him frown, the fact that there was an unknown being pulling the string the strings in the shadows, which wasn''t Adam or Marcus.

    "Another system bearer perhaps", he mumbled before he shrugged.

    Whoever was hiding to be the fisher, will be surprised to see that instead of a little fish has attracted a shark with his bait.

 Chapter 296 Magic Blacksmith Promotion

    For the next hours Daimon scrolled though the missions avable and was positively surprised, by the promotion ones, the requirements were pretty low andpleting them will allow him to buy the next level of the respective knowledge book.

    What was more by doing so he''ll learn a new type of skill "Profession Skill", though to be honest since they were akin to what the system considered a novice, none sounded really useful.

    But they could lead to something interesting as the system wouldn''t just made him lose his time, by learning something that had no uses, they were always avable to begin with, so he went for the easiest ones from his point of view.

    [Novice Magic cksmith Promotion]

    [A magic cksmith is one who canbine its knowledge about materials, forging and runes to create a variety of treasures and devices]

    [Requirements: Create or modify a device that is operative and helps the host in any aspect (0/1) (the grade of the device must be at least on par with the greater realm in which the host currently stands)]

    [Reward: Profession skill "Scan"]

    Daimon epted it as he already was going to work in a way to contact Calvin and the others, so it was two birds one stone.

    [Novice Swordsman Promotion]

    [The way of the sword is infinite, to begin the journey one must first find the style that suits oneself, a swordsman always strives for the pinnacle]

    [Requirements: Defeat other weapon users in real battles, to prove your style surpasses theirs (0/10)]

    [Reward: Profession skill "sh"]

    "That''s perfect, in the uing beast hunt I''ll bet there will be plenty of "volunteers" to help Daimonplete this mission", mumbled Narasha, earning a smile from Daimon.

    "Speaking about that, since I won''t be using my public appearance, how about I''ll let you run wild in Disaster''s form?".

    Narasha was surprised for a split of a second, but then she giggled, Daimon normally doesn''t need her help in the Wonder Myriad Ster chart as those in his same age range, don''t pose a threat.

    But here there were descendants of Emperors, and he was sure they had really good magic weapons too, so it was her time to shine as his battle partner.

    "Yes!".

    Daimon saw Narasha literally sparkling and he chuckled, since she didn''t have any facial factions, she used the light to express the small expressions of emotions she has learned so far, in this case expectation.

    Daimon heard someone knocking on the door and Narasha hid herself below the bed, as he got up to open the door.

    The one waiting at the other side of the door was none other than the head maid Martha, she slightly bowed and then handed Daimon a silver ring with a dolphin design and a blue gem engraved on it.

    "Pardon for the interruption, I was asked to bring these items to young master Daimon, this ring will identify you as someone under the protection of Lady Ae, please ept it".

    Daimon took the ring from Martha and after a quick inspection just to make sure there wasn''t anything wrong with it, he put it in his left index finger, as he had the ring from the academy in his left ring finger.

    "If you need anything else, please feel free to call me".

    "Thanks", after being thanked by Daimon, Martha bowed her head and then left as calmly as how she arrived.

    Daimon closed the door behind him and Narasha passed through the bed to approach him, as she looked at the silver ring in Daimon''s left index finger.

    "What I shame I can''t wear anything in this form¡­", she said as she found the ring pretty.

    Daimon couldn''t help but softlyugh at her way to express herself, Narasha who didn''t understand that her words could be misunderstood, looked at Daimon confused until he exined it to her.

    "I never thought about it, but you got rid of Disaster''s scabbard as you spend most of the time in the inventory and you don''t simte clothes in that light body form of yours¡­ I wonder is my Narasha an exhibitionist?", he said with a yful voice.

    It took Narasha a couple of seconds to realize what Daimon was implying, and then the part of her head, where her cheeks would be if she had a face, lightened up a bit, as if she was blushing.

    "No fair¡­ you and Eve always bully me like that~", she mumbled.

    Daimonughed amused by her cute reaction, it was indeed funny to tease Narasha, but he also did it to help her develop and understand emotions.

    "Sorry, sorry, let''s make a deal, once you get your body, I will buy you all the clothes and essories you want, okay?".

    "Mm~", Narasha repeatedly nodded with a happy voice.

    Daimon then sat down cross legged on the bed as he took out the items he asked from the queen, one of those "Reflection Mirrors", which allowed you to see and hear what was happening in another ce where a respective surveince array was engraved.<novelnext></novelnext>

    The second item was a small octagonal te called "Comdev", which function was tomunicate with others, simr to the sigil lector from the Wonder Myriad ster chart, and this is where things got pretty interesting for him.

    Because once he started inspecting it, he realized it instead worked in a simr nature to a cellphone from earth, the instructions stated that there were some things called signal towers, which allowed all thedev to connect with each other.

    To contact someone, you just needed to know the password of the other party, which varied, from a series of numbers and characters, to a more personal thing like a drop of blood, it all depended on the signal tower wo which thedev connected.

    Something that caught Daimon''s attention was that thedev that he was handled, had a dolphin emblem engraved on one of its corners, and also there was a note attached to it.

    "I have towers in the four seas, the ess is enabled in this device, have fun~".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at the fact that the queen had coverture in the four seas, but then he remembered the fact that the Reflection Mirrors were created by her family, and also their magic apparently was rted to sound, somunications were one of the fields in which they excelled.

    Daimon then took out one of his spare sigil lectors, and started working on disassembling it, it wasn''t that hard since it was one of the lessplex devices with which Liz taught him about magic cksmithing.

    Soon he had theponent he needed, which was a gray metal que where the sigils were registered.

    The it came the hard part of the task, he had to dismount thedev and understand the function of the parts, luckily, he could see the runes and how the process worked with his infinity eyes and after a couple of rounds of him sending some test messages to Mellie, which was one of the only three contacts to whom he had the passwords, he pretty much understood he logics behind thedev.

    "This thing is just an extension of the reception tower, unlike the sigil lector who has an antenna built in, it sure requires more preparation, but the range is on another level, Liz is going to love it", mumbled Daimon.

    "If that''s the case¡­", Daimon took the que which stored the sigils, which were basically a "magic signature", created by abination of many ingredients, like the mana, blood and original handwrite of the owner, and connected it to thedev and then to his sigil lector.

    By doing this he would be able to narrow down the search, unfortunately he wouldn''t be able to contact his ssmates since they didn''t havedevs and the way the worked wasn''tpatible with the sigil lector, but as long as they were in the range of the reception towers of the queen, he''ll get to know their general location.

    The message will show in his sigil lector with the respective sigil as well as the territory in which the sigil is located, after a couple of seconds the modifieddev started transmitting to the towers of the queen, the process will take some time as the information of the sigils had to reach the towers at the other seas, for the first time.

    ''Well, that''s as much as I can do for now, once they are located, I will just tell the queen to tell her informants where to look¡­''.

    Daimon''s thoughts were interrupted by the sweet sound of a notification.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Magic cksmith Promotion" has beenpleted]

    [Requirements: Create or modify a device that is operative and helps the host in any aspect (1/1) (the grade of the device must be at least on par with the greater realm in which the host currently stands)]

    [Profession skill "Scan" has been added to the skill tree]

    [Scan: Allows the host to make a mind image of any object he touches (knowledge is required to understand the function and logics of the scanned object)]

    [Cooldown: Null] [Price: Null]

    "Woah, that sounds pretty useful", Narasha who was watching from the sides was surprised after reading the description of the skill Daimon got.

    And Daimon couldn''t help but agree with her, his infinity eyes helped him to understand the process but the materials used, the size and details of theponents weren''t easy to inspect with mana sense.

    Specially because to avoid the steal of designs and technology, all the magic cksmiths added formations to distort and trick mana sense, and when you work with devices that require precision, a deviation of even a millimeter would mean a malfunction or even worse aplete failure.

    Even if he isn''t too centered in the magic cksmith profession, Daimon couldn''t help but imagine the advantages this skill would give him over others andugh to himself.

    "I wonder when will I be able to teach skills to the soulmates¡­ cause Liz it''s going to be really interested in this one", he mumbled.

    Without noticing Daimon spent about three hours modifying thedev, and now that he looked at the clock, the sun should be setting down right now.

    "This thing will need more time to find something, so I might as well go see how are those four doing".

    Narasha returned to the inventory and then Daimon left the room, but after knocking on the door next to his, he noticed the room was empty, he focused in Aisha''s presence which he could feel thanks to her being his soulmate and found her at the other side of the mansion.

    So, he walked towards his mother''s location, after passing through some of the corridors, he found the head maid Martha and asked her what was in the direction in which he felt Aisha''s presence.

    "The training room is in that direction, if young master Daimon wishes so, I would be d to guide you".

    Daimon nodded, and then he followed Martha all the way to a corridor which only had onerge gate, from where loud sounds and explosions wereing.

 Chapter 297 Suspicious Changes

    Daimon could more or less tell what was going on judging by the changes in the illuminationing from the room, as well as the somewhat excited voices of the Risha sisters and even Aisha.

    Still, he walked towards the door and was weed with the sight of a huge roofed training room, the floor was made of some kind of light blue tiles that resembled a tform, just with tapping his foot on it he knew it was a really sturdy material.

    Besides that, there were reinforcing arrays and equipment for long and closebat as well as arge variety of training weapons, mounted on the walls.

    Besides the firing range which Liz built specially for him, this training room didn''t lose at allpared to the one at Erin''s mansion, where Aura has trained him for the past eight years.

    And just as he supposed, the origin of all that noise and light show, were the girls sparring between each other¡­ or at least that was the original idea, but as of right now it was more like a five-way all out war.

    The Risha sisters had their wings spread, but were using minor spells to extend their usage as most as possible, while still taking advantage of the overall boosting they brought to them, instead of using their strongest spell like a ss cannon.

    ording to Liliana''s calctions, after receiving the maximum amount of mana he could give them, it was enough for them to use their wings twice.

    Aisha on the other hand was also taking things seriously, using both metal and lightning boosting spells at the same time, she shed from one side of the room to another, dodging the attacks of the Risha sisters, while was shing with Mellie.

    Speaking of Mellie, Daimon was surprised to see the normally soft and gentle looking princess, being quite fierce in battle, she used a pretty unique weapon Daimon has never seen nor heard of before.

    A fiddle made of a mix of different blue minerals, which were also somehow used for the strings, it looked like a luxury musical instrument instead of a weapon but it worked pretty well.

    When Aisha attacked Mellie with her sword, she blocked with the hard part of the bow and when the Risha sisters attacked her with a spell, she yed a note on the fiddle and somehow dissipated the spells.

    It''s worth mentioning that she was using her innate ability as she had that shining yellow vertical line, on her forehead, also when Aisha used thunder arrow, she slid on the tiles of the floor to dodge it.

    Then she retaliated by pulling on one of the strings and then a small explosion urred in the direction she aimed at which usually made the Risha sisters jump to avoid being hit on their feet.

    Daimon chuckled amused by the fact that they were attacking whoever they had in front, he even saw Leslie and Liliana shing which created a pretty show of dim blue ice and bright orange mes.

    But then as if the girls had nned it beforehand, they all exchanged gazes and beautiful smiles flourished in their pretty faces¡­ before they allunched an attack at Daimon.

    Daimon activated his infinity eyes out of instinct and saw his mother winking at him, before she casted a moderated thunder arrow towards him, in Liliana''s case she shoved the tip of her rapier on the floor and a line of ice des and spikes raised with it as the origin.

    From above Leslie waved her fan and a tsunami of mes rained down, Yvonne was a bit sneakier shooting an arrow which seemed pretty normal, if not for the fact that there was a barrage of dark arrows hid in the shadow of the first one,st but not least Mellie, her attack was invisible but thanks to infinity eyes, Daimon could see the tiles vibrating wherever the soundwave passed.

    ''Young master should we¡­'', Horals''s voice was directly transmitted to Daimon''s ears, as he asked if he was required to act, as Daimon has ordered him to treat hispanions with the same respect, he shows him.

    "No need", mumbled Daimon, his image then blurred and he appeared one hundred meters away from his original position just to blink one more time to appear right next to the Risha sisters.

    He then gently touched their backs and to their surprise, their wings were dispelled, for Mellie he was able to snatch her fiddle away as she wasn''t holding it with enough force, though she managed to retaliate using the bow as a staff and bashing it against Daimon who blocked the attack with his forearm, and was actually sent backwards leaving a two centimeters deep trail on the tiles.

    Daimon looked at his forearm to see that there were some shallow scratches on his skin, which quickly faded away, also the tip of his fingers with which he touched the backs of the Risha sisters, sill had fire ice and darkness mana attached to them.

    That being said, the mana of the Risha sisters wasn''t even trying to harm him, it just stayed there chilling in his hand, it was probably rted to the fact that their wings were now created using a mix of his and their mana.

    Without a second of dy, he used blink one more time and appeared behind his mother, but then before he could do anything, Aisha raised her hands and left her body fall backwards into her son''s embrace.

    "I surrender~".

    Daimon was speechless, as strong as he is, Aisha is always able to read him like a book, to the point that in a fair fight although they tied, she would always have the upper hand.

    With his mother still leaning against him, Daimon looked at the Risha sisters and Mellie before saying.

    "What is happening heredies and why are you attacking an innocent bystander?".

    The first one to answer was Mellie, she shily smiled as she exined how they ended up in an all out five-way battle.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Sorry, solo training is pretty boring¡­ so I asked Aisha, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana if they wanted to train with me and they epted to kill some time".

    "I thought I was a good way to improve teamwork since Mellie joined our group, and miss Mina wanted to see if it was true that even if webined our strengths, it would be nearly impossible to take you down with an ambush~", said Aisha with her usual rxed voice.

    Daimon chuckled, but he could more or less understand what happened here, Aisha and the Risha sisters liked to brag about him, and it was understandable that others doubted about some of the things he was able to do, which led to this little surprise attackbo they pulled on him a moment ago.

    "Mm?", Daimon then looked at the Risha sisters and saw their faces were slightly flushed, but as he was about to ask them what was happening, Aisha''s yful voice echoed in his mind.

    ''Although it wasn''t intentional, you touched the base of their wings darling, it''s the same as caressing the base of Aura or Erin''s tail, something they would hate if done by a stranger, but when done by their partner hehehe, so those three are of course feeling a bit shy right now~''.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, their wings weren''t exactly part of their flesh and instead were mana condensed in a special way, though it was linked to their nervous system as they could move them as they wanted.

    And for that reason, he was careful to not touch them when sent a small stream of his mana into their mana circuits, to interrupt the flow and dispel their wings, but apparently, he didn''t take into ount that their upper backs including the area right below their napes which was his point of contact, was considered the base of their wings.

    But then Daimon saw those three smiling although they were avoiding eye contact and he knew they weren''t really against it, so he ultimately inwardly shrugged, if they didn''t mind, he neither.

    "Ahem, sorry for the interruption but we might have a bit of trouble in our hands", suddenly the normally yful voice of Ae could be heard in the training room.

    The queen wearing her elegant long blue and white dress, appeared out of a space portal that opened right in the middle of the training room, with a serious expression in her pretty face.

    "Sis, what happened?", asked Mellie, she knew that her older sister would only be serious around her, when there was a really important and potentially dangerous situation ongoing.

    Ae contemted things for a second, before she pointed at the door.

    "Let'' go have something for dinner, then I will tell you".

    No one objected so they followed the queen to the dining room, where the maids immediately started preparing everything.

    Once everyone was sitting and the maids had ced the dishes and drinks on the table, Mellie looked at Daimon before saying.

    "A moment ago, an emergency meeting was arranged between the n heads of all the highest ranked noble houses, the number of deaths in the younger generation due to the pirates surprise invasion was prettyrge, about 25% of the descendants of low ranked nobles were killed, for the middle ones the number amounts to a total of 10%, and just 5% of deaths on the high ranked descendants, and that is without taking into ount all the injured".

    "The same happened in the Elemental Sea apparently, but just as we managed to capture some pirates thanks to Daimon, a "rising star" that appeared out of nowhere frustrated the ns of the pirates on the granddaughter of the shaman, and due as a way to thank that rising star, they asked him what could they do to repay¡­ and the answer was to exchange pointers with the young generation of the kingdom, as that will also allow both Seas to bond and grow closer as an alliance".

    "Originally the most important members of the young generation, woulde to the banquet offered by the royal family, but now that stupid king epted that all of the young generation of the Elemental Sea would be allowed to attend to the major events of the kingdom this time".

    "Of course, I objected, since we are still in a chaotic state after being surprised by the pirates, but more than half of those bastards voted against me, because "The kingdom would lose face if we were unable to wee visitants from our ally", and that''s not all, the magic beast hunt was changed to tomorrow, as the Wild Tide Reef has opened earlier this time".

    Daimon frowned, understanding the concerns of Ae, putting the young generations of the two Seas together was basically drawing a shooting target on their backs, as no one knew how many pirates still lingered in the shadows.

    And there was also that guy who asked it as his reward from the most respectable family in the Elemental Sea, in other words the family of the shaman.

    "Do you know something about that "rising star", you mentioned?", asked Daimon, while a certain idiot came to his mind.

    "Mm, I confirmed it with my own means, blond hair, blue eyes and light element, an acquittance of yours?", said Ae.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    "Yeah, I know the guy, it''s one of the people that entered this ce, but he is an enemy¡­ I suggest you prepare a containing force just in case, no one knows what the likes of him can pull off their sleeves".

    The queen''s eyes glowed for a split of a second, she looked at Daimon directly into his eyes before she nodded.

    "Thanks for the warning, I''ll prepare B n just in case~".

 Chapter 298 Wild Tide Reef (Part 1)

    Adam might be an idiot from Daimon''s point of view, but he is still a system bearer, so who knows what kind of tricks he might have up his sleeves, not to mention Marcus who is still missing in the picture.

    "Now, please enjoy the dinner, we''ll be leaving in the morning to the Wild Tide Reef¡­ ah right, the ckfin Duke has sent what I told you, but it will only arrive tomorrow night since it has to go through a personal inspection by the Trident Marshal".

    "Don''t worry, I can guarantee he won''t y any tricks, by the end of the magic beast hunt I will personally hand what I promised to you".

    Daimon nodded, he had no reasons to doubt about Ae''s words, besides even if he got whatever might be the main ingredient for the Blood Shark liqueur, after getting the Ruler of the sea, his instincts told him to not drink mor of the liqueur, so he wasn''t in a hurry for the reward promised by the queen.

    After saying that, Ae who didn''t seem to be in the best mood, said goodnight and then retired to her room.

    Daimon and the others finished their meal, and then Mellie also excused herself.

    "Don''t'' stay up untiltedies, goodnight".

    The next one to leave was none other than Daimon, leaving the girls alone in the dining room for a moment.

    The Risha sisters who remained silent during the whole dinner, suddenly all stared at Aisha at the same time.

    A slightly awkward silence fell in the dining room for a split of a second, but Aisha could tell by their gazes that something has changed for her friends.

    "Are you three that troubled because he touched the base of your wings?", asked Aisha with a yful voice.

    "No¡­ it felt good, like being covered by a nket of the softest silk in a cold day", mumbled Leslie, while she softly smiled.

    "Mm, a warmth that fills your heart", said Liliana as she ced her hand in her chest

    "Or a gentle light that illuminates even the darkest ce", added Yvonne.

    Aisha saw those three genuinely happy expressions, and she was lost for a moment.

    ''Love is certainly a scary marvelous thing darling, to be honest I don''t think these three will leave your side¡­ even if you decide that is what you want'', she thought before saying.

    "We don''t know what is going to happen tomorrow, so why don''t you stay with me and Daimon tonight~".

    The Risha sisters furiously blushed, which made Aishaugh to herself.

    "Don''t be perverts, we are only sharing a room as a group just like you stayed together in that cave, nothing else is going to happen", said Aisha.

    "Mm", the three didn''t doubt to ept Aisha''s invitation after listening to her logic, or at least that''s what they used as an excuse.

    As they were walking towards Daimon''s room, Aisha slowed down for a moment before she whispered to her friends.

    "Before you three decide topletely go down this path, think to yourselves, is your love unconditional and limitless¡­ because I can assure you Daimon''s is".

    The Risha sisters suspiciously looked at Aisha for a split of a second, but before they could ask anything, Aisha opened the door of the room.

    Luckily for them, Daimon was still using shorts instead of being naked like he''s used to when he is alone with Aisha in their bedroom.

    "Mm?", needless to say but Daimon was confused to see the four girls entering the room, but then he saw an almost unnoticeable smile reflect in his mother''s face and he raised an eyebrow.

    ''Mom, what did you tell them this time?'', he asked directly to her, in her mind.

    Aisha winked at Daimon and as she went to the bathroom to change for morefortable clothes, she spoke out loud.

    "Tomorrow is going to be a rough day, so I thought it would be a good idea to "bond" a bit to improve our teamwork, you know like those legendary warriors, who ate together, trained together and slept together~".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he never thought one of the movies he showed to his soulmates for entertainment woulde to bite him in the ass like this.

    Still, it''s not like it changed anything, since tomorrow was indeed going to be a long day, he had already decided to abstain from night activities with Aisha.

    He then turned to see the Risha sisters, and had to admit that they looked pretty with their faces flushed, the bed was really big and it was obvious they didn''t bring the one from their room.

    "Come on you three, go change yourselves, we need to go to sleep", said Aisha as she left the bathroom, she was now wearing a loose shirt and shorts, nothing exactly tempting or feminine and yet she looked stunning.

    The Risha sisters entered the bathroom together, leaving Daimon and his mother alone for a moment, Aisha jumped on the bed and after she amodated herself face up, she tapped the ce at her left which was one of the sides of the mattress.

    Daimon chuckled; he got on the bed next to Aisha as he gazed at her.

    "I told you to not tease them that much, you know why I''m worried about them getting to attached to me".

    Aisha shook her head before saying.

    "I previously agreed with you darling, but I think it''s a bit toote for that now, just let nature follow its course, believe it or not¡­ but their answers regarding you were pretty simr to Erin, Liz and ine''s, I don''t think you''ll be able to make them leave you, that''s your fault for being a "Casanova" was it, hehehe~".

    Daimon saw his mother giggling at him and he sighed.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Fine, I won''t stop things from happening, but that includes possibility of they finding out about us, and you know that it might end up bad".

    "Mm, but I consider them my friends and am willing to share my most precious thing with them, so I''m giving them a chance, whether they take it or not it''s up to them", mumbled Aisha as she entered her son''s embrace.

    Just in time for the Risha sisters toe out in their sleeping clothes to see Daimon and Aisha hugging, and while they were a bit surprised, Daimon could see the slight traces of jealousy that shed in their eyes for a split of a second.

    Still, they didn''t say anything and just got on the bed with Aisha separating them from Daimon of course, at first it was a bit awkward, but after a couple of seconds they stared chatting about random things and soon everything was like normal.

    Aisha even got them tough with some stories of when Daimon was a baby, things like how he never cried nor made any mess even in his first days.

    "Hoh, so since his birth he was a weird one?", said Yvonne with a mocking voice.

    After other simrments made by Leslie and even the normally emotionless Liliana, Daimon chuckled, as he got back at them.

    "Perhaps I should have a long and detailed conversation with your mothers, I''m pretty sure they''ll be more than charmed to tell me some interesting stories and show me those albums they mentioned once before".

    "Ahhh no fair!", Leslie reacted like a cat whose tail is stepped on, out of the three of them she was the one that was the most photographed by her mother.

    That being said, Yvonne and Liliana weren''t any better, apparently when Yvonne was little although she doesn''t have memories of that, she used to act in a simr way as when she used her wings the first times, a bit narcissist and cheeky.

    Liliana on the other hand, had a diary in which she wrote everyday with her mother''s help, because she didn''t want her daughter to freeze her emotions like it happened to her.

    Aisha was the happiest here though, seeing her son getting along with those three somehow made her feel good.

    ''How weird, perhaps this is how a mother feels when their son brings home a girl'', she thoughts.

    As weird as it might sound, for Aisha, Erin, Liz and ine were part of the family from the very beginning, so they joining her felt pretty natural as if it was meant to happen, Aura was the same, it was probably rted to the fact that all of them trusted the other to the point that they were willing to put their life in the hands of the other.

    But the Risha sisters were aplete separate matter, from the very beginning it was Daimon, the one that involved with them, though it happened because he was worried about them, he still stood up for Leslie after seeing Aisha was in no danger.

    ''The old you wouldn''t have cared about them, these three have had a positive impact in you darling'', thought Aisha as she turned off the lights, putting an end to the "children" ying with each other.

    They soon fell asleep as the room was now filled with a harmonious sensation, no one felt awkward about anything anymore.

    ¡­

    The rest of the night went uneventful and soon the sun raised on the horizon, bringing a new day with it.

    Daimon slowly opened his eyes as soon as he felt a presence outside of the room, then a secondter the voice of the head maid Martha could be hearding from the other side of the door.

    "Good morning young master Daimon,dy Ae has asked me to wake you up, please get ready to leave in an hour at most¡­ please inform the youngdies about it".

    Daimon saw the sleeping beauties next to him on the bed, and chuckled, Aisha was of course hugging him to sleep, and the Risha sisters were a sight to behold, Leslie was sleeping in a strange position with her arms and legs extended, Yvonne had her hair covering her face while Liliana was curled up.

    "Thanks, miss Martha, we''ll be there in a minute".

    Daimon heard the footsteps of the head maid as she left, before he looked at the girls, he sneakily kissed Aisha''s cheek before throwing pillows at the Risha sisters.

    "Wake updies, we need to get ready now".

    After saying that, Daimon uncovered them and then went to the bathroom to wash his face and change into the hollow suit, the only thing he didn''t put was the mask.

    When he came out the girls werepletely ready, to their surprise Aisha was also using her own hollow suits, while the Risha sisters had altered their appearances to have those fan fin-like ears simr to Mellie and also changed some of their characteristics with the help of the bracelet of the god of mischief, Yvonne for example changed her pupil color to the beast-like yellow that manifested when she used her special eyes.

    Leslie made it so that the surface of her hair became ck but the backside was still that pretty orange-red, andst but not least Liliana who added some blue strands to her silver-white hair and also changed her eye color to an aquamarine simr to Ae and Mellie.

    "What do you think, with this, that light guy won''t be able to recognize us right?", asked Yvonne as she did a turn to show her disguise.

    "We also learned to change how our wings look, just to mess with him~", said Leslie, then under the surprised eyes of Daimon, a pair of bat-like wings spread behind the backs of the Risha sisters.

    "Not bad, we are fighting an idiot with heroplex, so I guess we''ll be the evil demons of the story", mumbled Daimon, they still made those wings lookpletely different to any of the ones known in the Wonder Myriad ster chart, so no one will be able to tell who they are.

    "Let''s go", after saying that, Daimon and the girls left to the dining room, to have breakfast with the queen and Mellie.

    As soon as they entered the room, the queen couldn''t help but look at them and admit, even she couldn''t see they were disguised, and the Trident Marshal only knew about Daimon changing his face a bit, because he allowed him to.

    That''s right, Evangeline warned Daimon that there was someone looking at them, so he purposedly created the illusion that his disguise could be seen through by that old man.

    "It''s better like this, others can''t look for trouble when their targets don''t exist to begin with", said Daimon, which earned him a nod of affirmation from the queen.

    ''Well, it seems battle isn''t the only thing you excel in, let''s see what other miracles can you work out¡­ child of the promise'', thought Ae as she took a sip from her cup of tea.

 Chapter 299 Wild Tide Reef (Part 2)

    While Daimon and the girls might sound to be dressed in a shy way, that wasn''t the case at all, the pair of queen and princess sisters, were wearing their own attires.

    Mellie was wearing a mix between a dress and a battle armor which included a skirt, leg and arm protectors, a chest te, gloves, stockings and armored shoes as well as a tiara with blue gems and a pair of dolphins over a crescent moon, she perfectly fit the description of a princess.

    For the queen, the theme wasn''t battle but elegancy, so te was using a long one piece light blue sleeveless dress with white crystal ornaments here and there, she had long sleeve globes and was also wearing other essories like crystal decorations on her fan like fin ears, and unlike the previous times Daimon has seen her, she was using a crown this time, as the queen her crown was pretty detailed, made of white coral like mineral and pearls, it had an spiky halo design with some trident ends and right on the middle of it a sun like design.

    Daimon quickly looked at them and he admitted they looked stunning, but what really caught his attention was that despite the big differences in their attires, they were both using simr pendants, which he has seen them look at with different expressions.

    "Mm?", while Mellie didn''t notice it, how could the queen a Half Emperor by right, not feel at least a sh of the sensation of being observed by Daimon at such a short distance, she then yfully smiled and sent him a message through mana vibrations that only he could hear.

    ''I particrly don''t mind, but other noble girls have protectors that will try to attack you, just for stealing a gaze~''.

    Daimon chuckled as he got back at her.

    ''I wouldn''t worry about it, regardless of how they look I won''t take a second nce at someone I consider an enemy, leaving that aside, I must admit that this queen attire does indeed fit miss Ae''.

    Needless to say, but the queen was surprised by two things, first besides Arch ranks, orte-stage Mortal realms as they knew them, only those skilled wind or sound affinity mages could send a message directly to other people''s ears, by mana vibrations, and as far as she knew thanks to her Analysis Resonance ability, Daimon had lightning and fire affinities.

    Second, his answer wasn''t what she expected, but then she remembered what Martha told her this morning.

    ''Oh my, so it turns out, our little guest is a wolf in sheep''s clothes, now things are getting interesting~'', she thought, before saying out loud.

    "I''m pretty sure all of youe from outstanding backgrounds, but at the same time it seems things are quite different from where you are from than a kingdom, so if you don''t mind let me give you a small introduction to the "petty battles" you are about to witness".

    While Daimon and the girls took a seat and started eating their breakfast, the queen pointed at her crown and Mellie''s tiara before saying.

    "First, only royals and those whose statuses are on par with them are allowed to use tiaras or crowns, that includes of course the princes and princesses, as well as the wives of the king, the only Archduke which is the head of the Arcarius family, his firstborn son, me andstly the Trident Marshal, though thetter would rather eat a sword than wear a crown~".

    "Second, of course your attire will be evaluated from head to toe, but nobody will say anything, those who do are looking for trouble, shall the case present itself feel free to handle the way you want to¡­ as long as nobody dies there won''t be any problem", added the queen as she stole a gaze at Daimon''s shadow from where a pair of sleepy eyes peeked from time to time.

    The queen tried to look for Horals but she couldn''t find it, so she supposed he was also somehow hiding in Daimon''s shadow, an ability that she was really interested in, but respectfully refrained from asking about it.

    And the queen was right, while Rita had the capacity to live in other people''s shadows indefinitely, she could also cast that spell on others, but they needed to be able to live without breathing and inplete darkness, so the only one avable for the task was Horals.

    The problem is that he didn''t like it, because Rita once imprisoned him in the shadow of a toilet, during one of their fights to decide who was Daimon''s right hand, that''s why he looked for a way to always be at his young master''s disposition without Rita''s ability, ultimately finding that way to use the inventory as a portal.

    Still since Daimon asked him to, he agreed to be kept in other people''s shadow, but unlike Rita he couldn''t leave as he pleased, because once he was out, he would be unable to return, so he limited to look from within the shadows and that''s why the queen couldn''t notice him.

    "The third and probably most importantparison, will be held between the tamed magic beasts that the high ranked nobles have, of course the royals have a league of their own, like my Mellie''s Pearl Seahorse~".

    Daimon looked at the ck chained beast pouch hanging on his waist before saying.

    "Speaking of that, isn''t that guy going to be confiscated since it is an inmate, or more importantly, aren''t the tamed beasts going to be confiscated before the event?".

    The queen elegantly took a sip of her tea as she shook her head.

    "No, they are symbols of status, in any case none of the outside magic beasts will be able to do anything within the Wild Tide Reef, they can block a lethal attack fromnding on their respective owners once, but that means the owner will be disqualified and forcefully transported out of the Wild Tide Reef immediately, a security measure to make sure the number of casualties is basically null".

    "There is a list of banned magic beast races and a detection array set up anyway, but don''t worry while cktooth is ugly as hell and a piece of trash overall, but its race isn''t banned, in fact no one knows he was imprisoned besides the Trident Marshal and me, so use it as you see fit~", said the queen with a yful voice.

    Daimon could feel the beast pouch slightly moving, a sign that cktooth was able to hear the queen insulting him, but he agreed with her, so the matter ended like that.

    One everyone finished their breakfast, they got up the table and after the security head, Mina wearing a full body blue armor came, and the queen gave some indications to the head maid Martha.

    Ae transported everyone to the front yard of her mansion, where the same white and bluerge carriage pulled by adult sized seahorses, was already waiting for them along with most of the maids lined up to see their youngdy off.

    The full armored Mina sat on the driver''s seat while the head maid Martha opened the door for the queen.

    After Ae and Mellie got up the carriage, Daimon and the girls followed and once everyone was properly sitting, at the order of the head maid all the maids bowed towards the carriage and softly said.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "We wish youngdy and young miss a safe trip!".

    "Mm, thanks to you all, Martha you are in charge while I''m out".

    "Understood youngdy, please have a safe trip".

    After saying that Martha closed the door of the carriage, she then nodded at Mina and the carriage started advancing towards the center of the city, where the mansion of the city lord in other words, the Trident Marshal was located.

    Inside the carriage the queen saw Daimon and Aisha putting on those masks that covered their upper faces, and was surprised to see that Daimon''s presence became really thin, if not for the fact that she knew it was him, she wouldn''t have paid him any attention and just considered bystanders.

    But they weren''t the only ones, the Risha sisters also turned to see Daimon, because for them it was as if they vanished for a split of a second, it''s worth mentioning, that Daimon wasn''t using the concealment effect of the hollow suit when they knew the queen or Mellie, which was the first time Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana saw it too.

    Daimon noticed his mistake and then changed it so that they wouldn''t be affected by it, he also regted the effect to about 30% of its maximum output, just enough to be ignored by those who he considered unimportant, as he didn''t want to be participate in social stuff involving spoiled brat nobles, which he was sure there were going to be.

    Feeling the slightly usatory gazes of the Risha sisters, and the mocking gaze of his mother because she had already changed hers to notpletely vanish her presence, Daimon bitterly smiled.

    "Sorry, it wasn''t on purpose".

    "Speaking of that Lili and the others told me to call them by their nicknames while they are in disguise, so how am I supposed to call you now Daimon?", asked Mellie.

    Lili, Yvi, Les and Asha, where the nicknames the girls called each other, and being honest they did sound like demon race names, since they often had long and strange names for some reason, so they shortened them in their daily life.

    Daimon had already thought about it since he decided to use his identity as a knight like a separate entity and while he for a moment was tempted to use the name "Van Helsing" since that was the name of his system, he didn''t know if Adam was from earth just like him, and if that was the case, he would be giving his origin away by doing so and failing the mission as he isn''t supposed to be known as a system user yet, and there was the possibility that the administrators of Adam and Marcus''s systems knew about his system.

    So instead, he chose a name that was still rted to the universally known as the best monster hunter that has ever existed, at least in the stories back at earth, but less known.

    "Gabriel, while at least in public while I look like this, Gabriel is fine".

    "Mm", the girls nodded, it was a simple, easy to remember name, which wasn''t rted at all to Daimon''s real name, so there were no chances of them mixing it up.

    Soon they reached their destination and as Daimon expected, there was already a crowd waiting at a respectable distance from the mansion of the Trident Marshal, the reason is pretty simple, only he had the ess to the portal needed to go to the Wild Tide Reef, as it was one of the legacies of the Malleus family.

    The other nobles saw the eye-catching carriage of the queen and while some opened up a path for it, others didn''t move, unfortunately for them, the one driving was Mina, so for those who didn''t part a way, she literally icked them out of the way.

    "Hey, what the hell are you doing!", some of the drivers of the carriages that were pushed asideined but were immediately suppressed by Mina''s mana pressure, which made them fell from their seats ending up being theughing stock of the other nobles.

    Mina didn''t even bother to look at them and she directly drove the carriage to the entrance of the city lord, where the guards received them with utmost respect.

    "The guard of the Trident Marshal, greets her majesty the queen!", the guard made a military salute, while they greeted Ae''s carriage.

    The door of the carriage opened and all the gazes fell on Ae who graciously descended from it, followed by Mellie and to the noble''s surprise and delight, Aisha and the Risha sisters, then to the general displease of some of the male spectators that weren''t tricked by the hollow suit, they saw Daimon leaving the carriage, before the door closed, Mina then kept the carriage in her storage ring, before she silently stood at the left side behind the queen, while Mellie was at her sister''s right.

    Daimon inspected his surroundings, to notice that they arrived pretty early, or at least the other nobles whose statuses allowed them to get so close to the mansion of the city lord weren''t here yet.

    The doors of the mansion of the city lord opened and then a tall old man with blue robes, came from inside the mansion.

    At the first sight of the old man, as if it was pre-discussed, all the nobles, guards and the bodyguard who were also drivers, slightly bowed their heads towards him before they shouted.

    "We greet Lord Trident Marshal, and wish him prosperity and longevity!".

    The old man nodded at the crowd, but his eyes especially looked at Ae''s group, of course the queen and the princess were excused to greet him like that, not because of their status, since this is his home and even the king has to show him face and respectfully call him ancestor, given his seniority second to none in the kingdom, but because of personal reasons.

    But it got his attention, that the silver haired youth he evaluated the other day not only felt pretty different, but he and his group just stood there without even trying to feign, while he didn''t care as he knew they weren''t part of the kingdom, he could tell other nobles felt insulted as they had to show respect, or truly respected the Trident Marshal, while that unknown group didn''t care.

    ''What an interesting kid, little Annie has never been wrong once before¡­ let''s see if you can be the first and probably only exception'', thought the old man as he walked towards the queen.

 Chapter 300 Wild Tide Reef (Part 3)

    Although the old man in front of him looked more of an erudite than a warrior having a calm face and aura, Daimon couldn''t help but admit that for the first time since that day when he fought against the manticore, he had that sensation of unawareness which meant he wasn''t sure to survive a direct confrontation.

    Daimon didn''t make any try to hide the fact that he was evaluating the old man that was a few steps away from reaching them, at this distance it was meaningless even with the bracelet of the God of Mischief, he needed to reach the Lord rank for it topletely work against Emperors, like it does for Half Emperors.

    A tall and bulky constitution, a middle sized gray beard and blue robes as well as a staff, which he was using to walk, although it was obviously not a need, but what mostly got Daimon''s attention was the fact that the world itself seemed to flow around the old man, giving it a strange calm but firm aura, like a river whose surface is calm but has strong streams coursing through it.

    ''So, this is what an unrestrained Emperor ranked being looks like¡­ truly a different level and yet thews that surround him are barely above what Calvin''s grandfather has gathered if I say so myself'', thought Daimon.

    It wasn''t a secret for Daimon, that the people from the tribes, the skelefiends and most of the mermen he has know don''t have the capacity to use mana sense, so Daimon''s theory was that those rted to this magic ruin werecking something.

    The same happened with the Half Emperors, the queen wasn''t able to use space shift, which was probably rted to the fact that she didn''t have spacew around her, unlike Erin or Aura, though she indeed had mana sense.

    And that made him consider how strong was the Emperor that invaded them back then, if the guy didn''t have the whole abilities that shoulde with his realm, that would exin why Magus Kings who were molded based on his remains, were considered weaker than Half Emperor, with a few exceptions.

    This small interaction had already given Daimon a lot to think, but he decided to leave that forter, since the old man had arrived to their side.

    "You are here earlyss, here I thought you were going to make this old man wait hahaha!".

    Along with his calm appearance, the old man seemed to be in pretty friendly terms with not only the queen but even Mellie as he turned to see her after talking to Ae, with a warm expression like that of a grandfather who sees his grandchildren.

    "It''s been a while little Mellie, here uncle has gotten you a little present", as the old man finished speaking, he took outrge thin white case and handed it to Mellie.

    "Thanks uncle Vincent", Mellie respectfully epted the case and immediately opened it, her eyes sparkled after seeing its content, it was a fiddle''s bow, carved up in white and blue minerals and it had a pretty white string.

    "What do you think, I casually found a Half Ster rank catfish the other day, and that string was refined using its biggest whisker", said the old man satisfied with Mellie''s happy expression.

    The old man then turned to see Daimon, which rang both Rita and Horals alerts, but they were ordered to not act by Daimon.

    "Although little Ae has mentioned you before, this is our first time properly meeting, Vincent Malleus, it''s a pleasure", said the old man as he extended his arm for a handshake.

    Let alone Daimon, all the other nobles were beyond words right now, being personally greeted by one of the pirs of the kingdom, it was an honor of the highest grade.

    Daimon nodded as he epted the handshake of the old man.

    "Gabriel, the pleasure is mine".

    Vincent slightly smiled as he stole a gaze at Mellie.

    "Thanks for making my little niecepany, I''m expecting to see your performance".

    After saying that Vincent walked away, leaving an excited crowd behind, those who paid attention to Daimon earlier mostly did because he was travelling in the same carriage with a lot of beauties, but now they were genuinely intrigued on who he was.

    ''This old man isn''t making things easy for me'', thought Daimon.

    ''Well, you are flirting with his nieces, be happy he isn''t holding it against you~'', Evangeline said with a yful voice.

    Daimon inwardly raised an eyebrow, he doesn''t remember doing something like that, when heplimented the queen, it was clear she understood it as a joke, and while he is in more friendly terms with Mellie now, it''s mainly because they have signed a contract.

    "Mm?", Daimon came out of his daze as he listened to trumpets suddenly echoing through the whole area.

    "Look at that!", one of the many nobles pointed at the sky where arge shadow was floating right now.

    "Is that¡­ a shark?", asked Leslie.

    That''s right, above them in the sky there was a huge shark floating, it''s size even surpassed cktooth''s for a dozen of meters, also it was of apletely different race, it was light blue on its upper and white on the lower part of its body.

    For a moment Daimon thought it was a genuine White Royal Shark, in other words the origin of the lineage of the royal family, but itcked the mark on the forehead and it was still too smallpared to the one he saw while he was in trial of the lineage temple, also its body shape was different.

    "A subspecies", mumbled Daimon, which made Ae softly giggle and look at him approvingly.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Yup, that''s the "guardian beast" of the royal family, a Half Ster rank White Fang shark, the closest to the White Royal shark race from which the royal family descends~".

    Daimon could hear the naked disdain in the queen''s voice and it was clear she was holding a grudge against that magic beast, or perhaps against the royals themselves.

    He also noticed, that old man Vincent blocked their surroundings while the queen was talking probably to not let those who were using that giant shark as a mount, hear her.

    Daimon then looked at the sky, to see a group of people descend a few meters away from them, one man and three women who seemed to be in their early thirties, then there was also a group of people from the younger generation, three men and a girl.

    The only grown man in the group, had blue hair and was wearing an incredibly detailed robe as well as a cape, judging by the big blue crown on his head, he was none other than Triten White, the current king of the Clear Water kingdom.

    The adult women were all wearing veils, but since they had crowns on their heads, it was clear those were the wives of the king, that being said their crowns couldn''tpare with Ae''s in size and craftwork and barely surpassed the tiaras, wore by the princesses.

    Speaking of the princesses, besides Mellie, there was now a second girl in the royal group, but this one was older than Mellie, as she seemed to be in her middle twenties, long dark blue hair and green eyes, she was wearing a ck dress with golden decorations and had an overall elegant aura around her, it was the first princess Daphne Vs.

    The next ones were the twin princes, both had short blue hair and were wearing some interesting clothes, considering the event of today, blue formal shirts and ck vests, the one at the right had a tie and a serious face, while the one at the right was wearing a scarf and had a grin, Ryan and Bryan Keran.

    Last but not least, the only one among the younger members of the royalty that was allowed to stand next to the king himself, the crowned prince Terry Malleus, Terry was tall and athletic, he had long light blue hair and eyes of the same light blue tone, he was wearing borated robes simr to those of a schr decorated with many blue tones and ocean waves, besides that, he had what at first sight seemed to be a long blue mineral flute, but judging by the handle it was a sword of some kind.

    As soon as they set a foot on the ground, the crowd of nobles bowed their heads and shouted.

    "We greet his majesty the king and the honorable royal family!".

    The different members of the royal family had different reactions, the king nodded with a serious expression, his three wives stayed silently behind the kind and simply raised the sides of their dresses, the princess Daphne ignored thempletely, Ryan nodded at the crowd while Bryan winked at some of the girl nobles he spotted, as for the crowned prince, he ced his hand on his chest and slightly bowed giving a full noble salute with an elegant expression on his face.

    The group of royals then split, the king and his wives went to greet Vincent, while the members of the younger generation walked towards the queen.

    "It''s been a while cousin, have you thought about it, you can join my team this year", said Bryan with an expecting smile, which made his twin Ryan sigh.

    But before Ryan could say something, Mellie answered.

    "I appreciate the offer, but I''m already in a group as you can see, so I will have to decline".

    Bryan''s smile froze on his face, his eyes narrowed as he looked at Aisha and the Risha sisters for a short period of time before he red at Daimon.

    "Oh, that''s a shame, that being said I must admit, cousin has found a pretty "decent" group, please go easy on meter".

    The twins seemed to have lost interest in the queen and Mellie, so they left to where their mother was.

    The princess Daphne didn''t say a word but she nodded at Mellie and then slightly bowed towards Ae, before she also left.

    Lastly the crowned prince who had a gentle and warm expression as he greeted them.

    "Lady Ae and miss Mellie, please ept my mother and mine''s greet, I was also thinking on inviting miss Mellie but as it would be improper given the fact that she has a team already, I look forward to see the performance of someone personally chosen by Lady Ae", said the prince as he looked at the ring with the dolphin emblem in Daimon''s hand.

    Unfortunately for the crowned prince Daimon didn''t even nod at him, which made the prince slightly narrow his eyes but after excusing himself he left to apany his mother.

    The queen chuckled seeing that Daimon wasn''t flinching even in front of the publicly recognized number one among the young generation in the kingdom, giving him thumbs up in her mind.

    What she didn''t know was that he was now more interested in the people that was arriving from the south side of the city, again the nobles looked at the sky but this time what appeared wasn''t a magic beast, though it could be considered one from a certain point of view.

    "What is that?", asked one of the many present nobles, just to be answered by another one.

    "Humph bumpkin, that''s the Flying Citadel guarded by the family of the Shaman of the Elemental Sea".

    Even Daimon had to admit he was surprised this time, there in the sky there was a white floating city, decorated with what wings.

    ''His system should be called shy idiot, instead of hero'', thought Daimon as he shook his head.

 Chapter 301 Wild Tide Reef (Part 4)

    Daimon stole a gaze to his sigil lector before he returned it to the inventory, the process has already finished to register the information of everyone''s sigils in the tower the queen had in the Clear Water kingdom.

    So, since there has not been any positive result yet, it meant his ssmates as well as Scarlet and the other girls, weren''t here.

    He double checked because with his infinity eyes, he managed to recognize a couple of girls among the group of people that was now descending in some kind of floating tform that de-attached from the flying citadel.

    Besides Adam, the alfear princess Tessa and the dwarf princess Femi, were also in the group.

    Daimon inwardly nodded, it was possible to negotiate with the alfear princess, so he already decided to look for a way to get a moment alone with Tessa, to ask her if she has seen anyone of his group.

    "What the hell are you doing aghhh!", the attention was suddenly drawn to a part of the crowd where some nobles were pushed aside, or it would be more urate to say they were thrown aside.

    As if they were waiting for the people from the Elemental Sea to appear, a group of people all wearing full body armor bypassed the crowd and walked all the way towards the Trident Marshal.

    Once they were a couple of meters away all of them took their helmets off, to reveal that they had mixed characteristics meaning they didn''t belong to specific noble family and yet they had the audacity to approach the Trident Marshal.

    "The Spear of the Sea greets Lord Trident Marshal!".

    The man leading the group made a military salute as he greeted the old Vincent, despite him being also a Ster rank judging by the aura that he radiated.

    The queen noticed Daimon seemed to be interested in the neers so she sent a message directly to his ears.

    ''The Spear of the Sea is the unit conformed by the neo nobles, they normally don''t announce their name nor use any kind of emblem, with the exception of events like this, though they have some subdivisions, this unit is conformed by the representatives of all the most outstanding people among them, including one of the two Ster ranks they have''.

    Daimon slightly nodded at Ae thanking her for the information, he was still a bit confused about why they decided to appear now, since he saw them calmly sitting at the back rear of the crowd when they arrived, but he supposed it had something to do with the tform that was descending from the flying citadel.

    Speaking of that, now that all the bigger yers were here, the crowd dispersed into smaller groups, paring with their respective teammates.

    Daimon managed to recognize a few people among those groups, like the guys he met back then when he was travelling to this city, also the guy from the tiger shark race which "happily" gifted him that bottle of Blood Shark liqueur andst but not least, he could feel a hostile gazeing from a specific part of the crowd.

    It was from a group which consisted in people all wearing ck stone armors, guarded by a tall man wearing a full body ck armor with a red cape, the others didn''t have their helmets on with the exception of that man.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow as he noticed that for once, the hostility wasn''t directed to him but to the queen and Mellie, he only understood what was happening after he found a certain resemnce among the man with the cape who Daimon realized was a Ster ranked, and the member of the younger generation leading the team.

    ''Is that perhaps the ckfin Duke?'', asked Daimon directly to the queen.

    ''Mm, the guy with the cape is him, the one leading the group from the younger generation is his second son and the older brother of the one that''s imprisoned right now, also he is one of the two that is known for being able to stand on par with the royals''.

    Daimon nodded and then he turned to see the tform that finished descending from the flying citadel, since the crowd has dispersed at this point, there was more than enough space for it tond.

    Five groups of people descended from the tform, all of them were wearing robes with simr designs, but different essories and colors, red, amber, green and blue, which Daimon easily rted to the four tribes he has heard and battled before.

    But the fifth group/color was new to him, white, and to no one''s surprise, Adam seemed to be close to that one, Tessa and Femi were also there and there was also a young girl whose eyes sparkled every time she gazed at Adam, as well as a couple of guys on their middle twenties, as for the one leading them was an old withered woman.

    ''Another Ster rank...'', Daimon was slightly taken back, out of all the presents, previously he could affirm no one was as strong as the Vincent, but that old woman who arrived with the fifth group was on par with him, the ones leading the other four groups were also Ster ranks, but they were at what Daimon judged to be the early stage, being equal in strength to the ckfin Duke, of course it was just a supposition given the amount ofws that gathered near them.

    ''Luckily I found a way to spy on these guys without having to specifically look at them, so that they don''t notice as long as there is some distance'', thought Daimon.

    Instead of focusing on the people with his infinity eyes, he just quickly gazed at the space near them and depending on the amount ofws that lingered around them, he more or less guessed how strong was the respective, Ster rank.

    Daimon was also surprised to see that Sera wasn''t with Adam, but that could be because of the little trick he yed sending her with Scarlett and the others, as a Lord ranked it would be a suicide to cross the sea by herself so she was probably hiding in the Bone Sea or maybe even at the Maelstrom Sea.

    As soon as the people from the Elemental Sea descended from the tform, the Ster ranks walked towards the king and greeted him.

    "Skyfire greets Lord Triten, may our two Seas remain allies for the eternity".

    "Underwood greets the king of the Mermen Sea".

    "Stoneheart greets Lord White".<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Heartstream greets king Triten".

    The four Ster ranks introduced themselves, it didn''t escape Daimon''s attention that their named, were rted to the element they represented.

    The king nodded at them as he epted their greet.

    "Wee to my Clear Water kingdom, honorable guests from the Elemental Sea, please feel free to wait at my side while the gate is prepared, as for the illustrious young generation that attended to broad their horizons, I''m eager to your performance in this history changing event", said the king as he stole a gaze at Adam.

    The four Ster ranks then went to greet the wives of the king but ignored Ae, the old withered woman wearing white robes, also walked towards the king, but this time thetter was more interactive.

    "Senior Aurora, it''s been a long time since west shared a word, I hope senior shaman recovers soon".

    The woman nodded.

    "Thanks for your kind wishes, and yes I could see a few promising seedlings among the younger generation".

    The king proudly smiled, the old woman in front of him was the wife of the shaman of the Elemental Sea, she was one of the oldest people alive in Neptune too and was already one, when he was only a prince a long time ago.

    "Speaking of that, I wonder if senior Aurora is going to introduce us, the young hero''s group that is responsible for this story changing moment?", asked the king referring to Adam''s group, his interest was justified though, because unlike the natives of the Elemental Sea whose skins had a tinge of the tone their element had, they were clearly different.

    Not to mention Tessa and Femi''s ears which wererger than human''s and had pointy ends, due to their races, it was worth mentioning that they weren''t using any disguise too.

    The old woman was all smiles as she nodded.

    "Of course", she then made some gestures at Adam, the girl that was looking at him with clear admiration in her eyes, as well as Tessa and Femi.

    Needless to say, but the first one to present himself was Adam, who had his characteristic gant expression.

    "Adam Regen greets king Triten", he said as he ced his hand on his chest and slightly bowed towards Tristen, a full noble salute simr to the one the crowned prince did.

    The next one was that girl that has been eyeing Adam all the time.

    ? "Jasmine Ivory, greets Mr. Triten~", the slightly childish voice of the girl, made some of the nobles frown as they heard her call the king by his name without referring him as "king", but they then remembered that girl was among the very few exceptions that were allowed such honor, as she was the sole grandchild of the shaman of the Elemental Sea, in other words she had two Ster ranks as grandparents.

    Long blond hair and green eyes, her skin was pale but had a healthy pink tone to it, she was wearing a white and red attire which left her shoulders in in view, but perfectly covered the area of her chest, white stockings and a boots and was also using a simple white tiara with golden engravings, as for her weapon she had a spear-like staff with a blue gem in the middle and a wing like design at one side.

    The next one was Tessa, her innately elegant and gentle appearance immediately attracted the attention of the male nobles, and the admiration/jealousy of some of the female nobles.

    "Tessa Evergreen greets king Triten", she said as she raised the sides of her white and blue dress.

    Femi wasn''t as used as Tessa in formalities, so she just limited to nod and state her name.

    "Femi Hepha greets the king", needless to say but Femi caused a bit of an uproar, not only because of her kind of serious way to speak, but because of her appearance.

    While she was from the dwarf race and her stature was indeed nothing to brag, she wasn''t as short as Daimon would have imagined a dwarf would be, also to break even more the "stereotype" of dwarfs, her skin wasn''t tanned but pale, she had gray hair and copper colored eyes, her getup consisted in loose white pants and a loose jacket, as well as a ck sports top, she was wearing boots and gloves and had a hammer in her hands, besides that the only essory she had was a ck tiara-like ornament with horns on her head.

    ''So, she is like mom'', thought Daimon, the dwarf princess had earth and metal affinities as far as he knew, and that tiara she had wasn''t for aesthetic purposes, it was a piece of one of the purest Orichalcum ore Daimon has seen before, just like how Aisha had metal essories which could double as conductors or weapons in case of need.

    The king evaluated Adam''s group for a moment before he nodded.

    "I hope these little friends find the beast hunt organized by Senior Vincent, as entertaining as the people in my Clear Water kingdom find it".

    Vincent who has been doing some gestures with his hands for a while, suddenly stopped, the tiles around him illuminated with a dim blue light, as he took out a sky-blue key from his storage ring.

    "The Wild Tide Reef will be opening in a minute, everyone form a line and prepare for the travel, don''t worry we''ll be going with you".

 Chapter 302 Wild Tide Reef (Part 5)

    The Trident Marshal tapped his foot on the floor a couple of times and then a twenty-meter wide and ten-meter high portal appeared in front of him, the portal was connected to a random part of the city until Vincent inserted that blue-sky key into it.

    The image reflected on the portal then changed to what Daimon would describe as "A rock tform in the middle of the sea".

    "Representatives and friends from the Elemental Sea, please follow me".

    With those words, Vince, the king, princes and princess as well as the white robbed old woman and Adam''s group started walking towards the gate.

    No one seemed to disagree¡­ until Ae followed by Daimon and the girls also joined the first "wave" of people going through the gate.

    Though no one said anything, the king looked at Ae from the corner of his eyes with a slight tinge of resentment, not to mention the wives of the king waited for the next wave.

    "Royalty and nobles, army, guests and neutral, aren''t we the four representatives?", asked Ae with a yful voice, as she felt the gazes of the king as well as the white robbed woman on her.

    While the king thought Ae was just looking for trouble, she wasn''t exactly lying, Vincent represented the army which included the neo noble faction, the king represented the royals and nobles since he had offspring with the founding and old noble houses, the white robbed Aurora was the wife of the maximum authority of the Elemental Sea, and at the same time she was on par with any of the n heads in status.

    As for Ae she as the queen has taken the responsibility on maintaining the power bnce in the kingdom, supporting the middle and small noble houses, as well asmoners who have shown potential, such as Mina who stayed behind by the queen''s petition.

    Since Vincent didn''t say anything, the king remained silent, but that didn''t prevent his wives from snorting upon seeing their "counterpart" getting to enter through the portal before them.

    To Daimon''s surprise although the ce at the other side of the portal wasn''t near ind, the travel through the artificial dimensional tunnel didn''tst even a whole ten seconds, probably because the Trident Marshal injected an insane amount of mana into the magic array to elerate the process.

    Once they came out at the other side of the portal, everyone was received by the fresh and slightly salty breeze of the ocean, as they were literally standing on a rock tform surrounded by water.

    The first thing that caught Daimon''s attention was that the water in this ce was divided into four different tones, light blue, dark blue, gray blue andstly pitch ck.

    Noticing the curiosity in the face of the members of the young generation, the Trident Marshal proudly smiled before saying.

    "This Wild Tide Reef is one of the few parts in Neptune where currents from the four seas meet... and the only one that is essible in a regr basis too, now enjoy the spectacle".

    "Mm?", Daimon felt an almost unnoticeable movement on the earth below his feet, then under the surprised eyes of all the people present, the four different waters receded, it started slow but then the rhythm at which the water level lowered elerated, until about one hundred meters of it had gone down.

    Then the water level stopped going down, but it was enough to reveal ayer of the solid rock which acted as a ground, forming a valley with what seemed to be rivers, ponds orkes spread across all over the ce.

    Daimon had to admit that it was an interesting phenomenon which you don''t get to see every day, this also exined why other people wanted toe in with the first wave of people, as the rock tform where they were standing wasn''t exactly spacious.

    But now that the water has receded, the problem has solved itself, the Trident Marshal moved the portal to the recently formed valley which was still damp due to the leftover water that was running through the sea rock floor, and the rest of the rest of the people from the younger generation and some of the other Ster ranks crossed the portal.

    Since there were people from another seaing from the first time to his event, the Trident Marshal took the initiative to exin the rules to everyone.

    Vincent cleared his throat, which drew everyone''s attention to him.

    "Ahem, first of all wee to the Wild Tide Reef, a legacy of my Malleus family and one of the treasurednds of our Clear Water Kingdom".

    "Since we have friends visiting from our allied sea, I will exin the rules of the beast magic hunt".

    The Trident Marshal then snapped his fingers and then a small octagonal te appeared in front of each little group of members of the young generation.

    "First of all, the captain of each team let a drop of blood fall on the score te, then inject mana or battle aura on it and pass it to your respective team members, so they can inject mana or battle aura in it too".

    Everyone followed the instructions of Vincent, who waited until everyone finished before he tapped his foot on the ground.

    A portal appeared on the air in front of him, before arge crystal board came out of it, there was a total of 100 empty slots on it.

    "Now each captain write your name and then pass it to your team members to repeat the process".

    Daimon did as the Trident Marshal told and he saw his name appear in the crystal board, the slot assigned to him had a yellow frame, while the one of the girls had a blue frame, there were also empty spaces right next to the names and a row that separated each team from the other with the word "Total" wrote on it.

    Once everyone was registered, a total of 50 teams in total in other words 300 members of the young generation, half from the Mermen Sea and half from the Elemental Sea.

    Vincent then pointed at the crystal board were four symbols appeared.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Spread across the area there are magic beasts on the early, middle and peak stages of the middle level Mortal realm which depending on strength, rarity and race, a beast will be worth one, two or three stars which are worth 10, 50 and 150 points".

    "What a bout the red star?", asked Adam without leaving the Trident Marshal finish speaking.

    Still the old Vincent didn''t take it personal and just thought it was the enthusiasm of the young generation.

    "The red star falls in the "special" category, their worth isn''t categorized so it could be worth a lot or not, luck is also part of one''s strength after all, what I can tell you is that at least half of the red star marked beasts have surpassed the middle level Mortal realm".

    "All the magic beasts that enter the area covered by the array in the Wild Tide Reef will be marked with one of the ssifications mentioned, and for you to get the points you need to either kill the magic beast or bring it with you to this exact ce by tomorrow night, when the four currents will be flooding the ce again".

    "The score te will register the points in the first case, and for the second the four representatives will be evaluating the results, by using the second method there will be bonus points added too".

    "Besides not killing each other, everything else is allowed including point stealing but for that the respective captain will have to agree, the te also has a non-detailed map of the Wild Tide Reef, since all those "water bodies" that you can see will take you to underwater caves and other ces within the Reef, while the currents haven''t returned is easy to return to the surface, and the te can teleport your whole team back here, regardless of where you are, but once one member does this, the whole team will be taken out".

    "Besides weapons, other treasures aren''t allowed or your whole team will be disqualified, tamed beasts can only be used in emergencies and that will mean your team will be disqualified too".

    "All the scores will be updated in real time for all the spectators to see, and to ensure fairness besides the participants everyone else will return to the Warhammer city, be aware that per any of your representative''s request, your team can be taken out of the event".

    "Ah, right, during the first thirty minutes of the event, fighting isn''t allowed, any questions?".

    All the teams discussed between each other, but the Trident Marshal has practically covered all the basics, the only variants were the red star marked beasts and the possibility of being robbed of your points.

    Since no one was asking anything, the Trident Marshal nodded as he turned to see Daimon''s, Adam''s and Terry''s groups, in other words the members of the young generation that were in the rock tform abode the valley.

    "Little friends please descend with the others, so we can start the countdown".

    Only now, Adam noticed Daimon, he has gazed at Mellie, the Risha sisters as well as Aisha before probably because they are girls, but he didn''t pay Daimon any attention until now.

    Still, he gantly smiled at his two petitors" as he jumped off the tform.

    "Good luck, friends from the Mermen Sea", he said with a little tinge of condescendence in his voice.

    Bryan Snorted and he as well as his group jumped following Adam, Ryan followed his twin, then Daphne andstly the crown prince Terry who stole a gaze at Mellie before joining his half siblings.

    ''My little Mellie has a lot of trust in you, please take care of her¡­ also if you bring the trophy to my camp, I''ll prepare a little reward for you, good luck~''.

    As Daimon was about to jump from the tform, he heard the queen''s voice on his ears, which made him chuckle.

    "Let''s go", he mumbled, then he and the girls slid down thedder all the way to the valley below, while the non-participants left to the tform which now had enough space for them.

    The Trident Marshal reviewed everything one more time and then he pointed his hand at the sky.

    A water sphere condensed in his hand which he then shot towards the sky.

    "Boom!", the water sphere exploded and then the loud and imposing voice of Vincent echoed through the whole valley.

    "Let the beast hunt begin!".

    Some of the participants mostly the guys from the neo noble faction roared upon hearing the Trident Marshal and then all the teams started moving in all directions.

    "So, what''s the n, D¡­ Gabriel?", asked Leslie, her tongue almost slipped due to not being used to call Daimon by a different name.

    Daimon observed his surroundings, there were many high rock peaks dispersed through the valley and there was a rock trail that advanced far from what he could see right now, there were also those "water bodies" which were actually entrances to the different underground spaces some were flooded and some weren''t, not that it was a problem since Ae has given them potions that allowed them to breath underwater for two days in preparation.

    "I think we should dive right to the next level", said Daimon.

    "Mm", the girls nodded and they started walking towards the water bodies to find the one they wanted to use.

 Chapter 303 The Beast Hunt Starts

    While the members of the young generation were all discussing their next course of action, or directly doing what they had nned beforehand, the representatives and spectators waited in the rock tform while the Trident Marshal prepared the portal back to Warhammer city.

    So now that the young generation wasn''t present and the only ones left were the "adults", appearances were dropped a lot, specially because everyone was gathered in a small space such as the rock tform.

    To the surprise of no one, the first ones to enter in conflict were the neo nobles and the nobles, the ckfin Duke and the Ster rank who personally greeted the Trident Marshal earlier to be more specific.

    "What the hell do you mean with that, Dominic!", the ckfin Duke suddenly raised hic voice while he let out some of his mana pressure, making those who were surrounding him to take some distance.

    "Humph, I''m just stating some facts, why should the father of a criminal hold the title of Minister of Security, just because you are from an old noble family, Eugene?", the neo noble Ster rank who turned out to be called Dominic answered in a sarcastic voice as a violent red battle aura radiated from him.

    The other people took some distance from them, because their energies were shing causing explosions and sudden discharges of fire and a ck-green smoke from time to time.

    "I have heard that the old nobles and neo nobles don''t get along, but isn''t this a bit too heated for a small discussion?", asked Underwood, the patriarch of the Bamboo Forest sect.

    The other patriarch started mumbling to each other enjoying the gossip, even some of the nobles participated as well.

    The king saw it and he cleared his throat to draw their attention.

    "General Dominic has always had a small feud with Minister ckfin, over the position of Minister of Security, I hope this little disy don''t make you honored guests ufortable".

    Most of the nobles took the hint and stopped participating in the gossip, but the people from the Elemental Sea were enjoying the show.

    The mother of the crowned prince, heard somements that involved her son, as he couldn''t unify the kingdom and other small talk and she gritted her teeth before saying.

    "A general''s status is lower than a Minister, Lord Dominic should be aware of his own position, this is what happens when a non-prepared person gets a noble rank through backdoor means, humph".

    This time even the patriarch from the sects stopped, the king had already spoken for the royals, so no one else should have said anything, at least not anyone from the king''s "faction", but she did.

    And the king actually gazed at his wife, but before he could say anything, Ae''s mocking voice interrupted him.

    "Military ranks and civil ranks work in a different way, the only Minister who is above in terms of statuspared to a general, is the Archduke Arcarius who is only equaled in authority by uncle Vincent, you should know that given your own position Irma".

    The mother of the crowned prince herd Ae not only refer to Vincent as "uncle", but openly reprimand her and even calling her without any honorifics and she nearly lost it, but the mother of the twin princes ced her hand on Irma''s shoulder as she shook her head.

    "Enough, Lord Dominic, Minister ckfin, fighting is a disrespect for our guests", the voice of the king followed by his mana pressure separating the two Ster ranks who were still ring at each other with clear disgust for the other.

    The ckfin Duke turned to see the king and then bowed his head as he spoke with an aggrieved voice.

    "My king, this psycho has wrongly used my son and purposedly ndered by ckfin family which has protected the public security of the kingdom, for the past ten generations, your subject requests a disciplinary action to teach that savage some manners!".

    Dominic snorted and then spat on the ground before he took out his red war spear out of his storage ring.

    "Protected the public my ass, in case an idiot with a silver spoon from birth like you has such a bad memory, where were you when the pirates entered the kingdom causing the death of many decent young seedlings, not to mention your own son betrayed his country fellows just to save his ass, king White, I request for you to strip the tittle of Minister to this idiot for his faults!".

    The ckfin Duke was shaking due to anger, he looked at Ae from the corner of his eyes, but as much as he wanted to get angry at her for the "rumors" which were in fact the truth, about his son, she only stated that in exchange for the legacy of his family, she wouldn''t execute his son on the spot, everything else was out of the table.

    The king wanted to mediate give the reason to the ckfin Duke, but since Dominic mentioned the death of the descendants of other nobles, if he did, he will be criticized and in the current chaotic status of the kingdom that would be dangerous, so he was now trapped between the sword and the wall.

    But then an old but gentle voice drew everyone''s attention.

    "Since the source of all this problem is the young generation''s actions, why not let that be the solution itself?".

    The king as well as the ckfin Duke, Dominic, the representatives from the noble ns and even the patriarchs of the sects from the Elemental Sea turned to see the old Aurora who spoke a moment a go.

    "Would senior Aurora care to borate?", asked the king, trying to take advantage of the chance to break the dispute without having to favor anyone.

    "Well, I have heard that the second son of the ckfin family is the most talented in the history of his household, but at the same time the merits earned by the young spear from the neo noble factions had reached the ears of the people from my Elemental Sea".

    "So why not let the result of this events determine who is in the right, upbringing is a big reason of the young generation''s performance after all, so through them we will get to know who has been responsible and who isn''t, don''t you agree?", asked the old woman.

    The nobles, patriarchs, the royals and even the neo nobles had to agree with the words of Aurora, which was what she wanted to make her next move.

    "Of course, I hope you don''t mind me joining this littlepetition, how about a Half Ster rank worth prize of the election of the winner, regardless of who wins this will be a little "visit" to see the treasury of he other, so it''s a chance for the young generation to know another sea, since I''m the one suggesting it, I will cover the Elemental Sea in this little bet, what do you say?".

    The patriarchs who were sweating a bit earlier let out a sigh of relief, it wasn''t a secret that Aurora favored the "rising star" that saved her granddaughter, and while they recognized his potential, handing out a Half Ster worth prize was out of question for them, at least for an event that didn''t take ce in the Elemental Sea.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Oh, I like senior''s approach, I Dominic have never been a coward unlike a certain someone, count me in!".

    The ckfin Duke heard Dominic calling him a coward and he snorted.

    "My family has millenniums of history, I can easily disburse a Half Ster rank prize, specially since it will be staying in my Clear Water kingdom", said Eugene as he nodded at the king, implying that the winner will be either his son or the crowned prince.

    The king was all smiles right now, but as he was about to enter the bet too, he was interrupted once again by Ae who was ying with a lock of her beautiful hair.

    "I''ll join in too".

    Upon hearing Ae''s words, most of the people present gazed at her, Mellie isn''t too social nor renowned as she normally stays at home, so everyone thought the queen was just showing her little sister some support, as she could afford to lose due to her status.

    The king on the other hand raised an eyebrow, well knowing Ae wouldn''t do anything without a certain amount of certainty, but ultimately, he discarded his worries, his son has shown him his real abilities in private and he was sure that even the son of the ckfin Duke of the young spear of the neo noble faction, were a bit short inparison, besides how could he as the king chicken out when his subjects have epted the bet.

    "I thank senior Aurora for her generosity, my White family will also participate in this friendly bet, and will make sure that all the parties follow their word, any objections?".

    "Let this old man join the fun too, whoever wins it will have a positive effect in both our seas, so I don''t see any downside to it", Vincent who just finished preparing the portal back to Warhammer city, also joined the fun.

    The other nobles as well as the patriarchs were now more interested in the event, despite the fact that they knew their chances of winning weren''t too high.

    This time Vincent stayed behind while the others crossed the portal, and "coincidentally", the queen was thest one to enter, so as Ae walked next to him, she mumbled.

    "What did I tell you uncle, arrogant people will do whatever to keep face, just a little spark was needed".

    "Now we just need to see if our expectations of that little fellow pay out or not~".

    After saying that Ae entered the portal with a calm and happy expression in her face.

    Vincent bitterly smiled as he stole a gaze at the Wild Tide Reef, before he turned around and entered the portal closing it behind him, not without thinking.

    ''When ites to strategy even this old man wouldn''t like to face youss, I just hope you know what you are doing as this coulde back to bite us if that little friend doesn''t win''.

    The portal closed leaving only the sound of the water streams, and the echo of the conversations some of the participants of the beast hunt were having using the rest of the thirty minutes of no fighting granted by the Trident Marshal.

    ...

    While the other teams were tagging with others, Daimon and the girls walked near the countless water bodies trying to find the one they wanted, of course other people asked them to join, but it was a farse as all of them were subordinated to either one of the royals, the ckfin young master, or Adam.

    "Miss Delphini, would you like to team up with my Fierce Tiger Shark family?", asked the same guy who ended up gifting Daimon the key to the ck Armored Shark lineage.

    Unfortunately for him, Mellie simply shook her head without even saying a word, which made his false smile to freeze on his face.

    "I see, the crowned prince sends his regards, have a nice day", as the guy low key threatened Mellie, he tried to leave just to hear Daimon''s mocking voice piercing his ears like a needle.

    "Some people won''t cry unless they see a coffin".

    The shark guy slowly turned to see Daimon with bloodshot eyes, while Daimon didn''t mention anything, the first and only time he has been humiliated has be well known in the noble circle, so of course he was harshly reprimanded by his family, so thatment hit a sore spot for him.

    Still the tule of no fighting was still in vigor, so he just swallowed his anger by swearing to take revenge as he left.

    Daimon suddenly turned to the left just in time to see a hole appearing on the ground, from which water poured out, his amethyst eyes glowed behind the mask, as he dragged the Risha sisters, Aisha and Mellie with him.

    "It''s going to be a little turbulent,dies, so hold onto something".

    Without letting the girls say anything, Daimon jumped into the water dragging them with him.

    A secondter a tried to follow them, but the hole in the ground somehow closed which made it just hit the ground.

    "Tch", the figure clicked its tongue and then jumped in the closest entrance followed by about twenty people.

    At the same time, the restriction stated by the Trident Marshal officially finished and the magic beast hunt, which will lead to a change in Neptune itself started.

 Chapter 304 The First Kill

    Once everyone had returned to the Warhammer city, Vincent showed all the representatives and guests an area which his subordinates prepared in their absence, with chairs, maids, chefs and tables of food prepared for everyone, clearly although Vincent isn''t too fond of social events like banquets, he still holds the proper etiquette of a noble when receiving visits.

    "Please feel free to take a seat and enjoy the food that the Mermen Sea has to offer, prepared by Lady Delieri and her students", said Vincent, among the chefs there was a woman who seemed to be in her early thirties and shared some resemnce with Aida, the girl that was in the same caravan which Daimon and the girls joined.

    "Oh, I have heard about Lady Delieri''s restaurants, thanks in advance for this feast", said the old Aurora as she walked to the food table.

    The royals, representatives, high ranked nobles and the patriarchs of the sects from the Elemental Sea all went to take their respective seats, the most important people had a seat assigned on the first raw, which directly looked to the crystal board where the participants of the beast hunt were registered.

    Unfortunately, they couldn''t see their performance directly, but they could still see how the scores increased and discuss about it, all the presents were high ranked mages or knights, so the two-day duration of the event was nothing, besides the Trident Marshal has prepared all themodities needed.

    But of course, there was again another sh among some people, this time due to the distribution of the seats, while the king, the Trident Marshal, the old Aurora, the patriarchs of the sects, Ae and surprisingly the mother of the Vs princess, were assigned a seat at the first row, the other two wives of the king weren''t.

    Making them frown andin to the king, unfortunately this was a matter of authority not status, so the king who normally dotes on his wives had no say this time.

    "Now, don''t feel bad Irma and Norma, the ones in the first row are people who has to listen toins and deal with matters of our respective territories, so I doubt you''ll want to hear to such boring stuff~", said Ae with an unnoticeable tinge of disdain in her voice.

    She wasn''t lying though, while the three wives of the king were descendants of Dukes, they themselves held lower ranked titles, for example since the mother of the crowned prince though she was the niece of the Trident Marshal, her title was that of a Marquis as her father was a Duke, and although she was his only children, her father was still active as a noble, so she had practically zero responsibilities, the same applied to the mother of the twin princes, and the king was prohibited from granting tittles to his consorts, making Ae the only with that authority, that or they could get it through "backdoor" means, gaining merits in the military.

    The only exception was the mother of the first princess, as her parents died so she inherited their Dukedom, bing the Duchess of Vs.

    In a sense, the other two spend their days in the royal castle in luxury, while the Duchess of Vs was busy managing the cities of her family, something well known in the noble circles.

    "Humph", Irma and Norma softly snorted and then walked to their respective seats.

    Needless to say, but the king wasn''t happy, Ae has been kicking his ass since the beginning of this event, probably as a revenge since she was ignored in thest meeting that the higher echelons of the kingdom held.

    Vincent saw the sparks flying and he bitterlyughed, as he tried to take the conversation to a different direction, Ae actually cooperated with him by pointing out something the old man "forgot" to mention.

    "Uncle Vincent, although I didn''t mention it, but it didn''t escape from me, that you didn''t mention the fact that each year the four currents that converge in the Wild Tide Reef, tend to drag not only magic beasts from their respective seas but even resources and other natural treasures".

    The Trident Marshal inwardly chuckled, but he still epted the lead Ae gave him.

    "As I stated before, luck is part of one''s strength, I personally believe that when one is destined to something, it doesn''t matter where you are it wille to you, but at the same time personal effort is important in order to fully exploit one''s opportunities, like this, all those kids will have a fair chance of getting their own fortunate encounters, whether they can spot them or not, that is up to them".

    "Well said old Vincent, please ept this toast from me hahaha!", the general Dominicpletely ignored the seats and other "boring" stuff and went straight to the drinks table, grabbed a bottle and directly drank from it.

    The other neo nobles were pretty much the same, they ate and drank without thinking of elegancy and things like that, which of course made the most orthodox nobles re at them, but since they were minding their own business discussing in their private groups, nothing else happened.

    And so, the festive atmosphere grew and soon the discussions turned in the direction of the crystal board, as the counters had started to show some changes, meaning the participants were starting to get some achievements.

    The mother of the crowned prince, Irma, smiled from ear to ear seeing that her son was the first one to increase his score, the dazzling yellow star with a number "1" attracted the attention of all the people present, that and the fact that Terry got a small bonus for being the first to increase his score.

    Irma turned to see Ae who was enjoying a piece of cake with a free and careless expression, but her modals were top notch, making it a bliss for the eyes jut to see her, with a challenging expression, but then her smile froze on her face when Ae''s voice made everyone turn to see the only one that had zero points up past the first thirty minutes.

    "Oh my, these bonuses are a bit unfair, but I guess that making the effort of finding a peak stage middle level Mortal magic beast to be the first kill and doing it such a smallpse of time instead of going for long endurance battle, is truly praise worthy~", said the queen as she pointed at a certain name with her spoon.

    Once the eyes of the nobles found what the queen was pointing at, their mouths widened in disbelief.

    ...

    While Daimon might not be the one with the highest realm among the present people, he has yet to see someone whose perception surpasses his, in the young generation at least, so of course he noticed there were a few people that have been eyeing them in secret.

    So, after seeing with his infinity eyes a temporary breach opening on the ground, and making sure it led to not a dead end, he grabbed the girls and jumped into it.

    Inside of the tunnel the current was pretty strong, luckily the potion that the queen gave them not only allowed to breath underwater, but also protected their mouth, eyes and ears from the pressure, essentially granting them themon advantages of the mermen of seeing, talking and hearing underwater, besides breathing of course.

    The girls were holding onto Daimon, with the exception of Mellie that held Aisha''s shoulder to not be dragged apart by the current.

    Aisha looked at the ce from where they entered the tunnel, that closed in a hurry and she raised an eyebrow at her son.

    ''Why didn''t you let those idiots follow us darling, we could have dealt with them right now?''.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon grinned as she answered to Aisha through the mental connection.

    ''It''s better like this, we''ll let the little fish fatten before catching it''.

    Aisha softly giggled and then she tightened her grip on Daimon''s right arm, as the current elerated all of a sudden after taking a detour.

    After about ten minutes of being guided by the current, Daimon suddenly felt his body being released from the pressure.

    "Don''t let go yet, I''ll take us to the surface", mumbled Daimon.

    "Mm", the girls nodded and then Daimon moved his feet to propel them out of the water, while dragging others out of the water without using his hands as support, might be hard for others.

    Daimon who has trained to swing a thirty-ton sword around, could easily handle helping five girls out of the water.

    Once their heads popped out of the water, Daimon first inspected his surroundings, they happened to reach an underwater cave of some kind.

    There was no shore and they actually had to jump a couple of meters to reach the ground of the cave, Daimon flexed his legs and then with straightened them propelling himself and the girls out of the water and safelynding on the ground, which was made out of some kind of dark green rock.

    As soon as his feetnded on the rock, Daimon waved his hand and Disaster appeared floating in front of him, before he stabbed it on the ground.

    "Screeeechhh!!!", a loud ufortably high-pitched sound echoed through the cave, before the ground bellow their feet trembled, revealing there was some kind ofrge webbed hand which was covered by rocks, below them.

    "What the hell is that?", the first one to react was Ivonne, she and the other girls jumped away from therge webbed hand but Daimon stayed there.

    The whole rock trembled before a fifteen-meter-tall strange creature raised from the ground, its hands were about two metersrge and Daimon was standing on it, with Disaster piercing the webbed part from one side to the other.

    "I wonder what the hell are you", mumbled Daimon trying to see if the creature was rational or not.

    The reason as to why he did it, was because the creature stood on its hind legs in a semi-erect way, and it hadrge arms as well as a trunk which resembled that of a human, though it had the head of some kind of fish from the depths of the ocean, with big bright red eyes and needle like teeth.

    The answer of the creature was to open its jaws and try to devour Daimon, Daimon simply loosened his grip on Disaster''s hilt, and the whole 40 tons of weight of the sword when Narasha didn''t cooperate to lighten it, made the creature fall and get pinned to the ground due to Disaster''s edge betting drilled into the rock all the way to the hilt.

    The creature made a ruckus trying to separate itself from the ground, even trying to take out Disaster just to be directly attacked by the ck and red bordered energy radiated by Disaster.

    ''This thing has such a low vitality but a really high amount of darkness and water mana, a good help to eliminate more of the antinite~'', said Narasha directly to Daimon''s mind.

    Daimon chuckled, after a couple of seconds, the creature copsed exhausted, only then he took Disaster out of the creature''s hand, he was surprised that the thing didn''t cut off its arm to escape, as he would have done that if he was in that situation.

    But then he remembered that Narasha mentioned it had a really low vitality, meaning that losing a limb was probably the same as dying due to the loss of blood.

    After inspecting the creature Daimon found the mark that the Trident Marshal mentioned, at the left side of the head of the creature, and he smirked noticing the three yellow stars on it.

    "What an unfortunate bastard, a ss cannon ambush beast like you would have probably caused all the other teams troubles, and you had toe across the one that can see through disguises, and really heavy sword too", mumbled Daimon as he snapped his fingers.

    The creature then exploded in white mes before it even had the chance to scream, it died, then Daimon saw the three-star mark flying out of the corpse and entering the crystal te the Trident Marshal handed him.

    Daimon ced Disaster''s backside on his shoulder and then walked towards the girls, it was awfully obvious that Mellie was the newest of the group, because her pretty face had the word "impossible" written all over it.

    "S-Say Daimon, I could feel the ground tremble when the creature fell earlier, but I''m pretty sure that it wasn''t that heavy, so how much does that sword weights?".

    Daimon chuckled as he yed with Disaster before saying.

    "About forty tons, but it will keep increasing in the future".

    Seeing Mellie''s dumbfounded expression, the Risha sisters patted her shoulders.

    "It''s easier if you don''t think too much about it, otherwise, you are in for a lot of outrageous things~", said Leslie.

    "Mm", Liliana and Yvonne nodded agreeing with Leslie, while Aisha giggled.

 Chapter 305 From Hunter To Prey

    While the Risha sisters at this point believed nothing was an absolute impossibility when it came to Daimon, thetter knew his limits and a peak Lord ranked magic beast was out of his league.

    If not then back when he had to fight the djinns, he wouldn''t have had to activate core synchrony, without it even if he used Disaster the most, he could stretch his battle prowess was the middle stage of the Lord realm.

    "This thing wasn''t weak enough for me to get rid of it so easily, it was lethargic but¡­".

    The girls listened to Daimon and then saw him walking towards the corpse which was still burning, the white mes were dispelled and then Daimon flipped the corpse over to reveal that the back of the creature was a mess.

    It had so many cuts and deep scars, that even after being burned the wounds were still clearly visible.

    "Those whip wounds", mumbled Aisha.

    Mellie who wasn''t following what was happening in front of her, shook her head before saying.

    "Wait, are you implying someone enved that thing?".

    "That would exin why its vitality was so low, despite being a magic beast of some kind, also the aura that this creature gave off was simr to cktooth''s one, so I think it''s pretty safe to assume we ended up in the underground part of the reef that connects with the Maelstrom Sea", said Daimon as he kept destroyed the corpse of the creature.

    Still Daimon couldn''t help but had a bad premonition, and he wasn''t the only one, Yvonne frowned for a moment before she said what was in her mind.

    "No one could have guessed an irregrity such as "Gabriel" would participate in the beast hunt¡­ but Adam practically announced his participation, and then a high worth but weakened dark element magic beast like this casually appears, it looks too convenient for me".

    Daimon nodded, this looked a bit forced, but if this was a trap the result wasn''t as the other party expected, unlike Adam''s light which left marks on Marcus when he wound it by ident, Demon Light doesn''t leave anything behind, so if they were trying to frame him with that magic beast the n miserably failed.

    Also, per Daimon''s calctions that beast equaled Adam in physical strength, even in its weakened state, so a fight between them would have required more time, he was able to finish it in such a short period of time due to the really low amount of vitality it was left.

    "The Devil Stingray pirates", mumbled Mellie, they were one of the reasons as to why Ae wanted to postpone this event, their base is the Maelstrom Sea and the Wild Tide Reef connected with it, though there was a magic array to identify the things that entered a certain range, there are simply too much mysterious and eerie things hidden beneath that sea, and she was sure that creature wasn''t supposed to be here.

    Mellie doubted for a second before her eyes became determined, as she grabbed the crystal te that was given to them by the Trident Marshal.

    "We canmunicate with uncle Vincent through this, in case of a real emergency, don''t worry if anything I''ll be disqualified but the team won''t be punished for it¡­".

    Mellie''s expression changed in a split of a second, from serious to worried, because she realized the emergencymunication array wasn''t activating.

    She immediately tried to take something out of her storage ring, as they were allowed to bring food and daily necessities¡­ but the result was the same, it didn''t work, she even tried to summon her tamed magic beast to eighter ask it to protect them or trigger the forceful teleportation out of the event, but it didn''t work.

    Aisha and the Risha sisters tried too just to realize their rings didn''t work too, but then they looked at Daimon as they saw him took out that ck sword which he still had in his hands right now.

    Aisha knew he had the inventory, and it was practically impossible for any external mean to cut off his connection with it, but Mellie and the Risha sisters didn''t.

    "My sword wasn''t in my ring, it''s a bit hard to exin, let''s just say that, that restriction doesn''t affect me, but it doesn''t really matter because any kind ofmunication won''t be able to contact the other side, also my beast pouch doesn''t work at all too".

    "I don''t know how but whoever is behind all this, managed to leave the scoring function avable so that the spectators don''t suspect anything is wrong".

    "Give me a second", said Daimon as he jumped into the water to the surprise of the girls, the water was pretty clear so they saw him dive to the bottom gaze at the tunnel from which they came and frown before returning to the surface.

    "What happened, is the current too strong for us to return through the same way we arrived?", asked Leslie.

    But Daimon shook his head in response.

    "No, we can''t go back because there is no tunnel anymore, and judging by the debris that is now blocking the tunnel, it was done by something with earth affinity and an insane reserve of mana, plus the capacity to breath underwater, instead of using a magic array which is easy to detect with mana sense, it was a "magic beast" which didn''t ring any rm, due to the nature of the event¡­ and also a rune master at least as strong as that old man must be involved", said Daimon referring to Vincent.

    ''And I couldn''t detect it with my infinity eyes either'', he thought to himself.

    "So, they got us good", mumbled Liliana.

    "Well, I don''t think it was specifically directed at us, if the pirates are behind all this, they are probably aiming at all the participants of the two seas", added Yvonne.

    Mellie saw that despite the incredibly dangerous situation in which they were, Daimon and the girls were pretty calm, and then she noticed she was the same too.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''How weird, back when at the forest I had already epted that I was going to die, and to be honest this situation is worse, then why do I feel as if there is nothing to worry about¡­ is it because of him'', thought Mellie as she stole a gaze at Daimon before she looked at the pendant that hanged from her neck.

    After contemting things for a moment, Daimon finally took a decision, so he pped to get the girl''s attention.

    "Based on what we know as of right now, this event has gone from a simple beast hunt to a survival kind of situation, we can''t stay in a ce for too long, so let''s try to leave this cave and then we''ll decide what to do, don''t let down your guard and we''ll be fine".

    "Mm", listening to Daimon''s reassuring words, the girls nodded and after that they started walking into the cave, with Daimon being a step ahead of them.

    ''Horals, Rita, if something on the Arch rank shows, and is possible to restrain it do it, if not eliminate till thest trace of it''.

    ''Understood young master''.

    ''Those pirates don''t know their ce, Horals requests permission to wipe them all out in the name of young master!''.

    As always Rita was pretty reasonable, while Horals was a bit too enthusiastic, probably because the bone general couldn''t leave unless it was absolutely necessary as they could be being watched right now.

    Luckily since the terror contractor skill allowed him to directly speak with his subordinates, there was no need for them to leave their hiding ces which were able to trick Emperor realms, as nor Vincent or Aurora noticed anything.

    ''Well at least, the strongest enemy isn''t stronger as the strongest "ally", I guess that''s something to celebrate'', thought Daimon as he led the girls through the cave, he kept Disaster in his hands, just in case.

    The further they ventured into the cave the darker the ce got, it was clear this ce was a disadvantage for light affinity people as light mana was scarce here, but with two darkness affinity mages plus Aisha who as a vampire had a decent rtionship with darkness element, there was no problem for them to navigate in the darkness.

    "I can see there is something ahead of us, fifty meters to the left it looks like¡­ a corpse", mumbled Yvonne, her eyes glowed with a dim yellow light, meaning she was using her special eyes.

    Even after death, the mana flow of a person will still work for a certain amount of time, depending on how strong was said person when it was alive, in fact the artificial undead were the result of a reanimation spell applied on corpses whose mana flows hadn''t withered yet, eighter due to how recent was the death of the "material", or due to some preserving methods.

    So, for Yvonne''s eyes, the still ongoing but weak mana flow blinking at the side of the road was easy to spot.

    Daimon nodded, and after inspecting the area to make sure it wasn''t a trap, he walked towards the area pointed by Yvonne.

    Leslie, Liliana and Mellie couldn''t see in the darkness, so they held onto the others and just walked in rhythm with them, Leslie offered to illuminate the area but that would make them an easy target so it was discarded.

    Once they reached the area pointed by Yvonne, Daimon saw a wide tall rock pir that raised from the ground, all the way to the roof of the cave, it wasn''t carved but a natural rock formation eroded by the water that dropped from the roof.

    What Yvonne mentioned was at the other side of the rock pr, there was a bloody scene, a middle-aged man was leaned against the pir, with about ten different weapons stabbed on his chest stomach and even a couple on his eyes and one on the mouth.

    ''There is no bad smell yet so it hasn''t been even a day since this happened'', thought Daimon as he grabbed one of the many weapons, just to notice there was some kind of transparent odorless liquid smeared all over the weapon.

    Luckily, he was using gloves so the liquid which was probably poison, didn''t touch his skin.

    "Mm?", Daimon then noticed that the hand of the guy was tightly closed but there was a small bump popping out of his palm.

    Daimon carefully cut a hole with Disaster''s de on the hand of the guy, and after a couple of centimeters he felt it touched something.

    But as he crouched down to take out the object hidden in the hand of the guy; something flew out of his pocket.

    "You again", mumbled Daimon as he saw the ck badge with the rune shark swirl around the hand before it dug out the object¡­ another badge.

    For a moment Daimon thought maybe the badge bearer from the vampire race had bitten the dust, and someone stole his, as Adam and Marcus where the other badge bearers and he was sure they were alive.

    But he then noticed that unlike the ones he has seen before, this one was of a lifeless gray color and had a much grimmer design, with some bones an spikes decorating it.

    The ck badge did a whole turn around it, before it lost interest on it and then returned to Daimon''s pocket.

    "You little thing, can''t you give me some answers for a change?", mumbled Aster as he sent the gray badge to his inventory, if the guy practically hid it in his body even when he was killed, then it can''t be worthless.

 Chapter 306 The Plan Of The Stingray Pirates (Part 1)

    After Daimon kept the badge, he amodated the hand of the corpse so that the wound wasn''t visible, he also inclined the corpse to the side, before he scrapped some of the poison on the weapons that were stabbing it, and spread it on his arm, so that it slid all the way down until it reached the wound, making the skin swell and changed its color sessfully blocking the wound making it look as if the poison had corroded the flesh.

    The girls od course knew Daimon was doing it so that others wouldn''t notice he took something from the corpse, and while the Risha sisters knew Daimon has already gone through one of the hardest lessons in life¡­ in other words killing, as he previously asked their mothers to teach them about it, before the exploration started, Mellie was a bit surprised to see how calmly Daimon dealt with a corpse.

    "Say Daimon, is your native too wild or¡­", she asked with a somewhat curious voice.

    While she is a princess and has lived her life rtively sheltered, her sister made sure to drill into her head, the thought of not hesitating to point her weapon at an enemy when the situation requires her to, she isn''t toofortable with the idea of killing.

    And that isn''t bad, the Risha sisters and most of the first years and even second years at the academy were the same, but Daimon''s circumstances weren''t as simple, he lived with the constant reminder that the Naktis and probably the Silverheart families would do anything within their power to destroy him and his loved ones, so he grew up in that sense, as he never wants to be forced to look from the sides, when his family is in danger¡­ again.

    "Not really, I would say the situation is overall simr to Neptune, with four bigger divisions and a rtive peace among them, but constant fights still happen from time to time, so it''s better to be prepared".

    He tried to look for a mark or emblem with his infinity eyes, as he knew pirates tattooed the symbol of their crew on their bodies, but he didn''t find anything, which made him wonder who this poor bastard used to be.

    Once Daimon made sure there was no trace of them even approaching the corpse, he used some darkness to erase their footprints and then they deepened into the cave.

    ''That guy didn''te from the water tunnel''s direction, so there must be an exit to the cave somewhere around'', thought Daimon.

    Normally he could have asked Rita or Horals to map the cave, but it was possible that their mana senses were intercepted as an Arch rank''s mana will obviously stand out like a sore thumb, in fact even his might be noticed considering he was 90% sure there was a powerful rune master on the side of the enemy.

    So, he limited to use his infinity eyes to look at close and long distances, the best way to describe it was as if he could use "zoom" in his eyes, reaching a distance of about five hundred meters without any detail escaping from him and one kilometer in regr "definition".

    After about twenty minutes of them walking in absolute darkness and inplete silence, Daimon''s ears managed to catch wind of some soundsing from about two kilometers ahead of them.

    "There are people ahead of us, I don''t feel any threat so they should be at most middle-stage Lord ranked, prepare yourselves, I will take them down at sight, Mellie and Lili, can you two restrain them?".

    "Mm".

    "No problem, I have a spell that doesn''t need me to see my enemy".

    Both girls agreed and then they slowly and silently advanced until they reached an area that was slightly less dark, as there were some faint rays of lighting from a breach on the wall of the cave, meaning they have reached the other side of it.

    Now that they were able to see about fifteen meters ahead of them, the first thing Daimon noticed was that there were dry blood stains on the ground, and judging by the amount of them, the blood came from more than one person.

    Daimon beckoned the girls to follow him without saying anything, and he slowly approached the wall, he injected mana into his eyes until he was able to see through it, and the image at the other side was quite something.

    Turns out the cave in which they were was a small separated area, of arge underground rock formation, and outside of the cave there was a small camp with a few people sat around a bonfire chatting andughing, a pretty normal sight.

    That''s not what caught Daimon''s attention, but the conversation the people around the bonfire were having.

    A fat bearded man on his thirties with a bottle cursed as he spat alcohol on the bonfire making the mes raise for a couple of seconds.

    "Ahh, this is so fucking boring, I get we are new on the crew but why did the big boss sent us to this really secluded part of the hideout!".

    The other guys around the bonfireughed and one of them who had a scar on his left cheek, smacked the shoulder of the bearded man.

    "ckface why are youining, the others have to y hide and seek with some noble brats, while we only need to stay here and boss around that ugly sea beast, what''s the problem?".

    The bearded man called ckface, shook his head at his friend.

    "Dog, you are a coward, but this daddy likes to fight and get some girls¡­ and those noble misses will all be captured and distributed between the brothers if not tasted by them before, I don''t want second hand goods, and I heard the granddaughter of the shaman attended this event", said the bearded guy as he licked his lips.

    "Your long history of brothel visits says the contrary, or what did you believe those bitches stories about you being their first after paying with a few gems hahaha!", one of the other guys who had a bandana on his head, mocked the bearded guy.

    "Yeah, a toad like you wants to eat swan''s meat", and the others joined in.

    "Baldie what the hell did you say you piece of¡­", the bearded pirate snorted but as he was about to start a fight with the bandana guy, nothing unusual, the only guy who hasn''tughed nor talked so far, let out his mana pressure.

    "Ughh", the mana pressure of a middle stage Lord ranked suppressed the other guys, making their faces pale a bit, the bearded guy on the hand spat blood due to the shock.

    The silent man then stood up and gazed at the other pirates as he spoke with hatred filled voice.

    "In case you bastards forgot about, the vice-captain was done in, because he was thinking with the head between his legs, which dragged his subordinates along with him".<novelnext></novelnext>

    "We are here to capture the daughter of the queen, the Vs princess and the granddaughter of the shaman, after that if you want women, I don''t care how much whores do you fuck, but if you mess up, I will cut off your dicks and make you eat them, am I clear!".

    The man retrieved his mana sense and the other pirates were able to breath and move again.

    "Yes, sorry boss Travis", said the pirates as they regained theirposure.

    "Very well, now move your asses and go see if the Deep Bottom Shredder has caught something"

    The pirates''s faces paled a bit more, the bandana guy hesitated for a moment before saying.

    "Boss¡­ that thing ate Matt thest time we were alone with it, can''t youe with us?".

    Travis snorted as he waved his hand urging the pirates to leave.

    "There is six of you, and that thing was practically a bag of bones after being "trained", Matt screwed up and that''s why he was sacrificed, I sent the creature to fish its own food, so it should be better now, so hurry up and go get it before I order it to eat you all along with those noble pieces of shit!".

    The pirates had no other option but to swallow theirins and obey, they all helped ckface get up and then walked towards the semi blocked wall, which led to the cave where Daimon and the girls were hiding.

    ¡­

    Daimon looked at the bandana guy, more urately to the ck stingray tattoo on his shoulder.

    "Stingray Devil pirates, six of them, you know what to do", mumbled Daimon as he waved his had using ck curtain to hide the Risha sisters and Mellie, he and Aisha were using the hollow suits, so with their presences hidden, they could meld with their surroundings.

    The girls nodded at him and prepared to ambush the pirates as soon as they got Daimon''s greenlight.

    The pirates moved arge boulder that was blocking the exit of the cave, and after making sure the creature they had to go get wasn''t near, they all entered after making sure to block the exit again.

    Of course, the pirates didn''t want to wander in the darkness, so they brought some branches they lit up with the bonfire as torches.

    "Damn, it surely sucks that we can''t even use our storage rings", said the pirate with the scar on his face.

    "Fuck your storage ring, what''s up with Mr. Travis going mad all of a sudden?", mumbled ckface in a low voice to make sure the echo wouldn''t filter outside of the cave.

    "Idiot, it''s your fault we were reprimanded, among the ones that were captured by the Clear Water kingdom, was Mr. Travis brother, what do you think they are doing to him right now, of course they are torturing him do get information about us, and you have to remember him why he was captured", said the bandana wearing pirate.

    "Humph, what''s so bad about it, it''s not like the boss is going to let those cuties go unscathed even if he reaches an agreement with those nobles and sect fools, I don''t see the problem in getting a go at them, it isn''t my fault the vice-captain was a horny idiot who couldn''t control some little princess", said ckface as he kicked a rock in front of them.

    ckface who was looking at the ground after kicking the rock, waited for hispanions to answer or make some nasty observations like usual, but he was met with a sepulchral silence.

    ckface felt his back covering in cold sweat imagining that the creature they were sent to get, had killed everyone but he still forced himself to raise his eyes just to see a fist copying all his field of vision.

    ckface was a bit too slow to react and he took a punch to the face, he originally thought he would be fine, since pirates are used to dirty fights, so he was going to roll on the ground to get out of the reach of his attacker, but all his ns and experience went to hell as soon as the fist connected with his face.

    It was as if he was hit with a bar of iron instead of flesh and bones, his nose was dent backwards making him stop the scream of help he was about to shout, due to the blood going down his throat.

    The next thing he knew was that his whole body was cold, and then the lights dimmed as the torched went off.

    "Yo, ckface it''s good to see you", a familiar but unlikely to hear voice, drilled ckface''s ears, he slowly moved his head upwards and his face lost all its color, in front of him there was a corpse with weapons stabbing his body, smiling at him while blood leaked out of its eyes and mouth.

    "No, it''s impossible, we killed you after getting to know you were a spy from the skelefiends!", shouted ckface.

    While ckface was having a mental breakdown seeing his former "friend" now talking with him as a corpse, Mellie saw Daimon cing his hand on the back of the head of the bearded pirate after he was held down by Liliana''s ice, and then the pirate just started screaming and talking some nonsense.

    Luckily, Liliana built an ice dome around them to make sure, the screams couldn''t be heard, because the bearded pirate was screaming and retorting as if he was having a horrible nightmare.

    Yvonne saw it and her eyes glowed for a split of a second, as she saw a vague pitch-ck shadow extending from Daimon''s body, its shape was definitely not the same as Daimon''s but the eyes had the same amethyst color, the difference was that those eyes were cold and arrogant, as if it was looking down on the world itself.

    ''Well, he was able to simply deflect my Illusion back then'', she thought.

 Chapter 307 The Plan Of The Stingray Pirates (Part 2)

    Under the horrified eyes of the other pirates, ckface screams became louder before he started smacking his face against the ground by himself, while the Risha sisters and Mellie showed some difort of the current scene of ckface destroying his face until all that was left was a bloody mess, Daimon and Aisha didn''t change their expressions at all.

    ckface was a mage and in his current mind state didn''t use mana to reinforce his body, his body was just a bit tougher than a grown adult, so it didn''t take more than twenty solid smacks, for him to kill himself.

    Only then, Daimon turned to see the other pirates whose bodies were restrained by Liliana''s ice from which they didn''t dare to try to escape as they all had weapons pointed at their heads or necks.

    Seeing the masked silver haired youth who indifferently watched their now deceasedrade, bang his head against the ground to death, now set his attention on them, made the pirates feel a chill running down their spines.

    Especially because after their eyes got used to the dim illumination they noticed, that one of their main targets was in their captor''s group, in other words Mellie.

    "I''m pretty sure that guy was the one who knew the less so he was worthless for me, now who of you knows what is happening here, the ones who give me the best answer lives, the others¡­ well you already saw what happened to "ckface", right?", said Daimon with a cold voice.

    "Ah right, you have thirty seconds to answer or I''ll kill you all and then get what I want from the guy waiting for your return, also in case you have the slightest hope of that sea magic beast saving you, I killed it as soon as I arrived at this cave".

    The expressions of the pirates went from bad to worse, the bandana guy as well as the guy with the scar stole a gaze at each other, before they all talked at the same time.

    "I know the n please spare my life and I will talk!".

    The remaining three seemed to not be in the same page as the first to pirates, as their answer was trying to secretly gather mana as they said.

    "Fuck you, if you kill us, once our big boss finds you, he will cut that princess''s arms and legs before he¡­".

    Before the remaining three pirates could finish speaking, three lines of ck light pierced their foreheads killing them in the spot.

    The bandana pirate and the scar faced pirate, nearly peed themselves in the blink of an eye, three early-stage middle level Mortal mages were killed by someone from the young generation.

    ''The big boss said that besides the crowned prince and the guy from the neo nobles, we''ll be dealing with spoiled brats, without ess to anything but their treasures, so where did this cold-blooded monster came from!'', they shouted in their hearts.

    In a real fight without any external help, the pirates were sure they would be able to easily get rid of most the members of the young generation, as they weren''t as experienced in battle, and they knew how to fight dirty, everything was valid as long as they won, a concept which the noble houses were alien with.

    But then, they saw someone from that same group they disdained, mercilessly killing four grown up men, of course they were afraid, in their opinion they had the horrible luck to bump into a secret guard raised by the queen who is known to be a great strategist, to keep her sister who she adores, safe.

    ''That woman is as scary as the rumors say, she surely put all her resources into this guy'', thought the bandana pirate, he wanted to cry but tears won''te out.

    "Start speaking", ordered Daimon, the walk from here to the ce where the water tunnel is, in other words where the magic beast was hidden, takes about twenty minutes if one knows the route unlike them, so they had some time before the middle stage Lord ranked outside started to feel suspicious.

    "Sorry, we don''t hold a high rank in the crew¡­ but we are among the first ones that joined so we have heard a lot of stuff, the official task that was given to us was to look and capture the high "worth" members of the young generation, especially the women", said the bandana pirate.

    "But one of the middle upper-level officers is someone that entered the crew with us, so he gave us an "advice", to only focus on capturing the women and then immediately return to the closest outpost of the crew", added the scar aced pirate.

    Daimon saw Mellie clenching her hands, she has been targeted twice now, so of course she was angry about it.

    "That can''t be all you two know, speak, why should you flee, does it have something to do with that strange magic beast?", asked Daimon.

    The two pirates had a bitter expression, it was obvious that the silver haired youth was too sharp for them to try to lie, if they wanted to live that is.

    "That magic beast is called "Deep Bottom Shredder"¡­ and is one of the subordinated races, of the ck Sea Snake Emperor, a magic beast which resides at one of the deep areas of the Maelstrom Sea".

    "A magic beast which originally had a deal with the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates, who helped it ascend a long time ago, I''m pretty sure you know their captain was ambushed and wounded, which is true but the tough bastard managed to escape".

    ? "So now our captain is dealing with all the allies the Silver Dawn captain had, of course engaging in a fight with a Ster rank magic beast is a pain in the ass¡­ so with the advice of his counselor, the captain is nning to frame the guys from the Elemental and Mermen seas of mass murdering one of its subordinated races, so they enter in conflict and weaken each other".

    "In the meantime, we were allowed to use those sea magic beasts to get rid of the problematic young nobles, as none of them should be able toe unscathed of a fight with a peak stage middle lever Mortal enemy, not even the one who saved the granddaughter of the shaman, at least not without being able to use any external help, like what happened before".

    Daimon frowned noticing two important things in the story of the pirates, first whoever nned all this was a hell of a scheming bastard, they were basically taking out three birds with one stone, second unlike what he thought the one behind all this wasn''t Marcus, or it would have known that the limitation in storage rings was practically useless with a system bearer, as he was sure they had something simr to his inventory.

    ''That''s not necessary the case, you have barely had any contact with other system users, so it''s not weird that you don''t know it, but not all the systems have the same properties and authorities".

    ''This ability of being unaffected by restrictions is one of the Van Helsing System properties, and while others might have something simr none canpare, I bet that Adam guy must be getting cold feet right now'', said Evangeline with a proudful voice.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon inwardly chuckled, as he answered with a yful voice.

    ''Good to know, you are awesome Eve''.

    ''Humph, don''t think you can sweet talk me like Nasha and your soulmates, I can''t tell you the properties of the system that you have already unlocked, unless you somewhat figure them out yourself¡­ thanks Daimon'', by the end of her answer, Evangeline''s voice became mellower but undertone almost like a whisper.

    ''What did I tell you, Eve likes it when youpliment her~'', added Narasha making Evangeline sigh, as her friend gave her away so easily.

    The previous internal interaction didn''t take even a couple of seconds, and once it was over Daimon continued with the interrogation.

    "How many of you are here, how are they distributed and what''s the strongest one like?".

    The scar faced guy was the one to answer this time.

    "Six hundred of us were dispatched to make sure we get all the main targets, in teams of six, each with a peak stage middle level Mortal Deep Bottom Shedder¡­ as for the strongest it should be the team with the cousin of the captain, an early-stage peak level Mortal realm with the two chiefs of the Deep Bottom Shredder race, a couple of peak stage high level Mortal magic beast, his team is the one in charge of the whole operation, we don''t know the location of the others, because this underwater space is huge".

    ''So, a recently ascended Archmage and two peak Arch rank magic beast, that''s a bit of an overkill for people whose battle prowess can''t go past the peak Lord rank even as a whole, I guess whoever nned this wants the job done for good'', thought Daimon.

    With the sum of six early-stage Lord ranks, team working properly, they should be able to bring down a peak Lord rank, as long as they have support, and tanks to keep the enemy in check.

    Of course, that was a calction made on the supposition that everyone has the same level of battle prowess, but there is a lot of things that can cause a different result.

    Lastly Daimon still had a couple more of questions.

    "Is there a Ster ranked rune master working with you?".

    The pirates stared at each other, with a hesitant expression but seeing that Daimon was ready to kill them is they didn''t answer, or lied they spilled the beans.

    "The rumors say that the entric ck Beard covets the granddaughter of the shaman from the Elemental Sea¡­ and he is a Ster rank rune master, we have had some deals with him in the past, and in part he is also responsible for the ambush on the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates, but if he is involved, we never saw him, only the captain and vice captains would know if he is involved or not".

    "In any case I''m sure he isn''t here, because there is no way the Trident Marshal of the Mermen Sea wouldn''t notice a Ster or even Half Ster rank being entering into the range of the Wild Tide Reef", added the bandana pirate.

    "Last question, how do I reactivatemunications and the ability to use spatial treasures?", asked Daimon.

    "Well, we were told that in an emergency, only the cousin of the big boss can cancel the istion magic array that was disyed here", answered the scar faced pirate.

    Daimon nodded, he pretty much got what he wanted, now he just needed to decide what to do with these two pirates.

    He promised not to kill them and he was inclined to respect his word, but that didn''t mean he was just going to let them go, they sold theirrades to save their asses, so of course he couldn''t just trust them.

    With an unnoticeable grin, Daimon made a pistol gesture with both of his hands and then two lines of ck light were shot from his index fingers.

    "Aghhhh!", the pirates though they were gone for sure, but instead of the eternal darkness they were expecting, what weed them was a horrible pain on his knees, elbows, shoulders, shins and feet.

    Of course, Daimon''s attack pierced through Liliana''s eyes as well as the flesh and bones of the pirates, so they immediately started to bleed, making the pirates retort due to the pain of being burned with concentrated lightning and darkness in other words, Daimon''s original spell "ck Hell Javelin".

    "If you obediently stay quiet in this cave, you won''t bleed to death, as I promised I''m not going to kill you, but all the other pirates will die, so here is my offer, you two have a lot of valuable information so it would be a waste to kill you, unfortunately I don''t have the means to make sure you won''t try to pull any trick, so when this is finished if you two behaved properly, I will talk with the queen to take you in as "corsairs", I can guarantee that you won''t be mistreated in exchange for all the information about your former work mates of course, who knows even captains of your unit doesn''t sound impossible if you ask me".

    Daimon then crouched down near the two pirates who were recovering from the hellish pain caused by Daimon''s attack, as he whispered.

    "If you try something funny in the meanwhile¡­ well, let''s just say that all what happened here was me being reasonable and merciful, and that attack is not meant to be used as torture".

    The two pirates nearly started crying, those ck rays which nearly made them two grown adults who have had their fair share of suffering, cry, weren''t considered torture means, then what the hell would the silver haired youth will to torture them, they wondered.

    ''From which damn hell did this demon came from'', they both thought as they nodded and stayed quiet.

 Chapter 308 More Mysteries

    With a wave of her hand, Liliana moved the two pirates whose bodies were frozen to a corner of the cave which was hard to spot, before Daimon casted dark curtain around them.

    "Well, that should be enough, unless they are really unlucky", mumbled Leslie.

    "So, how do we deal with the guy outside", asked Yvonne.

    The one in charge of the pirate''s team, who is a middle stage Lord rank, someone who has solidified its power in the Lord realm, instead of the recently ascended.

    "Judging by how easy was to deal with those guys, their captain shouldn''t be able to use "Manifestation", but maybe ording to the bandana pirate he has mana sense, so it''s going to be harder to ambush him", added Liliana.

    "Manifestation?", asked Mellie confused.

    "Ah, right you probably know it under a different name, it''s the phenomenon caused by the increase in the domain over an element a mage gets after reaching the Lord rank", said Leslie with her usual enthusiastic voice.

    Now it was the turn for Daimon and the girls to be surprised, at Mellie''s confused expression to be more specific.

    "I haven''t heard of anything like that before?", said Mellie noticing that her reaction wasn''t what Daimon and the others expected.

    "Wait, really, then you guys don''t have domains or the capacity to travel through dimensional tunnels without the assistance of a magic array either?", asked Yvonne.

    Mellie''s pretty blue eyes widened a bit, before she said.

    "I haven''t heard about what a domain might be, but uncle Vincent can do that thing of travelling through dimensional tunnels without the help of a magic array¡­ please don''t mention it to anyone, only mom and me know about it".

    "Only the Trident Marshal can do it?", asked Daimon.

    But Mellie shook her head in response.

    "There are others, but it is treated as a secured treasure, basically it''s dissuasion, if other families don''t know who has it, then everyone can be kept in check¡­ honestly even I don''t know if my sister can do it, but the king has admitted to have that ability".

    Daimon nodded, he remembers they had mentioned something like that, apparently, they were referring to the king, and although he was quite surprised that some people actually had the ability to use space shift, but no one had a domain, or at least no ording to Mellie''s knowledge.

    "I guess that''s something we can discuss with the queenter, for now, let''s deal with the guy outside, our time is almost up, we''ll go with a ssic tactic, I''ll be the frontline and you contain him from the sides".

    "Mm", the girls nodded in response, Mellie saw Daimon getting rid of a magic beast stronger than the guy they were about to face, and she can always boost herself to the middle Lord realm by using her innate ability anyway.

    Daimon and the girls walked towards the exit of the cave, once he was sure they were all perfectly covered by the dark curtain, Daimon silently opened a breach on the wall with an earth spell.

    They left the cave and the girls positioned themselves around the perimeter, while Daimon walked towards the bonfire where the team leader of the pirates was still siting, with an annoyed expression on his face.

    "Ah, damn it, what is taking those fools so long!", shouted the man, it was clear he was quite frustrated, and he was also drinking something from a bottle.

    Probably because ckface reminded him about his brother whose fate was unknown, well not that unknown because up close Daimon could tell he had some resemnce with one of the surviving pirates, from that time.

    The man stood up but as he was about to walk to the cave, he saw a masked silver haired youth standing there with a ck sword in his hands.

    "You, I remember you are with the group of the younger sister of the queen¡­ what are you doing here, a mere early level Mortal wants to fight me?".

    Daimon grinned, he simply pointed his index finger at the man and a line of ck light was shot from it.

    Travis''s survival instincts screamed taking him out of his drunk daze.

    "What the hell!", the pirate managed to grab a green harpoon from the ground next to him, just in time to block that strange spell that wasing towards him.

    "Crack!", or so he thought, although it was just a small chip, his weapon''s de shattered and he was pushed back due to the impact.

    More than what he expected, his body literally was sent flying and crashed against a rock a few dozens of meters away.

    But of course, that wasn''t enough to take the guy down, he jumped frontwards until he was a few meters away from Daimon.

    "A spoiled brat from a noble family wouldn''t have attacked out of nowhere without announcing his glorious family''sst name, so that means you are someone who doesn''t care about that nonsense, so my guess is that you are a man of the queen instead".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow behind the mask, but he still decided to follow the act.

    "To a certain extent, you could say so, what does it matter to a pirate, your n is still to capture the women rted to the royals anyway?", asked Daimon.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Then to everyone''s surprise, the man dropped the harpoon and then raised his hands before saying.

    "I have a valuable piece of information which I''m willing to exchange for the freedom of my brother, let me contact the queen and the information is yours".

    Daimon frowned.

    "In case you forgot,munications don''t work right now, if you are trying to stall, I have to say you are more of a disappointment than what I expected", along with Daimon''s word, he also pointed at him while ck lightning gathered on the tip of his fingers.

    But then the next words of the pirate gave the whole situation a new turn.

    "This information is about someone in your kingdom cooperating with us, so I think it''s worth enough to exchange for brother''s life, and it is also enough to give someone enough merits to get a pretty decent noble title too".

    Daimon chuckled, the noble title of a kingdom in which he wasn''t going to live was useless, but the first part of the information, he had a hunch that it would help him with his own agenda, the special mission to be more exact.

    "Let''s say that I believe you, why should I trust you, when you are practically done and I have already secured two sources of pretty decent information?".

    The pirate looked at his surroundings trying to find others, but he was unable to, at least until he heard a girl''s voice in the air.

    "That information, is it rted as to why you pirates want to capture us?", asked Mellie.

    The pirate doubted for a moment, if he talked right now then that meant he was already a traitor, so there would be no turning back for him.

    But ultimately, the image of his brother being tortured or something worse crossed his mind, and he decided to give Daimon and the others a little proof that what he offered was worth it.

    "I''m just going to take something out of my pocket okay, stored spells don''t work right now anyway", said the pirate as he looked at Daimon.

    Daimon nodded without cancelling his spell, just in case.

    The pirate then took out a piece of red cloth, in fact the cloth was dripping and considering the color and the iron smelling from it, it was blood.

    Not only that, the cloth had a very peculiar pattern, one that Daimon has seen before¡­ in the badge that is now being stored in his inventory, the one he found hidden in the flesh of the corpse inside the cave.

    "This cloth was used to¡­ drain the blood from the youngest son of the Skelefiend Horrorw, in other words the current ruler of the bone sea, I''ll just say that the captain of the Stingray Devil pirates has been acting pretty weird and then he discarded this, after a quick meeting with the Skelefiends, from whose son left with a missing arm, and there was someone from the Mermen Sea with them too".

    Daimon turned to see Mellie, mainly because he didn''t know if the queen had already disposed of the pirates, or if they were being interrogated as of right now.

    "Very well, your offer has been epted¡­ now get in the cave", said Mellie.

    The pirate let out a sigh of relief, as he handed Daimon his storage ring, weapon and all other essories as a sign of good will.

    The pirate pacifically entered the cave and after being surprised to see the bandana and scarred face pirate still alive, he joined them in the little ice prison Liliana had built for the asion, of course he gave them some information free of charge, like the approximate area which some teams are supervising.

    As they were leaving the cave, the pirate said something that made Daimon contemte things once again.

    "Hey, you are the bodyguard of the princess right¡­ be careful with the captain or anyone directly rted to him, he has changed a lot recently, originally he was violent but that''s normal on a pirate, but now, he is just a monster in human skin, if you kill them make sure there is nothing left of them".

    Once outside of the cave, which Daimon covered with more earth to make sure no one find it.

    "North has the less teams and is closer to the exit of this ce, so it''s going to be crowed there, what you think about the west?", asked Daimon.

    ording to the information Travis gave them the exit was the most custodied, but the west was the territory with less pirates, not by choice but because there were some troublesome magic beasts residing there.

    "Sounds good to me, besides some allies woulde in handy", said Daimon with a smirk as he gazed at the beast pouch were cktooth is being held.

    With that said, Daimon and the girls started walking towards their next stop which was about sixty kilometers towards the west.

    But by the time they arrived the hunt of the pirates had already given some results; the girl''s faces paled a bit at the scene of ughter left.

    There were pieces of bodies spread across the whole ce, but curiously or not considering the reputation of pirates, all the corpses belonged to males.

    "This is not how pirates work, they enjoy partying and toying with their victims, as bad as it might sound, I expected to see them¡­ doing other things to the female nobles, not just taking them away after raining hell down on the others", said Mellie with a little disgust on her face.

    "Mm?", Daimon suddenly saw some small movements on a pile of dismembered bodies.

 Chapter 309 Thrust (Part 1)

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, then with a small grin he shoved Disaster''s tip on the ground as he walked towards the pile of dismembered bodies.

    "If you don''te out in five seconds, I''ll set those corpses in fire".

    ¡­ Listening to Daimon the girls prepared for a fight, but then after a couple of seconds a ragged guy came out of the pile of bodies, with his hands raised on the air.

    "Wait, wait, wait, I''m a survivor from the previous battle, please don''t attack me!".

    The guy that came out of the pile of bodies was quite pale and disheveled, but besides that he looked pretty much as any of the high-ranked nobles of the Clear Water kingdom.

    That being said, Daimon honestly didn''t recognize the emblem on the shoulder of the jacket of the man.

    But Mellie did.

    "That''s the emblem of the Lorenz family, so you must be Charles Lorenz, tell us what happened here?", she asked with a firm voice.

    Though Mellie didn''t really act as a royal most of the time, right now they were in a rush against time, they needed to find out what the pirates were doing and then look for a way to inform the Trident Marshal.

    "Charles Lorenz greets princess Delphini, the story is something like this¡­".

    Charles then proceeded to tell them what happened here, apparently a couple of groups managed to bump into each other, after noticing their magic devices weren''t working as they should, they decided to tag along and look for a way out.

    But then after a couple of hours of walking just when they stopped to rest, they were ambushed by a group of people hiding their faces, and while their numbers were simr the battle took a horrible turn after they heard a roaring at the them.

    "T-The next think I knew was that there were pieces of bodies, organs and blood flying everywhere¡­ it was a massacre, that thing was stronger than us and it was angry and hungry, so the first victims went straight into its stomach, I can still hear the sounds of bones being crushed and screams", said the guy with a pale face.

    "I was sent flying with a lot of other people, but by some miracle I wasn''t killed on the spot and just fainted due to the impact, but before that I managed to see how they forced the girls in our group to enter cages before that strange magic beast carried them as they left".

    The guy then pointed at therge w wound on his right side as he looked at Mellie.

    "The ws of that thing had poison, so I''m done for my temperature has dropped a lot and I just managed to endure up to this point because I stayed still¡­ please save the girls princess, among them is my fianc¨¦e, please help her in my stead", said the guy as he made an effort to bow his head at Mellie.

    Mellie was clearly angry, the pirates came and were making everyone suffer just because they wanted to get to her, but as she was about to approach Charles, Daimon stopped her from doing so by cing his hand on her shoulder.

    "Daimon what are you¡­", Mellie saw Daimon approaching Charles with his sword in his hand and she was confused as to what was happening, until she saw Daimon casually stabbing his sword on Charles''s chest.

    "No, wait!", Mellie''s eyes widened, she saw Charles spiting blood and then looking at her.

    "Princess run, this guy''s mask is simr to what I the other guys who attacked us were wearing, they aren''t from Neptune but ughh!".

    Before Charles could keep speaking Daimon kicked him on the face as he shook his head, of course he saw Mellie''s conflictive face and he sighed.

    "There is no undead in Neptune, and these guys have developed an interesting ability so I''m not surprised you were able to trick those poor bastards, but in front of me even corpse sandalwood is useless, so how could I not notice the stench of deathing from you, Skelefiend?", said Daimon.

    "Damn, you invaders are quite something, that person warned us that there were some hard to crack nuts among you, but I must say I''m surprised that one was able to see through my perfect disguise hahaha!".

    From the hole in the chest of Charles a mouth with spiked teeth could be seenughing as it tried to stand up.

    "I have seen that before, one of those things was possessing a demon''s body at the north sea when we were at the firstyer of Neptune, said Aisha, remembering that demons she fought back then.

    "Hahaha, those guys were mere ants,moners sent as scouts, even partners or family won''t be able to tell the difference thanks to our lord, it doesn''t matter what you do, the Mermen and Elemental seas will fall!".

    Daimon snorted.

    "Okay, enough bluffing, now it''s time for answers", he said as he grabbed Charles by his neck.

    "Don''t worry I have something special for people like you, my sacrifice is only temporal as my lord will bring me back to life!", shouted Charles as he activated the immtion magic array set up for security reasons.

    But his moment of going in a ze of glory didn''te, so he tried to activate it again and again with a desperate expression.

    "You see that''s the problem with all of you¡­ you talk too much", said Daimon as a wisp of white mes appeared on his hand, then before the Skelefiend could say anything, the wisp of me entered Charles body and the next thing that came out of his mouth was a lung-tearing scream.

    "Aghhhhh!".<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Kill me, kill meeee, why can''t I leave!", shouted the Skelefiend inside of Charles body, which made Daimon smirk.

    "You are a creature of chaotic darkness and my mes are pretty special, just by being in their presence you''ll be suppressed, and in contact your body itself will lose integrity, in simple words, you can''t move nor resist, to me it seemed to you enjoyed causing pain and suffering to the poor bastards that fell for your tricks, what a shame you don''t know fear as much as you think you do".

    "And thatme way to hide a magic array was meaningless in front of he, in other words since the very moment you decided to get in my way you were dead", said Daimon with a cold voice.

    "But taking a page of your book and since I pretty much know how a manually tore limb looks like, I''ll take my time burning you until there is nothing left from you" whispered Daimon to the Skelefiend.

    From the shadows, Horals was jumping and pping.

    ''That''s right young master, show those copycats how a true demon induced fear into his enemies hahaha''.

    Rita on the other hand shook her head.

    ''Bone head, can''t you see, young master is trying to confirm if with enough fear he can force the terror contractor skill to activate''.

    Rita was right, he was specially causing this Skelefiend fear, with the intention of confirming a couple of things, unfortunately it wasn''t working, but a constion prize the Skelefiend who was going crazy due to being low fire fried right now, shouted.

    "Please, I will tell you everything you want, just kill me already!".

    Daimon snapped his fingers and Demon Light stopped killing the Skelefiend momentarily.

    "You see that wasn''t so hard, I guess first things first, what the hell are you bastards doing here?", he asked.

    The Skelefiend took a deep breath as speaking was hurting like hell right now.

    "We were sent by ruler Horrorw to assist the Stingray Devil pirates, also we are supposed to capture the Vs princess, the problem is that our number is very low due to a certain incident, so we had to resort to traps and other tricks to get hostages¡­ and food for our helper".

    "That''s all I know I swear!", said the Skelefiend, but Daimon shook his head as he yed with a wisp of Demon Light in his hands.

    "Why are you so eager to leave, where you are going there is going to be way hotter than this anyway?".

    "Humph, my death will be temporal, I have seen my lord brining back others, you Mermen are doomed hahaha", finding courage from who knows where, the Skelefiend momentarily returned to its previous self, at least until Daimon made Demon light burn him again, which woke him up from his fantasies of his resurrection.

    "Whatever, I don''t have time for this, just tell me where were the girls taken and you''ll have my permission to die", said Daimon with a disdainful voice.

    Bringing people back from the death, or at least bringing the "original" people back was impossible even for those above the Emperor realm, that''s something he knows better than anyone, since bringing Aisha who died in the same die, back, required an item with the word "Divine" on its name.

    So, either this Skelefiend just saw a really good necromancer put on a show, or something else was possessing a dead body, however this idiot became a fanatic due to that, and now as going to die with that stupid idea.

    ''A necromancer system user maybe'', thought Daimon, it would be easier for a system user to trick these Skelefiends, and the data from the information shop said there was a new religion growing at the Bone Sea, since the statue and temple of the previously sole deity were burned down and destroyed, and the believers were being eliminated.

    "They were brought further into the west area of this underwater space; it''s been about two or three hours since they left".

    "Are they fine?", asked the princess, which made the Skelefiendugh.

    "Princess, did you know that some of them offered to set you up with the condition that we spare them, how much of a fool can you¡­ aghhhh!".

    "When I ask you for your personal opinion you''ll know it, for the time being answer the damn question", ordered Daimon as he made Demon Light burn the Skelefiend again.

    "I''m sorry, they are alive and fine at least for now we were prohibited from ying or eating, but once they are useless, they will be skewers for my brothers and sisters", said the Skelefiend.

    "Okay,st question, do you recognize this?", asked Daimon as he feigned to take out the badge in the hand of the dead man, while taking it out from his inventory.

    "Y-You, how did a mere human got a devil emblem, no wait that pattern, that''s George''s emblem, how did you get it, dear hell you killed him, you have no idea what you did, he was ck Beard''s spy, you are so doomed hahaha¡­".

    While the Skelefiend wasughing Daimon simply maximized the output of Demon Light, turning the whole guy into ck dust, there was nothing left.

    "Does it look like I care, he is on my list already anyway", said Daimon as he shrugged.

 Chapter 310 Thrust (Part 2)

    There is a big chance that ck beard guy is either the master mind or at least rted to his mission, so he is in target''s list anyway, they are meant to be enemies and Daimon couldn''t care less about him being angry at him, in any case while the badge is in his inventory, no one can track it down.

    "I couldn''t notice it¡­", mumbled Mellie from the sides, she was still in shock over the fact that she couldn''t notice Charles was nothing but a corpse possessed by a Skelefiend.

    "It''s not your fault, they learned to trick your naturally high analizing capacity, I''m pretty sure that even if you used that ability of yours, you wouldn''t have noticed because this method is not from Neptune and it was modified too".

    Daimon wasn''t lying to make Mellie feel good with herself, even he was nearly tricked, unfortunately the method used to make this Skelefiend disguise, was simr to the one Ereman the skin tailor who is subordinated to Daimon uses.

    Essentially, they are like parasites who meld with the original owner, so from the outside and through a mana sense scan, they look like part of the body and nothing else, even getting the memories of the prior owner of the body.

    But his infinity eyes can see a lot ofyers of the visual spectrum, and now that he has seen Ereman''s process, he could tell there was something off about Charles, the rest of the decision was taken based on the fake afraid expression the Skelefiend put, he who is used to cause fear in others could easily recognize a fake when he sees it.

    "Speaking of that¡­ tell me Mellie do you trust me?", asked Daimon with a serious expression on his face.

    Mellie knew this was to be expected, since she was genuinely confused when he stabbed "Charles", though it wasn''t to the point of bing hostile, she had to admit that it made her feel her heart clench a bit over the thought of Daimon being an enemy and she being yed with.

    Daimon saw her slightly ashamed and conflictive expression and he sighed, he knew it wasn''t her fault, in her position he would have doubted too, the only ones whom he would blindly follow were his soulmates and those who he considers more than friends, and the list is pretty small, also he isn''t even a native of Neptune and both she and the queen know he is holding a lot of secrets.

    For example, the Risha sisters only recently managed to dug a way into that circle through their actions, Michael and Calvin did too in a different way of course, they are his brothers in arms, just like Arianna is his junior sister thanks to her being taught magic by Aura.

    The others are his friends like Loren, Haylee and Aleah though thetter is a bit closer to him due to their similitudes, their friend''s rtives like Calvin''s aunt Mireya and the old Solomon, those who have a contract with him like Leena, Lydia, Ste and those involved with him thanks to that like Dana,stly his subordinates who are actually one of his most trusted people, simply because when ites to him their loyalty is absolute.

    Surprisingly not even a secondter, Mellie''s eyes became determined as she looked at Daimon directly into his eyes.

    "I do, if you wanted to harm me you have had a thousand chances already, not to mention I owe you my life", she said with her mellow and gentle voice.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Very well, because from now and onwards, everyone but the ones right here are enemies until proven wrong, no matter what you see we can only trust each other, any objections?".

    "Okay", the girls didn''tin at the decision, especially Yvonne since even with her special eyes she couldn''t notice anything because the mana flow of Charles was pretty much "normal", as unlike the known possession process of the Skelefiends which would show two manapletely different mana flows in one body, in a way that Yvonne would have easily spotted it.

    The process now was like the integration and flesh melding of the skin tailors, so there was nothing "strange" about it.

    "Also, we won''t go out of our way to help anyone, until we can secure a way to contact those outside¡­ you have seen what that idiot from the ckfin family did to save himself, and I''m pretty sure that will repeat itself given the current situation", said Daimon to Mellie.

    "Mm, finding a way to contact uncle Vincent is the priority, with a simple gesture of his hand he can put an end to this", mumbled Mellie.

    Daimon chuckled.

    "Don''t make that face, those who were captured here are in our way so we can lend them a hand, but they won''t join us, we need more information anyway".

    Mellie''s eyes sparkled, there was difference between ignoring someone in a bad spot and knowing and deliberately nor helping, while Daimon didn''t care about people not rted to him, Mellie is too inexperienced in that aspect.

    "Let''s go", having said that Daimon casted dark curtain and they all used a boosting spell to move faster than normal, towards the direction the Skelefiend gave them.

    ¡­

    While Daimon and the girls moved as silent shadows, there was a ruckus ongoing about one hundred kilometers ahead of them.

    "Boooom!", arge shockwave made the ground tremble while countless of figures were sent flying.

    "Damn it, who are these guys, they don''t die unless I directly attack them!", Adam whose face was covered in sweat cursed as he tried to catch up his breath, but then he was bathed in a dim white light which made him recover faster.

    From the corner of his eyes, he saw Jasmin casting buff spells on him, which is one of the reasons as to why he has been able to hold this much without copsing, and he had a hatred filled expression as he remembered how things got like this.

    For some reason the water body in which he dived took a strange turn making him separate from the rest of his group, only Jasmin reacted on time since she was the closest to him, so she managed to hold onto his arm, and was dragged by the same water current along him.

    Then the next thing he knew was that they were expelled by a geyser, and not only that but a strange magic beast, seemed to be waiting for him and tried to ambush him.

    So of course, he vented all his anger into that stupid magic beast, which turned out to be stronger than it looked, after a drawn-out battle in which he didn''t suffer even a wound thanks to Jasmin who is the best support mage in the younger generation of the Elemental Sea, casting buffs on him the whole time.

    After inflicting the thing a lot of sword wounds it finally copsed, the beast still had a lot of mana, but it bled to death, which was a first for Adam.

    Then feeling thirsty and a bit tired he wanted to buy a recovery potion from the shop of his system, just to realize he had no ess to anything that implied spacew, including inventory, shop, his storage ring and even the te given by the Trident Marshal.<novelnext></novelnext>

    And as then as if the fate favored him, they saw a small group of people mostly girls, who were near them, so he approached them to get information from them, his heroic handsome appearance along with his naturally charming aura, should have put him in the good books of the female members of the group¡­ if they were humans, light oriented and if they weren''t explicitly ordered to eliminate him and capture Jasmin.

    That group was conformed of all Skelefiends possessing the bodies of some people of the Mermen Sea, mostly subordinates who separated from their master''s groups, and the Deep Bottom Shredder which Adam killed was theirs.

    And so, a second fight started, but this time he didn''t want to draw out the battle too much, so he used his battle aura to the max, making his light element burn the Skelefiends as he illuminated the whole area.

    While at first, he noticed those Skelefiends weren''t dying as easily as the ones he faced at the first level of Neptune, they still sumbed under his sword and its holy light.

    But as if the world was ying with him, his light spectacle attracted the attention of at least five more groups of Skelefiends though some didn''t have a flesh body, as well as three Deep Bottom Shredders, and then the hero of light was left with only one possible way of action¡­ flee.

    Chased by about forty-five Skelefiends on the early Lord realm, five of the middle Lord realms and though weakened three peak lord realm magic beasts, he had to keep moving for the past three hours trying to lose them, but for some reason they kept finding them, and the he had to resort to use one of the life saving items he had on himself, a "Holy Crucifix", an explosive which stored a great amount of corrosive light.

    The first one took the Skelefiends by surprise and he was able to take at least ten of them out with that as well as badly wound one of the Shredders, but then a scene which will probably haunt him for a while developed in front of him.

    The wounded Bottom Shredder ate the corpses of the burned corpses of the skelefiends, and then his whole body was suddenly covered in ck impossible to understand runes.

    And that''s when the nightmare started, since then whenever he used a Holy Crucifix, he, the runs engraved on the skin of the enhanced shedder shone in ck light, and the effect of his explosive was lessened, then the other two shredders took the impact for the skelefiends, resulting in basically just a few burn patches of skin here and there.

    That being said, his personal attacks weren''tpletely affected by the runes of the enhanced shredder, so with some shes he was able to take out some of the Skelefiends.

    And for the past one hour or so, he has been fighting in guerri style, hiding and attacking when they approached before he and Jasmin ran again.

    ''Ariel, a hero shouldn''t have to fight like this,e on lent me a hand here!'', he shouted to the angel girl, which was expressionlessly floating behind him, invisible for anyone but Adam.

    ''You know the rules, you discarded long term benefits for girl partners when you let your dick think for you and started sleeping around with all the women that smiled at you back then, a light hero should be demure and celibate, but no you just had to fuck everything that moved, so normal items from the system won''t work on girls for you".

    ''You have a special teleportation scroll in stock, but this area is under a harsh restriction, the space is so constricted that it''s an incredible headache to manipte it, so while you can use it as it is a special reward, the girl won''t be able toe with you''.

    ''A damn it, the scroll will take me to a ce which align with my interests within a certain range, right?'', asked Adam as he shed at the Skelefiends forcing them back, while he threw hisst Holy Crucifix at them, making them retreat behind the Deep Bottom Shredders.

    ''Yeah, but you can forget about the "Light Blessing" on this girl and the mission rted to her''.

    Adam inwardly sighed.

    ''What a shame, she is quite cute and I didn''t get to taste her¡­ never mind, I guess I can tell her grandmother she got separated from me and when I found her the skelefiends had killed her, I cans till get her support to fight against the idiot of Marcus''.

    "¡­", the angel girl didn''t say anything and then Adam turned to see Jasmin with his usual bright smiling expression.

    "Jasmin, cast all your buff spells on me, I''ll get rid of them all at the same time with my best attack, you''ll have to look for me after that though", he said with a gant voice.

    "Yes, brother Adam~", said Jasmin with a slightly tired but gentle voice, then rolled her spear-like staff and her light mana leaked out of her body as she casted the spell which was innately passed down to women in the Ivory family.

    "Silver Citadel", with Jasmin words the image of a silver-white city, which by its size was more like a small fortress appeared behind of her, then it shrank and entered Adam''s body.

    Adam''s eyes widened a bit as all his wounds recovered, half of his mana reserves were recharged and a third of his stamina was replenished too, there was a dim silver light covering his body increasing his physical defense too.

    ''Damn, I''m going to miss this support spell'', he thought as he ordered Ariel to use the only special reward item with space nature he had in stock, to escape from this precarious situation.

    For others, the situation was more or less like this, the Skelefiends trembled upon seeing Adam bing a miniature white sun, while Jasmin''s eyes sparkled waiting to see an incredible martial art¡­ but the result waspletely different to their expectations.

    The Skelefiendsughed as they noticed Adam wasn''t here anymore the second the light went out, while Jasmin was in shock, it took her a couple of seconds to realize she was abandoned and her eyes got teary.

    "My heart is hurting for the poor light princess who was discarded like trash¡­ or that would be the case if I had one kekeke".

    The Skelefiends who found the situation rather amusing,ughed at Jasmin as they made sure to surround her.

    "Capture her, Lord Horrorw wants her alive, but a few missing limbs is within the eptable, as he can sbe healedter!".

    Jasmin whose lips were shaking due to being insulted, clenched her little fists as she used what was left of her mana, to cast onest spell.

    "Light Fortress!", her usually sweet voice had a tinge of fierceness as she used her best defensive spell, a light cube covered her whole body while at the same time her eyes closed as she passed out due to exhaustion, but as she fell to the ground, she managed to see a few blurred figures from afar.

    ''What a pretty silver color'', she thought to herself as she fell into the darkness.

 Chapter 311 Ancient Oath (Part 1)

    A few minutes ago:

    Daimon and the girls were moving the rockyndscape of the underwater space in which they were, Daimon noticed blood stains from time to time, and clear signs of fight sometimes between people and others between magic beasts.

    ''Well, those Bottom Shredders need a lot of food, so I guess all the weaker magic beast were already hunted and devoured'', he thought.

    "Stop", Daimon extended his hand as he asked the girls to stop moving.

    "Is there some problem?".

    "Did you see something D¡­ Gabriel?".

    The girls stopped and asked Daimon why he told them to, once again Leslie nearly called Daimon by her real name, which made her shily giggle while her sisters gazed at her.

    Then the girls all saw a huge explosion radiated arge amount of white light, which was visible even from afar.

    "That''s about ten kilometers away, what is happening?", asked Yvonne, she had to half close her eyes due to the increase in the brightness.

    "Nothing that affects us", said Daimon as he proposed to leave.

    Right now, he had not time to y with Adam, who thanks to his infinity eyes saw was being surrounded by a lot of Skelefiends and three Deep Bottom Shredders.

    ''They can see your light mana, you fool'', thought Daimon as he casted his boost spell again, but then it was in that precise moment where Adam''s frustration reached a high enough level, for him to be able to listen to his and his system administrator''s conversation.

    Though it was a bit distorted due to the distance, he more or less understood what they were talking about, he couldn''t help but frown after getting such an interesting information.

    ''So, girls are one of the weaknesses of his system, popr but celibate, that''s what "dense" is called, it fits a loser like him and that would exin why he was so angry about those two princesses just being near to me'', thought Daimon.

    ''Well, not everyone can be a consequence less skirt chaser who benefits by adding women to the skill tree hehehe'', of course Evangeline couldn''t help but mess with Daimon a bit as she was able to listen to what Adam and his system administrator were talking about too.

    ''No consequences my ass, I remember a lousy system administrator forgetting to mention that upon reaching puberty, the pheromones of the Apex Predator body would be present in my first wet dream, making all the women in a wide area to lust after me, luckily mom and the others had already gone through it once so they weren''t immediately charmed and threw me in a bathtub full of cold water to wash it away, while Erin eliminated till thest trace of pheromones in the bedroom with her darkness''.

    ''Pfft, I wish I was able to film it~'', Evangeline nearly peed due to theugh attack she had remembering one of the very few embarrassing moments Daimon has had in his life.

    Even Narasha couldn''t help but softly giggle, making Daimon sigh.

    ''Don''t let Eve corrupt you Narasha¡­''.

    Daimon then frowned, without him doing it, the vertical yellow lines that indicated the Drakolevia lineage was in effect, appeared in his pupils, then as he was about to ask Evangeline what was happening, the unmistakable sound of a notification ran on his ears.

    [Ding]

    [A new special mission has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Oath from the ancient age: The descendant of the first daughter of the northern sky has fallen in a precarious situation where her survival chance is below 20%, nowadays the mutual help oath between the northern sea and the northern sky has been buried in the sands of time, the host has fulfilled the minimum amount of lineage concentration to renew the oath]

    [Save the descendant of the daughter of the northern sky and keep her safe for the rest of the day <!>]

    [Reward: New oath with the host as the holder (the oath will be updated and adapted to the system), the concentration of the lineage will increase in a total of 5% as the host will be fulfilling one of the promises of the son of the northern sea]

    [Penalty in case of failure: The oath will be eliminated from the inheritances hidden in the Drakolevia lineage forever]

    [Remaining review time: 30 minutes (adjusted due to the emergency of the situation)]

    Aisha noticed her son had a contemtive expression on her face and she asked in a voice only he could hear.

    ''What happened darling?''.

    ''Apparently that girl who was with Adam has something to do with the secrets of this magic ruin, that exins why the Skelefiends and the pirates want to capture her'', said Daimon, then a realization hit him like a truck.

    ''The main mission I got for the Clear Water kingdom was triggered because I blocked Adam when he was in a crucial moment, his ns clearly require that girl to die so she can''t tell anyone about his betrayal¡­ and if I save her not only, I will be screwing him over, but I''ll even get a reward from the system, two birds one stone'', he thought.

    "I''ll be back in a second, advance to the east, we''ll avoid direct contact with that group of enemies", said Daimon as he epted the mission, the countdown was of just 30 minutes, which was probably how long her spell was going tost.

    Daimon already took the decision to not directly sh with those Skelefiends, not because of them but because of that Deep Bottom Shredder which had runes engraved on its skin, runes which he perfectly recognized as some of them were engraved in the walls of the ck stone corridor from which he entered to the magic ruin.

    Luckily, he didn''t have to, those guys were being repelled by the light cube casted by Jasmin and¡­ his skills weren''t affected by the istion formation, so blink was at the order.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Under Mellie''s surprised eyes, Daimon''s image shed as he disappeared from where he was standing.

    "What kind of movement spell is that, how can he move so fast?", mumbled Mellie, even for her whose observation abilities were one of her strong points, it was as if Daimon vanished into thin air for a split of a second to then reappear one hundred meters away from his original position.

    The Risha sisters stared at each other with smiles on their pretty faces, since Daimon they had travelled with Daimon while he used blink to teleport them too, they knew it wasn''t a movement spell, but a genuine spatial ability simr to what Half Emperors can do.

    "Let''s start moving, we need to leave the area that those guys will be searching through right from the bat, Yvi I leave erasing our traces to you".

    "Mm", the girls nodded and then they used their respective boosting spells to put get some distance, while Yvonne made sure to erase their traces with darkness mana, Daimon didn''t need to track them as he could feel Aisha''s presence anyway.

    ¡­

    Once Daimon had taken some impulse he jumped and then used blink to raise into the sky, before he advanced frontwards.

    "Aerial mobility is such a huge advantage over those below the Arch ranks", mumbled Daimon as his image shed through the sky, they were underwater so there weren''t clouds her, but due to the abrupt change in temperature due to the sh of the currents from the different seas, there was mist which functioned the same for his purposes.

    It didn''t take Daimon too much to be get a glimpse of the small army of Skelefiends, mostly because the Deep Bottom Shredders outstood quite a bit.

    "Mm?", the Skelefiend who seemed to be the leader of the whole group, and was upying the body of a high ranked noble descendant from the Clear Water kingdom, had a sudden bad premonition, but no matter where he looked at, he didn''t see anything that justified said premonition.

    Daimon who was on freefall about one kilometer from the ground, smirked, he took a deep breath and then his body exploded in white mes, cancelling the dark curtain in thest moment and then using blink to slow down enough tond safely.

    While his body didn''t sh against the ground, nothing stopped the literal tsunami of white mes from falling at a high speed from the sky.

    "Watch out!", the leader of the Skelefiends felt the dreading from above and his face paled, he threw a ck and green spear at Daimon as he shouted before jumping behind the enhanced Bottom Shredder, some of the Skelefiends managed to react on time to use the Bottom Shredders as meat shields, while others didn''t.

    "Booom!", the sea of mes impacted the ground with enough force to create a small tremor, followed by the mes spreading all over the ce in the nearby area, all the Skelefiends who weren''t fast enough were vaporized while the others along with the Bottom Shredders were blown away due to the shockwave.

    Daimon who was yet to touch the ground dodged the spear, but he was still scratched by its de, luckily Narasha jumped out of the inventory and blocked most of the attack with Disaster, but Daimon was still pushed back a few dozen of meters.

    ''A mage possessing the body of a knight'', thought Daimon.

    He saw the light cube standing strong in the now disaster-like area, and he used blink to appear next to it, while at the same time he gathered all the remaining mes and formed a dome to cover his escape.

    ''I hope this thing doesn''t attack me'', he thought, previously he saw all the attacks of the Skelefiends and even the Bottom Shredders being bounced back right at them by the light cube.

    So, it would be troublesome if he was recognized as an enemy, but luckily that wasn''t the case in fact it was all the contrary, as soon as Daimon''s hand made contact with the cube, it became small white particles which then covered Jasmin adapting to her shape, so he could easily carry her.

    ''That''s convenient'', thought Daimon as he carried Jasmin like a princess, then taking advantage of the chaos he used blink to soar into the sky disappearing in the mist a couple of secondster before anyone even noticed he left the white mes dome.

    The leader of the Skelefiends shook his head to get out of his daze, and noticed he was bleeding.

    "What are you waiting you bastards, destroy that me dome we can''t leave that bitch slip between our fingers or Uncle Horrorw will crush your bones!".

    The remaining Skelefiends obeyed and started casting spells to destroy the white me wall, while the leader evaluated the damages.

    ''Fucking hell, that monster bastard out half of us, one of the Bottom Shredders is beyond reparation too and the enhanced one lost an arm¡­ what the hell!'', swore the leader in his heart.

    One of the Bottom Shredders was now burning in the ground, while it was still alive his body was beyond help, even the enhanced Bottom Shredder refused to eat it.

    To be fair, Daimon basically used all his battle aura reserves and half of his mana reserve in one go, which resulted in a sphere of Demon Light of about one hundred meters of diameter, it was the by far the strongest attack he has ever performed without activating core synchrony.

    "Lord Tonguespike, that guy is gone", the shouts of the other skelefiends returned the leader back to reality.

    "What!", the body of the leader Skelefiend shook due to anger and then his head tilted back as he shouted in such a high volume that his voice reverberated through the whole area.

    "I don''t know who you are but you are dead meat!".

    Daimon who at this point was about five kilometers away from them, heard the outraged voice of the Skelefiend and he grinned.

    "The next time we meet will be thest", mumbled Daimon as he elerated the rate at which he used blink, he had already depleted a whole round of his mana reserves and had replenished it, which of course took a toll in his stamina, specially because he used all his reserves of battle aura.

    But a headache was a really small price to pay given the how things resulted back there, about 20 Skelefiends killed on the spot, one Bottom Shredder and the arm of another, it was a good dead count.

    Also the Bottom Shredder was registered in his te, so he now had 300 points, while the event didn''t mattered for most people as they will be busy surviving, his mission required him to win, so couldn''t just ignore the beast hunt.

 Chapter 312 Ancient Oath (Part 2)

    After a couple of minutes of moving through the sky, Daimon focused his attention on the connection he shared with Aisha to feel her current location and found her about five kilometers away towards the east, it was a good distance from their original position.

    He also noticed that the girl in his arms had started to wake up and considering how bad she was treated by that trash hero, Daimon didn''t know how she was going to react if the first thing she saw was an unknown man carrying her in his arms.

    After spending another quarter of his mana reserves on blink, he caught up with the girls and then descended from the sky a few meters away from them.

    ''For someone who was using that Adam guy of being too shy, you did a pretty act yourself darling~'', said Aisha directly to her son.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled.

    ''It as different though, that guy''s attacks are naturally shy and eye catching, I had to do it like that to make those Skelefiends pay more attention to the attack, but if I had condensed all that battle aura and mana in a javelin, I could have eliminated at least two of the Bottom Shredders and heavily injure the third one''.

    While Aisha was more interested in the potential that attack of her son showed earlier, the Risha sisters and even Mellie were directly gazing at the girl who was fainted in Daimon''s arms.

    "Isn''t that the princess of the Elemental Sea of something like that?", mumbled Leslie, putting emphasis in the word "princess".

    "Not really a princess, but both her grandparents are Ster ranks so she might as well be considered one", said Mellie.

    Daimon of course could notice the gazes of the girls piercing him like spears and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he was also in a bit of a predicament in how to exin why did he save her.

    "Mellie, do you know anything about some kind of oath between the founders of the Clear Water kingdom and the Elemental Sea?", asked Daimon trying to divert the attention from Jasmin.

    And to his surprise Mellie nodded.

    "Sis knows more about old story than me, but I''m pretty sure I have heard her mention that the hero, in other words the only other known owner of the ck Armored Shark lineage in the history besides you had a¡­ close "friendship" with the matriarch of the Light Pce sect, the one from which the current five sects derive".

    "After the disappearance of the hero the rtionship between the two forces cooled out, and we ended up in the current "allies by convenience" kind of rtionship, why do ask?".

    "Well, let''s just say that I got an idental "emergency call" from her, and it ended up being beneficial for my lineage to save her", said Daimon.

    Mellie had a contemtive expression on her face as she made memory of some of the stories her sister has told her.

    "Well, the hero supposedly never failed to his word, that''s also one of the reasons as to why things cooled between our seas, he didn''t help the matriarch of the light pce when she needed him, which resulted in her suffering the lethal wound that led to her death, it''s worth researching more about the subject with sis once we retu said Mellie with a curious expression in her face.

    Both the queen and princess sisters were curious by nature, and this is a subject that is probably rted to the current state of Neptune so of course her interest was picked by it.

    Of course, Daimon could feel the intense gazes of the Risha sisters on him, but he still needed to carry Jasmin for what he was about to do, though he changed the way he was doing it.

    He wrapped his let arm around Jasmin, so that he had a free arm which he extended to the girls.

    "Hold onto me, I saw a decent ce to rest for a couple of hours".

    The three Risha sisters held onto Daimon''s arm though they didn''t say anything their smiles gave them away, while Aisha and Mellie grabbed his shoulders.

    Daimon chuckled, and after reminding Mellie to not let go of him, he jumped, just by physical strength and even with the six girls depending on his impulse, he reached about forty meters into the air before using blink to take more distance from the ground.

    Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana already knew what travelling with Daimon while he used blink was like, but it was a first for Mellie and she was pretty surprised about it.

    "This is unfair such an unfair spell, you can practically fly even if you aren''t a peak mortal¡­ Arch rank", mumbled Mellie, since she learned how the Wonder Myriad ster chart ssified their ranks, she agreed that it was more organized so at least in private she preferred it that way.

    Daimon agreed with Mellie, blink is indeed one of the most useful skills he has, and the previous limitation he had due to physical objects blocking his sight, thus preventing him from knowing where he would appear, was solved thanks to his infinity yes.

    And that allowed him to do something like what was about to happen, after a couple of uses of blink a small hill which was smooth from the outside without any sign of internal spaces, appeared in Daimon''s field of vision.

    "There it is, don''t let go of medies", with onest warning, their images shed but this time they didn''t appear anywhere in the sky.

    The Risha sisters, Mellie and even Aisha were surprised to see how their surroundings changed in a split of a second, from the open sky to a pretty much dark cave, Daimon simply created a small wisp of Demon Light which was enough to illuminate the whole ce.<novelnext></novelnext>

    They were in a sixty square meters space, inside of the hill which they saw earlier, when Daimon was returning, he casually found this ce, and it was so deep into the hill that no one had found it earlier, there were no signs of a magic beasts either, so it was apletely natural-made cave.

    But now that they were inside Daimon frowned because he noticed that the wisp of Demon Light was slowly but surely being reduced, he changed theyer of the visual spectrum he was seeing with his infinity eyes, to focus on the flow of mana not inside other people''s bodies, but the one that floated in the air.

    But the result was not what he expected, basically the mana was pretty much normal it roamed freely in the space, but when he looked at the wisp of Demon Light, he noticed that the proportion of mana in it had gone from the original 85/15, in other words 85% battle aura and 15% mana, to 60/40, hepensated the difference with mana or the me would have extinguished but the integrity had suffered a bit, luckily, he was just using as illumination.

    "The walls", mumbled Daimon, he saw some specific parts of the walls of the cave absorbing his battle aura, which was already in a bad spot as there were only some left overs.

    The origin of it were some small dark green mineral ores incrusted inside the walls, which had managed to caught his attention, though it wasn''t affecting also his mana like antinite would, the attraction for battle aura was strong enough to separate the one he poured into his Demon Light, just to be absorbed, but right now he just wanted to rest, so after taking out a nket and letting Jasmin down on it, he stretched his body and then sat down.

    The Risha sisters and Aisha noticed Daimon was pretty tired and after staring at each other and smiling between themselves, they prepared a little rxing time for him.

    Leslie took over illuminating the cave, while Yvonne, Liliana and Aisha prepared something to eat, Leslie heated the food with her mes, with Daimon providing the ingredients from his inventory of course.

    He had to admit that seeing the four of them working together had a certain charm to it, normally he would have helped out more, but the girls told him to leave it on their hands, and his stomach was actually killing him.

    The Apex Predator body already made it so his metabolism was monstrous, so he had to eat quite a decent share of food, in exchange his energy reserves were pretty high though, which was one of the reasons as to why his battle aura was so strong as it is produced by the mix of his life spark and the energy produced by his body.

    Once the food was ready a pleasantly appetizing smell spread across the cave, the girls served for everyone and they soon started to eat.

    As always Aisha personally fed her son with her fork and Daimon happily ate what she gave him, but there was a change this time, the Risha sisters stared at each other, before Leslie extended her hand to offer Daimon a spoon of the vegetable soup she was eating.

    "Ahem, you are really hungry after using so much battle aura right¡­ here you can have some of mine if you want to", needless to say but her cheeks were a bit red, as this was something only those who are close do, and that it was even more true for people like Daimon who have a really small group which he considers close to him.

    Daimon was surprised to see the although energetic, shy when ites to this kind of things, Leslie offering to give him food directly like Aisha does, but he still epted it, as it is true, they have be closer to him during this small adventure, and after sleeping in the same bed this didn''t seem like too much.

    Seeing Daimon eating what she offered Leslie brightly smiled before she continued eating, giving some spoons to Daimon from time to time, of course she wasn''t the only one, Yvonne and Liliana who were sitting besides Leslie previously, stood up and sat in front of Daimon, forming a circle, with Mellie sitting next to Aisha while she looked at them with curious eyes.

    And then they also did the same, Yvonne with a piece of grilled meat and Liliana with some of the fruits she cut for herself since she mostly ate cold food.

    Aisha who looked from the sides gave the Risha sisters thumbs up, even if it was just a small gesture, they were happy with it as that meant they had be closer with Daimon, and she as their friend was happy for them too.

    Mellie felt a bit left out, but she understood that she was new in the group, so it was only normal, though after the other girls stopped feeding Daimon, they chatted with her too.

    Daimon on the other hand ate te after te until he felt satisfied, before he took out one a bed from his inventory andid down on it to rest a bit.

    The girls casually sat on the edges of the bed, while Aisha wasying down next to Daimon and Mellie stayed on the nket near Jasmin.

    Daimon then proceeded to tell the girls what happened to Jasmin, including how Adam not only abandoned her, but he even made her use almost all her mana before doing it, so that her death was practically assured.

    Of course, the girls were incensed about it, while they didn''t know Jasmin, they couldn''t help but feel sympathetic towards a decent girl whose trust and gratitude were taken advantage off, by a piece of trash like Adam.

    "What an idiot, even my sister has told me some of the good deeds the granddaughter of the shaman from the Elemental Sea has done", said Mellie.

    While they were talking about what happened, Daimon''s ears caught a change in Jasmin''s heartbeat and an increase in her breathing rhythm, which meant she was already walking up.

    ''Time or the truth'', thought Daimon as he prepared to suppress Jasmin if needed.

    "Mm, where am I?", Jasmin''s eyes slowly opened and she noticed the obvious change in her surroundingspared to what she remembers before she passed out.

    She turned to see her surroundings, and contrary to what Daimon expected, she didn''t freak out and instead her eyes got teary, but she bit her lips and forced herself to not break down.

    Then without any warning, Daimon''s pupils changed as a vertical yellow line appeared on them, but that wasn''t nothing out of normal, what did surprise everyone, Jasmine included was that her pupils changed too, but for her instead of lines it was a white halo what appeared in them.

 Chapter 313 Ancient Oath (Part 3)

    Jasmine who still had a sleepy expression rubbed her eyes a couple of times, she touched her face and then used her spear-like staff to see her own reflect.

    "Mm¡­ what is this?", she mumbled, apparently, she didn''t know why her eyes looked like that, besides that she didn''t notice any change in herself, so she kept calm, while she evaluated the situation.

    Daimon on the other hand did notice something different the unmistakable sound of a notification ringing on his ears, to be more exact.

    [Ding]

    [An external beneficial force is trying to reach to the host (unknown effect), do you want to ept it Y/N]

    Daimon stole a gaze at the white halo in Jasmine''s pupils and he raised an eyebrow, he has already seen notifications about blocking negative effects such as the curse that was casted at him back then, but this is just the second time he has seen a notification about a beneficial effect, but it wasn''t the same.

    What caught his attention is that he has received buffs from other people''s spells before, Erin, Aura and Liz had done it quite a few times when he was training, or practicing any activity which required it, and he never got a notification put of it, the only exception was¡­ ine.

    A memory of ine''s passive skill shed through Daimon''s mind, as he tried to find what this current situation had inmon with what he has experienced before.

    [Sleeping Lover (Passive): When sharing a bed with her lover, the user will be able to heal andfort her chosen partner (It only works with Daimon Licht)]

    It happened one day when he overstepped his limits when training, his body killing him, so he took a bath and simply threw himself on the bed to res, then before he fell asleep, he felt a soft and soothing sensation running through his body, ine who casually saw Daimon all beat up,id down and cuddled with him, then he got a notification simr to this, the difference is that back then he didn''t have the option to not receive the benefit unlike this time.

    ''Well, I guess it''s because ine is my soulmate'', concluded Daimon, still his instincts which now took into ount the ck Armored Shark lineage, told him to ept, and the system alsobeled it as a "beneficial force", so epted it.

    Daimon immediately felt afortable wave of energy going through his body and then his battle aura''s reserves which had recovered to about 70% after eating, as he needed to rest for about an hour to fully recover because he hit zero when using that previous attack, suddenly reached maximum capacity.

    ''What the hell'', thought Daimon, while he could replenish mana from the practically bottomless amount, he had stored in his magic core, and battle aura from eating food thanks to the Apex Predator constitution, his stamina took the toll, meaning that with each time he did, he would get tired, so even for him there was a limit as to how many enemies he could fight one after another, or the maximum amount he could take on at the same time.

    Normally he avoids hitting zero in any of the two reserves, because recovering from that takes a longer time than when he just uses most of his reserves, but his instincts told him that if he didn''t give his all in that previous attack, it wasn''t going to be enough to aplish his goal.

    And to a certain extent his calculous was right, he eliminated one of the Bottom Shredders and damaged the enhanced one, while also cutting the number of Skelefiends in half, that was enough to leave the survivors shocked, so that they were distracted enough for him to make his exit.

    Daimon saw that Jasmine didn''t notice what she did, in fact the small amount of mana which she had recovered after fainting, didn''t diminish.

    ''So, it''s not a spell but an innate ability'', thought Daimon, just like when he uses "Ruler of the Sea" or when Mellie uses her "Analyzing Resonance", whatever Jasmine did isn''t a spell but an ability as it doesn''t require her to use mana to activate.

    That being said, she clearly didn''t know anything about which included how to activate it or deactivate it at will.

    While Daimon was contemting the implications of his new discovery, Jasmine got up with a bit of Mellie''s help, as she was still pretty weak after using all her mana, not to mention the mental shock she suffered due to Adam abandoning her like that¡­ no he actually tried to kill her, using the Skelefiends to do the dirty job.

    Once again, her eyes got teary but after sniffing a couple of times, she took a deep breath and calmed down, what she found weird because she was sure that being betrayed like that should have broken her, but instead besides some lingering sadness there was nothing else.

    "Thanks for saving me, miss Delphini", mumbled Jasmine.

    Mellie bitterly smiled, she had nothing to do with it, so she shook her head in response.

    "I''m sorry but it wasn''t me¡­ in fact we couldn''t have arrived on time even if we knew in which situation you were, it was Gabriel the one you should thank, also just call me Mellie, in terms of status we are pretty much the same".

    Jasmine''s eyes had aplex expression in them, after what happened with Adam thought it was dumb of her to have trusted him so easily, you could say that in that aspect she learned a lesson, a painful but necessary one.

    Still, she approached Daimon and then slightly bowed towards him.

    "Thanks for saving me, right now I don''t have anything to repay you with, but if I make it out of this alive, I''ll be sure to ask my grandmother to reward you, for the time being please ept this bow from me as a sign of gratitude".

    Now that she was standing close to Daimon, she noticed two things, first, he didn''t have any mermen characteristics unlike the other people present, Aisha and the Risha sisters had imitated the fan-like fin ears of Mellie, as their characteristic of choice, but Daimon didn''t.

    And second, she remembers having seen this silver haired boy before she fainted back then, and not only that she was surprisinglyfortable around him, in fact she was rather too calm considering what she went through.

    "Mm?", Daimon came out of her dare as he saw Jasmine bowing to him, before she extended her hand and poked his right cheek.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Then as if she confirmed something, she retracted her hand as fast as she could, after that she noticed Daimon and the others looking at her and she flushed a bit.

    "Sorry¡­ I just wanted to make sure I wasn''t dreaming, I remember seeing you from afar before fainting, but I thought my brain was ying tricks one me, since I was a few minutes from death".

    Daimon frowned, what Jasmine said was impossible, by the time he arrived she has had fainted for about twenty minutes already, and he flew hole using dark curtain and only descended when he was about to attack the Skelefiends, so she would have only seen him once hended near to her.

    "Actually, what happened was¡­".

    Daimon proceeded to tell Jasmine a resumed version of how he got an "emergency call", while they were travelling, and that by the time he arrived she had already fainted and the Skelefiends were attacking that light cube, of course omitted some details and only made it look like he managed to trick the enemy so he could retreat with her.

    The mission only required him to keep her safe for the rest of the day, and Daimon didn''t know what was Jasmine''s standing in all this, so he had no reason to bepletely honest with her, not only that, thest girl he met who has so affectionate with Ada, was that crazy woman from the Penddra family.

    She was obsessed with Adam to the point of Daimon considering it brainwashing, and he had rted it with the "light blessing" mentioned by the angel girl who administrated Adam''s system, that''s why he was a bit wary of Jasmine, he didn''t know how much Adam had progressed with her.

    He could have done something simr if he used the title Casanova he unlocked a long time ago, but the difference is that he wouldn''t brainwash them, it was more of a strong suggestion, and he didn''t want to do that to Aisha and the others, so up to this point he had deactivated it.

    ''I wouldn''t worry about that, have you noticed that this girl who should have been devastated due to being so attached to that hero guy, is only having a small sadness and resentment period'', said Evangeline.

    ''Yeah, but what does that have to do with this?'', asked Daimon, just to hear Evangeline''s yful giggles.

    ''Well, let''s just say you have be her "hero" now, she is only feeling a normal deception, as that guy''s tricks were rendered null now that she has positive feelings, after having interacted with you, I would bet that''s what triggered that change in her eyes, her lineage is responding in kind since you helped her~''.

    Jasmine had a contemtive expression on her pretty face right now, as she tried to make memory, just to confirm the fact that she was sure of having seen Daimon before fainting, while it was true, he wasn''t there physically, he was indeed looking and listening to the situation when everything happened, so maybe she perceived that, it probably had something to do with that oath.

    "Whatever the case you saved me, thanks¡­", before Jasmine could finish her sentence, her stomach let out a low but still noticeable growl, making her face redden.

    "Sorry, I had been on the run since I arrived at this underwater space", she added.

    The girls softlyughed and then offered Jasmine some of the food they prepared which was still hot thanks to Leslie''s mes.

    Jasmine dly epted the food and then she told them everything that has happened to her since the beginning of the beast hunt, as they wanted to see if maybe she had new information about the current situation.

    During the conversation, Daimon couldn''t help but notice she wasn''t wearing a spatial ring nor she had a life-saving treasure, which was weird, Mellie has her pendant, she refused to use it, but she had it with herself, so it was strange for the granddaughter of two Emperors to not have one.

    Jasmine noticed Daimon''s interrogative gaze and she sighed before saying.

    "I gave my ring to him so he could keep it safe after discovering we couldn''t ess to it, as for my life-saving treasure, I used my grandmother''s previously when the pirates tried to capture me at the Elemental Sea, as for my grandpa''s¡­ he gave his to that guy as he was supposed to be my bodyguard", by the end of her sentence, Jasmine''s voice became rather cold without her noticing it, before it returned to normal.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head, Adam did a pretty big number at the Elemental Sea apparently, to the point that he gained the favor of the shaman.

    Once Jasmine finished eating, she thanked the girls for the food and then after doubting for a moment, she turned to see Mellie to ask what was in her mind.

    "Would it be a problem if I stay with your group while you rest here, Mellie?", she was beaten and needed a proper rest, where her life wouldn''t be in danger preferably, and to she mysteriously felt pretty safe right now.

    Instead of directly answering, Mellie gazed at Daimon, ultimately by ay means he was the captain of the team.

    "Sure, we can''t go out right now, and in any case given the current state of things, the more we survive the bigger the chances are that the Trident Marshal realizes there is something wrong with the beast hunt", said Daimon.

    In the outside world the sun will be setting down by this moment and with his infinity eyes, he saw that the mist which originally was only present high from the ground, had now spread across the whole ce, it was so thick that it was hard to see through it, and he also had a bad premonition as if there was something hidden in the mist waiting for its prey.

    Since there was no use in hiding it, and Adam didn''t have the capacity to use his inventory, Daimon didn''t care to take out another bed, for Mellie and Jasmine to share, while the Risha sisters, Aisha and him stayed at the first one.

    ''In any case this favors me, it would have been awkward to ask her to stay within my sight at least for the next hours'', thought Daimon as he saw Jasmin hopping onto the bed to rest.

 Chapter 314 Ancient Oath (Part 4)

    Now that he had some free time and his stamina had recovered to its maximum capacity, Daimon got up from the bed and walked towards the walls of the cave, more specifically to one of the parts where he saw his battle aura being dragged towards earlier.

    Daimon ced his hand on the wall and softened a small part of the stone, before he punched a hole on it, almost immediately Daimon got a hand of a small nail sized dark green mineral ore.

    Just by being on contact with it, Daimon felt slightly lethargic for a split of a second, before his usuallyzy ass magic core,ined and moved just enough to counter the suction force of the stone which was trying to steal his vitality away from him.

    ''Damn, this little thing will be such a hassle for knights'', though Daimon as he inspected dark green ore.

    Apparently one of the reasons as to why no one has found this open space inside the hill, is because of this mineral, which was incrusted into some parts of the walls, so for anyone using mana sense to scan it, there were no signs of living beings, because the mineral blocked it.

    The principle behind it was different to antinite, because while antinite will nullify all kinds of energy, touching it won''t make you weaker, it will only prevent you from using or circting mana and battle aura, which is kind of unfair for mages as they depend on mana to strengthen their bodies, but knights don''t need to use battle aura to have inhuman strength, though it is vastly amplified by it.

    In other words, this mineral Daimon found by ident was the an antinite focused exclusively for knights, and that was both good and bad news depending on the situation.

    Good if it was as rare as antinite and it was inessible, unattainable unless someone had an incredible fortunate encounter, just like antinite whiches from the nucleus of celestial bodies, and was only discovered in a ce where a meteorite fell thousands of years ago.

    Up to this day antinite couldn''t be artificially harvested, and its existences were sow that a hand sized piece of it could be considered a legacy in low high ranked family, not to mention it''s regted by the same council formed by Half Emperors, the Field Marshal and the Magus Kings who had an equal standing with them, which sealed away Disaster.

    "Mellie, do you recognize this mineral?", asked Daimon as he showed Mellie the small dark green mineral he had in his hand.

    "Mm?", Mellie inspected the nail sized pebble in Daimon''s hand and the activated her innate ability, making a yellow line to shine on her forehead, as she went through the books she has memorized, before her eyes widened.

    Once she recognized what it was, she hurriedly knocked the thing out of Daimon''s hands, with the arch of her fiddle.

    "That''s "Sea Devil Ore", don''t let it touch your skin or it will drain your vitality away!".

    Mellie then proceeded to tell Daimon the story of this mineral, a king once found a rock the size of a hand inside the stomach of a Half Ster rank sea bottom magic beast, which he found in a strike of luck and killed after a harsh battle.

    Since the meat of the magic beast was so delicious and packed with vitality, he took the rock as a sign of good fortune and ordered a magic cksmith to create a ne for his wife.

    As you can guess, not too muchter the wife of the king fell ill and in less than a year died mysteriously, this was before the knight path was discovered so no one knew why she died, the king was busy during that year and the ne looked as beautiful and vibrant as when he handed it to his wife.

    So, he took it as a reminder of her, and used it himself, as a high ranked mage it took some time for him to start showing negative effects, so when he noticed it, he went to see a doctor and was told he was perfectly fine, just to die in a battle some yearster due to sudden exhaustion.

    The ne was given to one of the princes, who happened to be one of the first knights and the one who solved the mystery of the death of his parents, needless to say but the ne was destroyed, but a small piece of it was kept for research purposes in the royal vault.

    It was then learned that this specific ore could only be found at the deepest parts of the sea, where only some races of magic beasts could reach, that beast which the king killed has eaten it because it was full of vitality, probably because another beast ate it before and was slowly drained from its life due to that, which ended in the new magic beast devouring it.

    The cycle broke because that king killed the magic beast, but the mineral ended up taking the life of the king and its wife, that''s why it was named "Sea Devil Ore", because its vibrant looks and "positive" effects which were temporal due to the excess o vitality stored inside of it, stolen from its previous owner, was like the whispers of a devil, tempting one.

    "It''s been a few hundreds of thousands of years since that¡­ and no one has ever been able to let alone find one, but even see one, where did you find it?", asked Mellie.

    Daimon who was delighted by her response grabbed the rock from the ground, the thing again tried to drain his vitality and was blocked by his magic core.

    ''I''m the one predates on others, not the contrary so just resign yourself'', thought Daimon as he kept it in his "pocket", obviously sending it to his inventory forter.

    Aisha knew her son was immune to that kind of things, since he was able to tame Disaster, so she didn''t show any concern, but Mellie and the Risha sisters weren''t, so they were visibly worried about it, until he exined them.

    "Don''t worry this thing can''t harm me, also I found it in the walls of this cave, you won''t be affected by its effect unless you touch it, so it''s not only harmless, but beneficial since it''s blocking others from being able to notice us".

    The girls were still a bit unconvinced but they decided to trust Daimon, and put the subject at the back of their heads.

    Daimon offered to give them each one of the ores in the walls, which he would take out when it was time for them to leave this cave, but they weren''t interested on it.

    "I bet they''ll be happy when you gift those three a different kind of gem~", Aisha of course took the chance to tease the Risha sisters, but besides blushing the three didn''tin at all, in fact they were smiling and giggling between each other.

    It also didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that Jasmine was just feigning to be asleep, she had her eyes closed but her breath and heartbeat gave her away, though it was understandable, thest time she went to "sleep", she had already resigned to death after all.

    Still, it wasn''t his ce to say something, so he justid down and chatted with the girls about random stuff, he had no intention to die in this ce, and he wasn''t going to let any of them die as well, so for him this was just another day.

    Daimon''s confidence and calmness wasforting for not only the Risha sisters, but even Mellie and soon they felt sleepy, probably because they also ate quite a bit, and without noticing they entered thend of dreams, leaving only Daimon and Aisha awake, Jasmine was too but she was facing the wall and had her eyes closed while she tried to ovee the idea of not waking up tomorrow.

    ''Darling?'', Aisha saw Daimon''s eyes changing to have that vertical yellow line in them and she asked what was happening through their mental connection.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''Just a little test'', answered Daimon, previously when he was feeling "bad", Jasmine''s eyes changed and he was "healed", but unlike him, she has no control over her ability and her eyes hadn''t changed back, so he decided to give it a go and try to repay the favor.

    And to his surprise it worked, not even five minutester he noticed Jasmine''s breathing getting slower and stabilizing, as she fell asleep and that wasn''t all, thanks to his lineage he could feel when she had her ability active, the same applied for Mellie, so knew Jasmine had deactivated hers before falling asleep.

    ''All these lineages and their rtionships¡­ just what in the world is this magic ruin hiding'', thought Daimon before he focused his attention on the charming beauty in front of him.

    Since they were in a safe ce, Daimon had taken out the mask of the hollow suit and also took off the outeryer of his outfit, keeping his pants and shirt only, the girls did the same to be morefortable.

    So right now, Aisha was only wearing her dress without any other essories, they were also using a nket to cover themselves since the temperature seriously dropped after that mist appeared, Aisha put on a mischievous smile and then moved her body so that her son was spooning her, with her back resting on Daimon''s chest.

    "I''m feeling a bit cold darling, hug me~", she whispered at him.

    Daimon chuckled, they Risha sisters, Mellie and Jasmine were in the room with them, and here she was teasing him, and to top it off, it was working.

    ''Damn she smell so good'', thought Daimon as he caught a whiff of the fruity scent of Aisha''s shampoo, her body was soft everywhere, all in all it was a bliss to have her close to him.

    But he also knew this wasn''t the moment for this, so he simply ced his hands on Aisha''s belly and cuddled with her, while he sneakily kissed Aisha''s neck.

    "You''ll have to make up with this for now", he said whole he softly caressed his mother''s belly, making Aisha giggle.

    After ordering Rita and Horals to be on guard, just in case what he was thinking became true, he fell asleep with Aisha in his arms.

    ¡­

    The hours passed and while Daimon was sleeping, he suddenly had a strange sensation, which ended up waking him up, but before he opened his eyes, he heard his mother speaking directly to his mind.

    ''Girls nowadays are pretty daring¡­ or maybe this is your effect on others, darling~''.

    Daimon opened his eyes and besides Aisha who had changed her position to snuggle on his chest, the second thing he saw was that Jasmine was standing next to him, looking at him with those pretty light green eyes of hers, which had white halos in them.

    After exchanging gazes for a couple of seconds without saying anything, Daimon broke the silence.

    "Do you need something?".

    Jasmine looked at Daimon''s eyes as she answered.

    "It was you right¡­ you were what helped me sleep, how did you do it?", she asked with a curious voice.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Yeah, I was just returning the favor, since you also helped me with something after your eyes became like that, so I thought that just by doing the same it will help you to calm down to sleep".

    Jasmine contemted things for a second, she sat on the edge of the bed before saying.

    "When I fell asleep, I heard a voice telling me about me having found someone worthy, I honestly can''t remember it all, but there was something about an oath and it being beneficial to both of us and I have been wondering about it¡­ you have inherited the ck Armored Shark lineage right?", she asked.

    Daimon was slightly surprised at her words, he chose to not have any characteristic and use his original hair color, because that waspletely different to what the hero mentioned by Ae was, and yet somehow this girl managed to guess it.

    There were just a couple of minutes before the date changed, and the mission waspleted, so he simply nodded.

    "You could say so, can you tell me how did you notice it, I think I have zero resemnce to the only one before me who had it?".

    Jasmine''s eyes narrowed a bit, as she answered.

    "It was just a hunch, that yellow line in your eyes is different to the one of the Royal White family, and you are a male, meaning you can''t be part of the other lost lineage¡­ so that only leaves the ck Armored Shark option".

    Before Daimon could even answer, the sound of a notification rang in his ears.

    [Ding]

    The mission waspleted.

 Chapter 315 Ancient Oath (Part 5)

    Daimon looked at the notification in front of him and he couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow.

    [Save the descendant of the daughter of the northern sky and keep her safe for the rest of the day]

    [Reward: New oath with the host as the holder (the oath will be updated and adapted to the system), the concentration of the lineage will increase in a total of 5% as the host will be fulfilling one of the promises of the son of the northern sea]

    [Penalty in case of failure: The oath will be eliminated from the inheritances hidden in the Drakolevia lineage forever]

    [Completion rate: 100/100]

    [Calcting results¡­.]

    [Ding]

    [The mission has beenpleted]

    [A new title has been awarded due to a specific action]

    [New tittle unlocked: Promise of the northern sky]

    [The host has sessfully saved and kept the descendant of the daughter of the northern sky, alive, thus earning her gratitude, the host will now be granted the buff "Sanctuary", when in need of it]

    [Sanctuary: Once a day, the host will be able to select full recovery of either, mana, battle aura, stamina, vitality, or heal any wound as long as the host is still alive (further development, requires the host to repair the broken trust caused by the failure of the previous holder of the oath)]

    [Level of trust currently attained 10%]

    [ck Armored Shark: 10¨¤ 15% concentration]

    ''Well, at least now I know what her ability is called like, and damn it is such a good support'', thought Daimon as he dismissed the notifications.

    He then noticed all the gazes of the girls on him, including the Risha sisters and Mellie who were asleep a second ago, but unlike what he expecting it wasn''t due to Jasmine being sitting next to him on his bed, but because when the concentration of the ck Armored Shark lineage increased 5% in a single go, they were able to feel it.

    Or more urately they felt as if a magic beast suddenly appeared in the cave, thus waking them from their sleep.

    "Sorrydies, I just advanced a bit in something", he said.

    "A bit you say, I have analyzed the most serious fight the crowned prince has had, against the young spear from the neo noble faction, and your lineage has caught up to his at his maximum output¡­ the one who is considered the most talented member of the royal family in all the history of the kingdom", mumbled Mellie with a still hard to believe voice.

    Her eyes were sparkling, the way she was looking at Daimon, was like a zoologist who has found a miracle magic creature of some kind.

    And to a certain extent it was understandable, one does not simply increase the concentration of its lineage in half in a single go, all the main branches of the noble families, had a fixed concentration since the moment of their birth, and that increases during their life, or not, that''s considered a part of one''s talent.

    If Daimon were to ask the queen, she''ll give him an approximate saying that most of the nobles have a concentration between 3% to 5%, while the heads of the noble houses and their direct descendants are about 5% to 8%, while the minimum needed to receive a real benefit from one''s lineage is 10%.

    Now 2% might sound like not too much, but in this case is the difference between regr members of a race and those who unlock an innate ability, such as Mellie.

    And now ording to her, the crowned prince had long past that point by reaching about 15%, at such a young age, it was worth being noticed.

    The reason as to why the king puts so much attention and resources into the development of the crowned prince, is that past a certain age if one hasn''t reached a specific realm, the concentration will not go up ever again, at least not by natural means.

    And the crowned prince has reached the concentration a peak Arch rank of a few couples of hundreds of years would have, in his 20''s, in that sense no one was at his same level¡­ until now at least.

    That being said, Daimon didn''t feel that much of a change, probably because the next "milestone" was at 20%, and he also had the Draklevia lineage, which was the ancient root of the ck Armored Shark lineage, so he was more focused on getting the best version of thetter''s innate abilities, such as how the Commander of the sea, became Ruler of the sea.

    Anyway, this wasn''t the moment to be thinking on that, because right now, Jasmine was looking at him with a curious gaze on her pretty face, as a torrent of information appeared in her mind.

    ''You, why do I feel so calm around you¡­ it''s not like with that guy where I was lightheaded and slightly confused all the time, but a calm and safe feeling, simr to what it feels to have my grandmother around me, but different at the same time'', she thought.

    She had to admit that the previous she, would have been all over the silver haired youth, treating it like her "savior", but now after what she experienced, the wound in her heart was too deep for her to remain so innocent.

    And that''s what intrigued her the most, because the silver haired youth in front of her, wasn''t even close to be as "attentive and affectionate" as Adam feigned to be, at least not with her, but the girl who was resting next to him on the other hand, had such afortable expression, that she couldn''t help but feel a bit jealous in her heart, it was confusing.

    Anyway, this was a battle that she had to fight for herself, from her previous "charming prince" mirage, to being in front of someone to didn''t want to manipte her, so after stealing a gaze at Daimon, she excused herself and returned to her side of the bed, with Mellie.

    Not before she nodding at Daimon, and for the first time being able to deactivate her innate ability at will, which reminded Daimon of the exnation the Risha sisters gave him about their wings.

    In their words, the way to use them simply popped in their minds out of the blue, the most epted theory was that it was information codified in their lineage, which due to some kind of trigger, surfaced, and apparently something simr just happened to Jasmine.<novelnext></novelnext>

    After that little episode everyone returned to sleep, of course the Risha sisters noticed how close was Aisha to Daimon, but after giving her usatory gazes they being looked at with mockery by their friend, they closed their eyes and fell asleep.

    Daimon chuckled and then with his mother snuggling with him he also entered thend of dreams.

    ¡­

    The rest of the night went uneventful for Daimon and the girls at least, but at many ces within this underwater space which seemed limitless, roars, screams, explosions and the sound of weapons colliding could be heard.

    A few minutes before the sun raised on the sky in the outside world, argemotion exploded about three hundred kilometers from where Daimon was, but it was suffocated soon.

    "Who the hell are, why are you attacking us!", shouted one of the subordinates of the young master of the Fire Jade sect, as he saw a tall horrendous sea monster munching on the corpse of what used to be their young master.

    "He can''t listen to you, so let me answer your question, it is because you guys didn''t tell us where is that little princess of yours hiding", said a tall man with some a small amount of facial hair, who seemed to be in his middle twenties.

    Around him there were a lot of battered corpses, some were gnawed at, or had dismembered parts, or were reduced to just a lump of blood paste, but all had something inmon, they all belonged to males, while the women of the group were put in arge ck cage which was transported by another strange looking creature.

    The Deep Bottom Shredder suddenly grabbed the legs of the only male survivor and after the man who seemed to be on charge nodded, it tore them away, the scene was too bloody for a lot of the girls in the cage, to the point that some of them threw up while others looked away with pale faces.

    Needless to say but the poor now legless guy screamed in pain, the man in charge then approached him and forced a pill into the guy''s mouth, which to thetter''s surprise stopped the bleeding and even replenished most of the vitality he lost.

    "Normally you''d be food for my pets, but I think I have a better usage for you, I''ll let you live, so that you go look for that little passionate" princess, go and tell her that if she doesn''t want to see a lot of innocent women be magic beast''s shit, she bettere with me by her own will, I''ll wait her at the only exit of this underwater space", said the man with a sinister smile.

    "Ah right, my name is Ellemy ckheart, my cousin is the captain of the Devil Stingray pirates".

    After saying that, the two magic beasts grabbed one cage and they entered the mist that has spread through the whole ce, disappearing a couple of secondster.

    The man who was trying to get away from this corpse filled ce, as he knew it would attract magic beasts, suddenly felt a shiver running down his spine, followed by a hissing sound.

    And he paled, not because of that sound but because of what followed, which were understandable words.

    "Human, you smell like them, tell me where did your group brought myrades and I''ll let you live", from within the mist a brown serpent with some coral-like protuberances and water dripping from its body, emerged.

    The previous voice came from it, meaning it had unlocked its wisdom, bing wise and not just a magic beast driven by instincts, and that was even scarier for people from the four seas, because that meant they were in front of at least a Half Ster rank creature eight out of ten times.

    As the man was about to exin that he had nothing to do and was instead attacked by the pirates and sea magic beasts, the emblem of the Fire Jade sect appeared on his face and then his head exploded killing him at the spot.

    The snake snorted in response to the scene that unfolded in front of it.

    "Another one who chooses death over speaking, it is just as the Empress supposed, the humans had started to go after us since the honorable captain Silver got ambushed¡­ even if I had to seal my powers to the Mortal realm, don''t think I can''t do anything to you humans, I general Karmandi will tear your flesh to appease the souls of my envedrades".

    With thosest words, the snake melded into the mist, where a lot of different beast-like eyes could be seen.

    Then after a few hours the already precarious situation in which the nobles and members of the sects from the Elemental Sea where, became even worse, previously there were practically zero magic beasts roaming around, and they only had to worry about the pirates and Skelefiends, but now packs of sea magic beasts which were able to move in drynd appeared out of nowhere and were killing or capturing everything in the spot.

    Soon the day reced the night, and just as Daimon expected, the mist didn''tpletely disappear, just as the previous situation finished, Rita who was in charge to see what happened at long distance, directly talked to Daimon''s ears.

    ''Sorry to interrupt young master''s sleep, but there is something I need to inform'', she said with an apologetic voice.

    ''Oi you witch, the heavens better be falling for you to interrupt young master''s quality time with the young misses!'', as always, the enthusiastic bone general Horals, was a bit too into his role, which led to Rita fighting with him all the time.

    ''It''s fine, what''s the matter Rita?'', said Daimon while he tightly held Aisha with his eyes still closed, the morning was freaking cold so cuddling with his mother and enjoying her warm was both addictive and a habit he has developed over the years at Lykos.

    ''Young master''s suppositions were right, magic beasts had arrived and the situation has be even more chaotic, there are people dying and fighting basically at all times since a few minutes ago''.

    Daimon inwardly nodded.

    ''Thanks Rita, keep an eye on those guys if they are within your range and tell me if something else happens''.

    ''Thanks for your kind words, young master~'', said Rita before she returned to her silent self.

    ''Young master, let me go out, I''ll kill a hundred enemies and present you their heads, by breakfast''s time for your honorable self!'', said Horals, making Daimon speechless.

    ''You have a more important job, just focus on that for the time being, in any case I don''t think you''ll have to stay hidden for too long, I can smell the powder in the air, the situation is about to explode and I''ll need my subordinates ready for a war''.

    ''Understood, young master just has to say the word!'', shouted Horals.

 Chapter 316 The Enemy Of An Enemy

    Daimon didn''t wake the girls up due to the previous information provided by Rita, to be honest he didn''t care to stay in this hill till today''s night, where the Trident Marshal would finally realize there was something off.

    He didn''t have a positive impression of most of the other participants after all, the only exceptions being those guys with whom he travelled back in the caravan and ording to Rita they weren''t in this underwater space, so he didn''t have to worry about anything.

    As long as the girls around him remained safe he couldn''t care less about both the nobles or the members of the Elemental Sea, on the other hand he needed to hunt some magic beasts as his mission required him to do so.

    Luckily for him, there were magic beasts running wild wight now, who weren''t under the control of the pirates or the Skelefiends, so that was a cake which fell from the heavens right at his table.

    ''The pirates and the Skelefiends wanted to frame the nobles and the guys from the Elemental Sea, so they are probably hiding right now, to maintain the act, that''s good I just need to deal with one enemy instead of three at the time¡­ but wouldn''t I be falling in their trap like this?''.

    "How can I take advantage of this situation for me, there is also that idiot who escaped who knows where to take into ount", mumbled Daimon.

    Sure, he could just go hunting the magic beasts, or ambush the pirates and Skelefiends who were probably hidden, but his group alone would be in trouble if they got surrounded, Horals and Rita were his trump card, so he was reserving that for an emergency.

    He could also recruit all the scattered nobles under his g, he had two princesses with him right now after all, the problem is that none were trustable, back then some already offered to sell out Mellie to save their asses, and Daimon didn''t doubt for a single second, that there were people like that from the Elemental Sea, the only reason as to why no one hase to knock on his door, is because no one knew where they were.

    And his original n to use the Ruler of the sea to get some magic beasts, had gone to waste because the magic beasts where now moving in packs, so if he used it on one, then all the others would know about it and avoid him like the gue.

    ''Damn, not being able to do soul contracts, or using the terror contractor is such a hassle'', thought Daimon.

    As always at the slightest sign of being troubled about something, his mother who knew him better than anyone in this world, immediately noticed it.

    Aisha''s pretty amethyst eyes opened while she was snuggling on Daimon''s chest, her son''s heart beat lulled her through the night, so now that it changed, she woke up and noticed he was contemting something.

    ''What happened darling~'', she asked as she tightened her hug on Daimon.

    Daimon smiled and gently caressed Aisha''s long silky silver hair, while he exined he was in a small predicament about how to proceed here.

    "Mm, why not form an "alliance", if the magic beasts are being so organized then there must be a really high ranked and probably rational one directing them~" whispered Aisha as she sneakily kissed his neck under the nket.

    "The enemy of my enemy is my ally", mumbled Daimon while he felt Aisha''s little fangs touching his neck, just for her to retreat at thest moment, to give him a teasing smile.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, Aisha was helping out the Risha sisters to develop their rtionship with him, and that was amazing from her, but she has also gotten pretty flirty with him, despite them being around not that heined in fact he loved it, but she was just teasing him too muchtely.

    ''We''ll have a nice "chat", once we get out of this ce'', said Daimon as he kissed Aisha''s forehead.

    He then got up having decided what to do, if he doesn''t have soldiers then he just need to get some, and something he learned thanks to the wild "lioness" Aleah, is that magic beasts respect two things, strength and honesty, not all of them but the ratio is indeed higher than human beings who often back out on their word if not forced to fulfill it, besides in case anything happened, he could neutralize the stronger beasts as long as they attacked him.

    ''I''ll be back in a moment mom'', said Daimon as he got dressed up with the hollow suit.

    ''Do you want me to apany you darling?'', asked Aisha as she leisurelyid down on the bed.

    ''No, don''t worry I''ll take Rita with me, and I still have "that" in store, so there shouldn''t be any problem, once those four wake up tell them to prepare¡­ we''ll be going to war''.

    Aisha sweetly smiled, though she wanted to go with Daimon, she knew he would have taken her with him, if he needed her help, so she didn''t think too much about it and just epted her son''s decision.

    ''Okay, be careful if anything happens, I''ll be there before you notice it~'', said Aisha as she threw a kiss to her son.

    Daimon chuckled as he used blink to disappear from the room, not without giving Horals an order.

    ''Horals, Aisha is in charge while I''m not here, her orders are my orders, understood?''.

    ''Yes, young master!'', shouted the bone general with an excited voice.

    ''Finally, young master is going into a war, I will bring the general''s heads back to honor him'', thought Horals.

    Once Daimon was out, he immediately soared into the sky, the mist was pretty dense at a high altitude, while it has lessened a bit at ground level, withoutpletely disappearing though.

    But that wasn''t an obstacle for his infinity eyes and he also had Rita to help him navigate.

    ''Can you track that snake you mentioned for me Rita?'', he asked.

    ''Yes, young master, it isn''t particrly trying to hide himself and it is instead actively interrogating some of the high ranked nobles the other magic beasts had captured'', answered Rita.

    ''He is probably using himself as bait'', thought Daimon as he used blink to advance towards the direction Rita told him.

    Something that had Daimon thinking about it, was howe that snake didn''t find the pirates so far, he was sure most of them including the cousin of the captain of the Devil Stingray pirates, should be near the exit of this underwater space.

    But then a wild supposition appeared in his mind, what if these guys had found some of the Sea Devil mineral just like him, and used them to create small hideouts where anyone who used mana sense as their way to scan things, which would be practically the few highest ranked nobles, as mana sense was a rare ability here, couldn''t find them.

    The more he thought about the more Daimon frowned, whoever was pulling the strings in the shadows, had put some hard nning into it.

    ''Well, at least I can practically confirm that none of those two clowns is behind this'', thought Daimon referring to Adam and Marcus.

    Soon Daimon reached one of the many areas where beasts were running rampant, and he slowed down his pace, luckily there weren''t any aerial magic beast in the group, so the skies were pretty much clear.

    That being said, Daimon could feel he was now within the range of detection of a couple of magic beasts, the only thing preventing them from finding him out was the hollow suit.

    ''Two middle stage Arch rank and a peak stage¡­ no it feels more like a Half Emperor ranked, but its power is suppressed'', thought Daimon, it made sense though, since this snake came alone, it didn''t want to draw the Trident Marshal''s attention, so at most it was allowed to have the magic firm of an Arch ranked magic beast.

    "Be prepared Rita, we are going in right now", mumbled Daimon as he stopped using blink to stay high in the sky.

    ¡­

    The snake general Karmandi who was frustratingly hissing, after not being able to find out where were hisrades, he has interrogated a couple of those annoying humans with elemental affinities, just to realize they didn''t know anything.

    "This isn''t going anywhere and that idiot of Ulkrear doesn''t bring the humans alive, because he is angry, damn it, why would the Empress send him with me¡­", Karmandi who had somehow reduced its size to be only about twenty meters long, suddenly raised his head, just to see a masked figure descending from the sky.

    A silver haired young humannded on the ground in front of Karmandi, making him raise an eyebrow, of course not even a secondter a lot of different magic beasts surrounded the human in front of him, ready to shred him to pieces at his order.

    But something prevented Karmandi to give the order, the fact that the "human" in front of him, was more like one of them like one of the humans who had lineages of sea magic beasts.

    Then before Karmandi could say anything, the firm voice of the young human echoed through the whole area.

    "My name is Gabriel and I havee with an alliance proposal to deal with the real enemies, the Devil Stingray pirates and the Skelefiends, the one in chargee to see me!".

    Karmandi''s snake eyes glowed, as he slid his body towards the silver haired young man.

    "And why should I trust a word from someone who possibly enved myrades?", he asked, to which Daimon responded.

    "Because unlike you, I can find them whether they hide or not, so if I''m lying, I won''t be able to take you to them, which will blow my cover away, pretty simple don''t you agree".

    "Oh?", Karmandi''s interest was picked by the silver haired human, normally humans tend to drag things and scheme behind other''s backs, so seeing such a straightforward one, was indeed rare.

    On the other hand, this human appeared out of nowhere so he was as sneaky as the humans he has met so far.

    "What you say does make sense, but for you to be have a voice, you must prove yourself, the only thing we magic beasts respect is strength, Exil, give the neer a little test", shouted Karmandi, then a fifteen-meter ck spiked crab, separated from the group while snapping its pincers and exuding the pressure of an early Lord ranked magic beast.

    After all, while Karmandi had a grudge against humans, he is also friend to some of the Silver Dawn pirates, and the young human in front of him is only an Early level Mortal realm knight.

    "Human, if you can endure ten minutes against Exil then, you can work under me¡­.".

    "Booom!", before Karmandi could finish his sentence, the ck crab was sent flying away while blood dripped from a crack in its shell.

    "First of all, I''m not going to work for you, snake, as I previously stated, this will be an equal alliance, and don''t think I can''t recognize a Half Ster ranked magic beast when I see one".

    Karmandi frowned, he evaluated the human in front of him and he was sure it hadn''t reached the middle level of the Mortal realm, but then he was able to crack the shell of his subordinate so easily, not to mention sent it flying away with a single punch.

    "Exil, you, okay?", asked Karmandi, to which the crab made some weird bubbling noises.

    ''Hoh, so he avoided any vitals but could have killed you if he wanted to'', thought Karmandi, as he turned to see the silver haired youth.

    "Gabriel was it, if you want an equal alliance, you must be able to show you have a backer with a strength on par with me, present in this ce".

    Daimon''s shadow extended and then with the sound of a finger''s snap, all the magic beasts besides Karmandi, were brought down to the ground, while ck straps of darkness tied them.

    "Shadow Bind".

    "Don''t you dare look down on my young master, snake", Rita''s angry voice came out of Daimon''s shadow as she pressed down all the magic beasts with her spell.

    Karmandi''s eyes widened a bit, not because of the strength of the neer, but because he couldn''t sense it at all, while his powers were suppressed, his senses weren''t and a being who could hide its presence right below his nose was someone to be wary off, in other words, someone that could be considered on pair with him at least in some way, since he was sure the owner of that voice was only a peak Mortal realm existence.

 Chapter 317 Enemies And Allies (Part 1)

    Karmandi contemted things for a moment, magic beasts mostly focus in offense or defense, which is one of the reasons as to why he hasn''t progressed in the mission his Empress gave him, but in front of him there was a possible ally with a nice control type ability.

    Also, the human who came to request an alliance is pretty interesting being able to beat one of his subordinates which is of a higher realm than him, he had the means to speak with him as an equal.

    Ultimately the snake general nodded before saying.

    "Fine, I Karmandi, the third general of the ck Empress is willing to form an alliance with you, human child¡­ sorry Gabriel".

    As Karmandi finished speaking he bit his own tail and teared one of his scales, which he then threw at Daimon, not before he let some of his blood fall into it.

    As soon as Daimon received the thing a notification popped up.

    [Ding]

    [Coral Sea General "Karmandi" has offered a temporal equal association to the host, do you wish to ept it Y/N <!>]

    Before epting it, Daimon looked at the details of the "contract", that Karmandi as a fully rational magic beast offered to him.

    [Equal association: It limits both individuals to not betray or attack each other and help to reach a specific goal, if the previous condition is unfulfilled the contract will be rendered null, the contract will be effective for the next 48 hours once epted]

    "I guess you can pretty much guess it, but the condition for that contract is that you weren''t lying about being able to find the guys who caused this", said Karmandi, to which Daimon nodded as he epted the contract.

    The scale which now had a rune engraved using Karmandi''s blood, whose meaning was "Trust", flew back and integrated with his body once again.

    Of course, Daimon wasn''t really tied by the contract, but he had no reason to go against his word, so by all means the alliance though temporal, was settled.

    "Okay, so now that we had taken that out of the way, what''s next?", asked Karmandi.

    Daimon first asked Rita to release Karmandi''s subordinates, as he pointed at them.

    "First, order the other magic beasts to stop killing the nobles and the guys from the Elemental Sea, I don''t really care about them¡­ but two of mypanions would probably, also we need numbers anyway because the pirates and Skelefiends outnumber us already".

    Karmandi sighed as he answered.

    "My subordinates aren''t killing anyone, they just bring them to me, I interrogate them and if they don''t know anything I''ll just knock them off and sent them to the same ce where they were at previously".

    "I guess you are talking about Ulkrear''s subordinates, he is another of the generals which was sent to investigate the vanishing of the Bottom Shredder race from the territories of my Empress, and as you can guess he isn''t exactly fond of humans, and I can''t order him".

    "In fact, if I tell him I''m working with you, he''ll probable attack you out of spite, also hemunicated to me that someone "spilled the beans" telling him the ones that would know where ourrades were being kept were the princesses of the Mermen and Elemental Seas, so he is out to hunt them down¡­ so if they are thepanions you were talking about, and he was lied to, better keep them hidden".

    Daimon frowned, the one who told that magic beast should have been either one of the pirates or the Skelefiends, but then that didn''t make sense, why would a magic beast who kills people on the spot, pay attention to the words of one of their preys so religiously, something was fishy.

    "I have an idea, order your subordinates to all rush back here, then when that Ulkrear guy ask what''s happening, tell him they are bringing you one of those princesses".

    Karmandi raised an eyebrow.

    "Are you implying that Ulkrear is a traitor?", he said with a low growling voice.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "Maybe, or maybe he was tricked, the pirates and Skelefiends want the princesses, and I can assure you they don''t know a thing about yourrades, so he might be being used to do their dirty job, we''ll only know once he is here".

    "Even if that was the case, how would you be able to know if he is in cahoots with those bastards from the Devil Stingray pirates, or the sacks of bones?", asked Karmandi not fully convinced of Daimon''s idea.

    "Well, you couldn''t find them no matter where you looked but I can, so if I see someone else sneaking in, I''ll let you know it, then you can confirm it by yourself, you don''t lose anything anyway, and if Ulkrear asks, just tell him that a blond-haired human with a sword hanging rom his waist took the princess and escaped", answered Daimon with an almost unnoticeable smirk.

    Karmandi would be lying if he said he didn''t doubt of Ulkrear, mainly because thetter always asks to not be put in a team with him, due to bad blood between them from their younger years, and now all of a sudden, he asked toe with him in this specific mission.

    "Fine, I''ll give you a chance, but if the result isn''t what you expect, you''ll take me right away to the ces where the pirates are hiding, if not the contract is over".

    Daimon nodded and then Karmandi closed his eyes, another of his scales the one which was in the center of his forehead glowed with a rune whose meaning was "general", as he ordered all the magic beasts subordinated to him to do as Daimon asked.

    "It''s done, all will be back in ten minutes¡­", while Karmandi was speaking to Daimon, he suddenly frowned, to which Daimon chuckled.

    "Let me guess, Ulkrear immediately asked what was happening?", said Daimon with an obvious voice.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Yes, he did".

    After a moment of silence, Karmandi ordered his strongest subordinates to prepare for a surprise attack, Daimon walked until he was next to Karmandi and then under the snake general''s surprised eyes, his image, presence, smell, everything, vanished, as if he didn''t exist.

    ''Just like that strange being hidden, who is this kid?'', wondered Karmandi, but he put the subject at the back of his mind for the time being.

    ¡­

    Not even ten minutester, the ground trembled a bit as arge amount of magic beast could be seening from afar, among them there were a couple which outstood from the rest, just like Karmandi''s group.

    The onesing had two middle stage Arch ranked magic beasts in the form of two sea fleas, and then there was a fish like creature with two pectoral fins which resembled arms, and a horn on its head, who was exuding the pressure of a peak Arch rank magic beast, but Daimon easily saw through that, and was sure it was a Half Emperor ranked being.

    ''That''s Ulkrear?'', asked Daimon, to Karmandi''s surprise, he heard the silver haired young man''s voice directly in its inner ears.

    ''So, you even know how to make mana vibrate to sent private messages, what is your race kid?'', asked Karmandi, but since he didn''t get an answer, he focused on the important subject.

    ''Yes, that''s Ulkrear, a Half Ster ranked Rock Hand fish, he is somewhat rted to the Deep Bottom Shredder race''.

    Daimon nodded, as he injected as much mana as he could into his infinity eyes, to increase his sight range only.

    He then thoroughly inspected the uing pack of magic beasts, until his eyes focused on a sea turtle of the early-stage Lord rank, a magic beast which was virtually invisible in the whole pack, as it was part of the bottom of the food chain, and yet it looked "vibrant".

    Daimon then changed theyer of the spectrum he was seeing, to see into the bodies of the magic beasts, simr to how he inspected Arianna''s muscles during the tournament, to see how much tension they were put through.

    And then his eyes glowed as he sent Karmandi a message, which made the snake general to tremble for a split of a second, before it calmed down as the magic beasts were arriving just now.

    "Karmandi, where is it, where is the princess that knows where is my kin!", shouted Ulkrear.

    Karmandi who was strangely calm, shook his head as he followed Daimon''s n.

    "A blonde-haired human with a sword hanging from his waist, killed a whole bunch of my subordinates and it escaped just when I was arriving", said Karmandi with a genuinely sad and angered expression.

    Daimon wanted to p, despite the snake general hating schemes, he was a good actor, reinforcing the believe that snakes are cunning.

    Contrary to what Karmandi would normally expect of Ulkrear, thetter didn''t insult him or started a fight, instead as if there was a fire on his ass, he immediately tried to leave and so did most of the magic beasts that arrived, including some of Karmandi''s subordinates as they needed to continue with their respective tasks.

    But then Karmandi''s voice made some of those magic beasts, and surprisingly Ulkrear stop.

    "That human has a weird looking magic weapon, which cracked Exil''s shell, shelled magic beasts stay here, you''ll be reced by agile magic beasts".

    Upon Karmandi''smand, the shelled type magic beasts which were generally slower than others, including crabs, lobsters, snails and of course turtles, came to his side while some of the magic beasts that were here from the very beginning took their spots.

    But there was one who didn''t do it, that turtle which Daimon saw earlier.

    "Mm, Archi is there a problem with your ears, I said you all will take a turn with others, so move your ass", ordered Karmandi, in his usual voice when he deals with subordinates that don''t listen to him.

    Then Ulkrear stepped in for the sea turtle called Archi.

    "Karmandi, that turtle is among the ones that had found more humans in our joint scout team, it would be too much of a loss to keep it stationary, don''t you agree?", said the Hand fish.

    Karmandi didn''t get angry or anything, instead he nodded.

    "Fine, if he is hat useful and isn''t afraid of dying that''s worthy of being called my subordinate, Archi ept a little gift from me", said Karmandi as he moved his tail towards the turtle, magic beasts didn''t cultivate the way other creatures did, you could say they were favored by the heavens to a certain extent.

    One of the reasons lower ranked magic beasts subordinated themselves to stronger ones, is because their "alpha", could reward them with some of their blood, which they could use to strengthen their own bloodline, and evolve, right now Karmandi did a slight cut in his tail to do exactly that.

    "Crack!", but then Ulkrear''s face who was calm a moment ago, suddenly became ck, even some of Karmandi''s subordinates were in awe.

    Karmandi''s tail had pierced through Archi''s shell killing it at the spot, an ufortable silence fell on the area, but it was interrupted by a pained scream, once Karmandi slightl moved his tail.

    "Aghhhhh, stop it you bastard!", the magic beasts who doubted Karmandi a moment ago discarded those thoughts, as an unknown voice came from the stomach of theirrade, which shouldn''t be possible.

    ''So he was right, Ulkrear you are dead meat'', swore Karmandi in his mind.

 Chapter 318 Enemies And Allies (Part 2)

    Before Karmandi dropped all the formalities to seek blood for his subordinate, which he now realized was death long ago, but was somehow disguised as a living being so perfectly that even he wouldn''t have noticed, if not for the silver haired young man with which he signed a contract earlier.

    He retracted its tail brough what was inside the sea turtle''s stomach, a Skelefiend on the peak Lord realm, until he was seeing it upfront.

    "What did you do to Archi, you piece of shit", demanded to know Karmandi.

    Maybe other magic beasts wouldn''t know all their subordinates, but he recruited each and all of them, and was sure of their potential, so for him it wasn''t just a soldier''s loss, but a personal one, and even his corpse was profaned by some kind of evil magic, he was furious.

    Daimon who was looking from the sides, confirmed his theory, that the people in Neptune didn''t know about undead at all, back at the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart, there was a period of time where the other races had a hard time due to, they being unable to differentiate the undead, who could be created using corpses of all races, from citizens of their cities or academies.

    It didn''t help the fact that demons who specialized in schemes helped them, but after the humans and more specifically the Greenwich Sage put the effort into developing techniques to identify them, everything returned to normal.

    Neptune was now undergoing something simr, what surprised Daimon was that this undead creation process was one that didn''t exist back at his native Ster Chart, so it wasn''t brought by an "outsider", and instead it was created here.

    And that was worse, because there were no undead previously in Neptune, while at the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart, they have always existed, so the question here was, where did this method came from.

    The Skelefiend who was being crushed by Karmandi''s tail right now, refused to talk, and instead stole a gaze at Ulkrear, making thetter inwardly grit his teeth, as much as he didn''t want to do anything he had to, but he tried to take a different approach.

    "Ahem, Karmandi, don''t you think we should keep this Skelefiend as a prisoner, to make it talks, he is probably tied by a contract so if he talks it will die as a penalty, but the Empress can dissolve the contract for us", said the handfish with an urging voice, as he slowly approached the snake general.

    But Karmandi who was already angry, simply let out some of his mana pressure as he shouted at Ulkrear, with a condescending voice.

    "This thing killed one of my subordinates, you have no right to get in my way so get lost Ulkrear!".

    The handfish had a twisted expression, he a Half Ster ranked being, had to act low and humbly and was still yelled at by someone he despised, he nearly started a fight at the spot, but was stopped by the death-serious expression of the Skelefiend who refused to spill the beans.

    ''Stop you fool you''ll make this snake get suspicious, based on the profile you gave my Lord of this guy, he won''t kill me until he gets some answers about what happened to his "precious" subordinate'', said the Skelefiend thanks to a connection he had due to a contract with Ulkrear.

    And the Skelefiend was right, the only thing stopping Karmandi from crushing him pieces, was the fact that he wanted to know what they did to his subordinate, so now they were stuck, because Ulkrear hadn''t make his move yet.

    Daimon who was contemting about some of the things Ulkrear said, more specifically the fact that the Emperor ranked magic beast Karmandi served, had the ability to dispel contracts.

    ''A race ability perhaps'', thought Daimon, as he noticed the predicament in which the snake general was.

    ''Force that guy''s hand, tell him¡­''.

    Karmandi''s eyes glowed as he listened to Daimon''s n, he had to admit that this alliance was paying off.

    ¡­

    The previous might have taken some time to exin, but it was a batter of a couple of seconds, so Ulkrear and the Skelefiend didn''t notice anything.

    That is, until Karmandi tightened his grip around the Skelefiend''s body, with a sinister smiling expression.

    "You are a tough one huh, fine I don''t know how others didn''t notice you, but such a lousy disguise is nothing for me, you Skelefiends are like rats, if there is one there is more, I''ll just go and get all of them, someone will spill the beans, now go to hell!", shouted Karmandi to make the situation more real.

    "Fuck, help me Ulkrear, this bastard needs to be eliminated he knows too much!", shouted the Skelefiend noticing Karmandi was serious about killing him.

    Ulkrear wanted to swear, the Skelefiend blew his cover away, so he was forced to betray the ck Empress publicly, because he could have left the Skelefiend to die as long as he was ready to pay a price, but now he had no option.

    "Shit, Ligel!", Ulkrear suddenly exploded in mana as rock spikes raised all over his body as he pounced towards Karmandi, trying to take him by surprise.

    But his ns obviously failed, a strong water stream enveloped Karmandi''s body rotating at an insanely high speed

    "Ulkre¡­ aghhh!!!", the first thing that happened was that the Skelefiend was blown away into small pieces due to the water stream, then both Karmandi and Ulkrear shed.

    Regardless of rank, the most liked method for magic beasts to fight was close physicalbat, in fact the closest to "Magic Knights", that exists are magic beasts, though they can''t produce a life spark for some unknown reason, their bodies are innately strong and they store mana in their flesh, blood, skin, bones etc.<novelnext></novelnext>

    So, to a certain extent they have both the capacity to use mana and vitality, like Daimon, that''s also why Karmandi thought Daimon is closer to a magic beast than to a human, because he is using his knight realm as a part of his disguise, and his vitality was really strong, despite it being hidden by the hollow suite, he looked outstanding for Half Emperor and Emperor level beings.

    "Booom!", a loud explosion along with a shockwave was created upon sh between the two magic beasts, in a split of a second both Karmandi and Ulkrear grew to be about fifty meters tall.

    Daimon was safe as Rita protected him from the impact, but some of the weakest magic beasts were sent flying backwards due to the shockwave, despite them being protected by the middle stage Arch ranked magic beasts of their respective groups.

    The sh between Karmandi and Ulkrear, created a growing sphere of mana a consequence of their powers trying to push the other back, so in a smart move, Karmandi wrapped his body around Ulkrear and ascended into the sky, not without shouting.

    "General Ulkrear has betrayed the Empress, soldiers of the Coral army, put the Rock army under arrest, if they resist kill without mercy!".

    "What are you waiting you fools attack them!", in response Ulkrear also gave his order as they both disappeared into the mist that functioned as clouds within this underwater space.

    The highest ranked beasts which were the four middle stage Arch ranked ones, divided in two from Karmandi''s group and two from Ulkrear''s, a sea centipede and a smaller snake from the same race as Karmandi on one side, and two sea fleas on Ulkrear''s side.

    As magic bests which haven''t unlocked their wisdom, nor have reached the Half Emperor realm, they mostly guided by their instincts in the wild, but as Arch ranked beings under a contract with a Half Emperor, they had gained a certain amount of rationality, at least enough to think to a certain extent, listen and execute instructions.

    The four magic beasts looked at each other and growled at each other, perhaps it was a way tomunicate which they had, but wasn''t understandable for others.

    Then apparently, they weren''t able to reach an agreement, because with some loud roars, the four magic beasts group started battling each other.

    Biting, scratching and using their strong bodies to tackle others, it was savage and primitive but extremely effective, as soon the whole area had started to be stained with blood, the batter was bitter with both forces being practically as strong as the other.

    Or at least that would have been the case, if Daimon wasn''t involved, now that the Half Emperors were busy in their own battle, he was like a wolf in a pack of sheep.

    With the hollow suit still hiding his presence, Daimon became a sh of death, using Disaster which was the perfect counter to any living being, he appeared over Lord ranked magic beasts which were attacking the ones he memorized were part of Karmandi''s army, and stabbed their foreheads.

    Soon the Arch ranked sea fleas, noticed that the "cannon fodder" of their group were dropping dead one after each other, and they became fiercer, making it hard for their enemies to hold them back.

    "Oh?", Daimon who just killed his 20th Lord ranked magic beast, noticed the sudden change on the sea fleas and he frowned, they jumped backwards and devoured the corpses of theirrades before their original brown color changed to ck, they also grew about a third part of their original sizes and red symbols appeared all over their backs, it was simr to how the Bottom Shredder was enhanced.

    The centipede and the snake started to be constantly pushed backwards after their enemies underwent that change, Daimon noticed that the mark the sea fleas got from the magic array, ssified them as red stars, probably because although their realm didn''t change, their battle prowess increase quite a bit.

    ''Let''s do a little test'', thought Daimon as he pointed at one of the sea fleas, he gathered half of his battle aura and half of his mana on top of his hand forming a white spear.

    "White Heavenly Javelin", contrary to his ck hell javelin which isposed of darkness and lightning mana thus making it a spell, this version only consisted in Demon Light and an extra of light battle aura in other words it was a martial art the technique of a knight, with the intention of making it more like a concentratedser than the fire consistency Demon Light usually has, Daimon got inspired by Aliya''s theory, and without realizing he has gotten closer to the "concept" she mentioned.

    The spear constricted itself until it became a one-centimeter line of white light which Daimon then threw with all his strength, once it hit the carapace of the sea flea, the thing was pushed a couple of meters by the impact, but nothing really happened, until it started screeching in pain.

    "Screeeeech!", the sea flea retorted on the ground as the symbols on its back started burning all of a sudden, the centipede saw its chance and used its innate ability to shot a poison spit at the sea flea, melting its limbs and elerating the rate at which the symbols burned, until there was just a ck lifeless skeleton left.

    Needless to say, but Daimon was speechless right now, he just wanted to test the limit he could reach using that idea he got from Aliya, and although the result was really good piercing a small breach into the carapace of an Arch ranked magic beast, it was obvious his attack was ultimately useless.

    He couldn''t even kill thete-stage Lord ranked enhanced Bottom Shredder back when he used all his reserves, so this was just a small test to see how destructive could a martial art created by him would be.

    Daimon saw that the bones of the spinal cord of the sea flea had melted to a certain extent due to those symbols burning, and he noticed that the major damage was done at the exact height where he hit the magic beast with his attack.

    "So, a destructive external force can use that strange enhancing method as powder, how interesting", mumbled Daimon with a grin, still he didn''t have to support the snake to kill the other sea flea because the centipede helped it, in a 2v1 situation the sea flea was suppressed.

    Instead of that, Daimon looked at the sky, his infinity eyes allowed him to see through the thickyer of mist which was covering the fight between two peak Arch ranked magic beasts, apparently after sealing their powers they couldn''t just undo the seal as they pleased as it required a certain procedure, so the integrity if this ce was safe for now.

    Still Daimon didn''t want the battle to drag on too much, he remained near the snake and the centipede and then ordered Rita to help Karmandi suppress Ulkrear.

    "Try to immobilize the fish, so that Karmandi can fullynd an attack on it¡­ but don''t risk yourself", ordered Daimon, Rita specialized in long distancebat as a mage unlike Horals, so if she received direct impacts from a Half Ster magic beast''s body, she could end up suffering a lot of pain.

    "Understood young master", said Rita, Daimon''s shadow became less dark as a ck blur came out of it, soon disappearing into the sky.

 Chapter 319 Enemies And Allies (Part 3)

    While Rita flew to find a good position to participate in the fight between Karmandi and Ulkrear, Daimon stayed on the ground and supervised the whole battlefield.

    Whenever one of Karmandi''s subordinate showed some signs to be losing, he stepped in and killed the enemy, which earned him the gratitude of the magic beasts, while he also farmed points for the beast hunt.

    Still, he had his eyes set on the remaining sea flea which was being suppressed by the Karmandi''s present strongest subordinates, but he was also curious about that enhancing process.

    Seeing that the centipede and the snake were about to kill the sea flea, Daimon stopped them from doing so.

    While the two magic beasts couldn''t talk in themonnguage like Karmandi, they could understand it.

    "Wait, I have some things I want to confirm for which this guy needs to be alive", Daimon didn''t reveal himself but he sent his voice directly to the centipede and the snake.

    Needless to say, but the two magic beasts showed resistance to listen to Daimon, they had their orders and the sea flea kept trying to escape, so the next thing on their list was killing it.

    "Your boss is going to need the information I will be able to get out of this flea''s body, besides his fight will end in a few minutes, so there is no downside to it".

    The snake which was from the same race as Karmandi and seemed to be more used to deal with humans, was convinced by Daimon''s words and then it made some gestures to tell the centipede to cooperate, after some hisses and low screeches they limited themselves to suppress the flea.

    Daimon nodded, the battle was ending way sooner than it would have, because he pretty much killed almost all the early-stage Lord ranked magic beasts from Ulkrear''s army, and Karmandi''s ones which were free ganged up on the next enemy, elerating their defeat.

    ''Time to wrap things up'', thought Daimon as he looked at the sky where the really important battle was taking ce.

    ¡­

    Up there past the mist therge figures of a snake and a handfish floated at some distance from the other, their bodies both had some wounds.

    Some of Karmandi''s scales were punctured by the rock spikes which covered Ulkrear''s body, at the same time thetter''s body hadrge friction wounds and cuts on his hand-like fins, resulting from the fact that Ulkrear had to use his hands to push Karmandi away when he wrapped his body around him.

    "Karmandi why are getting in my way, don''t you want to break off the shackles of mortality, and reach the Ster rank, to be able to travel through the sea of stars our ancestors spoke about".

    "Join me and we can both get what we need to finally take thest step to volve into something greater, you Know that with the appearance of beings from another gxies, Neptune''s days are counted", shouted Ulkrear.

    Just like how the Risha sisters descend from a magic beast, and they have inherited their innate abilities through their lineages, magic beasts can leave "messages" for their future descendants.

    That being said, not all magic beasts can do it and not all the descendants can ess to them, just like how Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana are just the third generation that had received the knowledge about their wings, and the first to be able to properly use them.

    Karmandi snorted as his mana exploded out of his body.

    "You can''t fool me Ulkrear, you are siding with those sack of bones because you want to kill the Empress to get a share of her beast core, and you are too much of a coward to try and advance to the Ster rank without a safety".

    "I Karmandi am no saint, but I would never repay kindness with betrayal, the Empress is honorable and has treated us fairly, if you want to backstab her it would be over my dead body!".

    The handfish gritted his teeth, besides the first two generals, the other four had simr strengths, so a battle between him and Karmandi would take time, time he didn''t have.

    ''If my memory doesn''t fail, that strange guy told me that a blond-haired human with a sword was one of the impossible to calcte variants in the n, and that if the targets were to be saved by him, then he wouldn''t be getting anything.

    So, every second he was wasting fighting against Karmandi, his chances to reach the Ster rank became smaller.

    "Fuck it, if that''s how you want it to be, then you can all go to hell!", shouted Ulkrear as his mana poured out of his body, and he started expanding his body, soon reaching about one hundred meters of size.

    Karmandy frowned, previously they weren''t figthting seriously, just like how Aura and Erin had a really high control over their bodies after having reached the Half Emperor realm, Karmandi and Ulkrear could control their bodies.

    In their case it was their size, their real sizes were about of three kilometers, since they were sea magic beasts where gravity didn''t limit them unlike ground magic beasts, size was one of their strong points.

    But since they had sealed their Half Ster powers away, they also had to reduce their sizes, because without the energy source moving such great physical bodies would exhaust them, also the pressure exuded by a magic beast of that size would make this underwater space be unstable and ultimately copse.

    But now Ulkrear was burning away his vitality as he couldn''t undo the seal, to regain some of his size.

    As Karmandi was about to risk everything to stop Ulkrear, he got a message from the same woman who earlier suppressed his whole army.

    ''Per my young master''s wishes, I came to assist you, prepare your best attack I''ll hold it down for ten seconds''.

    Karmandi wanted to say something, but not only him but even Ulkrear had their attentions drawn by a sudden immense wave of mana that appeared out of nowhere.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Rita''s figure slowly came out of a ck portal above Ulkrear.

    "Shadow Heart Puppeteer", Rita''s soft voice echoed through the whole area, making the two Half Ster ranks, army of magic beast and Daimon who was watching from below, to look at her.

    With Rita as the center a ck projection expanded to all the directions, not before she said a few more words.

    "The Conqueror Suppressing the World", an almost unnoticeable smile flourished on Rita''s normally expressionless face, as the ck mass changed its shape.

    Before Ukrear could react a pair of arms of about two hundred meters grabbed him, practically imprisoning him between their palms.

    "What the hell is this!", Ulkrear which was being grabbed like a toy despite his still growing size, and he elerated his growth despite wasting more and more of his vitality.

    Unfortunately, the ck figure which was now holding him had a total height of six hundred meters from head to toe, so he was like a child fighting against an adult.

    Needless to say, but Ulkrear was furious, he a magic beast who is revered by its strong and guant body, was being toyed with, he spawned more of those rock spikes that were covering his body to pierce the hands of the creature which was holding him, but to his surprise his attacks just went through the hands.

    Karmandi who was in a lost for words a moment ago, suddenly snapped he concentrated half of his mana in front of his snout, and the water stream that used to cover his body was dragged in to the mix, creating a thirty meters ball of rotating water.

    "Hold it like that woman".

    "Tidal Vortex!", Karmandi bit the ball of water and then spit a stream of insanely pressured water and Mana towards Ulkrear, from a certain point of view it was simr to the legendary ability of a dragon "breath", but it was done externally since Karmandi couldn''t produce water in his body, but manifest it from the humidity and water mana on the atmosphere.

    Ulkrear felt a chill running down his spine, water can wear down rocks, if Karmandi''s attack fullynded on him, he had no doubt it will drill a hole through his defense and pierce his body, and since he expanded his body but couldn''t move, he essentially became a bigger and easier to hit target.

    "I will remember this Karmandi, yours and that bitch''s days are counted!".

    As the water stream hit the ck hands, a loud lung-tearing scream could be hearding from them, the attack stopped there for a moment before it passed through the ck hands, hitting a mountain a kilometer away blowing it into pieces and disappearing into the horizon, not stopping even after that.

    Even now, Karmandi was obviously holding back, that attack was at most at the peak of Arch rank, because if he had used the power of a Half Emperor¡­ he would have blown away the whole ce, but in his current sealed state it was among his most destructive attacks.

    "He sacrificed his vitality and escaped", mumbled Karmandi.

    Half Ster ranks had started to get in contact with the spacews, and while in Neptune not everyone had that ability, the six generals of the ck Empress did, so even if suppressed by the istion magic array created by an Emperor, by paying a hefty price Ulkrear "squeezed" himself through a little breach in the space.

    It was simr to how Aisha once fled using a forbidden spell, despite she only being an Arch ranked, but as a consequence her magic core cracked and she nearly died in the process.

    The six-hundred-meter ck figure bent down and left an object at Daimon''s feet, a huge magic beast''s arm, and Ulkrear''s right arm to be precise, while Ulkrear managed to activate his escaping ability, he was hit by Karmandi''s attack in thest moment and one of his arms was torn away due to the impact.

    Daimon ced his foot on top of the arm, because many magic beasts eyed it as soon as it was left at his feet, they couldn''t avoid it, it was the flesh and blood of a Half Ster ranked being, just a bit of it was enough for a Lord ranked beast to strengthen its lineage a lot.

    Andpletely consuming it would help an Arch rank of the same attribute to increase the chances to be a Half Emperor, not guaranteeing it, but ording to Erin the chances for the average mage are about 10% and that is for those who manage to reach the "breaking point" or the absolute maximum state possible for an Arch rank, which can''t be achieved by external means.

    With a fuel of the Half Emperor realm like this arm, the chances will go up to about 30%, it was an absolute treasure.

    Karmandi and Rita descended from the sky, thetternding kneeled down in front of Daimon.

    "Sorry young master, that ugly fish slipped away from me", she said with an apologetic voice.

    Daimon shook his head; he raised his head and saw that huge ck figure and bitterly smiled.

    Why do you ask, because it was molded based on him, in fact it was like a reflect of him but in ck shades, essentially a giant copy made out of shadows with his form.

    Rita noticed Daimon''s curiosity and she smiled.

    "What do you think young master, this is the biggest shadow puppet I can create, but with time and train I''m pretty sure I''ll be able to make it bigger and bigger, one day young master''s enemies will see your face as their is grabbed and crushed by you~".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, she clearly created this spell to mess with Horals, Archknights can project their battle aura inrge constructions, the bone general uses that fighting style, it can be considered basic but it''s extremely effective.

    So, Rita basically adapted that to a spell and gave it his form.

    ''Well, she is indeed pretty creative'', thought Daimon as his "shadow clone" dissolved and was absorbed by Rita who then returned to his shadow, where she felt at ease.

 Chapter 320 Returning To The Cave

    With Rita recovering in his shadow after she used about three quarters of her mana reserves in that spell, the battle was momentarily over, but they couldn''t stay here anymore.

    Thest part of the battle was too shy and while Daimon more or less knew what the forces of the pirates were like, the Skelefiends were still a mystery, specially because of that enhance process which has been bothering him since earlier.

    It was really early in the morning anyway, so taking a couple of hours to rest was perfectly fine.

    The problem now was what do with this pack of magic beasts who had gathered here, not all of Ulkrear subordinates followed the orders of the sea fleas, some surrendered and submitted to Karmandi.

    Of course Daimon made sure none of them were puppets for the Skelefiends, in which case he would have exposed them.

    The beasts were getting a bit wild over the sight of the meat of a Half Emperor magic beast, so Daimon turned to see Karmandi.

    The snake general had some wounds here and there but nothing a Half Emperor magic beast would be worried about, in fact they were already getting covered by new tissue, though it might take a while for his new scales to be as tough as the old ones.

    But what was an urgent matter is the fact that he used a lot of mana in thatst attack.

    "Karmandi, how about we go half in the "loot", Rita held that guy down but your attack was what made him ran away", proposed Daimon.

    Needless to say but the snake general was surprised to hear, the human young man bring this matter by himself, he was prepared to have a discussion about it, since he knows humans tend to be greedy, though he would understand it when dealing with a high ranked treasure, which even magic beasts would go crazy for, if not for him suppressing them with his aura.

    Daimon saw the dubitative expression in Karmandi''s face and he chuckled.

    "What''s the use of wealth if you can''t enjoy it, a Half Ster ally increases my and minepanions chances to live, but only if you are in condition to fight and I''m sure a couple of hours isn''t enough for you to recover your mana to its maximum capacity".

    Normally Daimon would negotiated more, an habit he caught up thanks to Erin''s "merciless" tactics, but he also heard the snake general''s honest answer earlier and honorable allies are harder toe by than treasures, in his opinion.

    "Very well, let me do the honors", said Karmandi as he used a thread like water stream to cut the arm in two equal parts, he picked up the upper part and willingly let Daimon the lower one which included Ulkrear''s ws, as he has seen him using a sword and those are perfect for that.

    "This position ispromised, we have to find a ce to regroup, my subordinates need to rest too", said Karmandi as he chewed on a piece of Ulkrear''s arm, while holding the whole thing with its snout.

    "I think I have something in mid¡­ but we have to travel in secrecy, because I don''t want it to get exposed", mumbled Daimon.

    Karmandi nodded, but he was a in a predicament right now, his army doesn''t'' sneak on enemies they often sh head on, of course that doesn''t mean they are suicidal, as they attack those in their same leagues, but Karmandi doesn''t have a subordinate here which can hide other''s presences.

    "Wait, centipedes move underground, can you tell that guy to make a tunnel in which you all fit?", asked Daimon.

    Though that centipede had poison attribute apparently, it had the proper "tools" to bite away rock, and he could soften stones with his poison as well.

    "Oh, it''s worth a try, Toma let our ally travel with you and follow his instructions, Gabriel I trust you can find that ce even underground, right?".

    Daimon nodded in response, as he jumped andnded on top of the centipede''s head, making it growl a bit, but ultimately epting it both due to Karmandi''s orders and the fact that the young human helped hisrades quite a bit

    "No problem, by the way do any of you have ice attribute, I need that sea flea to be immobilized to get some "answers"?", asked Daimon.

    Karmandi first became smaller until it was of about the same size as the centipede, to not waste time before ordering a sea turtle who had an ice ability to seal the sea flea into ice, and transport it over its shell.

    "Let''s go".

    With those words, Daimon sat down cross-legged on top of the cetipede''s head as thetter dived into the ground creating a tunnel for the whole pack to move.

    Of course Daimon also added his dark curtain and he even took out the piece of Sea Devil ore he had, everything to reduce the presence of the group.

    Once they were underground, Daimon realized that Karmandi''s subordinates were pretty useful, even the weakest ones had their own things, for example some were bio-luminescent, so the tunnel had a stable non traceable source of light, as it wasn''t powered by mana.

    "Say, Karmandi you came here to rescue your envedrades, but what if they weren''t enved to begin with?", asked Daimon to kill time along the way.

    The snake general mentioned that Ulkrear was somewhat rted to the Bottom Shredder race, and while the low ranked ones might have been forced, their leaders weren''t pushovers, so the most possible scenario is that they betrayed the Emperor ranked magic beast they all served, in their seek for power, maybe convinced by that enhancing process.

    Karmandi sighed, as he answered.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "I also think that''s the case¡­ in the end I guess traitors exist in every race", said the snake general with a slightly defeated voice.

    Among the Emperor ranked magic beasts with which he has had contact, the ck Empress has always treated her subordinates the best, going to war against others for their sake, protecting the young so they could grow and be strong despite the harshpetition for survival in the Maelstrom Sea, which happened to be Karmandi''s case.

    And even then at the first sign of benefits one of her generals has already betrayed her, that is what he is aware, who knows if there are more traitors in the shadows, which he can foresee already.

    "I guess honorable beings are hard toe by", said the snake general as he squeezed some blood from Ulkrear''s arm, and handed it to his subordinates, of course he gave each a quantity based on their realms, to not make them explode, it was mainly to help them recover faster and boost their vitalities.

    ¡­

    The rest of the travel was pretty much uneventful, Daimon didn''t want to draw any attention so they took the long route and about half an hourter they were about to reach the hill in which his camp was.

    "Stop here for a moment", said Daimon to the centipede.

    With his infinity eyes he could see that even this down into the ground, there were some pieces of the Sea Devil Ore, they were of course smaller but they were there and he counted with it.

    Using his ws Daimon carved them out and sent them to his inventory, after removing about three of them which were all what there was in a diameter of fifty meters, he created an opening where the centipede could advance again.

    They were now right below the cave where the girls were waiting for Daimon, the centipede created another cave and all the magic beastsid down to rest, Karmandi gave some of the flesh of Ulkrear''s arm to his strongest subordinates before he swallowed the rest, to refine itter.

    Daimon saw the snake general reducing its size even more until it was of about four meters, about the size of a young anaconda.

    "These guys need to rest, do you mind if I go with you, I want to see with my own eyes those princesses you mentioned, because I don''t understand why would Ulkrear go to such lengths to capture them, there are other ways to reach the Ster rank and while they may take more time, they are way safer than betraying our Empress, Ulkrear is too much of a coward, this couldn''t be his n at all".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "That''s not up to me to decide, they are in my group but I can''t take decisions for them, give me a second to ask".

    Karmandi nodded, he understood that his petition could be misunderstood, but he thought that maybe he could notice something strange/remarkable about those princesses, to be honest he didn''t know a thing about humans and their culture, so he was also curious.

    ''Mom, I''m back¡­ with some new allies, I''ll exin you allter, are Mellie and the girl from the Elemental Sea awake?'', asked Daimon through the mental connection.

    ''Wee back darling, yeah all of them are awake now, taking advantage of this "no-boys allowed" time, we all took a bath and we are about to prepare something to eat~'', said Aisha.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, they were treating this like some kind of camping, but again they were pretty much safe here, and he went into this little mission alone for that same reason, Aisha would be safe in the battlefield even if she was alone, due to some reasons rted to her being his soulmate.

    But the Risha sisters, Mellie and Jasmine weren''t included in that, and he alone wouldn''t be able to grant their safeties, that''s also why he went and looked for an ally, and triumphally returned with an army at his back.

    ''Okay, there is someone who wants to meet them¡­'', Daimon more or less told his mother about Karmandi, and how they had a temporal contract, it didn''t even take five minutes, and then Aisha told the two princesses about it to see what their opinion was.

    Needless to say but both Mellie and Jasmine were speechless, not because a Half Ster rank wanted to meet them, but because Daimon who left at most for two hours returned with such an ally.

    Again the Risha sisters couldn''t help butugh and remind Mellie to get used to these kind of things happening, whenever Daimon is around, of course Jasmine heard it too and her eyes glowed for a split of a second, as such scenarios which would be considered extremely hard toe by apparently happened a lot, near the silver haired boy who saved her life.

    ''That guy wasn''t like this, now that my eyes aren''t clouded, I can tell that most of the time he was bragging but he never proved anything with his actions¡­ and Gabriel is the exact opposite, hispanions are the ones whopliment his actions'', thought Jasmine.

    "I don''t see a problem, he wouldn''t have even considered it if it was dangerous for us", said Mellie, Daimon had agreed to act as her bodyguard and she had no reasons to doubt about his criteria.

    "I agree too", added Jasmine keeping her reasons to herself.

    ''Everything''s okay darling''.

    With Aisha''s greenlight, Daimon asked the centipede to dig a hole in the roof of the second cave he made, jus enough for Karmandi to fly through it, Daimon held onto the snake general''s tail and they both soon reached the natural-made cave where the girls were

    "Good morningdies, I brought some help", said Daimon as both he and Karmandinded a few meters away from Aisha and the others.

 Chapter 321 The Next Target

    The girls smiled at Daimon, though both Aisha and the Risha sisters couldn''t help but notice the small blood stains in his clothes, besides the fact that Daimon''s hair was a bit messy due to the chaos back at the battlefield.

    But seeing that he waspletely fine, they all inwardly let out a sigh of relief and weed him.

    "Wee back,e sit with us~", said Leslie as she pointed at the only free seat at the table which was the middle one.

    "Mm, we prepared breakfast", added Liliana.

    Daimon nodded and after taking out his jacket to take a seat, he introduced the girls to Karmandi.

    "These are mypanions, my sister Aisha, the Risha sisters, Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie, the younger sister of the queen of the Mermen Sea, Mellie and the princess of the Elemental Sea, Jasmine".

    Karmandi slightly bowed his head, while he isn''t knowledgeable about human culture, even he knew how to do a formal salute, mostly because that''s how he behaves in front of the ck Empress.

    "I''m Karmandi, the third general at the service of the ck Empress, and the one who leads the Coral Army, it''s a pleasure".

    The girls slightly rose the sides of their skirts in response, in the meantime Daimon joined them for breakfast and the first thing he noticed was that the taste of the food had gone up a notch, the Risha sisters had taken a few lessons from their mothers and with Aisha''s help, they normally prepared some delicious things, but there was more to it this time.

    ''The light princess offered up to help, imagine my surprise when I saw her bathing all the ingredients in light mana, I have to admit that the food tastes way better after that'', said Aisha as she noticed Daimon''s interested expression.

    Daimon stole a gaze at Jasmine, just to see her smiling at him as if she waited to see his reaction after tasting the food.

    Even Karmandi joined them, of course the amount of food they served wouldn''t have been enough to actually satisfy his appetite, but there was no need to it as he was still refining the piece of Ulkrear''s arm he devoured, he only did it for pleasure because even he thought the food was delicious.

    Once they finished everyone moved to the some stone benches Daimon created using the spell terraforming, as it was time to get into more serious matters.

    "So, anything that might exin why the pirates and Skelefiends are targeting these two?", asked Daimon.

    Karmandi''s snake eyes glowed as he inspected Mellie and Jasmine, but ultimately he ended up shaking his head with a defeated expression.

    "Nothing that practically gets my attention as a magic beast, don''t get me wrong they are indeed different the "average" humans I have known, but I can''t see anything that would make Ulkrear go out of his way like that".

    "Ulkrear?", mumbled Mellie.

    "Ah right, I forgot to tell you the context, what happened was¡­".

    Daimon proceeded to tell the girls practically everything that happened, of course he omitted pretty much all Rita''s participation in the decisive battle, but besides that he shared pretty much everything else with them.

    "So even the magic beasts are after us now", Mellie sighed with an annoyed voice, this whole situation has been bothering her.

    Jasmine was the sane, but her worries were more on the fact that some people from the sects who are supposed to protect her have offered to set her up to save themselves.

    Daimon didn''t sugar coated anything of what he said, because the situation was pretty serious, there was someone pulling the strong behind the shadows, and based on what he has caught up so far, he could basically guarantee it was another system user and one which wasn''t as inexperienced as Adam and Marcus.

    If it weren''t for the fact that he wasn''t affected by limitations and restrictions of any kind, he would have been in a much tough situation just like Adam.

    "I think we need to talk about this with my sister, if anyone knows something it should be her, Senior Karmandi would you minding with us once we are out of this ce, I''m sure Uncle Vincent will guarantee your safety".

    Karmandi''s eyes widened a bit.

    "Vincent¡­ you mean the Trident Marshal of the Mermen Sea?", he said with a surprised expression, to which Mellie nodded in response.

    "Same here, I bet my grandma will be more than happy to reunite with general Karmandi, especially since you are joining hands with us", added Jasmine.

    Karmandi stole a gaze at Daimon, someone who was trusted by two Ster Ranks, and two of the few maximum ranked in the Neptune, to take care of their descendants, couldn''t be normal.

    ''Well, considering that woman protector who I couldn''t detect was at hisplete disposition, he couldn''te from a regr household to being with'', thought Karmandi.

    Why is someone who already serves an Emperor ranked being so shocked about talking with other Emperors you might ask, well the answer is pretty simple, because even the ck Empress would consider those two as seniors, based on the fact that she is only a middle stage Ster rank, while Vincent and Aurora are maximum ranked ones, the peak of the existence in Neptune, only a few can be considered to be on par with them.

    "Ahem, I will have to ask my Empress first, but I would be honored to meet those two seniors", said Karmandi.

    The whole situation was strange to Daimon, if the Mermen Sea had so much trouble with the pirates, why didn''t they sign a contract with some of the strong Emperor level magic beast, that dominated the Maelstrom Sea to suppress them.

    It was such a profitable business, imagine getting a guarantee that your ships could move through a specific route, as the magic beasts wouldn''t attack you and the pirates would be driven away by them too, it was a win-win situation.

    "Now that I think about it, I remember that it was said your Empress had an agreement with the Silver Dawn pirates, howe you couldn''t reach something simr with the Mermen Sea or the Elemental Sea?", asked Daimon.

    The Skelefiend in thar noble''s body had mentioned that ck Beard guy was involved in the ambush of the Silver Dawn captain, and they clearly wanted to frame the Elemental and Mermen Seas, to start a way with the ck Empress, meaning they didn''t want them to cooperate, but they have never did it to begin with.

    "You don''t seem to informed about the rtionships between the White royal family and the magic beasts of the Maelstrom Sea¡­ Gabriel, I guess that''s good I was worrying thinking you were part of the royal family since you have two princesses at your side", mumbled Karmandi, before saying.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "The White royal family despise the races that are native of the Maelstrom Sea, because they can''t control us, even their king can''t influence us unlike the races that share a bond with the Mermen Sea".

    "And to be honest we hate them too, because a long time ago they attacked us with no reason, just for fun, the painted the water with our blood and killed the old and the young¡­ including a lot who were born not too long ago".

    Daimon shook his head, he could smell a scheme here, an easy way to win a war is create a rift in your enemy''s camp, and that would exin why the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates was attacked, among the "humans", they were the only ones which hade to an agreement with an Emperor magic beast, so they set a precedent.

    But now they were practically eliminated and the magic beast who worked with them, was being targeted too, so whatever could be the reason someone didn''t want them to join hands.

    And if it was going to piss off, the guy behind the scenes, then Daimon was more than eager to do it, because an angered enemy is bound to slip, and a sole mistake was everything Daimon needed to catch the little scheming bastard.

    "You bring your Empress and let me take care of our side, someone is trying to pull us by our noses, and you know it, Ulkrear is a good proof of it", said Daimon.

    The snake general sighed, he still had to give his Empress the news of traitors appearing in the group, many things were bound to change after/if they were able to leave this ce.

    "I can''t promise anything, but since it is you who is asking, I think it''s worth a try, the Empress will be able to see my memories of this whole situation, as long as I let her".

    "Now onto the most serious subject, what''s our next target, once my subordinates had recovered, will we break through their blockade, will we hunt them down one by one?", asked Karmandi.

    The girls also turned to see Daimon to see what his decision was, the two princesses specially, Mellie still wanted to save some of the nobles, the women who were captured due to her at least.

    And Jasmine has some people she has known since she was a little girl, in the sects too, the girls with who her grandmother allowed her to y with for example, they were her original team, until she met Adam and formed a new team with him and the people he chose as their members.

    "We need to capture an Skelefiend, I already have some hostages from the pirates, so now we only need an informant from the Skelefiends".

    "We will hunt the Skelefiends, and in the process I want to see what''s the origin of that weird enhancing method they are using now too".

    "If we find some hostages in the process, we''ll take them with us¡­ but they will stay in a cage until we are in a safe position, I trust you understand why", said Daimon.

    Now that he had Karmandi and his subordinates back up, secured with a contract, he had no need of the nobles who weren''t trustworthy.

    The princesses smiled, happy with the result, and the girls didn''tin either, so everything was ready.

    As Daimon was about to excuse himself to start looking at the sea flea, one of Karmandi''s scales illuminated.

    "Gabriel, one of my subordinates who was too far to reunited with us, has contacted me, he says there is a small group of humans fighting with both pirates and Skelefiends, it''s pretty far away, enough for my mana sense to not be able to reach it due to my seal, but I think you''ll be interested on it¡­ because he says they are fighting against a group led by a princess".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, if Karmandi and Rita''s mana sense didn''t reach that group, then they should be really far from them¡­ or there was something interfering with them.

    "The Sea Devil Ore, ask your subordinate if there is some kind of thing we can use as reference to find him", asked Daimon in a hurry.

    Karmandi raised an eyebrow but he still did as he was asked, and a secondter he said.

    "Now there is, he changed the roof of a huge rock to look like me".

    "Rita, can you look for that?", asked Daimon.

    "On my way young master", Rita extended her senses through the area, and she was surprised of what she found.

    "I can see it young master, there is camouged camp near it, if my guess is correct, they are using those strange green rocks too, so I can''t tell how many enemies there are".

    Daimon nodded; the only princess left was the daughter of the Vs Duchess, so it had to be her.

    "Daphne would never leave her subordinates behind¡­ she probably raided the camp to rescue one of them", said Mellie, with a tinge of worriedness on her face.

    "Okay, I guess we have our next target, Karmandi are you up for a fight?", asked Daimon to the snake general, making thetterugh.

    "Sure, I need to retrieve my subordinate anyway".

    "Okay, go prepare we leave in five minutes".

    Karmandi returned through the tunnel to the lower cave, he was going to take just a few of his subordinates with him, those who could fly to be more precise.

    Daimon was left in a small predicament right now, judging by the determined expressions of the Risha sisters, and also Mellie they will being regardless of what he said.

    ''Worry not young master, your most trusted subordinate Horals, will protect the young misses!'', said the bone general as he told Daimon a couple of things he discovered.

    ''Oh, sounds interesting, Rita help him make it possible'', said Daimon, to which Rita limited to nod, she could see Horals''s mocking smile and she softly snorted.

    ''Bonehead''.

 Chapter 322 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 1)

    The girls expected Daimon to ask them to stay, based on the fact that he went alone earlier, but to their surprise after looking at them for a couple of seconds and without them saying anything, Daimon nodded.

    "We will all go this time, they can''t outnumber us as badly with Karmandi''s army, so the situation is manageable".

    ''Also, it''s not like you are weak by any means'', he thought to himself.

    The Risha sisters have now learned to distribute the boost their wings give to them, to fight for a longer period of time at about the same strength Aleah would have without using her lineage, in a saw calction they would be in the middle of the eight-nine star realm.

    But their elements are strong enough to harm and kill early stage Lord ranks, which is the stapple to not be a pushover in this ce, Aisha didn''t need to be considered, in this matter from the very beginning, just with her battle experience alone she is on par with Daimon in a lot of aspects and she even surpasses him in others, with the exception of Disaster or Core Synchrony of course.

    Mellie is way fiercer than she appears to be, her spells can blow away mages, and inflict internal damage which is the bane of a knight''s defense below the Arch rank, not to mention she is a Lord ranked and can go up to the middle stage with her lineage activated, if anything her physical body is her weakness, but she had polished her closebat skills as Daimon previously saw when she attacked him with the bow of her fiddle.

    Andstly Jasmine, she is the pr opposite of Mellie, her offensive isn''t high, somethingmon among light affinity mages, but in exchange, her support and defense abilities are top notch, in fact if not for Adam pulling a fast one, making her use her remaining mana before abandoning her, she might have had a chance to flee, even after being on the run for quite some time without a proper rest or food, her vitality was high due to her affinity after all.

    The girls eyes lit up and they immediately went to prepare themselves, putting the armor which they had taken off to befortable.

    ''Are you sure to bring those three darling, there might be a traitor in the group of that princess, so the situation can be chaotic?'', asked Aisha through the mental connection.

    As the saying goes, a spear in the day is easier to dodge than an arrow at night, they were going to lend a hand to the princess because it''s impossible she is behind this as she is being targeted, but her subordinates on the other hand might not be clean.

    ''Don''t worry, if I found a way to solve the previous problem, so that they can fight to their heart''s content now'', said Daimon.

    He understood Aisha was worried about those three as their friend, and he wouldn''t have let them tag along to the many fights that were about toe if he didn''t have a way to look for them, just like he does for his mother.

    Aisha smiled and didn''t ask anything else, if Daimon said he had it covered, she was sure he had it.

    A few minutester with Daimon guiding them, everyone jumped through the tunnel on the floor to descend to the second cave where the magic beasts were staying.

    The girls were a bit surprised to see the numbers of the army Karmandi was leading, which Daimon had gotten to back them, from the original about 300 members around 10 were mildly wounded and needed more time to rest, but in exchange around 100 of the beasts from Ulkrear''s army had joined Karamndi, among which there were 3 peak Lord ranked ones.

    Even the magic beasts organized themselves as they called themselves "army", normally Arch ranks or sub generals lead the groups, but due to the promptness of the situation and the fact that many Arch ranks entering the trial area might call the attention of the Trident Marshal, each general only brought two Arch ranks with them, and the peak Lord rank beasts were the temporal leaders of groups of thirty magic beasts each.

    From the 10 groups that followed Ulkrear, besides his two arch ranks which were the sea fleas, three of them defected to Karmandi''s side, so about 400 magic beasts of which the weakest were early-stage Lord ranks conformed the current army Daimon got the support off.

    "We are ready, Kamir will stay behind to guard the fort and just in case the Ulkrear''s subordinate might try to pull something", said Karmandi referring to the middle stage Arch ranked snake from his same race, the one which listened to Daimon''s request of capturing the sea flea.

    "Ok, so who''sing?", asked Daimon.

    "Originally, I though flying was the only option as I thought our destination was too far, but since we were just being tricked by the damn Sea Devil ore, Neal will being to make the path¡­ as for the others, I''ll leave them to you to choose", said Karmandi as he pointed with his tail to the team leaders on the peak Lord rank, who had formed a line in front of Daimon and the girls.

    Daimon inspected the options and was convinced by them, none had anything to envy to the Bottom Shredders so they were eligible to fight against them should the situatione to the worse.

    "Choose one eachdies, they''ll be your temporarypanions for the uing battles", said Daimon.

    The girls looked at the beasts, there were a total of twelve including the three that came from Ulkrear''s army, as one of the team leaders from Karmandi''s army needed to recover, Daimon wasn''t worried they will betray them, because Karmandi exined the terms of their contracts, to form part of the army they needed to be loyal, but there were exceptions which allowed them to deflect, one of them being if their general made poor decisions which disregarded them, and Ulkrear fell in that category when he openly betrayed the ck Empress.

    Not even five minutester each one of them had chosen a magic beast, Aisha choose an eel for lightning purposes, Yvonne had bad luck as there wasn''t any beast with darkness attribute but she chose a centipede with poison that could be useful for her, Liliana chose a sea turtle with ice attribute, Leslie got the short end of the stick since there wasn''t any beast with an attribute that went along with fire, so she just selected a crab from the same species Daimon fought earlier, it was a good choice as it had a good bnce of defense and offense.

    Mellie chose a seahorse as she had experience with them, then Jasmine selected a purely offensive magic beast, but with a decent innate defense, a crocodile, which unlike other species had blue scales to camouge in the sea instead of swamps or other non-salt water bodies.

    It''s worth mentioning Daimon also chose one, a lobster, in defense terms it was weaker than the crab, but its agility was higher to the point that it was surprising a sea beast could move at such speed in drynd, it wasn''t for him though as he was sat on top of the centipede called Neal, to guide it towards the camp and just in case they bumped into another piece of the Sea Devil ore.

    "Let''s go", everyone rode on top of their respective magic beasts, and with Daimon''s green light, Neal started advancing and making the tunnel for the others to follow him, Karmandi who remained in that four meter form, sat next to Daimon too.

    ¡­

    This time the centipede was allowed to move faster once they were far enough from their camp, so the travel only took about fifteen minutes until Daimon told him to slow down, as they were about to reach the ce where the battle was taking part.

    Karmandi also heard the sounds of battle and everyone could feel the sts of mana generated due to the exchange of spells between the three parties.

    "Mm?", Karmandi suddenly moved his tail like a whip, a blue stream pierced the rock roof and fell from above right at where Daimon was sitting down.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon inspected theposition of the blue stream as it reminded him to something he has seen before.

    ''Air and water manapressed into aser-type attack, though weaker this was the attack used by that whale shark in the trial of the Lineage Temple'', thought Daimon.

    A middle stage Lord ranked would have lost half of his life if that attack even slightly brushed him, but for the snake general it was as simple as waving his tail to redirect it.

    "That''s the iplete form of the Storm Stream of the Vs family, it puts the user through a lot of tension so Daphne wouldn''t use it unless it''s a must, the fight should be reaching a critical point", said Mellie.

    The girls saw the blue stream piercing a hole through the rock wall even after losing a lot of impulse, and being redirected by Karmandi, and they had to agree that it was an incredibly strong spell.

    Daimon raised his head and his infinity eyes saw through meter after meter of rocks andpacted earth, to reach the surface.

    And just as Mellie said, the battle was really intense, probably the pirates arrived earlier because they had the bigger amount of casualties, their Bottom Shredder was literally turned into minced meat which Daimon only recognized due to the remaining shape it had.

    The Skelefiends on the other hand were more cautious, some were upying the bodies of male nobles from the Mermen Sea, while others were in their normal forms, all of them were Lord ranked beings.

    Daimon followed arge trace which was carved into the ground and found the actual target of the previous attack which ended reaching them, thereying on a crater and a pond of dark red blood, there was a Bottom Shredder whose body below the chest was missing now.

    What caught Daimon''s attention the most is that the Shredder had those ck marks all over its body.

    ''That spell is as dangerous as I experienced back then'', thought Daimon, if not for him having blink the trial would have ended the moment the whale shark had gathered enough mana for that attack, it had a really wide area of impact and it crated an insanely strong shockwave too.

    "But in exchange¡­", mumbled Daimon as he looked at the left where arge rock wall was created to be used as a bastion for the people hidden behind of it.

    There he saw a group ten people, eight girls and two guys, one of the guys had a missing arm, and three of the girls had arrows in their legs or shoulders, but the one who really looked as if a breath would knock her down, was none other than that tall girl with dark blue hair Daimon met back when the beast hunt was starting.

    The only daughter of the king, the first princess Daphne Vs, to put context, her previously pale but pink skin tone had changed to an unhealthy one, and there were some bags under her eyes too, her chest was moving up and down and her breathing was a mess, in other words she was exhausted.

    But it was understandable, she practically killed an enhanced Bottom Shredder, something even Daimon was unable to do back then, though he focused more in area and distraction, instead of condensing it to get rid of a single target.

    And besides that trace and crater as well as the Bottom Shredder being half dead, the Skelefiends were perfectly fine, so she only targeted it.

    "Young miss is awesome, your spell finished those horrible magic beasts", said one of the girls who was supporting the first princess so she didn''t copse.

    The three wounded girls were unable to move, probably due to some kind of paralyzing poison applied on the arrow heads, and the guy with the missing arm was also sat trying to stop the bleeding.

    The remaining four girls and the guy, keptunching different spells to keep the Skelefiends and pirates in check, the pirates were probably still terrified of that previous attack, so they didn''t dare to show their faces and were hiding behind arge rock.

    "Didn''t that fucking bastard say she could only shoot that thing once, then what the hell was that!", shouted the pirate leading the remaining two surviving pirates, as he erected an earth wall to block one of the many attacks that the teammates of the first princess wereunching at them.

    "Boss, those sacks of bones lied to us, they want to capture the princess for themselves", answered one of the two pirates.

    Seeing the hatred face of the leading pirate, Daimon smirked.

    ''You guys aren''t the only ones who can y behind the scenes, let''s see how you like it'', he thought.

    Karmandi saw Daimon grinning and he raised an eyebrow, he couldn''t see through the rocks and he couldn''t use his mana sense, since he didn''t want to give their positions away, in case there were some "fishers" waiting to reap the benefits of the battle currently ongoing, besides them of course.

    Then under Karmandi''s surprised eyes, Daimon vanished as he activated the hollow suit, but he didn''t move from where he was standing.

    Instead of that he simply used one of the earth spells he learned just to have something in his arsenal in case he needed it.

    "Earth Spikes".

    "What the hell!", one of the Skelefiends saw spikes raising below his feet and he unconsciously jumped to avoid them, but that put him in the way of three different attacks from the teammates of the first princess.

    "Aghhh!", the Skelefiend was hit and his body was sent flying due to the impact, resulting in an immediate death.

    The leader of the Skelefiends which was in the middle stage of the Lord realm, gritted his teeth, he couldn''t feel where the attack came and the only one here with earth affinity that could do that, was the leader of the pirates.

 Chapter 323 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 2)

    The leader of the Skelefiends first shoot an acid arrow to the team of the first princess to make them hide behind their bastion, before he used the momentary gap to look at the leader of the pirate.

    "Oi, Joshua you piece of trash, what the hell are you doing!", he shouted.

    The leader of the pirates who was already angry after being lied to and used as cannon fodder, because the Skelefiends had a sudden "emergency" that made themte for their joint attack against Daphne.

    What the pirates didn''t know is that the Skelefiends weren''t lying, the so called "emergency", was them going to look at the ce where their envoy was supposed to be as well as one of their allies in the form of Ulkrear.

    They felt something was off since the envoy hadn''t returned, so they had to take a detour to see what happened, and ended up finding an emptynd which had signs of having being used as a battlefield.

    And no matter how they looked they didn''t find anything, then after receiving a signal from the pirates they had to hurry up to the battle, and ended up arrivingte just to see a blue stream utterly destroying one Bottom Shredder.

    In other words Daimon had screwed the Skelefiends before revealing their spy in Karmandi''s army, and he screwed the pirates over now by framing them.

    "So now you are using me of your subordinates being stupid, Feller, you were the ones that didn''t follow the deal causing most of my subordinates to die, what the hell do you want from me now!", shouted the pirate leader.

    The Skelefiend snorted.

    "So what, you are taking a petty revenge by making my subordinate die in vain, is that what''s this all about?".

    The pirate leader frowned, not understanding what the Skelefiend was talking about, but then a supposition hit him like a bolt out of the blue.

    ''They want to put me on us, to eliminate our group, then capture the princess who is at the end of her rope and keep the rewards for themselves'', he thought.

    A second of silence fell in the area, before both leaders reached the same conclusion.

    ''The one who strikes first win'', they both thought.

    "Rock Massacre!".

    "Acid Rain!".

    The pirate leader''s spell hit first, the ground below the Skelefiends trembled and then without any warning, a plethora of stone spikes raised from below, but this time the Skelefiends were able to react on time¡­ or so they thought.

    Because once the spikes had risen from the ground, they bloomed more spikes horizontally.

    "Aghhh", out of the remaining twenty Skelefiends five died on the spot while another one lost a limb.

    But the pirates also suffered a loss, one of the two surviving pirates didn''t even have the time to scream and was melted into a pulp due to the attack of the Skelefiend leader while the other one suffered chemical burns.

    The two leaders didn''t stop in the ceremony and started bombarding each other with spells, while their subordinates took some distance from them to not get insta-killed, also they didn''tpletely ignore the first princess''s group and continued with the fight, turning the whole situation into a chaos.

    ¡­

    "Their leaders are distracted fighting between themselves, it''s now or never princess Daphne", said the only guy who was capable of fighting.

    Three of the girls who were also shooting spells towards the pirates and Skelefiends, agreed.

    "Larry is right princess, we have used about half of our mana reserves, if we just keepunching spells to keep them away from us without moving, we''ll be doomed once we run out of mana".

    "Yeah, we need to run, there is a small forest ahead of us we can look for a way to hide from these guys to rest there", added another of the three girls.

    The girl who previously helped Daphne not to copse, and has been using her mana to protect the three paralyzed girls, raised an eyebrow before saying.

    "Amira, Nadia and Pam are unable to move due to the arrows used by the pirates, and the terrain inside the forest is too irregr, we won''t be able to move fast enough while carrying them with is, not to mention the young miss is still too weak after having pushed herself to eliminate those two monsters".

    "Chris I know those three are servants of the princess just like you, but if we don''t do anything we''ll all die¡­ for themon good we can help the princess through the harsh terrain of the forest, how about it?", asked the third girl.

    The girl called Chris frowned.

    "They received the arrows for you three and you are going to abandon them at the mercy of the pirates and the Skelefiends?", she slowly asked with an angry voice.

    "The pirates were using a paralyzing poison instead of a deadly one, which means their goal is to capture us not kill us, once we recover we can return to look for them", said the guy who was missing an arm, with a coward expression, he needed a hidden ce to properly cure his wound if he wanted to be able to grow it back with a potion.

    Everyone of them looked at Daphne who was still trying to catch her breath, but then after a couple of seconds the first princess only shook her head.

    Just as Mellie mentioned, she would never leave her subordinates behind, she instead looked at a bracelet she was wearing and pressed a hidden button which revealed a little ss bottle kept inside of it.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daphne drank the content of the bottle and she recovered a bit, just enough to be able to move be herself and not trip in the process, and also be able to use some spells again.

    Apparently, that was an emergency potion she had on herself all the time, instead of having it inside her spatial ring.

    Chris who was one of the servants of the princess knew how serious things were, the Vs family all focused in long distancebat, so their mana consumption rate was insanely high, and thus they had a big stock of mana replenishing potions in their ring, but Daphne also had one in her person, due to her mother''s rmendation, it was for an emergency only, so if she was using it, her subordinates would know it was a life and death matter.

    Daphne pointed at the three girls who were unable to move and the other three who could, had no option but to carry them per her orders.

    The first princess gathered the mana she recovered and then ced her hands on the ground, a wave of water raised from the ground flooding the battlefield, getting the attention of the pirates and the Skelefiends.

    But then as they were about to bombard the group of the first princess, a small swirl appeared on the center of the battlefield, and not even a secondter it turned into a whirlpool, which sucked both the pirates and the Skelefiends.

    The whole group of the first princess jumped out of their cover, and disposed to make a run, but an earth pir as well as a green cloud which appeared out of nowhere blocking their retreat.

    The girls who were carrying the immobilized maids of the princess didn''t doubt a single second and dropped the maids, they activated some boosting spells and avoided the obstacles before they elerated their pace disappearing into the woods.

    The two guys who were supposed tounch spells at the enemies to hold them back stared at each other, and then ran in two different directions.

    At the same time the princess ran out of mana, a spell casted by an early Lord ranked like Daphne that could block a bunch of early Lord ranks and a couple middle stages at the same time consumed a lot of mana, not to mention she didn''t recover even 20% of her total reserves because she needed to rest, hence the short duration of her spell.

    "They are escaping boss, should we...", asked the remaining surviving pirate.

    But the pirate leader instead sinisterly smiled.

    "They aren''t worth our time, the big prize stayed behind, also those three are still paralyzed so we''ll be able to have some fun too".

    The Skelefiend who just jumped out of the water, snorted as he pointed at the pirate leader.

    "Humph, dream on Joshua, the princess is mine, with Lord Horrorw''s reward I''ll reach the peak of the mortal realm or even the Half Ster rank, so get lost!".

    The first princess slowly sank into the water as her legs gave in, but then Chris dragged not only her but the three immobilized girls with her behind the rock bastion again.

    "Young miss, you shouldn''t have used your own mana to hold them down, those cowards discarded us and escaped", said Chris with an angered voice.

    Daphne used herst resort to buy time and they instead of helping her escape, just left them behind, to have a slightly better chance of surviving, it''s not that they escaped what angered Chris, but because she knew what they were thinking "If their target, in other words the princess stays behind, then they wouldn''t chase after me", it''s what they thought.

    And unfortunately they were right, after fighting between each other, and also considering the princess had some tricks up her sleeve, both the pirates and Skelefiends stopped their quarrel and focused on them once again.

    "She must have run out of mana once and for all, I propose a temporal truce, we kill the nuisances and then decide who gets to keep the princess, what do you think Joshua?", offered the Skelefiend.

    While he had the bigger group, the fact that their envoy a peak Lord ranked disappeared without leaving behind a trace, still weighted in his mind, so he wanted to wrap things up as fast as possible.

    The leader of the pirate found thepromise a bit suspicious but his chances of losing were higher as hecked manpower, so he epted.

    "Deal, we have used too much mana and the magic beasts might get attracted to this ce, let''s finish them first and we can decide between ourselves on our way back to the hideout".

    Then a the sound of tree leaves moving drew everyone''s attention, the Skelefiend and pirate leaders had bitter expressions as they saw the neers.

    "Lucas".

    "Miserius".

    Two more groups, led by a pirate and a Skelefiend came from within the forest, they were each grabbing a battered body by its neck, two of the three girls that escaped before, as for the third one and the two guys, there were two Bottom Shredders in the group and they had blood stains and pieces of clothes on their mouths which resembled to the ones wore by those three.

    "Thanks to you two for being disposable pawns, so that we didn''t have to lose any of our subordinates, we''ll take care from now own", said the pirate called Lucas.

    "Do you really think I "identally" left the hint I got from young master for you to see it, Feller, I guess you haven''t heard that the mantis stalks the cicada unaware of the oriole behind, kekeke", added the Skelefiend.

    "Mm?", everyone suddenly looked below because the ground started to tremble but before anyone could do anything, seven holes appeared on the ground from which seven different magic beasts appeared, six of them had girls standing on their heads, they were positioned in a circle around both groups of enemies, two behind the first ones and five around the neers.

    An eight hole on the ground appeared right in front of Daphne, but this time only a silver haired boy with a smirk as well as a four-meter snake jumped out of the groundnding a secondter.

    "You took the words out of my mouth, Skelefiend", said Daimon as he pointed his sword at them.

 Chapter 324 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 3)

    The Skelefiend called Miserius and the pirate Lucas stared at each other before theyughed, they were both peak Lord rankeds, not to mention their two Bottom Shredders who were early-stage Arch ranks.

    Apparently this specific group of was somewhat rted to the ones in charge of both the Skelefiends and the pirates.

    Miserius looked at the seven peak Lord ranked magic beasts surrounding them, and he snorted.

    "Kid the next time make a better job inspecting who you mess with", he said as he snapped his fingers.

    The Bottom Shredders suddenly unleashed their mana pressure, but even before it could affect the girls or Karmandi''s subordinates, the ground below them exploded as the centipede Neal wrapped its body around them and dragged the fight to the nearby forest.

    The previous took Miserius and Lucas by surprise, and their expressions twisted realizing they were tricked and ended up making a clown of themselves.

    But losing that battle didn''t mean the war was lost, they both nodded and then their groups separated and attacked the girls.

    The Skelefiends aimed at Mellie and Jasmine, probably because their leader recognized Jasmine as she was their main target, while the pirates went after the Risha sisters and Aisha.

    Although there were seven peak Lord ranked magic beasts, as well as two early stage Lord mages in the form of Mellie and Jasmine, each group of enemies consisted in thirty enemies, sixteen middle stage and fourteen middle stage Lord ranks, besides their respective leaders who were at the peak.

    So they just the middle stages outnumbered Karmandi''s subordinates in a 2:1 ratio, and that''s without taking into ount the others.

    "Lucas I know your addiction to women, so I''ll deal with them, you get rid of the guy and capture the princess", shouted Miserius as he jumped towards Mellie and Jasmine.

    The pirate who didn''t recognize Jasmine or Mellie thought he was getting the best side of the deal, as he was going to capture Daphne which meant he''ll receive a bigger part of the merit, thus a bigger share of the reward, was more than happy to oblige.

    "Sure, enjoy your meal but don''t y around that much kekeke".

    Lucas then turned to see Daimon who was apanied by a "small snake", who wasn''t even at the Lord rank, and he sinisterly smiled, judging by the armor the silver haired youth was using, he supposed Daimon belonged to one of the noble circles, which yed to be knights, as he knew how the neo nobles who were the real dangers dressed, full body armors, so for him Daimon who wasn''t even at the middle level of the moral realm in other words the Lord rank, was just a random low ranked noble trying to impress a princess.

    "I know saving a princess is a fetish of you low nobles have, but in your next life grow some hair down there before you¡­".

    Lucas''s words stuck in his throat as he saw the silver haired youth swinging his sword backwards without turning around or anything, urately stabbing his sword in the chest of the pirate leader Joshua, who used an earth spell to try and snatch Daphne.

    "Aghhhhhh!", being stabbed on the chest is already painful, but to be stabbed by Disaster is a hard to describe sensation, mostly because those that experience it, usually don''t live to tell, so far the only exception to that rule is the Naktis ancestor and he survived only because he was a Half Emperor, though at that point Disaster was at its prime.

    Still besides the lung tearing scream that escaped from Joshua''s mouth, which caught the attention of both Miserius and Lucas, his body was soon drained from both vitality and mana, until it became a dry mummy which then turned into dust, leaving nothing behind.

    ''What the hell is that sword!'', screamed Lucas in his mind as he jumped backwards to put some distance between him and Daimon.

    "Idiot he is trash that depends on external methods, why do you think I made you keep those two as hostages!", shouted Miserius before he focused in the enemies in front of him.

    The pirate''s eyes glowed as he grabbed the two surviving girls from before by their necks, and raised them in the air in front of him.

    "Don''t move kid, toss that sword over here or I''ll crush these two bitches''s necks!", he demanded.

    Lucas''s n was really simple, once the silver haired youth dropped that scary sword which was something he was probably given by the royal family, they had knight orders that served them and the youngers and most promising ones were often given "presents", to buy their loyalty, all because the neo nobles have grown too muchtely, so they had to start forming their own outstanding servants to not lose face.

    Of course, such "gifts" came with restrictions, like having to practically give their lives for the White royal family if needed, and some of the magic weapons were things found in underwater caves or sank treasure troves, whose side effects were unknown, so these knights functioned as guinea pigs for the royals in case an item was cursed, they were considered the private army of the royals and their dogs, by the high ranked nobles at least.

    ''Tch, to bump into one of the big dogs from the White family at this exact moment, I have been having some bad lucktely'', thought Lucas.

    The maid of the first princess which was the only one in their group that could still fight, stood up after helping Daphne lean against a rock, and walked towards Daimon.

    But then the time seemed to slow down for both Lucas and the maid Chris, they saw the silver haired youth shoving his sword on the ground, but as Lucas was about tough triumphantly, his smile froze on his face.

    Two lines of white light pierced the heads of the two girls leaving a five millimeter hole in their fronts, killing them in the spot.

    "That''s the only mercy a traitor deserves", Daimon''s image shed and without any warning he appeared in front of Lucas as he swung his sword at him.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Lucas''s rms rang in his mind, if he was touched by that sword it was a game over for him, still he as a peak Lord ranked was able to react on time and distance himself from Daimon.

    But Disaster still cut the corpses of the two girls in half, one of the things Daimon liked about using Disaster''s form is that there was no mess, any cut made with its edge wouldn''t bleed¡­ because there will be no blood left after being cut with it, at least that was the case for anything below the Arch ranks, whose bodies have been nurtured be it mages or knights, and their lifespan which could be counted in the tens of thousands was enough to survive being wounded by it, at least for now while Narasha was still being othered by refining the antinite externalyer on Disaster''s body.

    Lucas whonded a couple of meters back from where he was standing, saw Daimon casually treating his "fellow" nobles with such indifferency and his back was drenched in cold sweat.

    "Those "honorable idiots" wouldn''t have killed other nobles in such a cold way, nor they would have cut through their corpses like that¡­ who the hell are you!", shouted Lucas as he took out his own weapon, a sword-breaker dagger, or that was the bestparison Daimon could think of, since the weapon was too long to be a dagger, reaching about 1.2 meters, but with the characteristic spaces at the backside of the weapon.

    Needless to say, but the maid Chris was speechless right now, though she didn''t know Daimon, he was with Mellie and Jasmine who she did recognized, so she thought he was just a noble who tagged along until he effortlessly killed two other nobles, and girls on top of that.

    The only one known for being so decisive was the young spear from the neo noble faction, but he was known for his wild and rebellious behavior, akin to hismoner upbringing, and even if she was beaten to death, she would never believe the silver haired youth in front of her isn''t a noble, his aura was too imposing to belong to a normal person.

    ''Wait, miss Lord Trident Marshal considers miss Mellie his niece¡­ maybe this guy is his secret disciple, that would exin the origin of that scary sword who seems to be on par with the flute of the crown prince and the spear of the young spear'', thought Chris as she approached Daimon.

    "Hi, I''m Christina Lazuli, the head maid of the first princess, may I know your name?", she asked in a respectful voice, if her supposition was right, then the silver haired youth in front of her had the same status as a prince and was only helping them by the Trident Marshal''s petition.

    "Gabriel, also don''t leave that girl alone, there are still enemies in the shadows", mumbled Daimon, with his gazepletely focused on Lucas.

    A peak Lord ranked was out of hisfort zone, so he couldn''t lost track of it, then why was Lucas acting so cautious around Daimon you might ask, the answer is simple the spectacle of Disaster easily killing a middle stage Lord ranked and Daimon ruthlessly killing the two hostages, had a big impact in Luca''s mind.

    He was used to despise the nobles of the Mermen Sea who are afraid of blood and dirt unlike him a pirate, that seeing one being so cold throw him out of his game, and an agitated mind was susceptible to the intimidation caused by Overlord''s Pride.

    So for Lucas right now, the aura given by Daimon was simr to the one of those veterans who had survived thousands of battles, an aura that reeks of the iron contained in blood and the steel of weapons.

    Still for some reason, just like how contracts and his terror contractor skill didn''t work with the people of Neptune in general, Overlord Pride wasn''t enough to make an enemy submit, but it still made Lucas hesitate, his hands even trembled a bit, he a pirate who is used to blood and carnage was feeling fear!

    ''Fucking Miserius he probably had some intel about this guy and tricked me!'', he swore in his heart.

    ¡­

    If the Skelefiend were to hear his thoughts, he would probably vomit blood, because what he thought would be an easy target ended up being a hard nut to crack.

    At the other side of the battle field, while the magic beasts and the Risha sisters were being attacked by the pirates and skelefiends, the leader Miserius was fighting the two princesses and Aisha and things weren''t going the way he imagined.

    "Boooom!".

    "B-Boss aghhhh!", Miserius jumped sidewards and avoided a thirty centimeter line of silver light, but he noticed he was going to be touched by it so he grabbed a random subordinate of his and used it as a meat shield.

    Once the silver light made contact, not only drilled a hole on the Skelefiend, but the poor guy melted from the inside leaving a puddle of ck liquid on the ground, and the silver ray didn''t stop there, it flew right into the forest blowing away a straight line of tall trees in the process until it disappeared in the horizon.

    Aisha who was the origin of that silver ray, or more urately pretty index finger was the origin of that thunder arrow, had an approbative smile on her face.

    "I have to admit it, this is some insane support spell you got there, Jasmine", she said as she looked at the silver spear image floating behind her.

    "Thanks", with a short answer Jasmine dissipated her spell "Silver Spear", a buff which was simple but incredibly practical at the same time, it tripled all the aspects of the next spell used by the one who received the buff including power, speed, duration etc. With the only limitations that the realm of the one receiving it couldn''t by higher than the caster and also it had to be used with "day" oriented elements¡­ like metal and lightning, which were the ones Aisha used for her thunder arrow.

    Miserius wanted to cry but tears won''te out, he was confident in taking down the princesses because based on what he knew Jasmin who was the only one with light affinity which was his weakness, had to offensive capacities.

    But then he kicked an iron te because Mellie whose element was considered neutral but fierce, forced him to back off as he was having a had time to know where her attacks wereing, since he couldn''t see the vibrations in the air unlike Daimon.

    And then a that silver haired girl suddenly tagged along and to his displease she had lightning element, which can be considered a fierce if not the fiercest aspect of light, still while her attacks were dangerous, due to the gap in their realms he could block them with his acid shield, the spell he had chosen to use as his natural defense as a Lord ranked, though it consumed arge of mana, it was manageable.

    But then his main target who was Jasmine, used a spell he has never seen and the next attack made all the hairs in his body to stand on their ends, which forced him to use one of his nearby subordinates as a meat shield or he would have lost an arm at least, as the silver ray not only increased its size but its speed too, matching to him as a peak Lord ranked.

    ''Fucking Lucas, he probably had some intel about this girl and he tricked me into taking them one, while he went against that sole guy'', he thought.

 Chapter 325 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 4)

    Daimon quickly gazed at the battlefield just to make sure he wasn''t missing anything, because his instincts told him there was more than what met the eye, but so far everything was going ording to the n.

    Aisha and the two princesses were suppressing the Skelefiend leader, and the seven magic beasts were though were being ganged on almost in a 1:10 situation as there were sixty enemies going against them, were fairing pretty well.

    The gap between middle and peak Lord ranks was big enough for the pirates and skelefiends to not be able to really wound the magic beasts whose carapaces or scales were part of their innate advantages, with their normal spells, they needed to use their best ones to actually made a significant amount of damage.

    But Karmandi''s subordinates though not fully rational, weren''t stupid in any way, they knew that they needed time to cast such spells, and interrupted them in the middle.

    At the same time the magic beasts were having a rough time trying to hit the "slippery" small enemies, unless they used wide area abilities, so the situation has more or less found a bnce where they were stalling each other.

    Unable to find the source of his worries, Daimon sent Aisha a message through the mental connection, so that he could focus on the enemy in front of him.

    He also nodded at Karmandi to let him know it wasn''t the time for him to reveal his identity yet, precisely because of that strange sensation he had.

    ''Oh well, let''s finish this guy down first'', thought Daimon, he exhaled and then for the first time since he arrived at this magic ruin, he activated Core Synchrony.

    Still, he controlled the output to be at the early stage of the Mage Lord rank, and still hid a great part of his aura thanks to the hollow suit, he did it so that the spectators would only think he has only stopped to hide his real rank.

    And it worked, the maid Chris for example was having a hard time believing that the "disciple" of the Trident Marshal wasn''t even at the Lord realm, as that was the norm for the remarkably high ranked noble descendants of the young generation, such as Mellie or Jasmine, the only exceptions were the crown prince and the young spear as well as the middle son of the ckfin family who were the only which had reached the middle stage, thus bing the top of the food chain, and the favorites to win the events.

    ''So he was hiding his real strength this whole time'', she thought as she returned to the first princess''s side, as Daimon asked her to, the uing fight was going to be pretty wild.

    Inparison the pirate Lucas gritted his teeth as he spat on the ground.

    "Hiding your real strength, getting rid of hostages and killing women, you nobles aren''t better than us, and yet you paint yourselves as upright knights, while we are the bad guys¡­".

    Before Lucas could finish his sentence, Daimon''s image vanished from where he was standing, but unlike the stealth blink which doesn''t cause any sound or effect on Daimon''s surroundings, what he did was simply move using a lightning boosting spell inbination with his abnormal physical strength as a knight.

    "Boooom!", a thunder like sound echoed through the whole area as the ground below Daimon''s feet exploded, and the next thing Lucas knew was that there was a ck sword swinging at him from above.

    "ng!", this time Lucas couldn''t out speed Daimon, so he had to use his weapon to block the attack, and used the blunt side of the sword-breaking dagger, to trap Disaster''s edge.

    But he miscalcted how heavy were Daimon''s swings, and while his Arch ranked dagger was able to resist the attack, sparks flew all over the ce while he was forced back and even had to bent his knees due to the impact.

    Lucas felt his bones creaking due to the strength behind Daimon''s attack, but he still smiled and the formations in his weapon activated, in his mind as long as he got rid of that scary sword, he could deal with Daimon as he was still "just" an early stage lord ranked.

    But to his surprise, not only sword-breaking array didn''t activate, the cracking sound he heard was one he recognized as this was his second weapon of the same kind.

    "Crack!", then under Luca''s ash-death expression, his precious weapon was cut in half, and he was sent flying backwards.

    Daimon could "feel" Narasha''s excitement, apparently, she who was in part affected by Disaster''s feelings, enjoyed the sensation of fighting other magic weapons and destroying them.

    Lucas saw what was left of his dagger and his eyes got bloodshot, as a Lord ranked he practically had to put his life at a stake to get an Arch ranked magic weapon, in the ck market and now a random guy who messed up his ns broke it just like that.

    "You beast, you forced my hand!", Lucas ripped his upper clothes and then red symbols appeared all over his body, his body grew to be about two meters of height and his muscles expanded, his skin became gray and his teeth which were normal a moment ago became spiked like the ones of a monster, but the biggest change was his arms.

    His arms which were previously proportionated to his body, grewrger until they reached past his knees all the way to his shins, and his fingers erged to be about fifteen centimeters each, also his hands became webbed andrge sharp ws appeared on his fingers it was strangely simr to a¡­ Bottom Shredder.

    "You pirates like to transform yourselves into monsters", mumbled Daimon remembering the change that pirate underwent in which he gained traits of the Mist Horrors, the only difference is that this time the base was obviously a Bottom Shredder instead.

    "Roaarr!", Lucas tilted his head and then let out a beastly roar, which was answered by another simr roar,ing from the jungle.

    Then the air around Lucas trembled and then his aura forcefully jumped form the peak Lord realm to the early stage Arch rank, before it stabilized there.

    And that wasn''t all, a turmoil raised on the forest where the Bottom Shredders and Neal were previously having a tight 2v1 fight.

    But now the aura of one of the two Bottom Shredders has be equal or maybe even slightly stronger than Neal''s, meaning it had jumped to the middle stage of the Arch rank.

    "Boom!", Lucas grabbed the two pieces of his dagger and then dashed towards Daimon, apparently in this form he overcame the apprehension he felt earlier, but Daimon snorted and after releasing the rest of the increase he got from Core Synchrony he reached the middle stage of the Lord realm and weed Lucas with Disaster, causing a huge sing sound and a deafening shockwave.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ¡­

    The battles stopped for a split of a second due to the oppressive waves of mana caused by the sh of two middle stage Arch ranked magic beasts, then the Skelefiend Miserius who saw from the corner of his eyes at his colleague using their hidden card, sinisterly smiled.

    "You should have behaved like good girls and handed in by yourselves, I''ll tell you a little secret, we haven''t gotten totally used to this power, so it''s hard to control ones urges¡­ I must say that you female nobles "taste" delicious", said Miserius as he licked his lips.

    Then just like Lucas his body expanded and gained simr characteristics to a Bottom Shredder, the difference as that he had no flesh as he is a Skelefiend, in fact his resulting appearance was by far more horrible than Lucas, and he also became an early stage Arch rank.

    Jasmine didn''t waste a second, she tapped the floor with her spear-like staff and casted her best defensive buff, on the three of them.

    "Silver Fortress", as son as the words left her pretty lips, the image of a brick small castle appeared in front of Aisha, Mellie and her.

    The girls saw the effect of the buff and they were once again positively impressed, by Jasmine''s spells effects.

    This was her best defense boosting spell exclusive to the Ivory family, of which only she and her grandmother existed.

    "300% increase in physical defense and 200% magical defense for the next ten minutes, that''s a bit¡­ too much", mumbled Mellie.

    Jasmine nervously chuckled.

    "I can only use it on non-knights and also once every 24 hours, but it is indeed a pretty good spell", she said with a lightly ashamed expression on her pretty face.

    "Well, since we are going all out here, I might as well do the same", said Mellie, then a vertical dazzling yellow line appeared on her forehead, and her aura jumped to the middle stage of the Lord realm.

    "I''ll join in the fun~", added Aisha

    "Silver Skin + Lightning Discharge", as Aisha casted her spells, first a pretty silver light whichbined with her silver hair tone, covered her body, then sparks flew as purple electricity was poured out of some of the essories she always wore, the result was that now Aisha was bathed in a dim purple light, giving her skin and hair a pretty purple glow, it was as if the goddess of lightness had descended from the skies.

    "Lightning Empress", this was the result of Aisha''s training over the years, an spell created bybining two of her original spells, it was the best she had in her arsenal for boosting purposes.

    Daimon at this point had be a white sh that kept shing against Lucas, creating craters due to the explosions generated by their both monstrous physical strengths colliding, saw from the corner of his eyes Aisha''s current appearance and he prayed for her enemy¡­ because in that form unless he used Core Synchrony Aisha would easily suppress him, and when using it he would win by dragging the fight.

    Why do you ask, Aisha isn''t a knight and thus her vitality and stamina is lower than Daimon''s, but in that form even for Daimon who can use blink she is simply too fast.

    "I guess you two are indeed brother and sister", mumbled Mellie, she has never been superficial, still she is aware of her extremely appealing beauty, but even she had to admit that the current Aisha made her feel a bit jealous, her appearance hasn''t changed that much but there was a certain aura she was giving now, which made her feel respect for Aisha, like the kind she would feel for her sister, when she is serious.

    "Jasmine can you give me that attack boost one more time?", asked Aisha, this spell consumed a lot of mana, if not for herrge reserves she wouldn''t be able to use it until she has reached the eight star mage realm, and the limit was still about ten or so minutes, that''s how Daimon win her the only time they fought giving almost their all, she ran out of time before him.

    Jasmine who was lost in Aisha''s change came out of her daze and nodded.

    "Mm, I need a minute".

    "As if I would let you!", Miserius whose transformation just finished first roared to the sky, as he jumped towards them, he still remembered that silver ray of light, and didn''t want to deal with an even more powerful version of that, so he needed to knock down Jasmine, or get rid of Aisha, in this case he decided to attack Aisha.

    Unfortunately there was no correct answer for his predicament, Aisha''s image blurred and the next thing Lucas knew was that a silver armored leg was making contact with his face.

    "Get lost".

    "Boooom!", a thunder reverberated through the battlefield and a sudden purple sh, forced all the nearby pirates and Skelefiends to cover their eyes, as if a lightning had fallen right when Aisha''s leg made contact with Miserius.

    "Aghhhh!!!", the Skelefiend screamed as smoke leaked out of his face, Bottom Shredder or not, he was a darkness oriented being, and Aisha''s lightning was of a extreme positive nature, imagine it like how a demon from the ancient legends would react if it was sshed by holy water, the reaction was pretty much the same, not to mention a kick with a metal reinforced leg elerated at the speed of lightning.

    Daimon had a bitter smile remembering that little training they had some time ago.

    ''She was soft on me back then and yet those kicks and punches elerated by lightning still nearly broke my bones'', he thought.

    In that form Aisha was essentially a living railgun.

 Chapter 326 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 5)

    While Aisha and Mellie were suppressing Miserius so that Mellie could cast her spell, Daimon and Lucas had already turned the other side of the battlefield into a chaotic mess.

    Even in this form Lucas kept doing his best to not be cut by Disaster, but with each sh, more of what used to be his dagger kept being cut apart.

    But he also took the those moments contact to counterattack, once the strength behind Daimon''s swing had been used to break another part of the dagger, Lucas took impulse and then he hit Daimon with all his might, it''s important to mention he has metal affinity.

    So he used a boosting spell to cover his skin, and punched Disaster''s t side to avoid being cut by it, that or he directly aimed at Daimon''s body.

    In both Cases Daimon defended with Disaster, though this form isn''t that of a broadsword like Gram, the base is the same and not even the Half Emperors back at the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart were able to destroy it, so Daimon didn''t have anything to worry about the attacks of a false early stage Arch rank attacks damaging his sword.

    Also with each sh, he could feel Narasha getting more and more excited to the point that Disaster had started to vibrate a bit.

    ''It''s fun when you use Core Synchrony Daimon~'', said Narasha from within Disaster.

    You might ask howe Daimon was able to follow up with the speed of an Arch rank, but back then he asked Dimas to suppress the Arch ranked djinns, the answer is pretty simple.

    He isn''t doing all the work, Narasha can move by herself and she is paying her full attention to block attacks and to look for openings, normally they can''t fight like this yet, but with Core Synchrony activated their minds and hearts are closer, so she bes like an extension of Daimon.

    Daimon''s arm is going with the flow right now, it was as if they were holding hands and dancing, the result of years of their training, Daimon fully trusted his back to her, not for anything he has called Narasha his battlepanion.

    Unfortunately due to Disaster being such a hard to master magic weapon, they need Core Synchrony to reach this state, as Daimon is still a bit short in physical strength, and that''s why she is having so much fun right now.

    "ng!".

    "Aghhhhh!".

    Two different sounds drew the attention of the first princess and the maid Chris who had taken some distance from the battle.

    First they saw that elegant thin looking ck sword blocking therge metal covered fist of Lucas, which caused an ear-hurting metal colliding sound, followed by a pained scream that escaped the pirate''s mouth, because the silver haired youth Kicked him on the stomach.

    Lucas was actually sent backwards, the metal which covered the skin of his stomach cracked due to the strength behind Daimon''s kick, and he nearly vomited due to the impact.

    "No way¡­ he broke through my iron body spell", lowly cursed Lucas, just like how Miserius had an acid shield spell as his natural defense, Lucas had a metal affinity spell which will naturally defend him when needed, something normally rted to the "manifestation" phenomenon akin to Lord ranks, but that people of Neptune haven''t heard about apparently, or at least that was Mellie''s case.

    Daimon saw Lucas''s face retorting due to the pain and he smirked.

    "You are just an imitation, your body is not nearly as tough as a magic beast and you aren''t a knight, the fact that you increased your output strength doesn''t mean your body''s defense is the same".

    Daimon''s knows it better than anyone, because when he uses Core Synchrony he only boosts his mage realm, and that would have destroyed his body if not for his abnormal constitution, but that still was too much of a toll for him originally.

    That''s why he went through a hell-like training for the past eight years, to both increase his strength and defense, in other words, to really harm Daimon one''s attacks needed to exceed his physical strength which was the same as physical defense for his specific case, around 35 tons.

    But others weren''t the same, for knights they only increased physical strength until they reached the Arch ranks, only then they increased their defenses, unless they used martial arts of course, but they couldn''t protect their insides only their outer body with that.

    ''I''ll go help Neal suppress those traitors, they have both nearly reached thete stage peak mortal level, thanks to that profane magic'', said Karmandi directly to Daimon, as he without anyone noticing slid into one of the holes in the ground from which they came.

    Daimon nodded; it was time to end things here too.

    ''As long as I don''t use spells the penalty on Core Synchrony will be rtively insignificant so¡­'', with that thought he extended his right hand and about half of his battle aura condensed into a white spear.

    His knight realm didn''t get a boost due to Core Synchrony, so he could use martial arts without any repercussion.

    "White Heavenly Javelin", Daimon''s image blurred as he fiercely charged towards Lucas, with a ck sword in his right hand and a white me spear in his left hand.

    Surprisingly Lucas didn''t seem to be wary of the white spear, he once again focused on blocking Disaster''s edge, but when it came to the spear, he even bravely used his forearm to directly receive the impact with a smile of sufficiency.

    A smile which was immediately erased from his face the very moment he was touched by Demon Light.

    "Aghhhhhh¡­blegh!", a lung-tearing scream escaped from his mouth, but was interrupted by a gurgling sound because Daimon stabbed Disaster on his throat, Lucas tried to jump backwards, but Daimon who let go of Disaster then stabbed his chest with the white spear and Narasha pushed the sword deeper basically piercing all the way to the other side of Lucas''s neck.

    "W-Wasn''t this enhancement supposed to counter even the strongest light element of that guy", where thest words the pirate managed to spit with a resentful voice, before he was both drained from his mana and vitality and also exploded in white mes.

    Daimon chuckled seeing Disaster and Demon Light fighting to consume more of Lucas''s body, before it became nothing.

    Also based on what Lucas said, this enhancement method was apparently prepared to deal with Adam, which worked as he had trouble fighting with the enhanced Bottom Shredder.<novelnext></novelnext>

    But although Daimon Light seemed to be a light affinity battle aura, that isn''t the case, it''s a mix of fire, light, darkness, mana and battle aura, even if one of those is countered there are four more, not to mention it''s destructiveness is far more what one would reach if they were used separately, such was the result of the second biggest achievement he has gotten, besides surviving and killing the manticore many years ago.

    ''That''s what you get forparing my Demon Light with that heroplex idiot''s Holy Light''.

    Daimon exhaled and then deactivated Core Synchrony, his mana was practically intact so the penalty wasn''t that strong, the whole battlested for him nor even five minutes, so he only had to wait about half an hour or so to use it again, of course the penalty will extend for the second time, but it was a good result.

    If anything, he did feel slightly tired after using more than half his battle aura reserves.

    "They should be ending things soon", mumbled Daimon as he walked back to where the others were fighting not without taking Lucas''s spatial ring as his loot, he was careful not to melt it with Demon Light after all.

    ¡­

    Back at the second battlefield, the Risha sisters had found a way to deal with the pirates, the pirates were working in group to suppress the magic beasts, so the only thing they needed to do was to mess up their teamwork.

    The three of them nodded at each other, and then separated to cover the whole area, separating the enemies in three groups of twenty for what they were about to do.

    The pirates were too busy to notice them, but the magic beasts felt the girls using them as trampolines to jump into the air, before a beautiful pair of wings suddenly appeared on their backs.

    As soon as their wings appeared, two things happened, first pretty smiles flourished on their faces as they felt Daimon''s mana circting in their mana circuits, second the pirates finally couldn''t ignore them anymore.

    Unfortunately, it was toote for them, the three girls shouted in unison.

    "Feather Massacre Tsunami".

    "Ice de Spiral".

    "Nightmare Demonic Dawn".

    Then three different wide area attacks rained down upon the pirates and Skelefiends, of course the girls were smart enough to not assign Yvonne to attack the Skelefiends, since her affinity is darkness.

    So first a fire tsunami flooded most of the Skelefiends, as some of the middle Lord ranked ones managed to dodge the attack, then ice spikes raised from the ground and started rotating, stabbing both pirates and Skelefiends, some unfortunate bastards whose armors had uncovered spaces got their limbs cleanly cut by the ice des andstly a ck line of light hit the ground "missing" the pirates which made them mockinglyugh as they moved away putting some distance.

    But then with a snap of Yvonne''s fingers, with the are of impact of that line of ck light, a round sphere raised from the ground engulfing all the pirates as her attack had thergest area of effect out of the three.

    Those were the area of effect version of the spells they learned thanks to their lineage, which they were only able to use when they were using their wounds.

    By the time the attacks ended, their wings forcefully disappeared because those attacks used all the mana Daimon had given to them, so they graciously descended to the ground, just in time to see the result of their bombardment.

    The early stage Skelefiends practically melted in the tsunami of fire, while the middle stage ones suffered some burns here and there, the group in the center which consisted in both pirates and skelefiends suffered two different fates, those who had flesh were stabbed by ice de and ice spikes at some point, ending in funny positions while their blood stained the ground, that or they were frozen and immobile which was the case of the Skelefiends.

    Their bones also had started to creak and be fragile due to the sudden drop in the temperature, so if they moved too much their bodies would probably shatter, as for the third group which consisted in only pirates¡­ well, once the ck sphere disappeared all of them had melted into ck puddles, leaving only their clothes and armors left, surprisingly some had a few life-saving objects which they threw as if they had chosen to die by their own will.

    "Yvi, that spell of yours is as terrifying as always~", mumbled Leslie, unlike her, Yvonne''s attack killed all the pirates, early or middle stage none of them escaped.

    "Most people aren''t prepared for spells that affect the mind, if they could have seen through the nightmare the darkness wouldn''t have had enough time to corrode their bodies, or they would have broken free from the sphere", said Yvonne as she shook her head.

    "Lili is the winner this time, her ice has grown colder with Daimon''s mana", added Yvonne as she saw the Skelefiends frozen like popsicles.

    Needless to say, but the magic beasts and the surviving enemies were both in awe, unlike Aisha and the three princesses, in their eyes these girls were fairing pretty average earlier, but then in the split of a second, they wiped all the early-stage Lord ranks and about a third of the middle stage ranks.

    Only eighteen middle stage Lord ranks remained, and they were already surrounded by the magic beasts, not only that but they saw those beautiful but death-announcing wings sprout out of the Risha sisters''s backs, though this time they weren''t asrge or majestic, since they were using their own mana to activate them, it was still a hard blow to the moral of the enemies.

    "Booom!", and just like that while five of magic beasts were holding the enemies, the remaining two which were the eel and the turtle, as well as the Risha sisters bombarded them once again.

    They wrapped things up just in time to see Daimon returning to the area of the main battlefield.

    Daimon saw their faces which has the words "praise me" written all over them, and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, he first ordered a couple of the magic beasts to go guard the first princess, before he beckoned at the Risha sisters.

    "Come here you three, let me give you some mana", said Daimon, which made them brightly smile as they approached him.

    He also wanted to see if they didn''t hurt their mana circuits, because this was the first time he saw them using such wide area spells, and they practically used all the mana in their wings alongside them.

 Chapter 327 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 6)

    Once the Risha sisters were within reach they turned around and showed Daimon their backs, before he ced his hands on them to give them some of his mana, he also inspected their mana circuits to make sure they were alright, the image of the mana circuits of their mothers practically breaking after using their wings still had a big impact on him, though Veronica''s medicine healed them, the pain they experienced must be excruciating, imagine a lesion in a nerve but multiplied per ten times in the best-case scenario.

    Luckily with a quick scan which he limited to only their backs to not see anything he shouldn''t, he noticed that instead of getting brittle or suffer tension, the sets of mana circuits in their backs which were used as the base for their wings, were instead full of vitality.

    As if the more they used them, the stronger they were getting, which made sense, they only became able to manifest their wings recently, so they still needed to exercise them, as a proof of that they couldn''t fly with them but they were able to levitate for a couple of seconds and slow down their falls.

    The three sisters stared at the other and noticed thefortable expression in each other''s faces, but decided to remain silent and just enjoy the moment.

    While Daimon shared some mana with those three, he also looked at the remaining battlefield, where Miserius had be fiercer, he abandoned all defense and just focused on killing Mellie.

    That''s right, after realizing he wasn''t going to be able tond a hit on Aisha because her speed was overwhelming, not to mention her attacks which generated thunders once they impacted him, which were then used by Mellie to double the sonic shockwave essentially sending him flying no matter how much he fought back, the Skelefiend suddenly leaked an insane amount of acid mana.

    Which he then absorbed and released upon Mellie from above.

    "Go to hell bitch!", the Skelefiend hystericallyughed, he endured those heavy kicks and punches as well as the sound shockwaves whichbined had destroyed a lot of his enhanced bones, just to directly kill Jasmine because at this point, he didn''t care about anything else, he wanted to stop Aisha from one-shooting him with an even stronger version of that spell.

    A green cloud condensed in less than a second above Mellie before a green thick rain showered her, releasing a hissing sound due to the toxicity of the liquid, it was the same spell used by the Skelefiend Feller earlier, speaking about him he was among those who Liliana froze with her attack and was ultimately shattered into pieces, along with the rest of his subordinates which were melted by Leslie''s fire.

    But then Miserius eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, the green rain which still hadn''t stopped was separated, as a white translucid cube emerged from within it.

    "Light Fortress", Jasmine calmly stood there as her spell shielded her from the acid rain, which was still falling on her.

    The Skelefiend gritted his teeth and in ast try, he took some impulse and threw his weapon, which was a green trident towards her.

    The idea had some merit, Jasmine''s spell could withstand a peak Lord ranked attacks for thirty minutes, or the ones of an early Arch rank for one minute, it could only be used once a day and the one which would receive its protection must be facing a life threatening danger for the spell to be casted, the downside to it is that it''s an stationary spell, meaning she can''t move while being inside of the fortress, it''s ast resort type of spell after all.

    That didn''t mean it couldn''t be broken with brute force, the protection could be worn out by constant attacks, and that''s what Miserius was trying to do, unfortunately for him, this time Jasmine wasn''t alone.

    "Sea Current Serenade ?", Mellie''s mellow voice echoed through the battlefield, she used her bow to y the strings of her fiddle, and a stream of vibrations was shot from her instrument towards the ck trident.

    Though Mellie''s attack wasn''t strong enough to knock down the trident, it forced it to change it''s direction, so itpletely missed Jasmine, thus destroying hisst hope, especially because Jasmine finished casting her spell at the same time.

    "Silver Spear", by Jasmine''smand a silver spear''s image appeared behind Aisha, who appeared in a sh right next to Miserius, with her pretty index finger pointed at him,

    ''Count yourself lucky Skelefiend'', thought Aisha as both metal and lightning mana gathered at the tip of her finger, before a ray of silver light was shot from it, it would be more urate to call it a silver sh because that''s everything anyone saw, one whose area covered a diameter of about two meter.

    Aisha''s attacks were already really hard to follow up, now imagine what happened when that attack''s speed was tripled thanks to Jasmine''s spell.

    Before Miserius could even blink to protect his eyes from getting burned due to the silver sh, his arms and everything below his waist disappeared.

    "Boooom", and that wasn''t all, everything in a one hundred meters range behind Miserius exploded, leaving a smoking crater whose bottom couldn''t be seen from above.

    "Aghhhh!", the attack was so fast that Miserius''s brain only registered what happened almost a secondter, his now limbless body fell to the ground, and though the wounds were cauterized due to the high heat contained in the ray of silver light, he couldn''t help but scream due to the exposition to such a extremely positive element like lightning.

    Also strong silver-purple currents of electricity ran through his body, making him retort on the ground, his enhancement was cancelled as the symbols were destroyed by Aisha''s lightning, and then Miserius an Arch peak Lord ranked from such a bloodthirsty race as the Skelefiends, foamed from his mouth before he fainted due to pain.

    Aisha snapped her fingers and the lightning stopped assaulting Miserius''s body, previously when the battle started Daimon her to not kill the Skelefiend, because he had some questions to do to, he could have easily destroyed Miserius using his White Heavenly Javeline, since Demon Light was the bane of any negative nature being.

    Not to mention their enhancement didn''t work as supposed against him, inparison he already had pirate hostages, and the idea of killing Lucas didn''t cause any reaction in his sixth sense, so he went ahead and left the Skelefiend to his mother, while he fought Lucas.

    Just as the fight ended, Aisha saw her son as well as the Risha sisters and Karmandi''s subordinates approaching them, and she giggled noticing the still flushed faces of those three.

    "And here I was wondering howe you haven''t finished your battle yet, turns out you were taking a sweet moment to "rest"~", she said with a yful voice.

    Daimon chuckled, but the Risha sisters bit the bullet and didn''t let Aisha''s words affect them¡­ too much.

    "Ahem, we just used too much mana so a rest was needed", shily answered Leslie.

    "Mm, those guys were trash but they outnumbered us", added Yvonne.

    "¡­", Liliana remained silent, but she agreed with her sisters in using that as their excuse.

    "Boooom!", a sudden explosion drew everyone''s attention as the battered bodies of the two Bottom Shreddersnded a few meters away from Daimon and the girls, the things were covered in chemical burns and their bones were visible at some parts, they were practically sacks of ones with skin attached to them, it was surprising that they were still alive.

    At the same time the ground trembled and Neal came from within underground, with Karmandi still in his small form sitting on the centipede''s head.

    It was worth mentioning that Neal had deep cut marks at many parts of its body, result of the ws of the Bottom Shredders after they used their enhanced forms, which allowed them to equal or maybe even slightly surpass him, his life would have been in danger if not for Karmandi lending him a hand in the shadows.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Karmandi suppressed the Bottom Shredders with his mana pressure and then Neal used his best spell, which melted arge part of the forest nearby due to a river of poison that was created by him, but didn''tst enough to cause other people''s troubles.

    "Neal told me you have a use for these guys, so I brought them barely alive, do with them as you please¡­ I was able to confirm that all the ones who had rationality in other words those at the early stage of the peak Mortal level and above betrayed the Empress by their own will", said Karmandi with a resented voice.

    Daimon nodded in other words, all the Arch ranks of the Bottom Shredder race decided to stab their benefactor in the back for some benefits as they weren''t just wild beasts anymore, as for the Lord ranks and below some followed them due personal loyalty, and the rest were enved for investigation purposes.

    With some gestures, Daimon asked the turtle to freeze the prisoners and transport them over its shell, that''s why he brought a seventh magic beast with them anyway.

    After doing that, they walked towards the area where the first princess and the maid Chris as well as the three paralyzed girls, were being guarded by two of Karmandi''s subordinates.

    Speaking of Chris she had a troubled expression right now, the battle she witnessed a moment ago, waspletely out of proportions for people of the younger generation, it was a ughter, something normally only the army gets to see, there were dismembered bodies, and corpses all over the battlefield.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed as he looked at the three paralyzed girls, before he turned to see Chris.

    "What kind of poison were they injected?", he asked.

    "Before they it took effect, they told me it''s bone softening poison, something the pirates use for¡­ their disgusting hobbies, those below the middle stage of the middle Mortal level who are infected with it can''t move their bodies no matter what, for the next twelve hours at least".

    Daimon nodded as he approached them while he took out something from his pocket, but then Chris''s face paled as she saw Daimon throwing a wisp of those terrifying mes at the three paralyzed maids.

    "What are you doing!", she eximed as she got up ready to fight with her life at the stake for her friends¡­ but the next events that unfolded made her words stuck on her throat.

    "Fucking psycho!", the girl in the middle which was called Amira suddenly jumped to avoid the whisp of white mes that was about tond on her a moment ago.

    The me then changed its direction and the other girls Nadia and Pam also suddenly regained their mobility.

    "You three can move", mumbled Chris with an interrogating voice.

    Nadia immediately answered.

    "Yeah, the part of the arrows that pierced our skin didn''t have poison, though the rest of it had, we were waiting for the pirates to approach us to¡­ take at least one of them down with us, maybe like that we would have given time to the young miss to escape".

    Thest girl Pam nodded, but then she looked at Daimon as if she was looking at a madman.

    "The battle just ended so we were still on hold, until that crazy guy tried to kill us!".

    Chris let out a sigh of relief, she took one of the arrows which was piercing Pam''s leg earlier, until she removed it and was able to confirm that she was saying the truth, the tip of the arrow''s head didn''t have poison, just one of the borders, which was understandable as pirates weren''t exactly a responsible bunch, the guy in charge of doing it probably just cked and halfway did his job.

    "p, p, p", Daimon pping his hands made everyone''s attention fall on him.

    "I''ll admit it, the guy behind all this sure is a hell of a schemer, what a shame these tricks don''t work on me".

    Daimon nodded at Karmandi, and the snake general let out some of his pressure.

    Needless to say but the pressure of a Half Emperor magic beast made the three maids to copse on the ground, with a suffocating sensation pressing on their chests.

    "Even I would have been inclined to believe you, if it wasn''t for the antidote you took prior to being hit by the arrows", said Daimon as he walked towards the maids.

    "What antidote, you bastard, check our pockets we can''t even take out anything from your rings!", shouted Amira.

    Chris and also Daphne red at Daimon, they didn''t want to doubt him, but it was their friends the ones being used here, people with which they grew since they were practically babies.

    Daimon crouched down behind Amira, and the maid freaked out, with a frightened expression she cried to the first princess.

    "Young miss run; this guy is just like the pirates!".

    Daimon snorted in response.

    "You three traitors together can''tpare to one of mypanions, why would I want to have anything to do with an ugly bitch with a ck heart", he said as he took off Amira''s left shoe and turned it upside down.

    "If you aren''t lying then what is this?".

    "Ting", a little crystal tube with a needle at one of its ends fell from within the shoe, Daimon then threw it at Chris so she could show it to Daphne since she was unable to move due to how exhausted she was.

 Chapter 328 The First Battle Of The Allied Army (Part 6)

    Chris observed the little thing and her nose wrinkled a couple of times, as the personal maids of the princess they all had some formation in how to treat wounds, poisoning and the like, so it wasn''t hard for her to guess the functionality of the liquid previously contained in it.

    "This an antidote¡­", mumbled Chris with an ash-death expression on her face.

    The first princess was the same, she didn''t speak, in fact Daimon hasn''t heard her saying a word since they met, but the pain and sadness in her eyes made obvious what she was feeling right now.

    "We don''t have time to lose here", said Daimon as he got up and then pointed Disaster''s edge at Amira''s neck.

    "You have seen what this sword can do, now tell me everythng you know or die a horrible death, your choice".

    Amira''s body trembled, she saw what that sword did to Joshua, she had no doubt that it was a horrible way to die, her pupils contracted like needles as she saw the edge of the ck sword approaching her neck and she immediately shouted.

    "W-Wait, we don''t know anything important, also if we were to talk about it we''ll die due to a contract!".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the fear of death made Amira lose her control, she actually peed herself, but he didn''t pay too much attention to that, he instead nodded before saying.

    "Then you are useless", Daimon moved his hand to swing his sword at her and Amira retorted her body to see Daphne directly at her eyes.

    "Young miss, Chris save me! this guy is a maniac, we were forced, we are friends!", she shouted with a pretty convincible hurt and sad expression on her face.

    Chris clenched her fists, a part of her believed her friend, making her want to stand up to the silver haired youth, though she knew she had no chance at all, she was the oldest one and she promised that if the day came, she will die before them.

    Daimon shook his head; he used Disaster to cut a piece of the blouse of Amira which covered the left side of her waist.

    "I told you, these salon tricks won''t work on me", he said as he took a little capsule which was still attached to her skin.

    He threw it at Chris once again, and just by smelling it her eyes got teary and a sad expression unwillingly appeared on her face.

    "Woe Potion", said Chris, as she threw the capsule to the ground, it was a potion which allowed someone to look miserable, sad and hurt over something, something that could trick anyone below the Half Emperor realm, as it was refined using the suffering of others, which of course was a forbidden practice punishable with death in the Clear Water kingdom

    Amira finally couldn''t hold it anymore, none of her life-saving measures worked and knowing her death was inevitable she gave Daimon a poisonous gaze

    "You will ro¡­ aghhh!", she couldn''t finish her sentence before Daimon stabbed Disaster in the center of her back, right behind her stomach.

    "You talk too much", snorted Daimon as Amira became a dry mummy before it turned into dust, that disappeared a secondter.

    Chris opened her mouth as she saw Amira being killed, but words didn''te out, she only came out of her daze when she felt someone tugging her right sleeve.

    She turned to see the first princess, just to see her pointing at Daimon, who was walking towards the other two maids, who were retorting on the ground and screaming trying their best hoping that maybe they would somehow able to escape from Karmandi''s mana pressure and run for their lives.

    Needless to say but it wasn''t working and when they felt Daimon''s presence behind them, both of them paled and immediately shouted.

    "W-Wait, we''ll do whatever you want, please spare our lives!", this time they didn''t even try to appeal to Daphne or Chris, but they did so directly to Daimon, they even swayed their hips in a try to sound convincing.

    The Risha sisters softly snorted while Aisha giggled.

    ''Shameless bitches'', they thought.

    Daimon shook his head, not to mention he didn''t find these girls attracting, even if they were the beauties, their hearts were rotten, they were the type of people who Daimon hated the most, ungrateful traitors.

    While Daimon isn''t a saint, he will never repay kindness with betrayal, and he will never forgive a traitor, though he didn''t know why he felt such a strong aversion against traitors, considering he never suffered from it.

    He was victim of having an asshole father¡­ in his two lives so far, and yet for his father back at earth he forgot about him a long time ago, he got what he deserved and he decided to treat it like a pebble in his path nothing more.

    As for Isaac what he hated wasn''t him being discarded or never considered family from the Naktis to begin with which was probably the case, so he didn''t consider them as traitors, since all along he knew they weren''t his family to begin with, but the fact that his actions led to his beloved Aisha''s death, is something he will never forget.

    Sure, he was able to bring her back, but what where the odds of it, if he didn''t awaken as a system user, he would have lost something irreceable in that mountain years ago, that''s what he was unable to forgive the Naktis for.

    Through the years Daimon managed to sort and limit his burning hatred for the Naktis to just the ones that caused the previous, it was the girls the ones that soothed his heart and prevented him from getting swayed by hatred.

    And now he has discovered something he hates in a simr proportion, which is betrayal.

    ''I guess no one likes betrayal'', thought Daimon as he proposed himself to stab Disaster down on the head of Nadia, unlike Amira he decided to let them off the hook faster, in the mean that they will die on the spot instead of experiencing their vitality and mana abandoning their bodies before they descended into the eternal darkness.

    "Wait!", Chris who got up and walked until she was standing in front of Daimon, made him frown.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Chris could feel the interrogative gaze of the silver haired youth on her and she couldn''t help but unconsciously shiver, those violet amethyst eyes were like ckholes which dragged one''s soul into it.

    This wasn''t something derived from personal power, as she has been in the presence of the king, the Trident Marshal, the ancestor of the royal family and the mother of Daphne, all strong cultivators at least in the Half Ster realm, and yet she never felt so intimidated in her life so far.

    Still, the maid Chris closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then slightly bowed her head as she said.

    "The first princess asks if it''s possible to take those two as prisoners¡­ we can interrogate themter after all".

    After a second which seemed like an eternity for Chris, the unwavering voice of Daimon made her speechless.

    "No".

    Chris straightened her position and then as calm as possible she asked.

    "Why is that¡­ you are so strong that bringing two hostages wouldn''t affect you at all, not to mention you took that Skelefiend and those magic beasts as prisoners?".

    Daimon nodded in response.

    "There is a difference, these three had admitted they don''t know anything important, and they are under a contract of some kind so they can''t reveal the small information they have anyway".

    Daimon then pointed at Miserius and the Bottom Shredders as he added.

    "You can see the state in which I took them in as prisoners, and when they answer to what I want which I can assure you they will, it will be their end, so I didn''t forgive their lives, I merely conceded them a small extension, I bet by the time I finish they will beg for death, the offer I gave these three was the same".

    He had to take more time with Miserius and the Bottom Shredders because they were harder to deal with, but these three maids were easy to suppress so there was no need to waste time with them, the result would be the same.

    Daimon ignored Chris for a moment and then looked at the first princess who was silently gazing at him, with those expressive eyes of hers.

    "I don''t pretend to tell you I know how you feel, I understand you considered them part of your family and I respect that, but they never thought of you like that, since the moment they opened their mouths all what they said were lies".

    "With how things are all my attention is focused in taking mypanions out of this ce safe and sound, and I don''t have time to babysit traitors, a painless death is the only mercy they''ll get from me".

    "I came to lend a hand because I needed a Skelefiend to interrogate¡­ and because Mellie asked me to do it, the situations aligned so I didn''t mind, but whether you decide toe with us or not, I will kill these two because I''m not na?ve enough to believe they won''t stab us in the back if I let them live".

    Daimon is a firm believer of not letting witnesses, forgiving a death enemy is just asking to be bitten in the asster on, of course if he could put a leash on them things changed, unfortunately his terror contractor skill and soul contracts didn''t work here.

    Daphne seemed to be lost on her thoughts for a moment, different emotions shed through her eyes, until she clumsily stood up, it was obvious she was still too affected after having given her all in her previous battle, in fact it was praise-worthy that she was still conscious at this point.

    Chris tried to help her, but Daphne stopped her from doing so, she with her still trembling legs slowly approached Daimon, until she was only a few centimeters away from him.

    This was the first time Daimon saw her up-close and he noticed something that he previously overlooked, she had a small cross scar in her pale neck, which was hidden by a ne she was wearing.

    He only noticed it, because after the chaos of the battle her clothes and essories were a bit messy, that also exined why she didn''t speak, it''s not that she didn''t want to¡­ she couldn''t.

    After looking at Daimon directly into his eyes, Daphne ced her hands on Disaster''s hilt and then she nodded at him, to Chris''s disbelief.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, but he then understood what she meant, since they were her friends who betrayed them, she wanted to be the one to put an end to them, it was her way to cut them out of her life.

    ''What a strange girl¡­ but she''s got guts'', thought Daimon as he stabbed downwards killing Nadia on the spot, as he promised her death immediate, she didn''t have time to feel pain, the same applied to Pam and only after that, the first princess''s eyes closed, her fatigue finally got her.

    The maid Chris supported Daphne to prevent her from falling, her mind was a disaster right now but she didn''t say anything, with the recent actions and words of the silver haired youth, she realized he wasn''t the disciple of the Trident Marshal.

    Or he would have listened to the request of the first princess, even if it was just an excuse to forgive the lives of Nadia and Pam, but the silver haired youth didn''t flinch at all.

    "We are leaving now, if youe with us you won''t be able to leave until we are out of this ce, if you can''t ept those conditions feel free to leave", said Daimon as he walked towards Neal, Aisha and the Risha sisters followed him instantly, surprisingly Jasmine did too, she didn''t even seem to be ufortable with Daimon killing the maids.

    Mellie inwardly sighed before saying.

    "I hope you cane, I used to y with Daphne when we were kids and I know for a fact she is a good person, just like auntie Vs¡­ but Gabriel is right, whoever is behind this has investigated us at a personal level, with the goal to exploit our weaknesses, alone we don''t stand a chance, but since the moment I met Gabriel he ha led us to victory, he worries about the group and I''m willing to bet my life that he wouldn''t betray nor abandon us, think about it".

    After saying that Mellie also followed Daimon and the others, this time the girls all rode on top of Neal, the tunnel was already created so the centipede will take less time to return to the cave, and the other magic beasts were more tired which reduced their speed.

    The Risha sisters sat at Daimon''s left side, while Aisha was clinging to his right arm, Jasmine sat behind him, at the left side, leaving a free space which Mellie took.

 Chapter 329 Rest & Interrogation (Part 1)

    Daimon saw Mellie returning and he nodded at her, before he tapped Neal''s head.

    "Let''s go, we have a lot left to do".

    As the centipede was about to dive into the ground, a girl''s voice could be hearding from the east.

    "Wait¡­ please let us go with you", it was Chris who was carrying Daphne, the maid was also tired so she was having a hard time doing it as she isn''t a knight but a mage and her physical strength isn''t really high.

    Daimon asked Neal to wait for them and then helped both the fainted Daphne and the maid Chris to get up the centipede.

    "Thanks", Chris thanked Daimon before she also fell asleep, she has reached her limit a long time ago too, and she needed a ce to rest and to keep the first princess safe, while she recovered, unfortunately they didn''t have mana replenishing potions and that has been a nightmare for Daphne.

    Her race''s specialty was the use of spells with wide areas and high destroying properties, which of course requires arge reserve of mana, even then the Vs often uses mana replenishing potions which specially brewed for them, as they don''t get resistance against them which allows them to take arge number per day before their bodies need to rest as their stamina runs out.

    Unfortunately, Daphne had no ess to her ring, so she has been budgeting her mana throughout the whole time they had been here.

    After making sure those two wouldn''t fall, Daimon gave the order and Neal dived into the ground.

    The other magic beasts soon followed them, until only Karmandi was left.

    "To think there will be someone with thoughts akin to the Empress among the humans, I guess everything is possible nowadays", mumbled the snake general with a smirk before his eyes glowed and then everything in a radius of one hundred kilometers disappeared, leaving only arge crater, but without making any sound.

    Thus, eliminating all the evidences of the battlefield besides the crater, now the only traces were a strong water mana which could belong to a lot of magic beasts, the snake general nodded happy with the result before he dived into the ground.

    ''I must inform to the Empress¡­ this might be the chance us beasts from the Maelstrom Sea had been striving for'', he thought as he caught up with the others.

    The first battle of this strange alliance finally ended, with a crushing victory for Daimon and Karmandi, not only that, but they now had the higher ground, in the meaning that the three princesses were safe and sound, so the pirates and Skelefiends got nothing so far.

    ¡­

    It didn''t take too much time for the group to triumphantly return to their hideout, Daimon made sure to copse all the part of the tunnel which was near the battlefield, so that no one noticed they arrived moving underground.

    A soon as they returned things got busy in the cave of the magic beasts, the ones that needed rest were helped by their healthyrades, the sea flea was still imprisoned in ice and Ulkrear''s former subordinates didn''t cause any problem.

    "I''ll deal with these guys, you also go take a rest, I want to be present for the interrogation if it''s not too much to ask", said Karmandi as he looked at Daimon.

    Daimon nodded as he answered.

    "No problem, just keep an eye on them, I made sure they don''t have any kind of traceable device and the Sea Devil Ore is blocking any signs of life".

    Neal made Daimon onest favor and took them to the first cave which was above their, before leaving to have a well deserved rest, not without catching something Daimon threw at him with its mouth.

    The centipede chewed on the thing and his eyes glowed, it was a poisonous pill, which for creatures with poison attribute would be considered as a medicine, the deepest wounds Neal had on its body immediately looked better, though they didn''t close they stopped bleeding, which saved the centipede a lot of recover.

    Neal nodded at Daimon before it returned to Karmandi''s sides, of course that action didn''t escape from the girls eyes and they had different reactions towards it.

    Aisha giggled, she was once worried that her son would grow to be a muscle head since he showed so much interest and talent in the knight''s path, but she could tell Erin taught her nice rational skills, the only problem is that she might have¡­ "negatively" influenced him, in other aspects but it was worth it.

    The Risha sisters were amused that Daimon basically bribed the centipede, though it could also be seen as a little thanks for having stopped Karmandi from killing the Bottom Shredders as they were information sources, even their corpses would probably be extremely valuable for researchers.

    Jasmine was helping with applying minor first aid to Daphne and Chris on one of the beds, mostly because her mana levels were pretty low so this was the best she could do for now, so she didn''t see them.

    But Mellie''s attention was attracted to a different thing, with the stupor of the battle she forgot Daimon had somehow ess to an spatial type treasure, only now after she saw him giving a medicine of some kind to the centipede she remembered it.

    "Chris only needs some rest, she''ll wake up in an hour or so and will be able to move and fight without any problem but¡­ the first princess isn''t that lucky, she hasn''t had the time to let her mana to fully recover and the stress has affected her mana body, she won''t wake up until all her reserves have fully recovered and the more we wait, the worse she will feel when she wakes up", said Jasmine as she approached Mellie and the others.

    Mellie had a troubled expression in her face as she gazed at Daimon, but before she could say anything, Daimon grabbed her hand and handed her a couple of bottles.

    "The first one is to improve her stamina recovery, the second one is a simple mana replenish one, the third one is to elerate her body''s natural recovery, her body is all tensed up so it''s better to do it this way than directly healing her", said Daimon.

    People from the young generation would normally drink healing potions over any wound like idiots, without knowing that when their bodies are new to be put through tension, and then they just let go of all that by using a potion, it''s a source of inner indetectable wounds.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Think of it like this, when you stretch a rubber band and then letting go, it would have a strong recoil, and while ultimately it will keep its shape, there will be micro tears in it which will lead to it breakingter on, inparison when you instead slowly let it return to its original size, there will be no damage.

    This is something Aisha taught her son back when he was little, knowledge that descends from the only person in the Silverheart family that treated Aisha like family instead of an asset, her grandmother who isn''t around anymore, and also a former alchemist that specialized in treating people with fragile bodies¡­ like Aisha when she was a baby.

    "Once you had given her the three, wait 45 minutes and then ask Jasmine to use a regr healing spell, she''ll wake up in less than 20 minutes after that".

    Daimon then handed Jasmine some potions too, so she could recover her mana faster, of course he did the same to the other girls, he kind of forgot to give it to them prior to the battle, he already had secured a safety for them, so it simply escaped his mind.

    The girls dly epted the potions and threw themselves on the bed to rest, Aisha included.

    Jasmine sat on the edge of her bed to meditate while she absorbed the effects of the potion, while Mellie stood there with a contemtive expression.

    "Are you sure, we don''t know where we will be leaving, giving away this kid of things is a bit¡­", she mumbled, to which Daimon scratched the back of his head.

    "Don''t worry I have tons of this things¡­ I just forgot to give you all some before we left".

    "Pfft", Mellie couldn''t help but giggle upon hearing Daimon''s words, he was clearly embarrassed to have overlooked such a thing, in his defense the group with which he is used to fight are often the one taking care of him not the other way around, since all the girls with the exception of Aisha are way stronger and experienced than him.

    Mellie''s mellow voiceughing was like little silver bells ringing, a please to the ear, and this was also the first time Daimon has seen her acting like a normal girl her age, when she finally was able to stopughing she apologized.

    "Sorry, it was just too funny, I was starting to think you were some kind of old general in disguise instead of someone from the young generation, thanks for helping Daphne, she is probably the closest to a friend I had ever had, besides my sister of course, unlike the other princes she acted like an older sister when I was younger, so I have a reason to help her".

    Mellie stopped for a couple of seconds before saying.

    "But you don''t¡­ so why did you lend her a hand?", mumbled Mellie with a slightly shy voice, she has never expected anything from anyone nor asked anything from anyone.

    And yet she found herself indebted to Daimon on a regr basis, it was a strange new thing for her, also she believed to have "analyzed" Daimon at this point, why he acted like he does, and the like, just to be proven wrong every time.

    For example, he went and saved Jasmine although she was with someone, she realized was Daimon''s enemy, and so far, he hasn''t shown any disdainful or negative attitude towards her, nor her has tried to manipte her at all.

    Also, she thought he didn''t like unnecessary problems and yet, while he had the chance to just take Daphne away, he decided to sh with the Skelefiends and the pirates

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "I could say the same of you, all the people here epted my leadership and followed me to battle, you trusted your lives to me, so it''s my responsibility to protect you to the best of my capacities and bring you all back safe and sound".

    "The first princess is a decent girl and you wanted to save her, I don''t need ay reason to lend a hand if it align with the original goal anyway", said Daimon as he shrugged.

    Mellie was taken back by Daimon''s response, ultimately, she could only chuckle in response.

    "You are really a strange guy, killing without a second of hesitation but at the same time being able to show so much concern for other people''s lives~", said Mellie as she went to the other bed to feed Daphne the potions to help her recover.

    ''Not that I dislike it'', she thought.

    Daimon hopped on the bed next to Aisha and also focused on rest and recover his battle aura reserves, he held Aisha''s hands without anyone noticing as he thought.

    ''When you have resolved to protect someone, you don''t leave them die no matter what''.

    Without Daimon knowing, inside the space where Evangeline resided, thetter was observing at the sky that was above her, which was filled with countless golden spiked chains.

    "Crack!", another one of the countless chains had stared to show signs of breaking, what''s the big deal with it, if it has already happened once before you ask, the reason is very simple.

    Among the sea of chains, there is arge variety of sizes, small, thin,rge, wide and narrow ones, previously the one that broke was among the smaller and thinnest ones, but this time¡­ it was one of thergest, one of the ones that came from the very sky of this space.

    ''I wish I could say it is as I expected from my host but to be honest, this fully surpasses what I calcted¡­ you old bastards were wrong and will pay for it, I only wish I can be there at his side when it happens~", she mumbled as she waved her hand, shattering a notification that popped in front of them a moment ago.

    In a rare asion the blurred figure of Evangeline instead of showing signs of being tired, she was happily humming right now while she was resting on top of a white cloud.

 Chapter 330 Rest & Interrogation (Part 2)

    "Mm?", Aisha noticed her son holding her hand and she smiled and cuddled with him, Daimon who had closed his eyes to rest and recover to his peak state after having used Core Synchrony, felt the soothing sensation of his mother''s warmth and he couldn''t help but put on afortable expression.

    Which didn''t escape the Risha sisters, but they didn''t say anything, the sensation of Daimon''s mana circting in their mana circuits was enough to keep them happy¡­ for now.

    There was another girl who stole some gazes at them from time to time, Jasmine drank the one of the mana replenishing potions Daimon handed her with a contemtive expression in her pretty face.

    She yed with the empty bottle, as she was lost in her thoughts.

    ''When I was travelling with that guy he kept asking for potions and other resources, and never asked me if I still had some left for me, nor ever offered any of his nor he cared if I was wounded or not¡­ from the very beginning he was using me, he never cared about me as apanion like Gabriel does'', she thought as she clenched her little fists.

    But then she felt someone''s gaze on her, and she returned to reality, she followed the origin of the sensation and notices Daimon''s left eyes which was slightly opened and looking at her.

    ''Sorry'', she spelled without actually letting out any sound, but then her eyes widened a bit as she heard Daimon''s voice on directly on her ears.

    ''Don''t let him take anything else away from you, of course make him pay, but don''t let his actions change you nor rule your life''.

    Ultimately Jasmine could only smile, before sheid down on the bed to refine the mana replenishing potion.

    Daimon closed his eye once again, a moment ago he felt a burning hatred aura near which wasn''t directed to anyone in the room, and then the unmistakable sound of a notification rang in his ears.

    [Ding]

    [The level of trust of the daughter of the Northern Sky has been updated <!>]

    [Level of trust currently attained 10% ¨¤ 15%]

    Daimon dismissed the notifications, he had no intention of manipting Jasmine, nor he has used any skill to cloud her mind, why do you ask, it would be easy for him using "Casanova", and the effect of the tittle "Promise of the Northern Sky", "Sanctuary" would be infinitely better which is a lot to say considering it is already quite incredible.

    [Sanctuary: Once a day, the host will be able to select full recovery of either, mana, battle aura, stamina, vitality, or heal any wound as long as the host is still alive (further development, requires the host to repair the broken trust caused by the failure of the previous holder of the oath)]

    It''s practically a second life if used properly, so what would its advanced effect might be, no one would be able to me him for doing so, he originally saved her due to the mission, though his instincts did tell him it was the right thing to do as well.

    But the whole thing changed when Daimon looked at her eyes after she realized she was used by Adam¡­ because he saw some of his old self in her, the deep burning hatred which he was able to ovee thanks to the girls, had started to show in Jasmine''s eyes.

    And originally, he was indifferent towards it, Adam was going to get a spoon of his own medicine, once they got out of this ce, with Jasmine alive she was of course going to tell her grandmother, and Adam was going to pay for what he did.

    But he also saw her chatting,ughing and cooperating with the girls and she didn''t deserve to be consumed by hatred, so he decided to lend her a hand, just like someone else did for him many years ago.

    Of course his actions didn''t got unnoticed, for a couple of people, first Aisha who giggled and then tightened her hug around her son''s body to whisper at him.

    ''You have changed a lottely darling, perhaps it was indeed a good idea toe to the academy~''.

    Daimon chuckled with his eyes still closed, but he still answered.

    ''I feel different too, those three, Calvin, Michael, Loren, Haylee, Aliya, Boris, ¡­ I never thought I would end up learning so many names outside of my family''.

    ''Not to mention adding some of them to the family, like the little bird girls~'', added Evangeline.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head.

    ''Let''s just rest, Narasha you were incredible earlier, the way you blocked that guy''s attacks surpassed what we previously practiced''.

    ''Thanks, it was really fun Daimon, I want to break other magic weapons for you~'', said Narasha with an unusual energetic voice.

    ''Sure, we''ll have more of itter''.

    ¡­

    The rest of the hour Daimon kept chatting with Aisha, Narasha and Evangeline who was surprisingly talkative today instead of being constantly napping like normally.

    Once the hour passed, Daimon opened his eyes and then he tapped Aisha''s shoulder, to which she unwillingly let go of him, as it was time to work once again.

    As Daimon got up he saw that Mellie and Jasmine were finishing the treatment of the first princess, while the maid Chris had already woken up a couple of minutes earlier, she was still a bit in shock for what happened earlier, but she didn''t forget to give Daimon a grateful gaze.

    Especially because Mellie told her about him giving her the potions she fed Daphne, and also how he exined to tend to her, so there won''t be side effects for all the tension she had put her body through.

    Daimon nodded at her, and then he looked at the three sisters which were sleeping, in those strange positions, Leslie was upying arge part of their side of the bed with her arms and legs extended, Yvonne''s ck ling hair was neatly spread covering her face and chest, while Liliana was covered with the nket from her toes to her neck, leaving only her head out.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "They have such bad sleeping habits", he mumbled as he walked towards the hole in the ground that led to the second cave.

    ''I''ll be back in moment mom'', he said to Aisha as he jumped into the hole in the ground, the next thing wasn''t going to be pleasant to see nor hear after all.

    Once Daimonnded on the second cave, he saw Karmandi as well as the centipede Neal and the snake Kamir already waiting for him.

    "I have soundproofed the cave, just in case¡­ so how do you want to do it, Neal''s poison is helpful to make others spill the beans", said Karmandi.

    He might prefer head on battles, but that didn''t mean he was a muscle head, he reached the position of a general in the files of the ck Empress after all, so he knew how to get information from enemies.

    Daimon knew Karmandi had a lot of questions regarding how many traitors were hiding among his Empress subordinates, and apparently the Bottom Shredders had already given him any information they had, so it was time to divide and conquest.

    "You interrogate the sea flea and I''ll start with the Skelefiend, don''t kill it of course, then we can exchange targets".

    The snake general nodded and then he and his two subordinates slid towards the sea flea, which had received minor treatment so it didn''t die, and was also unfrozen but chained to the wall and poisoned so it couldn''t move just in case.

    Daimon on the other hand walked towards the Skelefiend who was just a trunk as his limbs were blown away by Aisha''s thunder arrow, his bones were nailed to the wall and Karmandi''s subordinates who were able to radiate light were surrounding him and the Bottom Shredders, with the intention of weakening and restraining them.

    Miserius was already awake, his eyes were filled with resentment as he saw Daimon''s silver hair, also just like Aisha, he was wearing the hollow suit, to the Skelefiend was easily able to tell they were rted.

    "You have no idea who you are messing with, no one in this will be able to do anything once that "Lord" start to act", spat the Skelefiend.

    Daimon nodded in response.

    "You are right, I don''t know, but I don''t care also, since he has decided to target me, then he is my enemy and thest thing he will see is my sword cutting its head off, since you seem so talkative why don''t you tell me what''s your deal, you and the pirates wouldn''t move a finger if there is no benefit after all".

    Miserius gritted his teeth before saying.

    "Or what, are you going to torture me, I don''t have any hopes of getting out of here alive, but at the same time you can forget to get anything from me, that "Lord" can and will revive me if I have served him right, so I don''t care about dying!".

    Daimon smirked as a whisp of white mes appeared above his left index finger.

    "Oh, you will die believe me, I''m not offering to freed you under any circumstance besides aplete submission from you, which is unfortunately unavable for the time being, but the way you die can be horrible or peaceful, that is up to you".

    Seeing that the Skelefiend was being stubborn, Daimon beckoned and the whisp of white mesnded on one of its may bones.

    "Aghhhh!", as expected not even a secondter a lung-tearing scream echoed through the cave, getting the attention of all the magic beasts.

    Such a pained scream should be akin to a horrible torture and that''s what they expected to see, but the oue was different, it was just Daimon standing there with an indifferent expression, while a small quantity of white mes consumed one of the bones of Miserius.

    In fact Daimon''s results ended up softening the sea flea which was being threatened by Neal, because Karmandi casually mentioned it will be his turn once they are done with it.

    Daimon approached Miserius and then with a sinister smile he said.

    "I have seen others returning people to "life", and let me tell you a little secret, without at least a piece of the original body it is impossible to do so, as there will be nothing that attaches you to this world".

    "My mes don''t hurt like this because of their temperature, though they are indeed hot, they don''t burn, and instead destroy, in other words by the time I''m finished with you, there will be nothing left, not even ashes, you''ll be 100% death once and forever".

    Miserius was already at the verge of crying due to the horrible pain, which was enough for his mind to be agitated thus being susceptible to Daimon''s Overlord''s Pride, and now listening that he wasn''t going to be electable to be revived, his bravado of before shattered.

    Especially because to his displease, they were indeed told there were "restrictions" to be able to return, and though they weren''t told which were, what Daimon said sounded really convincing and logic right now.

    "W-Wait, I will tall, I will talk!!!", he shouted seeing those mes finishing one of his bones and spreading to a second one, normally when they lose a bone they can grow them back by themselves.

    Given how his limbs were sted away, he knew he couldn''t do it by himself, but there were still medicines that would be able to help him, though they will be painfully expensive, but the bone he just lost was different, he couldn''t feel the wound, the thing was simply gone, he was almost sure it won''t be able to grow back, unless he set a foot on the Ster rank.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and the whisp of Demon Light returned to his body as he took out a chair from his inventory and sat in front of Miserius.

    "That wasn''t so hard, ah right I can tell when others are lying so if you try it say goodbye to more of your bones, now I''m all ears".

    Miserius saw the smirk in the face of the silver haired youth and he felt a shiver running down his spine.

    ''He''s a demon'', he thought as he hurried up and started to spill the beans.

 Chapter 331 Rest & Interrogation (Part 3)

    The Skelefiend who still had a horrified expression remembering the pain caused by Demon Light, started telling Daimon what he knew.

    "First of all, let me tell you I don''t know too much, I might not be under any kind of contract or restriction because of some blood connections with Lord Horroww¡­ but I''m not even close to the top of the food chain".

    "So, I haven''t seen that person even once, only Lord Horrorw and the captain of the Devil Stingray pirates had reunited with him".

    Daimon nodded, his expectations weren''t that high, whoever was behind all this wasn''t stupid enough to let some nobodies see him, but it didn''t matter as he was sure whoever the pirates and Skelefiends leaders knew, was probably still a disguise.

    The identity wasn''t what he was aiming for here, he wanted more context about the whole situation so he could start nning a counterattack.

    "Okay, let''s start with the basics, how may of you are here and who''s the strongest?", he asked.

    "About 800 of us entered this ce, the weakest are in the middle stage of the early Mortal level, as for the strongest, two of Lord Horroww''s generals who are Half Str ranks are leading the whole army half and a half, their strengths are suppressed though so that the Trident Marshal wouldn''t notice them".

    Miserius answer was quite detailed and Daimon would have left it at that¡­ if he couldn''t notice the signs of the Skelefiend omitting information, like his heartbeat elerating and his eyes unconsciously showing some distress.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and a whisp of white mes lit up above his right hand.

    "Didn''t I tell you to not y any tricks, the pirates barely dared to bring around 400 people, since they didn''t want to raise suspicions, so now you are telling me you doubled their numbers without any extra preparation?".

    Miserius felt a shiver running down his spine upon being looked by those violet amethyst eyes, he saw those terrifying mes approaching him and he immediately shouted.

    "W-We found an alternative route that led us to certain spaces in the Wild Tide Reef, also that Lord sold us a process that allowed our race to hide in other creature''s corpses, with it we were able to sneak in the bodies of weak magic beasts that wouldn''t arise any surprise, unfortunately due to the promptness of the situation, we were only able to double our numbers".

    ''If not you all would have died by now'', mentally added Miserius.

    Daimon skillfully yed with the white me giving it different forms and making it swirl around his hand, as he said.

    "Speaking of that, how is that method called and also tell me everything you know about that enhancing you used earlier, did both of them came from that "Lord" you keep mentioning, what are its pros and cons?".

    Miserius was trying to divulgate as less information as possible, but due to his fear he had of those white mes he ended up shooting at his own foot, so now he had to answer.

    "Yeah both methods were given to us by that Lord¡­ as I stated I don''t know too much, but heard from one of the higher-ups that the enhancement method was given to us as a "sign of goodwill", in exchange for us to ally with the pirates, that''s why they also have it".

    "As you previously saw it improves our bodies by using the properties of some magic beasts, giving us a boost in physical aspects and our mage''s realms too, depending on the race we arepatible with, also as a side benefit, we be more resistant to light element attacks¡­ or at least that should be the case", said Miserius as he resentfully looked at the white mes in Daimon''s hand.

    "The same process is used for the magic beasts that have joined us, but they get properties from non-beast races, like us, mermen or the mixed races to which the pirates belong".

    Daimon frowned, it was a really strong enhancement, those who descend from magic beast often have some advantages over humans, the Risha sisters for example, the Revy family and the like, one of the pirs of their families are the race-exclusive talents they have.

    On the other hand, now that Daimon had fought head on with Lucas, he could tell that enhancement couldn''tpare to a real descendant of a human and a magic beast, or magic bests who had be able to take human form before they produced offspring.

    Ultimately they were imitations and integrating other people''s lineages isn''t easy at all, the artificial undead back at the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart are proof of that, among them "abominations" exist, which are basically failed products result of the try ofbining different races to create a stronger one, or a variant.

    But so far, they haven''t been able to do it, all the products were deformed corpses with gic damage, and incredibly short lifespans, though they ended up being re-categorized as abominations bing one of the many different artificial undead races.

    "How much time had passed since you idiots were put through that enhancing process?", asked Daimon, as a realization hit him like a truck.

    Miserius gritted his teeth upon being insulted but he still answered.

    "It''s been two weeks, the method was given to us just recently, and we divided our attention into getting used to the other process we bought from that Lord, one that only our Skelefiend race can use to disguise within the corpse of other creatures, you should all give in, without noticing our spies will surround you both mermen and idiots from the Elemental Sea".

    Daimon snorted, he grabbed one of Miserius''s bones and teared it apart from his body, making the Skelefiendin with a pained expression, but he still didn''t dare to provoke the silver haired youth, and just kept silent.

    Daimon looked at the bone which came from Miserius''s shoulder, when he fought with Lucas he memorized the distribution of those ominous ck symbols, they had different sizes and some of the bigger were on key points like shoulders, knees, chest and the like.<novelnext></novelnext>

    But now that he looked into it, he realized that first there was nothing in the bone, the marks and any other evidence of the process had disappeared without a trace.

    Daimon red at Miserius and the Skelefiend had no choice but to say.

    "We can only use the enhancement once per each "charge", and for that single use we are given a small bottle with the "fuel", don''t ask me what''s in there because I don''t know anything, besides the fact that a lot of blood and flesh from the respective magic beast is needed to produce it".

    Daimon frowned, the whole process were forbidden practices, things that are banned in every ce, magic beasts often don''t care if some low ranks are hunted for food, that''s the cycle of life and they respect it, but when their peers are massively captured and used for experiments, they will bite back.

    Back at his Ster Chart, there is an agreement between the forces and the Half Emperor magic beasts, unless a race is causing troubles to a strong force, they are not to be exterminated, for preservation purposes.

    In exchange to avoid overpoption the forces are allowed to hunt some magic beasts, by missions assigned by their respective academies, families and the like, for example the Keratos that reproduce too much and are too vtile when they approach popted zones, fall in that category.

    As the say goes, "There are no eternal enemies only eternal benefits", both the rulers of the four gxies and the magic beasts had to reach an agreement, for the sake of both parties, o course there are exceptions which are not to be touched, just like how descendants of Half Emperors have "guardian angels" backing them, at the end everything is the same.

    Miserius could tell Daimon wasn''t pleased with the fact that he couldn''t investigate the enhancement process and he inwardlyughed at his disgrace, unfortunately for him, Daimon could read him like a book and his next words were like a bucket of cold water right to his face.

    "Do you really believe that such a convenient poweres without any restriction, that you can just integrate other''s lineages without any side effects, you idiots were fooled, or perhaps your bosses know it but you are the guinea pigs", said Daimon.

    The boosting that pirate used back then when he met Mellie, and the one used by Lucas and Miserius is on par with those that can be considered highly talented in the Clear Water kingdom, like Mellie or him, in other words those who have managed to reach a concentration of about ten percent, thus allowing them to disy a race trait.

    Daimon has the system and ording to Evangeline he already had some kind of thing ongoing even prior to that, which the energy that powers the system and some of his strongest skills, what is responsible of his magic core originally to being able to process mana, prior to the system''s awakening.

    And one of the things his Apex Predator constitution grants him is always being at the top of the food chain, as such he can predate on others but nothing can predate on him, so consuming other lineages and integrating them is including on that, even then he needs to meet some requirements for it to work.

    As for Mellie she was born with thattent lineage and developed it as the years went by, so her body doesn''t reject it, and she is able to endure the tension of stimting it, which boosts her strength and other aspects.

    But the pirates and Skelefiends just gained an although inferior, simr capacity from overnight, and originally even Daimon wasn''t able to notice anything fishy, but that is because he wasn''t looking at the correctyer of the visual spectrum.

    From the outside, structural wise, vitality wise and mana wise the bone was perfectly fine, though Aisha''s attack weakened it by exposition to lightning, it wasn''t irreparable and thus the damage wasn''t permanent.

    But with his infinity eyes he could see that some of the thinnest and almost unnoticeable mana circuits, werepletely thorned apart, they were beyond reparation, in fact Daimon was sure just one usage of that enhancement method took away a few hundreds of years of lifespan from whoever used it, the higher the realm the higher the price.

    These guys weren''t even Arch ranks, unless they had special eyes, they had no way to notice it, and even if they reached the Arch ranks, unless the reached the peak stage and had strong mana senses, they would not be able to see even the most external mana circuits let alone these ones who were really hard to notice.

    Daimonughed at Miserius, the Skelefiend used to believe he will bepensated if he gave his life in this battle, but what could you expect from a someone who uses its allies as guinea pigs, it was obvious they were mere subjects in the eyes of whoever is behind all this.

    ''Whatever, your corpse will be given a decent purpose at least'', thought Daimon as he continued interrogating the Skelefiend.

    Most of the information Miserius had wasn''t too useful, but he managed to get some dates, and other rumors as well as the location of the alternative exit to this ce, and the general distribution of the Skelefiend army from him.

    "If you want more detailed information you''ll have to capture one of the two generals, but I assure you, you will die trying!", said Miserius in a try to make Daimon angry, which was worthless, the Skeefiend didn''t know he also had Half Emperor with him right now, not to mention Rita and Horals were able to at least stall one for a certain period of time if they cooperated.

    "Before I leave you to answer for the deaths of the magic beasts, tell me, is that ck Beard guy also cooperating with you¡­ and why were you looking for this?", asked Daimon as he took out the badge he got from the corpse of that pirate who was supposedly an spy from the Skelefiends ording to the pirates that he captured.

    "D-Devil emblem, how in the name of Snakele did you get it!", shouted Miserius, the Skelefiend who already knew was going to die lost his cool once again, a reaction which Daimon found interesting.

    "Oh, so you do know about it, thest Skelefiend didn''t say anything, and I left nothing of him in exchange, so how is it going to be", said Daimon with a smirk as white mes lit up in half of his body.

    Miserius wanted to cry but tears won''te out, as he once again was forced to give probably thest piece of important intel he had.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed as he listened to Miserius''s answer, and at the same time he frowned as he thought about the his own ck badge with the rune shark engraved into it.

    ''What the hell is happening in this magic ruin'', he thought.

 Chapter 332 How To Break A Blockade (Part 1)

    Once Daimon finished interrogating Miserius, he exchanged subjects with Karmandi whose expression was grim, and went to the sea flea.

    Unfortunately, once he started inspecting the sea flea, he noticed its situation was the same as Miserius, the body of the magic beast was superficially perfectly fine, but some of its mana circuits were destroyed.

    There was a difference between the Skelefiend and the magic beast though, unlike Miserius''s body where there were no traces left, Daimon was able to see an almost unnoticeable amount of a strange liquid encapsuled in one of the many legs of the sea flea.

    Daimon quickly cut the leg of the sea flea and sent it to his inventory to preserve it, the sea flea was so battered that there was no response, apparently the thing begged Karmandi to take it as his subordinate to save itself, but the snake general ignored it.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, that scheming guy was really careful to cover his ass, he was unable to find anything else, maybe someone expert in magic beasts would be able to find more information out of its corpse.

    ''Well, I guess I have presents for Liz and Aura'', thought Daimon as he tabbed Disaster into the head of the sea flea.

    Of course he asked Narasha to control Disaster so it didn''t turn the corpse into no dust as it had researching value.

    Then with a snap of his fingers he kept its corpse in his inventory, something he already had agreed with Karmandi.

    Speaking of the snake general, as soon as the Miserius listened to Karmandi speaking, he realized he was in presence of a Half Ster ranked.

    "You damn magic beasts, didn''t you hate the Clear Water kingdom, since when are you allied with them!", she eximed in disbelief.

    The only Half Ster rank magic beast which was subordinated to the Clear Water kingdom, was the shark raised by the White royal family, also since Karmandi is a snake race it was safe to assume, he was one of the generals of the Ster ranked they were aiming for.

    ''So, from the very beginning we were being tricked'', thought Miserius as his face paled, targeting an Ster ranked being is a really dangerous thing, because if cornered it can escape leaving its subordinates behind, and the revenge of a Str ranked who has nothing to lose, is a thing to be wary of.

    All the subordinates who were below the Arch ranks, only epted because they were told the ck Empress had no other allies besides the Silver Dawn pirates, which were taken care of majorly by the Devil Stingray pirates prior to they bing allies with the help of that Lord.

    Not to mention they managed to convince some of the subordinates of the ck Empress toe to their side, in other words they were sure it was going to be an easy kill, but now turns out some high ranked noble of the Mermen Sea and the very princess of the Elemental Sea were allied with the ck Empress.

    Karmandi snorted, the pirates and Skelefiends both were waiting for them to fight to death with the nobles, so that they could reap the benefits.

    And the worst part of it, is that it would have worked if not for the intervention of the silver haired youth, he met by randomness of destiny.

    Out of anger Karmandi hissed and a line of pressured water pierced Miserius and the Bottom Shredders''s heads killing them on the sport.

    The snake general then nodded at Daimon and as per their agreement he was given the corpses, which he kept I his inventory.

    Daimon noticed Karmandi''s agitation, or more urately anger and he asked.

    "Did you get to know who else betrayed you?".

    To which Karmandi shook his head.

    "Not in detail, those Bottom Shredders and the Sea Flea, were rted to Ulkrear, so both were his subordinates¡­ apparently the one behind all this didn''t even let the other traitor generals who were on their side".

    "They were given some kind of item that reacts in the presence of another traitor, just prior to the start of this event, only then Ulkrear knew for sure I was enemy, this was probably done so that the Empress wouldn''t notice something was off, that''s why I hate humans", snorted the snake general.

    Daimon chuckled, at this point he wasn''t sure if the one behind this was a human, since it had all these forbidden methods, but he could bet that it was a system user indeed, think of it, prior to their arrival to Neptune there was no one who knew about undead here.

    So that technique the Skelefiend were using simply came out of nowhere, the whole situation smelled like the shop of a system.

    At this point the first princess should be awake and fine, so Daimon beckoned at Karmandi and the two of them went up the tunnel to the upper cave where the girls were waiting for him.

    Daimon then exined the information he got from Miserius and Karmandiplemented the story with what he got from the magic beasts.

    Apparently a few months earlier an unknown person wearing a full ck robe which covered its whole body approached some high ranked people all over Neptune, what he exposed during those reunions is a mystery since Miserius''s status wasn''t high enough to attend, but ording to the rumors it had something to do with the destiny of Neptune itself.

    Something along the lines of an imminent crisis knocking at their doors, of course many refused to believe the words of a stranger and simply ignored it, others even followed the stranger to the Maelstrom Sea and attacked it, but they nothing else was known about them.

    Not even a couple of dayster, the people from the Winder Myriad Ster Chart and the gxy from which Scarlet and the other girls came, arrived at the firstyer of Neptune.

    The first ones to notice them were the Skelefiends who had sent scouts previously, because their leader Horrorw was the most oriented to believe the words of that unknown person, for some reason.

    Imagine their excitement when they got to know invaders from other ces had arrived at Neptune, if others coulde in, then that meant there might be a way out for them.

    Also they misjudged the guys from the tribes as people from the Elemental Sea, as their energy firms were pretty simr, and the "invaders" were more simr to the habitants of the Mermen Sea.

    That''s why the pirates and the Skelefiends epted the offer of that mysterious person and joined hands to destroy the Mermen and Elemental Seas, and they have been working together for longer than what others knew.<novelnext></novelnext>

    They even purposedly waited to ambush the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates, until that person told them to do it, and the date coincided with the day the trident of promise that the White royal family has been guarding broke and the day the Shaman of the Elemental Sea suffered some kind of bacsh.

    After that the pirates did the task they were required if they wanted to join to the alliance, since they were skeptical the first time, and ambushed the nobles of the Mermen and Elemental Seas, but as Daimon got to discover, their true aim was to kidnap the princesses, unfortunately the reasons of that were still unknown.

    But Daimon got a really important notice from Miserius, one of the two generals from the Skelefiends who came here, is the one of the lovers of Horrorw and the mother of his favorite son, so if there was someone with more information it was her.

    "Per their agreement the "only" exit of this ce is costodied by both Skelefiends and pirates, so there is two Half Ster ranks there as well as at least fourte stage peak Mortal ranks there, besides the other subordinates", said Daimon making some rough calctions about the enemies.

    "The other exit only known by the Skelefiends has only one Half Ster rank, the other one who would have been there is probably Ulkrear, but he ran away, right?", mumbled Karmandi.

    Daimon nodded, his intervention created a w in the ns of the Skelefiends, they hid the fact that there were nearly 400 extra of them from the pirates in that alternative entrance from the pirates, they sent half of their forces to cooperate with the pirates while the other half as well as the traitor Ulkrear would have waited in the shadows, if the pirates were careless they would have been robbed out of their rewards, or they would have ended up getting just one of the princesses.

    But now that Ulkrear is out of the picture, there was a weak link in the encirclement the enemy formed, one that Daimon was nning to take advantage of.

    They couldn''t obviously fight in three fronts at the same time, as they only had one Half Ster rank, as well as Rita and Horals who could stall another for some time, that was their limit in that aspect.

    There was also the thing of all the kidnapped girls that were being kept hostages, so that the nobles and people from the Elemental Sea tried to save them just to be ambushed, a trap set up to catch Mellie, Jasmine and Daphne.

    Daimon contemted things for a moment while he made memory of the many strategy lessons, Erin gave him and the best solution he could came out with was.

    "Lure the tiger out of the mountain", he mumbled.

    The girls gave Daimon a confused gaze, which made him borate.

    "We can''t directly attack the main exit since there are two Half Ster ranks, if we try to stall them the Skelefiends can call the other half of the army and surround us, on the other hand if we attack the alternative exit, the other two can stab our backs, Miserius mentioned unlike the pirates, the Skelefiend generals have a way to contact each other after all".

    "So, what do you suggest to do, if we can''t attack any of them?", asked Karmandi, to which Daimon smirked.

    "We don''t attack any of them, instead we¡­".

    Before Daimon could finish speaking, Rita''s voice interrupted him.

    "Pardon me young master, but those guys have started sending scouts to all directions".

    Daimon nodded as he looked at his clock, there were only a few hours left before the Trident Marshal and the other high ranked people noticed there was something off and that would be the limit the Skelefiends and pirates had, so they were of course feeling tight on time as they haven''t managed to capture even one of the princesses.

    "They will eventually find out where we are, I don''t think we can wait until the people outsidee to help, Gabriel", said Karmandi, just to make sure that wasn''t Daimon''s n.

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "That''s not the idea, we will divide into two groups, one will "identally" get the attention of the Skelefiends at the alternative exit, while the other distracts the ones at the main exit and save the hostages".

    "The only problem is that I need someone besides me to get the attention of the Skelefiends, besides that you can leave the rest to me", said Daimon as he looked at the three princesses, they were the main targets after all.

    "I''ll do it", both Mellie and Daphne were about to raise their hands but Jasmine was faster this time.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, as he looked at Jasmine, she was thest he expected to volunteer for this task, but at the same she is the one he wanted to do it the most, because the Skelefiends targeted her the most, for some unknown reason.

    After a moment of silence Jasmine said.

    "I diched my original team due to that guy¡­ they are people with which I grew up with, and I''m pretty sure they didn''t say anything so if they arrived at this underwater space, they must have been taken hostages too, with this I will undo a mistake", she said with a firm determined light in her eyes.

    Mellie and Daphne wanted to object, since the majority of the female nobles were from the Clear Water kingdom, so it was their duty to save them, but Daimon stopped them from doing so.

    "It''s not like this is a suicidal mission you two, in fact I would say it''s riskier to where you will be going, as there will be two Ster ranks, also I will be taking Neal and most of Karmandi''s subordinates with me anyway, everyone will have to cooperate for this to work".

    Mellie and Daphne slightly flushed, they were getting a bit lost in the moment, but now that they thought about it, they knew Daimon was right, the risk was the same.

    "So, what do you need from us?", asked Karmandi, normally he would have called someone who rmended to divide when their numbers were already less than the enemy and the other party had a 1:3 ratio of Ster ranks an idiot, but even if he were to be beaten to death, he wouldn''t believe even for a second that the silver haired youth in front of him is one of them, if he did something there was for sure a reason behind it.

    Daimon smiled and then exined his n to all of them, the more he advanced the wider the smiles on the faces of he others, until they all were at the verge ofughing.

    ''As expected of young master, a demon must know how to manipte enemies, to the point that they would sell themselves and help count the money HAHAHA'', the bone general thunderouslyughed from within the shadows, making Rita sigh.

    ''Can''t you show some propriety bonehead'', she mumbled.

 Chapter 333 How To Break A Blockade (Part 2)

    While Daimon kept exining his n to the others, at a different ce of the underwater space, there was a turmoil ongoing.

    The pirate, a tall ck-haired guy who seemed to be in histe twenties, was livid right now.

    "What the hell do you mean with "we lost them", you bastards, sent more squads, turn the whole ce upside down if needed, if we don''t get anything out of this mission your heads will roll!", shouted Ellemy to his subordinates, the pressure of an early-stage Arch rank leaked out of his body making the others tremble.

    "You pirates are useless, I told lord Horrorw to convince that Lord to just send us, but of course that captain of yours used some underhanded methods to gain his favor, so you got a spot in this mission", said a tall man, at first sight you would believe it''s a normal human instead of a Skelefiend¡­ if not for the fact that his sclera is ck and his skin is really pale, unhealthy like that of an undead, also his teeth were ck instead of white and he had green hair.

    "Humph, you can brag as much as you want Tiberius, but weren''t your side the ones that lost track of the guy that Lord personally asked you all to get rid of, not to mention the little princess of the Light Pce", snorted the pirate.

    "What did you say!", the eyes of the Skelefiend lit up in ck light as his pressure which was limited to the peak of the Arch rank, but was heavier than that, spread across the whole area.

    The pirate though weaker didn''t show any fear, he snapped his fingers and two mana pressures which separated were weaker than the one of the Skelefiend, but together were enough to match up to him, countered Tiberius''s mana pressure.

    It came from two magic beasts that were standing behind the pirate, at first sight they looked like Bottom Shredders, but instead of their big frame and the usually fierce gaze, these two were only about two meters height, and their eyes shone with rationality, also their bodies were thinner and more human-like, they were the king and queen of the Bottom Shredder races, and two former sub-generals of the ck Empress who took their whole race with them at the moment of their betrayal.

    The pressures shed and the result made both the weaker pirates and Skelefiends pale, Tiberius suddenly frowned as a wary expression appeared on his face.

    Originally only the king of the Bottom Shredder race was at the peak of the Arch rank, the queen was at the middle stage, but now both of them were peak Arch ranks, and the king has gotten closer to take a step into the Ster rank.

    ''Fucking sea beasts¡­ just you wait, once we get what that Lord requested, our Skelefiend race will conquer the whole'', thought Tiberius as he snorted and slowly retracted his mana pressure.

    "Enough, right now we need to find those little princesses, Garret!", shouted Tiberius.

    Another Skelefiend who also had aplete flesh body, though it was only a peak Lord ranked, approached Tiberius.

    "Garret greets Lord general".

    Tiberius pointed at a cage which was a few meters away from them and then said.

    "Go see how far did the previous batch of "bait" managed to reach, and then release another group, one of those three bitches shoulde to us after seeing it".

    Garret sinisterly smiled and then bowed his head.

    "Yes, my general!".

    The Skelefiend then walked towards the cage, where some male nobles from both the Mermen and Elemental Seas were imprisoned".

    The male nobles paled upon seeing the Skelefiend, every time one of them approached the cage, someone was bound to suffer, and this time it wasn''t different.

    "No wait, I''m the second son of the marquis¡­ aghhh!".

    Even the shorter Skelefiend was about 1.8 meters height, so inparison with the nobles of the younger generation they were taller and bulkier.

    Garret grabbed a noble from his neck and then with a punch he broke the legs of the noble before he threw him out of the cage, the other nobles who had terrified expressions had two different reactions.

    Some of them retreated to the other side of the cage, while a couple tried to escape from the cage.

    Garret sadisticallyughed and then with a wave of his hand, he teared the legs of the two nobles that tried to escape.

    "Kyaaaa!", there was a second cage at near to the one of the male nobles where the female nobles were kept, the bloody scene was a too much for most of them, some couldn''t resist and puked while others lost any strength on their legs and copsed in shock.

    The other male nobles were happy to have survived this round of selection but at the same time they were frustrated since they were the next on the chopping board.

    Garret licked his lips as he saw the cage where the girls were kept, but he didn''t say anything and then dragged the three wounded nobles from their legs as he walked away from this ce, leaving a bloody trace behind of him.

    Still not all the nobles were cowards, there were a few who among the girls who helped the others to recover andforted the ones that broke down to cry after witnessing a such a bloody scene for the first time in their lives.

    "Calm down,dy Jasmine will never abandon others, we''ll make it out of here alive", said a slim girl with green hair, and the emblem of the Bamboo Forest sect on the sleeve of her blouse, with a gentle expression on her face as she helped a couple of girls to get up from the ground.

    "Sniff¡­ do you really think she wille?", asked a young girl from the Mermen Sea.

    A girl with fan-like fin ears slightly simr to Mellie''s nodded with a firm expression.

    "The first princess and young miss Delphini won''t abandon us either, they must be looking for a way to contact Lord Trident Marshal, once they do it, these monsters will pay for what they have done".

    The girls somewhat recovered theirposure and stopped crying, Mellie might not have too much of a public image besides she appearing with the queen from time to time, but Daphne had pretty known to be really protective of the subjects of the Clear Water kingdom, because she is the first princess.

    "How adorable, you women still believe someone will being to rescue you, you both Mermen and Elemental Sea habitants got too cocky, if those girlse, we will capture them, but don''t worry, none of you will be leaving so you will be able to spend yourst hours with your idols kekeke".

    Tiberius sinisterlyughed as he approached the cage of the female nobles, his eyes specially focused on the noble girls that haven''t given up yet, though he didn''t know who they were, he supposed they had some rtion to the princesses and that was good for his ns.

    ¡­

    While Tiberius was bullying the nobles, Garret who was flying while he carried the three wounded nobles by their legs, descended as he saw some corpses floating on puddles of blood.

    They belonged to both people from the Mermen and Elemental Seas, of different noble houses or sects, but they all had something inmon, their legs were broken, crushed or simply were missing.

    And judging by the red traces left behind by those now corpses, they had been crawling for a long distance, until they fainted and died due to blood loss.

    "Oh, these batch of bait got a bit further than the previous one, whatever it''s your turn, start advancing, and shout for those princesses toe and save you, if you are lucky enough you might live kekeke", said Tiberius with a sarcastic voice.

    The nobles gritted their teeth, they who had lived in luxury, respected by others and rubbing shoulders with the cr¨¨me of the crop of the kingdom, were now reduced toughing stock for the Skelefiends.

    That being said they had no choice but to oblige, because Garret threatened to kill them if they didn''t obey.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Garret wasughing at the nobles when suddenly a cold voice made him feel a shiver running down his spine.

    "You Skelefiends are really disgusting".

    "Mm?", Garret''s pupils contracted like needles, out of nowhere a few figures appeared on his field of vision.

    There were seven girls and a tall fully armored guy.

    Garret was beyond words right now, he then smiled from ear to ear, two of the girls were the princesses that the pirates were targeting, and the other seven were top quality beauties.

    "Ah, thanks to Snakele, this must be I Garret''s lucky day", mumbled Garret as he pounced towards Mellie and Daphne, first things first, he had to capture the princesses, though he couldn''ty a finger on them if he wanted to live, with them as hostages he could do what he wanted with the others.

    But then, the next thing he knew was that a water de severed his legs, including part of his true body which was a skeleton.

    His eyes followed the origin of that attack all the way to the fully armored man and thest thing he managed to think before he fainted was.

    ''H-Half Ster rank!''.

    Daphne looked at Chris and then pointed at the nobles who were still on the ground and the maid went to them to give them first aid, though she didn''t have medicines to waste on them because the ones Daimon gave them were reserved in case Daphne needed them, she still had some non-essential ones, to stop the bleeding which was the biggest problem right now.

    Needless to say but the nobles were at the verge of crying right now, in their eyes Chris and the first princess were like life-saving beautiful angels.

    "P-Princess, thanks for saving us", said two of the guys who were being attended by Chris, but the third one had a twisted expression.

    "If you two wouldn''t havee we wouldn''t have had to suffer like this, my brother was killed by those bastards because of you!", he shouted with a resentful voice.

    Mellie and Daphne stared at each other, and they saw some guilt in the eyes of the other, but then Aisha''s voice woke them out of their daze.

    "Let''s go, we have no time to waste here".

    The two princesses wanted to say something, but the Risha sisters interrupted them.

    "Gabriel is counting on us", said Yvonne.

    The two princesses nodded and then they started walking while the fully armored man dragged the half-dead Skelefiend by his neck.

    The third guy saw that the other two were treated so they wouldn''t die while he was ignored and he lost his previous bravado.

    "Where are you going, cure me first!", he demanded.

    But the only thing he got, was Chris''s cold voice, insulting him.

    "Didn''t you wish we weren''t here, then you don''t need our help, go and find someone who is willing to give you precious medicines while hot having ess to a storage ring, humph".

    The noble paled , he tried to held onto Chris''s leg, but she quickly followed the others leaving them behind.

    Aisha saw that the two princesses were still a bit hesitant about leaving that guy who in their opinion was indeed affected by the pirates and Skelefiends hunting them down, and she patted their shoulders before saying.

    "Cowards can''t choose the way they die, even if it didn''t happen today, someone that only mes others is bound to get killed on their first real fight".

    Aisha is someone who has survived her fair share of life and death situations, assassination tries and the like, and she knows by experience that instead of ming others, if you want to survive then you have to grit your teeth and strive forward.

    "Mm", ultimately Mellie and Daphne nodded, they had more important things to tend to right now, for Daimon''s n to work they needed to provoke their enemies enough, so that they would get careless.

    "Seriously where did he learn how to scheme, it''s a bit scary", mumbled Mellie as she gazed at the fully armored guy walking next to them.

    The Risha sisters whose mothers idolized the trio of mother and daughters of the Revy family, giggled.

    ''That''s to be expected of someone personally taught strategy from the most cunning woman in a whole gxy'', they thought.

    At the other side of the underwater space, near arge boulder who outstood from the rest of the ground as it was covered in musk, a clear sign of the high humidity nearby, a loud and chaotic battle was taking ce.

    The participants consisted in arge pack of sea magic beasts on one side and on the other, there were only two people who attacked and retreated constantly, a silver haired youth as well as a blond haired girl.

    Every time the beasts got too close to them, the silver haired youth took out some kind of device that upon contact with the ground released a massive quantity of white mes, making the beasts roar and retreat for a couple of minutes, just enough for the other party to take some distance from them.

    The strange boulder though didn''t seem like it, was hollow and right at the entrance there was a hole which led to an underground open space, where a small army was stationed.

    At the center of the army, a woman who seemed to be in herte thirties was thrilled to hear the notices of her subordinate.

    "Lady Shirel, our main target is being chased by magic beasts right now, perhaps that Ulkrear guy betrayed us but got wounded while fighting with his formerrade, so his subordinates are doing the dirty job".

    The woman''s eyes glowed in ck light as sheughed.

    "What the hell are you waiting for then,e we need to capture that little bitch, once we give her to that Lord, my son will be the official next ruler of our race, we Skelefiends will conquer Neptune and then the outside worlds that our ancestors wrote about".

    "Ohhhhh!", the army shouted and then they started to move, by climbing, jumping or flying in the woman''s case.

    Daimon who just dodged a shot of poison casted by Neal, felt the ground trembling, with his infinity eyes, he saw the army of Skelefiendsing their way and he smirked.

    ''Got you''.

    This battle will never be forgotten by the Skelefiends, as the day a single person led three Half Ster ranks by their noses and in the future it will be written in history books as a crushing victory, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 334 How To Break A Blockade (Part 3)

    While they were on the run from the pack of magic beasts that were chasing after them, Daimon secretly nodded at Jasmine and her pretty eyes glowed in response as a white halo appeared on them.

    Daimon''s body then covered itself in white mes as he activated Core Synchrony, in preparation to both the intense though short battle that was about toe, as well as to increase the range in which he couldmunicate with Aisha through the mind connection they had as soulmates.

    ''Mom, we are about to start here, how is it going at your side?'', asked Daimon.

    After a couple of seconds, Daimon could hear Aisha''s yful voice in his mind.

    ''We are almost there darling, as you expected give us ten minutes then I''ll give you the greenlight, be careful~''.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled.

    ''Okay, be prepared, by the way how is Karmandi doing?''.

    Daimon could hear his mother''s prettyugh, it was like little silver bells ringing in his ears, an auditory pleasure without a doubt

    ''He is saying this is such a "sneaky human scheme", but he is ying his role pretty well, as expected of a snake type magic beast''.

    Daimon shook his head and then cut contact with Aisha to focus on his side, since the whole army of Skelefiends were arriving just now.

    Therge boulder which was about eight hundred meters from them suddenly exploded, the attention of both the magic beasts as well as the human couple was immediately drawn to the origin of the ruckus.

    Then from within the hidden cave, about four hundred Skelefiends most of them in the Lord ranks, appeared led by a woman in herte thirties whose teeth, sclera and nails were ck inked, and her skin had a unhealthy pale tone.

    Normally by the time a Skelefiend reached the peak of the Arch rank, it fully develops a fleshyer to protect its real body, but they don''t look how they see themselves in their skeletal form, also by doing so they actually lose a bit of strength since their flesh bodies increase the vitality, which is a weakness of Skelefiends.

    But these new bodies some of the high status Skelefiends were "wearing", were dead tissue molded to their liking and reanimated so that they could insert themselves into it, it aligned perfectly with their negative and chaotic oriented nature, as if they were meant to develop this way but for reason couldn''t do it by themselves.

    Daimon looked at the woman and he frowned, from his point of view she was worse than an undead, as they at least are one with their bodies, in a sense they are "alive", maybe created with a death body but their existences get a new "rhythm" and mana firms, as they are apletely new being separated from the previous owner of the body they were created with.

    But that woman wasn''t like that, her mana firm was ugly and chaotic, also for Daimon whose smelling sense is pretty sharp, her existence itself reeked of rottenness.

    ''Whatever that guy gave these idiots, is some serious shady stuff'', thought Daimon.

    Still for his purposes this was perfect, because he will be getting an investigation subject which is also a source of really valuable information and a hostage, it was a win no matter which angle one saw it from.

    ''I guess only the hard part remains, to capture her'', thought Daimon as he put on a "wary" expression on his face.

    Besides the woman, the other Skelefiends had normal iplete flesh bodies, so it was obvious they were Skelefiends thus enemies.

    "What do you want?", mumbled Daimon as he ced his arm in front of Jasmine, as if he was protecting her from the Skelefiends.

    The woman evaluated Daimon, he was wearing some light armor and had a sword hanging from his waist, also those white mes clearly were light oriented.

    Shirel nodded with an affirming expression on her face.

    "Do you think wearing mask can hide that strong light affinity and the sword gives you away, you are the guy that Lord warned us, the arrogant fool who''s ying to be a white knight for the Light Pce''s princess, but didn''t even bother to dye your hair color, do you think my Skelefiend race is that easy to trick humph".

    Daimon had the urge tough out loud, but he controlled himself, that''s right he was impersonating Adam, though the girls didn''t see it he was using the effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief to make the Skelefiends think his hair was blond like Adam''s, also the mask of the hollow suit changed to cover his whole face, he then unsheathed the sword that was hanging from his waist which was none other than Disaster in Gram''s form.

    While it''s style was a bit wilder than Adam''s sword, being that Gram was a broadsword big enough to be wielded with two hands, it''s refined and elegant appearance made it pass as a ssy knight''s sword without any problem, the fact that it was fully dded in light helped toplement the act too.

    Daimon then put on a slightly exaggerated but pretty much convincible cocky voice, just like that idiot hero who hates anything rted to the darkness and negative oriented nature things.

    "You lowly filthy beings dare to get in this young master''s way!", he shouted as he leaked out arge amount of white light mana from Gram.

    Jasmine, Neal and Kamir who were serious a moment ago, nearlyughed at Daimon''s act, but they managed to keep her cool and waited, for their signal to jump to action.

    The Skelefiends of course felt really insulted by Daimon''s words, so their eyes got bloodshot, and they looked at him as if they wanted to tear him apart.

    Shirel gritted her teeth, but she didn''t act out of anger, that Lord had told them that the light guy had some dangerous "tricks" up his sleeves so she didn''t let her anger cloud her mind.

    She instead turned to see Neal and Kamir who were clearly the ones leading the pack of magic beasts, before saying.

    "Let''s make a deal, how about you help us get this guys and we get you enough resources to jump to the peak of the Mortal realm, recently the queen of the Bottom Shredders did a big advance thanks to her being rewarded by her "allies", what do say?".

    Shirel thought that if the pirates could get some free thugs in exchange for resources, why couldn''t she, every soldier will count in the uing war after all.

    The centipede and the snake exchanged some gazes and then looked at Shirel with dubitative expressions, which made thetter smile from ear to ear, since she got their attention now, she just needed to add something to seal the deal.

    She took out two small bottle which contained a ck inked liquid from her pocket, it was obvious this was valuable for her since she had a slightly unwilling light in her eyes as she said

    "This is the strength that person has granted us, side with us and it''s yours, of course these two will be handled by us, but there will be more rewards for you two, who knows maybe you''ll even be able to reach the Ster rank in the next thousand years and secure a path for your offspring".<novelnext></novelnext>

    Neal and Kamir put on a convinced expression and then with some low screeches and hisses, they both slid towards the right side of the Skelefiend''s army, standing behind Shirel as if they recognized her authority, which made sense since magic beasts respect the strong.

    Shirelughed and then throwed the bottles at her two new "pets", before she turned to see the blond haired couple in front of her, her eyes specially focused on Daimon as she spoke.

    "You see boy, there is no such a thing as eternal enemies, just eternal benefits, that Lord asked us to bring you to our side alive and safe as far as possible, why don''t youe with us, as long as you step out and let us get the princess I can even put a good word for you, I know you covet women and resources, we have a cage full of noble girls from the Mermen and Elemental Seas, join us and a quarter of them will be yours along with whatever they have in their storage rings".

    Daimon inwardly snorted, this confirmed his theory that whoever is behind this has did some investigation regarding important targets, to the point that it had managed to see through Adam''s gant fa?¡ìade, they should have been watching him in the shadows since they arrived at Neptune probably through the pirates or spies in the Elemental Sea, the fact that Adam was supposed to be brought back instead of eliminated at the spot, supported his belief that the mastermind behind this was a system user, if he could steal from other system users, there was a chance others could do it too after all, if not, there was a lot of ways to take advantage of a system user anyway.

    "As if I would fall as low as to ept a deal with a filthy being like you!", shouted Daimon with an upright voice, as he gazed at Jasmine, wanting to confirm if he was impressing her.

    Jasmin did her part too, looking ttered and moved by his knightly self.

    Shirel snorted and she then pointed at them.

    "Capture them, if that idiot tries to stop you kill him, that Lord will still reward us if we get him, his corpse!".

    "Ohhh!", the army of Skelefiends and magic beasts which summed about 800 Lord ranks and four Arch ranks immediately advanced following Shirel''smand.

    But then Daimon smirked as he shoved the tip of Gram''s on the ground, at the same time Jasmine tapped her staff on the floor as she casted her spell.

    "Silver Spear", Jasmine''s mellow voice was buried by the war cries of the enemy''srge army, but Daimon felt afortable warm feeling running through his body as a silver spear''s image appeared behind of him.

    Not even a secondter, he unleashed about 90% percent of his battle aura and 50% of his mana reserves in at the same time, creating a white pir which reached about one kilometer into the sky.

    Shirel had a sudden bad premonition, which was soon proven right as a tsunami of menacing white mes flooded the whole battlefield, focusing on the Skelefiends mostly.

    "What the hell is that!", shouted Shirel, at first she disdained the attack of a Lord ranked, until those white mes were near her too, she as a Half Ster ranked judged that those white mes were strong enough to dangerously wound a middle stage peak Mortal level, in other words a middle stage Arch ranked, which were the leaders of her army, nor to mention the whole lot of Lord ranks subordinate she''ll lose with that one attack.

    "What a monstrous attack, however in front of a Half Ster rank it''s nothing!", she shouted as she casted an acid shield in front of her army to protect them from the white me tsunami.

    Sizzling sounds echoed through the battlefield as the white mes evaporated the acid shield, destroying a big part of it but ultimately failing to affect the army behind it, also making Shirel triumphantly mock at Daimon, just to see him grinning, as he snapped his fingers.

    An expression which didn''t fit the description she got from Adam, she somehow now noticed some green almost unnoticeable crystals tied to those ck metal spheres, she saw Daimon throw at the magic beasts earlier, unfortunately before she could put two plus two, she felt the ground trembling and before she could react an ear-deafening explosion came from behind her acid shield.

    "Boooooom!", the explosion was so loud that she felt a bit dizzy due to the sound, but that''s not the worse part of it, but he fact that the mes released by that explosion were white, just like the attack she just protected her subordinates from.

    Shirel''s pupils contracted, she proposed to dispel the mes to save as much as she could but then a menacing presence fell from above her.

    There hidden in therge column of white mes released by the explosion, she saw a woman with light gray skin and a ck dress decorated with some skulls, coldly ring at her.

    "Shadow Heart Puppeteer", Rita mumbled feeling shy to be subjected to, too much attention, but she still did what her young master asked her to, Rita joined her hands in front of her and then softly said.

    "Cursed Doll House".

    Shirel tried to move, but a pir of white mes assaulted her from below, forcing her to dispel it, which created an opening.

    Her arms, legs and neck were then imprisoned by ck chains that manifested out of thin air, and as she tried to break free by using arge scale attack without caring about blowing away her subordinates and enemies equally, four ck metal walls raised from the ground and soon a ck dismal castle had imprisoned her.

    "Aghhhh!", soon bloody screams as well as small explosions could be hearding from the castle, before the thing shrank until it was about the size of a ser ball, which then flew towards Daimon''s hands.

    ''Young master, did Rita did it good?'', she asked in a sleepy voice.

    Daimon nodded.

    ''Yes, don''t worry and rest a bit, I''ll take it from here''.

    Rita who had a tinge of tiredness in her face smiled happy to beplimented and then became a line of ck light that integrated into Daimon''s shadow, and then Daimon shouted making sure the Skelefiends who survived listened to him.

    "Let''s go, we have to save the other girls!".

    "Mm".

    Jasmine nodded and then her staff illuminated with a soft white light, before a silver floating city''s image appeared behind of Daimon.

    "Silver Citadel", Jasmine''s spell immediately recovered his mana to full as well as a third of his stamina.

    Jasmine then grabbed Daimon''s arm and under the surprised and horrified expressions, the human couple vanished from the battlefield, with their leader along them.

    And thus, the first part of Daimon''s n had seeded.

 Chapter 335 How To Break A Blockade (Part 4)

    Once Daimon and Jasmine sessfully kidnapped Shirel, the Skelefiend army as well as the magic beast army were thrown into chaos.

    "What are you doing idiots, everyone listen mymand and put out those mes with an acid rain spell!".

    One of the two middle stage Arch ranked Skelefiends, the one who managed to react on time to not suffer any wound from the previous surprise explosion to be more urate, took over Shirel''s authority and ordered the rest.

    "Y-Yes sir", the Skelefiends who were lost a moment ago seemed to finally react, they stopped helping those who were heavily wounded by the explosion and then chanted in unison.

    "Acid rain!".

    A huge dark green cloud appeared above the battlefield before green rain poured out from it.

    "Hisss!", loud sizzles could be heard when the rain made contact with the remaining white mes, it took nearly thirty seconds before the mes finally disappeared.

    Only then the vice-general Dagur managed to make a count of the losses, his blood went cold as he noticed that nearly one third of the army was wiped out, but the real damage was about 50% of the army, because besides those who died immediately due to direct exposure to those white mes and being blown away due to the powerful explosion, others suffered horrible wounds, like missing limbs and third grade burns that reached their real bodies.

    In other words, it was a ughter, inparison he noticed the magic beasts didn''t have any casualties, besides some light burns here and there, which made him grit his teeth.

    Dagur walked towards hisrade vice-general who helped him parry an explosion, to save group of their subordinates.

    The other vice-general lost his right arm and half of his face had melted, damaging his bones, though the Skelefiend was still standing, the burn was hurting like hell, he had to put out the mes by flooding his body in his acid mana and even then, the sensation didn''t disappear.

    "That Lord told us we were at maximum dealing with someone whose battle prowess equaled an early-stage peak level Mortal realm enemy, for a couple of minutes¡­ how in hell is this the power of someone weaker than us!", shouted the wounded Skelefiend.

    Dagur sighed, he agreed with hispanion, that attack though didn''t have such a wide areapared to what they were able to cast, definitely surpassed what they were able to do, the raw damage behind it wasparable to a peak mortal realm''s attack, and the destructivity of those mes was horrible, maybe because it had such a strong light element imbued into it.

    "Why the hell didn''t those beasts suffer at all!", yelled the burned vice-general, to which Neal and Kamir responded with a threatening hiss and screech, as they approached them.

    But Dagur stepped in to avoid a internal fight to start.

    "Enough Uly, magic beasts had tougher bodies than us, also that guy''s element is our weakness and you know it¡­ not to mention he specifically aimed it at us", said Dagur as he pointed at therge craters that were created due to the consecutive explosions that were triggered before.

    In a range of about five kilometers, there were about fifty or so deep burnt craters from which smoke was still raising, the stone floor actually melted and turned into red burning moltenva, which was cooled down by the acid.

    The wounded general softly snorted but didn''t say anything else, stir up problems with the magic beasts was stupid as they were in an unfavorable position right now.

    Dagur then took out a strange ck te, he dropped some of his blood into it and then spoke out loud.

    "We were attacked and Lady Shirel was taken away, the perpetrator is the guy that Lord warned us about, our main target is travelling with him, he is going towards the other exit, we await instructions from general Tiberius".

    A secondter an angry somewhat agitated voice could be hearding from the ck te.

    "You fucking useless bastards, if something happens to the woman of Lord Horrorw do you think we''ll be able to keep our limbs attached to out bodies, hurry up ande here¡­ we are also being attacked!".

    Dagur had a bitter expression, he wasn''t Tiberius subordinate so he had not right to yell at him, but apparently the situation at their side was bad too.

    "We suffered heavy losses, we only have about half of our previous numbers and vice-general Uly is in bad shape, I''ll go there with half of our remaining forces, the rest will stay here to secure the exit".

    "I don''t care whoes, just hurry up!", shouted Tiberius before he cut themunication.

    Dagur gritted his teeth and then he looked at the magic beasts, before saying.

    "I know this is a bad start, but I need one of you two to tag along with me¡­ I''ll move fifty soldiers but I need help with the other fifty".

    Dagur knew magic beasts hated others riding on top of them, unless they have recognized the other part as their contractor, or were ordered to by their alpha, and here none of those two conditions were met, and as he expected both Neal and Kamir put on threatening expressions.

    The Skelefiend general had no option but to offer somepensation, with his heart bleeding he took out a hand sized blue sphere from his pocket, something which immediately drew the attention of all the magic beasts.

    "This is the magic core of a water mage at the peak of the mortal realm, help me transport my subordinates and its yours", he said.

    Kamir whose affinity is water nodded at Neal and then epted the deal, of course he took the core and swallowed it but didn''t refine it.

    Dagur saw his reward from where he participated in the ambush to the Silver Dawn pirates, being gulped down by Kamir and his heart bled.

    ''Fuck, I was going to trade it with something that helped me advance¡­ whatever Lady will surelypensate me for it'', he thought before he shouted.

    "I''ll go lend a hand to general Tiberius, vice-general Uly is in charge, don''t let anyone get to the secret exit, understood!".

    The Skelefiends who had recovered some of their courage after those white mes disappeared, shouted in unison as they helped the wounded and then formed a circle near the boulder which led to the exit.

    Neal and the whole pack of magic beasts also stood there to help "watch" the entrance, while Kamir allowed fifty Skelefiends to got up his body, with the exception of his head of course.

    "Let''s go!", after saying that, Dagur flew away helping fifty of his subordinates to fly alongside him, Kamir exchanged a gaze with Neal before he also soared into the sky soon disappearing in the horizon.<novelnext></novelnext>

    The two magic beasts were in awe at the fact that everything was going ording to what the silver haired youth with which their boss has allied, said, if anything their respect for him had gone up another notch.

    ¡­

    About a thousand kilometers away from the alternative exit, Daimon and Jasmine appeared on top of a small hill, Jasmine let go of Daimon''s arm and Daimon then took a deep breath.

    Daimon looked at his status, more specifically at his stamina and he sighed, a moment ago when he used that attack that blew away about 150 Lord ranks, he got a notification from the system, to which he didn''t have time to pay attention, but now he looked at the log because he was feeling suddenly freaking tired.

    [Ding]

    [A new skill type has unlocked due to a specific action <!>]

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [The level of trust of the daughter of the Northern Sky has been updated]

    [Level of trust currently attained 15% ¨¤ 17%]

    Daimon''s eyes glowed as he changed the tap to the skill tree, there was a new section added.

    [Fusion Skill: A skill created with the help of an external object and the cooperation of someone whose lineage resonates with the host''s]

    [White ze Hell (Demon Light + Damage Buff + Holy Grenade) Lv1: By triggering the explosion of apacted amount of battle aura, the host is able to create a chain of explosions whose damage multiplies per 1% each (added to the original boost used to activate the skill]

    [Price: 80% of battle aura reserves + 50% of mana reserves]

    [Duration: variable (5 seconds per each explosion)]

    [Penalization: 50% of stamina of the host + 25% stamina from the buff caster]

    [Cooldown: 1 Month]

    ''Damn, those are some harsh conditions'', thought Daimon but that also exined why he suddenly felt tired, he sat down near a red mark which had exploded when they appeared on top of this hill.

    "Switch is such a convenient thing", mumbled Daimon, unlike the skill blink, switch is the skill with which he changed the position of two things he had previously marked with his mana, though it required some preparation he could use switch all the way to the range of detection of his mana sense, which in Core Synchrony''s state is about one thousand kilometers.

    Switch is also one of the few skills that consumes "AP", instead of mana or battle aura, in other words is a skill which is only possible for him or his soulmates to acquire.

    Jasmine saw Daimon''s face which was a bit pale and though she was a bit tired herself, she started chanting to cast Silver Citadel though she knew she would faint if she used it twice in such a short period of time, but Daimon stopped her from doing so.

    "Don''t worry, I just need to catch up some breath", he said as he used the effect of the title he got when he saved Jasmine.

    [Sanctuary has been activated, the host has chosen to recover stamina, proceed Y/N]

    [Stamina 30% ¨¤ 100%]

    Daimon nodded and then all his fatigue vanished in a second, he felt fresh as a lettuce, even the tension caused by Core Synchrony went away, he used so much stamina due to having manipted an insane amount of mana and battle aura at the same time, while in Core Synchrony state, only that dropped his stamina to about 10% in a single go, but Jasmine''s Silver Citadel recovered 30% of his stamina as well as half of his mana, and then he spent another 10% when he used switch.

    Daimon knew his body was monstrous enough to endure those hard drops, or he would have suffered horrible inner wounds, but he still felt dead tired after using switch.

    Jasmine''s noticed those white halos appearing in her eyes and then Daimon''s expression changing from tired to perfectly fine, and she felt relieved without knowing why, unlike Mellie she still didn''t know what her innate ability was, but her lineage resonated when Daimon used Sanctuary as it was linked to the renewed oath.

    Daimon then got up and extended his hand towards Jasmine, while he carried the shrank ck castle which trembled from time to time.

    ''Ten minutes more'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Let''s go".

    "Mm", Jasmine held onto Daimon''s arm and then they both disappeared from where they were standing.

    The alternative exit was about 2000 kilometers from the main one, so Daimon had to use switch twice to get there, of course Daimon calcted how much time he needed, in case he wanted to rest a bit and for the other part of the n to reach the point he needed.

    ¡­

    Meanwhile near the main exit, chaos had risen, the air trembled as three figures, one dded in blue light, two in ck and one in dark green were shing above on the sky, creating thunders each time they collided.

    And that wasn''t all, at the ground there was a sea of mes and lightning holding back the weaker Skelefiends, while ice spears and a ck mist were forcing the pirates to retreat, though it was limited to the Lord ranks.

    But the two Arch ranks in the enemy group were facing something which they found absurd¡­ a floating ck armored head and an arm, both dded in green me-like battle aura.

    ''What the hell is happening here'', thought the Skelefiend and the pirate as they were forced backwards by the floating body parts.

 Chapter 336 How To Break A Blockade (Part 5)

    To understand what was happening we must go back a few minutes in the past, almost at the same time where Daimon made his move.

    Tiberius and Ellemy were arguing between each other like usual, when their attentions were drawn at a sudden "thing" that impacted against the ground a few meters away from them.

    Tiberius specially was surprised because he recognized the "thing" nowying on the ground, it was none other than his subordinate Garret, but unlike before he was missing both his legs and arms, and he was all battered due to the strong impact.

    "M-My general¡­", Garret couldn''t finish his sentence before a blue sword descended from the sky piercing his head killing him on the spot.

    Then before they could react a huge water tsunami flooded the whole area, dragging all the Lord rank Skelefiends, pirates and the two cages as well.

    "Who is it!", shouted Ellemy, before they felt a strong pressureing from above.

    There floating on the sky, there was a full body blue armored tall figure, the pressure it exuded clearly surpassed the Arch rank.

    It was none other than Karmandi who had half undone his seal thanks to burning away a part of the vitality he got from eating Ulkrear''s flesh.

    Also per Daimon''s request he has taken his human form, which is unknown for anyone with the exception of the ck Empress, and just in case he was also using a full body armor.

    "Impossible, a Half Ster realm Mermen''s dog sneaked in!", shouted Tiberius.

    In human form, Karmandi''s mana firm resembles that of the people from the Mermen Sea, that''s also part of the reason as to why the Half Ster magic beasts from the Maelstrom Sea don''t reveal their human form to anyone.

    There is so much bad blood between them and the White royal family, that the magic beasts despise to be confused as them, they are proud of the naturally chaotic aura thates with being a native of the Maelstrom Sea after all.

    But even then, Karmandi couldn''t argue with Daimon''s logic when he asked him to use his human form as a "disguise", because he needed his subordinates to pass as enemies, for the other part of the n to work.

    Ultimately Karmandi reluctantly epted but he didn''t show his face to anyone as he wore a full body armor, conformed by the scales he has in his beast form.

    Karmandi beckoned at the Skelefiend and pirate''s leaders, with disdain making both Tiberius and Ellemy grit their teeth, but right now they had no time to get angry, because they thought that if a Half Ster whose powers weren''t "sealed" sneaked in, the Mermen and Elemental Seas probably discovered their presence, which meant they needed to get out of here as soon as possible.

    The problem is that they couldn''t retreat, with a Half Ster ranked shooting at their backs, it was a suicide, so they had no option but to kill this enemy and then get the hell out of this ce.

    "Ellemy, tell those two to assist me, that guy''s powers aren''t sealed and I can''t kill him without some help, you go get the cages my subordinates will help you", said Tiberius as he flew towards Karmandi.

    Ellemy gritted his teeth, but he did as he was told and nodded at the Bottom Shredders.

    "Go help him, the otherse with me!".

    Having said that Ellemy as well as the Arch ranked pirate and Skelefiend left to where the tsunami has taken the others and the cages.

    The two Bottom Shredders felt somewhat apprehensive due to the aura of the enemy they were tasked to fight with, but they only thought it was normal since they were facing a "real" Half Ster ranked as Karmandi had undone about half of his seal, which them confuse him with a recently ascended Half Ster rank.

    The Bottom Shredder king and queen put on aggressive expressions as they followed Tiberius and then the three of them as well as Karmandi ascended into the sky before they shed.

    "Boooom!", a thunder-like sound echoed through the while area as arge explosion resulted of the sh of their mana.

    ¡­

    About fifty kilometers from the big battlefield, the tsunami finally ended, the Skelefiends and pirates were mostly fine besides some scratches, but the cages weren''t in sight for them.

    Soon the two Arch ranks arrived at the scene as well as Ellemy whose expression was twisted, even if he didn''t manage to catch the princesses of the Clear Water kingdom as requested, he at least used to have some nobles which was achievement worthy enough to justify him getting the Bottom Shredder king and queen as subordinates, but if he had nothing to show to his cousin, he was going to lose limbs at the end of the mission.

    "One of you go and look for the hostages, the othere with me, we need to guard the exit in case some rat tries to sneak away¡­ watch out!".

    Ellemy who was barking orders suddenly had a bad premotion as he shouted at his subordinates, but he was one second toote, the pirates felt the temperature dropping and then a chill ran down their spines as they heard a couple of mellow different voices chanting.

    "Ice de Spiral", a winged white-silver haired beauty holding a rapier appeared out of thin air, once the tip of her weapon pointed at the pirates, ice spikes and ice des raised from the ground impaling some of the pirates, while cutting others, before they started rotating making the victims try to run away or scream, but then their retreat was cut by a ck dome falling over them, as Yvonne''s voice echoed through the battlefield.

    "Nightmare Demonic Dawn".

    If before the pirates were screaming due to pain, now they all seemed to have seen a ghost, their faces paled and a lot of them lost their courage and just stood there while Liliana''s attack cut their limbs and froze them.

    Both girls slowly descended as their wings disappeared, those attacks used all the mana Daimon had given to them after all.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Ellemy who normally would have been admiring the beaty of the two girls that just appeared in his field of vision, instead had a bloodshot expression, he could hear the wails and screams of his subordinates within that ck dome, their numbers were already low about 100 people from which only 15 were peak Lord ranks, the rest were middle and early-stage Lord ranks, since they had to divide into a lot of teams to look for the princesses.

    "Go kill those bitches!", he ordered at the Arch ranked Skelefiend, who though unwillingly as he thought it was a waste, followed Ellemy''s order, his image shed and a secondter he appeared in front of Yvonne and Lilia with acid mana leaking out of his body.

    "Sorry cuties I''m in a hurry if not this vice-general would have shown the joy of being wo¡­", the Skelefiend didn''t manage to finish his sentence, before a skeletal arm and a skeletal leg both dded in green me-like battle aura emerged from their shadows, hitting the Skelefiend and sending him flying a couple of kilometers away.

    "What are you waiting attack them!", Ellemy ordered the Skelefiends to join the fight, since his subordinates were temporarily busy, and the army advanced towards Yvonne and Liliana, just to be interrupted by a sea of mes.

    "Feather Massacre Tsunami~", Leslie''s soft voice which normally is like the chirping of a little bird, was like a demon''s whispers for the Skelefiends as they were burned by her fierce mes, but that wasn''t all.

    A silver haired beauty appeared next to Leslie and with a snap of her fingers ck clouds appeared above the Skelefiend army.

    "Thunder Storm", purple lightning poured down over the Skelefiends making them scream and release ck smoke from their bodies.

    Ellemy was beyond words right now, four girls were holding back an army, but he still had another Arch ranked at his disposition.

    "Liner go get those two, cousin might be appeased if we bring him a pair of top level beauties".

    "Understood!", the pirate knew that their captain was in need of subjects and if they didn''t bring any result, well, let''s just say it would be preferable to die in battle than to love after a crushing defeat.

    Still, he saw the result of the vice-general Skelefiend, so he didn''t approach them and instead created a giant rock arm to grab the two girls.

    "Come here, you two will be good additions to our captain''s bedroom kekeke", said the pirate.

    But as the rock arm was about to grab them, a cold disdainful voice could be hearding from the shadow of the silver haired girl.

    "How does a lowlife dare to covet my young master''s lovers, break for this general!",

    The rock arm was intercepted by a skeletal arm dded in green battle aura, and utterly destroyed almost immediately, then a floating head dded in a ck armor emerged from Aisha''s shadow.

    "What the hell is that!", shouted Ellemy, at first he thought what intercepted the Arch ranked Skelefiend was some kind of life-saving treasure, until he heard the head talking, which made it obvious it was a "living" being.

    "Bone Maniption, Skeletal Guardian", proudly shouted Horals, making his body parts shine with green battle aura which protected the girls of his young master.

    He wasn''t the only one surprised though, the Risha sisters recognized Horals''s voice and they brightly smiled, Daimon told them to fight to their heart''s content without any worry before the start of the n, and only now they understood why, he assigned Horals to protect them¡­ well more like a piece of Horals''s body protected each of them, naturally Aisha had the head, while Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana had the two arms and a leg.

    As for the remaining parts, which were the other leg, right ribcage and left ribcage, they were assigned to Mellie, Daphne and Chris, originally the part assigned to Chris was with Jasmine, but for this n she would be with Daimon all the time, so there were somest-minute modifications done.

    The girls gathered and while one of Horals''s arms stayed in front of them, his leg, arm and head respectively, flew towards one of the Arch ranked

    Horals''s head which was flying towards Ellemy was specially surrounded by fierce battle aura, as he shouted with a cold voice.

    "Disrespecting my young misses in front of me, if I Horals don''t bite you to death it will be a disgrace as my young master''s right hand!".

    And so the strange scene of three Arch ranked fighting against the dismembered parts of the bone general unfolded in front of Aisha and the Risha sisters, though it looked a bitical, the result was no joke.

    "Boooom!", the three body parts and the enemies shed and to Ellemy''s surprise, he was forced backwards, that''s right the head in front of him was stronger than him, it was humiliating.

    But it wasn''t his fault, this was Horals''s innate ability and also the reason as to why he was able to travel using the inventory, unlike other bone generals, his bones had vitality as he was a knight and so he could manipte them as he saw fit, so far, he could split into seven parts, and all of them were equally strong.

    In other words, he was seven middle stage Arch ranked in one, an ability he developed due to his burning loyalty and wish to be helpful to Daimon.

    Rita was unbeatable in crowd control and also, she was more logical and a better advisor in general, it was a bitter truth the bone general hade to ept, but there was another aspect in which he excelled more than her, battle prowess, his talent focused in crushing the bones and beheading the enemies of his young master, so he decided to focus on that.

    ''A conqueror''s sess is proved by the army at its back, young master is still too young, so I Horals will be his army'', thought Horals as he fiercely shed against Ellemy and the other two enemies.

    Aisha giggled and then she looked at the east, waiting for the signal they previously orded, so that she could give Daimon the greenlight to wrap things up.

    ''Those three should be finishing their part at any moment'', she thought.

 Chapter 337 The End Of The Magic Beast Hunt (Part 1)

    While the girls were fighting with Ellemy and the two armies, about one hundred kilometers the cages which contained the nobles of the Mermen and Elemental Seas, finally stopped moving due to the tsunami created by Karmandi.

    The nobles started talking between each other, some cursed the man that sent them away without freeing them.

    The armor Karmandi was wearing was somewhat simr to the one the neo nobles used, so they just assumed it was one of them the first one to arrive to this underwater space.

    "What the hell are those savages thinking, why didn''t he save us first before starting to fight".

    Karmandi''s actions perfectly fit with the battle-starved way of doing things of the neo nobles, so the nobles started toin about it.

    "That armor isn''t the one we use", said someone from the neo noble faction, which started a discussion, that only stopped when the voice of a woman interrupted them.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding drew everyone''s attention, the origin were a few girls in the cage for female nobles, the ones thatforted the others back when Garret dragged some guys as bait.

    "If you have time to argue, start making some progress in breaking the lock of the cage", said the girl from the Bamboo Forest sect, a green light covered her hands as she hit the lock of the cage.

    The other girls didn''t have physical boosting skills but they were either kicking the lock or casting spells at the lock.

    Since the Skelefiends didn''t brought potions to prevent their hostages to use mana, the cages were instead really durable, it was enough to imprison an Arch ranked.

    The guys who wereining felt humiliated that the girls scolded them, so they softly snorted before saying.

    "Don''t listen to her, we can''t break the lock anyway, and when those guys find us, if they see the scratches on the lock they will torture us!".

    The people who were motivated by the action of the girls immediately hesitated, if the Skelefiends saw them trying to escape they will be the next ones to suffer, and if they couldn''t escape anyway it will be just a suicide.

    "Humph, cowards", the neo noble though was the only one insulted the others and started attacking the lock, a couple of other nobles stared at each other and joined the neo noble, making the other guys shook their heads.

    "Idiots¡­", their disdainful expressions froze as a they saw three figures appearing out of nowhere.

    Mellie, Daphne and Chris arrived in time to see that ugly scene.

    "P-Princess!", shouted the nobles in disbelief.

    Some of the nobles let out sighs of relief, while others had resentful expressions, specially because they didn''t bring an Arch ranked so the princesses appearing here was "useless".

    "So you two finally decided to appear, we were tortured because of you!", shouted one of the male nobles.

    Others followed the usation, while a minority remained silent, on the other hand none of the female nobles said anything, though they had to watch bloody scenes, they were kept safe because the Skelefiends and pirates wanted to use their wellbeing as a token of exchange, so they didn''t suffer as much as the guys who were used as bait.

    While Mellie and Daphne didn''t want to argue, the maid Chris did answer them.

    "If you feel like that, then how about we leave you in that cage, I bet the Skelefiends will be more than happy to have someone to take their anger on, no one will know it and you won''t live to tell anyway".

    The nobles who wereining and demanding an apology from the princesses, paled, their bubble of "safety", was destroyed in this mission.

    Seeing that they shut up, Chris snorted.

    "Humph, cowards!".

    Of course, the nobles were livid to be insulted, but they valued their lives more than their dignity, so they gritted their teeth and didn''t say anything.

    "Lady Delphini¡­ do you know anything about our young miss?", asked the girls from the Bamboo Forest sect, afraid of the answer.

    Mellie nodded, in response.

    "Yes, she as well as the senior who is stalling the Half Ster ranks of the enemy, are cooperating with us".

    The maid Chris checked the cages and reached the same conclusion, they weren''t going to be able to open them, and the cages were too heavy for them to push them away.

    Daphne patted Mellie''s shoulder, she was about to use her innate ability to see if she could damage the lock enough for them to escape, but then they saw Mellie''s shadow distorting before an bone leg dded in green battle aura.

    "That is¡­", Mellie has seen Horals before, so she didn''t get scared, but she was indeed surprised by it.

    The bone leg floated still in front of Mellie as if it was waiting for her instructions.

    "You are Gabriel''s protector, right?", mumbled Mellie.

    The leg moved up and down as if it was nodded in confirmation, making Mellieugh.

    ''I was wondering why he left us join this time but not before¡­ apparently he found a way to look for us at a distance'', she thought as she pointed at the lock of the cage that contained the female nobles.

    "Senior Horals, please help me break that lock".

    "Booom!", the leg exploded in green aura and with a kick the whole front side of the cage was blown away.

    The female nobles were in awe right now, though the scene of a floating bone leg obeying the orders of Mellie was a bit strange, they just assumed it was some kind of treasure gifted to her the queen who is known for always having a n b¡­ and for being a bit entric too.

    Mellie thought about it for a moment before she said.

    "Thanks, senior Horals, that''s all for now".

    "Sister Daphne, Gabriel was right, we can''t know who is on our side right now, we''ll still take them with us, but they will be kept in that cage", said Mellie.

    Daphne nodded and the male nobles put on resented expressions, but they remained silent still, as long as they were able to escape this hell everything was fine.

    The female nobles only left the cage but didn''t move too much, only the girl from the Bamboo Forest sect and a couple of girls who believed in Daphne approached them.

    "Princesses, how can we help?", they asked, but Mellie simply shook her head as she took out a small red bed from her pocket.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Stay close and grab onto the cage, we''ll be making our exit in a moment so be prepared, if anyone doesn''t follow our indications and is left behind, we can''t do anything".

    Mellie threw the bead upwards and then with a snap of her fingers the bead exploded in the air liberating a small cloud of red smoke.

    At the other side of the battlefield, Aisha and Karmandi saw the smoke and they both did what they were supposed to.

    Tiberius and the two Bottom Shredders suddenly had a bad premonition, as Karmandi sinisterlyughed, his mana exploded out of his body creating a huge ck cloud.

    "Stop him!", shouted Tiberius, unfortunately he was a second toote.

    "Rain Dragon Hurricane!", Karmandi''s blue mana created a high-pressure whirlwind that trapped both Tiberius and the Bottom Shredder king and queen.

    The water was rotating at such a high speed that a deep hole was drilled into the ground, the air trembled as a 50 kilometer tall, water twister forced Tiberius and the Bottom Shredders to put everything into defense, while Karmandi stayed in the eye of the hurricane coldly staring at them, whenever they tried to break free he elerated the rotation of the hurricane.

    ''Hurry upss, I don''t have my while power, so I can''t suppress them for too long''.

    Aisha whose face was a bit pale due to therge amount of mana she has used listened to Karmandi''s voice directly at her ears and she nodded, the Risha sisters were in the same position, they have used their wings with their own mana to keep the Skelefiend army in check, so they were tired as well.

    ''Everything ready darling!''.

    Even from afar Ellemy was able to see the huge hurricane, but he could notice that his allies were enduring it pretty fine, they were just trapped so that didn''t make him panic, what did make him feel a bad premonition was the smile on the face of the silver haired girl which he ordered his subordinate to capture earlier.

    ''Why do I feel so unease¡­'', he thought, but then his eyes widened, the mist that functioned as clouds evaporated.

    "S-Sun, why is the sun appearing underwater!", shouted Ellemy.

    That''s right in the middle of the air, a fire sphere appeared out of nowhere, the only difference is that instead of the yellow/orange tone of the sun, it waspletely white, also at the center of it there were a pair of figures, a silver haired youth and a blond girl who was tightly holding onto the young man.

    It was none other than Daimon who was ying thest part of the act, Jasmine was taken by surprise because they appeared midair so she held onto him to not drift away by ident.

    "Breaking Dawn!", with Daimon''s order then sun contracted and then descended upon the Skelefiend army.

    While the three Arch ranks were being stalled by Horals''s, they powerlessly witnessed the moment where the white sun made contact with the ground and the next thing, they knew was that a blinding sh forced them close their eyes.

    "Booooom!".

    A loud explosion followed by the horrified screams of the Skelefiends flooded the battlefield.

    Then Horals''s parts returned to the girls sides and they were brought away above the explosion, which was still ongoing.

    "Don''t let them escape!", this time Ellemy did react on time, he and the other two Arch ranks flew towards Daimon and the others, just to be forced to back off by a water de that nearly cut them in half.

    Karmandi who suddenly jumped out of the hurricane shed towards Daimon, and he grabbed Daimon''s shoulder at the same time as the girls held onto him too.

    "No!!!", Ellemy hysterically yelled as he saw them disappearing.

    Almost at the same time Tiberius and the Bottom Shredder king and queen managed to escape from the hurricane, just to see Daimon and the others disappearing.

    "You fucking useless idiot, you couldn''t capture a few little girls in front of you!" barked Tiberius at Ellemy.

    Ellemy gritted his teeth, as he yelled back.

    "Shut up, we can discusster they can''t be too far away from us so move your ass".

    The Skelefiend general misjudged thinking that Karmandi used a high ranked movement spell to escape from the vicinity.

    ¡­

    At the same hill where Daimon took a rest with Jasmine early, he, the girls and Karmandi appeared.

    "Are you okaydies?", asked Daimon seeing their slightly lethargic expressions, but the girls nodded.

    "Mm".

    Then a couple ofrge cages also appeared next to them, Mellie, Daphne and Chris were holding onto them, luckily switch had range of fifty meters, where everything touched by the one with the mark could be taken back with them, so they just grabbed the cages and were able to transport everyone inside of them, it still costed Daimon about 20% of his stamina though.

    "Karmandi, if you do us the honors", mumbled Daimon.

    "Finally, I was starting to feel ufortable in this little form", said Karmandi as he returned to his beast form.

    Of course the nobles in the cages felt intimidated by Karmandi''s aura, also the fact that he could talk meant he probably was a Half Ster ranked.

    "Calm down, senior Karmandi is our ally", said Jasmine and Mellie to the citizen of their respective seas.

    Some of the nobles were troubled seeing that a magic beast was helping them, there were subordinates of the old noble houses who believed in the propaganda of the White royal family, and Karmandi was clearly not from one of the races of the Mermen Sea, because there were no Half Ster ranks beasts there, besides the guardian beast of the royal family.

    In contrast the people of the Elemental Sea, who were mostly girls as the guys apparently didn''t end in this underwater space, didn''t have a problem with it.

    Ignoring what they thought about him, Karmandi grabbed the cages and then Daimon naturally rode on Karmandi''s back, the girls sat next to him, while the princesses and Chris grabbed Daimon''s shoulders.

    And then they disappeared, not without one of Karmandi''s scales glowing.

    ''Time to go Kamir'', he sent a short order to his subordinate as they left this hill, there was just about half an hour before the end of the beast hunt, meaning the Trident Marshal and the other adults should start feeling suspicious that no one had returned, so hell was about to break loose.

    The end of this event was approaching, but at the same time a major event which would change Neptune forever was about to begin.

 Chapter 338 The End Of The Magic Beast Hunt (Part 2)

    Kamir, Dagur and the Lord ranked skelefiends were about halfway to the main exit''s battlefield, when Kamir got the order from Karmandi to make his move, they were flying at high altitude as to not be detected since they were acting as reinforces.

    Dagur suddenly had a bad premotion so he activated his innate defensive spell acid shield just in time, but was still hit by a high-pressure water streaming from Kamir''s snout, it was the best spell Karmandi''s race had for long range offensive, Tidal Vortex.

    Why did he use that you might ask, the answer is simple, the attack was supposed to put as much distance as possible between Kamir and Dagur, and it worked like a charm, the water stream sent Dagur flying about five kilometers and then smacked him against the ground.

    The Lord ranks that were flying thanks to Dagur found themselves in free fall immediately, and while they weren''t going to die the still had no way to maneuver midair, so they could only resentfully re at Kamir as they fell.

    But that wasn''t all, Kamir immobilized the fifty Lord ranks that were being transported by him with water chains, and he devoured a couple that were trying to break free before he turned around and immediately fled from the scene but in direction to the main exit, soon disappearing from the sight of the Skelefiends who were boiling due to anger at this point.

    "Fucking magic beast, I will peel you alive!!!", Dagur suddenly came out from the ground, once he helped his subordinates safelynd he asked where did Kamir went, and they pointed at the main exit.

    "You return to Vice-general Uly''s side, I will go after that traitor, if he reached there before me, then he would have a free pass to ambush general Tiberius!", shouted Dagur as he became a green sh that shot itself towards the direction where the main exit was.

    Due to the istion magic array, using any form ofmunication was incredibly hard, that ck te he had could only be used once every 12 hours, and so thest information Tiberius had was that the magic beasts were their allies, giving Kamir a chance to stir up chaos if he arrived before.

    ''Fuck, maybe that fucker was one of the subordinates of the other general mentioned by Ulkrear, it was a snake and I totally forgot about it!'', screamed Dagur in his heart as he elerated even more.

    He wasn''t worried about Uly being with the other Arch ranked magic beast, because the centipede''s affinity is poison and as Skelefiends they had high resistance towards it, even wounded he shouldn''t have trouble fighting against it, he was half-way to the main exit anyway and his main priority was to free his Lady.

    Kamir who was already about fifty kilometers ahead from Dagur, had a positively surprised expression on his face.

    ''Gabriel is incredible, general I''m ready to leave'', that was he message he sent back to Karmandi as he ascended into the sky at a high speed forcing the Lord ranks Skelefiends to faint due to the sudden change in the pressure.

    ¡­

    Almost at the same time Daimon and the others appeared about one kilometer away from the alternative exit behind arge rock formation that perfectly covered them, and that wasn''t all, the walls of the rock had a few dark green crystals incrusted into them.

    It was Sea Devil ore, of course it wasn''t naturally formed on any outside rock, but something Daimon put into this rock formation to cover their presence.

    ''I still can''t believe you can touch that horrible thing¡­ even our Empress treats those things as the gue, Kamir says he is done his part too'', said Karmandi directly to Daimon.

    Daimon nodded and with a snap of his fingers, a mark on the ground a few meters away from them exploded.

    ''Switch'', with a single thought Daimon''s stamina reduced another 10% and then therge body of Kamir appeared out of thin air, there were also 6 Lord ranks being suppressed by his water chains.

    Kamir gave Daimon a reverence gaze, as he offered three of the Lord ranks as "tribute", to Daimon, the other three were given to Karmandi.

    The snake general chuckled as he said what was in Kamir''s head to Daimon.

    ''He says that he wants you to ept this sign of respect from him, the others were devoured but he will give Neal their magic cores because he apparently got something good from the Skelefiend who you trapped into that ck small castle''.

    Daimon nodded, more sources of information would not be a problem, and speaking of that, he snapped his fingers and the two three still frozen pirates that he met just when he was arriving at this underwater space appeared next to him.

    "W-What now, just let us die in peace",ined one of the two subordinates, while their supervisor calmly evaluated their surroundings until he saw Daimon and the group that has formed, which included some really strong looking magic beasts.

    "So, you indeed had a hidden card¡­ you can''t be possibly one of those spoiled nobles, to be able to promise my brother a pardon from the queen, and also be allied with magic beasts, who are you?", mumbled Travis.

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "Not the time to talk, get into the cage, we''ll be making our exit".

    Travis who was the only one of the three that could move by himself nodded and entered the cage along with the male nobles who gave him resented gazes, but they have noticed the silver haired youth being the one in charge here, not to mention the princesses, even that dangerous looking magic beast had paid attention to his words, so they remained silent.

    "Put these guys into the other cage, Kamir if you don''t mind give these girls a ride", said Daimon.

    Karmandi threw the Lord ranked Skelefiends into the cage andpressed it so it was closed once again, while Kamir offered the former prisoner female nobles to ride on his back.

    Needless to say, but they were a bit afraid of the Arch ranked snake, so they turned to see Mellie and Daphne for advice.

    Mellie inwardly pouted as she stole a gaze at Daimon, who left her the task of convincing these still shocked girls to thrust a fierce looking magic beast like Karmir, Karmandi could talk so it was easier to ept as he had unlocked his wisdom, but Kamir was more on the wilder side.

    "Don''t look at us like that, the pressure of the water in the tunnel is horrible, without the protection of someone strong you''ll end up being dragged away, Senior Kamir is a water affinity middle stage peak lever Mortal magic beast, more than enough to protect you, also he has proven to be thrust worthy".

    "Mellie is right, don''t be picky you all¡­ besides I bet you won''t like the other option", added Jasmine referring to Neal, the centipede was way grumpier and fierce-looking than Kamir after all.

    "Ahem, thanks for the advice young miss,e on get up, we are almost out!", shouted the girls from the Bamboo Forest sect as well as the girls that supported Daphne.

    Speaking about that, the oldest looking girl from the Bamboo Forest sect, couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow at the sight of Jasmine still holding onto Daimon''s shoulder, but she also noticed that Adam was nowhere to be found.

    And she was able to notice her childhood friend seemed different than before, she looked a bit more mature but happier, unlike before where she couldn''t stand seeing how she was led by Adam.

    ''I guess we have a lot to talk¡­ granny Aurora is going to be really pissed'', she thought as she got up Kamir''s back too.

    "Let''s go", said Daimon as he jumped on top of Karmandi''s back, making the snake general sigh.

    ''Not even my Empress uses me so casually as a mean of transportation you know?'', he said with a defeated voice, making inwardly Daimonugh.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''We are going to be risking our lives together, what does a few rides amount for allies''.

    Karmandi knew it was futile to discuss, besides as strange as it sounded he didn''t feel ufortable working with Daimon, maybe because despite his human appearance the feeling he gave off was closer to that of a magic beast that has taken human form, or maybe because he has developed some respect for him during this whole situation.

    The girls all hoped on board and sat next to Daimon, then Karmandi grabbed the cages with his tail and they flew towards the alternative entrance where the surviving Skelefiends were without noticing surrounded by Neal and the rest of the Karmandi''s army.

    The centipede got the order from Karmandi and without any warning, he whipped his long body against the ground making it shatter below him.

    "Aghhhh, what the hell is this!", the Skelefiend army was taken by surprise and they fell on a deep hole which was created by Neal previously, the before they could react the whole army startedunching long range attacks at them.

    Lightning, ice spears, rocks, water des, and a lot of other attacks rained down upon the trapped Skelefiends, making them scream, they were outnumbered in a 4:1 proportion so they couldn''t even retaliate and were soon drown in spells.

    "What the hell are you doing!", Uly who just got out of his daze shouted at Neal, when he suddenly had a bad premonition as a wild supposition shed in his mind.

    Wasn''t it a bit too convenient that the magic beasts were practically unscathed in the previous battle with that monstrous guy, he thought¡­ and what if he were to be somehow in cahoots with the magic beasts all this time to set them up.

    Unfortunately for Uly his theory was then confirmed when a strong pressure forced him on his knees, as Karmandi and Kamir arrived to the entrance of the alternative exit along with that same guy that caused such heavy casualties before.

    "Hi again vice-general, I''m in a hurry so let''s drop formalities, is there anything in special I need to know about this alternative exit?".

    Uly''s face twisted as he heard the indifferent voice of the human who at this point, he realized, yed them all along, but then he vomited blood due to the pressure of the magic beast in which he was riding.

    "Answer the question, sack of bones", ordered Karmandi.

    "H-Half Ster, you are that snake which Ulkrear mentioned!", shouted Uly in disbelief, a Half Ster rank was giving a merman a ride, despite how much they hated each other.

    ''What in the name of Snakele is happening in this!'', screamed Uly in his heart, still he had no choice but to say something unless he wanted to be crushed to death.

    "There is nothing, no one knows of this exit besides us and it leads to a lot of ces in what you call Wild Tide Reef!".

    Karmandi looked at Daimon and saw him nodding, he could tell the Skelefiend wasn''t lying.

    "That wasn''t that hard was it, you''lle with us since we apparently will need a guide, don''t try anything funny and you as well as "she" will live", said Daimon as he moved the little ck castle in which Shirel was still being kept, though the castle was still trembling from time to time, it has be less frequent, with a good reason, not to mention Shirel had suppressed her powers to the Arch rank, that was Rita''s definitive ability, after using it she had to sleep for a whole day in Daimon''s shadow to recover, in her words at least.

    Uly noticed all his subordinates were dead at this point, and the fact that Kamir returned with a Half Ster rank and was perfectly fine made him believe Dagur got done in, his obligation is to keep Shirel alive at all cost since he is from her lineage too, so he had only choice now¡­ obey.

    "Fine, I''ll guide you out", he said, it was as if he had aged a few hundreds of years, he a vice-general was utterly defeated, if only he knew Daimon even yed with the generals which were Half Ster ranks, he would probably vomit blood and die.

    With Karmandi setting a literal water bomb around Uly''s neck, they all jumped into the cave, which was then copsed by Karmandi and Neal, not without Daimon leaving a little present for when the others realize they had fled.

    Soon guided by Uly they reached arge open space underground, there was a natural deep pool which had a strong current ongoing, at the bottom there was a clear tunnel that led to another ce.

    "Here we are, let me say this beforehand, there might be some magic beasts trapped in the current so I''m not responsible if those weaklings die", said Uly referring to Karmandi''s subordinates as well as Daimon and the girls.

    "I would like to see which magic beast below the Ster rank dares to block this old snake''s path", said Karmandi, water is his element, he was born in it, raised in it and is determined to die in it.

    Still, he turned to see Daimon to ask for confirmation, because in authority he is at the same level as him in the alliance, so he couldn''t just decide by himself.

    ''Let''s leave this ce, the real thing is about to start¡­ I don''t believe for a second, they did all this without taking into ount the Trident Marshal and Jasmine''s grandmother, don''t forget to do the call as soon as we are out, and also help me with what I asked'', said Daimon directly to Karmandi.

    Daimon then turned to see the girls that changed their previous positions to now be holding onto him.

    You know there is no need for that anymore right, we''ll be leaving through a water tunnel?", asked Daimon.

    Aisha and the Risha sisters simply giggled in response, as they tightened their grip on Daimon''s arms.

    "We are tired, can''t you be a gentleman for once", yfully said Leslie with a genuinely tired expression.

    Aisha just stuck her tongue at her son and directlyid down using Daimon''s leg as her pillow.

    "Yeah, using thunder storm for such a long time made my body feel a bit numb, so I''ll be taking a little nap here~".

    Yvonne and Liliana didn''t say anything but their eyes perfectly expressed that they weren''t going to let go no matter what.

    Mellie simply shrugged before saying.

    "It''s for safety, what will you tell my sister if I were to be dragged by a random water current being so close to leave safe and sound¡­ we still have to win the three-art tournament, don''t we?".

    Daphne only looked at Daimon and then gave Chris a gaze, which she somehow was able to trante to words.

    "The first princess says that she still feels weak due to the bacsh of her innate ability and she invites you to pay her a visit to the Duchess territory at a tea party, as a way repay you".

    Daimon chuckled, as he gave Karmandi the greenlight.

    The snake general eyes glowed as he nodded, he then threw Uly into the water before he, Kamir, Neal and the rest of the army followed.

 Chapter 339 The End Of The Magic Beast Hunt (Part 3)

    The first thing Daimon noticed about the water currents of this pool, is that it was colder than the one in which they travelled before, he could also notice there was arger proportion of darkness mana floating underwater.

    They weren''t really touched by the water because Karmandi was protecting them with a thingyer of mana, but the surroundings were rather cold.

    ''This water current belongs to the Maelstrom Sea'', said Karmandi, confirming Daimon''s suspicion, after saying that guided by Uly, they dived downwards until they reached the bottom of the pool.

    The current was indeed really strong, so much that the weaker magic beasts had to hold onto the stronger ones, Neal who wasn''t transporting anyone took the initiative to protect some of the smaller magic beasts only then they entered the current which immediately dragged them downwards at a high speed.

    Seeing that the surroundings had be darker due to the absence of light, Daimon released a faint amount of demon light, and that was enough to illuminate the whole area around twenty meters, enough for the girls to befortable.

    He did it because being underwater and without sight puts mental pressure in creatures which aren''t used to that kind of atmosphere, Karmandi did his part too, he ordered his subordinates who were capable of using bio-luminescence to light up the tunnel.

    "Woah, look at the patterns on the walls", eximed Leslie, now that the illumination was high enough, she pointed at the strange corrugated pattern on the walls of the tunnel.

    The other girls seemed to be also interested by it, while Daimon and Karmandi frowned, it was an strange pattern, which was hard toe by naturally, but it''s also clear that it isn''t a recent thing.

    ''Perhaps a few thousands of years ago, some magic beast created this tunnel'', thought Daimon before he put the subject at the back of his mind, he was instead surprised to see a certain magic array disyed in the first three or so kilometers of he tunnel which werepletely surrounded by walls before they finally reached an open underwater space.

    Even then they didn''t have to do anything, as the current impulse them towards a specific direction, which Uly assured to be the one that will take them to the surface.

    Daimon smirked as he sent Karmandi a message directly to his ears, before they got away from where they were.

    While Daimon and the others were travelling though the underwater current, the vice-general Dagur had exhausted himself to elerate enough to reach the main exit at the same time as Kamir, and he finally was able to catch a glimpse of his destination.

    "Damn it, he got here first!", cursed Dagur, as he saw the destroyed area as well as what was left of a flooded battlefield result of Karmandi''s hurricane stopping, it was a disaster zone.

    There were corpses floating here and there, some made him remember that white me explosion which obliterated a big part of his army.

    "Mm?", Tiberius and Ellemy saw a figure approaching and they prepared for a battle, thinking Dagur was another battered corpse just like Garret previously, but they eased up when they noticed he was alive.

    "Vice-general Dagur reporting, what happened here, did that snake ambushed you?", asked Dagur in a hurry, just to be met with weird gazes.

    "What the hell are you talking about Dagur, if you have time to speak nonsense help us look for those guys, they managed to take away our hostages before leaving", said Tiberius, before he frowned.

    "Wait, why are you alone, didn''t you say you were going to bring reinforces, among them some magic beasts?".

    Dagur gritted his teeth in response.

    "The magic beasts betrayed us, they were allied with that guy who attacked us, from the very beginning¡­ did general Tiberius managed to wound that traitor snake?", asked Dagur with a hopeful voice.

    The fact that he was yed by a magic beast who hasn''t unlocked its wisdom was a hard blow for him, so he expected Tiberius to shred Kamir to pieces, but the response he got was instead.

    "We didn''t see any magic beast, only an armored guy who probably belonged to the neo nobles of the Clear Water kingdom, don''t try to make up some excuses for beingte, you useless sack of bones, the little bitch princesses escaped from my hands!", shouted Ellemy.

    "Are you calling me a liar, you pirates don''t even have a Half Ster on your side right now, if someone here is useless that''s you Ellemy", Dagur was too worried about Shirel right now to show respect to Ellemy just because he was the cousin of the Devil Stingray pirates.

    "Humph, great words for someone who couldn''t even protect his master, wasn''t a guy the one who took away that scheming woman from you, what do you think he will do to her, he even escaped from us, there is no saving for you now Dagur", said Ellemy with a schadenfreude, happy for the moment the ruler of the Skelefiends will behave Dagur for losing one of his wives.

    Tiberius who was the moreposed here, frowned as he got in the middle of the two.

    "Enough!".

    "Dagur, a snake didn''t approach this ce at all, my senses can cover around three hundred kilometers, and I assure you nothing like a snake magic beast flying appeared in it".

    Dagur was taken aback, while Ellemy snorted, but then a realization hit him like a truck as a memory shed through his mind.

    ''That blond guy vanished into thin air all of a sudden, but there was no Half Ster rank near us, or he could have just obliterated us after Lady Shirel was captured, wait how did that guy reached all the way here in such a short period amount of time¡­".

    "THE ALTERNATIVE EXIT!", suddenly shouted Dagur with a twisted expression.

    Ellemy raised an eyebrow, while Tiberius grabbed Dagur by his neck.

    "What are you doing, you fool?", he asked with an angry voice, the alternative exit was a secret passed down by an Skelefiend ancestor from his family, and he just shouted about its existence.

    But right now, Dagur didn''t care about statuses and ranks, he instead answered with question.

    "If there was a Half Ster rank besides the princesses, then a breach in the istion array must have been opened, how did they escaped from you!".

    Something made click in Tiberius''s mind, he discarded the enemies being too far from them, because he didn''t see any traces of a transportation magic array near here.<novelnext></novelnext>

    it didn''t even cross through his mind that the guy which he fought had that rumored ability, the ability to move through space without the help of an array, but if that was the case then¡­ they got done in.

    Tiberius tightened his grip on Dagur''s neck as he shouted at his face.

    "Who is watching the alternative exit".

    Dagur had a bitter expression as he answered.

    "Vice-general Uly¡­ but he wasn''t in a good state, if that snake never came here and instead went straigth to the alternative exit, then he is probably dead at this point and they should be escaping as we speak".

    Tiberius''s eyes got bloodshot, he threw Dagur and smacked him against the ground as he pierced the left side of his chest with his own hand, to take out a small ck scroll, which he then opened.

    "If we can''t stop them, then we just have to bury them, it will be easier to dig and retrieve the corpses of the princesses than to return empty handed!", he shouted with a mad expression as he broke the ck scroll

    ¡­ But then to Tiberius''s surprise what he expected didn''t happen, he opened the scroll whose function was to activate the self-destruction array carved on the first eight kilometers of the underwater tunnel, the rocks weighted more underwater so even a Half Ster rank would be trapped there, of course there was the possibility of the guy being able to move through space, but as far as he knew, those who were able to do such a thing, had to wait before doing it again, also the explosion would definitely harm it.

    Unfortunately the scroll which should have exploded in mes upon activation, didn''t have any reaction, the array couldn''t be nullified since it came from within the rocks and the exit of the tunnel, so this could only mean it had been detonated already.

    "Only a Half Ster sea magic beast would be able to open a path in the strong currents, and also move fast enough to not be affected by the explosion¡­", mumbled Tiberius as he fell silent for a moment.

    Then all the pieces of he puzzle took their respective ces, making him realize he was toyed with, the guy he fought wasn''t a noble from the Mermen Sea, but a magic beast who had taken human form.

    Also the magic beasts were allied with the Mermen and Elemental Seas, or maybe someone leaked their ns which forced them to cooperate, in any case his neck was now in danger.

    "Bleeeghh!", Tiberius''s face became red and before he could do anything, he vomited blood due to anger.

    "I DON''T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUT I WILL SKIN YOU ALIVE!!!", he roared at the sky, as he forcefully unsealed his full power.

    Ellemy was blown away due to the mana explosion caused by a Half Ster ranked going mad, the Bottom Shredder king and queen stood in front of him to block the shockwave.

    But then Tiberius coldly stared at them before saying.

    "Ellemy, those beasts will be taken hostage and interrogated, we were defeated in so many fronts that this can''t be a coincidence, cooperate or die, your choice".

    Ellemy gritted his teeth, he knew Tiberius right now wasn''t in a right state of mind, Skelefiends are already crazy by innate, and he seemed to be suffering some kind of deviation, so if he didn''t cooperate there was a big chance, he will attack them.

    "They will be put through interrogation, but right now we need to leave right now, the Lords should be arriving right now, we need to leave the istion array to contact them¡­ if we want to keep our heads attached to our bodies".

    Tiberius nodded, strangely calm, he waves hid hand and Dagur who was a bit haggard was pulled towards him.

    "You know the map of the currents, guide us through the shortest route possible, leave the current to me".

    Dagur nodded and then he and the others jumped into the main exit, followed by a few Skelefiends who managed to survive, in these series of battles, they lost about eight hundred of their high soldiers, a Half Ster rank who happens to be one of the wives of the Skelefiend ruler and a few vice-generals.

    As for the pirates, only Ellemy, his direct subordinate and the Bottom Shredders made it, or at least that''s what he knew, since he wasn''t aware of a few people dejecting to the other side.

    ¡­

    Back to the underwater space, Daimon''s infinity eyes saw the runes engraved on the trying to activate the array and he smirked, a ck sword was shoved on the wall and before the array could be triggered all the mana stored inside was devoured by the sword, needless to say but they were already out of the closed tunnel.

    Unlike a living being who can put up resistance against Disaster''s ability, starting from the Arch ranks and above, and array doesn''t have that capacity, or at least not this specific disposable array whose only purpose was to create arge explosion.

    "Can you do the honors, Karmandi?", asked Daimon, making the snake generalugh.

    "Tidal Vortex!", a blue stream was shot out of Karmandi''s snout, demolishing the tunnel thus making it impossible for the enemy to follow them through it, at least not for the time being as they would need a lot of work to unblock the tons of rocks that blocked the tunnel.

    Uly was speechless right now, he didn''t lie about there not being anything waiting from them in the underwater tunnel, he didn''t know about that array, which means someone could have buried them if needed.

    ''Fucking Tiberius, if I''m not wrong it was his family the one who discovered this secret passage'', he inwardly cursed.

    "Let''s go, take us as close to the entrance of the Wild Tide Reef on the surface as possible", ordered Daimon.

    The next minutes will be critical, Daimon didn''t know if the enemies were waiting for them at the surface or not, that''s why he dyed their leave as much as possible, but now he had no choice but to leave because the currents will be returning and then it''s going to be hell for anyone who isn''t a Half Ster ranked at least.

    Uly nodded and then they all started advancing at full throttle, the start of a battle without precedents approached with every second that passed, there were only a few minutes left prior to the time limit set by the Trident Marshal, once that happened questions will be asked, and the pirates and Skelefiend will be forced to make their move, without knowing that they don''t have any hostage to use.

 Chapter 340 Results Of The Beast Hunt (Part 1)

    While Daimon''s group, the Skelefiends and the pirates were rushing to get to a ce where they could contact their respective allies, back at the Warhammer city, the Trident Marshal as well as the other adults had started to find strange that the participants haven''t started to return yet.

    "Senior Vincent¡­ shouldn''t those fellows have started to appear, we are only a few minutes away from the time limit?", asked the patriarch of the Bamboo Forest sect.

    Though he didn''t specifically mention it, he was getting worried about his daughter, since he knows how meticulous she is.

    ''Thatss doesn''t take any unnecessary risk, that''s whydy Aurora trusted her to be the best friend of the little princess¡­ she would have normally been here at this point'', thought Underwood.

    Patriarch Skyfire who was drinking some wine, made some underhandedments at Underwood.

    "Why are you so worried, youngsters must venture to be stronger, it''s no surprise that the Bamboo Forest sect had stagnated, the next generation is bound tock courage if you overprotect them you know?".

    Underwood softly snorted in response, he might like to maintain peace but he isn''t a pushover, so he answered in kind.

    "Says the guy whose son threw a fit at his 18th birthday because he was rejected, if I remember correctly, a certain someone asked for an appointment with Lord Shaman with the excuse of discussing the "future" of the Elemental Sea".

    "What did you say you bastard!", akin to his name, Skyfire got heated up pretty easily, the wine in his ss evaporated and the ss itself melted as he got up from his chair.

    But Underwood didn''t cower, his green hair shone with a dim light and a wood pattern appeared on his arm.

    The other people stayed as spectators, unfortunately while usually this would have been treated as just a quarrel and be overlooked, Aurora had started to be worried too, the score of her granddaughter''s team stopped increasing some time ago, in fact a lot of people noticed that the current scores were way different to what they expected.

    The only ones whose points were increasing at a regr pace, were the princes teams as well as the one of the young spear from the neo noble faction.

    "Lord Vincent, would it be possible to end the event a few minutes earlier, I''m starting to miss that little girl and the difference between the first three ces and the others is too big, so I don''t see any point in holding back the results", said Aurora.

    The mother of the crowned princess found the old woman Aurora lovely, since the one holding the first ce was none other than her son, that being said the son of the ckfin Duke and the young spear have been exchanging the first ce with him every five minutes or so, so if thepetition ended right now, then besides some exceptions like the other participants bringing some alive magic beasts with them, her son will be the winner.

    The Trident Marshal raised an eyebrow, it was a bit disrespectful for others to ask his event to be ended sooner,

    ''Uncle, I have a bad premonition'', said Ae directly to the Trident Marshal.

    Ultimately he epted, the scores weren''t as high as he expected, specially one among them was too low considering it belonged to that silver haired youth, contrary to his expectations.

    ''Were this old man''s senses tricked, or could it be¡­''.

    Vincent cleared his throat to get all the present''s attention, his voice was calm but firm.

    "By everyone''s petition I will dere the end of the magic beast hunt of this year, let''s go meet those little friends and wee the winners".

    Having said that, Vincent tapped his foot on the ground and to his relief, the portal to the Wild Tide Reef properly opened, which made the other patriarchs and high ranked nobles let out a sigh of relief.

    "Follow me".

    The crowd went through the portal and a couple of secondster they arrived at the other side, on top of a small hill, since the currents were about to return, there were small streams that have started to appear on the ground.

    As Vincent was about to use his mana sense to look for the closest participants, just to calm the others down, he immediately frowned.

    The Trident Marshal''s eyes contracted like needles, the istion array was perfectly hidden within the one deployed by his family many generations ago, so he couldn''t see the difference as he isn''t a Rune Master.

    But what he indeed could feel were the waves in the space appearing above them, all the Ster ranks gain the capacity to feel the waves in space in different proportions, that doesn''t grant them the ability to travel through it though.

    "Mm?", Aurora was the same, she suddenly raised her head to look above, then without any warning a rain of fire fell from within the sky, right where the Trident Marshal and the others were standing.

    "Boooom!".

    Arge the explosion didn''t raise any fire, but in exchange arge amount of ck smoke filled the whole area.

    "Whooooosh!", with a wave of his hand, the Trident Marshal''s who parried the previous attack with his bare hands dispelled the smoke blocking the sight of his group.

    "Hurry up prepare your defenses!", Vincent might have been taken by surprise, but he is still an experienced war veteran, he immediately organized these nobles and guests in a formation, the weaker people and other high-status nobles like the wives of the king with the exception of Daphne''s mother who was a powerhouse by all means.

    The Ster ranks formed a line in front of everyone else, Vincent, Aurora, the patriarchs of the four elemental sects, the general of the neo noble faction Dominic and the ckfin Minister were forming a solid wall.

    At the sides the Half Ster ranks conformed the nks, included but not limited to, Ae, the Vs Duchess and a couple of n heads from the noble families as well as the vice-captains of the royal guard who always followed the king and his wives.

    Speaking of the king, Triten was Livid, he was attacked in his own kingdom, and though he was weaker than Vincent, he could still feel some space waves, meaning the enemy was about to make their entrance.

    "Lady Delphini, as the queen you are not supposed to be in the frontline, how about you stay with us in the center?", asked the mother of the twin princes from the Keran family.

    The king looked at his wife from the corner of his eyes and gave her thumbs up in his mind, unfortunately Ae''s answer wasn''t what he expected.

    "I appreciate Lady Norma''s intentions, but I refuse, spears in the daylight are easy for me to deal with", said Ae with a slightly cold but yful voice.

    The high ranked nobles would have normally found joy in the sharp tongue of the queen, in a single sentence, she disrespected the wife of the king directly calling her by her name, and also referred to her as a backstabber without directly saying it.

    Of course, it''s not like Ae simply verbally attacked her without any reason, in terms of rank the twin princes are the youngest and practically have no chance of inheriting the throne, so their mother has been looking for a way to get them Archduke titles, for when the crown prince ascends, they would have enough authority to be on par with him, with a few exceptions that are exclusive to the king.

    But for that, she needs the approval not only of the king, but the rmendation of a current Archduke and¡­ the approval of the queen too, so she''s been doing everything to please the king which include trying to act as a bridge between Triten and Ae, the Archduke''s rmendation is more on the mary/achievements side, so the hardest nut to crack was the queen.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''Arrogant bitch¡­ just you wait'', thought Norma with a bitter expression as she said.

    "I see, certainly the queen is formidable considering her connections with the army, I leave my safety in your hands".

    Ae unnoticeably snorted as she called one of the two royal guards.

    "You, take this nk, I need to talk with the Trident Marshal".

    The royal guard frowned, he was trained to obey the king and his wives exclusively, the queen''s authority was indeed at the same level as the king, but he didn''t owe her his loyalty.

    "Do it", Triten graciously lent Ae a hand in this matter, making the royal guard nod.

    "Understood".

    Ae didn''t even wait for the previous to happen, by the time Triten showed his "support", she was already standing at the side of the Trident Marshal.

    "Uncle, I can count ten¡­ how many are there and who is the one behind all this?", she asked in a low voice.

    Though calm, Vincent was inwardly really angry right now, someone corrupted the barrier array of one of the legacies of his family, and the ones in Neptune with that kind of ability could be counted with the fingers of a hand, now the ones who could do it without him noticing were even more limited, ounting to only two people.

    One of them wasn''t an option due to an agreement reached a few thousands of years ago, in one of the many battles that made his name reverberate through Neptune, so the only other option is, one of the most despicable persons that has ever existed in the Maelstrom Sea.

    "The space here isn''t too stable, due to the mix of the mana from the four seas, so the limit is about fifteen, the problem is the old bastard who opened this breach¡­ ck Beard Commodore, but he isn''t alone, just one Ster rank isn''t enough to force so many portals here".

    Aurora heard Vincent''s words and she frowned, but she didn''t wait for anything else to happen, she pped her hands together in front of her and tried to summon the de-attachable part of the Flying Citadel, the legacy treasure of her family, just to realize it was taking more than normal.

    "Humph, break for me", with a soft snort, a breach on the istion formation opened and the tform in which the people from the Elemental Sea descended appeared above all the present people.

    With a snap of Aurora''s fingers, the tform lit up in white light and a transparent cube as projected around them, then they ascended into the sky where the biggest space waves were appearing.

    Just in time for the space waves to finish their job, as a series of portals appeared in front of them, from which war ships came, there were two themes, the ones on the left half were made out of ck wood, lead by an old eerie ck ship, the ones of the right half werepletely white made out of bones, lead by a creepy ship which was created using a couple of magic beast''s carcasses.

    The sound of steps came from the ck warship as a tall man in his early thirties came from the captain''s cabin of the ship.

    "Yo, what a sight to behold, the mighty Trident Marshal and the Matriarch of the Light Pce waiting for my great self to appear, isn''t it funny w?".

    A hoarse voice could be heard from the carcass ship as a three-meter tall, mummified guy came out of a red sack, it was different to any of the Skelefiends Daimon has ever seen, he had skin and "flesh" but it was stuck to his bones, unlike other Skelefiends it wasn''t just a cover, but a part of his real body now.

    "Stop it Commodore we aren''t here to y, also my name is Horrorw", said the mummified Skelefiend.

    Vincent and Aurora nodded at each other, they took a few steps ahead of the rest and left the protection of the Flying Citadel tform.

    The pirate and the Skelefiend did the same and the four of them found face to face with only a couple of meters of distance between each other.

    "We haven''t attacked neither of you, the treatment stands for the rest of this year at least", said Vincent.

    ck Beardughed in response before saying.

    "You should have read the small letters old bastard, the treatment was nullified from the moment events such as the Trident of promise breaking happened, not to mention I only epted not directly attacking the ships from your forces".

    Aurora snorted.

    "So, what do you want here?", she added.

    "Now that is the correct question, I need to borrow your granddaughter for a bit", said Horrow with a sinister smile.

    The formerly calm and gentle aura that surrounded Aurora disappeared before the pirate could finish his sentence, in exchange the air started trembling as white sparks leaked out of Aurora''s body.

    "If you want to die, just say so, why beat around the bush", said the old woman whose body was radiating heat right now.

    Horrorw snorted as he used some acid mana to protect himself from Aurora''s mana, then ck Beard''s annoying voice drew all the present''s attention.

    "Don''t be so grumpy, I would hate to have to order my subordinates to punish the princesses because of you bad attitude".

    This time it was Vincent whose mana exploded out of his body, the clouds ckened and wind gusts started blowing around him.

    "What did you say bastard!", he yelled.

    ck Beard''s face twisted as he pointed at his eye patch.

    "Do you remember this, I told you you''ll pay with flesh and blood for my eye, and if I remember correctly don''t you treat the little Delphini sister as your niece, two birds one stone, don''t you agree?".

    "Boooom!", the auras of the four Ster ranks exploded at the same time, forcing both the lead ships and the tform backwards, the tension was palpable and the smell of powder floated in the air.

    The other ships aimed their cannons at the nobles and people from the Elemental Sea, while thetter took out their respective weapons and started casting their spells, at the slight sign of anyone interfering hell would rain down on both groups.

    Without them noticing a few kilometers away, the ground started trembling as if something was about to burst out of it, at the same time arge wave appeared on the horizon, as the four currents were returning to the reef.

 Chapter 341 Results Of The Beast Hunt (Part 2)

    A few moments ago:

    Daimon and the others were advancing through the underwater current, when Karmandi suddenly spoke.

    "Careful, there is a pack of magic beasts ahead, they are lead by a couple of peak Mortal level guys".

    Something suddenly clicked on Daimon''s mind as he sent a message directly to Karmandi''s ears.

    ''It has already started, the istion array got weaker''.

    The snake general''s eyes glowed, he immediately injected mana into the scale who protected his heart and to his surprise it illuminated with a rune in the form of a crown.

    ''Done, I also did what you asked''.

    Daimon nodded in response.

    ''Help me with the magic beasts, we don''t have time to lose here, once the Ster ranks start fighting, we''ll get dragged into the mess''.

    Karmandi leaked some of his mana and just as they nned before, he created a vertical twister that covered the whole area around fifty kilometers.

    The girls saw the water rotating at an insane speed around them and they unconsciously tightened their grip on Daimon''s body, Karmandi had already finished unsealing his Half Ster powers, so right now they were surrounded by the attack of someone who has greatly surpassed the Arch ranks, it was instinctively intimidating even if it wasn''t aimed at them.

    But the girls were handling it pretty good, a secondter they got over it, the nobles on the other hand were pale, some of them even fainted on the spot, of course it didn''t escape the girl from the Bamboo Forest sect, that Daimon didn''t even flinch.

    Even she whose father a Ster rank, had prepared her to not feel intimidated so easily, couldn''t help but shiver upon the imposing sight of Karmandi''s spell, it was something innate as those who have set a foot in the Ster rank are on a whole new level.

    ''Who is this guy?'', she wondered.

    Uly who was guiding everyone saw the whirlpool and he pointed at the left side of arge rock formation ahead of them.

    "That''s the entrance to the tunnel that lead to the surface, we just need to avoid a couple of obstacles".

    Daimon smirked in response.

    "I don''t see such a thing as obstacles and you Karmandi?".

    The snake general wildly smiled as he said.

    "Me neither... Drill Whirlpool!".

    The rotation of the whirlpool doubled and then the thing bent upwards, piercing everything in its way.

    "Prepare for the impactdies", said Daimon.

    The Risha sisters stared at each other and then smiled, before they leaned against Daimon, making Aisha who was still leisurely using her son''s thigh as a pillow giggle.

    "You cunning little birds~", she mumbled.

    Back at the surface the tension has reached its peak, Vincent might haven''t been in the front for a long time, but that doesn''t mean his skills are rusted.

    He extended his hand in front of him and a blue trident appeared on his hand, upon seeing the old man''s weapon, both ck Beard and Horrorw changed their cocky expressions to way ones.

    They both took out their weapons too, ck beard had a pair of ck sabers and Horrorw used a pair of rusty metal gloves with red ws.

    "Oi, are you sure you want to do it the hard way, that cute niece of yours will pay the price, ah right I forgot to mention but we also have quite a nice stock of hostage nobles in our files, so tell those weaklings to put their weapons down", said ck Beard as he pointed at the patriarchs of the sects and the n heads of the noble houses.

    If possible, he didn''t want to sh with Vincent, he might be one of the two best rune masters in Neptune, but in battle terms there was no one who would dare to affirm was capable of beating Vincent in a 1v1 fight.

    If not why would he have gone through all the trouble to take the princesses of the Clear Water kingdom as hostages.

    "You too Aurora, with a single order I can make your granddaughter experience hell, in exchange if you let here with me peacefully, I can promise she''ll at least live", added Horrorw.

    Vincent saw the worried expressions on the faces of the nobles and he snorted.

    "Use your damn brains, do you think this idiot wouldn''t have demanded even our clothes if he had the hostages he says he''s got, attack!".

    The patriarchs and the n heads saw the confident expression in the face of the Trident Marshal and their recovered their moral.

    "Humph, don''te crying when you receive a severed arm with a ribbonter on, you old bastard!", shouted ck Beard.

    "Booom!", the four Str ranks raised into the sky and then a horrifying thunder-like explosion, followed by a four colored sh of light that forced everyone to look away.

    Before leaving, Vincent snapped his fingers and a few portals appeared behind the nobles, from which his personal subordinates as well as the soldiers from some of the noble houses and the neo nobles entered.

    The battle maniac Dominicughed out loud as he pointed his spear at one of the big secondary ships floating in the sky.

    "Spear of the sea, sink that ship!", he shouted.

    "Ohhhh!", the neo nobles were many things but cowards isn''t one of them, following their general they poured towards the ship pointed by Dominic.

    The sound of cannon explosions filled the whole area, the other n heads sighed now that things have gotten like this, then there was no use in waiting.

    "That crazy idiot, your majesty this subject will go help at the battlefield, please consider degrading that fool when all this ends", said the ckfin Duke as he bowed towards the king and then became a ck sh who shot itself towards another of the big ships.

    Above in the sky, ck Beard''s sabers had red runes engraved all over them, as he shed against the Trident Marshal.

    "ng!", the sound of metals colliding echoed through the sky, as ck Beard was forced backwards a couple of centimeters, he is just a high ranked Ster rank, while Vincent has reached the maximum stage.

    But as a rune master, his weapons were of the best quality, which was enough make up for most of the difference... and yet he was still being put under pressure.

    ''Fucking outrageous old bastard, where are those fools why haven''t they returned with the hostages!'', screamed ck Beard in his mind.

    Though the Trident Marshal was acting all confident, he had his doubts, the only reason as to why he gave the attack order, was because Ae assured him, Mellie was fine.

    ''I hope you know what you are doingss'', said Vincent to the queen who was graciously redirecting the attacks of the battle ships.

    ''I gave the kid my pendant, if Mellie is in danger I would feel it, but nothing of the sort has happened even now''.

    Vincent''s eyes glowed, he then fiercely gazed at ck Beard, if Ae said so then... he had no reason to hold back.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Aurora, Horrorw and ck Beard felt Vincent''s mana going up another notch, the old woman wasn''t following what the Trident Marshal was doing, she thought they were just applying some pressure, but judging by the current state of Vincent he has started to getting serious.

    ''Old Trident, am I missing something?'', she directly asked to Vicent.

    ''I have confirmed my niece is fine, so I will be teaching this punk some manners'', was the only the thing Vincent exined before he red at ck Beard.

    "Shit", ck Beard cursed, the crossed his swords and his skin tone paled, red runes appeared all over his body and then both he and Vincent took some distance as they started fiercely shing weapons.

    At the same time, without others noticing the ground a few kilometers behind the battlefield the ground trembled before arge breach exploded, water at a high pressure erupted out of the ground.

    A fierce water pir raised into the sky, then an unmeasurable amount of magic beasts poured out of the breach in the ground.

    All the presents turned to see such an strange phenomenon, though it wasn''t umon for some magic beasts to get caught in the underwater currents, the amount was just too much for it to be normal.

    The only ones who didn''t stop shing were Vincent and ck Beard, and almost as if it was orchestrated, a ck te which was hanging from Horrow''s waist.

    "Lord, we were ambushed, the mermen and magic beasts had joined hands from the very beginning, they killed almost all the pirates, and our soldiers too, general Uly was lost in action... we lost all the hostages and Lady Shirel was kidnapped instead!".

    ... A sepulchral silence fell on the battlefield, before a ck-green light exploded out of Horrorw''s body.

    "What!!!".

    ck Beard who was now able to match up to the Trident Marshal, saw his ally losing his cool and he shouted.

    "Calm down w, Sting will take care of it!", he shouted.

    The Skelefiend calmed down, his ck teeth formed a smile as she unleashed a third of his mana just like Vincent.

    "Worthy of the legendary Trident of the Clear Water kingdom, but I bet you didn''t predict this", he said as he shed with Aurora, who snorted, a white castle image appeared behind of her as she received the attack head on.

    "Boooom!", once again the nearby people and ships were blow away due to the impact.

    Ae who parried the impact suddenly felt a familiar sensation appearing the nearby area.

    ''There you are child of the promise, let''s see if my bet has paid off~'', she thought as she flew towards the area were the ground exploded a moment ago, the water was still pouring out at an insane ratio, at the same time the tsunami-like wave reached the area mixing with it, creating an evenrger wave.

    ...

    Suddenly a huge magic beast''s corpse surfaced from below the water, on top of it there were arge number of people, two cages as but nothing else.

    Daimon who had to amodate his hair which was dripping wet, softly cursed.

    "Stupid Skelefiend, that wasn''t just a few obstacles, it was a whole damn pack of magic beasts", he said as he spat some of the sea water which he nearly swallowed.

    The girls were also soaked right now, well almost everyone but Leslie who dried her clothes immediately and Liliana whose body was leaking a cold mist.

    Daimon looked at the current battlefield and he realized they arrived a bitte to the party, the fights had already started.

    "Mellie", Daimon turned to see Mellie and the princess nodded, she tapped her beast pouch which was finally working and a peak Arch ranked thirty meter seahorse appeared in the sea in front of them.

    "Let''s go!", with Daimon''s order, everyone jumped onto the seahorse, which then grabbed the two cages with its mouth before it started advanced at a high speed towards the small hill which the nobles were using as their fort.

    Daimon could already feel the presence of the queening towards them, and he let out a sigh of relief, before his instincts screamed danger.

    "Donge!", she shouted.

    "Boooom!", arge explosion echoed through the battlefield, a small ship which was at the floating alone exploded into pieces.

    A tall man with short ck hair and gray toned eyes came out of the explosion with a twisted expression.

    The man didn''t say anything, his aura poured outside of his body making it clear he is a Ster ranked by right, he waved he hand and arge wound appeared on the chest of the seahorse.

    "Kia!", Mellie saw her magic beast gritting her teeth, the thing endured the pain and changed its direction, moving even faster than before as if it was putting its all into escaping from this ce.

    The man snorted and he waved his hand again, but this time he was met with a different situation.

    "Do you think I''m just going to let you do as you please!".

    "Booom!", the attack of the man was stopped in the air, a huge devil goblin shark was floating in between the seahorse and the man, it was cktooth, who had finally made its appearance.

    But there were a couple of differences whenpared to its previous self, the first and probably the most noticeable was the fact that it had arms, with threerge ws, that and his aura was that of a Half Ster rank!

    "Hahaha, why didn''t you say you treated your subordinates so good young master, let this cktooth fight for you... what the hell isn''t that a Ster ranked!", shouted cktooth in disbelief.

    A silver haired youth who was standing on top of the Devil Armed Goblin Shark, shook his head.

    ''Luckily I sent this fool a piece of Ulkrear''s arm just in case... to think the Ruler of the sea had this effect too'', he thought as he opened his eyes showing his pupils had a vertical yellow line in them.

    "Humph, a mere recently ascended Half Ster beast, how dare you believe you can fight me!", shouted the man.

    To which Daimon smirked.

    "What kind of fool will fight a Ster rank with just a Half Ster magic beast, I just need to distract you".

    All the hairs on the body of the man stood on their ends, his eyes contracted like needles as he looked at the sky.

    "Fuck!!!", the man shouted and he tried to unleash all his mana at once, but he was interrupted because blood exploded out of his mouth, nose, eyes and ears.

    "cktooh, barrier!", shouted Daimon.

    The poor shark wanted to cry but had no time for it, he jumped towards the seahorse and his body shone in a ck light, before everything went nk.

    ''What evil did I do in my previous life, to have to experience this spell twice'', thought the shark as he tried to seal his ears.

    "Crack!", a loud shattering sound filled the battlefield and the next thing everyone knew, was that some of the enemies from the pirate''s side vomited blood all at the same time, the strange thing is that it was pretty random, some suffered but others didn''t.

 Chapter 342 Results Of The Beast Hunt (Part 3)

    To understand what just happened we must return in time a couple of minutes ago, just when Daimon felt the presence of the queen approaching.

    Narasha''s soft voice made its way into Daimon''s ears almost at the same time.

    ''Daimon, I can feel arge amount of that green ore inside of one that lone ship at the back of the enemy troops and also there is another a few kilometers away into the sea''.

    Daimon inwardly nodded in response.

    ''Oh, these idiots have learned some tricks from the guy who''s behind all of this, thanks for the warning Narasha''.

    Though Narasha had no physical appearance, Daimon could almost imagineughing and jumping while being all excited of being helpful for him.

    ''I''m only doing my job as you battlepanion, besides it''s all thanks to you giving Disaster those weird rocks to assimte~'', said Narasha with a happy excited voice.

    Daimon smiled, it was hard to find more of the Sea Devil ore, but the hassle paid off, once he got about one kilogram of it, he suggested Narasha to give her half of it so she could try integrating it into Disaster.

    Speaking of Disaster, the thing had developed a strange pickiness when it came to its "food", of course it obeyed Daimon''s orders when it came to absorbing energy, any kind worked as nice meal.

    But for materials maybe because it had "tasted" mithril, orichalcum and even antinite, it didn''t take in anything whose quality was too far from them, even if Daimon shoved the sword into blocks of some materials with decent properties, it refused to absorb them and only drained their mana turning them into useless brittle rocks.

    As if itined of it not being worthy enough to be integrated into it, which gave Daimon a headache as he thought it was a waste of potential, but then giving it a second thought, maybe there was a limit as to how many minerals the sword could integrate from time to time, or something like that, so he didn''t force it.

    Also, during one of the many trainings in the wilderness Daimon had with Aura, Narasha one night made an incredible discovery, she felt a faint "dragging" sensation towards a specific cave deep into a forest, when Daimon and Aura explored it, they found a hand sized piece of orichalcum inside!

    Apparently, Disaster had the ability of feeling the minerals which had been integrated into it, it was incredible as there is no way to detect nor orichalcum or mithril, it''s a part of why they are highly valued materials, either they are found by pure luck or they appear in really big deposits of other metals and minerals, mithril for example is known to appear randomly in silver mines, there is even a "sport" in which nobles participate in auctions to buy newly discovered silver mines, the prices can skyrocket as there is a possibility of mithril appearing.

    Orichalcum is the same but it''s harder to find as there is no pattern, it can appear in mines of all the metals, big or small deposits, it can be as deep as hell or even at the surface of the mine.

    Anyway, Daimon decided to give the Sea Devil ore a try, for two reasons, first, it was simr to antinite, the most precious mineral that he knows off and second, the Skelefiends and pirates had already shown signs of using it for their ambushes, probably because they got the advice of the mastermind behind them.

    And Disaster''s ability to detect things it integrated into it, would be quite helpful, it was two birds one stone, of course with the amount he got it wasn''t enough for Disaster to use that ability to deprive and store vitality, but if the sword didn''t ept it, it was good to know from the very beginning as he would have to find another way, that or he was going to have infinity eyes adjusted to see it all the time.

    To his surprise the sword "happily" absorbed the Sea Devil ore, and thanks to that he was able to find a few more pieces of it, though he didn''t give them to Disaster immediately and instead stored them in his inventory forter.

    ''Get a room you two'', mumbled Evangeline with a sleepy voice, she clearly was woken up due to Narasha''s loud voice.

    ''Eve is too grumpytely, is it due to those times of the month Erin mentioned Daimon?'', innocently asked Narasha, making Daimon chuckle.

    Erin once made a joke about it and of course the curious Narasha who doesn''t have a body asked, so for her, Evangeline''s reaction fit with the description.

    ''Humph~'', Evangeline softly snorted, but she couldn''t get angry with her friend for being curious.

    Daimon then sent a message to the queen as themunication devices were working again, since the istion array has suffered some breaches.

    ''Last ship at the left, ambush, also five kilometers south from my current position, bring someone who can stand up to a Ster rank'', it was short simple message, but its meaning was really important, the enemies had a couple tricks up their sleeves.

    Daimon left the decision of how to handle it to Ae, since he was sure she''ll know what to do, of course that didn''t mean he just carelessly left his safety and more importantly the girls safety in other people''s hands, he had his own backing n in case it was needed.

    And the result was within his expectations, once the ship exploded, he caught a glimpse of little green shards sinking into the water and the next thing he knew was that a Ster ranked was directly aiming at them, that wasn''t all, judging by the slight resemnce he had to Ellemy, it was safe to assume he was seeing the captain of the Devil Stingray pirates, Sting ckheart.

    When Daimon saw that the queen hadn''t stepped up before Mellie''s seahorse was attacked, he turned to see her just to realize he couldn''t find her, but then her mellow voice made its way to his ears.

    ''Who would have thought the arrogant captain of the Stingray Devil pirates would act as an ambush, I''m preparing a big "gift" for him, can you get me a couple of seconds¡­ if not I can call Daphne''s mother but he''ll notice my presence?''.

    Daimon nodded almost unnoticeably.

    ''Sure, but don''t take too long''.

    Their interaction was too fast, and Sting was too furious after being noticed by his cousin that four hundred of his high ranked subordinates were wiped out due to the blond guy he was warned of, coordinating with the magic beasts, and he couldn''t find it so he wanted to vent out his anger.

    But then after being blocked, a dreading sensation made the hearts of both Sting and cktooth who recognized that sensation, sink.

    The queen appeared out nowhere above Sting, in his forehead there was a dazzling vertical yellow line, also the blue band wrist she was wearing in her left arm shone and then a pretty lyre with two sirens carved in a blue mineral as its arms, appeared in front of her.

    "Shattering Resonance ?", Ae''s mellow voice was thest thing Daimon and all the people in the battlefield heard for the next couple of seconds.

    There was no explosion unlike what Daimon would have expected, judging by the insane amount of mana he saw gathering around the queen.

    What he could indeed feel was that once Ae became visible, an ethereal dome covered the whole battlefield.

    ''Domain!'' he thought before his eyes widened upon the next scene.

    Sting as well as some of the other pirates that were fighting the nobles, suddenly trembled before blood exploded out of their mouths, noses, ears and eyes, some fainted on the spot and fell from the sky, while others managed to stay awake but were captured or killed by their opponents.

    Of course, such a strange and terrifying spectacle, made both enemies and allies show some wariness towards the origin of it, a beautiful woman with white hair and aquamarine eyes, who slowly descended next to a silver haired youth on top of an unknown Half Ster magic beast that popped out of nowhere.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Cough!", Sting who was experiencing a living hell right now turned to see the woman who is known for being a genius strategist and he coughed up blood due to anger this time.

    "I should have known it, of course if someone was going to get in my way it was you, how long have you been in cahoots with the magic beasts you bitch!", he shouted.

    Ae had absolutely no idea what was Sting talking about, but since Daimon returned with a Half Ster cktooth, she supposed this whole thing about magic beasts was rted to him.

    Of course an enemy had no need to know that, so she simply sweetly smiled as she said.

    "Who knows~".

    Sting gritted his teeth, in response, his eyes got bloodshot, whichbined with the fact that he still had blood on them made him look really terrifying.

    "I don''t care anymore, you all go to hell!", he yelled, his pressure akin to a middle ranked Ster rank exploded out of his body, making cktooth shiver, the light of one of his six ws disappeared at the instant.

    ''Damn there goes one, just the pressure is going to crush me'', he thought but he didn''t dare toin with that terrifying woman standing on his head.

    But then another shocking scene unfolded in front of the eyes of those who were watching the separated battlefield that was created due to the neers and the queen.

    "Arghhh!", a pained growl echoed through the whole area, the very moment when Sting tried to gather mana to cast a spell to get rid of the nuisances that were preventing him from getting the two princesses, his face paled and blood sshed out of his chest as if some of his veins had exploded out of nowhere.

    ? Besides cktooth whose expression was grim as if he was remembering some unpleasant memories, and the Trident Marshal who was fiercely shing with ck Beard everybody else had no idea of what was happening.

    Even Daimon was no exception this time, he was preparing to use switch if needed, as the queen was here so she could be the alibi for the eyes of all the high ranked people here, when he saw the mana of Sting going berserk and backfiring him, he could bet that what exploded wasn''t only some of his veins but even some of his mana circuits.

    "What did you do to me!", shouted Sting.

    Ae softly snorted in response, but she still answered, while her lyre floated next to her.

    "Everything has a certain "rhythm", it''s the result of arge number of things, heartbeat, the sound of one''s blood running through the veins, the vibrations of mana when it circtes in the mana circuits and so on, I simply interrupted that, those who were affected are the guys rted to you since their "rhythms" are simr".

    The queen saw the expression of disbelief in the face of the pirate and she disdainfully added.

    "If you are too much of a simpleton to understand it, just imagine someone breaking a ss with its voice, in this case I''m the person and you are ss, so every time you try to excel anything which I affected¡­ well you can imagine the result, that''s what you get for trying to bully my little Mellie".

    Besides Mellie who was pouting due to her sister treating her like a child, the rest were in awe, but they weren''t paying attention to the real surprising thing.

    Daimon on the other hand was, he wasn''t surprised of the honestly terrifying ability of the queen, though he was for sure going to ask about itter, right now he was more interested in why she bothered to answer Sting.

    ''If I learned something with Erin, is that strategist and street mages have a really big thing inmon, while one hand draws your attention, the other screws you over'', he thought.

    And pretty much as he expected, the queen''s next words confirmed his theory.

    "By the way, I''m not the only one out here for your blood, good luck", said Ae as she snapped her pretty fingers.

    Before Sting whose senses and body were numb could react, a few meters away from him, a tall beautiful woman with dark blue hair and an angered expression appeared out of thin air.

    The woman slightly opened her lips and a couple of soft but dead serious words escaped from her mouth, as she extended her left hand at the pirate

    "Chaos Stream".

    "Boooom!".

    An ear-deafening thunder explosion, followed by a huge blue stream of five kilometers of diameter which hit Sting''s body directly, blowing him away was the result of those words.

    But that wasn''t all, the attack impacted exactly at a spot five kilometers at the south of Daimon''s current position, creating a huge shockwave, a blue sh of light and a seaquake that resulted in a one-hundred-meter-tall wave.

    The woman who just literally sent a Ster rank flying with one hand, casually descended next to Daimon and the queen, while she nodded at them.

    "Thanks for the help sister Ann, Ster rank or not, how does he dare to try and kidnap my princess".

    Daphne who was standing next to Mellie sighed upon hearing the woman, showing a slightly embarrassed expression on her usually calm face.

    The woman was of course none other than the Vs duchess, the mother of the first princess and a peak Half Ster ranked.

    Daimon couldn''t help but admit that ability was as insane as always, he had the right to think so as he experienced what being shot that blue stream is like back at the trial of the lineage temple, but this time he managed to see a way stronger version of it.

    ''I knew it, someone rted to that crazy woman can''t be normal¡­ a Half Ster ranked sending a Ster ranked flying away just like that, damn!'', screamed cktooth in his heart, the poor shark felt his heart in his throat having two terrifying woman standing on his head.

    "What are you waiting cktooth, take us to the shore while that guy is down", ordered Daimon, making the shark go out of his trance.

    "Yes, young master!", immediately said the shark thinking that if hepleted his task as soon as possible, he''ll be sent back into the beast pouch away from these two beauty-shaped monsters.

 Chapter 343 Results Of The Beast Hunt (Part 4)

    Listening to Daimon''s orders, cktooth immediately flew towards the shore, Mellie sent her seahorse back to the beast pouch to let it rest, the cages were carried by cktooth.

    The girls jumped on top of the shark''s head, while the female nobles reluctantly got on cktooth''s back, the devil goblin shark race isn''t exactly appealing to the eye, so it was obvious they weren''tfortable with it.

    But seeing that the queen as well as the Vs Duchess were confidently standing on top of the shark''s head, they followed Mellie and Daphne.

    Ae saw all the nobles which were rescued by Daimon and she inwardly nodded, though she didn''t understand why some were inside a cage while others weren''t, also she of course noticed the hand sized miniature ck castle which was now hanging from Daimon''s waist.

    The queen''s eyes glowed for a split of a second, a surprised gaze shed on them fo a split of a second before she mumbled.

    "You got a pretty decent catch".

    Daimon chuckled in response, but then he got serious.

    "Yeah, but we can discuss thatter¡­ that guy ising back and he isn''t alone".

    cktooth felt a chill running down his spine, there was strong violent presenceing his way, so he elerated as much as he could, but he was still intercepted midway to the shore where the portals back to the Warhammer city were.

    Two figures stood in front of cktooth, one of them was of course Sting, whose appearance was quite miserable, his clothes were ragged and his body was full of wounds, specially the right side of his body, his arm''s skin was practically peeled away and half of his face was a bloody mess.

    Since he wasn''t screaming of pain it''s obvious he had swallowed some kind of potion, but his wounds weren''t healing or maybe they were healing at an incredibly slow speed, which shouldn''t be the case as only a Ster rank can leave scars on the body of a Ster rank.

    Based on Sting''s hatred filled expression as he saw Ae, Daimon knew his body was failing at refining the potion, that also exined why he was so affected by the Duchess''s attack.

    As a middle stage Ster ranked, his mana should have been strong enough to parry most of the damage, but since he couldn''t properly circte it, he received the attack upfront and as a mage it took a toll on him.

    In fact, Daimon was surprised he didn''t suffer more, as that attack was insane, though it exceeded what he could calcte, he guessed at least was at the same level of an early stage Ster ranked, and that is a lot to say considering the huge gap between a half step and the real deal.

    Also Daphne''s mother mana reserves dropped about a third part, of course he didn''t dare to use infinity eyes to see inside of her magic core as she would probably notice, but the amount ofws floating around her diminished about a third part, so he based his guess on that.

    Back onto the current problem, the other figure was practically fine, with the exceptions of some burns in its clothes here and there, not that it made a difference as the one wearing it was¡­ ugly as hell.

    The other person that appeared was a fat man in his forties, for human standards it was ugly having some kind of e marks on his face, but since it has green skin and horizontal pupils it was clear it wasn''t a human.

    "Yo, Sting did you really get your ass handed by two Half Ster ranks, it seems the Devil Stingray pirates have an unearned reputation", therge tongue of the man hanged out of his mouth as he gazed at the queen and the Duchess.

    The Duchess aggressively snorted as her mana once again gathered around here before saying.

    "The captain of the Marsh Toad pirates, what is an ugly toad like you doing so far from your sewer?".

    "Woah, time outdy, if you shoot that in this direction you''ll hit your own allies, besides it was you the one who attacked my fleet first, so this is legitimate "self-defense" kekeke", said the toad man with a lecherous smile on his face.

    The toad man''s aura exploded out of his body, though it was "only" an early stage Ster ranked, it was one Ster ranked more than what the Elemental and Mermen Seas had at disposition right now.

    After the pirates rted to Sting were subdued, the forces hidden in the ships had no option but toe out and join the battle, so everyone had an enemy to deal with, even the king had to fight to keep his wives safe.

    And that wasn''t the worst part, but the apocalyptical sight above in the sky, result from the sh between the four currently present heavyweights, at this point all of then had unleashed half of their mana and just with that, the heavens seemed to be about to tear apart.

    Thunders echoed with each one of their movements, the explosions of mana result of their shes blew other Ster ranks away, they were simply on another level so their battle had to be apart from the rest.

    Sting''s body suddenly expanded, though it seemed to fight to grow more it was unable to do so, but it still increased his height about ten centimeters, the veins in all his body bulged which made him coldly re at Ae, he had no other option but to stop half way, stuck in the middle of his transformation, which was simr to the pirates gaining some traits of a magic beast.

    ck corrugated skin grew on his arms, neck and face, his eyes became bloodshot but his face was only half changed, giving him a bizarre appearance.

    "Well, that exins why this toad bastard is with you, the two of you are ugly both in the outside and the inside", Ae''s sharp tongue of course dealt some damage to sting, whose transformation would normally have given him an imposing appearance ifpleted.

    "Shut up bitch, whose fault do you think it is, that I can''t harmonize anything in my body!", shouted Sting with an angered voice, he who is considered a yboy among the pirates is being called ugly, he was livid.

    The toad man on the other hand seemed to take things more lightly¡­ or not.

    "Don''t lose your temper Sting, once we captured these little beauties, you''ll get to discover the pleasure of taking a woman who disdained you, their powerlessness and despair is intoxicating kekeke", said the toad man.

    Sting sinisterlyughed in response.

    "For a change I actually agree with you, what a shame the almighty strategist of the Mermen Sea didn''t take into ount how many portals can be opened in a certain amount of time, even the Trident Marshal reached his limit, and he is the only one who can bring other Ster ranks to this ce".

    "ept your doom, if you kneel and beg for mercy I will spare you and your sister, so you can serve me if not, humph be prepared to experience a living hell!".

    The toad man''s tongue which reached his abdomen made some lewd gestures as he gazed at the Daphne''s mother.

    "I haven''t tried the wife and daughter of a king before, new day new experiences kekeke", he added.

    Daimon couldn''t help but thank to the loose tongues of the pirates, judging by Ae''s serious expression Sting was telling the truth, which meant people in this needed to have an equal or superior strength to those who travelled with them through space.

    The transportation array was being disrupted by all the spells that were being casted in the battlefield, and the Trident Marshal apparently already used his reserves of the spacew bringing his subordinates, the other nobles and neo nobles as well as the royal guards of the king.

    And the others couldn''t even bring a Half Ster rank, so things were getting kind ofplicated.

    ''I''m going to use my strongest ability, with that I can restrain these two for about ten seconds, take these girls and run all the way to the back line, sister Vs will escort you all the way'', said the queen directly to Daimon''s ears.

    Sting had recovered some of his ability to use mana, because his "rhythm" has changed after using that boosting process, the queen and the Duchess could handle one middle stage Ster rank together, but not two of them, specially if they had to protect others while fighting.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Sting saw the resilient expression on the eyes of the queen and he snorted.

    "Do yourself a favor and be a good loser, this time we outwitted you, I would hate to have to let my subordinates destroy that pretty face of yours", he said with a sinister smile.

    "Those are some big words Sting, I wonder why didn''t you ask this Empress whether you were allowed to dere your victory or not!".

    A sudden voice which wasn''t too loud but somehow reached everyone''s ears, made all the presents turn to the south.

    To their surprise there was the head of a spearing out of the sky, the spear then forced the space open, tearing a portal of about one hundred meters tall, from which a tall woman wearing a ck dress came out, there was still blood dripping on the tip of her spear.

    Also, thousands of pairs of eyes could be seen glowing from within the portal, at her back.

    ''It took you long enough Karmandi'', said Daimon directly to the snake general whose head just popped out of the portal along with arge pack of magic beasts.

    Sting''s face twisted, he perfectly recognized the woman whose aura was so sharp it hurt the eyes just to gaze at her, it was none other than the one they tried to frame so the Elemental and Mermen Seas mutually destroyed with her, the ck Empress, a middle stage Ster ranked magic beast.

    ''Sorry the Empress and me had to take out some garbage, that Skelefiend was really useful to take the principal traitor out¡­ but the Empress killed him too by mistake, don''t worry we''llpensate you for the loss'', answered Karmandi.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, the woman was clearly angry, her yellow eyes had vertical pupils simr to the ones of a snake, and she was giving off a really threatening aura.

    By the time the portal closed arge army of about fifty peak Arch ranks and two Half Ster ranks had appeared in the middle of the battlefield.

    "You said she wasn''t going toe", said the toad man with a grim expression, he was clearly afraid the of the ck haired woman, maybe because in the nature snakes killed toads pretty easily.

    Only now the attention of the woman was drawn at the toad man and, she sinisterlyughed as she pointed her spear at him.

    "Oh, the heavens must be on my side, I will get to cut off the heads of three scumbags in a single day".

    Everyone was confused as there was only two enemies in front of the woman, until she gazed at Karmandi who threw a bag at the feet of Sting and the toad man, a circr object rolled out of the bag, it was a severed head¡­ a man''s severed head to be more urate and if you observed closely, he had some resemnce with the toad man.

    "I don''t discriminate anyone for their race, so I thought nothing when a toad species joined my army and even climbed to be a general, but as of right now, I can tell you all the spies you nted are gone".

    This time the toad man was the one whose expression became twisted, the severed head at his feet belonged to his first son, the one who was closest to reach the Ster rank and he is dead now, not only that judging by the horrified expression frozen on the face of the severed head, it wasn''t a peaceful death.

    "Go and help the guys from the Mermen and Elemental Sea, this Empress needs to release some steam", said the woman as she craned her neck.

    "Ohhhhh!", the magic beasts roared and then poured like a sea current towards the battlefield, they surrounded an enemy and literally shred it to pieces before continuing with the next one, in a matter of seconds the tables were turned.

    Karmandi and the other Half Ster ranked magic beast, which was a white sea snake stood in front of Daimon and the others.

    "Queen of the Mermen Sea, I Karmandi the newly appointed Marshal of the ck Empress''s army, will protect these children with my life, don''t worry and fight to your hearts content", said Karmandi to Ae.

    Ae stole a gaze at Daimon who nodded at her and only then she shrugged.

    "Sister Vs, let''s teach these idiots not to mess with our little princesses", said the queen as she grabbed her lyre.

    "Mm", the Duchess nodded and her body exploded in mana.

    The ck Empress wildlyughed and then her mage shed towards the toad man, whose eyes were bloodshot.

    "Booooom!".

    A huge shockwave made Daimon''s hair wave, but the impact was blocked by Karmandi and the other snake, who were escorting them to the back of the battlefield.

    It was then when Daimon''s eyes glowed as he looked at the ck castle hanging from his waist and he grinned.

    ''Karmandi, do you want to make a bet, if I can make this battle end in the next five minutes you''ll owe me a doublepensation for the loss of a valuable hostage, if not then we''ll be even, what do you say?''.

    The snake general raised an eyebrow, the battlefield was too chaotic, the Ster and Half Ster ranks were fiercely fighting with each other, so how was it possible to end such a battle in five minutes he thought before saying.

    ''I ept, no hard feelings for the loser''.

    Daimon nodded.

    ''Deal''.

    The next thing Karmandi saw was that Daimon''s aura skyrocketed, he then ced his hand on the ck castle thing hanging from his waist and then he saw those strange white mes appearing in his hand, before they were absorbed by the miniature castle, before the thing vanished into thin air.

    ¡­

    A few seconds passed without nothing happening, but as Karmandi was about to ask what were they waiting for, a horrible scream echoed through the battlefield.

    "Aghhhhhhh!!!".

    Normally a scream would not raise a reaction unless it came from some of the big shots, this was specially true for the heavyweights fighting above in the sky.

    But this time one of the two battles above in the sky was interrupted in cold.

    "Shyrel, you bastards, where is she!!!", the mummified Skelefiend descended from the sky in a sh, he tried to attack all the presents but was blocked by the Aurora.

 Chapter 344 Results Of The Beast Hunt (Part 5)

    Horrorw felt a vein popping on his neck, every time he released his acid mana, Aurora''s light blocked it, she was his natural counter, and he was originally supposed to fight the Trident Marshal but ck Beard of course had to provoke the old Vincent, which ended in him having to deal with Aurora.

    "Matriarch of the Light Pce get out of my way!!!", shouted Horrorw as he unleashed another portion of his mana.

    The Maelstrom Sea is known for being unstable, and for that same reason Ster ranks can''t use their whole power or they could cause a disaster, it is an unwritten rule and one of the few things in which the four seas agree, anyone who destroys the bnce of the space will be hunted down and eliminated by the all the other forces.

    The Wild Tide Reef was also in part territory of the Maelstrom Sea, so Ster ranks could at most excel half of their power safely, more than that and the space might copse.

    "Crack!", the air trembled as Horrorw reached about 60% of his maximum output, even then he wasn''t getting serious yet, but the pressure he was exuding did increase to the point that the ships were creaking just by being in his presence.

    All those who weren''t Half Ster ranks at least were pressed down until they almost fell into the sea.

    Aurora softly snorted in response, she took out a staff simr to Jasmine''s and then chanted.

    "Neutral Field".

    White light shone on the gem in the center of the staff and then little sparks spread across the whole area.

    "Woah, my body feels light again!", eximed one of the many peak Arch ranks which were suppressed just by Horrow''s aura earlier.

    Horrorw gritted his teeth in response, to fight Aurora who is known as the strongest support mage in Neptune, one must be a full attack type knight or a control and focus on attacking her, or be a control type mage and take her allies away from her, so that somebody else can take her on.

    And while is abilities are pretty destructive they are based in acid mana which is weak against light mana.

    "Aghhhhhhh!!!".

    A second scream woke Horrorw from his stupor, his eyes got bloodshot but besides trembling due to anger he had to swallow his pride, because he recognized the voice of his wife but couldn''t find her no matter how much he tried, so that meant there was someone at the same level of that "Lord" in the enemy''s side too.

    And now he had to re-evaluate his next movements, because he couldn''t afford to let Shyrel die, not because he was in love with her or anything, but because her family is one of his most important backers, and without their support he wouldn''t have been able to be the ruler of the Skalia continent.

    Not to mention he still had to deal with the thing about Snakele''s temples being burned down, it was better for him to put out the fire in his backyard before he went in an all-out war with the Elemental and Mermen Seas, that''s also why he epted to participate in the n using hostages, but everything has gone wrong and he now had no other option but to give an order of retreatment.

    "SKELEFIENDS, WE ARE LEAVING!", he shouted from the bottom of his lungs.

    ck Beard who was containing Vincent nearly spat blood due to anger, upon hearing Horrorw''s words.

    ''What the hell are you doing Horrorw, continue with the n!'', he said directly to the Skelefiend''s ears as he blocked Vincent''s trident with his two ck sabers, making sparks fly all over the ce.

    ''Shut up, it was your ipetence which made the n fail, that armed fish couldn''t get rid of the snake who then called the ck Empress here, your forces were wiped out and that brat Sting got his ass handed by two Half Ster women, I''m wishing to see how are you going to exin that Lord that you failed to get the two targets he assigned you''.

    ''Thanks to your uselessness my wife got captured, if you want my help you must retrieve her alive, if not I''ll do it by my own means but you can forget of any idea of being in an alliance with me''.

    ck Beard''s face twisted, he was being put all the me by the Skelefiend ruler and he had to swallow it, because his side was technically the weaker¡­ at least for now.

    The nobles saw that Aurora wasn''t trying to stop Horrorw and his surviving subordinates got on their ships and they frowned.

    But then Vincent''s thunderous voice drew their attention.

    "What are you waiting fools, capture all the pirates, in case of resistance kill without hesitation!".

    "Ohhhh!", the nobles, neo nobles and the members of the sects ganged up on the pirates and the battle which wasn''t showing signs of ending anytime soon earlier, was now advancing in direction to the victory of the Mermen Sea over the pirates.

    At the other side of the battlefield Karmandi and the other snake general had safely arrived at the small hill which was the most protected ce, Daimon and the girls jumped out of Karmandi''s back and sat down on the ground, almost at the same time a fully ck armored tall figure stood still behind them like a guardian angel, or this case a guardian bone general.

    Daimon''s aura returned to normal and he let out a small sigh, using Core Synchrony so much has taken a toll on him, specially because he used mana this time instead of just battle aura and his physical abilities.

    ''That was cheating Gabriel, now did you know the Skelefiend ruler will leave after hearing that woman''s screams?'', asked Karmandi, he wasn''t mad of losing the bet, instead he was rather curious.

    After seeing the silver haired youth pull soma amazing stunts time after time, it was hard to not admire him, despite his realm and age not being too high.

    ''Easy, she is just a Half Ster ranked and yet she had another Half Ster ranked assigned to be her subordinate¡­ Skelefiends aren''t exactly sentimental, so that woman must have another status besides being one of the many wives of that Horrorw guy, I just betted that she weighted enough to force him to retreat using her well-being as a threat and it worked'', said Daimon as he shrugged.

    The snake general had the sudden urge tough but he endured it, as he noticed there were other humans observing them, among which he recognized the king of the Mermen Sea who was reced by one of his guards, so that he could elegantly supervise the battlefield along with his wives.

    Daimon of course noticed the disgusted expression in Triten''s face, he was about to go and talk with Daphne and also Mellie to offer them "protection", but he saw Jasmine standing next to Daimon too and he didn''t dare to go and cause troubles for them.

    cktooth was sent back to the beast pouch to the relief of the goblin shark, the cages were left on the hill but the male nobles didn''t want to leave now as they felt safer inside of them.<novelnext></novelnext>

    As for the female nobles they stuck around since Mellie and Daphne remained at Daimon''s side.

    "The curtains should be falling anytime now", mumbled Daimon as he observed the battlefield.

    Half of the pirate ships were destroyed already, the others were being fiercely defended by their protection formations, but they were reaching their limit, the same applied to the pirates, who were being forced back with each second that passed.

    ¡­

    Above in the sky ck Beard saw things going south and he gritted his teeth, but he had no time to get angry, when he saw Auroraing to join Vincent to suppress him he immediately made a cut in his palm with one of his two ck sabers and then his figure starting blurring.

    "Next time you won''t be as lucky old bastards, the time hase and your two seas will fall!", he shouted as he disappeared.

    The pirates saw their main pir abandoning them and they hopped onto the ships and turned around to flee, while being chased by Dominic leading the neo nobles and the ckfin Duke leading the nobles.

    The other important battle was finishing too, Ae and the Vs Duchess were stalling Sting, who saw things falling out and he immediately pressed the ck te hanging on his waist, which controlled the g ship of the pirates, it was his to begin with but he lent it to ck Beard since he was going to be hidden in preparation for an ambush.

    The duo of queen and duchess saw Sting trying to flee and they became fiercer, the queen yed one of the cords of her lyre and arge wound appeared on Sting''s back, but the lyre''s glow diminished a lot, also Ae was showing signs of being tired.

    But there was still Daphne''s mother, her image shed and just when Sting managed to jump into his ship, she extended both of her hands at him before saying.

    "Twin Chaotic Stream!", her mana reserves practically were drained, but in exchange two blue streams of mana were shot from her hands, shing against the giant ck ship.

    "Boooom!".

    The attack impacted the barrier and though it didn''t immediately pierce through it, the ship was sent flying due to the shockwave.

    Inside of the barrier Sting saw some cracks appearing and he gritted his teeth, he came with a n expecting a glorious victory, and now was forced to flee with his tail between his legs, it was humiliating.

    "I don''t know where are you, but I will tear you to pieces!", he shouted, referring to the guy who ording to his cousin screw all the ns the pirates had.

    A few hundreds of kilometers away, the toad man saw the ck ship leaking out some kind of mist and he shouted.

    "Wait Sting, don''t leave here", unlike his previous lecherous cocky behavior, right now he was terrified, his body was full of cuts and he was missing an arm.

    The reason of that was a ck sh of light which zig-zagged towards him, transforming into a tall elegant woman with a ck dress and a wild prating gaze with a spear in her hands.

    "Trying to escape, leave your life behind for this Empress!".

    "Royal Fang, Sun Piercing Hydra!".

    The ck Empress pushed her spear frontwards and a series of nine snakes of different sizes and species made of ck light were shot from the tip, the things spread and then surrounded the toad man, whose face paled.

    "Aghhhh!", the man screamed in pain as he was restrained by the nine snakes, each of them shoved its teeth into his body, and then his originally green skin was corroded.

    Soon the snakes coiled around the body of the toad man forming a ck sphere, which then exploded into a ck rain, it was a really brutal spell.

    But judging by the unsatisfied expression in the ck Empress''s face, the result wasn''t what she expected.

    A corroded pair of legs were brought back by the nine ck snakes.

    "What a shame, that coward escaped humph", the ck Empress snorted and then pierced the legs with her spear, whose tip changed to be the head of a snake that swallowed the legs.

    Ae and Daphne''s mother approached the ck Empress and raised the sides of their dresses to properly greet her.

    "Thanks for lending a hand, if my memory doesn''t fail me, you are the ruler of the east side of the Maelstrom Sea, the ck Empress Thea, right?".

    The ck Empress smiled in response and then she closed her eyes, to Ae''s surprise her aura went from threatening to gentle and calm as soon as she did it.

    "We are both queens, you can call me Thea, no need for honorifics".

    "Now where is that little friend which that old snake general mentioned?", added the ck Empress with an interested expression.

    Needless to say, but the queen and Daphne''s mother were in awe right now.

    ''Since when the magic beasts are so friendly?'', they wondered.

 Chapter 345 The Winner Of The First Event (Part 1)

    Back at the hill Daimon saw the battle was finallying to an end and he was about to tell Karmandi to bring what he asked from below the water, when he suddenly felt an ill intent aiming at them in general.

    "Careful young miss!", the ckfin Duke who was managed to hold down one of the ships, making impossible for the pirates hidden inside to flee, shouted.

    In a moment of despair, the one in charge of the ship shot all the remaining weapons, and while the ckfin Duke was distracted deflecting the canon balls and harpoons, he jumped out of the ship and threw his own weapon which was a spear at Karmandi and the white snake general, which of course would affect Mellie and Daphne as they were standing next to Daimon.

    "You beasts ruined everything, go to hell!".

    The ckfin Duke was able to react at thest moment and used his left arm to try and block it, but he was a second toote.

    "Aghh!", still the spear was too fierce and it actually pierced through his arm and sent him flying a few kilometers away.

    Though it lost about half its impulse after being weakened by the ckfin Duke, it was still the attack of a middle stage Ster ranked.

    "Humph", Karmando softly snorted and his mana exploded out of his body, a pr of rotating water raised around Daimon and the others.

    "Rain Dragon Hurricane!", unlike back in the underwater space he was able to let go of any limits and so a hurricane of about 200 kilometers of height was created.

    But that wasn''t all, the white sea snake general also chanted, her voice was feminine meaning it was a female snake unlike Karmandi, also her affinity was wind.

    "Rain Dragon Twister", once her words left her mouth, an equally big tornadobined with Karmandi''s hurricane and the height of thetter doubled.

    "Booom!", the spear shed against the water and wind walls and sparks flew all over the ce, the spear tried to pierce through, but the high rotation of the spellsbined made it really hard for it to do so.

    ''How can I let other people''s generals outshine me in front of young master'', thought Horals as his green battle aura exploded out of his body like a tsunami.

    "Aura Solidification, The Conqueror''s Right Hand!".

    Horals''s battle aura then condensed into a green giant skeleton with a metallic glow on it, this was the proof that someone had reached the Archknight realm, the capacity to solidify and amplify mana to create a big sized avatar, the knight''s path was created inspired on how magic beasts stored mana in their blood, flesh and bones, so the trait acquired at the Arch rank was a giant tough body just like what magic beasts achieve in that realm.

    Horals''s avatar then took impulse and punched the spear with all its might, unlike what one would have expected the arm of the avatar didn''t break, instead of that the sound of metals colliding echoed through the area.

    "ng!".

    "Hahahah!", the bone general loudlyughed, Karmandi and the white snake''s attacks had worn out the momentum of the spear so when he punched the thing, it was finally dominated and sent towards the ground, but before it could impact it, Horals actually moved his hands and grabbed it.

    The previous might have taken some time to describe but all happened in a matter of seconds, the water and wind walls also disappeared after having consumed almost three quarters of the two snake generals and half of Horals''s battle aura, but in exchange Daimon and the others were perfectly fine.

    The bone general then shed and appeared kneeled down in front of Daimon.

    "Horals''s presents this high ranked magic weapon tomemorate young master''s victory", respectfully said Horals.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the weapon in question was indeed pretty decent, judging by the fact that it harmed the ckfin Duke a middle stage Ster ranked, though taken by surprise, it was still a magic weapon at the peak of the low rank Ster rank, something pretty expensive as it needed materials of an equal rank, and the probability of sess wasn''t 100%, if one had bad luck the materials would go to waste.

    He noticed the slightly tight grip of the bone general on the spear and inwardly chuckled, apparently Horals''s was interested in this spear, but he didn''t want to mention it.

    "Karmandi would it be a problem for me to keep this spear, we can take it as half of the payment of our previous bet?", asked Daimon, Karmandi and the other snake contributed to stop the attack after all.

    The snake generalughed while the white snake had a surprised glow shing in her eyes, she had a hard time believing in Karmandi''s words of having found a reliable human ally, but she had to admit that the silver haired youth was leaving a decent first impression on her.

    "Sure¡­", before Karmandi could finish his sentence, a cold voice interrupted him.

    "This isn''t the ce for a beast from the Maelstrom Sea to take decisions, any treasure above the Half Ster rank acquired in a battlefield, can only be granted by the king, the minister of defense or those with equal civil authority, not to mention it was me who took the hit so that it wouldn''t harm the young princesses".

    The ck armored ckfin Duke who had some blood dripping from his arm and mouth,nded next to Daimon and reprimanded Karmandi, before he extended his hands at Horals while looking at Daimon.

    "I''m pretty sure this little friend who seems to be trusted by the princesses, isn''t a small person enough to cause troubles over a magic treasure, in front of your king, right?", he said as he looked at Triten.

    Previously it was still a somewhat private matter, the king ordered his other guard to go and lend a hand, but the guy wasn''t even able to enter the hurricane so ultimately only Horals, Karmandi and the white snake general were the ones to stop the spear, which meant they could im it as their loot.

    But now that the ckfin Duke mentioned the king, if Daimon refused to give up on the spear, then it would be an insult to the White royal family as he was going against the rules of the Clear Water kingdom in front of its very ruler.

    That being said, Daimon''s response wasn''t what the ckfin Duke expected,

    "Hahaha!" a loudugh escaped Daimon''s mouth, which made the ckfin Duke and the king to frown.

    "What is so funny brat?", asked the ckfin Duke with a now hostile voice, to which Daimon smirked.

    "He isn''t my king, and I have no obligation to follow the orders of a Minister who didn''t even stop an attack aimed at not only a lot of nobles but two of the princesses of his own kingdom, just because there were two magic beasts in the nearby area, now you have the nerve toe and demand the loot, get lost".<novelnext></novelnext>

    ¡­

    A sepulchral silence fell on the area, some of the nobles who were returning either triumphant with their respective loot or defeated with new scars on their bodies, managed to hear Daimon''s answer and their reactions varied.

    The members of the old noble houses were outraged that an outsider was so rude in front of the one who represented them, in other words the ckfin Duke, not to mention Trite whose expression wasn''t exactly pleasant, but a few of them had troubled expressions because some of the female nobles were their daughters, nieces etc.

    And they could have been harmed due to the ckfin Duke not giving his all to stop that attack earlier.

    The neo nobles included their highest ranked General Dominic on the other hand, found the situation rather amusing, as they could stir up problems for the traditional nobles and because for them, the rule is pretty simple, you kill it you keep it.

    "He got you there ckie, it was your ipetence what made that attack to threat the young misses and also the daughters of a bunch of those guys, this general concedes it to you, your face is thicker than mine".

    The other one who stood out for Daimon was Underwood, he managed to catch a glimpse of what happened, his daughter was standing there and the ckfin Duke did just the bare minimum to block that attack essentially putting his daughter''s life in danger, when he could have fully stopped that attack.

    "Those magic beasts and that ck armored knight protected that little friend and a lot of other members of the young generation, without any discrimination, just for that, the treasure should go to them, what they do with it is their matter, not Lord ckfin''s one".

    "You!", the ckfin Duke nearly vomited blood, the other old noble houses also hated the magic beasts, and wouldn''t have lifted a finger to help them, which is what he did, but the silver haired youth turned the situation into negligence towards the princesses and the descendants of other nobles, so now he was being publicly judged, to make it worse the sects from the Elemental Sea were neutral towards the beasts and now Underwood had taken their side.

    ''You hypocrites!'', inwardly swore the Duke, but now that he had mounted the tiger, there was no going back, so he decided to bite the bullet.

    "Don''t try to put words in my mouth kid, the fact that the king is the one to make the decision remains, I suffered a heavy wound and was unable to fully block it, but it still diminished the power of that attack, or do you think those Half Ster beasts would have been able to block it, if it wasn''t for me you wouldn''t be alive to argue, not to mention you aren''t a citizen of our kingdom", he said with an upright voice.

    Mellie and Daphne felt incensed, they knew how much the old noble houses hated the magic beasts, but that didn''t change the fact that their safeties were ignored for a stupid quarrel about something that happened a few dozens of thousands of years ago.

    Triten noticed things were getting out of hands and he stepped in.

    "This king will hold onto the treasure and the case will be taken to court, now hand that spear over little friend, I promise to listen to both parties and take a fair decision", said the king as he extended his hand at Daimon.

    Suddenly a woman''s cold voice drew everyone''s attention, as a cket arrived from the south of the battlefield.

    "Hoh, and you still wonder why we magic beasts don''t negotiate with the Mermen Sea, what a bunch of trash".

    Once the ck light dispersed, the figure of a tall woman wearing a ck dress was revealed, but she wasn''t alone, Ae and the Vs Duchess were at her side.

    Some of the nearby nobles felt suffocated just by the aura of the ck haired woman, though she was a middle stage Ster ranked just like the ckfin Duke and Dominic, she had reached the peak and just needed a small impulse to breakthrough and reach the rtive higher echelon of Neptune, as no one has been able to be a maximum Ster ranked like Vincent, Aurora, Horrorw and the others who were survivors of the previous war era.

    Daphne''s mothernded next to her daughter and after making sure she was alright, she slightly bowed to Karmandi and the other snake general.

    "Thanks for helping my little Daphne, please ept this bow from me as a sign of goodwill, also feel free to visit my Vs Dukedomter", she said as she looked daggers at the king, regardless of their rtionship, the White royal lineage still ran through the veins of her daughter, so Triten not showing concern for her, made her furious.

    "Gabriel saved the life of my little sister and asked for nothing in return, but if Minister ckfin is so keen in following tradition I Ae Delphini in my right as the queen grant him the tittle of Marquess, and since his actions saved the lives of all the present members of the young generation, he will be entitled to the loot of this specific encounter".

    te didn''t even ask if anyone had an objection, she directly gave Daimon a noble rank, and ended the matter regarding the spear, to the displease of the ckfin Duke, he wanted the king to interfere before because in all the matters rted to the army at the moment, the queen''s word had more weight, but she wasn''t present earlier and once the king gave his verdict she could not undo it.

    "Don''t you think that is being too impulsive Ae, I don''t doubt this friend has helped little Mellie and Daphne, but a Marquess is a high ranked noble title, not to mention the ckfin Duke did nothing wrong, he was taken by surprise and those magic beasts made it hard for my guard to step up to help little Mellie and Daphne", said Triten.

    The ck Empress chuckled, her image shed and the next thing anyone knew was that she was standing in front of Daimon, while she pointed her spear at the ckfin Duke.

    "Little friend I have heard a lot of you, if these fish bastards don''t respect you, how about you join my army, this Empress promises you anything you want as long as it is within my possibilities and the position of general of course, I trust you know how I do things, as long as you don''t betray me, this Empress will have your back", said Thea with a gentle voice, which didn''t match her threatening aura at all.

    The words of the ck Empress, made the nobles haws to drop, unlike the other seas, the Maelstrom was full of untouched resources, and the silver haired youth was practically offered a check in nk to that, some even wondered if they should propose themselves for that position.

    Vincent and Aurora descended from the sky to interrupt the strange scene ongoing.

    "Ahem, we can discuss thister¡­ in case you have forgot about it, we need to go look for the other participants", said the Trident Marshal.

    "As for that spear, my vote is with little Ae and I don''t want to hear any more about it, am I clear?", asked the old man with a serious expression.

    The ckfin Duke felt as if he was suffocating just by being red by Vincent, ultimately he had no choice but to lower his head and nod.

    "Understood¡­", he said with an unconvinced voice, but inwardly his heart was burning with hatred of this humiliation.

    "Very well, now go and look for the others so we can announce the winner".

    The nobles and the patriarchs of the sects left, with the exception of Underwood whose daughter and other members of his sect were all here.

 Chapter 346 The Winner Of The First Event (Part 2)

    Now that the battle had finished, the subordinates retrieved the ships and the very few captured prisoners while the nobles went to meet their respective descendants.

    Of course it didn''t escape their eyes that the male nobles were kept in a cage and so a small group formed by their parents and rtives red at Daimon as they demanded an exnation.

    "Why is my son imprisoned?", asked one of the high ranked nobles.

    "Where s my son, he was in the same group as that boy?", asked another noble.

    Simrments could be hearding from the crows, to be honest Daimon wasn''t in the mood to deal with them, he felt a bit dizzy after using Core Synchrony with so little time of difference, and also, he had to use half of his mana reserves in that state to force Shyrel to scream.

    "Because we caught some "bad eggs" who offered to sell the princesses to the Skelefiends and the pirates, to save their own skin¡­ it seems to be bing a popr trend nowadays I would say", said Daimon as he stole a gaze at the ckfin Duke who gritted his teeth in response, but remained silence.

    ''Who, told you to meddle in my business'', thought Daimon as he inwardly grinned.

    As Daimon expected now that some of the nobles have their parents "backing" at hand again, though were quiet earlier suddenly got pretty brave.

    "Dad, this guy freed the girls to flirt but we were kept in the cage with these pirates!".

    "Uncle, we were tortured and threatened by the Skelefiends, they even broke the legs of some of us to use them as bait to capture their targets, it was a living hell".

    "They took Max and he didn''t return¡­ yet this guy treated us like criminals".

    Listening to the bitterins of the nobles, Daimon simply smirked as he red at their parents, giving them knowing gazes, as he added.

    "That being said, they were free to leave the cage as soon as we arrived at the back of the battlefield, as to why they didn''t do it, it beats me".

    Most of the nobles had unconvinced expressions, but they understood that the silver haired youth was giving them a way out, by not announcing who did what, under the pretext of "human nature", which is basically the desire to survive through any means, but as nobles they are supposed to preserve their dignity, instead of coward inside a cage.

    How could these old foxes not know they were getting a warning "Don''t mess with me or I will ruin you", if they minded their own business then they had nothing to worry about, this was the correct way to deal with selfish nobles, something ine as the matriarch of the Revy family taught Daimon, in other words politics.

    So now the former significant crowd divided in two parts, those whose descendants were still alive who simply yelled.

    "Little bastard shut for this old man, you left yourself be captured by the enemy and survived this will help you form some character!", shouted one of the high ranked nobles, making it look as if it was a life lesson.

    Following that high ranked noble the other ones also reprimanded their respective rtives, and when they tried toin they got death stared by them.

    The smaller group left were those whose descendants were paired with the ones in the cages, but weren''t at sight.

    "Where is my nephew!", asked one of the nobles, judging by the emblem on his clothes he was from one of the subordinated families of the old noble houses, a Half Ster rank and a Marquess.

    Daimon simply shrugged in response.

    "What you can see is what I have, not everyone ended in the same ce as me, not to mention that underwater space was too wide, on the other hand I''m not a babysitter so go try luck with the next groups".

    "What!", the noble was outraged.

    "Why didn''t you look for the others, thanks to your selfishness I might have lost the most talented member of my family''s young generation!", shouted the noble.

    "It''s not my fault that your descendants are weak, we all came here knowing the risks, if you don''t want them to be in any danger keep them chained in your castles and mansions".

    After saying that, Daimon ignored the rest of the nobles because the answer applied to them too and he just walked away.

    Some showed signs to want to follow him, but when they saw Jasmine, Mellie and Daphne still tagging along with him, despite the fact that their mothers and grandmother respectively were now present, which led them to believe there was more to the silver haired youth than what met the eye.

    Speaking of Jasmine she was talking with a small group of girls from the Bamboo Forest sect, among them the daughter of patriarch underwood who approached Daimon.

    "Little friend, my daughter told me everything that happened, as the patriarch of a sect I concede you the status of honored guest, as long as I''m alive you''ll be weed in the Bamboo Forest sect for saving my wife''s disciples¡­ as a father I can''t never repay you for saving my Cassy, so please ept this sign of friendship from me", said Underwood as he extended his hand at Daimon offering a handshake.

    The Bamboo Forest sect was pretty reserved in what friends regarded; they didn''t use the word "friend" lightly, that''s why Aurora supported her granddaughter to be best friends with the daughter of Underwood, and her decision proved to be right, as she never stopped believing or defending her friend, despite Jasmine teaming with Adam instead of her, due to him ying some tricks.

    Daimon shook his head in response, he epted the handshake but still said.

    "Don''t mention it, to be honest I did it because Jasmine asked for my help¡­ and it aligned with my ns too".

    Underwood smiled in response.

    "Nheless, you still helped her while you could have ignored it", he said as he patted Daimon''s shoulder and left to his daughter''s side.

    ''What a strange guy'', thought Daimon, as he walked away too, he felt an intense gaze on his back and looking for the source of it, he saw that tall ck-haired woman who Karmandi called Empress smiling at him with her eyes closed.

    A strange group had gathered near Daimon, arge army of magic beasts, the ck Empress and her generals, Aurora, Vincent, the queen, the Vs Duchess and of course Mellie, Daphne and Jasmine.

    "You fulfilled your mission perfectly, this spear will be your reward", said Daimon as he handed the bone general the spear which caused a discussion earlier, of course the ckfin Duke saw a mere Mortal ranked getting such a decent magic weapon and he felt insulted, but no one was paying him attention now.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Thanks young master, Horals will humbly ept this gift!", said Horals as he received the spear, it was a bit strange to see the bone general being so enthusiastic about a weapon, but he probably had his reasons, so Daimon didn''t question him.

    Daimon then walked towards Aisha and the Risha sisters who were talking with Mellie and Jasmine, the bone general woke up from his daze and with a wave of his hand he created arge decorated metal chair for Daimon.

    "Young master, please", he said as he made a noble salute with his hand pointed at the chair which was obviously a throne.

    Daimon felt the gazes of the nobles falling on him and he chuckled but he didn''t care and just sat on the chair, of course the bone general was "considerate" enough to make other seats for his young master''spanions.

    "Who does he think he is, acting so disrespectful in front of the king", of course the nobles couldn''t help but gossip between themselves.

    Aisha and the Risha sisters giggled and sat next to Daimon, the searching party was taking a bit too much time to return, and he didn''t want to be standing waiting for them.

    What caught the attention of the nobles is that the ck armored guy which at this point everyone knew was the protector of the silver haired youth, built seats not only for those girls they didn''t recognize, but even the three princesses, and they happily took them.

    Not only that but the queen who normally fiercely keep the male nobles away from her younger sister didn''t say anything, Daimon exchanged gazes with Karmandi and the snake general nodded at him, but they were interrupted by the Trident Marshal saying.

    "They are finally back".

    The search party formed who used flying ships as a mean of transportation, returned with a varied number of expressions, the three ships at the front lead by the crowned prince, the son of the ckfin Duke and the young spear from the neo nobles, each had their own ship because the deck was full of restrained magic beasts.

    There were also the twin princes and other high ranked nobles at the second row, and to other people surprised they also saw two girls they didn''t recognize, they were the alfear and dwarf princesses, Tessa and Femi.

    The ships at the third row were mostly upied by nobles with defeated expressions, some had some slight wounds and grim expressions.

    It was obvious that the ships didn''t return with as many people as the adults expected, which made some of them pale, the chances of their descendants being stranded but alive were honestly really low.

    The Trident Marshal sighed, but he still felt positive regarding the result, in a rough calction, only about 15% percent of the participants were missing, though another 25% had different grade wounds and others were mentally affected, considering how the Skelefiends and pirates took them by surprise, the damage was really low.

    The three leading ships arrived first and the crowned prince, the young spear and the son of the ckfin Duke, jumped as they bowed in front of Vincent.

    "Lord Trident Marshal, we were attacked by the Skelefiends and pirates, but still brough back some trophies to be counted!".

    The old Vincent nodded in affirmation, the amount of dead magic beasts was quite hefty, worthy of the three top candidates.

    "Very well, the formation is stable once again, let''s head to Warhammer city to count the results".

    With a tap of his foot, the Trident Marshal activated the formation and arge portal opened.

    Following the indications of Vincent, everyone went through the portal and safely returned to the city, Vincent even allowed the ck Empress toe with them, with Ae''s warrant that she came here in friendly terms, one more ally is one less enemy so the Trident Marshal followed through with it.

    Those who required immediate attention were brough to the infirmary at the mansion of the city lord, while their guardians followed them, but others stayed behind wanting to see the result of the first event.

    Luckily there were seats prepared for everyone, the judges which were Vincent, Aurora, the queen and the king upied their seats in front of all the others.

    Vincent then pointed at the te where the scores were disyed.

    "ording to the registered scores, the top three are the crowned prince, the young spear and the second son of the ckfin n head, is there anyone who has more points to be manually added?".

    Some of the nobles stood up, most only wanted to climb a few more ranks and had no hope of overthrowing the top three, one by one they went and got their extra points added to their scores and everything stayed pretty much the same, until a girl with a mix of ck and blonde hair and a white haired girl with red eyes presented their results.

    A small mountain of death magic beasts appeared in front of the judges, which made the king frown.

    "Young misses, the idea is to present those beasts which weren''t counted as they were brought back alive?".

    Tessa nodded before saying.

    "The magic array failed minutes prior to the end of the beast hunt, and so these points weren''t counted, but me and my friend hunted them in time, as a proof of that the star marks are still engraved on their skin".

    The Trident Marshal inspected the corpses of the magic beasts and nodded.

    "It''s truth, count them and add the points to their score", he ordered to one of his subordinates.

    The guy made a quick check and soon he had the result which was then manually added to the score.

    "Woah!", surprised expressions appeared on the faces of the nobles¡­ the team in question surpassed the first ranked, in other words the crowned prince was now the second ranked and the son of the ckfin Duke was pushed out of the top three.

    Which impressed the judges, with the exception of the king, as his son wasn''t the top one and the difference was prettyrge, so there was a chance that he might not recover.

    "Ahem, very well done, can the previous top threee ahead?", asked the king.

    Tessa and Femi returned to their seats, not without stealing a gaze at Daimon who was calmly observing everything, they made their utmost knowing that he was their biggestpetitor.

 Chapter 347 The Winner Of The First Event (Part 3)

    Just as the king asked the top three toe, he felt one of his wives staring at him, it was the mother of the twin princess, who sent him a message directly to his ears, through mana vibrations.

    ''Your sons did their best too, they brought beasts to be counted and you are ignoring them, I''ll tell my dad you are showing too much favoritism to the Malleus kid and they don''t support you like my family!''.

    Norma''s voice was outraged, she saw from the back the slightly stiff expressions her sons put when their father, first called the crowned prince, they respected Terry like everyone, but they still did their best, even when they were attacked by some low-life pirates and Skelefiends, which forced them to kill all of them but the points weren''t counted.

    So, they were proud of their scores which were already in the top ten, without counting the magic beasts they captured working together.

    Triten inwardly cursed as he thought.

    ''You fool, do you think Vincent and Aurora can''t hear you, they are maximum ranked Ster ranks¡­ whatever if it makes her happy, right now I''m not in the mood to fight''.

    "Ryan, Bryan, what are you waiting, the others in the top ten had already showed what they got, only you two are left besides the top three", said the king with a knowing gaze.

    The twin princes nodded at their father and then stood from their seats before they walked to the front stage, their beasts were all dead as they couldn''t keep them restrained and protect themselves from the pirates at the same time.

    Two small sized mountains of corpses appeared in front of the judged, with a nod, the subordinate of Vincent inspected them all, some had no mark left but others did, so he manually did the calctions and then added them to the score te.

    "Not bad, you two improved quite a bit", said the king, the twin princes jumped from the eight and nine ranks, to the five and six, just one rank below the previous top three if it wasn''t for the appearances of those girls who turned out to be ck horses in the beast hunt.

    The whole ce fell in silence for a moment as the three favorites walked to the stage, all at the same time, at the right the young spear of the neo nobles.

    "Go Lance, show those traditional idiots who''s the boss".

    "Hooooh!".

    Of course the madman Dominic didn''t even doubt to wildly yell his support and his subordinates followed him.

    The full blue armored guy, took his helmet off, it was the first time Daimon saw the so imed "young spear" real appearance, it was a slim guy with metallic blue hair.

    ''Now that is abination you don''t see every day'', thought Daimon as he caught a glimpse of the mana floating around Lance, he already learned that not even Ster ranks could notice when he didn''t specifically looked at the bodies of others with is infinity eyes.

    The young spear, had blue and silver colored mana surrounding him, in other words he was a rare dual elemental mage, having both water and metal affinities, that exined why he was considered quite talented, not to mention Daimon could tell the guy has gone through some intense training, his posture said it all, someone who hasn''t shed sword with stronger people, wouldn''t have such firm steps.

    The young spear tapped his spear on the ground and a big mountain of corpses appeared in front of him, at the same time one of the many neo nobles brought ten restrained magic beasts who were quite beaten up but alive.

    "This is all, Lord Trident Marshal, please", said Lance as he made a military salute.

    Vincent nodded and his subordinate counted all the death corpses first, the spectators were pretty shocked, he was still a few thousands of points apart from the current first ranked which was Tessa''s team.

    Then when the live magic beasts were counted, he soon surpassed them and when the subordinate reached thest ones, he realized it was different¡­ they both were red starred magic beasts.

    "Early-stage middle Mortal level, as expected of the young spear!", eximed Vincent''s subordinate.

    Lance was only a middle stage Lord ranked and yet he captured two early-stage Arch ranked magic beast, it is indeed worthy of praise as capturing a wild beast is harder than killing it, it requires not only strength but strategy, unless your realm fairly surpasses the other party''s.

    "Lance Varsi, 110,000 points", dered Vincent''s subordinate, which earned him ps from the crowd, the previous first ranked which was Tessa had 100,000 points, that Arch ranked magic beast did quite the difference, adding about 5,000 points, it was fair though, not only it was a major realm stronger than him, but it was brought back alive.

    ''Hoh, maybe I should have imprisoned those Bottom Shredders, instead of killing them'', thought Daimon but ultimately he shrugged, he didn''t go through all the hassle of framing Adam to take the me, just to blow his cover to show off, besides he had more than what he needed in storage.

    Vincent''s subordinates took the beasts away and Lance did a reverence before leaving, now it was the turn of the son of the ckfin Duke, judging by his serious expression he wasn''t sure of his victory, but he still did what he was supposed to and took out a mountain of corpses, before he snapped his fingers and one of his father''s subordinates brought also about ten alive magic beasts, they were bigger than the ones Lance captured, but as the count reached the ninth, everyone noticed that he apparently only captured one red starred magic beast instead of two.

    Once Vincent''s subordinate finished counting he announced the result in a loud voice.

    "Ezequiel ckfin, 107,500 points".

    Upon hearing the results, Ezequiel gritted his teeth feeling enraged.

    ''Fucking stupid pirates getting in my way!'', he screamed in his mind, with this he was sure to get the third rank, because in his mind there is no way the crowned prince will have less points that Lance, still he contained his anger and left, not without making a sharpment.

    "I hope that Lord Trident Marshal gets to the end of this, those pirates were really annoying to deal with, it forced me to kill one of my red starred trophies".

    Everyone understood Ezequiel was putting the me on the pirates about him, not getting enough points to surpass Lance, but on the other hand, they always were getting tied in fights, so that was probably why he lost for a noticeable amount.

    ''Oh, so that''s why my points are so low as of right now'', thought Daimon, apparently even if red starred, if they were killed they only gave him about 2500 points, though he killed about four or five Arch ranked magic beasts, and a lot of Lord ranked ones, his points only reached about 60,000, but it was understandable he killed more Skelefiends and pirates than magic beasts, and they weren''t counted.

    Finally it was the time for truth for the whole event, the crowned prince was thest one on the stage, he still had that gentle smiling expression which earned him the hearts of a lot of the female nobles, not to mention the support of the king himself.

    He ced his hand on his chest and made a noble salute, as he took out arge mountain of corpses from his magic ring, but that''s not what caught everyone''s attention, but the fact that he brought fifteen alive magic beasts, instead of ten like Lance and Ezequiel.

    "Ezequiel is right royal father, the Skelefiends and pirates did a y on us, I was lucky to keep more of my trophies than them, so please help me count them".

    The king was smiling from ear to ear as he ordered Vincent''s subordinate to count the points, the guy did as he was told and the crowned prince''s score skyrocketed all of a sudden.<novelnext></novelnext>

    For the first time one of the participants reached the first rank just with the corpses, and there were still the live beasts to count, the first twelve were all just peak Lord ranked which gave him each 150 points, nothing too special through just with that he got the first rank, but when Vincent''s subordinate reached thest three his eyes widened a bit¡­ all of them were red starred.

    "Crowned prince Terry Malleus¡­ 142,000 points!".

    "Woah!".

    As expected, the crowd went crazy, the difference between the second and third ranks was of a whole 30,000 and even without them, he would have still gotten the first rank, he was without a doubt the one to whom all the younger generation in the Clear Water kingdom looked up to.

    The king was all smiles right now, he ordered the staff to take the beasts away but he asked his son stay behind, he nned to dere him the winner right on the spot, but as he was about to speak, he saw someone approaching from the participants seats and frowned.

    It was that same silver haired youth who didn''t give him any face earlier, not only he refused to hand over a treasure won in a battlefield of his kingdom, but he even dared to seat on a throne in front of him, the king, though it seemed to have helped Daphne, which made the Vs Duchess to not dere war at him on the spot, he left a pretty bad first impression, which was being reinforced again, since he wasn''t even in the top ten.

    Still, he had to be magnanimous as the king and be the model for the young generation, so he cleared his throat before saying.

    "Ahem, little friend, only the top ten gets to be recognized, I don''t want to sound strict, but we don''t want to lose time since some of us have to discuss major things, regarding what happened earlier", the king tried to be tactful, but to be honest his voice was loaded with disdain.

    Which made Daimon decide to give him a little lesson.

    ''I wasn''t going to do it, but since when have I not retaliated when someone insulted me'', he thought as he shrugged.

    "I agree with the king, unfortunately since there were too many peopleing to the stage, I had no choice but to wait".

    "Oh, and why is that?", asked Vincent, he still was waiting to see if his suppositions were right, or of his instincts finally failed him for the first time in his life.

    "Because they were in the way, it''s going to get pretty crowded in a moment after all", said Daimon as he waved his hand.

    "W-What the hell!", shouted the subordinate in charge of counting the manual points, a series of three mountains of corpses appeared on the stage, upying it all, even some of the seats were pushed backwards.

    Of course, the nobles went crazy and stated gossiping between each other, while the girls chuckled.

    "He''s got that smirk on his face¡­ someone is about to suffer", mumbled the Risha sisters, while Aisha limited to giggle.

    Ae turned to see her younger sister just to see Mellie softlyughing, even the first princess known for being stern and calm had a little smile forming on the corner of her mouth, the same for Jasmine, the normally energetic princess of the Elemental Sea was acting rather serious until a moment ago, when she looked at Daimon.

    ''How interesting, I wonder what in the name of the four seas happened¡­ I guess we''ll have a little "talk", child of the promise~'', thought the queen.

    The queen was also surprised to see the ck Empress who has been yawning since the counting started, showing some interest into it, her eyes whose pupils were like those of a snake, slightly opened and her previous gentle aura vanished changing into a threatening one.

    "I have to admit it, old snake you have some good eyes attached to your head, what I shame this Empress couldn''t participate on the bets earlier, it would have been a killing", said Thea as she let her face rest on her hand, with a feigned sad expression.

    The nobles who were sweating seeing Daimon''s score going up and up, finally showed some calmness when the count stopped at 105,000, it was still amazing, this silver haired youth was the biggest ck horse of this time, but he was short for a few thousands to enter the top three.

    The king inwardly let out a sigh of relief and then offered a smile at Daimon.

    "Incredible, you nearly doubled your original score, maybe the next year you''ll get to ented the top three, very well done".

    Daimon smirked in response as he shook his head.

    "One shouldn''t count chicks before they hatch", he said.

    At the participants area the alfear and dwarf princesses were eating when Femi noticed her friend had a strange expression on her face.

    "Tess, what''s with the big face, he didn''t win us for that much", said Femi who was munching on a piece of meat,

    The alfear princess shook her head and then in a rare asion she took a small te with a dessert.

    "You were worried about your precious shield back then, but I did see that guy''s smile when he captured all of us, the same when he shed with Adam and Marcus or when he forced the two envoys to do what he ordered¡­ every time he does that, something outrageous is about to happen", she said as she nibbled on a piece of the cake in her te.

    "Oh really, well certainly he still won us without any sign of trouble, whatever as long as those idiots don''t get to be in the top three it''s fine by me", said the dwarf princess as she bit her meat and identally munched on the fork too.

    "Ah damn it", she lowly cursed, but then she saw her friend sighing.

    "See I told you".

    Femi''s eyes glowed as she mumbled.

    "Uwahh, are you serious".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the whole area as a blue "globe" descended from the sky, it was a sphere of water which contained around one hundred magic beasts all pretty beaten up but alive, but the number isn''t what caught their attention, but the fact that they could recognize them even from afar¡­ and all of them were Arch ranked magic beasts.

 Chapter 348 The Winner Of The First Event (Part 4)

    Needless to say but most of the present people refused to believe the absurdity of someone from the younger generation capturing one hundred Arch ranked magic beasts, maybe setting them up with traps was possible with some meticulous preparations, but that would make it impossible to bring them back alive.

    So of course, the usations started, one of the many nobles who at this point epted that his descendant was most likely dead was the first to stand from his seat and pointed at Daimon before saying.

    "Kid, you surely aren''t trying to say you captured all these beasts by yourself right?".

    The ckfin Duke saw a chance to get back at the silver haired youth who insulted him before, and snorted as he said.

    "How curious, you returned with pany", how can we know they didn''t help you, the array was damaged so there is no way to tell, without further investigation, I suggest Lord Vincent to render these extra points null".

    Daimon simply stood there with a rxed expression waiting for the usations to end, after a couple of seconds, Vincent''s voice echoed through the area.

    "Silence", it wasn''t angry or anything, but the authority behind it, made all those who were talking or even whispering to sit straight in their seats and turn silent at the spot.

    Only then Daimon spoke.

    "To begin with, the reason as to why my team had such low points is because I mainly encountered with pirates and Skelefiends¡­".

    The ckfin Duke didn''t even let Daimon finish, as he snorted.

    "What are you implying we should give the points to you because of an uncontroble situation, these things happen in real life, you are too na?ve kid!".

    Daimon smirked the idiot took the bait.

    "I couldn''t have said it better myself, it was my decision to use those cages to keep your descendants and some war prisoners safe, and the enemies ambushing us was something that falls in the category¡­ but if I have to ept the negative aspects why should I be deprived of the good aspects".

    "When I was surfacing I was lucky enough to find a pack of sea magic beasts, which were blocking my way, and they were sucked by the current that took my group to the surface, though I did have some help to open a path through the ground in the form of one of thatdy''s generals, it''s not my fault the beasts were caught in the current".

    "I''m pretty sure you saw that pir of pressured water which pierced the ground, all those beasts were hit by the current and while in the air they couldn''t maneuver as they wanted, my team as well as the princesses attacked the beasts to exhaust them, after that I only asked for the Empress''s general to keep the beasts together so they didn''t drift away due to the chaotic battlefield, changes in a battlefield are indeed uncontroble but what kind of idiot wouldn''t take advantage of them?".

    The ckfin''s Duke face turned sour, he fell in a provocation and gave an argument for the silver haired youth to defend his case, not to mention the three princesses were now involved and that made a lot of the nobles to reconsider his opinion as they wouldn''t lie.

    Daimon then walked towards the water sphere and took out one of the smaller beasts, which was still so lethargic it didn''t even try to fight back.

    "Here, you can see it for yourselves, the mark is there and I''m pretty sure you can feel my team''s and the princesses energy firms on the wounds and not anyone''s else", he said as he threw the beast towards Vincent''s subordinate.

    "Crack!", though the beast was rather small, an Arch rank magic beast is quite heavy due to the density of its bones and its high muscle mass, of course at contact with the ground thetter cracked,

    That sole action had a lot of meaning, Daimon casually threw such a heavy magic beast, meaning his physical strength was anormal, and that ced him in the same category of the top three, meaning that if he didn''t lose time to help the hostages, his base points would have been around the 105,000, add to that the 45,000 he brought back in corpses and the result was¡­ 150,000, which means he by right would have gotten the first rank.

    "Of course, dealing with so many magic beasts wouldn''t have been possible for my team alone, and so the amount should be split in three ways, for mine, the first princess''s and miss Jasmine''s equally, that would be fair", added Daimon as he stole a gaze at those two.

    The crowd was dumbfounded, 100 Arch rank magic beasts at 5000 points each was half a million points, divided in three that was still around 166,000, Daphne and Jasmine who basically lost their teams were really far in the ranks, since they weren''t officially in Daimon''s team, but with just there, then they would be the second and third ce respectively.

    In other words, the silver haired youth by "himself" pushed the three favorites out of the top three at the same time, it was outrageous.

    The king was about toin when Vincent waved his hand and inspected the wounds of all the magic beasts, if he were to make a detailed report about the percentages of the energy firms he found in the body of the magic beasts, it would be 30% Daimon''s team, 30% Jasmine, 30% Daphne and thest 10% were only faint traces of that snake general that followed the ck Empress.

    "Luck is also a part of one''s strength, is that what you are trying to say?", asked the Trident Marshal before he gave his verdict.

    Daimon shrugged in response.

    "Sheer luck is worthless unless one knows how to take advantage of an opportunity, some good opportunitiese disguised as disasters, it''s a matter of perspective".

    The king saw that things were going in the direction he didn''t want the most and he interfered in the conversation.

    "Ahem, though your reasons are valid, you still received external help to keep your "trophies", while others didn''t, we can''t just overlook that".

    Daimon shook his head before saying.

    "In case the king''s memory is chaotic due to the recent events, I seem to remember that besides my group, everyone else was brought back with help as they were stranded, they only arrived once the battle ended, but I returned as it was required and was met with the "frightening" experience of many high ranked people shing, what did you expect me to do".

    Vincent was inwardlyughing, but he remained calm on the surface, there were no ws to Daimon''s logic, for each "negative" part of his story, he had a positive one, the others indeed received help to transport their trophies all the way to the finish line, while he just asked for help so the lethargic beasts didn''t drift away due to the waves caused by the many battles.

    The ckfin Duke could foresee the end of this, he saw his son looking at him and he gritted his teeth, before making onest attempt.

    "I still think this was too much of a convenient situation, a further investigation should be upheld to verify¡­".

    The ckfin Duke suddenly stopped speaking when he was red upon by both Aurora and Ae who had remained silent until now.

    "Are you implying I can''t recognize my own granddaughter''s energy firm in all those beasts?", said the old woman with a serious voice.

    "I was the one who taught Mellie most of her spells, and these beasts were clearly attacked by them, are you using my sister of cheating ckfin Duke?", Ae''s voice was clearly hostile.

    And that was thest nail on the coffin for both the ckfin Duke and the king, the four judges had to give their verdict and in a 3v1 situation, in which the king voted no, the top three took a different turn.

    Vincent''s subordinate counted the points and then loudly announced, so that everyone could hear it directly.

    "Marquess Gabriel¡­ 272,000 points".<novelnext></novelnext>

    "First princess Daphne Vs, 200,000 points".

    "Young miss Jasmine Ivory, 198,000 points".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the area, in past beast hunts the highest score belonged to the crowned prince and it was a total of about 185,000, which was also the highest score ever attained since the Trident Marshal''s young years, that''s why so many people idolized him, he showed the potential to easily reach the maximum stage of the Ster rank, a genius who hasn''t appeared since the chaotic war era, the young spear and the ckfin family''s second young master, weren''t that far though so they were expected to be in the same category, a trio who was supposed to shape the future of the Clear Water kingdom.

    And yet they were surpassed by a lot today, by someone who most of the present people haven''t even heard about, call it luck or strategy, results are results.

    The ckfin Duke saw his son was about to lose it, and he abruptly stood up from his seat to excuse himself.

    "Your majesty, this subject has some matters to tend to regarding what happened, we have some prisoners which I would like to interrogate, so I''ll take my leave".

    Of course, he didn''t forget to re at Daimon as he softly said.

    "Lucky brat".

    Daimon smirked in response as he said.

    "This wouldn''t have been possible with the help of the princesses, I guess loyalty is rewarded while treason is punished, I think the people of the Elemental Sea call it "Karma", am I rightdy Aurora?", said Daimon as he looked at the old woman.

    Aurora nodded in response.

    "Yes, my that is one of the teachings of my Light Pce sect".

    The ckfin Duke felt the judging and ridiculing gazes of the nobles and neo nobles, the case of his son abandoning the sister of the queen to save himself, had spread through the kingdom like powder, and it has be a sore spot for him.

    "Humph!", ultimately the ckfin Duke snorted and took his son and his subordinates as he left in disgrace.

    He nearly vomited blood when he heard Dominic''s mocking voice calling him out from behind as he left.

    "Don''t forget I will submit a petition so you are stripped from the Minister of Defense''s position, hahaha!".

    The ckfin Duke trembled due to anger, but he didn''t turn back and just elerated his pace.

    The king''s mood was spoiled too and he noticed his son wasn''t exactly happy as well, so he decided to wrap things up for today.

    "That will be it, honored guests please feel free to explore my kingdom while we prepare for the next event and the royal banquet, I leave you in senior Vincent''s hands, don''t worry we''ll get to the end of this matter".

    The king then stood up and looked at his wives, of course only Irma and Norma as well as the twin princes and the crowned prince followed him, the crowned prince stole a gaze at Daimon as he passed next to him, but didn''t say anything.

    Ae didn''t give the king''s wives any face though.

    "Don''t forget our little bet, I expect the paymentter on", of course that made the king and his two wives to re at the queen, but there was nothing they could do about Ae''s sharp tongue.

    The young spear on the other hand approached Daimon and offered a handshake.

    "It was a nicepetition, I hope to sh weapons with you at the three-art tournament, strategy isn''t my strong point so one of mypanions will be taking that spot, but I''m pretty confident in my battle skills".

    Daimon epted the handshake, the gaze in Lance''s eyes was one he knew pretty well, as he has seen it in Aura''s eyes before, it''s the gaze of a battle maniac.

    "Sure".

    The madman Dominic also approached Daimon and roughly patted his shoulder.

    "Nice way to put those bastards in their ce, shall the situation allow ite and visit my Spear of the Sea''s headquarters, there is always ce for strong people who earn their titles to join hahaha!".

    Apparently, Dominic was impressed by Daimon''s performance, he earned a noble title with his own hands and that was the origin of the neo nobles after all.

    Daimon then turned to see his own group, the other nobles were leaving so it was time for them to find a ce to stay, probably Ae had a mansion here where they could rest.

    But then both the Trident Marshal as well as Aurora, approached him.

    "You all must be quite tired, let me invite you to this old man''s mansion, of course all the present''s are free to join".

    Daimon could feel the gazes of the two Ster ranks as well as the queen''s and also the Daphne''s mother and he knew they wouldn''t ept a no, so he inwardly sighed and after seeing the girls were on board he nodded.

    "I''ll take on the offer".

    The ck Empress as well as Karmandi and the other snake general also approached them.

    "This Empress will join as well; I have some things to discuss with Ae".

    Vincent raised an eyebrow, listening to the ck Empress calling his niece by her name directly, but since Ae didn''t seem to mind, he nodded.

    "Sure, follow me, there are enough rooms for everyone to rx, then we can have a nice meal before entering into more serious matters".

    And so the strange group formed by people from three of the four seas and different gxy, followed the Trident Marshal to his mansion.

 Chapter 349 Undercurrents

    Though Vincent isn''t someone who likes to bathe in luxury, but more of a retired veteran, he as noble of the founding families and one of the main pirs if not the main one of the Clear Water kingdom, had to keep up a certain standard.

    And so his personal mansion which was the mansion of the city lord, was the heart of the Warhammer city, a huge imposing building which outstood among all the other constructions of a whole city.

    Not only from the outside but on the inside too, everything was made out of rtively high ranked materials, while remaining simple but appealing to the eye, what caught Daimon''s attention the most were the war trophies disyed on the walls.

    Bones from magic beasts whose aura could still be felt after their death, ignoring the pass of the time, some broken tridents and symbolic pieces of different ships that represented the history of Vincent, it was quite incredible.

    ''The history of an Emperor ranked is quite something'', thought Daimon.

    ''That is nothing, young master one day will haves as war trophies, I will personally bring the most remarkable beauties of all the races to young master''s chambers!'', eximed the bone general.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled, he was still really far from that, his feet were quite firm on the ground, as he knew everything he has known is still the beginning of the path, even in Neptune were there are Emperor ranks, they are considered the top.

    But Dimas confirmed to be part of the young generation of his native ce and he is also an Emperor ranked magic beast, so there was a wider universe out there waiting to be discovered, though he wasn''t sure if that was a good thing or not.

    Soon the Trident Marshal guided them through therge magnificent halls of his castle until they reached the left wing of the castle, which was assigned to the guests, there were countless of doors each one representing arge room.

    "Feel free to chose whichever room you''ll like to use, each one has its own private bathroom, arge bed and a little meditation room, lunch will be served in 45 minutes and one of my subordinates wille to guide you there, that''s all", said Vincent, habits die hard and so he still kept some of the manners of when he was in the barracks of the army, meaning he talked and followed a very precise discipline.

    "Ahem, everyone please refresh yourselves and see you for the lunch, Melliee with big sister, it''s been a while since we bathed together~", the queen was more rxed, and her hands were pretty sneaky as she dragged Mellie along with her to one of the many rooms.

    Ae''s attitude helped others rx and feel morefortable, the Vs Duchess stole a gaze at Daimon but didn''t say anything before she and Daphne went to their own rooms.

    "We''ll also take our leave old Trident, I have some things to discuss with my granddaughter", said Aurora before she and Jasmine left to their room, not without Jasmine nodding at Daimon.

    "This Empress has heard a lot about the food of the Mermen Sea, I hope it''s not a disappointment", said Thea, then with a snap of her fingers she became a sh of ck light which disappeared into the doors of one of the rooms.

    Karmandi and the other snake generals had shrank to be about eight meters of size, and they slightly bowed their heads at Vincent before they took a room right next to the ck Empress.

    And now only the Trident Marshal, Daimon and the girls were left.

    "This old man had seen a lot of things in his life, and yet it''s the first time I see the beasts from the Maelstrom Sea act so friendly with us, kid your performance in front of the ckfin Duke was impressive, I have only seen little Ae manage so calmly when dealing with those old foxes", said the Trident Marshal as he stroked hisrge beard.

    Daimon chuckled in response.

    "I wasn''t lying so there was no need to be nervous, but I indeed had a good mentor when I was younger, so politics are nothing to fret".

    The Trident Marshal couldn''t help but fell more approbative about this silver haired youth with each second that passed, but that''s why he wanted to clear some doubts.

    "This old man will take his leave; in public I have to be the Trident Marshal but¡­ I''m still Mellie''s rtive and so I thank you for bringing her back safe and sound", said the old man before he left.

    Daimon stood there with a contemtive expression for a moment, before he turned to see the girls, Aisha was obviously going to stay in the same room as him, but he was surprised that the three sisters didn''t move and inch.

    Aisha of course didn''t miss the chance to tease her friends and her son too.

    "Don''t make girls say embarrassing things "Gabriel", of course they will stay with us~".

    The Risha sister''s faces reddened but they didn''t deny it, instead their pretty eyes looked at Daimon expectantly, it would be a lie to say they weren''t afraid when they were attacked by Sting, just like the others they were suffocated by his aura, but then they felt a warm sensation on their chests, and a familiar feeling flooded their bodies.

    The mana Daimon gave to them, helped them ovee their fear and not only that, when they needed him the most he stood in front on them, once again they were protected while looking at his wide strong back.

    Their little maiden hearts couldn''t help but skip a beat, they have been courted by the guys of the dius, Ascott and Grayer families, and sentences such as "I''ll take care of you forever" or "I''ll protect you with my life on the line" were a recurrent thing every time they were forced to meet the young generation of those families at their own home, but words are cheap, when the three young masters of their families showed their interest in "owning" them, as they had no romantic feelings for the sisters, but they were just infatuated by their beauty, all those suitors parted ways and never dared to say a word, not like the sisters expected anything from them, but it was still a dose of reality which wasn''t needed for such good girls who should have been able to enjoy their childhood.

    Needless to say but their experiences with men were really poor and so it was hard for them to ever trust on them, until one day they met a certain "irregrity", someone whose reputation was as bad as possible but when they got to meet him in person, they realized rumors aren''t trustworthy.

    Even when they have shown clearly they are interested in him, he still hasn''t said the words that they want to hear, but from the very beginning his actions have talked by themselves.

    Without knowing they actually helped Daimon change a lot in such a short period of time, he who never expected to be able to trust in people outside from his soulmates, now had dear friends that cared about him, the sisters opened a small space in the armor that had restrained his heart, that''s why Aisha was so receptive with them, what mother wouldn''t want such good girls for their son after all.

    Daimon smiled and then walked towards the door, he turned his head as he opened it before saying.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "What are you waiting, you three".

    The girls sweety smiled and then entered the room followed by Aisha who winked at her son, Daimon shook his head in response.

    ''I can''t beat you at all mom'', he thought as he closed the door behind him.

    "You can take a bath first,dies, I want to rest a bit", said Daimon as he copsed on the bed, in public he refused to show any sign of weakness, but after using Core Synchrony for a second time in such a short period of time and using mana this time, his stamina reserves were near 10%, and he had already used "sanctuary", also he has received the help of Jasmine''s Silver Citadel, his stamina has gone up and down too much, he needed a proper rest and a meal to recover naturally.

    Aisha''s eyes were filled with tender love as she sat on the bed, she took his mask and shoes and amodated Daimon to use herp as a pillow while she gently caressed his hair.

    "You go ahead, we''ll goter~", mumbled Aisha while sheforted Daimon''s tired body.

    The sisters pouted, but then their faces reddened, they weren''t ready to share a bath with Daimon, but for Aisha it was a normal thing so she was the right choice¡­ for now.

    "W-We won''t lose", said the three before they ran like scared rabbits to the bathroom, leaving an amused Aisha with slightly cunning smile.

    "I''m counting with that~", she mumbled before she kissed Daimon''s forehead.

    ¡­.

    Once Daimon closed his eyes he felt his senses abandoning him and he knew he overdid again, but to be honest he went through a lot during the beast hunt, then he realized how weird it was that he was "conscious" in his sleep.

    "Isn''t this¡­", Daimon found himself surrounded by a limitless sea, a dream he has had before.

    "Now that I think about it, I had this dream even prior to having obtained the ck Armored Shark lineage, so it''s not caused by that, as always there is nothing here", mumbled Daimon as he walked on the water, no matter how much he extended his mana sense or his field of vision with his infinity eyes, there were no other living beings, even underwater there were no vegetation, it was more like a giant artificialke than a sea.

    "Crystals¡­".

    Daimon suddenly heard an unknown voiceing from all everywhere, but he was then brought back to reality in a split of a second, the next thing he saw was Aisha''s pretty face a few centimeters away from him.

    "It''s our turn to bath darling", she whispered at him.

    Daimon nodded, still confused about the dream he just had.

    "Let''s go", he said while he inwardly talked to Evangeline.

    ''Eve, did you see what happened when I was asleep?'', he asked.

    ''Mm, yes I did notice your mind activity was different''.

    ''What was that, I normally straight up rest or dream with the soulmates, but that dream has repeated twice''.

    "¡­"

    Evangeline remained silent for a moment before saying with a rare apologetic voice.

    ''You know I can''t say some things until you have caught the gist of it, this falls in that category, sorry, I wish I could help you more, but it would be against the rules as it isn''t directly rted to the system''.

    Daimon was surprised to hear the normally cheeky Evangeline speaking in an apologetic voice, maybe she was feeling left behind as she was limited by the system, while the other girls were walking side by side with Daimon, even those who weren''t soulmates had grown along with Daimon while she could only see.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed for a split of a second, without Evangeline realizing she did narrow his options, if it isn''t directly rted to the system, then it isn''t any of his lineages, nor the missions he has currently epted and that left very few options, and all were magic treasures, Disaster, the pendant Ae handed him and the sea and demon emblems he has in his inventory.

    Things that could use crystalized energy only.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he saw the three sistersing out of the bath looking really fresh and pretty, they weren''t using their disguises and were only wearing light clothes shorts and loose shirts.

    Their hairs were still glistening due to the remaining humidity that they were about to dry off with the help of the other, it was a cute sight to behold.

    The sisters noticed Daimon gazing at him and they blushed as they sat on the bed to dry each other''s hair, Aisha giggled and then dragged Daimon to the bath, they only had about twenty minutes left so it was going to be quick but she could still have some fun.

 Chapter 350 Relaxing On The Bath R-18

    As soon as Daimon closed the door behind of him, he heard the familiar sound of clothes falling on the ground, he turned around just to be weed with the alluring scene of Aisha taking of thest pieces of cloth that were covering that beautiful body of hers.

    Of course, Aisha noticed her son''s gaze glued to her which made her softly giggle, as she decided to tease him a bit.

    She spread her long pretty silverish hair to the sides, revealing her pale back and the straps of her bra.

    "Can you help me undo it darling?", she cutely asked.

    Daimon knew what she was ying and they had little time to bath, but how could he not give in to the temptation, he has been surrounded by beauties for the past days and while he isn''t a horn dog, it is also true that he normally has some fun with his soulmates on a regr basis which he hasn''t done for some time.

    He approached his mother from behind and skillfully undid the little hooks to release that pair of big breasts of hers.

    "Mm, be gentler with me darling~", Aisha purposely let out a cute sound when her breasts bounced out of their "prison", the inertia made that pair of soft mountains to jiggle.

    Daimon saw Aisha''s pretty long eyshes charmingly flutter while she looked at him over her shoulder, and he bitterly smiled.

    Aisha left her body fall backwards in Daimon''s embrace, after a couple of seconds of rubbing herself against Daimon''s body, she separated and then grabbed her panties before lowering them down.

    Of course, she bent over and then slightly raised one foot before doing the same with the other, while making sure Daimon got a nice peek at her pretty privates.

    ''She is doing it on purpose'', he thought, and as if to confirm it, Aisha wiggled her butt a couple of times before she grabbed Daimon''s hand and dragged him under the shower.

    At this point of course Daimon was hard, who in his right mind wouldn''t after seeing all of that.

    Aisha giggled, she grabbed a shampoo bottle and then ced Daimon''s face on her chest as she applied it on his hair.

    "This sure brings back some memories", said Aisha with a nostalgic voice, back when they lived in the Naktis castle she was alone with her beloved son and couldn''t leave him alone for a second afraid of his safety, so they were together all the time, from morning to noon before going to sleep together.

    Daimon whose eyes were closed while he enjoyed the soothing sensation that Aisha''s bosom brought him as well as her pretty hands massaging his hair, softly nodded.

    They only had each other and that was the first time Daimon got to experience the love of a mother, it was a warmness in his chest which he never thought was possible to feel, especially after his scumbag of a father who used to beat him up until he couldn''t move destroyed his capacity to feel anything, even when he was adopted by an elderly couple which took care of him for the next four years before their demise, he didn''t feel love for them.

    Though he was d and in exchange he acted like a model son, not getting into any trouble, studying hard as he finally had the chance to go to school without his fathering to get him drunk in the middle of a ss which ultimately made everyone else to ostracize him, the elderly couple gave him time as they understood it wasn''t going to be easy for him to ept them as their parent figures, but they passed away before thy could achieve their goal of bing his family.

    And he was thrown out of the house of the couple by their rtives who of course coveted the properties and money of their deceased family, still the couple left onest gift for him in the form of a separate ount with some money for him, that''s what made his heart which was death long time ago to feel something again, but he couldn''t do anything with that as he was crushed to death by the copse of that building.

    Then the next thing he knew was that he was being held by an angel, that woman protected him, healed his broken soul, lived and died for him, he has debt which can never be repaid with her, and for that he will always stay by her side, maybe it was because of those strong feelings that the system gave him the chance to bring her back as a soulmate.

    Leaving aside the romantic aspects, being a soulmate was the highest level of rtionship he could share with anyone, an eternal partner, something the system created ording to Daimon''s wishes.

    Daimon smiled and then did the same for Aisha while they exchanged gazes, his hands applied shampoo on her pretty hair, the mix of Aisha''s sweet feminine scent and the fruitiness of the shampoo filled the bathroom, it was intoxicating.

    "Mm~", Aisha was taken by surprise, Daimon leaned for a kiss and he gently wrapped his arms which could break steel as paper, around his mother''s thin waist with all the care of the world, before he pressed his lips against hers.

    Of course, Aisha gave in and enjoyed being kissed by him, Daimon knew they had little time so he didn''t go too hard, it was more of a peck than a passionate kiss, nheless he could hear Aisha''s heartbeat elerating, the kisssted until Daimon''s hair was cleaned out of all the foam.

    Aisha broke the kiss and then giggled as he hands wandered downwards, before she grabbed Daimon''s hard thing and gave it a couple of pumps,

    "You used to be so little and obedient, now that are so "grown up", you have rebelled against your mother~".

    Daimon chuckled, he recognized the horny gaze in Aisha''s eyes and he knew she won''t let go until she had gotten some, and to be honest he was in the mood too.

    "Fine, but you''ll have to make up with this for now", whispered Daimon at her ears as his fangs pierced his mother''s pale neck.

    "Wuuuh~", Aisha had to cover her mouth to muffle her cute moan, so that the little bird girls outside wouldn''t hear her.

    Once Daimon drank a couple of sips of Aisha''s blood, he let go of her, needless to say but at this point Aisha''s switch was flipped, her flower was now drenched with a different type of liquid, once whose smell was assaulting Daimon''s nose making his penis twitch.

    "You bully, they could have heard me, mommy will have to punish you~", said Aisha with a pout, she dragged Daimon out of the shower and made him sit down on the floor, while she sat on hisp.

    Aisha then "wildly" bit on her son''s neck, her cute fangs erged a bit and pierced Daimon''s skin, which normally wouldn''t even budge unless he was impacted with 35 tons of force, yet her fangs easily bypassed such tough defenses, and allowed her to drink that delicious blood she loved so much.

    Aisha''s face reddened, ironically though Daimon felt pleasure by having his blood sucked by Aisha, for his lovers all his fluids were a treasure, they would recover from their fatigue if they drank them, it also had different effects for different girls.

    Aura for example, her smelling sense was pretty sharp as she is a werewolf, the manly scent from Daimon''s pre-cum and sperm made her horny, just a whiff of it was enough to make she a two thousand years old Half Emperor to get awfully wet, the next thing she would know is that she had to gobble on that thing and she wouldn''t calm down until she had swallowed a load of his white stuff, Erin joked saying that she gets "in heat" due to Daimon''s penis.

    For Aisha it was different, it wasn''t the smell but the vitality contained in Daimon''s fluids what made her go crazy, right now she was drinking Daimon''s blood with an intoxicated expression on her face, of course she didn''t take more than a couple of sips, because there was another thing full of vitality ready to be drank by her.

    "Mm, darling is delicious~", she said with a predacious look in her eyes, Aisha''s hot breath touched Daimon''s skin making him shiver a bit as he saw her licking her lips, funny enough he an Apex Predator is being "preyed" upon by his mother.

    Aisha let her pretty body slide downwards while she kissed Daimon''s body all the way from his neck to his chest, lower abdomen and finally his crotch, her eyes were a bit scary as she looked at the big thing in the middle of Daimon''s legs.

    "Thanks for the meal~", she said as she proposed to swallow the whole thing, just to be stopped in cold by Daimon.

    Aisha''s watery eyes gave Daimon a needy gaze, thinking he might want to stop, just for her smile to return when he lifted her by her waist as he let his body backwards.

    "It''s not fair that you get all the fun", mumbled Daimon as he turned her body around so that she was on top of him with her lower body aimed at his face, the famous 69 position.

    For a moment Daimon was entranced by the bewitching sight of Aisha''s pussy right above his face, her petals were perfectly shut in and it was dripping wet, clearly begging for some attention.

    Aisha felt Daimon''s thing which she was tightly grabbing with her hand throb and she giggled, before she focused in her own thing, first she moved her head towards it and then kissed the tip.

    A lot of pre-cum had leaked and the sole thought of her son''s white stuff flooding her mouth in a moment, made her body ache in expectation.

    "Mm~", Aisha couldn''t hold back anymore, she swallowed the tip in a single go and started twirling her little tongue all over the ns, she was in trance right now, but Daimon was not better.

    He grabbed Aisha''s plump ass with his hands and dragged her closer to him before he spread the petals of her flower to reveal her pretty pink insides, Daimon nearly came just from the sweet enticing smell and the beautiful pink paradise in disy just for his eyes.

    ''Damn it looks so delicious'', he thought as he kissed Aisha''s pussy, luckily Aisha''s mouth was upied with something, so her moan was suffocated, but that didn''t prevent her body from shaking due to the wave of pleasure that ran through her spine.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon smiled and then he started licking her, all the way from her little clit to the entrance of her pussy, he licked sucked and kissed everything in the way, her nectar was a delicacy for him.

    Both Daimon and Aisha closed their eyes and got lost in the moment for a few seconds, while they used their mouths to please each other, but then reality hit them as they remembered they had a time limit.

    They looked at each other from the corner of their eyes and both smiled knowing what the other wanted.

    Aisha suddenly lowered her head all the way down until her face was touching Daimon''s thighs.

    "Kuh¡­", Daimon growled in response, Aisha''s mouth was so warm and soft that he felt as if he was melting, but he wasn''t just going to let her do as she pleased, he smirked and then spread her pussy lips, before he shoved his long tongue inside of her.

    "Mmbgh~", Aisha gagged, she intended to moan but her throat was being prated by Daimon''s rock hard penis, it wasn''t ufortable though, but she obviously couldn''t speak while sucking on it.

    "Slurp~Slurp~Slurp!".

    Soon, sloppy wet sounds filled the bathroom, Aisha was moving her head up and down while Daimon''s tongue twirled around inside of her, they were both leaking fluids, each time Daimon rubbed Aisha''s sweet spot, her nectar spilled out of her, as for Daimon whenever Aisha gobbled on the tip, she was able to suck his pre-cum out of it, they were engrossed in each other''s genitals.

    Daimon felt his ejaction building up and he became more aggressive, he took his tongue out of his mother''s pussy and then without a warning he shoved his middle finger inside of her.

    "Muhhh~", Aisha was taken by surprise, her head tilted back and she nearly let go of her son''s penis, but she managed to cling to it and turned around to give him an usatory gaze, just to see him smiling.

    Daimon mercilessly started scrapping her sweet spot, making Aisha''s legs wobble, he was having trouble though, she was so tight that he couldn''t move his finger too much, but it was enough.

    "Gah¡­", Daimon suddenly felt a bolt of electricity running through his body, he looked at his crotch just to see Aisha triumphantly smiling, she was biting his shaft with her fangs.

    As painful as it might sound, Daimon was in bliss right now, whenever they drank each other''s blood there was no pain, and there was no mark left either, a mystery of the vampire race, but Daimon has never heard of a vampire woman biting her lover''s thing.

    That being said it felt freaking good so he just inwardly shrugged and got back at her, their time was running out, so he decided to wrap things up, since they have been saving the front forter, the girls had gotten used to climax from having their asses yed with, it was easier for Daimon to put it in now and they were more sensitive back there.

    Daimon''s hot gaze fell on the cute pinkish anus of Aisha, and the little thing twitched as if it knew something good was about to happen.

    Daimon took out his finger out of Aisha and then spread her ass cheeks before he kissed her ass hole, it was perfectly clean and pretty so it was a delight to view and taste, once he had yed with the entrance to his heart''s content, his tongue slid and started making a mess inside of her.

    "Mmmm~", Aisha who was gently biting on Daimon''s penis while licking it at the same time, felt her son bullying her backdoor and her body trembled, she only managed to let go of the thing before she swallowed it whole and then sucked it as hard as she could while she reached her orgasm.

    Daimon wasn''t any better, thebination of Aisha''s sweet ness and the overwhelming pleasure of her mouth on his penis, made him explode.

    With a low growl, Daimon''s penis throbbed before it unleashed arge amount of sperm, Aisha''s eyes widened a bit as she felt her son filling her mouth to the brim.

    She grinded her ass against Daimon''s face and with his tongue still ying with her insides, her juices sshed all over the ce drenching Daimon''s upper body on the process.

    "Gulp~Gulp~Gulp".

    Lewd gulping sounds echoed through the bathroom while they both drank each other''s fluids, while they enjoyed the afterglow of their orgasms.

    Aisha sucked the leftover sperm and then with a little "pop" she let go of Daimon''s penis, Daimon also stopped slurping on her love juices and they both looked at each other andughed.

    "We need to wash ourselves again~", said Aisha.

    Daimon nodded, they got up and cuddled under the shower to wash their bodies, Aisha was all smiles while Daimon sweetly whispered at her how good it felt, they applied soap on each other and washed it away.

    "Carry me to the bathtub darling, I''m tired~", Aisha hugged Daimon and asked him to carry her like a princess.

    Daimon chuckled and did as she wanted, they only had about five minutes left so they rxed in the bathtub a bit before helping dry each other and then changing into some casual clothes, before leaving the bathroom.

    The Risha sisters saw Aisha who somehow looked "brighter" than before, and they raised an eyebrow.

    "You need to tell me what cream you use, your skin looks amazing", asked Yvonne, with a slightly jealous voice.

    Leslie''s little nose cutely wrinkled a couple of times before she added.

    "Your perfume too, mom gave me a pretty good one but yours is on another level~".

    "Your hair looks so lustrous and silky", said Liliana, her and Aisha''s hair tone wasn''t too different, though Liliana''s was more on the white side while Aisha''s was silverish.

    Aisha giggled as she hugged Daimon''s arm.

    "It''s all natural, though some "hard work" and a lot of "exercise" is needed, the results are pretty good though, I can teach youter if you want to~", she said as she waved her pretty hair which indeed seemed to glow.

    The Risha sisters''s eyes glowed, there was no girl who wouldn''t like to be prettier and they have seen Aisha be more and more beautiful in such a short period of time that they couldn''t help but envy her, they were beauties by right but she was always stunning, and they could tell she didn''t use any makeup.

    "Yes please", the three eximed at the same time.

    Daimon bitterly smiled knowing what was Aisha''s "secret".

    ''Mom, don''t tease them too much'', he said through the mental connection.

    ''What, I didn''t lie, my jaw is a bit numb due to all the "hard work" I had to do and there are days when my hips end up all sore after such rough "exercise" hehehe~''.

    ''Dear heavens, can''t you keep your hands out of each other pants for a day'', said Evangeline with her usual sleepy voice.

    Daimon inwardlyughed but then he turned to the door as he heard someone knocking.

    "Young master Gabriel, Lord Vincent sent me to guide you to the dining room, are you ready?".

    The Risha sisters jumped out of the bed and then they all got closer to Daimon.

    "Yes, we areing", said Daimon as they left the bedroom.

 Chapter 351 A Different Kind Of Battle

    Outside of the room, a middle aged man wearing a full body armor was waiting for Daimon and the girls, funny enough the Trident Marshal had morebatants than service staff stationed in his mansion, so the soldiers had to fulfill some misceneous tasks.

    As they started walking towards the dining room Daimon looked at the outside through the windows and saw it was raining, which made him lose himself in his thoughts.

    This time it was convenient ad the Clear Water kingdom just got attacked by both Skelefiends and pirates, the young generation of the nobles was "traumatized" in their own words.

    Some were grieving then lose of their descendants, while others had a deep resentment against those who survived¡­ or those who could have helped their rtives survive, not that Daimon really cared about any of them.

    He has always followed an iron rule "before making enemies, one must make allies", and so he signed a contract with the queen, who he is sure is more than what meet the eyes, which already saying a lot considering her front is pretty imposing as of right now.

    It didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that practically everyone showed different levels of apprehension, when Ae used that spell to mess up with Sting''s body and everyone who had a simr "rhythm" in the vicinity.

    She crossed realms and stood up against a Ster rank as a Half Ster, in other words she is a genius, Daimon even doubted her lineage was just in the 15% of concentration, she should have surpassed that long time ago, so to why she hid it, he had no idea, but that was normal as there is a lot of things he doesn''t understand about Neptune.

    Everyone seems to have a hidden agenda of some kind, or a feud with each other, anyway since he could pry into that as an outsider yet, he instead focused in what he could control, in other words bringing more people to his side.

    And he achieved his goal during the beast hunt.

    ''Ironically these opportunities like meeting Mellie, Daphne and Jasmine originally should have belonged to Adam, impressing the Trident Marshal, heck maybe even getting to know Karmandi was prepared for that guy¡­ it''s not funny how they believe they can y with decent people''s lives as they like'', once Daimon''s mind train unconsciously reached that point, without noticing his aura escaped his body, it was just a bit, but it was enough for the lights in the hall to dim and the temperature to drop.

    Luckily Daimon was using the bracelet of the god of mischief which covered his aura so that others wouldn''t feel he was the origin, not to mention he was wearing the mask of the hollow suit so that no one noticed his eyes glowing in a mysterious amethyst light, but the physical phenomenon took the guard who was guiding them by surprise.

    Vincent''s subordinates aren''t greenhorns as the guy immediately took a battle stance, while looking at his surroundings, thinking they were going to be ambushed, as the negative sensation that flooded the whole area was akin to the high ranked Skelefiends or the most dangerous pirates.

    But to his surprise nothing happened and the lights and temperature returned to normal, and after inspecting everything and seeing there were no breaches in the perimeter, but the light mana crystals on themps showed some corrosion, he took it as a simple failure in the manufacture,bined with the current rainy weather.

    Only one person besides the guilty knew what truly happened, Aisha, she isn''t affected by the effect of the bracelet or the hollow suit because Daimon so decided it, as the host of the system he was immune to the "negative" effects of the items that were sold in the store, unless they implied penalties, so even when the girls used the bracelet or the hollow suit, he could see through it.

    But the same didn''t apply to him, so to make it "fair and square", he set the bracelet and the hollow suit to not affect the perception of the girls, he did the same for the Risha sisters recently when he handed them bracelets, but he kept anything rted to his powers hidden from them, since he didn''t want them to notice the huge change he undergoes when using Core Synchrony, that was his trump card.

    Only enemies could tell because they were shing with him and they didn''t survive to tell, so the truth died with them, of course if they stuck together to him, they were bound to notice it, but as of right now they just thought he had something that allowed him to harm those who were stronger than him, just like their wings, in their mind those white mes were some kind of outrageous innate ability as they have seen Daimon''s prowess when he uses them.

    Returning to what happened a moment ago, Aisha felt the usually rxed but confident aura around her son, changing she knows that he wears the fear he has caused to others like a mantle thanks to overlord''s pride, but this was different, this wasn''t fear¡­ it was hatred.

    Daimon was brought back to reality, as he heard the mellow voice of his mother echoing in his mind and that wasn''t all, Narasha and even Evangeline followed.

    ''Darling?'', said Aisha.

    ''Are you okay Daimon?", asked Narasha, trying to understand why Daimon''s mood changed like that, which was a difficult task for her considering she has yet to understand all the emotions humans have.

    ''Earth to the perverted host, a bit more and those little birdies are going to notice it, your mana is in their bodies too''.

    Daimon slightly shook his head and his aura was absorbed back in his body, it was then when everything returned to normal.

    The previous took some time to describe but it was a matter of a couple of seconds and the guide didn''t stop walking as to not alter the honored guests of his Lord, and to not let whoever he thought was targeting them to realize he discovered it, truly well trained soldier.

    ''Sorry you three, I still need to recover more stamina, I''ll be fine after a nice meal'', said Daimon which made Narashaugh.

    ''Don''t scare me like that'', she said.

    Of course Aisha who knew her son better than himself, noticed there was probably more to it, but since it happened out of nowhere she let it go, maybe he was affected by the penalty of Core Synchrony she thought.

    As for Evangeline, she remained silent about it and just returned to sleep.

    ¡­

    Leaving aside that small interruption they soon arrived at the dining room, they weren''t the only ones arriving at the moment, the old Aurora as well as Jasmine had just entered the dining room, so they met at the door.

    The old woman noticed Jasmine''s expression which has been down since she returned illuminating and she stole a gaze at Daimon''s group before she turned to see her granddaughter.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Go with your friends little Jas, I will sit with the old Trident to have a good conversation about some boring stuff from the past".

    Jasmine nodded and she then approached Daimon and the others as they entered the room, but they were interrupted by Ae''s voice.

    "Don''t worry senior Aurora, adults have to deal with boring stuff while youngsters should only worry about their studies and making friends to team up with, so the tables were set with that order".

    "Oh, is that so", answered Aurora.

    Daimon could have sworn he saw sparks flying between the queen and Aurora, not only that the Vs Duchess also added.

    "Team work is important in these reckless times after all".

    While those three were having some kind ofpetition, Daimon suddenly felt a presence appearing out of nowhere behind him and the next thing he saw was the ck Empress manifesting herself out a ck vortex that spawned on the ground below him.

    "Have you thought about this Empress offer, boy, how about youe to have a drink with this Empress so we can seal the deal", said Thea as she strongly patted Daimon''s shoulder.

    A pair of middle-aged people, a man and a woman dragged the ck Empress away with them.

    "Lady, please don''t overdo with alcohol, or at least use your powers to remain sober", said the woman, while the man turned to see Daimon with an apologetic gaze.

    "Sorry, Lady Thea is strong in every aspect¡­ besides alcohol, if she doesn''t use her powers, she gets drunk with just a cup of even the most mellow drinks, and she often ends up getting frunk just by the smell".

    The guy who was talking was tall and elegant, with trimmed beard and moustache as well as brown hair, if it wasn''t for the small-scale patterns on his neck, Daimon would have though it was a human, well, that and the voice which clearly belonged to Karmandi, he was using formal clothes instead of his full body armor made with his own scales.

    "No problem, so that''s how you look like under that armor", said Daimon with as he chuckled.

    Karmandi bitterly smiled, he was fighting the ufortable feeling of using clothes not made with his own scales.

    "We aren''t leaving any time soon and it surely gets annoying to be looked by others, so it was better to take human form", she said.

    The maids had started to bring the tes, so Daimon and the girls went to the "young" table, where Mellie, Daphne and Jasmine were already sitting.

    Daimon and the girls upied their seats which were in the middle of the others.

    Vincent pped and the kitchen staff ced the dishes on the table, everything looked delicious and just by the smell and vitality in the food it was obvious these weren''t just mere dishes, they were made to help all the present people to recover and heal, which wasn''t cheap at all.

    "Enjoy the food", said the Trident Marshal as he gave the greenlight by putting some food in his te, ording the noble etiquette the host tried the food first as a sign of goodwill, it was more of a symbolic than practical thing, but it was still tradition.

    "Woah, Gabriel you have to try this grilled vegetables~", said Leslie as she offered Daimon some of her food.

    An strange silence fell on the room, while the other two sisters inwardly gritted their teeth and also picked some food with their forks and offered them to Daimon.

    "This fruit is fresh¡­ try it", mumbled Liliana.

    "The meat is also delicious", added Yvonne.

    Aisha giggled and then directly fed Daimon a piece of meat from her te, making the sisters pout.

    ''The early bird gets the worm~'', thought Aisha as she gave her friends a knowing gaze.

    The others only looked at that strange scene and didn''t say anything, the woman general was trying to make the ck Empress let go of the bottle she was holding, while Ae, Aurora and the Vs Duchess were staring at each other.

    Vincent and Daimon exchanged gazes and they both inwardly sighed.

    ''What kind of battlefield is this'', they thought.

 Chapter 352 A Frank Conversation (Part 1)

    The rest of the lunch was rather uneventful, the girls enjoyed the food and talked about some random things with the three princesses, of course Daphne limited to listen and nod or shake her head depending on the situation, but overall they had a good time.

    Daimon was surprised to see that they had gotten so close to the princesses, but it was to be expected they have gone through dangerous situations together and became sisters in arms, not to mention they have it easier at making friends than him.

    But there was no problem, since he is intending to have all the presents in the room as his allies, and as far as he understands the feeling is mutual.

    Feeling Aurora gazing at him, the Trident Marshal pped his hands as he gave a simple but firm order to his subordinates.

    "Leave us".

    The maids, guards and even a couple of guys wearing ck attires which have been hiding in the shadows, lined up in front of Vincent, bowed their heads and then left not without closing the door behind them.

    The princesses and the Risha sisters were surprised as they didn''t notice the guys in ck attires until now, Aisha couldn''t see them either but she didn''t let it notice on her face, while Daimon noticed them since he entered the room.

    It was obvious right now the Clear Water kingdom was in a turmoil, they were attacked in what could be considered their territory, everyone was quite wary of others, that being said, since Vincent is such an important figure for the kingdom there is always a couple of those guys following him in the shadows as well as his subordinates.

    You might argue that what is the meaning of assigning bodyguards to a maximum Ster ranked, but strength isn''t everything in a battle as Daimon has proven recently, everything is possible in this vast world, and there are extraordinary people appearing in every generation.

    Vincent has always kept an open mind about life, and the reason as to why he was able to climb mountains of corpses and reach the top even when there were people stronger than him back when he was young, it''s because he never allowed himself to becent.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, he though that Vincent was going to ask for the princesses as well as he girls to leave for a moment, but to his surprise he didn''t as he created a barrier around them with his mana.

    "With that ck Beard punk being a pain in the ass, I can''t help but doubt of the arrays, but I would like to see him bypassing my own mana, humph", snorted the old man, he was clearly angered that the pirates corrupted a barrier which was a legacy of his family, not to mention all the chaos they caused in his event, he might be tolerant but he isn''t a paper tiger by any mean and the pirates will be paying for that.

    "Ahem, sorry for all the secrecy but what we are about to discuss will stay between those who are present right now only, if anyone wishes to retire this is the moment, no one will hold it against you", added Vincent as he gazed at the ck Empress.

    Out of all the presents, they share some history of past rtionships, even Daimon is under a contract with the queen, Aurora seems to be an old acquittance of the Trident Marshal and the Vs Duchess is friends with Ae.

    Thea who has sobered up using her powers, gazed at Daimon before saying.

    "This Empress is very capricious when ites to certain subjects, as a proof of it I''m sharing a table with people from the Mermen Sea, it''s a bitte to take a step back now".

    As always when Thea''s eyes aren''t closed, her attitude takes a 180¡ã change, from the elegant aura of a ruler, to a sharp and wild demeanor akin to a magic beast.

    "Ahem, Lady please don''t be so blunt with your words", said the middle aged woman who was the human form of the white snake general, Theas previous words could be taken as an offense after all.

    Thea shrugged, she tried to sneakily grab a ss with liqueur from the table just to get her hand tapped by the woman''s, since this was a serious moment.

    "Ahh, Lina you are too strict sometimes, I was getting bored in that castle without a single drop of "fun" for thest three or so months", mumbled the ck Empress.

    Vincent was speechless.

    ''To think the bloodthirsty ck Empress who rules a side of the Maelstrom is this... childish, I guess it makes sense since she is still part of the newer generations'', he thought.

    That''s right, despite her proximity to the peak of Neptune, the ck Empress is still below the five-thousand-year mark, which is considered extremely young for Ster ranks, in Vincent''s and the other survivors of the old generation, anyone younger than ten thousand years old is a teenager at most, so for him Thea is just a child.

    Even ckbeard who is a high ranked Ster ranked is nothing more than a kid with a runny nose, despite he being nearly forty thousand years old.

    "So be it, then I ask everyone to ce one hand here and repeat "I promise" when I ask you to", said Vincent as he made a "cut" in the air to take something out of the space itself, something that drew Daimon''s attention for a moment but ultimately it was a fake rm.

    In Vincent''s hands, there was a silver badge, simr to the two that Daimon''s have but with another type of design, different to the ones he has which he already knows are called "Sea Emblem" and "Devil Emblem".

    Vincent noticed Daimon''s gaze on his treasure and he chuckled knowing he had a lot of questions to make, but that could wait until everyone was on the same page.

    The girls turned to see Daimon and only after seeing him nodding, as he didn''t find any "surprise" in the silver badge, they did as Vincent told.

    "I swear that the information discussed for the next thirty minutes in this room, won''t be leaked by me to anyone, also for the next year or so no one here will plot or try to harm the other in any form, now please", said the old man.

    "I promise", said everyone.

    The silver pendant shone and then everything returned to normal, but Daimon could tell they signed a contract of some kind using the silver badge as the medium, of course it didn''t restrict him, but it was interesting to see the people of Neptune had found heir own ways topromise with others, instead of soul contracts.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''I wonder if they arecking something... or if we excel in the subject'', thought Daimon referring to the fact that everyone back at the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart could do soul contracts, not to mention that each Lord ranked had a manifestation phenomenon, the worst were weak but they still had it and here only no one had it, the same applied to Arch ranks every single one had domains, some were "pathetic" or limited in a lot of senses but they all had it, unless one walked down the path of being a Magus King, but here only the cr?¡§me of the crop seemed to even know about the existence of domains.

    And if Daimon''s calctions were right, based on what he saw during Ae''s fight, using their a domain even for a Half Ster ranked is extremely challenging.

    Vincent pointed at his treasure and then directly asked Daimon.

    "You seem to be interested in this, may I ask you why?".

    Daimon smirked.

    ''We are being straightforward huh, fine I prefer it this way too'', he thought as he took out the so called Devil Emblem from his "pocket" of course he sent it back from the inventory, and was just acting.

    "Well, I happen to have found a simr one, so I was wondering what are these?", asked Daimon as he showed the lifeless gray badge to the Trident Marshal.

    Vincent''s eyes glowed for a split of a second, he then scratched the back of his head before saying.

    "Kid... you surely like to surprise others, that is a "Devil Emblem", though it looks simr to the one I own, mine is a "Elemental Emblem", though to be honest the difference is practically only the name and the ce where they can be found".

    "Oh, I would be d to hear more about it", added Daimon, he also had a Sea Emblem, butpared to others, either sea, devil or elemental, his was different, as he had the rune shark engraved into it.

    Vincent nodded as he took out a book from his storage ring, something which made Aurora''s eyes to narrow.

    "This is a book where all the information regarding the emblems is recorded, I once used it to get mine and no one besides me, little Ae and Aurora who used to be on missions with me, know about it".

    "But you aren''t going to lend it to me unless I answer to your question first", said Daimon with a frown.

    The Trident Marshal cleared his throat in response.

    "Ahem, don''t see it like that, I''m not trying to keep the book away from you to extort an answer, it''s more like I need an answer from you before I can lend you such a thing, besides it''s not like there is a map to find one here it''s more of a historical and rumorption, but there are some parts that are "sensible" from Neptunian''s point of view", exined Vincent.

    Daimon evaluated the old man''s expression and deemed it as honest, also he noticed Jasmine, Aurora, Daphne, her mother, as well as Karmandi, the female general and the ck Empress raise an eyebrow after hearing Vincent using the term "Neptunian", it was the generic term used for the people that was born in Neptune.

    Besides Vincent, Mellie and the queen, no one else knew Daimon''s group weren''t natives of Neptune, they just thought they were part of some of the families that had isted from the rest of the world, in some faraway ind, he four seas were so vast and mysterious that no one has mapped even a third part of it, especially the Maelstrom Sea.

    But now based on Vincent''s words, that wasn''t the case.

    Daimon looked at the Trident Marshal and then nodded.

    "Tell me your question, if I can answer it, I will do it, but I can''t guarantee anything".

    Vincent inwardly let out a sigh of relief, though Ae has told him the truth, he was still amazed at the idea of people from other cesing to Neptune, and of course he knows the dangers thate with them, so he wanted to make sure they weren''t being yed with.

    "Who are you really... below that disguise, I know you might have your reasons and I respect that, but you can''t expect me or the people from my culture to trust someone who hides below a mask, because for us this is an existential level crisis".

    While Vincent had a hunch that Daimon was hiding his true appearance, he couldn''t see what was behind the disguise, there was something preventing him a maximum Ster ranked from doing seeing through him, of course he felt wary, it was normal, he was more like that because if he wasn''t for his sharp instincts and all the years he had lived, he wouldn''t have noticed anything, it was a bit scary.

    Daimon remained silent for a moment, to be honest the disguise of "Gabriel" wasn''t there for the people of Neptune, he only used it because there were people from the academies in Neptune, if not he wouldn''t have cared to use his real appearance.

    Under the expectant eyes of all the presents in the room, Daimon''s hand grabbed the mask which was covering his face and slowly took it off, everyone besides Mellie and the queen, was surprised to see the revtion, a silver haired handsome youth with amethyst eyes who seemed to drag the light, like ck holes.

    His factions also changed but nothing too extreme, or appearance altering, it was more of an aura change, besides some minor cosmetic aspects, but whichbined indeed made him look like aplete different person.

    To begin with, while he was mysterious and interesting as Gabriel, Daimon was a kill for thedies, they also noticed he was younger than what they expected and yet he was so strong as he has demonstrated.

    And that meant that he was even more talented than the publicly recognized number one, crowned prince, just because of his age alone.

    "This is how I look like, my name is Daimon Licht, you can call me Daimon and I guess I can be considered a "prince" of some sort, though at my gxy we don''t have kingdoms, but ns and forces".

    The Trident Marshal raised an eyebrow as he looked at Daimon''s hair, which made him realize he didn''t change it back, and then a momentter it turned ck inked, technically silver was his original hair color, but he dyed and the ck color was the natural one, while he was using the bracelet of the god of mischief to make it look silver.

 Chapter 353 A Frank Conversation (Part 2)

    Daimon whose eyes were finally visible for everyone after taking off the mask of the hollow suit, observed the different reactions of all the present people.

    The princesses first, Mellie already knew it so she was the least surprised, nheless it was the first time she heard Daimon''s real name.

    ''Mm, now that I think about it "Daimon" sounds better than "Gabriel", somehow the name fits him well'', thought the Delphini princess with an amused expression on her pretty face.

    ? Daphne''s eyes were filled with curiosity, she already had questions about Daimon''s identity, as she has never seen anyone being close to Mellie besides herself, but never in her wildest imaginations she expected he was from another, in this case as Neptune though incredibly big was just a at the end of the day.

    Thest princess had the biggest reaction, never in a million years Adam expected someone that has been "charmed" by him to be able to break free, as Daimon has seen on that Jenna, the girl from the Penddra family.

    It might be due to an ability, a title or an irregr skill such as Core Synchrony, but Daimon supposed there was no way toe back once they were at that point, or that was the case until he met Jasmine.

    Jasmine was indeed tricked into getting closer to Adam, but unlike Jenna, she didn''t throw herself at him at the first chance, that is something Daimon can assure as Jenna practically was "filled" with Adam''s aura, so it wasn''t hard to tell she was more than a supporter of the light hero idiot.

    But for Jasmine it was different, what he got was her trust, as a proof of that when he abandoned her, she was devastated but still strived to survive, if Jenna would have been in her ce... she would have ended her life based on how obsessed she was with Adam.

    It could be because Jasmine lineage, if the roots of her lineage used to go as far as to share a "oath" with the Drakolevia lineage, which is supposed to be the root of the ck Armored Shark lineage and a deity for the people of the Mermen Sea, then it can''t be worse than that.

    Of course the blood had diluted after so much time, but the is still a second generation descendant of two Emperors, it could be that her lineage resisted Adam''s ability, system users aren''t almighty that''s something Daimon has always been aware of, given the correct circumstances even ants can kill a lion.

    Anyway back to Jasmine, Adam didn''t think she''ll escape his grasp, not to mention he gave her for dead, so of course how could he not brag in front of who he thought was going to be one of his women, while Aurora haven''t heard about it, Jasmine knew Adam was from another world.

    And Daimon expected as much, but he always said he didn''t want to take advantage of her, and he meant it, there is no such a thing as a perfect lie, everything surfaces given enough time, and his instincts told him that it was the correct thing to do.

    Besides while he doesn''t consider himself a good person, Daimon despises those who take advantage of the innocent decent people for selfish reasons, his father back at earth used to be like that and the sole thought of ever bing like him made him want to puke.

    Good or evil might be subjective, but decency isn''t, or at least that''s what he believes in, it''s the principle his mother put her soul into teaching him, and that''s why his hatred changed target from the whole Naktis family to just those who deserved it.

    But to Daimon''s surprise, what met him was the unmistakable sound of a notification ringing in his ears.

    [Ding]

    [The level of trust of the daughter of the Northern Sky has been updated <!>]

    [Level of trust currently attained 17% ? 30%]

    [Sanctuary will be updated to the next level, remaining time 12:00 hours, please refrain from using it in the meantime]

    ''What just happened...'', for a change something out of Daimon''s expectation, happened, he came out of his daze as he felt a pair of eyes gazing at him.

    Those white halos shed in Jasmine''s green pupils, before she closed her eyes falling asleep to her grandmother''s surprise.

    "Little Jas, are you alright?", mumbled the old woman, but after noticing she was just sleeping, she calmed down, especially because she had such a peaceful smiling expression in her sleep, that it was impossible for her to be feeling unwell.

    "Sorry old Trident, this little girl is probably exhausted", said Aurora as she snapped her fingers and Jasmine disappeared, she was able to move through space like Vincent, but on way weaker targets besides herself, her limit was about the Arch rank.

    Aisha of course noticed "something" changed for her son too, as she is aware Daimon wouldn''t have gone out of his way to save a random girl without any rtionship with him, not by putting himself in danger at least, as he had to do back then to bring Jasmine out of the encirclement of the Skelefiends when he didn''t have an army of his own yet.

    But she just took a sip of her cup of tea and observed the rest of the reactions, as his mother she of course is clinically making sure that no one even gets the idea of taking advantage of her beloved son after all.

    Aurora wasn''t too shocked, as a survivor from the previous era, she has seen a lot of things that go againstmon sense, so peopleing from another ce isn''t out of her scope, not to mention she can manipte space to a certain extent, of course there are others with a better capacity to do it, her theory is that maybe someone like that was backing Daimon, that or they found an entrance to Neptune.

    But she suddenly frowned as if something made click in her mind, her gaze became serious as she slowly spoke.

    "There is something twirling around in my mind, and the fact that I didn''t think about it until recently is what worries me the most... kid, if you are here then there should be more like you in Neptune, is the guy who was with little Jas one of you?".

    Daimon could feel the intense gaze of the old woman, probably Jasmine already told her, Adam left her to die, and that bad impression was threatening with staining his ns for an alliance right now.

    ''That idiot, leaving me to deal with his mess'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Well, I''m pretty sure you out of all people can understand that even those who share origins, aren''t necessary allies right?", he said with a cunning light in his eyes.

    The old woman''s eyes narrowed as she mumbled.

    "So you saves Jasmine because he is your enemy... no why would you help an ally of your enemy, then why?".

    Daimon chuckled in response as he said.

    "Because that''s what I wanted to do, if you are asking me if I have ulterior motives for Jasmine like that guy, the answer is no, I simply saw her situation and out of the two options I was presented, I choose what I felt like to do, it is as simple as that".

    Needless to say, but Daimon''s answer took a lot of people by surprise, Vincent, the Vs Duchess, the ck Empress and of course Aurora, were in awe for a couple of seconds, until a softugh broke the silence, the ck Empress hit the table with a bottle which she took out of who knows where, as she was being supervised by the white snake general.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Well said, are you perhaps the descendant of a magic beast, there is no way a human can be like this, maybe that''s why I find you so "appealing" to the eye unlike that idiot surnamed White, so what if youe from another sea,, gxy or whatever, won''t you join this Empress army, I can tell your potential surpasses even what that old snake told me", said Thea as she pointed at Karmandi while she drank from her bottle, judging by her slightly reddened expression, she was drunk once again.

    "Sigh,dy give me that", said the white snake general as she took the bottle from Thea''s hands, making herin about her being too strict.

    Karmandi gave Daimon an apologetic gaze before saying.

    "There you have it, we magic beasts from the Maelstrom Sea usually only value one thing, strength, but our Empress favors honesty above everything, race, age, strength origin, all of that is nothing for her, that''s what makes her different from all the other Emperor level beasts, I take pride in having good eyes and as proof of that I never got along with Ulkrear and the other general who turned out to be a traitor".

    "Whatever the Mermen and Elemental Seas decide, our standing was decided a long time ago, Gabriel... no Daimon we''ll be your allies!", eximed the recently designated snake marshal.

    Daimon nodded at Karmandi, he also noticed the queen was simply smiling while she drank from her cup, her standing didn''t wave too, in fact if she has learned something from observing Erin, is to recognize to some extent the emotions behind those pretty cunning smiles.

    And the queen seemed to be happy, as if she had won a bet or made a huge profit from an inversion, but there was also relief and genuine happiness it was a bit strange.

    The Vs Duchess also had an approbative expression as she repeatedly nodded.

    "Doubting after having listened to that will be an insult to my Vs family, not to mention I owe you a big one for saving my Daph-Daph", I''ll be your ally too.

    The first princess bitterly smiled, listening to her mother calling her some weird nickname, but she didn''t object to her decision, regardless of his reasoning, the truth is that not only the silver haired youth saved her life, but he also helped save the hostages, among them some of the girls are minor nobles that serve her Dukedom, and so she has responsibilities with them, nobles have the duty to protect their subordinates it''s one of the rules her mother taught her since she was little, never turn the back on those who have trust their lives to her.

    The sound of porcin echoed through the room as the queen left her cup on the table, before she looked at the Trident Marshal.

    "Uncle, I understand your worries, especially after seeing his hair color and the emblem he bears, but my decision hasn''t changed... besides he has brought Mellie safe and sound from really desperate situations twice, even if he was the devil himself, I''ll still side with him~", at the middle of her sentence the voice of the queen changed to that yful tone, as she gazed at her little sister.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    ''Since when did I became the evil guy... wait I understand that the devil emblem is suspicious, but what does my hair have to do with all this'', he thought.

    Vincent took a deep breath and then sighed defeated, as he threw the book in his hands at Daimon.

    "This old man gives up, if little Ae says so then I have no more questions, I''ll lend you a hand, so now tell me whates now, exterminate the Skelefiends, or maybe the pirates are the ones to which the "promise" alluded?".

    Daimon had to interrupt the Trident Marshal, because he wasn''t following what he was saying.

    "Wait a moment, it seems I''m missing something, what do you think I came to Neptune to do, and what is that promise you mentioned?".

    The Trident Marshal raised an eyebrow in response.

    "You know the hidden meaning behind the Trident of the Promise breaking, the fact that half of Neptune will be destroyed soon, it''s weird though, if your hair is ck then you should have half of the white or purple Sea Emblems, instead of a Devil Emblem, but I guess not everything can be so urate", he said as he stroked his long beard.

    Daimon heard the Trident Marshal mentioning more things he didn''t know anything about and he had a strange premonition as he took out the ck badge with the rune shark engraved on it.

    "I arrived to Neptune thanks to this one, do you know anything about it?", he said as he showed it to Vincent.

    The Trident Marshal looked dead serious for a moment, before he softly snorted.

    "Oi kid, don''t try to y tricks on this old man, a ck Sea Emblem doesn''t exist and even if it did, there is no way you could have the two halves of it without finding andpleting its respective trial... wait that thing is real!!!", eximed the old man, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

    This time even the queen was taken aback as she saw Daimon''s ck badge.

    ''What the hell is happening here'', they thought.

    Aurora was different though, she still couldn''t get over the fact that not only her granddaughter but she didn''t notice anything weird about Adam, despite he bing so close andfortable with them.

    "I... will give you an answer after talking with Jasmine", said the old woman as she disappeared from her seat, making Vincent sigh.

    "Don''t take it against her, she has already lost a lot due to emblems".

    Daimon nodded, if he had one then it was safe for Aurora to assume Adam had one, which made her get more wary about Daimon, it was part of the mess left by that idiot hero for him to deal with.

    ''I already told them the truth, what they decide is up to them, my goal hasn''t changed at all anyway, whoever is behind this I will find it and cut his neck for trying to kill mom and those three'', thought Daimon as a cold light shed through his amethyst eyes.

    "Now how about you exin more about that "promise" you mentioned, as you can already guess I have no idea", said Daimon to the Trident Marshal.

    The ck Empress also expressed her interest in Vincent''s words.

    "I want to hear about it too, for us the natives of the Maelstrom Sea, the history left by our ancestors is different, long story short, everything will be destroyed and only those who count with the help of a certain existence will make it through", she said as she closed her eyes making her aura change from wild to elegant in a second, though she still tried to sneakily take the bottle from the hands from Lina just to get her hand tapped as a punishment.

    "Oh,e on, a good story can''t be enjoyed without a good drink",ined Thea, but her general ignored her.

 Chapter 354 A Frank Conversation (Part 3)

    The Trident Marshal saw Thea treating such an important part of the history of Neptune as a wan entertainment story and he sighed.

    "Just to be clear, this story is not official, it''s what me and Aurora managed to learn from the time when we used to wander around the Seas, no one is really sure of what happened back when the hero of our Clear Water kingdom disappeared".

    "Even my Malleus family which is the oldest in existence among the founding ns, doesn''t have records until about one thousand years after the chaos age before the kingdom was stablished, as we were just starting by joining many dispersed members of our race to form a family".

    "Aurora''s family is the same, since shees from one of two original factions that now conform the roots of the Elemental Sea, the Light Pce sect".

    "After reading our respective records, what we managed to catch is that the hero and his lineage in other words the ck Armored Shark''s lineage didn''t belong to Neptune".

    Daimon''s eyes narrowed a bit, which made Vincent chuckle before continuing.

    "The war between the four seas stagnated for dozens of thousands of years, without a winner nor a truce or nothing, no one knows why but we just kept killing each other, until one day each side got someone to guide them, we had our hero, the Light Pce sect got their saint, the Skelefiends had what they called an "envoy" from Snakele and the magic beasts¡­".

    Before Vincent could finish their sentence, Thea interrupted him.

    "The Maelstrom Sea supposedly was guided by someone with the lineage of a magic beast at the same level as the legendary dragons or unicorns, a Hydra, I used to hear that tale when I was younger, all those from snake races know about it".

    Vincent listened to Thea''s obviously dubitative voice and he shrugged.

    "In our records a man with the ability tomand all the races of snakes is mentioned, but I understand your concerns, Hydras are said to always be females so it is still a mystery what was that guy, all of them were said to not know each other before and first meeting in Neptune, that was deduced by some "poems" we found un Aurora''s family records alluding to her ancestor''s first meeting with the hero".

    "Anyway, returning to what I can confirm, the hero came here with a sea emblem, half of one to be more urate as it was iplete, but it supposedly granted him the ability to order the magic beasts of the Mermen Sea, while the others also arrived with their respective emblems they didn''t have an ability as they were iplete so we had an advantage over the others, which ultimately ended to a "victory", the truth is that everyone had lost too much things, so at the end there was no winner, just four worn out forces".

    "What made others deem us a the winners is that the envoy and the guy with the Hydra lineage were killed during the wat, but the hero and the saint survived, so we were expected to take possession of the other two seas¡­ but then the hero disappeared without a trace, and the saint who was fighting the remaining enemies and expected his help, was deathly wounded in battle".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow as he mumbled.

    "In other words, you returned to your starting point?".

    Vincent shook his head in response.

    "Notpletely, while officially there are no written records from that age, that is only certain for the noble families, the royal family does have a book from back then, as they were the ones who worked with the hero, and then were the ones who took over the responsibility of bringing order to the kingdom, but they weren''t the only ones".

    "The other extinct lineage of the founding families, also had some answers but with the death of theirst known descendant, their knowledge was lost¡­ until".

    The old man gazed at Ae as if he wanted to confirm something with her, the queen didn''t answer but instead took over the exnation.

    "Until me and Mellie''s mother was born, our mom was the daughter of a servant in our father''s family, the Delphini family, she was always sick and had a fragile body, so of course she wasn''t apt to be a servant, but she was really pretty and so our father, the next in line to be the n''s head took her in as her fianc¨¦".

    "One day when I was ying in my¡­ that man''s studio I found a book in his shelf, it was illegible and full of dust meaning no one had read it in a long time, so I took it but was unable to open it, my mother on the other hand was able to".

    "Mother read some of the pages but didn''t tell me what was in there, but, inside its pages there were two things", said the queen as she pointed at the ne which she gave to Daimon and the pendant Mellie was always wearing.

    "She gave me one and the other to Mellie, told us she loved us, returned the book and then sent us to sleep, the next morning she didn''t wake up¡­ she died in her sleep or so we were told".

    Daimon could see the queen gritting her teeth as a cold light glowed in her aquamarine eyes, until the Trident Marshal patted her shoulder as he took the control of the narrative again.

    "I was near the area and happened to visit the Delphini territory, so when I passed through the room where she died I had a strange feeling about it, my curiosity got the best of me and I sneaked a peek, imagine my surprise when an array appeared on the ceiling, before a letter came from within it, a letter sealed with a lineage seal".

    "One was directed to me, how was she sure I was going to appear there it still beats me, the other was for little Ae and little Mellie, the contents of mine were pretty simple, I was to be their guardian from the shadows, they would publicly be recognized by me and my reputation will provide them with a safetyyer".

    "Though it was what the letter said, to be honest when I saw those two little girls, who lost the only family they had, this old man couldn''t help but take them as my own nieces, especially little Mellie", said Vincent with a nostalgic expression on his face.

    While Mellie pouted, the queen softly smiled before saying.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Our letter said that I had to be the queen and that Mellie shouldn''t leave the castle, until she was 19 year and 6 months old, also it told us to hold onto our nes, but I was supposed to give mine to someone who saved Mellie''s life".

    The more Daimon heard, the more he felt intrigued, he didn''t know if all this was part of what was prepared for Adam or who prepared it for him, but he stole it so things wouldn''t go as nned.

    Not to mention Marcus also had an emblem, so he probably was left something here, from who knows who.

    ''Maybe those guys from the history, the ones who led the four seas were system users¡­ not that doesn''t make sense, the saint was in such a good rtionship with the hero, so they couldn''t have been both system users or things wouldn''t have been so easy, the hero wouldn''t have eliminated the others without paying a huge price first too''.

    ''But maybe one of the defeated guys had a descendant, his system could have been inherited, and that guy took revenge of the hero, that will also exin who has been moving the strings from the shadows'', thought Daimon.

    Sounds improbable indeed, but it''s what Daimon could think off with the current information he had.

    "So, the history is repeating itself with us here, is that what that promise thing is about?", asked Daimon.

    The Trident Marshal nodded.

    "More or less, it basically trantes to "an event that will destroy half of Neptune, when the "darkness"es to our world, and the "white" and "purple" reveal themselves, one will be our savior and the other one will be our enemy", that''s why I thought you were bad news kid, you have ck hair¡­ and purple eyes, of course it gave me a bad feeling, but I also understand the promise is referring to emblems".

    Daimon scratched the back of his head, he was sure he wasn''t the one whatever that promise is, referred to, because he wasn''t supposed to appear her, until he stole from Adam, also the white emblem was in Adam''s hands, but they didn''t discover a purple one.

    "My vote is with the purple, Adam has the white emblem and while he is indeed a pain in the ass to deal with, I''m pretty sure he hasn''t reached the level of being a threat to this in specific, at least not without a lot of help".

    ''Not to mention, he is supposed to do "hero things" and his missions are rted to saving people to get what he wants from them'', he mentally added.

    "Also, none of us has a purple emblem, so my guess is that the guy with that emblem and the one who organized the pirates and Skelefiends to attack us is the same one".

    Vincent''s eyes glowed for a second, he has heard from Mellie that the pirates and Skelefiends, mentioned a "Lord" a lot, not to mention the queen took the pirates Daimon subdued to interrogation and they cooperated and started writing down everything they knew in exchange for a royal pardon from the queen and a small position of authority, where their pasts as pirates were irrelevant.

    "It makes sense, that ckbeard punk wouldn''t work with anyone he doesn''t consider above average, that sack of bones is the same, now the question is, who in the world is the one with the purple emblem".

    Daimon turned to see the queen, theycked more information and there was a chance to get something to fill in some holes in the history.

    "Do you perhaps have ess to that book?", he asked.

    But the queen sighed as she shook her head.

    "No, I went to that man''s studio and opened it to see what was written on it, but it was just a regr geography study, even uncle Vincent inspected it in secret¡­ my theory is that the royal family stole it", said Ae with a fierce expression whichter changed to a cold one.

    Vincent wanted to tell his niece to not mention that in front of the Vs Duchess and Daphne, but while thetter showed some sadness, the Duchess didn''t seem to care, in fact she apparently was angry too.

    "When mother died many agents from the royals were called by that man, by the time uncle arrived they had "inspected" everything, I never mentioned anything and they probably believe me and Mellie were too young, so even if our mother told us anything we wouldn''t remember¡­ they don''t know that part of our "Analyzing Resonance", helps us never forget, because that partes from our mother''s lineage, and not the Delphini lineage which focuses in soundwaves".

    ''So they are both variants'', thought Daimon as he looked the queen and the princess, more or less they had given form to their suspicions, and to be honest it was enough for a single day, he still hasn''t had a good rest after being in constant battle, so he decided to wrap things up with ast question.

    "Onest question before we can go to rest, why can''t a ck Sea Emblem exist?", he asked.

    Vincent saw the emblem in Daimon''s hand and he sighed.

    "Because their colors can''t repeat, there is already a ck Devil Emblem, or there used to be as it was destroyed when his bearer was killed in one of the three disastrous zones of the Maelstrom Sea, the Despair Whirlpool".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, at the mention of that stupid ce at which they arrived when they entered the secondyer, that thing was strong enough to make his Apex Predator body feel pressured, though ording to Evangeline the curse only affected him because of the huge gap in their strengths, and he was still able to ignore some of its effect thanks to his abnormal body and magic core, or they wouldn''t have been able to escape alive.

 Chapter 355 Experiments (Part 1)

    Daimon looked at the ck emblem in his hand and he then remembered the dream he had the other day, whether it was Ae''s ne, Disaster or one of his two emblems, he needed a nice stock of sea crystals which were the equivalent of mana crystals, to do some tests.

    He also suddenly realized something he failed to contemte before; Daimon turned to see the Trident Marshal before saying.

    "You say the emblems have abilities only when they areplete, and yours seem to have the capacity to make oaths, but what is the price to it?".

    Vincent raised an eyebrow, he was clearly confused by Daimon''s words, but then a realization hit him like a truck.

    "Ah right, your emblem is different, all theplete emblems allow their users to do oaths with other people, mine''s ability is not as simple as that, but indeed for it to properly function I need to use a small fortune in sea crystals when I use it".

    Daimon''s left eyebrow trembled, for a moment he felt the urge to crush the little thing with his hand, he has been having headaches over the fact that he can''t enve¡­ no, make contracts with the people of Neptune and apparently all the other emblems had that functionality.

    ''You little¡­'', thought Daimon, but he then calmed down before saying.

    "I see, if that''s the case can I ask for some of them, I want to see what this little thing can do".

    The queen was the one to answer this time.

    "Sure, go to uncle''s treasury and grab the crystals you need, I''ll discount them from your part of the bet and the respective rewards that are granted to you due to the prisoners you captured, they were so easy to provoke", said the queen with a yful voice.

    Daimon could almost see a fox''s ears and tail growing on Ae, she easily yed with the ego of the nobles to make a profit, of course Daimon was the one that told her, his group will win on matter what, so she also did a bet which paid off.

    Daimon nodded, while the Trident Marshal sighed, he only had money in his treasury since his wealth from when he became a Ster ranked and above, is always with him, so it''s not like Daimon could literally take anything else but crystals and other not so rare gems.

    But he was still weirded about the fact that Ae simply gave Daimon what he asked, from his treasury and not hers.

    And he wasn''t the only one, Daimon also knew that the queen didn''t do anything without a good reason, and as if to confirm it, Ae then spoke with a gentle smiling face.

    "Speaking about it, I seem to remember the anguished voice of the Skelefiend ruler''s main wife, are you perhaps the one who captured her and if that were to be the case, how about you sell me that source of troubles~".

    Daimon was surprised, not by the fact that the queen wanted Shirel, she probably had a thousand uses for a hostage that was enough dissuasion for a maximum Ster Ranked like Horrorcaw to retreat in disgrace in exchange of her well-being, but by the fact that Mellie hadn''t properly told her.

    ''She didn''t have the time to, or perhaps she didn''t want to make me lose an opportunity, the little princess knows how to show gratitude'', thought Daimon.

    He had his own ns for the hostage and so he couldn''t give her to the Clear Water kingdom, even if the king were to demand it, he will tell him to suck it up, since the one who risked his skin to capture her was him and his group.

    "She is in my hands indeed, but I can''t give her to you, that being said I can "lend" her to you for interrogation, but all the information you get, must be shared with me, besides that I only need crystals aspensation".

    The queen''s eyes glowed for a moment, she stole a gaze at her sister and saw her giving her a "Don''t be a cheapskate" gaze, and she inwardly sighed.

    "Deal, take what you nee from uncle''s treasury, I''ll rece itter~", she said while she thought.

    ''Only an emblem ability can deny or nullify an emblem ability, and since he''ll be protecting Mellie, it''s money invested in that girl''s safety~''.

    Of course, Ae wasn''t going to take a loss, even if she went along with Daimon''s suggestion, there was a benefit for her, the only one who lost here was the Trident Marshal.

    Daimon then took out the ck miniature castle, which had started to show some signs of being worn out, it was probably just going tost a few more hours before it would be unable to contain Shirel.

    That''s also why he epted handing her to the queen, Rita''s ability didn''tst forever.

    "She is inside this restraining treasure, be prepared to suppress her", said Daimon as he opened the gate of the ck miniature castle.

    A battered and untidied Shirel was expulsed from the ck castle which crumbled apart and then integrated into Daimon''s shadow, unfortunately for the Skelefiend not even a secondter from her release, she was suppressed by the queen, who then ordered her guard Mina to imprison her.

    "Mina, be sure to tie her tight, we have some questions that need answers after all".

    "Yes, mydy", said Mina as she dragged Shirel out of the room, of course Vincent opened a breach in his barrier for her to leave.

    The Trident Marshal noticed the fatigue on everyone''s face and he nodded.

    "We''ll leave things like this for today, have a well deserved rest and we can continue tomorrow, there are three days left until the three art tournament starts¡­ ah right kid, the "gift" from the ckfin Duke will arrive tomorrow too, the whole ce is in a turmoil as you can expect and I need to do some rounds to calm everyone down".

    Daimon nodded.

    "Thanks, and also for the book and the crystals", said Daimon as he got up from his chair.

    Vincent bitterly smiled as he dispelled his barrier, he then called one of his subordinates and gave him some orders before disappearing from the room.

    Ae and the Vs Duchess stared at each other before saying.

    "I''m going to be doing some boring stuff Mel, you can stay with Daimon and the others, the queen is in charge of external rtionships, so you''ll be in charge of making some connections with our guests", said the queen as she became a blue sh of light.

    "Mm, Daph, mom has to go break the bones of the bad guys, meanwhile rx with your friends~" added the Duchess as she followed the queen.

    Mellie and Daphne stared at each other and sighed, truth is their sister and mother were still really angry over the fact that they were specially being targeted, so they could tell the prisoners were going to have a really bad day.

    "Can we join you for the rest of the day, Gabr¡­ Daimon?", asked Mellie.

    Daimon shrugged in response.

    "Sure, but I can''t assure you I''ll stay awake for too long, I''m still too tired".<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Mm", the princesses epted and then they proposed to go, when Daimon was suddenly immobilized by the slim arm of a woman grabbing his shoulder.

    Daimon turned around just to be directly looked at by the snake-like eyes of Thea, her expression was death serious¡­ until her pretty lips opened and her clearly drunk voice came out of them.

    "You even got to "squeeze" some money out of the Clear Water kingdom how impressive, I''m liking you more and more,e and have a drink with this Empress, I need more capable subordinates and¡­ ah this thing is empty, Linaaa give me another one!".

    Midway, Thea tried to drink from her bottle but noticed it was empty and went to bother the white snake general

    "Sorry about that Daimon, she doesn''t show it, but the Empress is still a bit hurt after those two''s betrayal¡­ it''s good that she isn''t just keeping it to herself, she is being serious though, if you feel you aren''t weed by the Mermen or the Elemental Seas, you''ll always have a space with us", said Karmandi as he patted Daimon''s shoulder before he went to help control Thea.

    "Young master, Lord Vincent told me to bring you to the treasury, do you wish to go now orter?", asked Vincent''s subordinate.

    Daimon nodded, the girls were already talking with each other so it was better to go and take what he needed, he''ll decide what to do after that.

    "Let''s go at once".

    "Understood", said Vincent''s subordinate.

    While Daimon and the girls were being guided to Vincent''s "public" treasury, at the top of the mansion Aurora was looking at the sky with a serious expression on her face, when Vincent appeared next to her.

    "It''s been how long, two or three thousand years since I saw you worried about something, Aurora", said Vincent with a nostalgic voice.

    The old woman sighed but she still answered.

    "And who do you think the fault is, normally if I were worried about a boy getting close to Jasmine, I will just grab him by his neck and make him spill the beans, but I can''t touch that kid, or you''ll stop me am I right?".

    Vincent bitterly smiled as he shrugged.

    "Don''t put all the me on me, little Ae hasplete faith in him, she even said that she was happy to have been wrong for the first time in her life because of that kid¡­ besides to be honest even if we were going to make a move I''m pretty sure you won''t be able to force him to answer you".

    "Have you forgotten what was written in the record we found in that chamber under your mansion, "Don''t ever directly attack the hero or anyone who is like him, not only it won''t work but it will bring disaster upon you", those were your ancestor''s words", said Vincent.

    Aurora softly snorted.

    "I know, that''s why I left, that kid doesn''t give me the vibe of being a threat to Jasmine, but I was tricked by that brat who now is who knows where once, so what guarantees that I''m not being tricked once again, and more importantly that Jasmine isn''t being used¡­ again", she said as she gritted her teeth.

    Vincent tapped his fingers on the wall of the mansion before saying.

    "To think, some kids from the young generation will make us the peak of the existence in Neptune feel trapped, it''s an interesting feeling, I can''t force you to trust if you don''t want to, just be aware that I have already made my decision and I will follow it to the end¡­ even if that means going against you, my first and only surviving friend from the previous era".

    "Still, I think the kid has proven to be trustworthy, and I think you are also missing something due to your judgement being clouded by what happened to your ancestor and your daughter, unlike that¡­ Adam was it, Daimon managed to reason with the magic beasts, the ck Empress who is considered one of the most bloodthirsty herself, came all the way from the Maelstrom Sea and stayed in my Malleus city surrounded by the Mermen she hates to the core, because of that kid".

    "I''m pretty sure he isn''t like the hero mentioned in the "promise", but isn''t that better, he isn''t a hot-headed idiot, he values allies and his potential is endless, hell if I had an unmarried daughter, I would arrange a marriage right away Hahahaha!".

    After finishingughing out loud, the Trident Marshal added with a more serious voice.

    "Besides, you saw it too right¡­ the mark of the ancient ns in his eyes, his lineage isn''t that of the ck Armored Shark I''m sure of that, but he was mounting a Half Ster ranked beast from the Maelstrom Sea, something the hero couldn''t do, not to mention that ck Sea Emblem, whatever it is, I feel he is the correct choice to bet for".

    Ultimately Aurora let out a sigh of relief and then mumbled.

    "Fine, I''ll talk with Jasmine and I won''t take it against the kid, the countdown has already started anyway, I don''t care what happens to me, no, I don''t care what happens to the whole Elemental Sea, I won''t lose a member of my family ever again, if she survives then Neptune''s demise is a price I''m willing to pay", she said with a fierce expression on her face.

    Vincent chuckled.

    "I had already forgotten that below that "saint" mask of yours, you used to terrify our enemies more than me back then hahaha".

    "Shut up, you old bastard", said Aurora.

    ¡­

    While at the Mermen Sea, the people were agitated but somewhat celebrated their victory over their enemies, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from there, a portal opened and the tired and untidied figure of Adam came out of it.

    "Damn it Ariel, why the hell was I dragged into that weird dimensional tunnel, I just lost my time!", eximed Adam.

    The expressionless angel girl, Ariel shrugged with an uninterested expression on her face.

    "You used an emergency escape, it took you to where you would need to go to make your next move, don''t me because you screwed over with the light princess".

    Adam gritted his teeth, as he was reminded of all his "efforts" gone to waste.

    "Fuck, I didn''t even get to taste her what a waste of time, fucking Skelefiends, I''m going to burn them all¡­ now where the hell am I?", he mumbled as he took out a smallpass, he was gifted by Jasmine.

    "Hoh, how interesting, so this is the best move to guarantee me a profit, thanks to the system hahaha".

    While Adamughed out loud, the angel girl boringly looked at her surroundings, they were in an ind with architecture that was simr to that of the ancient Greece, he appeared at an alley where there was no one, even.

    "Having a n b was a good idea after all, let''s go, we will make a "triumphal return" for the second event".

 Chapter 356 Experiments (Part 2)

    With the guide of Vincent''s subordinate, Daimon and the girls soon arrived at the treasury, the Trident Marshal didn''t give Daimon any key or anything to pen the magic reinforced door of the treasury, because there was no need to.

    The two guards standing in front of the door saw Mellie and they bowed their heads.

    "We the treasure guars, greet young miss Delphini, Lord Marshal told us you will visit with your friends, please just ce your hand on the lock of the array".

    Mellie has always had ess to the personal treasury of Vincent, so she just ced her hand on the door and the magic array scanned her energy to confirm her identity, no one''s energy firm was repeated, even twins wouldn''t be exactly the same, so this was one of the best ways of to secure something.

    The array illuminated for a couple of seconds, before the metal door whose width was of about four meters, slowly opened for her.

    The guard nodded and then stood aside to allow the group to enter, Vincent''s subordinate did a salute and then left.

    Daimon and the others entered and the door closed behind them, unlike the treasuries Daimon has seen in the Revy and Argent ns, which are akin to those of royal castles, with tons of materials, weapons, spell books, secret records and other valuable things filling the room.

    The Trident Marshal''s treasury could be considered "boring", there were a bunch of troves filled with different gems of different properties, racks with a lor of storage rings which contained different amounts of sea crystals and a few minerals and ores ssified as "unknown", medicines of different kinds and that was it.

    Don''t misunderstand, the amount of racks filled with storage rings was quite high, each ring could contain millions of crystals so the amount of wealth umted in this room was nothing to look down on.

    Mellie saw Daimon''s interested expression and she softlyughed, remembering the first time she came here.

    "It''s a bit strange right, all the weapons and raw resources, uncle seize from enemies or get as tribute, are used for the army where he says they will have a good use instead of just rotting behind a metal door, or being used to hunt talents".

    Daimon chuckled, the previous sh he had with the ckfin Duke made it obvious that the royal family has an steel grip over high ranked weapons and other resources, they are granted as prizes, but theye with strings, in other words those who ept them end up being tied to the royals.

    The army and the royal guards are always in conflict due to that, it''s worth mentioning that they royal guard is conformed mostly by members of the old noble faction, while the army is now practically influenced by the neo nobles, the king of course favors his own guards over the army.

    And while there are nobles rted to the army, they don''t dare to give the soldiers weapons and other treasures, unless the king does it first, but there is an exception, the Trident Marshal.

    Vincent''s authority is high enough to not have to show face to the king in that aspect, and the king doesn''t really care as long as it is only him doing it, it''s managed as a situation where a retired veteran funds the army due to his patriotism, instead of a noble investing in the army.

    "That old man is more cunning, than what he suggests", mumbled Daimon, making Mellie giggle.

    ''Daimon, there is a lot of mana crystals here~'', Narasha''s happy voice echoed through Daimon''s mind, when Disaster absorbs energy from things, Narasha is also benefitted, so she was like a kid in a candy store right now.

    Unfortunately, that analogy was true in more than one sense, while Disaster if left alone could probably keep absorbing energy forever, in truth, it would only make use of a part of it during a certain period of time, the rest will escape from the de and be released on the atmosphere, in the form of that ck aura with red borders that Disaster used to attack.

    In simple words, Disaster was like a kid who eats more candies that what it should and gets and upset stomach, if Daimon doesn''t restrain it.

    ''I''ll give you some tooter, once Disaster had processed the mana from the self-destruction array, okay''.

    ''Mm, thanks~'', cutely said Narasha, despite Disaster''sins.

    Daimon then grabbed a few dozens of rings, from the racks, sea crystals were used for anything on the Arch rank and above, and all the ones disyed in the rings in the racks are low quality ones, which are easy to find in the crystal mines.

    So Daimon was sure the Trident Marshal wouldn''t care about him taking them, he then went straight to the coffers that had random mineral ores tagged as "unknown", who knows he might find another one which is up to Disaster''s taste, so he grabbed a few samples of the different ores that were just stashed there.

    Mellie saw Daimon looking through the coffer of minerals that others considered just decorations and she found it amusing, she saw how happy he was when he ordered the magic beasts to find more of the Sea Devil ore for him.

    "Is he always like that when ites to materials?", she asked to Aisha.

    "Yeah, that''s an habit he took thanks to and old friend of the family", said Aisha referring to Liz, Daimon took a liking to magic cksmithing due to Liz giving him the prototype of the magic gun, and Daimon turned out to have talent for it.

    "I have everything I need, let''s go back to the room".

    Ignoring Daimon''s words who could be misinterpreted, the girls nodded and they left the treasury, now that they havee all the way here they didn''t need the guide of Vincent''s subordinate to go back to their room.

    Speaking of Vincent, he who was about to interrogate some of the pirates that were captured during the battle, he received a message on his mirror te, one which said how many rings were deduced from the racks.

    ''That kid is merciless... but he does have a conscience'', thought the Trident Marshal, as he entered the interrogation room, he was going to make the pirates spit till thest bit of information, to let out some steam, how could he ask money back from his own niece, he could only hope Daimon didn''t empty his treasury.

    ...

    Back at Daimon''s room, he and the girls entered, Mellie and Jasmine had already shared a room with them, even spending a night on a bed next to Daimon''s, so they didn''t stand in ceremony and sat on the second bed with the Risha sisters.

    Daphne doubted for a second but she joined Mellie and the others a momentter, Daimon and Aisha on the other hand upied the other bed.

    Daimon took out his two emblems and the ne that the queen gave him, after listening to the story behind it, he originally was inclined to it being what asked for crystals in his dream, because it fulfilled one of the requirements of the mission he had in Neptune.

    Daimon opened the mission tab and observed his progress, since he was dered the winner of the beast hunt it was updated, but he left it forter.

    [Stealing from the hero (Clear Water Kingdom): the hero of light Adam was prepared the stage to findpanions and allies in the Clear Water kingdom, but its way was blocked by the host at a critical part of the event].

    [Objectives:

    [Be well known among the four dominant factions (2/16) ?)12/16)]

    [It''s too early for the host to show he possesses the system to other system users, proceed with the mission without being rted to your public self (1/1)]

    [Make a great entrance like a hero (1/1)]

    [Win the beast hunt (0/1) ?(1/1)]

    [Win the three-art tournament (0/1)]

    [Get the hidden gem to join your side (1/2)]

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Hero of Light (0/1)]

    ''Mm, I stillck the second gem, the legacy, the three-art tournament and bing more famous, well I guess not all the noble houses participated in the first event'', thought Daimon.<novelnext></novelnext>

    And he was right, for example the family of the Minister of development, which is the only one with an status at the same level as Vincent''s, outside of the royal family of course, and his subordinated families didn''t go, it wasmon knowledge that Vincent and the Minister didn''t stand each other after all.

    With the three objects in front of him, Daimon was sitting on the bed, with Aisha sitting behind him, with her head resting on Daimon''s shoulder as she curiously looked at what her son was doing.

    "Okay, let''s do this", mumbled Daimon, with a wave of his hand he took out a small mountain of sea crystals from one of the rings he took from Vincent''s treasury.

    The Risha sisters and the princesses also stopped what they were doing and looked at what Daimon was doing, then under their surprised eyes the iplete lifeless gray Devil Emblem trembled and then slowly floated towards the crystals.

    "Oh, so it was you, then are you perhaps like the emblem of the hero who had an ability even when it was iplete...".

    Daimon couldn''t finish his sentence, because his ck Sea Emblem suddenly shed and then the head of the rune shark manifested outside of it, before Daimon could react, the jaws of the rune shark swallowed the Devil Emblem and the crystals too.

    "What the hell", Daimon eximed, he could hear the crunching soundsing from the snout of the rune shark, meaning the crystals and the emblem were both destroyed before the head of the shark returned to the ck Sea Emblem.

    But that wasn''t all, the ck emblem didn''t be inactive like normal, but kept floating in front of Daimon, as if it was asking for more "food".

    "Sigh, whatever, you better give me something, I was going to use that Devil Emblem", said Daimon as he took out arge pile of sea crystals.

    This time the rune shark didn''t appear, apparently it only did it so that it could eat the Devil Emblem, this time the thing just shone and all the mana contained in the sea crystals was absorbed by it, turning them into lifeless useless rocks.

    Unfortunately, this was just the start of Daimon''s nightmare, the thing kept asking for more food, and it didn''t stop until Daimon had emptied about five dozen of rings, the thing then started glowing and rotating.

    Mellie, Jasmine and Daphne were speechless.

    "If I remember correctly, your grandmother has an Elemental Emblem, right Jasmine, what''s its price like?", asked Mellie.

    "Mm, I have seen granny using it, it''s the light yellow Elemental Emblem, its ability isn''t suited forbat though, but it can function as an artificial sun to help nurture crops and even magic herbs, as for the cost it''s activation needs around two million low ranked sea crystals, then it needs one hundred thousand crystals to work for a month", said Jasmine.

    Mellie nodded in response.

    "Uncle''s silver emblem turns into an armor, the activation cost is about ten million crystals, which is on the expensive side of the known emblems... but then it''s been more than fifty millions and that thing hasn''t activated".

    Daimon was also in awe, only the activation costed so much and the thing also ate his other emblem.

    ''You better have some really incredible ability'', he thought as he looked at the ck emblem rotating in the air in front of him.

    The thing stopped what it was doing and then it returned to Daimon''s pocket, that''s right, nothing else happened.

    "...".

    After a moment of silence, the girls nearly fell from the bed, while Daimon could feel a headacheing his way, he had his hands full with a "cheeky" treasure in the form of Disaster and he didn''t want to deal with a second one.

    But then, the unmistakable sound of a notification rang in his ears.

    [Ding]

    [A special mission has been created due to a specific action <!>]

    [Listen and rejoice emblem bearers, the gates to Neptune''s legacies will open in 7 days, whether a civilization survives or not, it will depend on the results of this life-changing event!]

    [Special Missions]

    [Global Raid: Those with at least half an emblem will be taken to the thirdyer of Neptune through the closest entrance, where they will have to face tribtions, and find their way out <!>]

    Daimon clicked on the "!" icon and then the details of the mission showed.

    [Reward: If the host finishes the mission without any casualties a copy of "The road to the Ster level" will be granted, extra reward "Random Blessed Box (High ranked) if the host clears the raid]

    [Penalty in case of failure (casualties in the raid team): The emblem will be destroyed, the Drakolevia and ck Armored lineages will be lost forever]

    [Remaining review time: 7d 3h]

    Daimon was in awe for a moment, if it wasn''t for the system he wouldn''t have known he will be dragged into whatever the thirdyer of Neptune is, the event was adapted to the system function and a reward was assigned, but it will happen whether he participates or not.

    ''Legacies... whatever was left for those two should be there, the timing is perfect too, practically after the banquet offered by the royal family'', he thought as he epted the mission.

    [The mission has been epted, the host has been assigned as a raid team leader due to the high ranked emblem in his possession, please find a proper party, (maximum middle Lor rank, each one must have at least an iplete emblem) (0/20)]

    Aisha could see the screen of the system since Daimon has allowed her to, and her eyes were glowing with interest.

    ''Treasure hunting with my darling~'', she thought.

    Daimon turned to see the princesses, he didn''t want to participate in another meeting today, but he couldn''t stay silent about the need of iplete emblems.

    "You three, ask senior Vincent, Aurora, the queen and the duchess to gather iplete emblems, the type or ability doesn''t matter we just need to get a lot of them, the price is irrelevant too, this concerns the survival of your respective seas".

    The three princesses stared at each other, throughout the previous events at the beast hunt they never saw Daimon put on a serious or worried expression ever, but he was dead serious now, so they didn''t take his words as a joke.

    "Mm, leave it to us", they said.

    Daimon wasn''t being serious for nothing, the rewards actually told him more about the difficulty of the mission than the description itself, normally rewards are one level above the difficulty, in this case the first reward was a book with knowledge about the Ster rank, meaning the dangers that they would directly face will at most round the Arch ranks.

    But the second reward is what worries him, he''ll get the first one just by returning alive without casualties in his team, but for "clearing" the raid, he''ll get a high ranked reward, low ranked conforms the group of rewards that can be find in his gxy of origin.

    In other words, everything up to the Half Ster rank, then middle rank rewards are those of ranks he has seen and knows off but aren''t a thing in his gxy, the Ster rank basically, so to clear the raid he''ll face a problem that should be handled by a Ster rank.

    The a high ranked reward is... something of a level of which the host hasn''t heard nor seen before, it''s normally the best reward given by the system, as irregr level things are normally growing type ording to Evangeline, like his Core Synchrony which got stronger with each soulmate he got.

 Chapter 357 Preparations For The Tournament (Part 1)

    Not even a minute after Daimon asked the princesses to tell their backers to find emblems, he heard someone knocking on the door¡­ repeatedly.

    "Ah, I''m going don''t break the door!", Daimon said in a loud voice as the knocking got worse.

    As soon as he opened the door he was met with a plethora of gazes on him, Vincent, Ae, the Vs Duchess and even the ck Empress were outside of the door.

    "Oi kid, what''s with the "bring emblems or the seas will be destroyed" message we just got?", asked Vincent with a dead serious voice.

    "Little Jas directly woke up and came to join you not even an hour ago and the world is ending now?", said Aurora.

    After falling asleep during the lunch, Jasmine didn''t take too much time to recover, when Aurora went to the roof of the mansion, her granddaughter had already woken up and joined Daimon and the others when they were going to their room, she didn''t even send Aurora a message and just left a note saying "I''m in Daimon''s room", of course she was fuming.

    "Yeah, me and sister Ann were having some fun torturi¡­ I mean, interrogating Horrorw''s wife, when we received such a message from little Mellie", added the duchess.

    The queen was also pouting, she had an expression like the one of a child who is told "it''s time to go" when having fun in a park.

    The ck Empress on the other hand seemed oblivious to the situation, she instead looked at the inside of the room and gave Daimon a knowing gaze when she saw the three sisters and the two princesses as well as Aisha all in the beds, which were ced next to each other, she then nodded in an approving way before saying.

    "Oh, so you are kind that looks innocent but is dangerous on the inside, not bad boy, you managed to trick this Empress, here let me offer you a toast¡­".

    Before Thea could finish, she was dragged away by the white snake general Lina, who bowed her head with an apologetic gaze, apparently once Thea had started drinking, she''ll stay in that carefree way for the next half day at least.

    In fact, she didn''t receive a message from anyone, she was just wandering around the halls after escaping from Lina, and felt the waves in the space caused by Vincent transporting himself, the queen and the duchess at the front of Daimon''s room, so she casually tore the space with her spear and jumped to where the others were going in such a hurry.

    Not without mocking Lina as she escaped from her, so now she was being forcefully dragged to her room to sober up.

    Only now Aurora noticed her granddaughter wasying down on the bed next to Daimon''s and her eyes saw red, but Vincent ced his hand on her shoulder to restrain her.

    ''Ahem, do you think little Ae would have allowed little Mellie to join them if the kid had such intentions¡­ honestly I prefer the gentle and demure "mask" you use in public, think, even the array of my family was corrupted but he took care of them, there is no safer ce than this room in the mansion''.

    Aurora inwardly clicked her tongue, in public she might be called a saint and all that, but the truth is that back at home, she personally gave a beating to the fathers and uncles of the male heirs that tried to court her granddaughter without her knowledge, you could say Jasmine was her reverse scale, for a variety of good reasons.

    And she was still wary due to what happened with Adam being fresh in her memory, that being said she wasn''t blinded by that, Vincent''s logic was perfect, ording to the records of her ancestors, anyone who attacked the hero head on was met with a "casualty" that made the attack fail, it was as if he couldn''t be directly killed, but had to be set up or ambushed.

    Karmandi scratched the back of his head, during her drunk state, his Empress had the bad habit to stir up troubles by mistake.

    "Sorry for the trouble, but this seems to be an important situation, so I''ll stay in representation of the Empress", he said.

    And that''s how the current strange situation in which Daimon, the Risha sisters, Aisha and the princesses were sitting on the border of a bed, while the respected Trident Marshal, the matriarch of the Light Pce, the sharp and cunning queen as well as the proper and serious Vs Duchess were sitting on a small couch in front of them, Karmandi preferred to sit down on the floor.

    Daimon sighed, he didn''t want to have more meetings today, he was literally falling asleep and just wanted to cuddle with Aisha, he turned to see the princesses with an usatory gaze.

    Which the three of them to look away.

    "Don''t look at me like that, uncle and sister arrived before I sent them the second message exining more about the current situation", mumbled Mellie.

    "Mm", Jasmine and Daphne nodded agreeing with her.

    Daimon sighed in response.

    "I guess I can''t me them, I''ll go straight to the point, in seven days what you have been expecting to happen will start, and to participate we need at least an iplete emblem, apparently the result of it will decide which sea survives".

    "¡­", as expected, everyone was speechless, Vincent raised an eyebrow at Daimon before saying.

    "It''s not that I don''t trust you, but why didn''t you mention such an important thing earlier, we need to start preparing then".

    Daimon shrugged.

    "I didn''t know it, it was this little thing what told me¡­ after eating the Devil Emblem and around sixty millions of sea crystals", he said as he showed Vincent his ck Sea Emblem.

    Vincent was first shocked about the number of sea crystals Daimon''s emblem just ate, second he was now even more convinced that the emblem wasn''t a Sea Emblem, or at least it wasn''t like the ones he has seen or heard about.

    "It ate a Devil Emblem and then gave you an advice or a warning about the future¡­ is that its ability, but then sixty millions of sea crystals, the previous record belonged to the hero''s golden Sea Emblem and it was of thirty millions to activate the ability of ordering sea magic beasts with certain limitations", said Vincent as he stroked his long beard.

    But then Daimon''s next words nearly made him spit blood.

    "That''s not this guy''s ability, apparently it was just inactive due to it being "hungry", I still don''t know what it does, but I''m pretty sure it needs a ton more of sea crystals to use it".<novelnext></novelnext>

    Vincent felt his soul leaving his body, he could see his military budget flying away, Aurora was in awe too, emblems have ranks too, the highest ever found belonged to the hero and the other three that arrived with him, and they were middle ranked, so if the ck-haired youth in front of her was telling the truth, then¡­ it had to be superior to those.

    "This might be just my assumption, but is your emblem perhaps categorized as high ranked?", asked the old woman with a serious voice.

    Daimon casually nodded.

    "Yes, that seems to be the case, maybe that''s why it requires so much sea crystals, just to wake up".

    Vincent felt a headacheing his way, while the way Aurora saw Daimon changed a bit, middle ranked emblems weren''t just lifeless tools, they had a certain amount of "consciousness", in the form that they didn''t work with anyone, but chose their bearers, she knows this herself, because her husband the shaman of the Elemental Sea has one and he nearly died just to be chosen to bear the emblem, but if Daimon has an ever higher ranked one, then what kind of impossible hellish trial did he have to go through, she wondered.

    "Okay, so how many emblems do you need, I have some in my collection, I''m pretty sure Aurora has at least three and little Ae has two, so that would be, eight of them", said the Trident Marshal.

    Daimon rose two of his fingers, which made Vincent let out a sigh of relief thinking Daimon only needed two, until he heard Daimon saying.

    "Twenty, the raid party I''m allowed to have, is of twenty people, so I need twenty iplete emblems".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the room, there was an unknown number of emblems in Neptune, but they weren''t easy to find, they appeared in dangerous areas or they could just randomly surface.

    Honestly for the average person clearing the trial that came with an iplete emblem was a death sentence, so they were seen as a bad omen bymoners and most of people, with the exception of nobles like Vincent that had an interest in collecting them.

    The queen tapped her finger on the armrest of the couch, before her voice filled the room.

    "There are some in the royal treasury, they have been offered as tribute and I''m pretty sure they are just umting dust, you can just take them all if you win the three art tournament too, I''m sure that idiot will be more than happy to not lose anything from his treasury other than iplete useless emblems~", Ae''s cunning smile made Daimon chuckle.

    Vincent also nodded.

    "Let''s go with that, in any case I''ll send my subordinates to look in the ck market, little Ae if you can get any intel, I''ll be d to check it out".

    Karmandi also added.

    "I think the queen once found one of those and threw it into her ring, I''ll ask her about it".

    Daimon was also reminded of something important thanks to Vincent''s words, he hasn''t gotten a response from the device he created to track his ssmates, probably they weren''t using their sigil lectors as they were together, or maybe the territory was toorge to be mapped in just a couple of days.

    But now he had one of the rulers of the Elemental Sea in front of him.

    "I need some help to find my teammates, miss Ae can you please give the information to senior Aurora".

    "Mm", the queen nodded, and then all the adults left, but not without Ae and the Vs duchess turning around to look at their sister and daughter respectively and saying.

    "You two stay to sleep here, we''ll be out of the mansion working", then without letting Daimon say anything they vanished into thin air with Vincent.

    Aurora nearly tripped down when she heard that, she could feel her granddaughter''s gaze on her back and she ultimately sighed, all were going to stay together and she didn''t want Jasmine to feel excluded.

    "You too Jasmine, don''t leave the group¡­ I''ll return tomorrow morning", she said as she became a sh of yellow light.

    The girls were happy to spend more time with their newly met friends, Daimon on the other hand just left his body fall backwards on the bed and closed his eyes, his vision was blurring at this point.

    "Wake me up for dinner", he managed to say as he fell asleep, Aisha nodded and then amodated her son who was deeply asleep, before she hopped on the other bed with the other girls.

    "So now that he is asleep, shall we have a decent girl''s talk", said Aisha with a yful smile on her face.

    The sisters blushed a bit, remembering the times they have had such conversations when they bathed at the training facilities of the academy, since those conversations mostly started with Daimon as the focus or somehow ended up talking about him one way or another.

    The princesses stared at each other, Daphne and Mellie more or less knew each other, but they didn''t spend enough time together to consider themselves friends, Daphne had her maids, but only Chris who was now with her family, was her actual friend.

    As for Jasmine, she also only had one real friend, which was the daughter of the patriarch Underwood, so this was a new experience for them.

    ¡­

    While the girls were giggling and chatting, no one noticed that the emblem in Daimon''s pocket was a bit restless, the eyes of the rune shark which was engraved on it, glowed for a couple of seconds before it returned to normal.

    Daimon frowned in his sleep, but then he eased and just continued resting.

 Chapter 358 Preparations For The Tournament (Part 2)

    This time Daimon didn''t dream, he properly rested and a few hourster, he was slightly shaken by Aisha.

    "Mm", Daimon''s eyes opened, the illumination made him understand that the sun had already settled down.

    "What time is it?", asked Daimon as he rubbed his eyes, the other girls were sitting orying down on the bed, each doing their own thing, the Risha sisters were reading books while the princesses were ying some kind of board game together.

    "Aisha, it''s your tu eximed Mellie.

    Daimon chuckled, apparently the girls got in friendlier terms while he was sleeping, he was woken up from his daze after Aisha answered him.

    "It''s 8:00 PM darling, the dinner will be served in half an hour ording to the guards that are taking rounds through the mansion".

    Daimon nodded, he felt really refreshed right now, his stamina had fully recovered, it also helped that it was night and his base race was vampire, so he felt like a fish in the sea.

    He jumped out of the bed and went to the bathroom.

    ''I''ll take a quick shower mom'', he said directly to Aisha.

    The girls saw it and they turned to see Aisha, normally she always enters with Daimon, which is a subject that came up when they were talking earlier.

    "What is it that weird that I don''t apany him, you can enter yourselves if you want to~", jokingly said Aisha to the sisters.

    Inside of the bathroom, Daimon undressed and jumped into the shower, but then he remembered something and looked downwards, just to see his shadow distorting just a bit, but that was enough for Daimon to notice Rita had already woken up.

    "Rita, if you are awake, go and stay in Aisha''s shadow", said Daimon.

    Horals had returned to the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart, he send him back to secretly inform Erin and Aura about everything what happened and to tell them to prepare, because he didn''t know what will happen after the thing with the global raid.

    "I still need more rest in young master''s shadow to recover after using Doll House¡­ can I stay?", mumbled Rita.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, since she gained intelligence, she seemed to get scenic panic, ording to her, she recovers her mana faster in his shadow and so here favorite ce to be was Daimon''s shadow, of course she knew when not to go into it, which was basically when her young master spends his time with her young misses.

    She was asleep when Daimon had some fun with Aisha in the bathroom, but she woke up when he was sleeping earlier, but still tried to feign to be asleep so he didn''t tell her to leave his shadow where she wasfortable.

    Ultimately he didn''t have the heart to tell Rita to leave, she overstepped her limits to trap a Half Ster rank for him after all, he already rewarded Horals giving him the spear, so he just shrugged and nodded.

    "Fine, rest as much as you need but stay in alert, in case someone tries to sneak in the room".

    Within Daimon''s shadow, Rita smiled as she said.

    "Thanks, young master~".

    Daimon then took a quick shower and changed into casual clothes and changed to Gabriel''s disguise, he only showed his real appearance to the people that is in an alliance with him, because no one knows if any of Vincent''s subordinates is an spy, there were infiltrated people in the group of the first princess, so it wouldn''t be weird if that was the case.

    He came out of the bathroom, the girls were ready, the sisters and Aisha also wore their disguises and then they left the room.

    By the time they arrived the maids were already standing in the dining room waiting for them, none of the adults was here as they all had their own thing to tend to outside of the mansion, well it''s not exactly true, since Thea was sleeping hugging a bottle, while her generals were handing some errands.

    As soon as they sat down, the maids brought the dishes and then retired to give them some privacy.

    ¡­

    After enjoying their dinner, they returned to the room.

    "Phew, camping isn''t my thing~", mumbled Leslie as she threw herself on the bed, Daimon''s bed to be exact.

    Her sisters joined her and before they noticed the three were sleeping, time flew for them since they were too engrossed talking with each other.

    It didn''t escape the princesses''s eyes that the sisters wereying down on Daimon''s bed, but they didn''t say anything and got on their own, it was gettingte so they also went to sleep.

    Aisha also joined the sisters, she stayed awake to take care of her son while he was asleep so now, she needed to rest too.

    Daimon caressed Aisha''s face a couple of times and then went to sit on a desk that was ced at one of the corners of the room, he dimmed down the lights so the girls could rest and he took out the book Vincent handed him.

    ''Low ranked vampires are nocturne, now that I think about it the nights at the castle of the Naktis used to be more energetic than the days'', thought Daimon, he was a day walker thanks to Aisha''s lineage, so he was closer to humans in daily routine, heck he didn''t even feel the need to drink blood back then and could obtain nutrients from normal food.

    Daimon opened the book and started reading the entries, he immediately noticed that the first pages were added when Vincent was quite young, based on the dates mentioned there.

    Just like the Trident Marshal mentioned, most of the things in the book were notes from Vincent and Aurora''s young days when they looked for the emblems.

    "Damn¡­ it took the old man one hundred years to finally found the other half of his emblem, and another two thousand years toplete his task, and it''s a low ranked emblem", mumbled Daimon.

    He took out his emblem from his pocket and inspected it, he didn''t face a trial hard enough to justify it being a high ranked emblem, the thing guided him to the entrance of the secondyer, protected him in the dimensional tunnel from whatever where the creatures that tried to attack him.

    A realization hit Daimon like a bolt out of the blue.

    "Was that your ability, negate life threatening attacks?", wondered Daimon, the amount of mana it has absorbed, would be justified if that was the case, he also thought it was like that because the emblem didn''t react when in the underwater space, on the other hand then why it didn''t act when Sting tried to capture them.

    ''Was it because itcked mana to work'', he wondered.<novelnext></novelnext>

    ''Young master¡­'', Rita''s voice interrupted Daimon''s thoughts, but Daimon just nodded, he closed the book and then stood up from his chair.

    ''Time to work'', he thought as he opened the door and left the room, not without letting a dome of Demon Light to cover the girls who were still sleeping.

    As soon as Daimon was out of the room, he noticed two things, first the lights of the hall went off on him, second there was an eerie atmosphere filling the area, it was as if invisible hands were moving in the darkness.

    Daimon smirked, for the first time since they came to this magic ruin, he let out the aura of his overlord pride leak out of his body on purpose, his shadow extended all the way from where he was standing to the end of the corridor.

    He looked upwards and saw two ck robed figures walking on all fours on the ceiling, a scene that seemed toe out of a terror film back at earth, unfortunately for them, the one who caused others to suffer was him, not the other way around.

    The two figures let go of the ceiling and fell one in front of Daimon and the other behind him, blocking his way of retreat, now that he looked at them close up, he realized they were humans just using some disguises.

    "Why are you using those robes, you are one of the guards and a maid, I wonder why was my food the only one poisoned, when you had the three princesses to target?", asked Daimon rhetorically.

    The two figures trembled unconsciously, making Daimon smirk, the poison used in his food was colorless and odorless, even the energy firm was too thin to normally be seen, as the ingredients in the food had strong remaining mana due to the high ranked ingredients used.

    Unfortunately for them, his infinity eyes noticed there were some differences between his te and the ones of the girls, and the food was the same, he purposely was the first to take a bite of the food and got a message from the system, poison was useless against him, because his metabolism as an apex predator is insane.

    And from that moment onwards he observed the staff, but to his surprise he didn''t notice any difference, so he knew he was dealing with professionals.

    "So now, who sent you, I pissed off a lot of peopletely, maybe one of the nobles who lost someone for being a weakling¡­ nah they don''t have the guts to mess up with the Trident Marshal, so the options are the royals or that ckfin Duke guy", said Daimon.

    The two figures didn''t answer, they became shes and extended their hands towards Daimon, the woman was aiming to slice Daimon''s throat, clearly trying to silence him, but the guy was trying to capture him.

    Daimon shook his head, and then the two figures stopped midair, they tried to fight but soon realized they couldn''t move, even their tongues were paralyzed to prevent them from taking their own lives.

    Daimon waved his hand and the two figures were brought in front of him, he teared the robes away to see who were his attackers, but they were just a random guard and maid, they weren''t the ones directly ordered by Vincent.

    "Mm?", Daimon suddenly saw the female figure being dragged into the shadows, before the sounds of bones being crushed and muffled screams could be hearding from it.

    ''Rita?'', asked Daimon.

    ''That woman''s knife was smeared in a deathly poison, she deserved to die", angrily said Rita.

    Daimon looked at the guard whose face was pale, and then threw the knife of the now dead woman at a corner of the ceiling, while being dded in Demon Light, destroying the array that they set up.

    The darkness that covered the hall disappeared, Aisha then opened the door of the room, she woke up the moment her son moved towards the door, but stayed behind to look for the other girls, just in case.

    "Oh, an assassin disguised as a guard, the usual I would say", boringly said Aisha, she survived many attempts like this when she was little, though her grandmother protected her every time.

    "Yeah, but they aren''t from the pirates nor the Skelefiends, they were sent by a noble if you ask me, using that as a cover, the other tried to kill me but this guy just wanted to capture me, so he deserves a chance to "exin" I guess".

    Daimon red at the guy who was still suspended in the air, though now the ck threads that came from Daimon''s shadow were visible, a cold pair of eyes could be seen in Daimon''s shadow, making the guy tremble.

    ''What "he is just a random guy who abused his luck", this aura surpasses a lot of the seniors, he is a monster!'', he yelled in his heart.

    Daimon then walked towards the room next to his, but to the guy''s surprise he just sat on a chair, but then a green vortex opened on the air, from which a ck armored knight came out.

    The knight kneeled down in front of the silver haired youth and ced his right hand on his chest, before saying.

    "Horals''s, listens to young master''s call, what can I do for you!", he shouted.

    Daimon pointed at the guy.

    "I want to know every bit of information that guy has, if he cooperates let him keep all his limbs, if not¡­ do as you please".

    The bone general felt a thrill running through his body, he took out his notebook and leafed through it, until he was at the middle, he then dragged the guy to the bathroom while happily humming.

    Rita sighed from Daimon''s shadow.

    "That bonehead is a sadist", she mumbled.

    Daimon''s eyebrow trembled a bit, she just crushed someone to death and she called Horals a sadist.

    ''Well, they were undead originally, themon sense of a living being obviously doesn''t go along with their nature'', said Evangeline.

    Daimon nodded, he took out Vincent''s book and continued reading, waiting for Horals to get the answers he wanted, which took less than what he expected, not even thirty secondster, a bored Horals dragged the guy by his neck and threw him at Daimon''s feet.

    "He ims to have been tricked, his mission was just to gather information, but his assigned partner secretly epted an assassination task, I was going to rip his arm off, but he offered to willingly give all the information he has in exchange to keep his life", said Horals, with a bored voice, as if someone had spoiled his fun.

    The guy trembled feeling Horals''s intense gaze, he kneeled down in front of Daimon and shouted.

    "I-It''s true, I''m just a middle stage, middle level mortal realm, my task was just to gather information on any guests the Trident Marshal had since the past five days onwards!".

    Daimon frowned, that was strangely specific and it happened to be the same date, where he stayed in the mansion of the queen.

    "I guess we have a winner", mumbled Daimon, getting an idea of who sent someone to spy on them.

 Chapter 359 A Mission From The Queen (Part 1)

    Daimon looked at the guy who was clearly trembling upon being gazed by Horals, before saying.

    "Then, what do you have to say, needless to say but if your information isn''t worth my time, you can say goodbye to your head".

    The poor guy felt his soul leaving his body, having lived a few years in this line of work, he has seen cruel people, those who rejoice in making others suffer, alcohol, debauchery and abuse are normal hobbies for nobles.

    He kept his mouth shut because he is just a little informant who was somehow assigned to this ce, but this is the first time he bumps into someone who doesn''t show any reaction positive or negative when having other people''s lives in his hands.

    ''That murderous aura earlier isn''t normal, what the hell did I get myself involved into!'', he screamed in his heart before saying.

    "I-I''m just a small informant, my superior was the woman that died a moment ago, I don''t know all the details but I have worked for her for some time, once het tongue slipped and she mentioned she belonged to some sort of organization".

    "I was told we were just going to gather information on the guests of important people, that woman never mentioned we were going to kill anyone¡­ I''m not suited forbat as you can see, just today she changed the ns and poisoned your food, then told me we were taking you with us, that was a couple of hours ago, I don''t know why she did it, but I saw her receiving a message with a disposable mirror te".

    Daimon frowned, if the woman Rita turned into minced meat was an assassin, then this guy shouldn''t have been able to talk about it, he should be under a contract.

    The guy noticed his words were being questioned and he immediately exined.

    "S-She had a contract with her employers, I am an external so my contract was with her and it isxer¡­ I know more about the organization, if you can find the medium used for it and destroy it, I can tell you all I know".

    He was obviously trying to prove his life was worth sparing, and Daimon didn''t detect any lies in his words, on the other hand he didn''t have the time to go look for what was used to tie this guy''s tongue.

    There were a plethora of objects that could be used to make contracts in Neptune, some people had them with them all the time, while others hid them or buried them, in case of death the other party couldn''t destroy it and escape the contract.

    Unfortunately for some reason, none of those regr contract methods worked for the people of the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart, so far only Ae''s ne, Vincent''s emblem properly worked, his contract with Karmandi had a time limit of a couple of days and he is a Half Ster rank, so there was of course something behind this limitation, which has been pestering Daimon.

    ''Ah, damn it, everything will be easier if my terror contractor worked, that old man and the others won''t return until tomorrow and I can''t take this guy to the guards, because who knows if there are other spies, I doubt he''ll survive the night'', thought Daimon.

    It was then when he remembered something Karmandi mentioned.

    ''The ck Empress, she is supposed to have the ability to nullify contracts of all kind and she stayed behind'', thought Daimon.

    Also the ce where she was staying was safe, who in their right mind would dare to try an sneak into the room of a practically high stage Ster rank, Daimon was sure the spies were at most early stage Arch ranks, like the woman Rita killed, because anything higher than that would be directly ordered by Vincent and the chances of being discovered were too high.

    ''Horals, watch this guy closely, and protect my room, if anyone tries to barge in kill without any hesitation'', ordered Daimon as he got up from his chair.

    ''Understood!'', answered the bone general, the green mes in his eyes burned brighter, his young master sounded like a conqueror, and he couldn''t help but feel excited over the idea of killing his young master''s enemies.

    Daimon could feel the enthusiasm of the bone general and he bitterly smiled, but he then shook his head and activated the effect of the hollow suit, it was as if his existence vanished.

    Vincent had an array to prevent other Ster ranks to transport themselves into his mansion, he allowed Thea and Aurora to ignore the restriction in case something happened, since they are allies now, but Daimon wasn''t registered since he didn''t know he has the ability to move through space.

    Luckily there is no need for that, since blink isn''t affected by restrictions, in exchange his range is pretty limited though, but he can use continuously as his mana reserves are huge.

    And so with a thought, Daimon shed through the mansion, with his presence being hidden by the hollow suit, the guards didn''t notice him at all, there weren''t even Half Ster ranks among them anyway, everyone past the Arch rank was dispatched by Vincent, since the city needed to be patrolled to calm the nobles and the citizens, to avoid panic.

    They were attacked today after all, past a certain point Daimon cancelled the effect of the hollow suit, because the area within one kilometer of Thea''s room waspletely empty, and he didn''t want to be misunderstood as someone tried to sneak, so he directly walked thest meters and then knocked on the door.

    A few seconds passed and there was no response, so Daimon knocked one more time, he then could hear a dull sound, it was the sound of someone falling on the floor and cursing.

    "This better be a life-or-death situation old snake, or I''m going to dry you under the sun until you be jerky meat, ah my head¡­", the slightly dizzy voice of the ck Empress could be heard from the other side of the door, apparently, she was having a hangover due to all the alcohol she drank, which made Daimon wonder if it was a good idea toe ask for her help.

    ''Whatever I''m already here, so I might as well¡­ besides that ability sounds really interesting'', he thought before saying.

    "Sorry to wake you up miss Thea, I had something I would like to ask of you".

    ¡­ A sepulchral silence fell on the whole area, before all the locks on the door were undone immediately, the door opened and Daimon was weed with the sight of an elegant looking tall woman wearing a ck dress.

    "Ahem, if it isn''t my general candidate, what can I do for you thiste, do you want to share a drink under the light of the moon with this Empress?", she asked.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, with her eyes closed she acted elegant and gentle though firm, her stand was that of a nobledy, when her eyes opened, she was pretty imposing, her aura became wild and war-like akin to a magic beast nature, and then when she was drunk, she was pretty carefree, pretty much like a human.

    He didn''t know if she was acting, but now the elegant and carefree "personalities" were mixed, she was trying to act proper and elegant but the slight scent of alcohol made it obvious, that she hasn''t sobered uppletely, not to mention she offered to drink more with him.

    ''Maybe her race loves alcohol¡­ so she can''t stand it, or something like that'', thought Daimon before saying.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Thanks for the offer but we''ll have to leave it forter, Karmandi mentioned you have the ability to nullify contracts, someone tried to y a trick and I caught him, but I can''t get all the information due to a contract so¡­".

    Before Daimon could finish, Thea nodded.

    "Let''s have a look, by the way, how much time has passed since the lunch¡­ my memory after that is a bit blur, normally Lina gives me a report but I don''t feel her presence in the mansion".

    "About ten hours I would say", said Daimon, making Thea bitterly smile.

    "That stingy Lina didn''t bring my potions, so that I couldn''t drink as much as I wanted and now my head is killing me", she mumbled.

    Daimon bitterly smiled but he didn''t say anything and instead proposed to show the way to the ck Empress, but she took out her spear and teared a hole in the space, at the other side the door of Daimon''s room could be seen.

    "It should be faster this way", said Empress before she jumped into the hole in the space followed by Daimon.

    They appeared at the entrance of Daimon''s room, Horals immediately detected the presence of his young master and opened the door, Aisha did it too, she saw Thea standing next to Daimon and nodded, since there was a Ster ranked here now, then they could ease up a bit.

    The sisters and the princesses though tired could feel there was something ongoing, so they woke up when Daimon released his aura, but Aisha told them everything was fine and to wait until he returned.

    "You all cane if you want to", said Daimon, he could see the girls hiding behind the other side of the door next to Aisha whose head was peeking out of the room, thanks to his infinity eyes.

    "Oh, you''ve got some nice eyes, this Empress feels more and more impressed", said Thea, her yellow snake-like eyes glowed, taking Daimon by surprise, apparently just like Yvonne she had special eyes.

    And though she couldn''t know what Daimon''s infinity eyes did, she could somehow identify a panion" with magic eyes.

    Aisha and the other girls left the room and followed Daimon and Thea into the one next to it, where Horals was watching over the prisoner, speaking of the poor guy he nearly fainted when he saw Thea entering the room.

    "B-ck Empress, but that woman said all the Ster ranks left the mansion", he eximed, confirming Daimon''s supposition.

    There is no way, two "small fries" like the woman from before and this guy would make their move if they knew Thea was staying in the mansion, though the ck Empress was sleeping, if she would have felt any threat, she would have reacted, drunk or not.

    The only reason as to why she didn''te earlier, is because Daimon wasn''t in any danger to begin with, so her instincts didn''t wake her up, the question here is who told that woman all the adults were gone, Vincent and the others didn''t inform anyone they were leaving, as that would be an invitation to be attacked under the current circumstances.

    Daimon noticed Mellie had a troubled expression, and he turned to see her wanting to know if she had something to say, just to see her taking out a note from her pocket, that said, "There are spies in the mansion, please tell Daimon to take care of the situation, I set them up for you, the reward from the Minister of development is an iplete emblem but he won''t hand it over to uncle Vincent or anyone rted to him so it''s got to be him, good luck~".

    "I only noticed this when I woke up¡­ sorry".

    Daimon sighed, the queen probably was the one that let the rumor that all the Half Ster and Ster ranks, were gone.

    "She didn''t want to hit the grass and scare the snake, it seems this organization is a pain to deal with'', mumbled Daimon.

    Of course, the queen could have captured the maid and the guard, if she stayed behind, but then the ones behind them would probably notice it and disappear, so she instead left the task to Daimon, knowing he had someone to protect him all the time of course, and leaving Thea behind just in case, also it would be suspicious if any noble or their rtives were to specifically ask for an emblem as reward, since they are considered useless.

    But Daimon was recently appointed as a noble, so it''s "normal" for him to be curious about it, specially because everyone thought he came from a remote ind, or that he belonged to an isted family somewhere in the sea, and since he is a rising star, it''s normal for high ranked nobles to try and woo him to their factions, Dominic already invited him for example, though it was more of a honest request to join due to the strength he has showed.

    Since Vincent seemed to be involved, not all the nobles had the status to try, maybe the royals and the ckfin Duke could do it, but after what happened between them and Daimon earlier it''s obvious, they won''t, so that only left the faction of Minister of Development, and this was a perfect chance, as Vincent "awarded" Daimon with the spear he gave to Horals, so of course he had to offer some rewards to the current rising star, if the situation demanded it.

    ''I wonder who will win in a strategy contest, between her and Erin'', thought Daimon.

    "Miss Thea, please cancel this guy''s contract, let''s hear more about this people who are going to kindly donate an emblem for us", said Daimon.

    "Mm", the Empress nodded and then the color of her left eye, changed from honey yellow, to blood red.

    "Aghhh!", the guy trembled, his face paled and then he spat blood and copsed on the ground, but Daimon didn''t flinch, he could tell he was perfectly fine, and that was just a reaction caused by the contract which was nullified.

    He instead was more interested in Thea''s ability, why do you ask, because it brought him a familiar sensation, it was simr to when the queen or Mellie used their "Analysis Resonance", or when Jasmine stimted her lineage, whose ability was still unknown.

    ''Another lineage with ancient roots, is it coincidence?'', he wondered, earlier he noticed that Aurora didn''t notice the vertical yellow lines that shed in Jasmine''s eyes, when the level of trust she had on him jumped all the way to 30%.

    And she apparently didn''t tell her, which is something he has to talk about with her, so far in the notes he has read from Vincent''s book, he can tell there are "missing" parts, but they aren''t those who were lost due to time, but some information that was purposedly not wrote down.

    He could notice it, only because he is a system user, like the hero probably was.

 Chapter 360 A Mission From The Queen (Part 2)

    After being down for a moment the guy seemed to be return to life, in fact it was as if a weight had been lifted from his chest, he actually bowed down towards Thea, with a thankful expression on his face.

    "I humbly thank the ck Empress from removing that "curse" I had on me for thest three years", he said.

    "My name is Brandon Almer, a member of one of the many small towns of the Clear Water kingdom¡­ I was worked as an information dealer, that mostly sold reports about magic beasts and the areas that were frequented by them I had such experience because my family had been hunters since the days of my great-great grandfather, one day I was "recruited" in a small group to go hunt some beasts".

    Brandon remained silent for a moment before continuing.

    "The pay was too good so I tagged along and of course it ended up being a trap, that woman killed the other members of the group and I was forced to serve her, all the information gathered in my family''s records was taken by her¡­ and it was used tomit different crimes, which I don''t really want to speak about, you get the idea, after everything was done, the proofs were destroyed by magic beasts, and that was the end of the missions".

    "That being said, that woman was the one to do all the job, I was basically her servant, my job was to fulfill all her "needs", since I''m not apt for battle I just frequented bars and taverns to gather information, one night when I was¡­ doing some chores, we were interrupted and I managed to see her talking with someone wearing a robe, I couldn''t see his face, but he had a symbol like this tattooed on his neck".

    Brandon took Horals''s notebook and drew three horizontal wavy lines one above the other at a certain distance.

    "Wind, no, it looks like a wave", mumbled Daimon, to which Thea nodded.

    "That is the symbol of "ck Wave", they are some shady bastards who had branches in the four seas, no one knows who is their boss, but I have seen them made deals with Ster ranks before".

    But then the Empress frowned.

    "But that doesn''t make sense, you are too weak to be involved, their assassins are at least at the peak of the mortal realm, and I didn''t feel a threat on that level?".

    Brandon shook his head in response.

    "The woman I served wasn''t part of them yet, I didn''t know the name of the organization, but she once bragged about being in the process of joining an amazing group, she had some meetings with that tattooed guy from time to time, where she did all kinds of tasks for him".

    Daimon shook his head, apparently the woman abused the poor guy but she herself used her body hold onto one of the guys of that organization, it was something normal, a rtionship out of convenience though.

    But this time it became a chance to eradicate or at least get rid of the branch in the Clear Water kingdom.

    ''Those guys are really unlucky, or maybe your luck with women is so high, that even when they aren''t rted to you, you benefit from them~'', jokingly said Evangeline making Daimon chuckle.

    He then gave Brandon a notebook and a pen.

    "Write down all the ces that were in your family records, I doubt she was assigned just random people to kill, the connection might help us, also tell me the ces and dates where that woman reunited with the man and try to put a description of him, you''ll make a contract and return to your act as a guard, if you see any suspicious guy, you''ll inform me, understood?".

    Brandon saw a chance to live and immediately epted.

    "Yes, young master!", he shouted imitating Horals, to the bone general displease.

    Daimon shook his head, as he looked at Thea.

    "I can''t make contracts, could you please help me with this guy?", he asked.

    Thea nodded, with a cunning smile.

    "Sure, he can be your information official for when you ept this Empress''s offer of bing a general", she said.

    This time her right eye was the one to change its color, from honey yellow to a pretty light green tone, Brandon saw a snake eye mark appearing on his chest, but he didn''t resist.

    "It''s done, the only conditions are loyalty and reasonable obedience, the contract assigns me as the holder, but I can designate you as my representant", said Thea as she extended her hand towards Daimon.

    "Normally I can just assign contracts by thinking about it¡­ but for some reason I can''t target you like that, so we''ll have to do it the hard way, this Empress doesn''t like formalities but whatever, a kiss on the hand should be enough".

    Daimon shrugged and did as he was told, this too was also part of noble''s etiquette, which his mother taught him, he grabbed Thea''s hand and then kissed the reverse of her hand, the sound of a notification rang in his ears.

    [Ding]

    [ck Empress Thea has offered a general''s position to the host, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, apparently, he had to be a general to receive Thea''s contract, it made sense since the message he got when he made a temporal agreement, mentioned it came from the "Coral Sea General", also those symbols that appeared on his scales were engraved not innate, in other words the ability belonged to Thea, but she could extend it to her generals.

    Though Karmandi needed to use his blood and one of his scales as a medium, but Thea could do it by innate.

    He still epted, in any case he couldn''t be retrained by it and it only benefited him, so there was nothing for him to lose, who knows this might even trigger the creation of an ability that worked to contract the people of Neptune.<novelnext></novelnext>

    [The contract has been epted]

    Unfortunately, the skill creation notification Daimon wanted didn''t appear, but not everything was bad, because he indeed got a bonus from epting the contract.

    [Ding]

    [New title unlocked: Rookie General]

    [Having noticed the host''s potential and like-minded virtue, the ck Empress has granted him the authority of a newly incorporated general, from now and onwards all the magic beasts subordinated to the Empress will treat the host as their kin, additionally those who are assigned by the Empress will follow the host''smands (Former development of the title is possible depending on the host''s actions)]

    [Subordinates assigned: 1]

    This made Daimon wonder, why did making a contract with Thea gave him a title, but when he made one through the emblem with Vincent nothing else happened.

    ''Maybe the principles behind them are different ad the system finds this contract to be more of my liking'', he thought.

    The system supposedly grew in the direction he wanted adapting to his wishes and needs, most of the times it gave him things he needed instead of what he wanted though.

    Thea looked at her hand which Daimon was still holding because he got lost in his thoughts, her expression was calm but at the same time she looked somewhat happy that he epted.

    Daimon woke up his daze, when he felt the intense gazes not only of the sisters but Aisha, too, even the princesses had hard to decipher expressions on their faces, it was then when he noticed he has been holding the hand of the Empress all the time.

    "Ahem, we should get going, I don''t think we are going to find those guy''s den tonight, but if we can capture the tattooed man who is an official member of ck Wave, then we''ll get some valuable intel from him", Daimon cleared his throat and let go of Thea''s hand, he then looked at Brandon who was finishing writing down what he was asked.

    "These are the locations in the kingdom that were written in the records of my family, I underlined the ones that have already been used by that woman to get rid of evidences once, there is also a list of the ces we used to frequent and even some inns in which we had stayed, I know young master probably isn''t affected, but some of these ces aren''t, suited for sensitive¡­ no decent people, specially girls", said Brandon in a low voice as he pointed at the princesses.

    As an informant if course he recognized Mellie, Daphne and Jasmine, needless to say but since his former boss which was that woman, worked as an assassin in trial for ck Wave, the ces she frequented were ces where the scum of the kingdom went to have fun.

    No matter in which gxy, or city you live, there is always a dark side, it''s a needed evil to some extent, since mages and knights live such a long life, they are prompt to go crazy and suffer deviation if they don''t have anything to entertain them through their lives, of course not everyone enjoys debauchery, some strive to improve their abilities, spells, others aim to research, there are people who enjoy the thrill of the battle or the sessfulness of creating something new.

    Daimon knows it and he doesn''t care, as long as someone he cherishes isn''t involved, or if he doesn''t have anything to win or simply doesn''t feel like it, he won''t go hunting some lowlifes for the sake of "justice", selfish maybe but realist, to anyone that would ask him, he would respond with "why should he risk his or the girls lives for people he doesn''t care about".

    Sure if the situation allows it is aligned with his goals, then he doesn''t mind lending a hand here and there, just like how he brought back the nobles that were taken as hostages, since he was going to fight the pirates and Skelefiends anyway.

    Daimon turned to see the princesses before saying.

    "Where we will be going, there will be some ugly things to see, and we don''t have time to get involved into that, furthermore if we dismantle those ces our target which is ck Wave and its members will notice it and they will disappear, if you want toe then be prepared for it".

    The Risha sisters didn''t flinch, they have already decided to follow Daimon no matter where he goes, so they won''t step back now, Aisha was never a concern, she is used to ughter and to see the real faces of hypocrites, so this was just another everyday situation for her.

    The princesses had somewhat troubled expressions, but ultimately, they exchanged gazes and nodded.

    "We''ll go too, we are going to fight alongside with you soon, then we need to incorporate into the team", said Jasmine.

    "Sis, wanted me to tag along as the one in charge of external rtionships, besides you are still my bodyguard", added Mellie.

    "Mm", Daphne only nodded, but her eyes expressed her intentions, she won''t stay behind.

    Daimon then looked at their clothes and bitterly smiled, as princesses they naturally outstood from the rest, the sisters and Aisha did too, but they were using disguises thanks to the bracelets, so they were covered in that aspect.

    "You need to change to something more discreet then", he said, while the girls went to the bathroom to change, Daimon handed the notebook to Thea, Brandon was given a map of the kingdom and he marked the ces they had to visit.

    "That''s all for now, mix in the guards and if you notice something suspicious send me a message", said Daimon as he handed Brandon a disposable mirror te, the queen prepared a few just in case, as always, she probably predicted something like this might happen.

    The girls returned wearing ck or dark gray clothes as well as robes and half-face masks.

    ''Well, I guess that''s less showy to where we will be going'', thought Daimon.

    "Let''s go".

    With Daimon''s greenlight, the ck Empress teared a hole in the space with her spear and then created a bubble with her mana, to avoid being noticed they will be appearing on the sky above the respective locations, luckily her attribute was darkness and it was night so she could easily hide them, also Mellie had the authority to ignore detection arrays of all the cities which weren''t upied by major families since she had an extension of Ae''s authority.

 Chapter 361 Fools Always Flock Together (Part 1)

    The ces in the wild that were registered in Brandon''s family records were quite disperse, and to be honest Daimon didn''t expect to find anything there, because the hungry magic beasts would have probably gotten rid of any "evidences".

    That part of the information was reserved for Ae, since she had her own intel, then she should be able to easily confirm if there is some sort of connection between the ced underlined by Brandon, disappearances, kidnappings or other rumors simr to that.

    So, Daimon instead decided to focus on the bars, taverns, inns and other ces of the underworld of the kingdom, where the female assassin had met the tattooed guy previously.

    ''Considering he gave that woman a chance to join after she offered herself, then the most obvious ce to look for him is¡­ a brothel'', thought Daimon as they travelled through the dimensional tunnel.

    "Hoh?", the ck Empress saw that unlike the others, Daimon didn''t be lethargic due to the big difference in flow of the time, that as present in the dimensional tunnel created by a high ranked powerhouse.

    It would have been different if they were travelling through an artificial method, such as the transport arrays that were deployed in the kingdom, as the arrays were optimized to reduce that effect on lower ranked people.

    But that wasn''t the case, Thea had the ability to move through space like the Half Emperors of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart.

    "I have been wondering this, what is your current realm Daimon, this Empress can''t see through you, but if I were to guess, I would say it''s the early stage of the middle Mortal realm?", asked Thea with a curious voice.

    Daimon doubted for a moment, he has been simting his knight rank to be at the early Lord realm, since that is more or less the result of hisbination between being a five star knight and almost a two star mage, the sum of both paths is obviously not as simple as one plus one, that being said Daimon''s battle prowess allows him to fight easily against middle stage Lord ranks, that''s why Thea and the others can''t properly pinpoint what his realm is.

    "It''s a bit hard to exin, as miss Thea have probably already noticed I''m not a human, my lineage is part of my strength, so I appear to be like that, but I haven''t reached the Lord rank yet".

    Daimon quickly exined the ck Empress how they ssified power levels at his gxy, toplement his answer, which made Thea suddenly turned around and grabbed Daimon by his shoulders before saying.

    "How old are you!", her voice changed from gentle to slightly enthusiastic, making Daimon chuckle.

    "I''m 13, though I consider myself older since my growth both physical and mental is linked to my lineage more than to my biological age".

    Thea''s eyes glowed in surprise before a proudful smiling expression flourished on her pretty face.

    "You are younger than the crowned prince that idiot excuse of a king takes so much pride on, and yet you are already at his level, one of the generals of this Empress~", she mumbled.

    It wasn''t a secret that the magic beasts from the Maelstrom Sea didn''t like the White royal family, but for Thea it was more of apetition, so for her knowing that her newly appointed general showed a greater potential than the genius of the White family, she was ecstatic

    Daimon chuckled, the Empress''s gaze was a bit intense, especially because those snake eyes of hers, gave her that wild aura akin to a magic beast, it didn''t affect nor make him ufortable, but any other person below the Arch rank would have been trembling in fear at this point.

    Thea noticed her bad habit was showing and she let go of Daimon, as she closed her eyes and returned to her elegant self.

    "Ahem, sorry about that¡­ I can''t wait to see your match in the next event, this Empress will be cheering for your victory", she said.

    Daimon nodded, they were reaching the end of the dimensional tunnel, the previous might have taken some time to describe but it happened in just a couple of minutes, since the chance of the assassin from ck Wave, being in a city as far as possible from the center of the kingdom was higher, they literally went to the border of the continent, the n was to advance from that point all the way to the center after checking the ces Brandon mentioned.

    A couple of secondster they left the dimensional tunnel, and the girls returned to normal.

    The Risha sisters stared at each other and noticed the positive surprise in their eyes.

    "I feel way less dizzy when travelling through space now", mumbled Leslie.

    "Mm, our wings", added Yvonne.

    Liliana didn''t say anything but she gazed directly at Daimon, they were the weakest in the group, and hen travelling with the help of a Half Emperor on in this case an Emperor, they expected to get a little headache, but unlike before, even when they became lethargic, they didn''t get negatively affected, though they noticed some of the mana Daimon gave them had diminished a bit and it was now circting through their mana circuits.

    Aisha giggled as she peeked on Daimon''s shoulder.

    "You three surely put Daimon''s mana to use for a variety of things~", she said with a yful voice, making the sisters blush a bit.

    Daimon shook his head and then looked at his surroundings, they appeared a few hundreds of kilometers above a small town at the border of continent, the fact that it was small didn''t mean it was uncivilized nor stuck in a previous era, the word "town" was rtive.

    Only the ces which had the support of at least a middle level noble family were considered "cities", for declining or low ranked noble families, the territories they supervised were considered towns, ports or outposts no matter their location.

    In a rough calction there should be around two million habitants in the town they were seeing right now.

    "Let''s go the east side of the town, ording to Brandon that''s the entertainment area, the establishment we are looking for is a bar called "tkr", it''s one of the ces in which that woman has met with the tattooed guy more than once, since it also has a special zone exclusive for VIPS".

    Thea listened to Daimon and she spread her mana sense, she didn''t want to alert anyone with her strong presence, so she limited to spy on the conversations of the people that were walking through the east side of the town.

    Daimon''s interest was once again picked by the fact that the habitants of Neptune seemed to ck" things back at his gxy were the rule, Thea had the capacity to travel through space without any problem, but just like how Ae seemed to have to put effort at the moment of disying her domain, which shouldn''t be the case as she is a Half Emperor, Thea''s wasn''t as skilled in mana sense as her high realm would suggest.

    It was because of that, that she had to focus on lower ranks as she might slip and alert others, some people excelled in mana sense after all.

    ''I wonder if she has a domain'', thought Daimon, but he was woken up from his daze when the Empress moved the sphere of mana in which they currently were, all the way tin direction to northeast, until they reached a normal lookingrge building, from outside it seemed to be some kind of warehouse, it was open to the public so there were peopleing in and out of it.

    "Here it is, ording to the people walking around, below this building there is an underground ce called "tkr", things down there are quite wild if you ask me though", said Thea.

    Among the conversations there were some¡­ "vivid" descriptions of the activities taking ce at the bar, and though she didn''t rally cared, Thea had to admit it wasn''t up to her liking.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon nodded and they descended from the sky into an alley near the warehouse, Daimon noticed there were some people strategically positioned in the nearby buildings observing at the warehouse, probably a safety measure, but it was meaningless in front of the ability of the hollow suit, in fact they couldn''t even see through Thea''s mana sphere as she was using a spell simr to Erin''s dark curtain.

    "Okay, I''ll be going down there with Aisha, the rest wait here and prepare in case we need to leave in a hurry, if you see someone that adjusts to the description, knock him down please", said Daimon to the Empress, the Risha sisters and the princesses.

    Aisha smiled and she grabbed Daimon''s right arm, which of course made the sisters pout, until they heard Daimon saying.

    "We have arge list of ces to visit, the next time one of you will go with me, it''s just to not raise suspicions since nobles won''te alone to this ce".

    "Mm~", the sisters nodded and then Daimon and Aisha left the sphere of mana created by Thea, but used the hollow suits to mix into the crowd, before they deactivated them using some disposable appearances of random people they have seen back at their gxy.

    Nothing too eye catching and they kept the masks that covered their upper faces, since that was normal, Daimon caught some whispers her and there and once he was sure of the method to enter, he and Aisha entered the warehouse.

    From an external point of view, this ce was a normal supply store, there were weapons, potions, ingredients and other misceneous stuff, nothing on the Arch rank, probably to not incentive high ranked peopleing here, unless they specifically wanted to go to the underground space.

    Daimon and Aisha just looked around for a couple of minutes, before they went to an isted part of the warehouse were the cheapest materials were disyed, and approached the one in charge, it was a tall slim guy with eyebags and a face that would be easily forgotten or confused in a crowd.

    Daimon then took out three low purity sea crystals and threw it at the guy before saying.

    "We came for the special products, any rmendation?".

    The guy smiled, as he looked at the third crystal, the admission fee was one, so the third was a "tip", the nobles that frequented this ce liked to burn money like nothing, but he rarely got such benefits, so he knew he was in front of a rich kid who looked for some thrill.

    "If this young master has the means, I rmend paying for the VIP zone, I assure you, both of you will like it, enjoy your visit", he said as he pointed at a rack which was behind the counter.

    Daimon nodded and with Aisha clinging to his arm, they both walked towards the rack, which surprisingly wasn''t a secret door but a reference mark, the floor separated to reveal an entrance which led to a very elegant and illuminated set of stairs that descended underground.

    Daimon and Aisha went down the stairs and the entrance closed behind them, even from afar Daimon''s ears could clearly hear the music,ughs and giggles as well as¡­ sweet cries of women and he shook his head.

    "I always thought Erin would be the one to one day take you to a brothel, but it seems I got your first darling~", cutely said Aisha to her son.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    "One day, Arthur Jolbaris is going to get a wind of that time she took me to spy into his daughters and wives bathing and he is going to lose it".

    Aisha softlyughed, Erin''s "rewards" were quite¡­ unique, indeed.

    Once they reached the end of the stairs, what weed Daimon was an open space, which reminded him to a discotheque, there were various bars across the area, there were also catwalks on which women wearing extremely revealing lingerie, or simply naked walked, some were dragged away by one of the many people enjoying the show.

    There were also private tables with their own small catwalk, but most where unupied, besides that there was area to dance, where everyone was rubbing against everyone.

    Though wild, it wasn''t too chocking for Daimon who came from earth, if not for the women that didn''t seem too convinced to be dragged away by some of the customers, he would have thought it was just a strip club or some other shady establishment.

    "Wee, dear customers, how can I help you", a topless girl approached Daimon and Aisha and weed them, she wasn''t one of the girls avable for the customers, but a waitress, apparently that was their uniform, pretty much akin to the lewd atmosphere of this ce.

    Daimon didn''t way the girl''s naked body any attention, he pointed at one of the private tables before saying.

    "I want one of those and the best girls you have avable, to sweeten mine and my partner''s eyes".

    The eyes of the waitress sparkled, thinking she was lucky to catch a big fish tonight.

    "Understood, it will be ten thousand sea crystals, please", said the girl.

    Daimon handed the crystals and the waitress led them to their table, this ce was definitely designed for nobles, ten thousand sea crystals were something amoner wouldn''t spend like this, in fact even Daimon thought it was a waste, luckily these crystals were kindly "donated" by the Trident Marshal, so wasting them didn''t affect him at all.

    Also it''s not like he just bought a table formodity, when youe to these ces, the different people group with those who are like them, in this case Daimon was aiming to the groups that had their own tables.

    And his n worked like a charm, even before the waitress returned, some of the guys from other tables approached them.

    "Yo, this little brother why don''t you join us for a few rounds, drinking in group is better than doing it alone, don''t you agree?", said one of the guys who had his arms wrapped around two girls.

    Daimon quickly inspected the little fish who took the bait, the girls that were in his arms weren''t employees, but nobles, first and formal they weren''t naked, also they had masks too, and all the women dancing on the catwalks as well as the staff didn''t wear masks.

    ''Fools are quite easy to find no matter where you go'', thought Daimon as he rose a cup he took from the mini bar assigned to his table.

    "Sure, I''ll just tell that waitress to join our tables".

    The guy who was clearly intoxicatedughed and shed his cup against Daimon''s.

    "Well said brother hahaha".

 Chapter 362 Fools Always Flock Together (Part 2)

    As per Daimon''s request, the waitress and other members of the staff moved the table Daimon paid for as well as the personal catwalk, so that it would be put next to the one of the guy that approached them.

    Daimon then took a seat on a couch which was in front of the catwalks, while Aisha naturally sat on hisp, making the other guyugh as if he has found someone akin to his interests.

    After that, the waitress soon returned with a couple of girls wearing provocative clothes, who started posing and dancing for the delight of the group.

    The guy who approached Daimon, who turned out to be called Enzo kept drinking as if there was no tomorrow, and groping the two girls that were apanying him, but to Daimon''s surprise he didn''ty a hand on the girls putting on a show, even when they started tempting them.

    "So, brother Alexander, what lucky wind brings you to ktr, not many people know about this entrance, and the ones who have the means to pay for private tables are even less in this isted dirt-poor town", said Enzo with a disdaining voice.

    Aisha inwardly giggled, of course Daimon wasn''t going to throw dirt at his identity as Gabriel, so he presented himself as Alexander, which should be somewhere in Neptune too, originally he wanted to tarnish Adam''s reputation, just to mess up with the light idiot, for the troubles he caused regarding the trust issues Jasmine''s grandmother had with him, but who knows if ck Wave has something to do with Adam or Marcus.

    In his mission it said there was a "legacy" he needed to steal from Adam, so there is a high chance that they had some supporters here hiding in the shadows, and this was just a side mission to get an emblem from the Minister of Development after all.

    Daimon shrugged while he drank from his cup, before saying.

    "I was just passing by on my way back to the capital, when I felt like having some fun, given all the things that have happenedtely, those bastard pirates are giving my family a headache".

    Enzo nodded, it was ofmon understanding that all the ones in the group were nobles, so while obviously they didn''t mention to which family they were members of, they could brag about their noble status, in fact it would be weird if they didn''t, since "outstanding" nobles won''te here, this was a ce for the ck sheep of the families to drown in debauchery.

    Most of the times, because no one knows what other people do in their free time, Daimon kept chatting about random stuff with Enzo, mostly he only got to hear him or the other noblesining about the recent events, specially about the fact that the crowned prince, the one almost all the young generation of the kingdom admires, lost to a random guy who appeared out of nowhere.

    "I bet that guy has been trained by that terrifying woman in secret, there is now way a random would fight at the level of the crowned prince humph", said one of the girls who was hugging Enzo.

    "Yeah, the queen has gotten really rebellious towards the kingtely, I wonder how is that affecting the royal family", added the other girl.

    "Ah, don''t mention that woman in front of me,st time she fined my old man for some little tax evasion, and we ended up paying twice since the bribe was already done, any middle or high ranked level family that receives a visit¡­ no even agaze from here has really bad luck".

    Daimon interestingly listened to the opinions the nobles had about Ae, it''s not that he likes the gossips, but the fact that the queen isn''t liked by the upper echelon of the noble houses is important.

    Because the guy who is behind the pirates and Skelefiends joining hands, is one scheming bastard, he looks for the weaknesses of others and exploits them, and a non-unified kingdom is easier to destroy, not to mention the panic and chaos that being attacked in broad daylight has caused on the citizens of the kingdom.

    ''Well, that exins why they all left to do preparations, in case that king guy isn''t up to the task, they will have to keep it together by themselves'', thought Daimon.

    Enzo looked at the bottle he and hispanions were drinking from which was now empty and he called as he was about to order some snacks and more drinks, the waitress of before approached them with an ashamed expression on her face, she bowed her head towards Daimon before saying.

    "Excuse me dear customer¡­ one of the girls that is dancing for you was requested by another client, would it be okay if I take her, of course you''ll receive a discount for the troubles".

    Daimon inwardly smirked, this was the chance he was aiming for from the very beginning, he purposedly showed to be wealthy, and got a private table, the best treatment one could get besides the VIP zone, so if someone wanted to have his entertainment, then it had to be someone who was considered a better client than him by the club.

    ''These guys are so easy to read, I''m a neer with money, so they want to "teach" me they are better'', he thought, before saying.

    "No, I already paid for this service, why the hell should I let some bastard interrupt my fun?, said Daimon with an annoyed voice.

    The poor waitress felt trapped between the sword and the wall, she had to call one of the managers of the ce, a tall man with a scar on his left eye which blinded it.

    "Excuse us dear client, but one of these girls was personally requested by a VIP, in fact she shouldn''t have appeared here so¡­".

    Daimon didn''t leave the guy finish his sentence; he interrupted him with a pompous voice.

    "So the problem is money, you should have said so from the very beginning instead of interrupting my fun, so how much is it?".

    The scarred guy frowned, spoiled kids like the one he was dealing with appeared from time to time, so he has learned how to take care of them, simply telling them the price to be considered a VIP would scare them away and make them realize their real standing.

    "One million sea crystals per person", he said with a triumphant smile¡­ which didn''tst long as he was handed a ring.

    The manager inspected the contents and he took a breath of cold air, inside there were about ten million sea crystals, it was enough to pay for the whole group in these two tables to join the VIP area for the night.

    ''Damn it, a direct descendant of a Marquess or a distant rtive of a Duke maybe, this is going to be a headache, why are these big fishesing to our entrancetely'', thought the manager.

    Normal members of the young generation wouldn''t have such amounts of money to waster, nobles included, only the upper echelon could afford to do so, so that lead the manager to believe Daimon was one.

    "The amount is more than enough but¡­ I still advice this young master to reconsider, showing face to the one requesting that specificdy", said the manager.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon didn''t pay any attention to the manager he got up, and beckoned at the girl who seemed to be the origin of all this trouble, to follow him as he walked towards a red door which led to the VIP area, not without calling Enzo.

    "Everyone''s entrance has been covered,e".

    Enzoughed and his group followed Daimon, leaving a troubled manager who sent some messages through his mirror te.

    ¡­

    The red door led to arge corridor that ended after a five minute walk, making Daimon wonder howrge was this underground space, he also could perceive some spacews which made him realize this ce was more than what met the eye.

    ''It seems our luck is good darling~'', said Aisha directly to Daimon''s mind.

    ''Yeah, the small fish gave some information and the it also baited a bigger fish, let''s see if we can catch the shark as well'', answered Daimon.

    Unlike the previous lewd scenery, the VIP area was way calmer, but it was only like that on the surface, Daimon and the others arrived at what could be described as aplex with many doors and a huge living room.

    The first thing that caught Daimon''s attention was that there were transport arrays, a lot of them which led to different ces, the second thing he noticed was the though faint, noticeable for him smell of blooding from some of the doors of theplex, that exined why Brandon told him the ces frequented by that woman might be too much for the princesses to handle, it was a den of degenerates.

    Daimon looked at the girl who was the origin of the animosity and he brought her and Aisha to one of the empty rooms, Enzo and the others took their own ways, since this was a ce to make one''s hidden desires true in secret, so the privacy was better.

    Why was Daimon so keen in keeping this girl with him and shing with whoever was requesting her you ask, it''s not because she is pretty which is indeed case, but because of the sea magic beast traits she had.

    Though Rita crushed the female assassin to death when she was using a disguise, Daimon still saw her true appearance with his infinity eyes, it was a member of the angel fish n, a family whose female members are considered outstanding in beauty terms, among the people of the four seas.

    Unfortunately, that didn''t bring them prosperity, their family lost their noble status and many were of course turned into ves for entertainment, forcing the surviving members to escape to the Maelstrom Sea.

    How does Daimon know this, because the ck Empress casually mentioned that the captain of the Silver Down pirates with whom she had an agreement, is also a member of that race.

    And just like that female assassin and the woman Thea knows about, this girl is part of that race, a mixed though but still it outstood from the others that worked entertaining the clients, if anything she was confused by the waitress due to her mixed race, but Daimon recognized here since he entered the club.

    In other words from the very beginning, he selected a bait with the same characteristics as the female assassin.

    ''An arch rank can basically have almost any woman he likes, yet that guy got infatuated with a random assassin aspirant, if ck Wave is such a big organization their assassins shouldn''t be thatx, so either he is an idiot or he''s got some serious fetish over the female members of the angel fish n, and if that''s the case then¡­''.

    As Daimon expected, his thoughts were interrupted by someone knocking at the door, the girl was dancing for him and Aisha, but he honestly wasn''t even looking, and instead he was thinking if maybe the assassin was as stupid as toe all the way here just to get the girl he wanted.

    Daimon opened the door and he was greeted with the sight of some shady guys wearing ck robes.

    "Good evening, little friend, our master has asked us to invite you to the VIP area of the Forest Fang town, as your tastes seem to be of the highest level, which is something our master values, of course everything will be paid by our master", said one of the guys as he looked at the girl from the angel fish n.

    Daimon grinned and he "innocently" epted going into the wolf''s den, the town mentioned by the guy was one of his priority spots to visit, because not only it was on the border of the continent, but it had a couple of the areas perfect to get rid of evidences mentioned by Brandon, he left it for second or third, because they haven''t been used.

    "Sure, sounds fun", said Daimon, he left the room not without sending Thea a message, to tell her to go to the Forest Fang town and prepare in case something happened.

    Daimon and the others arrived at the many transport arrays installed on the ground, and he couldn''t help but wonder, how many nobles made business with this ce, the number should be high enough for them to make their private circuit, though all of them led to towns which weren''t really cared about by the kingdom.

    ''This is also a perfect way for assassins to move, no one here asks for identity and with money you can move around easily, Ae is going to love getting this information'', thought Daimon as he jumped into the array alongside Aisha, the girl he was using as bait and the group of shady guys.

    They soon appeared at the other side of the array, the design was simr to the VIP area where they were before, but Daimon could notice here the atmosphere was worse, there were even screamsing from some of the private rooms, which had soundproof arrays installed, so the fact that they could heard them, meant it was done on purpose.

    A voiceing from upstairs drew Daimon''s attention.

    "I heard from the staff that a young friend with refined tastes, such as me appeared, wee to the ktr of Forest Fang town, I''m the manager Pablo".

    Daimon raised his head to see the origin of the voice and he has the urge tough out loud, the guy who was talking was wearing a mask and a robe, but with his infinity eyes he could see the three horizontal ck wave tattoo he had.

    Not only that, but the prize this time might be bigger than what Daimon expected, because he recognized a couple of guys that were "casually" standing near the guy, feigning to be clients, though disguised they were among the pirates that assisted ck Beard.

    Which reminded him, that ck Beard participated in the ambush against the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates along with Sting.

    ''I guess fools always flock together'', he thought.

 Chapter 363 One Step Closer To The Truth

    While Daimon was inspecting Pablo and the pirates who were disguised as clients, the poor girl from the angel fish n was shivering, she could hear the horrible screamsing from the many private rooms and her legs nearly gave in.

    She noticed that the other girl in the group who was holding onto the arm of the guy that bought her wasn''t worried at all, and she sneakily got closer to Daimon before she grabbed the corner of his robe.

    An action that didn''t escape Daimon nor Pablo''s eyes, while Daimon didn''t pay too much attention to it, Pablo was inwardly gritting his teeth, the precious rare ve he used nearly all his connections to find, was mistakenly shipped to the wrong branch of ktr and some high ranked rich master from the Clear Water Kingdom seemed to have recognized it.

    The defeat and disappearance of the angel fish n happened way too long ago, even before the current king became the leader of the kingdom, and of course such a humiliating thing was buried under the carpet and erased from history books, so at this point only those who were above the Arch rank back then still remember about it.

    In other words, for Daimon to have recognized that girl as a member of the angel fish n, Pablo supposed he has to be the direct descendant of at least a peak stage Half Ster rank or maybe even a recently ascended Ster rank.

    ''Fucking useless bastards, now I have to deal with some spoiled brat to get my prize¡­ well if the kid doesn''t know what''s good for him, there is no bodyguard here, so don''t me for what happens, a nice reality check is good for the idiot nobles of this ce hahaha'', thought Pablo to himself.

    Though Daimon couldn''t read Pablo''s mind, how could he not decipher what the intentions of an Arch ranked are, he whose battle prowess reached the Arch rank realm while using Core Synchrony can perfectly understand them, or it would more urate to say that his instincts had reached that level.

    ''Angered and confused horn dogs are easier to see through, so let''s add some fuel to the fire'', thought Daimon with a grin, he then hugged Aisha by her waist and the girl from the angel fish n by her upper back and shoulder, it was only an act of course, and the result was as he expected.

    He could see Pablo''s grip on the railing of the stairs tightening and his hand slightly twisting the metal, but he still managed to not explode and just smiled as he invited Daimon to a room right in the center of theplex, one whose door is about trice the size of the others.

    "This room is reserved for the manager of a VIP area and his friends, so why don''t we have a drink and enjoy this fated meeting of fellows who share the same tastes", he said with an eloquent voice.

    Daimon nodded as he stole a gaze at both Aisha and the girl from the angel fish n, and then he went upstairs followed by them, right into the room which Pablo mentioned, inside he had to admit that the guys that ran this ce put quite a lot of money into these VIP rooms.

    If he wasn''t in a mission, he wouldn''t mind spending some quality time with his girls in a simr room, as he was sure it would be a pleasant experience considering all the modities" that were installed here.

    Daimon returned to reality because he could feel both Aisha and Evangeline''s gazes on him, while Narasha was as confused as always regarding human emotions.

    He sat down on one couch and Aisha as well as the other girl sat down next to him, while Pablo upied the other couch in front of them, there a pole in the middle which was obviously there for the delight of the clients.

    "Little friend, aren''t you going to ask that missy to entertain us while we have a drink?", asked Pablo, as he licked his lips while looking at the girl from the angel fish n, who instead clinged harder to Daimon''s body, making him frown as he noticed something interesting, but he decided to leave it forter and instead answered.

    "Well, she doesn''t seem to be in the mood for that, and so that wouldn''t sweeten my eyes, why don''t you bring some of the best girls of your establishment brother Pablo, it would help to make a more friendly atmosphere don''t you think so?", said Daimon with a cunning smirk on his face.

    Pablo felt the urge to twist Daimon''s neck, but he looked at the clearly afraid girl which he wanted to get no matter what and ultimatelyplied.

    "Sure, everything to make this memorable moment more special", said Pablo as he pped.

    The door of the room opened and two girls on theirte twenties wearing provocative clothes entered, they immediately started dancing and putting on a show for them, that wasn''t all, they even brought some snacks and bottles into the room and proposed to serve everyone.

    Or that was the idea, but there was someone faster than them, Aisha grabbed some grapes and cutely fed them to Daimon, for her this was nothing more than a date, the girl from the angel fish n tried to copy Aisha just to be red by her, which ultimately led to her remaining quiet while holding onto Daimon''s arm in silence.

    Pablo was at the verge of copse right now, even when the two women were putting their all to please him, he simply wasn''t in the mood, not when the prize he has been aiming for was a few meters away from him.

    "Ahem, little friend I wonder why are you so keen in monopolizing that missy, though she is pretty, I don''t think is worth all the hassle, you even paid 10 million sea crystals just to keep her for one night and yet you are ignoring her", said Pablo, it is clear that the spoiled brat in front of him is giving all his attention to the girl that came with him, though it made sense as the nobles who frequent ktr are the ck sheep of their families, so it''s normal for couples who shared some¡­ entric tastes toe and enjoy together.

    Daimon who was drinking the wine Aisha was lovingly giving him, gulped down the whole cup before saying.

    "It''s all about enjoying the moment, after what happened today who knows what will happen to the kingdom tomorrow, so when I saw that girl, I just felt like getting her, aren''t we nobles supposed to enjoy our privileges anyway?".

    Pablo nearly vomited blood.

    ''What kind of trash noble raised this brat!'', he screamed in his heart, but he kept his fake smiling expression as he tapped his finger on the table in front of him.

    "That is indeed true, but what if I insist on getting that girl, there must be some kind of agreement we can reach, since she isn''t as interesting as your partner for you right?".

    Daimon put on a dubitative expression, which made the girl from the angel fish n shiver, if she was sold to that pervert then her life would be over, unfortunately for her before she could say anything, Daimon nodded at Pablo.

    "Well, it''s not like it''s impossible, for the correct price everything can be discussed", he said.

    Pablo smirked, the number of members of the young generation that could basically throw away 10 million sea crystals in one day just for debauchery was limited, to the princes and probably the descendants of dukes and he was sure the spoiled brat in front of him isn''t one of them, so he supposed Daimon was just bragging and now wanted to get his money back and make some profit so that his family doesn''t disown him for being stupid.

    "Of course, I won''t treat brother Alexander bad, how about I return you your whole payment and give you ess to this special room for a day?".

    But to Pablo''s surprise, Daimon shook his head before he raised two of his fingers, which made him think.

    ''Oh, could it be wants to double his investment, perhaps this brat isn''t that much of an idiot, if he gets this much sea crystals by himself, then he can get a huge merit from his family, it would be worth helping him so that he can be a puppet for us'', thought Pablo, but his mind then froze when he heard Daimon''s next words.

    "Brother Pablo must be joking, if one uses a life worth of luck then there is a possibility of a girl from the angel fish n appearing on the back market and the price wouldn''t go below two hundred millions of sea crystals, and we are talking about an early stage Lord ranked like this girl".

    Pablo nearly broke the armrests of the couch, but he then took a deep breath thinking that if he turns the brat in front of him in a puppet, the price will be worth it, so he was about to ept the deal, when he saw Daimon''s mouth opening one more time to put thest nail into the coffin of his sanity.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "That is of course the price for the normal members of the angel fish n, but this girl is not only a member of their royal family, but she is also pure am I right, I heard my grandpa once saying that getting the first night of a girl from those conditions is not only a heavenly blessing, but it actually brings luck and prosperity¡­ it is even said that one of the previous kings was gifted with such delight".

    Daimon smirked and then showed his two fingers at Pablo before saying.

    "If you want me to give up in such a good opportunity naturally thepensation should be of the same nature, let''s say how about twenty thousand millions of high quality sea crystals, that would be enough".

    Forget about Pablo who was frozen cold, the two women he brought fell from the pole, the price Daimon mentioned was outrageous, let alone the purity of a member of the angel fish race, whose royal family had extinguished when they were stripped of their noble status, meaning he was lying, for a third of that price one could buy an early stage Half Ster ranked ve, the highest grade of ve avable, it would be a magic beast with its mind broken and the capacity of an Arch rank, as there weren''t humanoid ves of that level, but still a Half Ster ranked, though only to show.

    Not to mention it''s hard to know if there are even enough high ranked sea crystals in the whole Mermen Sea including the unexplored areas, to meet such a quantity, the vast majority of the riches exist in low and middle ranked quality sea crystals, why do you ask, because high ranked sea crystals are used by middle stage Ster ranks and above to cultivate, they are way too valuable and scarce.

    The girl from the angel fish n was perplexed while Aisha giggled and rested her face on Daimon''s chest.

    ''Every time I see that smile on darling''s face, someone is about to suffer~'', she thought.

    It took a whole minute for Pablo to react, in which Daimon just gulped another ss of wine waiting for his answer, which was as he expected negation.

    "B-Brother Alexander must be joking, even if we were talking about low quality sea crystals, that amount will be too much for a girl from the angel fish n¡­".

    Daimon interrupted him saying.

    "It''s not just the angel fish n, but their royal lineage", Pablo felt a vein popping on his neck but he still tried to reason.

    "Brother must know that they have extinguished".

    But Daimon shrugged in response.

    "That''s why I''m putting such a price, there is one in my arms right now, I''m even giving you a friend''s discount, if you were the king I would be asking trice that price, I have aother proposition for you though".

    Pablo finally couldn''t hold back, the pressure of a peak Arch rank fell on the room, making the things tremble a bit as he stood up from his seat with an angered expression.

    "What if you had no arms to hold onto her "brother", I bet your price would diminish too, let''s count in the life of that partner of yours I bet your discount will be even bigger then, not to mention my status is higher than that of the White family''s king!", he shouted, the two women that were previously entertaining them pounced at Daimon and Aisha with needles they took out of their hair.

    But they suddenly froze midair, their bodies were dragged into a ck hole that appeared on the ground in front of Daimon, no it would be more urate to say it was his shadow which had extended to cover his side of the room.

    Screams and the sound of bones being crushed could be heard from the ck hole, before a woman''s head peeked out of it, with a death cold expression on her face.

    "Bitches don''t get in my young master''s way", who could it be besides Rita, who somehow seemed scarier than normal.

    ''Maybe she has been influenced by Horals''s enthusiasm'', though Daimon as he felt the rich murderous auraing from Rita.

    Pablo felt his body going numb, he didn''t have mana sense so he couldn''t pinpoint Rita''s realm, but the fact that he as a peak Arch rank couldn''t move, made him think she was a Half Ster rank.

    "Uncle, someone is trying to kill me, help!", he shouted, but to his despair no one came to aid him, not only that but he wasted hisst seconds of freedom, since Rita had yet to recover it took her a few more seconds for her to fully restrain someone in the same real as her.

    "Shadow Heart Puppeteer, Shadow Bind", with those words, Pablo''s body stiffened he couldn''t even blink now, in fact even thinking was hard, and so the treasures he had on him didn''t activate to save him too.

    But that wasn''t the worse, but the fact that Daimon was looking at him with a grin, while he rxed on the couch with two beauties in his arms.

    "You didn''t let me finish, I was going to tell you my other offer, you can have a painless death if you give me that same payment in properties and information, let''s see, the location of ck Wave''s branch and everything you know about them should be enough for you to leave this world peacefully "brother" Pablo".

    Pablo''s face paled, his body trembled and he wondered if his eyes were deceiving him, because he saw an infinite ck shadow with sharp purple eyes standing behind who he thought was a spoiled brat.

    ''He is a demon!'', he shouted in his heart.

    And to give him thest blow, the door of the room opened and a tall woman with an elegant aura, a ck dress and a mask entered with a head mounted on her spear.

    "A mere Half Ster telling such vulgarities to this Empress, that''s why I hate these pirates, humph", said Thea as she softly snorted.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, what was the point of wearing a mask if the ck Empress was going to talk in that unique way which identified her, he thought, anyway he looked at Pablo and realized that this catch was actually more important than what he expected, luckily there was a Half Ster personally killed by Thea to take the me, because he had other ns for Pablo now, if his suppositions were current then¡­ he would be one step closer to unveil the truth of Neptune.

    But for now, they had to leave this unpleasant ce, he couldn''t leave the other branches of ktr to discover what happened here though, so he still had one thing to do before leaving, one to which the soundproof room was a blessing.

    A green portal opened on the air, from which the ck armored bone general came out, with an excited expression and a notebook in his hands, it was time to torture some poor bastard for the sake of his young master''s conquer after all.

    "Miss Thea, if you do the honor to break whatever restriction this guy has, so Horals can learn everything since the moment he had use of reason, please".

    "Mm", the ck Empress nodded and then one of her pupils behind her mask changed from its natural honey yellow tone to a red one, and Pablo vomited blood, he would have screamed and probably rolled on the ground but he was still being restricted by Rita''s spell, so he could only slightly tremble in agony.

 Chapter 364 A Lucky Reunion

    A lucky reunion

    A couple of seconds after being hit by Thea''s contract breaking ability, Pablo finally calmed down, he was bleeding from his mouth, nose, eyes and ears, some of his skin also teared revealing the flesh below, all in all he looked half dead though he didn''t lose as much vitality as his appearance would suggest.

    And that of course didn''t escape the sharp eyes of the ck Empress, she suddenly grabbed Pablo by his neck and lifted him, while she tightened her grip on it.

    "Even with my ability after being freed from the contract, a miserable mortal ranked assassin from ck Wave like you, should be one step away from his grave, so howe you look quite lively, what''s your surname?", demanded Thea, her snake-like eyes were opened and a fierce aura was surrounding her.

    Pablo was having trouble to breath right now due him being choked by Thea, but that wasn''t the worse, he had started foaming from his mouth due to the murderous aura she was exuding right now.

    "B-Bolge¡­", he managed to force himself to say before his eyes rolled back as he fainted, Daimon cleared his throat to wake Thea from her daze, so that she wouldn''t identally kill their informant.

    "Ahem, miss Thea, leave the interrogation to Horals please, I assure you the results will be up to your liking".

    Thea nodded and then threw Pablo on the ground, while she stole a gaze at the girl from the angel fish n before saying.

    "Sorry, this guy is rted to the leader of the branch of ck Wave on the Maelstrom Sea, a bastard who just like this idiot and ck Beard seems to have a fetish for the members of the angel fish n, like my friend who is now missing, seeing that little girl made me remind about it¡­ I wasn''t there when she needed my help".

    Daimon saw Thea clenching her fists with a genuinely angered expression, not only with all the guys that joined hands to ambush the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates, but to herself who wasn''t avable to lend a hand when it happened.

    Only now she realized she was tricked, because Ulkrear and the other general that betrayed her, asked for help during a mission because they encountered a middle stage Ster rank rival magic beast, so she departed to help them and the pirates made their move at that moment, in other wors she was baited.

    Daimon looked at the girl from the angel fish n and then poked her forehead with his finger, while he kicked Pablo who was still unconscious on the floor, he then nodded at Horals and allowed him to take him to a more private ce to start the interrogatory.

    While Horals was bringing Pablo to have a good "conversation" to the bathroom, a habit the bone general developed because Daimon didn''t like to see a bloody mess on the floor and it was easier to clean in the bathroom,

    The sisters saw Daimon getting touchy with that girl and they pouted, while Aisha had a smile which wasn''t a smile, which made Daimon bitterly smile, but he momentarily ignored the intense gazes of the girls because there was something interesting happening in front of him.

    The mixed characteristics of the girl from the angel fish n diminished, not only that, her realm jumped all the way to the peak of the Lord rank, and she even grew taller and aged a bit, from looking around 16 years old to 19 years old.

    Daimon then looked at the notifications from the system that appeared when he grabbed this girl from her upper back and smirked.

    [Ding]

    [A continuous curse has been casted upon all the males on the vicinity]

    [An Apex Predator cannot be preyed upon by anything, the luck of the host can''t be stolen¡­ the curse "Royalty Charm" has failed to affect the host, do you wish to retaliate Y/N]

    Daimon pressed no, because he still needed this girl for his n to seed, not to mention she didn''t cast the curse, it was more of a self-preservation instinct, not only that, his interest was picked because his infinity eyes allowed him to see the curse entering Pablo, while he didn''t notice anything.

    The girl from the angel fish n was just an early-stage Lord rank, sure he had abilities that couldn''t be noticed by Arch ranks like Pablo, but curses required a direct sh between the resources and preparations made by caster and the mind strength, luck and other factors of the one being targeted.

    This curse was activated at the spur of the moment, so unless this girl could be at two ces at the same time and the second "her" killed at least a Half Ster ranked by herself, there is no way she could have cursed Pablo without him noticing like that.

    Luckily for Daimon, if some conditions were met, interactions and dynamics were processed by the system, and some options which normally aren''t "real", do appear for him, as they trigger reactions for him a system user, which depending on his decisions might turn into missions or other things

    Which was the case here, as it triggered a mission once he refused to retaliate, but he left the information to readter in the logs, since he was dealing with Pablo, until a moment ago when Thea entered the room marking the end of his troubles with Pablo.

    He then opened the mission tab and was taken aback by the new addition; he had in the pending to ept section.

    [Special Missions]

    [Helping the Lucky Cursed Princess: After being ambushed the angel fish n''sst royal, had to burn out all the luck she umted to survive, since it wasn''t enough her lineage and memories made for the difference, bring her safe and sound to her sole friend <!>]

    Daimon clicked on the "!" icon and then the details of the mission showed.

    [Objectives:

    [Bring the Lucky Cursed Princess to the side of the ck Empress (0/1)]

    [Secure the Princess well-being (0/1)]

    [Give the Princess enough luck for her to recover her basic memories (0/100%) (You must be present when the luck is transferred and there is a 50% chance of you being affected)]

    [Reward: The gratitude of the ck Empress Thea and the Silver Dawn Angel Marlene, Lucky Charm tittle]

    [Penalty in case of failure: A random bad thing will happen to the host (from tripping to being struck by a lightning on a sunny day) depending on the end of the Lucky Cursed Princess]

    [Remaining review time: 30 minutes]

    After seeing such a good deal Daimon of course epted the mission on a blink, it was then he poked the forehead of the girl from the angel fish n, or more urately their princess and the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates as well as Thea''s friend.

    Of course, since he had to be present when she stole luck from others to recover herself, there was a chance of him being affected too¡­ or that would normally be the case, but he can''t be preyed by anything.

    [Ding]<novelnext></novelnext>

    [A continuous curse has been casted upon all the males on the vicinity]

    [An Apex Predator cannot be preyed upon by anything, the luck of the host can''t be stolen, the curse "Royalty Charm" has failed to affect the host, do you wish to retaliate Y/N]

    He clicked "No", and then since the girl wasn''t mistreated since he epted the mission, she was now in presence of Thea and she took Pablo''s luck, the mission ended.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Helping the Lucky Cursed Princess" has beenpleted]

    [A new title has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Lucky Charm: Once a year, the host will receive help from the universe to achieve a desired feat (The host can''t chose when it will be applied)]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, it was such a vague effect, but in any case it was a literal cake that fell from the sky, since he didn''t have to do anything toplete the mission anyway, so there was no reason for him toin.

    In fact, he might need to thank to the girl from the angel fish n, who now had a dizzy expression while she hold onto his arm for safety reasons, stealing others luck was a self-preserving instinct for her, so it activated when she was in a life-threatening situation.

    ''Was it because she was captured by envers rted to ktr that they ended up being so easily exposed¡­ did that allow her to meet me, so that she was saved?'', wondered Daimon.

    ''It''s a mix, I would say, luck can''t directly go against destiny, she was indeed not directly delivered to that pervert, but she ended in another one of the branches of this degenerate''s circus, that was her luck doing its part, she stile luck from those guys and that made it easier for you to find their base, but that was the limit, because the system protects you from being directly affected by such things, you would have gotten a notification if there was an attempt like before''.

    ''You casually meeting her, and choosing her due to the female assassin from earlier is your luck, so the rest is your merit, she only created a chance of someone saving her by dying a bad end on her side¡­ but if you ask me, she ended in the arms of a pervert anyway~'', jokingly said Evangeline.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    ''Hoh, Eve is getting boldertely, one day my luck will be high enough for you to have a physical body, see if I don''t smack your ass'', he thought.

    Daimon was brought back to reality, when the ck Empress jumped out of surprise, her eyes widened a bit as she eximed.

    "M-Marlene!".

    She jumped on Daimon''sp, grabbed the girl from the angel fish n and then shook her by her shoulders, until the poor girl paled, she a was currently a Lord ranked being threated so roughly by an excited Ster ranked, she nearly fainted due to the shock.

    Daimon felt a chill running down his spine as he remembered that time when he met Liz and she lifted him to make him roll on the air, or when Erin hugged him so hard, he could feel his bones creak a bit.

    ''These high ranked girls can be quite scary, Daimon had to ask Thea to calm down, because she was going to kill her own friend by ident, he even saw her ability to steal luck activating, unfortunately he was the only male in the range of it, and he couldn''t be deprived from his luck, so it didn''t work, also the Empress body was¡­ rubbing against Daimon quite a bit due to the movement, and though he had a really good self-control, just like when he shared a room with the sisters, his body was greedy enough to want to "devour" any beauty that was put in its path.

    Not to mention apparently Abraham Van Helsing was a skirt chaser too, whichbined with Daimon''s desire to have lifelong partners, created the soulmate function, which made him more prompt to desire more women, luckily he didn''t let his desires control him as that could be a "massacre", the pheromones of the his Apex Predator even affected Erin and Aura, imagine what would happen if they run loose, though it only affected girls who already had feelings for him, the sisters were here too.

    Thea realized what she was doing to her friend and she let go of her, the poor girl from the angel fish n was about to faint at this point, Daimon couldn''t me Thea though, she saw a random girl suddenly transform into the friend she was feeling guilty of not being able to find.

    She changed that much due to the toll that her lineage and realm took, it made sense though, her whole existence was modified after losing so many things, from thest royal or her race to a mixed race ve.

    ''Well, she escaped the encirclement and ambush of Sting and ck Beard, while being an early stage Ster rank, that''s one hell of a luck strike, the price was high too'', thought Daimon as he let go of Marlene, to not cause any misunderstand, she had to recover from her basic memories returning and the ck Empress nearly shaking her internal organs until they became paste.

    Daimon could feel the gazes of the sisters and he cleared his throat.

    "Though we are almost finished here, tomorrow I''m going to need your help, depending on the information Horals get for us".

    That was enough to make the sisters smile and get distracted, while imagining they''ll get to be alone with Daimon just like Aisha who was flirting with him earlier when they arrived.

    "We are going to tag along as well of course", said Mellie, taking the sisters out of their imaginary world.

    "Mm".

    Jasmine and Daphne nodded agreeing with Mellie, which made the three sisters''s gazes sh with the princesses''s, for a moment, sparks flew all over the ce, but they were interrupted when Horals, returned with a notebook and a weirded out expression, as he dragged a fainted Pablo.

    "Young master I got all the information from that guy¡­ I also have the key to the treasury of this ce, even before I asked him, he slipped and broke his leg, the key was hidden in his flesh and fell out of his broken skin it was so weird, I properly cleaned it of course".

    "¡­", Daimon was speechless, to think an Arch rank would trip on the bathroom and break his leg, though his cultivation was sealed, it was such a strike of bad luck, not deathly but really stupid.

    Ultimately Daimon shrugged and took the key from Horals, on the surface the operations of this ce had to keep go, but they didn''t have a need for their umted resources to be kept there rotting, so they will dly "donate" them for a greater cause, making him richer, also there was a lot of scumbags who will be taken care of, but that was the queen''s work, he will only capture them as they might have information too, not to mention they were involved with ck Wave indirectly.

    "Horals, go and capture all the bastards in the other rooms, if anyone resists break hos four limbs, knock them out, miss Thea can you help me with another contract, this guy will be our key to take down those idiots", said Daimon as he kicked Pablo waking him up.

    "Mm", the ck Empress whose impression of Daimon has gone up another notch nodded and then one of her pupils changed from honey yellow to a light green color as she created a contract for him".

    Daimon took out disaster and pointed it at Pablo''s neck.

    "ept it, or die".

    Pablo saw Horals who was yet to leave and his body shivered as he immediately epted the contract, thus bing Daimon''s second subordinate, though the conditions werepletely different, for him orders were absolute if he tried to betray them he will die on the spot as well, basically a ve.

 Chapter 365 Fishing (Part 1)

    The rest of the people in the other rooms weren''t even on the Arch ranks, this branch of ktr was special since Pablo was the one running it, no one above the Lord realm was allowed to enter, with the exception of Pablo and his bodyguard who was a Half Ster ranked.

    The pirates were also Arch ranks, unfortunately for them, since Thea was the one who barged in, with Daimon giving her the "coordinates", she just used her spear to tear through space and appeared inside the club.

    It was as if they left a wolf loose in a herd of sheep, a ughter took ce, they didn''t even had the chance to scram before Thea killed the lowest ranked ones and knocked the others unconscious, as for the Half Ster she directly ripped his head of with her spear, because he has some annoying treasures that could cause them troubles if he had the chance to activate them.

    ''I didn''t notice it before, but what she used earlier wasn''t "Space Shift", she pierced through a certain range of space with her spear'', thought Daimon as he stole a gaze at Thea who was giving some potions to her friend in hopes that she recovered faster.

    Thea has the habit of using her spear to open the portals required to use Space Shift, originally Daimon thought it was just a personal preference, but apparently it had a reason, maybe it''s because she is used to whatever ability she used to ignore the restrictions in the space of this ce, what she did was simr to blink.

    In the meantime the girls sat on the couch with Daimon, while he read the report made by Horals, apparently the story goes like this.

    A long time ago, some unknown "benefactor" gave Pablo a hint on where to find a girl from the angel fish n, one who wasn''t happy with living in the Maelstrom Sea, so it escaped from Marlene''s crew, who ispletely conformed by women from the angel fish n.

    Pablo approached the woman and presented himself as someone from an extremely strong organization, supported her and ultimately offered her a chance to be stronger by bing an assassin.

    Having no resources and no other option but to hide her race, the woman epted the deal and started training to enter ck Wave, because apparently Pablo didn''t want to use his connections to help her join before umting enough merits for her, as there was a chance of the higher ups in ck Wave that will be making him the favor, to demand getting a share of the woman.

    Having read this far Daimon raised an eyebrow, the maid Rita killed wasn''t ugly by any means, but nothing special, any of the girls in this room surpassed in beauty terms by far.

    ''Are they really that horny for the members of the angel fish n, or maybe it''s because they believe that story of one of the previous kings getting luck and prosperity after having taken one as a lover?'', thought Daimon.

    Anyway, continuing with the story, this benefactor of which Pablo talked, told him there will be a day when he will have to do him a favor, as his silence is what allowed him to monopolize that woman from the angel fish n, and that was thest thing he got to know of that person.

    Daimon of course rted that benefactor to whoever was behind the pirates and Skelefiends, and that was a big revtion, since it meant ck Wave wasn''t under that guy''smand, or at least the branch in the Mermen Sea isn''t, Pablo was probably a pawn prepared for when the time of attacking the Clear Water kingdom came.

    Why was Pablo selected for such a big "honor" you ask, the answer is simple, Pablo''s mother is the leader of this sea''s branch of ck Wave, his only son on top of that, ktr was a gift he got from his mother, it was also his alibi as one of the vice leaders.

    ''Nepotism and a dark organization, what a badbination'', thought Daimon, this also exined why he had a peak Half Ster ranked bodyguard.

    What surprised Daimon for a moment is that if the leader of the branch spoiled Pablo so much, howe she wasn''t here in the ktr he personally supervised, but that doubt was solved a secondter, ording to Horals''s information, the four leaders of the four branches and the strongest members in other words the vice leaders had to attend some kind of secret meeting.

    Neptune was changing, and those who have been hiding in the shadows, those with high ambitions have started moving too, ck Wave is one of the ones that actually has the power to be an independent variant in the uing conflict.

    Pablo was left behind because who knows if the meeting was a trap, ultimately the four branches had their own leaders with their goals and that led Daimon to think, the mastermind behind the pirates and Skelefiends had prepared ways to bring the four branches to its side, though as always taking advantage of ones weaknesses and desires.

    ''What a scheming bastard'', thought Daimon.

    Unfortunately, that was all the information regarding the origin of the maid that tried to attack him, and also everything he knew about that benefactor, with the intelwork of the whole branch at his disposition now that his mother left him in charge, he by himself got a wind of rumors of a ve with "simr" characteristics to the ones of the woman he was preparing to join ck Wave and his efforts paid out, when he found Marlene, though it was a mixed race, unlike the one he already had, Marlene was pure, so he was over the moon about his discovery.

    By what one would normally call a "coincidence", the shipment in which the ves were being transported to enter the kingdom, was discovered by public defense forces, in other words the guys that worked for the ckfin family.

    Obviously the shipment was confiscated and the ves were going to be freed, since none was of a high value on the surface, but Pablo who has amplework of connections contacted someone from the ckfin family and directly asked for Marlene to be send to him, he was too nervous about losing her that he showed how much he desired her.

    Which of course ended up getting to the ears of the ckfin Duke, who in exchange asked for a favor as well, he wanted someone to spy on the guests the Trident Marshal would be receiving, that''s how the female assassin ended up working as a maid for Vincent.

    Surprisingly on the records, there was no proof od who interviewed her for the position, as probably every document was disposed to not leave traces.

    Daimon frowned, Pablo was the one who sent the woman to spy on them, but Horals made emphasis in the part that she tried to kill Daimon all of a sudden, something that Pablo denied having done.

    Meaning the maid had her own agenda, or not her exactly, Brandon was with her the whole day, ording him she only received a call from a disposable mirror te and it was from Pablo, so she either took that decision on a whim, or she was ordered by someone to do it before she was sent by Pablo, as those were the only moments Brandon wasn''t with her.

    ''I''m sorry young master, I shouldn''t have directly killed her without your permission¡­ it''s just that I had a huge bad premonition when she jumped towards young master'', said Rita with an anguished voice.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head.

    ''Don''t worry, we have her corpse so it''s not like she there is nothing we can get out of her, you did instinctively it to protect me, despite knowing all the safety measures I have on me all the time, so there must be something else to it, I was the one who ordered you to do so anyway, so if there is someone at fault it would be me''.

    ''Mm, thanks young master for his grace~'', Rita happily nodded from within Daimon''s shadow and then returned to be silent.<novelnext></novelnext>

    Daimon didn''t me Rita, she and Horals are different than the others that were tied to him through the terror contractor skill, they are closer to have a category for themselves in the system ording to Evangeline.

    Which exined theypletely not being like what their species is supposed to be, Evangeline was only allowed to help Daimon directly if he was in a life-or-death situation due to the restrictions of the system, so even if she knew what was up with that maid, she wasn''t allowed to say anything or act if it wasn''t a life or death crisis.

    But Rita and Horals were different, in their words they existed to protect Daimon and it was their mission and joy to do so, so when it were things rted to their young master, their senses were incredibly sharp, to the point that Daimon had to order them to tone them down to only detrimental things that could affect him, since they were literally warning him about bad weather, pebbles that could make him trip and other misceneous stuff.

    In other words, if they ignored the chain ofmand and directly killed an enemy or acted on their own, it was a special case, it''s just that Rita didn''t notice anything once she killed the maid, so she thought it was just her letting her emotions control her and that''s why she apologized to Daimon, ultimately she is an undead as well, unlike Horals she is more civilized as she acts as her young master''s daily helper, she considers herself more of a maid or caretaker than a soldier like the bone general, but her nature is still slightly unstable just like Horals, she just has a better control over it.

    In any case, leaving the thing with the maid aside for now, it''s not like he hasn''t won anything, all that information helped him get a better idea of what the guy behind the pirates and Skelefiends n''s was.

    Those who frequented ktr might be the ck sheep of their families, but they are still nobles, and they were stupid enough to be manipted, not to mention those who belonged to high ranked families mostly didn''t like the queen who was the one that from Daimon''s point of view truly protected the people of the kingdom, the public opinion has a big weight in the wellbeing of a reign after all, and themoners respected Ae, that''s one of the reasons as to why Triten didn''t dare to pull any tricks and instead wanted to woo her in to his side as a wife, that and of course the fact that she had Vincent''s backing.

    Daimon suddenly smirked.

    ''Destroying the bnce, creating a revolt and then taking over, you have becent'', he thought.

    Though he stillcked some pieces, he already had the gist of that guy''s n and that being the case, it was easy to mess with it, for him who learned about scheming for eight years under the wing of the most cunning woman of a gxy.

    Daimon turned to see Pablo and then said.

    "Your contact with the ckfin family, tell me who it is and also arrange a meeting, just tell him you found something outrageous which made you lose one of the actives you sent, but the second one made it through and brought intel to you, I want to have a nice "chat", with whoever wanted to spy on us".

    Pablo shivered feeling Daimon''s aura, it was the same he felt when he was dragged to be tortured, also the fact that he mentioned one of the actives he sent was dead made him feel his heart sinking.

    Something Daimon of course noticed, unfortunately for Pablo, Daimon didn''t have an ounce of pity for him, instead he had a little experiment to do, Brandon was rtively innocent so he was left of the hook, but Pablo deserved to suffer.

    "That woman tried to kill me so she was crushed to death, but I would advice you not to suffer, since she didn''t obey your orders, then that means she already had another guy to which she wanted to cling".

    Daimon''s sharps words pierced through Pablo''s ego, it''s not like he loved the female assassin, she was his "property" so the fact that she probably was being ordered by someone else drove him mad, so much that his face twisted.

    It was then when he received a rope to help him climb back from the bottomless pit in which he was drowning right now.

    "If you understand then cooperate to the best of your capacities, because when I find the one who is pulling the strings from the shadows, I will tear him to pieces, wouldn''t that be the perfect ending for the one guided me to this ce, the one responsible for you losing everything you had?", said Daimon with a convincing voice, the aura of the overlord''s pride leaked out of his body.

    Pablo nodded with a hatred filled expression, which made Daimon inwardly smile, the method of the carrot and the stick was as useful as always, sure he can order Pablo around, but unlike his terror contractor skill where there is literally no way for his ves to disobey or affect him, the contract made by Thea did have a way out, the w that all other contracts also have¡­ death, if he had enough guts he could think on betrayal and the contract will kill him, which is a lose on both sides to a certain extent.

    But now that Daimon has directed Pablo''s hatred towards the one who used him, then he will perfectly fulfill his tasks, without the idea of dying to escape, also Daimon wanted to see if now that he had a contract, he could somehow turn it into a terror contract with some work, who knows something good mighte out of it.

    Horals returned to the room and then kneeled down in front of Daimon.

    "I have fulfilled my task young master, I found this on their treasury, I beg young master''s pardon as I wanted to personally present it to you", said Horals as he extended his right hand in which a lime colored badgeid.

    Daimon grabbed it and after a quick inspection he nodded satisfied with the finding, it was an iplete Elemental emblem, which lowered the amount needed.

    "Good job, put all the prisoners in one of the rooms and clean up, we''ll be getting some guestsing here soon", said Daimon, to which the bone general proudly nodded.

    At the same time Pablo who was given a disposable mirror te he had in the ring Daimon confiscated, finished sending and receiving some messaged with it.

    "It''s done, the guy will being in half an hour, I demanded arge amount of crystals as the price for the information and the life of the active who has it as well as a physical meeting, the other party agreed without hesitation".

    Daimon nodded and then said.

    "Miss Thea, please bring Brandon here, the rest of us will hide, it''s time to go fish a fish who thinks himself to be a shark".

    "Mm", the girls nodded and then everyone put hands to work.

 Chapter 366 Fishing (Part 2)

    About half an hourter Pablo who was sitting on a table that set up in the middle of the floor at the VIP area of ktr, having a nice dinner, suddenly looked at the entrance of the room where a couple of guards opened the door.

    An eerie breeze of air entered the room, before a ck mist manifested itself, from which a ck robed figure emerged, judging by its body shape it was a man, he couldn''t be 100% sure as the figure was covered with things from head to toe, including a mask.

    Pablo still turned to see his bodyguard who was standing next to him, and only after seeing him nod, he weed the neer.

    "Good evening senior Shaz, I was starting to worry about you noting, which would make the loses I suffered in vain".

    "¡­", the man remained silent for a moment as he inspected the whole area, the aura of an early stage Ster ranked ran through the room, just for a second, it wasn''t aimed at anyone, so there were no damages, but every nook and cranny of the club was inspected, only then the man took a seat in front of Pablo.

    "Young master Bolge seems to be quite understanding, as far as I know this ce is quite crowded all the time, but there are no customers tonight", said he man with a hoarse voice.

    Pablo rose his cup offering a toast to the man.

    "Of course, as I mentioned the information I got is of the top quality¡­ honestly it''s even hard for me to believe it".

    The man''s aura changed, from the neutral feeling of a moment ago, to an eerie and slightly terrifying one.

    "Speaking of that, can young master Bolge show me the witness mentioned, even before we further discuss about it, I want to confirm it with my eyes".

    Pablo nodded, he beckoned and then a pair of guards brought Brandon who was chained, next to him.

    "Out of the two actives I sent to the mansion of the Trident Marshal as requested, only he who was the assistant of my field agent survived".

    The man inspected Brandon and then allowed Pablo to continue, not before saying.

    "He does indeed have traces of the arrays and other things that exist in that mansion, I brought the payment requested, but before that, tell me the information, regardless of the result I''ll give you half of the payment, who knows it might be something me or my superiors already know".

    Pablo seemed to had a hard time not cursing, but ultimately, he controlled himself and asked the guards to take Brandon back to the room where he was being kept, he then took out a notebook from his storage ring and said.

    "The Trident Marshal has been recruited by some unknown existence, and is now working to take over the kingdom, it''s also rted to the people that had recently appeared in Neptune¡­ they aren''t natives of this!", he shockingly eximed before adding.

    "There is more information on the same level, discovered by the assistant, since my field agent was caught and killed, I have it in this notebook".

    Visibly there wasn''t that much of a reaction from the man, but his heartbeat became erratic for a fraction of a second, before it returned to normal.

    The man then nodded and took out a trove from his storage ring, he opened the lid to show the contents, there was a bunch of pretty octagonal light blue crystals, perfectly piled, the numbers reached the dozens of thousands, there was also a spatial ring on top of all the crystals.

    "As we agreed, one hundred thousand high ranked sea crystals, fifty million low ranked ones and also a promise from my contact in the ckfin family, so that in case of some shipments being discovered, young master Bolge will be notified and given his legit properties, do we have a deal?", asked the man as he extended his hand at Pablo to offer a handshake.

    Pablo inspected the trove and after confirming everything was there, he nodded and leaned frontwards to ept the handshake.

    Then for a moment it was as if the world had slowed down, Pablo could hear the voice of the man on his ears.

    ''What a shame, you could have been a great pawn, but you know too much and we can''t have you telling on to your mother, so go to hell''.

    Pablo''s whole body shivered, all the hairs on his body stood on their ends as he saw many small red lights shining through the mask of the man, he as an Arch ranks was able to caught a glimpse of a strange limbing from the stomach of the man, aiming at his head, but when he was about to die without a grave, suddenly the four limbs of the man separated from his body.

    "Huh?", the man couldn''t react on time and his now limbless body fell to the ground, he red at the origin of what took away his limbs and gritted his teeth.

    "What is a middle Ster ranked doing here, the stronger people in ktr right now should be a mere Half Ster ranked".

    Pablo whose face as pale got up his seat and then kneeled down next to the table, the limbless man then saw one of the guards taking Pablo''s seat, before the others sat next to him.

    The man then saw a ck spear piercing his chest, which made him smirk, he didn''t show any kind of pained reaction up to this moment, strange symbols started appearing all over his body, which had started to dpose into a ck mist, but then the ck spear suddenly lit up in white mes.

    "Aghhhh, what the hell is this!!!", the man finally showed a reactions, his four limbs grew back and he tried to take the spear out, but not only the bodyguard who was stabbing him didn''t flinch, the mes made it so he had a hard time grabbing the spear.

    The symbols on his body then turned red and his flesh started to swell, as if he was about to explode, but then the bodyguard stabbed him with a second weapon, this time it was a ck inked sword right on the left side of his chest.

    The man then copsed on the ground, and the symbols faded out and disappeared".

    "What the hell did you do to me, you bastard!!!", shouted the man, his body started getting thinner as if his life was abandoning him, this continued until the man was only a sack of bones with skin stuck onto it, normally this would mean the man was dead.

    But there were two surprises here, first the man was still alive, second the shape of his skeleton wasn''t precisely what you would call human, the bones that confirmed the legs reached all the way to a few centimeters below the ribcage.

    The ribcage had an strange spiraling shape too, and there were only three bones in the fingers of each one of his limbs.

    The sound of fingers snapping echoed through the area and then a ck dome covered the whole room, the bodyguard''s shape and face then changed to that of a tall elegant woman.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "The flesh was that of a thousand eyed bottom horror snail, but this Empress has never seen this kind of skeleton, also a Ster ranked Skelefiend doesn''t be like this, they all change into something like that old zombie bastard of Horrorw, despite the fact that there is a lot of bizarre things hiding beneath the waters of the Maelstrom Sea, this is a first".

    The guard that took Pablo''s seat, nodded before saying.

    "That''s because this guy is neither a magic beast nor an Skelefiend", as the guard finished speaking, his appearance changed to that of a silver haired youth with a mask that covered half of his face.

    Daimon frowned behind his mask, he looked at Thea and the Empress then teared the mask of the man on the ground apart, to reveal half of his head was covered with eyes, his mouth wasrger than a human''s and had spiked teeth, it was quite ugly, races with multiple eyes exist, but that''s how they are supposed to look so there is "harmony" in their nature.

    In the case of the creature that was in front of Daimon, it was different, it looked as if someone just mediocrely mixed a few things, it gave off a worse vibe than the abominations created by the undead, despite it being "natural", instead of artificial.

    But to Daimon''s surprise this isn''t he first time he has felt this kind of auraing from someone, back then when he finished walking through that ck stone hall, the monster that was imprisoned on the door which tried to devour him, was the same, originally Daimon thought that thing was an Skelefiend but after having fought them quite a few times, he could safely affirm he was wrong.

    Even the methods they used to improve themselves which they got from that "Lord" they mentioned, made them look more human like Shirel, or control dead bodies like the ones who were cooperating with Ulkrear.

    But this being in front of Daimon wasn''t like that, his skeleton wasn''t like the ones of the Skelefiends, and he didn''t enhance himself using the lineage of a magic beast like the pirates, instead it seemed to be just an aberration of nature.

    "Looks like our line caught something pretty interesting, answer what are you, who do you work for?", said Daimon.

    A moment ago, Thea assured him, this creature whatever it is, it wasn''t under any kind of contract, as she couldn''t see any restrictions within its soul.

    But then under everyone''s surprised expressions, the thing''s body exploded in dark purple mes, which threatened with sshing on everyone.

    "You''ll all be marked, once my Lordes it will be your end hahaha!", the thing hystericallyughed, as its body withered away and turned into ashes, a ck sphere came from within the mes and actually bypassed Thea''s barrier, to escape.

    Thea tried to grab it, but the mes them attacked everyone forcing her to defend, to her surprise her mana was being overpowered by those creepy mes.

    Daimon''s body exploded in white mes, his Demon Light previously caused an excruciating pain to the creature that wasn''t bothered by having its body cut or pierced by Thea''s spear, so he supposed his battle aura was effective against that creature.

    And he was right, the purple mes avoided him as if he was the gue, and that wasn''t all, a sh of light came out of his pocket and his ck Sea Emblem blocked the escape of that ck sphere that was what was left of the creature.

    The head of the rune shark came out of the emblem and before Daimon could order it to not do it, it swallowed the ck sphere, the purple mes immediately disappeared and to everyone''s surprise, the voice of the creature could be heard onest time.

    Even when the thing was burned by Daimon''s mes, there was only pain in its voice and expression, but this time what could be heard in it was a deep despair and terror.

    "I-Impossible, how can this be¡­", the voice of the creature disappeared before it could finish its sentence, the ck emblem then returned to Daimon and entered his pocket before it became quiet.

    Daimon''s sharp ears, caught a faint metallic sound, he saw the spatial ring of the creature falling on the ground, so he grabbed it and tried to inspect it, to Daimon''s surprise it wasn''t protected, which could mean two things, first its previous owner didn''t have anything of value in it, which clearly wasn''t the case, the second possibility is that the restrictions on it were eliminated by a rune master expert.

    But that wasn''t possible since the ring just lost its owner, fortunately Daimon who worked as Liz''s assistant knows the principle over eliminating restrictions on storage type treasures, essentially it''s a kind of soul contract, and to eliminate it, one must scrape all the leftover specs of the previous owner''s soul in the ring.

    In other words, his ck emblem eliminated the soul of that creaturepletely, when it swallowed that ck sphere, which reminded him of a magic core.

    And the surprises kepting, with a quick look into ring, Daimon''s eyes widened a bit, leaving aside the ungodly number of sea crystals, which he didn''t bother to count, there was also a quite eerie thing¡­ as coffin.

    "¡­", after a moment of silence, Daimon took out the coffin, because he wanted to confirm something.

    The girls who stayed behind, approached Daimon curiously, just to see the coffin, which contained a fully bandaged man, one which Mellie surprisingly recognized.

    "That''s the ckfin''s Duke shadow, my sister has a record of all the people that do the dirty job for the highest ranked nobles, she has been trying to capture this guy for a long time, his name was Timor if my memory doesn''t fail".

    Pablo whose hands and legs were still shaking, paled.

    "H-He is the one I spoke with, my contact with the ckfin family was him, he is the one who asked me to spy on you, I thought that thing was him since it covered its whole body with something, just like Timor".

    Daimon felt a headache iing, he caught a quite big fish this time around, but while it brough him answers, it also brought new questions.

    ''That thing didn''te from the scheming guy, it reced the subordinate of the ckfin Duke and changed the n from capturing me to killing me, ahh damn, that means the Duke isn''t the one behind this too, he probably just wants his treasure back''.

    Daimon shook his head, it was gettingte into the night, and thest hint was now a dead end, literally, he sent the coffin back to the ring and then kept the ring in his inventory, in case someone¡­ or something had a way to track it, it would be useless as it would be in his inventory.

    "Let''s go back to the mansion, Brandon you and Pablo stay here and keep the business going, offer some empty promotions that extent for a week or so, I want you to gather the worst noble scum here on the next days".

    "Yes, young master!", they both answered, the array was on again, and unless someone with an ability simr to Thea appeared, the customers that could enter freely would be below the Arch rank, so Pablo and his subordinates which were enved to him would be enough to handle things.

    ''Tomorrow is going to be such a long day'', thought Daimon, he had a lot to talk with the queen and the others.

 Chapter 367 Premonition

    After giving Pablo orders on what do on the next days, he asked Thea to bring them back to the mansion of the Trident Marshal, the guys that were having fun in the rooms ktr were all knocked out before they could react and thrown on some alleys away from ktr by Horals.

    Of course, Daimon ordered Pablo''s subordinates to supervise and return them to ktr once everything was over, it wasn''t worth spoil this huge source of information over the small fishes that were in ktr tonight.

    Most belonged to middle level noble families, which were subordinated torger families, so if they disappeared their owners would notice something was off and wouldn''te to ktr, so Daimon left them of the hook to use them as bait, from their point of view they just passed due to all the fun they were having.

    Of course, the poor girls that were suffering due to them were rescued and send to a safe ce, it wasn''t exactly out of good will though, Daimon needed to take everyone but his group for the confrontation with the creature, which they supposed was the subordinate of the ckfin Duke anyway, so it aligned with his pans.

    Once they returned to the mansion, they all appeared inside Daimon''s room, in which there was now a third bed set on, that wasn''t all there was a girlying down on the bed, eating as if there was no tomorrow.

    "Cough!", the poor girl was surprised to see all the group appearing out of nowhere and she nearly choked with her food, when she reached out for a cup of water, she identally spiled it, Daimon heard a notification ringing and chuckled.

    [Ding]

    [A continuous curse has been casted upon all the males on the vicinity]

    [An Apex Predator cannot be preyed upon by anything, the luck of the host can''t be stolen, the curse "Royalty Charm" has failed to affect the host, do you wish to retaliate Y/N]

    Unfortunately for the girl there was no luck she could absorb and so, all she could do was pitifully gaze at the ck Empress who grabbed a bottle from her ring and forced her to drink down.

    "Phew¡­ Thea your space travelling ability is as sneaky as always, I always died out of surprise", mumbled the girl.

    The ck Empress softlyughed, listening to the voice of her friend which was different to when she had taken that half mixed form.

    "A Ster ranked dying like that, your name would definitely be engraved in the history of Neptune, Marlene~".

    The girl then looked at Daimon and slightly bowed her head towards him.

    "We didn''t have a chance to talk back then, I''m the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates, you can call me Marlene, how can I call my benefactor?", she politely asked.

    Daimon evaluated the girl in front of him, she was as tall as Aisha and long brown copperish hair and blue eyes, as well as a pretty skin tone, despite she being so casual, the truth is that she is a being on par with Thea, a middle stage Ster rank, though she was temporarily stuck as a peak Lord ranked due to the circumstances.

    Daimon saw Thea nodding at him from the sides.

    "You can trust her, she chose to lose her powers and memory instead of betraying me, I can add her to our contract as well".

    Daimon nodded, another Ster ranked on his side for free, was too much of a good offer to refuse, also while it was the result of his actions, it''s true that Marlene''s ability negatively affected his enemies, which led him to get a lot of valuable information and other rewards, so she could be a worthy ally.

    "You can call me Daimon", he said as he took off the mask to reveal his real face, which everyone but Marlene already knows.

    Marlene nodded and then she gazed at Thea.

    "So you got yourself a new general, not that I don''t understand why though, it''s the first time my ability was unable to affect someone, even when the effect is reduced depending on the gap in my and the target''s powers, it has never been zero before", she said as she evaluated Daimon from head to toe.

    "Speaking of that, change the group target of your ability, there is a whole farm of luck for you in the castle of the ckfin and White family", said Daimon, for now he was the only guy here but Calvin and Michael would reunite with them at some point, and though it would for sure be funny to see Calvin trip down or something, he doesn''t know hoe much time does a person need to recover the luck stolen.

    It''s not something that can be just assigned a number, or maybe not for his current self, but maybeter on when the systems goes through some updates.

    Marlene nodded.

    "Sorry, I fainted before I could finish setting the targets after I was ambushed by that Sting bastard, it should have been men with ill intentions towards me, give me a second".

    Marlene closed her eyes, and then her body started glowing with green and red mana, Daimon frowned, her attributes were pretty interesting.

    "Wood and fire¡­ that''s a strangebination for a single person, especially considering she is a member of the mermen race", said Daimon with a curious voice.

    Maybe Marlene''s attributes don''t repel each other as much as his would do, if it wasn''t for his magic core, he can wield both light and darkness, and as far as he knows he is the first and only one in the history of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart.

    Sure there is people like Tessa, who have a "negative" and a "positive" affinity at the same time, in her case nature due to her royal alfear lineage and darkness for some unknown reason, but no one has awakened the absolute expression of both sides, in other words light and darkness affinities, on the other hand there were countless of expressions of those sides and so even a bigger amount ofbinations possible.

    It''s the first time Daimon specifically sees the wood element for example, anyway once Marlene finished changing her target group, she nodded at Daimon.

    "I don''t have enough power to change what I set up when I was at my prime, but I could modify it to target the male members of the ckfin family, the White seem to have some kind of treasure that could expose me if I tried to affect them, there is a story of an ancestor from my kin being with one of the kings of this kingdom after all, so it could be something left behind by that lucky guy".

    Daimon shrugged, as long as it didn''t affect his group, the ckfin Duke could trip on the stairs and break his neck for all he cared, though that wasn''t going to happen, since Marlene is in a weakened state, still his son and the other guys were good luck farms for her,

    Being tired after dealing with so much stuff in the previous hours, Daimon and the girls went to sleep again, the third bed apparently wasn''t only for Marlene, the ck Empress decided to stay with them too, just in case something happened.<novelnext></novelnext>

    The sisters and the princesses were kind o against it, but remembering that the target of the maid was Daimon and not them, they happily epted the protection of Thea.

    Daimon took off his shoes and jacket and just threw himself at the bed, Aisha and the sisters joined him, though only Aisha directly hugged her son to sleep, while the sisters justid down next to him, Daimon turned off the lights and then everyone entered thend of dreams.

    ¡­

    The hours passed and the rest of the night was going uneventful, until Daimon suddenly frowned in his sleep, he was just resting without dreaming of anything until a second ago.

    [Ding]

    [Lesser #$%# core "Baltros" has been refined, the memory fragment will be shown now]

    The next thing Daimon knew is that he was in that endless sea which he has seen a couple of times, it was the dream in which he heard what now he knew was the ck Sea Emblem asking for more crystals, or that''s what he thought until he noticed there was something different this time¡­ the sky which always had a pretty blue tone as well as the sea, were now died in red and ck respectively.

    Daimon''s pupils narrowed like needles, that red sky is something anyone with knowledge about the Arch rank or above, knows and fears, the result of powerhouse going wild and surpassing the limits of the magic atmosphere of a.

    "A copse phenomenon, where the hell am I, thest one registered in the history happened about five hundred thousand years at a under the rule of the humans, not to mention this ck colored liquid isn''t water but blood¡­", mumbled Daimon.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt something moving in his pocket and then the ck Sea Emblem came out of it and floated in front of him.

    "So, it was you who brought me here, you are going to need to be more specific since you ate my source of information you little thing", demanded Daimon.

    The ck emblem stood there for a couple of seconds, before it started advancing towards north, Daimon sighed and then used blink to follow the thing, surprisingly even if this was a dream he could use his skills, well he wasn''t that surprised since Evangeline has told him, they exist for his sake and will never leave him.

    "Speaking of that, Evangeline are you there, what''s going on?", Daimon asked out loud, after a couple of seconds, Evangeline''s sleepy voice could be heard on Daimon''s mind.

    "Even workers back at earth could sleep you know, I should fill ain since my boss is such a tyrant", she jokingly said.

    Daimon shook his head.

    "Since you were sleeping then I can confirm I''m in no danger right now, but just to be clear, this is all happening in my mind right?".

    "Yep, it''s not something the system did though, it just "yed it" to make it simple, this is like a 3D movie in which you can interact to a certain extent with this illusion".

    Daimon nodded, just like how some things that happen in his daily life are covered by the system and turned into events, missions and notifications, if the system can ssify it, then it would adapted to it, so what normally should have been a dream is now a moreplex thing.

    Daimon who was flying by using blink suddenly caught a glimpse of a mountain that raised from below the ocean, it was a big chance since Daimon ahs already wandered around in this dream and he never found anything else besides this endless sea before.

    The ck badge which didn''t show signs of stopping before, finally stopped advancing and floated right on top of that ck mountain, Daimon had to raise into the air more, since the mountain had a few kilometers of height, after using blink around forty times, meaning he ascended four kilometers, he reached the top of the mountain.

    Luckily this ce wasn''t real and so his mana didn''t diminish even if he used his skills or spells, the ck emblem then returned to Daimon''s pocket as if it said "I did my job", which made Daimon sigh.

    "Oi, I followed you all the way here at least give me some answers¡­".

    Daimon''s words died in his throat when he looked at whatid in front of him, well to be more urate itid down below his feet too, this wasn''t a mountain but a skull, a ck giant skull whose shape was strangely familiar.

    "It''s just like the skull of that thing, there are holes for all its eyes and the teeth look simr", the biggest difference Daimon could find is that it had no flesh or skin unlike the creature he captured before.

    Daimon increased the mana in his eyes to get arger field of vision, and the first thing he noticed was that this was just the skull, the rest of the skeleton wasn''t here, also the ck liquid which had dyed the water ck, wasing from the skull, it was probably part of the bones which had separated from it due to the waves.

    Daimon then looked at the horizon and he had the urge to curse.

    "Damn, I liked it more when it was empty, what the hell happened here", he mumbled.

    What appeared in his field of vision were¡­ corpses, a countless number of rotting corpses of different magic beasts, people and other things which he couldn''t even recognize, essentially he was seeing the results of a ughter.

    Just then, Daimon felt a slight bolt of electricity in his head and his eyes opened in the real world, he saw all the girls still sleeping and the clock on the wall, it was quite early in the morning.

    ''What the hell was that, some sort of premonition?'', he asked to Evangeline, but she just said.

    ''I don''t think so, the system ssified as a memory, so it''s something that already happened, it probably was hidden in the thing that your emblem swallowed, as to why it showed it to you, I have no idea''.

    Daimon ultimately shook his head, he hugged Aisha tight and then returned to sleep, he can''t change the past anyway, what he can do is assure that the corpses that end up rotting on the future abandoned battlefields, like the one he saw a moment ago, are the ones of his enemies instead of the ones he cherishes.

 Chapter 368 Daimonâ€™s Experiments (Part 1)

    Normally Daimon''s biological clock would have waken him up early, he is the one that decides to remain in the bed resting with the Aisha and the others, but this time he was legitimately sleeping, as the hours passed, the girls in starting waking up one by one.

    Starting from Aisha who looked at her son''s sleeping face with tender lovely eyes, she then felt a couple of gazes on her and she giggled.

    The sisters were awake now and they were intensely looking at them, of course how could not Aisha tease her friends a bit, she tightened her embrace on Daimon, while she cutely stuck her tongue at them, which made the sisters pout.

    "Aisha is too cruel sometimes", mumbled Leslie.

    "As one would expect from Daimon''s older sister", added Yvonne.

    "Mm", Liliana limited to nod.

    But then the three of them as well as Aisha softlyughed, it was a good way to start a day, especially after having seen some of the darkness that lingers in this kingdom, the previous night.

    The princesses were the next ones to wake up, they did just in time to see that strange though fun scene between Aisha and the sisters, they also stole a gaze at Daimon whose normally serious expression was nowhere to be seen.

    "Woah, he looks so different when he is sleeping, I can believe he is younger than us this way", mumbled Mellie.

    They weren''t just making things up, Daimon wasn''t originally someone to externally express his emotions, a bad habit he developed back at earth, because his scumbag of a father would beat him up even more if heined or showed any hatred towards him.

    It was thanks to Aisha that he returned to act more human-like, which is pretty ironic considering she isn''t human but a vampire, after that Erin, Aura, Liz and ine were the ones that slowly worked to help him recover from the trauma he developed due to Aisha dying.

    It''s not like they just wanted to fool around all the time with him, well maybe it was Erin''s case, leaving aside their training, they took the duty to bathe Daimon in love, to heal his wounded heart, only then they noticed he finally started showing such a peaceful expression on his face when he slept, because before even sleeping he had a frightened face as if he was afraid they would disappear during the night or something like that.

    That is also why Aisha supported the sisters feelings for him, because they also had a positive effect on him, they and the other members of the elite ss, helped her son improve more, he now not only had them, he had friends too, something she as her mother honestly didn''t think would be possible, she wanted him to join the academy for that same reason, so that Daimon would be able to experience a "normal" life.

    "Mm, you are right little princess, he does indeed look less fierce than normal, I still can''t decipher what''s his race though".

    Before anyone could react a ck sh suddenly appeared next to Daimon''s bed, before the pretty finger of Thea poked Daimon''s sleeping face a couple of times, making the sisters speechless.

    Aisha didn''t stop her though and soon not only Thea, but the sisters and the princesses were surrounding Daimon and casually chatting while looking at him, the only one who didn''t join was Marlene who was snoring in her sleep.

    Daimon''s eyebrow twitched, his eyes opened and the first thing he saw were all of them piking his face.

    "Good morning,dies¡­ care to exin what is going on?", he slowly asked.

    "¡­", they all retrieved their fingers and simply feigned ignorance as they returned to their beds or went to the bath to change, the only one who stayed behind was Aisha who sweetly smiled at him.

    "Good morning, don''t pay it attention we were just having a "girls conversation", more importantly ording to Rita, the queen as well as the others had returned to the mansion".

    Daimon decided to leave it at that, they had a lot discuss with Ae and the other adults, also if what he saw in that dream was rted to what will be happening in a week, then he needed to get a hold of the treasure the queen extorted out of the ckfin Duke, since he discovered a way to use it with cktooth which probably no one has ever thought about.

    "Speaking of them", Daimon said when he heard someone knocking on the door, Thea who was near opened it.

    "Good morning,e to join us for breakfast", Ae who at the other side of the door, saw the untidied appearance of Thea, as well as the slight alcohol scenting from her, the bed in which an unknown girl wasying down and Aisha clinging to Daimon and she raised an eyebrow, the Vs Duchess was who was apanying her was the same.

    "I didn''t know you had such hobbies Thea¡­" jokingly said the queen, to which the Empress softly snorted.

    "We were attacked yesterday, I''ll let my newly appointed "general" tell you the details at breakfast though~", said Thea putting a lot on emphasis on the word general, Thea then grabbed Marlene from her left leg and then they both disappeared, she already told Aisha she would meet them at the dining room, as she had some things to discuss with Karmandi and Lina, she took Marlene with her so she wouldn''t be a bother for them as well.

    Daimon turned to see the queen who had the words "Exin what happened" written all over her face and he chuckled.

    "It''s a long story, I''ll tell you all what happened at the dining room, Mellie, the first princess and Jasmine also want to see you, the Duchess and Senior Aurora first".

    The princesses came out of the bathroom as Daimon mentioned them and the queen nodded.

    "Fine, take a moment to prepare and I''ll see you at breakfast", she said, the princesses left the room following the queen and the Vs Duchess.

    Seeing the sisters going to the bathroom to take a shower, Aisha also got up from the bed and followed them.

    ''I''ll join these three today darling, because if I go in with you, we''ll end up arrivingte~'', said Aisha through the mental connection.

    ¡­

    Once the girls finished Daimon took a quick shower and then they left the room, this time there was no guard to guide them though, so they just went to the dinning room, where everyone but Jasmine and her grandmother were already waiting for them.

    It didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that the Trident Marshal seemed to be a bit down, but he didn''t say anything about it and just took a seat, the sisters and Aisha sat at his sides, apparently today was Liliana''s time to get the seat right next to him.

    "So, I heard you had quite a wild night, Daimon?", asked the Trident Marshal, ignoring the old man''s vague way to describe it, which was probably caused by Ae telling him what she saw earlier, Daimon answered.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "Yeah, pretty much not to my liking¡­ because we were attacked right at my door, well more urately I was attacked".

    Both Vincent and the queen frowned, for different things though, Ae knew there was something weird ongoing in the castle, but she thought the targets were Mellie and the other princesses, not Daimon, as for Vincent his pride suffered a blow after hearing that someone in his mansion was a traitor.

    Ae saw the reaction of her uncle and she sighed, this is precisely the reason as to why she didn''t tell him about it, besides leaving Daimon to handle the matter in order to get a reward from the Minister of Development of course.

    "Don''t let it get to you uncle, don''t forget what Daimon told us, the bastard who is behind of this likes to y with our weaknesses and fears, if we let it affect us it will be our end".

    Vincent''s eyes glowed, his body trembled for a couple of seconds and blue particles of mana leaked out of his body, but ultimately, he gritted his teeth and calmed down.

    "Sorry, this old man has shown you something unsightly, please tell us what happened while we were gone".

    ''Uncle''s newest batch of recruits was¡­ massacred yesterday at night, all of them were younger than Mellie and all of them were found death in a cave at the forest where they were patrolling'', said the queen directly to Daimon.

    Daimon nodded, at the same time Jasmine and Aurora arrived so that now everyone was here, Thea brought Marlene with her and true to her words, she didn''t present her to the others, since she assigned that task to Daimon.

    The atmosphere in the dining room was a bit dense, apparently Aurora also had something happening to her yesterday, but she remained silent and waited for Daimon to talk so he did.

    For the next twenty minutes or so, Daimon proceeded to tell them everything what happened, from the moment Daimon was attacked by to them going all the way to the towns at the borders of the continent with Thea''s help.

    The things rted to ck Wave, the female assassin that apparently had deeper connections than what they thought, thements he heard from the loose lips of the ck sheep that frequented ktr.

    Andst but probably the most important, the fact that there was some kind of creature faking to be the shadow of the ckfin Duke, while the real guy was dead and his corpse was inside of the ring Daimon confiscated.

    He even told them about the dream he had of course making it sound as if the emblem was what caused it, without mentioning anything about the system, if there was another system user, they were safer not knowing about it, since they already knew how to "deal" with them, in other words traps or ambushes as that was written in the notes Vincent and Aurorapiled about the hero and the ancestor of the Light Pce sect.

    Lastly Daimon mentioned that Marlene ended up being dragged into the picture and since she was going to join them, he introduced her as the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates and thest member of the royal branch of the angel fish n.

    To Daimon''s surprise, Vincent didn''t look too shocked after listening that there was a member of a supposedly extinct family branch of a race of which there is already a really scarce number.

    Still the Trident Marshal evaluated Marlene from head to toe as if he wanted to confirm something before saying.

    "To think this old man would get to see a second royal from the angel fish n in his lifetime, I guess my luck isn''t that bad".

    Marlene immediately frowned upon hearing the Trident Marshal''s words.

    "A second, that''s impossible, there hasn''t been another royal since our n escaped to the Maelstrom Sea, unless¡­", Marlene''s eyes narrowed as Vincent nodded.

    "I was still a teenager working as a guard at the royal castle back then, but I did manage to see her, the one of which the people talk, one of the lovers of the king of five generations ago, the one of which the stories talk about was also a royal from your n".

    Marlene''s frown deepened, truth to be told she didn''t know why she was a royal, her parents were regr members of her n, but she was born different than them, she possesses all the records of her n as their current ruler, and yet she didn''t know another royal appeared after they were expulsed from the Mermen Sea.

    "Leaving that aside, what do you think of the recent events Daimon, is this all that guy''s doing?", asked the Trident Marshal.

    He wasn''t old for nothing, naturally he could tell there were a couple of details Daimon didn''t mention, but just as he stated, since Ae has decided to trust in him her most precious material property, the ne left to her by her mother, he would never doubt about him again.

    So, he asked for what his deduction about all this was, knowing he would then give a full answer, taking into consideration what he could and couldn''t directly tell them, Daimon wasn''t Erin''s disciple in politics and strategy only to show as well, he could tell what the old veteran wanted.

    "My conclusion is that there isn''t just one guy ying behind the scenes, the ones which I have angered don''t have a reason to kill me yet, they probably are thinking on a way to "put me in my ce", my direct suspect was the ckfin Duke, but that theory died along with his subordinate, that idiot was used, though he probably has had deals with them, so he is still in the list".

    "In my opinion, the next course of actions should be taking measures to avoid the kingdom being taken over by the guy behind the pirates and the Skelefiends, ck Wave was the bigger variant here but since Pablo is my subordinate now, I can easily deal with them know, miss Ae needs to tighten he leash on those stupid nobles who are wavering".

    Ae pped, with the little information they had, Daimon''s idea was the best oue.

    "Ah right, I need the treasure handed by the ckfin Duke now, I will be doing some experiments during the day", added Daimon.

    Vincent nodded, with everything that has happened he personally went for the thing Daimon was promised, since it was in his office back at the barracks of the army, where he thought it was safe, until the dead of the young recruits.

    Daimon then gazed at the Vs Duchess, which she of course noticed, before saying.

    "There is something that has been bothering me as well, the royal family isn''t doing anything, there is no way the king doesn''t have an intel of his own, so they must be aware of at least the way the middle and high ranked nobles areining, on the other hand it could be because their hatred seems to be focused on miss Ae, so the king doesn''t care".

    The Duchess shook her head.

    "That man does have his intel, and you are pretty much guessed why he ignores their attitude, as long as they respect his White family, he doesn''t care, that and spending the whole day with Irma and Norma, he was quite young when he was crowned and besides fighting he never administrated a territory, if we are currently a stable ce is thanks to senior Vincent and Ann''s help".

 Chapter 369 Daimonâ€™s Experiments (Part 2)

    Daimon frowned after listening to the Duchess words, what she described isn''t a king but¡­ a fa?ade, and of course he wasn''t the only one thinking about it, the first one to say something was none other than Thea.

    "Humph, so the current head of the White family is a mere puppet, but if that''s the case who is the one taking the important decisions?", said the Empress with a disdainful voice, it''s not a secret that she hates the White royal family to the core, though that hatred doesn''t seem to have spread to Daphne or the Vs Duchess, maybe because unlike the other wives of the king, she didn''t get sway away by Triten and draw a clear line between them from the very beginning.

    This was a good chance for Daimon to ask something that has been bothering him for some time too, no matter in which age, or gxy one is, the one to rule is always the one with the bigger fist.

    Call it intelligence, influence, money or strength, the one who holds the most of it, is the one that rules, that''s an iron rule, no one would follow a weakling.

    "I think I have an idea, but I want to hear it directly from you, old man, why aren''t you the king?", Daimon asked to the Trident Marshal.

    Out of all the people Daimon has met in Neptune, no one has been at the same level of Vincent, even Aurora though technically in the same realm, the number ofws she has amassed pales inparison with the Trident Marshal.

    Vincent chuckled in response.

    "You are one scary kid you know, let me first state that I''m not interested in ruling, this old man was born a general and will die a general, that being said, it''s not like I didn''t want to use my status to guide the kingdom to a better state and so I did, but when two forces with the same strength sh, the smallest change can and will do a huge difference".

    "Don''t underestimate the royals, because they have someone who can pair up with me in normal circumstances and probably kill me shall the necessity to do so arise¡­ that''s what bothers me the most regarding that little girl''s appearance and how suddenly that ck Beard punk is so interested in the angel fish n", said Vincent as he pointed at Marlene, before continuing.

    "Because the ancestor who acts as the royal''s backer is the king from five generations ago, Poseidon White a maximum Ster ranked and the oldest person alive in the Mermen Sea".

    Daimon tapped his finger on the table, what Vincent said it''s not as shocking as one would think of, for example back at the Naktis castle, the one who forced Aisha to escape wasn''t Victor, but his father, in this world the old powerhouses when they feel their deaths approach, they reduce their activities and fully dedicate to advance, in order to gain a longer lifespan, some aplish it, while others don''t, however during that seclusion, they cane out if an emergency arises, at the cost of shortening the time they have left since they be active once again.

    "So, there is an old monster backing the king, but his leftover years are probably too little, if he hasn''t directly interfered to stop your influence from spreading", Daimon concluded.

    "Basically yes, but it''s not like he is the only obstacle, the Minister of Development is on his side, since that cunning bastard was appointed by the White ancestor and that guy can stand up to me, not defeat me in a million of years, but a fight between us would drag for quite some time", said Vincent.

    "Not to mention, the higher ranked nobles do know of the existence of the ancestor, so while it is true that they respect and fear me, it''s not to the point of being okay with me ruling them, which creates the current situation, in which the king is respected for his backer and doesn''t feel the need to do anything, luckily little Ae took the lead and has maintained things rtively stable for some time", he added.

    "I see", mumbled Daimon, now he had another guy in his list, unfortunately that old monster wasn''t the guy behind the pirates and Skelefiends, because why would someone who already has the Clear Water kingdom in his palm try to start a revolt to take over the power, there is no need when he already has a puppet king.

    But since now he knew there are more than one guy hiding in the shadows, that ancestor is probably one of them and there is a high possibility that is also who sent the maid to kill him, as someone with a really high status is needed to infiltrate people in the mansion of the Trident Marshal.

    And that would mean that creature worked for or with the White ancestor.

    ''Tsk, weck important information toplete the puzzle'', thought Daimon as he saw one of the rings that he wore in his left hand.

    "You have it right, the treasure of the ckfin family, I need it and a spacious room", said Daimon to Vincent.

    "Yeah, honestly I don''t know what it is, having lived and seen a lot, my senses can''t inspect it, so good luck with it", answered the Trident Marshal as he handed Daimon a hand-sized ck metal box.

    Daimon nodded and he was ought to leave with Vincent directly guiding him, as the guards were now "dispatched" patrol and to not have them in the mansion, to avoid anything like yesterday to happen, what was guarding the mansion right now were arrays, tamed magic beasts and of course Vincent and the others, who decided to not leave all at the same time.

    But Aurora who clearly had something to say, stopped Daimon from leaving.

    "Wait, kid, we have something to discuss¡­ in private, you don''t mind right old Trident?", said the old woman.

    Vincent shook his head, there were very few things he and Aurora kept from each other, and all of them were strictly personal, so he didn''t mind it.

    "The rest of us can wait outside, if that what''s Daimon wants as well", he said, to Aurora''s surprise, Daimon shrugged.

    "Sure, it''s better to clear things up at once, but Aisha will stay, take it or leave it".

    Aurora sighed, but she still nodded.

    "Fine, in that case Jasmin will stay as well".

    The others understood and left the dining room, Daimon originally wanted the sisters to stay as well, but if his supposition was right then Aurora wouldn''t have epted that, Aisha was fine because she was presented as his family, while the sisters are his friends.

    Jasmin who was sitting next to her grandmother gave Daimon an apologetic gaze, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "Don''t look at me like that, senior Aurora was going to find out about your eyes sooner orter, because she is the same", he said.

    Aurora whose eyes were closed a moment ago, opened them to reveal she also had those halos Jasmin manifested after Daimon renovated the oath, but hers weren''t white like Jasmin''s but grey.

    "So, you indeed noticed it, tell me do you know what is the innate ability of my Light Pce''s lineage?" asked Aurora.

    Daimon shook his head, to which the old woman narrowed her eyes until she was able to confirm Daimon was beingpletely honest with his answer.

    As of that moment the slightly tense atmosphere vanished and everything returned to normal, as the old woman turned to see her granddaughter, before saying.

    "I see, if that''s the case, then you just noticed it because you possess the ck Armored Shark lineage, the truth is that our ability doesn''t exist for our sake, but for the sake of ourpanions¡­ we have the power to prevent the death of someone we cherish, be it lover, friend or family, but just once without any consequence and a second time at the cost of our lives".

    "That''s how the ancestor of the Light Pce died, she gave up her life to save her partner, when she felt his life being threatened, unfortunately since she lost all what she had for it, she was unable to keep looking for the hero and died in battle after her strength left her".

    Aurora''s words were like a bomb for Jasmin.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "T-Then, your halos are different because you already used your ability?", she asked, to which Aurora nodded.

    "To be more urate, the first time isn''t under our control, if the case presents then it will activate, when your grandfather fell ina, he should have actually died but was saved thanks to this as well".

    Jasmin let out a sigh of relief, but then Daimon interrupted them.

    "So that''s what you were afraid about, the fact that due to Adam, Jasmin might have given up on her life for him?".

    Aurora nodded in response.

    "Yes, for some reason I wasn''t able to notice there was something weird going on with that brat, he probably knew the whole truth, though I have no idea of why, so I needed to confirm myself whether you were the same or not".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, at their level Aurora and Vincent know that contracts aren''t 100% effective, though a way to break the one created through an emblem supposedly doesn''t exist in Neptune, Daimon isn''t a native, the magic from another gxy is bound to be different, so Aurora wanted to hear it directly from him.

    "Still, to think you already awakened, I who was considered the most talented since the ancestor, only managed to do it after a couple of hundreds of years, I wonder how did you stimte your lineage, you lucky girl", said Aurora as she proudly looked at Jasmin.

    Which made Daimon inwardly bitterly smile, it was him, the one who caused her to awake, though she didn''t seem to have gotten that ability, or he would have known.

    ''Maybe it''s something that will appear when the level of trust she has rises more, Daimon resisted the urge to check the log to see how the title changed.

    "Ah, another thing, do a contract with me kid" said Aurora waking Daimon out of his daze, as she showed Daimon her emblem.

    "A contract?", asked Daimon with a confuse voice, they were already in one that made them allies.

    "Yes, I heard you epted to be the bodyguard of little Mellie, if something happens to me, I want to make sure you''ll lend this girl a hand, take her with you to another gxy where she won''t be limited to live in a cage, also I want you to help her punch that damn Adam brat on the face, if it''s you, you can do it right?", said Aurora with a knowing gaze, which made Daimon confirm his theory that though they didn''t know about the existence of systems, the notes they had probably made Aurora and Vincent to realize there were "specially talented" people, like the ones from their history.

    Of course, Aurora wasn''t threatening Daimon, she offered a pretty good payment.

    "In exchange I''ll tell you where to find it¡­ the legacy of the only person who had the ck Armored Shark lineage prior to you, it''s of no use for anyone but you probably".

    Daimon''s pupils narrowed like needles, maybe Adam doesn''t have the ability to devour and incorporate lineages like him, since it''s a trait of his Apex Predator constitution, but he can still be awarded with such things just like how Evangeline helped him fix his body back then.

    So based on that, the ck Armored Shark lineage was supposed to go to him, one way or another, maybe he was supposed to get the ck box in which the main ingredient for the liqueur from which he got it, resides, since the son of the ckfin Duke travelled with the caravan in which Mellie was too.

    ''So, the idea was for Adam to save both Mellie and that guy, getting him the chance to meet the queen and be in the good books of the ckfin Duke, giving him ess to this ingredient, and one of the two hidden gems, then through Jasmine he would have gotten the legacy¡­ as always it''s creepy to think how this was prepared for that guy'', thought Daimon.

    Honestly there was no need to sign a contract, it''s not like he is obligated to respect any contract anyway, but Jasmin has be friends with the sisters and Aisha, just like Mellie and Daphne, so it''s like he was going to just sit and see them die if he can''t prevent it, in any case they were quite rted to his mission in Neptune.

    "I ept", said Daimon as he ced his hand on Aurora''s Elemental Emblem, sessfully finishing the contract.

    "That''s all I wanted to say, little Jas, I will go to my room to rest, have fun with your friends, I''ll bring you the map at night, it''s sealed so you''ll have to unlock it yourself as no one else can", said Aurora as she disappeared from the room.

    A notification immediately rang in Daimon''s ears.

    [The level of trust of the daughter of the Northern Sky has been updated]

    [Level of trust currently attained 30% ¨¤ 50%]

    To Daimon''s surprise there was no extra announcement this time, which made him think that probably the next will happen when it reaches 60%.

    Anyway, he dismissed the notification and then stood up, since the Trident Marshal was waiting for them, Jasmin approached him with a smile.

    "Can I tag along as well, I''m pretty sure one of your experiments has something to do with the ck Armored lineage, and yours and mine resonate right?", she said.

    Daimon nodded, he was distracted by her smile, not because she looked pretty while doing so, which was the case, however it was because that''s the smile she put when he told her, to not let Adam take anything away from her.

    ''So she is happy because of the hit Adam on the face, part of the contract, not that I me her though'', thought Daimon.

    "Well, I don''t mind maybe you can help to inspect that thing, but there is one experiment which none of you will see, Aisha included, because I don''t know what will happen, okay?".

    "Mm", Jasmine nodded and then they left the dining room, the other girls as well as the Trident Marshal were outside waiting for them.

    "Let''s go", said Daimon and then Vincent guided them to arge empty room, which was used for the guards to train.

    "It''s reinforced and soundproof, so take your time, I have a meeting with the king and the higher echelon of the kingdom, so I''ll be back at night, little Ae and Aurora will go as well, little Thea will stay with you in case something happens", said Vincent as he left.

    "This Empress didn''t allow you to call me in such a familiar way", eximed Thea, but Vincent was gone at this point, so she just softly snorted and sat down on a couch.

    Daimon took out the ck box from his inventory and then opened it.

    "Let''s begin".

 Chapter 370 Daimonâ€™s Experiments (Part 3)

    Upon opening the ck box, Daimon frowned, the contents weren''t what he expected, since the liqueur was what allowed him to get the ck Armored Shark lineage, he thought it would be maybe a bone or a blood crystal of some kind, something that should contain the gic material of that race.

    But no, in truth it was a fray sphere with the size of a tennis ball, it was cold to the tact and seemed to be made out of some kind of mineral.

    The first thing Daimon tried was of course using his mana sense to inspect it, the people of the Neptunecked in that aspect after all, it''s not as if he thought Vincent''s senses were weaker than his, since as a Ster ranked with the capacity to travel through space and mana sense, he could even notice he was using a camouge type of treasure, while the other Ster ranks he met couldn''t.

    But sometimes perspective is far more important than sharpness or range, which what increases with a higher realm, he as someone with the ck Armored Shark lineage, might be able to notice things others can''t.

    "Task, of course it can''t be that simple¡­", mumbled Daimon, the result of the first test was of course a failure, just like Vincent stated, the result of inspecting it was useless, this thing is made of, isn''t listed in the vast amount of knowledge he has amassed, no it was far worse than that, there wasn''t even a coincidence with all the materials he has seen or knows off.

    Which is something hard to believe, considering that a molecr level many materials despite their uniqueness or rarity, have some connections with other materials, mithril for example is rted to silver, so someone who has inspected silver with mana sense, with enough practice can recognize mithril, that''s how it worked.

    And here is what things got interesting, supposedly the Drakolevia lineage which he suffered so much to increase just a bit, back at the trial of the lineage temple, is rted to the ck Armored Shark lineage, so by corrtion if this thing came from a ck Armored Shark or a Drakolevia whatever it is, he should have been able to know it.

    In other words, whatever this gray sphere is, it isn''t even rted to those races, which made Daimon wonder how the hell did he end up getting them in the first ce then.

    ''What the hell is going on, how did the ckfin family use this to produce the liqueur'', thought Daimon before he turned to see the girls, if one doesn''t have an answer then what one has to do is simply ask to others, that''s something he already learned from his soulmates.

    "Can you try looking into this thing, if you discover something then just tell me", he said.

    "Mm", the girls nodded and happily cooperated, one by one they all grabbed the gray sphere and inspected it, even Thea and Marlene tried but couldn''t reach an answer, fortunately Daimon isn''t Erin''s disciple for nothing, something like an absolute dead end doesn''t exist, it''s one of the things Erin taught him, and in this case it came in handy, because even a negative answer is an answer.

    "If natives of the Wonder Myriad ster chart and natives of Neptune can''t identify it, then it''s safe to assume this thing isn''t from either of them¡­ how did the ckfin Duke get a hold of this?", asked Daimon to Mellie.

    "Sis mentioned that is a heirloom passed in their family since the times of the foundation of the kingdom, apparently is something they found in one of the special ces that sometimes open for those who do a trial toplete their emblem, the ckfin ancestor supposedly got it along with an emblem their family has held on since then", said Mellie.

    Daimon nodded, he then tried to use infinity eyes to see, maybe there was something they couldn''t see with mana sense, it was an incredibly useful way to trick a mage after all, only those with special eyes could get a different approach than with mana sense and even then, not all of the magic eyes had the same abilities.

    Luckily for Daimon, he could adjust what he wanted to see, and so he did, he tried with all theyers of the spectrum he knew off, mana, battle aura, temperature, x-ray, ultraviolet¡­ and the only thing he could confirm is that, the thing wasn''t hollow, there was nothing else hidden inside or something else mixed in it.

    He even took out his Sea Emblem to see if the little thing would swallow it, but there was no reaction.

    Daimon frowned, even the system wasn''t triggering a notification or something like that, like normally, Daimon''s eyes then glowed as he smirked.

    ''Restrictions huh¡­ I won''t depend on you then, the system works for me not the other way around'', he thought.

    Inside of an unknown space with a sky full of imposing chains, the blurred figure of a woman who was just floating there peacefully sleeping smiled.

    ''That''s it, don''t let your way be controlled by anything but you, my precious host'', mumbled Evangeline as she returned to sleep, not without looking at the sky where all those chain converged forming a cocoon, one of the big chains whose origin couldn''t be seen as it extended through the infinite vastness, cracked a bit more.

    "As of right now I can''t decipher what is this thing, but that doesn''t mean I have no use to it", said Daimon as he took out arge vase, he then used a low level spell to cast water, once the vase was full he threw the gray sphere into it.

    Unlike him others couldn''t get the ck Armored lineage from the liqueur sold by the ckfin family, but that didn''t mean they got no benefits from it, if they could endure it they would get stronger, it was a resource of some kind, one that didn''t make any distinctions between race, gender, status, lineage concentration or anything, only strength and will mattered, if you could endure it then you''ll benefit if not then¡­ you''ll die.

    "Are you going to make something like the liqueur sold by the ckfin family, this Empress has tasted it before and though it''s not horrible it''s taste is nothing special, this Empress will offer you a drop of Snake Ocean Wine, it''s done with Ster ranked materials, I guarantee its quality", said Thea, to which Marlene pouted.

    "What''s up with this difference in treatment, I your first and sole friend never got offered such a delicacy, if I remember correctly, you found that bottle in a one time cave that appeared under the sea", she said.

    The ck Empress shrugged in response.

    "I can give it to you if you have a death wish, though it''s called wine, in truth it''s more like a potion, and I can tell whether someone can drink it or not, it''s effects are quite nice, unfortunately it doesn''t affect me anymore as I have developed resistance to it, and it would be a waste to just drink the leftover drops of it for the taste, it will be an investment in my recently appointed general".

    Daimon nodded.

    "I''m not really doing liqueur with it, the ckfin family probably gave up on investigating about this material after they discovered the amazing effect it has at enhancing those from the younger generation who can stand its effect, for them it''s just a business which they lost due to me, do they probably think I''ll start making my own product to sell it, but that''s not it".

    Daimon then grinned.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "I want the concentrate created with just water and this ingredient", his instincts told him that it was futile to drink more of the liqueur, even if it was the one of the higher quality, which he got ess to thanks to Vincent, it simply won''t have any effect on him anymore, so the next thing to do was of course get it right out of the source.

    Unfortunately he''ll have to wait some time until the thing was finished, but he send the vase into an empty beast pouch, why do you ask, because unlike a storage ring, where things took way too long to age, in the beast pouch that wasn''t the case, time flowed normally there.

    He then sent it into his inventory, which could contain anything as long as it wasn''t "alive", normally the inventory worked as storage ring but enhanced, meaning that they time things to age was even longer, but when another spatial rted treasure was involved, then the properties of thetter were kept.

    "Well, now that, that is settled, I need you to leave for a moment, the second experiment might get a bit wild, miss Thea, Rita and Horals will stay with me, so please watch over them instead, once I finish and if I seed, I''ll tell you the result", said Daimon.

    "Fine, but you owe this Empress a cup of that drink you are making", answered Thea, the girls then left the room to give Daimon some space, Aisha included, her son didn''t hid things from her, so if he asked her to leave then there was a really good reason to it, so she didn''t ask and just smiled as she followed the sisters and the princesses, it was a good moment to get to know each other, since they''ll be fighting together and there was another training room next to the one Daimon was upying.

    "Let''s have a friendly spar~", she said to the others.

    Daimon waited until they left, to start with his second experiment, his shadow extended and Rita came out of it, as she rose the sides of her dress to greet Daimon.

    "Rita greets young master~", she said with a smiling expression.

    Then a green portal appeared from which the ck armored Horals emerged.

    "Horals greets young master, the honorabledies send their regards", said Horals as he kneeled down, he informed Erin and the others of everything that has happened per Daimon''s orders.

    Daimon nodded, he waved his hand and a battered corpse appeared on the ground, it was the corpse of the female assassin which tried to kill him.

    "Very well, watch over me, if you get any negative vibe, I allow you to interrupt me at any moment".

    "Yes!", they both answered.

    Daimon then touched the amphora ring which he hasn''t used in some time, it''s the treasure where the rest of the djinns he captured are being kept, truth to be told unlike Gars whose strength was enough to possess an Arch rank rted to the royal branch of the Alfear race, to be a spy for him, the others were too weak and for some reason they couldn''t advance in the gxies of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart, so they were stuck in the Lord realms, having not too much of a use for him, until now.

    Daimon ordered it and one of the djinns was taken out of the amphora ring, all of them had discarded the bodies of the lizardmen they possessed earlier and were now just in their shapeless form, just an umtion of red light without a form.

    "Dalton, can you possess this corpse, I want you to read whatever memories that are still there and give me a full detailed report of them".

    This was an idea Daimon got earlier, the djinns possessed the dead lizardmen to move freely and to be able to manifest their power in the Wonder Myriad Ster chart, since the ce from where they came had a different atmosphere, Gars could read rens memories after he possessed it, so this should be the same.

    The djinn trembled for a moment before saying.

    "I''m not a darkness element spirit, this body is too damaged and its element doesn''t align with mine, master, if I posses it I''ll just be able to keep it for a couple of minutes, my lifespan will be shortened too, do you still want to proceed?".

    The djinns were under a terror contract, so Daimon''s orders were absolute, even if they would die they had to obey, Daimon has already used one of the djinns to get information that surpassed the regtions of the Wonder Myriad Ster chart, about the Emperor realm, which ended in the djinn being exterminated by thews, so he didn''t really care about the djinns, they were there to kill him and the others, not to mention they lusted for Liz and Leslie due to they having fire affinities.

    But he still ordered them to tell him whether what he asked would kill them or not, because they were useful tools, which had the potential to be a spy if needed, also he had to keep some of them to be his guides, if he goes to their ce of origin in the future.

    "Go ahead, any information you can get will be rewarded, who know I might get a way to make you guys stronger and that will be awarded depending on contributions", said Daimon.

    The djinn had no other choice anyway, so he entered the corpse of the female assassin, which immediately exploded in mes, since it was so damaged it would burn in a few minutes, in which the djinn had to focus on reading the memories.

    In part this was one of the reasons Daimon didn''t want the others to see the process, it involved the fact that he could enve others this way, also while it was an enemy, he didn''t know Marlene''s stand regarding a member of her race being used like this.

    Many people hate necromancers, toying with the bodies of dead people is not well seen, by humans and the beast faction as well, demons and undead obviously don''t really care, it''s a cultural thing.

    Daimon couldn''t care less about the corpses of his enemies as well, but that didn''t mean he found pleasure on it, he was indifferent to the unpleasant spectacle in front of him, but the girls wouldn''t have been like that, even if they didn''t pity someone who tried to kill him, they would have had some negative reaction to it, as for Aisha who was the same as him he had a theory which he needed to confirm, so unless he was sure it was safe for her to be here, he wouldn''t leave her.

    ''I guess having gotten the vampire''s selfishness was a good way to adapt to this merciless world'', thought Daimon.

    He couldn''t imagine him a former human from a modern world not feeling ufortable with the current scene, prior to his reincarnation as a vampire, even if he hated his scumbag father, he wasn''t coldhearted, heck he didn''t even go hunting or something like that, the first time he killed was at that mountain, where Aisha died once.

 Chapter 371 A Spec Of Truth & Changes On The Plans

    Daimon who was lost in his thoughts for a moment, woke up from his daze as he heard djinn which was possessing the corpse of he female assassin scream, with a pained voice.

    "Ahhh!", the corpse which was still on fire started rolling on the ground, which made Daimon frown.

    "It hasn''t even been a minute, what the hell is going on", he mumbled, but then his pupils narrowed, the fire was overpowered by an eerie and repulsive looking ck mist.

    Daimon snorted, his body immediately exploded in white mes, that flooded the whole area, that was enough to extinguish the ck mist since it had barely started spreading, but surprisingly the body didn''t disappear along with it.

    Instead, it started swelling, and it was then when Rita and Horals immediately interrupted.

    "Shadow Heart Puppeteer, Cursed Doll House", with Rita''smand, the miniature castle appeared and sucked in the corpse of the female assassin, the then jumped into Daimon''s shadow and a shadow dome covered him.

    But that wasn''t the end, Horals also stepped in, he pped and then yelled.

    "Bone Maniption, Skeletal Crush!", then one of the fingers of the one general separated from his hand, and became a sh of green light that shed against the ck miniature castle.

    "Booom!", upon contact all the battle aura and vitality contained in Horals''s bone, who was basically eight Arch ranks in one exploded at once, he was controlling it, since it was a part of his body that he self-destructed, so the explosion didn''t expand, and instead concentrated in a small spot around the miniature ck castle, erasing it from existence, along with a portion of the floor.

    The explosion didn''tst that long though, in a matter of seconds everything was finished, and Daimon didn''t interrupt them, because although Dalton was as dead as one can be, following his orders, he still send him a report of what he could discover.

    Such was the might of the terror contract, against wishes, survival instincts or even the probably horrible pain the djinn experienced, he had to follow Daimon''s orders, andpiled the information he could until he met his limit and send it to him through the link they had thanks to the contract, not even a fraction of a secondter Daimon stopped feeling said contract, meaning the djinn was dead.

    Horals, then waved his hand and a current of wind was created due to his physical strength, dispersing the dust, so that it didn''t bother his young master, he even snapped his fingers and a metal throne raised from the ground.

    "Young master, please", said the bone general, Rita softly snorted from Daimon''s shadow, the ck dome integrating into the shadow and she came out of it.

    Daimon nodded and walked towards the throne before he sat on it, Horals remained kneeled down in front of Daimon, while Rita stood at his side like a proper maid, despite their differences they knew how to act as soon as they perceived a threat.

    "Let''s see what did our friend Dalton discovered, to think you would interfere despite that woman being undead", mumbled Daimon as he went through thest message sent by the djinn.

    Daimon frowned, the message was pretty chaotic, not because of how Dalton felt, but the memories which were quite blur to begin with.

    Back at earth the existence of souls was uncertain, some said they existed, others denied it, but in truth both theories were mere spections, no one had the means to confirm or deny it with full trust.

    But in this world were magic existed, the soul was a certainty, though not much was known about it, at the very least its existence was confirmed, surprisingly it was thanks to necromancy that the base of many religion beliefs were proved right, as the artificial undead were different than the naturally born undead due to that.

    In the world of magic, a soul wasn''t something that was given by a god or something along the lines of it, for them it was an umtion of knowledge, experiences and time, of which living beings are capable of, it could also be considered the origin of one''s personality, and supposedly it also took a form in the body.

    Just as a magic core was the form of mana, and a life spark was the form of battle aura, the soul was supposedly the form that one''s ego took, and along with the life spark disappeared when one died, since the life spark was rted to it in a sense too.

    Or at least that was the currently most epted hypothesis, anyway, the fact that a soul was missing from a body, didn''t mean everything was lost, memories also lived in certain parts of the brain, such was magic a mix between fantasy and science.

    Though for the people of this world, they put too much focus into the fantasy part, that''s why guys like the Greenwich Sage who thought out of the box were bound to make history, as the say goes, a one-eyed man is king in and of the blind.

    Anyway, while others had no way to retrieve the information in the brain, despite knowing it would stay there for a short period of time, necromancers do have a way, which is using their methods to turn the corpse into an artificial undead.

    Unfortunately the process takes too long, so 95% of the times they got nothing but an empty shell out of it, but the remaining and really scarce sesses, ended in an undead with "memories", not personality, but more like reflects or muscle memory, as well as other basic patterns, but again one of those could easily overpower other undead in the same level and offer resistance against those stronger than them, which only followed orders.

    Rita and Horals originals "races" were among those special artificial undead, a bone general who has the ability tomand weaker undead since it was created using the corpse of someone who excelled in that aspect when it was alive, and a bone sorcerer who knows what spells to cast to better support her master, due to the research she did when alive, those were the basic requirements for the corpses used to make them.

    What Daimon tried was different though, the djinns were ethereal beings, who could rece the soul of the former owner of the body, if the dead was fresh then they would literally take possession of everything the previous owner knew, of the killing method was a normal one.

    But given the amount of danger Rita felt, she didn''t only crush the body of the female assassin when she killed it, but she even attacked her soul, her affinity is darkness and darkness has the greatest capacity to affect ethereal beings and the mind, that''s why Yvonne could torture stronger enemies than her to death.

    Though Rita focuses more on control, she has that capacity too or she wouldn''t be able to live in Daimon''s shadow, or to bring Horals into a shadow as well, she could affect ethereal objects either in a positive or negative way, for Daimon it was the next step after illusions, the capacity to affect what is behind the mind, which is the soul.

    After a couple of minutes of processing what he could understand and reviewing the message a lot of times, Daimon sighed, but then he triumphantly smiled.

    "I win this one, you scheming bastard", he mumbled.<novelnext></novelnext>

    From the information he got, he could confirm a few suspicions he had, first Rita was right to directly not only kill but crush the soul of the female assassin, she had a trap hidden in her, so that at the moment of her death, she would not only self-destruct but blow away her soul and body, as to not leave any evidence.

    But that wasn''t all, she had a trigger to send a message to probably the guy who set the trap, and the condition was pretty interesting, "Someone simr to the hero", simr in what sense you might ask, a system user.

    Though it wasn''t described with that name, Daimon could deduct that a "God''s favorite" was how the people from the ancient Neptune described a system user, it was the fantasy part of this magic world doing it again, though it made sense, since to be honest the things a system could do were outrageous, like bringing someone back to life for example.

    The trap would activate if he was a system user, probably taking into ount a few things that Daimon had inmon with the hero, like the ck Armored Shark lineage, or other characteristics that the one behind the assassination try knew, in any case he could confirm that the hero was a system user, but the one behind this particr attack wasn''t.

    "That venerable ancestor from the White has entered the list again, the book that was taken away from the queen''s father studio, it should contain something about that time, something only the queen''s mother could read".

    "That could exin why the king wants to bring Ae to his side so much¡­ well since he is an idiot, he is probably just attracted to her, but the old monster probably motivated him when he was younger, since he wants her to read the book for him, hoping it can extend his life or lead him to the advance that has been avoiding him, or something like that".

    "He probably knows it, but he is also being used by those creatures whatever they are, probably they descend or served an enemy of the hero, or something like that and now are making their move", concluded Daimon, ording to Dalton''s message, the bandaged guy went into the royal castle, using a spatial array of some kind, that was thest piece of information he could get from the maid.

    And it was only there because she apanied him, how did they slip away from Brandon, it happened the night before when she went to the "bathroom", she disappeared and then returned in less than ten minutes through that array.

    Dalton described a route to follow all the way to a hidden door, but whatid there was missing, either the maid''s memory was erased through some spell or that part disappeared along with her soul.

    In any case this meant one of the yers behind the shadows was practically confirmed, and the best part is that supposedly that same ancestor will be present in the banquet of the royal family that will take ce after the three-art tournament, and in an even better luck strike, the old bastard was sleeping so the one in charge was the creature, which wasn''t a servant but more of a coborator, so he didn''t know about its death.

    ''I need to do some preparations, let''s see what you are hiding, White royal family'', thought Daimon.

    ¡­

    With this the experiments were over for today, Daimon was honestly a bit frustrated, but luckily the old ancestor wasn''t as tricky as the guy behind the pirates and Skelefiends, probably because his time was ending and had to rush due to that, while the other didn''t.

    The girls then returned into the room, they were all a bit untidied, a result of what they were doing while waiting, even Marlene was like that, the only one who was perfectly tidied was Thea.

    Luckily the room Daimon was using was soundproof and was reinforced so they didn''t heard the loud explosion or the screams from earlier, still Daimon exined to them what he learned, obviously making some adjustments to the story.

    But they got the gist of it, basically, the ancestor of the White royal family was sure to have done a deal with that strange creature that was recing the shadow of the ckfin family, and that he probably wanted what was written in the book Mellie and Ae''s mother read, unfortunately that discarded the old guy as the one responsible of their death, but since it was in their father''s studio, and was of interest for such a strong guy, then their father was going to have to answer some questions, one way or another.

    Daimon also ordered Horals to split itself and Rita to send a piece of him to the shadow of all the girls, this time he told them beforehand, the head stayed in Aisha''s shadow of course, he did it because the other party had a way to get to system users, using some sort of curse or other weird magic.

    But Rita and Horals could detect it and stop it from activating, as for Thea and the other adults they didn''t need his protection, as they were strong enough to counter it head on, the spell was clearly aimed at people from the young generation.

    Speaking of them, they surprisingly returned earlier than what the Trident Marshal and judging by their expressions, what happened in the meeting wasn''t up to their liking.

    "Kid, the tournament''s date was moved, that Minister bastard suddenly decided to change it to tomorrow, since many nobles simply weren''t happy with the result of my best hunt event, so they asked him to, or that''s the excuse he used, but since Triten was smiling from ear to ear, it''s safe to assume the crowned prince made some kind of advance, be careful", said Vincent.

    Daimon nodded in response.

    "Don''t worry, I need to ess the treasury, so I''ll win".

    The ck Empressughed with an approbatory expression on her face.

    "The more you crush that idiot king''s pride, the more this Empress will reward you", she said.

    They then went to the dining room to have a meal together, in which Daimon took advantage of the moment to tell them what he discovered, Vincent and the queen immediately epted Daimon''s reasoning, since both had their suspicions from the very beginning.

    Ae and Mellie were especially thankful, that Daimon got a new hint regarding their mother''s death, even if they didn''t get the responsible, they had an idea on who to interrogate to learn the truth.

    If you can''t directly defeat the big boss, the correct way to proceed is to aim for theirckeys.

    ''Those two idiots are going to have a rough time soon'', thought Daimon, seeing that both Ae and the Vs Duchess now had cold dead serious expressions on their pretty faces, the king should have more information that they could use to solve the puzzle and since he is the weakest link, he has be the next target along with the ckfin Duke.

 Chapter 372 Arriving At Arc City

    After exchanging some more information, Daimon and the girls returned to their room, since the tournament was moved to tomorrow they needed to rest and the previous night wasn''t exactly rxing considering everything that happened.

    Before leaving, Daimon pulled the queen aside and gave her Pablo''s contact, he already ordered to follow the queen''s orders as if it were his, ktr was a gold mine of information, but it wasn''t useful for him, but for Ae who had to deal with the nobles.

    He also handed her the corpse of the ckfin Duke''s shadow, he already inspected it using his methods and besides the fact that the heart was missing, everything else was normal, unfortunately the guy has been dead for a long time so even if he were to use another djinn, he wouldn''t get anything out of it.

    But that didn''t mean it was totally useless, it was a perfect ckmailing material to make the ckfin Duke spill the beans, which was Ae''s specialty.

    Of course receiving such a "gift" made the queen be in a happy mood, that and she was really grateful that Daimon got some hints regarding her mother''s death.

    "You just focus on winning tomorrow, leave the rest to us¡­ also I''ll leave Mellie and Daphne in your hands~".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, after the Duchess found out he was now acting as Mellie and Jasmin''s bodyguard, she asked the same for her daughter, and honestly there was no reason to refuse, since he was going to watch over her anyway, not to mention the Duchess offered him a good payment, in the form of precious minerals and metals.

    Her Dukedom was the territory with the higher number of mines in the Clear Water kingdom, not for anything she dared to go against Triten openly, they needed the resources extracted there.

    For Daimon it was a good opportunity maybe he''ll find something up to the liking of Disaster, and if not, he''ll still get a good gift for Liz, it was a win-win situation, what surprised him is that the queen mentioned Daphne regarding the tournament tomorrow.

    Unlike the beast hunt where teaming with other groups was possible, in the tournament that wasn''t the case, seeing Daimon''s confused expression the queen giggled and then said.

    "Ah right, I forgot to tell you, besides the date, there were other adjustments made, since many participants died during the beast hunt and a whole bunch of the ones who survived aren''t in a good mind state, the number of members per team increased to decrease the number of rounds, so now the groups will consist in 12 people, I took the liberty of disposing of two of the free spots, hope you don''t mind~".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, how could he who has lived with the a certain cunning fox girl, not recognize a cunning smile when he saw one, but he just shrugged.

    "Aisha, the sisters, the three princesses and me, are the first 8 members so who are the other two?", he asked.

    The queen rose two of her pretty fingers as she answered.

    "The little maid of Daphne and the daughter of patriarch Underwood, they have a decent level and I saw you getting along with them, so I invited them and both epted, much to the displease of patriarch Skyfire, so you can expect some more "rivals" besides the crowned prince and the second son of the ckfin Duke".

    "As for the leftover two, you can use them however you see fit, there will be a selection before the tournament starts, so those who don''t have a team yet can enter one, unfortunately those kids from the middle ranked noble families that travelled with you and Mellie were taken out of the events by their parents, they survived but suffered some injuries after all".

    Without leaving Daimon say anything, the queen disappeared from the dining room, leaving behind a speechless Daimon.

    "Rivals huh, well I had to beat them up to win anyway, and those two are certainly decent, since they didn''t betray Daphne and Jasmin, even when their lives were at the stake¡­ I guess is time to deal with those two, since Adam is still out of the picture", mumbled Daimon.

    Daimon couldn''t help but feel there was something off, Adam simply disappeared from the beast hunt, others simply thought he was killed and eaten by some magic beast, but Jasmin saw him vanishing into thin air, and as a system user he wasn''t so easy to kill.

    Besides that, there was still Marcus and the other people from the gxies that came with them, who has yet to appear, though they might be at the other side on the firstyer of Neptune, where Aleah and the others were trapped.

    He was also wondering were did the women from the cmity and light churches were, Scarlet and the others should be with them as well, at the very least he can confirm they are fine since they signed a contract with him which is still in ce, the same for Calvin and his other ssmates they were with them too, so they should be fine.

    ¡­

    The rest of the day went uneventful, besides Thea and Marlene stating to sleep with Daimon and the girls, for safety reasons, despite Karmandi and Lina lecturing the Empress, nothing else happened and soon the night came and everyone went to sleep.

    After a few hours the Warhammer city became lively and active again, since more than a day has happened after the incident with the pirates and Skelefiends and the king himself made an announcement that the everything was fine now, the citizens returned to their normal routines.

    Which included the festive atmosphere that came along with the most important events of the year, this time it was the turn of the second of the three, the three-art tournament held by the Minister of development, where not only the strong could show their prowess like on the beast hunt, but those who specialized in the art of war and also schrs could shine, it was an event where manymoners had jumped on the stage, since major noble houses recruited those who outstood there, basically it was a way to scout talents, to secure the prosperity of the kingdom.

    Daimon and the others woke up and joined the adults at the dining room, Vincent wasn''t in a great mood today, since he and the Minister of development didn''t get along at all.<novelnext></novelnext>

    "That double faced bastard, trying to cut the budget for the army, but publicly always talking about the greater good for the kingdom", said the Trident Marshal as he softly snorted.

    The queenughed at her uncle, before she turned to see Daimon.

    "So, do you have someone in mind for the leftover spots?", she asked, to which Daimon nodded.

    "Yes, do you remember the two that surpassed the three favorites before they started counting the extra points, they alsoe from outside of Neptune, so they are the best option", he said.

    The queen made memory and remembered a girl with white hair and another with a mix of blond and ck hair.

    "Are you sure they''ll join you, they have a chance to get the first ce as well, not to mention a lot of people are probably going to ask them to join them, including the three favorites, they were among the top after all?", asked the queen.

    Daimon smirked in response.

    "I''m counting on that", the queen saw that Daimon wasn''t saying anything else and she ultimately chose to believe he had a way to bring them over, if not they can just choose someone from the people she knows are trustable anyway.

    ''That exins why I couldn''t keep a trail of those two though, it was as if they vanished, I wonder if all the people from the outside world are full of surprises like them'', thought Ae.

    She of course kept an eye in the promising participants, but her informants lost track of those two, if Daimon wanted them to join, then they must have their own means to stand out, which would exin why her subordinates couldn''t follow them.

    Once everyone had finished their breakfast, Vincent guided them out of his mansion, the tournament was going to take ce at the territory of the Arcarius family, unlike the Wild Tide Reef property of the Trident Marshal''s family, the Calm Trike which was a legacy of the Arcarius family, was located in the Clear Water kingdom, but was only essible to the Minister of development and those who were close to him, it was a protected area so to speak.

    That''s why no one objected to the tournament taking ce despite they being attacked previously, because the location this time was in the kingdom, not even near the borders, so it should be safe.

    Outside of the mansion, there were people already waiting for them, Daimon immediately recognized, the patriarch Underwood from the Bamboo Forest sect and his daughter Cassy, apanying them was the maid and childhood friend of Daphne, Chris as well as a woman who looked simr to her but older, probably her mother, the security head of the queen, Mina was also with them, she watched over Chris and her mother, by the request of the Duchess.

    "If everyone is ready, let''s go", said Vincent, the neers approached the group and Daimon saw Chris''s mother bowing towards the Vs Duchess, and standing behind of her, which exined their rtionship, apparently Chris''s family is subordinated to the Vs family, but they grow together and act more as friends.

    Daphne was happy to see Chris, and Cassy greeted Jasmin, happy to see her friend seemed better than before, with everyone''s approval, Vincent tapped his right foot on the ground and then an array light up on the ground around them.

    After what happened the prestige of the Trident Marshal took a serious blow, since the array that his family set up in the Wild Tide Reef was corrupted, of course that was only an opinion of those whose statuses didn''t grant them ess to the information, that said it was ck Beard the one who messed up with the array, in other words one of the only two Ster ranked rune masters in Neptune.

    In any case, all the nobles had their ways to travel, some left earlier and travelled in caravans, others paid to use the spatial arrays the kingdom had at the major cities, and so on.

    They didn''t take too long to reach their destination, since the territory of the Arcarius family is on the central area of the kingdom, simr to the territory of Vincent''s family, as they were the other pir of this ce.

    The scenery changed, from the traditional and sturdy but well-designed architecture at Warhammer city, to a more modern approach, focused on efficiency, just by gazing at his surroundings, Daimon could tell why Vincent and the Minister didn''t get along, they were like oil and water.

    The group immediately drew the attention of the people that were in the vicinity, since this wasn''t Vincent''s territory, he had to transport to the allowed areas, though he did have a private spot given his status.

    With a wave of his hand, Vincent took out arge carriage from his storage ring, one who had the emblem of his family and medals that made everyone know, the Trident Marshal was riding on it.

    "Get on, we are in Arc city, that guy will take us to the Calm Trike, once everyone is reunited at the center of the city, I''ll take you to the city lord''s mansion", said Vincent.

    Everyone followed Vincent''s instructions and got on the carriage, when Daimon was about to close the door behind him, he felt a few gazes on him but when he turned around there was a lot of people, so he couldn''t tell where they originated.

    ''Let''s see who will win this round, scheming bastard and old monster'', he thought as he closed the door.

 Chapter 373 Selection & Calm Tri-Lake Forest (Part 1)

    Along the way, Daimon observed the city through the double-sided windows of the carriage, just like Warhammer city is full of decorations that allude to the race to which the Trident Marshal belongs, in the form of hammerhead sharks, Arc city has decorations rted to turtles.

    ''So the minister of development''s race is like that annoying ice manipting turtle from the trial of the lineage temple'', thought Daimon.

    It made sense though, in the eyes of the public, the only one on par in terms of strength with Vincent in the Clear Water kingdom, was the Minister of Development, and the Arcarius family, just like the Malleus family, are founding ns of the kingdom.

    But they take care of twopletely different things, the Trident Marshal specializes in offensive and the Minister in defense, that''s why Vincent said that in a battle between them, it will take too much time to decide a victor, though he is confident in not losing, stalling is also a way to win depending on the situation.

    Just like back then at Warhammer city when the beast hunt was about to begin, the streets of Arc city were crowned, everyone was celebrating, some in bars or restaurants where the fights were going to be show through mirror tes, because unlike the beast hunt, the three-art tournament happened in the territory of the kingdom, so it was easier to cover.

    Luckily, everyone recognized the emblem of the Trident Marshal, and while the people of Arc city, supported the Minister, they still didn''t dare to show any disrespect to a legend like Vincent, and instead parted way to let his carriage pass through.

    "Being famous surely has its advantages, right old man", said Daimon, to which Vincentughed.

    "Of course, this old man hasn''t been working his whole life for nothing you know".

    Leaving aside the casual chat, they soon arrived at their destination, the center of the city, where the mansion of the city lord stood tall and imposing.

    "Tsk, that bastard added anotheryer, I''ll make minerger once we retu mumbled the Trident Marshal, making the queen sigh.

    Many of the nobles left earlier so by the time Daimon''s group arrived, a lot of people were already there and just like with Vincent, there were seats prepared for the representatives, depending on their statuses of course.

    The carriage stopped and then the door opened, before everyone got down of it, Daimon looked at a sign a few meters away from the podium prepared for the Minister to greet everyone, the rules always differed from year to year, and no one knew what the changed would be until the event was about to start.

    The queen and the other adults went to take their seats, since the old generation and the young generation had their own things to do, so Daimon was left alone with the girls, actually Thea wanted to wander around with them, but she was dragged away by Lina and Karmandi, since getting the permission for them to attend wasn''t easy and they didn''t want her to cause troubles.

    Daimon guided the girls to where the people of the young generation was gathered, in other words that sign with the rules, along the way of course many recognized him as the champion of the beast hunt, he was also apanied by the two princesses of the kingdom and the princess of the Light Pce, not to mention his original group which only consisted in pretty girls, so naturally he stood out a lot.

    Ignoring the gossiping and the plethora of different gazes from the other participants, Daimon approached the sign to read the rules.

    "Mm, nothing seems to have changed and here I thought, things were going to get messy since I was the winner", said Daimon, making the nearby nobles frown.

    Among them, one guy left the crowd and approached Daimon.

    "The friend there, I can''t ignore your previous words, Lord Minister has nothing but admiration for those who show the talent to improve the kingdom, no matter the origins", proudly said the guy, as he red at Mellie.

    Since Vincent and the Minister are openly against each other, and Mellie is considered as the niece of Vincent, she is obviously looked as an enemy by the noble families subordinated to the Minister, to which this guy apparently belonged.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head, though the Minister didn''t change the rules to mess with him, he also didn''t add any extras like in previous years, the queen of course informed Daimon of the bonuses he as the champion of the first event should have gotten in the past tournaments.

    For example, his team would have been in standby until the end, only having to face the team that defeated all the others, but this time, that wasn''t the case, his team was instead put in the penultimate round of eliminatory matches, where there were space for other three teams.

    In other words, he was going to have to fight one of the three favorites before getting to thest round, it might not be such a big deal in the eyes of others, but Daimon isn''t easy to fool, the Minister wanted to see his abilities, since everyone doubted of his abnormally high result back at the beast hunt, there was also the possibility of the Minister supporting the crowned prince, and wanting to give him the chance to study the only opponent of which he didn''t know anything.

    Not like Daimon cared since the result was going to be the same.

    ''Well, at least I don''t need to go through the hassle of ying around with the other nobles, we''ll only have to participate after those three had wiped the extras'', he thought, besides that the other rules were pretty much the standard, no killing, no weapons past the Half Ster rank, in fact until the penultimate round where the favorites would sh, the participants will be given standard weapons to make thepetition fairer, no people past the middle stage of the Lord realm, no external help meaning scrolls and other aiding treasures were forbidden, that was all, other instructions will be given once the events start.

    Seeing that Daimon was ignoring him, the guy that stood out to defend the Minister, snorted and left.

    Daimon gathered mana in his eyes and then smiled before saying.

    "Let''s go meet ourst two teammates".

    The girls nodded and then they followed him towards one of the corners were a smallmotion seemed to be ongoing.

    ¡­<novelnext></novelnext>

    In the direction to which Daimon was heading, a lot of people were surrounding a couple of girls, all of them were shouting their proposals, trying to get them to join their respective teams.

    "You two still don''t have a team right, how about you join my Gaze family''s team, we were in the top 20 back at the first event, depending on the result you''ll get a reward from my father, he is the n head and a Peak Half Ster rank!", said a tall guy with a full green armor.

    "Screw you, my Rega family was in the top fifteen of the beast hunt, we offer you the same conditions, plus five million low quality sea crystals, also my father is an Early Stage Ster rank!".

    And simrments to that were being thrown around all over the ce, surprisingly no one in the top ten was here, but that is probably because of the three neers that just arrived right now.

    "Excuse me youngdies, I happen to have two people who couldn''t arrive on time, it would be my pleasure to have you in my team, I''m sure the rewards will be up to your liking, fifty million sea crystals and a Half Ster rank weapon of your choice for the penultimate round, if we win I''ll add the treasure to your reward, and also concede you an audience with mu royal father".

    The first one to spoke was a tall handsome youth with blue hair, and a mix of a robe and light green armor, in his hands he held a flute with an exquisite design, it was the crowned prince who is actually rted by blood to not only the king but also the Trident Marshal, Terry Malleus.

    "As expected of a royal your conditions are quite incredible Terry, but my Spear of the sea unit isn''tcking in any aspect, we offer fifty million sea crystals of low quality and ten of middle quality, as well as materials from Half Ster magic beasts of your election from our storage, if we win, a middle stage Ster rank, in other words general Dominic will personally revise your fighting styles and give you pointers and training for a year".

    The second to speak, just because he was a bit faster and way less "refined", than the second son of the ckfin Duke, was the young spear, who was wearing a blue armor and holding a yellow spear the only one who started as amoner in the three favorites, Lance Varsi.

    "Humph, why would these esteemed misses want to listen to the opinions of a madman, my ckfin family offers one hundred million low quality sea crystals, a set of potions on the Half Ster rank grade, and one ingredient on the same level free to choose from our stock, as well as a business opportunity with my father, also a middle stage Ster ranked and the Minister of Defense".

    The third one was of course the second son of the ckfin Duke, Ezequiel ckfin, who was wearing a heavy ck armor and a holding a battle axe over his shoulder.

    "Sigh, as expected of the top three¡­ there no way others can offer such good conditions", said the other people who wanted to recruit the two girls in the center of the group.

    It''s not like they can offer arge sum of money or the Half Ster resources, though it will put a small strain on the economy of their families, they have Half Ster and even early stage Ster ranks in their families, the big wall that they can''t surpass is the fact that the number of middle stage Ster ranked powerhouses in the kingdom can be counted with the fingers of two hands, and they are tied to the neo nobles, the founding families or the old noble faction as well as the royals.

    No matter how much money one has, you can''t buy the time of such people, who are only second to the Trident Marshal or the Minister of Development in the whole kingdom, not to mention only middle stage Ster ranks can safely hunt Ster ranked magic beasts alone, meaning they have materials of Ster rank to spare, with enough saving a Ster ranked treasure is a possibility for them, it''s simply another level.

    Tessa and Femi were thinking about the offers, when the encirclement was suddenly broken, more urately a breach opened because those who stood in the way of a tall silver haired youth were pushed aside against their will.

    "I''ll guarantee you the first ce, if you join my team".

    "¡­"

    A sepulchral silence fell on the area as they heard the words of the silver haired youth, before the crowd went crazy over such a bold affirmation.

    Tessa and Femi stared at each other and saw the confusion in the eyes of the other, they never expected that overbearing guy toe out of his way to invite them join him.

    Daimon has left such a strong impression on them, that they were sure he had the bigger chance to win this event, just like he did on the first one, so they were sure he didn''t need them, which means there must be another reason, he is someone who forced the envoys of the Light and Cmity churches to follow his orders, after all, his strategy capacities were on a league of their own.

    And pretty much akin to what they were thinking, they received a voice transmission directly to their ears, like the whispers of the devil tempting the Alfear and Dwarf princesses.

    ''Something interesting is about to happen in this, when it bes public everyone will know we aren''t from Neptune, if you join my g, I''ll grant you my protection as well as resources from this ce depending on your contribution to the team, of course we''ll sign a contract''.

    Tessa and Femi looked at each other, before they both answered.

    "We are in, it''s a pleasure to work with you"

    Needless to say, but the almost immediate answer, send the crowd into a turmoil, also the offers of the three favorites which made all of them drool, were rejected just like that, it was outrageous.

    Daimon smiled and pointed the way for them to leave this crowned area with his group, Tessa and Femi stood up from their seats and walked towards Daimon, they were received by Aisha and the other girls.

    At the same time, Daimon''s gaze met the ones of the crowned prince as well as the second son of the ckfin Duke, the young spear on the other handughed and greeted Daimon before he left, free spirited as when he arrived, though disappointed as he couldn''t recruit strong people for his team.

    "Humph!", Ezequiel snorted at Daimon and left the scene, while the crowned prince didn''t say anything and also left followed by most of the crowd which wanted to incur in his favor.

 Chapter 374 Selection & Calm Tri-Lake Forest (Part 2)

    Since the crowd was still quite noisy in this area, Daimon guided the girls to the seats for the members of the young generation, along the way he observed that there were participants he has never seen before, probably from the families subordinated to the Minister of Development.

    And of course it didn''t escape his eyes, that some of the teammates of both the first prince and Ezequiel were new.

    ''What free spots, you bastards already got reinforcements from that old Minister'', he thought.

    Normally Daimon wouldn''t have gone to the seats, since they were next to each other, and judging by Tessa''s gaze, it was obvious she had some questions to ask, but since he was the champion, the distribution was made so a whole row of seats was separated from the rest, and reserved just for his team, pretty much a way to recognize the winner, though Daimon knew this wasn''t prepared for him.

    "We have some time, if you want to ask something now is the moment, also don''t worry about our "secret", everyone is this group is aware of it".

    Tessa softyughed before saying.

    "Well, in that case I would like to start by asking why are you using a disguise, Daimon?", she asked.

    Daimon chuckled, this was also why he chose to bring these two to his team, back then at the firstyer of Neptune he met them with his real appearance, so it should have been impossible for them to know Gabriel is Daimon.

    Especially considering the fact that he previously only showed himself as a mage, he didn''t even use Demon Light when he shed with Adam and Marcus, just darkness element and Gram, though he induced light mana into Gram, if asked it could easily be attributed to Gram, since it has the ability to convert any energy into light anyway.

    Aisha and the sisters were also disguised when Tessa and Femi saw them back at the beginning of the beast hunt, and as Gabriel he has only used battle aura in public, his firm of energy, realm, cultivation and overall aura ispletely different as Gabriel and yet back then he noticed these two somehow recognized him.

    "I should be the one asking regarding that, you two wouldn''t have joined my team if you didn''t know it was me from the very beginning, so how did you recognize me, I have some confidence in my disguising abilities you know".

    This time it was the dwarf princess the one who answered.

    "Don''t underestimate us¡­ is what I would like to say, but honestly we only did it, because of that characteristic smirk of yours, well more urately it was Tess the one who recognized it", she said as she shrugged.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, he got caught due to this bad habit of his.

    ''I guess, I''ll wear a mask that covers my whole faceter'', he thought before saying.

    "So, how do you suggest we deal with this, as you can imagine this is a secret I want to keep, so it will be troublesome for me if you were to talk".

    Tessa and Femi didn''t notice it earlier, but they were surrounded, they unconsciously sat next to Daimon and didn''t pay attention to who was sitting at the other side, which is Aisha, but for them it''s the one among the group of which they can feel the most threat, besides Daimon, they were now trapped between the sword and the wall so to speak.

    Tessa slightly shook her head in response.

    "Yeah, I don''t want to die yet, so we can include silence regarding this matter in the contract, will that be enough?", she asked.

    She has once dealt with Daimon, and though overbearing he isn''t unreasonable, back then he could have killed them all if he wanted to, the girl from the Penddra family attacked first, so it would have been justified, but he didn''t.

    Out of all the horrible oues she imagined for them after that woman screwing up things on her own, she was only asked to be a guide, they weren''t even mistreated and instead their integrity was respected, something rare to find, in other words, for her Daimon can be considered a decent guy.

    Daimon nodded, that''s why he chose these two to join them, they were pretty easy going, though it''s not like they had a choice, since if they refused he could just silence them, he had the support to do so.

    Tessa let out a sigh of relief, one can never be too cautious, she and Femi epted because Daimon mentioned he will grant them protection, meaning that he wasn''t going to kill them, as to why they believed him, they just knew it, alfear are pretty sensible in which understanding others regards after all.

    "We can leave the other subjects forter, this thing is about to start, but we won''t be participating right away, so we''ll have a more private ce to talk", said Daimon, he saw that thest seats were finally upied and it was the king the one who arrivedst, so things were about to start.

    "Mm", Tessa and Femi nodded and then everyone''s attention was drawn at the podium where a portal suddenly appeared, an old man that seemed to be in the same range of age of Vincent, came out of it.

    But the neer waspletely the opposite of the Trident Marshals, who though retired hasn''t softened in training so his battle skills don''t rust, the Minister was a tall but slim man, who exuded the aura of an experienced erudite.

    The old man approached the podium and then amplified his voice.

    "Esteemed guests from the Elemental Sea, his majesty and highnesses as well as the heroes from the young generation, let me first wee you to this Arc city and to the Three-Art Tournament, held by my Arcarius family!", said the old man with an enthusiastic voice.

    The crowd pped, the especially those who were subordinated to the Minister, who then looked at the king, following the tradition, Triten raised his hand and the sounds stopped.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Thanks for such weing words, Minister Raymond".

    With those words, the Minister had the greenlight to continue, with his speech.

    "Since this time we have guests from another sea for the first time, I''ll personally exin the rules of my tournament, but first let''s change the location and don''t worry, my most trusted guards have been inspecting the area daily, to assure the participants safety, not to mention we will be personally supervising the event".

    Having said that, the Minister snapped his fingers and arge portal opened next to him.

    "Now please follow the order in which your seats were prepared and enter this portal, which will lead us to the Calm Tri-Lake Forest".

    Starting from the royals which included Ae, and the higher ranked people like Vincent, Aurora, the general of the neo nobles, the ckfin Duke, the patriarchs of the Elemental Sea as well as some people Daimon didn''t recognize, everyone went through the portal.

    It didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that Thea, Karmandi and Lina weren''t included, and left forter.

    ''Petty tricks'', he thought.

    Anyway once the members of the old generations were gone, it was time for the participants, and Daimon''s group was the first one on the list, so they stood up and walked towards the portal, along the way Daimon noticed the hatred filled expression of Ezequiel, since Tessa and Femi were walking next to him, as well as the neutral but still sharp gaze of the crowned prince.

    Then to everyone''s surprise, Daimon didn''t enter the portal and instead walked towards the where the ck Empress was sitting, before saying.

    "Miss Thea, since the promptness of your visit, seems to have taken the Minister by surprise, to the point that your seat was ced so far from those with a simr status, I can assume you weren''t assigned a good spot to enjoy theing matches, I happened to have been assigned the champion''s skybox which is quite spacious, as it is normally used by the royal family, it would be an honor if you apany us, it''s fine right Senior Raymond, after all I have heard that others can stay with the champion as an exception?", said Daimon as he gazed at the Minister, who had a dead serious expression.

    ''This brat¡­'', thought the Minister, but he had no choice but to smile and answer.

    "Yes, little friend is right, my subordinates had a rough time since the previous incident, so they seem to have had mixed the seats, you can dispose of the skybox as you see fit".

    Daimon inwardly snorted at the upright expression of the Minister, since he is a supporter of the royal family, it''s normal for him to despise Thea, but he can only y these underhanded tricks, and not openly mess with her, or his image will be stained.

    That being said, never in a million years, he imagined a member of the young generation would directly go against him like this, on the other hand he heard that this time''s champion, seems to have been taken under the wing of the ck Empress, so he attributed this feat to her.

    Thea smiled and then got from her seat.

    "Sure, this Empress will apany general Gabriel, and cheer up for his victory", she said as she red at the Minister.

    The other participants were in awe at Thea calling Daimon "general", normally they wouldn''t know about Thea, but since it''s the first time a magic beast from the Maelstrom Sea, has been epted as a guest of the kingdom, she was a hot topic, so at this point it''s known by the nobles that she is Daimon''s backer.

    Without saying anything else or even looking at the Minister again, Daimon and the others entered through the portal, and a few secondster appeared in a different ce, the change in scenery was quite remarkable.

    From the modern Arc city, to a naturalndscape, Daimon fell the gazes of the nobles that are subordinated to the Minister falling on him, probably because Thea was apanying him, and they knew it shouldn''t be the case, but they could only swallow it and remain silent, since the Minister didn''t stop them.

    "That''s our skybox", said Daimon as he pointed at the ce that was assigned to him, the Calm Tri-Lake Forest, as its name states is a forestall zone, in which''s center there are threekes of different colors and characteristics.

    Since it''s a protectednd, the only buildings allowed are those prepared by the Minister for the tournament, which consist in some stadium bleachers surrounding the center of the forest, so that the spectators can enjoy the matches, tforms floating in the middle of the threekes and the skyboxes for the VIP''s.

    Daimon''s gaze met with Ae''s and he nodded at her, before his group went into the skybox, back when he was dered the winner of the beast hunt, Vincent gave him a medal, which worked as the key, he just showed it and the door opened for them.

    "As expected of something prepared for the royals, it''s quite luxurious" mumbled Daimon.

    Besides therge space inside the skybox, there were individual seats, a couch, a table with pretty good-looking food, a private bathroom and even a bar, not to mention the view from up here was incredible.

    There were also three mirror tes that would allow them to see the matches in a more detailed way, it was quite something.

    Once the rest of the participants went through the portal, the Minister followed them and then flew to the center of the threekes.

    "Now that we are all here, I will exin the rules for the sake of our guests, everyone please enjoy themodities offered by my Arcarius family in the meanwhile, also for safety reasons only certain people is allowed to use anymunication devices, so bear that in mind".

 Chapter 375 The Tournament Begins

    While floating in the middle of the area where the threekes would converge if not for a natural rock separation, the Minister proceeded to exin the rules.

    "This forest was discovered by my ancestors, who saw the potential in the three coloredke that forms once every year for a few seconds".

    "From right to left, we have the Mind Cleansingke, the Spirit Enhancingke andstly the Body Temperingke!", said the Minister as he pointed at the three differentkes in front of him.

    Daimon whose who had taken the seat right in the middle of the room, observed thekes, each one had a different shade of blue painting its waters, sky blue, sapphire blue andstly cobalt blue, respectively.

    Needless to say those were colors not that easy to find in water bodies, and if his eyes weren''t wrong, it''s because they originate from the minerals thaty deep down at the bottom of thekes.

    ''Damn, even with my infinity eyes I can''t see the bottom¡­ how deep are those things'', wondered Daimon.

    Noticing Daimon''s curiosity, Mellie''s eyes sparkled, she who is an avid reader, as her innate ability basically makes her a living encyclopedia, proceeded to exin.

    "It is said that the origin of the colors of thekes are underwater deposits of precious minerals, the fact that this event is hold yearly is because it takes a year for small pieces of those minerals to surface, that is how deep the bottom is".

    "Also, the price for the winner of the tournament is the three-colored water that is only created after that natural phenomenon, but the minerals belong to the Arcarius family and besides the yearly tribute they pay to the royal family, they never sell or trade them since it''s said they use it to reinforce their ice attribute".

    "Oh?", now Daimon''s interest was picked, he has gotten a nice souvenir for Liz, but nothing for ine, so this is a good chance, also that three-colored water sounded like a natural treasure of some kind.

    Returning to the Minister, he proceeded to tell some of the history of thekes, before continuing with the information rted to the tournament.

    "The reason as to why this tournament is only hold yearly, is because only when the three waters converge, their waters are beneficial for living beings, which only happens for a fraction of a second, the rest of the years, if someone where to try and dive into the waters, the result would be¡­ an horrible death", said the Minister, he then threw a stone into each of thekes, to show everyone the result.

    For the firstke, the stone froze and then shattered, the secondke caused the stone to explode at the spot, as for the third one, as soon as it touched the water it sank and disappeared, the water of the thirdke was the darker meaning light was absorbed by it.

    "This is just a friendly reminder, but if you or your mana or battle aura were to touch the water of thekes, for the first ones the result would be what you saw, as for the third one, your body would be turned into minced meat immediately, as for those who think spatial type abilities or treasures can help you, forget it, the water of thekes makes it so the space below are chaotic enough to shred even me, so please bear it in mind".

    Daimon heard the "friendly" reminder of the Minister and he snorted, it was clearly just a threat, he was basically telling everyone to not covet the resources of his family.

    "That being said, let''s start with the firstke, the Mind Cleansingke, in which the strategy matches will be upheld, naturally it won''t be a simple exam to see how skilled are the participants in the art of war, but a real challenge".

    "Because besides the few seconds in which thekes converge, those standing at a certain distance from the waters of the firstke, will have their minds clouded, the tform will turn into a maze and you and your team will have to face both real and imaginary threats, the winner can be decided two ways, first if the whole team besides the strategist first leaves the maze, or if the strategist alone leaves the maze, whatever happens first".

    From the skybox Daimon raised an eyebrow, he didn''t see anythinging from theke with his infinity eyes, which meant it was probably an emission of some kind, one which is invisible, odorless and colorless.

    ''Now that is some scary stuff, luckily it can''t be manipted by anyone, could it be¡­", Daimon then practically injected 80% of his mana into his eyes, and only then he was able to catch a glimpse of them.

    ''Laws'', he thought before he forcefully deactivated his infinity eyes, back then when he was falling in the ice tunnel where Dimas''s cave was located, there werews sealing movement, he was somewhat able to discern them, because they weren''t at the Ster rank.

    Now he has learned to more or less calcte the prowess of an Ster ranked, by the amount ofws that unconscious to them, swirl around their bodies, in other words, those arews that don''t belong to them, otherwise he would suffer if he wanted to see them, just like it happened when he learned Blink, but a thousand times worse, just like it was happening right now.

    Aisha immediately leaned Daimon against her shoulder and helped him calm down, the pain he was suffering wasn''t physical so the cure wasn''t physical, though he felt as if his head was about to split.

    Still Daimon''s face didn''t show it, Aisha noticed it because as his mother she can read him like an open book, and also because of the connection she has with him as a soulmate.

    So in the eyes of most of the other people they were just ying around like normal, though there were two who noticed something was weird, Thea and Yvonne, since as magic eyes owners, they could notice Daimon did something with his eyes, even if they didn''t see it, they could notice the sensation of a magic eye being used, of course they didn''t know what he did.

    Daimon has noticed it, but only those who understand aw should be able to see it, in other words, even if there are Ster ranked people present here, unless they understand the specificw that dwells in the water of thekes, they can''t see it and so they don''t know the true origin of the effects of the water.

    "Phew", after a couple of seconds, Daimon let out a sigh of relief, he sessfully suppressed the head-splitting sensation, using the aura of Overlord''s pride.

    ''You shouldn''t spy on strongws that are active at your level, back then when I suggested you to seek insight in the dimensional tunnel, was because thews of space that filled that specific tunnel were quite soft and tame, what you did right now was like smashing your head against a rock'', said Evangeline with an sleepy voice.

    ''Be careful, I can''t interfere if you aren''t dying, but the pain can be excruciating¡­", she added before she became silent again.

    Daimon inwardly smiled.

    ''Thanks for worrying, 3,2,1¡­", once Daimon''s countdown reached zero, he got an unmistakable sound to ring in his ears.

    [Ding]

    [A new independent skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [Mind Barrier Lv1: Diminishes the recoil of observing things out of theprehension of the host by 20% (Derived from Infinity eyes and Overlord''s Pride)]

    Evangelineughed from within the space she lives.

    ''You are quite a madman sometimes you know, you forced the skill to adapt to fit your needs, as expected of my host~'', she proudly said, to which Daimon sighed.

    ''Well, it would be easier if the damn good skills were easy to trigger''.

    ''That is your fault Mr. "The one who overcame destiny", you set the bar too high from the beginning, so only outstanding actions will give you decent skills, in any case even the smaller ones can be of useter on''.

    Since Evangeline didn''t continue, Daimon knew it was due to a restriction or something, so he didn''t push, he already got what he wanted, you might wonder why he didn''t ask Erin, Aura or even Calvin''s grandfather whosews surpass even the ones around the Trident Marshal, to lend him a hand to get this skill.

    And the answer is easy, thosews that are active due to a mage or a living being in general, can''t be used by the system to trigger the creation of a skill, Daimon doesn''t know the exact reason, but at least for him, he has to see or feel them from nature itself, also they have to be quite strong for it to work.

    The previous might have taken some time to be exined but it happened in a matter of seconds, in which the Minister of Development enjoyed the surprised reactions of the people from the Elemental Sea, after listening to the incredible properties of the legacynd of his family, he even red at the skybox where Vincent was and gave him a triumphant gaze, before saying.

    "That being said, don''t worry, there is a safety over the surface of thekes, created by an array, so that the participants can give their all without having to worry about falling of the tforms".

    The minister let his own body fall on the water to demonstrate what would happen, and just as he stated, once he was about one meter away from touching the surface of theke, a dim blue barrier prevented him from doing so.

    He then walked all over the ce, around the threekes for everyone to see it was safe.

    "Due to the recent events, this year there is only 41 teams participating, out of them the team of the champion of the beast hunt is exempt from participating until we reach the penultimate round, where the fifth team that manages to reach that far will be separated to join the other four".

    "For now, that will be all I will say, today the forty teams will engage in pairs for the first round, don''t worry for those who lose, since the result of the first three rounds is decided depending on the number of victories, the finishing time, how easy was the round for the team and the number of members of the team that are still standing at the end, so give it your all!".

    After saying that, the Minister snapped his fingers and more tforms appeared on the surface of thekes, which now everyone knew was actually the surface of the safety to be precise, a total of forty tforms, of about the size of two football stadiums each, that''s how massive eachke was, they weren''t insanely deep for nothing after all.

    "Now, heroes of the young generation pleasee down for the sort, to see who will be your opponent, the number each team was assigned is the same one of the positions in which you finished on the beast hunt, as for the spectators, enjoy the event".

    As the Minister finished speaking arge mirror te appeared floating on the sky next to him, the names of each of the captains of the teams were next to the number they were assigned.

    "20 teams were selected from the ones that won the beast hunt, makes since, since a lot of teams were dissolved, since their members died, are in shock or injured after what happened, as for those who remained strong, they joined the top 20", mumbled Leslie.

    There were other adjustments, made due to Daimon basically, since he had three captains joining his team, Daphne, Jasmin and Tessa, so the ranks were changed and other people took their numbers.

    "Humph, that old man looked for a way to make the idiot king''s son enter the top three anyway, how shameless", said Thea as she snorted.

    Daimon and the girlsughed at Thea''sment, but it was true, though the Minister did it in the name of adjusting the rules for the current situation, since the other 21 teams consisted in the people from the families subordinated to him exclusively, he could have put his own men there, since those ranks represented nothing for the second event, besides Daimon''s as he was the champion of course, but he didn''t.

    He was giving face to the favorite three.

    "Well, it doesn''t matter, since we won''t be doing anything until the four winning teams are decided, so I guess we can start by making our contract", said Daimon as he took out one of the contracts prepared for him by Erin.

    While he needed the help of an outside mean to tie people to certain levels, the contract itself will be tied to the system, so that it can''t be broken unless someone with the power to go against the system breaks it.

    In other words, a contract prepared by Erin can tie up to a high ranked Half Emperor, but once signed, even if the other party someday surpasses that level, it can''t break free from the contract unless it also surpasses the current capacity of the system, meaning once they enter in a contract with Daimon, it''s essentially a lifetime thing.

    ''Poor girls they don''t know they are selling their souls to a pervert demon~'', jokingly said Evangeline.

 Chapter 376 The First Roundâ€™s Results (Part 1)

    The contracts made by Erin were in nk, so that Daimon could add the conditions he wanted to them, depending on the situation, which in this case were quite simple.

    First, from this point onwards and until they were back at their respective gxies, they couldn''t harm each other in any form, second, that included betrayal, forcing the others to risk their lives against their will and the like, the second condition was that no matter the circumstances, Tessa and Femi would never reveal Daimon''s identity as Gabriel, unless he or Aisha directly allowed them to.

    The third condition was that Daimon would protect them to the best of his capacities, as long as they were sided with him.

    There was an extra condition added but it was just a formality, whoever got a resource will be its owner, but at the same time if selling they should prioritize each other, Daimon also added that he will reward them ording to their contribution to the team, since he was the team leader and they epted to follow him.

    And that was basically it, again the alfear princes and the dwarf princess were reminded or why they chose to side with Daimon, the terms were prettyx and even beneficial for them, as they had no backer in Neptune.

    Of course they could have joined any of the teams from the noble families, even the royals invited them, but those things came with a lot of strings.

    Thea looked at the process of the alfear and dwarf princesses signing a contract with Daimon, with curious eyes, the paper used to it which exuded the presence of a strong magic beast, that picked her interest, as well as how they let a drop of their blood fall on it, and the light that came from the paper and entered the bodies of the parties involved, it was simr to the methods they had in Neptune, but different at the same time.

    "Oh, so that''s how things work from where youe from, it does remind me to the way my ability works, as I could feel there is a strong beast race mediating, but the result feels too different from every method I know, or have heard off", she said.

    Daimon chuckled, the aura from a beast she mentioned belonged to Erin, since she was the one who made the contracts he had in his inventory, it also interested him that she mentioned the result was different to anything she knows, since the mystery of why people from the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart can''t make soul contracts with the natives of Neptune, still remains.

    "Well, if we make it through, I can introduce you to the person that borated this contract for me", casually mentioned Daimon, making the Empress smile.

    "Sure, sounds interesting, if my eyes aren''t deceiving me, it should be someone with an insanely strong darkness affinity, I have never seen something like that before~".

    Daimon was amused by the enthusiastic expression on the Empress''s face, unfortunately for her Erin isn''t exactly fond of battle, so maybe she''ll get along better with Aura, in any case there would be some time before they can meet, and that is if the people from Neptune can even leave this ce, everything depended on what would happen in the Global Raid mentioned in his mission.

    Daimon did the contract with those two, because he wasn''t interested in the sorting part of the first round, but now that it had finished, he paid attention to what was happening on thekes.

    Unlike others who preferred seeing the event through the mirror tes, he could use his infinity eyes to get a perfect and up-close vision, so he did.

    At the Mind Cleansing Lake, the pairs were already decided, Daimon didn''t put too much attention to most of the participants, only those that could pose a threat to his team, which surprisingly weren''t only the three favorites.

    Besides the crowned prince, the second son of the ckfin Duke and the young spear, there was actually a fourth team on a simr level, one lead by a bulky guy with a dark blue armor, and the emblem of a turtle and a shield on his back.

    The grandson of the Minister of Development, Walford Arcarius, that being said, it wasn''t exactly him what made Daimon pay attention to his team, but the fact that all the members of his team were quite decent.

    All of them were early-stage Lord ranks and all of them were members of different races, probably they were the best of each of the families subordinated to the Arcarius family.

    "Well, I guess that exins why that old man did 21 teams, he opened a spot for his family, so no matter who wins, he will get a part of the credit", mumbled Daimon.

    How will the team that will be split among the four finalists will be chosen was kept a secret for now, but Daimon could already expect the old Minister to try and y some tricks, not that he cared since they weren''t going to work anyway.

    Of course, the four favorites weren''t ced against each other, or the first round will be too intense, so besides the poor bastards that were paired with them, the others had pretty much the same rtive level, now it all depended on how good was the strategist they chose.

    Among them, there was one guy who also caught Daimon''s interest, not out of strength or because it looked capable, but because it was a member of the Delphini family, like Mellie and because it was in the team of the crowned prince, also it looked than Mellie.

    "That is the son of our father''s second wife, sis is the eldest, but our mother was the second wife, so she has no right to seed the Delphini''s state, everything we have was earned after she became the queen", said Mellie.

    Daimon nodded, normally the first male son is the inheritor of a noble, while the daughters are married off to other family, unless there is a big gap in the status and then a lower ranked noble marries into the family of the bride, but Ae and Mellie cut any connections with the Delphini, and started their own family, they even kept thest name in part to mess with their father, and in part because they didn''t know what was their mother''s, as she also didn''t know it.

    "It makes sense, since everyone knows miss Ae is a good strategist, let''s see how this guy fairs", said Daimon.

    With the greenlight of the Minister, the tforms moved so that the forty of them formed in pairs, resulting in 20rger tforms, ording to how the pairs were formed, then the arrays engraved on them illuminated and walls as well as a roof appeared on the twenty tforms.

    The Minister then snapped his fingers and the image reflected in all the mirror tes ced for themodity of the spectators, changed from thekes to the inside of the tforms, before he retired to his skybox while leaving some words behind.

    "I''ll leave you with the special guest invited to narrate the first round, a renowned strategist and the head of the Delphini family, Carlos Delphini", one of thergest mirror tes changed to show a tall man with blue hair and fan-like fins as ears, though it didn''t resemble Ae or Mellie, and instead looked more like the strategist selected for the team of the crowned prince, that was their father.

    Daimon noticed the usually calm expression on Mellie''s face wave for a moment and he ced one hand on her shoulder before saying.

    "Don''t worry, he is also in the suspect''s list, so he''ll be spitting everything he knows which includes what happened to your mother, Horals is really good at interrogating others after all".

    "Mm~", Mellie softlyughed and then her mood improved, and she wasn''t the only one, a certain bone general which was hiding in the shadows, loudlyughed after being praised by his young master.

    Back at the tforms, the first round finally started, unlike before the walls and roof appeared, thendscape which used to be a in tform changed, with the help of both the arrays, mazes with different characteristics appeared in each tform.

    Some found themselves in swamp areas, others in forests, jungles, deserts, valleys, frozen areas and the like, some elements of the mazes were real, others were illusions and others were manmade traps, on top of that the emissions of theke had filled the closed spaces, which started affecting the minds of the participants.

    ¡­

    Inside of the tforms, the crowned prince turned to see his strategist, after he evaluated his surroundings, the illusions were quite well made, and theke made it even harder for them to discern the truth.

    "Corey, what''s the strategy going to be, I want to reach the exit in the less time possible, but with all ourpanions".

    The guy called Corey who was non other than Ae and Mellie''s half-brother, nodded as he closed his eyes and ced his hands on the ground, with him as the origin vibrations mapped the nearby area, after a couple of seconds he stopped what he was doing and then pointed at his right.

    "The maze is designed to force us to choose whether to use each member to discard the dead ends, while being guided by the strategist from behind, which is the fastest but the riskiest choice, or to move as a whole and only separate when needed, which is the slowest but safest choice, but there is also a third choice, not known by a lot".

    "We canbine both", said Corey as he got up the shoulders of one of the members of the team.

    "Follow my instructions in detail, I''ll say this now, not everyone will leave the maze, but don''t despair, the traps might harm us but they aren''t meant to kill but to stall us, once we clear it, you''ll be set free".

    After saying that Corey closed his eyes and the air started vibrating around him, as he guided the group of the crowned prince who was being escorted in the middle of everyone.

    Outside of the tforms, the head of the Delphini family, Carlos, nodded and thenmented about the strategy his son was using, to the Minister who was sitting next to him.

    "Corey''s idea is not too conservative but efficient, the strategist is meant to remain behind the lines to direct others, but there are some decisions that can only be taken when one is in the frontline, it''s a matter of perspective, like this he can apany the crowned prince while being escorted by the rest of the team members".

    The Minister nodded in an approbative way.

    "Not something usual, but certainly practical, that being said, the other favorites aren''t doing it any worse", he said as he pointed at the mirror te that was reflecting the team of the young spear.

    Loyal to their name they were acting like madmen, why do you ask, their maze was a jungle, there were some magic beasts both illusions and real ones, as well as poisonous vegetation and other traps here and there, and they took a quite interesting approach, basically they were attacking everything on their way.

    "Spear of the sea unit, pierce through the maze!", shouted Lance.

    "Ohhhhh!", the morale of the team went through the roof, they all startedunching attacks to everything that surrounding them, triggering the traps, blowing the illusion magic beasts and trees away, which made the real ones attack them.

    But their momentum didn''t diminish, led by Lance who acted as the tip of the spear, they kept advancing, though slowed by the many obstacles.

    "¡­", the spectators were speechless, with the exception of their general Dominic, who wasughing on his seat, still no one criticized him, because Carlos soonmented on their favor.

    "Though it might seem reckless, they are perfectly coordinated, when one is in trouble, the others focus their fire on that specific enemy, and surprisingly the young spear seems to be the strategist, or at least the one with the most sense in that group, so it''s not like they are shing against all the obstacles, he has avoided a couple who were quite threatening, the downside to this, is that their mana will run out before they reach half of the way, so they will have to take a rest in which other teams might surpass them".

    The ckfin Duke listened to the decent evaluation that Dominic''s subordinates got and he snorted.

    "A bunch of muscle heads, why do you think the members of a team were increased, it''s all a matter of efficiency, just like in business", he said as he pointed at the mirror te that was reflecting his son''s performance.

    Their strategy was slightly simr to what Lance was doing, the difference is that their formation had the form of an axe instead of a spear, unlike the neo nobles where everyone wasunching spells and other attacks to open the path.

    Ezequiel had distributed his teammates, so that one at each sides and one in the front were making way for the rest, using wide area spells, just like the swings of an axe which ware ample, they advanced inrge steps, then changed with the next three whounched the next three attacks and so on.

    This time a different personmented, before Carlos or the Minister could.

    "That is only efficient on the surface, the second one of them misses one step, the whole team will be affected, because they aren''t being guided but ordered", said a beautiful girl, who was wearing a magnificent crown, her aquamarine eyes seemed to glow as she red at both the Minister and the Delphini Duke, who else could be but Ae of course.

    The ckfin Duke was fuming, why was his son the only one being targeted by that sharp tongued woman he wondered, he wasn''t in a good mood already, since his subordinate suddenly disappeared.

    ''Where the hell is that idiot, if I find he has been attending those dirty brothels instead of doing his job, I''ll twist his neck!'', he inwardly cursed, without knowing that his shadow has been dead for quite some time already.

 Chapter 377 The First Roundâ€™s Results (Part 2)

    Besides those three, there was another team who outstood among the participants, the one formed by the best the families subordinated to the Minister had to offer,pared to the Minister, in this event, Vincent was put in a strange spot.

    Because, the crown prince is technically his grandnephew, as his mother is the daughter of a distant cousin of his, though they don''t belong to the same branch, they are still from the same family.

    Unfortunately, Vincent and that cousin never got along well to begin with, and the small interactions the old man had with Irma, weren''t pleasant at all, not to mention when he took Ae and Mellie under his wing, their already bad rtionship worsened.

    It also didn''t help that despite Irma marrying the king, Ae got a superior status as she became the queen, so eve if Terry had the Malleusst name, he had nothing to do with Vincent, that being said, Vincent who dedicated his whole life to defend the kingdom, also didn''t get along with his family.

    So even if he is namely the n head, the one that has always been in charge of the most of the matters of the family, is his cousin, simr to Ae, the Trident Marshal earned everything he has through his own work instead of inheriting wealth from previous generations.

    That''s why he is never called Malleus n head, but Trident Marshal, anyway, the fact that he is the leader of the Malleus family doesn''t change, so he should have been able to enroll a team representing his family, just like the minister.

    But since Terry can''t take thest name "White" until he is crowned, he is the representative of the Malleus and the royals as well, Vincent didn''t want to discuss such trivial stuff and he resigned his right to have a team of his own in these events to his cousin.

    His support was with Mellie anyway, and this is where things got interesting, because the strategist of the Arcarius family''s team, was none other than one of the twin princes of the Keran family, Bryan Keran, of course his brother was also in that team.

    ''Mm, so the Minister doesn''t support Triten at all, only the White Ancestor, I guess it makes sense, since they probably have done some kind of deal'', thought Daimon.

    For others, the fact that the twin princes were in a team with the direct descendant of the Minister, was a way to show his support to the king, even Triten probably believed so, since most of his attention was directed to Terry, but those two were still his sons, so it''s not like he didn''t want them to get a decent position, not the champion, but maybe in the top five or the top three with some luck.

    But Daimon couldn''t be tricked so easily, ording to Vincent, the Minister was sided with the White only because of their ancestor, so he sought glory for his family, while also on the surface giving face to the king.

    ''What a cunning old bastard'', was Daimon''s conclusion, the only one in the dark was the idiot king who wasn''t aware that he was a mere front.

    Back at thekes, Daimon observed how did the team of the Minister''s family faired.

    "Young master Bryan, I''ll leave it in your hands", said Walford as he walked to the front of the group, his body then let out a cold mist and some parts were covered in a thickyer of ice.

    "Ice Shell Fortress", with a loud shout, Walford projected a wall of battle aura around the whole group and then nodded at the princes.

    "Now, Ryan", with Bryan''s instructions, they both pointed their hands forward, the rest of the members of their group stood behind them forming a line and holding onto each other''s shoulders as they released their mana, which was then taken by the princes, who then pierced a couple of spears on the ice wall, making sure they were fully attached to it.

    "Thrust!".

    The public''s attention was drawn at the scene projected on the mirror te, the group of the Arcarius family whosendscape was an open sea, suddenly dashed frontwards at an insane speed.

    Magic beast jumped out of the water to try and engulf them, but their heads were smashed when they shed against the wall of ice battle aura projected by Walford, naturally such a dense defense is incredibly heavy.

    Akin to their race, that ice turtle sacrificed mobility in exchange for defense, so they shouldn''t have been able to move like that, but the princes made up for it.

    ''Just like in the lineage temple trial, those narwhals were quite annoying'', thought Daimon.

    The Keran family''s race is called Shooting Narwhal, and their innate ability is using mana to create impulse, back then Daimon had to fend off against the horns of the narwhals using a metal boosting spell, and he was still pushed backwards.

    Their piercing power was low, but the impulse behind their charges was quite something, so while they couldn''t really wound Daimon whose body has been reinforced both in and out, due to his training while in Core Synchrony''s state, the shockwave still send him backwards each time, they were one of the races he does remember having to deal with, among the countless sea magic beasts whose bodies weren''t huge.

    This time of course the Minister was the one toment since it was his grandson''s performance.

    "My Arcarius family might be called the shield of the kingdom, but certainly our stylecks in the speed aspect, that''s where the princes innate ability shines, since they can advance at an insane speed but without the capacity to change directions, so they can''t avoid the obstacles, it''s a perfect way to make up for it", said the Minister as he nodded.

    Surprisingly, the Delphini Duke this time didn''t fully agree with the Minister.

    "Indeed a good way to advance through their maze, as it''s an open sea zone, but what happens when young Walford''s battle aura depletes, not to mention the not all the traps areid horizontally, so they can''t be taken head on all the time, for example¡­".

    Carlos didn''t finish speaking, when the water in front of Walford''s team started moving, creating an spiral, it was trap that emted a whirlpool.

    But the time didn''t seem to show any concern regarding it, instead of that, another of the members of the team, a girl with the same emblem as Walford, meaning it was part of the Arcarius family, pointed ahead and a ramp made out of ice formed on the water in front of them.

    With the impulse that the princes were generating, they soared into the skypletely skipping the whirlpool much to the surprise of the spectators, Carlos looked at the Minister from the corner of his eyes just to see him grinning.

    "Aren''t knights and mages supposed toplement each other, the fact that we are considered the strongest defense of the kingdom doesn''t mean we are rigid, it took some time but we have some decent mages among the young generation nowadays".

    The public went crazy, not because of the simple yet practical way they avoided the trap, but because, up to this day, everyone in the Arcarius family has been a knight, they seemed to have no talent in mana controlling, but now the Minister was showing, that changed in this current generation.

    ''What is this old fox plotting, showing such an important hidden card like this'', wondered Carlos, knowing the Minister, he would have saved this surprise for when something really important was disputed, to take opponents by surprise.

    Though this year''s events were indeed important as it was the first time guests from the Elemental Sea attended, that was merely a social event, not worth of showing this improvement.

    Of course, the Delphini Duke had no way to know, that this time''s events were far important than what he believed, because the winner will be able to get something from the precious treasury of the kingdom as their prize.

    That''s one of the few things Triten can im as his merit, the fact that to ess the treasure section of the royal treasury, the crown of both the king and the queen is needed, and only the current regents can wield them.

    ¡­

    Soon the difference between the four favorites and the other teams became obvious as they reached half of their way out of the maze, but it was here where the victor will most likely be decided.

    They all sped through the first half, and now they needed to take a rest to catch up their breath, while the other teams did their beast to reach the four favorites, thetter reviewed their current situations, to sum their losses.

    The crowned prince managed to reach this spot and only lost one teammate, Corey had used more than half of his mana, but the rest of the team was fine, having around 70% of their reserves intact.

    The young spear was different, his quick reactions and good instincts helped him leave behind any of his teammates, but in exchange they all had used around 40% of their mana reserves, that didn''t mean they were tired, since their training sessions are hellpared to this.

    In contrast Ezequiel''s team lost three members on the way, but since his strategy consisted in using rounds of three to dispel the obstacles, their mana reserves were around 80%, though their morale did suffer a small dent, since Ezequiel didn''t seem to care.

    As for Walford, the princes and the captain had used around 40% of their reserves, since manipting the mana of others to create impulse required a lot of energy, the same as maintaining the battle aura wall all the way here, in exchange the others had around 0''% of their reserves, as they didn''t do much, besides giving mana to the princes, but the weight was shared between everyone.

    So far there wasn''t a clear winner yet, there was also a reason as to why there was a spot to rest right at the middle spot of the maze, the current tform was the result of two of them joining, and thus the circuit that each team had to go through consisted in two differentndscapes.

    For the prince he now had to face an underground space, with faint visibility and a lot of mechanical traps, like trap doors, hidden crossbows and things like that, the young spear had arge mountain area ahead of him, with steed slopes that made it difficult to advance straight ahead, the ckfin Duke was met with a quicksand desert andstly, Walford had a volcanic area which would make it hard for him to use his ice battle aura.

    Seeing the changes, the spectators were surprised, because the other teams that werepeting with the four favorites, got caught up as thendscapes changed and they were practically wiped out, unable to follow such an abrupt change.

    The Minister took the change to exin what happened.

    "The mazes register the answers used by the participants during the first half, to create a counter for the second half, while those who arepeting against the ones that reach the middle spot can make it through if they are skilled enough, the difficulty does rise".

    "This is a little surprise I prepared for this specific year''s tournament, and you can expect more for the next rounds!", he said with an excited voice.

    The response of the vast majority was positive, with the exception of those families, whose representatives were wiped right now, though they had no way toin since their opponents were the four favorites anyway.

    Daimon who was using his infinity eyes to see the insides of the tforms, suddenly noticed the gaze of a couple of people on his skybox, one was of course the Minister who seemed to be challenging him, which he expected so he wasn''t surprised, the other was Vincent who sent him a message only he could hear, but thest one was surprisingly the Delphini Duke.

    Daimon ignored them all, they couldn''t see through the double-sided window anyway, and using mana sense was forbidden, so besides ring at him, there was so much they could.

    That being said he understood why the Minister was aiming at him, he pped his face earlier when he brought Thea along, contrary to his petty ns to humiliate her, so it was normal.

    But Ae''s father has never met him before, so him showing hostility was uncalled.

    ''Well, we''ll have a nice conversation once the tournament ends, so he''ll have to wait until then, I''ll have to ask the queen to set the stage, since we are dealing with a Ster ranked though'', thought Daimon.

    ''Maybe he is angry since you are taking his daughters away~'', yfully said Evangeline, making Daimon chuckle.

    ''Nah, if he was a decent parent, then everything would have been easier, that secret room, and the book that was in his studio are the only hints I have left, we''ll see what else is that guy hiding soon''.

 Chapter 378 The First Roundâ€™s Results (Part 3)

    Daimon looked at the current results and smirked, based on how the four favorites were fairing so far, he had an idea of was going to win this round, which made him lost a lot of interest in the leftover half of the first round.

    Though he managed to see some of what Walford could do, the crowned prince, Ezequiel and even Lance, weren''t revealing their hands, if anything Lance proved to be a decentmander, but that was already within Daimon''s calctions, since he was part of the army.

    Daimon came out of his daze, when he heard the alfear princess''s voice.

    "I just thought about it, but were you the one who sent those guys to spy on us?", she asked with an using expression on her pretty face.

    Daimon shrugged in response.

    "It wasn''t me, naturally this kingdom has its own intel, some of them probably were the subordinates of the queen... speaking of which, you''ll be staying with us from now and onwards, I''ll tell you two everything once we are back at a safe ce".

    Tessa nodded, without knowing she''ll be getting more than surprisedter on, when Daimon tells her about the Global Raid, and the undercurrents that threatened with destroying Neptune.

    Back at thekes, the other participants were finally catching up with the favorites, or at least that''s what they thought.

    But they weren''t the favorites for nothing.

    Corey who was the one who used more mana in the team of the crowned prince, approached Terry and, they changed their formation, previously the strategist and the prince were escorted in the middle, but this time they stood one at the front and the other at the back of the group.

    "Young master Terry, I''m ready, please do the honors", said Corey.

    The crowned prince nodded and then tapped his foot on the ground, a sky blue colored mana then leaked out of Terry''s body and then a circr te made out of mana appeared both in front of Corey and in front of the group.

    Corey then punched the te, which waved a bit, producing a peculiar sound, surprisingly, the second te in front of the group also vibrated and then, Corey whose eyes were closed shouted.

    "The first fifty meters we can run straight in the direction we have right now, then we have to turn to the left, hurry up, the traps seem to move with time!".

    After saying that, they whole group started advancing, needless to say but the crowd was excited to see such a creative disy of two different innate abilities working together.

    Mellie who was sharply observing the team of the crowned prince''s new strategy, exined to the others what happened.

    "The innate ability of uncle Vincent''s family, is called "Water Armament", they can mix water and mana to create temporal reinforced objects, it might sound simple but it''s a really strong ability, as they can manipte them, however they wish... then the people from the Delphini family have the attribute "Vibration", so they can use a short-range sonar of some kind to explore".

    "In this case, the prince used his ability to expand the range of that, but not horizontally, but vertically, since their maze is a hidden trap type, the roads are narrow, so they can be perfectly covered by the original range, but the traps hidden below the ground are harder to locate".

    Daimon nodded, but he was a bit curious, since Mellie''s ability was way different to that, she could create sound explosions, and use the bow of her fickle as a sharp weapon by making it vibrate, not to mention attack the bnce of others by using certain frequencies.

    But that guy''s focus was totally different, his ability had a wide area, but a weaker effect, noticing Daimon''s expression, Mellie proudly smiled before saying.

    "Sis and me are different, they use vibrations to map and explore and up to some extent they can detect treasures by their "rhythm", that''s why our father''s studio was full with strange things he found in his trips".

    "But we use it for a different thing, our ability has a shorter range, but it''s more concentrated than theirs, so we can not only detect but interrupt the "rhythm", our analyze resonance is different, which allow us to memorize the pattern of the rhythm of things, though they differ, the base is the same, that''s how sis blocked all the pirates rted to ck Beard", confidently said Mellie.

    Daimon was still amazed by the ability the queen showed before.

    ''It sure is good to have her as an ally, instead of an enemy'', thought Daimon.

    Though the crowned prince''s team was the first one to finish changing their formation, the other favorites didn''t get left behind.

    "Spear of the sea, at mymand, formation number 34!", shouted Lance.

    "Ohhhh!", the rest of group roared, they started running towards the near mountain, like fierce beasts, making everyone wonder what the hell were those madmen going to do.

    And pretty much akin to the reputation of the neo nobles, they did something barbaric.

    "Now!", with Lance''s signal, every one of them stabbed their spears on thedder of the mountain and then used the impulse, to propel themselves around thirty meters ahead, not only that, they were all applying mana on the tip of their spears, so that they wouldn''tnd directly on the mountain, in case there was a trap there.

    "What kind of circus act is this!", shouted the ckfin Duke, making Dominic grin.

    "Unlike you, we neo nobles train every day, so far we have developed fifty formations that adapt to 50 differentndscapes, those are our pride and honor, 50 bloody battle spear formations", said the general as heughed out loud.

    They had some merit though, none of the members of Lance''s team were knights, and yet they had the physical strength and the dexterity to do that, it''s a skill that was honed with lots of training.

    For Daimon, this reminded him a bit of Gina''s fighting style, she used the momentum on her weapon to increase her mobility, though this was just a generic copy of that, since Gina had a genuine mastery of her body, probably due to her snow leopard lineage.

    "General Dominic''s subordinates are as "unique" as usual, I guess they do have a point in using spears as their symbol, since it''s a weapon with a vast range of usages", said the old Minister.

    Maybe others could question the methods of the neo nobles, but their results were as amazing as always, leaving those two teams who took the lead, the focus changed to the team of the Arcarius family.

    "We might have been in trouble in previous generations, but now, we have mages to make up for it, Susy, create a path of water in front of us, the rest grab my shoulders and hold on, princes this time we''ll only need one to use the ability, the other please be on the look for threats".

    Walford remained on the front, but this time he didn''t create arge wall with ice battle aura, instead of that, taking advantage of the heat that leaked through the floor since they were in a volcanic zone, the mage of their group created a "water slide".

    Then Walford''s body grew asrge pieces of ice attached to him, the rest of the group held on to that, being near to his ice battle aura was perfect as the heat was starting to take a toll on them.

    "Ice shell dash!", while it might sound funny, with the mage creating a path ahead, and one of the princes guiding them, Walford only had to be the ride, so after taking some impulse, he threw himself at the ground and then slid frontwards, using the water slide as well as the impulse created by one of the princes.

    Basically they found a way to reduce the friction, which made up for one of the princes not using their ability anymore, in this case it was Ryan, as he apparently had mana sense, so he was the one guiding, while his brother was the muscle, not as much as Walford though, the ground in the area was quite irregr, so pieces of his ice shell, were being scrapped with each centimeter, which forced him to replenish it from time to time.

    Still it was a good disy of teamwork, since unlike back at the sea open area, here they had to be on the look for suddenva surges, which were way more dangerous and couldn''t be as easily dodged by ice spells as the whirlpools that formed at the sea maze.

    Right now, the Minister was all smiles, his grandson was demonstrating that he was at the same level of the favorites, especially because the son of the ckfin Duke was yet to leave the middle spot.

    "What the hell do you mean, with "I can''t detect the quicksand, as fast as they appear", aren''t you an earth mage, just like your brother Roman!", shouted Ezequiel at one of his subordinates.

    To be safe, he brought a pair of mages of different elements, enough to cover most situations, water, earth, wind, fire, nature andstly he and his "secretary", which had darkness affinity.

    Back at the first round, he lost one earth, one wind and one fire mages, but he didn''t care, since he still had one of each left, so what was the big problem, it''s what he thought, but apparently from the pair of brothers who had earth affinity, he lost the one who was more skilled on it.

    "I''m sorry young master, sand is an affinity on its own, my older brother is closer to it, that being said I can solidify the quicksand if needed, but we''ll have to be careful, since my senses can''t prate deeper than one meter, if a magic beast or a trapses for us, then well sink".

    Ezequiel felt the urge to curse, he was about to shout at his useless subordinates, when his secretary helped him calm down, by whispering at his ears.

    "Don''t worry, what contributes the most to the final score is that the strategist and the captain reach the exit first, if you and me make it through, all these idiots can be used as trampolines if needed".

    Ezequiel nodded and then shouted orders, his formation didn''t change, but he did make some adjustments to the order, first the nature affinity mages will make something to support the floor below their feet using vines, then the earth element mage will prevent them from sinking, while the others were in charge of keeping him and his strategist who was also his favorite partner, safe, so that they could reach the exit.

    "Advance, even if you are left behind, don''t worry, money, fame and status, I''ll grant them to you, the ckfin family promises!", he shouted, while inwardly he snorted.

    ''You better work hard to pay for the resources my family has fed you''.

    ...

    As the minutes went by the four favorites were reaching the area near the exit, making the crowd excited, so far their performances were quite different and yet, they were tied, the winner will be decided based in a the slightest details.

    To the ckfin Duke''s delight, his son''s team, though had reduced in half, was at the head of the race, even ahead of the crowned prince who used to be the in the first position.

    "You see that, you madman, that''s the difference between efficiency and barbarity", said the ckfin Duke with a disdainful voice, to which Dominic just offered a toast in response.

    "I''m going to enjoy your reaction in the next few minutes, cky".

    Listening to the crowd suddenly going crazy, the ckfin Duke turned to the origin of such reaction, just to see the neo noble''s team who took a deviation, to reach a high hill.

    "Formation number 10!", with just those words, all the members of the team formed up in pairs, then their spears connected with each other, to form arge harpoon-like spear of, of which everyone held on, with Lance''s spear being the tip of it.

    Back at Daimon''s skybox, Leslie frowned.

    "Are they going to...?".

    Daimon leaned back on the couch, as he gave his verdict.

    "It''s over".

    "Spear of unity!", with those words, the whole group jumped out of the hill without a second of hesitation, they became a sh light that led to the exit of the maze.

    Practically almost at the same time, the crowned prince and Lance''s team reached the exit, but the first tform to open its exit was... Lance''s one.

    "Ohhhhh!", the crowd went crazy, though the results needed to be calcted, at least the winner was decided, why, because Lance didn''t lose any of his teammates and he arrived first, unless the judges were blind, there is no "but" that could be used to disparage their victory.

 Chapter 379 The First Roundâ€™s Results (Part 4)

    Leaving aside Lance who arrived first though the team ended up rolling on the ground ungraciously, the crowned prince didn''t seem to be really affected by getting the second ce, as if he expected it from the very begging.

    "A bit too agitated for my liking, but it was a good round, Lance", said the crowned prince with his usual smile, which sent the female spectators in a frenzy.

    The young spear, who was just got up and was dusting off his clothes, nodded at Terry.

    "You still forced me to use Spear of unity, luckily my instincts told me to order my fourpanions who have wind affinity to use less mana than the rest of us, since they are the base of many of our movement type formations", said Lance, nor toocent, nor too arrogant.

    Clearly the two of them were wary of the other, since with just the slightest variation, the winner of this round could have been the other, though this time Lance got the upper ground.

    That was one side of the ones that had finished, and were praised by the spectators, since they seemed to respect each other as rivals at least on the surface, the other side well¡­ not so much.

    "What the hell, how can it be that I got the fourth ce!", shouted Ezequiel, as he red at Walford''s team, who was exhausted, apparently once they reached a straight line to the exit, Ryan stopped using mana sense and poured everything he had into increasing their speed even more.

    Of course, Walford consumed the rest of his battle aura since they elerated more, even the others who had other affinities used the basic wind spell "Breeze" to help, as a result, they passed Ezequiel''s team at thest moment, getting the third ce.

    And that''s how Ezequiel lost his temper right now, he lost half of his team to arrive early, it was well-calcted as the girl who was not only his strategist but also his favorite, counted the points they would get if they arrived first, which would have given them the victory.

    Unfortunately everything crumbled apart as he got the fourth ce, where he will remain for this round as he has less "surviving" members in his team.

    Ezequiel could feel the judging gazes of the crowd and he grabbed his earth affinity subordinate by his neck.

    "It''s all your fault, you damn useless piece of trash, if your brother wouldn''t be participating in the third round with me, I would have kicked you out of the team!", he shouted, but then he felt a soft hand bringing him calmness, it was his strategist who whispered at him.

    "You can take it out on himter, for now, let''s wait for the result and keep our cool in public,ter we can y around a bit".

    Ezequiel took a deep breath and then let go of his subordinate who was pale, if he were to take the me, his family will be severely punished by the ckfin Duke for sure, and that would mean his father would give him a nice beating, for making him lose prestige.

    "Wen is right, I''ll let you off the hook this time, work harder to be skilled in sand element next time", said Ezequiel in an upright manner.

    "Yes, young master!".

    ¡­

    Besides the four favorites, the rest of the teams took more time to get to the exits of their mazes, surprisingly three of the teams from the Elemental Sea was only two minutester than Ezequiel.

    It was the teams formed by the members of the sects from the Elemental Sea, with the exception of the Bamboo Forest sect, because Cassy''s friends were still recovering, that was in part why Underwood was happy that his daughter joined Daimon''s team.

    Once again Daimon could feel some gazes aiming at his skybox, the three patriarchs, Skyfire, Stoneheart and Heartstream weren''t happy, in their eyes if Jasmin as the princess of the Light Pce sect was leading their sons instead of going over to his team, then they would have most likely gotten a ce in the top three.

    And that could have been the case, if Cassy and Jasmin were in that team, they could have easily left Ezequiel behind, with Walford it would have been a more tightpetition though.

    Besides them, the next closest to them took around ten minutes more than Ezequiel, and that team was formed by members of, the Delphini, Keran, Arcarius, ckfin and even Malleus families, probably they were members of the secondary branches.

    ''Oh, so the Minister isn''t enemy of the Malleus, just of old Vincent'', thought Daimon, probably those were rted to the wife of the king, who was also Terry''s mother, but to see all of them teaming up, it was probably done to show the "unity" of the kingdom to the guests.

    Little by little the rest of the teams left the mazes and once thest was out, the formations deactivated, so that the medical staff could retrieve those who were left behind, they were wounded or exhausted but their lives weren''t in any danger, and with a night of rest and medicine they should be fully recovered, for the sake of the continuity of the tournament the traps were limited to that extent after all.

    The judged then descended from their skyboxes, during the first round only the Minister, Carlos and Ae talked, but they weren''t the only judges, Vincent was one too as well as Aurora, but the Trident Marshal didn''t participate, he personally supported Lance''s team, as they are part of the army, but officially he refused to show favoritism to any unit, so Ae was sent as his representative, though she was a judge herself, as for Aurora she had little interest so she didn''t participate as well, her granddaughter was in hold for now after all, though she gave an approbative gaze to the three patriarchs, given the decent result achieved by their sons.

    Also, apparently the Delphini Duke was chosen by the king to be his representative, which would exin why Corey was the strategist of the crowned prince''s team, whether it was done like that to incur in Ae''s favor, or to mess with her, it was unknown, since no one knew whose advice''s Triten was listening to as of current.

    The Minister was the first one to speak, as he is the one hosting the event.

    "Congrattions to all the participants, regardless of the results, all the teams finished the first round, which''s level is higher than previous years, and thus you all should be proud of it!".

    This was of course said to save face, even if they weren''t in the tops, the participants were still part of the elite of the younger generation of two seas, so politics were in need to keep things peaceful.

    "That being said, the top three this time are, the young spear of the neo noble faction, Lance Varsi!", with the announce of the champion of the first round, the people from the neo noble factions that was sitting on the bleachers, went crazy, they stood up and cheered, pped or simply shouted, celebrating the victory of their representative.

    Only when the Minister raised his hand, the noise slowly stopped, so that the judges could announce the next ranks, this time Carlos was the one to speak.

    "The second ce goes for his highness, the crowned prince, Terry Malleus", just like with Lance, people acimed and cheered for the crowned prince, this time it was those from the old noble faction as well as the founding families.

    Surprisingly the one to announce the third ce, Ae was the one chosen, instead of the Minister, probably he allowed it, since he as the host, would look bad if he showed favoritism to his grandson''s team.

    "The third ce by a far distance, is for the Arcarius and Keran''s family team, it was a good dynamic, never seen before", sharply said the queen.

    Naturally, Ae never did anything without a good reason, in this case, she was mocking the ckfin Duke by saying his son lost by a lot, while also entuating the fact that the twin princes joined hands with the family of the host, the vast majority of the spectators didn''t notice the meaning behind Ae''s words, but for those to which they were directed, it was easy to get the message.

    ''This bitch!'', screamed Norma in her heart, she wanted her sons to take the whole credit, to increase their status, with enough achievements they could im a better noble title, and even the queen was forced to grant it, but just like that, this round''s feat of defeating the ckfin Duke''s son, was disregarded.

    Ae even gave Norma a disdainful gaze, how could she not know, what she was plotting, she has been sendingins since Daimon was granted the title of Marquis, since her sons are secured the title of earl in the future, and they will only get their titles once the next king is chose, so she was livid that a random kid was so easily given such aa high ranking title, instead of her sons.

    The rest of the ranks were announced by Vincent and Aurora, each announced the teams of the other sea they were part of, as a sign of goodwill.

    And with that the first round of the tournament ended, and the first day as well, since all the participants must be in a good condition for the three rounds.

    The Minister waved his hand and arge portal opened at the same position at which it opened earlier when everyone was moved to the Calm Tri-Lake Forest.

    "Please return in the same order at which you arrived, I hope you enjoyed the first round of the tournament and don''t forget to enjoy the festivities that will be taking ce for the rest of the event, in my Arc city!", said the Minister.

    The spectators which consisted in nobles and the members of the sects from the Elemental Sea that apanied Aurora, now felt calmer since the first day of the event went on without any problems.

    The citizens of the kingdom were the same, thanks to the mirror tes and everyone saw it, saw the festive atmosphere flourished again, helping them forget the fact that the kingdom was attacked not too long ago.

    Ignoring the instructions of the Minister, Vincent, Ae and Aurora went to Daimon''s skybox and waited until it was Daimon''s turn to leave, of course the minister who saw Thea giving him a taunting gaze, felt a vein popping on his forehead, but while he didn''t mind shing with Vincent, he as the Minister had to keep a decent image in front of Aurora, so he swallowed his anger and just said goodbye to them with a fake smiling expression.

    "What do you think little friend, the second part of the first round was a nice surprise right, I have more surprises for you the heroes of the young generation", said the Minister trying to get back at Daimon.

    "Well, it was interesting, not that it matters since I''m going to win anyway though", said Daimon, without even turning to see the Minister as he entered the portal.

    The surrounding the minister trembled, only him and his family members were left, so he could let vent his anger a bit, Walford approached his grandfather with a serious expression on his face.

    "Don''t worry grandfather, I will show that guy, the strength of the Arcarius family!", said the holder of the third ce, which made the mood of the Minister to improve, his grandson was recing the ckfin Duke''s son as part of the top three, which was an amazing thing, considering the top tree in the young generation hasn''t changed since they debuted.

    "Very well, remember to continue with your practice, but don''t overwork, tomorrow, you need to aim for a higher position!".

    Leaving that small episode aside, once Daimon''s group returned to the center of the city where they were before, the queen turned to see Daimon, she didn''t have a chance to see up-close who he brought in to fill the remaining two spots, until a moment ago.

    "So, are you not going to introduce these two missies to us, Gabriel?", said the queen with a curious gaze on her face.

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "They will be staying with us, we can do the presentationster, for now, let''s go to a more private ce first".

    Ae smiled, and then turned to see the Vs Duchess, who nodded.

    "Uncle if you would, take us to sister Vs''s residence, please".

    Vincent sighed, he had a house in Arc city, but naturally just like he didn''t allow the minister to get a decent property in his Warhammer city, Raymond didn''t allow him to get one in Arc city, such was the animosity between them, fortunately, the Vs Duchess was well weed wherever she went, since she had thergest part merchantpany, in what mines regard.

    Even if Raymond didn''t get along with Vincent, besides some restricted areas, he had no power to prevent him from moving through space, as his status was on par with him.

    The Trident Marshal tapped his foot on the ground and then the whole group disappeared.

    The next thing most of them knew was that the scenery changed from the center of the city, to the east side, in front of arge luxurious mansion to be more urate.

 Chapter 380 Actualization In The Plans

    Since even Vincent''s mansion was infiltrated, the Duchess who was told beforehand by Ae, that they will be using her mansion, made sure that there was no one in it, so they were received only by the arrays of the mansion.

    The Duchess showed her identity token and then the barrier let them in, of course Vincent, Aurora, Thea and Ae, all used their senses to inspect the ce, just in case, once they were sure everything was fine, Vincent gave the greenlight and everyone entered the mansion.

    The insides of the mansion were quite luxurious but not opulent, in fact there were some paints of Daphne in secession, showing how she grew up, since she was a little girl to her current appearance as a proper youngdy.

    Very much to the embarrassment of the first princess, her mother proudly showed them to the visitors, while the security head Mina went to the kitchen to prepare food for everyone, by Ae''s request.

    In the meantime, Daimon and the others took a seat at the living room, which was spacious enough to heldrge conferences.

    "Old Vincent, if you would", said Daimon, making the Trident Marshal softly snort.

    "You kids are treating this old man as some kind of all-purpose tool", said Vincent, but he still snapped his fingers and a barrier made of his mana surrounded the whole area.

    Cassy and Underwood already knew about what was happening, since Aurora informed them, after they signed an oath of course, the same happened with Chris, the maid and friend of Daphne, as well as her mother, who was the Duchess''s advisor and closest friend.

    But, the newly incorporated Tessa and Femi, needed to be informed of the situation, also the others wanted to know about them, since Daimon chose them to fight alongside him.

    The alfear and dwarf princesses noticed the attention of all those strong people fell on them, and they turned to see Daimon with slightly bitter expressions.

    "Ahem, let''s start with a small presentation", said Daimon as he took off his mask, to show his real face which Cassy and Chris have yet to seen, no one in the alliance could reveal he was Gabriel, since Daimon asked Vincent to add that condition anyway.

    Aisha and the Risha sisters also dispelled their disguises, to show their real appearances.

    "So you four were also here, the ssmates of the demon of the elite ss¡­ sorry of Daimon", said Femi, she was left a strong impression of the other members of the elite ss, besides Daimon, the sisters and Aisha were travelling with him, when they met, but unlike Daimon who Tessa somehow recognized, they thought Aisha and the sisters were people from Neptune who was working with Daimon, since they were disguised as members of the mermen sea, slightly modified to look like mixed races.

    Leaving aside the strange nickname they heard Femi calling Daimon as, the presentations started.

    "I''m Tessa Evergreen, the first princess of the alfear race of the Blue-Sky gxy, it''s a pleasure", said Tessa with her naturally calm and refined voice.

    "Femi Hepha, just like Tess I''m the sole daughter of the dwarf''s race chief, so you can consider me a princess I guess", added Femi.

    Ae stole a gaze at Daimon, if her instincts weren''t failing her, these two princesses seemed to be in a lower positionpared to Daimon, who also imed to be a prince of some sort.

    One by one all the people in the room presented to Tessa and Femi, who were dumbfounded after hearing, that just in this room there were three Emperor level experts, unlike Daimon, they couldn''t discern Vincent, Thea or Aurora''s realms, and they had no time to buy information, since they were followed by Adam first and then spied by the people of the noble families.

    Though they knew they had high statuses, but still, when they realized they were in presence of practically two of the people that stood at the pinnacle of Neptune, and that both were backing Daimon, they were naturally surprised.

    Daimon looked at Tessa and Femi and then dropped a bomb, casually by saying.

    "I told you I had a surprise for you, I''ll be frank, this is going to suffer some kind of cmity if we don''t stop the guys behind the attack at the beast hunt, as well as some kind of creatures which attacked my group".

    Of course that took Tessa and Femi by surprise, but they showed their noble education by recovering from the shock quite fast.

    "If you are working to solve it, that means this cmity is bound to happen before we can leave this ce, right?", asked Tessa.

    Daimon nodded in response.

    ''As I thought, this alfear princess is quite sharp, I wonder if that''s a race trait'', he thought before saying.

    "Yes, a week starting today something called "global raid" will start, to participate we need emblems simr to the ones the captain of the teams sent by the academies have, to be honest I don''t know what the cmity will be, but considering even the maximum level Ster ranks like that old skeleton from the Skelefiend race, are moving, then it''s not something from which we can easily survive, by hiding".

    The princesses nodded, to be honest they wouldn''t have participated if they could leave before the cmity happened, even Daimon was the same, he wasn''t helping out of kindness, he had his mission toplete and even then if he deemed it too dangerous for him and the girls, then he wouldn''t hesitate to fail the mission and leave with them, the only difference is that now, he would lend a hand to Mellie and the others he has be friends with, by taking them with him to the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart, but that was thest resort.

    Daimon then turned to see Vincent, so far he hasn''t talked about the power level of the beast faction and things like that, but since they were in a contract and he trusted them now, there was no need to hide it, especially if his supposition was right.

    "I''ll tell you this now, but back at the ce wee from¡­ there is no Ster ranked experts or magic beasts".

    Naturally such a revtion took Vincent and the others by surprise, in their eyes a ce without Ster ranks couldn''t nurture a monster like Daimon, let alone him, Aisha, the sisters and the two princesses they met, were pretty much at the same level of the elites of Neptune, while Daimon could easily sh with the best of the best of their young generation.

    At least such was the impression they all have, the ck Empress, specially refused to believe that the aura she felt from that strange contract Daimon used, came from a "weakling", since her affinity is also darkness.

    Noticing the confusion on everyone''s faces, Daimon borated.

    "I don''t know if we outstand, or if youck something, but if my calctions are correct, the people of our ces can match up to a whole realm above their own, if facing the people of Neptune".

    "Of course, that''s not always the case, but to put an example the grandfather of one of my ssmates, who happens to be one of the strongest people back at our origin¡­ has a stronger aura than old Vincent".

    The queen frowned, so far the only person they know off, who can probably make Vincent retreat, is the White ancestor, so it is indeed hard to ept it, but Daimon had no reason to lie, not to mention he couldn''t harbor ill intentions to them, due to the contract, and honestly the queen wouldn''t believe he will harm them, since he could wear the ne her mother left to her.

    Daimon then smiled to ease the slight tension that lingered in the room.

    "I''m not saying this topare us, or because I don''t trust you, but because there is a possibility that we end up having to leave Neptune, and the theory I can think of, is that our ce of origin has stricter "regtions", so when you enter, your realms will be adjusted to that, I''m just letting you know beforehand to avoid any problem".

    Dimas was a special case, since he was sealed in that strange ce, but Evangeline has told Daimon that to surpass the Half Emperor realm, they will have to leave the Wonder Myriad Ster Chart.

    Originally he thought they coulde here to breakthrough, but Neptune and the ce where Scarlet and the others as well as the tribes lived, seemed to be weaker, as theycked in the three important aspects, mana sense, resonation with the world andws, in other words, that''s why their lord ranks didn''t have a manifestation phenomenon, they suffered to use a domain and that is if they even had one, and also couldn''t use space shift, automatically like every Half Emperor and even the three Magus Kings that had power equal to them, back at the White Fang gxy.

    "So it''s a matter of environment¡­ that would mean the only thing we excel at is mana capacity, due to our higher realms, it would exin why in the notes of the hero, it said that when he entered the Ster rank, the skies ckened and he was sent a heavenly signal, after that no one was his opponent until the moment the other people that came with him went through a simr process", mumbled Vincent.

    Daimon nodded, he came to this conclusion in part thanks to what Vincent mentioned, which was written in the book he gave him, it reminded him of the scene of the djinn being destroyed by the "Regtion lightning", probably that was the signal of a proper Emperor realm expert, or as Dimas called it  Subjugation" realm.

    Apparently, it wasn''t Neptune the only ce which had some hidden story, the Wonder Myriad Ster chart had no records of the ancient age as well, who knows if it was rted to the time of the hero, or not, but Daimon had a hunch that the global raid, might affect more than Neptune in the future, so he wanted everyone to be on the same page.

    "I have reinforces preparing out of Neptune right now, if the situationes to worse and they find a way in, then we won''t be alone, I would say that two of them should be at the same level as miss Thea", said Daimon, referring to Aura and Erin.

    The fact that the Empress was impressed by Erin''s aura, meant they should be near in strength terms, that also supported his theory, though ultimately, everything was a supposition until they met face to face.

    But so far, as Vincent said, besides arger amount of mana, he hasn''t seen the Ster ranks of this ce, doing anything that could make him feel the threat of death as for Vincent and Aurora, he doesn''t know since he hasn''t seen Calvin''s grandfather fighting yet.

    "Leaving that aside, you two came with Adam from the Elemental Sea, have you seen or heard anything of mypanions, or the two women from the light and cmity churches, as well as the other people from the academies?", asked Daimon to Tessa and Femi.

    Even after Aurora started using her intel,bined with the queen''s one to look for Calvin and the others, as well as the device he created, there hasn''t been any news about them, there was also Arianna and Dana, who were supposedly trapped in a castle somewhere under the sea, but he already had a n for that, now that Thea was his ally, she could be his guide through the Maelstrom Sea, with the help of the Flying Citadel of Aurora, he could finish looking just in time for the global raid, he had to wait for the tournament to end, because Aurora had to take the sects back to the Elemental Sea on it, he also wanted to go as he had to collect his reward from there, once he wins the tournament bing the champion of the two events.

    As Daimon expected, the alfear and dwarf princesses shook their heads.

    "No, besides Adam, we haven''t heard about anyone else, but Adam did mention that Marcus probably was with the Skelefiends", said Femi.

    Daimon smirked as he heard that.

    ''As expected, that light idiot has a hard time not bragging in front of girls'', he thought.

    Vincent and Aurora frowned, Aurora has already had an unpleasant experience with Adam, so she naturally imagined someone like that with the Skelefiends, and her mind linked it to whoever was behind of them, Vincent reached the same conclusion.

    Daimon who noticed their thoughtful expressions, discarded that theory.

    "Marcus is on par with Adam when ites to causing trouble, I''m 100% sure he isn''t the one behind the pirates and Skelefiends joining hands, he might be behind the new religion which is propagating and the people destroying Snakele''s temples, though".

    "Even if they join hands, the most they can do is tie with me, they can confirm it, as I have already had a small fight with them not too long ago", said Daimon as he pointed at Aisha, the sisters as well as Tessa and Femi.

    The queen''s eyes sparkled, as she saw Aisha and the others easily nodding, she could tell they werepletely honest, Tessa and Femi were a bit doubtful, but that is probably because they haven''t met Daimon for too long, that''s the conclusion she reached.

    Aurora on the other hand was ecstatic, knowing that the brat that tricked her granddaughter, was trashpared with Daimon, Jasmin also seemed strangely happy to hear that.

    And with that, everyone was now on the same page, so they advanced to the next point in the list.

    "I have a list of the nobles that are frequenting ktr and ording to Pablo, his mother and the other executives of the ck Wave''s branch in the kingdom, will return the same day when the tournament ends, at night to be precise", said Ae as she took a sip of the tea cup which Mina brought her a moment ago.

    Daimon smiled, ck Wave was going to be part of his forces, whether they liked it or not, there were also the nobles who frequented that ce, which will be leashed by the queen and will happily "cooperate".

    "That''s good, we need to have an army both on the surface and in the shadows, to cover both aspects in the uing days".

    Vincent then found his time to shine.

    "Leave the "light" side to me, this old man still has some friends and trustable subordinates, of course I''ll make them sign a contract¡­ and will take of them shall they turn to be traitors", said the Trident Marshal with a cold light on his eyes, he has yet to collect the debt, of hisst recruits being massacred.

    "Patriarch Underwood and the Bamboo Forest sect are also confirmed allies, I''ll see how things go with the others, there are also the sects under the management of my husband back at the Elemental Sea, once we return you can meet them", added Aurora.

    Daimon nodded, little by little, the army was forming, they still had a lot of things to do, before thest stage started.

    "Very well, doing it now would be dangerous, but we''ll also pay a visit to the Delphini state to have a "conversation" with the Duke", he said.

    After that the whole group went to the dining room to have a good meal, the queen and Mellie were especially happy for some reason, Ae even had a few sses of liqueur with the Empress, who found a potion that helped her sober up, but she still got drunk just by opening the bottle, making Lina drag her to her room to make her recover.

    "Ah right, we are all staying in a single room with Daimon, miss Thea is watching us over, I suggest you four to join~", said Aisha with a yful voice.

    Tessa, Femi, Chris and Cassy stared at each other and saw the surprise in the eyes of the other.

    Chris and Cassy were especially surprised to see Jasmin and Daphne casually entering Daimon''s room, as if it was the most natural thing to do.

    Tessa and Femi on the other hand gave Daimon usatory gazes.

    "Now that I think about it, isn''t the demon of the elite ss said to be always apanied by women, in fact most of the members of the elite ss are girls, could it be¡­", mumbled Femi, making Daimon reply.

    "Hey, don''t spread weird rumors about me, the queen and the other adults often leave to do their own tasks, and it''s better for miss Thea to watch us all together".

    Marlene and Thea joined them too, making those four sigh and enter the room, the sun was settling at this point, Aurora told Daimon to wait for him a bit as she was about to unseal the ring in which she had the thing left behind by her ancestor, which supposedly was a legacy of the hero.

 Chapter 381 The Beginning Of The Second Round

    While the girls were inside the room amodating more beds for the neers, and also chatting with each other, they were all on the same boat, so it was better for them to get along, Daimon waited outside for Aurora.

    Currently the only ways he had to get stronger, were the concentrated liquid which was brewing in his beast pouch, and probably the legacy of the hero.

    That doesn''t mean he isn''t prepared, since he has bought a lot of things from the shop of the system in the past years, not to mention the rewards he has piled just in case, but one can never be too cautious, especially if the things he saw in his dreams were what was awaiting for them in the Global Raid.

    ''Damn magic core, hurry up and let me advance already'', thought Daimon.

    There have been a few asions in which he has felt his magic core waking up, he doesn''t know when or how much, but he should be advancing in his mage path, at least up to the same realm in which his knight cultivation currently is.

    And that will allow him to train and advance in the knight path, since that''s how it seems to work for him.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he saw Aurora appearing in front of him, she then handed Daimon ck inked storage ring, which had a shark fin emblem on it.

    p¦Á§ád¦Á-¨¾?¦Í¨º|¡¤§ã¨®§® "Originally, I was supposed to hand this over to anyone who proved to have the ck Armored Shark lineage without any other conditions, that was the wish of my ancestor, but to be honest I was going to destroy it if the situation ever happened, because I can''t stand losing another member of my family due to some guy''s recklessness", said Aurora, with a sad light glowing in her eyes.

    Daimon didn''t say anything, he is not stupid, and Jasmin''s parents aren''t on the picture, so it''s obvious they had a bad ending, probably because the guy did something stupid and ended being saved by the lineage of the Jasmin''s mother, twice which led to her death.

    "Phew, but then the one who has that lineage I hate and is also a man, turned out to be you, someone whose will to live shines more than anyone I have seen or met in my life, so I will bet on you, don''t die kid¡­ and don''t abandon Jasmin, this isn''t a condition or a request from the matriarch of the Light Pce, but a plea from a grandmother".

    After saying that Aurora vanished into thin air, leaving behind a Daimon who was lost in his thoughts, call it fate, random, luck or maybe the interference of the system, but those who end up tangling up with him, have their lives go through a big change.

    Whether it''s a positive one or a negative one, varies depending on the case, Aisha returned from death, while Victor will be killed by his own hands, the only thing he can assure is that big changes often surround him, or are impulse by his actions, Jasmin has benefitted him and she also benefits from him, so he is sure she will go through a different path than those who preceded her, and Aurora probably instinctively knew it too, that''s why she made a bet, because there is a high chance that she will die during this conflict, or more urately she will choose to do so, if that means saving the little happiness she has left.

    Daimon entered the room and then sat on his bed where Aisha wasying down leisurely, he put on the ring which suddenly grew a small needle that punctured his skin to get a drop of his blood.

    Only then the ring unlocked and Daimon was able to see its contents, inside there was a perfectly preserved map, Daimon was honestly surprised that the contents were so straight, he expected it to be some kind of riddle or another of those clich¨¦ things that old powerhouses loved to leave for their descendants, to "test their worth" and simr stuff.

    Daimon extended the map on the bed and the girls curiously approached him, including Thea who was floating on the air randomly, as she was clearly not fully sober even now.

    Naturally, Daimon had no ide of the locations drawn in the map, but that''s why he haspanions, in this case there is girls from three of four seas present in this room, and as one would expect, one of them recognized thend distribution in the map.

    "I have seen these hills before, they are in the border of our continent, you remember Cassy, we once camped near that ce, since the vegetation is quite unique", said Jasmin.

    The daughter of the patriarch of the Bamboo Forest sect nodded, until not too long ago, Jasmin was way more livelier, and that is something she has had with her, since she was little.

    They visited all kinds of ces in the territory of the Elemental Sea, together when they were kids, with proper supervision¡­ most of the times.

    "How can I not, the trees in that area have a darker green colored leaves, I even brought some for my mother to study since they looked interesting and got scolded, because a certain someone lied to me saying we were allowed to leave alone", said Cassy.

    Daimon nodded, it made sense that the hero who was the lover of the ancestor of the Light Pce, left something behind in thend she ruled, and since the guy was most likely a system owner, then it should be quite a decent item.

    "I guess, everything falls in its right ce, I''ll apany you back to the Elemental Sea after winning the tournament", said Daimon.

    Tessa and Femi stared at each other, they wondered how could he affirm with such confidence that he will be the winner, but they didn''t say anything, Daimon has proven to not be someone to brag, and they were already in the same boat, so it was better for them if he had such confidence.

    ¡­

    The rest of the night went uneventful, with Thea guarding the fort, Ae and the others used the time they had to keep making preparations, since they will start moving as soon as the tournament ends.

    After a few hours, the sun reced the moon in the sky and thus the morning came for Neptune, Daimon was curious about how there was a sun and a moon in this ce where only one existed, but apparently no one knew about, they couldn''t fly past a certain height.

    And they couldn''t see anything besides the sky and the sun and moon, even if they used magic devices, probably because Neptune was isted, and separated inyers.

    Daimon slightly stretched his body, the first thing he saw after opening his eyes, was naturally Aisha who was hugging him to sleep, the four neers were surprised to see them being so close, despite their ages, but apparently the story Erin invented of them being orphans, who only had each other did the trick, and they didn''t ask anything else.

    ''I wonder how are those three going to react, when they know Aisha is your mother, not to mention your soulmate'', said Evangeline with an sleepy voice.

    ''They like Daimon, so they will understand it", added Narasha.

    ''You still don''t understand emotions Nasha, the natural in that situation is they being death-surprised by a the guy who made his mother his lover, however given how lucky Daimon is, I bet they''ll ovee it quite easily with some kisses and sweet words from this predator~''.

    Daimon chuckled.

    ''Good morning, you two seem quite lively today, even the normally grumpy Eve is being so cheerful nowadays, did something good happened perhaps'', he said.

    Narasha and even Evangelineughed, which made Daimon shake his head, they were clearly hiding something, but he didn''t look further into it, they will tell him when they have to.

    Aisha woke up almost at the same time as Daimon and after making sure that the others were still sleeping, he sneakily pecked Daimon''s lips.

    ''Good morning darling~'', she said through the mental connection, Daimon smiled and then they got up, not even a minuteter the other girls started to wake up one by one, thest one was Thea who has tied Marlene with a bed sheet, because she moved too much while being asleep.

    Just like before, the girls entered the bath together, even the ck Empress and Marlene joined them, from outside Daimon could hear some giggles and other sounds, which would make anyone''s imagination fly.

    Luckily, they didn''t take too long, and then Daimon had the bathroom for himself, which made him miss Erin and the others, leaving aside the lewd stuff, it was always fun to take a bath with them, still they will be together soon and if everything goes well, he''ll also be taking a big step in his rtionship with all his soulmates.

    Daimon noticed his sword raising up ready to pierce the sky and he bitterly smiled and jumped into the pool, while he doesn''t drown in carnal pleasure or debauchery, it''s not as if he''s made out of stone, spending practically all his time surrounded by beauties is quite hard, sometimes he doesn''t know where to look at, and the group keeps growing.

    "Damn, Apex Predator body", he mumbled, cing all the me in his body constitution.

    While Daimon was rxing a bit in the bathtub, he saw his shadow which extended behind him, due to the light crystal in the ceiling and he said.

    "I forgot to ask yesterday, did you notice something strange about the people we were close to when we left, Rita?".

    Daimon wouldn''t have stopped near the Minister just for a petty exchange of disguised insults, he had better things to do with his time, he exchanged words with him, because that way, Rita who lives in his shadow, could try to see if there was something off about the Minister.

    While she is in Daimon''s shadow, not even Vincent can detect her, but can''t manipte Daimon''s shadow, or she will be noticed, so he had to be close, unfortunately the apologetic voice of Rita made it clear she had no luck.

    "Sorry young master, I was unable to discern if that guy is like that maid or the creature, but I could indeed feel an ominous sensationing from him, his ice affinity is not like the ones young master or me have seen so far".

    Daimon nodded as he got out of the bathtub and started drying his body with a towel.

    "Okay, he might not be a creature but he should have a deal with them, that or some kind of spell like the one the guy behind the Skelefiends and pirates, gave to them".

    "Thank for the hard work Rita, inform me as soon as you notice something suspicious", said Daimon.

    "As you wish young master", after saying that, Rita returned to silence and Daimon who had fully dressed left the bathroom, the girls were waiting for him so that they could have breakfast together.

    They went to the dinning room, where Vincent and the others were already at the table, Mina was serving the breakfast.

    "Good morning kid, I''m just telling you in advance, today I will retire early from the tournament, because I will "receive" a call from the one of the outposts at the border of the kingdom, I will be meeting with some of my trusted subordinates in secret, there would be no suspicions since I always use some excuse to not be all the time in Raymond''s event, as he skips mine", said Vincent.

    Daimon nodded, as long as one of the two maximum Ster ranks of the group stayed behind, in case the Minister tried some tricks, it would be fine.

    After finishing their meal, Vincent directly brough them to the center of the city, where all the participants as well as the spectators from the noble houses were gathering, everyone seemed to be in a good mood, probably because the festivities were still ongoing even after the whole night.

    Still, there was an schedule, so not even five minutester all the participants and their families or forces were present, the doors of the Minister''s mansion opened and Raymond came out of it, apanied by his grandson and the other members of his family.

    "Good morning to everyone, I hope you have enjoyed the first day of the event, and have had a good rest, because today''s event is going to be as exciting as yesterday''s", said Raymond as he waved his hand to open the portal.

    Just like yesterday, the people crossed the portal to the Calm Tri-Lake Forest, since they already knew where they had to sit, today''s start went smoother than yesterday and soon the twenty teams were already on the stage.

    Today it was the turn for the knowledgepetition, which would be held on the tforms that floated in theke which was in the middle, in other words the Spirit Enhancing Lake.

    Daimon was curious as to what the effect of theke on the participants would be, the first one numbed the senses, which was rted to the fact that when Raymond threw a stone in it, the thing froze.

    Cold destroyed the receptors on the body, but contrary to what one would think, not being able to feel anything due to cold wasn''t a bless but a disgrace, since normally that would mean, the tissue was death and it would need to be removed.

    The stone the Minister threw at theke in the middle exploded at contact, but naturally that couldn''t be the fate of the participants or who in their right mind would ept such conditions.

    ''It''s a knowledgepetition and theke this time is called "Spirit Enhancing", maybe there is a time limit to answer, and some kind of penalty if you fail or get a wrong answer'', wondered Daimon.

    Thest people upied their ces and then the Minister left his seat to float in the middle of thekes, which meant the second round of the three-art tournament was about to start.

 Chapter 382 The Results Of The Second Round (Part 1)

    Now that the minister hase from his seat, the noiseing from the spectators stopped, so that the second round of the tournament could start.

    "Wee to all the honored guests and spectators of our Clear Water kingdom, today we will be witnessing the debut of the future schrs that will influence our seas".

    "And for that, our family has prepared thiske, like in any knowledgepetition, questions will be made and the designated "schr" of each team must answer them, but if it was just like that it wouldn''t be one of the most important events in our kingdom".

    "A schr is often responsible of the lives or deaths in a team, while the decision might not be made by him, one wrong advice can lead to a tragedy, and because of that you should realize the weight of such responsibility".

    With a wave of the Minister''s hand, two different sections appeared on each tform, just like yesterday two tforms joined to form arger stage, meaning that the teams will be once again facing each other.

    Unlike yesterday were mana and talent had a big impact, the round of today was oriented to give hope to those who dedicated to learn, and while education might be better on the noble families, byw everyone had ess to it in the kingdom, and if anyone outstood, regardless of origin or status, it would be nurtured by the kingdom.

    "Future schrs please take your positions, other team members you too", ordered the Minister.

    The teams then divided, the schrs were given a seat and a table, while the others had to stand there, in an specific order, starting from the captain, then the vice-captain, strategist and then the strategist, andstly the regr members of the team.

    Of course, there were more position in one team, especially in army units like the team of the young spear, but for the sake of the tournament, each team designated one for those three positions only, and the others were treated as regr members.

    Once everyone was in their respective positions, the Minister continued with the exnation.

    "There is no time limit to solve the problems and questions that will appear in each other''s tables, but while the schr faces the problems in ck and white, the rest of the team will be exposed to theke".

    "The captain has the facility to relegate the exposition to theke, to the vice-captain and the vice-captain can pass it onto the strategy and so on, if the three authority positions don''t do it, the penalty will be automatically passed after five minutes on the captain, three minutes on the vice-captain and one minute on the strategist, as for the regr team members, they can at most endure the penalty for thirty seconds, additionally the captain can carry the whole team if he so wishes to".

    "If the team member in charge of the penalty faints or shows signs of being in critical danger, the team automatically fails the current question and will have to skip it, if the captain is the one who sumbs then the team will be disqualified so manage your "time", efficiently".

    "There are a total of 11 problems to solve for each schr and they are all different and are sent randomly, the difficulty also varies but not for that much, as I said the time isn''t what matters the most in this round, but once one of the two teams facing each other finishes, the output of the exposition to theke will double".

    Listening to the words of the Minister the spectator''s interest was picked, this roundbined both knowledge and "spirit", or the will to endure the penalty by those with authority.

    The Minister then smirked as he pointed at theke to exin what the penalty was.

    "When drank mixed with the water of the other twokes, the Spirit Enhancingke has the ability to improve one''s ability to reason, making thoughts more fluid and temporarily enhancing onesprehension of its affinity, but in its raw state it will forcefully put pressure in one''s head as it affects the brain".

    "You saw the fate of the stone I threw directly at theke, such is the result of those fools who had tried to sneak some of the water of the Spirit Enhancingke before, naturally for the tournament we have limited the exposition to a 5%, but the effect increases the more time one is exposed to it, regardless of output and that is as of current since the second day is when theke in the middle "weakens" the most".

    Everyone could imagine the head of a person, suddenly exploding like a watermelon struck by a hammer and they felt chills running down their spines.

    The teams from the Elemental Sea were particrly displeased by the harshness of the penalty, but they noticed that the teams from the kingdom were equally surprised, which made sense, since the previous years they didn''t have to go through this, there used to be a formation which applied pressure over the schr to urge him to solve the question and that was it.

    But this time, the roles were inversed, making those who chose a "sturdy" but less knowledgeable schr, inwardly curse, while those who didn''t try to be smart and exploit a w looked at them with disdain.

    "As for the factors taken into ount to decide the winner, the first and most important will be the number of correct answers, the number of surviving team members and "spirit" showed by the captain of each team, to all the heroes of the young generation, I will leave you with our special guest of today and good luck".

    Having said everything he needed to, the Minister returned to his seat among the judges, this time Carlos''s seat was upied by a different person, a slim old man with sses and a long white beard.

    Despite his looks, based on the aura that he exuded, the old man was actually a Ster ranked, and from a renowned family on top of that, because he was Triten''s royal advisor, and the n head of the Sail family conformed by the sea turtle race.

    With the Minister''s greenlight, the second round started, from within his skybox Daimon saw the arrays on the tforms illuminate, the schr was protected by a dome, while on the other side, a red circle surrounded the one who was being exposed to theke.

    As soon as it started, the tables in front of each sch also illuminated and an envelope appeared on them, at the same time the captains of the 40 teams who were participating right now, had different reactions.<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>

    The four favorites had little to not reaction at all, the rest of the top twenty slightly frowned, those in the positions 21 to 40 flinch a bit, though some were just taken by surprise, there was exception though.

    "Ahhh!", the captain of the 33th ranked team screamed not even thirty secondster, he immediately passed the penalty to the vice-captain, unfortunately that meant his team automatically failed that problem, so the schr had no option but to leave it on the table next to him and, in the area designated for thepleted problems, only then the next envelope appeared in front of her.

    "Uwaah, that was pathetic, what captain can''t even endure as much as the regr team members".

    "Well, the captain isn''t always the strongest, that guy probably got his position since he is the son of the n head of his family".

    And simrments could be hearding from the spectators.

    "What do you think senior Enzio, you who personally experienced the exposition to theke have an advice for the members of the young generation?", asked the Minister to the ssed old man sitting next to him.

    The old man scratched his beard a couple of times before saying.

    "The phenomenon caused by the Spirit Enhancing Lake of the Minister''s family is still beyond theprehension of our kingdom, but ording to the data we gathered with your cooperation, what each person feels when under the influence of theke is different, but the intensity is the same".

    "Let''s use a simple example to describe our results, it''s like eating spicy food, the same amount of spiciness has different impacts on each person, ones will burn while others find it tolerable or even nd".

    "When we talk about magic resources the amount and the capacity of one to absorb and refine is what defines the result, but thiske is different, besides being exposed to it, nothing else matters, we saw a ten years old child on the early stage of the low mortal level, endure a whole minute without any problems and a royal guard on the early stag of thete Mortal level scream after a few seconds of it".

    "An schr doesn''t make assumptions, this is my advice for the members of the young generation, don''t blindly believe in anything, unless you have personally experienced it".

    The words of the old man changed the perspective of the spectators, most of them no longer mocked the guy who screamed a moment ago, especially because the vice-captain endured it even less than him, in exchange the strategist was perfectly fine even at the minute mark.

    But if we are talking about those who were excelling right now, the first one would be the team of the Arcarius family, whether it was for convenience, part of a n or mere coincidence, the young spear, the son of the ckfin Duke and even the crowned prince had already changed with their respective vice-captains.

    The one whosted the most was the crowned prince, having reached the three minute mark, next was the young spear with 2 minutes and 55 seconds, andstly Ezequiel whosted 2 minutes and 45 seconds.

    Meanwhile Walfordsted 3 minutes and 20 seconds in total, making the spectators that supported the Minister cheer up and p, making Raymond smile from ear to ear.

    ''While I don''t know if the Bryan the "mind" of the twin princes is as good as the royal concubine assured, in terms of points acquired by the captain''s spirit, Walford who has refined the three-colored water of theke, twice in his lifetime will naturally perform better'', thought the Minister.

    Little by little the penalty made the regr team members pale and sweat, but they endured it and then recovered while theirrades took over, and when the penalty was about to start the second cycle for the average teams, and had affected half of the team for the top ten while for the four favorites the penalty was about to leave the strategist to start with the regr team members, the first schr to properly finish solving a problem appeared.

    One of the twin Keran princes, Bryan left the paper in the designated area, and to everyone''s surprise, the red circle which symbolized the one who was being exposed to theke, suddenly returned to Walford.

    It was then when the voice of the Minister made its way to the ears of all the people present in the area.

    "The first surprise I prepared for you, is that when the schr willingly ces a result in the designated area, the cycle for that team will start over again, but the captain wont'' be able to pass it until at least 45 seconds had passed, that or give up on the next problem, for the chance to ce the penalty on the vice-captain".

    The voice of the Minister was a nightmare for those captains who barely endured a whole minute, they started praying that their schrs didn''t answer as fast as possible but that was also problem, because if the opponent finished first, the output of the penalty for them will increase.

    In other words, they had no choice but to grit their teeth and endure, there was also another factor, which the Minister didn''t mention but which some were considering right now.

    Which is purposedly screwing over their opponent, how do you ask, by answering whatever to finish early and then increasing the difficulty for the opponent, naturally by doing so they will be giving up on this round, but that was still fine as long as they dragged their opponents down.

    It was a "w" left on purpose by the Minister, for a future situation, though right now no one was taking it that seriously.

    Even the opponents of the four favorites were fairing way better than in the first round... for now.

 Chapter 383 The Results Of The Second Round (Part 2)

    From the skybox of the judges, Vincent, Ae and Aurora noticed that the Minister was specially confident in this round.

    Vincent saw a chance to make his exit in the most smooth way possible, which is of course looking for a fight with the Minister as always.

    "You old sly turtle, do you think you can fool us with your "equalness", it''s obvious that this round was bound to be easier for that grandson of yours, I bet he has refined the three-colored water at least once in his life, it''s easy to outstand with a better starting point", said Vincent with a sarcastic voice.

    The Minister listened to Vincent''s words and he snorted.

    "Don''t nder others so carelessly old shark, certainly Walford has absorbed the three-colored water before, but he couldn''t even take advantage of 20% of its effectiveness, besides it''s not like the other participants haven''t used any potions of resources before, it just happens that my grandson used the best ones for this situation, if you had a team representing your family, maybe you could have used that in your favor in that event of yours".

    Naturally the Minister answered in kind, but honestly Vincent wasn''t taunted by his words.

    "Well, whatever tricks you pull, ultimately you are going to lose anyway, I''ll take my leave since it''s getting boring for me", said Vincent with a mocking expression, which made the Minister grit his teeth.

    But then the Minister smirked.

    "Both you and that brat which won the beast hunt seem to be quite confident in me failing, then why don''t we make a small bet, what do you say a few millions of sea crystals aren''t anything for you right?".

    Vincentughed, he then took out three objects from his storage ring, they were all iplete emblems which the Trident Marshal has collected through the years.

    "At our level, what do a few millions of sea crystals amount for, if you want to pick my interest then offer something which isn''t easy to obtain, these iplete emblems are part of my personal collections, do you dare bring out something as rare, or are you going to hide in your shell".

    The Minister snorted and then he also took out a couple of objects from his storage ring, a couple of iplete emblems, Vincent saw that Raymond only had two of them and he shook his head.

    "Have you gone senile Raymond, you want to bet 2 against 3 and leave the shortest end of the stick to me, forget it if you don''t have the guts".

    The Minister frowned, right now, besides those iplete emblems he didn''t have anything else as rare in his ring.

    Vincent then gave thest attack by saying.

    "Since you are so confident in your grandson''s ability after he absorbed the three-colored water it has gotten my interest, add the amount of three-colored water that is produced this year to the bet and we have a deal, when my champion wins, I''ll give it to my niece".

    The minister doubted for a moment, the amount of three-colored water produced each year is different, sometimes it''s only a few drops, other times it can be a whole bottle, if he ends up losing and this year''s harvest is outstanding he will have to cry.

    But again it was all a bet, even in the case the four favorites lose to the ck horse of the event, the chances are of only getting a few drops of the three-colored water.

    "Fine I ept your bet, don''te cryingter old shark", said the Minister, to which Vincent smiled before saying.

    "Very well,dy Aurora will be our witness, in case you want to be a sore loserter on".

    After saying that, Vincent left the ce, of course the Minister opened a portal for him to leave, since he didn''t want to see Vincent more than usual.

    ''You''ll be receiving a surprise this year you old bastard, this year the secondke is the weakest I have seen ever, so the amount of three-colored water that will appear should be really low'', thought Raymond, during the previous, no one noticed that one of the people present in the room was fighting the urge tough.

    Naturally all this was nned by Ae, originally the idea was for Daimon to ask for the emblems the Minister owns as the prize for him winning the tournament, but since such a good opportunity to rip off the Minister presented, how could she not take advantage of it.

    The Minister was too confident in the advantage his grandson had, and the things at stake were the "useless" iplete emblems, so even if the Minister lost, he would not feel too bad, besides his pride of course.

    Even then, Ae took into ount the fact that using the emblems for the bet might raise suspicions for the Minister, so she told some instructions to Vincent, to ask for something which the Minister deemed valuable, as she knew the Minister only had two emblems, while Vincent had three.

    If Daimon asked for the emblems, there is a possibility that the Minister invented some excuses to not give them away, since he had some grudges against Daimon, but like this she made the Minister believe, Vincent aimed at the three-colored water from the vey beginning and only used the emblems as an excuse.

    ''She basically yed with one of the pirs of the kingdom and a much stronger mage than her, just using the knowledge she had, truly the most terrifying strategist of the Mermen Sea'', thought Aurora who took a sip of a cup of tea.<novelsnext>please visit </novelsnext>

    Back at the tforms the second round continued and was about to reach half of it, at this point most of the teams had lost members, in fact some captains and by consequence their teams were disqualified after not being able to endure the exposition to theke.

    The first surprise the Minister had hit the teams hard, each time the schr solved a problem, the captain had to forcefully endure 45 seconds of penalty or fail a question, naturally this benefited Walford''s team, since he was the captain with the highest endurance in the forty teams so far.

    ¡­

    ''Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, why am I surrounded by useless trash!'', Ezequiel saw his strategist having trouble solving the fifth problem, and he inwardly cursed, even if he and the vice-captain endured the penalty, he didn''t want to put the burden in his strategist, which is his woman too.

    Not only because of personal reasons, but the third round requires the strategist to be in its best condition, and thiske screwed over the mind, while recovery was possible, with just a night of rest, one could not possibly return to its prime.

    That''s also why the strategist was only allowed to endure one minute of penalty at most, Ezequiel wasn''t the only one who used this strategy, the crown prince was the same, he kept Corey in the best condition possible, and instead had his vice-captain, which is actually someone from the Vs family, a tall dude with a bulky figure.

    For Walford''s team, he was the one taking the most of the penalty, but his regr team members were doing it amazingly good too, probably because they were given some three-colored water as well, the vice-captain was the mage girl that used ice to make a road for them in the mazes.

    And as always, the team of the neo nobles represented by Lance, was doing something barbaric, both the vice-captain and the strategist in name were the sturdiest members, who were there just to endure the penalty for the longest time, as for their schr, it was a slim guy wearing a full body armor and sses, it clearly didn''t fit with the barbarian-like body shape of the other members of the team.

    Ezequiel''s mood suddenly improved, seeing that his schr was the first one toplete the fifth envelope, but just as a smile was about to form on his face, he saw an envelope different than the previous ones appearing on the table of his team.

    And then as if to confirm the bad premonition he was having, the voice of the Minister could be heard echoing through the whole area.

    "Oh, as expected of the heroes from the ckfin family, they were the first ones to reach the half mark, then let me exin you the second surprise I prepared for this round".

    Ezequiel nearly vomited blood, both because he was suddenly assaulted by the penalty and because it seemed as if the world was ying with him now, unfortunately for him, besides his father and his team, everyone else ignored his state, as they were more interested in what the Minister had to say.

    "Information is a weapon and a good schr must know to wield it, my second surprise is a small challenge based on the encrypted letters, that used to be seen in the battlefields back then, when mirror tes didn''t exist".

    "Only those who are knowledgeable in the history of their respective seas, would know about such a thing, and that is why this challenge is optional, you can skip if you want to¡­ but be aware that deciphering the envelope and the problem inside of it, will count as two correct answers".

    "Those who are not secure of a previous problem, have the chance to redeem themselves, and those who are confident in their previous answers, will get a wildcard, as an exception I''ll give you schrs a chance to talk in private with your captains, during twenty seconds, good luck".

    As soon as the Minister finished speaking, the captain and the schrs of each team were covered by a ck dome, which isted them from the others, so that they could have privacy to discuss whether they would ept the challenge or decline it.

    Daimon who was evaluating the participants until a moment ago, shook his head, he already knew who was going to win this round, the girls also made their guesses, and Mellie approached Daimon to validate hers.

    "The Minister did something to give his grandson an advantage, right?", mumbled Mellie.

    "Mm, yes but that''s not going to be enough, he is forgetting that while his grandson has ice affinity which is indeed rted to water, it isn''t water, it''s the same principle that screwed over the son of the ckfin Duke in the first round, therefore the ones who are feeling less pressured by theke are those with water affinity".

    Mellie smiled, Daimon''s answer went along with her supposition, the domes that were isting the captains and schrs, disappeared, and then as if something triggered a chain reaction, the schrs who finished the fifth problem, tossed the encrypted envelopes aside, meaning they gave up on the chance of getting two points.

    The reasoning behind it it''s pretty simple, deciphering the envelope would add more time to the penalties they had to endure, and the number of surviving members of a team also counted for the final score.

    But even then there were a few people who didn''t reject the chance to get the extra point, the crowned prince and Walford to be more urate, and that''s not all, the red circle was around them, meaning they had decided to use their right to endure all the penalty as captains.

    Lance looked at his schr and nodded, he opted to reject the extra point, because he has already won a round, and he needs his subordinates to be in their prime for tomorrow, if he wants to have a chance win against the crowned prince''s team, which is his main target in the third round.

    As for Ezequiel, he ended fourth in the first round because he lost too much team members, so this time he by himself took the opposite decision and didn''t chose swiftness, but practicality.

    "Ohhhh!", seeing a literal showdown of "spirit" between the popr crowned prince and the grandson of the Minister, who seemed to be the hidden card of his family, the spectators cheered up.

    The first one to retire from enduring the penalty will lose points in the "spirit" aspect of the second round, and also will probably lose a team member if the schr takes too long to decipher the encrypted envelope.

 Chapter 384 The Results Of The Second Round (Part 3)

    All the attention of the spectators focused in the current showdown of "spirit" between the crowned prince and the grandson of the Minister, who turned out to be a ck horse in the tournament.

    The seconds kept passing and their respective schrs continued to do their best, soon the count surpassed the third minute, but the scene of the crowned prince giving up which the Minister expected didn''t happen.

    Walford who saw that, frowned, he was still far from his limit but he was surprised to say the less.

    ''If he could endure more, then why he didn''t do it from the very beginning, could it be that he can guess how much time I can hold and knew his limit was lower than mine, so he didn''t want to waste time?'', he wondered.

    If one knew the other would win, then it was better to not tire oneself just for a showoff and instead manage the time in a way that made up for it, Walford was confused, if the crowned prince was continuing with this littlepetition, then it meant he was confident he was going to win, which should be impossible.

    ''Humph, don''t me me if you end up bleeding from your eyes, ears, nose and mouthter on'', thought Walford.

    A couple more of minutes passed and when they both surpassed the five minute mark, the spectators were speechless, they even ignored the fact that Lance and Ezequiel''s teams schrs had already solved the seventh problem.

    Once they reached the seventh minute mark and to the Minister''s displease, Walford started to show signs of unstableness, at the same time the schrs finally finished deciphering the envelopes.

    Walford noticed that the prince has also started show signs of being tired, but he knew he wasn''t going tost as much as him, and if he overstepped his limit, then there was a chance he would get eliminated by being too tired, so while gritting his teeth he passed the penalty to his vice-captain, ending at an amazing time of 7 minutes 30 seconds.

    The crowned prince in exchange held out until the 8 minute mark, when he suddenly trembled and only then he passed the penalty to his vice-captain, he trembled because just when he reached the eight minute mark, the continuous exposition to the effect of the water of theke, increased the output from 5% to 8%, it was a bit more than a 50% increase in the effect whenpared to before, and it hit different.

    "Ohhhh!", naturally the whole ce went crazy cheering up for the crowned prince, he even beat the "local" in his own home, not by anything he was the most popr in the younger generation and the number one at the same time after all.

    At the skybox of the judged, the Minister had a sour expression on his face, he even gave Walford the three-colored water twice, for him to absorb as much as he could and yet, he couldn''t beat the crowned prince, the difference wasn''t that big though, so he started making some calctions, if he got a decent dose of the three-colored water this time, he should get enough to make a third portion for Walford.

    ''It''s okay, a gentleman can wait dozens of years for revenge, my Arcarius family will definitely rise this time around, by climbing over the ckfin family anyway'', he thought.

    At Daimon''s skybox, the girls looked at him waiting for his exnation, those two nearly tripled the previous time the captains got at the beginning when they were supposedly showing off their capacities.

    And while they looked a bit tired, it''s clear that they could recover in a round of their subordinates enduring the penalty instead of them, so they should have been able to endure around 15 or so seconds more than what they did respectively.

    "It''s a matter of lineage concentration and the effects of theke on the different affinities, Walford should be around 10-12% of concentration which is not bad, but the crowned prince as of current should be around 16-17%, also Walford''s affinity is ice while the crowned prince''s is water, so even if Walford has drank the three-colored water, he still has a slight disadvantagepared to the crowned prince".

    "Still, I have to admit that that old Minister is quite cunning, ording to uncle Vincent the amount needed for a sole dosage of the three-colored water per person is around the three liters, or it won''t have any effect".

    "And since the average is just around 100 milliliters in a good year, Walford must have drank around the amount collected in one hundred years, which should be two dosages, not to mention the mage girl who drank another two dosages, and three of the members of the time who took one, that is around five hundred years of their reserves¡­ it''s crazy", mumbled Mellie.

    Daimon agreed with her, it was weird that the Minister was willing to invest so much in the younger generation, without any special reason, his grandson and the mage girl were understandable, but the others weren''t, it was as if he wanted to increase the strength of the young members of his family, as much as he could, regardless of the cost.

    "He probably even gave one dosage to other guys from his family", added Chris, who was talking for Daphne.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, the Minister shouldn''t know about the Global Raid, only system users should know the details of what was about to happen, also if the Minister would have known that the emblems were required to enter, he wouldn''t have epted Vincent''s bet.

    ''It could be that others are restrained to talk too much about it, or maybe they don''t know the details and just know that something will happen this weekend'', thought Daimon.

    It was possible, since unlike other system users, he wasn''t affected by restrictions, unless they were for his well-being, like the one ced on the grimoire he got from his Fragment of Lace, ording to Evangeline, any outer restrictions were useless against him, and the Global Raid though adapted to the system as a mission, is something that will happen whether he was here or not, so it doesn''t depend on the system.

    "I guess we''ll soon find out, in any case he is giving his all to win, so he wants the prize of essing the treasury of the royal family, meaning there must be something of big interest for him there¡­ for him or for whoever he might have done a deal with", concluded Daimon.

    "Mm", the girls nodded agreeing with him and they then focused in thepetition once again.

    ¡­

    Back at thekes, a strange situation was developing, some teams which aren''t from the favorites had started to finish solving their problems, everything started when they reached the eighth problem in which even the four favorites were stuck right now.

    When the schr of one of the lowest ranked teams finally decided to skip it, as soon as he opened the ninth envelope he paled, the ninth problem required him to solve the eighth problem, meaning he couldn''t answer it too.

    So he skipped one more time and then he fell into despair, because the tenth problem required the answer from the ninth one, after skipping the tenth, he finally saw light when the eleventh problem wasn''t rted to the previous, just to fall from the sky to hell when he realized this problem was around tree times harder than the previous.

    And as if the heavens were ying with him, the twelfth problem was even harder, so he started to try and answer it while he regretted having skipped the previous problems, he after around ten minutes and losing one team member had no choice but to admit he couldn''t solve it and leave it which marked the end of his team''s participation in the second round.

    But he wasn''t the only one, all the lower ranked teams found themselves in a simr situation, since they all used the same strategy, which was evaluating how much time was going to take them answer a problem, and if it surpassed what the team could endure, they had to skip it.

    There were other teams who were able to answer the eighth and ninth problem but from the tenth was too much, meaning they reached their limit because thest two were harder than that.

    Little by little the teams started finishing by just skipping the problems, their opponents suddenly felt the penalty increase which made them also fail a bit faster than what they nned.

    All the way until only the four favorites, the three teams from the elemental sea, their opponents and the team made from the people of secondary branches of the high ranked noble houses from the kingdom, as well as their opponents remained.

    In other words from forty teams only sixteen remained, and the ones facing the four favorites were probably only staying to not impair the idols of the kingdom, it''s not like they were doing it out of kindness or admiration, but because if they who had no hopes to win them, were to resort to such methods to get in the way of the favorites, they will drown in a sea of spit, due to all their supporters.

    In other words, their reputation worked as a dissuasion, as for the opponents of the three teams of the sects from the Elemental Sea and the team from the secondary branches, they were matched against opponents who were close in rank to them, so the remaining were the strongest 16 teams.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    This time the disposition changed though, the opponents from the members of the three sects finished in a rushed manner, because they could no longer endure the effects of theke.

    Next the team from the secondary branches also left, it wasn''t obligated but they skipped thest problem and quitted, the opponents of the four favorites saw that others left before them and they who were literally just making time at this point, let out a sigh of relief and left by skipping thest two questions.

    So now only the four favorites and the teams of the three sects remained, patriarch Skyfire saw his son at the verge of copsing and he gritted his teeth, if Jasmin took the position of the captain and with the children of the four sects working as the vice-captain, the strategist and two regr members of the team, they should have been able to get to the top three.

    Although he used that excuse, he was just angry that his son seemed to be the first one that was going to be forced to retire out of the teams of the three sects which were participating, since patriarch Underwood''s team wasn''t.

    And just as expected the son of patriarch Skyfire was the first one to leave from the teams of the sects, followed by the son of patriarch Stoneheart.

    Inparison, the son of patriarch Heartstream was able to endure more and properly answer the eleventh question, but the schr shook his head upon the twelfth question, meaning h had no clue on how to solve it and they then left.

    Still they were the ones who held out the most out of the four favorites probably because all had water affinity, which slightly helped to endure the effect of water of theke, unfortunately their schrcked just a bit.

    Un any case, the climax of the second round was finally here, the four favorites had to endure a double output of the exposition to theke, the crowned prince and Walford were fine holding their previous marks, which were three minutes, since their real limit was more than double that, the young spear was surprisingly able to stand 2 minutes and a half, meaning his real limit was around five minutes.

    But Ezequiel felt his brain hurting barely passing the two minute mark, he turned to see his schr and gritted his teeth.

    ''Why is this bastard not hurrying up!'', he inwardly screamed, all of them were in the twelfth question, and even though time didn''t matter for the final score, right now time was important since the teams were reaching their limit, whoever loses a team member will probably end up in fourth ce.

    The schrs were also sweating, they have been doing their best since the encrypted envelope surprise, to not burden their teams, because they knew that taking too much time to answer was the same as losing.

    Surprisingly it was Lance''s schr the first one to finish the twelfth problem and so their team was released, some of the members practically copsed as soon as they were released from the participating.

    The ones who could move helped theirrades and under loud ps and cheers, the team from the neon nobles retired to the resting area prepared at the other side of the tforms.

    The next one to finish was none other than Walford, but he had a positive expression on his face, since his schr nodded at him after he finished thest problem, also it didn''t escape the public''s eyes that their team members weren''t as tired as the previous ones, despite they having endured for a couple of minutes more.

    And so it ended with the crowned prince''s team and Ezequiel''s team on the stage, for Ezequiel''s luck, his strategist asked him to let her participate in taking the penalty, which earned their team mates a bit of rest, and that''s what allowed him to not lose anyone, apparently the strategist was strong enough to endure the whole minute at double output, which meant she would have endured more than two minutes earlier.

    The schr from the crowned prince''s team suddenly smiled and with ast movement of his hand, he finished the twelfth problem, some of the teammates of the crowned prince fell on their knees, but most were able to stay standing.

    Not to mention the crowned prince''s position was straight and firm like a mountain, he helped all his subordinates stand and they left to the resting area under the cheers and ps of the spectators.

    "Hurry the fuck up you fool", growled Ezequiel, he felt as if his teeth were going to break due to him making onest effort to leave his schr finish thest problem, which didn''tst him too much, he had to pass it to his vice-captain who endured as much as he could and the thing ended with the strategist.

    Fortunately the schr finished before the strategist reached the minute mark, which was a must because the other teammates wouldn''t have been able to endure it even one more second.

    As soon as they were released, everyone besides the strategist copsed on the ground, even Ezequiel felt the strength abandoning him, but he was helped to keep standing by his strategist, which made him nod in approbation, his woman helped him keep face after all.

    Once the ckfin family''s team arrived at the resting area, the judges came down their skybox they had the answers of all the problems, so they just needed to see whether the answer matched or not, that was the first filter, then if the old ssed man deemed their process correct but their answer wrong for a minor factor, they were given half a point, but there were just about five cases evaluated like that, the others were fully wrong answers.

    "I would like to congratte the young heroes who participated in this second round, which is harder than previous years, having said that the first ce of this time is¡­ the crowned prince, his highness Terry Malleus".

    Walford already knew it but he still sighed, then Aurora took over.

    "The second position belongs to the grandson of the Arcarius family, Walford Arcarius".

    The Minister pped at her grandson, he lost for a really little difference in the spirit category, since the crowned prince won the showdown earlier, but he still got the second ce, it was good, they had a second and a third ce so far.

    This time the ssed old man was the one to give the third-ce result.

    "I want to make a special mention for the third ce, they got the twelve answers correct, and lost due to other aspects, but their answers were perfect including the processes, if this was a pure schr type ofpetition they would have been the winners", said the old man with an approbatory voice.

    The neo nobles proudlyughed, the ones among them who dedicated to knowledge were really important, since they helped develop the formations they used, the same for strategist, they might be battle maniacs but they aren''t stupid, they know that to excel a higher battle prowess, more than strength is needed.

    Ezequiel was literally fuming right now, and to add salt to the wound the one to announce it, was once again Ae who didn''t bother hiding the disdain in her voice.

    "As for the fourth position, the winner managed to defend its title, five a round of apuse to Ezequiel ckfin", she said.

    The spectators still pped and all, but those who had a grudge with the ckfin family got the message and alsoughed, which made the ckfin Duke feel the urge to fight the queen on the spot.

    ''Why is that bitch targeting me, could it be that¡­ that idiot was caught by her, if so he''s more than dead, luckily he didn''t know anything'', thought the ckfin Duke.

    The rest of the ranking was announced by the Vs Duchess and so the second round of the tournament reached its end, the minister opened the portal and asked everyone to leave in the same order, this time he didn''t bother in waiting and went directly to where his family was instead of looking for troubles with Daimon, he didn''t want to give Vincent a reason to try and cancel the bet.

    Aurora, Ae and the Duchess returned to Daimon''s group side and they all left together, Vincent asked them to contact him once they were back at the mansion, though the secretmunication line one could only ess with the keys of him and the Ae, which the queen had on her right now.

 Chapter 385 New Allies & Dream

    Since Vincent wasn''t with the group, Ae used her ring to create a portal with the defensive array of the city, Aurora wasn''t skilled enough inw space to bring anyone above the Half Emperor realm and while Thea could use her spear to move, the array would have gotten in her way, so the queen was the one to excel her authority to move.

    A couple of secondster they appeared outside the Duchess''s mansion, after making sure they weren''t followed or anything, they entered the mansion and went to the conference room while the security head Mina went to prepare food for the group.

    In the meantime, the queen took out two blue keys from her spatial ring and handed one to Aurora, while she held onto the other one, at the same time she took out a mirror te with a lock.

    "Senior Aurora, if you please".

    Aurora nodded and epted the key, the same person couldn''t use the two keys, but one could designate someone to act on their behalf, in this case Vincent gave Aurora the right to act as his representative.

    Daimon was a bit perplexed at therge number of security measures that the queen implemented for this mirror te, but it made sense since this seemed to be a line she used only to discuss the most private matters with Vincent.

    Ae and Aurora both inserted the keys in the locket and the mirror te was safely unlocked, but that wasn''t all, since this was Ae''s te she let a drop of her blood fall on it and even used her voice at an specific frequency as a secondary verification.

    Only then the transmission started, it was both image and sound, and what could be seen floating above the mirror te which worked as a projection was another conference room simr to the one in which Daimon and the others were right now.

    The difference is that there were only five people in total there including Vincent who was sitting at the head seat, all of them were wearing uniforms of the army and all of them were in their middle thirties, looking a bit younger than Dominic the main general of the neo noble faction.

    Vincent took the initiative to present both parties, starting by his side since they were the neers to the alliance.

    "These four are my most sessful students in the army, four of the ten generals of the army, from right to left, Richard, Gerry, Chazz and Eliot, the four who are in charge of defending the east and west aquatic territories of the kingdom".

    Daimon was surprised that Vincent had the support of four generals, out of the then, the other four are rted and sponsored by the noble houses including one of the two who were at the middle stage of the Ster realm, the remaining two were from the neo noble faction, which Dominic the other general in the middle stage lead along with thest general.

    Before the queen could say anything, Daimon took the initiative to ask.

    "Are they representing themselves, or the armies behind them?".

    The queen and Thea smiled upon hearing Daimon''s question, one liked cunning people and the other was simply happy that her newly appointed general was outstanding in a lot of fields.

    On the other side, the question wasn''t taken in such a good way though, one of the four generals frowned before saying.

    "I know teacher Vincent will never recognize anyone who isn''t worthy, but don''t you think you should introduce yourself and exin why are you siding with that filthy beas...".

    Before the guy could finish speaking Daimon smirked.

    "I don''t have time to y around or be "tested" by you guys, in case old Vincent hasn''t told you, let me be clear, I''m not from Neptune so I don''t care about what kind of story you might have, ept the conditions or get lost, I can always recruit more people, when the world ising to an end, I bet there will be a lot of voluntaries".

    Daimon wasn''t attacking them out of nowhere, since the moment the transmission started, he noticed that two of the generals didn''t seem to look convinced after seeing him, what he couldn''t stand is that the sole cause of that, is because Thea was with them.

    These guys didn''t seem to realize the situation they were in, though their prowess was good, in this case their high realm was useless, they couldn''t participate in the Global Raid anyway, he wasn''t going to order them around, but if they didn''t show respect, then they needed to be reminded of who was in charge.

    Vincent chuckled but he didn''t interfere, many people in the army had some resentment towards the magic beasts of the Maelstrom Sea, which is not wrong as they have lost friends and family due to that.

    But Daimon isn''t interested in their pasts, this regarded the security of Aisha and the girls, if these guys were to do something stupid for a petty revenge, they could put their lives at risk, and he wasn''t going to allow it, so it was better to be clear from the beginning.

    "In case you think you are special let me break that bubble, no one past the middle stage of the Lord realm will be able to enter the real stage that will decide this''s future, and the strongest in that range is me, in fact even if all the other "candidates" join hands, I''m sure I will stille out as the winner".

    The first two generals who remained neutral before, turned to see Vincent and their eyes widened a bit when they saw him nodding, Vincent is someone who values honor and responsibility, he will never lie over something as important as this.

    "We have the full support of our immediate subordinates,bined it should be around two peak Half Ster rank officials, four middle stage ones and eight early stage ones, as well as a bunch of mortal level captains, those are the ones in which we can trust, the soldiers are too many to tell", said one of the two generals, one who had a scar on the left side of his face.

    The other two sighed and then exined what they had to offer, since Vincent, Aurora and the queen didn''t reprimand the silver haired youth, it meant he had the capital to talk in such a grand manner, Vincent only told them he came from another gxy, but he didn''t disclose Daimon''s status or backing by Daimon''s petition.

    "Very well, now that it has been settled, I''ll stay here for the rest of the day while the rest of the officials are brought to sign the contract and return at night... also I''m investigating something that might be rted to those creatures, so be prepared in case you receive a call from me", said Vincent before the transmission ended.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "As expected from this Empress''s general, you handled those guys pretty well hahaha!", Thea approached Daimon from behind and patted his shoulder happy with how he put the generals in their ce.

    Even Aurora had to admit that Daimon had enough presence to talk in such a way with the generals, it''s clear his formation was everything but normal.

    "Changing the subject a bit, I got you a nice deal, the Minister generously chose to donate his two emblems and the three-colored water thates out of theke this year, so you can use the prize to enter his treasury and see if there is something interesting, if there isn''t I suggest you to choose more of the three-colored water~", said the queen.

    Daimon felt a bit of pity for the Minister, he was tricked and didn''t notice it at all.

    "Speaking of the Minister, what do you think he has nned for the fourth round, tomorrow the teams are going to fight so wouldn''t he be revealing the strengths of the four favorites to us?", asked Yvonne.

    Based on the personality of the Minister, he will give his grandson every advantage possible, in an underhanded way, so it didn''t make sense for him to give Daimon a chance to study Walford''s strengths and weaknesses.

    "He did it so that it seems as if he is rewarding us, but in reality he used the first three rounds to "train" his grandson''s team for the fourth one", said Aisha.

    Ae curiously looked at Aisha, others normally wouldn''t be able toe to such a conclusion, which made her frown a bit, since that perspective is too strange for a member of the younger generation.

    Naturally she had no way to know that while Aisha could be considered young in her two hundred years back then, she was still a peak level Archmage who went through her fair share of life and death situations, while strategy isn''t her strong point like Erin, she can''t be tricked easily.

    "That''s right, the Minister prepared the stages to showoff his grandson and the members of his family, without revealing theirbat strength as there was no need to it, in fact I can assure you the captains of the teams won''t be fighting tomorrow", concluded Ae.

    Daimon had more or less the same idea, in the first round the one who outstood the most was the strategist, which for Walford''s team was one of the twin princes, the attention was directed to him, and the captain was unconsciously ignored as it just acted as a mean of transportation, it was made on purpose, though he had to feed the public''s curiosity with the revtion that his family now had mages, he tricked the spectators.

    In the second round once again personal strength was omitted, since even the ssed old man stated that a peak Arch rank screamed in pain while a ten year old endured a minute without any problem.

    So everyone assumed it was random though that wasn''t the case, the spirit showdown was intense though, but it was just a show to entertain the public.

    And if what Ae said was right, then tomorrow the captains won''t be participating, so that they can take Daimon by surprise in the fourth round, while also using the experience they had gained to be at advantage, since seeing something isn''t as good as experiencing it.

    "What a cunning bastard, it doesn''t matter though, because if he bothered this much to prepare the stage for his grandson, that means the fourth round will most likely be abination of the first three rounds, and if that is the case then it''s going to be easy to win for us", said Daimon.

    He hasn''t beenzing around, everything that happened he thoroughly inspected it with his infinity eyes, not to mention he had already selected who will be the strategist, the vice-captain and the schr in his team, so there shouldn''t be any problem.

    Now that they had dealt with the urgent matters, they enjoyed a nice lunch and then went to rest, the queen, Aurora and the Duchess had things to do, so they left while Thea was left behind to defend the fort.

    That being said nothing really happened for the rest of the day and they spent the rest of the day nning for when it was their turn to participate, who will be taking care of what and who will be facing who in case it was needed.

    After that they went to sleep or that was what Daimon pretended to do, but he was instead dragged to that same dream in which he appeared at the sea, strangely enough he appeared where he left, in the middle of that forgotten battlefield filled with corpses and with the mountain-sized ck skull.

    Daimon saw the ck embleme out of his pocket and then soar into the sky, which unlike normally it was clouded.

    "Ohe on, what do you want to show me this time you little thing", mumbled Daimon.

    His eyes widened a bit when the clouds were suddenly dispersed, or it would be more urate to say the were pushed aside due to something huge which was falling from the sky.

    It was another corpse, but this one was different, it was the full body with the exception of the head, and it seemed to be some kind of bird type magic beast, but that wasn''t everything, but the beginning of a "rain" of corpses falling from the sky.

    Which remembered Daimon the fact that the skies of Neptune were sealed, if he supposed this sea was Neptune back at its origins, that would mean there was a battle at the sea and another at the skies, the problem is that he hasn''t seen who was battling the creatures and all those strange magic beasts, which from Daimon''s point of view weren''t normal, their bodies lifeless gray and had some parts that looked rotten.

    "I wonder which side are you allied with?", asked Daimon as he grabbed the emblem and slightly applied pressure onto it.

    The emblem has helped him a couple of times, and honestly he was inclined to think whoever made it was an ally, or at least an enemy of those creatures who were his enemies too.

    The problem is that so far it has only showed him these enemies, instead of showing who defeated them.

 Chapter 386 The Results Of The Third Round (Part 1)

    Daimon raised his head, during all the tome he has been here, corpses kept falling from the sky, since he confirmed he couldn''t see what was past a certain height in Neptune, he decided to give it a try here.

    "Well, I don''t lose anything trying", mumbled Daimon, his image then shed as he soared into the sky.

    ording to A if you approach the limit set up in the sky, nothing really happens, you just can''t advance past it, besides that even if maximum Ster ranked experts attack it, the spell goes through it and disappears, the same happens with battle aura.

    It took Daimon a lot of uses of blink to reach the limit in the sky, luckily in this dream-like world he didn''t use mana or anything, so he didn''t get tired no matter what he did.

    Daimon then frowned, unlike the real Neptune as soon as he reached a certain height, he felt his body being pressured from above.

    "What the hell, was this always here from the very beginning or it was "unlocked" since the rain of corpses started?", wondered Daimon.

    Still, he didn''t stop and kept ascending until he felt an invisible wall interfering with him, no matter what Daimon tried he couldn''t see what was at the other side of it, when he touched it he actually felt as if a huge wight was ced on his body and was forced to descend a few hundreds of meters.

    Daimon frowned, but ultimately, he stopped trying and then descended, there was no point in continuing losing time here, he had onest idea but unless it was obligatory, he won''t do it.

    The dream didn''tst long, besides showing Daimon the rain of corpses that were falling from the skies, nothing else happened in it, probably it was only meant to show the fact that the enemies not only took the seas, but the skies as well.

    The night went uneventful besides that, once Daimon left that dream he was able to have a good night of rest, since he cuddled with Aisha who was smiling even in her sleep.

    ¡­

    Soon the moon was reced by the sun and the morning came to Neptune, today was going to be an important day, it was the third day of the three-art tournament, thest one before it ended.

    Daimon didn''t see it that way though, he slowly opened his eyes and was weed by Aisha''s pretty sleeping face, after making sure no one was awake, he gently kissed Aisha and then got up the bed.

    He walked towards the bathroom and when he was about to open the door, it was opened from the other side and Liliana came out of it.

    "Good morning, Lili", said Daimon as he entered the bathroom.

    "Mm, good morning", said Liliana, as soon as Daimon closed the door behind him, she happily smiled and then returned to her bed where Yvonne and Leslie were already waiting for her, since they woke up when she opened the door of the bathroom a second ago, or more urately when Liliana talked with Daimon.

    Leaving that little episode aside, once everyone was ready they went to the dinning room to have breakfast together, Vincent returnedter than what he expected, but he brought good news.

    Everyone was able to sign the contract, which means at least his four students and their immediate subordinates were clean.

    "Well to be honest I expect that the corruption happened on the side of the noble houses generals, since it''s easier for the guy behind the Skelefiends and pirates, not to mention it''s a two birds one stone situation", said Daimon.

    The queen nodded as she took a bit of a toast, her manners were as refined as possible, making a delight for the eyes just to see her eat.

    "That reminds me that tomorrow we have a meeting with some of those same noble houses, there are a few marquess level involved but mostly theye from earl level families", she said after she cleaned her lips with a napkin.

    Daimon nodded, he didn''t expect too much from the nobles involved with ktr, it was a ce for the ck sheep of the families who had money to waste, the low ranked nobles had no money for such vices, while the high ranked ones had to watch out for their image, so instead of going to such ces, they have their fun at their own houses¡­ in various ways.

    So that only left the middle ranked nobles, who were also an easy target to manipte, the queen showed her support to the low ranked nobles, in fact she appointed a lot of them, since most weremoners who gained some merits.

    The high ranked nobles already had what they wanted, and only sucked up to the ones on the top like the Minister out of convenience, but the middle ranked nobles were ambitious and envied what the high ranked nobles had.

    They also saw the queen as an obstacle for their goals, since she had to agree to give every title above earl, while Triten was given a yearly amount of them to grant, but even then, after a trial period of a year, if the queen deemed them unapt they were stripped out of their tittle.

    In other words they were the perfect target, with the reasons and means to create waves in the kingdom, they just needed a spark, luckily Daimon found about ktr before the ck Wave branch in the kingdom was taken over by the guy scheming behind the scenes.

    "Now that I think about it, we have some possible allies in the middle ranked noble houses, miss Ae please try to contact the family heads of the guys that travelled with us back then, I don''t know about their parents and elders, but those guys aren''t that bad, at the very least they didn''t run when death approached them, so they are worthy of having a chance to survive", said Daimon.

    Mellie who was drinking from her cup, smiled without letting anyone notice, well anyone but her sister who giggled.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Sure, I''ll give it a chance, they can be our ears in the middle noble houses circle, are you perhaps getting softer with Neptune natives thanks to Mellie~", jokingly said Ae.

    "S-Sis what are you saying!",ined Mellie.

    Daimon chuckled, he isn''t a saint and he doesn''t do charity, but certainly there are some people who deserve a chance, and those guys in the face of death instead of cowering decided to step in, even if it meant only giving Mellie a few seconds more of life, they were proud to fulfill their duty.

    ''Pretty words are easy to say, only actions matter when ites to the moment of truth, though I''m not one, I don''t dislike straightforward people'', thought Daimon.

    It''s the same principle of why Erin was only able to be friends with Aura in her two thousand years of existence within the beast faction, she had other acquittances and even a rival-like rtionship with Leena, but to the only one to which she trusted her back, was none other than Aura, that was before she met Aisha and not too muchter Daimon of course.

    After they had a nice breakfast, Vincent took them to the center of the city, by the time they arrived most of the participants were already there, Daimon could see the different results that the winners of the first rounds brought to the mood in the participants.

    The crowned prince was the happiest, he had a first and second position so far, so he was the closes to be the champion, Lance was rather calm, he had a first and a third ce, but his goal apparently wasn''t winning but surpassing Terry, his team was full of fighting spirit despite the miserable states in which they ended yesterday, it made sense though, those guys were battle maniacs and today''s round was a fighting event.

    Then you have Ezequiel who had a hatred filled expression on his face, he ended up third and fourth, he was surpassed by the neer, of course he was angry, the only thing that seemed to bring tranquility to his life was his strategist who was openly clinging to him.

    Lastly there was Walford who was all smiles, he didn''t expect to surpass the crowned prince in his debut, but he was happy with having gotten a second and a third ce so far, if things went ording to the n, there is even a chance for him to end in the second ce, which would increase the prestige of his family, as the neo nobles have been settled in the second of the top three for a long time, and he belongs to one of the founding families.

    As if someone had prepared the stage, the four of them turned around at the same time, and their gazes fell on Daimon, but they weren''t the only ones, the teams of the sects were the same, since the one who should have been their leader was in that team, not to mention Cassy was there too.

    Daimonpletely ignored them and just went and took his seat followed by the girls, while the adults left to their respective area.

    Not too longter once all the seats were upied, the gates of the mansion of the city lord opened and the Minister as well as the king and his wives came out of them.

    "Wee to all the guests and heroes of the young generation, I hope you had taken a nice rest because today we have an intense round ahead of us, the long-awaited duel round!".

    The words of the Minister increased the expectation of the participants and the spectators equally, Raymond then wave his hand and the portal to the Calm Tri-Lake forest opened.

    Just like in previous days everyone followed the turn order and entered through the portal, well almost everyone, Thea remained at Daimon''s side all the time, Karmandi and Lina were sent to deal with some administrative matters in the meantime, so she was enjoying her "freedom".

    And though the Minister felt as if he was being pped on the face every time he saw Thea mockingly gazing at him, he endured it and swallowed hisins, since he knew Vincent was just waiting for him tomit a mistake so that he could kick him while he was down.

    Today was the turn for the thirdke to be the stage for the tournament, following the order, technically thiske was the most dangerous, since they had to wait for the day closest to the harvest of the three-colored water to use it for training purposes.

    And that is with the arrays and a limited output in ce, the tforms attached in pairs, in the same order that the first two rounds have been using, naturally the four favorites couldn''t fight each other, for the sake of the continuity of the tournament, so they were paired with the same teams they have been facing so far.

    The Minister left his skybox and then floated in the middle of the threekes, he cleared his throat and then the whole ce went silent.

    "Wee to the third round of the tournament offered by my Arcarius family, let me start by saying I have been impressed by the performance of all the participants, but at the same time it''s not good to force one''s limits, heroes of the younger generation, always remember fast is not the same as talented".

    "That being said, this third round is also different than the one you might be expecting, since this time we have a fourth round where the champion of the beast hunt will participate, also the effect of the Body Temperingke will be applied to the tforms in use¡­ all the time".

    Some of the participants paled when they heard that, the secondke left them a little trauma, that pain they suffered yesterday was still fresh in their memories after all.

    "However, don''t worry since not everyone will be participating today, this duel will be upheld between the officials of each team, the captains won''t participate of course".

    The spectators interest was picked, the Minister has been building the mystery around the strength of the top four teams, during the whole event, now a part of it will be revealed, so of course they were excited about it.

    "Captains please step out of the tforms and go to the areas assigned to your respective families or forces, the three selected officials stay behind and await instructions".

    And with those words the penultimate round of the tournament was about to start.

 Chapter 387 The Results Of The Third Round (Part 2)

    Following the instructions of the Minister the captains of the teams left the tforms, the same applied to the regr members of the teams, so that only the three officials stayed behind.

    Only then Raymond started with the exnation of the dynamic for this year''s third round.

    "There is an old saying, that states, that a soldier must fight a soldier, a general should fight a general and a king should fight a king, but personally I disagree, in a real war one doesn''t get to choose who to fight, generals have been in by civilians and kings have been assassinated by servants as an example of that".

    "That''s why unlike previous years, where the officials had to outperform theirpetitors, this time there will be a change in the dynamic, vice-captains from the team with the highest position in their respective tform, step in", said the Minister as he waved his hand, at the same time staff members from the Arcarius family brought a box to each pair of tforms.

    "Who will fight who will be decided randomly, just like in a real situation, however we can''t ignore the prior achievements of the teams, so the one to take the chance will be the vice-captain of the team in the best position out of the two facing each other".

    The nobles and even the neo nobles admitted this was fair, it''s normal for the stronger side in a war to have the upper hand, so this was a good representation of that.

    The vice-captains of the team with the highest rank in their respective tform walked towards the boxes and then put their hands in, a secondter they took them out and showed their result of the sort.

    The Minister snapped his fingers and one of the mirror tes changed the information it was showing, to the result of the sort.

    "Those who participated on the sort will face the official that their paper states, their counterpart will face the official which didn''t appear in the sort of the ones who participated, so that there won''t be matches between "equals", for a total of three rounds".

    The method used by the Minister was quite simple, let''s say that the vice-captain "A" drew the paper and had to fight the schr of the team "B", then the vice-captain "B" had to the fight the strategist "A".

    That left the schr "A" and the strategist "B" to be the third par thuspleting the cycle, naturally amotion was raised when the "weaker" officials saw they were up against the vice-captains of the opponent.

    Normally a vice-captain is someone who has the ability to make the team keep going in case the captains is not in the picture, contrary to one believes, while the captain can focus in bringing the team to victory by giving orders to the other officials, the vice-captain must know how to fulfill any of the officials in case it is needed, so they are the most bnced officials, possessing strength, wit and knowledge, maybe not at the level of the captain, schr or strategist, but still being able to bnce all that and also focus in their own strong point, is what earns them the title of vice-captain.

    At Daimon''s skybox, the girls looked at the mirror te with the pairs formed for the first matches, which involved the vice-captains of both teams, naturally they just paid attention to the four favorites, since Daimon told them they didn''t need to worry about the others, as they won''t be participating in the fourth round anyway.

    The pairs ended up being, the crowned prince''s team vice-captain, versus the opponent''s schr, Lance''s team vice-captain versus the opponent''s strategist, Ezequiel''s team vice-captain versus the opponent''s schr andstly Walford''s team vice-captain versus the opponent''s schr.

    At the spectator''s area, the four captains were observing the tforms, and Ezequiel suddenly looked at Lance with mockery.

    "Wow, you must have angered someone Lance, so that your schr is the only one who has to fight a vice-captain", he said.

    Unfortunately for Ezequiel, Lancepletely ignored him, making Ezequiel snort in response.

    ''I want to see how will you react when that ssed weakling ends up all beaten up, it''s better if you rage and get disqualified you bastard'', he cursed in his mind.

    Now that the pairs were formed, the Minister nodded and then continued with his exnation, he snapped hos fingers and the arrays which were engraved on the tforms of the thirdke lit up, but didn''t activate yet.

    "As you already know, the thirdke is called the "Body Tempering Lake", and it''s effect is actually the easiest to understand among the three, everything which had contact with its waters... sink to the bottom to never be seen again, in case those who had the ability to breath underwater think it''s not a big deal, think it again".

    "There is a record in my family stating that a death-sentenced prisoner of the Arcarius, whose crimes were atrocious, was once used to measure the effect of the Body Tempering Lake, it was thrown into theke, and not even a secondter it was no longer visible from above, not only that but the array who was linked to its life exploded, so in less than three seconds an early stage Ster ranked was killed, and that was in the day of the yearly harvest, when thekes are at their weakest point".

    The spectators felt a chill running down their spines upon hearing the words of the Minister, killing an early stage Ster ranked in less than three seconds, that was a territory for those with battle prowess in the high ranked Ster realm at least, and that was the weakest point of the thirdke, it was outrageous.

    Having achieved what he wanted, the Minister then continued.

    "Naturally we can''t have the heroes of the young generation, crushed to death, so the array limits it to a maximum of 5% of its output, based on the data we have gathered through the years, each 1% of the output doubles the weight of the one in the tform, meaning that if you originally weighted 50 kilograms, at 1% you''ll weight 100, at 2% it will be 200 and so on".

    Seeing that the spectators were rxing after hearing that, the Minister smirked.

    "That is for normal humans, mana and battle aura have their own "weights" which depend on the person, attribute and the amount used, that is the first surprise I have prepared for the third round, as apensation the weapons that you''ll be given to use are immune to the effect of the array".

    Many people had the urge to curse at the Minister, an average person weighted around 70 kilograms, the maximum output of the array was of 5%, meaning that without using any spells or battle aura actively, an average person will weight around 2,240 kilograms in the tform when the output is at its max, it was insane.

    The Minister saw one of the participates raising his hand, and he gave the word to him, it was the ssed slim guy from Lance''s team.

    "How will the output be controlled?", he asked in a low voice.

    The Minister nodded and then shook his head.

    "It''s set at random, so at any given moment it might increase or decrease, as for the order of the duels, it will be vice-captains, then strategist andstly schrs, the highest ranked official of the pair will be the taken into ount".

    "As for what will be taken into ount for the winner, the factors will be, the time taken to defeat the opponent, how crushing is the victory of the winner andst but not least, adaptability to the battlefield, the arrays will immediately save the participants if their lives are endangered, so don''t worry and give it your all, good luck".<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Without giving the participants time to ask more questions the Minister returned to the skybox of the judges, not without saying.

    "I''ll leave you with our special guest of today, a battle specialist and the captain of the royal guard, Tideus Malleus".

    The mirror tes showed a tall man in his fifties, wearing a white and blue armor, Daimon frowned upon seeing him, not only because it seemed to be a rare high stage Ster rank, just like ck Beard, but because... it looked like a slightly younger version of Vincent.

    And there was a reason to that, that guy was the crowned prince''s maternal grandfather, being Irma''s wife and at the same time, Vincent''s cousin as well as the n head of the Malleus family.

    Contrary to what Daimon expected, there was no drama involving Vincent and his cousin, they both ignored each other even if they were sitting close to the other acting as judges.

    And so, with the greenlight of the Minister the third round finally started, for the crowned prince, his vice-captain was a rtive, since it was a member of the Malleus family, a tall bulky guy with water affinity which identified him as a member of the main family branch, the opponent who was the schr of the opponent''s team honestly felt the urge to run away, Terry''s vice-captain was around forty centimeters taller than him, not to mention a fighter unlike him who is a schr.

    The same situation repeated for Ezequiel''s and Walford''s team, their vice-captains clearly outssed the opponents by a lot since they were the schrs, it was an easy win for them.

    The only exception being Lance whose case was the contrary, his vice-captain had to fight against the strategist which didn''t seem to be that much of a pushover in battle terms, meaning his vice-captain was going to take more time to beat his opponent, giving an advantage to the other three favorites.

    And that wasn''t all, in case that wasn''t enough of a disadvantage, Lance''s opponent vice-captain got to fight his schr, so right from the beginning, the neo nobles were facing a not immediate victory and a possible loss, it could be said they got the short end of the stick.

    Ezequiel listened to the spectators having the same opinion as him, and he snorted at Lance.

    "I remember you use to care about your subordinates quite a bit Lance, why don''t you tell that little bookworm to give up before he gets hurt hahaha!".

    But the only reaction Lance had was that the ends of his mouth slightly bent upwards.

    At Daimon''s skybox, the girls were also interested in the current matches, because they might be facing a simr situation, knowing the Minister was of course going to try to pull some underhanded tricks in the fourth round.

    "What do you think Daimon, Lance''s schr or the opponent''s vice-captain, who is going to win?", asked Leslie in her usual lively voice, Liliana took the initiative to talk with him in the morning, so this time she wanted to get his attention too.

    Daimon saw those expecting eyes of hers and he inwardly smiled, she was too obvious so her intentions were as clear as day, but he had to admit that he found her cute.

    "The schr will win, and it''s going to be one sided fight that won''tst past the first ten seconds, it would be even shorter if not for the array being a variable", he said.

    Thea who was floating on the air, since she managed to steal a bottle from who knows where, poked Daimon''s head with her pretty index finger before saying.

    "You did it again right, this Empress has been wondering, but what are those eyes of yours~", she asked with a slightly strange voice, her face was a bit red after just a small sip of the liqueur of the bottle, it wasn''t a strong drink since she was in charge of watching them over just in case.

    Daimon felt Thea poking his head repeatedly with her fingers trying to get his attention and he bitterly smiled.

    "I''m a knight so I can of course recognize other knights, having arge muscture isn''t the same as having a high physical strength, but miss Thea is right, with my eyes I managed to see the affinity of that ssed... schr, that''s why I can tell that battle isn''t going tost even ten seconds".

    Just as Daimon finished speaking, and before practically all the spectators of the young generation could react, as well as to the surprise of the ones from the old generation, with very few exceptions.

    The ssed schr from Lance''s team, turned into a gust of wind, the ground before his cracked a bit due to the sudden explosion, and the next thing the vice-captain of the opponent''s team knew is that a slim figure appeared in front of him.

    "Hurricane Fist", with a low and almost unnoticeable voice, currents of wind gathered on the fist of the ssed schr, who then punched the stomach of the opponent, as a water mage the defensive spell that the vice-captain learned when he became a Lord ranked, automatically activated and formed a wateryer to mitigate the impact.

    But it was futile, the wind attribute battle aura of the schr, blew the water wall away and directly connected with the bare body of the vice-captain.

    "Booom!", a loud thunder-like sound echoed through the whole area, followed by the roars of the neo nobles, as the opponent''s vice-captain was sent flying outside of the tform around one hundred meters away,nding on the array that covered theke, with his eyes rolled backwards.

    "Ohhhhh!", the neo nobles cheered at unison making the whole ce tremble.

    Lance saw Ezequiel unsightly expression and this time he did speak.

    "You see, in the spear of the sea, we have a scarce amount of schrs not because there isn''t smart people among moners" like you believe Ezequiel, but because their physical training is twice harsher than the one of a regr soldier, as they are prompt to be targeted by the enemy, in battle prowess terms, my schr is stronger than the vice-captain in my team, and only second to me".

    The ones who were near Lance, listened his exnation and were in awe, like always the neo nobles pulled some barbarian-like surprise.

    And with that crushing victory for Lance''s team, which was also the fastest victory in the first match of the third round, the war for the supremacy among the four favorites continued.

 Chapter 388 The Results Of The Third Round (Part 3)

    The other captains took a moment to process what happened, that slim weak looking guy was actually a knight, not only that, he destroyed a vice-captain with a single attack, in less than ten seconds despite the increase on weight caused by theke.

    At Daimon''s skybox, Thea who was still floating around, looked at Daimon with curiosity shining in her eyes, naturally she wasn''t tricked by the weak appearance of the ssed schr, in fact she also noticed another little secret the schr was hiding.

    But she wanted to know how Daimon came to such a precise conclusion, the time, way of winning and even the kind of attack the schr was going to use, if her supposition was right, Daimon predicted everything.

    "I wonder how did you knew to such an extreme how that match was going to end?", she asked.

    Daimon pointed at himself before saying.

    "Muscles, some parts of that guy''s body have been put through more training than others, that and unless he has reached an insane level ofprehension in earth element, the only element than can lighten one''s body is wind, so he should be using an explosive yet fast style of fighting".

    "To be honest, it reminded me of how a friend fights, so I could tell how it was going to end", said Daimon referring to Michael.

    He wasn''t lying, the battle aura that circted through the body of the ssed guy, had wind properties, he also had a simr body shape as Michael, so Daimon immediately changed theyer of his infinity eyes to see the muscture and focused on the legs and arms.

    And just as he expected, those areas were more trained than the rest of the body, the other party was a water mage, and while water if the more fluid among the elements, perfect for counterattacking or using the enemy''s strength against himself, it was weak against wind and lightning.

    So, from the very beginning, there was no mysterious in who was going to win this match, at least for Daimon.

    "Those eyes of yours are quite something, can this Empress know, what are they called, in exchange I''ll tell you mine''s name of course".

    "Honestly I don''t know, I called them Infinity Eyes", answered Daimon.

    "Mm the name fits perfectly, mine are called Nine Malefic Evil Eye~", added Thea.

    Back at earth, in the myths and folklore, there is supposed to be people who can cause harm at others, just by looking at them, and also see things normal people can''t, that is the so called "Evil Eye", naturally at earth such things are just stories elder people tell to the kids to make them behave, but in this world were magic and science meet, that isn''t the case, anyway Daimon was more interested in the number "nine", which probably meant Thea had nine different abilities she could use, if that was her innate ability it was quite something.

    Yvonne saw Daimon being interested in the ck Empress''s eyes and she inwardly pouted.

    "Mine are called Clear Dream Eyes by the way", she mumbled.

    Aisha listened to that slightly jealous voice of Yvonne and she giggled.

    ''You are going to have to start paying more attention to those three, darling, there is nothing more dangerous than a jealous woman after all~'', she yfully said directly to Daimon.

    Naturally Yvonne was just ying, she knew he hasn''t forgot about them, right now they were preparing for the Global Raid, and they have seen Daimon doing his best to keep them safe, even assigning them the same protection he gave to Aisha.

    ...

    Leaving aside that little episode in Daimon''s skybox, which didn''t go unnoticed by Mellie and the other princesses, back at the thirdke thebats continued.

    Though the ssed schr beating so easily a vice-captain was quite a surprise, he wasn''t the only one who outstood in the first matches.

    To Ezequiel''s pride, his strategist in other words his woman, showed her true value when facing the opponent''s vice-captain too.

    The rarity of an affinity isn''t a fixated thing, at least not at a generic level, as an example to that, in the beast faction where the races are chaotic oriented, light and darkness affinities are the rarest, but here in the Clear Water kingdom, fire and earth are considered rare and given the correct circumstances quite dangerous for the races of the Mermen Sea.

    And to the bad luck of the vice-captain who was fighting Ezequiel''s strategist, she had fire affinity and a strong one on top of that.

    Under the ufortable gazes of the spectators, the spectators, the strategist''s mana leaked out of her body and the whole tform was flooded in mes, the poor guy who was fighting her, belonged to one of the races that could breath underwater, meaning that while his affinity with water was quite good, he was particrly sensitive towards fire.

    So now, what was an advantage for him during the second round, allowing the vice-captain to endure the doubled output of the secondke''s effect until thest rounds, was making his life hell.

    He couldn''t even use the nearby sources of water since they were part of thekes, so the only option he had was to cast water, because the humidity in the air was eliminated by the high temperature caused by the mes, which meant the vice-captain had to use more mana to get a decent water spell, water had mass and weighted more unlike fire, so he had to pour in more mana to surround himself with water to not be fried alive.

    Normally it wouldn''t have been that much of a problem, but using more mana in the tforms under the influence of the thirdke, meant the weight pressing down on him increased even more.

    The output of the formation suddenly switched, from 1% to 5%, the female strategist, had stopped supplying mana to her spell and simply let the fire burn, she stayed still and endured the increase, the vice-captain on the other hand, had to kept the water with mana imbued to not be burned, and thus the increase in weight hit him like a truck.

    "Ahhh!", a scream followed by the sound of metals colliding, echoed through the area.

    The vice-captain lost his footing and fell to the ground, then as if she was waiting for it to happen, Ezequiel''s strategist dashed forward and used the spear she took from the weapons allowed in the third round, to pierce the head of the vice-captain.

    Unable to react on time, the defensive array protected the head of the vice-captain, blocking the spear and giving the strategist the victory.

    "Hmph, trash", with those words, the female strategist left the tforms and returned to Ezequiel''s side, speaking of Ezequiel he was smiling from ear to ear, maybe she took more time than the ssed guy, but she had control over the battlefield from the very beginning, and her victory was clean, so in terms of score she should be around the same level.

    Besides that, the other fights were more or less as expected, the vice-captains of the four favorites crushed the opponent''s schrs in a short period of time, as for the other strategists from the four favorites who had to fight the opponent''s vice-captains, they also won, but it took them way more time than Ezequiel''s strategist, with only one exception, the first strategist to finish his opponent off, was the one from Walford''s team, which happened to be one of the twin princes.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    But that was to be expected since he is a royal, also the Keran family isn''t weak in battle terms and out of the two princes, Bryan who is the strategist is known for being quite aggressive to begin with.

    So, in a rough calction, the ones who had the taken the initiative were Ezequiel, Walford and Lance, leaving the crowned prince a bit behind, since his strategist in other words, Corey though managed to win was thest one of the four, as he isn''t battle oriented unlike Mellie.

    And now the third decisive match was the only one left, from the side of the four favorites, it was time for their schrs with the exception of Lance who had to send his strategist, though that was only in name, since the strategist of his team was him.

    Whoever wins his match first will probably be the winner this time around, and now Ezequiel who made fun of Lance was clenching his hands, besides Lance, the other three had to send their schrs, and everyone knew besides the ssed guy and Lance, the other members of his team were all fighters, so he had the advantage in the third match.

    ''Shit, if I don''t win at least one first position, I''ll be ending fourth'', thought Ezequiel, he gave his schr a death re, which made the poor guy tremble.

    With the greenlight of the Minister, thest match started and since everyone was desperate to win faster, the whole area became a mess, everyone gritted their teeth and endured the increase in weight caused by theke and rushed towards their opponents.

    Well almost everyone, a tall slim blue haired youth, just waved his hands, two almost unnoticeable objects were thrown by him at his enemy.

    The opponent who was a strategist simply agitated his weapon of choice which was a light sword, and deflected them.

    ''Even if you are a prince, why are you not taking your opponent seriously'', thought the strategist, but then his body froze where was, a magic circle appeared at his right and behind him, then two currents of air hit him directly.

    Normally that would have sent him flying, but the output of the array suddenly changed from 3 to 5% and the strategist was smacked against the ground.

    "Blegh!", the strategist vomited blood and fainted on the spot, his life wasn''t in danger so the defensive array didn''t activate, but he was out ofbat so he lost, a tinkling sound then made its way into the spectator''s ears.

    They saw a couple of nails bounce a couple of times on the ground, before they stopped, that''s what the one who won threw earlier, as for his identity, it was the remaining prince, Ryan, who was the schr of Walford''s team.

    ''I wanted to keep this to take first brother by surprise, but I guess it was do or die, besides father is observing'', thought Ryan ad he retired from the tform.

    The reactions varied, first the people from the Keran family roared and cheered, they were confused as well, but everything could wait untilter.

    Then there was Ezequiel and the members of the ckfin family who had unsightly expressions on their faces, the first in the third round was no longer in their reach.

    "What the hell are you doing, beat that lowlife at once!", shouted Ezequiel, making his schr lose focus for a moment, an opportunity the opponent''s strategist dly took tond a hit on the schr.

    The poor schr who coincidentally was the guy who couldn''t control sand but earth, which costed Ezequiel the first round, had no other choice but to ept the hit and the enemy''s saber left a deep cut in his left arm, but he also gritted his teeth and feeling the output of the array decreasing, his hand covered in ayer of rocks before he punched the strategist on the face.

    The strategist who was also a mage tried to jump back, but he reactedte because Ezequiel''s schr grabbed the de of his saber with his free hand who was also covered in ayer of stone, so the hit connected, breaking the nose of the strategist and ending the fight.

    Unfortunately, by the time that happened, Lance''s "strategist" had beaten his enemy to a pulp, and then the crowned prince''s schr took his enemy by surprise using his back as a shield to endure his spell, since he is a member of the Sail family conformed by the Sea Turtle race, though he didn''t have a shell, his back was naturally sturdy, which allowed him to win a few seconds before Ezequiel''s schr.

    "Ohhhh!", she spectators cheered at the same time, the other fights weren''t that bad, but most of them came to see what the result of the top four will be.

    The other fights started reaching their ends and soon the tforms were empty, it was then when the judges descended from their skybox to announce the results, this time the one giving the first ce announce was Vincent''s cousin.

    "As the captain of the royal guard and the royal instructors in the art of battle, I''m proud to announce that the first ce of this round will be the Arcarius family''s team, thanks to the spectacr performance of his highness Ryan Keran".

    The Keran and Arcarius families as well as Norma and even the king pped, that victory represented more than one would think and Daimon knew why.

    The ability of the Shooting Narwhal, could only be used horizontally frontwards, that''s why they couldn''t "drive" and instead the ice mage of the Arcarius had to make ice ramps of different angles to change direction in the first round.

    But apparently Ryan Keran managed to think on a way to do it, he somehow imbued mana into the nails he threw and the impulse was shot using them as the source, though for Ryan the nails ended behind at one side of the enemy, from the tips of the nail''s perspective, the enemy''s position was in front and horizontally of them, so it worked.

    "For the second ce it naturally belongs to the young spear Lance Varsi''s team, due to the capacity of adaptation shown by his schr", said Aurora.

    "The third ce was a close call, however his highness the crowned prince''s schr, not only ended his fight before, but he is unscathed which has granted him the third ce", added the Minister, even if he would beughing in his sleep now that his grandson finally got a first ce, he had to show face to the crowned prince and personally announce his result.

    And as always, Ae was the one who gave the result of the ckfin family''s team, but this time she didn''t rub salt on the wound, at least not with words, but the disdain in her eyes was open for everyone to see.

    "The fourth ce is for the ckfin family, congrattions".

    Ezequiel nearly lost it right there, unfortunately even if he was angry, what could he possibly do to the queen, so his rage was then directed to his schr, who felt his body getting cold suddenly.

    But before heshed out at the schr, the strategist grabbed Ezequiel''s arm and whispered a few things at him, which somehow managed to calm him down.

    The rest of the results were announced by Vincent, and besides the top four whose ranks will be decided on the fourth round, the fifth ranked was the team of patriarch skyfire''s son, they dominated the three matches since their affinities were all fire, which granted them the advantage, the sixth was the team of patriarch''s Heartstream and then the team of patriarch Stoneheart, next was the team formed by the secondary branches of the big noble houses, that was the preliminary ranking result of the first three rounds.

    "I hope you had enjoyed the event so far, tomorrow only five teams will participate, but I invite the others to attend as spectators, to witness thest round of the three-art tournament", said the Minister as he opened the portal so that everyone could leave, not without stealing a gaze at Daimon''s skybox.

    ''Bring it on old bastard, let''s see what tricks you have up your sleeves'', thought Daimon as he smirked.

 Chapter 389 Preparations For The Fourth Round

    Vincent and the others returned to Daimon''s skybox and then they left together, not without passing by near the Minister, who in his current good mood didn''t forget to remember Vincent of their bet.

    "Don''t forget it old shark, those emblems of yours are going to look great in my trophy room".

    Vincent felt the urge tough, but noticing Ae ring at him, he cleared his throat and only said.

    "Clean your treasury old turtle, it''s going to be visited soon after all".

    After saying that, Daimon''s group left through the portal, while the Minister snorted.

    ''If you think my Arcarius family has shown everything we got, you are in for a surprise you old bastard, let''s see whoughsst'', thought Raymond.

    Daimon and the others appeared at the other side of the portal, the gazes of all the people nearby fell on them, which is understandable, since tomorrow they will finally be participating in the tournament.

    Vincent also noticed his cousin hostile gaze on him from afar, and he could tell what Tideus was thinking, but he ignored it and with a wave of his hand they all disappeared from the center of the city.

    The scenery changed from the front of the city lord''s mansion, to the entrance of the Vs Duchess''s mansion, they entered and made themselvesfortable while the security head Mina prepared food for everyone.

    During the previous days, the girls had sparred to get used to the abilities of each other, so today they just decided to rest so that they will be in their best condition for tomorrow.

    While the girls chatted, Daimon inspected his beast pouches, in one cktooth has been consolidating his realm, since he broke through all of a sudden thanks to having eaten a part of the arm, from Ulkrear which Daimon got as war spoils.

    ''cktooth, how much will the piece of Ulkrear''s arm will help you evolve?'', asked Daimon.

    The Devil Goblin shark thought about it for a second before answering.

    ''Originally at most it would have brought me to the breaking point of the middle stage of the Half Ster realm, but with young master''s help, I would say it''s enough to get to thete stage!''.

    At this point the previously resentful Goblin shark had nothing but admiration for Daimon, there is no magic beast which despise the strong, he who was stuck in the Mortal realm for a few hundreds of years, was suddenly catapulted to the Half Ster realm, he was now following Daimon by his own will, not like it had a choice though, since he was still under the effect of the Ruler of the sea, but certainly why would he try to leave a young master that is so generous with him.

    Also, he now learned of the existence of Vincent and he was honestly horrified, Ae beat the crap out of him and she wasn''t even close to the top of the pyramid in what strength regarded, in other words, cktooh learned the meaning of the saying "It''s better to be in the hands of the demon than in its way".

    Daimon personally didn''t care what cktooth thought, as long as he obeyed that was all he needed from him, since he will be ying a role in his ns.

    The other thing Daimon wanted to check was how the contents of the vase in the other beast pouch were doing, so using mana sense he inspected it, the water had turned slightly darker, meaning it was working, but he could tell the concentration wasn''t high enough to help him increase his ck Armored shark lineage, so he still had to wait some time before that.

    ''Oh well, I can keep it for an emergency or something, there is also that'', thought Daimon as he opened the interface of the system and went to the title''s tab, and checked the log of the system, with everything that has happened he forgot to check how did sanctuary changed after the level of trust Jasmin has on him increased.

    [Sanctuary has been sessfully updated, please keep working to reach its final state, current level of trust of the Daughter of the Northern Sky 30% (and increasing)]

    [Sanctuary: Once a day, the host will be able to select full recovery of two of the following: mana, battle aura, stamina, vitality, or heal any wound as long as the host is still alive, effect added "Care of the Northern Sky''s Daughter", now the effect will activate automatically if needed, even if the host isn''t conscious, the selected recovery will be chosen depending on the situation]

    [Further development, requires the host to repair the broken trust caused by the failure of the previous holder of the oath, to elerate the process, demonstrate the Daughter of the Northern Sky you are worthy of the trust of her descendant]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the change was quite simple but practical, he could now recover two of the things listed at will, also in case he was unable to activate the effect of the title on his own, the thing will activate by itself, it was indeed quite a nice addition to his repertory of passive abilities.

    ''I guess it makes sense, since theplete version saves one from death automatically once for free, though I honestly like this iplete version more, since I don''t n on using Jasmin as a spare life'', thought Daimon.

    He inwardly shook his head, the system acted based on his desires and needs, so he is sure Jasmin''s ability will be different than Aurora''s, whether it is for the better or not, it''s still hard to tell.

    Daimon came out of his daze as he felt someone tugging on the corner of his clothes.

    "Mm?", Daimon turned to see the origin of that and saw the Risha sisters sitting at both his sides, Aisha was originally sitting at his right, but now she was giggling at him as she left to the dining room since the food was ready, but Daimon was "daydreaming" when Mina came to inform them of it.

    "What happened you three?", asked Daimon.

    The sisters stared at each other before saying in unison.

    "We''ll crush our opponents tomorrow, in exchange when we return¡­ we want you to visit the Risha family with us!".

    Daimon saw those three''s nervous expressions and he didn''t know what to say, this had Aisha''s "seal" all over it, in any case it''s not like he could keep the sisters waiting forever, they are honest with their feelings and how could he consider himself a man if he doesn''t make things clear.

    "Sure, but you''ll have to wait a few days after our return, there is also something you need to know before we go any further, if your current expressions don''t change at that moment, then I''ll have no choice but to ept three problematic sisters in my family", said Daimon, making the sisters blush.

    After saying that, Daimon stood up and burned the image of their current obviously lovesick pretty faces in his heart, because he isn''t sure what their answer will be once they get to know how "big" is his heart, and how many girls already live there.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Still, he trusted them enough to believe that even if they don''t be his partners, they will still be his friends, if he didn''t have at least this amount of confidence in them, he wouldn''t have even considered them possible soulmates.

    Aisha saw her son entering the dining room without the Risha sisters and she giggled in her seat.

    ''How was it darling, those three had be quite daring right~'', she said directly to Daimon.

    Daimon chuckled as he sat next to Aisha.

    ''Yes, I''m not going to rush things with them though, but they deserve a proper answer¡­ and a certain mother deserves a nice spanking for teasing them too much''.

    Aisha softlyughed, she was feeling in the mood for some lovetely, so she couldn''t wait for the moment they were all together again, since Daimon promised they will be taking a big step in their rtionships after this.

    That''s why she didn''t mind helping her friends, since she will be getting her share of the cake first.

    Daimon saw Aisha who clearly didn''t pay attention to his words and he sighed, he was still looking for a way to fulfill the requirements of his grimoire, the firs option was naturally thepletion of the mission he got from stealing an opportunity from Adam, since there were so many damn things involved, then the rank of the feat should be quite high, depending on how well he faired he could reach the Divinity SSS rank.

    If not, he still had a n B in store, but with some luck there wouldn''t be a need for it, he already wanted to unlock his grimoire, since that will be an immediate way to increase his strength.

    The Risha sisters came not toote after Daimon, they looked rather happy as if something good happened to them, not too long ago, and then everyone enjoyed their meal.

    Karkamndi and Lina also returned with good news for Thea, they left to see how were the preparations made by the other surviving general who is also the first ranked being an early-stage Ster realm magic beast, though he was now Karmandi''s subordinate as he was ascended.

    "Everything is ready, the troops are hidden in the ces proportioned by senior Vincent", informed Karmandi.

    Thea nodded in response.

    "Very well, tell them to just wait for the fun to start, we''ll move along with general Daimon''s greenlight~", said Thea putting emphasis in the word "general".

    Daimon took a bite of his food, tomorrow he was going to be quite busy, crushing the other participants of the tournament in the morning, having a nice "conversation" with Ae and Mellie''s father at noon and then a meeting with ck Wave at night.

    Not to mention visiting the treasury of the Minister at the next day, and the travel to the Elemental Sea after that.

    ''Ah, damn, I''m going to vent some anger on that scheming bastard once I catch his ass, giving me so much trouble'', thought Daimon.

    Once they had their fill, everyone parted ways, the adults except Thea left to do theirst preparations, while Daimon and the girls went to their room to rest.

    The rest of the day went uneventful, if you don''t take into ount the fact that the Risha sisters, couldn''t bear to even look in Daimon''s direction, which Aisha of course used to tease them.

    The princesses didn''t know what was going on, so they didn''t say anything and instead focused on tomorrow''s strategy, the roles have been already decided, Aisha is the vice-captain, Yvonne will be the strategist and Mellie will be the schr.

    A person with knowledge about Neptune was needed for the schr position and the best in that aspect in the group was Mellie, she has memorized a lot of books after all, do not look down on Yvonne, her mother idolized Erin and so she also learned and became skilled in the art of strategy, which she taught to her daughter as well, as for Aisha, well there is no need to exin, she was the most experienced in the group and could take the best decisions depending on the situation, not to mention her battle prowess didn''t lose to anyone including Daimon, unless he used core synchrony of course.

    In Daimon''s case, his job was simple, crush everything in his way to reach an absolute and undisputable victory, he left the decision making to his mother this time.

    And so, the night went on and after a few hours the moon left the sky and morning came to Neptune.

    Daimon''s biologic clock woke him up early today, his body was feeling perfectly rested and his fists were aching a bit, though he doesn''t consider himself a battle maniac like Aura, he is an apex predator after all, staying still and not doing anything isn''t in his nature.

    To Daimon''s surprise he noticed the sisters joined their bed with his, though they didn''t approach him, they were closer to them than before, he didn''t even notice when they did it.

    Today he felt like taking a sip of Aisha''s blood for some reason, so after making sure the others were still sleeping, he leaned his head and gently bit Aisha''s neck.

    "Mn~", Aisha''s lips slightly opened and a soft and lowfortable sound escaped from them, after gulping down a couple of sips of his mother''s blood, Daimon gently pecked her neck and watched the mark of his fangs disappearing without leaving any trace.

    He took then separated from Aisha just to see her looking at him with an amused expression.

    ''Good morning darling, I also took a te night snack" earlier, hope you don''t mind~'', she yfully said.

    Daimon chuckled, he now understood why he was feeling quite energetic and, in the mood, to drink her blood, Aisha drank his while he was sleeping.

    ''We''ll continueter'', said Daimon as he gently pecked Aisha''s pretty lips, and then he got up the bed, the others should be waking up soon, so he went straight to the bathroom to prepare, leaving behind an Aisha in a really good mood.

    ''I was going to wait until we returned, but I guess even I can''t avoid but feel jealousy when ites to you darling~'', she thought, after seeing the Risha sisters being so bold, she also wanted some love from Daimon, so she went for it and now she had something she looked up to once they finished today''s matters.

 Chapter 390 The Fourth Round (Part 1)

    Once inside the bathroom, Daimon undressed and took a quick shower, while he was under the shower, he looked at his shadow before saying.

    "Today we''ll be up against some opponents, don''t act unless their lives are in danger".

    Daimon''s shadow waved a bit and Rita''s head peeked out of it, she then nodded in response.

    "Understood young master, I have informed that bonehead as well", said Rita before she returned to Daimon''s shadow.

    Daimon quickly finished and after drying and dressing again, he left the bathroom, by the time he was out, all the girls were already awake, so he greeted them.

    "Good morning you all, get ready so we can leave early".

    "Mm", the girls nodded and they all entered the bathroom together, even Thea and Marlene joined.

    ''I don''t understand how can they be close enough to bath together so fast, well it could be a girl''s thing, I do remember that on lunch breaks, most of my female ssmates back at earth always went in group to the bathroom'', thought Daimon.

    He then left the bedroom to go to the dining room, to give the girls some space, they had to put on their equipment and they will be a bit tight on space, in the bathroom.

    At the dining room, Vincent and the others were already sitting at the table, the queen who was drinking tea greeted Daimon.

    "Good morning, are the others not ready yet?", asked Ae as she took a sip of her cup.

    "They shouldn''t take that long, are the preparations regarding our "conversation" with the Delphini Duke ready?", said Daimon.

    Ae softly smiled in response.

    "Of course, with uncle and senior Aurora blocking the Minister and that man''s senses, I could easily ce a little "gift" on him, so we''ll know his exact position~".

    Naturally, when the Delphini Duke attended the judge''s skybox as a guest, the queen used a tracking array on him, it''s something she got from the other rune master on the Ster realm, so unless ck Beard himself or the White Ancestor inspected the Duke personally, then no one would notice it, well maybe besides Daimon and Thea.

    The girls didn''t take long to join the rest at the table, everyone was now fully equipped, since the fourth round will be different, besides not being able to bring any weapon or equipment above the Half Ster rank, or any other external mean like scrolls which had spells stored in them, potions and the like, they could use their own personal items, as they were part of their "strength".

    Daimon naturally knew the Minister wasn''t doing it for their sake, that old sly fox probably got the best equipment avable for his family''s team, though the same applied to the top four, themoners would have been at disadvantage, but since they aren''t participating anymore no oneined.

    ''Daimon I can break their weapons right!'', said Narasha in an unusual enthusiastic voice, which made Daimon chuckle.

    ''Sure, you can have some fun but don''t overdo it, I need to defeat other sword users for my mission anyway'', thought Daimon.

    ''Mm~'', Narasha happily hummed, while Daimon finished his meal, spars didn''t count for the mission, the system literally urged him to crush other sword users, not that he cared, since the sword is the most popr weapon, people prefer it to the point of it being called "The king of weapons", so there were a lot of idiots who only swung swords like sticks out there.

    Aura personally taught him swordsmanship but she suggested Daimon to also try more weapons, so he learned how to wield other things, not to mention the magic guns, naturally since Narasha was his partner and Disaster is up to the day the best magic weapon he has seen, he has only focused on the sword, but he isn''t too fixated on it, with the system he can easily learn to use other weapons, but for that same reason he has to be careful not to divert his focus in weapons that don''t go along with his fighting style.

    It''s the same that happened with his affinities, he has all the basic affinities and a few of the rarer ones like ice or poison for example, but while the affinities are on a high level after hunting magic beasts who had them in the past eight years, he focused on learning spells only of the ones he feltfortable with.

    So that he wouldn''t end in the situation of being decent in all and skilled in none, for the time being his limit was around four or five.

    Once everyone had their fill, they left the mansion guided by Vincent, since today they were participants, they had to be earlier at the gathering point, Vincent waved his hand and they all disappeared.

    A few secondster they appeared in front of the Minister''s mansion, where the other participants were already waiting for them, just like Daimon''s team, the four favorites were all using their personal equipment, which was clearly on another leverpared to the ones lent to them for the previous rounds.

    Besides them, the members of the four sects from the Elemental Sea were also there, Jasmin and Cassy were participating, they had to show their support, since Aurora came so how could they dare not to show up, when their immediate superior did.

    As always Daimon ignored everything and just went straight to upy his seat, the girls followed him while the adults went to their own area, the sun was only appearing and today''s morning was colder than usual.

    Daimon felt a mocking gaze falling on him, he slightly turned around and saw Ezequiel ring at him, while he grabbed his strategist by her waist, the crowned prince was too being surrounded by the three female members in his team, though he didn''t pay them too much attention, they were still assigned the closest seats to him.

    As for Lance, he didn''t seem to be interested in such a thing and instead was sharpening the de of his spear with the help of his schr and vice-captain.

    Daimon ignored Ezequiel, why would he needed to participate in this petty show off, he was going to crush them allter, that being said, how could Aisha let such a provocation let go unpunished, she smiled and then got up from her seat and before Daimon could react, she sat on hisp.

    The other girls were used to see Aisha being close to Daimon so they weren''t surprised, and that wasn''t all, now that Aisha''s seat was free, the Risha sisters both next and behind him, and under Ezequiel''s envious eyes they all hold onto Daimon''s arms and shoulder respectively.

    Unlike him who was grabbing his strategist, the girls in Daimon''s team were holding onto him by their own will.

    "Tsk, let''s see how you lose due to those pretty "flower vases"ter", said Ezequiel and then he stopped paying attention to Daimon''s group, he could have filled his team with women if he wanted to, but the ones who were avable for him weren''t skilled enough to be part of his team, besides his strategist.

    This was in part one of the reasons as to why the nobles despised Daimon, they thought he just chose his teammates due to their appearances, since they have only seen Tessa and Femi outstand in the beast hunt, Mellie was in his team so she didn''t count, as for Daphne and Jasmin their teams were "wiped out", and they ended in the top three because Daimon divided his extra points with them, at least that''s how people saw it.

    Daimon wasn''t going to say anything, but he couldn''t help but feel angry that Aisha and the others were insulted by Ezequiel, still actions were better than words, so he simply said out loud.

    "I''ll be eliminating you first, just so you end up in fifth ce, regardless of the fact if your team is better than the Arcarius family''s one, or not, it''s going to be easy since you got your ass handed in the three first rounds".<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "What did you say you¡­", Ezequiel nearly lost it right there, but the doors of the city lord''s mansion opened and he had to swallow his anger, because the king wasing and whether he liked it or not, the first princess was in Daimon''s team.

    There was another person participating in this show off, from within Aisha''s shadow, Horals was fuming.

    ''How does a simpleton dare to show off in front of my young master, young master just give the order and this Horals will capture all the women in his family and offer them to warm your bed'', eximed the bone general.

    Daimon bitterly smiled.

    ''Have you been talking with Evangeline or something¡­ forget it, my hands are already full with those four and now the possible new three entering the scene, I can already feel a headacheing my way once I return'', said Daimon.

    ''Oh, I understand, of course young master wouldn''t even look at normal women, quality over quantity is the way of a conqueror, this Horals apuds young master''s wisdom!'', said Horals, his eyes were burning in green me-like battle aura.

    Daimon shook his head, Horals''s skull was too thick, so his words weren''t reaching him, he could feel the gazes of the princesses and the other members of his team, as well as Thea, Vincent, the Duchess, Ae and even Aurora piercing him from all the directions.

    After a few minutes everyone had arrived, since today will be the ending of the tournament, the Minister then approached the podium and his voice echoed through the whole area.

    "Wee to thest day of the tournament, esteemed guests and heroes of the young generation, please follow me!".

    Without further ado, the portal to the Calm Tri-Lake and everyone went through it, this time Daimon''s group followed a different path and ended up in thekes, while Thea and the others watched them from the skyboxes.

    Daimon watched the ce in which they ended and he smirked, they were at the center where the threekes converge and the tforms from the threekes had joined to form a huge single tform.

    ''Just as I expected, that old bastard nned to use the effects of the threekes at the same time, how predictable'', he thought.

    Now that the five teams were in the single tform that was formed, the Minister descended from the judge''s skybox.

    "Before I exin in what will consist the fourth round, there maximum number of teams allowed is four and so, one team will be dissolved and its members will be split and join the other four teams, since the champion can''t be selected, the team with the lowest rank will be split, ckfin''s family split into four groups of three, we''ll sort who will join who".

    Ezequiel felt outraged, but before he couldin someone spoke first.

    "I refuse, give the three that were supposed to join me to the others", said Daimon.

    The Minister frowned.

    "Are you sure "champion", there will be a team with two vice-captains and a team with two captains you know?".

    Daimon shrugged in response.

    "That''s better, since everyone in my team is at least at the level of a vice-captain, so now there won''t be any excuse the others can use when they lose".

    The Minister, the ckfin Duke, Ezequiel and Walford felt a vein popping on their necks, they were being looked down too much by the silver haired youth.

    "Hmph, so be it, don''te cryingter, in that case¡­", before the Minister could continue, another voice interrupted him.

    "I don''t want them either, split them in two and give them to the others", Lance also rejected Ezequiel teammates.

    Which made Daimon smirk.

    "You see, no one wants hindrances in their teams, you can give them the fifth ce, since that is going to be their result anyway", he said with a disdain filled voice.

    The ckfin Duke broke the corner of his seat by tightening his grip on it, while he gritted his teeth, his family was being insulted by the neo nobles and also the team which was backed by the queen.

    The Minister clicked his tongue and then after a couple of seconds he said.

    "If that''s the case, then the rules will be changed by the champion''s petition, the fifth team will remain together, in exchange the difficulty of the stage will increase, is everyone okay with it?".

    The crowned prince nodded without a second of hesitation and Walford had no choice but to agree as well, since it would have been a 3v1 situation, Ezequiel''s opinion wasn''t taken into ount at all.

    Daimon could feel the hateful gaze of the Minister on him, and he inwardlyughed.

    ''What, did you think I was going to let you y such an obvious trick, you were going to send that idiot of Ezequiel into my team to cause disruption and then excuse yourself saying "You got a second captain level and still lost", you''ll have to do it better than that'', he thought.

    The Minister loved giving troubles disguised as advantages to others, unfortunately for him, Daimon couldn''t be tricked so easily, it also helped that Lance shared the same opinion, since that made the queen and Vincent didn''t feel the need to interfere.

    And just like that, Daimon won the first sh in this chess game against the Minister, and also made his previous ns crumble by changing the setting, as for the increased difficulty he didn''t care, he wasn''t bluffing when he said all the girls were at least vice-captain level, in fact besides Lance, the crowned prince and Walford, Daimon was sure that in a 1v1 the girls could defeat everyone else, and even those four shouldn''t be able to defeat Aisha, Mellie and Tessa, at most it would be a tie.

    The sisters were a bit weaker in the meaning that their maximum output was limited to the time they could maintain their wings not to mention they were still learning to control them, Daphne''s ability was formidable but she will lose if she fails the shot, Femi could deal with Ezequiel and probably Walford, but in a rough calction Lance and the crowned prince would be able to suppress her, as for Chris and Cassy, they weren''t at the level of the top four captains yet, it''s not that they are weak, but they yed support roles in their teams, so battle wasn''t their specialty.

    That was an objective evaluation, but to be honest, Daimon believed that they could stand up even to the crowned prince, with the correct preparation.

 Chapter 391 The Fourth Round (Part 2)

    The Minister saw Daimon''s almost unnoticeable mocking smile, which was naturally aimed at him on purpose, and he felt his lungs filled with anger.

    ''A brat that came out of nowhere like you, dare to mess with me, let''s see how long will you be able to keep smiling punk!'', he screamed in his heart, but on the outside, he kept a neutral face as he continued with the exnation of today''s round.

    The Minister snapped hos fingers and then the arrays engraved in the huge tform which was actually theplete form of the individual ones illuminated, unlike previously, the tform upied a part of the threekes at the same time.

    Also, theplete array looked way moreplex than the previous ones, which made sense since these tforms were made by the other Ster ranked Rune Master, who has had some deals with the Clear Water Kingdom from time to time.

    "As I have stated before, thekes "weaken" with each day that passes, until the harvesting of the three-colored water arrives, but the day of the harvest is special, while the partially mixedkes aren''t safe to be absorbed, there is an extra effect caused by this day".

    "Besides the three negative effects, you have seen in the previous three days which will be active together and used on the stage, from time to time, the positive effects will randomly appear as well".

    "In other words, the heroes of the young generation will get to experience the positive effects of thekes as if they have absorbed the three-colored water, that is if you are lucky enough to be present in the ce and moment when they appear of course".

    The spectators nodded, their interest was picked by the stage set up by the Minister, which of course fed the ego of thetter.

    "My Arcarius family''s tournament is meant to evaluate the young generation in the different aspects that are important to a leader, since they are the future of our Neptune, this chaotic scenery where "troubles" and "opportunities" exist, is a battlefield created for the sake of rising a king", said the Minister.

    If a normal noble were to say something like that, the King would probably p his face, but the Minister is his right hand and he even gave him face, by taking in his two sons who though aren''t at the level of his heir, were still his flesh and blood, so he didn''t pay mind to this "stage" mentioned, in any case Terry was going to win, so this y will make his pride grow stronger, or at least that''s what he believed.

    "With that being said, today''s round is called "Conquest of the throne room", and will consist in a simple yet difficult task, you''ll all enter the royal maze and make your way to the throne room, naturally being fast won''t grant you the victory, your team needs to defend the throne where the captain will have to stay for more than five minutes to win".

    "And to make things more entertaining, once the first team has arrived to the throne room, the countdown for the end will begin, and the teams will have just twenty minutes to fight for the win, if no team manages to hold the throne for more than five minutes, the winner will be chosen depending on the performance of all the participants, how fast they arrived at the throne room and the time that the captain managed to hold the throne".

    The stage sounded easy but everyone knew it was going to be a harsh battle, there were five teams and just twenty minutes once the countdown started, if divided equally no one will get even five minutes in total, to the fight at the throne room will be chaotic, especially with the addition of the fourth effect from thekes.

    ''This old bastard nned things through, most of his team have water affinity and some of them drank at least one dose of three-colored water¡­ what a shame, you can''t calcte how an irregrity like him will affect the stage~'', thought the queen as she stole a gaze at Daimon''s calm face, which made him look as if the win was his from the very beginning.

    Some perceived such a thing as tant arrogance while others were eased by the aura he exuded, that''s how he is supposed to be, an apex predator is supposed to be unrivaled in his ecosystem, the moment Daimon starts doubting of his victory, he will stop being an apex predator and will be just another prey.

    Of course, Daimon is aware that overconfidence is a shortcut to death, and that is why when ites to the lives of the girls and his, he always has something prepared beforehand, in case being an apex predator ever gets the best of him, he won''t let even his own power prey on him.

    "Ah I almost forgot to mention the first surprise I have for you now that the set up was changed by the champion''s petition, the teams will be split from the very beginning, and while the number of "surviving" team members won''t be taken into ount for the score, it will be harder to defend the throne with less team members, so keep that in mind and good look", said the Minister.

    And just like that without letting anyone adapt to the situation, the Minister snapped his fingers and individual walls surrounded each one of the participants, the huge tform also changed like in the first round to be a giant closed rectangr prism, with walls and a roof, to be arge-scale maze.

    The very moment the Minister did his move, Daimon did his too.

    ''Mom, you go straight to the throne room, I''ll go pick up the others since illusions are useless against me and I can see through the walls and traps on the floor, you can let loose and eliminate anyone that appears in your way, if you find it quick, you can reunite with me''.

    ''Okay darling, I hope I meet that Ezequiel guy, how does he dare to show off that bitch as if she was the prettiest woman in the world hmph'', though Aisha''s voice tone was clearly a joking one, she seemed to be actually angry.

    ''It should be the euphoria caused by she drinking my blood and me drinking hers'', thought Daimon, vampires often go nuts due to the euphoria of drinking blood, for nobles it''s hard for that to happen, unless they find a highlypatible blood partner, in which case they be infatuated or even obsessive, Victor thought Aisha would have beenpatible with him, that and her transcendental beauty was why he coveted her.

    Unfortunately, he never had the chance to solve his doubts, since he never got to drink Aisha''s blood, and Daimon will make sure it stays that way, so far only he has drunk Aisha''s blood.

    Daimon couldn''tmunicate with the others mentally, and he didn''t want to give away his ability to send messages through mana vibrations in front of all these people, so he didn''t talk with the others, but they already had a strategical meeting earlier so they knew what to do depending on the situation.

    Not to mention a certain trio of sisters could "feel" Daimon''s intentions, since his mana ran through their mana circuits like a furious yetforting stream.

    ¡­

    For Daimon once the individual capsules in which they were all trapped activated, everything went dark, not like he cared since he could perfectly see in the shadows, originally thanks to being a vampire and now due to the infinity eyes.

    After what seemed to be around two minutes, the walls imprisoning Daimon disappeared and he then inspected his new surroundings.

    It was a ssic dungeon-likey out, simr to the ones one could see in videogames, movies orics back at earth, with the gray brick like walls, wooden doors reinforced with metal ornaments and torches that barely illuminated the nearby areas, hanging on the walls.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed for a split of a second and he located the ces where the array worked as a camera to follow his movements, also he adjusted the mana output so that he could see thewsing from theke without his mind being dragged into them, to avoid that head splitting pain.

    ''Mm, that should be enough, now let''s see where did those girls ended up'', thought Daimon, with ease he felt where Aisha was, since she is his soulmate, he can feel her position without the need of using mana sense, which is good because the walls interfered with that on purpose.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''Mom is advancing towards north, her mana sense has arger range than mine unless I use core synchrony, so the throne room must be there, then let''s go northeast and do a whole circle starting from that'', concluded Daimon.

    In normal state, Daimon''s mana sense can cover around one hundred kilometers, while Aisha can triple that number, inside this maze their mana senses are being suppressed, but the creator of the array took the abilities of the natives of Neptune as the base, and they aren''t, so Daimon kept around a tenth of his mana sense, that''s also why he sent her to look for the throne room first, she is the correct girl for the job.

    The maze allowed the participants to feel the nearby doors with mana sense without any problem, only the walls were "imprable", for mana sense that is, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask and theyers of the walls became visible for him, he could see gears, and movable arrays floating all over the ce, the traps changed their location randomly, to prevent the participants from avoiding them.

    ''I found you'', thought Daimon, he then exploded in lightning and became a sh which dashed through the maze.

    Outside of the maze, the spectators were seeing the different points of view of the participants, reflected on the mirror tes, today all the guests from the previous days were also watching from the judge''s skybox.

    "Esteemed seniors, I want to hear your opinions on the participants performance so far, since a good start is often apanied by a good end", said the Minister to the guests.

    The first one to speak was none other Tideus, the cousin of Vincent and the captain of the royal guard, he pointed at the mirror tes showing the crowned prince and the twin princes performance.

    "In terms of personal fighting skills, my bet is on the crowned prince, unless the two princes are together, I sadly admit they aren''t a match for him, even if they are my disciples whom I have personally trained since a young age, but if they manage to reach the throne room first than anyone then they can snatch victory away", said Tideus, the twin princes were advancing easily surpassing the traps, using different methods.

    The old ssed man from the Sail family yed with his long beard for a moment before pointing at the mirror te which showed Lance and his schr who were somehow moving in the same direction.

    "Don''t underestimate schrs Lord Tideus, specially one who has ovee the natural weak point we tend to have, if my guess is correct that child is rted to the other general of the neo nobles, which is also their major asset, besides their muscles of course, a man who can create all those strange formations that gave the neo noble unit their name is everything but normal, I expect the same from his offspring".

    "Lord Tideus is a being a bit too straightforward in his prediction, this stage resembles the first round a lot, and it was Corey the one who cleared the maze in the shortest amount of time, the one who arrives at the throne room first will have an advantage over others, the decision of starting the countdown while also preparing an ambush for those who arriveter can be quite impactful in the result", said Carlos Delphini, in other words the father of Ae and Mellie.

    The Minister nodded, naturally every one of these guys were supporting their own either rtives, or the ones with which they identified, it''s not like they were lying, since they mentioned people who outstood so far, and he is the same.

    "Lord Tideus is right in one thing, the twin princes are formidable when they are together, and though my grandson is the captain, I can assure you they are as important, so if those three join hands, they will be hard to defeat in this stage", confidently said the Minister, so far only the team of his family counted with the positive opinions from two judges.

    "Hoh, to be so old, all of you sure are quite shortsighted", the yful voice of the queen suddenly broke the peaceful atmosphere of those old men who seemed to be drinking and enjoying a "friendly" football match.

    While the ssed old man didn''t show any reaction and instead nodded happy that his opinion was challenged, the other three turned to see the queen with frowned expressions.

    "I know miss Delphini is know as a fierce strategist, but even you can''t convince me that running around through the whole maze, like that little champion of yours is doing, is a good strategy", said the Minister with clear disdain in his voice.

    Tideus sighed, he might not be a strategist but he is an experiencedmander who has protected the royal family for a long time, so decision making under unknown circumstances and leading people is part of his curriculum.

    "I''m not one to prejudice unless I see someone being weak, so I won''t nder that youth''s battle capacities given his result in the beast hunt, but in this situation, he sent his vice-captain to the throne room and took arge detour, probably to look for the rest of his team instead of trusting they will get to there with their own means, if that is not a bad decision, based on knowing the ipetence of one''s team mates then I don''t know what it is".

    As for Carlos Delphini he simply red at Ae and snorted before he ignored her, which made the queen smirk.

    "That''s your problem, you only watch the surface of things, have you ever thought that¡­ the girl who was sent to look for the throne room is strong enough to crush almost every participant, included the two ipetent captains of the lot", she said with a ridiculing smile on her pretty face.

    As always, Ae''s sharp tongue,nded a critical hit on her targets, she didn''t mention who where the two ipetents, and naturally everyone was making calctions in their mind while refusing to believe it was the ones they supported, with a few words she kicked everyone out of their games with ease, and now it was time for her to take the lead.

    "Since all the captains are centered in looking for the throne room as that is the condition for the win, have you thought what will happen when a group lead by a captain and ten vice-captain level fighters do a whole run through the maze, I can resume it in one word "massacre", and then how can a captain defend the throne alone while being bombarded, the ones who didn''t trust their team mates are the others, while my Mellie''s bodyguard, went on to hunt down all the nuisances", said Ae putting emphasis in the word "bodyguard".

    "That would be a sight to behold, but her majesty is forgetting that nothing prevents the remaining captains to join hands", said the ssed old man with a neutral voice not servile nor arrogant.

    "That''s true, but what if I told you that on a 4v1 battle, the four-man team at most could tie with the sole person, and then we add eleven supporters to the sole person, what the result do you think will be?", asked Ae.

    The old man from the Sail family sighed and then amodated his sses.

    "An utter and crushing defeat for the four-man team if my calctions don''t fail me, I would say, I must ask, did her majestye with this strategy or¡­", humbly asked the old man, to which Ae giggled and then focused her attention on the mirror tes again.

    "Who knows~", said the queen with a happy voice, while she red from the corner of her eyes at the Minister.

    "I almost forgot to mention it, but my personal auditor gave me the record of your treasury, Minister, and since you haven''t dered any retire in the high ranked treasure category, I expect for everything to be the same tomorrow, or we will have to run a deep "inspection" through all the territories of the Arcarius family, to look for the missing items".

    The Minister saw the smile which wasn''t a smile on the face of the queen and he gritted his teeth, if what she predicted happened like normally¡­ wasn''t he screwed!

 Chapter 392 The Fourth Round (Part 3)

    The Minister suddenly had a bad premonition, he abruptly turned around to see Vincent, just to catch a glimpse of the Trident Marshal, grinning at him, it was almost unnoticeable as itsted less than a second, so the Minister even doubted it actually happened.

    ''I must be seeing things, whatever the case, with the trump card I prepared for Walford, even the crowned prince shouldn''t be able to win outpower him at least for six minutes'', thought the Minister.

    Back at the maze, Daimon whose body was covered in lightning kept advancing through the corridors without stopping, but then he reached a dead end in which he was forced to go through one of the wooden doors.

    "That old bastard must have done it so every certain distance you have to enter a door at least", said Daimon to himself.

    He dissipated his boosting spell and then opened he door, for Daimon it was as if time stopped, he saw in slow motion arge spike of metaling at him, aiming at the right side of the chest.

    Daimon smirked, the traps from the Minister were thought to harm or incapacitate but not kill, taking as a base the strength of the stronger participant, in this case the unit of measure was the crowned prince, in other words a middle-ranked Mage Lord, if converted to a Knight Lord, the spike had around 25 tons of strength behind, while Daimon''s current physical strength was of 40 tons.

    Under the surprised eyes of the spectators Daimon''s hand blurred and then the next thing they saw, was that he grabbed the metal spike on the air, just in time to stop it from piercing his chest.

    Daimon then jumped int the room, his eyes behind his mask glowed, in a second he located all the shooting points, from where the arrows that were the trap set up in this room, will being.

    "Ding-Ding-Ding!", small metallic sounds echoed through the room as Daimon advanced through it, he used the metal spike to smack away the arrows all the way to the exit, normally a person would take three minutes to surpass this trap and yet Daimon did it in less than one.

    Needles to say but the spectators were dumbfounded at the scene that unfolded in front of their eyes a few seconds ago.

    "W-What the hell, he caught the spike on the air, even if he is a knight, how strong is that guy!".

    "Forget about the spike, how good are his reflexes for him to fend off against all those arrows while moving, he didn''t use a defensive martial art or an, spell!".

    And simrments could be hearding from the different participants, as for the adults who actually managed to see Daimon''s hand moving at an insane speed for a member of the younger generation, frowned, there were bets involving the results of the tournament, and so the information brokers sold the data of the participants who outstood so far.

    Daimon was listed as a ck horse from the beast hunt, but his battle prowess prediction was the early stage of the Lord realm, which made him weaker than the crowned prince and Lance, and equal to Walford or Ezequiel.

    Oblivious to the effect that his infinity eyesbined with the explosive strength of forty tons he had, Daimon kept advancing towards the northeast, though the Minister mentioned that they will be split randomly, Daimon was willing to bet that the old bastard yed some tricks, meaning that his team mates should have spread through the whole maze, to make things harder for him.

    "Unfortunately, you had to do the same with others, and ced all your hopes in the captain of the team, bad move old man", mumbled Daimon, he arrived just in time to see three people fighting.

    ¡­

    "What the hell are you doing, aren''t you an ice affinity knight, what do you mean with I can''t approach her!", a sportsy man with a ck armor punched the ground and an earth wall raised to protect him, but it didn''tst long before the wall was blown away due to an explosion of bright orange fire.

    "Shit, what''s up with this fire, I''m getting burned through my battle aura!", shouted a member of Walford''s team, just as Walford he is a member of the Arcarius, and an ice affinity knight, and here he was being suppressed by a fire mage and a slim fragile looking girl on top of that.

    "Humph, this ice is trash, Lili''s ice is stronger than steel, a wall of earth is nothing, burn and go to hell", a mellow and lively voice which didn''t match with the harsh words it was saying, came from within a curtain of fire,

    "Feather Massacre, Fiery Blossom", with Leslie''s fairy like voice, the ground around lit up in orange light and then fire raised from below blowing everything in twenty meters away.

    "Aghhhh!", the two guys were taken by surprise and both were hit by the fire explosion, when it ended both of them copsed on the ground, their hairs were gone and their clothes were burnt as well as their skins.

    The curtain of fire disappeared and Leslie who was using her metal spiked fan came out of it, then without stealing another nce at the enemies she just defeated, she proposed to leave but, she felt a familiar sensation in the mana circuits of her back, and turned around just to see Daimon arriving.

    The fierceness that was invading her earlier immediately dispelled, she smiled and then approached Daimon.

    "You saw it right, what do you think I eliminated two at the same time, I''ll soon be able to challenge Lili~".

    Daimon chuckled, maybe it was due to the explosive nature of fire, but when using her wings Leslie became quite fierce, unless he was around or if she used his mana to form the wings, but the amount of mana they could get from him was limited and Leslie wasn''t going to waste it with these nobodies, so she just used a bit of the time of her regr wings¡­ or the life-saving array would have immediately activated earlier, since Leslie turned some of the pirates and Skelefiends into ashes back then at the beast hunt.

    "Sure, sure, our little Leslie has gotten "hotter", jokingly said Daimon, which made Leslie blush, she then looked at her chest which has developed a bit more thanks to the potions her mother handed her, and she looked away.

    "What little, it might be a couple of months but I am older than you", she mumbled.

    "Which part of you looks older than me though", said Daimon as his body exploded in lightning before he started moving again.

    Leslie pouted, Daimon was right, the body shape of her race is naturally slim, gracious and elegant, which makes her look younger than her age practically forever, at least that was the case until her mother found a way to "develop" their bodies, the result which could be seen in Veronica were pretty convincing.

    ''Humph, just you wait, mom told y-you''ll drool over meter'', she thought, her slim figure was d in fire and then she followed Daimon, who naturally didn''t elerate too much, so that Leslie could catch up with him.

    "You three can feel each other''s position right, where are Lili and Yvi?", asked Daimon, as he saw Leslie running next to him.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Daimon saw the slightly bitter expression in Leslie''s face and he didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, Leslie cleared her throat and then pointed at her right.

    "Yvi is in that direction, I was going to reunite with her, but those two got in my way".

    Daimon nodded; he then offered his arm to Leslie before saying.

    "Hold onto me tight, I''ll elerate, don''t be scared, the lightning won''t harm you", Leslie''s eyes sparkled, she grabbed Daimon''s arm and then she felt a strange tickling sensation in her chest, as her body was covered in lightning along with Daimon''s.

    Daimon applied more strength into his legs and he nearly tripled his previous speed, he couldn''t use his darkness boosting spell, but his lightning could be excused since the outer aspect of Demon Light contains both light and lightning as well as fire.

    "Kyaaa!", Leslie wasn''t prepared for such a big change in the speed and she nearly let go of Daimon''s arm, but her little hands tightened their grip on it.

    Daimon saw the stubborn expression on Leslie''s face and he chuckled, she might be an energetic and even a bit clumsy girl, but her determination is no joke.

    Outside of the maze, the spectators were going crazy right now, they saw a little girl who isn''t even an official of her team, easily destroy two enemies in a matter of minutes, and that was only because the other party was oriented to defense and even counted with a knight, if that wasn''t the case, they would havested even less.

    "None of them are at the middle stage of the Mortal realm¡­ but still how can there be that much of a gap", whispered some people in the public.

    The Risha sisters were now all at the three-star mage realm, thanks to the resources Daimon gave them prior to entering the magic ruin, Liliana even managed to get to the middle stage, being just one lesser realm lower than Aisha, the average for the regr members of the top four teams, is around the seventh- or eighth-star mage realm, which means that using her wings, Leslie didn''t take a few minutes to defeat someone with a realm twice as hers.

    It made sense though, even if it had a time limit, Daimon ssified them as early-stage Mage Lords when using their wings, if they added his mana their elements became strong enough to kill middle stage Lord ranks, unfortunately it was just an increase in the strength of their spells and elements not an overall boost, unlike his Core Synchrony which makes it as if he has trained and advanced, considering he even gets a Manifestation Phenomenon, while they don''t.

    At the judge''s skybox, the face of the Minister was frowned, the same applied to the ckfin Duke, since the guys who got their asses handed a moment ago, were members of their grandson and son respectively.

    "A team full of vice-captains, I wonder how much will those sheepst when a pack of tigers is loose in a closed space with them~", yfully said the queen as she took a sip of a cup of tea.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon and Leslie were dashing through the maze, Daimon suddenly jumped at the left and avoided falling on a trap door that opened on the floor, he also punched with his left arm stopped a log that swung which hanged from the ceiling and was swung at him, though a door that opened on the wall.

    The purpose of the trap was to give the participants a fall sense of relief if he avoided the trap door, just to be hit by the log and thrown into the trap door anyway, but it didn''t work.

    A bit unwillingly, Leslie let go of Daimon''s arm and they entered on the door at the left of them, and both were met by a light blue frozen world and a harsh decrease on the temperature.

    "Ice de, Pierce", Liliana''s cold voice made its way to Daimon''s ears, Liliana thrusted her rapier frontwards and arge ice spike was condensed from the tip of the rapier.

    "Booom!", the ice spike shed against arge sized ice cube and pierced through it, destroying it on the spot.

    "Aghhh!", once the ice cube was destroyed a pained sound came from within it, and the life-saving array activated, the remains of the ice cube were pushed aside to show a person whose shoulder was impaled by the ice spike which was still connected to Liliana''s rapier.

    "W-What the hell, that was my best defensive spell and her ice pierced it just like that¡­ blegh!", the poor guy coughed blood, though the array avoided Liliana''s attack from piercing his chest, her ice was still burning his flesh and the impact made his organs shake.

    Daimon recognized that guy was one of the crowned prince''s soldiers, that being said he was around the ninth star mage realm.

    Since the array has activated, the guy was out of the tournament, Liliana sheathed her rapier on thece that was hanging on her waist and then her ice wings disappeared from her back.

    She then turned around and saw Daimon nod in approbation, and her face turned red as an apple.

    "You three should use my mana if you can''t control your emotions without me around you know?", said Daimon.

    But the two sisters shook their heads, the shyness slowly disappeared from Liliana''s face and she recovered her cool before saying.

    "No, if we were to run out of it and then sh with their vice-captains, we will win for a very small difference using our mana for the wings".

    ''Besides I only get shy if I think of you now'', she thought to herself.

    "Ahem, let''s move on, Yvi is ahead of us, she has been stuck for more than five minutes, so she should be up against at least six opponents including a decently strong one", said Liliana.

    Leslieughed at her sister and then she grabbed Daimon''s arm, which took Liliana by surprise, her eyes gazed at Daimon with expectance, until he made the same offer to her.

    "Be careful to not slip", said Daimon.

    "Mm", though Liliana kept her cool, a slight reddish tone appeared on her pretty face as she held onto Daimon''s arm, they then became a sh of purple light and left the room.

 Chapter 393 The Fourth Round (Part 4)

    It didn''t take too much for Daimon to reach the next door, which unlike the previous ones wasrger, also the color wasn''t the usual brown wood-like, but a red dangerous looking one.

    ''If this was a videogame of some sort, wouldn''t this be the boss''s room, or something like that?'', wondered Daimon.

    He asked Liliana and Leslie to stand behind him, just in case, before he opened the door, and just as he expected a secretpartment on the ceiling above them suddenly appeared and arge ck boulder fell from above.

    Daimon simply raised his hand and caught therge boulder, these traps which aimed at the naturally weak bodies of mages were nothing for him, naturally the trap wasn''t only that, while he was holding the boulder, a set of needles was shot from the sides of the wooden door.

    But Liliana and Leslie used their weapons to deflect them all, Daimon saw their proud expressions and he inwardly nodded, those three have been training to show that they can stand at his side instead of just behind him, unlike the first time they met, also they were no longer tortured by the emotional trauma that the families of the light faction put on them.

    Daimon casually tossed the boulder aside, making the floor tremble for a moment, though he made it look easy the thing weighted around 23 tons.

    Only then he and the two sisters entered the room and were weed with a strange sight.

    "Fuck, why are they only focusing on us?".

    "Hey, Lord Minister this is cheating, why are the beasts ignoring that bit¡­ aghh!".

    "Shut up if you have time to argue, focus on blocking them!".

    The current scene in the room was aplete chaos, there was arge scaled array deployed at one side of the room, from which magic beasts kept spawning, there was also a barricade blocking the exit.

    The set up was as if the beasts were protecting the exit, so to surpass this room you had to make a way through them to leave.

    But that wasn''t all, the poor guys who were fighting the beasts were between the sword and the wall so to speak, because Yvonne who was floating with her wings spread on her back was shooting them from above.

    So, while they have to defend against a swarm of magic beasts which weren''t weaker than them, they were also being pressured by Yvonne.

    "Why are you attacking us, if we lose then you can''t get out of this room either, the room requires at least four people for the door to appear!", shouted the one leading the other team, which was a ninth star knight.

    Besides him, there were four mages one from each of the other four teams, and also two female mages who wereying down on the floor with ck mana arrows sticking out of their butts.

    "Humph, those two bitches dared to say their captains were the best, you all can die for all I care; my knight will be here in a second so I won''t even have to lift a finger", said Yvonne with a cheeky voice.

    "Nightmare Demon Arrow, ckout", Yvonne who was leisurely floating, pulled the string of her bow and then a rain of ck arrows fell on both the group of people and magic beasts.

    "Shit, dodge, she did it again!", the guy leading the team warned the others, but he was a secondte and one of the mages was hit on the head.

    Surprisingly the array didn''t activate which made the temporal teammates to pale, but there was no blood or wound on the head of the mage and instead his eyes rolled backwards and he fainted.

    Daimon''s group arrived on time to hear Yvonne''s deration as well to see here using this technique she recently derived from the usage of her wings.

    "Woah, the cheeky Yvi is quite scary, unless the arrays on the armor are prepared to stop mental attacks, those arrows can bypass them", mumbled Leslie.

    "Sadist", quietly added Liliana.

    Daimon chuckled, they were right though, Yvonne was floating far from the reach of the enemies, and she was also using a spell to hide her presence, simr to his dark curtain, but hers only avoided the senses of the beasts.

    In other words, she allowed the enemies to see her to irritate them, they shouted and made a fuss, which attracted the attention of the beasts towards them, creating an opening for Yvonne to shoot them down one by one.

    The beasts who saw theirrades being suddenly knocked out got mad, their eyes were bloodshot and they became fiercer applying even more pressure on the remaining three enemies in front of them.

    ''Well, she wasn''t chosen as the strategist for nothing, they are being yed with¡­ still, I bet she is going to die out of embarrassment in a moment'', thought Daimon, amused by the whole situation.

    They didn''t have time to waste so it was better to end the show, white mes appeared on his hand and then condensed into a spear, which Daimon threw to the battlefield without a warning.

    "White Heavenly Javelin".

    "Booom!", the white spear impacted the ground and a tsunami of white mes engulfed the whole area, the beasts which weren''t protected by the life-saving array were reduced to ck burned corpses, while the three remaining enemies were left out ofbat, the very moment the javelin made contact with the ground, the away activated for them, since it judged them to be dead if they were to receive the attack.

    It made sense, since that martial art contained around fifteen percent of Daimon''s battle aura''s reserves, as well as forty tons of momentum behind it.

    Daimon whose senses were aware of the whole area, suddenly extended his arms just in time for him to catch Yvonne, who suddenly cancelled her wings and left her body fall.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "My knight finally arrived~", said Yvonne, she even sent a flying kiss to Daimon, very much to the surprise of Leslie and Liliana.

    Daimon on the other hand simply chuckled, the side effect of Yvonne''s wings formed with only her mana was a shameless and haughty attitude, at least with enemies, but apparently when dealing with him, she was pretty flirtatious,st time she greeted and winked at him, during the tournament and at that point, Yvonne hadn''t cleared her feelings for him, but now, she had, so she became even more daring¡­ at least for the couple of seconds that took her to return to normal.

    "S-Sorry, put me down please", mumbled Yvonne, making her sistersugh at her.

    Daimon also couldn''t help butugh at her current expression, Yvonne seemed to want to find a hole to hide, all that bravado she gained thanks to her wings vanished and when she reacted, she was in Daimon''s arms, let alone such an intimate action, they haven''t even started anything yet and were normal friends, so she was embarrassed.

    Still, he let her down and then said.

    "I need my arms so I can''t carry you like that, but hold onto me, we are breaking through that wall".

    Yvonne whose face was red as an apple saw Leslie and Liliana, mocking her as they held onto Daimon''s arms and she felt a vein popping on her neck.

    ''You two seem to have gotten prettyfortable with him huh'', she thought as she grabbed Daimon''s shoulder.

    Daimon''s body exploded in lightning and then, he shed towards the wall that was blocking the exit.

    Daimon simply retracted his arm and punched frontwards.

    "Booom!", the wall which prevented even a ninth star knight apanied by four mages to advance, shattered into pieces with a single punch, and then Daimon''s group went through the door sessfully leaving this room.

    Outside of the maze the public was in awe, first of all, Yvonne''s power disy was as incredible as Leslie and Liliana''s ones, she could be considered to be on par with a vice-captain without any problem and she was the strategist only, besides that, the martial art used by Daimon and his abnormal physical strength caused waves among the knight spectators.

    "What the hell was that, was there such a fierce martial art in Neptune?".

    "Forget about that, martial arts can be created with time and experience, but didn''t he use three elements!".

    "Such a strong light element, does he belong to the Light Pce sect, that would exin why he was at the side of the Light Princess".

    And simrments could be heard across the whole area, dual affinity mages were rare but still one per every hundreds of thousands of people appeared from time to time, a knight with dual affinity was rarer, because that meant his life spark was special, in a way knights create their own source of energy unlike mages who use the mana of the atmosphere in the early stages.

    And now they saw a knight who could use three elements, such a thing has never been heard off.

    At the judge''s skybox, the Minister had an unsightly expression, he red at the queen who was calmly drinking her tea with a mocking disdainful smile on her face, and then he saw Vincent who finally couldn''t hold back hisugh anymore.

    "Old turtle, your face is so worth seeing right now hahaha!".

    "So, what, you found a rare talent and nurtured it in secret, I don''t buy that triple element affinity crap, light and lightning are rted, just like how earth affinity mages have the chance to evolve to metal affinity with the correct resources and training!".

    There were some elements which were tightly rted to others, so the Minister thought that Daimon originally had fire and lightning affinities, and he was given some sort of precious resource from the Pce of Light sect, which allowed him to get light affinity as well, resulting in this ultra rare triple affinity knight.

    ''Shit, I didn''t think Aurora would join hands with this old bastard, even if they are old acquittances, she has never given him any help to maintain the line, so why!'', inwardly swore the Minister.

    Tideus who was silent until a moment ago suddenly spoke.

    "Vincent with all the money you dumped into an outsider, why didn''t you help your own family instead!".

    The process of helping someone toprehend an advanced version of an element, was aplete bet, even after absorbing a precious resource of such element, there was a high chance of not being able to refine it properly, technically every living being had all the affinities, but thepatibility with them was amazingly poor, with the exception of one, so the chance of sess of such process was below the 1%.

    Vincent smirked in response.

    "Even if that was the case, what I do with my money is my problem, not yours Tideus, unfortunately I didn''t have the chance to contribute to the incredible warrior you are seeing today, also don''t forget your position", said Vincent as he leaked his pressure, which made the whole room shake.

    Tideus gritted his teeth and his face paled a bit let alone a Duke like him, even the king had to show respect in front of the Trident Marshal, it''s just that Vincent normally doesn''t care about such a thing, unless he is angry.

    The Minister frowned and then his pressure countered Vincent''s, though he is still one lesser realm lower than Vincent, in terms of defending, he is second to none in the kingdom, and he can block Vincent.

    Vincent ignored the Minister and instead focused on the mirror te that showed Daimon, who was speed running through the maze, no matter the traps that tried to slow him down, he was perfectly dodging or surpassing them as if nothing could stop him, not to mention the three girls who were now holding onto him, which didn''t diminish his speed at all.

    ''Such good battle reflexes, I wonder if he is going to carry all the others like those three, if not, catching up with the other captains it''s going to be a bit hard'', he thought.

 Chapter 394 The Fourth Round (Part 5)

    Daimon and the sisters kept advancing through the maze, naturally it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes, that suddenly a lot more of traps started to appear in his way, which he already expected.

    ''That old bastard is starting to panic, what a shame, even if youe here yourself you can''t prevent what''s about to happen'', thought Daimon.

    The sisters suddenly felt a ticklish sensation on their ski as Daimon increased the output of his boosting martial art, luckily for him, he could achieve simr effects with either spells or martial arts.

    Normally he uses the spell Lightning Discharge created by Aisha as his default speed boosting spell, the only thing that changed is that he used battle aura instead of mana, he had this facility, probably because of his mana core that allowed him to be both a mage and a knight.

    Daimon suddenly jumped and ran on the wall for a couple of seconds, a whole area of the floor fell, revealing a huge trap door, Daimon''s knees slightly bent and then using the wall as support, he jumped and zig-zagged using the two walls, until he left the area where there was no floor.

    Outside of the maze, the Minister was fuming, that trap was something he was reserving for when most of the participants had gathered near the throne room, he was going to use it to get rid of a lot ofpetitors of Walford.

    But now he wasted it on Daimon and he didn''t get anything out of it, if the same trap popped out more than once aimed at the same person, others would naturally think he was ying dirty, which would be a problem.

    "That little bastard must be cheating, that trap covered such a wide area and appeared out of nowhere, there is something fishy here!", said the ckfin Duke as he smashed his hand against the table, only to be mocked at by Dominic.

    "ckie don''t you know thatparisons are a source of depression, if you are using your son to measure that kid''s reaction time and battle reflexes, let me break your bubble, that lecherous son of yours can''t hold a candle against him".

    "Knights are often heavy andck in speed, but that kid has lightning affinity, in terms of speed it''s the best element and even more important his reflects can keep up with that, to be honest even if the all the members of the other teams besides the captain, join to fight him, he will still win, as it seems he is used to fights against arge number of enemies¡­ a one-man army so to speak", concluded Dominic with a curious voice.

    Unlike the majority of people here, though he supported Lance as he is his disciple, the neo nobles respect the strong, so he was dying to see Daimon fighting against the captains.

    Back at the maze, Daimon whose eyes were glowing behind his mask, saw through the two doors that appeared at his sides, one lead to a dead end, and the other was upied by a group who was fighting.

    "There, Jasmin and Cassy are inside at the other side of that door",

    "Daimon¡­", Yvonne tried to say something, but Daimon smiled at her and she just nodded knowing he understood her intention.

    This time he surprisingly didn''t slowly opened the door and told the sisters to stand behind of him, he instead just opened and jumped inside of the room.

    Naturally it was for a good reason, metal spikes covered in paralyzing poison raised from the ground and also fell from the ceiling, this was a trap that was aimed at his previous way of opening doors.

    Unfortunately, no matter what tricks the Minister tried to pull off, Daimon''s eyes could see the gears and arrays that moved through the maze with his infinity eyes, not to mention as a lightning affinity user his reaction time was unparalleled within the same realm.

    Daimon''s fighting style just as Dominic stated, was created to deal withrge numbers of enemies, the only way to "counter" him, was with a 1v1 battle with someone that could contain him, otherwise he would just sweep through everything, that is if there was a sole person that could rival him in the vicinity of course.

    Daimon suddenly raised his left hand grabbing the edge of a dagger that materialized out of nowhere.

    "What, you stopped my dagger with your bare hands!", a voice came out of the air, as a guy wearing light ck armor appeared.

    Before the assassin who turned out to be a member of the crowned prince''s team, could gain some distance, Daimon stabbed his own dagger which the assassin discarded in a try to step backwards, on his neck.

    Or at least he aimed to do that, but the life-saving array activated and the dagger was blocked almostpletely, the tip still managed to pierce the skin on the neck of the assassin who was pale as paper right now, if there was no array the dagger would have pierced his throat and killed him.

    "Even the subordinates of the crowned prince can''t be all outstanding I guess", mockingly said Leslie.

    "Nice Yvi", added Liliana.

    The assassin has darkness affinity, but so does Yvonne, with her Night Sparrow lineage whose specialty, is messing up with the mind and perception of others, how could she not see through such a "poor" disguising ability, not to mention her eyes could see the flow of mana, and of course a floating mana flow in the middle of the air was suspicious.

    Daimon nodded at Yvi, he of course also noticed the guy, but she deserved the credit for being able to see it too, since she wasn''t using her wings even, and yet she could see through the spell of an eighth star mage.

    Daimon grabbed the dagger from the ground, since nothing prevented him from taking the possessions of others, the participants were taken out with what they had on them, if they dropped something, it would be returned after the round ends.

    He just took the dagger out of convenience, but to be honest he was impressed by the result of the gloves he asked Vincent to get for him.

    Outside of the maze, the Minister red at Vincent.

    "You old bastard, did you give that kid tactical equipment from the army?".

    Vincent snorted in response.

    "I think you are forgetting that the one funding the equipment of the armytely is me, since a certain someone reduced the funds of those who defend the protect the east and west territories, besides the materials were proportionated by the ck Empress, because she wanted to grant her newly appointed general a weapon for the tournament, backers are also part of one''s strength right", said Vincent with a sarcastic voice.

    The Minister gritted his teeth, the Maelstrom Sea had resources which were unknown for the kingdom, all the equipment of the team of the crowned prince is at the peak of the Half Ster grade, but there are still differences due to the ones who created them, not everyone had the qualifications to receive a treasure from the best artisans and cksmiths.

    "You are all forgetting something important, that kid has two maximum Ster ranks, the ruler of a quarter of the Maelstrom Sea behind him, not to mention the queen of a kingdom as well as the richest Duchess, did you really think he was going to fight with his bare hands~", yfully said Ae.

    Daimon looked at the gloves which were covering his hands, that were as thin as silk and practically unnoticeable and he had to admit that Thea proportioned an incredible material.

    ''Iron scaled jellyfish huh, these were made to purposedly be on the Half Ster rank, I''ll be sure to ask them to upgrade them after the tournament is over'', thought Daimon.

    This jellyfish''s outeryer was immune to any piercing or cutting attacks, unless there werews imbued in them of course, ording to Karmandi, the Empress killed it¡­ with her own fists.

    In any case no matter how high ranked a weapon was, of the user couldn''t power it, which was the case with everyone here, what made the difference was the strength and skill of the user, Daimon''s skin could be cut by the dragger, but the gloves prevented that from happening, he was stronger than the assassin so he could easily stop him from moving the dagger as well, it was simr as to why Yvi''s arrows pierced through the defenses of the enemy, they couldn''t activate the arrays so they were only hard pieces of armor to counter weapons of a simr rank.

    "Let''s go", Daimon sheathed the dagger on his belt and then he continued advancing, to where the sounds of fight kepting, this room was split into two areas, separated by a corridor, the assassin was in charge of getting rid of anyone who entered, but he was done in by Daimon.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ¡­

    "Now Cassy, Silver Spear", Jasmine rolled her staff and the then tapped it on the ground, the jewel in the middle lit up and then the image of a spear appeared behind Cassy.

    The daughter of patriarch Underwood, was surprised, she felt her body brimming with strength.

    ''Jas''s spell previously doubled only the strength of the next spell, I still can''t believe that now it triples every single aspect of it!'', thought Cassy, the difference between the Jasmin she knew and the current Jasmin was incredible, but it seemed to be a positive change.

    "With this I can use it, Demon Subduing Wood Sword!", Cassy''s sword covered in a pretty green light, she then shed at her enemy who turned out to be Walford''s vice-captain, in other words the recently revealed ice mage of the Arcarius.

    "Ice Shell Mirror", the mage used her own defensive spell with a confident smile on her face, ice is hard to cut and Cassy isn''t a knight, she could already imagine the Cassy''s hands trembling and she receiving the recoil of her own attack.

    "Crack!", but the result was very different to what she expected, the sword had no edge, instead of that, when it shed against the ice shell, it fully destroyed the ice andnded on the mage''s body being only blocked by the armor.

    "Blegh", the poor mage girl spit out blood, Cassy was an early lord rank just like her, and she received Jasmine''s buff which tripled every aspect of her next attack.

    That wasn''t all though, the mage copsed on the ground but at the same time, a tsunami of fire fell on Cassy.

    "Humph, Silver Fortress", Jasmin''s mellow voice came from behind the battlefield, and the image of a white brick small castle appeared in front of Cassy who was once again positively surprised, she shed her sword and a ray of green light was shot from it, easily splitting the tsunami of fire.

    "Shit, how is that bitch suddenly so strong, that''s even past the level of an average vice-captain!", the one who used the opportunity to sneakily attack them, was none on other than Ezequiel''s strategist.

    Her spell was so easily countered by Cassy, and she also heard some soundsing from the corridor, she saw the other two mages who were casting spells trying to take down Jasmine, failing miserably, due to that same strange white castle spell and she gritted her teeth.

    Without a second of hesitation, she turned around and ran away leaving behind the two mages, which were also Ezequiel''s subordinates.

    The mages cursed the woman, but they had no time no time to waste, because Cassy wasing at them, all the spells they shot at her, were destroyed with a sh of her green sword.

    The two mages knew one had to block for the other to use long ranged spells, so one of them unsheathed his sword and rushed forward, to which Cassy smiled.

    "Demon Subduing Wood Sword, Zen", Cassy extended her free hand and a sword made out of wood appeared on it, this time she used that one to sh at the enemy, and naturally it was cut in half since the opponent was using a Half Ster grade magic sword, but that didn''t stop Cassy.

    The piece of the sword she was holding and the one which was floating about to fall to the ground lit up in green light, and then to the surprise of the mage the both turned into tree branches which held on onto the mage, locking him in ce just in time for Cassy to smack her edgeless sword against the face of the mage, knocking him out ofbat.

    She didn''t pay attention to the other mage, because a purple sh shed against it, not only knocking him out ofbat too, but even breaking his weapon which was a sword.

    "One less", mumbled Daimon, he dispelled the lightning surrounding him to reveal, the slightly messy appearances of the Risha sisters, only their hairs were a bit disheveled though.

    "That''s an interesting way of using a sword", said Daimon, he has never seen a sword without edge, or more urately a swordsman who fought with his sword sheathed, because his infinity eyes could see through that green sword, and below the woodyer, there was a real sword.

    Jasmin saw the sisters holding onto Daimon and she raised an eyebrow, but she also couldn''t help but softlyugh at them.

    "The one who ran away was Ezequiel''s strategist, we should chase and eliminate her, or she can cause troubles", said Cassy, noticing that Jasmine seemed to be on the moon or something.

    Daimon nodded, he entered in time to see a figure escaping through the door, but he didn''t pay too much attention to it, he instead focused on destroying the sword of the other mage, that''s why the Risha sisters ended up a bit dizzy, Daimon elerated one more time and then he used Disaster to cut the sword.

    "Let''s get rid of her on the way", said Daimon as he beckoned at those two, it was faster to move this way.

    While it took Cassy a second to react, Jasmin casually held onto Daimon''s right arm, just like Leslie, which made Cassy sigh, she grabbed Daimon''s free shoulder and then they were all covered in lightning and became a purple sh once again.

    Others might think that carrying other people would made you slower, but what burden could those light as feather girls cause Daimon, when he''s got forty tons of physical strength running through his body, even without using a martial art.

    Outside of the maze, the spectators were in chaos, starting by the ones from the Bamboo Forest sect, including patriarch Underwood.

    "Oi, Underwood, what the hell is the meaning of this, if your daughter has reached the middle stage of the middle level realm, why didn''t you told her to lead the team of the Elemental Sea, and instead sent her with the princess to that guy''s team!", said Skyfire.

    The spell Cassy used is only avable for middle stage Lord ranks, it condenses a great amount of wood mana to make an "undying" sword that with each cut traps the enemy more and more.

    Underwood''s eyes glowed, he knew his daughter hasn''t reached that point yet, the only thing he could think off was the buffing spell of Jasmine, but if that was the case, then Jasmine was a monster, because Silver Spear should only increase one time per each big realm, in other words, for her to triple the strength of a spell she had to be at the Arch rank, that''s how the buff spells of the Light Pce worked.

    There was another person who was going crazy right now, the ckfin Duke who saw the broken swordying on the ground of the room,pletely destroyed.

    "What did that bastard do, that is a freaking Half Ste grade treasure!", he shouted, his heart was bleeding.

    Meanwhile Dominic wasughing, he knew how it happened, what happens when two weapons of the same rank sh, the answer is that the best user will win the confrontation, apparently Daimon''s sword was fierce enough to cut through treasures of the same grade, so if the other part didn''t have a strength equal to his, then his sword will just push through the other.

    What did surprise him, is that the broken sword should have still be able to be repaired, but looking at the piece of scrap that was reflected in the mirror te, that was no longer possible.

    "The weakness of every weapon is the same, the user, get ready ckie you are about to lose a few billions of sea crystals", said Dominic, which made the ckfin Duke pale.

    He didn''t gift the equipment to Ezequiel''s team, they were just lent to them for the sake of face during the tournament, and now he just lost one of them.

    "Why did he do that to a sword, wait, most of the ones I gave to those useless bastards were swords, don''t tell me¡­", the ckfin Duke had a sudden bad premonition.

 Chapter 395 The Fourth Round (Part 6)

    All this time the spectators have been unconsciously following the trace of Daimon''s group through the mirror tes, but after seeing what the Risha sisters, Jasmine and Cassy could do now, a question couldn''t help but appear in their minds.

    "If the "normal" members of the team are this strong, how strong is the vice-captain", they wondered.

    They already saw Yvonne in action, and she was quite domineering, her wings were hidden thanks to the effect of the bracelet, so for the spectators she was floating on the air shooting down her opponents from above.

    For those who can''t fly, an enemy with the capacity to move in the air is one of the worst nightmares, because those below the Arch rank can''t fly, and even if oneunches spells, you have to take into ount the natural effect of gravity which pulls down objects towards the core of the.

    In other word, shooting spells upwards is harder than any other direction, not to mention Yvonne wasn''t leaving them even breath properly, and instead used every aspect to suppress the enemies, like a strategist would, but also participating to prove her personal strength wasn''tcking.

    As for Daimon, he hasn''t met an opponent of his caliber, so besides being impressed by his reflexes and physical strength, they still wanted to see him fighting another captain, well there was also another thing about him that surprised the crowd.

    And it was how he was moving with ease despite carrying five girls, as if he was used to do such a thing.

    Back at the maze, besides Daimon there was another purple sh rushing through the corridors and speed running the different rooms, unlike Daimon whose lightning was wild and chaotic, since he was using battle aura.

    Aisha''s lightning was perfectly regted and controlled, she seemed like a purple fairy dashing through the maze, attracting the gazes of the male spectators, though she was disguised and half of her face was covered by a mask just like Daimon, so her face couldn''t be seen.

    It was impossible for her not to stand out, just like a star can''t stop dazzling, especially because for a member of the young generation her rule over her element was incredibly good, she surpassed Daimon in that aspect, though it made sense, since she used to be a peak stage Arch mage, her powers were lost but herprehension and experience were still there.

    Aisha''s elegant figure suddenly slowed down a bit, she stopped with ease despite the high speed at which she was running, she extended her finger and after covering it with a thinyer of metal mana, she cut an invisible string that was blocking her path and a lot of curve knives fell from the ceiling surrounding Aisha, there were around one hundred of them.

    "Come out, I know this wasn''t a trap set up by the maze", said Aisha with a calm voice.

    A slim figure came out from one of the doors that was a couple of meters ahead from where Aisha was standing, it was one of the few people that actually caught Aisha''s interest among the other team''s participants, the ssed knight who is also Lance''s schr.

    But he wasn''t alone, there was also a couple of Lance''s subordinates with him, for a total of four people.

    "Brother Lance doesn''t like ambushes nor team fighting against a sole enemy¡­ but you are too dangerous to be fought head on alone, please forgive me", said the ssed guy as he bowed his head.

    The neo nobles were a bunch of battle maniacs, but they had their own pride, never bullying the weak, standing up to the strong and never ashaming themselves, those were their ideals.

    That didn''t mean they were stupid and hot blooded, as the ssed guy was proving they also were skilled in the art of war.

    Aisha looked at her surroundings, there were curve knives all over the ce, also the two guys were ninth star mages, while the ssed guy was actually a Knight Lord, not only that, the knives weren''t made out of metal but some kind of ore which didn''t conduct electricity, in other words this specific set up was prepared to fight either her or Daimon, since they have shown to have lightning affinity.

    ''I guess that Lance guy has my darling''s interest for a reason, but I can say the same about his subordinates, the others are all focusing on reaching the throne room, but this schr didn''t follow the tendency and instead ran on the contrary direction to intercept others'', thought Aisha.

    "You two stay behind and support me, you are no match for her, understood", the voice of the ssed schr turned dead serious, there was authority in his tone, and the two mages obediently followed the orders.

    They jumped backwards and then chanted.

    "Wind Coat!".

    "Wind Boots!".

    Currents of wind gathered around the ssed schr, he also released his battle aura and a wild whirlwind covered him, he essentially turned into a living tornado, but that wasn''t all, a few of the curved knives raised from the ground and started rotating around the schr.

    Aisha raised an eyebrow, every boosting spell put a certain amount of strain on the body of the target, the schr was currently being double boosted, not to mention he was using a martial art at the same time, which required a high amount of control so that his battle aura, didn''t sh against the mana of the spells.

    The schr dashed frontwards and the wind as well as the knives followed him, creating cuts and other marks on the floor and walls of the maze.

    "de Hurricane Fist".

    Aisha smiled, the schr was going all out from the very beginning, so she responded in kind.

    Besides the lightning, metal mana surrounded her, while the disy of a knight bncing boosting spells and a martial art at the same time was quite a sight to behold, the truth is that they were both of wind element at the end of the day.

    But Aisha could do the same with boosting spells of different elements, which is even harder and naturally has an even better result, not to mention the spells she used were created by her which meant they perfectlyplimented her fighting style.

    "Lightning Empress", Aisha''s skin and hair were now glowing in a pretty light purple light, it was as if the goddess of lightning herself had descended into the maze.

    But the beauty increasing of this purple light wasn''t the only thing that Aisha''s spell did, the air around her was trembling and crackling, even without her doing anything, all the knives that were near her were blown away.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The two mages gulped down, even if they were far from the frontline their legs were trembling, since the very moment Aisha used her boosting spell, as experienced fighters who have followed the hellish training traditions of the neo noble faction, they could tell¡­ that in this state if Aisha wanted to, she could kill them in a matter of seconds.

    The schr wasn''t that different though, the wind mana that was surrounding her previously had diminished as if it was afraid of Aisha''s mana, and he also felt a suffocating pressure falling on him.

    "I know you have your reasons, unfortunately I''m the same".

    No more words were spoken, both Aisha and the ssed schr and Aisha moved, green light and purple light shed head on, what followed was a huge shockwave and the sound of metals colliding echoed through the whole corridor.

    "Booom!".

    "Aghhh!", the two mages couldn''t keep their mouths shut, they were both attacked by wind des and also smashed with lightning that not only burned their skin but also cut them, it was like being in the middle of a rain of des, there was no way to escape.

    The life-saving array activated and saved them, but instead of worrying about themselves, they stood up and tried approach the point of collision.

    Aisha who was still dded in lightning, shed with her sword and the leftover wind as well as the dust that was raised due to the sh, was dispelled.

    The result was that the floor and walls of the maze had deep cuts and even missing parts where the stone was bright red due to the heat produced by Aisha''s lightning.

    The schr wasying down on the ground, besides the ssed being destroyed as well as some slight cuts and thorn out clothes, there were no more wounds on him, but the life-saving array was protecting his neck, where Aisha''s sword was resting.

    "Thanks for showing mercy, even with my all I would have lost an arm before the array kicked in", said the schr with a bitter tone, despite all the preparations made beforehand based on the information he could gather regarding Aisha, the result was a one-sided short battle.

    Aisha retrieved her sword and sheathed it again.

    "What are you saying, a girl should take care of her skin, specially if you want to get the attention of your beloved~", she mumbled.

    The schr was speechless for a second, she looked downwards to see her thorned up clothes, there was nothing showing, so her cover wasn''t blown away so how was she discovered.

    Aisha giggled, how could she who was fighting for Daimon not recognize another girl who was doing the same for her beloved, to the point that she resorted to an ambush and even team fighting, despite the beliefs of the neo nobles.

    "You still managed to hold me back a couple of minutes, let me tell you that any other vice-captain wouldn''t havested more than fifteen seconds against me in that state, they said your name was Julio, so what''s the real one".

    The schr sighed and then mumbled in a different voice, a female one.

    "Julia, my name is Julia Gale, please don''t mention this to anyone else".

    Aisha nodded.

    "If you have to be wearing man clothes, you already have enough problems as it is, good luck".

    After saying that, Aisha became a purple sh and disappeared from the corridor through, entering through the door from which the schr appeared before.

    The previous conversation was done in low voices, so let alone the spectators which were still awe after seeing the previous battle, even the two mages that were slowly approaching the schr didn''t hear them.

    The schr cleared her throat and then got up from the ground, before her voice changed back to a male one.

    "We lost really bad, once we return a month of intense training is in order!", she shouted.

    "Yes, vice-captain!", answered the two mages, as they were all transported out of the maze.

    ¡­

    Outside of the maze, the spectators were going crazy, people with dual affinities thatplemented each other were rare, to see someone who can get an increased effect out of two spells of different elements is even rarer, and a boosting spell that used not only two elements but two boosting spells of said elements to be casted was unheard off.

    The Minister at this point was feeling outraged, he abruptly turned to see the queen who was enjoying a cup of tea, with a smile on her pretty face.

    ''This bitch set me up, how is that a vice-captain, she can fight with the damned crowned prince¡­ no she and that brat can''t join hands, otherwise Walford won''t stand a chance, especially because the kid from the neo nobles won''t join hands with our side, and instead would go for an individual fight!'', inwardly swore the Minister.

    He wasn''t the only one getting a headache though, the ckfin Duke and also the captain of the royal guard were both frowning, while Dominic and Vincent wereughing.

    "Oh, as I would expect form the direct rtive of my new general, she is quite something, I have never seen a spell like that", said Thea, Karmandi and Lina who were standing behind her nodded.

 Chapter 396 The Fourth Round (Part 7)

    Back at the maze Aisha immediately noticed that more traps were appearing on her path and she smiled.

    Though she indeed felt like going in serious against the ssed schr, because she recognized her determination of helping Lance, since she would have done the same for Daimon.

    Aisha naturally had her own role to fulfill, Daimon already expected the Minister will not y fair, so he asked her to draw some attention, since he will be a bigger target as she picked up the other girls across the maze.

    So that even if the Minister increased the traps that came their way, he will be forced to divide his attention on both of them, with Vincent and Aurora as well as the queen sitting near the Minister, thetter will have to keep his cheats to a certain level, because if he oversteps, they won''t let him go.

    Unfortunately for the Minister the limit he had was nowhere near to suppress either Daimon or Aisha, so besides praying his grandson and the others to arrive faster than Aisha and Daimon to the throne room, there was nothing else he could do.

    In other words, they had the Minister grabbed by the balls right now, though Aisha found some other minor enemies along the way, none of them were even ninth star ranked, so she didn''t need to use Lightning Empress to finish them quickly.

    So, she waited until at least a vice-captain popped up, and the ssed schr presented herself in the best moment.

    ''Humph, a trash like you wants to get in the way of my time with my darling, know your ce!'', thought Aisha as she took out her sword and deflected some arrows that were shot from all directions.

    Little metallic sounds echoed through the corridor as Aisha continued advancing, ignoring all the obstacles the Minister was sending her way, if her calctions were right, then she should be arriving at the throne room soon.

    At the other side of the maze, Daimon who felt Aisha using Lightning Empress smirked.

    ''I told her to draw some of the old bastard''s attention, but she went all in, I guess blood is indeed like a drug for vampires'', he thought.

    ''More urately you are the addictive to your soulmates~'', jokingly said Evangeline, making Narashaugh.

    ''Eve is right, I feel happy when I fight alongside Daimon, what a shame that sword was too weak'', added Narasha.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, that was a Half Emperor ranked magic treasure, it''s not that it was weak, but it was Disaster which is too fierce instead, well he also yed his part, since he swung a sword which weights forty tons and can cut everything so far, with a physical strength of forty tons, plus the eleration he gained due to his movement martial art.

    It would be strange if the other sword didn''t break, unless it was a treasure made by the best artisans and magic smiths, the result was obvious, at least in a sh in which the arrays engraved on the weapon couldn''t be powered by the user, the fight resorted to the old good muscles and the quality of the materials used for the weapon, like a pure knight confrontation.

    ''I didn''t expect Disaster to devour the properties of the sword and to destroy the arrays though, since when the thing is so well behaved?'', asked Daimon.

    ''Mm, it''s not exactly devouring, it simply deprived what the other sword had, as a way to dere "I''m stronger", it fully destroyed the defeated opponent, or something like that'', said Narasha, she was having fun too, so she didn''t reprimand Disaster in this case.

    ''¡­'', Daimon was speechless for a moment.

    ''What a capricious sword'', he thought, destroying a treasure just as a way to prove its superiority.

    "Whatever, I had to do it for the mission anyway", mumbled Daimon, to be a novice swordsman he had to defeat ten sword users, if he wished to, he just needed to go out there and destroy some nobodies toplete it.

    But with overscore being a possibility, why shouldn''t he take advantage of that to get a better result, everyone tried to prove that their sword is the best, so by not only defeating but thoroughly crushing even the sword of the enemy he expected to get a better reward.

    Daimon came returned to reality when he heard, Cassy speaking.

    "I feel a simr element as mine flooding one of the rooms ahead, it should be miss Tessa".

    Daimon nodded, his eyes glowed and his sight ignored the walls and any other obstructions to see through a door that was about three hundred meters away from them.

    ¡­

    "Damn it, why did I have to find another positive nature affinity bitch, just when I was trying to get away from another one!", yelled Ezequiel''s strategist.

    Earlier when she saw Cassy''s sword, she tried to ambush her to take her down as soon as possible, but her attack was parried by Jasmine''s spell, so she immediately turned around and escaped.

    Every element has a positive and a negative aspect, take fire for example, fire can be good and provide warm to nurture life, but it also can destroy life and destroy everything in its path, a part of the reason as to why despite people having simr elemental affinities, doesn''t mean they are the same, is that division.

    Ezequiel''s strategist fire is negative oriented, since it is focused in burning too much oxygen to suffocate the enemy, that''s how she dealt with her opponent back at the third round of the tournament, so easily, unfortunately for her positive nature is her counter, since that is the only element that can not only resist her mes but make up for theck of oxygen.

    She can''t even use it to increase the propagation of her fire, since it is imbued with the mana of the caster, in this case Tessa.

    "Uwah, you shouldn''t have said that", said Femi who was using her hammer to hit the ice shell of one of Walford team members, it was actually a ninth star Knight, and yet with a single hit of Femi''s hammer the ice shell cracked and was almost destroyed.

    But right now, that wasn''t the most eye-catching thing happening in the room, the usually calm and gentle demeanor of the Alfear princess was nowhere to be seen.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    To begin with unlike the elves from the myths back at earth, the alfear weren''t fully kind and gracious, they were just any other races, some had short tempers and so on, Tessa is a princess so she had learned noble etiquette, as a proper youngdy, she knows how to behave.

    But if there is something she hates is being insulted, Femi knows it and that''s why in her heart she was praying for Ezequiel''s strategist.

    Another curious thing about Tessa, is that unlike most of the highest ranked noble Alfear and each and all of the direct descendants of the royal family, she doesn''t use a bow, but a staff, since she focuses in the mage path.

    Tessa made her staff roll on her hands and then raised on the air as she chanted.

    "Guardian Vines".

    The ground trembled a bit before dark green vines raised from the ground surrounding her.

    "Humph, go talk with trees and die", Ezequiel''s strategist snorted, she used practically almost her mana in her anger, since her ns were hindered by two nature affinity women in a row, then she was going to at least take one of them down, not to mention her fire had another "surprise" hidden.

    "Hellstorm Meteor!", a huge fire ball appeared above Tessa, the whole room was illuminated due to the fire and the temperature raised enough for the ice shell which Femi was about to casually break, to start melting.

    Naturally, Ezequiel''s strategist didn''t even care about her own subordinates, who she left behind, right now she only wanted to destroy the woman in front of her, so she couldn''t care less to drag down the temporal "tool" she allied with.

    Tessa softly snorted and pointed her staff towards the meteor, and the vines followed hermand.

    "Boom!", the vines started pping the meteor repeatedly in frenzy, until the meteor exploded in a bunch of smaller mes that fell all over the room, losing the impact that the meteor would have caused, but still turning the room into a hell of fire.

    Ezequiel''s strategist maliciously smiled as she retreated behind the resulting fire, there was a second effect to this spell, though it consumed practically all the mana she had when she used it, the resulting mes could still be controlled at her will.

    "Those vines are quite strong, not having turned into ashes immediately, but they are useless now, so in the end you still¡­ aghhhh!", the woman couldn''t finish her sentence, when a vine that sprouted out of nowhere pped her body sending her flying.

    Tessa snapped her fingers and vines sprouted from all the ces which had fire burning on them, the fire was put out and the vines then moved.

    "Pah-Pah-Pah!", the result was a sea of vines that were pping Ezequiel''s strategist all over the ce, this continued until the life-saving array deemed the situation life-threatening and activated transporting the woman outside of the maze, but at this point her face was all swollen.

    "The tree of the royal family can use any kind of mana to regenerate and produce other nts¡­ only him is an exception", she mumbled as the image of a smiling silver haired youth appeared in her mind.

    The battle wasn''t over yet though, Femi who had already destroyed the first ice shell casted by the ninth star mage, saw that a second and third ones appeared in her way and she sighed.

    "I also take pride in my defense, but you are being a bother", said Femi, her body shone in dark gray light and then she smashed her hammer against the ice shell, arge magic circle was casted once the hammer touched the ice

    "Gaia Smithing!".

    The ice shell crumbled on the spot and what followed was the painful screams of the ninth star mage, who was now being stabbed on all his limbs by metal spikes that actually appeared out of his own ice.

    Femi retrieved her hammer once she saw the life-saving array activating to protect the mage, and she turned to see her friend toin.

    "No fair Tess, your opponent was better than mine, this guy couldn''t even withstand a single spell, whatever let''s get going, our dear captain won''t pay us if we take too long", she said with her usual carefree voice.

    At that exact moment a purple sh arrived at the spot, taking both the Alfear and Dwarf princesses by surprise, not because Daimon was moving so fast, but because of the strange scene of a lot of girls holding onto him.

    "Get on you two, Aisha arrived at the throne room so we have to speed up a bit", said Daimon.

    The princesses looked at each other and sighed, as they approached Daimon and both held onto the sides of his coat, they were surprised to see that their hands weren''t actually touching his clothes, but an invisibleyer of battle aura that was surrounding Daimon.

    ''T-This is solidification, he is not even a knight lord yet and he can already solidify battle aura outside of his body!'', screamed Femi in her mind.

    Tessa noticed the shock in her friend''s face, but honestly, she wasn''t better than her, in fact all the other girls were the same at first, besides the Risha sisters who at this point havee to the conclusion that anything is possible if Daimon is involved.

    He was using the small domain he had over battle aura to solidify just a bit of it around all of them, that''s how he was able to move as a "whole", making the girl''s bodies to follow his exact instructions when he moved, to avoid the traps.

    Naturally such a thing required monstrous reflexes and thinking speed, but he is a lightning affinity user, so there was no problem in that aspect.

    The Alfear and Dwarf princesses remained silent while Daimon initiated his martial art once again, he only needed to find Mellie, Daphne and Chris next, before reuniting with Aisha, who just arrived at what seemed to be the throne room.

 Chapter 397 Rushing To The Throne Room (Part 1)

    Daimon smiled at Femi''s surprised expression, this is the first time he puts the small amount of battle aura solidification he can use, to work in an external way, normally he only applies it as anotheryer of protection below his skin.

    Since he can''t do much with it currently anyway, besides increasing the already innately high defense of his body, but he got this idea based on the fact that a Knight Lord is said to never lose its weapon.

    Naturally that''s just an exaggeration, battle aura solidification is the trait gained by Archknights, but just like Mage Lords gain their Manifestation Phenomenon, Knight Lords also get an ability thates with their level, which is called Will Maniption.

    In short terms, a Knight Lord can infuse battle aura in objects to control them to a certain extent, it''s like adding strings to a puppet, the myth regarding the fact that a Knight Lord never losing a weapon, is because they use that ability to attach their weapons to themselves, or retrieve them in a certain range.

    Strangely Daimon couldn''t do that, instead he learned a bit of battle aura solidification out of nowhere some time ago, probably because his vitality is too high, which strengthens his battle aura overall.

    So right now, he was covering the girls with his battle aura alongside with his body, to keep them in ce even when he was moving at such a high speed.

    Daimon looked ahead and he smirked, the whole ce was full of traps, and he knew why, because he heard Aisha''s voice on his mind a few seconds ago.

    ''I arrived at the throne room darling, I''ll be keeping the seat warm for you~'', she said, before she cutmunications.

    The n changed, originally Aisha was supposed to reunite with him after finding the throne room, but she apparently had her reasons to stay there and wait for Daimon''s arrival, which probably had to be with the fact that the Minister could maybe change the disy of the maze.

    But as long as Aisha was there, Daimon would always find his way to there, so even if the Minister tries to y that trick it would be useless, Daimon will find a way to get there no matter what, and the Minister will just make the other participants also lose their time.

    And since Aisha was already there, if she sat on the throne room, the countdown will start and as the sole team who has a member in the throne room, Daimon will still win, the Minister was in check, the only thing he could do was wait that the other captains and maybe some of their teammates arrived at the throne room to suppress Aisha.

    While Daimon was free of cares, since his queen has reached the other side of the board, the other captains were rushing to the throne room, at some point the four of them converged and immediately attacked each other in a try to get past the rest to take the advantage.

    But in the narrow space of the corridor, the four captains were unable to excel their whole battle prowess, and they just stalled each other, without anyone being able to advance, so they ultimately reached a mutual understanding, since Daimon wasn''t with them which meant he could get past them without them noticing, so right now the four of them were running next to each other alone, with the exception of the crowned prince whose strategist, in other words Corey was running behind of them.

    "Lance, howe that slim schr of yours haven''t caught up to you, did he perhaps runaway with the tail between his legs hahaha!", Ezequiel who was running next to Lance said in a try to make Lance lose focus and fall behind after falling in a trap.

    The young spear didn''t let his divert from the front, but he still answered.

    "Are you in a position to worry about others, that guy said he''ll eliminate you first, so if he were to find your subordinates including that strategist you value so much, what do you think will be the result".

    Without waiting for Ezequiel to answer, Lance elerated a bit, leaving Ezequiel who was fuming, a couple of meters behind.

    Besides those two aiming at each other throats like always, the crowned prince was the most rxed one, he had his strategist with him and he had the most, high ranked subordinates in his team besides the neo nobles, the best equipment he as a prince and the young master of the Malleus family could buy.

    So even if some were defeated, they should stall the enemies quite some time, not to mention that he should have the most surviving teammates arriving at the throne room.

    As for Walford, his previous good humor was long gone, the Minister had a way to sent him short coded messages, so he has received information of what was happening, his vice-captain got done in by Jasmine and Cassy, so now he only could hope that the twin princes made their way to the throne room.

    There were still some high ranked participants left though a couple of vice-captains, like the one of the crowned prince''s team which is an early-stage Knight Lord ranked from the Malleus family, Ezequiel''s vice-captain which an early-stage Mage Lord as well, andstly though the real vice-captain of Lance''s team was the ssed schr who was already eliminated by Aisha, the neo nobles had another Lord ranked, which was the one acting as the vice-captain, a Mage Lord to be urate.

    ''Shit, I haven''t found any of the ces where the positive effects of theke are avable, luckily grandfather has moved the especially negatively affected corridors out of the way, or I would have had to use that already'', he inwardly swore.

    The areas where the negative effects of theke appeared, where simply because the array set up by the Arcarius, loosened up on purpose, and so the Minister could manipte them to a certain extent, but the fourth effect which was the positive effects altogether, waspletely random, as it came from theke and bypassed the array, since it had no negative aspects.

    The Minister didn''t know it, but it was normal, since even in Neptune where Ster ranks existed, they had no way to maniptews at will, contain them yes, but made them act at their will was out of question, if not the Arcarius family would have definitely raised even more, since thekes were such a treasure.

    ¡­

    While the four captains were rushing to the throne room, at theplete opposite direction, the twin princes were moving as a whole, using their innate ability to impulse themselves through the corridors, it was thanks to that they were almost at the same distance from the throne room than the captains.

    They were also in Walford''s team, so the Minister didn''t send more traps their way, so they have had pretty smooth time so far, they then saw that they reached a dead end with just one door ahead of them.

    Bryan who is the aggressive twin prince as well as Walford''s strategist, took the initiative to open the door, and what awaited them was an earth-shaking battle, between two parties.

    The scale of the battle made sense because the four people that were participating were all Lord ranked, at one side there was a water affinity knight teaming up with an earth affinity mage, on the other side there were two mages one who wasunching wind and water spells and the other one was deflecting the attacks of the enemies and engaging in closebat against the water knight.

    Naturally they were Mellie and Daphne, as for the other party they were the crowned prince and Ezequiel''s vice-captains, Chris was also here but she wasn''t participating actively and instead was in charge of the supporting them from the back.

    "Pardon my offense young miss Delphini, my young master asked me to bring you to the throne room", said the water Knight Lord, as his battle aura exploded out of his body like a waterfall.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Ocean Chariot!", the water battle aura changed to form a carriage led by a hammerhead shark, as the Knight charged towards Mellie, who softly snorted in response.

    "I told you to get lost", Mellie used the bow of her fiddle whose string started vibrating to sh at theing attack.

    "Disruption Edge", Mellie''s melodious voice echoed through the area, and then to the water Knight Lord''s disbelief, his battle aura was cleanly split apart, and he was forced to dodge aside.

    ''What the hell was that'', thought the Knight, he touched his face and saw the red liquid which was left on his hand, that sh not only dispelled his a attack, which is the legacy spell of his Malleus''s family branch, but also ignored the protection of his battle aura and directly left a wound on his face, if he didn''t react on time, his head would have separated from his body, in a normal battle, but here the formation would have activated and he would have been eliminated.

    Mellie saw the result of her attack and though she felt proud of herself, she also slightly bit her lip.

    ''It''s still not enough, sis can do it without a physical medium just by making the mana vibrate¡­ I have to reach that level if I want to catch up to him'', she thought.

    Mellie saw the door of the room in which they were fighting opening and the twin princes entering through it and she jumped backwards, while also giving Daphne the signal they previously orded to use when they had to regroup.

    This room was practically thest obstacle prior to reaching the throne room, once they surpassed it, they just had to follow a straight corridor to reach thest stage, Mellie was able to get this far so fast, because during the past three rounds she has observed the tforms while memorizing their shape, details and any kind of unique thing to use as indications.

    In other words, she made a mind map of the current maze, using everything she memorized of the three previous rounds, thanks to her innate ability, she used that to divide the maze in blocks, each corridor corresponded to one of the individual tforms, and she just followed the pattern she managed to see after memorizing the order of the tforms.

    Worthy of being Ae''s sister, Mellie''s reasoning capacity and information processing was quite something, the Minister didn''t bother to make the order of the tforms random, because in his mind there was no way for anyone below thete Mortal realm, in other words a high Arch rank, to see through the pattern of the maze, but Mellie did, and so she was able to even foresee which door led to the shortest route towards the throne room.

    On the way she met Daphne and Chris and they reached this ce together, but were intercepted by these two vice-captains, the crowned prince''s vice-captain invited her to witness the victory of the crowned prince per thetter''s request, but she naturally refused as for Ezequiel''s vice-captain which is the guy that was identally eliminated in the first round, costing Ezequiel the victory in his eyes, he needed to get some merit, if he wanted his little brother to not be punished for not being able to fulfill the expectations of Ezequiel, and so a fierce battle between the four of them started.

    And now there was a third party arriving, the twin princes looked at the scene unfolding in front of them and Bryan smiled as he gazed at Mellie.

    "Sister Mellie, it seems you are having a tough time dealing with these two, how about you join us, we can destroy them easily, I only ask you to stay out of the battle for the throne room¡­ it will break my heart, if we have to join the other side to eliminate your group after all", he said with a cunning smile on his face.

    The other prince, Ryan sighed as he looked at the crazed expression of his brother, everyone knew that the crowned prince and also Bryan both were infatuated with the younger sister of the queen, they were the first two that tried to get the greenlight from the queen to date Mellie after all.

    Unfortunately for them, not only Mellie even refused to discuss such a thing with them, they weren''t even allowed to see her, nor enter any of the territories property of Ae, in other words they were harshly rejected.

    Mellie didn''t bother to answer them, she instead turned to see Daphne and Chris and they both nodded at her, then they changed their battle formation, Daphne went to the back while Chris joined Mellie at the front.

    "I canst around five minutes against them, but my mana will be reduced in an eighty percent, please try to make them be as close as possible", mumbled Chris in a voice only Mellie could hear.

    Mellie nodded and then Chris stomped her right foot on the ground.

    "Millennial Stone Bastion!", amber colored mana exploded out of Chris''s body, and a small stone castle covered the three of them, while Daphne was inside of the walls of the castle fully protected, Mellie and Chris appeared at theteral watchtowers.

    "I''ll cover from above, don''t worry and go all out", confidently said Chris.

    Her family have been the right hands of the Vs''s main branch since the beginning of the times, while the Vs focus on an extreme offensive, theypletely focused on defense, since their attribute is earth, also for some reason the heir of both families was always a woman, so they were raised together as sisters and best friends through all the generations so far.

    Mellie nodded and then she jumped downwards, safelynding on the ground in front of the four Lord ranked enemies in front of her, she grabbed her fiddle and prepared to pull the strings.

    "Tsk, normally I will never team up with brother Terry''sckies, but I guess that impress sister Mellie I at least need to prove of being stronger than her, so what do you say Rudford, wanna join hands, I bet your master is waiting for your arrival?", said Bryan to the water Knight Lord, who frowned for a moment but ultimately nodded.

    "I''ll ept his highness proposal, but I still have to mention that my young master will be the one to win¡­ everything", said the Knight as he gazed at Mellie.

    The other twin prince Ryan, gave Mellie an apologetic gaze, Ezequiel''s vice-captain also joined so it was a 3v1, no in fact it was going to be a 4v1 since he was going to join too.

    "Excuse us miss Mellie, this is for the honor of our Keran family", said Ryan as he took out his nails, while Bryan took out his weapon whish was a curved sword.

    Mellie softly snorted, as she said.

    "I don''t mind you fighting for your family or whatever, but I don''t remember ever allowing any of you to call me by name!", a vertical yellow line appeared on Mellie''s forehead and her strength jumped to the middle Mage Lord rank all of a sudden, taking the four enemies by surprise.

    Tough Mellie exined how her innate ability worked to Daimon pretty easily, before that, only Ae knew about it, since the only ones who have that capacity in the Delphini family are them, the others have a different Analyzing Resonance which isn''t battle oriented, others knew the queen could do it, since she is a public figure and has fought quite a bit over the years, but Mellie practically never left the mansion and territories of the queen, so she never had the need to fight, well if you don''t take into ount the hellish training the queen made her go through.

    The first time she ventured outside of that fort zone" was when she travelled in the caravan, which is also when she met Daimon.

 Chapter 398 Rushing To The Throne Room (Part 2)

    Bryan saw the expression Mellie''s pretty face, which maspletely indifferent toward them and he gritted his teeth, at first, he chased her because his mother told him to, if they were to be inws of the queen, then it would be a huge advantage for the Keran family.

    He who had the confidence to make any girl fall for him, was met with a cold and absolute reject for the first time in his life, which of course made him get genuinely interested in "getting" Mellie, and so he has been trying from that moment onwards.

    ''Even after all this, that bitch refuses to obediently jump into my arms, let''s see how much time you can keep your princess act!'', he inwardly swore.

    "Ryan, the attacker first and then we bombard that turtle shell with everything we got, Daphne is charging that monstrous spell to wipe all of us at the same time, so be conscious of your surroundings all the time".

    Bryan might be a piece of trash, but his capacities as a strategist were real, he could easily create a n to counter Mellie and the others in a short term after all, so the others who were teaming up with him epted his advice.

    Ryan nodded and then they spread across the room, the crowned prince''s vice-captain who was called Rudford and Ezequiel''s vice-captain Dn, followed the advice of Bryan and also ran in different directions, so that Mellie was now surrounded in four directions.

    They all had a considerable amount of distance between them, so in case Daphne tried to ambush them with her Storm Stream, she couldn''t attack more than one at the same time, which would be a waste for such a strong spell which required her both time to charge, as well as a huge amount of mana.

    The four enemies reached a mutual understanding, since Mellie''s realm jumped to the middle Lord rank, individually none of them were a match for her, so they had to cooperate if they didn''t want to get eliminated.

    The four aimed at Mellie andunched their respective attacks, to block her path and prevent her from attacking them.

    "Pressure thrust!", Bryan started the barrage by pointing his sword at Mellie, from the tip of the sword a current of wind was shot towards Mellie, besides the ability of the Shooting Narwhal to create impulse, both the twin princes had wind affinity and so their spells had double the strength.

    Still since his innate ability only allowed him to attack frontwards and horizontally, he has to be in a straight line away from the enemy, and so Mellie only had to dodge sidewards or upwards to avoid the current of wind, which she did.

    But she wasn''t fighting only against one person and so, the next attack came her way pretty fast, Mellie''s eyes glowed as she saw a pair of nails fly using the current created by Bryan, the nails moved through the air as if they had a mind of their own, until they were aiming at Mellie from both sides.

    "Precise Air Cannon", with Ryan''s voice, a pair of magic circles appeared on the tips of the nails, and air gathered on them.

    Mellie softly snorted, she used the bow of her fiddle to knock down one of the nails easily, the string was vibrating and to Ryan''s surprise, the moment she made contact with the bow, his spell was interrupted rendering the nail useless.

    But the other nail finished its charge and so the air cannon was shot at Mellie, who didn''t even show any reaction.

    "Booom!", a loud sordid sound echoed through the room, as a curtain of dust was raised, the twin princes smiled happy that their team work was as good as always, in terms of understanding what the other was thinking they were proud of their ability, they weren''t twins just to show off after all.

    But then Bryan''s pupils contracted like needles, he jumped sidewards and barely dodged an invisible line that flew through the air and shed against the wall, exploded a piece of it.

    "Shit!", Bryan looked at his left arm, the whole sleeve of his shirt was cut by that attack, though his armor protected him, his ear was bleeding due to the vibration making him frown.

    The dust was dispersed revealing a perfectly unscathed Mellie, who was pointing the bow of her fiddle at Bryan, there was a wall made out of amber bricks protecting her left side where the air cannon was shot by Ryan.

    Chris who was on top of the watchtower softly snorted, though she couldn''t engage in direct battle while using the legacy spell of her family, that didn''t mean she couldn''t interfere.

    Unlike other mages who move around while throwing spells, the specialty of her family is concentrate almost all their mana to create a "mobile fortress", with a minimal amount of mana she can then manipte the fortress to change its form at will, that''s how she raised a wall to defend Mellie against the air cannon.

    This spell was naturally created to perfectly support the Vs who had to take some time to cast their innate ability, as long as Chris had enough "bricks", she could construct whatever she wanted, it was a really strong mix between defense and control in a single spell.

    Naturally it required its user to be able to react in time and have a good sight of the battlefield, and that''s why the watchtower was at a high height, Mellie also made them take a corner, before the fortress was casted so that there was no possibility of being attacked from behind, she isn''t Ae who is known for her strategic genius, sister, just to show off.

    "What the hell are you two waiting for, if one of us gets taken out, you''ll be next you fools!", shouted Bryan at Rudford and Dn who were watching from the sides during the previous confrontation, they both smirked, naturally they served the purposes of their respective captains, so while they agreed to tag against Mellie, if the twin princes could be worn out and weakened while doing so, it was two birds one stone.

    Unfortunately for them, Mellie had to intention of letting them off the hook, she slightly stomped her right foot on the ground and then dashed towards Rudford, who immediately let out his battle aura to protect himself, the ability of the queen is known to be quite domineering because even with armor one can get harmed.

    Take Sting as the example, he was wearing armor and yet when she used that strange spell, the next time he tried to circte his mana he vomited blood, since she directly affected mana, the same applied to Mellie, the difference is that she is limited to use a physical medium and instead of shattering spells or martial arts, she can only disrupt them, and there is a limit of people she can handle at the same time, since the rhythm required to it differs a lot, and she can''t process as fast as Ae.

    That''s how she ignored Rudford''s martial art as well as his battle aura to leave a cut on his face, as well as how she cancelled Ryan''s spell, also that''s why Vincent gifted her a peak half Ster ranked bow for her fiddle, since that''s what she uses for closebat.

    As a Malleus Knight Lord, Rudford could shape his water battle aura in different forms, but unlike the main family from which Vincent and his cousin were, he only had three shapes, the chariot which focused on movement, an offensive and a defensive form, he could use them without the need of learning a martial art, since that was his innate ability, and they were also stronger than any form he could create with a martial art for the same reason.

    "Ocean Heavy Shield!", water battle aura condensed in front of Rudford, in a try to block Mellie''s head on assault, the scene of a knight being afraid to enter in closebat with a mage was quite a sight to behold, but the next development would exin why that was the case.

    "Shattering edge", Mellie''s soft voice escaped from her pretty lips and the bow of her fiddle cleanly cut through the edge, splitting it in half as she continued advancing towards Rudford.

    Earth spikes raised from the ground at her right trying to take Mellie by surprise, but Chris who was watching from the watchtower softly snorted.

    "Wanting to y tricks with earth within the range of my fortress, humph!", the ground around Mellie trembled and a half circr wall appeared at her side, blocking the earth spikes, unlike the spikes which were made out of regr brown earth, the wall was constructed from those amber bricks just like the fortress.

    And to Dn''s surprise even if he is a Mage Lord, while Chris is an eighth star mage, in a direct confrontation, his spikes lost and were destroyed when shing against those amber bricks.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Mellie never stopped moving and so she arrived in front of Rudford who was livid, he previously hesitated to use his offensive ability form, since the crowned prince ordered him to bring Mellie not to eliminate her from the tournament, but he now realized that the pretty "flower" his young master coveted was full of thorns, so unless he wanted to be chopped into pieces he had to go all out.

    ''Don''t me me for what happens young master, your royal mother specifically stated that you must win this tournament'', thought Rudford, he extended his right hand and practically all his battle aura condensed on it, taking the form of a vague Warhammer.

    This is the strongest form that the Malleus can create the Warhammer, the shape, size and property differ from person to person, and Rudford can only use it for a short period of time by using practically all his battle aura, because one of his parents is from the main branch.

    "Torrent Warhammer!", the blue Warhammer exploded with water battle aura and then Rudford swinged it towards Mellie, who frowned.

    Unlike the previous forms which she easily saw through and could disrupt with her vibrations, this one was harder to decipher, but she didn''t stop advancing rushing against the torrent of battle aura led by a huge Warhammer that was aiming at her.

    A few centimeters before the hammer shed with her, the yellow vertical line on Mellie''s forehead shone and she shed her bow at the part on which the head of the hammer unites with the shaft.

    Then to Rudford''s disbelief, the bow cut the head of his Warhammer, which made the thing explode, as it contained an immense amount of battle aura, not only Rudford directly vomited blood after having his strongest ability interrupted, but the explosion hit him directly and sent his body flying.

    "Aghhhh!", a pained scream followed by a loud explosion echoed through the room, Dn tried to interfere and take the chance to strike Mellie down, but he was forced backwards due to the explosion of battle aura caused by the Warhammer breaking.

    It took a few seconds for the wild blue battle aura and dust that resulted from the explosion to settle down, revealing there was a small pit in the ce where Rudford used to be standing, right next to it, there was an amber brick dome, which returned to the ground revealing a perfectly looking Mellie, not even the corner of her clothes was damaged.

    Rudford on the other hand... wasn''t so lucky, he wasying down on the ground, with blooding out of his mouth, ears, nose and eyes, his armor protected him from the explosion and the life-saving array prevented Mellie''s bow to cleanly remove his head from his body, but the recoil of the Warhammer being destroyed made some of his mana circuits to break, also he was suffering from internal bleeding due to the impact.

    He might be wearing half ster grade armor, but he can''t power the arrays and since he isn''t an Archknight yet, his insides haven''t been reinforced yet, unlike Daimon, so how could he not end up in such a miserable state.

    Mellie turned around and gazed at the twin princes and Dn as she pointed her bow at them, Dn''s face was specially pale he felt blessed to be an earth mage, since the floor is made out of earth, he doesn''t have to create the element to manipte it, there is no direct connection between his spells and his body, so even if Mellie destroy his spells he won''t suffer any backsh, that was the w in using a physical medium for her innate ability, if she was skilled enough to do it like Ae, she wouldn''t have to worry about that.

    "So, what do you think, are you going to cooperate now, you bastard!", shouted Bryan at Dn.

    Dn obediently nodded, Mellie was too fierce to be taken on even with two people, but with the princes they should be able to drown her in enough attacks to not give her the time to cancel all the spells, andnd a solid hit on her.

    Unfortunately for them, Mellie wasn''t fighting alone either, she smiled and then Dn as well as Ryan who didn''t react on time were grabbed by their legs by hands made out of amber bricks.

    Both of them paled as they were dragged towards the other, the moment when they were next to each other, the ground opened and Daphne who had a light blue sphere with green currents of wind around it, floating on her right hand, jumped out of it, Chris moved her through the ground using thest bits of her mana, just for this precise moment.

    Daphne crushed her sphere on her hand and aimed at Ryan and Dn who had no time to escape, then a wide ray of light blue light engulfed everything in their direction.

    Even before the Storm Stream of Daphne hit them, the life-saving array activated to prevent them from dying, but that also meant they were eliminated from the tournament.

    "Booom!", for a moment the whole room was illuminated in blue light, which forced everyone to slightly close their eyes.

    Before the light disappeared, Bryan whose eyes were bloodshot right now after suffering a crushing defeat and being led by his nose, despite him being a strategist too, red at Daphne whose breathing was heavy due to having used her ultimate attack to eliminate two Lord ranks at the same time and he unsheathed his sword and shed towards her.

    "How dare you get in my way elder sister!", sinisterly shouted Bryan as he shed his sword towards Daphne''s stomach, since the wound wasn''t going to be lethal, then the array wasn''t going to activate, he just wanted to hurt Daphne.

    The light blue light which was illuminating the room was suddenly outshined by a purple wild light and the crackling sound of electricity.

    Bryan''s pupils contracted like needles, he felt his body shivering all of a sudden and he only managed to block with his sword, he then felt as if his body was hit by a mountain.

    "Aghhhh!", not only his sword exploded in a ton of pieces, but a heavy fistnded on his chest, sending him flying, the array activated so that he wouldn''t vomit broken pieces of organs, but Bryan still fainted and bled from all his orifices due to the impact.

    "And that makes nine, one more to go", Daimon whose body was dded in lightning, said, without even taking a second look at Bryan, he walked towards Mellie and the others, who had an amused look at his current appearance, since he was carrying all the other girls around.

    "Is that some kind of ritual from your hometown or something?", asked Mellie with a giggle.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, as he pointed at his back.

    "Get on, Aisha is waiting for us at the throne room".

    Daphne didn''t hesitate, she was feeling a bit weak after using Storm Stream, so she silently held on onto Daimon''s arm, next to the Risha sisters, her eyes expressed her thankfulness for the help.

    Chris followed her friend, since she was also quite low on mana, and ultimately Mellie did it as well, only then she noticed the invisibleyer of battle aura surrounding Daimon, she previously thought it was going to be hard to hold onto him, but as son as she entered in contact with him, she felt her body secured in ce.

    ''You really are full of surprises'', she thought.

    Daimon then became a purple sh and left the room, he had picked up all his team with the exception of Aisha who was already at the throne room.

 Chapter 399 The Tournamentâ€™s Result (Part 1)

    Needless to say, but the previous fight, had left the audience of the tournament in awe, the revtion that Mellie could boost her realm up, took them by surprise, everyone knew the queen could do it, but they supposed it was her who was a monster, so now everyone was interested on Mellie too.

    If their heirs were to manage to win the heart of the little princess, won''t their offspring be amazing, meaning their families will rise in the next years, not to mention getting a connection with Ae meant they also got on the god books of Vincent, it was an incredibly good deal.

    But the surprises didn''t stop there, they then saw her using Ae''s renowned ability to dispel martial arts and spells equally, which is what granted her the position of queen, besides the support of at least one of the pirs of the kingdom, the title of queen was supposed to go to the strongest woman in the kingdom.

    And while there were a couple of female early-stage Ster ranked experts among the files of the kingdom, they were utterly defeated by Ae when she was only a middle stage Half Ster ranked, thanks to that abnormal ability of hers.

    So now seeing Mellie fighting they were reminded of the time when Ae debuted, back then there was no one who coulde out unscathed from a confrontation with her, the heads of the many ns and forces still remember the crushing defeats that their outstanding members of the young generation suffered at her hands.

    And now the history was repeating itself, even the twin princes who have the blood of the royal family which is supposedly the strongest in the kingdom, flowing through their veins were a match for her.

    And yet it didn''t escape the many important figures of the kingdom eyes, that she wasn''t the captain of the team, she wasn''t even the vice-captain, which increased the interest they felt in the silver haired masked youth, that was now carrying almost all his team, through the corridors of the maze.

    Not everyone was positively impressed though, the mother of the twin princess who was sitting at the left side of the king was gritting her teeth with a hateful expression on her face, the way her son was rejected by Mellie was out for everyone to see.

    And that wasn''t all, Bryan was beaten up like a dog by the little bastard that has been causing troubles for them, the fact that her son couldn''t withstand even a single punch, nor have the capacity to dodge or counter attack meant he was nothing in front of that silver haired guy.

    ''That cunning woman, where did she find that monster, was she raising him in the shadows to be that little bitch''s partner from the very beginning, this isn''t good we have to get rid of him!'', she inwardly swore.

    The others who were at the border of getting an attack right now, were the mother of the crowned prince, since the talent she personally scouted for her son''s team, was single handedly eliminated by the younger sister of the woman she hated the most.

    Not only that, but in his way, Daimon eliminated a lot of the other participants that were left, among them there were members of the crowned prince''s team, he simply rushed through the maze one-shooting everyone in his path.

    What was worse is that she saw him get even more vicious towards anyone holding a sword, to the point that he even destroyed the weapons to the point of them being irreparable.

    She didn''t care about the others and their weapons, her husband in the king, thought the royal treasury is out of their reach, thanks to Ae tightening the leash on them, they had a lot of wealth thanks to the ies of their territories as well as other external sources, what worried her is that, the psycho that Ae brough to her side, would target her son, getting in the way or his victory, because he also used a sword.

    Speaking of that, the ckfin Duke was livid right now, out of the nine sword users Daimon destroyed so far, seven were from his family, meaning he lost seven Half Ster ranked treasures, he was trembling due to anger.

    Dominic on the other hand wasughing his ass off at the ckfin Duke''s expression, each time a sword was destroyed, his face twisted and that made the neo noble general amused, that being said he isn''t a simpleton as others might believe, at least not when ines to anything rted to fighting.

    ''That kid''s battle experience isn''t any less than Lance''s, I wonder where did the queen found such a talent'', he thought.

    At the judge''s skybox, the Minister''s face became unsightlier with each second that passed, he also noticed the pattern of Daimon mercilessly crushing every sword user in his way and his grandson is also a sword user, but that''s not everything, he realized his calculus were wrong.

    He underestimated the strength of the champion of the beast hunt, disregarding his overwhelming score as luck and the help of the princesses, but now he had no other option but to believe that another monster like the crowned prince appeared in the kingdom.

    While Ae, Vincent and even Aurora were all smiles satisfied with Daimon''s performance, the captain of the royal guard Tideus and also the Delphini Duke Carlos, were gritting their teeth, one saw the talent of Mellie who should have belonged to his family and the other saw his disciples being utterly defeated.

    The only one who remained calm was the old schr, he has never heard of the queen speaking well of anyone who didn''t deserve it, and so he based his expectations on the fact that Daimon was as strong as Ae mentioned, even then the results he witnessed were quite hard to believe, the whole team was insanely strong, not only the captain.

    Back at the maze, Daimon who was rushing to the throne room, suddenly heard an rm going off, which meant the countdown to end the tournament has started, in other words Aisha opened the door of the throne room and sat on the throne.

    ''I''ll be there in a second mom'', he thought as he elerated even more, leaving a trail of purple lightning behind of him.

    ¡­

    A few moments ago, in front of the throne room, which''s door is of a dazzling golden color instead of the red one that symbolizes the "boss" rooms so far, a purple fairy arrived at the entrance.

    Aisha''s pretty lips slightly curved upwards, she was the first one to arrive at the throne room, but she waited until Daimon had picked up Mellie and the others, to open the door.

    The golden gates opened and the insides of the throne room were revealed, it was arge open room with a huge throne at its back, there were two rows of torches that lit up as soon as Aisha entered, and a red carpet which led all the way to the throne.

    Aisha quickly inspected the ce and realized there weren''t any traps set up here, so she casually walked towards the room while she happily hummed, imagining the reward her darling will give to herter, and then jumped to sit on the throne, the throne had around twenty meters of size, so it wasn''t an exaggeration to say, Aisha who is quite tall for a girl her age, looked small inparison.

    As soon as Aisha leisurely leaned backwards on the throne, an rm went off and then a giant hourss appeared on the ceiling, which then started the countdown of twenty minutes to end the tournament.

    Aisha simply stayed there waiting for Daimon''s arrival, but not everyone was as carefree as her right now.

    The four captains who were not that far from the throne room heard the rm going off and they all elerated, without caring of stalling the other, naturally how could they outrun a lightning mage who specializes in speed as Aisha, so even when they were moving without any obstacles, they were still a step toote.

    That being said, three of them had the hopes that their subordinates were the ones who found a shortcut and arrived earlier than them, the only one who was running as if his ass was on fire was Walford, because the Minister sent him a message saying that Aisha was the one who did it, he didn''t even care that Corey was left way behind of him.

    They soon arrived at the gates of the throne room which remained open, since they had already been imed by someone, and their expressions when they saw Aisha leisurely sitting on the throne were worth watching.

    Lance sighed, if Aisha who he considered Daimon''s right hand was here, that meant his schr lost, she didn''t even look tired nor had any damage on her clothes, so it was safe to assume it was a one-sided battle.

    "Did you defeat Julio?", he asked with a calm voice, to which Aisha nodded.

    "Yes, "he" was a decent opponent, unlike the subordinates of those guys", said Aisha as she disdainfully pointed at Ezequiel, Walford and the crowned prince.

    Lance softlyughed and then he retired to one of the sides of the throne room, leaning his back against it.

    "I want to battle Gabriel in my best state, so I''ll stay out of this for the time being".

    Seeing Lance''s rxed attitude, Ezequiel gritted his teeth.

    "Oi, you battle idiot, if we don''t make her leave the throne and take it for ourselves, we''ll all lose, your neo noble faction will lose its glory and face you know!", he angrily shouted.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Lance whose eyes were closed slightly opened them to re at Ezequiel.

    "Will glory and face make me stronger, I''m just here to polish my skills, what use does status have when you can crush your enemy anyway, look at her for example, she isn''t even a noble and yet she arrived before any of us", he said as he pointed at Aisha, before closing his eyes again.

    "Tsk, what a fool, whatever don''te crying when you end up in fifth ce", said Ezequiel as he snorted, before he turned to see Walford and the crowned prince.

    "What do you say, if we attack together, we can eliminate her fast, that guy will be arriving soon, we can take his right arm first, then focus on who will win?".

    Walford immediately agreed, he knew Daimon''s team will arrive here alongside him, Aisha was his vice-captain, so taking her out was a wise decision, especially because with the help of two other captains, he wouldn''t need to use his trump card yet.

    The crowned prince also agreed quite easily, if his vice-captain wasn''t here, then that meant he got done in on the way here, on the other hand he could feel that some of his team mates were still on the game, so he didn''t panic, still one enemy less was a deal he had no reason to refuse.

    Ezequiel grabbed the war axe he had on his back and then ck mana poured out of his body, Walford also grabbed the heavy sword that he had on his back and his ice battle aura exploded out of him, as for the crowned prince he elegantly unsheathed his sword out of the blue mineral scabbard which made it also work as a flute, light blue mana gathered around him.

    The three of them then shed towards the throne, the idea was to force Aisha to leave the throne, so they didn''t restrain their strength, in any case the life-saving array will protect her, from their attacks if she was stubborn enough to not move out of the way.

    "What a shame that beauty is working for that idiot, me yourself for choosing the wrong captain!", shouted Ezequiel, he purposedly poured even more mana into his battle axe, increasing the strength of his attack.

    The three shes advanced towards Aisha, who had a careless expression on her pretty face, she didn''t even flinch despite the discharges of mana and battle aura that wereing her way, then at thest second, she actually smiled.

    "Boom!", suddenly a horizontal line of white light got in the way of the three attacks, blocking them from advancing even a single centimeter ahead, the sh of the attacks raised a curtain of dust that blocked the sight of the three captains as well as the spectators.

    "It''s good to see you three don''t bother in fighting as a group, that way you can''tin if you are bombarded in an 11v1 battle", Daimon''s voice came from within the dust, then with a swing of a strange looking ck one-edged sword, the dust was dispelled to reveal the current situation.

    Daimon who was pointing his sword at the three captains, was sitting on the center of the giant throne, at his right Aisha was leaning onto him, the Risha sisters at his left and the others were sitting equally split in the two directions, with Chris and Cassy sitting on the armrests of the throne.

    "That was new darling, I wonder how are you going to exin those four, how you were carrying these many new girls all over the maze~", whispered Aisha with a yful voice, that only Daimon could hear.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, but he didn''t answer and instead now that he had been sitting on the throne for around a minute, he stood up and craned his neck, then his white battle aura exploded out of his body like a fountain.

    "I told you, you will be eliminated first, you aren''t even a sword user so get lost you useless piece of trash", said Daimon, his image shed and the next thing Walford and the crowned prince saw was that he appeared in the middle of them.

    The crowned prince reacted on time and blocked with blue mana, while Walford condensed an ice wall in front of him, Demon Light which was covering Daimon''s body, was destructive enough to wound others even without the use of a martial art, just by touching things after all.

    While those two were blocking the white mes that spread across the nearby area, due to Daimon''s sudden appearance, Ezequiel''s pupils contracted like needles, he felt as if a huge boulder was now pressing down on his chest.

    Still, he forced his arm to move and blocked with his giant battle axe in front of him, Daimon tightened the grip on Disaster''s hilt and his forty tons of physical strength apanied by the forty tons of weight of Disaster, exploded as Disaster roared excited to sh against another magic weapon.

    "ang!".

    "Crack!".

    A thunderous sound of metals colliding followed by the sound of something breaking echoed through the room, as Ezequiel''s battle axe was destroyed to bits, that wasn''t all, Ezequiel felt as if a mountain had shed against him.

    Even when he focused all his weight and released as much mana as he could, he was forced to retreat around one hundred meters until his back shed against the wall of the throne room.

    "Boom!", Ezequiel was smacked against the wall, leaving behind a trail on the ground caused by his feet which were protected by metal boots which had spikes on its soles, even with all that he couldn''t withstand the impact and was sent backwards.

    "Bleghh!", Ezequiel whose left eye, mouth and ears were bleeding, panted, his arms were trembling and his right hand was broken, he was in disbelief at the strength that a single sh carried behind.

    Walford was in shock too, he immediately jumped backwards and took some distance from Daimon, the crowned prince on the other hand frowned as he slowly walked away too, leaving space for Daimon to solve his personal matters with Ezequiel.

    Ezequiel refused to believe what just happened, his precious battle axe which was especially crafted for him, was destroyed in a single exchange, and he was deeply wounded too.

    "What the hell are you, you damn monster!", he shouted, ignoring the pain in his throat and the blooding out of his mouth.

    Unfortunately for Ezequiel, Daimon had no interest in talking with him, his image shed once again, and then a fist covered in white battle aura and lightning aimed at his face.

    "Booom!", a thunder exploded out of nowhere as Daimon hit the life-saving array which activated to save Ezequiel''s head from exploding like a watermelon hit by a hammer.

    Still the shockwave wasn''t negated and the wall behind Ezequiel cracked due to the impact, he also not only fainted on the spot, but he even peed himself, because he could feel the sensation of deathing his way.

    The feeling of the grim reaper approaching one''s neck, it''s not something easy to forget, if not dealt with, it can be a lock that will prevent you from advancing in the mage or knight path forever, in other words, just as he previously stated, Daimon thoroughly eliminated Ezequiel from the tournament.

    Daimon then turned around and saw Lance opening his eyes, and taking his spear out of his back.

    "I wonder if you can spare some time for a decent battle, originally I aimed at Terry, but it seems a better target has appeared", said Lance.

    Daimon smiled, that guy was the only one who didn''t attack Aisha, and he didn''t even seem to care about the result of the tournament, he was only here to be stronger and he could respect that.

    "Sure, those two can''t approach the throne now that they are here anyway", said Daimon as he gazed at the girls who were watching the fight with curious eyes.

    Walford gritted his teeth, he was being looked down a lot, even the regrly elegant and cool crowned prince was frowning with an angered expression, those words sounded as if those women could block him from getting the victory.

    And so, the final confrontation was about to start, with the elimination of Ezequiel as the greenlight.

 Chapter 400 The Tournamentâ€™s Result (Part 2)

    Changing the point of view to the outside of the maze, the spectators went crazy a moment ago, those who despised Daimon saying he only chose pretty girls as his teammates, felt as if they were pped on the face.

    "He is a freaking monster!", they all thought.

    Never in the previous tournaments a captain was eliminated in a single exchange, and that wasn''t all, the fight was obviously one sided, one of the three most outstanding members of the young generation of the kingdom, was crushed to the point that he disgraced himself in public, it was outrageous.

    "Booom!", the ckfin Duke couldn''t keep it together anymore, he stood up and hit the table in front of him, destroying it into a thousand pieces.

    Since when his ckfin family has been dishonored like this, his anger had reached a whole new level, in which he didn''t care about face anymore, unfortunately for him, even if the Minister sympathized with him, this was his event.

    And even if he didn''t do anything, Vincent, Aurora or even the captain of the royal guard would act to suppress the Duke.

    "ckfin Duke, losing can also be a blessing, if your son can ovee that he''ll be way stronger than what he is right now, now retrieve your aura", said Raymond.

    The ckfin Duke listened to the words of the Minister and he yelled "bullshit" in his mind, he could feel the ridiculeing from all directions, since his son made a fool of himself this time.

    And he had no face or reason to stay in this ce anymore, since he no longer cared about the result.

    "Humph!", the ckfin Duke coldly snorted as he red at Ae, in his mind she was vicious enough to ask Daimon to defeat his son in such a humiliating way, not to mention he already had a conflict with Daimon due to that spear treasure.

    "Seeya at the royal ball to enjoy a cup ckie", the neo noble general of course didn''t let go of the chance to mess with the ckfin Duke, who abruptly turned around, went to the nursery to pick up his son and then left, while swearing to repay this humiliation tenfold in the future.

    He wasn''t the only one whose blood pressure had risen due to the previous scene, the Minister kept his cool on the surface, but on the inside was cursing at the son of the ckfin Duke for getting eliminated so easily, without helping his grandson stall that silver haired youth.

    And as he expected the young spear wasn''t going to go along with his ns, so now only the crowned prince was left with the possibility of being Walford''s temporal ally.

    ''There is still a big chance to win, that brat got cocky and he left those girls in charge of the throne, Walford only needs to take them out, the crowned prince still has some team mates which will arrive soon as well'', thought the Minister.

    Leaving aside the members of the ckfin family and their subordinated families who left in disgrace, apanying their n head, the neo nobles were roaring and cheering upon the current scene unfolding in the mirror tes.

    ¡­

    Inside of the maze Daimon and Lance were facing each other frontwards, ignoring whatever was happening around them, their fighting spirits were shing as they directly gazed at each other.

    The suddenly both dashed frontwards and swinged their weapons at each other, a ck one-edged sword and a yellow sturdy looking spear respectively.

    "Haa!".

    "ng!".

    With a loud shout and the sound of metals colliding, a thunderous shockwave was created upon contact followed by currents of wind, none were using any mana or battle aura to enhance their weapons, it was a purely physical sh, the ground below them exploded as a result, and stone pieces were sent flying in all directions.

    Daimon was surprised to see that Lance wasn''t sent flying backwards, though he didn''t use his full strength, Disaster wasn''t as merciful nor interested in an exchange between two warriors and it tried to destroy Lance''s spear.

    ''That spear is strange Daimon, the impact was redirected downwards'', said Narasha directly to Daimon''s mind.

    Daimon looked at Lance who was unscathed after shing with him directly and his infinity eyes followed the staff of the spear, all the way to the extreme of the staff, he could see a cable made out of dark brown mana which connected the spear to the ground.

    ''Mm, in an estimated calculus, his physical strength should be around twenty tons, which is amazing for a mage, but still he shouldn''t have been able to withstand my sh alone with that'', thought Daimon.

    Both he and Lance jumped backwards to make some distance, the two of them were inspecting each other trying to find out the strengths and ws of the others.

    He didn''t show it on the surface, but Lance was beyond words right now, his innate ability made him able to create a connection with the ground and redirect the impacts of the attacks he parried towards it, that''s why he wasn''t sent flying after blocking Daimon''s monstrous sh and instead the ground below them was blown away.

    That is a technique he developed to hunt magic beasts, who are known for their strong bodies and physical strength, it''s a big part of what made him able to hunt an early-stage Arch rank magic beast despite he being just a middle stage Mage Lord, since unlike the crowned prince he didn''t have a boosting type innate ability.

    Still, he was amazed at the strength of the previous attack, if he wasn''t using his ability then his hands would have broken for sure.

    "Damn, I know you are a knight but what kind of training did you undergo to double the physical strength you should have at the early stage of the middle Mortal level", said Lance.

    He went through countless of battle and training to be physically strong enough to use his own ability, as a mage with enough hard work it isn''t that hard to gain a few tons of physical strength, since that is not something they gain by innate in their path.

    Even Lance who went all the way and was the physically strongest mage in the neo noble faction in his range of age, couldn''t begin to imagine what kind of training did Daimon do, to double his strength as a knight.

    One must know that for knights, getting stronger separately from their knight cultivation is way harder, it''s amon knowledge problem, since their bodies get stronger the more, they advance, then regr exercise means nothing for them, most of knights give up on the idea of using regr training to be physically stronger and just focus in improving the intensity and purity of their battle aura, which makes them stronger anyway.

    In other words, they chose the easy way, but Daimon is different, his battle aura doesn''t increase his physical strength, so besides the increase he gets by breaking through, the rest was earned by him through Aura''s hellish training.

    Daimon smirked in response.

    "Aren''t you the same, that sh would have normally destroyed the arms of a normal Mage Lord, even if it used a boosting earth or metal spell, but you look pretty well if you ask me".

    Lance rolled his spear, he has never been someone that likes to drag things, he tapped his spear onto the ground and then his mana exploded out of his body, just like Daimon suspected he is a dual affinity mage, and of a strangebination on top of that, a wind and earth mage.

    Twopletely opposite elements, were perfectly bnced and surrounding his body, Lance''s skin turned bronze green, while his yellow spear was dded in a whirlwind, the crowned prince frowned upon the current state of Lance.

    ''He hasn''t used that against me before¡­'', he thought.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Lance then gazed at Daimon, as he pointed his spear at him.

    "This is thebination spell I developed to fight against Terry, it''s the second time I sessfully cast it, so be careful", upon saying that, Lance became a sh of green light that appeared in front of Daimon a secondter with his spear piercing at his chest.

    Daimon smiled; his white battle aura poured out of his body with such a wild force that it caused a distortion on the nearby area.

    He could feel Narasha''s excitement to sh against that spear which Lance was holding, so he shed frontwards and met Lance''s spear head on.

    Before they shed, a third figure appeared out of nowhere, Corey who was left behind finally caught up to the crowned prince, and tried to take both Daimon and Lance by surprise, so that they would lose their focus and their attacks lost control.

    Strong spells and martial arts are hard to control after all, and the idea wasn''t bad at all, the problem is that he miscalcted something, the current battle wasn''t something in which him with his mere early-stage Mage Lord battle prowess could meddle with.

    "Get lost!", both Daimon and Lance shouted at the same time, and a gust of wind as well as st of white mes separated from the shing point, and hit Corey directly.

    "Ahhhh!", the left side of Corey''s body was covered in deep wounds, while his right side was horribly burned, since the attacks hit his chest and not his head, the life-saving array only activated after he suffered enough pain to wish he was dead.

    Completely ignoring the fate of the idiot that was throwed against the wall after trying to interfere in their battle, Daimon and Lanceughed and then shed their weapons once again.

    "Booom!", Lance''s wind was crushed by the purely physical shockwave generated by Daimon''s sh, but surprisingly the white mes were deflected sidewards, identally or not, the sts of Demon Light were redirected towards Walford and the crowned prince.

    "Oi, don''t mix other in your troubles, you psychos!", shouted Walford, he had to create an ice wall to protect himself against the white mes.

    The crowned prince on the other hand surrounded himself with a whirlpool made out of his blue mana, to avoid being burned alive by Demon Light.

    Once again, the sh ended in a tie, Daimon''s eyes glowed, wind element is probably the worst match against fire which is base form of Demon Light, and yet he was able to use wind to deflect fire.

    ''So, his body is connected to the ground as a shield to block physical impacts and the spear is flexible and fluid to deflect energy type attacks, what a strange way of fighting'', thought Daimon.

    Lance was having fun right now, he and Daimon became shes of light and kept shing, normally his wind would have returned the attacks of the enemy right back at them, which is how he hunts magic beasts, using their strength against themselves.

    But no matter how much his wind pressed those white mes to go back at Daimon, they never do it, as if they were unable to harm him or something like that, it''s the first time he sees something like this.

    One must know that even if casted by oneself, a spell or martial art can harm the caster, that''s why control is incredibly important for both mages and knights, but Lance had a hard time believing Daimon''s control over his battle aura had reached such a level.

    "In this state I killed an early stagete Mortal level magic beast you know", he said.

    Daimon looked at the amount of Demon Light he has used so far, it was enough to fry an early-stage Arch rank magic beast as well, he changed his focus to outside of the room, where the sound of footsteps reached his sharp ears.

    "Let''s end it with the next attack, since there are some nuisancesing our way", said Daimon.

    Lance sighed, still he understood that while he didn''t care about the result of the tournament, not everyone was the same, Daimon should have his reasons to want the win, so he nodded and then took a deep breath.

    "Phew", he exhaled and then he basically used all the mana he had left, the projection of a green bronze spear man appeared behind him.

    "This is the best I can do for now, if you block it then it will be defeat", said Lance.

    Daimon saw that projection and he raised an eyebrow; it seemed as if Lance was trying to imitate the battle aura Avatar of an Archknight using mana and probably what was a lineage ability.

    "Fine let''s do it your way", said Daimon, purple lightning covered his body mixing with the white mes, resulting in a savage look, in which Demon Light became wilder, instead of the normal me form it takes by default, right now it had be white and purple lightning which was surrounding Daimon''s body.

    This was a new fusion technique he wanted to try, Demon Light was created using mana, battle aura, fire, lightning, darkness and light, so technically he only increased the amount of lightning to take over the base form from the fire element.

    This was the easiest change he could do, since lightning was the element in which he was the most skilled besides darkness, but he couldn''t show he had darkness affinity as Gabriel, so lightning was the obvious choice.

    Lance saw the current Daimon and he bitterly smiled, even before the sh he already knew what the result will be, still his determination didn''t wave and he rushed towards Daimon, with his spear leading the way.

    "Bronze Titan Thrust!", he pushed his spear frontwards and the image behind of him did the same, for Daimon it was as if the ground itself was aiming at him.

    Still, he also had to finish this because this form was hard to maintain since it was experimental, his image shed and then a dazzling white light forced everyone to close their eyes.

    "Boooom!", when the light finally disappeared, a five-meter-deep line had appeared on the ground of the throne room, Lance was still standing, but everything on the right side of his body had evaporated, armor and clothes included, that being said he wasn''t wounded at all, but the tip of his spear had disappeared too.

    Daimon who was standing a few meters behind him, couldn''t help but nod in approbation, even if he was defeated, Lance managed to redirect his sh, so that his body wasn''t cut in half, or this case the life-saving array didn''t activate, as he would have survived, unfortunately that costed him not only all the mana he had left but a piece of his weapon too.

    And Daimon had told Narasha to not destroy it to the point of it being irreparable, out of respect, Lance equaled him in his strongest state, without the use of Core Synchrony, sure he might have a high realm, but that didn''t make it less amazing.

    Besides Aisha and maybe the troublesome lioness Aleah, he was probably the strongest member of the younger generation in offensive terms he has faced.

    Lance copsed on the ground, he wasn''t wounded but his body was at the verge of copse, he squeezed till thest drop of mana he had earlier after all.

    "Next time I''llnd a solid hit on you", he said as he recognized his defeat, the array then appeared and took him out of the maze and thus the second captain was eliminated from the tournament.

    But the way he left waspletely different to Ezequiel, not only that, there was no shame in his defeat and besides the neo nobles and their supports who were cheering at him, others couldn''t help but do the same as a way to thank him for the incredible fight he showed them.

 Chapter 401 The Tournamentâ€™s Result (Part 3)

    Outside of the maze, Lance who was receive with a round of apuses and cheers, looked at his spear, though its head was destroyed in thatst exchange, he could tell that it wasn''t irreparable and he smiled.

    ''Don''t worry partner, I have kept you in this iplete state for too long due to my own weakness, with this I can finally advance'', he thought as he looked at the mirror te in which Daimon was proudly standing up to thest two captains.

    "Wielding a Ster ranked magic weapon with sheer physical strength, I didn''t even think it was possible for anyone below thete Mortal level, but just like my spear I''ll be stronger after this fight", he said as he jumped from the tforms to the resting area, where his schr and all his team was already waiting for him.

    Daimon had no way to know, but the current Disaster weighted the minimum required for a Ster ranked weapon, naturally those who use them, power the arrays engraved to lighten the weapon, in part the reason as to why the tournament only allowed Half Ster ranked equipment, is the requirements to use one.

    Even if you didn''t use the arrays engraved, Ster grade materials were on a whole new levelpared to anything below them, even the lightest weapon created with them will be too heavy for anyone below the early stage of the Archknight realm to even lift it.

    As for early stage Archmages they can somewhat activate the lightening arrays on them for a short period of time to use them, but today Lance saw someone from the young generation easily wielding a sword that weighted the same as a building as if it was the most normal thing in the world, his hands were aching for a second round, but now was not the time.

    Daimon and the girls eliminated most of them in a fair confrontation, as for his vice-captain who is also a lord ranked, he was ambushed by Ezequiel and the crowned prince''s vice-captains as well as around six of their subordinates, before they encountered Mellie, and was eliminated, not without taking out the six subordinates, the few who were spread around the maze were taken out automatically when Lance lost.

    "Captain, we were defeated without reaching the throne room, please assign us the required disciplinary action!", they all shouted as they kneeled in front of Lance.

    Even the ssed schr bowed towards Lance, but they were all met with the strange sight of Lanceughing, he passed by and patted Julia''s shoulder as he shook his head.

    "All of you get up, if you have time to ask for punishment follow me to train, the only defeat that we can''t use to get stronger is death".

    What can one expect from a group of battle maniacs, Lance''s words made their eyes shone with excitement, this tournament wasn''t like the previous ones in which the result was always the same, the stagnated waters of the kingdom had started to flow once again and they could tell, that after this fight they will be stronger.

    ''Thanks, brother Lance seems to have had fun fighting you'', thought Julia as she slightly bowed at the mirror screen that showed Daimon in the throne room.

    One can only imagine Lance''s future surprise, when he learns that the current weight of Disaster is already lightened, thanks to Narasha fighting alongside Daimon, but that is a story for another day.

    ...

    Back at the maze, Daimon dispelled the white and purple lightning that was dding his body, that sole exchange with Lance drained a third of his battle aura, since that state consumed an abysmal amount of energy per second.

    He was able to pull out something so strong while in the star realms, because of his abnormal vitality and battle aura reserves, even an early-stage Knight Lord would have fainted after one or two seconds of the consumption of battle aura that martial art required, truly a way of fighting that only suited Daimon, an absurdly costly but overwhelmingly strong technique.

    Daimon then turned around and slowly walked towards the throne while he ignored both Walford and the crowned prince.

    While the crowned prince remained calm as he paid attention to the women sitting on the throne, that seemed to be ready to strike him down the moment he moved, Walford gritted his teeth, since it seemed that in the silver haired masked youth, he wasn''t even worth the trouble.

    ''Fine be as arrogant as you want you bastard, if at least two of my subordinatese here, you''ll all be done!'', he inwardly swore, as he endured the humiliation of not daring to attack his enemy even if it was slowly walking while showing its back to him.

    The crowned prince on the other hand, did attack, he shed his sword frontwards and a half moon ray of blue mana was shot frontwards.

    "Booom!", his attack exploded even before it was able to reach Daimon''s body, the crowned prince frowned, he looked at the origin of the interference and his eyes soonnded on the throne, more specifically on one of the beauties that was elegantly resting on it.

    "Little sister, don''t you think that helping an outsider instead of me, is a disgrace for our Clear Water kingdom?", asked the crowned prince, to the pretty girl who was aiming a fiddle at him.

    It was Mellie the one who blocked the attack of Terry, by ying one of the strings of her fiddle, to produce a sonic explosion, that being said and though she blocked the crowned prince''s attack, she lost the confrontation, because there were residues of thetter''s mana that fell to the ground, producing a small current of water that slowly returned to Terry''s side.

    Those words weren''t aimed just at Mellie, who Terry called "little sister" but to Daphne who was his real sister, if those two had joined him, then he was sure that they will be standing at his side in the throne room right now, and not only that he also red at Tessa and Femi who also rejected his offer.

    "I wonder, I''m also on the victor''s team, which means the kingdom also wins, or at least the part that my sister represents does it", said Mellie, before she stopped paying attention to Terry, very much to the displease of thetter.

    Daimon finally reached the throne and the girls made space for him to sit in the middle again, he is not a fan of drama and under normal circumstances he would have already been shing with thest two opponents.

    He only conceded Lance a duel-like 1v1 fight, because he was respect-worthy and also, he wanted to try out the new martial art he created for the global raid, but for these two he didn''t have such consideration.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The only reason as to why he bothered to provoke them and not directly fight them, is because they are sword users and probably among the best in the young generation of the kingdom, which meant they were the perfect to achieve overscore in his mission.

    In other words, he had to utterly destroy their swords in their best state, which if his calctions didn''t fail him, required the guys that were about to enter the throne room, to participate with them.

    The girls didn''t even bother to ask, they fully trusted Daimon and if he was doing things this way, he must have a good reason, even Yvonne who as a strategist would have normally been scolding someone that dragged a fight on purpose, was simply smiling, since she was the one who won the rock, paper, scissors game earlier and so, she was sitting directly at Daimon''s left, while Leslie and Liliana gave her envious gazes.

    It was only a minute or so, but for Walford it was like an eternity in which he was being looked down by the silver haired guy who was carelessly sitting on the throne, as if he was a mere peasant.

    This was the Minister''s fault tough, since the room was set up so the throne was in an elevated position, he prepared it like that for his grandson, but things didn''t go as he nned and now it became a source of humiliation instead.

    Daimon looked at the gate from which people started appearing, from Walford''s team four people arrived all from his Arcarius family, as for the side of the crowned prince, the three girls which were earlier sitting close to him as well as another three guys in other words six ninth star mages came to back him up.

    One of the girls on Terry''s side saw that there was someone else upying the throne and she immediately casted a mist that hid, the crowned prince''s team from the eyes of the others.

    Naturally such a thing didn''t work for Daimon who has the infinity eyes, but he limited to look through the mist, since he noticed Terry has been calm all this time, even after Lance was defeated which meant he had something on which to rely, something that made him stronger than Lance at least.

    Inside of the mist the six teammates of the crowned prince approached him with apologetic expressions.

    "Young master I''m sorry, we met Ezequiel and the young spear''s subordinates on the way, so we were dyed", said one of the three girls.

    Terry shook his head to interrupt her, each second that passed was another second he wasn''t sitting on the throne, so it wasn''t the time to chat.

    "We''ll discuss itter, use as much mana as you can to cast water, I''ll handle the rest".

    The six mages nodded with blind faith in their eyes, and then they all gathered around 90% percent of their leftover mana and started chanting, they all had water affinity and while they focused on different things, by Terry''s petition they all mastered the ninth star spell "Strong Water Current".

    The previous took a moment to exin but it happened in less than thirty seconds, the mist casted previously to hide them from Daimon, was suddenly dispersed and a huge tide of water flooded the throne room, naturally the ce was too big for anyone who wasn''t an Arch ranked to fully fill it with water, but it still created a water level of a couple of meters.

    Daimon then saw all that water being pulled towards the right side of the room where the crowned prince was standing earlier, until it took the form of a huge wave.

    "I''m sorry for the wait, but this is a spell I can''t cast by myself currently, what a strike of good luck that my opponent is a battle maniac like Lance, this time", said the crowned prince as he came out of the huge wave.

    The water parted way to let him walk out of it, he was perfectly dry despite the fact that he was inside of a flood a second ago, as for his teammates they willingly retired from the tournament to not get in the way of the crowned prince.

    "Oh, so those three were part of your family, so you have an easier time controlling their water, since it''s simr to yours", boringly said Daimon as he jumped out of the throne.

    Terry finally showed a reaction, he was surprised that his secret technique was seen though, those three girls were from a secondary branch of the Malleus, and this amount of water was under his control in part because their mana was willing to be manipted by him.

    An effect he discovered was thanks to the mix of the main branch''s lineage of the Malleus as well as the blood of the royal family, which coursed through his veins, not even hos father the king knew about this as it was one of his trump cards and yet it was so easily seen through by the silver haired guy.

    "I consider myself a patient person... but I have to say you are starting to get into my nerves", coldly said the crowned prince, his blue eyes shone in a dangerous light, since when a nobody dared to stand in his way to glory, he thought.

    Daimon smirked, the gentle andposed little prince was finally starting to show his true colors, unfortunately he had no interest on it, whether he was a saint or a devil, the result will be the same a crushing defeat by his hands.

    "Well, since you are using a team spell, I should do the same", said Daimon, which made Leslie, Aisha and Jasmine smile, since he was currently "Gabriel" only they with fire and lightning and light affinities fitted for the task of using a team spell with Daimon, in the team.

    Yvonne pouted she knows that Daimon mostly uses darkness element when he uses spells, so she was out of consideration for the current fight, while Liliana sighed, Daimon has admitted to have basically all affinities but she hasn''t seen him use an ice spell up to the day.

    ''I''ll ask him toter'', she thought.

 Chapter 402 The Tournamentâ€™s Result (Part 4)

    The crowned prince wasn''t in the mood to be acting as a gentleman anymore, he knew Daimon was nning something to humiliate him and he snorted.

    "I''m not a battle idiot like you, why should I leave you cast your spell, go to hell!".

    "Arsenal Tide!", he shouted.

    The huge wave behind of him rippled and then many currents of water separated from the main body, and then soon took the shape of different weapons, spears, swords, hammers, axes of all kinds shapes and sizes formed.

    Naturally there was too much water for the crowned prince to shape and manipte as he pleased, he was using the whole reserves of mana six ninth star ranked water mages, as an external support after all.

    Even then, the number of water weapons he created and controlled was around the six hundred in number, it was indeed a tide of weapons, the huge wave used around an eighth part of its size for that, since a great amount of water and mana was condensed into each weapon.

    Outside of the maze, the spectators were going crazy at the incredible disy of skill and talent that the crowned prince was showing.

    At the judge''s skybox, Tideus proudlyughed and then red at Vincent.

    "Look at that Vincent, that is the current representative of the younger generation of my Malleus family, even you when you were his age could at most control two hundred creations with Water Armament hahaha!".

    Though Vincent didn''t bother in answering Tideus''s provocation, he was indeed surprised, there is a reason as to why the Malleus are elite of the armed forces of the kingdom, for example Tideus which is the captain of the royal guard leads the elite squad of royal guards, which are all members of the Malleus family.

    Vincent during his active time was the same, he led a squad of Malleus soldiers through all the wars and battles that the kingdom faced back then, and was never defeated which earned him the position of the Trident Marshal.

    But for that same reason he was suppressed by the royals, since he wasn''t directly subordinated to them, as the army technically responds to the queen, a position which was empty back then, so Vincent had the highest authority at a given point.

    The result was that his cousin which represented the vast majority of the Malleus, raised to power, took control of the Malleus and became the captain of the royal guard, only then the royals stopped bothering with Vincent, who from the very beginning wasn''t really nning anything, he just wanted to bring peace to his homnd.

    Anyway, the reason as to why the Malleus are so good in leading armies, is because their innate ability Water Armament, for the most outstanding members of the main branch, there is a change to develop the capacity of controlling the water created with the mana of other people, the effect bes stronger if they members of the Malleus, but at the same time is harder to do so.

    In the whole story of the Malleus, Vincent was the only one who developed that ability before reaching the Ster rank, that''s why his branch was considered the main one, the sight of two hundred weapons made out of mana and water flooding the battlefield along with a tsunami, imparted fear in the hearts of the people of that generation, of which only a few still survived up to this day.

    But now Terry revealed he was capable of doing the same, and he could control more of the mana and water of the Malleus family members than Vincent, the number of creations he could shape tripled what Vincent was capable of too, which was indeed amazing.

    The Minister was also taken aback, his information didn''t mention anything about this, some unpleasant memories of the Vincent of back then flooded his mind, making him grit his teeth.

    ''No, Walford won''t be outshined like I was, while those two try to destroy each other, prepare and act when you see a change to snatch the victory!'', he inwardly screamed.

    The king was all smiles right now, even he didn''t know his son was hiding such a trump card.

    "As this king expected from my heir, I must reward that childter", he said with an approbatory gaze, while he also showed some affection towards Irma, for giving him such a talented son.

    Norma on the other hand had a bitter expression, her sons were eliminated just before reaching the throne room, just a bit more and they would have gotten the recognition of her husband.

    Which made the hatred she had for Ae to burn with passion.

    ''If it weren''t for that arrogant bitch, I would have gotten Duke titles for them, and now the little bitch has also gotten in my way, even Vs has allied with her, unforgivable!'', she swore in her heart.

    Triten could notice the expression on his other wife''s and he dragged her into his arms.

    "Those two also did it well, I''ll personally grant them some merits and allowance as a reward".

    ...

    Leaving aside the public''s reaction regarding Terry''s advanced capacity to use Water Armament, back at the throne room in the maze, Daimon saw the tsunami apanied by a rain of weapons, which was charging at him and he smirked.

    What''s the best way to crush someone, to defeat it in which he excels at of course, since Terry took pride into thisme excuse of an advanced team spell, then he will show him what a real team spell looks like.

    Without having to say anything, Aisha and Leslie jumped out of the throne andnded next to Daimon, both in their strongest states already.

    Aisha was covered in the pretty light purple shine caused by using Lightning Empress, while, a beautiful pair ofrge me wings spread on Leslie''s back, though for others weren''t visible due to the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    For Daimon not only they were perfectly visible, but they even seemed to be trying to get his attention, by brightly shinning in a pretty orange light.

    Daimon ced one hands on those two''s backs making them smile, Aisha''s skin shone in a silver light and then her body exploded in silver and purple lightning, for Leslie her hair radiated a pretty orange light, making it look like mes dancing, Daimon could already foresee how her Manifestation Phenomenon will look like once she reached the Lord rank, her body was bathed in red-orange mes too.

    Those two''s mana outputs went through the roof right now, to the point that the mana which was being expelled out of their bodies had reached the ceiling of the throne room.

    The lightning which was crackling around Aisha, had heated up to the point that the ground which was hit by it had crystalized due to the high temperature of the electricity, many forget that lightning can even outshine the sun in terms of temperature, because even the most skilled lightning users don''t dare to carelessly use "hot lightning", out of fear.

    "Silver Storm", Aisha''s pretty lips opened and a couple of words, apanied by a torrential wave of lightning echoed through the room, it was a literal sea of lightning, as to why it had the word "silver" on it, was because the lightning wasbined with metal element, so that Aisha was able to manipte its direction, instead of just shooting it frontwards, like her thunder arrow which she had no way to change its direction, due to the extreme speed of theser-like attack.

    That was Aisha''s way to keep the hot lightning under her control, she was ruling its course and route using her metal mana, just like an Empress would do with her subjects, that was the origin of the name of her boosting original spell.

    Leslie wasn''t going to be left behind, all the fire mana she had gathered and mixed with Daimons mana, swirled around her body and then she casted the widest range spell she had in her repertory right now, which was also her strongest spell, that she didn''t like to use as it will fully deplete the mana that Daimon gave to her, but right now she was given a nk check to use Daimon''s mana, so she didn''t restrain herself.

    "Feather Massacre, Phoenix Flutter", normally this spell required her to use the fighting style Phoenix Dance of her family which focused on fluid movements, that made her look as if she was a gracious bird dancing, before she released all her mana in a wave of mes, but she changed it and now, she just pped her pretty wings and a torrent of fire waves was casted "out of nowhere" for the eyes of the public at least.

    "Booom!", the tsunami shed with the lightning storm and the waves of fire and the result was an enormous amount of mist, as the water was evaporated by Leslie''s fire, as for the water mana weapons that were mixed on it, they were extinguished by Aisha''s lightning until there was nothing.

    "Impossible!", outside of the maze, Tideus suddenly stood up and shouted, that tsunami used the mana reserves of six ninth star mages, and it was countered with just two girls using spells.

    Naturally they supposed Daimon did something, since he earlier said that he was going to show Terry how does a real team spell looks like, but they didn''t see him doing anything, a team spell requires a group to use the same spell, then the one who leads controls it, which is what Terry did, he added the usage of Water Armament to further increase the strength of the attack, and that was the difference between him and a regr mage using a team spell.

    But what Daimon did was different, he didn''t cast any spell and he guided mana into Aisha and Leslie''s mana circuits, which they then mixed with theirs to cast an amplified version of their spells, that required both the caster and the one acting as a back up to be in the same page and trust each other at their fullest, because a mistake will harm both of them.

    This is what Daimon called it a true team spell, since he wasn''t just taking control of their spells, but actively participating in the cast from the very beginning, naturally this was possible for him, since his mana was able toplement the one of others without any sh, for some reason, probably it had to be with his magic core and the fact that he could learn all the affinities he wanted.

    Terry whose figure came out of the mist, was gritting his teeth, he managed to block those two extremely strong spells but all the water and mana he got from his teammates was gone just like that.

    "Humph, you got the help of two early-stage middle Mortal level mages, so what, personal strength is what truly matters at the end of the day!", shouted the crowned prince.

    Aisha has always been using the bracelet to make herself look like a Mage Lord, since her battle prowess is at that level, and further increases when she used Lightning Empress, as for Leslie, with her wings spread she also had the aura of a Lord ranked, thus exining why Terry confused them like that.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Terry''s body suddenly grew a head taller, a line of yellow light appeared above his left eye, and his realm jumped a lesser level, from the middle stage Lord realm to thete stage, that was the innate ability of the White Royal Shark lineage, Bloodlust.

    His previous gentle and elegant demeanor akin to a schr was long gone, and now a cruel light shone in his eyes, which were bloodshot.

    Daimon waved his hand and all the mist was dispersed to reveal the current Terry, who was exuding a mana pressure stronger than what Lance manage to do earlier, just for a bit though.

    "ng!", both the crowned prince and Daimon shed and then shed on the air just above Leslie, Terry wanted to eliminate the fire mage, since she could be a nuisance for his water spells.

    But naturally Daimon didn''t allow him to do as he pleased, the shockwave was quite something, to the point that even if they were a couple of hundreds of meters above them, Aisha and Leslie''s pretty hairs waved due to the gusts of wind released after the impact.

    Sparks flew all over the ce, when Disaster shed with the sword of the crowned prince, whose pupils contracted like needles, his blue mineral sword called Torrent, was actually chipped in the first exchange.

    Not only that, if his attack was like a stream of water, Daimon''s sh was like a limitless mountain, no matter how much he pushed forward he couldn''t gain the advantage.

    ''What the hell, I''m using Water Armament on top of full Half Ster equipment, while being at the peak of the middle Mortal level thanks to Bloodlust, why can''t I push him back, even Lance had to take a few steps back, despite his monstrous physical strength!'', he swore in his heart.

    Daimon could almost read Terry''s thoughts, based on his currently twisted expression, the crowned prince is the type of guy who has never suffered any setback, he was born a prince and a genius, praised by his father, raised, nurtured and admired by a whole kingdom, he grew with the idea of being at the top of the food chain since he had use of reason.

    So now that his supremacy was defied another "alpha", he was about to lose it, it''s not like Daimon isn''t privileged having the system, not to mention Aisha and the girls who are his greatest treasure, but all of that is something he got in this life.

    The sensation of going to sleep with hunger, the cold asphalt on which he had to sleep almost all his childhood, the burning pain of being hit with a metal tube by the scumbag of a father he had, and the desire for the warmness of a mother, those are things Daimon will never forget.

    When he came to this world, he tried to deny his past and just enjoy this second chance he was given, but then his momentary happiness was shattered when Aisha died protecting him, it was then when he learned an important lesson, trued happiness isn''t given to anyone, the sensation of peace that living under the roof another people bring is fake, happiness must be attained, if not by peaceful means, then by blood and the sword.

    All what he has experienced forged the current Daimon, and while he knows he is way too far from his goal, he won''t lose to a fake predator.

    "Stop getting in my way and go to hell already!", shouted Terry, his already chaotic aura, increased a second time, and he actually set a foot in the Arch rank, Bloodlust was a boosting innate ability that could push him at most three lesser realms, naturally it had its own limitations, with each lesser realm, the rationality of the user will be lost, as they were resorting to the wild instincts of their lineage to increase their power.

    Still the aura Terry was exuding caused distortions on the nearby area, he artificially reached the Archmage realm after all, still he was somewhat able to articte his thoughts, and he extended his hand to gather his mana on it, until a blue sword appeared on it.

    Outside of the maze, Vincent saw the current scene and he frowned, for those extremely talented members of the main branch of the Malleus family, once they reach the Arch rank, their strongest creation with Water Armament which is the Warhammer, changes to the weapon of their choose, for him it was a trident, apparently Terry chose a sword.

    ''It''s still iplete since he achieved it through artificial means, but it''s not something a Lord rank as that kid call it, can block'', he thought.

    But seeing that Ae wasn''t showing any trace of nervousness, Vincent remained silent, not only that, he noticed that there was a characteristic smile on the face of the silver haired youth, which has caused him too much exaltation for a day.

    Back at the throne room, Daimon''s smirked, his body exploded in white-silver lightning as he activated Core Synchrony, since his knight realm wasn''t increased by it, he used his now stronger mage realm to pour in lots of mana into his martial art, this time he used light mana to be more urate.

    Unlike when he fought with Lance, the lightning surrounding him didn''t make any noise, in fact it didn''t look like lightning, it seemed more like thousands of threads of white battle aura, he noticed he couldn''t give form to this power, but it was enough for what he needed for now.

    He could feel Disaster trembling in his hand, as well as Narasha''s excited state, they were raring to break the sword of the crowned prince.

    ''What am I going to do with these capricious girls'', he thought, before he turned into a ray of white light.

    "Haaa!", Terry swinged both his magic weapon and the blue sword he created through his innate ability at the same time, and just the air pressure created a strong current of wind, but right now Daimon fully ignored anything and just became a white sh that flew through the air towards the crowned prince.

    He looked like aet leaving behind a white trail, which gave the name to this ability, not even a couple of secondster Daimon appeared in front of the crowned prince and swung Disaster at him.

    "White Universe, Comet Sword".

    "Crack!!!", the ck one-edged sword first destroyed the blue sword created through Water Armament, by cutting right through it, what a joke it was a condensation of energy, and Disaster feasted on any kind of energy, even then it was just the aperitive, the main dish was that perfectly crafted sword Terry used.

    What happens when an object with eighty tons of weight, is elerated by light and then shes against something, the answer is simple, it goes through it.

    And that''s what happened not only the sword of the crowned prince exploded upon contact, bing countless of little shards that spread all over the ce some were incrusted on Terry''s arm, while others tried to harm Daimon just to be stopped by him using the gloves Thea gifted him.

    Terry didn''t even have time to process the pain of the pieces of his sword entering his arm, because that same arm was blown away by the twenty meters wide ray of white light shot by Disaster, that was Daimon''s previous attack.

    For a couple of seconds, the mirror tes only reflected a white world, until the ray of light shed against the wall of the throne room.

    "Booom!", for the first time since the beginning of thest round, the maze was affected enough for some of its internponents to be exposed, in this case, Daimon''s sword attack left a crater of twenty meters of diameter and ten meters of depth on the wall of the throne room.

    "Ahhh!", Terry who fell from the sky after losing his artificial Archmage rank, not to mention his right arm from its origin at the shoulder which was scalded due to the previous attack he received, screamed and rolled on the ground in pain.

    The right side of his face was also burned just by the proximity to that previous attack too, but his sword managed to absorb some of the impact, which prevented the life-saving array from activating as this wasn''t a life-threatening wound, though it for sure hurt him like hell.

    Still his arm didn''t disappear, as he was using an extremely sturdy armor, Daimon''s attack managed to create a breach on the armor of the shoulder and Disaster cut through it, thus separating it from his body.

    Daimon whose ck sword was now radiating heat and steam due to that previous attack, stopped Core Synchrony and the white radiance that was dding him earlier disappeared, he then approached Terry who was bleeding from his mouth and said.

    "You are right, personal strength is really important, that''s why I never loosen up, otherwise I wouldn''t be qualified to have such goodpanions", Daimon looked back at Aisha and the other girls who were enjoying the show.

    "Y-You... blegh!", Terry vomited blood, maybe because his words were sent back at his face or maybe because he suffered internal wounds in the previous exchange, in any case the array activated and took him out of the maze.

    Daimon on the other hand stretched his body, even after using Core Synchrony and such a big move as Comet Sword, which used around ? of his mana reserves along with the physical impact of him swinging Disaster at a high speed, to release a highly concentrated sh, he was fresh as a lettuce.

    The merit of this went to Jasmin, because now that Sanctuary allowed him to fully recover two aspects, and since Core Synchrony isn''t rted to his Knight cultivation, he just had to recover his mana and stamina to full, before deactivating Core Synchrony and it was as if he haven''t used it to begin with.

    Daimon turned around and saw the unsightly expression on Walford''s face, when Terry''s sword was destroyed, he heard a notification triggering, but he hasn''t checked it, he has already crushed ten sword users, so he could simply eliminate Walford, but he wanted to test something, if overscore still counted after the mission waspleted as long as the "battle" hasn''t ended.

    And right here, he had the eleventh sword user ready to be his guinea pig.

    Daimon started walking towards Walford, with Disaster in his hand, the edge of the sword was still slightly red due to the remaining heat of the previous attack, it was to the point that with each step of Daimon, the air hit the edge and red sparks were produced.

    ''Fuuuuck, where is the damn opening!'', inwardly cursed Walford, even if he were to use his trump card, he wouldn''t be stronger than Terry just with that, and Daimon easily crushed him, he was suppressing the urge to runaway seeing the monstering his way, he knew he stand no chance, but there was still a way to snatch victory.

    As if Walford''s prays were answered, he saw a coded messageing from his grandfather and a big smile appeared on his face as he jumped to the left side of the room, followed by his teammates.

    ''The fourth effect of theke, left side, don''t you dare to lose'', was what the message sent by Raymond said.

 Chapter 403 The Tournamentâ€™s Result (Part 5)

    Daimon saw the previously worried Walford now having a smile of contempt on his face, and he smirked.

    "Oh, so you recovered some confidence, that''s good otherwise it will be no fun crushing you", he said.

    Walford''s face twisted, up until now he has had to live under the shadow of the top three, his grandfather told him that he was being prepared to shine at an important point for the Arcarius family.

    But deep inside he knew that besides Ezequiel, he had no confidence in defeating Lance or the crowned prince, and that was making him go crazy, as the say goes,parisons are a source of troubles.

    But all that was left behind when his grandfather presented him with the legacy of the Arcarius, the three-colored water, thanks to that his battle prowess increased to the point where he didn''t need to fear Lance or the crowned prince, he was finally a part of the top three.

    Naturally he wasn''t happy just with that and instead he wanted the fame and recognition that bing the strongest in the young generation of the kingdom will bring to him and the Arcarius.

    And his dream seemed to be bing true during the first three rounds, he got nice results and he just needed to face the crowned prince and Lance on the fourth round, his grandfather paved the way to him and his subordinates, so that they wouldn''t encounter too many obstacles.

    That unfortunately worked not only for him, but for those who encountered members of his team though, but it was a small prince to pay, the more members of his team that arrived at the throne room, the cleanlier his victory over others will be.

    But now in front of him, everything crumbled apart, three captains the crowned prince included were eliminated by a nobody who appeared out of nowhere, and since there was so little time left, and the other party has sat on the throne twice, while he hasn''t been able to even approach it, there was only a single path for victory in front of him, and that is defeating and eliminating the silver haired masked guy, from the tournament.

    With a hatred filled expression, Walford beckoned and his four subordinates surrounded him, so that there was one in each direction with him as the center.

    "I won''t make the same mistake as Terry, if one controlling the power of a bunch isn''t enough to beat you, how about an army acting together".

    "Heavenly Turtle Battle Array!".

    Battle aura suddenly exploded around the bodies of Walford and his team, a character appeared above each one of them, and then the five sources of battle aura mixed together, the ground shook a bit and arge curtain of dust was raised.

    "Mm?", Daimon noticed the temperature of the throne room suddenly dropped dramatically, to the point that a thinyer of ice started appearing on every surface, including him and the girls, that being said they just circted some mana to get rid of it, with the exception of Liliana whopletely ignored the cold.

    The curtain of dust was suddenly blown aside by arge beast-like extremity made out of ice blue battle aura, to reveal the result of what Walford did earlier, it was the application of battle aura exclusive for Archknights, an avatar made with battle aura solidification!

    And a giant fifty-meter size turtle made of ice battle aura to be more urate, the four members of Walford''s team were each ced at the four legs while Walford was floating in the neck of the turtle, working as the bridge between the body and the head.

    "What do you think, this is the legacy martial art of my family, one that we have kept a secret up to this day, well it''s not like we haven''t used it before, but there were no witnesses left whenever we had to", said Walford.

    Daimon injected mana in his infinity eyes and saw the different mana flows that were conforming the giant turtle, everything was tied together by three-blue colored mana, which was a thing the five ones forming the turtle had inmon, if anything Walford''s three-colored mana was a bit brighter than the others.

    ''Well, the Minister did say tat after drinking that thing one would be enlightened in water rted affinities for a certain amount of time, and also the strength will be amplified for some time, so they are using that as a way to project a temporal battle aura avatar, so he realized that alone he is no match for me'', he thought.

    Daimon was right, Walford previously believed he alone could beat Lance and the Crowned prince in a 1v1 battle, but after seeing that spell Lance used against Daimon and the fact that Terry could use the second step of Bloodlust to reach the Arch rank, he realized he was still short a bit to be on par with them.

    Luckily the four who reached the throne room of his team, all have drunk the three colored water once, andbined with him who has drank it twice plus the fourth effect of thekes, he was able to use the trump card his grandfather prepared for him.

    Outside of the maze, the spectators were in awe, the knight ones especially, how could they not recognize the application of battle aura that only peak Mortal level knights can use.

    Daimon had confirmed a few suspicions he had with Vincent earlier and this one was one of them, first the people of Neptune didn''t gain a Manifestation Phenomenon nor Will Maniption when they were in the Lord ranks, which made the average Lord rank from Neptune weaker than the average Lord rank from the Wonder Myriad Ster chart.

    Second, the Arch ranks here only developed a Domain or a Battle Avatar when they reached the peak, that''s why those guys riding flying fishes they met when they arrived at the secondyer of Neptune, were terrified when they saw Horal''s Avatar, despite the fact that he isn''t peak Arch rank but a middle stage one.

    Daimon previously supposed this, because although he has seen Ae using a domain when she attacked Sting, Mellie who has fought seriously at his side and isn''t any worse in terms of talent than her older sister, didn''t have a Manifestation Phenomenon, it didn''t make sense, unless youpletely eliminated the traits developed by Lord ranks from the equation.

    ''So, the traits gained thanks to the major realms are indeed rted tows huh, miss Aliya is going to be charmed to learn this information'', thought Daimon.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Now that he could peek atws, he could see that what was holding everything in ce for that giant turtle, despite the different battle auras used to create that pseudo-Avatar, were thew of the threekes, which were resonating in the bodies of Walford and the other four.

    And yet this was only possible because of the positive effect of theke, the three-colored water they drank wasn''t enough to achieve this, but he could tell that Walford is a step behind of turning into a Knight like the ones he knows off, meaning that if he is able to endure a third dosage of three-colored water while he is in the Lord rank, he will develop Will Maniption, and probably be able to manifest a Battle Avatar at the early stage of the Arch rank, like every knight back at Daimon''s gxy.

    Outside of the maze, the Minister was all smiles, he gazed at Vincent with mockery, for this moment, he has endured the tittle of "Number two" of the kingdom, ever since his teenage years, thekes have been in his family for such a long time, but those who could absorb even one dosage of the three-colored water are rare, and so far, only him and Walford have been able to endure two of them.

    Unfortunately for him, the second one he drank was when he had already be an Arch rank, back then he felt a sensation of loss, as if he missed something really important, something that would have changed his life, if he only had drunk the second dosage while in the Lord ranks, so through the years he tried a lot of times, putting his faith in the younger generations until Walford who was equal to him in terms of talent appeared.

    "Oh, so the Minister has giarized uncle''s ability to control other people''s water mana, and made it into a legacy martial art which was "hidden" for an important moment, how dramatic~", Raymond who was in cloud nine a second ago, was brought down all the way to hell, by Ae''s sharp words.

    But before he couldin, Vincent added.

    "No, he really "kept" this secret up until now, because none in his family was or is able to pull this off, that child is only able to do it thanks to the external help of thekes, am I right, Raymond?".

    The Minister gritted his teeth, he knew this would happen, though none of them could see thews of theke, for maximum Ster ranked, they could still "feel" traces of them, they are surrounded byws all the time after all.

    And it was as Vincent stated, the effects of theke were increasing the effectivity of the three-colored water in Walford and his team member''s bodies, it was like drinking another dosage without any side effects for them.

    Though temporal, Walford became the first to enjoy the results of drinking three dosages of three-colored water while in the Lord ranks, in the history of the Arcarius, his realm was even temporarily boosted to a middle stage Lord rank, but that''s not what mattered, but the fact that the Battle Array could be disyed thanks to that.

    "Humph, so what, you Malleus can control other water mages mana, and my Arcarius can do the same with ice battle aura, we are finally in fair terms, and you are nowining, Vincent", he coldly said.

    In Raymond''s mind, he and his family were always one step behind Vincent, because of this, but now things will change, after experiencing a temporal triple dosage of three-colored water, his grandson should be able to endure a real third dosageter on, and then the effects won''t be temporal, his Arcarius family will get an heir with the potential to lead a whole generation, it was a turning point for his family.

    ¡­

    Back at the maze, Daimon became a sh of purple light and charged towards the giant turtle.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding echoed through the throne room, as Disaster shed against the right frontal leg of the turtle, he saw that one of the many pieces of armor that was previously protecting Walford or his other team members moved through the outeryer of the turtle, and was used to block his attack.

    Not only that, but the turtle wasn''t pushed backwards like the crowned prince, which made Walford wildlyugh, in this form they were essentially a tank, the battle aura of five knights in the Lord ranks, since his subordinates got boosted from the star ranks, to the Lord rank,bined and amplified was enough to parry the shockwave caused by the silver haired masked guy''s monstrous physical strength, and the Half Ster ranked pieces of armor could stop the attacks from that ominous ck sword.

    All the observation and scheming his grandfather and him had done so far, was finally paying off.

    "What happens, even a monster like you can''t outshine the one hundred tons of physical strength that this Battle Avatar can create right hahaha!", Walford wished so and the right frontal leg of the turtle took some impulse and attacked Daimon, who responded by swinging Disaster at it.

    "Boooom!", a thunder-like explosion urred the moment the two attacks shed, sparks flew as the three armoredyered leg of the turtle shed against Disaster, the attacks cancelled each other and none of them was able to get the advantage.

    "This is just the beginning, do it you four!", shouted Walford, originally in this battle formation, a mage should be in the shell position of the turtle to use long ranged attacks as aplement of this tank-like Battle Avatar, but his vice-captain which is the only mage the Arcarius has been able to nurture so far, was eliminated, so now he had to rely on the four subordinates tounch long ranged martial arts for his n.

    "Ice Hail!", from the four legs, countless pieces of sharp and heavy ice were shot, aiming at both Daimon, the throne where the girls were sitting and the possible retreat paths they could take.

    The machine gun like attack rained upon the whole area, and the sounds of little ice crystals exploding as well as the ground or anything that was attacked by it being destroyed filled the room.

    "Stop!", only when Walford ordered, the four knights on the legs of the turtle ceased the fire, a cold mist liberated by the explosion of all those ice crystals was filling the room now, but it was all dispersed by an explosion of white mes in the middle of the room, right in front the throne.

    Daimon''s figure who was standing in front of the girls that left the throne to assist him, was revealed when the mist disappeared, if he entered Core Synchrony, he could easily deal with the pseudo-Avatar in front of him, since his battle prowess reached, he middle stage of the Arch rank in that state, but that would be revealing too much too soon.

 Chapter 404 The Tournamentâ€™s Result (Part 6)

    He preferred to make others believe his limit was just a bit above the crowned prince using the second step of Bloodlust, which would be the early stage of the Arch rank, but unlike him, he maintained his rationality and that was the "reason" of his victory over Terry, is the story he fabricated for the spectators to believe.

    Since he didn''t know if the bastard behind the pirates and the Skelefiends was watching the tournament, Core Synchrony is his trump card and its full power should naturally be only revealed to two type of people, first those he trusted enough like the girls and his friends, second those who couldn''t talk about it, in other words the dead.

    But he had no need to be in a tight spot even without Core Synchrony, that''s why he picked all his team across the maze after all.

    "Well, since you are team fighting, I don''t have to feel bad of bombarding you in a 12v5 battle, right", said Daimon with a smirk.

    "Uwah, that smile means something bad is about to happen to someone", mumbled Femi, which made the other girls giggle.

    Daimon cleared his throat; his bad habit was showing again.

    "Ahem, I''m counting on you,dies, screw him over", shouted Daimon as he jumped to action, and started shing with the turtle Avatar physically, with each sh sparks and pieces of armor were blown away due to Disaster''s fierceness, he could have cut a piece of battle aura with Disaster in each cut, but that would reveal its simple but monstrous ability to devour all kinds of energy, so he refrained from doing so and instead resorted to the primal way of fighting among two "beasts", which is a pure physical battle.

    Daimon could tell this was also what Narasha and Disaster wanted anyway, since little by little the weight of the sword had started to increase, meaning more of the antinite covering the sword was being devoured by the sword, so that even if Narasha was reducing the weight actively, it still increased due to it.

    While Daimon and the turtle Avatar were causing a disaster wherever they appeared, shing and created currents of wind and deafening thunder shockwaves, Aisha and the girls started at each other and then dispersed to fulfill their respective roles.

    "Fuck, why don''t you get squashed and die!", shouted Walford from within the turtle Avatar, not only Daimon was enduring the physical strength of five lord knights alone, he wasn''t being pushed backwards at all.

    In fact, Walford could notice that they were losing, because with each sh, the pieces of armor he deployed to block that ominous ck sword, started to crack and show signs of beingpletely destroyed.

    ''Shit what the hell is wrong with that sword, is it really a Half Ster treasure, all these armors were created by one of the best two Magic cksmiths of Neptune, fuuuck!'', it''s not a lie to say that the Minister went all in, the best equipment, the best resources, the best stage, everything was prepared for the raise of his Arcarius family¡­ and they were being stopped by a single person that popped out of nowhere.

    Daimon suddenly dodged one of the attacks of the turtle instead of blocking it, which led Walford to believe he has reached his limit.

    "Go to hell!", his four subordinates got the message and immediately used their strongest wide area martial arts, the turtle lit up in ice blue light and then with it as the center, a blue shockwave of battle aura was released.

    "Ice Shell Shock!", even Walford participated this time, meaning they were using the full strength of the Avatar to deal with Daimon.

    Speaking of Daimon, he was smiling right now, his body exploded in white mes and around 50% of his battle aura reserve and all the remaining mana he had were put into his next attack.

    "White Universe, Comet Sword".

    This time he didn''t need to enter Core Synchrony nor gain a certain amount of eleration, and just directly shed Disaster at the iing shockwave, ten diameter white ray was shot from the tip of Disaster.

    "Crack!".

    "Blegh!".

    The shockwave of battle aura and the shell of the turtle Avatar were both pierced by Daimon''s attack, and that wasn''t all, Walford vomited blood when he saw that ck sword which somehow rode in the white ray of light, entering the Avatar and urately destroying his treasured personal weapon, before it pierced through the other side of the Avatar, essentially cutting a hole through it.

    His four subordinates also suffered some backsh, but they could still continue, Daimon on the other hand exhaled, with a slightly tired expression on his face.

    ''So now that is a skill, I don''t need to do the preparations, but if I''m not in Core Synchrony not only it bes weaker, but I''m practically drained of all my mana reserves and a half of my battle aura, I guess it''s tit for tat'', he thought.

    Daimon raised his head and saw Walford''s triumphant smile and he looked as him as if he was looking at an idiot, without paying him any attention Daimon turned around and started slowly walking towards the throne.

    It was then when Walford realized that all those girls weren''t sitting on the throne and his pupils narrowed feeling the dangering his way, unfortunately it was toote for him.

    The pretty figures of three girls suddenly appeared above the turtle which was floating on the sky precisely to avoid sneak attacks from the other team members of Daimon''s team.

    "Feather Massacre, Phoenix Flutter".

    "Ice de Rain, Pierce".

    "Nightmare Demon Arrow, Midnight, go to hell~".

    Following the three different but equally mellow voices, a huge wave of fire arge pr of ice and a ray of ck light hit the shell of the turtle at the same time, though it didn''t break it, it was sent flying downwards.

    "Booom!", the turtle Avatar was smacked against the ground, making Walford''s subordinates to vomit blood.

    "What are you waiting, move you fools!", shouted Walford, but before his subordinates could react, he saw dark green vinesing from the ground and wrapping around the four legs and also the shell of the turtle.

    Tessa who was aiming her staff at the turtle, chanted.

    "Guardian Vines".

    Walford cursed, he tried to use his own martial art to cut the vines, but though he seeded, the vines grew again out of his own ice and battle aura, thanks to the property Tessa mentioned of the sacred tree from which those vines originate to use any kind of energy as nourishment to grow, not only that he also saw two huge hands made out of amber bricks holding the avatar by its stomach.

    "Millennial Stone Bastion", Chris who was standing next to Tessa casted her spell in a smaller proportion, since she didn''t have enough mana to call forth the whole fortress, but helping Tessa immobilize the turtle Avatar was still within her possibilities.

    "Ah, I don''t care anymore, I''ll take you all out even if I have to lose", shouted Walford, then he used the authority as the only one in the turtle avatar to drain the battle aura of his subordinates for the ultimate attack that the Avatar could use.

    A huge amount of battle aura gathered on the snout of the turtle Avatar which then slightly opened, the nearby air turned into cold mist just by that.

    "Ice Breath¡­", the grandeur of the attack which would resemble that of a magic beast of legends a dragon, was interrupted by two things, first a cheeky girl''s voice and then the sound of metals colliding.

    "Bye bye~", Yvonne let go of Cassy who she was holding by her hand, and then waved at her hand at the turtle with disdain.

    Cassy who was floating with the help of Yvonne, was thrown downwards, her sheathed sword which was covered in green jade-like wood, shone in wood mana.

    "Demon Subduing Wood Sword, Mountain Seal", Cassy hit the snout of the turtle from above, and the sound of metals colliding echoed through the area.

    Walford felt the strong impact forcing the snout of the avatar to close, and he snorted.

    "Humph, this isn''t enough to destroy my Arcarius''s legacy martial art¡­ blegh!", his sentence was interrupted by blood surging out of his mouth.

    "Gaia Smithing, Fortress Buster!", Femi hit the ground with her hammer and a pr of earth with a ck tip, raised at the same time as Cassy''s hitnded on the turtle, ironically Cassy was the hammer and Femi was the nail, the impact from above plus the strength of the earth pr reinforced with orichalcum which was taken from the ck horned tiara, Femi wears on her head, nailed the turtle Avatar to the ground, through its mouth, fully immobilizing it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''And now for the finishing touch'', thought Daimon who was observing the surprisingly well-coordinated attack of the girls, while leisurely sitting on the throne.

    He just needed to destroy Walford''s sword for his mission, so why not leave the girls have some fun too, besides for someone like Walford who hated being looked upon down the most, being ignored by the one for whom the Minister prepared all this, was the biggest humiliation.

    And he was right, outside of the maze at the judge''s skybox, the Minister saw all his efforts gone to waste and not only his aura was leaking, he crushed the part of the table he had in front of him, unfortunately there is nothing he could do, since there was a pair of eagle-like gazes fixated on his back, ready to strike him down if he dared to try and make a move.

    At the champion''s skybox, the atmosphere was more festive, Thea who was hugging a bottle of liqueur wasughing as she enjoyed the show disyed in the mirror te.

    "Hahaha, this new general of mine is quite something~", she said.

    Marlene who was sitting next to Thea nodded, as she mumbled.

    "Well, considering he is the first one who not only didn''t lend me some luck but even almost made me be struck by lightning in a sunny day, he for sure makes others suffer but he doesn''t suffer any loss himself¡­".

    ¡­

    Back at the throne room, Walford was at the verge of a mental breakdown, his subordinates were out of battle aura to spare, since he drained them to use Ice Breath, just for it to be interrupted, with the current amount they had, they were barely maintaining the Avatar.

    It was then when a sensation of fatality fell upon him, thest group who hasn''t participated in the coordinated attack was ready to pass down judgement on him.

    First of all, he was forced to slightly close his eyes due to a dazzling white light shining a few meters ahead, which made his body tremble thinking it was Daimon who has recovered and wasing at him once again, but then he noticed the feeling was different, while Daimon''s white light brought dread with hit, this one was gentle and warm, unfortunately it wasn''t aimed at him.

    "Silver Citadel"

    "Silver Spear Area!".

    Jasmine whose pupils had pretty white halos in them, rolled her staff and then raised it to cast two buffs at the same time, which took even Aurora by surprise, in exchange for the extremely strong buffing spells they had, they could only single target buff, at least at the beginning, she only learned to do it after reaching the peak Mortal realm, but now Jasmine had achieved it at such a young age, she was smiling from the bottom of her heart.

    Walford on the other hand was as far as happy as one can be right now, because he knew what those spells did, there were phantom images of silver spears behind Aisha, Mellie andstly there was both a silver fortress and a silver spear behind Daphne, whose expression was lively once again.

    It was natural since, Silver Citadel recovered half of her mana and 30% of her stamina, so that she could use Storm Stream again.

    So, with Jasmine behind them, buffing the three extreme offense type mages of the team, the little hopes of Walford of a miracle saving his ass, vanished, the only thing he could do was redirect all the pieces of armor to protect the neck of the turtle where he was positioned.

    Mellie who gathered as much mana as she could on her fiddle, positioned the bow on the strings and yed a single note, which was apanied by her melodious voice saying.

    "Disruption Resonance", surprisingly the fiddle actually didn''t let out any sound, instead of that and exclusively for Daimon''s infinity eyes, he saw a line of vibrating mana being created by Mellie''s bow and fiddle, which was then shot at the turtle avatar.

    "Crack!", upon contact a ten-meter hole exploded on the shell of the turtle, because Mellie disrupted the harmony of the battle aura Avatar, besides Walford who was now surrounded by a ton of pieces of armor, the four subordinates paled and crouched as if they were feeling a horrible pain in their stomachs, or more urately in their mana cores where their life sparks as Knights were positioned.

    And it was for a good reason, though weaker due to her lower realm and lowerprehension about her affinity, that spell was created as Mellie''s alternative for Ae''s Shattering Resonance which made a middle stage Ster ranked vomit blood on the spot, even if the Avatar took most of the hit, a few of those guy''s mana circuits probably broke.

    But the attack hadn''t ended yet, purple and silver light as well as blue and light green light, flooded the room.

    Aisha who was using Lightning Empress pointed her pretty index finger towards the turtle Avatar and the lightning gathered on the tip of her nail, before her lips slightly opened.

    "Thunder Arrow", a concentrated line of silver light was shot from her hand, followed by a wider but less concentrated ray of blue light.

    "¡­", unfortunately, Daphne couldn''t talk, but everyone knew the name of what was considered the strongest long-range spell of the Clear Water kingdom, the Storm Stream of the Vs family and its variations.

    "Booom!", the twoser-like attacks pierced through the hole left on the shell of the turtle by Mellie''s attack and then exploded inside of it, creating arge explosion of mana, that blinded anyone who tried to look at the mirror tes.

    When everything returned to normal, they saw the result and were speechless, the once magnificent looking construction of battle aura in the form of a fortress-like ice turtle was gone, instead of it there was a crater on the floor of the throne room, were for a second time in the history of the tournament, the damage was enough for the gears and formations that lingered inside the maze to be seen.

    The four subordinates of Walford were gone, naturally they weren''t dead but were transported out of the maze by the life-saving array, but they were beaten like dogs, as their haggard appearances which were in disy for the public outside to be seen, suggested.

    Walford on the other hand, wasn''t on a life-endangering situation because he hid in a tortoise shell of all the pieces of amor that were at his disposition, but he was still hit by the explosion shockwave of Daphne''s Storm Stream and the super high temperature resulting from the liberation of all the lightning contained in Aisha''s Thunder Arrow.

    To resume his current state, he looked like a boiled shrimp, his skin was slightly reddish and the only reason as to why he wasn''t burned alive which would have eliminated him due to the array, is because at thest moment he drained more battle aura from his subordinates to create ayer of ice around him.

    Still, that was evaporated by Aisha''s lightning''s heat, and this skin tone was the result, just imagine a person with pale skin who stays at the beach without any sunscreen, that was the color of Walford''s current skin.

    The girls saw his miserable appearance and he ignored him as they returned to the throne, for a well-earned rest, they all had their own battles earlier, but still wanted to participate in the final one, so besides Daphne who received a little help from Jasmine''s Silver Citadel, they used almost all their remaining mana.

    Yvonne who was still in her cheeky mood, wanted to jump into Daimon''s arms, but she was stopped by Leslie and Liliana who forced her to sit down at his left, while Aisha took the right side.

    ''Losing in rock, paper, scissors with the cheeky Yvi, is such a headache'', they thought as they forcefully kept Yvonne who was looking at Daimon with coquettish eyes, sitting down on the throne, naturally the previous onlysted a few seconds before Yvonne returned to normal, and feeling the interrogative gazes of all the other girls, she blushed and felt the urge to find a hole to hide.

    Leaving that aside, the current scene of Daimon''s team sitting on the throne simply resting and chatting with each other, while Walford was bleeding and panting on the floor, made the spectators shiver, especially because they saw Daimon directly ring at the array which acted as a surveince camera, which shouldn''t be possible as they are hidden pretty well.

    It was as if he was saying, "This is the result of going against me", the Minister noticed the re was specially aimed at him and hi clenched his fists so hard, his skin paled, for some reason his stupid grandson wasn''t leaving, but instead was being a disgrace in front of everyone.

    How could he know, that the cheeky Yvonne put him under an illusion before the situation returned to normal, previously when the image reflected on the mirror te was just a nk screen due to thest attack of the girls.

    "Enough!", the Minister finally couldn''t hold it, he smashed his fists on the table turning it into pieces of broken wood as he finished the fourth round.

    Daimon who was watching everything with his infinity eyes smirked, he then noticed the walls of the maze started moving and separating, but he didn''t move and the girls followed his lead.

    So that when everything ended, they were in an open space on top of a tform still sitting on the throne.

    The Judges descended from their skybox, it was easy to see that the result wasn''t to the liking of some of them, but what could they do about it, so while gritting his teeth the Minister tried to show an amicable expression as he said.

    "The winner of the three-art tournament is¡­Gabriel".

    "Ohhhhh!", cheers, ps and roars filled the whole ce, maybe the high ranked nobles were unhappy, but the neo nobles, the people from the Elemental Sea, as well as those ns who are subordinated to the queen or the army that follows Vincent, exploded in happiness.

    This is a tournament that will be written in the history books of the kingdom, since it was a turning point for Neptune, but that is a story for another day.

 Chapter 405 When It Rains It Pours

    The Minister felt such a strong humiliation, even now in front of him, the silver haired masked youth, was sitting on the throne ignoring him, what a joke, Daimon sat on the throne Horals made for him, right on the face of Triten, why would he hesitate to do the same when facing the Minister.

    Speaking of the bone general, Horals was thunderouslyughing right now, this scene of his young master sitting on a huge throne surrounded by beauties, while others had no choice but to lower their heads, is his future image of Daimon.

    ''Ah, young master, be it in this life or any other one, let this Horals serve as your right hand forever hahaha!'', he shouted, making Daimon sigh.

    The only other one who could hear him was naturally Rita, who immediately reprimanded him for spoiling the moment of victory of Daimon.

    ''Shut up bonehead, you are ruining the moment, right young master?'', her tone of voice waspletely different at the beginning and at the end of her sentence, the first was death cold as one would expect from an undead, while the second one was more girlish and appealing, akin to her self-imed position as the head maid of Daimon''s household.

    ''Humph, you scold me, but you would have loved to si... fuck not again!''.

    Horals''s was interrupted by a ck miniature castle which appeared in Aisha''s shadow, where Horals''s head was hidden and sucked him in to experience the nightmares that were contained in its walls.

    ''Cursed Doll House!'', Rita said with an elerated voice and slightly gritted teeth, which is strange considering her usual cool and calm demeanor.

    ''Don''t worry young master, a minute in the real world is a day inside my spell, I''ll leave him out in five minutes'', respectfully said Rita.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head.

    ''Okay, you two fix your personal differences by yourselves'', he said.

    Daimon returned to reality when he saw the judgesnding on the tform in which the throne is positioned, normally the top three woulde here for the ending ceremony, but the crowned prince, Ezequiel and Walford weren''t in the state to participate in anything right now.

    In any case, all the ckfin family participants had left long ago, the king also descended from the royal skybox, because he had to, but his hatred filled expression made it obvious for everyone, he was angry beyond words by the loss Terry suffered at the hands of Daimon.

    So, for the first time in the history of the Clear Water kingdom, the two major sponsors of the tournament were angry at the winner, not like Daimon cared, he didn''t even get down the throne, until Vincent and the queen arrived.

    Lance and his schr were tired but in a good condition so they did join at the tform, along with the neo noble general Dominic, besides them, Tideus, the Delphini Duke and also the long bearded old man schr which acted as amentator earlier participated in the ending ceremony.

    The Minister endured the urge to unsheathe his sword and attack Daimon, as he announced.

    "Thanks for all the heroes of the young generation and guests from the Elemental Sea who participated in my tournament, I hereby announce the ending of the event, with Gabriel''s team as the champions".

    Surprisingly and for the first time, Vincent voluntarily participated in the announcements.

    "After a detailed discussion, the second ce goes to the young spear of the neo nobles, Lance Varsi".

    That did take a lot of people by surprise, they expected either Terry or Walford to get the second ce since Lance was eliminated first, but Walford purposedly harmed his teammates for the sake of staying longer in the tournament and was penalized for that.

    As for Terry, the fact that he as a captain lost his capacity to reason, which is a must for a captain, earned him a penalization too, inparison Lance might have been eliminated first, but his disy of abilities wasn''t less incredible than the other captains, not to mention his schr which is actually his vice-captain, took the wisest decision of facing Daimon''s right hand, to prevent them from reuniting.

    While all the others just rushed to the throne room, and no one could say any negative argument against that, which earned Lance the second ce.

    "The third ce goes for the crowned prince, Terry Malleus", said the king as he red at Ae, in his mind all this was orchestrated by her, and Daimon was just her subordinate.

    And so, Walford ended up in fourth ce while Ezequiel got the fifth ce just as Daimon told him he would, both were announced by Aurora, and the rest of the ranks were told by the other special guests.

    Both the king and the Minister approached Daimon, and with unwilling expressions handed him a token with the emblem of their respective families, those were the entrance permits for their respective treasuries, which were the prizes for the winner of the both the beast hunt and the tournament given by the royal family, and the winner of the tournament given by the Arcarius family.

    Naturally to ess the royal treasury Daimon also needed the token of the queen, which Ae was handing him in front of everyone just as a mere formality right now, since she gave it to him the moment he signed a contract with them as the ne in Daimon''s neck, which she handed to him proved.

    "Congrattions Mr. champion, don''t forget your supporters now that you are famous~", jokingly said Ae, which made Daimon chuckle.

    Since the people started leaving, the king quickly made his escape, he didn''t want to be here even a single second more than needed, as his most treasured son was in the infirmary at the royal castle right now, being treated.

    Lance''s group congratted Daimon and invited him to pay them a visit, before they took their leave, with their heads in high position and shouting the word "training" at full volume.

    The Minister also wanted to leave even if it was his family''s territory, but Vincent''s words made him stop in cold.

    "Aren''t you forgetting something old turtle, I seem to remember you owe me and this little friend a few more things", said Vincent.

    Raymond trembled due to anger, not only his treasury will be open for the silver haired youth he hated so much and he couldn''t y any tricks with the queen''s tax department breathing on his neck, but he actually forgot about the bet he made with Vincent and now he had to pay.

    "Humph, my Arcarius family always pays its debts, what''s a mere pair of iplete Sea Emblems for me", he said as he threw them at Vincent, who still didn''t let him off the hook.

    "Yeah, yeah, your family is quite rich, so don''t forget you also have to give Gabriel the three-colored water that is harvested this year", he said.

    Raymond poisonously red at Vincent as he said.

    "Don''t you think you are taking things too far Vincent", he said with an angered voice, unfortunately the queen dropped a bucket of cold ice on his head by saying.

    "I was a witness of that bet as well asdy Aurora, if the Minister is trying to not acknowledge it, then a royal court will be organized for both parties to defend their ims".

    Raymond''s teeth nearly cracked due to the excess of strength he was putting on them, but he ultimately calmed down, right now it was a private matter, as everyone besides the members of his Arcarius family, and the party involved with Daimon left.

    But if the queen announced a royal court for this, then everyone will know and he is sure she had already something prepared to make him lose, not only the thing in dispute, but also his reputation and other kinds if penalties, only a suicidal idiot will try to take the legal and politic route against the queen.

    "Miss Delphini is misunderstanding my good intentions, it''s just that the amount of three-colored water that is harvested each time, ispletely random, the highest possibility is that there might be just a couple of drops of even nothing, so I was thinking of exchanging that for the right of picking two items instead of one from my treasury, but since the idea is not up to the liking of the champion, then we can proceed with the harvesting", said the Minister with a fake amicable expression.

    Since no one bought his feigned hospitality, Raymond left for a moment and then returned with arge wood tub, the size of a small pool, it looked quite heavy and hard to move, but the Minister had the nerve to say.

    "This is the ceremonial tool used for the harvest of the three-colored water, it happens that this year is a special anniversary since my Arcarius family was founded, naturally it isn''t just arge tub for showing, this wood has the property of keeping the three-colored water perfectly clean and fresh, the containers used for the dosages that Walford and the others drank, were made using this same material, naturally the champion himself has to harvest the water, unless he is willing to offer a percentage to us".

    Daimon softly snorted, though indeed this wood tub had some waterws floating here and there, meaning the property mentioned by the Minister was true, the size wasrge so it was hard for him to harvest the three-colored water with it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    But then his eyes glowed behind his mask as he said.

    "If that''s the case, can you gift me more tubs like this, I have no experience harvesting the water of thekes, so I might end up empty-handed if I don''t have enough tubs to cover arge area".

    The Minister had the sudden urge tough, the three-colored water is expelled out of thekes yes, but its appearance is random, it can go in the direction of the tform, or just appear at some point on the surface of the threekes.

    That''s why he gave Daimon that huge wood tub, the quality of the water will drop since he will be forced to grab it with another container or something, that is if he is even able to move fast enough and if the amount of three-colored water is enough to even form a small stream, instead of just scattered drops.

    "Sure, we have made one each year since my family was founded, but we don''t have any use for them, you can take as many as you want", said the Minister as he waved his hand and a mountain of thoserge wood tubs appeared next to him.

    Daimon nodded, the girls followed Vincent and the others out of the tform to give Daimon space to prepare for the harvest, before leaving they saw Daimon smiling and knew a disgrace was about to fall upon the Minister, which made them giggle.

    ''Old man, if the Minister tries to interrupt me stop him, I''ll give you a nice reward in exchange'', said Daimon directly to Vincent, who raised an eyebrow, he was now being hired as a thug to bully others he thought, but he still said.

    ''Sure, I hope it''s something as good as you make it sound, just like you, being guarded by me isn''t cheap you know''.

    Daimon chuckled, he then grabbed one wood tub and threw it in a specific direction, he repeated the same process until all the tubs were disyed all over the ce on the tform, and a in a ring surrounding it, the arrays that covered the surface of theke remained so they were floating on top of them, the three-colored doesn''t have any negative effect, so the arrays doesn''t block it, that means that it can pass through it, in both ways, out and in.

    That''s what the Minister aimed at, that Daimon missed the water and thetter just returned to theke, and maybe umte for the next harvest or something like that, they actually don''t know if that works, since they never let a single drop escape their grasp after all.

    In fact, this is the first time someone with a realm lower than a peak Arch rank is performing the harvesting in the history of the Arcarius family.

    For some reason the harvest of the three-colored water, happened every year at the same exact hour, exactly at 2:00 PM, which was in exactly twenty seconds apart from now.

    Daimon''s eyes behind his mask glowed as a vertical yellow line appeared in his pupils, then a surprisingly pretty scene unfolded in front of all the presents, the sky blue, sapphire and cobalt bluekes, mixed together turning into a single entity, a three-coloredke so to speak.

    And then the harvest which will leave three-colored in and out but nothing else, like every year finally started.

    The Minister had a smile of sufficiency, there wasn''t a time limit for the harvest, thekes stayed mixed sometimes even more than half an hour, but that normally meant there will only be a few drops of three-colored water as a result or even less, a whole five minutes passed without nothing emerging from thekes, which made the smile on the Minister''s face widen.

    "Sigh, that''s why I offered to change this for a safe secondary reward for the champion, s, the young generation is often too hot blooded...", the "good old senior" tone in the voice of the Minister frozen, when he saw the whole surface of theke trembling at the same time.

    And his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, when a water stream as wide as an adult exploded out of the three-coloredke.

    "W-What!", his mind almost stopped working for a second, but he returned to reality when he saw an even more absurd scene unfolding in front of him, that stream of three-colored water didn''t disperse or return to theke, instead it started going from one wood tub to another, as if it was snake jumping around, filling each tub in its way to the brim.

    Soon all the tubs surrounding the tform werepletely full to the point that a single drop couldn''t fit in them, only then the water stream exhausted itself, but then the Minister felt as if his heart was about to fail him, when a second stream popped from another side and started doing the same, this time all the tubs on the outeryer of the tform were filled before it exhausted itself.

    The Minister actually forgot of his face and any reputation, he was about to jump to theke, if he had to catch the water with his mouth, he was ready to do it and order all his family members to follow him, but then a steel grip grabbed him from his shoulder.

    "Now, now, we old men shouldn''t meddle in the matters of the young generation, old turtle, why don''t you enjoy the view, I doubt you''ll get to see something like this in your lifetime again after all", at the same time Vincent surrounded theke with his mana, to prevent anyone from the Arcarius to interfere with Daimon.

    Raymond looked at Vincent as if he had murdered his parents, as he was about to fight Vincent to death if that''s what it took for him to jump to the tform, he saw a huge column of three-colored water raising behind the tform and then raining from above upon Daimon and all the wood tubs that were still empty.

    Daimon stood there calmly, hidden from the gaze of the Minister and everyone else, inside that torrent of water, he extended his hand and saw an especially bright amount of three-colored water twirling around him affectionately.

    "So, when those threekes mix, the result is the water from the so famous "Northern Sea", now that''s something I didn''t expect, however I can''t take you all out or that turtle bastard will fight me to death on the spot, be nice and wait for my return, I''ll take just a small bottle of you with me".

    Daimon took out the best bottle he had in his inventory, and then opened the lid, a small current of blue gem-like water separated from the three-colored torrent of water and entered the bottle, which then Daimon sealed and sent to the inventory on the spot.

    The torrent of water then immediately stopped, since all the wood tubs were fully filled, and Daimon was bathed by it too, his body felt refreshed and smooth.

    "Phew", Daimon let out a small quantity of white mes to dry himself and then he waved his hand, the dream-like scene of tons ofrge water tubs containing three-colored water of the best quality the Minister has ever seen, turned into a nightmare as all the tubs disappeared into Daimon''s ring.

    Naturally he sent that ring to the inventory as he feigned to put it in his pocket, just in case the Minister went crazy in a second and tried to steal his ring.

    He then gazed at the Minister who was at the border of copse and then smiled.

    "It seems that indeed it was a special year for the Arcarius, I thank the Minister for his generosity, the exact number of tubs I used were barely enough to contain all that water".

    "Blegh!", this time it was a torrent of blood what suddenly appeared as the Minister vomited blood on the spot due to anger, today he experienced the meaning of the saying "When it rains it pours" to its fullest.

    The other members of the Arcarius family were dumbfounded, those who were able to recover from the shock went to assist the Minister, in the meanwhile with Vincent''s supervision Daimon and the girls left the Calm Tri-Lake Forest and returned to Arc city, before Vincent used space shift to take them back to his Warhammer city, making sure that other people saw them leaving per Daimon''s request.

    Seeing the expectation filled expression on Vincent''s face, Daimonughed as he took out the ring from his inventory and then took out one wood tub of three-colored water, which Vincent dly kept in his ring, anyone with water affinity will have a thousand uses for this after all.

    Daimon could feel a few sharp predacious gazes on his back, naturally they weren''t malicious, but instead belonged to Ae, the Vs Duchess and for some reason Thea, the first two were understandable, despite how it looked Ae and also Mellie have water affinity, they are dual affinity mages, having water and vibration affinity which is an advanced specialization or maybe an evolution of wind affinity apparently.

    But Thea''s affinity is darkness, so she had no use for it, well maybe there is some use for her, since shees from some kind of marine snake race... probably.

    In fact, now that Daimon noticed, all the girls had particrly expectative gazes on their eyes, even Leslie whose affinity if fire was the same, not that Daimon really cared, since he nned to give a few tubs to each one, as he learned something important about the threekes.

    It was then when Aisha enlightened him, she poked Daimon''s cheek with her pretty finger and nodded in an approbative way.

    "That water is such a good skin care product, let me take a bath on it tooter~", she yfully said

    Daimon didn''t notice but he had a pretty glint on his skin right now, if it wasn''t for the mask and the overbearing aura that he always radiates, others will confuse him for some kind of pretty boy.

    Thea on the other hand was imagining the drinks she could prepare using the three-colored water as the base.

    "That water is supposed to have mind calming effects, so I won''t get drunk, ahem, general Daimon, don''t forget the annual tribute you must offer to this Empress", she said.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, if the Minister were to hear that these girls wanted to use the three-colored water, that he has been so desperately gathering through the years and that he won''t ever have the chance to own again in his life, as bath water or as a drink, he will probably bang his head against a wall and die.

 Chapter 406 Meeting At Night (Part 1)

    After Daimon gave each girl a couple of tubs of the three-colored water, they entered Vincent''s mansion for a well-earned rest.

    Leaving aside the fact that everyone was all smiles right now, there were still some important things to do, but some preparations were in order for that.

    "I''ll go prepare the reunion, you all have ask Mina to prepare a meal and then have some rest", said the queen as she left Daimon and the others at the living room of Vincent''s mansion.

    Speaking of Vincent, he and Aurora also left as they had their own thing to do, in preparation for tonight.

    And so, Thea was left in charge of Daimon and the girls, or more urately, Lina and Karmandi were the ones guarding the fort, since the Empress ordered some snacks and then dragged Daimon and the others to their room, to have a few drinks and celebrate their crushing victory over the geniuses of the kingdom.

    Of course, that was in part an excuse for her to try the idea she got earlier, she mixed a few drops of three-colored water with her drink, and then took a sip of it and her eyes sparkled.

    She was perfectly sober, she then turned around and gazed at Daimon as if she was looking at some kind of priceless treasure.

    "Say Daimon, don''t you want an ascension, how about you aim to take Karmandi''s position, the general rank is merit-based after all~", she yfully said.

    Karmandi bitterly smiled at the thought of being reced due to some drinks, of course Daimon just took it as a joke, but he was sure his "tribute" will probably be increasedter on.

    He also noticed that Marlene was looking at him, as if she was looking at a delicious dessert, it''s been like that since he called the torrents of three-colored water earlier, it was like that even after he gave her a tub of the three-colored water, so that wasn''t her target.

    Ignoring the drooling Marlene, Daimon threw himself on the bed, though he recovered immediately from using Core Synchrony, courtesy of Sanctuary, the thing with the three-colored water left him strangely tired.

    It was strange, he didn''t use stamina, nor mana, battle aura or even vitality and yet he was a bit torpid, his instincts told him that the best solution was for him to take a nap and rest.

    ''It might have something to do with ordering the gem-like water from the Northern Sea, which is the core of the three-coloredkes¡­ you better be quite amazing after causing this much trouble, you little thing'', thought Daimon as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

    The girls who were enjoying snacks and chatting with Thea and Marlene, saw Daimon fell asleep and they were surprised, it''s not a secret that he has an abnormal amount of vitality, so for him to get this tired is quite something.

    "Don''t worry, he''ll be fine after a couple of hours of sleep, we have some more important matters to tend to, like for example Yvonne''s daring actions earlier~", yfully said Aisha.

    "Ahhh, don''t make me remember that!", said Yvonne as she covered her face with a pillow, once she returned to normal, the fact that she wanted to jump into Daimon''s arms, remained in her mind and she was dying out of embarrassment, so much that she cursed her cheeky self.

    ¡­

    Besides someughs and giggles, the rest of the noon was pretty much uneventful, just as Aisha said, Daimon remained deeply asleep until the sun was setting down and it was time for the second event of the day to start.

    Daimon''s eyes slowly opened, the first thing he saw was Aisha''s pretty face from below, she ced his head on herp, while he was sleeping.

    "Are you feeling better?", Aisha tenderly asked, to which Daimon nodded, he also looked at the many "!" symbols on the log of the system and chuckled, besides thepletion of the mission, there was another surprise there, but he left that forter, still he exined Aisha why he fell asleep.

    "My stupid magic core pulled a fast one on me earlier, I forgot I also have water affinity, so the torrent of three-colored water that rained upon me was in part absorbed by it", mumbled Daimon.

    He extended his hand and to Mellie and Thea''s surprises, they saw arge amount of water manaing from all over the ce, to Daimon''s hand, before a single drop of ck water condensed in front of him.

    The reactions varied, Mellie who was the only one in the room with water affinity was beyond surprise, her little mouth was slightly open as she felt the suppressive sensationing from that small drop which Daimon now had in his hand.

    The other one who had some kind of reactions towards that drop of ck water was Thea, she pushed Marlene who was sitting in front of her, throwing her from the bed as she shed towards Daimon, with a serious expression on her face.

    Daimon ignored the fact that the Empress was floating just a few centimeters above him, with a small frowning expression on her pretty face, to ask.

    "Is there any problem?".

    Thea remained silent for a moment, she observed Daimon and then the drop of ck water, and then alternated between them for a couple of minutes but ultimately, she shrugged.

    "Sorry, for a moment I thought you were wielding water from the cursed current of the Maelstrom Sea, but on a close inspection this is different¡­ luckily, or everyone here besides me would have all melted into puddles of liquid", she said with a tone of relief.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, this water might have a dark color, but it doesn''t have any corroding effects, though it is indeed not the regr water affinity, that the natives of Neptune have.

    Also, he wouldn''t have summoned such a dangerous thing in the proximity of the girls, but the confusion was understandable, since the ck water had a certain ominous feeling to it.

    Leaving that little scare Daimon caused the girls aside, he got up from the bed and then took a quick shower, before he put on the Hollow Suit again, assuming Gabriel''s identity, since he had a meeting to attend.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The queen as well as Vincent and Aurora and someone who hasn''t appeared in some time, the head maid of the queen, Martha, was also apanying them.

    Daimon gazed at Ae who then exined why Martha was here.

    "She is the one in charge of my informationwork, unlike Mina she works in the shadows".

    Martha slightly bowed towards Daimon as she handed him a report which consisted in a few pages, listing the names of the noble families that were found to frequent ktr, as expected most of them were middle ranked nobles, earl level families and a couple of marquesses, which though technically were part of the upper echelon, were about to lose their high ranked nobility to be earls, over theck of merits in the recent generations of their families.

    "As one would expect of that scheming bastard, they are the perfect bunch to organize a rebellion, has anyone suspicious attended ktr in the recent days, you know besides the usual guys?", he asked to the head maid Martha, who nodded as she took out apact mirror te from a secret pocket in her skirt.

    "All those who have gone to the main location of ktr have been restricted already, and just await being taken under young master Gabriel''smand, with the help ofdy Thea, but this man has gone quite a few times and just observed without ordering any "service", we couldn''t evaluate his prowess, so we didn''t try to confront him, to keep up the act", she said as he handed Daimon the mirror te which showed the image of a tall slim guy, using a bandana to cover his lower face and neck.

    Daimon nodded, Ae was quite efficient with the task she was given, all the guys who went to ktr to either have some fun, or meet and just trash talk the queen, or the high ranked nobles in general, were ambushed once they entered the private soundproof rooms, by the subordinates of the queen and a few trusted men from the army, which Vincent sent as reinforces.

    Being caught red-handed they were given the choice of submit or die, since all this happened underground, if they died, the investigations would not proceed, and so they choose to submit, increasing the forces of which the alliance could dispose, the restrictions they got were temporal though, and that''s why Daimon and Thea will be meeting themter, so that they an be fully controlled through her contract ability.

    But before that, there was someone they had to meet, well now there were two of them, Pablo''s mother which is the leader of ck Wave in the Mermen Sea, and the guy in the image Martha showed Daimon, which he could bet was involved in all this.

    "So how are we going to do this?", asked Thea.

    The girls weren''t going to actively participate in this operation since there were Ster ranked involved, but they couldn''t be left alone in the mansion, in case someone tried to y some tricks.

    "Miss Thea and senior Aurora wille with us to ktr, we''ll take care of bringing ck Wave under our g, I leave the Delphini Duke to old Vincent and the queen, capture him in secret and take it to a secluded ce for interrogation", said Daimon.

    The queen brightly smiled, happy that she was given the task of dealing with one of the guys she hated the most.

    "I have the perfect location for that, but I want to witness the interrogationter~", she said.

    Daimon chuckled, but he nodded, in any case the interrogation will be left for Horals, so he didn''t need to be there, the queen probably had her own questions to do or maybe she wanted to close the mystery of her mother''s death, and he could respect that.

    Like saying goes, the right person for the right job, if they wanted to kidnap a Duke which is also a Ster ranked in secret, the best one for the job was none other than Vincent, as for why Daimon chose Aurora toe with him, he had the hunch that her light affinity was perfect to deal with creatures like the one that was impersonating the ckfin Duke''s subordinate.

    Thea on the other hand could keep Pablo''s mother and her subordinates who will be returning in a few minutes, in check, just in case she tried to do something desperate to save Pablo.

    "We''ll gather here in two hours, if something happens, you know what to do", said Daimon.

    The others nodded and then, the two teams parted ways, Vincent transported Ae and the Vs Duchess with him, while Thea used her spear to open a portal that led to Forest Fang town, where the headquarters of ktr were located.

    Daimon and the girls entered through the portal Thea opened, since they had two Ster ranked, the girls would be safer going with them.

    Forest Fang town was closer to Warhammer city, than Arc city, so they only took a couple of minutes to arrive at their destination.

    Everything was prepared beforehand, since Daimon ordered Pablo to tell them every update his mother gave him regarding the upper echelon of ck Wave''s return, so they arrived around half an hour prior to them.

    With Thea''s ability to ignore space barriers, they easily bypassed ktr''s security, and appeared inside the VIP area, where Pablo and his subordinates were already waiting for them, the queen''s subordinates and well as the reinforces sent by Vincent were sent outside to not rm the soon to appear guests.

    On the other hand, it was crowned with "clients" which were all nobles that had already submitted, and so the trap was prepared.

    Pablo saw that every little detail was already taken care of by the silver haired masked youth, that was now his master, and he felt a shiver running down his spine.

    ''To have the support of the magic beasts from the Maelstrom Sea, the Matriarch of the Light Pce, the queen and the army¡­ what a terrifying fellow'', he thought.

    Even if Pablo was considered avish second generation, how could he not recognize one of the few Maximum Ster ranked that exist, as well as Thea who is the known ruler of a section of the Maelstrom Sea, as for Ae a she came here in person, after the nobles were restrained to deal with the aftermath, imagine Pablo''s expression when he saw thest person, he wanted to meet in the Clear Water kingdom, casually strolling around ktr.

    They were now on the backstage of the scenery which was once used for the girls that worked here to entertain the clients, but was now under "reparations", in any case none of the nobles that were present, were in the mood to seek carnal pleasure, since the queen had put leashes on their necks.

    "We''ll be waiting in the main VIP room, you know what to do, if you try anything funny, death will be thest of your worries", said Daimon as he used the secret passages exclusive for ktr executives to spy on the clients, to go to the room where Pablo will lead the executives for a "meeting".

    "I wouldn''t dare", said Pablo in a hurry, thest thing he wished for his mother was to fall in the hands of the queen, who is rumored to have a private prison somewhere.

 Chapter 407 Meeting At Night (Part 2)

    While Daimon and the girls waited in the backstage, the usual scene of debauchery in ktr normally developed, the only difference is that the nobles were ying with each other, instead of causing trouble for girls who were sold as ves, since all of them were taken in into the queen''s shadow forces for training by Martha, with Ae''s permission of course.

    So, no one would notice that everyone in this room was currently under Daimon''s control, Pablo also did his part as avish second generation and drank with his subordinates, waiting for the return of his mother and the other executives of ck Wave.

    ording to the countdown, when there were exactly ten minutes before Pablo''s mother return, that tall slim guy with a bandana covering his lower face and neck, appeared, the hostesses which were ex-ves freed by the queen, approached him and offered him "services", but the guy as always refused and just ordered some drinks.

    Pablo was quite wary of that guy, he still has nightmares about the creature which was impersonating the subordinate of the ckfin Duke, in part that is why he became so obedient towards Daimon, if such a monster like that was helplessly yed with, by the silver haired youth, then wouldn''t that make him an even bigger monster.

    Like the saying goes, it''s better to be in the hands of the demon than in its way, a few minutester Pablo finally got the message he as waiting for, he took out his mirror te and then made some signs to his subordinates.

    It was the usual, the manager of ktr drank everyday in the presence of the VIP clients, then went to his office or left to do some errands, nothing suspicious.

    But this time''s routine was interrupted by a tall slim guy with a bandana covering his lower face and neck, who approached Pablo''s group when he stood up from his seat.

    "Are you perhaps, Pablo, the manager of ktr?", asked the bandana guy, his voice was slightly hoarse and rough, it was ufortable just to hear him.

    Pablo raised an eyebrow, but he immediately received instructions from Daimon, who was watching everything behind the scenes with his infinity eyes.

    ''Follow that guy''s act''.

    Pablo didn''t know whether tough or cry, the n which he perfectly memorized was being changed right now, unfortunately he could do nothing but obey, so he turned to see the bandana guy before saying in his usual haughty voice, worthy of avish second generation.

    "That depends, who asks?".

    The bandana guy seemed to rx, he then took out a ring and handed it to Pablo.

    "I have a "request" I would like to personally discuss with ady, I was informed that today is a good day for it".

    Pablo looked into the ring, thedy the bandana guy was talking was his mother, and the request was naturally an assassination mission, as to why this guy knew she will be returning today, those who were involved in the underground scene and had enough money or have made big requests, to ck Wave before, were informed.

    The ring contained the base fee for an assassination mission, to be personally taken by stronger assassin of this branch of ck Wave, in other words Pablo''s mother, naturally the price will increase depending on the discussion that will take ce, after saying the code words to get to meet her.

    Pablo followed Daimon''s instructions and smiled as he did in front of the important clients, that supported his mother''s business.

    "Sure, the owner will be here in couple of minutes, so you can wait with me in the conference room, please follow me", he said as he led the way towards the main private room.

    The bandana guy nodded and then they went to the private room, once they were gone, Daimon made hisst preparations and now it was just a matter of waiting, for all the pieces tond in their rightful ces.

    ...

    Inside the main private room, the waiters prepared a table with food and luxurious drinks, which is the rule every time the owner is discussing a job with an important client.

    Pablo grabbed a cup, on the surface he was calm but, on the inside, he was dying out of anxiety, since the bandana guy was an unknown variant in the n, unfortunately he was ordered to keep up the act by Daimon and he had no choice but to obey.

    A couple of minutester which for Pablo were like hours, an array appeared in a corner of the private room, no one was rmed or anything, since this was the usual, the owner didn''t live here unlike Pablo, she just came to visit from time to time when she had to ept a job, and it was done through an array that was installed in the main private room, exclusive for Pablo and his subordinates.

    A portal appeared floating on the air, from which a group of five guys led by a woman came out, the atmosphere of the group wasn''t exactly happy, but who would expect to see the strongest assassins of this sea''s ck Wave to be happily smiling or something like that anyway.

    The woman first noticed Pablo and the corner of her mouth slightly bent upwards, before she noticed there was a second person in the room, she removed the hood of her coat to reveal her face.

    It was a woman who seemed to be on her early thirties, with gray hair and slightly pale skin, she was using a dark purple lipstick and wearing leather pants and leather armor over a white blouse, as one would expect from an assassin, she used light armor, as for her weapons she had a curved de hanging from her waist, and a case of knives and small daggers around her right leg.

    Her name is Olivia, and she is the leader of ck Wave in the Mermen Sea and an early stage Ster ranked, as for the five guys who were following her, they were all peak Half Ster ranks, and the ones who trained other assassins of ck Wave, something like vice-leaders, just like Pablo, though thetter got his position thanks to his mother only, since he is only an early stage Archmage.

    Olivia inwardly frowned, she felt apprehensive towards the bandana guy who was sitting close to her son, but she kept her poker face and approached them, before she sat next to Pablo.

    "I just returned from dealing with some personal matters, if you have an urgent request, I can appoint a reunion for tomorrow, since I need to catch up with thetest news of the kingdom", she said.

    The bandana guy didn''t show any signs of leaving, and instead he stretched his legs and put them over the table, tossing the tes of food which were previously ced there, to the ground.

    The sound of tes breaking and the clear show of disrespect made the five vice-leaders frown, the immediately surrounded the bandana guy and aimed their weapons at his vitals, ready to kill him if he moved even one bit.

    The bandana guy didn''t seem to care about the current situation, he instead red at Olivia before saying.

    "And here I was thinking in which this ce relied to dare go against my Lord and turns out, that it''s only an early-stage Ster rank and a few little half steps, that idiot of Barus must have gotten done in by you, or maybe you left another Ster ranked behind, to protect your worthless offspring?".

    Olivia and her subordinates were genuinely confused, the only Ster ranked in the ck Wave of the Mermen Sea, was Olivia, what''s more they had no clue of what this guy was talking about.

    The bandana guy thought he was being mocked and then snorted, a ck mist leaked out of his body as the pressure of a middle stage Ster ranked flooded the room, sending the five vice-leaders flying backwards, with blood dripping out of their mouths, just the shockwave was enough to wound them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Olivia on the other hand used her own pressure to protect both Pablo and herself, she seemed to have reached a realization after seeing that ck mist too.

    "So, the leader of the Bone Sea isn''t loyal to his word, but don''t believe you cane and do as you please in my own backyard", said Olivia, she unsheathed her sword and also took out one of the knives on the case that was wrapped around her thigh.

    "Mekt, take Pablo out of here, then call all the Half Ster personnel, we have to send a head back to that guy if he is trying to mess with us!", she shouted with a fierce expression.

    One of the vice-leaders grabbed Pablo and then a portal opened for him, he surprisingly had the ability to use space shift, which is quite rare in Neptune.

    Unfortunately, the bandana guy snapped his fingers and the ck mist swallowed the portal before they could leave.

    "Lord wanted you to join him and conquer this sea, but since you killed Barus, then you need a punishment, the mission I came with, is for you the leader of ck Wave to surrender to my Lord, then personally hand me an arm of your son and we''ll call it even".

    "Otherwise, I will beat you to submission and then torture your son to death just for fun!", he viciously said.

    Pablo was outraged, no matter which option was chosen, he was going to suffer, and to make things worse, it was for something he didn''t do.

    ''That Barus this guy is mentioning is probably that monster who was killed by young master, so that means...''.

    "Mother, don''t surrender, that guy is a monster, if he gets to have our necks in his hands, we''ll all be killed and devoured at some point", said Pablo.

    Olivia actually didn''t seem to be surprised by her son''s words, she instead nodded and beckoned to order two of her subordinates to protect Pablo.

    "Yeah, I know, the leader of ck Wave in the Bone Sea also used that ck mist and told us, that it was time to make an important decision to serve some shady guy, who will lead us to victory and give us strong powers".

    "Naturally we thought he had gone crazy, but then that guy who used to be the weakest among the four leaders... cut the arm of the leader from the Elemental Sea and ate it before leaving, we tried to chase him, but he apparently awakened the capacity to travel through space too, so we made some ns and then ended the yearly meeting earlier, but it seems I was still one step toote".

    The bandana guyughed, since there was no point in keep hiding it, he teared the bandana apart, to reveal that he had no mouth, at least not on his face, but there was crack on the skin of his neck, from which spiked teeth could be seen.

    "So, you have entered in contact with others huh, in that case you should know the gap between the followers of my Lord and you lowly mortals, ept my Lord''s baptism and be one of us, or die!", he shouted.

    Then his clothes and skin melted, to reveal his true appearance, it was a humanoid creature with an old bone-coloredyer of skin, and a huge mouth which started on its neck and ended on his lower abdomen.

    An ominous ck mist was leaking out of his body, instead of mana, everyone but Olivia was having trouble breathing, the presence of the creature was enough to overwhelm them, to the point of despair.

    "You''ll all be my Lord''s servants, soldiers to conquer the four seas hahaha!", with a roar the creature proposed to attack Pablo and the other weaker enemies, to leave Olivia for the end, but the smile on the mouth that upied basically all his upper body, changed to terror, when the room was suddenly surrounded by a white castle.

    But that wasn''t all, the ck mist was immediately suppressed by therge amount of light mana that suddenly flooded the whole room, and the creature felt fear of the pressure that fell onto it.

    A portal appeared on the wall of the room, the ck mist tried to swallow this one too, but the result was different this time, the mist that approached it was split into little pieces and then eliminated.

    A silver haired masked youth, followed by a group of young girls, as well as an elderly woman, came out of the portal.

    The situation took a 180¡ã flip all of a sudden, making the creature grit its teeth.

    "Who the hell are you, do you know who you are messing with!".

    The masked silver haired youth, smirked as he saw the creature before saying.

    "That is in fact the question I''m looking to answer today, leave only the upper part of his body, the rest is useless for us", he coldly said.

    "No problem", the elderly woman nodded, then only within this room, the suffocating pressure of a maximum Ster ranked descended, forcing the creature and everyone else, besides the neers, to the ground.

    "Silver Guillotine", with those words, the creature was suddenly surrounded by light mana, which formed a silver-white sphere.

    "Ahhh!", a pained scream could be hearding from within the light sphere, once the spell disappeared, the result was in in view for everyone, the creature was now missing its four limbs and the lower part of its body, also its skin was full of burnt patches and there was ck smokeing from his body.

    Daimon nodded at the result, his supposition was right, whatever these creatures were, they were weak against light, and that helped him get a theory of why the Skelefiends who were under the influence of the scheming bastard, wanted to capture Jasmine.

    Which probably was to threaten the strongest light affinity mage in Neptune, in other words to keep Aurora in check.

    "Shall we get going, we have a meeting to attend after all", said Daimon, to which Aurora waved her hand as she said.

    "Silver Chains", chains made out of light mana appeared all over the ce and then restrained the creature which was knocked out for safety reasons, as well as Olivia and her subordinates.

    Olivia saw that the chains didn''t restrain her son and she red at Pablo who sighed in response.

    "I''m sorry, but I can exin... don''t worry", though he said that, he knew that the following hours will decide whether everyone he knows lives or dies.

 Chapter 408 Meeting At Night (Part 3)

    A few moments ago, while Daimon''s group was dealing with the creature which appeared, and made them change the n just a bit, not outside of Daimon''s expectations, at the contrary direction to Warhammer city, there was the territory of the Delphini family.

    Well, it could be said the original territory of the Delphini, because Ae as the queen had her own territory whose capital was Crystal Reef city, and it was right next to the territory of Vincent.

    In other words, the Delphini Duke literally had to go through Vincent''s territory if he wanted to cause troubles to Ae, which is why he didn''t dare to go after her, even after she left the Delphini family with Mellie to never return... until today at least.

    Carlos was having a bad day, after so many efforts, his son was recognized by the crowned prince and joined his team, meaning his Delphini family was on the right track.

    When a new king rises, naturally new nobles are appointed, also those who have contributed for the campaign of the ryal sessor, get rewarded, he was aiming to get an Archduke title for his family, which will put the Delphini on par with the Arcarius.

    And so far, everything was working, even if his unfilial daughter rejected each and every of his letters asking to get more noble titles for the people of the Delphini family, he found a quicker route, through the crowned prince.

    But everything crumbled earlier, the crowned prince who was severely injured finally woke up after half a day of the most expensive healing methods, and the first thing he did was expulse Corey out of his team.

    Because he was rted to the queen, who in his mind plotted everything that happened at the tournament, he lost, and it wasn''t a close one, but a humiliating and crushing defeat, he was livid.

    If it weren''t for the fact that Corey was with him all the time, he would have used him of giving information to his enemies, in any case Corey will never be allowed near the crowned prince, just because of association, as he now hated the queen and everyone rted to her.

    "Damn it if I knew such misfortune was going to fall in my Delphini family, I wouldn''t have set my eyes on that bitch, even after death her daughters are causing me troubles", said Carlos as he gritted his teeth.

    He then opened the door of his studio and then smacked the door behind him, he sat on his chair feeling a headacheing his way, he then sighed and pressed a secret button below his desk, which made the wall behind of him turn around to reveal his trophies, some weird discoveries he has had over the years, thanks to his Analyze Resonance.

    Carlos suddenly frowned, he turned around to see the left corner of his studio, where a familiar figure was ring at him from the shadow, those pretty turquoise toned eyes, how could Carlos not recognize them, after having been put through too much troubles, by their owner over thest one hundred or so years.

    "What do you want, are you going to mock me now that my heir fell from the grace of the royal family... Ae".

    The queen came out of the shadows with a calm expression, she ignored the Delphini Duke and instead approached the wall which was full with strange unknown discoveries, that were the pride of Carlos, the curiosity over the unknown is amon trait among the Crystal Dolphin race to which he belonged after all.

    "Why would I involve in some child''s y like that, no, I came here to get some answers", said the queen as she casually grabbed one of the so precious trophies of Carlos, and after inspecting it, she returned it to its shelf.

    Carlos snorted in response; he waved his hand with disdain towards the door.

    "You want to talk now after humiliating your own father, get lost, you are no longer a member of my Delphini family, never show yourself in my territory ever again", he said.

    Ae smirked, she turned around and her mana pressure leaked out of her body, her lyre appeared floating in front of her too.

    The Delphini Duke stood up from his chair, but as he was about to call the guards and summon his Ster ranked weapon, thinking that Ae has gone mad, his legs gave in and he copsed on the ground.

    "Y-You, what the hell did you do... ahhh!", his muscles were retorting, stretching and breaking, every time he even thought of moving, imagine the pain of a serious cramp on your leg amplified around ten thousand times, that''s what Carlos was experiencing right now.

    Ae slowly approached him and then kicked his face directly with her heel, making a couple of teeth fly out of the Duke''s mouth.

    "Fuck, don''t get carried away you low origin bit...ahhh!", this time Carlos tried to circte his mana, blood exploded out of his skin as if some veins had broken all of a sudden.

    The Duke''s back was covered in cold sweat, he knows about Ae''s capacity to disrupt other people''s capacity to use mana, and while he admits is a terrifying ability, he has always believed that he can deal with it before it affects him, since he also has Analyze Resonance, so he has thought of a way to neutralize it.

    But he was hit without realizing it what''s more, this effect of feeling his body thorning apart wasn''t in the report about Ae''s spell, not only that she wasn''t even her ability to boost her mage realm, so he was confused about what was happening here, howe a middle stage Ster rank like him was being so easily suppressed by her.

    Ae grabbed the Duke by his neck and raised him from the ground, her eyes had a cold light shing on them as she said.

    "One hundred years, I have held this grudge against you for one hundred years... do you think I haven''t made all the preparations for the when the time to crush you came, your disgusting "rhythm" has been thoroughly analyzed by me, countless of times at this point, so that I can do something like this now".

    Ae then used her pretty index finger to lightly pull one of the strings of her lyre, but there wasn''t any sound produced by it, instead of that, two different sounds came from Carlos.

    "Crack!".

    "Aghhhhh!".

    The sound of bones breaking as Carlos''s right leg and left arm spun in an impossible direction, for any creature that has knees and elbows, followed by a miserable scream echoed through the room.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "What do you think of this "Body Shattering Resonance" which I created to deal with the experts of the Delphini family, you can use vibrations sure, but can you stop vibrations created by your own muscle fibers being pulled as strings~", yfully said the queen.

    Carlos spat out blood, he who is the most skilled using vibrations in the Delphini family, found what Ae said outrageous.

    "B-Bullshit, even if you can analyze living beings unlike the rest of the Delphini family members, there is no way you could memorize such arge amount of information and then turn it into a rhythm!", he shouted.

    Ae softly snorted, her pretty fingers pulled the strings of her lyre and then all the fingers on Carlos''s hands broke and twisted in different directions, making him scream in pain.

    "Well, if you study someone for one hundred years, you''ll get to know a lot of things", said the queen as she sat on Carlo''s seat, in front of his desk.

    The Duke gritted his teeth, when has he faced such humiliation before, he pushed the ring in his right hand against the ground, activating a silent rm that called all the experts of his family to his studio, since he knew Ae could apply the same ability to those that were rted as their rhythms resembled, he raised a couple of shadow protectors that weren''t part of the Delphini.

    ''Just you wait, becent if you want, even if those two can''t kill you, I just need a chance to let everyone know you are here, then even if you are the queen, you''ll be executed for attacking an old noble house'', he thought.

    A who was leisurely sitting on Carlos''s seat, smirked before saying.

    "So, you finally called those two, what a shame no one will being, I even left a note with your handwrite exining to your family how you were feeling overwhelmed and wanted to venture to find some new trophy for your collection, so you won''t be returning for a long time".

    Carlos''s face paled, if she knew even about the secret protectors and deal with them, so easily to the point that no one else noticed then... she didn''te here alone, and the number of people who can silently kill Ster ranked in the Clear Water kingdom can be counted with the fingers of a hand.

    The door of the studio opened and Vincent who was dragging two miserably beaten-up figures entered the room.

    "They were hidden exactly where you told me little Ae, these fellows are quite sneaky, but they are still early-stage Ster ranks, so it wasn''t that hard to knock them out without anyone noticing", said Vincent as he threw the two beaten up guys next to Carlos.

    Ae stood up from her seat and then crouched down near Carlos, her eyes were cold and her usual yful attitude was nowhere to be seen.

    "So, you really believe you were going to get away with it, sweeping the whole thing regarding my mother''s death under the rug, making it look as an ident and then making any evidence disappear".

    "You were dead the very moment she took herst breath back then; I have had the power to make you disappear without leaving a trace since a long time ago, the only reason as to why you are alive is because she told me not to kill you before I met a certain person, and now he is here, which means it''s time to settle old scores", said the queen as the image of a silver haired youth shed in her mind.

    "It''s quite easy to die when venturing in the Maelstrom Sea, don''t worry I''ll make whatever is left of you return to that bitch who was so happy my mother died".

    Carlos trembled, he knew his end wasn''t going to be a decent one, so he tried to detonate his magic core and take these bastards with him, just to feel despair when he noticed his mana wasn''t obeying him, he followed the origin of the suppression to the tall old man who was ring at him.

    How could a mere recently ascended middle stage Ster rank pull such a trick in front of Vincent, he thought of biting his tongue to die, but his body was now literally being controlled by Ae''s lyre, there was nothing he could do but despair.

    Vincent saw the cold expression on Ae''s face and he sighed.

    ''One hundred years sounds like a short period of time, but enduring the urge to get revenge knowing you have 100% certainty of victory, even this old man can assure to do it... I hope that with this, you can finally leave this behind and return to be the little girl I met that day which changed my life as well'', he thought.

    "Uncle, clean the ce while I take the "luggage" that the Delphini Duke will take for his one-way travel to hell", said Ae as she absorbed all the trophies in Carlo''s secret wall, as well as the books on the shelves and any other document that was in his desk.

    No one was allowed toe into this studio besides Carlos, and even if anyone entered just to satisfy its curiosity, it was normal for Carlos to take his important properties with him, in his storage ring.

    Vincent nodded and used his water mana to erase any traces of them ever being in this ce, Ae studied every aspect of the mansion of Carlos, to the point that she had memorized each and all the arrays deployed, she interrupted their functions with a weaker version of her Shattering Resonance, which is the same method Mellie used to disrupt other people''s spells or martial arts, that''s why no one noticed them entering the mansion.

    Also no one besides Carlos knew about those secret protectors, they lived hidden in a secret base below the mansion, where they trained and did all the dirty work for the Duke, so no one will know about their disappearance.

    Just as Ae stated, she studied everything and prepared to take action for one hundred years, if she wanted to, she could have killed Carlos a long time ago, but she respected thest message of her mother, and didn''t do anything until they met the one who saved Mellie the very first time, she left the territory owned by her.

    "Even after all these years, I don''t know what were you thinking... mom", she mumbled, before she turned around, Vincent had created a water prison where Carlos and his subordinates were restrained.

    "Let''s go, we have a night meeting to attend", said Ae.

    Vincent nodded, he opened a portal using space shift and they jumped into it, disappearing from this studio, to which Ae only had negative memories about, thest time she came here as a young girl, her mother died, this time the one who allowed it to happen will die.

 Chapter 409 Partial Truths From The Past (Part 1)

    Coincidentally, two portals appeared on Vincent mansion''s living room at the same time, from one, Daimon''s group came out, with Aurora bringing the new prisoners restrained with her light chains.

    The other one was used by Vincent, Ae and the Vs Duchess to return from the Delphini territory, the Duchess was given her own task by Ae, she had to watch out the perimeter of Carlos''s mansion along with Martha who also apanied them.

    It''s not that she wascking the strength to participate in the operation, but Ae wanted to make Carlos despair with her own hands, that''s also why Vincent was turned into a thug who beat up the secret protectors of the Delphini raised by the Duke, while the Duchess acted as a vignt.

    And that seemed to have improved her mood, she was brightly smiling, as if she hadn''t just beaten a middle stage Ster ranked an inch away from death a moment ago.

    Daimon noticed the thankful expression in her pretty face, when she looked at him and he raised an eyebrow, she wasn''t being yful, but she was genuinely showing happiness to see him.

    ''This is the third time, I wonder what can make such a strong-willed girl like you, smile like that'', thought Daimon.

    The previous two times he has seen the queen genuinely happy, were when she knew Mellie was safe after the incident with the pirated and the caravan, and when he signed a contract with her and epted the ne which was now hanging from his neck, so this was the third time.

    He then turned to see the water prison made by Vincent and recognized one of the people being restrained by it, it was one of the special guests that participated as amentator in the tournament, the Delphini Duke.

    And judging by his appearance, he was beaten like a dog, probably by Ae since his wounds didn''t leak waterws, which would have been the case if Vincent was the one to beat him to this point.

    What''s more, he noticed the strange directions in which his arm and leg were pointed, and the fact that his skin was intact, a strange sight to say the less, it was as if his arm and leg were moved that way by his own body which was obviously not the case, unless Carlos was some kind of octopus race Mermen.

    Ae saw the strange creature being restrained by Aurora''s light chains and she turned to see Daimon.

    "It seems there were some changes to the original n, right?".

    Daimon nodded in response.

    "Yeah, apparently that scheming guy wanted to bring ck Wave under its wing, one way or another, that or he is haughty enough to send a middle stage Ster monster to force them into submission, because the previous envoy failed the task", said Daimon with a smirk.

    When two strategists face each other, the one whose "nature" is unveiled by the other first, is the loser, Daimon has shed four times with the one behind the pirates the and the Skelefiends so far, first when he saved Mellie, then the invasion at the beast hunt, the situation with ck Wave and this second creature.

    And he has already started to understand the pattern behind that guy''s actions, destabilize, find the weakness of the target, use the weakness against the target, and in case of failure retaliate with "crushing" force.

    He has seen it happening twice, when the pirates and Skelefiends couldn''t force Mellie, Daphne and Jasmine to surrender themselves to save the other members of the young generation, after not being able to capture them due to Daimon''s interference, ckbeard Horrorw and Sting directly attacked Vincent and the others.

    In other words, whoever was behind the pirates and Skelefiends, hated when his ns didn''t give the predicted results, amon trait among those who consider themselves smarter than anyone, unfortunately for him, Erin even managed to trick the Greenwich Sage which is said to be smartest person in the four gxies, it''s not a matter of intelligence but cunningness, and that little fox won''t lose to anyone in that aspect.

    Naturally, Daimon who has been taught personally by her, is the same, with each sh he approached the truth behind the veil more and more.

    "Bring me too, I want to confirm a few things, miss Thea you too", said Daimon to the queen, originally, he wasn''t going to participate in the interrogation, but the appearance of the creature changed the n a bit.

    "Mm", Thea and the queen nodded, Aurora was also going to apany them, while Vincent stayed behind to watch over the girls along with the Duchess, because the following wasn''t going to be funny.

    For a moment, Mellie hesitated to ask to go with her sister, but Ae patted her head and told her to stay behind this time, they will solve the mystery of their mother''s death together, but she didn''t need to witness the interrogation.

    ¡­

    Ae took out a key from her ring and then used an array to open a portal to her private prison, the same ce where Daimon got cktooth, but a different area, it was without any doubt a ssic interrogation room, with tons of "funny" tools to make others talk.

    The queen expected Daimon to be at least a bit surprised, but she realized he didn''t even flinch at all, which earned him a nod of approbation from the three women that followed him here, one must be mentally strong to lead others, if this scene can cause waves in the heart of the leader, then he or she isn''t suited to sessfully guide others through the road of blood and carnage that is a mage or a knight''s path, at all.

    "Pablo, you take your mother and the others from ck Wave to that corner, once we finish with some more pending matters, I''ll go talk with you", ordered Daimon, his voice tone gave no chance to refuse at all, even if his upper face was covered with the mask of the hollow suit, Pablo felt as if the eyes hidden behind it were piercing his very soul.

    "Yes¡­ young master", Pablo grabbed his mother and the executives and brought them to a corner, to wait for their turn.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and a green mes portal lit up in front of him, from which the ck armored bone general Horals appeared.

    "Horals greets the young master!", as always Horals, kneeled in front of Daimon to greet him and wait for his orders to be issued.

    Since the information they will be getting from the creature is probably more sensitive, Daimon turned to see the queen, Carlos should be interrogated first.

    "Is there any problem in making him talk first?", he asked.

    The queen shook her head in response, she has waited enough to learn the truth behind her mother''s death.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see Thea.

    "Miss Thea, can you verify if he is under any kind of contract, and if that''s the case erase it from him, please", he asked.

    Thea nodded and then approached Carlos who was immobilized by the water prison created by Vincent, needless to say but when he saw the ck Empress and Aurora also participating in his kidnap, he paled, two maximum Ster ranked wanted him dead, regardless of his status as a Duke, he was at the verge of a mental copse.

    Thea''s right pupil turned blood red colored as she inspected Carlos, this was part of her innate ability, Nine Malefic Evil Eye, with this red pupil she could see and erase contracts of all kind.

    After a couple of seconds, Thea frowned, naturally a middle stage Ster ranked who has lived for quite some time like Carlos, had a decent number of contracts which he has stablished during his lifetime, but only one outstood from the rest, it was one represented by a red ominous chain around Carlos''s magic core, meaning that if he broke it, his magic core will explode and kill him, quite a vicious penalty for a contract.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    But that''s not what made her frown, but the fact that the other party to which the contract was linked, was undoubtedly stronger than her, and that is a lot to say considering she isn''t even afraid of Tideus the captain of the royal guard and a high stage Ster realm expert, despite she only being at the middle stage.

    "I can break it, but since my strength is lower than the other one to whom the contract is linked, the other party will feel it, on the other hand I can temporarily nullify it without the other one noticing it, it will onlyst a day but it''s the better choice", said Thea.

    Before Daimon could say anything, Ae answered for him.

    "Do it, what I want is answers, his little life isn''t worth anything¡­ I can take it after all the turmoil ends, also I won''t let him off the hook so easily", she said.

    Ae truly wanted to kill Carlos, but she also knew that doing it will alert the one with whom he did that contract, which is probably rted to her mother''s death, so she decided to leave him live for a little longer, naturally it wasn''t going to be fun ride for Carlos, but that''s apletely separate matter.

    Daimon agreed too, it wasn''t the right time to reveal themselves, since he still has to travel to the Elemental Sea, to get the sects to join them and to get what was left by the hero there.

    "Let''s go with the second".

    Thea nodded, her right pupil which was now of a bright red color shone in red light, and then the veins on Carlos''s neck swelled up, he retorted and tried to scream due to the pain he was experiencing, but the water prison didn''t allow him to make any sound or move at all.

    After a couple of seconds, Daimon saw Thea close her right eye, there was a thin trace of blooding from it, meaning she had to put some effort into nullifying the contract.

    "Senior Aurora, if you would, please", said Daimon.

    Aurora nodded and she extended her staff towards Thea as she casted.

    "Silver Citadel!", a white gentle light enveloped Thea, making the pain in her eye disappear, her mana reserves which were halved due to the strength of the contract she temporarily nullified, were fully recovered and her stamina which also took a blow, returned to its peak.

    "Phew, what a convenient spell, at our level something that recovers 20% of our mana reserves is already quite decent, but this spell gives a full recovery, as one would expect from the strongest light mage of Neptune", said Thea before she turned to see Daimon with an expecting gaze.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, she hasn''t used even a liter of the three-colored water he gave her, and she is already asking him for more, not that he minded since he had way more than what he could use anyway.

    "Ahem, when you finish what I gave you earlier, I can always give you more", said Daimon, which made the ck Empress brightly smile, now that her stock of non-intoxicating alcohol drinks was secured, she happily went to sit to enjoy the show.

    With that out of the way, Daimon pointed at Carlos while he gazed at Horals.

    "Assist the queen interrogating that guy, I want him to spill everything he knows".

    Horals''s eyeless eye sockets lit up in green mes, he took out one of his multiple notebooks and then approached the Delphini Duke, waiting for Ae to make a question.

    Ae dispelled the block on Carlos''s mouth, so that he could speak and then she made the first question, one which has been living in her heart for one hundred years.

    "Who orchestrated my mother''s death?", she coldly asked.

    Carlos coughed a couple of times and then looked at the queen with disdain.

    "Why should I tell you, once you get your answers, I will no longer have any use, what kind of strategist will destroy his only value, next time don''t discuss such important things in front of your enemy you fools!".

    What Carlos said had some merit, certainly if an enemy knows that he holds important information, it can be used as a chip of bargain.

    ''Humph, I just need to endure this, once that person makes it move, you''ll all bow down and beg for mercy¡­''.

    "Aghhhhhh!", Carlos''s selfcent thoughts were interrupted by a mind breaking amount of pain which came from all his body, a beastly scream escaped from his mouth, but that wasn''t enough to express the suffer he was experiencing right now.

    Luckily for him, it onlysted a couple of seconds, before he returned to normal, his eyes were leaking tears without his consent, as he looked for the origin of such horrifying pain, which he found quite fast, his leg was being poked by one finger of the ck armored guy called by that silver haired masked youth earlier.

    And his next words made the Duke almost pee himself out of fear.

    "Who do you think you are calling a fool, you piece of useless garbage, my young master doesn''t care about you listening, because with this Horals present, by the time we end, you will beg to talk but won''t be allowed to!".

    Horals took out his gauntlet to reveal a skeletal hand burning in green battle aura, he then pierced Carlos''s skin with his fingers, and the next thing that happened was that Carlos convulsed as a lung-tearing scream escaped from his mouth.

    "Arhghhhhh!".

    Truth to be told, Horals only needed one finger of a hand for the interrogation, but since his young master was insulted in front of him, how could he not make the other party wish to be death, but being unable to.

    Unfortunately for Carlos, the premise of keeping one''s mouth shut to crate an opening for rescue, is based on the fact that the prisoner can endure the pain caused by showing resistance against the torturer.

    And how could he a strategist, who isn''t fond of the battlefield and instead has lived his life, giving orders from the officer''s tents during battles, endure the horrors that the mind of a bone general like Horals, can give birth.

    "W-Wait, I''ll talk, I''ll t...aghhhhh!", Carlos tried to confess not even five secondster, but Horals didn''t pay him attention, and since the mistress-candidate who was given the authority over him, during this interrogatory, by his young master in person, didn''t order him to stop, he casually continued.

    Pablo and the other people from ck Wave, who were sitting on a corner saw Carlos, begging to confess and not being allowed to, and they all felt a chill running down their spines.

    Daimon was sitting at the other side of the room, with Thea who was enjoying a drink and offering Daimon some, at his right, and Aurora who was watching over the still knocked out creature restrained by light chains, at his left.

 Chapter 410 Partial Truths From The Past (Part 2)

    Daimon casually waited for the moment Ae ordered Horals to stop, this is a personal matter for her, so she is in charge of the interrogation, in any case, Daimon believes that Ae is patient enough to not take Carlos out of his limit, she waited one hundred years for her revenge, having the power to execute it, because that was her mother''s wish, at least she can let out some steam in this way.

    On the other hand, this is the first time Daimon is seeing Horals''s interrogation method, and he had to admit that it was quite something, at first, he thought he was using his battle aura to inflict physical pain to Carlos, but that wasn''t the case.

    Horals has the ability to manipte his bones however he likes, to the point that each major division of his body can act as a separate entity using one of his body parts as the core.

    But Daimon didn''t know he could take over other people''s skeletons and control them at will, by entering into contact with them, when Horals''s finger pierced the leg of Carlos, the tip of his finger pierced all the way to the bone, but that''s not what was causing the mind breaking pain which the Delphini Duke was experiencing right now.

    Horals''s took over the Duke''s skeleton, and made it crack just a bit, everything at the same time, being careful enough so that not even a piece of bone broke and pierced the flesh or anything, which could cause internal bleeding.

    He just made all the bones of the Duke crack and then repaired them as soon as possible, the pain travelled so fast through all his body, that even if it was instantly repaired the Duke felt as if his body was being teared apart.

    It was a type of pain which reached the very core of body, since one''s'' bones are in fact the core that supports the body.

    ''I wonder where did he learn to do that?'', thought Daimon, he and Rita have been showing to be quite strong and that is while they are Arch ranks, one can only imagine how will they fair once they reach the Half Emperor realm.

    ¡­

    After a total of ten minutes in which Carlos fainted three times but was immediately woken up by an even stronger amount of pain, Ae finally raised her hand and asked Horals to stop.

    The bone general had a bored expression, since he knew that the Duke won''t refuse to answer anything from now and onwards, which meant his fun was over for now, but he still stood still right behind Carlos, applying psychological pressure on him.

    The queen red at Carlos before her pretty lips slightly opened as she said.

    "I''ll ask onest time, who orchestrated my mother''s death?".

    Carlos''s whole body trembled, he was clearly afraid of answering, but he was even more afraid of the crazy guy who was standing behind of him, what''s more he saw that skeletal hand, and confused Horals for a Skelefiend, and that terrified him even more, he already had two of the known maximum level Ster ranks wanting him dead, if the Skelefiends were involved, then wouldn''t their king which also a maximum Ster ranked be involved too!

    He looked at Ae with teary eyes, but he didn''t dare to beg for mercy, knowing that if he didn''t answer, he won''t even be given the option to die, which at this point didn''t sound bad at all.

    "I-It was¡­ the White''s ancestor".

    The queen trembled of anger, her eyes glowed with a cold light and then she kicked Carlos on the face, making a couple of the teeth which Horals kindly made grow again, fly out of his mouth.

    Unfortunately for Carlos, even before he touched the ground, Horals grabbed him by his hair and made him amodate straight once again, for the interrogation to continue.

    "Tell me everything, I have analyzed everything about you over the years to the point that I know the sound your blood makes when it moves through your body, so I can assure you that I will know if you are lying, and believe me when I say you are far from experiencing a pain enough to make you wish to be dead", she coldly said.

    Carlos saw the eyes of Ae and his body shivered, as some unpleasant memories shed through his mind.

    ''Those eyes, they are the same as hers!'', he inwardly screamed, but the dreading feeling of Horals''s hand on his head made him react on time to avoid another session of torture.

    "It happened a couple of hundreds of years ago!", he shouted, now that he spoke in time to not be tortured, he continued with his exnation.

    "When I met your mother, she was amoner, an orphan which was working as a maid in one of the many properties of the Delphini, I immediately got infatuated with her and brought her back to my personal mansion to work under me".

    "I already had a fianc¨¦, but I couldn''t ovee the beauty of Helena, so I broke my marriage arrangement off and instead ordered her to be my wife¡­".

    The Duke remained silent for a moment which made Ae re at him, forcing him to keep speaking.

    "I don''t remember some of what happened in between, maybe it is because it happened too many years ago or maybe is because I was too happy and drunk at the time, but we ended up having you, after that I distanced from Helena and married my original fianc¨¦ for quite some time, I don''t know what she did or where she spent her time, but I had Corey with my current wife".

    "It was then that a subordinate of the White''s ancestor approached me, I was a mere Half Ster mage back then and my father, the previous Lord was at the verge of death due to wound suffered in a battle against the Skelefiends, and he offered me a potion to help me breakthrough".

    "Naturally it didn''te for free, I was given a task, which was to kill your mother with a specific poison provided by the White''s ancestor, at first I refused, but when I went to try and talk with Helena, she refused to even open the door to me so¡­".

    "So, what, you got angry because she didn''t like a scum like you and then decided to kill her for some benefits!", shouted Ae, her body was shaking due to anger, but she calmed down and then frowned.

    "What about Mellie, you say you remember me, but you didn''t mention Mellie at all, when she died Mellie was already being treated in the bubble incubators?", she asked.

    When Mellie was born, her mother was sick and that brough someplications, which she now knows were caused by Carlos''s poisoning her.

    Carlos vehemently shook his head with a genuinely sincere expression on his pained face.

    "I swear I don''t remember having done anything to her, I did put the poison on her drink, but I don''t remember giving it to her, also I don''t remember¡­ doing anything so that Mellie was conceived".

    "T-That''s why I distanced myself from her, I was always stunned by her beauty, to the point that my mind was dizzy, every time I approached her, I ended drinking a lot to gain the value to talk to her, just to wake up he other day dead drunk on the floor¡­ however the day she died was different".

    "I had just returned from my most recent travel and ced my discoveries on my desk, you entered my studio and then grabbed one of those discoveries, a book which I found in a rundown boat store from the nomads of the Maelstrom Sea when I was returning to the kingdom".

    "That day, the same subordinate of the White''s ancestor came to see me and gave me a second different poison, I do remember giving her the poison that time¡­ but it was because the first one didn''t work, I thought I was just being tested, to see if I was loyal to the royal family¡­aghhh!".<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Ae ignored the clear lie to lessen the possibility of being tortured and directly punched Carlos''s on the face, she didn''t use any mana or anything and so, she harmed her pretty hand, the knuckles to be more specific.

    But she didn''t pay any attention to it, and instead grabbed Carlos by his neck.

    "You poisoned her twice and you dare to say it wasn''t your intention, you trash!".

    "What else happened that day after you gave her the poison?", asked Ae, her mother''s body as well as any evidence was taken away, and no one knew what happened to it, even after all these years, Vincent couldn''t find any information regarding her corpse, but he did hear a rumor about a certain important book in the collection of the royal family.

    "The White''s ancestor had everything prepared beforehand, those who came to "investigate" were shadows guards of the royal family, they erased every evidence, which included that book, but only because it was thest thing your mother touched before her death".

    "Later I heard from the subordinate that the book had historical value, so the ancestor kept it as a part of his collection, which is in his room, but that was it, no one could read that thing anyway, I bought it out of curiosity and because the cover was made from some valuable materials, that was it".

    "As for your mother''s corpse, despite my participation in her death¡­ I was afraid of she bing a cmity for my family, so I did a proper burial, since the White ancestor didn''t ask me to give him her corpse, her tombstone is hidden inside an underwater grotto, in the sea that leads to the Elemental Sea from the kingdom".

    Ate who has calmed down and was just showing cold indifference towards Carlos, asked.

    "What about those shadow guards, are there any of them alive?".

    Carlos shook his head in response.

    "They were beheaded on the spot, in front of me by the subordinate that acted as an envoy from the White''s ancestor, so that only I was left alive, but I had to sign a life and death contract, if I ever revealed what happened my magic core will explode and I will die, in that way I will "return" to the ancestor the power he bestowed me in exchange for my service".

    "That was all, after that I never got to see that subordinate or hear anything from the White''s ancestor¡­ until a couple of months ago, I was told to proof my family''s worth by introducing Corey to the crowned prince''s team, by that same subordinate".

    "But that was thest time I saw him, he said he had some matters to tend to at the Elemental Sea and then left, after that all the thing regarding the trident of promise happened and Corey met the expectations of the crowned prince and joined his team".

    "Everything was going well¡­ until he appeared and ruined Corey''s opportunity to bring the victory to the crowned prince", said Carlos as he gazed at Daimon, just for his face to be smacked against the ground by Horals so hard that the floor cracked a bit.

    "Watch your mouth, you lowlife, how dare you address my young master in such a way, from now on whenever you see him¡­ no whenever you think of him, you will throw yourself to the floor and smack your forehead against the ground three times to thank him for this glorious image from appearing in your head", enthusiastically said the bone general, making Daimon sigh.

    "Horals, raise him once again", ordered Daimon, he had to make some time to have a serious conversation with him, others will start to look at him as if he was the founder of shady ck sect or something, if he kept spewing things like that in public.

    Surprisingly, Carlos''s face didn''t disappear due to the impact, his nose was bleeding and one of his eyes was swollen, but that was it, probably because Horals was responsible enough to reinforce his skull before he smacked him against the ground, to not identally kill Carlos.

    The queen and Aurora had noticed the same important point at the end of the story and had the same question to make, so both talked at the same time.

    "Who is that subordinate you mentioned?".

    They had their own reasons, one wanted to see if there was more information regarding her mother''s death and the other was worried about that subordinate causing troubles in the shadows, at the Elemental Sea.

    The shaman suffered backsh after the incident with one of their treasures breaking, though he recovered before all this or Aurora wouldn''t have left his side toe to the Mermen Sea.

    But with her and the patriarchs of half of the sects absent, they might be short in personnel, so there is a chance that troubles are being created without they knowing.

    Unfortunately, Carlos shook his head, this time he didn''t dare to look at Daimon directly, but he still said.

    "I don''t know who he is, he always wears a white mask, simr to that guy, but his covers all his face, besides that it is obvious is a male, and he should be around the same age range as you, as for his strength I don''t know, he should be stronger than me and he is probably some authority figure among the shadow guards of the royals", said Carlos.

    Ae raised an eyebrow, the only high ranked Ster expert in the kingdom is Tideus, and he can''t be a shadow guard, because he is the captain of the royal guard and has openly sworn to protect and obey Triten, in a public ceremony.

    Not to mention, it couldn''t be him unless he could be at two ces simultaneously, Ae immediately thought of the ckfin Duke''s subordinate and she took out the mask that its corpse was wearing on top of the bandages all over his face, she had the corpse in a ring for when the time to deal with the ckfin Duke came.

    "Was it this mask, the one he was wearing?", asked Ae as she showed the mask to Carlos, who at first paled but then shook his head.

    "N-No, it might be simr, but that''s normal since they are generic masks, his mask has a pyramid form".

    None of the women present in the room knew anyone like that and that is a lot to say, considering they are important figures of their respective forces, which are three of the four seas.

    On the other hand, there was one person at their disposition, from the fourth sea and for convenience it was trapped within these same walls, in another room of course.

    The queen used the master control of the prison to make some movements on the disposition of the rooms, and then one of the walls moved to connect at another room.

    There was a metal chair with yellow crystal chains restraining one person, a woman to be exact, and the be even more urate it was quite an emaciated woman, there wasn''t any sign of physical violence, but she looked like a fish outside of water.

    Carlos nearly suffered a heart attack, he recognized that woman as the main wife of the king of the Skelefiends, Shirel and she was captured by Ae too.

    ''What the hell is this woman trying to pull of here!'' he shouted in his mind.

 Chapter 411 Partial Truths From The Past (Part 3)

    Daimon saw the Skelefiend woman who he captured, be in a really miserable state, due to the creativity of the queen to interrogate.

    Skelefiends had two different evolution paths, they could develop flesh and get a human-like appearance, which is the path Shirel chose, or go for the mummified corpse appearance like Horrorw.

    Their appearance in fact shows the path they have chosen to get stronger, those who be human-like are mages, while those who be full body skeletons are knights, in other words, Horrorw became an Emperor rank through the knight''s path, the first one Daimon knows off having done it like that.

    Maybe the mage path is easier for Neptune''s natives, but so far, all the other Ster ranks he has met are mages, a subject he has taken note and decided to talk with Vincentter, for now he saw those yellow crystal chains restraining Shirel and then turned to see the queen.

    ''She actually used a lot of light element mana crystals to create chains, just to make that Skelefiend woman ufortable, maybe she couldn''t get the answer she wanted'', he thought.

    Ae isn''t the type to enjoy other''s suffering, unlike Horals who has a few screws loose, she doesn''t like torture, but she isn''t afraid of resort to it.

    And so, she made those chains to slowly wear Shirel''s resistance away, she didn''t resort to anything more than that, probably because if Horrorw got to feel that she was in too much pain¡­ he might dere an all-out war out of anger.

    So, she was given a preferential treatment of sort, but that might change right now, if her answers don''t convince Ae.

    "Hi miss Shirel, I happen to have some questions for you, this mask you see here, is there anyone you know wearing a simr one, but with a pyramidal shape?", asked the queen.

    Shirel whose mage powers were sealed and her body was contaminated with light mana, making her feel miserable, gritted her teeth, she saw the responsible of all this, sitting there quietly, naturally she was ring at Daimon.

    Despite the rebellious expression she put for a moment, she still answered, in part because she could see a pair of fierce eyes ring at her, from within the masked silver haired youth, which made her remember the horrors she experienced when she was trapped into that miniature ck castle, which up to this date caused her to have nightmares.

    "It''s not a pyramid, but there is someone with a white mask among Horrorw''s "subordinates", it''s a female knight called Wi, she wears a mask with a rectangr shape, ording to my deal with you Mermen queen, I''m not lying in exchange of not being tortured, but I don''t have too much information regarding Horrorw''s matters", she said.

    Ae who was using her Analyze Resonance as the vertical yellow line in the middle of her forehead suggested, nodded, she was telling the truth, so that guy mentioned by Carlos didn''t belong to the Bone Sea, so that made things easier, the next destination not only for Daimon, but for her too, was the Elemental Sea.

    Daimon didn''t miss the resentful voice of Shirel when she talked about Horrow, and the deal she mentioned having done with the queen, which made him remember it''s been sometime since they sent a message to the Bone Sea, for a negotiation to change Shirel''s liberty for promise of no aggression from that old mummy, and they have gotten no answer yet.

    "Miss Ae, have you gotten any notice regarding the negotiation with that old corpse?", he asked.

    Ae bitterly smiled, as she answered.

    "I got it today, I was going to tell you after we finished here, but I guess since the involved are present, there is no harm in letting her hear, they said we can keep her and harm her if we want, we''ll be attacked by them anyway".

    Daimon dangerously smirked, the Skelefiends were ying to be brave now, back then when Shirel was captured, Horrow retired with the tail between his legs, demanding that she wasn''t harmed at all.

    Shirel gritted her teeth, she then turned to see the queen before saying.

    "I told you, my father is in seclusion, so Horrorw isn''t showing the same amount of respect for me than normal, he is temporarily the only Maximum Ster ranked at our continent, so he is doing whatever the fuck he wants, like banging some that Wi bitch, because we haven''t officially married yet, humph".

    Shirel''s family is the reason as to why Horrorw could be the leader of the Skelefiends, her father is the strongest Skelefiend mage, while Horrorw is the strongest Skelefiend knight, the two factions had been at war for countless years, and they only stopped due to a political marriage.

    But before anything was official, Shirel''s father suffered some backsh, precisely when the statue of Snakele, the deity of the Skalia continent where the Skelefiends lived, exploded which supposedly was a historical treasure, just like the Trident of Promise, of the Mermen Sea.

    So that old man was in seclusion to cure his wounds and all the power fell in Horrow''s hands, he still showed respect to Shirel, but he no longer treated her as the apple of his eyes, and instead returned to be "free", since Shirel kept him on a short leash, even if they haven''t officially married yet.

    "Mm, we could send him a couple of fingers, maybe that will make him realize I''m being serious", mumbled Daimon, making Shirel''s body shiver, the woman who put her into that castle of nightmares, was the silver haired masked youth''s subordinate, so she believed he coulde with even worse tortures than her.

    "W-Wait, you just want the Skelefiends to not attack you right, Horrorw won''t ept it, he is aiming to be the sole leader of Skalia, but my father is different, he built schools and hospitals following the teachings of Snakele, those who chose the mage path once reaching the peak of the Mortal realms, no longer need to consume the flesh of living beings, I''m sure you can negotiate with him", she said in a hurry.

    Daimon stopped to think for a moment, the origin of the conflict between the seas is so old that at this point no one knows what happened back then, one of the things that has kept the quarrels ongoing, before the scheming guy entered the scene, was the fact that Skelefiends required flesh of the living to evolve, but that could be solved by them hunting magic beasts.

    So, what Shirel said has some merit, a Maximum Ster ranked less as an enemy is a big help, so if Horrorw isn''t willing to cooperate, Shirel''s father sounds like the perfect option to rece him, not because of his beliefs, but because Daimon knows and is in possession of his weakness.

    Horrorw wasn''t so obedient towards Shirel out of love after all, he did it because her father doted on her so much, that he might go at war with Horrow over some trivial matters, as long as Shirel ask him to.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "We''ll talk about thatter, Horals, return her to her cell but remove the light mana crystal chains, just rece her by normal chains", ordered Daimon.

    "Yes, young master".

    Ae didn''t object at Daimon''s decision, if Shirel was going to be their chip of bargain, she had to look good and healthy, she instead added.

    "Take this trash with you too, just throw him into one of the closed cells".

    Horals didn''t ask for Daimon''s confirmation and he just slightly bowed his head, as he grabbed Carlos by his neck, while he dragged the chair in which Shirel was being restrained, to drag her away.

    "Understood, young miss!".

    Now that the "outsiders" in other words, Carlos and Shirel were gone, it was time for the main star of the night to be interrogated, in other words the creature which tried to make ck Wave submit.

    The guys from ck Wave were allowed to stay, because they were the targets, Pablo already knows about the creatures, and his mother mentioned something interesting, regarding the ck mist used by the creatures.

    In any case, Olivia and the others will also be Daimon''s subordinates or they will die, so there was no harm in letting them see what was targeting them, in fact it was helpful for the purpose of bringing them under his wing in an easier way.

    Daimon stood up, this time Horals wasn''t apt for the interrogation, the thing the creatures feared the most was light, and probably the thing in his pants.

    Naturally he was referring to the ck Sea Emblem, the thing swallowed that ck sphere which ultimately killed the previous creature which was impersonating the subordinate of the ckfin Duke.

    "Senior Aurora, cast an enclosed space made out of light mana please, I''ll need your help with the next interrogation", said Daimon.

    The creature was knocked down unconscious up to this moment for safety reasons, even if this prison waspletely isted from the outside, there was no reason to not put anotheryer of security just in case.

    Aurora did as she was told and she created a cube made out of light mana to iste the ones who will participating in the interrogatory from the others, she then woke up the creature which was just a limbless trunk right now.

    In fact, it was less than that, it was just an upper body, but that didn''t seem to worry the creature, it instead looked at its surroundings trying to find anything that gave its current ubication away, but it could only see light yellow mana walls no matter where it looked at.

    "You won''t get away with this, once my Lord makes tis move, then you''ll experience a living hell¡­ ahhh!".

    The creature didn''t expect to feel any pain, but his face was burning right now, and it wasn''t a normal pain, but a deep and horrible one.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and the white mes which were engulfing the face of the creature returned to his body.

    "You probably have done this quite a few times, so to put it in simply words, answer my questions or be prepared to experience a living hell, right now", coldly said Daimon.

    The creature which was coughing, as its face released an anormal smoke, result of it being burned by Demon Light.

    Still the creature didn''t let the pain break its spirit, instead it looked at Aurora before saying.

    "Even if you capture me with your light mana, you won''t get a thing for me, no matter what you do, I''ll just return to my Lord''s side to get a new life hahaha!".

    Aurora was about to use a spell to make the creature bleed, but Daimon stopped her from doing so, he put his hand in his pocket and then took out his ck Sea Emblem, and then showed it to the creature.

    "If you are referring to that ck sphere thates out of your body to escape, then let me tell you a little secret¡­ your previous friend tried to do that and was caught and devoured by my Sea Emblem, tell me have you heard anything about that guy with tons of eyes on its face, after its disappearance", said Daimon with a smirk.

    The creature actually showed some reaction, no one knew about that way of escaping, exclusive to them, that''s why they didn''t care about their physical bodies, since the only important thing couldn''t be damaged, unless there was a strong light affinity mage involved.

    Daimon saw the creature being sessfully shocked by the knowledge he gained thanks to the previous confrontation and his eyes glowed behind his mask.

    These things acted as if they weren''t afraid of death, whatever they were, but that is only a superficial thing, since they have a way to survive, so it was time to see how loyal were these creatures to the scheming guy.

 Chapter 412 The Creatureâ€™s True Nature

    The creature had the word "Impossible" written all over its face, it could feel the aura of his missingradeing from that ck Sea Emblem, of which he has never heard off, not only that but those white mes didn''t burn its flesh only.

    The flesh they used was just like a piece of cloth, they could take it and change it when needed, without any pain, there was only one thing that actually was alive for them, and it could only be harmed by attacks which were at least as strong as them, that was one of the blessings of his lord.

    Light mana attacks could somewhat ignore that blessing, but not to the point that someone at the beginning of the mortal realm could make him feel pain, and damage its core, and yet it happened in front of its eyes a second ago.

    "W-Wait a second, a unique sea emblem¡­ you are the heir of the hero, no but you have light affinity, who the hell are you!", shouted the creature.

    The only one who has had the capacity to directly harm them, with a realm weaker than them is the hero in the legends, but he had the ck Armored Shark lineage and had darkness affinity, while his silver haired youth had light affinity, it didn''t make sense.

    ''Lord, told us that the only light mages who were threat to our blessings, belonged to the Light Pce, but the Light Pce only has women and they don''t focus in offensive, and this guy''s light is fully destructive, so what''s gong in, did the Lordmit a mistake!'', swore the creature in its mind.

    Daimon didn''t bother to clear the misunderstanding, he has both light and darkness affinities, but he isn''t rted to the hero at all, he stole this opportunity to Adam, so there is a higher chance that the hero was rted to him.

    But he could confirm a couple of things thanks to the reaction of the creature, first they were afraid of death, which meant they can be intimidated and since these creatures are for sure not natives of Neptune, then its worth trying to use terror contractor.

    Daimon first turned to see Thea, who immediately understood what he wanted, her right pupil turned blood red as tried to discern if the creature was under some kind of contract, but to her surprise there wasn''t any contract, in fact there wasn''t anything.

    "This thing¡­ doesn''t have a soul", mumbled Thea.

    Contracts are linked to the soul, but if her eyes weren''t deceiving her, this thing in front of her had no soul, or at the very least she can''t see the contracts which would be attached to it normally, and that is a first.

    Daimon frowned, the previous creature reacted too fast and after destroying itself, the ck Sea Emblem swallowed that ck sphere, so they couldn''t interrogate it, but this time they made the necessary preparations.

    "It''s fine, I don''t need him to have one, as long as it can feel pain, we''ll be fine", said Daimon with a smirk, he then grabbed the head of the creature and his hand exploded in white mes.

    At first the creature endured it, but then when it started to let out smoke like earlier, the mouth of the creature which started on its neck started letting out pained screams.

    Others might be intimidated by the fact that something doesn''t have a soul, but for Daimon this creature is just another race, for him who lived in a world were magic didn''t exist, any mage would have been considered a deity.

    So, from his perspective, gods, demons, monsters, one could be any of the previous with enough strength, so there was no need to be afraid, he just needed to be stronger and even the most horrible creature will bow down to him.

    That being said, it is true that these creatures whatever they are, are quite unpleasant to the eye, but that might be due to his personal perspective which originates from his life as a human mostly.

    "Stop, what do you want!", the creature finally couldn''t resist it and shouted to get Daimon to stop, which was good, as he had used half of his battle aura reserves in a matter of a minute to burn the creature.

    Even if it seemed to be especially weak towards his Demon Light, there was too much of a gap in their realms, Daimon only managed to burn ayer of skin, revealing the ck meat below of it, but that was enough, just like he stated, he just needed to instill fear into the creature, and regardless of race, the biggest fear anyone can have, is the unknown.

    So now the creature was questioning itself, "who is he", "why am I feeling pain", and other doubts had been nted in its mind.

    Daimon slowly retired his hand from the head of the creature, there was a horrible burn with the form of a palm on its face, it had no eyes or nose to begin with, so the only result was that the ck colored flesh below its skin was now showing.

    The creature has an expression of disbelief.

    "Y-You, what did you do to me, this is the pain you low creatures feel, how is it possible that I''m experiencing it!", it shouted, apparently it was in such a shock that it revealed something it shouldn''t had.

    Daimon turned to see the queen before saying.

    "Miss Ae, can you do me the favor of kicking this guy on the shoulder".

    The queen didn''t know what Daimon was trying to confirm but she did as he asked and with an elegant small turn, she kicked the creature which was chained, on the shoulder, her heels were actually a magic equipment, that''s why she earlier easily kicked Carlos''s teeth out of his mouth without any problem, inparison when she punched his face, she also harmed herself.

    As Daimon expected, the result was null, though Ae''s heel pierced the skin of the creature making a wound, there was no blood or any reaction from the creature, it was just a dent on its body and nothing else.

    Daimon then grabbed one of the many torture tools, a regr hammer which wasn''t even a magic treasure and handed it to Ae.

    "Now try to hit it on the burned area".

    "Mm", Ae took the hammer from Daimon''s hands and the creature actually showed an expression of fear on its face.

    "W-Wait¡­ aghhhh!", Ae didn''t pay attention to the creature''s words, and she just smashed the hammer against its face.

    To her surprise, this time there was blood, and that is when being hit by Ae, who isn''t exactly physically strong, as she is a mage, maybe she is as physically strong as an early-stage knight, since she has been reinforced by mana during her life.

    It shouldn''t be enough to harm a middle stage Ster ranked to this degree, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, he now confirmed a few things.

    First when Aurora attacked it using light mana it did have effect on the creature, it also caused some pain, but it was only because it was hit with strong light mana, the loss of its body parts had no effect at all.

    To confirm that, he asked the queen to kick the creature, she created a new dent on the body of the creature but there was no blood or any reaction, even with the help of a magic equipment.

    But then she just used a random normal hammer to smack the area he burned with Demon Light, and this time it was as if she attacked a regr human, there was a bloody mess on the face of the creature.

    The most shocked one here, was none other than the creature though, its expression was truly worth seeing right now, the areas where it was cut by Aurora''s light mana had a burned tone, but after the attack ended everything returned to normal, the creature didn''t feel any pain or nothing.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Inparison the burn from Demon Light not only was darker, but it seemed to have infected the creature or something like that, creating a vulnerable area, or to be more urate turning its previously insensitive body into a normal one.

    Daimon''s face turned into a smiling one, his bad habit was showing right now, the queen and Thea already know that when he smiles like that, someone is about to suffer, and they were right.

    He extended his arms towards the creature and thetter trembled, it actually tried to dodge in fear, but with only an upper body which is chained, it couldn''t do much as Daimon''s fists which were burning in white mes punched it.

    "Aghh, no stop please!", the pain wasn''t as much as previously since Daimon was limiting the exposition to Demon Light, to adjust to his battle aura reserves, what was making the creature scream as if there was no tomorrow, was the sight of its body turning like its face, ck burned and "alive", with all the implications that came with it, like the sensation known as pain.

    By the time Daimon finished, the whole body of the creature was covered in ck burned bruises, as for the thing it was actually shaking, if it had eyeballs maybe it would have been crying.

    Daimon on the other hand was happy, he discovered something pretty interesting, these creatures had a simr ability to the one he got from killing the smiling ghoul some time ago, "Dull Nerves", with it he could ignore 20% of the pain produced by physical wounds, but it''s not like he didn''t receive the damage, he just felt less pain.

    In fact, Daimon de-activated that skill already, pain is an important measure for the body, not feeling it will make one less sharp and careless, since there is no reason to react time when you don''t receive "any" repercussion from it.

    But the ability this creature had was slightly different, it was as if its everything was condensed into that ck sphere, so everything that affected it was negated, as long as that ck sphere was intact, the body was just a puppet for it.

    Which made sense, the scheming guy handed a method to the Skelefiends which allowed them to control the body of the dead so perfectly, that others wouldn''t notice it, at least for a period of time until the dead body started deteriorating, the principle behind it was the same as this.

    ''So that bastard is indeed a necromancer, I can cross out the possibility of Marcus being really good to hide its true nature now''.

    Like previously stated, when two strategists fight, the one whose nature is unveiled before loses, and right now Daimon did a really important discovery, there are plenty of ways to mess with a necromancer''s abilities, which were developed by the humans back at his gxy to counter the undead.

    So now, he had to give a shopping list to Vincent and assign a few quick-feet people to do some errands, but that can wait for now, he turned to see the creature which was trembling just by being red at by Daimon.

    "Y-You are an esteemed Lord yourself, then why are you helping these lowly inferior beings!", it shouted, after that, Daimon finally heard the sweet sound of a notification ringing in his mind.

    [Ding]

    [Lesserhereal "Ra''ax" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Not only that, he could feel something flowing from the creature which was being absorbed by him, his Overlord''s Pride aura was increasing, which made sense, since it was basically a coat made with the fear strong beings felt due to him, it was almost there, he could feel that with a small push this incredibly practical passive skill will level up, which is amazing considering how hard is for a high ranked skill to level up.

    ''I wonder what a level 3 skill''s might will look like'', thought Daimon.

    But then as he was about ept the loyalty of the creature, to enve it through a terror contract, he heard two voices calling his name, one inside his mind and the othering from his shadow.

    ''Back off Daimon!''.

    "Watch out, young master!".

    Daimon''s instincts also kicked in and he actually jumped backwards, surprisingly the queen who was standing the closest to the creature due to his previous request of help, didn''t seem to notice anything, but Daimon managed to drag her with him just in time.

    "Why Lord¡­ arghghgh!", the creature suddenly let out a pained scream and a ck ominous liquid came out of its mouth, eyes, nose and ears, it looked like ck ink which soon covered the body od the creature and also the nearby area of three meters around it.

    Aurora''s expression turned dead serious, as soon as that ck ink touched the room she made with light mana, her mana reserves dropped in 30%, that is 30% of a maximum Ster ranked, it''s an insane amount of mana.

    ''Tsk, a curse, I guess I should have expected it from someone who breaks his toys when he loses'', thought Daimon, the notification disappeared meaning the creature was dead.

    "Don''t you think these things should be done in a proper order~", a mellow voice woke Daimon out of his daze.

    He looked downwards just to see the pretty face of the queen a couple of centimeters away from his, due to the sudden situation, he pushed her down when he took her with him to put some distance between them and the creature.

    So, Ae wasying down on the floor, with Daimon on top of her, his arms were supporting him preventing them to be stuck to each other, but it was an awkward position to say the less.

    "Ahem, sorry that took me by surprise", said Daimon as he impulse himself with his right arm to get up, he also offered a hand to help the queen stand up, which she dly epted.

    Daimon noticed the apologetic expression on Thea''s face, she reacted only second to him, or more urately second to Evangeline and Rita who were the ones that noticed something was wrong and warned Daimon before, by the time Daimon had pushed the queen away, Thea had appeared next to them and was ready to block the attack with her spear, but that ck ink stopped spreading, it was a low range effect but in exchange it was truly powerful, having drained 30% of Aurora''s mana reserves.

    That is by far much more than what a middle Ster ranked like that creature can make a maximum one use to defend from an attack, even if it self-detonates its core, a maximum ranked can blow the explosion away like the me on a birthday''s cake candle.

    "Luckily you asked me to make this room, otherwise that ck ink would have melted this whole ce", said Aurora.

    Daimon nodded, he noticed a small movement in his pocket and his ck Sea Emblem came out flying out of it, the little thing actually swallowed the now solidified corpse of the creature along with each drop of the ck ink, leaving nothing behind before it returned to Daimon''s pocket.

    Leaving the curse aside, this exchange of movements between Daimon and the scheming guy, ended in Daimon''s victory, he now knew the nature of the powers of the opponent, and the name of the race to which those creatures belonged.

    Not to mention the fact that his Terror Contractor skill worked against them, now he just needed to find a way to deal with that loyalty curse.

    Pablo and the others from ck Wave were frozen at the corner of the room, they didn''t know what was real and what wasn''t, well all of them but Olivia who was frowning.

 Chapter 413 Black Waveâ€™s Submission

    Daimon dusted off his clothes, now that the creature was gone, there was just one pending matter to tend to before he could return with his beloved Aisha to have a rxing bath, in preparation for his departure tomorrow.

    He approached Pablo and the others and made Pablo remove the restrain that was preventing Olivia from talking.

    "You already saw what is this dealing with, I offer your ck Wave a chance to not only survive but prosper, instead of the very with cattle purposes that those things will put you through if they win".

    "Naturally, you''ll all have to sign a contract and those who fail to fulfill the requirements will be executed on the spot since I don''t need spies in my files", he said.

    To Pablo''s surprise, his mother who in his experience should be getting angry and try to fight back, remained silent for a moment before she nodded.

    "We''ll join you, but you have to guarantee we''ll be paid for our services and rewarded for our contributions, we are assassins and not ves after all", said Olivia, to which Daimon agreed.

    Olivia noticed her son''s baffled expression and she sighed wondering where did she go wrong at raising him, what a joke she just saw the queen who doesn''t show any face even to the king, not only listen to the masked silver haired youth, but casually acting close to him as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

    Not only that, but the creature which was horrifying enough to make her, who has seen quite a lot of the ugly side of the underworld of Neptune, feel unpleasant just by being in its presence, she wasn''t too sensitive or something, it was an instinctive thing.

    And yet this youth who she is sure is younger than anyone in this room, made such a thing feel fear to the point that it begged for pardon, she who has survived so many crises to reach the Ster rank as and removed a lot of heads until she became this ck Wave''s branch leader, could recognize an opportunity when she saw one.

    Besides, she knew her son wouldn''t betray her unless he was forced, so since her sole weakness was in the hands of the silver haired youth, why should she suffer, when submitting will give benefit her.

    Someone who had the support of the Light Pce''s matriarch, couldn''t be a bad boss anyway.

    Daimon called Thea and she helped him make the contract between Olivia and Daimon, the Empress was still a bit down since she couldn''t detect that curse, her pride in her innate ability which was in her eyes, took a blow.

    But to be honest she wasn''t at fault, out of all the ones present, only Evangeline probably noticed that curse before it showed signs of activating, but couldn''t say anything until it was endangering Daimon directly, due to the restrictions of the system.

    As for why Rita reacted first, that''s because she lives is Daimon''s shadow, also unlike Horals whose talent is battle, she excels at mana sense, which ends up making her a formidable mage, giving her an incredible facility toprehend her element.

    Thea still reacted faster than Aurora and Ae, so she genuinely doesn''t have a reason to feel bad about it, but Daimon didn''t say anything to not put salt on the wound.

    Olivia casually epted the contract bing Daimon''s third subordinate through Thea''s contract ability, Daimon then ordered Pablo to remove the restrains on the other executives.

    Not even a secondter, one of the executives, the one who Olivia earlier ordered to take Pablo to a safe ce, which was also her second inmand, a tall man called Mekt, became a sh of light that aimed at Daimon''s neck.

    But there was an even faster sh of electricity that made Mekt froze on the spot.

    "Blegh!", Mekt, whose mouth was covered by a piece of cloth, vomited blood, he slowly looked downwards and saw a knifeing out of his throat, he managed to slightly turn his head backwards, just to see Olivia''s cold eyes ring at him.

    "L-Lady Olivia, why¡­", he managed to say before the light abandoned his eyes as he copsed on the ground dead.

    The other executives had a not so convinced expression on their faces, profession aside, Mekt has been at Olivia''s side from the very beginning, it''s not a secret for everyone that he had feelings for her, and yet she killed him just like that.

    It''s not like they were exactly friends, but it didn''t leave a good taste in their mouths to see their boss surrendering to the other side so easily, but that onlysted for a second, before they saw Daimon removing the piece of cloth that was covering Mekt''s lower face.

    "T-That is!", one of the other executives pointed at Mekt''s corpse, the flesh of his mouth was gone, leaving his raw meat exposed, surprisingly there was no wound or blood, as if it was meant to be this way, which is clearly not the case, since Mekt was a regr mixed Mermen.

    "He has worn that cloth since we left the gathering between the four leaders of ck Wave, I originally thought it was just a personal preference, who would have thought that he already betrayed us and jumped into the carriage of the leader of the Bone Sea¡­", said Olivia.

    Independently of that, she acted because she who has lightning affinity could see that the silver haired youth which became her boss a second ago, was smiling from the beginning to the very end of the incident.

    The others confused the fact that he released the restrains on them before making them sign contracts, as a "greenhorn" mistake, but Olivia realized that Daimon did it on purpose.

    ''He already knew there was something fishy ongoing and used this opportunity to purge the spy and also see what my reaction would be¡­ what a terrifying fellow'', she thought.

    Olivia was right, Daimon never did something without a reason, like previously stated he has already seen through the pattern of actions behind the scheming guy.

    That preference of using one''s weakness to get what it wants, is a major w in its strategy from Daimon''s point of view, it makes it easy to see from where will the knife wille for you.

    That guy was Olivia''s most trusted subordinate, if his treason wouldn''t have been revealed, then ck Wave would have been infiltrated from the inside and no one would have noticed it.

    Unfortunately, he had no option but to act right now and then try to sweettalk Olivia, with something along the lines of "It was for the sake of ck Wave", since he wouldn''t be able to sign a contract that will kill him on the spot, as he had ulterior moves from the very beginning.

    Naturally Daimon has already seen through it, he was the one who created this chance for Mekt, by sending sound transmissions to the queen, Thea and Aurora, telling them to show some "distraction", so that the assassin will try to attack him.

    And those three perfectly executed their role, from the very beginning the assassin was a clown dancing on Daimon''s hand, even if Olivia turned out to be a disappointment, the murderous intent and the pair of eyes that could be seening from Daimon''s shadow, meant Rita was up to protect her young master.

    "Just to be clear, I don''t have the hobby of killing anyone who doesn''t deserve it, if you work for me, then you can expect to get benefits, that guy probably sold himself over a chance to be a Ster ranked, even if that meant bing one of those things", said Daimon as he pointed at Mekt''s corpse, which had started crumbling apart, apparently the one who gave him that power made it so there would be no corpse to study once he died.

    But that is also fine, because now Daimon could confirm that normal beings could turn into those creatures, one must not underestimate the wish of others for strength, and since the scheming guy had the means to grant others strength, then it was easy to find fools to manipte.

    That also drew a line between the White''s ancestor and the scheming guy which wasn''t clear before, since Carlos was given power through a potion instead of being turned into one of those creatures, the objective was the same, but the method was way different, so Daimon could confirm that they weren''t on the same side, each had their own goal.

    Daimon then took out a wooden bottle and opened it, making the four executives and even Olivia''s eyes glow, they could feel every cell of their bodies telling them that the content of that bottle was beneficial for them.

    Daimon then poured a ss of three-colored water and handed it to Olivia, who immediately recognized it as one of the most treasured resources of the Clear Water kingdom, which was exclusive to the Minister of development and their closest family members.

    "Three-colored water", she mumbled as she epted the ss Daimon poured her.

    "That''s right, like I said, those who work for me get rewarded", said Daimon.

    The three-colored water is beneficial for anyone regardless of element, at least the first time, after that, only those whose affinity is rted to water, will be able to get some benefits out of it, but it is still not a resource that can be found even in the ck market as it is strictly regted by Raymond.

    Not to mention all Mermen had a decent water affinity, even if it isn''t their main one, the three-colored water is indeed one of the most beneficial things they can get, to the point that there is a chance, they improve their lineage concentration thanks to it, like Walford.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Naturally this ss which Daimon handed Olivia, wasn''t even close to the dosage needed for it to take effect on a Ster ranked, but the fact that he was willing to give such a precious resource to a newly joined subordinate as a reward made those executives eyes to glow.

    If they are going to sell themselves, why not choose the highest bidder, they will get stronger and wouldn''t need to turn into monsters, and they just had to kill others for it, it was a dreame true for them.

    "We greet the young master!", they said at unison, imitating Horals''s demeanor.

    Daimon inwardly smirked, naturally not everyone was as perceptive as Olivia who submitted out of her own will, without the need for any external reward, besides keeping her life of course.

    For those who were destined to always be soldiers, immediate benefits are the best way to control them, the method of the stick and the carrot so to speak.

    ''Sigh, these fools just wasted a chance for long term benefits over some peanuts¡­ whatever, as long as they can live that''s fine'', she thought.

    Olivia dly drank the ss of three-colored water, and could feel it nurturing her body, she then bowed and said.

    "Thanks for the young master for his generosity, I have something to report, may I proceed?".

    Daimon nodded; he was interested in the conversation she was having with the creature before the battle broke out.

    "Go ahead, there are no strangers in this room", he said.

    Olivia then proceeded to tell Daimon everything regarding the gathering of the leaders of ck Wave.

    Turns out, that this time things took a different direction, ck Wave is an organization that was founded a long time ago, but it started as a mere gathering point for assassins to exchange information and jobs.

    Once the organization grew big enough, they split into four branches one for each sea, they then develop their own methods, rules and internal organization, which resulted in the ck Wave of today.

    Still, they kept in touch, since that way they could wok as an informationwork that covered all Neptune, and the leaders of each branch reunited once a year to exchange information and discuss some major events.

    This time they gathered, due to all the recent important events that had happenedtely, like the Trident of Promise breaking, the statue of Snakele, the Shaman receiving backsh, and the recent actions of the pirates and the Skelefiends.

    Everything was going like usual, but at the end of the meeting, the leader of the ck Wave branch at the Bone Sea, asked for a moment to talk exclusively with the other three leaders.

    It was then when things went downhill, the four leaders were originally on equal standing, all being early stage Ster ranked, but this time the leader of the Bone Sea turned out to have advanced to the middle stage, not only that but his affinity which was originally earth, somehow became rted to darkness.

    Or at least that''s what Olivia used to believe after she saw him using some kind of ck mist to demonstrate his current powers, he invited them to join first, but the three leaders naturally knew there was no such a thing as a free meal.

    And when they said they will take some time to think about it, the leader of the Bone Sea changed his approach, from an amicable invitation to forced recruitment, the other three leaders joined hands to resist and were able to escape each using their own means.

    "The leader of the Maelstrom Sea suffered wounds when we were escaping, but me and the leader of the Elemental Sea were able to defend ourselves, could be because my affinity is lightning and wind, while the leader of the Elemental Sea has fire affinity, which are able to face darkness head on", said Olivia.

    She still felt chills remembering that ck mist, which was practically the same as the one the creature tried to use to attack them, it wasn''t hard to deduce who was behind the sudden advance of the leader of the Bone Sea.

    Daimon nodded, he more or less understood the current situation, since the Global Raid was approaching, the scheming guy had started to elerate its ns after seeing them fail due to Daimon''s interference.

    In other words, it went from exploiting weaknesses directly to overwhelm others with strength, the usual pattern.

    "Olivia, do you have a registry of all the ones who joined ck Wave?", asked Daimon.

    "Mm, we make everyone sign a silence contract before they enter the organization, so we have a list of the names and directions of all the members", she said.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see Thea.

    "Miss Thea, can you apany them and bring all those guys under a contract?".

    Thea nodded, the other members of ck Wave were weaker than the executives, so she could mass contract them, and with her ability to travel through space easily, they should be finished in a couple of hours at most, not to mention she still felt bad regarding the curse which she didn''t realize was nted into the creature.

    "Please do so, we''ll be leaving tomorrow, so don''t overdo it", said Daimon.

    Thea used her spear to cut a breach into the space and the dragged Olivia, Pablo and the now four executives, they had a lot of cleaning to do after all.

    Daimon let out a sigh of relief, he was exuding Overlord''s Pride aura all the time, to leave a big impression on those assassins, not to mention he practically used all his battle aura when he dealt with the creature, he already used Sanctuary today during the tournament, so he couldn''t replenish his stamina, mana and battle aura that way.

    Though Aurora was here, he didn''t ask her to use Silver Citadel on him, earlier because he didn''t want to waste it, what if a real emergency happened, then he would be in trouble, but now everything was over at least for today.

    "Let''s go back to the old man''s mansion¡­ here this should help you with that", said Daimon.

    With everything that happened, Ae forgot about the small wound in her hand, she got due to punching Carlos on the face without any mana, so Daimon handed her a healing potion.

    It was nothing special, but the queen still dly epted it and drank it on the spot, only after that, she opened the portal back to Vincent''s house using the arrays in her private prison.

    "I''ll go talk with Mellie, goodnight", the queen was still processing what she learned about her mother''s death, so after a short goodbye she left to Daimon''s room, where Mellie was.

    Aurora wasn''t any better, there were some troubles lurking on the shadows of the Elemental Sea too, so she was worried about that.

    "I''ll go prepare for tomorrow''s departure, please keep an eye on that little girl", she said as she left.

    Daimon stretched his body and then went to his room, where Aisha has been waiting for him to haver her "bath", the others were already sleeping, with the only exception of Mellie who left the room to have a conversation with Ae.

    Aisha''s pretty purple eyes glowed as she saw Daimon entering through the door.

    "You sure tool your sweet time interrogating that thing, darling~", she yfully said, her little fangs erged a bit, giving her a slightly wild charm, and Daimon knew he was about to be suck dry, in all the meaning of the word.

 Chapter 414 A Love-Thirsty Vampire (Part 1) R-18

    Aisha who was previously leisurelyying down on the bed waiting for Daimon, jumped out andnded right on front of him, she made no sound as if that beautiful body of hers had no weight.

    Daimon could feel the intense gaze of his mother on him and he chuckled, this is the first time they drink blood from each other and then put out, going all the way for so much time.

    One mustn''t underestimate the euphoria caused by a vampire drinking blood, now add to that the fact that they arepatible blood partners and you get a horny time bomb, it is a miracle that Aisha didn''t jump on Daimon earlier during the day.

    On the other hand, she turned all that into fierceness for the fight during the tournament earlier, those who fought her are lucky that Aisha has some nice self-control, or they wouldn''t have ended with just minor injuries.

    "Ahem, let''s go ahead and take our bath", whispered Daimon, as he took off his shoes and the mask to leave them on top of the bed.

    Aisha''s eyes glowed in a pretty purple light, as she happily followed Daimon into the bathroom closing the door behind her.

    Inside of the bathroom, Daimon started undressing today was quite a long day and he honestly needed some rxation, he has been on guard the whole time, so it was finally time for him to calm down and take a break.

    "Go ahead to the shower darling, I''ll join you in a moment~", Aisha''s yful voice made its way into Daimon''s ears, making him raise an eyebrow.

    But he didn''t refuse and instead finished undressing before entering the shower, the little water drops fell on Daimon''s body, easing him and rxing his stiff shoulders.

    He heard the sound of familiar footsteps approaching him, and then felt a soft sensation envelope his body from the back.

    "Mom?", Daimon turned his head around a bit, just to see Aisha tightly hugging him from behind.

    Aisha''s little nose wrinkled a couple of times and then she cutely pouted, as she mumbled.

    "You had to carry all of them earlier, now you smell like them¡­ not fair~".

    Daimon didn''t know whether he shouldugh or cry, his mother, the one with whom he has been sleeping while cuddling, practically everyday since they arrived at the secondyer of Neptune, was feeling jealous just because he carried all the other girls around the maze earlier.

    Those pretty eyes of hers, and the needy expression she was putting, made Daimon''s heart skip a beat, she looked so damn cute right now.

    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á n?¦Ía| §ãom Daimon turned his body around and then gently raised Aisha''s face by her chin before he sealed her pretty lips with a kiss.

    "Mm~", Aisha''s heart started beating like a drum, her little tongue entered Daimon''s mouth and then entwined with his like a snake.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Daimon grabbed Aisha by her thin smooth waist but before he could lift her to carry her to the bathtub, she jumped and wrapped her legs around Daimon''s body.

    Daimon softlyughed while Aisha giggled, he then walked towards therge pool which worked as the bathtub, without stopping the kiss at all, luckily, he could use mana sense to watch his step, without the need to stop paying attention to Aisha, because she wasn''t letting go of him, and they could have ended up falling by ident.

    "Ssh!", Daimon jumped into the pool, and his body submerged into the water all the way to his stomach, the water sshed all over the ce drenching them all, and making Aisha finally stop the kiss.

    The water made Aisha''s long silver hair cover her pretty face, giving her a funny look, but she didn''t miss the chance seduce Daimon by amodating it backwards in a tempting way.

    Daimon saw the small water drops dripping though Aisha''s pretty pale skin, his eyes couldn''t help but aim at her privates, those big breasts of hers which ended in pretty light pink nipples, which were cutely hard as a sign of excitement.

    But that was just the entr¨¦e, his eyes naturally wandered downwards, all the way to the sacred ce between her legs, Daimon couldn''t help but gulp down, blood pumped into his thing as he got a raging boner just by staring at Aisha''s flower.

    Aisha could feel the desire of her beloved son for her and she giggled as she jumped into his arms, making Daimon step back until his back was leaned against the wall of the pool.

    "Oh my, my poor darling must be all pent up, being surrounded by all those pretty girls all the time, let me take care of you today~", Aisha softly blew at Daimon''s ear, making his penis twitch in expectation.

    Her hands sneakily moved downwards and then grabbed his thing, while she whispered at him.

    Normally Daimon is the one who takes the lead, but since Aisha was quite proactive today, he decided to leave it in her hands, literally.

    They walked towards the entrance of the pool, which is a set of stairs, a perfect ce for Daimon to sit while Aisha does her magic.

    The very moment Daimon sat on the stairs, Aisha started gently licking his neck,

    "Thanks for the meal~", she said, her cute little fangs erged a bit and then without any warning she bit him, a glint of ectasis shed through Aisha''s eyes as she drank a couple of sips of Daimon''s blood.

    She felt a hard burning thing pressing against her belly, which made her smile as she let go of Daimon, naturally her bite didn''t leave any mark, at least not on his neck.

    But it certainly had an effect, not only Daimon''s thing looked as if it was about to explode, Aisha on the other hand felt a hot sensation running through her body, her secret ce was dripping wet, with a different kind of fluid than the water of the pool too, making Daimon feel drunk due to the sweet scent of Aisha''s love juices.

 Chapter 415 A Love-Thirsty Vampiress (Part 2) R-18

    ?

    "Slurp~Slurp-Slurp~".

    "Nnnhh~".

    Slurping wet sounds followed by muffled moans, echoed through the bathroom, Aisha was thanking the architectures that build the mansion for making the bathroom soundproof, otherwise the other girls who were sleeping at the other side of the door would have noticed that they were doing more than taking a bath.

    "D-Darling¡­ahnn~", Aisha tried to ask Daimon to go easy on her, but he was in a trance right now.

    Daimon was grabbing Aisha by her waist, pushing her backwards, his face was buried between her legs, as he ecstatically licked the outer area of her vagina.

    He gently yed with the petals of her flower rubbing them and then slightly spreading them to take a peek at the light pink flower they were hiding.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed with desire as he saw Aisha''s pretty pink insides, he then moved his head frontwards and pushed his tongue inside her.

    "Mmbhh~", Aisha''s toes curled as she felt the hot long tongue of Daimon invading her, she felt a bolt of electricity running down her spine as Daimon started twirling his tongue around, hitting her sweet spots, which he knew like the palm of his hand at this point.

    Naturally, her body rewarded Daimon for his caresses, letting more of that sweet delicious nectar flow out of her pussy, it was vicious cycle for the poor Aisha, the more Daimon licked her insides, the more love juices she produced, Daimon then drank till thest drop of her nectar, and that made him use his tongue more on her, which started the cycle once again.

    In fact, without noticing, Daimon continued eating her out for around twenty minutes without showing any sign of wanting to stop, but luckily for Aisha, he noticed her legs were trembling with each lick at this point, and Daimon decided to end this part for today.

    "Phew", Daimon took his tongue out of Aisha''s pussy, and then gave it onest kiss, before he changed his focus.

    At this point, not only Aisha, but even his mind was a bit foggy, it could be because her sweet scent was assaulting his nose, enticing him, as his raging boner would suggest, or maybe because he hasn''t done anythingtely, but the desire for each other''s embrace was overtaking these pair of vampire mother and son.

    Still, Daimon wasn''t horny enough to ignore his beloved Aisha''s well-being, he raised his body just a bit, and then put all of his attention on her cute backdoor, that tight pinkish little hole has been twitching for quite some time asking for some love too, but Daimon was being bewitched by Aisha''s deliciously wet vagina earlier, so it was ignored until now.

    Daimon''s amethyst eyes which were glowing right now, showed a hint of lewdness, he started by slightly poking the little thing with his index finger.

    "Mmm~", Aisha covered her mouth, but her moaning voice still made its way into Daimon''s ears, letting him know she was enjoying the little massage on her backdoor.

    Daimon licked his lips, he moved his finger downwards and then took a bit of Aisha''s love juices with his finger, to then apply it on her butthole by rubbing it with his fingertip in small circles.

    "Darling, don''t tease me anymore~", cutely said Aisha, but Daimon''s response was to use his tongue to lick all the way from her vagina to her ass hole, making Aisha''s body shiver.

    "Hey, mom, do all girls taste so good, or is it because you are my soulmates?", jokingly asked Daimon, without stopping his tongue from licking her ass.

    Before his reincarnation, let alone having a lover, he didn''t even have the time to go on a date with a girl, it''s like he wasn''t popr or that no one showed interest in him, but after what happened with his scum of a father, it took him a while to be ready to trust in other people again, when he was a kid there was a girl in his ssroom who liked him, but she ended up distancing from him, because his drunkard piece of trash father came all the time to the school to cause problems, until he was expelled due to some drama in the parent''smunity regarding that.

    Unfortunately for him, right now, besides moaning, Aisha couldn''t do anything else, which made himugh.

    "This should be enough", he mumbled as he got up, to stand up behind Aisha, whose eyes glowed with expectation.

    "Come here darling~", she said as she swung her hips seductively, Daimon ced his hands on her thin waist and then rubbed his hard burning erection against Aisha''s pussy, smearing it with her love juices which mixed with the precum that was leaking from the tip.

    Daimon then pointed his thing at Aisha''s backdoor and after rubbing it against it a couple of times, he both pushed his hips forwards and dragged her by her waist towards him at the same time, only then he was able to push the tip inside of Aisha''s anus.

    "Wuuh~", Aisha let out a slightly pained moan, the regeneration abilities of a vampire are no joke, when they did it on a daily basis, Aisha''s body got used to Daimon''s size and she was a perfect fit for him, but now she has returned to how it was before.

    Daimon knew it and that is why he focused in loosening her up before going for it, even then it was barely enough for him to put the tip in without hurting her, luckily, he knew a little trick that allowed him to even go rough on Aura, despite her slim small frame.

    Aisha smiled feeling the warmness of Daimon''s body enveloping her, as he tightly hugged her from behind with all the care of the world to not move as to not harm her, the pleasure of Aisha''s body would make any man desperately move his hips seeking his own pleasure, it''s going to heal anyway since is a vampire, so what''s the big problem, vampires are selfish when ites to pleasure, so that is the normal current of thought among them, naturally it applies to both male and female vampires, especially those from the noble houses, Victor is a perfect example of that.

    Daimon then gently licked her neck before he shoved his fangs into her, he took a small sip of Aisha''s blood just for pleasure, and then left the bite do its magic.

    "Mmmn~", Aisha felt her body on fire as the euphoric pleasure caused by her darling drinking her blood, coursed through her.

    Daimon immediately noticed the changes in her body, her insides rxed enough for him to slide half of his dick inside of her, but that wasn''t all, her pussy started dripping more of its nectar, and her nipples which were rubbing against the floor of the bathroom, were stiff.

    She turned her head around and then pressed her lips against Daimon''s, they were pressing their bodies against each other as if they were trying to fuse into a single being.

    Without stopping the kiss, the water of the pool started waving as Daimon moved his hips back and forth, moving in and out of Aisha, slowly but surely, he was managing to put more and more of his dick inside of her.

    "Anghh~", Aisha suddenly broke the kiss to moan, as Daimon finally pushed the whole thing in.

    Daimon wasn''t doing any better though, he closed his eyes to enjoy the overwhelming pleasure he was feeling, Aisha''s insides were warm and freaking tight, he had to put a lot of effort just to move, just like the firs time they did it, but once she gets used to it, her body will be a perfect fit for him.

    He didn''t want to admit it, but seeing Aisha''s beautiful body being conquered below him, brought him a sense of pride, which was probably caused by his Apex Predator body, but that was a secondary source of pleasure.

    What was making his heart pound like crazy were those pretty eyes of hers, which were filled with intense love and the motherly tenderness that characterizes Aisha.

    Daimon grabbed Aisha''s right hand and intertwined his fingers with her, while he used the left one as support to hold onto her waist, while he started pounding her from behind.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Pah~Pah~Pah!".

    "Ahh~ahh~ahhnn!".

    The sound of meat colliding, moans and water sshing filled the bathroom, as Daimon gave a few days-worth of love to Aisha in a single exhibition, despite how rough it looked, Aisha raised her lower body by herself, to make it easier for Daimon to prate her.

    Not only that, she even started rotating her hips, to make Daimon''s penis enter her in different angles, both of them were giving their all to make the other feel good.

    "Nyaaa~", Aisha was taken by surprise when Daimon suddenly grabbed her by her waist and jumped out of the pool, not only his thing got bigger somehow, but the impulse made it go a bit deeper inside of her.

    Her insides spasmed and while she covered her face with her hands, love juices poured out of her pussy like a broken fountain, she actually came due to that sudden deep trust.

    But Daimon was still not finished, he walked towards one of the walls of the bathroom, while he kept his dick inside of her.

    "Haaa~haaa~haa~", Aisha was panting, her insides felt all tingly while her head was light, that climax hit her really hard, to the point that she nearly peed a bit, due to the stimtion, it''s normal since Daimon reached deeper inside of her than ever.

    "D-Darling, is it my imagination or you got bigger inside of me?", asked Aisha with a slightly nervous but strangely expecting voice.

    Daimon who finally reached his destination and then gently pressed Aisha against the wall, whispered at her.

    "I don''t know, I just felt the urge to push you down really hard a moment ago, that''s why I jumped out of the pool to find another spot to do it in a different angle".

    Aisha blushed, size is rtive, you could argue that adding once centimeter to something that is already big, doesn''t make that much of a difference, but when that something is stirring your insides, a centimeter can make a big difference.

    "Ahem, darling can you be gentle with me, I just came and¡­annhhh~", Aisha''s sentence was interrupted by a high-pitched moan escaping her mouth.

    Daimon lifted her body a bit and then prated her from below, reaching as deep as he could in a single go, her body has rxed quite a bit after the bite and the endorphins released by her brain after her orgasm, turned everything into pleasure right now, so there was nothing to worry about.

    He then started wildly pounding her, making Aisha''s body shake with each thrust, Daimon was holding her tight so that she couldn''t "resist", not like she was even going to do something like that, not when she was enjoying being the focus of Daimon''s world, even if it was just for this moment.

    That''s right, below the "victim" fa?ade she was putting, as she received all the pent-up desire, she was loving every single second of it, that being said, her body was taking quite a beating, she has orgasmed three times already, while Daimon hasn''t done it even once, which isn''t fair in her book.

    As if her body responded to the desire of making her lover enjoy it even more, her insides wrapped around Daimon''s penis and sucked him deeper inside of her, she also started moving her hips sidewards, as if she was dancing on Daimon''sp.

    "Kuh!", Daimon felt Aisha''s ass squeezing down on him, and he finally couldn''t hold back anymore, he pushed her against the wall and increased the pace of his thrusts, he was having troubles to move backwards, because Aisha didn''t seem to want to let go of his thing.

    So, between the already mind-melting pleasure of his dick moving inside her tight and warm ass and the strangely seductive movement of her hips, the dam broke and Daimon exploded inside of her.

    "Nnnnh~", Aisha felt a warmfortable sensation filling her as Daimon''s sperm flooded her insides.

    Their legs gave in and they slowly slid to the ground, normally one round is not even close to be enough to satisfy the libido of these pair of vampire mother and son, but the intensity with which they did it was enough to make both of them short of breath right now.

    Daimonid on top of Aisha''s back, still connected to her, while they both enjoyed the afterglow of their orgasm.

    He moved her drenched silver hair that had stuck to her nape, aside, and then whispered sweet word to Aisha, while he kissed her neck and cheeks.

    The sex was certainly amazing, but this part where they just remained stuck to each other, and flirted was one of the things that they enjoyed the most too.

    The conversation is different depending on the girl with which Daimon is cuddling, but the idea is the same, to have a heart-to-heart chat with the girls, since they feel especially close to each other after making love.

    "I''m not going to be able to sit down tomorrow, darling~", yfully said Aisha, making Daimon chuckle, she just wanted him to spoil her.

    Back then he even went out of his way to buy a lot of potions in a batch, including the ointment which he applied to the girls after they had anal sex for the first time, worried that they will be hurt the next day, just to be considered a worrywart by Erin and the others, since it was not necessary.

    All of them are way stronger than him, so the "wounds" left by him on them, would have healed right away, that being said, they all wanted to experience making love with their lover, and so powers were forbidden during bed activities.

    So, the ointment ended up being used, but after the first time, they just wanted to receive Daimon''s caresses, so even if they werepletely fine, they still asked him to tend to them, Erin specially went as far as saying that she was going to pass out of pain, if he didn''t properly cure her.

    In any case, Daimon did like helping the girls clean after everything was finished, it was part of the intimacy of a couple, what kind of selfish jerk just finishes and leaves the girl to deal with the mess after all, at least that''s what he believed.

    After a couple of minutes, Daimon and Aisha finally calmed down, he pulled out of Aisha and saw his white stuff flowing out of her cute butthole, that sight was enough to make him want to go for a second, third and fourth round if not to continue until they both fall asleep, but since they aren''t alone, that will be bad, so it was time to wrap things up.

    Daimon helped Aisha get up and they then went under the shower to wash and cleanse each other once again, Aisha was all smiles right now, feeling satisfied in all the meaning of the word.

    Once they finished, they dried off and put on some casual clothes, before leaving the bathroom, they spent around one hour inside of the bathroom, and that''s why they did it once the others were sleeping, so that they wouldn''t suspect, the only one whose senses were too sharp for Daimon to notice if they were discovered was Thea, but she was out putting all the members of ck Wave under a contract, so this was the perfect opportunity.

    Mellie hasn''t returned yet, but the others were soundly asleep, Daimon and Aisha got on their bed and then slightly cuddled as they closed their eyes to enter thend of dreams.

 Chapter 416 Cosmic Weaponry & Aishaâ€™s Advance

    ?

    The rest of the night went on uneventful, after that intense lovemaking session they had, Daimon and Aisha slept like logs, while Aisha was smiling even in her sleep and mumbling some unrecognizable things besides the word "darling", Daimon on the other hand just hugged her to sleep.

    He moved his body downwards so that his head was resting on Aisha''s belly, normally he would have used her generously big bosom as his pillow, but since they weren''t alone, that will be a bit too much.

    Sleeping together despite their age, was already stretching the concept of "close siblings" which they used for their public backstory a bit after all, getting touchier than that will be too obvious.

    At some point during the night, the door of the room opened, since today Daimon wanted to have deep night of sleep, like the kind he has when he is in his home safe with his girls, he gave Rita the task to watch over them, so he could lower his guard.

    The self-proimed head maid, dly epted the task her young master gave her, since she doesn''t need to sleep anyway, Rita''s head emerged from Daimon''s shadow, just to verify that the neer didn''t have any ill intentions towards Daimon.

    After confirming the fact that it was just one of the many bride-candidates that surrounded her young master, she returned to Daimon''s shadow.

    Thea who just returned after finishing the purge in ck Wave, saw the woman who somehow lives in Daimon''s shadow and acts as his bodyguard, inspecting her, before she disappeared once again, to a ce where her senses couldn''t reach her and she shook her head.

    The Empress then tossed Marlene who was upying more than half of her bed, aside and thenid down to sleep.

    Nothing else happened for the rest of the night, and Mellie didn''t return to the room, probably because she stayed tillte talking with her older sister, it''s understandable since it''s the first time they get a hint regarding their mother''s death.

    ¡­

    And so, the hours passed and the moon was reced by the sun as the morning came to Neptune, Daimon''s eyelids slightly trembled before he opened his eyes, he felt amazing right now, fresh as a lettuce and full of energy, more than normal in fact.

    He frowned and then checked the log of the system, there were a couple of notifications which he left forter, before, but now there were more than previously, once his eyes fell on the different updates registered in the log, he understood what was happening.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, he then moved the interface bar of the log, and found the origin of this changes.

    [Arge source of beneficial catalyzer has been absorbed by the Apex Predator, an assimtion cycle will start, time remaining 00:00]

    [Congrattions, the properties umted into the body of the Apex Predator over the past years had been sessfully integrated, calcting the new information¡­]

    [The information of the Lineage temple has been updated!]

    [Vampire: 10% ¨¤ 20% concentration (Originally 100%) <!>]

    [ck Armored Shark: 10% ¨¤ 15% concentration]

    The origin of this invigorating sensation that was coursing through his body, was because his lineages had advanced overnight.

    The concentration of his vampire lineage actually doubled, not only that but the ck Armored Shark lineage also increased.

    Daimon clicked in the "!" symbol next to the concentration of his vampire lineage, and ament from the system was disyed.

    [The blood on the body of the host was cleansed and condensed eliminating the weak genes, Dhampir lineage 10% fully assimted, Day Walker lineage 10% fully assimted, reach 30% to achieve the first change (The vampire lineage will be linked to the soulmate Aisha Licht)]

    Daimon sighed, that exined why he didn''t feel the desire of drinking Aisha''s blood previously, the original vampire lineage in his body was the one of the Naktis, which is apparently called "Dhampir" lineage, its concentration went from 100% to 10% after he got the Apex Predator body, it didn''t weaken, but it was refined instead.

    He remembered that there used to be some question marks next to Aisha''s race in the soulmate tab, which were caused probably because he hadn''t unlocked the Lineage Temple back then.

    Daimon looked at the pretty sleeping face of Aisha and then opened the soulmate tab to see if there were any changes.

    [Aisha Silverheart]

    [Race: High Vampire (Mixed)/Undefined (Originally Day Walker lineage, currently undergoing evolution, linked to Daimon Licht''s vampire lineage)]

    [Age: 22 years old (Age adapted to be morepatible with the contractor)]

    [Emotional status: Happy/In Love/Satisfied]

    [Current Bond: Lover]

    Daimon now understood a bit more, ording to Aisha, the Silverheart family was formed by two families, the famous silver hair, metal affinity and the capacity to ignore the normally weakening effect of Mithril she has, came from her grandmother, who has already passed away.

    Those traits only appeared after she joined the family and only those who were her descendants had them, in other words the male side of the family was a mixed vampire, who was lucky enough to marry a woman with the Day Walker lineage.

    As the generations passed, the mixed lineage improved thanks to the presence of the Day Walker lineage, which culminated in the appearance of a genius like Aisha, even the mixed vampire lineage changed to "High Vampire" in name, for her and now she is undergoing another change to evolve into something of a higher level.

    ''Still to think it took me eight years to fully assimte the Naktis lineage, and only then I started desiring mom''s blood, but why did I assimted the Silverheart lineage so fast, is it because she is my soulmate'', wondered Daimon, just to be met with Evangeline''s yful voice.

    ''That''s just a part of the reason, you have been exchanging not only fluids but also mana with her thanks to that absurd Core Synchrony skill of yours, every time you do that a bit of your "essence" enters them, while theirs also is assimted by you, that bath you took in public yesterday helped your body dissolve and absorb the benefits that would have normally taken you a year or so to integrate, talking about lucky perverts~'', she jokingly said.

    Daimon chuckled, the gem-like three colored water which was absorbed by his body, helped him more than what he expected, that also exined the increase in the ck Armored Shark lineage and that advanced version of water affinity he got.

    "We went at it quite rough yesterday and yet you are really lively so early in the morning, darling~", Daimon came out of his daze, when he heard Aisha whispering at him, he knew what she was referring to.

    As a side effect of the invigorating effect caused by the increase on his vampire lineage, he couldn''t control his morning wood like he normally does, so it was pressing against Aisha''s thighs, due to the position in which they were, luckily thanks to that the other girls who were showing signs of waking up, couldn''t see the tent in his pants.

    "Ahem, it will calm down in a moment, do you feel any different?", said Daimon trying to deviate his attention to anything else to calm his erection down.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Mm, why, did you perhaps do something to me while I was sleeping~", yfully said Aisha, but then her pretty smiling expression froze for a split of a second before she giggled and tightly hugged Daimon.

    "I broke through, now I''m a seventh ranked mage!", she happily said.

    Daimon was in awe; he used his mana sense to inspect Aisha and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, she actually advanced three minor realms overnight, jumping all the way from the fourth star rank which she reached thanks to the piece of Thunder Nimbus Vine, he got for her before, to the seventh star realm.

    Not like a few more stars made too much of a difference, since she is way stronger than what her realm suggests, her battle prowess didn''t change that much in fact, since she is already strong enough to kill middle stage Lord ranked beings anyway.

    But her mana reserves increased exponentially, also she was closer to obtain her Manifestation Phenomenon once again, that will probably be the best way to increase her battle prowess, since her original spell Lightning Empress as well as Thunder Arrow, have been trained up to the Lord rank as of current, that''s in part why she can only use them with limitations, but now she will be able to maintain her strongest state for a longer period of time, and use Thunder Arrow and simr level spells more times.

    Daimon sighed, his stupid magic core still didn''t take thest step, there was something missing that was preventing him from advancing, on the other hand he was more than happy for Aisha, the girls bing strong is the same as he bing strong anyway.

    Daimon isn''t being a philosopher, the base for the soulmates to be able to contribute noticeably to the boost of Core Synchrony is being at least one realm above Daimon, once Aisha reached the Lord rank, she''ll also contribute to her darling''s strength.

    Besides those surprises that were waiting for him in the log, there was one more reward, it was the result of the mission he took to be recognized as a swordman by the system.

    [Novice Swordsman Promotion]

    [Requirements: Defeat other weapon users in real battles to prove your style surpasses theirs (12/10), overscore being calcted¡­]

    [The profession "Novice Swordsman" has been obtained]

    [The reward has been updated due to the overscore, the system has detected a previously existing sword technique,patible with the host''s style, "Cosmic Weaponry" style has been created, the difficulty has been adjusted to fit the needs of the host]

    [Cosmic Weaponry:

    [White Universe Techniques: Comet Sword, (For the next technique, "Promotion to Expert Swordman is needed)]

    [?????: Defeat one thousand log range weapon users to unlock, (For the next technique, "Promotion to Expert Swordman" is needed)]

    Daimon had a curious-filled expression as he saw the result of him crushing the crowned prince as well as Walford, though he lost the profession skill which would have been his reward, thanks to the spell Comet Sword which he created earlier, a whole path opened for him, unfortunately the next promotion mission wasn''t avable yet, but his instincts told him that it will appear once he unlocks the second aspect of Cosmic Weaponry, which is currently unknown.

    Daimon was in cloud nine right now, this night was quite lucrative for him, and that wasn''t all, he now realized that since the Lineage Temple was avable, the races of the girls will be further exined which could help them improve that aspect.

    ''Once I return, I have to look at their tabs'', he thought, he could take a peek at their tabs right now, but he wants them to be present since it is something rted to their future.

    Daimon sneakily kissed Aisha''s bellybutton making her giggle, before he got up the bed and went to the bathroom to wash his face, the Risha sisters, the Empress, Marlene, as well as Tessa, Femi, Chris and Cassy were still sleeping, though judging by their heartbeats, Daimon could tell they will be waking up any second.

    Once he was inside of the bathroom, he washed his face and then said.

    "Anything worth-mentioning happened during the night, Rita?".

    Daimon''s shadow waved a bit, before Rita''s upper body emerged from it.

    "Nothing, after that ck haired woman returned, no one else approached the room, the other girl that left stayed in the room where the woman called Ae is staying", she said as she offered Daimon a towel to dry his face.

    "Mm, thanks for the hard work", said Daimon as he epted the towel and dried his face to then return it to her.

    Rita smiled and then dived into Daimon''s shadow once again, getting her young master''spliment was enough to make her day.

    Daimon chuckled and then left the bathroom after changing his clothes to Gabriel''s attire, in other words the Hollow Suit, he still had one thing to do before they departed to the Elemental Sea, which is paying a visit to the treasury of the Arcarius family.

    But before that, he had time to take a nice breakfast together with the others, after being on the move all the previous days, the travel was a good way to rest for a day.

    Once he got out of the bathroom, he felt arge number of gazes piercing him like spears.

    "Good morning,dies, what''s happening did you have a bad night or something?", he asked, just to be met with the Risha sisters pouting at him.

    "How can someone be prettier overnight, not fair", said Yvonne.

    "Aisha''s hair kind of makes me jealous, it looks so silky and smooth", added Leslie.

    "She even advanced", mumbled Liliana.

    Aisha stuck her tongue at Daimon, making him inwardly sigh.

    ''Mom why are you teasing these three'', he thought, naturally Aisha was glistening with vitality, since she drank his¡­ "fluids", in his case it was because his vampire lineage has increased, luckily, he didn''t be a pretty boy like the silk pants noble vampires, instead all the nourishment went to his physical body, reinforcing his muscles and bones, while also increasing the blood flowing though his veins.

    The others might have not noticed, but Thea''s eyes were sparkling, she felt Daimon had be more like her than before, a direct descendant of a magic beast that took human form, his "breath" was on another levelpared to the Mermen whose lineages had diluted involved because they becamecent.

    "Let''s go have our breakfast, we have a ship to take after paying a visit to the treasury of the Minister", said Daimon with a smirk, making the girls giggle and feel a bit bad towards Raymond.

    They could still remember his miserable appearance after seeing all that three-colored water escaping from his hands, and he was going to be robbed by the same person today too, they would pity him, if he wasn''t an idiot.

 Chapter 417 The Ministerâ€™s Unwilling Generosity (Part 1)

    ?

    While Aisha and the others went into the bathroom to dress and prepare to leave, Daimon went ahead and left to the dining room, where the queen and the others were already waiting for them.

    While Ae was calm as usual, Mellie looked a bit depressed, which was understandable, she was too little when her mother died to the point that she has very vague memories of her, so deep in her heart she wanted to think she just faked her death and escaped after she was poisoned.

    But now that Carlos has spilled the beans, and the ce where she was buried was revealed then that small possibility disappeared.

    On one hand she was happy that she will be able to pay her respects to her mother who gave birth to her, even with theplications that the first poison brought her, and also bring her back to the Clear Water kingdom, the two sisters had even decided a ce where they will build a small garden just for their mother to rest in peace.

    On the other hand, she couldn''t help but feel a bit sad in general, and also angry towards the White ancestor who orchestrated her mother''s death, her pretty face was filled with a troubled expression.

    "Good morning", he said, getting a positive response from everyone but Mellie who was lost in her thoughts, until her sister slightly nudged her below the table.

    "Ah¡­ sorry, good morning", mumbled Mellie giving Daimon an apologetic gaze.

    Daimon inwardly bitterly smiled and then took his seat; the queen took the chance to change the subject to something else to try and distract Mellie from the subject of their mother.

    "I sent a message to the Minister, he is obligated to personally wee the champion after all~", said Ae with her yful voice.

    Maybe because she had epted her mother''s death a long time ago, she was in a good mood, knowing that the ones who caused it will be getting what they deserve, starting with Carlos who is being put through some fun games and activities right now, especially because she asked Daimon to lend her Horals for the rest of the time they had before departing.

    Ae will be staying behind Along with Vincent to guard the fort here in the Mermen Sea, though Mellie will be apanying Daimon as a representative of the queen, simr to how Daphne will be going as the representative of the Vs family while her mother stays behind.

    Out of the adults in the alliance, only Thea, Aurora and Cassy''s father in other words Patriarch Underwood, will be going with Daimon to the Elemental Sea, so he can receive his reward from Aurora officially.

    Daimon nodded, and then seeing that the others were entering the dining room to join them, the head maid Martha and the security head Mina brought the food.

    The atmosphere changed to a more rxed one with all the girls here chatting and eating, even Mellie cheered up a bit thanks to Daphne and Jasmine, those three got closer to each other since the incident where the pirates and Skelefiends wanted to capture them, not to mention their positions were pretty simr, so it was easy for them to get along.

    Once everyone had their fill, Aurora and Thea went to do thest preparations they needed for the travel, the queen and Vincent took Daimon and the others to the mansion of the Minister.

    With a wave of his hand Vincent created a portal, even the old man seemed to be having a good day since he will get to see more of Raymond''s defeated expression like yesterday.

    A couple of minutester a portal opened in the outer area of Arc city from which the queen''s carriage came out.

    The visitors from all the territories of the kingdom had most likely left at this point, in part because the oue of the events of this year wasn''t what the vast majority wanted, unlike the Risha sisters and Aisha who added some Mermen characteristics to their disguises, Daimon didn''t bother to do so since he is using the mask of the hollow suit anyway.

    So, for them, an outsider won the most important events that took ce in the Clear Water kingdom, they were defeated as the locals, which made them look bad, especially because the defeats were crushing.

    The crowned prince that everyone admired was crushed in front of their eyes, the only relief was that even if he lost, Lance still managed to block the attack of his opponent head on, in fact the poprity of the neo nobles went through the roof, while the poprity of the royal family hit rock bottom.

    Luckily for Triten, the most important event of the year, in other words the royal ball has yet to take ce, and that was his opportunity to regain the prestige of his royal family, that''s why he wasn''t bothering with anything else right now.

    Arge aquamarine carriage soon arrived at the entrance of the mansion of the Minister, standing at the gate of his mansion, was Raymond with a stiff expression on his face, even if he was feeling depressed, politics are politics and he had to oblige and present the champion with his reward.

    The door of the carriage opened and arge group led by a silver haired masked youth came out of it, the Minister frowned as he red at the queen, there was no need for anyone but Daimon toe, so in his mind she just brought more people to witness his humiliation, especially because Vincent who clearly wasughing at him also came.

    With his right eyebrow trembling due to anger, the Minister put on a fake smiling expression as he greeted the group.

    "Wee to my mansion, please follow me so that the honored champion can receive his reward from my Arcarius family".

    Vincent was barely containing the urge tough, while Daimon and the others simply followed the Minister inside of the mansion, since they were in the same group with the queen thus rted to Vincent, Raymond didn''t invite them to his mansion before.

    So, this was the first time they had entered, with the exception of the Duchess and Daphne who hade a couple of times for business reasons.

    Once inside Daimon noticed there weren''t servants or other people here, he still noticed a couple of presences here and there but all were too strong to be butlers or maids, meaning they were family members of the Arcarius, the Minister probably didn''t want his servants to see this disgraceful experience of his.

    With Raymond''s guide they soon reached the depths of the mansion, more urately the vault room in which the treasury of the Arcarius was located.

    "Please show me the proof of the champion of the three-art tournament", said the Minister.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Daimon took out the token Raymond gave him yesterday, the Minister took it and broke it on the spot, he then mumbled a couple of words and took out a key from his storage ring, which he used to open the metal door of the vault, but that wasn''t all, behind that metal door, there was an ice door.

    This time the Minister cut his hand and ced it on the door, once the blood was absorbed an array lit up on the door and the ice melted away, to reveal the entrance to arge store-like ce with tons of shelves and racks, treasures disyed on the walls, coffers full of sea crystals and, books and other types of valuables amodated in a perfect way.

    "You have thirty minutes, you can choose only one thing, don''t try to y any tricks, spatial treasures don''t work inside the treasury and there are surveince arrays all over the ce", coldly said the Minister.

    Daimon didn''t care about the Minister''s attitude; he instead approached him before saying.

    "I wonder if the Minister is interested in making a deal with me, I have way more three-colored water than what I need, so I was thinking of using some to get the chance to choose a second thing from the Arcarius treasury, how about one liter of it for a second reward".

    The Minister gritted his teeth at the words "I have way more three-colored water than what I need", but his eyes suddenly glowed and then he nodded.

    "Let''s make it more interesting, give me one tub of three colored water and I''ll let you chose four things".

    Daimon knew this old fox had something in mind, but he didn''t care, he wasn''t going to y nice too anyway, so everything reduced to who had the best trump card.

    "Deal, old Vincent and miss Ae please be the witnesses", said Daimon as he took out one of the tubs with three-colored water and gave it to Raymond who was all smiles right now.

    Now that the transaction was finished, Daimon smirked and then entered the treasury, the gate closed behind of him, since no one else was allowed to enter besides him.

    Naturally the Minister made things hard for Daimon by setting a limit of thirty minutes, even a day will be too short to inspect the whole ce, the coffers of the Arcarius family wererger than Vincent''s apparently.

    Which made sense, Vincent represents basically himself, he isn''tcking resources at all, but he is sole person, since the Malleus family is being led by Tideus, also Vincent has most of his riches in sea crystals.

    Unfortunately for the Minister, Daimon didn''t need to go through all the shelves and racks individually like probably all the members of the young generation in Neptune will have to, those exceptions who have the weak mana sense akin to natives of this ce included.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask and the world''s perspective he has, changed, he could now see the mana flow of the things, simr to Yvonne''s ability.

    With a quick scan, Daimon could notice that the Minister was ying some tricks, he couldn''t find anything on the Ster rank, even the treasures on the walls which looked so glorious and dignified, were just Half Ster ranked magic equipment.

    Which normally wouldn''t be that bad, but the problem is that all of them just had a good outer appearance, but were low quality things, in other words it was a trap to force him get some worthless crap.

    ''Those things can''t evenpare with the equipment Liz made for me'', thought Daimon.

    While Liz is still an Arch ranked, her abilities who used to be at the peak of the Arch rank, progressed thanks her Crown Fire, after eight years she could create Half Emperor grade treasures of the best quality.

    Naturally she couldn''t just produce a lot of stuff out of nowhere, unlike Neptune at the four gxies Half Ster rank materials were incredibly rare, but even her effortless creations which were peak Arch rank equipment, were better than most of the Half Ster treasures Aster has seen in Neptune so far.

    With a few exceptions like Mellie''s fiddle, Lance''s spear, the sword used by the crowned prince as well as Walford''s sword, and the gloves that were gifted to him by Thea.

    Besides that, only Ster ranked treasures could interest him, like the spear he got for Horals the other day, Aisha and the others didn''t need him to get them Half Ster treasures, since the queen has promised to order a weapon for the Risha sisters and Aisha too, as part of her payment to Daimon for protecting Mellie, since she had some ties with the other Ster ranked rune master of Neptune, besides ckbeard.

    As for the materials needed for the weapons, the Duchess will provide them for free as a thanks for saving Daphne, as for the boration fee, the bill was thrown at Vincent who could only sigh and pay, the order was already in process right now.

    Originally Daimon wanted to order weapons for Aura, Erin, Liz and ine, but not only the materials will take months to be gathered, the creation will take also too much time, so instead of that he had to find them weapons that were already created.

    Erin was already solved since Aurora mentioned that they had some Ster ranked darkness oriented magic weapons in their treasury, from which Daimon could choose, but he needed to find a nice souvenir for Aura, Liz and ine.

    And the Arcarius with their ice affinity was probably the best ce to find one for ine, and he could take other three to use for trade in case he didn''t find something that fitted Aura and Liz.

    Outside of the treasure room, the Minister suddenly felt a shiver running down his spine, but after a second thought, he inwardly shook his head.

    ''What am I worried about, I personally hid the nice things in there, so even a week isn''t enough to find a single Ster ranked treasure, I have to thank that brat for being so "generous" as to give me a whole tub of three-colored water in exchange of four pieces of trash hahaha!''.

    Aisha saw the sufficiency expression on the face of the Minister and she softly snorted.

    ''I wonder what your expression will be when my darling leaves your family un bankrupt'', she thought.

 Chapter 418 The Ministerâ€™s Unwilling Generosity (Part 2)

    ?

    Back at the treasure room, Daimon injected more mana into his infinity eyes and then extended the range of his search, he then started walking through the treasury trying to find anything which''s mana flow was strong enough to be considered a good treasure.

    But after around ten minutes, his eyes had already gone through all the shelves, coffers, racks and the things mounted on the walls and the best things he found weren''t even as good as the clothes he was wearing right now, which are actually soft armor created for him by Liz.

    "That only leaves¡­ the spatial rings left to inspect", mumbled Daimon, he walked towards a separated section where shelves with countless rows of spatial rings were exhibited.

    The Minister was quite tricky, since he couldn''t take any of the high ranked treasures out, to prevent Daimon from choosing it, he re-amodated all of them into the spatial rings, the problem is that there are countless of them, and they also contain mountains of sea crystals.

    To inspect a spatial ring mana sense isn''t a necessity but it does help to go through the contents in an easier way.

    Even then, given the amounts of crystals inside the rings, he would normally need to take a long time to finish inspecting the contents, which was a problem since he only had thirty minutes.

    Unlike the inventory where he had a literal panel showing what was inside each slot, a description and the number in possession, you had to go through everyst item in order when trying to find something in a spatial ring.

    That''s why, people often have a separate ring dedicated for currency like mana crystals and another one for items, which are obviously more varied but way less in number.

    Daimon smirked, the Minister made a good decision, even with his high processing capacity thanks to his lightning affinity, he will take too much time to go through all the sea crystals the Minister was using as cover to his valuables.

    Even in Core Synchrony, there were simply to many rings, but there is always a right person for a specific job, in this case a right undead maid which is always waiting in the shadows for an opportunity to help her young master.

    ''Rita, I want to find the best ice, fire and, wind and lightning affinity materials, equipment, spells, potions and martial arts, in that order of priority, can you do it?'', he asked.

    Rita''s eyes glowed from within Daimon''s shadow, since there were surveince arrays, she didn''te out, but her determined voice could be heard in Daimon''s mind immediately.

    ''Consider it done young master!'', she said with an enthusiastic voice, quite unusual for her normally serious andposed attitude.

    Others, couldn''t see it, the surveince formations included, but Rita''s mana sense divided in countless ck threads that covered the whole area, each thread went into one ring and Daimon could see Rita''s mana entering them.

    Daimon was a bit surprised; he has never seen someone use mana sense this way, but it made sense Rita has affirmed herself, that her talents lie in her sense capacities, while she is in Daimon''s shadow, she can''t be detected even by Vincent and the Aurora so she must be quite skilled in the usage of mana sense.

    Not even five minutester Rita''s voice made its way into Daimon''s mind once again.

    ''Young master, I found a few things that fit your requirements, in the 345th ring on the 8th shelf, there is the highest ranked ice affinity item in the whole room, unfortunately it isn''t a treasure but a material, it''s the silk made by some kind of ice affinity magic beast, ifpared to the people young master has entered in contact with, the beast from which originates would be slightly weaker than that old man called Vincent''.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, there aren''t maximum ranked magic beasts in Neptune, the strongest ones are in the high stage, that doesn''t mean they are weak, magic beasts are on average stronger than mages and knights of the same realm.

    Naturally there are always exceptions, those who are talented can cross realms, but the same applies to magic beasts, that''s why Thea is strong enough to be considered an "Empress", who rules an area of the Maelstrom Sea, in her middle stage she is as strong as a high stage Ster ranked, in a 1v1 situation she isn''t afraid of even Tideus one of the few high stage Ster ranked existences.

    And now Rita found a material whiches from a high Ster ranked magic beast, it''s a jackpot, which made him wonder why the Arcarius hadn''t used it yet, but then a realization hit him like a truck.

    Unlike other members of the young generation, Daimon not only is physically strong enough to wear high ranked equipment, like peak Ach ranked armor, he can power the arrays engraved on them, when he is using Core Synchrony.

    So, Liz made him soft armor in the form of the clothes he uses daily, his white and purple attire was made with metal as threads, thanks to orichalcum which is the best mana conductor as well as the most malleable metal that exists, which earned it the name of purple magic gold.

    The inner face of his coat is purple because is made with orichalcum thread, and the outer face is white-silver because is made with mithril thread, the same applies for Aisha, since both of them are immune to the effect that mithril has on night races.

    The difference between his and Aisha''s, is not only the weight, technically in price his equipment is more expensivepared to hers, because Liz had to make it adequate for both mages and knights, meaning she used twice as much materials.

    Not all the materials of a magic beast are apt to be used to create equipment for both paths, some are usable exclusively for mages since they gather too much mana which might end up in conflict with the battle aura of a knight, in exchange those materials tend to be light and flexible, perfect for mages.

    On the other hand, take there are materials who instead of mana carry on with the vitality of the magic beast, and that enters in conflict with mages, but is perfect for knights, since those materials are sturdy and can conduct battle aura which''s base is vitality, like a charm.

    The material mentioned by Rita must be something that is only usable for a mage, and the Arcarius family has only had knights from the its foundation to the recent generation where a mage finally appeared in their files.

    So, it should be something that the ancestors of the Minister got and has been umting dust since that moment.

    Daimon took the ring mentioned by Rita with a smirk on his face, as he asked.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''Anything else?''.

    Without wasting any second, Rita answered.

    ''Mm, there is a fang from a wind affinity magic beast and a set of ws from a fire affinity one, their quality is the same as the previous, besides that there isn''t anything worth mentioning of the other elements young master mentioned, but there is a second ice affinity item that young master must ger, it''s arge ice mana crystal of the best quality I have ever seen''.

    Daimon nodded, the results were better than what he expected, the fang will partially cover the gift for Aura, the ws were for Liz while the silk and the ice mana crystal were for ine.

    Unfortunately, he didn''t find ready to use equipment, but on a second thought, nothing was better than custom made equipment, and those materials were good enough to be the center of magic treasures worthy of being wielded by his soulmates.

    ''I guess, Liz is going to have a lot of fun once I return'', he thought.

    Daimon took the three rings in which the other things he chose were hidden, and then walked towards the exit, he finished just in time, having one minute left before he was going to be expulsed from the treasury.

    Once outside he was met with the fake smiling expression of the Minister, who expected to see him frustrated or maybe even better, tricked by the shy crap quality treasures he purposedly put in exhibition for him to choose.

    But that smile slowly faded away when he saw that Daimon wasn''t carrying anyrge item, instead of that he had four small things in his right hand, which he showed to everyone before saying.

    "I choose the four treasures that aren''t sea crystals inside these rings".

    The Minister frowned as he realized Daimon managed to see through his tricks, but he still wasn''t ready to give up on whatever treasures that might be inside of those rings, which to be honest even him didn''t recognize.

    Not all the rings had other things besides sea crystals, most of them were there as decoys so that even if Daimon started inspecting them and by some miracle managed to check a few, he will ultimately only find crystals in them and then end up choosing those trash treasures.

    "I can only give them to you if you know what those treasures are, after all how can I be sure you didn''t just choose some random rings hoping for something incredible to be inside", said the Minister.

    Vincent snorted, but as he was about to tell Raymond to stop trying to be a smartass, Daimon gazed at him and then nodded, making the old man smile and cross his arms.

    "Very well, I will tell the Minister what are the treasures I want from those rings so that there won''t be any more buts, from right to left, there is silk, a fang and a set of ws, all materials from high ranked magic beasts,stly there is an ice mana crystal of the Ster rank too".

    Raymond paled the moment he heard Daimon''s words, he tried to take the rings from Daimon''s hands, but Vincent who was ready for the action appeared behind him and ced his arm over the Minister''s shoulder.

    "Now, now, now, why don''t you show everyone if what Gabriel said is right, if he is wrong then I''m willing topensate you for the troubles".

    The Minister trembled out of anger, if what the silver haired youth said was right, then his family just lost the four most valuable treasures in their inventory, besides the three-colored water which can potentially create a genius.

    Unfortunately, with Vincent and the queen ring at him, he couldn''t y anymore tricks and had to pray to all his ancestors, that the silver haired youth was just bluffing and by some magical coincidence managed to get some information regarding his Arcarius''s family treasury.

    ''T-That woman is his backer, so I wouldn''t be surprised that she somehow managed to find what was inside our treasury, she is that much of a creep after all'', thought Raymond referring to Ae and her excellent informationwork, anyone who tried to evade taxes ormit fraud was immediately found out and judged by her after all.

    Waking up from his daze the Minister took the rings from Daimon under the sharp gaze of Vincent and then injected his mana sense, his heart nearly stopped on the spot, all the four things mentioned were there in other words, Daimon was right and he had to hand them over.

    Those were treasures that were inherited from many generations ago, since he who is the sole high Ster ranked of the Arcarius family focuses on defense andcks the offense to kill a high Ster ranked magic beast, hell even Vincent can''t go and kill one on a whim, since there is a hance of suffering lethal wounds.

    Daimon saw the four items he chose fall to the ground, they were all kept inside crystal cases to preserve their properties, the first one was a watermelon sized ball of white silk which actually had icewsing out of it, it was perfect for ine, the second was a five-meter sized fang which had windws leaking from time to time.

    Next there was a set of ten hand sized red ws, curiously thewsing from it weren''t purely of fire, but mixed with something else which Daimon couldn''t discern without using more mana, but that could be left forter,stly the ster grade ice mana crystal was an octagonal huma head sized blue-transparent gem which contained icews mixed with mana inside, nothing was leaking as it was of the best quality and had zero cracks.

    Daimon waves his hand and the treasures were absorbed into his ring, he then walked towards the exit followed by the girls, but now without saying.

    "I thank the Minister for his generosity, these treasures can''t be bought with money, since they are priced in "lives" considering someone must have died to obtain them, to think I managed to get them with just a tub of three-colored water, it was an excellent reward".

    Raymond''s body trembled, his vision obscured as he fainted on the spot due to the agitation, Vincentughed his ass off at it, and then group then returned to Warhammer city.

    Aurora had brought the legacy treasure of the Light Pce, the huge Flying Citadel and the people that came from the Elemental Sea with her were getting on it, since they will be leaving an a few moments.

 Chapter 419 To The Elemental Sea

    ?

    Aurora saw Daimon and the others returning and she approached them apanied by Patriarch Underwood, who came to see how his daughter was doing, since he has been busytely.

    "How did things go, we are almost ready on this side", said Aurora to Daimon, she could see Vincent was in a great mood, so she supposed something interesting happened back at the mansion of the Minister.

    Daimon nodded in response; he had already dealt with what he needed for the time being in the Mermen Sea.

    "We are ready, are those three inside of the citadel?", asked Daimon.

    "Mm, that ck armored guy brought the Skelefiend and the woman from ck Wave is also inside", answered Aurora.

    Daimon asked Horals to bring Shirel, since the Bone Sea is closer to the Elemental Sea, so they will be paying the Skalia continent a quick visit to make a deal with her father, as for Olivia she will also being to arrange a meeting with the leader of ck Wave in the Elemental Sea.

    Aurora wanted to get rid of that cancer which has grown in the shadows of her territory, so they will either join the alliance or be purged by her.

    "I''ll be entering first to adjust the route¡­ we''ll make a detour based on the information that ck armored guy got, Underwood will guide you to your room", said Aurora as she left.

    Horals didn''t make suffer Carlos for nothing, he made him draw a map and very exact instructions on how to find the underwater grotto where Ae''s mother was buried.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see the queen before saying.

    "We''ll be back for the royal ball at the end of the week".

    "Mm, I''ll guard the fort, keep an eye on that little sister of mine", said the queen, she then dragged Mellie to the side to have a small conversation in private.

    "We''ll also stay behind per the orders of the Empress¡­ don''t let her cause troubles on my stead", said Karmandi, he and Lina will be staying behind as well.

    "Humph, what troubles are you talking about, you old snake, this Empress is going as an envoy", said Thea with a slightly annoyed voice.

    The Duchess also approached Daimon, she is a person of few words, but her eyes are quite expressive a trait she shares with Daphne.

    "I''ll leave Daph in your care, I will have what we discussed ready for when you return, so don''t die", she said with her usual stern but calm expression.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, the Duchess was as straightforward as always, now that everyone had said their goodbyes patriarch Underwood guided them towards the Flying Citadel.

    Daimon looked at the big structure which caused him a big impression, back at the four gxies they have barely started to enter the age of airship, thanks to the Greenwich Sage creating the nes for the flying carriages.

    Though the dwarves are considered the biggest experts in magic forging, and they produce flying carriages in mass, Liz has taken a step ahead of them with hertest creation, which is the flying ship.

    Here in Neptune the flying ships have been around for quite some time, it was a necessity as they have to navigate through the chaotic seas.

    But the flying citadel is different, not only is many times bigger than any flying ship, the whole thing is made out of an alloy that no one has been able to analyze so far, and it is said that it can even resist the attacks of a Maximum Ster ranked.

    It is basically a mobile fortress, the only downside to it, is that it has no offensive means, and for some reason new arrays can''t be added to it, at most they can use some magic cannons like the ones the flying ships use.

    It still caught Daimon''s curiosity, what kind of man from the modern era isn''t marveled by futuristic concepts such as spaceships, that''s in part why he helped Liz develop the flying ship.

    And now he has found an even more advanced version of it, naturally he is excited about it, he even asked Aurora to allow him to inspect the arrays and other things that let the flying citadel work, and to his surprise she easily epted without even asking for something in return.

    Many people had taken a look at the legacy treasure of her family but no one has been able to discern anything, in fact the notes from her ancestors say that it is treasure thates from the outside world, that''s why she left Daimon do as he pleases, maybe he can discover something.

    "Watch your step little fellows", said Underwood, therge tform descended from the sky andnded in front of the group, they got up and then the tform floated towards the main body and attached once again.

    Underwood then guided them to the residence Aurora assigned to them, the citadel is divided in two areas, the outer ring where the people from the sects is temporarily staying, and the inner ring which is where normally Aurora and Jazmin stay.

    But this time the group will be staying in the inner ring, which is a first, the fact that Aurora allowed Daimon to take a look at the secrets of the citadel without any condition, doesn''t mean she is so generous with others, besides her direct family this is the first time anyone else sets foot into the inner ring.

    Even the patriarchs are only allowed to go when there is an important meeting, with Aurora''s permission.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    With Underwood''s guide they soon arrived at the border of the outer ring, on the way Daimon noticed that the whole ce is made of a single piece of material, all the structures were smoothly attached to each other, a strange architectonic style indeed.

    The outer ring was separated from the inner ring with a river and a silver metal wall, to reach the other side one could only use the transportation formation, and apparently even Maximum Ster ranked couldn''t fly over that.

    Daimon''s eyes contracted as needles when he took a peek at the silver wall, there weren''t arrays engraved on it, but he felt his head pulsating just by stealing a gaze with his infinity yes.

    ''Damn¡­ those are a lot ofws'', he thought.

    Jasmin took out her token of identity and then used it to open the portal to the inner ring, the group entered through the portal and appeared at the other side a couple of secondster.

    "Woah, it''s like apletely different ce", mumbled Leslie as she saw the difference between the outer and inner areas.

    Outside the buildings were made with the intention of maximizing the efficiency of space, you couldpare with barracks for soldiers, but glorified.

    On the other hand, the inner area was focused on the elegancy,rge mansion-like buildings with beautiful gardens, clean modern looking paths, fountains, recreation areas, it was the epitome of luxury.

    Underwood took them to the biggest mansion on the area, which was near the captain''s cabin at the top of the citadel, this is the mansion exclusive for the Light Pce''s reigning family, in other words for Aurora and Jasmin who are the only ones left.

    "Lady Aurora told me young miss Jasmin knows this ce better than herself, so this is as far as I go, please enjoy your stay¡­ little friend Daimon can I have a moment of your time?", said Underwood.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, Aurora has told the truth regarding his identity to Underwood, as he is part of the alliance having signed a contract and all, so he isn''t surprised that he speaks to him using his real name, but why is him wanting to have a private discussion, he wondered.

    Still, he nodded in response and then looked at the girls before saying.

    "Ladies you go ahead and unpack, I''ll stay behind to have a small conversation with senior Underwood".

    Jasminughed and then dragged Mellie and Daphne with her, it''s been a long time since she was here, her grandmother grounded her back then when she sneaked into this area with Cassy when they were little girls, Cassy and Chris tagged along too.

    The Risha sisters on the other hand seemed to have something to discuss with Aisha, so they grouped and then entered the mansion, Femi and Tessa followed them too, as for Thea she had separated from them some time ago and was wandering around, with the excuse of enjoying the sight, in truth she just wanted to have a couple of drinks, Marlene also went with her, leaving only Daimon and Underwood behind, well and of course Rita who never leaves her young master''s side.

    Underwood invited Daimon to take a seat on a bench that was ced at the street in front of the mansion, Daimon took off his mask since they were safe here, it was the first time Underwood has seen Daimon''s real appearance.

    "I won''t take long since you probably have your own things to do, I just wanted to confirm a couple of things,dy Aurora told me Neptune might be destroyed at the end of the week so¡­ in case something happens to me, can you please take my Cassy and her mother to your gxy", he said with a serious expression.

    Daimon could understand Underwood''s worries, he isn''t a native of Neptune, but hearing that your homece is probably reaching its end, for sure puts a lot pressure on you, especially when you can''t do anything but trust in others, like in this case.

    Let alone Underwood, at first even Vincent and Aurora felt powerless knowing they can''t do anything about it, but they changed their focus now, they can always show their support those who can change the future, in this case Daimon.

    "I don''t mind inviting your family to visit the White Fang gxyter, but I''m not nning on letting this disappear", calmly said Daimon, ording to the system his mission required him to win the global raid, which is equal to saving Neptune.

    Underwood stayed silent for a moment, he carefully looked at the confident eyes of the ck-haired youth in front of him, after a couple of seconds he nodded with a smile on his face.

    "Now I understand whydy Aurora has entrusted you with the little princess''s safety, in that case my Bamboo Forest sect is at your disposition, you can consider me Tucker Underwood a friend", said Underwood as he extended his hand towards Daimon to offer a handshake.

    Daimon epted the offering, Underwood previously joined because he trusted Aurora, his sect has been subordinated to the Light Pce since its foundation, light and wood go along since they both represent life, but now Underwood has decided to follow Daimon, and that means the destiny of his sect is linked to Daimon''s victory.

    "Certainly, as senior Aurora mentioned, your Underwood family is quite straightforward when ites to friendship", said Daimon, which made Underwoodugh.

    "What can I say, thedy surely knows me", said Underwood as he stood up to leave, he only wanted to see with his own eyes the type of person Aurora chose to believe in, so he had no more to say.

    "Ah, I almost forgot about it, that fellow Skyfire has a grudge against you, his younger son is nothingpared to you since you defeated the crowned prince so easily, but his older son is a peak Mortal realm and he is also in love with the little princess since he was a kid, withdy Aurora he can''t do anything, but Skyfire''s father who died in action, was Lord Shaman''s sworn brother, so there might be some troubles¡­ if someone asks, you didn''t hear this from me, Lady Aurora doesn''t tolerate internal fights and she will get angry if she hears me badmouth her husband after all".

    Daimon shook his head, he doesn''t have the time to fight in some childish "duel for the love of the princess", he still had to deal with the scheming guy, not to mention the White Ancestor who even Vincent can''t say with confidence he is strong enough to defeat, there is also Adam and Marcus, who have been out of the radar and should be doing their own ns.

    "Thanks for the warning, I''ll have it in mind", still he thanked Underwood for the information, now he knows that the Skyfire might try to cause him troubles, but so what, considering how chaotic will the next days will be, there is high chance that anyone who isn''t on the same side as Aurora in other words allied with him, ends up dead or in a cell.

 Chapter 420 Jasmines Discovery At The Bottom Of The Lake

    ?

    Now that the conversation was over, Daimon stood up from the bench and then entered the mansion to see how were the girls doing.

    As he walked through the main corridor Daimon realized why this mansion is out of limits for everyone besides Jasmine and Aurora under normal circumstances.

    The moment he set a foot inside, he noticed a wave of mana scanning him and with his infinity eyes he saw some weird symbols appearing on the walls for a split of a second, then fire, light and lightning mana was released into the atmosphere.

    "Did this thing scanned me and then released mana that fit the affinities I''m currently using in public?", said Daimon.

    It wasn''t really helpful for him since he can''t advance in his mage path due to his magic core taking its sweet time absorbing all the mana it swallows every day exactly at midnight.

    But for others this is quite helpful, the mana in the atmosphere is element less mana, and depending on the nearby environment, mana of certain elements is more or less abundant besides the pure mana.

    For example, since the Flying Citadel is floating high in the air, outside there is an abundance of wind mana, since it is a sunny day there is also a considerable amount of light and fire mana.

    In truth all the elements of mana are in the atmosphere in a small or big proportion depending on the case, but the mana being released by the walls of the mansion, isn''t the raw mana of the nature.

    But mana that has been previously refined making it easier for mages to absorb it and integrate it into their magic cores, in other words cultivating inside this mansion will bring double the results with half the effort.

    Naturally to do that mana crystals of the respective elements were needed, not to mention the neutral mana crystals needed to power the formations, essentially this mansion started burning money the very moment someone set a foot inside of it.

    And since right now there were people with a variety of affinities, the consumption of mana crystals must be pretty high, though there must be a regtor to not help mages from a certain realm and above, in order to save resources.

    Aurora probably invited them here, because there is no use in hoarding resources when there is a possibility that the world ends, it''s better to use them to help those who have the opportunity to change the future of Neptune, get stronger even if it is just a bit.

    Daimon kept walking until he found the corridor from which the voices of the girls could be heard, to his surprise there was a single door in that whole corridor, his supposition turned out to be right, he opened the door and was weed with the sight of a lot of pretty girlsughing and chatting in a singlerge room with many beds.

    "You sure have gotten used to share a room", he mumbled.

    "Isn''t it better like this, we are going to be risking our lives together anyway~", yfully said Aisha.

    Daimon chuckled, judging by his mother''s cunning smile and the fact that the Risha sisters were looking at everything but him, it was obviously those four''s doing, but as long as they were having a good time then it was fine for him.

    "I''ll go take a small walk, don''t ck and take advantage of this perfect environment created by the mansion", said Daimon, he put his mask on again and then proposed to leave, but Yvonne''s voice made him stop for a second.

    "Don''t take too long, we are going to prepare something to eat", she said with a tinge of shyness in her voice.

    Daimon could see Aisha giggling at the back, but he still nodded.

    "Sure, I''ll return in an hour at most", he said, making the three sisters smile, it''s been sometime since they had the chance to cook for Daimon.

    The other girls also showed some curiosity towards preparing food by themselves, the room is filled with princesses and young misses from noble families, so they aren''t used to daily chores such as cooking, which made it a new experience for them.

    An opportunity Aisha naturally won''t let go to waste.

    "Come, we all can prepare something together", she said.

    Daimon closed the door behind him trying not to think on what was that mother of his plotting this time.

    He instead walked through the mansion trying to see if he could find something that gets his attention, earlier he saw those strange symbols for a split of a second, and he couldn''t recognize them nor understand them.

    It''s not that weird, considering he experienced something simr from the very beginning when he entered Neptune through that ck stone corridor, which was full to the brim with inscriptions in anguage he couldn''t understand.

    But while those symbols were ominous and of a red color, the ones he saw earlier were white colored and gave off a gentle and calm sensation.

    He already asked the queen about it, and she lent him a book with aption ofnguages used in Neptune, which he has finished reading already, but none was simr to the symbols of the ck corridor, and the same happened with those white symbols he saw earlier.

    After not being able to find anything in the mansion, Daimon decided to take a look outside, he literally had the entire inner ring for himself anyway, so he could stroll around if he wanted to.

    But as he was about to reach the exit, he felt a presence behind of him, naturally it wasn''t an enemy but the princess of the Light Pce, in other words Jasmin.

    "Did something happen?", asked Daimon as he saw Jasmin''s slightly flushed face.

    "Ahem, cooking¡­ isn''t one of my strong points, besides cleaning the ingredients with light I can''t do much, and the things in the kitchen of the mansion are already of the best quality, Cassy told the others of my previous tries to make something and they didn''t even want me to stay in the kitchen with them", she said with a pout.

    "So, I thought of tagging along with you, unlike my cooking my exploration skills are really good, I was thest person to discover something in the citadel was me after all, so what do you say?", she asked.

    Daimon softlyughed, he could imagine Jasmin burning a bowl of cereal, but he didn''t judge, since he is also not exactly skilled in that aspect, luckily, he has the inventory where he can store recently made dishes forter, or he would have to rely in dry rations like everyone else when in hostile territory, where using a storage ring might give away your position.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon didn''t know Jasmin was thest person to ever discover something new in the citadel and Aurora for some reason didn''t mention it.

    "Sure, then take me to what you discovered to see if we can find something else", said Daimon, making Jasmine smile.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ¡­

    Outside of the mansion, he realized that they had already started advancing, it''s just that the movement of the Citadel is so smooth that the ones residing on it didn''t notice it, there was an invisible spherical barrier protecting the Citadel, to prevent flying magic beast from attacking them, and also to protect it from air resistance.

    ''The barrier of this thing is much more refined than the one Liz was able to deploy in the flying ship'', thought Daimon as they walked through the city.

    With Jasmine''s guide, Daimon walked into one of the many recreational areas of the city, which consisted in a small forest with an artificialke in the center.

    "We need to enter theke to see it, only Cassy who was with me when we found it and grandma know of this", said Jasmine as she pointed at the center of theke, which though deep, the water was so clear that the bottom could be seen from above.

    Daimon nodded and then he snapped his fingers, water mana gathered from all over the area inrge quantities, which made Jasmine''s eyes sparkle.

    ''This strong mana gathering is akin to those at the peak of the mortal realms'', she thought.

    And she was right, though Daimon''s mana core is rebellious when ites to advance, it doese with its advantages, one of them being that since the moment Daimon started cultivating in the mage path, it automatically gathered by mana without the need of him to do anything, an ability, others only get after reaching the Arch ranks, also his mana gathering speed is on the same level as one, naturally his reserves aren''t, unless he uses Core Synchrony of course.

    And now it was proving its usefulness, because this water affinity he got is different than normal, with that strong mana gathering speed, it still took him around ten seconds to gather a single drop of the ck water that took the Empress by surprise earlier.

    With the drop of ck water floating on top of his hand, Daimon turned to see Jasmine and then said.

    "Let''s dive into theke", without letting Jasmin saying anything he started walking towards theke, which made her shrug, she was about to suggest him to call Liliana, with her ice she could make a bubble so they didn''t get wet, but since Daimon didn''t seem to mind, she neither.

    But to her surprise the fresh sensation of the water she expected didn''te to her when she jumped into theke right behind Daimon.

    "What is this?", she asked.

    To her surprise the water didn''t approach them, as if there was something pushing it away, a sphere of around ten meters of diameter formed around them, preventing the water from touching them.

    Daimon was also surprised, he just did this on a whim, since he wanted to try out this water affinity of his.

    [Royal Water Affinity (Exclusive to those who possess "Ruler of the Sea"): Allows the host to control the water element exclusive to Drakolevia]

    That simple message was the only hint Daimon had regarding this water affinity he won after he took a bath with the three-colored water, and his body absorbedrge quantities of it, as well as some drops of the water of the Northern Sea.

    There was no exnation on what it could do, but when he thought of a way to not get wet, his instincts urged him to gather a drop of that ck water.

    Not only the drop of ck water was keeping the normal water away from them, Daimon felt like a fish in the sea, with just wishing it, the bubble in which he and Jasmine were, moved through the water without any resistance, it was as if the other water followed hismand and pushed them in the direction he wanted.

    The best thing was that Daimon wasn''t using mana for this, besides the initial price he had to pay to gather the drop of ck water of course, that being said with his infinity eyes he could notice that small almost unnoticeable bits of the ck drop were disappearing with each second that passed since they entered theke.

    Leaving this interesting discovery regarding Daimon''s newest acquired affinity, Jasmine pointed at a small rock formation at one of the most isted parts at the bottom of theke.

    "Over there, behind those rocks", she said.

    Daimon nodded and then he made the bubble move in that direction, he tried to use mana sense earlier and even ask Rita to give it a try, but he couldn''t find anything, it made sense though, this Flying Citadel even its current weakened state can resist the attacks from Maximum Ster ranked.

    There was a limit to how much he could ignore even with his cheat-like skills like infinity eyes, but that also gave him some important information, this magic treasure was in the same category as Disaster, which meant he couldn''t inspect it as of current even with the system, for example when he stored Disaster in the inventory, it showed no description besides "Temporal residence of a soulmate", despite the fact that he supposedly got to know the origin of Disaster, out of Aura and Erin''s mouths, and it was confirmed by Narasha herself too.

    Once they reached their destination, Jasmine crouched down near one small rock and tapped it with her finger, the rock sank into the ground a bit and then some of those white symbols appeared, just like before Daimon only had time to steal a gaze at them and he couldn''t understand a thing about them.

    After the symbols disappeared, the floor of the bottom of theke on which the symbols appeared, waved and then a que formed.

    "Last time I brought grandma here and we tried everything we could to get this thing to show a reaction but nothing happened, we even let some drops of our blood fall on it, since we thought it might require to be imed as ours, but it was futile".

    Daimon nodded, he tried it with his blood, maybe this treasure was rted to the hero, who knows it could be a gift given to the matriarch of the Light Pce, and since he also has the ck Armored shark lineage it could work.

    Unfortunately, the result was the same as Jasmine said, there was no reaction, he tried with all the things he could think off, including his ck Sea Emblem and the pendant the queen gave him, but there was no response.

    ''Damn it, the first time I want something to work as if I''m in a fantasy story and this happens, of course it couldn''t be easy right'', he thought.

    His instincts told him that this que was important, but they didn''t give him any hint on how to activate it or something, and all the methods he had in hand like the infinity eyes and his abnormally sharp mana sense didn''t work too, so there was nothing much he could do.

    Since they couldn''t do anything else and the drop of ck water was about to disappear, Daimon and Jasmine returned to the surface.

    From the highest point of the citadel, Aurora looked through a window and saw her granddaughtering out of ake with Daimon and she sighed.

    "Thatss sure has be more rebellioustely, what "I want to show him my discoveries myself"... whatever as long as she is doing what she wants instead of being controlled by some shady bastard then everything is fine", she mumbled.

 Chapter 421 The Three Important Aspects Of The Flying Citadel

    ?

    After getting out of theke, Jasmine took Daimon to all the ces which she knew of the city, including other residences to which she had ess thanks to the token of authority Aurora gave her.

    Unfortunately, there weren''t any more interesting things to see like that que at the bottom of theke, but Daimon could confirm a few things.

    First of all, that function of scanning someone and then releasing mana of the respective elements in which the person excel, was exclusive of the main residence in which they were staying.

    Which at first didn''t make sense for Daimon, certainly an array that refined and then released mana to help increase the cultivation speed of mages, is literally burning resources, but there is no reason to not have them in all the residences.

    But his doubts were somewhat cleared when Jasmine, dropped a bomb by saying.

    "Ah that, ording to grandmother, the residence is special because for that array to work we only need to use neutral mana crystals as you call them, as fuel, it''s amazing right, it can release mana of all the attributes using neutral mana on a 1:1 ratio of exchange".

    Daimon nearly tripped when he heard that, neutral mana ispatible with all elements, so it can transform into a specific element mana, like fire mana, water mana and so on.

    But it doesn''t have any of the elements by innate, instead it must be affected by the environment for that change to happen, ces with water bodies end up producing water mana, volcanic zones produce fire you get the idea.

    It can be done artificially too, but the way to do it is inefficient, basically you need to drop a lot of mana crystals into the area in which the desired element is abundant, the mana crystals will be assimted and then after some months of waiting, crystals of the respective element are bound to appear.

    High ranked families or forces only resort to this when they are in desperate need of mana crystals of a specific element, because the return in only around 30%, which means that per each dozen of mana crystals invested in those artificial "mines", and after months of wait, one would get only three elemental mana crystals, the rest is lost in the process.

    And now, Jasmine casually revealed that the array in the main residence can not only ignore the horrible exchange ratio of an artificial mine, but also convert it on the spot, without the need to wait.

    Such an array was way above the capacities of any rune master, be it in the gxies or in Neptune.

    ''Well, I guess it''s not a legacy treasure of the force that rules the Elemental Sea, for nothing'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Wait, I inspected all the mansion, maybe I''m unable to see the arrays, but there is no way Rita wouldn''t have noticed the deposit of mana crystals if it was in the mansion".

    Rita''s eyes sparkled from Daimon''s shadow as she heard Daimonplimenting her abilities.

    ''The young master has such confidence in my skills'', she happily thought.

    Jasmine pointed at the highest part of the citadel which is also the captain''s cabin as she answered.

    "Everything in the citadel is controlled through the captain''s cabin, I have seen grandma insert mana crystals into the control panel, I can take you there if you want to".

    Daimon nodded, he couldn''t see though the alloy of the citadel, and mana sense was useless also, so there is no way to know what lies below the surface of the citadel, also ording to Jasmine there is no way to ess the underground.

    All the big structures of the citadel were already there when it was inherited to them, some minor things like fountains and or forests which only worked as decorations, appeared after the previous generations of Aurora''s family identally touched or activated some hidden arrays made with those white symbols, but the first discovery that could be considered important since the citadel was registered in the record of the Ivory family, was Jasmine''s discovery at the bottom of theke.

    Jasmine smiled and then she guided Daimon towards the center of the city, the captain''s cabin was located at the highest floor of a skyscraper tyke of building, which actually only had two rooms.

    At the base there was a conference room, in which Underwood as well as the other patriarchs were currently having a meeting.

    Naturally when the door opened their attentions were drawn towards the neers, because only Aurora can bring people here as far as they know.

    Underwood saw Daimon walking next to Jasmine and a subtle smile appeared on his face for a split of a second, naturally the reactions among the patriarchs varied, Stoneheart and Heartstream raised an eyebrow but didn''t say anything, as for Skyfire, his brows deeply furrowed.

    "Little Jasmine, this is the heart of the Flying Citadel, it''s not a ce in which outsiders shoulde and go as they please, even if it is a friend of yours, he shouldn''t be here", he said as he red at Daimon.

    The other patriarchs besides Underwood, didn''t say anything, but the overall feeling was the same, this was their base of operations, its importance is simr to the strategic room of the army where the highest ranked generals meet to discuss top secret matters, they were in fact having a serious conversation a few second ago, before Jasmine''s appearance interrupted them.

    "Now, Skyfire, Gabriel is a guest of our Elemental Sea, and if the young miss has brought him here, there should be a good reason¡­", Underwood spoke on behalf of Daimon, but Skyfire interrupted him by smacking his hand on the table in front of him.

    "That rxed attitude of yours is getting out of hands Underwood, can you take the responsibility in case something happens, this is the heart of the citadel, do you hear me brat, I''m pretty sure you tricked little Jasmine to bring you here!", he said with a strict voice, as he pointed at Daimon.

    Jasmine''s pretty face showed some signs of anger, the way Skyfire talked made Daimon look like someone with bad intentions towards her or her grandmother, and for some reason that made her feel angry.

    "He is staying in the main residence with me, and I can respond for him, is that enough for Patriarch Skyfire", she said.

    Heartstream and Stoneheart''s eyes widened in surprise at the revtion that someone other than the Ivory were staying in the main residence, they just supposed that Aurora assigned one of the many empty mansions in the inner ring as a sign of courtesy.

    As for Skyfire, his expression turned unsightly, not only some outsider was allowed into the main residence in which even his family haven''t been allowed to take a step into, but the little girl who used to listen to him when she was a child, harshly answered him like that.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    If Underwood was Aurora''s right hand, Skyfire was the Shaman''s right hand, Jasmine used to spend a lot of time in their sects and regarded their patriarchs as uncles, so this took him by surprise, not to mention the silver haired youth didn''t even bother to pay him any attention and was instead looking at the walls and other parts of the room.

    "Oi brat, do I bore you or something, listen to others when they are talking to you¡­".

    But before he could say anything else, a calm voice came from a mirror te which was ced on the wall in front of the table where the patriarchs were sitting.

    "That''s enough Skyfire, I was the one that gave Jasmine the instruction to take Gabriel anywhere he wanted in the citadel, does any of you have ain regarding who I allow to do what, in my Flying Citadel?", she said.

    Aurora''s voice was calm like always, but a sever light shed in her eyes, which made the patriarchs besides Underwood gulp down, for the usually gentle matriarch they know to show such an expression, how many centuries has it been they wondered.

    "T-This subject apologize for his presumption", said Skyfire as he slightly bowed his head, not without giving Daimon a poisonous gaze.

    Unfortunately for Skyfire, he waspletely ignored through all the incident, Daimon walked pass behind him followed by Jasmine who happily guided him towards the portal that let to the only other room in the whole skyscraper, in other words the captain''s cabin of the Flying Citadel.

    Jasmine used her token of identity and a white portal appeared in front of them, she and Daimon entered through it, disappearing from the room, leaving behind two perplexed patriarchs and one who was gritting his teeth.

    Underwood chuckled and then got up of his seat to leave, not without patting Skyfire''s shoulder on his way to the exit.

    "You can be as tyrannic as you want in your sect, but this isn''t your territory, if I were you, I will watch who I offend, that little friend is being backed by the Trident Marshal, Lady Aurora, the ck Empress and the queen of the Mermen Sea, can you afford to offend so many people over some petty delusions, think about it".

    Though Underwood isn''t close to Skyfire, they are stillrades who protect the Elemental Sea, this is thest shred of goodwill he can show to someone that is being disrespectful with the one in whom Aurora has put her trust, it would be a shame to see a whole sect being erased just because of a bad decision of their patriarch, or at least that''s what Underwood implied behind lines, whether Skyfire and the other patriarchs understood it or not, it was up to them.

    Stoneheart and Heartstream had thoughtful expressions, the sole fact that Daimon was allowed not only to stay in the main residence, but even under the same roof as Jasmine, meant that Aurora had full trust on him, so things weren''t as simple as the champion of the events paying a visit to the Elemental Sea to im some reward, that''s the conclusion they reached.

    "We''ll take our leave too, we can discuss things once we arrive at Twilight City", said the two patriarchs as they left, leaving an angered Skyfire behind.

    ''Fucking cowards, are you being intimidated by some random brat that became famous over a childish tournament, humph just you wait'', he thought.

    ¡­

    A couple of secondster, Daimon and Jasmine appeared at the captain''s cabin where Aurora was already waiting for them.

    She didn''t mention the small incident of before and instead looked at Daimon, waiting to hear the reason as to why he wanted toe here.

    "I heard that the array in the mansion doesn''t need elemental mana crystals, but just the neutral ones, I just wanted to see how you power it, if I can discern the meaning of some of those symbols, then we might be able to learn more about this treasure", he said.

    Aurora''s eyes glowed for a second, so far besides her and Jasmine, not even Vincent or her husband have been able to see those white symbols, and she is sure Jasmine didn''t tell him, because she specifically instructed her to not speak about it, for others when the arrays activate, they just see some white light and nothing else.

    She expected the silver haired youth in front of her to give her a surprise like always, and it ended up happening.

    "Yes,e here, this is the master control of the citadel, there are currently three sections avable, Environment, Operations and Elemental Conversion Array", she said as she pointed at arge panel that extended for around three meters, what surprised Daimon is that most of the panel was in nk, as if there were missing sections, because the three mentioned by Aurora only covered around thirty centimeters of it.

    Aurora took out a couple of mana crystals from her storage and ring and then she ced her hand on the section which corresponded to the Elemental Conversion Array, those white symbols appeared on the panel and then a multicolored portal appeared floating in front of Aurora.

    "Since I''m the owner, I can tell how much energy reserves do the three sections have left, all the time, if I want to recharge it, I just need to do this, the three portals are different from each other, environment keeps the forests,kes, decorations and buildings in general in good shape, they only need mana if they are damaged".

    "The operation section refers to the all the generic functions of the citadel, like driving it, the barrier and everything else andstly the Elemental Conversion Array, which is exclusive to the main residence, as its name suggests it can transform neutral mana into elemental mana".

    "In case you are wondering why I don''t use it all the time to help little Jas or anyone else cultivate faster, that''s because the more it is used, the lower the reserves of energy of it can be charged, currently the maximum charge is of 76%, it was instructed to me to only use it for emergencies, so I have been saving it until now", she said.

    Daimon nodded, it made sense that such a powerful array suffered damages with each use, manipting mana to such extent is incredibly hard if it''s even possible to begin with, think of it as aputer which''s speed of processing is incredibly high, in exchange overheating is normal, essentially it destroys itself with each usage.

    "You cane here as much as you want and even activate the environment section, I have already given little Jas the authority to open the portal to it, so you can get to see those white symbols, just remember to not mention them to anyone outside of the alliance".

    Daimon nodded, for now he has learned enough and it has already been an hour, so it was time to return with the others to see how they were doing, so he said goodbye to Aurora and then left followed by Jasmine, whose face was a bit red for some reason.

    Daimon didn''t know it, but Aurora sent a message directly to her granddaughter, before they left.

    ''Make the most of this opportunity little girl¡­ you have a lot ofpetition''.

 Chapter 422 Of Course It Canâ€™t Be That Easy

    ?

    Daimon and Jasmine descended from the captain''s cabin using the portal, the four patriarchs were already gone from the conference room, so there was no more drama caused by Skyfire.

    They then returned to the main residence where the others were already waiting for them, even Thea and Marlene had returned from their little walk.

    Judging by the slightly reddish expression on her face, she has drunk something that wasn''t created using the detoxifying effect of the three-colored water.

    But there was no harm to it, since they are in the citadel so there are no dangers for the time being, and Lina isn''t here to nag her, so the Empress was happily drinking to her heart''s content.

    "Daimon,e sit and eat with this Empress", said Thea as she patted the chair next to her, it''s worth mentioning that she threw Marlene who was dead drunk, to the floor in the process since she was upying the seat Thea offered to Daimon.

    Aisha and the girls who were just returning from the kitchen, ced the dishes on the table, in just an hour they prepared a banquet, each prepared their own dish and now their eyes were all set on Daimon.

    "Ahem, is there something wrong you all?", asked Daimon, one could arguably say that being looked at by a lot of pretty girls is a dream-like situation, but their expressions weren''t exactly calm ordy-like like normal, but rather fierce.

    ''Mom what the hell did you tell them?'', Daimon said to Aisha through the mental connection, only to see Aisha smiling at him.

    ''Nothing much, I just made a little cooking contest with them, naturally you are the judge, darling~''.

    Daimon chuckled, so that''s why he was being stared at by all of them so intensely, al these princesses and noble young misses, turned out to be ratherpetitive.

    He just grabbed some of all the tes and started eating, naturally none of them was an experienced chef, but it was quite tasty, so there was no problem with the food, Daimon refused to give a verdict as to not get himself into any troubles, but he did tell them that their food was delicious.

    The Risha sisters were more than happy to hear it and the others were also convinced since Daimon isn''t someone thatpliments others for nothing.

    "I have to admit it, preparing the lunch together was quite fun", said Mellie who has somewhat cheered up thanks to the girls.

    "It would have been better if I could participate too though", added Jasmine as she gazed at Cassy with a slightly sour expression.

    "No way Jas, you are more apt to make other type of things¡­ like poison", jokingly said Cassy, making the other girlsugh while they enjoyed the fruits of their efforts.

    Even Daimon allowed himself to rx a bit, the mellowughs and giggles of the girls were contagious, so the group enjoyed their meal which turned into some kind of feast, Thea even shared some of her softest drinks with them.

    By the time they finished this small party the sun was already setting and most of the girls were beat, all of them ended up sleeping on the couches in the living room, or on their beds in the room, while Marlene passed out on the floor.

    Even Aisha was slightly drunk as she ng to Daimon, who experienced the not so funny scene of being the only sober one.

    Daimon carried Aisha to their bed and tucked her in, before he alsoid down to sleep, tomorrow they should be arriving at the underwater grotto mentioned by Carlos, that''s also probably why Mellie actually joined the others to drink, which was also the first time she has done such a thing.

    ''I hope the queen doesn''t me for this'', thought Daimon, as she saw the smiling sleeping expression of Mellie who was sharing her bed with Daphne and Chris.

    ¡­

    And so, the hours passed and soon the night was reced by day, since the citadel was high in the sky, the morning came quite early, after the little party they had yesterday, the girls woke up with a bit of a headache, which they solved by carelessly drinking some tea made with three-colored water.

    "If that old man knew what you are using the three-colored water for, he''ll bang his head against a wall and die", said Daimon as he ate a te of fruits native of Neptune which Liliana prepared the previous day and he kept in his inventory forter consumption.

    Speaking of Liliana, she passed next to Daimon and used her pretty fingers to grab a grape from Daimon''s te and then ate it, not like Daimon minded, but he noticed those three had be more daringtely.

    To his surprise, the drunk Yvonne was a lighter version of the cheeky Yvonne that appears when she uses her wings, Leslie on the other hand bes quite assertive too, so those two spent the whole noon ying some board games to decide who will cook for Daimon, just to end up hugging to sleep after they tied ten out of ten times.

    Liliana on the other hand kept some distance, showing some slight signs of the shyness that overwhelms her when she user her wings, it was rather amusing to see them being so carefree.

    "We''ll make a bigger party after we all return to the academy with the others", said Aisha who was magically fresh despite not having drank the three-colored water, how could she an experienced former Archmage who used to drink with Liz and ine all the time, lose with these "little girls", Thea was an exception since her alcohol tolerance is unusually low.

    After the girls recovered from the hangover, they went to the bathroom to refresh themselves, while Daimon left the mansion, when he opened the door, he actually met with Aurora.

    "We have arrived at the point mentioned in the map, besides me, I suggest that only little Mellie and youe¡­ because we don''t know the state of her mother''s body", she said.

    Daimon nodded, originally only Aurora was going to apany Mellie to retrieve the coffin of her mother, for safety reasons, but Ae apparently discussed it with Mellie and they wanted Daimon to go too.

    Personally, he didn''t mind, it''s not the first corpse he has seen nor thest he will see, also Mellie asked him to apany her by saying, "You are my friend, so you''lle with me, right?", seeing those big eyes of hers with an expecting gaze on them, he could only ept her request.

    Daimon who was originally just her bodyguard as per the conditions of the contract he signed with the queen, had now be friends, not to mention Aisha and the sisters were close to Mellie too, girls were better at showing support to a friend in these kinds of situations after all.

    The girls came out of the mansion and they all turned to see Mellie with warm expressions on their faces.

    "Let''s go", calmly said Mellie, though she was sad at first, she isn''t weak-minded and thanks to her friends she has prepared for what she is about to see.

    Aurora nodded and then she snapped her fingers creating a spherical barrier made out of mana that covered Mellie, Daimon and herself.

    "We''ll return in an hour or so, don''t cause troubles", said Aurora as she gazed at Thea specifically, the white sphere of mana then floated and shed towards the sea below the citadel.

    On the way down, Daimon saw the current scenery that surrounded them, they had already left the Mermen Sea and were currently in the territory of the Elemental Sea, besides the water of the sea who was actually of a lighter tone, the biggest difference wasn''t in the sea but in the atmosphere.

    ''To think that the concentration of elemental mana is actually higher than of neutral mana, what a strange ce'', thought Daimon.

    With his infinity eyes he could see countless small particles of all colors floating all over the ce, normally the atmosphere is like a blue background with small dots of many colors, the blue background represents neutral mana in Neptune, the color varies depending on the, but for some reason most of the time is actually the same blue color.

    The different small dots are the elemental mana that lingers all over the ce, but this time the roles were reversed, the dominant were the countless dots of many colors while neutral mana was secondary.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Such a set up will make it easier to advance for those who are particrly skilled in their element, but harder to advance for those who aren''t, since they will take more time to refine the elemental mana they absorb from the atmosphere.

    It was probably thanks to this that Mellie was the youngest Lord ranked of the group, having reached the early stage of the Lord rank at her 17 years of age, while Mellie and Daphne are 19 years old already, by the way Chris and Cassy who are also early-stage Lord ranked, ae just a couple of years older being 24 and 23 years old respectively.

    Not like a few years make some difference at the long run, every person is different and some naturally take more time to advance either a first orter on the path.

    After a couple of seconds of descending from the sky, Aurora''s barrier dived into the water, normally a person would think it twice before deepening into to sea at the parts which are far from anyrge inhabited area, because magic beasts roam free all over the ce.

    But with Aurora exuding the pressure of a Maximum Ster ranked, only the crazy things below the waters of the Maelstrom Sea wille to look for trouble, since they attack everything at sight.

    There is also a chance that a high stage Ster ranked beast appears to confront Aurora, if its territory is invaded, but naturally if Carlos could use this area as the burial site for Ae''s mother, then the danger level of this part of the sea isn''t that high.

    Daimon was surprised to see of the underwater scene, there were many species of fish swimming in groups here and there, all kinds of natural rock formations and obviously magic beasts that roamed free here and there.

    Aurora''s aura wasn''t a warlike one, but a calm and serene one, so the magic beasts didn''t runaway but kept a respectable distance from her, Thea wanted toe originally, but her Aura would have made all these beasts get nervous and aggressive since she is from a race native of the Maelstrom Sea.

    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á---n?¦Ía| §ãom They soon reached the bottom of the sea, this part wasn''t that deep, just around five kilometers and the light perfectly reached this area, so it was a pretty scenario instead of the dark one that normally would have appeared.

    "It''s there, are you ready?", asked Aurora as she pointed at the entrance to the grotto mentioned by Carlos.

    "Mm", Mellie nodded in response, her little fists clenched a bit, feeling some anxiety now that it was the moment of truth, but she then felt Daimon''s hand resting on her shoulder, she turned to see him and for some reason she felt at ease.

    "Thanks¡­", she mumbled with a more rxed voice.

    Aurora made the barrier move and they soon entered the grotto, ording to Carlos there was arge tunnel that led to an open space into the grotto, after he left Ae''s mother''s coffin in that open space, he copsed the tunnel so that the magic beasts wouldn''t disturb her, he didn''t make it out of any kind of guilt or regret, much less out of goodness, but because he who has seen a lot of strange things after travelling through many ces, and finding many antiques thanks to his Analyze Resonance, was actually afraid that she coulde to haunt him or something like that, since despite the fact that she never spent any time near him, and he doesn''t remember having done anything to her due to being drunk, he for some reason never dared to force her into anything.

    Luckily with Aurora here, those stones were easily destroyed by her light mana as they advanced into the tunnel, to soon reach the open area inside the grotto.

    They actually reached an underwater bubble of air, and had to surface to reach the open area, the white sphere elevated and they came out of the water to a spacious cave with nothing else besides a blue crystal coffinying on top of a small hill.

    Aurora scanned the whole area to make sure it was safe and only then she dispelled her barrier, to let Mellie and Daimone out.

    "I''ll wait here¡­ if you need something just tell me", she said.

    Mellie nodded and then after gazing at Daimon she walked towards the crystal coffin followed by him, thend was dry but it wasn''t that big, just around three thousand square meters.

    Still the seconds they spend walking towards the small hill felt strangely long, Mellie doubted for a split of a second at thest part, but ultimately, she exhaled and then approached the coffin.

    Daimon who limited to keep silence and follow her from behind, frowned when he saw Mellie freezing on the spot one meter away from the coffin, he approached her to see what was happening and her pupils behind his mask contracted a bit

    "It''s not there¡­ Daimon am I seeing things?", asked Mellie with a low voice.

    Daimon shook his head in response, he injected mana into his infinity eyes just to be sure, if this was an illusion of some kind, then he will at the very least will notice some traces of it, even if it was done by a high ranked rune master like ckbeard, he managed to see the alterations on the formation around the Wild Tide Reef.

    But the result produced more doubts than answers, and a small headache to Daimon, the contents of the crystal coffin were water, but it wasn''t normal water but water with arge number ofws, big enough to make Daimon get some backsh for looking at it.

    "That water is not normal, but a treasure on par with the three-colored water, but there are no traces of biological remains, am I missing something Rita?", asked Daimon.

    "No, young master is right, in fact there aren''t any sings of the coffin being fully opened¡­ ever, there is just a small hand sized hole on the lid, from which this water was injected and that''s all", said Rita.

    "Then either mother was made of water, or that man is lying, we are clearly missing something here", mumbled Mellie.

    Daimon shook his head, he is absolutely sure Carlos wasn''t lying, it''s hard to trick his instincts, not to mention Ae was there during the interrogation, she studied every aspect of Carlos''s rhythm, even if he practiced how to lie, there is no way he could control his heartbeats, the flow of his blood or the unconscious movements that one''s muscles do.

    Maybe if he was a knight, he could have made it harder for Ae to know whether he was lying or not by controlling his body reactions to some extent, but even then, she would have noticed it, that''s how much she had analyzed him over the years.

    "Let''s take the coffin with us, we can interrogate that guy once again to confirm if he knows something else, if not then we can still make the White''s Ancestor spill the beanster", said Daimon.

    ''Though I honestly doubt the queen will wait to interrogate Carlos the moment we inform her of this'', he mentally added.

    "Mm", Mellie nodded and then returned to Aurora''s side with a somewhat happier mood, whatever happened to her mother, as long as she didn''t get to see the corpse, she won''t believe she is dead.

    On the other hand, her pretty eyes now had a cold light on them as she thought of the White''s Ancestor, that old man had yet to realize he managed to piss off a pair of very troublesome sisters, but he will find out soon.

    For the time being Daimon asked Aurora to bring the coffin with them, she created a separated barrier to iste it, just in case, they couldter inspect it within a safe environment, the other option was for Daimon to sent it to his inventory where no matter if it had some tricks, it would be harmless.

    But he didn''t suggest it, as it could be seen as a disrespectful, they soon returned to the citadel where the others were waiting for them.

    Needless to say, they easily noticed Mellie''s expression which wasn''t what they expected, and they were intrigued after listening to the sum of the situation directly by her, and the confirmation of Daimon too.

    Thea whose mana sense was stronger than Aurora''s inspected the coffin too and she reached the same conclusion, besides that water which she noticed was a treasure, despite not being able to see thews swimming inside of it, there was nothing else.

    Daimon looked at the mission which was created out of the opportunity he "stole" from Adam and he sighed.

    ''Of course, it can''t be that easy'', he thought, he still has yet to steal the legacy for the hero and getting the second hidden gem, he got the first one thanks to Mellie, and his supposition was that the other one was rted to Jasmine, probably on the hands of the Shaman.

    Since Adam went out of his way to trick her, the only problem is that as the asshole he is, he might as well just have targeted Jasmine, because she had a high status or because she was pretty.

 Chapter 423 The Elemental Sea

    ?

    The rest of the travel was rather calmpared with the mystery of the crystal coffin, while the girls trained with the help of the Elemental Conversion Array in the main residence, Daimon spent his time in the captain''s cabin with Jasmine, trying to understand something about the white symbols.

    Unfortunately, besides being able to see them clearly which no one besides Aurora and Jasmine can do, and the fact that they are indeed some kind of runes, Daimon could only understand one of the symbols which appeared in the three sections of the panel.

    Daimon could only notice it after he used Core Synchrony, and then injected the whole amount of his mana reserves into his eyes, one of the symbols blurred a bit and then his eyes were able to interpret it in themonnguage, which surprisingly even at Neptune is the most spread one.

    The symbol he managed to understand meant "Sky", strangely after he understood its meaning, whenever that symbol appeared, for Daimon it was automatically changed for the word "sky".

    Back at the ck stone hall Daimon was able to understand around five or so of those red symbols, among which he learned the name Drakolevia, but the inscriptions that appearedter in what was the true ce destined from the entrance trial, he was unable to understand them, these white symbols were simr in that sense, they didn''t budge no matter how much mana he injected into his infinity eyes.

    It wasn''t Core Synchrony what allowed him to see it, but the fact that he used Sanctuary after that to recover the mana and stamina to prevent being penalized by the skill, it was then when one of the symbols blurred and he was able to read it.

    Unfortunately, even if Daimon wanted to study those whit symbols more, the travel to thergest continental zone of the Elemental Sea, onlysted one day, so he could only use Sanctuary once, he even tried to ask Jasmine to cast her buff spells on him, but nothing happened.

    ''Well, an advance is an advance no matter how small it is'', he thought

    Making memory, Daimon realized that his ck Sea Emblem might have something to do with the ck stone hall, because it absorbed the rune shark which he found after surpassing the trap of that skeletal creature, which he originally thought was an Skelefiend, but now was more inclined to believe, it was one of those creatures called "Nethereal", that could be why he managed to trante four or five symbols in total.

    Horals wasn''t present back then, but Rita was inside Daimon''s shadow, so now after they had met two of those creatures, she confirmed Daimon''s theory by saying that the creature that tried to trick him calling him "Drakolevia badge bearer", had a simr feeling to those Nethereal things.

    Besides that, another event worth mentioning is that the Risha sisters also advanced, they have fought quite a bit during this time, and the atmosphere rich in elemental mana of the main residence, even if it was only for a day, was thest push they needed.

    Surprisingly the three actually jumped to the fifth star mage realm, as if their growth had synchronized after they got their wings, since Liliana used to be on a higher realm than the Yvonne and Leslie, but no more.

    But they weren''t the only ones, Tessa and Femi also advanced, unlike the sisters who broke through in a short period of time all the way from the two-star mage realm to the fifth star one, they used to be three-star mages, simr to how Aisha could have been, if she wanted to, but didn''t bother in advancing because she wanted to enter at the same grade as Daimon.

    So, she only advanced after consuming the Thunder Nimbus Vine, and jumped two realms to be a four-star mage.

    The Alfear and Dwarf princesses, became sixth star mages, which to their surprise was still one realm below Aisha, despite they being the same age, 22 years old.

    Needless to say, but Mellie and the others that were natives of Neptune, were surprised to see that Daimon and the others who came from the outside world, were so strong despite not having reached the Lord rank.

    Especially because during the travel, Daimon exined to them the traits of the different realms, for mages Manifestation Phenomenon and a Domain, as for knights, Will Maniption and the Battle Avatar.

    He also mentioned mana sense and the ability to use Space Shift, even Aurora and Thea were interested in the conversation, because they had no knowledge regarding the Lord rank traits, Daimon mentioned, and the ones for Archmages only appeared on those who stood on the top of the pyramid in terms of talent, and even then, they only have two of three.

    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® For example, Ae, ording to Mellie she has a Domain and she has the capacity to travel through space, but she doesn''t have mana sense, her detection capacities are linked to her Analyze Resonance.

    Thea is a different case, she has mana sense and the capacity to travel through space, but she doesn''t have a domain, for that same reason her fighting style is simr to Aura before she became Daimon''s soulmate, in other words, closebat as shecks in the wide area spell aspects.

    Even then, the Empress made up for theck of a domain with her innate ability, which resided in her eyes.

    Daimon noticed the pattern, even if the talented people of Neptune stillcked one of three traits, innate abilities rted to lineages were abundant unlike at the four gxies, it was tit for tat.

    And so, after a whole day of travelling, the Flying Citadel reached the vicinity of the Elemental Continent, unlike the Clear Water kingdom which was a single mass ofnd, thends of the Elemental Sea were separated for a very good reason.

    "Woah, apletely green ind!", eximed Leslie as she saw the ind that belonged to the Bamboo Forest sect, the travel wasing to an end so they were all at the captain''s cabin to get the best view that could be attained in the Flying Citadel at its highest point.

    There was a total of seven inds, green, brown and blue at the right side, orange, purple and grey at the left.

    In the middle there was the biggest mas ofnd, which was equally divided in white and ck, naturally those were the predominant tones, mostly because the vegetation of the respective inds had them, representing the element which was more abundant in each of them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "The Sea Soul, Bamboo Forest and Rock Mountain sects are under the management of my light Pce, the territory from north to southeast, then the Sky re, Purple Haze and Grey Workshop sects which are under the management of the ck Fortress which my husband leads, controlling the territory from the south to the northwest", said Aurora as she exined the major divisions of the Elemental Sea.

    That didn''t mean there weren''t any other territories, there were a lot of inds here and there, where people lived, these seven masses ofnd were the biggest and acted as the head quarters of the eight sects.

    The Flying Citadel flew towards the ind in the center, more urately to the white right side of it, which was the territory of the Light Pce, though only Jasmine and Aurora were the royal family of the Light Pce, there were other people living in the ind, it was a paradise for light and its rted elements, mages, like lightning, so when a family had a talented son or daughter with light or lightning affinities, they were send there to learn.

    Besides Aurora there were a lot of instructors who worked under her, giving public lessons to all the people that lived in the ind, it was slightly simr to the system of academies stablished by the Magus Kings back at the four gxies, in the sense that the people separated from others based on their affinities.

    Naturally there was also way more normal people than back at the gxies, apparently in the Elemental Sea, it was normal for mages or knights to not appear in a family for many generations, a strange urrence at the gxies where even if low ranked, even themoners and poor people were eighter mages or knights.

    ''In a direct confrontation between this Elemental Sea and Lykos, Lykos will have the advantage, the only variant is that I don''t know how does the conversion between the Ster rank of this ce and the Half Emperor of the White Fang gxy work'', thought Daimon.

    Thea is a middle stage Ster rank strong enough to fight with high stage ones, and in a rough calction, Daimon estimates that Aura should be at the same level as her.

    ''Guess, I''ll have to ask Calvin how strong is his grandfather '', he thought.

    Normally is rare to get to see any of the Half Emperors on action, in her two hundred years of life, Aisha who is the only soulmate that was apanying Daimon, never heard of Solomon or any of the other who were in a simr level as him, fighting or even appearing outside of their respective natives.

    Daimon woke up from his daze as he saw the Flying Citadel descending from the sky onto arge open space area, there were mages acting as guides while Aurora controlled the descend.

    Naturally thanks to the barrier there was no impact, despite the insanely heavy weight of the citadel.

    "Let''s go, I''ll take you to Twilight city for the wee party¡­ I need to take care of some things and then we can to the treasury together", said Aurora to Daimon.

    She used more mana crystals than what she expected for the Flying Citadel since she had to activate the Elemental Conversion Array, so she needed to take out more from her treasury, because she has promised to take Daimon to the Bone Sea and the Maelstrom Sea.

    Only after that they will return to check on the restricted area where the legacy of the hero is supposedly located, luckily with the Flying Citadel and the guide of natives of the other two seas, in other words Thea and Shirel, one day will be enough to go to their destinations, the Citadel was that fast and the private routes of those two will help avoid the most dangerous territories preventing fights with magic beasts that otherwise would have dyed them down.

    Daimon nodded and they then descended from the captain''s cabin, after leaving the inner ring Thea just transported them all to the center of the outer ring where the four patriarchs and the other people from the sects were already waiting, since the tform that could detach from the citadel was that.

    Naturally their arrival drew the attention of the others, Underwood approached to talk with his daughter, followed by the other girls who were his wife''s disciples and Cassy''s original teammates.

    Heartstream and Stoneheart slightly bowed towards Aurora, since they are her direct subordinates, Skyfire on the other hand just nodded before he red at Daimon, unlike the other present patriarchs, he isn''t her subordinate as he forms part of the faction of the ck Fortress and only responds to the Shaman.

    Previously he showed respect and all, because he wanted to keep his "good uncle" image on Jasmine, but apparently that didn''t work, so now it was time to take a more direct approach and for that he had to ask for audience with the Shaman, so he had no time to entertain these outsiders.

    Aurora snapped her fingers and the tform floated and then descended from the citadel to the ground, the group was received by the people who earlier acted as guides for thending, which were actually the "Hall Masters" of the Light Pce, in other words the highest ranked instructors that were subordinated to Aurora.

    "Wee back Lady Aurora, the carriage you asked for has been prepared, the party will be ready at the requested time, also Lord Shaman hase out of his seclusion and is waiting for your return", said a tall man with a white armor.

    Daimon was surprised of the rare sight of a Ster ranked knight, and a light affinity one on top of that, not only that but it was actually at the middle stage realm, being on par with the important people of the Clear Water kingdom, like the neo noble general Dominic or the ckfin Duke.

    Aurora already exined there are no high stage Ster ranked under hermand, since they are pretty rare, but she has two middle stage ones and two early-stage ones as her instructors, and that is enough to equal most of the totality of the power of the White family at least on the public side.

    "Thanks Sid, everyone here is invited to Twilight City", said Aurora as she walked towards a white carriage which was being driven by a woman wearing white robes.

    On the way to the carriage Daimon could feel the hatred gaze of not only Skyfire but his son as well, the others also were gossiping since they saw Jasmine walking at his side, but he didn''t care, he didn''te here to y.

 Chapter 424 Welcome Party (Part 1)

    ?

    The woman sitting on the driver''s seat of the carriage saw Aurora and she got down to open the door for her.

    "Wee back Lady and young miss", said the white robed woman, who is actually the other middle stage Ster ranked subordinate of Aurora, this time a mage one, but not a light affinity one but a lightning affinity one, judging by thews Daimon could see lingering around her.

    Jasmine smiled when she saw the white robed woman as she introduced her to Daimon.

    "That is aunt Sylvie, she was my mother''s best friend and sworn sister, who took care of me when I was little".

    Daimon was a bit curious regarding the death of Jasmine''s parents, but he hasn''t found the chance to ask Aurora about it.

    Aurora greeted the white robed woman back and then everyone got into the carriage, though Shirel was kept hostage in the Citadel, Olivia did apany him, but she was disguised with clothes of the Light Pce.

    Her attribute is lightning and she is an early stage Ster ranked, so the others just thought that Aurora found a new promising talent for the Light Pce and brought her back.

    Before the door of the carriage closed the woman called Sylvie approached Aurora and whispered at her.

    "Lady, that ck haired woman¡­ is dangerous, do you need me to keep an eye on her?", she said referring to Thea.

    Darkness affinity people weren''t allowed toe to the main territory of the Light Pce usually, besides the ones brought by the Shaman of course.

    It''s not that they are hated or something, but the atmosphere here will have a harsh reaction when a strong darkness affinity being released its powers, and Sylvie could tell that the ck-haired woman not only was abnormally strong, but there was something strange about her.

    "No need, she is an ally from the Maelstrom Sea who came here as an envoy, treat her with the same respect you show me".

    Sylvie''s eyes glowed for a second and she nodded before she closed the door of the carriage, to start driving towards the royal city.

    Thending spot specially created for the Flying Citadel was created at the outskirts of the royal capital also called Twilight City, the reason is that the Citadel caused interference to the anti-aerial barrier of the part of the city ruled by the ck Fortress, it wasn''t due to an array but to the unknown alloy of it which was made, so it couldn''t be deactivated.

    On the way to the city, Daimon observed thendscape though the windows, he expanded his range of vision with the infinity eyes and could see the distribution on the city which was their destination.

    Twilight city was the point where the two inds joined, the right half waspletely white, having pristine looking building, with a serene inspiring architecture style, the left half on the other hand exuded a warlike sensation, having a more military approach, the predominant color was ck too.

    It made sense though, though it''s not like Aurora was weak inbat, she is a support type mage and the sects she manages focus in the less destructive elements, that are more rted to heal, crowd control and defense, the ck Fortress on the other hand manages the battle mages, having an army, assassins and guards.

    Each one of the sects had their own roles, which were rted to the elements in which they excelled, that was their modus operandi, naturally when they fight a member of each join to form a perfectly bnced team.

    That''s why Skyfire was originally angry towards Daimon, Jasmine and Cassy who were the best support and crowd control mages in the young generation of the Elemental Sea, should have been in the team representing the Elemental Sea, alongside his son.

    But they instead went to the team of an outsider who stole all the glory, it was a disgrace which he was going to report to the Shaman in person, in fact unlike the other patriarchs who left to return to their respective inds to leave their disciples before returning only with their descendants, Skyfire had taken another route through the dark side of the inds and was rushing to meet the Shaman.

    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® Inside of the carriage Olivia took out a mirror te and after doing the respective rituals to "unseal" it, she sent a message, a couple of secondster she got a response and then turned to see Daimon.

    "The leader of this branch has epted to see me young master, the reunion will take ce at midnight in the secret location of ck Wave¡­ which is in the territory of the Purple Haze sect", she said.

    Daimon nodded, after the party, his visit to the treasury, and the errands which Aurora had to do, they will go meet the leader of this branch of ck Wave and then they will leave to the Bone Sea which was the closest of his next destinations.

    He had exactly six days until the start of the Global Raid, one to visit each sea, two to go and get the supposed legacy of the hero and one to return, everything was perfectly calcted.

    Normally he would have just asked Thea, Aurora and Olivia to go and make this branch of ck Wave submit, but there is a chance that another creature appear, and only he had the capacity to use his ck Sea Emblem, his instincts told him that absorbing those ck spheres that were the real form of those things, was important and will be useful for him.

    ¡­

    The travel to the city didn''t take that much, since the carriage had the emblem of the Light Pce, no one stood in their way, they also ignored the security point and directly entered the Twilight City.

    The carriage then moved towards a white hill which was at the center of the of the city, where a white castle worked as the residence of Aurora, not to mention it was also the point with the best concentration of light mana in the whole Elemental Sea, because that white hill was in fact a mine of light mana crystals

    It''s worth mentioning that at the other city where the buildings were ck colored there was a ck hill with a ck castle on top of it, both castles were at the same position and at the same height, so they could see the other.

    As soon as the carriage entered through the gates of the wall that was surrounding the white hill, Daimon''s pupils contracted behind his mask a bit, there was an insane amount of light mana floating in the atmosphere.

    ''What the hell, using light mana spells will require around less 30% of mana usage within this area, the mine below the hill must have never been exploited then'', thought Daimon.

    Each force has their own legacies and treasurednds, some are formed on top of mana crystal mines that have never been exploited, like this one, and in rare asions they have an interesting effect, reducing the costs of spells of their respective element.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Mysteriously, the moment people start exploiting the mines, that effect will be lost forever and no one knows why, so those ces are guarded with an order to kill any trespasser on the spot.

    He knows it, because both the Revy and Argent ns have one, though he hasn''t had the opportunity to train in them, as they can only be visited every ten years, but Erin, Liz, ine and Aura had been there to train before.

    The Silverheart also had one, so Aisha has gone there too and ironically the Naktis don''t have it, so in terms of resources they could be said to be "poor" inparison, despite the Naktis being technically stronger than the Silverheart.

    "We have arriveddy", Sylvie''s voice could be hearding from the front of the carriage.

    The door opened and the entrance to the magnificent white castle appeared in front of Daimon and the others.

    "Let''s go, I''ll show you around the castle!", enthusiastically said Jasmine,tely she has been in a better humored, apparently, she had fully ovee the trauma Adam caused her, as a proof of that she has gotten closer to Aisha and the others, and more expressive and friendlier with Daimon, her level of trust also reached 50% in the standards of the system.

    Daimon didn''t know what were the bases for the assigned percentage, in his opinion Jasmine was already his friend, they had gone through life and death situations, fought together and she even stood out for him when Skyfire was trying to cause him troubles, that percentage probably referred to the resonance her lineage had with his, instead of their personal rtionship, since sanctuary originated on the oath between the Drakolevia and whatever which was the daughter of the Northern Sky.

    Sylvie guided everyone towards the gate and then opened it for them to enter, there were a few maids formed in two lines who bowed their heads as they greeted them.

    "Wee back Matriarch, young miss and esteemed guests", they said.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, apparently the whole staff of this ce were women, and all of them had light affinity too.

    "Little Jas you can bring them to the guest room, I have to go see your grandpa while the wee party is being prepared", said Aurora just to see Jasmine shaking her head.

    "They''ll stay in my room; it''s also been a while since Cassy visited anyway".

    Aurora saw the expression on her granddaughter''s face and she inwardly sighed.

    "Fine, feel free to ask for anything you need from Sylvie, the girls working here are her disciples so you can be at ease", she said as she gazed at Daimon, before her body dposed into countless white sparkles as she left.

    Let alone the maids, even Sylvie''s face was frozen in shock when she allowed a man not only make Jasminepany but even stay in her room, one can only imagine what her reaction will be when Jasmine tells her they have been sleeping in beds next to each other for a long time at this point, and Jasmine actually found Daimon''s presence easing, since she had nightmares during the first night after being left to die but they magically disappeared after that.

    ''Young master this ce is¡­ to bright'', said Rita directly to Daimon''s mind from his shadow, making Daimon chuckle, if it wasn''t for the fact that he has light affinity, he''ll be experiencing the same difort as her, since one of his main attributes is darkness.

    Surprisingly Thea didn''t seem to care, she was just observing the decorations here and there while she drank from a small crystal canteen, she was directly drinking three-colored water and has been doing so for quite some time.

    Just when they arrived at the corridor in which Jasmine''s room was ubicated, a voice came from the end of the corridor.

    "Miss Jasmine, I heard you were returning today so I came her to greet you, but you seem to have some interestingpany".

    A girl wearing purple clothes came from the corridor that connected the one that basically belonged to Jasmine since her room is that big.

    Cassy frowned when she saw the neer, she walked out of the group and stood next to Jasmine before saying.

    "Who let you enter Sarah?".

    The purple clothed woman called Sarah, softly snorted and sparks seemed to fly between her and Cassy.

    "My mother had requested an audience withdy Aurora and it was approved, so I tagged along, it''s been a while since I saw my two friends after all, why is there a problem?", she said with a yful smile.

    Jasmine didn''t say anything, she just ignored the girl and opened the door to her room, but Cassy didn''t restrain herself.

    "Don''t pay attention to that poisonous woman, she is the niece of Patriarch Purplecloud and a psycho, who should be caged in a faraway ce to then throw the key".

    Daimon and the others entered the room, in any case they won''t be here for too long, so getting to know someone that most likely won''t be their ally is meaningless.

    The purple clothed girl didn''t seem to mind the weird description Cassy gave of her, she limited to softlyugh until she saw Daimon entering Jasmine''s room.

    ''Oh, so little Jas has started to show interest in boys, I wonder what the reaction of the others will be, how interesting''.

    Sarah just left while she happily hummed, it was hard to know what she was thinking, in part that''s why Cassy didn''t like her, that and because her cousin is one of the guys that has been trying to hit on Jasmine since they were younger.

 Chapter 425 Welcome Party (Part 2)

    ?

    After Cassy closed the door behind them, Daimon and the others observed the insides of Jasmine''s room, it would be more urate to call it a one floor house though, the castle itself was quiterge and since only Jasmine and Aurora lived here, there were actually only three bedrooms.

    One for Jasmine, one for Aurora and one that so far has only been used by Sylvie, which is the guest''s room, the maids and other staff which were Sylvie''s disciples, worked here in turns and after they finished their jobs, they were allowed to train in the backyard of the castle, before leaving to their own homes.

    It might sound like they are servants, but that''s not the case, the mana filled atmosphere of the white hill is beneficial for them, and when they train here their results are naturally better.

    Simr to spending time in the main residence of he Flying Citadel, they will get double the results with half the effort, the difference is that it only worked for light affinity knights and mages.

    In exchange of that doing some chores here and there was nothing, Sylvie used that to teach their disciples humility, since Aurora hates haughtiness and arrogance a lot, in part that''s why she didn''t have a good impression of Daimon at first.

    His confidence can easily be mistaken as arrogance by outsiders, but after she got to know him better, she realized that the silver haired youth, is incredibly realistic, despite being the strongest member of the young generation she has ever met or heard off, he doesn''t care for glory or fame.

    The things that normally blind those who are called "geniuses" don''t affect him, he doesn''t rely on his strength nor shows the usual recklessness of the young generation, calm, merciless, smart and reliable, that was Aurora''s current image of Daimon, well she resumed it to a single wordter, after she got to know his real name, the word "Demon" was perfect to describe him.

    And after that she decided to support whatever Jasmine felt for him, because someone like Daimon makes other suffer, but never allows those near him suffer, unfair maybe but that''s how this world worked, and so far, she hasn''t regretted her decision, beating the Minister in his own game, destroying the royals were achievements that one would never think wille from a member of the young generation and her they were.

    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel Leaving that aside, Jasmine brought them to the small living area of her room, her bed and other personal things were in a separated area that could be considered a studio, she also had a living room, arge private bathroom and even a training room, all in one ce.

    The only thing it wascking was a kitchen, but that''s not only because they have a chef, but because Aurora knows how bad is her granddaughter''s cooking as she once epted something she prepared for her, a mistake she still regrets to this day.

    Daimon observed the door while his eyes glowed behind his mask, the moment they entered the castle, Narasha''s voice could be heard in his mind.

    ''Daimon, there is a thing Disaster wants to devour at the northeast of our current position''.

    Daimon was naturally charmed by the idea, surprisingly the capricious sword didn''t find the unknown alloy of the Flying Citadel to be of its liking, which made Daimon sigh, the properties of it were really good, an incredible sturdiness and the capacity to disturb any darkness affinity formation, it could have gone well with Gram''s form.

    Aurora went as far as saying he could destroy a couple of benches or some other furniture without any problem, but the picky eater sword refused the treat, which left Daimon powerless regarding it.

    "What''s at the northeast of this room?", he asked to Jasmine.

    "Mmm, if my memory doesn''t fail, the treasury should be there", answered Jasmine, truth to be told, contrary to Mellie, she was always out of the castle, with Sylvie watching over her of course.

    Daimon suspected that the situation where she was attacked and somehow Sylvie wasn''t there, was caused by the interference of Adam''s system, since one of the requirements of the mission created by the opportunity, he stole him was "Make a hero''s entrance".

    He fulfilled it when he saved Mellie from the pirates, but Adam probably forced the situation, since that was his modus operandi.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he heard Jasmine''s voice saying.

    "Grandma will take you thereter, for now let''s y some games¡­ the party is going to be quite overwhelming".

    "Oh, I''m always in to earn some crystals out of you~", happily said Marlene as she took out a set of cards from her storage ring.

    The other girls red at her, Marlene won quite a few times before thanks to her ability of stealing luck from others, who knows how many disgraces had the male members of the ckfin family who are weaker than her have experienced at this point.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon could notice when she used her ability, so he simply told the girls and Thea gave her a nice beating, after that she refrained from using her ability but she still won a rtively high number of times.

    ¡­

    While Daimon and the others were enjoying their time together at Jasmine''s room, at the castle on the ck hill that was next to the white hill, things weren''t as peaceful.

    Aurora appeared inside a corridor that led to the main hall of the castle, she casually opened the gates and was met with the sight of a throne room where a middle-aged man with ck hair and a short beard, ck robes and a severe expression on his face.

    Curiously, despite being older than Aurora and Vincent, he looked younger as if it was in histe forties, Aurora seemed to be in her fifties and Vincent on the other hand seemed to be in his sixties.

    This man was the patriarch of the ck Fortress and the Shaman of the Elemental Sea, a title which gave him an equal authority to the king, Abaris Jet, normally it would have shown a positive reaction after seeing Aurora, since they live in separate castles and don''t see each other often, but judging by his expression that wasn''t the case.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "It''s good to see that you have recovered of the backsh earlier than expected, now what do you want Abaris for you to call me as soon as I returned?", said Aurora as she took a seat on a table that was prepared for those who had audiences with the Shaman.

    The man frowned a ck light shone in his eyes and darknessws surrounded him, the amount was slightly higher than the ones that gathered around Vincent.

    "Skyfire handed me an interesting report earlier, but I wanted to hear it directly from you, is it true that you allowed not only Jasmine but also the daughter of Underwood to change teams to help the team of some random brat?".

    Aurora''s body leaked light mana in response, light and darkness are generally neutral towards other elements, depending if they are negative or positive, but regardless of anything they are the weakness of the other, light is strong against darkness and darkness is strong against light, they are the perfect example of the rtion between mages and knights for that same reason.

    "Is that really the first thing thates to your mind after the information I sent you, the Skelefiends targeted little Jas, and she would have been kidnapped if not for that "random brat" as you call him, he helped despite not having the obligation to do so, not to mention she was put in danger by the little bastard you praised so much and asked to be in the same team as our granddaughter!", she eximed, the anger was clear in her voice.

    If Abaris was paying more attention to the fact that they didn''t win any glory for the Elemental Sea instead of being worried about Jasmine''s wellbeing, she was ready to start a fight on the spot.

    Abaris gritted his teeth as he smacked his fist on the armguard of his ck throne.

    "Do you think I let the members of the young generation go to y at the Mermen Sea without a proper reason, with the current state of things we''ll most likely have to join hands with the White, if they think we are weak then we''ll end up getting the short end of the stick".

    "Even if you were going to let Jasmine enter another team, you should have chosen Triten''s son, to show goodwill, you didn''t even bring anyone from the Purple Haze and Grey Workshop sects, our result would have been different if not for that", s

    "And not only that, you even allowed some outsiders to use the main residence of the Flying Citadel, you were the one that told me it was ast resort reserved to one day save the Elemental Sea!", said Abaris as he raised his voice, just to be met with Aurora''s mocking response.

    "Let alone the fact that little Jas didn''t feelfortable with Purplecloud''s son, even if he would have gone, the result would have been the same, besides I knew you willin and brought Skyfire even if he isn''t my subordinate, I didn''t think he will "tell on me", with you the very moment he set a foot here".

    "Listen I''m not in the mood to discuss with you, I have seen what I need to do for the sake of our survival and I will do it, it is as simple as that, this time we people from the older generation can''t change the result of what''s about toe, but the youngster can, so I decided to use the main residence and not only that, I will be using the treasures and materials inherited from the past generations for it, what''s the use of having wealth if you aren''t alive to enjoy it anyway".

    Abaris shook his head, he didn''t understand what was happening with Aurora, she wasn''t being the calm andposed woman he knows, but instead it seemed to have changed after going to the Mermen Sea for a few days.

    "I can''t tell you what to do with the resources of your Light Pce, you are free to waste them as you like, but don''t expect me to do the same, I don''t care who you brought, little me and little haze will be the ones in charge of apanying Jasmine from now and onwards, give that brat his prize and then sent it back to the Mermen Sea¡­", Abaris couldn''t finish his sentence before Aurora interrupted him.

    "Unfortunately for you we only returned for a day because I needed to retrieve something out of my treasury, we''ll leave first thing in the morning to visit the Maelstrom Sea, since we found another ally thanks to the one, I brought, also you can forget about little Jas leaving both my or that kid''s sides now, in fact as we speak, he is staying with her in my castle".

    Abaris''s body shivered due to anger, he actually stood up from his throne and his mana pressure flooded the room.

    "What did you say, you left her alone with someone you met a couple of days ago, I remember you refused to even let her be courted by little me or little haze, and now you are pushing her at the arms of some shady brat!".

    Aurora softly snorted and her light mana shed with Abaris, in a direct confrontation she didn''t have the upper hand, but strength isn''t everything in a battle, she showed Abaris the ring which she had in her right index finger, which was the master control of the Flying Citadel, and as if a bucket of cold water was poured on Abaris''s head, his retracted his pressure on the spot.

    "You!".

    "Are you even threatening due to some unknown guy, how far will you go against me, Aurora!", he shouted.

    Aurora sighed, Abaris has always been like this, his temper was short due to his darkness affinity, and things had to be his way no matter what, even their daughter had an arranged marriage, with a candidate he chose alone, though she didn''t regret it, Aurora wanted Jasmine to take her own decisions and control her future.

    She didn''t know what did Skyfire told Abaris to make him this angry towards Daimon, but to be honest she didn''t care, the world might end for them in six days, so there is no time for this kind of drama.

    Ultimately, she stood up from her seat and turned around to leave not without saying.

    "Once you calm down you can attend the wee party, I''ll be leaving tomorrow in the morning, don''t show your face if you are thinking of causing troubles, or I will kick you out of my castle, and get this in your head, my priority is little Jas''s happiness, I won''t let the same tragedy repeat again".

    Abaris saw the door od his throne room closing and a vein popped on his neck, darkness mana exploded out of his body and the air trembled as if the space was about to give in, but ultimately, he calmed down and took a deep breath.

    This isn''t the first time he has a discussion with Aurora and he is sure it won''t be thest, and now he wanted to see with his own eyes, the brat that was causing him all these troubles, so he was going to attend the wee party and not alone, but with his subordinates too.

    ''If you are as outstanding as she makes you sound, then you will be able to handle the situationter, if not humph, don''t me me for being rude'', he thought.

 Chapter 426 Welcome Party (Part 3)

    ?

    While others might have not realized what happened in the ck castle a moment ago, inside the white castle there were a few who did notice it, Thea''s instincts warned her there were two strong beings shing a few seconds ago.

    Rita could see the mana thanks to her mana sense, even through the isting formation of the ck castle, as for Daimon he saw light and darknessws suddenly gather there.

    ''Mm, so morews not always mean to be stronger, it seems like quantity isn''t what''s important but quality, that Shaman guy is slightly weaker than old Vincent'', he concluded.

    Many aspects defined one''s battle prowess, Daimon has been studying what makes a Ster rank strong, since he is sure Erin and Aura can easily destroy each and any of the Early and middle stage ones he has seen fighting so far with the exception of Thea, for the high ranked ones, ckbeard looks troublesome, but not to the point where they would need to avoid conflict, that guy Tideus is the same.

    But the Maximum ranks are different, in a rough calction even if those two were to join hands, Daimon thinks the best they could do will be stalling for some time.

    And that has been making him want to see more Maximum Ster ranks, topare and make his own conclusions, thanks to the Shaman he now realized that there are levels amongws too.

    Well, the threekes helped him notice that too, since those are the strongestws, he has seen, in a scale where Calvin''s grandfather is a 10 and Vincent is around 9, the ones that appeared when thekesbined, will be a freaking 100.

    In this improvised scale he created, the Shaman will be at 8.5 while Aurora is an 8, that doesn''t mean they are necessary weaker than Vincent, but in this case, they are, though for a different reason.

    Aurora could be said to be in a lower realm despite being a Maximum ranked, her umtion is smallerpared to Vincent, but herws are of the same quality, the Shaman on the other hand, has a better umtion even than Vincent, but the quality of hisws iscking, resulting in Vincent being slightly stronger.

    ''Ah, I can already imagine the damn party being exhausting, why didn''t Adam have to deal with all this, he just appeared out of nowhere, saved Jasmine and everyone loved him'', thought Daimon, just to hear Evangeline giggling at him.

    ''Well, that''s in part your fault Mr. "I don''t want to use Casanova", I told you, the systems grow ording to their owner''s wishes, mmm, think of it like this, he chose to y in easy mode and you chose the hell mode~'', she said with a yful voice.

    ''Naturally the rewards follow the same pattern, so while he is shallowly using the opportunities given to him, you are getting every single drop of benefits from them, that monstrous swordsmanship and your new affinity are an example of that''.

    ''Besides if you were to be the type to choose the easy way, then you wouldn''t be worthy to be my host'', she added to herself.

    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel Ultimately Daimon nodded, that could be why those two were defeated by him during their first meeting, despite being two system users against one, decisions affected one''s result after all.

    Daimon looked through the window of Jasmine''s room and saw many carriages going through the check points of the white hill, in other words the party was about to start.

    Aurora materialized out of thin air in the middle of Jasmine''s room all of a sudden, her expression was calm once again as she stole a gaze at Daimon.

    She somehow felt as if he knew what happened earlier, but she still said.

    "Come with me for a second, the others should start preparing, though we will start the celebration when the sun starts to settle, the party will officially start in thirty minutes".

    As soon as Aurora finished speaking, maids entered Jasmine''s room bringing rolling racks with all kinds of dresses and other essories.

    Which made the sisters eyes sparkle, unlike Aisha who has her wardrobe with her all the time, thanks to Daimon''s inventory, they only had what the academy allowed them to bring in those rings and they haven''t really gone shopping in Neptune.

    Daimon could feel the usatory gazes of those three, since they have seen him giving Aisha some clothes out of thin air, but he didn''t bring any for them.

    "Ahem, sure, I''ll go with senior Aurora", said Daimon as he left the room with Aurora, leaving the girls who softlyughed at the whole situation, Jasmine included.

    Aurora saw the happy expression of her granddaughter, which was genuinepared to the times she wanted to explore just to not be in this white castle that reminded her of the fact that her mother wasn''t here anymore, and she inwardly nodded, this is what she wanted for her.

    Aurora closed the door behind her and then turned to see Daimon who just took off his mask.

    "So, what can I expect to happen in this wee party, childish personal attacks, angry losers that im something that wasn''t theirs to begin with?", asked Daimon, which made Aurora sigh.

    "Spying isn''t good you know, but indeed, they are going to cause you trouble, besides death anything is fine, Purplecloud and Skyfire''s sons will for sure take the chance, which my husband is going to create¡­ crush them but don''t kill them, it''s for little Jas''s sake, that''s the only thing I ask", she said.

    She has seen the way Daimon handles his enemies, there is no room for mercy once someone has pointed at him with a sword, she doesn''t know why but even with her husband being present, she knows he will be able to pull it off if he decides to go for the kill.

    Specially because Daimon has stated that even if both Vincent and Aurora were to try and kill him, if he wants to leave no one can stop him, so he isn''t afraid of them, he can even take the others with him now.

    In part that''s why both Aurora, Ae and the Duchess were delighted of the fact that Daimon was acting as their bodyguard, of he isn''t afraid of Maximum Ster ranked, then what can possibly kill him in Neptune.

    "I''m not asking something for free; he owes me a big one from some time ago, help me with this and it''s yours, there are some really nice darkness affinity things in the ck Fortress''s treasury and you can pick two", she said.

    Daimon''s bad habit showed, as he smirked, with Aurora''s help the things needed for Aura''s treasure will bepleted, and now he''ll also get what he needs for Erin and there is a chance the second hidden gem requirement is met, if it''s something that is in the hands of the Shaman of course.

    And he only needs to beat up some people, who he needed to deal with anyway, it was two birds one stone.

    "No problem, we met a girl from the Purple Haze sect, they specialize in the use of poison, as for the other guy it''s fire, right?", he asked.

    Aurora nodded in response.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Yes, though Skyfire''s older son will suppress its realm since he is a peak Archmage as you call them, so his fire isn''t weak at all, as for Purpleclous''s son, he is actually a middle stage Lord rank, he was supposed to be the one to fight Triten''s son, as he is the strongest in the young generation of the Elemental Sea".

    Daimon thanked Aurora but he didn''t show any worry regarding those two, which made Aurora inwardly nod, with this she can be at ease.

    "You also prepare for the party, technically you are the guest of honor and little Jas will be the one to give you the token to enter my treasury, though you can take whatever you need and not just one item", she said as her body dispersed into countless rays of white light.

    Daimon sighed, as someone whoes from a modern all the noble thing isn''t up to his liking, Aisha made sure he learned etiquette and all though.

    ¡­

    While the girls and Daimon prepared for the party, at the other side of the castle, Aurora who was already suing the robes of the Matriarch of the Light Pce, received a visit from a purple clothed woman.

    It was none other than the mother of Sarah and the second inmand of the Purple Haze sect.

    "Lady Aurora, thanks for receiving me with such a short notice", said the purple clothed woman as she rose the sides of her clothes to greet Aurora.

    "I''m a bit busy right now, so if you have something to say, now is the moment, Bell", calmly said Aurora.

    The purple clothed woman didn''t get offended by the straightforward words of Aurora, she instead nodded and then said.

    "In truth it was my daughter who insisted me oning, she saw her cousin''stest achievement in poison spells and since the notice of the "champion" of the Mermen Seaing here arrived before Lady Aurora, it was obvious for whom that was prepared, I just wanted to warn you about it, my little Sarah still considers young miss, her friend¡­ despite what happened back then, the same for me, though Sylvie it''s not talking to me anymore".

    Aurora remained silent for a moment, she looked at the roof of the room as if she was contemting things for a moment before she just sighed.

    "Thanks for the information, I will tell little Jas you came to say hi, or if you want to you can stay for the party".

    The purple clothed woman shook her head as she stood up to leave.

    "Thanks for your kind words, but Syl will attack me if she sees me near young miss, and I would do the same if I was her honestly, so I''ll have to pass, but Sarah will stay, please keep an eye on her".

    "Mm", Aurora nodded and then allowed the purple clothed woman to leave, while she was lost in her thoughts, with everything that was happening solving some pending matters wasn''t a bad idea.

    ''I guess I''ll have a talk with little Jas after the party ends'', she thought.

    Leaving that aside, the atmosphere on the white castle started to change to a festive one, the maids had prepared a waiting room for the people who arrived early to present their respects to Aurora, who were mostly the city lords of the territories under the management of the Light Pce.

    The three patriarchs included of course, people kept arriving one after another, in those luxurious carriages while everything was prepared for the celebration.

    The front yard was decorated, tables, chairs and other furniture was amodated, the chefs of the castle prepared their own workstations and started preparing the main dishes which requires time to cook, little by little an elegant party took form.

    Naturally the families of the n heads that were waiting to pay their respects personally to Aurora, didn''t get to enter the castle and instead were offered seats on the front yard, this was a special asion and everyone was gossiping about the rising star from the Mermen Sea who was visiting the Light Pce, since the crowned prince of the Clear Water kingdom was a renowned fighter and he lost, not ording to the rumors he was crushed in front of everyone.

    This was also a perfect opportunity for the people that lived in the Light Ind to meet the disciples of the other inds, it was a great chance to make connections and the like, ultimately the ones attending were nobles of their own sects.

    The gate of the white castle opened and naturally the attention of all the presents was drawn at it, it was almost time for the start so the honored guest should appear at any time.

    And they were right, since the onesing out of the castle were none other than Daimon and the girls, they were all dazzling, literally and figuratively, since the clothes that were given to them were magic equipment.

    Daimon looked at himself wearing this elegant white suit, which is actually the uniform of the Light Pce''s elites, that so far only Sylvie, in other words, Aurora''s direct disciple wear and he chuckled.

    ''For someone whose attribute is light, she is quite cunning'', he thought.

    This suit fit him perfectly and it is made with light affinity materials, it is not something that could be made in less than three or four days, meaning Aurora had ordered it to be made even before the tournament ended.

    ''At least it''s quite simr to my usual attire anyway'', thought Daimon.

    Naturally, an "outsider" wearing the elite uniform of the Light Pce which even the knight who has served Aurora for the longest time isn''t allowed to, and a man on top of that, made all the guests of the party dumbfounded.

    Why do you ask, well, only the royal family of the Light Pce can use it, Sylvie has epted Aurora as her master, so she is like an adopted daughter for her.

    In other words, either the Matriarch of the Light Pce has finally epted a male disciple or¡­ he was going to be family for her in some other way.

    And with that "revtion" the party officially started.

 Chapter 427 Welcome Party (Part 4)

    ?

    Daimon could feel all the gazes of the other guests fall him and he naturally understood why, the clothes he was wearing have a deep meaning, as they represent the fact that Aurora has epted him into the Light Pce sect.

    Though for him it was just a symbolic mean of trust, for the others meant a lot more, especially because the girls weren''t using the emblem of the Light Pce in any part of their clothes.

    So, the attention fell on him, Daimon turned around to see the girls, they were all wearing dresses of their own choose, starting from Aisha who found a silver and purple dress that suited perfectly.

    Next were the Risha sisters, Yvonne was using a ck long dress thatbined with her hair color, Leslie chose a lively orange dress that made a nice contrast with her maple-colored eyes andstly Daimon got to enjoy the rare sight of a blushed Liliana since she was using a white dress.

    Though Aisha and the sisters were stunning, they weren''t the only ones, Mellie was using an aquamarine dress with sea theme decorations as well as the tiara she used the first time she met Daimon, since she came in representation of the queen, for Daphne she chose a dark blue dress that made her look calm and serene, she was also wearing her tiara as a symbol that she is a royal.

    Speaking of royals, the alfear and dwarf princesses were as ufortable with all the noble stuff as Daimon, which made thetter confused, he expected it from Femi, since dwarves don''t exactly use the noble system, but something more simr to tribes.

    But the alfear are probably one of the races that take more pride in their etiquette and lineage, even at the four gxies were academies and ns are the usual terms used to describe forces, the alfear are a kingdom, so it was a bit strange that Tessa the princess of the alfear isn''t used to these events.

    That being said, her light green and ck dress entuated her noble appearance, her two-colored hair gave her a slight rebellious charm, though she is the calm onepared to Femi.

    Femi on the other hand looked surprisingly refined in her ck dress, at least until one noticed the weird way in which she was walking, since she as forced to put on high heels, it''s worth mentioning that she normally uses boots when in public and her feet are bare when she isn''t, her element is earth so her feet don''t get dirty even if she doesn''t wear any kind of footwear, so she developed the bad habit of not using any and now she was paying the price.

    "Damn, I''m going to fall in these things, even my hammer was confiscated and I was only allowed to bring my Horned Crown, because those women thought it meant I''m a royal or something", mumbled Femi as she gazed at Daimon.

    "It wouldn''t have been confiscated if you were able to keep it in your ring for more than thirty seconds", said Daimon, her hammer was in his inventory for safety reasons, naturally the hammer was given to him by Tessa who snatched it away from her friend.

    Leaving the princesses aside, Cassy was using a jade green dress, giving her a vibrant aura that went well with her light green hair, Chris on the other hand chose an amber toned dress that entuated the brown-amber color of her eyes, as for Marlene she chose a silver-blue dress as those were the colors of her angel fish n.

    Thea and Jasmine weren''t mentioned for different reasons, Thea was already wearing an elegant ck and red dress always, also she isn''t here since as someone in a simr standing as Aurora, she''lle out with of the castle at the same time as her.

    Jasmine on the other hand wasn''t here because she will be the one giving Daimon the prize at the ceremony that will take ce in a few more minutes, and Aurora prevented Daimon from seeing her before that.

    Instead, he came out of the castle early to unt this elegant suit and bait the idiots he had to deal with, though it seems they haven''t arrived yet.

    ''I guess they will "casually" arrive when Jasmine appears on the stage, like good third-rate viins'', thought Daimon as he walked towards the honor seats at the first row in front of the stage where the ceremony will take ce.

    The girls followed Daimon while they ignored the adoration filled eyes of those who looked at them.

    Surprisingly besides Cassy''s junior sister who are her mother''s disciples, no one else approached them, but this was also within Daimon''s calctions, the Shaman probably made sure that his unweing attitude regarding him, made its way into the ears of the ones that could made the news spread like a wildfire.

    Well, those girls from the Bamboo Forest sect weren''t the only ones, the purple clothed girl, Sarah also approached to say hi, since her seat was at the table next to Daimon, to Cassy''s displease.

    Daimon also noticed the people from the Sea Soul and the Rock Mountain sects doubting about approaching them, probably Underwood''s words made Heartstream and Stoneheart evaluate their options.

    As a result, they actually came to present their respects to Aurora before the Shaman arrived, when normally they will only appear after Abaris, but apparently the sons of the patriarch had their own opinions, since they were ring at him with raw mockery.

    It was obvious they were hoping to see the Skyfire and Purplecloud''s sons putting him "in his ce", so they were preventing the others from their sects from approaching him.

    ''Well, those two are useless anyway, their fathers on the other hand are Ster ranked, so they should be able to contribute to the final battle'', thought Daimon as he stopped paying any attention to those guys.

    The mumbles and whispers of the guests started diminishing the moment they saw the white castle shinning in a bright light, the gates slowly opened and Aurora who was followed by Sylvie, Sid, Heartstream, Stoneheart and the other rtively important people affiliated to the Light Pce came out.

    Then the group in general slightly bowed as they greeted Aurora.

    "Greetings to the matriarch", they said in calm and respectful voices, this is a custom that has been continuing since ancient times, so no one took it lightly, besides Daimon and the others, which obviously caught the attention of the others.

    But since Aurora didn''t say anything, no one else mentioned it, it was obvious that she had some sort of rtion with the silver haired masked youth, so maybe he was allowed to not bow down and greet her due to that, it still made more than one grit their teeth as they anxiously waited for the local "champion" toe and teach the outsider a lesson.

    "Everyone, wee to the award ceremony organized by my Light Pce, to congratte the champion of the first time two seas have participated in the three-art tournament and beast hunt of the Clear Water kingdom".

    "Now to present the first prize, we have the first and second princesses of the Mermen Sea, Daphne Vs and Mellie Delphini, pleasee up the stage along with the champion, Gabriel", said Aurora as she pointed at the table on the first row where Daimon and the girls were sitting.

    Mellie and Daphne stood up and went up the stage, Daimon followed not too long after, normally it would have been Ae the one sent since she is in charge of external affairs, but she has to guard the fort, so Mellie came in her stead.

    Daimon simply stood there with a calm expression, despite the thousands of gazes that wanted to pierce a hole through him, he was like an immovable mountain.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Jasmine inwardly nodded seeing Daimon perfectly handling the pressure of the public, a sign that hees from a high background.

    "And, to represent our Elemental Sea, the princess of the Light Pce and my granddaughter, Jasmine Ivory", said Aurora.

    The gate of the castle opened once again, but this time only one person came out of it, pale skin akin to a nobledy, long waist-length blonde hair, limpid light blue eyes and pretty face.

    Jasmine came out of the castle while she showed everyone the dress Aurora prepared for the asion, as a sign of goodwill the host wears clothes with the color of the force to whom the guest belongs, in this case blue not for the Mermen Sea but for Ae''s Delphini and the Duchess''s Vs family.

    And so, Jasmine was wearing a predominantly blue short dress, that perfectly envelops her body and a long-sleeved coat, in her hands she was using a new staff which Aurora ordered to be made beforehand, and she was also wearing a tiara as a symbol of her status as a princess, in one word she looked gorgeous.

    The moment she arrived at Daimon''s side, she smiled at him, which made the spectators, curse him in their hearts, the goddess of their dreams was acting too friendly with this unknown "invader".

    And as Daimon predicted, the skies over the white castle darkened and a ck bridge made out of mana, came from the lower part of the white hill.

    Just as the ck bridge approached the stage directly, an angered voice echoed through the area.

    "Is this how the Shaman treats his guests, maybe this Empress should have allied with the Skelefiends in that case!".

    Not only the spectators were in awe, the ck bridge trembled and a few curses and pained sounds could be heard.

    Then a ck vortex appeared on the stage from which the elegantly dominant figure of Thea, came out, she was wearing her ck and red dress and had her spear in her hands, not to mention an angered expression, though she winked at Daimon so fast no one saw her doing it.

    Making Daimon chuckle, the Empress was obviously just messing with the glorious entrance of the Shaman, she even used her darkness mana to disrupt the bridge which was made by Abaris personally, making some of the people that were riding on the bridge fall and disgrace themselves.

    Aurora who was inwardlyughing, kept a calm expression as she snapped her fingers, the white castle let out a dazzling white light and the darkness covering the skies was immediately dispelled, revealing the neers.

    Abaris current expression was way different than what he expected, his dignified self was nowhere to be seen, he instead was cursing Skyfire for omitting who came to form an alliance with Aurora, in other words Thea.

    It''s not like he personally feared the Empress, but who wouldn''t want ess to the waters of the Maelstrom Sea that haven''t been explored and exploited, it was practically and of dreams, in terms of resources.

    With a ruler level magic beast like Thea, they will be able to avoid the nightmares that dwell below the surface of the Maelstrom Sea, and he just offended her by not waiting until Aurora presented Thea.

    Not only that, his entrance was ruined and some of his subordinates ended up making a fool of themselves, unknown to Thea she actually managed to make the two challengers, that Abaris brought for Daimon.

    A purple clothed guy on his early twenties as well as a guy in his middle twenties wearing red armor, got up the ground and returned to Abaris''s side with aggrieved expressions on their faces.

    "Master we were attacked by that woman", said Skyfire''s older son, the purple clothed guy actually swallowed the anger because someone that could affect Abaris''s darkness mana couldn''t be simple, and his temperament was less explosive, his eyes were sharp and cold like those of a poisonous snake waiting to strike at the right moment.

    Daimon felt the gaze of the neer first trying to reach Jasmine, who actually moved away to stand behind Daimon, which made the spectators take a breath of cold air, the princess was avoiding Purplehaze''s eyes, but she stood so close to the silver haired youth, how can they not make some wild assumptions.

    "Only you will taunt a poisonous snake before beheading it", mumbled Jasmine with an amused voice, this whole situation was created by Daimon, well the part in which Thea humiliated the local talents and created trouble for Abaris wasn''t, but it helped for his purpose which is anger his opponents.

    "An unstable enemy is prompt tomit mistakes, it''s easy to destroy someone who isn''t able to control himself, like that red armored idiot", said Daimon in a voice only Jasmine could hear.

    Skyfire''s son was boiling right now, Jasmine never even gave him a chance and the one time he tried to court Jasmine more actively, Aurora beat him an inch away of death, and now in front of him, the unapproachable girl of his dreams was acting all close with some random guy, how could he not be angry.

    "I challenge you!", shouted the red armored guy, as he pointed at Daimon.

    ''Time to work'', thought Daimon as he smirked.

    The girls saw Daimon''s bad habit surfacing and they giggled; someone was about to suffer.

    Jasmine''s eyes glowed for a split of a second, this whole event which would have been usually unbearable for her, as she had to endure the "hungry" gazes of all those guys, was actually fun this time.

    ''Is it because of Daimon'', she wondered as she looked at Daimon, certainly with Daimon here, she felt at ease, let alone the cunning son of Purplecloud that always watch her from afar, like a creepy snake spying on its prey, but even her grandfather who is usually so dominant, were being yed by Daimon.

    And so the curtain raised for the first act of the day.

 Chapter 428 Quantity Vs Quality (Part 1)

    ?

    Though all this was orchestrated by both Daimon and Aurora, agreeing so easily will just blow up their cover, so naturally Aurora yed her part as the "outraged host", she turned to see Abaris with a serious expression on her face as she said.

    "What is the meaning of this?", Aurora''s voice was calm but the spectators gulped down seeing the light mana leaking out of her body, she looked like a ready to explode volcano, add to that the fact that Thea was also exuding some of her mana pressure, as she demanded an exnation of the Shaman.

    Abaris was now trapped between the wall and the sword, originally, he wanted to take a rxed approach, just asking the champion to exchange some pointers with his personal disciples, that way it would be up to Daimon to ept or not and Aurora will look bad if she interfered, it would be as if she said she didn''t trust in the strength of the champion.

    But now that not only he screwed the presentation of Thea, and also Skyfire''s son shouting that he wanted to challenge Daimon, his n went to hell, at this point he could only bite the bullet.

    "Little me and little Haze, wanted to see the champion with their own eyes, unfortunately we took more time because little Haze was in seclusion training so¡­".

    Without letting Abaris finish, Thea interrupted him.

    "So, I''m being put in second ce due to some juniors, I didn''t know the people from ck Fortress sect were so full of themselves".

    The atmosphere tensed up even more, between offending Thea and offending Aurora, Abaris could only grit his teeth and lower himself to solve his own mess.

    "Of course not, if my disciples have offended the ck Empress, then I''ll apologize in their stead, the members of the young generation are supposed to be hot blooded so we can''t me them for some little quarrels, don''t you agree?", he said, trying to get the support of the public.

    Unfortunately for him, Aurora wasn''t willing to let him off the hook so easily.

    "They can be excused, but why are you interrupting my awarding ceremony, I think I remember having mentioned that I will kick you out of my Light Pce''s territory if you caused troubles?".

    The spectators, including the patriarchs of the sects, which were all present, some on the honored seats prepared by Aurora, and some in the still unstable ck bridge created by Abaris, felt their minds going nk.

    They just heard Aurora dere that she was going to kick out the Shaman if he caused troubles, in other words she was willing to go to such extent for Daimon''s sake!

    Naturally it was more for Jasmine''s sake, but in this case both things aligned.

    Abaris gritted his teeth, he was being scolded in public, his face just took a hard blow and if that wasn''t enough, Thea added.

    "To think the day wille, when a mere peak Mortal mage will dare to try and bully the youngest general in the history of my army, right in front of me, if you want to fight, then how about you take one of my attacks, I''m two major realms above you, so it''s the same as you trying to fight Gabriel".

    Thea''s sharp eyes pierced Skyfire''s son, which made him take a step back in fear, what a joke if he were to receive an attack from someone like the ck Empress, there will be nothing left of him.

    "Ahem, that isn''t proper, little me is still a member of the young generation, though is true that he is a few years older than that little fellow¡­ so how about this, little me will get his realm suppressed to the low rank of the middle Mortal level, and we will leave them exchange one movement, as to not cause friction between our two Seas, what do you say, you aren''t afraid right little friend, after all you can boost your own realm to the middle stage of the middle Mortal level ording to the data of your victory over the crowned Mermen prince?", asked Abaris to Daimon, in his mind if Daimon let himself be provoked, he will ept and then Aurora and Thea can''tin.

    On the surface the challenge seemed fair, an Arch rank has a deeper umtion, but with a minor realm of advantage, then the strength of the two should be simr, as to who will be stronger, that will depend on their battle prowess, which for others tranted as to who is more talented.

    And as Abaris expected, the silver haired masked youth, couldn''t ept being insulted and recklessly hastened to answer, or so he thought when he saw Daimon turning to see him, just to feel blood pressure increasing due to Daimon''s next words.

    "What do I say you ask¡­ I say why should I ept to fight every nobody that challenges me, what do I win with that, I have already won the prize, while he has nothing, what kind of idiot will ept such a wacky duel?".

    Skyfire''s son trembled out of anger, the word "Nobody" hit a sore spot, unlike Purplehaze, his talent manifested just when he reached the peak of the Arch rank which was like a week ago, when he was a member of the youngest generation like Purplehaze, he wasn''t worth mentioning at all.

    Naturally it was Aurora who informed of this to Daimon, the idea was to force Abaris''s hand, or more urately his pocket, because why should Daimon settle for the rewards of Aurora, when he can also rob Abaris on the way, that was his target all along, those two guys were nothing for him, he was fighting the Shaman directly from the very beginning.

    Daimon''s words were rather ambiguous when he said he has won the prize, it could be interpreted as the fact that he already won the tournament¡­ or it could mean that he already has won the heart of the princess of the Light Pce, naturally Daimon referred to the first.

    But Skyme and Purplehaze associated it to the second meaning, which is what Daimon wanted, those two turned to see Abaris and they both bowed towards him.

    "Master please, allow us beat that arrogant bastard!", heatedly said Skyme.

    "He isn''t putting our Elemental Sea in his eyes at all, even Terry didn''t dare to act like this in front of me", added Purplehaze.

    Abaris sympathized with his disciples and more than that, he hated the guts of the brat that didn''t show an ounce of respect towards him, and was so casually standing next to his granddaughter.

    "In that case, let''s do it like this, if you win you can pick one thing from my treasury, just like you are going to get something from the Light Pce''s one, do you agree?", said Abaris to Daimon.

    Daimon nodded but just when Abaris thought things were over, he heard the voice that will bring him nightmares in the nearby future saying.

    "That will cover the ck Fortress''s part, now what will the Purple Haze and Sky re sects give me when their representatives lose?".

    Abaris nearly dered war on the spot, but he managed to swallow his anger and look at Skyfire and Purplecloud who were standing behind him, making them stood out by themselves.

    "We support Lord Shaman, my Sky re sect will also offer a pick from the treasury".

    "My Purple Haze sect is the same".

    Abaris proudly smiled and then turned to see Daimon to say his own conditions.

    "There you have it, but be aware that if you lose you will never be allowed to show yourself in the Elemental Sea ever again, nor approach either the Light Pce or my ck Fortress''s members", he said.

    Abaris calcted that this will be the best way to separate his granddaughter from this disrespectful brat, since Aurora can''t leave the Light Pce for too long.

    ''I can''t kill you right now, but they will never see or hear of you again after this'', thought the Shaman, unfortunately he couldn''t make this a life and death duel or Aurora will definitely step in, not to mention the ck Empress, but he can always deal with a mere juniorter, for now what mattered was to take him as far as possible from Jasmine.

    Daimon shrugged as he nodded.

    "Sure, let''s hurry up and finish this, those two can team up against me if they want to", casually said Daimon, making Skyme and Purplehaze grit their teeth, while Abaris, Skyfire and Purplecloud just limited to smile.

    They were so focused in Daimon''s act, that they didn''t notice the fact that Thea and Aurora didn''t even try to convince him of rejecting the challenge, still the Shaman wanted Jasmine to watch the arrogant silver haired brat being crushed so he shook his head as he said.

    "It will be a 1v1 fight, we''ll limit it to a single exchange no weapons or equipment will be allowed, the one who is in better conditions after that will be the winner, Aurora you take care of suppressing little me''s realm so that there aren''t any usations when this brat loses", conceitedly said Abaris as he snapped his fingers to create a throne with darkness mana, to seat, the stage in which the awarding ceremony was taking ce a moment ago will be the tform used for the duel.

    Aurora didn''t pay mind to Abaris''s provocations she pointed at Skyme with her index finger and a line of white light was shot from her finger, Skyme put on a pained expression as his realm plummeted all the way to the early stage of the Lord rank.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Naturally they gave him a few minutes to get used to it, in the meantime Aurora and the others left the stage to open up space for the duel, Daimon on the other hand took off the white suit and just kept his pants and the shirt he wore below, he handed his clothes and ring to Aisha and then waited for Skyme to go up the stage.

    Skyme did the same and ended up only wearing pants and a red shirt before he jumped onto the stage, Aurora who was acting as the referee stood up from her seat and then said.

    "I''ll remind you just in case but killing is forbidden, whoever tries to break the rules will be stopped and dealt with by me, now get ready".

    Skyme thought Aurora was saying it because of him, but she was in fact reminding Daimon to not kill his opponent, just in case.

    Skyme on the other handughed and then took his position, preparing himself to cast his spell the moment the fight starts.

    Aurora raised her hand and then shot a ray of white light, giving the greenlight for the duel to start.

    As expected, the moment the duel started, bright red mes exploded around Skyme, his fire mana covered the whole tform, engulfing Daimon on the process, though he has yet to cast his attack, the heat produced by his mana was already dangerous for a Lord ranked.

    Skyme saw Daimon being engulfed by his fire mana but not showing any reaction and he snorted, he already knew Daimon had fire affinity thanks to his father telling him everything he discovered about Daimon, he still didn''t underestimate his enemy and surrounded himself with a wall of fire.

    ''As a fellow fire affinity user, I''ll give you a chance, kneel down and apologize, swear to never approach Jasmine again and I''ll let you go with minor burns¡­ blegh!!!''.

    Skyme send a message to Daimon''s ears by making mana vibrate, he is an Archmage after all, but as if a mountain had shed against him, he suddenly vomited blood, the wall of fire was violently dispersed and then his chest dented inwards as he flew out of the stage, without even knowing what happened.

    By the time hended on the ground his eyes had rolled backwards and he had fainted already, while blood kepting out of his mouth.

    "You talk too much", said Daimon.

    A sepulchral silence fell on the whole area, while Skyme was convinced that his mana gathering ratio and casting speed was fast enough to outmatch Daimon, which made him unable to notice the attack that took him out, the spectators did manage to see what was happening, specially those from the Seal Soul sect.

    Daimon simply pointed at Syme and a drop of ck water condensed in front of his finger, which he then shot at Skyme, the moment the drop of waternded on Skyme''s chest, it exploded and he was sent flying with his chest turned into a bloody mess.

    And that wasn''t all, the drop of ck water actually reconstructed itself and left Skyme''s body to return to Daimon''s side, the only difference was that it had shrank to the size of a rice grain.

    "Your turn", said Daimon at Purplehaze who was still processing what happened, Skyfire also finally managed to react.

    "Son!", he yelled as he shed towards Skyme, the sight of his older son, the pride of his family, fainted with a hole the size of a palm and a dent in the middle of his chest, made his eyes get bloodshot.

    But before he could do something stupid, a bucket of cold water was poured on his head as he felt Thea''s threatening gaze piercing him like a spear, the moment he tried to make a move, he will die without aplete corpse, because at this distance even the Shaman will not be able to fully protect him.

    That didn''t mean he was willing to let this go, he turned to see Daimon and then poisonously said.

    "You cheated, that was clearly a water spell, and you already have three affinities, one of them being fire, there is no way you have water affinity!".

    Daimon shrugged, his body let out a few waves of water mana, to a level that wouldn''t be possible for anyone without water affinity before saying.

    "You can me the Minister, his three-colored water was quite useful for me".

    Skyfire froze on the spot, he forgot that Daimon had ess to the treasury of the Arcarius as his prize, that being said he was at deny over the fact that the brat in front of him could be so lucky as to awaken water affinity just by drinking a few liters of three-colored water, but the reality was in front of him, Daimon has water affinity and he can''t do anything about it.

    ''Damn Arcarius family, just how much three-colored water did he get from them!'', he inwardly shouted before saying.

    "Even then, with the amount of water mana you used there is no way you could have ignored the wall of fire made by my son, his fire''s temperature is way higher than anyone in his same realm, you didn''t even use that boosting ability of yours, how can you win like that without cheating!".

    Daimon smirked, condensing that small drop of water used around half of his mana reserves, which are already on par with a peak Lord ranked.

    "That''s easy to solve, it happened because his fire is trash, even if he were to use twice or thrice the quantity of mes he used, the result will be the same, while in the same major realm he is no match for me it''s a matter of quality", he said.

    "What did you¡­", Skyfire heard the condescending tone in Daimon''s voice and he nearly lost it on the spot, but Abaris interrupted him by cing his hand on Skyfire''s shoulder.

    "That''s enough, take little me to the infirmary of the Fortress".

    Skyfire gritted his teeth but he nodded, as he was about to leave, he heard the voice he hasted the must speaking once again.

    "Where are you going, regardless of what happenster, your Sky re sect lost, so you owe me something".

    Skyfire''s eyes were literally spitting fire, his body trembled due to anger, but with everyone seeing him, he managed to swallow his anger and then handed Aurora a red token with the word "Treasury" written on it.

    "Now that is what I call hospitality, if I knew the sects of the Elemental Sea gave away Ster ranked treasures as wee gifts, I would have taken my generals to visit a long time ago, feel free to challenge Gabriel more~", yfully said Thea.

    The people of the Sky re sect all felt insulted, Skyfire turned to see Thea but he didn''t dare to show hostility towards her, so he could only leave in disgrace, his sect members left with him, since they had no face to stay here.

    Daimon then looked at Purplehaze from above as he said.

    "Are youing or not, my time in this sea is limited and I have more important things to do".

    Purplehaze snorted but as he was about to go up the stage, Abaris prevented him from doing so and instead said.

    "Wait I want to change the second duel, to a proper fight, the same rules apply without the exception that there won''t be a limit to the number of movements, the one who is thrown out of the stage, faints or surrenders loses, in exchange I''ll give you two things from my treasury if you win, do you dare to ept?".

    Daimon saw the smile on Purplehaze widening and he knew these two had something on mind, but he didn''t care, whether it was a duel or a fight, the result will be the same.

    "Sure", he was actually in a good mood since he will be getting more materials, he was going to use two high Ster rank materials for Aura''s weapon and Erin will naturally want the same or she''ll be jealous of the wolf girl, so the more the better.

    And with those words the second act of the day started.

 Chapter 429 Quantity Vs Quality (Part 2)

    ?

    The atmosphere tensed up at the white hill, Skyme has raised to be well known since his mes evolved, from the basic orange color that fire has to a deep red one, at first people thought he was just ying some tricks to make his fire look more threatening.

    The color of an element can be modified with some practice, it''s a simple trick that doesn''t affect the strength of one''s element at all, but there is a second way to make one''s element manifest an external change, which is advancing in theprehension one has over it.

    Even here in Neptune where Ster ranked exist, people have very little knowledge regardingws, in fact the person that for Daimon seems to have understood how it works the most, isn''t even an Arch rank, no, in fact is someone that can''t be considered a mage anymore, the teacher of the elite ss, Aliya.

    If what Daimon supposes is correct, then Aliya''s theory "Concept" is the way to usews to alter one''s element, that being said she might be the first that has been able to give form to the idea, but it''s not like there aren''t people with modified affinities.

    There are those who are naturally born with it, Variants like Aura whose element is a mix of lightning and wind, which Daimon baptized as sma since that''s the closest resemble he could find, thanks to the knowledge he has from his previous life.

    The little tiger girl Dana whose lightning has substance thanks to abination of earth element is simr to that, and his ck water affinity is also on that category.

    Then there are those who learn or create one, his Demon Light and Aisha''s Lightning Empress are perfect examples of it, and to his surprise the wings of the Risha sisters are also like that, but in their cases their elements seem to change ording to their emotions, it''s a vast subject but so far be it by luck or a simple coincidence the principles of Aliya''s theory are in line with all the cases Daimon has met.

    Skyme isn''t an exception, his mes just became better than the regr ones not too long ago, could be because his lineage concentration increased after advancing to the peak of the Archmage realm, since he is rather young, being below the one hundred years old mark.

    But for Daimon, his mes were trash, he had the same trouble than the average native of Neptune, ager mana reserve was the only thing he had, without that, if his mes were to meet Leslie''s in the same realm he will lose.

    And he was suppressed to the Early stage of the Lord rank, that''s why Daimon easily crushed him.

    As angry as Abaris was, he probably noticed it too, that''s why he hanged the format of the next fight, from a one exchange duel to a normal fight, because if Purplehaze were to be forced to reduce his realm, he will also lose, in a sense since the moment he asked the conditions to be changed it was already his lose, but right now he didn''t care what methods he had to use, he just wished for Daimon to be defeated, if Aurora and Thea weren''t watching him like eagles eyeing their prey, he wouldn''t have minded using some underhanded methods to interfere with Daimon.

    ''Little Haze, you must win no matter what, if you defeat that brat then I''ll announce your engagement with little Jasmine, I have trained you with the purpose of taking care of her, as the next Shaman, don''t disappoint me'', Abaris sent a message right to Purplehaze''s ears as he saw him getting onto the stage.

    Purplehaze could barely contain his excitement, since the moment of his birth he was blessed with talent and status, during his awakening ceremony when he turned five, he was brought to the castle of the main territory of the Elemental Sea, where those with light or darkness affinity gather.

    He who nevercked anything, was bewitched by the girl who took the test before of him, her light was the most dazzling and pretty one he has ever seen, and since that moment he decided that he should have her.

    Only she was worthy of being his partner, to his luck he not only had darkness affinity but poison affinity whichplemented it, and as if the universe was helping him, the most respectable man in the whole Elemental Sea took him as his disciple.

    Later he came to know that the girl with which he was infatuated, was actually the princess of the Light Pce, and he who had be the direct disciple of the Shaman was the young master of the ck Fortress and also the young master of the Purple Haze sect.

    With this he had everything but then, the day he went and tried to court the girl he liked, he was rejected even before he could do anything, but unlike the others he wasn''t stupid, keep pushing it after getting a negative answer will just bring an even bigger negative reaction.

    Instead of that he kept his distance and waited, he umted merits and achievements until no one could be mentioned on the same phrase as him in his native sea, only then he decided to give it a second shot, but he couldn''t because Jasmine suddenly returned to Twilight city apanied by another guy, and not only his master but even his wife who always made sure to keep him in check, seemed to approve of them getting friendlier.

    Nothing really happened between them, because he made sure to follow them all the time, but he didn''t have a chance to be alone with Jasmine, after that they left to the Mermen Sea and his master was in seclusion to heal, so he was left behind with all this hatred inside.

    But once again he endured it and instead put all his energy into training, he had witnessed the strong light element of his love rival, and so he focused on creating something that could crush it, he was decided to prove that only he is worthy to be with her.

    And now, Abaris has promised to chose him as Jasmine''s partner if he wins this fight, so how could he not be happy, all those years of observing from afar will finallye to an end.

    Daimon observed the daydreaming expression on Purplehaze''s face and he chuckled, Skyme was an idiot but he pursued Jasmine like a normal person, at the very least he indeed liked her, but this guy wasn''t like that, he only wanted her because she didn''t want to be with him, it was a matter of obsession instead of love.

    ''That''s an idiot darkness and poison user for you'', thought Daimon.

    All the elements have a certain effect on their users, it''s not rare for a high ranked mage or knight to lose their mind over a wrong practice, if one''s will isn''t strong enough one will be consumed by its own powers.

    That''s why Aisha didn''t want Daimon to lose himself in hatred, as a darkness user and a really strong one on that, he could go down the wrong path, but nowadays that wasn''t a problem anymore, Erin and the others made sure to keep him bnced, in a sense he was their light and they were his.

    This time both Aura and Abaris were the referees, they stood next to each other and they both raised their hands to give the signal, two rays one ck and one white were shot from them and the fight officially started.

    The very moment the fight started, Purplehaze took some distance from Daimon, as a mage be in closebat with a knight it''s a stupid decision, but that isn''t everything, he took a deep breath and then shouted.

    "Darkness Haze!".

    The Shaman and everyone on the side of the ck Fortress were positively surprised to see ck and dark purple manae from all the directions and gather around Purplehaze.

    Arge ck and purple wake formed around him, it was as if the world was helping Purplehaze, since all that mana was surrounding him like a mantle, the sight was amazing, especially because no one had seen something like this happening to any Lord ranked before, for them it was simr to the ability that only very few elites on the peak of the Mortal or even on the Ster ranks developed, a domain.

    For a split of a second, Daimon was also surprised, not because of the mana or anything, but because that was a Manifestation Phenomenon, the trait Lord ranks gained after their advance.

    "What do you think, I created this spell only a few days ago, it was for the sake of defeating someone stronger than you, but you can be my guinea pig", he pridefully said.

    Daimon could imagine to whom he was referring, unfortunately for him, Adam not only disappeared, but he was stronger than him, and to make things worse, even if he had a Manifestation Phenomenon, he was a noob in what using it regards, to the point that he had to use mana to create it like an active spell, instead of it being summoned just by releasing his Lord ranked aura to the world, like it should be.

    On the other hand, Purplehaze''s strength did increase a lot, especially because there was a huge mine of darkness mana crystals near them, the ck and purple wake thickened and fully covered half of the stage, perfectly hiding Purplehaze from Daimon''s eyes.

    "ck Fog Demon w!", Purplehaze''s voice came from thepletely dark space in front of Daimon and series of ck arms with sharp razor-like ws emerged from it, aiming at Daimon''s vitals, chest, neck and head, naturally some also sneaked towards his legs, in case he dodged the first ones.

    "Booom!", Daimon didn''t move, his body exploded in white mes that reached around five meters above the ground,pared to the half of the stage which waspletely flooded in a ck wake, it didn''t look as amazing.

    "Heh, senior brother Purplehaze can control way more energy than that knight, the fight is over¡­".

    The words that the guy who was talking was about to say stuck in his throat as the next scene unfolded in front of everyone, arms and monstrous heads formed of ck and purple mana came from Purplehaze''s side, the corrosion caused by his poison enhanced darkness mana, made some small ck dots appear on the tiles of the stage.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Meaning he was able to corrode a peak Mortal material which made those who supported the ck Fortress cheer and roar, but then their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when they saw the ground around Daimon distort and then melt.

    Not only that but all the attacks of Purplehaze dissolved before they could reach the area five meters around Daimon, he just stood there with a calm expression while white mes enveloped him.

    Abaris immediately frowned, his disciple had managed imitate a domain while being in the middle Mortal level, he was ecstatic as he felt the respectful gazes of all his subordinates, the master of such a genius can''t be mediocre after all.

    But then, the incredibly strong darkness mana of Purplehaze which should be the best among the young generation of the whole Elemental Sea, lost in a direct confrontation against the battle aura of the silver haired masked youth.

    He turned to see Aurora who had an "As expected" expression on her face, and he gritted his teeth as he said.

    "How many resources and treasures have you given him!", he demanded to know, because in his mind, the only way Daimon was surpassing Purplehaze was because Aurora gave him something, probably the rumored array in the main residence of the Flying Citadel in which he has yet to set a foot by the way, helped too.

    Aurora didn''t bother to answer, Daimon was the one who exined her about Lord rank traits, how could he not be used to see them, in her eyes, Purplehaze was like a street thug trying to brag about knife skills in front of a professional.

    ''He is this strong without having reached the "Lord" rank, what will his trait be like when he does it?'', she wondered as she was amazed by those white mes of Daimon.

    Daimon actually did have a Manifestation Phenomenon which he can use when he is in Core Synchrony state, but¡­ it''s a sensible matter, so he has yet to use it, because unlike his public realm which the he can manipte with the bracelet as he wishes, he can''t do the same to it, also the price in mana of keeping a Manifestation Phenomenon increases ording to the strength of thetter.

    Returning to the fight, from within the dark space, Purplehaze saw his attacks not even reaching Daimon and his expression became twisted, he has crossed sword with Terry once before and in his calctions, this should be enough to force him to use his innate ability, but Daimon wasn''t using his.

    They thought Daimon''s innate ability was a boosting one, like the White''s, confusing Core Synchrony as it, since Daimon changed what it looked like for others, to an increase in his knight realm, while in truth it only boosted his mage realm as of current.

    ''It was Jasmine''s grandmother, she prepared this bastard to get in my way!'', he inwardly swore, without realizing he was slowly losing control of himself, while being surrounded by all the darkness and poison mana that gathered around him.

    But right now, none of that mattered, the only thing in his mind was to defeat the one who was stopping him from having what he wanted.

    "ck Fog Disaster!", Purplehaze''s scream echoed through the area, then to everyone''s surprise he actually called more darkness and poison mana from the atmosphere to his side.

    The ck space then started twisting and distorting as it expanded, countless of ck hands came out of it, it was a sight taken out of a nightmare, unfortunately no matter how many hands tried to reach him, all were dissipated the moment they approached exactly five meters from Daimon.

    ''That''s enough, it''s good to see that the natives of Neptune can get a Manifestation Phenomenon, what a shame this way rushed it and he is now stuck in this iplete state forever'', he concluded.

    The entirety of Daimon''s battle aura and three-quarter parts of his mana reserves that turned into light and lightning then condensed in his right hand, forming a three-meter white light spear.

    "White Heavenly Javelin", with those words, Daimon threw the javelin frontwards, his infinity eyes were able to see through Purplehaze''s ck space from the very beginning, so he never lost his track.

    Though Daimon threw the spear, the truth is that for everyone was as if he shot aser beam, because they were only able to see a thin white line of light leaving Daimon''s hand, at least those below the Arch rank, which is understandable there were forty tons of raw strength behind that throw.

    "Aghhhh!", a horrible scream came from inside the ck space which cracked and disappeared on the spot.

    "Booom!", but right now the attention of the spectators wasn''t on the stage, but on the huge explosion of white light that was released behind all the people from the ck Fortress.

    Countless of gazes fell on the impact point and they jaws dropped, the white spear shed against the ck bridge which Abaris had created before, and it actually made a small piece of it crack.

    "A-Are my eyes deceiving me, a middle Mortal level knight caused damage to something created by Lord Shaman!", eximed one of the Hall Masters of the Purple Haze sect, Abaris was the same he was in disbelief over the sight of his mana construction being damaged by Daimon.

    The only one who focused on the stage instead was Purplecloud.

    "Haze!!!", he shouted like a wounded beast, there was a hole in Purplehaze''s chest from which white mes could be seen, Daimon''s spear pierced his body and easily continued its way, until it shed against Abaris''s ck bridge.

    "Like I said, it''s a matter of quality not quantity", said Daimon as he walked towards Aurora, ignoring the hatred filled gaze of Abaris, since he practically affirmed that his mana was better than the one of the Shaman so if they were in the same realm he will lose horribly, just like it happened to Purplehaze.

    And that hit a sore spot for him, because his whole life he has lost against Vincent, even if their realms are the same.

    ''First that bastard and now this brat!'', he thought as he gritted his teeth.

    Aurora on the other hand received Daimon with a smile, while the girls pped, in fact all the people from the Light Pce cheered him, because he is a light affinity user, meaning he is one of them, so how could they not be happy when he destroyed the best darkness user from the Elemental Sea.

    Though their thought was wrong, Demon Light contains darkness mana, so in terms of offensive, Daimon is both the strongest light and darkness affinity user in the Elemental Sea.

    "Incredible, he defeated the disciple of the Shaman, no wonder why he was chosen by Lady Aurora to apany miss Jasmine!".

    "Gabriel---Gabriel---Gabriel!!!", the crowd started shouting Daimon''s nickname while they roared, the battle was short but they got to see something incredible.

    Purplehaze was trembling seeing that the one who beat his son so horribly was being cheered by the people of the Light Pce, but he could only swallow his anger and take his son away with him to cure him.

    Naturally he threw the token of his treasury to Aurora because he didn''t want to be humiliated like Skyfire, Abaris on the other hand red at Daimon who was being warmly received by Jasmine and the others and he snorted.

    "After he takes his prize, I don''t want to see him in my territory Aurora, he is banned from my half of the Elemental Sea!", he said as he turned into a ck line of light that shot towards the ck castle.

    Aurora didn''t care about Abaris''s petty decision, territory meant nothing in front of the threat that was about to fall upon them, Abaris can go fuck himself for all she cares, the only important thing is that Jasmine is happy and safe.

    And now that''s what she was looking at, her granddaughter was smiling as she talked with the silver haired youth, which reaffirmed her determination to support Daimon no matter what.

 Chapter 430 Rewards & Unconventional Meeting (Part 1)

    ?

    Now that Abaris and all his subordinates left, the awarding ceremony could continue, to Daimon''s surprise the purple haired girl Sarah, who is also from the upper echelon of the Purple Haze''s sect, stayed behind.

    She didn''t even look angry considering how bad Purplehaze who is her cousin got beaten up, instead she rose her cup towards Daimon as if she was offering him a toast as she smiled.

    ''What a strange girl'', thought Daimon, considering how bad Cassy reacted when she saw that purple haired girl greeting Jasmine, there must be some past history between those three, but that could wait, right now he wanted to end this ceremony thing.

    It would be a lite to say he wasn''t excited to get his rewards from all those treasuries, Daimon, Mellie, Daphne, Jasmine and Aurora got up the stage and then continued from the moment they were interrupted before.

    Daimon stood there on the stage in the middle of the three princesses, while Aurora said.

    "Besides the permission of a free pick from my Light Pce sect, I hereby dere that from this moment onwards, Gabriel will be granted the status of young master of the sect, and will be treated with the same respect you show me".

    Aurora''s words took all the spectators by surprise, well almost everyone but Underwood who already expected something like this to happen.

    Unlike the Mermen Sea where nobles existed, in the Elemental Sea they followed a different system, in a sense they gave more opportunities to those who had no background, but had talent, instead of focusing on lineage mainly.

    For example, Purplehaze who isn''t rted to by blood to the Shaman will most likely be dered the next Shaman, because he was the most talented in what darkness affinity regards, in the young generation.

    That being said, normally the families that led the sects remained unaffected, with all the resources they had if their offspring wasn''t decent, they could always raise another one, but the Light Pce and the ck Fortress couldn''t.

    Or more urately Aurora and Abaris couldn''t have more children, literally the continuation of their lineage dependedpletely on Jasmine, that''s in part why Abaris wanted to arrange the marriage of Jasmine with someone he considered worthy of her.

    And the title of young master was given to the one who will inherit the patriarch position of a sect in the future, and now such a thing was given to Daimon, not only that, there has never been a man with that status in the Light Pce, since their royal lineage is always conformed by women.

    No matter what, they are always women, the one that marries the Matriarch of the Light Pce in turn, traditionally belongs to the ck Fortress and it is prepared by the previous Shaman.

    But right now, everyone saw Aurora destroying thousands of years of tradition, maybe she didn''t directly dere Daimon as Jasmine''s partner, but it was clear for everyone that Purplehaze will neve be chosen, and now Daimon was simr in status, so it wasn''t hard to read between lines.

    Let alone the spectators, even Jasmine was surprised by her grandmother''s words, but she just slightly lowered her head and remained salient, while Aisha giggled on her seat, the Risha sisters on the other hand pouted.

    ''What a cunning grandmother'', they thought as if they have forgotten about the fact that their mothers directly asked Daimon to take "responsibility" for them.

    Daimon didn''t pay too much attention to it, Aurora had previously said that she was going to give him authority publicly just in case, and while he could imagine what everyone was thinking he didn''t care.

    ''Judging by those two''s expressions, it seems the travel was worth it'', thought Daimon as he looked at Heartstream and Stoneheart, who seemed to have taken a decision.

    In part Aurora asked him to mount all this show to break the chains Abaris tried to put on Jasmine, since even if she would have rejected Skyme and Purplehaze, there were plenty of suitors.

    But now to even think on approaching her, they will have to be better than Daimon, and that is virtually impossible as long as one belongs to the young generation, also now that the people from the sects had seen the abnormal "light" element of Daimon, they were way more receptive towards him.

    The following was just the normal, after receiving his reward and the authority Aurora wanted to grant him, the celebration followed up, if anything Daimon found himself in a weird position because all the respective leaders of the smaller sects that were subordinated to the Rock Mountain, Sea Soul and Bamboo Forest sects approached to congratte him and present themselves.

    As someone who isn''t fond of formalities this was a torture for Daimon, the girls limited to enjoy the delicious food, chat with each other andugh at Daimon from time to time, as if they had reached a mutual understanding.

    Daimon tried to leave a couple of times, but Aurora''s gaze fell upon him as she sent him a message.

    ''I''ll do the convincing regarding joining the alliance, it will be easier if you met their leaders even for a moment, "young master of the Light Pce", I''ll take you to the treasuryter so endure it for a bit'', she said, making Daimon sigh.

    He stayed behind and just absently listened to all the presentations, surprisingly Heartstream and Stoneheart brought their sons and made them bow and apologize, what a joke the silver haired youth easily destroyed the most talented members of the young generation of two seas in a matter of days, he was destined to be more outstanding in the future, and who wouldn''t want to be acquittanced to such a talent, not to mention he technically was if not their superior their equal, being the young master of the Light Pce to whom they are subordinated.

    Underwood just casually waved his hand at Daimon, his daughter was staying with him so there was no need for presentations anyway, but his wife did approach to say hi, she was like a grown version of Cassy, having that same light green hair and lively aura around her, that being said instead of her mother she could pass as her sister, which was probably rted to the fact that her element is wood.

    In fact, Daimon was confused about what was the difference between these Elemental races as they call themselves, and for example the Alfear or the Dwarves races to whom Tessa and Femi belonged, they also had a strong connection to their elements and yet it wasn''t the same.

    After presenting herself as "Camellia" and smiling the moment she mentioned she was Cassy''s mother before thanking him for saving her daughter and her disciples during the beast hunt, she left and that was the end of Daimon''s torture.

    The girls saw Daimon practically disappearing after that and they giggled before they also returned to the castle, unlike previously Aurora told them they could also enter her treasury to see if they found anything that could be useful for them, she already gave Jasmine the best equipment she could find for her rank and affinity, which included a new staff and that dress she wore earlier after all.

    ¡­

    While the party kept going and all the guests discussed Daimon''s feats enthusiastically as he now was officially part of the Light Pce, the protagonist of those feats was walking through the corridors followed by a group of girls while Aurora guided them towards the treasury.

    They soon reached an isted area of the castle, anyone that was allowed to freely wander inside the castle was trustable for Aurora, but to reach this area you had to go through around ten or so security checks.

    Aurora stopped walking in front of a huge white metal door, she used her token of identity and a drop of her blood as well as some kind of pattern password to open it.

    The moment the gate opened Daimon could feel the excitement of Disaster from his inventory, if it wasn''t by Narasha controlling the sword, the thing might have left by itself to find the delicious "food" it wanted.

    That being said, Narasha shared some of Disaster''s enthusiasm.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''There is something that will be useful for us inside thar room, Daimon!'', she happily eximed, she got stronger along Disaster after all.

    Daimon chuckled and then with Aurora''s greenlight he entered the treasury followed by the girls, what was at the other side of the door was an amazinglyrge room, in a rough calction Daimon thought it was at least four or five times bigger than the one of the Arcarius family.

    Everything was perfectlybeled and organized, unlike Raymond Aurora had nothing to hide from Daimon, so everything was in full disy, including the best treasures that have been legated from the previous generations.

    Daimon''s eyes immediately were drawn towards a purple horn that was ced on a pedestal, just by being there lightning mana was dancing around it along with somews which Daimon couldn''t recognize.

    "I want that one for starters", he said as he pointed at the purple horn, making Aurora nod in an approbative way.

    "You sure do have good eyes, that is the horn of a lightning cloud beast that once attacked this white hill, surprisingly it bypassed the defenses that were ced back then without anyone noticing, the Matriarch of that time then discovered that it cut the barrier with that horn, so after joining hands with the Shaman of that time we kept the corpse while the beast core ended up in the hands of the ck Fortress".

    Daimon smiled it was perfect to be the main material for Aura''s sword, once it wasbined with the wind thing, he got from the Arcarius, then it will be the perfect conductor for her element.

    As he expected the darkness affinity materials, he found weren''t the best, which is understandable as they should be in the hands of the ck Fortress, on the other hand he was urged by Disaster to find what it wanted.

    Daimon walked towards the end of the treasury followed by Aurora who had a curious expression on her face.

    "There is nothing especially valuable here, these is equipment that was confiscated or brought back as war trophies, they are at most early Ster rank and were created to be used by other people", she kindly reminded to Daimon.

    She didn''t mind giving him whatever he wanted from the treasury, in any case all of this will one day belong to Jasmine and then¡­ in any case there was no need to look at the random things.

    But it''s not like Daimon wasn''t aware of it, all these things indeed had lowerw gathering capacities if they had any to begin with, but then when Daimon''s hand identally touched a random shield and he could feel Disaster drooling over it.

    "You want this really?", mumbled Daimon, the shield was nothing special, it was an early stage ranked treasure and it was really worn out, Daimon couldn''t feel any special effect from the materials of which it was made.

    Still he took it from the piles of treasures and then took out Disaster from the inventory, the moment the ck sword was out it urged Daimon to let it destroy the shield, since Aurora didn''t care about it, he just let go of the sword which then let out that ominous ck aura with red borders that once tried to drain Daimon out of his mana and vitality a long time ago.

    "Crack!!!", cracks appeared on the shield and then Disaster dived into the shieldpletely destroying, Daimon''s eyes glowed as he saw Disaster actually devoured something out of the shield, but he didn''t know what it was.

    [Ding]

    The sound of a notification woke Daimon out of his daze.

    [Cosmic Weaponry''s requirement has been updated]

    [A weapon who has seen battles on par with the ones experienced by the host has been assimted by the Soulmate Narasha, .0005% of the experience was sessfully integrated]

    [?????: Defeat one thousand long range weapon users to unlock, (0 ¨¤ 500)]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at the word "weapon", this happened after Disaster destroyed the shield, so it didn''t make sense, also he didn''t know he could get the "experience" he required in this way.

    ''It''s because Nasha lives inside Disaster, the system allowed it because that shield has seen glorious battles on par with yours, but the amount was penalized since you didn''t have to defeat its owner and just destroyed it'', said Evangeline.

    Daimon wanted to reply that it was a shield and not a long-range weapon, when he suddenly saw a small brilliant object among the debris that used to be the shield, he crouched down to grab the thing and then frowned.

    "This is a partially melted bolt?", he mumbled, he couldn''t see this bolt earlier, so it was probably deep into the shield, he saw that the bolt started oxidating unlike the other parts of the shield, meaning Disaster absorbed this bolt not the shield.

    ''A bolt that has seen a million fights on par with mines but against long range weapon users'', Daimon concluded.

    The one who shot that bolt was probably an expert marksman, what surprised Daimon is the fact that the same bolt was used to defeat one million people, if not this wouldn''t have worked, Disaster would have had to destroy the weapon that shot the bolt instead.

    What kind of situation will force a marksman to use the same bolt a million times wondered Daimon, unfortunately besides the fact that this shield was confiscated from a bandit that was chased by the guards of the Light Pce after trying to break into the light crystal mine of the sect, there was nothing else she knew about it.

    It happened a really long time ago and the shield was even older than the date if that event, Aurora could tell because of the runes used to engrave the arrays of the shield, that style was used on the age of foundation of the Elemental Sea, but that covered arge number of generations, so it would be impossible to when the shield was created.

    Still Daimon was happy for this unexpected gain and also the capricious sword was satisfied with its meal, so it was a win-win situation, the material of the bolt was also unknown it''s a shame Disaster destroyed it and now it was just a pile or rubbish.

    The girls returned, most of them had smiling expressions while others were a bit depressed, meaning not everyone was lucky.

    "We still have three more treasuries to visit so don''t be disappointed so soon, you two", said Daimon to Leslie and Yvonne who were the most discouraged on the group, apparently, they couldn''t find something for their mothers, Liliana was lucky because Heartstream''s sect has given some decent things as tribute to the Light Pce over the years, so she found a nice resource for Anya.

    The same applied to Mellie, Daphne, Chris, Cassy and even Tessa and Femi, their elements aligned with Aurora''s subordinates, wood, earth and water, so they were able to get something useful, only two of the sisters were unlucky.

    Daimon was going to use his two picks from the treasury of the ck Fortress, but the ones from the Sky re and Purplehaze''s sects were bonuses, he already knew they didn''t have iplete emblems because Aurora audited them.

    "Mm~", the two sisters immediately cheered up, previously they would have declined such a gift from Daimon, but seeing Aisha winking at them, they just dly epted the offer.

 Chapter 431 Rewards & Unconventional Meeting (Part 2)

    ?

    Daimon looked through the treasury for another half an hour but there was nothing else he really needed, there were countless amounts of mana crystals of light, water, earth and wood element, but he already has many of them in his inventor due to all the rings he has stolen from his enemies.

    The pirates specially were quite loaded despite their not so high realms, because as it is widely known by everyone, the Maelstrom Sea is both and of wonders and nightmares.

    On the other hand, he did get something that would be incredibly expensive if avable back at the four gxies, Ster ranked spells and martial arts.

    On a short inspection though they were or a realm that doesn''t exist back at the gxies, the vast majority aren''t much, in fact even before Erin or Aura got grimoires due to being his soulmates, he calcted that the spells they used are better than all these ones he got.

    The only ones that would be on par with theirs, will be the ones reserved exclusive for the royal family of the Light Pce, and though Aurora didn''t mind showing him the precious books in which they were recorded, no one besides she and Jasmine could use them, because they are all legacy spells, which solved the mystery of why they are probably the best buff type light element spells Daimon has seen, each one could be the core of an average ruler family, now imagine when all of them belonged to the same family, that''s how the Light Pce became such a strong force.

    "Now that you mention it, that guy also asked me to buy light spells, I gave him a couple as part of the reward he asked after "saving" little Jas, he probably also wanted the legacy spells of my Light Pce, but even back then I refused by saying that no one else could use them".

    "To be honest, though no one else can use them, reading and learning from them is possible, Sylvie has created a couple of light spells based on the legacy spells of the Light Pce for example, if you need it just ask little Jas, she has all the spells that she can use in her level in her mind", said Aurora, which made Jasmine''s eyes sparkle.

    Daimon nodded with an interested expression on his face, not only because this knowledge will help the Revy and Argent families improve, but because he got to know that even if these two were under whatever bullshit brainwash Adam could do, it''s not like he could just order them to do something, if Aurora refused his request.

    ''It should be a passive that makes others see him in a "good light", instead of mind control as I believed it to be, I guess that girl from the Penddra family was in an advanced state for her to be that crazy about that guy'', thought Daimon.

    One they return to the gxies, he needs to ask Erin to gather information regarding Adam and Marcus, they have been out of his scope for a long time so who knows what they have been up to so far, in other words even after his return things will be far from over.

    Anyway, for now it was too soon to worry about this, after taking a couple more of things for a rainy day, they left the treasury, Aurora happily cooperated through all the experience, she offered the best items ording to the requests of each of them, without caring of price or rarity, the destiny of her Light Pce was now tied to the silver haired youth which was calm despite seeing treasures that would make even a Maximum Ster ranked drool, or burn in greed.

    ¡­

    After finishing their visit to the treasury of the Light Pce, most of the girls returned to Jasmine''s room, leaving only Yvonne, Leslie and Aurora behind.

    "Next we''ll go to the ck Fortress and the Sky re treasuries, as for the Purple Haze, we''ll save it forter at night, it will be our excuse for thete visit we have to pay to their territory for the surprise meeting with the leader of this branch of ck Wave", said Aurora.

    Daimon nodded, the two sisters were clearly happy right now, Aisha purposedly stayed behind to give them a chance to spend some time alone with Daimon, Liliana felt tricked but after Aisha whispered some things Daimon couldn''t hear, a blush appeared on her pretty face and she happily apanied them to Jasmine''s room.

    Aurora waved her hand and the teleportation formation of the castle created a portal, as the Matriarch of the Light Pce, she has ess to all the main territories of the sects, Abaris will probably ban Daimon from going to the part that his ck Fortress manages, but it will only happen after he has gotten all his rewards.

    That''s why they are leaving the visit to the Purple Haze sect forter, since Daimon will be going to the reunion too, he could use the Hollow Suit to ignore any surveince formations, but the teleportation array won''t work for himter.

    Daimon and the others entered the portal and a couple of secondster they arrived at the ck hill on which the castle of the ck Fortress sect was built.

    Daimon observed the new scenery, simr to the white hill of the Light Pce, this ck hill was on top of a huge mine of mana crystals, and it hasn''t been exploited as well, making it a paradise for darkness mana users.

    Luckily Daimon could hide the nature of his powers with the bracelet of the god of mischief, or the fact that he has darkness affinity would have been exposed the moment he set a foot in this ce, since he has drawn a clear line between his two paths.

    Darkness being the main focus for his mage powers and light for his knight powers.

    The moment they appeared Daimon felt a couple of gazes falling on them, there were a pair of people guarding the gates of the ck castle, simr to Sylvie and Sid, Abaris also had a pair of direct disciples, but he his less bnced in that aspect.

    One of the two people, a tall man with a scar that blinded one of his eyes red at them, Daimon judged him to be a rare high stage Ster ranked, on the other hand the other person guarding the gate was a woman, a darkness affinity knight on the early-stage Ster rank.

    Aurora saw the unsightly expression on the faces of Abaris''s disciples and she snorted.

    "Open the gate", she calmly ordered.

    The two Hall Masters frowned, but they realized Aurora was serious if they dared to block their way, she will probably suppress them, the Shaman told them to deal with the whole situation, since he didn''t want to see Daimon''s face after what happened earlier, well his masked face to be more urate.

    "Follow me", said the man, he didn''t dare to block Aurora from entering the castle, but he clearly didn''t show respect to Aurora like he would have before, nor like she cared about such things right now.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The design of the ck castle waspletely the contrary of the white one, this ce exuded a warlike aura from its walls and decorations, which were mostly trophies exhibited, among which there were broken weapons, bones or other simr things, they all shared one thing inmon, and that is that they were useless due to the damages.

    It was as if the one who ced them there was saying "This is what happens when you fight against the ck Fortress".

    The vault of the treasury of the ck castle wasn''t on the surface but on a lower level, what could be considered the basement, Aurora knew the way so the man didn''t try to y any tricks and guided them there.

    "Give me the token, take the two things you want and then get lost", said the man.

    Daimon threw the token at him, but before he could enter the treasury, Aurora moved her hand and white line of light was shot from it.

    "Ughh!", the man was hit by the line of light and his body bent due to pain, he saw a ck mineral coin on the ground while he tried to recover from the attack of a Maximum Ster ranked.

    "Your Patriarch owed me two more picks, that is the proof of the debt, also don''t forget you are in presence of the Matriarch and the young master of the Light Pce, I don''t care if you are a Hall Master, know your ce", Aurora''s voice was apanied by her mana pressure whish flooded the whole corridor, making the already bent man, lower himself even more until he was practically kneeling down, both due to the pressure and the pain he felt on the area of impact.

    Without saying anything else, Aurora guided Daimon and the sisters into the treasury, just in case Abaris tried to y some tricks, she will immediately notice it.

    Ignoring the still kneeled down high stage Ster ranked, they entered and started observing the things disyed in the treasury, Yvonne was especially enthusiastic as she looked for something that will be helpful for her mother.

    Daimon on the other hand didn''t move, in this ce Rita was like a fish in the sea, he could feel the surge in her strength from within his shadow, he asked her to use her mana sense to inspect the whole ce, the criteria was something that adapted to the two aspects of darkness in which Erin excels.

    Which are corrosion and stealth, the passive "Mother of Darkness" which Erin gained after obtaining her grimoire increased the already strong corroding effect of her darkness element, she also was an expert in camouge, she created dark curtain, a spell that worked against even other Half Emperors with Aura''s exception since she created an eye spell to counter it.

    Besides that, she had the charming ability and the Heart Mirror abilities that her lineage granted her, which are aligned with the mind, but her fighting style doesn''t really go along with that, not to mention she was already "alluring" enough as she is, even without using that, Daimon wasn''t going to shot his own foot.

    Instead of that, if there was an illusion-oriented darkness affinity material, it should go to Irina, the darkness element of the mother and daughter royal members of the Night Sparrow n, excelled in mind and illusions after all.

    The only other thing in which Daimon was interested were emblems, as for the treasure he promised to Leslie, the Sky re''s sect treasury will take care of it, since Rita already confirmed there weren''t any decent fire element resources in this ce, probably all the good things were given to Skyme by Abaris as a reward for his advance.

    ''Young master I found what something that fits your criteria but¡­ it''s not apt to make a weapon, that being said I think it will definitely be of the liking ofdy Erin, the third and eleventh shelves on the right upper corner, what I''m mentioning is inside some special cases''.

    Daimon nodded he jumped and took the cases Rita mentioned, he then opened them and his eyes glowed.

    "Indeed, she is going to love this, I guess even in what luck regards, like mother like daughter", he mumbled as he sent the materials to his inventory.

    Before Rita could inform Daimon of her finding regarding the other criteria, Yvonne''s voice woke Daimon from his daze.

    "Daimon, look at this!", she said with a rare enthusiasm filled voice.

    Daimon walked towards Yvonne to see what she found, she has the capacity to see mana flow, so her choice shouldn''t be bad, even if Rita''s probably was going to be the winner.

    Surprisingly the thing Yvonne chose was a small gem, which wasn''t a mana crystal, nor the magic core of a magic beast, thews that were gathered around it were weird, they resembled darkness but they warped and twisted, truly a strange sight.

    "That is the eye of a Phantom Horror magic beast, if I remember correctly, this was obtained when we cooperated to try and explore a deep area into the Maelstrom Sea, the records say that a strange magic beast which vanished and appeared out of nowhere eliminated half of the expedition force, the Matriarch of that time managed to kill the beast which turned out to be a weird magic beast, it was basically a giant eye, that is its pupil".

    "The members of the ck Fortress kept it but they don''t use illusions so they didn''t use it, also as far as I know no one else has ever found another magic beast like that one, so the name I mentioned was given to it by us, as always the Maelstrom Sea is pretty creepy", said Aurora.

    ''Young master, that''s what I was going to suggest, that gem doesn''t lose with any of the materials the other mistresses or you have chosen, it should be perfect for an illusion user'', added Rita.

    "We''ll take it", the verdict was easy to make, Yvonne was able to find the best material toplement her mother''s fighting style.

    As for thest pick, there was actually an iplete emblem stowed away in one of the many chests that contained random objects, it was a dark purple Elemental Emblem and with it their time in the treasury of the ck Fortress was over.

 Chapter 432 Rewards & Unconventional Meeting (Part 3)

    ?

    Daimon and the others came out of the treasury, the high stage Ster ranked was still kneeling down at the entrance, while the early-stage knight woman tried to help him stand up.

    Daimon didn''t pay attention to it earlier, but with his infinity eyes he could see that Aurora wasn''t letting the guy off the hook so easily, she actually created chains of mana that were restraining the man.

    He might be a high stage Ster ranked, but he is the weakest Daimon has seen, let alone Thea who will for sure destroy him, he judged that the neo noble general Dominic had a stronger battle prowess too.

    "Just a trash with an inted realm", mumbled Aurora as they passed next them, Daimon chuckled, though they ended up benefiting from Abaris''s stupid idea of causing troubles on purpose, that doesn''t mean Aurora isn''t angry about it.

    After listening to that, how could the man ask Aurora to lift the restraining spell she casted on him, it would only disgrace the ck Fortress even more, also it''s not like he couldn''t get out by himself, but it was going to take him a couple of hours.

    "Go and inspect the inventory to see what they took, master wants to know the answer by the end of the day at most", said the man.

    The woman knight nodded and left the man to deal with the spell, while she had to inspect to find what was taken from the treasury, there were simply too many things there and she had the best mana sense among the Hall Masters, but it was going to take her a few hours do the inspection.

    Leaving that Aurora''s fierce behavior, they straight went to the exit of the ck castle with her guidance and once they were outside, she created another portal.

    This time the other side of the portal showed a patch of rednd, with trees that had red leaves, in other words it led to the main territory of the Sky re sect.

    They crossed the portal and were met with a change in the temperature, Leslie looked ratherfortable in here, and she had a reason to, though the concentration of fire mana in the atmosphere wasn''t as high as the light mana on the white hill, which even lowered the cost to use light spells, it wasn''t bad at all.

    "This is better than the fire valley of the Risha family of which that man brags so much about", she mumbled, referring to her father.

    Daimon''s hand lit up in white mes for a split of a second and then he shook his head before saying.

    "This ce can''tpare with the Mystic Sun Mountain of which Liz talked all the time; we can all go there as part of the second year''s field trial".

    Leslie''s eyes sparkled as she heard Daimon inviting her to visit the one of the rumored three sacrednds of the Revy family, normally one needs the approbation of both the ancestor and the n head of the family to enter such ces.

    "Mm~", Leslie smiled at Daimon, after what Veronica did to Kirik, he cut off all the resources of the family that were supposed to go to Leslie, until she epted marrying the guy from the dius family, in part that''s why she was the weakest among the three sisters.

    Though the other patriarchs hated Irina and Anya as much as Kirik hated Veronica, Irina''s father was the old instructor Richard, so Ferdinand didn''t dare to pressure Irina that much, as for the short Archknight Horace, Anya defeated him on a battle in which they betted the chance to enter the sacrednd of the Ice Eagle n for Liliana and she won.

    Daimon then felt a hatred filled gazending on him, apparently their conversation was heard by someone, which made sense since Aurora brought them to the entrance of Skyfire''s castle.

    The gaze originated on a peak Lord ranked girl which was standing in front of the entrance of the red castle, next to a middle-aged couple, this time it was one middle stage Ster woman and an early-stage Ster ranked man.

    "You are the one who hurt senior brother like that, you must have cheated, fight me coward, if you lose, you''ll have to kneel down in front of him!", said the girl.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimonpletely ignored her, the middle-aged couple had opened the gates since the moment they saw Aurora on the group, no matter how outraged they were due to the current state in which Skyme was, the Matriarch could destroy them on the spot if they angered her.

    The girl dared to demand to fight with Daimon, because naturally Aurora wouldn''t suppress a junior, unfortunately Daimon didn''t pay attention to her provocation, he simply walked past them leaving some words behind.

    "Unless you have the right to give me a free pick from Skyfire''s treasury, get lost".

    The girl felt humiliated, she was Skyme''s girlfriend, naturally she knew that even if they married, she won''t be the main wife but a concubine, since Skyme liked Jasmine the most, the middle-aged couple were her parents and the strongest Hall Masters of the Sky re sect.

    Even then of course they had no right to promise such a reward for Daimon, they just got dirt thrown at their faces, since that meant, they weren''t even qualified to request a duel with him, and also, they realized Daimon didn''t get provoked like a member of the young generation would.

    Inside of the red castle, Aurora directly took Daimon and the others to the treasury, this time they didn''t have anyone guiding them, so Daimon just showed the token he got from Skyfire and the gate of the treasury opened.

    And just as he had expected, there good things with fire affinity were in the Sky re sect''s treasury, instead of the one of the ck Fortress, which is normal, not only Abaris favored them due to histe sworn brother, but fire''s nature goes against darkness, with the exception that both can be quite destructive, so Abaris couldn''t do much with them, he instead just gifted them back through Skyme, with the excuse of him being his disciple.

    Apparently Skyfire never thought the day woulde where an outsider will get a free pass to his treasury, probably because he had the Shaman''s backing, so his organization was rather¡­ simple.

    The highest ranked things werevishly exhibited in the center of the room, and Leslie didn''t need to think twice about what her chose will be.

    There was a red crystal furnace among the treasures, a magic equipment on the high Ster rank and ording to Rita, it was the most expensive item on the treasury.

    There were other options on par with it, but Leslie knew her mother the best, this will be the most beneficial thing she could get to her, since she is a potion master.

    And so, they left the red castle, Leslie happily hummed all the way back to Aurora''s castle.

    ''With this mom will be able to further improve her recipes¡­ will the thing she invented work faster after that'', she wondered, referring to the potion Veronica created to adjust their body type.

    After getting what they wanted from the first two sects, they needed to wait for the sun to be reced by the moon to go to the Purple Haze sect, luckily the wait wasn''t that long since they killed some time in the awarding ceremony and before they noticed it was already night.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Thea''s ability to see, make and cancel contracts was needed, so this time she will be tagging along with Aurora, as for who will be in charge of the girl''s security, Aurora left Sylvie behind just in case, of course Horals was also watching over the "Harem" of his young master from the shadows, thanks to Rita''s ability.

    "We''ll return in an hour at most", said Daimon as he jumped into the portal which Thea opened, they will be first going to the reunion with the Elemental Sea''s branch of ck Wave, before going to the Purple Haze sect.

    The reason is that the ce chosen for the reunion isn''t in the main ind of the Purple Haze sect, but on a secondary one which was far from it and Aurora couldn''t use the formation to transport them to there, but Thea could ignore spatial restrictions.

    ¡­

    A couple of secondster, Daimon, Aurora, Thea and Olivia appeared on the sky near a small gray ind which had no othernd masses nearby.

    "I guess that exins why I never noticed them, this is one of the "worthless" inds, as the concentration of elemental mana is inexistent", mumbled Aurora, it was considered a bad omen to stay in these inds which were rumored to have been abandoned by the Elemental Sea.

    "I''ll openly go to the encounter, you can follow me in the shadows, knowing that person I''ll be taken to another ce to conversate and this is just a temporal meeting point", said Olivia.

    Daimon nodded, Aurora snapped her fingers and their images waved before they disappeared, this was a visual illusion spell, of light affinity, unlike Erin''s dark curtain, it only made them not reflect light, but their presences and everything else was still there.

    Daimon just activated the hollow suit while Thea and Aurora erased their presences, they then followed a couple of meters behind of Olivia who descended from the sky andnded on the lifeless ind.

    Once they were on the ind, Olivia walked towards a specific rock formation, ck Wave their own signalnguage so she deciphered where the one receiving her, should be waiting.

    She made a series of knocks on the rock in front of her and after a couple of seconds the rock trembled as an opened appeared on it.

    "Weedy Olivia, the leader is waiting for you, please follow me", a ck masked man came out of the rock formation and greeted Olivia.

    Olivia nodded and then she calmly entered, to not look suspicious she didn''t try to talk nor turned to see the others, so she just entered the rock formation the usual way, the insides of the cave were pretty dark but the masked man had amp that barely illuminated the area of three meters around him.

    The silence would have been ufortable if Olivia had anything to talk with the masked man, after walking for around five minutes they reached an open area were a magic circle was drawn.

    ''These guys are way more careful than the branch at the Mermen Sea, no wonder Aurora never caught a wind of them'', thought Daimon.

    Olivia had already exined the cautious nature of the leader of this branch, so they expected something like this, luckily Thea who is very skilled in spacews was with them.

    The magic circle lit up and the masked man as well as Olivia disappeared, but before the portal fully closed, Thea stabbed her spear on it, they then jumped into it, the process only took an extra second so no one would notice it.

    At the other side of the portal, they appeared inside of arge storage-like ce, there were just a table and three chairs, the right side had to two while the other only had one.

    Sitting on the right side of the table, there were a pair of tall figures covered from head to toe with ck robes and masks.

    "Wee Olivia, normally I will suspect if you rushed all the way from the Mermen Sea to this ce, but considering what happened in thest reunion, it''s understandable, so what did you find out?", said the biggest figure in a neutral voice whose gender was impossible to tell.

    Following Daimon''s instructions, Olivia proceeded to tell the leader of ck Wave a bit of the history of the creatures, mostly she told them that one came to force them to submit and tried to use their son as a hostage for that.

    She also described the weird true appearance they had and other minor things, Daimon wanted to see what their reactions will be, and he was surprised that their heartbeat didn''t change, they were professionals in controlling their bodies apparently.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed as he injected mana into his infinity eyes, the identity of the leader of this branch has always been a mystery, Olivia and the others don''t really hide how they look, their subordinates are the same they aren''t forced to use masks unless they want to.

    But this branch is different, not even the subordinates know who is their leader, also there is always a second person with the leader, so many think they are a couple.

    Daimon''s eyes bypassed the robe and then mask, and his pupils contracted a bit, he turned to see Aurora, but before he could talk, he noticed she was frowning.

    Aurora actually came out of the light reflecting area and her mana pressure covered the area where the table was ced as she slowly said.

    "What kind of joke is this!".

    Judging by her angered expression, she probably realized who was behind the mask, and she clearly was pissed about it, not like Daimon could me her, since he also recognized one of them.

    Though their interaction was rather short, the masked figure on the left was the purple clothed girl who Cassy seemed to have something against, the niece of Purplecloud, Sarah.

    And Aurora recognized the other figure, even with the mask on, it was Sarah''s mother, Bell, how did she recognized her was unknown to Daimon, but the fact that the n changed a bit thanks to this unexpected development, remained.

    The two figures were naturally frozen, not only due to Aurora''s pressure but out of the shock, but they actually removed the masks and slowly ced them next to them.

    The fear Daimon expected to see on their faces wasn''t there, instead of that they looked¡­ sad?

 Chapter 433 Dark Past

    ?

    The visual illusion spell of Aurora didn''t dispel, despite the fact that right now her mind wasn''t in the best state.

    "Bell, what are you trying to y here!", eximed Aurora, which made the purple haired mother look at the ground as if she didn''t dare to see Aurora to the eyes.

    When Daimon used his infinity eyes to see through their masks, he looking at the physicalyer, after that little ident in which he saw through Arianna''s clothes back at the tournament, he had learned how to tone it up or down depending on what he needed.

    And one of the first things one should worry about, when catching a professional assassin is¡­ a suicidal method to avoid interrogation, but surprisingly the purple haired pair of mother and daughter had nothing like that, at least not in their mouths, like a capsule of poison under their tongue or a fake tooth as it is normally the case.

    Still, Aurora wasn''tpletely restraining them with her mana pressure, and there seemed to be something wrong with her, so he was about to ask Thea to do it in her stead, when the purple haired girl that offered him a toast, actually turned to see in their direction.

    "Gran¡­ no I guess that now that things havee to this, I won''t ever be allowed to call you that,dy Ivory, before we answer to you, could you please tell Jasmine''s boyfriend toe out, he should hear this too", said Sarah.

    Bell turned to see her daughter and tried to ask her to not talk, but Daimon''s sudden appearance interrupted her.

    Aurora saw Daimon calmly appearing and she actually blocked his way, because she thought he was going to kill those two on the spot.

    Daimon didn''t me her, obviously there is some backstory between them, also he wasn''t going to kill them¡­ yet, because first of all, he was interested in how did a Lord ranked girl managed to see him when he has activated the effect of the Hollow Suit.

    But that is only one of his questions, because a couple of seconds ago, Rita informed him of something incredible, and he wanted to hear their story before taking a decision.

    "Calm down, I''m not going to kill them, and I know you don''t want to do that either", said Daimon, making Aurora whose breathing was irregr let out a sigh of relief, it is unknown what methods does the silver haired youth in front of hers have after all.

    Daimon took out a pair of chairs from his inventory, one for him and another one for Thea who also came out, so now there were three people in one side of the table and two at the other one.

    Aurora''s gaze could pierce a hole through someone right now, and she was still ring at the pair of mother and daughter that didn''t even try to resist the moment they saw Aurora.

    "What do you have to say for yourself, you two?", asked Aurora.

    This time the mother was the one who talked.

    "First of all, I never wanted you to see us like this, second and I know it might sound like an excuse but there is a reason for me to be impersonating the leader of this club of assassins", she said.

    The word "impersonating", made Aurora frown, but she didn''t immediately buy it, Olivia previously told them everything she knew about the leader of this branch of ck Wave, it has always been a disguised couple, since ever, so this isn''t a recent thing, though Sarah should be rtively new considering she is just a few years older than Jasmine.

    "Everything started a few days before Jessica''s death, me and Sylvie were present when Jasmine was born, and we apanied Jessica all the time through it, she was rather worn out after that, but everything was fine".

    "I left for a mission that was assigned to me by Byron while Sylvie stayed behind to watch over Jessica, when I returned, I was told she¡­ died, so of course I was devastated, but I couldn''t believe that they were just randomly killed by a magic beast from the Maelstrom Sea, since we are really far from it".

    "When I started investigating, I identally happened to find an assassin from ck Wave, that''s when I came to know about this organization, the most obvious conclusion is that these guys were the ones who killed Jessica".

    "Naturally I told Sylvie and she¡­ well she didn''t take it well, I''m the leader of the intelligence department of the Elemental Sea after all, so it was my job to know about their existence if would have paid attention Jessica would have been with us up to this day".

    Bell stopped talking for a moment, she was gritting her teeth really hard while her daughter ced her hand on top of hers, Aurora frowned, she never really got to know why Sylvie and Bell who were as close as sisters along with her daughter, ended up fighting, she supposed it was due to Jessica''s death, so she never asked them about it, only now she got to know the truth.

    "So, I looked for a way to join ck Wave in secret, and after disguising myself and passing their tests, I ended up joining, then climbed up until I was able to take missions with the leaders, in one of those missions I took them by surprise and captured the two of them¡­ someone issued a mission to kill Jessica a couple of weeks before she gave birth, but it was cancelled the very moment the fact that her child was a girl was revealed to the public".

    "No matter how much I interrogated those two, they only knew that the one who issued the mission and the one who cancelled weren''t the same person, they were using masks or some other things to cover their bodies".

    "After that I was lost for some time, until Reed returned from his mission, one day after one of our usual fights, I looked into his storage ring and found this", said Sarah as she took out a white gold pendant from within her disguise.

    Aurora''s eyes got watery all of a sudden, how could she not recognize the gift she gave her daughter to congratte her for Jasmine''s birth, though it was broken, it was one of the things that have been passed down in her family, from one Matriarch to another.

    The thing had no function, it was merely symbolic and yet, for some reason they were always able to feel it, it was this what surprised Aurora earlier making her leave the illusion.

    "That was lost the day she and Byron''s life scrolls broke, are you saying Reed had it on him?", asked Aurora, she didn''t know it was Sarah behind the mask, but she felt the pendant and for a second she thought it was her daughter and her husband the ones who were ying to be ck Wave''s leaders, but to her surprise that wasn''t the case.

    "Yeah, and that''s not all¡­", after a couple of seconds, Sarah took out a piece of paper with a portrait drawn on it.

    "I tricked Reed to take him to a faraway ind and then fought him, he should have been a major realm weaker than me and yet, he went from being a peak Half Step Ster rank to a middle one in a moment, luckily I was still able to win but, he had done something to me and also to Sarah".

    "When I killed him, he turned into the thing that is drawn in that paper, also his body dposed into a ck mist and I saw a ck thing disappearing from the battlefield, not without telling me that¡­ he was the one who killed Jessica".<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The very moment Bell finished her sentence, Aurora''s body trembled, her mana pressure exploded out of her body, but before she could crush Bell into meat paste, Thea blocked with it and their pressures cancelled each other.

    "So that''s why you and that girl have the same feeling of those creatures, your husband and her father was a Nethereal, also he cursed you both without you noticing right?", mumbled Daimon, which made Aurora wake up from her attack of rage.

    "What!", she eximed, her supposition was that the creature impersonated Bell''s husband to take her daughter by surprise, but if what Daimon said was true then, things were much moreplicated than that.

    Bell took a deep breath and then focused on the silver haired youth who prevented her from dying a second ago, she then raised both her ck robe and the blouse she had below of it.

    "Yes", besides the pretty pale skin thatid below the clothes, she had purple strange marks covering all her back and a part of her side, Sarah who also showed part of her body was the same, but she was in much less advanced state.

    "This thing should have killed me on the spot but, both me and Sarah were somehow able to endure it, though it has been spreading since back then".

    Daimon nodded, the feeling he got from those purple marks was simr to the curse that killed the creature he managed to force into a terror contract, which exined why they were still alive.

    "You and that girl probably got used to that guy''s mana nature, in your case because of your pregnancy and for her, it is because she is part Nethereal, that''s also why she is in a better state despite her low realm", concluded Daimon.

    Bell''s eyes glowed as she nodded, it was exactly as Daimon said, after her daughter was born, she felt her body different, but she just shrugged it off by thinking it was because she was now a mother.

    Her daughter also manifested an incredibly strong poison affinity even when she was a baby, but it was just thought to be a good talent, Daimon earlier noticed that Sarah was actually stronger than Purplehaze.

    He also has poison affinity thanks to the manticore after all, so he is able to sense how deadly a poison is, and he was amazed at her poison element, surprisingly Rita wasn''t able to feel they were affected by a Nethereal, but it''s normal, since none of them are one, but just a part of them became like that.

    "Wait a second, if I remember correctly the one who introduced Reed to your father was Byron!", said Aurora with an outraged voice.

    Bell clenched her fists as she answered.

    "Yes¡­ my supposition is that Byron was involved in Jessica''s death, and that''s also why me and Sarah started impersonating the leaders of ck Wave, because the second person, probably the one who issued the mission to kill Jessica was Byron".

    Daimon could see Aurora''s fierce expression, and he understood why, Jasmine''s father, the guy who was chosen by Abaris to marry her daughter, was the one who issued a mission to kill her, how could she not be furious right now.

    "I didn''t think that Byron was really dead, since Reed wasn''t wounded at all, Byron was as strong as me back then, so if those two fought, even if Reed won, he would have suffered, but that wasn''t the case, they were together, and so I have been waiting for the day Byrones to ck Wave again so I could kill him".

    "As to why I didn''t say anything until now¡­ it''s because how could I exin this without revealing what me and Sarah are now, also it was my husband and my cousin the ones who killed Jessica, I didn''t have the face to even be near little Jasmine, so I decided that after I killed Byron, I will die and leave you a proper exnation".

    "Unfortunately, unlike Sarah my body is about to give in to the curse, since my affectation is much less than hers, but then I saw the leader from the Maelstrom Sea using that ck mist, so I finally got a new hint, but in this weakened state let alone capture him, I couldn''t fight back alone, so I wanted Olivia''s help to go capture that bastard", she said.

    Needless to say, but Aurora was in shock, Byron was Purplecloud and Bell''s cousin, and also an orphan, Abaris chose him because he had a really good talent in darkness element, in fact he was better than Purplecloud who only has poison affinity, but Byron didn''t want to be the Patriarch of the Purple Haze sect, he was the perfect candidate, as he will be fully loyal to the ck Fortress.

    "The scheming guy, I guess", said Daimon, Aurora reached the same conclusion, their personal weaknesses were included in this scheme, in her case, her daughter, as for Abaris, the fact that he desperately wanted to bring new talented blood to his ck Fortress.

    And they were both yed by those things, if Reed was a Nethereal, then she was sure Byron was one too, and this is where a new problem appears, if Jasmine''s father was a Nethereal then wouldn''t she be one too, like Sarah.

    "I''m curious, howe you were able to notice I was here?", asked Daimon, Aurora was having a mental battle right now, so he might as well solve the mystery, Sarah was the one who answered him.

    Her purple eyes glowed in a strange light and her body shivered as she said.

    "It''s because only you have made me feel this intense dreading sensation, it feels as if I will die just by approaching you, it''s¡­ amazingly intoxicating~".

    Bell sighed as she listened to her daughter, at the same time Thea frowned, Daimon on the other hand was speechless.

    ''What the hell is wrong with this girl'', they all thought.

    Daimon shook his head, reasoning what that strange answer meant could wait, right now they had to decide what to do with these two, or more urately Aurora had to decide, depending on that he will act as well, so the atmosphere tensed up.

    That being said, the pair of purple haired mother and daughter were rxed, they probably had epted that their death a long time ago, Daimon could tell this whole ce was filled to the brim with self-destruction arrays and that Bell could have activated them if she wanted to, but they weren''t prepared for them, bur for that Byron guy, since she apparently has weakened over the years, in other words from the very beginning she has only stayed alive to avenge her friend who was betrayed and killed.

    As for Sarah, who knows what''s in the mind of that girl, but if there is a thing Daimon is certain of, is that she cared for Jasmine, Cassy told him that she saw her attacking Adam, back then she thought Sarah was just causing troubles to Jasmine like always, but now Cassy didn''t know what to believe, she didn''t tell Jasmine because Sarah told her, she will poison both Jasmine and her if she mentioned it, but now it was obvious that was just an excuse, to make her look like crazy¡­ well maybe she is a bit crazy indeed, considering how she was looking at Daimon right now.

 Chapter 434 Bright Future

    ?

    The seconds passed without no one saying anything, besides Daimon feeling the weird and intense gaze of Sarah on him, which made him feel somewhat strange, Aurora and Thea were lost in their own thoughts.

    The same could be said of Daimon though, he grabbed the piece of paper on which the portrait of how Sarah''s father truly looked was drawn.

    The best way to describe it was, a human with long arms and the pattern of a crown drawn in what should have been its face.

    ''Every time I discover something new, more damn questions surge as well'', he thought.

    This Nethereal was different than the ones he has met so far, in a sense it wasn''t as bizarre as the others, as it looked more human, but Daimon thought he looked way more dangerous, despite the fact that ording to Bell, it was only a middle stage Ster rank back then.

    It was able to freely move under the noses of Aurora and Abaris, two Maximum Ster ranked, while feigning to be a half step Ster, there was also the fact that this guy had a daughter with a human or more urately a member of the Elemental races, which also applied to Byron.

    While at first Daimon thought the thing was just ying with Bell, when the same thing repeated with Jasmine''s mother, then it stopped being a coincidence.

    Daimon suddenly frowned as he turned to see Bell.

    "How strong was Jasmine''s father thest time you saw him?", he asked.

    The purple haired mother made memory for a couple of seconds before saying.

    "He was an early stage Ster ranked, but not too long after the announcement of Jessica''s pregnancy, he suffered a small ident during meditation and his real regressed to a half step, then he recovered and advanced to the middle stage a bit before Jasmine''s birth".

    Daimon nodded, that confirmed his theory, it''s not like those two managed to hide their realms from Aurora and Abaris, they purposedly became weaker using some method, and then slowly recovered making it pass as "advance", that Reed guy probably was forced to recover in a rushed way because Bell discovered what he was.

    In other words, they were way stronger than what they showed and if they two of them survived, right now they should be at least High stage Ster ranks or even higher.

    ''These new variants are getting troublesome, thought Daimon.

    Aurora seemed to finally have taken her decision, judging by her determined expression, she turned to see Bell and her eyes wandered through the still exposed skin of her side, where the purple marks were.

    She then stood up and approached those two, her mana was leaking from her body, which made Daimon doubt if he should interfere, Bell had important information regarding the Nethereals, and Sarah was able to see through Adam''s tricks while she isn''t a system user, something even Aurora partially failed to do.

    But then Aurora''s next course of action truly took him by surprise, she stopped a couple of centimeters away of the pair of mother and daughter and leaned down to hug them both at the same time.

    Let alone Daimon, Bell and Sarah were also surprised, Bell was about to beg for her daughter''s life to be spared at least until the curse started to cause her pain, like it was happening to her, never in a million years she imagined Aurora will hug them instead.

    "L-Lady Aurora¡­", Bell tried to ask what was happening, but Aurora just tightened her hug on them, as she said.

    "I remember you used to call me aunt, so why are you acting all distant now¡­ Jessica would have never med you for what happened, she loved you and Sylvie like sisters and you are little Jas''s godmother as a proof of it", Aurora''s voice was calm and much softer, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her chest.

    Bell''s body trembled, she knew how much Aurora loved her daughter, while she didn''t actively participate on Jessica''s death, her husband and her cousin were the ones who did it, also she failed to discover the plot while it was her job to be informed about everything that was happening in the Elemental Sea, now she realized that Byron sent her away so that they could kill Jasmine''s mother, in other words she was thoroughly yed with.

    Both mother and daughter broke in tears, while Auroraforted them and patted their heads, as if they were her own daughter and granddaughter.

    Daimon''s eyes behind his mask glowed, how could he not understand the deep burning hatred felt towards someone that caused the death of a loved one, when he has experienced it himself, even those who weren''t directly rted to it aren''t exempt from it, he originally wished to fully erase the Naktis, whether they were guilty or not after all.

    Aurora then slowly let go of those two who wiped their tears, she looked at the purple marks that didn''t even budge under her light mana and then she turned to see Daimon, with a pleading expression on her face.

    "You always have a way right¡­ can you sure them, I don''t want to lose anymore members of my family".

    Daimon chuckled, it''s not like the system is almighty though Evangeline often likes to say that there is nothing she can''t do, the truth is that system users die too, the hero of the Mermen Sea is a perfect example of that.

    Still in this case, Daimon stood up and white mes covered him as he approached Sarah.

    "How do you feel right now?", he asked.

    Sarah''s body trembled, her purple eyes which were focusing on Daimon, glowed with¡­ desire, she actually jumped in a try to tackle him, but Daimon already expected this to happen, so Daimon simply used blink to appear a few meters.

    What did take Daimon by surprise is that her speed suddenly increased and appeared behind him, just to be held in ce by Aurora''s mana.

    Speaking of Aurora she gave Daimon an interrogative gaze, as if she was saying "What did you do to her", which made Daimon bitterly smile as he absorbed the white mes into his body.

    Sarah who now had a disappointed expression on her face said.

    "Why didn''t you burn me with those mes", her voice was sad as if Daimon had done something horrible to her.

    "¡­"<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "I don''t know if she has a few screws lose, or if that''s the effect caused by my battle aura on her Nethereal lineage", said Daimon.

    Bell sighed as she saw her daughter before saying.

    "As much as I would love to say it is the second, she has always liked to put herself in dangerous situation even before I discovered the truth about Reed¡­ but I must say that this is the first time I see her like that", her voice was the one of a mother who worries about her daughter.

    "That''s because I never felt such danger from anything else, he is like a walking disaster, no, a living threat to all life and the feeling intensifies when those mes are out~", said Sarah as she licked her lips, making Aurora rub her temples feeling a headacheing her way.

    Daimon nodded in response.

    ''Yup, she is crazy'', he concluded.

    There were two reasons as to why he did this test, first, the Nethereal who he managed to force into submission called him "Esteemed Lord" the moment before the notification of his Terror Contractor skill was triggered, and it just happened after he burned it with his Demon Light for quite some time, something he couldn''t do with the first Nethereal.

    Second, when he met Sarah for the first time, she acted rather neutral towards him, her attention was focused on Jasmine, but after the fights he had against Purplehaze and Skyme, she then offered him a toast and smiled at him, which can be confused as just her being friendly, but considering she attacked Adam, it was weird that she didn''t give him the cold shoulder, when his situation is quite simr, he also appeared out of nowhere, saved Jasmine and was in the good books of Aurora.

    The major difference besides the fact that he wasn''t manipting Jasmine and that they were closer in the sense that they have even shared a room, is that Abaris hated his guts.

    Daimon then walked towards Bell and he once again lit up in white mes before saying.

    "And you, how does these mes make you feel?", he asked.

    Bell thought about it for a second, contrary to her daughter her expression was calm andfortable.

    "I want to be near them", she answered with all honesty.

    Daimon nodded, there was a fundamental between the mother and the daughter, one was part Nethereal while the other had just been affected by the mana of one, well that and one was crazy too, the other Nethereal was horrified by being exposed to Demon Light, while Sarah wanted to be touched by them, so even for Nethereal standards she wasn''t normal.

    Aurora more or less understood what Daimon was trying to confirm, she was there when he tortured the Nethereal with those strange mes of his, her light mana could only cause small amounts of pain the moment she attacked the creature, but Daimon''s mes made it scream, beg and bleed, as to why she didn''t have a clue about it, but Daimon was the same.

    His battle aura indeed has a horrible destruction capacity, but besides that it had no other properties, it didn''t even increase his physical strength unlike other knight''s battle aura, on the other hand he didn''t know what was the name of his Life Spark, but the rank of the achievement he got after creating it was "SS Divinity", which was lower than when he killed the manticore but still the second highest achievement he has gotten.

    "My battle aura can probably erase the curse, but first and formal they have to join the alliance through a contract and second, even if I increase the light part to the most I can without making my aura crumble apart, it''s going to hurt quite a bit, my element it''s not healing light but destructive one after all", said Daimon to Aurora.

    Daimon theorized that his battle aura somehow screwed over the ck mist element of the Nethereal, could be because his Demon Light contains almost all the elements that counter darkness, in other words, light, lightning and fire, nature and water could work too, but they are softerpared to the ones Daimon chose.

    Ignoring Sarah who was delighted over the thought of being covered in Daimon''s mes, Bell turned to see Aurora before saying.

    "Let him try it with me aunt, I will die in a year anyway, this way at least we can get to know whether this can be used to cure Sarah¡­".

    "No", three different voices denied Bell''s request, Aurora, Sarah who had woken up from whatever imaginary situation she was dreaming of and Daimon who retrieved his mes.

    "All the Nethereals so far have been different, but they all shared the same thing, which is that they are afraid of my mes¡­", Daimon saw Sarah who has been released by Aurora, sneakily approaching him trying to close the distance and he used blink to return to his seat.

    ''Except her'', he mentally added before continuing.

    "But you aren''t a Nethereal, luckily we have a knowledge about someone who is in a simr situation as you, wasn''t the leader of ck Wave in the Maelstrom Sea previously a normal mixed race, but now can use that ck mist", he said with a smirk.

    Aurora''s eyes glowed as she heard Daimon, why should they y with Bell''s safety, when there is a perfect test subject prepared for them, in a ce where they were going to visit originally anyway, it was basically a cake that fell from the sky right in front of them.

    "As for her¡­ the leader of the Bone Sea was injured, the scheming guy is going to send a creature to make them submit, so that is another true Nethereal test subject, maybe I can get something out of it", said Daimon.

    This time he will be prepared, the curse won''t take him by surprise a second time, and he needs to learn more about the Nethereal, the best way to learn how to kill something is knowing everything about it, that''s something Aura taught him, she has fought against each and all the strong magic beasts and races that are known in at least two out of the four gxies, that''s the origin of her battle maniac reputation.

    "We''ll do that, for now, bring the register of all the members of this branch of ck Wave, all of them will have a use in the army we are forming", said Aurora with a happy voice, this day she recovered a daughter and a granddaughter, there is no way she will let anyone take them away again.

    "Mm, I''ll call them", answered Bell, just to hear Daimon saying.

    "Before that, can you tell your crazy daughter to stop?", Sarah was trying to stick to Daimon, but he was using blink to avoid her, unfortunately that didn''t discourage her as she kept trying to hold onto him, he even threatened her, just to see Sarah smile at him and increase the fierceness of her chase.

    Bell softlyughed, while Aurora sighed as she wondered how was she going to exin what happened here to Jasmine, the only calm one was Thea who was enjoying of a drink.

    By the way, Evangeline has beenughing her ass off at Daimon for around five minutes straight.

    Despite all that, Aurora had a sensation of peace in her heart, one which was lost the moment her daughter died, for the first time since that tragic day she wanted to continue living, not only for Jasmine and Sylvie''s sake, but because she wanted to see what the future had in store for her.

 Chapter 435 New Hint

    ?

    The following process was pretty fast, as the leader of the intelligence department of the Elemental Sea, while Bell impersonated the leader of this branch of ck Wave, she had the information of all the assassins that were registered.

    She nned to give them all away to Aurora as part of herst gift to Aurora, in other words she basically controlled the underworld of the Elemental Sea, so it was easy for her to summon all of them at once.

    Not even half an hourter around one hundred people arrived at this secret underground space, unlike the other branches of ck Wave, this was the one who had the less members.

    The reason behind it was simple, Bell wanted to keep a tight grip on the organization, so while on the surface she epted new applicants, everyone who didn''t meet the requirements she had, was killed by her during the "tests" that they needed to do in order to join.

    The other members didn''t find it weird since this was a dangerous line of work anyway, and they had lesspetition this way.

    That being said, the few members were all at least peak Arch ranks, there were ten peak Half Ster and surprisingly an early-stage Ster expert, maybe in number they were less than the subordinates of Olivia but they were stronger.

    The early-stage Ster rank, an old man with a long white beard frowned, before he turned to see Bell who was now wearing her disguise.

    "What happened leader, it''s the first time we all gather at the same time, did something happen?", he said with a rude voice.

    Bell listened to the disrespectful elder and she smirked behind her mask, this old man was also present when things went south back at the reunion, but unlike Bell who of course joined hands with Olivia to resist the forced invitation of the leader of the Maelstrom Sea, the old man was interested in the power he offered.

    For a very simple reason, he was getting short on lifespan so unless he found a high ranked treasure to extend his life, or he advanced his life will end in a couple of hundreds of years, it might sound like a lot of time butpared to the normal lifespan of even a Half Emperor which rounds around the eighty thousand or so years, it was nothing, the old mas desperate.

    So when Bell harshly rejected the offer, the old man started getting funny thoughts, naturally how could Bell not notice it, in part that''s why she epted Olivia''s request to meet her, she was going to do some cleaning with her help, because though she was originally a middle stage Ster rank and a really strong one on top of that, as she was the older among Jessica, Sylvie and her, after years of being cursed she was barely keeping herself at the early stage of the Ster rank.

    "I had something important to announce Tadeus, if you feel that you are more important than ck Wave''s future, feel free to leave", answered Bell, with her disguised neutral genderless voice.

    "Humph, do you think I don''t know what you are scheming, you didn''t want to ept the power it was offered to us, and since I showed clear interest on it you now want to do some cleaning, I have been an assassin for more years than you!", said the old man with a smirk.

    He then turned to see the other assassins and then raised his voice.

    "Companions, when we joined ck Wave, it was with only one motive, get stronger for our own benefit, and now the leader is preventing us from doing so, join me, if we present the head of this idiot to Lord Romel, we''ll be for sure granted the power we want!".

    Many people in the group were moved by the words of the old man, naturally these assassins had no loyalty, they were ouws, exiled and criminals who joined ck Wave for convenience.

    The previous leader gave them good missions over the years, but now it was blocking their way to a higher realm, so it was time to change it.

    "Sorry boss, but with this I''ll be able to reach the Ster rank after being stuck for so many years, so I''ll have you die for the sake of my advance".

    Seven of the peak Half Ster ranks took the side of the old man, while around 80 out of the 100 Arch ranks also sided with Tadeus.

    "Since when have you been nning this, I don''t remember you ever being close to Romel?", asked Bell with her disguised voice.

    The old man put on a fierce expression as he took out his weapon a longsword with a serrated side, which clearly was used to rip flesh off.

    "Let''s just say I happened to know one of the subordinates that epted the power you rejected, who acted as the intermediary".

    "Don''t bother to try and activate the arrays, it was Mike the one who engraved them, so of course they are now deactivated", said the old man as he looked at a short guy with sses that was siding with him, that was the rune master of this branch of ck Wave.

    As the battle was about to broke out, the space behind Bell waved and then a silver haired masked youth appeared out of thin air, or at least that''s what it seemed to happen.

    "Really, viins lose because they talk too much", the moment Daimon finished speaking a horrible pressure fell on all the members of ck Wave, whether they sided with Tadeus or not, they were all forced to the ground.

    Having worked as an assassin for such a long time, which required him to escape from bodyguards who were often stronger than him after he failed or seeded on a mission, Tadeus''s face paled, he knew the owner of that pressure was way above his league.

    And he was right because soon Aurora followed by Thea and Sarah came out of the visual illusion area, naturally the appearance of one of the two most famous figures of the Elemental Sea and the only other Maximum Ster rank besides the Shaman, made Tadeous and the other assassins who tried to rebel, despair.

    "You betrayed us for the Light Pce!", shouted a half Ster rank, only for Bell to take out her disguise to show them her true appearance.

    "Wrong, I was never your ally to begin with".

    The word "shock" was written all over the faces of all the assassins, and you can imagine their reaction when Sarah took off her disguise, they have been following the orders of their natural enemy, the head of the intelligence department and her little daughter!

    "Miss Thea, if you do the honors, please", said Daimon.

    Thea smiled her right pupil turned bright red and then she scanned all the presents, as the ouws they were they had many contracts attached to them but all were already fulfilled.

    "They are clean, should I proceed with the contract now?".

    Daimon nodded, and then Thea''s pupil color changed to green, at the same time all the assassins grabbed their heads, the part who earlier sided with Tadeus actually screamed in pain, while those who didn''t only seemed a bit ufortable for a couple of seconds.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The reason is simple the first ones were turned into cannon fodder, those that will be sent to the first line to test the capacities of the enemy or to suicidal missions, while the others became soldiers for the army they were creating.

    The difference between the two is that the first were already tempted by the power of the Nethereal, and so they were susceptible to it, unfortunately the contracts made by Thea weren''tpletely absolute like his terror contracts, they could still harbor ill thoughts and they won''t die or suffer due to that, though they can''t act against Daimon and the others as per the conditions of the contract.

    Also, it''s not like Daimon wanted to see some drama for him let the situation develop to this point, Bell told him about Tadeus''s ambition and that meant there was a chance he had made contact with the leader of ck Wave in the Maelstrom Sea, Romel, who is one of his targets too.

    Since he didn''t know if Tadeus was under what he named as "Loyalty Curse", instead of risking to lose the old man who was their only hint regarding where to find Romel in the vast and dangerous Maelstrom Sea, Bell simply directed the conversation towards that.

    The old man ignorantly fell in the trap and since he talked about Romel so easily, it was easy to guess that he wasn''t under a curse of he would have kept his mouth shut, after that was confirmed, there was no need to keep watching, so Daimon finished the little y.

    ''I guess she isn''t the head of the intelligence department for nothing'', thought Daimon as he stole a gaze at Bell, she came with this n in a matter of minutes after she learned about the curse of the Nethereals from Daimon.

    "We are finished here, I trust you can get the can get the information we need out of him, right Bell?", said Daimon, she asked him to call her by her name without honorifics so Daimon didn''t stop in the ceremony.

    "Yes, I will know everything by tomorrow''s morning, so feel free to leave, Sarah you also go with them¡­ I need to let out some steam".

    Surprisingly Sarah who was eyeing Daimon all this time trying to find an opening to jump onto him, changed her attitude to an obedient one.

    "Okay mom", she said.

    But Aurora had other ns for the pair of mother and daughter.

    "That can wait, you two will being back to the Light Pce, I have called Sylvie and Jasmine, and we are clearing this misunderstanding tonight", the mother and daughter were a bit hesitant of confronting their friends so soon, but Aurora''s expression made them realize there was no use inining so they both nodded.

    "You don''t mind, right?", asked Aurora to Daimon after seeing those two ept her request.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "We are leaving tomorrow, so go ahead and settle your own matters first", he said, he understood that with the threat of the world ending in a few days, Aurora didn''t want to wait an extra second to solve the feed between the two girls who she considered her daughters, her sole direct disciple Sylvie and the other best friend of herte daughter, Bell.

    Though no it was unclear if Byron was actually rted to Purplecloud and Bell, regardless of that, Bell and Jessica considered each other as sisters, and Sarah has always considered Jasmine her little cousin, whom she has been watching over from the shadows, there was no way Aurora will ept them being separated now that the misunderstanding has been cleared.

    Bell used the transportation array to take Daimon and the others back to the lifeless ind, and then Aurora took them to the main territory of the Purple Haze sect, as for the assassins they were all under contracts now, and just in case Aurora casted a restraining spell on them, Bell willter return to deal with them.

    A portal appeared under the moonlight illuminated purple ind which was the main territory of the Purple Haze sect, more urately in front of a purple castle.

    The guards saw Aurora appearing at the entrance and this time they didn''t try to cause any trouble, apparently news of what happened to the high stage Ster ranked back at the ck Fortress''s treasury had spread, and they didn''t want Aurora to punish them too.

    Bell and Sarah were also apanying and though Purplecloud and Bell didn''t get along, since a long time ago, the fact that she is part of the royal family of the Purple Haze sect remains, not to mention she holds a really important title as the one in charge of intelligence, while Purplecloud is in charge of assassination tasks.

    With Bell here they didn''t need a guide, so after a few minutes of walking they arrived at the treasury of Purplecloud''s castle.

    The whole time Sarah''s eyes were intensely gazing at Daimon''s back, she tried to grab his arm a couple of times, but he easily dodged, which somehow made her try even harder.

    Aurora and Bell limited tough and kept their distance, while Thea also seemed to be amused at the whole thing.

    Daimon on the other hand felt a headacheing his way, because he could guess what was going to happen after the pair of purple haired mother and daughter reconcile with Sylvie and Jasmine.

    ''Forget it, I''ll leave mom and the others handle this crazy girl'', he thought, he had the premonition that even if even if he threatened Sarah, it will have the contrary effect, so he just ignored her.

    Daimon took out thest token he had and the door of the treasury opened, surprisingly the treasury was also pretty organized, it''s not like Purplecloud didn''t want to y some tricks, but he was too busy trying to heal his son so that there won''t be any side effects to not ruin his talent, so right now he couldn''t think of anything else.

    The moment Daimon set a foot on the treasury he already decided what he will be taking from this ce, the reason is simple thews that it was radiating were at least four times stronger than the ones of any other object in the room.

    "P-Purple Devilish Laurel!", eximed Bell, as a poison affinity mage how could she not recognize one of the most dangerous, wanted but at the same time avoided, poisonous magic herbs.

    Daimon didn''t know the name of the magic herb, but judging by the poisonws and the fact that the case in which it was contained which is a Ster grade treasure itself, is showing signs of melting, made it obvious it was an extremely poisonous thing.

    He waved his hand and the case disappeared as he sent it to the inventory, under the surprised eyes of the girls apanying him.

    "Take it out of your ring, the poison of that thing can ignore the isted space of the ring and affect you!", Bell immediately tried to warn Daimon, one of the things that makes that herb so dangerous is that no treasure can fully contain it.

    The poison will filter through any spatial or physical object overtime, it was one of the things legated to Purplecloud by their ancestors, a priceless treasure, which Bell thought Purplecloud had already gotten rid of, the reason is very simple, this same magic herb was what caused their father''s death.

 Chapter 436 Reconciliation

    ?

    Seeing that Daimon wasn''t paying attention to her words, Bell turned to see Aurora and then put on a pleading expression before saying.

    "Aunt, please tell him to not ignore me, back then the old man nned to try and absorb only the poisonous emanations of that thing to reach the Maximum stage, so he kept the herb in his ring and then went out to look for a secluded ce as his advance will bring a poisonous disaster to the nearby area".

    "But he didn''t even manage to leave the Elemental Sea before his ring was destroyed and he was directly radiated by the poison of that thing, even after consuming all kinds of antidotes he still died after a year".

    "That old man''s ring was a Ster rank spatial treasure and it was still destroyed, tell him to throw his ring away, a mortal realm will die on the spot!".

    Daimon was actually surprised by Bell''s words, this is the first time he hears of a poison¡­ no of anything that can bypass a spatial restriction in such a way.

    It''s not like a storage ring is indestructible, but he has never heard of something destroying a ring from the inside, after all the inside of a storage ring is an isted space, the way to prevent someone from essing the contents of a storage ring is destroying the ring which is like the door to that specific space, that is one of the many things Liz taught him.

    And that is why he keeps most of his valuables in the inventory, experienced knights will aim to destroy the ring of a mage all the time during battle, once destroyed there is no way to retrieve the things that were stored in that ring they''ll be gone forever.

    But right now, Bell stated that the ring was destroyed by one of the things it contained, in other words the poison of that flower was strong enough to corrode and destroy an isted space.

    ''If that''s the case, then that thing must also have spatial properties and stronger onespared to the material used to create storage rings'', concluded Daimon.

    In his many tries to make Blink level up, he tried to meditate in a space filled to the brim with the special mineral that is used to make storage rings, only to discover it was useless.

    In order to level up Blink he needed to experience spatialws that were above what he could feel when he was brought by Aura or Erin through Space Shift, he thought he will be able to when he met Vincent, but that wasn''t the case.

    Maybe because the Ster ranked of Neptune were "iplete", which in his mind put them on a simr or maybe even lower levelpared to the Half Emperors of the four gxies, in a sense both were still restrained to the mortal realms.

    There were other space oriented treasures back at Abaris''s treasury, but they were disappointing, being worse than the spear of Thea which is a rare weapon with space properties, unfortunately even when he travelled through the portals created by the ck Empress who is rather skilled in that aspect, Blink still wasn''t affected, so Daimon supposed he had already gotten all the possible benefits he could get out of mortal spatialws.

    And now he finally found something that might have stronger spatialws, it was worth investigating it, but he could leave that forter.

    "Don''t worry, my spatial treasure is far stronger than anyone you have seen or heard off, even ckbeard''s array wasn''t even close to be able to restrain it", he calmly said.

    The inventory could even contain Disaster which basically destroyed everything it touched, so this little poisonous herb won''t be able to cause any troubles.

    Aurora nodded, if it was anyone else, she would doubt it, but her granddaughter has told her about the adventures they had while in the beast hunt and she knew Daimon casually kept taking things out of his spatial treasure.

    Needless to say, but Bell was surprised to hear Daimon''s affirmation, ckbeard was one of the two best rune masters of Neptune, he even managed to infiltrate the barrier that Vincent had paid the other strongest rune master to ce around the Wild Tide Reef.

    Her eyes then glowed as she noticed that there were no leaks of poison indeed, meaning Daimon wasn''t bluffing, it''s not like she was personally worried about Daimon, they met a couple of minutes ago after all.

    But she was worried that Jasmine would be sad if something happened to the silver haired youth, also she finally found some hope regarding curing her daughter''s curse, so she won''t let anything happen to Daimon no matter what, not to mention she and Sarah had already joined the alliance so their lives were tied to Daimon''s victory.

    "Don''t think too much about it¡­ you''ll have to get used to see impossibilities bing a daily thing now that you have gotten to meet him", said Aurora as she patted Bell''s shoulder.

    Daimon chuckled in response, leaving that aside, they casually left the treasury of the Purple Haze sect and Aurora immediately took everyone back to the white castle, she didn''t want to drag the reunion of her remaining "daughters" even an extra second.

    The girls who were chatting and rxing in the living room of the castle, saw a portal opening in the middle of the room, the sisters and Aisha smiled knowing Daimon was returning.

    Sylvie and Jasmine on the other hand were a bit confused about why Aurora told them to prepare for their return, but they got their answer the moment the portal disappeared and people stopped appearing out of it.

    There were two reactions, Jasmine just looked at her grandmother confused about why she brought Sarah who she knew wasn''t in good terms with her and Cassy, unlike Sylvie she didn''t know about Bell''s "participation" in Jessica''s death, so she didn''t particrly hated Sarah, but they weren''t friends either, also Cassy who is her best friend didn''t like her, not to mention she was the cousin of Purplehaze, she always thought Sarah approached her due to the orders of her cousin as she seemed to observe her quite a bit.

    The other reaction was Sylvie who directly took out her weapon, a white spear which she then pointed at Bell.

    "What are you doing here!", the atmosphere tensed up, the girls were confused, Sylvie''s reaction made them think an enemy followed Daimon and the others back, but the fact that Daimon was in the group made them discard that thought immediately.

    Before things got out of hand, Aurora raised her hand and then said.

    "Calm down Syl, it was me the one who brought Bell and Sarah here¡­ you and Jasminee with me".

    Daimon was about to leave to Aisha''s side, when Aurora ced her hand on his shoulder.

    "Youe too, please", Daimon knew why she wanted him to tag along and he bitterly smiled, it will be easier for Jasmine to ept what she was about to learn about herself if Daimon was there too.

    "Fine", said Daimon, it''s not like he didn''t want lend his friend a hand, in this case Jasmine, as she was about to learn she is probably part Nethereal.

    Aurora then guided them to the guest room, the other girls were curious about what was happening, but they were sensible enough to not ask, as for Aisha, she knew her darling will tell her everything so she wasn''t particrly interested about it.

    The door of the room closed behind of them and Aurora then released Sylvie from the restraining spell she casted on her.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Have you finally calmed down?", she asked.

    "But, aunt, she is in part guilty of¡­", Sylvie who for the first time since Jasmine has know her, raised her voice at her grandmother, was interrupted by Aurora.

    "Before you say that, listen to what Bell has to say, little Jas, I honestly didn''t want you to know more regarding this matter so soon¡­ but now that is hase to this, I want you to know the truth, also remember that I love you and that won''t change no matter what", she said as she ced her hands on Jasmine''s shoulders.

    "Mm", Jasmine felt a bit strange but she still nodded.

    The following was as Daimon expected, Bell told everything to Sylvie and Jasmine, including the thing regarding the Nethereal, her rtionship with Jessica and the fact that Sarah and Jasmine are part Nethereal.

    Of course, the reaction was rather violent, Sylvie was furious after learning it was Byron and Reed the ones who killed her friend and naturally that anger extended towards Bell too, luckily Aurora was here to restrain her or she would have started fighting with Bell on the spot.

    As for Jasmine she was shocked, not only her father participated in the assassination of her mother, but he was one of those monsters who she has seen Daimon deal with, and that also meant she was like that too, it will be a lie to say she was okay after listening to that, the thought of ever being like the one who killed her mother made her heart clench.

    Her little body which was trembling, felt a calming sensation when a big warm hand was ced on her shoulder.

    Jasmine''s teary eyes turned to see the origin of the calming sensation which she has experienced one before, and naturally she saw Daimon, who has taken off his mask to show his real face, which Bell and Sarah hadn''t seen previous to this.

    "My words might not mean much, but what defines who you are isn''t your race, but your actions, the Jasmine I know will never be like that".

    Little diamond-like tears fell from Jasmine''s pretty eyes, she suddenly turned around and leaned her head on Daimon''s shoulder, he positive influence Daimon had on Jasmine wasn''t mind control like Adam''s tricks, she still cried on Daimon''s shoulder.

    But it indeed helped the girl recover herposure in an easier way, realizing she had gotten Daimon''s shoulder all wet with her tears, Jasmine blushed but Daimon just took out a handkerchief from his jacket and handed it to her.

    ''I knew it was a good idea to bring him¡­ damn you Byron, I will rip your head off for this!'', Aurora first let out a sigh of relief, happy that Daimon helped Jasmine calm down, then her mind was assaulted by murderous thoughts.

    But right now, it wasn''t the time for that, Jasmine let go of Daimon and then looked at Sarah, if what the purple haired woman who turned out to be Sarah''s mother was true, then she has been helping her from the shadows while being treated bad by Cassy and her.

    "She fought with Adam the day before you left to the Mermen Sea, I don''t know how things were back then, but I''m pretty sure that made the bastard feel wary which hindered his ns", said Daimon.

    He wasn''t purposely helping Sarah, with what he knew about Adam thanks to the shes they have had, he was 100% sure he would have tried to make a move on Jasmine once he felt safe about whatever he used to cloud other people''s eyes, it was thanks to Aurora who didn''t fully fall for his tricks and Sarah who directly confronted him, that he didn''t get toy his dirty ws on Jasmine.

    Jasmine''s expression changed once again, if there is someone she hated as much as she hated Byron now, that was Adam, she slowly walked towards Sarah, her sister with a different mother and she hugged her.

    "Thanks", she didn''t say much, but Sarah''s genuine smile made it obvious that she was really happy right now, for once the gaze she gave to Daimon wasn''t a desire crazed one, but a thankful¡­ unfortunately it didn''tst long before she licked her lips at him.

    ''Crazy woman'', thought Daimon.

    Bell was also happy from the bottom of her heart, it might bete for her generation to be like before, but she was happy that her daughter could have the chance, she then turned to see Sylvie who still had a slightly hostile expression and then sighed, but Aurora spoke before she had the chance to.

    "Syl, I can''t force you to do anything, but I know Jessica wouldn''t have wanted her two sisters to fight each other over something like this, she would have instead asked you two to take care of little Jas in her stead".

    "And I''m the same¡­ I don''t want to see the ones who I regard as my daughters aim a weapon at the other, if she knew about it, she wouldn''t be able to rest in peace".

    Sylvie''s body trembled, her angry expression broke and she actually started crying, to Bell''s surprise she was the one who took the initiative to hug her.

    Bell was the oldest of the three so she was the one who acted as the big sister, it would be a lie to say that Sylvie''s heart didn''t break every time she felt angry towards Bell, but at the same time she couldn''t just forgive her.

    But seeing how Jasmine treated Sarah and listening to Aurora''s words, the strong front she built copsed, and now she vented all the negative emotions she bottled up in her heart for so many years.

    Daimon left the room in silence, now it was time for them to catch up and they needed some space for that.

    ''Who would have thought you will have a sensitive bone in your body'', said Evangeline.

    ''I don''t care about what happens to strangers, but she is my friend, why wouldn''t I care about her?'', he asked in response.

    ''¡­''

    ''You¡­ have changed, but I like this Daimon more than the one whose eyes were ash dead, like the first time we met'', after a moment of silence, Evangeline said onest thing before she returned to silence.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the first time they met she made fun of him, not to mention that more than ash dead, he was raging back then due to Aisha''s death.

    Ultimately Daimon shrugged and then he returned with the others, they will be leaving early in the morning so he wanted to spend some time with Aisha and the sisters, for some reason he felt in an especially good mood right now.

 Chapter 437 Arriving At The Bone Sea (Part 1)

    ?

    The girls saw Daimon returning alone and they were naturally curious about what happened, especially Cassy who seemed to be worried about Jasmine.

    Cassy was older than Jasmine and technically the tree of them became friends at the same time, Sylvie didn''t marry nor had children unlike Jessica and Bell, so she didn''t have a daughter that could get along with Jasmine.

    But Underwood''s wife was also Aurora''s disciple, despite the fact that she isn''t a light affinity user, so it was natural for the little girls to meet and get along.

    Cassy didn''t know Sarah''s backstory but she one day just suddenly distanced herself from them, and then started avoiding them and just observing from afar, Jasmine might not remember but she does.

    Then it became obvious Purplehaze was obsessed with Jasmine and Cassy naturally thought it was rted to that, so she started to dislike Sarah, it appears that the misunderstanding affected both the old and young generations, but now things will be different.

    "You can go too", said Daimon to Cassy, on his way out, Aurora sent him a message, she didn''t want to see another trio of sisters separate, instead she wanted her granddaughter to have all the support she needed.

    "Mm", Cassy gave Daimon a thankful gaze and then she left, as for Daimon he sat on the couch where Aisha and the Risha sisters were resting.

    Aisha leaned her head against Daimon''s shoulder, she could notice her son was a bit distracted, he wasn''t wearing the mask too.

    "What happened, you seem to be lost about something?", she asked.

    Daimon smiled at his mother and then leaned backwards on the couch, who knows how many years has the ones behind the current chaotic situation, been plotting, Mellie and Jasmine seemed to be tightly rted to this.

    Originally, he thought the mission only included Mellie and Jasmine was only added due of the oath thing, because the mission didn''t update its requirements when he saved her.

    But now he has changed his mind, both of their mothers died, both of them were princesses and both of them were targeted by the pirates and the Skelefiends that were working with the scheming guy, it was too much to be a coincidence.

    ''There is a missing piece, I''mcking something that has been preventing the mission to be updated'', he thought.

    The missions are triggered based on an event, he got this one because he stole the opportunity to meet Mellie first from Adam, then Adam targeted Jasmine, could be because she is pretty, or maybe because she has two Maximum Ster ranked as her grandparents or¡­

    "The mission was reced because I interfered", he mumbled, reaching a realization Daimon''s eyes glowed.

    Him stealing an opportunity from Adam can also be an event, he probably triggered a different mission for the light idiot, in other words he changed Adam''s "fate", as he was supposed to meet Mellie.

    But due to him he lost that, so the next mission that could benefit him was probably created, and that was Jasmine, he didn''t know what the criteria for the order of the "opportunities" was, but when he stole one from Adam his system just switched to next one.

    Luckily it seems that Adam and the administrator of his system couldn''t notice the change, and now Daimon realized he was forgetting one more variant in the equation, which is Marcus.

    If Adam got his mission changed, the same probably applied to Marcus, because those two are rted in a sense, as they seemed to know each other for a while, probably because their systems were on two different sides, one was focused on light and the other on darkness.

    Ultimately Daimon shrugged, he will be going to the Bone Sea where he supposed that Marcusnded, so there is a chance that finding something rted to Marcus will make his mission update, so there is no need to think about it for now.

    Daimon woke up from his daze when he felt a dangerous sensationing at him, he moved his body to the left a bit, and Sarah who tried to sneak on him from his back, with the intention of hugging him, lost her bnce and fell frontwardsnding on the floor in front of the couch.

    One would believe that will make the purple haired girl feel embarrassed, but instead of that she stood up, dusted off her clothes and then jumped onto the couch trying tond on Daimon''sp.

    But then she froze on the air, before a pair of voices could be hearding from the corridor that led to the guest room.

    "See I told you we shouldn''t let that crazy girl leave before us with the excuse of going to the bathroom", said Cassy.

    "Don''t be so mean Cass¡­ Sarah is just a bit too energetic but she means no harm", mumbled Jasmine, trying to sound convincing though she seemed to not believe her own words.

    Jasmine followed by Aurora and the others returned to the living room, it was Aurora the one who restrained Sarah.

    Speaking of Sarah, now that Jasmine was here, she clicked her tongue and with an unwilling expression, she forced her desire to hold onto Daimon to leave her expression, apparently Jasmine''s presence forced her to act normal, for a reason Daimon didn''t understand.

    Only then Aurora sighed and let go of Sarah, while she gave Daimon an apologetic gaze, specially because of what she was about to say.

    "Let''s have a nice dinner together before Bell leaves to organize those guys¡­ also they will both be staying here and they''lle with us to the Bone Sea".

    As expected, Daimon had a "Are you kidding me" expression on his face, though he knew this was probably going to happen, because those two needed to be cured, he thought Aurora will leave them here to guard the fort, but apparently Sylvie offered herself to take that role, because Bell hasn''t even showed her face to Jasmine prior to this day, despite she being the one who helped Jessica chose her name when she had yet toe to the world.

    "Just keep her chained in another room or something", said Daimon as he pointed at Sarah, which made Aurora and Bell bitterly smile while Cassypletely agreed with Daimon and Jasmine softly giggled.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Don''t worry with me here she won''t do anything¡­ can she go with us, Daimon?", asked Jasmine with expectant eyes.

    Daimon truly wanted to say no, but seeing those eyes of hers, it was hard to do so, on the other hand it is true he had some pending matters with Sarah, despite her craziness, she was able to see through Adam''s tricks and he was really interested in that.

    ''Let here darling, I don''t know what you discussed earlier but Jasmine really seems to want her to join, and that purple haired girl isn''t weaker than Mellie, it''s a good addition to the team'', said Aisha directly to Daimon''s mind.

    Daimon didn''t expect Aisha to support Jasmine''s idea, because unlike the sisters, she should have noticed Sarah''s true intention, she didn''t want to attack him but to hug him.

    "Fine, just put a leash on her or something", said Daimon, which made Jasmine sweetly smile at him, ignoring Sarah who seemed to be delighted by Daimon''s words, the group went to the kitchen and enjoyed a nice dinner together.

    Jasmine took the chance to tell the other girls everything regarding her mother, how Bell and Sarah had been protecting her from the shadows and even the fact that it was her own father who turned out to be a Nethereal the one who killed her mother.

    Needless to say. but the girls were surprised by Jasmine''s story, they all fathered around her tofort her, Mellie specially since she went through something simr in the sense that her father participated in her mother''s death.

    The girls were also more weing towards Sarah after listening to that story, at least for a couple of minutes until they saw her, drooling every time she stole a gaze at Daimon, which made them realize she was a bit messed up in the head, but they were truly happy that Jasmine''s family was reunited again.

    After that Bell and Sylvie left together, since Sylvie will be taking up the role of supervising the underworld of the Elemental Sea while Bell is gone, she needed to learn a few things, also the assassins will be led by Sylvie temporarily, and she was also eager to get every bit of information the old assassin had, since she learned that Bell had only around year of life due to the curse, she just recovered her sister, and she isn''t willing to lose her again.

    It was quite a long day, so Daimon and the others went straight to Jasmine''s room to sleep, Aurora was also tired so after saying goodnight she went to her own room, leaving Daimon to deal with Sarah.

    Naturally she was also invited to stay in Jasmine''s room, and it easy to see what was in her mind the moment she saw Daimon''s bed, luckily even if she didn''t listen to her mother or even Aurora, she listened to Jasmine and so she stayed in Jasmine''s bed along with Cassy, who had no way but to ept that the crazy girl will be involved with her too, since she is Jasmine''s cousin.

    Daimon just shook his head at the whole situation, he cuddled with Aisha who has been giggling at him from time to time, and then closed his eyes to sleep, they will be leaving to the Bone Sea early in the morning after all.

    ¡­

    While at the white castle the atmosphere was a festive one, after the misunderstanding that separated two generations of sisters was cleared, at the ck castle the situation wasn''t so positive.

    "What did you say!", Abaris who was sitting on his throne, suddenly raised his voice, his ck mana exploded out of his body making the two Hall Masters who earlier were humiliated by Aurora shiver.

    The guy finally was able to remove the restriction Aurora ced on him, as for the woman she just finished the inspection of the treasury, which took her more time than what she expected.

    Abaris shut himself in his throne room, so he didn''t even notice when Aurora came, he kept getting angrier and angrier as the memory of what happened during the awarding ceremony kept appearing in his mind.

    And now, his two strongest disciples came to him, just to inform him that the best resources he had in his treasury were taken away by the silver haired youth that caused all this mess.

    Not only that, but his disciple handed him the ck token which Aurora used to attack him earlier, the proof that Abaris owed something to her.

    "She actually used it to help that brat¡­ damn you Aurora, you even told that bastard what were the best resources in my treasury, how far are do you intend to go against me!", eximed Abaris.

    ording to his disciples, there were two worthless things taken from the inventory, the red gem which no one has ever found any use to since it requires a really high talent in illusions and an iplete emblem, which only has collection value, in his mind those were the choices the silver haired brat made.

    Abaris was smirking when he heard that, but then his smile froze when his disciples told him about the other two things Daimon took, first he was angry thinking the brat dared to steal from him, but then things got worse, when he saw the token of debt, he gave Aurora so many years ago, he formed his own imaginary situation.

    For him, it was Aurora the one who told Daimon what to choose, or maybe she even picked for him since the other two things were given thanks to her token of debt.

    Abaris was fuming right now, he looked at his disciples who failed him miserably and a cold light shed in his eyes as he waved his hand, a ck gust flew them away, throwing them out of the room.

    "Get out of my sight, you two, go see Purplecloud and Skyfire, I want to hear what they got stolen by that bastard!".

    "Y-Yes master", the two Hall Masters immediately left the room, they knew Abaris was too angry right now, staying here will be just courting death.

    Abaris stayed there alone in his dark room while he sat on his throne with a cold expression on his face.

    "What that guy said turned out to be true, that brat somehow tricked those two and now they are acting against me, fucking hell", Abaris gritted his teeth, his hand crushed the edge of the armrest of his throne.

    ''Just you wait, I won''t let anyone get in my way'', thought Abaris as he clenched his fists, he then took out a mirror te and wrote a few things on it, the moment the message was sent the mirror te broke down it was a ime thing apparently.

 Chapter 438 Arriving At The Bone Sea (Part 2)

    ?

    Oblivious to what happened in the ck castle, Daimon and the others enjoyed a well-earned night of sleep, with Bell and Sylvie working together to sort out all the pending matters regarding ck Wave.

    Soon the sun reced the moon in the sky and morning came to Neptune, for Daimon waking up and seeing Aisha''s pretty sleeping face first thing in the morning was one of his favorite things.

    He could havepleted his morning routine by enjoying Aisha''s soft pretty lips with a kiss, if not for the fact that he could feel the intense gaze of the crazy purple haired girl Sarah, on his back.

    Daimon felt a headacheing his way, it''s 100% sure that Sarah will being with them to the global raid, in fact he wanted her toe, despite the fact that she is a bit annoying, the truth is that she is stronger than Purplehaze.

    For two reasons, first, she isn''t a mage but a knight, could be because of her Nethereal lineage but her body was innately stronger than the one of a normal human, Daimon also thought that same reason contributed to her weird obsession for his Battle Aura¡­ and for him in general.

    The second reason is that she is a natural dual affinity, contrary to what Purplehaze made others believe, the truth is that his mother consumed a magic herb with dark affinity when she was pregnant with him.

    She knows it because it was Bell the one who found that treasure and it was destined for when Sarah became able to train to give her a better start, but Purplecloud took it and with what happened with Jessica, Bell wasn''t in the mood to fight over resources as she was focused on learning the truth.

    Anyway, unlike Purplehaze, Sarah had both darkness and poison elements by innate, and that wasn''t rted to Reed, because just like Bell the Nethereal had poison affinity, she was born with it.

    Daimon had learned something interesting from Aurora recently, the Elemental race were just humans with a single difference, unlike others, they couldn''t use mana from any other element than the one in which they had affinity.

    That doesn''t mean their bodies didn''t contain any other mana, since a physical body is made of many things, including water, but despite having a certain amount of different manas in their body, they can''t use the most basic spells on them, even.

    In exchange they were more skilled using that single element, due to that it was even rarer that people with more than one affinity were born as part of the Elemental race, also not everyone was born like that, there were people in the Elemental Sea that could use simple of spells of elements which weren''t rted to their affinity.

    To put it in simple words the, the crazy girl was a genius, se could have easily taken away Purplehaze''s tittle as the strongest in the young generation of the Elemental Sea, but she wasn''t interested in that, as long as she could keep protecting Jasmine from the shadows and keeppany to her mother who was reaching the limit, she was happy.

    But now she has found something better, and judging by how she was licking her lips while she observed Daimon sleep for the past couple of hours, she really wanted to get a taste of it.

    Unfortunately for Sarah, the moment she tried to sneak from the bed in which Jasmine and Cassy were also sleeping, she noticed the three girls who were sharing the bed next to hers, ring at her.

    The Risha sisters gazed at Saah as if they were eagles eyeing their prey, the meaning was clear "Stay away", which only made Sarah''s interest in Daimon be even more noticeable, but she saw Jasmine waking up and she had no other choice but to calm down a bit.

    Daimon on the other hand got up his bed and then entered the bathroom followed by Aisha who gave Sarah an interested gaze, before she closed the door behind her.

    The girls started waking up one after the other, unlike the others, Sarah didn''t seem surprised nor shocked to see Daimon entering the bath with Aisha for the first time, her eyes glowed as she whispered a few things to Jasmine, which made thetter''s face turn red.

    "Hey, don''t you dare try and corrupt Jasmine you, crazy woman", said Cassy as she dragged Jasmine away from Sarah who just limited to giggle.

    ¡­

    Inside of the bathroom Daimon and Aisha were tenderly cleaning each other, they are going to be busyter so a bit of ying was good for now, after they finished showering, he and Aisha entered the bathtub and rxed a bit, in the meantime Daimon checked the log of the system because there was a notification triggered yesterday at night.

    But he was too tired for that after all that happened, so he left it for today, in any case he will have the whole day as they will be travelling to the Bone Sea, Daimon opened the log and it was as he expected for the first part.

    [The level of trust of the daughter of the Northern Sky has been updated]

    [Level of trust currently attained 50% ¨¤ 60%]

    [The next level of development requires the authorization of the host, due to the level trust reaching a critical point two possibilities have opened for the host:

    [Life Sanctuary: In exchange of potential, the other part of the oath will grant the maximum protection to the host, the capacity to avoid death one time automatically, a second time will be possible if the other party is willing to give up her life (WARNING: once chosen the level of trust will stagnate at its current forever)]

    [Unknown Evolution: Unlocks at 100% of trust (Might be possible or not, depending on the actions of the host)

    [Once the decision has been taken it can''t be undone]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, he expected Jasmine to walk down a different path than Aurora, but he didn''t understand why it was him the one that had to take the decision.

    ''Wait a second, was this also presented to that Abaris guy and to Jasmine''s father at a given point'', he wondered.

    To be honest the thought of choosing the first option didn''t even cross his mind, that will make him as much of a piece of trash as Adam, using someone that trusted and held him dear as a disposable toy, is something he despised.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    He just clicked "Unknown Evolution" and put the matter at the back of his head, Sanctuary was incredibly useful as it is, it basically gave him a free chance to use Core Synchrony, Jasmine has already contributed a lot to the team, not to mention Aisha and the others considered her their friend.

    Leaving that aside Daimon and Aisha came out of the bathtub, they dried each other and then put on their clothes before leaving the bathroom.

    Outside the other girls were waiting to take their bath, so while they did so, he left the room to go see Aurora, Thea wasn''t in the room when he woke up so there should be something rted to a contract in which Aurora needed the Empress''s help.

    And as Daimon expected, waiting for him in the dining room, there were Aurora, Sylvie, Bell and Thea, kneeling in front of them there were two figures, Heartstream and Stoneheart.

    "Greetings to the young master", they both said.

    Daimon turned to see Aurora who nodded at him, Bell then took the initiative to exin what was going on.

    "They came to join by their own will, and now their sects have joined the alliance, Sylvie will coordinate with them to keep an eye on the Elemental Sea while we are gone, so on the surface they will keep some distance from us".

    Daimon nodded, with this he had no other pending subjects to deal with, in the Elemental Sea, besides the legacy of the hero of course, but that will have to wait until they return.

    For now, after the two patriarchs left in secrecy, they enjoyed of their breakfast together, Aurora was more than happy seeing her granddaughter smile while she chatted with Sarah and prevented Cassy from fighting with her, it was as if she was seeing her daughter grow up with her friends once again.

    Once the breakfast was over, everyone was transported by Aurora to the open area where the Flying Citadel was, all the preparations were over, Sylvie saw them away as they were taken to the Citadel by the floating tform, she actually bowed towards Daimon before they left and asked him to help Bell and Sarah, to which Daimon just nodded.

    The citadel was as incredible as always, specially because they went straight to the inner ring, more urately to the main residence, Bell was surprised because she knew the importance of it.

    There was also an extra "guest" which Olivia was dragging by his neck, it was none other than the old assassin Tadeus, despite his miserable state he was still alive.

    "This guy doesn''t know where the leader of the branch of the Maelstrom Sea is hiding, but he knows one of the trusted men of Romel and he is at the Skalia continent of the Bone Sea right now".

    "They are supposed to meet there and this idiot would have traded miss Bell''s head to join them, and I got to know something interesting, this guy''s connection is an Skelefiend, but a human who works for Horrorw the current leader of the Skelefiends".

    Daimon nodded, now they had a target, but they still needed something else, unlike the previous seas, in the Bone Sea only Skelefiends lived, so if they went there, they will be discovered the moment they arrive.

    Luckily, they have a ticket of entry in the form of Shirel''s influential father, that is if he cared as much about her as she stated of course.

    "Horals, go bring that woman here", Daimon gave an order to the air and the parts of the bone general came from the shadow of the Risha sisters and the other girls to form the ck armored Horals.

    "Leave it to me young master!", he answered with his usual respectful voice before leaving to the room where Shirel was confined and returned in less that five minutes with the female Skelefiend.

    Now that Shirel was considered a potential ally instead of a prisoner, she was treated better, though she was bored as hell while being confined, it was much better than being tortured by the queen, something that still caused her nightmares.

    Daimon then took out Shirel''s storage ring which he confiscated before and gave her the mirror te that was inside of it before saying.

    "Call your father, tell him to organize a safe and secret ce for our arrival, I don''t think I need to remind you that if you try something funny, you are dead meat, understood?".

    Shirel took the mirror te with aplicated expression, she didn''t know if these guys will even take the time to listen to her father or not, but this was her only chance of survival, it was do or die, so she gritted her teeth and sent a message.

    The mirror te illuminated and not even a few secondster, she received a long response from her father which made her let out a sigh of relief.

    "He says that we cannd at Porter city, it''s within the area of influence of my father, and he will empty the city so that we can freely move without attracting any attention, don''t worry Horrorw is busy dealing with the fanatics which burned down the statue of Snakele, so that will be a perfect cover for us".

    Daimon read the message and then nodded.

    "Give senior Aurora the coordinates to that city".

    Daimon didn''t try to force her to sign a contract, not because he had pity on the Skelefiend woman, but because if what she said was true, doing it will cause a negative reaction from the Maximum Ster ranked that is her father.

    That could potentially make such a strong guy ignore the past feuds and join Horrorw, naturally Daimon won''t shoot his own foot, after all the best way to counter having a lot of enemies besides being overwhelmingly strong, is having numerous allies as well.

    And with that, the Citadel started floating on the air and then it advanced towards the Bone Sea.

 Chapter 439 Arriving At The Bone Sea (Part 3)

    ?

    After contacting her father and telling Aurora the coordinates to Porter city, Shirel voluntarily returned the mirror te to Daimon and then was escorted back to her room by Horals.

    "I''ll go to the captain''s cabin, little Jas why don''t you help your aunt Bell and little Sarah settle down in the main residence in the meantime", said Aurora.

    "Mm~", Jasmine smiled at her grandmother and then Aurora turned to see Bell.

    "Use the mana on the main residence to recover in the meantime, it might not cure the curse but your powers should be more stable with it".

    Bell nodded, one of the reasons as to why she had hold out so much even with the cure, is that she has been using her battle aura to suppress it, unfortunately when she fights the curse spread too, that''s why has to destinate more and more of her power to keep the curse in check, resulting in her regressing from almost having reached the high stage of the Ster rank, to the early stage.

    That''s right, just like her daughter, Bell is also a knight and a pretty strong one on top of that, ording to Thea, she would have been on par with her, if she was in her prime, it made sense since in Purplecloud''s family women used to be stronger than men, his wife endured consuming a magic herb to increase Purplehaze''s talent after all.

    Though in public that ended in Purplehaze''s generation, it wasn''t true, as Sarah was stronger than him.

    At first Bell wanted to refuse since she knew there was a limit to how much mana the Elemental Conversion Array could produce before it stopped working, but Aurora scolded her like a mother who scolds her daughter over not wanting to eat her vegetables, and she ultimately had not choice but to oblige.

    After Aurora left, Jasmine took them into the main residence since they were at its entrance earlier, Daimon and the others already knew where to stay so they went straight to the main room which was the only one that could amodate them all.

    Everyone had their own thing to do right now, most of them sat on their beds and started meditating to gather mana, the only exception being Thea, Marlene and Aisha.

    Daimon could understand Thea and Aisha not trying to meditate, Thea was too strong and she didn''t want to use the mana converted, it was better to leave it for Bell, Aisha just advanced a lot and she needed to get used to her new power, but Daimon didn''t understand why Marlene didn''t meditate, she was still stuck at the peak of the Lord rank after all.

    That reminded him the way she looked at him before, because she had the same expression now, she clearly wanted to say something, but was hesitating to do so, so Daimon inwardly shrugged and then focused on his own thing.

    He looked into the inventory where that purple flower was, naturally the poison couldn''t leak out of the inventory, but at the same time he couldn''t do anything but look at it, though as an Apex Predator there is nothing he can''t devour, that only means he won''t get any negative effect from them, for example he could drink poison to improve his own poison affinity.

    But there is a limit to the rank of treasures he can consume, otherwise he would have just eaten a ton of Half Emperor materials, but even for him that would be too much a cheat, currently the Arch rank was his limit, more than that and his body will most likely not be able to hold out.

    ''There is still a way but a day is not enough, I guess I''ll have to save it forter'', thought Daimon, the other method was using his infinity eyes to try and see if he could trigger the creation of a new spatial skill, but that was going to be a headache, both literally and figuratively and he couldn''t risk passing out for more than half a day, since the Elemental Sea was closer to the Bone Sea than to the Mermen Sea.

    So, they should arrive at their destination by midday at most, of course it was thanks to Aurora not caring about the amount of mana crystals needed to operate the Flying Citadel at full speed, which made it move on par with a Maximum Ster ranked who could use Space Shift.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he saw the door of the room opening, he expected Jasmine to return, because he wanted to ask if she felt something different, the fact that the trust level reached 60%, affected the oath and the tittle he got from fulfilling his side.

    But at the same time, it was rted to the innate ability of Jasmine, which so far hadn''t manifested, despite the fact that those white halos sometimes appeared on her pupils, simr to when he used the Ruler of the Sea.

    Unfortunately for Daimon, Jasmine didn''t appear alone, the pair of purple haired mother and daughter were with her and judging by the fact that Sarah was smiling from ear to ear, it was bad news for him.

    "Aunt Bell and Sarah wanted to stay with us, I hope you don''t mind", said Jasmine, most of the girls were okay with it, the Risha sisters and Cassy were the only ones that red at Sarah, but Jasmine had prepared to convince them beforehand.

    "Aunt promised to keep an eye on Sarah, so don''t fight with her, okay?", Cassy sighed, it was hard for her to just ept the crazy girl so fast, but that was Jasmine''s wish so she didn''t say anything.

    The Risha sisters looked unconvinced but seeing Aisha nod at them, they could only silently ept the crazy girl staying with them, as for Daimon he gave his mother an aggrieved gaze.

    ''You know that she isn''t ying around right, if I didn''t dodge, she would stick to me like caramel, I''m pretty sure she was going to jump into our bed earlier if not for Yvi and the others surveilling her'', he said through the mental connection.

    But Aisha simply giggled while she leisurelyid down on the bed before saying.

    ''It''s so rare to see something you can''t handle, so why not keep her around, besides though she might like if you attack her, I don''t think the same applies to others, so if she tries to cross the line I can give her a nice beating, don''t worry I''ll protect your "innocence" darling~''.

    Aisha''s yful voice made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch a couple of times, his mother was letting that crazy girl stay just to tease him.

    ''Ah, whatever, I need to see how her mana circuits and her physiology in general work under the curse if I want to cure her anyway'', thought Daimon.

    He then observed the pair of mother and daughter, there was a difference between when they left earlier to now, and that is the fact that they changed to much morefortable clothes.

    Bell usually wears light armor over a purple attire that doesn''t limit her movement, maybe because she is a knight but she is rather tall being on par with Liz, just a dozen of centimeters shorterpared to Erin, she has long light purple hair which shebs in a single braid that reaches all the way down to her thighs, her eyes are of a simr bright purple color, besides that her most distinctive characteristic is that she has a mole below her right eye, as for her current clothes she is wearing a short ck skirt and a ck turtleneck long sleeved blouse, as well as ck stockings, besides her hands and her head, everything else was practically covered.

    Of course, Daimon knew why as he has seen how those purple marks cover her back and her sides.

    Inparison Sarah is much more rxed, despite the fact that she also has some purple marks on her back too, unlike her mother both her hair and eyes are of a darker tone of purple, she has straight waist-length hair with pretty bangs that almost cover her face if she moves too much as she doesn''t tie it, as for her attire she was wearing a short single piece shoulder less white dress with a ck belt and a ck ne.

    The Risha siters gazed at her with slightly hostile gazes, Leslie especially, since Sarah''s figure was¡­ well-developed, which is normal as she is 24 years old being the older here among the girls from the young generation here.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''I have to hurry and give mom the furnace'', thought the girl from the fire crane n.

    Sarah earlier noticed Daimon''s gaze on her, and her eyes slightly glowed as she gazed back at him, if it wasn''t for Jasmine she could have jumped onto Daimon on the spot.

    ¡­

    The hours passed pretty fast, besides Daimon bringing Jasmine with him to see if they could find something new about the citadel, nothing else happened, besides Sara trying to sneak on them after she escaped from the main residence, just to be dragged back by her mother.

    They soon passed the limit between the Elemental Sea and the Bone Sea, the reason as to why it was called Bone Sea, was because first of all, the water had dark blue color, which made a high contrast with the now dirty yellow-colored bones that raise from below of the surface.

    As the name states, the Bone Sea was called like that because there were countless of bones from magic beast at its bottomyer, one would think that it would be detrimental for the environment, but surprisingly it isn''t.

    For some reason many magic beastse to this sea when their lives are about to end, be it of age or because of a wound, they die in the waters of the Bone Sea and their bones add up to the many thaty below the surface, or if the beast was toorge and that area was too shallow, then they can be seen like the ones Daimon and the girls could see right now.

    As to the reason of why it isn''t detrimental, is because there is a native species of fish that takes care of cleaning both the corpses and the water, keeping everything in perfect condition, the Skelefiends use the bones to make magic weapons and other equipment, like the ship of Horrorw which was created using the bones of strong magic beasts.

    The number of bones also diminish because there are magic beasts that eat them too, it was rather interesting as if it was meant to be this way, like natural cemetery.

    Besides that, the biggest change Daimon noticed between the atmosphere of the Elemental Sea and the Bone Sea, was that dark, poison and earth mana were more abundant while light, fire and lightning are less present here.

    "Young master, I feel ratherfortable in this atmosphere, I think that if I can cultivate here for a couple of days along with the resources young master kindly granted me, it will be beneficial for me", respectfully said Horals who came out of a green me portal.

    "Beneficial, you mean you will enter the Half Emperor realm?", asked Daimon, it''s not like he didn''t want the Bone General to advance, but he would rather tell him to not be an iplete knight, like most in Neptune, even Sarah who was a genius didn''t have Will Maniption, meaning she stillcked a bitpared to the knights back at the four gxies.

    It was a strange division which Daimon had yet to understand in what consisted, Purplehaze managed to obtain a Manifestation Phenomenon, but it was an inferior version obtained thanks to a treasure he absorbed, and since he had obtained, he will stay with that forever, essentially, he screwed himself over because he rushed things, probably because he wanted to defeat Adam to get Abaris to arrange him a marriage with Jasmine.

    Surprisingly Horals shook his head in response.

    "No, I feel I have still arge way to go before I can be a Half Emperor, but my instincts tell me, I will obtain something useful", honestly said Horals.

    Daimon then nodded.

    "Okay, if that''s the case, I''ll ask Shirel''s father to arrange a ce for you to train, that is, if he joins the alliance of course".

    "Thanks to young master for his consideration", having said that Horals returned to guard the entrance to Shirel''s room, he was tasked to watch over her, in case she tried to escape now that they were at the Bone Sea.

    The Flying Citadel flew high into the sky past the clouds so it wasn''t detected, since it didn''t have concealing arrays and new arrays couldn''t be engraved on it, the barrier had the capacity to reflect light, so it had camouge, but it was just an optic illusion, simr to Aurora''s spell, it only hid them from being seen, but their presence was still there and it could be detected.

    That was the major w of the Flying Citadel, it couldn''t be used for sneak attacks, but for upfront battles, that''s why they asked Shirel''s father to prepare a ce for their arrival.

    The girls came from the main residence and gathered near Daimon at the rooftop of the main residence, there was arge mass ofnd ahead of them, that was one of the border territories of the Skalia continent.

    "We''ll fly from here, are you sure you can keep the citadel in your spatial treasure?", asked Aurora who arrived next to Daimon and the others, with Shirel being restrained by a white sphere of mana.

    Daimon nodded, which made Aurora''s eyes glow, the citadel was massive, though there were specially made rings that would have enough space to contain it, the citadel couldn''t be stored inside of them, the previous Matriarchs of the Light Pce tried it and the rings were destroyed on the spot.

    After Aurora saw Daimon casually keeping the Purple Devilish Laurel which is also known to destroy storage rings, she asked if Daimon''s treasure might be able to store the citadel and to her surprise, he said that there was no problem.

    And now it was time for the truth, they gathered at one of the exterior areas of the citadel and after Aurora created a barrier around them with her mana, Daimon wished it and the huge citadel was absorbed into the inventory.

    The inventory was fundamentally different to a storage ring, ording to Narasha and Horals who were only sentient entities that could be enter in the inventory, each slot was like a separated world.

    If that wasn''t the case Daimon would have never kept Disaster in the inventory, because he wouldn''t bear to put Narasha into a dark close space, she had space to move, in a sense each slot was like the space of a beast pouch, there was even a basdscape ording to them.

    Daimon looked at his inventory and saw a miniature of the citadel in one of the previously free slots, before he nodded at Aurora to assure her everything was fine.

    Needless to say, but Aurora was positively surprised, Daimon made up for one of the biggest ws of the Flying Citadel, she looked at Jasmine who was also surprised and smiled at her, which made the light princess lower her gaze as if she was embarrassed to directly see her grandmother to the eyes.

    ''Sigh, that little girl is too shy, I should have a talk with her because¡­ I don''t think she should be so passive'', thought Aurora as she looked at the numerous girls that were present right now, especially at Sarah whose intentions were clear for everyone.

 Chapter 440 Armando Spokel

    ?

    Now that the Flying Citadel was safe in Daimon''s inventory, the group was led towards the mass ofnd ahead by Aurora who had casted a light barrier around them, just in case.

    ording to Shirel''s father, the mass ofnd on front of them was safe for them to reunite because it belongs to his family, he simply sent the residents to an "expedition" trial, and offered a prize to motivate them.

    After that, he himself encircled the city to prevent anyone to spy on them, he was going to meet with public enemies of the Bone Sea after all, son in that sense the old Skelefiend was trustable.

    But one can never be too wary, in case he turns out to worry more about the old enmities than his daughter, Daimon will take out the Flying Citadel to cause amotion and then, they will retire if needed.

    "That is the Pate Penins, the mansion of the city lord is at the east side, that blue colored tall building that can be seen from afar", said Shirel as she pointed at a five-story building.

    The ce for the meeting was decided beforehand, but to Daimon''s surprise the architectonic style of the Skelefiends was quite differentpared to the one of the either the Mermen or the Elemental Seas.

    At least in this so-called Porter city, there was no castle or mansion, but tall multiple level buildings that were built for the important ces.

    Guided by Aurora the group entered the aerial space of the city, they didn''t have any problem so that meant Shirel''s father fulfilled his promise and temporarily deactivated the barrier.

    Still Aurora didn''t cancel her optic illusion spell until they had arrived at the entrance of the tall blue building, the moment they became visible, the door opened and they were weed with the sight of an old man with slightly gray skin and white hair, moustache and beard, the most distinctive characteristic Daimon noticed was that his eyes werepletely white, as if he had no pupil, but he didn''t seem to be blind, maybe it was a race trait.

    The old man looked older than Vincent and at the same time, he didn''t have a war-like aura around him, but a calm experienced one, though his expression was serious it didn''t look imposing.

    Especially because it was easy for Daimon to see the huge relief that the old man felt when he saw Shirel being in a good condition.

    He knew that Horrorw tried to kidnap the princesses of the Clear Water kingdom as well as the princess of the Light Pce with ckbeard and Sting''s help, and it was a well-known fact that the queen of the Mermen Sea and the Matriarch of the Light Pce are protective when ites to their sister and granddaughter respectively.

    So, the moment he got to know Shirel was captured he could imagine the fate that awaited his daughter, he would have gone to the Mermen Sea if not for the fact that they received a message that demanded Horrorw to personally go if they didn''t want Shirel to be publicly executed.

    Naturally he immediately went to meet Horrorw but thetter refused saying it was a trap, and that now that the arrow had left the bow there was nothing to discuss, Horrorw even told him that if he dared to leave the Bone Sea, he will be dered a traitor and then Horrorw will provoke the Mermen Sea so that they kill Shirel.

    Unfortunately, the old man has been retired from the public scene for a really long time, so he had no way tomunicate with the Mermen Sea, in fact the only one who "officially" had a way to contact the Mermen Sea was Horrorw so any messages had to go through him, the old man had his hands tied essentially.

    That was until he received a call directly by her daughter saying that the Mermen Sea was willing to negotiate with him, and that led to the current situation.

    Daimon and the others were led by the old man to the main hall of the building, which again took those who were new to Skelefiend culture as it wasn''t a throne room but something more simr to a conference room, with arge table and many chairs.

    Anyway, the questions regarding that could wait, first, the old man looked at Aurora who was the strongest in the group and ced his hand on his chest as he did a basic noble greet by slightly lowering his head.

    "Armando Spokel greets the Matriarch of the Light Pce and herpanions, it''s a shame that out first meeting is under these circumstances¡­", the old man doubted for a couple of seconds, but ultimately, he couldn''t stop himself from saying.

    "I know this means nothing, but I truly didn''t know about Horrorw''s n, as I was in seclusion, the array ced on our deity''s statue was linked to me, so when it was burned, I suffered backsh, I didn''t think that Horrorw would be crazy enough to go at war after all the sacrifices that took us to reach this semi peaceful state, and what''s worse he involved my daughter in his stupidities", said the old man as he sighed.

    Shirel lowered her head, she didn''t dare to look at her father directly, it''s not like Horrocalw forced her to go, but she was convinced by him, now she realized she was tricked, what Horrorw wanted were the troops that were loyal to her family, though he retired when she was captured, it was only to publicly show support, not to mention he had a bigger chance of losing than winning, considering how things were going back then, since they didn''t take Thea appearing into ount.

    Not to mention the princesses were safe, they basically suffered a huge defeat so when Horrorw saw the chance to delegate the me to Shirel since she was captured, he did so without hesitation, in other words she became his scapegoat and now her father had to pay for her mistakes.

    Daimon who has been bothered by something, entered the conversation to say.

    "As far as I understand your influence in this sea isn''t smaller than Horrorw''s, so if you didn''t want war, then, why didn''t you prohibit it publicly, it sounds too convenient that you weren''t involved at all, now that we have your daughter in our hands?".

    The old man turned to see the origin of such a sharp and uratement, just to see a masked silver haired youth, who didn''t even flinch after being gazed at by him, though he isn''t actively trying to show off, Armando is till a Maximum Ster ranked, one that isn''t worsepared to Abaris, in fact this old man might be as strong as Vincent.

    Still Armando didn''t get angry, and instead he answered to the silver haired youth, because Aurora not saying anything when he talked, meant the sole male in the group held a special position, not mention he could also notice the strong light manaing from Daimon.

    "It''s not like I didn''t want to do it, but I can''t, certainly for internal affairs my authority surpasses Horrorw, but when ites to battle and anything rted to fighting, he has the higher ground".

    "Also, the members of the Bone lineages fully support him and their number is biggerpared to us from the Flesh lineages, even if we were to follow the old tradition and make the citizens vote, the result will be against us anyway, the only reason as to why Horrow showed respect to me was because he was weaker and he needed the members of the Flesh lineage, as only us can use magic among Skelefiends".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow behind his mask, he has noticed some concepts thate from modern society, democracy is one of them, on the other hand, it could be that the old man just wanted to trick them, but that didn''t seem to be the case.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Daimon was also interested in the fact that the Skelefiends seemed to divide themselves into two separate subspecies, which made him decide that the old man could be more useful than what he expected.

    "Well, that being the case, now it''s your chance to change that, in exchange for your daughter''s life, the condition is that you join us to fight Horrorw and his allies, pretty easy right", said Daimon as he leaned back on the chair.

    The old man more or less expected this, so he wasn''t surprised by the petition, what surprised him was that a member of the young generation was the one leading a negotiation, where two Maximum Ster ranked were involved.

    "Can you represent the king of the Mermen Sea and the Shaman of the Elemental Sea when you say this, we have a blood feud that goes back in time to a moment that was erased from the books of history, little friend, do you have that authority".

    "He can''t speak for the White, but he has the support of the Vs family, as well as the support of the Mermen Queen, not to mention the Trident Marshal as well", Mellie stepped in for Daimon as she and Daphne showed the tokens of authority of their sister and mother respectively.

    "The same applies for us, the Light Pce and all its subordinated sects fully back him up, as he was dered the young master of the Light Pce publicly yesterday", Jasmine also interfered in the conversation, earing thumbs up from Aurora who gave her, her token of authority as she knew it wille to this.

    "He is also this Empress''s newly appointed general, so you can count me in for the fun", added Thea.

    Armando was surprised of what he heard, big forces from three out of the four seas supported the silver haired youth who was talking to him a moment ago, individually the faction formed here was stronger than anyone else, just because they had two Maximum Ster ranked already.

    ''If I were to join then¡­ three Maximum Ster ranks under the same g, at least five high stage and dozens of middle and early stages, it''s outrageous'', thought Armando, but what amazed him the most was the fact that he never expected people from different seas to work together like this.

    "Ah, I nearly forgot to mention it, but he has the right to speak, because he is the one who captured your daughter and frustrated Horrorw''s n, forcing him to retreat in disgrace", said Aurora.

    Armando was in awe, no one knew how was Shirel captured, because only the queen and the others knew that it was Daimon''s doing, so publicly everyone believed it was some of Vincent''s subordinates that were lucky.

    The old man looked at his daughter and then he seemed to have taken a decision, as he turned to see Daimon.

    "I''ll join, but I want the contract that I''m pretty sure I''ll have sign, to stipte that you won''t harm my daughter, also you have to tell me what we are facing, because it''s hard to believe that Horrorw suddenly got braver just with those pirates as his allies", he said.

    Daimon shrugged.

    "She''ll also be signing the contract, so if she tries to do something funny, she''ll die, the same applies to you and all of your subordinates, but if you aren''t thinking on betrayal then there is nothing to be afraid of".

    The old man''s eyes glowed, the young man in front of him left no space for breaches in the contract he mentioned, others would have been intoxicated over the thought of having a Maximum Ster ranked as a subordinate, it wouldn''t be weird for them to forget about the one who acted as the bridge for their sess, in this case Shirel.

    Now that the two parties have reached an agreement, Daimon turned to see Thea and then said.

    "Miss Thea if can you do the honors, please".

    The Empress happily nodded and then one of her pupils became red, she confirmed that Armando wasn''t in a contract that prevented him from attacking the Bone Sea, probably Horrorw never in his life imagined the day woulde when the easy going and calm old man that didn''t even fall for his provocations, to attack him so he never pursued a contract regarding that.

    "He''s clean, I can do the contract but, unlike the others he will have to be directly under me or it won''t work", the difference in rank was too big for Thea''s ability to ignore it.

    Daimon nodded and the contract proceeded without any troubles, only then Shirel was released from the restrictions and the first thing Armando did was hug her.

    "I don''t want to interrupt but we have a lot of things to do, and a couple need your influence in this ce", said Daimon.

    Armando bitterly smiled but he agreed with Daimon, besides his daughter needed some rest after being at the verge of a mental copse earlier.

    "Very well, we can start whenever you want¡­", the old man suddenly realized he didn''t know the name of the silver haired youth.

    Daimon of course noticed the predicament, so he took the initiative to introduce himself.

    "You can call me Daimon".

    The old man nodded and then he told Shirel to go and take a rest, while he stayed behind as he had a lot of catch up to do.

 Chapter 441 The Origin Of The Skelefiends

    ?

    Naturally before Shirel left, she had to sign her own contract, but besides that she was now free to do as she liked unless her presence was needed for the next conversation that was about to take ce.

    Now that Armando was part of the alliance the girls could rx a bit as well, but none of them left the room, because they were curious about what Daimon had to say.

    For Mellie and the other girls that are native of Neptune, the fact that they now were working with one of the leaders of the Skelefiends was gave them a strange sensation.

    Their races¡­ no, their seas have been in conflict for so much time that at this point no one knew what was the reason of why, the bad blood between them simply increased too much for any of the parts to take a step back to end it.

    The only reason as to why in recent years things were rtively peaceful, is because at Vincent''s generation and the nearby ones, the four seas suffered too many casualties, resulting in the current status quo.

    Each sea had two beings that stood at the top of the pyramid, in other words, two Maximum Ster ranks, with the exception of the Maelstrom Sea which no one knew what horrors its waters contained.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon was now interested in the divisions the old Skelefiend mentioned, because it''s the first time he hears the term "Bone" and "Flesh" lineages, though it is easy to imagine why they are called like that, what interested him is something else.

    "Old man, have these divisions in the Skelefiend race always existed?", he already learned the public information about the four seas, which Ae provided in the form of a book.

    But each sea had its own history, which was hidden to the public, when the queen interrogated Shirel she didn''t know too much things, but she did mention that probably only the elders of the "council" which are led by her father, should have privileged information as they are the ones that have lived the most, Horrorw might be stronger than them with the exception of Armando, but he is younger than them.

    Armando wanted to question something too, but he realized that as strange at it seems for a mere Early-stage Mortal realm youth, to be in a leading position in an alliance that now had three Maximum Ster ranks, he was respected by all the presents, including Aurora and Thea.

    Not to mention that ording to Aurora, he was the one who frustrated Horrorw''s n, so he put aside ranks and seniority and answered honestly, but before that he took out a ck worn-out book from his storage ring.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask the moment he saw the book, but he didn''t interrupt the old man.

    "This is the personal record that the representatives of Snakele had passed down since ancient times, since you have the Matriarch of the Light Pce as your ally, I dare to assume you are aware of the origin of the four seas, in other words the time when the hero of the Mermen Sea and the other three originators lived", said the old man.

    Daimon nodded, everything seemed to have started with the arrival of those guys, he could at least confirm that the hero was a system user, but the information regarding the other three wasn''t enough to confirm the same.

    Aurora''s ancestor didn''t mention anything about it in the diary she left, but it could be that she couldn''t, not that she didn''t know about it, unfortunately there is no way to confirm it, since there is too little information avable from that time.

    Leaving the Elemental Sea aside, he could not fill in some holes in the history with Armando''s help, there was also the White''s records, in which there should be thest piece of the history which Daimon iscking, but that could be left forter.

    "ording to the previous representatives, prior to the ancient war we only were gifted with the capacity to use mana, it was the "Sword" of Snakele the one who brought the power of knights to our side and the first knight in the history of our race".

    "In our history, the first knight saw that our race wascking inparison with the hero from the Mermen Sea and he asked Snakele to grant us the power of knights, the goddess did so, but only the descendants of the first knight were blessed with the change of being a knight".

    "No one knows how many years did the warsted, but it was enough for the first knight to have children with the most prominent families of back then, among which my Spokel family outstood as the strongest and the first one to support the first knight, Horrorw''s family was also one of them and there was a third one which was practically annihted during thest battle".

    "Anyway, to answer your question, previous to what I mentioned happening, our race was called "White Walker", because of our unusual pale skin and these characteristic eyes of ours that only appear after we reach the Ster rank", said the old man as he pointed at himself before continuing.

    "But after the first knight and his direct descendants appeared, and since they were the ones who contributed the most, the name of our race was changed to the title that they were given due to their high strength which was "Skelefiend", on their honor".

    "After the war came to an abrupt end, out of all the ones who got to meet the first knight personally, only my ancestor and Horrorw''s one survived, my family has never been able to produce members of the Bone lineage for some reason, so Horrorw''s family was given the authority over them, while we were in charge of the Flesh lineage, that is the origin of those terms".

    "Unfortunately, unlike the hero of the Mermen Sea, there are no descriptions of how the first knight looked, but the Bone lineage which supposedly descend from him have one thing inmon and that is, the fact that they only develop flesh as they be stronger, getting a full body after reaching the Ster rank".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, Armando''s race looked human-like, besides their extremely pale skin and white eyes, so he was weirded at the fact that they didn''t find the Skelefiends unappealing to the eyes.

    ''I guess every race had their own sense of beauty'', he thought before saying.

    "I have good and bad news for you".

    The old man frowned but he didn''t say anything, waiting to hear what the silver haired youth had to say.

    "First the bad news, the so called first knight was either a human or a member of some race that wasn''t native of Neptune, and the Bone lineage has no ties to the deity you guys adore, which if my guess is right, already existed before the appearance of that guy, am I right?".

    Armando looked confuse for a second, but he nodded in response.

    "Yes, Snakele was our deity even before the appearance of the first knight, we were at war prior to that too, and he appeared when we needed him the most".

    Daimon chuckled.

    ''Of course, he did, because he was a damn system user with a mission'', he thought.

    "Continuing with the bad news, you guys were yed by him, the so-called Bone lineagees from a race called¡­ Nethereals", said Daimon, which made Aurora and the others exim in surprise, especially Jasmine and Bell.

    While Jasmine couldn''t imagine herself bing like that, Bell was worried about her daughter, Sarah on the other hand didn''t seem to worry about it at all, she was just intensely gazing at Daimon like usual.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    For Daimon everything connected the moment he got to know that the descendants of the first knight were the first ones that looked like what the Skelefiends are like nowadays.

    Just like it happened to Bell and Jasmine''s mother, the Nethereals had offspring with the natives of Neptune, Daimon knew what Jasmine was thinking so he added.

    "Don''t worry, you two won''t be like that, there are many Nethereals and they aren''t on the same side as well, so your case and this one, arepletely different, otherwise more half Nethereals would have appeared in the Elemental Sea".

    Aurora let out a sigh of relief while Jasmine and Bell nodded, what Daimon said made sense, unlike the Bone Sea in which a whole new race was created, in their case only they were born, and it was too recent to be rted too.

    "Nethereals?", the confused voice of Armanado, made Daimon continue with what he was saying, he only mentioned that term before exining to help Jasmine and the others calm down.

    "Yeah, they are the ones we are fighting against, a mysterious race which wants to destroy Neptune, and that tried to infiltrate the Elemental Sea, the bad news is that they aplished their goal in the Bone Sea", Daimon then drew the Nethereal he found in the ck stone corridor, the one which reminded him of a Skelefiend with the difference that it was bigger and it looked way more bizarre than them.

    He then showed the draw to Armando whose eyes widened in shock.

    "T-That is a perfect illustration of how the "Skelefiends" looked, but how, I didn''t mention their characteristics and no one besides me and Horrorw can read the ancientnguage!", he eximed.

    Daimon pointed at the ck worn out book before saying.

    "When I was arriving at Neptune, I went through a ck stone corridor which had those same characters engraved on it, also I found the thing I drew at the end of the corridor, and I killed it", he casually said.

    Armando was in a lost of words right now, something Aurora understood very well, as this is the first time, she hears of this too, but she understood why Daimon didn''t mention it prior to this.

    He couldn''t confirm if the creature he found at the ck corridor was a Nethereal or not, until this very moment, so before this the thing was just a Skelefiend that somehow ended up in that ce.

    Armando had many questions, starting from what Daimon meant by saying "When I was arriving at Neptune", as that meant he wasn''t a native, meaning he came from the outside world, which was shocking by itself.

    But right now, he was more intrigued on the ck corridor Daimon mentioned, as there aren''t any remains with the ancientnguage, the only thing that has it, is the book he always keeps with himself, that''s why no one else knew thisnguage, that ording to his ancestors was taught to them by Snakele.

    ''When the first knight appeared, he spoke in thenguage of the goddess, when only the three leaders of the prominent families knew about it and had previously sworn to not teach it to anyone, that''s in part how he earned the trust and support of the families¡­'', thought Armando.

    Things were falling in ce, an impostor had tricked them, the first knight wasn''t Snakele''s sword or anything like that, he knew thenguage as he probably was rted to the Nethereals the silver haired youth mentioned, and they fell for it.

    Ultimately Armando sighed feeling a headacheing his way, he just learned that their history is all a lie, as to why he didn''t doubt about Daimon''s words, that is because the contract stated they can''t lie, naturally Daimon isn''t obliged by the contract, but he wasn''t lying anyway.

    "What is the good news then?", asked the old man as he tried to not suffer a mental copse, because many problems came to his mind after understanding everything that meant, that more than half of the current poption of the Skalia continent was controlled by the descendants of their now enemy.

    Daimon tapped his finger on the table as he gazed at Jasmine and Sarah, before saying.

    "The good news is that your family wasn''t chosen to be those guys''s guinea pig, probably they couldn''t overwrite your race, due to your strong lineage concentration, in exchange Horrorw''s family were weaker so they were easier to alter".

    Armando indeed felt a bit better after listening to that, at the very least his family was safe from the external influence.

    Daimon didn''t know why the Nethereals wanted to mix their race with the natives of Neptune, but he could tell that Jasmine and Bell were the culmination of that project, because they weren''t altered despite being half Nethereals.

    That could also be the reason as to why Horrow and the pirated tried to kidnap them, because the Skelefiends or more urately the members of the Bone lineage were failures, that were created only to be used as soldiers, in other words, cannon fodder.

    ''Now the question is, why did they want to kidnap Mellie too, her father for sure isn''t a Nethereal, and her mother isn''t too, also Rita has told me she isn''t like Jasmine whose Nethereal lineage is dormant'', thought Daimon.

    At first, he thought Mellie''s mother might have been a Nethereal, considering her coffin was filled with just water that containedws, the Nethereals turn into that ck mist when their fake bodies die so that the ck sphere can escape.

    But Rita who after meeting Sarah could tell Jasmine was also a half Nethereal, affirmed that Mellie wasn''t like that, she was 100% a member of the Mermen races, what Rita could tell is that she and the queen aren''t simr to any of the other mermen Daimon has met, and just half simr to their father, so the race of their mother remained a mystery for now.

    "And what do we do now, if more than half of the Skalia continent will be controlled by those bastards", said Armando, not all the members of the Bone lineage were warriors, there were regr people who worked in the farms, or other nonbatant professions.

    Just thinking on having to kill them all, made him reluctant, Daimon knew this was going to happen since the moment Shirel exined the nature of her father, but this reaction was also within his calctions.

    "Well, their fate depends on you, I won''t leave a possible threat alone so that they cane and stab me in the back, first of all we need to make things in the shadows to nor alert either Horrorw, the guy behind him or the Nethereals, which are the ones we know are participating on this".

    "Which lead us to my first goal here, which is forcing the branch of ck Wave in this sea into submission, call your most influential subordinates here, they will join the alliance, or die, depending on whether they are enemies in disguise or not, after that, I''ll take care of ck Wave, while you look for the ones who burned down Snakele''s statue", said Daimon.

    Of course, he didn''te here without knowing what his next steps will be, Aurora was positively surprised to see Daimon was able to think so far ahead, the silver haired youth was merciless against enemies, but he wasn''t reckless at all, even with the power of three Maximum Ster ranked at his disposition, his actions were well-thought.

    ''I guess little Jas has a better eye for men than me and Jessica¡­'', thought Aurora as she inwardly sighed.

 Chapter 442 Three Steps Ahead (Part 1)

    ?

    Naturally Armando was careful enough to not inform any of his subordinates about this meeting, since it regarded the safety of his daughter, so the first thing he did right now was summon all of them at once.

    Surprisingly no one doubted about why Porter city was practically empty, apparently this is a normal thing when the "council" mentioned by Shirel gathers, so the members of the council thought they were the reason of why the citizens left temporarily.

    While Daimon and the others looked at the arriving people from behind an illusion created by Aurora, something interesting about this council is that though they are all technically subordinated to Armando, there is a representative from Horrow''s family.

    Daimon wanted to see how much have the enemies infiltrated the Bone Sea and this was an easy way to do so, Armando has been isted from public matters for a really long time, to the point that he didn''t know about ck Wave''s existence.

    In Aurora''s case it is understandable that she wasn''t informed, since the head of the intelligence department in other words Bell, purposedly hid it from her as she needed the organization to continue with her n.

    But there is no reason for Armando to not know about the threat that ck Wave represented, so that made one of his subordinates a direct suspect of treason, the question is besides that, how many other aspects of the Bone Sea have been interfered with.

    The door of the meeting room opened and five people with different dispositions entered, three belonged to the Flesh lineage and two were members of he Bone lineage, in other words three mages and two knights.

    The first one to sit was one of the mages, a slim man that seemed to be in his fifties, and the sole high stage Ster ranked of the group, the others followed quickly, for a total of two early-stage Ster rank mages and two middle stage Ster rank knights.

    It might sound amazing, since a high stage is included in the group, but when you put into ount the fact that these five elders are the strongest among the families that are subordinated to a Maximum Ster rank like Armando, they don''t amount to much.

    For example, the Elemental Sea is also divided between two major forces, the Light Pce and the ck Fortress, and Aurora has five ten early stage and two middle stage Ster ranks, at her direct disposition, not to mention she is sure Sylvie canpete against high stage Sters, and that is without including Bell who has always been her ally.

    Inparison, out of the five people that just arrived, one of the middle stages is a representative from Horrow''s family, that being said, it''s not like there aren''t more Ster ranks within the families that are subordinated to Armando, but they aren''t his direct subordinates, the same applies to Aurora and to the Mermen Sea as well, factions existed everywhere after all.

    "It''s been a while since we met, chief Spokel, I wonder why have we been summoned all of a sudden?", said one of the members of the Bone lineage, more urately the one from Horrow''s family, an Skelefiend since Daimon decided to leave that race name to the Bone lineage and call Shirel and those who were like here as White Walkers, since now they knew the truth, called Bandor.

    The high stage Ster which is also Armando''s right hand, a White Walker called Remi, frowned.

    "Bandor, we all know why you are here and we don''t care, but don''t forget to keep up appearances unless you want to get thrown out of this ce".

    Everyone knew Bandor was the eyes and ears of Horrorw in the council, so he and Remi have always been in conflict, that being said they normally don''t show it to Armando, but now that Horrow had Armando "at his disposition", due to Shirel being imprisoned, Bandor has be unrestrained, Remi is also reacting more violently than normal.

    Armando inwardly sighed, he previously felt a bit guilty that he called these five here so that they are forced into submission but he now realized that his subordinates had stopped respecting him.

    "That''s enough you two, I called you here because I have an important matter to discuss", said Armando.

    "Heh, if it''s aboutdy Shirel''s case, once again allow me to represent Lord Horrorw to say that we are making out best to negotiate with the White family, as soon as we get an answer, we''ll inform chief Armando about it", Bandor''s voice tone was rather disrespectful, sine he has been told about Shirel by Armando many times and the answer has been the same.

    On the surface Armando didn''t have any reaction, but on the inside, he was furious, Daimon had exined him who are their allies who are their enemies, and the possible allies as well as possible enemies.

    Needless to say, but the White family are confirmed enemies due to what their ancestor did to Mellie''s mother, he also mentioned that they weren''t involved in Shirel''s imprisonment at all, in other words Armando was being lied to the face.

    Restraining himself from giving Bandor a beating on the spot, Armando shook his head and then said with a calm voice.

    "That is a separate matter, I summoned you all here to discuss a threat that has been hiding from us in the shadows", as Armado spoke, the door of the room opened and a battered figure was brought in on a cloud of green fire.

    That is Armando''s family element, but we can leave that fortter, what''s important right now, is the battered old man that wasying on top of the fire cloud, it was none other than Tadeus the old assassin that used to be Bell''s subordinate.

    The five members of the council had different reactions the moment they saw Tadeus, who was clearly a member of the Elemental races, with which they were at war, being brought in by Armando.

    "Chief why is there a human here, thews state that he must be executed on the spot!", said Remi with a serious voice.

    "Forget about that, he must be brought to Lord Horrow for interrogation, who knows we might be able to get valuable information that could be used to save Lady Shirel", Bandor also gave his opinion.

    As for the other three, they remained silent since those their opinions aligned with what those two said.

    Armando raised his hand to tell the members of the council to make silence.

    "I know the rules Remi, in case you have forgotten I was present when your father as well as Horrow''s grandfather were alive and voted to make that ridiculousw, but I identally caught this human trying to sneak in into the continent earlier when I was meditating in the nature".

    "And after capturing him a question was born in my mind, why would a humane all the way to the Bone Sea, considering we are openly at war right now, so I interrogated him a bit and listened to an interesting story¡­".

    Armando made a small pause and the atmosphere on the room tensed up as Armando turned to see one of the two early-stage Ster ranked mages.

    "Apparently, he came to join an organization called ck Wave, which focuses in information gathering and assassination, do you know anything about it, Josue?".

    Josue is the one in charge of intelligence in the Skalia continent, at least from Armando''s side, since Horrow''s domains are out of Armando''s jurisdiction.

    The White Walker Josue gulped down, he has never seen Armando being serious ever before, but that is normal since everyone in this room is around three or more generations younger than him, he is even at leas one generation older than Vincent and Aurora which makes him be technically on par with the White''s ancestor, and that is in part why Daimon made all the effort to bring Shirel here.

    "Chief, this is the first time I have heard of such a thing, we have been putting all of our resources to find the heretics that burned the sacred statue¡­ could it be dangerous organization that has been hiding in Lord Horrorw''s territory?", said Josue.

    The focus of all the presents changed to Bandor, the moment Josue finished speaking, his words made sense, it was hard for the intelligence on his side to not notice anything about ck Wave, unless they were either being covered up by someone in this room, or outside of the reach of the ones in this room.

    And in this case, there is a person that can grant both benefits, in other words Horrorw''s representative, Bandor.

    "Humph, Josue don''t try to divert the attention to me, I have no clue about what this ck Wave might be, in fact why are you sure they aren''t rted to the crazy bunch that has been burning statues and making people disappear, why haven''t we heard of any update regarding your investigation?".

    Naturally Bandor wouldn''t let Josue turn him into his scapegoat, the same applied to the others, the five elders started discussing with each other and pointing at each other, the only one who maintained the same stance was Remi, who asked Armando to execute Tadeus.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Enough", a single word from Armando followed by the pressure of a Maximum Ster ranked, made the five elders stop their quarrel, Armando still had that calm expression as always, but the aura around him had undergone a 180¡ã change.

    "I don''t to hear excuses, it appears to be that we have failed in our duties, so we''ll all be put to trial right now", the moment Armando finished speaking, he snapped his fingers and a barrier was casted around the room.

    The word "surprise" was written all over the faces of the five elders, they never expected the calm and pacifist Armando to be so aggressive all of a sudden.

    ''Damn this old man has gone crazy due to his daughter being captured, this is bad I must inform Lord Horrorw'', thought Bandor.

    But as he tried to sent a message through a mirror te to Horrorw, he was surprised to see that the connection failed, and he was even more surprised when he heard Armando saying.

    "Don''t bother in trying to inform whoever you are loyal to, Bandor, Jouse and you too¡­ Remi, this barrier has spatial properties so your messages won''t be able to leave".

    Armando''s expression was calm, but the anger hidden in his voice was obvious, he practically raised these five, including Bandor, as he never discriminated between the two lineages, and now he came to know that there were at least three traitors hiding in his own faction, visiting his house, eating and conversating with him, he was furious.

    There is a reason as to why nobody seems to know or care about Armando, despite he being a Maximum Ster rank, the days in which he participated in the battlefield are too in the past, even Aurora doesn''t remember having seen him fight before.

    The representative of Snakele is prohibited from fighting, unless his homnd, family or close ones are in danger, not to mention Armando doesn''t like war, as he lost his wife due to that, but the old man decided to wield a sword again, not only because he was now in an alliance, but in the memory of his wife that died protecting this same penins from the invasion of pirates, the same ones with whom Horrorw is now working with.

    "I''m not your subordinate Armando, only Lord Horrorw can interrogate me, if you want to process me for treason or whatever, you have to follow the proper process!", shouted Bandor as he smacked his hand on the table.

    Armando simply red at Bandor, and the body of thetter was sent flying backwards, crashing against the wall breaking it on the process, the only reason as to why he didn''t end up a few kilometers into the sea is because the barrier stopped him, but the impact was the same.

    "Aghhh!", being smacked against a barrier that didn''t break, made Bandor vomit blood, as he slowly fell to the ground.

    "Distract him!", Remi was quick to act, he grabbed Josue and threw him towards Armando, while he became a sh that took the battered Tadeus.

    Remi took out a ck scroll out of his pocket and the thing lit up on mes as a portal appeared, it was an escape method which actually ignored the spatial restriction of the barrier that was set up in the meeting room.

    But just as Remi jumped into the portal, a ck Spear pierced it, the porta became unstable and ck lightning escaped from it, before a pained scream came from the portal.

    "Aghhrr!", a pair of burned figured were expulsed from the portal, Remi and Tadeus heavilynded on the ground with patches of their skins in horrible conditions.

    The portal crumbled apart and the ck spear returned to what seemed to be an empty space, that waved before Daimon and the others came out of it, the spear naturally belonged to Thea, whose darkness was of space orientation, that''s what allowed her to ignore spatial restrictions, manipte and interfere with portals, along other useful abilities.

    Josue which knew he was being sacrificed by Remi, didn''t even try to distract Armando, he was on his knees begging for forgiveness.

    "C-Chief, it was all Remi''s idea, I was forced to cooperate I swear, he has a monstrous guy backing him, he promised to grant us the power of the goddess since you were abandoned by her!", he shouted, the image of Armando casually destroying Bandor yed in his mind all over again.

    If Armando had decided to make war against Horrorw, what will he possibly do to him, that''s what he was thinking right now.

    Unfortunately for Josue, Armando ignored him and just walked towards Daimon, the remaining two members of the council were in a loss right now, everything happened too fast, so they were unable to react, that also made them look innocent but they still needed to pass Horals''s testter.

    For now, Daimon was rather happy of the results he got here, first of all, it was easy to tell there were at least two different sides involved here, Bandor was obviously on Horrorw''s side which made him undirectedly connected to the scheming guy.

    That could exin why Bandor wanted Tadeus to be handed over to Horrorw under the excuse of interrogation, since the moment he heard the name "ck Wave" from Armando, Daimon set up the bait and Bandor fell for it, Horrorw is working with the scheming guy and thetter wanted ck Wave to be under its wing.

    At this point it wasn''t a matter of whether ck Wave is useful or not, the scheming guy has been frustrated three times about taking ck Wave over, twice by Daimon and a third time by Olivia and Bell joining hands, so it wanted to capture the remaining branches out of spite.

    What Daimon didn''t expect was that he could capture some of Marcus''s subordinates with the same bait, that ck scroll had a familiar aura, it was an item from the store of a system, one which he didn''t have by the way, but it could be an exclusive thing of his system, Daimon has noticed that those two have many ways to nope the hell out of disadvantageous situations, just like how Adam escaped the encirclement of the pirates and Skelefiends back at the beast hunt.

    Also, he got to hear something quite interesting, if what Josue said was true then, Marcus was following an interesting pattern, which is the same as the first knight, in other words, he tricked some new idiots using the deity they adored as an excuse to make them follow him.

    ''Is it a coincidence or¡­'', while Daimon was lost in his thoughts, a green me portal appeared next to him, from which the ck armored bone general came out.

    The n was previously discussed, and his young master has given him permission to interrogate the prisoners, so as the diligent first general of Daimon''s conquest, he took out his treasured notebook and grabbed Remi and Bandor by their necks to drag them out of the room.

    Maybe Horals enjoys torturing his young master''s enemies, but he also pays attention to the reactions of his young master''s mistresses.

    ''The young misses don''t seem to enjoy interrogation, whatever, they only need the results, I''m here for the rest, thought the bone general as he happily left the room.

    Unfortunately, the room next to this one was also within the range of the barrier, so they weren''t isted from each other.

    "Aghhhhh!", the horrible lung-tearing screams could soon be hearding from the next room, which made Josue and the other two elders pale, imagining what sort of horror could make a high stage Ster rank scream like that.

    Daimon approached Josue and then said.

    "You are just a little fish in the big scheme, anything that you can tell us will be better exined by that Remi guy, so give me a reason to keep you alive".

    Josue nearly peed himself, judging by the calm voice of the other party he will really be killed if he doesn''t have anything to offer.

    "W-Wait, esteemed one, I-I have information that Remi doesn''t know, just today I discovered one of the gathering points of that organization called ck Wave I can guide you there!", Josue tried to calm down and answer but his voice was still filled with fear.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Very well, sign a contract and you are in", he said as he looked at Thea, this coward guy was rather cunning, he didn''t immediately inform Remi who seemed to be his superior in Marcus''s organization, so there must be more than what meets the eyes, but that could wait for when Horals''s finished his interrogation.

 Chapter 443 Three Steps Ahead (Part 2)

    ?

    By Daimon''s request, Thea approached Josue, her right pupil turned bright red, Daimon might not have the means to directly contract any natives from Neptune through the system, but Adam and Marcus might have one, considering this ce was originally destined to help them grow stronger.

    But apparently that wasn''t the case, at least not for Josue, Thea frowned as she noticed that contrary to her expectation, it''s not as if the other party had someone that could cancel contracts without the other extreme of it noticing it.

    The fact is that Armando didn''t tie these guys with a contract to begin with, and now he was paying the consequences, on the other hand these five were like his adoptive sons so he didn''t expect that a contract was necessary.

    Aurora was in a simr situation with Bell and Sylvie, the difference is that she put her trust in the right people, while Armando didn''t.

    Anyway, the only thing Thea found was a contract made through an emblem, a Devil Emblem to be more urate, since it was an emblem from the Bone Sea, it was a strange one too.

    For emblems to have the capacity to officiate contracts, they have to beplete and toplete one you must fulfill the respective requirements, otherwise an emblem is as good as a paperweight, that''s in part why people don''t really value them too much.

    No one knows what the conditions to get the second half might be, they can randomly appear and then disappear the next second, there is no pattern or way to predict whether it will happen or not, Vincent and Aurora were lucky to havepleted theirs when they were young.

    And they don''t know anyone else who has aplete emblem, but right now Thea was a bit confused, the contract she found was slightly simr to the one that tied the original alliance together, since the new additions were made with her ability, as an emblem has a limit of people it can put under a contract, and Vincent''s is already full.

    The difference between this contract and the which was made with Vincent''s emblem, is that the one at which she was looking at, was rather weak, it couldn''t bepared at all.

    Ultimately Thea shrugged and she just snapped her fingers, Josue''s face paled a bit as he spat a mouthful of blood, after coughing a couple of times the man looked normal again, Thea then put Josue under Daimon''smand, the man could have refused but he knew he will die if he showed any resistance so he obediently epted to be Daimon''s subordinate.

    "It''s done, the holder of the emblem is slightly stronger than me, but the emblem used is either trash or it waspleted recently and it is unstable, the contract was too shabby", said the Empress as she lost all interest in Josue and then casually sat on the chair where Remi was sitting earlier, to enjoy a few sips of the non-intoxicating drink made with the three-colored water.

    ''Young master I have a situation which requires your authorization, I have finished getting the information from one of these two guys, I''ll bring the other the other one back to the previous room, while the other recovers enough to move again''.

    ''Okay'', with Daimon''s greenlight, the bone general returned to the room, but before entering Horals looked at himself, there were blood stains all over his ck armor.

    "Mm, I can''t look like this in front of young mistresses, a knight is a reflect of its master after all", mumbled the bone general as it used its green battle aura to get rid of any stains on its armor, it''s not like battle aura has cleaning effects, but Horals''s affinity is metal, so he could manipte the ck armor.

    The idea wasn''t bad to look nice and clean to get a good impression on the Risha sisters and the others, but it would have been better if he did it before being in front of them, since the door of the room remained open.

    So not only they saw his blood-stained appearance, but they heard what he said, ignoring the gazes of the girls on him, the bone general gave his young master a knowing gaze, which made Daimon wonder whether he shouldugh or cry.

    ''For an artificial undead to develop such a strange personality, I guess you even influenced him in that aspect~'', naturally Evangeline wasughing as if her life depended on it, even Narasha who couldn''t properly handle emotions softly giggled.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head, he should have a conversation with the bone general regarding this subjectter, however now it wasn''t the time for that, the one who Horals brought back to the room was Remi.

    "Reporting to young master, the other guy was easy to interrogate, there is no contract preventing him from talking as Lady Thea mentioned, but this one¡­ after a bit of torture I perceived a simr but weaker sensation to when young master tried to subdue the creatures, so as previously ordered by young master I stopped immediately to report back", respectfully said Horals.

    Daimon nodded in response, as he thought.

    ''So, a curse instead of a contract, I guess it aligns better with Marcus''s system, but why this guy had it and the other one didn''t, is it because of the difference in their realms?'', he wondered.

    Apparently, the momentary silence made Remi believe Daimon and the others were afraid of rming Marcus, so he recovered some confidence remembering that Marcus said his status is of the highest grade at his ce of origin and that he is unbeatable in the young generation as well.

    "That''s right, my Lord not only is a true representative from the goddess, but he alsoes from the outside world, and has granted me his grace, so I''m protected, do yourselves a favor and let me go, then I might put up a good word for you".

    "¡­"

    Daimon looked at Remi as if he was looking at an idiot, he then turned to see Josue, before saying.

    "So, why is he under a curse, while you aren''t, power level shouldn''t be the only reason, right?".

    Josue hesitated for a second, as he felt Remi''s cold re on him, but ultimately, he was now under a contract so he had to answer anyway.

    "He gained the Lord''s favor, because he wanted the power that he offered, with the goal to reach the Maximum Ster rank, which hasn''t happened since many generations ago".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, how could he not understand the hidden meaning in Josue''s words, he also knew Marcus had¡­ particr tastes.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "I guess that idiot granted you more than his "grace", that exins the curse, the conditions should be either infidelity or a certain degree of wounds", said Daimon.

    The girls looked at the old man White Walker and then imagined Marcus, who ording to Daimon is on the same range of age as Adam, and they all had disgusted expressions on their pretty faces.

    They then gazed at Daimon making him bitterly smile, he didn''t exin the system as that would take too much time, he just told them that he was in a simr position to Adam and Marcus, and reserved the long exnation, Aisha and his other soulmates already knew the truth, because they were tied to him forever.

    As for the others, it wouldn''t do them any good to know about the existence of systems as of current, because who knows how many users are there, they might hunt and kill those who know about them, as the saying goes, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

    "Don''tpare me to those weirdos, I meant that I also received an emblem so I represent my gxy, and they are the same, they will also for sure assist the Global Raid", said Daimon.

    A cold light shed through Jasmine''s eyes when she heard that, Daimon has promised to take her into the Global Raid, so she can personally beat the crap out of Adam, Sarah also asked to participate.

    Leaving Marcus''s personal tastes aside, Thea was angry that she wasn''t able to detect the curse in Remi''s body, but Daimon didn''t me her, she has only unlocked three out of the nine eye abilities she has, and curses are harder to detect, the only reason as to why Rita was originally able to notice it was because of her abnormally sharp senses.

    In Horals''s case, the bone general could feel when Daimon''s well-being was threatened, which was the case with the second Nethereal they captured, and this time the curse had a simr aura to the one his young master gives off, so he noticed it as soon as the curse surfaced, even before it got to activate.

    "Miss Thea, if you do the honors, please", said Daimon to which the Empress nodded, she might not be able to detect curses yet, but she can erase them with the same ability she uses to nullify contracts.

    That being said the tie between Remi and Marcus was stronger, it was going to take her a few minutes at least.

    In the meantime, Daimon ordered Horals to go get Bandor back, since he had a nice n for him, it''s not easy to get a hold of Horrorw''s subordinates after all.

    Daimon naturally wouldn''t let go of such a good opportunity, and since these two didn''t care to be in conflict publicly, that meant that the scheming guy wasn''t willing to work with anyone, and Marcus was also not going to follow anyone''s instructions.

    The girls saw Daimon unconsciously smirking, and they knew someone was about to suffer.

    By the time Thea finished erasing the curse on Remi, Josue had already spilled the beanspletely.

    Turns out that Remi apparently found Marcus when he was travelling looking for a way to advance, Marcus was apanied by a ck robed figure which never left his side, no one really knew about who that guy is.

    But Josue can confirm one thing, it isn''t far from bing a Maximum Ster rank, anyway, after Marcus met Remi, he presented himself as the new representative of Snakele, sent to first punish the previous one for not fulfilling its duties, and second, to bring the whole Neptune to the arms of Snakele.

    The moment Armando had that he was furious, one of the principles of Snakele is freedom, those who decide to believe must to it out of their own will, so he couldn''t believe why these two were tricked so easily.

    Daimon on the other hand did know why he could get this far, for Marcus this was all probably part of his mission, but unlike Adam, the opportunities that were for him, were rted to these old geezers.

    As Daimon supposed, the one who ordered that the statue of Snakele had to be burned was none other than Marcus, and they did it with the help of Remi and Josue, the first was the right hand of Armando so he had enough authority to secretly make the poption of the town where the statue was ced.

    That''s right, the temple of Snakele was built in a mere town, and was essible to everyone regardless of status, power or anything else, so it is normal that many people visited it, at least until now.

    Remi made the citizens go away, Josue acted as the eyes of the operation, spying from the shadows, and then it was Marcus the one who personally burned down the statue, meaning that there was something important for him, as he had to do it personally.

    And that''s how they have been operating, after burning down the statue, Marcos seemed to have gotten new goals, mainly they were recruiting more and more dissidents, while Marcus gave them all tasks to take care off.

    "It''s done", Thea''s slightly tired voice woke Daimon from his daze, the curse was officially gone.

    "Bring that Bandor guy here, Horals", said Daimon.

    Horals nodded and the rushed out of the room before returning with a Bandor, that has lost any sings of greed or anything else, right now he was praying that somehow the old Armando take pity on him and save him from the ck armored guy.

    He suffered an amount of pain he didn''t think it was possible, and the armored guy said he was being rather soft, because he had some questions to make.

    Of course, Bandor didn''t what was Horrorw''s n, he was a mere representative that acted as a spy.

 Chapter 444 Three Steps Ahead (Part 3)

    ?

    But that is normal since Horrorw is working with the scheming guy, so that kind of information won''t be leaked to anyone but Horrorw''s most trusted subordinates.

    Discovering who they are would normally require its own investigation, and this is where Bandor came in handy.

    "Among Horrorw''s subordinates, who has the highest chance to know something about his ns?", asked Daimon to the Skelefiend.

    Bandor knew he had no chance to resist so he had to answer, but that didn''t change the fact that he was horrified at what will happen if Horrorw gets to know about his treason.

    "His right hand isn''t present at the moment, that guy is always wears a mask and he is Horrow''s vizier, no one knows anything about him that is for sure, we just know that he is on a mission at the Maelstrom Sea right now¡­".

    Feeling Daimon''s cold re on him, Bandor who was talking slowly, immediately added.

    "B-But my superior should know a thing or two about the big scheme, because he was the one that told me that if I found anyone rted to ck Wave I must bring it to him, his name is Takir and he is a high stage Ster rank from a secondary branch of Horrorw''s family".

    Daimon turned to see Armando and saw the old man nodding at him.

    "I have seen that brat Takir a couple of times before, he and Remi are the only high stage Sters in the Skalia contient, or at least that used to be the case", said the old man, referring to the ck robed person that supposedly always followed Marcus.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see Remi who right now had an expression of loss, he has already realized he is done, and if Daimon''s supposition is right, Marcus didn''t mention his existence, just like Adam didn''t mention him to Jasmine, despite all the bragging the light idiot did.

    In part it''s obvious that they didn''t mention him, because he won in that first exchange against the two of them at the same time, which was a stain on their previously matchless record.

    But that was only one of the reasons of why his existence was taken lightly by those two, the other one was that as system users they didn''t put anyone but other system users in their eyes.

    So, in their minds, with the benefits of their systems they will easily surpass Daimon, because that''s how it has been for them all the time, the only ones to whom they were wary, were each other.

    Of course, things might have been different if they could tell, Daimon was also a system user, but that wasn''t the case.

    ''This is a good example of what happens to those who becent and fully depend on their systems'', for a change, Evangeline said something rather wise.

    ''Of course, even of you left everything to the system, with my help nothing will go wrong~'', but then she returned to her usual yful self.

    Daimon chuckled, he has already experienced it, the consequences of losing, so he will never allow himself to becent.

    "And you, why did you want to execute that old assassin the moment you heard he came here looking for ck Wave?", asked Daimon.

    At first Remi didn''t want to answer, but then Daimon''s next words made him despair.

    "Leaving aside the fact that you are now under a ve contract, let me tell you a little secret of that "Lord" of yours, I kicked his ass in a 2v1 battle not too long ago, that''s why he didn''t mention my existence, I bet he only spoke about Adam, am I right?".

    Remi''s body trembled, he wouldn''t have believed Daimon if he hadn''t mentioned Adam''s name, because Marcus indeed mentioned Adam quite a bit, of course after bing Marcus''s "special" subordinate, he got to know that he came from the outside world, but that didn''t discourage him, the first knight was said toe from the outside world as well, after all.

    Ultimately the pain caused by resisting to answer Daimon to whom he is subordinated now, and the confusion of why Marcus didn''t mention such a dangerous guy to him, made Remi spill the beans.

    "He¡­ isn''t here, he and the divine envoy left on a mission, and I was tasked to eliminate ck Wave, that''s why I ordered Josue to look for them, but so far there weren''t any discoveries".

    "Then why did you want to kill the old assassin on the spot, if you needed more information about ck Wave, your words don''t make sense", said Jasmine, her usually calm and gentle voice had a tinge of anger behind it, probably because Adam was involved with Marcus too.

    Daimon didn''t interrupt her, though he had an idea of why Remi didn''t bother to try and keep Tadeus Alive, he already told all of them that Adam and Marcus were dangerous, but he couldn''t logically exin them about the impossibilities that a system user could aplish, it was better for them to hear it from others.

    And as expected, Remi''s next words made all the ones in the room, besides Daimon, Aisha and surprisingly the Risha sisters, be speechless for a moment.

    "That''s because, Marcus handed me a magic treasure that allows me to look into the memories of recently dead people, so no interrogation was needed, this way I could also keep up the act in front of Armando", said Remi.

    The Risha sisters didn''t let that surprise them, they have seen Daimon doing crazier things, and they each received a bracelet of the god of mischief from him, so since the moment Daimon openly told them that Adam and Marcus were dangerous, they supposed those two could pull out simr unheard-of items like Daimon, as they weren''t strong enough to defeat Daimon, so the source of danger shouldn''t be in their battle prowess.

    "Why does he want to eliminate ck Wave, is it rted to why he burned that statue?", asked Daimon.

    Remi shook his head with a defeated expression on his face.

    "I don''t know, I only followed his orders, but I once heard him talking alone, as if he was talking to himself "I better get something good as reward after killing those guys", it''s what he said, that happened the day after I was tasked with eliminating ck Wave, as for the statue, I don''t know, back then I hadn''t¡­ raised in rank within the organization, there are another high stage Sters on his side, but we don''t know who they are".

    Daimon already expected that both Marcus and Adam had backers waiting for them here, since Neptune was meant to strengthen them, he also confirmed that eliminating ck Wave was part of Marcus''s mission and that was a good thing.

    Because if he prevents him from doing so, he will be interfering with Marcus''s mission, which should count as stealing an opportunity from him, and with Remi under his control, he can create a situation in which Marcus doesn''t have the time to worry about ck Wave.

    Like making his force sh with Horrorw''s for example, and he has the pawns needed to make it happen.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Remi and Bandor suddenly felt a chill running down their spines, though the silver haired youth was wearing a mask that covered the upper half of his face, they felt as if a fierce magic beast was eyeing them, it was a long-lost sensation for them who have been in the Ster ranks for quite some time, the crushing fear of being at theplete mercy of others.

    "Senior aurora can you fix that guy, we are going to need himter", said Daimon as he pointed at Tadeus, who at this point was silently waiting for his death in a corner, he was beaten up by Bell earlier, because he needed to look miserable for Armando''s exnation, as to why Bell did it, she asked to for it.

    Aurora nodded, she snapped her fingers and white light surrounded Tadeus, healing his wounds, though his expression was still ash dead, but that didn''t matter.

    "You, take us to the gathering point of ck Wave, senior Aurora please stay behind to guard the fort, miss Thea, old Armando, Bell and Olivia, you foure with me, bring Tadeus and these two as well", said Daimon.

    The mentioned nodded, Aisha and the others didn''tin because even if they tagged along, they couldn''t participate anyway, but that didn''t bother them, because they will have their time to shine at the Global Raid, everyone had things they could and couldn''t do and these noble young misses and little princesses already understood that.

    All the ones that wereing were either allies or ves, so there was no need to restrain anyone, surprisingly Armando was prominent in moving through space, like Vincent, so after Josue told them the exact location of ck Wave''s gathering point, he created the respective portal to that ce.

    ¡­

    For this branch of ck Wave to have sessfully avoided Horrow''s eyes until now, they naturally didn''t operate in his territory, also ording to Bell the leader of this branch had a rtively pale skin, so it was expected for him to be a White Walker.

    What Armando didn''t expect was that a den of assassins was hiding in one of the most peaceful cities of the Skalia continent, one he knew very well, since this was the native city of his deceased wife, that being said Armando never returned to this city, because all of his wife''s family died during the war, Shirel is the only surviving rtive of his wife.

    Leaving Armando who was furious right now, Daimon observed the city, Armando''s mes were surprisingly useful for illusions, he called his element "Spectral Fire" but it wasn''t hot, in fact it wasn''t even rted to fire, it''s just that it looked like it, ording to the old man, it was a mix of mist and illusion affinities.

    Daimon was curious regarding this affinity, because Yvonne''s darkness was also mixed with illusion affinity, so it is possible that they get some advanced illusion spells from the Spokel family, but that could wait forter.

    Right now, while being hid by Armando''s illusion they advanced towards the east side of the city, to a pretty much average looking store, which made Daimon chuckle, apparently ck Wave followed the same pattern her as in the Mermen Sea.

    "I can sense an underground structure below that store, which is normal as all the stores have a warehouse, but I can''t sense if there are people inside of that ce", said Armando.

    Usually that wouldn''t be suspicious at all, stores naturally pay to have isted warehouses, so that they don''t get robed, that''s how ck Wave has been able to operate without any problem, they hide at in sight.

    On the other hand, Armando has the capacity to travel through space and a domain, so his mana sense isn''t as sharp as it should be, but Thea''s is, the Empress''s eyes glowed and then she said.

    "There are six people inside, two early stage Sters and three peak Mortal realms, one of the first two is wounded".

    "The wounded guy is the leader of this branch of ck Wave, the Mortal realms are the vice leaders, as for the other Ster ranked, it should be Romel''s subordinate, the guy who was going to act as Tadeus contact, regarding Bells''s assassination", said Olivia.

    In other words, the leader of this branch of ck Wave was recently found by that subordinate, but apparently no one has been informed, or Horrow should havee here personally to capture ck Wave.

    ''Well, I guess even under the g of the scheming guy, there must be different factions, since that guy is subordinated to the leader of ck Wave in the Maelstrom Sea, then he of course isn''t going to inform Horrorw if they want the merit for themselves'', thought Daimon.

    Though both Skelefiends and pirates are working with the scheming guy, that doesn''t make them allies, it''s just a matter of convenience, considering the fact that the scheming guy is rewarding them for their contributions, none of them is willing to share.

    And that acted in Daimon''s favor and also in Bell''s favor, because Rita who was carefully inspecting her young master''s surroundings all the time, informed.

    ''Young master, that guy down there is one of those creatures''.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow.

    ''Is he simr to Bell, or simr to the ones we have fought before?'', he asked.

    ''Mm, it feels like the two we have fought before but at the same time it also feels like that purple haired woman''.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, he already knew that other races could turn into Nethereals, so that guy probably just went through his change, also it''s normal that weaker people get changed faster, since they are overwriting their previous race, so the leader of ck Wave at the Maelstrom Sea is still at the ck mist stage, as Daimon decided to call it.

    "Old Armando, make sure to put a strong illusion barrier here, we have something we must capture, miss Thea I leave the battle to you, Bell you and Olivia will be in charge of suppressing the guys from ck Wave".

    "Tadeus go down there and ask to see your contact, you know what will happen if you try to do something funny right", said Daimon at the old assassin, whose body shivered remembering the torture of the ck armored guy, not to mention Bell using him as a sandbag.

    "Y-yes", surprisingly this was also the city that Tadeus''s contact chose to meet him, probably, he already suspected that one of the gathering points of ck Wave was here.

    But the fact that the leader of this branch was here, was a total coincidence, the newly transformed Nethereal probably wanted Tadeus to help him fight and capture the leader of this branch, since they are both early-stage Ster ranks.

    Tadeus was sent to the entrance of the city, before he was expulsed from Armando''s illusion, he then took out a disposable mirror te and sent a message, after which the thing broke.

    From above, Thea said that the Nethereal just looked into his pocket and then stood up to leave, the door of the store opened and a tall guy wearing a helmet came out, he casually flew towards the entrance of the city and greeted Tadeus before he returned to the store.

    Naturally Daimon and the others had already infiltrated into the store before they returned, and they just followed them from behind.

 Chapter 445 Three Steps Ahead (Part 4)

    ?

    Inside of the store, Daimon and the others followed Tadeus and the recently created Nethereal through the many secure points, which were disabled by the Nethereal previously.

    The question here was whether this guy had already informed that Romel guy or not, because Daimon''s n might have to change depending on that.

    But at the very least he could confirm, Horrorw wasn''t informed of what was happening here, so there was space to maneuver.

    ''Make him talk when I give you the signal, you know the pre-made story, and don''t try to y any tricks, you''ll be dead before anyone could react so don''t forget about it'', said Daimon to Tadeus.

    The old assassin didn''t dare to show any signs of difort, he knew that Daimon will not hesitate to kill him, maybe Ster ranks are a power to be wary of, but the silver haired youth had three Maximum ranked at his side, so a little early stage like him could be reced without any problem.

    This branch of ck Wave was quite simr to the one at the Mermen Sea, in the sense that they also operated under the disguise of average looking stores, but they didn''t build an underground y zone like Pablo, and instead it was more of a gathering room, simr to the mission hall that was reserved for second year students back at the academy.

    At least that was the bestparative Daimon could think of right now, they arrived at the center of the room, where the leader of this branch of ck Wave as well as his vice-leaders stayed to wait for the return of the Nethereal.

    Daimon thought they will at least try to escape or something, but after seeing the state in which the leader was, he understood why, the guy was infected by that ck mist, that the Nethereals could use, and judging by his emaciated appearance, the bags under his eyes and his previously pale skin which now had a yellow feverish tone, the guy''s organs had suffered a lot.

    But nothing that the better healing light user of Neptune couldn''t cure, the problem is that as an assassin, the leader of the branch couldn''t go and ask for an audience with Aurora on a whim, not to mention he isn''t 100% human but a mix of White Walker.

    He would have had to pay a certain fee just for the chance to enter the territory of the Light Pce, then he would have been investigated and only if he was deemed eptable, Aurora would have met him, it was a long process, and time was the thing hecked right now.

    ''Well on the surface that is a good reason to kidnap Jasmine, the Light Pce is the ce where the best light element mages gather, they can cure the wounds made by Nethereals, so of course they are a main target'', thought Daimon.

    That sameck of a skilled enough light mage, is what was forcing the leader of this branch, to either submit and join the pirates, or die a horrible death.

    "So, have you thought about my offer, leader Malkim, if you be one of us, not only your life will be saved, but the affliction that is making you restless will be a blessing for you, I was a peak Half Ster a few days ago but look at me right now, I''m a full-fledged Ster ranked", said the man who was covering its face with a mask.

    Malkim, in other words the leader of this branch of ck Wave, was in a predicament, after Romel tried to forcefully recruit him, he naturally resisted, but now his life was at peril, and he didn''t have the time to take things slow, not to mention that the enemy now had another Srer rank to move so the answer was obvious for him.

    Malkim didn''t climb all the way to be the leader of branch, while being reckless, caution was one of his virtues, unfortunately he was against the wall in this situation, but he didn''t forget to ask.

    "I ept to join you, if you can guarantee mine and my subordinates''s lives, of course that includes curing me, also I want to know who will I be working for".

    Ultimately Malkim is a mercenary it''s not like he was loyal to anyone to begin with, certainly that ck mist gave him an ominous feeling, but it''s not like he was innocent anyway.

    Apparently, he asked for something he shouldn''t have, because the atmosphere suddenly tensed up, and the pressure of a Ster rank descended into the room, normally Malkim would have been able to endure it, but in his current state the pressure made him and his subordinates fall from their chairs to the ground.

    The man then stood up and walked towards Malkim and the others, before he crouched down in front of them.

    "You have no qualifications to demand for anything, the only thing you need to know is that you will live and that you will be subordinated directly to me, am I clear?".

    Malkim gritted his teeth, he swallowed his pride and limited to nod, he was in shock because not too long ago the masked man in front of him, was a half Ster rank, he advanced maybe a couple of days ago, but this pressure was on par with him prime, which before being wounded, should have been at the middle of the early stage.

    In other words, the masked man was too strong for a recently ascended Ster, which in a sense made Malkim not regret his decision that much.

    "Is that how it will be for me too, Roger?", Tadeus voice interrupted the moment, the masked man turned to see the old assassin who had a doubting expression on his face, before saying.

    "No, unlike this idiot you didn''t refuse to join, but looked to, also he is weakened so I can convert him, but you aren''t, so your conversion will be left for Lord Garrius once we return to the Maelstrom Sea¡­ I can''t tell you much, but that Lord is the one who converted sir Romel, so you will be on par with me at least, if you brought that woman''s head, then you''ll probably be ascended to a simr position as sir Romel, who has made a great contribution".

    The masked man whose name was Roger, took the time to exin, not because Tadeus had some sort of friendship with him, but because he was specifically told to bring Tadeus with him back to the Maelstrom Sea, even if he had to force him to.

    As to why the Lord who gave him and Romel this new power, wanted a member of ck Wave from the Elemental Sea, they didn''t know and they didn''t dare to ask.

    Listening to Daimon''s voice in his head, Tadeus continued with the conversation.

    "What kind of contribution is needed, you know my situation, so if I can do it previously, my conversion was it¡­ would be smoother, maybe that Lord you mention will even reward you for aiding me", he said.

    The masked man thought about it for a second, then he looked at the room and after making sure they were the only ones here, he answered.

    "There are certain races and some specific people that are a nuisance for the superior of Lord Garrius and the others that stand at the same level, the best way to get promoted is killing, capturing of proportioning information regarding them, depending on the situation".

    "Sir Romel informed Lord Garrius about where to find one of those many targets, you might have heard of them, the Angel Fish n which is only conformed by women, they are in the list of extermination, and Sir Romel was lucky enough to find a hint regarding their hideout, so the mission of extermination was assigned to him".

    "We don''t know how strong is their leader, as she was able to escape the encirclement of Sting and ckbeard, that''s in part why we are taking in new recruits so easily, don''t let the opportunity go, becauseter even if you want to join, there will be more regtions and you aren''t young so¡­", Roger didn''t finish his sentence, but Tadeus could understand what he meant.

    Instead of investing in an old man that was reaching the end of his life, arge-scale organization will choose those with high potential, the only reason as to why he was chosen so easily, is because they needed strength over talent for the time being, and because he was a member of ck Wave that came by his own will.

    Tadeus didn''t ask for anything else, so, Roger continued with the process which he called "conversion", for starters he grabbed one of the four vice-leaders by his neck, he cut his own palm and then ced it on the mouth of the vice-leader.

    "Unfortunately, since I recently ascended my Nether isn''t strong enough to convert others, unlike Lord Garrius and the one who converted Lord Sting just by standing near to him, so we''ll have to do it the old way, it might take longer to fully act but whatever, drink up or die", coldly said Roger.

    The vice-leader had an expression of disgust, which is understandable, the blood that seeped out of Roger''s hand wasn''t red and fluid, but dark and dense, there are races with blood colors that differ, in Neptune, for example the members of the strongest ns of the Mermen Sea are said to have red blood with a tinge of blue, and something simr applies to the Elemental Sea, supposedly it has to be with the fact that their affinities are stronger than normal.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    As the vice-leader was forced to drink Roger''s blood, the nearby space waved and before anyone could do anything, a horrible pressure fell from above.

    Having heard maybe not everything he wanted, but some really nice new information regarding how the Nethereals worked and the goals of this small faction in particr, the operation started.

    The ones who appeared were a member of the White Walker and a Skelefiend, a high stage Ster and a middle stage one respectively, Remi and Bandor to be more urate.

    "So, this is where you rats have been hiding all the time, the verdict is immediate execution!", shouted Remi.

    Roger red at Bandor, who knew he was working with the pirates, that are allied to Horrorw and then said.

    "Whate are you doing, why the hell didn''t you warn me of this clowning, call Horrorw or someone to deal with him, if the operation fails it will be on you".

    Bandor heard Roger and he inwardly sighed, the operation had failed long ago, this whole situation was created by the silver haired youth, and everyone in this room was a puppet dancing in his hand.

    Unfortunately, he couldn''t say anything unless he wanted to die and that wasn''t the case, so he followed his role and attacked Remi by "surprise".

    Dark blue battle aura gathered on Bandor''s hand as he punched at Remi, taking him by surprise andnding a punch on the chest of the White Walker.

    "Boooom!", the strength behind the punch blew up the roof of the storage room, revealing the sky above them.

    "Hurry up take these guys with you, I''ll stall Remi while reinforcese!", shouted Bandor.

    Roger didn''t need to hear that twice, he snapped his fingers and Malkim and the others, Tadeus included, were trapped into a ck mist sphere, he then flew into the sky with the spheres following them.

    "Shit, out of all the damn possible moments, they had to appear now, and that Remi bastard, who the hell is he working for, if he isn''t loyal to that old man", angered at the fact that his mission might have beenpromised, Roger was furious, he didn''t have the time to try and hide himself, since every second counted right now.

    So, he could feel the gazes of the people and heard their whispers, what surprised him is that everyone repeated the same sentence, "Invaders, kill them!", which made Roger frown, his disguise made him look like a mixed White Walker, simr to Malkim, his train of thoughts stopped in cold when an even stronger pressure hit him like a hammer, smacking him against the ground.

    "Since when do the pirates dare to be so rampant in a city that is under this old man''s jurisdiction", Armando who descended from the sky, suppressed the group that was trying to escape, but then another change in the situation happened.

    Remi whose figure was a bit haggard suddenly appeared next to the group that was forced toy down on the ground, took out a ck scroll which burned out and they were all sucked in by a portal that appeared next to them.

    The people naturally started talking and whispering between them, because how could they not recognize Remi, as he is one of the biggest public figures, a member of the council and a High stage Ster rank.

    Bandor who looked miserable right now, flew towards Armando and then said.

    "Chief, Remi is a traitor, he helped those guys escape from me, I was about to contact you and Lord Horrorw but he outpowered me".

    Armando gave Bandor a suspicious gaze, but he didn''t say anything, before a portal appeared to take them out of this ce.

    ¡­

    The moment Armando left, it was as if a thin invisibleyer disappeared from the eyes of all the people present, these citizens didn''t know that they watched a realistic illusion, created by thebination of Armando''s spell and the screeny created by Daimon.

    And so, the rumors started to spread, this particr city suffered a lot by the invasion of the pirates when they were at war, and the fact that Horrorw was allied with them was a top-level secret, because both members of the White Walker and Skelefiend lineages lost friends and family due to them.

    No one knows who started it, but the rumor that Horrorw was working with pirates spread like wildfire, and at the same time, the rumor that the heretics that burned out Snakele''s statue was trying to invade the Skalia continent also be well spread.

    The only one who benefitted by the sudden public opinion surge, was the old pacifist Armando, who called both of the other groups criminals, and invited the citizens toe to the territories under his jurisdiction, promising to keep them safe.

    As for the group of "pirates" that were sucked in by a ck portal, that was something created by Thea, because Remi had already used his escape scroll, that group as well as Bandor and of course Armando all appeared inside an isted room back at one of the border regions of the Skalia continent.

    Needless to say, but Roger had an expression of disbelief when he saw the three that were aiming at each other''s throats a second ago, suddenly calm down and stand next to each other, imagine his expression when he also saw Tadeus joining them.

    "Well, that should be enough to put both the scheming guy and Marcus against each other, while the public joins old Armando, that was within the scope, but I didn''t expect to find such a nice test subject, he doesn''t have a ck sphere in his body, so he is perfect to see if Sarah can be cured with my mes", a calm voice that came from behind of him, made Roger feel a shiver running down his spine.

    He turned around just to see a silver haired youth with a smirk on his face, next to him there was purple haired woman who he of course could recognize.

    Unfortunately, he didn''t even have time to scream before everything went dark, right now Roger didn''t know it, but staying unconscious was better than what was about toe, since a ck armored tall figure happily approached him with a notebook in his hand.

    Daimon didn''t stop the bone general, he asked Thea to go with him, this time she said she wanted to inspect the curse triggering, so that she can know how to detect them, right now Daimon was thinking how to trigger the mission he wascking.

    Thest time he got his mission because he altered the route of Adam within the dimensional tunnel, which probably made himnd at the Elemental Sea, while he appeared at the vicinity of the Mermen Sea, which "stole" him from the opportunity to meet Mellie.

    ''If that''s the case then¡­'', Daimon turned to see the leader and vice-leaders from ck Wave who were frozen at the sudden change in the situation, the one wo was forced to drink Roger''s blood was retorting on the ground, so Horals also took him to the next room, for "observation", Bell went with them too, because she had many questions to make.

    Armando looked at the silver haired youth who even at this moment was thinking his next step, and he was a bit in a loss.

    ''He unveiled the truth of Horrorw''s alliance, put him against the other guys and also pushed the public to my side at the same time, in less than a day he is already three steps ahead of the enemy¡­ maybe Shirel being captured by him was a blessing in disguise, there is also that ck armored guy who is his subordinate, it seems like the goddess hasn''t abandoned us after all'', he thought.

 Chapter 446 The Other Half Of The Mission

    ?

    While Horals and Bell directed the interrogation at the next room, Daimon focused his attention on Malkim, the leader of this branch of ck Wave, who right now had an ash dead expression.

    Hisst chance to survive was taken away from him, and he could recognize Armando as one of the only two Maximum Ster ranked of the Bone Sea, so his death was practically guaranteed at this point.

    At least until Daimon''s voice made him notice, that there was another well-known person in this room.

    "Senior Aurora, can you cure this guy?", asked Daimon.

    Malking heard the name "Aurora" and his eyes glowed with the desire of survival, as he turned to see the elegant olddy that was calmly standing at the other side of the room.

    Aurora''s eyes glowed in a white light, she frowned for a second but ultimately, she nodded before saying.

    "His body is in a horrible state, for a wound that has just a couple of days, but I can heal it, a few hundreds of years of lifespan have been devoured by that ck mist though".

    Daimon smirked as he talked to Malkim.

    "You heard it, we can cure you but you''ll have to sign a contract to be my subordinate, the other option is naturally death".

    Malkim felt bitter right now, he didn''t understand why suddenly all these dangerous groups wanted to capture ck Wave, but he saw Olivia who didn''t seem to have been mistreated and he realized it was better to serve this group, than the one to whom Roger belonged.

    "I ept", he limited to say.

    Daimon nodded and then he sent a message to Thea, who previously had confirmed Malkim was clean of any important contracts, the Empress didn''t have to be in the same room for her ability to activate and so, Malkim was subordinated to Daimon.

    The leader could have resisted if he wanted to but the result would have been death, so he didn''t dare to do so, the moment the contract was stablished the sweet sound of a notification rang in Daimon''s ears.

    [Ding]

    [A new mission has been added to the Mission Temple due to a specific action <!>]

    Daimon felt the urge tough, his supposition was right, making this branch of ck Wave submit was part of Marcus''s mission for some reason, so now that he "stole" them from him, a mission was triggered, simr to what happened when he got into Adam''s way to meet Mellie.

    [Stealing from the devil (Skalia continent): the Devil Ruler Marcus was tasked to eliminate the most prominent group from the underworld of the Skalia continent and take their ce, but was blocked by the host at a critical point of the event (the mission has been adjusted to match the preferences of the host)].

    [Objectives:

    [Weaken the beliefs of the White Walker race ¨¤ Discover the truth about the sword of Snakele (1/1)]

    [Assassinate the current representative of the White Walker race ¨¤ Obtain the gratitude of the current representative of the White Walker race (1/1)]

    [Kill the leader of ck Wave ¨¤ Make the leader of ck Wave submit (1/1)]

    [Spread your influence over at least half of the territory of the Skalia continent (70/100) (territories owned by official allies count as territories conquered by the host)]

    [Kill the hidden gem to prevent them from getting on your way ¨¤ Get the hidden gem to join your side (0/2)]

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Devil Ruler (0/1)]

    Daimon read the objectives of the mission and he chuckled, originally it was basically the contrary to what he had to do after stealing an opportunity from Adam, which made sense as those two were the opposite of the other.

    While Adam had to get others to join his side, Marcus had to kill others to prevent them from getting in his way, that being said there was also a legacy left behind for him.

    ''Another two hidden gems¡­ I haven''t evenpleted that requirement from the other mission'', thought Daimon.

    One of the "hidden gem" requirement was met when he gained the trust of Mellie and Ae, the notification was triggered when he received the ne that the mother of the queen left for her, which he now wore in his neck, that made think Daimon that maybe the word gem meant those requirements will be met after receiving a material possession that held a strong meaning to the ones involved in the missions, but now he wasn''t so sure about it.

    Considering Jasmine was Adam''s next target, after entering into both Abaris and Aurora''s treasuries, he didn''t get any notification, for a moment he thought the Flying Citadel might have been it, but even after putting into his inventory there was no notification, and it''s not like the ne the queen gave him was his, she just lent it to him as a sign of their original contract, which currently wasn''t needed as Mellie was no longer just a girl he had to act as a bodyguard for, but his friend.

    The same applied to Jasmine, so he was missing something here, but at least he now knew that Marcus hasn''t gotten the main thing that was legated to him, and now he won''t, since Daimon had stole that chance, if what he theorized was right, then there were more than one gift prepared for those two, and his system stole the best one, but the others were avable for them, that way their systems won''t notice the disappearance of the reward that, the opportunity stolen would have given, since not even administrators know what the rewards will be, ording to Evangeline.

    "I don''t know where the hell did Adam ended up, but Marcus went to the Maelstrom Sea, while his job in the Skalia continent isn''t over, so there must be something there that is quite important to him", mumbled Daimon, he was going to travel to the Maelstrom Sea anyway, so he might as well take a look into what Marcus is looking for, there.

    There is also another urgent matter to discuss, which was rted to Marlene, the girl from the Angel Fish n raised an eyebrow, Daimon doesn''t really pay her any attention normally, besides the usual greeting or the times when he also ys board games with the girls, so being suddenly stared at by him made her wonder if the sun raised from the west today or something like that.

    "The Nethereal faction led by the leader of ck Wave in the Bone Sea is¡­ targeting your n".

    As expected, Marlene was temporarily at a loss after Daimon dropped a bomb on her so suddenly, Marlene might be pretty free spirited personally, to the point that she can be a bit of an airhead sometimes like when she tried to unconsciously steal some luck out of Daimon and was hit with the consequence of failing to do so which nearly made her choke, but she knows when to take things seriously.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    And she as thest member of the royal family of her n, has the duty to protect his fellow nmates, especially since they would be enved on the spot if discovered by anyone that recognized them, over that superstition.

    Getting a glimpse of the rare-to-see worried expression on Marlene''s face, Daimon said.

    "We''ll be going to the Maelstrom Sea next, so we can pick them on the way, just tell senior Aurora the coordinates of the ce where they are hiding¡­ I would suggest that you don''t contact them, because their location was leaked by the leader of that branch of ck Wave, so they might be being surveilled", added Daimon.

    Marlene''s eyes glowed as she nodded, she as going to ask Daimon for her nsmen to join, but then she realized that they will be practically baggage, since besides her whose talent was incredibly high as she was part of the royal lineage of the Angel Fish n, the others were mostly Lord ranked mages, with a couple early-stage Arch ranks, they had nothing to contribute to the alliance.

    And she hasn''t recovered either, so even that can be used as a token of negotiation, she even lost all the treasures and resources as her ring was lost, when she used herst resort to escape from Sting and ckbeard, Daimon had already helped her once, due to her friendship with Thea, sure he was technically one of Thea''s general, but it''s not like the Empress could order Daimon to do something, in fact she would refuse to do something like that, as she treats her generals as her family, otherwise she wouldn''t respect Karmandi and Lina enough to even allow them to scold her, considering she is way stronger than them.

    "Thanks¡­", she limited to mumble a few words, and then smiled at Daimon before she left to the next room, because she had some things to discuss with Thea.

    Or at least she tried to do so, but before she could, Thea as well as the Bone General who was smiling as he leafed through his treasured notebook, returned to the room, this time Horals properly cleaned and made himself look decent in front of his young master''s mistresses, being sure that they didn''t get to see his blood-stained appearance.

    Thea also seemed to be in a good mood, so she probably got the results she expected, Bell was the same, she had a few papers on which there were some draws, that caught Daimon''s interest.

    "That guy isn''t like the previous creatures, maybe because he doesn''t have that ck sphere, but he does feel pain, pretty easily I must add, even if you don''t use light element spells, also he was under a curse yes, but while it was as aggressive as the ones we have seen, it was way weaker, so the next time I should be able to see it!", said the Empress with a slightly enthusiastic voice.

    The fact that her innate ability which resided in her eyes couldn''t discern the loyalty curse on the Nethereals, gave Thea''s pride a blow, but she couldn''t be med, curses are already an umon thing, not only in Neptune but even at the four gxies, Daimon has only heard that the Arashiel noble n from the ck Marsh gxy, is prominent in that.

    Having "informed" her discoveries to Daimon she walked towards Marlene who clearly had something to say, judging by the expression her face.

    While those two went to a corner of the room to have a small private talk, it was Horals''s turn to read the newly added lines to the notebook, which he used to record the triumphs of his young master over a variety of enemies.

    For Horals the fact that his young master''s defeated enemies, were forced to spill the beans was a delight, besides death, the best consequence for anyone that dared to get into his young master''s conquest is humiliation, and obediently answering to the questions of an enemy is a huge humiliation, so those words were worth being recorded for the future history books of his young master''s conquered gxies.

    "Reporting to the young master, that guy is called Roger Hendric, a native of the Maelstrom Sea, from one of the many nomadic tribes, that are result of the mixing races from the other three seas, due to the outcasts, criminals and people who seek refuge in the mysterious waters of the Maelstrom Sea, he was a pirate from ckbeard''s crew before entering ck Wave, and apparently that ckbeard guy has been always colluding with these creatures".

    "That''s what he supposed, because he got to once see a masked guy that radiated a simr but stronger sensation to the one Roger gives off right now, casually ordering ckbeard who is know to be tyrannic, around like an errand boy".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask.

    ''The scheming guy, of course the best ce to raise a secret force would be the Maelstrom Sea, where no one dares to look too much into'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "That masked guy, has that guy seen him recently?".

    Unfortunately, Horals shook his head, before answering with a disappointed voice.

    "No, that was a few years ago, since then no one has seen anyone wearing that same mask, but there are others who give off a simr sensation, which I believe is caused by that ck mist young master mentioned, and one of them is in the Maelstrom Sea, acting as the pirate called Sting''s adviser".

    Daimon nodded, the pirates he met during the beast hunt, who surrendered, already mentioned that there was someone that was always seen with Sting, his right hand, which always wore a mask.

    Horals bowed and then returned to his rightful ce, which is standing behind his young master.

    Thest one that had something to say was Bell, who had a couple of papers with some familiar draws on them.

    "You were right, there are many types of Nethereals, that guy didn''t resemble the crown faced I know about, nor the multi-eyed or therge mouth ones you mentioned, this one grew feathers on its neck, and a beak on its chest", said Bell as she showed Daimon a portrait she drew of Roger''s real appearance.

    "I also got the description of another type of Nethereal which he has seen, the guy called Garrius to whom he referred as Lord is this one", added Bell, as she pointed at the second portrait that looked like a man with a forty centimeters neck and an arm longer than the other one.

    "As always the appearances of the Nethereals are rather bizarre, unfortunately this Roger guy doesn''t know about the crown faced Nethereal¡­", mumbled Bell, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "If that he is alive, he''ll have toe out sooner orter, the same applies to that Byron guy, we''ll take care of them at the respective time, for now let''s see what will the effect of my mes will be on a recently changed Nethereal whocks that ck sphere, it should be slightly simr to Sarah''s case for the time being", he said.

    "Mm", Bell cheered up a bit, she went to her daughter''s side while Daimon contemted what the next steps will be.

    Originally, they were going to pay a visit to the best informant of the Maelstrom Sea, since he needed to make sure if the underwater space where Arianna and the others were trapped, was in the Maelstrom Sea or not.

    He also wanted to know where did Calvin''s group and Scarlet''s group ended, because he has visited three seas, and the intelligence departments of the Ae, Aurora and the recently joined Armando, haven''t found anything regarding people with their characteristics, or even fighting styles.

    But now they needed to make a little stop to pick Marlene''s nsmen, and there was also a need to investigate what was Marcus looking for, as well to capture the leader of that branch of ck Wave who was in the ck mist stage still, meaning he was the best test subject to find out how to safely cure Bell.

    ''Luckily there is a scapegoat already waiting to take the me for that Romel guy''s future disappearance'', thought Daimon as he smirked.

 Chapter 447 Arriving At The Maelstrom Sea

    ?

    Since the rumors of what happened earlier had started to spread like wildfire, it was better to leave the Bone Sea as soon as possible, because an open conflict was about to start.

    Besides Remi, there was another high stage Ster rank who was left behind by Marcus to guard his group of fanatics that believed he was sent by Snakele, naturally the high stage Sters probably knew it was a farse.

    But for them, Marcus promised to help them advance to the Maximum stage, ording to Remi, the ck robed guy that always followed Marcus acted as the living proof of that, as it was a high stage previous to consuming what Marcus called a "Devil Blessing Potion".

    Then in front of the ouws and dissidents that Marcus had gathered, the aura from the guy that drank the potion sky-rocketed, to the point that all the other high stage Sters, Remi included felt suppressed by him.

    That being said the ck robed person didn''t advance on the spot, because in Marcus''s words he still needed time and battles to refine its effect, and with that public demonstration he got the loyalty of those guys, as they wanted to obtain such a magical potion.

    One must know that there are no alchemic products that can improve the realm of a high stage Ster ranked, even if the incredibly rare peak Ster ranked resources, like the poisonous flower which Daimon obtained from Purplecloud''s treasury, are used to make a pill or a potion, they can''t help increase one''s realm like it would happen at lower stages.

    No one knows how to reach the Maximum rank, including Vincent and the others that already entered that realm, for them it happened naturally, could be that something changed in Neptune, or they met an unknown requirement, there were countless theories.

    And now a new one had appeared as Marcus apparently had the ability get rid of that obstruction.

    ''That should be an item from the store of Marcus''s store¡­ no, it sounds too strong to be avable for buying, maybe a reward from a previous mission'', thought Daimon.

    The rewards from the system were quite better than what was avable on the store, in his case he got a few things from his achievements, because he unlocked the mission temple recently.

    There was another thing that Daimon didn''t understand, if Marcus had a follower waiting for him here, as part of the help from his system, Adam should have had one too, but that wasn''t the case, he was relying on Aurora who he tricked with whatever he used to brainwash others, to be his back up, that''s why he escaped to save his ass when he abandoned Jasmine to die.

    Probably he realized that his trick was going to be seen through, because Jasmine was too important for Aurora.

    Ultimately Daimon shrugged, it was futile to try and guess what other cheats the systems of those two had, what he could do was learn their patterns and so far, he was doing great in that aspect.

    Adam''s system forced him to act like a "hero" at least on the surface, below that he could be as much of a trash as he wanted, but appearances and public opinion seemed to matter for his rewards, missions and the like.

    Marcus was the contrary he had to act in the shadows, but in exchange he could run as wild as he wanted.

    After giving Armando instructions on what to do while they are gone, the old White Walker took Daimon and the others away from Porter city, into the Bone Sea so that they could leave without drawing anyone''s attention.

    "Young master I¡­", the bone general was unwilling to leave his young master''s side, though he knew that staying here to train will be beneficial for him.

    Daimon shook his head, he knew this was going to happen, and he had already prepared for it.

    "Wouldn''t you be more helpful to me if you are stronger", with a single sentence, Horals''s eyes burned with determination, in fact they were literally burning in his green me-like battle aura, behind his ck helmet.

    With that solved, Daimon waves his hand and took out the Flying Citadel from the inventory, even if Armando hasn''t been participating on anything for thest thousands of years, anyone who was someone knew about the greatest magic treasure of the Elemental Sea.

    So let alone the fact that the Matriarch of the Light Pce trusted in the silver haired youth, enough to hand him the Flying Citadel, he was in awe realizing that such a thing was now able to be stored away in a spatial treasure.

    "I''ll leave Bandor at yourmand, you just have to improve your public image and keep those two fighting, while Remi is "disappeared", that will cover our existence for the time being", said Daimon to Armando.

    Armando nodded, the story they fabricated was that Remi escaped with the criminals, but only after receiving a lethal wound, the reason of this is that Marcus could feel if his subordinates were alive thanks to his curse, so the moment Thea erased the curse, for Marcus it was as if Remi had died.

    That''s what he used to create hatred between Marcus and Horrorw, at the same time since Remi kidnapped the guys from ck Wave that the scheming guy ordered both Horrorw and the pirates to capture, then Horrorw will be hating Marcus''s guts right now, the stage waspleted and the two participants of this war which was orchestrated by Daimon, will now be actively aiming at each other''s throats.

    Naturally Remi was alive, he was forced to disguise himself and now he will be acting as part of the army of the alliance, since his previous identity was officially death for others, Aurora created a barrier around everyone and they then flew towards the citadel, being allowed to enter into its barrier not too long after.

    While Armano, Horals and Bandor returned to Porter city, Daimon and the others went straight into the inner ring of the citadel, Aurora threw the battered Roger into the prison of the citadel, while Remi was ordered to keep an eye on him.

    Daimon followed Remi to the prison because he had some "tests" to do, the travel to the Maelstrom Sea was going to take the rest of the day, previously they were going to leave the Bone Sea at night, but Daimon''s pending matters there were solved pretty fast.

    Though in exchange more things needed to be personally checked on by him at the Maelstrom Sea, they will be arriving at night which is when the Maelstrom Sea is more dangerous, but with the defense of the citadel and Aurora, not to mention Remi whose life was at Daimon''s disposition there shouldn''t be any problem.

    Aisha saw Sarah trying to sneak to follow Daimon to the prison, and she giggled before saying.

    "Let''s all go to Jasmine''s room so that we can continue our training, every little improvement counts for the Global Raid after all".<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Jasmine''s eyes sparkled, after everything that she has been through, she has felt a minor advance approaching her, she is currently a recently ascended early-stage Lord ranked, so she will be reaching the middle level of the early stage, since each realm is divided in three parts, by the way Mellie who is the strongest among the early-stage Lord ranks of the girls, is at the peak level, just a bit more and she''ll reach the middle stage, though Sarah is still stronger than her, being at the middle level.

    Sarah''s eyes glowed as she gazed at Aisha, who smiled at her, naturally Aisha already realized how to restrain the crazy girl to a certain extent, she didn''t mind her chasing Daimon when they were free, but when her darling wanted to train or do something serious, she will of course stop her from bothering him.

    After a silent exchange of gazes between the two strongest girls on the group, they all went to Jasmine''s room.

    ¡­

    The hours passed quite fast and before Daimon noticed the sun had already left the sky and was reced by the moon.

    "Ah, I''m damn tired, trying to control such a destructive element as Demon Light to not spread and destroy the body of a Nethereal is quite hard", he mumbled.

    In front of Daimon, there was a battered figure with different grades of burns on its body, there were parts thatpletely disappeared, but as one followed the path drawn by the burns, they became less horrible.

    Daimon managed to correct one of his assumptions, thanks to Roger, turns out, not all the Nethereals react the same to his Demon Light.

    When he burned the previous Nethereal, the wound wasn''t as bad as the ones Roger received, but the Nethereal was horrified because something changed for it, after being burned it could be wounded by something as simple as a hammer, as the queen proved a momentter.

    But Roger didn''t have that strange immunity to pain that Nethereals with that ck sphere had, in his case, his body crumbled apart upon contact with his Demon Light, of course that was the case under the presumption that Roger couldn''t defend himself, like right now.

    What confused Daimon was that he has exposed Sarah to his white mes, and the crazy girl seemed to enjoy being near them, leaving aside the fact that she might have a few screws lose, her body should have been wounded if Demon Light was detrimental to her.

    "Exposition generates first degree burn marks, idental direct contact produces second degree and aggressive direct contact on purpose produce third degree burn marks¡­", Daimon knew he was missing something, he needed to do some tests on the guy in the ck mist stage.

    For now, he could confirm that his Demon Light won''t kill the purple haired pair of mother and daughter by default, he would need to attack them with the intention of killing, like with anyone else, besides Nethereals so far.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and the left-over white mes that were burning on Roger''s body returned to him.

    "We''ll stop here for today", said Daimon, Aurora who came to the prison by Daimon''s petition earlier, nodded and then she casted a healing spell on Roger.

    Another interesting thing, is that he could be healed by light element spells, while anything that was light oriented was detrimental to the previous Nethereals they met, Bell and Sarah were simr in that aspect, light element by itself didn''t harm them.

    Remi who kept guarding the entrance of the prison, was pale behind his mask right now, no matter how much Roger screamed or begged, the silver haired youth didn''t even flinch as he continued with his tests.

    It''s not as if Remi is innocent nor he is kind-hearted, but he has never seen someone from the young generation have the guts to cause so much pain to anyone, enemy or not, develop such indifference towards other people''s lives required quit a few years on the battlefield.

    Just imagining him ending up in a simr position as Roger made his body shiver,pared to his new master, Marcus who imed to be the worst devil when he threatened a few of his subordinates to cause them fear, looked like a little kid ying around.

    ''I-I wasn''t imagining things, he is a damn monster!'', thought Remi, earlier he was able to catch a glimpse of Daimon''s Overlord''s Aura which is about to level up, and he felt his legs lose strength when he was red at by the pair of cold eyes that floated there in the infinite shadow that stood behind Daimon.

    Daimon''s body covered in white mes as he cleaned himself before he left the prison apanied by Aurora, the Matriarch of the Light Pce had already understood the type of person that Daimon is, so she didn''t leave the previous session of torture surprise her.

    For Aurora, this made her be able to rest assured knowing that she could trust Jasmine''s safety to Daimon, because he won''t hesitate cut the head of anyone that threatened him or those that stood at his side.

    While Aurora left to the captain''s cabin, Daimon returned alone to the main residence, he took of his mask on the way and once he arrived, he changed into morefortable clothes.

    The lights of Jasmine''s room were still on and softughs and giggles could be hearding from it, so it was obvious they were still up.

    Daimon opened the almost closed door of the room and was weed with the beautiful sight, of the girls ying and chatting with each other, even Marlene who was worried earlier seemed to have rxed a bit.

    The girls saw Daimon finally returning and they smiled at him, as they invited him to join them, of course he epted but after a couple of rounds, Daimon felt his eyes closing, he has been using Demon Light in short intervals but for a long period of time, and he was tired, so after saying goodnight to Aisha and the others heid down on his bed.

    The girls all stared at each other and after softlyughing they continued ying, since they meditated for a few hours and were well-rested right now, the night at the Maelstrom Seasts more than on the rest of Neptune, where there were only around six hours of day and eighteen of night.

    Without realizing, they had reached the water of the most mysterious sea in Neptune, where horrors and treasures hide below the waves of the dark blue sea.

 Chapter 448 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 1)

    ?

    A couple of hours after Daimon went to sleep, the Flying Citadel finally arrived at a rtively known area of the Maelstrom Sea.

    Unlike the other three seas where there was a big mass ofnd that acted as the main continent, besides small inds that surrounded it, the Maelstrom Sea didn''t have any big mass ofnd.

    ording to the rumors about the Maelstrom Sea that conform its history, as there were no "reasoning" natives from it,pile a proper record, there was once a mass ofnd but the strongest magic beasts joined hands and destroyed it.

    The Maelstrom Sea had nothing but magic beasts as its natives, even back at the era of the foundation of the four seas, there weren''t any human-like creatures on the Maelstrom Sea.

    The beasts refused so take human form, like the races from the Mermen Sea who also descend from magic beasts.

    Until the one who led the Maelstrom Sea to fight against the hero and the Matriarch of the Light Pce appeared, the one who was said to have a Hydra lineage.

    After that, some magic beasts decided to develop a human form since it was beneficial to them, but not all were like that, and after the guy with the Hydra lineage died, the beast army split into two.

    Those who wanted to take the path to evolution towards human form, and those who despised the idea, just like in the other three seas, inner conflict spread and they killed each other until a few generations ago, where the open conflict stopped after too many loses on both sides, and a rtive peace with little skirmishes here and there reigned.

    The Maelstrom Sea has two "officials" divisions, first of all, is the dangerous but habitable area, which is basically the outer part of the sea, there many nomad groups formed by those who were exiled, ouws, criminals and people that just wanted to not live under the role of the other three seas, existed.

    They modified small masses ofnd to be movable with the help of one of the two best Rune Masters in Neptune, that''s right, both ckbeard and the other Rune Master that was on the same level, the best two in Neptune, both lived in the Maelstrom Sea.

    Or at least that was the popr opinion, since no one knows who the other Rune Master is, as it operates through remote golems all the time, but some people had seen them fly through the Maelstrom Sea a few times which forged that rumor.

    Anyway, returning to the current distribution of the Maelstrom Sea, the outer area is where the nomad tribes live, past a certain point it''s pirate''s territory, the many crews form a circle around the nomads, then there is the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea which is controlled by the magic beasts that have use of reason.

    That includes both those who advanced in the path to take human form and those who didn''t, that''s basically the first official division.

    The second one is between the magic beasts that control the middle area and one of the esses to the inner area of the Maelstrom Sea.

    Among them there are two who had taken human form, one being Thea who controls one of the four esses and one region, there is the three-legged toad king who is the other one that has taken human form, and then there are two high stage Ster ranked magic beasts.

    That bnce broke when a descendant of the three-legged toad king infiltrated Thea''s forces, and then betrayed her recently, so now, all the races that followed Thea, among which there was a couple of early level high stage magic beasts, were shing with the forces of the three-legged toad king, beingmanded by Thea''sst remaining Ster ranked general.

    Unlike others, Thea not only valued strength, as the fact that her generals aren''t the strongest of her army, but the ones in which she trusted the most, suggested, and that general served her father who belonged to the same generation as Vincent and Aurora, but who died in one of the fewst conflicts under strange circumstances.

    That is another thing which has gotten the Empress''s attention, the symptoms in Bell and Malkim''s bodies, were slightly simr to the wounds that caused her father''s death, so she supposed that probably the Nethereals had something to do with it.

    Which made sense, since her father was stronger than the leader of the enemies which he faced countless of times, one of the two magic beasts that despised those who took human form, and her father was forced to retreat after losing arge part of his army, that being said, he still fully obliterated the enemy''s army, but was defeated by the magic beast and died not too long after, but he bought time for Thea to grow as the enemy was practically left without any subordinates.

    Daimon''s eyelids trembled as he felt a soft hand gently stroking his hair, he opened his eyes and was weed by Aisha''s pretty face.

    "We are here darling~", she mumbled, Daimon inspected his body and nodded, he has fully recovered after four or so hours of sleep.

    The girls were already dressed and prepared to leave, so Daimon stood up and changed into the Hollow Suit including the mask and they then left the main residence, Aurora and Remi who was actively restraining Roger joined them soon.

    Since Marlene''s nsmen being targeted was urgent, they stopped at one of the many neutral nomad temporarily settlements, it was a mobile ind called Entra, well, the Flying Citadel was floating past the clouds above it to be more urate.

    They then walked towards the outer ring of the Flying Citadel before Daimon turned to see Remi and then said.

    "You''ll be staying here, since there is a chance, we meet Marcus and he might recognize you as it has been too short of a time since you "died", I don''t think I have to remind you what will happen to you, if you even think of anything funny, right?", Daimon didn''t use a threatening tone of voice or anything, he just gazed at Remi from the corner of his eyes and the guy remembered the way Roger, an assassin who was vile and crazy enough to be a monster just for power, ended up begging for mercy after a few hours, and his body shivered.

    "I wouldn''t dare to, leave this prisoner in my hands young master!", shouted Remi, only after Daimon stopped paying him any attention, he could finally rx once again.

    "Let''s go", said Daimon, this time the Flying Citadel will be staying behind, because someone had to watch over Roger and Daimon didn''t want Remi to follow them anyway, so they will be staying on the outer ring of the Citadel, where they can''t do anything even if they were to somehow escape the ving contracts that tied them currently.

    Aurora casted her optic illusion spell around the Citadel just in case, and she then formed a barrier around Daimon and the others, to descend from the sky, in the Maelstrom Sea there weren''t any flying magic beasts, at least not in the outer and middle areas of it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    As they descended from high into the sky, Daimon observed the so-called mobile ind Entra, it looked like a regr ind with the difference that his infinity eyes could see the countless runes engraved on its borders.

    The ind had the size of an average city of the Clear Water kingdom, not too small not toorge, and the array covered it with a protective barrier, these nomads earned a living through different ways.

    First many of them had deals with travelling merchants from the other three seas, there were countless weird things in the Maelstrom Sea, so it wasn''t that hard to find some things that could attract the attention of the merchants.

    There were also those who cultivated thend and those who risked their lives and captured fishes or other low ranked magic beasts an sold them, andstly there were the ones whose business was the most lucrative, vers.

    They sold people to other nomad settlements, to the pirates and to the merchants of the other seas, naturally the ves weren''t legal in the other three seas, but they could be trafficked into them, through special channels, such was the case of Marlene after she lost her powers and memory.

    Entra was one of thergest settlements, and the reason as to why they were here is because Marlene has a way to reach the hideout of her n, in this same mobile ind, in fact she has ces like that in many points, but this is the closest one.

    With Thea here, Daimon didn''t have to worry about barriers that had anti-spatial properties, the Empress pierced her spear on the atmosphere and opened a portal through which the whole group entered, they then appeared inside of the barrier of the mobile ind, avoiding the tedious process to enter as well as the entrance fee, and more importantly, preventing anyone from knowing they were here.

    ording to Roger, ck Wave has eyes and ears in all the mobile inds, and he doesn''t know who are the spies, because his job wasn''t intelligence but killing, he was one of the two vice-leaders after all.

    What he did know was where were the gathering points of ck Wave are located, but there wasn''t one in Entra since is one of the most visited mobile inds, naturally this time not only Daimon but even the others were wearing masks and other things to cover any specific characteristic that could help others guess their identities.

    Marlene for example was wearing a hood to cover her unique hair color, which differentiates her from the other members of her angel fish n, Marlene has a mix of royal blue and blond hair that reaches all the way to her waist, giving her a rebellious look that perfectly fits with her free-spirited attitude, also she has blue eyes that make a good contrast with her hair.

    With Marlene guiding them and Aurora hiding them from the eyes of the others, they navigated through the city.

    Daimon had to admit that the zerow savage scenery he expected to see didn''t appear, instead of that, Entra was blooming with life, merchants walked here and there and there were may locals that sold all kind of things.

    There were restaurants and all the things one would expect to see in a rtively important city, everyone was busy earning a living too, even little kids were helping their parents, or the owner of the store in which they worked.

    Of course, the prosperity in this city is quite noticeable, since Entra is one of the biggest mobile inds, but not everyone is so fortunate, there are some smaller nomad tribes that don''t get enough food to maintain their members, and those are the ones that end up being sold as ves.

    "It''s there!", Marlene pointed at an isted alley that lied ahead of them, they walked towards it and after making sure there was no one in the nearby area, Marlene touched some specific ces of the ground and the walls.

    Despite that, nothing happened until she made a slight cut on one of her fingers and then let a drop of her blood fall in the middle of all the area formed by the many points she touched earlier.

    Only then an array came to life, but didn''t light up like normal, Daimon and the others were sucked in by a sudden portal, without affecting anything else, obviously it was made to not draw the attention of others easily.

    ¡­

    The dimensional tunnel was darker than normal, but it was a rathe short travel so there wasn''t any problem, Marlene clearly had a worried expression on her face, only she could use the different secret portals on the many mobile inds, since the members of her n couldn''t leave their hideout without her escorting them, due to their low ranks.

    They were among the most desired ves due to the superstition that said, they will bring good fortune to their partners, which was reinforced by the fact that there were only female members of the angel fish n, no matter with who they married, if their child was a girl it will be a member of the angel fish n, if not then it would always belong to the race of the father.

    They soon reached the other side of the dimensional tunnel and were met with what Marlene feared the most, the sight of a battle breaking out on the vicinity of the hideout of her n.

    The hideout was located inside of a rock formation that raised from below the water, inside there was a cave that extended for quite arge distance, and right now the mountain was surrounded by ships without any gs.

    Well, it would be more urate to call it a besiege, since Marlene''s n could only hide behind the barrier of their hidden fortress, while the other party attacked them and tried to break in.

    But that wasn''t what took Marlene by surprise, but the person who was leading the attack, which she could of course recognize, as it was one of the few Arch ranks of her n.

    "Lora¡­", Marlene gritted her teeth as she spat out a single name, there was blood on the ground near the borders of the barrier, and she was sure it didn''t belong to the enemy.

    Clearly her n members were taken by surprise, because one of them brought the enemies in, somehow, the Arch ranks were the ones in charge while Marlene was out looking for resources, but still they shouldn''t have been able to bring anyone inside, only Marlene had that authority, so, many things should have happened in her absence.

 Chapter 449 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 2)

    ?

    Daimon observed the woman who seemed to be leading the attack towards the angelfish n, unlike Marlene, she had only a color of hair which was a lustercking green, her eyes were of the same color.

    Besides her appearance which could be considered appealing to the eye, the woman had no other special characteristic, despite being an early-stage Arch rank, Daimon judged her to be weaker than Lance when he went all out, so battle wasn''t her strong point obviously.

    What confused Daimon was that he expected the members of Marlene''s n to either have blond or blue hair, since she had a mix of both, but that question was solved by Marlene herself in a second.

    "That woman is the elder of the Marine branch, my angelfish n has many branches besides the royal one to which I belong¡­ but nowadays only four remain, Marine, Coral, Altum and Bellus, besides the royal branch who ording to the Bellus elder who is the oldest of us all, is called Queen".

    Daimon nodded, while Thea handed her mirror te to Marlene, since the ck Empress used to be the sole friend of Marlene, she was the only "outsider" that had the contact of not only Marlene but the four elders.

    Naturally Marlene wasn''t going to contact the one that betrayed her, but the one in whom she trusted the most, which was the one that raised her as her daughter, when her mother died, the elder of the Bellus branch of the n.

    After a few seconds that seemed like years for Marlene, the tired voice of a woman came from the mirror te.

    "What is the name of your father?", Marlene smiled as she heard that question, because only she and that elder knew the truth, her mother never told her who was her father.

    "No one knows it", she answered, only then the voice of the woman on the other side of the call, rxed a bit, they were betrayed not too long ago, so it was hard to trust on a sudden call, even if it came from the sole friend of Marlene.

    "Little girl it''s good to know that you are alive, don''t return to the hideout, that piece of trash Lora betrayed us and with the excuse of going to the mobile inds to look for news about you, brought back strong enemies".

    "We were caught by surprise as no one besides you should have been able to bring outsiders along, what''s worse is that one of the enemies that is apanying her just ordered us to not resist and we were unable to move!".

    "Luckily one of the guards managed to activate the barrier manually and then destroy the control, so we were freed from whatever spell that was, but they attacked us out of anger¡­ Tara died on the spot but Laura and me were protected by the barrier on time".

    "The crystal your mother left, broke, so I know you have used yourst resort and right now you haven''t even reached the middle stage of the Mortal realm, so don''te¡­ all the little girls and us have decided to destroy the hideout along with ourselves, Lora won''t get the satisfaction to win", said the woman with a determined voice.

    Marlene sighed, she was sad that one of the remaining three elders died before she arrived, but on the other hand she was relieved that they arrived on time to prevent her n from disappearing.

    "I''m already here and I brought reinforces so don''t do anything stupid, just stay behind the barrier", she said as she clenched her fist.

    "It won''t work, I know this is the mirror te of Lady Thea, but the enemies have two high stage Sters, so just leave and live your life¡­".

    "I have a maximum Ster on my side, stop being a stubborn old woman and just wait to be rescued obediently!", said Marlene with a serious voice, which Daimon has never heard her making since they met.

    "¡­"

    "Why the hell didn''t you mention that from the very beginning you little punk, here we were all about to say goodbye to everyone before self-destroying the hideout!", the voice of the woman became energetic all of a sudden.

    "Ahh, why is it my fault that you don''t listen, do you think I''m stupid enough toe without a backup n!".

    Listening to the previous emotional moment, bing more of the arguing between a mother and a rebellious teenager daughter, Daimon chuckled.

    "Leave the mother-daughter discussion forter, those guys are making their moves", he said.

    Marlene nodded and after giving some instructions to her n members she ended the call, now that she knew that most of them were alright, it was as if a heavy weight was lifted from her chest.

    ¡­

    Oblivious to the fact that they were being eyed by a dangerous predator, the two different groups that had surrounded the hideout of the angelfish n were now discussing between each other.

    "You already have one of the four elders on your side, so why should we have to make do with just receiving one of the remaining two, are you looking down on Lord Garrius!", said a tall middle-aged man that exuded the pressure of the early-stage Ster rank, as well as a strange ominous ck mist.

    "It was you the one who killed the me elder, it''s your fault for being stupid, besides Lora isn''t included in the count, because she willingly signed a contract with our Lord and was given to me, she is one of us and not a future ve like those two, not to mention we don''t care about that Garrius or whatever, if you have the guts let''s fight and see who dies!", answered a man with an interesting hair color, as it had a mix of ck and orange hair.

    The atmosphere tensed up, though those two were only early-stage Ster ranks, behind them, standing still like statues there were to figures that were exuding the aura of high stage Ster ranks.

    One was fully covered from head to toe, wearing a mask, while the other had ck robes and pale skin, both were ring at the other keeping each other in check, besides that, both had some Mortal realm members that were silent like little children in meeting between adults.

    Ultimately both sides weren''t willing to go all out against each other, and since it was the mistake on the side of the tall middle-aged man, then they epted to only receive one of the remaining three elders as a war trophy and both forces came out of the gship in which the meeting was taking ce.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The woman called Lora saw the group to which she joined returning, and she happily flew towards the man with ck and orange hair, to grab his arm.

    "So, how did negotiations go, my king?", she temptingly said.

    The man smirked, happy to have followed thest words of his father, which led to the current situation, as he said.

    "Of course, thanks to your help, those guys were on the losing side to begin with, so we will get the bigger share as they don''t dare to go against Lord Envoy".

    "Don''t forget we have to get the Miriam, she is the one that raised that bitch, so we can lure her out by using her", added Lora with a twisted expression,tely she came to know a few secrets regarding the angelfish n, and thatbined with the jealousy she already had towards Marlene, made the hatred she hid in her heart for so many years explode.

    "Sure, I got to choose between the two first in exchange for leaving them have one even, in any case they will all end up serving me as Lord Envoy promised", said the man, the conversation came to an end as the other group approached them.

    "That barrier was made by the guy that equals ckbeard, is going to be hell annoying to destroy it if we both don''t go all out, send your strongest member and we''ll do the same, as the contract states, besides the elders whose distribution was altered we''ll get 50% of the others".

    The ck and orange haired man turned to see the ck robed figure who nodded at him, the tall middle-aged man did the same but this time to the fully covered figure, which also nodded, the agreement was made and they then prepared tounch an all-out attack, but first Lora was given a moment to try something.

    Per Marlene''s instructions, the remaining two elders as well as all the other members of the angelfish n, which weren''t even fifty people, all girls with different hair colors and appearances that went from 16 to 20-something, looked at the enemies that were trying to enve them frontwards.

    Theck-luster green haired Lora saw it and she was delighted, as she amplified her voice with the help of the ck and orange haired man.

    "Miriam and Laura, this is yourst chance, surrender voluntarily and you''ll get a better treatment, you should know that the woman you are waiting for won''te, as she was chased and killed by the pirates, so hand over the members of my n and all the others, then maybe I can ask for some mercy for you two", she shouted.

    The two oldest looking women of the bunch, who seemed to be in their thirties both coldly red at Lora, as they said in unison.

    "Go to hell traitor bitch!", the younger girls couldn''t help butugh, despite the precarious situation in which they were, because the elders acted as the mothers and tutors of all of them, and this is the first time they heard them speaking in such a way, strangely there weren''t any other women that looked past their twenties, besides those two, and Lora who was now demanding their surrender.

    "Humph, so be it, my king, capture them and turn them all into ves since they wish to follow that woman to hell", said Lora as she returned to the side of the ck and orange hair man.

    Or at least that''s what she wanted to do, but a huge pressure that descended from above, forced not only her but the two high stage Ster figures and all the mortal realm soldiers, downwards.

    "Aghhh!", pained screams echoed through the whole area, the mortal realm people, including Lora all vomited blood and were forced into the water below them, as for the two high stage Ster ranks, they both released their mana and fought together against the suppression, the ck robed man was doing it betterpared to the masked guy, but they both were still losing.

    "The one that will be going to hell will be you, Lora", the green haired Lora which was forced to drink water, paled as she heard thest voice she wanted to hear right now, along with a pressure that surpassed anything she had experienced or heard off before.

    Marlene''s body became visible all of a sudden, which made the young members of the angelfish n cheer, naturally that pressure didn''t belong to Marlene who in this moment isn''t even an Arch ranked.

    But to Aurora who was descending from the sky along with Thea, while Marlene was standing next to Daimon and the others that were covered by the optic illusion, Bell and also a barrier created by Aurora, not to mention Daimon''s hidden tricks.

    "I''ll take care of those two, I leave the others to you¡­ remember don''t kill them, but you can incapacitate them", said Aurora to Thea who right now had murderous cold light shing in her eyes.

    She who treasures her subordinates, treasures her friends even more, and not only Marlene but her whole n nearly suffered a disaster on the hands of the pirates and now these guys too, she was naturally angry.

    "Mm, they will still be breathing when I finish", softly answered Thea, as she also released her pressure, she targeted the ck and orange haired man as we as the tall middle-aged man, who ording to Daimon were valuable "information sources".

    Why did Daimon called them that you might ask, well, the middle-aged man was marked by Rita as someone infected by the Nethereals without having transformed into one yet, in other words someone in the ck mist stage as Daimon named it.

    And the other one was marked by Daimon himself, as the guy gave off a known aura to him, the aura of a system, and more urately the aura of Marcus''s system, so apparently both Marcus and also the scheming guy sent theirckeys to get the angelfish n.

    Daimon gazed at Marlene while he was lost in his thoughts, her n was in the list that Roger spat out after being interrogated, there were others that had already been dealt with, but he couldn''t find a connection between them all, of course it could be that Roger''s status was too low to know all the targets, in fact he only knew about Marlene''s n being one, because he heard the so-called Lord Garrius mentioning it.

    But Marcus''s actions were almost 100% rted to his mission, especially because he didn''t "fancy" women but men, so for him targeting the angelfish n was surely a requirement from his mission.

    And that made Daimon wonder if him meeting Marlene was only caused by her luck, or if he also got in Marcus''s way, because he intercepted Adam''s opportunity as those two seemed to be tied together due to their systems.

    Ultimately Daimon shrugged, whatever the case, his goal didn''t change, he just had to crush any obstacle that stood in his way and cause a crippling fear on others, so that no one would even dare to think on trying anything against him or his close ones.

 Chapter 450 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 3)

    ?

    The first one to make a move was none other than Aurora, since she will be fighting two high stage Ster enemies, the coteral damage might be too much, so the first thing she did was of course¡­ summon her domain.

    "Radiant Fortress", though Aurora could manipte space and also had mana sense, her capacity to manipte space was poorly developed, to the point that she couldn''t transport anyone that has surpassed the Half Ster realm, unlike Vincent or Thea.

    But in exchange, unlike them she did develop a domain, that being said, the members of the royal lineage of the Light Pce, weren''t meant forbat, their strength lied in a wide range of light support spells.

    That doesn''t mean they can''t use offensive oriented light spells, but their light element isn''t a destructive one like Daimon''s, but the healing type, meaning that their offensive will always be lower whenpared to battle oriented enemies.

    Support mages are an existence in the middle of offensive and defensive mages, they have the capacity to use both types of spells, but they aren''t as skilled in neither of them, but that doesn''t mean they are weak.

    Especially when they posses a wide arsenal of boosting type spells, like Aurora, the moment she summoned her domain, a giant white ethereal fortress covered her and the two high stage Ster enemies.

    Unlike the spell "Silver Fortress" that increased both the physical and magical defenses on the allies, there is a counterpart called "Light Fortress" which does something simr but, on the caster, that was the spell Jasmine used when Adam left her to die.

    The difference is that while Silver Fortress is a boost, Light Fortress is a barrier that protects everything in a certain range.

    Daimon observed the silver brick cubic castle with giant shields attached to its walls, that appeared out of nowhere with curiosity in his eyes.

    "Grandma once exined to me how was her domain made, she used Silver Fortress as the base and then added Light Fortress to it, which resulted in her Radiant Fortress, after that, she became skilled in barriers like the one that is protecting us right now", said Jasmine.

    Daimon nodded, the domains he knows off are the result of three things, the automatic defensive spell created by a mage when it reaches the Lord rank which is linked to its Manifestation Phenomenon, and theprehension ofws that is achieved after reaching the Arch rank as well as spell chose by the mage.

    In other words, two spells andprehension ofws form a domain at the four gxies, but here in Neptune no one has a developed a proper Manifestation Phenomenon, but some do learn an automatic defensive spell in the Lord rank, it''s just that most of the times it is discarded, because it is not as effective as wearing a high-quality defensive equipment, not to mention the spell drains the mana reserves of the mage.

    For example, some pirates had it, and they were forced to use it back at the beast hunt due tot heirck of decent equipment, Daimon and the others easily pierced through it though, but that could be because of theck of Manifestation Phenomenon that Neptune natives have.

    Otherwise, they would have been able to resist a bit better against Daimon''s group attacks, the result would have been the same but they could have put up more of a fight.

    All the girls had their defensive spells but they left them aside, and instead used high quality defensive items, for the same reason, and simr to that, Aurora didn''t include the defensive spell into the creation of her domain, instead of that she used two legacy spells of the Light Pce, which resulted in a decently strong domain.

    ''I bet miss Aliya is going to be ecstatic to learn about Neptune native''s mage path'', thought Daimon, he was also curious about what will happen when Mellie and the others enter the gxies, will they be able to obtain what theyck, will their realms regress in exchange, or will nothing happen.

    Leaving that aside, Aurora''s domain which extended for around a kilometer but only dragged the two high stage Sters and herself, raised into the sky past the clouds, as Aurora took her fight far away from this ce.

    Since all the mortal realm soldiers, Lora included, were earlier hit by Aurora''s mana pressure, they were all out ofbat, their bodies powerlessly floated on the sea next to the ships they brought, but they couldn''t move, unknown to them, white chains that became invisible were restraining their bodies, but the difference between realms was too high for them to notice.

    So that only left the tall middle-aged guy, which Daimon supposed was the other vice leader of the branch of ck Wave in the Maelstrom Sea, who ording to Roger, was called Fabio, because the leader Romel advanced to the middle stage after a few days of epting the power of a Nethereal from that Garrius guy, while the vice-leaders that were half Sters advanced to the early stage of the Ster realm.

    Daimon still didn''t know what made some directly be ugly creatures like Roger, while others stayed in the ck mist stage like Fabio or Romel, but that''s what interrogation and "tests" existed for, so he just needed to capture Fabio and the answer will naturallye to him.

    There was also an interesting supposition that appeared in his mind after hearing to some of the things that Miriam and Lora mentioned, as well as the particr split color hair of the other guy that seemed to be leading the enemy forces.

    While the ck and orange haired guy didn''t recognize Thea, Fabio who is the one in charge of information in this branch of ck Wave, not to mention Romel participated in the ambush that the pirates pulled on Marlene, of course recognized the ck Empress, and his face paled on the spot.

    Some didn''t consider Thea to be on the same level as the other three magic beasts that ruled the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea, as she is a middle stage Ster while the others are at the high stage.

    But those who had personally seen or experienced a battle with Thea, would not dare to look down on her and Fabio belongs to the second category, also the murderous gaze on Thea''s eyes was more than obvious.

    "Milo, let''s join hands to take her on!", he shouted at the ck and orange haired guy, which made thetter snort.

    "Fabio, it seems I overestimated you; the enemy is just a middle stage Ster, with the power I obtained from Lord Envoy, I can easily jump realms and control her, you can coward behind if you want to, but she''ll be mine kekeke", the moment Milo saw Thea''s elegant and beautiful appearance he already had ns for her.

    He has been living in a paradisetely, because his superiors weren''t interested in women, so, besides some specific targets, he could keep whoever he wanted without asking for permission.

    But now right in front of him, one of his favorite women, Lora, was attacked and wounded, he was furious.

    Before Fabio could say anything else, Milo took out his weapon, a serrated sword and then exploded in dark orange mes as he became a meteor that rushed towards Thea.

    "Shit, fucking ignorant bastard!", Fabio cursed, he took out his mirror te to contact Romel, and his expression became unsightly when he noticed that the thing wasn''t working.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding echoed through the battlefield, as Thea effortlessly blocked Milo''s sword with the edge of her ck spear.

    Milo''s eyes widened, Thea trusted her spear and he was pushed backwards all the way next to Fabio who immediately took out his weapon, a white harpoon, just in time to block Thea''s attack.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The ck Empress''s shed and the next thin everyone knew was that she was in front of Fabio and Milo, as sheterally swept her ck spear at them, Milo and Fabio used their weapons to block at the same time, and as result they felt their hands shaking, sparks flew all over the ce due to the friction of Thea retrieving her spear to continue with her attack.

    She pierced her spear towards the left side of Fabio''s chest, since she wasn''t supposed to kill him, the vice-leader of ck Wave paled as he shouted.

    "Help me block, if one of us loses we are both death!".

    Milo''s confidence was long gone, while Fabio med him, if they took the initiative to attack together, they might have been able to gain the upper ground from the beginning, but now they were forced to a passive situation.

    Still the ck and orange haired guy knew Fabio was telling the truth, in a 1v1 fight, none of them stood even a small chance of victory, so he used the serrated side of his sword to block the spear from the side, and then a horrible smile appeared on his face.

    His sword was designed to be used as a weapon breaker, and with his newly acquired power, he was confident he could at least leave some chips on the edge of the ck spear.

    The serrated side of the sword heated to the point that its color changed from the gray metallic original one, to bright orange one, and then Milo fiercely moved his sword back and forth as if it was trying to saw through the ck spear.

    But the scene of a deep scar appearing on the weapon of the enemy didn''t appear, instead of that the unmistakable sound of metal cracking made its way into everyone''s ears.

    "Crack!", under Milo''s surprised eyes, many of the serrated teeth of his sword, broke and Thea''s spear continued its trust towards Fabio''s chest, luckily for the assassin, the precious milliseconds that Milo earned for him, allowed him to dodge sidewards avoiding a thin ck line of light that zig-zagged on the air where he was floating a second ago,nding on one of the many ships that were surrounding the hideout of the angelfish n.

    There was no shockwave or explosion, but the moment the line of ck light made contact with the ship, it turned into giant head of a snake made out of ck energy, which bit off the ship, a huge hole was cleanly made on the ship before it sank on the spot.

    Thea''s darkness has space property, her attack opened a small controlled rift on the space, which swallowed a giant piece of the ship, including the defensive formations and the materials of the ship.

    Fabio was pale, if that attacknded on him, then wouldn''t a hole would have been created in his body he wondered, this was what put Thea on the same level as the other three magic beast rulers, her darkness element was incredibly dangerous.

    Andbining it with the ling reach of a spear and the innately high strength she had as a descendant of a magic beast, made her an enemy to be wary off, it''s worth mentioning that her father didn''t have the same type of darkness as her, and she was in fact the youngest ever member of her n to take the role of a ruler of the region that has belonged to her family for countless generations.

    "Damn it all!", Fabio shouted, ck mist leaked out of his body creating a deformed ck sphere which used to be his domain, but after his attribute and affinity was overwritten when he chose to enter the path to be a Nethereal, ended up looking like this, appeared around him.

    Milo didn''t hesitate to do the same, orange mes exploded out his body, unlike Fabio, his domain wasn''t deformed, and properly took the form of a dark orange waving sea, both domains took Thea by "surprise" engulfing her into their range, surprisingly they didn''t repel each other, but mingled together, probably because Milo''s mes weren''t fully of fire affinity as his half ck and half orange hair suggested.

    The young members of the angelfish n what were seeing the fight from behind the barrier of their hideout, tried to innocently warn Thea to dodge even though it was obvious that their voices couldn''t reach her from so far, considering they were only Lord ranks.

    But Miriam and Laura calmed them down telling them everything will be fine, that being said, they were both inwardly worried of Thea.

    Unlike the younger girls, they aren''t as sheltered, so they do know about the outside world as they are the sole remaining members of the previous generations, and it is their job to be informed as they periodicallye out apanying Marlene to gather information.

    And the pressures that Milo and Fabio were exuding weren''t the ones early-stage Ster ranks should have, at least not from their point of view.

    ''If I were you, I''ll cover those girl''s eyes, Marlene mentioned they are too innocent to see what''s about to happen''.

    Miriam and Laura were taken by surprise as the voice of a young man reached their ears, which made the two of them look in panic, thinking their hideout was infiltrated.

    ''I''m one of Marlene''s friends, you can''t see me because senior Aurora casted an optic illusion over us''.

    Miriam and Laura stared at each other, that voice clearly belonged to a man, it''s not like they hated men, but certainly it was harder for any member of the angelfish n to trust one, because they had to hide mainly because of that superstition, which caused all the male nobles to covet them, not to mention they all were born with superior appearances.

    Ultimately, they both decided to follow the instructions they were told, because they could see that Thea indeed looked angry earlier, and the young girls had already been through a lot for a single day, considering they were attacked and saw one of their mother figures die, while other betrayed them too.

    As if it was orchestrated, the moment the members of the angelfish n were told to turn their looks away, two pained screams came from the agglomeration of ck mist and dark orange mes.

    "Ahhhhhh!".

    "No stop pleaseee!!!".

    At the same time, giant ck snakes came from within the inside of the domains, piercing holes through them and then wrapping around them, before they forcefully crushed the domains to reveal the result of the fight.

    Thea floated there with an elegant but fierce aura surrounding her, she was perfectly fine, without even her pretty ck dress suffering any damage.

    On the other hand, Milo and Fabio were covered in blood form head to toe, they had clean holes of different sizes covering all the non-vitals areas of their bodies, it was as if they were bitten of by some kind of fierce magic beast, the one who seemed to be suffering the most was Milo whose hands were covering the area between his legs, while tears came down of his eyes.

    The next moment, the eyes of the two enemies rolled backwards as they fainted, due to the mix of massive blood loss and the excruciating pain they were suffering, their bodies fell from the sky and theynded on the deck of one of the many ships, it was unknown whether they were alive or not.

 Chapter 451 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 4)

    ?

    Now that Thea had let out some steam, she had a way more rxed expression on her pretty face, she turned to see Marlene and nodded at her, before saying.

    "I''ll go lend a hand up there", the long night of the Maelstrom Sea was still ongoing, so the white light from Aurora''s domain, slightly pierced the ck clouds and illuminated the nearby area.

    Naturally, before using such a showy spell, Aurora made sure that there weren''t more enemies in the vicinity, otherwise they will give their cover away and that didn''t go along with Daimon''s n.

    But even then, it was better to end the battle as soon as possible, Thea was blocking the nearby space to prevent anyone from sending messages or escaping, curiously her darkness worked even against items from system users.

    As that time when she interfered with the portal created by Remi using the ck scroll that Marcus handed him, suggested.

    It was simr to how Aurora was somewhat resistant towards Adam''s tricks, a proof that systems aren''t almighty, at least not the things that can be bought from the store, because the rewards are on a different level.

    There is also Sarah who waspletely unaffected by Adam''s charm, though Daimon theorized that is rted to the fact that she is half Nethereal, that or because she has a few screws lose, so the way she perceives things might be different than normal people.

    So far Daimon categorized Adam ability to trick others as a way to distort perception, since he couldn''t directly order others, but made them like him, until they became crazy about him, like it happened to that girl from the Penddra family, at least that''s what he currently believes it to be.

    Thea soared into the sky as she went past the clouds to go help Aurora finish the battle sooner.

    ¡­

    Past the clouds there was a violent turmoil ongoing, the white cubic ethereal fortress was being assaulted both from the outside and the inside, outside there was dark blue lightning impacting the fortress, while inside half of the area was covered by an ominous ck mist.

    The enemies did it like that because, lightning might get in the way of the ck mist and benefit Aurora instead, also unlike lightning mana which was present in the clouds that surrounded the whole area making it easier for the ck robed guy to attract it towards them using his domain, the ck mist wasn''t a natural element and so it didn''t exist in the atmosphere but was produced by the body of the masked guy, in a sense it was simr to battle aura.

    The difference is that battle aura is produced by a knight''s life spark, mixing mana and vitality, while that ck mist seems toe from the bizarre deformed body parts of those who had chosen to be Nethereals, or from that ck sphere that some of them have.

    "What the hell are you doing, hurry up and reinforces, my lightning isn''t especially effective against light, and that disgusting mist of yours is weak against her, we''ll only die if we don''t do anything!", shouted the ck robed figure to the masked guy.

    "Shut up, do you think I''m as stupid as you, I tried to contact Lord Garrius but there is interference, there should be someone that is skilled in spatialws, blocking the nearby area".

    "Fuck, that''s why she dragged us into this turtle shell-like domain, so we can''t get out of the space restrained area", the ck robed guy couldn''t help but curse, they were yed with.

    The masked guy saw a white ray of lighting towards him and he snorted, as he created a dark mist wall in front of him to fend off the attack, unfortunately he couldn''tpletely block it, but it was enough to stall it so that he could dodge it.

    The ck robed guy raised his hand and lightning condensed on his palm forming a blue lightning spear, which he threw at Aurora that was being protected by a white cubic barrier, at the same time the ck robed guy summoned more lightning to hit Aurora''s domain from outside trying to force Aurora to divide her attention, but before the lightning spear couldnd, a ck portal opened in front of Aurora and swallowed the attack.

    All the presents felt a new presence appearing into the battlefield, surprisingly Thea could appear inside Aurora''s domain, without telling her beforehand.

    "Are you done on your side", asked Aurora, to the elegant ck-haired woman holding a spear, that came out of a portal next to her.

    "Mm, those two clows weren''t a threat to begin with, the problem are these two", answered Thea.

    Aurora smiled as she nodded, her domain focused on defense, she could trap enemies and keep them here, battles of attrition were her specialty, but right now they didn''t have that sort of time, because if too much time passed without these guys reporting back to their superiors, they will suspect ande to see what is happening.

    The angelfish n seemed to be important for both Marcus and the scheming guy, otherwise they wouldn''t have sent two recently ascended, high stage Ster ranks to capture a group of nonbatant girls on the Lord realms, and three early-stage Arch ranks.

    Naturally the bosses didn''t lower themselves toe here, they just gave the task to the subordinates, but they couldn''t be med, who would have thought that a Maximum Ster ranked would appear out of nowhere.

    Especially Marcus who hadn''t experienced any setback in his mission considering he has made a few high stage Sters submit to him, but that has started to change, starting with Remi''s "death".

    "I''ll take the lightning affinity guy, the Nethereal is yours", said Thea as she became a line of ck light that zig-zagged towards the ck robed guy.

    Naturally the enemies weren''t willing to be separated, otherwise their only chance to defeat Aurora will disappear, unfortunately they had no say in this, unlike the ck mist domain which was ethereal, the white fortress was solid probably because its base was the spell Silver Fortress which increased physical defense as well as magic defense.

    Aurora snapped her fingers and a white wall raised from the ground, dividing her domain into two, sessfully separating the two high stage Ster ranked enemies from each other.

    She didn''t do this earlier, because that would have eliminated the advantage she had, due to the ipatibility of the affinities of the enemies, if they didn''t have to worry about their elements shing against each other, they will both summon their domains at their maximum output to worn out Aurora''s one.

    But with Thea participating in the battle now, there was no need to worry about that, because the enemy won''t have attention to spare, to attack Aurora''s domain while fighting with her.

    The ck robed guy saw that he was now isted from the masked guy and he sinisterlyughed.

    "You just lost your advantage, without that annoying ck mist in my way, I can go all out!", since the elegant ck-haired woman arrived to this battlefield so fast, she must have had easily defeated Fabio and Milo, so the ck robed guy didn''t underestimate her, even if she was one realm lower than him, he saw how his lightning was easily blocked earlier.

    "I don''t believe you can keep controlling the space under a lightning storm!", shouted the ck robed guy, his body exploded in dark blue electricity, as his domain which had the form of a lightning storm formed behind of him.

    The whole area was flooded in lightning that even engulfed Thea, covering her little inparison, pretty figure for a moment.

    Seeing that his sudden attack took his opponent by surprise, the ck robed thunderouslyughed, as he released even more electricity, the idea was to not leave the opponent even react, and fry it to death.

    "It''s a shame that such a pretty woman will end up as a burned corpse, but whatever, once I be a Maximum Ster ranked, what woman will be out of my reach¡­", the hoping voice of the man behind the ck robe was interrupted as he dodged at his right, avoiding by a few millimeters a line of ck light that was aimed at his chest.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Or so he thought, but he then felt a horrible paining from his shoulder where a clean hole appeared.

    "Damn it all, that hurts bitch!", shouted the man as he saw Theaing out of the lightning storm,pletely unscathed, there was a thinyer of darkness covering Thea''s beautiful body and any lightning that approached her was absorbed by it to never be seen again.

    Thea rolled her spear on her hand and a ck portal was created due to her maneuver; arge quantity of electricity was ripped apart from the domain of the enemy just like that.

    "Royal Fang, Dimensional Chasing Hydra!".

    She then turned into a line of ck light that charged towards the enemy, her figure formed a giant ck snake made out of darkness.

    Wherever that darkness snake figure passed, the lighting was erased, which made the ck robed guy''s face became unsightly, his mana decreased every time his lightning was erased.

    In other words, unless his lightning was strong enough to make the flying mass of darkness what controlling a spatial breach, unstable, his domain was useless.

    "Fuck!", the ck robed guy took out his weapon, a dark blue saber and charged while his body exploded in blue electricity, the best way to deal with a space user is with attacks that have mass, but lightning isn''t known for being heavy, so the only way he had to counter Thea''s fighting style was using his weapon to fight at close range.

    In a sense, Thea''s fighting style is simr to Aura''s one, their elements are incredibly fierce, but in exchange theyck in the wide area of affectation department, so they adapted to force their enemies to fight them in closebat.

    Aura used her insane lightning-like speed to hunt her enemies down, like a proud wolf attacking its prey head on, Thea on the other hand, took advantage of the unpredictable property of her space-oriented darkness to take the enemies by surprise, with attacks that ignored distance due to her portals.

    You might think that the giant darkness snake that is charging towards the ck robed guy is too showy to take the enemy by surprise, especially since she is fighting against the fastest type of enemy, one with lightning affinity.

    But who said that Thea was inside that giant darkness snake?

    The ck robed guy suddenly had a bad premonition and all the rms in his heart screamed in danger, a ck portal appeared below him from which the giant head of a snake came out opening its snout trying to bite off a piece of the body of the enemy.

    "Humph, do I look that stupid to you!", the ck robed guy became a current of blue electricity that escaped from the encirclement of the two giant darkness snakes, on time.

    But before then he felt danger behind of him and tried to escape once again, unfortunately this time he was one step toote, a ck portal appeared behind of him, and a ck spear came from within it, piercing his stomach and pinning him against one of the walls of Aurora''s domain, due to the force behind of it.

    "Blegh!", the guy vomited bloodbined with small pieces of internal organs, due to the impact, the physical strength of a direct descendant of a magic beast that has taken human form, like Thea is no joke after all.

    But that''s not what mattered, he had an expression of disbelief behind that ck robe, as he saw the ck-haired woman who slowly came out of a horizontal portal in front of him.

    "I-Impossible, you can''t have enough control over space to move yourself and otherpletely separate objects like that¡­ you aren''t even a high stage Ster mage", he slowly spat out.

    Moving through space requires a lot of focus, if one gets distracted a small error can send you a few kilometers away from your original destination, the ck robed guy couldn''t believe that Thea was skilled enough to sent her spear through space, while she was also moving through it, into the head of the giant darkness snake that appeared below him.

    Thea snorted, why should she exin her powers to an enemy, she has heard Daimon saying many times that idiots lose because they talk too much during a battle, so her only response was pointing her pretty elegant finger at the ck guy''s chest, to shot a line of ck light.

    "Aghhhh!", upon impact a hole the size of a beach balloon opened on the chest of the ck robed guy, it''s not like the guy didn''t want to dodge but he couldn''t, once the spear pierced him, it was as if a mountain was pressing down on him.

    Thea won''t exin it, but that is one of her strongest spells called "Space Shackles" which as its name states, makes the nearby space act as a lock, fixating the target on the spot, naturally such a strong spell has a downside to it, which is that she has to touch the enemy for it to work.

    In this case, her treasured ck spear acted as an extension of her, so the moment the spear touched the enemy, the fight was over, there is also the fact that with the spear inside of the stomach of the ck robed guy, Thea just had to give the order and a portal would have opened inside of him, separating his body in two parts.

    Annoyed by the pained screams and insultsing from the ck robed figure, Thea retrieved her spear and then smacked the no head extreme, making a few teeth fly out of the mouth of the enemy.

    The hood of the ck robe stopped covering the face of the enemy due to the strong impact, revealing how he looked.

    Surprisingly, it had some sea magic beast characteristics, in this case a small pair of fins of his neck and spiked teeth simr to those of a snake as well as ck eyes without any white, judging by its lightning attribute, Thea thought he was a descendant of an electric eel magic beast kind of race.

    But she hasn''t heard of any race that haspletely ck eyes like those in any of the snake type of races, either at the Maelstrom or Mermen Seas.

    Seeing that the guy had fainted Thea shrugged, she used a lot of mana earlier and judging by the explosions of mana at the other side of the wall, Aurora was about to end her fight too, so she just pointed at the now fainted guy and both of them disappeared from Aurora''s domain.

    She then came out of a portal near where Marlene was, the defeated enemy which was frozen, as if something was keeping him in that position, floated next to her.

    She just casually entered the barrier created by Aurora and then gave Daimon an expecting gaze, which made thetter chuckle as he handed her one of the wooden tubs that contained three-colored water.

    The Empress sweetly smiled and after keeping her "reward" in her storage ring, she left the barrier and sat next to Marlene as she took a sip of a bottle, without forgetting to offer her friend.

    One must know that Thea really values her drinks, and those with whom she is willing to share a cup are really scarce, Karmandi, Lina and Marlene being the previous only three, until Daimon caught her interesttely.

    Marlene didn''t refuse, after the rollercoaster of emotions that she has experienced recently a drink didn''t sound like a bad idea, and using the three-colored water they won''t get drunk, so there was no problem.

    Thea was using it as a recement of a mana potion, but Marlene simply drank while she contemted what the future awaited to her n that lost the ce they considered their home, ever since they escaped from the Mermen Sea.

    ''I guess we can always go live at a new gxy where no one knows about that stupid superstition'', she thought as she stole a gaze at the "empty" space behind of her, where Daimon and the others waited for the battle to be over.

 Chapter 452 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 5)

    ?

    While Daimon and the others waited at ground level, past above the clouds inside of the cubic white fortress, a battle of huge proportions was taking part.

    The atmosphere itself trembled as the dark mist radiated by the masked guy shed with Aurora''s light mana, producing an aggressive reaction.

    "Hissss!", a sizzling sound simr to the one produced by an acid dissolving something, but a thousand times amplified came from the point of the contact between the two different elements.

    But there was a difference, while the masked guy was slowly but surely losing his ground, Aurora was calmly suppressing her enemy.

    That being said, behind that calm expression of hers, she was furious and the next words of the masked guy were thest drop.

    "Fucking hell, if only those idiots did their job to capture that little inferior being, this nuisance would have been out of our way", he venomously spat.

    For the masked guy, it was obvious that his temporary ally lost to the woman that could bend space at will, because there were no more explosions of mana that could be perceived from the other side of the wall that Aurora created to separate them.

    If the ck robed guy had won, then he would have been bombarding Aurora''s domain with lightning at all moments, so that she is worn out as that is their best chance to win, but since that wasn''t the case, then it''s obvious who lost and who won.

    The only constion the masked guy had was, that even if this "vessel" died, he will be fine, that''s right, this one was one of the Nethereals that did have one of those ck spheres as the core of its existence, granting him almost full immunity against pain, unlike Roger who was artificially made and so didn''t have it.

    Unfortunately, this time he miscalcted, Aurora has been trying to find a Nethereal with a rtively high position, one that would probably be able to provide more information regarding the enemy, and the words the guy said right now had two different meanings.

    First, this guy was on a different levelpared to the previous Nethereals they have met, and second, he was involved with the ones that tried to kidnap Jasmine, and so he was a valuable source of information, but first of all he was¡­ a good way for Aurora to vent out some anger.

    "Mm?", the masked guy suddenly noticed that the light which was shing with his "Nether", stopped pushing forwards, which of course weirded him out, but he didn''t stop in the ceremony and released more ck mist until the whole area was covered on it.

    "I don''t know what are you nning, but I can tell you it''s not going to work, you can''t do anything to me", confidently said the masked guy as he searched for Aurora, which wasn''t such a hard task, because a moving spot of bright white light is easy to notice within a sea of ck mist.

    Right now, Aurora was covered in a thinyer of white light, she didn''t seem to be that different from before, but without anyone noticing, the outside of her domain had changed, the shields that were decorating the outer walls of the fortress had extended andbined, it had also stopped radiating light, but in exchange it started exuding an invisible pressure that dispelled all the nearby clouds.

    From below, Daimon suddenly frowned as he raised his head, Bell, Sarah, Aisha, Ivonne, Jasmine and Thea did the same.

    "It seems she is eager to test the results of our little experiment", casually said Daimon.

    "Grandma is angry", mumbled Jasmine, which made the others that could feel the subtle change on the sensation the white fortress was giving off, due to a variety of reasons.

    "It''s been a while since I saw aunt being on the offensive", added Bell.

    ¡­

    Back at the inside of the white fortress, the previously battle of attrition had taken a 180¡ã change, instead of that, there was a white sh of light chasing an agglomeration of ck mist all over the ce.

    Aurora had removed any walls to liberate some space which originally made the masked guy celebrate, thinking that she maybe spent too much mana into separating him from the ck robed guy earlier, but that wasn''t.

    The white spot of light suddenly dispersed into countless white particles and the next thing the Nethereal knew, was that a giant mirror-like surface covered the walls, ground and roof of the castle.

    And then in a sh of white light Aurora appeared out of thin air in front of him, but the Nethereal saw her retrieving her hand to form a fist, which made him snort, a mage was trying to punch him whose body is immune to physical pain, what''s worse is that she wasn''t using any light mana to attack him.

    But then the next scene made his brain freeze, or in this case shake, because the moment Aurora''s fist connected with his masked face, a cubic barrier appeared on her hand and shed against the mask, destroying it on the process and sending the now maskless guy flying a few hundreds of meters.

    The attack wasn''t over though, before the Nethereal could process what just happened, Aurora was already waiting for him, and this time she impacted her forearm against the face of the Nethereal, which had new characteristics,pared to the others they had met, meaning it was yet another type, but right now that didn''t matter.

    That cubic barrier covered Aurora''s forearm, and to the Nethereal''s surprise and horror, the impact not only sent him flying once again, but his nose was broken which is normal considering the amount of force behind the impact, what is not normal is that there was a warm liquiding out of his nose, he was bleeding!

    ''I-Impossible, she might be the strongest light user of this inferior, but at most she should be able to burn our vessels!'', inwardly screamed the Nethereal.

    Unfortunatley for him, Aurora didn''t give him time topose himself, she once again dposed into light particles and then appeared behind the Nethereal, this time she kicked him on the stomach, once again that barrier covered the area of impact, and the stomach of the Nethereal dented inward.

    "Gahhhh!", the Nethereal was horrified as he felt he wascking air due to the harsh impact.

    "What the hell is this, how can you make me experience the sensations you inferior beings experience!", he shouted, but Aurora''s answer was another punch on the face, which this time make a couple of teeth flew out of the mouth of the Nethereal.

    And that led to the current scene in which the battered figure that was hidden into that agglomeration, was desperately running away of a fierce sh of light that didn''t stop chasing after it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The Nethereal who had many bruises on his face, broken ribs, busted nose and quite a few teeth missing, tried to look for a way to runaway from this ce, he also tried to contact his superior to inform of a horrifying discovery he made, the inferior beings they despised so much found a way to harm them, but none of the previous was possible for him.

    "Damn it all, how can that woman keep such a tight restriction over space after fighting that idiot, did he didn''t even tire her out fucking useless piece of trash!", the Nethereal was at the end of the rope.

    There are many reasons as to why Daimon doesn''t rely on the passive Dull Nerves, when one doesn''t feel pain, senses deteriorate, because there is no need to worry about being wounded, since there is no obvious punishment, also there is no need for courage to fight when nothing can harm you, and that made this Nethereal runaway in despair since he was experiencing something he never expected from someone he looked down upon, pain.

    Naturally that doesn''t mean Daimon likes pain, Dull Nerves is a great anti-measure for recovery or ast resort for when he has to put his life on the line, in a do or die kind of situation, the only one that is crazy enough to put herself into dangerous situations willingly, so far, is Sarah, but she is a bad example considering that even for Nethereal standards she is a weird one.

    Suddenly the sh of light doubled its speed, cutting the way of the Nethereal and before he could react a fistnded on his face, white shields covered a spherical area of around thirty meters, after Auroranded the first hit, she shed and then appeared in apletely opposite direction, just in time to use her knee to hit the stomach of the Nethereal.

    Once she started, she didn''t stop, her image shed all over the area encircled by those white shields and each time, shended a heavy hit on the enemy.

    "What "Experience what we feel", this isn''t even near to the pain I felt when you, abominations killed my daughter, but don''t worry, when we finish with you, you''ll be able to understand us way much better, including the sensation of death!".

    After hitting the Nethereal to the content of her heart, which resulted in literal holes in the body of thetter due to the constant impacts, which turned the Nethereal into a bloody pulp, the ck sphere naturally tried to escape, but then Aurora who emerged from the white sh close her hand and the shields that were previously being used for her technique, created light walls connecting each other to form a dodecahedron, that trapped the ck sphere.

    The ck sphere started shing against light walls trying to escape, Aurora simply snapped her fingers and the previouslyrge dodecahedron shrank until it was tightly wrapped around, he ck sphere, but she didn''t stop there and actually forced the dodecahedron to shrank to the point that it was applying an insane pressure around the core.

    "Aghhhh!", a pained scream came from the ck sphere, before it finally stopped moving, ording to Daimon, these ck spheres probably contained the consciousness of the Nethereals, that or they were their real bodies, or part of them, more investigation was needed.

    What was 100% sure, is that if these ck spheres were destroyed, then they will truly die, Daimon confirmed it because the Nethereal that was put under a terror contract by him, was removed from the list after the curse activated, so he was as dead as one can be.

    The white dodecahedron flew towards Aurora''s hands andnded on it, at the same time the cubic white fortress dispelled into many white shards that returned to Aurora''s body.

    "I might have overdone it a bit, I could have trapped it from the very beginning¡­ whatever "field tests" were needed anyway and I do feel quite refreshed", mumbled the Matriarch of the Light Pce.

    The brutal beating wasn''t strictly necessary, she could have trapped the Nethereal and then crush his body until only the ck sphere was left, but she wanted to personally give a few punches to these guys, and she also needed to test something they discovered thanks to Roger.

    And it worked like a charm, which meant they now had a way to fight back, so she will be contacting Sylvie so that everyone past the mortal realm starts training in a very specific way.

    Aurora descended from the sky and thennded next to Thea, the barrier she ced around Daimon and the others earlier, dispelled revealing them to the young members of the angelfish n, as well as the two elders, that now confirmed there was a man apanying Marlene.

    Speaking of Marlene, she turned to see Thea who nodded at her, before they both gazed at Daimon.

    "We are going to take the other girls out of the barrier", they said.

    "I''ll gather and restrain all the prisoners together, little Bell, lend me a hand", added Aurora who seemed to be in a good mood.

    Daimon nodded, as he disappeared from where he was standing,nding on the deck of one of the many ships that were surrounding the hideout of the angelfish n, the next scenario required him to do some preparations, and the first one was a tragic battlefield.

    He took out his mirror te and then sent a message, in response to it a portal appeared in front of him, from which two figures came out, it was Remi and Roger.

    Remi kneeled down in font of Daimon, while Roger was forced to put his face on the ground by Remi.

    "Roger, go destroy those ships with your ck mist exclusively, you supervise him, you know what to do if he tries anything funny".

    "Yes, young master", answered Remi, who was now wearing a mask, Daimon didn''t refer to him by his name of course, after that Daimon used blink again to appear on the ship where Fabio and Milo wereying down fainted.

    Thea earlier took their storage rings just in case, and they couldn''t leave ormunicate due to her spatial restriction which still in ce, but didn''t affect those that were recognized as allies, so even if they woke up there was anything they could do.

    Aurora restrained Fabio and then brought him away, while Daimon grabbed Milo by his neck and then he smacked him against the deck of the ship.

    "Aghh!", the pain actually woke up the ck and orange haired guy, whose eyes opened just to see a silver haired young man with a mask smirking at him.

    "I have a job for you", said Daimon.

    Milo saw the malicious smile on the face of the silver haired youth and he had a bad premonition, unfortunately even if he was alive thanks to his magic beast ascendance, he was so weakened that any Lord rand would be able to kill him, Thea damaged him to that point, on purpose of course.

    So, he had no other choice toply to keep his life, little did he know that at this point, death might have been a better optionpared to what he will experienceter, but for now he listened to Daimon''s instructions and obediently used his fire to burn down one of the ships.

 Chapter 453 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 6)

    ?

    While Daimon prepared a tragic scene of "betrayal" between Marcus and the scheming guy''s forces, Thea and Marlene flew towards the entrance of the angelfish n''s hideout.

    Naturally in her current state Marlene couldn''t fly so Thea was helping her to, which made Thea question her friend.

    "Why haven''t you returned the "Arch" ranks, with the time you have spent at the main residence of the Flying Citadel it should have been enough?".

    Though Marlene seemed to have been justzing around on her bed, besides the times when she was chatting and ying with the other girls, the truth is that she also meditated, akin to her carefree attitude she didn''t have to adopt the sitting cross-legged position that most mages have to use to be able to concentrate, until they reach the Arch ranks where they can gather mana all the time, like Daimon.

    "I tried to but¡­ it''s not working, mother told me that if I used that ability things will be much moreplicated, but I didn''t know it will be to this extent", mumbled Marlene as she looked at herself.

    Thea nodded with a contemtive expression on her face, there is so many strange things in the world, and they know so little about their lineages, her included, that is not rare to find new things about themselves.

    Unfortunately, this is a bad moment to be stuck on the Lord ranks, for someone that has a n to protect, which has put a lor of strain on Marlene''s shoulders.

    Deciding to leave this conversation forter, they focused on the positive thing that they had in front of them, which is the fact that practically the whole angelfish n is safe and sound.

    The young girls of the angelfish n saw Marlene and Thea arrive in front of them and they all happily weed them, the two elders were also relieved to see that the enemies were defeated.

    Thea rolled her spear and then pierced the space in front of her, after some effort she ripped apart a two-meter line on the structure of the space and a ck portal that led inside of the barrier that was protecting the hideout formed.

    The control of the barrier was destroyed earlier thanks to the quick thinking of one of the girls that was on guard, so even if Lora somehow altered the array, she couldn''t open the barrier like how she brought outsiders with her, despite she not originally possessing the authority to do so.

    And ironically the girl which frustrated the traitor elder, was one of the members of the marine angelfish branch, as her dark green with some ck hair bangs of hair suggested.

    Thea and Marlene entered the hideout using the portal, once inside while Marlene went to meet her n members, Thea casually shed her spear at a white cube that wad floating near the entrance of the hideout, that was the control of the barrier which had been shut down using the emergency function.

    Once that was activated it won''t respond to anymand for the next 24 hours, so it was futile to try and make it work, and Daimon already exined that they couldn''t leave anything behind, so it was better to destroy it.

    Thea''s spear ignored the barrier that had appeared around the control device and pierced the white cube, which then shone in red light before it crumbled apart.

    "Crack!", the sound of crystal shattering echoed through the nearby area as the invisible barrier that was surrounding the hideout was destroyed.

    In the meantime, Marlene was received by the two elders, though technically they were her subordinates, for Marlene and for all the others they were more like their mothers or aunts, so rank didn''t matter in this case, at least not for Marlene.

    "Lass, its good to see you are fine", said the two elders as they both hugged Marlene, Miriam who is Marlene''s foster mother and the elder of the Bellus angelfish branch is tall, reaching around 1.9 meters of height, she has gray and blue hair as well as blue eyes, despite her role as a mother figure she looks quite young as it appears to be in between herte twenties and early thirties, like all the members of the angelfish n she has quite decent looks.

    The other woman who is hugging Marlene right now is the elder Laura, who belongs to the Altum angelfish branch, her hair color is a mix of yellow and dark grey as well as light amber colored eyes, which makes her look rebellious simr to Marlene, while Miriam has always been the strict and responsible figure, Laura is a bit moreid back having the vibe of a young permissive aunt, she seems to be in herte twenties and simr to Miriam, she is quite pretty, though shorter on height being just a few centimeters taller than Marlene who right now barely reached 1.75 meters of height.

    Leaving aside the happy moment, they let go of Marlene and then turned to see the peaceful "sleeping" figure of a woman who wasying down on the ground near them, everything would have been fine if not for the fact that she had a wound on her chest, which had been cleaned and patched by the two elders, but it was toote as herck of breathing suggested, something worth mentioning is that she was smiling.

    That was the elder of the me angelfish n, Tara, who died due to the surprise attackunched by the Nethereal army, she had orange and ck hair, and was the second oldest of the n after Miriam.

    "Sister Marlene the elder¡­ she pushed me away, the attack would have killed me if not for her", said a star ranked and one of the youngest looking girls of the bunch, that belonged to the Marine angelfish branch, in other words to Lora''s branch, she was apanied by a girl on herte teen age who was missing an arm, they both bowed down towards Marlene.

    Turns out that when they were attacked, it was Tara''s turn to supervise the little girls on their daily time outside of the hideout, the elder saved this girl in exchange of her life, she couldn''t dodge in time anyway, but the attack might have had missed her vitals if she didn''t move.

    That''s why Milo and Fabio were discussing earlies, Fabiounched a surprise attack that wasn''t in the ns, with the intention of "marking" his prey, he never thought that one of the elders would sacrifice herself to protect a mere star ranked little girl, that wouldn''t have endured a "suppression" attack.

    In a sense that scene also made the guard in turn, which is the older sister of that girl, decisively risk her life to shut down the barrier, despite Lora shouting the members of her branch to not do anything, which resulted on their ns being frustrated and them being captured right now, also the guard girl lost her arm because she was hit by one of the many attacks.

    Marlene took a moment to calm down, before patted the head of the little girl, to help her stop sobbing.

    "It''s fine, you didn''t do anything wrong, aunt Tara protected you with her life, so the best way you can repay her for that is continue living, treasure this opportunity she gave you", said Marlene, which made the little girl break down in tears.

    That also helped the knot in the heart of the other members of the me angelfish branch disappear, their mother figure died because of a member of the Marine branch, these girls who were too sheltered got to know hatred today, and some were wrongly directing it to their npanions that were part of Lora''s branch.

    They couldn''t be med though, they were in pain right now, but after listening to Marlene they realized the other members of the Marine branch were innocent, they were attacked too after all, the only one to me was Lora.

    "Aunt Tara will be properly buried with all the honorster, for now bring only the important things you have, we are leaving in fifteen minutes", ordered Marlene.

    All the young girls whose expressions were a bit more rxed now, rushed to their respective rooms, previously they didn''t bother to take anything, since they were all going to explode along the hideout, but they all had personal things they treasured as they were legated by their mothers and ancestors.

    The two elders remained at Marlene''s side, the riches of the n were divided on the persona rings of the four elders, and they always had their things with themselves, so they didn''t need to pick anything else.

    "This is Tara''s ring", said Miriam as she handed Marlene the storage ring of the deceased elder, which Marlene heavily epted, she also noticed both elders clearly had questions to ask, which she pretty much expected to begin with.

    "Go ahead, you two", she said, the first one to talk was Miriam.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Lass, what''s the deal with that masked kid, he said he was your friend?", she asked, the Marlene she knows would have not be friends with a man so easily, so she wanted to know what could have happened to change that, over such a short period of time.

    "I can tell you the whole storyter, but basically I lost not only most of my powers but also my memory, even my appearance changed everything in exchange of saving my life, and he was the one that saved me, even Thea couldn''t recognize me back then", she said.

    The "Marlene" that was bought by Pablo wasn''t her, she didn''t have her memories, but after she changed back, she preserved the memories of that period of time, so she knew what would have happened to her, if Daimon wouldn''t have appeared, her innate ability would have run out of options at some point after all.

    "Also, he has gotten the trust of the queen and the Trident Marshal of the Mermen Sea as well as the Matriarch of the Light Pce, I previously entered the alliance as an individual thanks to my rtionship with Thea, but now¡­".

    The two elders understood what Marlene tried to say and they were surprised, earlier they supposed Aurora was from the Light Pce, but only now they realized she was their Matriarch, in other words one of the few Maximum Ster ranks, not to mention even they know about Vincent, which makes two Maximum Ster ranks, and judging by Marlene''s exnation that wasn''t everything.

    "Why would he help us, we have nothing to offer", said Laura, they couldn''t take things lightly, the fates of all the other girls were in their hands after all.

    "Because Marlene is our friend", their conversation was interrupted by four girls that entered the hideout, the one who talked was none other than Aisha, next to her there were, Mellie, Jasmine and Daphne.

    "They are?", Miriam turned to see Marlene and asked her who the neers were, because she could tell they weren''t simple, she an early-stage Arch rank, felt threatened by these young girls after all.

    "Gabriel''s sister, and the princesses of the Clear Water kingdom as well as the Light Pce", mumbled Marlene.

    Daimon knew Marlene''s n members will doubt about his motives, but if he just said that he did as he pleased, they will of course have a hard time believing him, so he sent the girls to speak on his behalf.

    Just in time for the young members of the angelfish n to return from their rooms, because they were ready to leave, their eyes were naturally attracted by Aisha and the others, they never got to interact with others after all.

    "He is also my newest general", added Thea who had finished what she had to do.

    The two elders stared at each other and then nodded at Marlene, they were going to follow her anyway, but they wanted to know who will they be going with.

    "We''ll continue our conversationter,dy Aurora brought the legacy treasure of the Light Pce and we''ll be temporarily staying there", said Marlene.

    The eyes of the other members of the angelfish n sparkled, they have heard some stories from the elders about some of the most interesting things of the outside world, and the Flying Citadel is one of them, so they were of course curious about it.

    With Thea and the two elder''s help, all the girls flew towards the rock formation where the Risha sisters and the others were waiting, they left the hideout just in time to see Daimon appearing on the air while he had Milo grabbed by his neck, with a wave of Daimon''s hand the ships that weren''t used to recreate a tragic battle were brought into the inventory.

    After that Daimon''s image shed and he appeared next to Aisha and the princesses who were standing on top of the blood bat, taking not only the young girls by surprise, but even the two elders as well as Marlene and even Thea.

    They haven''t seen Daimon using blink before, unlike Mellie and the others after all.

    "That was a spatial moving technique", mumbled Miriam, out of all the members of the angelfish n she was the most informed, besides Marlene of course, movement techniques don''t allow Lord ranks to move upwards.

    Lord ranks might glide by jumping and then using a movement spell to advance frontwards, but they will end up a few centimeters or even a meter downwards,pared to their previous position, but Daimon was in a lower spot when used blink to appear on top of the blood bat, which is impossible to do with a movement spell, when one is midair without anything to use as support to jump.

    Thea''s eyes sparkled as she gazed at Daimon but she didn''t say anything, while the young girls from the angelfish n curiously looked at the masked silver haired youth, it''s not like they didn''t know about men, but this is in fact the first time they see one in person.

    Well, they have seen Karmandi from afar a couple of times when Thea came to visit, but the snake general wasn''t in human form, so it doesn''t count.

    Daimon nodded at Marlene as she pointed at Milo who was hanging out of the back of the blood bat on the air, being grabbed by his nick by Daimon.

    "We''ll use this guy''s mes and Roger''s ck mist to destroy the whole area so that the "scenery" ispleted, if those two think the other had captured your n, they will aim at each other''s throats to get them back, worst case scenario they will stop looking for them, thinking that they are dead", said Daimon.

    "Mm, thanks", said Marlene with a sweet smile on her face, though their home will be destroyed, it will be for a good reason, which is divert the attention of their persecutors from them.

    Once they reached the rock formations where the others were standing, all the gazes fell on the miserable looking green haired elder, Lora, she was soaked and shivering due to having been floating on the cold water, there were traces of blood on her mouth and nose, from when she was hit by Aurora''s pressure, and the hatred on her gaze made her look like an evil spirit.

    But her punishment could wait, so after coldly ring at her, Marlene gave onest gaze at her childhood home, before she nodded at Daimon.

    "Hurry up and do it", said Daimon as he tightened his grip on Milo''s neck, making thetter cough.

    The ck and orange haired guy produced mes and threw them at the hideout, while Remi who was grabbing Roger in a simr way as Daimon, did the same, obviously the proportion of damage caused by the mes was lowerpared to the one caused by the ck mist.

    But that''s what Daimon wanted, for his n to work the scheming guy should be the "winner" of the imaginary battle that he created, because he wanted to mess with Marcus''s pride, the idea was to provoke him so that he will harshly react and attack the other party.

    In part because they somewhat reached a mutual agreement this time, and that is something Daimon doesn''t want to see, so with this, such a situation will never repeat again.

    Naturally he still had ast personal touch for that, which made Milo sudden feel a shiver running down his spine.

 Chapter 454 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 7)

    ?

    After a few minutes of constant attacks from Milo and Roger, the hideout of the angelfish n was pretty damaged, only then Daimon nodded at Marlene who gave the order to the two elders.

    "Detonate it now".

    Miriam and Laura had prepared for this since the moment they were betrayed by Lora, but at the moment of truth it would be a lie to say they didn''t feel reluctant to blow up the ce where they have lived all their lives.

    Still, they had a duty to fulfill and also, they had to honor the sacrifice of theirte friend, so they didn''t allow themselves to be lost for too much time, they both took out scrolls of different colors.

    Miriam had two while Laura only had one, the reason is pretty simple, Miriam took the one from the dead elder Tara, after opening them they made slight cuts on their palms and ced them on the papers.

    Only three elders were needed to self-destruct the hideout, and Miriam who was Tara''s best friend had the authority to rece her, so she activated her scroll, they could have used Lora''s, but they no longer considered her a member of the angelfish n.

    The hideout started trembling and then it crumbled apart, the surface of the sea waved as the underwater cave to which the entrance led, copsed, in a matter of seconds, the ce a whole n called home, no longer existed and the sadness was obvious on the eyes of the young girls.

    Thea tapped the end of her spear on the ground and a portal appeared behind of them, the other side showed a glorious silver-like city which was clearly floating on the sky.

    Marlene knew her friend was trying to cheer up her n members, so she smiled at the ck Empress before she spoke to her n.

    "Let''s go to our new home", the young girls followed Marlene and the two elders though the portal, only then Daimon and the others crossed, including Aurora who had a white light cage floating next to her.

    Each captive was tightly restrained by light chains, and most were heavily wounded.

    Once they reached the other side, everyone appeared on the outer ring of the Flying Citadel, surprisingly, even Thea couldn''t bypass the barrier around the inner ring, without Aurora''s permission of course.

    The young girls of Marlene''s n were eager to run to the border of the Citadel to look at the sky, even if it was night, they Citadel was floating above the clouds so the sky was clear for them, but before that ording to what Marlene had agreed, with Thea''s help, all the young girls and the two remaining elders signed a contract to join the alliance.

    Marlene and the two elders were relieved to see that none of the girls refused, and none got backsh, meaning that none had any traitorous intentions, Marlene knew that Daimon wasn''t going to let any traitor live, so she was relieved that Lora didn''t manage to corrupt any of the others, her n was already small, so every loss made them closer to go extinct.

    With that sorted out the young girls were allowed to explore the nearby area as the pleased, it was a way to help them get distracted and cheer up after what they went through.

    "Besides these two, bring the new guests to their cells", said Daimon to Remi as he pointed at Milo and Lora, the ck robed guy as well as the Nethereal and those rted to them, will be kept in the prison, because their interrogation will be more "sensible".

    But these two had a blood debt to pay to the angelfish n, so they will be interrogated in the presence of Marlene and the two elders, out of respect.

    Naturally Aurora didn''t want to bring any violence into the inner ring of the Citadel, so she guided everyone to one of the many open areas on the outer ring, a small amphitheater, the two captives were forced to kneel on the center, while Daimon and the others sat on the first row of seats.

    "I''m not trying to offed you,dies, but I''m also not going to lie, things will get bloody here, so if you want to leave, now is the moment", said Daimon to the Risha sisters and the princesses, while he dodged to the side, avoiding Sarah who jumped at him from behind, making her fall gracelessly on the ground of the amphitheater.

    The crazy girl was scolded by her mother and then she returned to her seat, those two directed ck Wave in secret, so Daimon didn''t bother to include them into consideration, besides Sarah didn''t seem like the type of girl that will pale over a bloody scene, in fact she might be delighted by it.

    Seeing that the sisters and the others had determined expressions on their pretty faces, Daimon shrugged, while Aisha inwardly giggled.

    ''They are stronger than what you think darling, even if they don''t enjoy killing, they have all gone through that test already'', she said through the mental connection.

    Daimon didn''t answer, being strong doesn''t mean one has to enjoy carnage, but there is a difference between killing for fun and killing for self-protection, Daimon might not be a saint, in fact he has never pitied or felt bad towards his enemies, but he doesn''t kill on a whim.

    Even when he was torturing Roger, he didn''t even flinch despite how much the guy begged, cried and cursed, but that doesn''t mean he found joy in doing it, it was just something he needed to do, and so he did, it is as simple as that.

    The only one he really wanted to rip to shreds and was unsure whether he will enjoy it or not, was Victor and his father, but that is a mental battle Daimon will have to face in the future, so leaving that aside he directly gazed at Milo.

    "Miss Thea, can you do the honors, please".

    "Mm", the ck Empress nodded, her right pupil turned blood red as she used her ability, and then a smile formed on her pretty face.

    "I can see it; besides the useless contracts he has signed in his pathetic life, there is a loyalty curse, and is pretty recent too", she proudly said.

    Roger benefitted not only Aurora but also the Empress, as they both learned a couple of things thanks to his "contributions".

    "Aghhhh!", Milo''s face became red, veins bulged on his neck and then he spat a mouthful of blood, as Thea erased the curse which Marcus had ced on him.

    The reaction was quite violent, but it wasn''t that bad considering Thea just modified her eye spell recently, and still needed some adjustments and corrections.

    Once Thea nodded indicating Daimon that she had finished her job, the interrogation started, and the first question was made by Daimon of course.

    "So, why is a member of the angelfish n working for that idiot, tell me everything you know", casually said Daimon, which made Miriam and Laura look at Daimon in disbelief.

    Marlene was also surprised, but she had this weird familiar sensationing from Milo, which she couldn''t understand until now.

    But they weren''t the only surprised ones, Milo himself was in awe, no one besides his now dead ancestors and the Lord they had been waiting for countless generations, knew their secret, so howe this masked silver haired youth knew it, he wondered.

    For a moment he thought of keeping his mouth shut, if the enemy wanted the information he had, then he will be kept alive, so it was a good way to save himself, that''s what he thought until he suddenly felt a horrible paining from his abdomen.

    Milo looked downwards just to she a thin line of white light piercing his abdomen, a millisecondter, his mouth forcefully opened as a pained scream escaped from it.

    "Aghhhh!", Olivia was the one watching over them, since Remi was busy amodating the new prisoners, naturally this would have been Horals''s job, but the bone general wasn''t here for the time being.

    "I made a professional assassin beg for his life in less than five minutes, I wonder how much will a former farmer like you will endure", carelessly said Daimon, as if he wasn''t talking about torturing someone.

    Not even a minuteter, Milo who was already crying shouted.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "I-I will talk, make it stop, please!", the torture wasn''t exactly bloody, Daimon just left a thin line of Demon Light enter Milo''s body and then waited, he still needed the guy to be sane to answer after all.

    And earlier after the few movements Milo exchanged with Thea, Daimon concluded that the guy sucked at battle, he only had a high realm but zero battle experience and zero technique, thatbined with the fact that Daimon could feel Marcus system''s auraing from him, made Daimon realize this Milo guy was probably one of the "advantages" that was prepared for him in Neptune, but things didn''t go as nned, probably because he interfered with Adam''s mission, which triggered a ripple effect that affected Marcus too.

    The girls didn''t seem to be too impacted by the previous torture session, of course Daimon made it "lighter" and easier to watch, besides them, the two elders were surprised to see a Ster ranked, a being which they could only admire from afar, beg for mercy so quick.

    And the words of the masked youth had an even bigger impact, as he mentioned that this Ster rank, was a farmer, why would someone that has reached such a high realm do such mundane things they wondered.

    Even early stage Sters were respected and feared, there might be many stuck at the early stage, but there are even more stuck at the mortal realms, so entering the Ster realms isn''t a small achievement as they are the pir of a family or force.

    Milo felt humiliated, he thought that after the person which his family has been waiting for countless generations arrived, he will no longer have to be reminded of his shameful past, but he was forced to speak about it, still the cold re of the silver haired masked youth made him grit his teeth as he spoke.

    "Like that woman, I''m from the royal branch of the angelfish n, but while she belongs to the Queen branch, I''m from the King Branch", he said as he gazed at Marlene.

    Daimon had pretty much already guessed it, but Marlene and the two elders were lost for a couple of seconds, the first one to react was Miriam.

    "Nonsense, in the records of our n there have never been males born, if the baby is a girl, it will be a member of the angelfish n, if the baby is a boy, then it will belong to the race of the father, that''s an iron set rule!", the Bellus elder was a bit agitated as her voice suggested.

    "Hees from a different angelfish n, one that is probably the opposite of yours", Daimon casually said, which made Miriam fell in contemtion, while Milo was terrified.

    ''Just who is this guy, how can he know so much about us!'', he inwardly screamed, of course it''s not like Daimon actually knew Milo''s backstory, but he knows Marcus is a system user, so it''s not hard to more or less guess what''s going on.

    Feeling the threatening gaze of Daimon, Milo came out of his daze to continue with his story.

    "Y-Yes, was purely conformed by men, whenever a baby was born a girl, then it would not be a part of our n, however unlike you all we couldn''t get stronger¡­ well, we could meditate and even advance but we''ll only extend our lifespan without being able to exert our power at all, so we lived as farmers in one of the many mobile inds".

    "If you lived through simr situations as us, then why did you attack us, why not try to enter into contact with us instead?", asked the elder Laura, which made Milo snort.

    "You are descendants of a traitor, and the promise passed down by our ancestor is to either enve you or eliminate you on the spot, unfortunately we couldn''t leave the mobile ind in which we lived for that same promise, so we never even had the chance to see you all, that being said we did get to hear about that woman", poisonously answered Milo as he red at Marlene, just to be kicked by Olivia, so that he "behaved".

    The two elders and Marlene frowned, their history records start after with them living in the Clear Water kingdom, after the special trait of that member of the royal branch was discovered by the king of that time, they fled because the nobles coveted them and were nning to enve them all.

    Also, there was another thing that didn''t make sense for them, why were Milo and his family unable to exert their powers, while they could, certainly it was incredibly hard for them to advance, but they weren''tpletely powerless, but weak inparison to other forces, with Marlene being their ultimate genius as she managed to break into the Ster realms, something that no one in their history records achieved before.

    "Why were you unable to use your powers, why were they different in that sense to your n", asked Daimon, his biggest doubt will be solved after he hears the answer to that.

    Milo gritted his teeth as he red at Marlene.

    "Because it was her branch the one that betrayed our master, so as long as there exists someone with that damn lineage alive, you won''t be restrained by that¡­ but don''t be quick to celebrate, you probably know it by now, but in exchange your lifespan is limited and if you have offspring you''ll die not too long after, that is the punishment you deserve, while we can continue living and expanding until our lifespan ends", said Milo with sufficiency.

    Miriam and Laura clenched their fists, what Milo said was true, and that is why there aren''t any "old" members of the angelfish n, their lifespan rounds around three to eight hundred years, which might sound like much, butpared to others is like a tenth of what normally a Lord or Arch rank will live, especially because as descendants of magic beasts, their lives are naturally longer than humans.

    Marlene is around two hundred something years old, while Miriam triples that and Laura more or less double that, the four elders are the ones that are born thest from the previous generation, traditionally they are the daughters of the previous elders, while their generation peers have offspring at the "safe" age of below three hundred years, the elders wait until they feel their death approaching.

    The mothers of most children live to see their daughters first dozen of years, and then die, but the elders act as their foster mothers, raising them as theirs, sometimes the chain breaks and one elder dies before leaving behind a recement, the task is then passed down to another member of their branch.

    Miriam sighed, she has outlived most of the previous elders, but she could feel death approaching her at this point, she hasn''t had the opportunity to mention it to Marlene, but right now it wasn''t the time for that.

    "Then howe you are able to exert your power now, if you are restrained by that promise or whatever?", asked Miriam which made Milo sinisterly smile in response.

    "Because the Lord is back, even if there are very few surviving members of my family, they are all Ster ranks, and my great grandfather is a high stage, the Lord has started to release our limitations, so even if I die you will all be eliminatedter, that''s what you deserve for¡­ aghhhh!".

    Before he could finish his sentence, Daimon shot a white line of light from his index finger, piercing Milo''s right leg.

    "You are getting carried away, limit to answer what is asked to you", said Daimon, which made Milo curse in his heart.

    ''You can bully me all you want, but even that Maximum ranked won''t be able to save you, once the Lordes!'', he thought.

    Daimon could tell what Milo was thinking and he smirked before saying.

    "Let me guess, you believe that Marcus will easily kill me once he finds out about your demise¡­ what a shame, he already lost to me and it was in a 2v1 situation, so you can forget about the illusion of being rescued or avenged".

    Milo''s face paled, the Lord mentioned that no one in Neptune knew his name, besides his subordinates, and that meant this masked guy wasn''t a native of Neptune, in other words, he came from the same ce as his Lord.

    "Y-You, who the hell are you!!!", shouted Milo, Marcus naturally gave his subordinates a description of Adam, the only opponent that is "worthy" in his eyes, and Daimon clearly didn''t match with that, so he isn''t the one Marcus told them to be wary off.

    Daimon had no interest on answering the questions of someone that was going to die, so his answer was another question.

    "What did he sent you to do, I want to hear the same specific words that idiot said, you''ll lose a finger for each letter that is incorrect so, don''t try to y any games".

    Milo was terrified, he knew that if he answered such a specific question, he will be for sure betraying his Lord past the point of return, but if he didn''t, he knew the masked guy wasn''t joking, ultimately, he was too afraid of pain so he obediently answered.

    "I was tasked with capturing as much members of the traitor n as possible, I could keep the ones I wanted as long as I could lure out that woman, who our Lord wanted to kill personally", he said referring to Marlene.

    Daimon nodded, that was everything he needed to know, so heid back against his seat and let Marlene and the two elders do the questions they wanted, because this regarded the history of their n.

 Chapter 455 The Angel Fish Clan Situation (Part 8)

    ?

    Marlene and the two elders immediately made the question that has been bothering them from the very beginning, what''s the history of Milo''s family, because from their point of view they are traitors.

    But they don''t have records of ever serving anyone, in fact that''s why they escaped from the Clear Water kingdom, because they didn''t want to be used, so they can''t imagine their ancestors working for someone that could go as far as to curse them like this.

    Milo wanted to tell the glorified version of the history of his n, but under Daimon''s cold gaze, he didn''t dare to do so and instead told the truth, of which he only knows a part, because despite him having more than one thousand years of age, he is the youngest in his family.

    Naturally after hearing that, the elders and Marlene wanted to give Milo a beating, their n members can only dream of ever reaching the age of that guy after all.

    ording to Milo, the history of his family goes all the way back to the foundation times of the four seas, where the hero and the others were still alive, as Daimon already guessed, Milo''s n or more urately the angelfish n was subordinated to one of those four guys.

    It''s not that weird considering Thea''s family was the same, many of the strong forces or families of nowadays worked for one of the four that lead their respective seas, ording to Aurora, Underwood''s family has always been the right hand of the Light Pce, and surprisingly their left hand was none other than Bell''s family, but after the war ended the sects were re-organized and since they had poison affinity, they were put under the management of the ck Fortress sect.

    In other words, back then, the Light Pce had four sects at theirmand, while the ck Fortress only had two, which made Daimon joke saying that, the so-called "re-organization" was done due to the Shaman''s pettiness, considering Abaris belongs to the family of the first Shaman.

    Anyway, the story goes like this, back then the angelfish n wasn''t divided, both males and females were part of the same group, like any normal race, they had a king and a queen and though they were descendants of a magic beast that evolved to human form.

    Which would put them on the same side as Thea''s family, the angelfish n back then didn''t take part on the conflict, they lived isted from others, that was until the king was visited by one of the four leaders.

    And here is where things get interesting, because unlike what Daimon originally thought, it wasn''t the "Sword of Snakele", the one that convinced the king of the angelfish n to join them, but the guy who was leading the Maelstrom Sea, in other words the one who was said to have a Hydra lineage.

    ''Supposing that those four were system users, the hero of the Mermen Sea will be rted to Adam, maybe their systems aren''t the same, no they shouldn''t even be simr since one is darkness oriented and the other is light oriented, but there is a reason as to why that guy was called a hero, his system was the hero type like Adam''s''.

    ''But then if Marcus''s system is rted to the guy that tricked the White Walker race, why is his mission requiring him to mess with the angelfish n, that were subordinated to the Hydra guy'', thought Daimon.

    The more Daimon discovered the more questions were created, which was honestly a headache for him, though Daimon didn''t know why Marcus ended up being given this Milo guy''s family, it''s not like he didn''t get anything out of this.

    ''Well, at least this confirms the fact the Hydra guy was also a system user'', concluded Daimon, because this curse that restrained Milo''s family was definitely not something even a Maximum Ster ranked can do, and since even back then, the strongest participants of the all-out war, were at most Maximum Ster ranked, then the curse came from a system user for sure.

    Continuing with Milo''s story, the king of the angelfish n epted the deal offered to him, and then he called the weapons to join the cause of the Hydra guy, but the queen was a "coward" and refused to lead the forces that obeyed her and instead draw a line between the two sides of the n.

    Since the king epted on the name of their race, which included the queen and the branches that obeyed her, when the queen refused to enter the war, the whole race was hit with the negative effect of going against the contract.

    But in Milo''s words, "That woman had many tricks up her sleeves", so using some underhanded method she changed the punishment from death to a short lifespan, that being said the leader which they "betrayed" ended up losing a really important battle due to that, so using a special method and before the queen could get rid of the remaining negative effects of the contract, a new punishment was added, which was the origin of the curse that killed the members of the elder''s branches, not too long after they had offspring.

    "My family fell in disgrace due to that coward bitch, and we were hit with the negative reaction, which resulted in all the army that was sent by the king being eliminated, the king included, leaving only my¡­ Rust Blood angelfish branch", venomously spat Milo, which made Marlene frown.

    "You said you belonged to the King branch, are you trying to pull something here", she didn''t have even one bit of pity for these "rtives" she just got to know, they were safe and the idiot king was blinded by greed and decided to enter the war, the queen wasn''t a coward, she didn''t want her n members to pointlessly die for other people, she who had the lives of her n members on her hands could understand it.

    The glory and fame the winners of a war enjoy, is created over thousands of bones and oceans of blood after all.

    Milo gritted his teeth, he really didn''t want to talk about it, because it was part of his shameful past, but seeing the white mes that suddenly appeared on Daimon''s hand, he swallowed his pride and then said.

    "The Rust Blood branch was in charge of domestic matters, so they weren''t deployed onto the battlefield, that''s why we lived, and the king had many lovers, among them a maid who belonged to my n, she ended up pregnant and that child was the ancestor of my family".

    In other words, Milo wasn''t a royal, but a descendant of an illegitimate son, something worth mentioning is that the royal members on the angelfish n of Marlene, didn''t depend on lineage, Marlene''s mother was part of the Bellus branch like Miriam, but Marlene was born as part of the Queen branch.

    And while they didn''t know who her father was, it was obvious he wasn''t part of the Queen branch as they are all women, it was a matter of "luck", and previous to Marlene there was just one member of the royal branch on their records, and that was the woman who was taken by the king of the Clear Water kingdom of back then, in other words the nowadays White ancestor.

    So, the methods to determine royals between the two sides of the angelfish n were as different as they could be, and apparently the King branch didn''t have that ability to use luck, which meant that the Hydra guy probably aimed at then Queen branch from the very beginning and the idiot king was used to get them, but ultimately the n failed.

    Marlene and the elders had more questions, and Daimon was the same, unfortunately, Milo didn''t know anything else, he only got to know this much because he was the only one that showed enough talent to reach the high Ster rank like his great grandfather, but he was still young.

    That''s in part why Marcus eliminated the restrain on him first, because he was talented, and also because he was the most "appropriate" for the job, those were the words Marcus used ording to Milo.

    Marlene and the two elders had worried expressions, the enemy that was hunting them had the capacity to awaken a diluted lineage, to transform people from a nonbatant branch into royalty which specialized on fighting, while they couldn''t even love past eight hundred years and advancing was really hard for them, with the exception of Marlene.

    Daimon knew what they were thinking, such was the headache that facing against a system user could bring, that capacity to pull a surprise out of nowhere was in fact really troublesome.

    "Don''t worry, now that you entered the alliance you''ll be out of the scope of that guy, at least until he gets to see you personally", said Daimon to Marlene and the two elders, which made thetter ask in response.

    "How are you sure about that¡­", asked Miriam, she knew that the silver haired masked youth held an important status in the so-called alliance, considering that even the Matriarch of the Light Pce listened to him, so questioning him publicly was a bad idea, but that was her job, if the answer''s price was her life, then so be it, she wasn''t going to stay around for too long anyway, if she could help her n onest time, that was enough.

    Surprisingly for her, Daimon didn''t take her question seriously, but he also wasn''t to exin her about systems, so he limited to say.

    "Because I''m part of the alliance", of course that left Miriam speechless, but seeing Marlene gazing at her, she slightly bowed towards Daimon and then sat down again, Marlene inwardly sighed and then turned to see Daimon while she pointed at Milo.

    "He¡­", Marlene doubted, she wanted Milo to die because he was one of the reasons as to why Tara died, turns out they exploited a "w" in the array, the reason as to why Lora was able to bring in outsiders, which wasn''t part of the authority she had, was because of Milo.

    With the help of a rune master and the aura of Milo which "resembled" that of Marlene''s, because he is now a member of the royal branches, they tricked the array, essentially making it think it was Marlene.

    Though Marlene wanted Milo to die, the contribution a Ster rank can make in the battlefield can''t be ignored, and her n doesn''t even have one as of right now, so how could she have the face to ask for that, so ultimately, she changed her target at Lora.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Will you hand her over to us, she will be punished ording to thew of the n", said Marlene, to which Daimon nodded.

    "She''s all yours since she doesn''t know a thing, besides the stupidities that guy told her, as for him, don''t worry he is getting what he deserves, but even trash has its uses, you''ll see in a moment", it''s all Daimon said.

    "Mm", Marlene limited to make a low sound, but she was smiling, sure there is a saying that there no eternal enemies, just eternal benefits, but when the enemy killed someone, you cared about, the bigger picture can go to hell, the enemy must die by all means.

    In any case, Daimon had no use for Milo, the guy''s battle prowess was trash, and he already had sentenced him to death since the moment he turned out to be Marcus''s subordinate, through the mission of his system.

    Because losing him will affect his mission even if it is just a bit, and also because that is a perfect way to provoke him to so that he takes it against the scheming guy, two birds one stone and at only the price of a useless piece of trash, it was such a bargain.

    Lora heard the one in charge sentencing to dead and her face paled, she earlier noticed that Marlene was no longer a Ster ranked, and yet she was still being "spoiled" by the universe, in the form of that silver haired youth taking her side so easily.

    "Why are you the only one to get everything, what am Ickingpared to you, why can''t I be stronger or get a strong backer, but you can, even when you are now weaker than me!!!", she shouted, at this point she knew her death wasing, so she didn''t bother to hide the dark emotions that were bottled in her heart.

    "Just for that you betrayed your whole n, never I forgot to look for a way to lift this curse that was casted on us, but you also went to join the descendant of the one who cursed us, how stupid can you be", answered Marlene, there was no need for her to argue with a traitor, she will be paying for her crimes with her life and her death won''t be peaceful, that is for sure.

    Milo on the other hand was pale, the guy actually peed himself when he heard Daimon saying that he was going to die, he expected to be turned into a servant, based on his high realm, the king branch put a lot of weight into that and his mindset was oriented to that too, so while humiliated he still expected to be incorporated into the forces of the enemy, with his strength couldn''t he earn enough merits to raise in the ranks, is what he thought.

    But he was instead told he was going to die and what''s worse, given the very few he knew about Marcus, the silver haired youth was probably an enemy of his Lord, in other words he stupidly went against someone that is on the same level as his Lord.

    And what''s worse is that his Lord didn''t warn him about this enemy, and that made him think he was used as a pawn to test waters, despite his talent and all, he was currently the weakest of his surviving n members.

    And since the war wouldn''t be urring in the future but in the nearby present, his future prospects were useless, current power was what mattered, in a moment Milo''s mind twisted, all the ttering words he received from his father, uncles and grandfather became insults, as he was sent to die.

    In reality that wasn''t the case, but his mind broke upon the face of death, his family might have been able to extend their lives, but their mindset wasn''t the correct, after living in disgrace while only wishing to be able to exert their powers, they became rather unstable, so when Marcus granted them their wish, they of course went wild.

    Could be that it was made like that, so Marcus is able to easily control them through their lust for power, on other words just like the king of the angelfish n from back then, the idiots were just meant to be used.

    Daimon took out his mirror te and then sent a message, in response, Remi who was dragging Fabio by his neck, came flying and thennded on the center of the amphitheater as he kneeled in front of Daimon.

    Daimon then gave Remi his orders, which made the masked White Walker shiver and thank all his ancestors, that though he was originally an enemy, he didn''t attack anyone rted to the silver haired youth that now had his life on his hands.

    ¡­

    Once Remi fulfilled Daimon''s orders in the presence of Marlene and the others, faraway from the nearby area of the mobile city Entra, at one of the many mobile inds, one whose atmosphere was quite lugubrious, as theck of people walking on its streets, suggested.

    There was a small run-down house, which didn''t stand out from the rest, but the people inside of it will for sure stand out, considering there were many ck robed figures all exuding the pressure of the Ster rank, lined in front of a young man with gray skin, who was sitting on an improvised throne.

    "Where is that idiot, he iste for the gather, don''t tell me that he can do something as simple as catch some stupid whores on the Lord and Arch ranks, with the help of a high stage Ster rank!", the gray skinned figure was none other than Marcus, who was angry because Milo waste ten minutes already.

    "Lord, let me go and see what happened, though the angelfish n is weak, they should have a powerful barrier, there is also the fact that those guys joined the operation, so Hal might have his hands full dealing with the high stage opponent", suggested one of the ck robed figures.

    Marcus tapped his finger on the armrest of his throne, before he turned to see one of the ck robed figures that was standing at the most left side.

    "Manuel, it is your descendant''s failure, go get him and be sure to bring me those women, your n will be taken back one step on the waiting line".

    The ck robed figure bowed down, and then said.

    "As the Lord wishes, I beg pardon on that boy''s stead, we are just too eager to serve the Lord, since our family has been waiting countless years for his glorious arrival", the words of the ck robed figure, made Marcus''s pride grow, so ultimately, he just waved his hand without taking things further.

    But then just when the ck robed man called Manuel was about to leave, the door of the rundown house opened, which made everyone''s eyes fall on the entrance of the house, thinking an enemy had appeared.

    They all rxed when they saw it was a familiar face, Milo to be more exact, but they then frowned noticing the high stage that apanied him wasn''t in their line of sight, in fact the army that followed him including that woman who sold her n members, over the promise of power wasn''t there, and the women he had to retrieve wasn''t there as well.

    "You little bastard, why don''t you kneel for the Lord!", shouted the ck robed man called Manuel, he is Milo''s grandfather and a recently ascended high stage Ster ranked, simr to that guy who could use lightning that was apanying Milo earlier.

    A sordid sound was the response as Milo fell to the ground, which earned him a gaze of approbation from Manuel, maybe the mission went wrong, and the best way to not affect his n was apologize in front of the Lord who liked ttery.

    But then after a couple of seconds no words came from Milo''s figure who wasying down on the ground, which made Manuel frown, he approached his grandson and tried to pat his shoulder just for his hand to¡­ sink into it.

    "What the hell!", Manuel removed the ck robe which Milo was using, just to see that his grandson had melted into a puddle of ck blood, pieces of bones and organic matter, which was exuding some kind of dark mist.

    Besides Manuel who was at disbelief, Marcus was trembling due to anger on his throne, his subordinate was sent to die in such a horrible way in front of him, it was a tant insult, and he of course recognized that ck mist.

    "Well, well, well, it seems those bastards think they are some bigshots, everyone, we''ll raid all the dens of ck Wave and will till thest one of them!", ordered Marcus.

    "We listen and obey!!!", all the ck robed figures shouted in response, the opportunities to earn merits didn''te by to often, but since the opponent insulted their Lord, this was a great chance for them.

    Without they knowing, both Marcus and the other party were set on the stage like chess pieces, by a certain silver haired youth, and Marcus was yet to suffer another really important setbackter.

 Chapter 456 Reaction & Information (Part 1)

    ?

    What none of Marcus''s subordinates or Marcus himself noticed, was that Milo was half dead when he returned, he wasn''t even conscious anymore, there was a thinyer of a different "darkness" among the ck mist which had fully infiltrated his body, which was keeping everything together.

    And thatyer of darkness disappeared the moment Milo was in Marcus''s presence, it was then when his body crumbled apart due to the highly corrosive effect of the Nethereal''s ck mist.

    Why couldn''t anyone in a room filled with high stage Ster ranks and a system user notice that thingyer of different darkness notice anything was wrong you might wonder, the answer is pretty easy, it''s because that was Rita''s mana.

    One interesting thing Daimon got to know thanks to his tests on Roger, is that the ck mist that Nethereals use is called Nether, and to everyone''s surprise Rita ispletely immune to it.

    The self-imed head maid of Daimon''s household, not only is capable of detecting Nethereals even through their disguises, her darkness element which is oriented to shadows and whose most important property used to be making her undetectable even for Maximum Ster ranks, also turned out to make her immune to Nether.

    Unfortunately, she didn''t know the concrete reason of it, but Horals didn''t have that capacity, and there were many possibilities of why, for starters she was tied to Daimon through the system, she gained self-awareness before Horals too and that''s why she reached the peak of the Arch rank before the bone general.

    There was also the fact that while the two of them were originally undead, Horals had vitality since he actually awakened a life spark and became a knight, but Rita stayed as a mage, which made Daimon wonder if maybe undead were strong against Nethereals.

    But that theory was immediately discarded, the scheming guy gave a technique to the Skelefiends that made them simr to undead, and knowing that guy he would never give others weapons that could threat itter on.

    Ultimately, Daimon could only shrug and be happy to discover Rita''s ability, those two''s existences were unique, since as artificial undead they shouldn''t have personalities, nor they should be able to advance, but for Rita and Horals that wasn''t the case.

    Even their terror contract was different than others, like others in a simr situation like that skin tailor, they couldn''t harbor any ill intentions to Daimon, nor they could go against him and Daimon will know if they even felt like that, whether they did it consciously or not.

    But unlike the others, they never had those intentions, they were 100% loyal to him, out of their own will instead of being forced to by the contract.

    Back at the Flying Citadel, after Milo was dealt with, Lora was taken into custody by the angelfish n, her magic core was destroyed personally by Miriam, so she no longer had any powers, even if they didn''t kill her, she will die because the lifespan of an Archmage she had, died along with her core.

    But she wasn''t killed yet, because she will be used as an exampleter, given the current situation in which they were, Marlene took the decision of telling the young girls the truth, because she didn''t want a second Lora to appear among her n members.

    In part now that they weren''t limited to that cave, it could be said that it was a new beginning for the angelfish n, and the first step was for them to learn about the outside world.

    Leaving that aside, after those two were dealt with, they all went into the inner ring, while the young girls were given a mansion near the Main Residence, and while they explored the public areas of the inner ring, the two elders and Marlene followed Daimon and the girls to the Main Residence.

    Once they were inside, after being amazed for a moment due to the Element Conversion Array, the two elders followed Marlene to the living room of the Main Residence, where they got to see Daimon''s real face for the first time as he took off his mask.

    For starters both Miriam and Laura were surprised that the young man behind the mask didn''t have any sea magic beast characteristics, earlier they heard Marlene mentioning Ae and Vincent first among the ones who support Daimon, and also Thea said he was her newest general.

    Though they also mentioned Aurora and the Light Pce, the aura that surrounded Daimon was simr to that of a magic beast direct descendant like Thea, so they were surprised that he didn''t have any beast characteristic.

    Not only that, but now that Daimon wasn''t hiding anything with the Hollow Suit, they felt both mana and battle auraing from him, and that wasn''t all, he also seemed to be on the younger side as well.

    Daimon could feel the awe from the two elders and he inwardly chuckled wondering what their reactions will beter, when Marlene tells them he isn''t a native of Neptune, but that could wait forter.

    Right now, his attention was focused on his own shadow, it''s not like he was just ignoring Miriam and Laura contrary to what they believed, as they realized once the head of a woman peeked out of the silver haired youth''s shadow, very much to their surprise.

    Rita whose body partially left Daimon''s shadow, slightly raised the sides of her dress towards her young master, an honor he personally granted her, mainly because she looked a bit strange kneeling down like Horals does, as she wears a side less dress.

    After greeting her young master, Rita gazed at Daimon before saying.

    "That piece of trash is dead, as young master asked me, my shadow clone did a quick scan before dissipating, there were too many firms of energy in that ce to count them without letting any traceable signs of my mana, but there were at least ten people like that guy who controlled lightning and around five or so like him", said Rita as she pointed at Remi.

    Daimon nodded, in other words, ten recently ascended high stage Ster ranks, and five middle level high stage ones which is the realm Remi is in currently.

    Rita''s words were enough to make the angelfish elders worry to no end, what kind of concept was fifteen high stage Ster ranks, one must know that in a whole sea the number of people that has reached the high stage of the Ster rank can be counted with the fingers of one hand.

    And those exalted people are often the right hands of the rulers, and are also rted to the greatest figures in other words to the Maximum Ster ranked, simr to Vincent''s cousin who is the captain of the White''s royal guard, or the ancestor of the Arcarius who is the sole person that holds the rank of Archduke.

    Another good example was that guy who got punished by Aurora, one of Abaris''s direct disciples, who is also a high stage Ster, you get the idea, publicly at most one or two of those characters are known, so howe fifteen of those guys suddenly appeared was what they were wondering.

    Daimon on the other hand wasn''t surprised of that outrageous number, most of those guys were probably middle stage Ster ranks that received some kind of benefit from Marcus, which allowed them to ovee whatever bottleneck which was preventing them from advancing.

    How does he know it, well because he as a system user managed to do something simr, with someone he never expected, the Devil Goblin Shark, cktooth, which was sleeping in some kind of cocoon inside of the beast pouch, after informing Daimon he was evolving.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The new form it acquired which basically gave the shark a pair of arms and the power of a half step Ster ranked, was a stopping point, because he was interrupted as Daimon called him out when he needed him.

    That''s why the Goblin Shark changed his attitude towards Daimon, he realized that serving the silver haired youth, seemed to have brought new life to its long-stagnated cells, allowing it to evolve as long as he had the correct fuel, without any barriers!

    Daimon still didn''t know if it was a bonus effect of the Ruler of the Sea, or if it was because of the system, his soulmates won''t meet any bottleneck but that is because they have a grimoire, Daimon is the same but for him the cause is his Apex Predator body, so there are many possibilities.

    Anyway, Daimon wasn''t worried about Marcus having all those guys as his subordinates, this was within his calctions, as Marcus and Adam were supposed to have people to aid them in their missions, prepared beforehand for them, they literally just needed to find them and their systems will do the rest without them having to do anything else.

    The door of the main residence opened and all the attention was directed to the neer, who was none other than Aurora.

    "We are floating above Raki mobile ind, where the informant is currently staying, that guy is said to change its location every hour, so it would be better to go down as soon as possible", said Aurora.

    Daimon nodded, the conversation about Marcus''s forces could continueter, before they paid a visit to Thea''s territory, he wanted to meet the best informant of the Maelstrom Sea, to see if there was some sign of Calvin and the others in this sea, and he also wanted to know about that underwater castle mentioned by Arianna, because it was practically confirmed that it wasn''t in the other three seas at this point, at least ording to Aurora, Ae and Armando''s intelligencework.

    "Miss Thea and Remi will apany me, does anyone else wants toe?", asked Daimon, surprisingly the girls all softlyughed and shook their heads, Aisha included.

    "They are interested in the Blood Bat, so we''ll y with it for a bit~", said Aisha, which made the poor blood bat which was previously calmly resting on Aisha''s shoulder, shiver, the thing gazed at Daimon as if it was saying "help me" but was ignored.

    ''Sorry, better you than me'', thought Daimon, mostly because even the crazy girl Sarah was interested on the Blood Bat.

    The only exception was Marlene who also had something to ask to the informant, so she tagged along, after leaving Aisha in charge while he was gone, Daimon nodded at Aurora who took them out of the inner ring, where Remi was already waiting for Daimon.

    "I''ll stay to guard the fort, be careful, the informant only goes to the most horrible and dangerous mobile inds, so Raki isn''t as cheerful as Entra", said Aurora.

    After listening to Aurora''s warning, Thea opened a portal and the four of them entered through it.

    ¡­

    The dimensional tunnel didn''tst long, because Thea only took them out of the Flying Citadel, but they appeared a couple of hundreds of meters above a small sized mass ofnd.

    Thea didn''t take them directly into Raki, because there were no empty spaces to appear in, unlike Entra which had some alleys here and there, the space of the ind was quite reduced, so evert meter counted, even at the alleys there were temporary tents where people lived.

    Besides there was no need to sneak into Raki, evert person that came here used masks or some kind of disguise, because this was one of the cities that envers loved the most, the birthrate was too high for such a small ind, and unless one could afford to pay for the space that a new child will use, then it was sold, that''s the kind of city Raki was.

    Naturally, Thea and Marlene put on some generic masks, simr to Remi, they justnded together at the entrance of the city which was a rundown wooden port, there were guards stationed there, but they were just some Lord ranks with rusty weapons, the strongest people worked as private guards here.

    Following Daimon''s instructions, Remi threw a few low-quality sea crystals to the guards and they were allowed to enter.

    Aurora''s words made Daimon have zero-expectations about Raki, and still the ce surpassed his previous idea, it''s not that the whole ce was as rundown as the port, the correct term will be "unbnced".

    Basically, because the city was clearly divided into two sections, the outer area which upied the vast majority where the houses were made of a plethora of second-hand materials, and the inner area where there were some regr houses as well as a few mansions.

    And of course, as one would expect, the informant stayed in the inner area, so guided by Remi who had visited a simr ce once before, they walked towards their destination.

    They soon reached the checking point, this time the guars were actually peak Arch ranks, a clear differencepared to the entrance to the ind.

    "Halt there, pay the entrance fee, only then you can meet the informant", said one of the guards, which made Remi frown.

    The informant only took money as it answered to the respective questions, there was no such a thing as an entrance fee, that should be something that the owner of these mansions decided by itself.

    However, Remi didn''t want to waste his young master''s time, so he approached the guard to pay, only to hear that they wanted a hundred thousand sea crystals, which isn''t that much, until you hear that they want that per person.

    In other words, they were asked to give nearly half a million of sea crystals, just as Remi was about to send these guards to the afterworld, he heard Daimon''s voice in his mind, and his tone was¡­ happy?

    ''Pay them'', it''s all Daimon said, Remi limited to follow orders and paid the price, which made the guards softly snort, as if they have gotten away with what they wanted.

    But they had no idea of the nightmare that awaited everyone in this mansion, the only ones that realized it the moment they left checking point were Marlene and Thea, and the reason is very simple, they saw Daimon having "that" smile on his face again, which meant someone was about to suffer.

 Chapter 457 Reaction & Information (Part 2)

    ?

    Leaving aside the obviously outrageous "entrance fee", it was easy to see where do those funds went to, as Daimon''s group advanced through the mansion it was easy to notice that the owner of this ce, had avish lifestyle, portraits, luxurious decorations, guards everywhere as well as maids.

    A normal sight for nobles, but something that is out of ce in a mobile ind such as Raki, of course there is an exception and those are envers who had managed to make deals with important people from other seas.

    Ignoring the opulent interior of the mansion, Daimon and the others were guided by one guard to the waiting room of the mansion, apparently there were other people already buying information, ahead of them.

    While they took a seat to wait for their turn, Daimon observed his shadow as he spoke with Rita.

    ''So how is it, anyone worth mentioning?'', he asked.

    ''Mm, a couple half Sters that shouldn''t be here, but no one that can represent a threat, their treasure room on the other hand is quite troublesome, but with the snake woman''s help, there should be no problem'', answered Rita, her voice tone was a bit weird.

    Due to the recent discover that she was immune to Nether, and the way she helped gather information regarding Marcus''s forces, Daimon asked her what she wanted as a reward for her contribution, just like he did for Horals back when the bone general received that Ster grade magic spear.

    And her request was "to be allowed to have informal speech with the young master", which to be honest Daimon didn''t consider a reward, as he never really ordered them to be so formal with him, but if that''s what she wanted Daimon gave her the green light, and so she has greatly reduced the number of times she says "young master" quite a lot, but she still has it hard, which ends in a weird way to speak that mixes both casual and formal speech.

    As for why Daimon asked her to do a scan on the whole mansion, the answer is simple, he was going to rob the owner of this ce, not out of spite due to the crystals they were asked to pay, as he simply could have ordered Remi to knock the guars out.

    But because Rita informed him, that she felt the energy firm of one of the items he was currently looking for, an emblem, Rita had memorized the "feeling" that the different emblems gave of, and included that into the list of things of which she actively looked for every time she scanned the surrounding areas, which was practically every couple of minutes as she was in charge of detecting enemies and dangers that were invisible to others.

    A couple of minutester, the door at the end of the waiting room opened and a group of three left, though they were also using masks, their voices could be heard as theyined.

    "What the hell, why were we charged extra for buying information, how is it our problem that the informant is staying in that pig''s house!", the one that was walking ahead of the other two was clearly angry.

    "Shh, those half Sters aren''t just for showing, if you don''t want to die then don''t make trouble", said another member of the group.

    A man wearing some decent looking equipment came out of the room, and looked at Daimon''s group before saying.

    "Your turn", that was one of the half Ster ranks that Rita mentioned, naturally, Remi and Thea were hiding their realms, while Daimon and Marlene didn''t, so there were two Lord ranks, making the other party believe that it was a mortal level group, just the normal.

    Daimon and the others got up their seats and then walked towards the door, at the other side there was arge room which was divided in half by a transparent wall.

    At one side there was arge wooden bench which was prepared for the clients, while behind the transparent wall, there was only one thing visible, a man wearing a yellow mask sitting on a single chair.

    The guard that led them here left through a door that opened only after he used some kind of authority token, leaving only Daimon''s group and the man of the yellow mask.

    But that was only on the surface, Daimon''s amethyst eyes glowed behind his mask, and the image at the other side of the "transparent" wall became clear for him, it was a double-sided mirror.

    Besides the yellow masked guy, which was the informant, there was a short fat man wearing silver robes surrounded by four half Ster ranked guards, among them there was the one that led them here.

    That alone was enough to make all the ones thate see the informant tear this mansion down, the unwritten rules state that besides the informant and the ones that pay for the information, no one else should know what is discussed in the room.

    Daimon also saw that there was a servant writing everything in a book, literally everything, from the number of the people that entered to generic descriptions, apparent genders and realms as well as the questions made by the clients.

    ''I guess that exins the unusual riches of this guy, including an emblem'', thought Daimon, information by itself is a really important thing.

    So now imagine what would happen when someone knows what information you are interested in, ckmails, honey traps, set ups, scams and the list goes on, there is a wide list of ways to deal with someone, when you know what he desires.

    That fat guy will probably use their questions against them, if he has the chance to, it''s a shame that such a thing won''t happen.

    Daimon and the others sat on the wooden bench, before they started, Daimon sent a message to Marlene and Thea.

    ''Don''t worry about the prices of the information, make all the questions you want to''.

    Those two slightly nodded, and then the negotiations started, the yellow masked man was the one to initiate the deal like usual.

    "The base price per question is thirty thousand sea crystals, depending on the subject and precision of the information the price will go up, I''ll tell you the total before answering the question, but the base thirty thousand are mine whether you want to buy the answer or not, no discounts if you don''t have the money then leave now", the voice of the yellow masked guy was genderless and clearly altered, it had an array to prevent others from using mana sense on it.

    Unfortunately, that didn''t prevent Daimon''s infinity eyes from seeing through it, Rita could ignore the array without being detected too anyway.

    "I''ll go first, castles or big structures under the sea, the range are the four seas and I want the precise locations", said Daimon.

    The yellow masked guy took a second to calcte before answering.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Five million sea crystals".

    Daimon nodded and Remi took a ring out of his robes, an array appeared on the transparent wall and Remi threw the ring into it, only then the yellow masked man took out a piece of paper and wrote the answer to what Daimon asked, he also took out a map with some marks into it and then sent the items through the same array from where the ring was sent to him.

    Remi caught the items and after making sure there was information written on it, he kept the things in his ring, Daimon then made his second question, and for this one he took out a paper with the description of his ssmate, as well as the other people from the gxies that entered with them, before throwing it into the array on the wall.

    "Any rumor or news in which people with those characteristics had participated", the yellow masked guy read the paper and after checking into his ring and making memory, he shook his head.

    "There is no information that includes people with those characteristics, next question", with Daimon''s approval Remi paid the base price, and then Daimon made hisst question.

    "Important incidents and dangers in these areas", said Daimon as he handed a list to the informant, this time there was an answer though.

    "Three hundred thousand sea crystals", Remi paid and then the yellow masked informant wrote answers next to each of the ces which Daimon put on the list, before he returned the paper to Daimon.

    The next one was Marlene, and her question was something Daimon expected.

    "Rumors and news about resources that can cure curses, and experts that focus on them, exact locations or approximate ones", said the young miss of the angelfish n, the yellow masked guy took a second to considerate before saying.

    "Five hundred million sea crystals, the answer involves known people above the Mortal Realms, approximate locations, rumors about treasures that reach the Ster ranks and a confirmed location where a magic beast with anti-curse properties can be found", this time the informant was a bit more detailed with his answer, probably the price was quite high, it''s worth mentioning that all the payments so far were made in low grade sea crystals, but the amounts weren''t something that a low ranked noble family could use to buy information.

    The Maelstrom Sea is and of dreams and nightmares, it''s not rare for a random person to find a valuable resource, obtaining and being able to protect it are twopletely separate matters though.

    The thing is that with a single lucky encounter one can be rich overnight, or die without a tomb too, it all depends, normally those who are weak go to people like that fat guy who is spying on everyone that hase to buy information, and sell their treasure at a low price with the condition of never being bothered, or obtaining protection.

    If Marlene still had her ring which was lost when she used her innate ability to escape from Sting and ckbeard, she would have still resented paying such a sum, the angelfish n only had what their ancestors managed to bring with them, over the years they fished and cultivated thend in their hideout to feed themselves.

    Only the elders were able to make some money here and there participating in small jobs, only after a Ster ranked, in this case Marlene appeared their coffers started to grow, and Marlene split her earnings in half, one part went to the four elders which had ess to the funds of the n, and the other was in her ring.

    Right now, the funds of the n amounted to a couple of billions of sea crystals, and this information costed a fourth part of that, if it wasn''t for Daimon telling her that she didn''t need to worry about the price, Marlene would have doubted before epting, but she immediately nodded and then took out five rings from her pocket.

    The yellow masked informant confirmed the payment, unlike the previous times and only then, he took out many papers and maps, which he then sent to Marlene through the formation.

    Besides that, Remi had some questions to make, which were actually some things that Mellie and Jasmine made representing Ae and Aurora, the total amounted to a few dozens of millions of sea crystals, as for Thea, the informant refused to answer her questions, as it involved the magic beasts that ruled the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea.

    Once the deal finished, the same guard that led them to this room before, appeared to guide them to the exit, but his body suddenly froze, many offensive arrays lit up on the walls of the room, and the whole ce became a like a living beast.

    "Dear customer, retrieve your mana pressure, or your details and descriptions will be sent to all the informants, so you are put on the banned list and hunted down", said the yellow masked guy.

    This is one of the reasons as to why no one messed with the informants, it wasn''t worth offending them over small amounts of money, and if one could take out arge sum of it, that meant the person was rich enough to be a potential target for others.

    So should someone like that try to rob the informants, or something like that, then their information will be freely distributed so others make the dirty work for them, also rumors say that the informants have deals with ckbeard and other important figures, so it''s not like they are alone.

    "You are know trying to enforce rules, when there is someone next to you writing our information down, now that is being thick-faced", said Daimon.

    He could see the expression of horror on the face of the yellow masked guy, who immediately tried to activate some sort of escape treasure, only to notice the space was sealed.

    Daimon stood up and then Remi as well as Thea stopped restraining their powers, as they exuded pressures of the high stage Ster rank.

    "Originally I was only going to rob the guy that tried to rip us off, but your prices are clearly altered too, so I guess you''ll be spiting till yourst sea crystal too", said Daimon.

    While the masked guy paled, the fat guy snorted, the double-side effect of the wall disappeared and then he shouted to Daimon.

    "You have two high stage Sters with you, so what, this wall was made tost at least half a day under constant attacks, by the time you manage to break it, everyone will know about you, unless you have one of the four rulers at your side, you''ll be dead meat!".

    Unfortunately for him, one of the four people to whom only a very scarce number of people would dare to offend, was present in this same room, even the informant didn''t realize it was Thea the one that blocked the space, because those who had seen this ability of hers, are either her allies or are dead at this point.

    With snap of Thea''s fingers, a portal opened and the next thing the people at the other side of the transparent wall knew, was that their knees bent forcefully as they were forced to the ground.

    The fat man was terrified when he saw that the shadow of the man he threatened earlier, expanded and then stole the ne that was hanging from his neck.

    Rita retrieved the emblem, which the man was using as a luxurious essory, and handed it to Daimon, who felt the urge of his own emblem to devour it, probably because it was a Devil Emblem, but that could wait forter, right now he had some "donations" to ept.

 Chapter 458 Reaction & Information (Part 3)

    ?

    Daimon turned to see Thea who nodded, he didn''t need to say anything, for the ck Empress to scan everyone in the room to see if there were some contracts that needed to be nullified.

    Which was of course the case, the fat guy and the informant were the ones that required Thea to use her innate ability, the four half Ster ranks were tied to the fat guy, so Thea first erased those contracts, which made the guy vomit blood.

    Despite the riches and the fact that he had some decently strong subordinates, for being a mere ve merchant, he was just an early-stage Arch rank, and his battle prowess was super trashy, meaning he just advanced by consuming resources.

    So, the backsh of the contracts breaking hit him pretty hard, unfortunately for him that wasn''t the end of his suffering.

    "You watch over these guys, we''ll go make a withdrawal from this guy''s treasury", said Daimon to Remi, which reminded him he had toe up with a nickname for the White Walker.

    Remi bowed his head and then dragged the four half Ster guards as well as the informant, who were being suppressed by his mana pressure, whole ignoring theirins and offers, he knew the result of trying to antagonize his now young master, they will lose their everything, whether they lived or not it will depend on how useful they can be, but that''s a subject forter.

    For now, Daimon kicked the fat guy sending him flying towards the door that led to the inner part of the mansion, he actually tried to resist epting to be subordinated to Daimon, but after that little taste of pain, he epted.

    "Take us to your treasury, I already know the route but I don''t have time to deal with all the traps on the way, deactivate them, if you even think on something funny, you are dead meat", said Daimon, which made the fat guy grit his teeth, but he still obeyed.

    If the outer part of the mansion was luxurious, the inside was even more opulent to the point of being of bad taste, walls covered in gold, extravagant furniture and the like, the fat guy simply wanted to see his luxuries to inte his ego, whenever he gazed at the rest of Raki.

    Leaving that aside, and to the fat guy displease, he deactivated all the traps and safety measures as he led Daimon''s group to his own room where his treasure vault was.

    Needless to say, but there were a few women literally chained to his bed, which was to be expected considering the guy is a ve merchant, though Thea and Marlene normally didn''t go out of their way to help strangers, as women they of course sympathized with those poor women, especially Marlene since that would have been the fate of her n members, if Lora''s stupid plot had seeded.

    The fat guy suddenly felt his throat getting dry, those two''s dangerous gazes were set on his back, but Daimon interfered by saying directly to them.

    ''His life is worthless, Rita detected the aura of some nobles from the Clear Water kingdom, among them the ckfin Duke, with this guy as the proof, miss Ae can take them down, he is dead no matter what, so don''t waste your time''.

    "Mm", a bit unwilling but understanding Daimon''s point those two retrieved their murderous gazes, and treated the fat guy as a piece of rubbish on the ground, Marlene liked Daimon''s idea more, because when she ended up bing a ve, she was trafficked through the channel that the ckfin family had, but there was no evidence, unless she wanted to testify personally, which was impossible, who knows if the White''s ancestor would notice she is a member of the royal branch of the angelfish n.

    Though Daimon already told them, they were bound to sh, now it wasn''t the time, right now Ae was using all the methods she had to get rid of dissidents, and gather more forces without alerting the strongest enemies, everything from the shadows, but with the fat guy testifying she could take down the ckfin Duke on bright daylight, of course he won''t be executed for this, but his position as Minister of defense would be stripped from him and then Ae could appoint someone that she and Vincent trusted, because the ckfin were given their tittle by the king, if they fail the queen gets the right to determine who will take over, that''s how things worked.

    Ignoring the really dark future that awaits him, the fat guy with all the pain in his heart, took out a key and after following a series of steps, the manyyers of the door of the treasure room opened.

    Daimon had to give it to him, he really treasured his riches, there were three differentyers of security, a key, an array that activated with blood and even a lock that was opened with one of the many rings that the fat guy used in all his fingers.

    Not even a minuteter, Rita''s voice came from within Daimon''s shadow, as she reported the result of her scan.

    "There is another emblem hidden in the chest at the highest part of that rack, besides that, there is arge amount of trashy Arch ranked equipment, and around 25 billion of mana crystals as well as some average resources here and there", she calmly said as her shadow threads retrieved the chest she mentioned.

    Daimon nodded, he asked her to only tell him about above average resources that will be useful the Risha sisters and the others, he didn''t expect the fat guy to have top resources, otherwise he would have gotten full fledged Ster ranks as guards instead of half step ones, but certainly he had a crazy amount of sea crystals or mana crystals as they would be called in the four gxies.

    "Two new iplete emblems, not bad, more money is never a bad acquisition", mumbled Daimon as he took out the iplete emblem and then casually threw the chest into to the ground, making its contents spill all over the ce.

    With a wave of Daimon''s hand, everything in the treasury was sucked into his inventory, leaving only empty racks behind, unlike rings the inventory only used a slot for a same type of thing, so he could fit as many mana crystals as he wanted in just one slot, but he had to use a slot for each grade of mana crystals, but he used a little trick, which is leaving the stuff in the chests.

    The system automatically ssified the chests ording to the grade of its contents, and so he had a slot for "Arch" "Half Ster" and "Ster" ranked resources, and the same repeated for treasures, pills, potions and the like, it was quite convenient.

    The fat guy saw all the fruits of his efforts disappear in front of him in a blink and he nearly suffered a mental copse on the spot, first of all, there was no sign of a spatial ring being used, and the effect was instantaneous, so for him it was as if his treasures all vanished into thin air.

    Without caring about the mental state of the fat guy, Daimon and the others returned to the previous room, the ves that were chained to the bed were drugged, so during all the time they didn''t notice what happened, Remi was sent to leave them some money and administrate an antidote that will wake them in a few minutes, that was as much as they could do for them.

    Daimon couldn''t lose time with other people''s problems, he had his own things to deal with, which included prevent this from disappearing, it wouldn''t be toote to join all these mobile inds under Thea''s g,ter after they had dealt with the Global Raid.

    After Rita inspected the informant, arge number of tracking devices were detected and destroyed by Thea, only then the guy was knocked out and grabbed by Remi, the four half Ster guards were terrified, someone that didn''t care about the informants or offending the fat guy''s backers, was either a madman or a person with an insanely high status.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    And judging by the fact there were two high stage Ster ranks, one with the outrageous capacity topletely control space, they were more inclined to the second option, and so they were worried that they will be simply killed to be silenced, that was until they heard Daimon saying.

    "ept the contract or die", he didn''t need to speak twice before the four guys epted, what a joke, they were natives of nomad tribes that with a lot of effort and luck outlived their peers, and even managed to enter the half Ster realm, only to find a barrier that prevented them from keep going up, that''s why they became the guards of the fat guy, naturally someone with high stage Sters as bodyguards, would have resources to spare, especially considering they saw him rob their previous employer as well as the informant, out of practically everything they had on them.

    The barrier of the inner part of the mansion was left activated, so that the ves could safely leave after they woke up, Thea simply pierced the space with her spear and a portal that led to the Flying Citadel appeared in front of Daimon and the others, who jumped into it, disappearing from the mansion.

    ¡­

    At the outer ring of the Flying Citadel, Aisha and the others were happily chatting between themselves, while the young girls of the angelfish n were curiously ying with the poor Blood Bat, under the supervision of the two elders of course, the monster pet was different to anything they had seen or heard off, it wasn''t a magic beast to begin with, and it also had no fur unlike a normal bat, the Blood Bat was made out of condensed blood, it had a core which was fused into the emblem that Aisha acquired when she became its master.

    A ck portal suddenly appeared which took the young girls by surprise, they all rushed behind the two elders, until they saw Marleneing out of it, she and Thea took the masks off inside of the dimensional tunnel.

    "You know the process, take those two to the prison", said Daimon as he took off his mask too, his face became visible for all the presents, which made the young girls of the angelfish n curiously gaze at him.

    "These guys are useless to me, you can have them watching over those girls just in case", said Daimon to Marlene as he pointed at the four half Ster guards, he had Remi, and soon there will be another high stage Ster bing his subordinate, those four won''t be able to make a change in the iing war, but they can be good guards for Marlene''s n, since though they won''t be participating, they are still part of the alliance.

    "Mm", Marlene happily epted, now if she left again, her n won''t be in a desperate situation, at least they''ll have someone to look after them, naturally Thea will be modifying their contracts so that the two elders can order themter.

    "You left to make a few questions and returned with four half Ster ranks as subordinates, maybe I should have joined as well", yfully said Femi, her winnings from the exploration are just some resources and mana crystals, Tessa on the other hand had some lucky and got a few decent things, prior to meeting Daimon of course, because after joining his team, they even got to choose what they wanted from Aurora''s treasury.

    But they were surprised at how "easy" things came to him, which Daimon could exin with a single word "plunder", most of the riches he has amassed came from currently dead enemies, or those that dared to bet against him.

    "Speaking of that¡­", mumbled Daimon as he took out the papers that the informant gave him earlier, the third question he made regarded the reaction that his actions caused between Marcus and the scheming guy.

    And as he expected the recent news confirmed that an unknown group suddenly appeared in many mobile inds, and attacked some people, causing many deaths, which raised the danger level of certain areas of the outer zone of the Maelstrom Sea, especially because among the deaths there were people affiliated to some strong pirate crews, including the Devil Stingray pirates, and also ckbeard pirates.

    Everything because Marcus attacked the locations of ck Wave that he had knowledge off, without even confirming what they were, in his anger he sted off, pubs, brothels, restaurants, stores, in other words ces that worked as a source of ie and as a tool for information gathering, where people from many ces gathered.

    ''That idiot is really unstable, I wonder if it''s a secondary effect of his system'', wondered Daimon, he had to deal with the skirt chaser legacy of Abraham Van Helsing in a sense, ording to Evangeline his luck with women was rted to that as well, so it wouldn''t be weird for those two, who are way more susceptible to the influence of their systems, to be influenced by them, while they also influence their systems to grow to their likings.

    While Daimon and the others walked to the main residence, he turned to see Aisha and the Risha sisters to say.

    "Calvin and the others aren''t in the Maelstrom Sea either", the list of underwater ces he got, practically ovepped with that Ae, Aurora, Armando and Thea had investigated for him, which included some ruins, and cities that sank during the many wars that happened through the years.

    They have all been confirmed to not be inhabited currently, and there was just one location in the Maelstrom Sea known to have an underwater ruin, but there was nothing there, so unless Arianna was in some really isted ce, she wasn''t in any of the four seas.

    And Daimon knew she wasn''t, because her description was of an open area, where a giant underwater castle surrounded by magic beasts,id at the bottom, the water wasn''t particrly dark and the castle could be seen from afar, that was Arianna''s description.

    As for Calvin and the others, they should have already raised waves, if they hadnded on any of the four seas, but there was no notice that described people who looked or acted like them.

    That being said, Daimon could confirm they were alive because he hasn''t gotten a record on the log of the system, saying that the items from the store, which he gave them had broken, and those things would activate if they were in a life-endangering situation.

    "Well, knowing Calvin he might be flirting with a mermaid or something", jokingly said Leslie.

    "There was a division on the firstyer of Neptune, Aleah and the little sister of vice principal Leeris were there as well as that lizard girl, so they might have been sent there", added Yvonne.

    Daimon nodded, he hadn''t seen the guys from the other gxies back at the firstyer of Neptune, with the exception of those that were rted to Adam and Marcus, in other words demons and humans, Sera and La had those marbles that protected them, so it''s obvious they had their own agendas in Neptune too, maybe they weren''t meant to enter the secondyer, unlike Marcus and Adam, though they were supposed to help them.

    ''My contract with Scarlet and the others is still there, so they should be fine too'', thought Daimon, ultimately, he could only focus on what he could control, they still needed to visit Thea''s territory before returning to the Elemental Sea, so that he can get what the hero left under the care of the Light Pce.

 Chapter 459 Arriving At The Middle Area Of The Maelstrom Sea

    ?

    Once they reached the main residence, each person went to do their own thing, since the visit to the Bone Sea was shorter than what Daimon expected, they practically earned a second day to spend into the Maelstrom Sea.

    Originally Daimon was going to look for Calvin and the others on the way to Thea''s territory, but now that there was no need for that, he went straight to the prison, while Aisha and the others stayed behind to meditate in the Main Residence.

    Even the two elders of the angelfish n dly took the chance to try and advance since this was such a rare chance, Marlene on the other hand asked to follow Daimon, because she had some questions to do, to the high stage Ster that was subordinated to Marcus, the same applied to Aurora who had some questions for the Nethereal whose core was trapped in her spell.

    Thea was going to tag along too, but she then seemed to remember something and instead sent a message to one of her generals, and then asked Daimon to keep the guy in a "decent" state, because she''ll have someone look at himter.

    Earlier she was surprised to discover the magic beast characteristics of the lightning affinity guy, because she thought she knew each and all of the snake-like races of Neptune, but she has never heard of the characteristics that guy had.

    But that isn''t necessarily impossible, out of the four magic beast rulers, she is the youngest an the only one that doesn''t belong to the old generation, meaning she didn''t participate on the all-out war, from the times where Vincent and the other now Maximum Ster ranks, became renowned.

    Her father was, and though he is dead, his adviser which is Thea''s strongest general is still alive, so he might have some answers, normally that guy is on the front defending the borders of Thea''s territory from the attacks of the other rulers, so she had to call him back to her castle.

    And while she was on that, she also summoned all the leaders of the respective races that were subordinated to her, because she now has learned how to detect those annoying curses that eluded her before, not to mention she has Daimon''s aid to detect those that had been corrupted by the Nethereals.

    ''This time I''ll clean all the scum'', thought Thea as her amber snake-like eyes glowed, before sheid down on her bed to enjoy one of her drinks, advancing just with the help of the Elemental Conversion Array was impossible for her after all, especially because she has been stuck at the peak of the middle stage of the Ster rank, she had already understood that she wascking something.

    In part that''s why she has been consuming three-colored water non-stop, because she is looking for the inspiration she needs to advance, well, that and because this way she can drink more than one cup without getting dead drunk.

    Leaving what was happening in the Main Residence aside, Daimon arrived at the prison apanied by Aurora and Marlene.

    "I''m going to have to expand the area of the prison at this rate", jokingly said Aurora, to prevent the prisoners from having any fun ideas, each one was isted in single cell.

    The first visit of the day was of course Roger, the ex-member of ck Wave saw Daimon and his body shivered as he threw himself at the ground.

    "I-I''m willing to submit and obey the young master, please no more!", he shouted, it hasn''t been too long since he was captured, and this man who thought he had seen enough as the one in charge of managing the assassins of the organization, realized he was wrong.

    In part the reason as to why he was going crazy, was mostly because since his body has been re-structured to adapt to Nether, the suffering that Demon Light caused him was amplified, and that is a lot to say considering Demon Light is already horrifying enough without any help.

    Aurora also contributed to that, because after interrogating Roger and realizing he knew nothing about the Nethereals that plotted and killed her daughter, she used him as a living target, until she discovered the way her light mana caused the most damage, then she cured him, as Roger doesn''t have a ck sphere so light is still able to heal him, but that only extended his suffering as Aurora started all over again.

    "I don''t buy it", said Daimon, his hands lit up in white mes which nearly made Roger faint, his eyes were filled with fear, he has tried to submit around thirty times up to date, but he wasn''t epted, and instead was used as a test subject again, making him miserable.

    Fortunately for him, this time was different, because the moment Daimon prepared to once again use Demon Light on Roger, to practice for when he has to cure Sarah, the sweet sound of a notification which he has been waiting since forever, finally echoed in his mind.

    [Ding]

    [Commoner Nethereal "Roger has offered his loyalty; do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Daimon who had his mask as he was "Gabriel" right now, smirked, not only because his Terror Contractor skill once again was working, for some unknown reason, but because that sole notification also proportioned some valuable information.

    So far, he has confirmed that "Lesser" Nethereals are a one of the ranks of the enemy, the previous guy who ended up dying due to the loyalty curse, belonged to that category, he also called Daimon "Esteemed Lord", which he supposed is another rank, and now he got to know that these guys who don''t have that ck sphere in their bodies are considered "Commoners".

    ''That Lesser Nethereal from back then was for afraid of me than this guy, because I made him able to feel pain, his resistance crumbled apart on the spot, Roger on the other hand still harbored some rebellious thoughts, until now whether he knew it or not'', thought Daimon.

    While he still didn''t know why his Terror Contracts worked with Nethereals, while they didn''t work for Neptune''s natives, he was slowly understanding the requirements for them to work, unlike when he enved the Skin Tailor, fear wasn''t the only thing needed, he literally had to bring Roger to the brink of despair before the skill worked.

    And he had to get rid of the loyalty curse, or the result will be death for the Nethereal that is submitting, Daimon shook his head and then pressed "Y", under the surprised eyes of Aurora and Marlene, a ck bone chain cor formed around Roger''s neck, piercing his flesh and making him bleed a bit.

    "Congrattions you were ascended, from prisoner to guard, because we now have a more interesting test subject, get up and go ask Remi so he gives you something to do", ordered Daimon.

    "Y-Yes!", Roger who noticed the change in his mind, as he was nowpletely unable to harbor any ill intentions towards Daimon, and anyone who was rted to him, immediately ran to follow his instructions, who knows if his demon-like young master will torture him just for fun.

    Daimon of course noticed Aurora and Marlene''s slightly dubitative gazes, and he chuckled, it''s actually not the first time they see a cor created by his skill, Rita wears hers with proud as an essory, but hers is a much more detailed one with a skull design, that goes along with her outfit, so it doesn''t look out of ce.

    The same applies to Horals, his cor melds with his heavy ck armor, also unlike Roger and the Skin Tailor who are the only "ves" Daimon currently owns, besides the fire djinns who don''t have a physical body, those two have never been harmed by their cors.

    "You can consider that an innate ability of mine, it''s simr to Thea''s ability to make contracts, but mine only works with enemies¡­ it does have a stronger trying effect though, you don''t need to be wary around that guy ever again", he said.

    Aurora''s eyes glowed, even contracts weren''t wless, Thea''s ability to dispel them are a proof of it, but if what Daimon said was true then, he had one terrifying ability, anyway, she had already put her trust in Daimon, so she didn''t doubt about him, from the very beginning Daimon affirmed to be on par with that dangerous guy, that somewhat managed to trick her, in other words, Adam.

    Everyone had its secrets and trump cards, and Daimon showed his honesty by telling Aurora and the others that what makes Adam and Marcus "different" than others, he also has it.

    For Aurora, the crazier Daimon''s skills were the better, as it meant her granddaughter will be safer, as for Roger who cared about the fate of an enemy, and one that decided to be one of the things that killed her daughter on top of that, Marlene on the other hand kept a contemtive expression on her pretty face, while they walked towards the next cell.

    "Roger, you act as the guard, Remi, follow me", said Daimon.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Yes!", both of them immediately answered, and then Remi went with Daimon and the others, while keeping a respectable distance, normally when Marcus called him was to¡­ do some special "training", but his new young master didn''t have such hobbies, so he wondered why was he called to enter a cell with him.

    And the answer to that soon appeared in front of him, the "guest" of the cell in which they entered was none other than the lightning affinity guy with electric eel-like characteristics, who was feigning to be still fainted.

    Daimon gazed at Remi and theter nodded, he closed his hand and then punched the face of the eel guy, though both were mages, Remi is a middle level high stage Ster, a minor realm above the eel guy, also he could reinforce his body, while the eel guy had his powers suppressed by Aurora''s chains, so the result was a few teeth flying out of the mouth of the eel guy.

    The eyes without any white of the eel guy widely opened, his bleeding mouth, spiked teeth and unnatural eyes gave it a threatening appearance, and his words were too.

    "Let me go you bastards, once my Lord find out I''m here you''ll all die¡­ aghhh!", the response he got was Daimon burning one of his eyes with Demon Light, which forced a scream out of him.

    "Yeah, I know Marcus is almighty for you, unfortunately for you, I''m stronger than him and your life is now in my hands, so do yourself a favor and obediently answer to my questions", casually said Daimon.

    The eel guy whose left eye was now closed, gritted his teeth and closed his mouth with force, meaning he wasn''t willing to talk, could be because he didn''t know that the loyalty curse was removed from him while he was unconscious, or because he really was amazed by Marcus.

    "He is one of the guys that was stuck in the middle stage of the Ster rank, his life was reaching its end prior to meeting L¡­ that guy, so he is loyalty isn''t only due to his advance, his name is Torbal", said Remi, which made the eel guy re at him.

    "Oh, I see, I want the answers to these questions in two hours, any method is allowed", said Daimon as he handed Remi a list, and then walked towards the exit of the cell.

    "Ah right, you can take off your mask", Daimon added, in that list there were the questions Marlene had, they didn''t have to waste their time making Torbal talk, when Remi had nothing to do.

    "As the young master wishes", said Remi, he took his mask off and as expected, Torbal''s face paled, as if he had seen a ghost.

    "I-Impossible you are dead!", he shouted, which made Remi softly snort, at the fact that he was dered dead so easily, Armando was in contact with them, and there was no news regarding a group from Marcus''s side even trying to look for him, so he was discarded just like that, in part that''s also why he was now willingly following Daimon''s orders, well, that and how Roger was treated, until a moment ago.

    "Remi you bastard, you betrayed the Lord, he can know if you have traitorous thoughts, you are dead meat, help me kill these guys and then I''ll put a good word for you¡­ aghhh!", Torbal''s offering was interrupted by Remi kicking his face.

    "Don''t worry young master, I''ll have the answers you want in a couple of hours at most", said Remi as he bowed towards Daimon.

    Daimon nodded, and then left with Aurora and Marlene, the next prisoner required a much more persona treatment, especially by Daimon but Remi could have his turn to shine interrogating his former teammate.

    The next cell contained none other than Fabio, in other words Roger''s formerpanion vice-leader of this branch of ck Wave, but unlike Roger, this guy had started to change into the bizarre appearance of a Nethereal, having developed feathers simr to those of a buzzard and a beak on his chest.

    As soon as Daimon and the others entered the cell, the recently converted Nethereal red at them, but before he could say the words "I won''t talk", Aurora snapped her fingers and spiked white chains raised from the ground, wrapping around Fabio''s body.

    "Would you mind leaving the interrogation to me, I want to see how much has my modified light mana has improved, for the interrogation of this guy''s superior", asked the Matriarch of the Light Pce.

    Daimon shrugged, as he took a seat at one of the corners of the room.

    "Sure, I doubt he knows too much anyway, the goal is that guy who has a ck sphere, he should know more of the targets appointed to them by the scheming guy, and maybe be able to give us a hint about its identity", said Daimon.

    Fabio whose body was being crushed and healed by the spiked chains Aurora created, heard Daimon and a tinge of horror shed in his eyes.

    ''How do they know that!'', he inwardly screamed, unlike Roger, he was in charge of intelligence, so he indeed has a bit more information than Roger, for example he knows that some squads of the other seas have been eliminated, or disappeared, which is why middle or high stage Sters have started to be mobilized, and the answer to that mystery has just been solved, they have been captured, interrogated and most likely killed by this group.

    ''Just what in the world is happening, this guy doesn''t fit with the descriptions given to us by Lord Garrius of the ones we should be way of'', was thest thing Fabio thought before his world went nk, literally because Aurorapletely wrapped his body with white spiked chains, made with her mana.

    Muffled screams and smoke came from within the ball of chains, as Fabio was forced to bleed, and his blood then reacted to Aurora''s light mana, which burned it, resulting in that smoke.

    ¡­

    A few hours and a "Commoner" Nethereal who ended up burned to a crisp, though alive,ter, Aurora received a message from the captain''s cabin, because they had reached the entrance to the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea, so she ended the training, Fabio had already spat any information he had, which included the fact that Underwood''s family was one of the recently assigned targets to that Garrius guy, who then appointed one of the many subordinates he had to do the job.

    "I need Thea''s guide through the middle area, otherwise we''ll lose time lost in the mist that surrounds it", said Aurora.

    "We''ll leave it as it is for today, I''ll order Roger to keep this guy in check so we can focus on our main target", said Daimon.

    Through all the process Marlene didn''t participate, but Daimon could feel she had something she wanted to say, but every time she seemed to have taken the decision she hesitated, so Daimon didn''t force the subject, though he could guess what she was going to ask.

    Outside of the prison, Daimon was met with the scene of the entrance to the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea.

    "I guess that exins why the Mist Horrors screwed the army over back then", mumbled Daimon, the whole area ahead of them was covered in a thick gray fog, but that wasn''t all.

    Even from high into the air where the Flying Citadel was, Daimon could see the many rests of ships that had umted around the entrance to the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea, the reason of it was the many spiked rock formations that filled the whole area, and of course the aggressive magic beasts that swam here and there.

    It was a natural barrier so to speak, and one of the reasons as to why the four ruler magic beasts were wanted by the pirates, secure a route through this area would give them ess to the resources that can affect Ster ranks, which ally in the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea.

 Chapter 460 The Magic Beastâ€™s Summit (Part 1)

    ?

    Daimon, Marlene and Aurora who just left the prison, saw Theaing to meet them, she knew her guide would be needed move through the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea, not only the entrance was dangerous, the fog was actually corrosive since it contained darkness mana.

    While being surrounded by it won''t instantly kill you, it''s incredibly hard to navigate through it, and after being lost, the fog will corrode your ship, then the magic beasts that linger below the surface of the dark blue water wille to the feast.

    Even if you tried to escape flying, the mist raises until the limit on the sky of Neptune, so you''ll still have it hard to find your way out, and after being drained by the darkness mana you''ll start hallucinating, the result is of course death.

    "Come with me, I''ll change the control to manual so you can guide me through the mist wall", said Aurora to Thea.

    "Mm", Thea nodded and then she left with Aurora to the captain''s cabin, Marlene had already excused herself and returned to the Main Residence, which left Daimon alone in the middle of the inner ring.

    Well, the word "alone" might be a bit too much, considering there were a few people observing him from afar, Daimon suddenly dodged at the left and Saraha who was waiting for a chance to tackle him, passed a few centimeters away from Daimon.

    "I''ll tell Jasmine to tighten your leash tonight", said Daimon to the crazy girl, just to see her intensely gazing at him as she licked her lips.

    Daimon sighed, he could also notice some of the young members of Marlene''s n "spying" on him, they were of course way easy to notice, but since there was no harm, as they kept some distance unlike Sarah, Daimon didn''t bother them and instead also walked towards the Main Residence, while he easily dodged Sarah''s tries to catch him.

    Once he returned to the residence Daimon walked towards Jasmine room where all the girls, with the exception of Thea who was with Aurora and Marlene, were sitting on their beds meditating.

    Daimonid down on his bed where Aisha who was meditating immediately opened her eyers, to wee him.

    ''What did you do to the angelfish princess, darling, she entered the room, made a couple of circles on the entrance and then left to where those two women are staying~'', said Aisha with a yful voice, which made Daimon chuckle.

    ''I didn''t do anything, she probably wants to ask me if I have a way to lift the curse that the Hydra guy casted on her n, but she doesn''t have anything to "pay" for it, so she is doubting it'', he said through the mental connection.

    Aisha giggled; she knew that if her son had the way to solve Marlene''s n problem, he would have already said do, because while Daimon is pretty much indifferent to strangers, he will be the first one to help those he considers his friends.

    While "allies" are a for convenience, the word "friend" holds a heavy meaning for Daimon, that''s part of the influence that Aisha, Erin and the other soulmates have had on him.

    ''I''ll talk to herter, leaving that aside couldn''t you keep an eye on that crazy woman'', said Daimon with an using voice, which made Aisha softlyugh as she hugged Daimon.

    "Nope, because it''s fun to see that even you can''t deal with her~", said Aisha out loud, making Daimon bitterly smile, while Sarah''s predacious eyes were fixed on his back, luckily with Jasmine here, she controlled herself a bit.

    ¡­

    Normally when Thea returns to her territory, an escort brigade formed by at least one of her generals and two races subordinated to her, will wee her.

    But this time it was different, because everything was managed through Thea''s strongest general, while Lina and Karmandi in other words the other two remaining generals are out, so that no one knows Thea is appearing.

    The ck Empress might prefer direct confrontations and crushing her enemy head on, instead of schemes, but that doesn''t mean she is ignorant, much less she is dumb, this time she''ll be using this chance to clean the high echelon of her forces out of any "rats", she might even get some answers to a few doubts that had been bothering her for quite some time.

    And so of course no one could see the giant floating citadel approaching the main territory of the Ryner n, in other words to Thea''s family territory, an interesting thing is that Thea doesn''t have ast name, or more urately she doesn''t know what herst name is.

    Ryner n is the name of the force that is led by her family, of which only she remains, there are no other members of her race, in part that''s why she was so eager to meet Daimon after Karmandi described him to her.

    The snake general felt a familiar sensation when he was fighting alongside Daimon, because he used blink to fly, the only one who Karmandi has seen been able to move through space, even at the star realms, in his long life was Thea, until that day.

    Initially Thea thought Daimon was someone from her race, though she immediately noticed that wasn''t the case after personally meeting him, she was still enthusiastic about meeting another person with "spatial" affinity, and she liked Daimon''s aura which was that of a strong magic beast, not to mention, he helped her discover a traitor, which ended in her scouting him to be her general.

    With Thea''s guide and the cooperation of her strongest general, the Flying Citadel reached an empty area, which was isted on purpose for their secret arrival.

    The giant silver citadel descended from the sky, naturally there is a barrier surrounding the whole ce, but with Thea''s token of authority they bypassed it andnded, the ce waspletely deserted, with the exception of a single figure that stood there, amazed at the greatness of the legacy treasure of the Light Pce, one of the wonders of Neptune, but its attention then changed to the group that descended from it, before the citadel blurred and became invisible.

    The groupnded not too long after that, and the figure approached them, Daimon who was standing next to Thea and the other girls as well as Remi, observed the neer, Aurora stayed behind in the citadel, to watch over the prisoners, because there is a high stage Ster Nethereal and it would be troublesome if the ck sphere finds a way to escape if she is distracted.

    The man in front of Daimon was tall surpassing the three meters of height, was wearing a proper and elegant military uniform, with Thea family''s colors which are ck and golden, one would definitely think he is a general, the only difference between him and a general, is the fact that he has the head of a fish.

    It''s not a magic beast characteristic, his head is that of a fish, an oarfish to be more urate, which exined why he was so tall.

    "nder wees the little princess, I brought the most trending dresses and makeup I found on my travel¡­", before the fish-headed general could finish speaking, Thea punched him on the face sending him flying a couple of meters.

    "Don''t listen to his stupidities", said Thea as she sighed, nder was her father''s sworn brother, when he died, he took the role of being her paternal figure, the problem is that at that point Thea was already a young woman, while for nder she is still a little girl.

    The reason is because the fish-headed general lives under the customs and rules of a magic beast, because he is a magic beast that took human form, unlike Thea''s family who descends from one, meaning she was born with the advantage of having human form, but the innately high strength of a magic beast.

    And so, for nder, Thea is still a child, based on her less than five thousand years of age, so the fish-headed general tends to treat her as such, buying her childish clothes and things like that.

    The fish-headed generalughed and then got up, naturally he a peak high stage Ster ranked magic beast, even in this iplete human form, won''t be so easily wounded, not to mention Thea only used physical strength without any mana to hit him earlier.

    "He might be weird, but he was my father''s best friend and first general, so he is somewhat reliable", said Thea to Daimon, something that didn''t escape nder''s eyes.

    "Lass, is this the new general you kept talking about, he looks a bit weak to me¡­ damn seas, spatial affinity, is he perhaps a member of your race!", shouted nder after giving Daimon a close inspection.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''I''ll have to ask how he noticed I have spatial skillster'', inwardly noted Daimon, before saying.

    "We can discuss about thatter, there the number of people that needs to be scanned is quiterge ording to Thea, so let''s start at once".

    nder''s eyes glowed when he heard Daimon calling Thea by her name, without any honorifics, Karmandi and Lina were second generation generals, as their parents were the generals of Thea''s father, who unfortunately died in the battle that also provoked Thea''s father''s death, and it took quite some time before she allowed them to drop the honorifics.

    ''It seems the little princess has taken a liking to this kid¡­ well he does feel like some kind of predacious beast, but I can''t pinpoint to which race he belongs, is he part of the mermen, no, his lineage is too strong and yet he doesn''t have any beast characteristics'', thought nder.

    Thea had already told him beforehand that she had made allies from the Mermen and Elemental Seas, though she didn''t mention who they were, nder discovered it the moment he saw the Flying Citadel, at least he knew the Matriarch of the Light Pce was one, he couldn''t recognize Mellie or Daphne as the princesses from the Mermen Sea, because they were wearing masks.

    Daimon didn''t know how much enemies had infiltrated Thea''s upper echelon, so it was better to be safe than sorry, he might be able to capture them all with three high stage Ster ranks and a Maximum one observing from behind the scenes, but who knows if some of them have a way to send a message ignoring Thea''s space block.

    If their identities were discovered by the enemy, it would be troublesome a pain in the ass, an arrow in the dark is harder to dodge than a spear on daylight, so far he knew of the existence of the scheming guy as well as the system users and other major yers of whatever was going on in Neptune, but they didn''t know about him, and that''s how Daimon wanted to keep it until the day of the Global Raid, where he will hit them all with lethal force at the same time.

    "I gathered the leaders of the 12 ns¡­ well 11 since the Bottom Shredder race has been erased due to their betrayal, honestly I expected some not toe but no one wants to look suspicious, at least not while my army is closely watching their ns", said nder to which Thea nodded.

    They soon reached the castle of Thea''s family, which was built over a rock formation that raises all the way from the bottom of the sea, they had bypassed the checking points, but the Ryner n''s territory is divided in many rings, each one inhabited by some of the races that are subordinated to Thea.

    Once they entered nder guided them through the corridors until they reached the main hall, even from the outside Daimon could feel the auras of different strong magic beastsing from the room.

    The doors opened and then all the eyes fell on them, but it onlysted a second before all the eyes diverted towards Thea, there were exactly twelve "people" here, and all of them had their own means to know that Thea wasn''t here, so of course they were taken by surprise when they saw her appearing in the room.

    And that wasn''t all, they then noticed Remi who is also a high stage Ster ranked, the reason of that is because in this room, besides nder and Remi, there is just one more high stage Ster and it is an early level one, being a minor realm lowerpared to Remi, though it is unknown who is stronger out of them.

    "We greet the Empress!", the twelve people stood up from their seats and then greeted Thea, who just nodded at them as she walked to the podium in front of the seats that the leaders of her subordinated ns upied.

    Daimon''s group also took a seat, while Remi stayed standing up, behind them acting as their guard, which was his job, but that wasn''t all, without them noticing, all the people in the room were being scanned by Daimon''s head maid, who resided in his shadow.

    Thea''s job was to make time for Rita to finish her task, and she had the perfect way to do so, once she reached the middle of the podium, she immediately said.

    "All of you might be wondering why you were called by general nder instead of me, the answer to that is the fact that I wasn''t nning on attending, but I then remembered I haven''t introduced the new general to you all", said Thea as she gazed at Daimon.

    Daimon got up from his seat, this was all nned so he expected to be called, and the reaction of the public was also what he expected.

    When those n leaders, whose realms go from the early stage of the Ster rank to the high stage, saw that a member of the young generation who is at most a Lord rank, was appointed as their superior, they weren''t happy.

    But most of them remained silent, because at this point everyone knew that Thea judged others not only based on their strength, unlike the other three rulers.

    That being said, there was one person that raised his hand to then say.

    "I beg the Empress to not take it as an offense, but I can''t ept that such a weakling is my superior, Lord Karmandi and Lady Lina have history, their families served the previous Emperor and they are at least half Sters, but this guy isn''t like that¡­ not to mention he doesn''t have any beast characteristics, so he should be one a part of those despicable mermen races", said a slim man with scales on his neck and arms as well as fins on his back.

    That was the only other high stage Ster rank, and the leader of the strongest subordinated n, while nder is way stronger, he is a single person, because his n was exterminated during one of the wars from a long time ago, Thea''s father saved him and that''s why he became his right hand.

    "Eleazar, since when have I needed to get your approval to designate someone a general, the contributions made by him frankly surpasses yours, and his background is clean, so there is no reason not to", said Thea with a frown on her pretty face.

    This time a peak middle stage Ster woman, the one who was sitting next to Eleazar spoke.

    "But it was one of the generals appointed by the Empress the one who betrayed us, which caused the Bottom Shredder race to be tempted and defect to the enemy''s side".

    With that, the other leaders started discussing between each other, some were on the same side as the two that spoke against Daimon being dered a general so easily, while others said it was part of Thea''s authority, there was a third division who asked Daimon to be put under a trial to demonstrate his worth.

    Daimon suddenly smirked, which made Aisha and the others giggle, knowing that someone was about to suffer, and it happened quite soon, because he turned to see Thea as he pointed at the woman that spoke after Eleazar.

    "She epted the power of the Nethereals just a couple of days ago", Daimon''s words didn''t cause any reaction on most of the present people, Eleazar was angry that his wife was being pointed at, though he had no idea what the usation meant.

    The woman on the other hand, immediately exploded in ck mist and then tried to escape, only to fail miserably as a giant hand made out of brown mana caught her, nder knew what a "Nethereal" was, so he immediately suppressed the woman.

    Very much to the displease of Eleazar.

    "Empress, are you going to punish us because our opinion doesn''t align with yours, if so, my n will leave the Ryner n right now", he said, unaware that his wife had already taken the path of bing a Nethereal.

    The atmosphere tensed up a lot, but nder who was the strongest in the room, casually said.

    "She''ll be interrogated in front of all of us, if she isn''t guilty, you can cut my arm and I''ll guarantee your n''s safety, as you leave, if not, well, you know what the punishment for traitors is".

    Eleazar immediately nodded, nder is a legend-like existence for Thea''s n, the ruler level magic beast who doesn''t want to be a ruler despite being strong and influential enough to.

    Unfortunately, Eleazar missed his wife''s pleading eyes gazing at him, because nder prevented her from being able to give any hint to Eleazar.

 Chapter 461 The Magic Beastâ€™s Summit (Part 2)

    ?

    Though Eleazar didn''tin as he believed his wife was innocent, some of the other n leaders did.

    "Empress, aren''t you too biased towards the new general, I remember that to use a n leader, there is a process, such were the previous Emperor''s rules¡­", before the n leader, who was only an early-stage Ster rank could finish speaking, his face froze.

    He looked downwards just to see a ck spear piercing his stomach, surprisingly he didn''t feel any pain and there was no blood also, it was as if the spear wasn''t shoved into his flesh.

    "My father had his rules I have mine, and Gabriel has the authority to question anyone in this room, such is the role I granted him in my army, but if you want an exnation, I can give it to you too", Thea''s voice was cold like winter as her left pupil turned orange.

    "I recently unlocked another eye ability, so I can now see certain things, like curses for example", said Thea as she red at the n leader who had her spear piercing his stomach.

    Naturally the guy''s face paled, he tried to grab the spear to take it out, but to his horror his hands passed through the spear, it was a terrifying sensation to have a strange object ready to destroy your organs, and not even being able to touch it.

    nder snapped his fingers and the whole room was covered in a light brown barrier, while he moved the woman he had suppressed to the center, so that everyone could see her, her body and mouth were restrained with chains of mana.

    "Previously my contracts couldn''t resist against curses, but now they can, so I''ll have you sign a new contract Jina, the only difference with the previous contract which is the same every n leader has with me is that you won''t be able to lie for the next five minutes, or you''ll lose a random limb, if you don''t answer my question in thirty seconds, you''ll lose two", said Thea.

    She borated the contract and showed the conditions to all the presents, then she sent it to the restrained woman, who was now looking at her husband desperate, just to see Eleazar frown.

    "ept it Jina, let''s put an end to this and then leave, apparently the Ryner n is destined to decline in this generation", said the leader of the Eel Shark n.

    "¡­", a sepulchral silence fell on the room, as they saw that Jina wasn''t epting the contract, nder even removed the restrains on her mouth and the first words that came from her were.

    "Hurry up and bring me out of here you stupid fool, can''t you notice what I''m trying to tell you!!!".

    Eleazar froze for a moment, never in his wildest imaginations he thought that the usation made against his wife was right, and now he had to make a choice, well, his options weren''t that many though.

    Previously he wasn''t worried, as he didn''t do anything wrong, if Thea or nder tried to suppress him simply because they could, the other n leaders will take his side for sure, because they will be next, but now with the exception of the guy who was pierced by Thea''s spear and couldn''t move, all the others had distanced from him.

    Eleazar clenched his fists and then to everyone''s surprise he kneeled down, in battle between equals a millisecond can be the difference between winning or dying, a kneeling down position meant he was lowering his guard on purpose, so if he were to try anything, the other party will have the advantage, in other words he wasn''t nning to fight.

    "I beg the Empress to have mercy¡­ I''m willing to change my subordinate contract to an enving one in exchange for my wife''s life, please!", he said as he lowered his body even more, smacking his forehead against the ground.

    Jina felt her blood pressure raising, the stupid man was begging instead of directly rescuing her.

    "What are you doing you spineless idiot, she is going to kill me¡­ aghhh!", her shouts were interrupted by a scream, caused by her body which was covered in white mes.

    Eleazar was about to move and use a spell to dispel the mes, but Oleander''s mana pressure fell like a hammer from above forcing him to remain quiet.

    "I doubt you''ll want her as she is right now", Daimon''s voice drew the attention of all the n leaders.

    Eleazar gritted his teeth, his impression of Daimon wasn''t good from the very beginning, but the moment he used till thest bit of strength in his body to raise his head and answer, his eyes widened when he saw whatid there where his wife was supposed to be.

    While Jina kept her human shape, her previous shark characteristics that gave her an exotic charm, such as the small elegant scales on her neck and the fin on her back, had been reced by mouths with spiked teeth, she now had three extra mouths, two on her neck and one on her back, giving her a bizarre appearance.

    "Let me exin you the fruits of some little tests on Nethereals we have captured, only those who are members of that race have a ck core which makes them almost immune to pain, other people can be turn into Nethereals, and their appearances be bizarre the more twisted the person is, the weirder their appearances will be, as they represent the negative emotions that drove them to be Nethereals themselves".

    "Mouth-like characteristics represent ambition that has turned into greediness, also the number means how much twisted they had be, one is dissatisfaction, two are betrayal and three areplete indifference towards what tied them to their previous identity", said a purple haired masked woman, who was none other than bell, this was information that Roger had gotten out of Fabio, apparently thought the guy had decided to be a Nethereal for power, he despised the bizarre appearances, so he asked what the rules for their "ascended" form were, and got a small exnation from that Garrius guy, only for that information to end in Daimon''s hand.

    Turns out that past a certain point of umtion of "Nether" they can always start their transformation to Nethereals, but the more they perfectionate themselves first the better the initial result would be, some indulge in the power and skip that which results in the most bizarre appearances, in exchange for quick empowering, naturally this only applies to those that weren''t Nethereals to begin with, in other words those without a ck core in their bodies.

    Also, just as Daimon thought, Nethereals who resembled humans the most were also the most dangerous, and so far, the ones that had more human-like appearances, were Reed and Byron, who supposedly had that perfect human form with a crown instead of a face.

    The next one would be that Garrius guy, who ording to Roger has asymmetric arms and a long neck.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Eleazar was pale, what was Jina''s identity, his wife, the Matriarch of the Eel Shark race and hispanion, so those three extra mouths meant that his wife was dissatisfied with him, betrayed him and she was now indifferent towards him.

    "Y-You are lying!", eximed Eleazar, only to see Daimon signing a contract that didn''t let him lie for the next thirty seconds in front of everyone, to then say.

    "Everything I said earlier waspletely true", the n leaders saw it and they had no other choice but to ept Daimon''s words as an absolute truth, that being said he wasn''t affected by contracts, so he could have lied if he wanted or needed to.

    A portal suddenly opened in front of the n leader that was immobilized by Thea, and a ray of white light impacted him, making him scream, his "skin" melted away to reveal he was also corrupted past the point of the ck mist stage, that guy''s case was even more extremepared to Jina, as his body became a mass of bloody muscles, his shape was rted to the fact that he desired power, a prettymon and one of the most pathetic transformations ording to Fabio''s information.

    Eleazar was at a loss right now, but after a moment of contemtion he gazed at Thea and then said.

    "My request remains the same¡­ she is the mother of my children, and this is thest shred of goodwill I have for her, before cutting her from my life, I don''t care if she is used as a soldier or a ve, just allow her to live and I''ll be the most loyal servant for the Empress".

    "Deal", Daimon answered in Thea''s stead, the n leaders only saw their Empress smiling, meaning she didn''t take any offense and instead was happy for the actions of the masked young man.

    Daimon wasn''t going to kill Jina anyway, every different Nethereal is first of all a good practice for him to cure Sarah and Bell, and second a candidate for a terror contract, as entering the path to be a Nethereal nullified the impossibility he had to contract Neptune''s natives, for a change he was actually happy that more idiots sumbed to the temptation of Nethereal''s powers, so for him it was a 2x1 kind of deal where he got two Ster ranked servants, well one of them belonged to Thea, but that was still fine, since she is part of the alliance.

    Also, she and the other guy that was just impacted by Aurora''s light spell a moment ago, revealing his true appearance, were converted not too long ago ording to Rita, meaning that an original Nethereal who is at least on the middle stage Ster rank, or a high stage artificial one, should have been near this area.

    And while it is highly possible that the bastard isn''t here anymore, because nder should have scared it away, those rted to it, must be hiding, and they''ll be captured with those two used as bait, but that is a matter forter.

    Right now, the new prisoners were suppressed by nder''s mana, given poison to restrict their powers, and then taken away by one of Thea''s portals, which of course led to the Flying Citadel, where Aurora guided them to their new home, a warm and cozy cell.

    "I restructured the contracts, sign them again, and you''ll be free to go, but you have a lot of work to do, general nder will apany you to do a throughout cleaning, anyone that is signaled by this enemy detection crystal has to be killed on the spot, unless it is an Ster ranked, in which case it needs to be suppressed and captured, work as a group and advance in secret from one n to another", Thea gave her orders and the n leaders who were clean, which were all of them besides that guy and Jina nodded.

    The so called "enemy detection crystals" were just dark mana crystals, that contained one of Rita''s shadow clones, she could expand the range of her insanely sharp and undetectable detection ability, like this, the shadow clones won''t drain her mana but the one of the crystals, as if it is a remote battery.

    It''s an ability she developed so that she can help her young master''s subordinates, without leaving her rightful ce, which is Daimon''s shadow.

    "Ah damn, and I just returned, whatever we''ll be finished in an hour or so, since the ones that have developed proper reasoning aren''t that many anyway", said the fish-headed general.

    Bing a Nethereal had its requirements too, like being able to think, so magic beasts without self-awareness were unable to be turned into them, that meant that only from the middle stage of the Arch rank and above needed to be checked, lower ranked spirit beasts only followed their leader''s orders, so if the leaders were loyal so were they.

    That''s how it worked for magic beasts, simr to what happened with Ulkrear''s subordinates that were absorbed into Karmandi''s army after his betrayal, with the exception of the sea fleas that were self-aware and decided to betray Thea too, just to end up being used as test subjects by Daimon.

    "We''ll be back in an hour or so¡­ I want to have a small conversation with youss, so don''t leave until that", said nder before he waved his hand to open a breach on the space, apparently, he was proficient in using space shift, just like Vincent.

    Thea nodded, they still had another thing to do here, so they won''t be leaving so soon, and she also wanted to ask a few things to nder, with Daimon present.

    "I''ll be at the basement, just go meet us when you return", said Thea, nder nodded and then he and the other n leaders, including Eleazar entered through the portal, ready to make a purge of any traitor within their files.

    As for Thea, she turned to see Daimon and then jumped out of her seat.

    "The entrance to the inner area of the Maelstrom Sea is at the basement of the castle of my family, you cane but I don''t think is a good idea for everyone to follow, the aura that is exuded by that thing is quite detrimental for others, for those who aren''t Ster ranks, I think that only Aisha and Jasmine can resist due to their affinities, well, maybe Sarah can too, as she should be immune to poison".

    Tessa and Cassy whose affinities are rted to nature might be fine too, but they will be put under more pressurepared to Aisha and Jasmine whose affinities arepletely ipatible with darkness, Leslie and Yvonne will be able to resist too, but only if they use their wings, as they haven''t reached the Lord rank yet, inparison the crazy girl is not only a middle stage Lord rank, but also a dual poison and darkness affinity knight, which makes her less susceptible to corrosion and quite sturdy too.

    "You stay behind", said Daimon to Remi, because Bell wanted to go too, they were only going to take a peek to the entrance to the inner area, to see if they could get something out of it, if the others really wanted to go, Thea could always protect them with her mana, but they weren''t that interested into it.

    "As the young master wishes", said Remi, the other girls sat on one of the many empty seats, while Thea made a portal in which Daimon and the selected group entered, disappearing from the room.

 Chapter 462 The Ryner Clanâ€™s Origin (Part 1)

    The scenery changed, from the meeting room where the n leaders and Thea normally gathered to discuss important matters of the Ryner n''s territory, to a grim underground ce.

    The moment they appeared here, Daimon was amazed at the number of arrays that were engraved on the walls, roof and floor of this ce.

    "Dispel, detoxification, impact reduction, solidification, cleansing and the list goes on¡­ just how many arrays have been engraved here", mumbled Daimon, his eyes glowed behind his mask as he saw the countless runes that floated here and there.

    "A total of 88 different defensive type arrays that activate depending on the situation, this ce has been in my family, even before the earliest records that there are in the private library of the n head¡­", said Thea.

    Unlike the outer and middle areas of the Maelstrom Sea, the inner area is only essible through a limited number of ces, one would believe that is bad, since that means only a few people will have ess to the strongest resources and the like.

    But there is a reason as to why no one has even tried to overthrown the four ruler families, though the title of ruler has been taken away by a member of another branch, in the case of the Three-Legged Toad King, because the previous one was Thea''s father''s friend, and the current who is the cousin of the previous one killed it to steal its position.

    Anyway, the reason as to why no magic beast has tried to overthrown the ns, and at most they have gotten higher positions among them, is the giant portal that is covered by chains which is floating in front of Daimon right now.

    "In the whole Maelstrom Sea, there are only four permanent points that connect to the inner area, each one of those is supervised a by a ruler n and it is our duty to keep the portals sealed¡­ so that the things on the other side can''te here".

    "Through the years there has only ever been one irregr portal appearing in Neptune, and what came out of it was the gray fog that now surrounds the entrance to the middle area of the Maelstrom Sea".

    "At first the magic beasts thought that was a good thing, since the people from the other seas won''t be able toe and go as they please, to steal the resources from the Maelstrom Sea, but their happiness was quite shortsting, when the Mist Horrors appeared".

    "Those things appear, ughter and the vanish into the gray fog, and no matter how much we try to dispel the fog, the thing keeps returning, luckily there are no Ster ranked Mist Horrors, so we just ended up putting a bandage by ordering the nearby beasts to kill the Mist Horrors at sight", said Thea.

    Daimon nodded, previously he thought that the Mist Horrors were just strange magic beasts, whose appearances and overall auras were eerie because they belonged to the Maelstrom Sea, this believe was reinforced when he met the Devil Goblin Shark, cktooth, beingpletely honest, cktooth isn''t exactly appealing to the eye, and its affinity is called corrosion which derivates from darkness giving cktooth an even more menacing set up.

    But it was the same Devil Goblin Shark the one who told Daimon that the Mist Horrors aren''t considered magic beasts, they are in fact enemies of the magic beasts and whoever that allies with them is an enemy too, it is something engraved in the memories that flow through their blood, a primal instinct so to speak.

    And as if to confirm that, Daimon had already tried to use Ruler of the Sea on the Mist Horror which was captured back then, and not only it didn''t work, but the thing tried to attack him, despite meaning that the chains that were put on it were strangling and punishing it for doing so.

    The creature went against one of the principles of every sentient being, it ignored its life in a try to kill Daimon, but was easily suppressed as it was restrained, also now Daimon knew things he didn''t back then.

    For example, how effective was his Demon Light against Nether, and curiously Mist Horrors were also incredibly weak towards Demon Light, to the point that unlike Nethereals, the beasts didn''t even dare to harbor any ill intent towards him, when Daimon used Demon Light, the Mist Horrors frost and cowered in fear.

    And now, Thea affirmed that those same things came from a portal that led to the inner area of the Maelstrom Sea, which made Daimon wonder what was that ce like, naturally that curiosity didn''t go unnoticed by Thea who then said.

    "Many people believe that these portals lead to and of riches, while others think they lead to hell, the truth is that there is nothing at the other side, my father once showed me what lies after the portal, which is just a dark void".

    She then snapped her fingers and one of the chains, the smallest one was removed from the portal, the atmosphere suddenly took a 180¡ã change as currents of dark wind were exuded by the portal.

    Daimon frowned, his body radiated white mes which covered, Aisha, Jasmine and even Bell, protecting them from the dangerous thing that escaped from the portal, while he didn''t do the same for the crazy girl Sarah, who just stood there and received the currents of dark energy directly.

    Thea was about to interfere when she saw Daimon shaking his head at her, Sarah didn''t even try to dodge, and the currents of ck windnded on her, Bell had her doubts, but she knew that despite the¡­ strange rtionship her daughter has with Daimon, he won''t harm her, otherwise why would have him being practicing and refining his skills to cure the two of them.

    And Bell was in the right, that ck current didn''t harm Sarah at all, in fact judging by her body which was shivering and the expression of delight she had on her face, it was beneficial for her.

    In a matter of seconds, the ck current was absorbed by her, and then Sarah who was all smiles looked at Daimon with a predacious gaze.

    "As expected of my destined one, you even allowed such a dangerous energye to me~", she said as she slowly approached Daimon in a try to hug him, only for Daimon to dodge her.

    "That energy reacted against my Demon Light, so I expected it to give you a nice zap to see if it could fix you¡­ but it seems you are beyond salvation", said Daimon as he sighed, while Aisha giggled and Jasmine bitterly smiled.

    Obviously, Daimon knew Sarah wouldn''t be harmed by that energy, but the crazy girl simply took him out of his mind.

    Thea had a surprised expression rarely seen on her pretty face, well, rarely seen before she met Daimon, because after that she has been seeing many impossibilities happening in front of her.

    Like that dangerous radiation from the portal, which has killed quite a few people, be beneficial for someone.

    "Thest guard that was hit by that, melted into a puddle of ck liquid you know", she mumbled, which only made Sarah put on a delighted expression once again as she hugged herself and tried to catch Daimon by surprise.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    ''Maybe I should throw her into the portal, since she seems to like it that much'', thought Daimon as he dodged her.

    "That ck thing is simr to the Nether used by Nethereals, but unlike their ck mist element, that can be considered "natural" while theirs isn''t", said Daimon.

    During hisst experiments, he has been trying to find out what Nether is, originally it seemed to be a derivation of darkness element, now that he got to see that high stage Ster ranked "original" Nethereal, he noticed that wasn''t the case, it''s more simr to his Demon Light.

    Which means is an element that doesn''t exist in the nature by itself, because is an unnaturalbination of elements, the difference is that his Demon Light isn''t rejected by other elements, maybe because he has all the affinities, which makes hispatibility with the "world" as high as possible within his realm.

    But the Nether isn''t like that, as it seems to be rejected by everything, its power isn''t corrosion, but it causes an effect of corrosion whenever it shes with mana, and since in this world there is mana everywhere, well, it takes that incorporeal ck mist form.

    And that ck current that Sarah happily allowed to hit her, seems to be rted to Nether, but it isn''t rejected, meaning it has a natural property.

    "Show me those curse marks on your back", said Daimon, to which Sarah smiled as she turned around to undo the buttons on one of the sides of her blouse, making Daimon shake his head.

    Bell on the other hand was in awe, her eyes showed her excitement a secondter, because she saw that one of the marks had started to fade.

    "I think I know how to cure you two now", said Daimon.

    ''And I also now know why my Terror Contracts do work on the Nethereals, even if Neptune Natives are supposed to not be eligible for it'', he thought to himself.

    But his theory could be left forter, right now Thea once again sealed the portal, which as she stated had nothing at the other side, there was just a ck void there, which disappeared the moment thatst chain was restored.

    A brown portal suddenly appeared near Daimon and the others, the oarfish general nder came out of it in a rush, but when he saw Thea and everyone were fine, he sighed.

    "Lass, you nearly made me have a heart attack, I thought that the seals had broken from the other side and rushed back here", said the fish-headed general.

    One of the chains is linked to him, so that he is able to tell if there is any anomaly, Thea didn''t mention she was going to demonstrate how the portal worked, so he thought there was a break.

    "I guess this is fine too, I had already finished making guard for the strong ones to be put under the new contracts, the small fries can be dealt by those guys since Eleazar is with them".

    "Ah, right, what did you wanted to talk with me?", asked nder, there were some benches for the guards that were on duty, they were sent away by Thea early, so they could take a seat to have a conversation, which they did.

    This ce is not normally one you would choose for that, but since the conversation was going to involve that portal, things were different.

    "I have some questions regarding father''s death", said Thea, which made an ufortable silence fall in the room, but it didn''tst long before nder sighed.

    The moment he saw that ck misting from Jina, he knew this subject wille to light once again, if Thea didn''t mention it, he was going to do it, how could he not, then that ck mist radiated the same kind of feeling that the wounds that killed his sworn brother, in other words Thea''s father.

    "That ck mist you saw Jina use earlier¡­ the wounds of father had a simr sensation to it, right?", she asked.

    "Yes, brother Liam also mentioned that the Chauliodus n ruler, had gotten a newprehension of darkness element, which took him by surprise, but the wound in his chest which was the one that couldn''t be healed and caused his demise, it didn''t look like something darkness mana can do, especially because brother was a strong darkness user himself, his resistance towards corrosion was really high, and that is shy the Chauliodus ruler was afraid of him", said nder.

    "I see¡­", mumbled Thea before she turned to see Daimon.

    "I want to make the Chauliodus n one of the targets of alliance, they are definitely working with the Nethereals and so they should bepletely annihted", she calmly said.

    Though she indeed wanted to avenge her father, the previous Emperor passed away as a hero, he had a glorious fight where he alone eliminated practically all the army of the enemy, forcing it to retreat, avenging his generals which were ambushed and killed by the enemy''s ruler.

    He fulfilled his duties as the n head, and was a model for the Thea of back then, she cried his death, yes, but that became motivation for Thea to finally be able to control her spatial affinity, which caused her troubles, prior to that she sometimes ended up summoning a portal by ident here and there, or simply passing through things.

    But that ended the same day she was appointed as the next ruler, when she gained the title of "ck Empress".

    "Sure, they, the White''s ancestor, Sting, ckbeard, Horrorw and the ckfin Duke as well as some other guys, will all be considered as prior targets", answered Daimon, which made Thea smile.

 Chapter 463 The Ryner Clanâ€™s Origin (Part 2)

    ?

    Listening to Thea asking the masked young man to mark the Chauliodus n, which is the culprit behind the death of his good brother, and friends, in other words, Lina and Karmandi''s parents, nder frowned for a second before saying.

    "Lass, you know I hate that cunning bastard as much as possible, but his strength is no joke, even now that I have reached the peak of the high stage, beingpletely honest, I know I can''t beat him, at most I can drive him away¡­ and there is a high chance I''ll end up dead".

    "Only after you reach the high stage and with me restraining it, you''ll be able tond a lethal attack on him".

    "And what if we add three Maximum Ster ranks to the equation, including a light affinity one", Daimon''s voice made nder turn to see him.

    The oarfish general contemted things for a moment, he only counted two Maximum Ster ranks in the "alliance", since Thea hadn''t mentioned the fact that Armando also joined, so he was wondering who was the third one.

    But still he shook his head.

    "The Matriarch of the Light Pce isn''t an offensive type mage, I''m not trying to be an idiot, but in terms of offensive my brother''s darkness was stronger than the current Shaman and he still was corroded by that guy".

    Daimon smirked, he would have been wary of what nder was saying, if the scheming guy and its influence were a secret to him, but with Aurora''s newly modified light spells, anyone that was trusting in the powers of Nethereals, were in for a beating, regardless of the type of mage or knight they were.

    A ck portal appeared and Roger as well as Fabio who were dragging a battered figure, came out of it, Fabio who was the most informed and managed to hear what nder said a moment ago, immediately kneeled in front of Daimon and then said.

    "Reporting to the young master, the magic beast mentioned should be one of the "Representatives", like Garrius, they work directly under the Lord, and they all have a specialty which they obtained thanks to a Nether which is above average¡­ that''s in part what I was aiming for, that guy who is being restrained bydy Aurora should know more about it, as he was directly subordinated to Garrius".

    nder who was incredibly sensible to Nether, frowned, he could feel a simr but more obvious sensation like the one Jina radiated after she tried to escape, in other words when she used Nether as a distraction,ing from both Roger and Fabio.

    "They are Nethereals who now work for me, his loyalty is absolute, so you don''t have to worry about it, Thea can exin it to youter if you have doubts about it, I called them here to bring this guy", said Daimon as he pointed at the electric eel magic beast descendant, whose name turned out to be Liman.

    Contrary to his previous high and mighty attitude, he was now pretty submissive, Remi and Aurora did a good job interrogating him after all, and while he didn''t know too much, Daimon finally got to know what was Marcus''s modus operandi.

    In part Daimon had already guessed how it worked, but it was good to confirm it, apparently, simr to Milo''s family, descendants of some of the ns that fought on the war of back then, were scattered in the Maelstrom and Bone Seas.

    Since they were on the loser side, they ended up in disgrace, but at least one or two survived through the generations, and ended up bing Ster ranks, only to get stuck at either the early or middle stage.

    Now, it is important to mention thatpared to the experts of the Clear Water kingdom, whose formations were akin to nobles, or experienced soldiers if they came from the army, these guys were a bunch of bandits at best.

    In a pretty urate calction, peak half Sters from the Neo noble army could go one versus one against the early stage Sters mentioned before, because their preparation was inexistent, they just advanced whenever they had a chance to, without a solid base or anything.

    Such was the case of Milo, whose battle prowess was trash, after recognizing Marcus who for some reason had the proofs of identity of "benefactors" that helped the ns of those guys at a given point, they swore loyalty to him.

    Those who Marcus favored were given a "Devil Blessing Potion" and then their potentials exploded, which ended in them either advancing¡­ or dying, that''s right not all of them could survive the process, and their battle prowess didn''t increase, they had to go through many battles with tough opponents for that.

    But at least the shackles that had forced them to be stagnated, hide or runaway from the enemies they made through the generations, had disappeared, that''s the information Remi had managed to get out of Liman.

    And this is where things get interesting, the reason as to why Thea whose family knows each and all the snake-like magic beast races of Neptune, regardless of their sea of origin, couldn''t pinpoint to which race Liman belongs, is because his characteristics changed after taking the potion Marcus gave him in exchange for his loyalty.

    That being said, Liman didn''t know the name of his race, he was raised by a pirate who was a friend of his father, who was killed in one of the many battles that break out in the mobile inds.

    But he gave his original description and the one of his father, to Remi and that same information was now handed to nder, who was observing Liman from head to toe, and inspecting his eyes, the fins on his neck and the spiked teeth in his mouth.

    "The previous description is that of the descendants of the Blue Vari Eel race, they were a small n that was eliminated in one of the many battles against the Mermen Sea, during the time of brother Liam''s father".

    "Though rare it''s not impossible for a few mixed races to appear, the nomad tribes on the mobile inds are formed of a lot of mixes of races, so by either luck or simply atavism, one or two mixed should surface from time to time, but this guy''s current appearance on the other hand¡­ it reminds of the Voltari Steel Razor Eel raze".

    nder doubted for a second before continuing.

    "And that''s not possible, because till thest one of them was killed by your ancestors, back at the era of foundation and those guys valued the purity of their lineage to the extreme, to the point that they killed every other race without any discrimination, including other eel or snake type ns, which is why the Ryner ruler of back then exterminated them all".

    "On the other hand, this guy iscking their most characteristic trait, the razor-like fins on the arms and neck, which were the proof of their raze and what made them be on par with your ancestor of back then, also their lightning was of a dark yellow color, interestingly they appeared out of nowhere back then too", concluded nder.

    While nder was surprised to see a race from the foundation era, which was extinct surge out of nowhere, Daimon bitterly smiled, he could already guess who introduced Liman''s race to Neptune back then, a system user.

    How does he know it, well, ording to cktooth he is the first ever, Devil Goblin Shark to develop arms, his path of evolution has diverted from the one that his race follows, in Daimon''s case was rted to the Ruler of the Sea, but other system users had their own ways to empower others, in Marcus''s case is that devil blessing thing, whatever it is.

    "What is your family''s story, are you rted to the race mentioned by him?", asked Daimon to Liman.

    The guy seemed to have recovered some spine, as it red at Daimon, but then when both Roger and Fabio produced Nether to inject it in his body, which will cause a severe pain, he obediently answered.

    "My father once said that we Eel electric races had a royal family, who was on par with any of the four rulers, but out of jealousy they joined hands and ambushed our strongest n, but a benefactor tended to the wounds of one elder who survived for a few more days, and the elder condensed his lineage into a few drops of blood essence, which were given to the benefactor".

    "The story said that the benefactor promised to return one day, and hand the royal lineage down to someone who was worthy of it, Lord Marcus is the descendant of our benefactor, even if you captured me, my older brother is the genius of my family, he reached the peak of the high stage right after consuming the potion containing our royal n''s blood, and he awakened the Savage Razor Lightning, you will all die¡­ aghhhh!".

    Since Liman had started divagating from the question that was asked to him, Roger and Fabio ced their hands on his eyes and their Nether burned them, such was the punishment for him daring to threat their young master, the two ck mist stage Nethereals are under Terror Contracts, their loyalty towards Daimon is extreme.

    "That is enough for now, he apparently hadn''t told you everything he knew, right?", asked Daimon, which made both Roger and Fabio pale.

    Remi interrogated Liman first, but then he was tasked with surveilling the other Nethereal, because Aurora had a sudden inspiration, which ended in her casting that ray of white light which destroyed the disguise of the other n leader that had betrayed Thea along with Jina.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    So, they were in charge of the rest of the interrogation, and apparently, they were too soft with Liman, as they didn''t know about the little story he just told, still they didn''t dare to put the me on Remi much less on Aurora.

    "We are sorry young master, please punish us ordingly!", they both said as they kneeled down, which made Daimon shake his head.

    ''I guess they can''t be as efficient as Horals by innate'', he thought before saying.

    "We''ll discuss thatter; I''ll drop by to finish the interrogation personally".

    With those words, those two took Liman and Thea opened a portal so they could return to the prison of the Flying Citadel, judging by their wild gazes, Liman was about to suffer a lot, since he dared to make them look bad in front of their young master.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon now had a much more thing in which he was interested, and that is Thea''s n''s origin, beings who have the support of a system user raise in power, that is almost guaranteed.

    It''s not that Daimon is touching his own trumpet, but system users have many tricks up their sleeves, just look at Marcus, in a matter of months he gathered fifteen high stage Ster ranks out of nowhere, when each sea used to have one or two of such experts, it was simply unbnced, a cheat so to speak.

    Adam was different, but he still gained the full support of two Maximum Ster ranks and many others in a single day, back when he saved Jasmine, no questions asked, sure it crumbled apart "easily" but that was because of Daimon''s interference.

    It wouldn''t be weird that the system users of back then, powered a few races so they served them, the guy who tricked the White Walkers did it, and now it appears to be that the Hydra guy was the same.

    And that made Daimon wonder, what is Thea''s race, who were strong enough to eliminate a race with a system user backing them, how strong were they that they weren''t reduced to a miserable state like the angelfish n who also went against the Hydra guy, or was there something that made the Hydra guy wary of them, which prevented it from seeking revenge, but if that was the case why was Thea''s father targeted by the scheming guy.

    "I have heard you talk a lot about your father and he was the previous ruler and as far as I understand, his darkness wasn''t like yours, could it be that your spatial propertyes from your mother?", asked Daimon, which made Thea''s eyes glow.

    "I don''t know¡­ mother died when I was a baby, unlike father she wasn''t abatant, and she couldn''t even reach the Ster ranks, besides that I only know that I resemble her a lot, my eyes specially, ording to father", mumbled Thea.

    nder who was left out of the conversation, suddenly frowned as he gazed at Daimon.

    "I originally wasn''t going to mention it, because I trust the little princess''s eye for people, but a traitor appeared within the generals she chose and I know it wasn''t due to her being careless, so, sorry for the offense but¡­ who are you, you aren''t a native of the Maelstrom Sea, nor you are from the Elemental races as I can feel different types of mana from you, and you also don''t have any beast characteristic, not to mention your aura does feel like the one of a magic beast of a highest level".

    "I know the aura of all the ns on that level, since the little princess is from one of them, but howe I can''t recognize yours?", asked the Oarfish general, to which Daimon casually answered.

    "That is because I''m not a native of Neptune, Ie from another gxy", the moment Daimon finished speaking, the Oarfish general''s pressure exploded out of his body.

    But before Daimon''s safety measures activated, Thea and Bell were already in front of him, cancelling the pressureing from nder, whose eyes were bloodshot right now.

    Daimon didn''t stop in the ceremony, he snapped his fingers and his skill Switch activated, taking Jasmine and Sarah out of here, and recing them with Remi and Roger, Aisha stayed, because Daimon was confident that the safety measures on her, were enough to protect her.

    Both Remi and Roger stood at nder''s sides, surrounding the general, Remi was a peak high stage too, though Armando easily suppressed him, he wasn''t weak at all, it''s just that there is a high distance between a high and a Maximum stage Ster rank, and while nder is innately stronger than Remi, as he is a magic beast, he won''t be outpowered so easily.

    Thea knew that Daimon won''t hesitate to start a fight, against whoever that dared to attack him, so she turned to see him with those pretty amber snake-like eyes of hers before saying.

    "He is annoying but he isn''t an enemy, let me try and mediate¡­ if he is really trying to harm you, I will stop him".

    Daimon gazed at nder and he recognized the hatred that was burning in his eyes, it was the type of hatred felt towards the one that killed someone important to you, still understanding isn''t the same as sympathizing.

    Whether he is in the wrong or not, which in this case he isn''t, anyone that can is a threat to him or his close ones, will be eliminated, that being said, he could see Thea''s honesty in her eyes, so he raised his hand and then said.

    "You twoe here, but don''t lower your guards".

    Thea let out a sigh of relief.

    "Thanks¡­", she mumbled and then turned to see nder, in the long time she has known the Oarfish general, she has never seen him like this, magic beasts are violent and wild, that is normal, those who take human form have to learn how to suppress their nature, only then they obtain the advantages of a rational mind and the strength of a magic beast.

    First generations like nder aren''t perfect, it is harder for them to control themselves, but the Oarfish general has always been an easygoing person, so this isn''t a simple fit of anger, there should be a reason for it.

    "Hey old fish-head, what is happening, have you gone senile or something?", asked Thea, she wasn''t joking when she said she wasn''t going to stand aside, as she even drew out her spear.

    "Lass he¡­ is dangerous, I had a sensation of restlessness the moment I saw him, I believed in your eye for people, but if he is really from outside of Neptune then we can''t trust him, the history of my family is the better proof of it", said nder.

    Thea frowned.

    "The history of your family, weren''t you saved by father after your n was destroyed due to a battle with one of the ns that used to serve the Chauliodus ruler?", she asked.

    nder sighed and then pointed at Thea''s ring.

    "You have the record of the rulers in your ring right¡­ pierce it with your spear, your father made me promise not to tell you until you reached the high stage, but if the damn outsiders are here then we are running out of time, I swear to not do anything until you have read it", he said as he at down cross-legged, his eyes didn''t abandon Daimon''s figure though.

    But the same could be said of Daimon, the gazes of the two shed on the air, which took nder by surprise, the young man in front of him wasn''t intimidated by his aura, at all, in fact he didn''t seem to be worried about anything, as if it was decided that the one who would have lost if they shed earlier, wasn''t going to be him.

    ''Certainly, I can''t outpower that masked guy so easily, not to mention he has another three Sters and the little princess, but is hard to fight while protecting someone, what makes him so confident¡­ no I shouldn''t judge him bymon standards, if he is like those fucking monsters, then even if I were to be a Maximum Ster there isn''t such a thing as a 100% sure way to deal with him, only the little princess would be able to go against him'', he thought.

 Chapter 464 The Ryner Clanâ€™s Origin (Part 3)

    ?

    Thea heard nder''s words and she felt a bit troubled, her father who always mentioned she had the highest potential in the history of the Ryner n, made nder promise not to tell her about what she was about to read.

    And that also meant, there was more to the history of her family what she knew, it would be a lie to say she wasn''t angry to be kept in the dark, but she decided to first see what was everything about before reaching a conclusion.

    In any case, no matter what she got to know, she was sure of one thing¡­ her opinion of Daimon won''t change.

    Thea waved her hand and a ck book the size of a door appeared floating in front of her, this was the record of all the rulers of the Ryner n, in which they will write all the important events that they had to deal with during their reigning period.

    It''s something she has read quite a few times, because back then when her father died, this was the way she felt closer to him, by reading all the feats he achieved.

    But this time Thea didn''t open it with the method her father taught her, which required her to use her token of authority and a drop of her blood, she rolled her spear and againstmon sense, tried to pierce the book with it.

    To her surprise, before her spear reached the cover, a chain materialized out of nowhere, the hole of the lock had an irregr shape, which she recognized immediately as it perfectly fitted the tip of her spear.

    Thea couldn''t help but steal a gaze at nder, who just nodded at her, she then inserted the spear into the lock and the chain fell, a small ck portal appeared in the center area of the ck book, and a golden metallic book came from it.

    But Thea couldn''t even touch it, before it turned into yellow particles that integrated with the door sized ck book, the design of the giant book changed, now its borders and the center had golden metal ques attached to them.

    And that wasn''t the only change, every two or three normal pages, a ck one appeared inside of the book, Thea who has read every single word of the record of the previous rulers, was surprised to see new contents appearing out of nowhere, but what caught her attention the most, was that now, there were three ck pages at the very beginning of the book one after another, without normal pages.

    "Howe I couldn''t notice the missing pages, I have mana sense¡­", mumbled Thea.

    "That''s because those pages are stored in a different space, which is only essible to the ruler of each generation, as for why you who are probably the most talented being in which spatial affinity regards, in the whole history of Neptune, couldn''t notice it¡­ that''s because the previous one who held that title was the one that created this treasure", said nder.

    Thea''s pretty eyes glowed, in the whole history of the Ryner n, there wasn''t any other ruler with spatial affinity like her, no in fact so far in Neptune there was no one who was born with spatial affinity like here, at least not until Daimon arrived to this.

    Others are able to move through space, because they learn Space Shift, or because they manage to catch something due toprehending spatialws, but they don''t have spatial affinity.

    It''s simr to how mages can use the most basic spells of other elements that aren''t the ones in which they excel, but can''t deepen into them unless they keep advancing.

    Imagine a star ranked mage with wind affinity using fireball spell, now imagine a Ster rank of win affinity using that same spell, of course thetter will produce a way stronger spell, even if his affinity isn''t fire, the same applies to Space Shift, the ability to move through space that half Ster ranks develop, updates as they advance.

    But they can''t use space for anything else than making portals which aren''t realistically usable in battle as they require focues, unlike Daimon who has obtained an ability that doesn''t require preparations, like "Switch" or "Blink" thanks to his spatial affinity, or Thea who has learned to use change the space in which she or her spear reside, in other to ignore any limitations, which is what she uses to bypass barriers.

    ''Someone with space affinity who managed to survive and reach a higher proficiency than me'', thought Thea.

    In a where thousands of millions of living beings exist, Thea can''t be the only one with space affinity that has ever existed in the history of Neptune, but in public that is the case.

    The reason is actually pretty simple, others who might have had it died before it manifested, or their affinity was too weak to be of use and instead focused on their other affinity, or even more probably they were unable to be mages or knights.

    Thea might be really strong now, but prior to her father''s death, she was unable to control her space abilities, though she still had her darkness affinity, which had now merged with it.

    The other difference between others and Thea, is that she manifested space affinity since she was a baby, it was awake by innate.

    nder who had a frowned expression on his face as he saw those extra three pages at the beginning of the book, said.

    "Those ck pages are the secret records of the rulers, originally no one besides them should know about it, brother Liam entrusted this secret because it was too early for you back then, the history of my family goes back all the way to the time of your great-grandfather, the second page of his secret record to be more urate¡­ but those three pages at the beginning, they are new even for me".

    Thea didn''t need to hear it twice, she opened the book, but didn''t go to the pages of her great-grandfather as nder said, but straight to the first three, of course things didn''t go smooth which she already expected.

    "They are empty", mumbled Thea, she leafed through the book and then returned to the first three ck pages, only those were empty, the others had words written with white ink on them.

    "Your father told me everything he knew about the secret records, because there was a chance I had to act as a substitute ruler, so he also didn''t know about them", said nder.

    Thea had a slightly annoyed expression on her pretty face, but ultimately, she went to the pages nder mentioned previously, which were under the records of her great grandfather.

    Compared to humans and most of the races, magic beasts had a longer lifespan, each one of Thea''s ancestors lived through a few generations of kings of the Clear Water kingdom, that''s the bestparison.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    So, Thea''s great-grandfather is someone that lived around fifteen or twenty generations of kings of the Clear Water kingdom, to put in perspective, the current White ancestor who is older than Vincent, Aurora and the other Maximum Ster ranks, with the exception of Armanado, is just the king of five generations ago.

    The moment Thea read the beginning of the page that nder mentioned, her pupils narrowed.

    The entry basically exined that there have been other visitorsing to Neptune, besides the four that led the war of foundation, but they weren''t like the first four, most were just regr people that somehow ended in Neptune.

    Thea''s great-grandfather got to meet a couple in his lifetime, at least they affirmed toe from outside of Neptune, he epted them into his files because though they were weak at the time, they showed potential and they also helped some of his subordinates when they were in need.

    They ended up joining the army led by nder''s n and quickly raised in the ranks, until they were only below the generals, gaining many battles for the Ryner n, everything was good until they became too ambitious.

    They tried to convince nder''s n to start a rebellion, and of course nder''s ancestor refused¡­ so they massacred not only him but practically everyone that was present in the n back then, regr people, women, children, infants, everyone was killed.

    What they didn''t know is that nder''s ancestor managed to sent a message to the ruler, before life abandoned him, and so the ruler who was furious arrived in time to see those two using all the corpses for some kind of ritual.

    A horrifying battle exploded and the ruler came to realize that those two working together, were as strong as him, which made no sense, because they were still quite young, they became too strong way too fast.

    Still the ruler was more experienced, so he managed to lethally wound one of the two, and then started overwhelming them, it was then when all the corpses of nder''s n turned into blood mist, a red portal took them away before the ruler could kill them.

    It was due to that battle that nder''s n decayed as only some random people who were visiting other ces, among which nder''s direct ancestor was, survived, and after learning what happened from the mouth of the ruler himself, they left the Ryner n.

    nder''s race only returned to the Ryner n in Thea''s father''s generation, and till today, nder hasn''t meet other member of his race after his small family of his mother and him, were attacked by pirates just to be saved by Thea''s father.

    The Oarfish general against the wishes of his predecessors, returned to the Ryner n to help his benefactor, whoter became his sworn brother, but that doesn''t mean he has forgotten the resentment of his n which was practically exterminated.

    So, when nder heard that Daimon wasn''t a native of Neptune, he of course felt that his blood was boiling, remembering that thepanions that lived, ate, slept and fought alongside his n, killed everyone on a whim, perhaps they were never theirpanions to begin with.

    How could he see Thea repeat the same mistake as the ruler of back then, even contracts were meaningless, because they as direct subordinates should have not been able to kill their general, but they did, though Thea''s contracts were stronger than normal, who knows what methods people like those monsters have.

    Their general was as strong as the ruler, and he was killed too easily, the ruler did manage to half kill one and heavily wound the other, but they still escaped and their fate was unknown, as for his n members, they didn''t even have a corpse to bury.

    nder looked at Thea waiting for her answer, the situation in which Daimon ended up bing her general, was suspiciously simr to that after all.

    Thea turned to see Daimon who took off his mask, she directly gazed at him before saying.

    "Say Daimon, will you betray for your own benefit?", her voice was clear and calm.

    "No", Daimon''s answer was straight and clear for everyone to hear, unfortunately he had no way to make a contract, because he couldn''t be tied by them, but he knew he was telling the truth and that was enough.

    And apparently it was also enough for Thea, who smiled and then turned to see nder before saying.

    "I believe in him, if you believe in me then don''t lump him together with the ones written in the records, we don''t even know from where did they came, there should be an infinite number of gxies ands out there after all".

    nder''s eyes narrowed, he gazed at Daimon, not understanding how did he earn Thea''s trust in such a small period of time, but he then realized that it wasn''t only Thea, unlike the people in the record of his n, he has gathered people from at least three seas.

    "Ahhhhh,ss you are going to make me age early, fine if you believe in him, I will do so too, but if I detect the slightest sign of betrayal then¡­", nder didn''t finish his words, but the meaning behind them was obvious.

    He then signed the new contract that Thea made, which stated he won''t attack the new allies, making the Oarfish general officially a part of the alliance too.

    "An ancient race surging, outsiders, what''s next the end of the world?", said nder as he gritted his teeth, only to notice the strange gazes on the eyes of Thea.

    "What''s wrongss?", he asked, just to freeze the next second, when he was told about the Global Raid, which was a possible world ending event, depending on the result, not only that but he got to know that there were indeed people that came from outside of Neptune involved in it, in the form of Adam and Marcus.

    The Global Raid would have happened regardless of Daimon''s participation, because Neptune was part of those two''s missions, what changed is that now there was another yer and thus a new possible result.

 Chapter 465 The Ryner Clanâ€™s Origin (Part 4)

    ?

    Leaving aside the surprise nder got after listening about the Global Raid, the Oarfish general turned to see Thea before saying.

    "So, what nowss?".

    With the purge that was ongoing right now, the forces of the Ryner n are in need of reorganization, new leaders for the ones that were led by the traitors had to be appointed, not to mention that due to the same reason, Thea lost two Ster ranks, there was also Ulkrear who was still on the run.

    So the Ryner n was short staffed right now, at least on what leaders for the different armies respected, luckily, Daimon had already thought about it before, because for his n to work, Thea''s presence was required in the Clear Water kingdomter, so she wasn''t going to be able to stay behind at her n.

    Daimon observed his surroundings and after a quick calction he nodded and then waved his hand, a giant ck cocoon of a few hundreds of meters appeared on the cave, taking nder by surprise.

    "What is that, kid?", he asked, the sensationing from that cocoon made him frown, it was the aura of a magic beast indeed, but it didn''t resemble to any race he has met before.

    And that is a lot to say considering that though nder isn''t a Maximum Ster rank, he has lived more than some of them, with Armando and maybe the White''s ancestor''s exceptions.

    That''s why Thea wanted him to check on Liman, if someone could recognize a beast race that she couldn''t, that was nder.

    "This guy is cktooth, a Devil Goblin Shark, or at least he used to be one before, in three days at most he''ll be out of this thing, so I''ll leave him behind to work here, as a magic beast native from this sea he won''t look out of ce, besides that the Eel guy will also cooperate with you, just put him a mask or something of course".

    nder raised an eyebrow, Devil Goblin Sharks are a strong race indeed, but they are subordinated to one of the other rulers, it might not be an open enemy like the Chauliodus ruler, but it didn''t change the fact that they weren''t allies.

    And then we have Liman, a member of a race that was exterminated by one of Thea''s ancestors, in other words they were enemies no matter how you looked at it, not to mention nder didn''t exactly trusted Daimon to begin with.

    "They are unable to go against me, so you don''t have to worry about them betraying the alliance", confidently affirmed Daimon, cktooth was contracted through the Ruler of the Sea, while Liman will soon be under a Terror Contract, well, that is if what he recently discovered was right or not, but Daimon was 90% sure it will.

    "Sigh, forget it, I can make use of them, I would be d if you also leave Jina behind, you can control those Nethereal guys too, right?", said nder, to which Daimon shook his head.

    "I can, but that is a secret, there is no problem in that eel guy disguising himself to fight alongside you, because ultimately he is a magic beast, there might be more like him here and there, so he won''t outstand too much".

    "But Nethereals are different, there is still too much we don''t know about them, so the best way to deal with the ones I capture is making them be publicly death, I won''t leave them appear unless it is really necessary", he said.

    Daimon was sure he could deal with Marcus and Adam, he has somewhat understood their goals in Neptune too, so it won''t be hard to predict their moves for when the Global Raid starts.

    But the scheming guy is different, his goals are unknown, besides the fact that it is obviously targeting possible threats for the Nethereals, such as Aurora, so it is better for the fact that he can also control Nethereals to be kept a secret as much as possible.

    "How about that masked guy, he doesn''t give off the feeling of a Nethereal?", asked nder, he of course wanted to make sure that the Ryner n could survive the iing battle.

    But Daimon refused once again.

    "No, he has another ce he needs to be, don''t be greedy old man, you got a third high stage Ster rank to be on your side, and cktooth won''t be weaker than a middle stage one, at least in his own words, ah right Karmandi will also surprise you once he is back", he said as he snapped his fingers and a few wooden tubs appeared on the ground next to him.

    nder''s eyes widened a bit, he didn''t know what was inside of the wooden tubs but every cell of his body was screaming him to drink it, and with a good reason, those tubs were filled with three-colored water.

    "What treasure is this?", asked nder as he removed the lid of one of the tubs, just to be amazed at the concentration of mana in the liquid that the tub contained.

    "That is three-colored water of the highest quality, give it to anyone that has been stuck in a bottle neck and they will most likely advance, that cocoon formed around cktooth after he drank that same thing, take it as a sign of goodwill", said Daimon.

    nder looked at Thea, to seek a response, this treasure was too much to be casually epted.

    "It''s a gift from a friend, just take it and go distribute among those who you consider worthy of using it".

    It''s not like Daimon was just giving away such a valuable thing, for nothing, Thea had told him she had a spatial type resource which was apt for him to use, and she was giving it to him as a gift, so he had to respond in kind too, materials with space properties that aren''t storage, are extremely hard toe by, such is the case of that poisonous flower, but Daimon has no way to use it in the nearby future.

    "I will take my leave then¡­ there is a long list of decent subordinates that need this", said nder, he gave Daimon a troubled gaze and then disappeared using a portal.

    Thea sighed and then gave Daimon an apologetic smile.

    "Don''t take it against him, he is annoying but I will trust my life to him", she said.

    Daimon shook his head, he heard the history of nder''s n, so he didn''t really me him for being wary towards him, in fact he was interested in the ck pages, because so far, he has only gotten to know about the hero and the other three that arrived with him.

    But now, it turns out there have been othersing from outside of Neptune, the question here is, if they were also system users or not, judging by the fact that they had fast growth ording to the record, there is a decent chance they were, but if that was the case, they could have used another method than just try to convince nder''s ancestor to rebel with them.

    Thea noticed Daimon''s curiosity and she softlyughed, as she handed the giant ck book to him.

    "Give it a try, you also have an eye type innate ability right, maybe you can see discover something", she said.

    The moment Daimon touched the book, which had yet to leave Thea''s hands, the thing opened by itself, specifically showing the first page, but then the next moment Daimon got a notification.

    [Ding]

    [An external entity is trying to absorb the mana of the host without permission¡­ nothing can prey on an Apex Predator; do you wish to retaliate Y/N]

    Daimon shook his head, what if the system screwed the record of Thea''s family, he could not exin, still the moment whatever process the ck book was trying to do, was blocked by the ability of the Apex Predator body, the book closed itself once again.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Thea''s pretty eyes gazed at Daimon with surprise, she tried to interrupt whatever was happening, from her side, because she didn''t want Daimon to think it was her doing, but she soon realized she couldn''t.

    Though the amount of mana that the book took from her wasn''t that much, it was the fact that she couldn''t refuse what troubled her, but she then saw Daimon casually standing up to something she couldn''t so easily, so of course she was positively surprised.

    ''I guess I should have expected it from the first being ever that was able to block Marlene''s innate ability'', she thought.

    Thea then grabbed the book which had fell to the ground, but nothing happened, it didn''t absorb her mana either, and the first ck pages had nothing written on them.

    Daimon saw Thea gazing at him and he chuckled, it was obvious she wanted him to cooperate, so that she can see what''s written in them.

    "I doubt it was specifically designed for me to be the only one to produce this effect, unless that ancestor of yours could see the future or something simr", mumbled Daimon, which made Thea giggle.

    "I can help you open it, but I don''t think this is the right ce to do so, the portal is not exactly stable, let''s go to a safe ce and then we''ll open it", he said.

    "Mm", Thea nodded, Daimon then retrieved the cocoon in which cktooth was going through its evolution, and they left this underground area.

    ¡­

    A momentte, a ck portal appeared in the conference room where the Risha sisters and the other girls were chatting as they waited for Daimon and the others to return, with Remi acting as their bodyguard.

    "So how was it, did the fish headed guy went crazy or something?", asked Sarah when she saw her mother returning, none of them seemed to be worried about Daimon, even when Sarah and Jasmine already told them that nder suddenly got fired up.

    Everyone gazed at Sarah while thinking.

    ''You are the least indicated to call someone crazy''.

    "It was a little misunderstanding, everything is good now, we''ll stay here for a bit, you can return to the Flying Citadel or stretch your legs in the meantime", said Daimon.

    "That''s right, feel free to wander around the castle, or you can visit the treasury to see if you find something useful for you", added Thea.

    The girl''s eyes glowed, Thea handed her token of authority to Bell and they then left, whatever they needed they were allowed to take it, since there is a chance that the Ryner n doesn''t survive enough to use those treasures that have been umting dust over the years anyway.

    Naturally Aisha stayed behind, she saw the strange reaction of the Thea''s family records earlier, so she was curious about it, surprisingly Marlene also stayed behind, though she sent the two elders who were apanying her, to the treasury telling them to get something they could use.

    Realistically, only the two elders might be able to get a decent strength in a short period of time, because the young girls weren''t used to battle unlike them.

    "My room has the best defenses in the castle, so we can try it out there", said Thea.

    Daimon nodded and then using a portal Thea made the group left the room, the scenery changed from the in conference room, to a more personalized ce.

    Marlene has already been here before, so she quickly took a seat, Thea''s room was prettyrge, it would be more urate to call it a one story house, she had a living room, a dining area, a training room, a dormitory and of course a little bar, which was empty because Lina confiscated all her drinks, prior to the discovery that three-colored water allowed her who gets drunk even by just smelling alcohol, to drink to her heart''s content.

    "Let''s get right to it, if I see that there is something wrong from any side, I''ll forcefully interrupt it, okay?", said Daimon.

    "Mm", Thea nodded, she couldn''t stop the book from taking her mana earlier, but Daimon could so trusted him.

    Thea then took out the ck book from her ring, and then grabbed the thing as she offered it to Daimon, imitating what happened earlier.

    This time Daimon was prepared, his ability states that he can''t be preyed upon nor deprived in any sense, but if it was an absolute thing wouldn''t Aisha be unable to drink his blood, as long as he is willing then there is no problem.

    If not imagine, he wouldn''t have been able to use anything that required him to power it up with mana, and almost everything in this world works with mana, it would have been a headache.

    Daimon touched the book, with the intention of epting to let it take his mana, though the notification of deny didn''t appear, if this was detrimental to him, another notification would have been triggered, so that wasn''t the case.

    The moment, Daimon''s hand touched the book, the thing opened by itself once again and then started leafing until it reached the first ck page at the beginning, only then Daimon felt a slight tug as his mana was absorbed by the book, with his infinity eyes he could see Thea''s mana also leaving her hand, both then mixed and then words started appearing on the previously empty page.

    "Thalia Neris first entry, if you are reading this, I have good and bad news for you, first of all, congrattions on finding someonepatible in whom you can trust enough to hand over the records of the family, ah right, you shouldn''t know it too, our family''s surname is Neris".

    "Now, onto the bad news, the other person that is holding the record, unless you are willing to trust your life and everything you hold dear, kill it in this instant, it should be way weaker than you after all~".

    "¡­"

    After a moment of silence, Daimon who also read the entry from this woman called Thalia, who should be the founder of the Ryner n, said.

    "Your ancestor sure had a bad taste humor sense".

    Thea''s clear pretty eyes gazed at Daimon, she didn''t detect the slightest sign of doubt on him, which made her inwardly smile as she injected more mana into the book.

    "Woah, are you serious, there have been others who reached the previous point and either killed the other party, or had it killed by the book draining them out of all their mana because they didn''t really mean it, before their memories about this were modified, good job!".

    Aisha and Marlene also saw the words on the book, and they frowned, certainly it''s not what one would expect from someone who founded Thea''s n.

 Chapter 466 The Ryner Clanâ€™s Origin (Part 5)

    ?

    Daimon read the woman in the book saying he would have died due to his mana being drained and he smirked, he could tame Disaster back then and even stole its energy which allowed Narasha to recover some control over it.

    This book was certainly a treasure, but he could feel that Disaster would have been able to destroy with the given time and if it was needed, not to mention the thing couldn''t take his mana without his permission.

    And even if it could somehow do it, he had his life spark, so his existence wasn''t fully supported only by mana, unlike mages, probably this is why there was no notification from the system, he was never in danger to begin with.

    Thea injected more mana into the book, but new words didn''t appear, so apparently this time it was Daimon''s turn to do so, so he did, luckily his reserves outmatched even middle ranked Lord ranks, because the book was quite greedy.

    After a couple of seconds of Daimon giving mana to the book, new sentences appeared on the ck page.

    "For starters, let me tell you the origin of our race and why the n is named Ryner, despite the fact that my and thus your surname being Neris, as the current ruler you must be informed about the war of foundation, which involved four people that led the four seas, I''m sue you have heard some amazing feats and achievements from them, well, that is if one of them was the winner".

    "What I can tell you is that there were way more people involved in that war than those four whether it was on purpose or nor, and among those who were involved not out of out will there was me, I was dragged from my home, by the trash that led the Maelstrom Sea for their stupid game of war".

    "I bet that idiot named himself something like "Hydra King" or whatever, but the truth is that he was a half breed between a human and a magic beast that took human form, however after hunting and killing many snake races, he somehow integrated their lineages into himself".

    "He did so eight times, an by doing so he gained control over eight different elements, bing an abnormality with the ability to use mana of eight different elements, anyway the guy that was ying to be hero for the Mermen Sea apparently drove the idiot to a corner, and so he decided to go for the ninth element".

    "It was then when he dragged me out of my home¡­ somehow, first he offered me a deal, I''ll be partner and he would not only spare my life but help me evolve, but of course I could see the madness in his eyes, so I refused and a battle broke out".

    "What he wanted was my core, so that he could obtain the rare space affinity with which my Void Devouring Python race is innately born, as trash as he was, he was honestly a monster, having fused eight snake races into his, he attained a beast form which resembled one of the ancestors of all snake races, a Hydra".

    "But even after all that he was a mere imitation, Hydras have nine heads and they are always women, also even if his battle prowess was insanely high for a fake Ster being, I was of a higher realm than him".

    "Also, it seems I was luckier than him, because he seemed to have not gotten the support of someone important, and so even when his reinforces arrived, the small army of magic beasts that were convinced my noble aura, crushed them".

    "Unfortunately, I was hit with some kind of curse by him which slowly made my body turn into stone, but not before I ripped off the main head of his beast form, which was of darkness affinity, to swallow it and use it as energy to slow down the curse".

    "He fled since I had a small army at my side while he was left with nothing from the reinforces that arrived previously, I also found a ce to hide with an incredible treasure in the form of a natural spatial gate nearby and built a small fortress around it".

    "The magic beasts that followed me to battle, gathered their subordinates and joined me, but my time was counted, so I created this special record with a part of remaining powers, granted some of my blood to the one that contributed the most and helped me during all the process, which I''m pretty sure you know, a guy called Ryner who used to be a member of the Tidal Snake race, but after epting my blood he became the originator of a new race".

    "Back then he called himself a "Dark Maelstrom Serpent", to be honest it sounded cheesy for me, but I was dying so I didn''t care too much about it, anyway I then used the spatial gate to hide my body in a secret destination, because I didn''t want that piece of trash to use it for his own benefit".

    "My consciousness stayed behind to write a few more things in the record, like the coordinates were my physical body was hidden, so that one day a decent descendant can ascend into a member of my race, besides that, thest thing I was able to hear about the war, was that the guy from the Mermen Sea was winning".

    Up to this point the book kept demanding more mana from Daimon, but it suddenly stopped here, which meant it was time to change one more time.

    Needless to say, but all the presents were amazed at the story told by the book so far, well Thea and Marlene would have had it hard to believe that someone was able to use eight elements, if not for the fact that Daimon has openly told them he can use all of them, not to mention he is both a knight and a mage at the same time.

    But that is not everything that surprised them.

    "It seems, you were fated to be my friend, huh Thea~", jokingly said Marlene, those reinforces that were useless, were probably Milo''s family, in other words the King of the angelfish n and his subordinates.

    "Well, anyone else for sure will find it hard to get along with you", said Thea with an almost unnoticeable smile, it would be a lie to say she wasn''t in a good mood right now, not only she got to know herst name but the name of her race, which have been a mystery until now.

    But then new questions were born at the same time, for example she was born with space affinity, also maybe the previous rulers had their secret ck pages, but none of them had space affinity for sure, otherwise the Chauliodus n would have been eliminated a long time ago.

    The members of Thea''s family always had either a strong darkness affinity, or a strong water affinity, in isted cases they had decent dual darkness and water affinities, the only exception to that was her father, he had strong water and darkness affinities.

    "So, father''s blood had concentrated enough to be a member of the Dark Maelstrom Serpent race, he was the closest to break the limitation that had been preventing us direct magic beast descendants from reaching the Maximum Ster ranks", mumbled Thea.

    She was confused as to why she went one notch up and was born probably with the lineage that Thalia had, in other words she is a member of the Void Devouring Python race, and not only that, she has the darkness affinity that Thalia stole from the Hydra Guy, and even an innate ability that has the word "Nine" in it.

    The name of an innate ability isn''t given by a person, but appears along with how to use it, it''s a memory that dwells in the lineage, at least that is the case for real magic beast descendants.

    For Daimon it is different, because the innate abilities of the lineages he has, have been adapted to be represented as skill through the system, such is the case of the Ruler of the Sea for example, the original ability was called Commander of the Sea and it belonged to the ck Armored Shark, but he surpassed the limit of the species in the trial of the Lineage Temple and got it to evolve.

    At this point they had unveiled around an eighth part of the first ck page, and the story had already changed the way Thea saw the history of Neptune, so she injected more of her mana to see where all this was going.

    "I must say that I''m amazed, somehow you were born a member of my race, not only that but a direct descendant of mine, perhaps it happened because the one in a gazillion scenario, of both of your parents carrying an active part of my lineage happened, and in an even rarer happening, you who was born from lower ranked species, was able to survive, adapt and control a lineage stronger than you".<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Ah right, don''t try to make specific questions, this pages are showing the answers I prepared, for this scenario, the array determined what to say based on theparation between your mana and mine, the same for the one who is grabbing the book besides you, but for that, I used a sample of the mana that idiot used to drag me from my home to this mess, and incredibly it shares some resemnce, only around 5% but that''s enough, because I ran tests every minute during thest days of my life, with all the races I knew off and always got a 0% resemnce result".

    Daimon''s eyes frowned as he read that part, the woman called Thalia, was able to deduct he is a system user, based on some kind ofparation between his mana and the one of the Hydra Guy, which is honestly amazing, though it will only have sense for those who know about system users, for others such a low resemnce in mana is a mere coincidence at most, or maybe a way too distantmon ancestor.

    Thea''s eyes glowed, she gazed at Daimon and couldn''t rte it to the guy described on the story, besides the fact that he has more than one affinity, but then she remembered the small exnation Daimon gave them about Adam and Marcus being more than what it meets the eye.

    "Does that mean, that Hydra guy was like those two¡­ like you, Daimon?", she asked, Daimon saw those pretty amber eyes of hers and he shook his head.

    "He was probably like Adam and Marcus, but none of them is like me", he confidently said, which made Thea nod, if they were facing two guys on the same level as Daimon, then things would be pretty bad.

    After that little exchange, Thea continued injecting mana into the book and then, the record reached probably the most important part of it.

    "Still, even if you were lucky enough to be born with all that, which for sure has given you enough means to rule over others, you are also unlucky to not have only inherited my lineage but the one I stole from him, because I died before assimting it".

    "So, you in an existential limbo, which is preventing you from advancing, I think the middle stage fake Ster level should be your limit, but don''t worry I have a solution for that, you just have to suppress the darkness lineage and use it to ignite your Void Devouring Python lineage, and for that you need to refine the physical body I left behind".

    "I will give you coordinates, as long as you promise to avenge me, starting with the one holding the book next to you, believe mw people like them are monsters, theye deprive others and then leave without any consequence, out of all the battles I managed to see or heard about, besides me, that idiot only experienced problems when the other three that came alongside him, participated".

    "That''s in part why I stole something from him, in the form of his dark affinity lineage, the purpose of my lineage is to be able to retaliate against idiots like him, of you want me to help you destroy that limit your own "luck" has given to you, that is my condition".

    With those words, the ck page stopped producing words, but the book didn''t close, as if it was waiting for Thea to do something, which for sure wasn''t what she did on the spot, which was close the book with a slightly angry expression on her pretty face.

    "This power I have wasn''t given to me by you, but by my parents, my mother''s frail body gave birth to me, against all odds, not only that but she didn''t give up until thest second, just to see me for a bit more time, she was the origin of this strong lineage I have, as for my father, it was his death what gave me the strength to control it, I already surpassed my limits once before, I just have to do it once again!".

    Daimon smirked, he suddenly tightened his grip on the book and ignoring the fact that the thing was trying to drain his mana, he forcefully opened it, just to rip off the first three pages with a single move of his hand.

    ''You might have prepared to deal with guys like that scum, but whether you believe it or not, I''m not like them, so stop giving problems to my friend'', he thought.

    The moment Daimon tore off the ck pages, the sweet sound of a notification echoed in Daimon''s mind.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil", has been updated <!>]

    Thea saw the pages in Daimon''s hands, and to her surprise, the rest of the words that were hidden, and would have stayed like that, as she wasn''t going to betray her friend for the help of some shady ancestor, started slowly appearing.

    That being said, there was ck electricity assaulting the hand of Daimon, it was something she has gotten toprehend bettertely, a curse.

    From within Daimon''s mind, a soft snort could be heard, before Evangeline''s annoyed voice sounded.

    ''A mere dead snake dares to try and lump me in with those low lives, know your ce, humph!''.

    Apparently, whatever that curse was, was aimed to that "mana" which resembled the one of the Hydra guy, which was actually the leftover energy firm of the system, in other words, the curse wasn''t targeting Daimon as a whole like normal, but that small aspect of him.

    But Thalia miscalcted and annoyed a certain administrator girl, who was having a nice rest, so before Daimon''s anti-curse abilities activated, she did her move, since the system was targeted in a sense, she got some leisure to act.

    Which ended in the curse being sted away and the three pages revealing their secrets as part of the counter-effect, curses are rather interesting in the sense that if they don''t seed, the effect will invert and the caster will be the one suffering.

    ''Thanks Eve'', inwardly said Daimon, which earned him some mumbles from Evangeline who then returned to sleep.

    Daimon then turned to see Thea and handed her the three ck pages.

    "I think you can get that material, but don''t do as the record said, that will be the same as giving up a part of what your parents left for you, instead of that why not integrate it together, so that you get all the benefits without the downsides", he said.

    Thea''s limpid eyes saw the silver haired youth casually handing her the coordinates, to the corpse of a magic beast who was priceless, and she smiled.

    ''No matter what he turns out to be, speaking so casually about creating a new variant lineage, is something only Daimon will do'', she thought as she epted the ck pages.

    ''But isn''t that what makes me enjoy being around him'', she added as she gazed at the coordinates written in the pages, while she kept the ck book into a separate ring just in case.

 Chapter 467 Temporary Separation

    ?

    After keeping the book in a separate ring, Thea didn''t store away the ck pages since she had something to do with them, but before that, she turned to see Daimon and then said.

    "Let''s go meet the others at the treasury, so that I can give you the thing I mentioned before".

    Daimon nodded, to be honest the gloves Thea gave him were already one of his best equipment, besides Disaster of course, the things allowed him to use his extremely strong arms at its maximum capacity.

    Besides their insane durability, they only had a single property, the capacity to negate recoil, it is like that because they were made in a hurry, and Daimon is nning to ask Liz to modify themter.

    But for now, they are not bad at all, forty tons of raw physical strength plus a sword that weights as much as that, when Narasha is cooperating with him and gloves that negate the recoil from hitting someone with that, Daimon was like a fish in the water during the three-art tournament.

    It was an equipment he asked, because he now had to destroy the weapons of his enemies, both for his personal growth and because Narasha told him that Disaster got stronger like that too.

    With Thea guiding them, it didn''t take them too much to reach the treasury of the Neris family, though Thea didn''t like Thalia''s attitude, one of the dreams of her father was to discover what their surname was, and in his honor, she decided to take it as hers.

    A momentter, Daimon and the others could hear the voices of the Risha sisters and the othersing from a room thatid ahead of them, they actually left the door open.

    Still, Thea simply softlyughed, she didn''t mention it before but her family is¡­ loaded, the four seas originally were thought to be simr in terms of natural resources and riches, but the four portals which now Thea got to know are natural spatial gates, have existed in the Maelstrom Sea since forever.

    And apparently that makes the space here quite unstable, enough for people from other ces to end up in Neptune, at least it happened before a few times, but it stopped after the four rulers learned how to fully restrain the portals.

    Anyway, if people were dragged here, then it would only be normal for other things to end up in the Maelstrom Sea, and with the years all those treasures had umted here and there.

    That exined why some magic treasures showed from time to time, in underwater caves, Daimon now wondered if the bolt that was melted into that shield, from which he got half of the requirement he needed for his Cosmic Weaponry, came from outside of Neptune.

    Anyway, once Daimon entered through the door of the treasury, he understood why the others left the door open, they were probably amazed at the scenery that was also taking him by surprise right now.

    Thea''s treasury was huge, not only because the amount of resources gathered here, probably equaled that of the White''s royal family, the Light Pce and the ck Fortress altogether, but also because it was designed to fit magic beasts instead of humans.

    "This is already my third or fourth time here and I still find it hard to believe that you have all this at your disposition you know", mumbled Marlene.

    Thea shrugged in response.

    "Well, the territory of the Ryner n is thergest out of the four rulers, the magic beasts were ordered to bring back anything that looks valuable, and they are rewarded in exchange, over the years it is normal that it umtes".

    "Come with me", she said as she went upstairs, there were around ten or so levels in the treasury, the first eight were essible for the adviser of the ruler, while thest two were exclusive for the rulers.

    Thea has been there quite a few times and the thing she wanted to give Daimon was there too, but now, she wanted to see if something else reacted to Daimon, like the book did, maybe that first ancestor left something else after all.

    On their way to the highest levels, Daimon saw the Yvonne and the others looking at some things that were on the countless racks, they looked like little children in a candy store.

    "Here we are, I''ll deactivate the anti-theft arrays, so if something catches your eye then by all means give it a try", said Thea as she opened the door of the eight level.

    Unfortunately, besides the fact that there were some great Ster ranked materials to create equipment, nothing really caught up Daimon''s attention here.

    That being said, the Ryner n had a lot of materials that came from different magic beasts, ws, teeth, scales, bones even blood were all carefully preserved, and that made Daimon wonder why Karmandi and Lina haven''t reached the Ster rank yet.

    Their bases are solid, otherwise they wouldn''t be respected by even the n heads who are all Ster ranks.

    Thea noticed Daimon''s doubt and she exined as they walked to the next level.

    "The arrays in the treasury were created so that even the ruler can''t just take everything, unless there is an extinction level threat, if not, then I can just give one thing to my generals after a certain period of time".

    "Truth to be told, those two could have advanced a long time ago, but their parents always regretted not having exploited their potential as much as they could have, before advancing, so they aid they wanted to fulfill their parent''s ambitions, luckily that snake bastard finally reached his goal after all the ruckus that happenedtely", she said.

    Daimon nodded, Ulkrear who was at the same as Karmandi, got utterly destroyed by the snake general, Karmandi as a half Ster ranked, could defend against Ster ranks to a certain extent, maybe not to the level of Ae whose innate abilitybined with her affinity, resulted in an attack that ignored the differences in realm, but Karmandi was still strong.

    Also, just like Daimon, he, Lina and nder have been the only ones, in a really long time that have been given something from the eight to ten floors of the treasury, once Thea opened the door to the ninth floor, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask.

    The number of things exhibited in this room were way less than the previous ones, some were even lower ranked than those in inferior levels, but their quality was of the highest notch.

    And Daimon''s attention was immediately attracted to a rather small rack, separated from the others, Thea walked towards it and after closing her eyes a couple of seconds, she took out what was contained in it, a ck fang of two meters of size.

    Daimon immediately realized what type of material it was, because the sensation it gave off was incredibly simr to Thea''s spear.

    "The "Ryner" mentioned by that woman, was officially the first ancestor of my family, prior to the appearance of my father, no one had such a strong dual darkness and water affinities, to the point that their bones dyed ck like his".

    "Unfortunately, father''s body became brittle due to the Nether with which he was wounded, so he couldn''t be a legacy for his descendants as he wanted, but the first ancestor was able to".

    "All the rulers in the history of the n were given a piece of Ryner''s bones, when they were crowned, which was then turned into the weapon of choice of each ruler, the things made with these bones are exceptionallypatible with us, allowing our battle prowess to increase quite a lot".

    "A normal spear would have been destroyed after moving through space as much as I need it to, coincidentally my spear was made with the right fang of Ryner, and this is his left fang, and thest one of them, Ryner''s son used the first, my father got the second, I had the third and I''m giving you thest one".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, materials that have spatial properties not rted to storage are incredibly rare, and that ck fang also has darkness properties, which makes it perfect not only for Thea but for him too, also this exined why Thea named her spear "Royal Fang" as it was literally made with the fang of the official first ancestor.

    Daimon epted therge fang, but he still said.

    "Are you sure, this is quite valuable, you know?", the rarity of the material isn''t the only thing that made this fang incredibly valuable, but the history it had, after all it was given only to the most outstanding rulers in Thea''s family''s history only.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Says the one who casually handed over the location of the corpse of a magic beast, with a lineage that probably surpasses all the ones that currently exist in Neptune, if you are my friend just ept it", jokingly answered Thea.

    Only the upper fangs had both darkness and spatial properties, her father used one of the inferior fangs, and the same applied to Ryner''s son which was the second ancestor.

    Daimon chuckled and he didn''t say anything else as he kept the ck fang in his inventory, which made Thea smile, she showed Daimon her spear as she said.

    "This way you will always have my spear to help you, and so I will have your weapon to help me too".

    Daimon nodded, he already had an idea for this incredibly good material, but it won''t be possible for now.

    A small silence fell in the room, before Thea gazed at Daimon to then say.

    "I wanted to return with you all, but I read the coordinates of that woman''s corpse and I need one day to adjust the portal so I can retrieve it, I will stay behind and reunite with youter".

    Daimon wasn''t surprised, the fact that there is a big chance of Neptune being at least partially destroyed, means that the natural spatial gates might disappear, she had no time to lose.

    "We''ll see you at the Elemental Sea, don''t arrivete or you might miss the fun", said Daimon.

    After saying goodbye, Thea head straight to the basement of the castle, she even called nder back so that he would watch over her, just in case.

    Daimon mentally gave some orders to cktooth and then left it in a safe room that Thea prepared for him, as for Liman, Daimon was about to discover if his supposition was right, but before that, he went to pick up the Yvonne and the others so that they return to the Flying Citadel.

    Surprisingly Marlene didn''t leave her n in Thea''s castle as Daimon expected, but instead they will be tagging along with them, not that he had a problem with that, as they will be staying in the citadel.

    ¡­

    Back at the citadel, while the girls went to Jasmine''s room, Daimon paid a visit to the prison, where Aurora was still watching over the ck core and "torturing" it with her light mana, as the screams that came from it, suggested.

    But before he joined the Light Matriarch in that, he had another thing to try, so with Remi apanying him, Daimon entered Liman''s cell.

    The eel guy was fully restrained with a hatred filled expression on his face, which became wilder when he saw Aster entered the cell, surprisingly this guy didn''t break so easily, he even managed to hide information from Roger and Fabio, though he was forced to talk when Daimon burned his eyes.

    "What do you want now, I have already told you everything I know, just go ahead and kill me if you don''t believe me, Lord will avenge me anyway", he venomously spat.

    Unfortunately for Liman, what met him was Daimon''s smirking expression, as he snapped his fingers.

    Roger then entered the cell bringing two of the many soldiers that were captured back then, along with Lora and Milo.

    Daimon gazed at the first one and then ordered.

    "Kill yourself".

    The soldier was terrified but besides trying to fight in order to break free from Roger''s grip, nothing happened.

    The surprise came, when Daimon gave the other guy the same order while he focused his aura on him, the poor guy who was just an Arch rank trembled in fear as a ck spike chained cor appeared around his neck.

    The light disappeared from the eyes of the solider with the cor, and then he immediately used his own hand to pierce his chest, which of course led to his death.

    Let alone Liman, Remi was also horrified, ordering someone to directly die through a contract should be impossible, even enving level contracts, only grant obedience to a certain point of endangering one''s live.

    For example, one can be ordered to go and fight a magic beast stronger than oneself, which has a high chance of resulting in death, but it''s not a 100% chance of death.

    The reason for this is pretty simple, every being who exists, wishes to keep on existing, so when pressured to a corner, the survival instincts of someone with a strong will, might render the contract null.

    It is simr to how one can''t die by stopping breathing, because after fainting the body will automatically breath once again, a primal instinct¡­ which Daimon just ignored right now.

    "I never thought I would be thankful towards that idiot of Marcus, but I guess there is a first time for everything, thanks to him, I can now affect Neptune''s natives", he said as he red at Liman, whose chest exploded in white mes.

    "Aghhh!", Liman''s scream echoed through the whole area, in the meantime Daimon was for a change happy that Adam and Marcus were here.

    Apparently, those who had received something from a system user, which stopped them from being unable to be enved through a Terror Contract, as to why he only realized it now, it was because he discarded this theory previously after he couldn''t force the contract on Remi.

    But turns out that the White Walker hasn''t received the so-called Devil Blessing potion, he was only going to get after his after finishing his mission on the Skalia continent, because for those with higher realms it requires much more for Marcus to get the potion they need.

    And Remi is a peak high stage Ster rank, so he hasn''t been given the potion, but these small fries that were serving under Marcus''smand, had received some pills and potions to make them stronger.

    But not all of them have received something from Marcus as thest test suggested, not ten minutester, despite the "loyalty" Liman had towards Marcus, a notification was triggered for Daimon.

    [Ding]

    [Steel Vari Eel "Liman" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    With a little nod, Daimon got a new death-loyal subordinate though he will be left behind to help the Ryne n guard the fort.

 Chapter 468 Initial Success & Return (Part 1)

    ?

    Aurora observed the whole process from afar, needless to say but she was surprised that Daimon could order someone under a contract to die, which is certainly a terrifying ability.

    There is a reason as to why the ve market doesn''t focus on battle type but either on workforce or the luxurious type, which includes races that are appealing to the eye or are rare, such as Marlene''s angelfish n which falls in both of the categories.

    Anyway, is better to nurture guards, like the White''s royal family does with the royal guards, than to buy ves to act as guards, because a guard must be stronger than the one who is protecting.

    So as small as it might be, there is a chance that the ve finds a chance to escape the contract, and kill its previous master in retribution, inparison ves meant for pleasure don''t need to be strong, so they are easy to control, as for those used for physicalbor, a single designated strong mage acting as foreman, can control them.

    Of course it''s not like there aren''t people who use ve as guards, ve merchants do it, but that is because they have something to threat the ves with, their families for example and while nobles aren''t beyond doing the same, why would they, when they have their subordinates who have been serving them for countless generations.

    But Daimon''s ability solves that problem, as there is no room for rebellion nor disobedience, the order given is absolute.

    "Senior Aurora, can you please patch this guy up, it''s better if we leave as soon a possible after all", asked Daimon.

    Aurora nodded and her body lit up in white light as she casted a healing spell on Liman, not before Daimon retrieved the white mes that were previously burning Liman''s chest, revealing the hole that was burned into it.

    Aurora''s eyes glowed, the wound was rejecting her light mana, certainly giving her more troubles to heal than what a Mortal realm should give, which made sense, Demon Light is an element created by thebination of darkness, fire, lightning, light, mana and battle aura.

    Healing a wound caused by that requires more than six times the amount of healing than a normal wound, of course that is because Demon Light isn''t using the six elements at the same time, but a mixed version of it, which results in an exponential increase instead of a lineal one.

    After putting a bit more effort, the burn on Liman''s chest disappeared and the flesh grew again, leaving a slightly paler patch of new skin behind.

    "It''s done, here is the antidote to the mana sealing potion", said Aurora as she handed Daimon a small bottle filled with a light green liquid, all the prisoners were deprived of their powers with the potion mentioned by Aurora, luckily Underwood''s wife is a skilled potion master and so before they left the Light Pce, and with the growing trend of Daimon capturing enemies which started with the old assassin Tadeus, Aurora asked her to give them some reinforced mana sealing potions, which came really handy.

    Daimon nodded, he threw the bottle at Liman whose previous discontent with Daimon was nowhere to be seen now.

    "Take it and go meet Thea, her orders are only second to mine, if she isn''t around next is cktooth if not that old Oarfish, your identity must be kept a secret you know what to do", he said.

    Liman nodded, he drank the contents of the bottle and some color returned to his face as his mana started circting once again, that being said, as a safety method used in the mana sealing potion, even with the antidote, the recover was gradual, so right now Liman only had around 40% of his capacities as a high stage Ster rank.

    "I listen an obey!", he eximed and then left the Flying Citadel, with Aurora opening a path for him.

    "I''ll return in a second, I have to set the coordinates to the Elemental Sea", said Aurora as she left the prison, Remi stood next to the ck core which was restrained by Aurora''s light barrier.

    Daimon walked towards a bench at the corner of the cell to sit down for a moment and look at the log of the system, since he earlier heard a notification but ignored it.

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil", has been updated <!>]

    Daimon clicked the notification symbol and the change that happened was disyed below of it.

    [Objectives:

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Devil Ruler 0% ¨¤ 20% (0/1)]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the notification was triggered after he tore off the three ck pages from the records of the Ryner n, to be honest he thought he had gotten a hidden gem.

    So far what he understood is that the hidden gems are things which hold an important significance for the ones that are included in the missions, for example the ne which Ae gave him, that used to belong to her mother.

    The hidden gems probably had a function, like the ne Ae gave him which was used to stablish a contract between the two sisters and him, they could also mean that he has gained the trust of those involved in the mission, it''s not 100% clear, since so far he has only gotten one of the four hidden gems.

    Still he thought that the ck pages were another of the gems, they were really important for Thea after all, if not the ck fang also had a big chance of being a hidden gem, being the bone of the first ancestor.

    But the pages turned out to be part of the legacy left to help Marcus, which confused Daimon, why would something rted to the Ryner n, be supposed to help that guy, when he was supposedly following the steps of the one who scammed the White Walker race, impersonating a follower of their deity, he couldn''t see the rtion.

    The Hydra guy was for sure not aligned with the scammer guy, each had their own enemy ording to the notes of the Light Pce''s ancestor that Aurora showed Daimon.

    The hero was fighting with the Hydra guy, while the ancestor of the Light Pce was fighting against the scammer guy, those were the sides in the war of foundation, sure the hero offered help to Aurora''s ancestor, but he didn''t directly interfered in their fight, until thest fight, which''s story is unknown to anyone, besides the result which was the hero and the Light Pce''s ancestor, winning, only to die not too muchter.

    ''The Hydra guy represented the Maelstrom Sea, her legacy might have been assigned to Marcus, because his starting point was the Bone Sea'', thought Daimon.

    The Mermen Sea was the closest to the Elemental Sea, while the Bone Sea was the closest to the Maelstrom Sea, in a sense Neptune was divided even for those two''s convenience, what changed is that Adam ended up in the Elemental Sea due to Daimon''s interference.

    Ultimately, Daimon could only shrug, even if he gave Thea the ck pages, the percentage ofpletion of the mission advanced, one thing is sure, if he were to try and apany Thea, things will onlyplicate because Thalia for sure left traps to prevent those with an energy firm were even in the slightest simr to the Hydra guy, she managed to detect it in the records, so it wouldn''t be a surprise if the same happened into that ce where she hid her beast body.

    Apparently for the system, Thea getting the legacy was the same as him getting it, could be because Marcus was supposed to antagonize her too, since he was aiming at Marlene''s n.

    Daimon saw Aurora returning and he got up of his seat, she wasn''t alone though, the pair of purple haired mother and daughter were apanying her, naturally Sarah''s eyes illuminated the moment she saw Daimon, but this time her mother kept her in check, because this wasn''t the time for that.

    Aurora brought them here, because Daimon wanted to give it a try to what he discovered back when the spatial gate was opened, so he needed Sarah to be here.

    "Has this guy answered anything yet?", asked Daimon to which Aurora shook her head in response.

    "No, unfortunately it seems like in this form I stillck training on how to use my light to harm them, the effect was reduced around 80%", she said.

    Daimon nodded, Aurora could easily destroy any Nethereal up to the high stage Ster rank, as long as they had a physical body, whether they have a ck core or not, but when they are in this form, she still finds it hard to inflict pain to them, she could have destroyed the core though, but that''s not what she was aiming for, this was the first high stage Ster Nethereal they could capture, and it will be hard to repeat this feat before the war breaks out.

    The previous ones which Daimon captured were early or middle stage ones, that or weren''t originally Nethreals as they didn''t have that ck core, with the disappearance of this guy, the Representative of the Lord, in other words Garrius will be more careful, of course Daimon had prepared for this by putting all the me on Marcus, so at most they will be wary of him, without noticing that there is a third party watching from the shadows.

    "No problem, I''ll soften him and then I leave the rest in your hands since I''ll have to do other things", said Daimon.

    He then directly used Core Synchrony and bombarded the ck core with Demon Light, causing a sudden increase in the illumination, as the white mes shed against the ck core.

    "Aghhhhhhh!!!", as expected, a lung-tearing scream came from the ck core the moment it was bombarded with Demon Light, especially because Daimon wasn''t restraining the output.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Aurora had expanded the barrier around the ck core, which made thetter try to get away from the while mes, unfortunately for the Nethereal, she only did so, because Daimon wanted to double the amount of Demon Light he was using.

    The wild white mes twirled inside the barrier, while they dragged the ck core into them, making the scream intensify, the process continued for around ten minutes, just when Daimon''s reserves were about to hit rock bottom, what he has been waiting for finally happened.

    "Crack!", a thin crack appeared on the ck core, Daimon immediately retrieved whatever was left of the white mes to recover a bit, but he still used the effect of Sanctuary and chose to recover mana and battle aura, since he didn''t use any skill, spell or was moving, his stamina just decreased a tiny bit, as he was manipting Demon Light.

    Daimon nodded at Aurora and she continued the assault, light mana gathered on her hand and then she shot a concentrated thin ray of white light towards the barrier, the ray bounced all over the barrier and then ended up hitting the ck core from many angles.

    "No stop, I''ll answer your questions¡­ aghhhh!", the Nethereal screamed, though it didn''t know what was happening, it could feel this was bad for him.

    And it was a really urate feeling, because after five minutes of constant assault from the light rays, other cracks appeared on the ck core, and then to Aurora''s surprise a small ck piece fell from it.

    "That''s enough for now", said Daimon, which made Aurora stop her attack, Daimon then approached the barrier and casually asked Aurora to open a breach from which he took that small ck piece of material.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, many things had sense for him now, observing the core, the ce from which this ck piece fell, showed a different tone and size in general.

    Below the ck exterior, there was a pale gray interior, in other words their cores were covered in ayer of this ck material, it wasn''t a whole but ayer over the real core.

    This was just a theory Daimon had, because ording to both Aisha and with Evangeline''s confirmation, there is no ck magic cores, or there wasn''t until they saw his, even those whose affinity is darkness had at most a dark grey magic core, whose tone gets darker the higher the talent of the owner.

    So, he originally thought that maybe using Nether instead of mana turned their cores ck, so it was a mutation instead of a natural thing, in other words they were altered beings, which was backed by the fact that Daimon didn''t get any skill after killing them, simr to what happened with the chimera back then.

    They were wed iplete beings, which made the extraction of skills impossible, as they would bring harm to Daimon, also ording to Evangeline, the Apex Predator body disdained such low-quality things, so Daimon couldn''t get anything from them that way either.

    But if that was the case then why was he able to put the Nethereals under a Terror Contract, the one who was killed by the loyalty curse had a ck core, and while Roger or Fabio didn''t the three were put under a Terror Contract, so Daimon knew he was missing something.

    And thest piece of the puzzle came to him, thanks to the ck current of energy that escaped from the space gate under Thea''s castle.

    For his infinity eyes, that ck current had a simr appearance than the ck mist of the Nethereals, with the difference that one was natural and the other was made, which not only decreased its quality, but changed itsposition.

    Daimon left that ck currentnd on Sarah, because he could see that the purple marks on her back stopped radiating any kind of energy, when that ck current appeared, as if they were afraid of it.

    And turns out that ck current didn''t disappoint, after it was absorbed by Sarah, one of the purple marks faded.

    Daimon turned to see Sarah and noticing her expectant expression he sighed.

    "Turn around and raise your blouse a bit", he said.

    Of course, Sarah was delighted to hear that, and when she saw Daimon''s hand exploding in white mes, her smile widened a lot, which made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch.

    "You are really beyond any treatment", he said as he pressed his hand on Sarah''s back, despite how it looked, Demon Light wasn''t attacking her, but the small piece of ck mineral that fell from the core of the Nethereal, which turned to be just a magic core wrapped in this ck thing, whatever it is.

    That being said, it was like being separated from an incredibly dangerous animal by a thinyer of stic, the dreading sensation of Demon Light was still noticeable, the problem is that Sarah was loving it as her expression of delight suggested.

    Daimon could feel her body shivering and he felt the urge to threw her out of the Flying Citadel, but he ignored it and continued with what he had to do.

    After using around 50% of his reserves of both mana and battle aura, the small piece of ck mineral dposed in his hand, and was turned into a ck mist which was immediately absorbed by Sarah''s body.

    "Nnnn~", Sarah let out afortable sound, that nearly destroyed Daimon''s focus, but he shook his head and concentrated in his task, which was guiding that ck to as most of the purple marks on Sarah''s back as possible.

    From the original nine or so marks that had started to fade, Daimon managed to increase it to sixteen before all the ck mist disappeared.

    Daimon immediately cancelled Core Synchrony and he felt a bit dizzy, luckily after so much training using half of his reserves when in Core Synchrony state, was manageable, he won''t end up powerless unless he uses more than 80% of his reserves and stamina.

    Still, Rita took a page from Horals''s book and created a seat for Daimon using her shadows, it was throne but with a much more refined design than what Horals creates every time.

    Daimon sat on the throne and then he observed the result of his effort, sixteen marks on Sarah''s back had faded away, revealing the smooth and pale skin below them, that wasn''t all, Daimon could see the battle aura in Sarah''s body boiling, she literally got stronger right now.

    "Once all the marks disappear, she is going to get Will Maniption¡­the real one unlike that fake imitation of a Manifestation Phenomenon that idiot created", said Daimon, referring to Purplehaze.

    Sarah could feel the changes on her body, she didn''t know what Daimon did, but she could tell she was feeling much better now, as if a weight was lifted from her chest.

    So, she immediately turned around and ignoring the fact that her clothes were messy enough for quite a bit of her upper body to be in in view, she threw herself at Daimon, only to sh against a thin ck wall that Rita created between Daimon and her.

    Unfortunately, she took advantage of that, to hold onto Daimon''s leg, because Rita didn''t believe she was going to do something like that, but apparently, she underestimated her craziness.

    Daimon moved his leg trying to get rid of Sarah, only to notice she wouldn''t budge, in fact the more he tried the happier she seemed to get.

    "I have to thank you for curing me, so you either leave me, or I can be your pillowter tonight~", she said, making Daimon sigh, who knows what this crazy woman will try to do when he is sleeping.

    "You can jump from the Flying Citadel and we are even", said Daimon with a defeated voice, which only made Sarah giggle and tighten her grip.

    Aurora was speechless at the current scene, while Bell had learned to ept this weird daughter of hers.

    "She is just too thankful¡­ don''t worry I''ll keep an eye on herter", said the purple haired mother.

    Ignoring Sarah, Daimon focused on resting, he just used a lot of mana and battle aura, but now that he cracked the exterior of the ck core, Aurora could peel it with her light mana.

    If his knight realm was higher, he could have done it alone, but while he had the intensity, hecked the in quantity, Aurora in exchange had the quantity but her manacked the intensity of Demon Light.

    So Daimon focused his all in creating an opening so that Aurora could do the rest, and that wasn''t all, once a breach was opened on the ck exterior of the core, Daimon immediately got a notification, but that could wait forter.

 Chapter 469 Initial Success & Return (Part 2)

    ?

    After a couple of minutes, Daimon felt his breathing stabilizing, every time he used Core Synchrony the recoil diminished, even if it was just a little bit, the difference was noticeable, it was caused due to his body being brought to the limit and adapting itself to the extra tension.

    His eyes slowly opened as he looked at the log of the system, Thea had already gotten rid of the curse of loyalty by Daimon''s request.

    But this time they did it in a different way, with the previous Nethereals, Daimon didn''t bother to hide the process of Thea erasing the curse, because they will notice the pain caused by it.

    With Aurora''s newly discovered way to use her light mana, she kept the ck core in constant pain, while Thea secretly erased the curse, it was done like this because Daimon discovered why the Nethereals were avable for Terror Contracts, but required more effort to do so.

    In part it was actually Fabio the one that guided Daimon in the right direction, to discover how to deal with Nethereals.

    The fact that the bizarre appearance that artificial Nethereals adopted, was caused by their own corrupted minds, and their rush to obtain what they wished for, showed Daimon that Nethereals aren''t meant to be immune to pain by innate.

    Now that Daimon knew that their ck core was just a magic core covered in that ck material, it is normal to believe that the artificial ones would end up like the others, so it is possible for a "Commoner" Netheral to be a "Lesser" one.

    In other words, even the ones with a ck core are like any other existence, they have wishes and emotions, and that includes pain, it was that ckyer around their cores what was preventing them from suffering any pain.

    Then why was Daimon able to make them feel pain you ask, the answer lies in his knight path, Demon Light is formed by six different things yes, but it was created when Daimon lit up his life spark, so ultimately its base is his battle aura.

    Battle aura is created by the mix of vitality and mana within the body of a knight, with the life spark deciding what the property would be, for example it can be a defensive oriented battle aura, or an offensive one among others.

    The ck mist that the Nethereals use, follow a simr process in the meaning that, it is formed by thebination of mana and those weird body parts they develop, that''s why those who are too greedy, end up looking bizarre, more of those body parts mean more production of ck mist, in other words, more power.

    But that makes them prompt to be unstable, those without a ck core don''t really feel anything but pain when burned by Demon Light, which isn''t something to underestimate anyway.

    But those with the ck core, experience a horrifying sensation of dread, and that throws them out of their game, little by little small breaches appear on that ckyer, and that''s it, after not being afraid of pain for who knows how many years, they suddenly get to experience it once again.

    They are of course crushed by fear, which is taken advantage of by Daimon''s Overlord''s Pride, and the result is the notification that Daimon was reading right now.

    [Ding]

    [Lesser Nethereal "Akim" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Daimon nodded and a cor of ck spikes formed around the core, but the ckyer wasn''t included, it could be seen that only the original pale gray core was the one that was being restrained.

    In case you wonder what Aurora changed to be able to inflict pain to Nethereals, it is also rted to Daimon''s discovery, what she did was condense her light and add a little surprise to it¡­ anger, the anger she feels after discovering her daughter was killed by them.

    Both mana and battle aura can be positive or negative, as they can cure or bring harm, the same applies to elements, water can nurture life but it can also drown life, Aurora simply infused the hatred she felt towards Nethereals into her light, to modify her mana.

    It is simr to the Corrosive Light, that the Light Faction of the Blue-Sky gxy created, but Aurora focused on Nethereals specifically, of course it wasn''t as simple as it sounds, which is why even as a Maximum Ster rank, she was having troubles torturing Akim''s ck core.

    But with some training that will change, not to mention she has offensive type light mages and knights at her disposition, who will have it easier than her as she is a support type.

    "Akim, what will happen to you if all the ckyer is peeled away?", asked Daimon, while he was sitting on the shadow throne, it''s worth mentioning that Sarah was still clinging to his leg.

    "Answering to the young master, I don''t know, when I came to my senses, this was the form that the core of my existence had, I think that if the whole ckyer is removed, the current "me" will cease to exist", a voice could be hearding from the core a couple of secondster, unlike before, it was filled with respect.

    Daimon frowned, at this point he has gotten used to the fact that, whenever he gets an answer of Neptune''s situation, two new questions appear, this time he managed to discover the base of Nethereal''s existences, which is this ck material, but then howe this same material dpose into a degraded version of the ck current that came out of the spatial gate, it is degraded, because though Daimon only used a small piece of it to erase a part of the curse on Sarah.

    It is a piece of the core of a high Ster ranked Nethereal, against a curse on a Lord rank, but there is another possibility, which is that not only the ck energy produced by dposing the ck material, is of a lower quality than the one that came from the spatial gate, but maybe the curse was casted by a higher ranked Nethereal¡­ like one of the ones that are called Lords.

    Which is problematic, because that will put Jasmine and Sarah''s fathers at the same level as the scheming guy, considering the so called Representative Garrius works directly under him.

    "It doesn''t look like your powers diminish after losing the ckyer, am I right?", casually said Daimon, to which Akim nodded.

    "They don''t, I only lose the ability to ignore pain".

    "Very well, I want you to discard 80% of that ckyer, as soon as possible, also what do you need to get a new body?", said Daimon.

    "Understood, I should be finished in six hours, as for the second matter, I just need blood and flesh to reconstruct my body, or the young master can provide me a new body for my core habit, either way, it will adapt to my existence", answered Akim.

    Daimon nodded, he then turned to see Remi, before saying.

    "You will be in charge of keeping all the pieces of the ck material in a ring, as for the blood and flesh needed, you know what to do".

    Remi nodded, among the prisoners, there were pirates, assassins and other scum who didn''t have any use, as they weren''t even skilled fighters, but they could still be of help, they came with the intention to capture and enve Marlene''s n, if they would have won then they wouldn''t have shown them mercy, so the same goes for them, such is thew of this world, the winner takes all.

    Daimon then tried to get up to leave because he wanted to sleep a bit before they returned to the Elemental Sea, but he then noticed that Sarah wasn''t letting go of his leg.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    He tried to shake her away by walking while dragging her, but that only resulted on the crazy girl smiling, while she was dragged through the ground, which made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch.

    "Hey, I''m going to Jasmine''s room, so behave for a change", said Daimon.

    Sarah''s eyes glowed, she mumbled a few things and then stood up from the ground to dust her shirt off, her clothes were still messy because she didn''t even bother to fix them, after she raised the back of her blouse earlier, which made Bell sigh.

    Daimon felt a headacheing his way, but ultimately, he decided to ignore the crazy girl, who was now gazing at him while she amodated her clothes, Remi was about to put hands to work, so everyone but him as well as Roger and Fabio left the prison.

    They walked towards the main residence, where Aisha and the others were staying, with the exception of Aurora who went to the captain''s cabin to keep an eye on the route.

    Daimon opened the door of the main residence and soon reached Jasmine''s room, from which the voices of the girls could be heard.

    Daimon headed straight to his bed, since he was still tired after using Core Synchrony twice, if the legacy of the hero was like the legacy left by Thalia, then he was going to need to be in his maximum condition, just in case, so a rest was a good idea.

    Aisha saw Daimonying down on the bed and she softlyughed as she ced his head on herp, Daimon felt the soothing sensation of Aisha''s body and his eyelids felt a bit heavy.

    But the moment he was about to enter thend of dreams peacefully, Sarah''s voice drew reached his ears.

    "Look Jas, Daimon managed to cure me and he just had to see me naked, touch me and burn me with his mes~", said the crazy girl as she showed her back to Jasmine.

    Naturally Sarah''s ambiguous words earned Daimon a few gazes from the girls, so he had to defend himself.

    "What naked, I only saw and touched your back to erase the curse", he said, to which Sarah giggled.

    "Really, I remember your mana sense spreading on my back, ah the sensation was like being touched all over my body and some of your mes even entered my body~", she said as she hugged herself.

    Daimon was speechless, he indeed had to use mana sense to guide the ck mist to more of the purple marks to maximize the effect of the treatment, but he didn''t go further than that, being inspected with mana sense can be ufortable though, if one isn''t skilled enough it does result in a sensation simr to being touched all over oneself, that being said, it was clearly all Sarah''s imagination.

    "I should have turned you into ashes as well", said Daimon, it was futile to keep discussing with a crazy girl.

    "Thanks for helping her", Jasmine put on an apologetic smile as she slightly bowed towards Daimon, to thank him for curing Sarah, she could notice the changes on the crazy girl, and she wasn''t the only one.

    Mellie as well as Aisha, Tessa and Yvonne, in other words, the ones with the sharpest senses could feel that Sarah''s vitality had increasedpared to before she left earlier.

    Daimon nodded with his eyes closed.

    "No problem, just chain her up or something, I used too much energy to be dodging in my sleep", he said, which made the girls softlyugh.

    Before noticing, Daimon fell asleep while using Aisha''sp as his pillow, the girls continued doing their own things, while they only lowered their voices down a bit.

    The rest of the travel went on pretty smoothly, the girls meditated with the help of the Elemental Conversion Array, while Daimon actually slept for around the twelve hours that took them to return to the Elemental Sea.

    Normally Daimon only needs around three to four hours to decently recover to around half of his capacities, even when he abuses of Core Synchrony, the reason as to why he slept for more than twice that, is that after having a nice rest he found himself dreaming.

    "You know, back at earth I don''t remember ever having a dream, but it sure does get boring to have the same one quite a few times", he mumbled.

    He was into that open sea area, in which his ck Sea Emblem has been taking him into a few times before.

    These dreams were like small clips, he couldn''t interact with them until they finished,st time the clip showed a rain of corpses of some unknown creatures, so he wondered what will he be seeing now.

    And the answer came pretty fast, the sky suddenly darkened and then from within the clouds a giant portal appeared, Daimon thought it was just going to be another rain of corpses, but that wasn''t the case.

    What came out of that portal was a giant meteorite, which impacted the sea, but the result wasn''t a tsunami as it should have been, instead of that, the surface of the sea trembled before the water level started decreasing.

    Then the water started boiling, as magma and mountains raised from below the water, the whole ce was in turmoil, with new inds forming, part of the sea disappearing and other rock formations raising.

    "So, this time it''s the formation of Neptune''s formation", mumbled Daimon, once the chaos ended, whatid in front of him wasn''t an infinite sea anymore, there were inds andrge continents that were newly formed.

    Still not everything was just a beautifulndscape, apparently the corpses that fell from the sky were still present at the bottom of the sea, because along with the waves that crashed at the newly formed shores, many small broken pieces of bones that were clearly worn out, appeared.

    The dream came to an abrupt end, when Daimon suddenly opened his eyes, Aisha wasying down next to him, having a little nap, it was past 5 PM and now they were arriving at the Elemental Sea, due to the long night of the Maelstrom Sea, they missed the sunlight once again.

    But that is good too, it''s better for no one to know where they will bending, in other words the area where the legacy of the hero is supposedly kept.

 Chapter 470 Inside The Legacy Land (Part 1)

    ?

    Noticing the movements next to her, Aisha''s pretty amethyst eyes slowly opened, she then brightly smiled as she saw Daimon had woken up already.

    "And here I was thinking you were going to keep sleeping until tomorrow", she jokingly said, to which Daimon chuckled.

    "I had another of those dreams", he mumbled, Daimon suddenly remembered that the past dream came to him only after his ck Sea Emblem devoured other emblems, but he hasn''t given it any others, and to prevent the little thing from trying to snatch them away, he kept the iplete emblems in the inventory.

    ''Don''t tell me¡­'', Daimon opened the inventory just to see that as he expected, the iplete Devil Emblem he recently got was gone.

    Daimon sighed, his Sea Emblem acted on its own, but so far it has helped him when it was needed, to be honest he was going to give the Devil Emblem to it anyway, because his instincts told him they were trouble.

    Also, it is worth mentioning, that after his ck emblem had eaten enough mana crystals, it didn''t try to go after the other emblems, but immediately reacted to the Devil One.

    "Whatever I guess the result would have been the same, it''s hard to believe this little thing managed to snatch the emblem away from another slot of the inventory though", mumbled Daimon as he took out his ck emblem.

    The rune shark was still there like always, but the had gotten for vivid, it was still unclear whether his was aplete emblem or not, because not only he can''t use it to make contracts like others, but he can''t see or use its ability like Vincent or Aurora who own aplete one too.

    But at the same time, it doesn''t look like an iplete one, as it has manifested some abilities, like acting as apass or protecting Daimon and the others back at the dimensional tunnel that brought them to the secondyer of Neptune.

    Daimon knew things will be solved at the Global Raid, otherwise an emblem wouldn''t be needed to participate on it, so he put the matter at the back of his head for the time being.

    He looked at the room, the lights were dimmed down and the girls were all having a nice rest, well, almost all of them, as he could see a pair of purple eyes glowing in the dark, which of course belonged to Sarah, who was observing him, from the bed she was sharing with her mother.

    The door of the room suddenly opened and Aurora came from outside.

    "We arrived, I asked Underwood to make sure there wasn''t anyone in the nearby area, he''ll let us know if someonees this way", she said.

    Daimon nodded, their destination was the area at the border of the continental mass of the Elemental Sea, near the territory of the Bamboo Forest sect, where the map that the ring which Aurora handed Daimon, supposedly located something left behind by the hero.

    Luckily Aurora was skilled enough to use an optical illusion spell to cover the whole Flying Citadel, otherwise a silver metallic floatingrge object would of course stand out, especially at night.

    So right now, they were floating above the border of the continent, without being noticed, Daimon got up from his bed and so did Aisha and the others.

    Now that Akim who was what was making Aurora stay in the Citadel, has been dealt with, she could also apany them, so the others could go explore together with Daimon.

    Speaking of Akim, the Nethereal had finished shedding the pieces of the ck material, which Remi was now respectfully handing over to Daimon in a ring, not only that but Akim had already gotten back his body.

    There was a difference though, while his powers didn''t diminish, the bizarre characteristics he had were gone, he was now in the ck mist stage like Roger or Fabio, despite the fact that his existence is still linked to his core, instead of his body like those two, and his new appearance was that of a middle-aged man in his forties with short brown hair and beard, an average look that won''t stand out.

    Also, he was properly interrogated in the past hours by Remi and Aurora, unfortunately he didn''t know much about the scheming guy, supposedly, only Garrius has gotten to directly speak with it.

    But he did have some valuable information, worth of his strength as a high stage Ster rank, which is the fact that he could recognize the draw Bell made of Reed''s appearance, or more urately a part of it.

    The crown face to be more exact, apparently it was slightly simr to the symbol which is engraved on Garrius mask, but it wasn''t the same, ording to Garrius that mask was given to him by the Lord, so it could be said that it is the scheming guy''s banner, or something like that.

    That solved the mystery of why it took a piece of the ck material used to cover the core of a high stage Ster Nethereal, to heal only a fraction of the curse on Sarah''s body, her father is a Lord too¡­ which means so is Jasmine''s one.

    Daimon expected to get to know more about the origin of Nethereals, but to his surprise, Akim said that not only him but any other Nethereal he knows off, besides Garrius has no memories prior to suddenly appear in Neptune, in one of the many hideouts of the scheming guy.

    Apparently a "Representative" is much more important than what Daimon thought, because while Akim is now an early level high stage Ster rank, he was an early stage when he came to existence, but Garrius was a high stage from the very beginning, and now he has reached the peak of the high stage, which is the current peak of power in Neptune as no one is able to be a Maximum rank nowadays.

    Still, he now had a much clearer image of how Nethereals worked, sadly it wasn''t realistic to aim at Garrius right now, because he is always surrounded by all the other high stage Ster Nethereals, but he is also busy dealing with Marcus, so it is tit for tat.

    "You wille with us, Remi you stay back to guard the fort", ordered Daimon.

    "We listen and obey", those two answered, besides Remi, the two elders and the four guard of the angelfish n as well as the young girls won''t being, but Marlene tagged along.

    Daimon and the others then walked all the way to the border of the Flying Citadel, before they jumped down, with Aurora creating a barrier to take them tond safely.

    Just as Jasmine said, the trees and other vegetation in the area had a much darker green tone, not only that, but the trees were taller as well, giving it a primal forest kind of appearance.

    Daimon looked at the map and he was d that Jasmine happened toe to this ce before, because with how tall the trees where the hills which were the only thing that matched with thendscape of the area, were barely visible even from above.

    "Here we are", for safety reasons, Daion had previously told Aurora to take them at the entrance of the forest, instead of directly to the hills or into it, the legacy left to Marcus belonged to Thalia a being who battled and wounded the Hydra Guy, who was at least a Ster ranked system user.

    Naturally, the whatever was left behind for Adam shouldn''t be any worse, considering those two are supposed to be the yers of this little game, which involved the destruction of many civilizations.

    Daimon observed the forest with his infinity eyes and he even spread his mana sense, trying to see if there was something fishy here.

    But besides the fact that the trees had both nature and darkness elements, which was confirmed by Tessa, whose affinities are the same, certainly it''s notmon to see nts with more than one element, but these trees weren''t treasures, besides being tall, they had no valuable properties, just regr trees that had lived for a long time, somethingmon in the area of the Bamboo Forest sect, where nature, water and wood mana is abundant.

    With Daimon''s greenlight the group entered the forest and calmly advanced through it, with Aurora and Akim protecting all the nks, they didn''t take long to reach their destination, which were those small hills.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Daimon took out the map, the mark was located into the hills, but Daimon didn''t know if it meant below them, or inside of them, there were many caves in them, and his infinity eyes couldn''t see through the physicalyer, past a certain distance.

    "Can you feel anything from there?", asked Daimon to the others, but they all shook their heads, even Aurora, Akim and Bell, in other words the Ster ranks of the group, couldn''t sense anything, which meant the only option was to go into the hills, maybe the legacy will show up to him as he possesses the map, it could also be a spatial gate, because the one that was supposed to go to Marcus was in another location essible through one.

    Aurora created tform with her mana and took the group the closest hill, there was a rtivelyrge breach on itsdder, from where three people could enter walking side to side.

    With Aurora taking the lead and Akim watching the rear, the group dived into the hill, at first the ce didn''t look different from any other cave one could find into a mountain area, the passage was rather stretch and it was quite humid as this ce is near the border which means it is surrounded by sea.

    But after the first kilometer, in which Daimon and the others didn''t find anything, the passage suddenly widened into a much open area, and that is not all, it soon became obvious that there was more to this ce than what meets the eye, and that it hasn''t been visited by anyone in a really long time.

    The reason is pretty simple, there were small mana crystals growing on the roof of the cave, with the exploration teams of the sects sweeping through the Elemental Sea all the time, using special devices to detect mines of mana crystals, this ce should have been found already.

    Since the surroundingndscape is pretty eye-catching and yet it wasn''t noticed, what''s more, Aurora and the others didn''t notice those crystals before, and Daimon didn''t either, though his mana sense wasn''t as reliable as his infinity eyes, whose current range to see through physical objects was of five hundred meters, exining why he couldn''t notice them from afar, his instincts should have worked, unless¡­

    As if to answer Daimon''s question, the map which he kept in his pocket started shining, then those mana crystals answered by releasing light as runes that were engraved on them, were revealed, in other words, those mana crystals weren''t here previously but appeared due to Daimon''s map.

    "Mm?", Daimon felt a strange sensation in his body, at first, he thought it was caused because Sarah was intensely staring at him, in this dark ce, but then his pupils widened a bit as the vertical yellow lines, sign of his Drakolevia lineage, appeared in his eyes, he turned to see Jasmine, only to see those white halos appearing in her eyes.

    Without a second of dy, Daimon used blink to appear next to Jasmine, but he was a millisecond toote, as she was taken away by a sudden ray of light that appeared out of nowhere.

    For Daimon it was as if the world slowed down, he activated Core Synchrony and his mind elerated thanks to the increase in his realm, at least enough for him turn to see Aisha and manage to send her a message before another ray of light transported him too.

    ''We''ll be fine, stay calm and follow the previously stablished n, if I can''t get the legacy I''ll return in exactly 24 hours, otherwise it means I''m working to get it, you''ll know if I''m in trouble'', he said.

    ''Mm, I''ll take care of everything darling~'', Aisha''s confident answer, along with her pretty smiling face were thest things Daimon managed to hear and see, before everything went nk for him.

    Those rays of light were actually only visible for Daimon, even Aurora couldn''t react in time before they had already disappeared, so of course when she saw realized they were gone, she frowned, but then calmed down after listening to Aisha say.

    "She and Daimon were transported, don''t worry they will be fine, if the legacy isn''t obtainable, they''ll be back in a day, if not it might take more, I can tell if there are troubles in which case¡­ we''ll tear down this ce to the ground if needed".

    Aurora nodded, with Daimon going along with Jasmine, she felt at ease.

    "Mm?", everyone turned to see Bell who had a confused expression on her face as she said.

    "Where is Sarah?", she asked, which made the girls look around only to notice the crazy girl was gone as well, Aisha couldn''t see what happened earlier, she only heard Daimon''s message before she couldn''t feel his presence here anymore, so she didn''t know if Sarah was taken with them too.

    ''Could it be¡­'', she thought.

    ¡­

    While Aurora and the others looked for Sarah and stablished a small camp, since some will be staying behind to watch over this ce, at an unknown location there was arge magnificent white tent settled in the middle of nowhere.

    The peace of the ce was suddenly interrupted by the angered voice of a man in his teenage years.

    "Ahhh damn it, this is so boring, Ariel can''t you at least bring one of them while I''m stuck here, I''m sick and tired of only training all the time!", shouted a blond-haired man who wasying down on arge bed, which was obviously not meant to amodate a single person.

    "Not my problem, y with your hand if you are that bored", the uninterested voice of a girl came from an empty space near the roof of the tent, before the figure of a young girl wearing white and golden clothes with a small pair of light wings on her back was revealed.

    These two were none other than the Light Hero Adam, and the administrator of his system, that angel girl called Ariel, who Daimon managed to see before.

    The angel girl ignored the angered and dangerous eyes of Adam, and then pointed outside of the tent.

    "It''s finally starting, so if you still want this, then start moving, it seems more than one people came here, but I can''t track nor see who they are, probably a limitation due to the mission", said the angel girl before her figure faded away.

    "Finally, God damn it, I was about to drop this "gift" and leave, what kind of stupid legacy is worth being trapped here without anypany for seven damn weeks, I hope there is a decent girl among them to save, so that I can let out some steam, ah that makes me remember I couldn''t get a taste of that princess, and Jenna is dead because you didn''t tell me about the entrance method killing others, Ariel!", he said, only to be met with silence from the angel girl.

    Apparently after Adam escaped leaving Jasmine behind, using one of his safety measures, which was supposed to bring him to a ce where he could get some benefits, he ended in this unknown ce.

    Besides arge open area, there was nothing but a barrier that prevented him from advancing, no matter what he tried he couldn''t get in, but he could leave whenever he wanted, the only problem is that he won''t be able to return.

    So, he just stayed here to wait, in any case he made some preparations before all this happened, so he just needed to focus in increasing his strength and everything will work like always.

    Adam came out of the tent, and saw that cracks had started to appear on the barrier, which made him smirk, he could already feel some magic beasts nearby, which weren''t there previously, as there was no one but him.

    "I wonder what the scenery will be this time, bandits attacking the carriage, or maybe a kidnapping try", he mumbled with an excited expression.

    Little did he know that the scenery that awaited him this time was altered, because of a few people''s intereference.

 Chapter 471 Inside The Legacy Land (Part 2)

    ?

    A few moments earlier, though everything went nk for Daimon in the sense that he couldn''t see what was happening, he still had sixth sense and his instincts whichbined allowed him to realize what was happening.

    With his eyes closed, Daimon focused all his other senses and a mental image of his surroundings was formed, first of all he noticed that his body was surrounded by the same white ray that transported Jasmine earlier.

    It was that white ray what was preventing him from seeing, as it covered his body including his eyes, unfortunately for whoever set things to be this way, the senses of an Apex Predator aren''t that easy to block.

    What surrounded Daimon was a dimensional tunnel, one which was different than the normal ones, because unlike any other dimensional tunnel in which Daimon has been so far, there was more than space here.

    There was debris floating everywhere, some were simple pieces of broken rock, but there were also some pieces of metal here and there, why would that draw Daimon''s attention you might wonder.

    The answer is simple, that metal looked rather familiar, as in the material from which the Flying Citadel appears to bepletely made off.

    Which is surprising by itself, but when you add the fact that this white ray was configurated to blind him, it bes more than a coincidence.

    "What the¡­", Daimon who was paying too much attention to what was outside of the white light covering him, suddenly felt a strange sensation on his lower body.

    He changed his focus to his waist and legs, and to his surprise, there, tightly holding onto him was the crazy girl Sarah, despite the fact that she shouldn''t be able to see a thing right now, she had such an expression of delight on her face that it was hard to believe.

    Luckily, though they were isted from the outside, she was holding onto him so they could at least talk to each other.

    "What the hell are you doing here?", asked Daimon, to which Sarah giggled as she tightened her grip on him.

    "You seemed distracted to I tried and was finally able to caught you~", she said.

    Daimon was speechless for a moment, certainly back then he put all his focus on Jasmine, he was one stepte and though he activated Core Synchrony, is the milliseconds he has he only managed to look at Aisha and send her a message.

    ''I can''t believe she actually came here by ident just because she jumped onto me¡­'', thought Daimon, seeing her proud smiling expression made Daimon feel the urge to throw her to the outer space of the dimensional tunnel, but as if the universe itself was helping her, he caught a glimpse of the exit of the tunnel, meaning they were reaching their destination.

    Against all his wishes, Daimon could only say.

    "Hang on, we are about to leave this ce", naturally Sarah didn''t need to hear it twice, both her arms and legs were wrapped around Daimon''s lower body, with her full strength as a middle stage Knight Lord.

    Daimon stopped paying her attention, and a few secondster they were finally out of the dimensional tunnel, as if it was nned to be like this, the white ray dissipated and vision returned to Daimon and Sarah''s eyes.

    What appeared in front of Daimon was¡­ sky, the dimensional tunnel actually threw them out around three hundred meters into the air.

    "Oh,e on, what kind of wed transport is this", mumbled Daimon as he started descending along with Sarah, at a high speed.

    A fall from this height might not be too much for him, even if he is unable to slow down his fall his body is tough enough to endure the impact, but any other star ranked or even an early-stage Lord rank will end up as meat paste, as for a middle stage Lord rank, without the capacity to slow down its fall, some broken bones will be expected.

    ''You could always use that girl to as a cushion, her physique is not far from yours'', said Evangeline as she shrugged.

    An idea that Daimon found rather tempting, until he saw Sarah licking her lips as she gazed at him, she somehow seemed to have guessed what Daimon was thinking, and there was¡­ expectancy in her eyes?

    ''Nah, I''m sure she is crazy enough to actually enjoy it¡­'', answered Daimon, he then used blink three times in a row to directlynd on the ground.

    Naturally that didn''t diminish the momentum that Daimon and Sarah''s bodies falling, had already built, so they caused a small explosion and a curtain of dust to raise due to the impact, the ground cracked and small pieces of rocks flew all over the ce, just to sh against an invisible barrier that was lying ahead of them.

    With a wave of Daimon''s hand, the dust was dispersed to reveal a five-meter deep, crater in which he was standing, it''s worth mentioning that Sarah was still holding onto his legs.

    "You already had your fun, care to let go so that we can go look for Jasmine?", said Daimon.

    Surprisingly, the crazy girl who a moment ago was all smiles, put on a serious expression for a change, still she didn''t let g of Daimon yet though.

    "What happened to Jas?", she asked.

    Even Aurora couldn''t react to Jasmine being taken away, Sarah was the same, especially because when the white ray was transporting her away, she had already jumped towards Daimon, in a sense her timing was perfect, as she jumped on the small fraction of second in which Daimon had stopped paying her attention, otherwise she wouldn''t be here now.

    As much as Daimon wanted her to be as far as possible from him personally, her fighting capacities weren''t up to be doubted about, even before the first round of treatment she was strong enough to defend against Adam, of course it wasn''t a fight or death battle, but still, ording to Jasmine, that guy had already be an eight-star ranked knight,

    Adam and Marcus are older than Daimon, they are the leaders of the elite sses of the second year of their own academies, and they were five star ranked knight and mage respectively when the exploration started, but had already advanced with some lucky encounters.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Well, in Adam''s case, he was given some high ranked potions and resources after he saved Jasmine, but prior to that he was who knows where doing who knows what, and had already reached the seventh star rank, after having thatst advance it was when Sarah found him and she probably could tell he was up to no good, because she directly confronted him, making him postpone his ns for Jasmine, as she made him doubt if his ability was being resisted, who knows if Aurora might have ended up noticing something was off, which would not be good for him.

    "Seriously you were forcefully transported, blinded, floated in a dimensional tunnel where we could have ended up being crushed by debris, to then be thrown around high into the air, and only now you are showing some seriousness", mumbled Daimon, to which Sarah giggled.

    "I''m with you anyway, there is no bigger danger than that~", she said as she licked her lips, making Daimon sigh.

    "Forget it, it''s my bad for treating you like a normal person¡­ she was taken away by whoever set this ce up, I can feel her general direction, so we''ll go reunite with her and then either look for the legacy or leave depending on the situation, it''s just an assumption but there is a chance we meet Adam here", he said.

    Sarah''s eyes glowed as she thought.

    ''So, Jases first, good'', she then let go of Daimon''s legs and stood up before saying.

    "Very well, I''m hoping to see that piece of trash so I can crush his balls for what he did to Jas", something the pair of purple haired mother and daughter shares is that they were merciless with their enemies, could be because they were exposed to Nether, or maybe they were like that to begin with, and their fierceness was just amplified.

    Daimon chuckled, and then he looked at the barrier which previously tried to prevent him from looking at was what at its other side, unfortunately in front of his infinity eyes, it was futile.

    At the other side of the barrier which was cracking right now, there lied a vast wastnd that extended far from Daimon''s range, what was more shocking is the fact that outside of the barrier there was nothing on the sky, but inside there was a "sun".

    "So, this ce is like the one in which old Vincent had to pass the test to obtain hisplete emblem, a space with its own rules", said Daimon.

    If that was the case then it made sense that thendscape was a wastnd, the lineage that the hero owned was the ck Armored Shark''s one, in other words it was the one of an aquatic magic beast.

    In other words, this ce was created to challenge whoever had inherited the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, which if Daimon hadn''t stepped in, ultimately stealing the origin of it, from the ckfin Duke, would have been Adam.

    Daimon smirked, this little trick would have worked if he was limited to use one lineage at the time, like the Hydra Guy, who besides when using that eight-snake headed form, had to use his lineages separately ording to Thalia''s notes.

    But that didn''t work against him, because all the lineages he possess are part of his own, he doesn''t need to change them to use them, and can ess to all their abilities and properties without doing anything.

    A fundamental impossibility since that would mean, his main lineage is strong enough to contain all the others, and yet that was his case, because that unknown lineage which stood at the top of the list in the screen of the Lineage Temple, was positioned even above the Apex Predator one.

    Also, he has both fire and also water affinities at the same time, so even if he was brought to a desertic zone like this, he won''t be at disadvantage.

    After a couple of seconds, arge piece of the barrier shattered revealing an entrance to that wastnd ahead of them.

    ''I''ll make a transportation mean in a moment'', said Rita directly to Daimon, that''s right, she managed toe by hiding in Daimon''s shadow.

    ''No need, I didn''t feel anything outside of that barrier, but I''m pretty sure we''ll be observed once we are inside, your presence is one of my trump cards, so I''ll y along with the challenge, keep your mana for emergencies, but you can use your mana sense to look ahead for me, limit it to the point where you are sure you won''t be noticed even by Maximum Ster ranks'', said Daimon.

    Leaving aside the fact that Rita was now smiling from ear to ear over the words, "you are on of my trump cards", she understood Daimon''s reasoning, unlike him who had some ways to recover to full, she would have to take mana potions and their efficiency isn''t enough to bring her to her best condition and who knows what is waiting for them after all.

    ''Leave it to me'', she answered.

    "Jasmine should be in that direction, don''t be left behind", said Daimon as he entered the barrier, and then started running towards northeast.

    "Heh, I could chase you around for days without getting tired, but first we have to find Jas", jokingly said Sarah, with a single jump she arrived at where Daimon was and then they both rushed in the same direction, she is a half Nethereal after all, her body is innately strong to begin with, and as a knight that is amplified even more.

    Inside of the barrier, not only thendscape changed, the moment Daimon set a foot inside of it, the temperature went up like crazy, even for a desertic area in a rough calction it should be around 120¡ã C, which is crazy for a ce that has no abundance in fire mana.

    It means that it''s the natural temperature of this ce, if the base is that high, then when mana gets involved, the effect will be stronger, that''s how thing worked in the nature of this world of magic, mana acts as an amplifier, which means that cold ces get colder and hot ces get hotter.

    ''Young master three kilometers ahead, I see a small town and I can sense some signs of lifeing from it, there is also arge number of magic beasts in the vicinity which seem to being towards us on purpose, their ranks go from the eight star to the mid Lord rank, around a hundred of them, there is also some people that seem to be running away from them'', said Rita.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see Sarah.

    "Enemies ahead, prepare for a battle".

    "Mm~", Sarah''s eyes glowed, she has been doing nothing but ying and meditatingtely, so her fists were aching, knights do tend to enjoy battle more than mages, and Nethereals are also fierce by nature, now add up a bit of craziness and you have Sarah''s current mood.

 Chapter 472 Brown Wind Town ( Part 1)

    ?

    On his way to encounter that group of people and magic beasts, Daimon threw something to Sarah.

    The crazy girl caught it and then a smile flourished on her face.

    "Heh, so you are the type to take responsibility, don''t worry I won''t ever leave your side~", she said as she observed the pretty detailed bracelet Daimon handed her, which made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch a bit.

    "I''m just lending it to you, it''s better for others to not know your identity, especially if Adam is here", he said.

    The bracelet he threw at her was the bracelet of the god of mischief, he is wearing one too, to hide his mage realm as he is "Gabriel" right now.

    Despite Daimon''s exnation, the crazy girl happily put the bracelet on and then changed its design to fit her liking, after they joined the alliance, they got to know that Aisha and the Risha sisters were using some kind of magic item to disguise themselves, the same applied to Daimon.

    And even if Ster ranks, might be able to tell they were disguised, they still couldn''t see their real appearances, that is something Daimon confirmed with Vincent, could be because the Ster ranks of Neptune should be more or less equal to the half Emperors or the Magic Kings of the four gxies.

    For Daimon and the others who are still star ranked mages, the half Emperor realm is within the possibilities of the bracelet.

    Anyway, Sarah has seen Aisha, Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana using these bracelets, and the three sisters clearly cherished them, only now she discovered why, they were apparently given by Daimon and she was wearing one too now.

    Daimon could feel the intense gaze of the crazy girl on his back and he sighed, but he quickly put the matter aside, for others Sarah''s hair color changed to a dark green, she also appeared to be an early-stage Lord rank instead of a middle stage one, besides that her eye color changed to honey amber one, and she became younger and a bit shorter, appearing to be around Jasmine''s age now.

    Her face did have some slight resemnce to her real appearance, but she looked like a distant younger rtive.

    "How do I look, I should appear to be closer to your age now, right~", she said to Daimon, who ignored her, which unfortunately only made her giggle.

    ''Well, at least she won''t be recognized now'', thought Daimon, he was still wearing his mask anyway.

    ''The chance is little, but one can''t never be too cautious¡­'', thought Daimon, he then extended his hand and a ck ray appeared out of nowhere condensing into a ck one-edged sword.

    ''I leave their weapons to you Narasha'', inwardly said Daimon.

    ''Mm!'', Narasha and Disaster answered in their own way, Daimon could feel the ck sword vibrate excited to destroy other weapons.

    The moment Disaster appeared on Daimon''s hand, Sarah''s eyes sparkled, she could feel the threatening aura radiated by the sword and that made her feel the urge to jump onto Daimon, but she could tell there were people not to far ahead of them, so she could only click her tongue and take out her one of the spare weapons she has in her ring.

    When Daimon saw her weapon and that crazy expression on her face, he shivered a bit, because she was using a sword with a simr style as Disaster, a one-edged de sword, the difference is that hers ispletely dark green with some lines that ran through the de.

    "Matching bracelets and matching weapons, if I knew you only needed to touch my bare skin for us to advance this fast, I would have sneaked in when you were bathing~", she said as she licked her lips.

    ''Daimon¡­ I don''t know why but I suddenly feel the urge to cut her'', said Narasha which made Daimon chuckle.

    ''She''ll probably like it, so that''s a no, just ignore her'', he said.

    Daimon suddenly stabbed the ground below him with Disaster, naturally with a sword that weights forty tons when it is trying to be light, and Daimon''s abnormal physical strength, the rocky ground of the wastnd crumbled apart and the floor in a twenty-meter area exploded.

    Daimon didn''t bother to warn Sarah, because with her senses she should have noticed it too, or she might also get sted away by the impact, both results were good for him.

    "Screeee!", a high-pitched sound came from below the ground as a giant sandworm showed its head in a try to attack Daimon, just to scream in pain before it turned into a dried after Disaster drained it out of all its mana and vitality

    Sarah who of course easily dodged the rocks that flew all over the ce and calmly withstood the shockwave of Daimon''s attack with her body,nded next to Daimon, she casually swinged her sword and cut an arrow that was sneakily shot at them, taking the curtain of dust as a cover.

    "So, what do we kill, the beasts or the guys?", she asked, in response three more arrows suddenly pierced the dust aiming at her, but this time she didn''t block with her sword, instead she allowed the arrows to hit her, with a bright smile.

    The moment the arrows were about to touch her, the runes of her armor lit up in an ominous green light and the arrows melted as they hit her, as for the impact it was fully negated as well, if Daimon wasn''t immune to poison he wouldn''t have stayed where he was standing, because even the ground dissolved.

    Daimon dispelled the curtain of dust to see what was currently surrounding them, it was a group of around forty people, they were all wearing leather armor and more than half of them were fighting against the group of magic beasts from the wastnd.

    The rest of them were looking at them with fierce expressions ad they encircled them, and aimed at them with bows made with bones of magic beasts.

    Daimon gazed at the neers, among them there were two middle stage Lord ranks, who seemed to be the leaders, on of them was leading the group that was fighting against the magic beasts.

    While the other was the one watching over the group that was surrounding them, he hadn''t pulled out his weapon, but it was arge bone bow which was hanging on his back, along with heavy arrows, also while the one fighting the beasts was a mage, the other guy was a knight as his tall and broad figure suggested.

    The mage leader casted a rock spike that pierced the head of a lizard magic beast, and then glided towards the other leader.

    "Omar, I told you to ask those two to fight alongside us, not to attack them, we can pay them with some food and mana stones in exchange for their help", said the mage leader.

    "You know the situation back at the town Ender, we need to bring back the corpses of the magic beasts, or we''ll run out of food, the other magic beasts won''t let us go without a distraction, so unless you want to sacrifice some of your subordinates, why not use those two as bait?", answered the knight leader.

    Though there was chaos going on with spells being casted and the weapons of the knights shing against the tough bodies of the magic beasts, even from afar Daimon could perfectly hear their conversation, something those two didn''t think was possible.

    "And what are you going to do if they escape, to be travelling around the wastnd they shouldn''t be weak, are you trying to bring cmity to the town, when we could just offer them a payment and return back safe with food and materials to sell!", the mage leader was much more rational than the knight one.

    "Humph, fine if you want to employ them, you pay them, but you know the rules, what you get is yours, so you can forget about getting anything from my Sand Wolf Army, I''ll only feed my subordinates!", having said that, the knight leader turned around and took hisrge bone bow to then shot an arrow at a sand worm.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    The arrow was covered in a red fire battle aura, Lord ranks are able to empower weapons even when they aren''t in contact with them unlike star ranked ones, which is part of Will Maniption, so they no longer need to rely only on martial arts for long range attacks, one of the weaknesses of low ranked knights.

    And the moment the arrownded on the head of the sandworm, the thing exploded destroying it, Omar then proudly red at Daimon, or that was the idea, but when he turned around, he noticed the masked man who earlier stole his prey wasn''t there anymore.

    A huge sensation of crisis assaulted the knight leader''s mind, his released his battle aura at the maximum of his capacity, but before he could pull the string of his bow, a ck sword pierced his throat.

    "Blegh!", Omar vomited blood on the sport, which of course drew the attention of all his subordinates.

    "Retrieve your sword you bastard!".

    "Let the captain go!".

    The fifteen or so knights aimed their bows at Daimon, as they shouted to get him to let Omar of the hook, a Lord Knight''s vitality is high enough for a wound on the throat to not be lethal, of course if the neck ispletely cut off that is a goodbye, but Omar was still alive right now.

    But that could change with a mentalmand of Daimon, as Disaster will turn him into a dry mummy, that will be dust a secondter.

    The mage leader, Ender, saw things going south and he decided to step in, he raised his hands and then slowly approached Daimon as he said.

    "The friend over there, can you please let him go, you''ll be rewarded if you bring him back alive, also I would like to hire you to help hunt these magic beasts¡­".

    Ender hadn''t finished talking when Daimon casually swinged his sword and Omar''s head fell from his neck, but before it touched the ground it had turned into ashes as well as his body, due to Disaster.

    A sepulchral silence fell for a moment, before Omar''s subordinates started shouting to then attack Daimon, but they all suddenly froze, they looked downwards only to see there were nails piercing their necks or any uncovered part of their bodies.

    ck foam came out of their mouths before they all copsed on the ground dead, the mage leader felt a shiver running down his spine, he didn''t see a thing, which means that if the other party wanted him dead, he would have gone down a second ago too.

    "I don''t have the bad habit of leaving anyone who tries to kill me live if I can do something about it, so now that we have enough bait, how about you take me to that town of yours", said Daimon.

    Ender was in a dilemma, even if Omar was an idiot, he was still part of the force of the town, now that he was dead, then there will be questions, if he didn''t speak, he and his subordinates will be involved, not to mention the masked man in front of him killed without any hesitation, so who knows what he wanted from the town.

    On the other hand, even with his around twenty or so subordinates cooperating, he isn''t sure he can defend these two, especially the green haired woman, who casually eliminated fifteen knights like that, meaning she is a skilled assassin.

    So, both options could bring him to hell.

    ''Damn you Omar, if you wanted to die acting all high and mighty against anyone you found that is your problem, but why are you causing everyone troubles!?, inwardly screamed Ender.

    Still the mage leader, noticed that the green haired woman''s dangerous eyes were ring at him, and he could only say.

    "I¡­ I can bring you to the town and pay apensation for that idiot''s actions, I promise me and my men won''t say a thing, but you must promise to not harm the people there, otherwise even if you kill me, I won''t help you pass the security check".

    Daimon smirked behind his mask.

    "Sure, I only kill those who are a threat to me, shall we get going then", he said.

    The mage leader whose back was covered in cold sweat let out a sigh or relief, living in thisnd wasn''t easy at all, he has somewhat developed a sense of danger, despite being a normal human, and all the rms screamed the moment he was red at by Sarah.

    "Y-Yes, my name is Ender, just give us a moment to retrieve the corpses of the magic beasts that were killed by us", he said.

    The group of magic beasts actually split apart after Omar''s subordinates died, there was nothing left of Omar, but his subordinates were still there, and apparently their corpses were more interesting for the magic beasts than the ones of the sandworms and lizards that were killed by the mages.

    It''s worth mentioning that the sandworm Daimon killed was the leader of the sandworms, being the only middle stage Lord ranked one, that''s in part why Omar wanted to kill Daimon, the corpse was worth quite a lot and he didn''t want to lose it to a stranger that was "lucky" tond a hit on it, after he and his subordinates had tired it down and wounded it for the past twelve hours.

    Under Ender''smand, his subordinates cut the corpses of the magic beasts in smaller pieces and only then they kept them in their storage treasures, before the magic beasts arrived, the crazy girl had already checked the corpses of Omar''s subordinates and took all their valuables, which were just a couple of storage rings that Omar and his vice-leader had.

    The other stuff were poorly crafted items, in which she wasn''t interested and ended up in the stomachs of the magic beasts, that were now ripping the corpses apart as they fought for them.

    "If they could notice my poison they wouldn''t eat those things so eagerly, I wonder why are they prioritizing some regr humans over other magic beasts whose vitality is higher though?", mumbled Sarah who returned to Daimon''s side.

    "Could be the set up of this ce, from where Ie it is said that magic beasts preferred to eat humans more than other thing, a really long time ago at least", said Daimon as he looked at the strange things, they were using to store away the corpses of the magic beasts.

    Though Ender had a ring, all the other mages were using some kind of small backpack instead, and that was some really old magic technology which is way less efficient than storage rings.

    Evenmoners or non-mages could afford the cheapest storage back at the four gxies, as a well-stablished technology there is of course a low-cost line of them, but that didn''t seem to be the case here.

    ''So, it is either a backward ce, or we ended up at its border where things are chaotic¡­ maybe both'', thought Daimon as he wondered what was this ce.

    He already tried to use his infinity eyes and even got Rita''s confirmation, this wasn''t an illusion, they were brought to some other ce.

    ''Whatever, I don''t care about the objective of this ce, my objective is to find Jasmine, then the legacy and that''s it'', he thought.

 Chapter 473 Brown Wind Town (Part 2)

    ?

    To avoid any kind of confrontation, Ender called all his subordinates after they finished packing the corpses of the magic beasts, and then exined.

    "These two friends over here are young Gabriel and miss Prisc, they are travelers that have been training in the wilderness and ended up offering us help against the magic beasts that surrounded us, after Omar and his army took a detour to never be seen again".

    Ender''s subordinates started at each other, of course the previous was a tant lie, because though they were too busy to witness Daimon killing Omar, they did get to see Sarah casually looting the corpses of Omar''s subordinates before returning to Daimon''s side.

    But after having followed Ender for so many years, this was the first time they have seen him so apprehensive, so they all understood this was the only option they had, so they all nodded and then proceeded to make some kind of ritual to swear that the made-up history they heard, will be the only thing they''ll say.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow behind his mask as he observed the ritual, because it was also some really outdated method from a long a time go, unlike the soul contracts used nowadays, they used a method called "Blood Oath", which consisted in they all swearing while cutting their hands and using that blood to sign a contract.

    A red chain symbol then appeared on their wrists to then fade away once the ritual waspleted, Ender then handed the paper which contained the signs of all the present people to Daimon, with a "What do you think", expression, which made Daimon think.

    ''Don''t look at me like that, I don''t know what to say about such an unsafe method'', still he epted the paper and kept in his pocket which was only a feint to send it into his inventory.

    "That will work, then we should go to the town you mentioned right", he said.

    "Yes, please follow us, the guards will tun a few tests at the entrance, as long as you pass them, I can represent you to avoid further interrogation", said Ender, to which Daimon nodded.

    With Ender''s greenlight a few wind affinity mages started casting, and then a column of wind raised them all from the ground, and then started advancing towards northeast where the town detected by Rita, was located.

    On the way, Daimon turned to see Ender to ask him a few questions, because he wanted to understand more of the setting of this world, the part that he presented himself as a traveler that came from a really faraway ce, was so that he could ask what he wanted without looking suspicious.

    "What are these tests you mentioned, from where Ie the guards only corroborate that you aren''t a wanted person at most?", that was Daimon''s first question, because ording to his calctions, the strongest people in that town should be Lord ranks at most, maybe there is a few peak ones and that will be it, since the ones leading the teams were middle stage ones.

    Ender simply couldn''t feel at ease near Daimon after what happened earlier, well not really Daimon, he was more wary of Sarah, she looked quite young and yet showed such skilled assassin abilities, so his difort was justified.

    "Ahem, they are just the normal, tests to make sure you aren''t a flesh-eating demon, or a cannibal, other than that of course there is a clear crystal array to see if you are wanted, that''s pretty much it, I guess youe from a really big city at the central area, if the people that enter aren''t doubted of eating¡­ others", said Ender.

    Daimon had already thought about it, but the fact that you had to be checked to see if you were a cannibal before entering a city, meant that there was a severeck of food in this area, or maybe this whole ce in general.

    That also exined why Ender mentioned food first than mana crystals when he was offeringpensation, if he spared Omar''s life.

    ''Well, people from desertics are said to have it tough, not many non-magical nts can survive harsh conditions and still be nutritious enough to keep people alive, also to endure these high temperatures, without any magic or knight cultivation, arrays are needed, meaning a constant source of fuel is needed to'', thought Daimon.

    For starters, first it was hard to believe that he was actually sent to another ce, considering how much mana would be needed for a gate to connect the secondyer of Neptune to apletely separate ce.

    But then taking the fact that there were specific areas where the space was much thinner than others, like the four areas where those natural spatial gates appeared, then it wasn''t such an outrageous thing.

    Especially because ording to the Ryner''s records, some people from outside of Neptune ended stranded there, in the past at least, the array that transported them here, probably made use of a breach in space that the hero found in the past, or something along the lines of that.

    Adding the fact that the hero was system user makes it even more possible, thanks to the wind affinity mages putting some effort the whole group soon arrived at the entrance of a small sized town.

    Daimon observed the settlement in front of him, for a ce in the middle of nowhere the defensive walls were quite tall, there were archers all over the ce too and even a pit surrounding the whole thing with a drawbridge.

    "Yo, Ender how did the hunt go this time", shouted a man above the wall, he was wearing a better armorpared to the others, meaning he was probably someone with authority above the archers that were stationed here and there.

    "Xander, I don''t want to stay outside of the city walls more than what is needed, run the damn arrays so I can enter and go fetch my rewards, I can buy you a drinkter of course", said Ender.

    The man called Xanderughed, though it was only an early-stage Lord rank, one minor realm below Ender, it is always good to have good rtionships with the guards, especially in a ce where the requirements to enter are so strict.

    Daimon saw some of the arrays on the wall illuminate before a green light fell upon them, ording to Ender, the light would turn red if they were cannibals, flesh eating monsters of they were wanted, which of course wasn''t the case.

    With the sound of engines rotating, the gate of the city opened and only then a bridge came from within the other side of the walls, to allow them to enter.

    The moment Daimon set a foot inside of the city, he frowned, a screen which reminded him of the ones of the system appeared in front of him, but there was no sound of notification, so this wasn''t a notification from his system.

    Not to mention, Sarah''s eyes were sparkling because she could see it too, though one didn''t appear for her, still with a gaze from Daimon she remained silent understanding he will exinter.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon and Sarah followed Ender''s group into the city, naturally the guards who took noted of anyone that left, immediately noticed they weren''t from here, but with Ender talking to the man called Xander who turned out to be the vice-captain of the gate guards, they were left in peace.

    Xander also noticed that Omar and the other knights that also left, were missing.

    "Where are those guys, did you two have a fight again, he is a douche but his strength is needed¡­ the damn shortage of food is making even us tighten our belts", said the guard.

    "Ah, you know Omar, he is unable to work as a team and he despises us, so the moment he had the chance he decided take a separate route, therge group of beasts that wereing towards the town were led away by us, so he just went to look for a smaller pack to hunt".

    The reason as to why a forceposed of almost fifty, including two middle stage Lord ranks, was because the group of magic beasts wasing to the town, they acted as bait to lead the beasts away from this area.

    The magic beasts were crazy over eating people here for some reason, so they ignored the city which was surrounded by walls that concealed the living beings behind of it, and instead followed the tasty-looking humans.

    Of course, Omar and Ender were sure that they could bring most of their subordinates unscathed back to the city, after they hunted some magic beasts to bring back.

    After saying goodbye to Xander, Ender approached Daimon to say.

    "I need to inform and sell the materials I got, please follow me so that I can give you the money from the things you handed me".

    Daimon found a few things in the rings that Sarah retrieved from the dead knights, which were unable to be traced down to them, since he didn''t have the currency of this ce, he wanted to get some as it may be usefulter.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    They also used mana crystals, but their energy firm was different than the ones of the four gxies and the ones found in Neptune, so if he brought those out it will draw unnecessary attention.

    "Sure", with Daimon''s greenlight, they walked towards a three-story house a few streets away from the entrance of the city, this house was a store created by the chief of Brown Wind Town.

    There other stores set up by merchants from other ces, but the store of the chief was the one with which Ender worked, the reason is very simple, the gains produced here were in part used to prevent the people from dying.

    At least they provided some emergency food for those who didn''t have anyone to provide for them, like orphans, elders and the like, that being said, Ender assured Daimon he will be getting a fair price for the objects he was selling.

    While Ender''s subordinates stayed outside of the store, Ender guided Daimon and Sarah inside, it was quite a regr store for Daimon at least, there were weapons, potions, and even magic scrolls.

    The major difference was that everything here was literally chained to the racks, to prevent theft, there were also defensive arrays ced on the racks too, and a few tall guys acting as guards positioned on the corners and the center of the store too.

    "I''ll go sell the things, have a look in the meantime if you want to", said Ender as he left to the main counter of the store.

    Daimon gave Sarah a signal and then walked towards one of the many slightly isted areas of the store, where bones of magic beasts were exhibited, once the crazy girl confirmed they couldn''t be heard by others, she turned to see Daimon and asked what was in her mind.

    "What is that, is it some kind of illusion, created with magic?", she curiously asked.

    Let alone Sarah, even Aisha, Erin and the others were amazed at the screens produced by the system, so this much was expected from the crazy girl.

    "Something like that, these will probably tell us what are the objectives left by the guy who took us here", said Daimon as he read this fake notification he got.

    [Congrattions on reaching one of the many checking points "Brown Wind Town", fulfill the objectives to earn rewards and be able to return, failing three times you are out, good luck]

    Once Daimon finished reading the notification, he dismissed it and then a second one appeared for him.

    [The first objective has been decided, solve the food problems of Brown Wind Town and find the source of their hardest to deal with troubles, the reward will be decided based on the time ofpletion and the result of the method used]

    Daimon inwardly snorted, these notifications were really basic, they looked like cheap copies of the ones from the system to be honest, there was no timer as well, so the mission probably started the moment he entered this town, even if he didn''t read the notifications.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he saw one of the tall guys that were acting as guards approaching them.

    "Hey you two, if you aren''t going to buy something get out of the store", said the knight, Daimon smirked as he got a nice idea on how to take on this fake mission he got.

    "We are selling stuff to this store, if you don''t want them, I can leave and go to another store of course", casually said Daimon.

    The guard froze on the spot, if what was being sold was meat from magic beasts and he caused the store to lose the deal, then he would for sure be punished for it, just as he was looking for a way out of this situation, the voice of a man came to his rescue.

    "Leave then, once you see the prices offered by the other stores, you''ll want to return but won''t be allowed to do so".

    The voice came from a man in his twenties, which was apanied by the one who was attending the counter, next to them Ender who had an apologetic expression on his face.

    "Sorry, it seems there is a new person in charge here, I''m to me, we''ll go to another store", he said.

    Daimon didn''t care too much about it, he wanted to see the level of the things sold to the public, that''s why he entered the store, he knew that Ender wouldn''t dare to steal from him anyway.

    And now that he has confirmed that the magic equipment that was being sold was rubbish, he no longer had any interest in this store, in fact he was now interested in getting to know those merchants mentioned by Ender, to improve the image he had of this ce.

    "No problem", said Daimon as he walked towards Ender, he didn''t even bother in looking at the guy who told them to leave of they wanted to, the guard who was earlier trying to send them out, saw the angered expression on his boss''s face and he sinisterlyughed.

    "Hey, who allowed you to leave¡­ aghhh!", the poor bastards actually tried to hold onto Sarah''s shoulder to stop her, and the moment his hand was around five centimeters near of her, it melted.

    The flesh turned into a ck liquid which dripped out, revealing the bones below, that then turned into liquid too, making the guard scream in pain as he grabbed his arm and rolled on the ground.

    "I''m taken, so hands off, you piece of trash", Sarah''s cold voice sent a shiver through the spines of the guards, Ender and the manager of the store, not only the hand, but the whole arm of the guard, had started to melt, ignoring the armor he was using.

    Daimon felt a shiver but for a different reason, which is the fact that Sarah gazed at him when she said "I''m taken", earlier.

    The manager no longer wanted to sh with Ender and this scary woman, so he stood aside and allowed them leave, but of course his eyes were full of hatred, as he will have to pay the guard for this incident, there is a chance he loses his recently acquired position too.

    Naturally that didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes, but that''s what he wanted, he was the one who told Sarah to deal with the situation as she liked, essentially unchaining the crazy girl, which resulted in the guard whose body was crumbling apart even now, as the screamsing from the store, suggested.

    With Sarah happily humming as she walked next to Daimon, and Ender who now was even more worried than before, Daimon was guided to the next store, which was smaller, but had a better vibe going on.

    "I''m sorry for what happened earlier, the old managed was a good person and my acquittance, but he isn''t feeling well so that idiot was sent as his recement¡­ he was giving me a horrible price due to some personal feuds I had with him, this store offers a lower price, but don''t worry I''ll cover up your losses", said Ender.

    Daimon nodded, he thought about it for a second before saying.

    "Say, Ender, besides food what other problems you find to be the most apprehensive for this town?".

    Ender was taken back by Daimon''s question, but he still answered quite fast.

    "Insecurity and impunity are a pain to deal with, with food being worth sometimes more than mana crystals, you can imagine what people is willing to do just to have a full meal¡­ the chief is fair but he isn''t the strongest and so he can''t control everyone, Omar was a good example of that, but he wasn''t the worst in this ce".

    Daimon nodded in response, this was quite valuable information, as he just found a way to deal with both of the assignments of the mission at the same time.

 Chapter 474 Heroic Deeds (Part 1)

    ?

    The group went into the store, which unlike the previous one actually had a couple of clients, apparently the previous manager of the store of the chief has been gone since yesterday, but Ender didn''t know it.

    So other stores had been receiving the few visits that the chief''s one has on a daily basis, though it seems that after listening to the offers they get, they still end up choosing the one from the chief.

    At least the vast majority, because that guy who is now managing the store seems to be in bad terms with many people.

    "Can you believe that bastard, he offered an eighth part of the market price in exchange for the meat of the desert rat I hunted the other day, he wanted the core for free and only then he was willing to pay three fourths of the public price".

    "Hah, that''s nothing, he said he wanted a go on my girl to pay me full price, I didn''t have anything against him prior to that, but Lisa apparently rejected him a long time ago, so now I can''t ever go to the chief''s store again".

    Two clients wereining out loud about their problems with the new manager of the chief''s store.

    ''Are you kidding me, he actually wanted her for that¡­ and here I am trying to get rid of Sarah, I can''t believe someone is actually trying to willingly bring such a cmity to himself'', thought Daimon.

    The magic world is quite chaotic back at the four gxies, mages and knights have long lifespans, so indulging in pleasure to make by is normal, be it battle, lust, research, power or simple ughter, it''s nothing to fret.

    At least that''s what Aisha has taught Daimon, so he could imagine how corrupted people will get in a ce, where there is a need for a detector of people who eat other people.

    The crazy girl could somehow tell whenever Daimon was thinking badly of her, as the smile of delight on her face suggested.

    Leaving that aside, this time Daimon followed Ender to the main counter, because he wanted to see the merchant that ran this store.

    "Oh, now that''s a rare sight, Mr. Ender paying a visit to other store than the chief''s one, I guess things are that bad now", the one on the counter was a short man who appeared to be in histe forties, unlike some of the people Daimon saw when they entered the town, he looked rather well fed, as one would expect of a merchant.

    Not to mention the guards here were also nine-star mages and there was an early-stage knight observing from the shadows, which of course Daimon detected the moment he entered the store.

    "Well, since things are like this now, I hope merchant Gary offers a fair price, since I have to find a new associate for the things me and my team hunt from now and onwards", said Ender.

    The eyes of the short merchant glowed, the new manager of the chief''s store was put there thanks to personal connections, he honestly sucked at business and was just using the store to get as much benefits as possible.

    "Oh, that sounds interesting, to get a contract with one of the four most prominent hunting teams is one of the rare good news one can hear nowadays, let''s see what you got".

    Ender retrieved the backpack on his back and took out those small bags in which the pieces of the corpses of the magic beasts were stored, and handed them to the merchant.

    The short man looked into the bags for a couple of seconds and he nodded, there were quite a few pieces of edible meat in the bags, as well as bones, scales and other materials from the magic beasts.

    "You got quite the catch this time huh, I''m guessing all your group already took their fair share of meat, which means you sessfully hunted around eight Lord rank magic beasts, amazing", mumbled the old man.

    Ender was surprised for a moment, the merchant urately guessed the number of magic beasts, even when he was only selling meat and materials from four of them, as normally Omar''s team will get half of the loot.

    But he didn''t show it on his face, and instead just nodded as calm as he could.

    "Yeah, we got a lucky encounter thanks to these two friends who are apanying me, so we were able to secure some food before the blood moon week, so how about the price?", said Ender.

    The short man gazed at Daimon and Sarah as if he was scanning them, in fact he did, for a middle-ranked Mage Lord, he had quite a sharp mana sense, unfortunately in front of the bracelet of the god of mischief, he could only see what Daimon wanted him to see anyway.

    "I see, how about a hundred thousand mana crystals, I can double the amount if you are willing to take out the cores of the magic beasts, or I can change them for dry rations of a decent quality".

    Ender doubted for a second before he took out a leather pouch from his ring, Daimon''s attention was drawn at the conversation the moment he heard the words "cores".

    The magic beasts killed were mere Lord ranked ones, unless we are talking about a magic beast with a really strong lineage, there is no way they have a beast core, even peak Arch rank magic beasts rarely have cores and they are of the size of a pea.

    But the things in that pouch which Ender took out of his ring were the size of apples, and those are the sizes of the cores of Ster ranked magic beasts, who had already be rational, regardless of their lineage.

    Strangely enough, there weren''t cores like those ones in the rings which Sarah brought, but that could be because Omar lived day to day in a "luxurious" way and his subordinates were cut the same way.

    ''Now that I think about it, there weren''t any mana crystals in the ring too¡­'', thought Daimon.

    "Here it is, I hope to you keeping to my store in the future", after making sure everything was in order, Gary handed Ender a bag which contained the payment, luckily for Daimon, Ender took one of the mana crystals out to check it.

    It was then when Daimon was momentarily taken back, the moment he saw that mana crystal, his eyes glowed behind his mask.

    ''That is a damn high grade mana crystal, are you telling me he got paid two hundred thousand of those for a few corpses of Lord ranked magic beasts'', he thought.

    Sarah was the same, what are high grade mana crystals, things used to power Ster ranked arrays, and also used by Ster ranked beings to cultivate.

    "Ah, right, I have these other things I want to sell, some equipment and stuff that my subordinates aren''t using, you know they want to stack some cash to go buy rations before the blood moon starts", said Ender as he took out the things Sarah looted from the corpses of Omar''s subordinates.

    One of the reasons as to why Ender chose this particr store, is that Omar and his subordinates never make deals with Gary, so he couldn''t track the things he was trying to sell, to the soon to be announced deceased knights.

    Gary checked the things, they were in a good preserved state so the price was surprisingly high, around three hundred thousand mana crystals, which previously Daimon thought were low grade ones, as that would have been the price of these crappy lord ranked things.

    Daimon had previously told Ender to take the offer as long as it wasn''t too bad, so he epted right away and the deal was over.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Onest thing, these friends are travelers so they will be leaving soon, can you give me the most recent news, a map and some information about the cities that they might find ahead, as well as a threat encyclopedia?", asked Ender.

    "Sure, the map and the news will go for ten thousand mana crystals each, as for the information about the cities, I''ll give it to you for free, I only know around five or so anyway, that being said I''m the one who has travelled more among the merchants thate to this area".

    With Daimon''s greenlight, Ender paid for the things and received a few papers as well as a scroll made with the hide of a magic beast, which was a map.

    After thanking Gary, Ender walked towards the exit followed by Daimon and Sarah, once they were out of the store, Ender turned to see Daimon and then said.

    "I know of an inn where you can stay, the owner is a decent person so you don''t need to worry about that, also if you don''t have food, I''ll rmend you to go and buy some, the blood week is starting anytime soon, and everyone will be quite tense, so it''s better to stay in a room and safe, unless there is an emergency".

    "Here is the money and the things you wanted, if you need something you can find me in the limestone street, I have to go sort out some stuff".

    After saying that, Ender handed Daimon his things and then left along with his subordinates who had followed them in case something happened.

    "Are we staying here, we have to go find Jas", said Sarah, which made Daimon shook his head.

    "This ce is vaster than what we originally thought, look at this", he said as he took out the map which he spied into using his infinity eyes earlier.

    For a map the price was quite high, but there was a reason, this was a map published with the help of many cities that worked together topile maps of their own regions into a single document.

    The moment Sarah opened the map she couldn''t help but click her tongue, they were practically at the border of the "world", in the nearby area there were around twenty cities, and some were literally in the way.

    Daimon couldn''t calcte the distance at which Jasmine was of them, but he could tell that she wasn''t in the vicinity of the nearby twenty settlements at least.

    "If we take detours we will waste too much time, so what''s the n?", she casually asked.

    "We''ll use a little amount of time to save a lot of it, I took a peek at the back of the store and there were carriages being charged, so that guy should be leaving soon, and we''ll use him to go through the cities easily, but first we have to earn some reputation for that to work".

    "Luckily those merits wille to us by themselves, for now let''s get a ce to temporarily stay so we can inspect those mana crystals and the couple of cores I asked Ender to leave for us", said Daimon.

    Sarah nodded, she could tell Daimon wasn''t losing time on purpose, but he believed this was the fastest way to reach Jasmine, so she didn''tin about it, a few hours won''t make a difference on a travel of this scale anyway.

    Also, he said that if Jasmine was in trouble, he would be able to tell, and since there is no bad news, that must mean she is safe at least for now.

    Following the directions Ender left, they walked towards the east side of the city, it''s not like there was a lot of visitors, but not everyone could afford buying or building a house, so there were actually quite a few inns.

    The one rmended by Ender, was a rather average looking one, a four-story building with a pretty simple style, it was quite clean and well maintained, which was rare, but there weren''t too many people around it.

    "What the hell, one hundred crystals a night, are you kidding me!", there was only one person in line ahead of Daimon, but considering the tone of the voice of the guy, he will be leaving in a second.

    And Daimon was right, the man smacked his fist on the counter and then left in anger, just as Daimon was about to ask for two separate rooms, Sarah went ahead of him, Daimon had given her some of the crystals they got earlier because she was the one who looted the corpses, in fact she was the owner of the loot, because all the things they sold were properties of the subordinates, as Omar''s things would be too shy.

    "One room, with a single bed and a private bathroom, please".

    The woman on the counter nodded and then handed her a bronze key, as she epted the payment from Sarah.

    "Let''s go", enthusiastically said the crazy girl, Daimon for a moment considered getting a room for himself, but it''s not like they''ll be spending the night here anyway, so it would be a waste to throw some high-grade mana crystals just to stay a few hours un a room.

    Daimon followed Sarah upstairs, their room was in he third floor which were the ones that had private bathrooms, feeling her gaze on his back he didn''t forget to say.

    "I''ll burn you if you try anything".

    Sarah giggled in response, but she didn''t continue with the matter, this small "rest" wasn''t toze around, they had to read the stuff they got from the merchant, and to wait for what Daimon needed toplete the fake mission to happen.

    They soon arrived at their room and with a little click, Sarah opened the door, which Daimon quickly close behind of him, by the time he did so, the crazy girl was alreadyying down on the bed, giving him a predacious gaze.

    But Daimon ignored her and just dragged a chair that was across the room, to be in front of the bed as he threw a few things at Sarah.

    "We''ll change in half an hour so don''tze around", he said as he started reading the information they bought.

    ¡­

    A few hours passed quite fast and before Daimon noticed, not only the sunlight had gone down a lot, but his time to start moving was approaching.

    "I count fifteen outside and five on the roof", casually said Sarah, making Daimon sigh, if only she was less crazy, she would be a great addition to any team, as she had a wide area of expertise.

    "Let''s go out to make this own a "better" ce", he said, Daimon had thought about why he was required to help this town, which was probably because the hero was the one that set up all this, when he stole Adam''s opportunity, he had to make a greatst-minute entrance, an absurd thing to do in real life, but a requirement for a hero.

    So, he had to do some heroic bullshit to win the rewards, which was a hassle honestly, or that would have been the case if he were to follow the rules of this ce, which wasn''t the case.

    ''The easiest way to deal with shortage of food is quite easy¡­ having less mouths to feed, and that manager guy is quite unrestrained to sent someone to kill us over that small sh back then, it was two birds one stone.

 Chapter 475 Heroic Deeds (Part 2)

    ?

    Daimon got to know some other crucial information a couple of minutes after those guys who were targeting them arrived, night came way early to this ce, that and the moon of this world is dark purple, so the natural illumination at night is really low.

    With his mana sense which was way more developed than the ones of the visitors that were aiming at their necks, Daimon saw that the few people that were on the streets rushed to their homes the moment it got dark, as if they were afraid of something.

    ording to the information Daimon got, the night is usually dark but it gets worse during a certain period of the year, whichsts for around a month, being the worst part thest week of said month.

    And that week started today, still not everyone rushed to hide in their homes, those who had some sort of confidence in their strength or some backing walked in the dark, towards some of the few locals that were still open.

    Though most of the town was covered in darkness, the establishments backed by the merchants as well as the ones from the chief and other strong people had magicmps to illuminate their nearby areas.

    The reason of that is that the temperature dropped like crazy at night, so normal fire would just go off, there was a need for mana to sustain it, and only those who had enough resources could afford to keep other than their own bedrooms warm and illuminated.

    Needless to say, but besides the stores, the other locals that were still open were of course ces to seek pleasure, there were both men and women trying to lure the "strong" people into their establishments.

    There were also some of those confident people that walked through certain alleys, just to be ambushed, silenced and killed, their corpses were then dragged into some shady looking houses, for who knows what purposes.

    ''I guess that''s why Ender said it was better to stay home during this week, the order is already quite fragile normally and this darkness along with fear makes it even worse'', thought Daimon as he observed some random ces of the town with his mana sense.

    He came out of his daze, thanks to the crazy girl who was giggling while her body shivered.

    "Are you perhaps spying into those ces, but there is no need, you can always have m¡­", she couldn''t finish her sentence when Daimon interrupted her with a death serious face.

    "No", listening to such a straight reject, only made Sarah lick her lips while she fought the urges of jumping onto Daimon.

    Daimon sighed, the crazy girl was also skilled enough in using mana sense to practically map the whole town, just like him, what''s more, she was literally following his mana sense, because he wasn''t hiding it from her.

    "It''s dark enough, time to move, I have already marked who to kill with my mana sense¡­ you can see the marks right?", asked Daimon.

    "Hehehe, ever since the treatment I can "feel" every time you use mana sense~", said Sarah, which made Daimon think.

    ''Maybe this is why people say that no good deed goes unpunished''.

    ¡­

    Outside of the inn, the atmosphere haspletely changed from a few minutes ago, even when night fell, besides the temperature dropping, everything was normal.

    But when that dark purple moon appeared, the overall sensation in the air became heavy and the night darkened even more, it was quite an ominous scene.

    If you add to that the fact that there were fifteen people wearing ck clothes surrounding the inn, as well as five on the roof which practically sealed any way of escape, then things looked worse.

    "Boss, should we be really doing this, those two were seen inpany of the captain of Rock Gale, Ender, with the blood moon week falling over us, isn''t a bad idea to fight with another of the four prominent hunting teams?", asked one of the ck clothes figures, to the one that seemed to be leading the attack.

    The one was leading, a tall muscly man with ck clothes and a big heavy sword in his back, which he didn''t bother to hide, snorted in response.

    "Normally fighting with Ender''s group prior to such a thing as the blood moon week would be a stupid thing to do, but that guy''s got other things to worry about right now, you don''t need to know it, but apparently Ismael''s little brother who tagged along Ender to go beast hunting hasn''t returned yet".

    "No way, if something happened to the vice-captain of the Sand Wolf Army, lord Ismael will go mad", eximed another of the ck clothed figures, which made the guy with the big sword nod.

    "Exactly, though Ender is probably not even rted to this, as Omar is an idiot who despises others too much, in Ismael''s eyes, even if Ender had to sacrifice all his subordinates just to bring Omar back, he should have done it, so I won''t be surprised if Rock Gale disappears from Brown Wind Town, after all even if the three captains of the other prominent hunting teams were to join hands at most, we would be able to tie with him".

    "Oh, what a shame, that means he is just a peak Lord rank then, and from such a crappy ce, meaning he is even weaker than middle ranked one", the bored voice of a young man, suddenly took the leader and the other four guys who were on the roof of the inn, by surprise.

    They all felt a sense of crisis in their hearts, but for some reason their bodies weren''t moving, no matter what they tried to do, they were frozen.

    The leader could still move his eyes and so he turned to see the origin of the voice, just to see a silver haired masked young man standing there behind of them.

    ''What the hell, isn''t that our target, what are those bastards doing!'', he inwardly screamed, the real striking force were the five at the roof of the inn, who were all Lord ranks, the strongest of the group that came here.

    The other fifteen went from the seventh to the ninth star rank, but they had strong detection capacities, those were the scouting team of the Desert Vulture hunting team, another of the four prominent groups, which is on equal standing as Ender''s group.

    A second figure suddenly appeared next to the masked young man, in a sh, this time it was a woman with dark green hair and a bored expression.

    "These guys had more things on, I can''t believe mere star ranks from a run-down ce, actually own high grade mana crystals, and you can get them just by killing them, it''s like a cake that falls from the sky, what a shame Jas isn''t here or this would be a perfect thing to do for our honeymoon~".

    "¡­", let alone Daimon, even the guy with the big sword and the other ck clothed figures were speechless at the weird things Sarah was saying, though they were for sure focusing on a different part of what she saidpared to Daimon.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head, it was futile to try and reason with a crazy girl, instead of that he took out Disaster, in this almost lightless night, the ck one edge sword was really hard to even notice, it was as if it was mingling with the lingering darkness, so for the leader with the big sword, the masked man just moved his hand and his four subordinates turned into dry mummies to then crumble apart in ashes.

    Contrary to what most people believe, living beings do not fear death the most, what they fear the most is the unknown, for the vast majority death is an unavoidable thing, it will happen, hat scares them is the fact that they don''t know from where will the arrow, knife, sword, bite, poison, etc. Wille.

    The sensation of not being in control of one''s life, that is the biggest fear that very few can ovee when the time of truthes, take this guy with a big sword for example, having survived since his early years, almost ending in the stomach of some random magic beast, or other human, one would think that four people dying in front of him would be a normal Tuesday.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    But it''s the first time he has seen four early-stage Lord ranks, dying in such a miserable way in a mere second, when even a peak Lord rank magic beast won''t have it so easy, and there it was, the fear to unknown made his heartbeat skyrocket, his blood ran cold and his legs trembled, if he could move maybe he would have copsed on the ground.

    But, since there were thin shadow threads that were invisible, courtesy of this dark night, binding him, even that wasn''t under his control.

    That being said, the poor guy wasn''t all to me for being at edge of a mental breakdown right now, even Daimon felt slightly ufortable when he looked at it¡­ the aura that his body was radiating right now.

    The moment he and Sarah appeared outside of the inn, courtesy of blink, they both suddenly felt as if they could fly, and it wasn''t just figurative, as Sarah who jumped from the fourth floor just to see that she didn''t descend but instead floated, until she wished to stop doing so, proved.

    Daimon and Sarah had already experienced the boosting capacity of the mine of darkness mana crystals, below the castle of the ck Fortress produced, but this was way beyond that.

    Float without using any impulse is something only Arch ranks can do, though Sarah only remained there static on the air, which can''t be considered flying, it is still not something a Lord rank can do, even those with wind affinity will at most slow down their descend as they advance, which would be just gliding.

    And not only that, the crazy girl could feel her battle aura and her vitality boiling, but what she could feel the most, was that horribly terrifying aura that was escaping from Daimon''s body and she was delighted by it.

    ''What the hell, I can''tpletely suppress my Overlord''s Pride, this feels like walking on the street with the zipper down on purpose, it''s just a show off'', thought Daimon as he increased the control over his aura as much as he could, but he ultimately gave up and had to activate the effect of the Hollow Suit to erase his presence, without bing invisible.

    Only then, some color returned to the face of the guy with the big sword, without Daimon noticing, the middle stage Lord rank was being suffocated until a second ago.

    "Rita, how do you feel?", asked Daimon, ignoring the still restrained remaining enemy, Daimon''s shadow rippled before the head of the self-imed head maid of Daimon, emerged from it.

    "It''s amazing, I feel way stronger than normal young ma¡­ Gabriel, like this I would have no problem in suppressing neither of those two idiots!", she said referring to Roger and Fabio.

    Daimon chuckled, it was rare to see the Rita enthusiastic for a change, she even nearly called him "young master", when she has almost fully stopped doing that, as the reward she chose was speaking to him in an informal way.

    "F-Flesh eating demon, impossible we paid to purify the city!", the guy with the big sword raised his voice, naturally with Rita blocking this area with her mana, no one would hear him, this was the standard process she followed whenever she was assisting her young master.

    Listening to the big sword guy, Daimon frowned, undead aren''t the "zombies" that are known back at earth, sure there are some that eat humans among them, like Smiling Ghouls for example, or Skin Tailors, but most of them don''t even had the need to eat, Bone Generals like Horals are a good example, they absorb nutrients from the bones of the dead, but there is no need for them to be human, in fact it''s better for them to belong to magic beasts whose bones are way stronger than those of most races.

    Rita originated from a Bone Sorcerer, though she did have flesh on her body even back when she was a simple artificial undead, she only fed on mana, the mana of the one with whom she had a contract.

    Listening to an inferior piece of trash calling her that, in front of her young master, Rita saw red, though she knows Daimon isn''t human, most human-like races don''t eat each other, and despise those who do.

    That''s one of the breaches that had caused the war among the four gxies, and here this idiot was calling her that, in front of her young master.

    "Aghhhh!", the shadow threads tightened and all the fingers of the big sword guy were suddenly severed at once.

    But then she woke up from her anger when she remembered her young master kept this guy alive for a reason, so she wasn''t meant to attack him.

    "I''m sorry young master, I''m willing to receive any punishment for acting on my own", said Rita as she bowed her head, only to see Daimon shaking his head.

    "It''s fine, return to my shadow for now, you aren''t a reckless person, this ce is affecting you too", he said.

    "Mm", Rita who was inwardly smiling at her young master''s consideration towards her, nodded and then she sank into Daimon''s shadow once again.

    Having taken care of that for now, Daimon turned to see the big sword guy and then smirked behind his mask.

    "Now then, I have a few questions for you", he said.

    The poor man felt his soul abandoning his body, flesh eating demons will never obey a human, however there is an old legend, something that the elderly tells to little children so they behave.

    And that is the rumor that the king of the flesh-eating demons, looks like a human, one you would not only never suspect of being a monster, but actually find appealing to the eye by women and feared by men.

    The most important thing of that old tale, is that the king of the demons has control over all of them, and is able to call them whenever he wishes so, or that would be the case if he wasn''t supposedly sealed into the moon, which turns red during a certain week of the year, due to the king hurting himself by punching the prison in which he is trapped, at the moment where the seal is in its weakest moment.

    ''What the hell did I get myself involved into!'', inwardly screamed the man, as he regretted and cursed the manager of the store from the bottom of his heart, from having offered him a nice reward if he killed the man and brought the woman to him.

    "For starters, tell me where is that idiot from the store and also where is the base of the group to which that guy Omar belonged, ah, your base as well as the ones of anyone who is benefiting from the chaotic situation, I don''t think I have to remind you, but if you lie, death will be the least of your problems", casually said Daimon as he slightly pierced the tip of Disaster on the arm of the big sword guy.

    The man saw his arm paling and his flesh crumbling apart, and he nearly peed himself.

    "I''ll talk, I''ll talk!!!", he shouted.

    Daimon nodded and then he retrieved Disaster and then let go of it, surprisingly the sword kept floating there, next to him, which only made the fear that the poor man was feeling, increase once again.

    Of course, Daimon wouldn''t be ying like this if he didn''t have a decent motive, normally he would have given a beating to the guy as he interrogated him, to elerate the process, but he wanted to see if his Terror Contracts worked here, which didn''t seem to be the case.

    ''Tsk, I guess it is to be expected from a ce which was set up by another system user, whatever, we''ll do it the old way'', thought Daimon, as he listened to the answer of the big sword guy.

 Chapter 476 Heroic Deeds (Part 3)

    ?

    After making a few questions to the big sword guy, who turned out to be called Aguil a middle stage Knight Lord of this ce, Daimon honestly felt¡­ disgusted.

    "I expected that this wild environment would make a lot of scum to bloom, but to think practically the whole upper echelon, besides the chief who is only a leader in name nowadays, is involved", he mumbled.

    "Well, we can just kill them all", casually said the crazy girl making Daimon raise an eyebrow at her.

    "If you do that, who will hunt food for¡­", Daimon, stopped midway, originally, he was simply going to kill all the scum, but turned out that a lot of those scum was needed for the town to survive.

    Only sheltered idiots would divide things in "good" or "evil", the real world is full of grey tones, this is something ine who was in charge of educating Daimon in the duties of a leader made sure to put a lot of emphasis into.

    Let''s say that you find a small settlement inside a dangerous area, they have a harsh life, and have to pay tribute to the strong group who rules with iron hand, then one day you just appear and in a heroic moment get rid of the group who is always pressuring the small settlement.

    Now they are free and they all celebrate, to then find out the next day that those who ruled over them, hunted the strong magic beasts that lingered all over the ce, the people of the small settlement are then attacked by the magic beasts and they all die.

    Sometimes both parts are mutually dependent, remove one and the other will follow soon, that is in part the origin of the saying that "There are no eternal enemies, just eternal benefits".

    Of course, that doesn''t apply to all the situations, because once again the world isn''t as simple.

    "The chief''s store, the town''s granary and storehouse, Tom and Ric merchant stores as well as Wild Night brothel, we''ll pay a visit to those, but first the HQ''s of the Sand Wolf army and the Desert Vulture", said Daimon.

    Sarah nodded, ording to the information that Aguil proportioned, those ces were where the worst scum was gathering as of current, if Daimon were to be strict the list would be thricerger, but the others hadmitted "minor" thingspared to those, at the very least they still preserved some decency.

    Alguir could tell what was about to happen, and he rushed to beg for mercy.

    "W-Wait, esteemed Lord, I-I was tricked intoing here by that bastard, if you spare my life, I will give you all my possessions, it seems that the youngdy likes to collect mana crystals, I have a million of them in store, I will be the most loyal dog I swear!".

    Unfortunately, his fate was sealed the moment he agreed toe here, there are four hunting teams in this town, the idiot from the store clearly didn''t have good intentions for Sarah, nor Daimon.

    While he would have been killed and probably turned into food for others, Sarah''s destiny would have been even more miserable, and this guy was "selected" to take such a task, instead of either Ender or the other big hunting team.

    The Sand Wolf army didn''t count, since sparing them wasn''t an option to begin with, anyway the previous demonstrated that Aguil''s group has done simr things in the past, which is why they will all be disappearing tonight.

    "Sorry, I don''t need trash and with your death all your possessions will be mine anyway", casually said Daimon as he grabbed Disaster.

    "I-If you kill me, you will never be able to open the magic array in my treasure room, it will self-destroy thirty minutes after my death, unless you use a secret password¡­", before Alguil could finish the tip of Disaster pierced his head killing him on the spot, his mana and vitality was then drained and he turned into a mummy before his body crumbled into ashes.

    ''Sorry Narasha, it seems it''s going to be hard to find some weapons worth breaking'', inwardly said Daimon.

    ''Mm, no problem, leave those array things to me Daimon, it''s also fun to destroy them!'', enthusiastically answered Narasha, which made Daimon softly smile.

    The moment Alguil mentioned the words "magic array", Daimon lost any interest in keeping him alive, Disaster could easily erase the arrays made by the Skelefiends in the underwater tunnel back when they were making their way out to the surface during the magic beast hunt event.

    In fact, unlike any other magic weapon, Disaster had no runes, it killed the one who turned the original metal into a sword, its ability which is devouring and assimting, was innate, so not only there is no need for runes but there is no way to engrave them into the sword, as they will be erased anyway.

    In a sense, Narasha obtaining a grimoire was the only way besides devouring in which Disaster could grow, because the skills that came with it didn''t depend on arrays like other magic weapons, from the very beginning the ck sword has been a one-of-a-kind existence.

    "Well, let''s pay a visit to our friend in the chief''s store, maybe we can get some answers as to why mana crystals here seem to be less valuable than beast cores, despite being high purity ones, in the storage of the store", said Daimon with a smirk on his face.

    "Mm, but let me kill him, I specifically said that I was already taken, what if this makes my destined one jealous, so I''ll clear any doubts by ripping his head off his shoulders with my own hands~", as always, Sarah amazed Daimon with the crazy things she said.

    Especially because she was intensely gazing at him, when she said "destined one", which sent a shiver down Daimon''s back.

    Against any rational thinking, Daimon told the crazy girl to hold onto his shoulder, and then they both disappeared, twenty people came here to get rid of two, and all ended up bing less than corpses as there was nothing remaining of them.

    Five of them were turned into ashes by Disaster while the ones Sarah took out melted into puddles of ck liquid, armor, equipment and clothes included, only their spatial treasures were saved, and turned into loot for the crazy girl.

    ¡­

    At the northwest area of the town, there was a mansion that outstood,pared to the rest of the town''s buildings which were made to be durable without any decorations or things like that, this mansion was quite well made.

    Having enough quality to belong to a middle ranked noble from the Clear Water kingdom, in Daimon''s judgement, not only that but the whole area around the mansion was fully illuminated, there were guards stationed at the entrance, it clearly didn''t go along with the rest of the town.

    And the reason to that, is that this was the headquarters of the strongest hunting team in Brown Wind town, the headquarter of the Sand Wolf army.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    Right now, in therge front yard of said mansion there was a tense situation ongoing, Ender as well as his five vice-captains, were surrounded by around thirty people, not all the times numbers give and advantage over an enemy.

    The problem is that all the thirty people were early-stage Lord ranks, each one of the other three hunting teams has at most ten Lord ranks besides the captains, but the Sand Wolf army has more than forty of them, or that used to be case until earlier today, since Sarah killed all of Omar''s subordinates.

    They also were the only ones that had a vice-captain on the middle stage of the Lord rank, until Omar died of course.

    "What is the meaning of this, Ismael, I came here as a guest by your invitation", coldly said Ender, his whole body was tense and ready, he had to, because of the bulky tanned man who was sitting on an ostentatious metal chair, in front of him, without any worries on the world.

    "And you will be guest, both of you will stay here until the sun raises, if my brother doesn''t return by that, then both of you will be killed along with your whole squads and their families", said Ismael with a murderous voice.

    Ender gritted his teeth as he turned to see the other group that was trapped in the encirclement, just his, it was conformed by a middle stage Lord rank and five early-stage ones, that was the core of the remaining team Fire Dune, and their leader was a woman who appeared to be in herte thirties, with some slight scars on her arms and dark skin, somethingmon for those who spend time out in the wastnd.

    "Why is it our fault that your bastard of a brother went out and didn''t return, he wasn''t supposed to go out today as hecked experience, and he separated from Ender''s group on his own, if you wanted him to live them why didn''t you chain him or something", said the woman.

    Ismael body trembled due to anger, but he didn''t lose his cool and instead snorted.

    "T, I believe I told you that whenever my brother left you had to look out for him, as something happening to him will mean your death, both of you were out hunting, I don''t believe you have the balls to kill him, but maybe you saw him and didn''t bother in bringing him back, so if he is gone, you''ll pay with your lives, it is as simple as that, but in your case I might have some use for you".

    Ender gave the woman an apologetic gaze, they were old friends who have cooperated many times before, and today it was their turn to go out hunting, T''s team left to a far area from the town, while Ender was patrolling the nearby area, when the pack of magic beasts appeared, he went out to distract and hunt and Omar tagged along, even when it wasn''t the turn for the Sand Wolf army.

    "Sorry Til, it seems I ended up dragging you into this mess", said Ender as he sighed, he knew that Omar wont'' be returning, so that meant they will die here.

    "Nah, don''t say that, that bastard has been eyeing us from the very beginning, that coward of Aguil doesn''t have the balls to stand up for himself, unlike us, so he just wants to eliminate us, and that idiot''s disappearance is his excuse, he might have even told Omar to follow you just for this", said T, which made Ismael sinisterlyughed before saying.

    "As expected of the only woman who has survived enough to be a middle stage Lord rank, in this town, in a really long time, you have some wit, what a shame you didn''t ept my offer, but I''ll still have some fun with youter".

    T spat on the ground, certainly it was harder for the women in this town to be stronger, not because they were weaker in any sense, but because simple numbers, there was more than three times the number of men than women here, so more men survived till the age of five which was when it became possible for them to be mages or knights.

    Add to that the fact that there were always more men than women here, those without any backing were only pray for the strong, the vast majority ended in the brothels, or worse, not like it didn''t happen to men too, but with bigger numbers the possibility of a lucky bastard reaching the Lord rank increases, and so does the chance for a middle stage too.

    As for T, her mother was lucky enough to be an early-stage Lord rank, and she survived enough to allow her daughter to grow to rece her, and left her a hunting team with some decently strong people, out of her five vice-captains, three were girls and two were men.

    You might ask why aren''t Ender and T joining hands to fight their way out, the answer is simple, even if they do, Ismael as a peak Lord stage Knight, can take them at the same time without any problems, and their ten subordinates will just be outnumbered in a 3v1 situation.

    The only constion they had, is that they already ordered their remaining five Lord rank subordinates, to take their families and the other members of their hunting groups and escape the town if they don''t return in a couple of hours.

    So, they weren''t trying anything, to give them time to escape as well, unfortunately Ismael might look like a musclehead and he is, but he has a brain on his side too.

    "Ah right, in case you rats try to run, let me tell you that Tom and Ric''s guards as well Jeremy''s ones were hired to surround your headquarters and houses, they will kill anyone who tries to leave", casually said Ismael as he nodded at a man with short brown hair and sses, that was standing behind of him.

    Ender gritted his teeth, as he regretted not having asked for a way to contact Daimon.

    ''With those two''s help we could have had a chance against Ismael, damn it'', he thought.

    But then he came out of his daze when the atmosphere suddenly became heavy, the air started trembling in the while area of the front yard, and all the early-stage Lord ranks on both sides felt as if they werecking oxygen as they copsed on the ground.

    Ismael''s pupils contracted like needles, as he felt a chill coursing through his body, he was sitting and he had to use his battle aura to move and look at the origin of this horrifying pressure.

    "Sorry, this is the slightest amount of aura I can use now", Ender recognized the voice, for a change he actually felt d to hear and see the silver haired masked man he met only today.

    But the happiness didn''tst at all, when the green haired woman that was apanying him, casually said.

    "Hey look, that guy looks like the idiot you killed in the wastnd, so that should be their captain, lucky we don''t have to look for him somewhere else".

    "¡­".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the whole area, before Ismael literally exploded in red mes, which were more urately his battle aura.

    "So, it was you huh, well, well, well, I can''t believe two high quality women had decided toe to me in a single day, must be Omar helping me ovee his death from the afterlife", said Ismael as he summoned his weapon arge Warhammer and a tower shield.

    Which were surprisingly Arch ranked equipment, and not only that, but they were different than the ones Daimon is used to see, because these ones had spherical spaces on them, where there was a core simr to the ones Daimon saw Ender selling, with the difference that those looked bigger.

 Chapter 477 Heroic Deeds (Part 4)

    ?

    Seeing those strangepartments on Ismael''s equipment, something clicked in Daimon''s brain and a strange supposition appeared in his mind.

    "What the hell are you all doing, use the ignition of your amors at once!", shouted Ismael, waking not only Daimon out of his daze, but also his thirty subordinates, who were having troubles to even breath as they were copsed on the ground.

    "No, kill them before they can move!", Ender wasn''t a captain for nothing, he shouted at T and the two of them exploded in mana and battle aura respectively as they became shes of light that dashed towards Ismael''s subordinates.

    Ender used his spear to pierce the heads of Ismael''s subordinates, while T who was wearing metal gauntlets punched them into mincemeat, unfortunately even though they weren''t immobilized by Daimon''s aura, they were still slower than under normal circumstances.

    So, they moved a second toote and just managed to kill ten of Ismael''s subordinates, before the armors of the remaining twenty, lit up, red lines of light covered the armors, with the beast core which was embedded into their chest tes as its center.

    Then they all actually managed to regain their mobility, jumping backwards to gather behind Ismael.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, those armors weren''t only countering a portion of his Overlord''s Pride''s aura, but also boosting the battle prowess of the ones wearing them.

    Daimon noticed that the moment those armors activated, the mana flow in those guys bodies elerated, their blood also started circting faster and their flesh was infused with vitality.

    The boost wasn''t able to push their realms, but they became stronger overall, it was something that Daimon hadn''t seen nor heard off whether it be in the four gxies or in Neptune.

    In what magic weapons regards, there are none that directly increase their owner''s powers in such a way, even Disaster can''t do that, though Narasha can give some of the energy that the sword devours to Daimon if the need arises, it''s more of a recovery measure than an empowering one.

    On the other hand, there is arge list of alchemic products such as potions or pills that can temporarily boost one''s realm, but not only they are quite expensive, but they all have downsides, going from temporal weakening to permanent damage or even death.

    That''s why those whose innate abilities allow them to increase their realms, are considered geniuses, because they can do something simr without having to worry about the previous, as long as their lineage is pure enough to not have a side effect of course.

    "Crap, sorry Gabriel we were one step toote", Ender walked towards Daimon and apologized as he stopped next to him, followed by T who then said.

    "Your battle aura is amazing, I have seen some control types be able to intimidate, but to actually suppress others directly like that, I guess there is always a higher mountain".

    The tanned skinned woman was amazed, because she is a knight too, and even now she had to put some effort into not be suppressed by Daimon''s aura, at the same time she confused Overlord''s Pride as Daimon''s battle aura.

    She thought Daimon''s life spark was control type, and focused in intimidation, in part because there was no visible explosion of energy, but the overall atmosphere was affected by it, making it simr to a mental attack to break the spirit of the opponent.

    Not that she could be fully med, since that passive was obtained when Daimon killed the manticore who was the absolute ruler of its territory, it effect derived from the fear that a strong being''s presence struck into a weaker one, of course it was modified to fit Daimon''s wishes, and it was now being enhanced by the atmosphere of this ce for some reason.

    Still, Daimon didn''t bother in clearing the misunderstand, even he didn''t know what was the ssification or even the name of his life spark, but it for sure wasn''t control type, considering Demon Light, something fully focused on offensive is his battle aura.

    Daimon was now interested in the magic technology of this ce, which seems to have taken apletely different route than the one he knows off, but that could wait forter, right now he turned to see Ender before saying.

    "You take care of his subordinates, leave the brother of the idiot to me".

    Ender doubted for a second but he still said what was in his mind.

    "It would be better if three of us join our hands to take Ismael out first, I will support from the rear and also defend our subordinates", he said so, despite being well aware that the one taking thatst role will probably end up in a miserable state.

    It didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that Ender wasn''t wearing an armor with a beast core embedded into it, the woman called T on the other hand was, but unlike the equipment Ismael had, hers used a Lord rank core instead of an Arch ranked one.

    If he was alone Ender will be easily be able to bombard the twenty Knight Lords to oblivion, but he will have to protect his subordinates who were unable to move, and defending is harder than attacking in this particr situation.

    Daimon didn''t want to lose time, he just turned to see the crazy girl and said.

    "Don''t let them die".

    "I expect a rewardter", mumbled Sarah which made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch.

    "I should have left Disaster cut you earlier", he said as he started walking towards Ismael, while Sarah licked her lips.

    "That would have worked~", she said as she took out her dark green one-edged sword, only to notice the thing had started to show signs of corrosion, as it was just a spare weapon, instead of her custom made one.

    "Ah, lucky I''ll get a bunch of high purity mana crystals, or mom would have scolded me for this", she mumbled, before a wild smile appeared on her face.

    "Aghhh", one of the twenty knights suddenly screamed, he tried to remove his armor in a hurry but before he could so, his flesh melted and his body crumbled apart into a pile of corroded meat and blood which ended turning into a ck puddle on the ground.

    "Oh, so those armors increase their vitality, normally the melting process isn''t visible", said Sarah with her usual yful voice, which sent shivers down the spine of not only the enemies but Ender and T too.

    "I¡­ couldn''t see what she did", mumbled Ender, T on the other hand did manage to see a very faint blink,ing out of Sarah''s hand the moment she took out her sword, but she then lost it from sight.

    What happened is that Sarah used one of those nails which she had covered in her dark poison battle aura, she has been trained in both frontal and assassin fighting styles by her mother after all.

    Even if these guys didn''t seem to pose a threat for her, the crazy girl can be many things but careless isn''t one of them, those armors were something she has never seen and so she of course did a little test before deciding what was the best way to taken on these enemies.

    "You can focus on defending those guys, leave the killing to me~" said Sarah, without waiting for Ender and T to answer, she became a ck sh and disappeared from the eyes of all the presents.

    ¡­

    While Sarah was having her fun, Ismael who previously wasn''t worried as he had these pair of weapons, which he was sure only one person in the whole town could match up to, now had a death serious expression.

    Even with his best equipment in hand, his body tensed up and his instincts made him know that the masked silver haired young man that wasing towards him, was incredibly dangerous.

    That''s why he followed Daimon to a separated part of the front yard that will act as their own battlefield, because he was sure that the side effects of his battle will be enough to kill others.

    The moment they reached the other side of the front yard, Daimon casually radiated white mes, and then a horrified scream came from the area a meter behind of him.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Aghhhh!", the "empty" space from which the scream came, blurred and then a ssed guy with short hair became visible, just to then be consumed by white mes and turn into ashes that were scattered by the wind a secondter, naturally his ring was absorbed within Daimon''s shadow by a certain girl who was watching the fight ready to assist her young master.

    The one who died was the strategist of the Sand Wolf Army and the only mage in the group, also an illusion spell user, the guy casted an illusion on himself the moment Daimon and Sarah appeared and waited for an opportunity.

    Not only that but the guy was sneaky enough to have hidden his realm with a simr treasure that used a beast core, like the ones Ismael were using, the treasure was just a Lord ranked one though, and it was burned along with the ssed guy''s body.

    The core on the other hand, broke even before Daimon attacked, for some reason, in any case Daimon had better treasures to study, the ones in Ismael''s hands to be precise.

    "Burt", Ismael gritted his teeth, seeing one of his trump cards dying just like that, he saved the ssed guy''s life when he was younger and helped him increase his realm, because he was skilled in illusion spells, which at first weren''t usable for hunting, making Burt suffer hunger, as magic beasts were less susceptible to them.

    But his talents were perfect to deal with other humans, unfortunately for him, using illusions in front of Daimon was just asking to be bullied, as he waspletely immune to them, even Yvonne who is the best illusion user of the young generation, Daimon has met, being able to make her enemies kill themselves with her nightmares, couldn''t trick Daimon''s mind.

    The only one whose mental "attacks" had worked on Daimon is Erin, and it was just because first, she is a Soulmate so she will never harm him, and second, it was an ability focused not offensive but on¡­ charming the target.

    Anyway, Ismael eyes saw red, not because he really cared about Burt, heck he didn''t personally care that Omar was killed, it was more of a matter of pride, he the strongest hunter here was insulted when his brother was killed, and now the subordinate he invested so much resources into was burned to death just like that, he was livid.

    "You bastard, I was going to have some fun with that green haired woman after killing you, but I have changed my mind, I will break all your limbs and make you watch as I y her to death!", he shouted as his battle aura exploded out of his body.

    Since he saw Daimon using mes, which he noticed were his battle aura, he used his so that he won''t be burned like Burt.

    "That''s so¡­me, I wonder if the hero made it so such third rate viins would bloom as part of the test", mumbled Daimon as he took out a random Arch ranked sword from his storage ring, using Disaster would go against the objective of snatching those magic weapons from Ismael, as they would end up being destroyed pretty easily on top of that, what a joke, he destroyed half Ster ranked weapons back at the three-art tournament, these low grade Arch rank things would snap like twigs with a single sh.

    Of course, Daimon was only taking things easy because this was a controlled situation, there was nothing that could be a threat to him in this town, even then he didn''t lower his guard.

    With a little tap of his feet, the ground below Daimon exploded as he shed towards Ismael.

    "Booom!", pieces of dirt as well as dust was raised just by Daimon using his physical strength to move, this was pure brute force without using any martial art.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding as well as sparks flying all over the ce was the result from the first sh.

    ¡¤?¦Èm Ismael blocked Daimon''s sh with his tower shield, just to feel as if a mountain had shed against him, not only he was sent backwards a dozen of meters leaving a trail on the ground, his hands were shaking and that wasn''t all, he saw that there was a five centimeter''s deep scar into the front side of the shield.

    "No fucking way, even without using the beast ability, the materials of this shield are Arch ranked ones, you are just an early-stage Lord rank, your hands should have been destroyed by the recoil!", shouted Ismael.

    But Daimon didn''t bother to answer, his body was strong enough to endure the recoil of shing Disaster around, that is an object of more than thirty tons at its lightest state, plus his own strength added to that, and with the gloves Thea gave her, it was much easier now, he could let loose and just push as hard as he wanted without any worries now.

    Which resulted in him destroying the first of the threeyers of the tower shield with a single sh.

    "Damn it all, who the hell are you!", Ismael shouted, his battle aura exploded out of his body, this time he rushed towards Daimon, for someone using heavy armor and heavy weapons, he actually moved decently fast.

    Unfortunately for Daimon, he was slow as hell, he simply shed at his left and his sword shed against Ismael''s tower shield once again.

    This time there was a difference though, he still felt his sword diving into the shield, but the depths it reached were around half of the previous one, the reason is that the core embedded on the shield lit up and dark gray lines appeared on it, which made some kind of metal scales to cover its surface.

    With his sword "trapped" into the shield, Ismael''s eyes which were bloodshot glowed with a vicious light, as he swinged his Warhammer which was covered in his red fire battle aura, towards Daimon''s chest.

    Though his battle prowess was trash, it''s not like Ismael wasn''t experienced, the shield was prepared to trap the weapon of the opponent, so that he couldnd this attack, even if the enemy dodged it will lose its weapon, which is a grave mistake in a fight.

    Unfortunately for him, this tactic only worked on enemies whose either focus on agility and have low explosive power, or have explosive power but have low agility and Daimon has plenty of both.

    Daimon''s image shed making Ismael felt horrified as hepletely disappeared from his field of detection for a split of a second, which is normal considering he used blink and not a movement spell.

    Ismael tried to turn around as he felt a huge sensation of crisis, but he was too slow, before he could take impulse to swing his Warhammer, a white me de pierced his back and came out of his chest from the front.

    That wasn''t all, a stream of white mes was shot from the sword, burning a thirty-meter-deep crater in front of Ismael.

    ''Oh, so I can use Comet Sword like this too, and make the power contained within it be released with each attack until it drains all its power'', thought Daimon.

    If he used Comet Sword like normal, a burnt crater of a couple of hundreds of meters would have appeared in front of him, but that would have reduced a part of the town to ashes, so he used the white me sword to pierce Ismael''s armor from the back and directly attack his body, instead of releasing all the energy of the sword at once.

    "Aghhhh!!!", Ismael actually didn''t die with that, he tried to use his own fire battle aura to fight back against the white mes that were burning his chest, and to sent Daimon flyinf away with the impact.

    But his mes were immediately consumed by the white mes, and turned into fuel to produce more white mes, also Daimon easily withstood the shockwave, so Ismael''sst try didn''t achieve anything and he died the next second due to the explosion of white mes he provoked himself.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and the white mes returned to his body, though he couldn''t recover all the Demon Light he used to create the Comet Sword, around 60% of it was absorbed back into his body.

    Daimon casually kept Ismael''s weapons and his storage ring in the inventory and then turned to see how things were going on the other battlefield, just to see Sarah casually strolling around, humming in and filled with melted corpses, every time she saw something that either caught her attention or survived her poison, she cleaned it with her dark poison battle aura and pocketed it.

    All this while Ender and T looked at her with terrified expressions, as they stayed as far as possible from her, while protecting their subordinates, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "Ender, we''ll go kill the ones that are surrounding the rest of your subordinates, and then we''ll sweep through the town to eliminate the scum in this list", said Daimon as he returned to their side, and gave Ender a paper with the list of targets he selected based on the information he had gotten, which should be the irremediable scum of the town.

    T who now wanted some exnations from Ender, about what was happening here, couldn''t help but ask.

    "Who are you two?".

    "Mmm, random people doing some heroic deeds I guess", casually said Daimon.

    ''Heroic deeds¡­'', both Ender and T saw thend of death that was surrounding them, and they both bitterly smiled, but still they didn''t refuse, because the ces on the list were indeed the worst of the worst, what worried them was, why were these extremely dangerous people helping clean the town.

 Chapter 478 The Results Of The Test (Part 1)

    ?

    Though at this point Ender knew it was toote to do anything about it, the more he interacted with Daimon, the more he doubted if it was correct from him to bring them here.

    ''Well, considering their killing methods don''t even leave a corpse behind, I highly doubt they are human hunters sent by the flesh eating demons¡­ though looting seems to be quite of their liking''.

    In this ce, the loser often ended up turning into food for the winner, not in a figurative but in a literal meaning, there are even some who sold the corpses of their enemies to certain people, who were said to work with or for flesh eating demons.

    For a change, something that the crazy girl did, ended up giving Ender a better impression of Daimon, because killing with poison is a way to make 100% sure that the corpse won''t be edible, either for other humans or flesh eating demons.

    As for Daimon, well, the fact that there was nothing left of Ismael, who would have been a "delicacy", for those who ate human meat, spoke by itself, at the very least they weren''t a threat in that sense.

    On the other hand, seeing Sarah happily loot from those horribly damaged corpses, without any care in the world, made both Ender and T wary, even in a world where people eat each other, the vast majority won''t be able to hand death in such a carefree way, not to mention she looked too young, it was simply abnormal.

    The only thing that Ender could think of, was that Daimon and Sarah were born in a ce with a much worse life quality for humans, than the towns that surrounded the wastnd, and there was only one ce that fitted that description in his mind.

    ''Human farm¡­ could it be that they managed to escape from that hell of a ce'', he wondered.

    Unaware of the fact that he chose someone that by no means can be considered normal, even for Nethereal standards, Ender helped his subordinates get up, only to suddenly feel his body much lighter as Daimon finally managed to restrain his aura like before.

    Not only it was hard for him to suppress his Overlord''s Pride here, but it was harder to retrieve it once he let it out, and this was the smallest amount he could use, he couldn''t even imagine what will happen if he let it rampage.

    "I can move again, boss I told you we needed to hunt more to buy those Ignition Armors like those guys", said one of Ender''s subordinates, making Ender chuckle.

    "Forget about it, you all know the kind of things he had to do to get enough money to buy that equipment from the ck market", said Ernest as he shook his head.

    "Speaking of that, did you retrieve the armors of those guys?", asked Daimon to Sarah, only to see the crazy girl shrugging.

    "Nah, they tried to force more strength out of them in a try to not be dissolved by my battle aura, but the cores were destroyed and along with that, their armors self-destroyed, and here I was restraining myself to let those things unscathed", she said.

    Daimon didn''t me her, this was a run-down town, and Ismael was a piece trash, even if he had obtained the natural increase in physical strength that a peak Knight Lord would get, he couldn''t make the most out of it.

    In a rough calction, Ismael was around the level of an average middle stage Lord rank, the only moment in which he reached the battle prowess of a peak Lord rank, was when he used those two Arch rank magic treasures.

    So, it''s only normal that these treasures he had weren''t of a rtively good quality, that being said, the things sold in the stores didn''t have cores embedded into them, nor they had apartment for that.

    Which probably means they aren''t that easy to obtain, at least not in this area, as even that short merchant who is the one that supposedly has travelled to more towns than anyone here, didn''t have that type of equipment for sale.

    "Leave them behind to secure this ce, only you two and us will be doing", said Daimon to Ender and T.

    If their subordinates came, they will only end up powerless when he used Overlord''s Pride, so there was no reason for them to tag along, also a big number of people moving in group will be easier to notice than just four of them and with Ismael being such a cliche third rate viin, Daimon wanted to avoid a certain situation from happening.

    Ender nodded, that ability Daimon had to suppress enemies would be more useful in this situation than arge group.

    "Okay, you all stay here, there should be some star rank members of the Sand Wolf army left in the mansion, go and capture them, Gilles you know what to do", he said.

    As the strongest hunting team of the town, Ismael could afford to use star rank mages or knights as servants, so the mansion still needed to be secured, as for Gilles he was Ender''s most trusted subordinate, his right hand.

    Seeing Daimon walking towards the exit of the mansion, Ender waited until there was some distance before saying in a low voice.

    "Be sure to not let anyone take anything, he killed Ismael easily an that woman is terrifying¡­ there is a chance they are survivors from a human farm, those guys are even scarier than the flesh eating demons themselves, I don''t want to die because of some idiot''s greed, understood?".

    "O-Okay boss, I''ll beat anyone who tries to y some tricks to a pulp", answered Gilles, a human farm is hell on thend of the living, the horrors that can be found in there can make even veterans have nightmares, and those who survive in that kind of environment are monsters among monsters, it is said that the founder of the strongest city ruled by humans, a long time ago, was such a person, someone that walked out of hell with its own feet.

    Ender nodded and after listening to T give the exact same warning to her subordinates, they both walked towards the entrance, unaware of the fact that Daimon''s sharp ears heard that conversation.

    ''Human farms huh¡­ was this ce really set up by the hero, or was it just visited by him, but if that was the case, then why would he not solve these problems?'', he wondered.

    As far as he understood, the missions assigned to a system user were adapted to the type of system they owned, hero type had to do "good" things or some shy feats, while those like Marcus had to act in the shadows and cause chaos, if the hero came to this ce before, then his mission would have for sure involved solving these situations or at least helping some.

    ''Wait, could it be that he failed and that''s why this ce was chosen by him to leave his inheritance'', thought Daimon, his eyes glowed behind his mask, if that was the case then this ce was for sure not simple as it seems.

    Surprisingly a mission hasn''t been triggered yet, but that could be because this ce is already part of a mission, that or he hasn''t met the requirements needed, ultimately Daimon shrugged, he just needed to get someone that knew how to move around to save time and advance in the shortest time possible, so that he can get to where Jasmine is, everything coulde after that.

    "Don''t be left behind", said Daimon as he shed, disappearing from where he was, Sarah slightly bent her knees and then jumped, her figure mingled in the darkness that covered most of the town as she followed Daimon, who was purposedly letting her as well as Ender and Sarah feel his presence.

    Those two stared at each other and then used their own movement spells and martial arts to follow.

    ¡­

    At the east side of Brown Wind town, there was a rtively betterplex of buildings which had a better construction than others, the best being a light brown and green three-story building, which was the headquarters of Ender''s hunting group, the nearby buildings were also better than average.

    Which normally brought peace to the area as a whole, but right now that wasn''t the case, T had taken preventive measures prior to going to Ismael''s mansion, her remaining subordinates as well as all the families that depended on her Fire Dune hunting team, took refuge in Ender''s headquarters, so that they could flee as a whole and have bigger chances of survival, in case Ismael sent his subordinates to attack them.

    Unfortunately, they didn''t expect that arrogant muscle head to actually shell out a small fortune, to hire the guards of one of two out of the top three stores and the guy who managed the best brothel at the same time.

    So their group of ten early stage Lord ranks and a bunch of star ranks, paled inparison with the around fifty or so early stage Lord ranks, even if they were more experienced, they were simply outnumbered not to mention they had to protect others, and there were even a couple of middle stage Lord ranks among the enemies, since the captains of the hired guards, were the ones that took the task representing their masters.<novelsnext></novelsnext>

    "Captain, can''t we break in at once and ughter them, this is the first night of the damn blood moon week, we should be in the quarters having some fun with those bitches",ined one of the guards.

    "We were paid a lot just to stand here and don''t let those guys run, it''s more profitable if we don''t have to fight at all", answered the captain, a tall guy with a patch on his left eye.

    "Yo, Jake, it seems that your subordinates want some fun, why don''t ya''ll pay a visit to Wild Night, I''ll give you a discount if you give us have all the women in the building, once we break in, you don''t have to worry about their food this way and you get to y with the trained and well-maintained "goods" instead of those malnourished women", said anky man as he yed with a knife.

    "Add a third part of the profit you''ll get of butchering them and we have a deal, no bargaining, that is my master''s offer, otherwise forget about it, Smith", said the patch-eyed Jake to thenky man Smith.

    "Heh, so you were waiting for this from the very beginning, make it a fourth part and it''s a deal, we still have to pay some fees to n and Hal to keep them silent, but don''t worry, everyone wants to get as much rations as possible for the blood week, so even low-quality products sell like hot bread, not to mention we have some special "orders" kekeke", said Smith as he coldlyughed.

    Jake found thenky man disgusting, but more money was always weed and they didn''t have to do anything, but leave those degenerates do their job and the merchants for who he work, will get a nice profit, which means more resources for him, so he put his personal opinion of Smith aside.

    "Mm?", Jake suddenly felt an insane bloodlusting from above, he looked upwards just to see Ender who had a murderous expression, he heard the previous conversation, his aunt and cousin as well as some other rtives of his were in the headquarters.

    If he would have fell against Ismael earlier, they would have met such a horrible end, so he of course was furious, and Daimon now knew why Wild Night was considered the worst of the worst.

    Not only the people working in the brothel of course had miserable lives, but even in their death their corpses were butchered, that included both men and women, but for some reason this time they were specifically targeting women.

    He didn''t care about the problems of others to be honest, but he was interested in the "orders" mentioned by thenky man, it is also true that he despised those who trashed the powerless just for fun, since he was once in such a situation in his previous life.

    As for the guys mentioned by him, n and Hal, they were already on the list, Hal was the current manager of the chief''s store, and n was the one in charge of the granary and the storage of the town, and also the only other peak Lord rank that lived here, though that will change soon.

    "Kill everyone but that one", said Daimon, which made Ender grit his teeth, but he didn''t dare to disobey, his aim changed from Smith''s neck to his chest as he pushed his spear towards it.

    "ng!", in thest second, Smith managed to react and block the spear with his knife, but the tip still slightly pierced his leather armor getting some blood out of him.

    "Shit, that idiot didn''t say he will let these guys go if his brother returned!", shouted Smith, in his mind the only way for Ismael to let Ender and T leave is that his brother returned safe and sound.

    It didn''t even ur to him that they would have killed him to then appear here, at least that was the case until he heard miserable screamsing from the group conformed by his and Jake''s subordinates.

    "Aghhhh no, help!", Smith''s eyes widened a bit when he saw some guys melting into mountains of corrupted meat before ending as ck puddles, one after each other the same scene repeated and no one knew why, so of course chaos unleashed on the group.

    "Don''t break the formation you bastards, regroup and¡­", Jake was actually used to lead others in battle, and Daimon noticed that, which is why a ck sword was piercing his head from side to side right now.

    Under the terrified eyes of the remaining twenty-five or so early-stage Lord rank enemies, Jake turned into a dry mummy before his body crumbled into ashes that were dispersed by the wind a secondter.

    Daimon suddenly pointed his index finger at Smith and before thenky man could react, white line of light pierced his right leg, burning it to ashes, without its support, his body copsed.

    Normally a wound by fire would be better than a wound by sword, because the fire will cauterize it and prevent bleeding, but when the fire is Demon Light, the pain inflicted to the flesh of the target will make them wish that they were attacked by anything but it.

    "Aghhhh my leg!!!", Ender who ceased his attack to Smith, the moment Daimon said he wanted to capture him, and was now killing some of the early-stage Lord ranks along with T, turned his head around just to see Smith retorting on the ground.

    His face was twisted and he had a horrified expression, hell, he was crying, a psycho who felt no regret over killing and turning other humans into cheap meat to sell at other ces, was crying like a little kid.

    Now imagine his reaction when his other leg was blown away by another white ray of mes, he peed himself and foam came out of his mouth he fainted, not before letting out a lung-tearing scream.

    Daimon grabbed Smith by his neck and tossed his legless body towards the entrance of Ender''s headquarters, like a piece of trash.

    Daimon isn''t a good person, he wouldn''t hesitate to burn a and all its habitants regardless of their age or gender, if they were int the way of his family, but killing the powerless without any reason isn''t up to his liking, that is one of the principles which Aisha and the other soulmates helped him to develop, of course for the sake of his family, anything could be put in second ce, but unless he has to, that''s a line he won''t cross.

    Of course, that doesn''t mean he is going to help random people that doesn''t benefit him, but making the world a slightly less horrible ce by killing the scum that appears in front of him is within his scope.

    Hypocritical, maybe, but so what, isn''t that why he is pursuing the seat of the strongest, so that he can be the one to make the rules, it is the universe the one that should bend ording to his desires, not the other way around.

    Daimon suddenly frowned, he felt a bit heated up, his blood flow was a bit faster than normal too, but it didn''tst long.

    ''Could it be the influence of this ce?'', he thought.

    "Tell them to chain him up, I have some questions to make him", said Daimon to Ender as he shed towards some of the very few remaining enemies, to end the battle fast.

    Ender nodded and then killed his opponent, T had finished her fight too, inbination they killed around eight enemies, while there were thirty puddles of ck liquid, courtesy of the crazy girl Sarah, while Daimon got rid of the remaining twelve with a few shes of his sword.

    "Two middle stages were defeated so easily¡­ they are too strong", said T, as she saw the result of a battle that didn''t even take five minutes to finish, it was a one-sided massacre.

    Ender walked towards the gates of the headquarter and after giving some instructions to his subordinates, who took away Smith to a cell, and seeing his rtives to assure them everything was fine, he returned.

    "Who will we attack next?", he asked.

    "The brothel", said Daimon, which made Ender nod in response.

    The group of four then started advancing towards the inner part of the west area of the town, their figures shed through the almost lightless sky.

 Chapter 479 The Results Of The Test (Part 2)

    ?

    While Daimon was jumping on the roofs of the buildings, which made him glide as his fall was deelerated by the effect of the atmosphere which was boosting him overall, he noticed that the crazy girl had a serious expression for a change.

    "What''s the problem, I highly doubt that just this little amount of massacre can alter you?", he asked, which made Sarah giggle.

    "It''s not that, to be honest, besides a very small number of people, I simply can''t feel anything for others, so I''m pretty sure that what I''m about to see in that ce won''t cause any waves in me¡­ but Jas is different", she said in a low voice.

    "I see, so that''s why you watched over her from the shadows, and even fought Adam in secret", said Daimon understanding a bit more about the rtionship between the crazy girl and Jasmine.

    "Mm, Jas is "light" and I''m "darkness", she was supposed to live carefreely with Casy, while I dealt with idiots like that Adam guy, but once again I couldn''t protect her¡­", she said.

    Daimon remained silent for a couple of seconds, Bell still med herself to this day that she couldn''t save her friend, so for Sarah what happened with Adam was history repeating itself.

    Because being honest the chances of someone snatching Jasmine from Adam''s ws were infinitely close to zero, the fact that Daimon appeared and changed the dead end for Jasmine, was seen as a miracle by the crazy girl, in other words she failed to protect her little sister, just like it happened to her mother, and that angered her.

    For a change Daimon could rte to her, he knew what it felt to not be able to protect someone precious to you, that impotence and hatred burned deep into one''s soul, and would not disappear easily.

    But at the same time, he now knew that one shouldn''t be consumed by it, but use it, having tasted defeat once, use that burning rage to never let it happen again no matter what.

    "I know it might not be my ce to say it, since it hasn''t been that long since I got to meet her, not to mention I didn''t meet the younger Jasmine, but the "current" Jasmine is stronger than what you think", said Daimon.

    He was there and saw Jasmine at her lowest, when she was devastated after realizing she was but a mere doll for Adam, the dread should have been worse since he used whatever method he had, to make her be so positive towards him, so the recoil should have been quite bad, and yet she managed to rpose herself in a day, though it took her more to return to her bright self, she shined more than before, at least that''s what Daimon thought of the current Jasmine.

    Listening to Daimon, Sarah''s eyes glowed for a split of a second.

    "Of course, she is, she is my Jas after all¡­ leaving that aside if you praise other girls that much, I''ll get jealous you know~", her previous seriousness disappeared as she returned to her crazy self, making Daimon sigh.

    "I guess it''s my fault for treating you like a normal person", he said as he increased his pace, since they were about to arrive at their destination.

    "Ahh, even your words inflict pain on me, as expected of my destined one~", Sarah didn''t even bother to said it out loud, making Ender and T who were just a few meters behind of them listen to the crazy things she said, making them nearly lose their rhythm and trip.

    Daimon''s eyebrow twitched, Narasha''s offer to cut her sounded more and more tempting as the time went by, but right now he had other things to pay attention to.

    ''If my supposition is right, then "that" is most likely to happen in this situation, let''s see what are you up to, hero'', he thought.

    ¡­

    The west area of the Brown Wind town could be considered both the worst and the best, depending on your standing, for those who had the resources to pay for the services of thedies and gentlemen that "worked" in the many brothels that were, it was a fun ride.

    But for the ones providing the services things weren''t that good, after all unless one is out of option who would be happy to whore itself out to be able to continue living, that being said, on the surface these brothels had another side and that is the fact that they were loan houses too.

    They will lend money, and even directly food to anyone, no questions asked, with a high return fee of course, and if you weren''t able to pay, well, they''ll make you pay one way or another.

    That included selling a family member or two, dobor work in especially dangerous ces, and the list goes on, the only thing that was not publicly allowed was using the people as food.

    But with the correct bribe to the correct people, rules could be bent, and no one has spare energy toin about the death or disappearance of strangers here, of course there were some cases of people trying to get revenge, but those poor idiots all ended up disappearing too.

    Having gotten the support of the strongest entities in the town, the Wild Night brothel which happened to be the biggest and most lucrative one in Brown Wind town, had gotten a bit out of hands.

    In both prices and the things that happened inside its walls, for the vat majority there was only fun, drinking and being served by the many staff of the establishment, it was a wondend, it was so wonderful that some clients stacked debt and ended up as workers as well, in other words the whole ce was tant trap, only those who stood at the top could truly enjoy the night scene, without the having to worry about ending in a miserable state.

    And among those, we have Jeremy, the one who ran Wild Night, everything was going well today, the blood moon week had finally started and unlike others who were afraid of it, he was excited as it was one of the most profitable events for him.

    The door of a room on the basement of a four-story building which was perfectly maintained, and decorated, opened and a man wearing leather armor entered in a hurry.

    "Boss, unless we take some extreme measures, we don''t have enough "goods" for the special deal¡­ if those guys don''t get the usual, we''ll be in deep shit", said the guard to a man who was sitting on his bed, there was a woman wearing light lingerie dancing exclusively for him.

    The man who was sitting on the bed was naked, which made the guard''s face pale, he tried to speak but words didn''te out, and before he managed to say anything his head fell from his neck.

    "Learn to knock in your next life you idiot, someonee clean this mess!", shouted the man as he put on his pants, and then pointed at both the corpse of the guard and the woman who even after seeing such a thing didn''t stop trying to entice the man.

    Her face twisted with despair as she heard him calling the guards, she bowed on the ground as she trembled and then shouted.

    "No, please master Jeremy, I''ll do it better next time I swear, you''ll enjoy it!!!", her voice was filled with fear as tears ran down her eyes, unfortunately her pleas didn''t work as two metal armored guards entered and dragged the corpse and the woman who kept yelling and belling until one of the guards hit her head with his fist making her bleed and lose the capacity to speak.

    "Beni, go see how are those idiots doing, we have to get those women no matter what", said the man who was still half naked, a figure emerged from the shadows of the room and limited to nod without saying anything.

    But then just as the figure lurking in the shadows left, the whole ce startled trembling, Jeremy saw dark gray lines appear on the walls of his room and he cursed.

    "Shit, the defensive property has kicked it, did Ismael and Hal joined hands, fucking bastards they should know that I have a one-time favor from those guys in reserve, did the fight didn''t go as nned?", he mumbled as he got up from his bed, then full set of armor, including helmet and a longsword, everything on the Arch rank and everything with cores embedded into it, covered him.

    "Booom!", the moment he set foot out of his room, he saw something going through the wall and jumped backwards to avoid it, just to see one of the metal armored guards, shing against the wall, turning into meat paste due to the strength of the impact.

    A group of ten metal armored soldiers came from the opposite direction and gathered around Jeremy, there was a middle stage Knight Lord among them who was one of the two captains of the guards, he outstood like a sore thumb since he was actually quite short despite having beard and a moustache.

    "Master, we are being attacked by Rock Gale and Fire Dune, they have already destroyed four of the upper floors, more than half of the guards have been killed, and they areing downwards, Omi has gone to fight them, you must grab all the assets and leave¡­".

    The words of the man stopped, when a nail suddenly appeared on his forehead, it was a pitch-ck nail covered in a dark green mist, to the horror of the other guards as well as Jeremy the flesh, bones and even the armor of the man melted into a puddle of blood.

    "Don''t stand there you fools cover my retreat!", shouted Jeremy making the guards wake up their daze, they all took out shields and formed a perfect semi-sphere with then to protect Jeremy.

    Surprisingly the shields were covered in dark brown lines and actuallybined to not leave even the slightest space between them, also the dark brown lines created a protection on the ground too, in case of underground attacks.

    And that isn''t all, the shields worked as two-sided mirrors as well, so the guards and Jeremy could see what was happening outside of the semi-spherical protection, while the people outside only saw a moving personal fortress.

    Having done a lot of stuff, Jeremy of course had enemies so he spent a lot in security measures, which is why he was confused about how just Rock Gale and Fire Dune could break all the way into the basement.

    But his question was answered quite fast, as he saw a couple of unknown figures entering the corridor in which his personal room was located, through the hole on the wall from which that metal armored guard came out earlier.

    It was then when the world suddenly seemed to turn gray, the air vibrated as an invisible pressure extended through all the corridor, as a silver haired masked young man slowly walked towards Jeremy, apanied by a dark green haired girl who was casually humming as she retrieved the ring from the corpse of the guard who exploded into meat paste earlier, without touching any of that of course as her hand was covered in ck and green battle aura which made the bloody mess disappear at once.

    Jeremy was about to order his guards to start moving towards the secret escaping tunnel he had, when he finally noticed that they were all copsed on the floor, having troubles to even breath, which made it impossible for them to talk.

    "Crack!", a crystal shattering sound made Jeremy turn to see the center of the many shields that formed the personal fortress, his eyes widened as he saw the peak Lord rank cores start to crack all at the same time.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    There were ten shields, which meant ten peak Lord rank cores were supporting the fortress at the same time, the resulting defense wasn''t as simple as one plus one, it was exponential, and yet it had started to falter just by the terrifying pressure that wasing from that masked silver haired man.

    "I don''t know you, why the hell are you attacking me you bastard!", Jeremy''s voice came from within the personal fortress, which made Daimon smirk behind his mask.

    "Now, I''m pretty sure you must have heard those words quite a few times already, considering the smell of blooding from below this corridor", he said as he pointed to the floor.

    Jeremy gritted his teeth, below the basement it was the storage where the secret "goods" he sold were kept, it was isted and prepared to block anyone from seeing, feeling or smelling what was stored there.

    "Adjudicator, isn''t this run-down ce, too far from the central reign for someone with such a tight agenda to appear, or perhaps someone rat me out, so you were sent here?", said Jeremy, more cracks appeared on the cores of the fortress so he used the time to activate the effects of his armor, helmet and sword all at the same time.

    But he didn''te out to try and fight, adjudicators are special forces dispatched by the strong cities to hunt flesh eating demons and those who work with them, but they are always too busy dealing with a lot of stuff, especially in the blood moon week, so Jeremy had troubles believing he had enough bad luck for one to appear in this town, at the border of the wastnd.

    Unless someone got profs of his special deals of course, which shouldn''t be possible as everyone who knew about it was under a blood contract, not to mention he had all their families within his grasp, just in case.

    Daimon of course didn''t know what the hell was the guy talking about, he just let out more of his Overlord Pride, and the aura which somehow was now affecting the real world instead of just the mind like previously, due to the boosting effect of this ce, pressed down on the personal fortress, making it dent inwards.

    "Shit!", Jeremy cursed and then made an opening to jump out of the fortress, at the same time, the cores finally exploded and the fortress fell upon the guards crushing them to death.

    Seeing the blood rivering from the now scraps of the personal fortress, Jeremy had an unsightly expression, he threw a dark marble to the ground and a massive current of ck smoke flooded the corridor.

    ''This is a secret mix of poison that only I know about, get poisoned and die you bastard!'', inwardly screamed Jeremy, he has taken the antidote already, so he was going to use the smoke curtain to escape, every adjudicator has received the full support of a big city, so they were all at least peak Lord ranks, though the pair of people that appeared to hunt him looked young, they should be stronger than him.

    But then to Jeremy''s despair, he saw that the two of them casually walked within the poisonous ck smoke,pletely ignoring it, which made sense as both Daimon and Sarah have strong poison affinity, which by itself doesn''t mean they are immune to any poison, but they are both knights too and have insanely high vitality for their respective realms.

    Not to mention Sarah is a half Nethereal and her lineage seems to be rted to poison and darkness too, as for Daimon, there is nothing he can''t prey on, poison is useless on him, in fact he was actively inhaling it, since variety helped level up the ws, he obtained from the manticore so many years ago, though he didn''t use them normally, it''s a skill with a lot of potential, it just didn''t adapt to his fighting style¡­ yet.

    Jeremy saw red, he rushed into his room and then came out with a pretty woman in his hands, he pointed his sword at her neck and then shouted.

    "Get the hell out of the town for the next three hours and don''t look for me, or I''ll slice her damn throat, I know you can''t kill anyone who hasn''t done deals with flesh eating demons, and this woman hasn''t participated on anything I have done!".

    Daimon stopped and the crazy girl just went on with the situation like usual, since she knew Daimon never did anything without a reason.

    "And there it is, the cliche "saving the hostage" kind of situation one would expect from a hero, so that the enemy can escape and then return to seek revenge", said Daimon with a smirk as he saw another "notification" simr to the one that appeared for him earlier, been triggered.

    [Save the hostage and go free all the captives that are being treated badly even now]

    He couldn''t help butugh at the situation, from the very beginning since he saw that poor imitation of a notification, his instincts had told him to trample on the objectives and do things the way he always does, which means to do as he pleases.

    "Huh, what the hell are you rambling about, did you not hear me, I will slice her¡­", Jeremy''s eyes widened as he felt a horrible paining from his chest, he looked downwards just to see a thin ck sword piercing his armor from the back, his flesh and the chest te.

    And that wasn''t all, the sword also pierced the chest of the woman, they were both skewered by the ck sword, only now Jeremy noticed that the masked man wasn''t in his previous position anymore.

    "Blegh!".

    "I-Impossible, you are only a Lord rank, this armor should protect me even from Arch rank attacks at least ten times!", said Jeremy as he spat blood.

    But that''s not what was terrifying him the most, but the fact that the masked man also attacked the woman he was keeping hostage.

    "Hiding in the shadows in front of me is one of the stupidest things to do", said Daimon, the woman Jeremy was using as a hostage was none other than Beni, the secret assistant of Jeremy.

    That being said, what Jeremy said was true, she was never involved into his deals with flesh eating demons, for the only reason that Jeremy nned to use her as a fake hostage to escape if an adjudicator appeared here.

    The reason as to why Ender, never ever thought Daimon or Sarah were adjudicator, was because they killed Omar and his subordinates like it was nothing, and adjudicators couldn''t kill humans that haven''t done deals with flesh eating demons, unless someone with a really high rank authorized it.

    And Omar wasn''t worth all that, it also helped the fact that the crazy girl was quite wild, which didn''t align with what people knew about adjudicators, unfortunately for Jeremy he assumed the wrong thing, because he knew all the things, he has done made him a potential target.

    Not like it would have changed anything, since the result would have been the same if Jeremy resisted in another way, instead of using his subordinate as a hostage though.

    "Y-You aren''t an adjudicator, who the hell are you¡­", said Jeremy as he fainted, the woman followed him not too long after.

    This happened because Daimon made Disaster drain enough mana and vitality for them to faint, without killing them, the energies of Lord ranks weren''t up to the liking of the capricious sword anyway, so it could do without them.

    The moment the woman fainted; a new notification appeared in front of Daimon.

    [Failing to fulfill the mission will result in a penalty, starting in 3-2-1¡­]

    The countdown froze in one and didn''t advance, in a sense, missions are like contracts, that''s why they have to be epted, at least that''s Daimon''s case, maybe other system users have no choice but for him that''s not the case.

    He can''t be tied through contracts, and there is no penalty for him rejecting a mission, he can choose whether he wants to do something or not, that''s one of the major rules of the system.

    That being said once epted there might be a penalty if he fails, anyway these so-called missions were forced onto him, he didn''t agree and so he could get the benefits if hepleted them, but he couldn''t be penalized if he didn''t.

    This was one of the directions that the system has taken adapting to Daimon''s wishes, he is the one that makes other suffer loses but he doesn''t suffer them himself, something he decided back at that mountain range where everything started.

    "Crack!", Daimon saw the fake notification crumbling apart to then disappear, surprisingly the one which asked him to solve the problems of the town stayed, probably because he was doing so¡­ in a sense.

    Ender and T arrived just to get pale since Daimon hadn''t retrieved his aura back into his body.

    They nearly fell to the ground due to the sudden change on the pressure, but managed to regain their footing because Daimon retrieved his aura in time.

    "You two go sort out the things at the storage and release those in the secret rooms", said Daimon to them.

    Of course, he wasn''t going to go down there to get rid of all the human meat that Jeremy had stored, he could see through the floor and there was a lot, not to mention the smell of blood was also quite strong, there were also a lot of cages with women of all ages on a room previous to the storage, those were probably on the "waiting" line to be stored, but they were still alive.

    Daimon had no interest in that, instead he tore off a ne which Jeremy was wearing, because with his infinity eyes he could see arge metal door hidden in apletely separated area underground, with a lock that had the same shape.

    "Time to get some souvenirs", he said as he used Disaster to cut a hole on the ground and then jumped into it.

    Sarah''s eyes sparkled as she jumped into it, to follow Daimon, not without dragging both Jeremy and the woman who were fainted, along with her.

 Chapter 480 The Results Of The Test (Part 3)

    ?

    The moment Sarah jumped into the hole Daimon cut on the floor, all the lights went out as she fell into a dark space, but far from feeling that apprehensive sensation of dread that normally would invade anyone who suddenly find itself deprived of any source of light, the crazy girl was like a fish in the ocean.

    Why you ask, well, she was now able to move in the air without using any martial art or battle aura, she was by all means flying unlike earlier where she just floated and descended slowly when they moved through the town.

    Daimon who had alreadynded raised his head only to see the crazy girl frolicking in the air, she made some circles and spins, it would have been a pretty sight if not for the fact that she suddenly det her body fall, in a try to make Daimon catch her, just for Daimon to move aside making her crash on the ground.

    "Booom!", the ground trembled a bit as pieces of the rock floor exploded due to Sarah''s heavynding.

    "Oi, are you trying to kill me, why the hell did you used battle aura to elerate your fall¡­", said Daimon as a realization struck him like a truck.

    ''Did she do it on purpose so that I would dodge making her crash against the ground?", he wondered, just to see the crazy girl giggling at him while she licked her lips.

    "You are really beyond salvation", said Daimon, he then ignored Sarah and snapped his fingers producing a wisp of white mes, which then ignited and exploded erasing the ominous darkness that was flooding this room.

    It was as if the sun had appeared inside this room, as the extreme darkness disappeared, there were actually torches on the walls which were lit up by Daimon''s Demon Light.

    Daimon then looked at the origin of this ominous darkness, which should have made anyone feel ufortable and actually harm people, for the simple reason that it was produced by torturing and killing countless of people in a dark room where the sunlight never shone.

    The result would be an extremely negative darkness mana, which was called "Corpse Darkness", Daimon knew about it thanks to the fact that the Revy and the undead had been at war before, and those who focus in necromancy use this modified mana to nurture their artificial undead.

    As weird as it might sound, natural undead can''t use this type of mana for themselves, because it is harmful for all living beings, as it is produced by lots of corpses, rotting and a dark isted space, it was basically poison.

    Even undead are alive, if not they wouldn''t be able to advance, they just another race with many subspecies, at least that''s the current epted theory, since artificial undead can''t advance, they will only reach as far as the "ingredients" used to create them, allow them to, no more and no less, they were just flesh dolls.

    As to from where did all this toxic thing came, there was a breach on the wall near one of the corners of the room, this isted ce was where Jeremy hid his vault, the breach led to his secret escape tunnel, which was connected to the ughterhouse, where all those poor women in the cages that Daimon saw earlier, would have been turned into "goods" to be sold.

    "Hey, I actually felt quite light earlier, but these guys are about to kick the bucket", said Sarah as she showed Jeremy and Beni to Daimon.

    Their lips and their wounds had turned purple as if they had been infected by something, and there was also ck blood seeping from them.

    Daimon''s hand shone in white light, his light isn''t the gentle type but the destructive type, so healing spells aren''t his thing, at most he can heal minor wounds on others, but using light mana he cleaned the corpse darkness that had infiltrated their bodies, to prevent them from dying before he could get some answers.

    "That guy let this ce be flooded by that mana to make it easier from him to escape, he really was afraid of being captured", said Daimon.

    Jeremy had many tricks up his sleeves, unfortunately none of them worked but one must apud his preventive measures, but Daimon didn''t pay attention to that, he was instead interested in the fact that before he sted away the corpse darkness, he also felt the boosting effect of this ce bing stronger, just to return to normal when he dispersed the corpse darkness.

    He didn''t bother to avoid it earlier because he and Sarah would not be affected by it, of course it''s not like they were going to absorb it, but unlike humans they wouldn''t be poisoned just by being exposed to it.

    It still shouldn''t have had any positive effect on them and that''s what was bothering Daimon, but ultimately, he couldn''t think on a proper exnation, besides that maybe the darkness mana in this world got stronger during the so-called blood moon week.

    With Sarah who was dragging Jeremy and Beni that nearly convulsed to death a moment ago, but where still out, following him, Daimon walked towards the giant metal gate at the other side of the room.

    Of course, before opening it, he asked to his sensing specialist maid, which wasfortably staying in his shadow.

    ''How is it Rita, any traps I have to look out for'', he asked, Rita could still use her extremely sharp mana sense to a certain extent without exposing her existence, and Daimon couldmunicate with her directly to her mind, because she is linked to him through the Terror Contractor skill.

    ''Yes, after inserting the key, there is a need to take it out and put it in a secret lock that is hidden at the upper left corner of the door, otherwise a mechanic trap will go off and shot poisoned darts from within the door'', she said.

    Jeremy was really paranoic, not like he didn''t have reasons to though, a mechanic trap without using a source of mana will be hard to detect with mana sense, of course that limited to Lord ranks who hadn''t gotten the natural reinforce to their detection abilities that bing an Arch rank would give them.

    But Jeremy didn''t think an Arch rank woulde for his vault, when such a person wouldn''t have the need to rob a small middle stage Lord rank like him, also it''s not like he had the means to defend against an Arch rank whose senses were sharp enough to detect that little trick as that would need to be a middle stage one, or an extremely talented early stage one.

    Daimon nodded and then quickly inserted the key on the lock, and after rotating it he took it out and jumped, following Rita''s indications he just moved a small practically undetectable metal que which had meld with the door perfectly to reveal a second lock, in which he inserted the key, this time rotating it on the contrary directions.

    The sounds of gears moving came from the giant door which slowly opened to reveal the fruits of the many years, in which Jeremy has been doing practically everything he could to amass fortune through the suffering of others.

    It was actually not that big, being a one-story building, but in exchange the quality of the things here were better than what even Ismael had in his hands, it was easy to see it because the guards of Jeremy had not only armors with cores embedded into them, but their shields and swords were the same.

    They were generic mass-produced magic equipment, but still they all had it, it''s worth mentioning that these types of equipment weren''t offered in any of the stores, a doubt which Daimon was nning to solveter through Ender.

    That being said, everything was put in racks, as storage treasures had really small capacity in this ce, besides a dozen of armor and swords sets, there wererge boxes with tons of high-grade mana crystals just lying there umting dust.

    In exchange the beast cores were put in a secured rack, each ced in a slot made out of metal to amodate them individually, it was easy to see which held more value for Jeremy.

    "I can''t believe they treasure those crappy cores over this mana crystals~", yfully said Sarah as she grabbed some mana crystals and tossed them here and there.

    "I have been thinking about that, it seems that they don''t know how to properly extract mana from them, their arrays have differentpositions than the ones I know, and also those cores are different than the ones from the magic beasts on the same realms in Neptune and the four gxies", said Daimon.

    The effect of those armors left a big impression on him, that wasn''t something that a Lord rank treasure should be able to do, probably the people of this ce focused on how to extract power from these strange beast cores instead of mana crystals, as to why, it might be rted to the fact that they somehow attached the innate ability of a magic beast to the equipment result of such methods, which was outrageous, a weapon which can power itself, besides Disaster, Daimon has never heard of anything like that.

    That being said, apparently there was a limit of uses before the core broke and it didn''t seem as if it was receable, as it was embedded into the equipment, so they sacrificed durability in exchange for power, maybe that''s why this equipment wasn''t offered publicly.

    Putting the matter at the back of his head for now, Daimon proposed himself to take all this loot in his inventory, and then he saw a fake notification as he has decided to officially name them, appearing in front of him.

    [These riches were earned though the suffering of people, destroy them or prepare apensation to the victims]

    Daimon softly snorted and kept the racks and everything else in his inventory, seeing the words "Five Million" in the count for high grade mana crystals of the inventory, Daimon couldn''t help but smile behind his mask, which again triggered a fake notification.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    [Failing to fulfill the mission will result in a penalty, starting in 3-2-1¡­]

    Once again of course it didn''t work against him, and the notification crumbled apart a secondter, Daimon then turned around and beckoned towards Sarah, it was time to go to their next target.

    The crazy girl nodded, she didn''t say anything about Daimon taking all the things of the treasure, as she knew she would get her share, Daimon isn''t someone that would fight over such a thing.

    After robbing the fruits of all the hard work of Jeremy, Daimon and Sarah both jumped upwards and then walked through the destruction they caused earlier, until they returned to the surface where Ender and T were already waiting for them.

    Needless to say, but they had disgusted expressions after having seen all the "goods" stored by Jeremy, not to mention all the women in the cages which were about to be turned into that.

    T was especially angry, why wouldn''t she be, she is also a woman and she could have ended like that too, those poor women were kept near the storage and the ughterhouse, some of them had gone mad after listening to the butchering sounds for weeks, and had to be put out of their misery.

    So of course, when they saw Daimon returning with Jeremy and Beni, their gazes were filled with murder intention, they might not have the ck to provide for strangers, but they never ate other humans, even when their stomachs rumbled, they instead grabbed a sword and hunted to survive, that was what brought them to where they are right now.

    "He''ll dieter, for now chain him up in a cell, I don''t care what you do to him as long as he is in condition to talk when we return, leave the woman aside", said Daimon as Sarah threw them to one of Ender''s subordinates.

    "Go, give that inhuman bastard a little lesson, but don''ty a finger on the woman¡­ I''ll execute anyone who doesn''t follow the terms mentioned by young Gabriel, understood", said Ender.

    "Y-Yes!", a couple of subordinates grabbed the two prisoners and took them to the headquarters of Rock Gale.

    "Next is Ric and Tom''s stores, they have the double of guards, but their equipment isn''t as good as Jeremy''s, also you already killed the captain of their guards, so it should be easier to get rid of them", said Ender.

    Daimon nodded and they then jumped and gilded towards the south, Ric and Tom''s stores had amercial agreement, one specialized in equipment and the other in potions and alchemic products.

    They were actually tworge buildings connected through a small house that was in the middle, inside which there seemed to be some kind of private party going on.

    "Hahaha, old Ric you sure know how to treat others", said a man with short brown hair, who seemed to be in histe twenties, it was n, the guy who earlier shed with Daimon and Sarah in the chief''s store and its current manager.

    He was now drinking while embracing a pair of girls wearing only light lingerie, while his hands touched here and there, the girls served him the drinks.

    He wasn''t the only one enjoying debauchery, there were a pair of men in their forties who were enjoying the show of a few girls dancing for them, one of the men was tall and slim while the other was short and fat.

    The tall one who was also bald, was Ric, as for the short fat guy with ck hair, that was Tom, the motive of this celebration was that they closed a deal to buy things from the store of the chief with a discount, as long as they got some women up to n''s liking.

    Which was a bargain for them, who had connections with a couple of towns and often bought some ves in the shadows, while they also took charge of providing Jeremy a few extra workers from time to time.

    "Ah, I still can''t believe that bastard dared to speak me in such a way, luckily that idiot of Ender will be dealt with tonight, I heard he''s got a nice aunt whose husband died hunting as well as a cousin who should be around my age, sell them to meter will ya?", said n, his face was slightly red as the alcohol had started to kick in.

    "Sure, two or three disappearing won''t make a difference to Jeremy anyway", said the fat Tom as he raised his cup, he was too happy thinking on the profits that buying things at a discounted price will bring them.

    Ric was the same, just as they stood up to take their respectivepanions for tonight, to their bedrooms, they heard amotioning from outside.

    "Damn those bastards, I told them they could have a couple of drinks to celebrate and they are already drunk fighting, I''ll cut their sries for this!", cursed Ric as he walked towards the door, ready to scold the guards that were drinking outside.

    His body suddenly froze a few centimeters away from the door, gray lines of light appeared on the walls, making n and Tom who were ying with the women, get angry.

    "Are they really going at it so hard, Ric I told you to not leave them drink until Jake returned, hey Ric are you listening to¡­ me?", Tom who walked towards his friend, also froze when he reached a few centimeters away from him.

    But it was for a different reason, Ric froze because there was a ck sword piercing the reinforced door like butter, and Ric''s head along with it, surprisingly there was no blooding out of the wound.

    And Tom froze because he was in shock out of the fact that Ric who was celebrating with him a couple of seconds ago was now as dead as one could be.

    Unfortunately, he didn''t have the time to regain hisposure as the ck sword moved downwards, shing the door and Ric''s body in two, while at the same time the gray light lines on the walls faded away.

    "Well, it seems you are quite lucky, this saves us a visit", the indifferent voice of a man came from the dark lightless area outside of the house, the lights had gone out and a silver haired masked man came out of it along with a dark green haired girl.

    Sarah saw n whose stupor disappeared along with all the color on his face, he sent his strongest personal guards to deal with the pair of people that appeared here, so unless he was seeing ghosts, then that meant his subordinates were dead and now they hade for him.

    He tossed the woman he was embracing a moment ago towards Daimon in a try to gain some seconds, as he turned to make a run for it, but then he vomited blood as a huge pressure fell in the room.

    Sarah''s image shed and then she appeared behind n and grabbed him by his shoulder.

    "Crack!".

    "Aghhhh!".

    The sound of bones breaking followed by a horribly pained scream echoed through the room, as the bones of n''s legs pierced his flesh and stuck outside of his skin, the crazy girl had used her stupidly high physical strength, to smack him downwards, and that directly broke his legs, nailing him to the ground.

    "Now, weren''t you trying to hit on me earlier despite me already been taken, what''s the hurry now~", said the crazy girl with a smile that wasn''t a smile.

    n wanted to scream and throw a threat as that has worked him all his life, but he was distracted by the inhuman amount of pain that came from his lower body, his eyes widened in horror as he saw his legs slowly melting.

    "Aghhhh!", with a lung-tearing scream, n fell to the ground as the flesh was slowly falling off his bones.

 Chapter 481 The Results Of The Test (Part 4)

    ?

    Tom who had copsed on the ground the moment he was assaulted by Daimon''s aura, saw the miserable fate of n and his face paled.

    Ric, Tom and n too, were also middle stage Lord ranks, but they had advanced using resources since they had money in hand, their realms were merely to show and minimal protection, because any battle or danger was left to their guards to handle.

    So even for this ce''s standards, they had trash battle prowess, not being able to withstand Daimon''s aura, when Ender and T who were in the same realm, could do it.

    "W-Wait a moment please, we¡­ I don''t have anything to do with this!", shouted Tom, the target of the enemies was n, so he could die for all he cared.

    "Oh really, because it seems like you three were celebrating our "deaths" with quite some joy, now you aren''t trying to tell me that you merchants didn''t know about us", casually said Daimon as he saw the terrified women who were also brought to their knees due to his aura.

    Tom''s face was drained out of any color, both he and Tom of course knew that n sent his guards to kill someone and bring his woman to him, it was amon thing for him, their association started because, they sent their guards to suppress and kill Ender''s subordinates.

    n who had a grudge with Ender naturally saw them in a better light, and chose to offer them things at a discounted price, in exchange for some benefits for himself, in fact they offered some manpower to n, which would have been Jake, but he refused because he believed that the team, he sent was more than enough to kill Daimon and capture Sarah for him.

    "I''m sorry, I didn''t know that idiot had offended sir, please spare my life I''m willing to offer all my belongings in exchange for my life!", said Tom in a hurry, he never felt this kind of fear from anyone, including Ismael and Hal, or other peak Lord realm experts.

    Which for him basically meant, he was in presence of an Arch rank, and judging by appearance, voice and overall vibe, it was quite a young one, the dark green haired woman who was toying n to death right now, was also monstrous.

    ''That damn bastard, why the hell did he have to provoke these monsters, let me be, so I can go to Jeremy and use that blood call scroll¡­ then it will be your death!'', poisonously thought Tom while he kept a submissive expression.

    Unfortunately for him, Daimon''s answer was a ck sword stabbing him from his back, anding out of his chest, nailing him on the ground.

    "Bleghh!", while Tom had an expression of disbelief as blood flooded his mouth making him cough, Daimon activated Disaster''s ability and the fat short guy was reduced to a dry mummy which crumbled to ashes a secondter.

    "For a merchant this one was quite stupid, why would I ept treasures for your life when killing you grants me all what you posses anyway, you done there?", said Daimon at Sarah who turned around and smiled at him.

    "Yup~", she said as she returned to Daimon''s side as she yed with a storage ring, which she of course took from the pile of corrupted meat that used to be n, apparently the crazy girl slowed down the process, to make n suffer as much pain as possible before he died, as a result of that, he didn''t turn into a puddle of ck liquid, but ended as a pile of corrupted meat and bones.

    At the same time Ender and T who had finished dealing with the guards outside, entered the room, Ender immediately recognized n''s corpse, because he saw the ring with which Sarah was ying, and he couldn''t help but bitterly smile.

    "I thought you were going to give him a beating and then use him as a hostage¡­ Hal is his father and they are rted to the chief", said Ender.

    Daimon shrugged in response.

    "It was up to her how to deal with him, also there is no problem since that Hal guy will be going down soon too, but first¡­".

    As Daimon stopped speaking, he took both Tom and Ric''s rings and then walked towards the inner part of the house, where the vault of the two stores was located, the keys were actually Ric and Tom''s rings.

    "Heh, so the merchants don''t have that kind of equipment in reserve, makes sense as not all their subordinates had them, unlike Ismael or Jeremy", said Daimon.

    Daimon ignored the trash magic equipment which didn''t have cores embedded, and just took the mana crystals, there were some potions which looked interesting too, though they seemed to only be usable for Lord ranks at max, who knows the forms might be worth studying, Aliya is really into alchemy after all.

    "You keep those, they''lle in handyter", said Daimon to Ender as he pointed at the leftover stuff in the treasury.

    Ender doubted for a second, but he still did as he was told and stored all the equipment and other things, in his ring, as a captain he had saved enough for a ring with a decent space, and he emptied his ring every time, so it fit without any problem.

    As for n''s ring, Daimon didn''t question Sarah about it, she was the one that the creep of n targeted, so the lootpletely belonged to her.

    "Gabriel these women¡­", asked Ender, with how these pair of people did things, he was afraid they will be killed just to silence them, naturally the women thought it too, so they bowed towards Daimon and begged.

    "Esteemed sir, please spare our lives, we might not beparable to yourpanion, but we have been trained and know how dance, sing, drink and entertain", they said.

    ''I should have melted these whores'', thought Sarah as a cold glint shed through her eyes, but she regained her cool when she heard Daimon saying.

    "Not interested, Ender they''ll be under your jurisdiction, you are going to need a lot of people to work in the town starting tomorrow".

    "Excuse me, would it be okay to let me take them in, of course I''ll make sure that they don''t cause you any trouble", T who was dealing with the corpses outside, saw the current situation and decided to step in.

    Her hands were trembling a bit and her heart was beating too fast, she was actually worried that Daimon would just kill her for interfering, the reason is that, unlike Ender and herself, Daimon and Sarah didn''t seem to be affected by the sickening things they saw below the brothel, still she gritted her teeth and said what was in her mind.

    "Sure", said Daimon.

    Ender visibly let out a sigh of relief, and the women were visibly happy too, T was a well-known hunter, for them this was a chance to be something more than a ything, a rare chance to gain a little control over their lives.

    This time it was T''s subordinates the ones dealing with the aftermath of the battle, T assigned some of them to take the women they found in the house, besides the six that were present in the living room where n, Tom and Ric were, there were another six who were the previous batch, chained on the basement.

    They were still alive and sane, but had clear signs of abuse, since their owners had gotten bored of them, so they would have ended being sold to Jeremy, to be turned into meat.

    "What''s the next target?", asked Ender, inwardly praying that the treasure of the chief''s store won''t be looted like Tom and Ric''s as well as Jeremy''s and Ismael''s which was going to be looted for sure.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Next it''s the town''s granary and storage", said Daimon, which made Ender feel relieved, Daimon didn''t have anything against the store of the chief, it was n the one who tried to kill them, that being said he nned to ask them to give him the mana crystals they had, as they had no use for them, but were valuable for him.

    With a small nod, the group started moving towards the center of the town, covered by the lightless night.

    At this point the people of the town had somewhat realized there was something going on, the sound of walls breaking, swords shing and spellsnding on their targets, weren''t exactly low after all.

    Still with Rita''s mana sense practically covering the whole town, there was no escape for any of the marked targets, which were being arrested by Ender and T''s subordinates, on the streets.

    ''Daimon, that guy has noticed there is something going on and has activated one of those strange arrays as a defense, as well as group of fifty guards'', said the undead head maid from within Daimon''s shadow.

    Daimon nodded, and then informed the others as they jumped though the roofs, moving towards the center of the town.

    ¡­

    The center of the town was the most developed area of all, only those rted to the chief or with a high standing could live there, Ender and T had private houses there, but only them or their direct rtives could live there, their subordinates couldn''t, so they mainly stayed at their headquarters.

    And at the inner part of the center of the town, there was arge mansion with a rock fence, that was now in turmoil, the staff ran through the corridors bringing weapons, potions and other things to the front.

    At thergest room of the mansion, there was a tall man with shoulder length brown hair, and an unsightly expression on his face, he had a bad feeling since earlier, but ignored it and only now tried to contact some of his business partners and found himself unable to reach them.

    "Fuck, what the hell is going on, even Ismael isn''t answering", said Hal as he gritted his teeth, he and Ismael were the sole peak stage Lord ranks, Ismael was a knight and he is a mage.

    They have been disputing and fighting each other for a long time, and he was sure that their forces were on equal standing, one was the strongest hunter while the other was in charge of guarding the most important ce of the town, the granary and the storage where the emergency rations, funds and treasures were kept.

    With such authority he of course pocketed a lot of things, earning a lot of benefits, he was a rtive of the chief too and his son was appointed as a manager of a store, he had everything he wanted, so of course he wanted more.

    And he started epting bribes to turn a blind eye to certain things, like Jeremy''s business, and ves bought purely for butchering, ves weren''t illegal as long as they were used as workforce or pleasure, only using them as food wasn''t allowed, such was the state of the "order" in this world.

    A wild supposition suddenly struck him like a bolt out of the blue, someone who could defeat Ismael without having a fight that would level half of the town, had to be way stronger than him.

    A peak Lord rank had enough power to cause a lot of damage to any of the towns on the border of the wastnds, since there were one or two in each of them, so to suppress such people so cleanly.

    "An Arch rank¡­ damn it, did that idiot of Jeremy drew too much attention and an Adjudicator was sent from the central cities", he mumbled with a dead serious expression, his previous wishes to defend evaporated like that.

    He wasn''t stupid enough to try and fight an adjudicator, even if there was a minimal chance that it was a recently designated one, meaning it was a peak Lord rank, like him, he was sure he will lose in a direct confrontation.

    "I have to get the hell out of here, I can just look for another town to stablish¡­", unfortunately the moment Hal proposed himself to escape through an underground passage, his family had built a few generations ago.

    A horrible sh assaulted the mansion, Hal saw the roof trembling as dust and small pieces of rock fell from it, dark grey lines appeared on the walls just to start blinking a secondter.

    Hal no longer cared about taking any of the assets that were left in the treasury of the mansion, he directly turned around and ran towards the basement, but then the roof of the mansion copsed, burying him under many tons of materials.

    "Aghhh!".

    "Booom!".

    Screams apanied by a loud explosion and a curtain of dust were the result of the roof copsing on top of their heads, the second third, second and first floors of the mansion were destroyed by structural failures.

    The origin of all that was a silver haired masked man who was slowly descending from the sky, wherever the masked young man passed, the air trembled and when hended, the ground below him cracked andpacted.

    Sarah who graciouslynded next to Daimon, intensely gazed at him with predacious eyes, while Ender and T who arrived a bitter, were in awe, as they didn''t feel any mana or battle aura being used to take down the mansion.

    "D-Did he do that without just physical strength?", asked Ender in disbelief.

    "No, even if he didn''t use his battle aura, there will be some traces of vitality if he used his physical body to destroy the mansion¡­", mumbled T.

    Let alone them, even Daimon was surprised, his Overlord''s Pride was just a tiny bit away from reaching level 3, so he wasn''t sure if this change was caused only by the influence of this ce, or not, but the new effect was crazy.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he saw some debris moving before Hal came out of it, with a mansion copsing on top of him, of course he now looked miserable, even if he used a boosting spell and a defensive spell as well as the effect of his armor, the mansion was extra reinforced and so the debris was too.

    His previously glorious armor was full of dents, and there was blooding from his right shoulder and left leg, the core on his shield had already shattered too.

    Now imagine his surprise when he noticed that there wasn''t even a peak Lord ranked, in the group that was surrounding him.

    "I-I surrender!", he shouted as he raised his hands, trying to test the waters first, he hasn''t participated in any deals with flesh eating demons, so that adjudicator wherever it was, couldn''t kill him.

 Chapter 482 The Results Of The Test (Part 5)

    ?

    Unfortunately for Hal what he thought would have been his lucky charm, in other words the fact that he hasn''t participated in deals with flesh eating demons directly, was actually a death sentence for him.

    He couldn''t be med though, with theck of strong people at the towns on the borders, under normal circumstances and since he didn''t send people to Jeremy for butchering, but just didn''t inquire in what he did.

    The adjudicator would make him sign a blood contract to recruit him, and then he''ll be freed after earning some merits.

    It''s a shame that let alone caring about the things Jeremy did, Daimon isn''t an adjudicator to begin with, and since all the information regarding flesh eating demons is in Jeremy''s head, then Hal had no need to keep his over his shoulders.

    Feeling Daimon''s murderous gaze, Hal''s body trembled, he crawled backwards in fear as he shouted.

    "W-Wait I already surrendered you can''t kill me, I didn''t do anything!".

    "Well, that seems to be the problem, you knew what was happening inside the walls of the brothel, and feigned ignorance, but don''t worry I''m not killing you due to such a noble reason, your idiot son tried to kill us and that is why he was turned into a melted pile of meat a few minutes earlier, as for you, you are in my way, that''s it".

    Hal''s eyes widened, he in fact felt aggrieved because it was his stupid son the one who brought this cmity towards him, on the other hand he was also angry now that he heard what happened to n.

    He actually gritted his teeth as a spear with a core embedded into its shaft, appeared on his hand, the spear lit up in green lines of light as Hal''s body released arge amount of wind bing a small hurricane, as he thrusted his spear frontwards from below.

    Kneeling down as he did previously is a disadvantageous position to dodge or escape, but for surprise attacks is actually quite good, since it''s hard to fend off from attacks thate from low angles.

    "Crack!", a ss shattering sound echoed through the area, at the same time the hurricane suddenly disappeared, revealing a baffling scene, at least for Hal.

    Hal had used practically all his mana into this surprise attack, while his physical strength was really low since he was a mage, wind has a really high sharp property rivaling that of metal but being way lighter, thoughcking in defense in exchange of course.

    And the entirety of his mana reinforcing his spear amounted to nothing, as the scene of the tip of his spear exploding as it shed against the ck sword of the enemy, which was somehow floating by itself in front of the masked man, suggested.

    Hal''s surprise attack might catch others off guard, but even if he would have been somehow able to trick Daimon, Narasha took her role of being Daimon''s battlepanion pretty seriously, even from the inventory she was always looking at Daimon fights, so that she could interfere.

    There wasn''t really a need to, but Daimon was wielding her even if this was a low ranked battle, because he could tell she wanted to participate too, Narasha was his soulmate so for Daimon it was easy to notice how she felt.

    And that''s how he could notice she was in a really good mood right now, so much that the ck red bordered energy of Disaster came out of the sword and engulfed both the spear and Hal, reducing them to ashes.

    ''Who knew that the usually calm Nasha could be so wild, must be Daimon''s influence~'', yfully said Evangeline, making Narasha softlyugh, but she didn''t deny it.

    She was forced to be emotionless since she came to existence, otherwise Disaster which was quote unstable would have gone berserk, the very first time she allowed herself to show some emotions, was when Daimon had counter-stolen energy from Disaster, weakening it.

    In part that''s why she still had trouble understanding emotions, but she has progressed a lot in the past years, at least now she understood love, affection, protectiveness, bloodlust and recently enthusiasm has been her focus, it''s not like she didn''t feel other things, as she has shown some jealousy towards other girls.

    But she was unable to understand why, it''s not like she was dense or anything, as she knew it was rted to Daimon, unfortunately it''s not something she could exin with words, so that others could help her, it was something she had to do by herself, since it could be part of the requirements needed for her to obtain a body, Daimon didn''t press on the subject and supported her from the sides, if she needed his help she will tell him after all.

    With Hall dead, Disaster returned to Daimon''s hand which brought Narasha peace of mind, being wielded by Daimon was something she enjoyed, also she was careful enough to not destroy Hal''s ring which was the only thing on him that survived Disaster''s attack.

    Daimon beckoned and the ring flew towards him, now that the battle was over it was time to loot of course, so using his infinity eyes he looked for Hal''s treasury, which had been buried by the debris but remained firm in its ce.

    Daimon suddenly had an idea; he waved his hand and to his surprise the debris was tossed aside like it was nothing, Sarah''s eyes sparkled, she tried it to and a boulder of thirty meters of size was ripped of the ground and send flying a few dozens of meters, making her smile.

    "Will Maniption¡­", mumbled Daimon, leaving aside the fact that Sarah just used Will Maniption, which should be the case as she is a Knight Lord, she shouldn''t be able to as the curse ced on her is still there, and she had toprehend it too.

    On the other hand, he also shouldn''t be able to use it, to this extent, as the most he could currently do was fixate things ording to his desires, like how he carried all the girls during the three-art tournament.

    And what he did just know is an advanced application of Will Maniption, for mages entering the Lord realm means bing closer to the world, hence they gain a Manifestation Phenomenon that increase their affinity with whichever element they are skilled in.

    Knights on the other hand, entering the Lord realm means bing able to affect the world, which results in Will Maniption, the ability to extend their "existence" to other things than themselves, through their battle aura, it has an infinite number of applications which depend on each person.

    But one of the though generic, advanced applications is manipting non-animated objects with battle aura, as that is one of the bases for their future Battle Avatar.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, the boosting effect of this ce''s night, was incredible, originally, he thought that it was granting them abilities one major realm above their battle prowess, like flying.

    But was more than that, as it made Sarah, a native of Neptune, plete", as she was now able to use Will Maniption, which no native of Neptune has obtained, as they directly skipped to Battle Avatar at the Arch rank in the case of talented people and half Ster rank for the less talented ones.

    Hal''s treasury was quiterge, but it had less things than Jeremy''s one, as one would expect of illicit business, it was quite profitable, but in exchange Hal had double the amount of mana crystals, which were the jackpot for Daimon.

    Besides that, the other stuff was mainly crappy equipment without cores embedded, and he had a rack of beast cores which were taken away of course, as well as some potions and a single Arch rank sword with an Arch rank core, like the weapons Daimon got from Ismael, but this one was in perfect state, not having been used before, which was the surprise of the night.

    The rest of the stuff ended in Ender''s ring, or more urately in a few rings Ender got from the enemies he had killed tonight, as for the town granary and storage, they were located below Hal''s mansion, so while the crazy girl used Will Maniption to remove all the debris, in a good mood as she was enjoying ying with this new toy, Ender turned to see Daimon and then said.

    "All the targets have been captured, I stationed my subordinates outside of Ismael and Alguil''s treasuries¡­ will you mind meeting the chief?".<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    Ender was worried about the fate of Brown Wind town, as far as he understood Daimon was leaving as soon as he could, and with the forces of the town reduced a lot, it was going to be harder for them to survive.

    To his surprise, Daimon actually nodded, agreeing to that, but he also added.

    "Sure, that was the next step, in fact tell him to summon all the important people that is left, to show up in the chief''s mansion within twenty minutes", he said, making Ender bitterly smile but he still nodded as he took some distance to make a call to the chief and the important people he knew off, which survived.

    Seeing Ender leaving for a moment, while T was busy coordinating the rescue of the ves kept by the other hunting teams and other things, Sarah who had finished ying with Will Maniption stretched her tall body, clearly entuating her curves, just to be ignored by Daimon, which still was up to her liking as her smiling face suggested, approached him.

    "So, what now?", she asked.

    "We wrap things up here and then move to a bigger stage, also we have to arrange a meeting with the flesh eating demons, since we have some "questions" to ask them", answered Daimon.

    He previously didn''t think that was the case, but now that he learned that the missions of this ce were some stupid hero crap, there was a big chance that Jasmine would be in the territory of the flesh eating demons, waiting to be "recued" by the hero, as that was most likely the script prepared for this farse.

    Sarah immediately connected the points, because she could see the fake notifications that Daimon received from this ce, the crazy girl could be strange but she didn''t have an ounce of foolishness in her, when she was serious at least, so her expression immediately became serious as she said.

    "The humans of this ce are already scum, if Jas is trapped in those guy''s territory why don''t we break in directly, instead of going to another city¡­".

    Even if she wasn''t a fool, Jasmine''s safety was a delicate matter for Sarah, though she trusted Daimon and actively threw herself at him, she couldn''t help but ask what was in her mind, precisely because that''s how much Jasmine meant to her, and that is one of the few things Daimon could respect of her.

    "We are already in human territory, the flesh eating demons obviously live separated from humans, so it''s better to narrow our options regarding human territory first, before going into theirs, being fast doesn''t mean to be in a hurry, we''ll use the most efficient way to reach her".

    Daimon had already read all the information that the merchant with thergest coverage, could provide, and there was nothing that could be even remotely rted to Jasmine.

    With how far was the wastnd from the central territory of humans, Daimon was sure there would be no really important information arriving soon, so he wanted to go to a much more "civilized" ce, one with connections to the central territory, to see if there was any hint.

    Even if he could feel Jasmine''s rtive position, which was the northeast, the area was too big to just guide himself with that, he had to narrow the search, as a wrong turn might cost them a lot of time.

    As for why Daimon went through the hassle of dealing with the scum of this town, which could be considered a waste of time, there was a reason to it as well.

    They were brought here as part of the test for the inheritance of the hero, and the missions were rted to that, he wanted toplete at least one, maybe the reward could help them find Jasmine.

    And he chose the first mission he got as the test to that, because systems followed a game-like set up, triggered missions often followed a turn order within a certain area, in other words the first mission he got by reaching Brown Wind town, should give him the bet reward.

    In any case, eliminating all those guys didn''t take him even an hour, and now he just needed to solve the root of the problem of this town, and he''ll be finished, which will happen in the next twenty minutes, at the same time he''ll get his ticket to a better located town, or maybe even a city.

    "Mm, sorry I got a bit heated¡­ as an apology you can have me tonight~", as always once Sarah stopped thinking on Jasmine''s well-being she returned to her crazy self, making Daimon sigh.

    Ender returned just in time, with positive news for a chance.

    "It seems that all the important people that is left has already gathered in the chief''s mansion, the situation is quite tense though and the chief can''t control them for too long so¡­".

    "Let''s go, you two are enough", said Daimon.

    Ender nodded, he called T and then they led the way to the mansion of the chief, which was also in the central are of the town, but surprisingly at the outer part of it, while Hal literally lived at the most inner part of the center, a clear sign that the chief had lost a lot of his authority.

    On the way, Daimon observed the town, it surprised him to see that all the people stayed in their houses, because while most would do that, there is always opportunists wo take advantage if chaos and yet no one was trying to rob small stores, or causing troubles, instead they were all cowering in fear in their houses or even on the streets, sitting waiting for their deaths toe.

    "Why bother in building a town in such a far away ce, if you don''t have the strength to keep it running", said Daimon.

    He could understand that the current people lived here, they were born here and were too weak to go to better towns, as travelling through the wastnd was practically a death sentence for them.

    But the ones who stablished the town, must have been strong enough to defend against the dangers here, even without a proper refuge as the town surely took some time before it was built properly.

    To Daimon''s surprise, Ender answered with a bitter voice.

    "In the past, the wastnd used to be arge and calm green area, where there weren''t even dangerous magic beasts, but the first time that the blood moon week happened, thendscape changed, and the magic beasts that we have to fight in order to survive nowadays, appeared".

    "My great-grandfather once told me that we were being punished for something, I didn''t believe it, until I saw a person eat his own child after being driven mad by hunger, perhaps we did something really bad which resulted in our world being turned into such a rotten ce", he said.

    Daimon remained silent, he still wasn''t sure of what was the backstory of this ce, the only thing he knew is that a hero system user should havee here in the past.

    With Ender leading the way they soon reached the mansion of the chief, which was actually quite an old looking building, it was taller than Hal''s mansion, but it wasn''t as well-maintained.

    Daimon could hear the many voices arguing inside of the mansion, and there were some mana agitations too, caused by many people using mana pressure at the same time.

 Chapter 483 The Results Of The Test (Part 5)

    ?

    Naturally the entrance to the mansion of the chief, is not for everyone to use, but all the important people can gather there in emergency cases, like the current one.

    So, with Ender being the leader of one of the four strongest hunting teams, he used his token of identity to unlock the door, to reveal the current discussion ongoing.

    Even if they were at the entrance of the mansion, Daimon''s eyes could bypass the walls, and his ears were sharp enough to fully witness what was happening in the main hall of the mansion.

    There was arge rectangr table, with enough space for more than thirty people, but right now there were only around fifteen or so upied seats.

    At one of the corners of the table, there was a slim old man, his skincked luster and his eyes were slightly dent, making him look sick, that being said his presence wasn''t weak at all, at least Daimon could tell that if the old man gave his all, he couldst a few rounds against Ismael.

    Two of the other corner seats were empty, because they belonged to Ismael and Hal, as for thest one, there was a bearded fat man wearing fine clothes and a scepter which had a beast core at its top, giving him a noble-like appearance.

    Or at least that would have been the case, if he wasn''t smacking his hand on the table as he shouted at the old man.

    "Father-inw, those two had gone crazy, they are attacking a lot of people at once, please officially dere them enemies and use the guarding array to stop them, otherwise I will go and hire a mercenary force and raze this ce to the ground!".

    Next to the fat bearded man, there was a woman in her thirties who had a twisted expression, which slightly diminished as she heard the man saying he will take the matter in his hands if she wasn''t given a proper exnation.

    The slim old man sighed before saying.

    "I have known Ender ever since his father and uncle were still alive, they acted as bait for a middle stage Arch rank magic beast that was driven out of its territory and ended uping right at the town, which as you knowcks the ability to defend against such a thing".

    "I can swear with my life that Ender wouldn''t bring harm to this town on purpose, since that would be against the will that he inherited from his father, so I want to hear what is happening directly from him, before taking my decision".

    The woman gritted her teeth as she stood up from her seat with a hatred filled expression, to then say.

    "Don''t give me that crap, my brother''s mansion copsed, killing everyone inside of it, even if Hal managed to somehow survive, I''m pretty sure my little nephew is dead, I get that you aren''t from the same family branch as us, but they were still rted to you, if you don''t give me a proper exnation, then¡­".

    Ignoring the woman''s ramble, the cold voice of a young man interrupted her.

    "He tried to kill me, and was killed in retaliation, that''s the exnation of what happened".

    All the presents in the room turned to see the origin of the voice, just to see, Ender, T as well as two unknown people entering through the door of the meeting room.

    Well, there was one person who did recognize them, the short merchant Gary, who also had a seat on the table, though it wasn''t a main seat, as he wasn''t a part of this town but a travelling merchant of course.

    Obviously now that the supposedly causers of the turmoil on the town appeared, the many guards standing at the corners of the room, immediately pointed at Daimon''s group with their weapons.

    Which made Ender to rush in front of Daimon, before things got out of hand, he spoke.

    "Keep your weapons away, I don''t know what you believe, but we only attacked because Ismael as well as others tried to kill us, and the same applies to these two friends who were only stopping for a day in our town!".

    "As for what young Gabriel mentioned about n, he is saying the truth, I was the one negotiating a price with n over thetest catch, and he deliberately gave me a low price to then try to kick us out, and grabdy Prisc, you can imagine the rest, chief", said Ender at the slim old man.

    But before the old man could say something, the fat man snorted and pointed at Ender.

    "Do you expect us to just believe that, you are just putting all the me on n, and saying you were defending yourselves but what I saw was that you were the ones attacking".

    "Chief, I have supported this town and in exchange my nephew was killed, if you don''t give me justice then I''ll have to get it with swords!", he said.

    "I see names on the assigned to the chairs, are they the right ones?", Daimon''s voice once again interrupted the heated discussion, as he turned to see Ender, who knew that what was going to happen couldn''t be avoided.

    "Yes, the seats are assigned, and they can only be upied by those who held a certain amount of influence in the town", he said.

    "Oh, I see", not even a secondter, Daimon pointed his index finger forwards and a thing line of white light, was shot from it, piercing the head fat bearded man, who copsed on the spot, with his previous arrogant expression froze on his face even in his death, as he didn''t see the attacking.

    The others also reacted slowly, the woman was the first, she screamed and then tried to take her weapon out to avenge her husband, but then a horrifying pressure flooded the room.

    And to the terror of all the presents, more of those white rays were shot by the masked man, killing another five people, including the woman, all the guards were being pressured against the ground.

    As for the other people sitting at the table, only the old man was capable of still moving under Daimon''s pressure, but he saw Ender shaking his head at him earlier, and now he was grateful that he listened, otherwise his head would have been removed out o his body right now.

    The people here had influence and they were also Lord ranks, but they weren''t adept to battle, the reason is pretty simple, Daimon has already killed all the battle oriented influential people on the middle stage Lord rank, that would have joined this meeting, with the exception of Ender, T and the old chief.

    The fat man actually did have some middle stage Lord rank, guards, but they were watching over n, in other words they were dead already.

    Daimon retrieved his aura, allowing the survivors to breath once again, that being said they couldn''t move yet, so he walked towards one of the seats and casually took it.

    The crazy girl sat next to him, and tried to lean against Daimon''s shoulder, just to fall to the ground when he dodged it, though she seemed happier to have been avoided like the gue.

    As for Ender and T they slightly bowed towards the old man and then also took their seats, which were near the one Daimon took, but still kept a respectable distance from him.

    Daimon waved his hand and took out arge purple book, which he opened and then threw at the old man.

    "The ones I killed were part of the business that the guy of the brothel was running, their names and blood signs are there, probably a safety measure of that sly guy", he said.

    Jeremy of course had some dirt on the people he worked with, just in case they ever thought of telling on him, he will bring them down along, and that worked in Daimon''s favor allowing him to get rid of the remaining scum.

    The old man read the book and his eye widened a bit as he gritted his teeth, the "business" they did, were perfectly detailed into it, butchering, human very, distribution of human meat, theft, kidnapping, and the list continued.

    "Now, that we have cleared that what happened a moment ago had a proper reason, let''s focus on how to solve this town''s situation, in a profitable way", said Daimon, not giving time for the old man to process what he just learned.

    Jeremy''s brothel has some history, it has been there since his father''s generation, but the other business he ran, is rtively new, at least the old man when he was still able to go out and make some rounds through the town, was sure that such a thing didn''t exist, it was around ten years ago when he had to enter seclusion, because of a dangerous wound he suffered in a battle against a magic beast.

    He survived, but until now his movement was quite limited, so he designated Hal who belonged to his family, but to a different branch to guard the granary and the storage as well to handle the protection of the town.

    He originally wanted Ender to take that role, but unfortunately the decision was taking though votes, and at that point, Jeremy had already bribed the people who just died a moment ago, not to mention the ones that were killed earlier, so Hal took the leadership.

    "Are you perhaps¡­ an adjudicator?", asked the old man to Daimon, who shook his head.

    "No, I''m just a passerby who ended up involved, I''ll leave in a few hours", he said as he stole a gaze at the short merchant Gary.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "W-Why should we believe you, with that strength you might be a hunting dog of the flesh-eating demons, killing them might just be due to internal conflict", said one of the remaining survivors.

    It''s worth mentioning that those who were still alive in the room, were people that actually worried about the town, they weren''t saints but at least they had some conscience and generated ie as well as some jobs from time to time, allowing the lower echelon to earn some money to eat.

    Unfortunately, those who were at the low part of the pyramid, were of course weak, and so they could only work in the mines or other manualbor, that didn''t require them to fight, which meant the pay wasn''t great also, but that still saved a ton of lives every year.

    "Well, I could kill and rob you all, just like I did to those who tried to attack me, but instead of that, I want to offer a deal, I happen to have gotten a lot of things that are useless for me, recently and I''m willing to sell them all for mana crystals".

    "Just give me all the mana crystals you have and the things I don''t take from the treasuries of those idiots, are yours, Ender show them the type of goods I''m talking about", he said.

    "Yes", Ender took out one of the many rings he had stuffed with the regr weapons, and other things that were found in Tom and Ric''s treasuries and poured the contents out on the table.

    Needless to say, but the chief and the other survivors were in awe¡­ at such a good deal, the things they were looking had, couldn''t be bought with mana crystals, they were magic equipment that thoughcked the capacity to integrate a beast core, had to be bought with cores, or magic beast''s meat and materials.

    "I also want some information and a few minor things as well, but nothing tooplicated", casually added Daimon.

    The chief and the merchant Gary were the first to answer.

    "Deal!", they both shouted at the same time, what a joke, the chief could use all these equipment, to form a self defense group out of the people of the town, a good weapon can make even a child a threat, and with Ender and T, in whom he trusted, they could be trained.

    Those weak people will gain some confidence by using such equipment, for free as even those who worked in mines, kept mana crystals as paperweight or decorations.

    As for Gary, he could use that equipment to convince his guards, to escort him to his destiny, as he was in a hurry, he only hated that he didn''t keep more mana crystals, but that gave the other people in the room to also join the deal.

    So, while their subordinates rushed towards their locals and houses, to get the mana crystals promised, with the guarantee that the town was perfectly safe to walk through right now, Daimon turned to see Gary and then took out the Arch ranked sword he got from Hal''s treasury.

    Gary is the merchant who has travelled the most in this town, and yet he didn''t have this type of equipment, with cores integrated into it, in his store, which has been bothering Daimon.

    "I want to know, why weren''t equipment like this one, offered in the stores, I mean the type to use cores, not necessarily Arch ranked ones", he said.

    Gary bitterly smiled in response.

    "Young master Gabriel must be ying with this merchant, in the area of the wastnd, no merchant has the resources to buy Beast Weapons to sell, in fact, in the wastnd area, they can only be bought from the ck market at the border Tiria city, the only "city" in the wastnd, and the one that is at the border of the outer region".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, first that was some valuable information, second Gary clearly had an expression of urgency when he mentioned that city, in other words, the reason as to why he was packing his stuff earlier, is because he wanted to go there, for some reason, which didn''t matter to Daimon.

    What was important, is that the merchant had the permit to go all the way to that ce, the outer region might not beparable to the central area, but they were still "habitable" areas there, in other words people could at least fill their stomachs there, unlike the wastnd region.

    "Merchant Gary, I happen to have another batch of those things, which I can give to you, in exchange for a ride to that Tiria city, what do you say", said Daimon.

    The merchant was charmed with the offer, since Daimon seemed interested in Beast Equipment, that was probably his goal, and he could enter Brown Wind town, so he isn''t a cannibal nor a wanted person, which means he''ll be getting some nice things in exchange for a ride, not to mention such a strong people would be good to have around in a dangerous travel.

    Of course, Daimon directed the attention to the Beast Equipment, because a person with unknown goals, is way more suspicious that one with a clear objective.

    "Sure, I have an empty space in my caravan, young master Gabriel can take one of the carriages, but I must say that I''m leaving as soon as possible tonight, is that okay?".

    Daimon nodded in response.

    "That''s perfect", he answered, at the same time, the subordinates that left earlier returned, they were sweating due to how they rushed to bring as many mana crystals ad they could find, including theirs.

    They respectfully ced around twenty of those bags, which were more spacious than the rings of the majority of people, with the exception of Jeremy, Hal and Ismael, on the table for Daimon to inspect them.

    With a quick peek, Daimon was amazed at the amount of mana crystals he was seeing, though there were only around a hundred million of them, these were high grade ones, Daimon couldn''t help but smirk behind his mask, with this he could help those two advance a bit faster.

    Half Emperors can only use high grade mana crystals for cultivation, but the production at the four gxies isn''t enough for a constant flow of them, each year a few millions of them being mined was a great harvest.

    The same applied to Neptune, low and middle grade ones were abundant, but high-grade ones weren''t, it''s for that same reason that maximum experts, like Calvin''s grandfather, Vincent or Aurora, were quite old, it took them hundreds of thousands of years, to advance naturally, while using some crystals here and there.

    Of course, they could use the ones their respective forces got, but then Ster ranked things were valued most of the times, in high grade crystals too, so they couldn''t just keep them for themselves, otherwise their forces will be outdated.

    Daimon kept the bags in his inventory, toter give her part to Sarah, since she also owned some of the things that were given to the chief and the others.

    Speaking of the crazy girl, she wasn''t as interested in the crystals as she was in the invisible to others, screen that appeared in front of Daimon, the moment he took the crystals.

    When he reduced the number of living people, he already made the number of reserves in the granary more abundant, as there were less mouths to feed, the chief also changes some of the equipment with Gary for food, so the shortage of rations was over.

    As for the origin of the problem, the problem of this town is that the rtion betweenmon people and fighters, was too unbnced, there were too few mages or knights, which will change with the massive amount of decent equipment they got.

    The other problem was corruption, and while there will always be a dark side to anything in this world, the ones who purposedly created chaos were dead, or on their way to hell, in Jeremy''s case.

    [Congrattion, you have sessfully eliminated the source of troubles in Brown Wind town, please choose your reward:

    [Hero Shield (It can block up to five attacks from any native of Kerrol)]

    [Hero Sword (It can inflict a lethal wound in any native of Kerrol up to five times)]

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the reward had nothing to do with Jasmine, the rewards were quite basic as well, still he didn''t pick anything yet, because he was in public, there was also no other notification appearing, either from fake or from his own system.

    "I''ll be returning to the inn, see you in an hour", said Daimon to Gary, as he stood up and then left followed by Sarah, Gary also left not too long after.

    Ender and T stayed behind as well as the old man.

    "If they weren''t adjudicators, could it be that they escaped a human farm?", asked the old man, to which Ender and T nodded.

    "Most likely¡­ I can''t believe he basically gifted us all the equipment from those treasuries, though they probably don''t care, it is still a life-saving grace for the town", said T.

    "Maybe they are going to the front to fight with the flesh eating demons, with their strength it shouldn''t be a problem, unless a noble appeared", added Ender.

    Their journey with those two mysterious people was over, they had to focus on the town now¡­ or so they thought, but who knows what the future awaits.

 Chapter 484 Difference In Results & Setting Out

    ?

    Before they left to deal with the many urging things they had to do, Ender turned to see the old chief, who turned out to be called Collins.

    The old man was looking at a small transparent vial which contained a light green liquid, with aplex expression on his face.

    "What''s the matter old man, you better drink that¡­ I can''t possibly make it out without you to nagging me every day", said Ender.

    The bottle that the old man had in his hands, was a recovery potion that Daimon gave him, apparently the alchemy in this world was quite out of date, simr to rune mastering, as theck of mass produced, efficient storage rings, suggested.

    Not only that, but the magic beasts of this ce were far more dangerous than the ones of the four gxies, or even Neptune, in a sense at least.

    Previously Daimon didn''t understand why the old man, hadn''t recovered from that wound he suffered, even after ten years.

    Back at the four gxies, even a deep wound could be healed with enough low-grade recovery potions, and some healing spells, as long as there wasn''t a need to regrow apletely severed limb, or an organ, the potions will patch things up.

    But apparently in this world, to heal a wound cased by a magic beast, a potion made with simr ranked materials or spells was needed, in other words, the old man who was wounded by a middle stage Arch rank magic beast, needed a potion on the same grade, or a healer on the same grade, it was a rather interesting thing for Daimon.

    The only thing he could think of, was that there was something different with the magic beasts of this ce, probably rted to the fact that even Lord ranked ones had cores, because even if humans didn''t have as much vitality as most of the other races, they still improved as they advanced, and the old man is a knight, in fact he used to be a peak Lord rank, but after being wounded, his real regressed as he ended in a bad state.

    "I will, I can''t imagine someone way stronger than me bothering in trying to poison me or something like that, I was just admiring such a refined potion".

    "Do you know that all the recovery potions are red colored, because the main ingredient is the blood of magic beasts, sure there are insects whose blood is green, but they aren''t suited to create potions with recovery properties, since their blood is like acid¡­ even the potions made with humans that the flesh eating demons drink like wine, are deep red colored", said Collins as he unplugged the bottle and directly drank its content.

    Not even a secondter a dark gray fog was expulsed out of his body, taking the form of a scorpion which then faded away, the old man whose eyes were glowing took his shirt off, and removed some bandages that were wrapped around is abdomen, just in time to see the wound that has been tormenting him for ten years, disappear without a trace, he then stood up and stretched his body, before releasing his battle aura.

    The previously lustercking hair of the old man recovered some color, and his stance straightened a bit, it was as if he had rejuvenated from being in his seventies, to be in his fifties.

    "Damn, it really was an Arch ranked recovery potion, in fact it might have been a peak grade one!", eximed Ender, the potions he knew will heal the wound, but helping on the post recovery was another thing.

    The old man was amazed at the result too, with some training and time, he should recover his previous realm, not only that, but he felt that there was an advance approaching him.

    ''I couldn''t tell the rank of the potion they gave me¡­ just who are those two?'', wondered Collins.

    While Ender and T were celebrating the recovery of the old man, Daimon and Sarah were about to arrive at the inn, the crazy had a curious expression on her face as she asked.

    "Why did you give him a star ranked recovery potion, if you wanted to make him suffer, why not a poison?", she asked.

    Daimon was speechless.

    "Hey, do you think I torture people for fun¡­", even before he could finish, the crazy girl softlyughed as she said.

    "Yes, I have arge rack of different ones to try in my ring, we can have some fun with themter~".

    Daimon sighed in response.

    "It was a little experiment, I told Ender toe see me if the potion didn''t work, that old man must have drunk it at this point, so that means it worked, in other words, a low-grade star ranked potion, cured a former peak Knight Lord", he said.

    In exchange for helping the old man, Daimon made him participate in a little experiment, he wanted to know what would happen to a native of this ce, when interacting with things from his world.

    To be honest, with all the mana crystals he got from the old man, it was fair that Daimon helped him this way at least, so if that potion wasn''t enough, he would have given him one of the many that he has in his inventory for this kind of cases, which are all peak Arch ranked ones.

    "Also, aren''t we going to interrogate that idiot, why the inn instead of that guy''s headquarters?", asked Sarah.

    "We are going to interrogate him, but I doubt he knows what we want to know, so we''ll use the little fish to bait the big one, also that strangemunication scroll doesn''t work inside the town, it''s probably rted to that "purification" mentioned by that guy with the big sword at the roof of the inn", answered Daimon.

    "Mm", the crazy girl nodded, a few secondster they were back at the inn, since Daimon used blink when they left, and blink to return, the girl at the counter didn''t even notice that they left earlier.

    Daimon then looked at the notification from earlier, the one that gave him the chance to choose his reward, he didn''t even have to think on what he was going to choose.

    In terms of offensive, he didn''tck at all, both he and Sarah were attack type knights, and with Core Synchrony, he was even less worried in terms of offensive, but defending is harder than attacking, so he naturally chose the shield.

    [Congrattions, you have obtained the "Hero Shield"]

    The moment Daimon selected the reward he wanted, the notification changed and then disappeared, as a palm sized golden colored shield appeared in front of him, the design was pretty basic, a t triangle shape with some engravings here and there.

    Daimon grabbed it and the think stuck to his belt automatically, the only thing he could see with his infinity eyes was that there was a counter above the shield [Uses 5/5], indicating how many times it could block attacks.

    Needless to say, but the crazy girl was marveled at the whole process, she even tried to take the shield but it didn''t budge, so she then tried to hug Daimon, just to be easily avoided.

    "I''ll take a short bath, you can join me if you want to¡­", Sarah gave Daimon a tempting gaze, as she walked towards the bathroom, just to be directly turned down.

    "No", the crazy girl giggled and then happily frolicked into the bathroom, which made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch.

    ¡­

    While Daimon was fighting against the urge to leave the crazy girl behind, ande pick her up after finding Jasmine, at another part of Kerrol, far away from Brown Wind town, which was still upied by the huge wastnd that seemed to extend infinitely, there was a town of simr size.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    But with apletely different current state, more than half of the town had turned into a disaster area, with all the buildings copsed, corpses here and there and even burning houses.

    While the town people were setting the fire out and cleaning the debris, there was a building which remained intact, inside of it, at the main room, which the previous chief used to own, there was a blond-haired young man, with an aggrieved expression, sitting alone on a bed.

    "Damn it Ariel, why the hell didn''t you tell me that the penalization was that other people, would suddenly turn out to be enemies, I can''t believe that just for having taken a few things from the treasuries of those guys, the chief would be "evil" and try to attack me, along with the army that helped me subdue the previous enemies".

    "And what''s worse¡­ the women in this town are either dead, ugly or fucking whores from the brothels, what the hell, the only decent one was the daughter of the chief and she self-destroyed her magic core in a try to kill me!", shouted Adam at the angel girl floating in front of him with a bored expression.

    "I told you that this wasn''t like the missions from the system, whatever this ce is, the system doesn''t react to it nor interferes with it, you could have epted the reward from the chief, but you wanted the girl and the treasure, not my problem", said the angel girl with an emotionless voice.

    "Ah damn it, this is so fucking annoying, even the reward was just a damn dagger which can hurt a native of this world, once, what the hell kind of reward is this", he said as he looked at the bronze-colored dagger in his hand.

    The more he looked at it, the angrier he got, after going through so much trouble and having to fight basically since he entered the town, because the bandits that infiltered the town, saw him with the daughter of the chief.

    He had to see his target, in other words, the daughter of the chief, try to kill him all of a sudden, when they were having a dinner, he was about to take her to his bed, and then she went crazy, to make things worse, the chief casually entered just to see his daughter die, and then dere him an enemy of the town.

    The as if the mansion of the chief had gained a life of its own, everything tried to capture him or attack him, it didn''t stop until he used one of his strongest martial arts to st away the chief, as well as the other people that were attacking him.

    Only then the madness stopped, and the remaining people of the town, thanked him for having killed the "tyrant" that was oppressing them, which didn''t match with what he knew from a few hours ago, which was that the chief was a respected and wise leader, that was being threatened with the life of his daughter, by a group of bandits, in other words, the mission took a 180¡ã turn, for the worse as a penalization for him trying to trick the daughter of the chief, who though thankful, wasn''t throwing herself at him, until he used his "blessing", not only to get what he wanted, but to make her give him some nice things from the chief''s treasury "willingly".

    "Screw it, let''s go to the next town mentioned by the chief, there should be some decent girls there, I need a rest from this stupid ce", said Adam, the angel girl disappeared as he stood up from the bed.

    He looked at what used to be a treasury full of valuables, which turned into a ck waste, as part of his penalization for being greedy, and gritted his teeth.

    "What the hell, I can''t get women, I can''t get treasures, then what the hell is the purpose of this mission, wasn''t it a ce that will benefit me", said Adam as he kicked the wall destroying it and then jumped out of the building.

    He took a carriage from one of the many dead merchants and then set out to the next town, which was supposedly way more civilized than this one.

    Without him noticing, a ck robed figure was observing everything from the roof of one of the many burning buildings, but even when the town people were using water to put out the fire, they not only couldn''t see it, but the water went through it.

    The figure then turned into wisps of ck smoke, as if it was never there to begin with, coincidentally, the fire which was still burning some buildings, was put out, but at the same time some screams could be heard through the town, as some people suffered lethal idents, losing their lives.

    ¡­

    Back at Brown Wind town, once Sarah finished her bath, Daimon also took one, he had to ask Rita to chain the crazy girl up with her shadow threads, because she kept trying to barge in, saying that she will "wash his back", while she had a predacious gaze on her eyes.

    Only after Daimon had cleaned himself, he changed into the Hollow Suit, put on his mask and then left the bathroom, just to be met with the weird scene of Sarah being restrained in a strange position.

    Her legs and arms were on her back and tied together, while she was hanging from the roof, there were also some threads covering her eyes.

    "Sorry, but she kept staring at the bath¡­ so I thought that maybe she could see through the walls, at least she didn''t try to melt the threads though", said Rita from within Daimon''s shadow.

    "Why would I, it was my fated one the one that ordered you to tie me, it''s as if he did it himself, ah, this is how our honeymoon should be~", mumbled the crazy girl, making Daimon sigh.

    Rita undid the shadow threads and Sarah fell to the ground, but stood up quite fast, the hour they took to rest and refresh was now gone, Daimon did so, because the travel will take at least a day, in the wilderness with nomodities.

    "Let''s go", said Daimon, allowing the crazy girl to hold onto his shoulder, against all his desires, to use blink.

    ''I really need toe up with a way that doesn''t require direct or indirect contact'', he thought as they both disappeared from the room.

    The short merchant was already waiting for them, in front of Ender''s headquarters, the caravan consisted in five rough and durable looking carriages containing goods, among which the two prisoners, in other words, Jeremy and the woman called Beni were hidden.

    And three more decent looking carriages for personnel, one for Gary and his assistant, an average looking woman in her early thirties, one for the guards and one for Daimon, who already knew he will have to travel in the same enclosed space with the crazy girl.

    He even saw the merchant giving him thumbs up with a knowing gaze, as he entered his carriage, which made Daimon bitterly smile.

    Sarah who was already inside of the carriage, patted the ce next to her as she invited Daimon to enter.

    Luckily the carriage was quite spacious, and there were three rows of merged seats, with a soft cushion-like cover, so Daimon simplyid down on one of them, separated from Sarah and closed his eyes.

    "Young Gabriel, we''ll pass the mine area as you wished, since it is in your route, the old chief has already told the guards, we''ll contact you once we reach it, enjoy the travel", the voice of the merchant came from amunication array engraved on a table that was ced at one of the corners of the carriage.

    It was a one-sided channel, unless both parties agreed tomunicate, for privacy reasons of course, Daimon didn''t bother to answer, but he did speak to the crazy girl who was eyeing him from the row behind his.

    "If you try anything, Rita will throw you out of the carriage, sleep, we''ll need to be in our best conditions for what will happen next, it''s for Jasmine''s sake, okay?".

    "Mm, okay", for a change the crazy girl behaved, she amodated on the sofa-like seat and then closed her eyes to sleep.

    ''And here I was thinking that not getting another mission was enough to be excluded from this farse, but it seems like this ce is set to cause annoying situations, no matter what you do'', he thought as his mana sense scanned all the carriages, stopping for a momment in the guard''s one.

    ''Whatever, I''ll just have to deal with it,ter'', he thought as he entered thend of dreams.

 Chapter 485 Mine & Flesh Eating Demons (Part 1)

    ?

    The caravan formed by seven carriages and some which were surprisingly all in the Lord rank, riding on top of all the carriages with the exception of Daimon''s, in which there was only a coachman, advanced through the wastnd.

    Surprisingly, contrary to all expectations, magic beasts didn''t increase their activity at night, in fact, during the blood moon week, even the magic beasts felt afraid of the almost lightless night.

    Naturally the guards and the merchant would have been the same, if they weren''t using special magicmps, on all the carriages which illuminated the area in one hundred meters, and also kept the cold away from them.

    Still, there were some eyes coldly ring at them, since a source of light moving in the darkness was quite eye-catching, but the merchant was prepared and used a powder that would scare away all the beasts whose realms were lower than the middle stage of the Lord rank.

    Under normal circumstances that wouldn''t be enough to travel through the wastnd at night, were the magic beasts lived in packs.

    But during the blood moon week, unless they passed through the specific area where a middle stage Lord rank or above, magic beast, lived, then there would be no problem, as the scouting magic beasts would coward in their own hideouts.

    Merchants, of course had to be informed of the safest routes, and Gary had paid a lot to secure a route to the next cities, in which it was confirmed that strong magic beasts didn''t live.

    Of course, this safe travel will onlyst until they reach thest of the five cities in which Gary has been, after that, they will have to be more careful, but that''s why he was going to hire more guards in the nearby cities.

    Originally, he was going to hire Hal among the guards, since Ismael was a certified douchebag, but now that Hal died, then he directly left to the next town, luckily, he found that couple whose strength should be enough to reach the next town easily.

    But before that, they had to take a stop at the mining area near Brown Wind town, which was located underground at three hundred kilometers from it.

    Around an hour after they left Brown Wind town, the caravan reached a small outpost in front of a rock formation, and stopped outside of it.

    At the same time, inside of Daimon''s carriage, Daimon''s shadow waved a bit, before Rita''s soft voice could be hearding from it.

    "We have arrived at the mine, young¡­ Gabriel", the self-imed head maid, nearly called Daimon young master, but she stopped midway.

    Daimon''s eyelids trembled a bit before he opened them, with his high vitality, unless he emptied his battle aura reservespletely, an hour of sleep was enough to be at his prime.

    He stood up from the cushion covered seat, and turned to see the crazy girl, for a split of a second, Daimon was surprised.

    ''She actually looks like a normal person when she is asleep'', he thought, he was woken out of his daze, when the crazy girl suddenly jumped at him.

    Daimon still managed to dodge, so Sarah fell on the seat which Daimon was previously using as his bed.

    "Can''t you give it a rest for once¡­", Daimon wanted to scold her, but was rendered speechless when he saw her, rubbing her face on the cushion, where he had his face resting a second ago.

    Daimon felt his right eyebrow twitch, he grabbed Sarah by the cor of her blouse and lifted her up to drag her out of the carriage, just to be seen by the guards that were sent by Gary to knock on the door of the carriage.

    Needless to say, but being treated "roughly" by Daimon, made the crazy girl joyously smile, so the guards of course misinterpreted what was happening, Daimon could feel the using, knowing and even some jealous gazes on him, which made him sigh.

    To Sarah''s displease, he let go of her and then walked towards the entrance to the mine, where Gary was already talking with the people stationed there to keep an eye on it.

    Which were only a few early-stage Lord ranks, for a simple reason, no one really wanted to rob mana crystals, in fact even magic beasts weren''t interested in them, so they didn''t approach, making it a rtively safe area, that''s why weak and normal people could work in the mine.

    "He is the person mentioned in the letter of the old chief, young Gabriel", Gary took the initiative to present Daimon to the one in charge of guarding the mine area, a man who seemed to be in histe twenties, who resembled the old Collins a bit.

    "I can''t believe that the old man finally was able to get rid of those idiots, he is even cured, those are some nice news", mumbled the man, Daimon wasn''t interested in that so he directly went straight to what he was looking for here.

    "So, have you seen a ce in any of the mines that fulfills the description in that letter?", asked Daimon.

    Riman thought about it for a couple of seconds, before he pointed at a small dark brown patch ofnd far away from the principal area of the mine.

    "The underground area of that ce fits the description, I have seen a small patch of dark brown earth deep inside the main mine, but the temperature and pressure down there is insane, that idiot Ismael once came to take a look but couldn''t even set a foot into that ce".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, he nodded at Sarah and the crazy girl went to retrieve the two prisoners from the cargo, just to casually drag them along as she returned to Daimon''s side.

    "We''ll return in a moment, I suggest you don''te no matter what you hear, unless you want to die of course", said Daimon as he walked towards the area signaled by Riman.

    Riman frowned, but Gary simply shook his head at him.

    "They were the ones who cleaned the town, I wouldn''t go against them if I were you, in any case those two were going to be executed", he said.

    Ultimately, Riman limited to nod and then returned to his own duty, while Gary ordered the guards to ce a temporal campfire, so that they could have a warm meal in the meantime.

    ¡­

    Sarah who was dragging Jeremy and Beni through the ground, casually making them hit some stones just for her amusement, and to the anger of those two who woke up while they were still trapped inside one of the carriages, turned to see Daimon to say.

    "So, what''s in that ce, after getting all those mana crystals, it must be something even more valuable than that right?", she curiously asked.

    "Do you know why even though high-grade mana crystals though can be found, there is no constant flow of them?", said Daimon.

    "Beats me, probably mom knows about it", answered the crazy girl with a shrug, making Daimon chuckle.

    "Even normal mines can give birth to some high-grade mana crystals, but for them to be constant, there is a need for something called "Mine Core", which is basically an agglomeration of mana encased into a rock with millions of years of age, as far as I know, no one has managed to get one, because they are often buried near the core of the".

    "Even if the is destroyed, in a try to get it, the thing will disperse for some unknown reason, so it can''t be forcibly obtained, also once some of the energy contained in it, leaks, that''s when high grade mana crystals form, way above it, the mines that produce high grade mana crystals are formed that way".

    "Who would have thought that one of those things, will be blooming near the surface right there", said Daimon as he pointed at the patch of dark brownnd a few meters away from them.

    If you wonder why Daimon knows about this particr subject, the answer is simple, those mine cores are the contrary of antinite, since instead of restraining mana they boost it naturally, without the need of any formations, and without any element restrictions, unlike unexplored elemental mana crystal mines, Daimon investigated the subject to help Narasha dissolve and absorb the cover of antinite that hasn''t been fully removed from Disaster''s de up to this day yet, but that option was discarded soon.

    And now, all that research paid off, he thought that since there were so much high-grade mana crystals produced in this ce, there might be a mine core which hasn''t been exploited yet, and he was right.

    ''I have been thinking about it¡­ but maybe all the mana of the forest that used to be the wastend, filtered into the ground back at the first blood moon mentioned by Ender, otherwise, there is no way that a mine core would appear so close to the surface'', thought Daimon.

    Still, it''s not like anyone could take it just because it''s near the surface, byw, something that can empower Ster ranks, can also harm them, in other words, under normal circumstances, to take a mine core a Ster rank is needed too.

    And judging by what Daimon has seen, there is a 90% chance that Ster ranks doesn''t exist here, maybe half ster do though, but they would be early-stage old fogeys with a foot into the grave, at least that was Daimon''s calction.

    Luckily, there were some things that ignored realm levels, like the inventory for example, but before that, Daimon needed to call some people to help him reach the mine core.

    Once they reached the patch of brownnd, Daimon walked into the entrance to the excavated part that the miners made, before they had to stop due to the zing heat that assaulted them.

    It was a tunnel of around fifteen meters deep, Daimon narrowed his eyes and then activated his infinity eyes just for a split of a second, it was as if everything had gone nk for him.

    The brightness that he was seeing, was such, that a drop of blood came from his eyes, which he had to close almost immediately.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    The crazy girl threw Jeremy and Beni against the wall, and rushed next to Daimon with a genuinely worried expression, this time Daimon didn''t avoid her, since she just approached to give him a recovery potion she had in her ring.

    "Here, can you drink it¡­ if you can''t, I can give it to you with my mouth~", she said trying to lessen the tense atmosphere.

    Daimon chuckled, he took the potion from her and drank it, to be honest, he just needed to keep his eyes closed a moment, for his retinas which nearly melted, to fully heal, but the potion did help him.

    Daimon opened his eyes and blinked a few times, once he confirmed everything was okay, he returned the bottle to Sarah.

    "Thanks", he didn''t say to much, but the crazy girl still sweetly smiled at him, Daimon then walked towards the east wall and used one of his ws to draw a cross on the rock.

    "Now then, how about you start talking, how many of those things will that scroll call to your aid, I know there is a portable gate array engraved into it", said Daimon to Jeremy whose face paled.

    Sarah removed the cloth which was preventing Jeremy from talking, and seeing that he wasn''t answering, she kicked his face, making a couple of teeth to fly out of his mouth, before she pointed at his left foot.

    "Aghhh, wait I-I''ll talk!!!", seeing the flesh of his left shin falling of his bone, which caused him an insane amount of pain, Jeremy immediately gave in, not enduring even half a minute of torture.

    "Oh,e on, at least let me have some fun, I have to drag you all the way here you know", said the crazy girl with a pout.

    The way of how she casually mentioned such a thing, made Jeremy try to get away from her, while the woman called Beni was trembling in fear.

    Feeling Daimon''s gaze on her, the crazy girl happily frolicked towards him, stopping at his side, since she didn''t try to jump onto him, Daimon didn''t avoid her, though she was quite close to him.

    "If I detect even the smaller lie, you''ll be her test subject", said Daimon, which made Jeremy immediately spill the beans.

    "I''ll talk, but you must sign a blood contract to let me go, those guys will appear here and once they notice I called them into a trap, they''ll hunt me down".

    Just when Sarah was about to give Jeremy another taste of her poison battle aura, Daimon shook his head and then used one of those blood contracts to make a vow.

    "Sure, I''m not interested in you, but in the flesh-eating demons anyway, I promise that neither one of the two of us, nor the guys outside will do anything to you, now talk", he ordered.

    Beni wasn''t included in the deal, but Jeremy didn''t care, very much to the anger of the woman who was still restrained at the corner of the room, with a hatred filled expression on her face.

    "That is a blood portal scroll, it is a legacy knowledge of the flesh eating demons, that only the nobles among them can put their hands on, the one I got is a simplified one, since I got it from the son of a Blood Earl, who I happened to have encountered and managed to convince of letting me serve under him".

    "So, who wille if you call them through that scroll?", asked Daimon.

    "That guy likes to inspect the "goods" first hand, so he alwayses himself, apanied by two peak Lord stage bodyguards, though they are secondary branch nobles, they aren''t far from the level that Blood Viscounts have", answered Jeremy in a hurry.

    Daimon nodded and then threw the scroll at Jeremy before saying.

    "Call them".

    Jeremy nodded, while he was inwardly sinisterlyughing.

    ''You arrogant fool, during blood moon week, all the nobles get a boost, those two should be early-stage Arch ranks as of current, that bitch has a strong poison affinity, so she should be of the liking of that psycho, I''ll use her as an offering'', he thought as he opened the scroll.

    Daimon didn''t open the scroll earlier, he could tell that it had some spatial properties thanks to his infinity eyes, but now that it was open, he couldn''t help but frown, the thing stank of blood.

    It was a really pungent smell of blood, also there was no runes on it, but the draw of an emblem in red ink, with a beast core embedded into the center of the thing.

    Now Daimon understood why only those so-called nobles had these things on their hands, that was an early-stage Arch rank beast core, and Daimon could tell that it was going to be destroyed after a single use.

    That being said, such a thing shouldn''t be enough to safely create a portal to wherever those guys lived, especially with the outdated technology that this ce had, which made Daimon feel interested into it.

    ''Liz will have so many things to y with once I return'', he thought.

    Daimon came out of his daze when he saw Jeremy cutting his palm, to let arge amount of blood fall on the scroll, the thing absorbed the blood and the red emblem shone, before it left the scroll, to float a few meters in front of him.

    A breach on the space opened, and after a few seconds, a group of three people came out of it.

    Two women in theirte twenties and a man who was in his early twenties to be specific, though the women were exuding the pressure of early stage Archknights, the man who was only a middle stage Knight Lord, was walking a meter ahead of them.

    "Finally, you called, you bastard, I was already starting to get impatient, you better tell me that you were able to only get female meat as I ordered, otherwise my party will be ruined, which will result in your death of course".

    Daimon was a bit surprised looking at the neer, they all had pale skin and blond hair, the two women had brown eyes, while the guy who was speaking with arrogance, had blue eyes, it''s not that Daimon is too fixated on looks, but certainly they were above average in terms of appearance.

    But that wasn''t what caught his attention, but the fact that they gave a somewhat familiar sensation, a sensation simr as the one of vampires, but different at the same time.

    [Ding]

    [Ghoul Lineage detected in the vicinity, collecting and reining it will be positive to the host]

    Daimon was a bit bothered that this didn''t trigger a mission, but Evangeline had already told him, that this ce would make it really hard for that to happen, in exchange she adjusted the system to temporarily notify him if there was anything rted to the missions or objectives that were active, in this case the goal was toplete his and Aisha''s original vampire lineage.

    "Oi, what the hell is this ce, why do you always call me in such obscure locations, well, I guess you''ll be hanged if others see you with me¡­", said the arrogant guy as he walked towards Jeremy, who immediately rushed and grabbed onto the guy''s legs.

    "Young master Dn, I found you a special toy, but I was betrayed and now they want to kill us all, please save me so that I can keep serving you!", he shouted, not forgetting to point at Sarah when he said the word "toy".

    Dn didn''t put that much attention to Jeremy, he instead whistled as he gazed at Sarah.

    "Oh, damn, I was about to kill you for being stupid, but I must admit that this is some really top level material, not even those old fogey Dukes get to enjoy such a delicacy more than once every thousand years, good job, I''ll give you some hunting dogs in reward, now get out of my way, I''m feeling quite energetic tonight so I''ll¡­", before Dn could finish his sentence, his legs and Jeremy''s arms turned into puddles of flesh and melted bones.

    "Aghhh!", both the master and the dog, shouted in unison.

    "Young master!", the women were the same, the both released their battle auras, which were light red blood colored, and proposed to crush the girl who attacked their young master, but then they felt as if a mountain fell on their backs.

    "Blegh!", they were shouting when they suddenly were pressured from above, so they closed their mouths and cut their own tongues by ident, and that wasn''t all.

    "Booom!", Daimon appeared behind of them an grabbed the two women by their necks, smacking them against the ground, making them sink a whole meter into the durable rock floor.

    Blood could be seening from the area where their faces were located.

    "I''ll leave the pair of idiots to you, now that thest materials I needed are here, I''ll go get that thing", said Daimon as he lifted the two women whose faces were a bloody mess, which had started to heal already.

    "Fang less huh, I guess you are outdated even in terms of lineage, that would exin why you need flesh and not only blood at the very least", said Daimon as he walked towards the wall in which he carved a cross earlier.

 Chapter 486 Mine & Flesh Eating Demons (Part 2)

    ?

    Back at the Immortal Gxy, it is thoroughly known that only trash level lineage vampires are obligated to drink blood.

    Those who have even the slightest shred of the lineage of the three major noble ns, in other words, the Naktis, the Nosfear and the Silverheart families, aren''t forced to drink blood to survive.

    That being said, they instinctively have a desire to do so, either for pleasure or power, at least the vast majority, with the exception of those with high purity lineages, like Aisha.

    Vampires hate being lumped in together with the undead who consume flesh of other rational humanoid beings, most of the cases, humans.

    Because they think of themselves as superior nobility, while being proud of their above average looks, they disdain undead as ugly and savage beings.

    Which is why, vampires who go astray and consume flesh and not only blood, are captured and executed, not as a reparation towards the victim or to put them out of their misery, but because they consider them a disgrace.

    ''Guess I''ll take a sample of the guy, for the time being since he is the son of an Earl, which should be an Arch rank at least'', thought Daimon as he walked towards the wall with the mark.

    Why didn''t he consider taking blood from the two women he was holding by their necks, you wonder, the answer is simple, because there isn''t going to be anything left of them in a moment.

    "Crack!", under the terrified gazes of Jeremy, Dn and Beni, Daimon''s grip tightened as he crushed the necks of the two women killing them on the spot.

    They were knights yes, but unlike him, whose body is innately monstrously tough, and has no need to increase his physical strength with battle aura, normal knights have to use their battle aura to use their whole strength, without that, they can at most draw out half of their power.

    And with they being immobilized by Daimon''s Overlord''s Pride, let alone move, they couldn''t even circte their battle aura anymore, it was more surprising for him that they didn''t have any life-saving measure, but considering the outdated rune mastering level of this ce, it made sense, they were just guards after all.

    Daimon''s hand covered in white mes which then spread to the bodies of the two women, he didn''t kill them out of mercy so that they wouldn''t suffer being burned alive by his Demon Light.

    But because certainly their screams would have been annoying, as he wasn''t going to be able to use his sight where he was going.

    "Booom!", with a swift movement, Daimon kicked the wall, making the cave tremble and opening a hole into it, revealing a hollow space from which an insanely high temperature could be felt.

    It was hot to the point that the opening turned red hot in a matter of second, the heat was contained because the other side of the wall was covered in some kind of ore that was isting it.

    Daimon covered his body in his white mes, and then jumped into the hole in the wall, disappearing from the sight of the presents in the cave.

    Dn observed the whole thing and he was as pale as paper, as he coldly red at Jeremy.

    "You bastard, even from this far I can feel my skin burning and that monster just casually jumped into the source of the heat, if you want to die that''s your problem why the hell did you dragged me into this¡­ aghhh!".

    Dn was in the middle ofining, when Sarah casually kicked his face once again.

    "Why was that!", he eximed, just to feel a vein bulging on his neck when the crazy girl spoke with a bored voice.

    "Just killing time until my beloved returns", she said to then kick Jeremy this time, the cave was soon filled with loud screams and wails, which were heard by the Gary and the others who were standing far from that ce while keeping guard just in case.

    ¡­

    While the crazy girl was giving Jeremy and Dn a nice beating, Daimon descended through the hollow space that led deep into the ground, the more he advanced the higher the temperature.

    The walls were covered in that ore which was isting the heat, keeping it under the melting point of the rocks, that were reinforced by mana to begin with.

    This insane heat is why he called the flesh-eating demons, or ghouls to be more urate, before jumping down here, though he had some anti-fire protections in his clothes which were his armor, and his body was highly resistant against fire.

    The first was kept for an emergency, and this didn''t count as one, and he wasn''t arrogant enough to believe he could use his body to withstand heat that could burn a peak Arch rank away with his bare body.

    So, he used the propagation property of his Demon Light, which worked better in organic material, in this case the two corpses which were being used as fuel to increase the power of the white mes without Daimon needing to supply more of them, but just keeping some control over them, to protect himself against the high temperature,bined with the natural boost to his mana which came with using Core Synchrony, he was just in the state but didn''t use more mana than to lit up the corpses, so that he would get no bacsh from it, he wanted to keep Sanctuary just in case.

    In truth, Demon light wasn''t fire, it wasn''t hot, unless he changed theposition to include more fire mana, in which case, they were hotter than even Liz''s fire if they were at the same level, the properties they attained if all the energies involved in their creation were bnced, was not only all the ones of the elements that Daimon put into it, but an extra destructive power, with an exponential strength akin to the number of energies that conformed it.

    This property of propagation was obtained thanks to the fire mana contained in it though, with his body covered in white mes, and the two corpses slowly turning into more white mes, Daimon soonnded, he used blink a couple of times to slow his fall, because he didn''t want to make the cave crumble by ident.

    ''Even if it''s close enough to create that dark brown area, it was still a fall of around thirty kilometers, I guess it''s really good, considering the guys who have seen a mine core, were tens of thousands of kilometers into thoses'', he thought.

    As for the signals of brownnd seen by Riman, in the main mine, they were at around three hundred kilometers into the ground, and that was only the surface area formed around the mine core, the thing should be at least a couple of thousands of kilometers deeper, which is still incredibly superficial for those who know about mine cores.

    That''s why he counted himself lucky, to have been able to find a mine core that was forming so close to the surface.

    Seeing that the fuel of his Demon Light was holding pretty good, Daimon walked towards the origin of all this heat, or more urately to the thing that was amplifying the heat that was stored underground due to the high temperature of the wastnd, which was constantly released.

    And soon he found himself in front of a fifty meter unperfect spheric pale rock, the area of fifty meters surrounding it, wasva, and the walls of this part of the underground cave had crystalized due to the heat.

    But the area twenty meters around the rock was perfectly fine, in fact it didn''t even look as if it was hot in there at all, and that''s how it should be, otherwise, Daimon would have cursed.

    "It hasn''t broken its outer protection yet, it''s an immacte mine core¡­ damn", Daimon smirked behind his mask, an element less mine core was the jackpot, if he could take it, then he they can turn it into a mine of high purity mana crystals, or turn into a mine of element mana crystals, there were many possibilities appearing in Daimon''s mind right now.

    But first he had to get it, the reason as to why the heat of this ce was so high, was because the natural heat of the underground area of the wastnd, was being amplified by the mine core, naturally the amplifying effect of something that could produce high grade mana crystals, was really strong.

    Even with all the protection he had, without actively using the effects hidden in his clothes, he had already started to feel the heat, luckily while others would probably fry the moment they tried to fly or jump over that sea of magma, he simply used blink and appeared in the area of twenty meters around the pale spherical rock.

    The heat and any difort immediately disappeared, this was a "safe zone", created around the rock, for self-preservation purposes, as it will break its outeryer on its own, when the time for ites.

    Daimon let out a sigh of relief, once he was ten meters afar from the rock, he knew it could be stored in the inventory, though so far it hasn''t failed him once, being able to even contain something like Disaster which couldn''t be stored in anything so far, he doesn''t know the limits of the inventory.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    With a single thought, the pale rock disappeared, and Daimon did so too in a split of a second, just in time before the sea of magma which wasn''t being repelled anymore, converged into the previously safe zone.

    Sarah who has gotten bored of kicking Jeremy and Dn, suddenly brightly smiled, as she saw Daimon appearing out of thin air, in the previous spot in which he was when he smacked the two women on the ground.

    Daimon coughed a couple of times, as he deactivated Core Synchrony, the two corpses burned on the spot when the rock was taken into the inventory, due to the insanely hot magma, he used to immediately return to where he left the mark earlier.

    But he still got his by some of the zing heat, it was a fraction of a second, and he temporarily felt as a non-smoker in a smoking zone, but it soon returned to normal.

    ''Damn, magma produced by natural mana amplification is sure something'', he thought.

    [Ding]

    [New skills have been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Lava Affinity (Passive)]

    Daimon couldn''t help but smile, it hasn''t been a while since he got a special affinity at Neptune, and now he got a second one, though he could createva by using both a fire and an earth element spell at the same time, he didn''t have this affinity.

    That girl called Riley left quite an impression in Aisha back at the Academy, simple affinities weren''t that hard to get, Aura helped him obtain them, but that way they were rather weak, the only ones in which he was highly skilled from the very beginning, were darkness and poison, since he got them by himself when he was not even a mage, from the Manticore.

    Maybe because the system needed another update, but he couldn''t see the level of his affinities, luckily, he could more or less "know" it with his sixth sense, and so he was actually happy, because thisva affinity was at the same level of his secondary affinities, in other words, fire and ice, but this one had it as its starting point, being only a bit behind his darkness, poison and lightning, from back then.

    Noticing the crazy girl''s gaze on him, Daimon nodded at her, he didn''t want to disclose any information in front of enemies, though they will be dead pretty soon, but before that, it was time to loot.

    "Now, what can you offer me so that I let you live?", casually said Daimon as he sat on a rock, Sarah sat next to him, but surprisingly didn''t try anything, maybe because she could tell, he was a bit tired, though he didn''t use that much mana or stamina, having used around 20% of his reserves, which wasn''t enough to make him suffer the recoil of Core Synchrony, to be at his prime again he needed some rest.

    Dn was about to offer the contents of his ring, when he remembered that the crazy green haired girl had took it from him.

    "Y-You humans get benefits from killing nobles right, I can call a Blood Earl from another family, so you can kill it, you''ll receive all kinds of rewards from that!", he said in a rush.

    As for Jeremy he didn''t say anything, as he had already been promised his life, though the crazy woman had tortured him and he lost his arms, she didn''t kill him even when he tried to have them killed by Dn, so he felt as the real winner.

    "Oh, that sounds like a decent offer, here put this on, you''ll be of course a prisoner until that moment, also let a drop of your blood fall on this right now, unless you want to die of course", said Daimon as he threw a generic mask at Dn, and a ck scroll, which was of course a soul contract.

    Surprisingly, he could make soul contracts with the natives of Kerrol, and since Dn didn''t know about this kind of thing, he signed it without opening it, which made him feel uneasy, but the scroll was taken by Daimon, after he confirmed the contract sessfully tied Dn.

    He then gazed at Sarah who nodded at him, Daimon nodded back and the crazy girl grabbed Beni as she walked towards the exit of the cave, once they were out of sight, Daimon looked at Jeremy who suddenly had a bad premonition.

    "You need new legs right, eat that useless idiot", he said with an indifferent voice, just as Jeremy was about to shout "You can''t kill me", his tongue was cut by a shadow thread, so he wasn''t able to produce any coherent noise.

    Dn on the other hand, gritted his teeth, he hated Jeremy''s guts right now, but still, he only ate female''s meat, it was a personal preference, not a racial trait though, so being forced like this also made him hate Daimon.

    Unfortunately, he had no say in this, as for Jeremy, he was forbidden from being able to tell on Daimon, who previously tricked him when he signed the blood contract, not that he or Sarah were really restrained by it.

    But he wanted to keep that a secret, so he just yed with the promise he made, by saying that neither one of them, or the people outside will kill Jeremy, this is why blood contracts were obsolete, they were really easy to mess with, because the promise was made orally, soul contracts on the other hand had to be written.

    There were still ws, both parties had to agree to it, but the two didn''t have to fully know the contents of the contract, that''s why it was really important to read the contract thoroughly.

    Of course, in an agitated state, something heard will be less taken into consideration, that something that has been put in paper, and Daimon simply yed Jeremy like a fool, even if he didn''t have Dn to kill him, he said neither he or Sarah, not the ones "outside", so Rita wasn''t included, from the very beginning there was no salvation for Jeremy.

    Daimon saw Dn''s face bing twisted, as a murdering expression appeared on his face, he looked way different than the refined and arrogant fa?ade he put on earlier, as he jumped onto Jeremy to brutally bite his throat off.

    Daimon had no interest in Jeremy''s final moments, so he stood up and then left the cave, with his tongue having been cut, Jeremy couldn''t even scream while he was eaten alive by Dn.

    He didn''t know those women who were killed by Jeremy, nor cared about them, at the end of the day he wasn''t a good person anyway, he was just stronger than those two, and they happened to be in his way, so they will die, it was as simple as that.

    On the other hand, if that made this crappy world a bit better, then that was not bad at all as well.

    Dn came out of the cave already wearing the mask, his clothes were a bit thorn and he was stained with blood, since Jeremy tried to resist, after Rita who watched the whole thing making sure everything went her young master''s way, confirmed Jeremy''s demise.

    Daimon burned any traces using Demon Light and then stomped his foot, making the cave copse, the dark brown patch ofnd had started to return to its normal sand color already.

    "You will only talk or move when I allow you do so, for now keep silent and just sit in your cage", he said.

    Just as Dn was about toin, his body acted on his own as he started walking in the direction Daimon pointed him, only then he realized he was tricked.

    He gazed at the silver haired masked young man from the corner of his eyes, and felt the indifferent gazeing from the mask, it was as if this was meant to happen no matter what he or anyone did.

    ''D-Demon'', was the only word that came his mind, as he entered his cage, which was next to Beni''s.

    The woman could tell that he wasn''t Jeremy because she knew what happened in the cave, but for Gary and the others, they just thought that it was Jeremy wearing different clothes, and with his hair dyed.

    "Don''t worry young Gabriel, I have prepared another identity for those two, since it is probable that you want to change them at Tiria with the best bidder", said Gary with a knowing gaze.

    Daimon didn''t say anything about it, letting the merchant make his own assumptions, since that worked for him.

    "Let''s go", he said as he got in the carriage where the crazy girl was already waiting for him, with the word "curiosity" written all over her face.

 Chapter 487 New Town, New Group And New Problems (Part 1)

    ?

    Daimon got into the carriage and closed the door behind of him, not even a secondter, he could feel the crazy girl''s intense gaze on him, which made him sigh.

    "I got the core, so stop looking at me like that, more importantly, what did you got out of those two?", he said as he took a seat, this time in the same seat as Sarah.

    The crazy girl smiled and then moved sidewards a couple of times until she was basically stuck to Daimon, but without being in contact with him, as she had learned that he won''t avoid her this way.

    "They were really easy to trick, one would believe that someone that could turn others of their kind would be tough, but it was boring, I didn''t even get to use any poison", she proudly said.

    That''s right, she didn''t just beat the crap out of Jeremy and Dn for fun, though she did have some fun doing it, Daimon previously asked her to interrogate them while he was gone.

    That being said the crazy girl jumped the part of making a question, and instead went right for the beating, only after she got bored, she started the interrogation part.

    "Their ranking is simr to the one at the Clear Water kingdom, from highest to lowest, Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount andstly Baron, they just added "Blood" to the name, there is also a king but that guy had no information about it".

    "To obtain a noble rank they have to get some aplishment on the endless war with humans, or alternatively they have to present the heads of at least ten humans on the same rank as them".

    "To be a Baron there is a need to be a middle stage Lord rank, for the next they have to be one minor realm above and fulfill different requirements, that guy only has information up to the Earl ranks, because of his father''s social circle, but he really never interested into it, as he is the youngest, instead he just made party after party while using guys like Jeremy as his dogs to obtain "fine food", turns out they can also eat magic beast flesh, but it tastes horrible for them, also it doesn''t bring them any extra benefits, unlike consuming human meat".

    "Ah, right, turns out they get their realms boosted during the blood moon week, simr to what happened to us, but I would say their boost is weaker than ours, since even if they jump to the next major realm, they don''t get the special benefit of that realm", said Sarah as she stretched her body trying to show off to Daimon, who didn''t pay attention to it, which was still up to her liking as her smiling expression suggested.

    She actually got more information, but the other things weren''t of Daimon''s interest, so the crazy girl didn''t bother in telling him, to put it simply, Dn was a useless second generation, his father got his rank by fighting in the war, while he just came out escorted to y around all the day.

    Daimon contemted things for a moment, he wanted some confirmation, because earlier he killed those two quite easily, calcting how much strength he used to crush those women''s necks, it was way less than what would have been normally needed to kill an early-stage Arch rank.

    ''Are we being considered as Ghouls at night¡­ no that might be possible for me, but Sarah has nothing to do with vampires, not to mention for us the boost gets weaker when we aren''t exposed to the lightless atmosphere, so there is a high chance it disappears during the day'', he thought.

    Earlier he wasn''t sure, normally any kind of boost should disappear at the moment of death, but even when he killed those two, they remained as early-stage Arch ranks, so he thought they maybe advanced not too long ago which added to the fact that they were mere guards, in an outdated world, made them have trash battle prowess.

    Turns out that wasn''t the case, well, they were indeed weak as they were just fake Arch ranks, maybe their battle aura reserves temporarily increased, but their bodies didn''t get the natural reinforce that entering the Arch rank gives, it was a half assed boosting.

    But that was from his point of view, for the people of this world, that would be enough to bring despair to a human on their same original realm.

    "Wait a second¡­ so is this why the rune mastering went this way in this world, they created those devices with cores that boost them without pushing them to the next realm, as a way to equal the Ghouls", mumbled Daimon.

    Naturally technology will always focus one''s problems, the rune masters and magic cksmiths put all their energy in thinking how to equal the Ghouls.

    "Anything else?", asked Daimon to which the crazy girl handed him a ring.

    "Everything he had on him is inside that ring, I peeked into it earlier, and besides meat of obvious precedence, there is something interesting, they use magic equipment which is more simr to what we know, without cores", she said.

    Daimon took out avish looking sword from Dn''s ring, leaving aside the luxurious aspect, and the precious jewels embedded into it, the runes were way better than the ones used in the things he saw in the stores of the town.

    Still, Dn had no mana crystals in his ring nor beast cores, meaning the Ghouls didn''t value them, but their rune mastering was good enough to make up for theck of the use of beast cores, which should be technology exclusive to humans.

    It made sense, they used another source of energy, which was blood, that''s why the scroll stank of blood, and that''s how a gate was able toe so far, in simple words, they drained people out of all their vitality and used their lifeforce as a power source.

    Daimon got more interested in the Ghouls with each second, out of the three major noble vampire families, the main lineage of the Nosfear family had the innate ability to control blood, their affinity was blood and use it in many ways.

    But these ghouls used something that was closer to undead carnage spells, which get stronger the more things die, but focused in blood.

    Daimon inwardly shook his head and then turned to see the crazy girl, the carriage had started moving, he decided to not deal with Dn and the other woman, until they reached Tiria, because he might be able to use them to get the information he wants, with a mine core in the bag, he no longer had any need to get mana crystals, of course he''ll ept them, but he won''t go out of his way for that.

    The only thing the human side had to offer for him now, was information regarding Jasmine.

    ''ording to Gary we''ll finish going through the towns by midday, and we don''t need to leave the carriage until thes tone previous to reaching Tiria so¡­'', honestly Daimon felt reluctant of what he was about to do, but he couldn''t waste the time of the travel, and meditating was of no help for him.

    These carriages moved really fast, so a travel that normally would take at least three days, was reduced to twelve hours, due to theck of magic beasts in this special route secured by Gary, it was already past midnight at this point too.

    He snapped his fingers and arge bottle containing tons of small ck mineral shards appeared on his hand.

    Sarah immediately recognized that and her eyes sparkled, as she giggled.

    "If I knew the reward was going to be so enjoyable, I would have made sure to make those two spit till thest thing they knew~", she said as she started undoing the buttons of her blouse.

    Daimon had to stop her frompletely undressing her upper body, he ced his hand on her shoulders to keep her blouse on her body.

    "Just the area of the back is enough", he said.

    "Hehe, don''t be so shy, you have already seen what''s there to see during the previous treatment anyway~", her ambiguous words made Daimon''s eyebrow twitch.

    He didn''t spy on her with his mana sense, and he wasn''t going to do that this time, because he didn''t want to exhaust himself, in exchange he will use more pieces of the dark mineral, but it was price he was willing to pay.

    Sarah just left her body ball frontwards on the seat,ying down on her stomach, with her back fully uncovered, she even undid theces of her bra, since they were actually on the way, making Daimon feel the urge to burn her with his mes.

    He took out a couple of pieces of the ck mineral and ced them on her naked back, to then press his hand against her soft skin, and lit it up in his white mes.

    "Hyaan so rough~", Sarah''s exaggerated voice echoed through the carriage, luckily the thing had istion properties, otherwise all the guards would have heard that.

    "You little¡­", Daimon saw Sarah''s legs happily swinging and he sighed, the ck pieces of mineral started slowly melting, since he wasn''t going to use mana sense on her, he just guided himself with his infinity eyes, making sure he didn''t see more than what was needed.

    While the crazy girl was enjoying her treatment to the fullest, the caravan quickly advanced through the wastnd, and in less than a couple of hours at full throttle they reached the nearest of the settlements to Brown Wind town, Orit Town.

    Apparently, Gary had informed his acquittances in the town beforehand, because there was a tall middle-aged man wearing heavy armor waiting for them at the entrance of the town.

    "It''s been some time sr. Tanner, have you decided already?", said Gary who got down of his carriage to talk with the tall heavy armored man.

    "Yes, I still think we should bring my team though, but they can survive without me for some time anyway", said the man as he thunderouslyughed.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Maybe next time, my funds aren''t endless you know, so this time I''m only hiring peak Lord ranks, in any case is only precaution due to the unfortunate timing and a personal affair", said the short merchant.

    "Very well, I already talked to the chief, as long as you can all pass through the detection measures, we can take the shortcut to Y town, though Orit town", answered Tanner.

    Gary nodded, as he took out another carriage, which was twice asrge as the one Daimon was give, it wasn''t that he was getting better treatment, as that one will be shared by all the peak Lord ranks, they will pick up on the way.

    If anything, Daimon was getting a better deal, since his carriage was spacious enough for at least six people, but it was exclusive for him and Sarah.

    Tanner and Gary entered their respective carriages and the caravan approached the gates of the town, being scanned one by one even through the carriages, the moment Beni saw that her face paled, in the cage next to her there was a flesh eating demon, and if they were caught trying to get it into a town, they''ll be imprisoned and probably executed, unless there was an high ranked adjudicator vouching for them of course.

    But Beni''s despair expression froze when the light of the gate fell on them and nothing happened, they were allowed to enter the town without any problem.

    ''What the hell is going on!'', she screamed in her mind, naturally what was happening is that the mask Dn was wearing had concealing properties, it''s something that Liz made after she studied the Hollow Suit, naturally it was an inferior product, that only worked up to two major realms of the one wearing it, and no matter what it couldn''t trick anything past the peak Arch rank.

    But it was still Liz''s work, it was more than enough to trick the outdated detections arrays of this world, of course if there were to be a closer inspection and the mask was removed, then Dn will be discovered but Gary was taking care of that, so Daimon only gave the Ghoul one of those masks.

    The caravan advanced through the city without any problems and soon left through the gate at the north, Orit was surrounded by two rock formations so to pass through here, you either had to surround it and waste a lot of time, or pass through the time.

    It was made like that, so the travelers would have to pay a fee to go through it, and as result of that, this town was in a better statepared to Brown Wind town, at leastpared to the old one.

    Though there wasn''t a scumbag as big as Jeremy here, otherwise he would have known it, there were still many unsightly scenes, such as brothels or people stealing here and there, but it was more of a race forfortability instead of survival unlike in Brown Wind town.

    ¡­

    As the hours passed, the previous repeated four times, the difference was that at the third and fourth towns, instead of just one, Gary was able to hire two peak Lord ranked people instead of one.

    The reason as to why Brown Wind town which used to be rtively safe ended up in such a horrible state, was that Ender''s father one of the previous two Peak Lord ranks that guarded the town, along with the chief, died.

    It took some time before Hal advanced, but of course he wasn''t like Ender''s father, then the old chief suffered that wound and only after that, Ismael advanced, those two didn''t care about the town, so it declined.

    Inparison, the other towns all had three peak Lord ranks guarding the fort, the chiefs and two independents, of which Gary hired one.

    As for thest two towns which were closer to the only city in this part of the wastnd, Tiria, they had four of them, allowing Gary to hire two in each, for a total of seven peak Lord experts of five different towns.

    Contrary to what Daimon expected, the sun wasn''ting in the morning unlike normal, even at 9:00 Am the sky was still dark, though it was certainly not as dark as at night.

    And at this time the caravan finally passed through thest town, whose size was around five times that of Brown Wind town, there was still crime but it didn''t happen in public, as they even had a public force of security, that kept a rtively peaceful front.

    The caravan stopped a few hundreds of meters outside of Atir town, they have been travelling all night, and the guards wanted to have a small rest, to have something to eat, thest part of the travel was the most dangerous, so this might be theirst meal.

    Unlike before, this area had an abundance of middle Lord ranked beasts, the number of low ranked ones was really small, which is why to reach Tiria, one has to travel with some peak Lord ranks at least, and still not be unlucky enough to find peak Lord ranked magic beasts on the way.

    The heavy armored Tanner was the first one to leave the carriage of the experts, while the guards started preparing the tables and the campfire to prepare the food, the other peak Lord ranks left the carriage.

    There were five men and two women, three of the men were knights while two were mages, as for the women the two of them were mages.

    "Hey, where is that Hal bastard, did he got scared and kept hidden below his bed in that shithole?", asked one of the male knights, who was hired from the second closest town to Brown Wind town, Dwell town.

    Tanner sighed, as he is literally the one in the middle of those two all the time, as peak Lord ranks, they cooperate at least once every year in coordinates hunts.

    "Ferris, that''s enough, we aren''t hunting this time, but escorting sir Gary, so don''t make troubles for others, we''ll have to fight side by sideter", said Tanner.

    "Well, Hal did steal some prey from himst time", said one of the male mages, a bald guy with a scar on his forehead.

    "Uli, that was Ferris''s fault for being stupid", added another of the male mages, making Ferris grit his teeth.

    Gary bitterly smiled, he had no way to fully control all these guys, so he could only mediate as he approached them.

    "Sr. Hal had a sudden emergency to attend, so he didn''te, instead I found a couple of strong travelers to cover his spot, oh, there they are", he said as he pointed at Daimon''s carriage which''s door was opening right now.

    Luckily Daimon had a mask otherwise, the people outside would have seen the ck expression he had on his face, even after he finished another treatment session on the crazy girl and sent her to sleep so that she rested, and more importantly he rested from her.

    Sarah kept making softlyughing and giggling even in her sleep, while she hugged herself, the only good thing is that she was actually tired, so she didn''t try anything, but Daimon somewhat felt the need to kick her a few times, of course he discarded the idea as she would like it instead.

    So, the crazy girl was all smiles right now, she hummed as she yfully moved her head while walking next to Daimon, as if the wastnd was a pic area.

    Daimon on the other hand, though was actually in perfect conditions, in any sense, he somehow felt tired, but he rposed quite fast as soon as he looked at the sky, which was still dark.

    He closed and opened his hand a couple of times, the boosting had weakened but was still there, he read about it, but now he was sure that though the sun was in the sky, since it was covered by the moon, it still counted as "night" at least during the blood moon week.

    The moon just gained a more reddish tone as the day advanced and will turn dark purple when the real nightes, that was going to be the case for the next six days, though Daimon didn''t n on seeing it to the end, he had set a limit of four more days as he didn''t know if the time flowed different here or nor, so it was better to be safe than sorry.

    Today was Tuesday in Neptune, and he had to return at most on Saturday, since the Global Raid and the Royal Ball would be celebrated that day, one at 7:00 Pm and the other exactly at midnight.

    "Oi, I do respect you old Gary since you always get me some nice stuff for my subordinates, but are you telling me those two kids are strong enough to take Hal''s side of the job, how the hell do you want us to focus on protecting the caravan if we have to protect brats!".

    "Not to mention they actually had a carriage only for them, while we had to share", said Ferris as he smacked his hand on a table, cracking it on the process.

    Tanner sighed, knowing that Ferris was just looking for a reason to fight, since he wanted to vent out his anger on anyone from Brown Wind town, as Hal pulled a fast one on himst time, if only he knew that Hall was as dead as one can be, and that the ones he was trying to pick a fight with were the ones that killed him like a big, his course of action would have for sure been different now.

    That being said, his words did hold some truth, so the other experts turned to see the neers and frowned noticing that they were just early-stage Lord ranks, that was the realm Daimon feigned to be as "Gabriel", while Sarah also chose it, since she was now posing as a girl the age Daimon appeared to have.

    Gary immediately stepped in, he was present when the masked young man, casually suppressed everyone in the meeting room and then killed all those middle Lord ranks, as if they were nothing.

    Not to mention, Hal and Ismael supposedly died by his hands, in his mind both Daimon and Sarah were peak Lord ranks, but were hiding their realms, and also had either special abilities or some really strong magic treasure, which is why he gave them a private carriage.

 Chapter 488 New Town, New Group And New Problems (Part 2)

    "I personally witnessed their ability sr. Ferris, so I can assure you they don''t lose anything whenpared to Hal of Brown Wind town, as for the carriage, that wasn''t a personal preference but part of a business deal, I won''t enter into further detail, but I was short in money to pay for what they were offering, so I added that".

    As one would expect from a smart merchant, Gary made it so the thing regarding the carriage wouldn''t be a source of dissension in the group, as for whether they have the qualifications to participate in this, he was more than sure of that.

    The question now, is if that would be enough to convince those peak Lord ranks, or if things will go the way he really didn''t want to, but were more probable to, in which he case he was praying from the bottom of his heart, that the other party restrained a bit.

    Gary took a small tour through the town and gathered information, since he was going to bring two rtively unknown people with him, of course he wanted to know their characters.

    So, he got a wind of the state in which n and others ended, in other words, he could tell these two people were merciless with anyone that had malicious intentions towards them.

    Daimon really didn''t care about what was happening right now, he walked past the group, he just wanted some fresh air, since being trapped in a small space with Sarah, ended up being more emotionally tiring than what he calcted.

    But of course, for those heated up idiots like Ferris, being ignored by someone they consider "inferior" to them, is a top-ss insult and a way to ask for a beating.

    Which is why the peak Knight Lord got up his seat, very much to the amusement of the others and the defeat of Gary.

    "Oi, you masked bastard, where the hell are you going, we are talking here!", he shouted as he moved his hand to unsheathe his sword.

    "If you even touch the hilt of that sword, you are dead", Daimon''s voice was calm, andcked even murderous intent, but what he said did cause waves on the presents.

    Naturally, under normal circumstances he wouldn''t bother with idiots like Ferris, but for the bad luck of the Knight Lord, a fake notification which kind of pissed off Daimon appeared in front of him.

    [A hero uses his charisma to change possible enemies into allies and friends, pardon those who disparage and look for troubles with you, and make it so they join your side using positive methods]

    "Uwahh, what kid of delusional idiot wrote that", said the crazy girl as she saw the notification.

    Ferris gritted his teeth, he was being ignored once again, still he actually doubted to grab his sword, the other party clearly knew how strong he is, and yet they threatened him in front of another six peak Lord ranks, which means they are confident in killing him, even with the others stepping in.

    ''No, he is just bluffing, if something really does happen to me, Dwell town won''t leave him be, but even if something happens to them, what can that shithole of Brown Wind town do, no matter what they paid to Gary he as a merchant will chose the option that benefits him the most so¡­'', having reached his conclusion, Ferris channeled his battle aura through his body making the veins on his arms and legs bulge.

    Darkness, a cold and absolute sensation of void was the next andst thing Ferris felt, the reason being is that there was a ck sword piercing his head from the backing out from his forehead.

    Of curse he died on the spot and by reflex the other six peak Lord ranks, who didn''t manage to see how Daimon moved from where he was standing, to be behind Ferris, jumped backwards but as they were about to take out their weapons, a few words made them freeze on the spot.

    "At this distance, all of you will be dead before even touching your weapons, you wanted to see how strong I am right, well there you go", said Daimon, as he used regr fire imbued in battle aura to burn Ferris''s corpse, not without removing his ring from his finger, very much to the displease of the six other peak Lord ranks.

    "So, you are a speed specialist, friend, with such an overwhelming ability did you have to kill Ferris, when an arm would have been enough of a warning?", said the heavy armored Tanner.

    "Sorry I believe in not leaving problems alive if I can solve them on the spot, besides he thought about it, and probably concluded that I was bluffing, the moment he decided to grab his sword, he was ready to kill me and I don''t have time to waste in childish things like that¡­", Daimon waited a second before he gazed at the other six peak Lord ranks, to then throw a ck scroll in front of them.

    "A strong magic beast appeared and killed that guy, it''s what you''ll all report, that is a special binding blood contract, sign it, that is if you don''t wish to be added to the list of causalities caused by that unknown "beast", in exchange unless you do something to harm me, I won''t go after you", he said.

    Gary let out a sigh of relief, is the seven experts were to die, he will have a lot of exining to do, but one casualty was expected, during the blood moon week, Tanner was the first one to move.

    "You got me this time, that martial art you used was amazing, in short rangebat, I doubt someone would be able to react on time", said the heavy armored guy as he let a drop of his blood fall on the contract, which was "nk".

    ''Of course, you couldn''t react, there are no Half Emperors here, so besides arrays, you have never seen a living being using a spatial movement technique like Blink'', thought Daimon.

    Knights indeed had better senses than mages, and it''s not like Ferris didn''t have experience, but how could he possibly be on guard against something of which he has never even heard off.

    Not like it would have made any difference, with the boosting effect of this ce, as of current Daimon was an early-stage Lord rank, he didn''t get the extra benefit of Will Maniption unlike before, probably because it was day, but he was a Knight Lord right now.

    And while he was far from the level he reached when using Core Synchrony, crushing Lord ranks was a piece of cake, in a rough calction his battle prowess should be around the early stage of the Arch rank, and the same applied to the crazy girl.

    Once the six signed the soul contract, Gary also did it, since his subordinates were tied to him, he signing was the same as them doing it too.

    Daimon retrieved it and kept it in his inventory, along with the ring of that guy, he could tell those six didn''t like that he robed Ferris even after killing him, which he found stupid.

    If he was weaker than the other party, will his enemy show him mercy, of course not, he will be killed and all he has will be taken away.

    The guards who were standing behind of Gary, finally rxed, they suddenly saw Ferris dying so they gathered near the merchant to protect him.

    Now that, that was settled, it was time to have breakfast, there was no blood left so magic beasts won''t be attracted to this ce, it was thest safe area before reaching Tiria.

    "Ahem, how will the protecting be divided now?", asked Gary.

    Daimon and Sarah had no obligation to protect him or his belongings, they were just travelling with him, but now that there were less peak Lord ranks, things will be a bit tight.

    "They are strong, so they can move on their own, our deal was with sr. Gary, one carriage less is a fair trade since there is one less of us now", said one of the female mages, a slim girl with brown hair and freckles.

    Gary was in a predicament, the carriage was his, and it was quite pricey, so he didn''t want it to be unprotected, but he didn''t have the leisure to care about others now.

    "Let our carriage move at the east side of the caravan alone, you don''t need to interfere with us, and I won''t interfere with you, of course we''ll keep using the carriage until reaching Tiria", said Daimon, putting an end to Gary''s problem.

    The woman with freckles turned her head away and didn''t say anything, which made a cold glint sh through Sarah''s eyes.

    The coachman was a ve, so Gary just ordered him to keep driving Daimon''s carriage, and that was it, while the guards enjoyed a meal and prepared to risk their lives in exchange for the big sum they were offered by Gary.

    Daimon and Sarah returned to the carriage, the crazy girl had rations in her ring, but nothing exactly tasty, they were for survival, so Daimon shared some of the meals he had stored in his inventory, they were prepared by ine who was the one with the best cooking skills among the girls.

    Normally no one would use precious space of a spatial treasure to store full course meals, but Daimon had the inventory, so he didn''t have to worry about space but slots, and "food" was all stored in a single one, he just had to think in the one he wanted to take out.

    "Oh, so that''s how you conquered Jas, nice, you got me too~", said the crazy girl as she smelled the delicious food what Daimon brought out, making thetter consider if he should just eat and not share anything, but again any kind of "mistreat" from him, will just make the crazy girl happier.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Just eat, I wanted to have food of which I don''t have to worry wondering if it''s poisoned or something", he said as he took a bite of the piece of meat which was on his te, Daimon couldn''t help but smile at ine''s cooking.

    Sarah was also surprised at how good the food was, which made her fall in contemtion, she has tried the food that Aisha and the Risha sisters prepared and this clearly was on another level, so¡­

    "Besides Jas and me, how many more girls do you have?", she casually asked, almost making Daimon choke with his food.

    "Jasmine is my friend as for you¡­ well you are almost one too I guess, but I don''t have a reason to lie, I have six people in my heart already", he said, making Sarah intensely stare at him with the word "exin" written all over her face.

    "Does that include those three beast race girls?", she asked, referring to the Risha sisters, only to see Daimon shaking his head.

    "No, but that doesn''t mean I''m not conscious of how they feel, it''s just that me and them haven''t reached that point yet, for now they are my precious friends", he said.

    Sarah''s eyes glowed, she had already understood that the word "friend" held a huge weight for Daimon, when he said he really meant it, a friend for him is someone with whom he would risk his life no less and that''s why he was so selective in that aspect.

    "I see¡­ who would have thought you''d be the skirt chaser type, that could be troublesome, however I just have to work with Jas so you can''t even think on looking at other girls and everything will be fine~", she said, making Daimon sigh.

    "Don''t say that to her, I don''t want her to feel like that because I saved her, otherwise I would be no better than that idiot, if she still feels like this after she has ovee that, then we''ll talk", he said.

    Sarah gazed at Daimon for a moment, before her face blushed and her eyes became dangerous as she thought.

    ''Ahh, if you say something like that, it will just make me want you more~'', Daimon felt a somewhat unpleasing sensation coursing through his body, as he was intensely observed by the crazy girl.

    "Control yourself, we are already advancing, if they are lucky at least two of them will die, let''s see what does that merchant do when that happens", said Daimon.

    Sarah giggled, it was hard to tell what was happening in her mind, but she ultimately nodded and kept happily eating her food, while she observed the outside through the double-sided windows of the carriage.

    Naturally, Daimon didn''t choice this side because of nothing, with Rita whose senses covered an insanelyrge distance, he already knew the distribution of magic beast in the area of three hundred kilometers.

    So of course, he chose the path which didn''t cross the territory of any peak Lord rank magic beast, while there were two of them waiting for the caravan, he could have said something but why would he.

    If what he thought was right, then Gary will be fine anyway, so why wouldn''t he take the chance to make him owe him, maybe for those guys peak Lord stage magic beasts were troublesome, but for them, they were only prey.

    It''s worth mentioning that the carriage in which Dn and Beni were, was attached to Daimon''s, since the caravan split into two.

    The six peak Lord ranks divided in four taking the four sides of the caravan, while the two female mages were riding on top of the carriage, ready to support andunch long range spells, it was a simple but effective formation.

    The one leading was none other than Tanner, who was carrying a shield, though they didn''t have the capacity to maprge areas with utmost precision like Rita, people here all had mana sense, it was weak or strong from person to person though.

    And one of the two female mages, a short girl with sses apparently had a decent mana sense, as she was the first one to notice the iing enemies.

    "Three sandwormsing from southeast and one desert lizard charging frontwards!", she shouted.

    "Uli, Nn and Jill, you three get rid of the sandworms, leave the lizard to me", said Tanner as he extended his hands preparing his tower shield.

    "Yes!", the bald mage, as well as the knight who insulted Ferris earlier and the girl with freckles nodded in response and prepared for the fight.

    Even if the enemies were middle stage Lord ranked beasts, magic beasts were usually stronger than humans of the same realm, without decent magic equipment, of course they weren''t as smart, so it was tit for tat.

    "Haaa!", Tanner roared and his brown earth battle aura covered his body and his shield as he rushed towards the lizard who didn''t stop its charge and shed against the shield.

    The result was that the lizard was flown away, as a bloody mess while Tanner didn''t move at all, before he returned to the caravan that never stopped moving.

    The other three also got rid of their opponents quite easily, the brown-haired girl used a bow to shoot a wind arrow at the sandworm, avoiding any blood from even getting near to her as she hated it.

    The bald mage Uli had fire affinity, so he roasted the sandworm even before it emerged, as for the knight Nn, he used his spear and water battle aura to shot a stream of high-pressured water, destroying the sandworm.

    "That was quite easy, with this payment I''ll buy a nice reactive with some luck I''ll be closer to advancing", said the girl with brown hair.

    Back at Daimon''s carriage, both he and Sarah raised their heads at the same time, then a whistling sound came from above and the short girl tried to shout but was one step toote.

    The head of the girl with freckles disappeared from her body, her blood stained the carriage, the eyes of the short-ssed girl widened a bit.

    "It''s a peak Lord rank Rock Vulture, Tanner, get up here now!", she shouted as sheid down on the roof of the carriage and protected her back with arge shield with spikes.

    "Damn it, it targeted Jill because she was the one with the longest effective range, be care full that thing has eaten enough people to gain some basic knowledge!", said Tanner as he jumped to the roof of Gary''s carriage.

    Daimon who was observing the whole thing was interested in what Tanner just said, in the information about threats it was mentioned that magic beasts were somewhat smart, but the extent of it wasn''t mentioned, also the fact that it happened thanks to them eating humans wasn''t mentioned either.

    Maybe because it was amon knowledge kind of thing, for any native of Kerrol.

    "That bird knows how to choose a priority target, but it''s not out of cunningness, it''s probably because he has been wounded by long range mages before, still for a Lord ranked magic beast to have take a "decision", it''s amazing", mumbled Daimon.

    This would exin why the magic beasts were crazy over eating humans, they instinctively wanted to be more intelligent.

    And with that, Daimon had decided to capture a few decent magic beasts if there is a chance, he has some beast pouches, if these magic beasts could be rational to a certain extent, then they could be tamed without any special ability but just some training, even if their lineage was nothing special.

    It''s a field with a lot of potential, as neither the four gxies or Neptune had the capacity to do that, at least "normal" people couldn''t control magic beasts, only certain members of the royal and high ranked noble lineages could control one magic beast.

    Daimon''s Ruler of the Sea technically didn''t have a limit, but currently he could at most control three aquatic magic beasts, the good thing is that the ability ignored levels, at least it worked on cktooth even when he became a half Ster, and even now that it should be advancing to the Ster realm, though cktooth willingly recognizing Daimon as his master might have something to do with it.

    ''Now, let''s see what will you do, fake hero system and merchant'', thought Daimon as he smirked.

 Chapter 489 New Town, New Group And New Problems (Part 3)

    ?

    "Stick closer to the carriage and prepare some defensive means, use your Beast Equipment if needed, Ken you get in the carriage and protect sr. Gary", shouted Tanner as he jumped onto Gary''s carriage.

    The bald mage Uli was the first one to react, he moved closer to the carriage and took out arge sword with a red core embedded into its hilt.

    The water knight Nn too the other side, he changed his regr spear for a dark blue one with a sky-blue core in the tip.

    As for the guy called Ken, that was thest mage and his Beast Equipment was strangely a cape, Gary heard Tanner''s orders so he slightly opened the door and the caped guy jumped into the carriage.

    Surprisingly, once the door closed again, the carriage blurred before it mixed with the environment.

    From Daimon''s point of view, it was a poorly made illusion, as it looked as if a piece of ground was moving, not to mention the borders were visible because Tanner and the ssed girl were on top of it.

    But it indeed reduced the presence of those inside of the carriage, the Rock Vulture which had previously eaten the head of the girl with freckles, flew in circles above the carriage looking for an opening.

    Which gave time to the ssed girl to inspect their surroundings, there was blood spilled on the carriage because of the girl with freckles dying, so it would be normal for more magic beasts to charge at them.

    "This isn''t funny¡­ there is a second peak Lord rank beasting our way, this time from below, this one is stronger, watch out Uli!", she shouted.

    The bald guy pointed his sword at the ground, but the attack he expected didn''te, instead of that he heard a scream followed by the sound of bones breakinging from the other side of the carriage.

    "Aghhhh!", Uli reacted just in time to see his friend Nn being swallowed and turned into mincemeat by the giant head of a sandworm.

    "Nn!", the bald guy roared and waved his sword which shot a stream of fire, burning half of the head of the magic beast.

    Unfortunately, just as the bald guy was getting some relief out of avenging his friend, the ground below him exploded as another giant worm''s head came from below, the sharp teeth filled mouth of the worm closed trying to swallow Uli just like Nn.

    But the bald guy managed to dodge, well, almostpletely dodge, his arm was bitten off by the worm.

    "Don''t think the same is going to work you beast", shouted Uli as he pointed at the worm shooting a stream of fire from his palm, unlike the attack of the sword his own mes weren''t as strong, so while he burned some patches of the skin of the worm, he couldn''t destroy a part of the head, with a quick spell without any preparation.

    Still, it gave enough time for the now one armed Uli to jump onto the carriage,nding next to the ssed girl, who he grabbed by her neck.

    "Didn''t you say it was only one magic beast you bitch, you killed Nn!", he shouted on the face of the ssed girl, who was still in shock over what happened a moment ago.

    "I-I couldn''t only feel life signaling at us, if that second one was able to avoid me then¡­ it should be an Arch rank magic beast", said the ssed girl as she pushed Uli away from her.

    "You!", Uli gritted his teeth, his sword could harm Arch ranked magic beasts, so what the ssed girl was saying could be true, but still his best friend just died so he was too angry, the job of the ssed girl was recognition, that''s why she was given a rtively safer position in the formation yet she failed in her duty.

    Tanner ced his hand on Uli''s shoulder and kept him away from the ssed girl as he said.

    "Enough Uli, it''s not an Arch rank magic beast, but it''s not far from advancing, it''s a rare aggressive variation, a two headed sandworm, that''s why June just detected one life signal, it''s just one but with more then twice the strength of a peak Lord rank".

    Uli clenched his fists, his eyes were bloodshot as he shook away Tanner''s hand.

    "You are just covering that useless woman, this is the first time I hear of a two headed sandworm and there is a nest of them near my town", he said making the ssed girl shake her head.

    "In the records of our town, there are rumors about a two headed one appearing when the blood moon week is especially strong, it''s a variation that supposedly happens when a sandworm takes a liking to cannibalism, instead of prioritizing humans like others, it eats its own species, I honestly thought it was just a rumor spread by a drunkard but turns out that wasn''t the case¡­".

    Tanner looked upwards and saw that the Rock Vulture was coldly ring at them, but it wasn''t attacking, as if it was waiting for something.

    "I don''t want to believe it, but those two beasts seem to have reached a mutual understanding, the sandworm is way stronger but the Vulture has the advantage of flying, they will be attacking at the same time next".

    And as the saying goes, when it rains it pours, the sandworm managed to mess up with the floor of the carriage and one of the wheels had started to fail, it wasn''t going tost too long, especially at the speed at which the carriage was moving.

    "Ken,e out, we need all the hands avable right now", said Tanner as he tapped his foot on the roof of the carriage a couple of times, the door of the carriage opened and the caped guy came out of it.

    "Uli, the next time yoush out at June, I''ll kill you", said the caped guy, both he and the ssed girl were from the closest town to Tiria, and though they belonged to different hunting teams, they have known each other since they were children.

    The bald one-armed Uli clicked his tongue and then swallowed a dark green pill, his wound closed on the spot and his flesh started growing at a visible ratio, but it was going to take some time before it finished healing.

    "If you have the time to fight between yourselves, prepare one of your advanced spells and martial arts, if we take out the Vulture the sandworm won''t attack us, it used the Vulture to test us out, before making its move, so it values its life, probably the same reason as to why it chose to eat others of its kind instead of humans".

    From afar, Daimon was observing the whole thing with interest, for beasts that hadn''t unlocked wisdom, to order other races, was something he hasn''t heard of, normally they only submit to a strong member of their respective race, all the non-rational magic beasts move in packs after all.

    "Let''s see how much can that guy y dumb", casually said Daimon as he ced his fork on the table, just to see the crazy girl "identally" dropping hers and then try to use his, which he of course prevented it by sending the fork to the inventory.

    "Your intentions are written all over your face you know", said Daimon, which made Sarah giggle.

    "You want me to eat with my hands, or maybe you want me to eat just with my mouth like an animal, ah, as expected of my fated one~".

    "Don''t do that damn it, here, if you drop this one, I won''t share my food with you again", he said as he handed her a clean fork.

    Sarah happily epted it and continued to eat, she had now learned how far she could take things without pissing Daimon off, that being said nothing prevented her from imagining what she would have liked to happen.

    Seeing the crazy girl getting lost in her fantasies, Daimon wondered if maybe he should throw her out to bait that sandworm.

    Leaving that aside, things at the other side of the caravan had gotten pretty tense, the four remaining peak Lord ranks were standing side by side watching each other backs as they prepared for the next assault.

    "It''sing, above at my left, distance of one kilometer!", shouted the ssed girl, making Uli grit his teeth.

    "You better not screw it this time, otherwise I''ll push you into that things mouth!", Uli roared and then swinged his sword in the direction mentioned by the ssed girl, shooting a pir or fire of six meters wide from the sword, making the core embedded into the hilt to explode.

    "Screee!", that sword wasn''t supposed tounch such long ranged attacks, so the core broke before it reached the original number of uses left, but the attack resulting of that, was devastating.

    As a result, the Rock Vulture which was diving to catch them by surprise like before, was trapped by the pir of fire and burned alive, making it scream in pain, which helped Uli get some satisfaction over avenging his friend to a certain extent.

    "The sandworm didn''t abort its attack, Ken, Tanner, it''sing behind the carriage!", shouted the ssed girl.

    "Rock Impact!".

    Tanner was the first one to act, the spell he had prepared activated and the ground behind the carriage exploded, making the worm bepletely exposed.

    "Humph, a beast is ultimately a beast, now that your subordinate is death, you should have runaway, Lightning Cannon!", turns out that the previously caped mage had lightning affinity.

    But unlike Aisha who focused on extreme speed as well as close and middle rankedbat, Ken fully focused on long range fighting.

    With his chant, blue electricity gathered in front of him and then a lightning was shot towards the exposed head of the worm, immediately burning a hole through it to then make it explode in pieces of burned meat.

    The previous might have taken some time to describe but it all happened in a matter of seconds, the ssed girl was about to smile since they defeated a magic beast that was a step away from bing an Arch rank, an incredible feat for them, since none was there yet and now there were only four left.

    Back at Daimon''s carriage the crazy girl stretched her body after she finished eating, and then leisurely amodated on thefortable sofa, originally, she wanted to sit on Daimon''sp, but she couldn''t arrive on time before Daimon dodged, so she instead chose to entuate her curvy figure.

    "And it begins now", said Daimon, ignoring Sarah as he looked at the area in front of Gary''s carriage where the burnt corpse of the Rock Vulture was about tond.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Booom!", the ground suddenly exploded and a perfectly fine worm head came out of it, this one was twice as big as the previous two, the mouth of the sandworm was more than twenty meters wide.

    Under the horrified eyes of the ssed girl, the sandworm swallowed the bird in a single go.

    "D-Don''t let it return to the ground, use everything you have to kill it!", she shouted.

    Unfortunately, Uli''s sword which had the strongest offensive power was already used, Tanner casted a spell but the spikes of rock that appeared couldn''t do more than slightly pierce the thick skin of the worm, as it had earth affinity and thus a great resistance against it, not to mention a high defense.

    Ken did react on time, he turned around and pointed his two hands at the sandworm, his body exploded in blue lightning, as a ring with a small core in his left hand glowed, producing ck clouds above the worm.

    "Tempest!", he didn''t hold back and casted a wide area spell using his second Beast Equipment, which amplified lightning affinity attacks, why hasn''t he used it until now you might ask, because it is a one-time thing.

    "Booom!", the lightning that was shot from Ken''s bodybined with the lightning that the ck clouds shot, producing an explosion of electricity that made the head of the sandworm explode.

    The leftover part of its body copsed on the ground, blocking the path of the carriage, as it had more than sixty meters of length, and that was just what was exposed, as there was more of the sandworm buried into the ground.

    "J¡­June check it out, are there any signs of lifeing from it?", asked Ken who was gasping for air, he used more than 40% of his mana reserves into that attack, the fact that Daimon can spam continuous spells or martial arts with high energy requirements doesn''t mean everyone can do it.

    Think of it like this, what would happen if you were at your peak condition and then you suddenly lose almost half of your reserves, your body will suffer due to the sudden change, of course this can be solved with continuous intense training.

    But still using too much mana in a single go put a lot of stress on the body, and that''s why Ken was covered in sweat, still it was worth it since he killed an unusually strong peak Lord ranked enemy, the core and materials of such a beast would be way more than enough to buy ten of the rings he used and since he killed it, the higher share of the money they would get from the sandworm''s corpse would be his.

    "I can''t sense any signs of lifeing from it", said the ssed girl feeling a light headache, spreading her mana sense atrge distances didn''t tire her out though it consumed her mana per second.

    But elerating her reaction time and sharpening her senses like she did before, to be able to follow the rhythm of the Rock Vulture, overloaded her brain so she felt as if her head was being hit by a hammer right now.

    Ken nodded in response, he patted the roof of the carriage and the caravan stopped a couple of hundreds of meters away from the corpse of the sandworm.

    He then jumped out of the carriage and walked towards the corpse, followed by Tanner who was the only one in a not so bad state.

    "Damn beast, to think it had three heads, at least it will fetch a really high price, maybe the City Lord of Tiria will be interested on buying it, that would be amazing", said Ken as he walked a few meters ahead of Tanner, he might have to share the money but not the credit.

    The city of Tiria didn''t have any direct deals with the towns of the wastnd, the merchants that lived there didmerce with the towns, but nothing official.

    Tanner shook his head, how could he not understand what Ken was thinking, but honestly right now he didn''t care, three peak Lord ranks died, one was wounded and two were basically out of mana, the situation was really dangerous.

    "Just hurry up and retrieve its core, so that the guards can help you butcher it, I doubt there are more peak Lord rank magic beasts near, but even fighting with small fries is going to be hard like this", said the heavy armored man.

    Ken nodded and then took out a sword to dig out the core of the worm, but then time seemed to slow down for them as a huge pressure made them kneel on the ground.

    Tanner activated the effect of his shield but he was still one step toote, the ground below Ken opened and he was sucked in by a worm''s head that emerged.

    "N-No way, it advanced!", Tanner''s eyes widened, as he was covered in a light brown capsule, that was the ability of his shield creating a personal barrier around him.

    "Roarrr!", the worm roared and then tried to crush the light brown capsule to eat the human inside, but the thing actually grew rock spikes so the worm spat it.

    "Crash!", the brown capsule shed against the ground almost three hundred kilometers away from the head of the worm, exploding in many rock pieces making Tanner vomit blood due to the impact.

    Hended right next to the carriage, where the ssed girl and Uli were in shock, since the pressure they were feeling clearly belonged to an early-stage Arch rank beast.

    The worm was horribly strong previously, they already used almost all their Beast Equipment, as only the ssed girl had hers avable, and there was only three of them left.

    It was safe to assume that they were all dead, especially because the ground in a circr area of more than one hundred meters around the caravan exploded as the sandworm encircled them with its gainedrger body.

    Coincidence or not, the encirclement ended exactly a meter away from where Daimon''s carriage was passing exactly right now, needless to say but they didn''t stop, since they weren''t going to lend a hand.

    At least that was the n until the door of Gary''s carriage opened, the captain of the guards came out with a banner that had a yellow sword and a blue shield on it, at the same time themunication array on Daimon''s carriage activated and Gary''s voice could be hearding from it.

    "Young Gabriel, I would like to ask for your help to deal with that magic beast".

    Naturally Daimon wasn''t going to move just because Gary asked him to, so he first messed with him a bit.

    "You didn''t have any Arch rank goods in your store, so what are you going to give me in exchange for killing that Arch rank beast, not to mention is an incredibly aggressive and smart variation?", he said.

    "¡­"

    After a moment of silence, the voice of a woman was the one that answered him.

    "I''m Gary''s superior, the first daughter of the Valleris family, Reyne Valleris, it''s a pleasure to speak with such a strong youth, who doesn''t ask "how" to beat an Arch ranked magic best but "why", despite being a Lord rank, I would be more than charmed to offer the best hospitality at the Tiria city that my Valleris family rules, as a thanks for Lord Gabriel''s help", said the woman with a warm voice.

    Daimon smirked behind his mask, there was only one nonbatant woman in the caravan and that was Gary''s "secretary", in other words that average looking woman in her thirties, which of course Daimon noticed on the spot was disguised.

    After all, why would a merchant who should value profits, practically suffer loses in every possible way, to arrive at Tiria as soon as possible, during blood moon week, there was obviously more than what met the eyes there.

    ''I already expected it, but to think that this kind of situation would appear even without me epting any mission'', he thought before saying.

    "Deal".

    In the meantime, the crazy girl had a dangerous glow in her eyes as she mumbled.

    "Bitch".

    Of course, themunication array was still on, so the other party heard her, luckily, she was talking in a really low voice, so it was quite hard to understand what she said.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow at her, just to see the crazy girl ying dumb as if she didn''t do it on purpose.

    "Let''s not reveal too much,e but don''t do anything okay?", said Daimon as he jumped out of the carriage.

    "Sure~", happily said the crazy girl, they both then shed appearing next to the giant sandworm which was slowly but surely closing the circle to crush those in the center, in other words the whole caravan.

    But the movement of the thing stopped on the spot when a ck sword was stabbed into its body.

    Arge magic beast without high mobility was just a free meal for Disaster, despite therge body of the sandworm, it was turned into a dried mummy in less than a second, the capricious sword didn''t really devour the vitality and mana of the sandworm as "food", it just stored it forter usage, as the first was reserved to those things it liked to "eat".

    This time the sandworm copsed for good and then turned into a pile of ashes, that being said, Narasha managed to keep the core intact and Rita retrieved it with an invisible shadow thread.

    Daimon observed the core for a few seconds, it was an Arch ranked one, like the ones embedded in the Ismael and Hal''s equipment, but this one was not only heavier but almost twicerger, being the size of a bowling ball.

    Naturally Daimon pocketed the core and then he walked towards Gary¡­ no it would be more urate to say the carriage of that woman from the Valleris family.

 Chapter 490 New Town, New Group And New Problems (Part 4)

    ?

    Seeing the two people casually walking toward them, after instant-killing an early-stage Arch rank magic beast, the guard who was holding up the banner, tensed up, earlier he watched Daimon overpowering the other six experts, but that was because of a difference in speed.

    Assassin type mages were quite strong against other humans, but against magic beasts they were at disadvantage, but then the masked solver haired man just killed that sandworm in a mere couple of seconds.

    And the previous scene of the same silver haired masked man, killing someone over a small dispute was still fresh, so who knows what could happen now.

    Also, it''s worth mentioning that the other guards who were all early-stage Lord ranks, were in shock, not only at Daimon''s performance, but at the banner with the yellow sword and blue shield that their boss was holding in his hands right now.

    And they weren''t the only ones, the three remaining peak Lord rank experts, were taken back by it too.

    "Is that not the family emblem of the Valleris, if this is a fraud, I don''t want to be involved in it", mumbled the ssed girl.

    Only those of the main branch of the Valleris were authorized to have that banner on them, as it not only represented the whole city of Tiria, but the force backing it too.

    Feigning to be a part of it, was a major insult for the Valleris which resulted in being hunted down and executed including all their families, so the ssed girl was worried that Gary was just trying to pull something that would have horrible consequences.

    "Jackes how long are you going to keep that up, you are going to cause a bad impression on our friends", the voice of a young woman came out the carriage, startling the guard who immediately returned the banner to his ring.

    "I-I''m sorry young miss!", said the guard as he kneeled down at one side of the carriage, respectfully waiting for the one who talked a moment ago toe out.

    The door of the carriage opened and a tall girl, slender girl in her middle twenties came out of it, she had dirty blond hair and dark green eyes, and though she looked rather calm and gentle, she was also exuding the pressure or a middle stage Knight Lord.

    And unlike the people at the towns Daimon met before, she actually looked like a proper middle stage Lord rank, he couldn''t detect any sign of Will Maniption from her, but her vitality was quite strong, not losing in quality to the elite young generation of the Clear Water kingdom, like Terry or Lance.

    Gary who had an ufortable expression on his face, came out after the girl, keeping a respectable distance from her, while bowing his head continuously.

    "Don''t worry about that, I''m Reyne Valleris, so I''m more than authorized to use the emblem of my family", said the girl to the ssed mage June.

    The other guards finally caught up what was happening, their boss which was a merchant was actually escorting an important person, who in this area haven''t heard about the young miss of Tiria city.

    Not only because of her looks which werepletely different to what you would expect, from people that live in a wastnd, having smooth pale skin akin to a nobledy who has never had to spend a day under the zing sun, but because of her backing.

    The Valleris practically owned Tiria city, and not only that, but they actually had an Adjudicator guarding the fort, the only one in this area of the wastnd, in other words they practically had the highest authority in all the nearby zone.

    They all kneeled down and remained silent, surviving experts on the other hand were coldly looking at Gary.

    The bald still one armed Uli, stood up and with bloodshot eyes he shouted at the short merchant.

    "You bastard, why didn''t you mention this before, magic beasts can detect people with strong lineages, it was your fault that such a freak magic beast attacked us, and nearly had us all killed!".

    How could he not be angry, from his point of view he was used as a meat shield and as result his best friend died, while he suffered heavy losses, that pill he consumed was quite pricey, which reminded him.

    "And you masked bastard, you knew about this from the very beginning right, you just wanted to wait until we got rid of the Vulture and tired that thing to get the results without any effort!", he said as he red at Daimon who was arriving along with Sarah right now.

    In his mind, the only reason as to why he was able to kill that sandworm with a single attack, was that ck sword which probably was an expensive Beast Weapon, so he put Daimon and that girl from the Valleris family on the same sack, two rich second generations that took advantage of them.

    Gary was about to yell back at Uli, when the girl raised her hand to do it by herself.

    "You are wrong, certainly magic beasts will hunt humans with strong lineages, the same applies with flesh eating demons, they have developed a sharp sense to detect us, but that''s why I''m using a special treasure to alter my presence, as well as that disguise of before", she said as she pointed a ne with a small core embedded on it, before continuing.

    "Not to mention I haven''t been out of Tiria until this time, how could I know that there was such a troublesome magic beast lingering around, when even the nearby locals didn''t know about it", she looked at the ssed girl who could only sigh in defeat, no one knew about that sandworm, it was as if it had appeared out of nowhere.

    Uli gritted his teeth, what Reyne said was right, who could have predicted that such a monster would appear, when there haven''t been any Arch rank magic beasts appearing in this part, during thest couple of hundreds of years, there are patrolling teams from Tiria doing some rounds all the time to prevent one from appearing after all.

    The only exception are the blood moon weeks, when they don''t operate for safety reasons, only mercenaries like Uli and the others would go out to keep hunting, as it was a dangerous time.

    That being said, Uli still had something he needed to clear.

    "Still, you, if you had the confidence to deal with that thing, then why didn''t you do it sooner, no one would have died if you acted earlier!", he shouted at Daimon.

    "If I remember correctly, you were the ones that told me to be out of the way, don''t tell me you came out during a dangerous time not expecting to risk your life, while just reaping benefits everywhere, if so, you are far more stupid than what I thought", casually said Daimon.

    "Y-You!", Uli felt his lungs fill with anger, but Tanner who could barely move after taking a recovery potion ced his hand on the bald mage and shook his head.

    "And just to make things clear, I didn''t act after all of you got trashed around by that magic beast to take advantage of your efforts, honestly you amounted to nothing, that beast tricked you all from the very beginning, only the head that swallowed that caped guy was "alive", the others were mere appendices with mouths on them, so you didn''t really lethally hurt it at all".

    "I acted until now because I was hired until now, it is as simple as that", added Daimon, to thenpletely ignore Uli and his aggrieved expression.

    Those guys thought they could get some easy cash by escorting Gary who was offering an insanely good pay in exchange for their services, they were blinded by greed and didn''t put enough thought into it, which led to their deaths.

    "Lord Gary, given the current situation of things and since you have gotten¡­ better escorts, I will like to break our agreement and return now, I won''t be of any use in battles anyway", said Tanner.

    What a joke, in his current state even middle stage Lord ranked magic beast will be a problem, so he couldn''t care about protecting others when he can''t protect himself even.

    "I also want to leave, Ken was killed by that thing, I have to inform his family¡­", said the ssed girl.

    Uli spat on the ground, his opinion was clear as day, he didn''t want to be with these people anymore, Gary''s expression ckened, he was the one that hired them, they dropping the mission like that was a disgrace for him, in front of his young miss no less.

    But he didn''t want to waste any time with these unreliable guys, if that sandworm came to them because it could detect his young miss''s strong lineage, then they couldn''t stay here too long, that being said he of course wasn''t going to pay them what was orded.

    "Jackes unload all the things in the carriage, since the deal is off, of course you won''t receive the payment, but as a show of the graciousness of my young miss, I''ll give you this carriage, even if damaged, it should fetch a decent price, you can divide it as you see fit", said Gary.

    The other guards who worked for Gary, didn''t leave, they had almost no chance to advance further than what they had, so this was a one-time chance for them to leave a decent impression on someone from the Valleris, even if they became mere porters at Tiria, it was better than be on the middle upper level of Brown Wind town.

    While Tanner and June felt somewhat thankful, since selling the carriage will at least give them enough money to get some profit, Uli didn''t feel any better, the pill he took was too expensive and he also lost his sword, not to mention he would have to stay in the town and rest until he recovered, he will be short on money for quite a while.

    Once the captain of the guards, who was the only one that seemed to know about Reyne besides Gary, had taken out all the personal belongings of his young miss, Gary turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "I hope young Gabriel is willing to let us share carriage until we reach Tiria, since the other ones are being used for cargo".

    Daimon nodded, since this was just an excuse to have a private talk, Gary obviously had more of these carriages in his ring, otherwise he wouldn''t have gifted that one to Tanner and the others.

    The crazy girl seemed pissed off that someone was interrupting their happy fun time together, which made her re at Reyne, but since Daimon nodded, then she didn''t say anything.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    After saying goodbye to the three surviving experts, the guards and the caravan formed once again, this time with Daimon''s carriage as its core and they continued advancing towards Tiria.

    ¡­

    Inside the carriage that advanced at full throttle, there was a slightly awkward silence between the atmosphere, as Reyne gently smiled at Daimon, under the fierce gaze of the crazy girl, while Gary was sitting on the row behind the one in which Reyne was sitting.

    "First of all, I would like to introduce myself, Reyne Valleris, the young miss of the Valleris family, it''s a pleasure", she said as she slightly raised the sides of her dress like a proper nobledy.

    Daimon nodded as he answered.

    "I''m Gabriel, and she is Prisc, we are travelers from an exterminated small settlement in the wastnd", this is the story he forged for them, he was sure that with the current state of Kerrol, it should be a prettymon thing, not everyone could live in towns, and it was normal to die if you lived in the wastnd, that also covered why they were strong, since they had to survive.

    "Leaving that aside, and while we were never in danger, I don''t appreciate to have been kept on the dark regarding this situation", said Daimon, though his voice was calm, the temperature seemed to plummet all of a sudden, making Gary feel his back drenched in cold sweat.

    Previously he didn''t believe Ender''s supposition, that Daimon and Sarah probably managed to survive and escape from a human farm, but he was inclined to believe it now, otherwise he couldn''t think of a way for someone to develop such a horrifying aura.

    Surprisingly, while the merchant was being intimidated, the gave Daimon an apologetic smile before saying.

    "Please don''t be angry about it, while it is true that I kept my identity a secret for my safety, it also applies to others, if anyone else were to know I was returning to Tiria, there is a high chance of flesh-eating demons, and humans attacking us instead of just magic beasts", she said.

    "Y-Young miss you shouldn''t¡­", Gary tried to tell Reyne to not speak about such things in front of strangers, but Reyne stopped him from doing so.

    "Enough, if they wanted to harm me, I think it would be really hard to escape, at least that''s what my instincts tell me, so unless I''m being kidnapped right now, I think we are good, in fact this is probably a situation that can benefit both of us, am I right, young Lord Gabriel", she said while keeping her calm and gentle smiling expression.

    Daimon had to give it to Reyne, he expected this to be a ssy hero situation, in which he was expected to help the damsel in distress, but this girl seemed to have things under control, since she wasn''t rmed even after the sandworm killed Ken.

    It is also easy to see that Gary didn''t want her to reveal her identity earlier, she took that decision on her own, so she wasn''t just a defenseless young miss from a noble family.

    "You are right, I want some information and a way to exchange some prisoners for rewards, if you can give me that, we can forget about the hospitality and all", said Daimon.

    But Reyne softlyughed as she shook her head.

    "I don''t mind lending a hand on that, but I still want you to at least enjoy your stay in Tiria, in the pce of my family, since you practically saved my life, of course if you don''t feelfortable with it, I won''t push things further, but I will still have to apany you because the ce where you can get what you need isn''t essible for everyone", she said.

    Daimon nodded, and then he leaned back on the sofa, with the sandworm which practically ruled this area, dead, there won''t be any other peak Lord ranked magic beasts appearing, and middle stage ones could be dealt of by Jackes and the other guards without any problem.

    If Tanner and the others were to know that they basically gave up a ride to Tiria, free from any dangers from this point onwards, they would probably vomit blood.

    And so, the carriage easily advanced through the wastnd, as Daimon predicted, besides a couple of middle stage Lord ranked magic beasts that appeared on their way, nothing else happened, so it was fine to assume that Reyne''s schedule wasn''t revealed.

    After a couple of hours of that, practically at midday, Daimon got a glimpse of a tall metal wall from the window of the carriage, just to hear Reyne saying.

    "There it is, the city that guards the border to the wastnd, Tiria".

    Daimon was surprised by the huge difference between a "city" and a "town", even the town closest to this city, didn''t have such an imposing wall, which was more than fifty meters tall, not to mention therge number of guards patrolling on top of it.

    There were giant crossbows mounted on the walls as well as archers deployed everywhere, not to mention the magic cores embedded on the giant wall, it was basically a fortress.

    Another curious thing is that the caravan didn''t go to the preferential line, which was clearly reserved for important people, but the general waiting line, meaning that Reyne didn''t want practically anyone to know she had returned.

    Once their turn to enter arrived, Daimon saw that she had returned to the disguise she was using earlier, while for him it didn''t work, she was able to trick the detecting arrays on the walls and the guards who were all middle stage Lord ranks.

    Just the guards here were as strong as Ender, and there was a dozen of them stationed outside, the difference between this ce and the towns just grew bigger with each second.

    But it made sense, since even from outside Daimon could tell there were a few Arch ranks inside this city.

    With Gary handling all the paperwork, they were soon allowed to enter the city, the merchant didn''t enter the carriage again though, and instead sat next to the coachman, leaving Reyne alone with Daimon and Sarah.

    The caravan advanced through the streets until it reached the merchant district, entering arge area which was owned by Gary, it would be more urate to say that it was a whole street, owned by him and his "associates", so once they reached that, the street was suddenly flooded by people.

    From inside the carriage Daimon observed the situation, all the people that appeared out of nowhere, all worked for Gary, he could tell because though it looked random, they were all fulfilling a specific role, not to mention that they weremunicating with signals.

    They were actually quite good, but not to the level where they could trick his infinity eyes, Sarah could have also noticed it, but all her attention has been on Reyne since they were left alone with her.

    Once the caravan had entered an empty yard, the gates closed and they were now isted from the outside, only then Gary stopped the carriage and opened the door.

    "Wee home young miss, the secret passage has been prepared and thedy is already waiting for you at the other side", said Gary, as he bowed towards Reyne.

    Reyne stood up from her seat and then turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "Do you two want toe with me, or do you prefer to wait here, I have to meet someone before I get to do anything else".

    "We''ll go", to Daimon''s surprise, the crazy girl was the one that answered, but he was going to say the same thing, so he went along with it.

    There was a door that led to the building to which the yard was connected, which opened for Reyne.

    "Keep an eye on those two, they can''t leave their cages, and you can''t approach them either, I''ll know if something happens, so I suggest you two warn those guys on the roof to not point those arrows towards me unless they want to die", casually said Daimon to Gary as he entered through the door, making Gary sigh, while Reyne softlyughed.

    "Those are members of the shadow guards, who can conceal their presences from even early-stage Arch ranks you know", she said.

    "Well, unlike that girl with sses, I could tell that the sandworm was ying with them, so it is only normal that I can detect them, but you already knew that, right", answered Daimon, making Reyne nod in response.

    "Indeed, don''t pay them attention please, I can''t really order them, they still aim at Gary even if he is a trustable subordinate of my father, but they won''t do anything unless my life is in danger, so there is no need to worry", she said.

    Daimon did as she asked and ignored them, the secret passage had a lot of those guys hiding here and there, he could feel the countless aims on him, not like it did matter, but certainly the security was tight here.

    The crazy girl also noticed them, since she has been trained in assassin techniques by her mother, but she was only paying attention to Daimon right now, as she walked in between him and Reyne.

    Daimon wondered what the hell she was up to, but he decided that it was better to not ask, because the answer won''t be up to his liking anyway, as long as she didn''t do anything too bothersome, Sarah was free to act as crazy as she wanted.

 Chapter 491 The Valleris & Perspective (Part 1)

    ?

    After around ten minutes of walking through the underground corridor, which was secretly been watched by those shadow guard guys behind the walls, Daimon saw the end of the corridor, which of course didn''t lead to their final destination, but to a spatial array.

    Reyne took a scroll out of her ring and then let a drop of her blood fall on it, to then throw it into the spatial array, the scroll burned into nothingness, she ced her hand on a specific spot of the right wall and only then the array activated.

    "Are you hiding the secret of eternal life in here, or what", mumbled the crazy girl, her smile widened a bit when she felt the arrows and knives in the darkness aim at her.

    Reyne bitterly smiled as she retrieved her hand from the wall.

    "Please don''t y like that, miss Prisc, those guys might not listen to me, but I would prefer to keep them alive, also while I don''t mind these kinds of things my father isn''t so easy going so¡­", she said.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, Sarah didn''t show any respect even to Abaris, so expecting her to behave was asking for too much, best case scenario she would just be indifferent.

    On the other hand, it''s not like she was dumb in the slightest, she was trying to test waters here, so Daimon couldn''t get angry at her for that, and of course he wasn''t going to ask for forgiveness.

    Which of Reyne expected, and now felt somewhat worried, but ultimately, she decided to mediate if things went south, because she really wanted her family to meet these two interesting people.

    She just walked into the array and beckoned to Daimon and Sarah, so that they followed her, which they did.

    The array on the ground lit up and they then disappeared, making the corridor fall in silent and darkness once again.

    Daimon had previously scanned the array to make sure it wasn''t a trap, so the travel was quite short and without any inconvenient.

    A few secondster the scenery changed from that obscure underground corridor, to a spacious and well illuminated room, where two women were waiting for them.

    Well, it would be more urate to sat that there was one woman waiting for them, while the other was observing from the shadows.

    "I''m back, mother", happily said Reyne as she walked towards the woman who was openly waiting for them, who looked like a slightly older version of Reyne, having also dirty blond hair and dark green eyes, if there was really a difference between them, would be their fashion sense.

    While Reyne wore a simple but elegant one-piece ck dress, her mother was wearing a more vibrant outfit, which consisted in a white dress with green decorations, despite her lively outfit, her expression was rather emotionless, besides a small smile that appeared when she saw Reyne walking towards her.

    "Wee back", she limited to say, but that seemed to make Reyne pretty happy as she hugged her mother, their personalities truly contrasted with each other.

    After that little exchange, the attention of the mother naturally went to the unknown couple of people that appeared at the same time as her daughter, since this was an extremely restricted area, that led to one of the safe escaping routes prepared just in case.

    "And who these pair of young friends might be?", she asked, to which Reyne cleared her throat before saying.

    "Ahem, mother, don''t forget to introduce yourself first", said Reyne, it was as if she was the mother, and the older woman was the daughter.

    "Oh right, I''m Jeanne Valleris, it''s a pleasure", said Reyne''s mother as she raised the sides of her dress.

    "I''m Gabriel and she is Prisci, we are survivors from a now extinct settlement in the wastnd, who happened to cross paths with Reyne", casual but properly answered Daimon.

    The moment Daimon referred to Reyne without honorifics, he noticed the gaze of the woman in the shadows, bing sharp, it didn''t carry any ill intent, but she was clearly not happy about it, still Daimon simply met her gaze with his own, which made the woman''s eyes widen a bit.

    Reyne felt the atmosphere tense up a bit, so she immediately stepped in to talk to the air, since she didn''t know where the woman was in the room.

    "Please calm down aunt Emily, they were able to detect a variation of four-headed variation of a sandworm on the early stage of the Arch rank and killed it with a single attack, so it''s normal that they can see through your camouge, but I can assure you they aren''t enemies", she said with a calm voice.

    The space blurred in front of Reyne as a woman with long dark gray hair with a mouth mask, wearing arge ck and red dress appeared, her eyes had some wariness lingering in them.

    And with a proper reason, the two women were both middle stage Arch ranks, while Reyne''s mother was a mage, the woman who was previously watching in the shadows is a Knight, and yet a Lord ranked member of the young generation saw through her camouging martial art.

    "Little girl, you know the situation in which we currently are, I don''t doubt your judgement, nor use them of anything, but the timing is indeed strange", said Emily.

    Daimon didn''t really pay much attention to thatment, his eyes glowed behind his mask as he felt a slightly familiar sensationing from her, one that probably only he could notice in the whole Kerrol.

    ''She is a Ghoul¡­ no only part of it'', he thought, at the same time a fake notification appeared in front of him.

    [There are many families plotting a rebellion, cooperate with the Church of Justice to eradicate them all]

    As always, Daimon found these fake notificationscking, there was no exnation, options, or rewards shown on it, it was as if something was trying to boss him around, which he of course didn''t like.

    The crazy girl was marveled at the sight of the notification though, but Daimon decided to leave that fortter, since right now there was a more urgent matter in front of him.

    What surprised him, is that he couldn''t detect any lies or ill intent from the dark gray-haired woman, so unless she was as skilled at deceiving others as Erin, she genuinely cared about Reyne, so there was obviously some backstory here, not to mention that he didn''t know whether the notification marked them as "allies" or "enemies", not like it mattered since that is something he will determine with his own eyes.

    "Don''t worry aunt, I almost had to drag them here, or they wouldn''t havee to the castle, also they could have kidnapped me if they wanted to, because I travelled alone with them in the same carriage, so they aren''t a part of "them" I''m sure of it", said Reyne with her gentle calm voice.

    "You what!", both Jeanne and Emily eximed in unison, as they both felt the urge to strangle Gary, since he was supposed to watch over Reyne, but they calmed down the next second.

    They knew Reyne wouldn''t lie about something that involved the lives of practically everyone in this castle, and if that was the case, Daimon certainly had all the chances in the world to make his move on Reyne before, but he apanied her home, so the chance of him being an enemy was practically non-existent.

    That or he trusted he could do as he pleased even within the territory of the Valleris, which was something they naturally couldn''t believe.

    "Fine, but you have to tell that guy about it, otherwise things will get troublesome", said Emily referring to Reyne''s father, in other words Tiria''s City Lord.

    "In that case, why don''t you guide your friends to a guest room, so they can refresh themselves so they can apany us for a meal", said Jeanne.

    As Daimon was about to refuse since he wanted to go get the information he needed as well as to get rid of those prisoners, Reyne turned to see him with a sweet smile to say.

    "The "ck market" starts functioning at 5 PM, to make up for it, you won''t need to wait in line for anything you wantter, so why don''t you two join us for a meal, also after almost a day in the carriage I bet a nice rest isn''t a bad idea".

    As random as always, the crazy girl''s eyes sparkled when she imagined being able to spy on Daimon as he bathed, or being chained so she can''t do it, both scenarios were fine for her, so she agreed on the spot.

    "Deal!", she said with an enthusiastic voice, which took Reyne a bit by surprise, she couldn''t understand what was happening in the mind of the crazy girl, little did she know that she was lucky, because Daimon could tell what her intentions were, on the other hand a bath didn''t sound like a bad idea after travelling through the wastnd for more than twelve hours.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "We kindly ept", he said, making Reyne p a couple of times, happy that her invitation wasn''t rejected.

    "Follow me please~", she happily said as she walked out of the room, followed by Daimon and Sarah.

    Once they had left, Jeanne turned to see Emily before saying.

    "Your senses are better than mine Emi, so what do you say?", she asked as she took a seat.

    "They are dangerous, especially the masked one, when our eyes met, my body tensed up on its own, I''m sure he is neither an Arch rank or a flesh eating demon, and yet I felt like that time when we were attacked by that Blood Duke, so unless he is the Blood King in disguise in which case we are screwed, even with your grandfather joining us, they probably achieved the impossible and escaped a human farm", answered Emily with a contemting expression on her face.

    "I see¡­ I thought Reyne brought him as a reinforce, but she doesn''t seem to have the intention of involving him at all, maybe she just wants to repay him for helping, which is for the good, I don''t think someone like that can be forced to anything, so them being neutral while having a good impression of Reyne is probably the best result possible", said Jeanne.

    Emily nodded and then her body blurred as she disappeared from in sight, the two of them then left the room, since they had other things to do now that Reyne has returned, everything will start with the meal that was about toe.

    With Reyne leading the way it wasn''t long before they reached the guest area, Daimon used his infinity eyes to look at where they were from the outside, the transportation array, brought them all the way from the merchant district which was located at the southeast area of Tiria, to the central area.

    The ce in which they were was visible even from outside, despite the fifty-meter-tall wall, it was a huge castle, which one would expect to find in any major noble family of the Clear Water kingdom.

    And yet this castle wasn''t in the most central spot of the city, there was mansion which didn''tck in any sense whenpared to it, that should be the mansion of the City Lord, while this was the castle of the Valleris family, besides that, there was a giant cathedral which Daimon could already guess to which force it was affiliated and also there were other rtively smaller buildings, that belonged to important people.

    It''s worth mentioning, that there was an inner wall surrounding the central area, and then both the castle and the mansion had their own private walls too, all the other buildings didn''t have a wall including the cathedral.

    This gave a rough picture of what was the power bnce in Tiria, leaving that aside, Reyne finally stopped in front of arge wood door.

    "This is the best guest room in the castle, I hope it is up to your liking, I''lle back in an hour to pick you up, if you need anything you can call me through this", said Reyne as she handed Daimon a device that looked like an older version of his Sigil Lector, which made sense since it was based on human magic technology, modified by dwarves and then by the beast races, and also the key of the room.

    Daimon nodded as he epted the thing, there was only one contact there and it was Reyne''s, of course he checked to see if there were some hidden tricks but that wasn''t the case, so he kept it in his inventory and then opened the door just to be temporarily froze on the spot, after noticing that there was only one bed in the room, it was quite big though, as it could easily amodate at least eight people.

    The crazy girl smiled and then jumped on the bed, without further ado, while Daimon turned to see Reyne just to see she was softlyughing.

    "Enjoy your stay~", she said in an amused voice as she left to her own room.

    Daimon inwardly sighed and then closed the door, he also moved sidewards dodging Sarah who just jumped to try and hug him.

    "Take your bath and don''t take long, so I can take mine, I have a couple of things to tell you", he said.

    "The best way to save time is that we bath together so let''s go~", said the crazy girl as she started undressing without any care on the world, she moved as fast as she could and her skirt was the first thing to fall, to reveal the ck panties she was wearing below, she was about to take off her panties, when Daimon shed to appear next to her.

    With his right eyebrow twitching, he grabbed Sarah by the cor of her blouse and threw her towards the door of the bathroom, which Rita opened with her shadow threads, to then close the door once the crazy girlnded inside.

    "Don''t let her out until she has dressed herself again", casually said Daimon as he let his body fall on the bed to have a well-earned rest.

    ''Mm'', with a small sound of affirmation, Rita followed her young master''s orders, that being said her eyes had a strange glow in them as she observed everything from within Daimon''s shadow.

    ''Ah, I''m starting to miss mom and the others'', thought Daimon as he closed his eyes to wait until Sarah had finished her bath.

    ¡­

    While Daimon and Sarah prepared to have their meal with the Valleris, to ease up their way to the information they needed, to narrow Jasmine''s search, at a ce far away from Tiria, there was a barrennd with volcanoes surrounded by a petrified forest, the smell of sulfur filled the air, making it toxic for living beings not apt to the environment.

    And in the middle of that area there was ck hill, surrounded by people with ck robes covering all their bodies.

    Even if their attires were simr, there was a clear division between them, forming two major groups, with many smaller divisions between them, in total there were around sixteen of them.

    A tall figure with a ck worn-out robe, came from one of the sides, just to be met by a short slender figureing from the other party.

    "Were you useless idiots able to retrieve that thing, or are you still losing our time?", sarcastically said the tall figure.

    "Shut it, unlike you whoze around, since you casually found your "key", we have to fight for it, we''ll tell you when we are ready, if I even hear of any of you near our territories, you''ll have to pay a heftypensation so don''t test our limits", said the short figure.

    "Humph, beg that we don''t meet in the Red in battlefield, otherwise I''ll crush all your family soldier''s necks!", said the tall figure as it turned back to leave.

    "Same here", answered the short figure as it returned with its own group, the two groups then started floating and they all soon left the area, which returned to its silent state, only interrupted by the random trembling volcanoes.

    Without them noticing, there was someone observing the whole thing, from within the ck hill, or more urately from within a ck cage that was trapped inside the ck hill, right next to an open cave which was overflowing with all kinds of precious materials, magic herbs and other valuable things.

    A pair of light green eyes could be said faintly glowing in the darkness flooded cave in which the ck cage was, followed by the sound of metal being slowly grinded by something sharp.

    Which then stopped, as the sound of footsteps came from outside of the cave, before a genderless voice could be heard.

    "So, are you enjoying the show, if you ept the deal I offered to you, we can end this and move on, what do you say?", asked the voice only to be yelled back.

    "Screw you, just try do something bad to me if you dare, do you really think I couldn''t notice the ufortable sensation around you, which appeared not too long ago, he ising, who knows, the next time you blink you might not open your eyes again!", answered the one in the cage, this time it was obviously the voice of a young girl.

    The owner of the genderless voice snorted and then left the cave, not without saying.

    "It seems you haven''t experienced the cruel reality yet, but don''t worry, I''ll show you the decadence on other people''s hearts".

    Listening to the footsteps fading on the distance, the pair of light green eyes which shone with unbreakable determination appeared once again in the darkness, as the sound of metal being grinded slowly making it almost unnoticeable, could be heard once again.

    ''Twenty thousand and fifty¡­ even from afar he is protecting me, how can I just sit and be a burden'', thought the little figure inside the ck cage, as it used an essory on her wrist to wear out the floor of the ck cage.

 Chapter 492 The Valleris & Perspective (Part 2)

    ?

    Back at the Valleris''s castle, more specifically at Daimon''s room, Daimon who wasying down on the bed with his eyes closed, heard the door of the bathroom opening as well as slow footstepsing his way followed by the fruity scent of shampoo.

    "If you jump at me right now, I swear I''ll throw you out of the room until I finish bathing", said Daimon as he opened his eyes just to see that the crazy girl wasying down on the bed a few centimeters away, staring at him.

    Surprisingly she didn''t do anything, besides giggling, so Daimon got up and then walked into the bathroom, not without asking Rita to keep an eye on her.

    Once inside of the bathroom Daimon took off his clothes and jumped below the shower, one of the good things about humanity or smart civilizations in general, is that whether powered by electricity or magic, technology always followed the same direction, which was, making people''s lives easier.

    As the water drops fell down on Daimon''s body, he heard Rita calling him from within his shadow.

    ''Daimon''.

    ''What happened, did that crazy girl couldn''t hold back anymore and is trying to barge in the bathroom?'', asked Daimon with an unsurprised voice in his mind.

    ''No, I noticed you were feeling a bit down earlier, would it be of any use, if I helped young master¡­ bath, that is also part of my duties after all?'', she said, her voice tone lowering more and more until it was practicable just mumbles.

    "¡­"

    Daimon remained silent for a moment, only then he realized something, besides when he was doing naughty things with Aisha and the others, Rita was in his shadow all the time ever since she gained self-aware, in other words, she basically has seen him naked a lot.

    ''Huh, so you didn''t know it, and here I thought you were just enjoying being an exhibitionist~'', unless Daimon didn''t want her to, Evangeline could hear his thoughts, and read his mood, and she of course couldn''t let go of this chance to tease Daimon, since it is rare for something to escape his scope.

    ''So, Daimon can also be clumsy sometimes~'', even Narasha couldn''t help but softlyugh, luckily, she has understood joy ever since she met Daimon, and she was making the most out of it.

    It''s not like it waspletely Daimon''s fault though, only recently Rita has started to show a more "human" side of her, asking to speak in an informal way to him, on the other hand it could be because she really is timid, to the point that she onlyes out of his shadow if he asks for it, or if she has to fight.

    "I appreciate the offer, I''m just taking a quick shower this time, maybe another time, also don''t worry, I just felt a bit nostalgic since it''s been some time since I saw Erin and the others", said Daimon keeping his cool, it would be more ufortable to change things now.

    But he kept a mental note to have a small conversation about thister, this is a subject he didn''t have to discuss with Horals, though he did have to stop the Bone General from "Gathering all the beauties of the enemy''s families, to warm his honorable young master''s bed".

    Rita who was inside Daimon''s shadow felt a bit at a loss until she heard the words "maybe another time".

    ''Okay!'', she answered in a strangely enthusiastic voice, making Daimon chuckle, he finished bathing and then came out, just to see why the crazy girl didn''t try to break in the bathroom, she was rolling on the bed, more urately on the part where he wasying down before.

    "What the hell are you doing now?", asked Daimon only to regret it the next second as he heard the answer.

    "Mixing my scent with yours to keep that bitch away~", she happily said, making Daimon sigh.

    "Why did I even bother¡­ whatever, you saw the notification earlier right?", said Daimon, to which the crazy girl who wasying down on her belly right on the spot where Daimon was earlier, nodded.

    "Mm, it was something about some guys working behind scenes and us having to stop them, we aren''t going to do that right, the reward won''t get us closer to Jas, and it sounds boring too?", she casually said as she rubbed her face against the bed.

    Ignoring what she was doing, Daimon nodded.

    "Of course, we aren''t doing it, but we''ll drop by the cathedral since we have some time before the ck market "opens", ording to the information we got thanks to Ender, there are two ways of exchanging those rted to flesh eating demons, it''s either the government in other words the Adjudicators, or the so-called Church of Justice", he said.

    "Okay~", said the crazy girl, usually this led to a fight and she having fun with Daimon, so as long as it didn''t get in their way to find Jasmine, it was good for her.

    Naturally Daimon had a reason for this, previously he already thought that the name "Church of Justice" sounded like something 100% rted to heroes, and this notification/forced mission confirmed it, now he just needed to know which side was more helpful for him, to determine his next course of action.

    They apparently cleared that out on time, because not even a few secondster, past the hour mentioned by Reyne, Daimon heard someone knocking on the door, Reyne to be more urate, which he knew courtesy of his infinity eyes.

    Daimon opened the door, and was met with the elegant and smiling Reyne who came to pick them up, whose attention was momentarily drawn by the fact that Sarah was smiling at her, from her face down position on the bed.

    That being said, her calm expression didn''t change, her attention just returned to Daimon as she said.

    "I''m happy to see that the room was up to your liking, are you ready?".

    Daimon nodded, luckily the mask of the Hollow Suit only covered the upper part of his face, so he didn''t have to take it off to eat, probably it was designed with that in thought.

    ¡­

    The two of them followed Reyne through the corridors and halls of the castle, until they reached the dining room, where Jeanne was already waiting for them, sitting on arge table that had space for at least twenty people, there were of course not that many chairs.

    The dark gray-haired Emily was standing behind Jeanne, while being camouged, Daimon took a seat at the other side of the table, and the crazy girl immediately sat at his right.

    Reyne didn''t react to that and just walked and sat next to her mother, her position was "casually" right in front of Daimon.

    Just as Daimon observed that there were only two free seats, and they were positioned at the two ends of it, very far from the center where he, Sarah and the pair of mother and daughter were sitting, the door opened and two neers came from it.

    They were two ck haired guys, one who seemed to be in his early thirties and one who was in his middle twenties, they both had green eyes too, and were clearly rted to the other, since they resembled a lot.

    The middle aged one, looked at Daimon with a frowned expression but didn''t say anything, that being said it was easy to notice he didn''t like the idea of Daimon wearing a mask, not to mention he was slightly exuding his recently ascended peak Archmage aura.

    As for the younger guy, he limited to greet Reyne and Jeanne, while ignoring everything else and taking his seat at the down edge of the table, while the older man sat at the upper edge of it.

    After a couple of seconds of waiting, it became clear that Daimon wasn''t going to present himself first, so Reyne took the initiative to speak.

    "Let me introduce you to them, young Lord Gabriel, my father, the City Lord of Tiria, Oliver Tiria and my older brother Eliot Tiria, ah if you are wondering about the difference inst name, the City Lord and his designated sessor take the name of the city as theirst name", said Reyne.

    "A pleasure", said Daimon, the young guy didn''t show interest in him so he didn''t pay him any attention, as for the old man, he didn''t present himself, so Daimon didn''t either, which made Reyne give him an apologetic smile, she knew her father was rather strict, and in these kind of situations, the junior should take the initiative, unfortunately when has Daimon respected anyone out of seniority, and that includes people who he is sure had lived tens of times what this mere peak Arch ranked has and yet aren''t this petty.

    Still, Reyne was clever enough to mention his name while she introduced her father and older brother, so in a sense the presentations were over and so with Jeanne who didn''t interfere before, pping her hands, the chefs and servants brought several dishes from the kitchen and ced them on the table, there were four copies of each so that everyone could reach to what they wanted.

    "Enjoy your food", surprisingly the city lord nodded at all the presents, including Daimon and waited for them to reach out to the food, before doing the same himself, it was courtesy but it surprised Daimon, considering he didn''t even introduce himself first.

    Maing Daimon wonder if there was poison in the food, but that wasn''t the case, at all, the crazy girl casually served two tes and then passed one to Daimon with a sweet smile on her face, while she stole a gaze at Reyne.

    ''Yup, she is doing it on purpose'', thought Daimon, but he didn''t say anything and just epted the te and dug in, the food was actually quite decent, not as good as ine''s cooking, but that was expected.

    The crazy girl was quite hungry herself, so she didn''t stand in ceremony and ate te after te, knights do consume a lot more of food than mages, due to the nature of their path which makes them more simr to magic beasts.

    Reyne was the same though, the difference is that Sarah didn''t act as a refined as her, not only because her backstory was of someone who was raised in a settlement in the wastnd, but because though she actually learned high etiquette, she wasn''t too fond of it, in that sense her mother was simr, both didn''t really like formalities.

    "Reyne, I wasn''t really going to say it, but is your acquittance really not going to take off that mask, is he perhaps not aware of what wearing a mask while eating means?", said Eliot as he drank from his cup.

    "Gabriel survived in the wastnd brother, but I can vouch that he isn''t a flesh eating demon, if that is what worries you", said Reyne with a smile that wasn''t a smile.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Little girl, your brother''s worries are justified, I didn''t hear anything of this beforehand too after all", added Oliver, just to hear Jeanne saying.

    "Well, that''s not exactly true, Emily called you but you didn''t answer, besides I met them before and they are Reyne''s benefactors and my guests, so you can drop the City Lord act or leave".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the room, until Daimon''s chuckle broke it.

    "I can swear I''m not a flesh eating demon if that''s the problem", he said.

    "Humph, can you swear you aren''t an enemy?", asked Eliot as he snorted, just to be surprised at Daimon''s casual answer.

    "Well, that depends on whether you stand in my way or not", he said, making Eliot slightly grit his teeth.

    "What did you¡­", just as he was about to stand up from his seat, Oliver interfered.

    "Enough, sit down Eliot, is this how a future City Lord should act!", he said before he turned to see Daimon.

    "I''m sorry for the misunderstanding, wearing a mask to eat is something those filthy high ranked nobles among the flesh eating demons do¡­ for fun, I didn''t know you helped Reyne, please ept my thanks for that".

    Daimon nodded, apparently the problem wasn''t him wearing a mask, but an association to the flesh eating demons, which Oliver seemed to hate from the bottom of his heart, which was understandable.

    "No problem, I guess Gary hasn''t filled his report yet, but we have passed the tests of six towns on the way, not to mention this city''s ones too", he said.

    Oliver nodded back, Gary actually did send him a report, but he hasn''t had the time to read it, since he was busy dealing with other urgent matters until he realized Reyne''s presence felt stronger, meaning she had returned, so he hurried back to the Valleris''s castle.

    With that out of the way, Daimon took the chance to ask.

    "In the towns I have been, there was no branch of the Church of Justice, nor a representative of an Adjudicator, so I wonder that is the difference between giving a sinner to one or the other?", he said.

    "Sinner" was the term used for those who cooperated with the flesh eating demons, the subject attracted the attention of both Oliver and Jeanne, though thetter knew Daimon has captured someone, she thought he had already been through this process before, since her daughter told her how he utterly crushed Jeremy''s business.

    "Mind your manners you savage, we are eating¡­", as Eliot was scolding Daimon, his father shook his head.

    "As an Adjudicator your duty is never over, and dealing with sinners is one of our major responsibilities, even for a newly epted one like you, time and situation don''t apply to this, unless we are talking of an emergency", said Oliver with a disappointed voice.

    Making Daimon inwardly nod, the City Lord was old fashioned but he now got a glimpse of his character, it''s not that he was actively trying to pick on him earlier, he just had a strict upbringing, but he was responsible and upright.

    Eliot wanted to argue back, but his father didn''t allow him to, as he immediately answered Daimon''s question.

    "It depends, we Adjudicators and our representatives have a fixed "reward" in exchange for sinners, while the guys from the Church of Justice don''t, their reward varies, but most of the time it is honestly higher than what we offer, at least in terms of beast cores, we are more resourceful in other fields though, like minerals, informationwork and permits to other cities".

    ''So, the church got more support, but they have more authority'', thought Daimon as he heard Oliver''s exnation.

    "I see, thanks for the information", said Daimon to then finish eating his food, before getting up his seat, Sarah and Reyne finished at the same time.

    "Thanks for the food, of you excuse us, we''ll go out to take a small walk", said Daimon to which Reyne added.

    "I''ll go too as we spoke earlier".

    Oliver turned to see Jeanne who nodded at him, since she has already approved of it, so the City Lord didn''tin, but Eliot on the other hand did say.

    "I will tag along too if you don''t mind¡­", he hasn''t finished speaking when Daimon interrupted him.

    "No", it was a single word and yet it was so cutting that Eliot felt as if he was pped on the face, but Reyne came to the rescue.

    "There is no need to worry brother, aunt Emily has agreed to follow us just in case".

    With that, even Oliver felt re-assured, so there was nothing Eliot could do or say, specially since it was obvious, he didn''t get along with Daimon, so there is no way the other party will let him tag along if not being obligated to.

    And with that, the three of them left the room, and not even a secondter, Eliot turned to see his father with a serious expression on his face.

    "Lord father, why didn''t you let me go too, that guy clearly only worries about benefits or he wouldn''t have asked that, what if he tries to take advantage of Reyne, and you why did you stopped me", he eximed as he pointed at Emily who came out of her camouged state.

    Earlier, it wasn''t only Oliver saying "enough" what stopped him from moving earlier, the dark gray-haired Emily used her mana pressure to restrain him too, her control was quite precise so that no one besides Oliver and Jeanne noticed it, or at least that should have been the case, but for some reason she couldn''t help but believe that the masked silver haired youth noticed it too.

    "It would have been too disgraceful if you had to rely on his help against a member of the young generation, in your own house, in a fight you started just by being a brat", said Emily as she pointed at Oliver.

    "Are you saying I would have lost, I''m a peak Lord ranked who has been epted as a preliminary Adjudicator, as I have killed those disgusting flesh eating idiots before!", said Eliot with a disgusted face as he red at Emily, who had already stopped paid attention to him.

    "ording to Reyne, he killed a variant early stage Arch ranked magic beast with a single attack, while that might have been due to a Beast Weapon, or maybe poison since the corpse couldn''t be retrieved, it is obvious that young man is used to fight those with higher realms than his", calmly said Jeanne, to then casually add.

    "There is a high chance that they escaped a human farm as far as we know, so Emily helped you back then¡­ also if I ever see you look at her with those eyes again, I''ll gouge them out".

    Oliver cleared his throat to interrupt before things got out of hand and because the theory that Daimon and Sarah escaped from a human farm got his interest.

    "Ahem, how certain are you of that and why the hell didn''t you mention it earlier, any Adjudicator would wee him with open arms you know, it was the wish of the founder after all", he said.

    Emily shrugged in response.

    "It''s your fault for not taking the call earlier, and being honest at least 80%, that or I just met the most talented person in the history of Kerrol ever since the first king, take your pick", she said, making Eliot snort as he stood up from his seat to leave to his room.

    Oliver sighed, but he didn''t reprimand his soon, today he was finally promoted to a junior Adjudicator, one of the greatest honors any human being can receive, and pushed the celebration toter, since Reyne had returned and he wanted to tell her, but all this happened in between.

    "I''m not as kind as Jeanne, so let me tell you that if he tries to pull something against that kid, he''ll die in eight out of ten scenarios", said Emily, to which Oliver frowned.

    "What will the two scenarios in which he survives would be?", he asked.

    "Well, there is always a chance that a natural disaster kills us all during blood moon week, like a meteorite falling from the sky and killing everyone in the city, before that masked kid destroys him, that or you interfere and he escapes, to then return in the future and kill the two of you", she casually said.

    Oliver bitterly smiled, but surprisingly he didn''t feel offended, because surviving a peak Arch rank''s attack, is within the capacities of someone that has escaped the living hell that human farm is, especially because thanks to the first king, the security and methods of the flesh eating demons improved a lot, so there hasn''t been any other known case of someone escaping, since back then, that''s why Ender was terrified over his own misconception.

    "I''ll talk to him, you shouldn''t have said that in any case Jeanne¡­", said Oliver as he stood up to leave.

    "He shouldn''t have looked at Emily like that, Adjudicator or not, I don''t care", said Reyne''s mother in response.

 Chapter 493 Church & Black Market (Part 1)

    ?

    Oliver saw Jeanne''s unwavering expression, and he sighed in response as he stopped his leave for a second to then say.

    "This isn''t fair for him you know, he has been training since he was ten, and then this kid just randomly appears, he deserves a chance", said the City Lord.

    Unfortunately for him, Jeanne was calmly finishing her meal while she handed Emily a red capsule, which she swallowed in a go, only after that Reyne''s mother answered him.

    "That''s not something you can decide, you already know my standing in all this, leaving that aside how did the meeting go?".

    Oliver shook his head in response to then say.

    "I have obtained the support of another twenty or so cities, thanks to the rumors of the neighboring wastnd region, where a town was practically razed to the ground in a single day, there weren''t even signs of the chief getting the chance of asking for reinforces".

    "The old fogeys refuse to make a move first, unless I get explicit evidence and those guys will arrive at Tiria tonight, I swear I don''t understand how we haven''t gone extinct since the founder passed away".

    Jeanne ced her fork on the te as she finished eating, while she gazed at the dark gray haired Emily before saying.

    "That''s because per ever million of cowards, someone with enough courage to make a real difference appears, don''t forget to inform the old man to be prepared, who knows what those guys are plotting, but I''m pretty sure they aren''t happy that she escaped their grasp".

    After saying that she and Emily left the room, Oliver followed not too long after, changing the scenery a bit, Reyne guided Daimon and Sarah through the castle all the way to the exit.

    Whenever the guards saw Reyne they respectfully bowed towards her before returning to their static positions, it was obvious that she had a high status among the Valleris, which made Daimon wonder she wasn''t the sessor instead of Eliot.

    He couldn''t imagine that strict upright guy, choosing his son just because of some kind of favoritism, when Reyne clearly was more apt to the uphold the responsibilities of a City Lord.

    That Eliot guy was too short tempered for that, maybe others couldn''t notice it, but since he could literally see mana pressure, even if he wasn''t subjected to it, he of course noticed that Emily was the one that prevented Eliot from attacking him in a moment of recklessness.

    Apparently Reyne was quite sharp towards this subject, as she took the initiative to say.

    "Not all the cities have the same rules, with the pass of the years there are some which are ruled by the Adjudicators and some which are ruled by the Church of Justice, as long as the one in charge cares about humans, no one has really anything to say about it, in fact it is taken as apetition to see who can bring more prosperity to humanity".

    "But there is an exception and that is border cities, like Tiria, more than 60% of Kerrol became unhabitable ever since the first blood moon week, and the remaining part is divided is divided in 15% for us and the leftover 25% is ruled by the flesh eating demons".

    "Contrary to what other people think, the central cities aren''t the strongest, but the border ones, as they regte the many dangerous regions, making sure that enemies don''t infiltrate into the core of human civilization, and because of that, the city lord of every border city has to be an Adjudicator, someone with outstanding battle capacities, other aspects can be managed by assistants, like in my family''s case".

    "In other words, father handles the fights while mom handles the internal affairs, as long as it doesn''t require seeing the representatives of other powers, because there is always a chance of someone trying to take me or her hostage to ckmail father, Eliot is always with father so he isn''t a target in that sense", she said stopping a moment to look at Daimon before continuing.

    "The reason as to why I was hiding my identity and temporarily staying in Brown Wind town, is because there were some meetings which father had to attend, and aunt Emily was out of the city fighting in the Red ins".

    Daimon nodded, earlier he could tell that Oliver is a defense type mage, he is perfect to protect, while Jeanne is a fullbat-oriented mage, if a fight breaks out, she can easily defend herself, but defending others is apletely different story.

    As for Emily, though she isn''t a defense type knight, the nature of her abilities make her a good bodyguard, who can both defend and attack depending on the situation, and since Reyne seems to get along quite good with her, it''s obvious that the dark gray haired woman is often watching over her.

    It''s also worth noticing that the Red in she mentioned is thergest extensionndscape in Kerrol, which is basically an open area surrounded by rock formations, that divides the territory ruled by humans and the one ruled by flesh eating demons.

    It''s the only point from where the flesh eating demons can realistically invade the human territory, since arge army would suffer if it had to move through the different extremely dangerousndscapes of Kerrol, which are the domain of the magic beasts, making it the major battlefield between the two races.

    "Keep your brother under control, next time he looks at me with those disgusting eyes of his, I''ll beat him to a literal pulp", casually said the crazy girl, making thest guards who were at the entrance of the castle shake a bit, it was hard to ignore thatment, but they saw Reyne ring at them as of she was saying "Don''t you dare move".

    Reyne noticed that Daimon wasn''t against the idea and she inwardly sighed remembering the destiny of those guys back at Brown Wind town, it wasn''t hard for someone like Sarah with a really strong poison affinity to turn someone into a bloody pulp.

    "Sorry about that, he has always been a bit reckless, but in part that''s how he became an Adjudicator even at a young age, since aunt Emily should be looking at us, he won''te to look for trouble so just ignore him", she said.

    Leving that aside, they finally left the castle, but were still within the territory of the Valleris, which extended to the surrounding streets, a literal part of the center of the city fully belonged to them.

    Daimon slightly raised his head to take a look at his first destination, therge cathedral that raised at the south of the Valleris''s castle, following the exnation given by Reyne, if a birder city had a strong representative from the "government" then the same should apply to the church.

    "We''ll go to the cathedral since I want to verify a couple of things, are you sure you cane?", asked Daimon to which Reyne nodded.

    "With aunt Emily tagging along, there is no ce of the city which I can''t visit, don''t worry I won''t cause troubles", she said.

    Daimon saw the dark gray haired woman observing him from the shadows, since she wasn''tining or preventing Reyne froming with them, then everything should be fine.

    Since that was settled, they walked towards the cathedral, on the way Daimon observed the city, it is easy to get an idea of how a city is doing by observing those who live in it, it certainly was on a different levelpared to the towns.

    There were no people living on the streets, and no one seemed to be worried about food or security in general, this was true even at the outer part of the city, which he observed from within the carriage when they arrived, though certainly it was a no-luxury life for those who lived there, it was still way better than the towns.

    "Say, Reyne, as someone who has lived in the wastnd I don''t particrly mind, but why is the city not tending a hand to the towns, not like in giving them free stuff but employing them, even at the towns there are several Lord ranks which could be useful and that would prevent what happened at Brown Wind town to repeat", said Daimon to which Reyne bitterly smiled.

    "It''s thew, unless flesh eating demons the cities don''t interfere with the other, much less with towns, humans are weaker than flesh eating demons by innate, so it was done like this to prevent us from getting usfortable which might lead to extinction, at least that''s the official reason, but in all honesty, I think that both the Adjudicators and the Church are trying for a second person like the first king to appear".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, they basically used the towns to force people exploit their potential, in a do or die kind of situation, humans are prompt to exceed their limits, it has happened in the four gxies before when Corrosive Light was created to by the Light Faction to deal with the Undead.

    The process didn''t really mattered to Daimon, but the result they wanted, in other words someone like the first king appearing to lead them, did interest him, because that so called first king could have been the hero as there are no records of how he looked or how strong he really was, ording to Ender.

    And for such an important person to just disappear from the books of history, it was a hard thing to aplish, but it would be easier if we are talking of a system user, also the timing and the situation matched.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    Clearly whatever the mission the hero had here was, he failed topletely clear it, but since he could leave a portal to this ce, something that for sure had to be with his system, then he should have managed to do some progress, a mission tends to have many objectives and each give a small reward.

    ''So, he freed himself from the prison and led the humans, but couldn''t finish it, maybe he wasn''t strong enough the first time, so he left to continueter, but died before having the chance to do so'', thought Daimon.

    Putting the matter at the back of his head until he met whoever sold information in this city, he came out of his daze as he saw the entrance to the cathedral which was quite imposing from up-close.

    There was a small number of stairs which one had to go up, meaning the cathedral was at a higher ground than those outside of it, a quite authoritative design, from the outside it looked like an old European building, made out of white marble, with small green areas at its sides and of course full armored guards standing at the entrance.

    Daimon could also see the numerous arrays here and there, as well as the cores embedded in the walls, pirs and practically every part of the structure, acting as decorations, while they were actually part of the defensive system of the building.

    Emily had toe out of her camouge, otherwise if the arrays detected her, she would be treated as an enemy trying to sneak in, so she just followed the group as they entered the cathedral.

    The insides were quite spacious too, the whole thing was basically a single huge hall which extended from side to side of the building, with chandeliers hanging from the high roof, pirs engraved with several designs, and no ce to sit, besides a slightly elevated tform at the other side of the whole thing.

    That being said, there were some doors at that side too, from which people came and left constantly, there were guards there too, and a singe man was standing still on the tform, wearing some strange white robes.

    "Oh, now this is a sight one doesn''t get to see every day, how can I help the young miss from the Valleris family?", said the man wearing white robes as he kept a peaceful expression on his face.

    But that was only on the surface, Daimon could easily tell the man exuded a cold aura when he saw Emily, not to mention he also almost unnoticeably red at Reyne.

    "Good evening, Archbishop Terrence, I only came as a guide, these two friends wish to speak with the evaluators", said Reyne as she kept a calm neutral expression on her face.

    "I see, that is a good thing, it''s always nice to hear that more of those "disgusting" people who associate with those monsters, is being brought to justice, please go through that door", said the man with white robes as he pointed at a door that was at the left extreme of the hall, while at the same time he also red at Emily.

    The atmosphere slightly tensed up, that white robed guy was the same as Emily, a middle stage Arch rank, a mage though, and it was easy to see they weren''t in good terms, but after a second of that, they didn''t do anything.

    "We''ll be back in a moment", said Daimon to Reyne as he entered through that door signaled by Terrence, of course the crazy girl tagged along.

    ¡­

    Once Daimon closed the door he was weed with the sight of aplete white room, there was some furnish, arge table, a few sofas and also white armors decorating the room.

    But everything waspletely white, giving it a strangely ufortable sensation, and in the middle of all that, there was a man wearing¡­ you guessed it, white robes, though it was only an early stage Archmage, it was easy to tell it was someone with sharp senses.

    Daimon could feel the guy trying to scan him, but of course he could only see what he wanted him to see, the same applied to Sarah since she was using the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    "I the evaluator n¡ã286 have confirmed you aren''t tainted by those monsters, please take a seat and feel fry to ask", said the man as he offered Daimon and Sarah a seat in front of him, at the other side of the table.

    Which they epted, the man even offered them some courtesy snacks such as little muffins and tea, which he served himself, as he waited for them to talk, since Daimon was acting as someone from the wastnd he went straight to the point in a "blunt" way.

    "I want to know what the reward will be, if I captured someone directly working with the flesh eating demons?", he asked.

    The man didn''t take it as an offense and instead said.

    "Noble or regr flesh eating demon, if the answer is the first do you have any idea to which family he belongs, and we''ll need evidence of it, otherwise it will be treated as the second, naturally the reward given by capturing those working for nobles is higher".

    "It''s a woman from a family called "Caraste", this is one of the things I found in her ring", said Daimon as he took out a handkerchief with an emblem in the form of a dagger shoved in the ground, it was something that belonged to one of the two woman that were apanying Dn, he of course robbed them before using them as fuel, so he naturally had all their belongings.

    The eyes of the man glowed for a second as he took the handkerchief from Daimon''s hands, his mana sense inspected the thing thoroughly, before he nodded.

    "I have confirmed that it isn''t fake, the Caraste are a Blood Viscount level family, which means that normally the reward would only amount to the peak of the Lord rank in terms of value, but they serve a Blood Earl directly and this emblem is so well made, that it has to be someone from its main branch, the reward for this would be an early stage Arch rank payment, you can chose between three hundred peak Lord beast cores, or a single use Arch rank, Beast Weapon".

    Daimon''s eyes lightened up as he heard about the reward, it was quite a "generous" one.

    "Wow, sounds like we''ll be able to rest way past the blood moon week, thanks for the information, we''ll go get that scum and return to exchange it", said Daimon to which the man smiled in response.

    "I''ll be waiting for it, may the grace of justice keep you safe", he said as he beckoned towards the door which opened for them to leave.

    Daimon stood up and then left with Sarah who had an excited expression on her face, making the man sitting on the table softly smile.

    Reyne saw Daimon and Sarah returning and she reunited with them along with Emily, before the group left the cathedral, under the eyes of the Archbishop Terrence.

    As soon as they left, Reyne turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "Were you able to get the answers you wanted?".

    "Yes, everything went well", said Daimon as he inwardly thought.

    ''Someone that can lie straight to your face and hide it really good, can''t be up to something good after all''.

    Back at the cathedral, the Archbishop suddenly frowned as if he was contemting something, before his expression returned to normal, no one could tell what the man was thinking.

 Chapter 494 Church & Black Market (Part 2)

    ?

    Once outside of the cathedral Emily once again used her camouging ability and her figure blurred, before she disappeared from in sight.

    Reyne then turned to see Daimon, who was in a good mood right now to then say.

    "The information dealer won''t be avable until an hour or so, but if you want, I can take you to the ck market, the street stalls are already open and even some of the locals too, who knows you might find something interesting there", she said with her usual gentle expression.

    Both Daimon and the crazy girl nodded, they thought that the whole thing didn''t start operating until the hour mentioned by Reyne, but turns out, it''s the information dealer the one who starts working quitete.

    "Sounds good to me", said Daimon.

    Reyne smiled and then guided the group towards the northeast area of the city, contrary to what one would expect from a ce that led to the ck market, the area where Reyne brought them was peaceful, clean and calm.

    In fact, the area was practically filled with family stores, like bakeries, restaurants, pubs, cloth shops and the like, Reyne casually entered one of the many bakeries which was attended by an average looking middle aged woman.

    But as casual as the woman at the counter looked, she was using a treasure to hide her realm, while in reality she was an early stage Arch rank.

    "Hi, I would like three coups of coffee and three baguettes please", said Reyne, to which the woman nodded and pressed her finger against a certain spot of the counter.

    Daimon was able to see it because of his infinity eyes and for that same reason he could see that the ss windows and the door of the local, were now projecting a frozen image and not what lied inside of the bakery.

    Only then, the woman at the counter pointed at the door that led to the backstage of the bakery.

    "This way please young miss", she said.

    Reynne nodded and then she beckoned at Daimon and Sarah, who followed her through the door, at the other side there was a middle-aged man sitting on a corner, besides that, the room seemed to be empty.

    "ording to the rules, please wear something to hide your identities, and remember that while scamming, fighting and dismembering is allowed, no killing can take ce at the ck market, otherwise you''ll be punished", emotionlessly said the man.

    "Don''t take it personally, that is just a reminder, this passage is safe and exclusive to me and the people here can be trusted", said Reyne to Daimon as she put on a generic ck mask, she also activated that ne of hers, which hid her realm and changed her presence.

    Sarah put on a purple mask, while Daimon wore a white one over the half face mask of the Hollow Suit, once his face was covered, he sent the other one to the inventory.

    Reyne was surprised to see that their clothes also changed all of a sudden, courtesy of the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    "Nice trick, I feel a bit dummy to have worried about you two", jokingly said Reyne as she put on a ck mantle to cover up her body, just in case her clothes could be recognized by someone.

    Sarah smirked behind her mask, the bracelet was invisible as it shouldn''t be seen by others, but she felt tempted to unt it to Reyne.

    "I wish the young miss, good luck in today''s findings", said the man as he activated the transportation array engraved on the ground.

    After a couple of seconds, Daimon and the others disappeared from the room, and the man returned to his casual bored expression.

    ¡­

    The travel through the dimensional tunnelsted only a few seconds and Daimon knew why, the ck market was built below Tiria, of course they had illusion and deceiving arrays all over, to prevent even Arch ranks from being able to detect it.

    But Daimon could see through the ground, and so he had already discovered where the ck market was, he still allowed Reyne to apany them, because the information store seemed to be exclusive.

    They soon appeared at a random alley, which was isted, though it was the ck market, it was actually just a smaller city below Tiria, there weremps all over the area, illuminating the dark underground.

    "How is it, different from what you expected right, unlike the ck market at other ces, this one is "official", in the sense that the City Lord in other words my father, knows about it and lets it exist, with some conditions of course, any kind of human trafficking is forbidden, for example, in exchange we have some privileges", said Reyne.

    Daimon nodded, Oliver''s focus was the flesh eating demons, he decided to go for a mutual agreement instead of having to fight the underground scene, this way he used the dark side of humanity for the benefit of his city.

    Of course, the previous came with risks, but the benefits were worth it, since he was involved, he could keep things under control, ording to Rita, the moment they appeared, there were people giving some signals.

    In other words, Oliver had informants all over the ce, supervising the overall situation, the ck market wasn''t exclusively for forbidden stuff to be sold, there were private collectors, and people who found random things and just wanted to sell them while keeping their identities hidden.

    This way they could sell things with "unknown" origins, without any problem, of course if something that previously belonged to someone important, popped here, a secret investigation would follow.

    "We don''t have to do it, but others have to sign a silence contract before entering, they can only bring other people with them, after they have visited a certain number of times, even we are limited to bring less than ten people along with us each time", she added.

    Daimon was a bit surprised that the upright Oliver was so "flexible", but he then understood that wasn''t exactly the case as Reyne said.

    "This was mom''s idea of course, the Adjudicators would have never approved it, if the choice was given to them after all".

    Leaving that aside, Reyne asked Daimon what he wanted to see, the ck market was divided in many areas, so it would be easier to focus in what they wanted to buy.

    "Beast equipment, blueprints, recipes, rare materials and alchemy products", answered Daimon, previous to this, he had already discussed with the crazy girl what they would be looking for, besides information that could lead them to Jasmine''s location.

    Reyne wasn''t surprised about Daimon''s requests, those were all valuable things, but considering the strength Daimon has shown, it was justified that he aimed for that stuff.

    "Mm¡­ blue prints and recipes are really expensive that is if they even show up for selling, there might be some at the information store, so we can leave that forter, for beast equipment I would suggest Hundred w store".

    "Just be aware that they will be expensive and they won''t nearly as of good quality as your sword, since they mostlye from the discarded inventory of the Adjudicator and the union''s army and small underground workshops, still they have some Arch rank goods in there, if you can''t find anything then we can go to the street stalls, mom found my ne in one of them", she happily said before adding.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "As for materials and alchemy products, ss Cauldron would be the one with thergest variety", said Reyne, it''s obvious that she has been here quite a few times so she of course knew a lot about the subject.

    Daimon was also solved one of the questions that have been lingering in his mind, but which he didn''t make, because it might give him away as a non-native of Kerrol, from where did the Beast Equipment came from.

    If they were rare enough so that they only showed when they were reced for better ones, then it was understandable that Ismael, Hal and even Jeremy who was rich enough to rival with some Arch ranks, as he was involved with the son of a Blood Earl, couldn''t get too many of them.

    It was also interesting that Reyne confused Disaster as ast generation Beast Weapon, but Daimon didn''t correct her, as long as he didn''t confirm anything then everything was nothing but assumptions.

    "Let''s go to Hundred w first them", said Daimon to which Reyne nodded, they left the alley which was actually hidden behind a fake wall, guarded by a street "seller" which was one of Oliver''s subordinates.

    Along the way Daimon observed the scenery of the ck market, it didn''t seem as grim as Daimon expected, back when he was training prior to enter the academy, Aura took him to a gathering point for people that lived in the underground scene.

    And it was quite a wild atmosphere, way worse than the darkness of Brown Wind town, those who went there were in danger to be devoured in a different way, there was now so they could kill each other without any doubt, just to rob the other, or be captured and sold to other races for experimentation and the like.

    Inparison this ce was more simr to a merchant district, with the difference that everyone was hiding their identities one way or another, and there were a lot of things whose origins couldn''t be disclosed.

    "Here we are", Reyne stopped walking in front of arge building with w mark designs on its walls, this was Hundred ws store thergest weapon selling store in Tiria''s ck market.

    As expected of a ck market, the service wasn''t good, there was a slim man standing on the counter, as well as tons of regr weapons made with the materials obtained from magic beasts, but without cores embedded into them.

    Apparently, the level of rune engraving for weapons, without using cores, was really low, so the human magic cksmiths didn''t make weapons like that, instead they focused on increasing their sturdiness and the like by adding materials from magic beasts.

    The flesh eating demons on the other hand, did follow a simr path as the four gxies using runes to grant better specs to their weapons.

    Daimon observed the many racks full of weapons, each had their own price and the method of payment which was eptable, Daimon directly ignored the regr weapons which were basically just ws, sharpened bones and carved teeth, and went straight for the beast equipment, which were all on the rack behind the counter.

    Injecting mana in his eyes, Daimon watched the different equipment, trying to discern which was the best one avable, since he needed some samples for Liz, it wasn''t hard to detect which one had less ws, the best core and the bestposition over all.

    So, he didn''t take too much to point at a ck spear with two cores embedded on it, one on the shaft and another on the head, it was the first one which Daimon has seen having two cores, also it was attracting thergest amount of mana among all the things in the room, it''s worth mentioning that it didn''t have a price tag unlike all the other things.

    "I want that", he said, the man didn''t even have to look at what Daimon was pointing, to know it was that spear, meaning it''s something that others have tried to buy before but haven''t been able to.

    "Five thousand peak Lord beast cores, or five hundred early stage Arch rank beast cores, no bargaining", casually said the man with an uninterested voice, as everyone always does the same, ask for the price and then back out after hearing it.

    "It''s too expensive, and it should be of sixth generation at most, for that price you can buy a legitimate one of seventh generation from father, it would be a one core one though", whispered Reyne at Daimon.

    "Is it that rare to see one with two cores?", asked Daimon in response, to which Reyne nodded.

    "Yes, they are idental creations, sometimes the cksmiths can use one core of the same kind to strengthen the one they will use, those are weapons of eighth generation, thetest and exclusive to the highest ranked Adjudicators or the Cardinals of the Church of Justice".

    "These weapons with two cores are the failures from that process, tests made during the sixth generation, they have collection value but their usage is too limited, since the cores might attack each other out of nowhere", she said.

    Her words simply convinced Daimon to buy it, the idea of the two cores was something that caught his attention, because he is neither a mage nor a knight, but someone who can use the powers of the two paths, now imagine a weapon with a core oriented to vitality and one oriented to mana, it would be perfect for him.

    With a wave of his hand, he took out a pile of cores and ced them on the counter, only this amounted to the whole savings of Ismael, Hal, the peak Lord rank guy which he killed to warn the others and around a fourth part of the cores Jeremy had saved up, it was really expensive.

    The man was baffled for a moment, but he woke up from his trance and then counted the cores, before he brought down the case in which the spear was contained.

    "Congrattions esteemed customer, this Demon ying X-1 is truly a weapon made for a real man, make good use of it", said the man as he handed the case to Daimon.

    Daimon ignored the tteries of the man, and after confirming he wasn''t interested in anything else, he moved aside and left the crazy girl take over, she had her own money so she also chose a couple of things, naturally if Daimon could think on getting samples of this technology, so could Sarah.

    Having finished his purchase, Daimon and the girls walked towards the exit, a single brown robed man with a red mask passed next to them, and went straight to the counter, only to raise his voice a secondter.

    "What the hell do you mean with what you sold it, did I not tell you to keep it until I returned!", eximed the brown robed figure to which the man shrugged.

    "If you don''t pay up half of the value, you can''t reserve our products, I told you before and you didn''t listen, if you don''t need anything else, please leave", he said.

    "Tsk, fine, then tell me who bought it, I have been saving for years to get that spear?", asked the brown robed figure, just for the man to shake his head.

    "I can''t do that, it''s part of this city''s rules for the ck market, I don''t want the Valleris toe and arrest me", he said.

    "Y-You!", the brown robed man was livid, but ultimately, he didn''t say anything and just stormed out of the store, to then walk towards one of the random bystanders who was sitting and casually drinking from a bottle.

    "I want a description of all the ones that hade and left this store, if you know about one who was carrying arge weapon, I''ll double the pay", said the man with brown robes.

    The guy who previously seemed to be intoxicated, suddenly recovered rity and then took out a small piece of paper from within his clothes.

    "A hundred peak Lord beast cores, the were a couple of Arch ranks here today", said the man with the bottle.

    The brown robed guy gritted his teeth, but nodded and gave the payment, only then, the other party gave him the list, at which''s end a description that perfectly described Daimon and the others, was written.

 Chapter 495 Discoveries & Jasmineâ€™s Whereabouts (Part 1)

    ?

    After leaving the weapon store, Reyne guided them towards ss Cauldron, on the way Daimon was in a bit of a loss of words.

    ''To think that the weapons those idiots had were that much trash'', he thought.

    The generic models of beast armor that Ismael''s squad had were actually better than the weapons he used himself, in the sense that though they were generic armors with just overall boosting, the basic stuff that soldiers who had earned some merits are given, they were of seventh generation.

    Meanwhile the weapons of both Ismael and Hal, were of fourth generation, but were more expensive since they had active abilities, such kind of equipment was only granted to team captains, which should be all peak Lord ranks.

    Among the things exhibited on the rack behind the counter, Daimon saw a couple of those, but the vast majority were fifth generation ones, and the best one was the spear he bought.

    "There used to be more, the past month I even saw a seventh generation sword in the store, what a shame it seems like someone bought it before you", said Reyne, she was still not convinced of Daimon''s choice.

    "I don''t want to be annoying, but if you need a good weapon, I can always tell father to sell one to you¡­ that spear will probably have destructive power on par with an early stage Arch rank of the seventh generation, of the highest quality, but it is unstable, using it in battle is too risky.

    "I''ll just bought for its rarity so I won''t be using it in battle, as for your offer, I don''t mind negotiating with your father when the timees", said Daimon, which made Reyne let out a sigh of relief, while Sarah softly snorted.

    Of course, Daimon wasn''t going to use that poorly made spear, to begin with the chances of him ever finding a weapon that has as much potential as Disaster/Narasha is infinitely close to zero.

    For example, Disaster isn''t even a Ster ranked weapon, or Daimon would not be able to wield it, and yet it is on par with them, as proved by Daimon easily using it to break half Ster ranked equipment back at the three-art tournament, the capricious sword literally crushed every weapon it shed with, and Narasha as his soulmate has a grimoire, meaning that she will continue to grow stronger along with Daimon, she isn''t his battlepanion by anything after all.

    Leaving that aside, they soon arrived in front of their next destination, unlike the weapon store, ss Cauldron was quite crowded, and for a good reason, they had thergest variety of alchemy products and rare materials in the whole city, and every day they put a batch of cheap things for sale, which is what most of the guys waiting in line aimed at.

    Reyne casually ignored the line and went straight to the door, before those guys in line startedining, she showed the guards a small circr ck token, and their insults stuck in their throats.

    "Confirmed, please go in", said the guard as he moved the line aside to leave Daimon and the girls enter.

    "This is one of the privileges, not having to wait in line, ah don''t worry no one knows to whom is the token linked, they are all the same, making it impossible for anyone besides the one who made them to know it, and its creator is dead", said Reyne with her usual calm and gentle voice.

    "Smug", mumbled Sarah, to which Reyne just softlyughed as the three of them entered the store.

    Unlike Hundred w, ss Cauldron not only upied arger building with three stories, but actually had some decent service, at least for them who weren''t interested in the first floor where the cheap stuff and discounted items were.

    Seeing that Daimon''s group went straight to the stairs that led to the upper floors, one of the salesmen approached them.

    "Wee esteemed clients, can I perhaps help you find what you are interested in?", he politely asked.

    "Poisons, the deadliest the better", immediately said the crazy girl.

    The salesman was speechless for a second, normally those whoe to buy things like poison, keep a low tone of voice or ask about it in secrecy, poison isn''t illegal, humans have many disadvantages against flesh eating demons and magic beasts, so they have to use what they can.

    Still, those who specialized in poison were feared and discriminated, at Brown Wind town no one cared, but in Tiria things were much more civilized, anyway, the salesman didn''t dare to show any disrespect since this group entered the using a token, meaning they had to have some connections with a bigshot.

    "The best poisons we have to offer can be seen at the third floor, naturally they are not in exhibition unlike others, since they can be used to kill Arch ranked magic beasts with the correct methods, please follow me", said the man as he led the way.

    Reyne wasn''t surprised about it, she has heard from Gary about the results of Sarah''s fighting, as for Daimon he came here only looking for a single thing, but he couldn''t ask about it and instead decided to look around, if he found it then he''ll buy it.

    The salesman took them to the second floor, which was less crowded than the first one, there the "brand" products were sold, healing, mana recovery, stamina recovery, there were potions with a lot of different effects, but they all only had one effect, making them "generic".

    The third floor was where the specialized products were sold, the salesman knocked on the door and the guards, who were two early stage Arch ranks opened it.

    "These esteemed clients are looking for specialized products, there is no need to verify their funds, they have a token", said the salesman, the two guards nodded and then opened way for Daimon''s group.

    "I hope you find what you are looking for", said the salesman as he bowed towards Daimon and the others to then return to the first floor, apparently, he wasn''t allowed to enter.

    Daimon and the girls entered through the door, and were weed by much more organized spacious room, there were many shelves, racks and tables with staff tending to the clients.

    "Please take seat at table number 3", said one the guards, pointing at one of the free tables, which was attended by a woman who seemed to be in her forties, who was smoking, surprisingly her cigarette didn''t produce any smell, but her slightly gray skin and bags under her eyes, gave her away as an alchemist who worked with poisons.

    "Wee, what kind of poison do you want to buy, the best ones we have are peak Arch ranked ones, a drop will cost you five hundred peak Lord ranked beast cores, of course with a single drop you can only kill an early stage magic beast" said the woman as she saw Daimon and the girls sitting in front of her.

    Luckily Sarah was wearing a mask, otherwise the woman would have for sure felt ufortable looking at the smile she had on her face right now, Daimon on the other hand did get to see her and he inwardly sighed.

    But then ignored what was happening on the table, to focus his attention on Rita, who was scanning the whole room, by Daimon''s request of course.

    ''I found what you asked Daimon, third shelf on the upper left side of the wall at your right'', after a couple of seconds, Rita''s voice could be heard in Daimon''s mind, her trustable sensing abilities didn''t let Daimon down, as usual.

    ''Thanks Rita'', answered Daimon as he used his infinity eyes to look at a hand sized bottle, in the shelf mentioned by the self-imed head maid, the thing contained a bright red liquid, which is what he came looking for¡­ blood of a Ghoul.

    Human trafficking of any kind is forbidden, but the Ghouls aren''t humans, and though their corpses for sure end up in the hands of the church or the Adjudicators, to be used to develop better weapons against them, some of their materials showed up from time to time.

    As to why he didn''t ask for it to Reyne, he naturally had a reason for it, but that could be left forter, for now hepared the blood in that bottle against the one which he got from those two women, in his memory, and the intensity of this one surpassed that, in fact it even surpassed Dn''s.

    And with a good reason, it belonged to a middle stage Arch rank and surprisingly the price on the tag wasn''t as exorbitant as he expected, probably Ghoul''s blood publicly didn''t have much uses, since humans couldn''t use it as an ingredient for anything that they consumed, it didn''t even work as poison, though it would for sure make anyone who drank it, vomit, in other words, Ghoul''s could consume humans and benefit from it, but it didn''t work the other way around.

    Something simr happened to Ghouls with magic beasts, not only their meat tasted awful for them, but they wouldn''t get benefits from it.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    Seeing that Sarah was now happily holding onto a small bottle with a single drop of an ash gray liquid inside of it, it was Daimon''s turn.

    "I want that bottle of flesh eating demon''s blood", he said, the woman raised an eyebrow, since the girl she spoke to a moment ago bought something really useful, giving her a good impression.

    Inparison the masked man, chose the most useless thing in the whole room, besides collection value, it could only be used to cover one''s presence for a certain period of time, but you had to hid to use it that way, since the flesh eating demons could hear the blood flow, to a certain extent, so you had to stay still for it to work that way, still it wasn''t her money so she just nodded.

    The woman casually tapped her hand on the table, a small array appeared on it and the bottle was now in her hand.

    "A thousand peak Lord ranked beast cores please", she said, Daimon paid and then he received the bottle.

    It was "cheap" in the sense that there was more than two liters of blood in the bottle, Daimon heard a notification ringing in his mind, but he didn''t open it right now, the information seller was going to open in a few minutes ording to Reyne, and that was their priority right now, besides the level of the things here was horrible from his point of view.

    Sarah only bought that poison, because it was the only one made with an effect different to the ones she has stored in her ring, and that was the only one, the others had simr but worse effects to the ones she had.

    They got up and then went downstairs, the guards didn''t pay them any attention as they left the store.

    ¡­

    Once outside, Reyne turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "The information selling store is different than the other ones, only those with a token from the ck union can ess to it, since each token holder is for sure not a flesh eating demon, that being said the one selling the information is quite a pain to deal with, so try not to antagonize it".

    Daimon in exchange turned to see the crazy girl who just yfully shrugged as she ced her hand on Daimon''s shoulder.

    "I''ll "behave" if I''m distracted with something~", she happily said, making Daimon''s eyebrow twitch, still she wasn''t crossing the line, only her hand was ced on his shoulder, so he didn''tin, Reyne could feel Sarah''s gaze piercing her but she limited to softlyugh and then turned around to guide them to the information seller.

    Unlike the previous stores which were in the same region, where the biggest locals of the city were, the information seller had a small house-sized local at the area where the street stalls were located.

    This also worked in Daimon''s favor, since he could take a look after he has gotten the information he wanted, on the way Daimon wanted to clear some doubts he had about the seller with Reyne.

    "What''s the limit of the information that guy sells?", he asked.

    "Mm, besides asking about secrets regarding the secrets of Adjudicators or the church, I don''t think there is a limit, the most it can happen is that the seller doesn''t know about it, normally there are many information sellers in a ck market, but in this one there is only one, since father didn''t want to increase the risk of leaks of information too much", she said.

    Daimon nodded, if that was the case, then he could reach the answers he needed¡­ one way or another.

    They soon arrived at a small house at the outer southeast area of the ck market, naturally since only those with tokens like Reyne coulde here, there was no line, Reyne ced her token on the door and then an array appeared on it, before the thing opened.

    The process seemed simple, but Daimon could see what truly happened, if the token would have been a fake, the array which had spatial properties would have instead opened a gate to a highly dangerous area, giving time for the one inside to escape, quite a cunning design, also the protective arrays in this house were not that far from the ones on the Valleris''s mansion.

    Having gotten the greenlight, they entered the small house and Daimon closed the door behind of him, there was only a regr living room in front of them, the rest of the house was covered in arrays as it was a restricted area.

    In the middle of the room, there were two sofas, a small one in which a man wearing brown robes was sitting, and arge one that could amodate up to eight people, which was reserved for the clients.

    "So, what do you want¡­", the man turned to see them, as he spoke with an uninterested voice, but froze on the spot, he then took out a small paper from his pocket and after reading it, but didn''t say anything.

    Daimon and the girls sat on the sofa, while Sarah as practically stuck to him, Reyne kept a small distance between herself and Daimon, it''s worth mentioning that Emily was standing behind of them, she had her own token and was allowed to use her camouge without the informant knowing, since she has signed a contract stating that she can''t kill him instead, an agreement between Oliver and this guy.

    "Everything important happening at far northeast from Brown Wind town, do you know about it", directly said Daimon.

    The man nodded and then ced his hand on the table between them, to then say.

    "The price would be ten Arch rank beast cores, ah right also handover that spear you bought earlier and apologize for making me lose my valuable time, otherwise the negotiations are over¡­", the man couldn''t even finish his sentence, when the atmosphere in the room became heavy, making him sink into the sofa as the sound of bones creaking starteding from him.

    Naturally the arrays on the room immediately lit up, but their shine faded away the moment a ck sword was shoved on the ground right where all of them crossed paths.

    Daimon whose pressure was flooding the room, and yet Reyne and Sarah werepletely unaffected by it, casually tapped his finger on the table as he said.

    "It seems you are misunderstanding the nature of this visit, that wasn''t a request, it was an order".

    Daimon would have normally not cared about a clown trying to pick on him, heck, he wouldn''t have minded giving him the spear if that was the payment required, but this idiot was thinking on lying about the information just to mess with him.

    And that of course angered him, since this was an important matter, that being said he noticed that he was being unusually aggressive, which could be because night has officially started a minute ago, as increased boosting effect on him, suggested.

    "If you even think on lying to me again, death will be the least of your problems", he said as she retrieved his pressure, leaving the brown robbed man who was gasping for air, while a puddle of blood formed around him, since he suffered internal bleed and practically vomited blood due to the previous situation, to finally breath again.

    Emily who was standing behind, of them was also excluded from Daimon''s pressure, but she could feel it, or more urately her instincts could notice it, she was also wearing a mask just in case, and she was happy about it because her current expression was of awe.

    ''H-He is like me!'', she inwardly screamed as she secretly sent a message to Jeanne, naturally with Rita watching everything in a range of one hundred kilometers, and informing Daimon of the things he asked her to, Daimon knew what she did, but he didn''t stop her, because there was something he wanted to confirm and there were no ill intentionsing from the dark gray-haired woman, in fact her impression of him seemed to have improved a lot.

    What Daimon didn''t know was the reason of that, he thought that it was because of the small power disy he did a moment ago, unaware that Emily somehow managed to feel a hint of his vampire lineage, through his aura.

 Chapter 496 Discoveries & Jasmineâ€™s Whereabouts (Part 2)

    ?

    After giving the brown robed guy a moment to rpose himself, since his heart seemed to be about to burst out of his chest, due to the previous situation, which was justified considering he is just an early stage Lord rank, and not even a battle oriented one.

    Though the robes the guy was wearing were actually a defensive beast equipment, and there was also an armor below that, both of which were early stage Arch rank seventh generation things.

    The problem is that those things only protected his body, the arrays of the room were in charge of preventing the guy from being falling illusions, and they were erased by Disaster.

    The guy couldn''t have even endured Daimon''s regr aura, much less the current boosted one, but he took thing to a different level, ever since he saw the effect of Yvi''s Nightmare Demon Arrow he wanted to give it a try.

    Those who were affected by it, practically killed themselves in many ways, as they were struck by fear past the limit their minds could resist.

    So, Daimon tried a little trick here, in truth he didn''t apply physical pressure on the brown robed guy directly, he made him twist and struggle against his own armor, in other words the brown robed guy did this to himself.

    If Daimon would have actually applied the physical pressure he could produce as of current, on the guy, his ribcage would have exploded on the spot, even with early stage Arch rank treasures, an early stage Lord rank is hopeless against him, since his knight battle prowess is currently on that same level, and in the same level there is no one that has been able to match up to him.

    "What the hell are you, you crazy bastard, do you know who you are missing with, I have a contract with this city, if you do anything to me, you are dead!", shouted the brown robed guy in response as he tried to control his shivering body.

    Reyne who was a bit in shock of what happened earlier, especially how that ck sword destroyed those arrays which weren''t that far from the ones at her family''s mansion, wanted to tell the guy that such a threat was meaningless, but Daimon was faster than her.

    He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a few things before handing it to the guy, who froze on the spot upon reading it, he immediately grabbed the paper and ripped it off into tiny shreds in panic.

    "Y-You wanted to know everything important happening at northeast from Brown Wind town, right?", asked the brown robed guy, to which Daimon nodded before saying.

    "And I don''t care if is a secret, you know what will happen if you hide even the slightest detail from me".

    The poor guy felt his back drenched in cold sweat, while he inwardly cursed Oliver.

    Under Daimon''s sharp gaze, the guy spilled the beans, turns out that for a change the point of conflict among humans and flesh eating demons, isn''t the Red in battlefield, but one of the most dangerous areas in Kerrol, Alzac Volcanic Zone, the only ce in the, where only Ach rank magic beasts live.

    And that is saying a lot, magic beasts have bodies which are innately stronger than both humans and flesh eating demons, only those who are above average can go against a magic beast on the same realm and beat it without suffering heavy wounds or dying on the attempt.

    So now imagine and which is already dangerous due to the constant magma eruptions, zing heat and suffocating emissions, which is also the home to Arch rank magic beasts, the result is a nightmare for both of the other races.

    "There are rumors that some kind of ancient ruin suddenly emerged from the ground in the area, and both humans and flesh eating demons started fighting over it, until recently when it was discovered that there is a need for "keys" to enter that ce, each race has one".

    "So as one can imagine, there is a divided opinion in both sides, some want to sign a temporal truce, others want tounch an all-out war to obtain the key of the other, and the list continues¡­ that''s all I know about it I swear", said the brown robed guy.

    Reyne didn''t know about it, but it sounded like information that shouldn''t be known by a third party, something that her father for sure wouldn''t want the informant to spread around.

    Which is why she was surprised that Emily didn''t try to stop the guy from speaking, little did she know that she had that intention first, but was stopped by Jeanne who told her to not antagonize Daimon, unless he was directly trying to harm either Reyne or herself, and since this situation didn''t fall in that range, then she refrained from doing anything.

    "Now swear that you won''t tell anyone about what you wrote before!", eximed the guy, which Daimon casually did as he got up from the sofa, to then leave the room followed by Sarah and Reyne.

    The poor informant hadn''t even let a sigh of relief when Emily undid her camouge, scaring the hell out of him once again, she actually took off her mask so that she would be recognized.

    "Y-You are the shadow knight of the Valleris, you can''t kill me, ording to the contract, if anything you should have protected me from that guy", said the guy to Emily, who simply shook her head.

    "Nothing happened here, you never met those people, this is an order approved by someone with a higher authority than Oliver Tiria, naturally you won''t be punished by something that didn''t happen, understood?", she said with a sharp voice.

    "You Valleris are as crazy as the rumors say¡­ fine, I don''t want to have anything to do with this, I''ll continue with the previous deal as if nothing had happened, just keep that monster away from me", he said.

    Emily nodded and then her figure blurred as she disappeared from in sight, leaving the brown robed guy alone, even now, his back was drenched in cold sweat, he wasn''t put under that strange aura for more than a couple of seconds, but it felt like hours for him, hours in which he felt as if his body was going to split from the inside.

    But what truly horrified him, were those words wrote in the paper, by the masked man, because that was something that no one in the whole world, besides him should know.

    Outside of the house, the crazy girl couldn''t help but feel curious about what Daimon used to scare that guy so much, in her experience physical pain works better when trying to get answers.

    And she knows that Daimon isn''t someone that would bat an eye before ripping someone''s head off, if it is needed to achieve his goal, because she is the same.

    Naturally Daimon could feel the curious gaze of the crazy girl, piercing him like an arrow, which made him chuckle.

    "I just perfectly described his true appearance up to thest detail, in that piece of paper", he said.

    There two reactions to his words, first Reyne who was at disbelief, the identity of the information seller was a secret even for her parents, they are especially prepared by the ck union, so that they are trained by retired informants whose lives are about to end.

    Only the one who trains them gets to know their real appearances, and once their training ends, the teachermits suicide, if they don''t die during the process, since they only do so when they are certain their death is really close.

    And then a special mask which emtes the face of the one who trained them, is made for them to wear as a sign of respect, the moment the face of an informant is known by the public, there is nothing but death waiting for it.

    Then we have the second reaction, which was the crazy girl''s breathing bing unstable as she licked her lips behind her mask.

    "Ah, as expected of my fated one, being able to inflict such fear with just words~", she mumbled, making Daimon sigh.

    Emily, who just caught up with them, interrupted the moment, her voice could be heard by the three of them as she said.

    "Young miss, your mother has asked us to return to the castle on the spot, that guy has asked it too but for different reasons, it would be for the better if our guests returned with us too".

    Reyne turned to see Daimon with an apologetic expression on her pretty face, which was hidden behind her mask, but Daimon was actually expecting this to happen so he wasn''t bothered by it.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Don''t worry, it must be something important if both are asking for it, I have just a bit of free time, before I leave so I''ll tag along to see what is happening", he said, he wasn''t the only one that took the decision, the crazy girl needed some time to use that drop of poison she bought, in any case they needed to have a talk with the city lord, because they needed a few things to speed up the travel they were about to start.

    Reyne felt a bit down, listening to Daimon saying he was going to leave, but she at least felt happy that he was epting to visit her home onest time before that, given that he seemed to be set on going to another ce ever since they met.

    And with that they rushed to one of the secret exits assigned to Reyne, which was a dead end in an isted area, the moment they entered the ce, she ced her hand on one of the walls and an array appeared on the ground, but this time Emily also did something.

    She used her own token of identity, and the array changed destination, Daimon was able to notice it, the previous would have taken them to Gary''s property, or some other ces in the city, but with Emily''s interference they were being transported directly to the castle.

    ¡­

    A few secondster the scenery changed from the underground city scene, to the elegant insides of the Valleris castle, more urately to that room where they appeared through the array at Gary''s property, which is actually a room to which only Jeanne, Emily and Reyne have ess to.

    Daimon could feel Jeanne''s gaze on him the moment they appeared in the room, it wasn''t a hostile one, but a rather interested one, which was within his expectation, considering what he did back at the informant''s house.

    "Reyne, would you mind to wait outside for a bit, I need to have a small conversation with them, don''t worry if everything goes well, I will tell you everything we discuss from this point onwards", said Jeanne.

    Reyne nodded, she knew her mother wouldn''t lie to her, if she said she will tell her, then she will tell her.

    "Mm, I''ll wait outside for a bit, don''t fight you two", she said with her calm gentle voice, to both Daimon and Emily.

    Once Reyne was out of the room, Jeanne invited Daimon and Sarah to take seat in the sofa in front of her, which they did, Emily also changed from being a bodyguard to be Jeanne''s best friend, so she didn''t stand behind of her but sat next to her.

    "Emi has told me what happened earlier at the informant''s house¡­ could you tell me from which Blood Archduke do you descend?", she asked with a serious voice.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon was in a loss for words right now, wondering what the hell did she meant, he wasn''t part Ghoul like Emily, nor has he shown any signs of his vampire lineage, since he didn''t use it for battle, his insane vitality came from his Apex Predator, the only time he used hi vampire lineage so far, was in the bedroom with the girls, when he drank their blood for pleasure purposes.

    "Don''t worry, we won''t tell anyone, I felt it earlier, deep hidden in your aura, I noticed it¡­ it''s the first time I met someone other than me, who was able to live past the first day after being", added Emily.

    Then to Daimon''s surprise, both Emily and Jeanne''s eyes turned blood red, their skins also paled just a bit more, but that wasn''t the biggest surprise, their realms, they both jumped to the peak of the Arch rank.

    Normally Daimon would have been surprised that they managed to hide their realms not only from him, but from Rita, but the truth is that they weren''t doing so, this was a boosting type ability simr to what Terry could do.

    The question here was, why was Jeanne also going through such change, when Daimon couldn''t previously detect Ghoul''s blood on her, but that was easily cleared by Jeanne herself a momentter.

    "Me and Emi saved each other by exchanging some of our internal organs with each other, due to a certain situation, which led us to be something different than both human or flesh eating demon, like you, when she noticed the resemnce in your aura to us, I also felt it, would you care to tell us your history?", she said.

    Daimon was having a hard time processing what they said, it''s not like humans and vampires couldn''t have offspring, but the result will either be a vampire or a human, it''s not like variants who though develop traits of two races or an evolved strongerbination, still have both lineages in them.

    For vampires and human lineage to co-exist in the same body, it had to be¡­ a new race, or at least new for the four gxies, and as if to confirm what he was thinking he heard the familiar sound of a notification ringing in his ears.

    [Npsi Lineage detected in the vicinity, collecting and refining it will be positive to the host]

    ''Now that is something I didn''t expect'', thought Daimon as he read the notification, that being said he understood it, the system didn''t confirm nor negate that Emily was a Ghoul, and it only confirmed what her race was now after he got more information about it, which goes along with the restrictions of which he knows off.

    As Daimon was about to answer, he heard someone knocking on the door, and both Emily and Jeanne returned to their normal states, there was no trace of their previous state left, as Jeanne asked.

    "What is it?".

    "Open the door, we have a little trouble in our hands, which involved our guests", it was Oliver voice the one who could be hearding from the other side of the door.

    While Jeanne and Emily both frowned, Daimon smirked behind his mask, since Rita had long informed him of said "trouble" to which Oliver was referring.

    Well, to be fair it was indeed a trouble¡­ for other people.

    "Do you want to go?", asked Jeanne to which Daimon calmly nodded.

    "No problem, this will be beneficial for all of us", he said.

    Jeanne nodded back and then Emily''s figure blurred as she used her camouge, they all then stood up from their seats, and walked towards the door which Jeanne opened.

    Outside of the room, there were both Oliver and Eliot waiting for them, as well as Reyne who had a somewhat annoyed expression on her face.

    "There are some people from the church who came to pay us a visit and they wanted to talk with and I quote "The two sinners that visited the cathedral earlier with your daughter", so if there is something you want to tell me, this is the moment", said Oliver with a serious face.

    "I told you they were suspicious father, hey if you involved Reyne in your stupidities, I''ll personally cut off your head!", eximed Eliot, only to hear Sarah chuckle.

    "Oh, really, you with yourme excuse of peak Lord rank battle prowess will do it, since you want topare yourself to Gabriel, why don''t you see if you can even endure a second of being exposed to my battle aura", casually said the crazy girl who was unaffected by the tense atmosphere.

    "What did you say!", Eliot saw red, but as he was about to take out his sword, his father stopped him from doing so, in fact he actually dragged Eliot behind of him, while a cautious expression appeared on his face.

    A moment ago, he could feel that if Eliot would have drawn his sword, he would have died on the spot, he didn''t know why or from where would the attacke, but his instincts and experience told him, that the result would have been unavoidable, even if he interfered just as Emily mentioned before.

    "Enough Eliot, it''s not the first time the churches looking for trouble and it won''t be thest one either, let''s go hear what they have to say and then take a decision, as long as they haven''t done anything I won''t let them so as they please", said Oliver, while Daimon inwardly smirked.

    ''It is definitely not thest time they wille looking for trouble, that''s a given, but the next time there won''t be words involved for sure'', he thought as they walked towards the main hall of the castle.

 Chapter 497 Deal & Truth

    ?

    Along the way, Daimon noticed Jeanne and Emily gazing at him as if they tried to tell him "Everything will be fine", he felt somewhat amused that these two had be much more weing to him than before, because they thought he was like them.

    But it was understandable, it was easy to imagine the kind of difficulties these two should have faced in a world were humans and Ghouls aimed at each other throats, so fiercely, they were in the middle, meaning that they had enemies on both sides.

    On the other hand, he was sure that while Emily''s situation was somewhat public for those with enough status to know about it, Jeanne not being human was a secret, otherwise Eliot who seem to fear/respect her, wouldn''t have made those snarkyments at Emily earlier.

    And that also made him wonder what was Reyne''s situation like, was she also like them, or was she human, maybe that was why Jeanne had so much things prepared in case they needed to escape.

    In other words, things weren''t as simple as they appeared to be, besides those two, Reyne also had a somewhat worried and also angry expression on her face, she invited them to thank for having helped her, and they ended up in trouble.

    She couldn''t help but think that it was just the church involving them in the fight behind scenes, that they had ongoing against the Adjudicators and the Valleris in general, meaning they got in troubles because of her.

    "You should worry about them, since they havee for us, their ends won''t be pretty~", casually said the crazy girl, making Reyne return to her usual calm self, Eliot on the other hand was fuming right now.

    ''Even under the current situation why are you getting along with these idiots'', he thought as he red at Daimon who didn''t even pay him any attention, unaware that his life was saved by a mere couple of seconds earlier.

    With this mix of different points of view of the current situation, they soon arrived at the main hall, where arge table was prepared while the ones who came from the church waited for them.

    Daimon casually observed the room which could be said to be divided in half, the left side where guards all wearing white amor and holding halberds were, and the right side where the guards of the castle wearing the gray armor with the emblem of the Valleris, a yellow sword and a blue shield.

    Besides them, there were three guys sitting on the table, one was the Archbishop Terrence which Daimon saw once when they visited the cathedral earlier, that guy wearing full white clothes, the other was a tall man wearing golden and red armor, he was exuding the pressure of a peak Arch rank, so he should be one of the s-called Cardinals who are supposedly on par with high rank Adjudicators like Oliver.

    And thest one was a young man with white hair who seemed to be on the same range of age as Eliot, wearing also red and golden armor, but much less voluminous than the one of the Cardinal.

    ''One peak and two middle stage Arch ranks as well as ten peak Lord ranks, less see what is your y'', thought Daimon after a quick peek.

    The Archbishop Terrence was the first one to look at the newly arrived group, to then say with his fake smiling expression.

    "For such important guests who came to discuss important matters, to be left not even in a proper meeting room, I guess the Valleris''s are as "free spirited" as always".

    Unfortunately for Terrence, Jeanne wasn''t in the mood for pettyments, after being interrupted during an important conversation earlier.

    "You should be happy that we have actual guests, otherwise you wouldn''t have been allowed to enter into my house".

    Let alone the Archbishop, even Oliver was taken by surprise after listening at Jeanne be so fierce, she normally is quite easy going, while Emily is the straightforward one after all.

    Ignoring the awkward silence that the sudden response from Jeanne caused, Daimon casually took a seat at the table, Sarah of course sat at his right, and to Eliot''s displease Reyne took the left next chair to him.

    Not only that but as he was about to sit next to Reyne, Jeanne sat next to her, and then Emily, at that point he was between the sword and the wall, because he wasn''t going to sit either next to Emily, nor Sarah who casually threatened him earlier.

    Oliver sat next to Emily, which had to be the case since this way he was right in front of the Cardinal, while Emily faced the Archbishop, Eliot clicked his tongue and sat next to his father, which ced him in front of the white-haired guy.

    "Yo, Eliot, it seems you have gotten more miserable since thest time you lost to me¡­ to the point that a sinner is getting a better position than you", said the white-haired guy with a mocking voice, as he gazed at Reyne.

    "Shut your trap Alex, you lost our previous match to that so don''t be acting all high and mighty in front of me!", eximed Eliot, he was already having a bad y and now this bastard was provoking him, of course he was furious.

    Unfortunately for him, this wasn''t the time nor the ce for him to solve his personal feuds, Oliver cleared his throat and then said.

    "Now, Scott, I want to hear it directly from you, why are you using us of hosting "sinners", when these two friends visited your cathedral earlier without any problem?".

    The Cardinal first of all turned to see Daimon and then pointed at his mask.

    "Before we start, take that mask off, you are in the presence of the 365th Cardinal that the Corius family has produced", he demanded only to see Daimon shaking his head.

    "So, what, I don''t think you and me share beliefs, so why should I follow your rules, tell me what the hell do you want with me or get lost", he casually said.

    Not even a second passed after Daimon finished speaking, when the guards from the church all released their pressures as they pointed their halberds at Daimon, that being said their pressures were easily blown away by Jeanne slightly moving her index finger.

    "Lady of the Valleris, should we take that movement from you as a deration of war against us?", asked the Archbishop.

    "Should I take the fact that those amateurs would have affected my daughter with their annoying pressures, as a deration of way against the Valleris?", she answered back, making Terrence frown.

    They lost the first move, ever since the moment Reyne sat next to Daimon, they were rendered unable to move against him, as the other party will be allowed to block using that same reason as justification.

    Of course, Reyne didn''t do it because of that, nor Daimon had a need for it, but things yed out that way.

    "Enough Scott, this isn''t your church, as the hosts we allowed our guest to keep his mask for personal reasons, so you don''t have anything to say in that matter, as for his way to answer you, what did you expect, you suddenly came and demanded to take him prisoner for investigation", said Oliver, the guards on his side didn''t act before as they were told to move only on his order, but now they unsheathed their swords waiting for their master''s instructions.

    The Cardinal raised his hand and then, the guards retrieved their auras, the captain of the guards didn''t move, since he was a middle stage Arch rank, him using his pressure would mean a direct deration of war, which is also why Jeann didn''t retaliate but just blocked.

    "I wanted to make this a thing only between ourselves, but since you are so set in interfering with justice, we''ll make it the hard way, just know that you won''t get away from this for free, bring him here!", said the Cardinal as he pointed at the door behind of him.

    The captain of the guards nodded and then opened the door to let in a man wearing white robes, which Daimon recognized easily as the guy who told them what the value of exchange for sinners was, back at the cathedral which made him finally understand what was happening here.

    But he didn''t say anything yet and waited to see where all this was going, it''s also worth mentioning that the guy was now missing an arm and his face was grim, as if he was poisoned.

    "Were they the ones who attacked you?", asked the Cardinal to which the man immediately nodded.

    "Yes Lord Cardinal, they used some sort of device that momentarily nullified all the formations in the room, and then asked me about the Caraste and Raydol families, luckily the formations reacted after that but they still knocked me out, I suspect they are hunting dogs of the Blood Earl Raydol, and are looking for his son, who we were informed is currently lost", said the man.

    "That is a lie father, they were only around five minutes in the white room, to do that they would have taken more time than that", said Reyne, to which the man snorted.

    "You don''t know how terrifying can the hunting dogs of those monsters can be, young miss, in that short period of time you mention, they managed to suppress and interrogate me", added the man.

    Before anyone could say anything else, a sudden familiar voice made them all turn to the left, it was familiar because it was the voice of the man, what was happening is that there was a projection of what happened in the white room when Daimon entered, being reproduced on the air in front of him.

    One mut give it to Reyne, the clipsted exactly five minutes and showed what happened in the white room up to thest detail, Daimon felt hostility the moment he entered the room so he filmed what was happening with a small magic camera.

    "Unless you want to revise your improvised story, to correct the amount of time we spent in that white room, I think we are done here luckily I used this one-time treasure to record everything since it was the first time, I visited a cathedral in a city".

    The Archbishop felt his lungs fill with anger, but as he was about to reply, he saw the Cardinal stand up and wave his hand, making the head of the evaluator explode in mes, without leaving even a drop of blood stain the ground.

    "It seems we had someone trying to make us fight without any reason City Lord, take that as my apology, if you don''t mind, I''ll take my leave", said the Cardinal as his sharp gazended on Daimon who didn''t let him off the hook yet.

    "For someone with such a high rank, I would believe you were going to arrest that guy and interrogate him, in fact I think you owe me a proper exnation so why don''t you leave behind that Archbishop for interrogation, unless you want to kill him on a "whim" too", he said.

    The body of the Cardenal leaked out orange mana as he slowly spat.

    "Don''t take things too far kid, unless you want to bid war against the church, I suggest you to keep your imaginary scenarios for yourself, we are going!", shouted the man as he turned to leave only to hear Daimon saying.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Let me tell you what was the biggest hole in your n, if I actually would have attacked that guy, he wouldn''t be here to testify against me, and your cathedral would be a pile of debris at this point".

    The Cardinal stopped in cold, his body trembled for a second but he didn''t turn around and just left followed by his subordinates, who also took the corpse of the evaluator, the white-haired guy coldly red at Daimon as he said.

    "Eliot you are pathetic, if you don''t do something then I''ll take the "matter" in my own hands".

    Once the people from the church left, Daimon saw a fake notification popping up in front of him.

    [Failing to fulfill the mission will result in a penalty, starting in 3-2-1¡­]

    He limited to inwardly snort, what a joke, those guys wanted to kill him, of course he wasn''t going to cooperate with them, on the other hand he now knew what was happening here and that worked in his favor.

    "City Lord, now that this proves I''m in no way working with the flesh eating demons, I have an interesting deal for you, are you interested?", he said as he looked at Oliver.

    The City Lord frowned but it would be a lie to say he wasn''t interested in what someone who easily outyed the church in schemes, had to say.

    "Sure, let''s but let''s go the meeting room instead", he said.

    Daimon nodded in response before saying.

    "Everyone but him can go", he said as he pointed at Eliot, which made him clench his fist.

    "What did you¡­".

    "I second that", Jeanne was the first one to speak, Eliot turned to see his father who shook his head at him.

    "I''ll have to agree this time, you lost your cool earlier, as your father I understand your standing, but as the City Lord I can''t be so soft with my future heir, this will be your punishment for the previous scene, understood?", said Oliver.

    Eliot gritted his teeth but seeing that no one was standing up for him, he stood up and left the room.

    Only then Daimon stood up from his seat and then Oliver guided them to the meeting room, while he inwardly sighed, he already talked with his son but it didn''t do much.

    ¡­

    Once they were inside of the meeting room, they all took a seat and then Daimon casually dropped a bomb on Oliver by saying.

    "What will you do if you had solid evidence that there are some in the church working with the flesh eating demons, will you be able to convince those stubborn guys to go all out against them?".

    Oliver''s eyes widened a bit, he gazed at Jeanne but saw her shaking her head, she didn''t mention any of it to Daimon, Emily was the one who helped the City Lord understand what was happening.

    "He was able to tell the real appearance of the informant¡­ I don''t know how though, but it seems like his senses are really sharp, which again makes sense seeing what he dealt with the church", said the dark gray haired woman.

    Oliver felt his hear stop for a second, being able to tell the real appearance of an informant was something serious, little did he know that he was in for a big surprise when he answered.

    "Okay, I won''t pry into why you know about the conflict among the high echelon of the Adjudicators and the Church, but yeah there has been some rumors that some of them are working with them, but we have never been able to catch them red handed".

    "Recently, they have been more active due to a certain situation¡­ if you are able to provide said evidence then those old fogeys won''t be able toin anymore, we''ll purge those traitor bastards on the spot", he said.

    Daimon nodded satisfied with the answer, to then say.

    "Very well, in that case, I can give you a 100% guaranteed to work evidence, but you''ll have to pay for it, here these are my requirements", Daimon handed a piece of paper to Oliver, who felt his legs weakening when he read it.

    "Kid, I know we didn''t have the best start, but isn''t this a bit too much¡­", said Oliver as he read the list of things Daimon put there.

    After strolling around the ck market, he understood the overall level of the things he could get, and he was of course unsatisfied with it, so he then thought that if he wanted treasures why not go directly to the source.

    Recipes, blueprints, a ton of mana crystals and of course beast equipment and beast cores of the highest rank avable, those were his petitions.

    "You are not the only one who needs my "evidence", so just divide it among all your friends, the amount is non negotiable by the way", casually said Daimon.

    Oliver let out a defeated sigh, as Daimon said, if all the Adjudicators chipped in, then the amount each will have to put will be bearable, what they will be able to achieve is something that has been postponed for quite a few thousands of years.

    Just when Oliver hade to ept, he was being practically ckmailed, Daimon''s voice made its way to his ears once again, nearly making him vomit blood.

    "I want you to take me to the Alzac Volcanic region as soon as possible, and you''ll have to grant me the authority to enter in the first batch".

    "Hey, that''s going overboard, to begin with, why do you even think I have that kind of authority!", eximed Oliver to which Daimon smirked as he pointed downwards.

    "Because of the old man isted deep down below the castle, and because you are the one who has the "key" needed, and that is why those idiots would have tried to kidnap Reyne, and now messed with me, am I still missing something", he said.

    Seeing Oliver be at a loss for words, Reyne couldn''t help but softlyugh, it is the first time she sees someone being able to make her father be frustrated like that, besides her mother of course.

    "I ept on his stead with one condition", said Jeanne, taking Oliver by surprise, but he didn''t say otherwise.

    "You two have to show us your real appearances, of course we can swear to not reveal anything to anyone, but we''ll need at least this if we are going to make such a deal, since we''ll be fighting together", said Jeanne, to which Emily and surprisingly also Reyne nodded.

    Oliver shrugged and then stood up from his seat, he no longer had a say in the negotiation so he proposed himself to leave since he had to contact those who were allied to the Valleris and Tiria.

    "I''ll leave everything in your hands, I have to wake my father too", he said as he left the room.

    Daimon turned to see Sarah who nodded at him.

    "This way we can reach that ce faster than on our own, besides I have been waiting too long to show her who I the best~", said the crazy girl as she gazed at Reyne who had a smile which wasn''t a smile on her ace.

    Daimon decided to ignore whatever was going on between those two and nodded at Jeanne.

    "Deal, but we''ll add a few more conditions", he said.

    "Mm, we''ll have to add a few more too, leaving that aside can we continue what we were discussing earlier?", asked Jeanne.

    Which put Daimon in a predicament, since he isn''t like them, but he decided to first hear their story.

    "I want to hear how you two ended up like that, then I''ll decide whether I tell you my story or not", he said.

    Surprisingly Jeanne an Emily both agreed, in fact they had expressions of "It must have been tough for you" on their faces, which made Daimon bitterly smile.

 Chapter 498 Chain Reaction (Part 1)

    ?

    Before Jeanne started telling her story, the pair of mother and daughter as well as Emily intensely gazed at Daimon, though they didn''t say anything they were clearly waiting for him to take his mask off.

    But they instead saw the crazy girl return to her real appearance by cancelling the disguising effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    1.8 meters of height, white pale skin with straight bright purple hair that cascaded down all the way to her hips, despite being quite tall for her age and being a knight, her figure was quite feminine having quite noticeable curves on the right ces.

    Her eyes were also of a light purple color and to crown all the previous a pretty face akin to a youngdy of noble birth, if there was any downside to it that was the fact that she was giving Daimon quite a predacious gaze.

    As if she was weighting whether she should try to pounce on him and grab a bite or not, leaving her outstanding appearance aside, she looked a bit older than before and also her real level was revealed as she radiated the aura of a middle stage Lord rank.

    At least that was the realm she had, as for how strong she really was, let alone Reyne, even Jeanne and Emily couldn''t discern it and that picked their interest.

    "You don''t seem to be like us, but you also don''t seem to be human¡­ at all", said Emily as she observed the crazy girl.

    "Don''t stare too much only my fated one can do that~", said Sarah as she licked her lips at Daimon, while also entuating her figure while stealing a gaze at Reyne, who for once actually looked a bit pissed.

    In terms of beauty in general, Reyne didn''t lose to Sarah at all, but the crazy girl was quite well-endowed while Reyne was more on the slim elegant side, which wasn''t that noticeable previously when she was in disguise, since Sarah literally used the image, she had of herself when she was younger to make her disguise.

    "How old are you?", asked Reyne to which the crazy girl said.

    "I''m 24 why¡­", just as Sarah was speaking, she saw a little almost unnoticeable triumphant smile appear on Reyne''s face, which made the crazy girl suddenly feel the urge to punch her.

    "I''m about to be 17 years old in a few months and I''m also a middle stage Lord rank, I''ll reach you in no time", she said as she gazed at looked at her mother from the corner of her eyes.

    Though Jeanne also had that elegant refined aura, to be put in simple words her body was sinful, Emily was quite the same, by the way.

    "Ahem, let''s not divagate from the subject, here you go", said Daimon interrupting the gaze sh between those two, as he took off his mask, needless to say but the presents were surprised to see Daimon''s face behind the mask.

    Vampires are quite proud of two things, their lineage and their looks, it''s not an exaggeration to say that they are one of the vainest races, with alfears not being that from them, of course not all are like that, but it''s ofmon knowledge.

    That being said, they indeed are quite lookers, at least in the time Daimon spent at the Naktis''s castle, he never saw a maid who wasn''t at the level of the top models back at earth.

    And with Aisha''s good genes, his lineage and the Apex Predator body, the result was a killer, his defined traits and the fact that his skin was rather pale, which perfectly contrasted with his silver hair and amethyst-colored eyes, made him be on par with those pretty boys, but his aura was a wild one eliminating any kind of frailness, not to mention his expression by default was a slightly serious one, giving him a much mature sensation overall.

    It was especially eye catching because normally knights have rougher aspects, stereotypes exist for a reason, and while not all knights are muscleheads, they tend to have way bulkyplexions and Daimon looked like the perfect mix of both the refined appearance one would expect from a mage and the imposing aspect of a knight.

    "Are you done you three?", casually asked the crazy girl with a somewhat irritated voice, as she saw them staring at Daimon.

    "Mm, he doesn''t look like any of the Dukes nor the Archdukes, what do you think Jeanne?", said Emily, to which Jeanne shook her head in response.

    "No, I also don''t recall any noble with those characteristics, the purer lineages have bright red eyes and either blond or ck hair", she said.

    The only one who didn''t make ament and just sweetly smiled at Daimon was Reyne, very much to the displease of the crazy girl.

    The previous made Daimon remember what he thought about earlier.

    "Speaking of that, can we just talk about it like this?", he asked, as he looked at Reyne making thetter softlyugh.

    "I know about mom and aunt Emily¡­ in fact I''m the same", she said with her calm gentle voice, as her skin became a bit paler and her eyes turned bright red, unlike the unhealthy white tone that Dn had, Jeanne, Emily and Reyne didn''t look lifeless but snow pale like nobledies that had never worked under the scorching sun of Kerrol, even if two of them are knights.

    "You are wondering why you couldn''t detect anything from neither me or Reyne, while Emily''s case was different¡­ that is because Emily was a pure blood, but don''t think bad of her, her family wasn''t like the other nobles, for a change there used to be an Archduke who didn''t allow his descendants to kill nor feed on humans".

    "Which is why they were purged by all the other nobles, Emi''s mother managed to escape with her to the wastnd where we met, due to me being wounded on the head and encircled by magic beasts, even if they were escaping, they helped me¡­", Jeanne waited for a moment before continuing.

    "Back then Reyne was only a few months old, I did my best to protect her but there were simply too many magic beasts, anddy Vanis helped me because she was a mother too, though Emi was already an adult, back then she wasn''t way weaker than me", she said with a somewhat nostalgic smile.

    "Anyway, we escaped together but the battle attracted the attention of the hunting team of the flesh eating demons, which leddy Vanis to give up her life and we still found ourselves surrounded by them, I fought until the wounds were too much and it was then when Emi came to my help, giving me part of her organs while she took mine to rece hers".

    "For some reason that made her reach my same level, not only that but we became temporarily stronger as you previously saw and then we got rid of all our persecutors, Emi became part human and I became part flesh eating demon, as for Reyne I think she was affected because I breastfed her, unfortunately we had no choice because I had nothing else on me besides my clothes and Reyne when I woke up in the wastnd, just a few weeks prior to that".

    "And Emi and her mother lost their rings too during the fight, we could eat the meat of magic beasts and drink their blood but Reyne wouldn''t have been able to process that", she said with an apologetic voice.

    "Wait, weren''t you part of the Valleris, what were you doing alone in the middle of nowhere in the wastnd?", asked Daimon which made Jeanne chuckle.

    "Ah right, you must think Reyne is Oliver''s daughter, but that''s not the case, by the time we reached a slightly civilized town, Reyne was already ten years old, since we had to stop to rest and avoid the dangerous magic beasts along the way, I met Oliver there when he was still doing field job as an Adjudicator, and kicked his ass when he tried to attack Emily".

    "Then made a contract with him, I will help the Valleris in exchange for Emily''s safety and she will provide the Adjudicators with all the information she had about the flesh eating demons, after a lot of trials and other boring stuff to demonstrate that Emily doesn''t have the need nor the desire to eat human flesh, they epted but to convince the old fogeys I had to act as Oliver''s wife on the surface".

    "Back then Oliver already had Eliot with his previous wife who died¡­ due to the church setting her up, and we had no idea on how to interact with others, so it was good for Reyne to have someone near her range of age too".

    ''Oh, so that''s why that guy hates me so much, I got in the way of his fantasies'', thought Daimon.

    Previously he was a bit surprised since it was way obvious Eliot was head over heels for Reyne, he didn''t judge the guy for that because¡­ Aisha, but the fact that the upright and strict Oliver didn''t seem to be against it, frankly surprised him and now it turns out that it was because they weren''t real siblings, but more of childhood friends who grew together, what amused him is that the white-haired guy also seemed to be interested in Reyne, both unaware that she was part of the race they hinted with such fierceness, inparison while Oliver was an Adjudicator he showed respect towards both Jeanne and Emily, though he might be in the dark regarding Jeanne being also part Ghoul, or more urately a Npsi ording to the system.

    "So that is our story, in case you wonder I have no idea why I was left behind in the middle of nowhere with a newborn child no less, but we were both humans back then, that is for sure, and I don''t remember anything prior to that, it was too close to the Blood Continent, so I guess I was wounded by a noble but managed to escape since I was an early stage Arch rank back then", she said.

    Daimon nodded, he got more knowledge about their race now, at least he knew that they were able to get nourishment from normal food or blood, and weren''t obligated to drink blood, which ced them at the same level as the high ranked nobles of the three vampire families.

    And here is where he had to take a decision, at first, he wasn''t going to tell them about his origins, since there was no need for that, but then they have actually helped him and even went to the length of lending him a hand when dealing with the church.

    Which though he wasn''t afraid of them, they would have made him waste time not to mention he''ll have to brute force his way into the volcanic zone, there is also the fact that he had decided to go against the fake notifications.

    ''The hero surely never told anyone about his origins and he royally failed, only an idiot would follow his same steps'', he thought to himself.

    Of course, he didn''t directly tell them about that, but instead turned to see the crazy girl and asked for her opinion, only to receive a direct "Okay", when he exposed to her that it would help find Jasmine faster.

    While Daimon was telling the Npsi trio about where they came, at the other side of the human territory, there was a border city called Caliz, the scale was pretty much the same as Tiria, but there was a major difference and that is the fact that the guards at the entrance, and the mansion of the City Lord were both pained with the colors of the Church of Justice, in other words white, red and golden.

    There was also a cathedral here, but the size of it was around twice the one at Tiria, even surpassing the dimensions of the mansion of the City Lord, unlike Tiria, it all happened because the Lord of this city was fatally wounded when fighting a magic beast, which also led to arge part of his army to be eliminated.

    And with theck of manpower to spare, the other Adjudicators couldn''t send enough people to make up for it, so the Church offered "help" with some strings attached to it, which led to the current situation, anyway the people were safe and there wasn''t shortage of food so for the regr citizens nothing had changed.

    Inside the previously mentioned cathedral, there was a luxurious room where a handsome blond hired man was currently residing in, naturally that was none other than Adam.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    ''Finally, these damn missions have started to pay up'', he thought as he rang the bell on the nightstand next to the bed in which he wasying down.

    When he arrived at the previous town, he happened to meet an evaluator from the Church of Justice and that triggered a mission, which required him to help them fight against some enemies or something like that.

    So, he came to Caliz city following that guy, and the moment he set foot in the cathedral he happened to meet the one in charge, who was more than impressed by his strong light affinity.

    From that point onwards his life finally returned to what it should have been, he was treated as the hero he is and basically spoiled rotten by the servants of the church, especially the woman who recognized his talent who happened to be a Cardinal, and his mot recent addition to his long list of toys, no, he actually was considering to take her as one of his women, since he was quite pleased with her in all the meaning of the word.

    Once the service bell rang, the door opened and a tall woman with short brown hair, wearing a red and golden nightgown entered the room.

    "How lively, I told you we''ll soon be at war with those sinners", said the woman with a coquettish voice, which made Adam shrug.

    "Why are you worried about that Pa, didn''t you mention it yourself, that the ce where all those treasures are, is supposed to only leave those below the Arch rank enter, there is no one stronger than me under the Arch ranks, forget about that ande here, weren''t you the one who wanted my "sword" before", he said as he patted the ce next to him on the bed.

    The woman softlyughed and then undressed as she got onto the bed, as the light of the room faded out, Adam saw the angel girl Ariel who was casually floating on the room before, disappear since she didn''t want to see what was about to happen.

    ''Oh,e on don''t be like that Ariel, the mission was literally made for me, to think that the Light Hero Sword I got as awakening gift was one of the keys to the legacy of the Blue Hero, I was even guided to this specific city with this beauty to serve me, finally some fucking good luck after all that crap'', mentally said Adam.

    ''Now it makes sense that the reward from the mission was useless, the real treasure was hidden somewhere else, waiting for me to take it, maybe I should take the stronger members of the church as my subordinates, they seem to be better than those guys at Neptune, I bet Marcus will shit his pants when Ie back with an army hahaha!''.

    Unfortunately, he was met with silence from the angel girl, not that he minded since he had more important matters in his hands right now, literally.

    And while he was busy touching here and there, the woman whispered at his ears.

    ''Don''t forget who was the first one to support youter, unless you prefer to bed those old fogeys or those saggy women of course", she said with an alluring voice making Adamugh.

    "I was quite lucky to find the only beauty among Cardinals".

    ''Quite lucky'', thought the woman as sheid on top of Adam while she stole a gaze at his sword, which was ced at the corner of the room.

    ¡­

    Back at Tiria and more urately to the meeting room at the castle of the Valleris family, there was a slightlyical scene ongoing.

    There were three girls, two adults and a young one inspecting Daimon from head to toe, they even asked him to show them his fangs, which even without the ergement that happened when he wanted to drink blood, wererger than normal.

    "So, from where youe, we who don''t need to drink blood but can get nourishment from regr food, would be "vampires" and high ranked noble ones like you on top of that?", curiously asked Reyne.

    "To think there is another world so close, when all the nearbys arepletely death and uninhabitable", said Emily, she was interested in astronomy, but there was nothing much she could do here, Kerrol natives couldn''t even leave the, butt hey had telescopes strong enough to reach others.

    Obviously ever since the blood moon week were most of the was turned into an extremely dangerous ce, the humans have been considering the chance to move to another, but they then discovered that the nearbys were in a much worse condition.

    Which the flesh eating demons also got to know, which was part of the reason as to why the war became even more fiercer, there was no way to go, the winner will survive and the loser will go extinct.

    "Then in your world those who aren''t human are not discriminated?", asked Jeanne, only to see Daimon shrug in response.

    "It depends, as long as there are benefits there is war, that doesn''t change no matter where you go, the difference is that we are certainly have it way easier than here, there are manys that have been conquered and colonized, by the various races, since we can easily travel through space", he said.

    Daimon didn''t bother to hide it, because he made a soul oath with these three so that they couldn''t reveal anything, that being said they didn''t seem to be interested in sharing this information with anyone else.

    If anything, he was a bit worried about the intense stare of the crazy girl, since she didn''t know he was a vampire, he didn''t particrly hide it from the Risha sisters and the other girls, but he didn''t mention it, but at this point it wasn''t necessary to hide it, they already knew he could use both mana and battle aura anyway.

    And as he expected he was right to feel that sensation of unease as he heard the crazy girl saying.

    "Then, can you drink my blood¡­".

    "No", Daimon immediately refused her request, but that only made the crazy girl happier.

    "Ahh, such a cutting negative answer~", she said as she tried to hug Daimon only to be avoided by him, the previous made Reyne raise an eyebrow as she mumbled.

    "Is that kind of thing normal from where youe or¡­".

    "No, she is just crazy", said Daimon as he sighed.

    The small rxing time was over the next second when they heard someone knocking at the door, Daimon nodded at Jeanne, they had already signed their own deal, while he prepared a public one for the Adjudicators.

    "Come in", said Jeanne, only then Oliver opened the door, he wasn''t alone unlike when he left, there was a tall old man with short gray beard standing behind of him, but that wasn''t all, Eliot also tagged along next to the old man.

    Even before Oliver could say anything, Daimon casually said.

    "Was I not clear enough earlier, I don''t want to see him", he of course was using his mask again, while Sarah had returned to her disguised appearance.

    "I was the one brought him along, little friend, I have been told the story and I agree to pay for the evidence you mentioned as well as giving you the space in the first batch that enters that ce, can''t you give my grandson a chance in exchange, he is also going so it''s better for the youths to be in good terms", said the old man, who was surprisingly quite rxedpared to Oliver.

    That being said the City Lord still disciplined his son by making him bow his head.

    "Now, a City Lord must always recognize his mistakes, where is your apology, our guests have more than proven to be allies of humanity", said Oliver with a strict voice.

    "I¡­ am sorry", it took Eliot everything he had to spat those words, it was obviously a forced one, but Daimon didn''t care about him to be honest, if he tried anything, he will kill him and that''s it.

    So, leaving Eliot''s matter aside, the three neers entered the room and sat on the table, then the old man gazed at Daimon before saying.

    "Could you tell me what is the evidence you mentioned, we have already summoned the allies who were nearby in extreme secrecy, so once we have a look of it, we''ll take actions against the church, all at the same time".

    Daimon nodded and then took out a well-designed badge with a red emblem on it.

    "I captured the son of that Blood Earl, which is why those idiots from the church came to frame me, they thought I might have some information about him, since it''s been some time since he disappeared", said Daimon.

    Naturally the presents were baffled at Daimon''s affirmation, killing flesh eating demons is a thing, everyone here has done that quite a lot in fact, but capturing one, and the direct descendant of a really important noble is apletely separate matter.

 Chapter 499 Chain Reaction (Part 2)

    ?

    After listening to Daimon''s previous words, Eliot really tried with all his might not to get pissed off at such a stupid lie, but seeing Reyne''s slightly fascinated eyes, he simply couldn''t.

    But since his grandfather was the one who stepped in for him, while he still got scolded by his father, he didn''t explode but tried to call out the arrogant bastard instead.

    "In case a bumpkin like you doesn''t know, the Raydol family are direct descendants of a Blood Archduke, and their Blood Portal Scroll will scan the area before activating and then tell those at the other side of it, the number and level of those nearby, you know what that means right, you can''t take them by surprise".

    "And the son of that Blood Earl will for sure be apanied by guards stronger than the ones calling him, do you really believe we haven''t tried that in the countless thousands of years that the Adjudicators have existed", he said with a fierce voice.

    Oliver kind of wanted to believe in Daimon, but what his son said was not a lie, over the years, they have been able to interrogate countless of low ranked flesh eating demons, but they have never been able to do that with a noble.

    All the nobles are said to have a part of the Blood King running through their bodies, and due to that if they were to be captured and interrogated by anyone who isn''t their ancestor or the Archdukes that are currently alive, they would be lifeless empty cocoons, so besides revenge and merit sake, there was no reason to capture a noble.

    They were exchanged for rewards with either the church or the Adjudicators, they have been trying to bypass that problem for countless years at this point.

    That''s why the higher echelon of the Adjudicators with its long blood feud against the flesh eating demons, easily epted the deal to let Emily live among humans, even if what she knew was not that much, as she was youngpared to her mother and father, it was the first piece of valuable information they could get their hands off in a really long time.

    Eliot didn''t know hat since he has just recently been qualified to be a junior Adjudicator, but his reasoning wasn''t off either, there hasn''t been recorded cases of nobles being captured in a set up using the Blood Portal Scroll, and unless the masked young man in front of him could cross half of Kerrol in a day, he couldn''t have been in the Red in battlefield so it had to be the first case.

    "Well, that guy was apanied by two women who had higher realms than "any" of the presents back then, but I just killed them both and captured him, to then make him a couple of questions", said Daimon as he shrugged.

    He then got to enjoy the different reactions from the others, Eliot was probably cursing him to death, while Oliver wanted to believe him but couldn''t, surprisingly the old man was the one more inclined to believe what he said.

    "Can you bring that flesh eating demon here, I want to see him, I won''t say a single thing, I just want to see you asking him something about his family".

    Daimon nodded in response.

    "Sure, he is in this city so it won''t take long for me to bring him here".

    "What, did you bring a flesh eating demon into Tiria you crazy son of¡­", Eliot''s words stuck in his throat when Daimon red at him, it was gettingte and the influence of Kerrol''s atmosphere was increasing too, even if Daimon was only going to tell him to piss off, his aura scared speechless.

    "If that guy was a danger for me, something would have happened already, he was transported in a cage and kept prisoner since his powers and all possessions were confiscated, as to how I tricked the formation, well you should know since you can''t see through my mask right", said Daimon to the old man as he ignored Eliot.

    The old man bitterly smiled in response before saying.

    "Guess you got us there, kid you surely are terrifying, are you not interested in bing an Adjudicator I can vouch and have you reach the middle rank on the spot given the contributions you are about to make".

    "No, I prefer the payment I already stated also I don''t have time to y at war, let''s get this over with and immediately set off to the Alzac volcanic area", said Daimon, which made the old man sigh in defeat.

    ''What a shame, such a talented youth¡­ if only we would have found him before, he wouldn''t be so indifferent towards humanity, well at least he seems to get along with little Reyne so it''s not like there is no chance for cooperation'', thought the old man as he said.

    "Bring the noble here, just one question will be enough once I see it with my own eyes and hear the answer, we''llunch our attack on the church".

    Daimon nodded and the tuned to see Oliver to say.

    "Tell Gary to bring the prisoners I brought with me, here".

    Oliver was a bit overwhelmed by everything that was happening, one of the goals that Adjudicators have been pursuing since their foundation was here in his city, at the care of one of his subordinates in in sight for him, and he never ever considered that possibility, it was as he had danced on the palm of the masked young man all the time.

    It''s worth mentioning that Daimon didn''t know about that thing regarding the nobles losing their minds if they were to be interrogated, it wasn''t his fault though, Dn didn''t know about it either, only the Blood Dukes knew about it, and they didn''t tell it to anyone to not cause panic among their people.

    Most of the humans didn''t know it either and those who did swore to not reveal it either, because that would only make the nobles fight more fiercely to not be captured as it would secure their deaths, to begin with no one wished to be captured by the enemy to the high echelon left it at that.

    But it''s precisely because he didn''t know too much about Ghouls that he made a different deal with Jeanne and Emily, among the conditions they had to tell him everything they knew about them, and with that he filled in some ws in his story.

    No one noticed, but Jeanne, Emily and Reyne weren''t surprised like them, when Daimon revealed hat Dn has been under Gary''s watch, because he had already told them beforehand.

    A couple of minutester, the door of the meeting room opened and Gary who rushed as fast as he could, entered the room with two cages covered with nkets.

    "Thanks Gary, now, everyone but me, Oliver and little friend Gabriel, please leave the room", said the old man to which Daimon shook his head.

    "My¡­ friend stays, miss Jeanne, miss Emily and Reyne stay too, they lent me a hand earlier against the church unlike others, the rest is up to you", he said, it was hard to ignore the intense gaze of the crazy girl when he called her his "friend".

    His reason was eptable though, Oliver didn''t move to block the pressure nor confronted the Archbishop, Reyne spoke on his behalf too, it''s not like Oliver wasn''t going to help Daimon, but truth to be told he wanted to see what he was capable off, because he had zero knowledge about him, not a bad move but unfortunately, he chose the picked the wrong person to fight in terms of schemes, he wasn''t Erin''s student for nothing after all.

    "So be it, little Eliot please stay out of them room for a bit with Gary, your father will inform you of what you have to know,ter", said the old man, making Eliot clench his fists, but he understood.

    His grandfather already stood up for him once, for someone of his standing it had to be humiliating to ask for something like that, with his own reasoning, Eliot didn''t take it against his grandfather and instead stood up to leave, closing the door behind of him.

    Daimon then stood up from his seat and casually lifted one of the two cages, cing it in front of the table to then remove the nket covering it, revealing the masked blond haired man inside of it.

    "Take your mask off and introduce yourself", ordered Daimon, Dn trembled for a moment, he recognized Oliver on the spot.

    "T-Tiria''s Butcher, you swore to not kill me!", eximed Dn to which Daimon said.

    "I haven''t done it, start talking if you don''t want that to change".

    Dn shivered, he had been kept caged like an animal, being fed with cooked meat of magic beasts, which for him tasted like crap, his skin had lost its luster and his eyes were a bit bloodshot, but seeing that pair of indifferent eyes he remembered what happened in the cave back then and he immediately obeyed, not like he had a choice since he basically agreed to be a ve the moment, he signed that soul contract without reading it.

    "I-I''m Dn Raydol, the third son of the Blood Earl Dan Raydol, grandson of Blood Duke Sarlian", he said.

    The old Ben nearlyughed out loud, but he limited to nod without saying anything just in case, Oliver was the same, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "You can talk, there were other humans present back then when I captured and interrogated this guy", he said.

    "Really!", this time the old man couldn''t help but exim as he heard Daimon''s exnation.

    "Hey flesh eating brat, how strong is your grandfather?", directly asked Ben to Dn, waning to confirm Daimon''s words as soon as possible.

    "H-He should be on par with Tiria''s Butcher or maybe stronger since it is blood moon week, so don''t try anything funny", said Dn with an anxious voice, an attitude truly fitting to a useless third generation like him, he casually spilled the beans in a try to keep his worthless life.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    The old man''s body trembled for a second before he turned to see Daimon as he was lost in his thoughts.

    ''Does he have the ability to nullify the influence of the Blood King on his descendants¡­ but that would mean he is like the first king!'', he inwardly screamed.

    "Oliver, give the greenlight, surround, kill and capture those traitor bastards right now", he heavily ordered.

    "Yes, Lord father", Oliver immediately took out hismunication device and sent a message through it.

    At the same time, Daimon turned to see Dn and then said.

    "Return to your cage, you''ll be interrogatedter".

    Dn obeyed with his heart sill on his throat, he thought he was going to be killed on the spot, little did he know that he basically screwed over an operation that has been secretly taken ce for dozens of thousands of years.

    "Little friend, I was informed of your personal feud with that Cardinal punk, I''m going to crush their den, want to tag along, whatever you obtain is yours, of course the others cane too if they want to", said the old Ben as he waved his hand making a voluminous ck armor with a big silver core embedded on the chest te, cover his body.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, this old man was ate peak Stage Archmage, with quite a solid base, he even outssed some of the Arch ranks back at the four gxies, but when he put on that armor, he went up another notch.

    ''Battle prowess infinitely close to the early stage of the Half Emperor realm, he is actually on par with Liz'', thought Daimon, so far, the only ones who he judged would be as good as the girls in the same rank, under the same conditions, would be Ae, Thea, Mellie, Sarah and surprisingly Marlene.

    It''s not like Jasmine and the others were weak, but they were stillcking a bit,pared to Liz and the others and that is prior to when they obtained their grimoires.

    To set an example, this old man in front of Daimon was way older than Liz and even if Daimon judged him to have a strong Domain, only when he wore that armor, he became able to match up to her, it''s a difference of dozens of thousands of years of umtion.

    That reminded Daimon of another of the important thins which he got to know, since he opened up with Jeanne, Emily and Reyne, he previously only knew up to Blood Dukes in the hierarchy of the Ghouls, after them there was the Blood King which wasn''t alive as of current.

    But that was only the public version of the story, there was another rank above Duke and those were the Archdukes, Emily was a direct descendant of one, though the weakest as he didn''t consume human meat and blood, he was still way stronger than any peak Arch rank Emily has met, besides Oliver''s father, those were her words.

    In other words, Archdukes were those whose battle prowess surpassed the Arch rank, for people of Neptune, the gap between the Arch and half Ster realm was big, but not impossible to cross with the correct preparations, of course we are talking about stalling or temporarily fighting against one.

    Only those talented ones could cross realms to defeat opponents with higher realms, but inparison at the four gxies, a case of an Arch rank defending against a Half Emperor is way too scarce, Erin, Aura are one of the few in history to have achieved that, Aisha would have probably been able to do it too, if she didn''t have to protect Daimon and fight against the guards of the Naktis back then when Victor''s father joined the fight, too.

    So, there was a wide area for Arch ranks with battle prowess that surpassed their ranks, and this old man was one of the strongest in that aspect, though he needed that armor to take that step, otherwise his body wouldn''t be able to resist his own power, he was quite old and worn out after all, inparison Liz was incredibly young for her rank.

    "Sure, let''s finish this quick so we can leave", said Daimon, which made the old manugh, a transportation array appeared on the floor and with Oliver''s greenlight, they all disappeared from the room.

    The scenery changed to high into the sky, naturally Oliver created a tform with his mana to prevent them from falling.

    From Above Daimon saw the city literallying to live, the istion array was secretly activated to prevent anyone from using spatial arrays to leave, there were soldiers secretly surrounding the cathedral and a certain list of buildings that were affiliated either open or secretly with them.

    "Little Oliver, I know how much you have been waiting for this, so I''ll leave the honor to you", said the old man as he threw a ck and red scroll at his son.

    Daimon immediately understood what the old man was talking about, that scroll was quite dangerous, it was a one time kind of treasure that was used to destroy arrays and weaken structures, it wasn''t based purely on runes but on a beast core that was embedded into it as well.

    "This is for Sana", mumbled Oliver as he opened the scroll and let a drop of his blood fall on it, to then throw it towards the cathedral, it had many more safety measures but Ben had already unleashing them, it was a really expensive and restricted treasure after all.

    The scroll burned on the air above the cathedral and then as if the heavens were passing down judgement, a red lightning exploded and fell on the cathedral.

    "Booom!", with a loud exploding sound and a sh of light, all the arrays on the cathedral crumbled apart and the walls and roof also cracked, having taken the upper ground, Oliver took a deep breath and then amplified is voice with mana, making his next words echo through the whole city.

    "The Church has been making deals with the flesh eating demons, thus betraying humanity, for which they will be all captured and interrogated, if you are innocent don''t resist otherwise you''ll be killed!", his thunderous voice made the air vibrate a bit.

    Followed by that, all the soldiers and forces hidden, came out of the shadows and surrounded their targets, which were taken by surprise, at the same time the members of the church including the Cardinal, Archbishop and the captain of their guards came out to fight, only to pale the moment they saw the old Ben.

    "Well, well, well, it''s been a few thousands of years since I saw you all, how about we catch up with each other", said the old man.

    The three who were the higher echelon of the church in Tiria, immediately turned to escape but then were then hit by a mountain-like pressure which made them vomit blood and fall from the sky, crashing on the ground a few secondster.

    Just like that, the battle that broke out a moment ago was practically finished, though there were small fight here and there, with the leaders destroyed in seconds they lost, needless to say but simr scenes were happening in many cities at the same time.

    ¡­

    Among the previous mentioned cities, there was Caliz, were a fierce battle exploded out of nowhere.

    "Fuck, didn''t you say that this city was under your control Pa, then where do all these bastardse from!", shouted Adam as he saw the sea of enemies surrounding them, he was only wearing boxers as he was previously rolling on the bed with the female Cardinal.

    Speaking of her, Pa had an unsightly expression as she saw the City Lord, who was supposedly bedridden, standing at the front of the army as healthy as a bull, wearing a strong looking brown armor.

    Pa immediately took her decision, she grabbed Adam and rushed into the basement of the church.

    "Don''t let her escape, capture everyone!", shouted the city lord as he rushed into the church but was blocked by the captain of the guards as well as the Archbishop.

    In the meantime, Pa and Adam reached the deepest part of the basement, where a tunnel with a luxurious looking carriage was waiting for them.

    "Those bastards had gone crazy, but don''t worry, our major forces are already at Alzac, we''ll reach there in no time after escaping the city, in the meantime let''s enjoy ourselves", said the woman with a coquettish voice as she hopped into the carriage andid down on therge bed-like seat.

    Adam smirked and entered too, the carriage immediately became a sh of light as it advanced through the tunnel, the sounds of battle faded away in the distance, as the tunnel crumbled apart in parts.

    Inside of the carriage, Adam who was hugging Pa couldn''t help but say.

    "Shouldn''t have we taken all the things in the treasury you showed me?".

    The woman softlyughed as she tightened her embrace on the Light Hero.

    "They are nothingpared to what is waiting for us, I''ll introduce you to your subordinates for the next mission, I chose a few cuties just for you", she whispered at him, making Adam nod, satisfied with the arrangement.

    The dead point that has been keeping Kerrol stagnant, was finally lifted due to a series of reactions in chain.

 Chapter 500 Arriving At Alzac & Summit (Part 1)

    ?

    Naturally while the Adjudicators won the upper hand due to their surprise attack, managing to eliminate most of their priority targets and capturing a lot of suspects, the church didn''t just stay still and took it.

    Specially because not all the cities were aligned with the Valleris family, there were total of sixteen major border cities which were responsible of keeping the public order in the human territory.

    Out of them, with old Ben using his own life as guarantee that the church was ying dirty, nine border cities listened to the call, destroying the branches of the church where it was needed and restraining.

    The other six border cities were the ones with the highest influence from the church, including their main cathedral, on the other hand it''s not like the whole church was part of the traitors, so once the suspects were secured, a ceasefire was ordered.

    "Father, everything went well, the guys at the main cathedral are demanding to know why we attacked them, the city lords who remained neutral are also pressing the matter", said Oliver to his father.

    The old Ben coldlyughed and then made a grasping movement, the three highest ranked members of the church in Tiria, in other words the Cardinal, Archbishop and the captain of their guards, were roughly dragged towards the old man, all the way from the ground.

    "Tell them all to use their Humanity Assembly array, if they want answers, and also make sure to remind them that those who don''t show up, will be treated as traitors and hunted down by all the others", he said.

    Oliver nodded and then separated from the rest to send the message he was tasked to, in the meantime the old man turned to see Daimon.

    ''Even with that little demonstration I can''t read that kid, just how strong is his backer'', he wondered before saying.

    "Thanks to you we have don''t have to worry about the "ticket fare", it will take a few minutes before the array is prepared, so why don''t we pay a little visit to these traitor''s treasury?".

    Daimon nodded in response, in part this is why he had to side with either Reyne and the others, or the church, he earlier saw a map of Kerrol and the Alzac volcanic zone was stupidly far from the human continent, normally a travel of a few days in carriage wouldn''t be that much of a problem, but he had a time limit.

    So the only option was using a long range transportation array, and due to the outdated rune mastering of Kerrol, the only ones who had such a thing were either the Adjudicators or the church, and he was right, Rita discovered arrays at the basement of both the Valleris''s castle, where the old man spent his time, and below the church as well.

    If they could be fueled through mana crystals, then Daimon would have just sneaked in and used them, but they needed beast cores and the amount needed was insane, it was easier to make a deal with the old man than to obtain/steal all the cores needed.

    With Ben''s help the group descended from the sky,nding at the now ruined entrance of the church, without the defensive arrays, the building was still quite tough, but not enough to resist the old man''s mana.

    Ben simply waves hid hand and a hole which seemed bottomless opened on the ground of the main hall of the church, without stopping the old man jumped into it, he had created a sphere with mana in which Daimon and the others were being transported.

    Just as Rita informed Daimon, the cathedral had a reallyrge underground area, which consisted in a misceneous storage, where there weren''t any valuable stuff, but food and other daily necessities, next there were the dormitories, a training level, andstly the "secret" level where the prison and "interrogation chambers" as well as the treasury were located.

    Now that it was obvious that this branch of the church was cooperating with the flesh eating demons, that exined why the prison was empty, besides the smell of blood there was nothing there.

    "To think you bastards became food providers for those monsters, fucking idiots", the old man though easy going, was really angry imagining how many innocents were framed, dragged here and then disposed as food for the flesh eating demons.

    One of the most popr punishments for those who cooperated with the flesh eating demons, was actually being fed to them, the Adjudicators had some low ranked ones imprisoned, naturally they only ate meat of magic beasts, except when a sinner was captured, quite an ironic end, simr to what Daimon did to Jeremy, but the ones being used as food here weren''t sinners.

    This branch of the church, probably captured those who exchanged sinners with them, and offered them as sacrifices, which is what they would have done to Daimon if they could have capture him.

    Once the group reached the deepest level, a giant golden and red colored gate appeared in front of them, ever since the old Ben entered the cathedral he didn''t give a second nce to anything until now.

    "Open it, unless you want to die", he ordered to the three that were being restrained by him, he already checked their bodies and their spatial treasures and couldn''t find the key to the treasury.

    "Screw you, you won''t get anything from our sacred vault, it will self-destroy in thirty minutes, and even you will need more than that to brute force your way through it, your expression was worth paying so much to set up the mechanical trap¡­", the Cardinal who had a smug face, suddenly froze on the spot as he saw someone approaching the gate.

    Daimon casually took out small golden key from his pocket, which made the Cardinal''s face twist.

    "Y-You, why do you have that!", he shouted, that was the key of the treasury which he personally hid, so that he could either returnter to retrieve the contents of the treasury or keep it closed until it destroys itself.

    Naturally, how could that guy''s actions escape Rita''s eyes, when theynded earlier, she had already retrieved the key and handed it to Daimon, through his shadow, everything without anyone else noticing.

    Daimon inserted the key on the lock, without the arrays which were destroyed earlier, he only had to rotate the key and the heavy door opened for them.

    "Kid, you surely like to surprise others hahaha!", the old man was enjoying the expression on the Cardinal''s face, quite a bit, but there was also an important matter in hands right now.

    Luckily for him, Daimon spoke first.

    "You can have almost all the beast cores, the rest is mine, any problem?", he said.

    "What the hell are you talking about, if it wasn''t for grandfather, you would have been killed by the church, and now you want all the treasury for yourself!", eximed Eliot, even from the outside he could see some incredibly valuable things exhibited on the racks and shelves, like eighth generation beast equipment, which made his sword look like a toy.

    His father did buy him one, but he could only use it in missions, the idea was that he saved for his own equipment, so that he would appreciate it, needless to say but he was inwardly drooling at the treasures, but then that masked guy casually dered that everything was his, he almost lost it on the spot.

    Daimon didn''t pay Eliot attention, he simply gazed at the old man, who limited to shake his head.

    "You should be a merchant kid¡­ sure, we wouldn''t have gotten anything if you didn''t have the key, so I''ll dly take the cores since we need them for the array", he said to which Daimon nodded.

    "You''ll still get a lot of profit from dismantling this ce and the vault itself is quite pricey anyway, so it''s not like you aren''t getting anything from it", he said, making the old man chuckle.

    "Grandfather, don''t let him get away with¡­", just as Eliot wasining, the old man red at him and spat a single word.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Enough", with just that, Eliot closed his mouth and remained silent with a hatred filled expression.

    He wasn''t the only one though, the Cardinal''s eyes seemed to spew fire as he gazed at Daimon, who smirked at him.

    "I told you, if I attacked you there won''t be witnesses left, and your cathedral would be reduced to debris".

    The Cardinal gritted his teeth so hard that blood dripped out of his mouth, but the old Ben knocked him out, since he was going to be used as evidence in a moment.

    While the old man stayed outside along with Eliot, Daimon and Sarah entered the treasury, Jeanne, Emily and Reyne went with them too, since Daimon didn''t have a problem with that.

    "And here I was thinking I put a really high price to Dn, but it seems I was too charitable", said Daimon as he observed the contents of the treasury.

    There wasn''t a single treasure in this room without a core embedded into it, all were beast equipment, and from the most recent models too, there were giant racks with row after row of Arch ranked beast cores, without a single Lord ranked present in the room.

    "You can take something if it catches your eye", said Daimon to Sarah and the others, as he started sending everything else to the inventory, shelves and racks included.

    The crazy girl was already holding a one edge light yellow sword, even before Daimon spoke, but nothing else got her attention on the short run, there were some poisons, but she had to check them, which would be left forter, she didn''t doubt that Daimon was going to give them to her if she asked after all.

    As for Jeanne, Emily and Reyne they also looked through the things disyed and took what suited them the best without any reserves, it was part of the "deal", if they needed anything which Daimon obtained, they simply had to ask for it, of course the same applied to them, the previous was limited to things that weren''t needed by the other party, and that''s how Daimon obtained some recipes and other things which Jeanne and Emily had among their belongings.

    That''s how Daimon distributed the loot obtained in his team anyway, it was a win-win situation after all.

    "I''m done, you can take the rest of the cores", once Daimon finished emptying the dozens of thousands of savings of this branch of the church, he gave the old man the greenlight to take the cores left.

    This time, Daimon hit the jackpot, the Valleris practically led the Adjudicators, and while this wasn''t the headquarter of the church, the cathedral of Tiria was the second richest one, as to why theycked an old monster like Ben guarding the fort, there used to be one, but he recently died after his lifespan reached its end.

    And a recement hadn''t arrived yet, and wouldn''t have arrived probably, since this branch was cooperating with the flesh eating demons, and if someone new arrived, there was a chance for them to be discovered.

    "Damn, as always working with those monsters is really too profitable", cursed the old man, as he observed the insane number of cores that were left, Eliot who was allowed to enter now, was also baffled too.

    ''This is what he left, how many cores did he kept for himself!'', he inwardly swore in his heart.

    There weren''t mana crystals in the treasury, but instead there was a massive number of cores, the flesh eating demons seemed to have a use for mana crystals, though heir arrays were fueled with blood, their rune mastering was more simr to the one Daimon knew about too after all.

    And since the church was cooperating with them, it''s obvious thy exchanged the crystals for beast cores, that the flesh eating demons didn''t use at all, since they hated everything rted to magic beasts, in a sense the two races actually could have a really goodmercial rtionship thanks to the cultural difference.

    "Father, we are ready, I have reunited the selected captains at the entrance of the mansion", old Ben received a message from Oliver and that marked the end of the looting.

    "Let''s go", with a wave of his hand, the old man covered everyone with his mana and flew towards the mansion of the city lord.

    A couple of minutester the groupnded in front of Oliver and a group of thirty guards, who had different armors than the rest, surprisingly 28 of them were middle stage Arch ranks while thest two were peak stage ones, though they were weaker than Oliver, this was the strongest group Daimon has seen ever since he arrived at Kerrol.

    The Valleris weren''t one of the two principal leaders of the alliance for nothing after, these were only the forces stationed in Tiria, there were more Arch ranks in other cities in the central reign, but not all will being of course.

    "Beck''s squad wille with us, while Raul''s will stay to guard the city, we have brought the "evidence" with us too, who else will being?", asked Oliver.

    "It will be a good experience for little Eliot, bring him with us too", said old Ben, besides them it was obvious that Daimon and Sarah wereing.

    And to Oliver''s surprise, Jeanne and Emily who never involved in anything regarding Adjudicators also tagged along, Reyne was the same, he even noticed hat they looked somewhat merrier for some reason.

    Ben handed the ring in which the beast cores he got from the treasury of the church were stored, making the city lord temporarily freeze at the number of them, it was way more than what he expected, and it was a gift from the heavens, because the array they were about to use burned a lot of cores per person.

    Oliver ced the ring on the ground and a huge array lit up on the ground, due to the outdated knowledge they had in runes, they used an unnecessarilyplicated array just for a travel in the same, inparison back at the four gxies the arrays could take you to others and even other gxies, since there weren''t spaceships¡­ yet.

    ¡­

    After confirming that they had everything they needed, the group disappeared from Tiria, to Daimon''s surprise, despite the huge inefficiency in terms of the energy needed to power the array, the travel was instantaneous.

    So, in less than five minutes, they appeared in a different ce, they very much reached the same level of spatial movement expected from a Half Emperor, from Daimon''s point of view, but again this much was expected considering how many cores they burned for a single use of the array.

    Daimon casually observed his surroundings, they were inside a huge hall with two tables, one in front of the other, there people already waiting for them, but he didn''t pay them attention.

    Not on purpose, but because he could now feel Jasmine''s current position quite urately, his eyes glowed behind his mask and his filed of vision bypassed the walls of this ce to observe the outside.

    ''Well, I should have expected this much from a volcanic area¡­ we''ll be here soon'', he thought as he observed the series of active volcanoes, rivers ofva and the scorchednd in general, especially an area at east from here, where there was a particr "hill" which was surrounded by people.

    "She is here", he mumbled, letting the crazy girl whose eyes sparkled, hear him.

    "Old Ben,e sit, those guys will arrive in a moment", an old voice could be hearding from the table where a slim old man with a small moustache was waving his hand at Ben.

 Chapter 501 Arriving At Alzac & Summit (Part 2)

    ?

    Ben turned to see the old man andughed as he beckoned at Daimon and the others, before saying.

    "Come, let me introduce you to the undying bastard", though it sounded quite offensive, the slim old man didn''t seem to take it seriously, apparently the two of them were in quite good terms.

    Inparison, there was a woman who seemed to be in her middle thirties, sitting next to the old man, who red at Oliver before giving a cold gaze at Jeanne, but it onlysted a moment before she turned to see Eliot with a warm expression.

    "What are you waiting,e greet me", she said, her attitude took a whole 180¡ã change when dealing with Elliot, which was exined a momentter when Elliot walked away rom the group to meet the woman.

    "Aunt Dorothy, I''m now a junior Adjudicator", he proudly said.

    Oliver saw his sister inw giving him the cold shoulder and he sighed, but he didn''t me her, he couldn''t protect his wife after all, at the very least, his son kept a good rtionship with his maternal side of the family.

    Daimon ignored the family meeting and casually sat, apanied by the crazy girl as well as Jeanne, Emily and Reyne, as for the ten captains that followed them, they were handling the prisoners that were brought for the meeting.

    Which included, Dn, the woman who worked for Jeremy and the top three of the church at Tiria, surprisingly the white haired guy who was Elliot''s rival wasn''t in the city, so he escaped the encirclement.

    Naturally, Daimon''s actions didn''t go unnoticed, the slim old man gave Ben a questioning gaze, only to see his friendughing.

    "That little friend is Gabriel, he is the one who provided the evidence that those stubborn fogeys had been asking to mobilize against those bastards, don''t mind the mask I can vouch for him", he said.

    "Oh, it''s the first time I hear youpliment someone, so he must be that good", said the slim old man as he approached Daimon to introduce himself.

    "I''m Antonio Heldrich, the former Lord of Winter city, it''s a pleasure", said the old man, curiously, this slim and well-mannered old man was actually a knight, in contrast, the easy going but quite wild speaking and bulky Ben, is a mage.

    "I''m Gabriel, the pleasure is mine", since the old man came with good intentions, Daimon responded in kind, there were other people about to enter the room from both sides, but among them there were only three that were on par with Antonio in terms of strength, one was of course Ben and the others were from the side of the church.

    Of course, that didn''t mean those four were the onlyte peak stage Arch ranks, who surpassed the limits of their realm, presents in the facility in which Daimon was, but they were the strongest.

    Dorothy who was talking with Elliot, saw him stealing gazes at Reyne who was now calmly sitting next to Daimon, talking with the girl who apanied the masked youth, and she frowned.

    "Oliver, would you mind exining the seat order to your guests, even if it is for appearance, the Valleris is one of the two pirs of humanity after all", she said.

    And now Oliver who was sitting next to Emily found himself in a tough spot, he was sure Daimon wasn''t going to follow traditions, heck, he didn''t even present himself back then, on the other hand, it was true that Jeanne and Reyne who were part of his family, were supposed to sit next to him.

    "How weird, I remember that my contract perfectly stablished that I can do as I please, as long as it doesn''t help the flesh eating demons or break the alliance''s rules, since when have I needed your permission to sit where I want, Dorothy", Jeanne''s answer made the room go silent all of a sudden.

    Unfortunately for Dorothy, the time for personal matters had ended, since the doors at both sides of the room, opened, meaning that the other participants of the summit were already here.

    Not to mention that, both Ben and Antonio directly interfered by saying.

    "Don''t forget that violence is forbidden in this building, the arrays will cool your heads if you can''t do it by yourselves".

    That''s why they were meeting here, the whole building was a treasure, used for negotiations between all he higher ups, of both the Adjudicators and the church, because they couldn''t fight here, it''s a treasure from the past, something that they haven''t been able to duplicate.

    From the side of the Adjudicators, 14 middle aged man led the group of neers, those were the other border city lords, behind of them there were a couple of city lords whose qualifications were enough to be here, but not to voice their opinion.

    Each of them was using the emblem of their respective family, so it was quite a varied group with different types of armors and characteristics.

    Inparison the group that arrived from the church, was way less varied, there were eight people wearing red and golden armors, meaning they were Cardinals, followed by forty Archbishops wearing full white attires, and leading the whole group there was an elderly couple using silver robes, those were the ones on par with Ben and Antonio.

    Naturally as the ones attacked, the group of the church was radiating an overall sensation of dissatisfaction, but they didn''t start a fight and instead directly sat at the table, the old couple was directly facing Ben and Antonio, and so the summit started.

    "We all know why we came here, so tell me you two, what reason could possibly be good enough tounch an attack against around 80% of our cathedrals?", asked the man of the couple from the church.

    "That is because your church was working with the flesh eating demons, and we finally caught their tails", said Ben, which made the woman from the couple grit her teeth.

    "You dare to use us, when you have "that", sitting on the same table as you!", she eximed as she pointed at Emily, who remained indifferent towards the whole situation.

    Ben smirked in response and then snapped his fingers, to which the guards brought the prisoners from the church as well as Dn who was wearing the mask.

    "Little Gabriel, would you do the honors, please?", asked Ben, Daimon nodded and then the projection of what happened when the guys from the church came to try and arrest him, appeared on the air above the table.

    Next to it, the clip of what happened at the white room, was also projected, by the end of both clips, the members of the church had genuinely unsightly expressions on their faces.

    "What you are seeing is your high ranked members, trying to frame an innocent person, following the request of a Blood Earl with an Archduke ancestor, to find the whereabouts of his son, and before you try toe up with an excuse, said son is present here", said Ben, to which Daimon ordered.

    "Take your mask off, tell them who captured you and who you are".

    Dn who was dying out of fear, feeling the gazes of all those strong people on him, followed Daimon''s orders.

    "I-I''m Dn Raydol, son of the Blood Earl Dan Raydol, grandson of Blood Duke Sarlian and I was captured by him", the moment Dn removed the mask, it became obvious to all the presents, that he was a flesh eating demon, there was doubt about it, also the most experienced could tell he was a noble.

    And the most experienced ones, were in awe at the fact that he wasn''t dying after speaking of his ancestor, as to why he didn''t mention the Blood Archduke, which Ben spoke about, that is because as a useless third generation, Dn hadn''t gotten to know it.

    "I-Impossible, you tell us where the human farms of your family are!", shouted the woman from the elder couple of the church, whose name was Maria, only to be angered at the fact that Dn didn''t answer.

    "He only speaks if I allow him to, I already sold the information he has to old Ben, so you won''t get that from him, additionally he is forbidden to lie", said Daimon while he mentally added.

    ''Unless is rted to me, of course'', he thought.

    Seeing the awe expressions on the faces of practically all the presents in the room, both sides included, Ben thunderouslyughed before saying.

    "I believe you understand what this means right, you shouldn''t have anyins regarding my actions now, Turner, and the same goes for you Maria, not to mention I don''t see that half-dead bastard and a third of your members here, when this was an obligatory meeting".

    The elderly couple sighed, even if they tried to excuse their side, it was impossible with a flesh eating demon proportioning his side of the story, not to mention they were more interested in someone that could make them talk, without bing empty shells.

    "Given the presented evidence, we''ll forget about the attack, but I refuse to believe all the prisoners are guilty and request for those who are deemed innocent to be returned to us", said Turner.

    "After determining that your own men are trustable, they can be present during the interrogation if you want to, leaving that aside¡­ what happened on your side?", asked Antonio.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    Obviously, the church was running their own investigation, and while they had their suspicions on some of their members, they didn''t want to ept the truth, that an internal faction who sided with their sworn enemies appeared within their files.

    Specially, because unlike the Adjudicator Alliance where highest authority was held by two people, they had three Pope candidates, the third one who was the substitute due to him being the oldest among the three, went missing among with a third of the members of the church all of a sudden.

    "Felix is¡­", before Turner could finish his sentence, the door on the church''s side opened once again, which shouldn''t be the case, all the ones with the authority to enter were already here, and since they suspected the only one left out, both Turner and Maria had eliminated his authority.

    And yet, they both recognized who was entering through the door right now, followed by a group of people that didn''t lose inparison to the side of the church that was already here.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, Rita just told him that there was a spatial array activating a second ago, outside of the room, and he also noticed a familiar face among the neers.

    And he wasn''t the only one, maybe others couldn''t notice it, but he felt the huge murderous aura, radiated by the crazy girl, which was justified since not too far from the one leading the newly arrived group, walking while wrapping his arm around the waist of a woman wearing the armor of a Cardinal, while having that arrogant expression as always, there was the light idiot, Adam.

    ''You can punch him a couple of times now, or you can destroy his asster, I assure you that he hasn''t met Jasmine, so she is safe'', Daimon''s voice made its way to Sarah''s ears, without anyone but she noticing.

    Right now, Daimon was sure that the self-centered idiot of Adam, didn''t recognize Sarah, much less him, in part thanks to the Hollow Suit, in part thanks to the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    But once they shed, while he was exempted from the scope of his system, that angel girl might recognize Sarah, since she has fought with him once, and while Daimon trusts that even if all the presents join hands, they can''t let alone kill him, even restrain him, they can get in between him and Adam.

    Specially because Adam has many tricks to escape from what would be a dead end for others, and even Daimon didn''t have a way to deal with that¡­ yet, the best chance to take him down, would be when there are no other guys who can interfere and when the fight was started by himself, it''s what his instincts told him.

    "Mm", the crazy girl calmed down on the spot, and then taking advantage of the situation, she rested her head on Daimon''s shoulder, who for a change didn''t dodge as if his life depended on it, probably because he could feel she was feeling genuinely frustrated with the situation.

    Leaving that little episode aside, Daimon focused his attention on the situation at the other side of the room, the side of the church all stood up and surrounded the neers, Ben and Antonio also stood up and walked until they were in front of the side of the Adjudicators, just in case.

    "Felix, what is the meaning of his, what the hell is up with that look!", shouted the previously calm Turner.

    The man who was leading the newly arrived group, seemed to be in his early fifties, making him look slightly younger than even Ben, who was the one in the best shape of the old monsters, before.

    As a proof of it, his hair had somewhat regained a brown tone and his eyes and skin were brimming with vitality, one wouldn''t believe it, considering that he had a foot on the grave a few days ago.

    "Oh, I just happened to make a little deal, in exchange for mutual cooperation, I attained a new life as the first ever human Blood Archduke", said Felix, which made both Turner and Maria tremble with anger.

    Those who joined the church, were supposed to repudiate the flesh eating demons, the Adjudicators were simr, but their motivation was personal, most of them had lost someone important due to them, that was themon history that first generation Adjudicators shared.

    But for the church, it was a more than that, it was their belief and that is why they all were against Emily living among humans, and here one of their highest ranked members somehow turned himself into a flesh eating demon at least partially, in order to extend his life.

    "Now, don''t look at me like that, while I certainly now need to drink human blood, I don''t have a need for meat, so I don''t need to kill anyone to live and I got a longer lifespan and other benefits, so what''s the problem with it, besides you can''t attack anyone here so stop embarrassing yourself and listen to me".

    "That ruin will only be open during the blood moon week, and while from the bottom of my heart I wanted to steal the key, I have to admit that the Valleris were much more of a pain in the ass than what I expected, so I came with an offer", he said as he red at Ben before continuing.

    "We have a way of entering without the other key, but the price is quite high, to the point that we might even end up without anything to eat, so I want you to cooperate to open it, in exchange there will be a ceasefire between those outside of the ruin whose realms surpass a certain threshold, until the ones that entere out, at the same time you''ll be saving dozens of millions of people, it''s not a bad deal, right?", he said with a smug face.

    "Don''t listen to him, Lord Turner, Lady Maria, we just have to eradicate them all!", shouted one of the Cardinals.

    But the four old monsters stared at each other as they exchanged opinions, through sound transmissions that only they could hear, or so they thought because Daimon and Rita also listened to them.

    In any case, they all simply said "I agree" at the same time, before Ben nodded at Felix, he had the highest authority in this matter, because it was his Valleris''s family the one who had the key in their possession.

    "We''ll ept, but the blood contract will be borated by us and reviewed by both, I trust you kept your device, I''ll call you when is ready, now get out of my sight you traitor bastard", said Ben, to which Felix grinned.

    "I''m waiting for our armies to meet on the battlefieldter, we''ll finally settle that tie from back then", said the man before he left to wait outside of the room, naturally their group was now being watched by representatives of both the church and the Adjudicators.

    The moment the door closed, isting the room once again, Daimon casually sent a message to Ben, whose image shed, the next thing everyone knew is that he had thrown out of the room, the Cardinal who wanted a fight earlier,

    Being met with the questioning gazes of Turner and Maria, Ben fiercely spoke as he showed the token of authority of the Cardinal, which had lost its luster, meaning it was used not too long ago.

    "You all came here with Maria''s emblem, that guy brought Felix here and he took all the others along, your arrays are breached, everyone on your side but you and Maria has to leave!".

    The elderly couple both clenched their fists, but totally agreed and sent them out through a different door, since Felix and hispany were also outside but at a different waiting room.

    "I guess there is no need to say that your spots on the exploration have been reduced to zero, you''ll still receive a certain percentage of the findings, depending on your contribution to the war that is about to start", said Antonio, to which Ben nodded before saying.

    "The following will be a discussion of the highest level, everyone but the four of us, Oliver and little friend Gabriel''s group, please go out to the waiting room".

    The other city lords obeyed, including the neutral ones, since now there was no room for neutrality anymore, the enemy was confirmed without a doubt.

    But there was one who didn''t leave as told, Dorothy, she saw Elliot giving her a pleading gaze and then turned to see Antonio.

    "Father, my rank is the same as Oliver, so I have the authority to stay, not to mention Elliot will stay too", she said.

    Only to see Antonio shaking his head.

    "I need someone to watch our men over, while the possibility is really low, what if someone choses to betray us, I will tell you everythingter, as for little Elliot, he doesn''t have the rank to stay here, you know we Adjudicators are forbidden to favor our descendants, the ones staying behind will actively participate, now please go outside".

    Dorothy wanted toin, but saw a rare severe expression on her father''s face, and knew it was futile, her father rarely denied her something, since she was the only remaining daughter he had, unless it broke the code of the Adjudicators, so she knew there was no point in arguing anymore.

    "Humph,e with aunt little Elliot, we have some catch up to do", said Dorothy as she left the room, apanied with Elliot who stole a gaze at Reyne to then re at Daimon.

    Once they left, Daimon turned to see Turner and Maria before saying.

    "Write down a list of the names of the guys on your side who were previously here, along with a detailed description of each one and give it to me".

    "Why?", asked Turner only to be speechless at the answer.

    "I''m going to give you a list of the traitors that were surrounding you, so you can dispose of them".

    A sepulchral silence fell in the room, as a result of Daimon''s words.

 Chapter 502 Initial Clash

    ?

    After listening to Daimon''s words, the elderly couple from the church gritted their teeth but, in a hurry, wrote what they were asked to, naturally that pair of old foxes didn''t hand over the information without first asking.

    "What do you want in exchange for this?", said Turner, to which Daimon handed him a small piece of paper, which Oliver recognized on the spot, since the contents of it will haunt him for some time.

    "W-What, are you robbing us!", Maria caught a glimpse of the things listed on the paper and she nearly vomited blood, for a good reason, Daimon demanded double of what the Adjudicators had to pay him to obtain all the information Dn had.

    "Little friend this is too much¡­", Turner tried to take the soft way and negotiate a lower price, especially because he noticed that even Ben was surprised by the payment requested, meaning that they didn''t have to pay that much, unfortunately for him, Daimon directly interrupted him on the spot.

    "They got a "friendly" discount, miss Jeanne and Reyne stood up for me when your church came to kill me, I''m already being generous considering how you treat miss Emily, take it or leave it".

    "Humph, do you think you can ckmail us, at most we''ll retire and see you suffering from the sides, then what will you do", said Maria, only to see chuckling.

    "You can try, but with the number of traitors I saw, I will be amazed if you survive to see the next month, of course you are free to believe that I''m making everything up", he casually said.

    After a moment of silence, Turner sighed in defeat before saying.

    "I ept the terms, but I want one spot back at least, of course the one chose to go will be interrogated before, we''ll give the Adjudicators half of our findings, take it as way to build a better rtionship between our forces".

    With how things were, the cool-headed Turner, realized that their useless internal strife with the Adjudicators could have brought the extinction of the human race, to begin with, both sides were founded by the first king and his lover, so they should have been working together.

    "You can''t take the decision by yourself, are you not seeing that they have that filthy thing on their side!", eximed Maria as she pointed at Emily, only the freeze on the spot at the sight of Daimon increasing the price, so that they will pay thrice what the Adjudicators had to.

    "Enough Maria, she might be part flesh eating demon, but she didn''t chose to be like that nor has she ever consumed human meant or even blood¡­ inparison our own people willingly entered that path and are enjoying it, how can we face our ancestors if we can''t even clean our own home", said Turner with an angered expression, Felix was like a second father for him, back then when he was younger, he looked up to the man who was the closest to be the Pope, the shock was strong enough to change the way he saw things.

    His wife ultimately conceded this time, because she couldn''t argue against the cruel reality of the situation, everything that happened will be known by the public, if they wanted their organization to survive, they had to demonstrate that they fight for the sake of humankind.

    "Fine, they are just material things anyway, we can get more with time, I''m also tired of the whole power struggle farce".

    After signing that contract, Daimon handed the list of traitors to Turner, whose face became unsightly on the spot, there were more than what he expected, but at least not many were particrly high ranked.

    Felix betrayed them to save his ass, his lifespan was about to end so he needed an extension, but the others that were following him weren''t that old, but the ambitious rtively young who wished to increase their strength faster.

    Daimon then nodded at the old Ben who then took over.

    "Previously we were going to have a small pointer exchange between our young generation, to see who was going to wield the "key" that my Valleris family has been guarding, but now there is no need for that, it would be an honor if little friend Gabriel is the one to use it", said the old man as he smiled at Daimon.

    "I have something to do inside that ruin, so I can''t promise that I won''t point my sword at you, depending on the situation you know", said Daimon in response, just to see the old manughing.

    "I believe you won''t do anything too harsh, little Reyne will be entering with you after all", he said with a suggesting voice, which made the crazy girl who was still leaning against Daimon''s shoulder re at him.

    "I will do what I have to and won''t bother you as long as you don''t target me, additionally I can tell you that I have a personal grudge against the flesh eating demons, so I''ll kill them at sight if get the chance to", said Daimon as he endured the sharp piercing gaze of the crazy girl.

    Old Ben casually nodded and then took out a ckrge case from his storage ring, then ced on the table in front of Daimon.

    "That''s enough, this was supposed to be given to you anyway¡­ since you have the same qualities as the first king", he said as he opened the case to reveal its contents.

    In front of Daimonid arge white metal crossbow, carefully packed in the case, the design was exquisite with many decorations, it looked a bit worn out though and the mechanism was missing a few pieces that seemed to have been torn apart.

    [You have found a lost relic and must return it to its rightful owner, the current designated hero]

    The moment Daimon saw the crossbow, a fake notification was triggered making him grin, of course he wasn''t going to give this to Adam, specially because there was a certain capricious sword in his inventory, drooling over it as if it was a delicious-looking candy.

    "I know it doesn''t look like much, but in the whole history of my family, not only we have never been able to repair it, we couldn''t even dismount it, I have attacked it with all my might before and nothing happened to it, it''s yours now so good luck", said old Ben.

    Daimon nodded and then closed the case to sent it into his inventory, it''s not like he was going to use the crossbow, once he aplished his objective, it will be a snack for Disaster.

    "If there is nothing else, we have to make some preparations to open the entrance of the ruin, so while the army arrives, prepare yourselves", said Antonio, and that was a hint for Daimon to take his leave, which he did.

    "Okay, that''s enough", casually said Daimon as he stood up, finally making the crazy girl separate from him, very much to her displease.

    "Little Jeanne, please take them to a guest room, we''ll be ready in an hour", said Ben to Reyne''s mother, who limited to nod in response.

    Daimon''s group left the meeting room, and they were met by the gazes of all the others that were waiting outside, including Elliot and Dorothy.

    Jeanne didn''t say anything and instead walked towards the door at the left, she had an area assigned exclusively for her, Emily and Reyne, which is where she was bringing Daimon and Sarah.

    "Where are you going, what happened inside the meeting room?", asked Dorothy who gritted her teeth after seeing she was being ignored.

    "Wait Reyne, since we''ll be entering the ruin, we should discuss our strategy and¡­", Elliot changed the approach and tried to appeal to Reyne, but her answer made him freeze.

    "I''m sorry, but there is no need for that, I''ll be moving along with Gabriel, so our objectives won''t be the same", she said with her calm voice, to then turn around to leave.

    "Uwaah, how cruel, I like it~", for a change the crazy girlplimented Reyne.

    Elliot saw red, but before he tried to do something stupid, Dorothy restrained him to then re at Jeanne.

    "Don''t you think that is too selfish, inside of the ruin there will be those monsters hunting our representatives, are you saying that you''ll be dividing our forces, like it happened to the idiots of the church?", she said.

    Ignoring the fact that Dorothy was obviously trying to make them look like the enemy, Jeanne limited to say.

    "You''ll be informed once the meeting ends, if you need to know, that is", her voice was freezing cold, making Dorothy tremble due to anger, but unlike Elliot who was easily provoked, she managed to keep her rationality.

    "Like mother, like daughter", she poisonously said as she spat, unfortunately Jeanne didn''t pay her any attention as she guided Daimon and the others through the door that led to her assigned area.

    Before the door closed, Sarah gave Elliot who was still standing there with a shocked face, a mocking gaze.

    The other people took some distance from Dorothy, who was like an about to erupt volcano right now, she wanted to barge into the meeting room to demand an exnation, but since her father prohibited from doing so, she couldn''t open the door with her authority, so she just dragged Elliot along with her as she left through a door at the right, she naturally also had her exclusive area.

    The hour went in the bat of an eye, and before they noticed, Oliver came to pick Daimon''s group, the moment he saw Jeanne, he couldn''t help but sigh.

    "Did you really have to fight with her?", he said.

    "Your family problems shouldn''t affect me and much less my daughter, you better than anyone know that I''m already conceding by not ripping her mouth off after she called Emi "that", in front of me", answered Jeanne with an indifferent voice.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    She certainly wasn''t in bad terms with Oliver, but Dorothy seemed to have taken personal, that he "remarried" not too long after her sister''s death, because back then she didn''t know about the deal, as she didn''t have a high enough authority, so she thought Jeanne just took advantage of the situation.

    Then when she was informed of the true nature of their rtionship, she got to know that a flesh eating demon, like the one who killed her sister was brought into the castle where her sister lived, which only worsened their rtionship.

    In part, Elliot''s hatred towards Emily came from Dorothy''s influence, Oliver couldn''t argue against that, though he didn''t develop feelings for Jeanne, as he never forgot about his wife, to the point that he hasn''t touched a woman ever since she died, despite his high status, he hoped that she could treat Elliot as her son, just like he cared for Reyne.

    Unfortunately, his son''s attitude towards Emily, made that impossible, and he couldn''t me Jeanne for that, because he knew how much those two cared about the other.

    Along the way, before they reached the main hall of the building, Oliver turned to see Daimon and then said.

    "I have talked with Elliot and warned him, even making him sign a blood contract¡­ I hope that if something happens, little friend Gabriel can show some mercy".

    "If he tries to kill me, I will kill him, if you try to avenge him, I will kill you, I''m not na?ve enough to forgive an enemy and unfortunately you are not in the infinitely small list, of people for whom I will tolerate that risk, that being said I will focus on my own things", said Daimon, which made Oliver inwardly sigh.

    He did everything he could already, even Ben didn''t give Elliot one of the spots he had, but Dorothy used hers, and there wasn''t much they could about it, unless she was proven to be a traitor, which wasn''t the case, so Elliot will be going.

    Ignoring the awkward silence, the group arrived at the main hall where both the Adjudicators and the church were waiting for them.

    Humans and Ghouls will each send ten members of the young generation, that was the deal they made, the ruin didn''t allow anyone above the Lord rank to enter, so that was part of the restrictions too.

    As for who will be allowed to fight while the members of the young generation are inside the ruin, no one past the middle stage of the Arch rank will be involved, besides that everything was allowed.

    From the human side which was conformed by seven elites of the young generation, there were four knights and three mages among which Elliot was, all were peak stage Lord ranks, the one from the church was a mage, the granddaughter of Turner and Maria to be more urate.

    To hide the fact that Daimon had his own objectives, Ben and the other old monsters, divided the group in three, two teams of three and one of four, the four-man team was led by Elliot, while the other three-member team was led by the girl from the church.

    "To all you, future heroes of the young generation, don''t forget that this is a fight against the monsters that prey on us, it is too soon for you to die, don''t throw away your lives, advance when needed and retreat when needed", said Ben, the two groups previously gave the team leaders their instructions, before Daimon arrived so with just that, all the presents were transported out of the building.

    A few secondster, the scenery changed from thefortable and modern main hall, to the scorchingndscape of the volcanic area, for starters the temperature went up like crazy.

    Besides a few exceptions, even with armors and equipment made especially for this environment, everyone below the Arch rank felt the shock of the zing atmosphere of this ce.

    But they had no time to adapt, as they noticed a mixed group conformed by humans and flesh eating demons, approaching them.

    They were led by Felix as well as other four people, two men and two women, the men had blond hair and red eyes while the women had ck hair and red hair, they were quite the lookers, and appeared to be in their middle thirties at most.

    The only downside is that they were eyeing the humans on the other side, as if they were looking a filth.

    "It''s been a while, you four look quite worn out if you ask me", said one of the two males, who surprisingly had a certain resemnce to Dn, making Ben smirk.

    "Yo, Eniz, I heard you lost one of your descendants, hope you find it sooner orter", he said, making the Ghoul''s eyes dye red, literally, there was no nk or pupil even, only red.

    "Don''t worry, we''ll share the experience", limited to say the Ghoul, he couldn''t attack Ben, due to the contract anyway.

    Leaving quarrels aside, Adam who was still holding onto Pa''s waist, came out of the traitor''s side and then said with an arrogant voice.

    "I''m the Holy Son chosen by the Blood Justice Church who wishes to finally put an end to the wat between the two races, those among you who have the guts to die by my sword,e out", he said.

    It''s worth mentioning that Pa turned out to be the daughter of Felix, though he never married he had a lover who died some time ago.

    Naturally the first one to stand up was Elliot, his group came out of the crowd and stopped a few meters away from Adam, who snapped his fingers making three girls from the side of the traitors approach him, followed by six Ghouls of the young generation, all guys, to alsoe out, though they kept some distance from him.

    Noticing the gaze of disgust on Elliot''s eyes, Paughed as she pressed her body against Adam to then say with a mocking voice.

    "Oh my, poor you, you don''t seem to be popr with girls, right", she said that because Elliot''s group was formed only by men, the only two girls were both in the team led by the granddaughter of Turner and Maria.

    Speaking of them, they also came out to the initial face off, but they were soon ignored, as all the eyes fell on a group of three that walked away towards the entrance hat had appeared on the hill to be more urate.

    "I have no time for childish show offs, get your ass here at once", said Daimon as he took out the ck case from his inventory to then insert the frontal part of the crossbow into the lock that had the respecting shape.

    Adam who was inwardly pissed off at the nobody who was messing with his demonstration, inwardly shouted.

    ''Hey, Ariel, can I kill that bastard right now?'', he asked.

    ''Only if you don''t want the inheritance of the Blue Hero anymore, the other party won''t let you go and you''ll have to use redeem another escaping ticket, needless to say but there will be a penalty as it will be the second time during the same mission'', casually said the angel girl with an uninterested voice.

    Adam clicked his tongue and then walked towards Daimon, he unsheathed his sword and pointed it at Daimon before he inserted it into the lock, oblivious to the fact that his previous conversation was heard by Daimon.

    Though pissing off Adam was a bonus of him not wanting to lose time in useless word exchange with soon dead to be people, he also did it because when Adam lost his cool, he could basically listen to his thoughts, and it was really easy to do so.

    "You are dead meat you bastard, handover that crossbow and the girl and I might let you live, once we are inside things won''t be that easy", said Adam in a low voice, unfortunately for him, Daimonpletely ignored him.

    He was more interested on the hill which trembled as the giant stone gate opened, making it easier for him to feel Jasmine''s general position, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, as if previously discussed, both Sarah and Reyne held onto his arms and then the three of them jumped into the gate, only to disappear, since they were transported by the array engraved on it.

    Adam felt a vein popping on his neck, he shouted at the three girls who had yet toe.

    "What the hell are you waiting for, they are getting ahead of me!", the girls immediately rushed towards Adam and they also entered the ruin and were transported.

    The other groups also woke up from their daze and rushed into the ruin, the scene of Reyne holding onto Daimon''s arm, repeated itself inside Elliot''s mind, making a cold sh appear in his eyes.

    ''That fucking bastard!!!'', he inwardly screamed.

    ¡­

    Inside of the ruin at a certainpletely dark room, a mocking voice sounded.

    "Did you see that, he already has other "things" in mind, poor you were put in second priority", said a ck robed figure, to a girl who was trapped inside a ck cage.

    "I wonder if you will be able to speak with your head removed from your body?", was the only thing that could be hearding from the girl.

    ''I wonder what your expression will be once he arrives here, you little stubborn bitch'', thought the ck robed figure.

 Chapter 503 The Inside Of The Ruin

    ?

    The moment the members of the young generation who were chosen to enter, disappeared through the entrance of the ruin, the huge stone doors closed once again.

    Naturally, Daimon and Adam previously retrieved the "keys", but that''s not important right now, the moment they disappeared, the second part of the deal made by humans and flesh eating demons immediately started.

    In other words, everyone below the peak stage of the Arch rank, was now in for a war, still while they were ring at each other, no one made a bet yet.

    As a part of the deal, everyone past the middle stage of the Arch rank, wasn''t going to participate at all, so they all floated away until they were high on the sky, where they actually had chairs prepared for them.

    In total there were around fifty peak Arch rank from each side, meaning a hundred people were floating above the volcanic area.

    Naturally the different rows represented how much authority each person had, with old Ben and the others leading the human side, and the Blood Archdukes taking that role on their side.

    From the side of the Ghouls, one of the two female Archduchesses, who had long hair, mockingly gazed at one of the people on the second row from the human side, before saying.

    "You have started to look like your mother, I wonder if the proximity to human filth prevented you from obtaining the glorious eyes of our family, Emily", the voice of the woman was cold.

    And in a close observation, she actually resembled Emily a bit, with the difference that Emily''s hair was of a darker tone of ck inparison, also Emily looked way younger than her.

    And there was a good reason for the previous, that woman was the older sister of Emily''s mother, unlike her sister, Emily''s mother hadn''t reached the level of an Archduke, back then and yet she was able to block her sister''s way, while her husband fought against two Archdukes, killing one and heavily injuring the other, unfortunately he died to open up a path for his family to escape.

    Humans didn''t know about it, but it was a Ghoul the one who turned the bnce on humanity''s favor, by getting rid of two Archdukes and also killing a lot of nobles and destroying a part of their capital.

    "Inparison, I see that you haven''t been able to recover from mother''s attack, your makeup is disgusting, that''s what you get for betraying your own sister", answered Emily with a fierce expression in her usually expressionless face.

    "Shut up filth who mingles with cattle!", the woman''s eyes turned red, her mana exploded out of her body, which only made a part of her "face" to crumble apart, revealing that everything on the right side of her face, besides her eye was burned ck, it wasn''t a fire burn, but more of a chemical one as it looked corroded.

    "Enough Lani, she''ll be captured so we get to know everything about the human side from her, only then you can kill her, besides didn''t you already take a small vengeance, after all it was that Andrew''s flesh and blood the one used to seal our deal with our new ally", the Ghoul called Eniz, who seemed to be personally against Ben, interfered.

    Emily''s body trembled due to anger for a couple of seconds, until she felt Jeanne cing her hand on her shoulder.

    "Don''t worry, we''ll cut off their heads to offer them to Lady Vanis, as for Felix, I have heard that they can''t drink or eat each other, unless they want to die, we''ll slice him into pieces and force them to eat it, that way your father will be avenged", she casually said.

    "Hahaha, well said little Jeanne, you heard that Felix, after beating your scrawny ass, you''ll be idiot''s food!", old Ben of course didn''t restrain from participating in the fun.

    "Booom!", a sudden explosion got the attention of the two sides, they looked at the east where there was an open area, which was used for the soldiers as an improvised battlefield.

    There, only Lord ranked were allowed to participate, while the Arch ranks were colliding on the sky at west, so that the two sides wouldn''t get on the way of the other, the explosion was caused by a magma which suddenly erupted at a corner of the battlefield, reducing a batch of soldiers from both sides to ashes.

    While outside things had heated up, literally, inside of the ruin, the situation was quite different, Daimon was in a kind of a predicament as he floated through a dimensional tunnel.

    The transportation array that weed them earlier, only appeared after the two keys were inserted into the locks, meaning that even with his infinity eyes he couldn''t detect it, as it literally didn''t exist prior to that.

    That being said, this situation wasn''t unexpected, it only confirmed Daimon''s theory, that there was something controlling the ruin, since he couldn''t fully pinpoint Jasmine''s location, as it kept moving all the time.

    And if that was the case and since he wasn''t the "hero" of this story, then it was to be expected that the one controlling the ruin, was going to mess with him, probably to Adam''s benefit.

    Which is why he acted on the spot, jumping into the array while keeping contact with both Sarah and Reyne, and using Will Maniption to keep them attached to him, in case the dimensional tunnel tried to separate them, the idea was to go straight to reunite with Jasmine, so it would be troublesome if they were to be separated.

    But turns out that wasn''t the case, the transition through the dimensional tunnel was quite smooth, there weren''t any traps aiming at them, the tunnel was pretty much a straight line, the problem is that who knows wat might happen the next second and so he didn''t let go of those two.

    Reyne was no problem, she simply kept a gentle expression as she held onto Daimon''s arm like a proper youngdy, the crazy girl inparison was taking advantage of the situation to stick to Daimon like bubblegum.

    That being said, she didn''t push her luck too much, despite how she kept predatorily gazing at Daimon from up-close, luckily for Daimon this didn''tst long, after a couple of minutes they got a glimpse of the end of the tunnel.

    "Prepare for battle", said Daimon, the two girls nodded at him and the next second, the scenery changed, from the dimensional tunnel to a closed scape.

    Daimonnded and only then he reduced his Will Maniption, so that the girls could freely move once again.

    Daimon observed his surroundings, they were in arge room which only had a door, the crazy girl was swift to fulfill her role, with a quick gaze she nodded at Daimon.

    "I don''t perceive any traps", she was trained by her mother, to be a proficient assassin, so her observation skills and mana sense were quite sharp.

    Naturally Daimon also had Rita double check, but everything was fine, as for Reyne she actually stood on the vanguard, unlike the crazy girl who is a mix of scout and offensive knight, she is a long range/flexible type, not to mention she has an interesting double affinity dynamic.

    In her human state she can use fire attribute, while in her Npsi form, she gets blood attribute, that being said, she can only use the respective attribute for her respective form.

    The three of them turned to see the door, which slowly opened to reveal a neer, at the same time a fake notification appeared in front of Daimon.

    [Wee to the Despair Labyrinth, defeat the opponents and advance to obtain the prize, good luck!]

    As always, the stupid fake notifications seemed to be iplete, also seeing the word "prize", made Sarah''s eyes glow, she red at the thing that entered through the door, which was a strange humanoid creature.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    One of which neither Sarah or Reyne have heard about, and Daimon has only read it in history books back at the four gxies.

    The thing was around the size of a ten year old human child, but besides that it had zero resemnce to the human race, it had dark green skin with some protuberances here and there, it didn''t have any hair on its head, it had spiky teeth and a long nose as well as yellow eyeballs and ankyplexion but with a round stomach, also it was only wearing some ragged cloth to cover its lower body, as for the weapon it was using a dagger.

    ''Seriously, a goblin-like monster'', thought Daimon.

    That''s right, the creature in front of him was quite simr to the ssic goblins from games back at earth, unlike what one would thing, there were no goblins at the four gxies.

    They were nasty creatures, so they were hunted until they went extinct, they didn''t contribute anything as they didn''t know how to be self-sufficient, instead they piged and assaulted others to obtain what they needed, as to why they were exterminated well, there were no females in their race so¡­ to reproduce they had to rely on women from other races, you can imagine the rest.

    And the moment their customs were revealed to the public, they were marked for extermination, since there weren''t even Arch ranks among them, it wasn''t a hard task anyway, it''s worth mentioning that the goblins only lived in the Blue-Sky gxy, ruled by humans.

    The thing which seemed inoffensive, suddenly dashed towards Daimon, surprisingly it chose to attack him, showing signs of intelligence since he was the "weakest" of the three, in terms of realm at least.

    The goblin was surprisingly agile and since it was quite short, its attacks were also quite low, the dagger was aimed at Daimon''s left thigh, which wouldn''t be a fatal wound, or that''s what normally others would believe, but Daimon could tell that the weapon had poison applied to it.

    "Screee!", the goblin screamed as it was sted away due white mes exploding around it, it died on the spot without leaving anything behind, only then, the door which had closed after the thing entered the room, opened once again to allow them to continue.

    Based on the previous, Daimon reached the conclusion that whatever that thing was, it was different than the goblins of which he read about in the records of the four gxies, there was no notification from the system, so he wasn''t sure if it was a just something that the owner of this ce created, like the mad chimera, or if the system only ignored it due to the difference in strength.

    Killing trash enemies would not give him skills or any benefits, unless it was needed for a mission after all.

    "What a strange creature, it seemed to be somewhat smart, but then why did it attack Gabriel?", mumbled Reyne.

    "Maybe it wanted to die~", said the crazy girl, to which Daimon shook his head.

    "Don''t lower your guard, that thing wasn''t supposed to be tough enemy and yet it was well prepared, it was only a three star ranked living being, but with the experience it showed, it could have taken out even a fifth star mage, though it seemed to be weak against knights, as itcked physical strength", he said.

    "Mm, okay", the two girls nodded, this was the first encounter and Daimon gave it a decent mark, meaning that things will get moreplicated on the next one.

    Daimon and the girls advanced to the next room, the door closed behind them, leaving them trapped in room which was the same as the previous, with the difference that this one had two doors at the other side of it.

    This time the doors opened the moment they stepped into the room, and a goblin came out of each door, the one on the left was simr to the one Daimon killed, but the one on the right, wasn''t using a dagger, but a slingshot as the rock that was about to hit Daimon''s head, suggested.

    ''A long range one this time, was it done on purpose or is it a coincidence'', he thought as he casually caught the rock, which to no one''s surprise was also covered in poison.

    With a normal swing, Daimon threw the stone back at the long range goblin, making its head explode on the spot.

    "Boom!", the stone shed against the wall, exploding into a ton of little pieces, as the now headless corpse of the goblin copsed on the ground.

    Itspanion wasn''t any better, with small movement of Sarah''s hand, a needle appeared on the forehead of the other goblin which was rushing towards them, making the thing trip and roll on the ground, the needle killed it on the spot.

    Besides the increase in the variety of the enemy, the second room presented another problem for them, there were two paths ahead of them, the two doors opened when they killed the enemies.

    "The right one", said the three at unison, while the right one is from which the "advanced" goblin came from, which would make one be more wary of it, the left one was full to the brim with traps.

    Those who didn''t have good observation skills, would be deceived and fall prey to the insane number of traps on the left path.

    ¡­

    While Daimon''s group was easily advancing through the rooms, the others weren''t having it that easy.

    "What the hell was that thing, it threw its dagger at itsst moment to try and kill one of us", said a guy who seemed to be in his early twenties, as he bandaged the leg of hispanion, whose face was a bit pale.

    "And the stupid dagger was actually poisoned, luckily I had prepared some antidotes just in case", said the guy was being bandaged by his friend.

    "I have never seen or heard about that creature, must be some kind of humanoid magic beast from the ancient times, I was shocked to see it wielding a weapon, but it was quite weak, let''s not lower our guards and we''ll be fine", said Elliot, this was the group he was leading.

    "Yes, boss!", shouted the other three, as they moved on to the next room, just to be weed by two stones flying at them, one aimed at Elliot and the other at the guy who bandaged the previously wounded guy.

    The guy who was the one in charge of tending to wounds, dodged the stone, while Elliot used his sword to deflect it, which normally would have been a good reaction as he didn''t directly touch it, the problem is that the stone exploded and some drops of a transparent liquid fell on Elliot''s hand.

    "Arghh fucking poison again!", shouted Elliot as he used his mana to burn the poison on his hand, it wasn''t that strong of a poison as it only left a slightly burn mark on the backside of his hand, but the problem is that he didn''t notice the stone had poison, until it hadnded on his hand.

    The other two members of the group, took advantage of the situation to charge at the goblins, killing them on the spot, to then reunite with Elliot.

    "Boss, there are two paths ahead, which one should we choose?", asked the guy whose leg was bandaged.

    Simr scenes were happening at different ces, they all had something inmon, the enemies were those goblin-like creatures, but there was a major difference, and that was the fact that each group faced a differentbination of goblins, agility type, long range, defensive, closebat and the list goes on, everything started after they reached the second room.

 Chapter 504 Sweeping The Labyrinth (Part 1)

    ?

    As Daimon and the girls expected, the door at the right led them to a room without traps, but that doesn''t mean things were good, because the third room had three doors at its other side.

    The doors at the sides were the first ones to open, revealing two of the three enemies that they had to face this time, both goblins and simr to before there was a long range and a closebat type.

    But unlike before, the long range type was using a short bow instead of a slingshot, as for the closebat one, instead of a dagger it was short sword.

    "Kriii!", there was another difference, the two goblins exchanged some sounds, making it look as if they were having a small conversation before the two split ways, to encircle Daimon''s group.

    Just like magic beasts, these goblin-like creatures weren''t either mages or knights, but their strengths could be ssified with the ranks stablished.

    ''A jump of two ranks, two fifth star huh'', thought Daimon, he then slightly nodded at the girls whose images shed the next second.

    Both Sarah and Reyne are middle stage Lord ranks, and based on Daimon''s calctions, they are quite physically strong, even without using battle aura, probably because they both have lineages.

    To fight with these two low levels monsters they didn''t need to use any martial art, a dangerous light shed on Sarah''s eyes as she beckoned with her hand, as if she was using some kind of magic trick, a needle appeared in her hand, which she threw at the gobbling with the short sword.

    Needless to say, but the thing couldn''t react before its head was pierced by Sarah''s needle, killing it on the spot, but she didn''t take the win yet, instead of that she jumped backwards just in time to dodge the short sword which fell from above.

    "I''m not like those amateurs" said the crazy girl with an annoyed voice, she of course noticed the goblin throwing its weapon the second before it died, it was an instinctive move, as it couldn''t react on time to dodge.

    On Reyne''s side, things were a bit different, the goblin with the short bow was actually shooting two arrows at the same time, unfortunately they were wood arrows covered in poison, and for a fire affinity knight like Reyne, they were basically moving fuel.

    With snap of her fingers, the two arrows turned into ashes, surprisingly there was no me liberation, which confused the goblin, it had an expression that seemed to say "What happened", but then it tried to attack again just to see the bow in its hands bing ashes, followed by its head suffering the same fate.

    As if previously nned, the two girls finished their fights at the same time and then turned to see the other, as if they wanted to see who was faster.

    Daimon heard them click their tongues clearly unsatisfied with the result, but ignored that as he saw the door in the middle finally opening, what came from inside was an ice spike directly aimed at him.

    Daimon clenched his fist and then punched the ice, making it explode into many shards, at the same time a line of white light was shot from his left index finger, hitting the "empty" space in front of the door.

    With a low "thud" something fell to the ground, a secondter the corpse of a goblin with a watermelon sized hole in its chest, became suddenly visible.

    Unlike the other two who were only wearing ragged cloths to cover their lower bodies, this goblin was using a cloak made with the fur of some kind of animal.

    "A magic using goblin, wearing a camouging treasure, now that is a jump in difficulty", mumbled Daimon.

    While on the surface he acted rxed earlier after those two eliminated the goblins quite easily, he never stopped paying attention to thest door, and while he showed "confusion" when it opened but nothing came, he of course could see through a mere star ranked camouge.

    But that''s not the surprising thing about all this, nor the fact that a fifth star ranked goblin mage just casted a seventh star ranked ice spell at him, any mage can overexert itself to cast a spell of a higher rank than it should.

    But that of coursees with a price, no, what surprised Daimon is the fact that the mage goblin waited until his group had "rxed" tounch an all-out attack, also the element of the spell used was coincidentally countered the affinity he showed to have in the previous rooms.

    To put it in simple words, these goblins somehow knew about how they dealt with the previous ones, but not everything fitted that assumption, for example the goblin with the short sword, throwing it to try and take Sarah by surprise, since what she demonstrated was her needle ability.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed as a theory appeared in his mind, but he didn''t say anything yet, the next room should confirm whether he is right or not, with a quick gaze he chose the left path door.

    Coincidentally at the same time, Elliot''s group got rid of the goblins on the third room, the fight was quite short and they basically overpowered the enemies, the downside is that the guy who was in charge of first aids, took an arrow on his left foot.

    "How the hell did that thing use a martial art to change the direction of the arrow midair!",ined Elliot as he handed his subordinate an antidote, strangely, despite the low rank of the goblins, their weapons could ignore their defensive gear to harm them.

    "I-it changed all of a sudden, when we first tested it, it certainly couldunch two arrows, but it wasn''t able to change the direction of them like that, the spear wielding one also suddenly threw its weapon as a onest resort, just when Manuel killed it, which forced me to dodge, their coordination was really good despite their low intellect", said the guy who broke the arrow to then pull it out before applying the antidote on the wound.

    Elliot clicked his tongue, he then took out his new weapon for the first time, since his father didn''t want him toe, he didn''t give him his Adjudicator weapon, which is an eight-generation sword.

    Luckily, his aunt who fully supported him, not only scolded his father but also gave him a Beast Weapon that didn''t lose with the one he previously used, at all, and it was his, without any strings attached.

    "I wanted us to not use too much energy, but I think is better if we finish the fights fast, disregarding the use of mana, we have recovery potions anyway, but who knows if they have poisons for which out antidotes won''t work", he said.

    His teammates nodded, the mana potions were granted to work, but the antidotes might fail, so they should avoid getting hit even if that meant consuming more mana to end the battle as fast as possible.

    Changing the scenery back to the initial part of the ruin, a portal appeared on the air, from which an Adam with an annoyed face, came out.

    "That was the slowest stupid dimensional tunnel I have ever been to!", he said as he kicked the floor, he couldn''t even take the chance to flirt with those three girls that were appointed as his teammates, because they were separated the moment they jumped into the array.

    ''Ariel, what the hell is this ce, can you feel where is the legacy of the Blue Hero?'', he inwardly asked just to hear the angel girl''s uninterested voice saying.

    ''You know the rules, find it yourself''.

    Adam who was pissed off right now, gritted his teeth, once again for some reason things weren''t going his way, he heard a low creaking sound which made him turn to look at its origin, a single door at the other side of the room, from which a familiar looking creature came out.

    At the same time an invisible to others screen with a message appeared in front of him.

    [Wee to the Despair Labyrinth, defeat the opponents and advance to obtain the prize, good luck!]

    "Oh, finally a familiar scenario, I guess the Blue Hero prepared this ce to be simr, to the training dungeon I received back then", he mumbled as a confident smile appeared on his face.

    The monster in front of him was at the bottom of the food chain, he can''t even remember how many of them he has killed, and on top of that it was a mere three star ranked one.

    "You know, even in a world where magic didn''t really exist, you goblins were just cannon fodder so¡­", just as Adam was about to unsheathe his sword to casually y the ugly thing in front of him, three wood arrows were about to hit him.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Humph, just die trash!", Adam''s bode shone, his light battle aura blew away the arrows, as he dashed towards the goblin, easily beheading it.

    But just as he was about to inspect the thing''s corpse, he saw a stone in its hand which glowed before exploding.

    "Booom!", the explosion wasn''t that big, but the sound was quite loud, and it raised quite a bit of dust.

    Adam coughed a couple of times as he dispersed the dust, he was perfectly fine, with the exception that there were some green stains on his armor, and a small piece of stinking meat stuck to his left cheek.

    "Ahhh god damn it!", he yelled as he cleaned his face, the meat had a really bad smell, probably because it burned due to the explosion, it made him want to vomit, though he could clean his face, the stains on the armor didn''te out with his battle aura, so he ultimately gave up and left them there.

    ''I fucking hate this ce!'', he inwardly swore as he noticed he kept some of the bad smell on himself, due to the blood stuck to his armor.

    ¡­

    Back at Daimon, at the fourth room, there were four doors that was to be expected, this time the four of them opened at the same time, revealing new types of goblins, the closebat one was actually wearing leather armor with some metal pieces here and there, and it used a regr light sword in one hand and a circr wooden shield on the other one.

    There was a middle range goblin using a spear, the thing even had boots to have a better mobility, the third was a mage like the one he killed before, but this one didn''t have a cloak, but a staff with a small human skull, as for the fourth goblin, it was even shorter than the others, but it was riding on top of a grey wolf as for its weapon, it had a blowgun.

    "Is it me or they took a bigger qualitative jump this time", said the crazy girl, the increase in the goblin''s strength was a constant, they were seventh star ranked beings, but the vibe they gave as well as the equipment and variety.

    Still the crazy girl simply shrugged, she waved her hands and four needles made their ways to the heads of the goblins.

    "Grrhghh!", while the spear wielder was killed on the spot, the "squire" goblin as Daimon decided to call it, used its shield to protect its head, of course Sarah''s needle pierced the shield like a hot knife through butter.

    But the impact made the trajectory of Sarah''s needle to slightly change, making the needle pierce the temple of the goblin instead of the space between its eyebrows like it was supposed to, the result was still death, but there was some resistance unlike before.

    As for the mage and the wolf riding goblin, their result was even more interesting, the mage shielded itself with an earth wall and gained enough time to prevent its head from being skewered by the needle, still the needle was now installed in its shoulder, making the thing let out pained growls, as it gave a hateful gaze at Sarah.

    The wolf riding one actually came out unscathed, well that is if you don''t consider the fact that the wolf, died instead of the goblin, who was now about to shoot poisoned darts at Sarah.

    Just for its blowgun to turn into ashes, making the goblin cough as it suffocated to death, the mage waved its staff, but its head crumbled into ashes the next second.

    "Hey, they were my prey", eximed the crazy girl at Reyne who finished the two goblins that managed to survive Sarah''s casual attack.

    "You had your chance", answered Reyne with her calm and gentle voice, though there was a small smile at the corner of her mouth, which made Sarah feel the urge to melt her with her battle aura.

    "Ahem, did you notice it, they knew how you were going to attack them, it was as if they had already fought us and survived for a second match", said Daimon as he interrupted those two.

    Seeing them putting on gloomy expressions, Daimon chuckled before saying.

    "You didn''t fail to kill the previous ones, in fact the corpses are still in the previous rooms", strangely, while the equipment used by the goblins disappeared after they died, unless it was destroyed during the fight, the corpses stayed behind like trash tossed at the sides of the road.

    While the rooms ahead were a mystery, because they only appeared once they had beaten the goblins that came from their respective doors, the ones behind stayed there, so Daimon only had to use his infinity eyes to see through the previous doors, to confirm that the corpses where there, those goblins were as dead as they can be, so it wasn''t that Sarah or Reyne failed to kill their opponents.

    "At first I thought that they had a really good coordination, but there was no sign of themmunicating with body signals, nor there were traces of them using a spell tomunicate with each other", said Daimon before adding.

    "They are a "hive", these things are learning not only from our previous fights, but also due to the fights with the other teams, that''s why they are putting up some resistance despite their low ranks, otherwise there is now way some star ranked goblins could have avoided your needles", he said making Sarah giggle at the pliment".

    Resisting the urge to jump onto him, the crazy girl nodded with a contemtive expression as she voiced her opinion.

    "In that case, this is like a race, the ones who fall behind will have to deal with more troublesome opponents than the ones ahead of them, maybe that''s why we moved so slowly inside the dimensional tunnel, some of the others should be ahead of us as they arrived before us".

    Daimon nodded, though he hadn''t felt any external presences in the rooms that they have cleared, he is sure that something or someone is controlling this ce, and since he had a key, things won''t be as easy for him as for others.

    "Try not to show any other techniques than what you have used so far, if those things learn from others, we just have to crush them with force".

    "Yes!", they both eximed enthusiastically, they were knights after all.

    Daimon softlyughed and then entered through the third door from the left, the room in which they appeared was different than the previous ones, it was bigger and more spacious, besides that, the number of doors was reset to one, but this door was thrice asrge as the previous ones.

    ''Oh great, a mini-boss room this time, can you make it more obvious that you prepared this for someone that came from earth?'', thought Daimon.

    Following the pattern, the goblins in the fifth room would be thest ones in the star rank, being ninth star beings, since all the people that entered this ce were Lord ranks, this was obviously not thest stage, but a midpoint.

    And that isn''t a thing in this world, unlike the games from earth, here when someone prepares a "middle-boss" guard to protect something, they don''t leave anything that might make others predict where it is.

    Only an idiot would announce "Hey, it''s going to be harder this time, prepare yourself for a stronger enemy" after all, which is exactly what was happening right now.

    The rtivelyrger door opened to reveal a different enemy than before, it wasn''t another type of goblin, but a different though rted, race.

    This time the thing which came out of the door had the size of an adolescent, and a much more human-like appearance, while still keeping the dark green skin, its eyes had pupils and it even had hair, not to mention it was wearing proper clothes, like pants and a shirt as well as a sword which hanged by its waist.

    One word came to Daimon''s mind as he observed the newest enemy.

    ''Hobgoblin''.

 Chapter 505 Sweeping The Labyrinth (Part 2)

    ?

    Despite the huge change in appearance being quite noticeable, what caught most of Daimon''s attention about the hobgoblin is the fact that he could see battle aura flowing through its body.

    Previously they certainly faced two goblins which could use magic, but that didn''t mean they were actual mages, the goblins were ssified as magic beasts instead of a rational race, not because of their low intellect.

    There are many races who aren''t exactly smart but more instinct driven, primitive would be the best way to describe them, some subspecies of lizardmen for example.

    And yet they are considered a rational race for the simple reason that they can learn and use multiple spells as well as manipte mana, the goblin mages Daimon faced previously were only able to use one spell, ice spear and earth shield to be precise.

    Though it is ssified as a "spell", it is more like a deluded version of an innate ability, those goblin "mages" can''t manipte mana, for anything than to cast the spell they know, meaning they can''t reinforce their bodies with it or anything else, they are a one trick kind of thing, because they only have a set of mana circuits for that spell and that''s it, naturally before making them go extinct mages did some research to see if they had any valuable property, needless to say but the result was no.

    Even magic beasts whose forms are really far from being humanoid, get stronger bodies and flexible innate abilities when they aren''t intelligent, and after unlocking wisdom they can learn proper magic, like Karmandi for example.

    The goblins on the other hand at most can overcharge the spell to make it stronger, just like what the one that shot the ice spear did, topensate for that, it was wearing that cloak with camouging properties though, and that made it different than the goblins of which Daimon knew about

    Anyway, the hobgoblin in front of Daimon was different than anything of which he has read about, the race was still within the records he read before, but this one was¡­ a knight and considering the different sets of mana circuits Daimon could see in its body, it was a proper knight with the capacity to manipte battle aura and use martial arts.

    That being said, it was still only an early stage Knight Lord, but that made the situation go more astray from what Daimon''s know, than previously, because the hobgoblin opened its mouth and¡­ talked.

    "Two middle and one early stage Knight Lords, I tell you what, tell the women to please me and I''ll leave your group leave", the voice of the hobgoblin was quite human-like and its attitude was even more so.

    Because as it talked, it snapped its fingers and five more goblins came out from the door, for the first time, a defense type goblin appeared, it was still the size of a ten year old human child, being shorter than the hobgoblin, but it was wearing full body metal armor, not to mention it had a tower shield, that one stood in front of the hobgoblin as if to protect it, there wasn''t any w between the joints of the armor as it was even wearing a chainmail below of it.

    Then there was a goblin wearing a ck mantle and wielding a dagger in each of its hands, in other words it was an assassin type, the other was a long range type, but the bow was reced for a cross bow.

    Out of the remaining two, one was a mage with a wood staff, simr to the previous one Daimon killed, and thest one was quite strange, it looked like a mage, but it didn''t use a staff, instead it had some weird tattoos on its body.

    "What do you think of my personal guards, they might be still low ranked, but they are at the pinnacle, having attained the rank of champions, and I Lord Roney am the one whomands them", proudly said the hobgoblin.

    "So, this is what happens when they gain individuality, not impressed, they are pretty much as idiots as others", casually said Sarah as she threw five needles with each of her hands.

    The needles produced whistling sounds for a change, the needless moved fast enough to not be seen with the naked eye, but the sound produced made it possible for the goblins to actually predict from where they wille.

    That being said, the one with tattoos growled and then a light symbol which resembled a shield, appeared above the head of the defense type goblin, its tower shield shone and then a red semi-sphere covered the group, followed by gusts of wind acting as a secondyer.

    The needles pierced the wind protection as well as the light protection produced by the defense goblin, but by that time, their trajectories had been altered enough for the group of goblins to not be hit, in fact the ten needles were stuck in the shield of the defense type goblin.

    As the protections dispelled, the smug face of the hobgoblin was revealed, the assassin goblin had disappeared, while the goblin with tattoos which now was revealed to be a support type, as it casted a defense boosting spell, was dancing, the one with the cross bow was standing behind the tower shield wielding one, pointing its weapon at Sarah.

    While the hobgoblin was standing behind of them, his battle aura was leaking out of its body, as it looked at the crazy girl with raw lust.

    "Now, I was going to take it easy with you two if you behaved, but I take back my words, after I''m done with you, you will beg for death".

    ''Wow, a third rate viin who likes to monologue, this was so prepared for an idiot like Adam'', thought Daimon as he pointed at the ground ten meters away from Reyne, shooting a line of white light from his index finger, piercing a certain tile.

    "Arhgghh!!!", a beastly scream came from ground, Daimon raised his hand making the ground crumble as the assassin goblin which was now being pierced by its neck through the white ray that was still connected to the tip of Daimon''s index finger, be forcefully dragged out.

    The assassin goblin apparently could move underground, an earth type innate ability of some sort, the moment Daimon''s attack pierced its neck, the insane amount of pain made its ability be nullified, so Daimon made it break through around three meters of hard solid rock with its own body.

    As a result, besides the fatal scorched wound in its neck, its limbs were twisted beyond recognition, and it was bleeding from practically all its body, as an assassin type the thing naturally had a low defense after all.

    Daimon didn''t say anything, the assassin goblin turned into ashes and then his image shed, as he appeared right next to the hobgoblin, whose pupils contracted like needles.

    The shield goblin tried to activate its ability, but the shield suddenly melted in its hands, courtesy of the poison in Sarah''s needles, next the mage pointed its staff at Daimon.

    This mage''s ability was more flexible than the previous ones, but it was still a single spell called Wind Current, it summoned gusts of wind that then could be used to both attack and defend.

    Earlier it was used to defend, as the wind not only interfered with Sarah''s needles, making them produce sound, something which the crazy girl was angry for, as she had trained so that her needles don''t produce any sound while moving at high speed.

    And now, it was about to summon the gusts of wind in a straight line to blow Daimon away, or that was the n, until the staff suddenly became charcoal, forcing the mage to let go of it, and burning its hands on the spot.

    "Urghrghh!", the mage screamed because the skin of its palms came off along with the staff, naturally the spell it was casting was cancelled as it lost its focus, luckily for it, it didn''t have to suffer much as its head burned, killing it on the spot.

    The goblin with cross bow had reacted and it actually managed to shot a bolt at Daimon, but the thing was hit by a needle which pierced it, nailing it to the wall at the other side of the room.

    "Grruughgh!", the crazy girl who had appeared on the air above the goblin with the cross bow, threw three needles, one to take care of the bolt that was shot at Daimon, and two to pierce the eyes of the goblin, resulting on the thing letting out a guttural scream before dying.

    All the previous happened in a fraction of a second, just at the same time as Daimon whose hand was now wielding a sword made out of white mes, was shing at the hobgoblin.

    Speaking of the hobgoblin, the guy yed itsst resort on the spot, which made the defense type goblin, suddenly appear in front of him, while the tattoos on the support goblin shone, making a light shield symbol appear the defense type goblin, while a sword light symbol appeared above the head of the hobgoblin.

    "I have full reign over my champions, even if they can''t follow your movements, I can!", shouted the hobgoblin as it unsheathed its sword, using a wind based elerating martial art and a drawing sword technique at the same time.

    The idea was that the white me sword of Daimon, bounced on the defense type goblin which was buffed by the support type, then the hobgoblin who was using its best technique, even adding an attack buffing effect to it, shed him down.

    But the result was quite different, the white me sword, easily cut through not only the defense type goblin, but the sword of the hobgoblin and then the hobgoblin two, producing a perfect half-moon wave of light, as the enemies were shed in half horizontally.

    With a little "thud", the now severed upper bodies of the defense type goblin and the hobgoblin fell to the ground, as for Daimon he absorbed the mes back into his body, luckily, he had learned how to just partially release some of the energy in the Comer Sword, to prevent wasting energy while still obtaining the huge destructive power of this martial art he created by himself.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    Oh right, in case you are wondering what happened to the support goblin, its left side was charred, while the right side had some needles piercing the vital parts.

    "I killed it!", said the crazy girl as she pointed at her needles.

    "My attacknded first", calmly said Reyne, the palm of her left hand was still releasing some heat as the bright orange light on it, suggested, she had to put in a bit more of effort because Sarah''s needles would have connected before her attack, if she didn''t, solely because the physical strength of Sarah was as crazy as her, and she used more of it in a try to get thest enemy.

    And as a result, the two girls were now trying to im the kill, Daimon killed three of the enemies, those two who killed one each at the same time and then immediately rushed to finish the remaining one, but actually tied.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, but he didn''t scold Sarah, she was actually angry since she had to leave Adam go earlier, she understood the reason but that didn''t mean she was fully okay with it.

    Surprisingly she had cheered up thanks to Reyne in a sense at least, leaving that aside Daimon casually stomped on the chest of the hobgoblin who was ying death, making its bones produce creaking sounds while the hobgoblin vomited blood.

    "W-Wait, you can''t kill me, otherwise my father will¡­ arghhh!", before it could finish speaking, Daimon applied a bit more of strength and the ribcage of the hobgoblin exploded, surprisingly not even a drop of blood managed to stain Daimon, as there was a thinyer of battle aura covering him.

    "Third rate threatening", he mumbled as he walked towards those two, who seemed to had finally reached an agreement that they attacked at the same time, dering it a tie.

    "These ones were easier to deal with~", casually said the crazy girl, for a change Reyne totally agreed with her, and in an even rarer case, Daimon did so too.

    It''s not like Sarah was bluffing, in fact the goblins were more experienced and followed their roles perfectly, the problem is that now that there was a hierarchy with a rational hobgoblin above them, their priority was the leader, and the hobgoblin who was rational learned the fear of death.

    Inparison, from Daimon''s point of view, things would have been harder if the primitive goblin just kept getting stronger, instead of being reced by hobgoblins who acted like coward nobles, but thisbyrinth was prepared to fit a "hero''s" needs, so it was understandable.

    While Daimon and the girls smoothly advanced to the sixth room, without having suffered any injuries, things weren''t looking as good for the other participants.

    The group from the Ghoul side, who had easily reached the seventh room, without any problems, now entered the eighth room, just to be ambushed by hobgoblins wearing full ck attires, resulting in a couple of them losing arms.

    At Elliot''s side things were worse, they just entered the fifth room, and since the number of doors diminished, they thought it was a resting area, they didn''tpletely lower their guard as they looked at the door all the time.

    But they didn''t expect that the moment when the door opened, a goblin with a mask and a mantle, who was stuck to the roof, ambushed them by letting itself fall from the roof and exploding, it was a suicidal attack, not only it temporarily blinded them, but they were attacked by a taller goblin who looked way more human than the ones they had previously fought.

    The result was that the guy who was stabbed in the thigh before, lost that leg and while Elliot got rid of the hobgoblin, rtively easily, one of his teammates had now be a burden.

    If it lost an arm, then its mobility wouldn''t diminish at least, but it lost a leg, Elliot did have a potion that could regrow a limb on the spot, in fact he had three, which is saying a lot, considering the way outdated alchemy of Kerrol.

    One was given to him by his father as his reward for bing an Adjudicator, while the other two were gifted to him by Dorothy when he turned eighteen, meaning he was now an adult, the sword he was now wielding and the spot for the ruin were his gifts for bing an Adjudicator, or at least that was the excuse she used.

    The others were also descendants of rtively high ranked Adjudicators, and had potions that could regrow limbs, but the process will take at least a few days.

    "Boss¡­ I''ll stay behind and wait for your return, more of those guys will appear in the next room so I''ll be a burden for the team", said the guy who lost a leg.

    The hobgoblin was quite agile and attacked them under the cover of its subordinates, Elliot managed to react in time to prevent it from killing anyone, but the attacknded on that guy''s leg.

    Elliot nodded in response as he patted the shoulder of the guy.

    "Well said, don''t worry, you''ll get your fair share of the reward, take it easy and leave the rest to us", he said as he walked towards the next door followed by the other two guys.

    The moment they left through the door, the thing closed leaving the guy missing a leg, alone, to sit in a corner of the room, or that was what he thought, theymitted another mistake, by following the previous rule that the number of the room represented the number of enemies they had to fight.

    In other words, they thought that the fifth room only had five enemies for them, including the hobgoblin.

    "Ah, damn, the old man is going to give me a beating once I¡­ aghhh!", as the guy was just rxing, a skinny green arm came out of the wall behind of him and the dagger that was being wielded by the owner of said arm, slit the guy''s throat.

    The guy tried to keep his blood from leaving his body by applying pressure on the wound using his hands, he was at disbelief since he had a life-saving treasure on his body and yet it didn''t activate.

    Also, this was the first time he saw a goblin that could hide in the walls, just as the guy tried to take something out of his storage ring, he saw his hand separating from his body, and then a ck clothed goblin using daggers appeared in front of him, before everything went dark.

    "Kriiii!", the assassin goblin grabbed the severed hand and took the ring, as it shouted as if to dere its victory, then a green transportation array appeared below of it, making it disappear the next second.

    The previous situation resulted in the first death on the participant''s side, but there was someone feeling even more miserable than that right now.

    Adam who had pierced through the rooms like a sword through butter, reached he sixth room, his expression was grim as he looked at the girl who was now apanying him again.

    "How the hell did you end up captured by that thing!", he asked in an angered voice, making the girl tremble for a second.

    "I-I don''t know, I directly appeared in a cage, next thing I knew is that I was being held captive by that green monster, luckily it said something around the lines of "I''ll enjoy you in front of the guy with the sword"¡­ luckily you were able to easily defeat it", said the girl as she smiled.

    Normally Adam would be smiling back at her, while making it so the girl would fall for him, the problem is that he was being kicked in the balls by the smell of the goblin''s blood that was covering most of the dress of the girl.

    Not to mention his armor also had more stains than before, because the hobgoblin fought with him in closebat, of course he casually shed it down, but he was sshed by the blood.

    ''Well at least she wasn''t done in by that hobgoblin, guess she still has some use forter'', thought Adam before saying.

    "The others might be held captive in the next rooms, so let''s speed things up, you just support me from the back", he ordered to the girl as they went through the door that led to the next room.

 Chapter 506 Penalty Room (Part 1)

    ?An error urred while reading the file: Could not find file ''/data//panda_novel_py/used_emails.txt''.

    "Mm?", Daimon who had reached the seventh room and casually dodged the knife that a hobgoblin wearing full ck clothes, making it look like a "ninja" from the eastern folklore, threw at him, frowned as he saw a pair of notifications appearing in front of him.

    [A possible ally has been killed, as a hero candidate you failed to save him, a penalty will be applied to thebyrinth in 3¡­2¡­1¡­]

    [A possible ally has been killed, as a hero candidate you failed bring him to show him the right path, a penalty will be given to thebyrinth in 3¡­2¡­1¡­]

    Daimon''s image shed and the next thing the ck clothed hobgoblin knew was that, he could see his own body in front of him, because his head was falling to the ground, luckily such a bizarre scene onlysted a second before everything went dark.

    Daimon then turned to see how those two were doing, only to witness the massacre they brought upon the rest of the enemies.

    Since the fifth room, the number of hobgoblins increased by one per room which increased the difficulty quite a bit, but in exchange not only the increase in realm was changed from two realms to two stages, but not all of the enemies got it, since there was a need for "hierarchy" now.

    In other words, since the "mini-boss" of the fifth gate was an early-stage Lord rank, the ones leading the group at the sixth room, were two hobgoblins at the peak of the early Lord rank, who led their own team, of three goblin champions as Roney called them.

    Unlike the previous champions, those were at the same level as the first hobgoblin, in other words they were recently ascended early stage Lord ranks, a total of six, divided in two groups of three, one lead by a knight hobgoblin and the other by a mage hobgoblin.

    Apparently, the hobs weren''t counted as a part of the enemies per door, which would exin why there were six at the fifth door.

    Anyway, at the seventh floor there were three middle stage middle Lord ranks, and seven champions, divided in two teams of two and one of three, Sarah and Reyne each fought against a hobgoblin with two subordinates, while Daimon got rid of the "ninja" who had three.

    He didn''t doubt about those two''s abilities, but his instincts told him that the ninja was the most troublesome, and he was right, the thing not only had lightning affinity but it could use the ability of the assassin goblin to dive into the ground and walls.

    Naturally that might have been a problem for others, since the material of which the room is made is quite durable, but for Daimon''s Demon Light, that didn''t matter, so no matter where the ninja hid, Daimon simply attacked there, after losing an arm and having a hole burned through his stomach, the ninja came out and tried to take Daimon by surprise, said attack was the knife that Daimon easily dodged earlier, before killing it after looking a the two fake notifications.

    Needless to say, but the two girls also got rid of their assigned enemies, while only using the same techniques and martial arts, which they have shown so far, in order to not give the owner of thebyrinth more information about them.

    The crazy girl saw Daimon approaching them and noticed the notifications, which for some reason she was able to see, while others couldn''t, and she also saw Daimon frowning which confused her a bit.

    "What''s the problem, I thought those things were unable to harm you¡­ did something happen?", she asked with a rare worried expression on her pretty face, making Daimon shake his head.

    "I''m fine, the problem is that the "penalty" this time is applied to thebyrinth and that idiot should have received the same notification so¡­".

    "He screwed things up for all", coldly said Sarah, whose attitude took a whole 180¡ã turn, from being genuinely worried that something might have happened to Daimon, to be invaded by rage at the thought of Adam making things worse, and possibly affecting Jasmine who is inside the ruin too.

    "Don''t worry about her, it said that the penalty is for the byrinth" and though I couldn''t reach all the way up to where she is, there is more inside of the ruin than thebyrinth", said Daimon which made the crazy girl calm down.

    "Mm", she limited to nod in response.

    "That being said, the next room might be a pain in the ass to deal with, so be prepared just in case", added Daimon.

    Reyne observed from the sides unable to follow up with the conversation they were having, which made her feel rather excluded, until she remembered Daimon''s exnation from when they signed a contract with him.

    He exined the threat that Adam is, as well as telling them from where they came, but he didn''t tell them about the "missions" nor about the systems of course, besides his soulmates, he didn''t tell anyone about that, not only because it was his secret, but because having specific knowledge about that would only endanger them, ording to Evangeline.

    So he kept things in "grey" by saying that there were some specially dangerous people, who were unpredictable, and used the first king of which everyone in Kerrol knew and yet no one had specific knowledge about, as the example, so for Jeanne, Emily and Reyne, Adam was an enemy with the potential of the first king while Daimon was an ally on par with that, though the crazy girl firmly affirmed that in a head to head battle Daimon would sweep the floor with Adam.

    ''Don''t let it bother you, he said it was for the better¡­'', she thought, surprisingly the crazy girl didn''t use that subject to mock her, mostly because she had the same amount of information, with the difference that she could see these fake notifications, which made her understand that Adam and Daimon were "different", but she didn''t put much thought into it, as a half Nethereal, her horizons were certainly ampler than those of a normal person, and she wasn''t normal person to begin with too.

    "Long story short, that idiot just made our lives harder, nothing new so don''t make that face", casually said Sarah to Reyne, which made Daimon bitterly smile at her resume.

    "Hold onto my shoulders like before, just in case", said Daimon, the offer was dly epted by those two on the spot, while Sarah was¡­ just being Sarah, Reyne returned to her calm self with that.

    The reason as to why Daimon was doing this, is because he knows that the "damsel in distress" scenario is an everyday urrence for the light idiot, and he doesn''t want to get involved in that.

    And unlike back when they just entered the ruin, he was right this time, the moment he crossed through the door to the eighth room, the space waved as it tried to separate them, but before he had to take the matter in his hands, he noticed the white crossbow reacting inside of the inventory.

    The thing couldn''t leave at will, unlike his ck Sea Emblem, probably because it was iplete, but since he didn''t feel any ill intentions from the crossbow, he simply allowed it toe out.

    The crossbow shone in a dim white light and the space was forced to return to normal, allowing them to pass to the next room without having to follow the whims of whoever was controlling thebyrinth.

    The crossbow returned to its normal state and before it felt to the ground, Daimon returned it to the inventory, not without putting on a "surprised" expression as he could feel a though thin and almost undetectable, gazeing from the outside of the room.

    Luckily though Sarah and Reyne couldn''t notice it, they were genuinely surprised at the crossbow, so thatplimented his "innocent bystander who got involved into this" fa?ade.

    Once the gaze that was observing them disappeared, Daimon inwardly smirked but didn''t let it show on his face, instead of that he looked at the room in which they appeared, which was way different than the previous ones, once again.

    Even the rooms past the mini-boss one had a thing inmon with the previous ones, the doors where always in a single ce, the wall that was directly facing the one from which they came to be precise.

    But now, there were two doors even bigger than the one at the mini-boss room, one at the left side of the room and the other at the wall that directly faced Daimon, like normal.

    "Sarah was right, that idiot just made things moreplicated", mumbled Daimon, just a second ago, even before the doors opened, he could feel what was about toe out of them, as to why he didn''t attack, there was an invisible wall covering doors.

    So, when he noticed that Reyne and Sarah were about tounch attacks at the doors, he just touched their hands and hey got the message, and also seemed particrly happy about the way he told them his intentions.

    Normally Daimon wouldn''t have stopped them, in fact he would have joined inunching a surprise attack, only a na?ve idiot would wait until his opponent is ready, in a life and death situation.

    But those walls would have bounced their attacks back and they weren''t supposed to be able to see them, as it was a petty trap disguised as an "advantage", set up by the one who controlled thebyrinth.

    As for the situation that it was set up for, it happened the next second, when a pained sound came from behind the door at the left side of the room.

    "Argghhh!", the door opened to reveal a group of four, three were Ghouls and thest one was one of the girls that was with Adam, in other words they were "enemies" of Daimon''s group.

    The pained sound came from one of the three Ghouls whose hand had turned into a bloody mess, as a descendant of a high ranked noble, a Blood Duke to be more urate, the wound should have stopped bleeding already and his hand should have returned to normal at this point, as they had a really high vitality and the capacity to regenerate to a certain degree, but it wasn''t happening.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    "Fuck, heal me human woman!", demanded the Ghoul at the girl, who was keeping some distance from them.

    The Ghoul saw the girl not doing as she was told and his eyes got bloodshot, but as he was about to force her to heal him, the Ghoul in the middle who had the blondest hair of the three, stopped him from doing so.

    "Enough Call, it was your fault for acting without thinking, even if she is a lowly human, thebyrinth teamed her up with us, so our chances to win will be reduced if she is missing, control your temper, am I clear?", said the Ghoul who seemed to hold a higher position than the other two, based on the fact that the one called Call, immediately obeyed.

    "Yes, young master Noah", he limited to say.

    That being said, the Ghoul named Noah turned to see the human girl before saying.

    "As per the contract signed between our forces, you will be rted to uster, as the direct descendant of an Archduke I can help you obtain a much higher start, with a better introductory lineage, and we are meant to cooperate, so heal mypanion, unless you want us to leave you aside to deal with them", Noah pointed at Daimon and the girls who were casually observing the scene.

    Since Noah appeared, it was obvious that Reyne was eager to kill him, probably because he somewhat resembled the other Archduke, who wasn''t rted to Dn, and that one was the one whonded the killing blow on Emily''s father.

    The girl from the traitor branch of the church ultimately nodded after some hesitation, and casted a water element healing spell, unlike light healing spells who though still work on Ghouls, have their effects reduced due to their negative nature, a water one keeps its efficiency, luckily for that Ghoul, his girl had water affinity.

    Still, the hand didn''t grow back, but the bleeding did stop, before Noah could scold her, the girl exined.

    "He is not getting better, it must be a "punishment" from thebyrinth, it''s not something that a healing spell on the Lord rank can cure, he needs an Arch ranked potion".

    Noah nodded, and then both he and Daimon turned to see thest remaining door which was opening right now.

    As expected, this time the neers were from the side of thebyrinth, in other words they were goblins, or more urately hobgoblins¡­ a total of eighth hobgoblins, all at the early stage of the peak Lord realm and there was a new incorporation to the list of enemies.

    While it also had green skin and human-like appearance like the hobgoblins, this one was taller and had a bulky constitution, the difference is that instead of a teenage appearance like the hobgoblins, that one looked more adult, but the biggest chance is that while it also was at the early stage of the peak Lord realm, the aura radiated by it outssed the hobgoblins.

    ''An ogre'', thought Daimon as he gazed at what supposedly was the strongest species that derived from goblins, at least ording to the records of the four gxies, that being said this one was different, its eyes clearly showed it was rational and even smart on top of that, while ogres were supposed to be just a mass of instincts with a strong body, which is why there weren''t Arch ranks among the goblins back at the four gxies.

    That and this one was a knight for sure, which only made things worse for the participants, aside from the three groups that appeared in the room, a floating board with a message written on it, appeared above them.

    [Wee to the penalty room, you have one minute to choose if you want your team to join hands with another, after that you must eliminate the leftover team, however only four will be allowed to survive, choose well as it will affect your next penalty room]

    Then a timer with exactly sixty seconds appeared next to the message and the time to make a choice officially started, luckily Daimon didn''t need to worry about that, because teaming up with those guys wasn''t an option to begin with.

    "Thanks¡­", mumbled Reyne with a small smile at the corner of her mouth, she really wanted to kill Noah, and that meant they couldn''t team with the Ghouls, as for the goblins, she knew that they were in Daimon and Sarah''s way, so they were the "leftover" team from the very beginning.

    In fact, Noah also didn''t even consider asking them to join them, instead he turned to see the ogre who was clearly the leader of its group to then say.

    "Let''s get rid of those three and then we can settle our own matters, I believe this benefit both of us".

    The ogre put on a wild smile, revealing itsrge inferior canines, as he answered.

    "I don''t like the one with the mask, so it''s a deal".

    And so, the though based on the circumstance, alliance between Ghouls and goblins, was born.

    Daimon saw the counter was about to reach zero, so he turned to see those two to say.

    "Reyne, you kill that Noah guy, I''ll take care of the ogre¡­ Sarah the rest is for you, you can let loose just a bit".

    "Mm", the both nodded in response, this time Reyne didn''t want topete in terms of the number of killed enemies, her focus was to eliminate Noah, as for Sarah she just wanted to let out some steam.

    The moment the counter reached zero, the invisible walls disappeared at the same time and the battle officially started.

    "Booom!", the Ghouls and the goblins somehow hadmunicated to make a n, because the moment the invisible walls appeared, they didn''t rush towards Daimon and the girls, instead the mages on both sides bombarded them.

    On the goblin''s side, there were three offensive type hobgoblin mages, one of the support types and a strange goblin who threw some vials that exploded at them.

    As for the Ghoul side, the girl from the church and the guy who lost his hand, were long ranged attackers, though the girl was a healer she could use the spell "rupture" which shot water at a high pressure towards the enemy.

    "Did that get them?", it was dangerous to keep a curtain of dust, so one of the hobgoblin mages with wind attribute dispersed to reveal that there was arge crater where Daimon and the girls were standing before.

    Unfortunately for them, the next second just after they thought that they were able to blow away the enemy group, Daimon appeared in the middle of the goblins while wielding a white me sword with his right hand, which he used to pierce the head of the support type hobgoblin, killing it on the spot.

    "They are hard to raise you bastard!", shouted the ogre, his weapon of choice was a three-meter saber, which covered in ck stones and the earth element battle aura of the ogre, as it was being swung towards Daimon.

    The mages didn''t attack Daimon, but the melee type hobgoblins namely a swordman and a spear wielder tried to encircle Daimon, while Noah appeared on the air above him, they were trying to take Daimon out first.

    "ng!!!", the sound of metal colliding echoed through the room, the swordman and the spear user hobgoblins were stopped in cold, as they had to use their weapons to deflect two needles that were aimed at their heads.

    To their surprise, the force behind the needles pushed them back a few meters, breaking the encirclement around Daimon.

    As for the area above, Reyne who finally took out her weapon, which was quite an interesting choice, a knight''snce, like the ones that could be seen in jousting tournaments back at the middle age at earth.

    It was the first time Daimon saw someone using that weapon, as it is quite hard to master,pared to a regr spear, on the other hand it was perfect to deal with Noah''s weapon which was a serrated sword, as it had more mass that could be used to block.

    "Booom!", ignoring the other battles, Daimon''s white me sword shed against the giant saber of the ogre, creating a sh of light as well as sparkles, as the ck stone covering the saber was blown away due to the impact.

    The explosion forced the girl from the church as well as the hobgoblin mages to cover their ears, because the shockwave included battle aura, and that made them suffer.

    At least the hobgoblin mages didn''t suffer too much, before the crazy girl who had threw needles at all the other enemies besides Noah and the ogre, appeared behind of them pushing a needle from behind of their heads, killing two of the three on the spot, the remaining one was saved because the swordsman goblin jumped in and took the needle with his right arm, which he cut off on the spot.

    And with three enemies killed at the first exchange of moves, the battle started.

 Chapter 507 Penalty Room (Part 2)

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    Noah who was shing on the air against Reyne, had a clear view of the previous scene, needless to say but he had an unsightly expression at how Sarah casually killed two enemies with a higher realm than hers, and also reduced the power of a third one, by forcing the swordsman hobgoblin to cut off his own arm

    That being said, he didn''t understand why the swordsman cut off his own arm, until he saw the severed limb melt, before it even fell to the ground, it had turned into a viscous puddle of ck liquid, bones, flesh and even armor included.

    Sarah didn''t bother to hide the fact that she could use poison, since she had already used it before to melt the shield of a defense type goblin quite a few rooms before, the hobgoblins already knew it.

    But that didn''t mean they could do anything about it, and that was only poison applied to the needles by the crazy girl previously, she had yet to use her battle aura and had been fighting using the needles and her raw physical strength so far.

    "Don''t let then regroup!", shouted Noah, unaware that he just fell in Daimon''s trap.

    From the very beginning, he didn''t intend to steal the prey of those two, but that''s something that the soon dead to be enemies didn''t need to know, in fact this worked in their favor, because that would put more pressure on the hobgoblins and the Ghouls who weren''t engaging in closebat.

    As they would be under the misinterpretation that Daimon, Sarah and Reyne even needed to join hands to kill all of them¡­ when that wasn''t the case.

    "Aghh!", Noah suddenly felt a huge amount of pressureing from his hand, it was only a fraction of a second but he faltered in the sh he was having against Reyne, and theyer of blood battle aura he had applied on his weapon was burned by her fire battle aura.

    And in a purely physical sh, Noah was taken by surprise at the fact that Reyne had the upper hand, resulting in him being forced backwards all the way to the other side of the room.

    In fact, he had to stab his sword on the ground to dimmish the impulse, otherwise he would have been smacked against the wall, Reyne''s image shed and the next second she was already standing in front of Noah, holding her knight''snce as if it was a sword, her wielding technique was quite unusual to say the less, but it seemed to perfectly counter Noah''s family''s technique.

    "You should worry about yourself, aunt Emily taught me all the techniques of all the noble families, her father didn''t go down until he killed at least one direct descendant of each noble lineage after all, all for when this time came", she said as she shed towards Noah who had an expression of disbelief on his face.

    "The seeds that traitors who show empathy towards cattle should have been exterminated a long time ago!", he shouted, his previously noble demeanor was nowhere to be seen, instead of that his eyes got bloodshot, in his n''s case, the one who was killed was his mother who tried to sneakily kill Emily''s mother, just to be turned into meat cubes and burned until there was nothing left of her, so that regeneration couldn''t be performed on them even with the most advanced rituals of blood sacrifice.

    Noah''s body exploded in a blood red light, before a crimson liquid of the same color was poured out of some secretpartments in his belt, the nearby air was filled with an iron-like smell, which was understandable as that was blood.

    That was the ability that only the direct descendants of the Gartner family could use, Blood Enhancement, it was a technique that worked both for defense and offense, allowing the user to burn the blood of other beings to increase the strength of the user''s battle aura, which is why all the direct descendants of the Gartner family were knights, who used serrated swords, the idea was to make the enemy bleed and use their blood against themselves, since there was a requirement of them having to be the ones who obtained the blood.

    In part that''s why Noah''s ancestor personally killed Emily''s father, since his most talented daughter was killed by him, then he took some of his blood and swore to kill Emily using that blood when the time came, that''s how deep the blood feud between them ran.

    By the moment Reyne''snce shed against Noah''s serrated sword, the thing had been dyed in a viscous mix of battle aura and blood.

    "ng!", this time the one who was force to step back was Reyne, and that was only the start, Noah followed with another swing of his sword and then another, it was a consecutive assault of fierce shes, which resulted in metal colliding sounds as well as sparks flying all over the ce.

    And they weren''t the only ones, Daimon and the ogre were also fiercely shing with each other, the shockwaves created by those four, disrupted the mana in the air and also made both the Ghouls and the hobgoblins feel a certain pressure on their chests, which made it harder for them to breath.

    Such was the effect of people whose battle prowess had surpassed the Lord rank, on those who haven''t.

    ''What the hell, I can''t even properly aim at them without my vision getting blurry!'', inwardly screamed the girl from the church, ultimately, she gave up and decided to change targets to the dark green haired woman who was basically keeping everyone else in check, including her.

    Of course as an elite from the church she had no need to chant to cast spells, but in exchange she had to put a certain amount of focus if she wanted to cast a strong spell, and as if the green haired woman could tell when she was about tounch arge area spell, a needle was shot her way, forcing her to either dodge which broke her focus, or change the spell to a water wall, which actually turned pitch ck at the moment of contact with the needle, before the water was dissolved.

    "Just how poisonous are those things!", shouted the girl from the church as she changed her position once again, though she didn''t have a high enough capacity to use light mana to be considered an affinity, she could manipte light mana around half as much as water mana.

    Which is not bad at all, considering that those without the affinity to x element can only manipte mana from around one to ten percent of the amount that they can of those elements to which they have affinity with.

    In other words, though she isn''t a dual affinity she can be considered a prodigy, and has the potential to awaken a second affinity with some resources, and a light affinity to top it off, and yet thebination of her defensive water and the cleansing light she was so proud off was being utterly crushed by the poison in those needles.

    ''Humph, I don''t believe you have an infinite amount of such a horrible poison, sooner orter you''ll run out of it, then you''ll be a delicious "meal" for these savages'', she thought as she surrounded herself with a crystal-clear water cupule, her security was first after all.

    "Hey, don''t hide you stupid woman, without Noah covering our ass, I will rip you to shreds!", shouted Call, the Ghoul wo was missing a hand as he rushed towards the water cupule while he red at Sarah with hatred filled eyes as he saw the multiple puddles of ck liquid that were behind of him.

    His family is a mage centered one, because their ability requires them to use mana, said ability allows them to turn the humans they kill into lifeless dolls to protect their own murder, they rot overtime and have to be reced though, but for a mage to have a lot of meat shields is a dreame true.

    Unfortunately for Call, though his ability would have surprised the crazy girl before, now that she met Daimon, she got to know about necromancy, and this was the crappiest form of it, the undead created through this method didn''t even keep a tenth percent of their original strength and had limited lifespans, the only "advantage" was that they could be stored in tattoos on the body of their owner, in great quantities, but since they were empty shells without even instincts, they had to be controlled and that required the mana of the user.

    So, Call has been using them to take the hit from Sarah''s needles, which would have turned him into a puddle of ck liquid if it wasn''t for that, as the other Ghoul who was apanying him earlier, that was now a stain on the wall after trying to face the crazy girl head on, suggested.

    "Shut up, I''m preparing a spell to reduce the effectiveness of that poison in a wide area, you still reek of death, so you should have a lot of those disgusting things left, just hold on for now and protect me", the voice of the girl could be hearding from the water cupule which had started rotating as some needles were trying to pierce through it.

    Each time a needle touched the water, that part was cut off from the cupule which then reced it by absorbing more mana from the air, after seeing how the swordsman dealt with the poisoned needle, they came with simr solutions, but instead of taking the hit themselves they were using discardable things to defend themselves.

    "It better be worth the wait or I''ll fucking bite your throat outter!", shouted call, as he released a huge amount of mana, two red tattoos on his arms shone in ck light, and arge amount of low ss undead such as skeletons or rotten zombies, appeared in front of them, and piled together to form a wall of bone and flesh that was covered in an ominous ck mist.

    Though this spell had an imposing name like "Death Wall", in truth it was just a cannon fodder wall covered with the harmful mana that corpses produced if not properly dealt with, nothing more, if anything it certainly looked dangerous as the flesh of the zombies pulsated from time to time.

    Seeing that those two were cowering while isting themselves, Sarah decided to focus on ughtering the hobgoblins, of course she didn''t lower her guard as she kept throwing needles at the wall from time to time, forcing the Ghoul to keep dumping mana into it, to detach the affected part, and rece it with more of those things, as for the bitch from the church, the spell she was preparing wasn''t an offense type one so she didn''t care about her.

    Instead of that, she skillfully maneuvered on the air to dodge the spells of the remaining hobgoblin mage, as well as the explosive vials of the masked hobgoblin, all the previous while shing with the one-armed swordman hobgoblin and one of the ninja ones, that kepting in and out f the walls, floor and ceiling, as for the spearman one, Sarah killed it already.

    Unlike the ninja and swordsman hobgoblins who were using martial arts to propel themselves into the air, trying to push Sarah towards the spells or the explosives, the crazy girl fluttered like a beautiful yet deathly butterfly, it was "night" and so she was boosted to be able to float and fly to a certain extent and she was making full use of it.

    "Her affinity had to be wind, fucking hard to catch poisonous bitch!", venomously said the now one-armed swordsman.

    "Don''t lose your cool, that''s how Andal died", limited to say the ninja hobgoblin as he blocked one of Sarah''s needles by throwing a knife at it to intercept it, only to see the knife melt the next second.

    In case you wonder how could that ninja be able to catch up to Sarah''s throwing skills, the remaining hobgoblin mage has wind affinity and was using it to slow down her needles, it was unable to deflect them without affecting itspanions, but just slowing them down was possible, the rest was up to the ninja, which was a hobgoblin that specialized in speed and urate attacks, as well as sneak ones, it required those two working together to match up to the level Sarah was showing right now.

    "Are you still not finished Merk!", shouted the hobgoblin mage at the one wearing the mask, who has been throwing explosive vials at Sarah, blocking her from directly shing against the swordsman hobgoblin who used long range sword shes to try and cut the crazy girl down from distance.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>

    The masked hobgoblin nodded and then took out a different vial from within his ragged mantle and broke it with his hand, this happened at the same time as the crazy girl changed her focus to the hobgoblins, so she practically vanished from the sights of the ninja and the swordsman hobgoblins to appear in front of the one with the mask, just to pierce its forehead, face and neck with needles all at the same time.

    Surprisingly that wasn''t the end, the mask crumbled apart to reveal a deformed and twisted face, full with burns and wounds, goblins weren''t exactly lookers to begin with, so the result was quite horrible.

    Another surprise is that below the mantle this previously masked hobgoblin had another set of arms, though smaller than the main ones, they were quite fast, those were the ones that the hobgoblin was using to prepare the explosive vials.

    The ninja, suddenly appeared from below aiming a knife at Sarah''s neck, with a smug face, that vial allowed the masked hobgoblin to inflict a crippling fear to the one that saw its deformed face, result of creating its explosive forms, it was a mental type attack, also it allowed the masked hobgoblin to discard its upper body, as it was essentially two beings who merged in one, as the double set of arms suggested.

    Though it will put the masked hobgoblin in a bad spot for a long time, it gave it a second life, that''s why it was used as bait to kill a tough enemy¡­ or at least that was the idea.

    "Blegh!", the ninja hobgoblin whose knife was just about to reach Sarah''s pale smooth skin, suddenly vomited blood, there was a short one-edged sword piercing his chest, not even a secondter, the body of the ninja dissolved like a candle exposed to a high amount of heat, armor, weapons and everything else included.

    "Screeee!", at the same type the formerly masked hobgoblin followed, but in its case the melting started from its legs, in other words, it was meaningless to discard its upper body.

    Sarah whose eyes had a cold light on them, stabbed another needle on the abdomen of the hobgoblin, where its new head was, instantly melting it into a puddle of ck liquid.

    "Was that supposed to make me feel "fear" what a joke, the real fear dreadfully runs deep invading every centimeter of your existence, rendering you uncapable to even think of rebelling, only he is allowed to bring me the delight of feelingpletely powerless~", mumbled the crazy girl as she licked her lips while stealing a gaze at Daimon.

    To then take a 180¡ã change in attitude as she red at the remaining hobgoblins, who were now shaking at the result of their carefully nned tactic, that even involved one of them "dying" in order to take out the enemy.

    "If you want to experience what true fear is, then look at that", she said as she pointed at a particr area of the room.

    The swordsman hobgoblin as well as the mage one, couldn''t help but look at where the crazy woman was pointing, only for their faces to pale at the sight of the "short" masked human casually grabbing their general, an ogre whose height elevated to more than two meters, by his head.

    There were many craters surrounding them, and there was a broken hilt on the ground, which they recognized as it was the weapon that the ogre used, an Arch ranked treasure.

    "Urghhhh!", the very moment their eyesnded on that part of the battlefield, they saw the hand of the masked human burn in white mes, followed by the beastly scream of the ogre who was trying to escape, squirming, kicking and punching the enemy which only resulted in the ogre breaking his own bones.

    At the same time, a light blue light appeared on the ceiling as the girl from the church finished her spell, making rain fall down in the whole room.

    Surprisingly, the wounds on the hobgoblins and the ogre not only didn''t cure, but they felt as if salt was rubbed against their live flesh, making them scream and copse, the wall of flesh created by the Ghoul exploded in light blue mes and a loud scream could be hearding from behind of it.

    As soon as the wall was destroyed, the though still alive, charred Ghoul Call, who was nowying down on the floor, was revealed.

    "Y-You what the hell are you doing you bitch!", shouted the Ghoul, the pain was killing him, unfortunately not only he was taken by surprise, since he didn''t consider that spell harmful as he was healed by something simr earlier.

    But he had also used a lot of mana to keep the wall, because Sarah never stopped attacking it to keep them under pressure, so he bathed in that rain thinking it will relieve his fatigue only burned by it.

    "Even if our forces are allied, ultimately, I''m a human, and I don''t have any intention on bing a filthy creature like you, I can''t die with you beasts here", coldly said the girl as she stabbed the Ghoul with a silver dagger she had hid in her dress.

    At the same time, a limbless body fell from air, crashing against the ground, the wounds were cauterized and while the person was still breathing, his eyes were rolled backwards, as it was at the verge of dying, it was none other than Noah.

    Reyne graciouslynded next to it and stabbed hernce on Noah''s body, making it shrink as thence slowly dyed red, she nodded at Daimon while she sweetly smiled, she was obviously in a good mood.

    That being said, Sarah who appeared behind the remaining mage and the swordsman, to casually twists their necks, killing them on the spot, wasn''t any worse, she was stealing gazes at Daimon from time to time with a slightly flushed expression.

    ''Ahh, I nearly¡­'', her weird train of thought was interrupted, when she saw the girl from the church smiling at Daimon as she walked towards him.

    "This young master was able to use one of the "keys", meaning you should be a man among man, I''m the daughter of Cardinal Ely, would you be willing to form a contract for mutual benefits, as you can see, I won''t slow you down, I was ordered to enter this ce against my will", she said with a mellow voice, as she rose the sides of her dress like a properdy, while also giving Daimon a glimpse of her thighs and legs.

    To no one''s surprise, a fake notification was triggered at the very end of her words.

    [A nice youngdy has requested amnesty, as a hero you are obliged to listen and protect her from any harm]

    The girl inwardly smiled at the fact that the masked man in front of her was thinking about it, because she could feel the murderous gazes of the two girls that were apanying him.

    ''Heh, you stupid bitches don''t know how to handle a man, sit on the bench and let me¡­''.

    The disdainful thoughts of the woman were interrupted at she felt a burning sensation on her neck, she looked downwards just to see a needle piercing it, next there was the tip of anceing out of her chest from behind, and that wasn''t all, there was a sword made out of white mes stabbing her stomach.

    "I don''t have time to lose in Adam''s whores, or whatever you are, right now", he said in a voice that only the girl from the church could hear.

    She didn''t even have the time to scream, before her body dried, melted and finally burned into thin ashes that disappeared not too long after.

    "That was unnecessary", said Daimon just to see both Sarah and Reyne smiling at him.

    "She was wasting everyone''s time", said Reyne.

    "Whoever wrote that "thing" has a really bad taste~", yfully said the crazy girl referring to the notification qualifying that girl as a "nice youngdy".

    Daimon chuckled, he then snapped his fingers and the drops of water that fell on them were instantly evaporated, neither Sarah or Reyne even thought of resisting and simply allowed the white mes of Daimon to remove the water from that girl''s spell from their bodies.

    To begin with, he didn''t need an "outsider" to mess up with his team, so though there was space for four survivors, only three were going to be used, not to mention not even a single word that woman uttered was truth and that spell was used for torture, it was meant to produce an insane amount of pain by mixing something in a water healing spell, it was done so the interrogation could continue indefinitely, of the victim was about to faint then the healing spell would kick in, it could be activated at will too, which is why it took the girl so much time to cast it.

    There was a chance that in the next room they met Adam, so the girl was preparing the stage for him to win, though Daimon noticed some interesting things about the current situation.

    Reyne who was all smiles right now, casually stabbed all the bodies on the battlefield with her spear, to be sure, while the crazy girl stuck to Daimon like bubblegum, surprisingly he didn''t stop her from doing so, naturally a notification was triggered as they killed that girl, but they ignored it.

    Once Reyne stabbed Noah who was still alive, the door from which the goblins came opened, while the one from which the Ghouls came crumbled apart.

 Chapter 508 Penalty Room (Part 3)

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    Before they left the eighth room, Daimon quickly scanned those two, just to be sure that they weren''t wounded or anything, besides the crazy girl being strangely hyped up, they were perfectly fine.

    The previous fights consumed at most 10% of their stamina, which was a perfectly eptable result, considering the number of enemies, the same applied to him, because that ogre was actually stronger than what Daimon made it look like.

    To be fair, the ogre was at the level of talented members of the young generation, even without using its battle aura, after reinforcement it could have shed against early stage Arch ranks.

    Unfortunately for him, Daimon''s base level was that same realm as of current, and that was without using any skills or martial arts thanks to the boost he got from Kerrol''s atmosphere, so when he added a partial releasing Comet Sword, the ogre stood no chance at all.

    This time those two didn''t even wait for Daimon to tell them to hold onto him, and directly grabbed his arms, as they both red at the puddle of ck liquid which used to be that girl from the church.

    Speaking of which, Daimon''s custom of robbing his enemies, had taken root in the crazy girl, as she actually cut off the finger of the girl from the church, at the same as she pierced her neck with a needle.

    As for Reyne she was still too new to the group to be "corrupted" by Daimon, so she actually forgot to rob Noah before she used her battle aura to burn his limbs, so that he couldn''t regenerate them.

    Though the ring was still there, the outdated arrays used by the Ghouls were less durable than the ones at the four gxies or Neptune, so more than half of the contents were gone by the time she picked the ring from the ground, which earned her a mocking gaze from the crazy girl.

    But it was understandable, she really wanted to kill Noah who proved to not be a challenge for her, for a good reason, he wasn''t the main descendant of his family, but his brother who was an Arch rank already, killing him was a bonus.

    After using Will Maniption just in case, Daimon crossed to the next room, apparently the owner of thebyrinth understood that it was meaningless to try and separate them, if the crossbow was going to prevent it, so there were no suspicious space waves this time.

    To be honest Daimon didn''t know if the crossbow still had any power left, because earlier he didn''t notice anything, and yet the thing actually helped him, it was simr to how he couldn''t see through his ck Sea Emblem.

    But nothing he didn''t expect, neither he nor the system were almighty from the start after all, Nethereals managed to trick his eyes once and only after that he learned to see through them.

    In fact, he had now found another thing that could hinder his infinity eyes, in the way thebyrinth was set, it was made so even if one had a strong mana sense there was no way to map the whole thing, because past certain points there was nothing.

    Only after meeting the requirements, the next part would appear, just like in these rooms, until the door opened, there was literally nothing at the other side, besides a nk space.

    It was a really good way to screw over those whose senses were really sharp or had eye abilities, in Daimon''s case he had both, unfortunately for the one that set up thebyrinth, even depriving Daimon from getting information, provided him with valuable intel, as it confirmed the fact that this ce was created to mess with system users.

    The fake missions couldn''t be used as a parameter, because they could be triggered by a lot of things, like a moment ago where he was supposed to spare that bitch''s life, despite the fact that she was for sure going to backstab him, because she "deserved" a second chance.

    The moment they passed though the door, they appeared in a room with only two doors, the one from which they came, and another one at the other side of the room

    Once again, they were the first ones to appear in the room, and there were those invisible walls ced in front of the doors, so that no one could take advantage of being the first to enter the room.

    A few seconds before the door opened, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, as he turned to see Reyne, who remained calm, despite somehow being able to notice the same as Daimon.

    Which is the fact that the onesing out from the other door included humans and among them there was¡­ Elliot.

    The enemy side was formed by Elliot, one of the three guys that Daimon saw following him out of the ruin, andstly a surprise add in the form of an ogre, but this one was not only stronger than the one Daimon fought before, but also younger.

    In fact, that ogre had much more bnced body shape, being just a bit more muscr than the ninja hobgoblin, and as it was supposed to be, it was a peak stage Knight Lord, but clearly exuded a pressure akin to the Arch rank.

    And there was another different thing about that ogre, which most people might not notice, but couldn''t escape Daimon''s sharp eyes and it was the fact that it was wearing a storage ring, the goblins were certainly using equipment, but until now none had a spatial type treasure, so there was that.

    Needless to say, but Elliot''s face became unsightly, not only at the fact that he was facing Reyne, but because she and Sarah hadn''t let go of Daimon''s arms yet, they weren''t lowering their guards, but the invisible barriers were there, so there was "nothing" they could do yet anyway.

    The next second, just like in the previous room, a message appeared floating above the two group.

    [Wee to thest penalty room, where those who are on the same side have to fight, there can only be three survivors, despair, struggle and give it your all]

    Daimon inwardly smirked, the real nature of the owner of this ce had started toe out to light, nothing he didn''t expect to be honest, since it was the same being the one who captured Jasmine to make her participate in this farce against her will.

    A counter with sixty seconds appeared, below the message, signaling the soon to start fight between "allies".

    Seeing that Reyne had yet to let go of Daimon''s arm, Elliot gritted his teeth but didn''t say anything and instead seemed to be lost in his thoughts as he took out his Beast Weapon, his subordinate followed and the strange ogre who was wearing light metal armor, did the same.

    At the other side, Sarah let go of Daimon and then turned to see Reyne to say.

    "You choose first, everything is the same for me", Reyne saw that Daimon wasn''t saying anything and she nodded before saying.

    "Leave Elliot to me".

    "I''ll kill the ogre then", added Daimon, he had more than enough reasons to kill Elliot at this point, like how he was murderously looking at him, but not only the ogre looked more interesting, but Reyne seemed to want to confirm something first hand, so he didn''t interfere, the result was going to be the same anyway.

    The moment the counter reached zero, the barriers separating the two groups dispelled and the six of them became shes of light.

    Elliot of course tried to go after Daimon, but his way was blocked by an insane wave of heat, which forcefully activated the automatic wind defensive spell he chose when he became a Mage Lord, in order to not be burned alive.

    Inside of a constant personal sized whirlwind, Elliot had an expression of disbelief, as if he couldn''t understand why Reyne decided to be the one to fight him.

    But then he noticed that Reyne wasn''t doing anything else, so he snapped his fingers and the whirlwind expanded, until it had encircled the two of them, Reyne was already on the ground, while Elliot glided until hended a few meters ahead of her.

    "What are you doing, I have to kill those two so we can advance to the next room¡­ that green guy is strong, if we have it as our ally, we can kill those monsters and obtain the treasures at the end of the ruin!", he eximed, just to be met with a cold silence from Reyne.

    Elliot had a bad premonition, which made him frown to then say.

    "Even if we all gang up against that green guy, we won''t be able to kill him, I had to fight against him in the previous room, his battle prowess is almost at the middle stage of the Arch rank, so I instead made a deal with him¡­".

    Before Elliot could finish, Reyne interrupted him in a cold way.

    "So, you killed your own subordinate to save yourself and you are about to do the same once again, without any kind of remorse am I right?".

    Elliot''s expression froze, but he then smiled and then answered.

    "What are you talking about, it was the ogre the one who killed Wendel, as for Roman¡­ I do feel sorry about it, but my priority will always be you, besides he is too weak for the next room, so he is going to die anyway".

    Reyne''s usually gentle expression was nowhere to be seen, her current self was the same as when she first saw Noah.

    "I don''t remember ever being too close to you, but do you remember when Ipletely distanced myself from you?", she asked as she took out hernce.

    Elliot had a nostalgic and slightly ashamed expression as he answered.

    "Don''t make me remember that, it was my eleventh birthday and I asked if you would marry in the future and father gave me a nice beating because that "thing" told him about it".

    Reyne nodded in response.

    "Yeah, but I didn''t stop allowing you to hang around with me because of your annoying insistence despite my clear reject, but because I heard your birthday "wish", you even called your aunt to tell her that you wanted aunt Emily to die, previous to that I just thought you were annoying, but at that moment I realized how much of a piece trash you were".

    "And then after so many years of you acting in a more proper way, you just confirmed that my previous decision to have nothing to do with you was correct", she said as her aura changed.

    "W-What are saying, did that guy do something to you!", shouted Elliot, referring to Daimon, from his point of view, his calm and always gentle childhood love started behaving weird when the masked guy showed, so he had to have something to do with Reyne turning against him.

    Reyne who had closed her eyes for a second, opened to reveal that her previously green pupils had turned bright blood red, which made Elliot''s throat dry.

    "My senses are quite sharp when ites to blood for obvious reasons, so from the very beginning I knew to whom the blood in your sword belonged, your subordinate must have fought quite a bit to survive, considering how much blood stained that sword, it wasn''t a clean hat for sure", she said.

    Elliot seemed to be having a mental crisis right now, as all kind of emotions showed on his face, but ultimately, he seemed to convince himself with some unknown reasons to then say.

    "N-No one has seen you like that, so don''t worry we just have to hide it, I-I won''t tell anyone¡­ if you help me kill those two, we can then get rid of Roman and live together, I know you aren''t like that "thing" who can''t hide, you don''t even trigger the detection amulet that the Adjudicators use, so you aren''t a flesh-eating demon like her!", he said with a crazed expression on his face.

    Reyne didn''t say anything else, she did feel bad for Oliver who treated her good, but it is obvious that Elliot has lost its mind, especially because when he took a pause to his words, she could feel his eyes wandering around her body, something he has done quite a few times ever since they both grew up, but previously it was more of interest while this time it was raw lust.

    He probably thought of keeping her in his grasp, in exchange for not telling anyone "what" she is, that being said, this fight wasn''t worth using her Vampire form, as Daimon called it, so she returned to normal, and then her eyes became sharp.

    Apparently, Elliot finally understood that things weren''t the way he thought they were, maybe because now he considered Reyne to be a Ghoul, meaning she had the "ability" to kill him, but that didn''t make him panic as he put on a calm expression while his mana poured out of his body, increasing the intensity of the whirlwind around them, and then water was added to it, turning it from a whirlwind to a mini hurricane

    "I used to believe that our affinities were meant to each other, wind can enhance fire after all, but now I understand why I obtained water affinity, it''s so that I can restrain you to prevent you from harming anyone, that way you''ll never be a threat and we can be together, I''ll protect you¡­".

    His monologue was interrupted by a sudden increase on the temperature, which made Elliot turn to see thebined spell of which he was so proud, just to see the hurricane changing into a zing whirlwind.

    That''s right, his water infused wind spell, somehow turned into fire, which made him temporarily shut down his mind, only to hear Reyne saying.

    "You have always been weaker than me, how can someone whose mana is some to the point that is a piece of cake for my Ignition Battle Aura to burn your spell, "protect" me, go to hell creep".

    And with those words and before Elliot even had the chance to scream, his body burned from both the inside and the outside, turning him into a piece of shrank charcoal, that then became a ck dusty stain on the floor.

    ''This is the best I could do for you uncle Oliver, he left without even noticing'', she thought, this was her way to repay Oliver for treating her nice, she ignored the obviously disgusting intentions of Elliot and gave him a painless instant death.

    Since Elliot was dead, he stopped supplying mana to the spell and the me whirlwind dispelled, revealing a Reyne who had returned to her usual calm and gentle looking self, the crazy girl who was standing a couple of meters away from where Reyne was, casually yed with one of her needles.

    Next to her, there was a puddle of ck liquid which used to be thest remaining subordinate of Elliot.

    "Heh, and here I thought I was going to finally be able to leave you behind, guess it won''t be that easy~", yfully said Sarah.

    As always, she was quite wild, because Reyne was sure that if she would have even considered betraying Daimon, Sarah would have tried to kill her with that same needle she was ying with right now.

    "What are you afraid that if I''m around you''ll lose", answered Reyne with a little provoking smile on her pretty face, which made Sarahugh.

    "For a spoiled noble girl, you managed it quite good", said the crazy girl, surprisingly sheplimented Reyne, though it also sounded like an insult.

    "Aren''t you the daughter of someone important too, I don''t believe you have lived in a rougher environment than me", said Reyne which made Sarah shrug.

    While those two were somehow getting along in a strange way, Daimon was at the other side of the room shing at high speed against the ogre, causing shockwaves and explosions of light every time he shed with it.

    This ogre was certainly different than any other member of the goblin side, which Daimon had seen, not only it could perfectly use battle aura, to enhance his knives so that his white me sword, wouldn''t simply cut through them to reach his body, but he was actually using Will Maniption.

    In quite a tricky way, it made use of the storage ring to make knives appear from different directions, then manipted them with his battle aura, to follow his will and attack Daimon in every direction.

    The explosions of light were caused by Daimon breaking he knives with his punches and kicks, while he used his right hand to wield the white me sword, it was quite a shy fight, that for anyone without a mana sense sharp enough to be at the Arch rank, would only seem as a green and a white shooting stars colliding all over the room.

    The ogre who has been feeling his hands go numb ever since he started shing against the masked human in front of him, noticed that his previous teammates had been eliminated and frowned, he took some distance by jumping backwards and then said.

    "Human, even if you are almost as strong as me, you stand no chance against the chief that awaits in the throne at the tenth room, so let''s make a deal, we can join hands to take that tyrant down and split the riches, don''t worry, you just need to kill one of those women, the treasure will be more than enough to obtain all the human women you want, you can be the king of humans!".

    Daimon was slightly surprised that this ogre was so cunning, the previous one was more of a musclehead, but this one even knew about negotiations and benefits, there was also the fact that it had that storage ring, that didn''t match with the overall sensation that the equipment previously used by the goblins, gave off.

    Also, the movements of this ogre were strangely familiar to him, and then remembering the fake notification that started all this hassle of penalty rooms, made Daimon smirk.

    "You recently became an ogre right, the way you move is quite simr to how those goblins with daggers do, the ogre I previously killed had a simr style as the swordsman hobgoblin, but you skipped that part, I wonder, were you the one who killed that participant", he said.

    The ogre was temporarily surprised, but it didn''tst long, he yed with his knife before saying.

    "Exactly, I evolved because I was the first low ranked of the nest to kill an invader, thus I Gamish have the potential to be a chief that surpasses he current one, ally with me and enjoy glory and riches, get in my way and I will eat you alive".

    Since the ogre didn''t have to hide its origin anymore, he dived into the ground, the ability that only the ninjas and assassin type goblins had, despite he not being one of them, as it had a really tough battle aura, akin to a heavy swordsman.

    "I see, so that''s how it works", said Daimon as he pointed at the ground, shooting a thin line of white light, that easily pierced the floor.

    The ogre jumped out of the floor, actually avoiding Daimon''s attack which made it proudlyugh.

    "Though I''m not connected to the nest ever since I evolved, I still kept the experiences of the deceased, you can''t kill me like that¡­", his speech was interrupted midway, as he froze on the air, slowly looking downwards just to see a fist sized white ray piercing his chest.

    The ogre slowly followed the origin of that attack and vomited blood at the sight of it being shot from Daimon''s shoulder.

    "Y-You could use cast such a strong attack from other ces than your hands you monster¡­ blegh!", the ogre turned into ashes the next second leaving nothing behind, besides the ring which Daimon casually picked up.

    There is a reason as to why he shots White Heavenly Javelin and ck Hell Javelin using his hands as the origin, living beings have ways in which they have it easier to gather energies.

    For those with humanoid forms, the hands are that exact spot, and that changes depending on the race of more urately the body shape, for example magic bests that move on four legs, or those that slither tend to gather mana way easily on their snouts, hence the way Karmandi casted that devastating spell that nearly killed a general at his same level on the spot.

    Anyway, that doesn''t mean spell or martial arts have to involve using one''s hands, but unless you have a special set of magic circuits in other body parts, like those with magic eyes, who can use that spot to gather energy as easily as their hands, it requires an insane amount of training to cast spells or martial arts from other ces.

    This doesn''t include boosting type techniques, as they aren''t long distance or extremely external, just imagine you shing with an enemy, your weapon against his, and then the guy shots a lightning from his mouth, it would be really hard to dodge, and most wouldn''t expect it.

    It''s a fearsome ability, that too little can obtain, even for Daimon it wasn''t easy to learn how to do this, as he only recently became able to, it was thanks to the mix of his infinity eyes and the boost of this ce.

    Also, he couldn''t take all the credit, since he has actually seen two people that are able to do this, Erin and Aura to be more urate, and they only learned it after they became Half Emperors.

    The ogre might not have known all the implications that what Daimon did mean, but trying to use long range magic or martial arts with other starting points besides the hands, is something that everyone tries to do at their early steps in the path of either magic or knighthood, so the ogre knew that the masked human was on another level for being able to do that.

    Speaking of that, the crazy girl''s pretty eyes were practically sparkling as she looked at Daimon, even Reyne had a surprisingly cute amazed expression on her face.

    "Ahem, I only used that because that guy wasn''t connected to the others, keep it a secret", said Daimon, such an ability had to be used to settle a fight where no witnesses would be left, otherwise it will lose its main advantage.

    Daimon won''t admit it, but he was kind of eager to try it ever since he realized he could do it, which was partially Erin and Aura''s fault, for the small sparring session they used to demonstrate the advantages of learning such an advanced ability.

    Those two limited to softlyugh, it was rare to see Daimon act so "normal" since he is always acting more mature than what his age appears to be, so they enjoyed the moment.

    On the other hand, Daimon was a bit relieved that Reyne had sorted things out properly, he had epted her in his team after all.

    With those two holding onto his arms, which had be one of their favorite moments of this whole thing, to the point that they were kind of d towards the owner of thebyrinth, they crossed to the next and final room, which was different than the previous ones.

    This one only had one door and it was the one from which they entered, torches lit up at the walls, illuminating the room, revealing a figure which was sitting in a throne made of bones at the other side of the room.

    [Wee to the final room of thebyrinth, survive for the next 10 minutes to obtain a reward akin to your performance, good luck]

    As always, Daimon found those fake notifications really annoying, he could feel the "disdain" of the one who wrote them, though they were for sure not aimed at him, but at the light idiot, since the owner of thebyrinth itself didn''t know he was also receiving those missions, or his path to this room wouldn''t have been so easy.

 Chapter 509 The Final Boss?

    ?

    Like previously, after the initial message at the moment of their arrival, a counter with sixty seconds appeared on the air.

    Thebyrinth did give them an "advantage" this time, which is the fact that the restraining invisible barrier, only affected the area around the throne where the boss was sitting.

    Allowing the challengers to move around and prepare a strong startingbo, but that was only on the surface, Daimon''s eyes could see through the fake benevolence of the owner of this ruin, with ease.

    He quickly scanned the being sitting on the throne and inwardly smirked, the so-called chief of the goblin nest, was also an ogre, but it had a strange built.

    Around five meters of height, yellow rough skin, wide strong arms and legs but with a fat shape, its body was covered in tattoos simr to the ones of the support type hobgoblins and it was wearing metal armor and it was holding a metal spiked club with its right hand, while holding a disaster of meat and blood on the other one, from which it was currently eating as it red in Daimon''s group direction.

    But the most eye-catching characteristic of this ogre, is the fact that it had two heads, one was strangely bigger than the other and had a small lump on its forehead but only one eye, while the other had two eyes but no lump on the forehead.

    Both of the heads were munching on the bloody mess which the ogre was holding with his hand, judging by the small patches of green skin and the size, it was actually eating a hobgoblin, which exined why the ogre that evolved from the assassin goblin called it "tyrant".

    Most humanoid and rational races repudiate cannibalism, even the most primitive or wild ones prefer to eat other races and only rely on cannibalism as ast resort kind of thing, inparison magic beasts eat each other when they are low rank mindless ones, unless there is an alpha to instruct order on the group.

    But this ogre was not hungry, it was just doing it for fun, judging by the disgusting smiling expression it had, the thing also red at Sarah and Reyne as it breathed heavily, making its intentions clear.

    Unfortunately, no matter how it tried to taunt Daimon, it wasn''t going to work, this was but a mere trick prepared to deal with hot blooded idiots, luring them to attack so the reflecting property of that bone throne could return their attacks right back at them.

    That was the real purpose behind giving them the chance to prepare a strong attack while the boss was "restrained", most people would have fallen for it, especially because the aura that the ogre was radiating, was quite close to thete stage of the Arch rank.

    For challengers that were at mostte stage Lord ranks, if they wanted to survive the ten minutes required to pass the boss room, then they had to stall for time, and the most effective way to do so, was to hit the boss hard right from the beginning, then set a sturdy defense and keep spamming long distance spells or martial arts with high destructive power.

    In other words, this whole thing was a trap, the ogre saw the counter reach less than thirty seconds but its prey not doing anything and it clicked its two tongues.

    "Tsk, that idiot Gamish probably spilled the beans before biting the dust, whatever, it''s been a while since I have gotten a decent woman with delicious looking flesh, a bit of exercise should make my meal tastier", said the one-eyed head.

    "Don''t waste time, the faster we get rid of them, the better the reward we will get would be, maybe we can even grow a third head and evolve to the next level", said the two eyed head.

    Daimon exchanged gazes with those two and they both took out their weapons, while Daimon summoned his white me sword, but remained half a step behind of them.

    The moment the counter reached zero, the ogre as well as the two girls both disappeared from where they were standing a moment ago.

    Daimon knew that the bone throne could only reflect energy attacks, and while he could have burned through that reflect array with his Demon Light, that would attract the attention of the owner of thebyrinth, because even if low ranked and worn out, that bone throne was an item from a system shop, based on the aura it gave off.

    So why go through all that hassle, when he could just force the ogre to move if it didn''t want to get skewered by Reyne''snce and be a piece of dried meat or turned into a porcupine by the crazy girl''s needles to then melt into a puddle of ck liquid.

    Naturally, to instill the enemies to use energy attacks against it, the ogre was an Archknight, meaning physical attacks would be less effective most of the times, but all the set up didn''t work.

    "ng!", a loud metal colliding sound followed by a strong shockwave, came from above as the ogre shed against both Reyne and Sarah.

    The ogre had an unsightly expression on its face, as it was forced to reveal one of its trump cards, which is the fact that it has two set of arms, originally it nned use the metal spiked club to block the attack of Reyne and then take Sarah by surprise by summoning another metal club, which was stored in one of the tattoos in its body, getting rid of that dangerous poison user.

    But a sensation of dread invaded him when he felt the strong pressure caused by those two''s high vitality, which was radiated the moment they used their battle auras, so the ogre threw all pretensions away and not only manifested its remaining two arms, but wielded a metal spiked club in each one of them.

    And so, the two metal spiked clubs in its right hands were shing against Reyne''snce, while the left ones were defending it from Sarah''s needles, needless to say but their weapons were covered in battle aura, so this wasn''t just a physical sh but an energy one too.

    "Booom!", the result was that sparkles flew all over the ce, and their attacks cancelled each other, as their battle auras wore each other out, producing a loud explosion that separated the two parties.

    The two girlsnded next to Daimon while the ogre was a few meters in front of them, the bone throne had be useless as it disappeared the moment the ogre shed with Sarah and Reyne.

    It was a conditional type of item, and it only worked for the first exchange of attacks, the ogre looked at its metal clubs, the ones on the left had some rust appearing on the part where they entered in contact with Sarah''s needles, meaning her battle aura corroded though his and caused some damage to his weapons.

    As for the clubs on his right hands, they had small deformations caused by the heat liberated by Reyne''s spear, meaning that the ogre''s battle aura also lost on that side.

    "That thing is quite strong, that arm with which it parried by attack should have melted, but its nature battle aura reduced the effect and the weapon is poison resistant", said Sarah as she stretched her body.

    "Mm, the right arms were using ice battle aura to reduce the heat of my attack", added Reyne.

    The ogre was actually a dual affinity knight, something rarer than a dual affinity mage, that being said, this ogre was a faker, because it wasposed of two beings that merged, probably it evolved from a hobgoblin like the masked one that was killed by Sarah earlier, which is why it could use two different types of battle auras.

    "You fucking pieces of meat!", the ogre seemed to feel insulted by the result of the previous sh, a dark green and light blue light exploded out of its body, producing gusts of wind and making the ground below it, crack as it spread its mana pressure.

    Daimon shook his head, this ogre might look strong, but it wascking the strongest ability that an Archknight should have, the capacity to manifest a Battle Avatar, its battle aura was only a bit better than the one of the ogre Daimon killed in the previous room, meaning that in terms of battle aura quality it was a barely an Arch rank, which is why it lost to Sarah and Reyne in the previous sh.

    That being said, in terms of quantity he did surpass those two, which was proved by the huge amount of battle aura it was radiating right now.

    "Green Carnage!".

    "Despair Hail!".

    The two heads of the ogre shouted as it used two different martial arts, the first one condensed arge amount of battle aura on the clubs in its left hands, which were then smacked against the ground, making the nearby area explode followed by countless thorns made out of battle aura to emerge from the ground, destroying and piercing everything on their way.

    The second martial art made sharp pieces of ice to rain from above, it was a pincer attack from below and above that covered a wide area, hence therge amount of battle aura needed to do it.

    "Booom!", the thorns raised a lot of dust which was then increased by the pieces of eyes destroying the ground even more, besides the area nearby the ogre, the rest of the room was affected by the attack.

    "Phew, it''s been a while since I went all out, I wanted to have some fun with those women, but I guess there isn''t aplete part of them left now", said the one-eyed head.

    "Don''t low your guard, the masked guy looked quite tough, he might have survived and we only have five minutes left now", said the two eyed head.

    The next second, the curtain of dust was blown away without the need of a spell, but because of the impulse with which three shes of light appeared in front of the ogre, a sensation of crisis flooded the heads of the ogre as it swinged its four arms towards the enemies.

    But this time the oue was way different than before, the metal clubs on the right side were pierced through by a zing spear, just the proximity to it made the arms of the ogre to catch up fire, producing ck smoke as the ice battle aura tried to put it out, but failed to do so.

    As for the left side, this time it wasn''t needles, but a one-edged dark green sword what shed against the metal clubs, or that would have been the case if the metal clubs along the sword wouldn''t have melted, sshing the arms of the ogre with the resulting ck liquid, which melted holes in its arms from which its flesh and started to be gnawed away.

    "Aghhhh!", the two heads of the ogre roared in pain, the tattoos on its body shone and a shockwave was released by its body, which blew away both Sarah''s poison as well as Reyne''s mes, pushing the two girls away too.

    Unfortunately for the ogre, it didn''t have the time tounch another round of heavy attacks, because the moment those two took some distance, a white me sword shed through both of his necks, cutting both of its heads at the same time.

    And before the ogre who was still alive could do a surprise attack, Daimon pierced the Comet Sword in its stomach, making it scream in pain.

    "Arghhhh!", the body of the ogre started to turn into ashes from its center to its limbs, as he suspected, this ogre was formed by one of those masked hobgoblins that could detach its upper body to survive and a support type one.

    This time the Comet Sword waspletely consumed, because Daimon had to burn through a thickyer of battle aura and also that amor, but it was a low price to pay in exchange of an Archknight''s life.

    The two girls who had "exhausted" expressions on their pretty faces, approached Daimon, they used quite a bit of battle aura to disable the arms of the ogre, which is why the thing was forced to use itsst resort, the ability to dispel any negative effects which could only be used once, and consumed a lot of vitality, just to be decapitated by Daimon.

    The counter of before didn''t disappear, instead it kept moving as it became a temporizer instead, since they had to survive for ten minutes, now it was almost the eighth minute, and it stopped advancing the moment Daimon pierced the stomach of the ogre with his Comet Sword.

    The room trembled and the wall behind the area where the ogre was sitting earlier, crumbled apart to reveal a golden door, which opened the next second.

    [Congrattions, you defeated the boss, enter the reward room to obtain your prize!]

    A message appeared above the golden door, urging them to advance to the next room, which they did, naturally both Sarah and Reyne held onto Daimon''s arms.

    The scenery changed from the previous lugubrious room, to a perfectly ordered and shiny one, there were many shelves exhibiting different kinds of treasures, from shields, swords, armor to moreplex things like rings with spells stored on the gems embedded in them, as well as recipes or potions, it was quite a haul.

    [Wee to the treasure room, you can choose one thing from the high level treasury, you''ll be transported out of the ruin after that, if you wish to obtain more rewards,e and participate again, good luck]

    Besides the condescending message, which Daimon ignored, a portal appeared at the other side of the room, it''s obvious they will be forcefully transported once they take their reward.

    "You two choose first, I will look from here", said Daimon to the girls.

    "Mm", those two nodded while Sarah stole a gaze at Daimon, before she went straight to the potion area, to see if there was a poison that caught her attention.

    ''It should be happening anytime now'', thought Daimon as his eyes glowed behind his mask.

    ¡­

    At a different part of the ruin, in a poorly illuminated room, a figure covered in a ck mantle, observed a ck cage ced in the middle of the room.

    "Did you see, your savior even allied himself with one of those human eating monsters, I wonder if your "reunion" would be as sweet as you expect, especially because those twopanions seem to be quite a lot to handle", said the ck mantled figure with a mocking genderless voice.

    The girl inside the cage, remained silent and limited to coldly re at the one who captured her, which made the ck mantled figure click its tongue.

    "Tsk, you are no fun, whatever he should be picking his reward soon, I wonder what his expression would be when his group is taken to the real boss room, despite all the effort that was needed for them to defeat that failure of an ogre lord!", shouted the ck mantled figure as it left room.

    The moment that figure disappeared, Jasmine who remained silent and static, changed her apathic expression for a smiling one, even in this dark room, everything seemed to be illuminated by that pretty smile of hers.

    She then touched her wrist and a bracelet that previously "wasn''t" there, became visible, though the design was quite refined, it had many scratches on it.

    "Just a bit more", she mumbled as white halos appeared in her pupils.

    ¡­

    Back at the reward room, Sarah and Reyne had chosen their rewards and returned to Daimon''s side, Daimon didn''t justze around, he evaluated the things from which he could choose and took a majestic looking sword with jewels embedded on its hilt and a refined scabbard, it looked more of a ceremonial sword than one created for battle, and yet it was actually a dangerous weapon.

    The moment he took his reward, the shelves disappeared and the portal at the other side of the room, grew bigger and started pulling them towards it, meaning it was time for them to leave.

    The same scene happened at another two ces at the same time, and the participants were all dragged into the portals, meaning that their time in the ruin had ended, at least for some of them.

    Outside of the ruin, the humans and flesh-eating demons were still shing against each other, roaring their spells and martial arts as they killed each other, above the battlefield the strongest of their respective sides, observed the situation when they suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from their chests.

    "Well, it seems our little children had finished ying, I wonder if you''ll be able to react on time before we turn them into mincemeat, starting by that little girl!", said Emily''s aunt from the side of the flesh eating demons.

    Emily and Jeanne got up their chairs at the same time as old Ben, because they were the first ones to feel the space waving at a particr ce, apparently the participants weren''ting from the entrance of the ruin, so this was indeed a race to see who was faster at protect and attack.

    Old Ben and his friend, Jeanne and Emily took the defending role, while Oliver, Dorothy and the couple of elders from the church took the offensive, since their light spells would have an extra effect on the enemy.

    There were two space movements at the same time, and no one knew who was who, so the two sides eyed each other, the moment that someone finally appeared, Emily''s aunt had turned into a red light that shot towards that direction, only to be blocked by old Ben.

    At the same time, the other female Archduke from the Ghoul side, bypassed them, but was contained by Jeanne and Emily, only to smile when Dn''s ancestor appeared in front of the returning humans, just to be blocked by old Ben''s friend, which allowed the other human high echelon to let out a sigh of relief.

    But then the ground split, to reveal Felix''s slightly burned figureing out of an undercurrent of magma, just in time to cast a darkness corrosive spell.

    Jeanne pushed the female Archduke away and then proposed to use her vampire form, to reach that ce in time, as Emily was about to do the same to be able to fight with the Archduke on par even if it was a momentaneous boost, when they both saw a small golden shield appear out of nowhere.

    Felix''s attack was fully negated, making a sepulchral silence to fall in the area, followed by a pained scream as the elderly couple from the church, managed to behead one of the ones who returned from the Ghoul side.

    The shield remained floating in front of the ones standing on the human returning spot, which after a second were revealed to be just two girls, Reyne and the granddaughter of the elders of the church, udia, who was in a really bad state by the way.

 Chapter 510 Title At The Bottom!

    ?

    Jeanne and Emily secretly exchanged gazes as they both reached the same conclusion; it was time for them to make their move.

    Before anyone else could react at the fact that the prepared all-out attack of a someone whose battle prowess surpassed the Arch rank, was nullified as if it was nothing a second ago, two red light explosions caught all the presents by surprise.

    Certainly, both humans and flesh eating demons present here knew about Emily''s origins, but the only ones besides Reyne who had ever seen her vampire form and lived, were none other than Daimon and Sarah.

    As such you can imagine the chocked expressions on both allies and enemies, when not only Emily but even Jeanne, suddenly underwent a maybe not physically, but inwardly amazing change all of a sudden.

    For starters, the female Archdukes who was previously easily shing with the two of them, felt a huge sensation of crisis, as her body froze under the pressure radiated by those two from up-close.

    It was justified though, while Jeanne and Emily "only" were temporarily boosted to thete stage of the peak Arch rank, their race underwent a fundamental change, as far as all the present Ghouls regarded, they were brought back to when they were children who met their ancestors for the first time, they were struck by fear and reverence at the superior lineage of the ones in front of them.

    The problem is that, for starters they were in presence of someone from the young generation and not only that, but one of them is a mere human, a member of a race which they despise, so you can imagine the shock that they were undergoing right now.

    Unfortunately for them, Jeanne and Emily weren''t kind enough to let it sink in, they both have been waiting a long time to finally make their moves, so of course they weren''t going to waste the initial shock.

    Simr to what happened with Reyne, their skin tone paled and their pupils were painted of a bright blood red color, only now the vampires realized that while Emily''s hair color was pitch ck, a sign of having one of the two purest lineages among them, Jeanne had the exact blond colored hair akin to the other.

    It wasn''t their fault though, unlike them, humans had the custom to dye their hair just for aesthetics, while that was strictly forbidden for Ghouls, so never in a million years they imagined that was Jeanne''s natural color after she and Emily exchanged flesh and blood.

    As a result, the female Archduke who was previously shing with them, hated to admit that the woman in front of her had a lighter and prettier hair color than her, and she hated even more the fact that two red armored hands were now ripping her body apart horizontally.

    Jeanne''s hand was covered in a white and red refined looking armor, while Emilly''s hand was covered in a ck and red terrifying looking one.

    "Haaa!", those two shouted as the applied strength in opposite directions, making the body of the Archduke split in two with her stomach as the center, the two parts were then sent flying in opposite directions, disappearing from sight a couple of secondster.

    The Ghouls finally woke up from their stupor, seeing one of their Archdukes being defeated so easily, they all released their mana pressure, especially those rted to that woman.

    But they were one second toote, before those pressures could hit those two, they had turned into ck and white shes that appeared next to Reyne.

    Jeanne took her daughter and the granddaughter of the elder couple from the church and moved behind the human lines, while Emily directly punched Felix whose eyes contracted like needles, but managed to block, which made his left arm being blown away by the impact.

    "What are you waiting fools, the children are safe, kill those bastards!", shouted old ben as his body exploded in mana¡­ he just activated his Domain, followed by his friend who summoned his Battle Avatar.

    Most of the presents didn''t have that ability, so they chose the next best option, which was cast a highly destructive spell or a strong martial art.

    "Boooom!", the area outside of the ruin, was suddenly illuminated by a strong sh of light, followed by a violent mana explosion as the strongest representatives of both sides shed.

    ¡­

    While outside things hat gotten quite explosive, causing tremors, making the sky darken at the sudden liberation of insane amounts of mana, and making the nearby volcanoes erupt, the inside of the ruin was perfectly calm.

    Well except for the fact that the insides of it was currently undergoing a change under the instructions of the ck mantled figure, the previous empty spaces that separated thebyrinth from the area where Jasmine was kept and the treasury, were now reced by a straight lineal path.

    Which ended in arge open area, where the cage where Jasmine was kept, was ced, on top of a pile of treasures, that included everything which Daimon and the others saw being exhibited on the shelves at the reward room.

    Besides that, there was an elevated seat on which the ck mantled figure was sitting, looking at everything from above, andstly there was another living being in the room, which was a fully ck armored knight, standing still like a statue, exuding a powerful pressure.

    "Now let''s see how your champion fairs against mine, how about a little bet to make things interesting?", asked the ck mantled figure to the pretty girl inside of the ck cage.

    Despite having been kept prisoner for a few days, in which she didn''t epted to eat or drink anything that the ck mantled person offered, Jasmine looked perfectly fine, if anything her usual bright smile was nowhere to be seen, as she remained calmly sitting there inside the cage without moving, she didn''t even bother to answer this time, which only made the ck mantled figure snort and amodate on the seat, as it waited to see the one that should be appearing from the only door that this room had.

    The wait wasn''t that long, before the door was violently opened, as a group of three entered the room in a dash of white light, that soon faded to reveal Adam who had an excited expression as he saw a reward that fitted his "tastes".

    "Finally, I was so pissed when I was unable to take all the treasures, even after having to deal with so much of that damn stinky blood!", said Adam as he unsheathed his sword.

    Next to him, there were two other participants, first the girl that was kidnapped by the goblins, which he saved, apparently his otherpanions were either dead or they left the ruin, separately, nor that he cared, right now he only wanted something to vent his pent-up anger.

    As for the other member of the team, it was actually one of the Ghouls, who proved to be strong enough to work for him, so he brought it along, because he knew that there was onest challenge waiting for him, as he hadn''t obtained the legacy he came here for, and his mission brought him to the ruin.

    "Wee little hero candidate, I hope you aren''t too tired after fighting those pests, since I went out of my way to prepare not only a worthy opponent, but also a nice reward in case you win", said the ck mantled figure as she pointed at the pile of treasures as well as the ck cage.

    Adam coldly smiled as he looked as the nice things he''ll soon obtain, including the girl inside of the cage, which only made his smile widen, very much to the amusement of the ck mantled figure.

    "I have to admit it, I didn''t expect you to be able to bring yourpanions along, but I guess that''s why you were "chosen", you have ten minutes, if you don''t defeat my champion within that time, you lose, of course those two can participate".

    With that said, the ck armored knight finally moved, his mana pressure flooded the room, making he air tremble, the sensation it gave was that of a¡­te stage Archmage.

    "Heh, you think that doll of yours scares me!", shouted Adam as he took out a in looking sword from his storage ring and pointed it at the ck armored knight who managed to react on time to prevent his head from being separated from his body, but lost its right arm in the process.

    "Tsk, let''s go you two, Ness support us from the back, Archbald you block, leave the offense to me", said Adam, his sword lit up in white dazzling battle aura and his strength which appeared to be at the middle stage of the Lord rank, jumped all the way to the early stage of Arch rank.

    "Yes!", Adam''spanions nodded in response, the girl jumped backwards and casted a barrier around herself, before she started chanting preparing a major buff spell, as for the Ghoul, his eyes became bloodshot and his skin turned grey metallic, the previous peak stage Lord rank Ghoul was now exuding the pressure of an early stage Archknight.

    The now one armed ck armored knight roared, making the air rumble as waves of ck battle aura were produced by its roar, it was an intimidating type martial art with the purpose of slowing down the enemy.

    Adam snorted in response, his battle aura poured out of his body as he shouted.

    "Hero Banner!", a light projection with the shape of a g containing a sword, appeared behind of him, and the ck waves that were about to affect hispanions, were cancelled.

    At the same time, Adam and the Ghoul Archbald nked the ck armored knight, since it only had one arm now, it could only wield either the sword or the shield which previously had equipped, and it chose the sword, it was a heavy sword of three meters of size.

    The Ghoul intercepted the attack that was aimed at Adam, his body exploded in red and grey battle aura, forming a voluminous armor of the same color, around him.

    "Iron Blood Fortress!", the sword of the ck armored knight had a lot of momentum behind, so the knight couldn''t stop its attack, instead it added more strength as it tried to split the annoying ant in front of him with a single sh.

    "ng!", surprisingly the moment the sword impacted against the armor, it bounced back producing a loud sound of metal colliding, as well as shockwave because the Ghoul sank around a meter into the ground.

    "Go boss!", the Ghoul had blooding out of his mouth, due to the shock, but he had done his job, the ck armored knight lost his bnce, since his martial art was deflected and the timing was perfect.

    "Holy Mantle!", the girl from the church finished chanting, her staff shone and then a cape made out of light appeared on Adam''s back.

    ''It was worth saving her after all'', thought Adam, this spell increased the strength of one light element attack by 50%, the onlyin he had, is that the girl from the church had to chant to use it, while Jasmine could use a much better spell without chanting, but it was to be expected since this world was quite outdated.

    ''Oh well, everything will be better once I obtain that reward, especially the cage'', he thought as he used the strongest martial art he could cast without chanting.

    "Light Piercer!", a huge amount of battle aura was poured into Adam''s sword as he thrusted forward, then a concentrated beam of thirty meters wide was shot from the tip of the sword, at point nk.

    The battle aura of the ck armored knight was blown away, and the white beam of light engulfed the knight.

    "Booom!", the beam reached all the way to the other side of the room, razing everything in its way, until it shed against the wall, piercing a hole through it, which was followed by an explosion.

    It took a few seconds for the light to fade and the dust to settle, once everything went back to normal, the scene of Adam''s sword piercing what was left of the ck armored knight, which was basically a trunkless body, which limbs were barely attached to it.

    The ck armored knight started turning into dust under Adam''s sword, making Adam thunderouslyugh, as he pointed his sword at the ck mantled figure.

    "There you have it, now give me my inheritance!", he demanded, the ck mantled figure pped in response.

    "Splendid, worthy of being an heir candidate, however you can only have one of the two, either the girl or the treasures, the choice is up to you".

    Adam didn''t even think it twice, he brightly smiled as he pointed at the ck cage before saying.

    "I choose her of course".

    The ck mantled figure remained silent for a second before clicking its tongue, it snapped its fingers and the ck cage was lifted and ced in font of Adam, who smiled at the girl inside of it.

    "Come out, you are free now", he said with a gentle caring smile, at the same time a pretty white light lit up on the air in front of him, before a blue metal trident with gold engravings appeared from it.

    Adam had the sudden urge tough out loud, of course he knew that to obtain the legacy of a hero, he had to act like one, which meant choosing to save the girl, instead of the riches, naturally he did so because he was going to be rewarded.

    In fact, he has been in this situation a lot of times, and it always ends up the same way, he obtaining the three things, the riches, the girl and the reward, such are the benefits of being a hero.

    He grabbed the trident and was delighted at the notification that popped up for him, but left it forter, he approached the cage and opened it as he extended his hand at the pretty girl which was previously imprisoned inside of it.

    "Come, I''ll protect you", he warmly said as he smiled.

    "You really are one disgusting piece of trash", coldly said the girl in a voice that Adam couldn''t help but find familiar.

    But before he had the time to process it, he first noticed he was missing something in his hand then felt a numbing paining from between his legs.

    "B-Bitch!", was the only thing he managed to mutter as his body bent in pain, due to the prongs of the trident piercing his lower abdomen including his dick.

    "Aghhhh!", the pained scream that followed, took not only Adam''spanions but even the ck mantled figure by surprise.

    Adam who had copsed on the ground having a hard time processing what was happening, saw the face of the girl blurring before it changed into the appearance of someone he knew quite well, but not as much as he would have liked to.

    "Y-You are alive!", she shouted as he manually used one of his healing potions, which should have activated automatically, under the rare situation when he wasn''t automatically protected by the defensive treasures he was wearing.

    What happened was that Jasmine set up the bracelet of the god of mischief to only affect Adam, and so only he was affected by it, also she only altered her face, since the ck mantled figure could only see her from behind, just in case.

    Archbald and Ness immediately rushed towards Jasmine, who then brightly smiled as she jumped backwards into the cage, to then smack the base of the trident''s shaft on a specific part of the floor of the cage, making a circr area of around a meter and a half to crumble apart.

    And the surprises kepting, Jasmine moved aside and the next second a white ray of light came from below, piercing a hole on the ground that perfectly matched the area which Jasmine secretly broke using the bracelet as a primitive tool, that was the origin of all those scratches.

    The next moment two figures came through the hole on the ground, a masked youth and a dark green haired girl.

    "Die scum!", shouted the crazy girl as her image shed.

    "Aghhh!", Adam screamed as the dark green haired girl kicked him on the face, just when the poisonous dark green battle aura was about to melt his disgusting face to match his shitty personality, a white light shone to prevent him from dying, that being said the ground in twenty meters around him, melted into a ck puddle.

    The ck mantled figure turned into a ck sh that shot towards the neers, but it was stopped cold by a white broken cross bow that blocked its way.

    "Get out of my way!", it was about to attack the annoying thing, when the cross bow disappeared by itself, the ck mantled figure reacted just in time to see the girl which has been held captive, showing her the middle finger.

    Of course, the ck mantled figure rushed towards them and punched the air, making a ck wave of energy be shot from its fist, but before the attack could reach its target, the masked youth grabbed the two girls and they disappeared.

    "Booom!", the cage took the hit and many parts of it exploded as a result, the ck mantled figure trembled as it tried to locate them, only to notice that they weren''t inside of the ruin, in fact it couldn''t sense them at all, only now it noticed the chaos that was taking part outside.

    And that wasn''t all, when it looked at its right, it noticed that the pile of treasures was gone, along with the trident.

    "You are dead meat!!!", shouted the ck mantled figure, making the whole room quake due to its pressure.

    ¡­

    The scenery changed from the inside of the ruin, to a ce a couple of kilometers away from it, on a rtively safe hill made out of volcanic rock, a portal appeared on the air, before three figures came out in a rushed way.

    Daimon fell to the ground, and those twonded on top of him, it would have been an enjoyable situation, if it wasn''t for the fact that he had used up around 90% percent of his stamina to use Switch eight times in a row to be able to escape from the ruin, making him be out of breath.

    "Ahh, that was so refreshing~", said the crazy girl who had zero intention of getting up and instead stuck to Daimon like bubblegum.

    Jasmine wasn''t that daring, but she was holding onto Daimon''s shirt, while she immediately got off him, but sat next to his body.

    "You came for me¡­", she said with a happy smiling expression, to which Daimon who was trying to shake off Sarah, chuckled.

    "You worked hard, wee back", he limited to say as he drank a potion to recover some of his stamina, just enough so that he could force Sarah away, to change his position to be sitting cross-legged.

    "You were right, I really hit him off with as much of my battle aura as I could gather on my foot without using a martial art and while I''m pretty sure I make some of his teeth to flew out of his mouth, when it was getting to the good part, something intervened, but I thought you were going to finish him off", said the crazy girl with a sulking expression, for both, being separated from Daimon and not being able to melt Adam''s head with her battle aura.

    Daimon shook his head in response.

    "Inside of that ruin, that¡­ "thing" had the advantage, that''s why we are luring them out, since Jasmine smartly stole that trident, they will for suree without any extensive preparations, that will be the right moment", he said.

    Jasmine smiled, as she heard Daimon''spliment, she had a hard time to not return to her happy self, when she heard Daimon''s voice in her ears, before Adam even arrived at thest room.

    He had marked a couple of useless things from the reward room with Switch, and when the portal forcefully transported them, both he and Sarah went stealth mode and then he changed ces with those things.

    Since the ck mantled figure was altering the structure of the ruin, he just waited until it was over and took the change, as the rooms weren''t separated by ling spatial distances, tomunicate with Jasmine.

    Apparently, the ck mantled figure, thought that the person Jasmine was waiting was Adam, she realized it quite early so she followed the act, and that helped them pull this off quite smoothly, she even vented out some of her anger towards Adam, and stole that treasure that made the light idiot look so happy.

    "Grrrrr", Jasmine''s stomach made a cute sound, she put quite a lot of strength in that attack, and after not eating or drinking anything as her ring was confiscated, she was naturally hungry, but only now that she felt safe and rxed again, she felt it.

    Needless to say, but her face cutely blushed, which made Sarahugh and hug her, while Daimon softly smiled as he took out a small snack from the inventory.

    "Here, have this for now, we have to reunite with our allies for the next step, we''ll be leaving this ce by tomorrow at most", said Daimon as he offered Jasmine the snack, while he observed the first real notification he has seen in some time.

    "Mm~", Jasmine epted the food and took some bites of it, while Sarah kept hugging her, to then say.

    "Still, I can''t believe the gentle and soft little Jas went straight for the nuts, you even flipped that bitch off, sigh, my little Jas has been corrupted by this cruel world~".

    Jasmine nearly choked with the food, her face was red as an apple as she mumbled with a low voice.

    "I-It''s not like that, I just did it without thinking, since Daimon told us that if we went for the kill it wouldn''t work, I just aimed at what I thought would hurt him the most¡­".

    Daimon bitterly smiled, Adam for sure deserved that and more, that being said even he couldn''t help but slightly shiver when he saw that attack from Jasmine thanks to Rita sharing her sight with him.

    ''Now that you mention it, she does give off a "wilder" vibe than before, just like back at the cave'', thought Daimon, but ultimately, he inwardly shrugged, it''s normal that Jasmine had changed after what she has gone through.

    Title:

    Jasmine''s return

 Chapter 511 Taken By Surprise With Oneâ€™s Pants Down

    ?

    A blushed Jasmine who was munching on the snack Daimon gave her, could be seen moving through the volcanic zone.

    Why is she blushing you ask, well, that''s because is carrying her like a princess as he runs through the area, with the crazy girl moving next to him while she gives him intense expecting gazes.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, this whole situation started because they had to reach the meeting point, they orded with Reyne and the others.

    Daimon had just recovered some stamina and could at most use Switch a couple more of times, before he would be forced to either receive Jasmine''s recovery spell, or use the effect of Sanctuary.

    But since those had a cooldown of a day, he didn''t want to waste them just forfort, since they could grant him a second chance to use Core Synchrony without any drawback.

    Which resulted in him carrying Jasmine, whose body was a bit worn out after being deprived of food, water and sleep, though she already took some potions and was eating small snacks to slowly calm down her hunger, her body needed some time to absorb the properties of the medicine.

    So, Daimon was acting as her legs right now, as you can imagine the crazy girl asked to be the next, arguing that she used a "lot" of battle aura and felt tired, just to be ignored by Daimon who started running towards the meeting point.

    "I-I was wondering, why is Sarah looking like that?", Jasmine tried to divert her mind to something else to calm her racing heart down.

    The crazy girl proudly smiled as she showed off the bracelet that was just bing visible on her wrist.

    "Because I wanted to use my betrothal gift as much as possible~", she said, making Jasmine gaze at Daimon whose right eyebrow was twitching right now.

    "Rita felt "something" searching for us, so I lent it to her, I originally thought it was the one who had captured you, but after seeing it in person, turns out that wasn''t the case", said Daimon.

    Not only that, Daimon had thought that the one behind Jasmine''s capture, wanted Adam to be the winner, but now¡­ things turned out to be moreplicated than that.

    ¡­

    Back at the ruin, the room was rumbling as the ck mantled figure cursed and broke things, in the meantime the girl from the church helped Adam heal faster, while the Ghoul Archbald sat next to Adam.

    "What happened boss, did you know those guys?", asked the Ghoul, to which Adam gritted his teeth, his face and his balls were still hurting due to what happened earlier.

    "The bitch that was in the cage, is someone which I saved and stabbed me on the back, just to escape, but I got back at her, which is why I''m surprised she is alive, as for the other two I don''t remember having seen them, but if they are with her, then they have to be eliminated", he said with a hatred filled voice.

    Adam saw the ck mantled figure approached them, and then said with a disdainful voice.

    "I can''t believe that the current hero candidate is weak enough to have the legacy of the previous hero, stolen right under his eyes".

    "Ah, you say that but you couldn''t stop them either, so don''t lecture me you fucking npc!", yelled Adam, to which the ck mantled figure snorted.

    "I see, you are at such a low level, in that case, let me put you to a better use", the ck figure snapped its fingers and Adam suddenly felt dangering his way.

    "Ariel, use the esca¡­", Adam suddenly froze, red lines appeared all over his body and he was deprived from his freedom.

    He red at Archbald and the girl from the church, but he was weirded at the fact that they were calm, the girl stopped healing him, and Archbald lost that dumb honest expression it always had, and a dead serious face reced it.

    "Finally, I was getting tired of this stupid brat", said the Ghoul as he stood up, the ck armored knight that had turned into ck dust, suddenly recovered and then became a ck sh that entered Archbald''s body.

    The Ghoul''s realm, abruptly skyrocketed, all the way from the Lord realm to the peak of the Arch rank, making Adam''s eyes widen in shock.

    Now imagine his face, when he saw the girl from the church hugging the Ghoul with a feverish expression.

    "Ah, my Lord, I have missed you so much, that trash kept looking at me with such obvious intentions, that it was hard to not poison him", said Ness.

    Archbald wrapped his arm around the girl from the church, and then turned to see the ck mantled figure.

    "So, what now, we needed him to use the trident, but he went and lost it like a retard?", he asked.

    "Don''t worry, only a "hero" can use it, and none of them are, we just have to retrieve it¡­", the ck mantled figure was interrupted by Archbald, who just got a message.

    "Your highness, we need your help!", it was a short message, that came from Dn''s ancestor.

    "Can''t we just kill him and get what he has, I had to give him one of my future brides so she could curse him the way you told me to?", asked Archbald clearly annoyed at the situation.

    Adam who was still frozen on the ground, due to the red lines that appeared on his body, remembered how Pa fell into his arms way easily than normal, and only now he realized he was yed, the Ghouls, the rebels from the church and the owner of the ruin were working together, in other words they caught him with his pants down.

    "No, but don''t worry, it''s not like we arepletely empty handed", said the ck mantled figure as it grabbed Adam''s sword.

    The hilt of the sword released some electricity as it refused to be used by anyone but its owner, to which the ck mantled figure snorted.

    "Obey", it said, the sword trembled and tried to attack the ck mantled figure, but then received a discharge of ck energy, making the previously bright silver de stain ck.

    "Here, it''s an initial level currently, but it''s not that bad, the most important thing is that you''ll be able to hurt "them" with it, without interferences", said the ck mantled figure as it threw the now lusterless sword at Archbald, who grabbed it.

    "Oh, what a nice weapon, no wonder Pa kept saying it was fit to be mine, speaking of that, you "stabbed" one of my ves, so it''s only fair that I do the same to you, sorry for that "boss", I''ll have to let out some steam", said Archbald as he stabbed Adam''s thigh with the sword.

    "Amnngghh!", Adam tried to scream, but his voice was restrained, Archbald was about to so it again, when the ck mantled figure stopped him.

    "Enough, we need him, also I suggest you to heed your brethren''s call, they are being chased away right now".

    "What!", Archbald shouted, he became a ck gust of wind and left the ruin along with Ness, leaving only Adam alone with the ck mantled figure.

    "Now, I know we can''t kill you right now, since you probably have a lot of ways to escape, but I can make you suffer a living hell, or you can cooperate and then we''ll let you leave, what do you say, little hero?", it asked.

    Adam immediately nodded, which made the ck mantleugh as it snapped its fingers, which made the red lines on Adam''s body gather on his neck, returning him his freedom.

    Just as he was about to talk with the angel girl, to break this curse and then escape from this stupid ce, to n how to get back at these guys, he heard the cold voice of the ck mantled figure.

    "By the way, if you even try to ask your administrator for help, you''ll lose one of your heads, and since I can''t kill you, you can imagine which will be, the curse won''t let you re-grow it for the next 50 years, so I suggest you obediently cooperate, ah, and next time watch out in whom you are sticking it".

    Adam''s words stuck in his throat, they have him by the balls, both literally and figuratively, but that was not the only surprising thing, it was the first time he has met someone other than Marcus who knew about systems, in other words, the one below those ck mantles, wasn''t an "npc" as he thought.

    Unfortunately, he didn''t have the right to demand answers, if he risked everything, he might be able to escape, but the curse would trigger and since his life isn''t in danger, he won''t be saved.

    "I''ll lend you a hand, but I have a condition¡­ that woman who you nned to give me, I want her", he said with a hatred filled expression.

    "Well, you sullied one of the women reserved for the recovery of the Blood King, so you have some balls, I''ll give you a chance, if you fulfill your mission, you can take one of them as your trophy", said the ck mantled figure, to which Adam nodded.

    ¡­

    Outside of the ruin, Archbald appeared floating on the sky, just to see the disastrous zone that this ce had be, what''s worse is that he could smell the blood from his descendants filling the air.

    His eyes got bloodshot, as he became a sh of ck light, the scenery suddenly changed to the area where the soldiers were previously shing, all those Ghouls were abandoned and were being massacred by the high echelon of the human side.

    "You fucking cattle!", he yelled, the air trembled as his voice echoed through the whole area, making the sky darken, all the human soldiers on the ground vomited blood.

    Old Ben, and his friend joined hands to fight against the pressure that Archbald was radiating and managed to bnce things out, the elder couple joined them and made Archbald click his tongue.

    "Count yourselves lucky cattle, now that this King is here, your race will be erased from the face of Kerrol!", having said Archbald turned into countless ck wisps of smoke and all the ghoul soldiers, that were still able to move also disappeared.

    "Hahaha, I can''t believe those two were hiding so much strength, we took those bastards by surprise with their pants down this time!", shouted old Ben, he was feeling quite happy right now.

    The reason is simple, Jeanne and Emily defeated an Archduke together, and then they each could fight on part with one, meaning they had one old monster free, so naturally they ganged up on the remaining Archdukes, killed one for good which made the others flee, leaving their subordinates behind.

    Those Dukes and other nobles, were likembs delivered at the door od hungry wolves, the old monsters ughtered them, they even wiped more than half of the army of the ghouls, before Archbald appeared, it was a crushing victory for the human side.

    "Let''s go back at the headquarters, to regroup", said old Ben, the others agreed and while the elder couple stayed behind to secure the safety of the soldiers and other lower ranked people, old Ben and his friend as well as Oliver and Dorothy returned to the headquarters, to guard the fort.

    On the way, Oliver could feel Dorothy''s usatory gaze and he sighed.

    "Don''t look at me like that, I didn''t know it either, but you can''t hold it against them, they even helped us avenge her, though we couldn''t get those two, at least we killed one Archduke, is the major victory we have ever had, since the days of the first king", said Oliver.

    "I don''t want to hear from you ever again, I''ll be taking Elliot with me, if that bitch is one of them, that means her daughter is the same, he was deceived and seduced by that little¡­".

    "Enough Dorothy", Old Ben''s friend put an end to Dorothy''sins, because he could see the dangerous expression she had.

    Oliver''s wife was his daughter, so he hated the flesh eating demons of course, but Jeanne and Emily had proven to be allies, or more urately they were enemies of their enemies, so cooperation was possible.

    Also,pared to his grandson, he actually found Reyne a better child, so much that it was a shame that she wasn''t her granddaughter.

    Oliver didn''t have mind for this drama right now, earlier he saw that only Reyne and udia left the ruin, and he had a bad premonition ever since that, though he saw that guy appearing along with one of the girls from the traitor branch of the church, he still felt something bad happened.

    The group soon arrived at the headquarters, where they saw Daimon and the others were resting and having a meal, there was a new face among them, but that''s not what caught their attention but the fact that¡­ Elliot was missing.

    Oliver and the others descended in front of them, old Ben and his friend stood aside, while Oliver approached Daimon to say with a shaky voice.

    "Did my son¡­", his voice was cut by a projection appearing on the air in front of them, naturally the clip showed what happened inside of the ruin, all the things that Elliot said and what tried to do.

    But there was a difference, in this version, Reyne didn''t kill him, it was the ogre the one who sneaked behind of him and killed him, while Reyne was just blocking him from attacking Daimon.

    "They are lying, they killed him!", shouted Dorothy, but as she was about to grab her weapon, a huge pressure fell on the area, making her fall to the ground, Oliver was about to help her, but old Ben stopped him from doing so, with a dead serious expression.

    Daimon stood up from his seat and walked towards Dorothy, he red at her from above as he slowly said.

    "I don''t have to give you exnations, I''m only doing this for Reyne, if you even think on doing something I will know it, and you''ll be dead before you realize it".

    Oliver who seemed to have aged a few dozens of years in a couple of seconds, bowed towards Daimon before saying.

    "I''m sorry for her behavior, please overlook it¡­ I have lost too much today already", he stole a gaze at Reyne as he spoke.

    Which made her inwardly sigh, Daimon was secretly taking the suspicions on himself, because in Oliver and the others minds, he was the one that could easily kill Elliot, that being said the projection was wless, so they couldn''t argue against that either.

    It was already good that the Reyne in the projection wasn''t aiming for the kill, but just fending off against Elliot.

    "Oliver, take Dorothy to her tent, and watch over her, take a rest too, we have to discuss the next steps", said old Ben.

    Oliver nodded and then took Dorothy who was in shock after being directly hit by Daimon''s Overlord''s Pride directly.

    As soon as old Ben confirmed they were gone and weren''t spying on them, he asked in a low voice.

    "Was it true what he said in that projection?".

    "Yes", answered Aster.

    "I see, did he¡­ suffer?".

    This time it was Reyne the one who took the initiative to answer.

    "No, it was instant and painless".

    Old ben sighed, he had lost a lot of people in his life, to be as affected as Oliver at this point, so he managed to keep his cool, not to mention that for the things Elliot was trying to do, unless he or his friend interfered, he would have been executed.

    The code of the Adjudicators is strict, they exist to protect humankind not for their own selfish reasons, that was the wish of the founder.

    "Thanks, little girl", he limited to say and then changed the topic.

    "So, what happened in the ruin, did you happen to meet that guy?", he asked as he stole a gaze at Jasmine.

    Judging by how that girl was closely sitting next to Daimon, and how familiar the dark green haired girl was acting towards her, they should have joined the exploration of the ruin for her sake.

    Daimon smirked as he dropped a bomb on old Ben by saying.

    "That was the Blood King, apparently they tricked he was working with those guys from the church, they tricked the idiot who had the key, and you were lucky, he is in a weakened state".

    "What!", as expected, old Ben and his friend were in awe at Daimon''s words, the Blood King was a legendary figure who supposedly fought against the first king, and was killed by him.

    As for why Daimon said it was in a weakened state, that''s because the guy is actually a Ster ranked, or used to be one to be more urate.

    But he wasn''t worried about him, but about the ck mantled figure, because neither his infinity eyes or Rita''s senses could see what was below those mantles, so it was an enemy on par with Nethereals, it might even be a Nethereal.

 Chapter 512 Blood samples

    512 Blood samples

    The moment Daimon mentioned the Blood King, old Ben and his friend Antonio, immediately set up a barrier around the whole area, which was kind of weird considering there was a barrier in ce in the headquarters, in the form of a beast treasure that had the form of a pir, in the center of the whole area, projecting an invisible field that would restrain and weaken Ghouls.

    It was something exclusively reserved for important battles, since they had limited number of those equipment, the sole ninth generation treasures, that are under the strict vignce of the two leaders of the Adjudicators.

    "Kid, are you sure of what you are said?", asked Antonio with a worried expression, to which Daimon nodded.

    "Well, he not only dered himself that, but was called that by the traitors from the church, that Archbald guy was also probably the one who turned Felix into a flesh eating demon", he said.

    Daimon couldn''t help but notice Emily clenching her hands, just as he was about to ask what was the problem, she herself exined the origin of her frustration.

    "That coward obtained an ability thanks to the blood of my father, so even if I managed to capture him, we can''t kill him¡­ nor interrogate him", she mumbled.

    The slightly heavy atmosphere, was broken by the crazy girl being as wild as usual.

    "Ah, just leave it to Gabriel, his torture methods are just ahh~", said the crazy girl as she tried to jump into Daimon''s arms, just to be dodged and fall to the ground, quite ungraciously.

    Sarah''s words made everyone besides Jasmine who covered her mouth with her hands to giggle, give Daimon weird gazes, which made thetter sigh.

    "Don''t listen to her, she is¡­ helpless, however I would like to have a try, that being said it will have to be under my own terms", said Daimon as he avoided the crazy girl like the gue.

    Emily''s eyes glowed, as she remembered the exnation Daimon gave them, about people who had "special abilities" and him being one of them.

    ''If it is him then he might be able to¡­'', she thought before saying.

    "Please lend me a hand, I¡­ want to be the one who kills him", she was so close to kill Felix earlier, when her transformation not only hit its limit, but all the Archdukes used some tricks to flee, so she only managed to capture Felix who sealed himself in a strange barrier, probably to stall for time knowing that the Blood King woulde out.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see old Ben.

    "I''ll get the information you need, but it won''t be for free, I want time alone with some of the prisoners you captured, I''ll be the one to chose which, deal?", he asked.

    "Deal", answered old Ben, they had no im over Felix since it was Emily and Jeanne the ones who captured him, but they needed the information.

    Unfortunately, with them revealing their real selves in front of practically all the higher human echelon, those guys had be wary of them.

    Previously, they were more tolerant because they thought that if anything happened, old Ben and the others would be able to easily suppress Emily, but now they saw that not only Emily but Jeanne too are quite strong, and that made them feel threatened which is why they are being avoided.

    Dorothy isn''t the only one that openly despised Emily after all, but now they had real motives to be wary of them, and while old Ben and Antonio don''t see things that way, they have to keep humanity tied tightly together, otherwise they will be eradicated, so the way they treated Jeanne and Emily had to change, from casual to a much more neutral way.

    Of course, that applied to Reyne as well, and she expected it, they were now acquittances at most, it wasn''t the best result but it wasn''t the worst either, people''s minds are hard to change after all.

    So now old Ben could only rely on Daimon to act as a mediator since he is "human", everyone saw him using the key which was passed down from ancient times, by the first king, so he was kind of a celebrity among humans as of current.

    After discussing a couple of things, old Ben and Antonio left to do their own things, they had to organize the army and prepare for the sh with the ghouls.

    "We don''t have time to lose, you two eat and rest in the tent, I''ll be back in a second", said Daimon to Jasmine and Sarah.

    "Mm", Jasmine nodded as she dragged Sarah along with her, they had some catch up to do, especially since she saw "that" on her wrist.

    "You also go and rest, though you didn''t use it, the change is still too harsh for your body", said Jeanne to her daughter, who followed Jasmine and Sarah, they only had one tent set up due to the promptness of the situation.

    After that, Emily led the way to a small cave which was behind the lines, this area where the temporary headquarter was settled, was originally a whole, but now a separate area was assigned to Jeanne and Emily to prevent friction.

    Naturally it didn''te with all the facilities that the other part had, so they had to improvise a prison for Felix and chose the cave at which Daimon was arriving right now.

    Emily waved her hand and the barrier opened to let them in, inside of the cave there was arge empty space in which center there was an adult sized red crystal that was being restrained by ck chains.

    "Even if it is a poor imitation¡­ that is still part of my father''s ability, so until that guy runs out of mana, I can''t do anything to him", said Emily with a hatred filled expression, seeing the ability that his father exclusively wielded being used by an enemy like that.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, that red crystal was interesting, it basically condensed not only all the mana of the one inside, but also a massive amount of vitality, though there was no battle aura, in a sense it was a mix between something a mage and a knight could do, simr to his strongest techniques that included both mana and battle aura.

    ''This is worth investigating, vampires in general can manipte vitality to a certain extent, one would believe they would be talented knights, and yet one rarely sees a high stage vampire Archknight, outside of the Nosfear'', he thought as he approached the red crystal.

    Felix looked the neer and he smirked, though he couldn''t speak as the crystal isted him from the outside, he could still move a bit in the small space inside of the crystal.

    But then Felix suddenly had a bad premotion as he saw the masked young man smirking as he took out a ck one-edged sword which exuded a strange aura.

    as he casually stabbed Disaster into the crystal, that was easily pierced as if it was nothing.

    09:36

    "Crack!", the very moment Disaster pierced the crystal, the thing cracked, as the capricious sword Daimon looked at the capricious sword which was "ignoring" him, apparently Disaster was sulking because Daimon didn''t let it destroy and devour the white cross bow, at least that''s what Narasha understood from it.

    ''For being a living catastrophe, you are quite childish you know, here I have a candy'', thought Daimon as he casually stabbed Disaster into the crystal, that was easily pierced as if it was nothing.

    "Crack!", the very moment Disaster pierced the crystal, the thing cracked, as the capricious sword started draining all the condensed vitality, which made Felix pale, while both Emily and Jeanne smiled.

    "We couldn''t scratch that thing even after hitting it with everything except our killer techniques, you know?", mumbled Jeanne with a small smile appearing at the corner of her mouth.

    It''s not like that ability of Felix was invincible, heck, Emily''s father who was way more skilled and stronger than Felix, ultimately fell, but it was perfect to stall for time, which is how Emily''s mother was able to escape from the capital to the wilderness.

    Unfortunately, that crystal was a condensed mass of energies, and as such, it was practically a snack for Disaster, as the cracks that kept appearing on the crystal in a matter of seconds, suggested.

    For Felix''s horror, the crystal in which he put everything he had, exploded into shards that were then devoured by the masked man''s ck sword, and he was then grabbed by his face, by thetter.

    "I''m short in time, tell me everything you know", calmly said Daimon, to which Felix snorted.

    "I will die even if I answer, just look at that woman''s murderous expression, now, if you guarantee my safety then¡­ aghhhhh!", Felix hadn''t even finished speaking when his eyes were burned by white mes, making him scream to the top of his lungs, his whole body squirmed as he experienced the worst pain of his life.

    "For someone that has lived quite some time, I would believe you know there are far worse things than dying, but again you became that guy''s dog to extend your life, so I guess I should have expected it", said Daimon as he kept burning Felix''s face.

    The recently turned into Ghoul old man, had used all his mana and the blood it had in storage, to form that crystal, his ring was naturally confiscated by Rita, before he could react, so he couldn''t resist at all.

    "S-Stop, I''ll talk!!!", he shouted, being burned by Demon Light is no joke, Daimon was able to inflict pain even to Nethereals who are supposed to be immune to it, so you can imagine how fucked up Felix looked, he had a burn with the shape of a hand, and his eyes were fried, so he was rolling on the ground, but the pain didn''t diminish at all.

    Jeanne took out a healing potion from her ring and threw it at Felix, making the vial explode on his face, smoke was released from the point of contact, and the burn slightly diminished, but it didn''t heal, in fact Felix was screaming once again.

    "Ah right, the alchemy of this is quite wed, just give him something to ease the pain, it will be faster than healing him", said Daimon, even Aurora praised Daimon''s white mes, she the best healer in Neptune had to get serious to cure a wound produced by Daimon''s Demon Light, so it would take a lot of the low efficiency healing potions of Kerrol to deal with it.

    This time it was Emily the one who acted, she was in charge of interrogation, so she had pain inhibitors in her ring, still she had to force quite arge doze down Felix''s throat, before he was finally able to keep quiet.

    "Was that your battle aura, I guess that strange little girl wasn''t bluffing", said Emily with an interested voice, which made Daimon bitterly smile.

    "Don''t pay attention to her words", he said, he was starting to miss the bone general, whose favorite hobby besides bragging about his young master, is torturing the enemies of his young master.

    "Heh, so you can also make expressions like those", said Jeanne from the sides, as she observed Daimon acting like a kid his "age", instead of his usual serious and sharp self.

    Daimon softlyughed, and then turned to see Felix as he started to interrogate him, mainly about the Blood King and the process used to turn him into a ghoul, unfortunately though Felix had a lot of information about the second, none of he living Archdukes knew much about the Blood King.

    "I-It is not only me, if anyone knew about the king that would have been¡­ her father, since the main branch of her family is said to have been the ones who received the most blood from the king back then, that''s why I choose this lineage for my transformation", said Felix as he pointed at Emily, whose eyes were deathly cold.

    She knew that if Ghoul''s blood and flesh weren''t poison for other Ghouls, the Archdukes would have consumed her father''s remains, instead they kept his blood for investigation, and one of the uses the blood of one of the two who were said to have the highest potentials, since the Blood King, was to create more Archdukes like Felix.

    Apparently, he wasn''t the first one to undergo the process, but was the first one that managed to survive, meaning the Ghouls had chances to infiltrate humans in the past, but failed due to their spies dying in such a dumb way.

    ''Idiots, if hybrids could be created so easily, most humans would have already done so'', thought Daimon, even back at the four gxies, where undead had the highest amount of knowledge regarding races and gics, besides the good old mass reproduction and hope to produce a result, variants couldn''t be produced in mass.

    At least not functional ones, those artificial tries to produce a talentedboratory being, ended in abominations with though strong battle capacities, short lifespans and gic damage, like the chimera created by that woman back at the prison.

    Besides that, Daimon also ordered Felix to give them the locations of human farms, and strategic ces of the traitors from the church.

    "Anything else you would like to ask?", said Daimon to those two just to see them shaking their heads.

    "Okay, then I leave it in your hands, don''t forget our deal", said Daimon as he moved aside to let Emily kill Felix.

    "Mm, thanks", said the dark grey-haired Emily, her hair painted pitch ck and her eyes turned blood red as she entered her vampire form.

    "The king will avenge my death, you''ll all follow me to hell", poisonously said Felix as he spat on the ground, unfortunately for him, Emily simply snorted, her right hand was covered in a wild looking ck and red armor, as she pierced Felix''s chest with it, and then tore of his heart out of his body.

    "Blegh!", having his heart carved out of his chest, Felix vomited blood and died on the spot, his skin became grey lifeless the next second as his corpse copsed on the ground.

    For Ghouls, the heart was actually more important than the head, the Archdukes could even survive if beheaded as long as their hearts were still there, naturally their hearts are usually protected quite fiercely, but Felix had no mana left and Disaster destroyed every defensive array on the armor and clothes he was wearing, so this result was obvious.

    Emily then closed her fist, crushing Felix''s heart in a puddle of red viscous liquid, which she observed with a sad expression on her pretty face, the blood in the heart of a Ghoul was the most important, and in Felix''s case, that blood was the one that he obtained from, Emily''s father.

    "I trust you won''t do anything to humiliate my father''s blood", said Emily as she offered her hand at Daimon, who shook his head and just took a few drops from it.

    "This is enough, but I suggest you to keep the rest, who knows it mighte in handyter", he said as he stored the vial in his inventory, he asked to keep a sample of Emily''s father''s blood, for his mission.

    Apparently unlike his ck Armored Shark lineage, for his vampire lineage quality was enough, he just needed a small sample that will be integrated into his own, and so far in what Ghoul regards, Emily''s father''s blood was the strongest.

    Naturally he wanted a sample from Jeanne and Emily, as they were the first and only Npsi he has ever heard off, and that was part of their deal, but he would obtain it, after everything was over.

    "So, vampires like you, can drink each other''s blood without any problem, I never felt the urge to drink Emi''s blood?", asked Jeanne with a curious voice.

    "Well, it depends, the races that exist back from where Ie, don''t find each other''s blood to be poisonous, but there can be detrimental effects depending on the case¡­ and I have only drunk the blood of a really selected group of people, this samples I''m taking are for different use", said Daimon.

    He will only use his fangs for the pleasure of his girls, that''s something he decided a long time ago, what he will do with the blood samples, involves his Apex Predator constitution to integrate other lineages, so he won''t be "drinking" them, but absorbing them.

    After all, it''s not like drinking other race''s blood is enough to obtain a lineage, but of course Emily and Jeanne didn''t know Daimon had that ability, but it had its limits, the Apex Predator had to consider the lineages worthy of being absorbed, or it had to be part of a mission, since even Emily''s father''s blood didn''t wake the interest of his Apex Predator one.

    ''I''m surrounded by cheeky things, that damnzy magic core and even my main lineage¡­'', thought Daimon as he inwardly sighed.

    "Ah right, here are the vials of blood we obtained from the Archdukes we fought, unfortunately

 Chapter 513 Adamâ€™s Offer

    ?

    Daimon walked towards the tent where the girls were staying, apparently, they had already chosen what they wanted from the pile of treasures, the rest was kept by Jasmie in a ring which she handed to Daimon when she saw him.

    Daimon epted the ring and sent it to the inventory without even looking at the contents, those treasures were quite decent, there were even few peak Arch ranked ones, in fact they would be rarities in Kerrol, because they weren''t beast equipment, but the kind of treasures found at the four gxies or Neptune, meaning they had arrays engraved on them.

    However, behind their shine and refined designs, they were ultimately created for anyone with the respective affinity of which the materials used to create them, so they were generic, which meant they didn''t have uses for the people inside of this tent, who all used personalized equipment.

    In case you wonder why all the girls looked happy, the answer is simple, though temporarily generic, they can be alter modified to fit their needs, and apparently everyone had a lucky find among the pile of treasures.

    "I guess this confirms the fact that the owner of the ruin, was working with the flesh eating¡­ Ghouls, was it?", said Emily as she observed the ck metal belt in her hands.

    Daimon was first a bit confused about what she meant, but then he realized Emily thought those treasures were specifically prepared for Ghouls, since they had arrays instead of a beast core embedded into them.

    Though he had exined his origins, he didn''t divagate to culture and simr things, he did tell them thatpared to Kerrol, the four gxies and Neptune were more advanced.

    "I didn''t mention it, but of all the ces I know, the standard for magic treasures is using arrays, though the Ghouls are quite outdated from my point of view, those are arrays", he said.

    "Oh, so that''s why you wanted those blueprints", said Reyne, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "Anyway, take a short rest and adjust to your better state, we have to meet the old man and the others in thirty minutes", he said.

    "Mm", with a low affirming sound, those three moved to their own beds, with were ced at the other side of the tent andid down, as they checked on their weapons and equipment, to see if there was anything that needed to be reced, it wouldn''t be funny if one''s weapon breaks midway an important battle, so this is a good practice for any mage or knight.

    Jasmine and Sarah on the other hand, stared at Daimon, they had be used to stay in a spacious bed along with him, but this time each all had individual sized ones, Daimon noticed that they were clearly expecting him to give the greenlight, which made him bitterly smile.

    "You can put them together if you want to, but I''ll be meditating, so you''ll have to keep it quiet", he hadn''t even finished speaking, when those two got up and pushed their beds together, to make arger one, that being said each one stayed in their own space.

    The previous of course caught Reyne''s attention, but after gazing at them for a couple of seconds, she turned her head away and continued checking on her equipment.

    Daimon inwardly sighed and then closed his eyes, unlike the fake notifications that appeared "physically" and could be seen by Sarah somehow, the notifications from the system could both appear in front of him, or seen inside his mind thanks to the log of the log of the system.

    [Congrattions on obtaining the Promise level treasure "Trident of the Storm"]

    [Trident of the Storm: An ancient weapon that is granted only to heroes that share a connection to the sea]

    [Permanent Characteristics:

    [Promise: The weapon will adapt to the user and grow with it (If it changes ownership, any previously gained characteristics will be reset]

    [Sea Favor: Any lineage rted to wind and water will receive a 10% boost, when wielding it]

    [Sea Enhance: Attacks involving water or wind will produce 10% more damage, at the same time, any attack with said elements will produce 10% less damage]

    [Personal abilities: None (please refine the trident with your energy and blood to activate promise, the process might take time depending on the user)]

    As soon as Daimon finished reading the log, he looked at the inventory where the trident was, and put on a contemtive expression.

    The thing was honestly amazing, for starters this magic weapon came from a system shop, because only those items had detailed exnations like that, for "foreign" items, he only got a small description and that was thanks to his infinity eyes, ording to Evangeline, he had to be a "Master Appraiser" to be able to get a detailed exnation like the ones that the system provided for anything that came from it, or other systems.

    And while he had easily obtained the fundamental knowledge of an appraiser, from the book he bought at the system shop, to advance he had toplete a mission to advance to "Novice Appraiser".

    ''Tsk, aren''t those who reincarnated supposed to obtain the skill "Appraisal" as part of their starter pack'', thought Daimon, as he remembered the ssic set ups for games back at earth.

    ''Well, you are still better than others, since you are my host you know, others can''t see the detailed descriptions of the items that aren''t from their own shops, until their systems are on an equal or higher level than the one from which the item came, but you can ignore that'', said Evangeline with a proudful voice.

    ''Yeah, our Eve is the best, let me guess only now I met the "requirements" to learn that systems have levels, was it because it''s the first item from other system user I have gotten?'', asked Daimon.

    ''Mm, wait until the next time you upgrade the system, I have some surprises for you~'', answered Evangeline in a somewhat happy voice, though she likes to joke with him, whenever the restrictions of the system allowed her to give more information to Daimon, she immediately did.

    It''s worth mentioning that such a thing was up to the administrator, it was an optional kind of thing, the administrator could willingly help the host or limit to fulfill its obligations, which at most made it neutral towards the host.

    Luckily, Daimon and Evangeline had gotten closer over the past eight years, so now they were friends, instead of just host and administrator, the difference could easily be seen, whenpared to Adam and Marcus whose administrators weren''t exactly fond of them.

    Daimon then looked at the ongoing mission, he rushed to the ruin to reunite with Jasmine, since Adam was led there, then the prize for clearing it, wasn''t going to be the legacy of the hero, which he needed for his mission.

    Remember that he stole the major opportunity from Adam in what Neptune regarded, which was used to trigger his mission, so what Adam obtained was the next better opportunity.

    ''If the second-ce prize was so broken, what will the big prize be like'', he wondered.

    The trident was "inactive" and yet it already had such incredibly good characteristics, and unlike Jasmine who was unable to obtain the benefits from the trident, Daimon could, despite him not being a hero type system user, probably Eve knew why, but she remained silent, so restrictions were in ce.

    Still, in Daimon''s rough calctions, even inactive the trident gave a simr sensation to half Ster rank magic weapons, and most importantly, the thing allowed Jasmine to bypass Adam''s tricks and seriously wound him, while Sarah who had the bracelet of the god of mischief did trigger some kind of defensive measure.

    Though the thirty minutes hadn''t gone by yet, Daimon suddenly opened his eyes for three reasons, first, he had recovered his stamina almostpletely, while his mana and battle aura were at its max, it was still "night" and the boosting effect was doing wonders for him and Sarah, though for some reason Jasmine wasn''t affected by it.

    The second reason was that he could feel those two were now stuck to him, he opened his eyes just to see both Jasmine and Sarah looking over his shoulders, the third reason was that a fake notification had been triggered.

    [Complete the mission given by the guardian of Kerrol to go back from where you came, a penalty will be given if you refuse]

    "Woah, is that the thing you mentioned, Sarah?", curiously asked Jasmine, turns out she could also see the fake notifications.

    "Yup, though they look cool, and even give some interesting things, most of the times the messages are stupid", jokingly said the crazy girl, referring to the hero crap that the fake notifications tried to force Daimon to do.

    Daimon could feel the dubitative gazes from Jeanne, Emily and Reyne, since they couldn''t see the fake notifications, for them, it just liked like those two were flirting with him, well, Sarah''s obvious intentions didn''t help.

    But before he could exin them what was happening, he received a message from old Ben.

    "We have a problem, pleasee to the tent of leaders¡­ and bring the others with you" the message was short, but Daimon could more or less what was happening, based on the fact that the fake notification wasn''t triggered by him, which meant it was caused by Adam.

    "That idiot is causing problems to us again, right?", asked the crazy girl, to which Daimon shook his head.

    "No, independently of that, we can return if needed, so let''s go see what they want", he said, unlike Adam he wasn''t affected by the whims of the so called "guardian" of Kerrol, which was probably the ck mantled figure.

    The moment he reunited with Jasmine, Evangeline told him that just by wishing so, they could leave Kerrol, he hadn''t done so, because they still have some time and he wants to obtain the legacy of the hero as it is part of his mission, his instincts told him that he was close, so he gave it a go.

    Worst case scenario, he can always leave, and now that he has the white metal cross bow, the ck mantled figure knows that it is futile to try and take away Daimon''s teammates forcefully, which is why it hadn''t tried to do it.

    Naturally, that''s the reason as to why the ck mantled figure isn''t trying, but Daimon isn''t trusting the cross bow to save him, he now had learned how to prevent it, thanks to Will Maniption, if they try to take away any of the girls, they''ll stay together and go together, at least.

    "That female Archduke which escaped from you, is at the tent where we are going", said Daimon, taking Jeanne and Emily by surprise, not only because their sworn enemy was at the human headquarter, but because Daimon was able to tell, while they didn''t notice it.

    Well, to be honest, Daimon didn''t it notice first, it was Rita the one who told him, but since she was her young master''s eyes and ears, it was the same, at least that''s how she saw it, and that wasn''t all¡­ Adam was also there, they suddenly appeared outside of the headquarters, and asked to be allowed to enter to have a talk, ording to Rita.

    "Don''t worry, whatever they try, we''ll be fine", confidently said Daimon, to which those three nodded, while Sarah and Jasmine smiled, Daimon always brought them this sensation of easiness and safeness.

    ¡­

    On their way to the tent where the leaders of humanity gathered, Daimon could clearly feel the gazes from the soldiers that were patrolling the area, and he more or less realized what was the problem mentioned by old Ben.

    ''Let''s see what you''ve got'', he thought as they arrived at the leader''s tent, the guards tensed up when they saw Jeanne and Emily, but the voice of old Bening from inside the tent, made them ease up.

    "Let them in".

    The guards obeyed and stood aside, "allowing" Daimon''s group to enter the tent, this tent was quiterger than the personal ones, there were guards all over the ce, and there was arge table, in which the leaders of humanity were sitting.

    Daimon could feel the murderous intent that Jeanne and Emily were radiating, the moment their eyesnded on the ck haired woman that was standing at the other side of the tent.

    And the feeling was reciprocated, as the woman''s eyes got bloodshot, not only that, Jasmine and Sarah also red at Adam with clear hostility, while Adam red back,

    The atmosphere inside the tent suddenly tensed up, so old Ben was forced to interfere.

    "Ahem, say what you came to say, envoys from the flesh eating demons", he said.

    Apparently, Adam was sent as an envoy by the ck mantled figure, and Emily''s aunt came to act as his bodyguard, Adam nodded at old Ben and then said.

    "We came here to propose a temporal truce, as you already know, the Blood King who stands above all the flesh eating demons, has returned, and has proposed that for the next 100 years both sides don''t fight each other, since I''m a human as well, I have spoken on behalf you and gotten the right to give you back some of the humans that were imprisoned in secret ces, we''ll give you a list with names and portraits for you to choose".

    "The blood king is displeased by the way his descendants managed things during his absence and is willing to take a "trial test" to see if both races can coexist, depending on the result, 100 years from now, there is a chance for a permanent alliance to exist".

    "In case you wonder about the difference in "diets" between the two races, as you heard directly from Cardinal Felix, the flesh eating demons will be capable of surviving exclusively on blood, now that the Blood King is back, so the two races can be at peace and even proper through themerce of decent quality blood".

    "The only thing the Blood King asks from you, is that you surrender the ones that had offended him, inside the ruin, namely those three", said Adam as he pointed at Daimon, Sarah and Jasmine, to then add.

    "Here, a one time contact method, you have one hour to think about it, don''t let this chance to finally end the war between the two races, slip from your hands", he said as he ced amunication device on the table, the woman red at Emily and Jeanne to then take Adam who was giving Daimon a mocking gaze, away with her.

    Antonio escorted them out from the human headquarters, to then return, naturally all the gazes now fell on Daimon''s group, after a few seconds of hesitation, an Adjudicator from Antonio''s side, spoke.

    "What will we be doing, leaders¡­", the first one to talk, unleashed the chaos, as many started voicing their opinions.

    "What''s up with that suggestive tone, they want us to give up the one who wields the treasure that was passed down from the first Adjudicator, they are afraid of us!", said another guy.

    "We can always retrieve the "key", did you not hear the conditions given, we''ll be able to recuperate many people from the human farms, they will all be like first king, top call fighters, not to mention a truce of 100 years, in which we can finally restore the glory of humanity", said another guy, refuting the previous Adjudicator.

    "My family recently lost on a battle and some of our young generations as well as my brother were captured, many here had gone through the same, we might be able to get our rtives back¡­", added a female Adjudicator.

    "T-The first king sacrificed himself for the sake of humanity, anyone here will willingly do the same if it meant ending this war, it is only normal for the sessor of the first king to show the same nobility", said another Adjudicator, this time from old Ben''s side.

    ''Heh, that old man is quite upright, simr to Oliver, so this is why he asked me to bring those three as well'', thought Daimon as hepletely ignored the differentments.

    Everyone here saw Jeanne and Emily''s strength earlier, so while some were daring enough to voice their opinions, no one dared to make a move on their own, the only ones that could put Jeanne and Emily in danger, were the four old monsters, besides them, there were a few that were confident to sh head on with them, but not sure if they could win, among which there was Oliver and of course Dorothy.

    "What the hell are we even arguing about, they aren''t part of our order, but some selfish trashes that just arrived at out city, brought by that little¡­", before she could finish speaking, Antonio interrupted.

    "That''s enough Dorothy", but this time the woman didn''t concede, she instead replied in a hysterical voice.

    "YOU DIDN''T SEEK JUSTICE FOR ELLIOT''S DEATH, BECAUSE OF THE CODE, WELL THE CODE STATES THAT A SINGLE LIFE CAN''T GET IN THE WAY OF HUMANITY!", she shouted.

    Old Ben who had remained silent until now, turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "Could you please tell us, your opinion regarding the so called "offer" they made, since they im that you offended the Blood King inside of the ruin".

    Daimon shrugged in response.

    "I believe you know the answer already, you two had to join hands to resist against that guy, what do you think will happen if you give him a hundred years to recover", coldly said Daimon.

    A sepulchral silence fell in the room, the others didn''t know that, from their point of view, it was old Ben the one who stopped the Blood King, they were being too suppressed by Archbald''s pressure to properly evaluate the situation back then.

    Only the four old monsters knew the truth, well at least until a moment ago, since the cat was out of the bag now.

    As expected, most of the guys who were voicing such "brave" opinions, were now pale, Dorothy saw that the wave she raised was dying miserably and she finally couldn''t keep it together, she moved to draw her weapon out but her body froze before she let out a blood curling scream.

    "Aghhhh!!!", the motive behind that scream, was her whole right arm being ripped apart from her body, and then her body being smacked against the ground, her head first.

    Everyone reacted, after noticing that the "invisible" attacker wasn''t stopping, Dorothy''s head was being continuously smacked against the ground, creating the illusion that she was bowing towards Daimon as if to beg pardon.

    Antonio and Oliver moved at the same time, while Oliver tried to make Dorothy stop before she cracked her own skull, the old knight who could "feel" from where the attack wasing appeared in front of Daimon.

    The idea was just to demand him to stop, but when appeared there, his body froze, forcing him to release his battle aura, but even then, he was sent flying backwards and restrained by invisible threads midair.

    All the other Adjudicators stood up from their chairs, just to freeze the next second as they felt something tightening around their necks, the people here were all veterans, despite their previous outburst, now that their lives were on the line, they immediately reacted by ceasing every movement, because they could tell that their heads would separate from their bodies if they tried anything.

    Even Oliver was stopped from moving, and forced to see how Dorothy''s face kept being banged against the floor, though at this point she was unrecognizable.

    "It seems you are misunderstanding something, your battle is none of my concern, I have something I need to do here, after that I''ll leave, if you get in my way, you''ll be apanying that idiot who came here to try and put you against me, in hell".

    "I''ll give you everything I have, she will never appear before you again, please¡­ she is myst remaining family", said Antonio, his neck was bleeding since he wasn''t allowed to talk, so the shadow threads created by Rita were tightened around it, cutting him.

    It''s worth mentioning that Rita didn''t stop smacking Dorothy''s head against the ground, luckily, she was a knight or she would have died at this point.

    "Do you think she would have forgiven my life if the situation was reversed?", said Daimon, to which Antonio''s body trembled as he remained silent.

    "Me neither", said Daimon, but as he was about to order Rita to kill the woman, old Ben raised his hands and then said.

    "If you let her live, all the Adjudicators at my disposition will aid you in your battle, I guess even you won''t have it that easy to kill a few dozens of thousands of enemies¡­ too fast, right?".

    "Same here", said Antonio, getting the message from his old friend, to which Daimon snapped his fingers, only then Dorothy who had fainted a long time ago, was allowed to finally stop.

    That being said, she wasn''t left out of the hook so easily, her body retorted as a hole was ripped on her stomach, at the area below her navel.

    "Aghhhh!", the pain actually woke her up, just in time for her to see her battle aura leaking out of her body, that attack cracked her magic core, and while it wasn''t enough for her to die, she will soon stop being a knight.

    "Deal", said Daimon as he stood up, the threads around all the present''s necks, were removed and they were finally allowed to breath without the threat of dying.

    "Don''t forget, if you even think on doing something funny, I can kill you all with a snap of my fingers and you won''t be able to do a thing", he said as he got up to leave, apanied by the girls.

    Old Ben helped Antonio get up and then they both looked at Dorothy and were surprised at the precision of the previous attack, she will 100% survive¡­ as a normal human from now and onwards.

    Which is understandable, Rita executed her young master''s orders with utmost care, so since he asked her to not kill Dorothy, she perfectly did as she was asked.

    "Sigh, why didn''t you listen to me little girl¡­ the one who you despised saved you once, it wasn''t going to repeat", said Antonio as he gave his daughter a healing potion.

    Surprisingly, through all the previous, the people from the church didn''t move nor voice any opinion, until now at least.

    "I guess we are even in the "screwing things over" counter, now, we''ll also be participating in the battle, that girl saved our udia from Felix''s attack, we owe them that at least", said the two of them.

    Old Ben sighed as he helped Oliver who was sitting on the ground, with a nk expression on his face.

    "We aren''t even his enemies and ended up like this, I can''t wait to see what will be the fate of the flesh eating demons who are actually his enemies", said the old man, making Oliver bitterly smile.

 Chapter 514 Peace Was Never An Option

    ?

    Outside of the leader''s tent, while the crazy girl and Jasmine didn''t seem to be the least surprised by what happened a moment ago, Jeanne, Emily ad Reyne were obviously gued by questions.

    Daimon naturally noticed it, and as they walked through the headquarter, under the hostile gaze of the soldiers that previously idolized him, Daimon said.

    "We''ll talk inside the tent, our previous discussion hasn''t changed at all".

    "Mm", Jeanne and Emily nodded and then changed their attention to the soldiers that were observing them from afar with wat expressions.

    Naturally, after what happened a moment go, old Ben and the others, immediately passed down themand to not approach Daimon''s group under any circumstances, if what was happening inside that tent would have continued, humanity would have lost its higher echelon un a single sweep.

    That being said, the leaders didn''t give specific exnations, so now everyone thought that Jeanne and Emily must have done something, as for Daimon who was treated like a "hero" before, he was a considered a traitor to humanity for allying with them.

    Some especially viciousments involving Reyne, who used to be considered one of the dreamed lovers of a lot of members of the young generation, could be heard here and there too.

    After all, everyone knew about the key holder on the flesh eating demon''s side, who was a human that was seduced by the daughter of the traitor Cardinal, so they just put Daimon in the same category.

    Once they reached the tent, Jeanne and Emily created a barrier around them, though they couldn''t imagine old Ben and the others trying to attack Daimon after what happened, who knows what a cornered person might do.

    Feeling the curious gazes of those three on him Daimon chuckled and then said.

    "Though a bitte, let me introduce you to my¡­ head maid, Rita", following Daimon''s words, his shadow extended until it covered the whole room, before Rita who was barely able to restrain the urge to smile, emerged from the shadow.

    If it was some time ago, she would have been kneeling down after receiving her young master''s call, however the reward she requested from Daimon allowed her to act and speak in an informal way.

    And though she still has a hard time adapting to it, she has started to ept the privilege Daimon has granted her, to act without asking for permit, since he trusts her judgement, unlike with the bone general who has an incredibleck ofmon sense.

    "A pleasure", said Rita as she slightly rose the sides of her dress, before sinking into Daimon''s shadow once again, she isn''t fond of being in public after all, besides there is no morefortable ce for her, than her young master''s shadow.

    Once Rita returned to Daimon''s shadow, the room returned to normal and light was radiated by the magicmps that were ced inside of the tent.

    This time, not only Jeanne, Emily and Reyne were surprised, Jasmine and even the crazy girl were surprised, because they have seen Rita before and know that she is ate stage peak Archmage, but now she was giving off a different sensation.

    It was only for a second, but her presence was that of a Ster ranked for sure, Jeanne and Emily had contemtive expressions on their faces, which Daimon could understand.

    "You are wondering why did I make a contract with you, if I have such a strong person at my side, right?", he said as he sat down on the bed.

    "Mm, from what I can see you could have alone overpowered the four leaders of the human side, they would have needed to put their lives on the line just to defend against that woman called Rita", said Emily.

    "Even if Emi and me join hands, I think well be at most able to match up to her but once our transformation ends, we''ll lose, not to mention that she honestly gives off a simr sensation to the Blood Archdukes, if you went to their side, you would have been worshipped by them for sure", added Jeanne.

    Daimon nodded in response, some of the guys back at Brown Wind town, freaked out when Rita appeared, and he finally understood why after seeing the Archdukes.

    Turns out, that besides Sarah and him, the only ones he has seen who are able to enjoy the boosting effect of Kerrol''s atmosphere, are the Archdukes, to put in simple words, the Archdukes are Dukes that have learned how to surpass the limit of the Arch rank, by using that boosting effect.

    But as the fact that Daimon who has infinitely harder than others to advance, due to what each minor realm represents for him, bing a Lord rank thanks to the boosting effect, the Archdukes suck at taking advantage of Kerrol''s atmosphere.

    The Blood King on the other hand can properly use the boosting effect, and he use to be only peak Arch rank that was able to, that is until Rita appeared.

    "To put it in simple words, we are exploiting a w of this world, to excel a stronger power than normal, and I''m not stupid enough to rely on such a thing, when there were to some people worth allying with, especially because I was in a bit of a hurry", said Daimon as he gazed at Jasmine, whose face blushed on the spot.

    Jeanne and Emily smiled, happy with the answer they got, leaving that aside the had another important question to make.

    "Why did they conceded like that, the offer they made was actually quite generous, if not for the existence of the Blood King, I''m pretty sure those guys would have epted it", said Jeanne.

    "That''s because I have something they need, which is why they yed that idiot to guide him to obtain it, only to have it stolen by Jasmine", said Daimon before adding.

    "That being said, you should never, ever trust in anything that guy says".

    ¡­

    At the same time, at the Ghoul headquarters, two figures were just arriving at the entrance, they were the female Archduke and Adam.

    "His majesty has ordered you to go the royal tent", said the woman with a disgusted expression, which made Adam grit his teeth.

    "I''m not his subordinate, I''m working with him so¡­", before Adam could finish speaking, the female Archduke lost interest and turned away to leave.

    "Feel free to stay outside then, you''ll cower and rush to the royal tent in a moment, whether you want it or not", she said as she left.

    Adam spat on the ground, he really felt the urge to order the angel girl to take out of this stupid ce, but the idea of losing his dick for 50 years, made him tolerate the humiliation.

    ''I have already fulfilled the first part of the mission, by nting the seeds of conflict, that bitch will for sure be handed by those guys, then I can retrieve that stupid trident and get the hell out of here, just you wait, I''ll be sure to return this humiliation'', he poisonously swore to himself.

    Adam truly had no intention of going to Archbald''s tent, so he walked towards the rundown ce that was assigned to him, just to suddenly feel dizzy.

    "What the hell is going on now¡­", Adam raised his head and his eyes widened in shock as he saw pirs of red liquid falling from the sky, until a red sea was formed around the Ghoul headquarters.

    Adam felt his heart beating faster than normal, and the next he knew was that blood wasing out of his mouth.

    "Blegh!", with blood exploding out of his mouth, Adam turned around and rushed towards the only ce that gave a "safe" sensation for him, which of course was Archbald''s tent.

    On the way he noticed that the sea of red liquid had started to flow into the tents of all the soldiers, and a few of the nobles, in the form of a red tsunami that was following him.

    Though he knew that he wasn''t going die from this, that red tsunami gave him a bad premonition, he had started to feel a bit paranoic after he was stabbed by Jasmine, since that trident was supposedly exclusive for heroes, she would have been attacked by it the moment she held it,

    "Fucking hell!", he cursed as he jumped into the tent,nding on the ground in an ungracious way.

    "Hey, if it isn''t the "boss", how did the mission go?", a mocking voice came from the other side of the tent, making a vein pop in Adam''s neck as he turned to see the origin of it, just to feel even more enraged at the sight of Archbald sitting on a throne having Pa and the girl from the church, sitting on hisp.

    He now learned that, it was Pa the one who ced the curse that immobilized him earlier, as to why his defensive measures didn''t react, it was because the true nature of the curse was a "blessing", it only restrained the movements of those that didn''t act as a hero should, so when he tried to escape, it was triggered.

    Up to this moment he still was at a loss on how these guys found such an obscure way to bypass his defensive measures, but what angered him the most is that the women that were supposed to be his toys, tricked him like that.

    "Oh,e on, don''t look at my brides like that, you can only me yourself for being stupid after all", said Archbald with bloodshot eyes.

    Adam snorted as he red at Pa.

    "Enjoy the second-hand goods as much as you want, once I finish my mission I''m out of here, I have passed the message so you can expect them to ept in the next thirty minutes", he said.

    Archbald''s face twisted upon hearing that, it was a sore spot that he ha to "sacrifice" one of his brides, for the n that the owner of the ruin had, which he epted in order to obtain the power he desired, and what''s worse he couldn''t kill the one that cucked him.

    "It seems like losing one of your swords didn''t teach you a lesson, how about losing another one", said Archbald as he waved his hand.

    A monstrous arm made of a viscous red liquid formed out of nowhere and attacked Adam, who suddenly felt as if his body was pressed down by a mountain.

    ''Shit!", he inwardly swore, the attack wasn''t lethal and that meant it wouldn''t trigger his life-saving methods.

    "Do you think I''m that much of a pushover!", Adam shouted as he waved his hand, a white sword appeared on his hand, and then released a shinning white dazzling light.

    Archbald was taken by surprise, not only his attack was immediately blown away, but the lighting from that sword was aimed directly at his neck, and he felt threatened by it.

    That being said, he managed to react on time and jumped from his throne which was evaporated the next second, but then he felt a trembleing from his left side, and he turned to see the origin of it, just to see that the girl from the church was missing the left side of her chest as well as her arm, and was about to die.

    Pa released her mana, just in time to block another radiance shot by that sword, but was sent flying out o the tent which was burned a hole through it.

    Archbald''s eyes dyed red, he forced a vial with a red liquid down the mouth of the girl from the church, which stopped the bleeding, her cells started recovering at a visible ratio, but she was screaming in pain.

    The Blood King then waved his hand and the ck sword, which used to be Adam''s, appeared on his hand, but as he was about to kill the bastard in front of him, the ck mantled figure appeared out of nowhere, and created a wall between those two.

    "Enough Archbald, did I not tell you to not mess with him!", said the ck mantled figure with a severe voice, there was a change, usually the voiceing from behind those mantles was a genderless one, but now, it was clearly the voice of a woman.

    "And you¡­ keep that weapon away", said the woman to Adam.

    "I want my sword back once the deal is over, otherwise I''ll kill that bastard, fifty years are starting to sound bearable, so tell him not fuck with me", said Adam as he sent the white sword back to his inventory.

    Archbald saw red but when he saw the ck mantled woman ring at him, he ultimately swallowed his anger and sheathed the sword.

    "Now go ready yourself, this battle won''t be like any of the ones you have faced before, how much did you prepare?", said the woman, to which Archbald answered.

    "I prepared as much as I could, all the cattle in the farms were "sacrificed", the current humans don''t know why the leader of the flesh eating demons is called "Blood King", but after today they will never forget, well, that is if there are humans still living in Kerrol in the future", said the Ghoul.

    "A mere half-baked half Ster like you dare to say such a thing, you can be arrogant here, but in front of the experts I have seen, you are nothing", said Adam as he turned to leave, making the ghoul grit his teeth.

    The ck mantled woman didn''t scold Adam and instead followed him out of the tent, not without saying.

    "If you make the n fail due to personal affairs, you are dead".

    At the same time, Archbald could see Adam looking at him from the corner of his eyes, with mockery.

    ''Tough luck fucker, the one that has a leash on you turned out to be a woman, just watch by the sides and regret not having been born with the qualities of a hero like the great me, you fucking npc!'', thought Adam as he left.

    ¡­

    Back at the human headquarters, there was a turmoil going on, the moment those pirs of red liquid came down from the sky, even if the distance between the two headquarters was quite big, the humans all felt as if something was crawling up their skins.

    And it was for a good reason, that huge amount of red liquid was all blood, human blood to be precise, that being said, that''s not all that was there, otherwise the liquid won''t be as viscous as it looks, flesh, bone, organs, everything was turned into those red pirs that were now surrounding the enemy''s headquarters.

    Old Ben and the other three leaders, as well as Oliver who was the second inmand, came out of the leader''s tent, and their faces ckened at the smell that assaulted their noises.

    "It hasn''t been even fifteen minutes, those fucking bastards!", shouted old Ben.

    "H-How many people was needed to create that?", mumbled the female elder from the church.

    Antonio saw Daimon''s group approaching and he didn''t know how to react, he was angry that his daughter ended up in such a state, but on the other hand she was the one at fault, not to mention her life was spared.

    Old Ben turned to see the neers, it was easy to know who they were, because the nearby soldiers all tensed up and prepared in case a fight broke out on the spot.

    "That is quite arge amount of vitality, using nine star knights as reference that would still be a few hundreds of thousands", said Daimon.

    The nearby people all paled after listening to his words, due to the first king being someone that escaped from the human farms being a knight, the humans kept there weren''t allowed be knights, but forced on the mage''s path.

    Apparently, Ghouls liked more the flesh and blood of mages either way, so it wasn''t that much of a loss to them, anyway, a knight has many times the amount of vitality than a mage.

    Meaning that based in Daimon''s calctions, those pirs were created by killing a few millions of humans and that is assuming that all the humans in the farms were allowed to be mages, which wasn''t the case for sure.

    "I see, so while we were busy arguing among ourselves those bastards were acting behind our backs, damn it!", yelled old Ben.

    All the people that earlier thought that it was a good idea to hand Daimon''s group for a truce, were now burning with anger, they realized that the flesh eating demons were just ying with them, such arge scale sacrifice couldn''t be prepared in fifteen minutes.

    That guy who came earlier was just nting dissension among them, peace was never an option to begin with, and the worst part is that they fell for it, and drove out the one that would have brought them victory.

    "That is the biggest blood sacrifice I have ever heard off, among the records of the church, there is one that said that the subordinates of the Blood King will be stronger, when the king is present, the soldiers that wille to attack us, won''t be anything like before, we need to call all the reinforcements we can", said the male elder of the church.

    "You won''t be able to use the spatial array now, those pirs are messing up with the space of this ce, by the time you reach an unaffected area, they will be at your door", said Daimon.

    "Then what you suggest us to do?", asked one of the secondary leaders, to which Daimon smirked.

    "Well, you guys pretty much don''t have a choice but to attack now, those pirs are strengthening the enemies each second, the longer this drags on, the harder you''ll have it".

    "Everyone prepare to depart!", without a second of dy, old Ben gave the order, at this point he could only pray that the masked youth''s goals aligned with them, so he lends them a hand at the battlefield, even if it isn''t for the sake of humanity, surviving is surviving after all.

    It''s not like he was expecting Daimon to do all the work, but judging by the auraing from the Ghoul''s headquarter, at least three of the leaders will be needed to keep the Blood King in check, meaning only one leader will be able to support the others.

    And two Archdukes escaped earlier, so the ughter would be on their side this time, unless Jeanne and Emily join the fight to bnce things out, since Oliver isn''t at the level to take on an Archduke and win, without suffering heavy wounds currently.

    Seeing that Daimon wasn''t moving, the four leaders started advancing towards the enemy, only then Daimon and the others flew with Jeanne''s help, they were staying behind the lines of the human army, which made some of the soldiers grit their teeth.

    Unfortunately for them, Daimon had no intention of putting his life nor the ones of his teammates, in danger for them, the only reason as to why he was siding with them, was because they were needed for his n, whether they survived or died would depend on their own strength and luck too.

    "Stick up to the n, once the targetes out, we make our move, meanwhile stary next to me at all moment", said Daimon.

    "Mm", the girls nodded as they approached the enemy''s headquarters, the whole group was stopped by the red pirs from which that viscous blood kept seeping out.

    "Fire mages go!", shouted old Ben.

    While light might be the best counter to negative kind of spells, like the blood sacrifice used by the Ghouls, the blood could still be used by them, even after purified, so they needed to eliminate it, and for that, fire spells were perfect for the job, having wide areas of effect and fire being amon affinity.

    "Haaaa!", a squad made up of exclusively fire mages chanted and a tsunami of mes fell upon the red pirs, making a ck smoke be released from them, the blood wasn''t evaporating as it should, which was a sign of how much people was killed, to have such a density.

    But then they all felt a sensation of danger and turned to see origin of it, just to witness the majestic appearance of Daimon wielding the white cross bow passed down by the first Adjudicator.

    "Let''s speed things up a bit", said Daimon, a white me ball condensed in front of the cross bow which was then shot in the form of a white me arrow,pared to the sea of mes ahead the arrow looked ridiculous.

    But the moment the white arrow made contact with the sea of mes, the nearby fire started to change its color to that same white, and before they noticed the dark night was illuminated by a huge tsunami of white mes.

    And then a requiem of pained screams, could be hearding from the Ghoul headquarters, which only added more fun to the party that was about to start.

 Chapter 515 Battle On The Surface, War Behind Scenes (Part 1)

    ?

    While for others, the giant red pirs might be terrifying, considering the facts that they were created by sacrificing countless of human lives and they are also part of arge scale array, which has the property to intimidate, for Daimon it was just a big open target.

    The rune masters of Kerrol were outdated from Daimon''s point of view, for starters, this array, not only interfered with the human side, but it applied to them too, the barrier around their headquarter was cancelled due to the red pirs.

    It wouldn''t have really mattered since he has the infinity eyes, not to mention Rita at his side, but one of the most important parts of an array, is to hide they way the energy used in them, flows.

    Otherwise, someone with sharp eyes, can look into the inner circuit of the array, and crack it from the inside, or exploit a w.

    The Ghouls were confident that humans who used a different system in the form of Beast Equipment, wouldn''t know about how their arrays worked, and their rune masters sucked too, the result was a trash inferior product of an array that was full of openings.

    For example, the screams that could be hearding from the Ghoul headquarters, were caused because this array had the property to infuse the energy gathered in the pirs, into the many distribution spots, designated by the creator of the array.

    But there was also a "safety measure", which is the fact that for it to work, it had to first pass through a main node, that was of course the distribution spot reserved for the Blood King.

    The previous is the reason as to why the attacks from the fire mages, didn''t do noticeable damage to the red pirs, nor caused any waves within the Ghoul headquarter, the Blood King simply infused his battle aura into the array to protect it, since it was a two-way path, to give him full control, in case some of the Ghouls got any funny ideas after receiving a power up.

    Then, you might wonder why now the Ghouls were screaming in pain, if the previous worked like a charm to protect them from being affected, by the attacks of the human fire mages, the answer is quite simple, the moment Archbald felt the attack that was charged by the cross bow, he immediately cut off his connection to the array and ordered the Ghouls to do the same.

    Needless to say, but there were those who obeyed on the spot, those who reacted too slowly and those who made it look as if they were reacting too slowly, since they were intoxicated by the power of the boosting effect caused by the red pirs.

    Daimon who had experienced it himself, knew that the boosting effect didn''te with its drawbacks, it stimted one''s darkest side, and that had quite a lot of weight, considering the effect only worked on those whose nature and affinities had extreme negative properties, at least that was Daimon''s conclusion based on the fact that Jasmine didn''t receive the boosting effect, but Sarah and him, did.

    As to why it didn''t help Jeanne, Emily and Reyne who also had the "evil" nature, blood affinity, that''s because their natures were different, unlike Ghouls that had negative trends, those three were Npsi, who were on the neutral side, having both human and vampire sides, which is why they didn''t have the need to even drink blood much less human meat and could obtain nourishment from normal food.

    It''s worth mentioning that the Ghouls created from imnting Ghoul''s blood into a human, like Felix, would have been unable to receive the boosting effect of Kerrol, too, which was probably intentional as the Blood King who was the one behind that project, didn''t wish for a second power to appear in his backyard.

    Anyway, the greedy and slow bastards that were screaming soon stopped, after Archbald was forced to personally act as a firefighter, shing here and there to smash the distribution points, that were now causing a fire to spread around the headquarter.

    Naturally, the humiliation of forcing him to do such a mundane job, made the Ghoul''s eyes to dye red, as he red at the sky, where the "origin" of all this, was casually floating behind the enemy lines.

    ''Fucking bastard, he hid the ability of that stupid cross bow on purpose!'', he inwardly swore.

    The ck mantled woman, had informed Archbald about the fact that they couldn''t forcefully, transport anyone on the masked youth''s group, because the cross bow prevented it inside of thebyrinth, which eliminated the easiest way to recover the trident.

    But she didn''t mention anything about the cross bow regaining its offensive type abilities, he who now had Adam''s sword, understood the terror of these type of magic weapons, unfortunately though he could wield the sword now, he was unable to ess to its abilities, he was given the sword, because with it he would be able to wound system users.

    Also, the sword itself was of quite a high quality, even without any extra ability, it was still sharper and sturdier than any magic weapon Archbald has seen before, leaving the trident aside of course.

    Archbald waved his hand and a dozen of red spears formed in front of him, before they were shot at an insane speed towards, the enemy.

    The spears shed through the sky, some were aimed at the human army while some were aimed at Daimon, old Ben and the others stepped in, knowing that the others would suffer wounds if they tried to block that, so they blocked the spears aiming at the human army, thinking that the one that nearly killed them earlier, would protect Daimon without any problem.

    But they were wrong, Rita was one of Daimon''s trump cards and this wasn''t her time to shine, so instead, Jeanne and Emily stood up, and punched the spears with their hands that were covered in their respective armors, making the spears explode in tons of little shards, that were incinerated in white mes the next second.

    "Tsk, what the hell are you waiting,mence the offensive you fools!", Archbald''s voice echoed through the whole area, making the air tremble, the Ghouls naturally listened to the call of their king and poured out of the tents rushing upwards as they flew to be floating in front of the human army.

    Only Arch ranks were present in this face to face confrontation, on the Ghoul''s side the reason is that, most of the Lord ranked soldiers were killed by old Ben and the others earlier, and their boosting process was forcefully interrupted by Daimon, as most of the screams that could be heard, wereing from them.

    As for the human side, bringing Lord ranks who would be easily killed by just the after effects of the attacks of the Arch ranks, was a stupid idea, because all the nobles from the middle stage of the Arch rank and above, could userge quantities of human blood and flesh for their abilities.

    That being said, the previous doesn''t mean that there won''t be a minor battlefield, since there was that noble family that could use a half-baked necromancer ability to summon skeletons and zombies.

    "Booom!", the Ghoul''s usual strategy was to use those things as a meat shield, but this is where the Lord ranks that stayed behind, came in handy, the moment the "Death Wall" formed, it was blown away by a yellow ray of light that was shot all the way from the human headquarters.

    "We might have been arguing among us, but we never stopped developing weapons for the survival of the human race, how is it, the first ever extreme long range Weapon Equipment, that can defeat quality with quantity, "Wrath of the first king", quite amazing, right!", shouted old Ben at the Blood King who was joining his army, along with Pa, the girl from the church was still recovering in the royal tent, due to Adam''s attack.

    Needless to say, but Archbald red at Pa with angered eyes, there was no report of such a dangerous weapon in the information brought by Felix, the attack wasn''t strong enough to harm him, but with enough of those, they might be able to kill a middle Arch rank.

    "We didn''t know anything about it, our spies were never able to infiltrate the high echelon of the Adjudicators, where thest generation weapons were developed", said Pa in a hurry, after what happened earlier, she knew that Archbald was furious, and she also experienced the terror of an angered system user, so now she could only rely on Archbald, to block Adam from killing her, that white ray shot by his sword, still made her feel horrified, if she was a minor realm weaker, she would been vaporized, it was ridiculous given therge gap between their realms.

    "This is why, they all must die today, don''t spare a single one, kill, deprive, pige, ravage, it''s us or them!", shouted Archbald.

    "Arhhhhhh!", the Ghouls roared, even if the boosting process was interrupted, some obtained benefits, but were unstable right now, so they were like beasts that had gone mad, mostly the lower ranked nobles.

    The humans felt intimidated by the tsunami of enemies that was approaching them, but then Old Ben took the initiative to motivate them.

    "Don''t cower, we emerged victorious against the Blood King before already, this is just a repetition of that battle, brace yourselves, grit your teeth and kill your enemies, for you families and all of ourpanions that had been killed by those fucking monsters, charge!".

    "Haaaa!", a second tsunami of people was created by old Ben''s works, that being said, the battle immediately separated in many parts, those who didn''t have domains or battle avatars, took their fight towards the ground, while those who had it, raised high into the sky to sh.

    That only left behind the leaders, in other words, Archbald, the two Archdukes that survived the previous sh, among which there was Emily''s aunt and the guy who killed Emily''s father, there was also a new addition, due to the boosting process, one of the Dukes had advanced and was now an Archduke, there was also Pa and an old man from the traitors of the church stayed behind.

    There was no need for words, old Ben, Antonio and the male elder from the church directly rushed towards Archbald, and went up the clouds, where their confrontation started, the second inmand was actually Pa, as she was the bride of the Blood King.

    "Leave that girl alive, the rest, kill them all, also be aware of that brat with the cross bow", said Pa, her designated enemy was actually Oliver, the two Archdukes were intercepted by Jeanne and Emily, but they didn''t take the fight away and remained nearby.

    The remaining female elder from the church, red at the old traitor, previously Dorothy was fighting against him, but she was out of the picture now, so now there were two choices, she could take on the recently ascended Archduke or the old traitor.

    She turned to see Daimon, who was calm despite the fact that Jeanne and Emily weren''t guarding him like before, and she nodded at him as she rushed towards the old traitor, who was the stronger of the two, since the Archduke had recently ascended.

    The Archduke was actually quite familiar, because it had some resemnce to Dn, speaking of which, their ancestor was one of the two killed during the previous confrontation, so this Archduke was the new ancestor of Dn''s family, and was closer to him in terms of generation, long story short he was his grandfather.

    So, the Archduke was ring at Daimon furiously, but he wasn''t stupidly charging, since he was wary of the cross bow in Daimon''s hand.

    "Give me my grandson back and I''ll give you a painless death, what do you say?", shouted the Archduke while keeping some distance.

    "That would be heard, considering he is dead", said Daimon with a smirk, the Archduke saw red, but managed to not blindly charge, instead of that he just leaked a lot of mana and broke some bottles of blood, spreading a red mist through the whole area.

    Daimon casually aimed the cross bow at the sky and white mes condensed in front of it, before a white me arrow was shot from it, exploding on the sky, producing a rain of mes.

    The Archduke felt a sensation of threat and immediately covered himself in a cupule of blood, but to his horror the white mes were burning through his defense, and actually increasing in amount.

    "What the hell!", the Archduke immediately discarded the shield and jumped out of it, as if he was avoiding the gue, his face paled as he saw the blood cupule fully turning into white mes that didn''t disappear but instead flew towards the masked youth, and surrounded him, while covering the white cross bow.

    "How the hell did a mere Lord rank destroy my sanguine shield!", he shouted, what just happened didn''t make sense, the aura radiated by the masked youth was only at the early stage of the Lord rank, so what just happened should be impossible.

    The Archduke then paled when he saw Daimon aiming the cross bow at him, and to his horror the white mes produced by the burn of his own technique, were now moving towards him.

    "Damn it all!", the Archduke felt his blood freezing, his body exploded in blood red mana, as he casted another long range spell.

    "Blood Tsunami!", one of the singrities of the blood element, is that it can take both liquid and solid forms, and while the Archduke can''t create blood like Archbald, and has to rely on an external source, he still can change the state of the blood with ease.

    In his mind, the only reason as to why Daimon''s mes were able to burn his shield, was because the blood was in a solid state, so this time he tried to drown the mes with a wave of liquid blood.

    Just to face the horrifying reality that his tsunami of blood was "infected" by the white mes, reduced in size, and ending up as another group of white mes.

    The Archduke''s eyes got bloodshot, his mind was having trouble processing what was happening, he finally achieved his long awaited dream of bing an Archduke, it was with an artificial method, unlike his ancestor, but he could feel the strength boiling inside of him.

    And now, his attacks were being overwhelmed by a member of the young generation, so easily, he was being driven man.

    Daimon saw the Archduke losing his cool and he smirked, the problem with boosting effects, that allowed one to cross realms, is that they always put a huge load on either the body or the mind.

    That being said, he was "cheating", because he had activated Core Synchrony but was using the effect of the bracelet and the hollow suit to cover it, surprisingly he still couldn''t advance his realm to the Arch rank, and was limited to the peak of the Lord rank, but he obtained full control over the traits that a Knight Lord would obtain, if talented enough.

    That''s how he was perfectly controlling the white mes, resulting from his Demon Light using the enemy''s attack as fuel, he had obtained full mastery of Will Maniption, so the mes that weren''t created by him, but produced by using other things as fuel, which he could previously only use at short distance from him, before losing control and intensity, were now under his control.

    Jasmine, Reyne and even the crazy girl were amazed at how Daimon was easily dealing with the attacks of an Archduke, because unlike others, they knew that the cross bow wasn''t doing anything, Daimon was just holding it for appearance sake.

    Naturally, Daimon was only putting on a show, he had barely used any stamina, mana and battle aura, and instead used the attacks of the enemy as fuel, but it was working like a charm.

    The Archduke kept trying to defend and attack from afar, which resulted in some white mes using all their fuel and disappear, but they were reced by more, until the nearby area was illuminated in a bright white light, produced by the river of mes that surrounded Daimon.

    "Fucking monster!", shouted the Archduke as he saw his now missing right arm, the wound was cauterized so that it wouldn''t regenerate, unless medicine was applied, something Daimon learned thanks to Reyne.

    That only proved that Ghouls were indeed a low ranked sub lineage of whatever the species of the Nosfear is, ording to Aisha, the Nosfear Matriarch, used to be the weakest among the vampire Half Emperors, but if they have to choose, the other Half Emperors wouldn''t want to fight with her, who is said to be able to regenerate even if there is nothing left from her body, it would result in a frustrating eternal fight, that would eventually turn to her favor when the other party gets tired.

    That''s why Victor didn''t dare to push the thing regarding him marrying the young miss of the Nosfear, and instead went for Aisha, who didn''t have the support of her family, and ultimately was forced into living with the Naktis.

    The Ghouls inparison, could be stopped from regenerating, regardless of how much blood they have in store, as long as their flesh was affected to a certain extent, poison, light and fire were especially effective in that aspect, and Demon Light contained all three of them, which the Archduke didn''t know and that''s why he was freaking out at the fact that he couldn''t regenerate his arm.

    Daimon suddenly snapped his fingers and a tsunami of white mes, rushed towards the Archduke, whose pupils contracted like needles, the guy immediately turned around to leave but was met with wall of white mes blocking his path.

    ''How, I made sure to not let those disgusting mes get behind me!'', inwardly screamed the Archduke, only to realize that the red pirs were still burning in those same white mes that have been tormenting him for the past minutes.

    "Fuck it, domain!", the Archduke finally couldn''t hold it, if anything the Ghouls had a simr amount of pride as vampires, but just like the vast majority in front of a life-threatening situation, they threw away their facades.

    The Archduke limited the area of his domain to around two hundred square meters, creating a giant red capsule, which was full to the brim with blood, and corpses that floated and moved here and there.

    To Daimon''s surprise, blood entered the corpses and the thing started swimming towards them, but neither him nor the girls panicked, they were perfectly isted, by a smallyer of white mes that were covering their bodies.

    "Humph, with my domain active, all the mana in the area has be blood attributed, if you want to use those disgusting mes, you''ll have to use your reserves and there is no way you surpass me in that aspect!", shouted the Archduke, just to see Daimon smirking.

    Sarah''s body shone in a dark green light, as her battle aura exploded out of her, making the nearby blood turn ck and lifeless, then at Daimon''s left, Reyne whose eyes had turned bright red colored, was messing with the control of the blood element, she might be weaker than the Archduke, but her in her vampire form, her lineage was way purer and stronger, so her control over blood was on a different level.

    As a proof of it, the three Npsi, could create blood mana or battle aura, instead of just controlling it, with the help of external sources, something that only Archbald was capable off, on the Ghoul side.

    And then there was Jasmine, who was standing behind of Daimon, her pretty lips opened as she said two words.

    "Silver Spear!", silver light covered Daimon''s body as the image of a silver spear appeared above him, he had de-activated Core Synchrony, and instead just took advantage of the boosting effect of Kerrol, since Jasmine''s spell required the target''s realm to be equal or lower than hers.

    In any case Daimon was acting as a knight, so the only thing he was using Core Synchrony for, was obtaining arger and stronger amount of mana, to use less than what he would have needed, to turn the enemy''s attacks into fuel, earlier, but inside of a domain the amount of mana didn''t matter.

    This way, Daimon''s knight realm was at the early Lord rank, but his battle prowess still received the boosting effect, and with Jasmine''s spell, well, let''s just say that the Archduke nearly shit his pants, when he saw the white mes gathering in front of the cross bow.

    "Hissss!", the blood nearby the white mes instantly evaporated, creating a space devoid of any blood, which shouldn''t have been possible, unless his domain was being attacked by another domain.

    Domains were already touching the level ofws, which is why all the mana inside a domain, would be of the same element as the one with which the owner has affinity, as of current, Daimon could burn through weakerws with enough Demon Light, but using them as fuel was still out of question and while Core Synchrony transferred a part of the Soulmates''s realm to him, theirws, affinities and other things weren''t included in that¡­ yet.

    But Jasmine''s spell, amplified every aspect of the next attack, times three and that included thews mixed in Demon Light, previously when she buffed Daimon the effect wasn''t as noticeable in this aspect, because the quantity ofws contained in a star ranked Demon Light was too small.

    And when he increased his realm, he couldn''t receive the buff from Jasmine''s spell, but in Kerrol, the situations weren''t mutually exclusive, Daimon''s realm wasn''t higher than Jasmine, but his battle prowess andprehension of his battle aura were at the early Arch rank level.

    And so, Daimon''s next attack reached the level of a domain.

    "White Heavenly Javelin", with a few words, the white mes in front of the cross bow,pressed, until there was only a small white marble floating in front of it.

    Which then broke, and a three-hundred-meter wide, white sh was shot from it, the Archduke who tried to leave, just to notice his body couldn''t move, tried to protect himself with a wall of solidified blood, but was immediately engulfed in the white ray, that evaporated all the blood in its way.

    "Booom!", all the presents who were fighting their own life and death battles, were temporarily attracted to the pr of light burned through the domain of one of the Archdukes, blowing up arge part of it and then piercing the clouds until it disappeared on the horizon.

    "Arghhhhhh!", what followed that amazing sight, was a pained scream, and an iplete body falling from the sky, a domain is the most powerful ability of an Arch ranked, but it can also be its weakness, if one''s domain suffer a certain amount of damage, there is a recoil, how much damage is needed for the domain to crumble apart and how strong is the recoil, varies, but whatever was needed for this Archduke in particr, Daimon met the requirement.

    Which is why, his body which only consisted in his trunk, one arm and his head, which was heavily burned, was falling from the sky while the red cupule that used to be his domain was dissipating.

    A sepulchral silence fell on the battlefield, the Ghouls had unsightly expressions on their faces, as they saw one of their powerhouses ending in such a miserable state in less than half an hour.

    "Ohhhhhh!", the humans on the other side roared as they charged against their respective enemies, with renovated courage, despite they knowing Daimon wasn''t exactly their ally.

    But then, a couple more of people came from the headquarter of the Ghouls, it was none other than Adam, who was apanied by a blue haired woman wearing a ck dress, and a veil.

    Daimon could see Jasmine''s pretty face fill with anger, not because Adam had gotten a new toy, but because she could tell that the woman was the ck mantled figure that kidnapped her.

    "Don''t worry, have your fun and leave the rest to me", said Daimon in a calm voice, which made Jasmine smile at him as she nodded.

    "Mm".

    "How about a good luck kiss~", as always, the crazy girl was pretty much in her own little world.

    "Thanks to the heavens you aren''t the one that has to keep track of the battle", mumbled Reyne as she nodded at Daimon.

 Chapter 516 Battle on the surface, war behind scenes (part 2)

    Chapter 516 Battle on the surface, war behind scenes (part 2)

    The neers stopped flying to float a few meters away from Daimon and the others, Adam red at Jasmine with hatred burning in his eyes, but then he ignored her and gazed at Daimon.

    "Last chance, handle that bitch over as well as the trident she stole, then get the hell out of my sight and you''ll live, otherwise¡­".

    Adam hadn''t finished speaking, when Daimon appeared near him, but to his surprise he didn''t aim at him, instead of that he pointed the cross bow at the blue haired woman, whose eyes glowed in a dark light, a dark metal whip appeared on her hand, as she waved it towards the cross bow.

    "Booom!", the moment the whip shed with the white mes that were appearing in front of the cross bow, the mes exploded and the shockwave created by the whip was also dispelled, creating a loud explosion that flew Adam away.

    "The adults are talking here, go y hero somewhere else", said Daimon as he became a white sh that shot towards the blue haired woman.

    Adam''s expression was worth seeing right now, his face was twisted, after being tricked, treated as ackey by an npc, and now a nobody who was lucky enough to obtain a magic weapon from a system user, was looking down on him, he was furious, the white sword which he used to attack Archbald before, appeared on his hands, but as he was about to swing it towards Daimon, he felt danger approaching him from below.

    "Do you think I''m going to fall for that again you bitch!", he shouted as he moved aside.

    He still remembered the sensation of having his dick pierced by the trident, so he evaded in a hurry, which was the right thing to do, because that same trident was about tond in his balls.

    "Wait for your turn you¡­ aghh!", he turned around to curse at Jasmine, but was weed by the sight of both Sarah and Reyne''s fistsnding on his face, making him spin on the air and then a burning pain assaulted his face, as poison and mes burned his skin.

    The trident then returned by itself to Sarah''s hands, Reyne was floating next to her on top of a red tform made out of blood, while Jasmine was standing behind them, simrly on top of a red blood tform, preparing her spells.

    "Now, you shouldn''t look away, there are three beauties who have a score to settle with you, it will be your biggest andst honor", said the crazy girl as her poisonous battle aura covered the trident.

    There was something different about Reyne too, though Adam couldn''t see it, she was now using a bracelet on her right wrist, Jasmine had one in each of her wrists, because the previous one wasn''t working anymore, due to all the scratches on it, but she kept it as a protective charm.

    White halos appeared in her pretty eyes, that now had a sharp and angered light shing on them, her usual gentle and bright expression was nowhere to be seen.

    The three of them nodded at each other, and then Sarah and Reyne charged towards Adam, while Jasmine prepared her spells in the order they previously discussed.

    Adam saw red, his light battle aura exploded around his body, and the next second his body dposed in particles of white light, that then solidified in front of Jasmine, he had a cruel smile as he swinged his sword towards her.

    "You have caused me so much fucking trouble, I''ll cut your limbs and then chain you to be a toy, don''t worry I''ll heal you every time I finish ying with you", his cocky smile froze on his face, when he saw a white light wall appear in front of Jasmine, followed by a silver light shield floating above her.

    Growthes thanks to danger, not too long ago she managed to use her Silver Spear as an area type of spell, which by itself took Aurora by surprise, but as amazing as it is, it''s something that as a member of the royal family of the Light Pce sect, she was supposed to learn to do, though she surely managed to do it way earlier than she should have, as a proof of her outstanding talent that even surpassed Aurora''s.

    And during these days where she was kept prisoner, it''s not like shezed around, besides wearing out the ground of the cage, she had to find something to do while the ck mantled woman, was in the same room as her, or when she was watching over her.

    So, she took the time to think what she wascking as of current, so far, she has learned the spells that are engraved in her lineage, out of which she can only use, Silver Spear, Silver Citadel, Silver Fortress andstly her secret card which is Light Fortress, the ability she used to survive when Adam abandoned her.

    Light Fortress is actually the automatic defensive spell that all the members of the royal lineage from the Light Pce sect, learn, whichter bes the base for their domain, which exins the form that Aurora''s domain has and its incredibly high defensive properties.

    And there is a history behind the spell Light Fortress, being the only spell among the ones used by the lineage of the Light Pce, that uses the word "light" instead of "silver", that spell was a modified version of Silver Fortress, thatpletely changed the effect of the spell, the original work of the ancestor of the Light Pce.

    From that point onwards, no one has ever been able to modify the spells, they just learned them and trained to be more proficient in them, of course the domain of each person is different, but that''s not a spell, but a characteristic earned by those who reached the Archmage rank, additionally they are always mages.

    Anyway, Jasmine judged that her offensive was reallycking, unfortunately her light element wasn''t the offensive type, so even if she used an attack type spell, the result would be underwhelming, so she changed her perspective.

    "Booom!", Adam''s sword impacted the white light wall, but the image of Jasmine''s defense being easily cut by his sword, didn''t happen, which made Adam have a sudden bad premonition, but it was toote for him to change his target.

    Under Adam''s surprised eyes, spikes emerged from the white light wall, which then exploded in countless shard of light, now imagine Adam''s surprise when he saw a familiar attack nowing his way, the white ray he used earlier to attack Archbald, was now directed at him!

    ''It''s still iplete, but enjoy it to the fullest'', thought Jasmine as she casted her spell.

    "Retribution Fortress", with Jasmine''s words, the white ray impacted Adam, who couldn''t believe his eyes, it was weaker but it was no doubt his own attack, which was now being thrown at his face.

    He changed his stance to deflect the energy of his own sword, the attack was shot practically at point nk, so even if Adam managed to block it, he was pushed backwards, at the same time, Jasmine received a little recoil, as the thin trace of blooding out of her pretty lips suggested, that being said she was smiling, which made Adam have a bad premonition.

    And for a change he was right for the first time in a while, unfortunately the prize was, Sara and Reyne appearing behind of him, with their respective weapons aimed at him.

    "Shit¡­aghhhh!", by the time Adam realized his movements were predicted and he was baited, a trident covered in a ck-purple light pierced his abdomen from behind, followed by a knight''snce piercing his left shoulder, destroying the bone and burning the nearby flesh.

    "Aghhh!", Adam felt a current of pain running through his body, from his abdomen, the trident itself was enough to wound him, bypassing his safety measures, except the life-saving ones, but he did not expect Reyne''snce to hurt so much, having his body exposed to their battle auras, he screamed and then released a huge amount of his own battle aura, which was parried by those two using their own battle auras.

    Something interesting about both Sarah and Reyne, is the fact that despite having extreme negative affinities, they weren''t weakened by light, so while Adam managed to get away but letting their weapons rip some of his flesh, he couldn''t harm them with his Corrosive Light.

    Adam gritted his teeth, a bottle with a blue liquid appeared in his hand, and he drank the contents in a single go, making his wounds release steam as he started healing on the spot.

    Unfortunately for him, those three weren''t going to let him just do as he pleased, so Adam was forced to interrupt the healing process, to prevent the trident from piercing his chest, while he dodged Reyne''s spear, he couldn''t use the attack from the white sword, because Jasmine was ready to cast her self-modified spell at any time.

    Just for this battle, Jasmine created that spell, it was a modification thatbined Silver Fortress and White Fortress, but the nature of the spell overall was changed, the defense of the spell was amplified, but the duration was shortened, in exchange, 30% of the power of the enemy''s attack, would be redirected at the caster.

    For the first time since the days of the ancestor of the Light Pce, someone from her lineage broke out of the state of stagnation, that being in afortable zone brought them.

    After all, modifying a spell wasn''t as simple as Daimon makes it look like, in his case the system makes it so his skills and spells adapt to fit his desires as they level up, which has its own hardships, like meeting the unknown requirements which he has to discover on his own, but he doesn''t need to trigger the change.

    Inparison, the girls that had modified their spells, like Aisha, the Risha sisters and recently Jasmine, have to trigger the change, but don''t have to blindly look for the requirements, needed for their sess, it can be said that they struggle at different areas.

    ¡­

    While Adam was being assaulted by the three girls, a couple of hundreds of meters away from them, there was a white sh shing against a ck one, from up-close one could see Daimon who was using the white cross bow to block all the attacks from the blue haired woman''s ck whip.

    ''How much of her power did that bitch put into that stupid cross bow!'', inwardly swore the blue haired woman as she dodged a line of white light shot from the cross bow, those white mes actually "Booom!", with onest sh, they both separated and took some distance from each other.

    made her feel threatened.

    "Booom!", with onest sh, they both separated and took some distance from each other.

    "Why are you fighting against me, whatever "she" has promised you, I can give you a better reward, you just need to stand aside", said the woman, with a cunning light shing on her eyes.

    Daimon ignored her, and simply charged towards her.

    "Humph", the woman was clearly not taking things seriously, she only seemed way of the white cross bow, as she used her ck metal whip to disturb the aim of the cross bow, making the white me arrow miss her.

    Seeing Daimon "fiercely" trying to shoot her down, as he stole some gazes at Adam''s battlefield, the blue haired woman inwardly smirked before saying.

    "Ah, I get it, you seem to have a personal feud with my little champion, let me tell you what, if you hand over the trident, I''ll stay aside from your conflict, what do you say?", she asked.

    Daimon put on a contemtive expression, for the delight of the blue haired woman, Daimon then turned to see her before saying.

    "What about the Blood King, without the trident, he can freelye for me and mypanions".

    The woman remained silent for a moment, but ultimately, she snapped her fingers and a ck barrier, surrounded both Daimon and her, in a matter of seconds, the barrier was merely defensive and isted those inside of it, form the outside world.

    "If you hand over the trident, everything can be discussed, since you have those two at your side, that would make the Blood King unnecessary for my ns, if you prove your worth, naturally I won''t treat you bad, so what do you say?", said the woman, her voice carried a certain maic property that made it hard for others not to properly listen to hermands.

    And Daimon was directly hit from that, as a proof of it, he nodded in response before saying.

    "Deal, let''s make a contract then, no offense but I can''t easily trust you", Daimon approached the blue haired woman, who was smiling from ear to ear after seeing him keep the white cross bow in his storage ring, to approach her.

    As soon as Daimon was around two meters away from the blue haired woman, he was stopped in cold by a wisp of light that appeared out of nowhere.

    The blue haired woman clicked her tongue as she swinged her whip towards it, but the white cross bow escaped from Daimon''s storage ring, and blocked the attack, to then release a sh of light that made the blue haired woman step back as if to avoid the gue.

    Once the bright light was gone, what reced was a simple agglomeration of gray light that floated in between Daimon and the blue haired woman.

    "Don''t trust her, she is a vicious traitor", a girl''s voice came from the gray wisp of light, the white cross bow kept floating around it, as it aimed at the blue haired woman.

    But to her surprise, the cross bow flew back to Daimon''s hand, making the blue haired womanugh.

    "Well, this helps me the trouble to find thest remaining influence you had in this, it seems like unlike you, the one you choose has moremon sense¡­ aghhh!".

    As the blue haired woman was mocking the gray wisp of light, a white me arrownded on her chest, after causing her a short but intense burning pain, the blue haired woman released her dark mana to put it out.

    "You, how dares a lowly being attack me!!!", she shouted, amidst her moment of rage, her "body" slowly burned, revealing apletely different figure, it was as if she was wearing a veil, which was burned by Daimon Demon''s Light.

    ''Wow, if Calvin was here, I''m pretty sure he would have been crying out of disappointment'', thought Daimon as he observed the true nature of the blue haired woman.

    The best way to describe her would be horrendous, the lower part of her body had the form of a fish''s tail, while the upper part was that of a woman, so far you might imagine the legendary appearance of a mermaid, but people often forget that among the countless tales about mermaids, there are some that specifically dere that they eat human meat, which they personally hunt for, using their bewitching voices.

    Well, this "mermaid" embodied what one would imagine from that particr myth, having long dark greasy hair, a bony and emaciated figure with gray lifeless skin, that ruined the fact that it was topless, unproportionally long arms that ended in ws, andst but not least, spiked teeth that went along with the human eating part of the myth, certainly not what those who fantasized about mermaids would want to see.

    That being said, Daimon wasn''t the least surprised about it, to begin with, not even a single word of what the "beautiful" blue haired woman said, was true, unfortunately for her, trying to hide one''s ill intent was useless in front of Daimon, it''s not like he can''t be tricked, Erin has done it quite a few times, but the key point was not having even a single spec of malice towards him or those around him, and the blue haired woman didn''t meet that requirement.

    As to why he went along with her y, knowing that she hadn''t lowered her guard enough for him tond a proper attack on her, that''s because he wanted to force out, thest participant of this war, onto the stage.

    Back when they arrived, Rita felt "something" trying to localize them, unfortunately neither Rita not that being were able to pinpoint the other''s location, and from that point onwards that situation didn''t repeat.

    But back when the white cross bow prevented the blue haired woman from forcefully separating Daimon and the girls, inside of thebyrinth, Rita noticed a certain familiarity, which sheter informed to Daimon.

    Since it was obvious that the one who was lending him a hand through the white cross bow, opposed the blue haired woman, he just needed to create a situation, that forced said person to interfere, and that''s how we reach this point.

    Daimon had already confirmed that both the Ghouls including the Blood King and the light idiot, were just pawns for the blue haired woman, so she was the true dangerous enemy, while the others were just being manipted by her.

    "You know, that trick of fabricating an illusionary outer appearance is starting to get old", said Daimon, now that her cover was burned by Demon Light, the creature gave off a familiar feeling, which was simr to that of a Nethereal.

    But the curious thing is that she isn''t one, for the simple reason that the blue haired woman, was an¡­ administrator, in other words that deformed mermaid used to be the administrator of a system, but was now somehow running rampant on her own.

    ''It''s ready!'', Rita''s enthusiastic voice signaled the start of the next of Daimon''s n, he pointed the white cross bow upwards, and all the white mes that were still consuming the red pirs, bypassed the barrier created by the now abomination-like mermaid and gathered above Daimon.

    The monstrous mermaid, immediately dispelled the barrier and took distance from Daimon, knowing that with that amount of those horrifying white mes, she could get hurt.

    Naturally Daimon his Demon Light better than anyone, and while this amount of Demon Light looked imposing, in exchange for using other things as fuel, the original properties of Demon Light, thinned quite a bit, after all it wasn''t the original source which was produced personally by Daimon, but more of an extension of it, still it was enough for what he needed it.

    ''Now!'', listening to Daimon''s order, Rita snapped her fingers inside Daimon''s shadow, and a small sized ck portal appeared at his right, from which the trident of the storm, came out.

    Daimon could feel the "reward me", intense gaze from the crazy girl, even from afar, but ignored her and instead firmly grabbed the trident, all the white mes gathered around the trident, which Daimon then threw upwards, making he giant sphere of white mes follow.

    "That direction, don''t tell me!", the monstrous mermaid, suddenly realized she was yed, but as she was about to user her domain to intercept the attack, the giant sphere of mes disappeared into thin air, through a wide ck portal that suddenly appeared on the sky.

    "Shooting Star Spear", mumbled Daimon, the next scene drew the attention of all the people on the area, regardless of the battlefield in which they were participating.

    For the simple reason that the red moon above in the sky, was suddenly impacted by a white shooting star, naturally the sound and shockwave didn''t reach all the way from that distance to Kerrol.

    But the sh resulting from the impact, illuminated the sky, turning the night into day for a couple of seconds, resulting in a sepulchral silence falling on Kerrol as a whole, the battlefield, the cities, the towns and even those nomads that lived in the wastnds, everyone raised their heads, human, beast or Ghoul.

    The monstrous siren''s eyes got bloodshot, blinded by rage she actually charged towards Daimon, but was blocked by a pir of silver light that descended from the sky, the next second.

    "Boooom!", this time there was an explosion as the pir of light impacted the ground, it''s worth mentioning that a few Ghouls that were bathed by the pir of light were immediately vaporized, but the humans were just sent flying away with light injuries.

    Slowly but surely the pir of light contracted and then blinked until it disappeared, Daimon looked at his right and a sole word came to his mind.

    ''Pdin''.

 Chapter 517 Battle On The Surface, War Behind Scenes (Part 3)

    ?

    Due to the newest addition to the battlefield, the fights temporarily stopped, as both Ghouls and humans looked upwards.

    While the Ghouls were wary since a batch of them just got eliminated by the silver pir of light that descended from the sky, the humans who got blown away on the other hand, were slowly getting up with the help of theirrades

    Some red at Daimon, since those iconic white mes appeared to be the trigger of that silver pir as well as the neer who descended within it.

    Naturally, they weren''t exactly d to have been affected by Daimon''s technique, but that wasn''t the only reason as to why they were ring at him.

    In the history books of Kerrol, the original Blood King who the first humanity''s king fought, despite having being defeated, didn''t die and instead was sealed inside of the moon.

    As a result, the month in which the seal weakened, the blood moon week urred, and Daimon just attacked the moon, using some sort of unknown technique of which they haven''t heard about.

    In Kerrol, no one has reached the Ster realm or its equal which would be the Half Emperor realm from the four gxies, properly, so even if they do have spatial type arrays, to move through long distances, they had no knowledge of space shift.

    Which is what Rita used earlier to take Daimon''s attack up to the moon, the undead head maid, after having been meditating inside of Daimon''s shadow for the past three days, managed to grasp the necessary amount of spatialws with the help of the boosting effect of Kerrol''s atmosphere.

    So now, both sides were frozen, trying to figure out which side gained a new ally, after all it wasn''t umon for the Blood Dukes and above, to casually kill some subordinates in an outburst of anger, it also didn''t help that the neer was radiating an insane murderous aura.

    "I already suspected it, but you don''t look like a Blood King to me", casually said Daimon as he evaluated the woman that descended into that pr of silver light.

    Besides the word "pdin", another word that might perfectly describe her would be "silver".

    There floating around a meter away from Daimon, was a full silver armored person, it was easy to tell she was a woman, due to her tall feminine figure, she had long straight bright silvery hair that reached all the way down to her waist, besides that not much could be said about her, since her body was fully covered by that heavy armor, including her face as she was using a helmet that included a metal mask.

    "That''s because I''m not, whatever that filthy traitor has told you, it''s a lie, she has been controlling this world from the shadows, for the past tens of thousands of years, using both races for her own purposes, while I was imprisoned inside of that star", said the silver armored woman, with an obviously angered voice.

    The silent was interrupted by an explosion of dark purple, and bright orange battle aura, shing against a dazzling white one, resulting in a loud shockwave as well as a bright sh, followed by Adam''s exasperated voice.

    "What the hell are you doing, lend me a hand Ka¡­", Adam who actually didn''t see everything that previously happened, above on Daimon''s battlefield, since he was busy trying not to get his handed by the three girls that kept applying pressure on him, finally got to see the real appearance of the blue haired woman, and his face paled.

    Even the light idiot, could tell, that the monstrous-like mermaid was an administrator now, and that wasn''t all, he was horrified at the fact that he was nning to seduce that thing, to gain her support.

    ''Fuck, why nothing goes my way!'', he inwardly screamed as he dodged a poisoned needle, followed by him having to block both Sarah''s one edged sword and Reyne''snce, with his own weapon.

    "ng!", sparks flew due to the sh of metals, now that Sarah wasn''t using the trident of the storm, which had yet to return to Daimon''s side, Adam finally could breathe a bit, which is why only now he had the chance to pay attention to other things.

    "Get off me!" Adam finally couldn''t hold back, his armor ignited in a bright yellow light which forced Sarah and Reyne backwards, an opportunity Adam used to fly until he was floating next to the monstrous mermaid.

    "Looks like you are in a predicament, lift the curse on me and I''ll help you kill that masked bastard", he said.

    The monstrous mermaid, whose name was Ka, clicked her tongue, but ultimately, she nodded.

    "Don''t restrain yourself, that guy is currently being given power by that bitch, also since those Ghouls are more useless than what I expected, it''s time to give them a better use", Ka snapped her fingers, and the situation took another turn for the worse.

    "Aghhhh!", suddenly a lot of the Ghoul nobles and the traitors from the church who were fighting against the humans, bent due to pain, before letting out wild screams, followed by their bodies being ripped apart to release an ominous ck mist that then fused with their open wounds.

    The result were those guys losing their rationality and gaining different bizarre characteristics, like extra arms, mouths on their bodies, extra eyes and the list goes on, also their skins turned lifeless gray.

    Daimon inwardly frowned, those forms were carbon copies of Nethereals and yet, those things weren''t Nethereals, they were just abominations, still that made it clear that the monstrous mermaid could useher to infect others, transforming them into those bizarre creatures.

    "I need my sword back as well", demanded Adam, to which the monstrous mermaid nodded, with a snap of her fingers, the sword which was being used by Archbald who was still shing against three of the four leaders of humanity, returned to Adam''s side, regaining its white color.

    The silver armored woman immediately noticed something was off, but as she tried to grab Daimon to throw him out of the range of the monstrous mermaid, thetter broke a ck marble, which exploded into a dense ck mist that engulfed Daimon and the silver armored girl, as well as Adam.

    ¡­

    The scenery changed from the sky of Kerrol, to apletely ck space, which was then illuminated by the silver haired woman''s armor which shone in a pretty light, a secondter half of the dark space turned white, the monstrous mermaid and Adam were standing on the illuminated side, while Daimon and the silver haired woman were engulfed by the darkness.

    "I don''t know how the hell did you do that, but here moving through space isn''t possible, you can still make it out of this alive brat, hand over the both the trident and the cross bow, or die and be a stepping stone for the guy you hate!", eximed the mermaid with a twisted expression, that showed her spiked teeth.

    Daimon smirked, as the trident of the storm appeared on his hand, before Rita unwillingly followed Daimon''s order, she had retrieved the trident and left it in Daimon''s shadow, for him to take it out as he pleased.

    "I have been wondering, this trident is certainly a strong magic weapon, though it seems to need some repair, it is a Half Ster rank treasure after all, but why are you so fixated on it?", he said with a confused voice.

    Daimon''s question, made Adam cockilyugh as he pointed his recently recovered sword at Daimon.

    "You perceive it like that, because even with that woman''s help, you and those three bitches are mere nobodies, how could you even begin to imagine the true worth of a Promise level treasure, but enough of that, you have been a thorn on my side, so it''s time to die, don''t worry I''ll take "care" of those three once you are gone", said Adam as he unsheathed his other sword, apparently the light idiot could wield two swords at the same time.

    The silver armored woman snapped her fingers, and a pretty silver light covered Daimon''s body, turning into an ethereal armor that protected his body.

    "This isn''t the proper moment for introductions, you can call me Freya, sorry to have involved you in my war, this should help protect you fight against him, also that "thing" wants the trident because without it she can''t kill me... I have lost my weapon, would you please lend me the Judgement Cross Bow, even if broken I can defeat her with it", said the silver armored woman.

    Daimon nodded and the white cross bow appeared on his free hand, before he threw it at Freya, since for him it had no use, he just used it as a cover to use Demon Light without any restrain earlier.

    The silver armored Freya, knew that she hadn''t given Daimon any power prior to giving him that silver ethereal protection earlier, which made her interest in the masked youth increase, naturally she let the mermaid and Adam believe what they wanted.

    "You seem too rxed, so let me give you a little "gift", those minions I created are way stronger than the materials used to create them, so as we speak, they are ughtering all the humans!", poisonously said the monstrous mermaid, Ka.

    Apparently, this special barrier isted even the one who used it, meaning she couldn''t know what was happening outside, otherwise she wouldn''t have been so cocky, taking into ount the fact that Daimon left his trusty head maid behind, to give a hand to Jasmine and the others, that being said, there was for sure a ughter currently ongoing, on which side, that is another story.

    Freya who received the white cross bow, emitted a sad sensation for a moment, before she injected her mana into it, making a silveryer cover it, generating the missing pieces of it, it was just temporal but the cross bow was now working, judging on the aura it gave off.

    "This time, I will put a bolt in that disgusting face of yours", slowly said Freya as she pointed the cross bow at the monstrous mermaid, who snorted.

    Those two then became shes of silver and ck light respectively, and then shed at the left side of this enclosed space, leaving behind Adam and Daimon.

    To be honest, Daimon was more interested in the other fight, the two of them had simr sensation as the angel girl and the ghost woman that Daimon saw around Adam and Marcus respectively, meaning they were both administrators¡­ or more urately used to be, since they clearly weren''t tied to a host anymore.

    Anyway, what caught Daimon''s attention, is that they didn''t have a realm, they had powers, but they didn''t give the sensation of a mage, knight or anybination of those two, based on the level of usage of mana which Daimon has seen so far, put them in between the Half Ster and Ster realm though.

    "Where the hell are you looking at you npc bastard!", Adam who noticed Daimon was ignoring him, shed and appeared next to Daimon the next second as he swinged his two swords at him.

    "ng!", Daimon casually blocked both swords using the prongs of the trident, and then rolled it, forcing Adam to retreat before his swords escaped his hands, due to the movement.

    Needless to say, but Adam was surprised to see that in a direct confrontation, the opponent was physically stronger than him, since none of them used battle aura.

    "Fucking hell!", Adam''s body exploded in white battle aura, the white side of the space generated small particles of light mana that gathered around Adam, further empowering his body.

    Surprisingly the light idiot managed to jump all the way to the early Archknight realm, using his own boosting ability and the enhance created by this special space, naturally it was like that because the monstrous mermaid set it like that.

    Apparently, she wasn''t the one that created the boosting effect of Kerrol''s atmosphere, otherwise Ka would have done something, after Sarah purposedly allowed others to notice, she was receiving said boosting effect, with the help of the bracelet of the god of mischief, under Daimon''s order of course.

    This space was separated in two different areas, one white and one ck, Freya''s affinity was clearly on the positive side, Daimon didn''t have the time to properly peek at her with his infinity eyes, but judging on her appearance and that silver pir of light that earlier descended from the sky, she for sure had metal affinity and since the mana she used, evaporated the Ghouls, it was on the positive aspect of the specter.

    As for him, thanks to the hollow suit and the bracelet of the god of mischief, he appeared to be a knight who was lucky enough to have fire affinity with a strong inclination towards light, resulting on the white mes which he could use.

    And that''s why they were thrown into the dark side of this special space, where their strength would be greatly reduced, while Adam''s strength was boosted, everything was prepared for this moment.

    If the hero is at an "unfair" disadvantage, he will receive external help for sure, if the hero is attacked by someone on a higher realm than himself, there will always be a chance for them to benefit from it, if the hero hasrades at his side, saidrades can be sacrificed in order to allow the hero to experience growth,stly if the hero''s life is in danger there is always a certain probability of escaping, even against system users.

    Those were some of the properties of which Daimon was has managed to confirm from Adam''s system, through the different shes which Daimon or the others have had with Adam until now.

    The previous could be partially ignored as long as one possessed an item from a system, depending on the level of said item, the effect will increase, as a proof of it, this time Sarah was able to make Adam bleed, while in their previous fight, though shended some punches on him, he didn''t really suffer.

    But to make him suffer a real loss, there were some requirements needed, even for Daimon, his instincts told him, that if he aimed for the kill previously, things wouldn''t have resulted as he wanted.

    "How dare you look away you bastard!", Adam who had finished drawing all the battle aura he could, shouted as his two swords absorbed till thest bit of it, making them lit up in a dazzling white light.

    Adam then swinged both of his swords and a giant wave of light engulfed Daimon, who was taken by surprise, the dark area of the space was illuminated for a couple of seconds, as Adam''s attack moved through it, until the wave of light shed against the border of the space, making the wall tremble for a couple of seconds.

    "How do you like that, my Holy Light isn''t effective only against negative oriented beings, but against all my "enemies", so regardless of your affinity or nature, if you are hit by it, you are fucking dead hahaha¡­".

    Adam''s thunderousugh stopped in cold, when he saw the figure floating in the sky a few meters away from him, besides some slight damage on his clothes, as well as a few cuts in Daimon''s skin, he was perfectly fine.

    "I-Impossible, I could have killed a peak Arch rank with that attack, I am using Holy Enhance, plus the boosting effect of this space!", yelled Adam.

    Daimon smirked, the wounds he suffered weren''t healing, which is exactly what he wanted, he took a deep breath and then the sensation around him changed, drawing not only Adam, but also Freya and Ka''s attention towards him.

    Adam''s face twisted, as he now could feel that there was both mana and battle aura radiating from Daimon''s body, which should be impossible for the nobodies of the four gxies, even he couldn''t obtain the powers of the two paths¡­ yet.

    Then the anger, envy and surprise that was invading his heart, all turned into despair, when the atmosphere around Daimon started waving, the boosting effect of Kerrol only applied to his knight realm previously, because the hollow suit and the bracelet, made him look like a regr knight.

    But now that he openly allowed this world to see that he was both a mage and a knight, the boosting effect increased his level in both paths, under the horrified eyes of both the monstrous mermaid and Adam, both the darkness and the light that filled this special space, started dposing and then gathered around Daimon, who was temporarily distracted at the sensation that was coursing through his body.

    Previously, even when he used Core Synchrony, he just took advantage of his strengthened and increased mana to power up his battle aura, which contained different types of mana, but didn''t let the world realize he was a mage, in that state he remained a Lord rank, though his battle prowess did increase, which is why he was able to burn that Archduke, using his strongest affinity.

    But now things were different, because with his Core Synchrony and also the boosting effect of Kerrol, he managed to finally reach the next realm, in other words, Daimon''s realm was now the early Archmage realm as well as a peak Knight Lord.

    "Y-You, what the hell are you!!!", Adam whose face was pale as paper, turned around to try and escape, in terms of realm he was the same as the opponent, but even from afar, he was suffocating just by being in the masked man''s presence, what''s worse is that his battle aura wasn''ting out of his body, as if it was afraid of the opponent''s one, it was absurd.

    If he was mage, it might be understandable, since a stronger mage can restrict a weaker one''s capacity to use mana, but battle aura is created inside one''s body, thanks to one''s life spark, as well as vitality and the mana that circted through the body, saying that his battle aura was being intimidated by the opponent, would be the same as saying that the life spark of him, the hero of light, had gained consciousness and was afraid of the enemy''s.

    ''Impossible, I gained the highest rank of life spark possible for the Mortal realms, he isn''t even a system user¡­'', Adam''s train of thought was stopped by his body freezing, he looked downwards just to see the prongs of the trident of storming out of chest.

    Daimon had throwed the trident and casually pierced his heart with it.

    "Damn it, blegh!", Adam vomited blood and his body started falling from the sky, he tried to remove the trident, but his armor had melted around it, and his strength was abandoning him.

    "Phew", Daimon let out a sigh of relief as he deactivated Core Synchrony, his realm then immediately returned to the Lord ranks, both mage and knight ones, since he was no longer hiding his two paths.

    Freya reacted first, her body shone in silver light and the special space was overturned by a metal zone, Daimon''s previous state had ripped apart the mana used by Ka, so the space had weakened a lot.

    Meaning that the silver haired woman, could take over without too much problem, and as a result, a giant hollowed metal sphere appeared on the sky, recing the previous battlefield.

    Daimon slowly flew towards where those two were fighting, Adam had fainted at this point, as long as the trident was there, he wasn''t going to be able to move, because the crazy girl applied paralyzing and sleeping poison on it, it was fully non-lethal as well, and it basically used all the battle aura reserves of Sarah, so at the very least, he''ll be out for the next thirty minutes.

    Also, he couldn''t escape through space, because Freya had the same capacity to prevent others to use spatial movement, inside this special spaces, which Daimon judged to be the equivalent to domains.

    "Well, now that the little nuisance is taken care off, let''s get rid of the bigger one", he said as he summoned a sword made out of white mes.

    The monstrous mermaid distanced herself from Daimon and Freya.

    ''Shit, what the hell is that bastard, if he stayed in that state, he could have killed me like swatting a fly, so then why¡­'', Ka''s mind naturally wandered to the most logical conclusion, which was that Daimon couldn''t handle such big increase in his realm, so he took out Adam fast, so hat he could join hands with Freya to kill her, no, capture her, since he used the trident to knock out Adam.

    "I recognize that you are indeed a risk factor which I didn''t take into ount, still benefits are what move you based on what I saw inside thebyrinth, so tell me, what do you want in exchange for staying out of this, you discarded the trident after all", said the monstrous mermaid, to which Daimon smirked as Narasha in Gram''s form appeared floating next to him.

    "Do you think that trident to kill you, no, you are alive because you''ll be turning into a "snack" for mypanion and a stepping stone for me".

 Chapter 518 Battle on the surface, war behind scenes (part 4)

    Chapter 518 Battle on the surface, war behind scenes (part 4)

    To Daimon''s surprise, the capricious sword suddenly showed interest in the monstrous mermaid after she used that trick to turn the Ghouls in those bizarre creatures, Disaster wasn''t exactly interested in devouring the mermaid, but that energy she used.

    Which is a lot to say, considering it didn''t show the least interest even on the backyer of mineral around the core of that high stage Ster rank which now served under Daimon, that made him wonder what was the difference between theher he has seen so far and this one.

    Daimon extended his hand and firmly grabbed Gram whose edge was covered in both light mana and light battle aura, that wasn''t originated from Daimon.

    Narasha was her own separated existence and while as of current she isn''t either a mage or a knight, because she doesn''t have a body, that works in her favor, she is in a unique kind of situation, because her grimoire basically gave her the ability to ess Gram''s form.

    But that is something that is applied to Disaster or at least that''s what both she and Daimon previously believed, but it turned out to not be the case.

    When Daimon wielded Gram, the spells and skills he used were counted as his, as they used his mana and AP depending on the case, but then when Narasha learned the spells and skills of Gram, she could use them as well.

    It added more weight to her affirmation of being Daimon''s battlepanion, with Narasha, Daimon could fight without having to use his own mana or even stamina, because she took the burden, in case you wonder why is that important, well, the answer is that in the previous attack where Daimon destroyed all of Adam''s defenses including his armor, he used 70% of his stamina in a single go.

    It''s not like the light idiot was too strong, it was Daimon who became too strong, so much that if not for his monstrously tough body and the hellish training Aura made him go through, he would have exploded due to the tension that forcing his way to the Arch rank caused him.

    ''Damn it, that felt exactly as when I tried to use my Manifestation Phenomenon with all my affinities back then¡­ the only result was me being lectured by them'', thought Daimon as he wielded Gram.

    "I''ll take the vanguard, you support me from the sides", Freya saw that Daimon''s previous overwhelming strength had disappeared, and he should now be around the level of a middle stage Arch rank.

    Bur before she could notice a white sh passed next to her, turning into a silver haired masked youth who was wielding two swords, that appeared in front of the monstrous mermaid the next second.

    "Boooom!", the ck metal whip of Ka shed with the Comet Sword, which eliminated the mana on the whip, then what followed was the physical sh of Gram against the whip, the result was an explosion of energy and a shockwave.

    To the monstrous mermaid''s surprise, the result was a tie, both attacks were cancelled and they both were forced backwards, which wouldn''t have been a bad result if it wasn''t for the fact that she just saw Daimon''s "strongest" state a moment ago, meaning that if he can use that power again, she''ll be the one to lose, not to mention he wasn''t fighting alone, she still had to consider Freya into the equation.

    ''Shit, why is this happening when I''m so close¡­ that guy managed to strike down that little idiot, ah, damn it'', she inwardly screamed as she casted a shield made of ck energy, to block a light bolt that was shot at her by Freya, to then move backwards, just in time to dodge Daimon''s sh.

    "Shouldn''t hero''s fight in an honorable way, what is this 2v1¡­", the monstrous mermaid tried gain some time, but she hadn''t even finished her sentence, when one of her fingers was cut by Gram, she did manage to avoid the arrow that Freya shot at her though.

    "Tsk", Ka created a wall with her ck energy to gain some distance, but she had barely moved when Gram cut through the wall as Daimon charged towards her, the reason as to why he ignored Freya''s suggestion, is that she is obviously not a long-ranged attacker, she was using the cross bow because she had no other choice, but her shooting skills weren''t on par with the whip skills of the enemy, since that wasn''t her main weapon.

    It was easy to notice it, because she was using the cross bow as a blunt weapon to sh against the whip, but even then, she couldn''t get the upper hand, which was perfectly normal, unlike Ka, who has had all the resources of Kerrol at her disposition, Freya was imprisoned, Daimon was surprised that she had enough energy left to maintain a fight.

    ''Just apply pressure on her, if you create an opening for me, I can end it with a single attack, but it has to be perfect because I can only do it once'', Freya heard Daimon''s voice sounding in her ears and she nodded.

    But then the monstrous mermaid who seemed to have taken a harsh decision, since her body had dried up even more, pped her hands and a wave of ck water emerged from her.

    Daimon frowned as he saw red spiked chainsing out of the water, before the corroded head of a ck shark emerged from the water, the very moment that strange magic beast appeared, the silver armored Freya trembled before her mana exploded out of her body.

    "You¡­ what the hell did you do!", she was clearly angered as she rushed towards Ka, but Daimon stopped her from doing so by extending his arm and intercepting her with Gram.

    "Don''t fall for her tricks, that isn''t a corpse puppet, she just gathered a bunch of random meat and bones and gave it that form to mess with you", he said as his eyes glowed behind his mask.

    Ahead, right at the ce where Freya would have arrived, the air waved before a second shark''s head became visible, it didn''t appear out of nowhere using a spatial ability, since they were sealed in this ce, no, it was a head that was connected to the body of the chained thong, growing from its own neck, that ck water was actually part of that creature.

    It was a good trick, but it was futile in front of Daimon''s infinity eyes, he could see the flow of mana of that thing, and it was just a huge mess, with different frequencies, colors and forms, in other words, that thing was basically an abomination, simr to the failed results of the undead research to create a strong artificial being.

    But there was a difference, while the abominations were absolutely loyal to their creators, that thing was a mass of destructive instincts, which would exin the chains that were tying it to the mermaid.

    The monstrous mermaid red at Daimon, ever since that masked youth appeared, her ns have been going down the drain, even the little toy she managed to put her hands on, was defeated in a single attack.

    ''What the hell is going on, where did that bitch found such an irregrity, he isn''t a damn system user and he is already this damn strong, if she manages to regain her powers¡­ no I can''t let them be!''.

    "What are you waiting, go and kill them all, that''s what you were created for!", shouted Ca, red electricity coursed through the chains and the creature roared as itpletely came out of the ck water wave.

    Freya who had lost her cool earlier, calmed down as she saw the true appearance of the creature, only the head was that of a shark, the body was simr to that of a snake and it had the tentacles of a jellyfish, it also had lumps of meat from different creatures here and there, an abomination in all the meaning of the word.

    "Sorry, I lost my cool for a second, I hate to admit it but I''mcking potency with this weapon, so I''ll hold that thing and also provide suppressive fire to create openings for you¡­ that crazed woman must die here, if she manages to leave this, a disaster will follow", said the silver armored Freya.

    Daimon nodded, Freya clearly wanted to kill the mermaid with her own hands, but she was willing to give up whatever feud she had, as long as the enemy died, meaning things had gotten way more serious after she saw that creature.

    Apparently neither she or the monstrous mermaid could harm the other, without the weapons they were using, but the sea abomination wasn''t included in that, meaning it was a better match for Freya who was using a weapon that didn''t go along with her, while Daimon could take on Ka.

    In any case, this worked in Daimon''s favor, because the monstrous mermaid seemed to have a limited amount of that specialher, and she only used it for her strongest attacks or when she lost her cool, luckily using it or not didn''t depend on her, if she didn''t want to, Daimon just had to make her use it.

    "The level of that thing is erratic, so it''s hard to pinpoint how strong it is based on its realm, also be careful of every part of its body", Ka heard Daimon casually revealing some of the hidden abilities of her creature and she gritted her teeth.

    "Can''t you piss off already, who the hell are you, why are you getting in my way!", she shouted as she charged towards Daimon, followed by the giant sea abomination, whose eyes were bloodshot.

    Freya took the initiative to be a silver sh and then shot a barrage of light bolts at the sea abomination, unlike her previous stagnated situation, the arrows easily pierced the body of the sea abomination making ck smokee out of the wounds.

    "Roaaarr!", the creature screamed in pain, but it didn''t stop its attack, but that was what Freya wanted, she had sessfully drawn the attention of the abomination, and now the stage was clear for Daimon to fight the mermaid.

    Daimon smirked, his image shed as he appeared in front of the mermaid, he swinged his swords down aiming at her chest, which of course Ka didn''t allow, she used her whip to block, or that was the idea, but then Daimon''s Comet Sword released a stream of mes burning her face.

    "Arghhh, go to hell!", the mes didn''t leave a deep wound, but the pain es excruciating, which made Ka''s body exude that ck mist in a try to push Daimon away, but to her horror, while Daimon did move backwards, her ck mist was sliced by Gram and "disappeared" the next second, in exchange the light mana and battle aura covering Gram''s edge increased.

    "Tsk", the monstrous mermaid clicked her tongue remembering how Daimon yed that Archduke to death, by using those white mes to take over the enemy''s attacks, unfortunately she didn''t have the time to think things through, she had to move to dodge a light arrow that was tantly aimed at her face.

    At the other side of the battlefield, Freya was bravely shing against the sea abomination, she was literally beating the hell out of the thing, using her own hands and legs, while she also shot light arrows at Ka, now that she wasn''t at disadvantage due to external things, her fierce nature came to light.

    Daimon took the change to appear behind the monstrous mermaid and then swinged Gram at her, forcing Ka to block with her whip, but then she noticed the white me sword was aiming at her face once again, which infuriated her.

    "Bastard, do you think I''ll fall for the same twice, turn into a puddle of putrid meat!", her body suddenly radiated waves of ck mist, this was the one Daimon has been aiming at, this mist had the sensation of death imbued into it, something that only those who have stared at death up-close before would notice, and for Daimon who experienced that at the mere age of five, how could he ever forget that feeling.

    That being said, such a trivial thing wouldn''t make him wave ever again, with a swing of his right hand, he used Gram to sh against the ck mist waves.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding followed by sparks was the result of the sh, with some effort Daimon ultimately managed to cut through the ck waves of energy with Gram, just in time to block Ka''s whip with his Comet Sword.

    "It seems free-form energy is easy for you to deal with, let''s see how you counter a technique that doesn''t exist in a mere bumkin level gxy, like the one youe from!", Ka took the offensive this time.

    Her whip swinged at Daimon, while the ck energy waves kept being radiated from her body, for her the energy was ethereal not being obstructing her movements at all, but for Daimon it was solid, and he was forced to attack it or it would reach his body, all the previous while blocking the hard to predict attacks of the mermaid''s whip.

    As they shed through the battlefield, small cracks and cuts started appearing all over the silver ethereal armor that Freya casted upon Daimon, which only made Ka''s spiked teeth mouth widen in a smile.

    "Once that bitch''s protection vanishes, I''ll turn you into mincemeat and feed you to my pets!", the monstrous mermaid whose body had turned into a ck stream of water, appeared above Daimon, her ck metal whip which was overflowing in that dark energy, solidified as she shed down.

    "Booom!", the impact was no joke, since Ka had realized that physical attacks were more effective against Daimon, she was somehow solidifying the energy she controlled, essentially, she went from fighting as a mage to fight as a knight, while not giving the sensation of being either of them.

    Once the explosion caused by the sh of Gram and Daimon''s Comet Sword against the ck whip and those strange ck waves of energy, dispelled, a Daimon whose protection from Freya had started to fall off from his body, was revealed.

    Inparison, the monstrous mermaid hadn''t taken any more damage since her face was slightly burned earlier, that being said the color of her dark energy had started to change, from a deep pitch ck to a less dark tone.

    "As one would expect from such a stupid woman, to think that even in this situation she is constantly replenishing the energy of that protective technique, she is using you to try and tire me out, you know?", Ka''s voice had a maic tone as she spoke to Daimon, who looked at the other battlefield from the corner of his eyes.

    The silver armored woman was massacring that abomination non-stop, but the thing kept regenerating, since all she was using were those light arrows, instead of her silver energy, well it would be more urate to say that the abomination was recing the missing parts and filling the holes in its flesh, with spare flesh that came from those lumps, a tactic prepared to deal with the purifying effect of light over extremely negative natured beings.

    "Oh really, it seems to be working though, your mana has gotten thinner since you are maintaining that thing as well, eventually you''ll fall behind and then I''ll behead you", said Daimon as he increased the output of his Comet Sword tot hen swing it towards Ka.

    A white me wave flew through the battlefield, cleanly dividing the dark energy being radiated by the mermaid who was taken by surprise due to the sudden explosion.

    "Arghhh!", Ka dodged sidewards and managed to not be split in half, but her timing wasn''t perfect and so, her whole right arm all the way from her shoulder was cut and then engulfed in white mes, which invaded her body forcing a lung-tearing scream out of her.

    Once the white sh caused by the energy of the Comet Sword being released in a single go, disappeared, the scene of an infuriated Ka as well as Daimon who was now only wielding a sword, was revealed.

    Then to Ka''s despair, she saw another white me sword forming on Daimon''s hand.

    "Enough,e here, be my arms and legs!", the monstrous mermaid yelled and the sea abomination which was still shing with Freya, turned into a ck water stream that returned to her creator''s side.

    Freya also rushed to Daimon''s side, seeing the protection she casted on him, having been destroyed past repair she frowned.

    "I don''t have enough energy to cast that on you again¡­ we have to finish her with a single attack, I''ll be the bait and create an opportunity, use your strongest attack and I''ll add my left-over energy into it", she mumbled, just to see Daimon shaking his head.

    "No, you already did what you were supposed to do, I''ll be more than enough to deal with that", said Daimon as he saw the ck stream of water enter the body of the mermaid.

    As a result, her body grew taller as spiked teeth mouths appeared all over her, followed by tentacles with snake heads sprouting out of her back, but the physical change wasn''t that impactful, Ka was already monstrous to begin with after all.

    What really caught the eye was the pressure she was exuding right now, that ck energy which was bathing her was twisting and changing, forming different things, which were the parts of the sea abomination, she couldn''t fully control it.

    "I was saving this forter, but you all can go die, once I ughter till thest native of Kerrol, I''ll be able to finally leave this stupid prison, it''s a shame that you won''t be alive to see what I will do once I''m out, Freya", said the monstrous mermaid whose face had deformed past recognition.

    Then to Freya''s surprise, the snake heads at the end of the tentacles, opened their mouths and started inhaling the nearby energy, to the point that the silver metal space started to be affected, it was slightly simr to what Daimon did a moment ago, but on a much slower and weaker ratio.

    In exchange, the ck energy around her recovered its pitch-ck color, and then spread all over the ce, Freya immediately extended her hands creating a silver-colored barrier around both she and Daimon, just to be speechless after seeing him casually leave the barrier.

    "What are you¡­", Freya was about to question Daimon, when she saw that all the ruckus outside of the barrier suddenly stopped, there was no more energy storming all over the area or pressure, the space had returned to its calm.

    That being said Ka''s body was trembling, as she red at the masked youth with horror filling her eyes.

    "Y-You, what did you do to me!", she shouted, her body wasn''t responding, no matter what she tried to do, she was only able to talk but nothing else, her safety treasures weren''t responding at all, much less the sea abomination which should be automatically attacking everything but her.

    "You know, part of the difficulty of this trial, was the fact that there are no seas in Kerrol, at most there are small water bodies here and there, while mostys underground, and then you go out of the way and summon such a "strong" sea magic beast", he said.

    Daimon''s upper face was covered by the mask of the Hollow Suit, so Freya and Ka couldn''t see the vertical yellow lines that appeared in his pupils, as Daimon used the innate ability of the Ruler of the Sea, in other words he had taken full control over the sea abomination created by Ka, and since she had fused with it, she was also under Daimon''s control.

    Naturally, the thing was resisting and Ka was resisting even more, unfortunately for them, Daion in his normal state could control a peak Arch ranked ck Tooth, back when the Goblin Shark didn''t want to obey.

    So, in his current Mage and Knight Lord status, that half Ster rank magic beast was just a free minion for him.

    "For someone that considered Adam a pawn, you aren''t that better either, whatever I have to thank you for being a third rate viin who uses her "final form" after some provocations, instead of striking down enemies with fulminating strength right out of the bat, when you have nothing to gain from them", said Daimon as he approached Ka, Gram in his hand dispelled and then a one edged ck sword took its ce.

    "How is it, I even "cooked" this snack for you, so you better don''t be picky this time", said Daimon as he felt Disaster''s enthusiasm, it was almost the same as when the capricious sword wanted to destroy the trident earlier.

    Daimon just applied pressure on Ka, until she was forced to enter her best state, he didn''t expect that she would fuse with that abomination, though, that was a bonus, he was going to use his second chance of Core Synchrony to finish it, before allowing Disaster to devour the dark energy of the mermaid, but things ended up ying on his favor.

    And now, Ka''s body was overflowing with that dark energy, she used everything she had, to fuse with the sea abomination, and it was that energy what was keeping it together.

    Daimon saw the snake heads which were still absorbing mana, trying to find a way out of this situation and he smirked.

    "What''s that poor imitation of energy devouring skills, the real "Devour" looks like this¡­", with Daimon''s words, Disaster''s red bordered ck energy exploded out of the sword, covering the whole space.

    Freya immediately raised her guard, as she felt the predatory sensation radiated by Disaster, but that disappeared when Daimon flicked the capricious sword with his finger.

    "She helped to "cook" your meal, don''t be ungrateful, also don''t even think on killing that thing, take what you wanted and then go to sleep", he ordered.

    The ck sword trembled as if it wasining, but ultimately seemed to agree, based on the fact that Freya stopped feeling any danger from that one-edged ck sword.

    "N-No, wait, please nooooo!!!", Freya''s despaired scream echoed through the whole area as Disaster''s energy engulfed her, flooding everything in its path, creating a ck and red tsunami.

    The energy that Disaster doesn''t devour, bes part of its reserves and then turns into that ck and red energy that carries and enhances its devouring property, which normally isn''t needed.

    The fact that the capricious sword used such arge part of its reserves, meant that what it was devouring was something amazing, at least it''s the first time Daimon sees it so excited about something, besides when he poured in his energy into Disaster back when Narasha became his soulmate.

    The ck tsunami receded at an incredibly fast speed until all that energy was absorbed by Disaster, who then fell "asleep", naturally with Narasha being the one with the reigns, there was no problem, she could take over the control over the ck sword, though her specialty was Gram.

    Due to the previous, Ka and the sea abomination were separated, while the sea abomination fell from the sky, loudly crashing against the ground, not too far from Adam.

    Inparison, one might even believe that Daimon helped Ka, because she no longer had that monstrous-like appearance, and instead now looked like a mermaid from the other part of the myths, apparently that light blue haired disguise she was using before, was her real appearance, before something changed it.

    "What did you do, you bastard!", that being said, she wasn''t exactly happy about it, her recovered beauty didn''t evenst ten seconds, before her skin started withering until she had aged until she seemed to be a centimeter away from her grave.

    "Well, that was the easy part, now, time for some answers", said Daimon as he looked at both the old half-dead mermaid and the silver armored Freya.

 Chapter 519 Battle on the surface, war behind scenes (part 5)

    Chapter 519 Battle on the surface, war behind scenes (part 5)

    Needless to say, but the silver armored Freya was in awe at what just happened a moment ago.

    ''Certainly, both me and that crazy woman are in horrible states, but whatever little energy she had managed to wring out shouldn''t be weakened enough to be countered by a mortal and that sword isn''t a Promise treasure so how did he¡­''.

    She was surprised by how destructive were those white mes, that the masked youth used, but could still put its effect on the fact that they contained a strong light element, which was a weak point of the monstrous mermaid.

    He also wasn''t restrained to be forced to use a specific weapon to inflict damage to the monstrous mermaid, unlike her, which is why she created a n to finish Ka in a single strike.

    Daimon was going to initiate the attack and then she was going to add all the energy she had left, into it, for that she even used a lot of her reserves when fighting the sea abomination and supplied energy to the protection she casted on Daimon, the idea was to look weakened so that Ka lowered her guard.

    But then the situationpletely went of tracks, and she now no longer was in control of what was happening, because she didn''t know what will the masked youth had in his mind, but she was sure that the ck sword he wielded was dangerous.

    While Freya was lost in her thoughts, Daimon heard Narasha''s voice in his mind.

    ''Disaster is actually "full" for the first time, ever since we became partners, seems like I''ll be managing things for a while since it''s going to sleep in order to digest what it ate''.

    Ever since Narasha became Daimon''s soulmate, Disaster and her werepletely separated, and she was no longer affected by the whims of the capricious sword.

    That being said, while Narasha was a good girl and always cooperated with Daimon, Disaster only took the initiative when it was interested in something, or when Daimon fed it with small quantities of his mana or battle aura.

    Besides that, Daimon was still able to use the devour ability of Disaster, but he output was greatly reduced, luckily Daimon learned how to "bribe" the capricious sword, by letting it drain his enemies out of their energy and vitality, which somewhat increased how much Disaster cooperated, that was the result of eight years of training.

    Of course, if he wanted to, he could have forcefully dominated Disaster by stealing its energy, since hiszy ass magic core actually seemed to have held a grudge towards it, but he chose to take a different approach, not for Disaster, but for Narasha who had to live inside of it, still it paid off since Disaster became more cooperative due to that.

    ''Okay, be on guard, we aren''t finished here yet'', he inwardly said as he shed towards the monstrous mermaid, and kicked her on the stomach, sending her flying downwards, until she shed on the ground.

    Now the three enemies wereying on the ground, with serious injuries on them, next to each other.

    Daimon descended from the sky and Freya who came out of her daze, when she saw Daimon casually hitting Ka, followed him but Daimon didn''t pay her much attention, he instead walked towards Ka who was spiting blood after receiving that attack and then aimed Disaster at her neck.

    "I''m pretty sure you know how this works, you are going to tell me everything I''m not aware off by yourself, or I''m going to force the truth out of you", he said.

    Ka spat on the ground as she replied.

    "You are a tough one huh, you can act all high and mighty but for me you are nothing but a speck of dust, by the time you find a way to kill me or escape this, everything you know would have turned to ashes¡­ aghhh!".

    Cutting the monologue of the now aged mermaid, Daimon stabbed her left shoulder with Disaster, she surprisingly didn''t have any vitality left, which didn''t make sense as she was still alive, but Daimon then resorted to the old reliable Demon Light, and that''s what made Ka scream.

    Ignoring the mermaid who was screaming while trying to take out Disaster''s de out of her shoulder, just to realize the sword didn''t move an inch no matter how hard she tried, Daimon turned to see Freya and then asked.

    "You are involved with her, so tell me, what did she meant with that?", there were too many missing pieces and Daimon wanted answers.

    Freya sighed in response before saying.

    "I can''t tell you much, it''s not like I don''t want to, I''m tied by a curse and the same applies to her, that is also the reason as to why she couldn''t kill me even when I was imprisoned inside that star, until that trident came to light once again¡­ unfortunately the object needed to kill her it''s not in this".

    "The other solution I know off, is to kill every single member of the human and Ghoul races, which is why that crazy woman incited a war at the end of her words, the silver armored woman clenched her hands, which made the monstrous mermaid who was still screaming, regain someposure.

    "Hahaha, that''s right, so what if you were stronger, you can''t change anything, obediently watch by the sides, like the rest of the trash!", she screamed as she forced her own arm to be cut off by Disaster by jumping backwards.

    Clenching her teeth to endure the excruciating pain, Ka extended her remaining hand and her severed arm turned into a clear stream of water which divided in two parts, one was absorbed by the decrepit mermaid, while the other went to¡­ Adam.

    "No, stop her!", Freya immediately reacted, she became a silver sh and used the white cross bow to hit Ka, the attacknded making the ribcage of the mermaid explode in a mess of blood and flesh, unfortunately the mermaid grinned as the wound healed on the spot, not only that but she returned to her younger appearance.

    And the bad news kepting, Adam who was out a second ago, suddenly got up, his blond hair slowly painted white as a yellow halo appeared above his head, the trident that was piercing his chest was forcefully expulsed out of his body, and then a single white feathered wing sprouted on his back.

    "Cruelly torturing up a woman in front of me, what an idiot", Adam''s voice was surprisingly calm, his sword which had escaped his hands earlier, flew all over from the other side of the battlefield, to reach return to his side.

    The second sword which he used to shot those white rays of light had be lifeless gray, but the light hero got a recement in the form of the trident of the storm that was now being covered in a dim yellow light.

    "I bet you didn''t expect it right, tough boy, my race doesn''t die due to aging nor we get sick, so if we give our essence to someone, regardless of their state they''ll make a full recovery in a matter of seconds, and we''ll recover not too long after, this is the wall that a nobody like you can''t surpass no matter how strong you be!".

    While the mermaid has gotten quite talkative, Adam was strangely calm andposed, he pointed his sword and the trident towards Daimon before saying.

    "Come, I assure you the result will be different this time".

    Daimon who was wielding Gram as he changed Disaster''s form the moment Ka cut off her own arm, charged towards Adam.

    "ng!", spars flew all over the ce as Gram shed against Adam''s sword, as well as the trident, but not only he wasn''t pushed backwards, he rolled the trident with his hand and then thrusted it, aiming at Daimon''s chest, his sole wing shone and particles of light mana were absorbed it.

    Adam''s body was propelled frontwards, forcing Daimon to stop the sh, since he couldn''t block the trident that was about to pierce his chest.

    "It won''t be easy anymore", Adam wasn''t willing to let the enemy that has made him lost so much, out of the hook so easily, the halo above his head rotated and yellow ray of light was shot from the prongs of the trident.

    "Judgement Light".

    Daimon swinged Gram, deflecting the rays of light, Gram had the capacity to manipte light, regardless of its nature, be it mana or battle aura, as long as it was light element, Gram could affect it.

    Surprisingly those yellow ways of light weren''t made of battle aura, but solely by mana, in other words, Adam a knight was manipting mana like a mage!

    As amazing as the previous was, Gram deflected those light rays but Adam took the chance to charge towards Daimon, his body turned into a light yellow meteor, despite the short distance, he gained an insane amount of momentum as the next sh between his sword and Gram, suggested.

    "Booom!", the sh released a thunderous shockwave that made the air vibrate, Adam who had gotten taller in this state, once again pushed Daimon backwards.

    "It''s futile, I don''t know how you were able to be both a mage and a knight, considering that such a thing doesn''t exist in Neptune, but in my Archangel form my realm equals that of my enemy, plus I gain the ability to enhance myself turning the mana in the atmosphere into light mana".

    ''Now die as a payment for forcing me to use such an expensive trump card!'', thought Adam as she turned into a stream of white light that shot towards Daimon, appearing above him as he swinged his sword downwards, he nned to behead the enemy and exhibit his head to those three girls that dared to trick him earlier.

    Daimon who was semi closing his eyes due to the blinding light released by Adam''s wing and halo, suddenly took a 180¡ã change of expression, from "panic" to a ridiculing smile as he said.

    "Oh no, of only I would have known that heroes are prompt to random power ups when getting their asses handed by their opponents, oh wait¡­", Daimon''s voice was momentarily cut, when Adam''s sword "reached" him, just to pass through him.

    ''Afterimage, no wait, that was a spatial move...''.

    Adam''s train of thought was interrupted when Daimon''s figure blinked, appearing behind of him in a fraction of a second.

    "I of course knew and counted with it", Daimon then casually grabbed Adam by his neck and then smacked his face against the ground.

    Killing a hero is not easy, those bastards are like pests that woulde back stronger, by random situations, but an easy way to deal with them was to not only crush them with force, but also destroying their fighting spirit, and judging by the lifeless gaze in Adam''s eyes, Daimon''s n was a sess.

    "Crack!", not only the hard metal ground cracked due to the impact, Adam''s skull probably cracked a bit too, as well as his face, especially because Daimon kept smacking his face against the ground, until a puddle of blood had formed below him and Adam was no longer resisting.

    "Did you really believe that I only crushed you earlier because I had double realms, while you only had one, if I so wished to, I could have busted your head open with that attack, but that would be letting you go too easily, besides you never really affected me so the honor of ending your miserable life isn''t mine¡­ no, there is someone who deserves it more than me", said Daimon as he took Adam''s sword and shoved it on Adam''s right leg, while he used the trident to pierce his left arm, pining him against the ground, so that if he tried to escape he would thorn his body apart.

    "Also, this really doesn''t go along with a bastard like you", added Daimon as he grabbed the wing on Adam''s back, his hand exploded in Demon Light and then using his enhanced monstrous physical strength, he thorned the thing out of Adam''s back.

    "Aghhhhhh!", whether due to what Daimon said or the fact that the wing was pulled out from him, Adam screamed as he smacked his head against the ground until his eyes rolled backwards, his body unconsciously made it so he fainted, to prevent the shock from killing him, not that it mattered since Daimon wasn''t going to kill him, there were a couple of girls who came to mind, to have the honor, besides his instincts told him that this was the best choice.

    After making sure that the light idiot wasn''t just feigning, while mustering strength to strike back, like earlier, Daimon nodded and then turned to see Ka who was froze on her spot a few meters away.

    "Oh well, where were we again?", he said.

    "What did you do to me!", the mermaid yelled as se observed her still missing arm, even after so "much" time, her bleeding hadn''t stopped and she didn''t feel her arming back, she now realized that she couldn''t heal that wound, in other words, her arm was gone for good.

    Freya who was keeping her in check while Daimon fought against Adam, stood in front of Daimon just in case the mermaid tried to something out of desperation.

    "I was wondering why I didn''t get a notification to obtain a portion of the experience I needed for my mission, if I destroyed that cross bow, but it seems like what was important were the bolts, not the cross bow itself, maybe that''s why Disaster wanted me to sh you down", casually said Daimon

    Though it sounded unrted to the current situation, judging by the expression of horror on the face of the now "beautiful" mermaid, this time she was truly scared, while Freya on the other hand was radiating a happy sensation.

    "Y-You used the bolt to forge that weapon, what are you to that bitch, how the hell did you find that!", eximed Ka as she stepped backwards, her previous arrogance was nowhere to be seen.

    Just like the trident was needed to kill Freya for some reason, apparently the bolt that was melted into that trashy shield, in Aurora''s treasury, which Disaster destroyed and Daimon took advantage of to increase his abilities with long range weapons, was the weapon selected to be able to kill the mermaid, apparently the capricious sword had gained that property.

    Though Daimon was sure that Disaster could have done the same, with or without it, it is true that only now that the ck sword directly cut Ka, she suffered a lethal injury, since even after her dark energy was drained out of her, she could still cure herself, but now she couldn''t.

    Feeling a real death approaching her, the mermaid weighted her options and then a cunning light shed through her eyes.

    "Wait, you are already so strong like you are, form a contract with me and you''ll obtain powers you can''t even imagine, unlike that uptight bitch, I''m free to choose a host, ah right, you don''t know about it, there are chosen people who are called system¡­".

    ''Hey, don''t go try steal other people''s hosts you bitch!'', Evangeline''s angered voice echoed in Daimon''s mind, as she saw the mermaid trying to get Daimon to form a contract with her.

    "If she dies, will you be freed from that curse?", asked Daimon to Freya.

    "Mm, the curse requires the two of us to be alive, that''s why she wanted to kill me at first, but then she gave up and instead aimed at killing every member of the two races, which is when I started interfering here and there", said Freya.

    "Oh, do you have the same information as her, and more importantly are you going to tell me everything?", asked Daimon once again.

    "¡­", the silver armored Freya remained silent for a second, before she nodded.

    "Yes, if that bolt came to you one way or another, you are supposed to know the truth, I swear over my existence", she said, surprisingly Daimon could feel the link that was created when one made a soul oath, Freya could do it without a tool mediating.

    "No, get away from me, I''m so close, I can''t die here¡­", Ka turned around and tried to run, but then Daimon appeared in front of here and then the next thing she saw was darkness, as her head was separated from her body by Disaster''s de.

    As her body started dposing, Kerroll rumbled, as many parts of the were trembling simultaneously, making the humans think that the Blood King who escaped from the moon was going wild.

 Chapter 520 Know your place (part 1)

    Chapter 520 Know your ce (part 1)

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as he carefully observed the corpse of the mermaid dissolving into light blue particles, even after her whole body dispersed, Daimon didn''t hear a notification, until he heard Evangeline''s saying.

    ''Humph, you think you can just discard your incarnation and call it even after trying to cajole my host, leave something behind for being a presumptuous bitch!''.

    Daimon then felt a strange sensationing from him, it was hard to pinpoint the origin, but it felt as if his existence had be a ck hole, different yet slightly simr to when hiszy ass magic core decided to do something.

    Followed by that, a scream that only Freya and Daimon could heard, echoed through the whole area.

    "Aghhh, Freya you fucking psycho, I''ll get you for thissss!!!", to Daimon''s displease the mermaid seemed to have survived, but as if to contempt him, the good old system gave him a reward.

    [Ding]

    [You have obtained "Siren''s ck Heart (fragment)", the host isn''tpatible with the obtained item, processing¡­]

    [Ding]

    [Do you wish to trade the item through the System for a skill of equal value (the skill will have a simr effect as the item used to exchange it for) Y/N]

    ''Eve, what is this?'', asked Daimon, this is the first time the System offers him a deal, also he got to know that the monstrous mermaid was actually a Siren, apparently the pretty ones with melodious voices were mermaids, and the ones that tricked and ate humans were called Sirens.

    Despite being from Neptune where races that had characteristics from sea magic beasts, or even cases of sea magic beasts taking human form existed, neither Jasmine nor Sarah have seen or heard of a race with the characteristics Ka had, in her two forms.

    On the other hand, they weren''t from the Mermen Sea, so probably Ae or Vincent might have information about the legendary race which are the mermaids, but that could be left forter.

    ''Well, you needed something else besides that bolt to truly kill her, but you managed to destroy her incarnation and a part of her existence, I just helped you m what you damaged from her as a punishment for insulting the System, since she tried to snatch my host¡­''.

    ''Hey Eve, isn''t this what humans call "jealousy", I could tell you got really angry when she tried to convince Daimon to be her host~'', Narasha''s words made Evangeline change the subject.

    ''Ahem, don''t worry about the trade that the System is offering you, you have no use to it, unless you are first of all, a woman, second an administrator and third, someone with a water oriented attribute, so this will be more beneficial to you, also it will be good for the System, she said.

    Daimon nodded, getting the message between lines that Evangeline gave him, if he got something from the System and also benefitted the System, he would be gaining twice, of course there is a chance that she was lying, but he trusted her not as the administrator of the System, but his friend Eve.

    Also, getting a useful skill is not easy, in part because he himself set the bar too high when he killed the manticore back then, on the other hand, the skills he got from that, were worth it.

    Overlord''s Pride, Sixth Sense, Mythic Vitality, those three skillsid the bases of what Daimon has achieved nowadays, the first was the base for his Terror Contractor skill, the second helped the creation of the infinity eyes and thest one helped his Demon Light be what it is, since vitality is the main ingredient of Battle Aura, besides one''s life spark, not to mention his insane vitality is also the reason as to why his body is able to endure a crazy technique such as Core Synchrony without him exploding.

    Daimon epted the deal and the sweet sound of a notification ringed in his mind, on the spot.

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action <!>]

    [Mythical Regeneration (Iplete) (Passive): Any wounds caused by beings on an equal or lower level of existence than the host won''t be fatal, healing will require a source of energy (stamina, vitality, mana or battle aura, if the host can''t supply for it after one minute, the effect will be nullified)]

    As Daimon read the skill, he felt the urge to curse, that skill was a partial immortality, and that also exined why that woman didn''t die though she had zero vitality left, she still had mana, but she used most of it when she helped Adam make his heroeback, so then she couldn''t supply for the energy needed to recover from being beheaded.

    ''Level of existence, is that one''s realm?'', wondered Daimon for a moment, before he put the thought at the back of his head for now, that skill went along with him amazingly well, he already has "Mystic Vitality" and while the effect is more noticeable for his soulmates, his vitality is strong enough to heal wounds and increase his recovery ratio, but he would die if his vitality reached zero or if his body was destroyed, like others.

    Well, maybe his System could interfere, like Adam''s did for him, but he wasn''t stupid nor arrogant enough like the light idiot as to let his life or death be decided by "fate", he has experienced the result of that once, and it will never happen again.

    Daimon immediately tested out his new skill, the slight cuts and burns that Adam''s all out attack, before he was knocked out the first time, were still there, his monstrous body was healing them, but the process was slowed down, probably a part of the abilities of that sword, but now¡­

    Daimon just guided some mana towards the wounds, and not even a secondter, they disappeared without a trace, and he just used a small amount of vitality, it was perfect for him, whose insane vitality recovery rate was the cause of him healing overtime, he could now use that excess for instant-healing, without any side effects.

    He then noticed Freya suddenly getting wary of him, she probably felt a simr sensation from him, as to when Ka used the effect of her Siren''s heart, since those two obviously had some history together.

    "I didn''t ept her offer, so take it easy", he said to which the silver armored woman nodded.

    "It''s not like Ka''s race is the only one with strong regenerative skills, but hers is one of the most troublesome ones, now that I look more closely, that ability of yours is not the same¡­ now, what are you going to do with him?", she asked as she pointed at the miserable looking light hero.

    Daimon sent the both the trident of the storm as well Adam''s sword to the inventory, the sword was tied to the light idiot, so in order to truly obtain it, Adam had to either renounce to it, or die for the sword to be free, but thanks to Ka messing up with the sword, as well as Adam being utterly crushed, the sword had no strength left to resist.

    Naturally he could tell that the silver armored woman had a lot of questions in her mind, like how was he able to steal a part of Ka''s existence, apparently even now, Freya couldn''t notice that he was also a System user, which is worth investigatingter.

    With a snap of her fingers, the giant metal sphere-like space crumbled apart, Freya''s body slightly trembled but she recovered after the fragments of her metal space were absorbed by her.

    The scenery changed from the isted silver space, to the chaotic battlefield outside, despite Ka being out of the picture, she wasn''t really dead, and so the things she created using that dark energy and the Ghouls, were now going berserk, attacking both allies and enemies.

    The first thing Daimon noticed was that the whole nearby area had be a disaster zone, unlike previously, the Ghouls that were consumed by that dark energy all developed a domain, or more urately they were creating a diluted version of that dark energy as they rampaged through the battlefield killing both Ghouls and humans.

    Which made sense, Ka wanted the two races to be exterminated, so that she could escape, after all.

    Daimon wasn''t interested in the war that was taking ce in Kerrol, but if what the message that Rita just sent him, was true, then it was within his interests to kill take care of those things Ka created.

    Freya did seem to want to interfere, but from Daimon''s point of view, she was at the end of her energy reserves, so though she wasn''t defenseless by any means, she couldn''t use too much energy, well, she could still enter hand to handbat, but to repel that dark energy she would end up using her own energy, since it was like a degraded version of Ka''s one.

    Without saying anything, Daimon flew towards east and the silver armored Freya followed him after a moment of hesitation, not too long after Daimon arrived at his destination.

    Since things went wild the moment Ka transformed those poor bastards into abominations, Daimon asked Rita to stay outside of the metal isted space, so she could watch over Jasmine, the crazy girl and Reyne too, since Jeanne and Emily were busy at the moment.

    While Daimon was beating the crap out of Adam and the Siren, things were rtively smooth, at least for Daimon''s group, but after Ka''s incarnation was destroyed and a part of her existence was damaged by Daimon, to then be stolen with Evangeline and the System''s help, the human side was once again pushed back.

    Still, since Rita''s orders were just to keep an eye on those three, she just acted when the Ghouls tried to attack them, needless to say but the result was a one-side massacre, which created a "safe zone" among thend of death that this ce has be.

    "So, what happened here?", Daimon who descended on the giant volcanic rock where Rita and those three should be waiting for his return, asked as he saw the strange ck crystal cocoon that was next to Jasmine.

    Since only one of the three girls was missing, it was easy to know who was inside of it, but the process was what was important here.

    "Some of those bizarre abominations suddenly rushed towards us, but were easily killed by Rita, after that, the corpses dried up and their blood released wisps of ck mist which then tried to fly away but then Sarahughed and then she used it¡­ that Manifestation Phenomenon you mentioned to us, those wisps were then dragged towards her and solidified into that crystal", said Jasmine with an apologetic voice.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, he used the infinity eyes to see through the ck crystal, the crazy girl was inside with a happy expression on her face, sound couldn''t leave the inside of the crystal, but Daimon could read her lips.

    "Wee back, I need more of those ck wisps, I''ll be out in a moment and then you can have me as a payment~", ignoring he fact, that Daimon had no idea how the hell, she knew he was looking at her, since the crystal should be isting her considering she didn''t react to the fainted half dead light idiot he was grabbing by his neck, it was good to see she was perfectly fine, or at least she was as normal as her crazy self, allowed her to.

    "I''m sorry, I didn''t want to use my mana sense on it, since I didn''t know if it would be detrimental for young master''spanion", said Rita to which Daimon shook his head.

    "Don''t worry, even if something went wrong, I bet she would enjoy it¡­ in any case this align with thest goal we had in this, bring all the abominations here and then kill them, remember to not destroy their bodies too much, please", he said.

    "Mm, understood!", answered Rita in an unusual enthusiastic voice, her body then turned into countless threads of ck light that shot towards the battlefield, eager to fulfill her young master''s petition.

    Daimon then tossed Adam like a piece of garbage, making himnd in front of Jasmine, who only now paid him attention, as she was worried about Sarah, and also happy that Daimon has safely returned.

    Despite Jasmine now being able to keep her cool, since she has gotten back at Adam earlier with the trident of the storm, the tinge of hatred that shed in her pretty eyes which had those white halos appearing in them, didn''t go unnoticed by Daimon.

    "Here, you deserve tond the killing attack on this idiot", he said as he stepped on Adam''s neck, in case he tried to do some hero bullshit once again.

    Jasmine''s pretty eyes glowed as she smiled at Daimon.

    "I want Sarah to do it too, she risked her life to prevent to make this trash hesitate, otherwise I would have been¡­", Jasmine stopped in the middle of her sentence, she was right considering how Adam had tricked everyone to be in their good books, Sarah attacking him might have resulted in the crazy girl being imprisoned or worse.

    And yet, she didn''t hesitate to confront the light idiot, essentially making him doubt that his tricks weren''t enough to gain the full support of the two strongest forces of the Elemental Sea, which is why he postponed doing anything to Jasmine, until his "triumphal return" as the champion of the first ever Inter-Sea Beast Hunt event.

    In other words, she yed a big role in Jasmine meeting Daimon and escaping Adam''s grasp, and so she also deserved to cut Adam''s head along with Jasmine.

    Daimon thought about it for a second, he really didn''t want to keep Adam alive for too long, so he then said.

    to Jasmine, though he didn''t stop stepping on Adam''s neck.

    "If she doesn''te out of that crystal after Rita brings all those things, then you''ll have to do it without her, okay?", as Daimon finished speaking, he took out the trident of the storm and handed to Jasmine, though he didn''t stop stepping on Adam''s neck.

    "Mm, thanks Daimon~", she said with her mellow voice, as she epted the trident from Daimon, to kill him properly they still needed a System weapon after all.

    Daimon nodded and then gazed at Freya before saying.

    "We''ll leave out conversation for when we leave this battlefield, until then you are free to do as you please", the silver armored woman had made a soul contract that bound her to answer his questions to the best of her capacities, so she couldn''t leave until that, though she didn''t seem to be in a hurry to part ways with Daimon.

    Surprisingly, against Daimon''s predictions, Freya didn''t leave, instead of that she sat down cross legged on the ground and ced the white cross bow next to her.

    "If you don''t mind, can I keep this cross bow¡­ until you leave Kerrol?", she asked, to which Daimon nodded, it''s not like the cross bow triggered anything from the System, nor it really had any use to him since it is currently broken, but it seemed to have personal value for Freya.

    "Sure", with a single word, the silver armored woman seemed to cheer up, as she observed Kerrol while lost in her thoughts.

    Leaving that aside, turned around just in time to see Rita returning with a giant ck cube floating behind of her, the walls of the cubes waved a bit from time to time, due to the ones trapped inside trying to escape, but nothing else happened, Rita''s shadow element could be both ethereal and dense, even the bone general couldn''t escape from Rita''s restraints in a short period of time after all.

    "Hold your hand!!!", as Rita returned to Daimon''s side, an angered scream came from above the clouds, as they were blown away.

    "Booom!", a few kilometers away, Antonio who was missing an arm as well as the male elder from the church whose previously white hair was now stained ck,nded on the ground, they were coughing and trembling as they tried to rpose.

    Then a pir of ck and red light came down to crush them, but old Ben appeared in front of it and deployed his domain in rush, managing to barely block the attack preventing the other two from being turned into meat paste.

    "Watch out kid, he suddenly got stronger!", shouted old Ben at Daimon, what happened earlier cooled down the good impression the old man had of Daimon, his grandson died after all, but what they were facing right now was a possible extinction as a race, and he as an Adjudicator had the duty to prevent that from happening.

    Not like Daimon really needed it, he was aware of what wasing from above the clouds, ording to Rita, not all the ones who received that dark energy from Ka went mad, there were a few who were actually able to keep their rationality to a certain extent, namely the remaining Archdukes, who were fighting against Jeanne and Emily at the other side of the battlefield, Pa who was guiding the Ghoul army while shing against the female elder from the church and of course Archbald.

    Though the Blood King got Adam''s sword confiscated by Ka earlier, he received Ka''s dark energy to make up for it, and now that the Siren couldn''t control him, he was finally able to fight at his strongest state.

    He took old Ben and the others by surprise, wounding Antonio who was in charge of defense, and also poisoned the male elder from the church, as for old Ben he was forced to defend his teammates, so Archbald was now unrestrained.

    That being said, Daimon didn''t me them, because Archbald had surpassed the level of Kerrol, judging by the size of the Battle Avatar that wasing down from the sky as well as the pressure radiated by it.

    A little lesson regarding Battle Avatars, their size varies depending on how strong it is, in a ratio of a hundred meters per minor stage of the Arch rank, from early to peak, there are nine stages, that means a nine hundred meter Battle Avatar, after that, there is no guideline, since the half Ster realm and above varies from each person, which is why someone can''t guide another person to breakthrough, also there is no need to reach the maximum size of Battle Avatar to advance, nor it is easy to do so.

    As a proof of he previous, Horal''s Battle Avatar, thest time Daimon saw it, was still five hundred meters size, but it is worth mentioning that the bone general was a middle stage Archknight until not too long ago.

    The previous is knowledge from the four gxies, in Neptune they don''t know about it, because not only just a few manage to obtain either a Domain or a Battle Avatar, but they tend to manifest it for the first time, at the middle or peak Arch rank or even until the half Ster rank, only people with really high talents like Vincent, Aurora and the others, obtained the trait of the Ach rank at the early stage and still, their limit is around half of what it is recorded back at the four gxies.

    Well, in Kerrol they were even worse, despite having knowledge of even the traits of both the Lord and Arch rank, not only most weren''t able to get them, but their limit was around a third of the one of the four gxies.

    And so, Antonio''s Battle Avatar who barely reached 350 meters of height with the help of his beast equipment, was overpowered by Archbald''s Battle Avatar who has surpassed the five-hundred-meter mark thanks to the dark energy he got from Ka.

    Seeing the giant ck knight shaped Battle Avatar of the Blood Kinging their way, Daimon nodded at Rita who snapped her fingers.

    Countless of spikes and thorns appeared on the cube, which were then absorbed into it, making screamse out of it, Daimon chuckled, that spell Rita used looked quite a bit like his dual element spell "Demon Coffin" the one with which he one-shot Alexander back then, with the difference that she adapted it to her own element instead of using lightning as she didn''t have that affinity.

    The result was also quite simr, the cube broke and a few dozens of hundreds of corpses of Ghouls who were turned into irrational abominations, fell from it, just as Jasmine said, their corpses dried as ck wisps of energy flowed out of them, just to be forcefully dragged towards Sarah, making the crystal''s ck tone darken even more.

    The other result was the Blood King going mad at the sight of his subordinates being massacred, despite him ordering the masked youth to stop, it''s not like he cared about them, but he was going to sacrifice them to advance to the next level, now that he had a taste of this power, he of course wanted more.

    "Aghhhhhh!", Archbald whose eyes were bloodshot, used the right arm of his Battle Avatar to punch at the volcanic rock where Daimon and the others were, just to be stopped when everything within his frontal field of vision was covered in darkness.

    Luckily for Archbald, or not, he didn''t have to look too much to find out what was happening, as he heard a woman''s voiceing from within the veil of shadows that was blocking his attack.

    "A mere pawn dares to bare its fangs against my young master, know your ce!", the giant mass of darkness then changed its form, until a familiar ck armored figure appeared in front of the Blood King, it was¡­ a perfectly detailed Daimon shaped shadow

    puppet of a kilometer of size.

    Now imagine Archbald''s expression when that giant "Daimon" extended its right arm, and grabbed his Battle Avatar to then smack it against the ground, making it sink into the ground, until the magma thatid below the surface, erupted, burning the Battle Avatar too.

 Chapter 521 Know your place (part 2)

    Chapter 521 Know your ce (part 2)

    "Boooom!", the impact caused by Archbald''s Battle Avatar being smacked against the ground, made the ground explode, the magma that was kept underground at a high pressure, erupted on the spot.

    The result was a loud explosion and a tsunami of magma that spread throughout the nearby area, followed by the angered voice of Archbald as he tried to brute force his way to stand up again.

    Just to get hammered into the ground once again, this time by the right foot of the giant Daimon shaped shadow puppet.

    "Aghhh!", fire is a good counter to blood element and magma is considered an advanced variation of fire element, so while Archbald wasn''t suffering pain due to the magma, his Battle Avatar took damage from it, now add the strong shockwave damage that the giant "Daimon" caused by smacking and then stomping on Archbald''s Battle Avatar, the Blood King felt his battle aura reserves take a big hit.

    Normally, a punch and a stomp wouldn''t make a Battle Avatar suffer, battle aura is solidified when bing a Battle Avatar after all, which is why the Blood King itself didn''t suffer any wound.

    But that giant Daimon shaped shadow puppet which is fighting against Archbald''s Battle Avatar isn''t a spell, unlike what Rita used back to fight against Ulkrear, no, that is¡­ her Domain.

    ''I can''t believe she gave her Domain that form, also that is a lot ofpressed mana¡­ is that why she never used it before?'', wondered Daimon as he felt the dubitative gazes of Jasmine, Reyne and even Freya on him.

    ''Hahaha, I got to give it to her, she is one hell of a maid~'', jokingly said Evangeline, which made Daimon chuckle.

    By default, a Domain takes the form of an elliptical space around its owner, depending on the element, talent and training of the owner, said Domain can be re-shaped ording to its master''s orders.

    Of course, that is an advanced technique which requires a lot of experience, control and mana, because unlike battle aura, mana isn''t solid by innate, some elements like metal or earth gain substance past a certain point, but solidifying mana is way harder than solidifying battle aura, which is why Ka only resorted to that after noticing that fluid attacks were being easily cut down by Daimon.

    Domains are perfect to deal with numerous enemies, while Battle Avatars are perfect for a one versus one situation, or to snipe important targets, of course there are exceptions, like Aurora whose Domain can be both a strong defense or a tool to iste strong individuals, to deal with them separately.

    Anyway, what''s important is that Rita seemed to be having fun, as she continuously stomped on the Blood King''s Battle Avatar, mainly because her Domain had taken Daimon''s shape, so in a sense her young master was fighting side to side with her.

    "Enough bitch!", after realizing that due to the position in which he was being hammered into the ground, his Battle Avatar was unable to regain his footing, unless he dissipated it and then summoned it again, which not only will burn a lot of his battle aura, but will also leave him open for a direct hit from the enemy, Archbald instead bit the bullet and dived into the underground sea of magma, to then resurge a few hundreds of meters away.

    The ground exploded as the Blood King''s Battle Avatar came out of it, there were a few parts which had melted due to the magma, not to mention Archbald was furious after suffering such humiliation, he a king couldn''t get up as he was being stomped upon by not even the enemy he was aiming at, but some servant, he was livid.

    Ghouls aren''t exactly stable beings to begin with due to their negative nature, they kill just for fun as a proof of it, and while the dark energy which Ka had, wasn''t corrupted like the one Nethereals use, it still follows simr principles, in other words, if not controlled properly, it eats away at one''s rationality.

    And the current Archbald was furious beyond words, he lost that amazing sword he was given, his sponsor abandoned him, and the materials he was going to sacrifice to surpass the level in which he has been stuck for countless years, were stolen right in front of his eyes, which once again changed the tides of the war, but not in his favor.

    "Blood Call!", shouted Archbald, his Battle Avatar exploded in dark red battle aura and then screams could be hearding from afar.

    "Noo my king, why!!!", and other simr wails echoed through the battlefield, as a lot of the low ranked nobles and soldiers of the Ghoul army, exploded into red mist which was then absorbed by Archbald''s Battle Avatar, and then injected directly into the Blood King.

    The damages done to Archbald''s Battle Avatar were immediately repaired, his previously almost fully ck battle aura had regained some red tone, and the Blood King actually recovered his rationality.

    "This fight doesn''t have anything to do with you right, get the hell out of my way and return me that", said Archbald as his Battle Avatar pointed at the pitch-ck crystal which unknown to him contained Sarah.

    "That is not up to you to decide, per my young master''s petition, your life spark will be extinguished by me", followed by Rita''s words, the giant shadow puppet in which she was swimming, released waves of dark mana which covered everything within ten kilometers.

    The thing about Domains, is that they can cover huge areas, technically a talented peak Arch rank can cover up to a few hundreds of kilometers, but in general the strength of effect of the Domain will diminish the more the Domain extends, since the borders will be too separated from the point of origin which is the Archmage itself.

    And the previous is without taking into ount the interference that outsiders bring to one''s Domain, after all, inside a Domain only the mana of the same element as the one of the owner of the Domain remain, so when another type of mana appears within the Domain, it causes interference.

    So, the current epted form to consider an Archmage''s Domain to remain at its peak in all its range, is one kilometer per every minor realm of the Arch rank, in other words the same rule as the Battle Avatars multiplied per ten, meaning that ten kilometers is the size of the Domain of a peak Archmage when fighting against an opponent of the same rank.

    Once again, those are the standards of the four gxies, which is also why Archbald right now was having a mental breakdown, he could somewhat ept that the enemy had "pushed it to the limit" and used the whole length of its Domain to create that giant version of the masked youth to fight on par with him.

    But then what the hell was happening now, why was the whole nearby area being encapsted in this oppressive darkness.

    "Oh, don''t tell me you believed this small shadow puppet represented my homage to my young master, his shadow extends infinitely without being restrained by anything, suppressing every being below his shade¡­", Rita stopped for a moment there before continuing.

    "Unfortunately, even in this atmosphere that is beneficial for me, Ick the ability to make use of the entirety of my Domain to create a decent representation of my young master without being able to exactly replicate till hisst detail perfectly, on the other hand thanks to that I still have a vast part of my Domain free for my use".

    Rita who unusually talkative, came out of her daze as she saw the Blood King trying to runaway from her Domain.

    "Oh well, though I could talk about my young master for hours, you aren''t worthy of listening, but fear not, for you can be a stepping stone in his path to greatness".

    Archbald who has turned his back on an enemy for the first time in his life, after feeling as if he was being suffocated by the dark space deployed by that strange woman, suddenly failed lost his bnce as his Battle Avatar''s right leg sank into the darkness that was covering the ground.

    "Damn it, let me go!", he shouted as he tried to get out, but no matter how much strength he used, nothing happened, so ultimately, he could only severe that leg and then jump towards the nearby border of the Domain, to punch it with his two fists.

    "Blood Burn!".

    "Boooom!", the two fists of the Battle Avatar exploded in ck and red battle aura, besides the increase inbat prowess, knights could use martial arts through their Battle Avatars, of course the consumption of battle aura was insane, so it was ast resort kind of thing, which only worked to show how scared the Blood King was right now.

    ''Shit, shit, shit, how is that bitch so strong, she isn''t one of the "chosen" of which that woman spoke, so then why am I trembling!'', inwardly screamed Archbald as he poured everything he had into that attack, the only thing he wanted right now was to escape from this ce and then go to his royal capital to do thergest sacrifice ritual, in order to advance.

    Thanks to the recent events he had seen the light at the end of the stagnation that has been torturing, ever since he went into a special slumber to find a way to breakthrough, originally, he epted to follow Ka''s orders as she promised to help him obtain a real advance, instead of the state he achieved thanks to Kerrol''s atmosphere, but now he has found his own way.

    "I can''t die here, I will evolve and be the progenitor of my own race, like the first Blood King!", shouted Archbald as he punched Rita''s Domain with all his might.

    "Booom!", the result was a giant shockwave that made the wall jiggle, but the Blood King''s smirk didn''tst long as the arms of his Battle Avatar were dragged into the shadow wall.

    "Crack!", with a loud cracking noise, the arms of Archbald''s Battle Avatar were ripped off from its body and then sank into the darkness of the wall, followed by the giant shadow puppet with "Aghhhhh!", with the origin of it being forcefully removed, the Battle Avatar crumbled apart on the spot and a lot of wounds appeared on Daimon''s shape, punching a hole through what was left of the Battle Avatar, sessfully making Archbald''s real body fly out of it due to the impact.

    "Aghhhhh!", with the origin of it being forcefully removed, the Battle Avatar crumbled apart on the spot and a lot of wounds appeared on Archbald''s body due to the recoil, blood exploded out of the wounds but before he could even scream, spiked shadow chains pierced his body and dragged him into the shadows, his screams could be heard for a couple of seconds, before silence reigned once again.

    Rita nodded happy with the result of her work, she then snapped her fingers and all the shadows, including the giant Daimon shaped shadow puppet returned to her, she then flew towards Daimon and jumped into his shadow in a rush.

    "It''s done, Daimon!", she happily said from within Daimon''s shadow, thefort was clear in her voice as she was back at her happy ce.

    Daimon had quite a few questions for her, but he decided to leave them for when they had some private time, also his participation in the war was about toe to an end.

    ''They should be finishing right about now'', he thought as he raised his head and gazed in a particr direction.

    ¡­

    At the other side of the battlefield, things had taken an interesting turn, previously when the Ghoul abominations were still alive, the human army was losing members with each minute, because at least three people on the same realm were needed just to resist against a single one of those, and that resulted in one dying, a second one receiving serious wounds and a third one being infected by that dark energy to then be either healed by the Domain of the female elder from the church, or killed by other members of the human army if the infected was beyond help.

    Needless to say, but 8 out of 10 cases ended in the third option, even if diluted that dark energy still originated in Ka, the female elder had never seen something like that, so besides trying to purify it with her light element she couldn''t do anything else, especially because she had her own battle to fight.

    Pa also received that dark energy from Ka, she wasn''t at the level of the Archdukes so she would have normally lost her rationality, but apparently, she received some "benefits" from entertaining Adam, so she managed to keep her rationality and reach the same level as Felix and the other old monsters.

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon''s interference in the war hadn''t ended yet, once Rita showed up and casually captured all the Ghoul abominations, the pressure on the human side plummeted and she was now in a tough spot.

    And now while she was shing with the female elder, she suddenly felt a piercing pain on her chest, where a red mark appeared and then faded away, making Pa''s pupils contract like needles.

    ''N-No way, they killed Archbald!'', she inwardly screamed, as she made the female elder retreat with one of her attacks, to then fly upwards in a try to escape, she even sold herself to obtain power, she didn''t have any loyalty towards the Blood King, she just wanted a position of authority in the new order that was supposed to be born, but now she realized she was in the losing side, so she had to escape if she didn''t want to be captured and tortured, either for when her path was blocked by a thin white light wall, the female elder managed to use her Domain onest time with the mana she satisfaction of the public or to get information from her.

    It''s a shame that when it rains it pours, she had yet to get too far when her path was blocked by a thin white light wall, the female elder managed to use her Domain onest time with the mana she had left.

    "Don''t get in my way you, old bitch!", she shouted as she punched the white light wall, after obtaining that dark energy from Ka, she couldn''t use her Domain anymore, instead she now made more of that dark energy appear near her, but that was enough for her destroy the white light wall.

    But as she left the elder''s Domain, she was met with thest people she wanted to see right now, Jeanne and Reyne who were both holding hand sized white metal boxes, they were both in their vampire form as their red eyes suggested, also both of them had blood stains on their armors.

    "Where do you think you are going, that woman said something interesting when I tore her heart out of her ribcage with my own hands, apparently the idea of kidnapping someone to forcefully obtain that white cross bow was yours, right?", said Emily as she craned her neck.

    "Mm, since you tried to capture Reyne for that idiot, you should have been prepared to be beaten to death by us", added Jeanne.

    "Shut up, so what if I decided to be the Blood King''s ve, you two hypocritical whores did the same, otherwise that masked guy who was on par with the idiot that was yed by me, wouldn''t have helped you so don''t you dare to look down on me!", yelled Pa as she summoned her Domain, or at least that''s what she tried to do, when Emily suddenly punched a hole through her chest.

    Jeanne who had be a white sh, appeared behind P and beheaded her on the spot with her sword.

    "Let me tell you a little secret, unlike you, we aren''t ves but teammates with our "special"panion, now why don''t reunite with Felix", said Jeanne as she grabbed Pa''s corpse to take it with them.

    The female elder looked at how those two easily disposed of the enemy she couldn''t kill, and she raised her guard to the best of her capacities, at this point she didn''t know what the masked youth was nning.

    She saw Rita capturing the Ghoul abominations but not killing them, who knows if the masked youth was aiming to be the new Blood King, he had the qualifications to do so, since no one could stop him.

    But she was wrong, Jeanne and Emily ignored her and shot towards the area where Daimon and the others were, the moment they reached a certain distance, Pa''s corpse dried up as a big wisp of dark energy came out of her body just to be dragged towards the ck crystal cocoon where the crazy girl was.

    Rita identally stole the dark energy that Archbald''s corpse produced, she tried to let go of it, since one of her young master''spanions needed it, but the thing was instead integrated into her shadows.

    "Crack!", to Jasmine''s happiness, the crystal cocoon cracked after absorbing that onest bit of dark energy, and then exploded into a dark purple mist, releasing the "unknown" life form that was inside of it.

    Daimon dodged to the side, but he was then taken by surprise since the "unknown" being changed directions, meaning he was going to be captured by it, or at least that would have been the case, if he didn''t have Blink, so he just used it, and managed to avoid in time.

    "It was closer this time, I''ll be yours for sure~", the purple mist dispersed to reveal the crazy girl, who had a happy expression, the aura she gave off had changed quite a bit, and that wasn''t the only change she had.

    Earlier Daimon was surprised to hear from Jasmine that Sarah had obtained a Manifestation Phenomenon, because she is a knight, therefore she should have obtained Will Maniption, which she had already showed signs of, previously.

    "Look, I made around 80% of the curse marks disappear with the help of that dark energy!", said the crazy girl as she shamelessly raised her blouse and then turned around to show Daimon her back.

    As for the Manifestation Phenomenon Jasmine mentioned, Sarah did develop one as the dark purple mist that was gathering around her, suggested.

    Freya, reacted on the spot by tensing up as she felt the nature of that purple mist, but Daimon who already had Disaster in his hand, gazed at her.

    "That is indeed a simr energy to the one Ka used, but despite being slightly crazy, she is trustable, I can vouch for it", he said.

    Freya observed Sarah who didn''t seem to have any worries as she yed with that dark purple mist, and she ultimately calmed down.

    Honestly Daimon understood her, because what was gathering around Sarah wasn''t poison element mana as it should normally be the case¡­ buther.

    "We''ll discuss itter, now, before anything else, it''s time to eliminate the end loses", he said.

    Sarah red at Adam who was being restrained by Daimon stepping on his neck, and she wildly smiled as she grabbed the trident along with Jasmine, to then use it to pierce Adam''s back.

    "W-Wait, I can give you anything you want¡­ aghhhh!", he hadn''t finished his sentence, when the prongs of the trident, pierced his back nailing him to the ground, so that Daimon was finally able to stop stepping on Adam''s neck.

 Chapter 522 Tittle at the bottom

    522 Tittle at the bottom

    Daimon removed his foot from Adam''s neck and then stepped back until he was standing in the middle of Jasmine and Sarah, he wasn''t going to do anything, but one can''t never be too cautious in general and much less when ites to system users.

    Speaking of which, Daimon was curious as to why that angel girl who is Adam''s administrator, hadn''t shown up nor talked yet.

    ''Ariel, what the hell are you waiting, do something!'', inwardly screamed Adam, Sarah was many things but kind isn''t one of them, she was actually moving the trident ripping Adam''s flesh with the prongs, which made Adam scream.

    Once again this showed the importance of not relying in pain reducing skills, there is a limit as to how much a skill works, even passives consume energy one way or another, be it mana, vitality or stamina.

    The light idiot wasn''t used to suffer, the light element in his body reduced the amount of pain he registered, which created the image of him being "tough", when the truth is that all those times he shed with Daimon, his organs took some damage and though Daimon reduced his power as much as possible to not turn Adam into meat paste when he threw the trident at him, after reaching the Archmage realm, everything that wasn''t vital basically ruptured.

    Naturally, Daimon had calcted how much the light idiot will be able to endure, and as expected he just fainted due to the shock but didn''t die, in fact the safety measures he wore, were slowly but surely sustaining his life, even when a lot were destroyed by that sole attack.

    In other words, the heroeback was supposed to happen whether Ka helped him or not, she just made it easier for him to jump into the stage just to be smacked against the ground by Daimon once again, this time for sure.

    Even then, his face which was unrecognizable not too long ago, was fine again, as a proof of how tenacious was a hero system user, even a trash one like Adam, was hard to kill, probably for the clich¨¦ situation of the enemy taking the hero as dead, but the hero managing to survive to return after powering upter.

    Unfortunately for Adam, things weren''t going his way this time, but he didn''t seem to have realized it as of current, as he put on the "kindest" smile he could and while enduring the urge to kill the two girls who were stabbing his back with the trident, he said.

    "Please stop, I don''t know what you were offered by that guy, but if you kill me, you''ll be punished, even if he is stronger than me now, that is because his realm I higher than mine, but unlike him, I''m special so he will meet his limit at the Ster ranks at most, while I will fly to higher ces".

    "I know there have been some misunderstandings between us, but I''m willing to set aside our differences and show you a world, you wouldn''t be able to know otherwise, so be myrades and I''ll bring protect you forever", said Adam with a confident voice and a bright smile, that didn''t match the bloody mess that was his back as of current.

    Adam was inwardly grinning, there was a light blue light shinning in his eyes and the white halo shinning on behind of him, illuminated the faces of Jasmine, Reyne as well as Jeanne and Emily, only Sarh and Freya were left aside.

    ''Heh, so what if you are temporarily stronger than me, none of these stupid women are Ster ranks, so they will be willing to die for me, it''s been a while since I have seen the loser face of a guy who is betrayed by hispanions¡­''.

    "Aghhh!", Adam''s train of thought was interrupted by both Sarah and Jasmine kicking Adam''s face, making the "invisible" halo and the shine in his eyes disappear, as he grabbed his face with his hands and screamed in pain.

    "What the hell are you doing you fucking¡­. aghhh", he tried to yell at those two, just for Sarah to grind the sole of her feet against Adam''s face, making him bleed.

    "Crack!".

    "See, that disgusting glow is what I saw him using whenever he spoke to you back then", said the crazy girl as she applied more strength on her feet breaking Adam''s nose.

    "Mm, thankfully I can see his true face, since I met a certain someone~", cheerfully said Jasmine as she gazed at Daimon.

    "Ahhhh stop please!!!", shouted Adam, wounds on the face bleed a lot, so right now Adam''s eyes were seeing red, he also was having trouble breathing because blood was filling his nose, so he had to breath through his mouth, which made him have a taste of the dirt stuck to Sarah''s shoes.

    Adam was in shock, he expected it to be hard for his charming ability to work on Jasmine, but at the very least it should have made her doubt, not to mention he was sure that Reyne, Jeanne and Emily were easy targets, and yet nothing happened, what''s more they were able to see that glow which shouldn''t be possible as it should be invisible for anyone besides him.

    Despite the disbelief he was experiencing, habits die hard, so when he found himself in a predicament, Adam immediately shouted in his mind.

    ''Ariel, fucking do something!'', the angel girl who had remained silent for some time finally spoke in Adam''s mind.

    ''I told you that you would exhaust the support function of the system, your body couldn''t endure the Archangel form yet since you didn''t manage to obtain that girl from the Light Pce, you were only able to activate it because that Siren gave you a lot of vitality to burn instead of burdening yourself with the recoil, not to mention I allowed you to ess it as an exception to save yourself''.

    ''The logical thing to do was to use the light blending ability of the halo to disperse and escape, but you didn''t listen to me and went against the one who had already bested you in a direct confrontation not too long ago, with quite ease if you ask me''.

    ''The system used to encourage you to take on challenges at first, but you chose to receive everything in a silver spoon, so the system followed your desires and now you have spent all the support you earned through the merit function''.

    Adam tried to reply, but the angel girl interrupted him before he could do so.

    ''I even went out of my way to help you, but you didn''t appreciate it, and now that you were utterly crushed by someone with a lower realm than yours and even cowardly begged for mercy, you have lost the qualifications to be considered even the lowest ss hero, so the system no longer supports you''.

    Adam finally got a moment to speak, so he immediately tried to defend himself.

    ''What are you talking about Ariel, aren''t wepanions, I''m not an npc, I should be free to do easily be sessful at everything right, I''m the hero!'', he eximed, just to see the angel girl finally appearing to float in front of him, well he managed to see a blur figure which was familiar to him, since Sarah''s shoe was upying most of his field of vision.

    The usually emotionless angel girl, for a change had a tinge of happiness appearing on her face as she red at Adam from above.

    ''Well, to be honest is not that I can''t help you, it''s that I don''t want to, if it was up to me, I would have left the moment you "secretly" tested if the Hero Charisma skill on me, not even a minute after you became a system user, unfortunately that led to me wasting 18 years seeing the most worthless hero be born''.

    ''¡­'', it took Adam a moment to process what he just heard, his administrator could save his life but she just didn''t want to do it, and the "excuse" she used was that he tried to charm her, back when he became a system user.

    ''So, what if I tried to make you submit, you belong to me anyway, so just obediently follow my orders, if I die, you''ll be going down with me!'', he yelled just to be met with a cold mocking gaze from the angel girl.

    ''You are my ninth host and so far, the worst one, besides the one who died just because he flirted with the wife of the local tyrant, the same day he became a system user, the system chose you, I didn''t make a contract with you so I don''t have anything to lose, the only thing I regret is that you didn''t even manage to increase the level of the system, enough for me stay here under certain circumstances like that Siren, but what''s a few hundreds of thousands of years of wait, at this point'', she said as she observed the sky.

    ''Oh, so that''s how it works for you, I guess that exins how those two are still here, even when they lost their hosts'', Daimon''s voice suddenly interrupted the conversation that the angel girl and the light idiot were having.

    Leaving aside Adam who was in awe at the fact that there was someone transmitting his thoughts with mana, an ability exclusive for those at the Arch rank and above, he heard Ariel mentioning not too long ago that the masked guy had a lower realm than him, so this didn''t make any sense, unless¡­

    ''Ariel, you fucking bitch, you nned this with that bastard all along, you wanted me to lose the qualifications of a hero, so you purposedly didn''t help me!'', he inwardly screamed.

    Inparison the angel girl didn''t seem to be so surprised of this, she turned to see Daimon before saying.

    ''If you want to steal a part of my existence, allow me to give it to you myself, that ck sword whatever it is, looks like it hurts, based on how damaged that Siren ended, it seems to be a random sort of thing and there is something that I can''t afford to lose, in exchange I''ll let you choose what you want from me¡­ please'', the angel girl bowed her head towards Daimon, trying to remain calm andposed like always, but her slightly clenched hands gave her away.

    ''That sounds fair, but before I take my decision tell me, why aren''t you instead offering me to be your host, like that Siren tried to, before I shed her down'', said Daimon.

    Ariel looked at Daimon''s masked face directly as she answered.

    ''She was just trying to win time to retaliate or escape, I don''t know how you obtained knowledge regarding system users, nor I can''t tell you much or I will be punished, but it''s not that easy, the two parts must be patible" and unfortunately the parameters aren''t set by us, otherwise I would be more than happy to get a talented host like you, instead of losers like him, for once'', she said as she pointed at Adam.

    The previous might have taken some time to describe, but it all happened in a matter of seconds, since it was discussed mentally, Daimon simply raised an eyebrow behind his mask as he spoke to Evangeline.

    ''You already knew that, right, so why did you make me ask her?''.

    Evangeline softlyughed as she said.

    ''You should know it at this point, but a lot of the restrictions that other system users have, don''t apply to you, the question here is if you prefer to keep getting paired with losers, until you cease to exist due to theck of merits, or if you''d chose to make a contract with the strongest host that has, is or will ever exist''.

    This time, Eve''s voice didn''t limit to be heard in Daimon''s mind, but also reached the angel girl Ariel, who was temporarily in awe.

    ''Y-You are an administrator, but he doesn''t show any signs of being a system user¡­ nor can I perceive you despite being so close to each other, so that''s how you knew how to take down that idiot'', she said

    Evangeline chuckled in response.

    ''Humph as if my host needed me to realize how to kill a mere hero wannabe'', she thought before saying.

    ''Let''s leave the questions forter, you have ten seconds to decide, are you going to ept or not, where will you ever find a two-star mage than can cross all the way to the Arch rank, in both the mage and knight paths, without his body rupturing past the point of return'', limited to say Evangeline.

    By the way, the previous was all heard by Adam who was having a mental breakdown right now.

    ''He is a damn system user, but he isn''t a native of Neptune or Kerrol, how can it be, wasn''t Marcus the only other system user I had to fight against, for the "tutorial", how can he be so strong at the two star realm, how did those two bitches convinced him to go against me, we are both humans, we should be working together, no he should be working for me, like those guys from the Light faction!''.

    Ariel ignored the delusional idiot, who no longer was considered a hero and instead evaluated Daimon, who by Evangeline''s petition allowed her to see his real rank, in other words a two star mage and a five star knight, though the boosting effect made it so he was both a Knight Lord and a Mage Lord, as the boost was of a whole realm.

    At the same time, both Jasmine and Sarah retrieved the trident from Adam''s back and then aimed at his head, it was time to finish him, and the countdown of the ten seconds was also about to end.

    ''I¡­ I can stay up to a year before being forced to leave, while I won''t be able to directly provide you help like your administrator, I will assist you to take down the "Devil Ruler" if you manage to do that, then I''m yours'', said the angel girl as she closed her eyes, meaning that it was that or she will give Daimon a part of her existence before leaving to wherever administrators without hosts will go.

    And she gave her answer just in time, because Evangeline snapped her fingers from within Daimon''s mind.

    "Noo, spare me please I will never bother you again, I will disappear!", Adam struggled onest time as he cried and begged, he learned toote that putting no effort and just leaving everything to the system was a stupid thing to do, amusingly enough the very first thing he did by himself was beg for mercy.

    Needless to say, but his pleas were ignored, but he did manage to sour both Jasmine and Sarah''s mood, since his miserable coward face, was disgusting, so they finished it in a single go.

    Adam''s wails stopped in cold as the prongs of the trident of the storm pierced his eyes and brain, killing him on the spot, Jasmine wasn''t used to be so brutal when killing even enemies, but she gritted her teeth and didn''t miss a single second of Adam dying.

    As for the crazy girl, she snorted happy that she didn''t have to keep listening to the pleas of a coward.

    Daimon saw Jasmine''s hand trembling a bit and he ced his hand over hers, to then say.

    "That''s enough, let me deal with the rest".

    "Mm¡­ thanks", Jasmine sweetly smiled despite the conflictive emotions that were surging in her heart, she truly enjoyed wanted to Adam, but on the other hand now that she did it, she realized that she didn''t feel even remotely as happy as when she joined Daimon''s group.

    Which made her remember Daimon''s answer, when she asked him if he was stronger than Adam back then, "He is nothing but a slightly bigger stone on the road, so there is no need to put too much importance to his life or death".

    Ultimately Jasmine slight shook her head as she cheered up, unaware of the fundamental change she just went through.

    Daimon on the other hand observed one of the different notifications that appeared in front of him, and he inwardly smiled, as he thought.

    ''With this, we have surpassed the limits of the oath, whatever the result might be, it will be something between my friend Jasmine and me''.

    [Ding]

    [The level of trust of the daughter of the Northern Sky has been updated]

    [Level of trust currently attained 60% ¨¤ 80%]

    That''s right, the level of trust that had been stuck at sixty as the system warned him that advancing past that was a bet, finally moved once again, it didn''t reach the required one hundred percent, that was needed for Jasmine to finally be able to get a benefit, instead of just benefiting the other part of the oath, like it was as of current, but they surpassed the historical limit reached by the all the ones that were bound by the oath prior to them.

    So, from now and onwards, they were setting a precedent, and yet from Daimon''s point of view, this was only the beginning.

    Speaking of setting up precedents, the crazy girl saw Daimon storing Adam''s corpse away, and she rested her arms on his shoulders, for a change Daimon didn''t avoid her like the gue, since she wasn''t trying to do anything, too extreme.

    "What a shame, I wanted to melt his corpse into a puddle of blood, but I guess that even trash can be recycled~", she jokingly said, which made Jasmine and the others softlyugh, even Daimon chuckled in response.

    "Let''s go back, everyone needs a nice rest,

 Chapter 523 A big piece of the puzzle (part 1)

    Chapter 523 A big piece of the puzzle (part 1)

    While the survivors of the human army cleaned the battlefield under old Ben''s watching, Daimon and the girls travelled through the portal created by Rita, strangely the dimensional tunnel in which they were was different than the ones created through Space Shift, which Daimon has seen before.

    Here not only spacews existed like normally, there were darknessws lingering through it as well, which was rather strange, the only thing Daimon could think of, was that Rita''s Space Shift was altered due to her strong shadow affinity.

    As a proof of it, the portal for them to leave, appeared on the ground in an area covered by shadows, inside of the Valleris''s mansion, so they literally emerged from the shadows, of course Rita chose one of the ces in which Daimon has been, so there weren''t guards here as it was the area that was assigned to Jeanne.

    Speaking of which, Daimon felt a bit curious about those white metal boxes those two were holding, he knew what was inside of them, but he didn''t know what they were nning to do with them.

    Feeling Daimon''s gaze on them, Emily turned to see him before saying.

    "We aren''t going to eat it or something like that¡­ the biggest part of my father''s heart blood was absorbed by them and infused in their hearts, so we''ll use a little ritual to separate it".

    "Reyne you alsoe, let them properly catch up", said Jeanne to her daughter, who was looking at Sarah y with that purple mist next to Jasmine.

    "Mm", Reyne nodded and then followed her mother and Emily to their room, leaving behind Daimon, Jasmine, Sarah and Freya.

    "Let''s go too, we have a lot of things to discuss", said Daimon as he gazed at Freya, before he left to the room which he shared with Sarah previously.

    On the way Daimon felt Jasmine''s happy gaze on him, which was caused by the fact that they were "allowed" to be present for the conversation he was about to have with Freya.

    Daimon hadn''t specifically exined to them about his system, he has only done that for his soulmates, per Evangeline''s suggestion, but even if he didn''t exin about his, those two had been too involved with Adam to leave them in the dark at this point.

    They even killed Adam, so they aren''t "normal" people anymore, Evangeline didn''t exin much cause restrictions, but she did say that they are now able to sh against system users, to a certain extent, despite not being directly linked to him, like Aisha and the other soulmates.

    Sarah could see through Adam''s tricks even before all this, but she was unable to truly wound him, but now she should be able to, even if she didn''t have items from a system, that was the biggest difference.

    As for Jeanne, Emily and Reyne, they were surprisingly immune to Adam''s "Hero Charisma" as Ariel called it, apparently Adam''s skill had a certain possibility to fail, when the target were women with extreme negative affinities, which is why it didn''t work with Sarah.

    Though Jasmine was also part Nethereal which should have helped her resist Adam''s skill, her Nethereal side has been suppressed by the lineage of the Light Pce and their extreme positive light affinity, while Sarah was born with dual negative affinities, namely darkness and poison.

    And now she has obtained an even more extreme negative one, in the form of Nether, speaking of that, Daimon needed to have a small talk with the crazy girl, to see what was the effect of her recently obtainedher, the restrictions and so on, not only because he was genuinely curious about it, but because he might have to deal with the Nethereal that tricked her mother, which is supposed to be her father.

    Soon, the three girls entered the room and then Daimon closed the door behind of him, the crazy girl was wild as ever, she just took off her shoes and jumped on the bed, Jasmine on the other hand slightly closed her eyes as she noticed that this room only had a single bed and it was quite a big one, in other words she and Daimon had shared a bed¡­ alone.

    Not to mention, she saw Daimon not avoiding her like the gue for a change, which meant that while she was gone, Sarah and Daimon had gotten "closer" for sure, how much, that was the question she was making to herself.

    But that could wait forter, since there was an "outsider" among them currently, in the form of Freya, who remained standing while Daimon and those two sat on the edge of the bed.

    "First of all, who are you and be as specific as you "can", if there is something you can''t say out loud, just give me a signal and I don''t think I have to remind you, but lying is meaningless in front of me", he said as he gazed at Freya.

    The silver armored woman nodded and then snapped her fingers to create a metal chair for her to sit.

    "For starters my name is Freya, since you killed thatme excuse of a hero, then you must know at this point that there are "extraordinary" existences, even among geniuses, I used to be thepanion of someone like that and so was Ka too".

    "I guess that my personal matters are of no interest for you, so I''ll keep that out as it won''t affect the answers you seek", said Freya before continuing.

    "I honestly don''t remember how many years ago it was, just like you and that girl with a "peculiar" affinity, mypanion and Ka''s one got mission, which led us to this, the difference is that back then, both humans and Ghouls were way stronger than now, the Archdukes were all Ster ranks and the Blood King of back then had managed to¡­ set a foot into the next realm", she said as she pointed at Sarah.

    With peculiar affinity she obviously meant the strange purpleher that Sarah became able to control, after absorbing all the dark energy that Ka bestowed to the Ghouls.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, this is the first time he hears about anyone surpassing the limits of the Ster ranks, even Maximum ranked were still Ster ranks after all.

    "Leaving aside the ventures that those two had together when they first arrived, in one of their missions, they met a native of Kerrol who managed to escape the living hell of a human farm, though his own means and also awakened as a "chosen one", and that''s where things changed".

    "That native started at a really low point, but this was his stage so he sky-rocketed through the ranks quite fast, and so with three people leading the humanity, the victories started to increase, until only the major areas controlled by the Ghouls remained".

    "If you wonder why the Blood King didn''t simplye to crush them, the missions and the appearance of a native chosen one was perfectly "timed", the Blood King had isted himself to attempt an advance, so he wasn''t aware that a fire had been lit up in his backyard".

    "As for the Archdukes, they were all only early stage Sters, so with those three at the peak of the Arch rank, they were able to repel them, also a couple of Ghouls were brought to our side, all in all with some loses on battles, the war was going to be won¡­".

    Freya took a moment to clench her hands and then sighed with a frustrated voice.

    "But then the "bnce" between those three broke, the native got a lucky encounter and broke through to the early stage of the Ste rank, while mypanion and the other guy only reached the half Ster state".

    "The mission had taken around five years up to that point, and during the previous four years, the native and mypanion got closer and for a good reason, as you can see my affinity is metal, and that guy was lightning, they pretty much were perfect for each other, inparison the other guy had water affinity one of the worst affinities for someone with metal affinity, but he was a¡­ hero".

    Daion frowned behind his mask, he could already tell where all this was going, there was something that didn''t match for him, but he remained silent for now, if Freya didn''t mention what he wanted, he will directly ask after she finishes her exnation.

    "Those deemed as "heroes", might not be the strongest in a group, but one of its special qualities is the ability to gather people to their side, the human army becamecent after winning so many times in a row, that they gave themselves the luxury to have inner conflict".

    "And slowly but surely breaches appeared between the alliance, but besides some discussions here and there nothing really serious happened, it was then when things soured, the Blood King failed his advance, but managed to obtain a partial trait of what he would have attained in the next realm".

    "The skies painted red and the brightest star that appears at night in this ce, which the natives consider the moon, turned ck, from that point onwards, the Ghouls suddenly became stronger whenever night came".

    "Oh?", something suddenly made "click" in Daimon''s mind, back when he met Dimas, he called the realm in which he as ary Subjugation" realm, instead of Emperor or Ster realm.

    If the boosting effect in Kerrol''s atmosphere was caused by the Blood King''s failed advance, that exined the reason behind the nameary Subjugation, the ability to boost other people''s realms, at aary level, under certain circumstances is enough to rule said after all.

    "So not only the ones he wanted were allowed to get the boost, but anyone with an affinity in a simr side of the specter, as a proof that he failed, right?", asked Daimon, to which Freya answered with a surprised voice.

    "How did you know that, wait¡­ are there Star Lord''s in your gxy of origin!", she eximed, which made Daimon inwardly smirk, since she bit the bait.

    "Heh, so that''s what the realm after the Ster rank is called, quite presumptuous if you ask me", said Daimon.

    "¡­", Freya remained silent for a second, baffled at the fact that a member of the younger generation, just made her speak more than what she pretended, still she didn''t affirm nor deny Daimon''s supposition and instead continued with her story.

    Daimon didn''t mind, though information was a weapon for him thanks to Erin''s teachings, he still needed the reward from the Global Raid, "Road to the Ster rank", since there seemed to be many misconceptions about what came after the Arch rank, probably because there hasn''t been a proper Ster rank in either the four gxies, Neptune or Kerrol, in a long time.

    Well, there was Dimas, but he is a magic beast and he isn''t the most trustable due to the strange circumstances behind of him, not to mention he shouldn''t be stronger than Erin or Aura, despite them being "only" half Emperors, meaning he iscking something too.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon focused on Freya once again.

    "Ahem, as I was saying, with the Blood King joining the war, things took a turn for the worse, the human alliance started losing quite a bit, but they were able to survive to fight another day, thanks to the native from Kerrol, which with mypanion''s help managed to hold that guy down for the rest to escape".

    "That continued until in one of those battles, a few Archdukes sacrificed themselves to stop mypanion and Kerrol''s native from interfering with the Blood King, as a result around a third of the whole alliance was exterminated, and the hero guy stood out to block the Blood King, so that the rest could escape".

    "Though those two didn''t want to leave him behind, they were dragged by what was left of the alliance and escaped, everyone thought that hero guy was dead, but he actually managed to escape after sessfully blocking the Blood King for around thirty minutes, unfortunately what he expected to happen which was mypanion to be impressed with his heroic "sacrifice", didn''t happen, though they did receive him like a hero, and also he gained the support of almost all what was left of the alliance".

    Daimon softly snorted, those guys from the alliance thought that it was an obligation for Freya''s host and the native of Kerrol to win, so the moment they suffered the slightest setback, they moved onto the side of the hero.

    Sure, that hero probably had something simr but more advanced that Adam''s skill, but it''s not like they had mind of their own, especially if what he was thinking, was what happened next.

    "The hero guy not was received with weing arms, but he also raised a wave when he returned, since mypanion and the native had received some wounds due to the Archdukes literally using their lives as weapons, so he took over and then the next battles were miraculously won with the hero fighting on the vanguard".

    "Th thing about heroes is that they gain momentum with people''s support, and as if to respond to humanity''s desires, the hero also managed to enter the Ster realm and in the middle of a tough battle on top of that".

    Listening to Freya''s ironic voice, Daimon inwardly chuckled.

    ''Well, one of the requirements of the mission I got from the opportunity I stole from Adam, was gain public recognition and make a shy entrance, so I guess being an attention seeking idiot is part of a hero''s path'', he thought.

    "Then the final battle came, with a newly gained confidence the whole armyunched an assault on the royal capital of the Ghouls, the battle was going surprisingly well, almost all the Ghoul enemies were killed and then the pce of the Blood King was besieged, but then¡­ a giant scaled array appeared on the capital, that crazy bastard allowed almost all his kind to be ughtered to use them as sacrifices to attempt a second try to advance".

    "Needless to say, but the three leaders joined hands to stop him once and for all, but the reinforced Blood King was too strong, and they could only wound him after mypanion created a breach in his defenses".

    "Then the hero came up with an attack n, the three were supposed to use their strongest attacks at the same time, onto a small crack that had been created on the blood armor of the King, it probably would have worked if it wasn''t for the fact that, the hero piece of trash, instead aimed his attack at the native of Kerrol".

    "That trident which you took possession of, was used to pierce the heart of the native of Kerrol and then hero who used to be fully water oriented, gained a new affinity, you see for chosen ones obtaining a second affinity isn''t as simple as for others, because doing so will alter their "concept", it''s a huge change in their paths".

    "You saw Ka''s two forms right, well the light blue haired one was

    her original appearance, and the monstrous one was the one she attained after that guy betrayed us, with that change he also became able to face the Blood King, and so while those two were shing on the sky, mypanion was crying on the ground at the sight of her loved one dying to be a stepping stone for the hero bastard".

    The atmosphere in the room suddenly became heavy, it''s obvious that Freya was angry at what happened next.

    "I''m not sweetening what happened, I certainly failed to fulfill my duty to protect my friend, but that for me both of them caused her death¡­ she used something she shouldn''t have and cut both the Blood King bastard who died on the spot and the trash hero who managed to escape, not without losing something important for him".

    "Ka was forcefully stripped away from him and I personally cut his arm before everything went nk¡­ the ability that mypanion obtained by forcefully pushing herself to the limit was "Sever", so she split the body of the Blood King into countless threads of blood and the hero bastard was split of what he treasured the most, the source of his power".

    "But that wasn''t all, she also¡­ cut the connection between her and me, there are different types of agreements between us and ourpanions, that angel girl mentioned to you right, well, mine was supposed to be a permanent contract meaning that when she died I would too, but she changed it so that I could live since she took the decision to avenge her loved one even if it costed her life".

    Daimon nodded, he was ready to die back when he fought the manticore, after Aisha died, whoever preached about forgiving someone that killed a precious person for you, didn''t know what the hell it was talking about.

    That being said, now Daimon realized that he was too immature, he was able to win because Aisha half killed the manticore and because his instincts took over, after that, even if he didn''t die, he would have ended up shortening his lifespan quite a lot.

    Obtaining the system changed his perspective, if he would have awakened the system before he saw the manticore was still alive, he might have chosen to hide and then look for a way to revive Aisha, ironically enough, it was his reckless abandon to kill the manticore what allowed him to bring her back.

    After a moment of silence, Freya then said.

    "As much as I would have liked that to be the end, I ended up obtaining a second chance, call it fate, luck or some idiot pulling the strings behind scenes, the younger sister of mytepanion became a chosen one after getting news of the death of her only family and I was chosen to be herpanion¡­".

    "We started all over again, she knew about me so she naturally asked about her sister''s death, so step by step we became strong once again, but we couldn''t find that piece of trash, until she reached the Arch rank, she got a mission to a that was essible through a ruin, simr to how my previouspanion and me ended up in Kerrol".

    "But this time we arrived at Neptune where the stage was different, that mission was shared with other three guys, and among them there was another damn hero, but as much as I hated them, he wasn''t the one we were looking for, or so we thought".

    "Turns out, that guy had some kind of encounter, though he lost his administrator, he gained the support of one of those guys who controls an energy simr to that girl''s one, and his overall aura and even affinity changedpletely, so I couldn''t recognize him until it was toote".

    "After defeating our respective opponents, we were sent in a "bonus" mission, which took us back to Kerrol, but while I couldn''t recognize that bastard, he did know about my newpanion, because her sister had mentioned her and they resembled quite a bit, with the difference that she had light affinity instead of metal".

    "So, we were ambushed by the guys of this ce that had been controlled by Ka, waiting for that bastard''s return, but the Ghouls who all those years back supported mypanion saw the resemnce and actually helped us resist, this time I took the initiative to use a part of my existence, and cut the new source of power that bastard got".

    "Also, my newpanion killed the hero bastard but died together with him, since neither I or Ka died, but I was weakened, she imprisoned me into that star and made up the history that the natives of Kerrol know about".

    "As for the source of the curse that kept Ka at her wit''s end, since she couldn''t escape unless he killed all the humans and Ghouls or me using the same trident with which he killed the chosen one of Kerrol, that guy apparently had made some kind of deal with someone powerful enough to suppress us and even those guys who controlled that dark energy, and since he betrayed it, both him and Ka paid the price".

    "Luckily, with thest bit of my energy I sent what I severed from that guy and from my secondpanion, away, back to Neptune, those two didn''t have any other family, but the younger sister had a friend who she considered her sister, so I made sure that her lineage was received by her so those two''s will could continue, and that was thest thing I could do, before I was sealed away".

    "Through the years, Ka tried to get me to tell her where the hero''s things were, but not only I didn''t know, even if I did, I wouldn''t have told her, and she couldn''t kill me nor damage me too much, unless she recovered the trident of the hero, so she created a fake mission to bring people here".

    "My secondpanion as well as the trash guy didn''tplete their mission, so the passage to Kerrol remained opened, after a lot of work, Ka managed to distort it so that only the ones she needed to escape this ce could enter through the passage left by us".

    "You can guess the rest, that guy who you crushed, was also a hero, so he probably used some sort of reward to enter, I was wondering why were you brought here id you weren''t one, but now all makes sense, you were brought because you are one too", concluded Freya.

    Only to see Daimon shaking his head, he stole the opportunity from Adam, but more importantly, the one who was kidnapped was Jasmine, the passage was in the territory of the Light Pce, and the second host of Freya was a light affinity system user, who died here without anyone knowing the truth.

    And there was another light system user that died in simr circumstances, which he knew about¡­ the Matriarch of the Light Pce, and Jasmine''s ancestor, also now things made sense, the cross bow was what didn''t match for him, though it was made of some kind of metal, it was clearly a magic weapon that was specifically used by someone with light affinity, so at first Freya''s host didn''t match for that, but the second one did.

    Daimon turned to see Jasmine who was in awe at the story she just heard, to then say.

    "It''s okay, deactivate the effect of the bracelet".

    "Mm", Jasmine had her doubts, but she didn''t hesitate even for a second after listening to Daimon''s words, with a single thought, the bracelet of the god of mischief stopped changing the nature of her light element.

    "You!", Freya almost fell from her chair the moment she felt Jasmine''s aura, and she stood up from her chair when she saw the white halos appearing in her pupils.

    Daimon then decided to test something out, light vertical lines of light appeared in his eyes as he took off the mask of the Hollow Suit, to reveal his face.

    Freya''s body trembled, her murderous intent flowed out of her body, but Daimon didn''t care, because itsted for a single second, before it became confusion.

    "You, what are you?", she mumbled, and the surprised kepting, Daimon took out a beast pouch from the inventory, and then retrieved the object he was keeping inside of it, arge vase which was full to the brim with a semi-dark liquid.

    With a snap of Daimon''s fingers, a gray sphere was retrieved from within the liquid and shown to Freya.

    "I guess, I should thank you for this then", he said as he yed with the hollow gray sphere that when submerged in water, produced the liquid that was turned into the liqueur that the ckfin family treasured so much, as it enhanced their lineage.

    But for Daimon had a different use, since he obtained the ck Armored Shark lineage from it, and earned the Dracolevia lineage thanks to him overscoring during the trial of the Lineage Temple.

 Chapter 524 A big piece of the puzzle (part 2)

    Chapter 524 A big piece of the puzzle (part 2)

    Freya was momentarily in shock at the sudden revtions, she approached Daimon in a matter of seconds, which made Rita who was observing everything thoroughly from Daimon''s shadow, prepared to protect her young master on the spot.

    But Daimon transmitted his intentions to her, which were not to act unless Freya showed hostility after realizing he wasn''t the "hero" from the Mermen Sea, which they now knew was as much of an asshat as Adam, but with a bit more of luck, since he lived until he reached the Ster ranks, not one but twice.

    The fact that Freya reacted to the vertical lines in Daimon''s pupils, the trait gained thanks to the ck Armored Shark''s lineage,bined with the trident of the storm being the item that acted as the secondary legacy left for Adam, made it clear that the though the hero only showed to have darkness affinity in the records of Neptune, he used to have water affinity before.

    Normally obtaining an affinity is quite hard, but losing one is even harder to the point that is considered impossible, which is why originally the guy from Freya''s story and the hero from the Mermen Sea, didn''t appear to be the same person.

    You might be thinking what happen to the guys that get gnawed away byher, aren''t they losing their affinities, but it''s not the same, they don''t lose their affinities, but instead are infected byher, and slowly turn into it, there is a big difference, when losing there are no traces left of it, as for the second case there are.

    For example, that purpleher the crazy girl nowmanded, has traces of poison, so either her poison is fusing with herher to give birth to a variant element, like Aura''s sma, which prior to him obtaining Demon Light, was probably the most violent element he and all the girls had seen or heard off, or herher has poisonous properties by innate, maybe both, since no one knew what was Sarah''s father''s real abilities, much less what was the result of Bell''s already talented lineage mixing with that of really high ranked Nethereal.

    Anyway, knowing about the ability Freya and her first host had to split things up to such extreme extents, everything fell in ce, that guy lost his affinity, his arm and his administrator, but he was still a system user and a hero, so he made hiseback properly, even in that he was better than Adam.

    What rings Daimon''s curiosity is that, the hero only obtained the ck Armored Shark lineage, in his second opportunity.

    ''ording to the hero bullshit traits I know off from games and stories, when a hero survives and returns, he gets stronger, that would make the ck Armored Shark lineage, more important than the Trident of the Storm¡­'', he thought.

    And yet, even after obtaining the Dracolevia lineage, that wasn''t one of the five hidden gems nor the still remaining two legacies, he had to obtain for the missions.

    Speaking of the Dracolevia lineage, which is what came out whenever Daimon used the ck Armored Shark lineage now, Freya carefully observed the gray sphere on Daimon''s hand, but ultimately shook her head.

    "That is the "Ethereal Capsule", an item which I obtained thanks to my secondpanion, though Ka was stripped away from that bastard, she was left free to cause troubles, the second time I wasn''t going to let the history repeat, so I sealed that guy''s source of power, which is that detestable lineage in that item¡­ how did you get it and more importantly, what the hell is the lineage you are manifesting right now?", asked the silver armored woman with genuine curiosity.

    "You''ll get your answers after I get mine, alternatively you can agree to tell me everything you are still keeping from me, since it appears that out objectives align with each other", said Aster.

    "You are rather greedy you know¡­ I''ll think about it, for now I will tell you what you are wondering right now, but before that, is that girl also concealing her real aura?", asked Freya as she pointed at Sarah, to which Daimon nodded at the crazy girl.

    "Show her", naturally the crazy girl didn''t miss the chance to throw herself at Daimon, both literally and figuratively, she tried to jump onto Daimon''sp, just to bounce on the bed since Daimon used blink to appear a few centimeters away from her, but the crazy girl didn''t forget to say.

    "The only one to whom I will show "mine" is you~", she said, that being said she did deactivate the concealing effect of the bracelet, and her real aura was out for Freya to observe.

    This time she didn''t get as surprised as when she saw Jasmine''s real self, she instead nodded to then say.

    "As you probably already figured out by the way I worded by story, those two didn''t have descendants, even my firstpanion who found someone to love, hadn''t reached that point before everything was over¡­ so that girl with light affinity, normally couldn''t be their descendant".

    "However, the younger sister found a friend who she considered her real sister, after going through so much together, she even knew about me and everything that was happening, and naturally she wasn''t an average person either, her family had the strange property of always having two descendants, ofpletely opposite affinities".

    "She already had a partner back then, but didn''t have offspring yet, due to the war only ending not too long before we disappeared due to the bonus mission, so she probably only had children after receiving the Northern Light Sky lineage, from me, since one of her two children was for sure going to inherit it, the other must have been born with darkness affinity and one that should equal the abnormally strong one of his/her sibling¡­".

    Now it was the turn for Daimon and the others to be surprised at what Freya was saying.

    "Does that mean that me and Sarah are¡­", before Jasmine could finish her sentence, Freya nodded.

    "Yeah, you two descend from that girl, the difference is that you somehow inherited enough of the Northern Light Sky lineage by innate, to awaken it, though it shouldn''t have been this early, since it was quite diluted, but now¡­ you are not that far from reaching the initial concentration that my secondpanion attained, still yours seem to be way different than what I know, so I barely recognized it", she said as she gazed at Daimon.

    The only unknown "variant" that she could think off right now, was that previously masked youth, whose true nature was a mystery, he was manifesting a lineage that in terms or hierarchy appears to be above the one of the enemy that caused the death of her two hosts, after all.

    Daimon felt Jasmine''s happy gaze on him and he limited to smile back at her, he didn''t choose to continue supporting Jasmine to surpass the limits that had been shackling her predecessors down, to gain her sympathy nor to get something out of her, he did so because she was his precious friend and taking advantage of her, would make him trash like Adam.

    Which is also why he didn''t mention anything about it, between real friends, there is no need for words, when actions speak by themselves.

    Naturally the small exchange between them, didn''t escape Freya''s eyes, she of course knew the abilities of the lineage of her second host, so she was positively impressed by the fact that Daimon actively helped her at the cost of not getting two free life passes in exchange for her life.

    ''It seems your descendant is way wiser when ites to life partners¡­ or at least that appears to be the case'', she thought with a nostalgic air around her, before she cleared her throat.

    "Ahem, there seems to be a problem though, your lineages were purposedly diluted along the way, from what I can see as of right now, it wasn''t in the first generations, but probably by the fifth or sixth one I would say", she said.

    Jasmine''s pretty eyebrows frowned, her familycks records from the Matriarch''s of the first generations, there is hole in the history of the Light Pce, which Aurora thought she was managing to fill thanks to the diary that the first Matriarch supposedly left behind.

    But now, she highly doubted that said book was left behind by the either one of the two people that shared the lineage she has, otherwise why wouldn''t have they mentioned about the passage to Kerrol being probably a trap, not only that but none of the two "first" Matriarchs, in other words the secondpanion of Freya nor her sworn sister, married the hero of the Mermen Sea.

    So, said hero didn''t leave his legacy in the territory of the Light Pce out of love, and then a big new question appeared, since Abaris''s family was supposed to descend from the hero, in this case, that being a lie would be the better oue for a change, but that gray sphere made it so there was a possibility that it wasn''t a lie, and thatplicated things.

    Especially because the crazy girl who was lost in her thoughts previously, hugged Jasmine before saying.

    "Mom has shown me the records from our branch of the family, and we do have records from the sixth Matriarch at the time, and that was when we took the charge of being the eyes in the shadow of the Light Pce, even working outside of the jurisdiction of our own family, whatever the case, Jas was my little sister prior to this and she''ll be my little sister after this".

    For a change the crazy girl said something quite nice, even Daimon couldn''t help but smile at her words, only to see her licking her lips at him, which destroyed the moment.

    "That would exin why your poison affinity is way stronger than that idiot''s, not to mention you also have darkness affinity by innate, your family branch was supposed to be the main one", concluded Daimon.

    Though it''s not that umon for a talented descendant to appear on a secondary branch, the difference between Sarah and her cousin Purplehaze was abysmal to the point that they couldn''t be mentioned in the same sentence, from Daimon''s point of view.

    Sarah being affected by the curse, was still way stronger than Purplehaze, she didn''t miss to Jasmine in terms of talent at all, the same applied to Bell, she was the strongest of the three sisters, which included Sylvie and Jasmine''s mother, after all.

    "It seems like a lot happened back at Neptune, even after we were out of the picture, unfortunately even if we do find Ka''s remaining existence in Kerrol, she won''t have the answers regarding that, there hadn''t been any outsiders entering Kerrol since back then andmunication between the twos is not possible through the passage as it was sealed", said Freya.

    To which Daimon nodded, Kerrol was a big piece of the puzzle for sure, but the main mystery lied in Neptune, the mission he obtained was centered in Neptune after all, so the answers should be there as well.

    That being said, visiting Kerrol was a must, otherwise he would have taken way more time to decipher that there were not only but two moments in which the history of Neptune was manipted and overwritten.

    "It didn''t escape me that you said the remaining existence of that Siren "in Kerrol", what does that mean?", asked Daimon.

    "Well, as strong as the ability "Sever" is, neither my firstpanion nor me, couldpletely split Ka from the system to which she was attached, what we were fighting earlier was the incarnation of her personality which is what was stripped away from that bastard, but a part of her, her original body to be more urate, is still chained to that system", answered Freya as she clenched her right hand a couple of times.

    "Inparison, me and that angel girl are both mind and "body", even if we are only iplete incarnations as of current, while Ka had used that dark energy to fabricate a "meat puppet" that suited her two forms", she added.

    ''Tsk, so that''s why I got an iplete skill, not only because I stole just a small part of her existence, but because she isn''t aplete being to begin with'', thought Daimon, now it made sense that the Siren was so weak, to the point that Freya who had basically zero reserves of energy left, was able to match up to her.

    Daimon noticed that Freya was hesitating to speak, so he gazed at her, his sharp amethyst eyes made the silver armored woman, chuckle behind her metal mask, even if she didn''t say it, she was sure that Daimon would find outter, as he seemed to be proficient in deductions and reveals.

    "I originally wasn''t going to speak about this, since it is a "personal" matter to a certain extent, but I guess it involves you two as well now¡­ there was someone reaching Kerrol, through a different route than the passage, some time ago".

    "Surprisingly that person slipped through Ka''s, in part due to where shended, which was in the middle of nowhere, luckily for her and for myself, the scarce days where the seal faltered enough for me to project my consciousness out of that star, I used to wander where Ka never visited without expecting anything, but that day was different, I saw a "shooting star" flying through the sky of the wilderness".

    "So, I followed out of curiosity and what appeared before me was a woman amidst the process of being corrupted by the most ominous dark energy I have seen so far, even stronger than the one Ka somehow obtained and here is when things get interesting, because that same woman is in this caste right now".

    Daimon frowned, the only one with darkness affinity that wasn''t present in this room, was Emily, and though her darkness wasn''t a joke, from his point of view it wasn''t stronger than Ka''sher, in fact it was still quite behind, at least in terms of utility and intensity.

    Though that could also have to be with the fact that Emily, is in her strongest stateparable to a Half Ster from Neptune, which isn''t something to look down since she is at the middle stage of the Arch rank, her talent allows her to jump that far in the realms, meaning she won''t be weaker than Ae once she reaches the peak Arch rank, the same applies to Jeanne, but she doesn''t have darkness affinity so she doesn''t count for this supposition.

    ''Wait a moment¡­ you have to be kidding me'', thought Daimon as he gazed at Freya who realized the silver haired youth managed to read through lines.

    And now the decision was up to him, which put Daimon in a small predicament, on one hand what he just discovered was probably a key part for his mission, on the other hand, the shock might be a bit too much for a certain someone.

    Still, this wasn''t something that could be avoided, so he nodded at Freya, who then left the room for a moment, only for Daimon to say.

    "We''ll be back in a moment".

    "Mm", those two nodded and then Daimon followed Freya out of the room.

    ¡­

    Daimon gazed at Freya as they walked towards Jeanne''s room where those three were.

    "Can you still use that ability?", he asked only to see Freya shake her head.

    "That was thest use I had, I only gave it to her because she kind of reminded me of those two¡­ to think such a coincidence would exist, no, even if Ka didn''t notice it, there is no way such a thing would happen without a third''s interference", she said.

    Daimon was lost in his thoughts for a moment, but he came out of his daze when they arrived at Jeanne''s room.

    Just as he was about to knock on the door, Reyne opened it for him, Jeanne and Emily could be seen at the bottom of the room, sitting cross-legged on the ground, their bodies were bathed in a pretty red light, in their vampire forms.

    "Mom and aunt will be finished in a minute,e in and wait", happily said Reyne, to which Daimon nodded as he entered the room followed by Freya.

    Though Reyne didn''t ask, it was obvious that she was wondering why Freya came, but Daimon limited to say.

    "She also needs to speak with them".

    Just as Reyne said, Jeanne and Emily stopped their ritual and then returned to normal, the red light condensed into a small crystal that fell to the ground so that Emily could grab it and keep it in her spatial ring.

    "Did something happen?", asked Jeanne to Daimon, he was weed at all times, but it was strange that Freya tagged along,

    since they weren''t acquittanced with her, or at least that''s what they believed.

    "What''s the earliest memory you two have?", suddenly asked Freya, to those two.

    Needless to say, but Jeanne and Emily frowned at the personal question, but they saw Daimon nodding at them, so they properly answered.

    "I woke up in the wilderness with my daughter in my arms", said Jeanne.

    "I was ina and woke up thanks to my father achieving an advance, which made him the strongest Archduke of all", added Emily.

    "You two, got along ever since meeting right, not only that but you took a liking to that little girl quite easily, despite the difference in race am I right?", asked Freya.

    "Yes, what is your point?", said Emily with her usual sharp voice.

    "I was out for quite some time, so I honestly couldn''t recognize you at first, to think you actually developed in such a way, I guess everything is possible", mumbled Freya before saying.

    "You two were originally a sole person, I used thest shot I had of a powerful ability to separate you so that you would survive, the human kept the original affinity of the body which was light, and the other adapted to the darkness but on the process got in shock and probably stayed asleep for a long time".

    "The original one was also about to give birth, so I ced a though weak, helpful barrier to keep magic beasts or other threats away and helped that childe to the world, I remember it as if it was yesterday, as it was a girl with a strong character, based on her loud cries".

    "¡­", the room fell in a sepulchral silence until Freya added thest nail to the coffin.

    "In case you wonder why would I have gone to such lengths for a stranger, to the point that I used all the energy I had amassed for that little escape, that is because even in that demure state¡­ that woman resembled the two friends I couldn''t protect and I couldn''t simply feign that I didn''t see it", she said.

    And then it was Daimon''s turn to speak, since it would be easier to strike when the iron is hot.

    "I also wondered why did I feel like Reyne was somewhat familiar

    when we first met, despite the not exactly good impression of the group she was with back then, it''s because I know her sister, in other words, you two used to be the one that was supposed to inherit the Light Pce sect, Jasmine''s mother, Jessica Ivory".

 Chapter 525 A strange reunion

    Chapter 525 A strange reunion

    Naturally, hearing that they used to be a single person, made both Jeanne and Emily frown but they weren''t that weirded out by it.

    "Now that I think about it, back then when we were surrounded and wounded, we both were strangely okay with exchanging blood and flesh in order to survive", said Jeanne.

    "Mm, it was as if we instinctively tried to merge together again, even as of current I had no exnation as to why we both underwent a change like that, just by doing that, since it''s not like other haven''t done simr things before".

    The history of Kerrol is quite long, and there is nock of crazy bastards among mages, so it''s not like there hadn''t been experiments to create hybrids between humans and Ghouls.

    Besides Jeanne, no one knew the real story of Emily, others only believed that she was a Ghoul that had no desire of human meat, a goodparison would be a vegan among humans.

    In part that''s why even if she provided important intel of the noble families, and also signed a non-aggression pact with the Adjudicators, the vast majority of humans just considered her a Ghoul with a strict different diet, meaning she was still one of the "monsters" they hated.

    Of course, that would have changed if they told their story to the Adjudicators, but with how many traitors there were in the mix, not to mention the forces from the church that were controlled by Ka behind the scenes.

    In fact, it was they keeping silent about it, what allowed them to not be specifically targeted by Ka, until they needed to get to Oliver in order to obtain the key, which is the point when Reyne met Daimon as she was hiding from the guys of the church.

    So, from forced breeding, to organ donation and even blood mixing, there were records of the disgusting experiments made by some of the "criminals" that appeared among both Adjudicators and members of the church, through the years.

    But none of them were sessful, until recently when Archbald returned with Ka''s support, they came up with a rtively efficient method, and while Felix was the first ever case known by the public, others existed prior to him, the problem is that they had way too short lifespans or their bodies rejected the lineage that was infused into them, resulting in a painfully horrible death.

    Surprisingly, the lineage of Emily''s father was the one with the longer list of sessful subjects, with Felix, the sister of Emily''s mother and the other male Archduke having assimted his lineage.

    The point is that, even after all that, the only results were half Ghouls, who still had the need to drink human blood, they only became stronger because Emily''s father''s lineage was that good, not because they improved as a race.

    But for Emily and Jeanne that wasn''t the case, those two were different, they surpassed the limits of their original race, namely a human and a Ghoul, to be Npsi a high ranked vampire race, on par with the Day Walker race to which Aisha and Daimon originally belonged.

    Now all made sense, they were sopatible because they were a single entity originally, so their bodies didn''t reject the other.

    That being said, even Freya didn''t expect this development, meaning that what they achieved was due to themselves, it made sense though, those two were Aurora''s daughter, they being talented was a given.

    ''So, for a Npsi to be born, one must bepatible to the point of being like the other half of the other, but that can''t be the only requisite, otherwise there is a chance for twin Ghouls to be Npsi, or maybe it has to be a Ghoul and a human, it still doesn''t add up, unless¡­ that energy which was corroding Jasmine''s mother had something to do with their evolution'', thought Daimon, before he put the matter at the back of his head.

    What was important wasn''t that, but for starters the question that Jeanne made the next second.

    "If that is the case, who is the original and who is the one created through that technique, also will we return to be a single entityter on?", she asked with a genuinely worried voice.

    But Freya''s answers put both of them at ease.

    "What I did for you was different than how I stripped Ka''s incarnation out of that bastard, both of you are equally part of the original, originally you two each represented a part of that woman called Jessica".

    "You see, she descended from a special lineage that has the equal chance to inherit either light or darkness affinities, naturally since having the two of them at the same time is maybe not impossible but really hard, not to mention mastering them both is even harder, for your lineage, obtaining one doesn''tpletely eliminate the other, it''s just suppressed so that your offspring may obtain it or not".

    "So, I just separated light in one and darkness in the other, if you two remained like that, after I recovered to a certain extent, I should have been able to restore you to a single being but now¡­ you have been altered, so I don''t know if that is even possible", said Freya.

    Another thing worth mentioning is that none of those two had the memories of Jessica, otherwise they would have not only known about Neptune, but they would have also recognized both Sarah and Jasmine, since they have seen their real appearances.

    There was also Reyne, she just got a sister, strangely enough, Jasmine is supposedly older than her, but she looks younger, but that can be exined by the fact that the Nethereal who tricked Jessica, probably had something to do with it, since Jessica "died" not too long after Jasmine''s birth, and either Byron or Reed, in other words, Jasmine''s father and Sarah''s father, were the one that issued a mission in ck Wave to kill both mother and daughter, but something changed and the mission was cancelled.

    While a thousand things floated in Daimon''s mind as he organized every bit of information he had obtained, to form a conclusion, those two were now looking at each other trying to find out what to do.

    But since they were too overwhelmed by the sudden discovery, Daimon decided to give them a push.

    "You three were already going toe with me to Neptune, since there is nothing tying you to this ce, right?", he asked to Jeanne who nodded in response.

    "Yes, I hate this stupid where we are treated like freaks, just because of some stupid war that started way too long ago, a new fresh beginning sounds perfect", she answered.

    "Mm, I personally don''t give a damn, but how dare they look at such a good girl like Reyne with those eyes, I have avenged my parents¡­ well the ones who raised me, since I apparently have another set of parents that are still alive, or something like that", added Emily.

    "I¡­ if it is possible, I wanted to go with you", mumbled Reyne, which made Daimon nod.

    Those three already expressed their intention tove Kerrol if it was possible, but they didn''t mention that they wanted to stay with him, well, Reyne was a bit obvious about it, but Jeanne and Emily hadn''t said anything like that.

    "I''ll say this beforehand, but my life isn''t exactly peaceful, and so wasn''t "yours", you two should have equal parts of Jasmine mother''s memories but havepletely forgot about her and everything regarding Neptune, or to be more urate, everything prior to when you woke up, which was after Freya separated Jessica".

    "I other words, the one who usedher to try and kill Jessica, probably erased her memories, before she managed to escape in that horrible state, Kerrol is isted from the outside, if you leave, you''ll reappear on the radar once again, and those guys won''t care that you two aren''t Jessica".

    "In fact, there is a chance that they go after Reyne as they are going after Jasmine, because she should be part Nethereal too, though maybe she bing a Npsi might have used that lineage as its fuel, those two guys didn''t have children with human out of love, that is a given", he said.

    Daimon didn''t know why Reed and Byron had offspring with humans, but the fact that they were trying to capture Jasmine and that Sarah was cursed to dieter on, meant that they had something nned for them.

    "If youe with me, we''ll find those bastards and make them pay that is a given, there is also a chance for you two to recover Jessica''s memories, not to mention Reyne will gain a new sister¡­ and a somewhat crazy cousin, besides a really strong grandmother".

    Daimon didn''t mention Abaris, because with what they just learned, which he must tell Aurora upon their return, that guy was so going to be erased from the family tree, in fact as far as Daimon knows he is 100% an enemy instead of just a petty narrow-minded bastard as Daimon used to believe.

    Naturally, Daimon also had something to gain from all of this, first of all, Jasmine will now have two mothers, Aurora will recover her daughter to a certain extent, and if those two recover Jessica''s memories, then the missing part about the mystery of Jasmine, Sarah and Reyne''s birth will be solved.

    Which will solve another part of the puzzle that is Neptune.

    "So, it''s like jumping from the pan to the fire¡­ but in exchange we will gain the freedom to grow", said Emily.

    "Not to mention Reyne will be really "happy" if we go", added Jeanne.

    "Mom!", Reyne eximed, but the smile on her face was hard to not notice.

    "Okay, it''s not like we can''t just ignore who we are anyway, also that girl deserves to know the truth", said both Jeanne and Emily at the same time, maybe they couldn''t straight up treat Jasmine as their daughter like they did for Reyne, since theycked Jessica''s memories.

    But that didn''t mean that they were cold towards Jasmine, she did share some characteristics with Reyne, both had light blond hair and while one had green eyes the other had blue ones, though Reyne''s changed in her vampire form, so did Jasmine''s when those white halos appeared in their pupils.

    Daimon nodded at them, to be honest if they decided otherwise, he would have despised them, from the emotional side, Jasmine is his friend so he wouldn''t tolerate them disregarding her well-being, and on the logical side, even if they decided to escape or hide, there is no guarantee that the Nethereals won''t look for them.

    And as strong as they might be individually, they had no support or anyone on whom they could rely, two Arch ranks can''t face the whole Nethereal army, no matter how strong they are.

    "Let''s go meet Jasmine, let me enter first, I''ll tell you when you can enter", said Daimon, half of the job was done, but that was the easy part, since those two didn''t have a strong emotional attachment to Jasmine.

    But the princess of the Light Pce, did treasure the memory of her mother, so telling Jasmine "Hey, your mother is alive but she doesn''t even remember who you are, nor she looks or acts even slightly simr to what you remember", wasn''t going to be easy.

    Those three nodded and then they left the room together.

    On their way to Daimon''s room, Evangeline couldn''t help but say.

    ''Well, those two have simr "tastes", that is a strong proof that they are sisters~''.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled, he didn''t get angry with Evangeline, because he knew that this was her way to lighten the mood.

    They didn''t take long to arrive at Daimon''s room, he opened the door and entered alone, leaving those three as well as Freya outside to have a private talk with Jasmine and Sarah.

    Those two saw Daimon returning and they smiled, especially since he was alone, but then they noticed there was something else going on.

    "Did something happen?", asked Jasmine, Sarah''s poisonous battle aura was already leaking out of her, she was ready to fight, but nothing could have prepared them for Daimon''s next words.

    "You know I appreciate you two and that I wouldn''t y with what you consider precious right?", he asked.

    "Mm, Daimon is my friend after all"

    "I would love if you yed with mine tough~".

    Two abysmally different answers but with the same meaning behind of them, could be heard right the moment when Daimon finished his question.

    "Okay, listen to everything I say before saying anything, your mother Jessica is alive, but not the way you remember her, you heard how Freya was able to "separate" a lot of things with a special ability, well¡­".

    Daimon then proceeded to tell those two about what he concluded and the reasons behind of it, and then he told them how it was confirmed by Freya herself, the hardest part was to tell Jasmine that neither Jeanne nor Emily had her mother''s memories, so they didn''t have the affect that Jessica had for her.

    On the other hand, he also mentioned that they can still regain Jessica''s memories, and that the two of them are part of Jessica, not to mention that she now has another sister, besides Sarah.

    This time even the crazy girl was speechless, not to mention Jasmine, the two of them remained silent until Daimon finished speaking.

    "I know Daimon wouldn''t lie about something like this, but then why can''t I feel as happy as I thought I would be if mother suddenly returned one day", said Jasmine in a low voice, Jeanne and Emily weren''t at fault for not knowing her, but that didn''t diminish the pain of being forgotten.

    Daimon sighed, no one had an answer for what Jasmine was feeling, but there was something he could do for her.

    "Mm?", Jasmine suddenly felt a warmfortable sensation flooding her body, as Daimon ced his hand on her head.

    "The ones at fault here are those idiots, we''ll get the answers we need even if we have to beat the truth out of them, if what I think is correct, then there is a chance to get your mother''s memories back, for now why don''t you give those two a try, they could have decided to stay out of this, but the two of them wanted you to know the truth and they will being with us too", he said as he inwardly added.

    ''Not like I would have allowed them to just nope out of this anyway, but there was no sign of falseness in their words''.

    "Ah, I thought she was a slut for trying to get too close to all of a sudden, but I guess that since she is "our" sister then it makes sense~", said the crazy girl who was as wild as always.

    That didn''t mean she wasn''t affected by all this, unlike Jasmine who was too young to remember and has only heard about her mother from Aurora, she does remember Jessica, who acted as a caring aunt for her, now they knew that they were not only rted due to the friendship of Bell with Jessica, but they were blood rtives as

    well.

    But her duty as the "older" sister came first, and right now Jasmine was the most affected for sure, which is also why Sarah against the wishes of every cell in her body, didn''t jump onto Daimon, but hugged Jasmine while Daimon patted her head.

    "You aren''t in the position to judge other people''s morality though", said Daimon as she chuckled, which made Sarah smile at him, while Jasmine softlyughed.

    "Thanks, you two, I''m fine, whatever the case, the fact that mother is alive even if it is in a different form, is more than what I could ask~", she said, her bright expression returned to her pretty face.

    Daimon then opened the door to let those three in, before he left the room to give them some time to speak, Freya also stayed out of the room, though strange it was a lost family reunion.

    "I wonder why someone so thoughtful as you, didn''t awaken as a hero, Adam was a native of the four gxies like you, so I might have ended up being your administrator, perhaps my luck with hosts was really that bad", a familiar voice could be heard by Daimon and Freya the moment they closed the door behind of them.

    The origin of it, was a ne with a transparent crystal that contained a pretty white feather, it became visible for a second before it actually "entered" Daimon''s body, as the angel girl Ariel appeared floating next to Daimon.

    "Could be because I didn''t expect anything in exchange for helping Jasmine, also it''s not like I would do this for everyone, I did so because she is my friend so don''t expect me to go helping strangers around", said Daimon as he sat on the ground.

    "I see¡­", the angel girl looked at Daimon with her amber colored eyes as she got lost in her thoughts.

    Daimon closed his eyes, since he just got a message from Rita, she could now share her senses with her young master, so she was literally her eyes and ears in Kerrol, not to mention others couldn''t notice her.

    ¡­

    While those five were sharing a somewhat touching moment inside of Daimon''s room, the reality of the afterwar in Kerrol wasn''t that sweet, not that Daimon cared about it, but Rita could hear and has marked all the ones that were badmouthing her young master.

    And while she was ready to silence them forever with just a word from Daimon, she put more focus on a certain specific tent near the center of the human headquarters at back at the volcanic area.

    This specific tent was filled to the brim with the smell of medicine, there were also a lot of defensive formations as well as guards both inside and outside of the tent.

    Besides that, there was a single bed on which a woman that was covered in bandages with different potions applied to them, wasying down, her eyes were bloodshot as she heard one of the guards reporting to her.

    "Young miss, the master has said that the war is practically over and that we won''t be initiating conflict with the¡­ hero of humanity, please take a rest, the master will be seeing all the outstanding alchemists in Kerrol, we might be able to find a way to restore your core", after saying that, the guard turned around and left.

    The one on the bed was none other than Dorothy, she just woke up and after realizing what happened to her, she of course was enraged, but then she got the news that the war was over and that the guy who crippled her was the one that contributed the most.

    So, she was now at the verge of losing it, the magic she cultivated was gone, she was starting to age and her father who was herst living rtive, basically told her that he won''t be seeking "justice" for her.

    ''Do you hate them?'', suddenly a voice reached her ears, Dorothy observed the room and was amazed at the fact that the guards seemed to be froze on their positions, she came out of her daze when she heard the same voice once again.

    ''Do you want the power to make them pay?''.

    Dorothy''s eyes got bloodshot, how could she not hate Daimon for what he did to her, this was no longer just anger due to Eliot''s death, she was affected this time as well, so she was full of hatred.

    ''Yes!'', she shouted in her mind, then a dark mist gathered above her, from which a cracked dark blue fish scale appeared.

    ''In that case, from now and until we both achieve our goals, we''ll bepanions'', said the scale as it moved towards Dorothy''s chest, but just as it was about to fuse into Dorothy''s body, the scale was suddenly restrained by countless invisible shadow threads, before a ck portal appeared next to Dorothy''s bed.

    "You know, for an administrator you are quite predictable, you already caused aeback today and now you are trying to get a second one, or perhaps you really believed that I was going to let you live", a masked silver haired youth holding a ck sword in his right hand was what came out of the ck portal.

    Dorothy tried to scream and struggle but she then noticed that her body wasn''t responding, curiously, despite not having fused with her yet, the dark blue scale tried the same only to get exactly the same result.

    "I was talking to you actually, but it applies to her now as well, I only allowed her to live because I wanted to see how she will react, "Y-You put her in such a horrible state and yet you were going to kill her", shouted Ka, that dark blue scale was the rest of her existence in Kerrol.

    "I was talking to you actually, but it applies to her now as well, I only allowed her to live because I wanted to see how she will react, that was as much as I could do for those old men, now that I have seen that she''ll be a pain in the ass, naturally she''ll be disposed of, right now", said Daimon as he used Disaster to pierce Dorothy''s heart.

    Her pupils narrowed like needles, as she died with a horrified expression on her face, surprisingly the wound disappeared when Daimon retrieved Disaster, there wasn''t any trace of a wound caused by external means, instead it looked as if she had destroyed the mana circuits near her heart, to kill herself.

    "It won''t end like this, my other half is still out there, they''ll notice my death and you''ll be killed by them!", yelled Ka as she tried to self-destruct her existence, only to notice that even herst resort didn''t work.

    "You are not going anywhere yet, you still have a lot of questions to answer, only then you''ll have my permission to die", said Daimon as she stabbed the blue scale with Disaster.

    "You demon!!!", the pain overwhelmed Ka, she managed to squeeze onest insult before she started screaming and answering Daimon''s questions of course.

    Unfortunately, Daimon had already obtained what he could from this part of Ka, if he wanted toplete that ability he obtained, then he had to find her other half, so after obtaining the information he wanted, he casually destroyed the dark blue scale using both Disaster and his Demon Light, making sure that there was nothing left of it.

    The portal closed and Daimon disappeared, the guards only noticed a few minutester that the remaining daughter of Antonio had killed herself.

 Chapter 526 Contract & Leaving

    Chapter 526 Contract & Leaving

    Freya was taken back at the sight of Daimon suddenly disappearing a moment ago, but then the source of her surprise changed to the fact that she felt as if a knot in her chest has been undone.

    "T-The curse is gone", she eximed in disbelief at the sensation of relief that was invading her.

    She was surprised because she knew what this meant, the incarnation of Ka that was trapped in Kerrol was destroyed.

    ''That woman was too sly, how did he find her so easily?'', she wondered, in Freya''s mind, besides Daimon''s group and herself, there was no one else capable of facing Ka, even in her weakened state, so it was natural to connect the fact that Daimon suddenly left through a portal and Ka''s demise.

    As if to answer her questions, a ck shadow portal opened at the wall and Daimon came out of it with a rxed smile on his face.

    Once the portal closed, Daimon took off his mask and then turned to see Freya, who felt curious about what made the usually stern silver haired youth smirk like that.

    But since he didn''t say anything about it, she didn''t ask either, everyone has their secrets after all, that being said there was a subject in which she can pry without any problem.

    "Did you kill Ka?", confirming it was the best, who knows, the Siren might be trying to pull something by feigning her death, luckily Daimon''s next words put her at ease.

    "Yes, she tried to get a new pawn and was unlucky enough to choose a "loose end" that I had purposedly left for observation, perhaps just like Adam, she finally exhausted that hero luck bullshit she had, or she was too excited to have found apatible host even if she was just going to use her, so she rushed things, whatever the case this half of her is now dead", he said.

    Freya nodded, each administrator knew if it waspatible with someone or not, normally the receiving end wouldn''t know unless the administrator itself mentioned it, otherwise Archbald wouldn''t have been yed like that.

    Among the information Ka was forced to spit out, there was the deal between the Blood King and Ka, apparently, she gave the Ghoul a taste of the dark energy she had and then offered him to be a "chosen one", the Blood King naturally epted unaware of the fact he wasn''tpatible with Ka to begin with, in other words he was just a disposable pawn.

    That''s why she casually discarded him for Adam when she was forced to, and then when Adam turned out to be a disappointment, she tried to trick Daimon who of course could tell she was lying which resulted in a rather painful death, not to mention she angered Evangeline on the process.

    "She was either desperate and that "loose end" was probably unusually highlypatible with her", mumbled Freya, which caught Daimon''s attention.

    "Oh, so there are levels in what patibility" regard?", he asked.

    The silver armored woman remained silent, before she softly snorted.

    "I''m not going to fall for that¡­ again, also don''t take it too far, I''m not your administrator, if I purposedly confirm things you are supposed to discover by yourself, you might lose opportunities".

    "Oh, so that works the same", said Daimon making Freya speechless for a second.

    "¡­", he tricked her to speak more than what she should again, but then it was as if she was hit by bolt out of the blue.

    "Wait a second, howe you don''t know the basics of the basics, unless you¡­", Freya stopped for a moment before saying.

    "Just how hard were the conditions of your awakening and what was the rank of your result?".

    Before Daimon could even consider whether to answer that or not, Evangeline actually spoke out loud.

    "Now, you shouldn''t ask that to other people''s hosts so casually, unless a contract is involved of course", she said with a suggestive voice.

    "It was just curiosity, I will hang around while the enemies that caused mypanion''s deaths are the targets, but I''m not thinking on taking a new host", answered Freya as she shook her head.

    "Oh really, and what do you think you can do with the miserable reserves of "origin" you have, if you are trying to have my host do the fighting without a payment, I''d rather steal something from you, we have a couple of especially metal affinity skilled people in our team, so we''d gain more even if you leave than just having you freeloading~", Evangeline''s yful voice didn''t match the dangerous words that she said.

    Freya gazed at Daimon and didn''t see hostility, but certainly their previous agreement only included information, not support in battle, which she couldn''t provide as of current.

    ''Damn Ka if it wasn''t for her torture, I would have at least kept the Ster rank, as a peak Arch rank my bargaining chips are too limited to be of any use in an event of this magnitude¡­'', thought Freya.

    On the other hand, she could tell that the administrator of the silver haired masked youth, was guiding her to a "trap", the problem is that she had no option but to fall in it, she didn''t even have a way to repay Daimon for getting rid of the curse for her by destroying thest part of Ka''s existence, besides information of course, especially if there were "Star Lords" involved in this conflict.

    "Fine, I''ll agree to a temporary contract, but not because of your threats, but because he has given me a chance to take revenge for a past grievance¡­ my only request is to see and help the family that inherited the will of myterades, what do you say, you seem to be in a good rtionship with them anyway", said the silver armored woman with expectancy.

    Daimon always paid attention to every single word Evangeline said, because she gives him hints every time she can, so when she mentions something new if he notices it and makes the correct questions, he can obtain new information.

    Naturally it didn''t escape him that Eve interrupted Freya earlier, but there must be a good reason for it, it was her way to say "Don''t ask about it yet", instead she got him another piece of information, Daimon decided to listen to her message, after all she has never done anything that could hinder his growth.

    "I guess the "origin" you mentioned is that silver energy for you and for that Siren it was that strangeher, right, but her reserves weren''t that big for sure but she could recover so why can''t you do the same?", asked Daimon.

    Freya doubted for a moment but ultimately, she sighed and then answered the question.

    "Origin is the energy we as administrators need and produce as long as we have apanion, as for your second question, that is because once we take certain decisions, they will remain forever, I told you that the type of link I had with my first host was a life and death one, since that was something I willingly did, from that point onwards if I wanted to make a "contract" whether it be temporary or permanent, it will be a life and death one, after all I wasn''t supposed to¡­ live after my host died, which is why my secondpanion didn''t ept to sign a contract with me no matter how much I asked her to", she said with a slightly sad voice to then add.

    "Unlike previously when I was assigned to the younger sister of my first host, this time I was able to stay behind, since I met the requirements for it, but not only I couldn''t produce origin anymore, but if I made a contract it will be a life and death one whether I like it or not, and Ka would have found out and killed my temporary host which would have been a dead end for me, not to mention I never saw anyone remotely close to be aspatible as those two, so the risk wasn''t worth it".

    "In any case, even after Freya selected a few Ghouls through the years, the amount of origin she was able to amass was a joke, because her originally assigned host was way morepatible with her, but she had no choice because she couldn''t return to zero and be re-assigned as she was iplete

    "I on the other hand could have escaped if I decided to leave everything behind, the problem is that no one knows to whom I might have ended up being assigned, it was a miracle that my second host was rted to the first one, and I simply refused to leave until I at least killed Ka".

    Daimon nodded understanding the basics of how it worked, administrators needed a host to be able to "progress" whether they made them system users or not, which exined why though Ka gave Archbald some powers, he didn''t be a system user, that Siren never made a meaningful contract unlike Freya, even the hero guy she was assigned to before was not a "keep" for her.

    "So howpatible am I for you, also will I get a second system if we make a contract even if it is temporary?", asked Daimon just to see Freya shaking her head.

    "You are actuallypatible with me, despite not having metal affinity, something simr happened with my second host, that being said you won''t be able to get the system I administrate, because of your gender, but that''s fine, I just need a bit of origin from you and in exchange I''ll help you as much as I can¡­".

    Before Freya could finish her sentence, Daimon''s vibe changed, his body radiated both metal element mana and battle aura, making the silver armored woman be in awe for a second.

    "W-Weren''t your affinities light and fire, I could understand if you also had lightning considering how much of a monster you appear to be, but metal ispletely unrted to those!", she eximed, in her excitement, she actually approached Daimon and grabbed his arm to touch his skin directly as if to confirm something.

    ''No way, hispatibility surpasses that of Lye, how the hell is he not a metal type system user!'', she inwardly screamed.

    Daimon chuckled and then hid his metal affinity with the Hollow Suit and the bracelet of the god of mischief once again, to then say.

    "I was born with metal affinity to begin with, but I''m not limited by such things".

    Freya was speechless, while Evangelineughed out loud.

    "As long as you around Daimon even if you want to be useless, things won''t go your way~", she said.

    "I''ll be out while the contract is formalized, since you have metal affinity, I''ll add teaching you how to properly use metal mana as part of the benefits of the contract¡­ I don''t have a promise item to offer but I won''t be a burden", with those words and Daimon nodding to ept the "link" she was trying to stablish, Freya turned into a silver light that covered Daimon, the next second, she had turned into an ethereal silver armor that protected his vitals, simr to the protection she casted on him earlier.

    Apparently, this was the form of her existence, it was simr as to how the angel girl Ariel became a pendant with a crystal and a white feather inside of it, she also made a contract with Daimon, but it wasn''t a life and death one, since she put a condition before even considering that, which was to kill Marcus and obtain his administrator too.

    ''To think he convinced that metal woman to ept a though temporary, life and death contract, maybe if it''s him¡­'', thought Ariel from within her pendant.

    "Well, that''s one thing solved¡­", mumbled Daimon as he saw the door of his room opening, meaning those five had finished their conversation for the time being at least, the one that came out was actually Reyne.

    "I can believe that Jasmine is my sister, but is that crazy girl actually rted to me?", she jokingly asked, to which Daimon softlyughed.

    "If you only took into ount the current rtions, she''ll be your cousin, but if we are serious about it, she is as much as Jasmine''s sister as you so¡­ good luck", he said, making Reyne sigh.

    Daimon''s amusement was interrupted by old Ben who stopped at a respectable distance, of Jeanne and Emily''s assigned area, he didn''t even say anything as he was sure that Daimon was observing everything, and he was right, courtesy of Rita of course.

    That being said, Jeanne and Emily also noticed his presence, so they came out of the room apanied by Jasmine and Sarah who were in a really good mood currently.

    "It''s time to get our payment, are you ready, we''ll be leaving after that?", said Daimon to those two.

    "Mm, since Reyne had already expressed her desire to leave, we had already packed our stuff before", said Jeanne to which Reyne cleared her throat.

    "Mom, a simple "yes" would have sufficed", she said.

    Daimon nodded at them and then he walked towards where old Ben was, followed by those girls of course.

    Old Ben saw the masked youth approach him with a calm rxed expression, and he inwardly sighed.

    ''I guess neither Dorothy''s death of which he should already be aware of, nor the fortune he is about to receive means too much for him, what a loss for the humanity'', he thought.

    "Here is the payment we agreed on, those two asked me to inquire about the price to remove that dark energy from them", said old Ben as he handed Daimon a couple of spatial rings.

    Daimon received the rings and naturally inspected their contents, as he handed the information that old Ben wanted, once he was sure that till thest mana crystal was there, he turned to see Sarah to then say.

    "You''ll be the one taking care of it, so the price is up to you".

    "I was going to ask for the head of that crazy woman, but that no longer holds any mean, so I want a poison that I don''t know about, every big force must have a secret mix or two, especially those guys from the church, and you have five minutes because we are leaving", casually said the crazy girl, making old Ben take in a breath of cold air, he knew that Sarah was merciless, but to think she would have asked old Antonio for the head of his daughter to cure him, that was way above what he expected.

    Not even three minutester, Antonio and the elder from the church arrived at the scene, both holding a small chest with a seal on them.

    "These are secret poisons that were yet to be tested, they are ninth generation beast technology, known only for the leaders of the two sides, will it be enough?", asked old Ben as those two opened their chest to show the contents.

    Sarah''s eyes sparkled as she took the chests from those two and put them in her ring, to then snap her fingers.

    A purple mist gathered around the crazy girl, forcing wisps of dark smoke toe out of Antonion and the elder''s bodies, the thing actually tried to escape but was intercepted and engulfed by Sarah''s purple mist.

    "It''s done, bye", said the crazy girl as she dispelled the purple mist, those two confirmed that they were now cured and then left.

    Old Ben on the other hand did say goodbye, before stealing onest gaze at Reyne before leaving, knowing that there was a big chance this was thest time he saw that extraordinary group.

    Daimon nodded at him but didn''t think too much about it, he instead looked at the log of the system where the message he wanted to see was.

    [The mission has been properly aplished, the portal to return is avable, do you wish to leave Y/N]

    Those five girls held onto him, without him saying anything, which meant they were ready to leave.

    Daimon epted and then the space on the roof of the room cracked, dragging them into a dimensional tunnel, marking the end of their visit to Kerrol.

    ¡­

    Inside of the dimensional tunnel, Daimon observed their surroundings, this was the smoothest dimensional tunnel in which he has been, but it made sense since this was created using the system as a medium.

    "We''ll be here for at least a couple of hours, so take a rest, we''ll soon be back at Neptune", said Daimon.

    Thest time they appeared outside of Kerrol, in the part to which the passage connected, this time they were inside of Kerrol, so they needed more time to return to Neptune.

    While Jasmine and the others talked to each other, Daimon who was curious about something, inwardly said.

    ''Back then, when you said that if I died you died¡­'', Daimon couldn''t finish his sentence before Evangeline interrupted him.

    ''I told you right, you are my first andst host, most administrators don''t dare to take such a risk, so you better treasure me'', said Eve to which Daimon limited to chuckle.

 Chapter 527 Back just in time

    Chapter 527 Back just in time

    Once the exchange between Daimon and Evangeline ended, Narasha took over since she also had something to discuss.

    Daimon could "feel" her hesitating, meaning she actually had something important to say, but didn''t know how to say it, Narasha was still quite stiff when it came to human emotions, which is understandable as it took her eight years to understand what it meant to be Daimon''s soulmate.

    Previous to that, she herself mentioned that she wouldn''t mind to fulfill night "duties" with the master she chooses, if she had a body, she knew about such things as Disaster had devoured the memories of those guys that created the special magic ore that was used to create the capricious sword.

    But now she felt ashamed of her own words, especially since she has seen Daimon "rolling on the bed" with Erin and the others.

    ''What''s the problem?'', asked Daimon.

    After a few seconds of silence, Narasha''s voice could be heard by Daimon.

    ''I was wondering if you are nning to use that sword you got from that guy¡­'', she said in a low voice.

    Daimon was momentarily speechless at the fact that he noticed a slight tinge of jealousy in Narasha''s voice, that being said he inwardly celebrated it, as it meant that she has progressed.

    ording to Evangeline, once per tome, the grimoire will get its owner something they need, in other words, the grimoire will help them ovee their "ws", but there were requirements for that, alternatively they will get it once they reach a step prior to the next rank that the current tome covers.

    For Erin and Aura, it came in the form of the skills that fused with their Domains, which were the third skills that Aisha, Liz, ine and Narasha werecking as they haven''t fulfilled the requirements needed, nor have reached the Half Emperor realm.

    But enough of that, the point is that unlike Aisha, Liz and ine who aren''t sure what will their grimoires grant them, Narasha does know it, she''ll obtain a physical body, which is understandable as the main trait she obtained is the ability to transform into Gram, so transforming abilities aren''t something new to her.

    For that, understanding emotions is the requirement she knows about, it can''t be forced and has to be natural, which is why Daimon was actually happy that she was "jealous".

    That being said, he already had the answer to the question she made, for which he took out the Adam''s sword from his inventory, holding it with his left hand, while he also took out Disaster¡­ no, Gram out from the inventory and wielded it with his right hand.

    ''Daimon?'', before Narasha could say anything else and under Jasmine and the other''s surprised eyes, Daimon casually shed the Adam''s sword down with all his might.

    "ng!", the sound of metals colliding echoed through the dimensional tunnel as Gram''s edge shed against Adam''s sword, a blinding white light was produced by the confrontation.

    ''Come, my Narasha is fierce enough to destroy that idiot''sme sword, show it, that your light is the brightest!'', inwardly shouted Daimon.

    Ever since he has used the identity of "Gabriel" in Neptune, he has used Disaster as his weapon, but now he was now using Gram which is Narasha''s ability, not only because Disaster is dormant to process Ka''sher, but because his instincts told him this would be beneficial for her.

    ''Mm!'', with an enthusiastic sound from Narasha, Gram suddenly overpowered Adam''s sword''s light, making cracks appear on it, until Gram actually cut through Adam''s sword.

    "Crack!", the defeated sword crumbled apart into white pieces of metal, that soon were deprived of any light and color, turning into scrap inparison, Gram was literally shinning, forcing everyone to keep their eyes half closed.

    Daimon had to send it to the inventory, not only because of the previous, but because Narasha''s consciousness was sleeping.

    ''Now that''s the Narasha I know, you would never lose to Disaster'', thought Daimon as he saw the pieces of scrap that used to be Adam''s sword which were now turning into orange powder to then be scattered through the dimensional tunnel.

    "That was a promise level treasure, it could have grown alongside you, even if you wanted to keep that strange being inside that sword, you could have transferred her consciousness to a new vessel you know¡­", the angel girl Ariel couldn''t help but speak after seeing the previous scene unfold in front of her, there certainly were growing type magic treasures out there, like Disaster appeared to be.

    But promise level items not only were growing type treasures, but also had other abilities and benefits, and yet she couldn''t feel an ounce of regret on the silver haired youth.

    "My Narasha won''t be limited to some "creator" whims, she is free to create her own path", said Daimon with a pride filled voice, the fragment of Lace took the form of the grimoire that best suited her, in other words, Gram is part of her own path, which is why he won''t try to move her consciousness to a promise treasure, not he will change her for another sword.

    Ariel remained silent after listening to Daimon''s answer, she wasn''t exactly talkative after all, that being said she seemed more willing to interact than when she was with Adam, as she has been asking questions by herself quite often.

    As for why Daimon didn''t use the trident as fuel for Narasha, that''s because of the rtion between it and Ka, it was the promise magic weapon that her host used, it might be usefulter on, not to mention it went along quite well with Neptune, which is a mostly aquatic.

    ¡­

    The rest of the travel was pretty much uneventful; besides the fact it took them a whole day and a half to finally be near the end of the dimensional tunnel.

    ''Luckily I didn''t waste time involving myself in Kerrol''s war, otherwise I would have arrivedte'', thought Daimon.

    They left Wednesday at night, so right now it should be Friday past midday, that''s how long the travel back to Neptunested.

    "We''ll be out in a moment, don''t separate and be alert just in case", he said to Jasmine and the others.

    Jeanne and Emily immediately changed to their vampire forms, as Daimon has assured her that no one gives a damn about it at Neptune, actually, they don''t even know what vampires are.

    As for Jasmine, Sarah and Reyne, they gathered next to Daimon and waited for the dimensional tunnel to expulse them.

    It didn''t take long for them to reach the end of the tunnel, the very same second, they were expulsed from it, Rita who was on guard by Daimon''s petition, covered them in a veil of shadows.

    The previous wasn''t due to paranoia, Daimon''s senses are incredibly sharp, and he could tell that where they were appearing wasn''t where they entered, in other words they weren''t at the cave were the passage to Kerrol was.

    The other thing that happened the very moment they returned to Neptune, was that Aisha''s melodious voice appeared in Daimon''s mind.

    ''Darling, you are finally back!'', she eximed with an enthusiastic voice.

    A smile couldn''t help but appear on Daimon''s face, but then he noticed that the atmosphere was strange, it hasn''t been that long since midday and yet the sky was rather dark, not to mention the mana was rather erratic.

    "Mm, this is certainly better than Kerrol, but not what I imagined from the ce where the "Light Pce" is located¡­ also what is this strange sensation of pressure lingering on the air", said Emily, which made Daimon chuckle.

    "Well if my senses don''t fail me, that is your "father", though at this point I''ll erase him from the family three, Rita update please", he said.

    While Rita scanned their surroundings, Aisha did her part and told Daimon everything that happened while they were gone.

    Surprisingly the troubles didn''te from where they expected, the Maelstrom Sea was rtively normal, with fights breaking here and there between Thea''s forces and the pirates but nothing too extreme.

    Instead of that, troubles came from their own "backyard", a couple of days ago, the Shaman publicly dered that after reviewing the contents of the treasuries from Purplecloud and Skyfire, there were some important items "missing", and that all the ones that had visited them recently, were required to be inspected that same day.

    Naturally, how could Daimon who was in another and probably another gxy, go to the arranged ce, nor like he would have obeyed Abaris''s summon even if he was in Neptune.

    But the Shaman took that as a way to dere Daimon guilty and then demanded Aurora to hand him over for interrogation, which resulted in those two discussing, not only that the Shaman asked for Jasmine toe live with him, since she wasn''t safe near a "thief", which of course was also rejected by Aurora.

    The problem is that Abaris somehow got wind of the cave where the legacy of the hero was supposedly left, and the fact that Aurora wasn''t present right at the castle of the Light Pce, to¡­ capture Sylvie.

    That wasn''t all, almost at the same time, the passage along with the whole mountain suddenly disappeared, Aurora rushed back and demanded Abaris to free Sylvie, but the Shaman told her that she had to hand Daimon over and also let him talk to Jasmine.

    And since none of the previous was possible, the conflict intensified, which resulted in the skies over the Elemental Sea changing, Aurora and Abaris actually started fighting between each other.

    The people under the Light Pce were trapped inside the defensive barrier of their ownnd, preventing the people from the ck Fortress to invade, which is why it was a mystery how they managed to capture Sylvie.

    And while Abaris could mobilize some of his army, including one of his two direct disciples, Aurora had the Flying Citadel with her, so the conflict was in a dead point, with Aurora threatening to break in to rescue Sylvie if she suffered even the slightest harm, which forced Abaris to don''t even dare to interrogate her, she was just kept hostage until Aurora handed over the "thief".

    Just as Daimon finished listening to Aisha''s exnation, Daimon''s sclerae turned pitch ck, that was the signal that Rita was sharing her senses with him.

    For Daimon the scenery changed from up into the sky where the dimensional tunnel left them, to the area where the Flying Citadel was standing still, facing Abaris and a small group of elites from the ck Fortress.

    "It has been two days since this started, are you not sick of defending that brat, are you really willing to turn your back on me for an outsider, not to mention you haven''t let me meet little Jasmine!", shouted Abaris, the darkness mana radiated by him, ckened the sky giving the whole area a "grim" sensation.

    "Don''t turn me into the enemy, I told you that once he is ready, I''m willing to demonstrate his innocence, as for little Jas, you dare to ask me to show her to you after you imprisoned Sylvie, who is like an aunt for her, dream on!", answered Aurora who was floating in front of the Flying Citadel, it was the time for today''s sh after all.

    Inside of the Citadel, Aisha and the others were calmly observing the situation, it''s not like Auroracked any support, while the patriarchs and practically all her subordinates were encircled by the guys from the ck Fortress, Akim, the high stage Ster ranked Nethereal that has submitted to Daimon, was in the Flying Citadel, respectfully kneeling in front of Aisha, waiting for any order.

    And with a single call, Liman, in other words the other High stage Ster rank, that has submitted to Daimon, woulde, not to mention there were another couple of low ranked Sters in the Citadel too, but Abaris had no need to know that.

    Aurora and Abaris both turned into a white and a ck sh that shed on the sky, before they raised above the clouds.

    ''Tell Aurora to keep that guy upied, but to prepare for a real battle¡­ I don''t have time to exin but tell her we''ll be leaving to the Mermen Sea after I finish doing something, and there is a big surprise waiting for her'', said Daimon through the mental link.

    ''Okay, I almost thought you weren''t going to arrive in time for the royal ball, there would have been many angry girls at you if that happened, darling~'', answered Aisha, making Daimon softlyugh.

    Returning to reality, and listening to Rita''s report, Daimon couldn''t help but smirk.

    "Perhaps this is part of what I stole from that idiot, however I bet he wouldn''t have known what I know", he mumbled.

    They appeared right above the center of the Elemental Sea, where the Light Pce and ck Fortress''s main territories were.

    "Rita, can you locate any kind of prison or other isted ce inside the ck Fortress''s castle, without anyone noticing it?", asked Daimon to which the undead head maid immediately answered.

    "No problem, Daimon!", Rita''s senses then focused on the area below them, she easily bypassed the barriers that were isting the forces from the two big factions, to then reach the white castle first.

    It didn''t even take a minute for Rita to finish seeing what was happening inside the white castle, so then she changed her focus to Abaris''s castle, luckily, she didn''t have to look too much into it.

    There inside of a cell, using ck metal chains, was Sylvie sitting on the simple bed that came with the cell, outside of it, there was the female disciple of Abaris, ring at Sylvie.

    "Have you considered our offer, if you testify against that little bastard, then you''ll be free to go, this time your master was one step toote to save you, so do yourself a favor and give in", she said.

    Sylvie who though was unable to use her mana, still was wearing her white dress and robe, not to mention was perfectly fine, snorted.

    "Little Jas''s smile has returned thanks to that kid, there is no way I will do anything that will disturb that, not to mention I personally don''t believe he''ll steal something from you, knowing him, you''ll be giving away what he wants by your own will", said Sylvie before she returned to be silent.

    ''Tsk, arrogant bitch, let''s see how you keep that act once that old woman concedes'', thought Abaris''s disciple as she left the prison, closing the door behind of her.

    This room was prepared to trap anyone with light rted affinity, the floor, walls and even the roof were covered with ayer of darkness mana crystals, and the darkness mana was so abundant that the room was really dark, despite it being still day.

    "Mm?", Sylvie, whose eyes were closed, suddenly noticed a ck portal appearing on the wall in front of her, from which Daimon followed by the girls, came out.

    To Sylvie''s surprise a portal opened right where the bars of her cell where, allowing her to easilye out.

    "Aunt Sylvie, are you alright?", asked Jasmine with a worried voice as she saw the ck chains around Sylvie''s arms, legs and neck.

    "Rita, of you''d do the honors please", said Daimon to which Rita nodded from within his shadow, creating a ck portal that led to a "obscure" area of the citadel.

    "Senior Aurora will remove those chains for you¡­ everyone but Sarah enter the portal", he said, making the crazy girl smile from ear to ear, while Reyne and Jasmine looked unconvinced.

    "We''ll be joining you in a second", added Daimon, Jeanne and Emily crossed through the portal followed by Jasmine, Reyne and Sylvie, not without thetter whispering something at Daimon, whose eyes glowed behind his mask.

    The portal closed, leaving only Daimon, Sarah and of course Rita, behind, without the boosting effect of Kerrol, Rita had returned to be a peak stage Archmage, but she kept the capacity to use Space Shift, and the ability to share her senses with Daimon, not to mention that she could feel her advanceing her way, just a little push and she''ll be a Half Emperor.

    Anyway, the following didn''t require a high realm, otherwise Abaris would have managed to do it, a long time ago.

    "I love staying with you rtively alone in a dark prison room for sure, but wouldn''t it be better if we went with little Jas?", asked the crazy girl as she observed the cell, who knows what imaginary scenarios were blooming in her mind.

    Daimon shook his head in response as he said.

    "Unless senior Aurora and old Vincent join hands, we can''t get rid of Abaris definitely, but there is a much simpler way to inflict him pain¡­ we''ll simply take something he values as much as his own life".

    Sarah licked her lips as she approached Daimon to lean on his shoulder to whisper at him.

    "And that''s why I can''t stay away from you~".

 Chapter 528 Be careful with what you wish for

    Chapter 528 Be careful with what you wish for

    "We''ll continueter when Jas is with us, for now what will we be taking from that old bastard~", said the crazy girl as she let go of Daimon.

    "Continue with what¡­ you know what, I don''t even want to know, also we won''t be stealing but "iming" instead", said Daimon as his sclerae painted pitch ck.

    Thanks to the Terror Contract he had with Rita, he didn''t have to speak if he wanted her assistance, the undead head maid could feel when Daimon wanted something and she happily obliged

    Of course, since Rita and Horals aren''t ves but Daimon''s most trusted subordinates, he usually voiced his requests instead of silently ordering them, but that only applied torgemands, in this case, it was counterproductive to say out loud "share your senses with me".

    So, he just thought about it and Rita shared her vision with him, Daimon couldn''t help but be marveled at the extremely wide and detailed field of vision that the undead head maid had.

    Rita''s mana sense is already incredibly developed, to the point that she can best even middle stage Ster ranks like Thea, and yet not even Maximum Sters can detect her, as long as she stays in Daimon''s shadow.

    She has grown after apanying Daimon to Kerrol, not only she gained the ability to use her own version of Space Shift, but she has be more skilled in what darknessws regard, as a proof of it, in this underground prison which was covered in darkness mana crystal to suppress anyone with light oriented affinities, the range of her field of vision was enhanced.

    Allowing Daimon to have the incredible sensation of being able to see "everything" in full detail.

    ''Well, to begin with this ce was supposed to be a paradise for those with darkness-oriented affinities, what a shame it has been in useless hands for quite some time'', thought Daimon as he looked for a certain specific something.

    This ability to share senses that Rita gained was amazing, normally such an incredible sight capacity wille with its respective requirements, like a certain realm, an amount of mana and also tension in the mana circuits that are located in the eyes, but nothing of the previous applied to Rita''s new ability.

    It was as simple as turning up a switch, Daimon obtained all the benefits of Rita''s senses and there was no burden for him, as for Rita she just used the almost unnoticeable amount of mana needed to spread her mana sense, which was basically nothing.

    ''I wonder what would happen if I added the effect of the infinity eyes to this, I guess it''s something worth tryingter, for now¡­'', thought Daimon as he looked through the countless floors and rooms that existed underground of Abaris''s castle.

    He saw all the strategic points, such as Abaris''s throne room, the treasury, the main bedroom, training room, the guest area where that female disciple of his was meditating and other facilities, but that wasn''t at what he was aiming, no, what he wanted to find was ced way deeper into the ground, at the level where the darkness mana crystal mine that turned this piece of continental mass a sacrednd for darkness affinity mages and knights.

    "I found you", mumbled Daimon, he turned to see Sarah who "understood" the message and held onto his arm, as they both were transported through a silent shadow portal that appeared below of them.

    While Daimon and Sarah were moving through the underground area of Abaris''s castle, a ce that hadn''t been visited for who knows how many years, up at the sky a few thousands of kilometers from there, the clouds were dispersed and the air trembled as a white sh and dark haze fiercely shed.

    "Booom!", both light and darkness by default are mass-less elements, their natural forms are ethereal, as they are more focused to energy type spells instead of physical affecting ones and yet, each time the white rays of light radiated by Aurora met the dark haze exuded by Abaris, a thunder-like explosion was produced.

    "Why are you being so stubborn for a brat you met not too long ago, we are Jasmine''sst remaining family, do you really wish her to see us fighting like this!", eximed Abaris as he blocked a white ray that was aimed at his face.

    "Humph, don''t you dare try to use little Jas for your petty revenge on that kid, you know as well as me that he didn''t take anything from the treasuries of those two, you are just angry that Purplecloud''s son was utterly defeated by that kid and that little Jas doesn''t want to be paired with your "brightest" disciple", said Aurora as she increased the output of her mana, forcing Abaris to now block with both of his hands instead of one.

    Before Abaris could answer, Aurora raised her hand and light mana gathered from all over the atmosphere, increasing the pressure on Abaris as she said.

    "I have put up with your bad temperament quite a few times in the past for the sake of that little girl, but this is something in which neither you nor me have anything to say, she has found something precious, a person with whom she is happy just by being at his side and I''m not going to let an old fool like you get in her way!".

    ''How will I be able to face Jessica straight if I allow the same mistake to happen again'', she thought to herself.

    Abaris clicked his tongue, realizing he wasn''t going to be able to convince Aurora with just words, the problem is that unless he dered an all-out war against the Light Pce, he couldn''t really do much to her, especially with the Flying Citadel ready to support her whenever is needed.

    ''Tsk, if only¡­ whatever tomorrow is the royal ball, we''ll both have to attend, I''ll tell those two to apply more pressure on Sylvie'', thought the Shaman as he also increased the amount of mana he was using to sh against Aurora.

    Abaris confused the sudden increase in Aurora''s fierceness on the fact that he tried to use Jasmine to persuade her, well, in part that was the case, but she also received sound transmission from Akim which contained Aisha''s message, exining to her that Jasmine and Daimon had returned and that there was a big "surprise" waiting for her, but first she had to entertain Abaris for at least half an hour.

    Of course, Aisha didn''t forget to mention that they will be leaving to the Mermen Sea, meaning that whatever Daimon was up to wasn''t something good, but Aurora trusted the one who Jasmine has chosen to follow, so she yed along.

    If only she knew that¡­ she will have a reason to be really angry at Abaris, on the other hand she had an even stronger reason to be happy, but that will have to wait forte, right now Daimon and the crazy girl finally reached their destination, an underground sealed space with a huge crystal door preventing anyone from continuing ahead.

    The moment they arrived it became obvious that unlike the previous areas where there was no trace of anyone passing by in a long time, this area was frequently visited.

    "Heh, so the old man had a secret passage just toe here", said Daimon with a disdainful voice.

    Though different in principle, Rita''s Space Shift had the property to ignore restrictions, unlike Thea who had the ability to pierce through space, Rita could open a free portal wherever there was even the slightest shadow.

    13:10

    The area in which they appeared was undeveloped, it was basically a cave with walls were covered in some kind of dark material that Daimon couldn''t recognize, it wasn''t mana crystal nor any metal he hard heard, read or seen before.

    That being said, not having intel on something can also be valuable information, depending on one''s perspective, this is something Erin taught Daimon, in this case the fact that he couldn''t recognize the material covering the walls, was simr to how he couldn''t recognize the material of which¡­ the flying citadel was made off.

    Another interesting thing is that there were signs ofrge amounts of mana being discharged regrly, and there was also a faint smell of blood lingering in the air, it wasn''t fresh though, but more of something that has umted through the years.

    And since there were no signs of anyone being killed nor the ominous sensation that naturally forms in ces where battles take part often, the blood wasn''t spilled but brought here.

    Which made sense for him, thanks to what could be considered the biggest "gift" he obtained from when he interrogated Ka before destroying that part of her existence.

    Daimon walked towards the giant ck door, more urately to the exact spot where the foot marks stopped which was also the spot where the traces ofrge amounts of mana being discharged, was.

    He then turned to see Sarah before saying.

    "I need some of your blood¡­", Daimon hadn''t even finished speaking when the crazy girl had already started smiling from ear to ear, as she took out one of her needles and pinched the tip of her finger.

    Daimon inwardly sighed at her expectation filled expression and just grabbed her hand, which only made the wild imagination of the crazy girl increase even more.

    Daimon then condensed arge amount of light mana on his free hand, which he ced at a certain specific spot on the giant door, the decorative lines of the door lit up as they absorbed Daimon''s light mana.

    A few secondster the sound of gears moving could be hearding from within the door as a smallpartment with a dark crystal was expulsed from the door.

    "Now for the finishing touch", mumbled Daimon as he slightly applied pressure on Sarah''s finger to make a drop of her blood fall on the crystal.

    "Harder~", of course the crazy girl was as wild as always, but Daimon ignored her and just kept making her finger bleed on the crystal, until the thingpletely dyed red.

    "Now it''s time to see if I was right¡­", mumbled Daimon as he helped Sarah retrieve her finger from the dark crystal, thepartment returned to be a part of the door and then the lines in which the light mana that was taken from Daimon was running, slowly but surely dyed ck.

    The moment thest part of those lines turned ck, the giant door rumbled for a couple of seconds as it slowly opened.

    ''Crap!'', Daimon felt the surge of manaing from the other side of the door, and he immediately initiated Core Synchrony and then poured everything into radiating light mana to cover Sarah and himself at the same time.

    Naturally Rita was going to act to protect her young master, but Daimon immediately ordered her to not do so.

    "Don''t, we are still aren''t on the safe side yet¡­", said Daimon, the sudden surge or mana that came from the other side of the door wasn''t an attack, it''s just thest part of the process to sessfully open the giant door.

    That being said, and with Daimon giving his all, his light mana was being blown away by the ck mana surging from the other side of the door.

    Only after Daimon was forced to use Sanctuary to fully replenish his mana, which is saying a lot as in Core Synchrony state, his reserves of mana equaled those of a middle stage Archmage, the surge of mana finally stopped.

    "So that''s why there were foot marks on the ground", said Daimon as he deactivated Core Synchrony, he knew that all the previous was just to show, the realst requirement to ess what lied at the other side of the giant door, was what happened right now.

    A sensation of being observed came from the lightless space at the other side of the door, and only after focusing on Sarah for a few seconds, it stopped.

    Daimon let out a sigh of relief, it would have been a pain in the ass if after all that, things didn''t work out.

    The crazy girl felt a strange pulling sensationing from the door, which made her frown and then hold onto Daimon''s arm.

    "Don''t worry, what''s inside there is both yours and Jasmine''s", said Daimon, it was weird to see the crazy girl acting wary, but it was not bad for a change.

    "Mm", Sarah nodded and her tensed body rxed, as they both crossed the door to enter the space that was sealed by that giant door.

    "I know on mustn''t judge a book by its cover, but that''s not what I expected", said the crazy girl as she saw the sole object in the previously sealed space.

    There floating in the middle of the air was a ck hand sized cube, the thing wasn''t radiating energy or anything, in fact the mana in the air inside of this sealed space was really thin but it was for a good reason.

    Time for a basic lesson, what happens when you sum positive plus negative energies, answer, both neutralize each other, as long as they are equal to the other of course.

    And that is what was happening right now, Daimon had some major questions for Ka, unfortunately simr to how it happened to Jessica, who became Jeanne and Emily, the Ka that was trapped in Kerrol didn''t have all her memories, she kept her personality as that''s what Freya''s first host cut from the hero guy.

    But shecked practically all her memories prior to that, as they stayed attached to the system, she also didn''t know anything about what happened to her host as they were separated until the hero returned to Kerrol apanied by Freya''s second host.

    However, before they could catch up, a fight broke out and both the hero and Freya''s second host both killed each other, still during the battle the hero had a small opportunity to exchange words with Ka and gave her a task.

    She was supposed to retrieve the best treasure in possession of the hero, which he couldn''t take to Kerrol, something that was supposedly destroyed along with a treasure of equal value during a tough battle, but which the hero hid forter usage.

    "It''s my turn now, stay behind me", said Daimon to Sarah who nodded and then did as he said.

    Vertical yellow lines appeared on Daimon''s pupils, and then he ced his hand on the cube, which then stuck to his palm, ripping his skin off to absorb his blood.

    ''It better be freaking worth it'', thought Daimon, this amount of pain was nothing, but he didn''t appreciate the long process, luckily it didn''tst long after a couple of seconds, he was free to retrieve his hand, his recently acquired Mythical Regeneration immediately healed the wound and even replenished the blood he lost.

    But while the previous was quite an amazing scene, it paled inparison with what was happening in front of both Daimon and Sarah, the cube started rotating and expanding until it reached around fifty meters of size, to then open revealing that it contained a white spherical object, which radiated a really faint light.

    "There you go", said Daimon to which Sarah nodded, she approached the giant sphere and then touched it while Daimon was touching the cube, making the two objects separate and then shrink.

    The crazy girl curiously observed the core which was now orbiting her, while the cube had fallen to the ground.

    "What is this, I do feel a faint link between it and me but there is nothing else, is it just for decoration?", she asked to which Daimon chuckled.

    "It has been fighting against an equal "enemy" for a really long time, just feed it some mana crystals and see", he said.

    Sarah''s eyes glowed, she had a fortune in her ring after extorting¡­ obtaining, all those crystals from the adjudicators and the church as well, so she just took out a bunch of them and the white sphere dragged them into it, like a man who has been starving for weeks.

    Daimon on the other hand observed the cube and then grabbed it to see a notification appearing in front of him.

    ''Now, that''s what I''m talking about'', he thought as he walked towards the wall of the previously sealed space, to then smack the cube against the wall, inserting it into it, one of the faces of the cube opened and then Daimon followed the steps of the crazy girl by taking out a ton of high-grade mana crystals which were devoured by the cube.

    ¡­

    Back at the skies, the battle between Aurora and Abaris had started to be serious, their exchange stopped being just streams of their respective mana to slowly turn into an exchange of spells.

    Abaris frowned as he deflected the iing spell that was aimed at his chest with an angered expression, the Shaman had a short temper to begin with, so there was so much he could take from others, before getting furious.

    "Enough Aurora, I want you to bring that kid to me right now, otherwise don''t me me for disciplining your disciples in your stead!", he said as his mana overflowed out of his body, Abaris actually took out his weapon, a ck ore scimitar that seemed to be made of obsidian.

    Normally those who saw that ancient weapon that has been legated since the age of the hero and the first Matriarch of the Light Pce, would be horrified by its presence, but Aurora remained pretty calm, while she didn''t have an ancient weapon passed down to her, she had the silver citadel that was floating behind of her, which thoughcked offensive properties, it had a lot of practical uses, she could always retreat into it if it was needed for example.

    But right now, not only she didn''t feel threatened, but she was actually smiling as she said.

    "You should be careful with what you wish for, who knows it coulde true".

    Abaris suddenly had a bad premonition assaulting his heart, but as he was about to demand Aurora to exin what she meant, a loud explosion followed by a wave of energy that hit the army brought by Abaris on their backs, sending them flying all over the area, got his attention.

    "What the hell was that!", eximed the Shaman, only to see that Aurora was already inside the citadel, which only increased the bad premonition in his heart.

    "You all keep an eye on them, I''ll return in a moment", shouted Abaris as he became a ck sh that short towards the origin of the previous phenomenon, which was the direction where the main territory of the Light Pce and the ck Fortress, was causing giant waves and hitting the some of the flying figures that were trying to contain the destruction caused by a piece of the continental mass being ripped off the located.

    By the time Abaris arrived, he saw something that he will never forget, in fact this will probably haunt him for the rest of his life, the sound of water, the screams as well as the seemingly bottomless crater that was being filled by the surrounding water, all the previous caused by the same thing.

    Which was a huge part of continental mass being stripped apart from the ground and raised onto the sky.

    "Boooom!", big pieces of earth and rocks fell from the sky,nding on the water causing giant waves and hitting the some of the flying figures that were trying to contain the destruction caused by a piece of the continental mass being ripped off the surface of Neptune.

    Abaris stood there in shock for a second, after thousands of years of living and defending a certain ce, how could he not recognize it, even if its surroundings had changed.

    What was floating on the sky was the whole ind where the sacrednd of both the Light Pce and the ck Fortress was located, he could even see the base of the giant mountain-like deposits of dark and light mana crystal mines, the mines actually came off along with the whole ind!

    And then it was as if a bolt had hit him out of the blue, he looked downwards and recognized the poor bastards who were dealing with the destruction caused, all their clothes had something inmon, they all belonged to the ck Fortress or the other forces subordinated to them, but there wasn''t a single person from the Light Pce.

    Abaris took out hismunication talisman and immediately tried to send a message to two different contacts, and his face ckened as he didn''t receive an answer from neither of them.

    "What the hell is going on!", he roared to the sky as he flew towards the giant floating ind.

 Chapter 529 Treasures that complement each other (part 1)

    Chapter 529 Treasures thatplement each other (part 1)

    To understand the current scene that Abaris was witnessing, we must rewind back in time around ten minutes, to the point when Sarah was busy giving mana crystals to the white orb.

    Daimon grabbed the ck cube which had earlier ripped off his flesh and absorbed his blood.

    He has gotten to see a lot of new things ever since the mission at Neptune started, like the Ster realm, the beast pouches, new lineages, magic technology that developed in a different way than the one at the four gxies and the list goes on.

    And yet most of the stuff that outstand from the rest, shares the same characteristic, they are iplete and there are close to zero records of it in the history of Neptune, at first Daimon was in the dark about why it was like that.

    But now he has obtained the first big piece of the puzzle after having gone to Kerrol and confirmed, that the history was altered by at least three different powers, first the ones which Daimon suspected from the very beginning, the system users that arrived at Neptune.

    Still as much as they stirred up troubles and altered Neptune, they weren''t the first ones to do so, the Nethereals hade much more before of them, at least ording to the dreams that the ck Sea Emblem has given to Daimon from time to time.

    And that was what didn''t match from Daimon''s point of view, in those dreams those creatures that were simr but much more imposing than the current Nethereals, were being ughtered in Like that giant severed head that was resting on the sea turning the water ink ck, or the rain of corpses of what looked like deformed mass.

    Like that giant severed head that was resting on the sea turning the water ink ck, or the rain of corpses of what looked like deformed winged beasts, the scenes always involved the death of those things, the question is who or what killed them.

    Something strong enough to deal with the Nethereals and even force them to go hide like rats, for the past hundreds of thousands of years, something strong enough to¡­ grant a system user a second opportunity and curse an Administrator after whatever agreement they have attained was breached.

    The third group from Daimon''s point of view had to be the ones who gave the hero the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, which he now knew were also the ones that created his emblem.

    The problem is that all the ones that might still be around from those three groups, are most likely enemies, excluding Freya who epted a contract with him, well, there might be an asional ally in the form of the creator of his emblem, otherwise why would whatever it is behind of it, have helped him before, still it also seemed to have supported the hero, so it''s not exactly a trustable backer.

    Of course, when has Daimon allowed others to toy with him, well, besides a certain fox girl, but that''s besides the point. Evangeline had already told Daimon eight years ago that system user''s lives are filled with danger and opportunities, more than normal people are prompt to experience at least.

    Which is why, Daimon is always on the look for things that can tilt the scale in his favor, regardless of realms, naturally, things that can have such impact are rare, but they exist, Core Synchrony and Disaster are good examples of it.

    Daimon took a page from the ssification that the system gave to Core Synchrony, and named those kind of things as "Irregr things", and he found a new one in Neptune, in the form of the Flying Citadel, a treasure that in its current state can resist against the strongest beings in Neptune.

    And that is while the thing is obviously either damaged or iplete, as itcks in many aspects, anyway, Daimon heard from Aurora that the Flying Citadel is something left behind by the first Matriarch of the Light Pce, and yet Freya didn''t mention it.

    At first Daimon thought she was hiding that information, but then when he interrogated Ka, he got to know that, the Flying Citadel was supposedly destroyed, along with a treasure of the same level from the hero.

    And here is where things get interesting, as there is a Flying Citadel present a few kilometers above Daimon''s current location, it wouldn''t make sense if not for the fact that there were two "first" Matriarchs, Freya''s second host and then her friend who inherited her lineage, meaning that the current Flying Citadel is something that a "normal" person left behind, instead of a system user.

    The hero was the one that orchestrated all of this, because he wanted to obtain the Flying Citadel, which is why he gave Ka the task to obtain the white orb that is now orbiting Sarah, in other words that orb is the core of the original citadel that was supposedly destroyed.

    The truth is that the hero sealed it, using something of the same level but of an extremely opposite nature, and that is the ck cube Daimon is holding right now.

    The hero miscalcted, by setting up aplex way to retrieve it, which required a light affinity that was totally unrted to the one of the Light Pce, the blood of someone with darkness affinity that descended from the friend of Freya''s second host, and then¡­ the ck Armored Shark''s lineage.

    Apparently, somehow Abaris''s family branch knew about the existence of this ce, and they have been trying to cross that door for who knows how many years, hence the smell of blood that lingered in the air, and the traces of constant huge discharges of mana.

    But the hero screwed them over, they needed the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, which was lost through the history, the answer lied in Ka who was trapped in Kerrol, so there is no way they obtained thest part of the key they needed.

    And in an even worse strike of bad luck, Daimon had the three parts of the key needed, his light affinity waspletely different than the one of the Light Pce, he had a descendant of the Matriarch with darkness affinity at his side in the form of Sarah, andstly, he stole the ck Armored Shark''s lineage from Adam.

    ''So. you are the "legacy", left behind by the hero, that has been avoiding me'', thought Daimon, as if to support that idea, a notification appeared the moment he grabbed the cube.

    [Ding]

    [ck Fortress Core X1 obtained, processing¡­]

    [The host''s lineage (Drakolevia) has sessfully overwhelmed the gic seal, do you wish to im it as your property Y/N (A source of energy will be required for the appropriation process]

    Of course, Daimon epted and then an ethereal 3D map with a marker appeared floating in front of him.

    [Please, select the initial territory to turn into your Fortress (Warning, the amount of energy needed will vary, depending on the extension of thend selected)]

    Daimon smirked, if one is going to do something, then isn''t it better to make it as big as possible, with a mentalmand he saw the marker circling everything that will be turned into the ck Fortress, and then nodded.

    ''This ce has been radiated by the ck cube for a really long time, there is no better choice for the core of the Fortress to be ced'', he thought as he walked towards the wall that was covered in that ck material to then shove it in it.

    [Please insert High Grade Darkness Mana Crystal 0/50,000,000 or High Grade Neutral Mana Crystal 0/100,000,000 to start the process]

    Daion inhaled a breath of cold air, those were MILLIONS of high grade mana crystals, let alone having them, if it wasn''t for his visit to Kerrol, it would have taken him a really long time to even see that quantity with his own eyes, not to mention be able to spend them at will.

    ''Damn, now I understand why Erin insisted on always taking as much as possible from enemies, luckily I obtained the mine core and also made that other deal with that old man¡­'', he thought as he clicked the neutral mana crystal counter.

    After having squeezed both the Adjudicators and the church, he obtained 200 million of mana crystals, is not that there wasn''t more in the mines, but since it wasn''t a strategic resource, not much manpower was invested into it, so he nearly took every crystal they had in their treasuries.

    And now in the blink of an eye he spent half of it, it really made one think about the vastness of the world.

    Leaving the huge hit Daimon''s wallet just took, it was time to reap the benefits of plundering others, the ck cube dissolved and fused with the wall, and the next thing both Daimon and the crazy girl saw was that a pitch ck viscous material extended all over the walls.

    With Rita''s linked senses, Daimon saw the wave of that unknown ck material surge from within the underground cave, covering everything in its way, until it reached the surface, before another notification was triggered.

    [Unssified entities have been discovered within the territory of the Host''s property, please choose the next course of action (Different choicese with a different price in terms of energy, once the Fortress has been properly created, new options of energy obtention will be added)]

    [Scan]

    [Communicate]

    [Expel]

    [Limit]

    [Imprison]

    [Eliminate]

    The same 3D map that Daimon saw before appeared in front of him once again, but this time, there were humanoid figures on it, they had different colors, which as far a he understood where due to their affinities.

    Naturally, Daimon couldn''t just throw out everyone, because the territory he selected included the area of the Light Pce, and most of Aurora''s subordinates, Underwood and the other Patriarchs included, were there too, so he first went for "Scan".

    The map updated, and now the figures reflected their affiliation, name, realm, affinity and even their overall stand towards Daimon, the personal data that couldn''t be evaluated normally, was based on his knowledge by the way, meaning that for example, if he didn''t know the name of someone then that would be left in nk, inparison their realms, affinities and overall stand was there for him to see.

    Daimon couldn''t help but grin at the potential he saw in this interface that he could ess thanks to the Fortress, but right now it wasn''t the time for that, after finding certain targets, he gave his orders,municating with some, expelling some, limiting some and finally imprisoning some, he didn''t use the option to eliminate, and still it costed him around three hundred thousand high grade mana crystals.

    That being said he knew it will be worth it, so Daimon didn''t stop in the ceremony, the whole process didn''t take even fifteen minutes, before that unknown material had covered every piece of non-organic material within a certain range, only then onest notification appeared in front of Daimon.

    [Ding]

    [The process was sessful, congrattions, the Basic Energy Conversion Array and Basic Elemental Conversion Array had been granted as a weing gift, the control will be transferred to the host, good luck]

    And with that, Daimon saw a ck bracelet with a triangr shield emblem on it, appear on his right wrist, which was previously free, at the same time he felt a link forming between him and everything within a twenty-meter range, it was as if he could control that part of the cave as he pleased.

    But right now, he didn''t focus on that, but on the fact that lines started appearing on the walls of the cave, and then a glove made of runes formed on his right hand starting where the ck bracelet was.

    "Nice", with a single word, the crazy girl approached Daimon and then held onto his arm, as the giant piece of continental mass which Daimon had selected to be used as the initial form of the Fortress, started trembling and separating from the rest of ground.

    And that''s how we reached the current scene of a giant ind floating in the sky, despite the huge boulders that just detached a moment ago, the structures and the area that was now covered by a thing ckyer of some kind of metal, was firm and solid, those were just remains of the continental mass that stuck to the borders of thend that now formed part of the ck Fortress, and fell due to the movement.

    Abaris who was flying as if his ass was on fire, towards the floating piece of continental mass, frowned as he saw ck light surging from the thing before an ethereal giant fortress covered it.

    "T-That is¡­", before Abaris could finish speaking, Daimon''s voice could be hearding from everywhere within that ck ethereal fortress that was covering the piece of continental mass.

    "You are now trespassing the aerial territory of my Demon Fortress, get lost or I''ll open fire".

    Abaris''s body trembled due to anger, how could he not recognize that voice, it was the voice of the masked brat that not only destroyed his number one disciple, but also took away his granddaughter.

    But that''s not what was angering him right now, not even the fact that some of his subordinates had suffered serious wounds, due to the previous explosion and wave of energy.

    No, what was making his lungs filled with anger, where the words "My Demon Fortress", as the current patriarch of the ck Fortress sect, he has been trying to regain the glory of which the records of his family spoke about.

    And the first step in the n, was to obtain the treasure that supposedly lied below the castle of the Shaman, one that was on par with the Flying Citadel that has given him so many headaches, the ck Fortress that inspired Abaris''s ancestors to give that name to their force.

    The same treasure that has now fallen on the hands of thest person he wanted it to.

    "Brat, how dare you, I will rip your head with my own hands¡­"

    "Boooom!", as Abaris was about to threaten Daimon, a part of the ethereal ck fortress moved and a giant cannon appeared, the next thing Abaris knew was that a certain ind a few thousands of kilometers from this current position, was engulfed in a huge explosion, that was followed by a thunder-like sound.

    Abaris''s eyes widened in shock, he slowly turned around in the direction where the explosion was still ongoing, recognizing what used to be there until a second ago, he then shed and waved his hand using an insane amount of mana to blow the explosion away, revealing the result.

    Which was Skyfire''s castle, being half demolished and Skyfire who was floating on the sky, falling the next second as his body was half

    charred to a crisp, a single attack decimated the defensive formations of the Sky re sect temporarily and there was still enough energy left to force Skyfire to take the hit, unless he wanted his castle to fully disappear, nearly killing him on the spot.

    The range and side effects weren''t as strong as what a Maximum Ster rank could do, by letting loose and going full attack mode, but the resulting strength of the attack in the concentrated area of the explosion wasn''t that far from it.

    And to Abaris''s displease, he saw other gates appear on the ethereal fortress, before more simr cannons were deployed, all of them pointed at the sects that were subordinated to the ck Fortress sect, which had already activated their strongest defensive methods, including their respective Patriarchs and elders be on the look, to reinforce the barriers.

    "Sure, these attacks will have it hard to hit you, but do you think I won''t be able to decimate all the nearby territories under your management before I run out of energy".

    Abaris had a hatred filled expression as he saw another of those giant cannons gathering mana, as a stream of ck light was shot towards the mainnd of the Purple Haze sect.

    "Shit!", Abaris became a sh of ck light and then appeared in front of the castle of the Purple Haze sect, a ck haze gathered around him as he deployed his Domain to block the attack.

    "Boooom!", the explosion still happened, but Abaris''s Domain was able to take the hit without suffering too much damage, that being said a trace of blood came out of Abaris''s mouth due to the impact.

    He was about to return the attack when Purpleclous who was pale as a piece of paper, approached him in a rush.

    "My Lord, please remain calm, with our forces dispersed, we can''t return the fire, that crazy bastard will blow away our headquarters, think on little Haze and also brother Skyfire, he needs medical attention", said Purplecloud as he bowed towards the Shaman.

    Abaris observed the nearby destruction that happened in his own backyard and he gritted his teeth, his forces were indeed spread through the whole Elemental Sea, while his elites were being led by one of his two direct disciples to encircle the Flying Citadel, he could fight against the masked youth if he used the scimitar passed down in his family, for sure, but his subordinates will suffer.

    "Aurora, from now and onwards, you are an enemy of my ck Fortress, just like that brat, I will hunt you two down no matter where you go!!!", the angered voice of the Shaman echoed through the whole area.

    While he was in the middle of his tantrum, the Shaman saw another cannon gathering mana and he cursed as he prepared for the impact, just to see the giant ethereal fortress moving away in the direction of the Flying Citadel.

    ''He dares to threat me!'', inwardly screamed Abaris, but he still didn''t attack as he had to focus on defending, instead of that he took out hismunication device and sent a message to three different contacts, out of which only one answered, which just made his eyes get even more bloodshot.

    "Master, I''m rushing back with the others, don''t worry we''ll get our revenge on those bastards!".

    Abaris wasn''t pleased by the positive answer, he instead frowned as he thought.

    ''Why aren''t those two answering¡­ could it be!'', he immediately spread his mana sense in his surroundings to look up for some specific people.

    ¡­

    Back at the underground cave where the ck cube was ced, which has turned into the heart of the Demon Fortress, Daimon gazed at the crazy girl who was all smiles right now.

    The first shot of the cannon was free, unlike the Flying Citadel whose specialty was defense, the Fortress focused on offensive, the problem is that he just obtained the Fortress, there are no reserves of energy and the arrays can barely produce enough energy to fly, as of current.

    So, he had to literally burn mana crystals for the second shot, and when Abaris seemed to still be doubting on whether to attack or not, Sarah who was now stuck to Daimon like bubblegum, asked him to attack the Purple Haze sect a second time, just for "fun".

    Still, that third discharge which was ready to beunched from one of the cannons of the Fortress, was what made Abaris desist in his idea to start a fight, well, more urately, it put enough fear in Purplecloud''s heart to make him beg at the Shaman to not do anything.

    "That was fun, can''t we justpletely explode them to smithereens right now~", yfully said the crazy girl, to which Daimon sighed.

    "You know that one single st of the main cannon would consume fifty million of mana crystals, right¡­ that''s why I used one of the secondary ones, otherwise a piece of that old bastard''s Domain would have been blown away by the impact, for sure, instead of just damaging it like that", he said.

    It''s not like Daimon was a cheapskate, in fact if he was sure that using all the mana crystals he had, was enough to kill Abaris, he would have done it without a second of hesitation, the problem is that he was sure that wasn''t going to be the case, for a variety of reasons, which include the fact that the Shaman is not a stationary target, he will move and dodge, and the cannons won''t be able to follow his speed as of current.

    Also, if he used all the mana crystals he had were used and Abaris didn''t die, then he would lose the way he had to suppress the Shaman, the chance wille for sure, especially once he tells Aurora the truth, and shows her the "evidences" he just obtained.

    "Are you going to let go of me, or¡­", said Daimon, the crazy girl was taking advantage of the situation to cling to him, and while she wasn''t trying anything, she was still too close.

    "I''mforting you, I saw the disappointment in your eyes earlier~", she said, making Daimon chuckle.

    ''I can''t believe that even the core of the Fortress isn''t the stupid legacy left behind by that bastard'', he thought as he piloted the floating ind towards the Flying Citadel.

 Chapter 530 Treasures that complement each other (part 2)

    Chapter 530 Treasures thatplement each other (part 2)

    Daimon was too tired to fight with the crazy girl right now, that discharge of mana from the door forced him to use Core Synchrony and Sanctuary as well, and even after that he was left with only around 15% of his mana reserves.

    That is almost two times the mana reserves that a really talented middle stage Archmage would have, sure it doesn''t sound that amazing when there are Ster ranks around, but when you put into ount the fact that Daimon''s mana is among the highest quality ones, and that it was used up in a matter of seconds, things change.

    If an average true middle stage Archmage would have used all that mana in such short period of time, in a single go, fainting would have been the best result, while damage to its mana circuits would be a much more realistic result, meaning that the challenge to open the door was supposed to be taken by people above the middle stage of the Arch rank.

    And that makes sense, since to be given the title of Shaman, one has to be a half Ster rank, only then the previous Shaman would retire and pass down the title to its heir, while he bes its adviser.

    ''That bastard was really cunning, after that door judged I have the ck Armored Shark''s lineage and was apanied by someone with the Light Pce''s matriarch lineage with darkness affinity, it tried to kill me, if it had been another member of the young generation with the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, he would have melted'', he thought.

    Daimon was able to brute-force his way through the process, the ck Cube wasn''t the inheritance left by the hero, in fact it seems that no one was supposed to obtain it, besides Ka.

    As the whole line of losers from Abaris''s family, failing to im property of it, suggested, amusingly enough, even if Adam did manage to get a wind of that ce and under the assumption that he could trick the crazy girl and the help of a light affinity person that waspletely unrted to Jasmine''s lineage, he would have still been unable to obtain the core of the ck Fortress, because hecked the ck Armored Shark''s lineage.

    ''I truly stole Adam''s best opportunity when it came to a mission rted to the hero'', thought Daimon.

    Leaving that aside and with Abaris too busy looking through the debris as well as preventing Skyfire from dying, the recently renamed "Demon Fortress" slowly but surely gained speed as it flew towards the Flying Citadel.

    And after around ten minutes, which is actually a lot considering the Flying Citadel can fly at the same speed as a Maximum Ster rank, but is understandable considering the Demon Fortress was recently created, so the arrays are too basic for it to operate at an optimum rhythm, especially because Daimon had to redirect most of the energy to manifest the cannons.

    But they finally arrived at the meeting point where the Flying Citadel was waiting for them, and Daimon turned to see the crazy girl, who unwillingly let go of him.

    He then took out hismunication device and sent a couple of messages that were answered immediately, making him nod as he talked to Rita who was resting in his shadow.

    "Rita, can you do the honors?", asked Daimon to which the undead head maid created a portal in front of Daimon.

    "Let''s go", he said to Sarah before jumping into the portal, the crazy girl naturally followed him.

    ¡­

    The next second Daimon and Sarah found themselves on the air, falling towards the citadel, Sarah ced her hand on his shoulder and they then blinked all the way to the ground, Daimon could ignore spatial restrictions to a certain extent, but it wasn''t necessary since he was whitelisted by Aurora.

    Theynded at the border of the Flying Citadel, where there was a weingmittee waiting for them.

    Needless to say, but Aurora and the others were in awe at the huge mass ofnd that was now floating, blocking the sun from shinning upon the Flying Citadel, and that is saying a lot, since the Flying Citadel is equal in a size to a big city, with space for around three million people as of current.

    Inparison, though the recently formed Demon Fortress, is more than three times bigger than the Flying Citadel, in terms of living space, Daimon literally only took the main castles that belonged to the Light Pce as well as the one from the ck Fortress.

    Because he had to use a lot of the territory he could select, to take the crystal mines all the way from their cores, so he had to give up on all the other structures, as they also were counted as territory, curiously enough the people in those structures weren''t taken into ount.

    And still they were under the rule of the owner of the territory, in this case Daimon, allowing him tomunicate with Underwood and the other patriarchs, limit all the other people from the sects and then imprisoning certain specific people that were present within his territory.

    Which led to the current scene of different shadow portals appearing next to Daimon, from which long lines of people could be seen waiting to cross to the other side.

    "I know we have a lot of catch up to do, but there are some things to take of first", said Daimon, which returned Aurora back to reality.

    "Don''t worry about that, the newly appointed deacons will take care of guiding everyone to their respective living areas", she said as she pointed at two women who Daimon recognized, they were none other than the remaining elders from the Angelfish n, Marlene''s foster mother, Miriam and the rebellious looking Laura, who were now wearing badges with the emblem of the Light Pce on their arms.

    Aurora then looked at the portals and frowned, but seeing Daimon gazing at her, she only beckoned at Underwood and the other patriarchs who started ordering the other people to cross the portals.

    It didn''t take long for everyone to cross, only then Daimon snapped his fingers and two ck metal cubes of around three meters tall and two meters height, passed through another portal which Rita opened.

    With that done, Daimon wished it and the Demon Fortress was sent to the inventory.

    "Everything is still in the castle, we can check it outter after returning to the Mermen Sea, for now it would be better if we take what we need before leaving the Elemental Sea" said Daimon, referring to the people from the three sects under the management of the Light Pce.

    Aurora nodded and with a mentalmand, the Flying Citadel started moving towards the Bamboo Forest sect, which was the closest one.

    And with that, the road was free for a nice conversation, at least for the time being, while Miriam and Laura as well as the patriarch where amodating the people, Aurora guided the group which included Jeanne, Emily and Reyne to the main residence of the Citadel.

    Daimon could feel the sharp gazes of the Risha sisters as well as Aisha all the way to the residence, but he thickened his skin and ignored them.

    The moment they entered the residence and closed the door, Aurora turned to see Daimon with an expression that meant she had a lot of questions to make, but first thing first.

    "What happened after you three were dragged in by the array in the cave?", she asked.

    "Well, to answer that I must first have to ask you to show me that diary that your "ancestor" supposedly left behind", said Daimon as he took off his mask and sat down on a couch, he was dead tired after all, Aisha, the sisters and the crazy girl took seat at his side, Jasmine wanted to do the same, but she instead offered a seat to her "mothers" and Reyne.

    Aurora frowned, as she turned to see Jasmine only to see her smiling at her.

    "I guess there is no point in doubting now, here", said Aurora as she handed Daimon an old worn-out book, which Daimon opened on the spot and leafed through it, while his eyes glowed in a dim purple light.

    It didn''t take him too much to read everything that was written there, mostly because there wasn''t that much to begin with, basically it talked about the years of courtship between the hero and the first Matriarch of the Light Pce.

    Besides that, it actually mentioned the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, but just the superficial stuff about it, like the vertical yellow line that appeared in those who had enough concentration of it, and it emphasized to trust in the ones who had it.

    Which ended up being beneficial for Daimon in the end, or that was the case until now, because Daimon knew what was Aurora''s reaction going to be in a moment, he closed the book and then returned it to her.

    "Okay, after reading through it I can tell you that everything there is a lie", he casually said, which of course made Aurora frown but before she could say anything Daimon continued with his exnation.

    "The ce we were sent to was a called Kerrol, there we met someone that apanied the hero of the Mermen Sea while he was alive, and that same person was the one that kidnapped Jasmine to use her as a "reward" for Adam, or at leas that would have been the case, if she didn''t have her own ns¡­".

    Daimon then proceeded to exin about Ka, without revealing that she was the Administrator of the hero''s system, he instead mentioned that she was his closest ally, and in a sense he was right.

    The different parts of the story caught the attention of the different girls, starting from Aisha who was interested in the Ghoul race, to Cassy who couldn''t help but smile when she heard that Adam was dead.

    And now it was time for the first hard to swallow truth, that Daimon had discovered, since the good news were going to be a bit shocking for Aurora, he started with the bad ones.

    "Based on the previous, someone altered the history of the Light Pce, through the ck Fortress, there are no records of the first matriarchs right, coincidentally the records from Sarah''s family branch start when they were demoted to a secondary branch of the ck Fortress, but previous to that they alsock their records, that is too much to be just a coincidence".

    Aurora gazed at Bell who nodded surprised that Daimon knew about that, but she then saw her daughter smiling at her and she understood Sarah must have mentioned it to him.

    "Then was it Abaris''s family the ones that messed with our family, and they also left this diary?", asked Aurora, to which Daimon shook her head, he had skipped all the part about the hero having the ck Armored Shark''s lineage previously, just like he didn''t mention Freya''s second host, nor her friend who was the other first Matriarch, until now.

    "They were the ones that worked within, but the one who instigated them was probably the hero on the beginning and then someone else influenced them, but couldn''t do nothing as theycked the¡­ ck Armored Shark''s lineage", he said.

    "Wait, so then, wouldn''t that make you suspicious?", asked Aurora to which Daimon shrugged.

    "What I obtained was originally prepared for Adam, I believe I have already exined that he wasn''t an average person, that is part of the reason, anyway, though the hero was dead, there have been other forces strong enough to alter Neptune''s history from the shadows, like the Nethereals, speaking of which the hero''s previouspanion had simr powers to them", said Daimon to then add.

    "As a proof of the previous, you saw the Demon Fortress I just obtained right, well, the core of the Fortress was sealing the core of the Flying Citadel, show it to Jasmine, Sarah".

    The crazy girl nodded and then took out the white floating orb and tried to hand it to Jasmine, just to see a spark being produced at the slightest touch, and the orb then avoiding Jasmine.

    "You can use the Flying Citadel because this coreless version, was constructed by one of the two people that can be considered the first Matriarch of the Light Pce, the second one to be more urate, and yet Jasmine who inherited her direct lineage can''t form a link between the its core and her, because it was altered by the hero".

    Aurora gritted her teeth in response, Abaris''s family supposedly descended from the hero, due to the people from the two sects marrying between themselves, Sarah was actually Jasmine''s distant cousin by blood, being rted to a sister from one of the previous Matriarchs, who married someone from Abaris''s family.

    Not to mention, that their fathers, Byron and Reed were supposedly cousins, also from Abaris''s family, though that was probably a lie since they were Nethereals.

    Aurora remained silent for a moment processing everything, her husband turned out to be not only a petty short-tempered guy, but a real enemy, which exined why he didn''t hesitate to dere war, he probably knew that Daimon might have discovered something, if he had a simr diary from one of his ancestors like her.

    Of course, he has had her differences with Abaris, but she married him too, so this was a conflictive moment for her, luckily that is why Daimon kept thest shocking new for the end.

    "That''s not all, when we were in Kerrol, we found some allies that helped me find Jasmine faster, they are Jeanne and her daughter Reyne as well as Emily, Jeanne''s friend".

    Aurora turned to see those three and bowed her head at them to then say.

    "Thanks for helping saving my granddaughter, she is myst¡­" before she could finish her sentence, Daimon interrupted her.

    "Jeanne and Emily are the result of Jessica being separated using a special ability, by thepanion of the first Matriarch, who is now contracted to me, she''ll wake up soon and you''ll be able to confirm it with her, because they don''t have Jessica''s memories".

    As expected, Aurora froze on the spot, but she didn''t believe Daimon, but then she realized that for some reason, ever since Reyne arrived she felt quite positive towards her, while she didn''t know her at all.

    Aurora actually stood up and approached them to observe those three from head to toe, with small tears forming at the corner of her eyes, when she heard Daimon saying.

    "There is a chance they recover Jessica''s memories, if they spend some time in the ces where she hanged out, and did things she often did, I swear upon my life that what I said is the truth", concluded Daimon.

    Aurora observed Jeanne and Emily and she found no simrities between them and Jessica, but Reyne on the other hand did have some resemnce, she wiped her tears and then smiled.

    "I... will choose to believe it for now, in any case they are weed to stay with us, since they helped little Jas", said Aurora with a bright smile.

    Daimon nodded at her, she naturally had her doubts but she followed her heart this time, after all it was better to believe that her daughter was alive in another ce, since her corpse was never found.

    As for the split thing, there are too many strange things in the world of magic, that it is not unthinkable for it to happen.

    Aurora took a moment to then sharply gaze at Daimon.

    "I didn''t see Sid among the ones that entered through those portals, was he¡­ killed?", she asked referring to the light affinity knight that served under her at the same level as Sylvie, just to see Daimon casually pointing at one of the two ck cubes that followed him all the way here.

    "Well, you remember the conditions I told you were needed for someone to obtain the core of the Fortress, right?", asked Daimon.

    "Light mana from someone that ispletely unrted to the lineage of the Light Pce¡­", mumbled Aurora.

    "Yeah and have a look at thismunication device I found on him", said Daimon as he handed her the ring of that guy.

    "But wait, I also happened to capture one of his disciples for interrogation, so we''ll get the confirmation we need, I can show you the heart of my Fortress, there were some interesting light battle aura traces", he said.

    "Abaris!", said Aurora as she gritted her teeth to then change her focus to Jeanne and the others.

    "You three look tired¡­ let me show around and take you to a room", she said.

    "Mm, thanks", answered Jeanne.

    Seeing Aurora leaving, Daimon chuckled, those were enough strong emotions for her for a day, but that didn''t mean the others were the same.

    Especially the crazy girl who was really enthusiastic to tell her mother, that her curse waspletely cured, but that wasn''t all.

    Now that Daimon was the owner of the Fortress, he could tell¡­ where the core of the Flying Citadel was supposed to be, and this time they should be able to ess it, as long as a certain condition is met.

    "Let''s go to theke one more time", he said, making Jasmine nod.

    "I don''t have a swimsuit but I can enter naked though~", added the crazy girl, which made her mother sigh.

    "Sometimes I believe you are going to cause my death instead of this curse", she said with a defeated voice.

    Daimon nodded,pletely understanding Bell, he then waved his hand and a giant pile of treasures, materials and other resources appeared on the floor of the living room.

    "Here, feel free to take what you need from there, we''ll return in a moment", he said, if his supposition was right, only Sarah and Jasmine could be present to open the entrance to that ce.

    He was going to be fine since the core of the Flying Citadel was altered to recognize the ck Armored Shark''s lineage.

    ''You surely got close to those two, darling'', jokingly said Aisha through the mental connection, making Evangeline and Narashaugh.

    ''Ahem, I of course brought something back for you and the others mom'', said Daimon, which made Aisha giggle.

    ''Oh, I can''t wait to see~'', she said as she looked through the pile of treasures, to wait for Daimon and those two''s return.

 Chapter 531 Treasures that complement each other (part 3)

    Chapter 531 Treasures thatplement each other (part 3)

    While Jeanne, Emily and Reyne were installing themselves at the main residence with Aurora''s guidance, and Sylvie and Bell were still in shock over the revtion that Jessica was technically still alive.

    But they refrained from pressuring Jeanne and Emily, since they heard Daimon mention that they don''t have Jessica''s memories, it was easy to notice since theycked the closeness to Jasmine that they would expect from their sister.

    "We have a pending conversation with those three", said Bell, referring to Daimon, Sarah and Jasmine.

    "As much as I want to talk with those little girls, especially Jasmine since sister Jessica is still¡­ alive, there is someone else I want to talk to "talk" to", said Sylvie as she clenched her hands a couple of times with a sharp gaze.

    "Heh, our little Syl has be quite violent with the years, I still remember how you used to cry and hide behind of me back then when we first ventured without permission", jokingly said Bell, to which Sylvie''s face slightly reddened.

    "You don''t have to specifically remember that, besides it was Jess the one that was more scared of that magic beast!", she eximed, the two of them then softlyughed, even if Sylvie was away keeping things in order at the Light Pce, while Aurora remained at the cave waiting for Daimon and the girls to return, they started talking to each other through theirmunication devices.

    After all, they have been seen each other without talking for a long time, so there was a lot of catch up they had to do, and now they have started to treat each other like before Jessica died, as sisters.

    "I guess we have to talk with those two too, regardless of the case, they are part of Jessica, so at the very least they can''t be bad, not to mention he wouldn''t have brought them with him if that was the case", said Bell.

    "Mm, I don''t want to see my sister from afar without approaching, ever again¡­", mumbled Sylvie, to which Bell softly smiled.

    ¡­

    Leaving that aside for the time being, Daimon and those two made their way towards the artificialke that was ced at the recreative area of the inner part of the citadel, after having being in a rush for the past days, for a change they weren''t moving with spells or martial arts, nor using spatial type abilities, but simply walking, it''s not like theke was too far from the main residence anyway.

    "Daimon", Jasmine who had a slightly hesitant voice called for Daimon, on the way.

    "Mm?", Daimon turned to see Jasmine as she called for him, he more or less knew what she was going to ask, but he didn''t say anything and instead waited for her to ask by herself.

    "Was grandfather involved in what happened to mom¡­", she mumbled after a moment of contemtion.

    Naturally, the suspicions on Abaris''s family have gone through the roof, now that the real rtion between the hero and the Light Pce has been revealed, Aurora might be looking calm on the surface, but the truth is that she was furious at the same thought that has appeared in Jasmine''s mind.

    On the other hand, she just "recovered" another daughter, this time the one that was actually "death", so as angry as she felt, she couldn''t help but ignore it for the time being, there is so much she wanted to discuss with Jeanne and Emily, not to mention Reyne, which is why Daimon left to give them some time, he had to deal with the Flying Citadel first anyway, so it was a win-win situation.

    "To be honest, I''m not sure, descending from that hero guy doesn''t mean to be on his side, the fact that the core of the ck Fortress was impossible for them to obtain, is a proof of it", said Daimon which made Jasmine nod, only for her to hear him saying.

    "However, none of that change anything, from the very beginning he wasn''t my ally and now he openly dered me his enemy, so I will destroy him with all my might, since he is a threat to my friends and family".

    Jasmine felt conflictive, on one hand Abaris is her grandfather, and even now, he has never tried to harm her nor Aurora, maybe they discussed and all that, but their fights were never serious, they simply saw things in a different way.

    But, now, it is true that Abaris has started being more aggressive with Aurora, ever since Adam appeared, so from Daimon''s point of view, there was more than what met the eye behind the Shaman.

    Jasmine nodded and then went ahead of them a bit, which made the crazy girl gaze at Daimon.

    "I didn''t expect you to say "I''ll let him live for you" or something like that, but I thought you''ll say it in a different way", she said, to which Daimon shook his head.

    "There is no point in sweetening it, it won''t change what I have to do, besides, the Jasmine I know isn''t weak, she can''t start hating Abaris all of a sudden, but when the timeses, she''ll understand it", he said.

    Sarah nodded in response, despite she technically also being rted to Abaris, as he was something like a granduncle for her, neither her mother nor her were close to the Shaman, and the crazy girlcked "empathy" when it came to people, she wasn''t close with, if they died then that was it.

    Of course, it''s not like she was deprived of emotions, but her wild nature made her like that, as proof of the previous she was now looking at Daimon as she licked her lips, "seductively".

    "As expected of my fated one, you are quite blunt~", she said as she went after Jasmine, making Daimon shake his head.

    "One is too "good" of a girl and the other is¡­ well she is just crazy", concluded Daimon.

    Daimon didn''t elerate his pace, and left those two have some time alone, he took advantage of this to recover a bit, there was still more things he had to tend to, but after that he was going to drop dead on his bed, since he was rather tired.

    Still, they soon arrived at the entrance of theke and Daimon took a moment to condense a drop of that ck water affinity he obtained, as always it took him some time to do so, but the result was worth it, as the water of theke parted to give way for Daimon and those two as they descended to the bottom of theke.

    Jasmine had put the previous matter at the back of her head and returned to her usual cheerful self, she was still marveled at the ability that the water affinity of Daimon had.

    And she wasn''t the only one, Sarah was too, she observed the sphere that formed around them, keeping the water of theke away from them, and also allowing Daimon to freely move through water ignoring the pressure even at the bottom of theke.

    It didn''t take long for them to reach the area where Jasmine had discovered the most recent new thing about the citadel, or more urately, the citadel allowed her to do so, but that is something that Daimon didn''t know back then.

    He discovered many things after obtaining his own fortress, like why the hero tasked Ka to retrieve the cores of the ck Fortress and the Flying Citadel, before he died, the thing was surely a treasure that couldn''t be bought on the store of the system, and its rank wasn''t fixed.

    Though it wasn''t a promise level treasure, as itcked the ability to grow along its owner indefinitely, but in exchange it was something that could cross realms to help its owner defend itself against way stronger opponents, like members of previous generations.

    Even System users, weren''t expected to be able to win against someone that much stronger, in a fight head on, otherwise Daimon killing the manticore even if it was already wounded, wouldn''t have awarded him with the highest ranked achievement attainable as of current, ording to Evangeline.

    And with a good reason, fortresses like the Flying Citadel had simplified version of a system, simr to what Ka did in Kerrol, it was obviously degraded, but still, it was something with an artificial system integrated, that''s what the cores of the fortresses were, the "IA" of the fortress resided there.

    Currently the Flying Citadelcked that, which is why many aspects of the citadel where restrained, it was only a mobile city with a decent defense, instead of a Fortress, but that will be changing soon.

    Daimon saw Sarah''s eyes sparkling and he chuckled.

    "So did it appear?", he asked.

    "Mm, I see message like the ones that appeared back at Kerrol", enthusiastically said the crazy girl, the white orb which was floating around her, has shown her a notification.

    [The requirements had been fulfilled; do you wish to open the passage to the heart of the Flying Citadel Y/N]

    Sarah naturally selected "yes" and the floor of theke trembled a bit, as arge piece of it separated to show an entrance covered with ayer of white light that kept the water away.

    "We can enter now", said Sarah, Daimon nodded and then the three of them jumped into the entrance that appeared for them.

    What lied at the other side was arge corridor that ended inrge white room, simr to the cave where the ck cube was, this ce was covered in a white unknown metallic material.

    "So, the original color of the citadel was white instead of silver, I guess it makes sense since Freya''s second host was a light affinity mage", said Daimon as he observed the "heart" of the Flying Citadel.

    The whole ce was empty, with the only exception of a white sphere full of cracks, which was floating in the middle of the room.

    Let alone Daimon whose infinity eyes immediately recognized what that spherical object was, even Sarah and Jasmine showed some reaction to it, but for a different reason, they felt some¡­ familiaritying from it.

    "That is¡­", Jasmine turned to see Daimon to seek confirmation, only to see him nodding at her.

    "Yeah, that is a magic core, the one of a Maximum Ster ranked mage with light affinity to be more urate", he said.

    Just as Daimon finished speaking, the magic core shone and a wave of mana flooded the whole area, the white orb that was orbiting Sarah until now, went ahead and covered the three of them from that wave of mana.

    It was a simr process as the huge discharge of mana that came from the cave where the ck cube was sealed, because that light mana wasn''t the supporting type, but the offensive one.

    As a proof of it, the protection casted by the white orb was being burned away by the wave of light, slowly but surely, still, Daimon remained calm, if anyone interfered, they will fail the process and though the magic core which was powering the citadel was full of cracks, the amount of mana that Daimon could feel from it was, amazingly superior to even Vincent or the other Maximum Ster ranks he has met so far.

    Only after a certain amount of time, the wave of light mana stopped and then it was time for the "inspections" part of the process, Daimon immediately erased his presence with the effect of the hollow suit as well as the bracelet, as for Jasmine and Sarah they were both inspected and approved by the magic core.

    And now it was time for thest part of the process, and this time, it was Jasmine''s turn, the magic core reacted to her, while ignoring Sarah.

    "Let a few drops of your blood fall on it, that magic core has to be reced with the core, but a part of the security measures only allows the designated people to do something like that", said Daimon.

    "Mm", Jasmine nodded and then approached the core, to then cut her finger to leave some of her blood to fall on it.

    magic core shone in a dim white light.

    Everyone was blinded for a moment and then, the core was covered Slowly but surely, the magic core was dyed red by Jasmine''s blood and then some of the cracks that it had started fading away, as the magic core shone in a dim white light.

    Everyone was blinded for a moment and then, the core was covered in arge amount of mana that took humanoid form.

    Daimon recovered his sight before those two and he was surprised at what he was seeing right now.

    ''Now that is something I didn''t expect, I guess that if the hero can y tricks so can other people'', thought Daimon as he tried tomunicate with Freya.

    What appeared in front of them was a floating ethereal person, a woman to be more urate.

    "It sure does bring joy to my heart, seeing that the Light Pce has prospered in my absence, to think such talented members from the two main branches of my Ivory family", said the ghost-looking woman.

    The woman appeared to be in herte twenties, had a mix of white and ck hair and was wearing clothes of the same color and her eyes were closed.

    Jasmine and Sarah who had recovered from the blinding light, got closer to Daimon and raised their guards, which didn''t escape the "eyes" of the woman.

    "What do you two not recognize your ancestor, after leaving behind such a big inheritance, what in the name of mana did that daughter of mine taught her children", casually said the woman.

    "It''s not their fault, no one in the present knows about the real first Matriarch of the Light Pce", said Daimon.

    The woman frowned as she changed her focus to Daimon.

    "And who might you be, you seem to possess darkness affinity but that''s not the darkness of my family, not to mention the descendants of the royal lineage are always girls, wait a moment, howe I can''t see through a member of the young generation, the only time this happened was when¡­", the woman stopped midway and then her overall vibe changed as her mana pressure flooded the area.

    Daimon felt the sudden pull caused by her pressure, but he didn''t show any reaction as he expected this to happen, in fact he added fuel to the fire with his next words.

    "I''m someone that has obtained the ck Armored Shark''s lineage¡­", before Daimon could finish speaking, the woman was already punching at him, but she was forced to stop in cold when Sarah and Jasmine stood in front of him.

    "You two, how can you defend him, do you truly not know what those like him do!", the woman eximed, only to see Jasmine shaking her head as she said.

    "Regardless of lineage, Daimon is my friend, if you want to attack him, you''ll also be my enemy", bravely said the princess of the Light Pce

    "Mm, what kind of woman would I be, if I let you attack my fated one and simply stand aside, bring it on", added the crazy girl.

    The woman''s eyes seemed to have seen red, but before she started scolding those two descendants of hers, she heard a familiar voice scolding her.

    "You haven''t changed at all even after so many years, acting first and thinking after was your bad habit back then too, Joanna".

    The woman froze on the spot, before she started looking in every direction as if she was trying to find something in specific.

    "Older Sister Freya, where are you, I followed yourst will and took Alicia''s lineage as mine to allow her will to live on", she said after not being able to find Freya.

    Then she felt a fluctuationing from the masked youth that she was about to attack earlier, an ethereal silver armor appeared on top of him, one that the woman could perfectly recognize.

    "T-That is sister Freya''s protection!", she eximed, her figure which was of a giant eight meters of size, shrank to around two meters and also stopped floating, as she approached Daimon to inspect him from head to toe.

    "I''m sorry, but are you really a girl, for some reason I can''t tell by using mana sense, I can personally verify it though", said the woman called Joanna, making Daimon''s right eyebrow twitch.

    ''Yup, she is definitely rted to Sarah'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Our contract is of a different nature, so there is no gender restriction, also you can stop trying to see through me, unless I allow you to, you''ll only be able to see what I want you to see".

    Joanna kept observing Daimon for a few moments more, before she changed her focus to Jasmine and Sarah, before a knowing smile appeared on her face.

    "I see¡­ well if you have sister Freya''s approval, then you have my blessing, someone that can get the attention of members of the two branches of my family, who are said to be as different as night and day, can''t be average after all".

    Daimon cleared his throat and then changed the subject.

    "Howe you, someone from a few dozens of generations ago, is not only alive but so young-looking?", he asked.

    "Oh, do you perhaps prefer older women, unfortunately not only I do not have a body anymore, but I''m happily married, well more urately I was", jokingly said Joanna, which only supported the fact that she was both Sarah and Jasmine''s ancestor.

    Still, she also stopped joking and then snapped her fingers, her appearance changed to that of an old woman, in her fifties, she didn''t lose her beauty though, but it was noticeable that she has lived quite a bit, she looked slightly simr to Aurora.

    But the previous onlysted for a second, before she returned to her young self.

    "There, that''s how I looked when I became the core temporary core for the Flying Citadel, what woman would choose to look old instead of young if it could choose, I guess sweet talking wasn''t what those two saw in you", she said.

    Daimon could hear Freya sighing from within the ethereal armor.

    "Sorry, I had forgot how much of an airhead she was, after so many years", she mumbled.

 Chapter 532 Treasures that complement each other (part 4)

    Chapter 532 Treasures thatplement each other (part 4)

    "Well, I guess it had toe from someone", said Daimon at Freya who could only sigh in response.

    "Just for the records, Alicia wasn''t like that, she was a responsible girl who knew how to analyze the situation and act ordingly, pretty simr to that little girl", she said referring to Jasmine.

    "I guess it runs out on them, depending on their attribute", said Daimon which made Freya who had appeared as a projection next to Daimon, nod in an approbative way.

    "You never disappoint, since when did you notice?", she asked.

    "From the very beginning, maybe others wouldn''t notice, but while mine aren''t as extremely opposite as possible, since both of them belong to the offensive type, unlike others, I not only have both darkness and light affinities but I can use them at the same time", said Daimon as he gazed at Joanna.

    The ck- and white-haired woman, frowned in response, her ethereal form floated around Daimon, as she observed him with interest.

    "To say something as crazy as that without even the slightest sign of hesitation, I like you, so can you show me how you do It?", curiously said Joanna.

    Daimon showed Joanna his left hand as it started radiating white light, as he has previously stated, his light affinity ispletely offensive, so instead of the neutral and calming light of Jasmine, or theposed and solid light of Aurora, Daimon''s light was blinding and burning.

    He then extended his right hand as a ck violent stream of darkness mana gathered around it, unlike Abaris''s whose darkness took a haze form, Daimon''s darkness looked like monstrous torrent that retorted around him, as if it was a fierce creature trying to devour everything in its way, it was ominous to say the least.

    As a proof of it, Sarah''s eyes sparkled, naturally she was charmed every time Daimon used his Demon Light, but his darkness mana wasn''t bad at all.

    Daimon then condensed ance on each of his hands, the ck one was made of darkness mana while the one was made out of light battle aura, which of course took Joanna by surprise.

    "Woah, has the people of the current era found the way to walk in the two paths!", she eximed, just to hear Freya saying.

    "What the hell are you saying, there are ways to obtain abilities of the two paths, but not be both at the same time, he is just that much of a monster, I can''t even imagine what his concept might be¡­", Freya stopped in cold realizing she had said more than what she should.

    Daimon shook his head as he dispersed both the spell and the martial art, certainly, Evangeline has told him that while Magic Knights exist, they follow a single path with certain traits from both paths, they don''t walk in the two of them simultaneously, like him.

    In part that''s why Adam nearly shit his pants when he saw Daimon using spells and martial arts at the same time, even him in his Archangel form couldn''t do that, though he gained the capacity to control mana externally like mages, he was still tied to use martial arts.

    "Nice catch you two, don''t let him escape", said Joanna as she gave Jasmine and Sarah thumbs up, just to see Jasmine blushing while Sarah nodded as if it was the most natural thing on the world.

    "Don''t worry, Daimon is the type to take responsibility, so he won''t run seeing everything there is to see and touch everything there is to touch~", yfully said the crazy girl, which nearly made Jasmine choke as she turned to see Daimon.

    "Hey, don''t say things that can be misunderstood", said Daimon, whose eyebrow was twitching, Sarah was quite wild as always, luckily, she didn''t say it in front of the Risha sisters nor Aisha, otherwise this would have ended in a bloodbath.

    "I don''t want to ruin the moment, but howe you became the core of the citadel?", asked Daimon to change the subject.

    Joanna''s gaze became nostalgic as she heard Daimon''s question, for a change she looked like a proper adult as she gazed at Jasmine and Sarah.

    "Before that tell me¡­ what happened to Alice, you only told me she died and to take her lineage for me as that was herst will, I waited for five thousand years to hear more from you", said Joanna to Freya who sighed.

    "I was captured and sealed, as I said in my message, that bastard turned out to be the one who killed Tania and after that¡­", Freya proceeded to tell everything that happened to Joanna, who got angrier with every second that passed, but ultimately, she just had a sorrowful expression on her face.

    "I see, even after his death he never stopped being a piece of scum", angrily said Joanna, to then tell her side of the story, in other words what happened after both the hero and the Matriarch of the Light Pce disappeared "mysteriously".

    "After those two''s deaths were confirmed by me and by that guy''s general, naturally new ambitious people emerged from the shadows, but we got rid of them under the excuse of peace, so there was a stable period of peace in which I married and had my daughter".

    "I had already integrated Alicia''s lineage with mine way before that, so that little girl inherited it safely, just like sister Alicia, she had a pretty strong light affinity, so she was honestly more fit to be the Matriarch than me".

    And this is where Jasmine and even Sarah felt a bit confused, ording to what they could feel, the color of her magic core and Daimon''s own words from before, Joanna was a light affinity mage, so she was perfect for the Matriarch position, or so they thought until they saw Joanna''s previously white mana, change to a pitch dark color.

    Joanna softlyughed at the surprised reactions of those two, before saying.

    "I guess something really serious happened for you to not know about this, when I left an exnation of everything for that little girl before leaving, let me tell you the origin of ourst name".

    "We are called Ivory because there is both a ck and a white color shade, called like that, just like you two, despite havingpletely different affinities are part of both my Ivory family as well as Alicia''s Brightstar family, and as ourst name states, the members of our main lineage were always born with either light or darkness affinity, some actually had both".

    "Naturally, as we grow, we''ll end up keeping one and sealing the other, as trying to train in the two of them is considered "impossible" in many levels".

    Though quite rare is not impossible for someone with light or darkness affinity, to awaken an affinity rted to the other, for example darkness and lightning, but those who do don''t think of it as a blessing but a cure, since the natures of their affinities are too different which means their efficiency isn''t amplified but reduced, and that is arge part of the advantage of having more than one affinity.

    The only known exception to that "curse" are variants, those whose affinities adapt to the other, due to their ascendence, that''s why no one questioned how he uses darkness and lightning too back at the four gxies, he is considered an extremely rare variant, simr to Aura.

    "After our victory, the years passed and though from the bottom of my heart, I wanted to rip that bitch''s head off with my own hands, I couldn''t find her nor all the ones that followed her, after they left when we finished dealing with the opportunists, so while there was peace on the surface, I knew things weren''t that simple".

    "My husband died even before my daughter had children, so after passing her the title of Matriarch, I isted myself to be stronger and didn''t leave my chamber for a really long time, the idea was that they thought my life was reaching its end or that I was bing senile, so they made their move".

    "But nothing happened so I realized they were not going to make their move while it was alive, which is why I recorded everything into a book for my daughter and then focused on leaving her destroyed during the final battle, and the same applied to his own Fortress, luckily there were a lot of remains from it, so I studied it something that could protect her¡­ the Flying Citadel".

    "I remember that piece of scum saying that most of it was destroyed during the final battle, and the same applied to his own Fortress, luckily there were a lot of remains from it, so I studied it for years and ultimately melt them to form a degraded version of it using a city destroyed during the war as the material, but I couldn''t find something to rece the missing core".

    "No matter how I tried, things didn''t progress for the next thousands of years until I saw it¡­ what came after the Ster realm, the problem is that if it tried to advance, there was a really high chance that my family would be destroyed".

    Daimon nodded, previously he would have doubted about why advancing will bring destruction to the Light Pce, but after Kerrol''s experience he got to know that said advance required a long process during which the one attempting to breakthrough, will be unable to do anything else.

    It happened to the Blood King, during that time, the system users lit a fire in his backyard, it got to the point where he had to interrupt his advance to deal with those three, Joanna knew that there were eyes and ears even within the Light Pce, so things will get bad if she was suddenly unable to make some appearances from time to time.

    "It was then when I received onest gift from Alicia¡­", as Joanna spoke, her right hand shone in white light, she was using light mana, which wouldn''t have been surprising if not for the fact that her real affinity was darkness!

    And that wasn''t all, the light faded away and was reced by darkness which covered her hand like a glove.

    Sarah frowned as she mumbled with a jealous voice.

    "Why did you ask Daimon to show you, if you could do the same?".

    Joanna giggled in response as she answered.

    "Come on, I''m not trying to steal your boyfriend or anything, unlike him, I can only use them one at the time, so it was truly amazing to see what he can do~", she said before adding.

    "Also, I only "awakened" my light affinity after I had put a step into the next realm, but I had to train it almost from zero, and that''s when I finally discovered something that could be used as a substitute core for the remodeled Flying Citadel, my magic core".

    "And I had to do it quick, because if I aged more, my core wouldn''t have been able to endure the process, unfortunately I was only able to make the citadel work as a defensive mean and the usage of the arrays I could save was limited, but that was enough".

    Freya felt a headacheing her way when she heard the insane thing, Joanna just said, as one advances more and more into the mage or knight paths, the magic core bes more and more important, losing it was the same as dying.

    "Luckily I was a rune master, so I could take my core and insert it into the heart of the city by myself, so that little girl didn''t have to see it, it''s a shame that my body was destroyed in the process though", casually said Joanna.

    ''Yeah, she is as crazy as Sarah'', thought Daimon.

    However, he also couldn''t help but feel some respect for her, she found herself unable to advance due to external pressure, but she found a way to protect the Light Pce sect and even more importantly, her family.

    "Speaking of which, where did you find that", said Joanna as she pointed at the white orb which was still orbiting Sarah.

    "It was hidden below the ck Fortress''s castle, and the core of the ck Fortress which is of an extremely opposite nature, was used to seal it", said Daimon.

    "I see, I never understood why that guy''s treasure went along so well with Alicia''s, even when we didn''t know he was a piece of trash, it''s not like they were close or anything", mumbled Joanna.

    Daimon had the answer to that though.

    "Because they were obtained through the same mission, and they were "teamed up", so it was normal that their treasuresplemented each other, as they were fighting on the same side".

    Those four arrived at Neptune thanks to a mission, call it fate or bad luck, but Alicia was sided with the hero to fight against the Hydra guy and the one who scammed the Snakele''s believers to be Skelefiends.

    Based on the usability and the strength of the fortresses, they were probably rewards from reaching the final stage of their missions, which was to battle each other, since they obtained the chance to go to Kerrol as theirst reward after emerging victorious from thest battle.

    "Tsk, whoever did that has a really bad taste, still how did you obtain the core of that guy''s fortress, is it rted to that lineage perhaps¡­ no, yours is different, if I had topare it, yours might be lower in concentration but the sensation it gives off is on apletely different level", said Joanna to which Daimon chuckled.

    "Well, unlike you, that guy didn''t care much about his descendants or subordinates, so he used a gic seal along other locks, but he miscalcted the fact that there was a superior version of his cherished lineage", he said.

    "Oh, that exins why that little girl with light affinity isn''t the one linked to the core of the citadel, but don''t worry, you''ll be linked to the citadel itself, while your sister will control the core, so the two will own it, it''s not a gift, right~", said Joanna with a bright smile.

    "What will happen to you after your core is removed from the heart of the citadel?", asked Jasmine with a somewhat sad voice.

    By all means, Joanna''s core shouldn''t have been able to hold on until the current generation, it was probably being maintained by the arrays in part, so once it was removed, it will crumb apart.

    Joanna softly smiled as she patted Jasmine''s head a couple of times, like a loving mother would do to her daughter, perhaps Jasmine did remind her of her daughter, if you think about it, she had earned to finally rest, after watching over so many generations of the Light Pce, though she wasn''t conscious until a moment ago, it mustn''t have been a pleasant dream, but more of like being in the limbo until now.

    Even Freya remained silent, thest person from her time who was still "alive" was Joanna, so once she moves on, she''ll be left alone, even if it was just a temporary existence for her, as she will be reassigned after her contract with Daimon ends, she couldn''t help but feel somewhat bitter about it¡­ or at least that was the case until she heard Joanna saying.

    "Why the sad face, with the elemental conversion array and the energy gathering array that will be improved after putting the real core into the heart of the citadel, my magic core can be sustained indefinitely, you just have to form a link between the citadel and me~".

    "Also, it seems like interesting things happen around him, so how can I not be a part of it", she yfully said as she pointed at Daimon.

    Freya suppressed the urge to strangle Joanna''s projection to death with her own hands.

    ''I changed my mind, she should just die'', she thought.

    Joannaughed as she floated around those two as well as Daimon, with a cheerful expression.

    "I have been trapped into a slumber for who knows how many years, I want to see the outside world, not to mention I don''t know what happened with my Light Pce, some descendant of mine must have been tricked by that bitch''s family, how can I rest in peace before settling some pending scores, wouldn''t I be a ghost if I try to leave now".

    Daimon saw Jasmine and Sarah''s expression and he shook his head.

    "I guess you two just got yourselves a weird ancestor, I can''t wait to see senior Aurora or those three''s expressions", he said.

    "I have transferred the control of the heart to you, don''t take long otherwise the citadel will fall from the sky", she said to Jasmine.

    Joanna then forcefully removed her core from the center of the room, and her projection disappeared on the spot, her core which was still quite worn out flew until it fell in Daimon''s hands.

    "Here you can have me while the link is formed, enjoy it~", Joanna''s voice could be hearding from the core, now that Daimon observed it up close, there were runes engraved in her core, she actually put an array into it, probably to keep her soul into it, otherwise her personality would have been erased.

    For a change, even the crazy girl was rendered speechless, so she ultimately clicked "Y" in the notification that just appeared for her and the white orb flew to take the ce of Joanna''s core.

    At the same time, Jasmine who was now the one with linked to the citadel, saw a notification appear for her, just like Joanna said, while Sarah was linked to the core, Jasmine was linked to the citadel itself, so the two of them had to agree for the process to start.

    Daimon felt tempted to sent Joanna''s core to his inventory, but he refrained from doing so and just kept her core in his hand, while Sarah and Jasmine were helping the citadel regain its past glory.

 Chapter 533 Back at the Mermen Sea (part 1)

    Chapter 533 Back at the Mermen Sea (part 1)

    Surprisingly, Daimon was capable of seeing the notifications that have started appearing in front of those two, in his case the interface of the Demon Fortress was connected to the system, so others couldn''t see the notifications by default, but apparently the same didn''t apply to Jasmine nor Sarah.

    Well, it''s not like they had anything to hide from Daimon, but he took mental note to tell them about itter.

    While Daimon was observing those two, he suddenly heard Joanna''s voice reaching his ears.

    ''So, what''s your system, I remember Alicia telling me that hers was the "Heavenly Archer" system, which I believe was a fair title, Alice could hit someone a country of distance away with her crossbow and that was when she was at the peak Arch rank''.

    ''I only talk about such things with the closest people to me and I don''t think we are at that point yet''.

    Listening to Daimon''s response, Joannaughed, she was rather carefree, but not exactly in the good way, as Sarah seemed to have inherited that from her.

    ''Come on, don''t be so cold, we are going to be family in the future anyway, besides there is something I wish to confirm which I believe will be of interest for you too''.

    Just like Sarah, despite her weirdness, Joanna managed to get Daimon''s attention one way or another.

    ''Exin, I''ll judge whether to tell you based on that, also I want you to tell me about the Ster rank on your era'', he said.

    ''Heh, aren''t you quite greedy, I wonder though, why didn''t you ask me about whates after the Ster rank?'', she asked just to hear Daimon casually saying.

    ''What would be the point, if your Ster rank was an iplete or degraded version, besides I doubt you''ll tell me that for free, right''.

    ''¡­'', Joanna remained silent for a second before she startedughing.

    ''Now that''s what I''m talking about, I guess that''s how you managed to steal the hearts of those two little girls, even I am starting to like you more~''.

    ''I don''t know what has your administrator told you, but for "normal" people to know about systems, can be both a blessing or a curse, the proximity to a system user will diversify the opportunities we can get, that''s what you did for Jasmine right, her Brightstar lineage isn''t losing in terms of strengthpared to my daughter when she was her age, and that is saying a lot, she was a first generation who inherited two lineages''.

    ''Alicia and I saved each other''s lives back when we weren''t even Arch ranks, in the process I got to know about systems and that helped me pull through quite a fair share of "dead ends", regardless of the fact if Alicia was with me or not¡­ even now I''m still here after all'', she said with a somewhat nostalgic voice.

    Daimon was a bit surprised that Joana could tell the difference between Jasmine and other descendants of the main branch of the Light Pce, but his next words surely took her by surprise.

    ''I''m sorry to tell you, but Jasmine doesn''t know about system users specifically, in fact none of the ones that surround me does, since I don''t know what kind of effect reaction it will have to hear it directly from me, I have been really careful with the words I chose to exin them about what happens around me'', he said.

    Let alone Jasmine and the others, even his soulmates haven''t heard the word "system" directly from Daimon not even once, that is a little trick which Evangeline taught Daimon, as long as he doesn''t do certain things, the influence he has over those around him will be kept under control.

    So, while Aisha and the others know about Evangeline, the grimoires and a lot of the functions of the system, they don''t know Daimon is a system user, they just know he is different than others.

    ''Damn, what the hell was your awakening trial like, to produce such changes in those two without having directly exined about your system'', said Joanna with an interested voice.

    ''That is only normal, since Daimon has the strongest system and the best administrator, as for the concept don''t ask about what you shouldn''t, ghost woman'', Evangeline couldn''t help but join the conversation, her voice wasn''t exactly friendly too, but Joanna was quite simr to Sarah in which her face was really thick, she didn''t take it personal.

    ''Oh, so you are his administrator, don''t worry, Freya also didn''t like me when we met, but look at her now, I bet we''ll get along pretty well~'', she said.

    Evangeline softly snorted as she returned to sleep, making Daimon chuckle, he trusted she only prevented him from learning things that will be detrimental for himself as of current, since she always gave him hints and information as soon as it was possible.

    ''Okay, we''ll leave this conversation for when we have be closer, as for my Ster rank, I was a real Ster, someone that obtained a Manifestation Phenomenon as well as a Domain and the capacity to move through space in the Mortal realms as well as mana sense, to then surpass the 100% mark forwprehension in the property of my darkness at the Ster realm, though thest is something I only achieved when I put a step into the next realm of which I don''t even know its name unfortunately''.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask.

    ''So, the Ster realm is indeed rted towprehensions as I had supposed, but then how did they measured it and why there isn''t anything about it in Neptune''s records¡­'', he thought.

    Let alone that, nowadays the natives of Neptune were lucky if they obtained a Domain in the Arch rank, the normal is to obtain it at the peak stage or even after entering the half Ster realm, if what Joanna just said was true, then Neptune was at least at the same level of the four gxies.

    Not even once has it passed by Daimon''s mind that the four gxies are weaker than Neptune, nor the simple reason that the four gxies also have arge period of time from which there are no written records, only stories and rumors passed down from mouth to mouth by the races that have the longest histories.

    And yet, the four gxies ended up in a better state than Neptune, even the less talented all have the traits obtained at the Lord and Arch ranks, and now Daimon knows that the Half Emperors have started toprehendws though they aren''t aware of it, not to mention there is a creature like Dimas trapped there, in the past there should have been mages that had surpassed the Ster rank, but somehow the inheritances and knowledge were lost over the years.

    ''How did you measure the Lawprehension of others?'', asked Daimon, there was nothing in the shop of the system that could do that as of current, and if he could obtain that magic technology, then a new era will begin in the four gxies, and naturally the one who started earlier will have the advantage.

    Of course, Joanna knew how much value her knowledge had; she isn''t an administrator so she isn''t restricted, as to why she knew about such a thing, that is because she already scanned the citadel and only found one Maximum Ster rank, and this was one of the forces that was considered top level back at her times, so she judged that the current Neptune was weaker than back then.

    ''Mmm, I''m a rune master, if you have a talented cksmith and enough resources, we can make "one" after some time, but you''ll have to give me something too, even back then, very few forces had it~'', she yfully said.

    ''What do you want?'', asked Daimon.

    ''Take those two with you when you leave¡­ I already experienced what it feels to not be able to walk side to side with someone important for you, I don''t want those little girls to go through that'', she said with an honest voice.

    Daimon was surprised about her request, she knew he is not only a system user but a really above average one, what others deem impossible is only hard for system users, it''s not an exaggeration to say that she could have asked him for practically almost anything, like helping her obtain a new body but she instead used that chance to help Jasmine and Sarah, till the end she cared about her family first, which is something Daimon can respect.

    ''You don''t know what is happening in Neptune right now, there is a chance that the disappears in which case, those two will naturallye with me, it''s something I have promised to them, so there is no need for you to use your condition for that, think about it and tell meter'', said Daimon as he returned to reality, the process of the core integrating with the citadel was finishing, as the white unknown material that surged out of the walls of the heart of the citadel, suggested.

    Joanna didn''t say anything else, as she had quite a bit to process, instead she also observed the process of restoration of the citadel, it was special for her, since the treasure that Alicia once used to protect everyone which she gave new life to ensure the continuation of herte friend''s lineage, was regaining its past glory.

    And they weren''t the only ones, Aurora and the others were surprised to see the white substances suddenly covering the floor, buildings and practically every inorganic part of the citadel, changing its color to a silver-white shade.

    "It was quite expensive and the process will be gradual, but the citadel will eventually return to be what it was before", said Jasmine with a smiling expression on her pretty face.

    "Yeah, you should see the new beds of the main residence and the improved torture chambers~", added the crazy girl, which made Daimon shake his head, she was as wild as usual.

    Jasmine gave Daimon an apologetic smile as she pointed at Joanna''s core, the arrays on the walls of the room shone and then a link was stablished between Joanna and the heart of the citadel, at the same time, a white metal wristband appeared on both Jasmine and Sarah''s right wrists, simr to the one that Daimon obtained thanks to the Demon Fortress, it was the sign that they owned a fortress.

    Unlike his, theirs had a white feather engraved on it, though, but the functions were the same.

    Joanna''s core which was previouslyying on Daimon''s hand, floated once again, more of the cracks it had developed through the years, faded away, giving it a healthier appearance.

    "Ah, that''s better, well, I have been trapped in this room for a long time, if you don''t mind, I want to see the outside and then meet the current people from my and Alicia''s family", said Joanna as her projection covered her magic core once again.

    "I have to return to the contract process, I have barely started producing origin again thanks to our contract", said Freya, Daimon previously wanted her to talk with Aurora about Jessica, but he noticed the tiredness in her voice and he decided to not do so, in any case she didn''t really know anything else about Jessica, it was just to confirm with Aurora, but she''ll have other things to think about now that Joanna has entered the stage too.

    Now that Jasmine and Sarah owned the citadel, they could control the many passages it had, ording to Joanna in the future they should be able to move through space however they want within the territory of the citadel, as Alicia was able to do it back then.

    A few momentster, the ground a few meters away from theke, split apart and Daimon and the girls came out of it.

    "Woah, the mana has really diminished quite a bitpared to back then, what the hell did those bastards do in my absence", said Joanna as she observed the sky above the citadel.

    "You can contemte Nepter, let''s go back to the main residence", said Daimon, he was feeling really tired right now, thest thing he wanted to do before taking a rest was to help those two take possession of the citadel, and it was done so it was time for him to take a well-earned nap.

    Joanna was the one that designed the flying citadel so she didn''t need a guide to reach the main residence, and after a few minutes of walking the arrived at their destination.

    Needless to say, but all the girls were gathered at the living room of the main residence, Jeanne, Emily and Reyne who had already installed themselves, included, they all turned to see Daimon''s group which was entering through the front door and had different reactions.

    Probably the most interesting one was, Aisha who had a smile that wasn''t a smile as she spoke with Daimon through the mental connection.

    ''I know you have the "Casanova" tittle and all, but you were only gone for fifteen minutes and brought another woman darling, I guess we need to have a little "conversation"ter~'', she said.

    Daimon cleared his throat as he gazed at Aurora.

    "I guess today''s is a "lucky" day for the Light Pce, you get to meet the one of the two "first" Matriarchs in person, good luck", he said as he walked towards his room.

    Naturally, for Aurora and the others it was as if a bomb had been dropped all of a sudden, they all have expressions of disbelief, well not all, Aisha, the Risha sisters as well as Mellie, Daphne and Christina casually followed Daimon, which didn''t escape Reyne, Jasmine and Sarah''s eyes.

    Joanna who was looking at Reyne, Emily and Jeanne with interested eyes, gazed at Jasmine and Sarah before saying.

    "I won''t be going anywhere, go secure the "future" of the Light Pce~", Bell couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow at the "familiar" words said by that strange woman, not to mention Sarah''s smile widened as she left the room, followed by Jasmine whose face was slightly red.

    "Mom, I''ll give you some space to talk with grandmother and the others", Reyne excused herself and also left, which made Jeanne softlyugh, and Aurora warmly smile, while Jeanne and Emily still had their reserves towards Aurora, as they just met, for some reason Reyne found it easier to ept Aurora as her rtive, just like she had started to treat Jasmine as her sister though she remained kind of wary of the crazy girl.

    "I guess he is the type to make things big or not doing them, don''t you agree?", said Joanna to the ones who stayed behind, which were basically the adults.

    "Ahem, let''s not jump to conclusions, is what he said true, are you Daimon, thetter entered his room, the beds of all the girls were still there.

    the first Matriarch?", asked Sylvie, she wasn''t the right hand of Aurora for nothing, she took the initiative to ask what was in everyone''s mind right now.

    "Yeah, you could say so, I guess what he said is true, you all don''t know anything about your ascendence, the truth is¡­".

    ¡­

    While Joanna told Aurora and the others what really happened, being sure to not mention systems, as per what she agreed with Daimon, thetter entered his room, the beds of all the girls were still there.

    Something Daimon noticed was that the girl from the angelfish n wasn''t here, nor at the wee of earlier, though Miriam and Laura were.

    "Marlene has isted in her room to try and find a way to advance to the Arch rank again, she''ll be outter", said Aisha who entered after Daimon.

    Daimon nodded and then he took off his shoes, jacket and the mask to then throw himself at the bed.

    "Wake me up for the dinner please", said Daimon as he closed his eyes and not even a minuteter, he was actually asleep.

    All the girls arrived just in time to see Daimon falling asleep, and they stared at each other before they closed the door, to then sit down on the beds which they put next to the other.

    "So, what happened in that ce after you were transported?", asked Yvonne to Jasmine and Sarah, the other girls also curiously gazed as those two as well as Reyne who was thest one to enter the room, and though felt a bit shy after seeing the beds being put next to each other, didn''t leave.

    She was then surprised to see the Risha sisters take out some snacks which were ced on the center, apparently, they all had gotten closer while Daimon was gone, at least they now seemed to

    be not just teammates but friends, and contrary to what Reyne expected she wasn''t being left aside, the others showed interest in her story.

    Which was a first for her, leaving aside Daimon, Jasmine and the crazy girl who didn''t discriminate, back at Kerrol all the people her age kept some distance with her, due to Emily''s race.

    ''As expected of the people Daimon is friends with, they don''t care about such things'', thought Reyne as she gazed at the sleeping face of Daimon with a soft smile on her face.

    ''Oh great, morepetition'', thought an unknown number of the girls present in the room, at the sight of Reyne gazing at Daimon in a way they knew pretty well.

    And so, while the citadel flew at an even faster speed towards the Mermen Sea, both the adult and the young girls were having conversations about different subjects, Daimon who entered thend of dreams, unaware that his name was being mentioned in both cases, quite a bit.

 Chapter 534 Back at the Mermen Sea (part 2)

    Chapter 534 Back at the Mermen Sea (part 2)

    Seeing Daimon''s rxed sleeping face, Aisha smiled and then naturally amodated him so that his head was resting on herp, which of course didn''t escape the eyes of the other girls.

    But at this point the only one who reacted was the newest addition to the group, in other words, Reyne.

    "How bold, I guess that''s why he changed the color of his hair using that bracelet, is she¡­", listening to Reyne mumbling, Jasmine giggled as she said.

    "Aisha is Daimon''s older sister, he dyed his hair ck but his original hair color is silver just like Aisha''s".

    Reyne has seen Daimon''s "real" appearance before, with his ck hair and all, when she saw that they shared the same eye color, she thought that it was because they belonged to the same race, which only made her feel a bit jealous over how intimate they looked.

    Reyne had thought that Daimon was so close to Aisha that he imitated her hair color for his alternative identity, but now that she got to hear that Aisha was his sister, she slightly blushed at the wild thoughts that had passed through her mind earlier.

    "Ahem, so miss Aisha is also a vampire like Daimon?", she asked trying to divert attention from her previous obvious reaction.

    Unaware of the fact that Daimon''s race is to the day a mystery for all the presents, with Aisha''s exception of course, that being said, the Risha sisters raised an eyebrow at thatment, because they know the rtionship between the four gxies, and the Immortal gxy is a sworn enemy of the White Fang gxy.

    Not only that, but Daimon is publicly known as a variant who descends from a member of the Twilight Alluring fox branch of the Revy n like Erin, and a family that was once the royalty of the Argent n, as they have changed their leaders many times due to their rule, that anyone can be the king as long as they have the bigger fist, just like Aura did, her parents were just regr members of the family, but she became the Matriarch due to her monstrous strength and also the corruption that had rotted the previous ruling family.

    And the Argent family has a blood feud with the vampires, maybe not all of their families, since Aura seems to have some sort of rivalry with the Nosfear Matriarch, but when a vampire and a werewolf meet, usually a bloody battle breaks out, the Revy aren''t particrly against the vampires, but they aren''t in friendly terms either

    Of course, those three also knew that rules don''t tend to apply to Daimon, so him being who he is, they wouldn''t find it weird if despite that, he was able to get Aura to favor him to the point that she took him as her first disciple, even when she had refused to teach even the most renowned geniuses of her own family.

    "It''s a bit moreplicated than that, you have seen Daimon using both spells and martial arts, not to mention he can basically use all the elements, right?", said Aisha as she caressed Daimon''s hair

    "Mm", all the girls who were interested in the conversation nodded, it''s not a secret at this point that Daimon is both a mage and a knight, but he hasn''t spoken that much about his race, on the other hand it''s not like they have asked about it.

    Also, besides Reyne, the others knew that he had at least two different lineages, his original one and the ck Armored Shark''s one, the only thing is that they didn''t know he was a vampire, except Reyne since she, Jeanne and Emily felt that strange familiarity towards him.

    Curiously, Reyne didn''t feel the same regarding Aisha, which means that the origin of that isn''t the fact that they are Npsi, but probably because they descend from the Ivory and the Brightstar families like Jasmine, though they didn''t manifest it like her, the oath which created a bond between Daimon and Jasmine, also applies to them to a certain extent.

    "Well, the same applies for bloodlines, there shouldn''t be a limit to the number of lineages which Daimon can have", said Aisha which rendered the other girls speechless.

    "One would believe that it would be harder to get surprised when such things happen too often, but he always finds a way to keep up", mumbled Mellie.

    "Wait, so if we give him our blood, will he be able to obtain the Risha family''s bloodline, just like it happened with that Shark something lineage?", enthusiastically asked Leslie only to see Aisha shaking her head.

    "There are some requirements that have to be met first, but technically it should be possible", said Aisha as she mentally added.

    ''After all, he hadn''t obtained the Revy nor Argent''s bloodlines, despite having drank those four''s blood quite a few times, not to mention mine~''.

    Just drinking the blood isn''t enough for the Apex Predator to integrate a bloodline, that''s why there is a function that specializes on that, otherwise it would be too easy and Daimon chose the high difficulty high reward path after all.

    "I see¡­", mumbled Leslie with a somewhat defeated voice, which made the other girls softlyugh, while Reyne was getting more and more interested in Daimon''s race, she, her mother and Emily all have blood affinity and while Daimon doesn''t seem to have it, he has an ability rted to that, that appears to be a thing among vampires, regardless of their race.

    It''s normal that she feels curious about it, until not too long ago, she didn''t even know that Npsi are vampires, heck they didn''t even know the name of their race but were just lumped together with the Ghouls.

    For the next hours the girls kept on asking things to Aisha about Daimon''s race, and other random stuff, not to mention asking Jasmine, Sarah and about what happened in Kerrol, as well as asking Reyne about her time living there.

    Aisha didn''t mind to ask, after everything Daimon has shown about himself to them, there is no use in hiding that he has a vampire lineage, it''s not worth mentioning in front of the fact that he is both a mage and a knight anyway, it''s just that Daimon isn''t particrly talkative about it.

    And without noticing quite a few hours passed, since Aurora and the other adults also had a lot of things to discuss, the dinner was served quitete today, almost at midnight, at this point the flying citadel was about to leave the Elemental Sea.

    Daimon who felt amazingly refreshed and well rested, noticed the familiar softness and the flower-like scent of Aisha up-close as he opened his eyes, just to be weed with the different gazes of the girls that until not too long ago were so immersed in their conversation that they didn''t notice how much time had passed.

    He chuckled at the sight of the empty packages of snacks here and there.

    ''Well, at least they seem to have gotten closer than before, but what''s up with those interested filled gazes'', thought Daimon only to see the crazy girl smiling at him.

    "Why didn''t you say it when we were sharing a bed, I would have dly given you my neck~", she said.

    Daimon looked upwards at Aisha, just to see her sweetly smiling at him.

    ''Mom just what did you tell these girls¡­'', wondered Daimon before saying.

    "I''m not exactly a vampire at this point, not to mention that traditionally a vampire should only do that with their life partners".

    Nowadays, most vampires didn''t really put weight to what used to be a sacred ritual between two vampires that loved each other, but Daimon was different, his fangs existed for the pleasure of his girls, not only for the tradition but because getting bitten by him will act as an aphrodisiac for the one who receives it, as long as it is a woman, the contrary applies to female vampires too.

    Which is why the few times Aisha had drunk blood, back then not only it was blood from a magic beast instead of a human or another vampire, but it was from a ss, Daimon took another one of her firsts as he was the first person she bit and drank blood directly from.

    "I was just about to wake you up, it''s time for dinner and those three are joining us since their training had just ended", casually said Aisha with a smile.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, this little revenge from Aisha was harmless, besides making the crazy girl discover a new thing she wishes Daimon to do to her, nothing bad came from them knowing about his lineages.

    "Let''s go then, after that nap I''m quite hungry", said Daimon as he jumped out of the bed, since they were in the citadel, he kept the mask off.

    "Sure, we can have a bath togetherter, since tomorrow is going to be a busy day", said Aisha as she got up from the bed followed by the others, Daimon who was about to leave the room nearly tripped when he heard Aisha announcing out loud that she''ll be taking a bath with him, but he managed to rpose himself and ignored the sparkling eyes of the crazy girl, Jasmine and Reyne''s slightly blushed faces, as well as Yvonne, Lilia, Leslie and Mellie''s unconvinced expressions, the only one who remained calm as usual while still smiling at him was the silent princess Daphne, but her maid and best friend Chris was narrowing her eyes at Daimon, something she had inmon with Cassy.

    ''She is doing it on purpose'', thought Daimon as they left to the dining room.

    ¡­

    As soon as they arrived Daimon was weed by the alfear and dwarf princesses, Tessa and Femi, since the cave disappeared and everyone returned to the flying citadel, the girls have been alternating to use the two special training rooms where the elemental conversion array works the best, originally Tessa and Femi''s turns would have ended a few minutes after Daimon''s return to Neptune.

    But the others chose to not enter the training rooms and instead meet Daimon, so Tessa and Femi were given the quotes of the others, that being said there was a limit as to how much mana could a mage absorb in a day and those two reached their limit.

    Judging by the fresh floral scent which Daimon caught a wind off, the two princesses left earlier to have a nice bath before joining for the dinner.

    "Wee back", Tessa slightly rose the sides of her dress to greet Daimon like a proper youngdy.

    "Hey, good to see you, I was starting to think we weren''t going to be paid", Femi on the other hand was much more carefree, she was wearing shorts and a top not to mention she was barefooted.

    Despite their differences the two were happy to see Daimon and Jasmine were back safely, not to mention they had heard about Reyne, Jeanne and Emily directly from Aurora who wanted to announce to the whole world that not only she gained another granddaughter but her daughter was alive.

    "Hi you two, did you manage to feel the difference in the conversion array while inside the training rooms?", said Daimon as he sat at the table, Aisha took the seat at his next while the crazy girl took the one at the left, surprisingly besides looking unconvinced the others didn''t say anything and Daimon decided not to ask.

    ''At least with mom here, she won''t try anything'', he thought as stole a gaze at Sarah who was all smiles right now.

    Just as Aurora was arriving with tray after tray of food, she prepared herself, to celebrate the fact that she gained more family, Daimon saw Marlene who was arriving at the table followed by the two elders, Miriam and Laura and he couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow at her.

    She had slight bags under her eyes and looked a bit gloomy not to mention tired, something really strange considering her usual cheerful self, also her realm has regressed from the peak stage Lord realm to the middle stage, but thetter didn''t seem to be a problem, her base was solid and there didn''t seem to be damage on her mana circuits, so it''s probably something she did on purpose instead of some kind of negative effect or something of the like.

    "Hi¡­ sorry for the dy, I lost track of the time during my meditation, d to see you could safely return on time", said Marlene as she slightly smiled at Daimon, Jasmine and Sarah to then seat along with the two elders who gave Daimon apologetic smiles.

    Daimon decided to leave that aside for the time being, everyone grabbed what they wanted from the different dishes prepared by Aurora who stood up and poured wine on a ss, to Jasmine''s surprise.

    She hasn''t seen her grandmother drank not even once before ever since she has use of reason, and she wasn''t the only one, Bell and Sylvie knew Aurora who used to have a couple of sses of wine from time to time, stopped when Jessica was born quite some time ago.

    "Regardless of what happens tomorrow, I''m really grateful for today", she said as she raised her ss at the others.

    "Cheers!", the others epted her offer, some with real wine others with juice or just water, and then everyone dug in.

    Daimon turned to see Aisha who smiled at him as she offered him a piece of the meat she was eating, which he epted though he was lost in his thoughts for a second.

    Ever since the incident from the manticore, the idea of his loved ones, suffering drove him mad, the hatred he felt for the Naktis became the fuel for his wish to be strong, unfortunately things nearly went out of hands but luckily Aisha and the others helped him ovee that lingering concern.

    At the four gxies one of the iron rules of magic is the fact that the dead can''t be resurrected, undead can be created using the corpse of a specific person, but the result won''t be the same, there will be a new "entity" upying the body, not to mention that normally there will be physical changes, the original personality will be lost and if one is lucky enough some instincts of the original''s owner of the body will remain, those are the top tier undead that can be created artificially, such used to be the case of Horals and Rita.

    Now imagine for Neptune where necromancy wasn''t known, though she had the hope that some day her daughter returned to her, to be honest never in her wildest dreams Aurora expected it would really happen, so it''s normal that she felt overwhelmed.

    ''Not having control of one''s live is truly a terrifying thing'', thought Daimon as he took the initiative to personally feed Aisha with his fork, just to see the crazy girl opening her mouth and giving him an expecting gaze.

    To everyone''s surprise, Sarah herself included, Daimon actually personally fed her, but with her own fork since Aisha was munching on his.

    Naturally, the previous resulted in the Risha sisters and Mellie asking for the same, after which the others also participated, including Tessa, Femi and even Cassy and Chris, Joanna also asked for some, but she is a projection so she was ignored.

    ''I swear she could pass for Sarah''s mother'', thought Daimon.

    Still the previous slightly tense atmosphere had disappeared and now everyone was more rxed, the young girls weren''t really worried since they were lost in their conversation previously, but the adults were, probably because they heard Joanna''s story, and not only that but something simr just happened to Aurora.

    A person with a light affinity which waspletely unrted to the Light Pce, was needed to try and open the gate of the room where the core of the fortress was sealed, and the person that fulfilled that role for the Shaman was¡­ Sid, in other words the second direct disciple of Aurora was a traitor.

    That''s how Sylvie was captured, she was attacked by surprise and while she managed to protect herself and not suffer any injury since she was as strong as Sid, Abaris took the chance to imprison her.

    Originally Sylvie didn''t realize it, until Daimon turned the tables by imprisoning Sid as well as Abaris''s female disciple, which turned out to be Sid''s lover, the ck Fortress had eyes and ears in the Light Pce, just like back then.

    Naturally while Daimon was asleep, Aurora, Sylvie and Bell gave Sid

    a piece of their mind, and also took the chance to interrogate him, which confirmed that while Abaris might not have tried to harm Aurora nor Jasmine yet, he had a hidden schedule for sure.

    Seeing that everyone had rxed again, Daimon inwardly nodded, once the global raid ends, he will reunite with all, the presents and the ones who aren''t, there was no need for him to say it, instead he will prove it words, that others can''t toy with him nor those around him, regardless of who they are.

    Speaking of those around him, now that the dinner had ended the girls started to get up and leave, Daimon was going to be thest to bath, so the others went ahead to have their turn.

    "You,e with me out for a second", casually said Daimon to Marlene who was taken by surprise, but before she could even show any hesitation, Miriam and Laura pushed her outside of the main residence while they smiled at Daimon.

    "I''ll be back in a moment", said Daimon to Aisha who nodded at him, she was going to bath with her darling anyway, so in the meantime she could justy down on the bed while the others finished their bath.

    Outside of the main residence, Daimon saw Marlene who was looking at the sky, lost in her thoughts, the two elders had returned to the room they shared.

    "Okay, what happened to you, Thea is going to be mad if I "return" you looking like that, you know?", jokingly said Daimon to which Marlene softlyughed.

    "Sorry it''s just that¡­ Miriam is reaching the end of her lifespan and no matter what I do, I can''t return to be at least a damn Arch rank", she said as she slightly clenched her fists with a frustrated expression on her pretty face to then add.

    "With the elemental conversion is easy to dissolve a minor realm and recover it without any side effect, so I have been running different ways, simtions but no matter what I can''t find the opportunity to advance further than that, I don''t know if it is the price to pay for having tricked death before, or if it''s the curse ced by that bastard, I can''t believe that I will be useless at the moment of truth¡­ again, I even tried using luck I stole from those idiots of the ck Fortress but it didn''t work".

    She who carried the weight of her race, as the only who had the prowess to make a difference was now "powerless", add to that her mother figure was reaching the end of her lifespan due to that curse, the feeling of not being able to protect was a bitter pill for anyone.

    Daimon nodded to then casually say.

    "Who said you can''t do anything, what will happen in Neptune is only a side effect of the global raid, the real battlefield won''t be here, so why don''t youe with us instead, aren''t you a middle stage Lord rank after all".

    "I don''t know what is waiting for us there, but I bet there will be rewards given to those who win, if you don''t like what the world is doing to you, then fight, even if you have to use your nails and teeth, struggle to the very end, who knows, it might work, it did for me", he added.

    Marlene was speechless for a moment, she was so focused on advancing or finding a way to extend Miriam''s life, that she overlooked the fact that as a middle stage Lord ranked, she could participate in the global raid, it''s not her fault though, she still thought as a Ster ranked.

    She was quite a strong-minded person, that is something that Daimon respected about the angelfish princess, a Ster rank that dropped all the way to the Lord rank, a lot of people wouldn''t be able to ovee the fact that all their hard work, life and death experiences and struggles were rendered useless just like that.

    Aisha went through something simr, with the difference that she recovered the years she spent, not to mention she was more than happy to be able to grow together with Daimon, but Marlene''s case was different, she remained her previous age, which though wasn''t that much a couple of hundreds of years, it was still part of the best period for a mage or knight.

    Not to mention her n already had it hard to advance by default, it was like kicking someone when he is down.

    Daimon could see the light in her eyes lighting up once again, to which he nodded.

    "Now go take a bath and have a nice rest, I can''t have one of my teammates sleeping on me", he said.

    Marlene pouted to then cunningly smile as she approached Daimon and hugged him out of nowhere, to then say.

    "What kind of man tells a beauty she smells, what kind of love potion did you use to get all those girls to like such a blunt guy".

    Daimon chuckled, though she actually didn''t take a bath after her meditation, it''s not like she smelled or anything, it was more of like she needed one to rx, but he decided to follow her game.

    "Well, aren''t you hugging me right now, why should I fix it if it seems to be working like a charm", he said making her let go of him with an exaggeratively surprised expression on her face.

    "Oh, dear mana, Neptune must be trulying to an end for you to make a joke~", she said.

    Daimon chuckled, only for Marlene to actually hug him once again as she mumbled.

    "Thanks¡­ well, I better hurry up to join the others, it''s been a while since I had a nice night of sleep so I''ll be staying in your room", Marlene stopped hugging him and then she shed as she left to join the others in the bath.

    ''Unfortunately, I can''t seem to trigger a mission for her directly, maybe something that the Hydra guy''s curse did, however by rebound through Thea I got a mission for her before, so if she goes with us to the global raid¡­'', thought Daimon, before shaking his head to then return back inside the main residence, just to see Joanna''s projection floating on the living room.

    "I''ll be staying where those three stay, so thanks for having me~", said Joanna as she flew towards Daimon''s room.

    ''Yeah, she is definitely Sarah''s direct ancestor'', thought Daimon as he went to his room too, the moment he entered he could feel Aisha''s knowing gaze on him, all the others were in the bath, while Joanna wasying down on Jasmine''s bed reading some history books to catch up with the modern Neptune.

 Chapter 535 Back at the Mermen Sea (part 3)

    Chapter 535 Back at the Mermen Sea (part 3)

    Aisha saw Daimon entering the room and her pretty amethyst eyes glowed for a second, before she patted the space next to her on the bed, urging Daimon toy down with her while they waited for the others to finish their bath.

    Daimon chuckled but he obliged, he took off his shoes and thenid down on the bed next to Aisha, who rolled on the bed to be on her side while looking at Daimon frontwards.

    "Just a few minutes alone with you and Marlene suddenly entered the room fresh as a lettuce and with a smile that she could barely hide, just what did you do to her darling~", said Aisha with a yful voice as she poked Daimon''s right cheek.

    Daimon bitterly smiled in response, just to see Aisha giggle as she dragged him into her embrace to gently caress his hair.

    "It seems like this travel was really worth it, for my Daimon to be able tofort others now, I''ll take that as a win", she said with a caring voice.

    Daimon softly smiled as he closed his eyes to enjoy Aisha''s softness, it is true that he has changed since the exploration of Neptune started.

    His goal remains the same, burn the ones who caused his mother pain, down to the ground and then instill more than enough fear on others, so that no one would dare to even think of harming his family.

    Aisha''s reason to bring Daimon to the academy, even if he could have just been taught at home and by a couple of Half Emperors nothing less, was because she didn''t want him to close himself out of the world.

    As a mother she felt happy when she saw Daimon discovering what friendship is like, and she has been even happier, after seeing him evolving fromplete indifference to anyone that wasn''t his soulmates, to have friends to whom he can trust his back to.

    The initial merit of that goes to the Risha sisters, which is why Aisha gets along so well with them, even if she as a lover can''t hep but feel jealous knowing that they like Daimon to the point where there is no going back.

    And now, it''s not only them, there is arge group walking by his side, which is what she wanted for him.

    ''Less female friends wouldn''t hurt though¡­'', thought Aisha as she pouted, Daimon noticed the change on the way she was caressing his hair as she applied a bit more of force to her hand.

    "Ahem, take it easy, I would like to keep my hair attached to my head", he said.

    "I get that I might be outdated in the ways of the world and wee from different gxies, but for siblings you two seem a bit too close, you know", Joanna who was reading her book couldn''t help butment after seeing those two tightly hugging each other at the bed, just to hear Yvonne who wasing out of the bath along with the others say.

    "Well, even at our gxy siblings are usually not that close, unless they are of the same gender, but Aisha practically took care of Daimon since he was a baby, so they grew closer due to that".

    Aisha who was smiling without the others being able to see her face, winked at Daimon, the backstory that they invented for themselves has helped them cover up their real rtionship quite nicely.

    "What''s there to be ashamed, I was the one who bathed and changed him, since he was a baby, it''s not like I haven''t seen everything there is to see", she yfully said as she jumped out of the bed to enter the bath, leaving Daimon alone on the bed to be gazed at by all the other girls who were amodating on their respective beds.

    ''Mom, that''s a bit too much¡­'', thought Daimon, there were a couple of gazes he could feel the most, the Risha sisters of course were among them, then there was Jasmine and Reyne whose faces were red andstly the crazy girl whose eyes were scanning him from head to toe while she licked her lips.

    "Go to sleep you all, tomorrow we are going to have a really long day", said Daimon as he walked towards the bathroom, closing the door behind of him.

    "What a shame every time I was about to get a glimpse at the bath, that woman who lives in Daimon''s shadow, caught me, on the other hand being immobilized and tied wasn''t that bad~", said Sarah with a bright smile, which made the other girls look at Sarah with "W-Wait, how many days where you left alone with him?", asked Mellie only to see Sarah mockingly smile at her.

    weirded expressions.

    "You are a menace you know", mumbled Leslie which made the others softlyugh.

    "W-Wait, how many days where you left alone with him?", asked Mellie only to see Sarah mockingly smile at her.

    "Enough for us to grow closer, wasn''t I personally fed by him earlier too~", she yfully said.

    "Ahem, let''s go to sleep, Daimon is right, tomorrow we''ll have a lot of things to do", said Jasmine as she dragged Sarah with her to their bed, where Reyne and Joanna were also staying.

    The others were somewhat unconvinced, earlier Sarah didn''t mention the bathroom incidents, in fact this was the first time Jasmine heard about that as well, nothing really happened, but they could imagine what the crazy girl was aiming at, since she was really open about it.

    Without Daimon knowing, a strangepetition between some of them started just a moment ago, but he couldn''t spare attention to that as of current.

    Inside of the bathroom, Aisha was waiting for himpletely dressed, she gazed at him from the corner of her eyes with an expecting expression on her pretty face.

    Daimon gulped down at the charming sight of Aisha clearly inviting him, despite his serious and responsible usual behavior, he is no monk nor a eunuch, there is no man in the world who wouldn''t be moved after being surrounded by a lot of beauties all the time.

    It happened before, when he was left alone with the Risha sisters, even if he didn''t see them in such a way back then, his body still responded to their closeness, like it should, luckily Sarah''s craziness prevented him from, reaching that point, but he had to admit that after spending more time with her, he indeed found her less annoying.

    She stopped trying to go too far and instead became friendlier and a bit more restrained, she still lost it from time to time, but she was way more tamed than when they met¡­ most of the time at least.

    Seeing the tent in Daimon''s pants, Aisha giggled as she moved her long silky white-silver hair aside, to expose her pretty smooth neck to her darling.

    "Those three will be soon asking you to bite them, not to mention that crazy girl, but for now, your fangs are mine~", she said.

    Daimon''s eyes were glued to Aisha''s pale neck, real beauties didn''t need to be naked to be mesmerizing, that is something he learned thanks to Erin and the others, back at earth he never developed any interest in anyone, even the prettiest models or celebrities that were trending among those of his range of age, caught his attention.

    The first time in his two lives, when he was moved by a girl was when his eyes beheld the sight of Aisha''s lovely face, after that even when the maids of the castle who were beauties by all means, as they served under the direct main branch of the Naktis, didn''t look appealing to him, the next time he found someone attractive was when he met Liz, the same repeated for ine, Erin and Aura.

    Then there was Narasha and Evangeline, who despite not having seen them in person, he was more thanfortable with, those two also had a ce in his heart, andstly there were the newly discovered rtionship of "friendship".

    Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana were at the top on that aspect, as they have openly admitted of liking him, but even as of current, they haven''t taken thest step, and though Daimon doesn''t reject them, it is also true that he doesn''t feel the same way with them as he does for Aisha and the others.

    It''s normal though, he spent eight years together with those seven, despite them being his soulmates, it''s not like he reached the current level of feelings he had for them, instantly, it developed over time.

    That is of course from Daimon''s point of view, his Apex Predator body tempted him to take all the girls that surrounded him on a daily basis, as one would expect from a body constitution which granted him those pheromones that would amplify and inhibit restrictions on those of the opposite gender who have positive feelings towards him.

    "You shouldn''t have told them that, you know what will happen if I bite them", said Daimon as he hugged Aisha from behind to then gently kiss her neck, before he sank his erged fangs into her.

    "Mmm~".

    "Well, it''s not like you are going to let them be taken away at this point right, I don''t mind that our rtion changed quite abruptly, since there was a long period of adaptation afterwards, not to mention all the flirting you had with those three and the "training" Aura invented to be alone with you, I want you to experience the whole process with them, like it would have happened if things hadn''t changed for us back then", she mumbled.

    Daimon who gently drank a bit of her blood, separated from her not without kissing her neck, before saying.

    "Well, you do seem to have taken a liking to those three, to the point that you are willing to share your lover with them, not to mention they are indeed really good girls, I''ll have a talk with their mothers as soon as we meet¡­ but we''ll leave the biting aside for the time being".

    Aisha giggled as she leaned backwards to then look upwards at Daimon''s face, from below.

    "I think a kiss will be more than enough to melt those three if you ask me, speaking of which are you going to bring them all with us, Liz is going to be super jealous you know~", she yfully said.

    Daimon shook his head, he didn''t have an answer to that, to be honest he didn''t want the others to leave, but he couldn''t just tell them to leave their lives to follow him, unless he is taking responsibility for them, not to mention that he doesn''t know what the result of the global raid might be, will Neptune end up connected to the four gxies, will it be destroyed, will nothing change, there were too many variables.

    But for now, Daimon decided to focus on the matter hands, literally as he started undressing Aisha to then take her under the shower with him, the transparent droplets of water running down her beautiful body were impossible to ignore, especially the droplets of "water" dripping down from the area between her legs.

    Daimon''s amethyst eyes glowed as he saw Aisha lean against the wall as she stuck out her pale round butt, to then slowly sway her hips in an inviting manner.

    Daimon stood behind of her and dragged her into his embrace, which was followed by sweet cries and giggles, that were luckily contained by the walls of the bathroom.

    Though Daimon and more importantly Aisha, could have continued all night long, they would not be able to cover up if they do that, so the limit was of around an hour, including the twenty minutes that was going to take them to clean afterwards to actually bath.

    So, around an hourter, they left the pool-like bathtub and dried each other before putting on some light clothes to then leave the bathroom.

    At this point, some of the girls were actually asleep, Marlene looked especially cute with a calm and rxed expression,pared to her previous worried self, Tessa and Femi were also peacefully sleeping and then there was Jasmine whose eyes were closing by themselves, though she remained awake to say goodnight to Daimon, which she did before she entered thend of dreams, Reyne and Sarah smiled at Daimon before they followed their younger sister''s steps, it''s also worth mentioning that a soft snore could be hearding from a white spherical object which was ced on top of a pillow, that was Joanna who released her projection to sleep.

    Daphne and Mellie were particrly eager to return, so that they could see their sister and mother respectively, so they went to sleep earlier than the others, Chris naturally joined her young miss and friend Daphne to dreand too.

    As for the Risha sisters, they were also awake though with sleepy expressions, that''s not what surprised Daimon, but the fact that they were waiting for him, in his own bed.

    "I-It''s going to be a cold night so I''ll stay with you, you know fire affinity!", enthusiastically said Leslie as she covered her face with her pillow to hide away the bright red tone that was visible on her cheeks.

    "I used up all the mana you gave me, but I know you are tired, so instead of a asking for more in a single go, you can give it to me in small parts over the next eight hours, so there won''t be any burden¡­" mumbled Yvonne, trying to not let her racing heart be so obvious.

    "I''m cold, hug", Liliana limited to express with few words like normal, but her point was clear.

    Before Daimon could say anything, Aisha pushed him onto the bed, making himnd in the middle of those three, she naturallyid on top of Daimon upying the main spot, but those three each held onto something, Yvonne and Leslie grabbed Daimon''s arms, while Liliana actually hugged his right side, she was indeed a bit cold but that was her normal temperature.

    Daimon saw those three giving him puppy eyes and he couldn''t help but give in, it''s not like they haven''t shared a bed before, nor they are at a stage where this level of physical contact, would be inappropriate, especially because they know Daimon wouldn''t do anything they don''t want, they felt safe andfortable being close to him, he was their "center" after all.

    "Okay, you better notin of not having had enough sleep,ter", said Daimon as he closed his eyes just to hear those three giggle.

    Sleeping with another person this closely it''s not easy first, as people tend to move around while sleeping, Daimon has seen Leslie wake up in the morningying down on top of either Yvonne or Liliana, for example.

    Still, silence fell in the room as Aisha turned down the lights, and then afortable darkness enveloped the room, without anyone noticing, a curious pair of eyes could be seen on the side of Daimon which Liliana wasn''t hugging tightly to, then slowly but surely a hand came out of the darkness to slightly hold onto Daimon''s abdomen for a couple of seconds, before sinking into the darkness again.

    ¡­

    The rest of the night went on pretty much uneventful, everyone had a good night of rest and before they noticed the moon was reced by the sun on the artificial sky of Neptune, and the now silvery-white flying citadel found itself within the territory of the Mermen Sea, naturally the route was traced in coordination with Ae and Vincent, so there was no one that could see them arriving, of course Aurora had casted a light illusion over the citadel just in case.

    Daimon felt a ticklish sensation on his face, which made him slowly open his eyes just to see Aisha cutely brushing his nose with her hair as she smiled at him, after making sure that the others were sleeping, she pecked Daimon''s lips as she whispered at him.

    "I really missed sleeping in the same bed with my darling~".

    Daimon chuckled, he could imagine how clingy are some certain fox and wolf girls going to be once the exploration ends.

    With Aisha waking up, turned on the lights, the movement and all, made some of the girls wake up, the first one was none other than Mellie, who got to see the Risha sisters holding onto Daimon''s body as they peacefully slept, making her face explode in a reddish tone.

    Still, she wasn''t Ae''s sister for nothing, she could "rationally" realize that besides them holding onto him, nothing else happened, so she greeted Daimon with a slightly stiff smile on her pretty face, before she got up to go wash her face.

    Naturally the previous, created a chain event, Daphne which was sleeping in the same bed as Mellie also woke up, she silently smiled at Daimon before she followed Mellie, Chris was next.

    And then the alfear and dwarf princesses, who gave Daimon some dubitative gazes, before chuckling as they left the bedroom, the problems started when the crazy girl who woke up at the same time as Jasmine and Reyne, saw that scene.

    The Risha sisters were toofortable, so they were still soundly sleeping while holding onto Daimon.

    "So, it''s going to be done in intervals of three, I want the full body hug next~", she yfully said as she jumped out of the bed, the noise finally made those three wake up.

    Needless to say, but once reality hit them, they reamodated so that their faces weren''t visible, as if they were hiding.

    "It''s a bit toote for that, we all saw you be allfortable and cuddly, you know?", mumbled Jasmine as she intensely gazed at Daimon, who could only bitterly smile, Aisha was stillying down on top of him, so he couldn''t move at all.

    Also, the usual gentle and bright Jasmine had an expression that didn''t match her, which was exined the moment she spoke next.

    "I want the right arm next", she said before she shed out of the room.

    "I''ll make up with the left one for now¡­", mumbled Reyne as she followed her sister, leaving only the crazy girl who wasughing out loud.

    "That''s the little Jas I know and love~", said Sarah as she happily hummed while walking out of the room.

    "Ahem, let''s get up you three, we''ll be having breakfast at Ae''s mansion to catch up with the current status of the Mermen Sea, so you should go dress up", said Daimon.

    "Mm", the three sisters nodded as they let go of Daimon, before they ran away like scared rabbits.

    "Aren''t they cute, darling~", jokingly said Aisha who was stillying on top of Daimon.

    "Well, that was never up to doubt, but I do feel things are going to get a bitplicated now", said Daimon as he rolled on the bed pushing Aisha below him, of course thatpromising position onlysted for less than a second as Daimon got up to put his clothes as well as the mask on, while Aisha and the others did the same.

    Once they were all ready, the group gathered at the living room, where Aurora and the others were already waiting for them, the flying citadel was now floating above the clouds on top of the Delphini family''s territory.

    "There is a lot of people here so we can''t store the citadel away, instead some will stay to supervise things, while the others go down to meet with the queen", said Aurora as she looked at Miriam and Laura.

    They couldn''t participate directly on the war that wasing, so it was better for them to stay at the citadel anyway, which is why they were perfect for the role, Jasmine and Sarah could grant some authority to others now too, so they could operate the citadel to a certain extent.

    Underwood and the other patriarchs as well as the guys that had submitted to Daimon were also staying behind, just in case too.

    The others nodded and then with Daimon snapping his fingers, arge shadow portal appeared, everyone jumped into it and then they all disappeared.

    The scenery changed from the living room of the citadel, to the throne room of Ae''s mansion, where the queen was sitting with Vincent standing next to her.

    As always, Ae looked pretty with her light blue hair and aquamarine eyes as well as her elegant dress and her crown, as for Vincent, the old Trident Marshal looked strong as ever, in fact he seemed to have gotten a bit younger than before, probably because he has be active once again, for military men like him, being quiet and still is like poison.

    "Wee back", said Ae as she stood up from her throne and rose the sides of her dress, elegantly towards Daimon.

    "It''s been a while kid, we have a lot to discuss", added Vincent as he gazed at Aurora who was happily chatting with Reyne as she looked at Jeanne and Emily.

    With this, the day that will decide the fate of Neptune had finally arrived and no one knew how much things were about to change.

 Chapter 536 What kind of legacy is this?

    Chapter 536 What kind of legacy is this?

    As Daimon was about to greet those two, someone got ahead of him as Mellie shed to hug her older sister.

    "I''m back sis!", the queen was surprised for a second to see Mellie being so affective with her in public, but she wouldn''t be considered the smartest woman in the Mermen Sea if she didn''t realize the reason behind of it.

    Daimon also knew why, Mellie is normally mature for her age, due to the circumstances of her childhood, even when she was facing an imminent death due to the schemes of the pirates, she didn''t lose her temper and was ready to die fighting, her graciousness was revered by those guys from the middle ranked noble families that were present that day.

    Even Daimon couldn''t help but respect that side of her, but it is also true that for a girl her age she has been shouldering more than what she should, which is something she showed Daimonter on.

    Like that day when they found about that her father poisoned her mother under the instructions of the White''s ancestor, or when they went and visited that underwater cave just to find the empty coffin where her mother was supposed to be resting.

    The recent events had been a shock for all the girls regardless of whether they are rted to it or not, Aurora''s daughter returned from the "death", in a different way but still, it doesn''t mean that all of them have a rtive they wish would return like that, but it''s more of a realization that what others think to be impossible, little sis this affective, I would have sent you out of the Mermen Sea some years ago~", yfully said the queen as she patted Mellie''s sometimes it isn''t.

    Marlene who has regained her cheerful attitude is one of them, and so is Mellie, which is why they were in a pretty good mood.

    "Heh, if I would have known that a few days away would make my little sis this affective, I would have sent you out of the Mermen Sea some years ago~", yfully said the queen as she patted Mellie''s head a couple of times.

    "S-Sis!", Mellie eximed, but she didn''t let go of Ae, Daimon saw that Vincent also clearly had some questions for Aurora, so he took the initiative to leave those who needed privacy alone for a moment.

    "Ahem, we have a lot of things to do, but a nice breakfast is a must, how about we install ourselves and continueter?", he said.

    Ae softlyughed as she answered.

    "Make yourselves at home, we''ll wait at the dining room¡­ Daphne, your mother is waiting for you at her room".

    Having said that, the group separated, though most of the girls followed Daimon towards the room that the queen left prepared for when they returned, Aurora and the ones from the Light Pce stayed behind to talk with Vincent, while Daphne and Chris went to where the Duchess was staying, of course Ae kept Melliepany.

    It didn''t take much for Daimon and the others to amodate themselves, since the room was previously prepared, maybe it was a joke from the queen, but this time there was only a single bed in their room, it wasrge enough to amodate the whole group at the same time though.

    While the girls unpacked their stuff, Daimon looked at hismunication devices, there were a couple of messages which he had yet to read from the multiple fronts which his group is covering in Neptune, but nothing rming so he left it to discuss it along with the queen and Vincent as a whole.

    ¡­

    A few minutester, once ethe girls were ready they all left the room to meet with the others at the dining room, it didn''t miss Daimon''s eyes that Daphne''s mother looked rather exhausted, but she was happily sitting with her daughter, so it seemed to be just normal fatigue due to all the work she has had during the past week, she even turned to see Daimon and smiled as she nodded at him.

    Daimon nodded back and then took his seat, the head maid as well as the captain of the guards that served Ae, brought the breakfast and then stood behind of their young miss.

    "For starters, I suppose you have already received news from our two "friends", in the other seas, right?", asked Ae to Daimon as she elegantly cut a fruit.

    "Yes, I must say that I didn''t expect it from that idiot king, but on the other hand I doubt it is his idea to begin with", answered Daimon.

    "Mm, inviting representatives from the four seas to discuss a new "treatment", those were the words that moron dared to say the moment the sun raised today", mumbled the queen.

    Daimon received messages from cktooth and Armando, that Triten, in other words the king of the Mermen Sea, had invited representatives from both the Skelefiends and the natives of the Maelstrom Sea to attend the royal ball of today.

    The curious thing, is that those who were specifically mentioned were Horrorw, ckbeard as well as two of the rulers of the Maelstrom Sea, in other words, Thea and Armando weren''t invited.

    Of course, that put the Mermen Sea in a turmoil, as those guys were dered enemies, but Triten came out to calm down the masses by stating that the Mermen Sea wanted to avoid a way and with that in mind, the ancestor of the royal family himself will being out of seclusion to negotiate with the enemy leaders.

    Not to mention that the Shaman as well as the Matriarch of the Light Pce will be joining to guarantee that a fight doesn''t break out, and if someone tries to stir up trouble will be punished by all the others.

    "Well, nothing really changed for us, our job is to contain and suppress those idiots whether they are being manipted or not", said the Trident Marshal as he stole a gaze at Aurora who sighed to then add.

    "Abaris is confirmed to be an enemy, though I don''t know who he is working with¡­ there was a rat hiding in my Light Pce for so many years, leaking my schedule to him".

    The queen nodded in response.

    "I have finished the preparations on my side, that assistant which Daimon provided has proven to be quite useful, and now all the low and around half of the middle-ranked nobles are under our strict orders tied by contracts", she said referring to Olivia who had returned earlier to help Ae to ckmail and control the nobles involved with ck Wave, from the shadows.

    "The army is also ready, that brat Dominic and the neo noble factions are on our side too, they had their reserved but Triten''stest deration pushed them all to our side, the troops are stationed ording to what we discussed earlier", added Vincent.

    Daimon nodded to then say.

    "Thea hadn''t contacted anyone since she entered the legacy of her ancestor, but her army is ready since her representative is cooperating with us, the same applies to Armando and the White Walker race".

    "Speaking of which, one of the two idiots that came from my native ce has been dealt with, but there is another one, and since the pirates areing, there is a high chance he finally reveals himself, not to mention the scheming guy will most likely act during the royal ball too".

    Vincent sighed as he massaged his temples.

    "So, we''ll basically be surrounded by enemies¡­ forget it, you take care of the global raid and leave Neptune''s battlefield to us", he said.

    Daimon smiled before he took out all the iplete emblems he has gathered so far, to start distributing them.

    Staring with Aisha of course, next the Risha sisters, Mellie, Daphne, Chris, Tessa, Femi, Jasmine, Sarah, Reyne, Cassi andstly Marlene, Daimon included for a total of fifteen people.

    The limit of people he could include in his "team" was of 20, however he couldn''t find that many iplete emblems, not to mention he didn''t have 19 teammates that could go with him into the global raid.

    That being said, besides the girls there was a couple of people in which Daimon had interest to include in his team, which is why he took hisst two remaining iplete emblems as well as a letter which he handed to Vincent.

    "When you find an opportunity give that to Lance, since they are now allies the opportunity is for them, whether they ept or not, it won''t be on our side", he said.

    The old Marshal nodded and then took the letter as well as the two emblems, before saying.

    "I investigated through the records of past years along with little Ae, there should be quite a few emblems in the treasury of the royal family, but I couldn''t confirm what has happened to them, since they weren''t considered valuables".

    "I see¡­ well there is nothing we can do about it, we''ll confirm if they are still in the treasury when we arrive at the royal ballter", said Daimon.

    The rest of the conversation was pretty much just tactics and instructions on what to do, depending on the situation, and after that, the girls left the room to do their own things, leaving behind the queen, Vincent, Aurora, the Duchess andstly Daimon.

    "Kid, why don''t we justunch an attack before everything starts, at this rate the royal ball is going to be a bloodbath, not to mention we have more than enough reasons to", said Vincent who was looking at Aurora, only to see Daimon shaking his head in response.

    "We have enough blood for that, the only variables are the Maximum ranked, as long as you and senior Aurora can contain Abaris and the White''s ancestor, everything will be fine, we have Armando to deal with Horrorw, as well as plenty of high stage Sters to sh with the enemy ones, did you manage to contact that guy?", he said.

    Vincent''s eyes glowed for a second as he nodded.

    "Yes, we can leave ckbeard to them, you are quite a scary kid you know", said the old man, which made Daimon smirk.

    "I just know how to assign "resources" where they are needed", he said.

    "Ahem, changing the subject a bit, don''t you have anything else to tell me, regarding¡­ the coffin you retrieved with Mellie?", asked Ae.

    Daimon could see the expectancy in the queen''s eyes, she probably wanted to hear from him, that another amazing thing will happen since he is involved, unfortunately that wasn''t the case this time, at least notpletely.

    "I¡­ don''t know, the water inside the coffin isn''t regr water, it is filled withws, simr to the water at the tri-coloredke, but different at the same time, what I can tell you is that it should be beneficial for Mellie and you to use it", he said.

    "Mm¡­", the queen couldn''t help but let out a slightly disappointed sound, but ultimately, she nodded.

    "If there is nothing else, that little girl told me she found a way to cure Bell, would you mind giving her some treatment¡­ I''m going to have my hands full with Abaris, so she and Sylvie will be leading the army of the Light Pce", said Aurora with a happy smile.

    Daimon had a bad premonition, but he still nodded, since this was part of his deal with the Light Pce, Sarah has gotten rid of her curse, so it''s not necessarily a lie that she now knows how deal with Bell''s curse, even if it is different than hers and if it doesn''t work, he still has a way to forcefully remove some of the marks using the crystalizedher from the core of the Nethereals which he has stored in the inventory.

    "Also have a look at sister Vs, I need my most trustedmander at my side after all", warmly said Ae as she gazed at the Duchess who smiled in response.

    "I''m fine, I''m just tired, a few hours of sleep should be enough", said the Duchess, still Daimon whose eyes were glowing behind his mask, shook his head.

    "Taking a look won''t hurt, I''m not a healer though, senior Aurora will be more effective in that aspect", he said.

    Daimon then took his leave, the crazy girl was already waiting for him at the corridor, with a bright smile on her pretty face.

    "We can''t start with you, so let''s go~", since he saw that smile on Sarah''s face, Daimon knew something was wrong, but he sighed and just followed the crazy girl to Bell''s room.

    Sarah happily opened the door and invited Daimon in, so far everything was good, Bell wasying face down on the bed with her face resting on her pillow.

    "When the curse ced on me was lifted, I realized how to deal with mom''s one", she said as she took out arge container with a dark purple liquid that though had no smell, made Daimon frown.

    "I know you are crazy but poisoning your mother to death is a bit too much", said Daimon which only made the crazy girl giggle as some wisps of purple mist were radiated from her.

    "I learned that the only way to get rid of that guy''sher, was with anotherher, that''s what you did for us at the beginning and it worked like a charm, however,her is also a type of mana".

    "Only those of low rank are consumed by theirher, since their affinities aren''t strong enough to find the bnce required for it to work, the problem is that my poison was strong enough to overwhelm that guy''sher with the help of the newher I absorbed, which resulted in me obtaining my own, but mom is more inclined towards darkness, so I thought, who has the purest darkness affinity in this world~", she said as she held onto Daimon''s arm to then drag him towards Bell''s bed.

    "So then, what''s the use of the poison?", asked Daimon, there were too many different things mixed there, probably including all the poisons Sarah obtained from Kerrol.

    "Ah that, you have to simte the curse by smearing the marks with that poison, with your own hands, since mom''s imagination isn''t as good as mine~", she yfully said.

    "Huh?", Daimon was confused by Sarah''s words.

    "How cruel, making me say it out loud, that''s why I can only be yours~", said the crazy girl before she whispered at him.

    "When I was getting rid of my curse, I had to feel a touch that made me feel "warm", luckily, I had run a simtion in my mind enough time ever since we met, so that I didn''t need to experience it in my own flesh, but mom is way meeker in that aspect, so you''ll have to do it first-hand~".

    "I''m not "meek", you are too much!", eximed Bell who finally couldn''t keep quiet anymore, only for the piece of cloth that was covering her back to fall down, revealing her naked skin.

    Now, seeing a naked back isn''t something to feel ashamed about, at least not for Daimon, the problem is that Bell''s whole upper body was naked and while from this angle, he couldn''t see the front, he could see the sides of her chest and¡­ there were curse marks there now too.

    "Ahem, we''ll start with the back today, could you please lie down miss Bell?", said Daimon, which made Bell slowly look downwards, just to see that her front was exposed too, and immediately lower her body against the bed, while using the bedsheet to cover the side.

    Sarah saw her mother who seemed as if she was about to cry and she giggled, as she handed the container with poison to Daimon.

    "Be gentle with mom~", she said.

    Daimon inwardly sighed, regardless of the method he''ll have to see anyway, even if it was solved in the less efficient way which involved him using Demon Light, which unlike with Sarah, might end up hurting Bell, he''ll have to see either with his eyes or with his mana sense, just like he did with Sarah.

    "Mocking your mother, it seems you need a nice beating to return to the correct path¡­", mumbled Bell, but she still nodded at Daimon as she amodated herself to befortable.

    Daimon poured the poison on her back and the curse marks immediately reacted by shining in a dark purple light, which tried to attack Daimon, which actually triggered hiszy ass magic core.

    "Now that''s a rare sight, are you finally doing something?", said Daimon as he saw the energy radiated by the curse marks, be dragged into his magic core to be devoured, until there was nothing left of it.

    "Woah, that sure does elerate things, as expected of my fated one", said the crazy girl, as she saw the curse marks losing their dark purple color, and then fading away, turning into dark mist.

    Sarah then took out a pile of high-grade dark mana crystals, which she extorted out of the church of Kerrol and Antonio, for this exact purpose, and then gave Daimon puppy eyes.

    "That''s not needed, I obtained this for you two ording to our deal you know?", said Daimon as he took out a big piece of the crystalizedher from his inventory, just to see the crazy girl softly smile at him.

    "I wouldn''t mind having to give you "something" in exchange for it~", she said as she licked her lips.

    "Hey, I''m still alive so control yourself for a bit", said Bell, to then gaze at Daimon who bitterly smiled as he ced a few crystals on top of her back as well the crystalizedher, to then release some of his darkness mana.

    "Uhhh", afortable sound couldn''t help but escape from Bell''s mouth, the floating dark mist was attracted to the mana crystals as well as the crystalizedher and Daimon''s mana, making all the ingredients mix and then melt on Bell''s back, before they were absorbed into her body.

    "¡­", silence reigned for a second, but Daimon didn''t worry, the next moment he sawrge quantities of darkness mana gathering from all over the ce, so he took a step backwards and the crazy girl did the same, she leaned against Daimon''s shoulder as she watched with an excited expression, her mother recovering enough to not be considering a dead person walking.

    The sudden spike of darkness mana got the attention of all the people on the mansion, but when they noticed the origin of it, instead of worrying they celebrated, Sylvie especially as she rushed through the corridor towards Bell''s room.

    The phenomenon didn''tst too long, before everything returned to normal, the result was a Bell who was now sitting on her bed, her upper body which was naked, was now covered by a pitch ck mist, and her pupils which are normally dark purple where now of ck too.

    Not to mention she was a middle stage Ster now, and her vitality had replenished almost fully, the curse wasn''t lifted unlike Sarah, but her life wasn''t in danger anymore.

    "Thanks¡­", just as Bell turned to see Daimon to thank him, the door of her room opened and Sylvie entered, just to see Bell whose upper body was naked and then see Daimon and Sarah who were standing near her bed.

    "S-Sorry, you are busy sister, we''ll talkter!", Sylvie immediately shed out of the room, leaving behind a Bell who was speechless, she didn''t know how to useher so of course when she lost her concentration, it was dispelled, so you can imagine the rest.

    Sarah who saw Daimon''s right index finger covered in poison,ughed and then catching Daimon with his guard off, she licked it and even put it in her mouth.

    Daimon turned to see the crazy girl, but he surprisingly didn''t stop it, against all his wishes he left her until she fully cleaned the poison, just to see her smiling.

    "Delicious~".

    Daimon cleared his throat to then say.

    "Ahem, now that you have your ownher, you can wear out the curse on your own, I''ll assist you when the time to lift ites, I''ll take my leave since I still have to pay a visit to the Duchess".

    Having said that, Daimon left the room, Bell remained froze for a few more seconds, before she gazed at her daughter who was looking at her with a happy smiling expression.

    "You nned all this right, you little girl¡­ did you know the requirements to break my curse", she mumbled.

    "Well, it was just a hunch, having him "involved" worked for me, so I guessed it should be the same to you, if it was the me before Kerrol, I would have asked for more than just imagining, but now¡­ I think it is more exciting this way~", said the crazy girl as she handed her mother something to cover herself.

    "Don''t cause him troubles at the global raid, we owe him more than we could ever repay him at this point", said Bell as she left her body fall backwards on the bed.

    Sarahid down on the bed next to her mother and then turned to see her as she giggled.

    "I know of a way though~", she said before she whispered some words at her mother, who limited to bitterlyugh.

    Daimon who was walking through the corridor towards Daphne''s room, where the Duchess was resting, looked at the notification that popped a second ago and he sighed.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Stealing from the hero (Clear Water Kingdom) has been updated]

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Hero of Light (0/1) ¨¤ (1/1)]

    ''Obtaining the core of the fortress didn''tplete the damn requirement, but letting that crazy girl drink the poison of my ws and curing Bell did¡­ or could it have been because I saw and touched her, what the hell kind of legacy is this!'', he thought.

    His instincts told him to add some of his own poison to the solution applied on Bell''s back, so he secretly did, he never imagined that the crazy girl would do that, and he wasn''t going to let her, but then he saw the notification being triggered and he actually got lost in the moment.

    ''Hahaha, well, every part of the mission has its own "requirements", you gained the trust of the queen and princess, when they gave you that pendant right, it seems like you gained something from that pair as well~'', jokingly said Evangeline.

    Ultimately Daimon shook his head, he knew there was more behind of the requirements from the mission than what met the eye, for Adam just "obtaining" would have been enough for him toplete the mission, but he wasn''t walking in the same path as him, for him fulfilling the requirements had a much deeper meaning.

    Curiously even if he didn''t understand it at the moment, if it was marked as fulfilled, it''s because he had achieved something significant.

 Chapter 537 All the currents will converge

    Chapter 537 All the currents will converge

    -While still lost in his thoughts over what happened earlier, Daimon soon arrived at the room where the Duchess was resting, how did he know it, well, Daphne was waiting for him outside with a somewhat worried expression on her pretty face.

    The first princess of the Mermen Sea, was despite her incapacity to speak, able tomunicate quite easily, at least for those who knew her like Mellie, Chris andtely Daimon.

    Her green eyes which had a blue shade, her face and other gestures where the way shemunicated with others and right now Daimon could see her being worried about her mother, when she was happy not too long ago when they returned.

    "Don''t put that face, you saw that sudden surge of darkness mana right, that was miss Bell recovering enough to not die due to her curse anymore", said Daimon as he patted Daphne''s shoulder a couple of times.

    Daphne''s eyes sparkled, though Daimon didn''t directly say it, how could she not understand the meaning behind his works, "If she could recover, then why wouldn''t your mother be the same", of course that also meant that he was willing to help.

    She sweetly smiled at Daimon and then opened the door to drag him inside of her mother''s room.

    Daimon didn''t mind Daphne''s enthusiasm, he instead evaluated his surroundings, the room was filled with the smell of medicine, now, Daimon''s senses are incredibly sharp, that includes his nose, so he could actually recognize some of the herbs used in the medicine that was used in this room.

    Of course, he could smell other¡­ things, like the natural fragrance of the Duchess who was sitting on the edge of her bed, drinking a potion which Chris handed her, or the Mermen princess who was standing quite close to him, but he ignored it, being thankful for all the years of "practice" which he lived through by being surrounded by Erin and the others, practically 24/7.

    "So, the origin of the problem isn''t physical, could you exin me what happened?", said Daimon to the Duchess who just finished drinking a potion.

    "Mm, my body is fine, but I have been feeling mentally tiredtely, could because I was worried about a couple of little girls, I should be fine now, but just in case I took a few Serene Breeze potions as well as some drops of the three-colored water you gave me", said the Duchess.

    The potion she mentioned had the capacity to relieve the mind, mages tend to get stressed rather easily, so these kinds of potions are a must, of course there are other ways to avoid it, the ssic alcohol, debauchery, money or violence are a daily sight in the world of magic, but naturally the Duchess has no inclination to such things, so it is normal to conclude that she has just been too busy with all that has been happeningtely.

    And Daimon would have reached the same conclusion, if it wasn''t for the fact that he knew how effective should the three-colored water be to soothe the mind, the fact that the Duchess has drank it over the past days and she is still in a somewhat affected state, means that this isn''t a simple headache caused by overworking.

    On the other hand, he couldn''t perceive anything bad from her, which again even not having information could be intel by itself, and there is something that has been bothering Daimon for quite some time.

    "From the outside I don''t see any problem, miss Ae asked me to take a look, but it ultimately depends on you, since I will have to use an eye spell and probably mana sense", he said.

    The previous is the reason as to why, doctors and healers that tend to noble women are always females, most of the times a much deep check is needed, so it''s impossible to not see or even touch in some cases.

    Of course, if there is no option then there is no use toin, and those who are dying don''t have the right to be picky, but this situation is not like that, so the choice is up to the Duchess.

    "No problem, Chris, Daphne, please leave the room for a moment", calmly said the Duchess, those two stared at each other for a couple of seconds before they left the room.

    Once they left, the Duchess turned to see Daimon as she offered her hand to him, to check one''s body contact of some kind was needed after all.

    "Here you go", she said.

    Daimon nodded and then grabbed her wrist as he extended his mana sense through her body, of course his mana sense wasn''t strong enough to view everything, but the idea was to see if there was something rted to either Nethereals or a system user affecting the Duchess.

    "I have been wondering, since I saw that small scar on her neck, but was Daphne always incapable of talking?", asked Daimon as he inspected the body of the Duchess looking for any anomality.

    "Oh, did that little girl show you that, I guess it should be expected given how close you two have gotten", mumbled the Duchess.

    Daimon nodded, the first time when Daphne stayed with them in the cave after he lent her a hand, she kept that pendant she used to cover the scar on her neck, butter she stopped minding to cover it in front of him, Daimon didn''t really pay attention to it which is something Daphne liked about him, other people always red at the scar on her neck which is why she started using something to cover it.

    "It was an ident during her birth¡­ the one who was responsible for it was executed personally by me, but the damage was done and since she was too little, she couldn''t take a pill nor a potion strong enough to help her recover, by the time she grew enough it was toote, the mana circuits she lost had scarred and it was impossible to regenerate them without having to cut too deep, her life will be in danger and there is no way to tell if it will even work", said the Duchess with a gloomy voice.

    Medicine that can regenerate lost parts is quite strong, and oftenes with side effects like temporary weakness, Daphne was a newborn baby so her body wouldn''t have been able to endure the process, basically it was her voice or her life, so the Duchess epted the me and took the decision.

    That being said, never has Daphne showed any resentment towards her mother, this subject is something that has caught Daimon''s attention, there are alchemists who brew potions and create pills, there are doctors who diagnose, apply or distribute said pills, or healers that can help others regrow limbs or cure sickness, but the knowledge people in this world had regarding surgery and the like is way too scarce.

    Probably because they can just drink something to cure themselves, or receive a healing spell and that''s it, it''s a cultural difference, on the other hand it probably has to do with the fact, that the ones who can see mana circuits are really, really few, since they aren''t physical unlike nerves which can be avoided to mess up with as long as the medic is careful and trained.

    Every person has different mana circuits, located in different positions, arrangements and ces, one mistake and that person might lose the capacity to circte mana through that part of the body, if it is a main circuit, then forget about magic, there will be a life danger by itself as the body won''t be able to properly process mana.

    "I see, well, magic herbs, potions or pills that can cure broken or missing mana circuits are certainly really hard toe by and so it an alchemist that can process them, but there is a certain person back in my gxy who might be able to help, if the Duchess doesn''t have a problem, we can give it a try after all this ends", said Daimon as he finished his diagnose.

    The Duchess''s eyes glowed for a second, the prices of treasures needed for something like that and the payment for an alchemist to do the job, would be insanely high, and yet she didn''t see even the slightest tinge of falsehood or doubt on the face of the silver haired youth that has been breaking any kind ofmon sense ever since she met him.

    "I agree with one condition¡­ you call sister Ae and even senior Aurora by their names, but I am still the "Duchess", even when my daughter is staying in the same bed as you, that doesn''t sound fair", she jokingly said.

    Daimon bitterly smiled in response, to then say.

    "To be honest, I only know yourst name, which is weird now that I think about it, even miss Ae calls you "sister Vs", nor have I heard anyone mentioning it before".

    "Ah right, I had forgotten that you aren''t a native of Neptune, my name was given to me by my mother while myst name came from my father, I stopped using my name due to a family drama with my mother, but at this point she is dead so there is no real reason to keep the act, let me present myself again, I''m Grace Vs, the current Matriarch and Duchess of the Vs family", she said as she rose the sides of her dress, it was aical situation, since she was sitting and Daimon was still holding her hand and running his mana sense through her body, which meant he was practically seeing everything.

    "A pleasure", said Daimon as he retrieved his hand, Rita had also scanned her with her mana sense, and said the results out loud for both Daimon and Grace to hear them.

    "It was as you expected Daimon, she isn''t sick nor fatigated or wounded, it was really hard to notice but a curse to affect her mind was used on her a long time ago", said the undead head maid from within Daimon''s shadow.

    "Nethereals?", asked Daimon just to see Rita''s head peek out of his shadow as she shook it in response.

    "No, but it was a really strong and perfectly executed curse, I wouldn''t have noticed if she wasn''t in her current state of affectation, her life isn''t in any danger and the curse had a one time effect, so she isn''t influenced or anything, she is just suffering a side effect that causes her to lose focus, receiving the favor of the young master prevented her from losing her capacity to use magic, so she should be thankful for that", said Rita, referring to the three-colored water that Grace has been drinking practically at all times since this started.

    Daimon chuckled as he gazed at Grace to then ask.

    "Any suspects?".

    "Well, I had fought against the Skelefiends and pirates quite a few times, some of them used curses, or illusions so it might have been them¡­ that ungraceful mother of mine was also adept in illusion magic and I wouldn''t be surprised if she casted them on me more than once, since she cheated on my father regrly, I might have caught her a few times so she made me forget about it, or something, if that''s the case I''m better not remembering about it", said the Duchess as she shrugged.

    Daimon shook his head, thest option had some credibility, being the target of illusions with ill intentions from a young age by a way stronger mage, will leave a mark for sure, in any case the three-colored water will get rid of this secondary effect without any problem, it''s worth mentioning that Grace would have suffered quite a bit if it wasn''t for Daimon, because the three-colored water is basically the best mind-cleansing thing that exists in Neptune, and probably in the four gxies as well, but its efficiency depends on purity and amount.

    And she wouldn''t have been able to obtain the amount and quality needed, from the Minister even if she was to use her authority as the Duchess of the most important territory, when ites to mineral resources in the Mermen Sea.

    Seeing Daimon preparing to leave, the Duchess gazed at Daimon for a second before giving him a storage ring.

    "That''s the gift I mentioned to you back then, take care of that little girl for me during the global raid~", she said with a bright smile on her face, something that was rare to see on Grace, who is usually stern contrary to her daughter.

    "I will, she is my friend after all", said Daimon as he left the room, those two saw him nodding at them.

    "She is fine, just a remaining side effect of an old "wound", it will disappear in a couple of days, I''ll check on her then", he said.

    "Thanks", said Chris, while Daphne smiled at Daimon, that was a thanks from her.

    As Daimon walked back to his room, Rita who wasfortably swimming in Daimon''s shadow, couldn''t help but notice her young master being lost in his thoughts.

    ''Is there something bothering you, Daimon?'', she asked, she tried to call him by his name as much as possible since it was part of the reward she requested, Daimon didn''t mind so there was no problem at all.

    ''I have told you about the missions I get, right'', said Daimon.

    ''Mm, they are quite often rted to women'', answered Rita which nearly made Daimon trip.

    ''Ahem, only thest one, but yes, I don''t believe in coincidences, there is a high chance that among the friends I made in Neptune, they are mostly rted to my missions, since "heroes" were involved'', said Daimon.

    ''I see, well, as long as they remain at Daimon''s side, I''m pretty sure they will be fine'', mumbled Rita.

    Daimon chuckled, Rita has be much more talkativetely, she is also more human-like and refinedpared to Horals, not only in appearance but in personality as well.

    ''Oh well, there is point in trying to force it, the first "gem" requirement was met quite fast, but then the legacy took quite a while, we''ll see how it goes at the global raid'', thought Daimon.

    Bell turned out to be part of the requirement for the legacy as far as he understood, whatever the case, those girls won''t be leaving any time soon.

    ¡­

    The rest of the morning went on pretty much uneventful, for Daimon at least, he took it as a rest, since everything will start at the royal ballter, so besides resting in his room and chatting with Aisha and the others nothing else happened.

    And before anyone noticed, the sun had started to leave the sky, the citizens were out in the streets having their own celebrations and the flying ships started to arrive at the royal ports of the main continent managed by the White family.

    Naturally, seeing the representatives from the pirates, Skelefiends and even magic beasts from the Mermen Sea that had taken a temporary human form, but were using full body armor, drew some animosity from the people, since they were all enemies of the Mermen Sea.

    Conflicts would have normally been unavoidable, if not for the fact that there were members of the army, wearing the emblem of the Trident Marshal, watching over both sides, ready to act the moment anyone tried anything.

    "Heh, it seems like the king of this ce isn''t exactly the one ruling, don''t you agree old w?", asked a tall man with a long ck beard, at a mummified figure, they were nothing less than ckbeard and Horrorw themselves, who were inside the same carriage.

    "I don''t care, that woman still has my fianc¨¦e captive and that old man has been kicking my ass, demanding an exnation", said Horrorw, referring to Armando.

    In what the world regarded, Shirel was still imprisoned somewhere by Ae, which is in part why Horrorw had stopped all kind of aggressions towards the Mermen Sea.

    "Hahaha, well, if the Mermen king can ask for a diplomatic meeting with even the magic beasts from the Maelstrom Sea, I don''t see why a new agreement can''t be reached, as long as I receive enough benefits, peace doesn''t sound bad", said the pirate as he leaned backwards on his seat, naturally as his eyes and mocking expression suggested, he wasn''t being serious at all.

    Leaving the enemies aside, Daimon who had finished preparing left his room and walked towards the living room, there everyone was gathered.

    "Let''s go, to where all the currents are converging", he said.

    Vincent nodded and then he tapped the ground with his staff, creating a portal that dragged all the presents into it.

 Chapter 538 A tricky event (part 1)

    Chapter 538 A tricky event (part 1)

    The group suddenly found itself in the dimensional tunnel, Daimon looked at the girls,pared to yesterday, the uneasiness that could be perceived from them waspletely gone.

    The Risha sisters were especially in quite a good mood, the crazy girl was even happier than normal and there was also Daphne who has recovered her usual cheerful aspect, since her mother had a nice night of rest and looked way better than before.

    "Remember, no matter what happens, stick together, the global raid will be the main event of today, but I''m pretty sure something big will happen before that", said Daimon.

    Normally, Daimon would have made it so not everyone arrived at the same time, since it is always better to not let others see what your allied front is like.

    But unlike others, the "front" he is showing is not even close to what he has in storage for his enemies, so in this case it will be better for them to think that he has gone all out with two Maximum Ster ranks at his side, as well as the queen and even the neo nobles who will be joining them soon.

    And as Daimon expected, the moment the group came out of the dimensional tunnel, which left them at the entrance of the royal pce, a privilege that only Vincent and the Minister had, the gazes of all the other people who were invited naturally pointed at them.

    If this was a usual event, the guests would have been taken inside of the royal pce, even before the main host came out, in this case that was the White ancestor who ording to the derations made by the king will being out only when the most important part of the event starts.

    But, due to that same main host, things have changed, because the White ancestor is recognized as the strongest in battle terms in Neptune, so that much face is supposed to be given to him, not to mention he is also the second oldest Maximum ranked, belonging to the same generation as Armando.

    That being said, none of them are the oldest beings alive in Neptune, that honor is on the hands of the magic beasts, and as one would expect they didn''t like to be put on hold.

    "Humph, I knew that the natives of the Mermen Sea weren''t trustable, but not only their king isn''t personally weing me, even their queen is arriving after the guests!", a loud rough voice came from one of the many groups that were waiting at the entrance of the royal pce.

    Daimon and the others looked at the origin of the voice, and found it quite easily, which was understandable as it came from a wall-like full armored man, whose height reached the four meters.

    It wasn''t hard to guess the identity of the other party, especially with the aspects of the magic beasts that took a temporary human form, standing behind that giant man, not to mention his aura was ignored, but a masked young man bypassed him to go straight towards the gate of the royal pce, making the stage light rather simr to one that Daimon knew pretty well, it was another one of the rulers of the Maelstrom Sea, like Thea, not to mention it was a high stage Ster rank with the qualifications to go against a Maximum ster human expert.

    Unfortunately for the giant guy, he was not onlypletely ignored, but a masked young man bypassed him to go straight towards the gate of the royal pce, making the stage light immediately change its focus.

    "Halt, the king will open the gates once it is time for the event to start!", shouted one of the two guards, just to see the masked silver haired youth taking out a golden que to show it to the guard.

    "That sounds good and all, but what does it have to do with the fact that I havee to get my reward from the royal treasury?", mockingly said Daimon.

    Let alone the guards, many of the high ranked nobles, guests, the pirates and the Chaulioudus ruler who is the one that was looking for troubles earlier, all gritted their teeth, a mere star ranked knight wanted to im the honor to be the first one to enter the residence of the host of the event!

    "I-I''m sorry but the king has ordered that¡­", the other guard tried to wash his hands by using the king''s name, just to be interrupted by Ae.

    "How interesting, as far as I remember from thews stablished by the founders, to deny a golden que holder its rightful reward, the king, the queen and the trident marshal all have to agree, and I''m pretty sure I did not such a thing".

    "¡­", a sepulchral silence fell on the whole area, before an angered female voice broke the silence.

    "Just to have your pet enter before everyone you are causing such a scene, and you dare to call yourself the queen!", said Irma, in other words the mother of the crown prince, speaking of which, Terry Malleus who had recovered during the past week was coldly ring at Daimon as he stood next to his mother, his previous schr fa?ade was nowhere to be seen.

    Since this event involved Maximum Ster ranks and those in equal standing from the four seas, even the royal family had to wait alongside them, only the king, the ancestor and the staff that would be serving during the event remained inside the pce, of course that included the personal guards of the king.

    "Oh my, if it isn''t Irma, why are you getting angry over something that has to do with the winner of an event, that ispletely unrted to you", calmly said Ae with a little smile on her pretty face.

    Irma''s eyes saw red, how could she not know what Ae was insinuating, "your son lost, so you don''t have a say in this matter", as always, the queen''s tongue was really sharp.

    "How dare¡­", before Irma couldsh out, Ae''s eyes glowed as she said with a smile that wasn''t smile.

    "Not to mention I''m only fulfilling my duty to enforce thew, I''m sure you understand right?".

    Irma''s body trembled, over the past week the devilish woman in front of her, basically uprooted all the low and middle noble families which she has been raising in the shadows, for the moment when the session war starts, basically destroying twenty years of efforts like it was nothing.

    To everyone''s surprise, the doors of the pce opened and Triten apanied by the captain of the royal guard came out, the king had a ck expression on his face as he said.

    "The queen is right, which is why I have decided to start the event early, since one of the stars has somewhere else to be and it might ovep with the first dance".

    Not all the guests were elegant or even educated, so Triten could feel the mocking gazes of the pirates and the disdain from the magic beasts, as he was forced to change his schedule over the whims of a member of the younger generation, well, they attributed this p on the face to Ae, at least until they saw Daimon walking until he was a few centimeters away from the entrance.

    "Y-You¡­", Triten felt his lungs filled with anger, the idea of himing out was so that he could save up the situation, he thought that with this Ae will take a step back, but the silver haired youth was now standing in front of him, waiting for him the king himself to open the gates personally.

    And the worst part is that he had to do it, because he tried to use Daimon as the excuse of him having to start the event early, but the captain of the royal guard took the bullet for him this time, as he extended his hand to open the gate.

    "I thank the king and all the esteemed guests for their consideration", casually said Daimon as he crossed through the gate, not without making a gesture towards his group, which caught the attention of the other guests.

    "Are they going to¡­", the crowd was speechless as they saw Daimon keeping the gate open so that all his group could enter, only then he moved aside leaving Triten whose eyes were spewing fire and the captain of the royal guard who was coldly ring at him, behind.

    "Hahaha, that kid surely knows how to start a party", the thunderousugh of Dominic broke the tense atmosphere, following him all the neo noble faction moved forwards and then the other guests were all waked from their stupor, meaning they rushed towards the entrance, being thest to enter would bring shame to their family, force after all.

    "Tideus, please escort the champion to the royal treasury", said Triten as he turned around to walk towards his wives and the princes.

    "What a coincidence, it was going to ask uncle to lead the way, it would be a problem if he gets lost after all", Triten felt as if someone was kicking him in the balls, as he heard Ae speaking, but he swallowed his anger and didn''t say anything else.

    And that''s what led us to the current scene, in which Daimon had separated from the group, and was apanied by the two strongest members of the Malleus family as they walked towards the royal treasury.

    "I have to say Vincent, that I didn''t think you''ll ever allow yourself to be used to throw dirt at the face of the royal family, what a disgrace, has that crazy woman corrupted that so called steel moral of yours", said Tideus as he red at Daimon.

    The old trident marshal limited to shake his head before saying.

    "Face, disgrace, what nonsense, the honor of a leader is determined by how they protect their people".

    "Humph, that stupid belief is what ended making you lose everything you worked so hard for", coldly said Tideus only to see Vincent smirking.

    "Losing huh¡­ do you think that you would be the patriarch if I hadn''t given up the position, all you have today was gifted to you by me".

    "What did you say!", Tideus couldn''t help but raise his voice only to feel his body going cold the next second as Vincent looked at him from the corner of his eyes.

    "Traditionally, the strongest "Malleus" is the one to lead the royal guard, in other words no matter what you do, you would have been the vice-captain now if I had any attachment to being the patriarch of the family, luckily for you, my duty is not with the royal family, nor the king, the trident marshal protects the people nothing more and nothing less".

    Daimon who was walking next to Vincent couldn''t help but p a couple of times.

    "Well said", he said, making the old man bitterly smile.

    "Sorry for the rambles of this old man, let''s go get you reward, now if you could guide us, please, captain of the royal guard", he said.

    Tideus who had a vein bulging on his neck, wanted to refuse and challenge Vincent to a duel right here, but even if he didn''t believe he will lose right away, this wasn''t the time for that, so he ultimately swallowed his anger and walked ahead of them.

    Daimon could see the old man sighing in silence, he didn''t miss that Vincent called Tideus "captain of the royal guard" for the first time, the old man has determined himself¡­ to kill Tideus if he tries to attack themter, because he won''t have attention to spare if he has to fight with another Maximum Ster, so this was his way to steel his heart, by listening to what Tideus believed in, though he already transportation array, Tideus used his personal token to unlock the knew the answer to that.

    They didn''t take long to arrive at a closed room with a transportation array, Tideus used his personal token to unlock the array and then turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "I already did my part, use the golden que to enter the treasury, you have one hour and you can only take one thing, try something and I''ll cut your head, once you decide just use the que to be taken out, your hour starts now so piss off".

    Daimon smirked in response to Tideus stopping even the feigned courtesy he had in public, he nodded at Vincent before doing as he was told not without thinking.

    ''Words are empty, let me show you how to really insult someone''.

    Seeing the silver haired youth''s smirk, the captain of the royal guard felt a certain unease in his heart, but he couldn''t put his finger on it, so he shrugged it off and instead red at Vincent.

    ''I was going to ask his majesty to keep you as a ve, but you can go and die, I''ll be a Maximum Ster and guide the Malleus to the glory!'', he thought.

    ¡­

    At apletely different part within the royal pce, there was a ck robed figure moving like a ghost through the shadows, maids and guards were bypassed like nothing by said figure, who then heard Aisha''s melodious voice in his mind.

    ''Everything went as nned darling, I''ll look around and tell you if I find any of the things on the list you gave me, still to think you''ll "rece" me with another vampire girl, I guess I''ll have to be the bigger person and teach her what are the customs of our race~''.

    Daimon nearly tripped down, which wouldn''t have had any real consequences as he was using both the effect of the hollow suit and the bracelet of the god of mischief to turn himself into part of the environment.

    ''Ahem, we actually have a pending matter to discuss regarding her, but leaving that aside, the aura of the three Npsi do resemble yours'', he said.

    ''Mm, I was surprised too, perhaps it''s because the purity of their lineage is on a simr level to mine, which makes sense as they are first generations too, but don''t believe you can divert my attention from the real issue, are nning to drink her blood?'', cutely asked Aisha with a slight tinge of jealousy in her voice.

    Daimon who was shing through the many guards and detection arrays, while avoiding physical restrictions thanks to blink, couldn''t help but inwardlyugh.

    ''Well, vampires are judged by the number of "brides" they are able to have, or does my Aisha want to be the only vampire of the family'', he jokingly said.

    ''Humph, I''ll think about it, she is as easy to read as Jasmine so at least she isn''t a scheming backstabbing blood sucker, like those bitches from the Naktis family branches'', said Aisha referring to Victor''s wives.

    ''Oh, I''m finally at the stupid treasury, I''ll contact youter, don''t forget that your first dance is mine darling~'', with that, Aisha stoppedmunicating through the mental connection.

    Daimon chuckled, this was expected as he asked Aisha to change her appearance into him to then go inside the royal treasury, she normally wouldn''t ask for something in return, but all the girls seemed to be discussing about who should take the first dance with her darling, you can imagine the rest.

    As to why Daimon asked Aisha to take his ce, while he erased his presence and turned into a ghost that was moving through the royal pce, the answer is quite simple, he was going to pay a secret visit to the White ancestor.

    ''Flirting while under the mana sense of that old monster that is recovering under the castle, you truly are something my dear host'', said Evangeline with a sleepy voice.

    ''I don''t see the problem, he didn''t notice Rita counter-tracking him, not to mention his attention is focused in a specific ce, I doubt there will be a chance to regain something once the war breaks outter'', said Daimon as he reached a dead end at one of the corners of the basement of the pce.

    ''Rita, can you scan where does that hidden array take you to and then open a portal to that ce?'', he asked.

    ''I''m already on it!'', enthusiastically said the undead head maid, which made Daimon nod, it was time to get some answers.

    ''To think I would find someone with a simr quantity ofws as Calvin''s grandfather, oh well, his lifespan is ending so he is older and still stuck in the Ster rank, old Vincent will have it hard but I don''t see him losing easily'', thought Daimon.

    ''It''s done Daimon, the array leads to a space deep underground that is not even below this pce, but at the north side of this city'', said Rita.

    ''Well, that makes sense, since the mansion of the extended White family is there, take me there please''.

    ''Mm'', with a little nod, Daimon''s invisible figure sank into the shadows as he was transported through a shadow portal.

 Chapter 539 A tricky event (part 2)

    Chapter 539 A tricky event (part 2)

    A couple of secondster Daimon found himself in a zero illuminated dimensional tunnel, floatingfortably, the distance between the royal castle and the northeast part of the city wasn''t that big, so Daimon was a bit confused about why Rita didn''t instantly take him to his destination.

    The undead head maid slowly emerged from within Daimon''s shadow, which was surprisingly visible even within this dark space, with an apologetic expression on her pretty face to then say.

    "Sorry, this happened because my skills arecking, there are too many detection arrays and deviations on the space that surrounds our destination so I had to move through arge amount of virtually non-existent breaches, we''ll be arriving in five minutes, I''m willing to ept any punishment from the young mast¡­", before she could finish her sentence, Rita heard Daimon saying.

    "What are you saying, if even Rita has trouble to not get detected that can only mean that where we are going has something that the White ancestor doesn''t want others to see or know about, I''ll grant you a rewardter for this discovery".

    Rita''s eyes sparkled as she brightly smiled.

    "Thanks Daimon!", she said before diving into Daimon''s shadows once again while happily humming, which made Daimon chuckle at the fact that a second ago she seemed as if she was about to cry.

    ''For an undead who is supposed to be insensible, she is quite a worrywart, especially since for the first time my instincts told me that if I was careless when using blink, I might have been detected¡­'', thought Daimon.

    The level of spatial arrays in Neptune is way lower than that of the four gxies to begin with, not to mention that Daimon''s spatial skills have yet to be detected or negated by anything so far, that being said there has been one time where the range of teleportation was reduced, and that was¡­ at the tunnel that led to Dima''s den.

    Of course, that doesn''t mean that if he tried to sneak in, he was going to be discovered, but if he wasn''t careful, there was a chance of "something" different being detected by the formations, and that will be a pain in the ass.

    Such was the usefulness of Rita''s shadow portals, she found a way to infiltrate that was wless though she had to take some time, such an achievement was worth a reward in Daimon''s eyes.

    ''Well, that snake woman could probably do the same for you, but she would have pierced through the restrictions instead of evading them, so this maid of yours certainly obtained one of the best abilities to be of help for you as long as you keep her by your side at all times of course~'', jokingly said Evangeline.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled but then returned to reality as he saw the dimensional tunnel ending, the White ancestor wasn''t at where they will be appearing, since earlier Rita confirmed that the old monster was staying in the underground quarters of the royal castle, naturally Rita shared her senses to directly show it to Daimon.

    In fact, ording to the recognition that Rita has done beforehand, there were no signs of living beings at where they will be appearing, but that only makes it more dangerous.

    Daimon''s invisible figure thanks to the bracelet and the hollow suit, emerged from the shadows at a corner of a room, and he naturally first observed his surroundings to decide which course of action he should take.

    The White ancestor might have been inactive during the past years, but he didn''tpletely disappear, Ae told Daimon that he participated through amunication device as a voice only, a couple of times in the past, not to mention he even congratted the crown prince before, also Triten and Tideus were allowed to go and see him at his private chambers bellow the castle where he supposedly lives.

    But, the ce at which Daimon just appeared, has a certain peculiarity, Daimon''s sclerae turned pitch ck, a sign that Rita he was using Rita''s senses to inspect his surroundings, after a couple of seconds he couldn''t help but smirk.

    ''Uwah, you really need to correct that bad habit of yours, for a hero of "love" like you, your smile looks too evil'', said Evangeline, which made Narasha giggle.

    ''Mm, Daimon''s smile does really make him look like the bad guy'', she said.

    Daimon cleared his throat, he couldn''t help it, since he seemed to hit the jackpot this time.

    ''This ce is right below the territory where the royals live, so as expected, above of us there are countless of different energy firms, including the one of the king, as a proof that he frequently visits those who live there, but inparison here¡­ there is only one'', he thought.

    Back at the royal castle, at the private chambers that were where the White ancestor supposedly lived, Daimon could detect three energy firms, the king, the captain of the royal guard and the one form the White ancestor.

    Which meant that the White ancestor only met those two there, in other words Daimon found his secret stash, as no one else knew about this until now.

    "Let''s see, the area where the residual presence of that old man is most noticeable is¡­", mumbled Daimon as he traced this undergroundplex, which consisted in three floors, one dedicated for training, one for living and the other one was a massive office, surprisingly there was no treasury here, but Daimon already expected that, that cunning old man probably kept all his riches in his storage ring all the time.

    Of course, a ring with that capacity would be astronomically expensive in Neptune, but the White ancestor has had ess to the resources of the royal family for quite a few generations, since the position of queen has belonged to the wife of the king until the appearance of Ae.

    Having found his target, Daimon calmly walked out of the room where appeared, which was a ce to store food and another misceneous things, he didn''t use blink because very much to his surprise there were so many traps and arrays that a little mistake might trigger an rm.

    Naturally the door that was at the other side of the room led to the kitchen, which again was filled to the brim with arrays so after making sure there was nothing worth the hassle, he continued his way, this was the living floor, besides the kitchen there was a living room, arge bath and a luxurious bedroom, as expected Daimon didn''t find anything, so he just descended to the second floor which was the training area.

    Unfortunately, there were no materials or resources to rob, so Daimon couldn''t enjoy the ssic looting, but not everything was a waste, because with his infinity eyes Daimon caught a glimpse of something interesting, the remainingws that lingered in this ce showed him a bit about the affinity of the White ancestor, which just like Terry or Triten, it was water.

    But it wasn''t regr water, at the very least Daimon couldn''t precisely identify what was the property of thews, but he was sure that it wasn''t normal water, another important thing is that he didn''t feel a trace ofher here, so the probability of that old man being the scheming guy hit basically zero.

    "Tsk, now the question is if those two bastards are allied or not", said Daimon as he descended to the deepest floor, which unlike the previous ones actually had something worth exploring, it was basically a huge studio with arge desk and a luxurious throne-like chair, besides that, the walls were covered in shelves where countless of books were amodated, so this was a library too.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, he walked as fast as he could towards the desk while avoiding all the arrays and rms, of course the White ancestor wasn''t stupid enough to write about his ns or anything, meaning he at least wasn''t as much of a third rate viin as Adam who actually had a diary of how he toyed with those girls that fell for his charm skill, which Daimon found in the light idiot''s ring, needless to say but he had no interest on it, though he didn''t destroy it, because who knows it mighte in handyter.

    But that didn''t mean there were no hints for him here, first of all the inker was only half full and the pen still had ck stains on its tip, so the ancestor has been writing quite a bittely, Daimon carefully scanned the desk for secretpartments or something but found nothing besides normal materials and a couple of nk books.

    So, he instead redirected his attention to the giant shelves on the walls, he floated with Rita''s help and approached one of the shelves to then use his mana sense to scan one of the many books, and was baffled at what he saw, it was a history book from a couple of generations ago, which was nothing special, the problem is that it was done in handwriting instead of through an array for mass production made by a rune master.

    ''Heh, so his hobby is to write the history of the Mermen Sea, what a cocky bastard'', thought Daimon, he read the books of history that were on Ae''s library and this one had the exact text that was done in handwriting, with the difference that there were annotations made by the one who wrote it, like "Dumb bastards really believe anything" or "That family won''t make it to the next book" and the like, things that normally might be taken as bad taste jokes, if it wasn''t for the fact that the annotations were almost 100% urate, and if not more insults could be found on the pages of the books.

    ''I found it Daimon!'', Rita''s enthusiastic voice echoed in Daimon''s mind, so far, he hadn''t touched anything, everything was done through mana sense, and while he inspected some random books to see what he could find, Rita was tasked to look for a specific thing.

    Besides history books, Daimon saw a variety of books with strangenguages that he attributed to the nomads of the Maelstrom Sea, which fitted with the information he got from Ae''s father, apparently some of the things he collected were given as gifts to the king which then handed them to the White ancestor.

    It is obvious that the one with the interest in those strange books was the White ancestor, but Daimon wasn''t na?ve enough to believe it was just a hobby, that old bastard was looking for something, though he was the same.

    ''Thest shelve at the left, 33rd row, the book number 56, it fits with the description given by that woman, but its contents are¡­ normal, it''s not in nk but it''s just a recipe book'', said Rita.

    ''Oh?'', Daimon moved towards the shelf mentioned by Rita and then observed the book with his mana sense, indeed it was a normal recipe book and on top of that the recipes were for dishes thatmoners ate, it wasn''t something that any rtively decent chef would use.

    But it made sense, since Ae''s mother was amoner that grew in poverty, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as he used his infinity eyes just for him to suddenly feel as if his body was being struck by lightning.

    Itsted less than a second and there were no changes to the book, nor at his surroundings and to Daimon''s surprise, Rita didn''t notice what he experienced a second ago, unfortunately there were no other reaction and even his infinity eyes couldn''t find anything else, but it''s not like they are absolute, what he could confirm was that the owner of the book wasn''t a system user.

    With how things were going and the thing regarding the empty coffin, not to mention the high talent that Ae and Mellie had shown to have, Daimon started considering the possibility of their mother being a system user and since they were put under the mission assigned to Adam, she might have been a hero.

    But the three things she left behind didn''t make an exclusive notification trigger, as far as he understood now, the pendant that Ae gave him wasn''t the "gem", it was him having earned the trust and approbation of the two sisters which was symbolized by it, what fulfilled the requirement.

    Daimon also checked the pendant that Mellie had and there was no notification, and this book which matched perfectly with the one that Ae showed to her mother, not too long before she was poisoned, was mot likely the third thing she left behind and there was no notification, however the queen said that the one time she managed to take a peek at the book, the words "blurred" so there is a high chance that only those with Ae and Mellie''s lineage can read the real contents of it.

    The only difference between that book and this one, is that the contents are readable, they are useless recipes but they are readable, still Daimon''s instincts urged him to take the book so he nodded.

    ''Oh well, there isn''t anything else of interest here so worst-case scenario I will still be able to see that guy''s face when he finds out I robbed him'', thought Daimon as he took something out of his inventory to then snap his fingers.

    Daimon then raised an eyebrow before a smirk appeared on his face, having gotten what he wanted he looked at his shadow and with a thought, Rita created a portal that dragged Daimon inside of it, making him disappear without any trace of him ever being here.

    ¡­

    Back at the royal caste "Daimon" who was casually wandering through the royal treasury suddenly smirked.

    "Oh well, they couldn''t touch the treasury but still they don''t have any of the specific things, I guess a high grade Ster rank magic weapon will do the trick, that way their hearts will bleed both literal and figuratively, let''s see, you''ll being with me", he said as he jumped and then shoved his arm into a simple looking shelf which had a bunch of scrolls with Arch ranked spells.

    After moving his arm around for a couple of seconds, Daimon retrieved it, there was palm sized ck case resting on his hand, Daimon then jumped backwards using the shelf as support to then safelynd a secondter.

    He then injected mana into the golden que and an array appeared below of him transporting him out of the treasury to then appear at the entrance where Vincent and Tideus were waiting for him.

    "What did you take?", demanded Tideus only for Vincent to say.

    "The rules state that he isn''t obligated to tell you that, the security arrays didn''t activate so there is nothing else we have to do here, bring us back, the first dance is about to start and wouldn''t it be rude for the champion to not be there when the previous king appears".

    As if Tideus wasn''t ring angrily enough at Vincent, Daimon added fuel to the fire by mockingly saying.

    "Besides isn''t it your job to look through the whole treasury to determine whether I broke the rules or not, have fun", after saying that, Daimon turned around and nodded at Vincent who guided the way back leaving Tideus whose body was trembling due to anger, behind.

    ''I''ll fucking kill that little bastard as soon as his majesty allows me to!'', he inwardly screamed.

    Back at the corridor of the castle, Vincent looked at Daimon before saying.

    "So did you find what you wanted?".

    "Yes and no, I ultimately choose the best thing that was stored there, by the way there was some dust so I want to wash my hands", casually said Daimon, making Vincentugh.

    "I see, okay I''ll show the way to the bathroom, don''t take too long, the event is about to start after all".

    Daimon nodded and then they remained silent as they returned to the area assigned for the royal ball, which was basically the whole event halls on the first two floors of the castle as well as the front yard and even the living room which was re amodated to have ces for the guests to sit.

    "I''ll go meet those old friends, don''t leave those little girls alone for too long, I can see a lot of people interested in "talking" to them", said Vincent as he left for the second floor, only to hear Daimon saying.

    "It''s going to be interesting once "I" join them in a moment, rest assured", after saying that, Daimon walked towards the bathroom, as one would expect the temporary changes made it so there were many private cabins avable within the same space.

    Daimon casually chose one and then closed the door behind of him, to then stand at the right side of the cabin.

    A ck portal appeared at the other wall from which a ck robed figure emerged; Daimon softlyughed as he said.

    "It would be interesting to see what will happen if I were to raise my voice, don''t you agree, darling~".

    The ck robed figure cleared his throat to then remove the robe to reveal his real appearance, a masked silver haired youth.

    "Luckily I choose you to impersonate me, because I''m pretty sure if Erin was here, she would have done it just for fun", said Daimon, the other "Daimon" then changed to look like the disguised appearance that Aisha was using in public ever since they arrived at Neptune, just like the Risha sisters did too.

    Aisha then changed once again to a random young man appearance, to then leave the cabin first, she had to meet another person but at the girl''s bathroom this time.

    Daimon waited exactly five minutes before leaving the cabin too, the moment he left the bathroom, he was weed with a couple of lovely girlsing out from the girl''s one.

    "What a rude dance partner, waiting for us at such ce, don''t you agree Reyne?", said Aisha to which Reyne softlyughed.

    "Mm, sister Aisha is right, on the other hand, it looks like he perfectly timed everything toe out at the same as us, so we should appreciate the gesture".

    Daimon chuckled before saying.

    "It''s good to see that you two are now in friendly terms, let''s go meet the others, the dance is about to start".

    "Mm~", those two nodded and then followed Daimon to the living area of the first floor where all the members of the young generation had gathered, there wererge tables with countless different dishes and of course groups had formed everywhere to wait for the event to start, in the meantime they drank, ate, chatted and tried to form connections with others.

    Among those countless groups there were some that caught more attention than others, for example the one in which the princes were, one actually formed by young pirates, one from the neo nobles and all the high ranked nobles, but the one that the most attention was one formed exclusively by girls.

    "Oi Lance, since when do you meddle in other people''s business?", a slightly angered voice could be hearding near thatst group formed entirely by beauties.

    "Since you became pathetic enough to try and cause problems after being rejected, in other words a long time ago", a second voice much calmer but also firmer answered the second one.

    Ezequiel gritted his teeth, he just came to say hi to Mellie as it has been a while since he saw her, and also invited her to have a dance with him, but was turned down on the spot, no hesitation, no exnation, no face, so he of course asked her why and then Lance who was eating with his "musclehead" subordinates, stepped in.

    "What''s your problem, I''m not the only one that is going toe, are perhaps going to get in everyone''s way when we are just trying to be friendly with those youngdies?", he asked, which made all the guys that were targeting Mellie and the others turn to see them.

    "Of course not, I''m going to be the one to get in their way", a sudden voice got the attention of all the members of the young generation present in the room, the princes who stayed aside, despite Daphne being in that group too, included.

    Naturally the one who just spoke was none other than Daimon, who casually met the gazes of all those guys with a smirk as he added.

    "I heard that 1v1 duels not only aremon in the Mermen Sea''s culture in events, but they even encouraged, if you have something to say, now it''s the time".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the room, followed by clenched hands and gritted teeth, the humiliation of an "outsider" bing the champion was still fresh on the minds of all those young nobles from high ranked families, unfortunately they also knew that speaking right now would only end in them being disgraced in front of the one their parents and elders told them to try and impress, the strongest person in the Mermen Sea, who rarely appeared, the White ancestor.

    "What a shame under other circumstances I would have asked for a rematch, but the general will kick my ass if I cause troubles this time", jokingly said Lance as he nodded at Daimon.

    Daimon nodded back at him and then approached the girls, just to see the crown prince as well as the twin princes, Walford and Ezequiel, alsoe towards him.

    "What, do you want a refresh of what happened thest time, unless you be early-stage high mortal ranked beings, you aren''t even a threat to me?", said Daimon at Terry whose eyes were bloodshot, he basically told them that to be his opponents they have to be a whole major rank above him, since he is simting to be an early stage Lord rank, which is not a lie though, most people below the Arch ranks will find it hard to endure a few exchanges with Daimon.

 Chapter 540 A tricky event (part 3)

    Chapter 540 A tricky event (part 3)

    Daimon''s words made the atmosphere in the room tense up quite a bit, unfortunately for them, what Daimon said wasn''t a baseless bluff but a solid truth, since Terry who even exhausted his lineage to push himself over the Lord rank for a moment, back then at the three-art tournament, was crushed by Daimon.

    What''s worse is that it wasn''t even a close fight, Daimon didn''t get a single injury throughout the whole thing, well, in fact the fight ended with just one serious sh from his sword, as he just activated Core Synchrony to use Comet Sword back then, and that was enough to break both of Terry''s innate abilities, destroy his sword and blow his dominant arm away.

    And that was after he had fought with the other guys present here, so even if all the ones that just came looking for troubles, grouped, the result won''t differ much and that is if the girls surrounding their target, don''t jump to even things.

    In other words, the youngest generation of Neptune found itself in the humiliating situation of beingpletely suppressed by a single person, and from another "sea" to top it off, it''s notpletely their fault though, Daimon has never aimed to fight those from the same generation as him.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as he saw Terry was about to unsheathe his sword, his schr fa?ade had been destroyed since he got his ass beaten back then, and his flute sword was crushed too, so he now had a regr sword hanging from his waist, it was still a half Ster rank weapon, but its quality was lower.

    "I don''t approve Ezequiel''s method to try and drag Mellie away, but you are also a disgrace for this event, who are you to speak to us¡­", before Terry could finish speaking, Daimon interrupted him.

    "I''m someone who is stronger than all of you and in case you are even thinking of using your status to, until you be the king you hold no real authority, not to mention I''m not a citizen of the Clear Water kingdom anyway, but if you want to do a sizepetition, I''m a first-generation Marqis", he casually said.

    This time not only Terry but all the other presents showed signs of hostility, until their parents stepped down, they were nothing, well, Terry was granted the title of Viscount, so in the situation of him losing the battle for session, he can be a noble on his own and create his own family branch, but the others have yet to obtain anything, not like it mattered since for everything Daimon knew, Neptune might meet its end today, but they didn''t know about it.

    Seeing that the smell of powder was spreading on the first floor and more importantly, things weren''t on their favor, a voice came from the second floor.

    "Now, this is an event to honor the protector of our kingdom, so while duels are indeed encouraged, they are meant to shorten the distance between the members of the young generation, fights based on personal conflicts are punishable, so why don''t you act like the champion and stop being so hostile towards our young generation", the different groups turned to see the origin of the voice, who was none other than one of the wives of the king.

    While Irma, the mother of the crown prince is known for being overbearing and prideful since her son is the next king, the mother of the twin princes has a different approach, she has even tried to build a bridge between the Keran and Delphini families¡­ through a marriage proposal between Bryan and Mellie.

    Unfortunately, Ae can easily see through her fake smile not to mention that Mellie has always found Bryan rather unpleasant, maybe his unrefined demeanor works with some of the young misses of other noble families, but Mellie only founds him crude, as for the other twin Ryan, he is surprisingly neutral and rarely shows animosity.

    But apparently Daimon managed to piss him off too, because both of the twins were ring at him, after what he said earlier, and their mother was the same, Norma walked down the stairs as she gazed at Mellie and Daphne before saying.

    "This is a ball organized by the royal family, don''t you think it''s only natural for the princes and princesses to put the example at the first dance, which is prepared to wee the protector of the kingdom?", she said with a fake smile.

    "Sorrydy Keran, but we''ll all only be having one dance and it will be with the partner of our choice, so if you excuse us", Mellie stood up and rejected Norma in the name of both Daphne and herself.

    Seeing that Norma still had something to say, Sarah who was already angry, since she lost against Reyne to see who was dancing with Daimon first, smirked before saying out loud.

    "Ahh, what is this woman making a fuss over a simple dance when we all have already decided who to share a bed with at this point".

    "¡­", as always, the crazy girl was wild with her words, she didn''t specify who they chose to "share a bed with", but since the only male in the group was Daimon, further exnation wasn''t needed.

    Of course, Sarah was messing with everyone, since they have truly shared a bed in the sense of staying in the same one, but not as all the presents were now thinking, she even mockingly gazed at Terry, Bryan and Ezequiel who were the most shocked by what she said, while sheughed.

    Daimon saw the Risha sisters and the other girls, whose faces were bright red, which only made the other presents gasp and whisper between themselves, even Lance gave Daimon a dubitative gaze.

    ''That was a bit too much'', he thought as he inwardly sighed.

    On the other hand, Sarah''s blunt words solved the problem, because even Norma was too in shock to keep interfering, so no one tried to stop them from leaving.

    A few momentster, as soon as the group had left the others behind, Sarah felt the usatory gazes of the other girls and she giggled as she rushed to hide behind of Daimon, to then rest her head on his shoulder from behind.

    "Don''t look at me like that, I didn''t lie and none of you denied it~", she yfully said.

    "How the hell did you expect us to exin our way out of that, you crazy¡­", mumbled Leslie, the three sisters were more happy than ashamed which at this point is understandable, everyone knows that they openly like Daimon and aren''t at the part where words will weight on them, they slept cuddling with him after all.

    While still ashamed over the previous scene caused by Sarah, Jasmine and Reyne shrugged it off by softlyughing, others were more in a predicament like Chris or Cassy, since they merely apanied their friends, though it is true that they were in friendly terms with Daimon and also stayed in the same bed.

    And then there was Tessa and Femi, whoforted each other by saying "The rumor will stay behind in Neptune".

    "I''ll deal with youter, for now, it''s time for the event to start", said Daimon as he gazed at Sarah who giggled in response.

    ¡­

    The atmosphere at the castle became more festive all of a sudden, as the royal orchestra started ying music, meaning it was time for the ball to start, that was the sign for everyone to gather at the main hall on the first floor.

    The ce was set so the people on the second floor had a clear view of the ones at the first floor, after all this was a "cultural" event, and it was the opportunity for everyone to exhibit their noble etiquette to the host, which normally is the royal family but today the guest of honor was the White ancestor.

    After the previous situation, the elites of the young generation of the Mermen Sea were secretly mocked by the young pirates, young Skelefiends and even the offspring of the high ranked magic beasts, which had taken a temporary human form to attend to this event.

    So, you can imagine the sparks flying when the groups of the three seas gathered in a single ce, but that wasn''t all, Daimon whose group was the first to arrive, turned around to see in the direction where the entrance of the castle was, since the st" participant of the royal ball had just arrived.

    Seeing the slightly worried expression on Jasmine''s pretty face, Daimon smiled and then patted her shoulder a couple of times.

    "He was taken into ount from the very beginning, so there is no need to worry about it, okay?", he said with a calm voice.

    "Mm", Jasmine nodded with bright smile, before she was dragged away by Sarah who was pointing at the guys who had the intention of inviting Jasmine to dance, with a murderous gaze.

    The ones who just arrived were naturally Abaris and the lot from the ck Fortress sect, while Abaris and the patriarchs that supported him went straight to the second floor, trying to not even gaze at Daimon, the members of the young generation led by Purplehaze and Skyme who apparently had recovered, poisonously red at Daimon and Jasmine, but were met with Sarah''s mocking voice.

    "What are you two losers looking at, it hasn''t been that long since you got your asses beaten ck and blue, did you perhaps develop some "special" interests after that~".

    Purplehaze and Skyme both gritted their teeth, but before they could say anything, the other guys that were following them, whispered something at them, which ultimately calmed them down.

    A secondter, trumpets sounded and the lights on the first floor were dimmed to entuate the illumination on the second one, there were different rows of seats ced on the second floor where the different ranked people were sitting.

    For starters, anyone below the half Ster rank was standing up on a lower row conformed by mostly low ranked nobles, then there was a second row where officials and other people at the half Ster rank were ced, naturally there were some exceptions due to ranks, like Ae and the Duchess.

    The third row was for Ster ranks with high ranked tittles, like Dominic, the ckfin Duke and the heads of the different high ranked noble families, the fourth row was conformed by royals and those with equal authority, Ae, the Duchess, Triten, the Minister and Abaris''s remaining disciple were sat here among others.

    Ladt but not least, there was the row where the leaders of the respective seas where ced, Vincent, Aurora, ckbeard, Horrorw, Abaris andstly a gray-haired man with long beard and armor where the only ones sat there, their seats weren''t like the others ones, even if Triten or Ae had thrones designed for them, the seats on the highest row where way more detailed, to entuate the status of the ones sitting on them.

    ''Oh, so that is the elusive White ancestor'', thought Daimon as he stole a gaze at the old man sitting near the middle of the highest row with a calm expression.

    "Wee to all the esteemed guests and visitors from the other seas, I dere that this year''s royal ball has officially started", Triten stood up from his chair for a second to give greenlight to the orchestra to start ying.

    Surprisingly, the White ancestor didn''t say anything yet, inf act none of the maximum Ster ranks or their equals did anything.

    Instead of that, the members of the young generation turned to see their respective dancing partners and then made their way to the dancing area, among them there was Daimon who extended his hand to Aisha, very much to the jealousy of a couple of girls.

    "Let''s go~", Aisha brightly smiled as she gazed at the Risha sisters and the others, to then ept Daimon''s invitation.

    Now, Daimon isn''t exactly fond of etiquette nor he likes to attend to the elegant parties, which are held almost daily at the high ranked vampire culture, but he did learn about it, because back then he didn''t want the other vampiredies to mock Aisha, due to ignorance, especially since he had use of reason from the very beginning which led to him being considered a role model for other vampire children.

    As they walked to the space reserved for those who wished to dance with their respective partners, Daimon saw Aisha being rtively happier than normal and he chuckled.

    ''Is that aply to take you out more often?'', he said through the mental connection, which made Aisha giggle.

    ''Well, I certainly did miss out a lot since I didn''t have any romance in my previous "life", so my soulmate has to be clingier and sweet to make up for it~'', she jokingly said.

    Daimon softly smiled and then took a couple of steps of distance from Aisha, to make a proper noble salute, by cing his right hand on the left side of his chest and then slightly lowering his head, naturally Aisha responded in kind by raising the sides of her dress and moving bending her upper body just a bit.

    This time Aisha extended her arm and Daimon reached out to her, so that they could start moving at the rhythm of the piece that the orchestra was ying, many gazes fell on them, since a lot of people wanted to find even the slightest mistake to get back at Daimon.

    Unfortunately, vampires are the perfect representation of high-grade social skills, so instead a lot of the young masters and young misses of Neptune were ashamed of being close to them.

    "That''s not fair, even at something like this they look so good together", mumbled Leslie, which made the others softlyugh.

    With Aisha graciously fluttering like an elegant butterfly and Daimon following her every step with utmost precision, the first dance soon ended and ps rained upon those who participated.

    Aisha happily smiled at Daimon as she returned with Mellie and the others, there were others who remained on the dance floor, as they had more than one partner, which was also a sign of one''s status.

    Among them, Terry, Ezequiel, Walford, the twin princes and even Lance were the most noticeable, though thetter was quite unenthusiastic about it, since it was only a formality between him and the daughters of the many officials of the neo noble faction.

    While the others already knew who their second partners were, Daimon simply extended his arm towards the girls, and another of the girls left the group, surprisingly the second one turned out to be none other than the crazy girl.

    And as if they had seen the chance of their lives, Terry, Ezequiel and Purplehaze who were supposed to receive their second partners, instead turned out to see Mellie and Jasmine respectively, to then extend their hands to them.

    "May I have this dance", they all said, the gazes of all the presents, this time the Maximum Sters included, fell on them.

    Ae saw Norma poisonously snarking at her, but she limited tough with her eyes closed, as she heard those two''s firm and definitive answer.

    "No", they said at unison, needless to say but those three''s gant expressions froze on the spot, they apparently believed that under the gaze of the White ancestor and Abaris, they would give them some face, but reality hit them hard.

    "Pfft, losers, if we could, we''ll be all dancing with him at the same time just like we do other "things" together~", yfully said Sarah as she rolled to enter press herself against Daimon''s frontal body, as if she was being embraced by him.

    Daimon inwardly sighed.

    ''I knew she was the best to provoke those idiots, but this of course wille haunt meter'', he thought.

    Some of the high ranked guests found the situation amusing, and of course there were some who clearly didn''t, for example Triten who frowned on the spot.

    "Little Mellie, don''t you think that is a bit too much, Terry just wants to have a dance with you, surely your sister wouldn''t mind¡­", before he could finish, Ae who has been smiling through the whole thing, casually interrupted him.

    "Don''t put words in my mouth, if it was for me, I would have made my own event with only some "selected" guests attending, I''ll leave the list of attendants to your imagination", she said.

    Triten gritted his teeth in response, even with his ancestor here, Ae didn''t show him the slightest bit of respect, then there was Abaris who red at Aurora from the sides to then reveal the "shocking" truth.

    "Did you instruct little Jasmine to do this, I wouldn''t have expected you to bring her into our quarrel", he said with a grim expression on his face, only for Aurora to snort in response.

    "What "quarrel" you and I are nothing but enemies at this point, didn''t you say that you wouldn''t let me go after besieging my Light Pce''s forces, not to mention you nted a spy at my side, you can forget about ever being allowed near my family as long as I am alive", she said.

    The many middle and small sized forced took a breath of cold air, the queen and Aurora didn''t leave any space for negotiation, they showed zero respect for their counterparts, in other words the king and the Shaman.

    It''s not like fights between them hadn''t happened on the past, but they never entered into such an open conflict, this was especially noticeable for the Elemental Sea, since the Matriarch of the Light Pce was the wife of the Shaman, unlike Ae who never had any ties to Triten.

    In the middle of all this, there was Daimon, since the orchestra never stopped ying as those were their orders, he continued dancing with the crazy girl who of course stuck to him as much as he could, without going to far before she winked at Daimon to then return with the others, and very much to the displease of those who supported the rejected guys, it wasn''t neither Mellie nor Jasmine the one who stepped in next, but Femi who was having some troubles wearing high heels.

    "Damn it, sorry in advance if I trip, unlike Tess''s family, our events consist in material appraising or forgingpetitions", she said.

    Daimon chuckled, the dwarf princess was rather blunt, but that was part of her charm, it was an odyssey to get her to wear a dress, she was wearing her usual clothes below actually, though others didn''t notice it.

    Luckily for Femi, the third piece was rtively short, because though something had stuck to her, after attending many events with Tessa, she was still a bit stiff when she had to participate, that being said, she did seem to have some fun, since Daimon was able to follow her heavy steps, that seemed to belong to the tribal dance that the dwarf race made each year.

    As soon as Femi stepped down, and before the next girl came, Terry who chose another random girl from the bunch that wanted to dance with him, turned to see the White ancestor before saying.

    "Esteemed ancestor, I want to challenge that rude guy to a duel!".

    The White ancestor raised his hand and the orchestra stopped ying on the spot, very much to Leslie''s displease since she was next.

    "That doesn''t depend on my, child, what do you say little friend, are you willing to demonstrate if your battle skills are as good as your charisma and dancing?", calmly said the White ancestor at Daimon who smirked in response.

    "You can stop pretending that this wasn''t nned, do you know how many times has that idiot nced at you ever since we gathered here", he said.

    Vincent and Aurora chuckled at Daimon''s answer, what a joke, trying to y tricks behind the scenes in front of him, was only asking to be exposed is what they thought based on their experience.

    "Very well, since that is the case and based on what I have heard from you, what would be the price to "witness" a rematch between you and my youngest and most talented descendant, who has learned from tasting defeat for the first time", said the White ancestor as he gazed at Daimon.

    Daimon felt the heavy gaze of the old man on him, but he shrugged it off, mere pressure was useless against his Overlord''s pride, unless the White ancestor actively used mana to suppress him, he could re as much as he wanted and nothing will happen.

    "Mm, I don''t know usually there are no second fights between me and others, and he was especially boring, so it''s going to be expensive", said Daimon as he pointed at Terry whose eyes got bloodshot, his lineage make him prompt to anger and being constantly mocked wasn''t helping.

    "You, insolent brat!", Triten on the other hand, didn''t stop from standing up and then releasing his mana pressure, which was blown away by Ae''s before it could even leave the row of seats where they were sitting.

    "You can shout and get as angry as you want, but don''t act out of line, Triten", she casually said as she took a sip of a cup of tea that her head maid which was standing next to her, offered.

    The White ancestor who remained silent at the previous clear sign of internal conflict, ultimately said.

    "Then what''s your price, I believe you aren''t as na?ve as to ask something impossible, right?".

    Daimon nodded in response before answering.

    "Oh no, I simply want a favor guaranteed by a contract from you".

    "What!", many of the presents immediately eximed, the White ancestor finally showed some signs of anger, as the vein that bulged on his neck suggested, now imagine how he felt when Daimon added.

    "Ah right, and the duel will only start after I finish dancing with each and all of my partners, since that was the reason why I didn''t leave this ce after taking my reward from the royal treasury".

    Needless to say, but the crowd was speechless, since when a member of the young generation dared to disrespect a Maximum Ster ranked, in his own house to top it off.

    What they didn''t know is that the generational respect being ignored, would be the least of their problems today.

 Chapter 541 A Tricky Event (Part 3)

    ?

    The Risha sisters and the other girls, were amused at the current situation, Reyne was especially happy about the second request Daimon made, earlier she "pridefully" won in the sort against the crazy girl, but ultimately Sarah ended up jumping into the dancing stage before her, for other reasons, namely she was better at pissing off others.

    Not only that, but since the turn order was messed up by Sarah, they secretly repeated the whole thing, and she came in third, the first being Femi, then Leslie and only then it will be her turn.

    So, you could imagine her displease when Terry suddenly decided to be an idiot and get in the way of having a dance with Daimon, but now everything will be fine, because no matter what the White ancestor wanted, he couldn''t refuse Daimon''s conditions, since he said he would have already left if it wasn''t for the dance.

    Of course, that was a lie since Daimon was sure, that today''s events will have the royal ball as their starting point, so he had to be present, but as far as the other "yers", he was nothing more than a side character that was running wild without knowing what was happening behind the scenes.

    And under such pretense it wasn''t weird that the White ancestor whose eyes previously had a cold light in them, due to being disrespected in his own territory, suddenly changed to those of a magnanimous senior looking at a "newborn calf who isn''t afraid of a tiger due to ignorance", as he nodded.

    "Let''s do it like this, I''ll give the two sides an hour to prepare for the duel, whatever you do during that time, it''s up to you, however since you are putting a condition, it would be fair to have your opponent doing the same as well", he said as he gazed at Terry who finally found a way to obtain what he wanted.

    "If I win then I want a dance with Mel¡­", even before Terry could finish speaking, he was interrupted by a cold sharp voice.

    "I think you are misunderstanding something", naturally the one who spoke right now, was none other than Daimon, though the upper half of his face was hidden by the mask of the hollow suit, the smirk he had made the Risha sisters and the others giggle knowing someone was about to suffer.

    Daimon ignored Terry for a moment, and instead looked at the White ancestor before continuing.

    "The favor I mentioned is not a "reward" in case I win that idiot, it''s the price you have to pay for me to consider wasting my time in a duel which''s result I already know, whether you ept or not that is your problem, you are in no position to put any conditions", he said before he changed targets to the crown prince.

    "As for you, a loser trying to treat my friend as a reward, learn your ce".

    "¡­", the atmosphere which previously had rxed again, tensed up to the point that some of the lower ranking nobles were actually sweating, of course it wasn''t only because of an argument, but because of the anger that the White ancestor was radiating behind of them.

    He wasn''t the only one of course, Triten and Irma immediately stood up but were blocked by Ae and Grace.

    "Adults shouldn''t involve themselves in the matters of the youngest generation, even if it''s only for reputation''s sake", said the Duchess as she confronted Irma who was crazy enough to have tried to use her mana pressure against Daimon, but got backsh since her level was trash whenpared to Grace.

    "Y-You!", Irma who had a trace of blooding out of the corner of her mouth, eximed, Terry was about to say something when the White ancestor raised his hand to stop him from doing so.

    "Enough, my descendant, there is no better reward than crushing those who see you in a lowly way, as for you kid, since I''m the one sponsoring the duel, you are not going to stop me from helping my "champion" prepare right?", he said with a once again calm voice.

    "No problem, it''s not like it will make a difference", casually said Daimon, which made a vein on the neck of the White ancestor bulge a bit, but he didn''t show it on his face.

    "Your hour starts now", limited to say the ancestor as he actually stood up to leave, not without gesturing at Terry who despite being insulted and utterly rejected by Mellie, was now all smiles.

    Now that the ancestor has openly shown his support towards him, his ascension to the throne was practically guaranteed, which is perfect as his undefeated image was shattered not too long ago, which shook his previously solid position as the crown prince.

    With those two gone there were different reactions, Triten and Irmapletely rxed, the king even ordered the orchestra to continue with the music, since they now had "nothing" to worry about.

    Daimon ignored their obvious disdain that the king, Irma and others who supported the crown prince were now showing towards him, and just extended his hand towards Leslie, who jumped into stage to ept his offer.

    "Sometimes I feel bad for those who antagonize you, you know~", mumbled Leslie just to see Daimonughing.

    "Then things are working out as expected", he said, Leslie giggled in response before she focused on enjoying her turn, naturally she wasn''t as daring as the crazy girl, who was basically jumping into Daimon''s arms at any given chance, but her technique was way more refined.

    Her slim figure graciously fluttered with ease, which was normal since the Risha sisters are quite physically agile despite not being knights, probably because their movement spells include steps that are practically dances.

    It might not look threatening when done for entertainment purposes, but if you add their wings to the equation, things will change for sure, explosive fire feathers, mind destroying feathers or sharp puncturing ones, being even grazed by them as a result of those three''s agile moves, will result in a lot of pain.

    But for Daimon, that''s an unnecessary worry, since their wings contain part of his mana, so they mean no harm for him.

    Seeing Leslie and the others enjoy their dances, Daimon inwardly nodded, this opportunity wasn''t part of the original n, but he was happy that they were having a nice time.

    ''Well, at least I could confirm that the idiot prince isn''t part of the big scheme of things, at least not directly, otherwise he would have kept his cool even if his blood was boiling, just like that old man'', thought Daimon as he caught Leslie who did a little jump, even without using any strength, she was light as a feather.

    When ites to enemies, Daimon never does something without a reason, if he didn''t have something to gain, he wouldn''t lose any time insulting or messing with them, he''ll just cut them down at the first opportunity.

    He has long confirmed that Terry wasn''t a system user, since he has made him lose his cool before and there was no notification, like it happened with Adam and Marcus, so this time he gave a try to see if the White ancestor was one, and now he could safely assume he isn''t.

    Of course, that didn''t lower his guard towards him at all, even without ess to the functions of a system, with the help of a rogue administrator, someone could easily rule over others, the Ghoul king was a good example of that and that Ka had barely any power/knowledge left.

    Daimon himself is an even better example, Freya is going to teach him about metal affinity swordsmanship and there is also Joanna who has Knowledge that others don''t and can share it Daimon without any restriction.

    There are too many variants that can give someone an advantage over others, so being conceited is a crime, at least for Daimon who has never allowed himself to underestimate an opponent so far.

    ¡­

    The hour given to the participants of the duel passed quite fast, besides Terry, the other elites of the young generation from the four seas, didn''t stop leave and continued dancing with their respective partners, Daimon included.

    Thest one to dance with him, out of her voluntarily stepping down from the sort, was the alfear princess Tessa.

    "I seem to remember that alfear are quite adept to social parties and stuff like that, but for a princess you surely don''t seem to like the ambient, am I that bad of a dancing partner?", said Daimon which made Tessa softlyugh.

    "Not really, ask Femi, though I always attend back at Evergreen, this is the first time I actively participate in a social event of any sort, besides couldn''t the same be said of you, for someone with a vampire lineage, where is your love for debauchery and excess", she jokingly said.

    Their little conversation was interrupted by Femi, who was watching from the sides with a little smirk on the corner of her mouth.

    "Woah, to think the antisocial Tess is actually having fun in a ball, the world must be trulying to an end", she said as she munched on a piece of grilled meat.

    Tessa turned to see her friend to then say with a smile which wasn''t a smile.

    "Heh, I hope you have as much fun when you see the photos, I took of you wearing a dress and high heels,ter~".

    "Damn, that''s not fair!", Femi nearly left her food fall to the floor when she heard Tessa''s words, which made the other girlsugh.

    All good thingse to an end at some point, but nothing prevents another good thing from taking over, and just by the time Daimon finished hisst dance of the day, the orchestra stopped since they saw the White ancestor returning with a Terry who was overflowing with confidence.

    "I assume that since you wasted the whole hour I gave you, you don''t mind starting the duel right away?", asked the White ancestor to Daimon, who smirked in response.

    "The sooner we start the better", he said.

    This time Terry didn''t boil at the first sign of provocation, he simply nodded at the White ancestor before he red at Mellie.

    "Very well, then let''s go the duel stage that has been traditionally used in all the events that are held in the royal castle", said ancestor as he snapped his fingers.

    A short-range spatial array lit up below everyone in the room, and the next second they scenery changed, since all the adults had assigned seats, their positions didn''t change, they were just sitting in the same order but instead of the main hall of the castle, they were outside on a stage that was prepared for the duels that were bound to happen during the event.

    As for the members of the young generation, they were free to grab a seat or jump into the tform, in this case everyone but Daimon and Terry took a seat, since the first duel had already been set, by the White ancestor on top of that.

    "Vincent, I know you are backing that kid since the little girl of the Delphini had be attached to him, but I hope you don''t interfere whatever the result might be", casually said the White ancestor to the old Trident Marshal.

    "As long as there are no tricks being yed, I will never interfere in a duel that was willingly epted by both parties, Arlion", calmly answered Vincent, that was the name of the White ancestor, not too many people knew that those two actually have been acquitted with each other, ever since they were part of the young generation a really long time ago.

    Probably because the ones that managed to survive the times of open war are quite scarce, not to mention Vincent was only a simple member of the royal guard who left to join the army back then, while Arlion was the crown prince at the time, also Arlion became the king quite before Vincent obtained the position of Trident Marshal from the previous king, in other words Arlion''s father, not too long before passing away.

    "Hahaha, you people from the Mermen Sea surely like to argue over useless stuff, in a real battle, tricks are the norm, unless you want to die, on the other hand words of the shameful defeat of the "greatest genius" of the White, did travel all the way to my Maelstrom Sea, so I guess even old men like us can be excited to see this rematch", said the Chaulioudus ruler.

    "This is a duel, so of course a savage won''t understand it, also it seems like I have been too passive in recent years, so that beasts have started to think they can insult my White family in front of me", answered the White ancestor as he red at the ruler who showed his spiked teeth in response, only for Horrorw to interfere.

    "It was the White family the one who invited us to discuss a truce, you can overlook that fellow''s attitude, as a race with ties to sea magic beasts".

    "To think you have be the voice of reason, old bones, what has Neptunee to", added ckbeard, only for the four of them to snort as they focused their attention on the tform.

    Daimon saw Terry jumping onto the stage and he nodded at the girls before doing the same.

    "Last time, those mes of yours got me good, so how about we fight using exclusively our bodies and our affinities, no treasures allowed", said Terry just to be met with a mocking gaze by Daimon.

    "You don''t have an option, the sword you are using right now, is not close to be of the same quality as the one I broke with mine, however if that''s what you want, I don''t mind crushing you under your own terms", he said.

    Terry''s eyes got bloodshot, but he took a deep breath and just took some distance from Daimon to prepare for the sh, everyone heard them agreeing so if any of them tried to go against the terms, the one who did will be dered the loser, since this is a duel.

    ''Sorry Nasha, but don''t worry we''ll have lots of fun togetherter'', said Daimon to Narasha who softlyughed in response.

    ''I''ll look forward to it~'', she mumbled, in any case the sword Terry now had, was trash not even worth of being destroyed by her and Disaster was taking a long nap after eating Ka''sher, so Narasha had to put more effort than normal.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as he saw a notification appearing in front of him, he smirked and then white mes covered his body, ever since the three-art tournament it became quite spread that the champion was an irregrity even among rarities, having an element that supposedlybined three affinities which is what earned him the support of the Light Pce''s matriarch, as they were lightning, fire and light.

    "Freaking abnormally", lowly said Triten as he saw the white mes enveloping Daimon, just to hear Arlionugh.

    "Certainly, a rare sight nowadays, however, we don''t have the word "White" on our names, only because of our lineage¡­ now show them my descendant, the terror of the White royal family!", eximed Arlion.

    Terry''s eyes got bloodshot, his muscle mass and height increased, signs that he was using the innate ability of White Shark Royal race, Bloodlust, his mage realm suddenly jumped from the middle stage of the Lord rank, to the peak stage of the Lord rank.

    Daimon didn''t show any reaction, as he has seen Terry using that in their previous sh, however he was indeed surprised to see that Terry didn''t stop there, cracking sounds could be hearding from his body, but unlike the previous time when he surpassed his limits by exhausting his lineage, his body didn''t overgrow, in fact he returned to his original height and then exhaled.

    "Let me tell you why was I so angry about being defeated by you, it was because I was forbidden to show my full strength by my master, as it wasn''t the time to it, after all my body couldn''t have endured a lineage concentration of 30% previously, it''s thanks to being "defeated" that I have grown sturdier, sharks can rece their teeth as many times as needed after all", he said as he stretched his body, to unt the fact that he was now an early stage Archmage.

    And that wasn''t all, water mana gathered from all over the ce and surrounded Terry, he actually gained a Manifestation Phenomenon, unlike Purplehaze''s one which was an iplete one, his was perfectly solid.

    Needless to say, but all the other members of the young generation were amazed by what they were witnessing, that wasn''t the level that a young person should have, is what they thought.

    And that wasn''t the end of it, water mana poured out of Terry''s body as he used the innate ability, he got from his Warhammer ascendence, using it to form his water armament, the difference is that this time, he only formed five swords that were floating behind of him.

    "How dare you use a white shade element in front of me, I''ll extinguish those disgusting mes of yours", said Terry as the five water condensed swords painted white, their previous solid and dignified sensation disappeared to be reced by a fierce and wild aura.

    ''Oh, so that''s what the remainingws at the training room of that old man, represented'', thought Daimon.

    The phenomenon in which water appears to be "white" is when little bubbles of air are trapped within it, in other words Terry''s water affinity now contains water and wind properties, it''s not a variant element like Aura''s, yet¡­ but it''s not far from bing one, as it isn''t cooperating like what the Vs do, but it is being actively mixed together into one.

    Arlion saw Vincent frowning and he smirked.

    "What do you think, the solid water of the Warhammer family has a strong structure, so it took that child quite a lot to be able to use the "Fierce White Water" affinity he was born with, however thanks to that same thing, his potential is limitless".

    Vincent remained silent, he noticed that Ae wasn''t the least worried, so he simply inwardly shrugged.

    ''The kid''s a monster, I should only worry about him killing the crown prince on the spot instead'', he thought.

    Daimon grinned, the white mes around him tripled their size as he activated Core Synchrony, all the mes then gathered on his hand forming a white me sword, which Terry recognized on the spot since it was that martial art the one that was used to defeat him with a single sh thest time.

    "Go to hell!", Terry''s image shed, he grabbed two of the five water swords and aimed at both Daimon''s chest and head, just to not feel any resistance through them.

    Daimon who had appeared behind of Terry, casually spoke.

    "Let''s see you growing teeth again, without your head attached to your body".

    Terry''s eyes widened, but he only managed to move the remaining three water sword to cover his back.

    ''White Universe, Comet Sword'', with thatst thought Daimon swung the sword in his hand, and a beam of white light of twenty meters if width engulfed Terry, travelling all the way from the tform, to the farthest corner of the area, shing against the barrier that was set to prevent the attacks of the participants to reach the spectators.

    "Aghhhhh!", a bloody scream was the only thing that could be hearding from the tform, many were forced to close their eyes due to the bright light emitted by the white ray of light.

    Arlion''s grip crushed the armrest of his throne, but he was being watched over by Vincent, so he limited to grit his teeth and wait for the result, which was revealed not too long after.

    Once the white light ray exhausted itself, the sight of Daimon standing right where he was before, was revealed, as for Terry, he was nowhere to be seen which made others wonder if he was vaporized by the attack.

    But before anyone did anything crazy, the eyes of all the spectators fell on the farthest point of the barrier, where the half-charred figure of the crown prince was slowly sliding downwards.

    "Booom!", Terry''s body crashed against the ground the next second, his eyes had rolled backwards, his hair and teeth were missing too, since Daimon wasn''t using Disaster, his clothes which were a magic treasure prevented him from being lethally wounded, but his exposed skin was burnt to a crisp.

    "See, I told you I knew what the result would be like, now pay", casually said Daimon.

    "You little bastard!!!", the White ancestor stood up from his seat as he yelled at Daimon, just to hear a cold voiceing from above.

    "Well, well, well, it''s nice to see all of you gathered here".

    The royal guards reacted on the spot by surrounding all the "guests" immediately, as Arlion asked.

    "What is the meaning of this, don''t tell me none of you is involved, it''s impossible to infiltrate the castle from the outside after all".

    Daimon stole a gaze at the one who just arrived and inwardly smirked.

    ''That idiot finally shows himself'', the idiot he was talking about was of course Marcus, who just appeared followed by arge group, among which there was at least twelve high stage Ster ranks.

    ''Let''s start'', thought Daimon, as he looked at all his suspects, waiting to see who''ll be the one making their move next, since it was time for everyone to show their cards andpare to see who had the best hand.

 Chapter 542 Years Of Plotting To Trip At The Last Minute

    ?

    The reactions of the nobles varied, some immediately shed to stand in front of their young generation, the pirates were known for killing the rising stars at any given chance after all.

    In case you wonder why they assumed the pirates were at fault for the sudden invasion, that is because ckbeard casually stood up from his seat and flew towards Marcus, followed by the various pirate crews that came alongside ckbeard.

    But that wasn''t all, the Stone crab ruler, which was the second ruler invited by the White ancestor snarked, before he as well as his army of magic beasts that temporary took a semi-human form also stood up in unison and joined the group that was floating on the sky.

    The mana pressure of Arlion exploded all over the recently revealed enemies that were trespassing the royal castle, Triten also stood up and was surrounded by the royal guards as well as Tideus.

    Unfortunately for Arlion, his pressure was countered by the Stone crab ruler who was standing next to Marcus, in terms of battle Arlion would probably win nine out of ten times against a ruler of the Maelstrom Sea, but the Stone crab ruler is a defense type knight, so blocking Arlion is not hard for him.

    "What is the meaning of this, I invited you to my home and you brought an army at my doorstep?".

    Marcus looked at the White ancestor with disdain as he answered.

    "Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Marcus and I''m here to exterminate the "legacy" that was built with the efforts of that man".

    While many didn''t understand what the hell was Marcus talking about, Daimon did, since he stole the most "profitable" opportunity that was supposed to go to Marcus, to create his mission, the devil ruler system user was given the next opportunity in line, which Daimon had no idea what it was.

    Marcus''s system was fundamentally different than Adam''s, unlike the light idiot, Marcus was supposed to act from the shadows, so it wasn''t as easy to obtain information regarding his goals as it was with Marcus, in exchange Marcus received less "assistance", as there was no Maximum Ster rank on his side, but hepensated with quantity given that Daimon safely assumed he had more than enough high stage Sters at his side, to equal in number the ones publicly known in the four seas.

    ''Well, I guess the foundation of the Mermen Sea was indeed built by the "efforts" of the hero, or at least he killed their major obstacles along with Freya''s second host, but to think that part of his mission would be destroying the Mermen Sea, what a predictable system'', thought Daimon as he reunited with the girls, naturally Aurora was now standing in front of them, while Vincent remained "calmly" sitting on his throne.

    "I bet you didn''t ever expect this to happen, right, you Mermen Sea scum, that after all these years some of the magic beasts you despised and hunted, woulde back to bite you", coldly said the Stone crab ruler as he red at the other ruler that came along him before adding.

    "Chailioudus ruler, what the hell are you waiting for, don''t tell me you are willing to sign a treaty with the ones that killed your ancestors?", he said towards the second ruler from the Maelstrom Sea that was invited by the White ancestor, the enemy of Thea''s family.

    Arlion turned to see the Chailioudus ruler who unlike what expected, didn''t immediately revealed to be an enemy, but has been silent as if he was waiting for something, just to see him showing his spiked teeth as he said.

    "Oh, don''t look at me like that, the strong preying on the weak is the way that true magic beasts follow, dying is normal when you are weak so I didn''te here for a revenge, no¡­ what I want are resources and a way to break through the shackles of this damn prison, so my interests align with a different person".

    As soon as he finished speaking, the Chailioudus ruler shed and was now sitting next to another of the "big" fishes that were present here, one which made Aurora''s eyes coldly glow, since it was none other than Abaris.

    "So, the Shaman of the Elemental Sea is also betraying my White family?", asked Arlion to Abaris who stood up left to one side apanied by his subordinates as well as the Chailioudus ruler and his army, not without saying.

    "I''m not interested in fighting, as long as certain "conditions" are agreed upon, we can discuss an agreement that will extend the peace that has reigned between our seas until now", he red at Daimon and Aurora being quite clear what part of his conditions will be.

    Arlion was clearly displeased by Abaris''s words, he was basically going to be ckmailed by his supposed ally, still he didn''t do anything yet, not because he didn''t want to, but because there was another movement among the presents which got his attention.

    And this one also took Daimon slightly by surprise, the ones separating from the rest, were the people of the ckfin family, but they weren''t led by their n head the ckfin Duke, but by all their secondary family branches who managed to snatch away Ezequiel and his secretary.

    There was also an interesting ally that was joining them right now, Horrorw and the Skelefiends reunited with them, the ruler of the Skelefiends took out a ck mirror and then broke it, which caused a few pained screams toe from a few high ranked nobles, among which there was the ckfin Duke.

    "Aghhh!" quite a few of them exploded into mists of blood and crushed meat, quite a bloody scene, but the mess cleaned itself as a portal was formed by their remains, a mantled figure came out of each individual portal, for a total of five.

    "What the hell is this!!!", the ckfin Duke screamed at his subordinated familes, though he now had a hole in his stomach, he didn''t die unlike all the others who screamed, he was lucky to be one of the few middle stage Ster ranks in the Mermen Sea, so he didn''t die, but he was gravely wounded.

    The tenth mantled figure, which had an irregr shape as one of the sides of his body was clearly muchrger than the other one, coldlyughed at the portal from which it came out of, which originated on the ckfin Duke.

    "Oh, nothing much, it''s just that it was time for you to pay for that breakthrough potion you got from me so many years ago, but don''t be angry it was due to that same potion you are still alive so besides a couple of thousands of years of lifespan you lost nothing", said the mantled figure as it walked towards Ezequiel and the others.

    Daimon who was watching everything happening, wasn''t surprised by his most recent discovery, those mantled figures were all¡­ Nethereals, nothing new since the right hand in the shadows of the Duke was reced by one, it was one of the first encounters he had with Nethereals after all.

    ''Well, that exins why Ae couldn''t find the connection between the Duke and Nethereals, he was an idiot who got used due to greed''.

    Daimon''s train of thought was interrupted when he saw the tenth mantled figure arrive at where Ezequiel and his secretary where kept hostage, to ce his hands on their heads.

    "Dad, help me!", shouted Ezequiel, as his eyes rolled backwards, unfortunately the ckfin Duke wasn''t sure if he could keep his life let alone help his youngest son, the next second, Ezequiel''sins stopped, the ones who were holding him let him go and he even stretched his body.

    "With this, the first part of our deal has been fulfilled "Arcanist", as requested my Lord has given you a nk Nether core, now it''s your turn", said the mantled guy.

    Ezequiel''s hair which was already ck, darkened a couple more of tones, his secretary, took a couple more of seconds to return to reality, only then she was let go as well.

    "Fucking finally, I was starting to feel suffocated, how are doing?", asked Ezequiel to his "secretary", who closed and opened her hands a couple of times.

    "Well, it''s better than nothing I guess, still why do I get the body that your suit humped at night all the time?", said the girl with a voice that waspletely different than the one she had back at the three-art tournament, but which Daimon and a couple of the girls perfectly recognized.

    "Heh, wasn''t she the one attracted to me though, besides she needed to have origin for you to use it, if you have a better method I''ll hear you out, otherwise don''tin, Ka".

    That''s right, the voice that the girl who presented herself as Ezequiel''s secretary was the same as the one of the monstrous siren, but that was secondary revtion, based on what Ezequiel just said and the burning hatred Daimon felting from Freya who was still hibernating as she couldn''t stop the process twice, the one speaking was¡­ the hero.

    Since Ka wasn''t saying anything else, "Ezequiel", nodded and then snapped his fingers before saying.

    "Now, back onto business", the moment he spoke, all the members of the secondary branches of the ckfin family all vomited blood and died, but then they all stood up again, the difference is that their skin changed to a gray tone, also most reached the peak of the Arch rank, as for the ones that were half stage Sters, they actually became early-stage Ster ranks on the spot.

    The hero and Ka also increased their realms, to middle stage Lord ranks immediately, and their faces "teared up", as their appearances changed, for Ka she now looked like a younger version of the blue haired disguise that the monstrous siren used, as for Ezequiel, his hair grew longer and he became taller as well, not to mention he looked way better than before.

    "Mm, not bad, not as good as I used to look, but we''ll get to that", said Ezequiel, well, at this point it would be more urate to call him the hero, whose name, ording to Freya was Ereth.

    Needless to say, but the ckfin Duke was about to suffer a mental breakdown, no one helped him since those who used to be allied with the ckfin family were terrified of the appearances that they now had, not to mention it was easy to see there was something wrong with Ezequiel, and those mantled guys.

    "Oh, right I nearly forgot about you", said Ereth, with a snap of his fingers, the ckfin Duke screamed before blood poured out of his eyes, nose and mouth, he fell frontwards and then got up in a simr state to the others.

    "Father!!!", the only one who reacted was the other son of the ckfin Duke, who was now looking at Ereth with hatred filled eyes.

    "Don''t look at me like that "brother", you were internally exiled despite your high talent, so he hasn''t been your father for quite some time", said Ereth as the "revived" Duke stood next to him.

    "Anyway, I don''t like to beat around the bush, ancestor of the White, my fight is with the Elemental Sea, if you stay out of my way, I won''t attack you, otherwise you''ll have the same fate as them, total annihtion¡­ well with a few exceptions", he said as he red at Jasmine and Sarah.

    "Hurry and tell us your standing, my Lord doesn''t like to wait", added the mantled guy as the mantle was dissolved by a dark ominous mist, revealing a man with a human-like appearance with the difference that the left side of hide of his body was unproportionallyrger than the right one, it pretty much looked bizarre as those generic Nethereals Daimon has see before, but at the same time he felt way stronger probably because the guy kept a human-like appearance at the end of the day.

    "Don''t intimidate the young generations, Garrius", jokingly said Ereth, just to see the White ancestorughing out loud before saying.

    "To think there were these much rats hiding in my Neptune, including someone that seems to havee from quite some time ago, noble warriors of the Mermen Sea, gather around me!".

    The royal guards, the nobles that were loyal to the crown as well as Triten, his wives and the princes all came to the side of their guardian who, some nobles as well as neo nobles remained confused about what was going on, but since they were all low ranked ones, Arlion ignored them.

    "Ancestor, do you know them, what is going on?", asked Triten, seeking advice from Arlion, who nodded at him.

    "They are remnants of the ones who caused the founding wars at Neptune, and enemies that hade from outside of our nativend as well, a while ago when I was the king, I was lucky enough to find about it through a record I obtained when Ipleted my Sea Emblem", he said as he took out a white medal with blue details.

    "Ever since, I have been preparing for this day with the help of the legacy left behind by the founder of our White family", he said as he waved the emblem he had in his hand, a blinding white light shone for a second before the projection of a giant white shark appeared above Arlion.

    He then walked towards Terry who was carried by one of the members of the royal guard, and ced his hand on his shoulder, the emblem shone and his burns and other wounds were immediately healed.

    "Master, I-I lost", said Terry as he gritted his teeth.

    Arlion shook his head in response as he put the emblem which had a chain to work as a ne, around Terry''s neck, before saying.

    "Don''t despair, you are my most talented descendant, sometimes we have to endure until it is our time to shine, just like I did, it is now your turn, besides don''t worry, you''ll never lose again¡­".

    Terry nodded, he has seen the ne his master now handed him, it was the most precious treasure Arlion had, ording to himself and he promised to pass it down to him when the right time came.

    Terry proudly stood up to face the enemies that were threatening to destroy the kingdom he was going to inherit, but then his expression froze, he slowly looked downwards just to see an arming out of his chest.

    "M... master", his eyes lost their light in a second as the White ancestor retrieved his hand, not without saying.

    "Though you couldn''t aplish a damn thing of the tasks I instilled into you, you still have a high value for me, so don''t worry, you''ll be the future ruler of Neptune", the next second, the emblem that was hanging from Terry''s neck shone, the giant shark became a line of light that entered the body of Arlion and the wound on Terry''s chest healed instantly.

    "I had forgot what pain felt like after so many years of istion and meditation, damn mortality, I guess all the efforts did pay, since I have now attained the first half of what I desired, a second youth with a much better starting point, I trust you find the temporary cocoon you wanted up to your liking, ancestor", said Terry who seemed to have returned to normal, with the difference that his previously blue hair gained a white shade.

    "It fulfills our agreement, however don''t forget our next target, it seems you are quitepatible with that body", said Arlion, or more urately whoever was now upying Arlion''s body.

    "Of course, it is, he inherited my pure and direct lineage since he was my son, it''s a shame hecked wit and mental strength so I couldn''t keep his personality aside to give him a new vessel, but whatever, I can have as many offspring as I want in the future", said Terry.

    "S-Son?", Triten whose face was as pale as a ghost turned to see Irma, with an expression of disbelief, just to see her smirking.

    "Now you care, after nearly a hundred years of wanting to have that bitch, of course I wasn''t going to be a second te for a weakling like you, especially since I wouldn''t be here if Lord Arlion wouldn''t have saved my life back then", she said as she walked to her "son''s" side.

    Norma who couldn''t keep up with what just happened dragged the twin princes away to not stand in Irma''s way, but she shook her head in response.

    "Don''t worry, I won''t be the queen in the future, neither will you be, but you can still be part of the dynasty that will be created, generals will be needed after all and you always were supportive of me", she said.

    Irma looked at Triten who was frozen and then nodded as she joined Arlion''s side, as for Ryan and Bryan, they weren''t close to Terry anyway so his end meant nothing to them, Norma on the other hand red at the Duchess before she said to Irma.

    "My family will support the White like always, but what about those who always "suppressed" us?".

    "Well, servants and ves are always a need to start a new kingdom, empire or dynasty", said Irma as she red at Ae.

    "Ancestor if you would, there are some animals who don''t know their ce, I suggest we get rid of them first", said Arlion as he gazed at Marcus''s group, but also at Daimon.

    Arlion''s original body nodded and then the whole area rumbled as an immense pressure flooded it, in terms of strength it didn''t surpass the Maximum Ster rank, but its intensity suppressive feeling definitely took the leaders of the other three sides by surprise.

    Luckily, they were outside of the castle, so everyone just moved away taking distance from their respective enemies, at the same time the pressuresing from the ones leading each group shed on the air.

    "Boooom!", a thunderous sound echoed through the whole area, the sky darkened and the wind started blowing, it was as if the world was about to end.

    "Mm, Vincent why are you at the side of the Elemental Sea, as your king I order you to bring me that brat who dared to insult me, I''ll need many strong generals in the future, of course you''ll be my second like it has always been", said Arlion, just to see Vincent mockinglyughing at him.

    "I only fight for the people, a crazy bastard like you who killed his own offspring for his benefit and chose the easy way isn''t fit to be the king¡­ people of Neptune, is this the one you wish to follow!", shouted the old Marshal.

    "No!!!", the low ranked nobles, the neo nobles and the army all shouted in unison as they prepared their weapons.

    Arlion sighed.

    "Oh well, to be honest I was going to turn you into a mindless doll anyway, whatever I''ll kill all your allies first¡­", Arlion''s words stopped as he felt a strange sensation all of a sudden.

    "Mm?".

    "What the hell?".

    "It''s still not the time!".

    Different but equally surprised reactions came from certain people, like Marcus, Ereth and Ka, all at the same time, the reason is that small cracks started appearing on the skies of Neptune, more urately on the limit that has always been there ever since the natives had use of reason.

    ''I leave this side to you, watch out the thing on the old bastard''s body, Horrorw and that mantled Nethereal'', Daimon''s voice could be heard on the adult''s heads, before he also sent a message to the girls.

    ''Be careful and reunite with the one closest to you, if I''m far don''te for me before you find each other, okay''.

    ''Mm!'', all the girls inwardly nodded and then Daimon looked at the notification that was triggered when Marcus arrived earlier.

    [Ding]

    [All the raid team leaders had gathered at a sole ce, as the one with the highest ranked emblem, the host has the right to start the Global Raid at any given time starting now]

    [Do you wish to start Y/N]

    Daimon selected yes and then the small cracks on the skies of Neptune, suddenly exploded as pirs of light fell on top of certain specific people, each pir only covered a single person as Daimon expected.

    "No, what gone wrong!", Marcus, Ereth, Arlion, Ka, as well as many others, screamed some weren''t selected by those pirs of light but they couldn''t do anything to those that were inside of them, to their frustration.

    Years of plotting and scheming from the shadows, watching over their shoulders just to trip at thest second, or at least that''s what they thought it happened since the Global Raid started before midnight.

    "Dammmn!!!", curses were thest thing that could be heard before the pirs disappeared and the cracks on the skies closed, leaving a sepulchral silence behind on the previously focus point of the conflict.

    But that didn''tst long before Vincent shouted as he shed towards the White ancestor, out of a better way to call whoever was now using Arlion''s body.

    "Charge!", and thus the war officially started.

 Chapter 543 The Distorted Land Above The Sky

    ?

    A few seconds before the pirs that descended from the sky, disappeared, as Daimon expected he found himself isted from the others, but at least he could still feel their overall positions as the pirs make them ascend into the sky, before everything turned into darkness.

    Or at least that was supposed to be the case, but Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask and the darkness faded away allowing him to see what was going on.

    The light pir that was surrounding him, was actually protecting him from a sea of chaotic mana mixed with something he recognized quite easily,her, it was the first time Daimon has seen so much mana in a free state gathered in one ce, it was to the point that the sh became visible.

    Normally, though the atmosphere of a habitable contains practically all the elements needed for life to bloom, be it at a small orrge quantity depending on each, only the basic ones are visually noticeable by default.

    For example, wood mana can be seen in ces withrge forests, earth mana on mountain ranges, water mana at open sea and so on, but there are other types of mana which aren''t visually noticeable though they are present, like space mana, only inside of dimensional tunnels it bes slightly noticeable by innate.

    There has only been one asion in which Daimon has seenher mana be innately present and visible before, and that was when Thea opened that portal which was created due to the spatial breach that her family has been guarding for countless generations.

    Until now, in this seemingly endless sea of mana, there washer and that wasn''t all, other hard toe by types of mana were in the mix, things like magma, space, storm and other variations or highly vtile types of mana that only appear rarely during a natural phenomenon, were shing and retorting within this mass of mana.

    ''Well, that exins why the space at certain parts of Neptune is fragile enough to copse if Maximum Sters fight nearby it, if the whole sky of this is covered by this mass of mana, I''m more surprised by it not having copsed before'', thought Daimon.

    Apparently, this chaotic ce was anotheryer of Neptune, which was only essible through the limit on the sky, or when the space teared apart naturally like the breaches that were sealed at the Maelstrom Sea and guarded by the four rulers.

    Another thing Daimon was able to see was the pirs of light being sent in different directions, many that were near him had disappeared before his infinity eyes could adapt to see in the sea of chaotic mana, but there were some not that far from him, among whom there was Daphne as well some guys with the emblems of the royal guard.

    "Heh, so the old bastard did have iplete emblems in his power and distributed them to his secretckeys", disdainfully said Daimon, he couldn''t recognize a single of those guys though they all belonged to the young generation, so they were probably part of the army Arlion has cultivated in the shadows for when it came to this.

    Daimon suddenly felt a slight pulling from his right pocket, his ck Sea Emblem finally reacted, unlike others whose emblems were floating in front of them since earlier, his took its sweet time.

    "Finally, I guess I''ll meet whatever might be at the other side of you little thing", said Daimon as he grabbed the emblem.

    "Oh, so youe with a little privilege, I guess it''s to be expected since you are supposedly the highest ranked even among the raid team leaders", mumbled Daimon as he moved the emblem in a certain direction.

    ¡­

    "Crack!", the space suddenly cracked before a loud impact could be heard as an object as high speed crashed against the ground.

    "¡­", Daphne found herself in arge crater, unlike what she expected the pir of light exhausted itself the moment the space of wherever she was now, was pierced through by it, the remnants of it slowed down her fall but she was still forced to use a spell to break the momentum.

    Luckily though her physical body wasn''t strong despite she descending from a sea magic beast, like Mellie, her efficiency in wind and water spells was top notch, so she just created a cushion of wind around her and avoided the impact.

    Daphne jumped out of the crater and observed her surroundings, or that''s what she was about to do when she dodged to the left avoiding an arrow that was aiming at her chest.

    "Here, I found one!", a young man''s voice came from east, Daphne who just avoided the attack, took cover behind a white rock formation which was not too far from her arrival point.

    She did so, because the one who attacked her wasn''t alone, she could tell there were another two at leasting from the remaining two directions, meaning she could only retreat in that direction or face those three enemies.

    Not even a few secondster, the three enemies revealed themselves, two guys and a girl, all wearing a simr uniform to that of the royal guard which Daphne knew quite well, as she is the first princess, but she who has seen all the members of the royal guard as she grew up, couldn''t recognize those three.

    Not to mention they were all early Lord ranks and members of the same youngest generation, which put them at the same level as people like Lance, Walford and the like, so there is no way they wouldn''t have been known¡­ unless they were hidden on purpose.

    "First princess, we know you are here, if you willingly surrender, we won''t attack you, our Lord tasked us with bringing you safe to where he is, so stop wasting time and¡­ aghhh!", a blue stream suddenly came from behind the rock where Daphne was hiding and severed the hand of the guy that was shouting at her, that was an attack type water spell "extreme rupture", as expected of the Vs princess, whose innate ability reinforced the mana circuits on her hands, shooting type spells casted by her were many times stronger than those of other people, she just severed the hand of a knight on the same realm as her after all.

    The guy who was the one leading and the one that shot that arrow at Daphne, held his maimed to apply pressure, only now he realized that his storage ring wasn''t working, luckily, he had a first aid kit in his pocket so while he bandaged his wound, he screamed at the other two.

    "Fuck it, crush that bitch''s limbs, well drag her through the ground all the way to where the Lord is, she is no longer a princess anyway!!!".

    The other two nodded and then grabbed their weapons, which they had on them since that was obligatory for them, the remaining male had an axe while the girl used a spear, their team had a bncedposition, one long range, one middle range and one close range, two knights and one mage.

    Or so they thought, the two who were slowly approaching Daphne suddenly felt their danger senses ringing, they both jumped backwards avoiding by the skin of their teeth, being sliced by a blue stream of water and an invisible current of winding from above.

    "What the hell, she can cast two spells of different elements at the same time, was she not useless without her servant?", the guy managed to not suffer a wound, but half of his hair was cleanly shaved by the stream of water which aimed at his head a second earlier.

    "That wasn''t on the data that the Lord gave us, wasn''t she a damn mute ss cannon!", cursed the girl whose hair and clothes were all ragged due to the explosion caused by the high-pressure current of wind.

    Daphne was simr to Mellie in the sense that she rarely appeared in public, though she was more known than the Delphini princess, the public only knew her for the famous Storm Stream innate ability that she inherited from the Duchess, since she was said to have been born with a weak body.

    Sure, her talent was still way above average, but she supposedly couldn''tpete against Terry, Lance or Ezequiel, even those guys that were supposedly her teammates were surprised to see her constantly bombarding the pirates back at the magic beast hunt.

    Back then Daimon met a dead end on who those guys were working for, but now it''s safe to assume they worked for Arlion, or at least to one of his closeckeys, since they all came from rtively high ranked noble families.

    Luckily, Daimon left no survivors, and dead men tell no tales, so besides Chris and the others, no one knew what Daphne was truly capable off, certainly her stamina wasn''t the best, but she was a tough one, having the guts to push herself over the limit to use her innate ability one more time even if that took a toll on her body, for the sake of her subordinates and friend.

    Add to that the fact that the Vs princess has been training in the main residence of the Flying Citadel, and while none of the girls that were at the Lord realm managed to advance, theirprehension on their respective affinities increased by bounds and leaps, to the point that Daimon was able to confirm that they will be able to obtain a Manifestation Phenomenon if they go the four gxies or if they keep training in the main residence for some time.

    So now the three members of the royal guard were in a predicament, they couldn''t go all out because their orders stated that Daphne had to be alive, but if they didn''t, they would not even be able to go through the barrage of fierce attacks that will be shot at them.

    "Screw it, you two use "that", I''ll assume the responsibility!", shouted the guy who was trying to find his severed hand.

    The other two stared at each other and then a maniac smile appeared on their faces, their eyes got bloodshot and their bodies grewrger, their hair lost some color and withered as if they had aged on the spot, in exchange, their bodies surged with power, the knight who was an axe user jumped and using a movement martial art was able to dodge Daphne''s attack.

    "Hahaha, I go die!", shouted the guy as he swinged his axe downwards, making the rock formation where Daphne was taking cover, explode.

    Daphne who was forced to retreat, saw from the corner of her eye the tip of a spearing at her from within the curtain of dust that was raised a moment ago, a small whirlwind appeared on her hand, which she threw her right.

    The whirlwind erged on the spot, redirecting the spear that was aiming at nailing her through her shoulder.

    "I got you now, you¡­", the handless guy who just appeared above Daphne aimed his bow at her, but as he was about to let go of the string, a giant pir of light came from above and engulfed him.

    "Boooom!".

    The impact blew away the two enemies, while Daphne who held onto a rock to not suffer the same destiny, sweetly smiled in response, not because the handless guy was crushed by that pir of light, she had noticed him earlier so the "sneak" attack wasn''t going to hurt her, what made a smile flourish on that pretty face of hers, was the silver haired masked youth that was dusting his clothes off as he came out of the giant crater caused by his arrival.

    "Sorry, it seems I took the long route by ident", said Daimon, he looked downwards just to see the pieces of broken bones and flesh that were spread at the outer part of the crater, that''s what was left of the handless guy, a result of Daimon not even caring about slowing down his fall, the pir didn''t disappear anyway, which is why the impact turned that guy along with his armor and all, into minced meat.

    "Another target, this time one of the killing list, the contribution is mine!", the axe knight who recovered from the shockwave before the spear user mage, shed towards Daimon with his axe ready to behead him.

    "Oh, that''s an interesting state you got there, it resembles what Terry did previously, burning his lineage in exchange for a bigger boost than what his body could handle, but for you it''s even worse, you are burning away your lifespan, here let me help you reach your goal faster", said Daimon, his image blinked and next he was shoving the axe guy''s head against the ground.

    "Booom!", the impact not only made the ground break, but the guy''s head exploded like a watermelon.

    The spear mage girl saw herpanion being destroyed in a single movement and the immediately turned around to escape, but she lost her bnce the next second, because her legs were cut clean by Daphne''s wind spell,

    "Aghhhh!", the woman who was bleeding like crazy, screamed in pain, surely losing one''s legs should be painful, but not to the point that a trained member of the royal guard would be screaming like that.

    "It smells a lot like anesthesia, I guess a cocktail of potions is needed for disposable pawns that are using the innate ability of a lineage with which they weren''t born with", concluded Daimon.

    With the anesthesia leaving her body through therge amount of blood she was losing as of current, whatever she was doing was interrupted and she returned to be a regr early-stage Lord rank, not to mention she was feeling the backsh of the technique she used.

    Her scream was interrupted by Daimon who grabbed her by her neck and dragged her to then toss her at Daphne''s feet.

    "You wanted to capture Daphne, why?", he was on the killing list of Arlion due to what happened earlier, so he wasn''t surprised that those three tried to get rid of him on the spot, but since Grace was clearly against Arlion, the same should have applied to Daphne and yet she was a target that must be captured instead.

    "As if I would betray my¡­ aghhh", listening to her negative answer, Daimon casually stomped on her left hand destroying her fingers and forcing a blood-curling scream out of that girl.

    "You screamed quite a bit earlier, don''t you know that raising your voice when in hostile territory is practically asking to be killed, in a couple of minute wild hungry magic beasts wille and rip you to shreds".

    Seeing that the girl didn''t speak, Daimon released a bit of aura as he added.

    "Did you know that magic beasts most of the times start with the "soft" parts, where there are no bones, like your stomach from which they can ess your organs and other simr tissue".

    As expected, the girl''s face paled on the spot, in part because of what Daimon said and in part because of his Overlord''s Pride aura, which instilled fear into her heart, even if his Terror Contractor wasn''t reacting, a simple interrogation wasn''t that hard to pull off.

    "I-I don''t know, the Lord only ordered to capture and bring him certain amount of people, among which there were the two princesses and there are also targets that are meant to be eliminated on sight, like you!", screamed the girl.

    Daimon clicked his tongue, he didn''t expect a random member of the royal guards to know anything, but it was still disappointing to hear that.

    "Watever, tell me, who the hell are you guys¡­" before Daimon could finish his sentence, he suddenly kicked the girl whose body exploded on the air a couple of secondster.

    "A loyalty curse, this looks awfully familiar", said Daimon, he couldn''t see the curse until it was triggered, it was different than the one used by Nethereals but so only now he learned how to detect it, luckily his instincts never failed him, so at the slightest sign of danger he acted.

    And he wasn''t the only one, a ck thread which came from within his shadow, handed Daimon a storage ring, which he dly epted, it was sealed by thews of this ce yes, but he recently learned a little trick.

    With a single thought, the rig disappeared from Daimon''s hand and appeared in the inventory, unlike before he was able to see into the ring as it was inside his inventory, which couldn''t be restrained.

    Besides a few potions and other medicine bottles, the only thing Daimon could find was a list, written not in the letter of Arlion but in the letter of someone else.

    "For someone that has been plotting in the shadows for a dozen of generations, that old man didn''t take into ount something as simple like yourpanions beingzy bastards", said Daimon, which made Daphne curiously look at him.

    "Ahem, I''m referring to someone else", said Daimon in response, he was referring to Calvin, though Sarah was kind of crazy she was pretty smart to be honest.

    If someone was to bezy enough to write a list of targets instead of memorizing it, that would have been Calvin for sure, and apparently that girl was on the same category, since she had a couple of papers with a list of names and different tittles, like capture, kill or follow.

    She probably could have guided the way to Arlion, but the damn curse activated, and since Thea wasn''t here, Daimon wouldn''t have been able to get rid of it, Rita could have tried but Daimon wasn''t willing to expose her over something so little, since she is one of his trump cards.

    In any case, he is sure that all the participants of the global raid are supposed to meet at some point, speaking of which it, Daimon could feel some kind of presenceing this way, meaning it was time for them to leave.

    "Let''s go find a higher ground to look at our surroundings", said Daimon, the pir of light moved him quite fast, so he wasn''t able to see at this ce from above earlier, his Sea Emblem allowed him to change his direction, it was hard to navigate but he managed toe out in the nearby area where he saw Daphne leaving that mass of chaotic mana.

    "Mm", with a low soft sound Daphne nodded and they then ran into the direction that led to a tall mountain, by the way the white "rock" formation of earlier were bones of some kind of magic beast that had been exposed for quite some time, the nearby area looked like a rocky mountainndscape, but there was arge wall ahead which blocked the sight, so it was safe to assume they appeared at some kind of isted area, probably it was set up like that as a starting point for the participants of the global raid.

 Chapter 544 Mountains Of Bones & Forest Of Flesh

    ?

    "Here", Daimon gestured at Daphne so she held onto his shoulder, whatever was rmed due to all the noise made by those three idiots, was quite fast.

    Daphne didn''t stop in the ceremony and directly grabbed Daimon''s arm, which Daimon didn''t mind, instead he used blink to sh three times from where they were previously sanding to the base of the giant mountain-like wall ahead of them.

    Without letting go of Daimon''s arm, Daphne looked downwards to the area where she fought earlier, the ground shook for a moment before arge bone hand came out from below.

    The ground split apart to reveal a three-meter-tall creature made out of bones which clearly didn''t belong all to the same creature, it was basically a mass of walking bones, which was powered by something Daimon and Daphne also, easily recognized,her.

    Daphne''s pretty eyes gazed at Daimon who then said.

    "That isn''t a Nethereal nor a Skelefiend, but an undead, it''s something that can be found back at the four gxies from where Ie, one of the many artificial undead races, a bone golem".

    How could Daimon not know about it, since bone golems were the prototype for race to which Horals originated, the bone general, of course in terms of strength, quality and potential, a bone golem can''t hold a candle in front of a bone general.

    But it is understandable, since bone golems are set to be only around the six to the ninth star realm, unable to ever advance like all the artificial undead, meaning that they can never reach the Lord rank.

    So, you might wonder why such a weak creature made Daimon leave in a hurry, to not be detected by it, the answer is pretty simple, that wasn''t the only thing that was arriving at where they were.

    From arge patch of petrified trees, a second different creature came out, this one also looked quite strange, since it had no skin, some parts of its body had the bones exposed but the vast majority has flesh over it, unlike the bone golem, this one was actually alive.

    But instead of a heart, it had a mass ofher beating in its chest, or at least that''s what Daimon''s infinity eyes showed him.

    "Where are the intruders, you better not have eaten them you sack of useless bones, otherwise I''ll consume you!", shouted the neer with a guttural voice.

    "Hehehe, why are you fighting among yourselves when there is no prey here, they probably escaped after being injured due to internal conflict", a suggestive voice came the "ground", or that seemed to be the case, before a puddle of a ck substance emerged from the rocks to then turn into a feminine looking creature that seemed to be made of ck mist.

    Daimon frowned, the third creature also hadher being used to sustain its existence, but on her case, it was attached to the skin, the wayher was used on the three creatures was too different to belong to the same faction.

    He already had his suspicions due to the inconsistence of the assassination order put for Jasmine when she hadn''t been born yet, and earlier he more or less confirmed the fact that¡­ there was more than one high ranked Nethereal.

    How did he confirmed it you ask, the hero had Nethereals at his side including that Garrius guy who is supposedly the highest ranked Nethereal being a "Representative" the rank right below a Lord, and also the only Nethereal with memories prior to having appeared in Neptune, at least ording to Akim.

    But then the Chailioudus ruler wasn''t with them, but with Abaris and just like Thea suspected, that guy also had traces ofher on him, though it was different to the first cases Daimon has seen, it was more simr to theher that Ka had.

    That meant there were at least three Lords among the Nethereals, two of them possibly being the fathers of Jasmine and Sarah who at this point was safe to assume cooperated with Abaris to a certain extent, and then there was the one behind Garrius who had some sort of deal with Ereth and Ka.

    And then as if things weren''tplicated enough, a rock near those three, exploded and a figure came out along with a stream of high-pressured water, the figure was revealed to be a humanoid fish-looking creature, it looked simr to what magic beast that take a temporary human form would look like.

    ''A primitive merman of some sort¡­'', is what Daimon thought thetest to the party looked like.

    Apparently, no one else wasing, because once the four of them were gathered at the ce, the hostilities started.

    "Sack of bones and disgusting lump of meat, you two arrived first, hand over the visitors or die", demanded the primitive merman.

    "A walking fish is acting so brave on an earth domineering environment, I guess it''s true that stupidity is passed down through beast''s bloodlines", disdainfully said the ck mist covered feminine figure.

    "Shut up, don''t think we have forgotten about you whores attacking our caravan and taking our guests away", shouted the merman as he released his mana pressure, which made the other two creatures join hands to counter it.

    In terms of realm, the strongest here was the primitive merman, being at the peak of the early-stage Lord realm, the flesh creature and the mist covered creatures were both at the early stage of the initial Lord realm and then the bone golem was at the ninth star realm, so to deal with the merman they actually had to join hands to fight in a 3v1 situation.

    However, one''s realm isn''t everything in a battle, Daimon has been observing his surroundings and the amount of water mana in this ce is extremely thin, while darkness, death, fire, poison and other elements in the negative side of the specter were quite abundant.

    It wasn''t to the point where the atmosphere will grant a boost, like back at Kerrol, but the merman will be at disadvantage at the long term.

    ''Should I wait and then interrogate the winner, or should I just kill three and leave one alive, the merman looks the like the obvious choice, but then wasn''t the hero allied to the Mermen Sea back then¡­'', thought Daimon to then return to reality as he heard the mist covered feminine figure saying.

    "What taking away, I simply offered them a more "tempting" deal which they couldn''t resist, at least the majority of them, there were some weirdos who resisted and even killed a few of us so we had to join hands to capture them, besides isn''t it your sea race''s fault for not assigning enough people to protect them, we live in a very dangerous ce after all~".

    Daimon felt as if he was hit by a lightning out of the blue, he looked into his inventory and then took out the sigil lector which he modified with the magic technology of the mirror te, the thing immediately started looking for a match with the signals stored in its data bank, and not even a few secondster a few images appeared on the screen of the sigil lector.

    The images were the following, a brown colored dune with the head of a coyote on top of it, a red winged cyclone, a green pond with a tree on its center, a yellow sun with a cross andstly a grey sword over pointing upwards.

    Daphne felt the aura around Daimon changing for a second, before he returned to normal, which made her look at him with a worried expression on her pretty face, she has gotten to know Daimon quite a bit after the time they had spent together, even if she isn''t talkative for obvious reasons, Daphne is a good observer and the asions where she has seen Daimon being angry are really scarce and all ended in tragedy for the other party.

    Seeing the worry in those pretty light blue eyes, Daimon smiled and then said.

    "It''s fine, it seems we have found ourselves a "shortcut", I''ll be back in a second", Daphne nodded as she saw Daimon jumping downwards.

    ¡­

    Back at the ground, the four creatures have been fiercely fighting against each other, the primitive merman used his ws to shatter the bones of the bone golem and ripped one of the arms of the flesh creature, but the mist covered feminine figure left some scratch on his body which had started to infect the nearby scales.

    "Today, I''ll eat fried fish for dinner and gain a new arm!", shouted the flesh creature as it rushed towards the primitive merman, who snorted and then gathered mana in front of him to shot a clear stream of water.

    The bone golem jumped in front of it and blocked the attack, the bones shattered more, but theher me in its skull lit up and the cracks closed in a matter of seconds, though the bone golem had many disadvantages, it had the ability to regenerate its bones as long as they weren''t utterly destroyed and the soul fire didn''t extinguish, so they were basically efficient meat shields.

    The mist covered figure emerged behind the merman and aimed at its neck, but then a huge pressure fell from above interrupting the fight.

    "Booom!".

    "Aghhhh!".

    A thunderous sound followed by a miserable scream echoed through the area, when the curtain of dust that was raised by the impact, was dispersed, the image of a masked silver haired youth whose foot was pressing the head of the mist covered woman, against the ground was revealed, there were some dim white mes covering his foot, that got more active whenever the woman tried to move, which were the origin of the high-pitched screams.

    "What the hell are you¡­", the flesh creature was about to demand Daimon to release the mist covered figure, when the bone golem exploded in white mes being reduced to ashes in a matter of seconds, and that wasn''t all, the flesh creature looked downwards just to see a ck sword piercing his chest.

    The guy didn''t even have a chance to scream before he was deprived from all its vitality, and became a dried mummy just to break down into fine dust the next second, everything in less than a minute.

    Daimon then looked at the merman before saying.

    "You, describe the "guests" you mentioned", he casually used Demon Light to burn the thing below his foot, which made the merman be wary of the silver haired youth, but then, he noticed that they were now surrounded by a ring of those white mes which killed the bone golem instantly, something he couldn''t do.

    "How can I be sure that you won''t attack me when you hear my answer, they didn''t seem to be in good terms with each other, so you might be their enemy which will make you my enemy too?", asked the merman, despite its appearance it was fully rational, unfortunately Daimon was not in the mood to dialogue with him.

    "You can be sure that I will kill you if you don''t give me an answer, also I assure you she won''t lie when I ask her so think twice if you are even considering on lying", said Daimon as he increased the output of his Demon Light burning more of the mist that was covering the feminine figure.

    The merman thought about it for a couple of seconds before sighing and then saying.

    "There were a bunch of them, but the ones in which I ended up in good terms were just a small group, to be honest all humans look simr to me but one of them was especially hard to forget, it was tall for a human and had brown hair, ording to the members of my n that managed to hold until we arrived, that guy was the one that stood up and fought alongside us, so while we don''t even know his name, my n has a debt of gratitude with him".

    "I see¡­ you, tell me where do you keep your captives", said Daimon to the previously fully mist covered figure, which was now revealed to be a pale skinned woman below the mist which was burned by Daimon''s Demon Light.

    "I''ll talk, please make it stop!!!", shouted the woman, which Daimon did, as soon as the mes returned to Daimon''s body since the body of the woman was no longer covered by that ck mist, the exposed parts dried and withered as if they had aged thousands of years in a second.

    The woman whose face was still covered by the mist gave Daimon a hatred filled re, but then seeing those terrifying mes appearing on the sole of his feet which was still stomping on her neck, made her answer immediately.

    "They are alive, my family is one of the leaders of the nest where the group to which that guy who resisted is held captive, so if you take me as hostage for negotiating you might be able to free them".

    "Don''t believe her human, every nest of those whores has at least one peak Lord stage existence guarding the fort, she just wants to take you into a trap, if you are that person''s friend then join us to lunch an assault on their nest", said the primitive merman just to see Daimon shaking his head.

    "No thanks, I don''t have time to waste, so I''ll directly go, besides she didn''t seem to be lying about the hostage exchange, so her n must value her life", he said.

    The merman thought about it for a second before ultimately nodding.

    "ording to the n rules if I can''t convince you I must apany you, I might not be as strong but I can at least hold some of them of, so allow me to go with you¡­ the one who held onto his life to tell us what happened was my older brother, I must honor his memory by helping his benefactor".

    Daimon shrugged in response, with a native ally guiding them they will be able to avoid dangerous ces.

    "Do you have a way for us to move at a fast continuous speed?", he asked, using blink all the way wasn''t realistic, who knows how far it was and his mana with not be able to take him there.

    "Even in this cursednd, there are small water streams, we''ll be there in less than an hour if we use them as our transportation mean".

    "Let''s go then", said Daimon, he grabbed the woman by her neck, all the areas that weren''t covered by ck mist had deteriorated at this point, but the woman didn''t dare toin and Daimon didn''t care.

    The two of them then jumped to climb the wall, along the way Daimon reunited with Daphne which to the merman surprise, gave off a somewhat "familiar" sensation which he couldn''t pinpoint.

    With the primitive merman who was called Razer, they climbed the giant mountain-like wall quite easily, avoiding parts that easily could have separated from the mountain causing them trouble.

    Once they reached the peak of the wall, Daimon finally got a good picture of the ce where the global raid was happening.

    And that wasn''t all, the unmistakable sound of a notification echoed in his mind as a screen appeared in front of him.

    [Ding]

    [Congrattions on making it to the start of the global raid, the first part of the event has been unlocked (The challenges will not be counted if the participant dies, and the team who kills a participant that haspleted a challenge will gain that score, the scores will be calcted based on the team leader with the highest result):

    [Challenges avable: 20]

    [Challengespleted: 0/20]

    [Remaining time: 72 hours (starting now)]

    [As a team leader you can share this screen with your teammates, do you wish to do so Y/N]

    Daimon was lost in his thoughts for a second, he could bring twenty people with him, but he didn''t find enough iplete emblems, not to mention he didn''t have that many people toe with him, but apparently the number of challenges didn''t diminish, it''s just that less people will have to do them.

    He of course clicked "yes" and then dismissed the notification to observe thendscape in front of him, they were on top of a rock formation, but at the other side of it, there wasn''t the face of a mountain as it appeared to be, no, the internal part of the mountain was actually a giant skill with multiple eye sockets, a familiar sight for Daimon as he has seen something simr in those dreams before.

    And that wasn''t all, there was a variedndscape as theyout of this ce seemed to be divided in four, a sea of clean blue water, a desert filled with giant withered bones, a forest which seemed to be made out of flesh andstly apletely cknd where the light faded.

    "Those women live in the lightless area, we are from middle ranked ns so we should arrive at her nest in a couple of hours, if we go through a secret route, with her help we should arrive in less than an hour", said Razer.

    Daimon nodded and then turned to see the woman.

    "Call your mother and tell her to open up a path for us to negotiate, if I feel the slightest trap, I will burn something", he said.

    The woman trembled remembering those white mes, under Daimon''s supervision, she was allowed to use some sort ofmunication device and then the group started advancing in the direction that the woman was given by her mother.

    Daimon naturally took a moment to confirm that there was no trap, with the help of Rita''s senses, only after that, the group started advancing in direction to the lightless area.

 Chapter 545 Meeting again (part 1)

    Chapter 545 Meeting again (part 1)

    While the primitive merman Razer, used its ability to transport the whole group through a current of water that emerged from underground, Daimon who was tightly holding that mist covered woman by her neck, casually asked.

    "What is this ce?", the question was directed to the two natives, naturally the one that willingly answered was Razer.

    "Even if you ask me, all we know is that our ancestors were created by our guardian deity who passed certain instructions which we had to follow, our world is separated in four areas which are ruled by the four races".

    "From strongest to weakest, there is the Sea n, the Flesh race, the ck Night race andstly the Bone race", listening to Razer saying that his n was the strongest, the ck mist covered woman red at him, but she remained silent.

    "It is obvious that your race doesn''t get along with the other three, but why do you seem to not be hostile towards us?", asked Daimon.

    Razer shrugged before saying.

    "To be honest, the full instructions are only known by the old men that live in seclusion at the central tribe, we who live at the peripheral tribes only know that if we judge the visitors to be worthy, we are supposed to guide them to the central tribe, otherwise we are forbidden to interact with them".

    "The other three races are different because unlike our Crystal Sea which is rich in life and provides us with a middle level of resources and food, the other three are more unbnced, the Bone race has tons of food but low resources, the Flesh race has a high number of resources but low food, which is why they somewhat get along or more urately doesn''t kill each other on the open at least and then we have them¡­", said Razer as he pointed at the ck mist covered woman before adding.

    "They actually have everything they need to live but aren''t satisfied with it, so they kidnap members of both the Sea race and the Flesh race, since the members of the Bone race can''t give them what they want, as they have close to zero emotions", judging by Razer''s hatred filled voice, the Sea race had a deep grudge with the members of the ck Night race.

    Daimon nodded getting a rudimentary image of this ce, since there were three different "races" that hadher integrated into their existences, it was obvious that the guardian deities of those three, were Nethereals, could be the so-called Lords that had been plotting and scheming in Neptune for quite some time, the one which was a mystery was the one behind the Sea race.

    Seeing that they were about to arrive at what seemed to be a castle of some sort, built at the bordering area of the lightless zone, ruled by the ck Night race, Daimon asked onest question.

    "What is the difference between the central tribe and your tribe?", he asked, to which Razer answered immediately and without any hesitation.

    "Strength, only those tribes who have an Arch rank behind them can move to the central area, it''s not discrimination but out of consideration, at least that''s the case for our race, since the living conditions at the central area are harsher though the resources are also better, ultimately we share a bit of everything among all the tribes, following the instructions of our guardian deity".

    "I see¡­", mumbled Daimon as he was lost in his thoughts for a couple of seconds, but he returned to reality when he caught a glimpse of the wee party that was waiting for them.

    At first nce, there was nothing in front of them besides arge wall which surrounded a castle made out of some kind of ck mineral, but Daimon''s infinity eyes could easily see through the tricks of those women.

    Just like the one he was holding hostage, the members of the ck Night race were able to somehow turn themselves into a fluid form and hide in small spaces, in this case there were quite a few of them camouging on the wall of the castle.

    Obviously, they were judging if there was a chance for them to take the hostage back, unfortunately for them, though Daimon feigned to not notice them, he also didn''t leave any openings, in fact since they were wasting his time, he tightened his grip on the woman''s neck to then shout.

    "Should I take the gates still being closed as a reject to my offer!", listening to the demanding voice of the silver haired youth, the ones who were hiding on the wall, nearly lost it, but before they revealed themselves, the gates actually opened for a tall ck mist covered feminine figure toe out.

    Unlike the member of the ck Night n, he held hostage, the one that came out was not only taller and stronger being at the peak of the Lord rank, but her appearance was different as well, besides the ck mist there were some pink spots mixed into theher that was covering her.

    Another interesting thing Daimon noticed, is that the ck Night n seemed to bepletely conformed of females, which isn''t that rare, Marlene''s n is simr after all.

    "Wee dear visitor, unfortunately when I received the call from my daughter, today''s event had already started, but I made a temporary pause for you toe in and see whether the one you are looking for was captured by us, how about you let go of my daughter so we can "warmly" wee you", said the woman with a suggestive voice.

    Unfortunately for her, the "invisible" pink mist that was radiated by her with the purpose of improving the opinion of the men that were exposed to it, didn''t work on Daimon, not only because it washer-based but because her ability was trashpared to the one of a certain cunning charming fox girl.

    "Lead the way", coldly said Daimon, without letting go of the hostage, which made the woman frown, though her face wasn''t visible below the veil ofher that covered her body, Daimon could perfectly bypass that obstruction with his infinity eyes, strangely enough, the appearance of the members of the ck Night race below that veil ofher, was practically that of a human, they could even be considered attractive but Daimon found their aura somewhat repulsive.

    And he wasn''t the only one, there was a girl which was fuming from within Daimon''s shadow, after seeing that "lowly thing", trying to seduce her young master, even Daphne red at the woman.

    Seeing that her n didn''t work, the woman looked at her daughter whose neck could be crushed any second by Daimon, and she gritted her teeth as she guided the group into the castle.

    With the gates closing behind of them, Daimon observed their surroundings, the inside of the castle was quite elegant, there were quite a few members of the ck Night race observing them from the shadows, even on the roof, it was as if there were eyes looking at them from all the angles, quite a strange scene.

    But Daimon ignored them all and instead followed the woman who was the one in charge of this ce, all the way to an underground area which was heavily custodied, the moment Daimon set foot in that ce, he realized how the prisoners were being kept without too much effort.

    There whole underground area was brimming withher, in fact Daimon saw an array on the ceiling which was gathering the ck mist to then condense it into small ck crystals, as for the source of the abundanther, it came from arge open space which was divided into many tforms where people were¡­ fighting each other.

    Each tform had an array engraved on it, and each time the two people participating on it shed, they produced a few wisps of ck mist that were dragged towards the ceiling to then be transformed into those crystals, said crystals were then eaten by the members of the ck Night n who were watching those fighting.

    Speaking of which, the ones fighting went from members of the Sea n, the Bone race and then there were humans as well, but none of that mattered to Daimon, the ones that drew his attention were a few people which he recognized.

    The woman gazed at Daimon and then made a few secret gestures to all the other Lord ranked members of the ck Night n, who secretly prepared for a fight to break out, but on the surface, she remained "friendly" as she exined what was this ce.

    "This is the gift we got from passed down from our guardian deity, the "Emotional Colosseum", unlike the barbaric Bone and Flesh races who will eat their prisoners alive, we don''t need such crude ways to feed us, but instead convert the strong mana infused with emotions that the prisoners use when fighting against each other, intoher crystals for our consumption".

    "Of course, we keep the prisoners well-fed and in optimal conditions¡­ most of the time, unless we are talking about those whomitted a great sin, like killing our kin, they receive a different treatment, not only they must fight daily, but the loser among them has to lose something as punishment, the winner gets to choose what to cut"

    "Also, the colosseum is protected by the power of our guardian, so until the event that is obligatory held every two days has finished, no one can interfere, on the other hand those who participate can''t be directly harmed by us, since they provide for us, a pretty nice deal, don''t you agree?", said the woman, who didn''t notice the darker mana that was spreading through the whole castle, with Daimon as the center.

    ¡­

    While Daimon evaluated the situation, down at two of the many tforms, there was a brown dded figure shing against a barrage of yellow rays of light.

    At the tform next to that, a dark green vine pursued an orange sh through the whole area for a couple of seconds, before finally catching it.

    "Booom!", the result of the two battles were loud explosions caused by mana colliding against each other, to then reveal the winners and losers of the battle, for the winners, there were two girls, one slim with short green hair and dark green eyes and the other rtively tall with long brown hair and light green eyes.

    As for the losers, one was tall with a robustplexion, disheveled dark brown hair with sand-colored eyes, who was now scratching the back of his head while sitting on the ground.

    "Damn, I don''t mind getting my ass handed by you since I''ll for sure enjoy the "recovery"ter, but those light rays are quite hard to deal with", jokingly said the brown-haired guy.

    "Forget about that, the poison on that vine nearly broke through my fire barrier, I bet even an early-stage Lord ranks will find it hard to not be dissolved by the poison".

    "Humph, in that case my Loren''s light can burn holes through middle stage Lord ranks, you shrimp!".

    "What did you say, Calvin bastard, my Haylee can poison peak Lord ranks to death then!".

    "You liar shrimp, if that was the case then she could have taken us out of this damn prison!".

    "Shut up, those bitches have extreme negative affinities, Haylee would need to learn how to use a positive oriented poison for it to work, which is something only possible when she reaches the Lord rank".

    The exchange of insults and brags about the one who defeated them, continued for the next couple of minutes, which only made Daimon who was observing until now, inwardly chuckled.

    ''Well, I guess I should have expected it from the crazy bastards I have as ssmates'', he thought to then hear the woman that was in charge of this castle saying.

    "Did you find the ones you were looking for?".

    Daimon nodded in response as he pointed at Calvin, Michael, Loren and Hailee, which made the woman frown.

    "Oh, them, as I said the ones who hadmitted the sin of killing our kin get a different treatment, so right now the losers have to get punished before we can even discuss about whether they are fit to let go or not, however you''ll have to entertain us with a nicebat yourself for me to consider it".

    "That little beauty next to you seems to be in particrly good "terms" with you, and you both seem to be decently strong, so if you two fight a high-qualityher crystal should be produced, let me prepare the stage for you¡­", before the woman could finish speaking Daimon interrupted her in cold.

    "It seems you are misunderstanding something, I''m not here to ask, this is an order, let them go".

    "WHAT DID YOU¡­ aghhh!", the woman raised her voice only then feel as if a mountain was pressing down on her, and she wasn''t the only onw.

    "Ahhh no, what is this!!!".

    "Help!!!".

    All the members of the ck Night race fell to their knees, the weaker ones vomited blood, those that were in fluid form were forced to return to normal, before they fell from the roof and walls,nding head on the ground.

    Daimon then casually waved his hand and ck one-edged sword appeared on his hand.

    ''Nasha!'', inwardly said Daimon as he used blink to appear near the roof of the underground area.

    ''Mm, let''s do it!'', said Narasha, Daimon pushed Disaster frontwards piercing the roof, directly cutting the runes engraved on the ck mineral.

    ck mist emerged from the array in great quantities but it was all immediately devoured by the capricious sword a if it was nothing, even asleep, Disaster didn''t say no to a little treat.

    "Nooo!", the woman could only see helplessly as the treasure handed to them by their creator was easily destroyed with a swing of the sword of the silver haired youth, all this while he still held her daughter hostage by her neck with his other hand.

    "Crack!", the moment the array was destroyed and all theher that was stored there was devoured by Disaster, an invisible dome that used to be surrounding all the tforms shattered and fell apart.

    The ones who were waiting for the event to finish, were surprised to see the array being destroyed, all with the exception of Calvin, Michael, Loren and Haylee who recognized the mana pressure that was now flooding the entire area.

    Calvin jumped to get up while Michael stretched his arms, their previously tired expressions were nowhere to be seen.

    Daimonnded once again, next to Daphne, naturally all the prisoners had the same idea "escape", unfortunately for them, they were also hit by Daimon''s aura and forced on their knees, the mermen included, the only ones free from that horrifying pressure were Calvin and the others who casually walked out from the colosseum to then reunite with Daimon.

    "Yo, it''s bean a while captain¡­", Calvin who had his usual carefree smile, took the initiative to greet Daimon, but then he noticed the pretty girl that was closely standing next to him.

    "Oh,e on,st time the alfear and dwarf princesses and now a beauty from a race which I haven''t even heard off, please make me your disciple!", eximed Calvin, to then feel Loren''s usatory gaze on him, which made him clear his throat a couple of times.

    "Ahem, what I mean, is that we are d to see you here", he said, Michael sighed and then nodded at Daimon.

    "It''s good to see you two are rtively fine", said Daimon, they were wearing gloves and boots, but with his infinity eyes he could see through them, and both Calvin and Michael were¡­ missing their toes and fingers, the whole twenty of them.

    It''s not hard to guess what happened, from the moment they were captured, they were forced to fight against Loren and Haylee and they of course lost on purpose and took the punishment, sacrificing one finger or toe when they lost.

    "Why didn''t you use the thing I gave you to escape this ce?", asked Daimon, with the life saving measure, he gave to each they should have been able to safely leave this ce, even under the attacks of the Lord ranked members of the ck Night race.

    Speaking of which, that woman from the Cmity Church, La, was sent away with Calvin and the others, but she was nowhere to be seen, neither were Scarlet and the others as well as the woman from the Church of Light, Sera, so there was a need for some catching up.

    "Oh this, it was more dangerous outside than here because Alexander and other idiots decided to work with the natives of this ce, so we took the decision to act as prisoners, they took our rings though", casually said Calvin.

    "Yeah, besides a few losing fingers being cut can''t be considered torturepared to having to share a cell with Calvin", said Michael.

    "Humph, forget about the shrimp, the old man beat me up until he broke each and every one of my bones once a year to make me sturdier, it made it easier to bear with seeing the shrimp all the day for the past month and a half", added Calvin.

    Loren and Haylee gave Daimon apologetic smiles as they greeted him, they also curiously gazed at Daphne who smiled at them, since it was clear they were Daimon''s friends.

    Daimon chuckled and then waved his hand taking a couple of pills from his inventory to then throw them at Calvin and Michael, who swallowed them without a second of doubt, their trust in Daimon was rewarded the next second, when they felt a slightly itching sensation on their hands and feet, before their fingers and toes regenerated on the spot.

    "Ah, the wonders of having rich friends", jokingly said Calvin, alchemic products with regenerative properties were quite pricey, well, besides Loren, all the other members of the Elite ss were filthy rich to be honest, Daimon and Calvin specially, so he was just messing around.

    "We''ll talkter, for now, it''s time to take out some trash", said Daimon, he snapped his fingers and countless shadow hands came out of his shadow grabbing all the members of the ck Night n and throwing them on the multiple tforms, including the one he held hostage earlier and also the woman who was in charge.

    "Razer, the mermen that were held captive are your allies?", he asked.

    The primitive merman nodded.

    "Yes, I don''t recognize them but I know from which tribe theye and they are in good terms with mine".

    "Very well, I''ll stop suppressing them, tell them toe, I''m pretty sure they won''t like to participate in what''s about to happen", said Daimon with a smirk.

    "Uwaah, your bad habit is showing again captain, oh well, better them than us", said Calvin, which made Loren and Haylee giggle, they all knew Daimon unconsciously smirked when he was about to make someone suffer.

    Razer called his race members back, they probably wouldn''t have trusted Daimon, but since they knew Razer''s tribe they didn''t suspect and left the tform, as for the members of the Bone and Flesh races, Daimon took the strongest one from each group and separated it from the rest.

    He then snapped his fingers and a cupule of white mes surrounded the whole area of the tforms, Daimon sat down and then casually said.

    "Only one from each tform will survive, if a winner doesn''t appear on a tform in the next five minutes, I''ll kill all the ones in said tform, good luck".

    "¡­", needless to say, but a sepulchral silence fell on the area, one of the few middle stage Lord rank members of the ck Night race shouted.

    "What are you waiting for, kill him¡­", she couldn''t finish her sentence before her movement was restrained by Daimon''s aura, and a white ray of light pierced her head, killing her on the spot.

    The corpse of the woman exploded in white mes which then joined the ones forming the white cupule around them, while the light ray returned to Daimon''s body, ever since he learned how to use the partial release with the Comet Sword, he obtained the capacity to diminish the amount of mana and battle aura he used, since he could re-absorb the attack while only losing the proportional energy that was used to kill the enemy.

    The woman who was the leader of this castle, looked at Daimon with ahatred filled gaze, because among the ones in her tform there was her daughter, but for now she had no choice but to oblige, so with a fierce and swift movement she used her hand to pierce the chest of a member of her own race.

    Which triggered a domino effect, and not even a few secondster they were all killing each other, not without getting rid of the outsiders first of course.

    "Well, while they solve their differences, tell me what happened after we got separated?", asked Daimon to those four.

    "It seems a lot happened on your side too", said Michael as he observed the massacrer that was unfolding on the tforms.

    ''You have no idea'', thought Daimon but he didn''t say anything, he first wanted to hear how things were on their side.

 Chapter 546 Meeting again (part 2)

    Chapter 546 Meeting again (part 2)

    Before Calvin and Michael started telling Daimon what they have been through, one of the countless shadow hands that previously came from his shadow returned from the depths of the castle with a ck mineral box, which then handed to Daimon.

    "Here, change yourselves, I''ll wait here", he said as he handed the contents of the box to those four, naturally what the box contained where their storage rings.

    Strangely enough, inside this ck mineral castle, spatial treasures did work, the reason as to why, their rings hadn''t been stolen but were just confiscated is that they were linked to their owners, since they were given by the academy to the members of the elite ss.

    Those women from the ck Night n, were at most peak stage Lord ranks, at least in this settlement, so they couldn''t do a thing to the storage rings created by Liz, they could have tried to destroy them though, but ultimately chose the safest method to obtain whatever treasures they may contain, which was to wait for their owners to die.

    Calvin and the others looked through their rings and after making sure all their possessions were intact, they separately walked into some of the rooms used by the members of the ck Night race to observe the fights, to change their clothes.

    It''s not like they were wearing the same clothes since more than a month ago, but they were using what their captors gave them, and nothing was better than changing into their own clothes.

    "Ahh, even I who lived on the wild and ended up covered in dirt, can''t stand the clothes those bitches made me wear", said Calvin as he amodated the custom-made armor he hid in his ring when they were surrounded and captured.

    In fact, all of them hid their magic treasures in their rings and practically fought bare handed, the boat in which Razer''s nsmen were transporting them, allowed them to use spatial treasures simr to this castle.

    In other words, they weren''t lying when they said that they purposedly left themselves be captured, the question was why, but that was about to be answered by them.

    Calvin and the others sat down and then Michael took the initiative to start exining.

    "After that woman from the Cmity Church was sent next to us, we found ourselves trapped in some kind of spherical barrier as we were dragged into a dimensional tunnel which weirdly enough had water in it, instead of just a void like usual".

    "The spheric barrier originated on a badge simr to the one that was given to the captains of the four elite sses, but apparently it was originally meant to only cover a single person, so that woman called La had to inject mana into it, to keep it stable through the dimensional travel".

    "At some point, the barrier crumbled apart and we were separated, I managed to drag Haylee with me and Calvin got paired with Loren, as for that woman, we don''t know what happened to her, but considering the overall level of this ce rounds the Lord ranks, she should be alive", Michael stopped talking and then Calvin took over.

    "Loren and me ended up stranded on an ind where we stayed for around ten days, until we saw a ship with humans, after judging them to be not dangerous, we asked them for a ride and they took us to a tribe of guys like him", said Calvin as he pointed at Razer.

    "They called themselves the Sea n, and the strongest was an early-stage Lord rank, they asked us our ages and realms, and after more or less telling them about ourselves, they showed us a worn-out book with pictures and listen this, they were all badges like the ones given to the captains, or the one that woman from the Cmity Church had".

    "Luckily when we exined to them what kind of badge our captain had, they became friendlier to us and offered to take us to a stronger tribe where we would be safer and receive a better treatment".

    "We epted since that ck mist thing was being a pain in the ass, preventing us from meditating, unless Loren used her light mana to create a temporary safe zone for us, and supposedly at the ce where they were taking us, they had buildings that could keep that disgusting mist out".

    "Their tribe chief even called someone to escort us safely, and imagine our surprise when thatrge ship arrived and that bastard Alexander was on board, not only him, there were guys from the Blue-Sky gxy and there were also the direct students of the Magus Kings from the Earth Pce and the Furious Whirlwind academies".

    Calvin then snorted before continuing.

    "The first days of travel were quite normal, besides Alexander being a pain in the ass, demanding to know where that little tiger girl was, nothing really happened, until one night when the ship was attacked by those women, they were averagely stronger though, I think the weakest was an eighth star rank".

    "We actually were fending them off, since the guy sent from the Sea n was a middle stage Lord rank and had the upper hand on the ocean, but Alexander and the other idiots made a deal with those women, and lowered the defensive barrier of the ship, we still managed to kill a few but were outnumbered".

    "We could have used the things you gave us, but all the time they avoided to even heavily wound us, as if they were afraid of identally harming us too much, so we collectively took the decision of surrendering".

    "Naturally that idiot of Alexander wanted to call the shots, but since he didn''t have a captain badge, he and the other guys who made a deal with those women were simply taken away to a much stronger settlement of this race, and we were kept prisoners since the ones we managed to kill all belonged to this settlement", said Calvin before adding.

    "The rest of the story is easy to guess, they made us fight each other for the past month and half, and we stayed because unlike outside, here we could meditate and advance".

    The secondter, Calvin, Michael, Loren and Haylee all revealed their current realm, Calvin and Michael were both recently ascended sixth star mages now while Loren and Haylee were peak fourth star mages.

    Those women from the ck Night race noticed them advancing but didn''t care, because the Emotional Colosseum was their sacred treasure handed by their creator, so it was supposedly "indestructible", and it prevented us from escaping the cells where we were kept with the exception of when we had to fight to entertain them".

    "At the same time, they couldn''t do anything to us though, so after realizing that the mana in this ce was insanely pure when it wasn''t mixed with that ck mist thing, we just focused on advancing, if you didn''t appear we were going to escape once Loren and Haylee reached the fifth star rank, but it seems our ss rep is as reliable as always".

    Daimon nodded, theher inside this castle didn''t enter into conflict with other types of mana, which is why storage treasures could be used unlike the outside, and at the same time, the mana here which seemed toe from that sea of mana which separated Neptune from this ce, was quite abundant and pure.

    It was to the point that it didn''t lose whenpared the mana back at the main residence of the Flying Citadel, which was refined thanks to the Elemental Conversion array, so it was no surprise that Calvin and the others advanced quite a bit, as they have spent more time in this kind of atmosphere.

    As for why they didn''t go past that, despite all the mana they had absorbed, that is because they hit a bottleneck, it was a point where they needed more than only mana to advance, they needed training and real battling experience, it''s normal and happens to all.

    In fact, that''s why Tessa and Femi were also stuck at the sixth star realm, and that is also why they were surprised that Aisha bypassed that and jumped to the seventh star realm, of course that is because they have no way to know, Aisha has the experience of a peak Archmage.

    And while she will have to face a bottleneck before that, as her current path is way different than before, there won''t be one at the star ranks at least, the fun will start at the Lord rank when she obtains her new Manifestation Phenomenon, or if she manages to lit her life spark, which would make her at least a magic knight, since even Evangeline isn''t sure how is Daimon able to use the two whole paths separately and thenbining them to multiply their strength, instead of just mixing parts of the two to sum their individual strengths and diminish their weaknesses a bit.

    "Mm, so they were specifically looking for those that have an emblem", mumbled Daimon as he gazed at Razer, since the Sea n was friendly with Calvin and the others after they described his ck Sea Emblem, then they were the obvious option to team with.

    "Speaking of which, how did you end up here and who is that girl Dai¡­", midway Calvin realized he screwed up, since Daimon was wearing a disguise, which earned him an exasperated sigh from Michael.

    "I swear, someday that mouth of yours is going to be your death", Loren and Hayle softlyughed, while Daimon chuckled.

    "No problem, she knows the truth and we are all friends here, so feel free to speak", said Daimon, Rita had created a barrier around them, so Razer couldn''t hear the conversation, the primitive merman was sensible and after seeing Daimon casually dictating the fate of a whole settlement not much weaker than his tribe, he didn''t pry into their secrets and simply watched how the members of the ck Night race were killing each other at this point.

    "Oh, I see, then what happened to the others, did you find them?", asked Calvin, Loren and Haylee had slightly worried expressions as they waited for Daimon''s answer, they missed Aisha and the Risha sisters and hoped they didn''t find any troubles after all.

    Daimon shook his head before saying.

    "They are fine, the moment we were separated they went with me and we ended up in a ce called Neptune¡­".

    Daimon proceeded to tell Calvin and the others about Neptune, the four seas that conformed it, the races, enemies and allies that they made and the overall situation in which they were, including the fact that the fate of the whole depended on the result of the global raid.

    Imagine their surprise when Daimon mentioned what came after the Arch rank here, and the fact that Maximum Ster ranks existed, they were naturally amazed and also excited, since that knowledge will bring a new age to the four gxies, but above all, Calvin was¡­ jealous.

    "Of course, I meet a new culture and they put me in jail, but Daimon meets a new culture and their princesses end up getting close enough for him to be leading them into a dangerous ce, damn unfair world!", he eximed.

    "Well, that is because unlike you, Daimon doesn''t have a hidden agenda when meeting said princesses", said Michael, which made both Haylee and Loren nod in agreement.

    Calvin saw Loren''s piercing gaze and he returned to his gant self.

    "Ahem, what hidden agenda, this young master is always knightly and righteous, to the point that if needed to, I could enter the women''s dressing room and calmly keep my eyes closed all the time", he said, while inwardly adding.

    ''My mana sense though¡­''.

    Ignoring Calvin''s obvious thoughts, Daimon felt Daphne''s curious gaze and him and he bitterly smiled.

    "They are a bit strange, but you can trust them as much as you trust me", he said.

    "Mm~", Daphne nodded, at this point Calvin and the others realized that the Vs princess couldn''t talk, but of course they didn''t pay much attention to it, also Calvin fool''s act was as always, a good way to create a rxed atmosphere.

    "I take it that you haven''t seen Scarlett and the other girls nor Hector during your time here?", asked Daimon to which Calvin shook his head.

    "No, sorry, but the leader of this settlement has more information since she received information regrly, if my memory doesn''t fail me, she and the other few middle stage Lord ranks, left a couple of times over the past month or so, I think they were hunting in group like when they ambushed us, so it is possible that others are kept on their other settlements".

    Daimon nodded, at least he was sure that Scarlett and the others were alive, they are contracted to him, so he would know if they died, also those girls were survivors that had gone through a lot despite their young ages, so if someone in the group knew how to avoid dangers and keep themselves alive, it was them.

    As for Hector, he hadn''t heard about him since they entered the magic ruin, but the same could be said of Alexander and he ended up showing here, so the other guys from the other teams should be either here or at the other side of the firstyer of Neptune, where Gina, Aleah and Lana as well as Ste should be right now.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as something popped in his mind, he stole a gaze at Razer but put the matter on hold, before anything, it was time to obtain some information directly from the source.

    In this case, the strongest members of the ck Night n in this settlement, which were the only ones still standing on the tform, there was one exception though, the leader was still keeping herself from killing her daughter.

    At least until she felt Daimon''s cold gaze falling upon her, which made her back break in cold sweat, a new experience for her.

    ''Why do I feel so afraid, even if we die, we would return to the embrace of the creator, so then¡­'', the woman was returned to the real world when she heard Daimon''s cold words.

    "You have thirty seconds left".

    The woman''s eyes got bloodshot as she saw all the corpses lying down on the ground, and she gritted her teeth, before she turned to see her daughter.

    "You caused this, how am I supposed to face the Lord now that a strain has been put in his ns because of your carelessness!", she shouted.

    "Ahhh!", the leader of the ck Night n extended her hand and a w made out of theher that covered her body, pierced the chest of her daughter killing her on the spot.

    Since the drama was over, Daimon pped a couple of times and then snapped his fingers, making the shadow hands of earlier grab the winners and drag them towards him.

    "Okay, now that the trash is out of the way, tell me what are you?", asked Daimon to the survivors, which included around five women from the ck Night race on the middle stage Lord rank, the leader at the peak Lord rank and a sole guy from the Flesh race.

    "Screw you, our Lord will find what you did and¡­", one of the members of the ck Night race raised her voice but she couldn''t finish her sentence before the shadow hand that was restraining her, tightened its grip turning her into meat paste which then sank into the shadow.

    ''Daimon, the members of this race seem to have an affinity somewhat rted to shadow, will it be okay of I take their corpses?'', asked Rita, to which Daimon inwardly shrugged.

    ''Sure'', he didn''t really care what happened to his enemies, he still had Adam''s corpse in the inventory for investigation purposes after all.

    The other captives saw the destiny of that member of the ck Night n, and their faces paled, the only one who clearly didn''t seem afraid of death was the leader of this settlement.

    But Daimon wasn''t worried about that, the other women didn''t hesitate to kill their own kin earlier, even the leader didn''t show anger nor sadness about killing her daughter, what angered her was that this screwed over whatever instructions she was given by her so-called Lord, in other words, they had no empathy towards their own kin.

    In Daimon''s experience, those are characteristics akin to artificial iplete lifeforms, which was an interesting discovery, the races of this ce were supposedly also created by the Nethereal lords.

    So then, why they were not only weaker but less refined than the lower ranked Nethereals that he met back at Neptune, even the artificial Nethereals like the guys from ck Wave that turned themselves into bizarre creatures, didn''t lost their empathy.

    ''Now that I think about it, if webine those guys from the Bone race and the ones from the Flesh race, they kind of remind me of Skelefiends¡­'', he Daimon.

    Daimon already knew that Nethereals had made several experiments over the years, among them there was allying themselves with at least two system users, the guy who tricked the White Walker race by supnting an envoy from the deity that they revered, and then there was Ereth too, not to mention Jasmine, Reyne and Sarah''s strange birth circumstances.

    He wouldn''t be surprised if those races were the prototypes of the Skelefiends, hence why they are way weaker, despite the atmosphere rich in mana in which they have been living for who knows how many years.

    And that would apply to the Sea n as well, they are probably rted to the natives of the Mermen Sea some way or another, the only ones that didn''t match in the theory Daimon had, were these women from the ck Night race, on the other hand theirher felt strangely familiar, as it reminded him of the one that he could feeling from the curses that were supposed to kill Sarah and Bell, but it was far weaker and wasn''t killing them, unlike those two.

    Daimon saw that the leader of the settlement was ring at the remaining four survivors of her race, which made them tighten their lips, and he smirked.

    "Oh, are you afraid of her, that won''t do, you should be afraid of me", he said, what followed was a miserable screaming from the mouth of the leader of the settlement.

    "Aghhhh!", her legs were crushed by the shadow hand, which finally pushed one of the middle stage Lord ranks over the edge.

    "I''ll talk, if you spare my life!", at the same time the sweet sound of a notification rang in Daimon''s ears.

    [Ding]

    [Lesser ranked Agrat "Ashelia" has offered her loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    Daimon clicked "yes" and unknown to others a ck metal cor appeared on the neck of that woman, but on the surface, he just nodded and then said.

    "Very well, you''ll confirm if what the others say is true, if they are lying, well a punishment will be administrated by me".

    Needless to say, but the other three members of the ck Night race weren''t happy that one of them had surrendered to their enemy, let alone the leader whose eyes were practically spewing fire at this point.

    Daimon then turned to see one of the three remaining survivors and then said.

    "What are the instructions passed to your race?".

    "¡­", the woman hesitated but ultimately upon the deathly re of the leader, she didn''t say anything, which made Daimon shake his head, the next second she was consumed by the shadows.

    This time it worked though; he didn''t need to repeat the question before the next member of the ck Night race spilled the beans.

    "O-Only the leader knows the direct message from our Lord, however we who have reached the middle stage Lord rank are told that our task is to make those who share any kind of rtionship to be in conflict since that is up to the liking of our creator, the worse the conflict gets the more we will be rewarded!".

    Feeling Daimon''s gaze on her, the other remaining survivor from the ck Night race, added what she knew.

    "S-She is telling the truth, those rewards include being helped to advance to the peak of the Lord rank, only those that have contributed are given the chance and there is a need for an even bigger contribution to be allowed to reach the Arch rank".

    Needless to say, but Calvin and the others were angered after listening to that, they were made to fight each other for the amusement of some kind of cult leader bastard, Daimon on the other hand found the newly acquired information¡­ interesting, if it was true then that exined a few doubts that he still had in mind, but that''s beside the point.

    And now only the leader of the settlement and that guy from the Flesh were left, the guy from the Flesh race has been trembling since earlier, out of the four races they apparently where the most unstable, so it wasn''t hard to make them talk from Daimon''s point of view, however unlike that girl from the ck Night race, there was no notification, so chances are they couldn''t be contracted, but the result was the same since they were bound to talk.

    Daimon snapped his fingers and the body of the leader burst in white mes, which of course made her scream, her silence didn''tst a couple of seconds before she confessed.

    Turns out, the history of the ck Night race was simr to the one of the Sea n, with the difference that they were told to capture all the ones that weren''t natives of this ce, as for the ones closely rted to an emblem bearer, or emblem bearers themselves, they had to hand them over to the high ranked members of their race.

    The others were distributed among all the weaker settlements, to act as their entertainment and source of thoseher crystals, a portion of them was given to the members of that settlement and a "tribute" had to be handed over to the higher ranked settlements, which somehow delivered it to their creator.

    Amusingly enough, Alexander and the other idiots imed to have information regarding someone who owned an emblem, some referring to Daimon and some referring to Adam probably.

    Which is why they were taken by the members of the settlements that have Arch ranks guarding their fort, as to why Calvin and the others were ignored and left here, that is because Alexander thought that if he mentioned they were Daimon''s teammates, they''ll get a better treatment than him, so he didn''t say a thing thinking he''ll never had to see them again.

    Unfortunately for him, that ended up ying on their favor, since Calvin and the others could escape from a prison custodied by Lord ranks without too much trouble, and instead used it as a temporary refuge to train.

    "Anything else?", casually asked Daimon.

    "Only the Arch ranks know more, as they have gotten the chance to meet our creator, when they were given his blessing to advance, kill me if you dare, as a candidate to be an Arch rank my master won''t stand still, he''lle for you".

    "That''s fine by me, he is also in my list", said Daimon as he used Demon Light to burn the leader, who actually smiled before saying.

    "Fool, even if I die, I''ll just return to his side, you¡­ wait what is this fire, no, stop, please!!!", the bravado of the woman stopped when she felt something was going wrong, which made Daimon coldly snort.

    "Did you think I didn''t notice that little trick, all the ones that you all killed didn''t "return" with your creator, they are as dead as they can be, why do you think I put that white me dome", he mockingly said.

    Maybe others would be tricked, but his infinity eyes could see that when those women died, there was an invisible "cluster" ofher that left their bodies, it was bigger depending on the realm of the one who died, the Nethereal who created this race probably used them topile information which returned to it after their death.

    It sounds like an advanced technique, but each and every cheap necromancer back at the four gxies knows how to do this, and the Revy n who has had to deal with them teaches their young generation to properly destroy undead, Daimon has it even easier since he can see those things with his infinity eyes.

    The woman who was slowly burning put on a hatred filled expression as she shouted.

    "I curse you; our master will find you and kill you and¡­" Daimon simply snapped her fingers and the woman died on the spot.

    ''You didn''t let me finish, you will reunite with him anyway, since I''ll be sending him with youter'', coldly thought Daimon as he destroyed the cluster ofher that tried to leave that woman''s body.

    [Ding]

    [Lesser ranked Agrat "Elith" has offered her loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    [Lesser ranked Agrat "Isselia" has offered her loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    There was an unexpected gain, in the form of the two remaining members of the ck Night n, bing contractable after seeing their leader who wasn''t afraid of death, ending up begging for her life, Daimon naturally had no reason to not ept them, so a second and two ck metal corster, he had two new ves who couldn''t disobey.

    Calvin who was drinking a mana potion suddenly heard his stomach rumbling and he shouted.

    "ss rep, you don''t happen to have something nice to eat in your ring, I''m freaking hungry".

    Daimon chuckled, he had some prepared meals in his inventory, which were prepared by ine, but he wasn''t going to share that, so he just threw some generic food that could be bought at the restaurant of the academy at Calvin who ungraciously devoured them on the spot.

    "Did they try to starve you to death or something?", asked Daimon only to see Michael sighing.

    "Nah, it''s just that Calvin is a glutton bastard", he said, making the others softlyugh.

    "You need to eat more, or you won''t grow tall and strong like me, shrimp Michael", naturally Calvin didn''t forget to get back at Michael, which triggered thetter.

    Despite their constant arguing, Daimon was sure they were happy that the other was fine and all.

    ''Sorry about that Rita, I ended up snatching the materials you needed'', said Daimon, which made the undead head maid shake her head.

    ''No problem, it doesn''t matter whether they are alive or not'', she said before arge ck mansion made out of darkness materialized in front of Daimon.

    ''Cursed Doll House'', that was the spell which Rita used to once trap Horals and also Shirel.

    ''Please leave them to me, I''ll make sure to properly "train" them~'', she happily said, Daimon felt a bit curious about what she meant with that, but he didn''t pry into Rita''s schedule.

    ''Fine, just cut some ck to the first one that surrendered, I want her to be our guideter'', said Daimon as he ordered those three to enter the doll house, which then shrank and returned to Daimon''s shadow.

    ''Mm!'', with thatst sound, Rita returned to silence, perhaps she entered the doll house as well, in any case she could always see what was happening around Daimon, so there was no problem with that.

    "Ahem, it appears that you are quite a fierce warrior, still I would suggest we leave, as there is a chance the nearby settlements realize there is something wrong if the local leader doesn''t answer to their call", Razer who limited to observe what happened earlier decided to speak.

    Daimon nodded, in any case there was nothing else to gain from this ce, the treasury was already looted by Rita who has caught the bad habits of her young master, earlier when those shadow hands looked through the whole ce, she put everything in a storage ring which she handed to Daimon along with the rings of Calvin and the others.

    "Sure, you navigate", said Daimon, they will naturally be stealing the ship of the members of the ck Night n that was stationed here, apparently the fournds of this ce were surrounded by sea at some point, so they all needed ships, it was a giant ind and there were smaller inds surrounding it which is where the stronger tribes and settlements lived.

 Chapter 547 The sea clan (part 1)

    Chapter 547 The sea n (part 1)

    Before leaving the settlement, Daimon used Disaster to cut a literal room of the castle to then store it in his inventory, the ck material of which the castle was made, had only one property which was stabilizeher.

    Apparently the four races had their own means to deal with theher that was in constant sh with the different kinds of mana on the atmosphere, the ck Night race used this mineral which only they knew how to process, to do that.

    As to why Daimon only took a part of it, was because Ashelia, the first of the members of the ck Night race to surrender, informed him that the castles of the higher ranked tribes were made of a better-quality material, so he just took a "sample", who knows when something cane in handy and if not, he knows a certain fox girl who''ll be more than happy to study a new material.

    The group went through the castle since the ship of this settlement was stationed at the backyard, which had a small pier that led to a river which derived from the sea that surrounded the territory of the ck Night race.

    Along the way, Daimon got to know from Razer, that this ce had no name, at least not an official one, the four races were actually separated from each other for a long time, and only met after they had grown enough to start a war that has extended until now, that''s as much as Razer knew, for further information Daimon had to go meet the elders of the Sea n.

    But in this case, given the strength Daimon has disyed, Razer instead contacted the chief of his tribe, so that he called someone from a higher ranked tribe toe to pick them up.

    "We have learned from our mistakes, so this time one of the tribe guardians will be sent, with an Arch rank on the boat, the other races will hardly try anything", said Razer as he gazed at Daimon''s shadow.

    Needless to say, but the primitive merman was weirded at the fact that Ashelia''s voice came from within Daimon''s shadow, only Daimon could hear, detect and see Rita when she was hidden in his shadow, so for Razer and the others, it was Daimon the one who somehow imprisoned those girls from the ck Night race and was now ordering them, an impressive but quite fearsome ability.

    Once the group got in the boat, Razer and his fellow mermen took their positions, they all knew how to navigate, and prepared everything to sail.

    "We''ll be at my tribe''s ind in an hour, I trust you don''t mind if we burn all the fuel of this boat?", he asked to Daimon who casually nodded.

    The fuel he was talking about were mana crystals, and he had more than what he could use anyway, and that was before stealing all the treasury from this settlement, looting paid off quite nicely.

    In case you wonder what happened to that guy from the Flesh race, Daimon already interrogated him, not much information was obtained since he was only an early-stage Lord rank prisoner, but he got to know what their public instructions were.

    The Sea n was told to aid those who came from the outside and those who were judged to be worthy were meant to be taken with the elders of the strongest tribes, the ck Night race was told to instill conflict between them, the ones with emblems or who were rted to emblem owners had to be handed to their elders as well.

    As for the Flesh and Bone races, in short words they were told to capture the outsiders, then they basically used them as resources, as in they ate their flesh and bones respectively, the reason why they had low conflict with each other, is that one only ate flesh and the other only ate bones, so they exchanged supplies with the other from time to time.

    Another interesting thing, is that Daimon and the others, including the members of the other elite sses weren''t the first ones toe here in a while, no, simr to what apparently happened at the Maelstrom Sea some time ago, random people were dragged to this ce from time to time.

    The humans that gave Calvin and the others a ride to an ind of the Sea n, were descendants of people that ended up stranded in this ce, still, unlike the ones Thea''s n got to know, the humans here were really weak, they led mundane lives as fishermen or did other simple jobs as they couldn''t even reach the Lord rank.

    ¡­

    Daimon and the others went downstairs and rested on themon area of the ship, the women of the ck Night race only ate those ck crystals, so the ship was sparkling clean, besides the gloomy atmosphere caused by the fact that the whole ce was painted ck, the ship wasn''t bad at all.

    At leastpared to what Ashelia told Daimon about the unpleasant scenes they had seen on the ships of the Flesh and Bone races.

    Around an hourter, Daimon suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of a notification ringing in his mind.

    [Ding]

    [The host has sessfully held onto iplete emblems X3, for more than an hour, the host had been granted authority over them, please select new owners for them (Be aware that those to whom you assign emblems will be considered members of your team)]

    "Oh?", Daimon was surprised by the fact that an indicator appeared above all the presents in the room, in other words, he could add Calvin and the others to his team.

    "Here, I have these badges I got from some idiots that tried to capture Daphne, I only have three so you decide who has to wait until the next batch is "delivered" to us, they don''t reallye with any obligation for you, and the benefit I know about them, is that I''ll be able to know your rtive position while here", said Daimon as he took out the three emblems, he got from the three members of the secret royal guards which were under Arlion''smand.

    Before anyone could say anything, Calvin grabbed the three emblems and handed one to the two girls and thest one was for Michael.

    "Oi, Calvin bastard who gave you the right to speak for me?", eximed Michael only to see Calvin mockingly gazing at him.

    "What, I''m stronger so I can wait, besides like this I have an excuse to be close to Loren, you already have Haylee, so shut up and don''t ruin this young master''s n, shrimp", he casually said, which made Loren slightly blush.

    Michael sighed but didn''t say anything, as hard as it was for him to admit it, Calvin was slightly stronger than under the current circumstances, he had trouble to kill those members of the Bone and Flesh races, while Calvin shed with them frontwards and was able to overwhelm them, thanks to his absurdly high defense, Michael''s fighting style was more effective against the ck Night race, as they mostly relied on sneak attacks and Michael was faster than them.

    Ultimately those three epted the iplete emblems and that triggered a new notification for Daimon.

    [Ding]

    [The information of the global raid mission has been updated!]

    [Challenges avable: 20 ¨¤ 23]

    [Challengespleted: 0/20 (Overscore now avable)]

    ''Well, I guess that solves the question of whether overscore was possible in this mission'', thought Daimon, apparently the number of challenges wasn''t fixed, but pass the original 20, ifpleted they will be counted as overscore.

    Razer wasn''t joking when he said he was going to use all the fuel of the ship, before they noticed the ship stopped moving meaning they had arrived at their destination.

    Daimon and the others stood up and went upstairs, on the deck of the ship, Razer and the rescued members od the Sea n were talking with another group of mermen that were waiting at the pier, after a few exchanges in what seemed to be the exclusivenguage of the Sea n, the ship was allowed tond.

    "Esteemed guests, wee to the ind of the Water w tribe", said Razer as he invited Daimon and the others to leave the ship.

    Once they were at firmnd, Daimon observed Razer''s ind, despite the Sea n looking quite beast-like, they were rather civilized as in they had a pretty decent organized settlement, with buildings that took advantage of the space and arge poption which included both mermen and humans.

    Daimon had already noticed it earlier after seeing the mermen from the other tribes, but they all had simr characteristics, the only changes were the colors of their scales and the shapes of their bodies, some were tall, some were slim, some were short etc.

    Also, there weren''t females, but strangely enough there were kids of the mermen race ying with human children, now Daimon honestly didn''t put much attention to it, but Razer wasn''t wearing clothes, he had some tribal ornaments, like wristbands, a belt from which a sword made out of bone was hanging and other things, but not proper clothes.

    The same applied to the others, some wore jackets or even shorts which were obviously made by the humans that lived here, but it was more of a fashion thing than a requirement, which probably meant that mermencked sexual organs, in other words they were unable to produce offspring, which is another sign of an artificial or iplete race.

    And that is interesting, considering Razer told them that the one who survived the ambush and informed him that Calvin and the others were taken prisoners, was his older brother and continuing with that, an older looking merman approached them to then say.

    "Wee, esteemed guests, my younger son has told me about your feats, thanks for avenging my oldest child, please follow me to the chief''s house".

    That merman who presented himself as Razer''s father, was a middle stage Lord rank, though in terms of age he seemed to be older than the middle stage Lord ranks of the ck Night race, like Ashelia and the others, Daimon could easily tell he was stronger than them, if he had to guess, a member of this race on the same rank as the members of the other three races, was around three to four times stronger.

    That being said, ording to the quick scan he made by borrowing Rita''s senses, the number of Lord ranks was barely the same as the settlement of the ck Night race, of earlier, and ording to Razer, his tribe was higher ranked than them, so theycked in terms of quantity butpensated with quality.

    The only problem is that they also had quite a bit of civilians, in the form of humans, that from Daimon''s point of view weren''t apt forbat, in a where the rule is survival of the fittest, that is a hard set up.

    "My name is Gabriel, it''s a pleasure", however, Daimon presented himself, Calvin and the others were already known by the mermen of this tribe, since they were being transported by a member of their tribe when they were ambushed, so their names and descriptions were recorded so they were rescued if there was a chance to do so, as for Daphne, Daimon purposedly didn''t introduce her, since there was something bothering him but he still had to confirm it.

    Razer and the other rescued mermen were taken to the medical facilities of the tribe, while Razer''s father, guided Daimon to the chief''s house.

    Along the way, Daimon carefully observed the architecture of the mermen structures, as well as the distribution, humans have had a pretty big influence in it obviously, and yet he didn''t recognize their style at all, it didn''t even match with the ones he has seen in Neptune, neither what he knew about the four gxies or Kerrol.

    "Here we are, I''ll wait outside, please feel at home", said Razer''s father as he opened the door of thergest building in the mermen settlement.

    Daimon and the others entered and were weed by arge open room, which has been organized to be something like a meeting room, with arge rectangr table ced horizontally, where a few mermen were sitting.

    A total of nine to be exact, the one at the middle seat was the sole peak Lord stage existence in this settlement, which Daimon had already confirmed earlier, then there were eight middle stage ones divided, four at the right and four at the left.

    "Wee to the Water w tribe, visitors from the outside, I''m Alec the chief of this tribe, please take a seat", Alec was quite old looking, which would exin why though this tribe is not weak, it is still rtively near the shore even if it owns an ind, their strongest members were too old to have a chance to reach the Arch rank, and Razer''s brother who was probably the one who had the chance to, was killed.

    Which is why the atmosphere of the room was slightly tense, or at least that''s the reason Daimon could think about right now, considering the four mermen on the left didn''t seem happy to see them.

    "One of the children of my tribe informed us about your arrival beforehand, so we have invited a guardian from one of the high ranked tribes of our race, due to the promptness of the situation, he''ll be arriving in a few minutes I hope you don''t mind the wait, in the meantime if you have any questions feel free to ask, however I hope you can also help us solve a few doubts we have", said Alec to which Daimon nodded.

    "Ok, for starters, I couldn''t help but notice that there are children from your race and that you get along with humans, but I don''t see female members of your race?", he asked.

    Alec nodded back at Daimon, he didn''t know the exact race of Daimon and the others, but their appearance was human-like so he expected that to be one of their first questions, since other humans often asked the same when they first met.

    "Unlike the human race, we alle to life thanks to our deity, after a certain amount of time a batch of eggs from which our race is birth, is delivered through the altar that we use to praise our guardian deity, though we aren''t rted as you humans call it, an older member of the race takes care of a couple of young ones".

    Daimon nodded, satisfied with the exnation, whatever was the guardian deity of the Sea n, had to be equally strong as the Nethereal lords, of it was able to create a whole race, though theycked some basic traits of natural races, they didn''t have major defects and at the four gxies no one has been able to do that, artificial undead didn''t count since they technically weren''t alive, they couldn''t be stronger either and stayed as they were created.

    But these Mermen, as well as the ck Night race and even the Flesh race were capable of advancing, as for the Bone race, if they followed the same pattern as artificial undead, they were unable to, but in exchange they could be created to be strong since the moment they came to life, though that was quite pricey resource wise, hence why Horals and Rita''s original races are the strongest artificial undead created as of current.

    Now it was Alec''s turn to ask, so he did so.

    "ording to that child, you possess strength noticeably above your realm and in the records, those four were said to be rted to an Emblem owner, are you one?", he asked.

    "Yes", at this point there was no need to hide it, especially because Daimon had yet to learn what the hell were those "challenges" mentioned by the global raid, what he knew is that these four races were involved as they knew about emblems, so he could obtain the answer to that, through them.

    Daimon could see the eight elders of the tribe talking to each other in their nativenguage, while Alec seemed to be lost in his thoughts.

    "Since we are skipping to the serious questions, tell me about that guardian deity of yours, the other three races also have one and apparently how you treat outsiders is based on the instructions you received, so I can''t help but feel curious about it".

    "¡­", an ufortable silence fell in the room, before one of the four elders on the left was about to raise his voice, before Alec red at him making his words die in his throat.

    "Before that, could you show me your emblem, I know it''s your time to ask, but to answer that there is something I must confirm first?", he said.

    Daimon shrugged and then took out his ck Sea Emblem, in any case it''s not like the mermen of this level could pose a threat for him, not to mention he also wanted to know more about that little thing.

    Still, the reaction was different than what he expected, they neither became hostile but they also didn''t seem to be friendlier, instead they were confused, Alec took out a book out of his spatial ring and then leafed through it but ultimately shook his head.

    "I¡­ don''t know what emblem is that, however it isn''t also listed on the emblems that were created by the evil deities of the other races", mumbled Alec before saying.

    "In that case, following the teachings of our deity, I will answer your question based on my judgement of you, I''m not an Arch rank so the information I have is limited, however I do know the supposed race of our deity, the ck Prison Megalodon, in the history of our race, he is the one that stopped the three evil deities from destroying ournd".

    Daimon inwardly frowned, he hadn''t heard about that race of magic beast, however it was a sea magic beast, which aligned with the human race of the Mermen Sea at Neptune, so chances are, they are rted, little by little he felt he was approaching the truth.

    Of course, getting answers directly from the old monsters, like Arlion or the Arch ranks of the Sea n, would be more efficient, though making them talk might be troublesome, as the sudden pressure that flooded the room, suggested.

    The door of the building was destroyed and a pained sound came from the one guarding it, in other words, Razer''s father, as a tall merman entered the room with heavy steps.

    Unlike the ones present in the room, the neer had traits that weren''t mixed, but exclusively belonged to a shark type magic beast, not to mention the pressure belonged to an early stage Archknight.

    "Alec, who gave you the right to speak about our sacred secrets with outsiders, ording to the rules of the Sea n, I will take all the presents under custody!".

    The pressure of the shark merman made a few of the elders of Razer''s try to fall from their chairs, but Alec managed to resist and counter some of the pressure with his own.

    The shark merman coldly snorted.

    "Humph, futile tricks¡­", but the pressure waspletely dispelled the next second when another figure appeared in the room.

    "That''s enough Vandor", the second figure was much smaller, but was also a shark type merman, however this one was an Archmage.

    "Don''t get in my way, Zander", growled the first shark merman.

    Alec immediately went to check on Razer''s father and after confirming everything was okay, he returned to then ask.

    "Alec greets guardian Zander, could you please tell me what is going, I was informed that only a guardian wasing and far as I knew it was with pacific intentions, so why is a punisher in my Water w tribe?".

    The Archmage shark merman sighed, he turned to see Daimon''s group before saying.

    "A couple of our tribes were justpletely massacred, not even the children, elderly or the sick, were spared, however one of the tribe chiefs managed to send an emergency message to us, "outsiders", was the single word that could be understandable before the message was abruptly interrupted¡­".

 Chaapter 548 The sea clan (part 2)

    Chaapter 548 The sea n (part 2)

    Listening to Zander, the corpulent Archknight shark merman heavily stomped making the ground crack below his feet.

    "Don''t cover it Zander, there were no human corpses in neither of three inds, heck there wasn''t even any of their blood spilled, all their stuff disappeared along them, it is obvious that they joined the damn outsiders to kill the ones who took them in!".

    The whole room rumbled as the pressure of the shark Archknight was radiated out of his body, allowing Daimon to confirm what he previously supposed.

    ''They aren''t weaker than the decently talented guys at the four gxies, however they seem tock both Lord and Arch traits¡­'', he thought.

    Seeing the rx and calmed humans, despite the serious usation made, Vandor saw red, but before he could do anything the Archmage merman Zander once again suppressed him.

    "Enough, whatever your orders were, I was tasked by the honorable ancestor himself to treat our visitors as valuable guests, and as far as I remember no one holds more authority, or have things changed in council after I left the main inds?".

    Vandor finally calmed down, he still snarked and showed its teeth at Daimon and the others, to then see the elders of the Water w tribe.

    "Don''t lower your guard, no matter how much have they mingled in our tribes, ultimately they aren''t members of our race, we are already tasked to face three enemies, why should we tolerate a fourth one".

    Having said those words, Vandor turned into a sh of blue light and disappeared, leaving behind a mess to clean up for the Archmage Zander, who turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "Don''t take it personal, in his youth Vandor was raised in one of the tribes that was destroyed so¡­".

    "Oh, don''t worry, I don''t believe that idiot is smart enough to spread dissension among the Sea race, so I''m pretty sure he couldn''t havee with those words by himself", Daimon wasn''t in the mood for this farce, so he stopped Zander from excusing himself.

    The Archmage merman remained silent for a moment before sighing, he saw the confusion in the eyes of Alec and the other elders and then raised his hand.

    "I see you aren''t the typical human¡­ no you aren''t even the typical emblem owner, can you show me what kind of emblem you have?".

    Daimon casually showed Zander his ck Sea Emblem, just for him to have the same reaction as Alec earlier, confusion.

    "I have never read or heard about a ck emblem, not even in the records that are avable for guardians, perhaps the council members or the honorable ancestor have the answers you probably want".

    Calvin who has strangely remained silent until now, couldn''t help but say.

    "Ah, great, another trip in a ship, I swear that I''m going to iste myself in a cave once we return", as an earth affinity mage, despite Calvin not liking being in the arid desert environment of his native, he was morefortable ind.

    "I wouldn''t worry about that, due to the urgence of the situation, I was given the authority to use the portal currents, we''ll be at our destination in a couple of minutes", said Zander.

    "Let''s go", Daimon easily agreed, there was nothing he could learn from Alec''s tribe, but those old mermen probably knew what was going on in this ce.

    Zander gave Alec some instructions and then the group returned to the pier where they arrived earlier, to their surprise they saw the ship they stole from the women of the ck Night race, disappearing the moment Daimon stepped foot in the nearby area.

    Razer had an idea of what was going on, since he saw Ashelia and the others sinking in Daimon''s shadow, but he kept his mouth shut, specially because he saw his father being casually attacked by Vandor earlier, over nothing.

    Zander took out a small bottle with just a few drops of water, he let one fall into the sea and portal opened on the surface of the water, which led to a dimensional tunnel that looked awfully familiar for Daimon and his ssmates, because it was like the dimensional tunnel that brought them to Neptune and this ce respectively.

    ''I''ll take it as a sign of approaching the truth'', thought Daimon as he jumped into the portal, followed by the others.

    ¡­

    The moment they jumped into the dimensional tunnel, they were transported by the high-speed current, it was a wild ride but just as Zander stated it didn''tst long.

    Of course, Daimon wasn''t as na?ve as to believe that Zander used a limited resource like this, just because of the "urgency" of the situation, the mermen probably didn''t want others to know the locations of their strongest tribes, especially with what happened recently.

    The portal suddenly reached its end and the group was expulsed at the shore, just to be weed by a group of armored stingray merman that aimed their spear-like tails at them, one of them an Archmage outstood as he took the initiative to dere.

    "ording to the orders of the general, the guests are to be escorted to the interrogation room to meet the respective council members and prove their innocence!".

    "That musclehead idiot just repeating words is one thing Zander, but these guys are different, they obviously know what the intention behind this "custody" is and are proud of be participating", said Daimon.

    Zander frowned, he took out some kind of authority token and showed it to the armored guards that were trying to arrest Daimon and the others.

    "Under the authority of the honorable ancestor, these people are granted protection and a friendly treatment, now move aside captain", he said.

    "When ites to security rted subjects the maximum authority isn''t the honorable ancestor, but the general, who is right now waiting to interrogate these humans, so they will being¡­ aghhhh!", not only the captain but the whole unit were suddenly forced to the ground by an invisible pressure.

    ''Humph, a mere beast at the peak of the initial Archknight rank wants my young master to be the one to seek out for it, nonsense, he should have crawled all the way to Daimon''s feet, the moment he set foot in this ind'', the undead head maid was quite angered, as the shivering three girls of the ck Night race a few meters away from her, suggested.

    With his infinity eyes, Daimon saw an invisible shadow handing out of his own shadow, to then fly into the direction where the guy who was observing them from afar, was positioned.

    "Booom!".

    "Aghhh!".

    A loud explosion followed by a miserable scream could be heard, the next thing was that the nearby members of the mermen race could see one of their respected figures be dragged out of a pile of debris which used to be a magnificent residence, to then be literally thrown at the feet of a human that was still standing on the sand of the shore.

    Naturally such a spectacle drew the attention of all the mermen, specially those that had a rtively decent strength, they were quick to surround Daimon and the others, among them a couple of old men who were also almost middle stage Arch ranks, were the ones that walked at the front.

    "What is the meaning of this?", asked one of the old mermen who had the characteristics of a shark, but this one had a horn in its forehead.

    "I should be the one to say that, we came here after agreeing to have a meeting with the elders of the Sea n, and instead we are told we''ll be sent to interrogation", casually said Daimon.

    "How dare you¡­", as another of the old mermen that arrived earlier was about to confront Daimon, due to the fact that the one who was observing them was now being disgraced publicly, since he was forced to grovel at Daimon''s feet, naturally the soldiers immediately moved to wield their weapons, until an old firm voice could be hearding from the middle right side of the ind.

    "Halt", it was a single word and it wasn''t apanied by any kind of pressure, but more than half the soldiers stopped immediately and then kneeled down as a sign of respect, in fact the same applied to almost all the mermen present.

    With some exceptions such as the old guys who were demanding Daimon to let the so-called general go, their closest soldiers also didn''t rx unlike the others, but the hesitation on their faces was noticeable, at least until a second voice could be heard from the middle left side of the ind this time.

    "Listen to my brother, sheathe your weapons", listening to the second voice, the hostilities ceased well with the exception of Daimon who didn''t let go of the guy that he was stepping onto right now.

    "Little friend, I apologize on behalf the general, it has been a rough day, please let him go, I want to have a conversation with you, I''ll guarantee your group''s security with my own life", said the first voice.

    Daimon removed his foot from the head of the general who red at him with hatred, just for his irises to turn ck and his face to contort in horror, but before he could even scream, he fainted.

    "General, are you okay?", in the eyes of others, the general lost consciousness due to anger, so they hurried to his side and then took him away.

    ''I didn''t know you could do that, Rita?'', inwardly said Daimon, the undead head maid just used something very simr to his Overlord''s pride, it was way stealthier and refined than his, as others didn''t notice anything at all, while when he uses Overlord''s pride, the thing goes out of its way to show off to all.

    ''It seems that just like Daimon can borrow something from me, I can do something simr~'', said Rita, the emotion was obvious behind the voice of the undead head maid, meaning that she probably just learned how to do it and it was probably triggered by ident.

    ''Oh well, she seems to be having fun'', thought Daimon as he put the matter on hold for now, with Zander escorting them to the center of the ind, the group didn''t meet any other trouble.

    Daimon casually observed the ind, unlike the ones which they previously visited, this ind and probably the other nine that were nearby, werepletely built for war, it wasn''t that easily seen on the surface, the organization, materials of which the buildings were made and deployed guards that were hiding in the shadows, they clearly have been preparing for the worst.

    And the answer to why so much safety measures was shown to Daimon the moment they arrived at what seemed to be this city lord''s mansion and entered through the giant heavy doors that protected it.

    What weed them was a giant open area with exactly twelve seats, two were ced higher than the other ten, not to mention that they were already upied by a par of old mermen that were waiting for the group to arrive.

    "Everyone take your seats, Zander you can stay, the rest wait outside of the meeting room", said the old merman at the right.

    Daimon observed the merman who was the one that earlier stopped the two sides from entering into conflict, or more urately stopping Daimon from wiping all the ones that were trying to imprison his group.

    Besides the clearly old age of the old merman, the most eye-catching things were, first, the old merman is a middle stage Archknight and a really talented one, which would exin why he is still alive.

    Scars all over the body, a missing leg and a missing arm as well as a burning mark that disfigured half of his face, that was the status of the old merman sitting at the right, they were old wounds.

    The second eye catching thing, was the race to which the old merman seemed to belong, Daimon has seen several mermen races so far, the reigning ones appeared to be sharks, turtles, whales and other major magic sea races, but none was as emblematic as the two old mermen sitting at the higher positioned seats, as they were ck Armored shark race merman.

    Of course, the hollow suit prevented them from noticing Daimon possessed that lineage as well, another thing is that those two old mermen were quite strong, in fact if they joined hands, they¡­ might be able to fight on par with Thea.

    Daimon knows how strong and talented the undead head maid is, which is why he was genuinely surprised that those two old mermen were so strong.

    The other old merman was in rtively good conditions, just a missing right arm and scars on the eyes.

    The remaining seats were soon upied by the other elders of the Sea n, with the exception of the tenth seat which belonged to the general that was sent to the infirmary due to Rita''s newly discovered talent.

    "First of all, let me apologize for what happened earlier, I''m Galen, the oldest member of the Sea n alive as of current and the current honorable ancestor, at my left my younger brother, survivor from the same generation next to mine and someone that was granted the rank of ancestor by our creator".

    The old merman at the left slightly bowed towards Daimon and the others as he introduced himself.

    "Helric, I''m sorry for my son''s previous behavior, I''ll make sure he is disciplined; however, you must understand that our job is to keep our n members safe, so if you are our enemies, we will use every mean in our hands to defend ourselves".

    "Well, in my case whether we are enemies or not, depends on you, but I do know of someone that is your enemy as of current and the recent deaths are probably something he did, but you already know about him, right?", said Daimon referring to the hero of many generations ago, Ereth.

    The two old mermen frowned, which made the other elders turn to see them with confused expressions.

    "I have been having a really bad premonition since earlier, but how is it possible, a human doesn''t live that long not even someone "like"

    is it possible, a human doesn''t live that long not even someone "like" him, and ording to the previous ancestors they never received revtions of him leaving¡­", said Galen.

    "Well, he didn''t die as for his long lifespan, that guy had a lot of tricks up his sleeve, among which a deal with the Nethereals was probably involved", added Daimon.

    Helric smacked his only hand on his armrest to then gaze at his brother before saying.

    "Brother we have to be wiser than the past ancestors, now we are all under danger so we have to¡­", as Helric voice raised, his brother shook his head.

    Daimon had no interest in the drama that was for sure developing between the two brothers, but he wanted the information they had about both Ereth and also whatever the challenges were.

    "I can tell you what I know about your enemy, for the correct price of course", said Daimon.

    The elders weren''t exactly pleased by Daimon''s words but the two old mermen raised their hands to prevent them from saying anything.

    "What do you want?", said Galen.

    "Information, are you familiarized with the term "challenge"¡­", Daimon hadn''t finished his sentence when the two old mermen let out their mana pressures, which were blocked by Rita''s.

    "For not being allied with that guy, you say some simr things and apparently have simr tricks", coldly said Helric.

    ''Of course, since we both are system users'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "If that''s the case, then I''m pretty sure you know that adding a second enemy of that category isn''t a smart thing to do, right, or did you didn''t learn the lesson back then?".

    The two ancestors retracted of their pressure instantly and then gazed at the other members of the council before saying in unison.

    "You all, out of the room".

    The other elders looked confused but since their two leading figurespletely agreed on something for a change, they knew it had to be a really important subject, so they obeyed.

    Once they were out, Helric turned to see Daimon before saying.

    "How did you know, if you know the history of that guy, you should more or less know how many years have happened since then, there is no way two "mere" Arch ranks would have survived that long?".

    Daimon inwardly smirked as he confirmed his suspicions, these two weren''t regr members of the Sea n, sure this race wasn''t weak, unlike at Neptune where theirck of Lord rank traits was linked to either their diluted lineages or the strange suppression of the for the most talented ones like Ae and the others, they weren''t limited in that aspect.

    For the races in this ce, it was more of they being connected to whoever created them, they had high talents but couldn''t progress if they weren''t allowed to, as far as Daimon understood they were rewarded for their contributions, just like the women from the ck Night race, and for a being that could create a whole race like that, what was extending their lifespan for a few millions of years.

    ''People who aren''t involved with system users have it really hard to catch up to those who are, however there are other ways to not lose against a system user, like having someone with enough experience or power backing you up'', thought Daimon, he perfectly knew about it, as he has a few acquittances who meet those characteristics.

    These two have been alive for quite a long time, umting experience, learning about their affinities and what was allowed for them to learn about their lineages, hence why they could equal Rita by working together, which taught Diamon two things, first that ck Prison Megalodon isn''t a system user and second it didn''t trust others.

    "Well, I guess Ereth can be a royal pain in the ass, even dead, the bastard he caused a lot of troubles to others, I can imagine what he did to you when he was alive thest time", said Daimon.

    "You look tooplete to have shed against him enough to be able to say that, even our creator was unable to return us to our state previous our battle with him", said Galen as he looked at his missing limbs.

    "Brother you can''t be really thinking off¡­", said Helric just to be met with Galen shaking his head at him.

    "We need the information and he might not be our ally but he is definitely not that guy''s ally either", said Galen.

    "I''m sorry but I won''t participate on this, you talk to them brother, I''ll go prepare a warm wee for that bastard", with those words, Helric opened a portal simr to the one Zander used to bring Daimon and the others here, to then disappear from the room.

    "Don''t take it against Helric, just like me he was the only one from his generation that survived back then, our creator sent us a lot of children to take care after what happened, but they couldn''t rece what we lost¡­ but enough of that, Ereth also came to us to ask about challenges back then".

    "However, your emblem is not on the book handed to us by our creator, while Ereth had one that supposedly symbolized being an ally to us, it was the best that could be obtained from our side, challenge-wise meaning, since by clearing it, he got a chance to meet our creator in person, an honor that hasn''t even been given to us".

    "Due to emerging victorious he obtained the maximum reward, one of the strongest lineages that anyone who is unable to escape from this prison can obtain, the ck Armored shark''s lineage", Galen''s voice was filled with pride.

    And Daimon understood why, certainly the ck Armored shark''s lineage was a gold mine and now Daimon realized why Ereth practically took a lot of things from those two mermen.

    "Let me guess, he became greedy after meeting the source of the lineage, so he tried to obtain it by killing your race but ultimately realized it was only in you two, what I don''t understand is why that creator of yours didn''t turn him into dust after what he did", said Daimon which made Galen sigh.

    "The best rewards aren''t mean to be given twice, even if the challenges remain for future people, after giving Ereth the lineage, our creator had to hibernate, by the time we were able tomunicate with him again, it had already happened, however our creator looked for him and punished him even if it took quite some time".

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, Half Emperor, Maximum Ster rank, no matter who he could think off, finding someone in another gxy while being static in one ce, wasn''t possible, so that creator was above that for sure.

    "Okay, that sure doesplement the story, but you still haven''t told me what are the challenges", said Daimon.

    "Simple, they are tests left behind by the four creators, to enter them one must posses an emblem, and of course we the native races can''t enter, only those who came from the outside".

    "That being said, the number of challengers that have emerged victorious through the history, can be counted with the fingers of a hand and that is because the entrances to the challenges are custodied by the four races, right below the inds that are spread across the sea", said Galen as he pointed downwards.

    "Speaking of the sea, is there a castle below the sea of this ce?", asked Daimon which made Galen frown.

    "How did you know¡­ forget it, yes there is one, they are the remains of an ind we custodied, they sank quite some time ago and we have to leave it, because the magic beasts there are almost as strong as an ancestor level member of our race", he said.

    ''Well, I guess that decides our next stop'', thought Daimon, before saying.

    "Give us a ride, the sooner the better, of course I''ll tell you a few interesting things you need to know", said Daimon as he smirked, which made Calvin and the others feel sorry for the poor bastard that was about to suffer.

 Chapter 549 The castle at the bottom of the crystal sea

    Chapter 549 The castle at the bottom of the crystal sea

    Galen seemed to be considering something for a second before he gave Daimon his answer.

    "I can take you there in exchange for the information you mention, however there is another thing I want to discuss with you, it appears that our sides are capable of working together", he said as he stole a gaze at Daphne.

    At first Daimon was surprised thinking that Galen had managed to see through the effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief, which Daphne was using to hide her lineage as Daimon told her to, so she could pass as an outsider like him, Calvin and the others.

    But then he remembered that the old merman in front of him, could treat people like Vincent, Calvin''s grandfather and probably even the Lich King of the undead back at the four gxies, as juniors, at least in terms of age.

    "Don''t worry, I''m the only one who has noticed it, just like I''m the only one in our race that knows about the existence of the world "below" ours, however I didn''t realize that young miss was a native of Neptune due to that¡­ but because when I was young, I once came across the entrance to a challenge which radiated a particr aura, which I was reminded off after meeting you".

    ''Cunning old man'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "So, what is the deal?".

    Galen nodded and then took out a piece of paper which he handed to Daimon.

    "There is the description of the entrance to the challenge I mentioned, no one knows the test that will be faced inside but what I can confirm is that even if two people take the same one, the test won''t be the same, take it as a show of goodwill between your enemies to me, we''ll assist your allies if we find them, of course it would be for the best if you give us intel about your enemies".

    Daimon had to admit that this old merman was quite something, however there was something Galen probably ignored, and that is the fact that the other three groups as a whole were his enemies.

    "Are you sure you want to ce your bet on my group, I don''t mind telling you that we are outnumbered", he said.

    "Kid, I have met too many people in my life but until a few minutes ago, no one made my instincts scream, more than Ereth when he was tearing my and my brother''s flesh down, I would never be able to forget that sensation, however I only felt like that after he betrayed, mutted and massacred us, as for you it happened the moment you set foot in this ind".

    "Heh, so you used that general guy to test me?", asked Daimon, just to see Galen shaking his head.

    "Not really, I was legitimately in shock and only reacted when things got more serious, my brother wasn''t like that because he lost consciousness back then when Ereth blinded him, but I made sure to remain awake through the whole process".

    "As for the outnumbering I wouldn''t worry about that, my race has always been fighting 3v1 battles, and I assume you aren''t afraid of all your enemies joining hands either", he said.

    Daimon nodded.

    "Deal", in any case he had nothing to lose, from the very beginning he never expected help from the natives of this ce, so this was a bonus for him, who knows they mighte in handyter, also that thing Galen mentioned about the challenge with an aura that was simr to Daphne''s, caught his attention.

    Luckily contracts between Daimon and the members of the Sea n were possible, so a few minutester the deal was finished, Daimon handed the information he promised and Galen immediately created a portal for them.

    group and my race".

    "In exchange, I would like you to describe your allies and your "I''ll apany you to the entrance of the castle, if it isn''t what you are looking for, I''ll take you back, then you can decide where you want to go, just be aware that I can''t use portals to take you directly to any settlement of the other three races, at most you''ll appear a few dozens of kilometers from them", said Galen as he jumped into the portal first as a sign of goodwill.

    Daimon nodded and the others, he of course used infinity eyes to make sure that the portal was safe, the whole group entered the portal which disappeared behind of them.

    ¡­

    The group found itself inside the dimensional tunnel, which like the one used by Zander previously, also contained water mana instead of just the regr space mana that is present in the tunnels created through either transportation arrays, or the spatial movement spell obtained by mages and knights, in other words Space Shift.

    Since the travel will take a couple of minutes, Daimon took the chance to ask Galen about it.

    "This movement spell is different than the one I know off, not to mention you and your brother are Arch ranks, so howe you can move through space in such a fluid way?", he asked.

    "Oh this, it was a reward that we were granted due to the continuous victories over the other three races, unfortunately only my brother and myself can use it directly but we can condense portals and give them to others¡­ like the ones you extorted out of me", said Galen.

    Daimon nodded, he inwardly thanked Zander for not hiding what he used to create that portal, naturally he didn''t make this question out of curiosity, he wanted to confirm something, and he now was sure of it.

    Those portals were possible thanks to the deity of the Sea n, and now he had gotten a few of them and handed them to Calvin and the others, just in case.

    The travel inside the dimensional tunnel didn''tst long, and they were able to appear practically at the entrance of the castle that Galen mentioned, since this ind that had sank to the bottom of the sea, used to be a Sea n''s settlement.

    The interesting thing, is that ording to Galen, the challenge that used to be linked to this area, was destroyed when it sank, otherwise the Sea n would have destined some guards to stay here.

    The moment the group came out of the tunnel, a variety of beastly gazes fell on them, as many different magic beasts eyed them, luckily, they were really close to the entrance, and despite the challenge having disappeared, the "protection" of the guardian deity of the Sea n, remained.

    As for its effects, there were only two of them, first of all, water couldn''t destroy the settlement and second magic beasts past the Lord ranks couldn''t approach past a certain point, otherwise, with the horrible weather of this ce, the inds would face hurricanes and floods quite often, not to mention the packs of magic beasts which would attack them without mercy.

    With the group entering the area covered by the protection of the castle, the magic beasts didn''t continue chasing them.

    Daimon observed his surroundings and his eyes glowed behind his mask.

    "It matches¡­", he mumbled, what he was looking for were simrities between this castle and the one described by Arianna, since even with all the resources of Ae, Vincent, Aurora, Thea and Armando, there was no trace of the ce where that "junior sister" of his as well as that little girl from the Jolbaris, where.

    At that point Daimon was sure they weren''t in Neptune, he looked through the four seas, so unless they went to another world like Kerrol, they should be out at the firstyer of Neptune, where Ste and the others were, or here, since Calvin and the others also ended in this ce.

    Daimon took out his sigil lector and tried to look for the signal of Arianna or Dana''s sigil, but after a couple of minutes there was no sign of them, however something did show some reaction.

    He felt his ck Sea Emblem trying toe out of his inventory, and he let it go, as that little thing could escape if it really tried, while for Daimon this was a normal urrence, Galen was in awe at the sight of an emblem moving on its own.

    "What the hell is that emblem of yours", he said.

    Daimon shrugged and then he followed the little thing through the outer area of the castle, previously Galen was using his mana to create a bubble of air around the group, but past a certain point, the water didn''t approach the castle, an effect which Daimon found rather familiar as the water affinity he got from one of his lineages could do something like that.

    Not that it was a surprise, he got the Dracolevia lineage as a reward for overscoring in the trial that the Lineage Temple gave him to obtain the ck Armored shark lineage, and that ck Prison Megalodon was able to give the ck Armored shark lineage too, there was bound to be a connection between them.

    Speaking of the ck Armored shark lineage, Galen and Helric didn''t obtain the eyes trait which he had, but they did have something simr to the ability "Ruler of the Sea", which he got, that was in part the origin of the respect that all the other members of the Sea n had for those two.

    Daimon guessed that was a low ranked version of "Commander of the Sea", the previous version of his "Ruler of the Sea", those two couldn''t control sea magic beasts but had some sort of presence in front of them, it instilled respect on the members of the Sea n as a side effect.

    The group followed the ck Sea Emblem which guided them to the frontal entrance of the castle before stopping there, it remained floating in front of the giant gates, but Daimon didn''t take the emblem yet, because his nose caught a familiar scent on the air.

    "Wat here for a second", he said to Daphne and the others as he shed towards a corner of the outer walls that surrounded the castle, following that familiar scent he caught off.

    The origin of it was as he expected a few red stains on the wall.

    ''I guess one would expect a werewolf to be especially sensitive towards other werewolf''s blood, luckily the message was left for me, because other star ranked werewolves would never discover it due to the salinity in the air'', thought Daimon.

    Blood codification, a method used by the werewolves to leave a message only other members of their race would be able to notice, it was developed as a mean to give instructions on battlefields, where it is normal for lots of blood to be spilled and no one would pay a second gaze to it.

    "She really is Aura''s student", said Daimon as the nail of his right index finger, erged, curved and turned ck, he then used his w to puncture the tip of his left thumb, letting a single drop of his blood toe out of it, which he then used to connect all the stains on the wall.

    And that the trick, the stains moved and aligned as words in themonnguage of the four gxies, made out of blood, appeared on the wall.

    [Daimon, we were here for around a month and a half, but were forced to enter a portal that appeared in this same wall, because the magic beasts were getting too violent and threw their lives away to reduce the protection of this castle, we are perfectly fine as we were able to advance quite a bit, I want a rematchter, pleasee find us when you can.

    Your junior sister Arianna]

    Daimon chuckled as he thought.

    ''What a troublesome sister I got'', Arianna never doubted he''ll find his way to this ce, the change on the behavior of the magic beasts was probably linked to the global raid starting, since Arianna added the date she more or less guessed was back at the four gxies, and it matched with the count Daimon kept to not lose sense of the time they have been gone.

    "I swear I''ll ask Liz to make a bettermunication device, they left practically the moment we arrived here, if the sigil lector would have detected them initially, this would have been much easier", said Daimon.

    ''Well, you can always make them your soulmates, even at this distance you know how to find your way to where Aisha and the others are~'', jokingly said Evangeline.

    Daimon limited to chuckle, Evangeline was making fun of him, but she woke up from her usual nap and was paying attention a lot of attention to what was happening, that is a hint she uses to tell Daimon "Don''t let your guard down", the system restricted her not to act unless his life was in serious danger, but as an administrator if she wanted to, she could indirectly give him some hints.

    ''The advantages of having a friend instead of an administrator, right Nasha'', inwardly said Daimon, which made Narasha softlyugh.

    ''Mm, Eve never wakes up as fast as when she has something for Daimon~'', said Narasha.

    ''Hey, Narasha, you are supposed to be on my side'', eximed Evangeline, but Narasha limited tough at her, all the previous was witnessed by a couple of administrators which were one way or another residing with Daimon, but they didn''t say anything.

    Back to the current situation, Daimon erased all the traces of Arianna and his blood using Demon Light, and then returned to where the others were, his Sea Emblem was still there, calling for him to take it.

    Judging by the position, Daimon could tell that the gates of the castle were going to open the moment he grabbed it, which meant he wasn''t going to the same ce where Arianna and Dana were taken, however if those two have the time to write a message, it meant that it wasn''t forced nor automatic teleporting, but more of a portal opening.

    "This was the ce where Arianna and Dana were stranded, I''ll open the gates of the castle and then we''ll decide what to do", said Daimon, Galen inwardly nodded at the fact that none of the members of the group doubted Daimon''s decision, it meant that they fully trusted him.

    ''I can see he isn''t like Ereth¡­ but then why didn''t our creator choose him, if only he had obtained the ck Armored shark''s lineage, he is younger than that bastard and yet, he would have been able to crush him on the same rank of age'', thought the old merman.

    Daimon didn''t lose any time, he directly grabbed his emblem and as he expected, the thing shone in his hand, and runes appeared on the gates of the castle, which with a low rumble slowly opened.

    What appeared in front of them wasn''t the entrance to the castle, but a giant portal instead, the castle was actually hollow as far as Daimon could see, in other words, the castle was actually a barrier to protect this portal.

    "Impossible, I came to this castle a few times before the ind sank, and even came to check up after it sank, this portal wasn''t here and the entrance to the challenge I knew about, had disappeared!", eximed Galen.

    Daimon saw his emblem blinking constantly, as it urged him to enter the portal, he didn''t feel any trap hidden in the portal, in fact his instincts told him that it would be beneficial for him to enter it.

    However, he has been tricked before, like when Jasmine was transported forcefully to Kerrol, so he didn''t approach it and instead reunited with the others, who were watching from the distance, to then ask Galen.

    "What do you think, does it lead to a challenge?".

    The old merman frowned, but he ultimately shook his head.

    "I don''t know, it does look like the entrance to the challenge which Ereth entered, but the size is¡­ quite a few timesrger, on the other hand I have never heard of an emblem like yours, so it makes sense that I can''t see through the portal it called upon".

    "Mm?", Daimon felt a small tug on his right sleeve, he turned around just to see Daphne pointing at the portal and nodding, her eyes were enough tomunicate her message, "Something there is calling me", is what she was saying.

    And she wasn''t the only one, Calvin and the others took out their emblems, Calvin was lucky that Galen actually had one among the things he has collected through the years, it belonged to an enemy which he killed and kept it as a trophy, since he couldn''t use it, but now it found its way to Calvin''s hands, through the deal the old merman made with Daimon.

    "ss rep, this thing is telling me to enter", said Calvin.

    "As crazy as it sounds, Calvin is right this time", added Michael.

    After considering things for a second, Daimon took the decision of going into the portal, he nodded at Galen to then say.

    "I leave this side to you, I suggest you to take action regarding what I told you, as soon as possible, the leaders are surely focusing on challenges, so only theckeys should be out doing secondary tasks".

    "I wish you all good luck, I''ll erase the tracks of the portal I used, no one will know where you went, besides me", said Galen as he opened a portal to then leave the castle.

    Daimon then turned to see the others to say.

    "We''ll split into pairs, I''m sure we''ll be separated if we try to form a big group, but there are cases of people entering in small groups of two or three", that was one of the valuable information Daimon got from Galen.

    Others will try to enter in a big group and will be 100% of the times separated, but among the emblem owners, Galen saw a few that managed to enter in pairs, and remembered that, since one of those pairs were among the sessful people that cleared a challenge.

    Naturally, Calvin went with Loren, Michael chose Haylee and Daimon was with Daphne, thetter were the first pair to jump into the portal, followed by Michael andstly Calvin.

    Thest thing Daimon managed to see before he was transported, was that the other two managed to stay together, so Galen was right.

    ''I guess we are about to see what have you been hiding all this time'', thought Daimon as he held onto his emblem with his left hand, while Daphne grabbed his right arm, before they disappeared.

 Chapter 550 Challenges Daphneâ€™s version (part 1)

    Chapter 550 Challenges Daphne¡¯s version (part 1)

    For a few seconds everything went dark, but Daimon didn''t need to do anything because the travel didn''tst long, the scenery changed from the dimensional tunnel in which they appeared after jumping inside the portal to a dismal looking corridor.

    "Mm?", Daimon''s emblem which was floating and glowing a second ago returned to be inactive and fell on top of his hand.

    But the darkness which reigned over the area was diminished once again, this time the illumination came from another source though, Daphne''s emblem to be more urate.

    Daphne''s eyes curiously gazed at her emblem which was now shining, the thing cracked which made Daimon frown, but it turned out to be a positive thing, a yer" fell from the surface of the emblem which previously had a simple design and was of a grey blue tone.

    The result was an intricately designed emblem that had runes in the form of arrows which formed a circle, also its color changed from that lifeless grey blue to a mix of light green and royal blue.

    Daphne grabbed her renovated emblem and curiously inspected it, she looked at Daimon''s emblem and realized that now its design was simr to his, in the sense that it had a runic engravement on its center.

    Daimon on the other hand was slightly confused, not understanding the reason behind this change, ording to Vincent the only way for an emblem to change its design is when it ispleted, but the only thing that changes is that its design bes more detailed, the color doesn''t change.

    Not to mention that evenplete emblems don''t have that runic engravement on the center.

    "Let me see it for a second, please", said Daimon, Daphne nodded and handed the emblem to Daimon without a second of hesitation.

    Daimonpared the two emblems and realized that the runic design was different not only in shape, the runic engravement on her emblem was "lifeless", unlike his as the runic shark moved around from time to time.

    He returned the emblem to Daphne and then she pointed frontwards with her right hand, meaning she wanted to advance in that direction, to which Daimon agreed, his emblem wasn''t reacting but Daphne''s was, so whatever this ce, she was the main character here.

    As Daphne was about to use a wind movement spell to enhance herself, Daimon stopped her from doing so.

    "Reserve your mana forter, something tells me you might need it, here hang onto me", he said as he pointed at his back.

    Daphne''s eyes sparkled remembering how Daimon carried all of them back at the three-art tournament, the difference is that this time Daimon wasn''t going to use Will Maniption, so she had to tightly hang onto him so she didn''t fall.

    The idea was for them to not use either mana or aura, so Daphne hugged Daimon from behind, and thetter started running, with his monstrous physique, Daimon could move at high speed with just physical strength without the need to use aura and his stamina wouldn''t be reduced just for a bit of running, not after the hellish training Aura made him go through, as for Daphne, from Daimon''s point of view she was as light as a feather.

    Daimon who was running at high speed while using infinity eyes to make sure there were no traps ahead of them, felt Daphne''s grip tightening, to move as fast as possible he was jumping and then using the walls of the corridor as support to continue moving like that, for Daimon it was a walk on the park, but for the Vs princess it was probably like a wild ride on a roller coaster.

    Last time, none of the girls had any troubles because they were being kept static thanks to Daimon''s aura after all.

    "Hang on, we''ll be out in a second", said Daimon.

    "Mm", Daphne nodded and then leaned her head on Daimon''s shoulder, as they shed through the corridor in the direction where their emblem was guiding them.

    ¡­

    The corridor seemed to be endless as it took Daimon around thirty minutes of running to finally see the "light at the end of the tunnel", but ultimately, they reached a different part of this ce whatever it was.

    The moment Daimon set foot outside of that corridor, he dodged to the left, avoiding a stream of green liquid that was aiming at their heads, when the liquid made contact with the floor, sizzling sounds were produced as it slightly melted the tiles.

    "Tsk, they dodged it, if only you two didn''t get in our way I would have eliminated somepetitors", said the one from whom that attack originated, who was none other than a skelefiend, one of the members of their young generation and an early-stage Knight Lord to be more urate.

    At that skelefiend''s side, there was also a young pirate, from the guys that were allied with Marcus, which was interesting since those two groups weren''t in exactly good terms, on the other hand, both their bosses, in other words Marcus and Ereth both wished to destroy the Mermen Sea, so it was probably a temporary alliance based on their shared interests.

    The two to whom the skelefiend referred, were even easier to recognize, one was none other than Ryan, one of the twin Keran princes and Daphne''s half-brother, the other was also a rtive to someone Daimon knew, as it was a guy who somewhat resembled Purplehaze, which meant he was a distant cousin of Sarah.

    "Idiot, the fact that the challenge hasn''t started meant that we need all the participants, what will you do if the challenge is cancelled if we don''t meet the required number of participants needed, savage idiots", said Ryan with disdain.

    "She is mine", limited to say the guy from the Purple Haze sect.

    Ryan who was facing the two who wanted to kill the neers, turned around, he caught a glimpse of Daphne earlier but only now realized, Daimon was here too, the vibe around him immediately changed.

    "That guy is really dangerous, I suggest we get rid of him first, then we can fight to decide who gets what", he said.

    Surprisingly the other three agreed, unfortunately for them the walls, floor and roof suddenly lit up with countless runes, and the participants were separated by transparent barriers that prevented them from fighting each other.

    Their emblems flew from their sides and then the runes that were inside their respective areas, turned into spheres which were painted as shooting targets, naturally if that was all, then calling it a challenge would be inurate, so the spheres started moving at high speed and bouncing on the walls of the barriers as they approached the ones inside of them.

    "Booom!", the impact of each sphere was surprisingly heavy and made the tiles explode on the spot, and that wasn''t all, a circle of around thirty meters of diameter appeared around each participant.

    There was no further exnation but the objective of this test was obvious, the participants were meant to destroy those spheres, but that couldn''t be all, ording to Galen, the tests faced by every person wouldn''t be the same, it was weird that the participants met like this.

    Not to mention that there were only five separated areas, and that circle appeared with Daphne as the center, meaning Daimon wasn''t counted as a participant, as a matter of fact, his emblem didn''t react and yet he was allowed to be inside Daphne''s trial area.

    While Daimon was considering whether he should help Daphne or not, the Vs princess gazed at him, as usual her eyes perfectlymunicated her intentions, basically she was saying "Leave it to me".

    "Fine, I''ll step aside for now, have fun", said Daimon as he jumped backwards to lean his back against the furthest wall of the barrier.

    Daphne sweetly smiled at Daimon, before she changed her focus to the iing spheres that had elerated after constantly bouncing all over the area, also at this point the other four participants had already destroyed a few of their targets.

    But that didn''t discourage the Vs princess, Daphne''s eyes glowed for a second, her right hand gathered water which fiercely flowed around it, while the left one was covered in a sharp gale of wind.

    Unlike the others who were using individual shooting type spells, like acid bullet, poison arrow or rupture, multiple times to urately destroy the targets one by one, Daphne apparently was restricted to use wide area spells.

    You might think that in a challenge which required them to destroy multiple targets, that would be an advantage, but that isn''t the case, if the spheres have a shooting target, that means that hitting closer to the center will be better, and for that, individual type spells were better.

    There is also the fact that spells bounced on the walls of the barrier, individual spells dissolved when they hit their target, but wide area spells won''t, they will only disappear after exhausting the mana imbued in them, not to mention the space avable for maneuvering wasn''t thatrge, all in all, Daphne was in a tough spot for this challenge.

    Or at least that was supposed to be the case, water surrounded Daphne''s body as arge wave formed in font of her, at the same time a tornado came from above andnded on the wave.

    The next thing that happened was that the tornado sucked all the water, turning into a hurricane, with a few gestures of her hand, multiple streams of water guided by gales of wind, urately pierced the spheres through their central areas, destroying them on the spot.

    Daphne then started moving her hands as if she was a master of ceremony, conducting an orchestra, her ten fingers were dded in either wind or water mana, and with them she attacks that came from the hurricane.

    ''To think she''ll use the wide area spells "tidal wave" and "tornado" to produce a rain of individual attacks, her mana control is quite something'', thought Daimon as he saw Daphnepletely obliterating the targets.

    She started after the others and was using a method that required a lot more of steps than the others, and yet in a matter of seconds Daphne outssed the other participants, changing an spells direction isn''t something easy to do, which is why individual shooting type spells are popr, they can be continuously spammed until they hit the target.

    The other option is using a wide area spell to cover the escape route of the enemy, andstly the hardest but also more efficient way which was controlling one''s spell to pursue the enemy, a technique that usually only Arch ranks and above can use.

    It might not be as hard as learning to use other mana circuits tounch spells, like what Daimon did back at Kerrol, but that doesn''t make it less praise-worthy, as it required a hell ton of practice and a fast reaction time.

    It bes easier for Archmages to do it since theirpatibility with mana is naturally enhanced when they advance, but Daphne is just an early-stage Mage Lord.

    The moment Daphne destroyed herst target, she dissolved her spells and the targets that the others failed to destroy so far, disappeared, then a number appeared on the barriers of each participant.

    Daphne destroyed the whole one thousand targets, next was Ryan who got seven hundred of them, then there was the guy from the Purple Haze sect which got six hundred and fifty, the pirate with six hundred and the skelefiend only got five hundred.

    Daimon who limited to observe, pped a couple of times, Daphne destroyed those guys in terms of score, unfortunately the challenge wasn''t over as the gate that appeared at the exit of the individual barriers separating the participants, suggested.

    Daphne nodded at Daimon and then walked towards the gate, followed by him, Daimon felt a hatred filled gaze falling on him, which originated from Purplehaze''s cousin, while Ryan also red at him with wary filled eyes, which made him smirk.

    "You should be grateful that Daphne asked me not to participate, otherwise I would have killed you all at this point", he mockingly said as he entered through the door, leaving behind an angered group of people that stared at each other.

    "My whole team was trashed by that guy before, however here his strength is limited, and we all have obtained new strength, it''s a perfect chance to get rid of a future source of trouble", said Ryan.

    Since he now had knowledge, he didn''t, back at the tournament, despite his wary nature, he thought that Daimon had stopped being a problem after meeting Arlion, unaware of the fact that the one who screwed up Arlion''s thousands of years of plotting, was Daimon.

    The other participants agreed, for a variety of reasons, and then they all entered through their respective doors, to appear at the other side.

    The second part of the challenge was a giant battlefield, each participant was separated from each other, and was given a small fort which they apparently had to defend, from who you ask.

    Each fort was surrounded by arge group of "enemies" in the form of golems, but that wasn''t all, all the golems were equipped with crossbows and bolts, they also had long ranged siege weapons, like catapults.

    It was easy to notice the reward for the winner of the previous test, since Daphne''s fort was in a better geographical position, being at the top of a hill, which made it harder for the enemy to reach it and also gave Daphne a better view of the battlefield.

    With a loud drum sound, the five armies of golems, started advancing towards their respective targets, the golems all reached the crossbows with which they were equipped and then started shooting bolts toward the forts.

    At Daphne''s assigned fort at the top of the sole hill in the battlefield, Daimon saw all those "long range" weapon users and his eyes glowed behind his mask, they were basically free experience for him to unlock the other aspect of the skill Cosmic Weaponry.

    But he didn''t let greed blind him, this was Daphne''s challenge so she was in charge, Daimon didn''t want her reward to be diminished because of him.

    Luckily, this time, Daphne''s restrictions were different, she tugged Daimon''s right sleeve and pointed at the arm that wasing from the north and east sides of the fort, she was telling Daimon that he could destroy the golems on that side.

    Daimon chuckled, he nodded and then said.

    "Don''t push yourself too hard", leaving those words behind, Daimon became a white sh thatnded in the middle of the golem army.

    "Booom!", a loud explosion followed by a giant curtain of dust was created due to the impact, Daimon didn''t even leave the golems aim at him with their crossbows, he directly shed and used his fist to punch a hole through the chests and heads od a dozen of golems on the spot.

    While Daimon was running wild in his side of the battlefield, Daphne calmly stood on the watchtower of her fort to gather mana for her strongest spell, the best way to deal with this situation was using her lineage''s innate ability and cast the Storm Stream, that will blow away arge batch of the golems.

    Daphne who was gathering and mixing the required mana to use her spell, suddenly felt a strange sensation of oppression on her chest, which forced her to stop casting her spell.

    Strangely enough, that sensation disappeared as fast as it appeared, but for Daimon who was down in the battlefield destroying golems right and left, stopping wasn''t enough to trick his eyes.

    ''For someone that puts on airs for being "smarter" than his brother, you used your trump card too openly'', he thought as he sent a message to Daphne using mana, to then carve a path through the golem army.

 Chapter 551 Challenges Daphneâ€™s version (part 2)

    Chapter 551 Challenges Daphne¡¯s version (part 2)

    While Daimon was rushing through the countless golem, avoiding the bolts that were being shot at him, he looked backwards as he wanted to confirm two things.

    First if Daphne was doing fine, which was answered by the Vs princess sting away a batch of golems with the spell "Wind Pressure", that being said Daimon did notice her mana flow was a bit awkward after what happened earlier.

    Still, Daphne didn''t fall behind and continued tounch spells to destroy the golems, the second thing Daimon wanted to confirm was if him destroying the golems added to Daphne''s score, but unfortunately that didn''t seem to be the case.

    To be fair, there were too many golems, their pattern was practically the same, with the difference that they started attacking the fortress at different distances, so the participants only had to destroy them before they reached their designated distance.

    Or that''s what appeared to be on the surface, the truth is that this challenge was testing quite a few things, for starters, what differentiated the golems from each other were minimal details, if one didn''t have good eyes, it was quite hard to discern one from the other.

    Then, one had to have the capacity to concentrate while being surrounded by enemies and arrange the order in which to strike them down, not to mention being skilled in wide area and long ranged spells.

    But in Daimon''s eyes, what this test was aiming to quantify was something more basic, but at the same time quite important, mana reserves and mana management, which is something in which Daphne excels.

    Each attack thatnded on the fort diminished the barrier protecting the participant, so at some point the barrier will be destroyed and the participant''s time in the challenge will end, in other words, there was no victory in this challenge, the winner would be decided based on whosts longer¡­ or that was supposed to be the case before Daimon got involved.

    Battle aura covered Daimon''s legs as he flexed them to then jump, Daphne didn''t need his help, under normal circumstances, he was sure that she would destroy the other three participants, but since they weren''t ying fair and square, he was just going to make things even.

    "Boooom!", with a loud explosion, the ground exploded below Daimon''s feet as he soared into the air, the shockwave sent quite a few golems flying away, surprisingly they didn''t try to attack him, as he was now out of their range.

    Instead of that, the golems on the next area where that skelefiend was facing his trial, were the ones weing Daimon who was descending from the sky right now.

    Seeing the boltsing after him, Daimon''s body covered in white mes as he elerated his descend to imitate a meteorite,nding in the middle of the golem army, causing a small tremor due to the impact.

    "What the hell, how did he leave the area designated for that woman!", eximed the skelefiend, the participants were limited to stay within a certain proximity to their respective fortresses.

    Daimon didn''t stop in the ceremony, he shed through the battlefield of that skelefiend, though he was nning to kill them all, Ryan was the first on the list, because he was somehow interfering with Daphne, and the only reason Daimon could think he was able to do that, was with Arlion''s help.

    Speaking of Ryan, he saw that the skelefiend wasn''t trying to stop him from going through his area, as it was obvious who he was going after which, and he gritted his teeth.

    "Are you that stupid, what do you think he''ll do after getting rid of anyone of us!", he shouted from afar.

    "Tsk, that guy is right, don''t let him get away", said the pirate guy to his temporary ally, the attacks of the participants couldn''t affect an area that isn''t their respective one, which is another reason as to why Daimon was aiming straight for Ryan, he bypassed that restriction.

    "Fine damn it, but I want a part of the reward", said the skelefiend as he aimed one of his hands at the white sh that was destroying golems right and left, to then shot a green stream of liquid.

    Daimon casually increased the output of his Demon Light, and then ignored the attack from the skelefiend.

    "Hissss!", the acid stream shed with the white mes and was vaporized on the spot, some poisonous fog was released, but Daimon did it on purpose as he used the acid fog to help him open up a path faster.

    With a smirk, Daimon punched frontwards and the pressure brought all the acid fog in a straight line, melting the golems and allowing Daimon to pass through the area.

    "What the hell are you doing, you idiot, why don''t you directlye down and escort him through your area, instead!", shouted Ryan as he saw Daimon arriving at the border of the skelefiend''s area.

    The moment Daimon entered the next area, which was the one designated for the guy from the Purplehaze sect, a curtain of dark purple mist fell all over the ce, engulfing not only Daimon but also the nearby golems.

    The result was that the runes that made the golems work, started failing on the spot, they actually started attacking each other instead of aiming at the fortress like the others.

    "That''s what you deserve for daring to act all close with¡­", the proud filled words of the guy stuck in his throat, blood exploded out of his mouth and while coughed the mist that was static until a second ago, was dragged towards a specific spot.

    Once all the mist gathered, the sight of Daimon holding a dark purple orb with his right hand, made the guy from the Purplehaze sect curse.

    "Impossible, how can it be that you also received his "blessing", I was promised that she will be mine!!!", he roared.

    Daimon observed the purple mist which he was holding with his right hand, others couldn''t see it, but there was a very thinyer of white mes containing the purple mist, which was nothing else than a poorly createdher with illusory properties.

    Quite a few things came to Daimon''s mind, but he decided to leave them forter, he casually let the orb fall to the ground, just for it to sink into his shadow, to disappear without a trace.

    Since that guy from the Purplehaze sect was having a mental breakdown of some sort right now, Daimon rushed through his area without any problems, the golems mostly ignored him since their aim was the fortress that protected the participant and they weren''t being attacked, so they focused on reducing the barrier around their enemy.

    Ryan who was observing the whole situation, inwardly cursed, he suddenly felt a chill running down his spine, as he was gazed from afar by Daimon.

    ''Useless pieces of trash, they can''t even buy time for me!'', he thought as he turned to see thest remaining area before his, which is the one designated for the participant that represented the pirates.

    "Hey pirate, I have something that will allow us to join hands against him, what do you say?", he said.

    The pirate snarked at Ryan to then answer with disdain.

    "Oh, so now the noble royalty of the Mermen Sea is requesting help from the pariahs of the Maelstrom Sea, I''ll be magnanimous and lend you a hand? for the right price of course".

    Ryan fritted his teeth but he wasn''t stupid enough to fight an enemy that even Terry couldn''t defeat in a 1v1 fight, so he bit the bullet and nodded as a sign of agreeance.

    "Those other two were useless, we''ll kill him and then divide the "reward" in 60% for you and 40% for me, it''s either that or we both lose".

    The pirate clicked his tongue, he wanted to rip off Ryan, but there was no time for that, besides he was getting the bigger share and if he teamed up with Ryan, they could eliminate the other two.

    "Deal".

    Ryan saw Daimonnding in the area designated for the pirate guy and he took out a red coin from his pocket, to then crush it into pieces, Daimon who stopped where hended earlier, looked at the roof of this ce, and saw a red mist that came from that coin, ovepping with the arrays in the nearby area, adding new runes to it.

    Though he might be able to somewhat understand the specific purpose of those runes if he injected more mana into the infinity eyes, he didn''t have the need nor the time to do so, the golems in the pirate and Ryan''s area stopped moving all of a sudden.

    Also, the two areas merged, the naked eye couldn''t directly see the divisions between the territory of each participant, they calcted it based on where the golems stopped, but Daimon could see the invisible divisions.

    Naturally with the golems frozen and the areas merged, the pirate as well as Ryan had no need to remain within their respective fortresses, so they jumped down and soon arrived where Daimon was.

    The pirate whose name was An, observed the new environment created by whatever that coin used by Ryan was, and he frowned.

    "Why the hell didn''t you use this earlier, weren''t you the one bitching about working together to get rid of him?", he asked just to see Ryan snorting.

    "It''s a one-time thing, of course I was reserving it forter, but I don''t think we''ll be able to get through the trial with him around, so I decided to use it now", he said.

    Daimon who was observing the new runes being attacked by the original ones, and slowly but surely erasing them, understood what was happening.

    ''It won''tst long but he actually overwrote the rules of the challenge, also this feeling again¡­'', he thought before he returned to the real word.

    "I can understand you hating Terry, he was always better than you at everything, but why are you targeting Daphne?", he casually asked, it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that Ryan''s face twisted a bit when hepared him to Terry.

    "Terry was an idiot, he was too prideful and those who outstand will always be targeted first, I prefer to pull the string behind the shadows, so I simply choose the best cover to do so, as for your question, besides my fool younger brother I never considered them family or anything, though I didn''t mind sparing Mellie".

    "Don''t waste time, he is just stalling for time", reminded the pirate, just to see Ryan shaking his head.

    "I know, this trial will stillst more than thirty minutes and he can''t leave this area, we''ll still have twenty-five minutes after killing him", he said.

    "Oh, it seems you got infected by Terry''s attitude, if I remember correctly, I moped the floor with you and your whole team thest time we fought", said Daimon as he stretched his arms.

    "Hmph, it will be different this time, my dear ancestor cover gave me the offensive means I wascking back then¡­", as Ryan finished his words, his originally slim body grew taller and a small horn appeared in the middle of his forehead, his realm jumped all the way to the peak of the Mage Lord realm.

    But it didn''t stop there, green and gray mana particles rushed from all over the area, to gather around Ryan, meaning he had obtained a Manifestation Phenomenon, that was the end of his transformation, but it wasn''t the end of the surprises.

    The pirate grinned and then his pupils changed into those of a beast, crackles could be hearding from his body as ck ques covered his arms, legs, neck and forehead, unlike Ryan, his change gave him a much more beast-like appearance, which is something Daimon has seen the pirates using before, they forcefully integrated a magic beast lineage into their bodies.

    The result was a less refined version of the beast traits acquired when one''s lineage reaches a 30% of concentration, which is what happened to Ryan and previously Terry, on the other hand this crude boosting has its advantages, it goes perfectly with knights as it increases the physical aspects more, as the pirate whose strength used to be quite far from Ryan''s now more or less caught up to him.

    That being said, Daimon could see therge quantity of stamina that the pirate was burning,pared to Ryan whose change was more stable.

    "Nice tricks, they do resemble your owners, however you aren''t better than Terry he was easy to deal with", mockingly said Daimon, referring to Marcus short tempered nature and Arlion''s patient and wary way to do things.

    Ryan''s eyes glowed with hatred, the small narwhal horn in the middle of his forehead shone and he then extended his palm towards Daimon, the wind mana particles around him converged in his hand, a current of air, strong enough to be considered equal to the spell "Wind Cannon" was shot.

    "Booom!", the area where Daimon was standing exploded due to the impact of the attack, raising a curtain of dust which engulfed everything nearby, normally the dust will spread but Ryan snapped his fingers and wind gathered to form a sphere around the dust to iste Daimon.

    Inside of the sphere, Daimon jumped to get out but his way was blocked by the pirate who was given an opening by Ryan manipting the wind to let him enter.

    "Where do you think you are going!", shouted the pirate with a hoarse voice, the disadvantage of this crude method of lineage assimtion was that the mind of the user was affected by the beastly instincts of the magic beast to which the blood belonged, but in this case the disadvantage was turned into a benefit as knights fought in closebat and fierceness helped, at least for the pirate it did.

    The pirate reached his back and grabbed the Warhammer that he was carrying, to then swing it downwards to crush Daimon''s head, at the same time, Ryan''s pped and the sphere contracted, applying pressure on those that were inside of it.

    The Shooting Narwhal had the ability to produce "impulse" it was an advanced version of wind element, previously Ryan couldn''t control wind only create impulse, but now he was able to use both, due to his lineage concentration increasing.

    As for the pirate, the lineage he integrated into his body was that of some kind of crustacean, which increased his defense and strength overall, preventing the pressure created by Ryan''s wind from crushing him, despite they being a team born out of convenience, they actually had a good synergy.

    Ryan felt the huge impact on the wall of the sphere and he smirked as he reinforced the spell, to prevent the martial art used by the pirate from blowing a hole through it, the idea was to keep Daimon inside the sphere and use his wind to mess his movement and retrain him, while the pirate pummeled him to death.

    Unfortunately for Ryan, ns rarely go as they are supposed to, his newly acquired beast instincts screamed in terror, but he had no time to react as a hand which felt heavy as a mountain was ced on his shoulder from behind.

    He slowly looked backwards, just to see Daimon who waspletely unscathed.

    "Impossible, I can feel what is happening inside that sphere, that guy is fighting against you¡­", Ryan''s words died in his throat, now that he tried to look at the situation inside the sphere, he didn''t feel anything, as in there were no signs of lifeing from it.

    The sphere popped like a balloon and the sight of the pirate whose head was twisted backwards, was revealed, his expression of horror was hard to describe, it was as if he has seen his worst nightmare before life left his body.

    Ryan''s body shivered, he jumped to gain distance and then took out another thing from his pocket, it wasn''t the needles he used to fight but a small silver and blue hand bell.

    "Get away you monster, or I will¡­", the next thing Ryan knew was that his face was covered by darkness, as Daimon grabbed him and then smacked him against the ground.

    "Boooom".

    "Aghhh!".

    An explosion followed by a pained scream could be heard echoing through the whole area, blood exploded out of Ryan''s mouth, nose and ears due to the impact, but what hurt him the most was the hand with which he was holding that hand bell, or it would be more urate to say the hand that used to hold that hand bell, since said hand was cleanly severed way from the rest of his body.

    Daimon who was using his right foot to keep Ryan down, deactivated Core Synchrony and then snapped his fingers, the hand bell flew towards him, tond on his right hand.

    The moment the hand bell was in Daimon''s hand, his pupils contracted behind his mask, and the strength he was using to keep Ryan down, increased, making his ribs break on the spot.

    "Aghhhh¡­", his scream was interrupted by Daimon firmly grabbing him by his neck and then lifting him so that he was directly facing Ryan.

    "We are going to have a little conversation, regarding this treasure and that coin you used earlier", coldly said Daimon.

    Ryan who was heavily breathing while blood wasing out of his mouth, mockingly smiled.

    "You can''t kill me here, otherwise the array I was given will eliminate you¡­", Ryan''s eyes widened not only because Daimon tightened the grip on his neck, but because he saw broken red runes falling from the sky like rain.

    A ck one-edged sword which he never saw appearing earlier, descended from above and stopped floating next to his enemy.

    "I was never worried about that coin''s effect, Arlion might have given you a couple of tricks, but I have as much if not more than him, so from the very beginning the moment you saw me, you should have runaway", said Daimon as he grabbed Disaster with his free hand.

    Seeing the golems starting to move again, Daimon walked towards them while holding Ryan with his right hand, and a smirk on his face as he said.

    "Besides, who said I was going to be the one to kill you".

 Chapter 552 Challenges Daphneâ€™s version (part 3)

    Chapter 552 Challenges Daphne¡¯s version (part 3)

    Listening to Daimon''s words and more importantly seeing that smirk on the lower part of his face, which wasn''t covered by the mask of the Hollow Suit, made Ryan have a bad premonition.

    "Let go of me you, crazy bastard!", Ryan squirmed trying to free himself from Daimon''s grip, just for Daimon to smack him against the ground a couple of times until his fighting lessened as they reached the area where the golems were starting to move again.

    "Now, you are going to tell me everything you know and have seen since you joined Arlion''s side, especially what''s the deal with this hand bell", coldly said Daimon as he showed the hand bell to Ryan.

    "Screw you, you are going to kill me the moment I let my tongue loose, however if I don''t tell you anything, he is going toe for Daphne and then I''ll be saved when he kills you!", said Ryan with a defiant look on his pummeled face.

    ''Daimon, leave me¡­'', as Rita was about to volunteer herself to deal with the lowly scum that was daring to give trouble to her young master, Daimon''s shadow extended without the need of her mana and then the air trembled.

    "Arggh", Ryan tried to scream but his voice couldn''t leave his throat, he felt as if he was suffocating, despite no physical pressure being applied on his neck, no, the suppression he was feeling came from a much deeper level.

    ''What the hell, isn''t this¡­'', Ryan''s train of thought was interrupted by Daimon who ruthlessly moved his arm to ce him facing the golems.

    "Y-You, don''t tell me¡­ aghhh!", Ryan got an idea of what was about to happen and he tried to hurry to negotiate, but then an arrow pierced his left thigh, forcing a scream out of him.

    "No, wait, I will talk¡­aghhh!", Ryan tried to speak, but what weed him was another arrow, this time itnded on his right shoulder, that''s right Daimon was casually strolling through the battlefield using Ryan as a meat shield for the few golems that changed their attention from destroying the barrier of his fortress, to them.

    "I''m sure you will, however we have some free time to kill, while Daphne wins this challenge", after saying that, Daimon no longer spoke any other word, despite Ryan crying, screaming and begging every time an arrow or boltnded on him.

    Instead of that, Daimon was more interested in the fact that unlike the golems on the other three participant''s areas, Ryan''s golems did add up to Daphne''s count.

    ''Oh, well, I guess the one who set this challenge isn''t happy that the rules were breached by a participant, but then why am I not being considered an intruder?'', wondered Daimon, he wasn''t given an area for the challenge, but he wasn''t limited by the rules either, it was as if he was allowed toe in and see or assist Daphne with her challenge.

    Then again, the participants this time were for sure not going to y nice, so it could be just an error caused by whatever means, Arlion, Marcus, Ereth or the Nethereals were using to mess with the challenges, the other option was that his system was interfering but the problem is that he hadn''t received a notification or a mission being triggered.

    ''Well, there is still a much wilder option, being that the challenge of my emblem is not a "trial", like others but me having to go through the challenges of my teammates, I guess I''ll know it once we leave finish one'', thought Daimon as he used his hand to destroy the head of a golem.

    ¡­

    By the time Ryan''s fortress''s barrier had less than a third part of its energy left, Daimon retreated inside of the barrier, he never lost sight of Daphne and the whole battlefield in general and as he expected even if the golems he destroyed from Ryan''s area, weren''t counted, she was still quite ahead of the other two idiots.

    ''Rita if you would, please'', inwardly said Daimon.

    ''Mm, it''s done'', answered Rita as she put an invisible barrier around Daimon and Ryan with her mana, Daimon nodded and then turned to see Ryan whose eyes were bloodshot to then remove the battle aura he used to seal his mouth to stop listening to his unending threats, wails, begs and the like.

    "So, do you have something to say now?", he asked.

    Ryan gritted his teeth but feeling the dangerous gaze behind that mask, he didn''t dare to remain in silence for too long, who knows what the psycho in front of him would do to him, if he didn''t speak, besides he could always lie and use the situation for his advantage or that''s what he thought until he opened his mouth, just to scream when Daimon twisted his left arm in a weird direction.

    "Ahhhh why!!!".

    "I wonder if Arlion is also your father, for you to think it''s better to try and lie in front of me than betray him", casually said Daimon, which made Ryan''s back explode in cold sweat, the monster in front of him could tell he was going to lie even before he did so.

    "I-I won''t lie, but I don''t know much, the moment those tubes of light came down from the sky, Arlion sent everyone of us a message and some things, namely a coin, apass and that hand bell".

    "I don''t know about others, but my message instructed me to use thepass to find a specific challenge, the coin was supposed to give me a chance to modify the rules of the challenge for a certain period of time and the hand bell, the message only told me to use it if I were to find Daphne in the challenge, and to kill her if I had the chance or better¡­ if I captured her, I would be given the second part of my reward".

    Daimon remained calm on the outside, but Rita and the girls from the ck Night n who were staying in his shadow, could feel it... how angry he was, and that is a lot to say, considering Daimon is not someone to waste emotions on enemies.

    ''Daimon, it could be overthinking, but isn''t that bell giving a simr feeling to¡­'', Narasha who had returned to the inventory couldn''t help but ask, Disaster is especially sharp when ites to energy firms, that''s why the capricious sword can be used as a rare metal/

    mineral detector, just like how it led Daimon and Aura to some hidden deposits of mithril and even orichalcum back when they were training at some randoms a long time ago.

    And while Disaster normally only reacts to the "snacks" it likes, Narasha can to a certain extent use the abilities of Disaster to help Daimon, it''s way easier for her, now that the glutton sword is sleeping to digest all theher it stole from Ka.

    ''Yes, the energy firming from that hand bell is exactly the same as Daphne''s'', but not all of her, but a specific part of her'', said Daimon.

    Now, it''s not like Daimon has purposedly scanned the girls, however, after spending so much time near them, it''s impossible for him to not remember their overall energy firms, scents and the like, heck at this point he can know when their heartbeat is different than usual.

    His sixth sense along with his sharp senses,pile that kind of information for him whether he wants it or not, not to mention his instincts as an apex predator make him be quite "aware" of them in many aspects.

    That being said, the energy firm and aura on the hand bell, was something he willingly learned because it''s the same as what he felt when he inspected Daphne''s scar, the scar on her neck which is supposedly what took away her voice.

    And that''s not all, he also felt somewhat familiar with the red mist that was released when Ryan crushed that red coin earlier, how could he not when he scanned till thest corner of the one from whom the material used to create it, came.

    But this time, he instead confirmed it with Rita, as she was the one that helped him with that, back then.

    ''Rita, those red runes, did they not feel simr to the traces you found back then?'', he asked.

    ''Yes¡­ it''s much more refined to the point that one might not recognize it, meaning the one who did it became more skilled with it overtime, but that red mist had a simr sensation to the traces of the curse that was used on that blue haired woman'', said Rita, referring to Grace, in other words, Daphne''s mother.

    Daimon remained silent for a moment, it would be a lie to say that he didn''t suspect there was someone involved in what happened to the pair of Vs mother and daughter, since maybe not all, but him meeting Mellie and the others was rted to the opportunities he stole from Adam and Marcus, meaning they were involved in the missions prepared for those two originally.

    But thanks to him interfering, their fates changed, at least they didn''t be trophies for the light idiot or stepping stones for Marcus.

    Ryan could tell that things were getting more dangerous for him, so he immediately tried to speak his way out of this.

    "I told you everything I know, you have to let me live, I can be your spy in Arlion''s team, b-besides I''m Daphne''s rtive, do you think she''ll be happy if you killed her brother, despite what happened here, I never had any conflict with her previously!".

    Daimon limited to snort at the pathetic sight of Ryan begging to be spared, to then say.

    "Do you know why both you and Terry didn''t attain the strength you expected, no matter how much external help you got?", he said.

    Ryan''s body trembled, he felt humiliated to beg for his life, to have been defeated and to be forced to offer himself to serve his enemy, but he still didn''t give up.

    ''At the end of the day, aren''t you arrogant yourself, I''ll listen to your monologue, a hundred years isn''tte for one''s revenge after all'', he thought as he put on a ttering expression to then say.

    "Please illuminate me young master".

    Daimon tossed Ryan like a piece of garbage and then sat down cross legged on the ground, Ryan couldn''t move because he had arrows piercing his joints and practically every non-vital spot on his arms, legs and back, that''s how much Daimon made him suffer earlier, the only reason as to why he hadn''t bled to death is because Rita injected him a potion by Daimon''s order, without Ryan noticing it.

    "As you already know, given the new "strength" you were granted by Arlion, his empowering is rted to lineages, he helped Terry''s lineage concentration to increase way more than what it should have at his age if he just developed normally, that and the fact that he was procreated by Arlion himself, meaning the source of his White Royal Shark lineage was less diluted than what Triten''s".

    "However, Arlion of course didn''t want Terry to be able to stand up to him, since he was cultivating a recement for his decaying self instead of a talented sessor, so he only gave Terry one of the aspects that conform what a strong lineage owner need".

    "The result as you can imagine, is an iplete lineage owner that though can use some of the prowess of its bloodline, it is still way behind what a real lineage owner can do, which is why both you and Terry were so easily defeated by me, in other words you and Terry were disposable pawns from the very beginning".

    Ryan''s expression twisted as he shouted.

    "Don''t lie to me, of course I know that I wasn''t given everything in a single go, he exined that to me, and that''s why I was going to capture Daphne instead of killing her!".

    Daimon mockingly gazed at Ryan in response.

    "He couldn''t do that for himself and you think he was going to do it for you, for someone that boasts about being smart and thinks that I''m not going to kill you because that would make someone unhappy, you are way more stupid than what I thought", he said.

    Daimon doesn''t know how the hell Arlion knows about it, but he learned the two aspects needed for a lineage''s potential to be fully exploited back when he obtained the Lineage Temple function.

    One not only needs to integrate the bloodline to obtain a lineage, but also you have to unlock the information codified in it, a sample of the blood gave Daimon the chance to obtain the first, through his Apex Predator physique, but he needed to pass the trial of the Lineage Temple to obtain the second.

    For what he knows, the magic beast from which Terry''s lineage originated should be on par with the ck Armored Shark''s lineage, not only that but he obtained a concentration on par with Daimon''s, but he still wasn''t a worthy enemy for him.

    Lineage owners, usually posses one of the two aspects and have to develop it to obtain the second one, how proficient they are with what they have is what separates the truly talented from fakers.

    And in case you are wondering, not even Daimon has the two aspects for all his lineages, as he has only gotten the trial for the ck Armored Shark''s lineage so far, but Ryan had no need to know that much.

    "You only need to know that Arlion lessened/ruined the aspects that Daphne and Grace had, and that is the origin of the coin and hand bell you were given, I don''t need to think too much to know why he wanted you to capture her, he wanted what was left".

    "So, what do you think is going to happen to you, after you reach a concentration high enough for "harvest", genius".

    Ryan froze on the spot, Daimon''s words repeated in his mind over and over again, if he was telling the truth, he couldn''t find a w in his exnation, in other words, he was sent to do something and his reward was being killed after fulfilling his task.

    "Why the hell are you telling me this!", he shouted, just to see Daimon smirking.

    "Because as much of a coward as you are, physical pain is not what hurts you the most, but knowing that you are below others".

    Ryan gritted his teeth so hard that he actually started bleeding from his mouth once again.

    "Crazy bastard¡­", limited to say Ryan, his anger was gone instead of that, his eyes were in shock, as an expression of disbelief appeared on his face, he gasped for air but couldn''t breathe properly, his face paled as he tried to cough, he even used his hands to rip the flesh of his neck, but it didn''t work.

    "That''s what having the mana circuits of your throat messed with, feels like, I have damaged a few of mine some time ago due to training and while they recovered, I can vouch that it felt like hell, and here you were ringing that disgusting bell in front of Daphne", he casually said.

    Ryan''s eyes which were filled with despair, begged Daimon to kill him, but he instead added.

    "Now, with this field test, I''ll be able to prepare a much worse thing for Arlion, so you can go ahead and wait for me to send him with you".

    Daimon then stood up and simply waited until Ryan stopped breathing, he silently witnessed his end, only then he shot a light beam from his left index finger piercing the middle of his forehead and his heart as well, better be safe than sorry.

    With a snap of his fingers the corpse was sent to the inventory, and Daimon then dusted off his shirt, as to why he wasn''t worried about killing Ryan and the pirate guy from earlier, they themselves said they were going to kill the other two referring to the skelefiend and the guy from the Purple Haze sect, and since they wanted to capture Daphne and not kill her, it meant that three surviving participants were enough for the challenge to advance to the next stage.

    Of course, he took a peek at the runes that covered this area as well, just to make sure, that is also why he didn''t go to kill the other two participants, this ce was Daphne''s fortune, well, it was now, since Daimon interfered in Neptune''s scheme.

    ''You can dispel the protection, Rita, the challenge is about to end so we are heading back'', said Daimon.

    ''Mm'', with a low sound, Rita dispelled her mana and then Daimon jumped out of the fortress, just in time for the golems to take down the barrier, the other participants were about to be surpassed by the golems as well, so they had no leisure to pay attention to Daimon.

    And he was able to return to Daphne''s side easily, the Vs princess who waspletely focused on the challenge till a second ago, saw Daimon returningpletely unscathed and an expression of relief appeared on her pretty face, before she smiled at him.

    "Wee back", it''s what her eyes were telling Daimon, who after a second of hesitation, decided to tell her what he discovered, since the challenge was ending in a minute or two and there was no way for the other two to catch up to her.

    As one would expect, Daphne was in shock at what Daimon told her, she continuedunching spells automatically, but her gaze changed from those expression filled pretty eyes that Daimon is used to see on her, to be in nk as if she was empty-minded.

    In fact, she continued doing so even now that the challenge ended and her spells were just being cancelled by the barrier of the fortress, and the golems had disappeared from the battlefield while the results were being calcted.

    Daimon who had kept her distance before, inwardly sighed, he approached her and then gently ced his hand on her head, despite the difference in age, Daphne wasn''t that much taller than him anyway.

    Little diamond-like tears appeared on the corners of Daphne''s eyes, her body trembled and she stopped what she was doing to hug Daimon as tight as she could.

    Daimon couldn''t help but sigh, in part because of herself, someone one day casually decided to deprive her of her voice for selfish reasons, when she wasn''t even conscious of herself, there is also the suffering her mother went through all these years, ming herself for what happened to her, when it was done on purpose by someone else.

    Daimon gently caressed her head, while the Vs princess cried in his chest, as if the challenge was aware of the situation, the process took quite some time, at least as much as what it took Daphne to calm down.

    Seeing her pretty eyes, still being teary, Daimon helped her wipe them with his handkerchief, as much as he doesn''t like vampire nobles and their etiquette, he still has a handkerchief in his pocket at all times, a result of Aisha''s etiquette lessons.

    "You can''t change what happened in the past, but we can do something about it now, he did it, we just have to beat him up until he begs to correct it, right?", said Daimon.

    "Mm~", Daphne softly giggled in response, finding Daimon''s words tofort her, amusing, she then realized she was still holding onto Daimon, not to mention she cried all over his shirt, and her face blushed on the spot, which made Evangelineugh in Daimon''s mind.

    ''That''s a weird conquering line, but I guess it''s threatening other people''s lives is part of your charm, anyway if it isn''t broken don''t fix it~''.

    ''I''m fine with it, Daimon will do the same for any of us after all'', added Narasha.

    Daimon chuckled, he let go of Daphne who was much better now, to then observe their surroundings changing, from the openrge area with the fortresses to something that resembled a testing area for those that wish to join an academy or other force, in Daimon''s experience.

    He thought so, because there were mana crystals of different elements ced in a single line next to each other, simr to what would be done to test one''s affinity, but the difference is that unlike the sealed and immacte atmosphere needed for that kind of test, this ce had a chaotic mix of different types of mana lingering on the air.

 Chapter 553 Challenges Daphneâ€™s version (part 4)

    Chapter 553 Challenges Daphne¡¯s version (part 4)

    After observing the set up for the challenge, Daimon looked at the other participants, just like Daphne who was kept isted inside a barrier in her own designated area, the Skelefiend and the guy from the Purple Haze sect were the same.

    As for him, he appeared inside Daphne''s area, Daimon smirked and casually walked towards the border where Daphne and the Skelefiend''s areas collided and then he extended his arms towards the barrier just to see it easily bypassing the limit, in response a small current of electricity assaulted Daimon''s hand for a split of a second before it disappeared.

    Seeing the monster who casually eliminated those two, ignoring the restrictions of the challenge just like that, made the Skelefiend''s face pale, or at least the expression in his eyes showed that, since he had no flesh on his head yet.

    But to his surprise, Daimon''s eyes glowed for a second and he then retrieved his arm before walking back to where Daphne who had a slightly worried light in her pretty eyes, after seeing the array punishing Daimon, was standing.

    ''System users are meant to experience some strange things due to their respective systems interfering with their lives, but for there not to be even a notification triggered, does it mean this would have happened whether he was a system user or not¡­ that''s just crazy, what kind of awakening trial did he face'', thought a certain angel girl within a crystalized feather pendant that was hanging from Daimon''s neck, while being invisible for others, just to hear Evangeline''s voice being directly transmitted to her ears.

    ''That''s just normal, since my dear host was already a monster before we got to know each other, just wait a for that silver armored woman to finish stablishing the contract, you''ll see something really interesting~'', yfully said Evangeline, which made Freya who was though in a inactive state, still conscious to a certain extent, feel somewhat worried, unfortunately she couldn''t stop the process for a second time to ask Evangeline what she meant, so she''ll have to trust the silver haired youth this time.

    Leaving that little exchange between the three administrators aside, Daimon smiled at Daphne to assure her that he was fine and then casually sat down cross-legged behind of her, limiting himself to observe this time.

    The Vs princess saw that Daimon had no wound and she let out a sigh of relief, after giving him a sweet smile, she changed her focus to the challenge that seemed to be about to start.

    Just like in the previous challenge there was no exnation whatsoever, leaving the true motive of this trial up to the interpretation of the ones facing it, but at the very least the basic purpose wasn''t that hard to understand.

    Three dummies with two counters floating above them appeared at the other side of this ce, each one aligned with one of the three participants, showing once again that though Daimon wasn''t being restricted by the challenge, he wasn''t counted as a participant either.

    The next second, one of the two counters lit up and numbers started appearing on it, it wasn''t hard to tell that it was registering the time that was passing.

    Seeing that Daimon wasn''t trying to go after him and the challenge getting in his way when he tried to interfere, as well as the time being registered by the challenge, the Skelefiend regained some confidence back.

    "Heh, so this is just a power disy trial, very good, I was worried since that crazy bastard killed those two without breaking a sweat, but it seems like the trial noticed and he can''t interfere this time", said the Skelefiend.

    Green mist gathered around his body to then mix with an ominous ck haze resulting in a putrid smelling chaoticbination of mana andher, the air around the Skelefiend started sizzling due to the exposure to the resulting energy, which made sense, in terms of destructiveness, the acid affinity of the Skelefiends was quite destructive after all.

    Seeing the Skelefiend ready to start, the guy from the Purple Haze sect gritted his teeth, his previously despair filled expression after realizing that the gap between him and Daimon was bigger than predicted, disappeared as both his irises and sclerae painted dark purple.

    He then red at Daphne and a sinister smirk appeared on his face as he radiated poison mana, before adding some whisps ofher to it, unlike the acid from the Skelefiend, thebination of poison andher didn''t produce any bad smell, but it produced difort to those who looked at it, in a sense it slightly resembled theher that Sarah obtained.

    But unlike the crazy girl''sher, which was of a pure light purple tone just like the pretty color of her hair, the one of this guy had the characteristic ck color ofher mixed into it, making it look like muddy water, not to mention Sarah could use both mana andher, and this guy was losing the capacity to use mana in exchange for the use ofher.

    "Acid Rain!".

    "Purple Death!".

    With two loud shouts, the respective attacks of those two wereunched towards their dummies, they both smiled upon seeing their spells and martial arts making way through the chaotic mix of mana of different elements that was floating in the atmosphere of this ce.

    Only for their expressions to sour at the sight of the mana crystals that were aligned near the dummies, lighting up as they released some of the mana stored inside of them, causing their attacks to distort, diminish in strength and ultimately dissolve before they could even hit their targets.

    ''Idiots'', thought Daimon as he gave them a mocking gaze, they didn''t learn anything from the previous challenge, sure to destroy arge number of enemies highly destructive attacks are the best choice, but that doesn''t mean one can just go happy trigger on a real battlefield.

    He knows it pretty well, since his fighting style is pretty much on the aggressive, domineering side, and so his spells and martial arts have high energy costs in exchange for their incredible destructiveness.

    A "problem" which Aura also had back when she was young, which is why she became a closebat specialist, since using her sma burned mana like crazy, in part that''s probably what prevented her from learning wide area spells like other mages, inparison with other Half Emperors, her domain used to be considered quite small, until her grimoire solved that problem for her at least.

    Daimon on the other hand, had it a bit easier since he has greater reserves of mana than probably anyone his age, not to mention he also has battle aura, but that doesn''t mean he allows himself to waste it, he learned how to reabsorb some of the mana he uses through the Apex Predator, and most of the time he just uses Demon Light in a formless way as it is easier to retrieve it into his body that way.

    Even the Comet Sword which is probably one of his strongest attacks, has been modified so he can do a partial release.

    Of course, he knows and takes all this into ount since his fighting style requires him to do so, someone who has never suffered constant backsh from usingrge quantities of mana, wouldn''t put this much thought into it.

    ''Well, this is certainly her stage'', inwardly thought Daimon as he gazed at Daphne, from the very beginning, the Vs princess ignored the timer, she waited for those two to attack first and only after seeing the result of their efforts, she decided what to do.

    And as expected, she chose to use the Storm Stream as the huge amount of mana that was being radiated by her, suggested, in fact judging by how much she was pouring into it, and the amount of mana she used back in the first part of the challenge, she only had one shot.

    "Humph, you are not the only one that specializes in highly destructive, wide area attacks".

    "We were chosen among our peers for that same characteristic".

    This time, they also decided to go all out, the already chaotic mana floating in the atmosphere of this ce, became even more distorted, to the point that it seemed as if the air was vibrating.

    Daphne ignored them, and just extended her pretty right hand frontwards, from Daimon''s point of view, all the mana that she built up until now, converged on her palm and was then shot in the form of a giant stream of blue light.

    At the same time, those two exploded, one turning into a river of dark green liquid and the other in a ck and purple horizontal pr of mist.

    "Boooom!!!", the result was of course a loud explosion, as the three attacksnded on the dummies at the same time, Daimon''s eyes which were covered by the mask of the Hollow Suit, slightly narrowed as the area was engulfed into a dazzling sh.

    The timer stopped advancing before everything returned to normal, the result of the dummies was revealed the next second, those twopletely obliterated their targets, leaving only a charred surface behind but the mana crystals near their targets were intact.

    Daphne on the other hand, only destroyed three parts of her target, apparently part of her attack was blocked by the mana crystals, since two of them were gone and another two were full of cracks.

    Daimon stood up and approached Daphne, others might not see it, since the Vs Princess has learned not to let it show on her face when she is tired, so that others couldn''t pinpoint whether she can still use Storm Stream or not, but Daimon could see her mana flow slowing down quite a bit.

    He walked until he was standing behind of her, to then ce his hand on her shoulder, helping her keep a straight stance, which made a happy light sh through Daphne''s eyes, but she then returned to reality as the other counter which has been unfazed until now, started quantifying their results.

    A sepulchral silence fell in the room as they waited for the result, only for the silence to be broken when the counters stopped moving.

    "Impossible, it doesn''t make sense!".

    "That''s cheating!".

    Twoins echoed through the room, while Daimon limited to smirk, the results were "0", "0" andstly "55", obviously the zeros belonged to those two while the third result was Daphne''s.

    For a moment those two thought that destroying the crystals was what gave Daphne a score, but then there was a total of ten crystals and she just destroyed two while damaging another two, the others were perfectly fine, so assuming each crystal had a value of ten, the numbers didn''t add up either.

    "You, you did something to the challenge!", said the Skelefiend as he pointed at Daimon, just to see him shrugging.

    "Why would I, from the very beginning, the only one among you four that could have caused some trouble was that little prince, this stage was not prepared for you after all".

    "What the hell does that mean!", demanded the guy from the Purple Haze sect, unfortunately for him, Daimon limited to smirk to then wave his hand making a one edged ck sword manifest out of nowhere.

    "Dead men don''t need exnations", he limited to say as he walked towards them, those two''s faces paled, but then they went from hell to heaven as portals opened for them to leave, meaning they lost the challenge yes, but they were allowed to leave and they now only wished to be as far as possible from Daimon.

    Unfortunately, their relieved expressions froze when the newly opened portals were covered in darkness, courtesy of a certain undead maid who was interfering with the space, Daimon then shed down the barrier that was separating the three designated areas with Disaster.

    "Hissss!", electricity crackled all over Daimon''s body, but was then devoured by Disaster, causing no harm to him.

    "W-Wait, we can give¡­", they couldn''t even finish their sentences before their heads were separated from their bodies, the only one that really had some information was Ryan, it was obvious by the fact that he was the strongest out of the four that were sent here by their respective teams.

    Apparently, Daphne wasn''t a priority for Abaris, Ereth or Marcus, but she was for Arlion, which was understandable, considering he was the one who damaged her mana circuits and cursed Grace, so after having interrogated Ryan, there was no need to worry about killing the others, as to why Daimon didn''t do it earlier, if he could bypass the barriers like he did a second ago¡­ the answer would be revealed in a moment.

    The arrays of the room came to life and surrounded Daimon, Daphne who had a bad premonition upon seeing the runes, despite not understanding them, immediately jumped in front of Daimon.

    The array which was about to attack Daimon a second ago, actually stopped in cold, another different array appeared below Daphne, but Daimon destroyed it by stabbing Disaster on the ground to interrupt it.

    "¡­"

    After a couple of seconds of silence, the air distorted as a thunderous voice, came out of nowhere.

    "Child, do you know "what" are you defending right now?", evidently that question was aimed at Daphne, but of course she couldn''t answer and whatever was talking right now, couldn''t understand Daphne like Daimon and the others could just based on those pretty expressive eyes of hers, so Daimon talked instead, or at least that was the idea, but his ck Sea Emblem acted first.

    The little thing flew out of Daimon''s pocket and the rune shark manifested out of it, biting the "empty" space, tearing a piece of it.

    "Damn it, you¡­ where did you get that?", the originally angered voice, calmed down after seeing the rune shark swim through the air and return to Daimon''s side, orbiting him a couple of times before returning to the ck Sea Emblem.

    "I guess you aren''t that Prison Megalodon I''m looking for, since you don''t seem to even know what is happening on the first stage of this challenge, let alone what is happening in the outside world", said Daimon.

    Out of the piece of space that the rune shark teared apart, a sphere of light descended until it was floating a few meters away from Daimon and Daphne who was still standing in front of him.

    "Where did you get that key, don''t worry child, I won''t try to attack him anymore¡­", said the light to Daphne, who didn''t lower her guard, pretty much to Daimon''s amusement, well to be honest, he was tightened his grip on Disaster''s hilt a bit more than normal when she jumped in front of him though.

    "Key, you mean this, I used it to enter this isted ce, as well as Neptune in general", said Daimon as he showed his emblem to that sphere of light, who approached them to observe the ck Sea Emblem for a moment.

    "I see¡­", the sphere of light distanced itself from Daimon and then added.

    "Tell me, what is happening outside".

    Daimon inwardly shrugged and then proceeded to more or less exin the deal with Neptune as far as he understood, of course he kept anything that could give him away as a system user, as well as other sensitive stuff aside.

    "To think that after all these years, those pieces of trash are still alive", mumbled the light, just to hear Daimon saying.

    "So, what are you doing here, what are these challenges for and most importantly how are you rted to the Nethereals".

    "My answer will depend on yours, kid, what are you to that girl and who did that to her?", asked the light, referring to Daphne and the fact that she couldn''t talk, or more urately referring to the damage done to her mana circuits and her lineage in general.

    "I would like to know that too, there is a man, a king from many generations who executed it, but I''m pretty sure he isn''t the mastermind behind of it, if he could have stolen other people''s lineages from the very beginning, then he wouldn''t have been forced to live in seclusion one step away from death for such a long time, after all, however I can tell you that is probably someone rted to the Royal White Shark¡­"

    "What!", the reaction from the sphere of light was quite drastic, judging by the change in the voice, which used to be genderless but now was clearly that of a woman, not to mention a really angered one.

    "How does an outsider know about that race''s name, I witnessed its destruction before¡­", the sphere of light realized it was made to talk by the masked youth, so it stopped speaking before saying.

    "So, the one who harmed that child, was rted to those traitors, you still haven''t answered what are you to her though?".

    Daimon couldn''t even answer, before Daphne leaned on him, in part because that was her answer and in part because she was tired after that attack from earlier.

    Unlike those two who didn''t understand howe Daphne got a better score, despite she not destroying the dummy neither all the crystals, Daimon did know it, the objective of the challenge was never to destroy the dummy to begin with.

    What the second counter measured, was how much of the mana that was floating on the atmosphere, could be swept up and dragged by the attacks of the participants, to then be impacted against the dummy.

    How does he know it, easy, because though rtively weak as it was adjusted to his level of back then, he has experienced what the real "Storm Stream" can do¡­ back at the trial of the lineage temple.

    That''s why he said that from the very beginning none of those four had any chance against Daphne, besides Ryan who could interfere as he had that disgusting bell and that red coin, which were created using "materials" gotten from Daphne and Grace themselves, their spells and martial arts didn''t have the properties of Daphne or Grace''s mana.

    That being said, Daphne could barely do it unlike her mother, could be because her lineage and mana circuits weren''t damaged like her daughters, or it could be because of the difference in their realms, on the other hand, Daphne still managed to pass the challenge with just experience.

    "I see, it seems this time isn''t like the previous skirmishes, in that case, let me be stubborn onest time¡­ kid promise me that you will take care of her", said the light, to which Daimon nodded.

    "I won''t let anyone toy with those close to me", he limited to say.

    ''Such nice eyes, if only we had someone like that back then¡­'', thought the sphere of light, surprisingly, she could actually see through the mask of the Hollow Suit, something not even Maximum Ster ranks have been able to.

    "Very well, unfortunately I can''t help you advance to at least the Star Lord realm in my current state, however I can at least help you rece what you lost".

 Chapter 554 Challenges Daphneâ€™s version (part 5)

    Chapter 554 Challenges Daphne¡¯s version (part 5)

    Naturally after listening to such words, it was impossible for the Vs Princess to not react in a positive way, as the light that shed on her pretty blue eyes, suggested, however, as young as Daphne is, she isn''t na?ve.

    Or at least, she isn''t as sheltered as she used to be, since she experienced betrayal by the guys that were assigned to her team back at the beast hunt, which wasn''t her neither the Duchess having a bad eye for people.

    Those guys were probably prepared behind the scenes by Arlion through Triten, and one has to give it to that old cunning bastard, after discovering the betrayal of the young masters and misses of those vassal families, Ae did a throughout investigation on her own and found that the old generation wasn''t aware of them being brought over to Arlion''s side.

    So, the old bastard simply swayed those delusional idiots by promising them power and the chance to break off their vassal status to start their own independent noble families, as to why he chose the members of the young generation, they were perfect disposable pawns since they needed less resources to be bribed and they didn''t hold real power in terms of the politics of their families, so they sessfully escaped the radar of the Duchess.

    Anyway, the important here is that Daphne didn''t ept right away, despite the sensation of "familiarity" that she was feeling from that sphere of light, which of course didn''t scape the eyes of thetter.

    "Ahem, I guess I can''t expect you to ept right away, though any other member of the young generation would have beenughing even in their sleep¡­ oh well, I can at least have a small face to face talk with you", said the sphere of light.

    The next second the light expanded and dazzled before everything returned to normal, in time to reveal a tall woman with long blue hair who was wearing an elegant long dark blue dress.

    Daphne was surprised for two things, first the woman in front of her was quite beautiful to say the least, and that is a loting from the Vs princess who is a beauty by all means, second there was a certain resemnce between that woman and¡­ her own mother.

    It''s not like they were exactly lookalike, but if someone said that they belonged to the same family branch, it wouldn''t be questioned by others, there was a huge difference in terms of presence though, and this woman was above Grace in beauty terms too, but that could be exined by the simple fact, that based on the feeling the gave off, she was a pure blooded magic beast descendant, her aura even surpassed that of Thea and the other rulers from the Maelstrom Sea.

    "First princess of the Northern Sea, Ophelia Vallmery, it''s a pleasure", said the woman as she raised the sides of her dress.

    Daimon''s eyes frowned behind his mask, he has seen the term "Son of the Northern Sea" and "Daughter of the Northern Sky" before, they showed up every time he looked at the oath that Adam was supposed to obtain as a way to tie him to Jasmine, but Ophelia used "princess" instead of "daughter", which got his attention.

    "Are you curious about my origin kid, unfortunately the information I have is limited, since this is only a sliver of my soul that remained, but if you want to ask something, I wouldn''t mind, I don''t even remember when was thest time I talked with someone after all", said Ophelia.

    ''She can see physicalyer of the Hollow Suit¡­'', thought Daimon, it would be a lie to say he wasn''t surprised; however, the important part is that Ophelia clearly couldn''t see through his lineages and the other stuff he was hiding, based on how she was wary of him earlier and tried to use the arrays of the challenge to attack him, she probably guessed he is a system user.

    But if Thea''s ancestor managed to learn how to identify them, it''s not weird that what probably is a being on a level Daimon can''t even begin to fathom as of current, it was normal, in fact based on what he knew so far after listening to story of Freya''s hosts, system users shouldn''t be that rare at higher ranked ces, a theory which was "indirectly" confirmed by Evangeline a secondter.

    ''Don''t worry, she couldn''t see through the system, but she has probably met a fair amount of system users before, she can see your face though but that''s understandable, since even her shattered existence is way above what you know as of current'', she said.

    ''Oh, higher than that of Freya, Ka and that little angel?'', asked Daimon just for Evangeline to giggle in response.

    ''Your usual tricks won''t work on me, you''ll have to think on better conquering lines¡­ also administrators and other beings in simr situations don''t count, since their existences are tied to something, anyway I can confirm that she doesn''t have any ill intentions towards you, courtesy of the system~'', she said.

    Daimon inwardly nodded, taking note of that forter before directly asking.

    "What is the Star Lord realm".

    "Wait, you don''t have Star Lords in your gxy of origin!", eximed Ophelia in surprise, she shed and the next second she was standing next to Daimon, she then floated around him a couple of times as if she was evaluating him.

    Up-close, Daimon couldn''t help but notice that she was really "big", in all the meaning of the word, she was actually taller than Erin, and had a figure that went perfectly along with that, as the delight to the eye curves that were reflecting on his eyes, suggested, it''s not that Daimon is that fixated on such things, but it''s the first time he sees someone that surpasses Erin in that aspect, so he couldn''t help but think about it for a second.

    ''Are most beast race women supposed to be this "dotted", or¡­'', wondered Daimon before he returned to reality, since Evangeline herself said that Ophelia wasn''t an enemy, he took off the mask, it was useless in the sense that she could see his real appearance anyway.

    After observing Daimon for a couple of seconds, Ophelia frowned as if she couldn''t reach a proper conclusion, before saying.

    "Kid, your physique is strange, are you perhaps a magic knight¡­ no it feels different, can you show me your mana or battle aura?".

    Daimon didn''t use any energy in the second part of the challenge, he only used Disaster to kill those two and break through the barrier that separated the different areas for the participants, so Ophelia apparently couldn''t tell whether he was a knight or a mage, still she somehow made a not so far from the spot supposition calling him a magic knight.

    Now imagine her surprise when he manifested battle aura on his right hand and mana on his left hand, at the same time.

    "What!!!", eximed Ophelia with disbelief.

    ''And of course, you aren''t showing off, because she is quite a beauty, right~'', jokingly said Evangeline, with an almost unnoticeable tinge of jealousy, to which Daimon cleared his throat to then say.

    ''Ahem, you personally stated that she is way above anything I know, without taking into ount administrators, I should make the most out of this encounter, it was probably prepared for Adam anyway'', he wasn''t going to admit it, but his Apex Predator instincts were "agitated" ever since Ophelia got close to him.

    ''I feel a bit angry for some reason, Daimon'', cutely said Narasha.

    ''Dear mana, if we have someone like him back then, let alone ending like this, we could have¡­'', wondered Ophelia before she slightly shook her head, there was no point in thinking about that.

    "That''s enough, certainly I don''t have a lot of my memories, but I do remember what "genius" would mean at my ce, and considering your mana purity, you are still far from it, however youe from a gxy without even a Star Lord and having such a monstrous mana purity and dense vitality at such a low realm and age, in terms of potential... you surpass anyone I remember or have heard off", she mumbled before turning to see Daphne to then add.

    "I guess that would exin why that little girl got such a good result, despite the diluted blood concentration and the damaged mana circuits, a lot of that vitality has been "injected" into her".

    "¡­", Daphne was confused for a second, before she understood the meaning behind those words, her face exploded in red on the spot, while Daimon chuckled to then say.

    "We haven''t done anything like that, Daphne modified that ability to adapt to her current status, I''m sure that if she was in a better condition, she could have obliterated more than two of those mana crystals".

    "Oh?", the confidence behind Daimon''s words, left a good impression in Ophelia, and also made the blush on Daphne''s face increase one more time, the ability that her mother used was called "Chaos Stream", while hers was "Storm Stream", thetter was a degraded version yes, but Daphne created it herself, well to be honest both were degraded versions in Daimon''s eyes, since he has seen the real thing back at the trial of the Bloodline Temple.

    "I see, answering to your question, a Star Lord is the lowest ranked being that has surpassed the moral realms, gaining the power to rule over a, don''t ask how to reach it or whates after that, for the first, what I know is only safe for my race and for the second¡­ you''ll be stricken by regtion lightning", she said.

    Daimon nodded, he has seen that thing killing someone before his eyes, and it was no joke, so he didn''t push the matter.

    "What happened between your group and the Nethereals, why is Neptune in such a state?", he asked, to which Ophelie bitterly smiled.

    "From what I remember, they are our enemies, beings that live in the Netherworld a ce that exists in a different dimension to ours, apparently they targeted us because we are royalty, or at least that''s what I remember".

    "We were ambushed by them when we were just passing by this area, for some reason we ended up trapped with them in this gxy, it was probably a trap they set up, so a war broke out".

    "Unfortunately, they had the ability to corrupt other beings to transform them into theirckeys, and so they used the local lifeforms as cannon fodder, so while we had the quality, they had the quantity not to mention they came prepared for a war with a lot of magic treasures".

    "We were also betrayed by one of the members of our inner circle, I don''t know about the others but I detonated my heart to take down one of their leader bastards, but I was tricked due to the traitor and only destroyed that idiot''s gship and around a third of his army¡­ after that I just woke up in this ce and I was supposed to supervise those who came and granted them rewards and things like that".

    "I''m also trapped here, the only way to leave is pass my lineage to someone and then die, which I was ready to do, but honestly I didn''t find anyone worthy until now, also this ce will disappear if Neptune is destroyed anyway", said Ophelia with a calm expression.

    Daimon followed to ask a couple more of things, but unfortunately, she didn''t know about them or couldn''t speak of others, she has been isted in this ce so whatever happened outside after she died remained a mystery to her too, however Daimon did get to know the name of her race "Azure Gxy Whale", a race on par with the ck Prison Megalodon which the old merman mentioned, apparently.

    She also remembered the name of the so called traitors, the one who was on par with her race was called "White Disaster Shark" and there were other races she remembered, namely "Icelock ck Turtle" and "baster Horned Dolphin" which were one notch lower than the previous ones, and then she also remembered a bunch of other lower ranked ones, which Daimon have no interest on, but they aligned with some of the low and middle ranked noble families of the Clear Water kingdom.

    And for thest question Daimon had in stock for her, a vertical yellow line appeared on his pupils, as he said.

    "What is a Dracolevia?".

    A sepulchral silence fell on the room, Daimon had to look up to see Ophelia''s face, due to the difference in height, since he barely reached the upper part of her abdomen, just to see her eyes glowing likemps in the dark.

    "Y-You have a royal lineage like me, wait I didn''t know that until now!", she eximed in both disbelief and happiness, apparently, she actually recovered a memory thanks to Daimon.

    "But you are a mortal and the Dracolevia Throne has never been upied, so there shouldn''t be anyone with that lineage¡­", mumbled Ophelia with a lost expression on her pretty face, her eyes shone with a happy light before she intensely stared at Daimon.

    "What is your name little brother?", she asked with a much warmer voice, as if she was talking to a member of her family, perhaps because he had a lineage rted to hers.

    "Daimon Licht", said Daimon.

    "If what you told me was true, then that little girl and her mother were cursed, a specialty of the White Disaster Shark race and their subordinates, do you happen to have the items used for the ritual?".

    Daimon nodded and then took out the coin which had lost its red color after Ryan used it, and the handbell, from his inventory and then handed them to Ophelia, who inspected them for a moment to then gaze at Daimon.

    "It''s faint, but there is a remnant of the aura of those traitor bastards, I won''t forget it even if I die, I can heal both the little girl and her mother¡­", Ophelia stopped for a moment, she seemed to be considering quite a bit whether to continue or not, but ultimately, she did.

    "I''ll use my remaining energy to give her a new set of mana circuits, as for what her mother lost, it should be the memories stored in her bloodline, I''ll prepare a copy of my own for her, normally that would mean I will die, but you have the "Ruler of the Sea", right?", she asked to confirm, to which Daimon nodded.

    "In that case, will you take me with you?", Ophelie saw Daimon raising an eyebrow and the light in her eyes attenuated, but she understood she was misunderstanding the next second when he said.

    "I do have the "Ruler of the Sea", but besides controlling a certain number of sea type magic beasts under some conditions and helping them evolve faster, I can''t do anything else".

    "Oh that, let me help you with it¡­", she said, the next thing Daimon knew was that a warm current was coursing through his body, as Ophelia leaned down and kissed his forehead, which made the three "present" girls pout for a second.

    [Ding]

    [A new title has been awarded due to a specific action]

    [New tittle unlocked: Blessing of the Northern Sea]

    [The host has gained the trust and recognition of a titled representative of the Northern Sea, "Royal Link" has been granted by the first Princess of the Northern Sea]

    [Royal Link: An ability from the first princess of the Northern Sea will be taught to the host, (if the tittle is unequipped or lost, the ability will disappear, the ability will be decided by the first princess of the Northern Sea)]

    [Ding]

    [A new skill has been unlocked due to a specific action]

    [Royal Grace lv1: Once per a thousand years, the host can prevent the death of any being whose lineage is rted to the Northern Sea (The target must be at most three major realms above the host and be in the same as the host at the moment of death, the target will be in suspension for a fixed amount of time, based on the difference between the strength of the host and the target)]

    [Cooldown: 1,000 years]

    Daimon''s eyes glowed as he read the notifications that appeared before him, he also felt a faint connection with Ophelia, but right now he could only think about the fact that he finally got a lifesaving skill, something he has been wanting to obtain for a really long time, it had some really harsh conditions, but it was the next better option after a resurrection skill, so how could he not be happy.

    Now, this one only worked for those whose lineages were rted to the Northern Sea, but the harder part was to get an ability with a specific function, after that, he could study it and learn how to create his own that will adjust to his needs, just like how he obtained "Switch" based on "Blink", of course it wasn''t as simple as that, it took him eight years and that was with him being able to use blink as much as he needed, but this ability will only activate once before going into cooldown, but it was better than nothing.

    Of course, there was another option he had before, he could have gotten something simr if he would have let Jasmine be a spare pair of lives for him, but that never crossed his mind, so now it was a win-win situation.

    "Wait, I don''t know what realm you thought I have, but I''m still below the Lord¡­ the middle level of the Mortal realm", said Daimon, to which Ophelia smiled before saying.

    "No problem, after giving that little girl new mana circuits and creating the copy of my lineage memories, I''ll at most be at the Ster rank, it should be enough~".

    ''You already have three administrators, a sword and a ghost on you, what does another one amounts for¡­ that doesn''t mean you can keep adding others, but she''ll be beneficial for you at both short and long term'', mumbled Evangeline with a cutely unconvinced voice.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed, as he got the hint hidden in Evangeline''s words, though she chose a weird way tomunicate her message.

    "In that case¡­ let''s do it", said Daimon as he nodded at Ophelie who warmly smiled at him, the link that formed between them was simr to the oath that originally assured Jasmin that Daimon wasn''t going to harm her, it was simr to a contract, of course Daimon wasn''t really tied by it, but they could feel that he didn''t have ill intentions towards them, so the result was the same.

    "I''ll be in your care, give those bastards a nice beating in my stead, little brother~", said Ophelia, her body dissolved into countless particles of light, some entered the hand bell, another portion went to the coin and thest part which took Ophelias''s form onest time,nded on Daimon''s palm to then transform into a ring with a small blue gem on it.

 Chapter 555 The blood-stained casino

    Chapter 555 The blood-stained casino

    Daimon looked at the ring that appeared on his hand with interest, he could feel the presence from Opheliaing from the small blue gem that was embedded on it.

    "The two things I mentioned will be ready in a minute, then I''ll go to sleep, the process won''t take that long a couple of hours at most but it will have to start right away, don''t worry my remaining presence will keep this ce from crumbling apart and no one will be able to enter, I trust we''ll see each other again soon, until then, take care of me, little brother Daimon~", said Ophelia before her presence attenuated until it practically disappeared.

    The ring which a second ago could rival with any Ster ranked magic treasure in terms of aura, Daimon has seen before, turned into a lifeless object, one that no one would give a second gaze to.

    The moment the ring became lifeless, the coin finished its transformation too, the original red ominous color it used to have, was changed to a pretty royal blue tone, besides it was brimming with a sensation that was simr to "vitality", which made sense, considering Ophelia created a copy of the information codified in her bloodline and saved it up into the coin.

    Unlike humanoid beings, magic beasts aren''t normally born with rationality, their actions are instead dictated by their instincts which puts them at disadvantage inparison with those that cultivate their wisdom, also known as mages.

    But the world gives every race a chance, and so magic beasts also have a way to ovee theirck of wisdom at their early stages, and that is through the information codified in their blood.

    Not much is known about it, since the information that the four gxies have is based on the few strong families and forces from the White Fang gxy, whose bloodlines aren''t diluted enough for them to not have any records of the innate abilities granted to them thanks to their lineages, and even then, not all the members of those families can begin to decodify said information.

    ''I guess, I''ll have to discuss about bloodlines with those two once I get back'', thought Daimon as he sent the now blue coin to the inventory, as for the handbell it took it a bit more time to finish its change.

    Daphne who was observing the handbell floating and shining, was taken by surprise when she heard a message being send directly to her mind.

    ''I left a little gift behind for you little girl, don''t let others snatch that little brother away from you~''.

    "¡­", Daphne whose face blushed, returned to reality when the handbell became a sh of blue light that shot towards her, entering her body through her chest, the next thing that happened was that the room was illuminated by a bright blue light, which forced Daimon to close his eyes for a split of a second before the light dimmed.

    Daimon didn''t worry about Daphne, since Ophelia told him that the process would start right away, however the result wasn''t what he expected, so he couldn''t help but be surprised at the result.

    In front of him, stood a pretty girl that appeared to be in her early twenties, she was rather tall being around 1.8 meters of height, had long hair which not only cascaded down all the way to her lower back, but was now also painted in two different blue tones, dark blue for the surface and a pretty royal blue color for the reverse, as well as bright sky-blue eyes, all in all she had gained a bit more of resemnce to Ophelia.

    However, that wasn''t all, her clothes which originally consisted on a long dress as well as light metal armor to protect her vitals, the standard for mages, had changed into a beautiful blue knee length dress with metal ornaments, it seemed to be based on what Ophelia was wearing.

    But Daphne''s was of a much brighter blue tone, also she was now using essories that perfectly matched with her dress, such as earrings, bracelets, a pretty ne and to top it off, a crown-like tiara that added a certain charm to her.

    "¡­", Daphne reacted a bitte, apparently, she didn''t realize the changes on her outfit, until she was met with Daimon''s curious gaze, which made her look at her reflect on the marble like floor of the room.

    Her pretty face exploded in red, her dress was a bit shortpared to what she normally wears, which let a part of her thighs exposed to the viewer, in this case Daimon, as she was going to ask him not to stare too much, her eyes contracted like needles as she ced her hand on the essory that was decorating her pretty pale neck.

    Daimon who was chuckling at her amusing reaction, noticed the change on her expression and approached her.

    "Is there something wrong?", he asked, just to see the Vs princess giving him a sweet happy smile.

    "D-Daimon~", a soft melodious voice reached Daimon''s ears, very much to his surprise, he observed the origin of such a pretty sound, just to see Daphne''s soft lips opening once again.

    "Daimon, Daimon, Daimon!", she said with a slightly excited and happy tone, this time Daimon managed to see the gem on her ne shining for a split of a second, unfortunately the next second not only her clothes returned to normal, but Daphne was covered by a dazzling blue light, resulting in her being enveloped by a blue crystal cocoon.

    "I guess that''s what she meant with the process taking a few hours¡­", mumbled Daimon, Ophelia probably did a little trick to show him what the result of Daphne''s restored lineage will be, probably the dress was included, into that.

    Daimon saw Daphne smiling at him from the other side of the crystal cocoon, her eyes transmitted the message "I''m fine", before she closed her eyes to focus on the restoration process, at the same time Daimon heard the unmistakable sound of a notification ringing on his ears.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil" (Skalia continent) has been updated <!>]

    [Get the hidden gem to join your side (0/2) ¨¤ (1/2)]

    ''Was the requirement helping her recover her voice, or perhaps she saying my name¡­'', wondered Daimon, ever since the crazy girl drinking his poison triggered the notification of the legacy from Adam''s mission being fulfilled, he has wondered what do the "gems" and "legacies" represent on the missions, but until now there is no direct corrtion between them, each one seems to bepletely different from the other.

    ''I slowed down the notification, but it was triggered when she said your name, that''s all I can say, you''ll be able to see the details of the mission on the log once youplete it'', mumbled Evangeline, to which Daimon inwardly smiled.

    ''Thanks Eve'', he said, he was indeed marveled by Daphne''s mellow voice and listening to a notification would have indeed soured the moment, especially since the Vs princess was so happy finally being able to hear her own voice.

    ''I-I just didn''t want you to nag at me, that''s all!'', eximed Evangeline before she returned to silence.

    Also, now that the restoration process started, Daimon felt a simr sensation of familiarity with Daphne as the one he felt towards Ophelia after she kissed his forehead, probably because the damages made to the Vs princess''s bloodline were being patched up using the lineage of the ancient root of the magic beast that was rted to the Vs, simr to his case with the ck Armored Shark and the Dracolevia lineages.

    Daimon softly smiled before he returned to reality as he felt a little tuging from his pocket, his ck Sea Emblem flew out of it, the rune shark was manifested and then made a turn around the crystal cocoon that was covering Daphne.

    A couple of runes flew out of the snout of the rune shark, onended on the cocoon while the other stuck to the backside of Daimon''s left hand, the rune shark then swam through the air, to bite a piece of the space, ripping a hole to create a portal, as the dimensional tunnel that could be seen inside of it, suggested.

    The rune shark then returned to the emblem which returned to Daimon''s pocket a secondter, as its task here waspleted.

    "You better exin me everythingter¡­", mumbled Daimon, the moment the runended on his hand, he understood its function, basically it was a "coordinate", he could feel Daphne''s location through it, also it had a one-time use instant portal, in other words the emblem was telling him "Go on".

    Daimon shook his head and then walked towards the portal, Ophelia sealed the ce so no one could enter now, so he could go ahead while Daphne finished the process to then catch up with himter.

    Though he didn''t mind to wait here until she was done, with how things have now escted past his previous supposition, since the "Star Lord" realm which supposedly far surpasses the Ster realm, was just the bottom of the barrel, based on Ophelia''s words, not to mention the fact that Ophelia herself still "existed", increased the dangers of the Global Raid, she was worst case scenario neutral towards the participants, as she didn''t try to kill those two but just wanted to kick them out of the challenge when they lost.

    She only attacked him when he killed those two, as he interfered probably confirming her supposition of him being a system user who was also hanging around with her descendant,

    But the ones who might be supervising the other challenges, will probably not be as nice as her, especially on the challenges that are on thend ruled by the other three major forces.

    After stealing onest gaze at Daphne, Daimon jumped into the dimensional tunnel, disappearing into it, before the thing closed, leaving only Daphne who was smiling inside that crystal cocoon as she felt the connection that was established between herself and Daimon.

    ¡­

    Inside of the dimensional tunnel, Daimon observed his surroundings, unlike the tunnel that brought them to Ophelia''s ce, to which he essed through the entrance of the challenge, this one didn''t only water mana floating inside of it, instead there was space,her and a lot of other elements lingering inside and for a good reason, since there appeared to be different "stops" along the dimensional tunnel.

    ''What kind of dimensional tunnel is this?'', wondered Daimon, the knowledge of space that whoever made this tunnel had, was on a whole different level, a single portal could connect to many tunnels that was normal back at the four gxies, however the rule was one tunnel per one destination.

    Even the dimensional tunnel that brought them to Neptune which was supposedly made by the ck Prison Megalodon, considering the fact that they needed the emblems to enter, might have been a single tunnel at first but then it split in different ones that separated everyone.

    Daimon returned to reality as he felt one of the many different entrances dragging him towards it, the next second he left the dimensional tunnel andnded directly at the foot of a hill.

    The first thing he noticed was that it was night in this ce, also the temperature was rather low, but nothing too extreme, the ce felt gloomy, also there was a lingering bloody stench on the air.

    "Well, at least I wasn''t dropped from the sky¡­", he mumbled, he had activated the Hollow Suit before leaving the tunnel, it might not physically hide him from beings on par with Ophelia, but such beings should be limited to a certain part of the space of the challenge just like her.

    Daimon used blink to climb up the mountain as quietly as possible, reaching its top a minuteter.

    Daimon frowned upon the discovery of a castle that was built at the other side of the hill, the continental mass ended at the other side of the hill and then where was a bridge that led to the castle that was ced on top of what appeared to be an artificial tform.

    Surrounding the castle there was¡­ nothing, a seemingly bottomless pit, surrounded the castle in all directions besides the one that connected with the bridge.

    But that wasn''t all, unlike the previous ce where besides the participants of the challenge, there were no signs of other "living" beings, here there were, though based on their appearances they might not be alive¡­

    The things that were walking towards and through the bridge to reach the castle, were basically walking body parts, connected through bones that were majorly exposed, some had arms, others had legs, others had heads, there were even some that were basically bones with just one finger and so on.

    ''Skelefiends, no, they are Nethereals'', thought Daimon as he used his infinity eyes to inspect those creatures, another thing that got his attention is that he couldn''t feel any energy from most of them,her included.

    Only those with at least three limbs, radiatedher, meaning that the vast majority were harmless, quite a strange thing, considering even the weakest artificial Nethereal has been a Lord rank so far.

    As from where all they came, there were doors at the base of the hill on which Daimon was standing, and there was a continuous flow of Netherealsing from them, the hill was the border of this ce as there was nothing on the other side besides a small extension ofnd, before ending in a ck abysm just like the one that surrounded the castle.

    Daimon didn''t think it twice, while still being invisible he descended from the top of the hill, there was nothing else besides the castle and he felt the presence from one of his teammatesing from it, so he was supposed to enter.

    Along the way he tried to spy on the conversations those Nethereals were having, but unlike the ones he had met so fat who talked in themonnguage of the four gxies, these ones were using different kinds of strangenguages.

    Still, even not having information is a useful piece of intel for Daimon as he was taught to think out of the box by a certain cunning fox girl.

    ''There are Nethereals from the different factions, gathering here'', he concluded, though they all looked the same, since their severed limbs were those of humans, which they were probably just using as temporary vessels, like the Nethereals that disguised as people they killed back at Neptune, they separating in different groups and talking differentnguages allowed Daimon to confirm their different aggrupation, the problem is that different to what he knew there wasn''t just three or four groups¡­ but around fifteen.

    Which meant that there might be potentially fifteen "top dogs" as well, which made sense, since Ophelia mentioned the Nethereals had the quantity, though she just remembered a few major races from her side, Daimon supposed there should have been around five or six beings on par with her, and the Nethereals should have had more.

    Daimon put the matter on the back of his head for now, in any case, since he is here, there might be a chance to fill in some missing information, he simply walked through the bridge, avoiding the many Nethereals to then arrive at the entrance of the castle, where he met the first "strong" Nethereals.

    There was a couple of tall armored figures, their bodies were strange, because their legs and arms had different sizes, but that wasn''t what caught Daimon''s attention, not even the fact that they were only early-stage Lord ranks, no, what got his attention was that they presented some sort of metal basket to anyone who wanted to enter the castle, the other party then had to drop something into it, before they opened the gate.

    That "something" was actually a body part, well more urately it was a piece of flesh of any sort, but the size appeared to be regrized as they all had the same exact volume, weirded out by the "payment" required to enter the castle, Daimon simply waited until the guard opened the gate for the next Netheral to then use blink, sessfully bypassing them.

    What weed him at the other side of the door, was a long corridor, decorated to look like the one from a wealthy family, based on the paintings and other things handed on the walls.

    "Ahh damn, I lost an armst time I came!".

    "Hahaha, that''s what you deserve for, betting against me

    Daimon turned around to see a couple of Nethereals passing by, he recognized them, or more urately their specific limbs from the ones he observed before entering the castle, now he could understand what they were saying, he then looked at the walls and roof of the corridor, just to see quite a few arrays engraved on them.

    ''A trantion array and did that guy said "bet", don''t tell me¡­'', while lost in his thoughts, Daimon arrived at the end of the corridor, where an openrge area weed him.

    "Nice, I won a leg!".

    "God damn it, my eye!".

    And simr heatedments could be hearding from all over the ce, Daimon raised an eyebrow at the unusual sight of Nethereals sitting on tables ying cards, or other kinds of gambling, that''s right, this ce was a casino of some sort.

    Daimon looked at his surroundings, searching for a way to go to where he felt the presence of his teammate, until he saw a crowd gathered in front of a set of stairs.

    "Did you hear about, they said that new fresh meat arrived at the castle earlier".

    "Damn, the prince will obtain new vessels for his guards again for sure, what a shame we can''t evenpete for them since not all his personal guards had obtained one yet".

    Listening to the conversation of a couple of Nethereals, Daimon used blink to appear on the stairs, ignoring the guards, the space was quite wide so more than ten people could walk side to side.

    Daimon went upstairs and was weed by the sight of stands surrounding a giant table, where a lot of people was sitting, among which Daimon recognized the very unique bi-colored hair of one of his teammates.

    "Okay, time to pay", the cruel voice of the Nethereal that seemed to be supervising whatever was happening on the table, echoed through the room, followed by wails and pained screams.

    "Ahhh no!".

    "My ear!".

    A few of the "participants", screamed in pain as parts of their bodies disappeared, others whose expressions paled, watched from the side, some were bleeding while others had bandages, only a few were seemingly unscathed, among which there was Daimon''s teammate, in other words the princess from the Angelfish n, Marlene.

 Chapter 556 Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 1)

    <h4>Chapter 556 Challenges Marlene¡¯s version (part 1)</h4>

    While those who lost in whatever the participants were ying in that table, wailed in pain, those who managed to keep their bodies unscathed, paled.

    "I-I want to give up, let me stay out of this!".

    "Me too, this is not worth it!".

    ''Oh, so those bastards ended up here'', thought Daimon who was observing everything from afar, the ones who were chickening out right now, were none other than members of the Eternal ss of the Crimson Blood Academy, in other words they were members of noble vampire families.

    As for the ones who lost a part of their bodies, they were humans who would have been subordinated to Adam, if he was still alive that is, besides them, there was one guy from each of the four enemies that were currently participating in the Global Raid.

    Namely one magic beast in human form from Marcus''s side, one of Ereth''s guys who were in that strange state simr to undead after being corrupted by the same Nether that Ka used back at Kerrol to make the Ghouls go berserk with the difference that this side of Ka made improvements on it, so that they would keep their sanity, then a member of Skyfire''s sect andst but not least the young master of the Arcarius family, Walford who was representing Arlion.

    The eyes of all the participants fell on the one who was supervising the table, unlike the other majority of Nethereals observing the event, who were just body pieces connected by bones, a state that looked awfully simr to Skelefiends, the supervisor had aplete body, in fact half of it apparently belonged to the same poor bastard, while the other part was that of a much older person based on the disparity in the sizes, also he was radiating a middle stage Lord rank mana pressure.

    "All right, participants number 4 and 6, I''ll approve your leave, just pay the fee mentioned on the rules of the game and you are free to go", said the Nethereal with a sinister smile on his face.

    All the participants frowned upon listening to that Nethereal, the ones who wanted to leave immediately raised their voices.

    "What fee, you didn''t mention anything like that when we were invited to this game!", said the first one.

    "Yeah, I want to leave, let''s see you stopping me when violence is forbidden within the castle!", added the second vampire as he stood up just to freeze the next second.

    "ording to the rules, the price for leaving without having won a single round, is losing a random part of your body to the house, thanks for your visit", with those words, the table lit up and then before those two vampires could react, their heads exploded in red mist.

    With a sordid "thud", two headless bodies copsed on the ground, the supervising Nethereal then snapped his fingers and the bodies were swallowed by the ground, before he added.

    "How unfortunate for the two of them to "randomly" lose their heads, oh well, their corpses will be temporarily stored in the morgue for their direct rtives to im them within 24 hours, otherwise they''ll be disposed ording to the rules stated by his highness Agrak".

    The Nethereal who kept that creepy smile on his pale dead-like face, turned to see remaining participants to then say.

    "Now, should we continue with the game, dear guests".

    "Oi, what is the meaning of this, I already showed you the emblem of the Lord I serve, howe I didn''t hear about those stupid rules, I want the item that was left in custody of the owner of this castle", said Ereth''s subordinate.

    "I want to see the one in charge of this ce, this isn''t what was told to me either!", added the guy from Skyfire''s sect.

    While those twoined, Marlene, the magic beast from the Maelstrom Sea that took human form and the pirate who came from Marcus''s faction remained silent, the humans from Adam''s academy were trembling on their seats as well, which was understandable, they were the weakest among all the participants being mere four star ranked mages.

    "Did you hear that, those idiots are trying to use outside influence to win in prince Agrak''s casino!".

    "Keke, humans are one of the greediest races after all!".

    The Nethereals who were watching the events taking ce at the giant table,ughed and ridiculed the participants, it is clear that they were tricked to enter the game only to be entertainment,

    Speaking of which, Daimon''s attention was drawn towards the single skybox that was floating above the scenery, that''s where the so-called prince and his target, should be.

    "Nonsense, to get the chance, no, the honor to y against his highness, a participant has topletely strip the supervisor of every possession it has, no one has ever been able to achieve such a thing, now, are you going to continue or perhaps you want to try your "luck" and leave without having won a single round like those two!", said the Nethereal supervisor.

    "Alternatively, remember that you won''t die while ying even if you were to lose your head and if you manage to gather a total score of 40 you can recover everything you lost to the house and leave, at 75 you get the chance to y a special round against me and if you reach 100 a you''ll get the item you requested before the game started, not to mention you can sell the points back to the house for a profit", he added.

    Daimon who was observing from afar couldn''t help but frown, this ce wasn''t a challenge perse, since those vampires and the humans didn''t have an emblem, yet they somehow ended here.

    ''Still, it''s being counted as a challenge for me since that little thig brought me here'', thought Daimon, the only thing that didn''t make sense for him so far, was why did Marlene agreed to participate on this whole thing.

    He could understand that the others were blinded by greed, besides those two who were clearly rted to Nethereals and had some connection to the owner of this castle, the other participants were for sure tempted by the treasures and other strange items hanged on the walls of the castle, which were all belongings of the ones who have died here, it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that he couldn''t recognize some, which was worth mentioning, as he knew what the basic structure of the magic technology from the four gxies, Neptune and Kerrol looked like.

    In other words, there is a high chance that people from other gxies had ended up stranded here, just like it supposedly used to happen in the Maelstrom Sea in the past.

    Anyway, Daimon knew that Marlene wouldn''t be moved by those kinds of things, so there must be something else in all this that he is missing, luckily that was rified the next second when an amused voice came from the sole skybox.

    "Enough, no matter your identity or backer, here in my castle everyone is the same a "gambler" and must abide by the rules of the game in which they are currently participating, also don''t forget the marvelous prizes that await those who win, information, treasures, power, support anything you want can be yours!", said the voice with grandeur.

    The participants who wereining earlier, clicked their tongues knowing that they were tricked by the owner of the castle, most had some kind of concern that was visible on their faces, with the exception of Marlene.

    ''That girl¡­ when I said that there might be a solution for her n''s curse within the Global Raid, I didn''t mean it like this, on the other hand she might have gotten a hint thanks to her lineage''s ability'', thought Daimon, she obviously wanted information on how to break the curse that has been tormenting her n for so many years.

    It was amusing that as besties, Marlene and Thea shared the fact that the Hydra system user was one of the sources of their n''s problems.

    To be fair, her conclusion shouldn''t be wrong, if the owner of the castle is a being on par with Ophelia, even in a weakened state, the curse casted on her n has also diluted after so many years, Marlene being the perfect proof of it as she was able to breakthrough to the Ster rank before, though she was now stuck as a Lord rank.

    Back at the giant table, the supervising Nethereal smirked at the fact that no one tried to leave, to then skillfully shuffle a deck of strange cards, unlike the ones used for poker and other games Daimon knew, each of those cards were the size of a hand and had intricate designs on their backside.

    "I take your silence as none wanting to stop ying, make your choice", said the Nethereal as he smoothly amodated the cards on the table.

    Daimon didn''t interfere yet, he wanted to see what the game they were ying was like, besides, Marlene didn''t seem worried at all, so she should be quite confident on winning, he has heard the other girlsining that her cheat-like temporary luck boosting ability helps her win in board games more than half of the times after all.

    The remaining participants hesitated before they ced their hands on a small crystal te that was ced in front of each one of them, once thest one who was actually Marlene, did so, the Nethereal snapped his fingers.

    "Closed, don''t forget to double check that the number of cards you receive is the desired one", after finishing his sentence, some of the cards ced on the table moved towards the participants, it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that the numbers varied quite a bit, some received two, others three and then there was Marlene who received four, which made a couple of the participants nce on her direction.

    ''Well, I guess some of them don''t know what is a "poker face", or maybe their result is bad enough to make them don''t care to show they got a bad hand'', thought Daimon.

    "Hahaha, look at that guy, he is so pale, I bet he got at least one finger in there!", shouted one of the Nethereals that were sitting near Daimon.

    "Those who wish to participate, make your bets", said the supervising Nethereal, then Daimon saw the ground in front of him opening and a small pedestal with a crystal que simr to the one that the participants used earlier, appear.

    He ced his hand on it and then two options appeared in front of his eyes.

    [Highest Value (The one whose sum of cards has the highest result)]

    [Survivor (The one with the highest score who loses the least in terms of flesh)]

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, he of course selected the second option and then a row of numbers for him to choose appeared, each participant was assigned one, originally there were a total of ten, but after those two vampires died a moment ago, only eight were left.

    Without thinking too much about it, Daimon casually chose the number "3" which was of course assigned to Marlene, as for the bet, the options were actually quite interesting, it went from something as simple as a strand of hair all the way toplete limbs, organs and even mana circuits or one''s magic core.

    They all had a price assigned to them at which the house will buy back and also a different return ratio, hair, blood and skin had the lowest price and also the worst return, which was 1 to .05, so even if you won the earnings would be quite low, there was also a minimum quantity of it needed to participate.

    ''I know different races have different cultures but this kind of thing is of bad taste regardless of that'', mumbled Evangeline.

    ''Well, they can survive without a body anyway, but I highly doubt that the owner of this ce set this whole thing up, just to keep Nethereals from getting bored'', said Daimon, he ced a bet and with that the floating menu disappeared, just in time for the supervising Nethereal to announce the end of the betting time.

    "No more bets will be epted from this moment onwards, now dear participants, reveal your cards".

    With those words everyone ced their cards face up on the table, allowing the spectators to see the results, and as expected there were different reactionsing from all over the ce.

    "Ah damn it, that guy is worse luck than what I expected!".

    "Nice, my bet paid off!".

    "Noo, my earnings are gone!".

    First the different Nethereals either cursed, cheered or shouted, something Daimon which would haven''t caught Daimon''s interest normally, if not for the fact that his infinity eyes could see small particles of energy that were being radiated by not only the spectators but also the participants.

    ''That is¡­ Rita, ask those girls if they know anything about the arrays on the roof and walls'', inwardly said Daimon to the undead head maid.

    Back at the castle of the ck Night n which he raided to reunite with Calvin and the others, those women made the ones who knew each other fight, whoever lost had to lose something, it was just a short moment but Daimon caught a glimpse of the array on the roof of that castle and it also seemed to collect some kind of energy.

    Also, ording to Michael who took note of everything unlike Calvin, the things they got cut after purposedly losing against their respectivepanions, were absorbed by the ground to never be seen again, the same applied to anyone who died.

    Unfortunately, he couldn''t properly decipher the meaning of the runes thatposed those arrays as he didn''t know thatnguage, they weren''t like the ones at the ck stone corridor through which he arrived at Neptune, neither the ones in this castle were like them, however now he knew that the Nethereals were more spread than what he thought, each having their ownnguage.

    ''They say that none of them had knowledge regarding the arrays, by the time they came to exist, the castles were already there for them to live in, the leader of the settlement never dared to be the one initiating a conversation with whoever they were created by when the time to offer their tribute came, so they simply limited to fulfill their orders of making those they captured fight'', answered Rita the next second.

    Daimon could hear the undead girl''s apologetic tone and also feel that she was intensely ring at those poor girls from the ck Night n, as if she was ming them for not being useful for her young master, which made him chuckle.

    ''It''s fine, we''ll get answers directly from the source, this casino offers information as a prize after all'', said Daimon.

    He returned to reality when he saw the results being projected above the giant table, so that all the spectators could see them.

    [Highest Value: Participant number 5]

    [Survivor: Participant number 3]

    [Lowest Value: Participant number 7]

    Daimon finally got to clearly see what the game was like, those cards had two different types of information on them, some had numbers from 0 to 5, while others had literal body parts written on it, the same that could be won or lost through the bets.

    "Okay, with the results clear for everyone, time to pay", dered the supervising Nethereal, what followed were pained screamsing from two different people, one of the humans and the guy from Skyfire''s sect respectively, the interesting part is that the one who got the lowest result which was Walford, also had to pay with something randomly, but he ended up lucking out and only losing a lock of hair very much to the displease of the spectators.

    "Ahhh!".

    "Crazy bastards give me back my fingers!".

    Amusingly, despite the guy from Skyfire''s sect being the one with the highest value, he also lost two fingers from his left hand, he chose three cards and while one was actually a four, the other two had the word "finger" written on them, so he got the highest score of the round but also lost something.

    The human was the only other that chose to get three cards, he got a total of 3 but thest card was the word "intestine", and so he lost an organ, normally having an organ removed would cause more than just pain even for a mage like that guy, but the array here made it so that the ones ying wouldn''t die nor faint no matter what, the pain remained though.

    Walford who had the lowest score was unlucky enough to get two zero value cards, but he was lucky as the punishment was random and he lost a lock of hair only.

    As for Marlene, she got four cards, and all of them were numbers, three had a value of one and thest one was zero, so she got the same score as the human but she didn''t lose anything, the others got either one or two of score and didn''t lose anything or lost hair, or some blood, nothing that really hurt.

    After watching a whole round unfold, Daimon more or less understood the trick, the objective was to get the highest score and for that getting a high number of cards was the easiest way, the problem is that the chances of losing something important also increased, which is why the other participants thought Marlene was crazy for selecting four cards.

    But it would be too easy if that was everything, with his infinity eyes Daimon could see that some of the participants were pulling their own tricks, and while the guy at the skybox could probably see through the vast majority, as long as the supervising Nethereal didn''t notice it, then it wasn''t against the rules, the problem is that the same applied the other way around.

    ''So, it''s only cheating if you get caught, looks like your kind of game~'', concluded Evangeline, to which Daimon limited to smirk.

    With the scores the way they currently were, Marlene already had 15 points, while the guy from Skyfire''s sect had 19, Walford was on the second ce with 16 and then the pirate from Marcus''s faction had 14, the rest had varied scores from 6 to 12, during the first rounds most probably just selected one or two cards at most.

    "Does anyone want to stop ying?", asked the supervising Nethereal with a sinister smile, only to be red and snarked at by Marlene and the others, after seeing those vampires dying, it was obvious that they could manipte what they lost as "fee" or at least narrow the options down to something important, so the best option was to endure until getting 40 points, recover everything they lost and then get the hell out of the game.

    You might think that then all this whole thing was pointless, but that isn''t the case, between those who will leave in a moment of anger like those pirates and the ones just to die and who will chicken out midway, the casino will profit, but from Daimon''s point of view the biggest benefit should be that energy which was being gathered by the arrays, the house never loses after all, or at leas that''s how it is supposed to be.

    Daimon leaned back on his seat, simr to what happened with Daphne, as long as others don''t interfere, he wouldn''t either, in a fair sh his teammates wouldn''t easily lose against anyone.

 Chapter 557 Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 2)

    <h4>Chapter 557 Challenges Marlene¡¯s version (part 2)</h4>

    ?557 Challenges Marlene¡¯s version (part 2)

    Besides not wanting to interfere unless others were trying to pull on some nasty tricks, Daimon also wanted to use this time to try and focus mana on his eyes to see if maybe he could decipher some of the functions of the array that was engraved on the ceiling of this castle.

    His ck Sea Emblem which also helped him through Daphne''s challenge, brought him here after all, so there must something he can gain from this challenge, besides helping a teammate if the need arises, just like it happened with the Vs princess.

    Speaking of which, the moment Daimon entered the room his instincts urged him to try something, but he kept himself from doing so, because if he did, he will for sure be discovered by the guy that is observing this whole charade with disdain from above, inside of that skybox.

    ''Oh well, it''s good to know that the Netheral in charge of this ce in particr, wasn''t as strong as Ophelia, or at the very least his senses aren''t as good as hers'', thought Daimon before he started slowly but surely injecting mana into his infinity eyes while stealing some nces at the ceiling, without ignoring what was happening at the giant table.

    Back at the game, the guy from Skyfire''s sect saw the supervising Nethereal being amused at the fact that he lost two fingers and gritted his teeth.

    ''Just wait you bastard, the Lord will get back at you for this!'', he swore in his heart before he took a bandage from apartment in front of his seat, to cover his wound, the castle actually provided bandages and simr things to let the yers tidy themselves up.

    Though as the supervisor stated, as long as they continue ying, they won''t die even if they were to lose their heads, the pain isn''t nullified and for sure it will be hard to focus on the game if one is bleeding like crazy, of course there is no way that this wasn''t done on purpose, but that''s beside the point.

    As for the human who lost one of his two intestines, he wasn''t bleeding externally at least, but the pained expression on his face as well as the slight trembling of his body, made the Nethereals on the gradesugh and shout.

    "Since there is no one retiring, let''s start the next round¡­", the supervisor''s words stuck in his throat when a cold voice interrupted him.

    "It''s not everyday that we get so many living "guests" here, so then why am I stuck watching such a boring game, Mk?".

    "¡­", all the Nethereals that wereughing, shouting and making fun of the participants, immediately shut up, Daimon whose eyes behind his mask didn''t stop looking at the ceiling, wondered what was that guy wanting to pull off this time.

    "Y-Your highness, I''m following the rules stablished by your honorable self¡­".

    "And you are failing, look at our "guests", some look as if they are about to cry and runaway, so let''s speed things up and make it even more interesting, from now and onwards, the rewards will potentially double and the risks will diminish as well", said the voice that came from the skybox.

    "Y-You can''t do that, the rules were already set!", eximed the human who lost his intestine not too long ago, he was already regretting having insisted ining to the magic ruin, back at his he was a respected genius and the young master of a noble family, but here, he was at the lowest echelon of the food chain.

    The other participants also frowned, the rules being notpletely exined to them earlier already made them feel anger, but now they were being changed as well and though it sounded as if it was to their benefit, they didn''t trust the owner of the castle at all.

    "Now dear guests, I''m doing this to favor those who want to leave the game as fast as possible, since this way you''ll need less rounds to gather the forty points needed to recover and leave, it also benefits those that need to ask something from me, I bet you have a time limit"

    "My suggestion is this, you''ll be split in pairs and your scores will no longer bepared to each other, instead of that you''ll only lose something if you end up choosing the respective card, in fact I''ll even increase the range of the numbered cards from 0-5 to 0-10, all I ask from you is a little modification to the forty and the seventy-five milestone rewards, apensation so to speak", said the guy inside the skybox with a tempting voice.

    The participants stared at each other, out of the ten that they used to be, two died already, in thest round someone lost an organ and the one with the highest score still needed at least four more wins with a score of at least five to be able to leave.

    The changes suggested, will make it easier for the participants to gather points for whatever they wanted, also it diminished the risk indeed, since without their scores beingpared, they only needed to worry about pulling the wrong card, however even the greediest or the stupidest didn''t directly fall for it, instead, the human that lost his intestine asked.

    "And what would that change be?".

    Daimon could almost see the bastard inside the skybox smiling as his voice came out of it.

    "Well, first of all, the one who reaches the forty-point mark second in each pair will be out immediately, the winner on the other hand will have to continue ying, don''t worry the winners will still get a free pass to recover everything you lost and you can use it if you fail to reach the seventy-five mark before your next opponent".

    "The one who reaches the seventy-five mark first in the next round will get its points doubled, the other will be out but with the free pass there is nothing to fret, I''ll tell you what thest round will consist off once we reach that part, but don''t worry it will bepletely optional and you''ll be allowed to leave without losing anything I give you my word".

    The magic beast guy, the guy from Skyfire''s sect, Walford and the zombie-like subordinate of Ereth all raised their hands in agreement, they needed to reach a hundred points or they will fail their assigned missions and that would most likely mean death at the hands of their respective leaders.

    On the other hand, now they could safely recover everything for free and also continue ying, it was too much of a great offer to pass on it, also they didn''t care about what happened to the ones who lost at the forty point mark which would be the only ones to get nothing from the game.

    The problem now, is that since there were eight participants remaining, they needed at least five to agree to the change, but Marlene solved it by also raising her hand the next second.

    "It''s settled, those who aren''t convinced don''t worry, the points you earn during the game will be enough to buy back what you lost, as long as you aren''t too "unlucky", Mk, arrange the changes now", said the guy inside the skybox with an amused voice.

    "Yes!", the supervising Nethereal ced his hand on the crystal te in front of him and the table, seats and cards were rearranged, so that the giant table was divided into four medium sized ones with two seats facing each other.

    "You may continue now", with the green light of the owner of the castle, the Nethereals on the grades started cheering, insulting and shouting once again.

    Daimon smirked behind his mask, he stopped looking at the ceiling and focused his attention on the game, not without thinking.

    ''And here I was squeezing my brain to decipher what those arrays do, to think that guy was going to "kindly" show me with an easy-to-understand example''.

    That''s right, a second ago, Daimon got a living demonstration of how the array worked, earlier when the bets paid off or when the participants lost their body parts, those particles of energy left their bodies and were dragged towards the ceiling.

    Daimon originally thought that the key point was the "game", those who yed and those who watched were the target of that array, but that wasn''t the case, the key was much simpler and it also aligned with what he understood about Nethereals in other words, the key was "Emotions".

    Those artificial Nethereals that he enved, exined him that the bizarre form that they adopted past a certain point, where the result of what drove them to the Nethereal''s side were emotions such as thirst for power and hatred, and now Daimon was able to confirm that the array on the ceiling somehow gathered said emotions.

    Daimon also noticed something interesting, the ones who generated more of those particles of energy which the array gathered, were in first ce the ones participating in the current game, in second ce there were the Nethereals who had at least half a physical body andstly, the Nethereals who were gambling.

    ''Heh, so that''s why they trade using body parts'', thought Daimon.

    There was a huge gap between how much of that energy was produced between the three groups mentioned before, if Daimon had to put it in numbers, the participants were each producing one thousand units of energy, the Nethereals with at least half a body were producing one unit and the gamblers were merely producing 0.01 of a unit.

    ''There were no gambles or games back at the castle managed by the ck Night n, they didn''t encourage greed but conflict, that means the owner of this ce is not rted to those women'' concluded Daimon.

    There were still many questions to be solved, but that could wait for the time being, the participants had ultimately no choice but to ept the changes suggested by the owner of the castle also known as Agrak.

    "As a sign of "goodwill", I will leave the pairing up to yourselves, of course those who don''t reach an agreement fast will be randomly matched, you can start", said Agrak to then remain silent.

    Marlene immediately red at Walford, she didn''t like any of the participants included those came in the case of the humans from the Blue Sky gxy or those vampires from the Immortal gxy, which she didn''t know, however she for some reason felt specifically displeased by Walford''s presence.

    But as she was about to point her finger towards him, she stopped in cold, her pretty eyes sparkled for a second, and she ultimately changed her target to Ereth''s undead-like subordinate, who coincidentally was also aiming at her with his finger, meaning they both wanted to face each other now.

    Seeing Walford visibly frowning, Daimon inwardly chuckled with an amused expression behind his mask.

    ''To think you guys would be keeping more gifts for me besides the three-coloredke'', he thought before focusing his attention on the game again.

    "That''s it, those who haven''t formed a pair yet will be randomly sorted!", dered the supervisor, besides Marlene who paired herself with Ereth''s subordinate and Walford who was chosen by the guy who lost his intestine since Walford had the worst score in the past round, the other two humans were pale they didn''t want to continue but they also didn''t agree to y against each other, which ended in one each being assigned to the magic beast guy from Marcus''s faction and one to the guy from Skyfire''s sect, to be honest from Daimon''s point of view they were just unlucky cannon fodder.

    With the pairs being formed, all the participants sat with their respective opponent on the newly arranged tables and the game continued, the difference is that now each pair only had topete with their opponent when it came to card choosing.

    "The next round starts now!", with those words, the supervisor gave way to the participants.

    "You are from the Maelstrom Sea right, why don''t you join us, my master also wishes to destroy the Clear Water Kingdom", said Ereth''s subordinate to Marlene who softly snorted in response.

    "I''m not nning to be a ve anytime soon, so screw off", Marlene might look quite young as of current, but she used to be a Ster realm powerhouse, so of course she wouldn''t be easily tricked by Ereth''sckeys, especially since she knows that Ereth is "simr" to the guy that cursed her family ording to Daimon.

    "Don''te cryingter when you are out of options", said Ereth''s subordinate with a menacing voice, to then look at the table only to see that Marlene had already chosen four of the ten cards that were ced for them to pick from.

    ''This bitch!'', he inwardly swore, unfortunately he couldn''tin so instead he gazed at the bone ring on his right hand to then select three cards.

    "Time''s up, prepare your bets everyone!", shouted the supervisor, Daimon stayed out of it this time, because he wasn''t producing particles of light and he didn''t want to draw the attention of the guy in the skybox, maybe his senses weren''t as good as Ophelia''s to see through the physical concealing property of the Hollow Suitbined with the bracelet of the God of Mischief, right of the bat, but he did notice a gaze that looked through the grades as if looking for something, which is probably why the game setting was changed so suddenly.

    "The bets are closed, reveal your cards", ordered the supervisor, one by one the different pairs showed their results to the spectators, the only one that mattered for Daimon was Marlene''s which resulted in her getting 0-3-2-1, in other words a total of six points and more importantly she didn''t lose anything.

    As for Ereth''s subordinate, he got an incredibly good result of 5-2-5, in other words a total of ten points, with that Ereth''s subordinate went from having a total score of 12 to 24, while Marlene who had 15 points before ended with a 21 score, meaning that she was now three points behindpared to her opponent.

    Ereth''s subordinate snarked at Marlene but she didn''t pay him any attention, the other results were as expected, the three humans either got less points than their opponents or lost something, pretty much to the amusement of the spectators.

    "The next round starts¡­ now!", dered the supervisor, as he made the cards shuffle back into the decks and then drew a set of ten for each table once again.

    This time Ereth''s subordinate whose face somehow had gotten paler than before, took the initiative, he immediately selected four cards as a way to mock Marlene.

    The angelfish princess calmly observed the remaining face down cards and then calmly selected five of them, which earned her some mocks and insults from the spectators.

    "What the hell, I bet for you, don''t lose on purpose you crazy woman!".

    "I tell you, humans are too greedy, luckily that is of benefit for us kekeke".

    Said two particr Nethereals who had more than half of their bodies, meaning they were regr gamblers, or more probably they were rted to the owner of the castle.

    "Shut up and bet", said the supervisor, which made the spectators return to their usual behavior, after a minute the time was up.

    "Reveal", with the announcement from the supervisor, the participants revealed their cards, Ereth''s subordinate didn''t even wait for the supervisor to finish to turn his cards up, the result caused a ruckus throughout the whole ce.

    "No way, he chose three cards of five points!".

    "Nice, with this my bet is practically secured!".

    That''s right, that guy actually got a set of 5-5-5, for a total of fifteen points, meaning he now had 39 points of score, he was only one point away from reaching the forty-point mark and eliminating Marlene.

    Marlene on the other hand turned her cards face up and got a set of 1-1-1-0, she took the risk of choosing four cards and actually only got 3 points, which added to her previous score resulted in a total of 24 points.

    The other pairs were also clearly having one with better luck, but all the attention was drawn towards Marlene and Ereth''s subordinate, because they were for sure going to be the first ones to have a member eliminated.

    "Last chance, join us, I can buy back what you''ll lose when you are eliminated, our boss has a taste for beauties so he wouldn''t want you to be butchered anyway", said Ereth''s subordinate, but he was met with a disdainful cold gaze from Marlene.

    ''Humph, you think too much of yourself, you should be honored that I considered you decent enough to exchange for merits with the boss, whatever I have to get "that" anyway'', thought the guy before he gazed at the bone ring in his hand.

    "The next round starts now!", shouted the supervisor, giving way to the participants to choose their cards.

    Ereth''s subordinate trembled for a second but he still picked his cards, two this time since he didn''t want to take too many risks, Marlene limited to select four once again and then she waited for the supervisor to ask them to reveal their choices.

    "ce your bets", with the words of the supervisor, the Nethereals all betted as if their lives depended on it, of course all of them ced their bets on Ereth''s subordinate, since it was a free win, naturally the house couldn''t lose so the amount epted per person was limited.

    "Show your cards", said the supervisor, the attention of all the spectators focused on Ereth''s subordinate who had a triumphant cocky smile on his face, something that didn''tst long as he saw the result.

    "M-Magic core and head!", eximed the guy, only for his eyes to widen even more when Marlene turned her cards up, this time she got a set of 0-10-10-10, in other words she earned 30 points meaning that she now had a total of 54 points, so she was the winner.

    "¡­", a sepulchral silence fell on the room, but it onlysted a second, before Ereth''s subordinate grabbed his chest as he fell from his chair.

    "Aghhhhhhh!", an ear-piercing scream echoed through the room, as the poor bastard retorted on the ground, raising his voice more and more in a try to ease the pain he was feeling, unfortunately besides hurting his vocal cords as the blood that wasing out of his mouth suggested, he achieved nothing else, then the next second not his head exploded and yet his pained screams could still be heard somehow.

    The other participants, particrly the humans paled as they witnessed what probably was the worst possible result avable in two cards, losing the head wouldn''t kill you as long as you were participating in the game, the pain wouldn''t be that bad either, what was making that guy scream was that he lost his magic core.

    Unlike knights whose most important part is their Life Spark despite also having a magic core, for mages, the magic core is the most treasured part of a mage as at least one mana circuit connected it to every organ of the body, what that guy was feeling was as if all his organs were being ripped off his body at the same time and the worse part is that he couldn''t even faint due to the array.

    It took the supervisor a few seconds to process what just happened, he came out of his daze and then approached the guy who was still screaming with a cunning smile to then say.

    "Dear participant, with the points you have gathered, there is enough to recover your head and also get a potion to suppress the pain of losing your magic core, do you ept the deal?".

    Naturally, the supervisor didn''t hesitate to kick someone who is down at the time, on the other hand it is true that his points weren''t enough to buy back his own magic core, ording to the table of prices, so it was a "fair" deal.

    "Ygahrhsh!", an impossible to understand growl was the answer, which made the supervisor nod.

    "I''ll take that as a yes", with a snap of his fingers, the head of the guy regenerated and he was given a red potion which he drank on the spot, only then the screams stopped.

    "Tsk, what a shame, it was fun to hear him scream like an idiot".

    "Why are you interrupting the fun Sr. Mk, he deserves it for being an idiot who loses when being one point away!".

    And other simrments could be heard all over the grades, they all betted for Ereth''s subordinate and they all lost so they of course were pissed, still, they all stopped when the supervisor casually said.

    "His highness didn''t want to listen to the screams of a loser anymore".

    Ereth''s subordinate who was sweating at the still lingering sensation of pain he experienced a moment ago, poisonously red at Marlene who gave not only him but also the spectators a mocking gaze, which of course earned her some curses and insults.

    Only one person got a different message from her gaze, a silver haired youth who was softlyughing behind his mask.

    ''What a vengeful princess'', he thought.

 Chapter 558 Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 3)

    <h4>Chapter 558 Challenges Marlene¡¯s version (part 3)</h4>

    ?Seeing the poor bastard whose face was somehow paler than before, not to mention it''s erratic breath which made it look as if he was about so fall and die, Daimon smirked, if what he understood about Marlene''s lineage ability was right, she could temporarily steal a certain portion of the luck of others and add it to her own temporarily.

    There were many variables that let alone Daimon, even Marlene didn''t know about her ability, because all the records of her n were lost, in fact the spells and martial arts that her n used were either created by the elders that dedicated their lives to take care of the young generations or things that were obtained through trades from the many nomad tribes of the Maelstrom Sea.

    Theck of legacy spells and martial arts didn''t really affect them, since they could barely enter the Arch ranks, until the appearance of Marlene, but their historical records being lost is what truly blocked their way path as well as the curse that was casted on them.

    For example, she didn''t even know that her lineage''s ability was called "Royal Charm", until Daimon mentioned it to her, the system showed it as such when she identally tried to steal luck from him back then.

    However, one thing that Marlene did know is that the amount of luck she can take from others is a fixed quantity, she can focus on a sole target or spread it on a selected group and the result can be incredibly different depending on the targets she choices.

    Which is understandable, luck is a vtile thing it can increase or decrease based on one''s actions.

    ''She knew that guy was using the bone ring to see what cards were more convenient for him and allowed him to get a winning streak, to then steal all the increased luck for herself'', concluded Daimon.

    Of course, luck isn''t absolute, her ability was more oriented to create opportunities for Marlene to win, in this case, it made the supervising Nethereal to give them a majorly horrible set of cards from which to choose, and also misguided the opponent to pick the worst from them, while helping Marlene to get the best ones.

    That opponent on the other hand only had that bone ring which is something Ereth had prepared with Ka''s help, it''s function ording to what his infinity eyes could see was that of apass, it guided its user towards what it wanted, ignoring the restrictions ced by the arrays of the castle.

    Naturally for such a convenient magic treasure to function the price was equally high, every time the bone ring activated, it consumed the life of its user, the only reason as to why Ereth''s subordinate didn''t be a gray haired wrinkled middle-aged man after losing so much vitality in a short period of time, is because he was in an undead-like state.

    That being said, what others thought was that guy getting nervous which including his face paling and that time when he trembled, Daimon knew was caused by the backsh of the bone ring, as to why the owner of the castle didn''t notice it, that''s probably rted to whatever Ereth and Ka had done to theirckeys, unfortunately the preparations done by that guy focused on countering the restrictions of this castle, not Marlene n''s lineage ability.

    To no one''s surprise, the three humans ended up losing horribly, with one losing his legs, another losing an arm and the guy who had lost its intestine now missing an eye as well.

    Leaving their wails aside, the supervisor Mk helped them buy back what they could and then kicked them out of this area, Ereth''s subordinate on the other hand still wanted to have a talk with the owner of the castle, so despite the hatred that filled his heart after being deprived of his magic core, he talked with the supervisor and was moved to some kind of waiting room.

    The current scores were, Marlene 54 points, Walford 49 points, the magic beast guy who was subordinated to Marcus who had 45 points andstly the member of Skyfire''s sect with 43 points.

    And with only four participants left, it was time for another opponent selecting round.

    "Hurry up and select your next opponent", said the supervisor, not even a secondter, Marlene pointed at the magic beast guy, who frowned for a second but reciprocated by pointing back at her, in fact he wasn''t the only one, Walford also did it.

    "Hey, let''s make a deal, leave her to me and we can make a temporary truce to deal with the others", said Walford without bothering to lower his voice, outside of the castle violence was allowed again after all, but to his surprise the beast guy also called Kail, snorted in response.

    "I don''t make deals with bastards from the Clear Water kingdom, my boss''s orders are to destroy each and everyone of you", he said as he showed his spiked teeth the symbol of his current human form not being permanent.

    "Tsk, idiots who can''t see the bigger picture, those "things" are Neptune''s enemy at the end of the day, regardless of the sea to which we belong, unlike them we are natives of Neptune", said Walford while gritting his teeth.

    ''Heh, did you hear that, that old scum is now ying hero¡­'', Daimon couldn''t help but inwardly snark at what Walford said, which is probably what Arlion was using as his ideology, the ssic "lesser of two evils", but his train of thought stopped midway when a sudden idea invaded his mind, which made a certain girl whose almost whole figure with the exception of a few strands of hair were blurred, smile.

    ''Hurry up and reach the next "level" so I can talk with you more, my dear host~'', happily mumbled Evangeline.

    Back at the game, since Walford''s offer was rejected and Marlene showed no interest in facing him, Kail was paired with her while the member of Skyfire''s sect ended up facing Walford.

    "The game starts now!", seeing that the pairs were formed, the supervisor shuffled the cards and ced ten on each of the now only remaining two tables.

    "Before we start let me tell you that I was impressed by how you dealt with that guy, I heard what he told you earlier, how about you join us instead, I can assure you that my boss won''t "pursue" you like that", said Kail while he smirked to show his spiked teeth.

    Marlene raised an eyebrow in response, naturally Daimon told his team members everything he could about Marcus, his preferences included, that being said she simply ignored Kail and picked three cards.

    "Oh well, let''s decide like we magic beast do, by seeing who has the bigger fist", said Kail to then actually select five cards, which earned him some insults from the Nethereals that were nning to bet on him.

    "ce your bets now", ordered the supervisor, the Nethereals didn''t have to hear it a second time, Daimon could see that despite their insults earlier, many still chose to bet on Kail.

    "Reveal", with a single word, the first round ended, Marlene turned her cards up first this time and got a result of 2-1-2, which wasn''t bad at all, her previous 54 points turned into 59.

    Kail waited for her to reveal her cards before doing the same, the first two cards were actually not good, "arm" and "leg" is the words they had written on them, the remaining three on the other hand got him 5-5-5, for a total of 15 points, so he went from having 45 points to a total of 60.

    That being said, unlike Marlene he pulled some body parts, so with the supervisor having registered the new scores, he casually said.

    "Time to pay", with those words, the left arm and right leg of Kail disappeared, which unlike others only made him growl in pain.

    "Let me show you what you rejected by ignoring my offer", said Kail, then the flesh on his wounds started undting, his bleeding stopped after a couple of seconds and then slowly but surely what he lost started regenerating, with the difference that his new arm and leg were incredibly skinny and emaciated, but they were still an arm and a leg.

    "That is cheating!", screamed one of the spectators, probably one of the ones that had betted for Marlene.

    Feeling the supervisor''s gaze on him, Kail snorted to then say.

    "This is the regeneration ability of my ck Spiked Starfish n, the rules prohibit spells and martial arts, but lineage abilities aren''t included in that, am I right, castle owner?".

    The supervisor raised his head to look at the skybox, waiting for Agrak to give his verdict, what Kail said was true, so this round was his win anyway, however the rules could be modified if the castle owner so wished it with a bit of "persuasion".

    "I''ll allow it, however as far as I know, there is no such a race in Neptune, so I want to know from where did that n came?", said Agrak.

    Kail didn''t bother to hide it, the mission that was given to him was to increase his boss''s reputation, if he managed to reach an agreement with the owner of the castle, then he will be rewarded.

    "This is the "Blessing" that my boss granted me in exchange for my loyalty, I who used to be a mixed-race ordinary magic beast now possess the incredible ability of regeneration of a magic beast that has the potential to reach the peak of the Ster rank!", the pride behind Kail''s words was evident and while the spectators didn''t show any reaction towards his words, Daimon could see a slight tinge of mockery on the eyes of the supervisor.

    "Oh really, that sounds interesting, in that case I hope to see a nice performance from you", said Agrak, though he didn''t show disdain with his words, Daimon could tell the guy wasughing at the narrowness of Kail''s view.

    He couldn''t me him for thatpletely though, for the natives of Neptune, the Ster realm was the peak of existence, it''s what every sentient being aspired for, however what did make Kail aughing stock was the fact that he was bragging about the Ster realm in front of beings that were capable of more than that.

    There wasn''t even a need for the Nethereals to show abat prowess that surpassed the Ster realm, to know that they were capable of more than that, the array that kept the participants alive despite losing their heads, or other vital parts was more than enough to prove it.

    At least there was nothing like that back at not only Neptune, but also the four gxies or Kerrol.

    ''Being a frog at the bottom of the well is really a sad thing'', thought Daimon, ever since that day back at the mountain, he was well aware of how weak he was in the bigger picture, that''s why he will neverpare himself with those in the same realm or age as him, his target is those that are older and stronger realm-wise.

    Leaving that little episode aside, the supervisor gave the green light and the round started, Marlene picked first, this time she picked four cards, Kail selected four as well, despite he acting all proud about his lineage, he only picked four cards this time.

    Although he called his ability regeneration, it was more appropriate to call it "regrow" since the body parts he created weren''t the same as the ones he lost, but new ones that were weaker and untrained, in other words he had to get used to them and enhance them with mana or battle aura all over again.

    As amazing as regrowing body parts sounded, it can be easily done with the respective elixirs back at the four gxies, and the result will be simr to Kail''s ability.

    To recover a body part in the exact same state as the rest of the body was aplete different case though, the ingredients and knowledge for that were on a different level, to put it in perspective, there alchemists capable of making such a high ranked elixir back at the four gxies could be counted with the fingers on one''s hands.

    And the only one who put such elixir up to sale was the Greenwich Sage, alternatively there were incredibly rare magic herbs and other resources that could achieve that same effect, but they had rank, affinity and even race restrictions, all the previous contributed to Daimon''s happiness when he obtained Mythic Regeneration, he could do all the previous with just providing energy.

    The bests immediately came and once the period was over, the supervisor shouted.

    "Reveal!".

    Kail moved first, the first three cards were numbers 2-4-4 to be exact a pretty decent result but not what he wanted, specially because thest card was "eye".

    Marlene followed right after, a small smile appeared on her pretty face as she showed her result, 5-5-1-0.

    "Tsk, so you still had some luck remaining", said Kail with an angered voice.

    "Pay", with a single word, the scores updated and Kail lost his left eye, at this point he and Marlene were tied with both of them having 70 points.

    "The next round starts¡­ now!", the supervisor gave the greenlight and not even a secondter, Kail had selected nine of the ten cards.

    ''Let''s see you win this one bitch!'', he inwardly swore.

    Under the eyes of all the spectators who felt attracted to the face off between Kail and Marlene, the angelfish princess chose the remaining card.

    "Damn, I was nning to go all in on that woman but now¡­".

    "Ah whatever, I''ll go 50-50, that way I''ll win regardless".

    And simrments came from the grades, the supervisor waited until the spectators ced their bets, not out of kind of course, Daimon could see that the particles of energy that the array gathered, were being produced at an insane speed at this moment.

    "Time is over, reveal", said the supervisor.

    "I hope you don''t hold it against me, you didn''t lose anything anyway, if you agree to join us, I can ask the boss to help you with whatever you needed from the owner of the castle", said Kail.

    "Did you not know that counting the chickens before they hatch is a sin for those who gamble", casually answered Marlene, she turned her sole card up and it turned out to be a 5, meaning that she has gathered 75 points, however if the opponent surpassed her score, she will be the one to lose.

    "Hpmh, I refuse to believe that my score will be lower than yours¡­", as Kail was saying, he saw the result of his first four cards and he nearly break his teeth due to gritting them too hard, 0-0-0-0, he got four zeros straight, now imagine his blood pressure going up when the next four cards were 1-1-1-1, meaning that he now had 74 points and one card left to reveal.

    "No way!".

    "You''ve got to be kidding me, I went all in into that guy!".

    The Nethereals started cursing as Kail showed hisst card, which was a poetic "mouth".

    "Bam!", Kail stood up and smacked his hand on the table to then point at Marlene.

    "She is cheating, there is no way that I could get such a bad result, are there even that many zeroes and ones left on the deck to begin with!", he shouted.

    "There are twenty copies of each card in that deck, you were "lucky" enough to getst remaining four of both zero and one", said Marlene.

    She knows it better than anyone, that luck isn''t absolute, which is why she has never considered to solely rely on it, that''s something she understood since she was a little girl who no matter how much luck she stole, couldn''t bring back an older girl who was bitten by a magic beast in time to where the elders were, so she could get treated.

    As to why she didn''t mind to reveal the fact that she had counted the cards, is that she knew that thest round will for sure be different than the previous, also this is essentially a casino, she isn''t the first nor will be thest one to do that, but she certainly was skilled enough to follow the results on all the tables as well as the actions of the supervisor, to urately know how many cards of each number the deck contained.

    "Time to pay", and with those words, Kail''s fate was sealed, his mouth was ripped off his face and while he managed to hold his screams back, the angered expression and the fact that he had to break his own arm, leg and mouth once again to use the free recovery pass given by the casino, since he had already regenerated what he lost, to avoid having to start training them from zero, nearly made him have an attack.

    The other finalist was none other than Walford who beat the guy from Skyfire''s sect, with a snap of the supervisor''s fingers, a single table remained and now Marlene found herself in front of Walford.

    "As I previously stated, thest round will be optional, the objective is to reach a hundred points or to be the one that endured the most, the rules are simple, you''ll both be given two cards and will have to give one to your opponent and keep one to yourself, the previous is to prevent any participant from trying to brute force its way to victory, any "regenerative" abilities will be prohibited and all the cards that had been used will be returned to the deck immediately, I want a nice bloody show for my spectators after all", said Agrak.

    "Of course, a reward akin to such difficulty will be given to the winner, you''ll get to ask me whatever you want and also make a "reasonable" petition to me, not to mention you will be able to choose one thing from my private treasury", Agrak''s words sounded sweet, but there was a big trap in them, still both Marlene and Walford nodded and then thest round started.

    Or so would have been the case, if Walford whose face paled didn''t suddenly close his eyes to then shout.

    "I surrender!".

    "¡­", a sepulchral silence fell on the room, the supervisor was already about to ce the cards, the Nethereals were ready to bet and the guy in the skybox was ready to have a niceugh, but everything soured in a single second.

    The only one who was enjoying the show was a silver haired masked youth.

    ''Now, what will you do Nethereal lord'', thought Daimon.

 Chapter 559 Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 4)

    <h4>Chapter 559 Challenges Marlene¡¯s version (part 4)</h4>

    ?The silent barelysted a few seconds before a heavy pressure which originated from the skybox, flooded the whole area.

    "Aghhh!"

    The various Nethereals who had less than half a body all fell to the ground while letting out pained screams, Daimon calmly observed the show while leaning against the back of his seat.

    ''So, unlike Ophelia this guy''s power is more oriented towards his race, I guess these kinds of subordinates have to be kept with a short leash'', he thought.

    While the pressure exuded by the one inside the skybox wasn''t weak at all, it wasn''t the pressure created by one''s mana, but something more akin to the intimidation caused through one''s lineage.

    In other words, for Nethereals that guy was indeed a superior existence who they had to obey regardless of realm, simr to what happens most of the time with magic beasts where a higher ranked species rted to them is able to control them to the point that even the irrational and aggressive ones would act like a somewhat coordinated group.

    It made sense though, unlike Ophelia who was supposed to meet and be able to suppress the visitors as her challenge was battle oriented, "violence" was prohibited in this castle, so there was no need for high battle prowess, that being said, in a rough calction Daimon estimated that the owner of the castle would still be around the middle or high stage of the Ster realm, if he wasn''t being restrained of course, which was still quite behind what Ophelia would have been capable off, if she went all out.

    "Your highness please appease your anger", the supervisor Mk bowed his head towards the skybox, as he pleaded for the owner of the castle to retrieve his pressure, since it wasn''t really affecting the participants anyway, it was a lineage kind of suppression, and they weren''t Nethereals or at least not of the races of Nethereals subordinated to him, though they were still feeling ufortable, Walford especially since he was the focus of the owner''s gaze.

    "What is the meaning of this, how does a mere mortal dare to ruin my entertainment", said Agrak.

    "I¡­ was given the order to stop ying by my boss, "Stop losing time with thatpulsive gambler and go help your teammate at the blood sky battlefield" he said, so I no longer have a reason to continue", said Walford as he stood up from the table to leave.

    Marlene couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, she understood that Walford would follow the order of Arlion, but why would he give that exnation, in any case this yed in her favor so she still gave a certain masked spectator a thankful gaze for having informed her of this beforehand.

    Needless to say, but Agrak was livid, unfortunately he gave his word to not prevent the yers from leaving for the final round, because he trusted that they needed to make that petition or question to him, not to mention the magic treasures, but turns out that wasn''t the case.

    ''Are you trying to say that my casino is less important than that maniac''s ughter house!'', he inwardly screamed.

    "Well¡­ very well, I''ll remember this insult!".

    "Mk, send a dozen of guards to that maniac''s ce, tell them to kill anyone with a simr firm of energy as to that game ruining bastard!", shouted the owner of the castle, referring to Walford.

    "Yes, your highness!", the supervisor immediately put hands to work, after gazing at Walford who was walking towards the grades without any care in the world, Mk left the area to fulfill the task that was given to him, the game was over so there was no need for a supervisor anymore anyway.

    "What the hell, such an anticlimactic ending, it was getting interesting".

    "Yeah, that guy is a coward".

    And simr upsetments started toe from the Nethereals on the grades, until Agrak''s voice made them shut up.

    "Silence!".

    "Earnings are sacred in my casino, however the process is also important, since this can''t be considered a game worth of the reward I modified for the sake of entertainment, I''ll return the reward to what it was supposed to be, you can only make one petition to me, just be aware that it can only be one, I will tell you if I''m unable to fulfill it or confirm if that''s what you want before proceeding".

    Marlene softly snorted, she was sure the owner of the castle had many tricks to not fulfill his promise, still she was running out of time so giving it a try wouldn''t hurt.

    "I want you to lift a curse at lineage level, in other words to erase a curse that was casted on a whole n", said the angelfish princess.

    "Oh, so that''s your objective, unfortunately as you can probably guess, my powers aren''t on the positive side of the spectrum nor am I a curse master, so I can''t fulfill that petition, maybe if the n you are referring to was my kin, I would be able to do something about it, but I highly doubt that''s the case, am I right?", said Agrak with a slightly disdainful voice.

    Marlene clenched her little fists in anger, but she didn''t give up yet.

    "In that case, tell me of a way to lift a curse of that level, you have such a strong life saving array here, so you should have some knowledge about it, or perhaps among all the treasures that you seem so proud to possess, there is something that can do the trick", she said.

    Curses are a shady and unexplored field in both the four gxies, Neptune and Kerrol, since there is too little information about them, however they can be seen as a long-term version of a negative affecting spell, the contrary to a buff, but without a time limit or at least a really longsting effect which might extend to future generations, which is why curses most of the times have extra requirements to be casted, and that often includes arrays.

    The guy inside the skybox smirked in response.

    "Smart mortal girl, that is right, among my peers I take pride in having the vastest amount of riches, not to mention the most premium private collection of treasures, so I do have something that would erase any curse as long as it is limited to the mortal realms".

    Seeing that Agrak had stopped speaking, Marlene added.

    "But?".

    "Kekeke, well, I can give you the method if that''s what you will be using your petition on, however the materials needed can''t be found in a ce where the existence is limited to the mortal realm, in other words, even if I give it to you, you won''t be able to use it", said Agrak.

    "And of course, you are telling me this out of the kindness in your heart, let me guess, you have those materials in your so-called collection, but you of course won''t hand them to me even if I want them", said Marlene.

    "The reward is a "reasonable" petition from me, you can''t expect me to give you a five extremely rare materials as well as an incredibly rare recipe and take it as one petition, right, even if you would have defeated your opponent in the way it was supposed to happen, it wouldn''t have been enough merit to get what you want¡­ but worry not, there is nothing that I hate more than an anticlimactic ending, so I''ll give you a chance".

    "It seems like others have started to underestimate me, so I have no other choice but to remind them of my greatness, and what better method than to participate in a game myself, I''ll give you the great honor to fight the champion, in other words me".

    "If you win, I''ll give you everything you''ll need to lift a curse at the mortal level, of course, your previous rewards would remain, I would even go as far as to not take your chance to make a petition from me, so that you can get a proper reward besides the objective you seem so adamant in fulfilling, what do you say?".

    Daimon frowned behind his mask, previously Marlene wasn''t producing those particles of light that the array would gather, but after listening to the previous proposition from that guy, that changed.

    It wasn''t her fault though, what her n has been striving to obtain is in front of her, it is normal that she wants to obtain it from the bottom of her heart, that being said she didn''t let Agrak''s words trick her, nor greed consume her.

    "What would the game be like?", she limited to ask.

    However, that was enough to make the castle owner maliciously smile inside of the skybox.

    ''Regardless of race, affiliation or realm, there isn''t a single being that doesn''t have something they wish to obtain, so when given the opportunity, even if its through "corrupt" methods, how can they not take the bait'', thought Agrak as he answered.

    "Simple, we''ll have a timed 1v1 match, we''ll only get one card that the deck will dispatch randomly for us, the one who reaches two hundred points first or the one with more body parts left after the ten minute period stablished as the time limit, finishes, will be the winner, ah right, I don''t want it to be a boring game, so any regeneration ability will be restricted, you don''t need to worry though, even if you lose you''ll be able to recover what you lost".

    Marlene remained silent for a second, even if she ended up losing, she can still get the recipe she needs, as for the materials doesn''t she know someone thates from outside of Neptune.

    ''I''m pretty sure that with enough time, there is nothing he wouldn''t be able to do¡­ nor do I doubt that my friend would lend me a hand without batting an eye, but since there is an opportunity in front of me, I shouldn''t let it go to waste'', concluded the angelfish princess.

    She has zero doubts that Daimon who is a simr "existence" to the one that cursed her n, as he exined, would eventually be able to help her solve her n''s problem, nor she believes he wouldn''t lend a hand, since he has called her a "friend" and Marlene is aware of the weight that word has for Daimon, unfortunately the circumstances demand her to find a solution now, is that or losing something irreceable for her.

    ''It doesn''t have topletely work, if what that guy is saying is half the truth then I''m fine with it, I will be more than happy to just get an extension!'', inwardly swore Marlene.

    After Daimon cheered her up back at the flying citadel, she got to hear from Sarah the fact that Daimon had helped to eliminate the curse on her, and also lessen the one on her mother to the point that even if she hadn''t been cured yet, her life was no longer in danger, so that''s what she is aiming for, what she needs is to buy time for Miriam and for that she is willing to walk into the trap prepared by Agrak if that''s what it takes.

    "I''m in", she calmly said, which made the spectators shout and celebrate.

    "Damn, how long has it been since the Lord has participated in a game!".

    "Well said mortal girl, I''ll cheer up for you to not lose in a turn like it happened a few thousand years ago!".

    And other simrments flooded the area, this time Agrak didn''t silence them, probably because all of them were praises for himself.

    "Perfect, let''s start right away then, I swear upon my name that the rewards I promised will be given in the case my opponent wins", said Agrak, with a snap of his fingers a way more detailed table and two chairs appeared, the skybox turned into ck mist, apparently the thing was made usingher.

    "Woooooooh!", the Nethereals stood up and cheered as the figure of the owner of the castle was revealed, unlike the other Nethereals which were obviously just using the body parts of obtained through the casino as vessels, that guy was different.

    He looked one hundred percent like a human, Agrak was a tall man in histe twenties, he was rather slender but not fragile, his hair was of a strange yellow metallic color, simr to the tone a recently created gold coin would have.

    ''That guy¡­ he didn''t take over a body, he is a solid projection simr to Joanna, but made withher'', thought Daimon, he didn''t need to use his infinity eyes, to pry into Agrak''s true appearance, when the skybox disappeared what was revealed was a ck sphere, itsted for less than a second, but Daimon could also see that invisible chains came from below the ground and attached themselves to that ck sphere.

    "I see you are surprised about my appearance, mortal girl, perhaps you had seen that rotten guy''s creations or maybe the crazy bastards or the weird ones from those two and thought that''s what we all looked like, it''s a shame it''s a mere image but rejoice, not everyone gets the chance to see a royal like myself!", eximed Agrak.

    ''Heh, looks like I found the "informant" I was looking for'', thought Daimon, a smirk couldn''t help but be formed behind his mask.

    ''Uwaah, you have to learn to control that, you look more like a viin than them when you smile like that'', mumbled Evangeline.

    ''Mm, Daimon has a bad habit'', added Narasha.

    Daimon limited to softlyugh in response, this little bad habit of his is the sole time when he allows his apex predator''s instincts to show, in any case this much is insignificantpared to what his instincts suggest him to do most of the time.

    Back at reality, Marlene and Agrak both took their respective seats, it wasn''t hard to notice that Agrak came from a noble background, based on the simple fact that his seat was made out of gold and had really detailed ornaments, it would be more urate to call it a throne than a seat.

    "Let''s start already", however Marlene didn''t care about that, nor she wanted to be used to entertain the Nethereals more than what was needed.

    "You should appreciate every second, mortal girl, whatever, let''s start with a little warm up", said Agrak, the deck sent two cards from a random part of it, to the table, onended in front of Marlene and the other onended in front of Marlene.

    There was no supervisor, but the bets became avable automatically, another thing that was different is that there was no time period for the bets to be ced, it was literally a game for the sole purpose of entertaining Agrak.

    "Let''s see what we have here", confidently said the Nethereal as he turned his card up, to reveal a number "5", quite a solid start.

    Marlene on the other hand, also revealed her first card and the result made her inwardly frown, she got a word instead of a number, in this case it was "hair".

    "Could have been worse, don''t you agree", mockingly said Agrak as he snapped his fingers, the cards were sent back into the deck, before the thing was shuffled and two new ones were sent towards them.

    "I''ll let you have the initiative this time", said the Nethereal as he leaned his back against his throne.

    Marlene didn''t let his attitude bother her, she turned her card up, this time she indeed got a number, but while on the outside she didn''t show any reaction, she was inwardly confused.

    ''What is going on?'', she thought as she looked at the number "3" which she got.

    "Not bad, at least it isn''t a body part, however I think that is rather low", said Agrak as he showed his card to everyone, it was the best possible result a "10".

    Daimon could feel the change on Marlene''s mood, so he immediately sent a private message to her.

    ''Is there a problem?''.

    ''Mm, based on the level of luck I was using, I calcted that I was going to get a five in the first round and a 0 on the second one¡­ no I''m sure that''s what I got'', answered the angelfish princess.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask for a couple of seconds before saying.

    ''Let''s do the following¡­''.

    While Daimon was having a little talk with Marlene, Agrak saw thetter not behaving like in her previous matches and he inwardlyughed.

    ''I love mortal''s expressions when they start losing kekeke!''.

    "Hey mortal girl, I don''t mind if you want to stall for time, but the cards will keeping", he said as he snapped his fingers, which made the deck repeat the same process as before.

    Marlene limited to reveal her card without saying anything, this time she got another word, which was "nail", and so the nail of her right index finger was removed from her.

    "That''s actually rare, most of the time that is a "finger", I guess you really do have good luck for a mortal", mockingly said Agrak as he revealed his card, a "7".

    "Shut up and let''s continue, I have won when my opponent was one point away from winning before anyway", said the angelfish princess.

    Agrak inwardly smiled.

    ''Ah, self-confident mortals, they produce some really high-

    quality energy, maybe I should enve this one, it seems like this time things are different, I might need a gaming opponent for the travel back home'', he thought.

    At this point the Nethereal royalty wasn''t aware that while the situation was indeed different to anything that has happened in hundreds of thousands of years, that didn''t mean it was beneficial for them.

 Chapter 560: Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 5)

    Marlene felt the Nethereal royalty''s gaze on her and she softly snorted before she ignored it, she focused once again on the game, since she heard a certain someone''s n a second ago, her mind was clearer.

    ''Using other people''s emotions as a source of power what a bad taste hobby'', thought the angelfish princess as she revealed her next card.

    Agrak saw the result and he smirked.

    "Well, it seems like your luck hasn''t been depleted yet, but it''s not working as intended right?".

    This time Marlene got a number at least, but it was a mere "1", while Agrak got a "9", which of course made the spectators roar and cheer at the crushing difference between the Nethereal royalty and the contender.

    That being said, Marlene didn''t say anything, she just limited to keep revealing the cards that were being given to her again and again after five minutes which seemed hours for the spectators, the results were appalling, the angelfish princess have only managed to gather 40 points while Agrak had a whole total of 80 points.

    Besides that, the tips of all Marlene''s fingers and toes were bandaged at this point meaning that she had lost all her nails, despite that the angelfish princess looked quiteposed as if the wounds weren''t hers.

    With the previous one would believe that Agrak would be more thriving after all, it sounded like an easy victory right, well the truth is that the Nethereal had been inwardly frowning the whole time.

    ''Are you sure about your words, Parker, if you are lying, I will personally burn your core for the next thousand years'', said Agrak through a sound transmission.

    ''I-I wouldn''t dare to lie your highness, ording to the lectures of the array, that mortal woman isn''t contributing at all since a few minutes ago'', answered another voice in a hurry.

    Agrak''s frown deepened.

    ''It can''t be, I clearly saw how much she wanted to obtain the method to lift the curse earlier, you even told me that she finally started producing energy for the array at that point, so did it suddenly stop, no one can suppress their greed once it had started to show, the array even amplifies it after all!'', he inwardly screamed, thinking that his subordinate wasn''t doing his job properly.

    But then a sudden idea hit him like a bolt out of the blue.

    ''Unless she is sure that she is going to win¡­'', having reached what was the most probable conclusion to what was happening, the Nethereal royalty felt insulted, a mere mortal had the confidence to beat him in his own pce in his own game, his eyes became slightly red as he thought that he was being underestimated once again, not too long after Walford insulted him.

    Still, he quelled his anger and then red at Marlene to then say.

    "You look rather calm for someone who is losing, perhaps the game is getting boring for you, so what do you think of raising the bets?".

    Marlene frowned in response.

    "You are winning and yet you want to go back on your words so fast?", she said with a disdainful voice.

    The spectators went silent for a second, the mortal girl who was losing actually dared to say such things to a royal!

    Agrak wasn''t any better, when has he ever been looked down by mortals like this he thought, on the other hand he knew that the other party was wary of his tricks so he didn''t immediately explode, and while trying to not reveal how angry he was he did his best to keep on a noble and refined expression.

    "I told you, there is nothing I despise more than a boring and anticlimactic game, besides it''s just a small change, no more numbers and no more measly body parts, the minimum will be a finger but in exchange the score won''t matter anymore, the one in a better state when we reach the ten-minute mark will be the winner", he said to then add.

    "There is only half of the time left anyway, your luck is too high so based on what happened during the first half of the game, I''m not going to reach the two hundred points so the winner will be decided based on the other condition, of course I will improve the reward as well, the previous promised rewards plus another petition from you

    "Of course, if you lose, you''ll have to agree to my petition what do you say?".

    Marlene inwardly smiled as she nodded to then casually say.

    "Sure~".

    "Come don''t be too wary I just want to¡­ what?", Agrak who was already trying to convince Marlene thinking she was refusing, stopped midway as he realized that she epted.

    ''What is going on, she is not producing energy for the array, so she isn''t blinded by greed, then why did she ept so easily'', wondered the Nethereal to then say with a smirk.

    "You will be my servant if you lose, just so you know".

    Unfortunately for him, Marlene''s confidence didn''t wave at all, despite her freedom being on the stake here, she simply stood up from her seat as she said.

    "I will use my previous petition now".

    Agrak''s previously smiling expression froze, he then snorted in response.

    "You can''t ask me to give up in case that was your bright n", he said.

    "Luckily that''s not the case, she just wants me to takeover from this point onwards", a voice new to the present Nethereals but familiar for the angelfish princess suddenly came from the spectator''s area which caught everyone''s attention.

    The one who spoke was none other than Daimon of course, the Nethereals who were sitting nearby Daimon suddenly jumped from their seats.

    "Where the hell did this guye from!".

    "Another human, but he wasn''t here a second ago!".

    The Nethereals shouted in disbelief with a wary expression, the whole area of the castle including the casino waspletely under the control of Agrak thanks to the arrays, no matter who it was, the moment they entered the area of influence of the castle, they would have to abide by the rules of the castle.

    Through the countless years they have beening to the casino, they have seen quite a variety of people, humans, beast descendants and other strange races, some were weaklings, some were talented members of the young generation and some were just random guys that were unlucky enough to end in this sealed ce.

    But regardless of who they were, even if among the talented and lucky ones some managed to leave with their lives intact and even with some gains, no one was able to ignore the rules and yet the ck-haired masked human next to them appeared out of nowhere.

    Agrak saw the neer and frowned for a second but then he coldly snorted.

    "So, this is what was giving you confidence, you had a little helper hiding in the shadows, still, the only thing you''ll achieve is to have him suffer in your stead, not that I care since the result will be the same".

    "It won''t be the same, since you are eyeing my friend as your prize, you''ll have to offer up something of equal value, I don''t have interest in small bets after all", said Daimon as he jumped from the spectator''s area to thennd next to Marlene.

    "Oh, and what would be a bet enough for you to y, then?", said Agrak with an interested voice, the neer at least spoke in hisnguage, in the meaning that he seemed to like big games.

    "Nothing much, the lives of you and every other Nethereal here as well as everything you possess, what do you say", casually said Daimon as he red at Agrak.

    "¡­", a sepulchral silence fell in the room, but it didn''tst even a second before infuriated screams came from all over the ce.

    "What did you say you bastard!".

    "He is crazy, all of us for a mere human woman!".

    "What''s more, putting the life of a royal at the same height of that of a mere human, your highness you must kill him!".

    Agrak didn''t need the spectators to tell him, after the initial shock that the ck-haired youth''s words gave him, his face became twisted and his eyes were bloodshot, a mere mortal wanted to take his life, he was livid and the next words only aggravated his anger.

    "What, didn''t you say that you don''t like boring and anticlimactic games?".

    A vein popped on Agrak''s forehead, despite he only being a projection without a physical body.

    "Very well, why not, let''s do it, however you''ll have to include your life in the bet as well, if you lose, both you and that woman will be my servants, I''m very interested in how did you ignore the restrictions of my castle, maybe your flesh body is decent enough for me to possess!", screamed the Nethereal.

    The spectators were in awe, did their royal just included their lives into a bet without even considering it, they wondered, what''s more some of the spectators frowned, they weren''t subordinated to Agrak but were just spending time in the casino.

    "Everyone, I hope you show some face to the royal Belliel family, anyone who stays to participate will be given two flesh body parts as a reward", said Agrak.

    "Woah, really, two body parts for free, long live the Belliel family!", the spectators immediately agreed, Agrak was going to win so they just had to stay seated and will still earn something, it was free money so why not.

    "His highness doesn''t have to worry, of course we''ll give our full support to you!", they screamed.

    "It''s settled then, prepare the new deck", said Daimon.

    "Don''t tell me what to do, mortal", said Agrak with an angered voice, that being said, he still did it.

    Daimon on the other hand looked at Marlene, the wounds caused by things lost through the games in this ce weren''t normal, she is currently only a middle stage Mage Lord, but she is still the descendant of a beast race, her vitality is high enough for her to have already stopped the bleeding on the tips of her fingers, but the bandages were slowly but surely being painted red due to her blood.

    "When I told you fight with ws and teeth if needed, I didn''t mean it like this you know", he said as he took a small bottle out of his pocket, to then give it to her, of course the pocket thing was just to trick others, he brought that bottle out of his inventory, storage rings were restricted by the arrays of the castle.

    Of course, the inventory could ignore that, but the Nethereals had no need to know about it, specially since for Daimon they were already dead.

    The corner of Marlene''s lips twitched a bit due to Daimon''s words.

    ''Wasn''t you the one who told me to keep ying until you said so'', she thought, still she happily epted the healing potion from Daimon and drank it without a second of hesitation, to her surprise the effects were immediate, not only the bleeding stopped, her nails grew back on the spot.

    She removed the bandages and her pretty blue eyes sparkled for a second, the faint ufortable sensation that she could previously feel from her wounds was now gone.

    Which was understandable, the ufortable feeling her wounds produced was the work of a certain little trick on the array, not only their flesh and body parts were taken by it through the games, Nether was instilled in their bodies, both when their lost their parts and when they recovered them, in other words the whole "recover everything for free" was bullshit.

    What''s more the Nether that the array in this ce produced, instilled greed in people''s minds, making gambling more addictive than it already is.

    As for why the potion that Daimon gave Marlene not only healed her but also removed that effect, that is simple, it was borated using tri-colored water, the best mind cleansing ingredient that existed not only in Neptune but also probably in the four gxies, Kerrol and even in the store of the system, at least as of current, it came from ake that couldn''t be taken by force even by Maximum Ster ranked after all.

    Seeing that Marlene was healed and the Nether in her body had been eliminated, Daimon turned to see Agrak and was about to walk towards the table, but a small tug on the right side of his shirt stopped him.

    "Mm, what''s the matter¡­", Daimon looked at Marlene to ask what was the problem but his words were interrupted midway, a faint but still enjoyably soft sensation came from his right cheek where Marlene''s lipsnded.

    ''Humph and you still dare to say that you aren''t a womanizer'', mumbled Evangeline.

    ''Well, at least it''s not on the lips, ording to Erin we only have to worry in that case'', added Narasha.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, but he didn''t move away, not because he wanted to enjoy the little peck but because Marlene was staring directly at him, even when she was obviously dying from embarrassment, she didn''t close her eyes, so this kiss wasn''t just an expression of affection for her.

    "T-The ones like me are supposed to bring good fortune to those close to us... break a leg", she mumbled as she walked away.

    Daimon felt a bit strange, not because of her actions, a good luck kiss and that phrase were known superstitions, however when a member of the royal lineage of the Angelfish n was included, things might be not so simple, he got a luck rted title thanks to Marlene when he saved her back then after all, what surprised him was the notification that was triggered a second ago.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil" (Skalia continent) has been updated <!>]

    [Get the hidden gem to join your side (1/2) ¨¤ (2/2)]

    ''The requirement couldn''t be as simple as she wishing me good luck, right?'', thought Daimon as he dismissed the notification, the gems were still quite obscure, Marlene was an ally so she of course didn''t want anything bad to happen to her friends, so the requirement wasn''t as simple as she wishing Daimon good luck, for a moment Daimon considered it to be the kiss, but that would still shouldn''t be enough.

    ''Her race¡­ she has zero doubts that I will obtain the method to erase the curse and wishes me to seed from the bottom of her heart, that would be a more eptable theory'', concluded Daimon, after a second, he put the matter at the back of his head for now, he could read the log after the mission waspletedter, for now he had to answer to her wishes by crushing the Nethereal in his own game.

    Daimon who was about to take the seat at the opposite side of Agrak, couldn''t help but chuckle, the thing was suddenly covered by darkness which then took the form of a magnificent throne, from a regr seat to a throne that clearly surpassed that of Agrak''s.

    ''Humph, the only one worthy enough to sit on a throne here is Daimon'', said the undead head maid in a voice that only Daimon could hear, since Agrak couldn''t detect her presence, he thought that Daimon was the one that modified the seat to insult him.

    "I''m royalty and yet you actually dare to sit on a throne in front of me, know your ce", he said.

    Daimon ignored him, nobility just by itself is useless from his point of view, you could be the king of a country but so what, a strong mage might appear one day, destroy your country, kill you and that will be it, strength is the only thing that will prevent others from trampling on you.

    Of course, being the king of a powerful country is apletely different story, but here in this ce, regardless of status, Agrak was going to lose in his hands, so being a noble from wherever he came, wasn''t going to help him.

    Others weren''t as easygoing as Daimon in that aspect though, both Rita and Evangeline''s cold eyes fixed on the Nethereal.

    ''Someone with a higher status than my host doesn''t exist, in this or any other universe!''.

    ''Someone with a higher status than my young master doesn''t exist, in this or any other universe!''.

    Is what they thought.

    Agrak frowned as he felt a chill running down his spine for some reason he couldn''t understand, ignoring said feeling the game started, the timer which had previously stopped, started running again, the next five minutes would decide the winner.

    The first two cards were sent to the two yers, Agrak immediately revealed his, there were no more numbers, nor safe losing cards like nails or hair, so this was going to be a bloody encounter, the Nethereal showed his result which was "finger", which resulted in his right index exploding.

    He was in a projection state so there was no blood, but there was pain, the projection was created using his soul and that ck core which was probably the magic core of a Nethereal, so the damage done to it reflected on both of them.

    That being said, Agrak was smiling from ear to ear, as he saw the result from Daimon''s card, the word written on it was "hand" and so the next second, Daimon''s left hand turned into red mist, but thetter didn''t even blink.

    ''Humph, keep on the tough act, I went easy on that woman since I considered convincing her to serve me willingly, but now, I have no reason no hold back anymore!'', inwardly screamed the Nethereal.

    From the side Marlene saw the previous and her little fists clenched, Daimon didn''t seem to care about it, but she still couldn''t help but feel guilty, ultimately, she shook her head and her gaze became sharp again, this wasn''t a direct battle so she couldn''t fight alongside her friend unlike any other battle she has faced before, however even if she didn''t know how to do it, she knew that her luck will be of use for Daimon, so she focused on that.

    ''Don''t get hurt, don''t feel pain, beat him, win'', and simr thoughts repeated in her mind, it''s worth noticing that victory was second after Daimon''s wellbeing in the list.

 Chapter 561: Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 6)

    Ignoring Agrak''s conceited expression, Daimon could feel the worried gazesing from the grades, his own shadow and even his mind, which belonged to the Angelfish princess, the undead head maid as well as Evangeline and Narasha.

    It is understandable, they are used to he not suffering any kind of wound regardless of the enemy which he is facing, the Risha sisters had the same reaction after they fell into that forbidden area of the sea back when they arrived at Neptune.

    It''s not blind faith but a strong believe based on the fact that Daimon has shown to always have a countermeasure to deal with whateveres his way.

    Daimon inwardly smiled at those four, he already told them what was going to happen and they still showed concern for him, it would be a lie to say that he didn''t feel his heart warm due to that, however the show must go on.

    "Hey, what''s the matter don''t tell me that a little amount of pain left you speechless, or are you perhaps trying to keep on a strong front for that woman, mortal?", disdainfully said Agrak as he nced at Marlene who was clearly worried about him.

    "Those are some arrogant words for someone that is clearly not high ranked enough among Nethereals to have subordinates in Neptune, a mereckey to the real noble ones", casually said Daimon with a slight smirk on his face.

    His sharp words immediately caused a reaction on Agrak, the Netheral gritted his teeth, the scene of Walford disregarding his rules and telling him that he was a secondary priority was still fresh in his mind.

    "Hmph, what would a mere mortal like you know, so what if those bastards from the Bane, Asmadian and Bx families used to be the designated leaders, my Belliel family isn''t any worse, they were only selected because I''m younger than them!", he eximed.

    "Oh really, that''s not what I heard, if I remember correctly only, they have been allowed to leave this prison or interact with Neptune, any other Nethereal is but a mere trapped loser", added Daimon.

    "What!", Agrak saw red on the spot, his body shivered due to anger but then he forced himself to calm down.

    "Nice try, but do you think such a lowly tactic would work on me, for starters, there is no way you would know about what happened back then, and none of us would say a thing about it, how dare you try to trick me", he said.

    Daimon softly smiled in response.

    "If you don''t even know that not only Nethereals are trapped in this ce, then your position in the hierarchy would be even lower than what I originally thought".

    Agrak''s expression which just had gotten better after convincing himself that what Daimon was saying was a just a bluff, soured again.

    ''Damn it, so some of those guys consciousnesses''s also ended here, but then why did those three didn''t tell me about it¡­ even now I wouldn''t have known that this time''s wave of neers was different if it weren''t for the fact that I recently managed to improve my array, I wouldn''t be able to retrieve the memories of the dead and might be on the dark and would have been destroyed along with this prison, damn scheming bastards!'', he swore to himself.

    ''Your highness, are you okay?'', the Nethereal heard one of his subordinate''s voices in his mind, which returned him to the real world, a whole minute has passed since he was lost in his thoughts, so his subordinate intervened.

    ''Yes, I''m fine, activate the barrier, none of the servants from the other families is allowed to leave until I have a word with those cocky bastards'', he answered.

    ''As you wish'', with a short answer the conversation ended and Agrak focused on the game once again.

    "I admit it for a mortal you are quite clever, I''ll thank you in advance for your brain, it will be of great use to me, now let''s continue ying", he said as two new cards were dispatched from the deck.

    Daimon didn''t say anything else; he just revealed his card and was honestly surprised at the result, the whole deck consisted on body parts so no matter what he pulled it would be bad, butpared to the previous it wasn''t that bad, the word written in his card was "finger".

    He couldn''t help but steal a gaze to the Angelfish princess, his eyes glowed for a second before his remaining index finger exploded.

    Agrak on the other hand got a "toe" card so his right feet suffered a loss, the Nethereal didn''t care, he beckoned and the next round immediately started, this time he revealed his card first and got a finger like the first round.

    Daimon''s result was different, he actually lost a bone, his femur to be more urate, it was an interesting sensation, others might lose mobility on the leg due to that, but thanks to his insanely strong body, his flesh alone could act as support and keep everything together if the need ever presented.

    Since one of the mostmon death causes for newbies during missions was the loss of mobility, Aura made sure to train him to be able to keep on moving even if his bones crumbled apart.

    That being said, he was sitting on a throne so besides his flesh changing itsposition to avoid any trouble that the bone disappearing might have caused, he didn''t need to do anything else.

    Amusingly enough, the undead head maid who was watching everything from within his shadow, made a slight modification to the throne to increase the support on that leg.

    ''I know I was the one who gave you the Apex Predator body constitution, but that''s not enough to get this far in only 8 years, sometimes I wonder what kind of strange creature are you~'', mumbled Evangeline.

    ''Mm, Daimon has a weird body'', added Narasha, unaware of the fact that her words were quite ambiguous, which made Evangeline loudlyugh.

    Daimon inwardly chuckled, he calmly red at the Nethereal as if to challenge him, which made Agrak grit his teeth, right now he had lost interest in both Daimon and Marlene and was more worried on having a word with the other Nethereal Lords.

    ''Hmph, keep on the tough guy act, you''ll be crying when you end up as a bunch of loose flesh'', he sinisterly thought.

    ¡­

    As the rounds continued, two constants were stablished, first and formal, for some reason Daimon kept on pulling bone type results, ribs, carpus, radius, vertebrae etc. While Agrak mostly lost fingers or toes, the previous would have normally made the Nethereal smile from ear to ear if it wasn''t for the second constant which is the fact that the mortal he despised didn''t crumble apart.

    The ck-haired masked youth kept sitting on that ck throne, his back was straight like sword despite the important bones that he was nowcking, heck there wasn''t even a sign of bleeding or difort of any kind.

    ''Whatever, this farse has toe to an end, I have more important matters to tend to'', thought Agrak as he dispatched thest two cards, to then say.

    "I admit that you have guts for a mortal, but this is the end, you two will be a part of my collection", hisst card was the first real loss he suffered and it was only a hand, which was Daimon''s opening loss, that being said, unlike Daimon, Agrak did show a tinge of pain upon his hand being destroyed.

    As for Daimon before he could even reveal his card, the timer hit zero so the game had ended.

    "Hahaha, I knew it, that guy was just bluffing, wanting our lives as coteral what a crazy bastard!".

    "Luckily, Lord Agrak has taught him a lesson in our stead and we even won a few parts without having to do anything".

    Simrments, insults and cheers could be hearding from the grades, all the Nethereals were celebrating the victory of Agrak, at least until a low "boom" interrupted them.

    "W-What the hell, Zan exploded!", eximed a Nethereal who was close to the guy that turned unto a bloody mist out of the blue.

    "Boom!", before anyone could tell what was happening, a second explosion caught their attentions as another Nethereal turned into red mist.

    "The array must be misfunctioning, run!", shouted a Nethereal, it was as if someone kicked an ant nest, all the Nethereals sitting on the grades jumped out of their seats and tried to leave, just to be stopped in cold by invisible barriers that surrounded the whole area.

    What they didn''t know is that the same scene was repeating throughout the whole castle, the Nethereals that had no idea of what happened in the special area, started exploding and thus chaos unleashed, everyone tried to leave but was stopped by the barriers around the castle.

    Agrak was shocked for a second, but he regained his senses and then shouted.

    "Parker, what the hell are you doing, turn down the array and the release the barriers!".

    "¡­", the humble answer that Agrak was waiting for didn''te, which was beyong his imagination, Parker was one of his original close subordinates and the only one that survived to serve him even in their current state, there was no way he betrayed him, which only left one possibility, that the Nethereal refused to believe.

    Agrak slowly turned his head towards the ck-haired youth who was calmly sitting on that ck throne even now.

    "With "Parker" you mean that guy who was supervising everything in that underground room, he was the first one to die, since he was the one that made it so you only got the best results", said Daimon as he got up from the throne.

    "Y-You, what did you do!", shouted the Nethereal.

    "Mm, nothing much, I simply won the game, and I''m taking my prize, that''s all".

    "Bullshit!", screamed Agrak to then add.

    "Look at yourself, you are covered in wounds, I''m clearly the winner!".

    "Wounds, I don''t see such a thing", casually said Daimon.

    The next second and to Agrak''s horror all the wounds on Daimon''s body disappeared, it didn''t look like healing at all, it was more as if time itself was rewound and the wounds never existed to begin with.

    "Illusion magic", mumbled Agrak in disbelief to then scream.

    "Impossible, you might trick my eyes but you can''t trick the game and the array, even if you managed to sneak in, by epting to y you agreed to a Lord grade contract, your soul would be destroyed if you went against it!".

    Daimon chuckled, to begin with contracts couldn''t be forced on him, so even if he got those cards, the penalties wouldn''t be able to harm him, then why did his hand, bones and other things ended up disappearing you might wonder, the answer is actually quite simple, he destroyed them himself.

    Throughout the whole game, he destroyed his own body to make it look as if the array was administrating the corresponding penalties and then used "Mythical Regeneration" to recover to his original state a couple of seconds before the game ended, but covered it by using the illusion effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief.

    In case you wonder why didn''t he just use the bracelet to fake the wounds, Agrak might clearly be weaker than Ophelia but up-close there was a chance that he noticed if an illusion was used and for Daimon''s n to work, the Nethereal had to keep his guard down.

    Agrak didn''t put too much attention on Daimon since thest three rounds, because for him the win was already in the bag, as a result he didn''t notice that he recovered during thest round and that the wounds were just illusions which meant that he lost.

    "There is noher in you, which means that the array couldn''t affect you but then¡­ you destroyed your own body, what the hell are you!", eximed Agrak in disbelief, the Nethereal couldn''t help but take a couple of steps backwards, he couldn''t begin to imagine what someone who was capable of being so cruel towards himself would to an enemy, in this case him.

    Unfortunately for him, Daimon had no desire to exin his strategy to an enemy, even to one that was going to die in a moment, so he limited to say.

    "I''ll thank you in advance for your memories, they will be of great use to me", unconscious to him, two yellow lines appeared in his pupils, originally when he used the Dracolevia lineage a vertical line would appear in the middle of his pupils, but this time a second one appeared and horizontally crossed the vertical one, forming something simr to a plus sign "+", with the difference that the four ends were pointy and sharp.

    Agrak''s pupils shrank like needles, a terrified expression appeared on his face as he screamed.

    "You are rted to that crazy woman!", before he even finished his sentence, he had already turned around to fly away, he could have tried to take Marlene hostage or something but he ran away without a second of hesitation instead.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, the new stigma of the Dravolevia lineage disappeared as soon as it appeared, anyway his attention was instead drawn towards Agrak, the ck core which was his real current appearance, actually exploded on the air, but his presence didn''t disappear, meaning that he wasn''t dead.

    Instead of that, a strange emblem shaped like a treasure vault spilled with blood and covered in ck chains appeared on the air.

    "Crack!", a breach formed on the space and air as well as other things that weren''t heavy enough started to be dragged towards it, that breach looked like a portal but a really unstable one, since it was dragging everything towards it instead of functioning as a mean of transport.

    "I''ll remember this insult, forcing me, a noble prince of the Belliel family to abandon my foundation and almost all of my lifespan and return in disgrace, just you wait!", shouted Agrak who was now a blurred shadow that was sucked in by the space rift.

    ''Daimon¡­'', Rita who was ready to act the moment her young master asked her to, saw the Nethereal entering the space rift and she was about to offer herself to drag Agrak back, but Daimon simply shook his head in response.

    "Don''t worry, he can''t escape without paying", he said with a smirk.

    At the same time, inside the chaotic dimensional tunnel, Agrak who was moving as fast as he could while enduring the pain of having used hisst resort, suddenly froze.

    ''What is this, I can''t move!'', he inwardly screamed as he was unable to even speak out loud, his fears and doubts were answered when a pretty voice echoed through the chaotic space inside the dimensional tunnel.

    "Acting all high and mighty towards my dear host and even calling him "mortal" in front of me, when let alone a mere former Star King like you, but even Realm Overlords wouldn''t have the guts to do so, humph, know your ce, trash",

    "Aghhhhhhhh!", what followed was a simple and primitive pained scream that came from Agrak''s figure as an invisible hand crushed his already damaged image into broken pieces.

    The vast majority was condensed and then dragged towards the entrance of the space rift, however a very small wisp of the Nethereal flew deeper into the chaotic space, disappearing into it the next second.

    "Mm, that should be enough", mumbled Evangeline''s voice, before the entrance to the space rift closed.

    Daimon didn''t watch nor hear what happened inside that space rift, however he did see a silver-colored sphere of lighting out of the rift before the thing closed.

    ''What a troublesome host, making me work too often, you better treasure me~'', said Evangeline to Daimon.

    ''Well, he made a deal with me, meaning he made a deal with the system, if he ran away without paying, your reputation will suffer right'', answered Daimon, which made Evangeline pout.

    ''You could be a really sessful scammer you know, to think you led a member of that guy''s race by the nose like that, I wonder who is the viin here~'', said Evangeline, getting back at Daimon to then add.

    ''Anyway, take that, this time there is no need to trade it through the system, I think you''ll like what you''ll get, I''ll go to sleep''.

    Daimon slightly shook his head; he grabbed the silver sphere of light and a notification appeared in front of him.

    [Ding!]

    [Congrattions, you have obtained "Seal of Greed"]

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action]

 Chapter 562: Challenges Marleneâ€™s version (part 7)

    Seeing the notification in front of him, Daimon couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, the skill that he just obtained was quite¡­ interesting.

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [Corrupted Treasure Trove Lv1 (passive): Allows the host to gather the energy of greed produced by other living beings and store it in the cursed trove for future usage (once a certain amount has been collected the skill will be automatically updated)]

    A strange red treasure chest with ck metal spikes, appeared in front of Daimon to then enter his body.

    ''Hey, Eve, normally getting a skill means that I''ll be able to use it on the spot, so why is it different this time?'', he inwardly asked.

    The frame of this skill was of a dim ck color, simr to the "Terror Contractor" skill, so before he read the description he was honestly interested on the skill, but it didn''t have an immediate effect, instead it was more like the array that used to be engraved on the ceiling of the castle, which actually disappeared along with Agrak.

    ''Mm, for a detailed exnation I would have to tell you the differences between the skills you get, unfortunately that is restricted as of current, however I think you''ll like the oue, sorry'', said Evangeline with an apologetic voice.

    Daimon didn''t hold it against her, Evangeline was already doing more than what she had as an administrator, as Daimon''s next words suggested.

    ''It''s fine, thanks for helping me with "that", I''ll make sure toplete more missions so that we can have a nice conversation without restrictions.

    ''W-Who helped you, that guy tried to dine and dash against the system so of course I had to teach him a lesson¡­ if you really want to thank me, hurry up and upgrade the system humph!'', despite her "harsh" words, the blurred image at the core of Daimon''s mind was cutely smiling from ear to ear.

    Daimon chuckled, he grabbed the remaining wisp of silver light and the information regarding the "Seal of Greed" was disyed in front of him.

    [Seal of Greed: The seal imnted into the the essence of the Corrupted Gains Belliel Royal lineage, that has been purified and condensed through the system, the original soul imprint has been reced by the host''s one and can now be bestowed by the host (Thepatibility with the target will be disyed for the host to see, limited to negative oriented races only)]

    ''So, is this how those guys turn other races into Nethereals, is this a lineage or is it something like the information encrypted on it, simr to what Ophelia gave me to restore Grace''s lineage?'', wondered Daimon.

    This was the first time Daimon got something like this, so he was in a loss about what to do with it, it said that he could bestow it to others, but then what will happen, will the one that receives it turn into a bizarre looking monster like those artificialhereals, or perhaps the result will bepletely different.

    ''Well, it does say that it has been purified and condensed and since that guy looked exactly like a human, so the result should be quite good'', he concluded.

    Anyway, both this "Seal" and the skill he got were merely bonuses, what he aimed at was the remaining things inside the wisp of silver light.

    While earlier Agrak sneered upon seeing Daimon making a great entrance and big derations as if he was the owner of the ce, something he affiliated to him being a young and lowly mortal, when has Daimon wasted his breath on his enemies, unless there was a hidden motive, by the time the enemy finishes his monologue, Disaster would have already pierced his face.

    From the very beginning Daimon carefully chose not only his actions but even his words, to get the result he wanted, the bet he did with Agrak which included not only his life and the one of all thehereals in this ce, but also everything he owned, was actually the second n.

    Originally, he was simply going to sh all thehereals down with Disaster, inside this castle violence wasn''t allowed thanks to the array, unfortunately such a thing didn''t apply to him and Agrak who was the only one that could pose a threat, wasn''t a fighter, unlike Ophelia, that guy had no real battle power left, only that suppression type ability he used to pressure others, which was also useless against him.

    Naturally, he discussed his n with the involved parties beforehand and as his administrator and more importantly his friend, Evangeline immediately told him the problem with it.

    ''Normally I''m pretty sure you could get the information you want from that guy one way or another, but there is a better option, that will benefit not only you but the system~''.

    And with those tempting words, the second n took form, since Daimon wasn''t in a position to waste time due to the current situation, he didn''t have the time to torture Agrak until he was sure that he would be telling the truth, so basically Daimon tricked thehereal into betting everything he had, which included his memories.

    Now, it''s not like there are no spells to read other people''s memories, the problem is that they require preparation and the result is most of the time not the desired, since with a single session the target will either die or have its mind damaged, so at most the process can be used two or three times to retrieve very specific memories, this is something Daimon learned thanks to a surprise visit to the Revy''s punishment elder''s "office" that Erin prepared for him.

    So, this time with Evangeline''s cooperation, he could get the maximum benefits from that guy, simr to what happened with Ka, the system could turn Agrak''s existence into something useful for Daimon, the problem is that not everything could be saved, the system was also restricted, to its current level after all, so Daimon made Agrak remind the subjects he wanted before ending the game.

    Namely, the information about the war that caused the current situation, the involved parties which included thehereal''s bosses that were causing so much trouble andst but not least, what Marlene needed.

    And those were the memories that he stole from Agrak with the help of the system, along with a part of his existence and whatever else the system took from him, ording to Evangeline the system didn''t work for free after all, but it was a win-win situation so who cared, he got what he wanted as well as a few extra bonuses.

    If anything, Evangeline sounded a bit sleepy since interfering made her use "origin", which is something Daimon only learned not too long ago thanks to his recent interaction with other administrators, but she herself confirmed that with a few hours of sleep she''ll be perfectly fine, thanks to Daimon''s abnormal origin production capacity.

    All the previous is the reason as to why Eve told Daimon that he could be quite a good scammer, he led Agrak by the nose from the very beginning, at the end that poor bastard not only ended being sold but he even helped the one who sold him to count the money, it was a really stupid end.

    ''I''m going to rest for a bit, don''t flirt with the angelfish princess too much~'', jokingly said Evangeline before she returned to sleep like usual.

    Daimon slightly shook his head, he was about to call Marlene when he felt a slight tuging from his pocket, his ck Sea Emblem came out and then turned into the rune shark to then open a portal once again.

    Daimon frowned, he shouldn''t still have around fifteen minutes left before having to go to the next challenge, he has been keeping track of time and he hadn''t reached the around two to three hours which he spent with Daphne during her challenge.

    The Rune shark made a turn in the air and then it shrank before letting a token fall on Daimon''s hand as the emblem returned to his pocket, the token was simr to the one that Daphne received earlier so that she could return to Daimon''s side once her restoration process finished.

    ''So, she can''te with me either, well she had something to do here anyway'', thought Daimon as he snapped his fingers.

    The air trembled a bit before arge stream of boxes, troves, shelves filled with books, scrolls and other misceneous things flew from all over the castle, those were all Agrak''s possessions which he bet against Daimon''s life, since he lost naturally, they were Daimon''s loot now.

    Unfortunately, he had no time to look through all of it now, but he could still notice that there were quite a few interesting things among it, anyway for now he focused in the memories he stole from Agrak and separated a series of five objects as well as a book which were now floating in front of him.

    "It seems like that guy indeed took a liking to you, he yed quite a few tricks to get you to stay behind, here, this book has the method to lift a race scale curse, basically is a portable array, but it doesn''t work with mana, the book has to be charged with Nether for it to work and that will only erase the curse on the one that obtained the book, for the others, the materials had to be processed by an alchemist to then perform a ritual", he said as he handed the things to Marlene.

    The angelfish princess held the materials as if her life depended on it, before she gave Daimon a gratitude filled gaze, but that onlysted a couple of seconds before she slightly smirked.

    "Hehe, do I detect a tinge of jealousy, don''t worry as your friend whose life is worth more than everything and everyone in this castle, I won''t be going anywhere~", she said.

    Daimon''s right eyebrow twitched as he gazed at the smiling angelfish princess, she was wearing a white and blue short dress with detached sleeves, her hair which had a mix of blond and blue shades, cascaded all the way down to her waist, making a nice contrast with her blue eyes, overall she had that "rebellious" attitude wasn''t a side effect of her realm regressing to the Lord rank, considering her overall lifespan she would be in her early twenties at most, which would be "younger" than even Liz, age-wise she''ll be ssified on a simr age group as ine.

    That embarrassing speech was part of the n to trick Agrak, otherwise why would he have forced himself to say such a cheesy line, when he prefers to demonstrate how much he treasures his friends through actions instead.

    Still since she wanted to y it like this, when has Daimon been afraid of anyone.

    "Oh, those are some bold words for someone that was red as an apple over a slight peck on the cheek, perhaps that was a first, I''ll have to ask Thea when I see herter", he said.

    As expected, Marlene''s face exploded in red as she remembered such an embarrassing moment, before she could react Daimon threw the token and her and then jumped into the portal not without saying.

    "Hurry up and use all the remainingher to lift your curse, when you finish you can use the token to return with us".

    Daimon''s words, made the angelfish princess return to the real world, seeing the portal closing she immediately shouted.

    "Daimon, I''ll get you for this!".

    The portal closed the next second, leaving behind a slightly flustered Marlene who bit her lower lip to then open the book which seemed to have turned into a whale that started inhaling all the remainingher in the castle.

    "So, what if he was the first¡­.", mumbled the angelfish princess before she focused on the book which''s pages started leafing through as it absorbed theher in the air.

    ¡­

    Inside the dimensional tunnel, Daimon who still managed to listen to Marlene''s shout, chuckled in response, only to listen to Evangeline''s sleepy but teasing voice.

    ''Waking me up with all that flirting, just wait until I tell the others about it~''.

    Daimon cleared his throat in response, he simply got back at Marlene for trying to embarrass him, anyway he put the matter at the back of his mind for the time being, his body was being guided by the dimensional tunnel to his next stop, without the need of him doing anything.

    Which was perfect as there was something he had to do, looking through the memories he stole from Agrak, more urately he wanted intel on the ones that he will be facingter on.

    ''That guy mentioned three people in particr "Bane" "Asmadian" and "Bx", let''s see what came to his mind when he remembered those bastards'', thought Daimon, due to the promptness of the situation, he couldn''t get all of Agrak''s memories, so he made him think on the subjects in which he was interested, but even then, it''s not like he could control what woulde to Agrak''s mind.

    But any intel woulde in handy and information about the Nethereal bosses would be quite even more useful for him, though he already had an idea about two of them¡­

    For Daimon, the scenery suddenly changed from the dimensional tunnel to a strangely familiar corridor, it was that ck stone corridor which he had to go through before entering Neptune.

    Daimon looked at his surroundings, since these were Agrak''s memories, he couldn''t interact with anything, but he could stop and then continue if needed, it was like watching a movie while also participating on it.

    Anyway, the memory barely started and he already gained something, this corridor in which Agrak who was still alive with his real body back then, was walking through, was the one he visited before.

    Back at the memory, Daimon saw Agrak opening arriving at the end of the corridor, simr to what he experienced, there was some kind ofhereal which worked as a gatekeeper, fused with the wall.

    "Prince Belliel, the three Lords are having a conversation with a special "guest" right now, what can I do for you?", asked the strangehereal gatekeeper.

    "Humph, they might have been given the title of Lords but I am a prince, I have the right to attend the meeting with that traitor, move I have something I want to confirm", said Agrak as he showed a token with a spiked treasure chest engraved on it to the gatekeeper.

    The gatekeeper seemed to be in a predicament but ultimately, it could only open the door, apparently though Agrak didn''t seem to hold a high authority among the Nethereals, like the ones inside, his status made up for it, so he crashed the "secret" meeting.

    Inside the room, Daimon could see arge table as well as four people, three sat at one side and thest one was sitting in front of them, meaning that there were indeed two different parties here.

    "Huh, what the hell are you doing here, brat of the Belliel?", a hoarse and old voice came from the one of the threehereals, the one at the left most seat to be more urate.

    Daimon observed the origin of the scolding voice, it was ahereal fully d in a ck skeletal armor.

    "You are having a strategical meeting and didn''t tell me beforehand, so what do you think I came here for, old sack of bones", angrily said Agrak.

    "Heh, since when does a second-generation silk pants like you, is interested in the art of war", a sarcastic voice came from thehereal sat at the right seat, unlike the tall ck armored one, this one was wearing a white mage robe that made him look like an erudite, as for his appearance, he looked like a young man in histe twenties, but obviously that wasn''t the case.

    Before Agrak could retort, the man in the middle a towering bulky guy in his early thirties, wearing blood red armor, smacked his hand against the table, making the whole room tremble a bit.

    "Enough, Agrak, this is an important meeting, the enemies are starting to gain territory over us, brother White here came to propose an alliance to finally get this over with, your prince title holds no authority over the troops, you want to listen, fine, sit down and shut up", he aggressively said.

    Having gotten what he wanted, Agrak sat casually sat down next to the smooth looking guy at the right, previously only the threehereals who were sitting looking at the entrance were visible, for Agrak and the same applied to Daimon as this was that guy''s memory.

    But now, the one sitting in front of them became clear for him and to no one''s surprise, that guy held some resemnce with Arlion.

    At this point in history, none of the presents was aware that a part of their secrets would be exposed to a third party, due to Agrak''s stupidity, but who could me them, it''s not like they could see the future right.

 Chapter 563: An incompetent ally is worse than a cunning enemy (part 1)

    The moment Agrak sat down, the meeting which was interrupted by his sudden appearance, continued.

    "Leaving this brat aside, you said that you had a deal for us, Lord Dian, let''s listen to it", casually said the smooth guy at the right seat.

    Speaking of which, the "brother White" to whom those guys referred, looked around 50% to 60% like a younger version of Arlion, before he somehow possessed Terry of course, the difference is that this guy had the blue-white hair that Terry obtained after his lineage was boosted by Arlion as a preparation to steal his body.

    Daimon whose point of view was the same as Agrak, tried to evaluate the guy in front of him, which he could suppose was the one currently upying Arlion''s original body, unfortunately, besides the fact that he could tell that everyone in this room was stronger than anyone he had previously met, there was nothing else he could discern.

    "As I was saying before this small "interruption" happened, this war has prolonged more than what it should, aren''t we all busy people from our respective Ster Kingdoms, none of us has time to lose on a boring stalemate in a faraway trash level gxy, right?", said Dian.

    "Humph, do you think we would have bothered to keep fighting with your Northen Sea Kingdom out of mere pettiness, of course this is a mission that was given to us so we can''t return before we fulfill it, unless we are ready to be demoted from our recently assigned role", eximed the ck bone armored Nethereal.

    "I see, perhaps if Lord Bane could be more specific, even I''m only the fourth inmand, I still have ess to the records of the inventory, maybe I could lend you a hand with that, with the correct price of course", added Dian.

    "Do you think we wouldn''t have obtained what we needed at this point if it was on your side''s inventory, the information we got was wrong all along", added the smooth guy on the right.

    For the first time, Dian slightly frowned, he tried to make the three leading Nethereals speak, but he failed to take the initiative, from the very beginning he was the one that came to make a deal with them, so he could only take a passive stance and ask.

    "I see¡­ in that case, what do you need from me and what can you offer in return?".

    This time the one to speak was the tall and muscly Netheral in red battle armor who upied the seat in the middle.

    "If brother White came to us to offer a deal, I believe that the displease towards the current situation had created conflict on your side, right, let''s make it like this, we''ll help you get rid of the three "obstacles" in your way to be the sole general of the Northern Sea''s army and in exchange we get to keep the corpses so we can exchange them for war merits to keep our ranks, of course we''ll doe the same for you, you can keep the corpses of all themoners we created for this war, I think that will be enough for you to be weed back as a hero", he said.

    Dian''s eyes glowed for a second, he has wanted to leave this miserable ce for quite some time, but the threemanders firmly refused to leave until they had made sure that the Nethereals can''t chase after them.

    Without them knowing, he has gathered followers who are also tired of the current situation, but even then, he didn''t dare to raise his voice, but if the only three guys whose authority was undoubtedly higher than his were to be removed, then he is sure that he can deal with the others at a simr level.

    As for whether he''ll be questioned by the higher ups at his return, he doesn''t know the true motive of all this conflict as he isn''t amander, so he can always put the me on the dead and fabricate a story that makes him a hero.

    It''s a better oue than what he expected, since he didn''t have to use his personal riches to settle the deal with the Nethereals, of course he still said.

    "Deal, however I want a contract to make sure no "idents" happen, you know just a formality".

    "Sure, as a sing of goodwill we''ll use a contract provided by you", said the Nethereal in the middle and with those words and a short discussionter, the deal was closed and Dian was ready to leave.

    "Agrak, since you want to sit with the adults, be useful and help our new ally to safely return to his base", said the ck bone armored Nethereal, which made Agrak''s face sour on the spot.

    "Coming is the safe part it can be brushed off as scouting, but returning from the enemy base is dangerous, if others see me, I''ll be dead meat, Andor you bastard are you that eager to see my corpse!", eximed Agrak.

    Unfortunately, this decision was agreed up by the three leaders, since Agrak insisted on messing with them, they will teach him a lesson by making him suffer, just enough so that he doesn''t get in their way in the future, of course they won''t kill him since he has some backing back at their kingdom.

    "You haven''t fought in the frontline even once during this whole war, if you want to get your share of the merits, you have to contribute, you can either participate in the iingst battle or do this little goodwill mission on our behalf, your choice", said the Nethereal in the middle.

    Agrak gritted his teeth but ultimately, he chose to guide the new "ally" back, since he didn''t want to die during thest battle and be aughing stock, he knew that the three leaders took the risk once, to open a path for Dian toe see them, so now it was his turn, that is if he wanted a piece of the cake.

    "Fine I''ll do it¡­ just remember that if something happens to me under the watch of war experts like you three, the one to die will be you, Bx", after saying those words, Agrak stood up and guided Dian out of the room, which made Daimon click his tongue, the three leaders weren''t leaving yet, so they would for sure be discussing something important in a moment, unfortunately Agrak was leaving already.

    But then to his surprise, the scenery didn''t change, he was still inside the meeting room, the problem is that nothing was happening, it was as if time had stopped but he knew that wasn''t the case, the memory was still ongoing.

    ''Pause'', with a single thought, the memory stopped, Daimon then walked towards the door and casually bypassed it, he couldn''t interact with the objects here, it was as if he was a ghost of some kind.

    At the other side of the door, he saw that Agrak was leaning against the wall, he had a stupid smug expression on his face, Daimon allowed the memory to continue just to hear Agrak saying.

    "I hope brother White doesn''t mind to wait a bit, I need to adjust my mentality before we leave".

    Dian didn''t seem to care, he just casually nodded and then, a voice echoed in Daimon''s ear the next second.

    "That idiot is getting more annoying, trying to obtain gains in the middle of a war, that''s why those damn Belliels aren''t given much military authority no matter how much "donations" they make", the smooth guy''s voice was the first.

    Daimon once again paused the memory, he bypassed the door and found himself back in the meeting room, only then he allowed the memory to go on.

    "I told you to give me the chance to use him for my new "project" Bx, but you refused and look, he just threatened you tantly, you deserve it", aggressively said the ck bone armored Nethereal at the left.

    "Enough, we are at the end of the rope already, the intel only said that what we need is in the hands of those guys, unfortunately the informer didn''t know that the shark bastard had already taken a step into the next realm and now I can only fight him thanks to the treasure given to me by the envoys, however "that" won''tst forever, at most I''ll be able to use it two or three times and that will be it, so it''s now or never, we have to kill him during our next battle, the other two won''t be able to hold against the three of us", the red armored Nethereal said with a solemn voice.

    "Fine, knowing that guy, what we need won''t be on him since he is always standing on the frontline, so he won''t suspect anything if we focus on him", added the ck bone armored Nethereal.

    "Whatever, if ites to the worst, you can just use that Belliel brat as fuel for that thing", casually said the smooth guy on the right.

    And with that, the scenery in the meeting room turned into darkness, Daimon paused the memory and then left the now darkness that used to be the meeting room, just to see Agrak''s angered frozen expression.

    ''I see, this guy somehow managed to spy onto those three, which is why the "scene" inside the meeting room was avable for me to watch, it was his mental image of the conversation that he could hear'', concluded Daimon.

    His point of view wasn''t only Agrak''s one, he couldn''t listen to his thoughts, but he could hear what he heard and see what he saw, Agrak only heard the previous conversation, but he imagined it and the result wasbined and presented to Daimon as a whole.

    Daimon could feel that the next would be really important, so he immediately allowed the memory to keep ying and just as he expected, Agrak who was boiling of anger due to the insultingments of the three leading Nethereals, hurried to leave this ce with Dian following him.

    ''Heh, so that''s why that guy couldn''t stand being looked down by others'', thought Daimon, he couldn''t hear Agrak''s thoughts and none of them said anything for quite some time, so it was a boring trip out of whatever this ce was, until they reached a giant ck door.

    "This is the emergency exit, a route that no one besides the threemanders and me, know about, this should be the safest route, but it is also the longest, I have some things I would like to discuss with brother White, I wonder if that would be possible?", said Agrak.

    Dian slightly raised his right eyebrow, but he still nodded as he took out a pair of ck mantles from his storage ring.

    "Sure, I''m all ears".

    Under Daimon''s curious gaze, the door opened and those two passed through it, the scene at the other side, made Daimon chuckle, this ce turned out to be an ind, moreover, the gate from which they came out, actually belonged to some kind of spaceship, a really big spaceship.

    ''What the hell, the fortresses are already massive enough, but this thing is around ten times bigger'', thought Daimon.

    With enough energy, the Demon Fortress which Daimon obtained can produce the same power as a Maximum Ster ranked, even if it is just in terms of offensive and speed, Daimon has learned about magic cksmithing from Liz, the technology and energy needed to emte the power of a mage or knight is higher than the realm it emtes, that is one of the fundamentalws of magic technology.

    The previous is the reason as to why, the only magic treasure in Neptune that could rival a Maximum Ster rank, used to be the Flying Citadel, even the legacy treasures used by the other powerhouses like Vincent and even Abaris were at most high Ster grade things, otherwise Abaris wouldn''t have done everything within his power to obtain the fortress, just for it to be snatched by Daimon.

    ''I guess this is one of the "gships" mentioned by Ophelia, perhaps this is the one she destroyed¡­'', wondered Daimon, anyway he saw those two soaring into the air so he followed directly, now he knew that the corridor from which he arrived at Neptune, was probably a leftover piece of one of these spaceships.

    At the sky, Agrak finally couldn''t hold back his inner thoughts.

    "Brother White must be feeling quite frustrated, not knowing the goal of your "allies", is quite worrying, don''t you agree?", he said with a tempting voice.

    As expected, Dian''s attention was caught on the spot, the three leading Nethereals didn''t tell him about their goal, despite the contract saying that they couldn''t kill him, at their level there were ways to exploit ws on said contract, so the two parties were way of each other, but now a third party seemed to be willing to make a deal with him.

    "It seems like Lord Belliel is a much better negotiator than the threemanders, but before we continue, what is the price for your cooperation?", asked Dian.

    "Oh, nothing much, you probably already know that my Belliel family is tied to "greed", so I''ll stick to my virtues and ask for some mere material possessions, let''s say the storage ring from one of the three leaders on your side, you can decide who''ll be the lucky winner for all I care, I only need to obtain it, ah right, I heard that the White Disaster race is specially skilled in curses, a rare subject even un our kingdom, so how about adding a tome of your choice", said Agrak.

    Dian frowned, Daimon didn''t need to read his mind to know that he was cursing Agrak for being a greedy bastard, but at the same time he who has personally shed against Agrak, knew that the Nethereal liked to y as a smart guy, still he waited for the deal to be formalized before forming his conclusion.

    After a moment of hesitation, Dian nodded in response.

    "Fine, it can be done, but only if you know what those three are nning and before I can see it with my own eyes, you''ll only get half of the payment", he said as he took out a book from his ring.

    Agrak casuallyughed before saying.

    "No problem, I''m more reliable than those bastards, what I seek are only material possessions so as long as you give me benefits, there is no need for me to y tricks, in fact you should be wary of those three instead, specially from Bx and Bane, those guy''s families focus on death and violence after all".

    Before Dian could say anything, Agrak continued.

    "They want something from the corpse of the Prison Megalodon guardian, as a proof of it, I can assure you that they willpletely focus on him on the next battle, they tricked you by saying that they wanted the corpses of those three to exchange for merits, it was done to divert your attention".

    Listening to Agrak''s words, a cold light shed through Dian''s eyes, if that was the case, then those three were truly trying to y him like a fool.

    Of course, Agrak struck while the iron was hot.

    "However I''m different, like I said I only care about material possessions, if you give me treasures, I''ll dly be your ally, you saw how they treat me earlier and I''m even giving you the choice of whose ring you''ll give me as a sign of goodwill, in the next battle, help me get rid of one of those three so I can take his ce, in exchange, we can cooperate and make both of our enemies to wear each other out, so we can be the final winners".

    Dian was moved by Agrak''s words,pared to dealing with someone whose status was higher than his, he would prefer to deal with Agrak, who was on a simr level as him, moreover, what Agrak said made total sense, if someone on his side had a priceless treasure, that would be the strongest of them, and Agrak even gave him the chance to choose with what to pay him, it was as he said a really big sign of goodwill.

    "Very well, this cooperation between brother Belliel and me, sounds like a better idea, that book is one of the curse grimoires of my White family, as for the ring, I hope brother Belliel can be satisfied with the one from the third ranked on my side, I have to chance to get the rings of the other two after all".

    Agrak warmly smiled as he nodded.

    "Sure, I dly ept it, don''t worry, we Belliels don''t sell what we obtain to others, but collect it, your grimoire with be a masterpiece among my personal collection".

    Listening to the tant bullshit spoken by Agrak, Daimon had to pause the memory since he couldn''t take it anymore, after a couple of seconds, he could only smirk.

    Unlike Dian, he knew that Agrak''s focus wasn''t exactly "greed", what he wanted were "corrupted gains", in other words, being allies with him was a bad idea, just look at Dian, he was tricked by Agrak''s words.

    Those three were going to focus on the Prison Megalodon, but not because they wanted but because they needed to get rid of him, in order to capture the other two leaders of the Northern Sea''s army, what they wanted was for sure with them after all.

    So Agrak used that to trick Dian, he didn''t directly ask for a specific ring, he didn''t know who of the remaining two leaders had the thing that was making those three go crazy, so he left the decision to Dian, which earned him the thrust from the White Disaster shark guy.

    Even if he couldn''t get what those three wanted through this deal, he would get to know who had said thing, at that point he could n how to obtain it, the initiative would ultimately belong to him regardless of the result, so he truly had nothing to lose but everything to win.

    Daimon was sure that''s what that idiot of Agrak was thinking, but since he knew final result of all this, his n clearly didn''t go as he nned, as to why, he was about to obtain the answer to that, since they were about to arrive at another ind, after flying for about five hours.

 Chapter 564: An incompetent ally is worse than a cunning enemy (part 2)

    The moment that ind appeared at the horizon, those two stopped flying due to Dian rising his hand with a wary expression.

    "Wait a moment brother Belliel", said the white shark guy as he took out a small mirror out of his pocket with utmost care.

    Daimon didn''t see the guy taking that mirror out of his ring earlier which means that the shark guy already had it in his pocket, before this memory started, luckily the function of the mirror was exined the next second.

    "I''m sorry for the trouble, but among those three bastards are there is a really annoying woman, even if there is a patrolling schedule as well as a map regarding how much territory do the detection formations of the spaceships cover, she tends to randomly change it and inform after", said Dian as he gritted his teeth.

    The shark guy made a cut on his finger and let some drops of his blood flow into the mirror, which then created a "bubble" around them, then Daimon''s vision which was basically the same as Agrak''s changed.

    Inside of the bubble the sight was quite interesting, lines and fields of different colors appeared all over the area, Agrak''s eyes shone with greed the very moment he realized what kind of treasure was that small mirror.

    "A mirror purely made with Star Void ss, brother Dian surely knows how to enjoy life", he said with an envy filled voice.

    "Brother Belliel must be joking, this is a family heirloom which I was supposed to pass onto my sessor, Star Void ss is the sole material that can fully ignore detection arrays regardless of level¡­ unfortunately that damn woman''s family and mine have a deep feud so there have been a lot of eyes on me from the very beginning, so I had to resort to use it now", answered Dian with an aggrieved voice as he looked at the mirror which now that Daimon caught a better nce off, had a lot of cracks all over it.

    In other words, it was an expendable treasure with a limited number of uses, which was perfectly understandable considering the amazing effect it had.

    ''Damn, even the Hollow Suit which was on the top tier list of currently attainable items in the shop of the system, is realm-limited, and that thing isn''t'', Daimon couldn''t help but curse in his mind.

    On the other hand, based on what those two said, the material used for that mirror should be extremely hard to get, it was also good for Daimon to see the world through the eyes of higher ranked beings first-hand, so that he could be prepared for future conflicts.

    Inside of that bubble those two werepletely isted from the outside, so without any further ado, they rushed towards the ind,nding a couple of minutester.

    As to why Agrak didn''t leave now that Dian had returned safe and sound, that is because now that those two had be allies, Agrak wanted to map the ind and also, they had to prepare a trap since their target would be one of the twomanders that would be free during the next battle.

    "We are at the east periphery, this area is under the jurisdiction of that annoying woman from the Vallmery family, out of the threemanders she is the weakest so my suggestion is that we focus on her".

    Agrak inwardly snorted, how could he not know that Dian wanted his help to get rid of his personal enemy, what''s more since that woman was the weakest the chances of, she having what the Nethereal higher ups wants, was really low.

    ''Tsk, this bastard isn''t as stupid as I thought, still don''t think you can use me without paying the price'', he thought before saying.

    "With the two of us working together, even if we might not be strong enough to fight the strongestmander, dealing with the second one considering we have the advantage of being in the shadows, should be quite easy, also in a wild guess, the "payment" you promised me wille from themander we''ll kill as a team, right?".

    Dian inwardly clicked his tongue knowing that the greedy guy in front of him, won''t be moved unless he sees benefits, still he knew how to solve it.

    "Let''s not beat around the bush, it will be in the best of my interest to make sure that annoying woman dies, sure since she is the youngest and weakest, the treasures in her ring won''t amount to the same as the other possible target, so what could be a fair price in order for me to get to choose the target of our cooperation?", he said.

    Agrak smiled in response, a feeling of superiority filled his heart as he answered with a "magnanimous" voice.

    "If the difference is in treasure terms, I seem to remember brother Dian mentioning having ess to the inventory, take me there so that I can get new additions to my collection, that would make things even, I don''t care who of the three leaders on my side will die, after all".

    ''Greedy bastard'', thought Dian but he kept on a smile as he nodded in response.

    "No problem, the treasury is in a separate space, since it''s not under the jurisdiction of a sole party, there is an ess here, so I can take you there right now, in fact we''ll need some materials to prepare our trap and we can thin some resources they''ll need, it''s a win-win situation", he said.

    Agrak agreed and so the two of them advanced through the ind, instead of going towards the giant "building" in the center of this huge ind that should be the original form of one of the main masses ofnd of Neptune in the future, they sped towards a certain cave near the border.

    Once they arrived at their destiny, Dian took out his token of identity, which was basically a white medal with a shark embedded on it and injected mana into it, then a couple of secondster a portal appeared on the cave.

    "I''ll go in first, brother Belliel can enter once I have made sure that there is no one else in the inventory", said Dian as he jumped into the portal.

    Agrak didn''t pay much attention to Dian''s words, the moment the shark guy was gone, he looked at his surroundings as if he was trying to burn this ce into his memory, Daimon knew it pretty well, since till thest detail of this area was presented to him as a result of that.

    A momentter, Daimon saw the Nethereal tap the fingernail of his left thumb with his index finger, the result was that a transparent film of some kind detached from his nail,nding on a random rock near the cave.

    Then a new "perspective" appeared in front of Daimon''s eyes, it was as if he had grown a second set of eyes, the effect was simr to dividing the screen when ying a videogame back at earth, this new secondary point of view was linked to whatever Agrak detached from his nail.

    There was no sound this time though, just image, this was probably a treasure thatplemented the one that Agrak used to spy the conversation among the three leaders after he left the meeting room.

    Daimon couldn''t help but softly snort, even after Dian entered the inventory, he left the mirror activated so that Agrak would be invisible just in case, it was obvious that the shark guy was utterly cautious and yet, the Nethereal casually sent that thing outside of the protected area without a second thought.

    ''I guess, those three were right on the desire of corrupted gains that these Belliel guys have'', concluded Daimon.

    The portal on the cave suddenly became active once again and then, Dian''s voice could be heard inside the bubble.

    "Everything is ready brother Belliel, don''t leave the bubble until you have crossed the portal just in case".

    And with those words, the scenery changed once again, from the open dark night that surrounded the entrance of the cave, to a perfectly illuminated and surprisinglyrge, warehouse of some kind.

    From the moment when Daimon heard the Nethereals referring to Ophelia and the others as "Northern Sea''s Army", he realized that despite both forcesing from whatever a "Ster Kingdom" is, the way they are organized is quite different.

    On one side the Nethereals appear to be a fully aristocratic society, where nobles decide everything, while the people from the Northern Sea is more a mix with nobility having privileges and authority but military to keep them in check.

    The previous is not what caught Daimon''s interest, but the fact that those two models perfectly match with the way how the Immortal and ck Marsh gxies rule as well as the White Fang and Blue-Sky gxies, respectively.

    ''A racial trait, a coincidence or¡­'', thought Daimon before putting the matter at the back of his head, back at the memory Dian finally deactivated the mirror and the bubble around Agrak dissipated the next second.

    Speaking of the Nethereal, Agrak looked like a kid in a candy shop, he looked in all directions, analyzing the different perfectly ordered materials that were positioned in the countless shelves and racks.

    "I don''t want to be annoying, but even with my authority at most we''ll have fifteen minutes without anyoneing to check on the inventory", said Dian.

    "We won''t need that much time, take me to the most valuable things in this ce", greedily said Agrak.

    Before Dian could say anything, Daimon suddenly felt an interestingly familiar sensationing from afar, for the first time he could "see" something that Agrak couldn''t, at least not as of current which made him remember a certain thing that Agrak mentioned before he tried to escape after he lost the game.

    "Fine, follow me, the things at the core of this ce are at least one tier above the other materials, but I can only take out a few, in exchange you can take as much as you want of the surrounding shelves", said Dian, making Agrak greedily nod in approbation.

    Dian then guided Agrak to the center of the warehouse, where a small metal rack contained a few things, three on the center as well as some storage rings surrounding the main treasures.

    "From left to right, there are two a spare King rank power sources, taken from my own spaceship during the travel towards this disgusting ce, then there is an extra set of King rank battle armor which was badly crafted and for some stupid reason can''t be used by any of us andst but not least a Red Moon potion an alchemic product capable of increasing one''s overall strength by 30% without any side effect, as the potion will heal you once the effect has ended, the problem is that it can only be used once in a thousand years, which reminds me that those three should have one each".

    Agrak''s mouth was drooling at the sight of those three treasures, so he didn''t care to wait until Dian exined what was inside the rings, he immediately pointed at the first object, which was a hand sized blue sphere with countless runes engraved into it and contained two shinning crystals.

    "I want the power sources, I hope brother Dian doesn''t take it personal, but with that extra power, we can increase the strength of my gship so that it can equal the ones of those three, just in case".

    Dian slightly gritted his teeth, but ultimately, he nodded and then used his token of identity to open the rack to then take the sphere and throw it to Agrak.

    The Nethereal happily caught the sphere to observe it, but then not even a fraction of a secondter, a heavy stream of blue light rained down from above.

    "Damn it¡­!".

    "Boooooom!".

    A loud curse as well as deafening explosion echoed through the whole nearby area, for Daimon everything went blue for a moment, since he could only see what Agrak saw, the Nethereal was crushed against the ground so hard that his body was forced into the hard stone tiles.

    By the time the explosion ended, the result was revealed, half of the warehouse was actually gone, the portal copsed and everything was pulled back to the real space that existed inside the cave, needless to say but everything was a mess, the racks and shelves wereying on the ground here and there, with the exception of the central rack which was perfectly fine.

    "How interesting, I went out to breath some fresh air and ended up catching two disgusting rats, a dark one and a white one", a cold yet mellow voice forced the dust to dispel on the spot, what followed was a huge pressure which make the atmosphere itself tremble.

    "YOU, CRAZY BITCH!", two enraged voices in unison came in response as well as two different pressures that shed against the first one.

    "Crack!", the ground shattered and the wind howled as a result of the mana sh between the three present people.

    At the same time, the whole ind came to life as rms rang from all over the ce, Dian and Agrak who were both in miserable states raised from the ground to face the neer, a person that Daimon knew pretty well, since she was technically living on a ring inside his hand, at least her soul was.

    "Vallmery, you crazy woman, you actually vaporized half of this vault just tond an attack on me!", shouted Dian to which Ophelia smirked in response.

    "And to recover what you stole from my central vault", she said, her words forced Agrak who until a second ago was looking daggers at Ophelia, to change his focus to his right hand just to notice it waspletely gone, the wound was seared which might be why he didn''t feel the pain until now, Dian was actually worse, his whole left leg was gone.

    "Aghhhhhh!", a lung-tearing scream escaped from Agrak''s mouth, without caring about anything else, he crushed the silver gem incrusted on the buckle of his belt and then a loud ss breaking sound could be hearding from above as the spaceship from which Daimon came out earlier, appeared on the sky.

    "What the hell is going on!", three angered voices came from below the spaceship, apparently the three leading Nethereals were forced out of it.

    "Enemies, all the forces attack!", with Ophelia''s order, countless arrays came to life and rays of energy flew towards the spaceship and the three leading Nethereals.

    "Damn it!", the three Nethereals immediately tried to return into the spaceship just to realize they weren''t allowed to, so they had no option but to deploy a barrier mad with their mana to resist the rain of attacks, that being said, they also turned around and fled as fast as they could, they were sure that they could eliminate all the arrays and wipe out the enemy soldiers.

    The problem is that this ind is only one of the three main ones of the Northern Sea Army and the reinforces will arrive in time, if they stayed even a second toote, they might have to stay forever and Agrak casually threw them in without any warn, they weren''t even using their armor as a proof of it.

    "Brother Dian!", following Agrak''s words, the spaceshipunched a yellow tube of light that surrounded Agrak and Dian dragging them towards it.

    "Heh, after calling me using such a badly crafted spying treasure you want to leave, dream on!", said Ophelia, which made Dian''s bloodshot eyes re at Agrak.

    Agrak clicked his tongue in response, now that the cat was out of the back and since he used those three as a smokescreen, he needed someone to me and judging by Dian''s gaze, Agrak knew who will be taking that role, there is also the fact that a huge sensation of fear suddenly invaded his heart.

    "Looks like we''ll part ways here brother Dian, good luck", with those words, Agrak somehow made the tube of light expulse Dian, at the same time the speed at which he was being dragged towards the spaceship, increased.

    "Agrak you fucking bastard, I''ll get you for this!", shouted Dian only for him to be drowned into a stream of blue light, that came from below, he turned into a charred corpse that was then further destroyed inside that blue stream until it waspletely vaporized.

    ''Just as Erin said, an ipetent ally is worse than a cunning enemy'', thought Daimon seeing the result.

    The previous took long to exin but happened in a matter of seconds, Agrak just arrived at his spaceship when the previous attackpletely dissipated, revealing an Ophelia whose gaze could kill.

    A moment ago, she received a message that third part of her spaceship crumbled apart, including the living area where all the nonbatant staff lived, as well as the infirmary and even the barracks where the low ranked soldiers were stationed, apparently Dian activated the traps he had set previously, in a rush, he originally was going to use them to threat Ophelia, but since his life was in danger he didn''t hesitate to go all out in a try to divert her attention.

    Unfortunately, Ophelia steeled her heart and instead of grieving the death of her subordinates, she decided to avenge them which is why not only she sacrificed her own weapon a pair of gloves that were now useless and also added a forbidden spell in a try to kill those two, but Dian was thrown out and used as a meat shield, the protective treasures in his body couldn''t save him, but he blocked most of the attack.

    "Damn it, she is crazy, get me out of here!", shouted Agrak seeing Ophelia charging her attack once again.

    The angered Ophelia saw explosionsing from afar and realized that an all-out battle had exploded between the two sides, probably the other twomanders had intercepted those three and were now fighting against them.

    "Where do you think you are going!", she shouted, the spaceship which was about to sh away was hold right in ce by a huge hand made out of pure mana that actually came from above the sky, Neptune is already a huge itself, these spaceships that Daimon just got to know were around the size of a small country, while even the fortresses were at most the size of a city but that hand¡­ was around five times the size of Agrak''s spaceship.

    Inside the spaceship while Daimon was in awe at the sight that appeared in front of him, Agrak jumped from his seat at the captain''s cabin.

    "Crazy, she is goddamn crazy, drawing power from the source used for a King grade spaceship to temporarily boost her realm, that thing is not supposed to be used by living beings!", he screamed as he saw the giant hand starting to crush his precious spaceship.

    In ast try Daimon saw Agrak using all sort of life saving means, which included one use spatial scrolls to open a portal to escape, as well as some kind of barriers, but everything was futile, the space itself was restricted and the barriers crumbled as fast as they appeared and then after taking onest nce at Agrak''s despair filled face before his body exploded into a bloody paste, which only left a ck core with a bloody treasure trove that shone in thest second, allowing the thing to escape, everything went dark.

    That was the end of the memory, then some in information appeared in his mind, but there was no "movie" being yed this time, apparently most of the capacity of the existence stolen by Evangeline was used to retrieve that long and pretty detailed memory.

    As for the rest of the things he made Agrak remember which were what he was more interested in knowing, they appeared as walls of text in Daimon''s mind, but right now he didn''t take the time to pay attention to them, because he was still amazed at what happened a moment ago.

    While the size of the attack used by Ophelia in thatst moment was not bigger than what a Maximum Ster ranked can do, considering those guys can obliterate a small sized if they go all out, the sensation was as different as heaven and earth, Daimon who experienced it through Agrak''s eyes was still immersed in that "feeling".

    ''It''s not the first time I felt something like that, but where and when did I¡­", Daimon who was lost in his thoughts was returned to the real world when he felt his body who was floating inside the dimensional tunnel being shook all of a sudden.

    Daimon''s eyes in the real world opened just for him to see a dark vortex facing his right, he could feel a certain attraction from it, just like how he was guided to where Marlene was.

    "I guess this is my next stop", he mumbled as he jumped into the ck vortex, at the same time a certain administrator inside of Daimon''s mind giggled.

    ''As expected of my host, a mere imitation recreated through the system he has managed to get on track by himself~''.

    With that sole thought, the blurred figure of Evangeline closed her eyes and fell asleep.

 Chapter 565: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 1)

    The moment Daimon''s body was dragged into that strange ck vortex, everything went dark, or at least that was the case for less than a second before Daimon''s eyes shone in a mysterious amethyst light behind his mask and then it was as if light had returned to the world.

    Here an interesting fact about Daimon''s infinity eyes, up to a certain extent Daimon has no need to have knowledge regarding the things he is looking at to understand about them, that is because one of the two skills that conforms infinity eyes is "Sixth Sense", a sensory kind of instinct that allows Daimon to see things that others can''t.

    And then we have the more refined side of the infinity eyes, whiches from the "Truth Seeker Eyes" the skill granted to a novice appraiser by the system, which unlike the instinct-driven Sixth Sense, relies on knowledge attained by the appraiser to see, recognize, identify, ssify and find materials,ponents or basically anything they know about.

    It is for thebination of the previous that Daimon was frowning right now, because the ck haze that extinguished any kind of illumination within the dimensional tunnel that was taking Daimon to his next stop, is something he has seen before the global raid started but only after it happened, he managed to understand.

    "It''s not as intense as the condensed ck fog that assaulted Sarah back then¡­ but this is definitely the same kind of "pure"her", concluded Daimon remembering the ck wind that escaped the space rift at the basement of Thea''s castle, which was absorbed by Sarah.

    After seeing that strange event Daimon kept wondering what the hell was thather, the only thing that resembled it was the ck mineralyer that covered the core of the original Nethereals he caught, but that was until he got to know about the arrays ced in the mansions of the Nethereals inside the area designated for the global raid.

    But there was still a difference, theher used by Nethereals and the one produced by those arrays had a thing that the one which was floating in this dimensional tunnel, didn''t, it was linked/rted to a certain emotion, a theory Daimon had which was pretty much confirmed thanks to the information he got from Agrak''s memories.

    The Belliel for example were rted to greed more specifically to "corrupted gains", which is why Agrak''s den was a casino, inparison theher that surrounded Daimon now was in "nk", just like the element less mana that naturally exists practically everywhere.

    ''Though I don''t know why is thereher in this dimensional tunnel, at least I know who is next'', thought Daimon as he saw the exit of the tunnel and could already feel something familiar from it.

    The scenery suddenly changed from non-gravity and darkness to a marvelous and clean starry sky that could be seen from the bottom of the deep canyon in which Daimon was thrown out by the dimensional tunnel.

    "Hshhhhhhh!", the moment Daimon set foot on the ground a ck shadow surged from one of the many small rifts on the walls of the canyon aiming at Daimon''s neck like an arrow while screeching out something that sounded like a mix between a hiss and nails scratching a chalkboard.

    Daimon whose eyes were shinning from the very beginning, casually extended his hand and caught the thing that tried to attack him, naturally since before he exited the dimensional tunnel, he was already scanning what the other side looked like, imagine his surprise when he saw countless small energy firms "waiting" for him.

    Ignoring the thing in his hand Daimon observed the walls where there were a lot of strange snakes of different sizes and species, sleeping, eating and the like.

    "I guess this wasn''t prepared beforehand, which means that this is normal here", concluded Daimon, considering the snake that attacked him was quite weak, a mere star ranked magic beast, his presence was of that of a star ranked knight as well though.

    "Still, not all of them give of the same aura and this fellow is rather more aggressive than the others", said Daimon as he inspected the strange snake in his hand.

    ck scales with yellow patterns and irregr bone formations on its body, also its eyes were bloodshot and even now that its attack had failed it kept trying to bite Daimon, until he casually broke its bones by tightening his grip on it, to then send the corpse to the inventory.

    To his surprise there was actually a notification appearing in front of him, which normally wouldn''t make sense, a mere star ranked magic beast wouldn''t give him a new skill, there were three possible exceptions, first that snake was worth the attention of his Apex Predator body, second for some reason the system had a reward for killing it, or third and the correct answer this time¡­ there was a problem with it.

    *Ding*

    [You have sessfully yed "Madness Infected Shadowfang Viper", no skills attainable due to unstable genes]

    ''This should be a hatching ground of some kind and yet only that snake attacked on sight, which means that not all of them had that problem, also it isn''t "gic damage" but "unstable genes" this time'', thought Daimon.

    His previous actions showed his killing intent which made all the nearby baby snakes cower in fear, most magic beasts in their infant years aren''t excessively aggressive, that doesn''t mean they are docile or tamable, but they won''t attack unless provoked or hungry of course, it''s a survival instinct since they hadn''t grown enough to hunt by themselves, also they aren''t intelligent so they arepletely instinct-driven at this point, which is why Daimon didn''t bother to use the Hollow Suit when he killed that snake, these baby snakes didn''t pay him any attention to begin with, they just felt a horrifying sensation spread like wildfire and nothing else.

    "That was the only unstable one here, it doesn''t seem to have been a coincidence", mumbled Daimon as he walked through the canyon, the other baby snakespletely stopped moving as a sign that they didn''t want to attract the attention of the "Predator" that had broken into their nest, disying the normal behavior of a magic beast of which Daimon knew about.

    Putting the matter at the back of his mind for the time being, Daimon instead focused on that familiar sensation which he could feel since he entered the dimensional tunnel.

    And as if discussed beforehand, his mirror te received a message, the emblem of the sender had a crown and a spear, so it was easy to guess from who was it.

    "Daimon is that you, sorry I couldn''t make it in time for the global raid", Thea''s guilt filled voice could be hearding from the mirror te, the empress took pride on her word, she promised to help but didn''t do it, it was a major insult for her.

    "Well, you indeed missed the royal ball but made it to the global raid", answered Daimon, he was registered as "Gabriel" on her mirror te, but she called him Daimon to prove that it was her and not someone who stole it, not even a secondter he received another message from Thea.

    "I guess that exins the difficulty of this damn ce, where are you?", she asked.

    "A canyon with a lot of baby snakes, would you care to exin what is going on", said Daimon as he climbed the wall, he was still analyzing whether it was safe to use blink or not, because the atmosphere of this ce was rather "special", there was actually space element mana floating around like it was normal here!

    As rare as this situation is, it''s not the first time that Daimon has seen space mana outside of a dimensional tunnel, back at the Maelstrom Sea when Vincent and the other Maximum Ster ranks fought, there was a momentary breach on the space from which space element mana flowed, which is why he didn''t use blink as he was unsure if the space was too unstable for it.

    "I think it would be better to discuss it face to face, there is a lot I want to tell you, you are in an incubator, leave as fast as you can and look for the closest water body, I''ll arrive at your position at that moment, also don''t worry about the state of the atmosphere, it''s safe and easier to travel through space here, even I was unable to track your spatial move skill, so there won''t be any problem¡­ Daimon, be careful".

    Listening to Thea''s worried voice, Daimon couldn''t help but softly smile.

    "No problem, see you soon".

    "Mm, remember as soon as you see a water body don''t hesitate jump into it and I''ll be there", repeated Thea, making Daimon wonder what she meant with that, but still, she seemed to be in a hurry so he decided to trust her and not waste time, there shouldn''t be too much time before the disappearance of that unstable snake was noticed after all.

    And with that said, Daimon''s image shed upwards, the canyon had a height of around two kilometers, so it took Daimon a few uses to finally get out of it.

    "Of course it would be like this", said Daimon as he observed the surrounding area, it was a damn rocky wastnd, apletely arid zone, with few spiked vegetation and no water bodies on sight, still as good as his eyesight and mana sense is, there is someone far better at it than him, happily swimming inside his shadow.

    ''Rita, please'', with a simple pair of words, the undead head maid who is ready at all times toply with anything that Daimon might need, immediately spread her mana sense in all directions.

    ''A nearby water body and traces of that snake woman, I''m on it, Daimon!'', she said with an enthusiastic voice.

    Daimon''s eyes shone behind his mask as he observed the invisible and undetectable for everyone else but him, thin ck dome that extended all over the ce.

    ''It''s as amazing as the first time I managed to see it'', he thought, normal mana sense works in a simr way as sonar, basically one radiates really small and thin waves of mana that forms a virtual map of one''s surroundings.

    It might sound simple but it is not something to look down upon, as it can''t be replicated manually, it''s an ability thates with being either a mage or a knight, even Joanna mentioned that having mana sense was part of being a "true" Ster rank.

    But then, Rita''s mana sense waspletely different, since others couldn''t detect her presence as long as she remained within Daimon''s shadow, instead of those thin waves of mana she deployed a thin dome that thoroughly scanned everything as it expanded, ignoring any kind of obstacles, including even arrays, even when she is outside of Daimon''s shadow she can do the same, with the only downside that her range diminishes, in a sense Daimon''s shadow works like an amplifier of some kind for her, it is also her happy ce.

    You might think that it''s a dynamic she developed with time, but no, since the first time she became sentient, her mana sense worked like that as if she was meant to live in Daimon''s shadow.

    Leaving aside the marvelous spectacle that Daimon was able to see since not too long ago, after almost thirty seconds of silence, Rita''s voice came from within his shadow.

    ''I found two routes, this ce seems to be a massive ind of some kind, 500 kilometers northeast there is the entrance to an underground river, there are groups of magic beasts every 10 kilometers as if they were stationed on purpose, the other route is the shore of the ind at 2500 kilometers southwest, the magic beasts on that way are scattered randomly'', she said.

    Daimon nodded as he contemted the two options, he could move by himself using the first route and arrive at his destination in an hour or so by using blink repeatedly and gliding, he will be able to recover the mana used following that strategy since he ascended in diagonal to then fall in diagonal as well, achieving twice the result with half the effort.

    The other option was only viable if he asked Rita to use the spatial movement skill she obtained back at Kerrol to transport him all the way to the shore of the ind, because the distance was too big for him to cover it in a short period of time, but there was a catch, it would take Rita more time to recover the mana used for that, while if he chose the other route, he will bepletely recovered by the time he arrives at his destination.

    ''Well, she said any water body not specifically the ocean, besides this atmosphere¡­'', thought Daimon for a second before saying.

    ''I''ll choose the first route, there might be some magic beasts sensible towards people like me, so guide me through the gaps on their formations, let''s be prepared just in case''.

    ''Mm, leave it to me'', confidently said the undead head maid, to which Diamon softly smiled before he blinked upwards to gain height.

    As Daimon ascended into the sky, he realized that using blink was easier than ever, the process was so smooth that the mana needed for the skill was directly cut in half without reducing the current maximum distance he could cover with a single use, which was still a hundred meters.

    After blinking around twenty times, Daimon stopped using the skill and allowed his body to freely fall, back when he moved with the Risha sisters he couldn''t do this and had to use blink all the way to their destination because the fast change of pressure would be harmful for them.

    Anyone whose physical body wasn''t at the peak of the Lord rank would most likely faint and remain unconscious for quite a few hours and that is if they had someone to prevent them from crashing against the ground to die in a horrible way.

    But for Daimon this was a walk in the park, after Aura made, him get used to have tons weighting down on him, this was nothing.

    ''Rita, you said this ce is an ind, right?'', to pass the time Daimon decided to have some small talk with the undead head maid.

    ''Based on the terrain that should be the case'', happily answered Rita.

    ''A wastnd on an ind, which is not only surrounded by water but also has underground rivers, it doesn''t sound natural'', casually said Daimon which made Rita immediately reply.

    ''I-I didn''t find environment changing arrays, besides detection and rms around that canyon I didn''t see anything else, even at the entrance to that underground river''.

    Listening to Rita whose voice had a tinge of panic thinking that she failed to fulfill her job, Daimon chuckled to then say.

    ''Calm down, that ancestor of Thea came from a higher ranked ce than us, so it''s normal that there are things of which we don''t know here, perhaps the array I think was used to change this ind''s environment is outside of even your detection range, so don''t think too much about it''.

    ''Mm~'', Rita limited to happily nod and then putting that matter aside, she took the initiative to ask Daimon some unrted things, like his favorite color, clothes, food and the like, ording to her she wanted to know personally and also, she felt it would be somehow beneficial for her, so Daimon didn''t mind to answer her.

    It was also helpful for Daimon but in a more immediate way, before he noticed he had covered a lot of distance and now he could see from afar a strange rock formation carved on a huge mountain near the entrance to the underground river which was his destination.

    ''There are a couple of middle stage Ster rank energy firmsing from inside that mountain and also a ton of Arch rank ones surrounding the whole area'', thought Daimon after a quick scan with his infinity eyes.

    Just like back at the canyon there were detection arrays and rms but not defense or offense type arrays, a rare set up for what Daimon concluded was an outpost of some kind.

    "I didn''t feel any unstable auras all the way to here, so that snake was indeed not supposed to appear here", after a moment of contemtion Daimon''s n took form, he descended on a nearby giant rock and then took out the corpse of that snake from earlier.

    ''Rita, hide this thing''s presence until I give you the signal, but be sure topletely erase your mana from it'', he inwardly said, Daimon didn''t want to leave any energy traces, considering that Thea''s ancestor found a way to identify system users through their mana, which is why he killed that snake purely with physical strength as for him using blink, Thea had confirmed that it''s not traceable before, she herself couldn''t tell from where would he appear when he used it, also there was too much space element mana in this ce''s atmosphere and that would cover any residual energy from the usage of blink.

    ''I''m ready'', a shadow veil appeared all over the corpse of the snake along with Rita''s confirmation.

    His arm tensed as he used his monstrous physical strength to throw the corpse of the snake as hard as he could without turning the snake into a blood puddle.

    Thanks to Rita''s mana the snake silently flew all over around a kilometer before it crashed head on against the sides of a fifty-meter-long red snake which was eating the corpse of a lizard looking magic beast.

    "Hsssssss!", an angered hiss came from the snake as its lower half was brutally pushed sidewards due to the impact, not only that but a fraction of a second before the sh, Rita dispelled her mana and then blood, flesh and bones spread on the side of that red snake as well as the lizard that it was eating.

    "Hsssss!", as if a bucket of moltenva and bait was thrown over the nearby snakes, their eyes became bloodshot as they started quarreling among themselves, at first it was just angry noises and aggressive stances, but then a bite happened and with that a full fight broke out.

    Seeing the snakes that were previously somewhat tolerating the presence of each other not too long ago, suddenly be aggressive and agitated Daimon confirmed his previous theory, that those unstable snakes were the enemies of the others, the baby snakes back at the canyon didn''t notice the presence of that snake because they were too afraid of Daimon to care.

    ''Those two areing Daimon'', with Rita''s announcement, Daimon smirked as he used blink in the direction the entrance of that underground river, from the sides he saw two humanoid figures flying at a slow speed from that mountain which was carved to look like a castle of some kind.

    ''Heh, now that''s interesting'', thought Daimon as he rushed towards the entrance of the underground river, his first objective was to reunite with Thea, everything else woulde after that.

 Chapter 566: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 2)

    As Thea affirmed, the two middle stage Ster ranks that were stationed here, didn''t show any sign being able to feel Daimon, considering their carefree attitude as they strode through the air towards the area where themotion between the magic beasts was still ongoing.

    After stealing some nces to take mental note of a couple of doubts for Thea, Daimon arrived at the entrance of that underground river mentioned by Rita, which was basically a circr hole on the ground made as a rudimentary well.

    ''There are rms and detection type arrays ced all over the tunnel that leads to the underground river, but they are unlike anything I had seen, the water itself has been engraved somehow so even if you can move through space without being detected, anything that touches this water will be analyzed''.

    ''Your clothes will prevent you to be detected, but the clothes themselves will be noticed instead, also I can feel some sort of connection between this well and something at north, as if it is sending information to that direction all the time, it''s an array specially developed to prevent anything froming out of this well without being detected''.

    ''My perfect detection range goes up to three thousand kilometers and I couldn''t detect the anomalies of this well until we reached the proximity of this area'', mumbled Rita with a self-disappointed voice.

    She took pride on her detection skills, especially on the fact that Daimon relied on them, so she was boiling in anger towards the one who implemented this array that managed to almost bypass her senses.

    Daimon wasn''t surprised about the strange security measures deployed in the well, it was the sole water body in quite a big area, in a desertic environment which was obviously not natural, so of course it was perfectly controlled by whoever ruled this ce.

    ''It''s not your fault, this was done by someone who could even distinct people like me from others, the fact that you noticed before we fell into the trap is already a big victory for me,ter you can ask for a reward but for now, how much of the water is affected, can you outrun it with your spatial movement skill?'', asked Daimon, which made the undead head maid''s eyes sparkle like stars, only for her to shake her head a secondter.

    ''No, as of current I can at most cover a thousand kilometers at the time, but even I can''tpletely avoid detection in that distance from the main node of the array, I''m sure that at two thousand kilometers downwards, I''ll be able to ignore this array even if I am still within its range, sorry¡­'', she said to then add.

    ''How about I do it, it doesn''t matter if they learn about me, the important part is that they don''t know about Daimon, besides even if I can''t bypass the detection, at least I can prevent the array from immediately sending information to that ce at north, by the time they realize I was here, we would be long gone''.

    Daimon slightly smiled, even if Rita couldn''t find a perfect solution like she normally always does, she did have a pretty decent answer to their predicament, it involved exposing herself on his stead though.

    ''No, need for that, if the water is what I need to be wary off, then I just need the water to detect "nothing", besides the portal to this ce was preventing anyone past the Lord realms from entering, so you are one of my bigger trump cards'', said Daimon to the undead head maid.

    Ignoring Rita who was smiling from ear to ear, Daimon closed his right hand to then open it producing a small drop of ck inked water which floated above it.

    With a gesture from Daimon, the floating drop of ck water went ahead, the moment it posed above the well, the water in ten meters around it was pushed away, as Daimon expected it worked like a charm.

    That drop of ck water was indeed created through his mana, but there was no leaking as it was fully contained within it, the effect of pushing the water was not a spell but an effect of it, so the water was indeed touching nothing.

    And with that Daimon simply jumped into the well, the drop of ck water was stuck to his body and its ability to push water aside allowed him to dive into the well as if he was in free fall.

    Compared to his previous travel, this one took more time as he had to cover two thousand kilometers to leave the area of influence in which Thea couldn''t ignore the detection arrays of the ind.

    Surprisingly even after covering more than two thirds of such arge distance, he was still within a tunnel and hadn''t reached open sea, on the other hand that was good since due to the reduced space, it was practically impossible for him to encounter a magic beast, also the tunnel was perfectly illuminated due to some blue crystals embedded on the walls.

    ''Those are too ordered to be naturally formed, why would they be so wary of the water when the magic beasts where ind, right Rita?'', asked Daimon.

    ''Mm, there were no magic beasts on the ocean near the border of the ind, and all the magic beasts I detected werend type ones'', confirmed the undead head maid.

    ''Perhaps it has something to do with Thea'', wondered Daimon, in any case he had nothing to do for the time being, so he focused on recovering the mana he was using to maintain the ck drop of "Royal Water".

    Luckily unlike other Star and Lord ranks, Daimon could recover while moving, since his magic core was simr in strength as the one of an Arch rank, so he didn''t have to focus on gathering mana as it would naturally flow towards him, but he could speed up the process if he focused on it which is what he was doing.

    ¡­

    After an hour of deepening into the tunnel, Rita''s voice returned Daimon to the real world.

    ''We are out of the strongest influence area of the array, they won''t be able to detect us now, even if we touch the water'', she happily said as she created a dome sphere with her mana to iste their presence from the outside world.

    Why did she do that if the water couldn''t touch Daimon thanks to the drop of Royal Water that was floating near his waist, the answer is simple, Thea told him that he had to touch the water so she could find him and while he didn''t understand how it would work, he believed in her.

    ''I''m about to enter in contact with water, be sure to transport within twenty meters around my exact position, since I''m inside a tunnel below the ind where I appeared'', was the message he sent Thea right now.

    Daimon extended his hand and his index finger which was covered by thin undetectableyer of Rita''s shadow mana, unlike his royal water which physically pushed the water aside to prevent the array in it to sense him, Rita''s mana instead hid his presence so even if it touched him, it wouldn''t cause any problem.

    And so, the very instant Daimon''s index finger went out of the area of influence of the royal water to enter in contact with the water, the air in front of Daimon trembled before a two-meter sized portal from which a known figure, appeared.

    "Daimon!", Thea''s happy voice reached Daimon''s ears, unfortunately as happy as the empress was to see him, she immediately changed her happy smiling expression to a wary one as she pointed at the portal.

    "We can catch upter, for now we''ll better leave¡­", Thea''s hurried words were stopped by Daimon raising his hand to interrupt her.

    "Don''t worry, we are inside an istion barrier created by Rita, even if their array is still on effect, we won''t be detected, after all even you didn''t notice it", calmly exined Daimon.

    ''Rita, ah right the woman with a strange presence that lives in his shadow, right?'', asked Thea to herself as she stole a gaze at Daimon''s shadow from which a sharp pair of eyes that gazed back at her could be seen.

    "I thought you had used an improved version of that spatial movement skill of yours to appear here, but it seems like you got a better idea", mumbled Thea, she also felt interested about the ck inked drop of water from which she felt a strange sensation of closeness.

    "So, what is going on with this ce, the dimensional tunnel that brought me her was awfully simr to the space rift at the basement of your castle, even the "pure"her inside of it was the same, it was just way less erratic", said Daimon which made the empresse out of her daze.

    While she was full of doubts herself, she knew they could be left forter, the most important thing right now was to inform Daimon of the current situation, her eyes shone for a second as she spoke.

    "It makes sense that there washer in the dimensional tunnel that led to this ce¡­".

    For the next twenty minutes, Thea proceeded to exin Daimon how she ended here and everything regarding her current situation.

    Turns out that the spatial rift at the basement of her castle, which until not too long ago she thought was just a rift on the fabric of Neptune''s space, was actually an iplete special portal of some kind.

    The remaining ck pages of the diary left behind by her ancestor, which Daimon ripped off from the diary as the thing tried to force Thea to do something against her will, had information about it on them.

    The space rift was a natural portal that existed even before Thea''s ancestor arrival, yes, but it was her the one that found it and also learned of a way to use it, probably it had something to do with the fact that Thalia''s race had space affinity so she had techniques rted to it, that surpassed anything known in Neptune or the four gxies.

    Basically, she somehow mapped the void inside the portal in a try to find a way back to her ce of origin from which she was dragged by the Hydra guy, but she realized that her time would run out before she could make a real advance, so instead she looked for a ce that would fulfill other purposes.

    And she found it, an isted smalloid with an environment that could sustain life which after existing for a long time within the void, has been permeated with space mana, resulting in a paradise for those with space affinity.

    After that, she sent her petrified body from which her conscience had separated to extend her life and some magic beasts that werepletely under her control in secret, to develop in this istednd.

    Of course she didn''te here to die in istion, unlike what she said in the pages of her diary, the abundant space mana in the atmosphere somehow extended her lifespan, and the magic beasts which she brought weren''tpany.

    She brought a variety of different snake and other reptile magic beasts and fed them with her mana and even some of the petrified scales that fell off of her deteriorated body, for what reason you might wonder, well, she wanted to create a new body for herself and after some time she managed to create a body that could amodate her existence.

    From that point onwards she focused on three different things, to create a proper civilization and to perfectionate the race of the body in which she was living in a try to recover her original lineage andst but not least to find a way back to her home.

    Along the way a problem surged, she had absorbed the darkness affinity head of the Hydra guy to use it as fuel for her own body, unlike Ryner, who integrated that darkness lineage into his body, Thalia used it solely as nutrients to keep her decadent body alive for more time as she needed it to create a new race that could work as a temporary host.

    Long story short, at some point the fragment of existence from the Hydra guy which was attached to that darkness lineage, possessed one of the many snakes that were created through the years and secretly spread its influence until it had controlled enough races to start a revolt.

    As to why the woman who had managed to discern system users from other people, couldn''t detect it, the remnant of the Hydra guy wasn''t a system user, but a mix between the personality of the Hydra guy and the original magic beast which he devoured to obtain that darkness affinity, so he didn''t have his memories and was apletely new existence that came to life.

    Unfortunately, he did keep the resent that the Hydra guy felt towards the woman that badly hurt him and the magic beast part also hated her, because it was treated as nutrients by Thalia so war was inevitable and that''s how we arrive at the current situation, how does she know all that if it wasn''t written on the pages as of course those things happened way after she had left Neptune, she told Thea about it in person.

    "They have been fighting between themselves for more than a thousand years at this point, the canyon in which you appeared is a hatching ground created by Thalia to replenish her army as for that aggressive and unstable snake, it was a "spy" created by Travis to destroy them", said Thea to then add.

    "I used the coordinates left behind in the ck pages to arrive at this ce, since the legacy left behind by her was supposedly here, of course I kept my guard up and it also helped that appeared in the middle of one of their main battlefields, where those two were actually fighting against each other and it was then she told me all that".

    "Let me guess, she wanted to take over your body", casually said Daimon which made Thea softly snort, not at him but at the situation back then.

    "Not exactly, she wanted to extract my Void Devouring Python lineage from me as in her words, that would be enough for her to create a perfect copy of her original body, naturally she tried to convince me that it wouldn''t kill me and that she would be able to restore my lineage over time, she even promised to teach me the secrets of the Neris family such a legacy spells and knowledge about the space if I helped her, but¡­", Thea stopped talking for a moment while she stole a gaze at her spear before saying.

    "I always wondered howe my mother had such a strong lineage but at the same time had a frail body, it was because before leaving she gave a significant amount of blood to a weak snake race that she was sure couldn''t assimte it".

    "Unfortunately for her, Ryner was smarter than what she believed, he knew about it and thanks to the darkness lineage of the Hydra guy, he wasn''tpletely enved to her, so he passed the message orally to the next patriarch and so on, my father knew about it but didn''t pass it on to nder because it ended with my mother¡­".

    "That snake ended up filtering and passing on that blood until my mother appeared, she was able to endure the pressure to a certain extent so she attained a human form and ended up marrying my dad, then both lineages converged in me, so she secretly despised me and didn''t want to see the "monstrosity" created due to the mix of the two lineages, her n was using me but even dead, Ryner got back at her, the moment she approached me my spear automatically attacked her and a message left behind by him was sent to my mind".

    "He engraved an array inside his own bones to protect his descendants from Thalia just in case, to then leave them behind with the instruction for them to be used as parts of the magic weapons used exclusively by the leaders of the Ryner n", she said.

    Daimon couldn''t help but look at Thea''s spear with respect, Ryner found a way to protect his offspring against someone that managed to fend off against a system user, hundreds of thousands of years after his death, it was worthy of admiration.

    "I guess you had to escape after that but why did you hide in the ocean?", asked Daimon, which made the empress proudly smile.

    "Yeah, one wanted to kill me and use my lineage for her benefit and the other wanted to kill me to prevent that, so after defending against their attacks to prevent being surrounded by their armies I fled to the ocean",

    "Thalia''s army excel on flyingbat and her closest officials have the ability to move through space, though they are trash for me, for her enemies who can''t keep up they are a nightmare, her fortress is a floating castle".

    "Travis''s army on the other hand are adept in fighting on thend, while his army is nearly half that of Thalia''s which is understandable considering he has been active for less time than her, the races that follow him are extremely aggressive, they can take on two enemies on the same rank without any problem, his base is on the only piece ofnd big enough to be considered a continent in thisoid".

    "As to why they don''t control the sea, that''s because even before Thalia arrived, there was life in this ce, and just like it''s theorized to have happened in a lot ofs, they originated on the sea and due to the unnatural increase of "danger" ind they remained on the ocean instead".

    "So, this isn''t a two-way war but a three way one, two invaders who ruled over thend and the skies andstly the natives who ruled the seas", she said.

    "Oh?", Daimon expressed his interest on Thea''s words with a low sound, that exined why there was such aplicated and massive detection array deployed around the only water source that he could find ind and also why the environment of the ind was changed to a desert instead of a tropical paradise as it should have been.

    A humid environment would naturally gather and produce a rich water mana that would empower the natives, so it was forcefully changed.

    "Luckily I was able to have a decent conversation with them, I have a sea magic beast''s lineage in the form of Ryner n''s blood in me after all so they were able to trust me, it also helped that their scouts saw me being attacked by both, Thalia and Travis", said Thea as she cutely stretched her arms, to then add.

    "It''s thanks to the deal I made with them that I can move through space without being detected as long as I am inside a water body, the range of my special movement practically doubled as well~".

    "I see, I guess that''s why this portal looked different than the ones I have seen you using before and also why it looked slightly familiar to the one used by that old ck armored shark mermen", said Daimon referring to Galen, the portals used by him used a mix of water and space mana and so did the one from which Thea appeared.

    Of course, there was a huge difference in quality, which meant that the natives of thisoid weren''t rted to the ck Prison Megalodon, they just used the ocean as a way to enhance their portals and Thea was allowed to connect her portals to their dimensional tunnels, that was it.

    "Okay, since it will be my first time seeing those "natives" who are our allies in this ce, let''s bring a present for them", said Daimon as he gazed upwards.

    "Mm, I agree, things will be way easier with that, sentient guards from that crazy woman are really hard to take hostage, the arrays disyed on the near body waters of the outposts where they are deployed, sent a distress signal too fast, which prevents them from being taken by surprise, but you seem to have a way to bypass that", said Thea with interest shinning in her eyes.

    ''As I thought, Daimon''s value far surpasses that of a whole army, not to mention the drinks created with his tri-colored water are amazing, and he is one of my generals~'', happily thought the empress.

 Chapter 567: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 3)

    Luckily the situation was really dire, Daimon was nning to return to the surface of the ind as soon as he got an overall exnation of the situation from Thea, so he left a couple of markers behind to use "Switch".

    With a small smirk, Daimon''s sclerae turned dark making his already unique purple amethyst eyes gain a mysterious charm, he could also feel the undead head maid''s happy mood as he was borrowing her sight and senses to a certain extent.

    Having ess to Rita''s extraordinary sensory range and sight doesn''t mean he can use it at the same level as the undead head maid, for example Rita''s perfect detection range is of a whooping three thousand kilometers, within that distance it is nearly impossible for something to escape her scope, as long as the target isn''t more than one major realm above her.

    Which meant that the formation engraved in the water by Thalia even if barely, had still surpassed the Ster realm, but even then, when she got closer, she was able to see through it.

    Daimon''s mana sense in Core Synchrony state has a one thousand detection range, inparison when he borrows Rita''s sight that number is doubled and theyer of the spectrum which Daimon has decided to call the "Shadow World" is added to the infinity eyes.

    Thanks to that Daimon can now see the strange vast space that exists within in his shadow, instead of only seeing Rita and her nearby surroundings within a lightless void.

    Anyway, thanks to that he doesn''t need to enter Core Synchrony to fully take advantage of Switch, since the maximum distance he can travel with it, is linked to his mana sense, since it''s not teleportation unlike Blink but a fixed position exchange, which requires him to be able to feel the markers for it to activate.

    Knowing what wille next, Thea happily ced her hand on Daimon''s shoulder and they both disappeared from the water filled tunnel, reced by a small stone which was covered in Rita''s mana to prevent the array from detecting it.

    Back at the surface behind arge rock a random pebble on the ground disappeared and in exchange Daimon and Thea appeared.

    The empress''s eyes sparkled, marveled at Daimon''s wless usage of space but she returned to the real world a secondter upon seeing the ruckus that was ongoing a few kilometers away.

    Unlike Rita whose mana sense could escape the detection arrays, meaning that during all the time she has been looking at the situation unfold to then inform Daimon about it, Thea was unaware of what was happening, so imagine her surprise when she saw an open bloody conflict between one of the armies of snakes and lizards that have caused her quite a few headaches but who now were indiscriminately biting each other in frenzy.

    "As I thought, these peak Arch rank reptile magic beasts seem to be rather primitive, normally even those with the poorest lineages who are unable to speak should be intelligent enough to equal a human teen and yet they don''t seem weak nor iplete", said Daimon, Rita had created a barrier to iste them so they were free to watch the show and talk in the meantime.

    "Mm, I also thought it was weird before, back at the Maelstrom Sea even those who aren''t born with human form like me, or are incapable ofmunication since their early years unlike talented fellows like nder, Karmandi or Lina, can rely on instincts to rival intelligence, so let alone Arch rank, when they be Lord ranks, they should be able to give and receive instructions like a child, but those guys aren''t like that, they are basically dogs on a leash at the service of that woman", said the empress to then add.

    "The natives of this ce told me that it was caused by Thalia, after Travis broke from her rule, she ced some restrictions on the species under her rule, so that she can decide whether they are able to develop intelligence or not, but ites with a price".

    "First of all, it''s a one-time thing, after she gives them permission, she can''t revoke it and yet she still has to do so because otherwise her subordinates can''t advance to the Ster realm nor gain human form, but in exchange the "guardians" in other words those Ster ranks we are seeing are under a strict ve contract".

    "I see¡­", mumbled Daimon as he nned their next movements, so far, besides his own terror contracts, none other ving contract is absolute, when the master gives an order that cuts off the possibilities of survival of the ve below a certain threshold, there is a chance for the ve to break off the contract, which is why the owner can''t directly order a ve to die, but can still kill it one way or another.

    "ording to Rita those two have been arguing since earlier, once things get too heated, we''ll step in, to make it as clean as possible the weaker one has to die and we''ll capture the other", he said.

    "Mm", with a soft sound and a small nod, the empress''s bright amber eyes posed on the two guardians at the distance as she sharpened her sight and earing to wait for Daimon''s signal.

    ¡­

    A few kilometers away from Daimon and Thea, there were two floating figures facing each other, they both looked at the ruckus below of them where the snakes and lizards were biting and threatening each other before exchanging gazes.

    "Orm, stop your damn subordinates and take them to the punishment pit!", eximed one of the two figures, a slender woman with brown hair and blue eyes that seemed to be in herte twenties, she wore a light brown skirt with a white blouse adorned by light silver armor, she was a mage.

    "Humph, don''t think that just because you got some achievements you can give me orders Zia, in case you forgot I''m your superior, leave behind that snake that caused this fight and ten Arch rank units aspensation and then return to your duties", casually answered the other figure, a tall bulky man with short gray hair and brown eyes, wearing a muchplete and heavy armor, he was clearly a knight.

    The girl gritted her teeth, the other part was indeed stronger being a peak middle stage Ster rank, while she was a recently advanced middle stage one, she was appointed to guard the sole water source near the hatching nest, because she had performed perfectly during a battle that broke lose with the dark berserker n, which Thalia happened to be watching from afar, so she was despised by the other guardians with simr authority.

    "My subordinate didn''t start the fight, that lizard from your side which was being eaten after being hunted by it, had swallowed something strange, the smell from was it was strangely simr "their" blood", threatening said Zia.

    "Y-You what the hell do you mean with that!", yelled Orm with a slightly pale face, their queen has strictly forbidden anyone under her rule to consume blood and flesh of the dark berserker n as that would allow the enemy''s leader to influence them, anyone who broke this rule will be executed without a trial and their direct superior will be severely punished as well, since it happened under their watch.

    ''Damn this bitch, I''m stronger so why is she not obeying me, she wants my position for sure, no I can''t let her get away with this, who knows if she was the one that set this up!'', Orm''s thoughts became erratic for a second before he reached a conclusion, he took a deep breath and then calmly said.

    "Fine if that was the case then indeed my subordinate''s fault, all of you stop and go to the punishment pit", while the lizards were clearly unhappy about it, red nes appeared on their necks and they had no option but to obey and leave, once all of them were gone Orm turned to see Zia.

    "There you go, now I need an assurance that this little incident will be written off from the report, so let me see it and we''ll be done here", he said.

    Zia inwardly sighed, she finally got one over the bastard that constantly ordered her around, the report Orm referred to was the a daily inform they had to deliver to the royal city, ever since this outpost was created, she had to take care of it, it was too much of a hassle for Orm, so she was forced to do it herself.

    "Fine, it needs both of our signatures anyway, so take a look", she said as she approached Orm to hand him a crystal orb of some kind, but then a sensation of dread weighted on her chest, her pupils shrank like needles as she dashed towards the ground, dodging by the skin of her teeth a ming fist which was then shot on the original direction where she was floating.

    "Booom!", the giant ming punch impacted the ground, immediately obliterating all the snakes which were Zia''s subordinates into burning pieces of meat and bones, Zia was in shock for a second before she released her mana pressure as she ascended to be floating afar from Orm.

    "What is the meaning of this!", she screamed, her subordinates being killed isn''t what angered her right now, but the fact that the attack was aimed at her originally, if that martial art hit her directly with her guard down, she would have died!

    "Tsk annoying as ever, you can''t even go die correctly, whatever I guess that signs of a battle between Ster ranks would make it easier to prove that we were "ambushed" by our enemies and that our subordinates were all killed", as his words ended another explosion came from afar.

    "Booom!", Zia looked at the direction from which the explosion came, that was the punishment pit, in other words each and every one of Orm''s subordinates was also dead now, silenced forever.

    "You fear the punishment that much that you would rather kill all the witnesses, are you out of your mind!", eximed Zia only be rendered speechless by Orm''s answer.

    "Ha, what are you talking about, I''m simply tired of your crap, how dares a weakling like you disobey me", poisonously said Orm, his eyes were bloodshot at this point, which made Zia understand that there was something wrong with him.

    The Orm she knows and already hates, is indeed arrogant and haughty, but he wasn''t crazy nor her was fearless, otherwise he would have forced her to serve him like he has done to other weaker female guardians, who weren''t strong and smart enough to stand up to him by using the queen''s name as a protection charm, since she was recognized by Thalia she just confidently mentioned it every time he tried to order her around and it made Orm give up any ideas about her, but now he was like apletely different person.

    "The others will arrive soon, so let''s end it soon!", with those words, Orm''s clothes expanded and started to shred as he attempted to change to beast form, one must know that magic beasts who had taken human form can''t casually change between states like nothing, the transformation drains a lot of stamina and mana or battle aura respectively so it is usually reserved as a trump card to be used when there are no other options left.

    Fortunately, or not, before Orm couldplete his transformation which might taken long to describe but would have been finished in less than a second before Zia could cast a spell strong enough to damage him, like a specter a ck spear pierced the back of Orm''s head and came out of his forehead, making his body freeze.

    Naturally a Ster rank knight didn''t die just by having its brain stabbed, so Orm managed to look backwards before the spear ripped through his body splitting it in half, at the same time just when Zia had started to fly away with all her might, giant ck chains came out of nowhere and restrained her.

    "Ahhh!", with a loud shout her mana exploded in all directions making the chains tremble and crack, unfortunately that gave enough time to the owner of the spear that just casually killed a middle stage Ster ranked knight, in other words to Thea the chance to arrive at her position relying just on flying speed and catch her by her neck.

    Zia''s vision blurred a bit as she felt the vice-like grip around her neck, fear filled her mind, she a middle stage Ster rank waspletely unable to react before she was captured, when even earlier when Orm tried to surprise her was unable to, not to mention she saw someone killing thetter like it was nothing, the number of existences in this that could do something like that could be counted with the fingers of a hand and only death awaited her if she crossed paths with any of them.

    Still, while she was frankly thinking on a way to survive, she knew she had not much to offer thanks to the contract she had signed with Thalia, she was not to reveal anything and if she fell on the hands of an enemy for more than 24 hours she will be forced to try and escape through all means possible, which would result on her death, it was then when a calm voice reached her ears.

    "Originally, the one that should have lied there in pieces would be the weaker one between you two, either by the previous confrontation or us, but luckily you are better informed than him, right?".

    Zia''s eyes moved trying to find out from where was the voiceing, she was sure it wasn''t the same person that was holding her neck, because the hand was soft and thin clearly belonging to a woman, while the voice was that of a young man, still she limited to nod with her eyes as she was unable to let alone speak, even gather any strength for some reason she couldn''t understand.

    Which was actually quite easy, fear, the fear that Thea caused herbined with Overlord''s Pride aura was enough to render her defenseless as a kitten.

    "Very well, surrender or die you have five seconds", the following words made Zia''s mind tremble, she didn''t know what the voice was talking about, until she felt some kind of decision appearing in her mind, well it was a decision in a figurative way as there was just a possible answer for her which was "Yes" and with that the sweet sound of a notification rang in Daimon''s ears.

    [Ding]

    [Amber Asper Snake Guardian "Zia" has offered her loyalty, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    With a single thought Daimon epted and a ck bone ethereal cor formed around Zia''s neck, signaling the sess of the terror contract.

    "It''s done, let''s leave now", said Daimon, Thea''s hand let go of Zia''s neck and the next thing the poor snake guardian knew was that she was now floating surrounded by a tunnel filled with water, on their stead the same stone that was used before was exchanged for them through switch, the thing wasn''t even wet thanks to Rita''s mana, it was just another pebble in this rocky wastnd environment.

    Fortunately for her, she had no ill intentions towards her captors for a couple of simple reasons, first and formal in a direct confrontation with so small distance between her and Orm, in the best-case scenario she would be able to escape with important wounds which would for sure be used by Orm to dere her a deserter to hunt her down and kill her, or she would die in the fight, both paths lead to death whether at the present or in the nearby future so her capturers were also her saviors, if they wanted her death there was not much she could do about it anyway.

    Second and probably more important than first, the moment that strange ne formed around her neck, she felt the connection between her and the queen beingpletely severed to be reced by respect towards a person the silver haired masked youth that was standing not too far from her.

    ''How strange, I don''t feel the dread I felt when I was in presence of the quee¡­ that despicable woman but respect as if I was in the presence of the noblest being'', she thought, oblivious to her, there was an integral change happening within her body and mind.

    The terror contract had two possible oues, ording to what Daimon has learned about it, one was a terrified extremely subservient ve without any possibility of betrayal which is the mostmon oue and then there is the much smoother loyal follower attitude which Rita and Horals had exhibited, the reasons that caused the second result were unknown to Daimon as of current as well, especially since none other of the terror contracted had be like that, until now.

    ''Mm?'', from within Daimon''s shadow, Rita frowned, she felt a simr aura to hers and for a second thought that the bone general had somehow arrived to this ce, which infuriated her as he hasn''t contacted Daimon since a long time ago, which is an insult to their young master in her eyes, but then she realized Horals wasn''t here and the familiar aura wasing from the woman who had just been captured by Daimon.

    Leaving aside the undead head maid, Daimon raised an eyebrow at the calm behavior that Zia was disying, normally the terror contracted all do the same thing first, try to escape just to be reprimanded by the ck bone ne, the terror contract though allowing absolute control simr to the rtionship between artificial undead and their owner, doesn''t turn them into mindless puppets, which also makes the recently contracted think they can escape just to be hit by reality a secondter, as they are now unable to even harbor any ill intention towards Daimon and if they purposely try to even think in that direction a punishment will follow through.

    In other words, if they truly submitted without hidden thoughts, there wouldn''t be any threat or negative aspect about it, but who can assure they would be fine with obeying others, when one of the most basic instincts of living beings is seeking superiority above others.

    "After such arge discharge of battle aura by Orm, the other guardians stationed woulde to investigate, we aren''t allowed to use any form ofmunication directly with others without going through the headquarters at the royal city, I would suggest we leave before they arrive as the first ce, they would look at would be the well", said Zia.

    Daimon nodded at Thea who was still wary of Zia, she trusted Daimon but it was hard to ept that he could force a middle stage Ster intoplete submission in a matter of seconds, when even she would have to use a few hours to contract one, she has seen Daimon forcing the Nethereals into submission but the key point is that they had to suffer a lot before it worked and Zia didn''t, so her wariness was justified.

    With a wave of her hand, the empress opened a portal, they had appeared at a distance where Rita could prevent the array from detecting them, so they jumped into the portal and cleanly left the vicinity of the ind on the pot.

    Inside of the dimensional tunnel which just as Daimon expected was filled with a mix of space and water mana, Zia looked at the two of them before she approached Daimon, while keeping a respectful stance she proceeded to ask.

    "May I know how to refer to you?", her strange way of speaking reminded Daimon of how Rita spoke with him before, speaking of the undead head maid, Daimon talked to her on the spot.

    ''Rita, is there something wrong with her?'', he asked.

    ''She feels like that bonehead¡­ or me, I can''t pinpoint why but I somehow know it'', mumbled Rita, there was bittersweet sensation filling her chest, on one side she was happy that Daimon had possibly gained a talented follower on the other hand she didn''t want a female follower threaten her position.

    Leaving Rita''s inner turmoil, Daimon''s interest in Zia increased, up to this day he had no clue on why Rita and Horals were different to the other terror contracted, the only theory he had was that it was because they were undead who probably had something special about them, as when he tried to replicate the result with other undead it didn''t seed, but now there seemed to be a third sess and it was a normal living being on top, so he might be able to learn something new and even be able to level up his Terror Contractor skill!

    "Ahem, you can call me D¡­ young master for the time being, she is my friend Thea and you must show her the same respect you have for me", said Daimon, for a second, he was going to tell Zia to call him by his name since he doesn''t really care much about formalities, but he could feel Rita''s gaze on him from within his shadow.

    Informal speech with him was a reward that the undead head maid had earned, so it wouldn''t be fair for Rita to give Zia such treatment without having contributed at all, Rita and Horals were on a different levelpared to the other terror contracted, Daimon considered them his trusted aides and friends, so there was a natural order to follow.

    ''She isn''t a knight so I hope she doesn''t follow up Horals''s steps and ask for normal speech right like Rita soon'', thought Daimon, he came out of his daze as he saw the exit of the dimensional tunnel appearing in front of them.

    Now that Zia''s loyalty was secured, he could obtain information from her without any problem, so that could be put in hold for the time being, meeting the natives of this who would y a major role in Thea''s challenge was more important now.

    As soon as they left the portal, Daimon found himself a few hundreds of meters away from an underwater dome which was covering arge city, well he was in front of "nothing" actually, he was only able to see the dome because of the infinity eyes and the fact that he was still in Core Synchrony state, or that''s what he originally thought unaware of the fact that a pair of yellow lines forming a "+" sign shed on his pupils for a second.

    "You can see it too, right~", said Thea, ording to the natives only those with highly pure and strong sea magic beast lineages, were able to see through the camouge of their underwater cities, without having been given authority tokens, Thea could and she was sure Daimon could as well, so she was happy to confirm her theory.

    But then her happy moment was interrupted by a plethora of strong auras that enclosed onto them from all directions, Daimon stole a gaze at Thea who was calm so he remained quiet, despite the fact that there were being surrounded by around twenty middle stage Ster ranks, not to mention he could feel the lingering aura of a slightly stronger one hiding in the shadows.

    Since Thea didn''t stop advancing towards the Daimon, neither did Daimon, until one of the many approaching figures shouted.

    "Halt, we are the border patrol of the Meliun kingdom under the direct supervision of his excellence Duke Nascenti, identify yourselves and be prepared for interrogation".

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, not only at the unique appearance of the figures that approached them but at their clearly unweing attitude, but before he could say anything, Thea''s pressure spread like a tsunami forcing each and every one of the ones that approached them to bow at almost 90¡ã.

    "I had already discussed this with the royal family and got an authority token of the highest grade, so what''s the meaning of this?", demanded the empress with a cold voice.

 Chapter 568: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 4)

    Under Thea''s pressure and cold re, the around twenty middle stage Ster ranked guards, couldn''t let alone resist but even talk, despite being underwater it was clear they were sweating maybe because their sweat had a different density than regr water making it visible, as they inwardly cursed.

    ''Damn, how can we even answer under this horrifying pressure!'', they screamed in their hearts.

    Daimon slightly smirked as he observed the current situation, those were all entry level middle stage Ster ranks, even of there were more than a dozen of them joining hands, they would be unable toy a single finger on Thea whose battle prowess can rival high stage Ster ranks.

    That being said, he was intrigued by how easily she was suppressing them, one thing was Thea intimidating enemies with a simple nce, something she can do thanks to the wild aura she has developed after winning so many battles through her life, it''s the kind of oppression that a civilian would feel in front of an experienced warrior.

    But the previous wouldn''t cause such a reaction, one thing is intimidating and apletely different case is paralyzing the enemy like she did, thetter might be achieved with mana pressure when the difference in realms is quiterge, or with special means like Daimon''s Overlord''s Pride or through bloodline suppression like Agrak.

    Sure, just by being from a higher ranked race would be enough to instill fear on others, Daimon can do that, but just relying on that it wouldn''t be possible to get a paralyzing result.

    One would be inclined to believe that it is bloodline suppression, but Thea''s race isn''t rted to these natives, otherwise Thalia would have conquered them a long time ago, anyway this mystery could be left forter, Daimon saw the water on a spot behind the group of guards, blur and then a neer appeared.

    This neer was like the other guards, he had mostly human appearance, looking like a middle age brown haired man in histe thirties and radiating the pressure of an entry level high stage Ster rank, the major difference between a human and him is the fact that he had pointy ears and blue scale patches here and there, some on his arms, some on his legs and even some on his face.

    "Please quell your anger young miss, his excellency the Duke ordered the border patrol to prevent you from entering if you brought anyone besides the "irreceable" ally that you mentioned to us¡­ as I sign of honesty I came out unarmed, so please release your pressure", said the man with a sigh.

    ''We the guardians of the border being forced to offend an esteemed guest of her highness the royal princess over some petty grudges'', he thought.

    "And why would I do that Karaam, based on this wee prepared for me, I''m seriously temped to sever any ties with your kingdom and leave you all to your luck, after all if I remember correctly, it was your kingdom the one who asked for my help not the other way around".

    The captain of the border patrol Karaam had a difficult expression on his face as he answered with an honest voice.

    "Don''t take it to heart, the Duke didn''t break any rules either, bringing outsiders inside the royal city is a sketchy matter, let me apologize on his stead and personally escort your group to the residence of her highness", he said.

    Thea turned to see Daimon who nodded at her, the captain of the border guards was being honest, that being said, Daimon casually added.

    "If I see the slightest sign of this being a trap, we''ll ughter everyone in this city, starting with these guards", he said as he pointed at the group of guards.

    Let alone the guards who were sweating bullets still being restrained by Thea''s aura, Karaam himself inhaled a breath of cold air, in his experience when someone from the young generation speaks such words, there is a lot of boasting and bluffing on it, but that silver haired masked youth had no such things in his words, so either he was a really good liar or¡­ he was used to it, either way it made the captain wish not to meddle with the silver haired youth more than necessary.

    "I understand, please follow me", said the captain of the border guards as he guided Daimon and the others towards the gate of the city, the gatekeepers were also his subordinates so ignoring all the control protocols they passed through the gates, which for Zia only became visible after she was at the other side, for her this they entered an underwater cave.

    But once inside, a giant city covered by an invisible dome was revealed, surprisingly inside the city there was no water, which made Daimon wonder what was the race of these natives, they lived underwater and yet their royal city had air to breath.

    Sensing Daimon''s curiosity, Thea smiled as she exined.

    "ording to what I know, only those with the blood of the royal family can breathe underwater, it''s not just this city, the other ones are the same with the exception of certain ces, that detection array engraved in water we found earlier is also used here for restricted areas".

    Daimon nodded, while Karaam inwardly sighed at the fact that an outsider like Thea knew such secrets that only a few high ranked officers and the royal family knew about.

    After that, they remained silent the rest of the travel, Daimon was unfazed by the royal city, despite its interesting sight as they were epassed by ocean his mind was focused on deciphering what were Thea''s requirements toplete her challenge, he knew that Thea was rted to the "legacy" left behind for Marcus, but her process was unlike the other girls who were rted to a legacy or hidden gem, since she partially progressed instead of being either a 0 or a 1.

    ''It could be that the requirements aren''t focused on a single aspect unlike the others, one aspect is for sure dealing with Thalia, these natives could also be involved since they seem to be easily intimidated by Thea'', thought Daimon, ultimately, he inwardly shook his head, it was to soon to jump into conclusions, perhaps after knowing their host who supposedly belonged to the royal family, he might be able to get some answers.

    "Here we are, please notify the guards and then I will take my leave", said Karaam as the arrived at the entrance of a wall that led to a castle, only for his eyes to widen in surprise when Thea took out the token granted to her, which made the gate automatically open for them, in other words she had the authority to directly enter without even notifying the gatekeepers.

    ''That despicable old snake, if we had caused harm to these people her highness would have sent us to the abyss prison as in the best-case scenario!'', inwardly screamed Karaam as he bowed towards Thea before leaving in a hurry to have a nice chat with his subordinates.

    Daimon didn''t pay that guy too much attention, instead he immediately asked Rita to scan the inside of the castle to prevent any "surprises".

    ''Mm, everything is clear Daimon, they have defensive and offensive arrays but they aren''t specially hidden nor did I detect any traps'', confidently said the undead head maid with a strange tinge of rivalry as she gazed at Zia from within his shadow.

    The new follower was unaware of Rita''s existence, but she felt a gazeing from her new master''s shadow for the second time already, she strangely felt familiar with that gaze, but she couldn''t pinpoint why.

    ''Okay, keep your guard up, if you see anything suspicious you have the authority to act first and askter'', said Daimon, Rita and Horals were extremely sensible when it came to things that would harm him, even more than Daimon himself in some aspects and they knew his general course of action, so he didn''t hesitate to trust his back to them.

    ''Mm~'', with a happy noise, Rita sharply stared at every nook and cranny of the castle from the shadows, analyzing and taking notes that Daimon might have a use for in the future.

    In the meantime, Rita took out her mirror te and sent a message with it as she guided Daimon to the living room of the castle, the ce was strangely empty, itcked the maids and servants one would expect to see in such a ce.

    "It''s normal, given what has been happening in the Meliun kingdom there is really few people who are weed into her home, but she is a trustable ally", said Thea to which Daimon nodded.

    Soon footsteps could be hearding from stairs that led to the second floor of the castle, which was protected with a barrier, unfortunately such a thing was unable to block Rita''s eyes so Daimon already knew how many people where in this castle and had an approximate of their strengths.

    The barrier that protected the second floor opened and a group of three people came out of it, there was a refineddy who seemed to be in her early thirties, she wore an elegant green dress that matched her green eyes and ck hair, also it is worth mentioning that whole she didn''t have scales on her arms or face unlike Karaam, her lower body didn''t end with feet but a gracious green scaled snake-like tail.

    "Wee back miss Thea, it''s great to see that you were able to safely return", said the woman with a polite smile, it is also worth mentioning that her pressure was that of a peak high stake Ster ranked, putting her on par with ckbeard or the now ex minister of defense of the Clear Water kingdom.

    "Thanks queen Mirellia, this is the "ally" I mentioned before, my friend and the newest general of my army, Gabriel", said Thea as she introduced Daimon to the conversation, the gentle looking Mirellia was about to greet Daimon when one of the girls standing at her side, the one at her left to be precise softly sneered.

    "Humph, a mere star ranked knight, big sister Thea had to put her life in danger for such a weakling".

    Her voice wasn''t loud nor it was insulting, but her words were quite harsh, which made the queen sigh, unfortunately before she could apologize, Daimon raised his hand stopping her from doing so.

    "It''s fine, she isn''t angry at me but was instead worried at my friend''s wellbeing, I can respect that¡­ however you should choose your words more carefully little girl", casually said Daimon, the moment the words "little girl" left his mouth, he could see the red in the eyes of the other party.

    The girl at the left of the queen was slender, her height nearing 1.6 meters, still judging by her face and the outfit she was wearing, she was obviously not a child, but had a small frame, in a rough calction she appeared to be a 15 year old girl in her rebel phase and despite not being well endowed like the queen who had a really nice figure, it was obvious that they were rted, as she also had green eyes and ck hair.

    Naomi, the younger princess stared daggers at the masked silver haired youth, but the colorful plethora of insults that she was nning to throw at him stuck in her throat, when she felt a suffocating sensation of dread overwhelming her, it was as if she was thrown in an ice cave all of a sudden, just being red by those icy violet amethyst eyes made her body shiver.

    And she wasn''t the only one, the girl at the right felt her hands shaking against her will, while the queen visibly frowned for a second before saying.

    "Please don''t take my youngest daughter''s words to heart, she is a bit untamed but I''m sure you can see the genuine worry she has for miss Thea, she became her idol since she saved her from an assassination attempt not too long ago", calmly said the queen.

    Daimon gazed at Thea just to see the empress slightly reddish face, she didn''t mention it because it was an embarrassing tale, she is used to deal with subordinates, rough soldiers and old fellows like nder and even a shameless friend like Marlene but having a young girl treating her like a hero of some kind was a first.

    With a soft chuckle, Daimon retracted his murderous intent but didn''t forget to say.

    "Don''t misunderstand that was my aura when not taking her words to heart, anyway now that we have stablished that I''m an ally "worth" of Thea''s support, tell me what is going on here".

    The previous naturally included introducing the girl at the right of the queen, who took it onto herself to speak this time, while the young princess Naomi hid behind her mother while gazing at Thea from time to time.

    "I, the current appointed regent of the Meliun kingdom, the royal princess Ferris Meliun, wee Mr.

    Gabriel in the name of the royal family", said the older princess as she made a proper noble salute, well it would have been perfect if she was wearing a dress or even a skirt to slightly raise the sides of it, instead she wore the clothes of training one would see on a knight, ck thigh-length shorts and a sport top, her long ck hair was tied in a ponytail and her belly was exposed, showcasing her toned abs.

    Daimon felt amused at the fact that the younger princess who looked like a proper noble young girl, was the rebellious one while the wilder looking older princess who was clearly a knight, was the refined one, as for why she was dressed like that, Daimon already knew, the older princess was training when they arrived and had no time to change her clothes so she didn''t care about it.

    "A pleasure, I believe in Thea''s judgement if she says you are trustable, I''m more than open to team with you, but I need to know everything in with that I mean EVERYTHING", said Daimon putting emphasis on thest part while gazing at the queen whose eyes shone with surprise and relief?

    Ferris turned to see her mother who gently nodded at her in response.

    "Okay, let''s start with the basics, this Draim used to be a part of a faraway gxy that suffered a catastrophe, thest surviving people of the strongest races migrated to this and used every resource they had to create a barrier around the ocean, hoping that it would at least give us time to think how to survive the iing catastrophe, the barrier held out but it also isted us for around a hundred years".

    "When our ancestors came out, they realized we weren''t at our gxy, the ended up being dragged into a space rift and since then we have been wandering in the void, unfortunately the older survivors died the moment they set the barrier, so only young and unexperienced people remained".

    "Out of them a representative was chosen from the two races and then we focused on building cities, we choose to stay under the sea since we were originally a race that lived in inds or near shores, having a deep connection with the ocean", Ferris stopped a moment before continuing.

    "Unfortunately, the young survivors had little to no knowledge about our previous gxy, so the records of back then are mostly tales and stories that their parents told them, it was said that the oldest survivors were Naomi''s age, luckily with no other option the two races allied themselves and prospered, until an uninvited guest appeared in our, that tyrant woman who then allowed that murderer man to arrive at Draim".

    "At first we managed to remain hidden from them, but after they fought to a stalemate, they focused on developing their armies and noticed us, which is what brought us to our current predicament, the two races are now facing difference in their opinions about the future".

    "Our Lamia race is matriarchal not out of disparity but because we are a female exclusive race, we have the gift to only need blood to procreate and our descendants are always females, that being said a Lamia can marry and have children¡­ the other way, and with members of the Naga race being the only other intelligent beings in the, over time this became amon urrence, with a single exception the royal family".

    "The Naga race on the other hand has always been strength oriented, originally the one leading them was said to be the best friend of our first leader as well, but with time the rulers changed, and friction started to appear, they did have female and males in their race, but for some reason they find us more appealing to the eye, it is said that we share an ancestor inmon, but unlike us, they are limited to develop only some scale patches when they reach maturity, on the other hand when we reach a certain point we can transform out legs into a snake tail", said Ferris as she pointed at her mother.

    Daimon curiously observed how the queen''s green scaled tail dissolved in green light particles to reveal her gracious legs, she was even wearing high heels, which made it obvious that while the snake tail is a part of her body, the legs were so too, quite an interesting racial trait.

    Some beast races back at the White Fang gxy have both beast and human traits at the same time, for example the Revy and the werewolves, they have fox and wolf ears respectively, but they also have human ears which are most of the time hidden behind their usually long hair, that being said that''s not always the case some are born with them are some aren''t, but most don''t really pay attention to them since their hearing is better with the beast type ones.

    The difference is that those two parts don''t ovep with each other, while the Lamia''s snake lower part does, on the other hand that could be why they aren''t born with it, but obtain it as some kind of temporal boosting type ability, concluded Daimon, the previous because now that the queen was standing on her legs, her realm fell to the middle grade high stage Ster rank, but then he shook his head realizing an important thing, the queen had a though really hard to notice, still existing aura of weaknessing from her body.

    ''It was shadowed and contained by the increase on her realm that her transformation gave her, but she was poisoned and¡­ withher no less'', thought Daimon.

    The queen took the initiative to continue with the story.

    "Ferris mentioned all that because said trait has been a cause of disruption between our two races for quite some time, the Naga believe that mixing our races is the road to a great advance in terms of strength but after many generations what they expected didn''t happen, so they had set their eyes on the sole lineage that has avoided them, ours, their king courted me even before I ascended to the throne but I didn''t respond in kind, so he now set his eyes on my daughters".

    "I suffered a devious wound by a sneak attack during ourst encounter with Thalia and Travis and the Naga king "casually" happened to have a cure for this strange poison that has been afflicting me ever since, of course I rejected it back then I thought it was because I found him unpleasant as a person but then¡­".

    "If his intentions were genuine, I wouldn''t mind exploring the possibility of our families stretching our bonds, so long my daughters are okay with it, then it''s fine for me, traditions aren''t worth a single hair of their heads for me, but while I simply couldn''t pinpoint why, my instincts told me not to trust the Naga king anymore".

    Daimon nodded, now that he had Agrak''s memories about Nethereals, things were much simpler.

    "Well, you were right, you have been poisoned withher, as to which type ofher I don''t know, but I do have a way to cure it, however we''ll have to get rid of that Naga king and anyone involved with his deal".

    "Nether what is that, something that Thalia created and what deal are you referring to, we can never collude with those two, thanks to a collective racial contract that was created by the two first ancestors?", asked the queen with a doubt filled voice.

    Leaving aside the fact that such a contract was of Daimon''s interest, so he will have to further borate into that, he shook his head to then say.

    "That guy isn''t colluding with anyone in this, but some guys that are invading the ce from where Thea and I came, as to how he managed to contact them, the dimensional tunnel that led me to this was filled withher in a strange pure state, so it wouldn''t too farfetched to think the Naga king managed to obtain some only to be affected by it.

    "Nether feeds on strong emotions, usually negative ones, he probably resonated with one of the stronghereals one that would have the strength to reach this ce tomunicate with him", said Daimon.

    The queen was in awe, then anger filled her heart, they already had their hands full with Thalia and Travis and now the stupid Naga king got himself involved with a hostile outsider race just toid his hand on her and her daughters, it was a bad taste joke.

    Taking a deep breath after pondering the repercussions that this revtion would bring to the Meluin kingdom which was more divided than ever, the queen gazed at Daimon to then say.

    "I used to be superior to him in terms of strength, but now I can only match up to him if I use my Lamia form, the problem is that it consumes a lot of stamina to fight in that state for long periods of time, if we fight in a war, chances are we''ll lose so¡­".

    "Also, we don''t have time for a war, time flows different in this since we are inside the void but at most, I can stay two to three days which would be around two to four hours outside, it will have to be a fast, lethal and clean strike, all the problematic guys must be gathered and taken down on the spot", added Daimon, which made the queen rub her temples for a moment before her eyes sparkled as she gazed at Daimon.

    "An event that would force the Naga king and all the involved to appear, and justify the appearance of the strong and renowned members of the Lamia army at the same time, I think I have something in mind that would fit those criteria", amusingly said the queen as she sent a few messages through amunication device of some kind, which made Daimon have a strange premonition.

 Chapter 569: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 5)

    And Daimon''s instincts were right, not even a few minutester a rumor had spread through the royal capital of the Meliun kingdom, apparently the queen has started discussions with the rumored ally who stood on par with the strongest warriors of the kingdom, to arrange an alliance through marriage between the royal heir of the force she represented, with not only one but both of the princesses of the royal family!

    The rumor spread from different information sources and was changed as it went from mouth to mouth, some said that their recent ally has brought a peerless army capable of wiping out the whole with a single word, right under the noses of the other two prominent forces.

    Others stated that the princesses fell in love at first sight and asked their mother, the queen to initiate the necessary arrangements, and there were also some who said that the queen might be been coaxed by their ally to give away their daughters in exchange for support to eliminate the two invading forces that had been like a thorn on their side for too much time.

    The point is that the rumors escted so much that they reached the ears of those with real influence and status within the kingdom, and with that in a matter of around thirty minutes, queen Mirellia managed to make the heads of all the noble families contact her out of their own will to request an urgent meeting before such an important decision was taken.

    Seeing the gentle but cunning smile on queen Mirellia''s face, Daimon couldn''t help but inwardly nod in approbation, one of Erin''s rules to choose to work with, even if it is a simple business connection, was to see whether the leader of the other party is apetent ruler or someone who simply inherited its position.

    After all, as Agrak has proven, an ipetent ally is worse than a cunning enemy and no amount of material benefits it''s worth the risk of joining hands with a clown only to get killed due to some stupid mistake.

    ''This way, they won''t suspect this is a purge, as they were the ones who requested to meet the queen, not bad'', concluded Daimon, he then gazed at the queen, though his eyes were covered by the mask of the Hollow Suit, their eyes met for a second as Mirellia stood up from her seat.

    "The event will be upheld tomorrow morning, I''ll take care of preparing the needed military to deal with the traitors during night, however there are other preparations we need to take care of, please follow me", she said.

    Daimon nodded and then the queen guided the way to the basement of the castle, Daimon didn''t suspect of her, because Rita had already thoroughly mapped the whole ce and besides the pantry which was there partly to fool others, there was only one thing hidden down there, a "pool".

    As they descended to the basement, the queen took the initiative to exin what was going on.

    "Unlike the Naga race who though can still function underwater but not beath in it, we from the Lamia race can not only breath in it but found ourselves morefortable in it, this racial trait is lost for those who descend from a mix of Naga and Lamia ancestors, which is why normally only the royal family can swim in this "pool" without dying", she said as she pointed at the giant pool that stood in front of them.

    Daimon''s eyes shone behind his mask and the seemingly normal water became a marvelous breathtaking spectacle for him.

    ''Wait this water is¡­'', thought Daimon for a second before he listened to the queen saying.

    "It seems you can see it too and here I thought it was already a miracle that miss Thea could¡­", Mirellia stopped there for a second before continuing.

    "The fact that our records were lost when the adult and elderly died doesn''t mean they left uspletely defenseless, ording to the tales left behind by my ancestor, those who survived were basically young students and civilians, but among the ones who set up the barrier that protected us back then, the one who led everything who was not only lethally wounded but at the same time the single person who had surpassed the Ster realm among the ones who made it to Draim".

    "While practically all the valuable assets in every people''s rings included hers, were used on the barrier, her flesh and bones included, she managed to secretly leave us a bottle of her blood with a short message that said "A single drop at the time, use at most half of it", my ancestor who was the first designated representative of the Lamia race drank a single drop of it on the spot and jumped from the Lord rank to the Arch rank in a couple of days, this became a custom but also a privilege as only the heirs who show the premise to be able to reach the high stage of the Ster rank are eligible to obtain a drop of said blood".

    "From that moment onwards, we created this "royal pond", basically it contains water infused with the refined essence of the blood that each queen who has had the honor to take the blood of that benefactor, the result is a small paradise for those of the royal family, if we submerge in it our healing and meditation speed is multiplied by ten times, however the most outstanding effect is that not only those of the royal family can see the real aspect of this water, but only we can interact with it, or at least that''s what I used to believe until miss Thea and you appeared".

    Daimon turned to see Thea who nodded at him.

    "She offered to give me a reward for having saved Naomi, among the options there was a small crystal tube filled with water, the multiple lights I saw in it made me think it was simr to the water you gifted me, so I asked about it, unfortunately it isn''t, but it did resonate with me in a different way so I choose it, I was nning to ask you help me analyze it in order to brew a nice drin¡­ ahem potion with itter", mumbled the empress.

    Daimon got lost in his thoughts for a moment, the water in the pool reminded him of both the three-colored water he obtained and also the water that filled Mellie''s mother coffin, it was of course not the same but it shared the key aspect of them, it hadws infused in it!

    As to why Thea could see them, that is new, since despite she and other people being able to tell the water of the tri-coloredke is special, they were unable to see anything past that, in his case it was probably because of the infinity eyes, so there must be something else going on here.

    ''Mm, perhaps it''s rted to her mission, I also feel a faint resonance with it but I can''t put the finger on the origin of it'', he thought.

    Mirellia on the other hand seemed charmed by the fact that Daimon was "simr" to them just like Thea, she gently smiled at them as she jumped into the pool while gesturing the others to follow her.

    The two princesses immediately followed their mother and then Daimon and Thea, both Rita and his own instincts had determined that while the water wouldn''t bring him the benefits Mirellia spoke about, it wasn''t detrimental in the slightest either, so everything would be fine.

    Despite the water being as clear as a mirror, the pool actually was quite deep, around a hundred meters, after swimming to the bottom, the Lamia queen waved her hand and a portal opened for them.

    Once inside the dimensional tunnel, the queen exined.

    "Naturally, the blood I mentioned is my Lamia race''s most treasured resource, so besides the three of us from the royal family and you two, no one else currently knows of its existence, in fact no one besides from the royal family has entered the real royal treasury", she said as they reached the exit of the dimensional tunnel.

    What weed Daimon didn''t look like a treasury but more like a "secret base", there were a few bedrooms, a garden, an artificialke which is from where they wereing out, and in the center of the whole ce there was a giant statue of a beautiful woman whose lower half was that of a snake, in other words a Lamia of the royal family.

    "That is the statue of my ancestor, she was the one who built this ce, everything to contain this¡­", with a few gestures, the Lamia queen made small cut on her right index finger and the eyes of the statue shone, then a small portal appeared on the base of it, Mirellia''s arm passed through the portal pulling out a ck metal box.

    "In the whole history of my Lamia race, there has only been a single exception in which someone was given the blood of our nameless benefactor, like I previously said, my ancestor had a friend from the Naga race who was designated as their first representative as well, unfortunately they didn''t have the luck of a benefactor leaving behind something for them, but my ancestor gave her a drop of blood in secret, she of course made an oath promising not to tell anyone about it".

    "The public believes that the two ancestors found a special magic resource while they were exploring the area that became this same city, but the truth is that the two of them isted themselves to refine the blood, the result, two exceptionally talented Arch ranked, a peak one and a middle stage one, the benefit obtained by the Naga race''s ancestor was slightly inferior, it''s worth mentioning that they were the first and only ones in the history of both races that have been able to reach the Maximum Ster realm", proudly said Mirellia.

    Let alone Thea, even Daimon was surprised by such a revtion, back at Neptune the concept of Maximum Ster ranks exists, yes, but those whose lineages are closer to magic beasts, haven''t been able to reach that point, Thea''s family is a perfect example of that, even she the most talented ever member of the Ryner n, is currently at the middle stage Ster rank, for some reason it is harder for them to reach that point.

    Daimon was unsure if Calvin''s grandfather was like that as well, which would exin why none of the Maximum Ster ranks he has met, appears to have as manyws as him, but now he knows that here there existed two Maximum Sters in a simr situation as Thea.

    The Lamia queen softly smiled, amused by their reaction, at least it meant that their race''s potential wasn''t bad even in a muchrger and surely more advanced civilization.

    Due to the limitation on resources that could be found in the ocean and the fact that most ind territory if not all of it, was under the supervision of the invaders, things like alchemy and magic cksmithing were really undeveloped in the Meliun kingdom.

    Thea had already told Daimon beforehand and he confirmed it already, even Karaam a high stage Ster who was the captain of the border guards, was using a not so high-quality middle stage armor, if it was Neptune, such a powerhouse would have at least one decent high stage Ster piece of equipment, not to mention the peak high stage treasures like Thea''s spear or the scimitar of which Abaris was so proud about.

    Back at Karaam''s armor, the thing was mostly made with bones and skin of sea magic beasts, and kept together using runes, as for alchemy if they were proficient on it, they would have already made an incredible potion using that blood mentioned by Mirellia for sure, that being said, while theycked in alchemy and cksmithing due to theck of high-quality resources, they focused on runes to somewhat make up for it, which would exin why they developed that strange way to engrave an array on water.

    The Lamia queen then opened the ck metal box in her hand to reveal two crystal containers, one half filled with a red liquid mixed with some stripes of green turquoise, a color obviously simr to that of the eyes of Mirellia and her daughters, not to mention it was the same color of the scales on Mirellia''s tail when she was in her Lamia form.

    The second container waspletely full though, inside there was a red liquid with fewer but still noticeable brown and blue stripes.

    "My ancestor''s friend had two daughters, the one who was supposed to inherit the Naga throne unfortunately died due to a magic beast''s attack, so the other one was chosen, the first Naga ancestor noticed some strange things at the end of her days, so before she reached the end of her lifespan, she passed this to my ancestor telling her to use it if a situation where both races had an unsolvable feud ever appeared, it contains the essence of her lineage which she extracted from her own body, before using what was left of her to reinforce the barrier, amon fate shared by the first ten or so rulers of both races".

    The moment Mirellia opened the ck box, the sweet sound of a notification rang in Daimon''s ears as a message appeared in front of him, he looked at it and saw that it belonged to the tab of the Lineage Temple.

    [Ding]

    [A concentration of "blood essence" has been detected, do you wish to absorb it Y/N <!>]

    Daimon clicked on the "!" symbol and extra information was disyed.

    [Compatibility with the "Dracolevia" lineage: 15% (Due to the small amount ofpatibility, there exists a 50% possibility for an overall minor enhancement, a 25% chance to enhance an existing trait or a 10% to obtain apletely new trait and a 1% to obtain all the previous)]

    Daimon''s eyes shone behind his mask, the Dracolevia lineage was second only to his unknown lineage and the Apex predator one, even an overall minor enhancement would for sure be beneficial for him.

    ''So that''s why I felt a though hard to notice, sensation of resonance, thepatibility is low and it was stored in such a special container'', thought Daimon as he saw that ck metal box, which had a type of rune he had never seen before, probably something that originated from the gxy from where the Lamia and Naga races came, surprisingly he could understand the meaning behind said runes without too much effort.

    "I honestly wouldn''t have minded to give you or miss Thea, a drop of my Lamia race''s sacred blood as we had baptized it, but as far as I know only women can use it in your case and for miss Thea, besides Nagas, none other race ispatible with it, we have tested this by giving a drop to a member of the strongest magic beast race we have discovered in the sea of Draim, in a try to obtain better materials for armor and alchemy¡­ but the result was the magic beast turning into a bloody pulp".

    "So, instead of that, I''ll give you the concentrated blood essence of the Naga''s first ancestor which doesn''t have such requirements, with the condition that you use it now, even if it takes time for you topletely refine it, the lingering aura of it will be detectable from your body, with that we''ll be able to fool the clean members of the Naga race into thinking they''ll follow someone rted to them and also stop the curiosity their nobles have for a union between us and them", said the queen to then add.

    "As for miss Thea''s reward for helping us suppress the traitors, I as the queen of the Meliun kingdom will fully support her to deal with that tyrant woman".

    Daimon exchanged gazes with Thea who happily nodded, making him dly take on Mirellia''s offer, he had nothing to lose and everything to win anyway, he would help Thea obtain an army to deal with Thalia''s one and at the same time a chance to improve his Dracolevia lineage, while Mirellia will be able to deal with dissidents and consolidate her authority over the two races, it was a win-win situation.

    "I ept, let''s make the respective oath and¡­", before Daimon could finish his words, he saw the queen extending her hand to hand him the crystal container with the Naga''s blood essence.

    "We can deal with formalitiester, in any case you have miss Thea''s trust, so you have mine as well, I''ll take you to your rooms so you can prepare for tomorrow''s event", casually said the queen as she put the ck box that now only contained one thing back into the portal opened by the statue.

    Daimon inwardly shrugged and epted the thing, in any case contracts couldn''t tie him, not like he was nning to go against his word when the other party was worth associating with.

    With that, the queen made a portal on the artificialke and everyone returned to the castle, to not raise suspicions, the two princesses will stay at the castle like usual, while Thea will be left to guard the fort and Daimon was basically free to do as he pleased, as for the queen she had to leave to prepare everything for tomorrow.

    "Ferris, please guide Mr. Gabriel and hispanion to their rooms¡­", the Lamia queen''s words were interrupted by Thea casually saying.

    "It''s fine we are used to share a room so he can stay with me, we have some catch up to do anyway, just get one room for her", said the empress referring to Zia.

    Needless to say, but the two princesses and even the queen weren''t expecting such words, as their surprised expressions suggested, the younger princess was especially shocked, Daimon inwardly chuckled knowing that those three misinterpreted what Thea meant, but he didn''t bother to exin, Mirellia gave Thea a key to the room next to hers, which would be for Zia and the empress guided them to where she was staying.

    As soon as they disappeared from their sight, Ferris turned to see her mother to say.

    "Mom, do you think those two are¡­ together?", their previous conception of Daimon''s status as Thea''s general was shattered if such a young and "weak" at least realm-wise, youth could be so close to a really strong warrior like Thea, then his status must be extraordinary back at their ce of origin.

    "I¡­ don''t know, they certainly look close but not to that point, a future engagement agreement of some sort perhaps, in any case we are aiming to stablish a long term mutually beneficial rtionship between our kingdom and them, so the higher their status, the better for us, now you two stay in the castle and don''t give them any problems, that is for you Naomi", said the queen as she opened a portal to then jump into it.

    The younger princess softly snorted, at her mother''s reminder, which earned her a soft poke on her forehead from her older sister.

    "Don''t resent Gabriel just because he called you "little girl", let me tell you that just his aura from earlier made me doubt that I, a middle stage Archknight would be able to emerge victorious against him in a fight".

    "What are you saying sis, he was hiding his realm and I admit he is for sure stronger than me, but he is still a Lord rank, at most he is at the middle stage, with your Battle Avatar you have crushed the elite among the elite at the peak Arch ranks, and even fought on par with half stage Sters, there is no way he would be able to defeat you!", eximed the younger princess, other families where the royal heirs would be envied by their siblings, Naomi had nothing but admiration for her older sister, who is publicly recognized as the most talented knight in the history of the Lamia race so far.

    Ferris patted her younger sister''s head a couple of times, to then leave towards the training room of the castle.

    "Never underestimate anyone, he has fought and probably killed way more people than me, that I can tell".

    Naomi remained behind, lost in her thoughts for a moment, before her eyes locked onto the direction of the guest area, her curiosity was now picked, her sister has never found anyone in the same range of age to let alone make her doubt her capacity to win, but even fight on par with her, so it would be a lie to say she wasn''t interested on it.

    ''I don''t think big sister Thea would mind if I apany her, besides I bet that rude man also wants to know more about our kingdom'', she thought to herself before she walked in direction of Thea''s room.

    ¡­

    Speaking of which, inside of the most luxurious guest room, Daimon gazed at the crystal container filled with blood essence, Thea who was casuallyying down a few meters away on the same bed as him, also looked at it.

    "How strange, I do feel some sort of resonation with Mirellia and her daughters, not as strong as I felt when I met you but still and yet I didn''t feel anything regarding those two crystal containers", mumbled the empress.

    "Well, in my case, the resonationes from the lineage I obtained thanks to the ck Armored Shark''s one, but thepatibility is low, perhaps a long distant rtion, nheless, it also means that the origin of it shouldn''t be weaker than my Dracolevia lineage", said Daimon.

    There lizardmen and other reptile rted races back at the four gxies, but none of them was particrly special, the only exception being Lana, the girl from the Ramir family who was said to descend from a beast from "ancient" times, there were snake rted races yes, but not any Lamia nor Naga races were known to have existed in the four gxies, ording to the history books or at least not in the ones at the libraries of the Revy and Argent families, which included Aura''s personal diaries created after she fought every single magic beast she has found throughout her life.

    That being said, there were mentions of them in the folklore of the beast races, simr to the case of sirens and mermaids, from Daimon''s point of view they were probably advanced versions of the sea rted races, that did exist not only in Neptune but even in the four gxies, so the same probably applies to the Lamia and Naga races.

    "I''m going to start absorbing this thing, please watch over me just in case", said Daimon as he opened the crystal container to drink its content, he wasn''t really worried about things going awry, since there is no way, this lineage is stronger than his Apex Predator, but he wanted to see if he could grasp something thanks to it, so meditation it is.

    Thea nodded, she leisurelyid down a few centimeters away from Daimon who was sitting cross-legged, observing him and she wasn''t the only one, an intense gaze came from Daimon''s shadow, focusing on him and also on the whole castle and its surroundings at the same time.

    ''Humph, that ungracious girl from earlier ising, trying to interrupt Daimon''s meditation after being so rude to him, dream on'', mumbled Rita as she covered the door to Thea''s room with a shadow veil, making the entrance invisible for others.

 Chapter 570: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 6)

    Outside of Thea''s room, the younger Lamia princess who just arrived was in awe at the fact that the whole wall where the door to the main guest''s room should be, was now reced by dark void.

    Naomi frowned, she tried to knock on the wall but to her surprise her hand sank into the shadow veil, making her jump backwards in a startled manner, it didn''tst long but she felt a shiver ran through her whole body starting from her hand which passed through the shadow veil.

    ''This must be that guy''s doing, what is he doing to big sister Thea¡­'', thought Naomi with a sulking expression, unaware of the fact that it was the undead head maid who borrowed Daimon''s fear infusing aura to scare her out so she would leave.

    But apparently the undead head maid underestimated the stubbornness of the younger Lamia princess, who simply snorted and then sat down while leaning against the wall at the front.

    "Humph, you''ll have to leave at some point", she mumbled as she closed her eyes to rest.

    Back inside the room, Daimon who was oblivious to the mischievous deeds of the undead head maid, clicked "yes" on the previous notification, you might wonder why did he drink the content of the crystal container if all he needed to do was to click "yes", the answer is both simple andplicated.

    Sorting practically anything through the system is most of the times easier and the benefits are often obtained in a short period of time yes, but by doing so there are opportunities that can be missed, systems aren''t almighty after all.

    In this case, Daimon was both processing the blood through the system and through the Apex Predator body, of course there exists the chance that his efforts end up being fruitless, relying solely on the system is what mediocre guys like the idiot hero of light do, and Daimon personally sealed his fate, so he won''t allow himself to growcent.

    Besides it was none other than Eve who between lines told him to always try to make out the most from an opportunity, whether the system is involved or not.

    Leaving that aside, knowing that processing whatever would be left from the blood essence, after the system did its own thing, would take a long time, Daimon inwardly opened his eyes and found himself in the same limitless ocean where he took the trial of the lineage temple back then.

    ''I wonder if this limitless ocean represents the Dracolevia lineage, I wonder how would the trial space will look for my vampire one, for now if there won''t be a trial what will the process be like?'', thought Daimon, things were different this time though, as there was no trial for him, he wasn''t going to obtain a new lineage but improve the Dracolevia one.

    Speaking of which, the answer to Daimon''s doubt appeared floating on the sky in front of him as the image of a tall woman with disheveled brown hair and dark gray eyes, wearing a brown dress with metal armor, materialized a few meters away from him.

    However, the projection didn''tst long as the image dissolved into countless small particles of light that fell into the ocean, next he saw a notification appearing in front of him.

    [Ding]

    [The result of the blood essence assimtion is being calcted¡­]

    Daimon simply waited for the result to be shown, there was no trial so the result waspletely random, to his surprise what came next wasn''t a notification, but a soft voice speaking to him.

    "To the one who has inherited my Gray Eyed Naga blood essence, please make sure our race survives in this cruel world".

    [Ding]

    [Congrattions, on having obtained:

    Dracolevia Lineage "Minor Enhancement X1, Enhancing of Existing Trait X1, New Trait X1]

    [Upgrading process will start now (Remaining time: 29 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes)]

    "Hoh?", Daimon watched with interest not only the result he obtained, but also how the surface of the water trembled and a small ind started surging from the bottom of the sea.

    The process was certainly different than what he expected, as for the message he heard that was probably thest wish of the first ancestor of the Naga race, since she left her blood essence to her friend hoping to prevent the two races from going to war.

    ''Time to go back'', thought Daimon, since a moment ago he has felt Thea''s gaze intensifying, she hadn''t interrupted him so it shouldn''t be anything urgent, but it was hard to ignore the empress''s gaze.

    Daimon opened his eyes in the real world and the limitless ocean disappeared, reced by thefy and luxurious room of Thea, speaking of the empress, her amber snake pupils were intensely fixed on Daimon''s face, more urately on his right cheek, making thetter wonder what was happening.

    "Did something happen?", he asked only to see the empress pout as she mumbled.

    "Mm, your body suddenly shone in a mix of yellow and blue light and a kiss mark appeared on your right cheek, judging by the mana I could feel, it seems like my general got closer to Marlene while I was trapped here, risking my life¡­".

    Daimon''s lips twitched a bit, he was sure that the effect of the title "Lucky Charm", wasn''t used, otherwise the one-year countdown till the next time it would be avable would be added next to it in the titles tab, so it wasn''t that, not to mention the very specific description given by Thea, which included the kiss mark on his right cheek.

    ''I guess that whening from an angelfish princess even a friendly peck, holds more weight than what I thought, it''s worth investigatingter with Marlene, I didn''t notice anything when she did it, nor felt anything out of normal earlier though'', he thought.

    For the time being he put the subject at the back of his mind, since he had something more urgent to deal with, a strangely pleasing to the eye jealous Thea.

    "Her challenge was my previous stop, we found a way to solve the curse that was casted on her race", he said, which as he expected made the empress''s mood improve on the spot.

    "Really!", she eximed, Marlene is her best friend so of course she was happy to hear such good news, however she still stubbornly bit her lip the next second and looked away.

    "I suppose that would be enough to earn such a reward from Marlene", she mumbled.

    Daimon chuckled, though he found this side of Thea rather amusing, there was someone clearly waiting outside of the room for them, so he decided to solve the misunderstanding.

    "I was helping her with her challenge, of course as a friend I''m more than willing to offer my help to Thea as well", he said.

    The empress''s eyes sparkled in response, the previous irritating sensation that lingered in her chest, disappeared like magic, she turned to see Daimon with a smile on her pretty face as she took out a bottle from her storage ring.

    "In that case, share a drink with me as part of my challenge", she said as she drank from the bottle to then pass it to Daimon with expecting eyes, though Daimon he isn''t a fan of liqueur, this was made using tri-colored water, so he dly took up the offer.

    The empress happily smiled as Daimon handed the bottle for her to keep it in her ring.

    "Let''s grab something to eat before going to sleep", said Daimon.

    "Mm", Thea nodded as a magic beast descendant, she is always up for some delicious food, also she has many things she wants to tell Daimon, mainly about how has her adventure in Draim, went while he wasn''t here.

    ''Rita'', with a single word, the undead head maid dispelled the shadow veil, and Daimon jumped out of the bed to open the door, just in time for him to directly face the younger Lamia princess who rushed towards the door the moment it appeared.

    Naomi froze upon the scene that weed her, standing a few meters away from her, Daimon had removed the mask when he started meditating, so his face was visible for the younger Lamia princess now, as to why he didn''t wear it again, queen Mirellia has shown her sincerity not prioritizing making a formal contract, so he decided to answer in kind.

    ''No way, he how can that rude guy be so good looking!'', inwardly eximed the younger Lamia princess, she tried to change her focus just to see Thea who was just getting up from the bed with a happy smile, making her imagination run wild.

    "We are going to the dinning room, feel free to tag along if you want to", said Daimon, while he didn''t hold it against Naomi for her harsh words, he also didn''t really care about her, still he offered her an olive branch by inviting her to dine with them.

    Ignoring the younger Lamia princess, Thea guided Daimon to the dining room, the staff of the castle was given some time off, but luckily the royal family could anonymously order food from all the high-end restaurants in the capital, thanks to how easy it was for the people in Draim to use the space as a mean of transportation.

    It was like an improved version of the service arrays that the biggest forces used at the four gxies, Thea demonstrated how to use it and ordered food for the two of them, since Daimon asked her to choose.

    "So, how strong is that woman, Maximum Ster rank?", asked Daimon to which Thea shook her head in response.

    "No, she is still not at that point, her artificially created lineage is too iplete, but she has reached the extreme peak of the high stage, honestly I would have been in some trouble to sh head on with her, if my spear wasn''t somehow suppressing her power", she said.

    Daimon nodded, it made sense that in a head on fight, Thalia would be stronger than Thea, not only she had knowledge from a higher ranked ce than the empress, but she has been around for dozens of thousands of years, while Thea is on the same age range as Erin and Aura.

    Besides that, the challenges didn''t measure something as simple as raw strength, but the unique talents and abilities of the girls, Daimon is sure of that, so while getting rid of Thalia might be an important part of the challenge, that doesn''t mean Thea has to do it alone.

    "I''m sure that if you join hands with queen Mirellia, dealing with Thalia shouldn''t be impossible", he said.

    "Humph, of course, mother is the strongest knight of our kingdom", a slightly aggressive voice came from the corridor, as the younger Lamia princess arrived.

    "Hey little princess, did you finallye out of your daze", jokingly said Daimon.

    "J-Just call me Naomi okay!", eximed the princess, to which Daimon shrugged.

    And so, the three of them enjoyed a nice dinner, Daimon took the chance to solve whatever doubts he had about the Meliun kingdom, including the information about the key important figures who will be showing tomorrow, surprisingly the older princess Ferris, didn''t show up to dinner, apparently this was normal since she spent most of her time in the training room.

    ¡­

    After dinner, Daimon and Thea returned to the room to have a nice night of sleep, and so the darkness was reced by a bright morning a few hourster and Daimon who was sleeping next to Thea, slowly opened his eyes after listening to someone knocking on the door, it was rather early in the morning so Daimon felt lucky they went to sleep early yesterday.

    He got up the bed and opened the door, the dazzling sight of queen Mirellia wearing an elegant emerald green dress, was what awaited Daimon at the other side of the door.

    The Lamia queen scanned Daimon for a second, this was also the first time she has seen his real appearance, but besides having to admit that the silver haired youth was quite a handsome man, she was marveled at the strong Naga-like aura that radiated from him.

    ''I thought he would at most feel like the young descendants of the Naga royal family, but in terms of quality his aura doesn''t lose against the one of their kings, was this caused solely by the blood essence or is it rted to the strange resonation I felt back then?'', wondered the queen as she greeted Daimon.

    "Good morning, thanks for giving that harsh daughter of mine a second chance, the event will start in an hour, I will send Ferris to escort you two, please prepare yourselves", she said to then graciously take her leave, or at least that''s what she intended only for Daimon to say.

    "Let''s deal with your little poison problem first, I can''tpletely eliminate it in a short period of time, but reducing it until it is harmless for some time would take a few seconds".

    The queen turned around and gazed at Daimon, trying to discern if he was bluffing and she was amazed at her conclusion.

    ''He is telling the truth!'', it''s worth mentioning that she has used tons of potions and even meditated in the pool at the basement, and that only slowed down the spread of the poison in her body and slightly reduced the toll it had on her, which is why she has been maintaining her Lamia formtely, in order to not look tired.

    "You are not the firsther afflicted person I have to deal with, in fact I know which Nethereal is behind whatever king did it", said Daimon, courtesy of Agrak and his "closeness" with the crazy girl and her mother, theher affecting Mirellia''s body is the same as the one that use to freely roam in Bell''s body.

    In other words, the guilty was either Sarah''s father, or a Nethereal directly subordinated to him, considering the queen is a high stage Ster rank, a Nethereal in a simr realm would be needed to harm her.

    Unfortunately for said Nethereal, Daimon isn''t a newbie when ites toher like back then, he has learned a lot about it thanks to the Global Raid and though limited to Agrak''s n''sher, he fully understands how it works.

    Not to mention has had enough practice with Sarah and Bell, so he offered his hand to the queen who epted the invitation, intrigued by what would happen next.

    The answer came a secondter when an invisible tremble travelled through the nearby atmosphere, before Daimon''s body exploded in white mes making Mirellias''s pupils narrow like needles.

    Despite not being limited to live underwater, as a race closely rted to the sea, Lamias aremonly born with affinities rted to it, that being said, previous to their life in Draim, they didn''t live under the sea and those who maintained their lineage close to the original one, had a wider range of option when it came to the affinities they could be born with.

    For example, Mirellia despite her gentle vibes is not only a knight, but also has a highly destructive attribute, derived probably from a mix of the original affinity of her family''s lineage and the one that their nameless benefactor had, poison and metal, resulted in acid, in other words the Lamia queen is a Variant, simr to Aura as she inherited dual affinities that ended up mixing andplementing each other perfectly, fusing into a single stronger one.

    Don''t confuse Sarah''s corrosive poison as acid, in her case that is the result of her dual darkness and poison affinities, but she isn''t limited to that and can create and use a plethora of poisons with different effects, it''s just that the crazy girl likes turning her enemies into bloody puddles.

    Mirellia on the other hand is limited to melt anything her battle aura touches, and yet even with such a strong and dangerous affinity, the moment she saw those mes a chill ran down her spine, it was as if every cell in her body was screaming "danger", of course that onlysted a fraction of a second and what followed it was aplete and easing calmness, despite those mes still being there a few millimeters away from her.

    "Don''t worry, despite how it looks, my battle aura isn''t "fire", so just being exposed to it shouldn''t be detrimental for you", said Daimon, confusing the previously tense expression on the Lamia queen''s face as an innate averse to fire caused by her lineage.

    "Mm, it''s not that, those whose blood hadn''t thinned past a certain point allowing our environment to influence them too much, wouldn''t be weakened when facing fire or simr elements, it''s just that Mr. Gabriel''s battle aura is¡­ terrifying, is this normal among outsiders?", curiously said the Lamia queen.

    "Oh, sorry about that, it had to be done this way for the "treatment" I recently came up with, to work, also you can call me Daimon, that''s my real name and no, my battle aura is not normal by any standards", casually said Daimon.

    The queen''s interest went through the roof, but she kept her doubts for herself for the time being, next she felt that dreading aura with which the silver haired youth rendered her younger daughter defenseless, pour out of his body like a tsunami, there was a major difference this time though, the intensity of it was way different.

    ''His killing aura is so strong that it is distorting the mana in the atmosphere, I had only seen psycho from the Dark Berserker n being able to aplish such a thing¡­ no this is different, way more refined and also I don''t feel like vomiting just by being exposed to it'', thought the Lamia queen.

    What she was seeing was Daimon showing off his Overlord Pride, as to why he was doing something so unlike him, it was part of treatment, after entering the Global Raid and sorting Agrak''s memories, Daimon has finally realized why his Demon Light is so effective against Nethereals, to the point that he can easily inflict pain just by being exposed to it.

    "Fear", his Overlord''s Pride aura is an agglomeration of the fear he has inflicted upon others, murderous intent caused by killing a lot andstly the aura of his superior bloodline, which includes his Apex Predator, Vampire andtely the Dracolevia lineages.

    And ording to what he knew about Nethereals andter confirmed by Agrak''s memories, Nethereal''s mana orher, isposed of an element and something derived from an emotion, for example greed in Agrak''s case, as for the element all the natural Nethereals he has met so far had darkness affinity, but that could be a result of whatever happened after Agrak screwed up, since the three leaders didn''t seem to have darkness affinityher.

    So, the way to deal with Nethereals is either having an element that far outsses theirs, or being able to inflict them an emotion strong enough to mess with theirher, and Daimon had both from the very beginning, battle aura is ultimately an energy expression of the physical body, so Demon Light inflicts both physical and mental damage to his enemies as it carries the fear caused by his aura.

    Amusingly enough it is a vicious circle, being wounded by someone from a lower ranked ce made the Nethereals afraid, which messed with theirher, then the fear innately brought by Demon Light, further affected them, in other words they were a bad match for Daimon.

    It''s also worth mentioning that Aurora managed to utterly destroy Nethereals during theirst fight, not only because she concentrated her light mana to its utmost limit thus far outssing theher of the enemy, but because after she learned the truth behind the disappearance/death of her daughter, her hatred/anger towards Nethereals soared to the sky, so superior element and strong emotion, you get the point.

    Back to the new "treatment" Daimon thought about, the point was to not inject his Demon Light into the body of the other party like he had to do with Sarah and Bell, strangely enough those two were somewhat resistant towards it, Sarah even enjoyed being exposed to the fear factor of it, so with a lot of focus and cautiousness he was able to drive outher directly, but that wouldn''t be the case for everyone.

    So, he created this alternative method using his newly acquired knowledge, he exposed the target to his Demon Light and then instilled a though short, still significant fear on it, the result is what was happening right now.

    "What is this?", asked the queen as she saw a wine-red colored misting out from her right shoulder, right where the sneak attack that poisoned her hadnded, the thing seemed to be alive as it tried to get away from Mirellia, only to miserably fail when Daimon said.

    "That''s the little bastard that has been bothering you", with a snap of his fingers, white mes encased till thest spec of that red mist, which was of courseher, Daimon casuallypressed it until a palm sized white me sphere with a wine-red colored centernded on his hand, only for him to send it to the inventory the next second, thather surpassed any other one he has seen before, including Agrak''s, well there was an exception and that was the "emotionless" pureher that freely roamed in the dimensional tunnel that brought him here.

    "Phew~", the Lamia queen heavily exhaled and mana gathered from all over the ce, thather came out with a portion of her mana so she had to replenish it, however she didn''t feel that ufortable and weakening sensation anymore, now she just needed a bit of time to return to her prime, but for now she directly drank a few potions and ended up in a way better status than earlier, her innately white skin regained its healthy luster and her green aquamarine eyes shone brighter as well.

    "Thanks¡­", said Mirellia, she was still processing what happened a moment ago, so she couldn''t find the words to thank the silver haired youth in front of her, ultimately, she decided to show her gratitude with actions through the alliance they were in.

    "You two cane out, I knew you were here from the very beginning", said Daimon, after a couple of seconds an impossible to understand rambling came from below the staircase as the two Lamia princesses approached them.

    "Now don''t take it against them Mr. Daimon, I''m pretty sure these two were just worried about me", said the queen, which was understandable, the previous outburst of Demon Light was what got the attention of Ferris, that being said, Naomi has been spying on them since before that, waiting for him and Thea toe out of the room.

    Ferris gave Daimon a gratitude filled gaze, she could tell her mother was better now, as for Naomi she stole gazes at him from time to time, while avoiding his eyes.

    "We can have a friendly celebrationter, those old geezers will be arriving in a few minutes so let''s head to the royal meeting chamber first", said the Lamia queen as she read a message that was sent to hermunication device.

    With a small nod, arge portal appeared in front of them and the whole group jumped into it, of course Daimon put on the Hollow Suit before that, mask included.

 Chapter 571: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 7)

    Inside of the dimensional tunnel, the queen who had rposed herself after having her mana reserves suddenly drop due to the treatment, turned to see her daughters to then say.

    "Despite all the preparations, things can always go wrong, so stay close to either me or miss Thea you two, Ferris in case everything goes wrong you know what to do, Naomi don''t pay attention to whatever nonsense those old fellows say to provoke you, okay?".

    "Mm", the younger Lamia princess seemed unconvinced but she agreed and then looked away, her older sister on the other hand nodded with a serious face.

    "Understood mother", said Ferris, the queen then turned to see Daimon, they already had discussed how they will y things depending on the approach that the noble families would take, however most ns never survive through the first contact with the enemy, so she still said.

    "I doubt you even need to hear it, but feel free to speak your mindter, we need to make the whole situation look real after all".

    Daimon nodded, dealing with Thalia was the priority, the more time they waited the more she''ll be prepared to fight against Thea, so he couldn''t lose time with the Nagas and their conflicts, the faster they ended with this the better.

    A few secondster the group reached the end of the dimensional tunnel and appeared in a ce that reminded Daimon of the Revy family''s throne room, the ce consisted on a tall single pir with a row of seats on its top, ced in the center of an amphitheater.

    Naturally Daimon''s group which included the sole three members of the royal family, appeared on top of said pir, which of course drew the attention of the other people in the ce, the first ones to react were four people who were surrounding the pir in the center.

    "We greet her majesty the queen and the royal family!", they shouted in unison, Daimon could easily see through their level, the four of them were peak middle stage Ster ranks, apparently just like back at Neptune, high stage Sters were quite rare and those who had such a status, were given special positions in the kingdom, just like Karaam who was designated as the captain of the border guard.

    And simr to him, there was another person who greeted the queen as soon as she appeared, a woman with dark green hair who was kneeling down in front of Mirellia and the others, while being allowed to be in the same area at the top of the pir, the difference between her and the other four is that she is an early grade high stage Ster, the captain of the royal guard and Mirellia''s spokesperson, Nea.

    Daimon and the others took their respective seats, the queen sat at the rightest seat which was of course a throne, then Ferris sat at her right and surprisingly the next one was Daimon, followed by Thea andstly Naomi, the younger Lamia princess didn''t feel excluded even if Daimon was upying her usual seat, because she got to seat near her idol, Thea, as for the recently added Zia, she stood behind of Daimon at the left, very much to the undead head maid''s envy, luckily she was assigned an important role by Daimon, which improved her mood.

    The queen nodded at Nea who stood up and gazed at all the ones attending the meeting to then exim.

    "Everyone, pay your respects to the royal family and our honorable guests from outside of Draim!".

    Only then, the many leaders of the noble families as well as their apanying guards bowed towards the queen to then introduce themselves.

    Mirellia had already told Daimon about the hierarchy in the Meliun kingdom, for the Lamia race, besides the royal family which has never changed, there are three major noble families with their respective representatives who hold the title of Duchesses.

    The three major families consist of, the Gramy family from which Neaes, their representative is an old woman with light green hair who resembled Nea quite a bit, the Zullie family whose representative is a young-looking slender woman with short brown hair andstly, the Allmere family whose representative is a dark blue haired woman in her thirties.

    They represented all the other nobles of the Meliun kingdom, not only due to their high status as they descend from the Lamias who worked with the first ancestor, but because all the other noble families are somewhat rted to them, as the queen stated, Lamias can produce offspring just by using blood, it can be their own or from other Lamias, the three major families had shared their blood with other outstanding Lamias and that''s how most of the noble families were born.

    After them, it was the turn for the Naga kings and queen, the Nascenti family represented by the duke of which Daimon had already heard about before, was the first one, a man with gray hair and dark green eyes, the Nascenti family was in a unique situation as their previous king died in battle, so his uncle the duke Nascenti took control of the n as a temporary regent while the daughter of the previous king grows enough to inherit the throne.

    Then we have the Valiun family, whose king is a bearded bulky man with ck hair and brown eyes, then we have the Yillian family, the third king was a middle-aged man with red hair and eyes of a simr color.

    Andstly the Mein family, represented by the sole female Naga queen, she had honey blond hair and dark brown eyes, she also had the less noble families sitting behind of her, and unlike the other three kings and their subordinates who shared quite simr characteristics like hair color, eye color and skin tone, the ones behind the Mein Naga queen looked rather diverse, different hair colors and even some scales of different colors.

    ''Despite iming they seek to produce a stronger race by uniting with the Lamia race, they aren''t really weing of the mixed results but want those whose Naga lineage end up in the dominant side, so their objective is something else'', concluded Daimon, just by observing how "poor" the Grym Queen''s entourage looked whenpared with the three kings.

    Besides that, another thing that was painfully obvious was the hateful gazes on the eyes of practically all the male heirs of the noble Naga families towards Daimon, the same applied from the few male hybrid Lamia and Naga guys mixed within the Lamia nobility but that was to be expected, since the rumors would mean that their dreamed lovers, in other words the Lamia princesses were being taken away by an outsider.

    Also, it didn''t escape his eyes, that the adult Naga nobles were paying special attention to the queen''s legs, contrary to what one would expect there was actually¡­ difort behind their eyes, as for the kings they were more skilled to conceal their inner thoughts, but they still couldn''t hide the interest they had in Mirellia.

    Leaving that aside after the greetings that also served as introductions, the nobles remained silent hoping for Mirellia to start the conversation, unfortunately for them, the queen elegantly sat on her throne with a soft smile on her face.

    This continued for almost a whole minute until the young heirs of the noble families, couldn''t stand the sight of Ferris stealing some gazes at the silver haired masked young man sitting next to her.

    The nobles felt the pleading gazes of their young generations and finally decided to bite the bullet, starting from the one who made the most noise due to the rumors that made all the major nobles ask for a meeting with the queen, Duke Nascenti.

    "First of all, I thank her Majesty the Lamia queen on behalf of the Naga race for opening a space in her busy agenda¡­", the Duke took a second before continuing.

    "Originally, what made my Nascenti family seek an audience with the Lamia royalty were some untasteful rumors that came to me through the mouths of the servants, stating something about a marriage that wouldpletely disregard our kingdom''s traditions, however, there is something that caught my attention and that is the fact that a ve of one of our enemies is standing there, behind our newest guest", he said.

    Though Duke''s words were rather elegant and his voice didn''t have the slightest tinge of disrespect, the message he conveyed was incredibly rude, specially because in terms of position he wasn''t an equal to Mirellia, the authority that the kings and queen of the Naga race held in the kingdom, was around a fourth part of that of Mirellia''s, in other words the four of them had to agree to something in unison for it to be on par with the Lamia queen''s orders, and that rarely if ever happened.

    Unfortunately for the Duke, the one to answer him wasn''t the Lamia queen but Daimon himself.

    "ve you say, Zia is my subordinate which means her status is higher than yours, old man, so be careful with your words"

    "¡­", a sepulchral silence fell in the room, the Nascenti Duke''s eyebrow twitched in anger, but he managed to remain calm to then say.

    "And why would that be the case, young man?".

    "Well, you don''t even own a single, while I on the other hand have a collection of a hundred habitables, the valuable information that Zia has provided me after bing my subordinate, it''s enough to reward her with the management rights of one of mys", answered Daimon, his role was to y as a noble "young master".

    That being said, he does have ownership over quite a few unexploreds, he is the young master of both the Revy and Argent families after all, so it wasn''t a lie.

    Naturally such a deration took the nobles by surprise, their whole races have been disputing the reign of Draim with two other forces for a long time, and here was a member of the young generation casually speaking about bestowing a whole to his subordinate as if it was nothing, the reactions varied, some saw opportunities, other saw red gs and others simply saw red, the young males specially.

    "Ahem, those are some grand words, but the premise behind of themcks credibility, we have tried to get the ves of those two to change to our side or simply to tear the information away from their brains before they turn into corpses, for hundreds of years to no avail and here you are affirming to have not only gotten said information but also the loyalty of one of them, pardon me if I''m skeptic about it".

    Daimon smirked in response to then say.

    "That can be easily solved, I have magic technology that you can''t even begin to imagine, if you don''t believe it, I''ll offer you a magic contract that will render all your previous loyalties null and force you into submission, what do you say?".

    A lot of the nobles took a deep breath of cold air, if such a thing existed, wouldn''t a lot of their secrets be at risk of being exposed, luckily for them Daimon''s next words made them rx, well everyone but the Nascenti Duke to whom said words were directed.

    "Of course, such a powerful contract is extremely rare and also has quite a few restrictions, that alone makes Zia have a higher status than yours, since I deemed her worthy of one".

    The young man next to the Duke finally couldn''t keep it together, a loud sound echoed through the room as he smacked his fist on the table in front of him.

    "Enough, how dare you look down on one of the founding families of the Naga race, your Majesty pardon my interruption, a mere crude Lord rank isn''t worthy of being with the princesses, please allow me Tiff Nascenti to fight for the honor of the Meliun kingdom!", he eximed.

    Such brave words, invigorated the other hot blooded young nobles who were of course dissatisfied by the rumors and soon different voices, from different nobles of both races could be heard throughout the room.

    "Alden Allmere requests a duel on the name of the Allmere noble family!".

    "Zack Zullie¡­".

    "Fern Valiun¡­".

    "Gerard Yillian¡­".

    The adult nobles rted to the young guys who were all dering the right to fight for the honor of their families, hesitated to stop them, certainly it was disrespectful to raise their voice in the presence of the queen, but at the same time they also felt that the silver haired masked youth was too arrogant, even if he had the capital to be like that, he should have thought about their faces as well, that is a golden rule among nobility.

    It''s worth mentioning that no one rted to the Gramy and Mein representatives, said anything, the first made sense since the closest person to the queen outside of her family, in other words Nea, came from the Gramy family, they were loyal followers of the queen, but the Mein Naga queen and her subordinated nobles not speaking was a bit weird.

    At least for others, Daimon perfectly understood why they behaved unlike others, because Karaam, the captain of the border guards was sitting near the Mein Naga queen, meaning he was part of her followers, so he probably informed her fellow nobles of the dangerous silver haired masked youth that arrived at the Meliun kingdom.

    And his precautions paid off the next second, when ck shadow hands holding a plethora of different magic weapons, appeared out of the bodies of all the ones who were dering their intentions to fight, pointing said weapons at their necks.

    All the guards who were supposed to protect the now endangered members of the young generation, immediately stood up but didn''t dare to act out of fear of causing a tragedy, while the parents and rtives of the hostages gazed at the origin of this phenomenon.

    "What is the meaning of this!", they eximed in unison, only for a mellow but cold as ice voice to answer them from all directions.

    "They are showing clear hostility towards my young master, so they must die", Rita''s voice was deprived of malice, as if it was meant to be this way.

    Naturally the fact that someone had slipped through their mana sense, instincts and the arrays of the room,bined with such words, made the atmosphere tense up on the spot, at least until Daimon casually said.

    "It''s fine, I''ll let it slide this time".

    "Mm, understood young master", answered Rita, the shadow hands absorbed the weapons into them and then they disappeared.

    "I apologize for that, since I came to support Empress Thea, of course I brought some help, you just met my head maid who was tasked with guarding my back, don''t take it against her, after all the punishment for threatening me would normally be immediate execution", he added.

    Such terrifying words made more than half of the ones who were raising their voices, break in cold sweat, their lives nearly ended just because they were perceived as a "threat", not even the haughtiest and mightiest nobles of the kingdom had such authority, as twisted as it might sound, this made their image of Daimon go up quite a few notches.

    Duke Nascenti who had lost the initiative and was furious that his son was the only one with more than one weapon pointed at his neck, cleared his throat in a try to keep his cool, even he couldn''t react on time earlier, so that "maid" must be at least as strong as him, the problem is that if one was hidden, what assured him that there weren''t more, so he decided to give his son the chance he wanted.

    "Ahem, at the Meliun kingdom fighting doesn''t necessarily mean engaging in battle, we take pride in our advanced rune techniques, among which we developed the "Bloodline Coliseum Array", which is what we use to determine who is outstanding enough to be granted a high position, since you want to court the princesses of our Meliun kingdom, you must also follow the tradition, in other words you have to proof that yourpatibility with the Lamia race surpass ours", he said.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow on the outside, but he already knew that the nobles would rely on the "traditions" to drag things over, in the past one of the many queens agreed to the petition of a Naga king, basically if the members of the Lamia royal family were to ever consider having offspring the good old way, the first ones to be considered should be the Naga race.

    That being said, this tradition was just a verbal agreement not aw or anything, but in this situation, not abiding by it would cause troubles for Mirellia, so she asked Daimon to y along, in any case it aligned with the result that they needed to put execute their n.

    Still, that didn''t mean that Ferris who hated being treated like a trophy, couldn''t speak on her own behalf.

    "That is a mere verbal agreement from a long time ago, we are free to choose who to rte with and both my sister and me have rejected each and every one of the ones that want to fight "in our honor", if I wish so, I''ll marry Gabriel and there is nothing anyone of you can do about it, I am the future queen of the Lamia race after all".

    That was the signal, Daimon smiled and then got up from his seat while cing his hand on top of Ferris''s shoulder.

    "Since miss Ferris finds this "tradition" untasteful, let''s make it like this, I''ll y along but this will be the first andst time I hear anything about this thing, also I don''t want to lose my time, so all the ones who want to participate, take a step ahead, I''ll deal with all of you at once".

    The confidence in his words was absolute, so much that the older nobles frowned, after witnessing how their young generation was taken hostage without them being able to do anything, they grew wary of the new guest that the queen brought.

    Of course, after being rejected by Ferris and also looked down upon by Daimon, Tiff and the others were raring to go, they bowed towards their elders asking for their blessing to fight.

    "Fine, from the Naga race, the four kings will provide their blood", said Duke Nascenti, the other two kings nodded and the Naga queen sighed but she still agreed, no one from her side will fight, but she had toply with this request.

    "From the Lamia race, I will provide my blood", added Mirellia, very much to the surprise of others, normally for these events one of three Duchesses would take this role, the queen has never done it, since the blood of the royal family is considered a treasure.

    The five blood donors made a slight cut on their fingers and extracted a sole drop of their blood, with a few gestures a red rune circle appeared on the ground, the thing blinked until the five drops of blood fell on it making it stable.

    Then a total of ten contenders jumped into the blood circle, before Daimon did the same, this array had a simple function, seal every force besides the bloodlines rted to the ones selected by the casters of the array, the participants will then fight using only said bloodlines.

    Tiff saw Daimonnding on the ground a few meters away from him and his eyes saw red, he has been courting both princesses for a couple of years and was harshly rejected every time, and here some random guy who appeared out of nowhere seemed to have won them over.

    ''So, what if you have a high status outside, here in Draim we the Naga race call the shots!'', he inwardly screamed as he stimted his Naga blood, making a few dark gray scales appear on his arms and legs, they shone for a moment producing a forty-meter image of a humanoid scaled creature of some kind.

    "Oh, not bad, young master Tiff''s lineage projection has grown to over thirty meters, even princess Ferris who is considered the most talented knight of her generation is around fifty meters", said one of the nobles subordinated to the Nascenti family.

    The other contenders followed through, their lineages produced simr illusions thanks to the support of the array, but thergest was Tiff''s one.

    "If you don''t manage to create your lineage projection in the next minute, it will be our victory¡­", Tiff''s sentence was stopped in cold by a single word from Daimon.

    "Kneel", what followed is a spectacle that will be forever engraved in the hearts of the present nobles, well, the ones who will survive to this day''s events.

    Though illusionary, ck inked water poured out of Daimon''s body until a giant wave above two hundred meters raised behind him, from within the ck nightmarish wave a pair of yellow sun-like eyes shone, next the sound of ss shattering followed by screams, echoed through the room.

    "Crack!".

    "Aghhhhhh!"

    The projections of the contenders exploded on the spot and their respective owners vomited blood and fell to the ground in pain.

    "Impossible!", the backers of the contenders screamed in unison as they rushed towards their young generation to confirm their status, all of them but Duke Nascenti whose son was still conscious but half kneeled on the ground.

    The burden of Daimon''s lineage projection was shared among the ten contenders, who had in average a projection of twenty meters, so Tiff received less pressurepared to others, that being said, the veins on his whole body were bulging due to the humiliation, he a prince of the Naga race obeyed the order to kneel in front of an outsider, whose realm is lower than his!

    "Go to hell!", he shouted as he rolled out of the circle which allowed him to regain his middle stage Archmage realm.

    In his anger, he forgot that earlier he was handled like a toy by Rita, but Duke Nascenti didn''t, which is why he jumped into the action to interfere.

    "Stop Tiff, the one in the shadows, hold your hand!", he screamed, but he was a step toote.

    "Aghhhh!", Tiff''s miserable scream drew the attention of all the presents, his arms and legs were twisted in a strange angle making him fall to the ground, to then be restrained by dark chains, before he could continue screaming his tongue was teared off as well, finally forcing him to faint.

    Duke Nascenti trembled from anger, but before he could speak, Mirellia''s voice acted like a bucket of cold water being poured on him.

    "Attacking the other party in the array is punishable with death, young master Gabriel has graciously spared your son''s life, don''t you have anything to say Duke Nascenti?".

    "T¡­Thanks young master Gabriel", said the Duke while gritting his teeth, the queen nodded and then said.

    "Well, now that you have witnesses such a crushing victory, I''ll make my official deration over your doubts regarding those rumors, they are fake", such words brought hope to the heats of all the young make nobles present, only for that to be utterly crushed the next second.

    "The one marrying our dear guest in the present, will be me, as for my daughters they will be engaged for the time being".

 Chapter 572: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 8)

    As one would expect the Lamia queen''s deration took all the nobles by surprise, in fact this also applied to Ferris and Naomi, the n they knew about was that their mother would announce that either one or both of them would be engaged with Daimon, this was leftpletely to the discretion of Mirellia and Daimon, it would be done based on how things developed.

    Seeing the though practically impossible to notice from afar, still existing reddish tone on her mother''s cheeks, Ferris gave her young sister who was ring at Daimon, a deathly gaze, making her shrink back into her seat.

    ''Humph, I bet he must have been the one to told mom to say that'', thought Naomi but she still didn''t dare to go against her older sister''s serious gaze.

    Ferris on the other hand felt the surprise around Daimon a second earlier, so she was sure he had nothing to do with her mother''s sudden change of n.

    ''Whatever, this is all an act anyway, mother must have her reasons, I''m more interested in that lineage projection of his, leaving aside that towering size for a Lord rank, the pressure radiated from it was no joke'', she thought.

    Daimon felt a couple of intense gazes well there were countless of gazes on him, but only two were worthy of his attention, one wasing from Thea and the other from his own shadow, still he decided to y fool as he was in the dark about too.

    Leaving that little exchange aside, the nobles slowly but surely got over the initial shock and as expected a loud discussion among them exploded on the spot.

    "Did my ears deceive me, a Lamia queen is considering marrying?", mumbled one of the Lamia/Naga male hybrids.

    "The first ever Lamia royalty couple is going to include an outsider¡­", and simr whispers could be heard here and there.

    Duke Nascenti who was previously focused on tending to his son''s wounds, had frozen as if he had heard something outrageous, but the continuous ongoing discussion snapped him back to reality.

    "Your Majesty, though the previous demonstration of talent was indeed amazing, there is big difference between an engagement with the princesses and an actual marriage, with the queen of the Lamia race no less, don''t you think that is a bit too much?", he said with a voice that tried to sound reasonable, but with clear and unaltered anger behind of it.

    "I have to agree with Duke Nascenti my queen, you represent the maximum prestige of the Meliun kingdom, a marriage out of nowhere would be "inadequate"¡­", added the Duchess Allmere.

    "I think likewise, besides I would like the previous lineage sh''s result to be rendered null and a proper investigation to look for cheating to be initiated, the lineage projection that young man created was in no way simr to the ones of the blood donors, meaning that his other powers might not have been sealed by the array", said the Yillian Naga king, which stirred the backers of the other guys who got their asses handed by Daimon merely saying a single word earlier.

    "The Yillian king is right, a single person destroying the lineage projection of ten talented members of the young generation so easily, there sure is something suspicious about it!", eximed the nobles in unison.

    They have seen Ferris train with three to four people stronger than her at once in the array with rtive ease, but they refused to believe that ten of their geniuses would be defeated just like that.

    Duke Nascenti saw the scale tilting his way and he decided to go all out.

    "It saddens me to say that if the current Lamia royalty takes such important matters this lightly, my Nascenti family will have to consider breaking ties with the Melliun kingdom, we can''t leave our future up to a shady person after all", he said with a slight threatening voice.

    Some nobles gazed at Duke Nascenti with disbelief, that statement was dangerously close to what could be considered treason, however there were others who were also moved by his words.

    It was then when a coldugh interrupted the passionate act of the Nascenti Duke, all the presents turned their attention towards the origin of it, a silver haired masked youth.

    "You all keep calling me "outsider", "shady" and stuff like that, let alone the the fact that had it not been for miss Mirellia''s sake I would have ordered you to be executed just for that, you seem to be misunderstanding something, I don''t need any cheats to crush those losers, I even went as far as to go easy on them not to embarrass you all", casually said Daimon.

    "What did you say!", Duke Nascenti nearly lost it, but he managed to quell his anger and regain his cool.

    "There must be a limit to someone''s arrogance young man, no matter how talented you are, there is no way you could dealt with that many talented opponents without any pressure¡­".

    Duke Nascenti''s words were interrupted midway by a giant shadow being casted all over not only him but all the Naga nobility, it was that giant ck inked water tsunami with an unknown being whose sun-like eyes could be seen bypassing the nightmarish water, but there was a difference this time, below the water there was a though smaller still noticeable, solidyer of ground.

    There was another differencepared to the previous situation, this wasn''t a projection, but just the shing image created by Daimon releasing his aura, still the result was even crazier, since all the ones with Naga blood in them, fell to their knees, some even broke in cold sweat as if they were facing a sure death situation, at the same time Daimon finally noticed the change on his eyes.

    Behing his mask he saw the reflection of a symbol that was simr to a "+" sign but with pointy ends, also the lower vertical end was significantly longer than the other ones.

    Seeing Naga nobles, he targeted trying to get up but being unable to, no matter how much they force they applied, to the point that they cracked the ground below them but were still forced to keep their heads down, Daimon jumped out of the pir,nding in front Duke Nascenti.

    The Duke''s field of vision was filled with Daimon''s feet, that''s how low his head was forced to be and as if that wasn''t enough to make him burn in anger, Daimon''s next words were thest nail for his coffin.

    "You see, if I would have wanted to humiliate those losers, I would have used the part of my lineage that is rted to your race, but I wouldn''t have gotten to see the famous lineage rted array of which miss Mirellia has told me so much about it, also she asked me not to be too harsh on you, unfortunately for you while I don''t usually bother with trash, I also don''t like clowns to unt themselves in front of me".

    "Gulp!", the lower and middle ranked Lamia nobles swallowed at the sight of a member of the young generation, humiliating the most respected members of the Naga nobility, well, almost all of them since the Mein queen and her subordinates were spared from such treatment.

    "Ahem, your Majesty I think our guest has proven his point, it would be better to solve things peacefully, don''t you agree?", said with a calm voice, the Gramy Duchess, in other words, Nea''s mother.

    Mirellia gave Daimon a calm gentle gaze, to which he nodded showing that despite his prideful attitude he waspletely calm.

    Daimon jumped back to his seat and only after he had amodated himself, he retrieved his aura, or more urately the leftover aura from the blood of the Naga first ancestor which he has been restraining with the help of the Bracelet of the God of Mischief and the Hollow Suit, allowing the majority of the Naga nobles to finally be able to breath.

    ''How interesting, I just wanted to expose the aura from the Naga lineage that was leftover, but it came out along with my Dracolevia lineage''s aura, otherwise the mark caused by the Ruler of the Sea wouldn''t have appeared in my eyes'', thought Daimon,pletely ignoring the infuriated Duke Nascenti and Yillian king.

    Unfortunately for those two, their humiliation wasn''t over yet, but it was time for the queen tond thest blow.

    "Is that enough of a proof for you, I don''t have to justify my personal life decisions to you, but if you are that much settled on not having an "outsider" gaining influence on the kingdom, I''ll tell you a little secret, young master Gabriel''s lineage has a certain rtion with the Naga one, an ancestor-descendant rtion to be more urate, in other words, he represents the "evolution" you have been seeking to attain by annoying the previous queens with your marriage proposals, and he attained it without relying on the Lamia race".

    She basically said "He is better than all the Naga kings that had existed so far" and this is where twopletely different sides formed on the Naga race, the Mein and Valiun, queen and king respectively, were in high spirits over the existing rtion between them and Daimon.

    It meant that there was a high possibility of cooperation between the Naga race and him, which included a way to break through the shackles that had been restraining them and return to the former glory of their race, after all while their first ancestor didn''t get to meet a member of their race who had surpassed the Ster rank, they knew that the Lamia race did and ording to their history records, they were neighbors in their original gxy, so there should have had simr strength, but seemingly worse luck.

    Then we have the other side of the coin, the Nascenti and Yillian kings were seething with rage.

    ''Are you telling us to bow to that little bastard, just because he was born with the luck of a purer lineage!'', is what they were thinking.

    As for the Lamia nobility, two of the three Duchesses had approving expressions on their faces, the Zullie Duchess who is known for being neutral was utterly convinced aster witnessing such a demonstration of power and the Gramy Duchess whose support belongs to the queen, stopped worrying after seeing how he didn''t look down on Mirellia.

    The queen pped her hands a couple of times to settle the matter.

    "Okay, since there doesn''t seem to be any moreins regarding that matter, is there anything else you would like to discuss, if not I''ll allow this meeting to end", she said.

    Duke Nascenti was trembling due to anger, he was humiliated just like that and it was being ignored by the queen, the Yillian king was the same, he approached the old Duke who was the leader of their united front to ask for his advice, only for the Duke to ce his hand on his shoulder.

    "Is that it¡­", a low but burning with hatred voice echoed through the room, making the nobles turned to see the Duke, they couldn''t believe he still wanted to stir up trouble after being taught such a heavy lesson.

    After all, the Naga nobles knew pretty well what happened to them earlier, it was the suppression caused by a superior rted lineage, the strongest among themselves had used it withmoners or their subordinated families, but never in their wildest dreams, they imagined to be subjected to it, specially because they are all at least half Ster ranks and that suppression diminishes if the difference in realms is too vast.

    However, they were forced to bow by a member of the young generation who isn''t even an Arch rank, meaning that his lineage must surpass them quite a lot, enough to make up for the difference in realms and also, they being nobility among Nagas.

    "Do you have anything else to say, Duke Nascenti?", coldly asked the queen, her voice nowpletely deprived of even the normal respect she shows to the nobles, which only made the mes in the Duke''s heart to burn even more furiously.

    "I see, so you have decided topletely throw yourself towards that little bastard", said Duke Nascenti, which made the other Naga representatives take in a breath of cold air, one thing is going against the queen between lines, but directly insulting her is a capital offense.

    Even the Yillian king couldn''t help but cough a couple of times as he approached the old Duke to whisper at his ear.

    "Ahem, uncle, why don''t we leave, we can further discuss this¡­ blegh!", the Yillian king vomited blood midway, he slowly looked downwards just to see a hand piercing his chest, disbelief shed through his eyes.

    As a Ster rank, a hand through his chest was not enough to kill him, so he directly asked.

    "What are you doing uncle!", the old Duke raised his head and gazed at the Yillian king with a calm but cold face.

    "You have a better use for me than an "ally", don''t worry I''ll make sure that your lineage lives on through your sisters and daughters", with those ominous words, the Yillian king who has been casting a spell in secret to blow the Duke into smithereens with his fire magic, suddenly felt all his power disappearing.

    "Aghhhh!", a miserable scream, escaped the mouth of the Yillian king, dark wine-red marks appeared all over his body making his flesh distort in a gruesome way before his body dried turning into a mummy.

    In exchange a thick dark red fog was expulsed from his body and then absorbed by Duke Nascenti, who then suffered an amazing transformation, it was as if time was rewound for him, the wrinkles on his skin disappeared, his slightly scarce dark gray hair became abundant and the beginning of a hunched posture was rectified, in a second, he went from looking like an old man in his fifties to a middle-aged man in his early thirties.

    Naturally such a bizarre spectacle took both Nagas and Lamias by surprise, the guards of the now deceased Yillian king were the first ones to react.

    "What the hell are you waiting, apprehend him!", shouted the captain of the Yiilian guards, who was actually a distant cousin of the king as his red hair suggested, also an early High stage Ster rank mage.

    Just when the other guards reacted to surround him, Duke Nascenti snapped his fingers with a smirk on his face and then a series of beastly screams came from various directions.

    "Agrghhhh!", for starters, dark red marks appeared on the bodies of all the guards of both the Yillian and Nascenti families, then they gazed all at different people and their eyes got bloodshot, this same reaction happened to guards and noble representatives of on both Nagas and Lamias sides.

    "Tsk, couldn''t you wait a bit more, old bastard!", a different voice drew the attention of the nobles who had gotten up to call reinforces, just to listen to the battle that had broke out outside of the throne hall.

    The origin of the voice was the Allmere Duchess, who simr to Duke Nascenti has gotten younger out of nowhere, the marks on her body disappeared after her transformation unlike what was happening to her guards who appeared to have lost their minds based on the empty but aggressive bloodshot eyes they gained.

    "Shut up you old whore, this happened because you couldn''t fulfill your part of the deal, if only you would have killed that brat, everything would be fine!", shouted Duke Nascenti.

    The previous took long to exin but happened in a matter of seconds and while the still sane nobles had retreated to reorganize themselves, they didn''t trust others now, so they were spread in many groups, the obviously hostile guys on the other hand had formed a sole group, which consisted in around three hundred guards the weakest being half Sters and twenty leaders who had reached the early high Stage Ster realm some in exchange for their sanity while others were already high stage Sters prior to this, there were also a few middle Stage Sters who used to be the leaders of the noble families subordinated to the two Naga kings and the Lamia Duchess, not to mention the Duke and Duchess who went up from the middle stage Ster rank to the peak after their transformation.

    The leftover guards barely amounted to around a hundred and the early high Stage Sters remaining were only five including Karaam and his subordinates who as Daimon expected had a couple of guys that deserted to the other side, as for the middle grade High Stage ones a couple who served the sole Naga queen and one from the remaining Naga king were clean, that''s without taking into ount the four guards of the Lamia queen and Nea of course, still they were outnumbered three or four to one, so things didn''t look that good.

    The sole reason as to why the newly revealed enemy hadn''t started attacking, is the existence of a big variable, Thea and as much as Duke Nascenti heated to admit it, Daimon.

    "This is an internal problem of the Meliun kingdom, take the princesses as a token of goodwill and leave, after things had settled down, we can talk about business between the new kingdom that will rise and the force that is backing you", said the Allmere Duchess, which made Duke Nascenti fiercely re at her.

    "To hell with that, this brat dared to make me kneel, I must rip his flesh and crush his bones as payback, also I want the three of them, remember you owe me one", he said.

    The Duchess sighed, but she decided to cooperate, Duke Nascenti just killed and used a Naga king as his nourishment, so he was the strongest in their alliance, it was wise a decision to obey him at least for now.

    Naturally ever since this whole situation started, the four guards as well as Nea were surrounding Mireallia and the others, the queen angrily red at the Duke to then say.

    "We have had our differences, but the Nascenti descend from the first Naga ancestor who was a friend of my own ancestor, never did we entered in a conflict that would justify this".

    The Duke snorted in response.

    "You can me your mother for this, if only she would have seen the bigger picture and be mine, the young generation would have been monstrous like that bastard, but no se had to be a stubborn bitch, she died without being able to even reach the High Stage Ster while I managed to reach it but exhausted my potential with that, so now you will be the one to solve this, feel honored, you''ll marry the first king of the Meliun kingdom¡­ no Meliun Empire after I reach the Maximum Ster rank!", he grandiosely eximed.

    And with that deration, the army of corrupted guards and nobles charged towards the queen and the others, while the Duke and Duchess remained behind like generals observing.

    The remaining sane people had no choice but to intercept their formerpanions and colleagues to take on two or three at the same time, or at least that was the idea until they horrified noticed that their attacks seemed to have no effect on the enemy.

    "What the hell is this, I punched a hole on his stomach but there was no reaction!", shouted a knight who was fighting three mages, he thought that since they didn''t seem to be in their right mind as they dared to fight in close quarters with him, there wouldn''t be a problem for him to deal with them, but the enemies took his attacks head on and didn''t flinch.

    Duke Nascenti haughtilyughed as he shouted.

    "This is the new power I have obtained, those who follow me will be protected, if you show your loyalty to me, you''ll be allowed to keep your freedom unlike those bastards who were showing signs of betrayal, join me and enjoy eternal youth and greater power!".

    "Pfft", his moment of glory was interrupted by the younger Lamia princess no longer being able to contain herugh.

    The Duke stared daggers at her trying to use his mana pressure to attack Naomi, but before it could even reach the pr, it was extinguished by Thea''s.

    Daimon also gazed at the younger Lamia princess, which made her look downwards in embarrassment.

    "Oh well, I guess it''s time to end this before the dead count increases", he said as he stood up.

    "Humph, you think I''m afraid of your backing, I have someone supporting me as well, besides since you''ll die here and be nourishment for my glorious Naga lineage, no one will know what happened to you", shouted the Duke.

    "Well, if you call being a ve to Nethereals "support" then you are even stupider than I what I thought", retorted Daimon.

    ''Especially since thather you seem so proud off is the one I am more ustomed to deal with'', he inwardly added, a bright yellow crux (I decided to call it that instead plus sign because it sounds better), appeared on his violet amethyst pupils.

    The Duke angrily witnessed that image which brought him to his knees, shing behind the silver haired masked youth, but he snorted to then say.

    "If your n was to end the fight without throwing a punch by relying on the privilege of having been born with your lineage, then you¡­", the voice of the Duke froze midway, as if the sun had descended into the room, a blinding white light appeared behind Daimon.

    An impending sensation of doom, rained upon all theher corrupted Nagas or Lamia and Naga hybrinds, which ounted to more than 80% of the army amassed by Duke Nascenti and Duchess Allmere, after all it was easier for them to tempt those guys with power than to the female Nagas who idolized the queen.

    "Aghhhh!", a loud scream broke the temporary silence brought by Daimon''s Demon Light making its appearance, as one of theher corrupted Nagas suddenly started bleeding before copsing on the ground¡­ dead.

    "L-Lord Nascenti, you said that we would be invincible and imperturbable¡­ blegh!", another Naga seemed to have recovered his sanity and with that, the wounds he had casually disregarded burst on the spot, bringing him to the brink of life and death.

    And that scene repeated all over the recently created battlefield, of course not all theher corrupted Nagas were severely enough wounded to render them useless on the spot, but watching their supposed "invincibility" being cancelled did the job, some who had dered their loyalty to Duke Nascenti knew that they would temporarily turn into mindless ground soldiers, but willingly epted in exchange of the marvelous powers and future high positions they were promised and in the inside they witnessed those words being true, but their joy was long lived.

    The result was the constant which any being can''t avoid to feel when after having tasted superiority no matter how shortly, gets by being brought back to where they truly stood¡­ fear.

    Duke Nascenti saw half of his army in this room suddenly copsing and felt the despairing from his forced in the battlefield outside of the throne hall, unknown to him, his hands began shaking, while he roared in an instinctive try to shake off the dreading sensation that was drowning him right now.

    "This is a trick, I am no longer a mere Naga tied to the lineage of that traitorous ancestor, with this power my potential should at least equal hers, I won''t be humiliated by that lineage of yours again!".

    Daimon casually nodded as he gazed at Mirellia, who with a gracious wave of her hand created a myriad of space portals from which, around thirty Hugh Stage Sters who grades went from the early to the middle one, descended, perfectly encircling the rebels, it was as if everything was perfectly calcted, because it was.

    "You see, withher or not a loser''s fate when facing me would remain the same, Thea, miss Mirellia if you''d do the honors", said Daimon.

    And then another surprise, which would have been pleasant under other circumstances, revealed for the rebels, the Lamia queen stood up from her throne and her figure was enveloped in a dazzling emerald green light, as her lower body turned into a gracious snake tail.

    "Y-You got rid of the poison!", eximed Duke Nascenti in disbelief, only for the queen''s words to put thest nail on his sanity.

    "Thanks to young master Gabriel, all the fronts of your betrayal were previously dealt with".

    Those words resonated within the Duke''s mind, he turned to see Daimon with blood thirsty eyes.

    "Aghhhh, I''ll take you down with me!", he roared as he charged towards Daimon, only for two elegant figures to intercept him, Thea appeared behind of him, her spear travelled through space, piercing the throat of the Duke, while the Lamia queen stopped the spell that was taking form on the Duke''s right hand by grabbing and twisting his arm off, let alone his hand, his mana itself melted away as a sign of how strong was the queen''s acid battle aura!

    And just like that, the light disappeared from the Duke''s eyes, thest thing he saw was a mocking smirk appearing on the face of the silver haired masked youth who had frustrated all his ns.

    It''s worth mentioning that while the Nagas and Naga/Lamia hybrids were shaken to their core and then sumbed to a mix of their wounds/fear, the Lamia rebels weren''t in a way better state, they felt intimidated which is why they were frozen but physically they werepletely fine, this included Duchess Allmete who was in a loss for words since earlier.

    She woke up from her stupor as she felt the scythe of the good of death approaching her neck, it was revealed earlier that the assassination attempt towards Naomi was orchestrated by her, so of course Mirellia was angry enough to torn her flesh and grind her bones with her own hands.

    Unfortunately, since fear drowned her within Daimon''s presence which further amplified it, she lost her chance to surrender, but in what probably used up all the remaining luck of her life, a casual voice saved her neck.

    "There are fates worse than death", listening to Daimon''s words, the Lamia queen''s hand which was a millimeter away from melting Duchess Allmere''s neck, stopped in cold.

    "Hisss!", a sizzling sound came from the skin on the Duchess''s neck as the mere proximity to the queen''s battle aura, melted the natural mana barrier around the Duchess''s body and burned her skin, but besides crying in silence she didn''t dare to let out a scream.

    The queen pouted, but she took a deep breath, her anger indeed got the better of her earlier, but it''s not like she was blinded, after all there were other High Stage rebels who got to keep their sanity, so she could "extract" information from them anyway, killing the Duchess wouldn''t affect her ns, still since it was Daimon the one speaking, she listened, not without expressing her doubts.

    "Like?".

    "Putting a leash on someone that valued being in a position of power more than her life, is a better punishment than death, not to mention that it would be a waste not to use peak High Stage Ster cannon fodder, of course the premise to this decision is the fact that obedience can be absolute, otherwise death it is", said Daimon.

    It was then when the queen was reminded of the fact that Daimon actually got a high ranked official from their sworn enemy to change sides with ease, the weighted the pros and cons for a second before taking her decision.

    Daimon didn''t interfere more, whether the queen killed the Duchess or not it didn''t really matter for him, the benefits of a peak High Stage Ster would have more impact for her kingdom than for him, he just wanted to test if he could recreate Zia''s terror contracting situation, but it was unsessful ording to the undead head maid''s words.

    ''Nope, she isn''t like us~'', happily said Rita who for a change was in good spirits about Daimon not being in the right, ultimately the queen restrained Duchess Allmere with chains made with her battle aura, allowing her to live but also giving her horrible chemical burn scars, as she returned to her throne.

    "Later I would like to listen to what she has to say, if you don''t mind", she said to Daimon who nodded in response.

    And with the recently arrived reinforces and the guards and nobles who were clean, joint forces, the rebels both sane or nor, who were still alive were apprehended, chained and piled in a corner of the room, giving way for the true motive of this meeting.

    "We''ll beunching an all out offensive against that tyrant woman tomorrow, prepare till thest soldier you have, this is a royal decree not a petition of course", said Mirellia, which made the nobles tremble.

    Throughout her life, any Lamia who is crowned as the queen, has three chances to demand the full support of the kingdom, this includes Lamia and Naga nobility''s, they are normally used in a moment of crisis, since it requires each and every noble representative to vote against it for it to not proceed, which would be incredible to witness considering the queen also has allies among nobles, like the Gramy and Mein families for example.

    And this was her first royal degree in more than a thousand years of reign, even when she had to face Thalia personally, she didn''t resort to this, so no one dared to raise their voice and instead nodded in response.

    "We listen and obey!", they eximed, what a joke after witnessing their newest "ally" toying with Duke Nascenti like he was nothing, even after he got those strange powers from who knows where, any thoughts of dissidence were eradicated from their very hearts.

 Chapter 573: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 9)

    Seeing the nobles fully supporting her decree, the Lamia queen inwardly nodded, she could havemanded a small or middle scaled assault on Thalia''s forces, with the loyal forces under her, but for a big scaled one, she definitely needed the armies of all the major noble families.

    Her body shone in a gracious emerald light and then her snake tail dissolved in green light particles, turning back into a lower human body which was perfectly hidden under her royal green dress.

    Naturally she could notice the though hidden, still impossible to conceal, difort on the eyes of the Naga nobles as she deactivated her Lamia form.

    ''Humph'', the queen inwardly snorted, her green snake-like eyes red at the nobles who in response shrank into their seats.

    "Very well, now that you are aware of the true purpose of this meeting, we''ll listen to what Gabriel''s follower, Zia, has to say about her previous affiliated force", said the queen as she gestured towards Zia, who in exchange turned to see Daimon to ask for permission.

    Unlike Rita or Horals, despite the fact that the recently contracted Zia, obviously idolized Daimon as the sparkles in her eyes every time she gazed at him, suggested, her attitude was more on the meeker side instead of the intense one like those two.

    However, Daimon has seen how her calm andposed mind changed to a "war" mode, when she faced that guy earlier, meaning it was probably a racial trait, interestingly enough, that side of hers took over when she received an "order" from Daimon.

    ''It''s a shame that there is no way to know what changed on Rita and Horals personalities, prior to the contract, since they were pretty much emotionless before that'', thought Daimon as he nodded at Zia.

    But before the newly contracted Zia could start, a soft cough could be heard from the nobles on the amphitheater, more urately from a slender and young-looking woman with short brown hair, the Zullie Duchess.

    "Ahem, sorry to interrupt your Majesty and¡­ Lord Gabriel, but before speaking about such an important and delicate information, wouldn''t it be wise if everyone but the representatives left?", she said with a firm voice, only hesitating at the moment of referring to Daimon, since if the queen''s statement was valid, he was the soon-to-be king of the Lamia race, the first one ever.

    It was praise worthy that she didn''t hesitate to express her doubts, despite the brutal exhibition of earlier, it''s not like Daimon was really a high and mighty young master, but he did y the role quite skillfully so far, mostly by imitating Adam''s usual attitude and the light idiot would have for sure openly reacted with extreme aggressiveness against anyone who defied him in any possible way, for some reason.

    Anyway, keeping up that act was no longer necessary, so Daimon simply answered like himself this time.

    "There is no need for that, lying is useless in my presence so earlier when you answered to miss Mirellia''s decree, I was able to determine that there are no traitors hidden anymore and for those whose resolutions weren''t up to my standards¡­", Daimon casually snapped his fingers and Duke Nascenti''s corpse lit up in white mes, but it didn''tst long, since Daimon only wanted to "remove" his disguise.

    "W-What the hell is that!", eximed a young Lamia noble girl, where Duke Nascenti''s corpse wasying a second ago, now there was a fully scaled but faceless corpse with a vertical mouth on its stomach, the thing looked bizarre but not specially frightening, only strange.

    "Nether is a strong power indeed, the problem is that when one isn''t up to the task of controlling it and more importantly when it is given by others, unlike mana it doesn''t only corrupt your mind but your body as well", said Daimon.

    Thanks to Agrak he now knew how artificial Nethereals were created, apparently Nethereals with negative oriented affinities have it hard when ites to produce offspring, it is still fine if the desire is to create a small civilization, but to be a military superpower they couldn''t simply rely on that, so they created a method to bring members of other races under their "wing", but it basically was very with extra steps.

    At least the four Nethereal families of which Daimon obtained information thanks to Agrak, normally included hidden loopholes in the contracts they made with those who they recruited and that produced a massive affluence of cannon fodder in the form of lesser Nethereals, who were more propense to be consumed by their negative emotions adopting a bizarre form.

    "This here is a major deformation caused by greed and this here is a minor deformation caused by lust, this is the result of being stupid enough to make a deal with a Nethereal whose status is way above yours, so I''ll suggest you to not let them tempt you, especially because now that I have seen thisher, no one who uses it will be able to hide it from me", said Daimon as he pointed to the faceless head and mouth on the stomach of what used to be Duke Nascenti.

    "Are they all like that, monsters with a fake skin on top¡­", mumbled the Gramy Duchess, as she gazed at the chained and unconscious rebels, to which Daimon shook his head.

    "No, that form is a result of recklessness in the sought of power for those who were converted, those with Nethereal blood, high ranked ones especially, have a human form and can gain traits depending on their lineages, ultimately they are only another race", he concluded.

    The concept of "gic damage" was alien for the people of a world where magic existed, but Daimon knew about it, maybe for Nethereal those bizarre changes were a proof of a poor lineage, poor talent or some ssist bullshit like that, but in truth it was majorly a gic problem caused by an invasive rushed change of race, which is why Daimon couldn''t obtain a skill from them, in order for him to avoid future problems.

    Of course he didn''t tell them that, also there was the problem of what happened to the Nethereals he saw at the casino, they didn''t have their original bodies, even the ones that had somehow sneaked into Neptune were the same.

    ''Damn Agrak, even for dying he was useless, couldn''t he die closer to the main battlefield'', thought Daimon, not knowing the oue of the battle that created the current Neptune was frustrating.

    Back to the meeting room, the nobles were half in awe and half terrified, they realized that it wasn''t the queen''s cleverness what allowed them to uncover the hidden enemies, the silver haired masked youth had a way to recognize them and yed them like fools.

    ''The aura of earlier clearly exuded darkness, water and metal affinities but what''s up with those terrifying white mes he used to bring Nascenti''s pawns to the ground¡­ an innate ability perhaps'', wondered the Mein Naga queen as she stole a gaze at Daimon, it was normal that she felt interested on it, since Mirellia stated that Daimon''s race shared some rtion with the Naga one.

    "In that case pardon the interruption, please continue", said the Zullie Duchess as she sat down.

    Feeling Daimon''s desire for her to continue, Zia took a couple of steps ahead to start with the exnation that her young master tasked her to give in the presence of the nobles.

    "My name is Zia, a member of the Amber Asper Snake race, I held a peak middle grade authority among the Guardians of the Tyrant Snake''s army, despite my lower battle prowess and was personally appointed by that despicable woman, before I was freed by young master", she said.

    Just those words were enough to convince the nobles of her loyalty to Daimon, while even with those ve-like shackles that Thalia ced on her subordinates, she couldn''t deprive them of having their own opinions deep in their hearts, they were unable to badmouth her, a little rule she set to prevent dissidence, since she ruled as a tyrant where no one else''s opinion mattered.

    So, Zia just demonstrated that she was no longer tied to that, just like Daimon stated earlier.

    "Even if I wasn''t part of the higher echelon, my specialty was information gathering and urate decision making, so I was held in high regard by some of the main Guardians, who of course wanted me to join their sides, as only those races who proved their worth would be spared from bing test subjects of that woman", she added, all this was to exin how the next information reached her ears, despite she obviouslycking the personal power to obtain it.

    That outstanding trait of hers, was also what earned her the enmity of the other middle ranked guardians though, but that''s beside the point.

    "As you already know, ever since Thalia discovered the existence of the Lamia and Naga races, she prepared countermeasures to prevent you who had spent more time here and gotten used to how easy spatial movement is in Draim, from infiltrating into some secret important ces".

    "The whole deal with the "Perfect Watchtower Array" had always been a distraction, she made the experts of the Rune Scale race, engrave that array multiple times in the headquarters, important ces and even all the non-vital facilities, all of that was actually to cover up a hidden¡­b".

    The nobles nearly fell from their chairs, all this time they have of course focused on trying to assault the most "secured" ces and now they realized that they were being led by the nose.

    "I have to admit it, to even use her own home as bait, she might be a cold soulless witch, but she is quite clever", said the Valiun Naga king as he smashed his fist against the armrest of his seat.

    "So, we areunching an assault onto that secretb to bring that snak¡­ I mean that tyrant, out of her home to ambush her?", said the Mein Naga queen, who midway noticed her mistake, both Mirellia and Thea descend from snake rted races, of course she didn''t mean it in a malicious way, apparently the Mein queen wasn''t too socially skilled, probably because she had to deal with two douchebag kings and a not bad but kind of musclehead one.

    "No, tomorrow morning you''llunch an all-out attack on the headquarters, while me and my personal army take care of that secretb", casually said Daimon.

    Of course, the previous made some of the nobles unable to hide their inconformity, especially the young ones, but they were death-red by their parents, family leaders and the like and zipped their mouths, it was hard for them to get used to the idea that as nobles aplete stranger was not only probably marrying three of the most coveted girls of their kingdom, but also calling the shots.

    "Is there a special reason for that distribution?", asked the Gramy Duchess, earning the gratitude of practically every young male noble present in the room.

    "It''s notplicated, your appearance on their headquarters is meant to draw their attention, while I have the means to bring a group through the detection arrays, that''s all", said Daimon.

    The vast majority of high ranked nobles nodded, unlike what they expected that was a pretty valid reason, still, one of the noble family heads subordinated to the Valiun couldn''t help but say.

    "We lost two major nobles and a bunch of captains from many squads of two Naga races, while assigning new ones to organize the armies in a day and one night should be possible, we wouldn''t be at out best for such an important battle".

    "Then don''t assign them, they might not have been directly involved in the rebellion orchestrated by those two old fogeys, but no one sent any information or anything, byw they should all have their noble status degraded if notpletely stripped away, so they''ll be treated as soldiers for the next few wars if they are lucky", eximed the younger Lamia princess, who was still pretty pissed after knowing the identity of the one who arranged her assassination attempt.

    The though few, sane nobles from the three major families that didn''t involve themselves into the rebellion, felt shame, but at the same time they didn''tpletely agree with Naomi''s statement, after all they were in the dark about this whole thing, though there were rumors among servants and stuff like that.

    Nevertheless, the dangerous eyes of the queen made them unable to refute, if the only thing they needed to keep their noble status was to earn merits in the battlefield, that was a blessing from their ancestors at this point.

    Besides, Daimon lent a little hand to the younger princess, because he had more important things to deal with right now.

    "As for the loose in manpower, it''s irrelevant, Rita what''s the percentage of deceases due to the previous sh?", he said.

    "Around 10% percent died from both sides", calmly answered the undead head maid, who by Daimon''s petition observed every battlefield that was created in the city.

    Daimon nodded, with a snap of his fingers a giant pile of weapons, armor and potions appeared in the middle of the room.

    "Here a little gift to celebrate our alliance, a ten percent of loose of manpower against a fifty percent in power increase", he said.

    The eyes of the nobles sparkled as they saw all that Ster ranked equipment appear just like that, sure most were low ranked with some middle ones mixed here in there, but considering the fact that not all middle grade Ster ranks had a low Ster rank magic treasure, it was a game changer.

    "Aren''t those the weapons that were pointed at our throats earlier¡­", mumbled a noble, only for a young Lamia girl to retort.

    "Shut up, I would take a stab from any of those weapons any day if I could get it in exchange".

    The Lamia queen gazed at Daimon, this wasn''t part of the n, so she was genuinely impressed by such a disy of wealth.

    ''Damn, so he actually is the heir of a big force'', thought Naomi as she saw all the shinny things piled a few meters away from her.

    Daimon on the other hand didn''t feel anything over giving those things away, he had emptied so many treasuries at this point that anything below peak middle grade Ster magic treasures was probably only kept for its materials.

    Also, he knew that Thea needed the Melliun kingdom for her challenge not to mention the fact that he was interested in the rune technology of the Melliun kingdom, it was a win-win situation.

    And that is without taking into ount all the free manpower he is about to get in the form of terror contracted Nethereals.

    "Ahem, if there are no more questions, you are all dismissed, we''ll leave at morning so prepare your armies and don''t arrivete", said the queen.

    With a respectful nod and other words, the nobles started leaving on the spot, not without being assigned a certain number of new and sparkling Ster grade treasures for their respective armies of course, until only Mirellia, her daughters, Nea and her mother were left, well besides Daimon, Rita and Zia.

    They weren''t alone though, the pile of chained Nethereal aspirants including Duchess Allmere were still in a corner waiting for their sentence, they were the sole Nethereal infected people, the other troops were just regr traitors bribed by Duke Nascenti, so they were all dead.

    "Okay, let''s start now, we have to leave at night", said Diamon to Mirellia and Thea who nodded and started moving the chained rebels towards the center of the room.

    "Why are you moving separately, the distraction would not be effective if you reach your destination before the battle breaks out?", asked Nea''s mother.

    "As a I said, the whole battle is just bait, that woman values thatb more than her own castle, so what would happen if she were to get a request for reinforces in the middle of her fight with miss Mirellia and Thea, as to why we are moving separately, while there were no more traitors in this city, who knows how much eyes the enemy has outside, they''ll of course spot an army at some point, but so what, isn''t the best way to mislead your opponent, letting him believe he is winning?", casually said Daimon.

    Only for the empress to immediately answer.

    "Insta-chance to kill, courtesy of my general~", the Gramy Duchess couldn''t help but feel a bit apprehensive about the silver haired masked youth, such craftiness from a member of the young generation, whereas the young nobles from the families subordinated to her own, couldn''t even stop drooling over the princesses.

    ''Sigh, this is going to take some time'', thought Daimon as his body exploded in white mes, what came next was a plethora of screams and then a rain of notifications of his terror contractor skill.

    ¡­

    After a couple of hours, till thest rebel was leashed properly, leaving only Duchess Allmere behind, ever since Duke Nascenti''s bizarre appearance was revealed by Daimon, she remained silent.

    "Something in specific you want to know, she is forbidden from lying even in the slightest now", said Daimon to Mirellia and her daughters, to which the older Lamia princess, Ferris nodded.

    "Yes, why did they wanted to kill Naomi, I could understand going after me, the crowned princess or kidnapping her but¡­", mumbled the older Lamia princess.

    Daimon probably knew the answer to that, but it was better to let the Allmere Duchess answer it by herself, which she did, with his permission of course since she was now under a terror contract.

    "As much as a lie as it may sound, the who made the n wasn''t me but Oliver, he was the one who received that poison but the idiot choose to use it in a "non-vital area", but that was ame excuse, he simply wanted to preserve the beauty of the queen, so the idea was to just infect her with the poison which should cripple her and then cause her enough emotional damage to break her, imagine his surprise when not only the poison didn''t cripple her, but the assassination attempt failed", said the Duchess referring to Duke Nascenti.

    Naturally, let alone Ferris, Mirellia was furious, her daughter was nearly killed just because an idiot coveted her, however seeing that said idiot was killed in part by her hands literally and figuratively, she managed to regain her cool.

    "As to why theher poison he used, failed to cripple you, that''s probably because of your strong ascendence, after receivingher from others, the thing takes over your previous characteristics, your affinity, mana, appearance and even personality can be altered, depending on how low you fall, that''s what Duke Nascenti was aiming for", said Daimon to then add.

    "Which brings me to the next question, to affect someone,her of the same rank is needed, I already a High Stage Ster Nethereal under mymand, but he was originally a Netheral instead of having been converted, and ording to him, a representative of their "Lord" would be needed to create an artificial Nethereal of that caliber, so where the hell did you get the Nether to transform yourselves?".

    Rita had already scanned till thest house or possible hideout in the whole capital city, during the past few hours and she found no one hiding, not even at the main residences of the two guys who led the rebellion.

    "We¡­ were given it, Oliver and me were exploring potential new dimensional tunnels at a random location under the sea and found an especially strong current, so we investigated a bit and were suddenly surrounded by a strange ck mist inside the dimensional tunnel".

    "Then Oliver heard a voice calling him, so we advanced through the tunnel and found a small breach in the space from which that ck mist wasing, the voice offered Oliver power and he epted with the condition of bing the king, I thought we were being tricked but we tested it on a couple of our subordinates and the thing worked, you can imagine the rest".

    "As for that breach in space, it was forcefully closed the moment that couple of red vials and the ampule with the poison came out of it, we couldn''t hear the voice at the other side anymore, but after taking the red liquid we somehow "learned" of our mysterious benefactor, Oliver was more affected than me", she concluded.

    "Well, that''s probably because you didn''t covet the queen, but power and status, while that guy was driven by more carnal desires", said Daimon, that solved the mystery if there ever was one, the one who tempted those two idiots and brought them to his side, was one of the three Nethereal Lords.

    The smooth looking guy who belonged to the Asmadian royal family also known as the Desire royal family and probably, Sarah''s father, or at least the one who poisoned both mother and daughter withher, "Reed", apparently the idiot did use his real name during his little hidden mission at the Elemental Sea.

    ''It doesn''t surprise me, after being trapped like a rat for so many years, those three have been probably looking for each and every possible way out and they can somehow use theher floating in the dimensional tunnels as an amplification tool, but can''t control it'', thought Daimon.

    As "eerie" and bizarre as Nethereals might look, which would for sure make some superstitious people believe they are devils or some other creature from ancient texts and the like, they were just another race, what made others afraid of them was the same factor that could made anything something to fear about, the unknown, being in the dark about what surrounds you is an instinctive fear that all living beings share, that''s why fire''s discovery was such a huge change for primitive men.

    Those guys were probably used to exploit that to make their enemies submit with less effort, Daimon could totally understand that, he''s got an angel girl hanging from his neck after all, ultimately what the folklore depicted as "Gods" were probably just higher ranked mages, who were like gods for mortals and weaker mages, but that''s beside the point.

    Leaving spiritual beliefs aside, Daimon now knew that whoever left his ck Sea Emblem behind, knew of this little trick that Reed was using and probably used this specific challenge to teach him about it.

    The question now is, if said person also knew about missions and systems, because all of this was of course rted to that, strangely enough there was no information about system users in Agrak''s memories, but their existence should be known at higher ranked ces, even Evangeline confirmed that as she didn''t want Daimon to growcent.

    ''Perhaps, they have other names for system users and that idiot of Agrak simply didn''t think about it during that day, damn hell he was really useless'', inwardly cursed Daimon, unaware of Evangeline giggling at him.

    ''Just a bit more, meet the requirements already, I''m dying to exin more things to you my dear host~'', she thought.

    By the time the interrogation finished, the sun was leaving the sky, the dome reflected the same status as the sky on the surface to not alter their perception of time, and this marked the start of Daimon''s own mission.

    The truth is that, he chose to go to thatb, not only because it would be helpful for Thea, but because his instincts told him to, wo why not kill two birds with a single stone.

    However, what he didn''t foresee, was that a certain couple of Lamia sister princesses, would knock on his door a few minutes before leaving to say in unison.

    "I''ll go with you".

    Apanied with a though gentle, firm as steel gaze from the Lamia queen and a sole sentence from her.

    "They''ll be safer with you than within the walls of my own castle".

    Daimon''s right eyebrow twitched behind his mask, which he had already put on as a sign that he was about to leave.

    "Fine, but they''ll listen to my every word", he said, as he especially focused his attention on the younger princess.

    "Hey that''s rude, I understand the importance of all this", said Naomi as defense, only for Ferris to nod at Daimon.

    "I''ll break her legs if she causes any trouble".

    "Okay, let''s go then", answered Daimon, from within his shadow a portal appeared, Zia, a group of ck clothed figures and of course Daimon and the Lamia princesses jumped into it, disappearing from the room, leaving behind the empress who was slightly sulking over not going and the Lamia queen who couldn''t help but chuckle at her.

    "Let''s go, we have our own war to win".

    "Mm", limited to say the empress, while she thought to herself.

    ''Humph, you better be there to share my victory, like you did with Marlene¡­''.

 Chapter 574: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 10)

    Unaware of the intense gaze of the empress aimed at his direction, Daimon was moving at high speed inside a grim-looking dimensional tunnel, along with the others.

    "What''s up with this dimensional tunnel, it doesn''t look like anything I have seen before?", the younger Lamia princess couldn''t help but ask as she touched the floating ck mist that lingered within the dimensional tunnel.

    Ferris on the other hand had other questions, like how were they going to ignore the detection arrays nearby their destination, which were specially made to not let any spatial distortion slip by.

    ording to Zia, while there was only one array on the source of water located at that ce, to not raise suspicions on the surface by letting it too unguarded for an assault from the Melliun kingdom, that didn''t mean Thalia only relied on that to safeguard a ce that she valued more than her own headquarters.

    She had spatial detection arrays all over the ce, which would normally be ignored by the Lamia and Naga race, as they covered the aerial space which is the territory of the Dark Berserker army, in other words, Thalia''s sworn enemy, while the dimensional tunnels that the Melliun kingdom used, had to connect with a water source.

    In that way, Thalia created the illusion that she didn''t care too much about herb when it came to the Melliun kingdom, but was wary of the Dark Berserker n, which was the same for all her properties.

    Listening to Naomi and seeing Ferris''s curiosity filled eyes, Daimon exined.

    "This is a special dimensional tunnel created by Rita, just like the ones you employ for spatial movement, it has special characteristics as it doesn''t only contain spatial mana".

    "W-Wait a second, I thought the spatial gate we used was created using runes and earlier you told us that the woman living in your shadow is a recently ascended half Ster rank, so how is it possible for she to create a dimensional tunnel?", eximed the younger Lamia princess.

    Before leaving Mirellia of course asked him the strength of the group he was bringing along, and that included Rita, imagine her surprise when Daimon told her that the undead head maid whose status was clearly above that of Zia''s, wasn''t even a proper Ster rank.

    Not to mention she managed to take middle and even high rank Ster powerhouses by surprise earlier at the meeting.

    Unlike the four gxies or Neptune, in Draim some peak Arch ranks have the chance to learn a spatial movement technique, but in truth they are only moving into the already discovered dimensional tunnels, to then use them as transportation, Ferris confirmed it as she is the sole middle stage Arch rank who can do so, something she shares with her mother who was the previous one to hold such an achievement.

    However, it was obvious for both Lamia princesses that this tunnel wasn''t one of the natural existing ones, but was created and only Ster ranks can do that, no one in the history of Draim had been able to bypass this rule and now Daimon casually said that a half step Ster did it.

    Before Daimon could answer, a soft snort came from within Daimon''s shadow, apanied by Rita''s voice.

    "Humph, as the one who holds the honorable status of being Daimon''s head maid, I can''t allow myself to be grouped with trash, since my duty is to fulfill each and every of my young master''s needs, this much is nothing", she said.

    "What, who are you calling trash you¡­ouch!", the fiery younger Lamia princess of course didn''t wait to stand up for herself, but with a sigh, Ferris softly hit her with her right hand, making her stop midway.

    "That''s enough Naomi, miss Rita wasn''t referring to you specifically, you should have noticed by now, that her way of speaking is a bit different, the same seems to apply to miss Zia, isn''t that right, Daimon?", said the older Lamia princess to which Daimon nodded in approbation.

    "Yes, her speech when regarding others is a bit¡­ strange but I assure you she means no harm", said Daimon.

    Naomi mumbled a couple of things while she gave her sister an aggrieved gaze, but ultimately calmed down.

    "So, what if she has the ability to create her own dimensional tunnels below the Ster rank, I bet everyone in that guy''s gxy can do it anyway", she said only to see Daimon shaking his head at her.

    "Nope, even by the standards of my gxy of origin and its surroundings, Rita is a special case, for starters she obtained this ability before setting foot in the Ster realm and like I said, her dimensional tunnels have a special extra property, they arepletely undetectable under certain conditions and incredibly stealthy at worst", he said, earning a full-face blush from the undead head maid who was floating inside his shadow.

    Daimon wasn''t lying there, Rita is now a half Ster but at the four gxies only Half Emperors can create their own dimensional tunnels by using space shift, Rita might be a half Ster rank, but Daimon is sure that she is no match for Erin or Aura, which reinforced his belief that advancing outside of the four gxies might be easier, but a higher realm of the outside doesn''t mean being equally strong.

    In a rough calction, Rita should be around the same level as Liz at her maximum power, which is nothing tough about, since Liz as one of Daimon''s soulmates has her own grimoire.

    Ignoring all of that, Rita fluttered here and there in the limitless dark void with a happy smile on her face.

    ''I am special~'', she thought, while she triumphantly red at Naomi, who only now reacted, remembering the sensation of being gazed down by Rita.

    "This feeling, you were the one who set up that barrier that blocked me out of sister Thea''s room", she said.

    "Of course, I couldn''t let an annoyance disturb Daimon''s private time", casually answered Rita, which led to the two of them to bicker among themselves, while Daimon washed his hands from the conflict.

    "Sorry, Naomi is still too young and has been practically confined to live in the castle, this is the first time she has gone out of the capital city, so she is nervous, I was simr back then, only after I reached the Arch rank mom allowed me to wander around with Nea as my bodyguard", said Ferris as she gave Daimon an apologetic gaze.

    "Sis, you promised not to tell him!", eximed the younger Lamia princess, stopping her quarrel with Rita.

    "Heh, turns out you are more inexperienced than what I thought", jokingly said Daimon to Naomi whose snake-like pupils gazed at Daimon, anything rted to being told that she is a "little girl" touched a nerve for her.

    "Later don''t lose it and don''t separate from the group, Thea would be angered if something happens to you, so behave, okay?", he added.

    "Mm", with a soft sound, the younger Lamia princess nodded and then remained silent, on the other hand Ferris''s eyes shone for a second, as she wondered.

    ''When we met, I was sure he wouldn''t have hesitated to kill us, but now, despite not showing it on the outside, he does care about or safety, perhaps because he is the one leading us¡­''.

    Leaving that little episode aside, the travel through the dimensional tunnel whichsted around an hour finally reached its end, as the exit became visible.

    ''Rita, cover us with an istion barrier, then drink some mana recovery potions and focus on absorbing them, I''ll borrow your sight for a bit'', said Daimon to the undead head maid.

    ''Mm, I''ll watch your back Daimon~'', said Rita, while it will be faster for her to fully focus on recovering the around 30% of her mana reserves which were used to arrive to their current location, Daimon''s safety was her top priority and a couple of extra minutes of work were nothing inparison, of course she could have this luxury since unlike when they arrived at Draim, Daimon now had some proper "watchdogs" to guard him or be sacrificed shall the need arise.

    Daimon''s sclerae painted ck behind his mask and his sight was enhanced beyond his limits, he scanned the surroundings of their exit point to make sure there were no nearby guardians stationed there.

    "We are about to leave, Rita''s mana barrier will hide us, Zia it''s your turn to guide us", said Daimon as the whole group was enveloped in a ck sphere of mana essentially hiding them from the outside world.

    "Yes, young master", answered the former Amber Asper snake guardian, as predicted they smoothly came out of the dimensional tunnel, without triggering any detection array, they appeared floating arge piece of drynd which basically had a little jungle and an inactive volcano at its center with a pond at its top created thanks to the rain.

    At in sight, one wouldn''t steal a second gaze to such a ce, but from Daimon''s infinity eyes, he could see that there wasn''t a single centimeter of aerial space that wasn''t covered with a detection array.

    Unfortunately, while the arrays engraved in water were hard to trick even for Rita, they were the only ones, the ones that covered the aerial space were an easy cake for her to bypass.

    "The pond at the top of the volcano is a distraction, the entrance to the secretb is at the jungle, concealed by the trunk of a tree, there are always two guardians in ce, so that if one has to leave the other stays, the entrance requires two keys which should be hanging from their necks, otherwise the rm will sound", said Zia as they slowly descended from the sky.

    Daimon looked around the jungle and after a couple of seconds, he found two energy firms, there were two peak middle stage Ster ranks guardians, he also saw the two keys mentioned by Zia and a metal door with behind of them.

    The ck spherended around a hundred meters away from the entrance to the secretb, Daimon made the thing float towards their destiny, not without looking backwards at one of the fully ck clothed figures.

    "Neutralize them both, without sound and without them dying", he said, the main figure nodded at him, to then reveal her real identity, it was the Allmere Duchess who now wore a mask, not only because she was supposed to be death for the world besides the loyal followers of the queen, but because by Mirellia''s petition she was forbidden from healing the scars left on her face as punishment for trying to kill Naomi, that being said looks aside her usefulness was no joke, after all what could be better than a peak high stage Ster ranked "watchdog" that will die if told.

    They silently approached the entrance and once they were less than ten meters away, the ck sphere surrounded the two guards without them being able to notice and before they reacted, the Allmere Duchess had casted spheres ofher infused water around their heads, hands and feet, making them pass out on the spot.

    Since she was just converted, her water affinity was still in the process of being transformed intoher, so her current affinity was a mix of water and the darkness elementher that all the Nethereals which Daimon had battled, used, Agrak aside since he had noher left and only used his lineage suppression.

    Of course, if she rushed her transformation and became a monstrosity like Duke Nascenti, she''ll gain the capacity to use theher of the one that converted them, because she is a high stage Ster, unlike others she''ll get theher infused with a negative emotion like Duke Nascenti, in this case based on what she exined it, the emotion was "obsession".

    Duke Nascenti was obsessed with power and beauty, so he got stronger by sacrificing the other Naga king, which he converted, as for beauty, that''s why he wanted to preserve Mirellia''s beauty, while infecting her withher poison, so that he could have her for himself, the reaping process would have been different though, but you get the idea.

    Anyway, for Duchess Allmere whose name was Celia, her obsession was status and strange as it sounds, as Daimon''s ve she had a higher status than before, for the sole reason that she was now the sole leader of all the enved Nethereals, there were no any other loyalty among them, they all obeyed her and she obeyed Daimon.

    In other words, she was below one but above anyone else, and that alone actually increased her battle prowess enough to be able to at least exchange a few blows with Mirellia without dying, unlike before, which would put her among the top five strongest living beings in Draim.

    So, it was understandable that two middle stage Ster guards were knocked out before they could even react, if they were ambushed by her, the keys hanging from their necks were retrieved and presented to Daimon a secondter.

    "Two of you stay behind to secure a way out for us in case something happens, immobilize these two, take their clothes and hide them, they should be out for half a day anyway", said Daimon to two of the remaining five ck clothed figures, the team consisted in a total of ten people, six enved Nethereals, Daimon, the two Lamia princesses and Zia, Rita was also here but she was inside Daimon''s shadow.

    "Understood", with a single word those two put hands to work, they were also peak middle stage Sters and both were mages like the guardians so they should be able to impersonate them.

    Daimon used the two keys following Zia''s instructions, and then he ordered one of the "guards" to enter through the door with the excuse of taking a break, the whole group took the opportunity to enter behind of the disguised guard.

    The door led to a set of stairs that descended into the ground, to prevent leaks there wasn''t a single spatial door used in theb, Thalia built a giant underground facility

    Of course there were detection arrays at the entrance, but they only felt a guardian, the key was the token of identity and it only worked for a single person.

    Following Daimon''s instructions, the guard walked all the way through the corridor at the other side of the door, until he reached the living area of theb, which was as far as he could go.

    In case you wonder how they were going to infiltrate into the interesting parts of theb, without the respective key, that''s the fun part, the smiling calm receptionist who supervised the living area was the key and she was also the strongest member of the Amber Asper race, in other words she was Zia''s senior.

    "In theb there are two high stage Ster guardians, both are extremely loyal to Thalia for some reason, one is hidden at in sight and the other is the openly recognized person in charge, the receptionist is the hidden one, I just need to disguise as her and I''ll have ess to most of theb no questions asked", said Zia.

    Daimon nodded, they were from the same race so in terms of aura and lineage there shouldn''t be much of a problem, as for the key, it was in the receptionist wrist, a decorative metal band with a in appearance, akin to the low realm that the receptionist projected to have.

    Not even the guards knew of her identity, so she didn''t suspect a thing when the male guard approached her a bit too close forfort.

    "How can I help you sir?", she asked, just for the guard to lean frontwards, drawing her attention, making her unable to react before Celia casted a water prison, sessfully trapping her, of course she was stronger than the guards from earlier, but a ck sword was stabbed on the area below her navel, and no matter how fast her mana moved to cast a spell, it didn''t activate.

    Naturally the ck sword was Disaster, Daimon used it not only to prevent her from using magic, but also to crack her mana core a bit, enough for her realm to temporally drop to the middle stage Ster rank, as that was going to be the cover up for what wasing next.

    The invisible barrier created by Rita prevented the arrays from noticing what was happening, others could only see the receptionist sitting on her ce with a nk expression on her face.

    Her eyes closed and she was then swapped by Zia who had a pretty bracelet on her wrist, which wasn''t visible for others, Daimon lent her his Bracelet of the God of Mischief, as he wasn''t using it for now, the Hollow Suit and Rita''s barrier were covering him for now.

    As to why he didn''t buy one for Zia, he had reached the limit of purchases, which was 10, his soulmates and himself used 6, the Risha sisters had one each and thest one was given to a certain girl who would need it for the Global Raid if what Daimon predicted were to happen.

    Anyway, as expected a secondter, a voice could be hearding from the personalmunication device of the receptionist.

    "Hey, Kria, everything okay, your realm suddenly decreased?", Zia inwardly couched a few times before answering with the voice of the receptionist, thanks to the bracelet.

    "I''m fine, I was meditating to master the legacy spell of my race and the thing failed, I''ll just go for a mana recovery potion at the inventory and use the chance to go look at my subordinates at the monitoring room", she said.

    For safety, no one was allowed to use any spatial treasure in the secretb, this included the receptionist and even the person in charge, of course there was an array to secure, unfortunately it didn''t work with the inventory of the system, so Narasha was free toe out and in as she pleased.

    After a couple of seconds, in which the one monitoring the status of the sole two guardians that mattered in the wholeb, made sure that the receptionist was fine, the guy said.

    "No problem, but the potion will be deduced from your payment, take your time to refine it and inform when you return".

    "Yeah, yeah, whatever", with thatst message from Zia, the conversation was over, she grabbed hermunication device and stood up from her chair, casually telling the "guard" in front of her to take her ce until she returned.

    ''Follow me young master, the inventory and the monitoring room are ced next to each other for safety'', said Zia through the mental connection that the terror contracted had with their master.

    Daimon nodded, once they messed up with the arrays, they''ll be able to freely move, Zia who was disguised as the receptionist walked towards a door that was ced at the right corner of the living area, she used her metal wrist band and the thing which had no pommel, opened for her, of course Daimon and the others followed up behind her.

    At the other side there were four paths, two at right and left, one downwards and thest one led upwards, Zia took thest one, each one had a middle stage Ster guardian on it, though they didn''t know the real status of the receptionist, she had the authority to move through their area so none suspected anything.

    And so, Zia walked through the stairs, that led to the upper area of theb, as strange as it might sound, the inventory and the monitoring room which would normally be ced at the basement, here were at the roof, which only served as proof that whatever was hidden at the lower floors was really important.

    After walking for around ten minutes, they reached a single corridor with three doors on its walls, each one with a guard in front of it, the first one led to the dormitories of the guards, the second one was the monitoring room andstly the inventory.

    Zia calmly approached the third door and without even looking at the guard used her wrist band to open the door, and then entered, closing it behind, she took a potion from one of the many shelves while Daimon scanned the whole ce, since nothing that used spatial magic was allowed here, the whole inventory was filled with things disyed on the walls.

    However, this inventory was a fa?ade, it only had potions, magic treasures and armors, which were basically meant to be used by the guards, only two people out of the couple of dozens that worked here, knew what happened in thisb, Kria and the one in charge.

    The difference is that Kria who was considered the "savior" of her race, liked to brag in front of her juniors, especially in front of Zia who was the newest prospect of their race with potential to surpass her.

    Of course she wouldn''t speak about anything serious normally, until the day when Zia was personally ascended by Thalia, she was angry and her tongue slipped about her real status, which led to how easy it was for them to reach this far without any trouble, Zia perfectly interpreted her, just like she said, her information gathering skills are top notch.

    ''Nothing really important here, we''ll take it if possible before leaving, let''s go to the monitoring room'', said Daimon to which Zia secretly nodded.

    "How are youmunicating with her, she is out of this strange barrier?", asked Naomi, with curiosity filled eyes, both sound and image were isted by Rita''s mana, so those outside of it couldn''t see, hear or even feel those inside.

    "It''s thanks to the contract", said Daimon, not exining further, he could both talk with the terror contracted directly to their heads and Rita as well as Horals developed an advanced version of that, as they could tell what Daimon wanted without him saying anything.

    Zia drank the potion knowing that there were arrays in the inventory, kept the empty bottle in her pocket and walked out of the room, to then walk towards the second door, just like she said she used her wrist band to enter the monitoring room.

    Now, when she said that she had subordinates, it was true, the ones monitoring the arrays in theb all worked for her, but they didn''t know it, she made herself pass as their assistant who brought them food and other necessities so they didn''t need to leave the room, using that as an excuse to supervise them, this was thest bit of information that Zia had about Kria, so after this they would be in the dark, but it was enough for Daimon.

    "Hey miss Kria, there are still a few hours before breakfast, I wouldn''t mind an extra meal though", said one of the girls who supervised the arrays on the first level of theb.

    To Daimon''s surprise, the ones monitoring the arrays were¡­ weak, since they had to be in the dark about the reality of this ce, like practically everyone else besides Kria and the chief investigator, they were only early stage Sters and quite carefree at that.

    Of course, they were members of the race that Thalia designed for rune mastering, the Rune Scale race, so their expertise on it was the best among the Tyrant Snake Army, unfortunately for them, a few punches on the head and a couple of secondster, they were all knocked out, while facing their respective devices.

    ''Young master, I don''t know the distribution and functions of the devices here¡­'', said Zia, Daimon looked around, his pupils moving really fast trying to find the array that controlled everything.

    ''There, the one supervised by the youngest one'', thought Daimon, he walked towards it and then took out Disaster from the inventory.

    ''Nasha, don''t destroy the array just absorb some of the mana that it''s being constantly channeled into it, that will be enough for me to freely move'', he said as he stabbed Disaster into the device.

    ''Mm, leave it to me'', said Narasha, of course this meant that Disaster and thus Narasha had to stay here, but in exchange with the power given to the array reduced, he could now move out of Rita''s mana barrier simply relying on the Hollow Suit.

    Speaking of which, luckily, he didn''t give one of that to the Risha sisters, because Ferris, Naomi, Zia and the Celia were wearing the remaining four now, for those who weren''t wearing one, they became invisible all of a sudden, the younger Lamia princess was marveled by such a treasure, unfortunately for her before she could even fantasize on keeping it, Daimon brought her back to reality.

    "Don''t get any ideas, this is an extremely precious treasure, so I am only lending it to you for now".

    "Humph, cheapskate you gave away all those things just to impress mom but won''t give a single one", mumbled Naomi to which Daimon raised an eyebrow.

    "That was to help Thea, a general needs a strong army, also there is a world of difference between those mass-produced things and a treasure of which there are only ten in existence", casually said Daimon.

    "Ahem, I have to say it, magic cksmithing is indeed way more advanced at your gxy of origin, Daimon", added Ferris while ring at her sister for saying such a strange thing, the whole marriage stuff was supposed to be a trick to agitate thehereal converted people, forcing them to act as they are prompt to be emotionally unstable and it worked, with the difference that Mirellia added herself to the deal.

    ''That reminds me¡­ I forgot to ask mother about that subject'', thought Ferris as she gazed at Daimon for a second before shaking her head, right now they were in a dangerous and quite hidden kept ce in the enemy''s territory, it wasn''t the time for such subjects.

    "You four take their ces, no one besides the receptionist and the four girls who monitor the arrays can enter, so there should be no problem, just make sure to keep them asleep and be my eyes and ears", said Daimon to the remaining four envedhereals, the devices in front of them were practically surveince cameras of ultimate generation, but now they worked in Daimon''s favor.

    "Understood young master", they said in unison, with everyone being invisible thanks to the Hollow Suit, besides Zia who had to open the door, which wouldn''t be registered thanks to the main control array being messed with by Daimon, the four of them left the room.

    The guards only saw Zia leaving and didn''t pay her any attention, it was normal for the receptionist toe and go to the monitoring room, quite a few times every day, they were informed about it, so nothing suspicious happened for them.

    ''I know that there is a hidden part of theb that isn''t under any surveince, only the chief investigator of the technology branch works there and there are no records of anything, that''s as far as my information reaches'', said Zia to Daimon, she became invisible the moment they left the sight of the guards.

    Thanks to them taking control of the monitoring room and having the Hollow Suits, they were basically ghosts, they could open doors and wander around everything that was under the surveince of the arrays, to begin with there are not many people here, basically only guards who think this is just another outpost, Daimon didn''t want to take the monitoring room just to hide his tracks.

    Just like back then, Rita informed him that to be perfectly undetectable, he had to reduce his range of sight even when borrowing her senses, so he could now only have perfect sight at a hundred meters around himself.

    ''You four, look for a ce that though doesn''t have guards stationed, is surrounded by them'', said Daimon to the four guys he left at the monitoring room.

    Thalia has proven to be quite cautious, but when ites to deceiving others, Daimon has only fell in the traps of a single person so far and that is Erin.

    ''We found a ce that fulfills that description young master, the trash disposing room is nked in all directions by guards but has none stationed on it, also the investigator in chief who was supposed to be in her office, disappeared the moment Lady Narasha interrupted the mana source of the main array'', informed one of the envedhereals.

    ''I see, that means that woman was invisible as long as the array functioned properly, she should be in the secret part of theb¡­'', Daimon''s thoughts were interrupted by a weak and almost impossible to understand whisper that reached his ears.

    ''H¡­e..lp'', the origin was impossible to detect, but Daimon was sure he heard it, he approached one of the walls and knocked on it a couple of times, for others, Celia included it was perfectly normal, but that only confirmed Daimon''s suspicions.

    No matter how good a building is made, when ites to underground facilities, there should always be a lingering echo when a wall is stuck against the ground, arrays or not, it takes a really sharp hearing, but there should be and there wasn''t one earlier, in other words, behind this wall which should face directly the ground, there was something else.

    As to why he didn''t notice it with his eyes, the limit was a hundred meters and the wall was thicker than that, he could see through it but there was just more and more metal filling his field of vision.

    ''Lead us to that ce'', said Daimon to thehereals in the monitoring room.

 Chapter 575: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 11)

    Receiving their orders from Daimon, the three Nethereals in the monitoring room traced the shortest and least guarded route to the garbage disposal room, at the same time, Zia who was still disguised as the receptionist, deactivated the effect of the Hollow Suit, they had to cross a couple of doors and each had a guard stationed, so a visible person had to lead the way.

    ''It''s done young master, we also discovered that while there are no guards in the garbage disposal room, the surveince on it under normal circumstances is too strict'', said one of the enved guys.

    ''Okay, give Zia the instructions and inform me of anything out of ordinary'', answered Daimon.

    Luckily, since none of the guards knew about the real purpose of this facility, no one would question why the receptionist goes to the garbage disposal room but just in case, Zia had the empty bottle of the potion she used.

    Under the invisibility of the Hollow Suit, Daimon, the two Lamia princesses and Celia, followed Zia through the necessary corridors and doors, like Daimon predicted, the guards didn''t pay her any special attention, of course to be safe Daimon had asked Rita to keep an eye in case any of the guards that saw Zia, used amunication device.

    But nothing really happened so after going through three different doors and a few corridors, they reached their destination, the garbage disposal room.

    ''Wait a moment before disposing of the empty bottle'', said Daimon to Zia, he scanned the whole room and the first thing that became obvious, is the fact that there were arrays destined not only for surveince but also for reinforcement, containing and restricting.

    Of course, the previous could be excused under the pretense that some dangerous material might disposed off in this specific room, butbined with the roundabout yet strictly guarded surroundings, things changed.

    ''I don''t see any spatial array, so¡­'', Daimon changed the spectrum of the infinity eyes, back to the physicalyer and found the answer to his doubt.

    Fifty meters of metallic wall behind the gate at the left that was used to deposit "regr" garbage, there was a hollow space and a mechanic system, akin to an elevator, and a vertical tunnel that led downwards, with the exact space for the elevator to move.

    ''There are no arrays securing the thing, it''s purely a mechanical system, quite paranoic if you ask me'', thought Daimon as he evaluated the secret passage, this would be the equal of having zero electronics in a ce where secret documents were kept, to prevent infiltration.

    Daimon looked at the whole thing, there was a trap integrated into the elevator, connected to a really strong mmable solution, based on the firews that floated above the thing, meaning that if used without the proper process, it would explode.

    After a whole 5 minutes, Daimon finally found the trick, besides her clothes which Zia was wearing on top of the Hollow Suit, Kria had only two things on her, the metal wristband which so far has been the "key" they used for everything, which would lead one to believe that it should be the case here as well.

    But that was a trap apparently, since based on the internal functionality of the mechanical system, that would make the elevator explode, instead Daimon found an irregr surface, behind the gate, with a size simr to the other thing that Kria had on her, hermunication device.

    "That woman really doesn''t want others to find what''s lying down there", mumbled Daimon, Kria''smunication device was independent from the arrays of this ce, opening the entrance to the secret passage would most likely send a signal to whoever monitored the sole two people who knew about this ce''s purpose.

    "Worst case scenario we can blow this ce up at the correct time to give mom and bis siter Thea a surprise window tond a hard blow on that woman", said Naomi.

    For a change, Daimon had to admit that the younger Lamia princess made a reasonablement, however he still shook his head, his instincts guided him here, despite his original intention of being with Thea on the battlefield, meaning that what lied down there was at least of equal importance for her and also beneficial for him.

    Also, unfortunately for Thalia, just like his infinity eyes made her non-technology security useless, Daimon had a solution for this as well, one that didn''t involve killing or torturing the receptionist to obtain the information in her mind, which would probably be noticed by the one monitoring them, even the Terror Contract would be unable to deal with that, since it severed any connection with the previous master, making it look as if the servant had died, like in Zia''s case.

    "Rita, can you block this device''s signal?", he asked to the undead head maid, the structure behind the gate was purely mechanical, so the signal had to be sent through themunication device, if that was blocked then their entrance wouldn''t be registered.

    "Mm, no problem", said Rita, to which Daimon nodded.

    ''Zia, open the gate to the garbage disposalpartment, five meters to your right on the wall, there is a special surface, plug themunication device into it and wait until the entrance to the secret passage opens'', he said through the mental connection.

    ''Mm, understood young master'', without even doubting or worrying that these orders might bring her demise, the newly contracted Zia, did as she was told, the gate opened and pushed themunication device onto the wall.

    With a "click" the thing perfectly fitted into the secretpartment, Daimon saw how the wall pressed a secret button on themunication device, which would have sent a signal, had it not been by the invisible to the eye etherealyer of Rita''s mana blocking its connection with the outside world.

    After a few seconds which appeared tost way more than that, the wall smoothly separated, revealing an illuminated corridor that led to an elevator, also themunication device was ejected but the surface was still returning to its original state, so the passage would only be open for a short period of time.

    ''Let''s go!'', with Daimon''s green light, Zia entered the corridor followed by the others, something curious is that pass this point there were no arrays, so either the one who designed it supposed it was impossible for an outsider to reach this far into the secret facility, or for safety reasons, arrays were banned down there.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon softly snorted at the fact that there were many buttons and none had a number or any indicator to where they led, however thanks to the thermalyer of the spectrum, he could see the buttons that had been pressed recently and a decision had to be made based on that.

    Either going to where the person in charge of theb wasn''t present, there were no arrays so with the Hollow Suit it should be near impossible for them to be noticed, or go straight towards her with Zia as the cover to knock her out and then explore theb.

    ''This would be easier if I had a way to obtain information without the need of torture or a Terror Contract'', thought Daimon as he inwardly sighed, the problem is that he had zero information about the person in charge, so he had no idea if she had to follow a specific routine but considering the receptionist had to, it should be the same with the other one.

    ''Let''s y it safe, we''ll go out at the same first stop of the person in charge and sort it out based on that'', concluded Daimon, the previous took long to exin but happened in a fraction of a second.

    ''Zia, press the button at the upper right corner'', he said.

    Zia obeyed and the elevator started moving, the thing was so carefully crafted and maintained that it made no sound while moving, which ended up working in Daimon''s favor, preventing the only other person in the secretb from noticing their infiltration.

    He also took advantage of the change in location to peek through the metallic walls of the elevator with the infinity eyes, his range was kept to a hundred meters just in case, unfortunately, besides a vertical tube which epassed the elevator and the chains used to make it move, there was nothing else, besides some doors every certain distance, which led to the different levels of the secret facility

    Unfortunately, there was still some distance needed for his eyes to reach the other side of said doors, as they all had corridors connected to them, simr to the one that led them to the elevator, but longer.

    Finally, after moving down for a whole ten minutes they reached the stop assigned to the button Zia pressed, it was obvious that they weren''t ced in order like in a normal elevator, but since the person in charge first stopped here, there should be something important in this level.

    The door of the elevator opened and corridor that led to another door appeared in front of them, following Daimon''s instructions, Zia kept the Hollow Suit effect''s off while keeping Kria''s disguise, just in case the only other person who knew about this ce was inside this level.

    Daimon and the others followed behind and after around fifty meters, Daimon''s eyes were finally able to get a glimpse of what lied in this level, to be honest he didn''t feel particrly bad about it, since this was something, he expected and wasn''t even remotely close to the worst oue which had crossed his mind, that being said his eyes still contracted in surprise behind his mask.

    But for a different reason than what made Naomi''s face pale, while her older sister frowned, the moment Zia opened the door ahead of them, a secondter when Daimon confirmed that there wasn''t anyone in this level, she activated the Hollow Suit and now the whole group was invisible again.

    Rita even deployed a mana barrier, because a couple of the present people were unable to keep silent anymore.

    "What the hell is this!", eximed the younger Lamia princess, even Ferris who would normally scold her sister for raising her voice, remained silent this time because she also had the same doubt.

    Now, Naomi might be inexperienced but don''t forget that she has gone through an assassination attempttely, fragile wouldn''t be a word used to describe her, her reaction was actually understandable from the point of view of people from this world of magic.

    What lied inside this level, was what one would firste to mind when thinking about a mad scientistboratory from fantasy, less the high technological stuff, giant tubes with unknown liquids in which living beings floated, more urately spirit beasts, majorly snakes and reptiles but there were also some people and a few sea beasts native of Draim.

    Some were clearly dead since they had no ess to oxygen and the liquid was just preserving them, but others not too many, had tubes connected to their bodies, which took care of all their needs.

    As a matter of fact, there was a giantplex machine connected to all the tubes, from which Daimon with his sharp ears could listen to engines moving, that thing supplied oxygen and vital support in the form of nutritive potions.

    "I recognize those two people, they were the representatives of the Phillian race¡­ they were supposed to have gone extinct during a "battle" with the ck Berserker n a few years ago", mumbled Zia as she pointed at the sole two people who were still alive inside those tubes.

    "Do you recognize the magic beasts?", asked Daimon to which Zia shook her head.

    "Some of the snake and reptiles yes, however I have never seen or heard of some too, they could be discarded races, the newborns at the hatching areas are taken in by the personal guardians of Thalia, it is widely known that not all make it to the army, but no one knows where they end, so perhaps this is the answer to that", she said.

    Daimon nodded before focusing on the human form subjects.

    They were both shaved clean and had a lot of stitches in different ces, with scars left here and there, even without using his eyes Daimon could tell they were missing bones, parts of organs, muscle tissue and other things, which was weird in more than one way, people of this world have near to zero knowledge about medicine, still they can reattach or even regrow limbs, not to mention changing outer appearance without leaving scars behind, thanks to potions and healing magic, recovery of organs isn''t that much of an issue, unless we are talking about the magic core or there in a problem with the organ itself, since they don''t have the knowledge needed to make transnts with a decent sess rate.

    So, the fact that these subjects despite being kept alive where in such bad conditions,bined with nothing in this room using mana directly through arrays to operate, meant two things, the one who designed this was from a ce where the civilization advanced in a different way than the magic one, like earth and second, using magic was either not allowed or not encouraged for some reason.

    "I can understand that she is a heartless witch, but why keep these guys alive at this point, what if they escape, after all this torture they must hate her to the core", added Ferris as she observed the half-vivisected beings.

    "She doesn''t need to worry about it, their bodies are still functioning but their brains are dead, in other words they aren''t here anymore", said Daimon, he wasn''t a doctor by any means, but he could directly see their brains and there were obvious signs of maniption there.

    ''Now that I look at them closely, some cuts have been reopened a few times and despite the damage, their organs are still working so they are healing them overtime, this is a farm'', concluded Daimon before saying.

    "Just to confirm, none of you heard anything back when we were at the upper level, this question applies to you as well Rita?".

    The Lamia princess exchanged gazes before shaking their heads in unison, Celia did the same while Rita and Zia said in unison.

    "I didn''t hear anything".

    Now what made him different than anyone else here, leaving the difference in gender which is the obvious answer, he is a¡­ system user, that being said he was perfectly hidden by the items of the system and Rita, so that would mean there was an existence with senses above the Ster rank, like Ophelia, imprisoned here, that or the message wasn''t directed specifically to him and he heard it by coincidence.

    "I''m going to try something, Rita, keep an eye on my reactions, Celia and Zia on guard, you two stay close", said Daimon to the others.

    Receiving a nod from them, Daimon first changed theyer of the infinity eyes to the mana one and as he already knew by senses alone, noticed that the mana in this level was thin to say the least, the very small amount of it that lingered in the air was radiated by the tubes that were connected to the living subjects, which supplied them with potions.

    ''Heh, they couldn''t even create a proper "sterilized void" without using an array, at least it means whoever did has barely any knowledge, or perhaps it''s imitating something they read about'', thought Daimon.

    To the girl''s surprise, he covered his hand with mana without using it for any specific purpose, before sticking it out of Rita''s barrier.

    For others nothing changed, but for Daimon it was as if the world slowed down, then an invasive train of negative emotions, including rage, pain, misery, madness and so on, tried to assault him, just to be blown away by Overlord''s Pride aura.

    Out of all the presents, the two Lamia princesses felt a slight pressure with Naomi pouting, thinking Daimon trying to tease her, since this is what he used to teach her a little lesson when they met, Celia nearly fell to her knees due to the nature of their rtionship, while Rita and Zia carefully gazed at Daimon only stopping after making sure he was fine.

    Daimon ignored his surroundings, with his eyes closed and his Overlord Pride blocking all the noise, he focused on his thoughts exclusively.

    ''This is ce was designed to be an artificial area of death, simr to the result of an ancient battlefield where too many mages and knights have been massacred, disturbing even the natural flow of mana in the atmosphere, so those guys in the tubes were forced to suffer on purpose, but why?''.

    Besides being a crazy bloody psychopath who enjoys making others suffer with no benefits whatsoever, getting a ce like this carries more trouble than benefits, like the previous result of exposing your mana to it, which results in all those negative emotions engraved in the dead''s mana, assaulting you, which could result in going mad.

    The previous is a known phenomenon, which was documented in the history the four gxies, on ces where the major wars among them took ce, somes became uninhabitable and had to be destroyed by Half Emperors to prevent the nearby mana from being affected, of course we are talking about ces where thousands of millions of mages past a certain rank, were killed in battle.

    The scale and strength here was on the lower side of course, but it was still enough to equal a Ster grade mental type of attack, most of middle stage Ster ranks don''t even have mental defenses strong enough to deal with an early-stage mental attack, so you can imagine the seriousness of this ce.

    For Daimon, he was practically immune to "harmful" mental attacks, since Erin''s charm still somewhat affected him, that or if he allowed it to affect him on purpose, as for Rita whose mana was in contact with the atmosphere, she even tricked this strange ce to not detect her.

    This also exined why arrays weren''t used here at all, they had to take in mana from the atmosphere to work, and the mana here would make them malfunction, which could be a disaster for the owner of this ce, imagine a restraining array suddenly not working on an enemy.

    ''I''ll clean everyone with Demon Light before leaving¡­'', Daimon''s thoughts were interrupted by what he has been waiting to hear, that voice from earlier.

    ''H¡­e..l¡­p'', this time he could confirm that it wasn''t directed specifically to him, it was more of a distress signal, being sent in the channels that the one from which it originated knew about, still since Rita and the others couldn''t hear it, it meant that it "normal" people and even those affiliated to a system user weren''t included in the list of targets of the sender, but system users were, so this message was meant to be only heard by them.

    ''Who are you'', inwardly said Daimon.

    ''¡­'', after an ufortable silence, the same broken voice actually answered him.

    ''A..r..e¡­you¡­here?'', this time Daimon was able to discern that despite sounding hurt, the major reason of the voice of the sender being broken was the low output she had to send her message, but now that she found someone to talk to, the quality improved, this also meant that the sender was using more mana and this conversation had to be short.

    ''Answer my question first, if you lie this conversation will be over'', he said.

    ''P..r..omise you won''t leave after hearing it'', she limited to say, to which Daimon inwardly nodded.

    ''Go ahead''.

    ''I..f¡­ you are here then you already know my name for sure, I''m¡­ Thalia, a certain ind with a volcano, ten kilometers deep into the ground,e to find me only if you have a strong backer¡­ please''.

    With those words the connection was cut, meaning that the sender who affirmed to be Thalia, had probably ran out of mana and now the decision was for Daimon to make.

    ''I didn''t detect any lies in her words, but that¡­ would mean that the Thalia that Thea will be fighting is an impostor'', thought Daimon.

    Not only that, this information would affect this challenge from its roots, after all Thea found her way to Draim thanks to the records left behind by Thalia, which would mean that someone was impersonating all the way to back then, but that by itself was hard, considering that the fact that the Hydra guy was defeated in part by Thalia wounding him, was confirmed through the history of Marlene n''s ancestors, the reinforces that didn''t arrive leading to the Hydra guy losing big time, thus earning a curse to be cast upon them, well the ones who survived after the inner conflict.

    ''The description obviously is of thisb, based on the times that my vision range changed when we were inside the elevator, we are around four kilometers below the ground¡­'', he thought.

    Without using arrays to reinforce materials, the architecture of this world was quite limited, at earth without magic ten kilometers into the ground was the limit with the help of technology of course, here relying only on special magic materials but no arrays the limit should be around the same, in other words, the sender of the message was at the lowest level of the secretb.

    Ultimately, Daimon opened his eyes and under the surprised gazes of Ferris and the others, he crushed amunication device that he took out of his pocket (the inventory in disguise), this was a signal he discussed with Thea, sending a message through such a long distance without being detected was impossible with the current technology and techniques they had, including the connection stablished through the contract she made with Daimon.

    But a wisp of Thea''s mana was stored inside the device and she would instinctively notice if it disappeared, which was the way to transmit her "Be careful", survivability and escape was never in doubt, so this was the only signal that they discussed to use, Thea had one with Daimon''s mana in it, she would use it if Thalia was seen going in their direction, in his case it was to be used if what they found in theb was specially dangerous and with just the tip of the iceberg being uncovered, that was already the case.

    "This is only the surface, whatever they farmed these guys for, should be at the lowest level of this ce, I''m going down there, do you two want to tag along or do you prefer to wait here?", asked Daimon to the Lamia princesses who nodded without a second of hesitation.

    "We''ll go", they said, despite their initial shock after seeing such "obscure" technology and obviously evil experiments being held, they were rather strong minded, well Daimon expected it from Ferris, but he was honestly surprised by Naomi''s reaction.

    "Let''s move then", said Daimon as he walked towards the gate that led to the elevator, not without ncing at a certain object in the background before using his eyes to see if the elevator wasn''t there anymore, but the chains attached to it weren''t moving, meaning that the person in charge has already changed locations.

    Changing to thermal vision, Daimon saw that the chain used to move the elevator was warmer on the roof of the elevator not the bottom, so the thing moved upwards.

    ''The penultimate button it is then'', thought Daimon as they entered the elevator to then point their next destination to Zia.

    Just like before the elevator started moving downwards, and Daimon observed every second of it, at first doors leading to other levels appeared like normal, however once they moved through a kilometer, things changed.

    Even after a whole kilometer there were no more doors and the same repeated for the next four kilometers, until they reached exactly nine thousand meters deep underground, then the smooth metal wall was reced by the upper center of a giant gate that continued pass Daimon''s current range of vision, in fact there were gates facing both sides of the elevator.

    Also, the surroundings expanded to match that, leaving a lot of free space around them, which made no sense, the elevator was only so big after all, but that question was answered when they reached the end of the way, the elevatornded on a solid surface for the first time and Daimon who looked downwards saw that a giant cageid at the bottom, below the elevator.

    Since it couldn''t move upwards for obvious reasons, the cage was obviously meant to move sidewards, meaning this level was connected to somewhere, luckily the rule of only two people present in the facility knowing about this, still applied, there was no one in the vicinity, the giant gate on the other hand was so big and heavy that an Ster rank was needed to open it, without an array, after all mechanics weren''t advanced enough to produce such an amount of strength here.

    "Celia, your turn", said Daimon, the former Duchess obeyed and even though she isn''t a knight, opening the door without using mana was still within her possibilities, that being said she was barely able to open a thirty-meter sized path between the hundred-meter-thick metal gates, before she started sweating.

    "That''s enough", with those words and Zia bing visible, to be used as an excuse, the group advanced through the giant metal doors, the Lamia princesses couldn''t help but be amazed at such a giant construction not involving the use of any array.

    Even moving slowly, it didn''t take long before Daimon could peek at what was at the other side of the doors and this time, the surprise in his pupils was evident behind his mask.

    But he didn''t have to say anything, the blood smelling from the destination to where the doors lead, which assaulted the girl''s noses gave them an idea of what lied ahead.

    Confirming that the person in charge wasn''t inside the room, they rushed at the other side and were weed by a giant storage-like ce, the roof was exactly a whole thousand meters above the ground.

    Despite the incredibly vast space that upied this level, most was used for two things, first a giant red array that upied almost the whole right side of the level, the smell of blood came from there, meaning that the array was painted with blood.

    And most of the left side was upied by giant cages, simr to the one Daimon saw earlier below the elevator, however only two had something inside.

    The one at the rightest side of the row of cages had a pretty wounded snake of some kind inside, the thing had a lot of patches and lost a lot of scales and blood, but it was sedated.

    The only other cage which had something inside was the one in the center, which coincidentally pointed at the exact center of the red array on the ground which by the way was not operational, something that didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes, a line that crossed the whole thing was erased on purpose, since the array wasn''t engraved but painted that made the whole thing useless.

    Inside that cage was a giant statue of a snake, or at least that''s what appeared to be on the surface, however based on the faint traces of aura that Daimon could feeling from it, which somewhat reminded him of Thea''s¡­ that would be Thalia''s original body and the surprises didn''t end there, as Zia suddenly spoke.

    "Young master, that snake, there is no way it''s part of that woman''s army or experiments, even now that I''m no longer tied to her, I can feel those who are, the "living" subjects up there were tied to her, but this snake isn''t and it is still alive, not to mention the aura it gives off isn''t far from the high stage Ster rank!".

    Daimon used the infinity eyes to change his point of view, so now he was looking from a hundred meters into the air, downwards to the ground, it was enough to cover a quarter of the total area upied by the red iplete array.

    "There are space-oriented runes included, I don''t recognize them though and this isn''t a space portal either¡­ what the hell is going on", mumbled Daimon only for him to hear a tired feminine voice, speaking to him in a frequency that others couldn''t hear.

    ''That''s a "summoning circle", or at least that''s what that disgusting filth who stole my identity called it''.

    Daimon turned his head towards the origin of the voice, which unlike before was detectable for him, his eyesnded on the giant snake statue which until a second ago had no signs of life, something he made sure off when they first entered this level.

    Before he could say something all the signs of life disappeared from the statue again, at the same time, Daimon saw the elevator which had gone upwards earlier,ing downwards again and based on the current situation, there was a big chance that it wasing here.

    "Everyone gather, someone ising, we''ll move to the end of the free space and observe, don''t move unless I say so", said Daimon, the Lamia princesses rushed to his side while Zia and Celia stood at both sides of those three as they moved to the furthest part away from the sole gate which was both the entrance and the exit to this level.

 Chapter 576: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 12)

    A few minutes after Daimon and the others had grouped at the farthest point away from the entrance, the elevator finally returned to the lowest level of the secretb, luckily before all this, Daimon had ordered Celia to close the door again.

    Which both prevented anyone who came here to realize there was already someone inside this level and also acted as an rm, since to be on the safe side, the range of vision of the infinity eyes with the assistance of Rita''s senses, has been kept to a hundred meters.

    And just the door covered that distance, not to mention their current position was around a whole kilometer away from the entrance of the level, with in sight, Daimon''s eyes were good enough to see through that distance, but the effects of the infinity eyes stopped at a hundred meters to prevent being detected.

    "There are only two races to whom I could believe that woman would assign to do such¡­ things, one of them is the Red String race and the other is the ck Spirit race".

    "The first is a male exclusive reptile race which was designed to be obsessed with Thalia, they are at her beck and call and would literally die to get as much of a nce from her, they are the top of the pyramid in terms of authority below her, since their loyalty goes beyond what contracts and lineage subordination can do, their mentality is screwed up and that''s why they can never advance past the middle Ster rank by themselves, also they are all be knights in order to have a sturdy constitution, Thalia''s personal guards are exclusively conformed by them".

    You might think that such a mentality resembled the effect of the Terror Contract, but that''s not the case, since thetter allows the contracted to keep their personality, in order to not cripple the potential of the contracted to keep on getting stronger, their minds are kept intact, they only are unable to so much as harbor any ill intent towards their master, which has two functions and results.

    Either they keep living with fear which adds up to Overlord''s Pride from which the Terror Contractor skill was derived, or they be true loyal subordinates.

    "As disgusting as the previous sounds, I personally dislike the second race even more, the ck Heart race is a snake race, they value Thalia''s life and researching, nothing else¡­ I have heard rumors of them using their own children as bait, to lure out and capturing members of the Dark Berserker''s army, they aren''t apt for battle but they are good at strategy since their blood is as cold as damn ice, I still remember they discarding one of the squads in which I worked, in order to get a hold of a strategic position in the battlefield, they are always mages", added Zia.

    Those were only two possible options of enemies, that wille out of the entrance, Zia didn''t speak about this earlier, because shecked information to make a fool''s proof prediction, but after witnessing the scene from earlier, she got what she needed, since even her race which is quite loyal to Thalia, would question such experiments given enough time, but those two wouldn''t.

    "Rita be prepared to iste the whole room, shall the need arise to, Celia your priority is to protect those two and secondly to subjugate the target without killing it, at my order, Zia you assist her if needed", said Daimon after processing the information given by Zia.

    "Mm, leave it to me", unhesitatingly said the undead head maid.

    "Understood young master", added Zia, as for the former Duchess, she was given the order to not talk unless it was strictly needed, so she limited herself to nod in a subservient way.

    The previous took long to exin but happened in the expanse of time used by the other party to walk through the corridor connected to the giant door and the time needed to manually open the door.

    ''It took less time for the door to open, so physically the neer is stronger than Celia, but not enough to be considered a knight, that or simple cking'', thought Daimon, as he waited for the newly arrived other party to enter his sight range, which happened a momentter followed by the sound of steps, the figure of anky woman with sickly white skin, short ck hair and a pretty much emotionless expression, became visible.

    ''Second option it is, then'', said Daimon to Zia who nodded in response, the person in charge of theb was a member of the ck Spirit snake race.

    Under Daimon''s watchful eyes, the woman looked at theboratory from the entrance before pulling a cart with a couple of barrels and a few metal boxes that could perfectly fit in the elevator, along with her, she gazed at the faded red array at one side before looking at the snake statue in one of the many cages to then speak out loud.

    "So, are you finally going to speak, or is subject Q256 as unimportant to you as all the previous have been".

    "¡­", being met with absolute silence, the woman clicked her tongue with an annoyed expression on her face, before taking out a metal harpoon which was ced on the pulling cart along with therge barrel.

    "Oh well, this was still a sessful "catch" after twenty thousand failed tries, so at least I''ll have something new to show to the queen, I wonder if this one''s dissection would be useful enough to design a new race, or if it will be summoning resources".

    And with those words and zero hesitation, the woman casually approached the cage where that damaged snake was passed out and stabbed the harpoon on its head.

    "nk!", the cage shook up as the snake''s eyes opened on the spot, but things returned to normal a secondter as life abandoned the magic beast, just like that an early-stage Ster rank magic beast died.

    "That magic beast wasn''t rational despite its rank", mumbled Daimon, this situation was eerily simr to the one of those snakes and reptiles in Thalia''s army, something of which no one had information about, ording to Zia, Thalia''s subordinates were either born with human form or were magic beasts, the second would never obtain wisdom and human form.

    It was an unspoken rule was to not ask about it to anyone, the team captains like Zia were given an upgraded identity token, with which they couldmand their subordinates, but the real authority was on Thalia''s hands.

    As to why Daimon didn''t act to save that snake, it didn''t align with his ns, earlier he had seen through the bigger barrel and it waspletely empty, as for the other one it was filled with a viscous mix of blood and based on the fleshy bits he could see, organs as well.

    Bringing an empty barrel to a ce where an array made out of blood wasid, could only mean one thing, the woman was going to harvest the blood of the now dead snake magic beast.

    And as if following a script, the woman walked towards one of the many tables and took a thick hose connected to a pump, which was then connected with staff of the harpoon on one extreme and the lid of the barrel on the other.

    The woman moved the pump a couple of times and flowed through the hose into the barrel, due to the big size of the snake it didn''t take long before the barrel was full, the woman disconnected the hose but left the harpoon to block the wound, perfectly sealing it to prevent the corpse from bleeding, clearly this was a refined process.

    Despite not having preserving arrays to prevent the corpse from rotting, the temperature down here was rather low and also magic beasts had strong vitality into their flesh, so it would take at least a few days before the corpse even started decaying.

    "Let''s start with Q257 right away, you''ll make things easier for us if you stopped ying dead and gave the queen what she wants", said the woman as she dragged the cart along with her, towards the cage with the snake statue.

    She grabbed a knife and scratched the surface of the statue, shaving a thinyer of it and collecting the resulting dust into a tray to then throw the dust into the contents of the smaller barrel.

    ''K¡­u¡­hh'', unlike any of the others in the room, Daimon heard a forced teeth gritting hurtling sounding from the statue, meaning that even if it was in this state, the one inside of it could feel pain.

    That being said, the statue had no superficial marks of wounds, nor cracks, so it was a bit strange that just having its scales scraped with a knife, made someone who supposedly fought and defeated a system user, feel pain, at least under normal circumstances.

    ''In the diary, it said that she separated her soul from her body to extend her lifespan after suffering a fatal wound, but assuming that at least half of it was a lie and considering that the Hydra guy was able to cast such a powerful curse on Marlene''s n, then this might be the result of a curse as well, something to weaken and immobilize her to a certain extent'', thought Daimon.

    The thought of she trying to get empathy from him, didn''t cross his mind, there would have been a different feeling to it if that was the case, what Daimon could get from it, was humiliation and hatred, not the desperation or pleading behind a call for help or begging for one''s life, even earlier when she asked for help, the only thing Daimon felt from her was the desire for freedom.

    "Be prepared, that woman is going to perform with the array, after she had activated it, there should be a window of opportunity in which her focus will be on the result, we''ll take her down in that moment", said Daimon.

    He wanted to see the process of that array working with the infinity eyes, his instincts told him that this was beneficial for him.

    After seeing the others nod at him, Daimon focused on the woman again, she pulled her cart all the way towards the giant array and used a mop-sized brush to fill in the purposedly erased parts of the thing, starting from the further corner and advancing from that point until she left the array.

    The borders were painted with the blood extracted from the recently killed magic beast, but the central parts of it, werepletely drawn with thebination of blood, organs and the dust scraped from the statue, Daimon fully observed the whole process using a different angle with the infinity eyes.

    And when the woman drew thest rune as she left the array, Daimon immediately burned the image into his memory since there was a big possibility that the array would be messed up during the confrontation that will take ce in a moment.

    Also, the moment the array was finished it started glowing in an eerily red light, trying to draw mana from the atmosphere but failing to do so, since there was too little of it in this ce for obvious reasons.

    "That should do the trick, now we just need some fuel" said the woman as she grabbed one of the metal boxes on the cart, opening it to reveal a bunch of really high ranked mana crystals, perfectly sealed into a case inside of the box, to prevent any leaks of mana before she threw the whole case into the array without opening it.

    "Damn, those things are only found on the deepest part of the mines, it''s lucky if one can get a dozen of them per year and she just threw a couple of hundreds of them like that!", eximed the younger Lamia princess.

    Luckily, they were inside Rita''s mana barrier, so her loud voice was undetectable, but still she earned a scolding gaze from her older sister, even Daimon spoke with a low voice earlier after all.

    "Sorry¡­", mumbled Naomi as she grabbed Ferris''s arm and half hid from Daimon who was frowning, behind of her

    Unfortunately for her, Daimon''s focus waspletely used on the array right now, so her unconscious reaction only made Ferris softlyugh at her.

    Leaving the younger Lamia princess aside, Daimon''s frown was caused because the moment the case which was supposed to perfectly iste the mana crystals from the outside, the array started forcefully draining the mana from them and in a couple of seconds, both the case and the crystals shattered.

    And that wasn''t all, thanks to the infinity eyes, he saw each and every piece of the meat bits mixed with blood, used for the center of the array, wither away and disappear, resulting in a whole bunch of vitality being momentarily released just to be absorbed into the array as well.

    ''An array that uses both mana and vitality¡­ no that''s closer to battle aura!'', thought Daimon, unlike mana which- is practically an all-purpose energy in its pure element less form, making it perfect to power practically any kind of array unless your array uses a specific element to work of course, battle aura is the result of the mix between a living being''s life''s spark in other words the unique manifestation of the vitality one possesses and mana that circtes inside one''s body.

    And so, while at the four gxies there exists arrays that use vitality, they are practically focused on either healing or nurturing the body, the most outstanding use for it is reserved for the richest families and forces which use them to help their talented young generation improve their lineages as an extremely valuable reward in special asions, since the way to gather vitality in the four gxies is by growing vegetation with nature properties or using strong magic beast''s blood.

    The previous isn''t because the rune masters at the four gxies are prolife or anything even remotely close, but more because so far refining battle aura artificially is considered to be impossible, after all while mana can be gathered from the atmosphere, condensed and refined to create or refill mana crystals, thoughcking inparison with the ones produced naturally, battle aura as it is, doesn''t exist in the atmosphere even if itsponents do.

    So, unless a high ranked knight volunteered to dedicate himself to produce battle aura for other people''s usage, which is incredibly inefficient, arrays that work with it are but a mere dream, the best oue was limiting to use vitality for the previously stated purposes.

    And yet, here Daimon was witnessing an array that not only used both mana and vitality, which though considered possible at the four gxies, it wouldn''t be realistic in such a big scale not to mention that the vitality used is closer to battle aura than to the former, in other words, this array is something that goes beyond the limits of the Ster rank.

    ''Do any of you two have something to say about that array?'', inwardly asked Daimon to both Eve and the angel girl Ariel, the only way he could think about someone obtaining such a thing was through a system and it shouldn''t be something avable on the shop, but probably a special reward kind of thing.

    Well, there was the possibility that someone from a higher ranked ce brought it here, but considering that the woman living in the snake statue ims to be the real Thalia and she clearly only knew the name of the array, it would mean that even she hadn''t heard of this level of rune mastery, also Ferris was as surprised as she could be and Celia was the same, so the Lamia and Naga races could also be written off from the list.

    ''I''ll tell you this time since your administrator is fiercely ring at me, because she can''t but¡­ consider this a one-time thing, we aren''t in a contract yet after all'', mumbled the angel girl from within the feather pendant hanging around Daimon''s neck.

    It might sound ungrateful considering she is travelling with Daimon, but it is true that she doesn''t owe him anything, after all unlike Freya who is in the process of receiving "origin" from Daimon in order to enter a mutually beneficial contract with him, Ariel set a condition to be his ally and until that happens, she is just an observer, the only exception being when dealing with the "Devil Ruler", which was the verbal promise she made with him in exchange for Daimon to keep her with him for as long as she could stay.

    To begin with the angel girl isn''t exactly talkative, she does make minorments here and there, but when ites to serious matters, she can help if she wishes to, but she can also decide not to interfere, something the light hero idiot didn''t understand back then, this is also a tacit understand between Evangeline and her, since knowing some things before meeting certain conditions brings more harm than benefit, though this time it wasn''t the case, it was just that Evangeline was being restricted by the system over some measly reasons that she didn''t agree with.

    ''You obtained something really "valuable" when you became a system user, that thing is based on something of that caliber'', limited to say Ariel before returning to being silent.

    ''Thanks, Ariel'', said Daimon, leaving aside the whole contract thing, she sounded sleepy, based on what he knows and deducts from Eve''s usual behavior, administrators sleep to recover and save their strength and since Ariel isn''t obtaining origin from him, she has to make do with what she saved when she was tied to Adam and that has tosts her until Daimon faces the "Devil Ruler".

    ''Humph, ying hard to get, I already want to see your expressionter'', thought Evangeline, but she still felt grateful towards the angel girl and instead med Freya for still being under the process to receive Origin from Daimon, making the sleeping metallic silver haired girl inside the ethereal silver armor protecting Daimon''s vitals, slightly tremble due to anger.

    Daimon on the other hand now understood how was that array so innovating, the things he obtained when he became a system user were the way to bring Aisha back to life and the Apex Predator body, both were lifechanging rewards, even if it was an imitation the thing in which it was based was quite high ranked.

    ''Wait if the base for that array was a reward to be used by a system user, that means it is imitating a living being¡­ an array that imitates a living being to work, that would exin the need for the organs and an insane amount of mana to activate it just for a short time, as well as being purposedly half erased after being used to prevent it from "rebelling", but why was the dust scraped from the statue and the blood of that snake, specifically needed?'', wondered Daimon before he focused back on the woman from the ck Spirit race.

    The woman opened thest box which she brought in the pulling cart, taking a scaled mask out of it to then put it on.

    "To thend, the skies and the void, this call I make, bring me a suitable result ording to the offering I made, summon!", shouting a really embarrassing sentence, the array light up as if it was finallypleted, red sparks came out of the many drawn lines on the ground before a blood red portal opened on the air in front of it.

    "Hishhhhh!", a pained and angered sound came from the portal as a lizard-like ten-meter head peeked out of the portal, before it started slowly but surely being dragged out, but to the anger and disappointment of the woman from the ck Spirit n, the array suddenly started blinking and the portal copsed and the body of the lizard was severed at shoulder frontal legs length, killing it on the spot.

    With a loud "thud", the half-burnt piece of the lizard fell to the ground, the array activated itsst effect, which erased a part of it, thus finishing its function, also the alreadynky and sickly pale woman, appeared to be even more emaciated, but that didn''t prevent her from angrily shouting.

    "DAMN USELESS THING, WHY DID YOU TRY TO RESIST!!!", in the midst of throwing a fit, Daimon saw her focus loosening enough for a surprise assault to have the highest chance of seeding.

    ''Now!'', he shouted to Rita, Zia and Celia though the mental connection, for Naomi she only saw a sh and a mana barrier appear, while Ferris managed to see Celia appearing behind of the woman who was crazily shouting a second ago while Zia focused on protecting them.

    But Daimon managed to see the whole thing as he pushed his senses to the limit, in front of his eyes, Celia casted a dark water spinning sphere around the woman in order to take her out, but she was still a fraction of a secondte to prevent the other party from taking action.

    The surprising thing is that not only the woman didn''t try to defend herself, but that with one hand she pressed hermunication device while with the other she aimed a dagger to her head while she also threw a few of them in many directions, in other words she was determined to inform her superior that someone had infiltrated, even if it meant having to die for it.

    What followed next was the whole walls of the room being as well as themunication device on the woman''s hand being enveloped in an invisibleyer of Rita''s mana, while at the same time ck water spheres restrained the woman''s legs, arms and head blowing away the mana she had gathered just right before she casted an all-out offensive spell.

    With a few "nks", a couple of daggers thrown by the woman shed against Zia''s mana barrier, actually making a few cracks on it, despite having been casted with practically a third of Zia''s mana reserves, but ultimately the surprise attack was blocked.

    Still, Daimon managed to see the lips of the woman slightly curve upwards, before she passed out due to theck of oxygen and the ck water sphere around her head rotating at full speed forcing her to lose her consciousness.

    ''Damn it'', inwardly cursed Daimon, as he instinctively looked at the roof of this level, one of the many daggers which the woman threw in seemingly random directions, hit a specific spot.

    However, theb didn''t copse or anything like that, now that the sole information leaking source was out, he directly expanded the range of the effects of the infinity eyes, reaching all the way to the roof, seeing right through the part where the dagger was stabbed and surprise, the thing hit a hidden spring.

    Now, all signals were blocked by Rita so the thing didn''t send any message, it was a purely mechanical thing, a spring that connected this level all the way out of Daimon sight''s range, which was around two thousand kilometers thanks to borrowing Rita''s senses, so he had no choice but to ask the undead head maid to where did that spring led to.

    ''Rita, where does that thing end?'', he asked.

    ''To the level above us at four kilometers of distance, it triggered a button on that level that opened all the cages on it¡­ I can see many magic beasts of different ranges going crazy and escaping their cages, rushing to the corridor connected to the thing that brought us down here'', said Rita referring to the elevator.

    "Heh, so the n is to use those magic beasts to both alert the surface and destroy anything stored in the upper levels", said Daimon, which made the undead head maid as well as Zia lower their heads with a gloomy expression on their faces, they failed to prevent this situation from troubling Daimon, Celia on the other hand felt ice cold, being afraid of Daimon punishing her for screwing up.

    After all she as the vanguard and the servant with the highest realm, was supposed to perfectly restrain the enemy but she failed to do so, also, she was perfectly aware that her status was that of a mere servant, while Rita and Zia were treated as allies instead.

    That being said, Daimon didn''t me any of them, well Celia was indeed at fault for not following in terms of speed with her enemy who was also a peak high stage Ster rank, but for Rita and Zia, they perfectly fulfilled their tasks as much as their abilities allowed them to do so.

    Rita cut off any signal from being sent in the really small fraction of time that took themunication device to activate and also isted the device, while keeping an eye on Daimon and the Lamia princesses, her realm was the lowest among the three but her insane senses allowed her to follow up with the speed of a high stage Ster''s actions, even when thetter was disregarding her own life to achieve her goal.

    On Zia''s side, despite not being abatant she blocked the attack of someone a whole stage above hers, burning a third of her mana reserves in less than a second, it was praise-worthy that she wasn''t shaken in the slight over such an abrupt change in her mana reserves, Daimon can casually spawn high mana cost spells, since he is also a knight, so even if his mana diminishes too fast, he wouldn''t feel the setback brought by it, but Zia isn''t like that, for those who are only mages to use those kind of spells at such high speed and not feel the recoil, it required them to have a high mastery of mana maniption.

    While not as "talented" as the undead head maid as of current, she hadn''t gotten her new abilities due to the special Terror Contract, so this was a proof that she wasn''t a cker but an elite, who wouldn''t fall behind Rita under the same conditions.

    ''Cheer up you two, the priority goals which I set up were perfectly fulfilled, that woman threw any chance of escaping or surviving away in exchange of achieving her goal, so it''s understandable that she managed to get something through, if you hate being surpassed by such enemies focus those emotions into improving so it doesn''t repeat'', he said to Rita and Zia.

    ''Okay~''.

    ''Understood young master!''.

    While the undead head maid swam in the limitless dark void inside Daimon''s shadow with a happy expression on her pretty face as she answered, Zia''s eyes sparkled with enlightenment and excitement as if she had understood something important.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon could feel some of the strongest auras of the beast that were going out of their cages above, there were a couple of early high stage Ster beasts and around ten middle stage ones, the rest were middle or peak Arch rank, probably the early stage Sters were used as resources for the array, just like that snake which now lied dead inside the cage at the corner of the room.

    Rita was isting all the way from this to the fifth level, in other words she expanded a barrier of mana that covered five kilometers, something possible thanks to her recent advance to the Half Ster realm, still stretching it more than that would diminish its effect so they had to move.

    It''s worth mentioning that above the lowest level in which they were, there were four kilometers of solid metal with nothing in between, in other words instead of ten levels, there were just six, from one to five, then four kilometers of metal and the sixth level or tenth one depending on how you counted them.

    "We have to movedies, let''s deal with that beast riot before anything else", he said to the others.

    "Perfect, I was getting stiff over having nothing to do", mumbled Ferris as her previously carefree attitude disappeared, her muscles tensed as she entered an offensive stance, just like a snake ready to bite off the throat of its prey.

    Naomi also seemed interested in fighting, as for Rita and Zia they were more than eager to get rid of the evidence of their ""failure"", Celia didn''t count but she was thanking all the stars in the sky that she wasn''t being actively med for the current situation and felt a deep burning rage towards those beasts, for opening a chance for a path in which she might end up being punished.

    There was another person present in the room though, a voice which now everyone could hear, came from the lifeless statue.

    "Is it okay to believe that you''lle down here after dealing with them¡­", she asked.

    "Yes, I don''t n on leaving before a couple of hours anyway, so we''ll have a nice conversation after I deal with those guys, if you need one of them alive, now is the time to speak", answered Daimon

    "No, after all that has been done to those poor beasts, it would be mercy to put them out of their misery".

    Daimon nodded at the statue and ignoring the Lamia princesses''s curious gazes, he rushed towards the elevator and burned a hole on its roof using Demon Light, before saying.

    "Rita, take us to the fifth level using a barrier".

    "Mm", with a soft sound a ck mana barrier covered the whole group and immediately rushed upwards, in case you wonder the now restrained and passed out woman from the ck Spirit n was kept in a much smaller barrier, which was filled up to 80% with Celia''s ck water rotating, to keep her passed down while still allowing her to breath every now and then.

 Chapter 577: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 13)

    With Rita flying them at high speed, the group shed through the around four kilometers of metal filled levels before reaching the fifth one just in time to see a giant dent appearing on the metal gate.

    "Booom!", the gate managed to resist the impact but the metal churning sound was so loud that it made the younger Lamia princess cover her ears, probably because as a someone with a magic beast lineage she had sharp senses.

    "Sometimes I think it''s not fair that only sis had the talent to be a knight¡­", mumbled Naomi, it''s not like she was making a fuss out of nothing, the metal door was strong enough to contain the middle stage Ster ranked magic beast that was trying to break out for at least half an hour if left alone.

    So, the sound produced by the sh of such a strong metal and the brute strength of the magic beast, resulted in a sound that was like nails on a chalkboard for those with sharp senses and not the best physical defense or an active defensive spell which was specifically designed to filter extreme sounds.

    "Now, now, don''t say stuff that makes you sound like an old bitter woman, if we were both knights our teamwork wouldn''t be as good as it is now, right?", said Ferris as she patted her younger sister''s head a couple of times.

    Leaving the Lamia sister''s exchange aside, Daimon observed the door being constantly hit by the magic beast on the other side and he turned to see Zia to then say.

    "I leave the middle stage ones to you, I don''t want to waste too much time and we are staying a couple of hours anyway, so feel free to use your domain to finish the fight as soon as possible, within the limits of this ce''s space of course".

    "Celia, the two high stage ones are for you, Rita you keep blocking what is happening here from the outside and keep an eye on us, we''ll take care of the Arch ranked mob, any questions?".

    "No", the girls answered in unison and then with Celia taking the vanguard, the door which the magic beast was trying to forcefully open from the inside, was easily opened from the outside.

    Unfortunately, the excited roars from the magic beast came to an early end when Zia entered its sight.

    "Mountain Shattering Hand", with a soft voice, a giant hand of around two hundred meters was summoned by Zia, grabbing the magic beast nearest to the door, a dark brown lizard with a missing eye and metal spikes shoved in many parts of its body.

    "Screehhhh!", naturally, the moment the enemy''s vanguard was attacked, the other magic beasts immediately reacted, but so did Zia her light brown hair seemed to glow for a second and before the other middle stage magic beasts could react, giant rock hands emerged from the ground below them,pletely suppressing them and dragging them towards Zia.

    That was the Amber Asper Snake race''s innate ability "sh Cast", it allows Zia to instantly cast simplified versions of a spell, in this case she used it on "Mountain Shattering Hand", which is a single target spell, turning it into an area of effect one, without the need of having to go through the casting process again.

    The result were the ten rock hands which were dragging the surprised magic beasts towards the east of this level.

    In case you wonder how is such a strong innate ability not being abused to rain down hell inbat, the result could be seen on thest five or so rock hands, which were already being shattered by the magic beasts shaking their bodies.

    Skipping parts of the casting process by using "sh Cast" reduces the strength of the resulting spells, not to mention it uses a whole bunch of mana in a sole instance, which is why Zia had to train a lot in order to not be affected when using her innate ability.

    All those inconveniences made it so being a vanguard in the battlefield, would be inefficient for her race, but they were perfect for information gathering andmunications, after all with a single activation of "sh Cast" they could transmit a message or move through space, more than three or four times the same distance as others after the natural reduction on the efficiency of the spell, which is still a huge advantage over others.

    Naturally the price in mana is astronomical, but in a war wheremunication devices are most likely going to be restricted and information has to be brought personally, Zia''s race is a trump card, this innate ability is the reason as to why the sole other person in the wholeb who knew about the underground facilities, in other words the receptionist, is also from the Amber Asper Snake race.

    Thest thing Daimon saw from Zia was she smiling while she summoned her domain, trapping the ten middle stage Ster magic beasts and herself within a giant stone sphere she condensed by using her domain, even if direct battle isn''t her specialty that doesn''t mean she is weak by any means, crowd control requires less strength but more wit and she is perfectly capable of that.

    "I''ll be back as soon as possible young master", said Celia as she summoned two giant streams of rotating ck water which forcefully dragged a red snake with protruding fangs and something that looked like a purple giant smander, those were the sole two high stage Ster magic beasts.

    Despite their high realms, theycked wisdom which is it was so easy for Zia and Celia to bring them into their domains, thus preventing them from wreaking havoc in this underground level.

    That being said, the beasts had already done some damage to this level, even if Daimon''s response was way faster than what the one who thought of this safety method predicted, the magic beasts were basically enraged after being tortured and experimented on, at this point they just destroyed everything on sight.

    "Tsk, around 30% of this level''s retrievable technology and information has been lost, Rita, can you record all the information avable in this level?".

    "Mm, don''t worry and fight without any restraints", said the undead head maid, to which Daimon nodded before gazing at Ferris.

    "I already know the answer but just to confirm, you have no trouble dealing with multiple peak Arch rank enemies at the same time, right?", he said.

    The older Lamia princess smiled in response before her body exploded in a strangebination of dark gray and metallic green battle aura.

    "Acid¡­ no, metal, but then why does it have two different colors", mumbled Daimon, while changing one''s energy color is possible just for aesthetics, Daimon is sure that Ferris wouldn''t do something so vain, but at the same time her battle aura had two different colors but its overall feeling was that of metal element.

    "So even you can be surprised, let me tell you a little secret, sister is the sole person ever recorded in Draim''s history who has been born with dual metal affinity", proudly said Naomi.

    "Hoh, judging by the pride behind your words, one would think you are the one with such a unique talent", jokingly said Daimon, earning an annoyed gaze from the younger Lamia princess while she showed him her teeth.

    "I''m joking, I must admit that it''s a first even for me, I know people with both light and darkness affinities and even a really special variant with an incredibly strong affinity, but double same element affinities, that''s new", added Daimon, the air around him became heavy before his body exploded in white mes as he activated Core Synchrony.

    Seeing Naomi slightly shivering just by the proximity to his Demon Light, Daimon softlyughed, he really left a longsting impression on the poor Lamia princess, just to mess up with her a bit more, he allowed his current peak Lord realm aura to be visible for her.

    "Ahhh, I knew it, there is no way you could be so strong with a realm lower than mine!", eximed the younger Lamia princess, who was still trying to find an exnation as to why she a peak Early stage Mage Lord was so intimidated by a star ranked knight to the point that she felt like standing at the border of the abyss when shepared herself with Daimon.

    "If that''s what you think, you are in for a surprise, there are at least a dozen of people with lower realms than yours who aren''t weaker than you", casually said Daimon referring to the Risha sisters and the others.

    In a rough calction, Daimon believed that Naomi should be able to fight against multiple peak Lord stage enemies on her own, which is not bad at all as she would be jumping two minor realms, however she stillcked if she wanted to cross a major realm and battle an Arch rack, while Ferris on the other hand could even if barely, fair quite nicely against half step Sters.

    "Don''t bully her too much, Naomi is still quite young and she has yet to obtain her second affinity which is why she might appear to fall behind me in terms of talent, but I can assure you that isn''t the case, mages are rarer than knights in the Lamia royalty and they have it harder to reach higher realms, such was our grandmother''s case", said Ferris defending her younger sister, in case you wonder, Naomi is currently a water affinity mage.

    "Oh, that''s something worth investigatingter, but for now, I''ll leave the ones at my left to you, I''ll take care of the enemies at right, as for Naomi, you can offer support from afar if it''s needed", with those words both Daimon and Ferris shed towards the stampede of enraged magic beasts that was approaching them, leaving a rather sulking Naomi behind.

    ¡­.

    Around an hourter, the younger Lamia princess''s sulking expression was gone and only shock could be seen on her pretty face, she skillfully created some openings for Ferris, with a few long-range spells from her, but she didn''t have the chance to intervene in Daimon''s battle at all.

    Well, more urately it''s not like she couldn''t have helped, but there was no need for her to do so, everything started when the silver haired masked youth used a simr technique to the one with which he suppressed the Naga nobles earlier.

    What Naomi saw was Overlord''s Pride aura being put in action, even the most irrational and mindless living beings preserve a primal instinct of survival, in other words they still fear death, otherwise why would they have bothered to try and escape from theb.

    As a mental type of attack, Overlord''s Pride works like a charm on unstable minds, so it wasn''t hard for Daimon to instill fear on those magic beasts thus messing with their reactions, some even started attacking everything on sight including their pack fellows, essentially nullifying the rule of the Ster ranked magic beasts over them.

    But as awe-inspiring as that was for Naomi, she has seen Daimon do something simr before and with higher ranked targets, so that''s not why her little mouth was cutely agape in surprise as of current.

    What caused such a reaction was that terrifying white battle aura which condensed into a three-meter broad sword that was then used to casually cut down Arch rank magic beasts like nothing.

    ''What the hell, it would be understandable if he used that dangerous ck sword from earlier, but¡­ he killed all those magic beasts with only a martial art!'', inwardly eximed Naomi.

    Truth to be told she wasn''t the only one surprised, Ferris who now stood over a pile ofrge sized corpses, half of which were sliced as if a tornado of swords had passed through this ce and the remaining half of said pile were pummeled to death, also stole a couple of nces at Daimon who was now absorbing what was left of the Comet Sword back into his body.

    "How did he do that, the moment he used that martial art, he became an empty shell and yet there was no backsh no dizziness at all, he can use his whole battle aura reserves in a single go without consequences and then reabsorb what''s left afterwards", mumbled Ferris.

    ''Phew, this was a controlled situation so I wanted to test the limit of Comet Sword, but it''s too tiring to keep up such arge amount of energy condensed and in perfect bnce like this'', thought Daimon.

    He basically condensed all of his battle aura and 75% of his increased mana reserves, thanks to being in Core Synchrony state, into a Comet Sword and used it as a recement for a magic weapon, the result was amazing, the white me sword easily burnt through the scales of the magic beasts, infiltrating their bodies and using their flesh and blood to produce more Demon Light in order to replenish the energy lost by the sword each time.

    That way, the Comet Sword remained as new as when it was created, no matter how many enemies Daimon killed with it, the problem is that the Demon Light produced by this method was different than the one created by Daimon, Demon Light by itself is an agglomeration of many elements as well as mana and battle aura, the slightest variation can produce unknown results, most of which would probably be quite violent, based on the nature of the "perfect" result which is Demon Light.

    So, bncing the two different kinds of Demon Light is too taxing for Daimon as of current, not in terms of mana, battle aura or even stamina since more than ? parts of the energy he used to condense the sword returned to him, and for stamina, all he did was use blink to move around and stab the confused magic beasts with the sword once or twice so he wasn''t physically but mentally tired.

    Luckily, such a thing didn''t count for the final bill at the time of using Core Synchrony, so essentially, he would be perfectly fine when deactivating it, meaning he can save his daily usage of Sanctuary forter, but instead of going through all this hassle, it was easier and more enjoyable to wield Narasha.

    ''Guess your "Eternal Sword" will have to be left aside again~'', jokingly said Evangeline, which made Daimon clear his throat at such a lewd reference to his abnormally high energy for bed activities.

    ''For someone who fiercely affirmed to "Do everything her power to not even catch a glimpse of such vulgar acts", you seem rather informed'', said Daimon, forcing Eve to either remain silent or admit that she spied on him from time to time.

    Having won this round, Daimon slightly smirked, before reuniting with the Lamia sisters, who were busy discussing something among themselves, until they saw him arrive.

    "What, did something happen?", asked Daimon, Rita was supervising the whole battlefield, including the enclosed spaces created by those two''s domains, and she didn''t inform him of any anomaly, so by all means everything should be fine, which led Daimon to think they received a message from their mother or something like that, but apparently that wasn''t the case.

    "No, we were just having a sisterly talk", said Ferris with a soft smile, while Naomi avoided Daimon''s gaze, like usual.

    "I finished gathering each and every document as well as important looking material, in thisb, Daimon", said Rita from within Daimon''s shadow, while it wasn''t as good as the inventory since time did pass for the stuff inside there, Rita could drag stuff inside Daimon''s shadow with ease, after all even those girls from the ck Night n were living¡­ somewhere inside there while being "instructed" by the undead head maid.

    Daimon could hear the "praise me" hidden in Rita''s voice and to be honest it was well-deserved, she used a mere hour to go through each and every level of the undergroundb, inspecting every nook and cranny, deactivating all the mechanical traps and stealing all the records, logs and documents she found, not to mention she took at least one piece of every instrument she saw, for Daimon''s sake since she noticed he seemed interested on that red array at thest level.

    "Thanks Rita, did you find any other living being who can still move by themselves?", he said.

    "No, these magic beasts were the only living ones, there level above us is filled with corpses being preserved in those tubes filled with liquid, but after inspecting them, there is nothing really eye-catching about them, I''ll match their appearances and characteristics with Zia to separate "non-native" species from the bunch", happily said the undead head maid.

    Daimon nodded, he was interested on the races that were brought here through the "summoning circle" after all, at the same time the isted spaces created by Zia and Celia, dissolved to reveal their triumphant appearances.

    Besides some scratches on Celia''s clothes here and there, she killed her two opponents while limiting the mana output, she could produce, in order to not affect her surroundings, as for Zia she was perfectly fine, not even a speck of dust could be seen on her clothes.

    "Very well, let''s return to the lowest level, depending on the situation we might have to leave in a hurry so rest and recover but be prepared for it", he said as he distributed mana recovery potions for all of them.

    ''That woman looked at our fighting, more urately to Daimon''s fight, in secret, I didn''t feel any ill intent though'', secretly said Rita to Daimon as they descended from the fifth level to thest one, naturally she referred to the one inside the snake statue who imed to be the real Thalia.

    Daimon inwardly nodded while he nced at the still passed out, receptionist and the investigator, thinking how to deal with them, however he returned to reality since they arrived at thest floor once again.

    ''So, did you get to see what you wanted from my fight earlier?'', asked Daimon in the frequency in which the woman inside the statue talked exclusively with him, with the exception that this time he made it so Evangeline could listen as well, instead of having to obtain the information through Daimon''s thoughts which were purposedly open for her to see, naturally the previous wasn''t discernible for the other party.

    ''¡­'', after a few seconds of silence, the statue seemed toe to life, not in the sense that it gained mobility but in the sense that it radiated a barely noticeable but still existing, vitality, while still looking exactly like a lifeless statue it was honestly strange.

    ''Yes, either you genuinely have a really high realm at such a young age and an even higher battle prowess, or you possess an outrageously strong boosting innate ability with no side effects, in both cases and considering you can hear this specific frequency, it''s enough for me to believe that you are one of them'', she said.

    ''So, whates now, are you going to exin what happened here or¡­'', Daimon''s words were interrupted by the woman inside the statue.

    ''Before we get to that, you¡­ are you a descendant of the Void Devouring Python race, a variant perhaps, you have space and darkness affinities but you are a man, why were there spacews from my race floating towards you earlier, why do you feel like one of my kind?'', after rambling for a few seconds, the woman got to the doubt that was itching her mind ever since she exchanged words with the masked silver haired youth.

    Daimon couldn''t help but frown behind his mask, certainly he had both darkness and space affinities, like Thea, but that shouldn''t be enough to make the woman in the statue, think he belonged to her race, much less if she was who she imed to be.

    ''My contract with Thea would exin the spacews from her race approaching me, though I couldn''t see them¡­ but none of my lineages have any rtion with Thea''s race'', thought Daimon, before an idea struck him like a lightning out of the blue.

    ''Ryner''sst fang'', he concluded, the gift that Thea gave him as a sign of friendship, originally Ryner didn''t have the space affinity of Thea and Thalia''s race, what he inherited from Thalia bestowing some of her blood to him, was darkness affinity which integrated with his original water one, however at the end of his days, Ryner managed to obtain space affinity.

    And while it was toote for him to exploit the potential of the lineage from which his derived, Ryner left this opportunity to his future descendants, with the years the bones were used for multiple purposes but the upper fangs weren''t suitable for anyone, so they kept umting mana, growing in power until they reached a level where they radiated a simr aura to the one of Thalia''s race.

    Which might exin why the fake Thalia was suppressed by Thea''s spear, ording to the empress herself, it was lineage suppression, now the problem lied in what to tell to the woman inside the statue.

    ''She really hopes that I am a member of her race, maybe that''s why her hatred towards system users isn''t being directed to me as of current, so if tell her otherwise, the reaction will probably be quite violent on the other hand if I lie, I might obtain some information out of her but¡­ I have zero doubts that she''ll discover the truth sooner orter, since she is someone that managed to screw over the hydra guy'', thought Daimon.

    Ultimately Daimon chose to tell her the truth, not for sympathy towards her, but because he was guided here by his instincts, when fully focusing on helping Thea with her challenge, so this encounter must be really important for her, also in his experience choosing the easy way out, might be satisfying on the short, but at long term you end up loosing more than what you won, just look at the corpse of the light idiot in his inventory.

    ''My lineage isn''t rted to yours'', he said, in case you wonder why he didn''t mention Thea, he didn''t trust the woman yet, right now she knew nothing about him and it was better to keep it like that, it would be easier to notice if she lied or tried to trick him this way, since she affirmed to be Thalia and he more or less knew about Thalia from two different sources, namely Thea and Marlene n''s records.

    As expected, Daimon could feel the gaze from the woman in the statue, getting colder on the spot, but behind all that, what could be felt was disappointment.

    ''In that case, I might as well tell you why I hate those like you¡­ I was forcefully taken away from my natal gxy by the one on which that array was inspired of, Dorian the user of the "Abyss Snake Tyrant" system''.

    Daimon remained silent, he couldn''t detect any lies in her words, also he finally discovered the name of the hydra guy, who caused so much troubles to Thea and Marlene''s ns.

    ''So, he "summoned" you with an array like that one, but then why didn''t you lose your sanity like those magic beasts?'', he asked, to which the woman softly snorted.

    ''Humph, don''tpare that degraded thing with the real deal, as a member of one of the twelve royal families from my gxy, I had already started the process to surpass the Ster realm, I was in the middle of my advance when that despicable array appeared in my room and dragged me into a chaotic dimensional tunnel''.

    ''Next thing I knew, I appeared in a room that only had arge bed, where that guy was sitting while I was chained to the ground by that array which was engraved on his chest, it costed me my advance, a part of my magic core and having to detonate my protection pendant but I broke my restraints, half-tore his chest open and then escaped by jumping into the nearby ocean'', she said, taking a moment before continuing.

    ''Who would have thought that the bastard of Dorian would then chase me to the end of the world in order to "tame" me, I only understood why after seeing the monstrosity in which he had transformed himself by forcefully integrating all those magic beasts into his body, he wanted my space affinity''.

    ''Luckily it was his own greed what helped me ultimately driving him away, his previous victim from which he obtained darkness affinity wasn''tpletely gone and in the middle of the battle in which he finally managed to corner me, she messed with him for a second, giving me the chance tond a fatal wound on that bastard, forcing him to run with his tail between his legs¡­ unfortunately my already wounded body started to sumb to the side effects of forcefully destroying the connection he tried to force onto me'', she proudly said.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, her story matched with what he knew, but there was still an unsolved mystery.

    ''If you defeated him, how did you end up trapped here?'', he asked, just to hear the woman gritting her teeth in response.

    ''Because even after his death that bastard came back to haunt me, I had built a ce to recover and even obtained trustworthy allies, but I¡­ lowered my guard after getting news of that guy being killed and it was then when "she" infiltrated my body, stealing my control over it while trying to use me to invade my world through a space rift that I was investigating back then''.

    ''My followers noticed it and most distanced themselves from me, but they weren''t strong enough to stop me, so I decided to take things in my own hands, after leaving a "safety measure" as ast gift for them, I used myst resort which essentially turned my physical body into a prison, interrupting her midway and forcing us to wander in the dimensional tunnel for quite some time, along with the ones that were tricked to follow her''.

    ''Unfortunately, while she was tied to my now petrified physical body, she still managed to find a ce to stablish herself and controlled those guys to develop her own organization, I hibernated a few years and when I woke up, I saw that disgusting array once again, she started summoning magic beasts to use them for experiments and ultimately created a though inferior, still rted lineage to mine, in order to escape this prison''.

    ''From that point onwards, she has been torturing me to obtain the memories of my gxy, since she is trapped her as shecks that special space rift from back then and the magic beasts, she summons basically lose their mind, ah right, she also tried to obtain the memories from the races of those two girls, but there was no progress is that area''.

    ''I see, so you gave your blood to someone else besides Ryner, so that there would be a descendant with the strength to oppose the one who stole your body, if she ever returned, right?'', asked Daimon.

    ''Yes, it was in a hurry but that girl had such a firm determination in her eyes so I¡­ WHAT DID YOU SAY!'', the woman who was calmly answering, stopped midway before she finally realized that Daimon said Ryner''s name.

    ''H-How do you know about that, don''t tell me this aura¡­ you killed their descendant!'', she eximed in horror

    And with that Daimon was convinced, because her reaction was genuine, now imagine how the temperature dropped when he took out Ryne''s fang, allowing the misunderstanding to further develop.

    Daimon could see the statue shaking, the woman was clearly enraged thinking that he had done something to Ryner and that girl''s descendant, still he decided to stop her before things got serious, after all he could feel mana secretlying from the deepest parts of the statue, when before there was no such a thing.

    Of course, at this point just words would be meaningless, so he instead allowed her to feel the contract he made with Thea, because while the aura she felt indeed came from Ryner''s fang, it was easy to discern the kind of rtionship he had with Thea, based on the mutual-trust link that was stablished between them.

    ''No way, that is the "Knighthood Pact" of the royal families and it was properly stablished on top of it!'', Thalia eximed in surprise, the suicide attack she was preparing, dissolved on the spot, what''s more the snake statue glowed for a second before a few yellow light particles emerged from it, to then gather before taking human form.

    A tall slender girl descended in front of Daimon, it was a young girl of around 17 years old, looking not even a day older than Aisha or Sarah, she wore a ck sundress made out of condensed darkness mana, which allowed her frail looking shoulders and pretty bare feet visible, simr to Thea she had amber snake-like eyes, her face also shared a certain resemnce with the empress, to the point that they could be confused as sisters.

    However, there were a couple of really important differences, first and formal, she looked younger than Thea who appeared to be in her middle twenties, which was weird considering Thalia should be older than Thea and second, her hair wasn''t of that deep ck inked color like the empress, butpletely white, which didn''t go along with the fact that she had darkness affinity.

    Also, her skin was quite pale, giving her a sickly fragile appearance, though thatst part was understandable, considering her vitality was like the blinking me of a candle in the middle of a storm after all she has gone through.

    "Allow me to introduce myself again, I am the second princess of the Neris royal family, Thalia Neris", she said out loud as she pulled the sides of her dress, allowing the other girls to listen to her for the first time since their previous conversation started.

    Before Daimon could even answer, the familiar sound of a notification rang on his ears.

    [Ding]

 Chapter 578: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 14)

    Following the sweet sound of the notification, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as he saw the message disyed by the system.

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil", has been updated <!>]

    Daimon gazed at the notification symbol and the change that happened was disyed below of it.

    [Objectives:

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Devil Ruler 20% ¨¤ 50% (0/1)]

    Daimon couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, as usual it was hard to discern what fulfilled the conditions of the "hidden gems" and "legacies", back then this specific legacy progressed when he ripped those pages out of the Ryner n''s head diary, but considering all he learned now, those pages were probable left behind by whoever possessed Thalia''s body.

    And now, the progression rate advanced out of nowhere, perhaps it was because he learned the true behind that, or because he got Thalia to willingly reveal herself to him.

    ''Well, considering there is a chance that I had to let that crazy girl drink the poison directly from my ws for the other legacy, I guess this isn''t that bad'', thought Daimon before he returned to real life when he felt Thalia''s intense gaze on him, he hadn''t answered to her introduction after all.

    ''Ahem, you can call me Daimon, it''s a pleasure'', he said, only then Thalia''s expression rxed again.

    ''¡­'', an awkward silence reigned for a second, before Thalia whose projection was floating a few centimeters above the ground, made a couple of turns around Daimon.

    It was obvious that she was curious about his system, considering she somehow learned how to detect users, which was a really valuable skill yes, but it could also be a curse, ording to Joanna, as those who knew or were close to system users were bound to both fortune and disasters.

    ''So, how is uncle''s family doing?'', asked Thalia, ultimately choosing not to pry into the subject of Daimon''s system, for now at least, also she looked like apletely different person, to the point that it was hard to believe that this girl was about to use a suicide attack a moment ago, perhaps it''s because she wasn''t in a defensive stance for the first time in who knows how many years.

    ''Uncle?'', Daimon raised an eyebrow, based on her speech and appearance, as well as the short exnation she gave earlier, it seemed like Thalia was indeed mentally younger than what both he and Thea guessed, specially if she was referring to Ryner when she said "uncle".

    ''I mean Ryner¡­ he was the one who found me and took care of me after I first escaped from that scum of Dorian, considering you have the Neris''s Knighthood stigma, it means that at least one talented royal has appeared among his descendants, right?''.

    Her words raised more questions than answers, but given the genuine worried expression she put, Daimon decided to leave them forter and instead answer her.

    ''Ryner has been long gone, but his n prospered until this day and there is indeed someone that can be considered a member of your race currently alive, the first one so far, though her lineage is still iplete considering she can''t change into beast form like you''.

    A tinge of sadness shed through Thalia''s eyes, but sheposed herself in no time, she probably knew that it was going to be near impossible for Ryner and those she knew back then, to remain alive until now, but she was also happy to learn that they got to live their lives apart from the chaos from back then, because they got strong enough to protect themselves.

    ''That''s good¡­ it was a shame that I couldn''t give Ryner the space affinity from my lineage, as it was restricted for women, but based on that fang you got there, he managed to find his way around of it at the end of the day'', she mumbled to then change to a lighter subject.

    ''Still, what''s this "iplete" lineage you are talking about, since she was able to stablish a Knighthood Pact with you, then she is a Neris royal through and through, but I can imagine what the problem is, since at Neptune the only ce where I was able to absorb enough space mana particles was next to that space rift'', she said.

    ''I guess that exins why this ce was chosen for her challenge'', thought Daimon, just to hear Thalia add.

    ''If you came all the way to this remote ce, then it must be rted to your system, right, what are you going to do now?''.

    ''I am going to destroy this ce and then deal with the imposter, speaking of which do you know who stole your identity?'', said Daimon, answering her question with one as well.

    Unfortunately, Thalia shook her head in response.

    ''No idea, the only thing she said when she took my body over was that I messed with her ns, so she was an ally of Dorian, another system user perhaps'', she said to which Daimon also shook his head.

    ''The four system users that participated on the war from back then, all died, well one of them kind of returned recently, but he is a guy and I''m pretty sure the other ones are dead'', he said.

    Ereth and the first Matriarch of the Light Pce, were the victors of the battle from back then, since Ereth survived and got the bonus reward of going to Kerrol, then the Hydra guy in other words Dorian and the guy who tricked Snakele''s followers who was probably in cahoots with the Nethereals back then, were killed by those two as thest part of their own missions.

    Ereth fought Dorian and considering how much of a pain in the ass, that guy is, it''s hard to imagine him letting Dorian escape from his grasp, especially since he was already really wounded by Thalia prior to their fight.

    In fact, that fight with Ereth was probably the reason as to why Dorian was so obsessed with obtaining Thalia, he knew he was no match for the hero without a realm ignoring advantage such as her especially strong space affinity.

    And if another system user would have appeared in Neptune, he or she would have reigned over one of the major forces for sure and there were no signs of it, not to mention their traces would have been found through the missions generated through the opportunities Daimon stole from those two, so it was safe to assume that there hadn''t been any other system users in Neptune since those four.

    ''You said that the "summoning circle" is a degraded version of the array Dorian had engraved on his chest, right?''.

    ''Mm, yeah, even if I die, I won''t forget how the thing that dragged me away from my room, looked like'', she said.

    ''Since that array appeared here, then it must have been drawn by someone who knew about Dorian''s system and had the knowledge to recreate it, not to mention someone who has no problem surviving a cunning bastard like Ereth, I can only think on Dorian''s administrator staying behind to cause troubles'', said Daimon to Evangeline.

    ''Mm, that sounds usible, however she had no reason why, if she survived then she wasn''t in a life and death contract with her host, meaning he wasn''t aspatible as possible with him, as such there is no obvious reason for her to go through all this trouble''.

    ''Not to mention that even if she obtained a temporary physical vessel and used its powers, instead of her own, just to remain here, the origin she had umted would still diminish with the pass of the time, cutting her connection with original abilities'', mumbled Evangeline.

    Unlike Ka who though also didn''t have a life and death contract with her user, meaning that their bond wasn''t exactly deep, still had a reason to stay behind, since her user was still alive though separated from her and as a former hero system user, there was a big chance for a hugeeback from Ereth.

    But Eve couldn''t think of a reason to remain in a rtively low ranked ced and even spend so many years trapped inside a dimensional rift, when it was easier to just start over¡­ and it was then when a realization hit her like a truck, but the moment the thought of speaking about it shed in her mind, the screen of the system appeared in front of her, forcing her to swallow her words.

    Despite the anger that surged in her heart, Evangeline took a deep breath and instead limited to say.

    ''She isn''t like that fragmented siren you fought before, goal-wise she is dangerous, be careful''.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask, Evangeline''s yful attitude only dimmed down when there was a really serious matter, she wanted to discuss with him but was unable to, due to the restrictions of the system, that was a mutual understanding agreement they had, also she took pride in Daimon being a monster among his peers, so if she told him to be careful in a serious way, then it was for a good reason.

    ''Got it, thanks Eve'', said Daimon.

    ''Mm'', with a soft sound, Evangeline softly smiled and then returned to sleep¡­ not without ncing at the feather pendant in which the angel girl lived, to then sent Ariel a message only she could hear.

    Leaving that aside, Thalia who seemed to have finished pondering about something before saying.

    ''Did you enter the Knighthood Pact with Ryner''s descendant¡­ due to a mission?'', to which Daimon shook his head in response.

    ''Not exactly, while a mission was indeed involved in our encounter, I didn''t know approach her for that, in fact I didn''t know she was part of my mission when we met and I consider her to be my friend'', he said.

    Thalia thoroughly studied Daimon''s expression and words and ultimately nodded, convinced that he wasn''t lying, before she pointed at the still passed out receptionist and the woman from the ck Spirit race to then say in a voice everyone could hear this time.

    "What are you nning to do with them?".

    "I will obtain information from the woman in charge of the experiments and then will dispose of her, as for the other one, I have a younger member of her race in my group, so she''ll be spared for now", said Daimon.

    The receptionist wasn''t simr to Zia in the aspect that she met the requirement to be a special terror contracted, but she''ll be a decent servant and since she was the strongest member of Zia''s race, she''ll be of use in that aspect and there is room for improvement for her as a terror contracted, just look at Celia.

    As for the woman from the ck Spirit race, it''s not like Daimon was going to get rid of her because of her experiments, she was too obsessed with the fake Thalia, as she ignored her life in order to inform her of the situation in theb, so there is no way she''ll be a decent follower, besides it was going to be really tough to torture information out of her, so she was dying one way or another.

    "In that case, let''s make a deal, I''ll temporarily take over that woman''s body and give you the information you want, in exchange take me with you to fight that imposter, there is something I have to take back from her", she said.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow in response, wondering why would she even ask for a deal, if she wanted toe and help fight against the fake Thalia, she was more than wee to.

    "I don''t see why is there a need for a deal, if you need to, we can break the bars of the cage where your body is trapped¡­", Daimon''s words were interrupted by Thalia who spoke in a really low voice.

    "I can recover my body if I take back what that woman stole from me, but I¡­", she stopped there for a second before she eximed.

    "Make a Knighthood Pact with me, I need to recover enough strength to be useful against that woman in a short period of time!".

    Daimon inwardly shrugged, if all she needed was a contract like the one, he stablished with Thea, that was fine for him, it was basically a mutual-trust agreement with no other conditions, not to mention she even offered to give him the information in that woman''s mind in exchange, it was a win-win situation no matter the angle.

    ''Perhaps it''s a racial trait, she said that the spacews of the Neris''s space affinity approached me due to my connection to Thea, so she will probably use that to recover, I have no use for them as of current anyway'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Sure, let''s start right away, my otherpanions are marching towards that woman''s headquarters, so we''ll have to prepare everything in the next two or so hours at most".

    "Y-yes!", after saying that, Thalia''s projection turned back into yellow light particles which returned to the snake statue.

    "Please open the cage", said Thalia from within the statue.

    Daimon gazed at Celia who immediately shed towards the cage to then open it, it was purely mechanical without runes, but in exchange the materials with which it was made were incredibly tough and it also heavy as hell, luckily the woman from the ck Spirit race had the key in her pocket, otherwise it would have taken Celia a few hours to break a few of the bars.

    With a loud "click", the whole frontal part of the cage unlocked from the rest of the structure and Celia raised it, so that the cage was now open.

    "Come here please", said Thalia to Daimon who approached the cage, her projection came out of the statue once again and floated in front of Daimon as she offered her hand to him, something that wasn''t necessary with Thea, but this was probably the "proper" process, of which Thea wasn''t aware off, since the result was quite simr, though the message differed, perhaps because Theacked knowledge regarding the origin of this ability of hers.

    [Ding]

    [The second Neris princess has offered Knighthood to the host, do you wish to ept it Y/N]

    With a nod, Daimon epted and just like with Thea that strange connection was formed between them, however there was indeed a difference, unlike Thea, Thalia knew the benefits and perks of this contract.

    From the point where their bodies made contact, in other words their hands, since Daimon was still holding onto hers, a small whirlwind formed and Daimon saw ck little rune-like thingse out of it.

    ''Those are¡­ spacews'', he thought with genuine surprise, it was a strange sensation, thosews weren''t in contact with him, in fact under normal circumstances he wouldn''t even be able to see them, kudos to the infinity eyes, it was more as if Thalia was taking his help to gather thosews but without directly involving him, like connecting an auxiliary antenna to get a stronger signal.

    Daimon gazed at Thalia just to see her astonished expression as she looked at the small ck particles that were pouring out of that ck whirlwind formed above their hands.

    "You, what race do you belong to, your space affinity isn''t weaker than mine and your darkness actually overpowers mine!", she eximed, she had already seen Daimon using blink earlier, which did impress her but she as an experienced space affinity mage, quickly realized that blink had a limited range.

    Sopared to his talent for battle which was awe-inspiring, she thought he wasn''t born with space nor darkness affinities but obtained it through his system, like what Dorian tried to do, since she saw him use a strange agglomeration of different elements as his battle aura, she fell trap to the white pale color of Demon Light since it is indeed near impossible to detect all theponents of it as they perfectly integrate, but now realized she was wrong.

    While Daimon didn''t obtain space affinity when he became a mage, by innate he waspatible with all the elements, that isn''t something he gained thanks to the system, the Apex Predator body constitution and the ability of the system to obtain skills and affinities thanks to the enemies he defeated, simply made it easier for him to develop said affinities.

    Just like Evangeline said from the very beginning, he was already a monster even before unlocking the system.

    What''s more, while she couldn''t discern whether Daimon was a knight or a mage due to the Hollow Suit and the Bracelet of the God of Mischief which Zia had returned to him earlier, she deduced he was able to use mana, based on how the spacews that were being dragged by them, reacted.

    ''No way, he can use both mana and battle aura, what the hell, none of those four were like this¡­ I guess that''s why Ryner''s descendant chose him, all thesews obtained from such a shallow gathering process, it''s insane'', she thought before saying.

    "Thanks, I can''t handle more than this as of current", with those words, she retrieved her hand and the ck whirlwind dissolved.

    With a gesture from Thalia''s hand, all those ck particles were sent into the snake statue before her projection also entered it.

    Daimon and the girls, watched with curious eyes how the statue started shaking, before it shrank from the previous hundreds of meters, to around twenty centimeters tall, only then Thalia''s projection came out and entered the passed-out woman from the ck Spirit race, whose eyes immediately opened wide.

    For a change, a pained a scared expression shed on the face on the woman who didn''t even value her own life, but it didn''tst long, a ck snake tattoo appeared on the forehead of the woman and then her eyes closed.

    The next second she opened once again, but they had changed to the amber snake-like pupils which characterized Thea and Thalia, that being said, the previously ck hair of the woman half faded, gaining a gray tone.

    "Phew, I was worried that there would beplications since I had never used this spell, but it worked, luckily her darkness affinity isn''t as trash as I thought, so I can recover a bit through her", said Thalia, though it was the woman talking, what came out was Thalia''s voice.

    "Now that you mention it, I thought that petrified body was the result of a curse, but you said it was you the one who did it and you also know how to possess other people''s bodies, those aren''t legacy spells of the Void Devouring Python race, right?", asked Daimon.

    Thalia bitterly smiled in response to then say.

    "No, these are the legacy spells from my father''s race who are proficient in darkness element, the Stone Prison is a self-curse, used to slow down the effects of serious wounds on the body and to focus everything in recovery, as for Snake Skin¡­ it''s a possession spell, but it is only used for elders to guide the members of the young generation in their training of their darkness affinities, also it is only effective on those with darkness affinity and it only works if your darkness is stronger than the one of the target".

    Daimon couldn''t help but softlyugh, she gave her all to exin that those two "ominous" capacities she showed, weren''t wrongly used, with that exnation she made it clear that what Daimon thought was petrification, was instead a healing method and the possession spell wouldn''t work on Daimon, since his darkness affinity was superior to hers, at least as of current, courtesy of a certain Twilight Alluring Fox.

    Perhaps she didn''t want him to have a bad impression of her, since they had a contract now.

    ''So, spacees from the mother and darkness from the father, just like with Thea'', he thought.

    "Okay, we can talk about itter, for now I want you to write down all the information regarding the experiments that woman was assigned to do, specially those rted to that array¡­", Daimon stopped midway as he noticed the difort behind Thalia''s eyes, which made him chuckle.

    "I''m not nning on dragging people from other gxies, nor summoning magic beasts with their rationality destroyed due to the travel, what I am interested in, are the runes used for the array, especially those special ones which I had never seen before, after all that array bypassed the defensive arrays of your own room, a ce built by a race who is talented in spatial movement", he added.

    Thalia cleared her throat, she actually tried to not let it notice on her face, since she promised to give him all the information as a part of their deal, but the memory of her desperate to resist the call of the array, was still fresh in her mind so she failed to do so.

    And while she wasn''t nning to go back on her word, since it was an agreement sealed with the Knighthood Pact, it did make her happy when Daimon exined what was his interest in that array.

    "Mm, I should be finished in an hour and half, it''s a lot of information after all, also don''t worry she isn''t supposed to report herself until four to five hours from this exact moment, that''s how much she usually takes for her daily experiments and I haven''t killed her yet, so no one will notice it", she said.

    Daimon nodded, he took out a few different things from the inventory, a notebook and a pen for Thalia as well as an empty storage ring for her to useter, and a couple of bags which he passed to Zia and Celia.

    "Here you should be able to keep your petrified body in a ring once we turn off the space blocking arrays, Zia, you and Celia go and start cing the "gifts" we brought, after that, Zia you return to the reception, while Celia must return here", said Daimon.

    "Understood young master", said those two as they epted the bags and shed out of the room.

    Thalia epted the notebook and the ring and put hands to work on her assigned task, and now it was only a matter of waiting for the signal they agreed on to appear.

    "You too rest, Daimon", said the undead head maid as she materialized a throne out of shadows for Daimon to sit and though against her deepest desires, she also made simple chairs for the Lamia princesses and Thalia.

    "Thanks", Daimon sat down and closed his eyes to meditate, while he didn''t get any recoil from using Core Synchrony earlier, he still used mana and for the iing battle he had to be at his best and the same applied for the others.

    ¡­

    At the same time, a really long distance away from the secretb, inside a dimensional tunnel, arge army travelled as a whole, at the back of the army there were a series of magnificent carriages and among them one outstood the most, which was normal since it belonged to the Lamia queen.

    Inside of said carriage there were two women sitting, while there was a third woman standing behind one of them, naturally they were Thea, Mirellia and the captain of the royal guards, Nea.

    "Any other news from them, miss Thea?", asked the Lamia queen as she took a sip of her cup of tea, only to see Thea who seemed slightly impatient since earlier, shaking her head.

    "No, he only gave me the "Be extra careful" signal and that was it¡­ how long until we reach the enemy''s territory?", asked Thea instead, to which Nea answered.

    "We''ll reach the territory of the Snake Tyrant headquarters in an hour and a half, we should be able to further deepen into their territory thanks to the information about the arrays, proportioned by you, so they''ll only detect us half an hourter", she concluded.

    "So, two hours¡­", mumbled Thea, her fighting spirit was pouring out of her, making the Lamia queen softlyugh at her.

    What Mirellia didn''t know is that, Thea wasn''t particrly looking to fight, what made her feel impatient was that earlier she had a strange premonition and she also felt a subtle change in her connection with Daimon.

    ''It didn''t weaken in the slightest, in fact I instinctively know it was a positive change, so then why do I feel like earlier when I detected Marlene''s mana on Daimon?'', wondered the empress unaware that she was in for a surprise in a couple of hours.

 Chapter 579: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 15)

    Time passed while Daimon meditated to ease up his mind after pushing himself to the limit with the Comet Sword earlier, as more than an hour went on in silence, the younger Lamia princess who was sitting not to far from him, stole some nces at both Daimon and Thalia who was focused on writing page after page of information.

    Naomi felt curious towards Thalia, because the aura around her reminded her of Thea whom she idolized, but she was also interested on her because she has been in Draim for quite some time, meaning she probably got to hear about some of the ancestors of the Lamia royalty.

    Ferris on the other hand was trying to remember all the "missing" important people from both the Naga and Lamia races, since it was obvious that some of them probably ended here.

    "If you want to ask something, feel free to do so, though I have been "alive" for way more time than what you think, my growth halted since the moment I was dragged away from my home, so technically our ages aren''t that far from each other", said Thalia without stopping her hands from writing in the notebook that Daimon handed her.

    The first one to speak was Naomi.

    "If I understand correctly, you and sister Theae from different ces though you are both from the same race, so¡­ are there Lamias in your ce of origin?", she asked.

    It was a valid question, with the knowledge from the gxy of origin of the Lamia and Naga races, having been lost, it would be reasonable to think that Thalia whose race lived in gxy with snake-rted races, might have seen other Lamias or Nagas, Naomi asked Thea the same question before, unfortunately the answer remained the same, though for different reasons this time.

    "Sorry, as the younger princess who had yet to be strong enough to be allowed to travel outside of my family''s main sphere of influence, I don''t know too much about the "outside" world, however I can at least confirm that within the Snake Scale Ster Kingdom, a race like yours doesn''t exist, having a state in between our beast and human forms would be considered a sign of a poor lineage there", she said.

    "I see¡­ thanks for answering", mumbled Naomi, to which Thalia added.

    "That being said, I think that would be just prejudice, your race seems to be supposed to develop in that way, I heard that demi-human kingdom existed in the vicinity, there might be a simr race to yours there".

    Naomi visibly cheered up with that, as for Ferris just as she was about to ask her question, Celia returned after finishing her task, Thalia finally put down her pen and themunication device which Ferris was holding in her hand, broke, just in time for Daimon to open his eyes.

    "Sorry for theteness, young master", she said to which Daimon raised his hand to stop her from continuing, the undergroundb was not only immense but it had a really solid structure, so the "things" he brought had to be ced everywhere, it was normal that the preparations would take some time.

    "It seems everything waspleted in time, we have to catch up with the others, so let''s get going".

    ''Everyone follow the n'', said Daimon to the terror contracted, basically Rita covered Zia and the Naga/Nethereal guys, so that they would be able toe down here without being detected, as for Narasha, she damaged the main array so that it would remain nonoperational for at least another three hours.

    Thanks to Thalia possessing the woman from the ck Spirit n, Daimon now knew the exact routine of the receptionist who was the only other person that mattered in this facility, she was really free to roam through theb and actually came down to visit her colleague during her daily experiment, since it was her duty to report about the results since she could use "sh Cast" for faster delivery of information.

    A few minutester, all the enved Nagas and Zia had arrived at thest level of the hiddenb where Daimon and the others were, in case you wonder why they didn''t go to the entrance like before, that''s because the anti-spatial array at thest level was deactivated by them now, so Rita could "smuggle" them out without any worries in the world.

    "Everything is ready young master, "we" exchanged shift with another two guards at the entrance, so no one would notice that those two are missing for a couple of hours at least", said the guy who reced that guard at the entrance.

    Daimon nodded, it was indeed hard to infiltrate this ce and keepplete silence, but the whole concept had a major w, the one who designed it counted on the greed of those who will try to infiltrate it.

    Since the research and experiments in thisb would be considered revolutionary and ahead of their time let alone here in Draim, but even at Neptune and the four gxies, then those who infiltrated theb wouldn''t try their utmost to obtain it.

    Of course, it''s not like the fake Thalia expected others to sacrifice their life just to steal theb''s investigation, but it was enough for them to be slowed down so that one of the many hidden mechanisms alerted the headquarters.

    Unfortunately, she never expected someone to not only be able to infiltrate and be interested in stealing the results of the thousands of years of hard work, but also be crazy enough to not hesitate at the moment of cing alchemic explosives in each and every support of the whole facility, all in a couple of hours.

    With a nod, Rita covered everyone in a barrier made out of her mana, before a ck spatial gate sucked them in, not before two things happened, first, Thalia looked back at the gloomy walls that had kept her prisoner here for such a long time, before her eyes glowed with gratitude towards Daimon, knowing that they''ll be demolished this very day.

    And second, Daimon gazing at Zia and telling her a few phrases, making the newly contracted girl''s eyes to sparkle in response.

    ¡­

    While Daimon''s group travelled in the dimensional tunnel, at a different one, the Lamia and Naga army which had been on standing until now, changed their stance.

    "Attention, we are about to cross the non-detection boundary, be prepared to fight as soon as you leave the dimensional tunnel!", shouted Nea who was floating outside of the royal carriage, wearing abination of a light green mage''s robe with some light metal armor to protect her vitals.

    The previously dormant army, immediately tensed up, since this was the first time they had taken the initiative tounch an attack on the enemy''s headquarters, normally the Melliun kingdom focused on defending themselves without interfering in the all-out war between those two.

    But not this time, inside the royal carriage, Mirellia who was standing next to Thea, nodded at the empress before taking out a finger sized blue crystal with a vertical slit on its center, which made it look like the eye of a snake, out of her pocket, if Daimon would have been here, he would have been amazed at thebination of water and spacews that resided within the crystal.

    That being said, Thea could act as his representative, since she could also perceive spacews by innate, so she felt the power contained within the crystal, which has been used to conceal their tracks so far.

    That crystal is one of the three royal treasures of the Melliun kingdom, that were created by the first Lamia queen, the "Snake Saphire", basically it was a mana crystal created by the Lamia queen after she reached the Maximum Ster rank, she nurtured it until the end of her days.

    So far it has only been used a few times, but said asions were really important for the Melliun kingdom, the main dimensional tunnels they used, were found thanks to the help of this treasure.

    Mirellia pointed the crystal at the exit of the dimensional tunnel, and the whole army was immediately expulsed from it, appearing at the border of the Snake Tyrant''s headquarters.

    "Attack!", with a fierce roar from Nea and before the arrays were able to inform the guards of their appearance, the mages of the army all casted wide area spells, raining down destruction on the nearby outposts.

    "Boooom!", despite the multipleyers of arrays and the thick physical defenses of the guard''s stations, they were immediately blown away when a thousand Ster ranked mages as well as around five thousand peak Archmages casted their spells in unison.

    "Knights, lead the charge!", giving the followingmand, Nea floated above the army, overseeing the whole battlefield, the knights went on a rampage using their Battle Avatars to crush everything on sight.

    At least until a loud rm rang at the distance and portals started appearing, cutting their advance and bringing the fake Thalia''s royal guards to stop the invasion.

    "Charge for our queen!", the neers were a bunch of those obsessed guys mentioned by Zia, they were all wearing white armors and they were all knights, a whole three hundred Ster ranked knights who rushed at the first sign of trouble for their queen.

    Now, normally what would have followed up would be a bitter battle, between fanatics who don''t care about their lives at all, as long as they eliminate threats for their queen and the Naga and Lamia knights who can''t just blow themselves up without any care in the world.

    Normally, any battle in which the Melliun kingdom took the upper hand, those fanatics would rush in and make sure to tilt the scale in the fake Thalia''s favor, even at the cost of their lives, dying alongside their enemies, self-destroying their cores, using a teammate as a meat shield tond a fatal attack, you name it.

    However, this time there was a huge difference and that is the fact that two people way above their level were present in this battlefield.

    "Dimensional Chasing Hydra".

    "Acid Dawn".

    Two cold yet pleasing to the ear, voices could be heard throughout the battlefield before everything at the right side of the fanatic''s army was flooded by a fierce-looking giant snake made out of ck mana, some horrified screams could be hearding from within the snake for a couple of seconds, before silence reigned once again.

    As for the left, a green wave of battle aura swallowed the remaining fanatics, unlike the dark mana snake, what happened within that acid realm was fully visible for everyone, the previously gant white armor wore by the fanatics became brittle and rusted on the spot, allowing those inside of it to have a glimmer of hope of escaping in exchange for their prized magic equipment.

    Just for them to see how their hair fell from their heads, followed by the flesh on their limbs turning into a goop that slid between the empty spaces of their bones, before their bodies melted into puddles of blood that were then reduced to nothing.

    Also, in both cases it''s not like the fanatics didn''t try to self-destroy to dispel those terrifying spell and martial art, respectively, however within the body of that snake made out of ck mana, no matter how much battle aura they expelled, all of it was "sent" somewhere else, in fact a couple of them did implode their bodies, but the resulting explosion was transported to another ce, causing no damage to Thea''s spell.

    In Mirellia martial art''s case, the dynamic was simpler but the result was equally despair-inspiring, the battle aura of those trapped within her attack melted before their defensive, offensive or movement martial arts could be activated, reducing them to brittle "mortals" with stronger bodies that only prolonged their suffering for a few extra seconds.

    In other words, for those fanatics, being trapped by those attacks was the same as immediately relinquishing the control of their lives to Thea and Mirellia.

    "Her majesty is invincible, long live her majesty!", Nea followed the script and eximed, making the whole army roar due to the overwhelming victory from a second ago.

    That being said, the two beauties thatnded a devastating blow on the response forces of the Snake Tyrant''s army, with just one of their offensive techniques each, without the use of their magic treasures, weren''t openly celebrating like their army which went on a rampage, practically wiping out the rest of the enemies in front of them.

    That is until they both felt a familiar energy firm, followed by arge portal opening on the sky a few hundreds of meters away from them, from which an armyposed of different squads all wearing armors of distinctive colors, emerged.

    And at the back of all that, there was a ck pnquin being pulled by four peak middle stage Ster knights, wearing white armor like the fanatics of earlier, but with a major difference, they all had an extra red cape as well as ck snake emblem engraved on their chest tes, meaning that they were the personal guardians of the fake Thalia and the captains of the white snake army which was utterly destroyed a second ago.

    Despite that, instead of anger or disappointment after their whole army was reduced to nothing, they were instead anxiously trying to sneak a peek at the person inside the pnquin as if nothing else existed in their eyes, it was pathetic to say the least.

    Facing the appearance of the multiple armor colored army of the fake Thalia, Thea and Mirellia actually smiled, which didn''t go unnoticed by the person inside the pnquin.

    "To think you''d manage to bring the elusive Lamia queen outside of the safety of that hidden royal capital of hers, I must say I am impressed, child", a condescending voice could be hearding out of the pnquin, ignoring the chaos and destruction that spread all over the outer ring of her own headquarters.

    That being said as vain as the previous words sounded, there was a clear reason behind of it, seed distrust, the previous was especially entuated when the pnquin opened and a tall woman with a face that was around 30% simr to Thea, but with a much more mature feeling and also white hair, instead of ck one, became visible for everyone.

    If ced next to each other, one would definitely think they are rted, maybe not directly, but an aunt-niece rtionship would be definitely possible.

    Unfortunately, and for the fake Thalia''s displease, her words didn''t cause a single ripple to emerge, let alone between the two beautiful generals that stood on the air above their army, side to side with rxed expressions on their pretty faces, but not even one of the "soldiers" under theirmand, seemed to care about her words, which was a first and of course made her frown.

    "I see, after enduring being treated like persecuted dogs, you finally decided to bite back and this is a battle for survival, I''ll happily y along since I have a lot of extra blood to spare, just know that this will only benefit that mad bastard''s side", she limited to say before she descended into her pnquin, intending to watch the show in a rxed manner, or at least that was the idea, until a st of mana and one of battle aura, poured down in that direction, forcing the nearby four personal guards as well as a couple of extra high Ster ranks to deploy their defenses in order to block those attacks.

    Just for their hearts to sink, when a couple of familiar figures appeared in front of their queen, a ck spear pierced towards the fake Thalia''s chest, while at the same time a green emerald gauntlet punched at her face.

    The face of the woman who was being attacked, contorted before a full body silver armor covered her, a heavy shield and a one-handed spear which were used to block the punch and the spearing aiming at her vitals.

    "Boooooom!", the result was a horrendous sh of mana, battle aura and a strange unknown energy, which sted away the nearby bystanders who were still blocking those two attacks from earlier.

    The atmosphere trembled and the ground below the sh was reduced to dust which raised into the air, producing a giant dust that swallowed both armies, just to be dispersed on the spot by the ones in change of them respectively.

    The result was then revealed to the world, Thea and Mirellia were standing side to side, in the exact same spot where they appeared earlier, the fake Thalia however was sent a whole meter backwards due to the sh.

    Speaking of the fake Thalia, she removed her helmet and her anger-distorted face became visible for everyone, her eyes had the word "kill" written all over them as she red at those two.

    "You two bitches want to die to eagerly, fine, activate the array, massacre them all!", she shouted, the ck armored group which stayed at the back of the army, far from the pnquin, all suddenly came to life, they took out their weapons which were "staffs", and threw them on the ground.

    What happened next is that those "staffs" expanded, turning into pirs and revealing their real appearance, the whole things had runes engraved on them and the very moment they expanded, a ck translucent barrier extended with them as their center, at least until Mirellia''s right hand shone in a pretty light blue light.

    More urately, the thing which she was holding, released that light, but the pretty light showcase isn''t what caught everyone''s attention, but the fact that said light shed against the barrier being deployed by those pirs, producing sparks for a second before the ck barrier waspletely overwhelmed and the pirs were swallowed by that blue light, making the crumble the next second.

    "Arghhhhhh!", the ck armored group that deployed the barrier all vomited blood and fell from the sky, as they were hit by the backsh.

    Mirellia gave a condescending gaze at the fake Thalia whose eyes were spitting fire as of current, before saying.

    "Why do you look at me like that, don''t tell me that you expected me to care about any treasures or resources in a battle for survival, this time you''ll be the one chased like dog by my Melliun kingdom".

    "Roaaaaaar!", with Mirellia''s words, each and every one of the members of her army suddenly changed their simple or low-quality equipment whenpared to the ones of the enemies they were facing, for the shiny and practically new sets of Ster grade armor and magic weapons of all kind that Daimon "kindly" provided to them, all this while making the whole battlefield rumble with the echo of their voices.

    Disbelief was written all over the fake Thalia''s face as she saw the whole enemy army, suddenly equipping magic treasures that equaled those used by the upper echelon of her forces, at the very least, a third of the enemy''s army was using armors that didn''t lose whenpared to the ones of the four captains of her personal guard.

    ''Where the hell did, they get such high ranked treasures in such quantity!'', she inwardly screamed, Draim isn''t a poor, but for some reason while mana mines and other energetic resources are more than plentiful, good smithing materials are really scarce.

    So, the fake Thalia had to rely mostly on materials harvested from magic beasts to make equipment for her army, in that aspect she was the same as the Melliun kingdom, the difference being that she had a wider variety to use, since she kept summoning magic beasts from other ces, resulting in the colorfulposition of her army.

    All her subordinates wore armor that suited their affinities, which was one of the strong points she had above her enemies, giving that her forces had a simr level of rune mastering when it came to smithing.

    But now that advantage was gone, what''s more, a second ago she realized that her local handicap of having tons of arrays to her disposition, since this was her territory was as good as nothing, due to that crystal which the Mirellia was holding.

    ''Damn it, to think that stupid snake girl would have so much treasures in her spatial ring, I should have killed her regardless of the damage to her body when I first saw her, instead of trying to convince her¡­'', inwardly cursed the fake Thalia, thinking that those treasures came from Thea.

    It was easy to notice that they weren''t armor and weapons made by the magic smiths of Draim, since the style and runes engraved on them werepletely different, not to mention she recognized the aura of Neptune on them.

    The three leaders of the two armies exchanged gazes, before they all shed to sh, bing a giant sphere of different energies and raising into the sky, letting their trusted seconds inmand to take over the lead of their armies.

 Chapter 580: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 16)

    Seeing the two queens taking their battle with the Fake Thalia into the sky, Nea took the lead of the army, as Mirellia''s friend who grew alongside her to be her personal guard, she chose the path that would allow her toplement the current Lamia queen, in other words she became a mage.

    However, the reason as to why she got along so well with Mirellia, is simple, though they are both calm andposed in their daily lives, when ites to anything battle rted, they are both¡­ savages.

    "Don''t leave a single one of these damn fanatics alive!", with a fierce war-cry, Nea wielded her new toy, the highest ranked magic weapon of the batch of treasures that Daimon gave them, a metal Warhammer.

    Originally, Daimon considered giving that thing which didn''t lose in terms of quality whenpared to the war spear, that Horals got as his reward back at Neptune, to Calvin since he wanted to stablish a connection with his grandfather, but he got a better offering in mind now, so the Warhammer went to Nea.

    And judging by her smiling expression when she rose it upwards as she channeled arge amount of mana through it, she really like the thing.

    "Verdict!", with a single word and a swung of her Warhammer, a few hundreds of metal spikes of around ten meters of size, manifested behind Nea, who then flew into the battlefield, sniping any target that caught her eyes.

    Blood flowers, blossomed all over the battlefield, as Nea made her way towards the Snake Tyrant''s army, second inmand, a tall woman wearing ck armor, meaning she was from the ck Spirit race, like the one in charge of the hiddenb.

    "Light green hair and metal affinity, the second branch royalty, the Gramy family, you resemble that woman who lost her life protecting the former Lamia queen, quite a bit, what a shame I couldn''t get my hands on her corpse since she blew herself up at thest moment", said the ck armored woman.

    Nea''s body shook from anger, the one of whom the woman was talking about was her mother, the captain of the royal guard back when Mirellia''s mother was the queen, who lost her life, when they were ambushed within a dimensional tunnel.

    Seeing her taunt working, the ck armored woman smirked behind her helmet, but that sadist smile of hers froze when multiple metal shing sounds echoed through the battlefield.

    "Trying to assassinate someone in the presence of the Mein family''s "radiance", aren''t you underestimating us a bit too much, dear friends from the Dagger Teeth race", a cold voice came from behind Nea, as two figures revealed themselves.

    Closest to Nea, there was anky man wearing grey leather armor and pointing a ck dagger towards Nea''s armpit, one of the weak points of human-shaped races as there is a clear path towards the heart there, that guy is the captain of the Grey Snake army, formed exclusively by the Dagger Teeth snake race, the assassin squad that served the fake Thalia.

    And behind of him, was a rather unexpected figure, a meek-looking young woman with honey blond hair and brown eyes, wearing light metal white colored armor, used her own dagger to stop the one aiming at Nea, it was the Mein Naga queen.

    Since the Mein family has always had the lowest number of high ranked people, as the vast majority of its members are mixed races who were ostracized and driven out by the other families, the Mein queen of around ten or so generations ago, made a decision, since they couldn''t rival others head on, then they would do so in the shadows and thus the next queen and all the upper echelon of the Mein family, were trained to be assassins.

    Thus, they overcame the limits of having a smaller number of people, or being the weakest among the Naga royals, since an assassin can take on stronger enemies, the most interesting part of this story is that, not even the other Naga kings knew about this, the Queen who was considered the weakest among them, was actually the most dangerous, a dagger hidden at in sight, they were utterly tricked by her.

    Let alone them, even Mirellia hadn''t confirmed the Mein queen''s ability, until not too long ago, as she decided to reveal it herself, since now the Lamia and Naga races were united again, thanks to Daimon''s interference.

    "Why the hell is an assassin wearing white and metal armor", said the leader of the Dagger Teeth race as he broke the sh between his dagger and the Mein queen''s one, putting some distance between them.

    It was certainly unusual to see an assassin using light colored clothes and wearing metal armor, that would be prompter to make noise and also limited mobility more than leather armor.

    "Training purposes, if we got used to handicaps like leather to avoid making noise when moving or dark colored stuff to make it easier to erase our presence, then we''ll end up being mediocre and the one bleeding after a single exchange wouldn''t be you, but us", said the Mein queen as she raised her dagger, showing the drops of blood that stained its tip.

    This scene repeated all over the battlefield, since the members of the Mein family''s forces, blocked the assassins from the fake Thalia''s army and retaliated at the same time, showing that they wielded two daggers instead of the traditional single dagger fighting style of an assassin.

    Despite the wounds not being fatal, they were a huge blow against the pride of those assassins, as their angered faces suggested, both the Mein family''s forces and the fake Thalia''s assassin''s squad vanished from in sight again, quietly focusing on their own war, allowing the regr soldiers to continue loudly shing on the battlefield.

    "Damn it!", the Snake Tyrant''s army second inmand, cursed at the fact that their army got bested like that, she also felt wary since they didn''t know that the Melliun kingdom also had a strong assassin army at their disposition.

    ¡­

    While the Lamia and Naga armies engaged in battle with the Snake Tyrant''s army, above in the sky said Snake Tyrant was shing against a pair of ck and green fierce shes of light, which were none other than Thea and Mirellia of course.

    "Booom!", an explosion resulting of the sh of those two''s mana and battle aura as well as the fake Thalia''s mana, echoed through the sky, sparks flew all over the ce followed by a thunder produced by the shockwave, which forced the three to backwards, breaking the previously close quarter exchange of blows.

    "To think the Melliun kingdom which was always a bystander in the battle for the supremacy of Draim, would turn out to be so good at hiding their trump cards, a whole assassin force was kept under the rug when it could havee in handy quite a few times in the past, like that battle where the former queen got the wound that ended her life, for example", coldly said the fake Thalia to then mockingly add.

    "Still, revealing it to the world just because you got sweet talked by a rebellious child, I must say you are "greener" than what I expected, Lamia queen".

    Asposed as Mirellia looked on the surface, her blood felt like boiling, that being said, this subject was already discussed beforehand, when the Mein queen revealed her forces, Mirellia''s mind couldn''t help but wonder if her mother could have been saved if a high ranked assassin bodyguard was with her.

    However, she didn''t put the me on the Mein queen, the reason as to why she had to keep her kingdom''s forces on a leash, limiting herself to keep the peace at her own kingdom, was because of Duke Nascenti and the Yillian naga king, their influence spread to the Lamia nobility, so she had her hands tied, if she made a bad move, her kingdom would have suffered.

    In other words, the real cause of the former queen''s death was both the corruption in the Melliun kingdom and the subordinates of the, mocking silver armored woman who was floating a few hundreds of meters away from the Lamia queen.

    Before Mirellia could say anything, Thea whose eyes sparkled for a second, patted her shoulder, but by the time she turned around to thank Thea, the empress was nowhere to be seen.

    "You sure talk big for someone who has to rely on a magic treasure to barely keep up with my spatial affinity, old ancestor~", jokingly said Thea making emphasis on the word "old".

    The empress who didn''t pay mind to the taunts, ridicule and mockery of the enemy, has recently decided to change her ways, something she took from Daimon''s book, is that the battle of the mindes before the physical battle.

    It was amusing to see the formerly frank and battle centered empress, adding a sharp tongue to her arsenal, if Evangeline was here, she would have said that Daimon has sessfully "corrupted" Thea.

    Specially because, her words hit a sore spot for the fake Thalia, that shiny full body silver armor, wasn''t only to satisfy her vanity, it was a really rare and extremely valuable spatial attributed magic treasure, which property wasn''t storage-rted.

    Unfortunately, and as luxurious as that sounded, the reason as to why she wore it, wasn''t grand at all, Thea could tell since the very first time her eyes gazed at the fake Thalia, that unlike Daimon or herself, that woman didn''t have spatial affinity by innate.

    The body she was currently using, was an artificial one created by imitating Thea''s race after all, so while she gave said race, spatial affinity it wasn''t as good as those innately talented in the space attribute, even after she entered the Ster realms which allowed her to move through space with ease, enhancing her spatial affinity,pared to Thea, she was second rate at most.

    The fake Thalia knew that someday, someone with spatial affinity by innate woulde, because the pages she left in that diary, would only show the coordinates of Draim to someone like that, so after gathering the dregs of spacews produced by using the summoning circle, for dozens of thousands of years, as well as a fortunate encounter in a dimensional tunnel, where she obtained a space attributed piece of metal, she with the "help" of the cksmiths from the Rune Scale race, under her, this armor was created.

    Said help, was basically sacrificing a peak high stage Ster, in secret, to process the metal and infuse those specs of spacews into it, granting the armor the incredible ability to enhance the space affinity of the one who wore it, beyond its realm/race limits.

    What she didn''t take into ount was the fact that at the end of his days, Ryner would awaken space affinity and while he wasn''t born with it, but obtained it thanks to Thalia''s blood which was bestowed to him, his space affinity derived from the real deal and it also grew stronger trough hundreds of thousands of years of being stored as no one could make use of it, until Thea was born.

    And that Ryne''s fang would end up bing a space attributed material, with a non-storage rted property as well, making the spear which was crafted with it, the nemesis of her prized armor.

    Thea''s spear didn''t enhance her space affinity, not because Ryner''s fang couldn''t be processed to achieve that function, but because Thea''s space affinity was as strong as her body could handle, the fact that she hadn''t been able to advance to the high Ster stage, despite thetent talent which fiercely ran through her veins, is because she is unable to fully exploit her own potential.

    And her spear was designed to help her with that, the Royal Fang as she named it, has two functions, first and formal it was made to resist the raging power of space and second¡­ it could cut, pierce and break through space, it was a "cane" to help Thea experience what a royal of the Void Devouring Python race could do if she was able to control her innate talent, properly.

    ''Tsk, that damn Ryner bastard, being a thorn on my side even after his death!'', inwardly cursed the fake Thalia as she saw the sharp head of Thea''s spearing at her neck, from the side of her eyes.

    "Crack!", her silver armor shone, projecting a translucid thin membrane at the fake Thalia''s side, just in time to collide with the tip of Thea''s ck spear.

    Normally the defense of the fake Thalia''s armor, which is a space barrier, wouldn''t budge unless a peak high stage Ster attacked it seriously, but the tip of Thea''s spear pierced through it as if it was nothing, destroying the projected shield as it went through it.

    With a "swosh", the fake Thalia managed to teleport herself a whole kilometer away from her previous position thanks to the millisecond she gained by her armor defending her by Thea''s surprise attack.

    That being said, the smirk on Thea''s face made the fake Thalia touch the face of her helmet, just to feel a thin but really deep cut which was carved through it, it didn''t stop there, a faint but still noticeable cut was made on her cheek, in other words, Thea''s attack had harmed her face!

    And this was possible because of the fraction of second, in which the fake Thalia was distracted due to Thea''s sharp words, which is why Thea inwardly giggled, remembering Daimon''s advice to incorporate some techniques to mess with the mind of her enemies into her fighting style.

    Though Thea didn''t externalize it, it was impossible not to notice her current bright mood, Mirellia nodded at Thea before she gave the fake Thalia a condescending gaze, making thetter grit her teeth.

    "Booom!", the energies of those three shed on the air as the they all released their domains and battle avatar respectively, also Mirellia''s legs turned into a gracious, light green scaled snake tail, meaning that their fight was about to turn serious.

    ¡­

    Quite a few dozens of thousands of kilometers away from the battlefield, within a dimensional tunnel, a silver haired masked youth apanied by a few beauties as well as a group of fully ck clothed figures who even wore masks, advanced at high speed.

    That was of course Daimon and the others who had left the vicinity of the hiddenb and were now rushing to their next destination, the curious thing is that while the overall direction in which they were advancing did align with the location of the Snake Tyrant''s headquarters, they had taken a significant deviation, which altered the final destination of the dimensional tunnel.

    Daimon who was meditating in the dimensional tunnel, since he had a sudden moment of "inspiration" after he made a contract with Thalia, opened his eyes realizing that he was still missing something and because they were about to arrive to their first stop.

    He observed the others, who followed his advice and focused on recovering and adjusting themselves to be at their prime for the iing battle, even the younger Lamia princess was responsively meditating.

    "Wake up everyone, we are about to exit the dimensional tunnel", he said, making each and every present person open their eyes.

    This dimensional tunnel to which Rita connected her own, was discovered and "adapted" in a short period of time thanks to Mirellia using the sapphire refined by the first queen, in order to kept it hidden from others, but there was a limit, just like earlier when the army arrived at the headquarters.

    ''Daimon, are you sure you don''t want me to put up a barrier¡­'', mumbled Rita from within Daimon''s shadow, to which thetter shook his head in response.

    ''No need, but be on guard in case we have to leave in a rush''.

    ''Mm, okay'', with that, the group reached the exit of the dimensional tunnel, appearing in the middle of a mountain range, constant trembles shook the nearby ground while wild roars and other sounds could be hearding from all over the ce.

    In case you wonder, where did Daimon had chosen to appear, it was in the closest ind which belonged to the Dark Berserker army.

    Since they weren''t hiding their presence, it didn''t take even a minute for the owners of this ind to rush towards them, but before that, arge pack of magic beasts arrived to their current position.

    The races were quite varied, but they were all reptiles and another thing that they all had inmon, were their bloodshot eyes and the murder gazes that they directed towards Daimon and the others, those were the distinctive traits of the Dark Berserker n.

    ''Mm, they are pretty much mindless and are just obeying themand that was given to them, pretty much like that snake back then'', thought Daimon as he inspected the arriving magic beasts.

    Among which, there were mostly peak Arch rank ones as well as a couple of initial Ster rank, another thing that Daimon noticed is that, while invisible to the naked eye, each and all of those magic beasts were radiating a red thin mist that pounced towards them.

    The first one to react was Naomi, the younger Lamia princess frowned, feeling a strange unpleasant sensation, for a second, the smell of iron assaulted her nose, until Ferris ced her hand on top of her head.

    "Sharpen your mana, that is the innate ability of the Dark Berserker n, they use their murderous intent to confuse their enemies, when in presence of the stronger ones you''ll smell blood even if there isn''t any in the vicinity and see seas of bones and blood around them, it''s quite shocking the first time", she said as she stole a gaze at Daimon.

    Truth to be told, Ferris was amazed at how good Naomi processed her first encounter with strong members of the Dark Berserker n, despite she being a mage, when back then when she experienced it, she nearly vomited due to the bloody smell and that is taking into the ount that Ferris as a knight has a tougher body.

    It wasn''t a matter of talent, but of experience, so the only reason for Naomi''s smoother reaction that the older Lamia princess could think about was that they were exposed to Daimon''s aura which had a simr but way stronger effect, earlier.

    While Naomi coughed a couple of times before calming down, Daimon''s eyes were glowing behind his mask.

    ''Those guys are using a crude and rudimental form of aura, with simr functions to my Overlord''s Pride, in that case¡­'', the atmosphere around Daimon took a 180¡ã turn when he expulsed his aura all over the ce.

    Unlike the ability of the Dark Berserker n, which though hard to detect, could still be seen by the infinity eyes, the aura of Overlord''s Pride was colorless and formless, still Daimon could perfectly see how that red fog which tried to swallow them, was easily driven away by him.

    In fact, the magic beasts all trembled the very moment his Overlord''s Pride was unleashed, before they started roaring at Daimon in a try to hide their fear.

    "Perfect, those guys are taking too long to reach us and these beasts should do the trick, Celia restrain them, Rita, open the portal", said Daimon.

    "Yes", with an answer in unison, Celia casted water chains that restrained all the magic beasts in the vicinity, for a total of around three hundred of members of the Dark Berserker n.

    Why was he going through this hassle you ask, well, in terms of size, the fake Thea''s army would outnumber both the Melliun kingdom three or four times, not because the fake Thalia''s subordinates were more talented, but because she had a swarm of magic beasts at her disposition.

    All those hatching grounds worked at all times, so though she used a lot of magic beasts as cannon fogger, the numbers were constantly being replenished.

    Which is why, the n wasn''t to go in a war of attrition with them but to strike the headquarters and of course kill the enemymanders, among them, the fake Thalia was the final target.

    Naturally at this point, the fake Thalia should have already called all the avable magic beasts towards the headquarter, luckily Daimon also had something in mind to deal with them.

    Basically, he was going to "borrow" some magic beasts from the Dark Berserker n, restrain them and throw them at the border of the fake Thalia''s headquarter, the reason was simple, he wanted to seed chaos in the Snake Tyrant''s army, making it easier for Thea to deal with the fake Thalia.

    But apparently the n was about to take an interesting detour, Daimon, Rita and Ferris suddenly looked upwards, while Celia''s water chains which were about to capture the nearby magic beasts, were suddenly erased.

    "Since when does anyone try to snatch my subordinates", a cold and unpleasant to the ear, voice came from above, followed by a visible wave of red fog that poured down towards Daimon and the others.

    "Booom!", an "invisible" wall interrupted the advance of the red fog, stopping the weakest members of the group from passing out due to the smell of blood.

    The magic beasts seemed to go crazy about the sh, they actually started fighting each other, pretty much to the surprise of the tall bulky man who just arrived.

    ''How the hell is fighting for the control of the pack!'', inwardly screamed Travis, that''s right, the neer was actually the leader of the Dark Berserker n and the fake Thalia''s sworn enemy!

 Chapter 581: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 17)

    After a couple of seconds of being surprised by the fact that the silver haired masked youth, which by the way was someone of whom he hadn''t heard anything about, could somehow interfere with the order within his own army, Travis decided to attack first and askter.

    "Execution Descend", with a cold voice, red mana exploded out of Travis''s body.

    From above, a sea of red mana rained down upon Daimon and the others, just to be met with a ck water wall, backed up by a giant mountain range that materialized out of nowhere.

    "Domain".

    "Mountain Wall".

    Two different voices could be heard behind the thunderous sh of mana that was taking ce right now, Celia immediately summoned her domain as the frontal vanguard while Zia used a defensive spell along with sh cast to multiply it a few times, the previous because Zia was sure that her domain wouldn''t be able to keep up with the mana that Travis was radiating.

    The atmosphere rumbled at the point of contact where their energies shed, it''s worth mentioning that Travis wasn''t using his domain, that was just one of his offense type spells and it required Celia the use of her domain which might not be focused on defense, but still has quite a decent defensive property due to its dense water attribute, to block it.

    And that was with Zia providing extra support to her domain from behind, not like it wasn''t understandable though, Travis is someone who can go head-to-head against the fake Thalia, and Celia has just entered the peak of the Ster realm and it was throughher corruption originally, so she is barely superior to the average peak high stage Ster as of current.

    As a proof of it, Mirellia could easily destroy her even without using her Lamia form, as for Zia, her potential was on par with Rita and Horals but her focus isn''t head on battle, not to mention she is just an early middle stage Ster rank.

    That being said, while they have basically zero chances of winning against Travis, something that Daimon is sure off, stalling him is perfectly possible for those two, which made Travis frown, he couldn''t recognize Celia as her energy firm didn''t match anything he knows about, but he did recognize Zia as a member of one of the races subordinated to the fake Thalia.

    What''s more, he saw a gloomy figure standing close to the masked unknown youth and a vein popped on his neck, just like his subordinates, Travis''s eyes got bloodshot on the spot and his already violent red mana got even fiercer.

    "Booom!", due to the increase on the output of Travis''s spell, the ck water wall was pushed backwards and one of the mountains created by Zia, crumbled apart.

    "Don''t underestimate me, Torrent Shield!", with a loud shout, Celia''s ck water half mana halfher, started spinning at high-speed forcing the sea of red mana backwards, regaining its previous standing, while Zia created another mountain to rece the one that was destroyed.

    ''Five¡­ no three minutes, block him for three minutes you two'', said Daimon, without waiting for their answer he sat down on the ground, a shadow cupule that emerged from the ground, enveloped him the next second.

    The Lamia sisters exchanged gazes before they stood next to Daimon who was now covered by that cupule, while Thalia and terror contracted Nagas stood in front of them.

    The previous message was transmitted to the terror contracted only, since Daimon didn''t want Travis to listen to it, as for why Thalia didn''t join the fray, Daimon ced his hand on her shoulder earlier when Travis attacked them, to stop her from acting.

    After all, if she also left, who would stop Travis in case he bypassed the ones defending, the other enved Nagas weren''t even as strong as Zia, and he and Rita had topletely focus on their next move.

    Speaking of the undead head maid, inside the ck cupule, her upper body peeked out of Daimon''s shadow, as she watched him meditate in silence for a second.

    "Are you sure about this, Daimon?", she mumbled to which Daimon opened his eyes behind his mask, his sclerae had turned inked ck, a proof that he was borrowing Rita''s senses.

    "You have already done it in a minor scale by yourself before, so it should be fine", said Daimon as he offered his hand to the undead head maid.

    Rita''s eyes sparkled, she held onto Daimon''s hand and then sat next to him, that''s right that shy Rita who always remains either partially orpletely hidden inside Daimon''s shadow, decided to fullye out of her own will, since it wasn''t required for what Daimon asked her to do.

    Originally, dealing with Travis wasn''t in the ns at all, Daimon chose a territory ruled by the Dark Berserker n which wasn''t particrly important, he just wanted to borrow some magic beasts from them for his purposes, but somehow a shark was caught in the along the small fishes.

    That being said, it''s not like that was enough to interfere with the meticulous countermeasures he made along with Thea and Mirellia, this was a battle that they couldn''t afford to lose after all.

    Outside of the ck cupule, the sh between Celia''s domain and Travis''s spell had finallye to an end, the red mana sea was worn out while Celia''s domain was still fiercely spinning.

    Travis narrowed his eyes at the result, he hadn''t seen the strange mana that the woman protecting that masked youth, was using, ever before and was pissed off at the fact that someone so weakpared to him was actually able to fully withstand a serious attack from him.

    ''What the hell, first that masked guy confused my subordinates forcing them to fight each other and now that woman who is protecting him, is using a type of mana that is not losing against mine, if this is something that bitch hase up with, I have to prepare a countermeasure as soon as possible'', he thought before extending his hand to condense an insane amount of mana with it as the center.

    "Execution Axe", with those two words all that red mana took the shape of a dark red double headed long axe, surprisingly while Travis was a mage, his fighting style was more akin to that of a knight, in other words that attack from earlier while it was done with the serious intent of taking down Daimon and the others, it was still not how he usually deals with the fake Thalia when they sh.

    But now things were different and Celia knew it, she had alreadypressed her domain to a small area in order to increase its density and endurance and also added rotation to sharpen her mana to resist Travis''s attack from earlier, it was tough but she forced that spell back, but now she felt overwhelmed by the strength radiated by that axe.

    "Damn it", she also had already given up on going against her "master" and instead was trying to earn his favor, so that she would in the future be allowed to heal the scars on her face, what drove her to be ahereal were both desire for power and vanity after all.

    Celia crouched down and ced her hands on the ground, a ck substance was expulsed from the tips of her fingers, painting her water domain darker than before, just in time for the sh against the axe.

    "Booom!", the axe actually shaved off a piece of the domain, but very much to Travis''s surprise, the part that was cleanly cut apart, grew strings and attached itself back to the domain.

    At the same time, a mountain fell from the sky, right at Travis, who simply swung his axe and casually obliterated it, but that was fine, Zia had cut off her connection with that spell, so she didn''t receive any backsh unlike Celia, also like this they earned twice the amount of time than just defending, by distracting Travis.

    "Damn annoying pests, fine, I''ll simply catch a different target, you all can go to hell!", Travis whose eyes had gotten bloodshot, suddenly exploded in red mana, making the atmosphere itself rumble as if the space was crying due to his mana pressure.

    "Blegh", Celia vomited blood on the spot, as the outeryer of her domain received the pressure directly, making it crack here and there, Zia refused to bow but her body half sank into the ground, making her grit her teeth.

    "That''s enough you two", then followed by a calm voice, the pressure disappeared as if it hadn''t existed to begin with, Zia looked backwards and saw Daimoning out of that ck cupule.

    "Roarrrr!", Travis who was about to st this whole ind into oblivion, stopped in cold as he listened to the anxious roarsing from all over the area, he turned around just to see that ck hands which were sprouting out the ground all over the ce, were strangling not only the magic beasts that had gotten out of his control, but even the ones that hadn''t.

    Then as if countless threads were broken at the same time, the sound of a snap travelled throughout the whole ce and Travis''s mind as well, the eyes of all those magic beasts lost their red bloodshot tone and Travis lost his connection with them, not long before they sank into ck vortexes that appeared below them.

    Travis enraged turned around and rushed towards the masked haired youth, to whom all those shadow hands seemed to be connected, just to see him smirking as his whole team disappeared into the ground as well.

    "Booom!", the axended right on the spot where Daimon was standing a second earlier, splitting a third part of the whole ind on the spot, when the ruckus was over the trembling figure of Travis could be seen floating above the new shore, he created a second ago.

    After a quick inspection thatsted less than a second, Travis realized that he couldn''t feel the presence of any of his subordinates in a two-thousand-kilometer ratio and as the count in his mind kept increasing, so did his anger.

    "HOW DARE YOU!!!", an enraged scream echoed through the vicinity before a red portal was forced to appear, Travis then jumped into the portal, following the traces left behind by the group he was previously fighting.

    Inside a dark dimensional tunnel, the still shocked Lamia princesses as well as Celia, Zia and the rest of the enved Nagas, observed the parade of magic beasts that were quietly aligned in front of them with awe, before they nced backwards at the one who caused this, or more urately the ones.

    The undead head maid hade out of Daimon''s shadow and was leaning against his shoulder, while she tried to catch up her breath.

    "You did well, now rest, by the time you wake up, this battle will be over", said Daimon as he ced his free hand on top of Rita''s head, making thetter smile.

    "Mm", with a soft sound, her eyes closed and she actually fell asleep in that position, before sinking into Daimon''s shadow.

    It was understandable, after all she used up practically all her mana in a single exhibition earlier, it was incredible that she remained conscious until now and Daimon knew that she did so, because she wanted to make sure that he had safely left their previous location.

    "H-How did you do that, others didn''t notice it, but there is no way that guy and me wouldn''t?", mumbled Thalia who had remained silent until now.

    It was shortsted for sure, but earlier she felt Daimon''s presence drowning everything in a two thousand kilometer''s distance, that kind of cover and with that level of intensity is not something that someone with Arch rank battle prowess can achieve, no matter how monstruous one can be.

    Thalia had already seen Daimon using Core Synchrony, she wouldn''t be surprised to see him crushing Arch rank magic beast head on, nor intimidating some Ster rank ones, like when they arrived at the Dark Berserker n''s territory.

    She was already at her wit''s end when she saw Daimon interfering with the order within Travis''s army, a sign that the aura he wielded was insanely strong, but even then, it shouldn''t have been enough to overwhelm that guy like this.

    "In terms of sensory powers, not even a Maximum Ster ranked can defeat Rita in a short confrontation, she by herself learned how to imbue my aura into her mana sense, so I simply asked her to go all out while I actively cooperated this time, the result is what you saw, we broke that guy''s connection with them", said Daimon as he pointed at the magic beasts ahead of them.

    Basically, Rita amplified Daimon''s Overlord''s Pride aura, it didn''tst long, but the intensity within the designated coverage, surpassed that of Travis for that short moment, managing to steal themand over those magic beasts.

    ''It also helped that the way that guy is keeping these magic beasts on a leash, is somewhat simr to my Overlord''s Pride, though'', inwardly added Daimon.

    Thalia and the others were taken aback by the revtion of how advanced Rita''s senses were, the Lamia sisters were specially surprised, since in the whole history of the Melliun kingdom, only the first Lamia queen managed to reach the Maximum Ster rank.

    And now, they were in the presence of someone that could best someone like that, in a specific aspect, while having only recently put a step into the Ster realm, not to mention someone like that was serving under another person, it was surreal to say the least.

    "Isn''t it time for you to use what the queen gave you; we got dyed by that guy after all", said Daimon to Ferris who returned to reality the next second, she nodded and then took out a thumb sized case from a secret pocket on her right sleeve.

    The older Lamia princess took out the content of the case, a nail sized blue crystal with a simr tone to the snake eye gem which Mirellia was using, for a good reason, it was a piece of it.

    Ferris''s arm tensed before she threw the crystal towards the border of the dimensional tunnel, the result was a blue glow that covered the whole group, magic beasts included, making them sh through the dimensional tunnel at an insane speed.

    ¡­

    Quite far from the previous scenery, the battle at the Snake Tyrant''s headquarters had escted quite a bit and pretty much to the surprise of the local army, the scale had inclined towards the Melliun kingdom''s forces.

    At the center of the battlefield, Nea used her Warhammer to crush the left arm of the fake Thalia''s second inmand, forcing her onto the ground before rushing to finish her.

    ''Damn it, who would have thought that these bastards would be this strong if they joined hands, what happened to internal conflict between them!'', inwardly screamed the woman whose left arm had be meat paste.

    By the time the fake Thalia arrived at Draim, fractures had already started to appear between the Lamia and Naga races and with the years, the internal conflict escted, further weakening the Melliun kingdom, hence why neither the fake Thalia nor Travis paid too much attention to them, not wanting to be the ones to deal with a dying civilization''sst stand, which would weaken them for the benefit of the other.

    But that ended up backfiring, as it turned out that when working without any reservation between each other, the elites of the Melliun kingdom were actually having the upper hand against the officials of the Snake Tyrant army.

    Unfortunately, said years of internal conflict did have an impact on the Melliun kingdom, while in terms of high ranked officers they could match up to the Snake Tyrant''s ones, in terms of army size they would be overwhelmed, which is why the n was a surprise incursion on their headquarters, where that endless stream of magic beasts wasn''t present.

    And just as Nea''s Warhammer was about to fall on her enemy''s head, a tower shield appeared on her way.

    "Booom!", a thunder-like impact echoed through the battlefield, interrupting the flow of the battle, everyone looked at the neer, a tall bulky man wearing dark brown armor and wielding double metal shields.

    "The general of the south has arrived!", a hoarse voice came from the brown armored man who blocked Nea''s attack, followed by roars and magic beasts pouring out from the south.

    "Tsk, I was one second toote", Nea, clicked her tongue, she nearly finished the enemy''s representative, and now the variables of the n had arrived, that''s right, she knew this guy woulde, in fact she and the Lamia Duchesses as well as the Naga kings and queen, gazed at the remaining three cardinal points, just in time to see one person arriving from each one at the same time.

    "The general of the north has arrived!".

    "The general of the west has arrived!".

    "The general of the east has arrived!".

    The other three also dered their arrivals, the Snake Tyrant''s army was the one that upied the biggest part of Draim''s explored area, so they of course had to have someone strong dispatched in every direction to protect their borders, and so a peak high stage Ster with a respective set of guardians assigned to him, were stationed here and there.

    The south general being the strongest, since the Snake Tyrant and the Dark Berserke''s forces, collided there the most, fun fact, Zia belonged to the guardians dispatched under that brown armored man''s jurisdiction.

    Anyway, the four generals arrived at the headquarters after more then two hours of open conflict, that''s how far they were from this ce and while they couldn''t bring their subordinated guardians, as there was a possibility of the enemy invading the borders, they did bring a portion of their famous magic beast armies, each.

    For starters, the four generals spread through the battlefield, taking the ce of the four bodyguards that were carrying the fake Thalia''s pnquin earlier, who were being blocked by a duke/duchess or a king, all this time.

    "This has been dragged too long, go to her majesty''s side already", said the south general, the four bodyguards nodded and flew into the sky, Nea wanted to stop them, but her way was blocked by both the south general and the second inmand who had somewhat recovered.

    ''Be careful, some flies had escaped the'', with a short message, Nea focused on the enemies in front of her, everyone had their roles and orders, and the whole army was aware that they would be swarmed by the magic beasts of the enemy, so while their arrival did tilt the scale on the Snake Tyrant''s side, the Melliuns'' army remained strong, even when facing multiple enemies at once.

    The high ranked armor and equipment they were all wearing, would make up for the difference in numbers on the short term, but it is also true that the longer the battle dragged, the higher the pressure they would need to endure, since this was only a part of the beast army.

    ¡­

    Leaving the battle on the ground aside, high into the sky, inside a giant conglomeration of energy which had taken the form of a sphere, thunders and shes were taking ce right and left.

    A bright green giant battle avatar was shing head on against a silver sh, the former being Mirellia and thetter being the fake Thalia.

    "Damn annoying bitch", shouted the fake Thalia as she was forced backwards to then theow the weapon she was using aside, once again as she saw the thing melting after a few shes with Mirellia''s battle aura imbued gauntlets.

    She didn''t dare to be in contact with Mirellia''s battle aura for too long, in part because its acid property had already melted away a dozen of the magic weapons she had stored in her spatial ring and in part because Mirellia fought in a strange and quite savage way.

    Normally, knights use their avatar as an extension of themselves, they d themselves on it and gain arger range and enhanced strength, defense, endurance and power to rival a mage''s domain, fighting as a giant entity, after all it was designed based on the colossal bodies of magic high ranked magic beasts.

    However the Lamia queen used her battle avatar in a different way, she summoned her avatar to fight alongside her, in other words she wasn''t inside of it, but the thing was still connected to her.

    Now, the previous while theoretically possible based on the knowledge at the four gxies, or even Neptune for Thea''s case, would be extremely taxing on the body and mind of the knight, since it would require the attention of thetter to divide, as a battle avatar wasn''t a separate being.

    And yet, Mirellia showed no sign of fatigue after forcing the fake Thalia to retreat quite a few times already, it probably had something to do with the fact that while she was in Lamia form, her avatar kept its human legs, her waist was the point of connection between herself and her avatar.

    So, when Mirellia shed with the fake Thalia, thetter had to block her gauntlets and then dodge unless she wanted to take a mountain-like punch from the Lamia queen''s avatar, to the face, preventing her from retaliating at all, long story short, she was taking a one-sided beating.

    Things wouldn''t be so bad, if the fake Thalia could still use her biggest advantage, the fact that she has space affinity, to dodge Mirellia''s attacks, unfortunately every time she tried to move through space, a ck spear crushed the entrance to the dimensional tunnel she would be using.

    Thea wasn''t justzing around, she flew through the battlefield, spear in hand, while blocking the fake Thalia''s space domain with hers, and blocking any chance she had to move through space and alsounching surprise attacks from time to time.

    Mages and Knights have both a big rivalry and a great chemistry and those two were making a great team, suppressing the fake Thalia far more than what anyone has managed to in a really long time.

    ''Damn it all, what are those useless bastards doing, had I being a normal "mortal" these two would have already pummeled me to death!'', she inwardly screamed, but then a creepy smile appeared on her face.

    Mirellia whose eyes sparkled just at the same time as she smiled, punched at her right,unching a martial art that blocked the area in front of Thea.

    "Acid Torrent", the stream of bright green battle aura, stopped the four "rats" that sneaked into the sphere of energy created by the sh of Thea and the fake Thalia''s domains, shing, from ambushing the empress who frowned at the fact that those guys had gotten faster and strongerpared to before.

    The empress soon understood what happened as she noticed the empty bottles that each one of her assant''s hands, the four bodyguards got a head taller, their muscles bulged and their realms which were previously stuck at the peak of the middle Ster realm, had gone up to the high stage realm, it was a temporary boost using some kind of potion.

    In that fraction of second, the four bodyguards rushed to their queen''s side, surrounding the fake Thalia in every direction.

    "What is this, dear ancestor, don''t tell me you are already feeling cornered", said Thea with a slightly mocking voice.

    The fake Thalia felt her blood boiling, but remembering how the wound on her face, which by the way hadn''t stopped bleeding yet, was infringed to her, she forcefully calmed down, that being said she extended her hand and grabbed the neck of the bodyguard in front of her.

    "Crack!", Thea and Mirellia frowned, seeing the fake Thalia snapping the neck of her bodyguard, the most surprising part was the fact that the other three had jealous expression on their faces, which those two found particrly unpleasant to the eye.

    "You lowly pieces of trash had started to get on my nerves, so I have decided to start taking this seriously, that''s all", limited to say the fake Thalia, once she finished her sentence, the necks of the other three bodyguards also snapped.

    And then the chest tes of their white armors exploded to reveal that each one had a quarter part of a circr array engraved on their chests, which started to glow in an ominous red light.

    Contrary to what one would expect, those four weren''t dead, in fact their bodies were radiating an insane amount of vitality, more than what even a high stage Ster knight should produce in the same amount of time.

    And all of that was absorbed into the partial arrays engraved on their chests, which then produced a red circr array with those four at the center.

    Thea and Mirellia got close to each other and rose their guards, feeling the strange and unpleasant sensationing from that array, the first one to notice the changes brought by it was none other than Thea.

    Her pretty snake-like pupils contracted a bit as she felt her domain which was solidly upying half of the energy sphere produced by the sh in domains, being suddenly pushed almost half of that, now the distribution was of around 70/30, on the fake Thalia''s favor.

    And that meant that the empress could no longer seal the fake Thalia''s spatial movement, by default, she could still get rid of the portals she created with her spear, but that left a big hole in their fighting strategy.

    And the bad news kepting, the fake Thalia shed from her previous position, her newly equipped weapon, a white withered bone bident shed with Thea''s spear, making sparks fly all over the ce.

    Mirellia didn''t sit still, she charged at the fake Thalia, punching towards her with her gauntlet armored right hand, while her avatar did the same but from the other side, the idea was to force her to retreat, but the result was different.

    "ng!", the sounds of metal colliding echoed through the battlefield, both Mirellia''s punch and the one from her battle avatar were blocked.

    The t circr array which had the four bodyguards as its core, actually followed the fake Thalia acting as a shield for her, that wasn''t the most surprising part, but the fact that it took a punch from both Mirellia and her avatar and it was made out of battle aura!

    "You two aren''t the only ones who know how to fight as a team", said the fake Thalia as she used her bident to make Thea take a step backwards, the shield array also pushed the arm of Mirellia''s avatar aside, while the Lamia queen changed her position to be at Thea''s side.

    "That isn''t a team, she is using a contract/curse to make those idiots willingly burn their lifespan and radiate their vitality to activate that array, I don''t know what it is, but the array is producing some sort of energy that is boosting her", mumbled Thea whose right eye had turned red for a second.

    That was one of the effects of her "Nine Malefic Evil Eye", the ability to see through contracts, unfortunately she instinctively knew she couldn''t erase them with her current eye''s ability, even if they were to be still and cooperate, which was a first.

    Mirellia frowned, earlier they have gotten a summarized version of what happened at the hiddenb, courtesy of Zia using a long-distancemunication spell along with sh cast, which Daimon asked her to use right before they left through the portal opened by Rita at the bottom of thest level.

    So, they more or less understood that the fake Thalia knew how to use vitality to produce battle aura and power an array with it somehow, but that didn''t exin how she suddenly became stronger, since the new energy that Thea and Mirellia could feeling out of the array, wasn''t battle aura, the shield was made out of it, though.

    "Of course this is a team, don''t you see how they are honored to give their lives for my victory, in any case, their memories will be inherited to the next generation of bodyguards, like always, their loyalty deserves a reward after all", said the fake Thalia as she charged towards Thea with her bident aiming at her spear.

 Chapter 582: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 18)

    Thea thrusted her spear frontwards in preparation to meet with the bident used by the fake Thalia, the "Royal Fang" in Thea''s hands fiercely roared as a way to demonstrate its disgust towards the bone bident.

    "ng!", the ck spear shed against the bident, making sparks fly all over the ce, followed by a deafening sound of metals colliding.

    Seeing the withered bone bident safely blocking the obnoxious ck spear that even her prized space attributed silver armor, was having trouble with, the fake Thalia inwardly grinned.

    ''Heh, luckily the women of this race have a thing for spears, this bident was prepared for the future, who would have thought that the little bitch from back then would have managed to pull a fast one me twice'', by the end of her inner monologue, the fake Thalia had gotten angrier.

    Thea''s race had messed up her ns at key points two times already, she had started to believe that there was more to it than what met the eye, but right now that didn''t matter.

    ''If she even inherited the preference for spear-type weapons, then her lineage should be pure and high tanked enough to be of used for "that", that face of hers will have its uses as well, so I''ll try not to chop her¡­ to much!''.

    Thea who was gritting her teeth and pushing against the bident that was actually negating the attack of her spear, while also resisting the pressure applied to her domain, felt her instincts warning her, her pretty snake-like pupils contracted.

    "Watch out", Mirellia''s voice was thest hint the empress needed, she rotated her body to stop the sh, redirecting the withered bone bident, avoiding by the skin of her teeth a sharp toothed snout that emerged from it, aiming at her arm.

    "Tsk!", the fake Thalia clicked her tongue, the circr array that contained the four bodyguards as its core, blocked at her right parrying the heavy punches of the Lamia queen and her battle avatar at the same time.

    "Booom!", the thunder like shockwave made the fake Thalia cease her attack on Thea and take a step backwards.

    "Are you okay?", Mirellia approached Thea, earlier she had a bad premonition which is why she instinctively warned Thea but she didn''t know from where it wasing.

    "Mm, thanks¡­ somehow, she nearly made it past my defense", mumbled Thea, she was still in awe at the previous, as someone with space awareness thanks to her space affinity, it''s really hard for her to miss something.

    Taking Thea by surprise is really hard, after all unless an object travel through space, it does still exist in the same ne as her, and she should be able to detect it, even if it''s a fraction of a second before it reaches her, that opens a window for a countermeasure, so be it head on shing or distant fighting, the empress

    Of course, there are limits and restrictions, but Thea didn''t feel anything like the mana used by the woman living in Daimon''s shadow,ing from the fake Thalia so she was confused as to how she nearly failed to dodge that attack, whatever it was.

    ''That bident seems to have been prepared to specifically deal with your spear, let me be the vanguard, I''ll take care of the bident so you cannd your attacks on her'', the Lamia queen sent Thea a mana transmission, without letting it show on her face.

    ''Okay, let''s give it a try, be careful I can still interrupt her spatial movement, but not like before, her domain has something weird mixed in it'', answered Thea.

    "Whatever battle n you two have, it''s useless now", with a cold voice, the fake Thalia charged towards Thea since she wanted to get rid of that annoying ck spear first.

    "Humph", following what they just discussed, the Lamia queen blocked the fake Thalia''s way, since she wasn''t sure of what the hell was wrong with the bident, she used her battle avatar to test the waters and so a giant green gauntlet punch intercepted the white bone withered bident.

    "Damn annoying pest!", the fake Thalia dodged the giant punch and thrusted the bident at Mirellia''s chest, but her attack was received by the Lamia queen''s own fist.

    "Boom!", the fake Thalia was forced backwards by the extreme physical impact produced by Mirellia''s punch, just in time for Thea to appear at her right, the ck spear shed towards the neck of her enemy, but the shield array interfered and to Thea''s surprise her spear was blocked!

    The empress was inwardly shocked, it''s not like blocking her attacks is impossible a weapon of equal quality like that strange bident can do it in a frontal sh, but what this time using the chance that Mirellia got for her, she found an opening on the space and was going to use her spear to bypass the fake Thalia''s defense and reach her before she could react, but she¡­ failed.

    The opening was as small as a grain of sand yes, but who is Thea, a space affinity genius with a talent so high that she can''t fully exploit it as of current and yet, at thest second her spear deviated a millimeter making her fail, not to mention that the battle aura shield also stopped her spear, all in all it was a failure.

    Thea retrieved her spear on the spot and put some distance between herself and the fake Thalia, returning to Mirellia''s side.

    ''You felt it too, right?'', asked the empress to the Lamia queen.

    ''Yes, there is something weird going on, she shouldn''t have been able to dodge the attack of my battle avatar so easily, also I put enough strength in my punch to send a mage like her flying but she only stepped back a bit'', said Mirellia.

    ''Mm, it was short-lived but something interfered with my spear as well, if she used a space-rted spell or ability to get in my way I would have noticed it, but that wasn''t the case, what is going on'', mumbled Thea.

    The fake Thalia saw those two grow confused and wary of her and she inwardly snarked at them.

    ''Think as much as you want, there is no way for mortals like you two to¡­'', her inner thoughts were stopped midway as she saw Thea suspiciously inspecting her arm, while Mirellia did the same but her focus was on her waist.

    Before the fake Thalia could react, those two charged at her, Thea and Mirellia alternated between each other to make it impossible to foresee which side would take each one of them.

    At thest second, Thea appeared at the left side her spear shed with the bone bident, releasing sparks due to the sh while Mirellia''s battle avatar as well as herself punched the battle aura shield, making the thing shake due to the impact.

    "That won''t work, just go to hell already", the fake Thalia resisted the double assault of the two queens, that spike toothed mouth emerged from the bident again, aiming at Thea''s arm but then, the fake Thalia''s eyes contracted as she saw a bright green stream blocking the ability of the bident.

    "Acid Whip", the stream that originated from Mirellia''s snake-like tail,shed at the spike toothed snout, producing a sizzling sound as it deviated its trajectory.

    "Damn it", the fake Thalia jumped backwards, realizing that she was tricked, she poured mana into the bident to cut off the part of the spiked mouth that was touched by Mirellia''s martial art, preventing the acid from spreading further, then using her mana the thing was repaired and returned to the bident.

    "So, you were indeed messing with our bodies, what a nasty trick", coldly said Thea, Mirellia nodded, agreeing with the empress.

    The fake Thalia gritted her teeth in disbelief, she was nning to use the power of her origin secretly a few times to worn those two out before finishing them both by surprise, but somehow, they not only noticed it but also tricked her to confirm their suspicions and even obtain information on what she could do.

    ''Is every woman from that race so annoyingly sharp, or were these two specifically born this way, perhaps they have someone "special" as their ancestor¡­ whatever in that case I can stop holding myself back, there are also enough casualties to experiment on for quite some time anyway''.

    Thea and Mirellia suddenly felt their instincts warning them, they shed to put more distance between themselves and the fake Thalia.

    "Now, the ytime is over, don''t even think on getting a quick and peaceful death, you made me get serious after all, pieces of trash", the fake Thalia appeared behind those two.

    "Boooom!", a horrendous explosion of energies and a physical shockwave, produced a blinding sh and a thunder-like shockwave, once the sh finished the image of Thea and Mirellia who had been sent flying downwards a couple of kilometers was revealed.

    The Lamia queen as well as her battle avatar had their arms crossed in front of them, she couldn''t retaliate and was forced to block the bash from the battle aura shield with her body.

    As for Thea, she was holding her spear with both hands, diagonally in front of her, there was a faint trace of gray manaing from the middle part of the spear''s staff with which Thea blocked the bident at thest second.

    "The fact that you know I can mess with your body''s reactions, doesn''t mean you can do anything about it, prepare yourselves "little girls" I''m going to rip your heads out of your bodies", said the fake Thalia with an authoritative voice before she became a sh of silver light.

    "Watch out!", said both Thea and Mirellia at the same time, a silver snake emblem appeared on top of Thea''s right arm and to the anger of the empress she felt as if a giant chain was restraining it, forcing her to let go of her spear and catch it midair with her left hand.

    "ng!", Thea blocked the fake Thalia''s bident with her spear just in time, but she was pushed backwards, since she was forced to not use her dominant hand at thest second.

    Mirellia tried to join into the fight but that silver snake emblem appeared in front of her shoulder and the punch which she had already thrown got deviated, it wasn''t that much but it allowed the fake Thalia to dodge it and block the kicking from the Lamia queen''s battle avatar with the shield array.

    "Quite cunning, you even realized that your avatar gets affected on the same spot as yourself, what a shame but even if the resistance is higher when used on a knight, you will still be thrown out of your rhythm", said the fake Thalia as she gestured with her free hand, bashing the shield against Mirellia, Thea nced from the corner of her eyes at the shield, making the thing tremble for a second, since it failed to travel through space to attack Mirellia from a blind spot.

    The Lamia queen jumped backwards but used her battle avatar to break the sh between Thea''s spear and the bident, helping the empress to safely retreat before that spike toothed mouth attacked her.

    Thea had discovered that the attack of that bident was especially prepared for her or more urately for her race, so taking it frontwards would be really dangerous for her, however Mirellia''s acid battle aura was quite effective against it, so she left the task to parry it to the Lamia queen, in exchange she helped Mirellia to not fall prey to the fake Thalia''s space tricks.

    Mirellia inwardly panted, as the hand of her battle avatar let Thea down, next to her, they weren''t sure of the extent of the ability that the fake Thalia was using to mess up with their movements, so they had to be really careful and it would be a lie to say that they weren''t feeling pressured during the previous sh.

    ''How the hell is she ignoring our defenses like that, I couldn''t melt away that restriction on my shoulder with my battle aura'', thought the Lamia queen.

    ''Is the energy produced by that array, whatever it is, at the same rank it overwhelms mana and battle aura, we should consider that she has put a step in whates after the Maximum Ster rank'', said Thea as she also caught her breath.

    It might not look too obvious on the outside, but she and the Lamia queen were using more energy to keep up with the fightpared to earlier, Thea''s mana reserves were going down by the second as she fought against the fake Thalia''s domain as for Mirellia, she had to use imbue way more battle aura into her gauntlets and her battle avatar to produce a simr to result against the shield array, as she did earlier.

    They might look like they are keeping up rather well, considering how stronger the fake Thalia got, but if previously they could have keep fighting for half a day while having sixty something chance to win, now they would run out of energy in two hours and had their victory chances reduced to thirty percent, that''s how much of a difference there was between before and now.

    The empress''s eyes glowed for a second as she remembered Daimon''s words, before they entered the challenges.

    "There are people who wield powers that outss what even those considered geniuses can use, they can achieve things that would be impossible for others, but don''t let them convince you that they are invincible".

    "If you meet one of them, be wary but don''t panic, hit them with lethal force by surprise and don''t let them catch their breath, in a 2v1 fight, any of the people epted in our team would have a decent chance to win against them".

    The empress had confirmed that the fake Thalia was one of those people at this point, so she decided to follow the advice Daimon gave them.

    ''We''ll go with the emergency battle n'', she said to Mirellia.

    ''Are you sure, that''s ourst resort, after using that, I''ll go out of Lamia form and won''t be able to use my battle avatar anymore¡­'', the Lamia queen''s hesitation stopped when she felt arge wave of hostile vitalitying from all directions towards the battlefield on the ground, meaning that arger part of the enemy''s beast army had just arrived.

    The fake Thalia felt the urge tough out loud, just like those two she was still paying attention to the battle taking ce below and to her displease, even with the arrival of the four generals of the beast army as well as their personal beast squads, they hadn''t been able to gain the upper hand.

    It became painfully obvious that she had underestimated the Melliun kingdom''s elite forces, but even so, she was still in the position to drown them in magic beasts, as long as she gathered more than a third part of her army at the headquarters and her previous orders were finally being effective.

    "Hey, young Lamia queen, you can feel it right, my army finally arrived and let me tell you a secret, thanks to you I finally found a way to bypass the annoying disguising arrays of your kingdom''s underwater cities and my army will march towards them as soon as I give the order".

    Mirellia frowned, she wanted to believe that the enemy was lying but her instincts told her that wasn''t the case.

    Seeing the reaction she wanted from the Lamia queen, the fake Thalia inwardly smirked.

    "I''m aware that you two can stillst some time against me, the same applies to your army down there, which is actually a surprise for me and also the reason as to why I am going to give you onest chance, help me capture that rebellious descendant of mine and I will take your kingdom under my protection, we can make a contract that would benefit both of us", she said to Mirellia.

    Of course, the Lamia queen paid no attention to her words, to begin with she wouldn''t backstab the person that saved her daughter''s life, who se considered a friend as of current, not to mention that she wasn''t na?ve enough to believe that someone like the fake Thalia would let her kingdom maintain its independence and she has seen how she treats her subordinates too.

    This was just a nasty trick to seed distrust between them again, and just like before it didn''t work at all, that being said it did make the Lamia queen steel her heart.

    ''Let''s freaking kill her!'', she said to Thea with a fierce voice.

    ''Mm'', with a soft sound of confirmation, they both charged towards the fake Thalia to prepare for the final sh.

    ¡­

    Back on the battlefield at ground level, the army of the Melliun kingdom was bravely resisting against arger number of enemies, as of current the soldier in the best condition was fighting at least one officer of the enemy''s army as well as one magic beast, while the most outstanding dealt with more magic beasts at the same time.

    But the one who was shinning the most right now, was the light green haired Nea, her metal Warhammer has beenpletely dyed red in magic beast''s blood at this point, there was a mountain of crushed magic beasts at her vicinity all this while she was shing against the fake Thalia''s second inmand and the strongest out of the four generals of the beast army at the same time.

    "Crack!", the bloody Warhammer heavilynded on one of the two tower shields of the brown armored general, finally shattering it into pieces and also breaking the arm of thetter.

    "Owen!", the fake Thalia''s second inmand yelled with anger, she shed towards Nea and shot a giant torrent of mes at short distance.

    "Humph!", Nea swung her Warhammer along with arge amount of mana, forcefully dispelling the fire, but giving her opponents enough time to rpose themselves, the brown armored general drank a potion and after a few cracking sounds, his arm healed, but the armor of the arm was utterly destroyed, and that was also hisst spare shield, along the fight, Nea had destroyed the five recements he had, so he was left with just one.

    That being said, Nea who had already used a mana and stamina replenishing potion during the fight, knew that she was in a tight spot, she should be able to kill one of her two opponents but the fight against the second one will be tough.

    ''Damn it, those magic beasts might not be dangerous under normal circumstances since they are pretty much mindless, but their numbers are enough to swarm us'', thought Nea as she felt the horde of magic beasts appearing in the vicinity with her mana sense.

    "Reinforcements!".

    "Ohhhhhh!".

    Seeing the horde of magic beasts surrounding the battlefield in every direction, the Snake Tyrant''s army roared in excitement, while the Melliun kingdom''s felt the pressure weighting down on them.

    "Kill them all!", the brown armored general who held the highest authority over the beast army, ordered and the magic beasts roared and charged towards the closest enemies, then the general turned to see Nea with hatred filled eyes, if it wasn''t for him tanking most of her attacks, his lover would have died long time ago, he wanted nothing more than ripping her flesh and grinding her bones.

    "Humph, your mindless beasts are useless against me, decide who of you two will die ande forward", fiercely said Nea as she wiped the sweat on her forehead and charged her Warhammer with mana in preparation for the ten magic beasts that wereing towards her.

    But then a strange sensation of reliance bloomed in her agitated spirit, an almost unnoticeable smile appeared on the corner of her mouth.

    "Roaaaaaar!", a different kind of fierce roar echoed through the battlefield, stopping the magic beasts that were just about to join the fray.

    Without anyone noticing, shadows of the key members of the Melliun kingdom''s army, expanded and joined forming a giant ck vortex on the ground, out of which seemingly countless magic beasts emerged.

    "Damn it, more magic beasts!", cursed the Valiun naga king as he crushed the neck of the officer that was fighting against him, alongside one of the four generals of the beast army.

    But then to his surprise, the magic beasts that bloomed out of the ground near him, actually pounced on the magic beasts that arrived earlier and even charged against the general which has been a pain in the ass for him.

    What was happening is that besides Nea and her grandmother who had theplete trust of Mirellia, no one else knew all the details of the n, but they were told that as long as they endured the victory would be theirs, so without questioning they all let out a battle cry and joined the fray with renewed vigor.

    "I don''t know what''s happening, but fuck it,e here you, slippery bastard!", the Valiun naga king with his bear-like constitution charged towards the general tackling him with his rock scaled armored body.

    "What the hell is going on, is that crazy bastard also attacking us!", eximed the brown armored general only to see hispanion shaking her head at him.

    "No, look at the eyes of those magic beasts, they aren''t bloodshot like the ones of the Dark Berserker n¡­ they were hiding this beast army of theirs, damn it", cursed the fake Thalia''s second inmand.

    ''You really took your sweet time'', inwardly thought Nea as she felt a certain pair of Lamia princesses appearing far from the battlefield while guarded by a couple of fully ck clothed figures as well as a girl with brown hair and blue eyes, no one else noticed it though.

    "People of the Melliun kingdom, show them what the Lamia and Naga races are made of!", with Nea''s order, the soldiers got even fiercer and with the escort of the magic beasts that were suddenly "bestowed" to them by the heavens, they forced their respective enemies backwards.

    Nea then fiercely smiled, all the magic beastsing at her were intercepted, opening a clear path for her to smash the heads of her opponents.

    ¡­

    "Booom!", a minute ago, above the clouds a trio of silver, ck and bright green shes collided on the air for a few seconds before being forcefully separated from each other.

    They were none other than the fake Thalia as well as Thea and Mirellia, the battle had taken a much more violent approach since earlier, the right arm of the empress was bleeding, dying the sleeve of her elegant ck dress and armor with a few blood spots here and there.

    Mirellia has also taken damage, the parts of her gauntlets that protected her forearms had cracks from which blood dripped asionally, also her battle aura had dimmed down a bit.

    On the other hand, the fake Thalia didn''t seem happy of having managed to harm those two, unlike them she hadn''t suffered major wounds, but there were cuts and bruises on many parts of her body.

    ''How humiliating, to think I had have weakened enough for these mere ants to be able tond some of their attacks after recklessly abandoning their defensive stances¡­ death isn''t enough of a punishment for them!'', she inwardly roared.

    During the past ten minutes or so, Thea and Mirellia stopped blocking any non-life-threatening attacks and focused on the offensive, which resulted in them getting wounded yes, but they also bypassed the blockade caused by the fake Thalia''s ability to mess with their bodies.

    Thea''s eyes suddenly sparkled as she felt a familiar presenceing through a dimensional tunnel in her direction, Mirellia couldn''t feel it but seeing Thea giving her a secret sign by clenching her fist twice, she used her battle aura to break a certain device hidden in her pocket.

    "What happened my fake ancestor Gwen, don''t tell me you can''t kill two opponents who are younger and weaker than you", mockingly said the empress.

    "What did you say!", the fake Thalia whose real name was Gwen, frowned on the spot as she heard Thea calling her real name as well as "fake ancestor", her preparations were made so that no one would realize Thalia was being controlled, so there was no way for the descendant of Thalia to know let alone what really happened, but her real name.

    In fact, there was only one person alive who knew her real name, as of current, Gwen''s pupils contracted like needles, her head wildly turned towards a specific direction while the shield array covered her as she focused on scanning a specific object.

    The very second her senses reached their destination, she saw a blinding sh followed by pir of mes which reached all the way to the sky and then¡­ her hiddenb disappeared from the face of the, along with all the things she had in there, subordinates included.

    "You bitch, how dare you!!!", an enraged scream echoed through the energy sphere in which those three were having their battle, but was interrupted by Gwen listening to the turmoil that broke out at the battlefield on the ground.

    She saw in awe how, magic beasts suddenly emerged from the ground, tilting the scale towards her enemy''s side and the surprises kepting.

    Gwen abruptly focused on those two once again, because she felt a sudden discharge of mana and battle aura respectively, of out of the scale proportionspared to everything she has seen during this battle.

    Unfortunately, she reacted one second toote, the Lamia queen forcefully closed her right fist, producing a loud "cracking" sound as she crushed a certain object with her full strength.

    Then a blinding green light appeared above the right hand of her battle avatar, it was a giant concentration of energy to be more urate of¡­ mana.

    "Acid Nova", thest thing Gwen saw was the Lamia queen''s battle avatar raising its hand towards the sky, while those two jumped into it, next with the battle avatar as its center a light green sphere expanded in every direction, covering everything with its light until it even surpassed engulfed the battlefield created by the sh of energies and domains in which they were fighting.

    There was no sound produced by the explosion, however a huge hole was suddenly cleanly melted down in the clouds that blocked the sky, it was as if a green sun had descended from the space, causing the bloodyst fight that had broken out in the battlefield at the ground to take a temporary stop.

    Regardless of affiliation, those that saw the green sun which was dissipating already, felt a chill running down their backs, all of them were sure that if they had been near that, they would have died, a hundred percent of the times.

    Back at the sky, once the green sun dissipated, the energy field which was around 80% melted and crumbling apart, was revealed, inside of it two figures could be seen.

    Gwen who had crossed her arms in front of her face while the shield arraypletely protected her, slowly moved.

    "Cough!", she vomited blood on the spot, the shield blocked the attack but her domain was nearly destroyed by Mirellia''s martial art, and that wasn''t all, till thest speck of mana in the vicinity was melted down as well, so this zone had turned into a nightmare for a mage even if it was temporary.

    The Lamia queen on the other hand, was panting, her previously glorious and solid battle avatar blinked a couple of times before it disappeared, returning to her body, at the same time Mirellia''s elegant snake tail turned into countless green particles, revealing her human legs which were covered by her armor.

    "Haaa¡­haaa", Mirellia couldn''t even speak as of current, but it was understandable, after all she managed to surprise Gwen, for real, since she a knight suddenly manipted mana!

    An ability that she would have never expected to see in a or gxy of this level, that martial art of herspressed a huge amount of mana into a sphere and then used all her battle aura at the same time to make it explode alongside it, a martial art truly befitting of the name "Nova", the resulting explosion seemed like the birth of a new star.

    But let''s leave aside the esthetic aspects for now, what''s important is that the Lamia queen showed a simr ability to that used by Adam when he grew an angel''s wing back then, but it was different, first she couldn''t fight in that state, like the light idiot, only use that martial art, she needed to be in Lamia form and use the martial art through her battle avatar and since she had no experience in handling mana, she couldn''t gather the required amount by herself and needed an external easy to use source.

    In this case, the Snake Sapphire left behind by the first queen was used to activate one of the two techniques, left behind by the her.

    The sapphire was lost but the result was worth it, the mix of acid mana and battle aura was strong enough to nearly destroy the energy field that was practically in the hands of Gwen and also deprive her of any mana.

    "You crazy bitch, die already!", Gwen saw the current weakened state of the Lamia queen and proposed to pierce her with her bident, but her body stopped midway as a translucent ck called giant snake, appeared out of nowhere in front of her.

    The shield array blocked in front of her but the snake¡­ bypassed, as if it had no mass the ck snake went through the shield like it was nothing, then engulfed Gwen''s right arm all the way from her shoulder to her wrist.

    "Dimension Devouring Python", a tired but mellow voice could be hearding from a few hundreds of meters behind of Gwen, the ck snake then bit the space with its snout and disappeared into the void.

    "Crack!".

    "Aghhhh!".

    The result was half of the shield array crumbling apart on the spot since two out of the four bodyguards that acted as the core, had only their hands and feet left, Gwen''s agonizing scream followed since her arm disappeared from her body, her hand which was still holding the bident fell down form the sky but was caught by Gwen with her remaining hand as she forced herself to regain her mind.

    Her eyes got bloodshot on the spot, her face which previously had a certain resemnce with Thea, trembled and then changed to be that of apletely different person, for starters she looked way older appearing to be in herte thirties now.

    Also, her hair turned gray and red and so did her eyes, in exchange for this, a strange fluid gray energy emerged out of her body.

    "Tyrant''s Decree!", with a loud shout, the energy field which was about to disappear, shrank down but it formed again, locking Thea and Mirellia who were sweating and panting, inside of it, that wasn''t all, her cleanly cut flesh on the shoulder trembled before a new arm which looked rather thin, formed, her hand which she managed to keep was attached to it, giving it a strange look.

    "You two miserable ants should feel honored to have forced me so far, you actually made me waste thousands of years of umtion, but don''t worry, your bodies and all those rats you brought will be enough to make up for it, don''t feel bad after all you two never stood a chance against me¡­".

    "And what if you add me to the equation", a cold butforting voice interrupted Gwen''s monologue, her domain which had just reformed got a hole teared into its roof by a giant white me sword that descended from the sky.

    The white me sword exploded in a sea of fire, revealing a silver haired masked youth, around whom the mes twirled like a hurricane.

    The very moment Gwen''s eyes got a glimpse of the neer, she took a defensive stance and brought the though reformed, smaller shield array in front of hers, because she could tell that the masked youth was a system user!

    "Damn it, so that''s why those lowlifes were able to resist against me, they had you backing them, you little bastard, still you are as smart as I would expect, choosing to protect those two instead of using the surprise advantage to finish me", said Gwen with disdain to which Daimon smirked.

    "Well, I couldn''t do anything about it, that''s how a distraction works", that shiver-inspiring smirkbined with Daimon''s words, made Gwen had a bad premonition.

    But by the time she reacted, a skinny ck-haired woman had appeared behind of her, her right arm which had ackluster phantom white snake coiled around it, pierced her chest from her back.

 Chapter 583: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 19)

    Gwen slowly turned her head around to see the attacker, she reacted too slow in part because her focus was on the masked youth who was radiating a dangerous aura like it was nothing and also because¡­ the one who appeared behind of her was someone she knew, one of her most trusted subordinates and the one who ran her secretb.

    Unfortunately, the voice that came from that familiar face wasn''t the one she expected, still she knew to whom it belonged and it made sense considering that there was an arming out of her chest.

    "Hi Gwen, it''s been fifty thousand years, so I hope you can return what you "borrowed" from me", the ck-haired woman then jumped backwards, retrieving her arm from Gwen''s chest.

    The white translucent snake that was coiled around the arm of the ck-haired woman, started dying ck.

    Thalia''s real appearance projected behind the woman from the Dark Spirit race, the now ck phantom snake moved upwards from the arm of the woman and was absorbed by Thalia''s projection.

    "Aghhhh!", Gwen who hadn''t shown to be visibly in pain even after getting a hole on her chest, screamed her lungs out, she covered herself with the remaining shield array, forcing Thalia who returned to the body she is possessing to distance herself and go back to Daimon''s side.

    By the time the scream ended, the bizarre scene of Gwen''s body decaying at a visible rate was revealed, apparently whatever she took from Thalia is what was keeping the body she was upying together so now that Thalia stole it back, her body became unstable.

    Under the surprised eyes of Daimon and the others, Gwen''s body withered, in a second she went from being in her thirties to herte fifties.

    ''Disgusting, she was actually recreating her own body using an artificial race as an incubator, don''t drop your guard'', mumbled Evangeline to Daimon in his mind.

    And her warn came in handy, when followed by a crazed re, a gray fluid energy umted on the hand she regrew earlier, forming a bead which she crushed the next second.

    "You want to kill me, fine, let''s go all to hell!".

    Daimon''s violet amethyst pupils contracted behind his mask, as he shouted.

    "You three, defend!", the two queens and Celia, didn''t know what was happening but their instincts screamed danger so they raised their barriers first, not even a secondter, the whole area was covered in a dazzling ball of mes, followed by an earth-shattering explosion.

    "Booom!", a blinding light engulfed everything in a thousand-kilometer radio, the space trembled and got torn up here and there.

    The previoussted around a whole thirty seconds, before the explosion ended and the light disappeared, revealing countless slightly shattered mana barriers floating on a giant crater that used to be the headquarters of the Snake Tyrant''s army.

    What happened is that Gwen actually made all her present subordinates do the same, the magic beasts included, why did such a crazy thing didn''t blow up this whole when Ster ranks were included you wonder.

    Well, that was because the explosion was contained by a force of simr strength, which were all the magic beasts Daimon stole from Travis self-destroying themselves, the explosions consumed each other instead of the and that''s how Draim was saved.

    "Crazy, she actually nned to take Draim down with herself", eximed Celia, to which Daimon who gazed at the queens and Thalia who looked dejected due to the result of the battle, chuckled.

    Unlike Celia, those three could tell that Gwen didn''t die, but escaped, of course Daimon was the same, but for a different reason.

    "I promised to help a certain someone, so of course we can''t let her have the final say in this fight", said Daimon as he threw a small pebble to the air, while he snapped his fingers.

    "Switch", following that word, the pebble disappeared, reced by the still emaciated figure of Gwen, whose expression was filled with disbelief at the fact that she who had gotten out of the range of the explosion was forcefully teleported back.

    Unfortunately, she couldn''t even make a sound before her field of vision was filled with white mes, the shield array blocked in front of her but to her surprise the thing was easily cut through as if it didn''t exist to begin with.

    That being said the mes were consumed enough for her to see the real appearance of the object that was shing her chest diagonally, a ck one-edged sword.

    "Aghhhhh!!!", a pained scream escaped from Gwen''s mouth, she reacted on the spot, jumping backwards to get away from Disaster, but the sensation of dread didn''t with that.

    "Acid Chain".

    "Dark Scale Seal"

    A portal opened behind the escaping Gwen, Mirellia appeared at her right and used whatever battle aura she had left to cast a restraining martial art to prevent Gwen''s body from moving, Thalia joined the fray using a spell to bind the left side of her body.

    And the icing on the cake was Thea, who appeared in front of Gwen, her spear aiming at her face, the empress didn''t even use a spell, she just injected as much mana as she could into her spear and thrusted as hard as she could.

    "N¡­.!", Gwen didn''t have the time to scream, her head exploded into a thin red mist, at the same time, Mirellia and Thalia reached their limits, Mirellia had overdrawn her battle aura to cast that martial art, after creating a barrier earlier, as for Thalia that phantom snake she used pushed the body she was possessing to the limit.

    Their martial art and spell, respectively, disappeared letting Gwen''s lifeless body fall from the sky, the three panted with renewed happy expressions, at least until they heard Daimon saying.

    "You can stop pretending, you value your life too much to go just like that".

    "¡­", after a couple of seconds of silence in which, those three looked in every direction trying to find any trace of Gwen, just to end up defeated, a cold mocking voice gave them the answer they were looking for.

    "So, you can even see me in this state, you are full of tricks", all the eyes fell on the origin of that voice.

    Above in the sky, the translucent projection of a beautiful woman with gray and red hair, appeared, the space behind of her shattered as a portal started to take form.

    Thea gritted her teeth, even after all that, she couldn''t kill her enemy, it was frustrating enough to make her try to force more mana out of her magic core, at least until aforting patnded on her shoulder.

    "Stop, in your current state, you three won''t be able to harm her", said Daimon, he pointed his index finger at Gwen''s projection, shooting a ray of white mes at her, which was blocked by the image of a young man.

    Thalia''s eyes saw red as she recognized the one who blocked Daimon''s attack, the object of her hatred and one of the four users that participated in the war of foundation of Neptune, Dorian.

    "Calm down, that guy is as dead as possible, in fact we could say he suffered a destiny worse than death, bing resources for her, right?", said Daimon to Gwen whoughed with disdain.

    "So, you knew it all along, damn annoying missions, forcing me to use such a valuable thing as an "extra life", whatever, you can win this time, I''ll kill you¡­", Gwen''s words were interrupted midway by Daimon.

    "Didn''t you know that viins die because they talk too much", Gwen who was rxed since she could tell how worn out were the enemies in front of her, suddenly felt a sensation of crisis.

    And for a good reason, Daimon''s mana and battle aura reserves which were practically injected into the Comet Sword that was still covering Disaster in white mes, recovered to full before he once again put everything he had into Disaster.

    The wild mes that got dimmer after burning the shield array with the help of Disaster destroying the runes and draining the lifeforce of the two bodyguards, turning them into perfectly mmable dried mummies, fiercely roared with new vigor.

    "Comet Sword", Daimon who appeared in front of Dorian''s projection shed Disaster, but contrary to what one would expect¡­ the thing didn''t budge.

    "ng!!!", the sound of metals colliding and sparks flying all over the ce was the result, what''s more, for the first time, Disaster failed to cut through something which was energy-rted, since the projection wasn''t physical.

    "Hahaha, my "Tyrant''s Seal" isn''t something you can destroy with just brute force, no matter how strong you are, you are just a lowly mortal!", Gwen who feigned not to have felt a chill running down her back a second ago, mocked Daimon.

    ''Don''t listen to her, you should have noticed it by now, but she isn''t someone you can kill right now and still you managed to defeat her, in fact even if those three were at their prime right now, that seal would be¡­ Daimon?'', Evangeline who felt angered by Gwen''s words and wanted to cheer Daimon up, stopped midway feeling a sudden in Daimon''s aura.

    Time seemed to slow down as a huge curtain of darkness, appeared behind Daimon, all the presents witnessed how Draim''s sky darkened on the spot, before a new source of light was born.

    A purple menacing pair of star-like eyes, could be seen opening from within the curtain of darkness, disdain filled them as they red at Dorian''s projection, then Daimon slowly and elegantly shed Disaster frontwards, visibly nothing happened and yet Gwen felt as if she was going crazy.

    "Impossible!!!".

    "Crack!".

    Gwen''s scream followed by the sound of crystal shattering, echoed through the sky as a thin line appeared on Dorian''s projection, before a rift formed right in the middle of the projection.

    "Ahhh, I don''t care anymore, all of you turn into debris along with this damn!", the projection started to shatter at a fast rate, along with the space nearby it.

    "Daimon, she is going to make the space in the whole area, copse, we have to get away from this ce!", eximed the empress, to which Daimon who was in a strangely calm state, shook his head as he pointed at the south, out of which a portal just opened.

    "This is offensive from you, where do you think, you are escaping to without me, Gwen", the unexpected figure of Travis emerged from the portal, his body was glowing in a red menacing light, making him look like a red ughtering star.

    "Kid, I owe you one this time, also it''s good to see you escaped", said Travis as he shed towards the currently shattering image of Dorian, the first part was naturally directed to Daimon while the second part was surprisingly directed to Thalia who found a red pendantnding on her hands right now.

    "Boooom!", the moment Travis reached the breach in Dorian''s projection, he turned into a fierce tornado of red mist, he self-destroyed his body as well, just in time for Gwen to jump into the portal that finally finished forming.

    "No, get away from me you psycho!", Gwen''s hysterical screams could be hearding from the portal, along with Travis''s maniacalugh, the portal turned red and then closed, at the same time the dark curtain behind of Daimon, was absorbed into his body and the sky returned to normal.

    "Phew", Daimon let out a sigh of relief, he deactivated Core Synchrony, also the projection crumbled apart on the spot, the reason as to why Gwen was so desperate to escape is because that sole sh from Daimon actually destroyed the projection, it was just taking longer for the thing to disappear.

    Which is why Daimon wasn''t worried about Gwen''sst threat, the thing was finished, Travis only elerated the process, how did he know it, easy, he heard the sound of a notification and saw the message appearing in front of him.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil", has been updated <!>]

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Devil Ruler 50% ¨¤ 75% (0/1)]

    In other words, he achieved something that made the progression percentage of the objective to advance and the only thing he could think off, was having destroyed Dorian''s projection.

    Also, he realized from Evangeline''s words from earlier that¡­ killing Gwen wasn''t a part of the mission and as if to confirm his theory, from the nowpletely destroyed projection, two rays of light flew.

    Onended on Daimon while the other reached Thea''s spear, which surprisingly turned into ck energy particles that entered the reverse of her right hand, turning into a ck snake emblem, very much to the surprise of the empress.

    As for Daimon, a second notification rang in his mind.

    [Ding]

    [The mission "Stealing from the devil", has been updated <!>]

    [Steal the legacy left to help the Devil Ruler 75% ¨¤ 100% (1/1)]

    [¡­]

    But that wasn''t all, a new message from the system arrived.

    [Congrattions to the host for killing the fallen codename: Tyrant Abyss Snake, a special reward will be awarded by the system]

    [Ding]

    [Congrattions on obtaining "Memory Orb" X1]

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action¡­]

    Daimon who was in the mid of reading the notification, felt his head getting dizzy, so he stopped paying attention to that and instead gazed towards those three, making Thea''s eyes sparkle as she got the "message".

    "It''s over", with those words, Daimon''s eyes closed as he fell asleep, his body started to descend from the sky, or that would have been the case under normal circumstances.

    The empress happily shed towards Daimon to help him float so that he wouldn''t fall from the sky, just to see a second person appearing at the other side of Daimon, just in time to also keep him floating.

    Thea frowned as she saw the skinny ck-haired woman who reacted at the same time as her, keeping Daimon up by his left arm, while she did the same but with his right one.

    "What are you doing?", asked the empress.

    "Giving him a hand, isn''t that why he gazed at me before falling asleep?", said Thalia, making Thea''s frown deepen.

    ''Damn it, she was actually floating next to me, so who was Daimon referring when he looked earlier'', thought Thea before saying.

    "For starters, who are you, your projection earlier looked a bit like me, but if you were that ancestor of mine who was imprisoned then you would look way older than me, right".

    Thalia felt a vein popping on her neck at being considered old, by Thea, she might have lived more years than Thea, but mentality wise, she was younger, the empress was in her early twenties while Thalia was inte teenage years, around 18 at most, simr to Aisha or the crazy girl Sarah.

    Unlike humans, most other races aged differently, years weren''t the way they measured their lives but let''s leave for another day, the Lamia queen saw sparks flying those two and she chuckled before clearing her throat to interrupt them.

    "Ahem, we can leave the introductions forter, that woman and her headquarters might be gone for good, but the remnants of her subordinates as well as her beast''s army are still here, we should retreat back to Melliun to safely recover", said Mirellia.

    They were basically out of energy right now, it would be dangerous if they were ambushed in a weakened state, also she wanted to confirm that her daughters were okay, she knew they were alive and that their lives weren''t in danger, but as a mother she wanted to see it first hand, after that explosion from earlier.

    And then, before those two could react, Mirellia "snatched" Daimon away from them, before shing downwards.

    "Hey!", the empress and Thalia got energy out of who knows where and followed the Lamia queen right away, Celia did the same but from a respectful distance.

    ¡­

    Ignoring what was happening in the real world, Daimon found himself in a vast dark space.

    "Eve, can you hear me?", said Daimon out loud.

    "Mm, this is just a short dream for you to rest¡­ speaking of which what happened earlier, I have never seen you doing something like that before, Overlord didn''t level up but that waspletely different?", mumbled Evangeline.

    Daimon softly smiled, he could hear the worry behind Evangeline''s voice, it would be a lie to say he wasn''t surprised by what happened when he couldn''t cut through Dorian''s projection.

    "It was something I came with instinctively, I felt a simr but contrary sensation as when I fought with Aleah, it reminded me of how I felt when I faced that manticore, I simply wanted to utterly crush it and then that happened", he said.

    ''And here I was worried that his body would turn into mush for using a power you shouldn''t possess at this point, but he ispletely alright, I guess I should expect that from my host~'', thought Evangeline before saying.

    "The next time you feel like that, tell me¡­ please", and with that the caring Eve was gone and she returned to her usual yful self.

    "Leaving that aside, I think you should wake up already, you have a lot to exin to those two~", after saying that, Evangeline ended the dream and Daimon returned to reality.

    He found himself in afortable and spacious bed, he easily recognized the roof as the one from the room at the castle of the Lamia queen which was given to him and Thea, it''s worth mentioning that though he opened his eyes, he was still wearing the mask of the Hollow Suit.

    Only himself or his soulmates could remove the mask unless given permission by him, and though he wouldn''t have minded giving permission to Thea and the others, he simply forgot about it, he never found himself in a situation that required others to rake off his mask after all.

    In fact, it has been years since he exhausted himself to the point of needing immediate rest, since the early days when Aura became a drill instructor from hell during training, at least.

    Anyway, he would have continue resting, if not for the tense atmosphere that reigned in the room, Daimon observed the two participants of the "staring contest" ongoing, Thea and Thalia who was in her projection form, that being said she looked way better than before, if one didn''t have good eyes, it would be hard to distinguish her from a normal person with a physical body.

    "It''s my turn to give Daimon a recovery potion", firmly said Thea as she took out a blue liqueur bottle out of her storage ring.

    "That''s alcohol not a potion¡­ besides you did it earlier, it''s my turn now", retorted Thalia as she showed her potion which was indeed a medicine.

    "Humph, this was created using a special water which Daimon gifted me, so it doesn''t matter if it is a drink, there won''t be any side effects!", eximed Thea with a strange pride in her voice.

    "So, what, I made this potion myself, the materials weren''t of the best quality, but the refining method is superior to the ones used in Draim or Neptune, the effect would be far more beneficial for him", said Thalia, defending her potion.

    "Sigh, if you two keep arguing, I''ll just give him one from the royal treasury like yesterday", added a third voice, which belonged to the Lamia queen.

    "No!", those two finally agreed on something, blocking the way of the Lamia queen who was about to pull a fast one on them, giving Daimon a potion in a snake-shaped bottle.

    ''How long was I out¡­'', wondered Daimon, from the corner of his eye, he could see the two Lamia princesses, spying on what was happening from the slightly opened door of the room.

    ''The rest of yesterday, these three kept checking on you even at night, unfortunately they couldn''t take your clothes off to "clean" you, but besides that, they took turns to tend to you~'', Evangeline''s merryugh filled Daimon''s ears for a whole five seconds.

    "Ahem, thanks for looking for me, I''ll go take a bath", Daimon suddenly got up the bed, before those three could say anything, he used blink and disappeared from the bedroom.

 Chapter 584: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 20)

    Appearing in the bathroom after sessfully escaping from those three, allowed Daimon to let out a sigh of relief, though he didn''t know what has happened between Thea and Thalia, they were now being strangely aggressive to each other.

    ''Did they started to fight as soon as I was out¡­ no, though they were arguing earlier I didn''t sense any ill intent between them, what''s more they easily agreed when it came to deal with Mirellia'', thought Daimon.

    He wanted to ask Eve what happened when he was out, but judging by how she was giggling at him, she wasn''t going to spill the beans so he didn''t bother to try.

    Instead of that he opened the log of the system, since he fell asleep without finishing reading the surprise notification he got after getting rid of Dorian''s projection, he quickly found his objective at the end of the log.

    [Congrattions on obtaining "Memory Orb" X1]

    [A new skill has been created due to a specific action]

    [Tyrant''s Rule Lv1 (Passive): In the presence of the tyrant, enemies can''t raise waves, whether they like it or not, the tyrant''s will is absolute]

    [Deprives the targets within the wake of the host, of proper control over a selected part of their bodies, additionally one trait of the selected choice will be temporarily incorporated by the host (improvement, physical strength, stamina or special function), the selected part can be changed at as much as the host wants it, but a span of five seconds will be required between each change]

    [Limited to two targets per day, for a maximum of five minutes per target (can be turned on and off by the host at will), the first effect can be resisted or weakened depending on the level of existence of the target, but the second one is absolute (the host must be fighting the targets at the moment of activation and the targets must be within the reach of the host''s senses)]

    [The Corrupted Treasure Trove has been partially filled 0/100 ¨¤ 5/100]

    Daimon couldn''t help but be in awe as he finished reading the description of the skill he got, sure there were restrictions but its effect was crazy.

    Imagine, not only hindering your enemy''s movements but also obtaining one of their strengths in the middle of a fight, what''s more he saw some resemnce in this skill and one of the skills that became the foundation of what he has be.

    ''Is it me, or this skill looks like a slightly weaker counterpart of Overlord''s Pride, focused on knights instead of mages'', thought Daimon.

    Overlord''s Pride has wide range of effect, it can be focused on specific targets to intimidate them, but as an aura type of skill, its purpose is to affect many targets at the same time, which is also the concept of mages.

    Tyrant''s Rule on the other hand, can only affect two targets at the same time, but the effect has a bigger impact in exchange, which is the concept of knights, of course Daimon has never encased himself to said concepts, but the initial focus of the skills is always one of those two, they change after leveling up as they adapt to Daimon''s wishes and needs, with the sole exception of Core Synchrony which from the very beginning didn''t differentiate between mage or knight, but is exclusively rted to soulmates.

    As to why Daimon considered it to be slightly inferior to Overlord''s Pride, that''s easy, this skill has limitations based on "Level of existence" and while as of current Daimon has no idea of what that means, Overlord''s Pride isn''t limited by that, so long as the target feels fear, it will be affected by it, still it was on par with his strongest skills for sure.

    ''That woman for sure had enough greed to contribute to the corrupted treasure trove, which hadn''t advanced at all even after destroying those Naga fellows, but tell me Eve, did the system tailor that skill specially for me?'', asked Daimon as he undressed and walked into the shower.

    The familiar gaze of the undead head maid, reminded him that she also recovered during the past night and was at her prime as of current.

    ''Well, originally you should have only obtained the control depriving effect, since that was what was contained in the remaining existence of that guy but¡­ you deserved a reward so I pulled some strings'', pridefully said Evangeline, clearly wanting to be praised, which was rather cute.

    ''Sure, sure, you are the best, you even changed the memories of that guy into a universal use item'', said Daimon as he observed the memory orb in the inventory, unlike what happened with that half part of Ka and the greedy Nethereal, the memories weren''t directly absorbed by him, but became an item, it''s obviously something that Evangeline did.

    And it came with quite some benefits, for example he could show its contents to others, instead of having to share them through words like it happened with Marlene.

    ''Eve is feeling "threatened" by the appearance of so many girls simr to her, so she wanted to show off a bit in front of Daimon'', innocently added Narasha, as she came out of the inventory as Disaster to float under the shower next to Daimon, making him chuckle, while Evangeline reacted like a cat whose tail was stepped on.

    ''N-Nonsense, I only did it because it was beneficial for me, that''s all!'', she eximed while thinking to herself.

    ''After all, if you would have killed that woman as you are right now, with help or not, you would have gotten an achievement that surpassed the SSS Divinity rank, so this much is nothing inparison'', a secondter she didn''t forget to add.

    ''Humph, go watch the memory orb along with your snake girls and let me rest a bit'', and with those words, Evangeline returned to "sleep", while in reality the blurred image of a girl floating while holding onto arge pillow, rolled on the air while rambling about some impossible to understand things.

    Daimon''s eyes glowed for a second as he inwardly thanked Evangeline for the hint, she knew he was for sure going to watch the memory orb, so she mentioning the "snakedies" part, meant that there would be extra benefits if Thea and Thalia saw it too.

    ''Thanks'', Daimon limited to thank Evangeline and as expected he got no response, but he could feel the administrator girl brimming with happiness in his mind.

    Leaving that aside, Daimon finished his shower and then left the bathroom, he was immediately weed by a couple of gazes that belonged to Thea and Thalia, apparently the Lamia queen had left along with her daughters, since a few minutes ago, not without inviting them to join them to eat lunchter.

    "Hi you two, there is something I want to show¡­", before Daimon could finish his sentence, he saw Thea''s smile sour a bit.

    ''I guess it''s better to solve this first'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Did something happen while I was asleep, you two didn''t know each other enough to be in bad terms until yesterday?".

    "It''s because that old woman in disguise is nosy", mumbled the empress, making Thalia softly snort in response.

    "I already told you that I''m younger, also who''s nosy, I didn''t interfere in your contract but stablished mine separately, it''s a fairpetition", she said.

    Daimon was temporarily speechless, those two were fighting over both being in a contract with him, which he found a bit amusing, also it was interesting to see Thea be sulking because he wasn''t her exclusive general anymore.

    "How is that fair, go away you thieving woman, Daimon is my general so I won''t let you steal him", dered the empress, which made Thalia frown.

    "Hey, don''t speak of the most honorable tradition of our race so lightly, for us of the royal lineage, the knighthood pact symbolizes more than a simple alliance, it represents the fact that we are close with the one we chose and are willing to be courted by the other party, it''s the maximum expression of respect and gratitude and so it must be upheld with total seriousness", she eximed.

    "¡­", this time let alone Thea, even Daimon was taken by surprise, the empress''s face turned red like an apple.

    "W-What the hell are you talking about, I¡­ Daimon¡­ courting!", the empress''s brain seemed to have suffered a short-circuit, unaware to process what was happening, it was Thalia''s turn to be confused.

    "Wait a second, don''t tell me you didn''t know the meaning of the knighthood pact, but then why were you aiming at my throat?", she said.

    "What you say makes no sense, I have other generals under me, not to mention my subordinates", mumbled Thea, ignoring Thalia''s previous statement, all this while thinking.

    ''Is that why my always thought that my connection with Daimon felt different¡­'', she wondered.

    "We are royalty, of course we can have as many allies or subordinates as we need, however a princess can only have one titled knight, so the pact with a person of the opposite sex who possesses the same affinities on equal standing as us can only be used with one person at the time".

    "Of course, if any of the parties wishes for it then the pact can be voided but as a penalty the two previous parts can never enter the pact again, at the same time a new knight can be chosen after defeating the previous one in a duel", said Thalia.

    "I see, so that''s why you asked me if I entered the contract with Thea due to external influence and also why you were surprised that I easily epted the contract with you", said Daimon, finally understanding Thalia''s reaction from back then.

    He was also unaware of the meaning of the pact, but it made sense after all meditating in unison is something that mages won''t do with just anyone, since it is a moment of weakness and the first thing Thalia did was to gather spacews with his help.

    "Mm, also¡­ it''s normally the man the one who proposes so it was rather shameful to have taken the initiative myself, especially when I thought that you were already courting a princess, but since it was for recovery purposes, I paid no mind", she mumbled in response.

    What happened was a double misunderstanding, Thalia thought that Thea stablished the contract with the purpose of considering Daimon to be his partner in the future, while Thea was angry at the thought of Thalia stealing his general from her.

    ''Well, they are definitely rted to each other, even their misunderstandings are simr'', thought Daimon, needless to say but Evangeline wasughing to death at Daimon''s current situation.

    At least until she heard Thalia saying.

    "Since the nature of your contract with her isn''t as I thought, then I would like to keep ours indefinitely, instead of terminating it when I recovery", before Thea could even react, Thalia turned to see her to then say.

    "Sorry to have misinterpreted you, we had no reason to fight to begin with, I''ll dly teach you how to change the nature of your contractter".

    Thea felt a vein popping on her neck as she saw the smile on Thalia''s face.

    "Dream on, you can''t steal my¡­ general in any way, form or whatsoever" said Thea, with a simr expression as when she saw Marlene''s kiss mark on Daimon''s cheek before.

    "But you stablished it by mistake, you don''t even know how to take advantage of the benefits from the knighthood pact properly", retorted Thalia.

    Those two shared another thing inmon, they were both incredibly stubborn which led to them starting to argue once again, the arguing continued until the empress seemed to have run out of arguments and instead turned to see Daimon with a slightly agitated expression on her pretty face.

    "You are the one who has to cancel your contract, I was first, tell her Daimon!", eximed the empress in a cute childish way.

    Daimon inwardly sighed before clearing his throat to get their attention.

    "Ahem, stop with the arguing for now, while the situation with Thea was a misunderstanding I don''t think it affect us in any way to continue as we are, you on the other hand did know the meaning behind of the contract, so why do you want to maintain the contract with me, Thalia, I don''t think you see me in that way?", asked Daimon, which made Thea pout but she also felt strangely happy to that cancelling her contract with him waspletely out of the window.

    Anyway, back to Daimon, he isn''t dense, he would need to be brainless to not notice when a girl harbors romantic feelings for him, like the Risha sisters for example, of course knowing and corresponding to them are twopletely different things.

    And so, he can tell that Thalia doesn''t see him in that way, she does seem to have a good impression of him, despite him being a system user, which might be rted to the fact that he saved her, but not love which is what the knighthood pact supposedly would represent for them.

    "Like I said it''s also the maximum expression of respect and gratitude towards someone of the opposite gender, also since this innate ability has evolved with time making it possible to be used as many times as needed, prior to choosing an official partner of course, so there is no down side to it, in any case it is beneficial for both parties as you saw earlier", said Thalia.

    ''That being said, it is indeed my first time epting a knight and the same applies for her'', she thought to herself as she stole a nce at Thea.

    ''Well, it''s not like I am really restrained by contracts anyway, so I guess there is no

    "In that case we can keep the contract, as well", he said, making the empress''s mood darken on the spot, but it was solved by Daimon''s next words.

    "However, I want to ask a favor from you in exchange", he said to Thalia who nodded in response.

    "Sure, if it''s within my possibilities I don''t mind, I owe you big time after all", she said, while ncing at Thea from the corner of her eyes.

    "I want you to teach Thea about her ascendence, so that she can avoid future problems, like the one with the knighthood pact", the contract in question was an innate ability that the empress learned through the legacy encrypted in her bloodline, said Daimon.

    She probably misinterpreted the word "knight" for the word "general" along the lines, not to mention she didn''t learn the whole purpose of the contract, considering that her lineage was quite high ranked, there should be many more things to learn.

    Seeing Thalia''s smile turn bitter, the empress giggled to then kick Thalia when she was down.

    "There is no need for that, the wall that was blocking my advance has softened after the Royal Fang was absorbed into my hand, there is information being assimted into my bloodline as we speak, I can see the way to reach the high stage Ster rank already~", she happily said, the meaning behind the lines was clear, "I don''t need her".

    ''Mmm, I guess that''s her reward forpleting her challenge, the gaps in her lineage are being filled in with what was missing'', thought Daimon, surprisingly Thalia was thinking something simr.

    ''Damn it, I forgot that a system user was involved, she probably got a copy of my own blood legacy as a reward'', she inwardly cursed.

    Daimon chuckled, those two had another thing inmon, their thoughts were really obvious, at least for him to notice.

    "Still, the process would be smoother if you are directly taught by someone who was born with that knowledge, not to mention you won''t get information about the culture of your race from your bloodline, so this would be beneficial for you, as for Thalia, I''ll help you with your meditation but we have to include Thea", and with that, it was Thalia''s turn to smirk at Thea, who pouted as she gave in.

    "Fine¡­ but only because you think it will be better for me", she said.

    Daimon felt relieved that those two were able to take a step back andpromise, he was worried that would try to solve this with their weapons, considering how alike they are.

    Leaving the whole subject aside, Daimon extended his hand and a white hand sized sphere with a ck snake emblem on it, appeared on the air, making Thalia frown.

    "That thing feels awfully simr to Dorian", she mumbled.

    "That''s because this is a part of Dorian''s memories", said Daimon, making those two''s eyes sparkle in surprise.

    [Memory Orb: Contains the leftover memories recovered from a fragmented being''s existence, the important parts were selected and refined with the cost of using non important parts, in exchange the content can be shown to other people at the discretion of the host, in an immersive experience (can be reproduced as a whole a total of ten times before it disappears)]

    Naturally, not everything could be saved since Dorian has been dead for a long time already, the projection of earlier is something that Gwen somehow made, so the system couldn''t recover everything, but with a bit of help from Evangeline, the important parts were saved, she even changed the format into an item that could be shown to others.

    The limit of times that could be reproduced doesn''t pose a problem, unless we are talking about someone with really bad memory, but Daimon and the two snake princesses will only need to see it once to memorize it.

    Also, in case you wonder if letting others see the contents of the memory of a system user, won''t put them in danger, ording to Evangeline it won''t make much of a difference for those that are already close to him.

    In other words, just being close to Daimon is already enough to cause the same effect on others as getting to know about system users, in fact others can mention and talk about it and they would remain the same, the only prohibition is that Daimon himself can''t talk about his own system with others, exploiting the w that using alternative words can keep them safe from further influence, at least for now.

    ''There must be other reason for Eve to change the memories into this kind of thing, I guess I will get to know it at its due time'', thought Daimon as he clicked on the snake emblem in the white sphere.

    Then under Thea and Thalia''s surprised eyes, the sphere raised into the air before it dissolved into light particles that then dispersed all over the room, the next thing they knew they were surrounded by a perfect projection of what would be a dvd menu.

    ''Really, Eve¡­'', thought Daimon as he saw the avable options, among which "Chapters" was included.

    ''Hehehe, I thought that since your girls love to see the movies you buy through the system, why not enhance the experience~''. Jokingly said Evangeline from within Daimon''s mind.

    ''I like them too, they are entertaining'', added Narasha, making Daimon sigh, certainly movie night was quite popr among the soulmates, but this wasn''t a movie but memories from a dead guy, so it was kind of strange.

    Also, the 3d holograph made it as if they were inside the projection, so he could tell that this memory orb thing produced a simr result as the scenes he got from the greedy Nethereal earlier.

    "Is this some kind of illusion magic, it''s amazing, if I didn''t see that sphere, I wouldn''t have noticed that this wasn''t real until I tried to touch something", said Thalia, unlike the empress she had knowledge of the paternal side of her lineage which consisted in darkness rted stuff, such as curses and illusions as well, so her words carried some weight.

    "Bookworm¡­", Thea saw Thalia "bragging" about her knowledge and she couldn''t help but mutter, before she sat on the bed to then tap the ce next to her, the projection kept an empty space for the viewers, that consisted on ten meters around Daimon.

    "Sit with me, earlier a certain nuisance got in our way, but we can now enjoy this "Snake Blessing Wine", it''s a special piece of my collection that will multiply your recovery rate for a whole week with a single cup~", said the empress as she smiled at Daimon, making thetter chuckle.

    If there is something the empress enjoys as much as battle or maybe even more, that is drinking and she recently discovered that drinking in Daimon''spany is even more up to her liking.

    "Sure", limited to say Daimon as he sat next to her, making the empress''s smile widen as she proposed to pour a cup for Daimon, only to see Thalia sitting at Daimon''s free side.

    "What, don''t worry I don''t like alcohol, our race is strangely weak with it but even then, some "particr" people in my family branch have it as their vice, my aunt for example", said Thalia before she focused on the projection.

    "Humph, I wasn''t going to give you anything anyway", mumbled the empress as she softly snorted.

    Daimon ignored those two''s petty quarrel and entered the chapter menu; he couldn''t help but notice that below some chapters there was a smallment with some familiar words.

    For example, there was one which said "Watch with the Angelfish princess for more fun~".

    Daimon could immediately feel the sharp snake-like eyes of Thea gazing at him, while Thalia who knew about system users, softlyughed finding Daimon''s administrator amusing, something that she wille to regret but that''s a story for another day.

    "Ahem, ignore that", said Daimon as he surfed through the chapters until he found the ones that were marked with "For Snake princesses"ment, while inwardly swearing to get back at Evangeline for this.

    Daimon clicked on the chapter and the surroundings blurred for a moment before they were "transported" into the initial scene of the chapter.

    "What the hell do you mean with "You can''t beat him", if I don''t win that hero shit, I''m going to die!", yelled a tall young man with brown hair and slit pupils, simr to those of a snake, who Daimon and of course Thalia recognized immediately as Dorian.

    "Don''t me me, you haven''t fulfilled the objectives of the mission and to begin with, that guy has the local advantage in this, since his concept is rted to water, anyway as you currently are you stand no chance against a hero type since their strong point is head on sh", said a second voice.

    Dorian was alone in a room, so it was strange to listen a voicee out of nowhere, but then a secondter the air in front of Dorian blurred and a tall woman with silver and red hair materialized, that was Gwen of course.

    Daimon felt interested on her as soon as she appeared, not because she was pretty which was true, but because she coulde out while still being with her system user and unlike the angel girl Ariel or that ghost woman that bullied Marcus, or Ka who tailored a body for herself and possessed another one with her other half, she had a physical body even before separating from Dorian!

    "Useless, you said that my system was a high tier one so why am I being surpassed by a random character in my first joint mission", eximed Dorian.

    "Not my fault, he leveled up more than you or probably had a fortunate encounter after having epted the mission, which catapulted him above the required level for this mission, the only one who might be able to put up a fight is that Light Archer girl, but she was chosen to be his ally, so you can''t woo her in", casually said Gwen, making a vein pop on Dorian''s neck.

    "Anyway, it''s not like everything is lost, don''t forget the major advantage you possess", she added, only for Dorian to throw a ss decoration making it break against the ground.

    "What''s the use of using myst summoning slot, they can''t be as strong as me anyway, that guy has a whole damn kingdom behind of him, I won''t have the time to develop the affinity after the integration!", he yelled.

    Gwen sighed in response.

    "That''s why you are an idiot, still since you are my host I can''t just let you die like that, why do you think I told you to focus on primary affinities, such as fire, water, earth, wind and the like, it was all toy a strong foundation for when you needed an affinity that can be impactful even in its initial form, like space for example", she said with a cunning voice.

    Her words not only caused a reaction from Dorian, but also from Thalia who clenched her fists, realizing why this chapter was marked for them to see, apparently this was the day when she would be kidnapped from her home.

 Chapter 585: Challenges Theaâ€™s version (part 21)

    Leaving aside Daimon and Thalia''s reactions, Dorian was even more excited after listening to Gwen''s tempting words, but then he seemed to have reminded something that made him angry.

    "Are you sure, the previous experiment for the seventh affinity nearly caused some backsh!", he eximed.

    "Youin now, but didn''t the double darkness affinity you obtained allowed you to defeat that quack of a priest?", mockingly said Gwen to then add.

    "Besides, this time it will be a single target summon, so what happened with those siblings won''t repeat".

    Dorian seemed to consider things for a moment before nodding in response.

    "Fine if it''s a single target summon, then there should be no problem, however I want to know more about the target,st time you knew the exact coordinates needed for the summon to work, so assume this time it will be the same", he said as he signaled a chair for Gwen to sit.

    The silver-red haired administrator seemed displeased but she epted the invitation and sat down, Dorian naturally sat in front of her, it wasn''t hard to notice that the Abyss Snake system user was interested on Gwen.

    "The target will be from a race called "Void Devouring Python", normally mortals are limited to be born with second or even third-rate space affinity, since we are talking about a special grade element, however the most talented members of the royal lineage of this race have the chance to be born with first rate space affinity, meaning that even at its base status, it will allow you to fight one or two minor realms above your own even at Ster level".

    "Of course that is for normal people, you the host I have raised should be able to jump a major realm with that, specially since the innate affinities of those snakes are darkness and space", said Gwen as she amodated her hair.

    Dorian''s eyes glowed in response, not only because he was treated with respect by Gwen for a change, but because with the power to jump a whole realm, he''ll surpass any obstacle in Neptune, meaning that he will be the ultimate winner.

    "Okay, but where does such a talented race live, there is no way they can be found in the gxies near this small single ne, unlike the previous targets, right?", he said.

    "Of course not, even in Empire ranked forces, they would be a rarity¡­ under normal circumstances, so be grateful, I used my umted origin to exchange for these coordinates of a family that lost in a session war", said Gwen as she took out a marble with a miniature gxy floating inside of it.

    The moment Dorian saw the marble, he frowned.

    "Forget it, I can already feel how hard it will be to stablish a summoning tunnel with those coordinates in this damn¡­ unless, right I can now use this thing I got as a reward after defeating that fake bastard", said Dorian as he looked into his storage ring to then take out a ck crystal, that immediately made the room go dark due to the ck mist it radiated.

    ''That crystal looks simr to the ck mineral that covered Akim''s core, but much higher ranked'', thought Daimon, if the ck mineral covering that high Ster ranked Nethereal which he enved was a torch, that crystal would be the sun, such was the difference in quality andher contained on it.

    Dorian then took his shirt off, and a red array appeared on his chest, it looked simr to the one that Gwen''s bodyguards created by engraving a part on each of them, but it also shared simrities with the summoning circle at the bottom of the secretb.

    A secondter, the same array was burned on the ground surrounding Dorian and then a sound of ss shattering could be heard as the space above the summoning circle was forcefully split open.

    "Blegh!", Dorian vomited blood on the spot, which made Gwen almostugh at him.

    "Damn, why is it so hard to stablish the summoning tunnel in this, I used myst free chance and poured all my mana into it and it is still being blocked by something", said Dorian as he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth to then throw the crystal into the space rift created by the summoning circle.

    "Booom!", the moment the ck crystal entered the space rift, a loud explosion followed by a discharge of mana andher came from the dimensional tunnel, the thing blinked a couple of times throughout the whole event as if it was about to copse, but ultimately Dorian gritted his teeth and bled to maintain the array functioning.

    "Hurry and make the summon, the crystal won''t be able to force a path through the blockade for too long!", shouted Gwen.

    Dorian ced his hand on his chest and then shouted his lung off.

    "Summon!", tattoos with different designs appeared on his skin, before phantom chains came out of his body, the scenery suddenly changed, apparently Dorian could see through those chains, everything cked out as his mind travelled through the summoning tunnel.

    The previous room projection, turned into the magnificent sight of a castle, it was Thalia''s turn to recognize something shown in the projection, since this was her home, while doing her best to keep her cool she frowned as she saw Dorian being attacked by the defensive arrays of the castle.

    ''Damn, just the travel used too much of my stamina, the space defense of this ce is too high ranked, they are going to notice me, screw it I''ll randomly capture someone on the less restricted ces of this castle'', thought Dorian, just as he was about to stop his incursion, the array of the castle suddenly stopped restraining him.

    Then a strictly defined "path" was opened for him to follow, if Dorian was surprised, imagine how Thalia felt as she saw Dorian advance through the path that opened up, just to end up at the door of a room she knew as the palm of her hand, since it was her own room.

    ''Hurry up idiot, the space on the ind is about to copse!'', Dorian heard Gwen screaming at him in his mind, and he threw all his doubts to the wind and ced his hand on the door of the room.

    What happened next is what Thalia already knew, a space rift suddenly appeared on the roof of her room, taking her by surprise and she was dragged into it, her point of view was ignored though, the projection returned to Dorian and Gwen who were standing on the previously mentioned room.

    A seriously wounded Thalia was forcefully thrown out of the dimensional tunnel, which Gwen immediately closed and somehow moved to another part of Neptune, Dorian''s eyes glowed as he inspected his "catch".

    "Damn, I kind of had to blindly pick, but it seems like my luck hadn''t beenpletely used yet", he said as he approached Thalia who was half consciousying on the ground still surrounded by those phantom chains, her clothes which were magic treasures were torn here and there and all her essories such as rings, earrings and wristbands broke down and turned into durst as a proof of how rough the travel through the dimensional tunnel was, with a sole exception a pendant that was hidden below her clothes.

    "Hurry and fully restrain her you idiot, she is actually one of the royals I mentioned", Gwen scolded Dorian as she sat down, clearly her previous actions took a toll on her, so she was out of breath right now.

    Dorian whose intentions were clear enough to not need a memory reproduction to be noticed by others, just when he was preparing the ritual to enhance the connection between Thalia and him, he clenched his chest with his right hand.

    "Aghhh!", Dorian fell to his knees, a pair of ck snake tattoos engraved on his shoulders, erged and started corroding Dorian''s body, at the same time a pair of voiced could be hearding from the tattoos.

    "Did you think you would get rid of us so easily you fucking bastard!", the first one was a crude male voice, directed at Dorian.

    "Hey, hurry up and escape, we can''t him for too long", the second one was a female voice with a tinge of sympathy, directed at Thalia, helping her to regain some control over her body.

    "Dam it, didn''t you say you hadpletely finished those two off!", shouted Gwen, she got up in a hurry, but before she could do anything, Thalia crushed the pendant on her neck and she was absorbed by a portal, sessfully escaping from the room.

    "Nooo aghhhh!", something that Thalia didn''t know is that said portal cut the phantom chains around her, making Dorian bleed from his eyes, mouth, nose and ears before passing out, the two ck snake tattoos were then suppressed by Gwen, who was cursing and that was the end of the scene since Dorian was out.

    Daimon and Thea both turned to see Thalia who has been silent since some time ago, she was clearly in shock and it was understandable, she believed that Dorian had a way topletely ignore the defenses of the castle where she lived, but that turned out to not be the case, he seemed to have been guided to her.

    "Daimon, do you think that guy pulled that off with luck or something rted to that woman¡­", mumbled Thalia, referring to system users, only to see Daimon shaking his head without a second of hesitation.

    "No, certainly opportunities doe to us more than to normal people, but there is a limit to how much one can deal with obstacles of a higher rank than us, also Dorian wasn''t a hero type so chances to turn the table around like that, aren''t his area of specialty, as for Gwen she didn''t interfere anymore, whatever that was, it was done from the other side", he said.

    It was futile to lie to Thalia, she knew the basic rules of system users already, since she was aware of missions, she didn''t want to directly think that someone who had authority over the defensive arrays of the castle guided "danger" to her room, on purpose, but Daimon directly crushed that illusion, it might hurt but it was for her own good and Daimon refused to sugar coat what he would firmly call a betrayal.

    Also, if Thalia was so much alike to Thea, Daimon believed she was strong enough to get over this, and he was right, after a couple of seconds of silence, Thalia regained herposure to then slightly smile at Daimon.

    "I see, thanks¡­ leaving that aside, I finally understand how I developed the ability detect those guy''s mana, back then I was half conscious, the mana of those chains was probably absorbed by me after some time, also I couldn''t hear the first voiceing from those tattoos, but wasn''t it simr to Travis?", she said, changing the subject.

    ''Those guys huh, so she doesn''t include you with other system users, how cute~'', jokingly said Evangeline from within Daimon''s mind.

    Daimon ignored that mischievous administrator of his and instead focused on Thalia''s words, that would exin why Travis stopped attacking them, when he arrived at the battleground, he probably recognized Thalia since her projection was out of the body she was possessing, that pendant he threw at her was actually a way to control all his army!

    "I don''t think it was exactly the same "person", but probably a new being born out of what was left over from that person", said Daimon as he touched the amphora ring, the feeling he got from Travis after he self-destroyed his body was slightly simr to the fire djinns he captured, not exactly the same, but he turned out to be a spirit type of being.

    It was different to Thalia, or the administrators who currently didn''t possess a physical body, Daimon could tell they couldn''t be put in the amphora ring, but Travis could, if he had submitted to him of course.

    Seeing Thalia get all the attention, the empress felt a strange bitter sensation flooding her chest, which led her to clear her throat to speak about her discovery.

    "Ahem, that "summoning tunnel" gave off a simr feeling to the space rift, below the Ryner n''s castle, perhaps it ended up fusing with it after that woman sent it away", she said as she drank from her cup.

    "That could exin why there was high qualityhering out of it when we went to see it, it was the leftover of that crystal which was attracted by Sarah", said Daimon as he nodded at Thea who hid her smile behind her cup.

    Daimon then clicked on the "next" button, to go to the next chapters, there were three which specifically mentioned the snake princesses, the second one was shorter though.

    Thea and Thalia were marveled at the projection disassembling to then form apletely different scenery, this time it was much more "merrier" situation, for Thalia at least.

    "I know we had a bad start, but I''m offering you the chance of your life, if you submit to me, I''ll help you reach heights that you can''t even imagine¡­", Dorian''s words were interrupted by a silver spear thrusting towards his face.

    "Dam it", Dorian cursed as he dodged, just to see a hole being pierced through his left thigh.

    "Didn''t you want my space affinity,e here and receive it right into that disgusting face of yours", the fierce voice of an angered Thalia could be hearding from every direction, making Dorian''s instincts scream "danger".

    "Screw it, Tyrant Hydra!", with those words, Dorian''s body was encased into a ck cocoon which broke the next second, as a giant snake with nine heads, each representing a different affinity based on its color and the element surrounding it, came out of it.

    "You bitch, I tried to give you a chance to be on equal standing as me, but now, you''ll be treated as a ve", said the nine headed snake, the heads alternated to say the words thatposed the whole sentence.

    "Humph", the Thalia on the projection, limited to coldly snort, she pointed her spear towards the sky and then released her domain, which simr to Thea, granted her a reinforced control over the space in a certain range.

    Unlike elemental domains, like fire, water and the like, Thea''s domain was more like a trapping domain that asphyxiated the enemy depriving him from the capacity to move through space, while allowing the empress to fiercely attack him from all directions.

    And Thalia''s one was simr, with a single but really noticeable difference, she could use space to directly attack her enemy!

    "Void Sky!", with those words, it was as if Thalia''s domain had turned into the snout of a giant snake, baring its fangs towards Dorian who felt his scalp numbing at the scale of Thalia''s attack, he couldn''t escape using spatial movement and he knew that if he tried to break through her domain, he will lose many parts of his body, leaving him with only one choice.

    "You crazy woman, go die already, Chaos Breath!", the nine heads pointed at different directions and streams of different elements were shot from each one, causing a sh between the enclosing domain and Dorian''s all out attack, certainly space can send enemy''s attacks flying away, but there is a limit.

    After all, it''s not like space is naturally set up to work against anyone, it is manipted through the mage''s mana to fulfill a specific purpose, in this case by Thalia to rip apart any physical thing it touches and deviate any energy thrown at it.

    So, Dorian chose the simplest and crudest way to deal with aplicated and strong spell since hecked a proper counter, he used a stupid amount of mana to outpower it, imagine it like this, if Thalia''s spell was a nuclear bomb, then Dorian poured a whole ocean''s worth of water to drown the explosion.

    The result was a sky shattering explosion and two figures being sent flying away in different directions, once the dust settled, the sight of a slightly wounded Thalia who wiped the blood out of her mouth was revealed.

    Her domain was damaged but she was still fine, since it wasn''t a physically manifested one and Dorian didn''t have enough strength to destroy space itself, speaking of Dorian, his previous nine headed hydra form was gone.

    "I''m going to kill you!", a hysterical scream came from a few kilometers away, while the main body of the hydra was still in a piece with some deep cuts and other scratches here and there, four heads werepletely gone starting all the way from their necks, cleanly shaved with the power of space.

    "I remember that, I honestly only had one more move I could use, but then that guy¡­fled", mumbled Thalia.

    Back at the projection, Dorian returned to his human form and then took out his magic weapon, which was actually a bident only to hear Gwen''s voice scolding him.

    ''Stop it you fool, you already lost too much against a secondary enemy, if she damages your promise level treasure, you''ll have no chance against that hero guy'', she said.

    Surprisingly Dorian directly ignored Gwen''s advice and proposed to charge at Thalia with burning hatred in his eyes, until he received a message through hismunication device.

    "L-Lord, the reinforces didn''t arrive, the hero''s armies are decimating our defenses ahhh!".

    "Count yourself lucky you damn woman, once I kill those bastards I''lle to settle this score for you, so do look up for the treatment of a ve!", with those words Dorian flew away, to get out of Thalia''s range of space interference, before using a one-time teleportation scroll to leave.

    "That was thest time I saw that idiot", said Thalia while Daimon chuckled knowing that this was caused by Marlene''s ancestors, the scene ended here and Daimon continued to thest one.

    The previous scenery, was reced by a vast burnt-outnd, tons of corpses of magic beasts and people from the mermen race could be seen all over the ce, in fact there were only two living beings in the whole area, one of them was Dorian whose point of view was shared with Daimon and the snake princesses.

    He was sitting on the ground, leaning his back against a rock while bleeding from his stomach, the second living being was a tall young man with long ck hair, someone who Daimon recognized, since he has gained the recognition of being a pain in the ass, the former hero, who caused Adam''s visit to Neptune, Ereth.

    "Fighting against me when you can''t even use 60% of your strength, what an idiot, whatever, at least I''ll finally finish this boring mission", said Ereth as he used his weapon, a trident that was now in possession of Daimon, since it was the Trident of the Storm, to rip Dorian''s head off his body.

    But that wasn''t all, the trident produced a fierce water stream inbination with a strong tornado, cutting and destroying Dorian''s corpse until only a puddle of blood and flesh was left, Ereth then nodded satisfied with his work and after waiting for a second, in which he probably received a notification, he left, disappearing from the scene a few secondster.

    "Heh, so even that cunning bastard was careless back then", mockingly said Daimon, if Dorian would have died, then the scene would have ended, so that meant that Ereth didn''t double check, hepletely relied on his system and missed a potential revenge, though it didn''t happen, but that just pure luck.

    To confirm the previous, countless small red snakes came out of the puddle of blood which was left from Dorian and piled together to then take the form of a person, who looked rather simr to Dorian but he was practically a sack of bones with skin.

    "Damn hero bastard, you were right Gwen since I couldn''t recover four heads in time for my battle with that guy, obtaining this "Red Fake Royal Cobra" half death ability, was a good idea even if I had to forfeit the mission, now how do I leave Gwen¡­ Gwen!", Dorian who was rambling realized that he didn''t receive an answer, no more than that he couldn''t feel his administrator anymore.

    "Hey where are you, this is not the time for¡­ aghhh!", Dorian''s words were interrupted midway by a bident piercing his chest, before a tall woman with silver-red hair appeared in front of him.

    "Y-You, what are you doing, you can''t kill me or you''ll die!", eximed Dorian as he saw Gwen approaching him with hostile intentions, only to see thetter smirking at him.

    "How can I kill someone that isn''t alive as of current, I must say that your luck is rather high, if only you weren''t an idiot, you could have be a host I would have chosen, back when I guided you to catch someone from a family that was out of your current level, I wanted you to die or at least end up seriously wounded to give up on the mission".

    "But you actually managed to kidnap a royal of the Void Devouring Python race, I felt you had potential just for you to stupidly let her escape and then end up being wounded by her, luckily you are too much of a coward to think on a way to win instead of a way to just survive".

    "You who choose the easy way to be a Tyrant by abusing of your subordinates instead of crushing your enemies, now you no longer meet the requirements to be considered even the most basic Tyrant and since my contract with you is only temporal, I won''t be erased if I kill you", said Gwen.

    "What are you talking about, you were the one who told me that a Tyrant doesn''t need to care about the opinions of others", said Dorian as he tried to look for a way out of this situation.

    "And you were stupid enough to not even try to think for yourself, like I said you had the luck to obtain such a high potential system as mine but were too much of an idiot to make proper use of it" she said as she retrieved the bident to then stab it on Dorian''s head, really killing him this time.

    Thalia actually smiled upon seeing the one who kidnapped her being betrayed and killed by hisrade, while Daimon frowned upon the sight of Gwen killing her host.

    ''No way, I thought she felt different but she actually killed her host with her own hands!'', eximed the angel girl Ariel from within the feather pendant, in a voice that only Daimon could hear.

    You might think that Ariel contributed to Adam''s death not helping him anymore, but that''s not the case, Adam used all the avable support from his system, also he lost the qualifications to be considered even the lower type of hero and ultimately Ariel didn''t do anything to cause the light idiot''s demise, she just stood aside at thest moment after he ignored her advices.

    Gwen on the other hand directly killed Dorian with her own hands, which Daimon thought wasn''t possible, not because Eve has confirmed that they are in a life and death contract, but because he instinctively learned that the administrator isn''t allowed to directly harm the host, otherwise said administrator would be punished ordingly.

    ''Eve, is this what you meant when you said that goal-wise she was way more dangerous than Ka?'', asked Daimon.

    ''Mm, getting away with killing one''s host isn''t a simple thing to achieve, since each time a method is used it can''t never be repeated again, as the rules get patched, that woman must have had reached a really high level of existence in her life, still no matter the achievement, once an administrator has killed a host then it will lose all her privileges and will be marked to be eliminated by any system user that crosses her path'', said Evangeline after a couple of seconds of silence.

    ''Wait, you knew she was a "rogue", since before meeting her in person?'' said Ariel, only be mocked by Evangeline.

    ''Don''t tell me you couldn''t feel it, little angel~'', she said.

    ''Humph, it did cross my mind since she felt strange, but she was using origin and also the core ability of a user!'', eximed Ariel in response.

    ''That''s why I said that she had reached a really high level before, to be honest I didn''t know the method she used before, but after seeing the memories of that guy, she turned a promise treasure into a cursed one through a ritual, killing its owner with it, then she used the corpse of the host to reform the treasure and his blood and flesh to create those new races, even his existence wasn''t spared, to know about such obscure arts, the "Abyss" in the name of the system she administrated must have originated on her'', said Eve to then add.

    ''If you call me big sister and ept to sign a contract with Daimon, I wouldn''t mind sharing more of my knowledge with you~.

    ''My previous statement still stands, if he helps me to get rid of the Devil Ruler system user, I''ll ept a temporary contract with him, however depending on what happens after that I¡­ might consider a life and death contract'', limited to say Ariel before she returned to silence, isting herself inside the feather pendant.

    All this while the blurred figure of a girl floating inside a virtual space, thought to herself.

    ''Hehe, I got you~''.

    Unaware of Evangeline''s schemes, Daimon retrieved the memory orb, he had obtained some important information just with those three chapters, obviously Evangeline needed Daimon to see and hear some things firsthand to be able to talk about some specific matters, which is why she only exined about why Gwen was an enemy to be wary off, until now.

    Also, Thalia now knew more about her kidnapping, while Thea got to experience the aura of the ce of origin of her race and also saw what she''ll be able to do once she learns to fully exploit her innate talent with space, not to mention they got to see and learn about system users, both snake princesses benefitted from this experience.

    As for Daimon, not only he saw the usefulness of the memory orb, but he also learned quite a few important things, anyway his time with the empress hase to an end, he still had a day but he was considering, leaving earlier.

    As if feeling Daimon''s intention to leave early, Thea jumped out of the bed and then grabbed Daimon''s arm to drag him to towards the dining room.

    "Let''s go grab something to eat, Daimon, then I want to try the new function of the contract with you, you won''t leave until then, right?", asked the empress trying her best to give Daimon puppy eyes.

    Daimon chuckled in response, to then say.

    "Fine, I''ll stay until the portal naturally appears, but then I''ll have to leave, okay".

    With those words, Thea took Daimon to the dining room, followed by Thalia, not expecting what the Lamia queen had in store for him.

 Chapter 586: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters version (part 1)

    Those three arrived at the dining room of the royal castle and were weed with an interesting sight, back when Daimon and Thea arrived at the castle of the Lamia queen, besides Nea there weren''t any others servants due to the recent assassination attempt that Naomi had gone through.

    However, after that was solved with Daimon''s help, all the servants, maids and other staff were allowed to return, which is why it was strange that the only person in the dining room was Nea, well besides the two Lamia princesses who were already sitting at the table.

    Before Daimon could ask what was going on as well as where was Mirellia, a merryugh could be hearding from the kitchen, before the Lamia queen entered the dining room, easily carrying a giant tray withrge sized dishes.

    Among which, there was grilled meat from high ranked magic beasts, soup, sd, bread and other simple but delicious looking food, making it obvious that the royal chefs didn''t prepare it, a supposition that was confirmed by Mirellia a secondter.

    "I wanted to prepare a meal as a sign of good will, it''s not too fancy but I hope you like it", said the Lamia queen as she ced the food on the table to then serve Daimon a portion of everything.

    Daimon felt the gazes of the Lamia princesses as well as Nea, apparently Mirellia wasn''t letting anyone else take a bite until he tried so he did, the vor was actually rather familiar, in what form you ask, the taste was a bit "clumsy" since the Lamia queen was obviously new at cooking.

    But there was a certain charm to these dishes made with the best intentions and basic cooking skills, simr to when the Risha sisters learned hot to cook from their mothers, the difference being that this time the one waiting to listen what his opinion on the food was like, was the Lamia queen.

    ''Hehehe, first fox girls, then the bird girls and nowmias, it seems like the food strategy is a thing regardless of race or culture~'', jokingly said Evangeline, it was true though, ine had talent as a chef so she prepared some nice meals for Daimon, and as soon as Erin and Liz got wind of that, they involved themselves into it.

    "Ahem, it''s quite good, thanks", said Daimon as he dug in, making the Lamia queen softly smile, only then the others were allowed to participate on the feast, Nea included.

    "Humph, quite good he says, we had to suffer through the trial and error, earlier", mumbled Naomi, which earned her a smile which wasn''t a smile from her mother.

    While Ferris inwardlyughed at the misfortune of her sister, Naomi hid her startled expression with her cup, besides that the rest of the meal was rather uneventful but when everyone had their fill, Mirellia once again drew everyone''s attention as she pulled a small brown box with a dark gray snake emblem on it to then hand it over to Daimon.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow but he received the thing, just as he wondered why there was no obvious way to open that little box, the snake emblem shone and then the box evaporated, turning into a crystalized drop of gray liquid which radiated a familiar sensation, while revealing the content of the box, a brown ring.

    "This is¡­", Daimon inspected the two objects with his eyes, the gray crystal was crystalized mana, simr to the snake sapphire refined by the first Lamia queen, but this one belonged to the one whose blood essence he absorbed not too long ago, the first Naga queen, in other words it was an agglomeration of energy refined by a Maximum Ster ranked throughout all her life!

    As for the ring, he was even more confused, the ring was a magic treasure for sure, but he couldn''t tell what its effects were as of current, what he could tell was that it was resonating with something in this room.

    "You can feel it right, that ring is theplement of this", said the Lamia queen as she pointed at her crown, which is a subject in which Daimon was interested, because despite being one of the three legacy treasures of the Melliun kingdom, it had no effects.

    Under the expectation filled eyes of the Lamia queen, Daimon wore the brown ring, which asked for permission to take some of his blood, after epting the preciousckluster exterior of the ring, gained new life, shinning in a dazzling gray light as if to announce its existence.

    Mirellia''s crown responded in kind, and so those two learned the effects of their respective treasures, which actually were the same.

    "My crown allows me to detect the location of the one who is using the ring, regardless of the distance, once, it also says that it can save my life once and¡­", the Lamia queen stopped her words as she read the third effect.

    "It increases thepatibility between those who wear these two treasures by five times", said Daimon.

    While Nea and the Lamia princesses nearly choked with the desserts, they were enjoying a second ago.

    "Ahem, since the Lamia race is a matriarchy for obvious reasons, only one crown was made, but the first queen asked for a ring for her friend to be smithed, it was a sign of their friendship and a symbol of the alliance between the two races".

    "However, by the time the first Naga queen had grown old, she noticed that her descendants became distant from the her friend''s, so she sealed the ring and returned it to the second queen who had already taken over as the first one died before her friend, the conditions to retrieve the ring was that the Lamia queen in turn would be willing to trust her life on the Naga ruler of her choice¡­ unfortunately things got worse and this ring remained sealed, while at the same time the Lamia crown lost its purpose, until now", said Mirellia.

    "I see, still you could have given it to the Mein queen, right?", asked Daimon, making Mirellia chuckle, at the fact that he noticed that the sole Naga queen carried the blood of the first queen, but it was understandable since Daimon entered in direct contact with the blood essence of said queen.

    "The Mein queen does descend from the direct lineage of the first Naga queen, since her ancestor was originally the one that should have reigned over all the Naga race, but it mysteriously "disappeared" and her older sister who was the ancestor of the Nascenti family, took over, since then the Nagas divided themselves in four, three governed by the three princesses that were still alive and the leftover "mixes" who were tossed aside".

    "Luckily the original heir, had already had a daughter who was raised by her surviving maid and that that baby who grew to be the ancestor of the Mein family, who took in all the mixed Nagas", said Mirellia to then add.

    "Unfortunately, her linage had thinned down too much, she wouldn''t be able to wear that ring, also I wanted to give it to you, I didn''t think it would have such an effect though", the second part of her sentence was said in much lower voice.

    Daimon gazed at the ring and was lost in his thoughts, thepatibility to which the ring and crown referred, wasn''t specifically defined, it might refer to team work in battle, meditation or even¡­ night activities.

    "Perhaps the first queens were "closer" than what they appeared to be", said Daimon, making Mirellia, Nea and Ferris, blush a bit, while Naomi seemed to not get the meaning behind Daimon''s words.

    "Well, they both remained single until their death and had their daughters by using their own blood, we kept that tradition but the Naga royal family was split and they changed their customs", mumbled Mirellia.

    "Mmm, we snake-rted races tend to have the problem of being female exclusive, luckily my ancestor developed the knight contract, allowing my race to produce offspring without thinning our blood and also inheriting the benefits from the father side", added Thalia, making the Thea''s face redden on the spot.

    "C-Can''t you stop mentioning that at every chance", eximed the empress, to which Thalia smirked.

    "You can always cancel your contract, you know?", she said.

    "Dream on!", immediately retorted the empress.

    "Humph", both snake princesses ended up snorting at each other and then getting up from the table and shing towards the training room, topete on who will evolve/recover their lineage innate talents faster, leaving behind a Daimon who couldn''t help but inwardly sigh and a Lamia queen who was giggling at those two falling on her trap, leaving Daimon alone with her daughters and herself.

    "Are you leaving today?", asked the Lamia queen, which made both Ferris and Naomi to gaze at him.

    "Yes, I don''t know the time, but I''ll be leaving Draim today, my other friends have also found simr situations to Thea" said Daimon, while he didn''t exin everything about the challenges and all that to the Lamia queen and princesses, but he did exin about Neptune and also about him not being a prince, though he is indeed the young master of two of the major forces at the four gxies, he even told them about the basics of the four gxies, for a good reason.

    Daimon knew he could trust the Lamia queen and her daughters, also from the very beginning he was ready for the question that Mirellia was about to make.

    "I see¡­ would it be possible for you to help us leave Draim, even if it''s only my daughters that is still fine", she said, while clenching her hands below the table.

    "Mom¡­", the two princesses gazed at their mother with aplex expression on their pretty faces, the Lamia princesses had always wanted to explore the outside world, but they weren''t the only ones, unlike the other Lamia nobles, Mirellia and Nea had never been too attached to their status, instead what they longed for was freedom.

    Probably because both their mothers died due to the conflicts of Melliun as well as Gwen and the overall situation of Draim, they grew to be quite independent of their subjects, unlike previous queens and their respective aides, those two enjoyed the thrill of the battlefield and adventure, in that sense they were quite simr to the first queens, so the fact that they put the two princesses over themselves showed how much they cared for them.

    "Ahem", not knowing how to interrupt this touching moment, Daimon cleared his throat to then say.

    "I''m sorry, but right now I can''t take anyone with me", the mood of the Lamia queen, princesses and Nea, went down a few notches on the spot, only for their eyes to sparkle the next second.

    "Even Thea and Thalia will stay behind for now, but they''llter follow me back to Neptune or back to my ce of origin, take this chance to organize everything here, so that you four can tag along when the timees", he said.

    The Lamia princesses and Nea immediately got up and left to do their preparations, while Mirellia smiled at Daimon.

    "Thanks", she limited to say before leaving.

    ''I can''t wait to see how will that fox and wolf women will react, when they see all the new "friends" you are bringing home, others came to look for resources, treasures, magic technology and new knowledge, but you came wife hunting~'', jokingly said Evangeline, making Daimon sigh.

    He had gotten a lot of all the previous, but is also true that he met a lot of girls who had be close with him.

    ''Was it me or¡­ was it that the opportunities stole from those two were casually rted to meeting, tricking or killing them'', he wondered.

    ¡­

    The rest of the day went quite smoothly, Daimon tried to help Thea and Thalia with meditating, but those two were too focused onpeting with each other, besides Thalia said that the first meditation session for a princess of the Neris family, will take whole day, so it was postponed and so the night came and Daimon who was sitting on the bed, with Thea resting next to him, drinking from her cup, felt a sudden movement in his pocket.

    His ck sea emblem came flying out of his pocket and the rune shark was manifested the next second, biting the space to create the portal to the next challenge, something that drew Thalia''s attention, since it looked slightly simr to how those in beast form from her family would open portals with their special fangs.

    "I guess it''s time to leave, see youter dear ancestor", jokingly said Thea to Thalia as she got up, making Daimon cough a couple of times, he didn''t tell her that she had to stay behind, because he knew how the empress was going to react, but now he had to.

    "You can''t follow me to the next challenge, Thea¡­", Daimon hadn''t even ended his sentence when the empress turned to intensely gaze at him, while Thalia was doing her best not lo wildlyugh at her.

    "Why?", she asked with serious voice.

    "It''s for the sake of the challenges, the portal opened by my emblem can only be used by me, but yours will receive a mark to followter", he said.

    Thea pouted, she approached the portal and then tried to punch it, her spear was still in the snake tattoo at the reverse of her hand, but she could still manipte space without it, to a certain extent.

    "Booom!", before her fist could reach the portal, Thea was repelled backwards, the empress then fiercely gazed at the rune shark and was about to fight it, to demand her to be taken along with Daimon, when thetter interrupted her.

    "It''s for a good reason, you can''t temporarily use your spear, the time flow in Draim is different than the outside world, so you can finish your initial integration with the blood legacy here, when the timees, you''ll be able to fight alongside me with all your strength" he said.

    The empress''s eyes glowed, she was convinced by Daimon''s reasoning, however she still didn''t want to be left behind.

    "Humph, I bet Marlene is already there", she mumbled, making Daimon bitterly smile, the scene of that kiss mark shinning on his cheek was still fresh in her mind.

    "She stayed behind without making trouble though", said Daimon and as he expected, the empress cutely bit her lip and then epted to stay in Draim until her emblem summoned her to Daimon''s side.

    "You aren''t going to leave without saying goodbye to us, right?", a mellow, voice interrupted the empress''s antics, as Mirellia, Ferris, Naomi and even Nea entered the room.

    "Well normally this little thing doesn''t wait for me, but I guess it was different this time", said Daimon, the rune shark didn''t urge him to enter the portal unlike normal, since it was being threatened by Thea not too long ago.

    The Lamia princesses exchanged gazes before they both approached Daimon, Ferris took the initiative to offer her hand to Daimon so he would hold it like when they met the first time.

    "The next time we meet, my lineage manifestation will be stronger, I hope we can train them together then", said Ferris, as Daimon epted her hand to say goodbye.

    "Sure", it was short interaction but Ferris was happy with the result, next was the younger Lamia princess who had an awkward expression on her face, but ultimately looked downwards as she eximed.

    "Don''t you dare die before I can pay you back for bullying me!", without letting Daimon say anything she rushed back to Ferris''s side and Nea took over.

    "Thanks for helping us, it might not mean much, but if you need some help, just say the word", said the light green hairedmia girl, before opening way for Mirellia.

    "Nea stole my words, so I''ll do this instead~", the under the surprised eyes of all the girls in the room, the Lamia queen leaned down and softly kissed Daimon''s forehead.

    Let alone Thea and Thalia who nearly screamed at the previous scene, even Daimon was temporarily in shock, at least until he saw the Lamia queen wink at him, before she pushed him into the portal, the rune shark jumped into it, closing the entrance to the dimensional tunnel a secondter.

    Not without allowing Daimon to hear the exmations of the Lamia princesses as well as Thea and Thalia.

    "Mom!".

    "H-Hey what was that".

    Nea didn''t say anything but she stole a gaze at her childhood friend while thinking to herself.

    ''Don''t tell me she is actually¡­ interested on him''.

    ¡­

    Leaving the chaos caused by Mirellia, Daimon found himself in thatplex dimensional tunnel once again, he could still feel the soft touch of the Lamia queen''s lips on his skin and he could also listen to Evangeline''sugh from within his mind.

    Luckily the travel didn''t take long, apparently his sea emblem took advantage of the abundance of space mana in the vicinity of Draim to shorten the travel, around half an hour and he travelled enough to reach his destination.

    Something that caught his attention is that since a while ago he hadn''t seen any exits in the dimensional tunnel, also the amount ofher in the tunnel increased a lot.

    ''I guess this will be thest stop of the challenges, I still don''t know anything about mine in specific though'', thought Daimon as he jumped into the sole portal at that opened for him.

    The scenery changed from the dark dimensional tunnel to an open vast ne, there were small mounds here and there and there was a smell akin to iron floating on the air, Daimon looked upwards and reminded something mentioned by Walford earlier at Agrak''s casino.

    "Blood sky battlefield¡­ or so I would like to say, but this is different than what I expected", said Daimon as he observed at the sky which was conformed by red, ck and dark pink tones.

    Just as the undead head maid was about to tell Daimon what she found by doing her scan of routine, Daimon felt a chill running down his spine, making him raise his guard but it was a bit toote, as a figure which appeared out of nowhere and restrained his movements by holding onto his body from behind.

    Daimon''s pupils shrank, his body exploded in white mes by instinct, but just then a strange sound prevented him from using Disaster to sh the "enemy" down.

    "Hmmm~", Daimon listened to that strange sound and the strange sensation from earlier now made sense, everything clicked when he saw a few strands of purple hair from the corner of his eyes.

    "I swear, one day I am going to sh you either on purpose or by mistake", said Daimon, just to hear a shamelessugh apanied by a tempting voice.

    "I''ll look up to it~", in case you still hadn''t guessed it, the one who was hugging Daimon right now, was the crazy girl, Sarah.

 Chapter 587: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters version (part 2)

    "Hey, how did you do that?", asked Daimon to the devilish ko that was hugging him with a steel-like grip, luckily Daimon''s body was tougher than metal, other guy would have had his bones shattered by the innately strong crazy girl who was also a knight.

    Anyway, back to the important subject, Sarah not only bypassed the undead head maid''s initial detection, she also was fast enough to take Daimon by surprise, only his instincts reacted on time, unfortunately she wasn''t ssified as a "threat" by them, so his body didn''t automatically defend against her assault.

    "A queen can always return to her king''s side~", said the crazy girl as she tried to rub her face against Daimon''s, only for her to be stopped in cold by a shadow hand that got in between.

    "Humph", a soft snort could be hearding from Daimon''s shadow, chains surrounded Sarah''s arms, legs and neck and forcefully separated her from Daimon.

    "Don''t listen to her nonsense Daimon, she simply teleported from a distance long enough to be out of my "perfect sense" and then did the same thing again as soon as she appeared to dodge my countermeasure", said Rita as she kept adding chain after chain around Sarah''s body, until only her head, hands and feet were visible.

    Daimon nodded at Rita and was momentarily lost in his thoughts, her reasoning made sense, Sarah somehow used a spatial movement spell that was fast and covered enough distance to bypass the undead head maid''s senses and his own detection.

    ''This better not be a permanent thing¡­'', he thought.

    "Daimon, how do you wish to dispose of this menace, should I throw her up into the prison of my castle?", asked the undead head maid, making Daimon return to the real world.

    "Hey, why not chain me to your bed instead~", merrily said the crazy girl, who almost drooled as she imagined Daimon putting a leash on her, with the other end being tied to the frame of his bed.

    While Rita felt her eyebrow twitch due to anger, Daimon sighed as he shook his head.

    "Forget it, I bet she''ll end up enjoying it anyway", he said, making Sarah giggle to then say.

    "Come on, I was a good girl, I just wanted some love after a really long time of not seeing you", said the crazy girl, as impossible as it might sound, Daimon actually believed her, since their time in Kerrol, the crazy girl learnt that if she didn''t cross certain boundaries, Daimon wouldn''t avoid her.

    Since rejecting her will only flip her switch, this was the best and only way Daimon found to deal with her, one had to give it to her, Erin used to be the only one who could force Daimon to his wit''s end, but the crazy girl became the second one, sure she did it by going to the extreme instead of calcted plotting unlike that fox girl, but it was still an achievement.

    ''Whatever, I had memorized that energy firm from earlier, so no one else using that will be able topletely bypass my detection'', thought Rita as she pouted.

    Of course, Daimon could tell that the undead head maid was sulking, not only because Sarah was annoying but because she took pride in her detection and the crazy girl bypassed her.

    Luckily for Rita, a chance to "redeem" herself came a couple of minutes after the appearance of the crazy girl.

    "Someone ising, two people, they''ll appear at twenty meters right and the other fifty meters left", said the undead head maid, her statement was confirmed a secondter when the space at those specific spots blurred and two familiar voices could be hearding seemingly out of nowhere.

    "See I told you that psycho would even let her allies suffer as long as she could be here before us, even if it was just a few seconds", said the first voice with a tinge of anger.

    "Don''t be like that, the round was practically over¡­ besides we all wanted toe as soon as we noticed it", said the second voice with a mellower tone.

    The blurs in the space disappeared, revealing a pair of pretty girls one light blond haired with light green eyes and the other who looked a bit older and had dirty blond hair as well as dark green eyes, of course we are talking about the recently reunited sisters, Jasmine and Reyne.

    Both sisters looked downwards and their eyes sparkled the very second, they saw Daimon standing there a few meters away from them, but then they both saw the crazy girl who was chained up on the ground with a dumb happy face while she gazed at Daimon and they both sighed, as they descended from the sky.

    "It''s good to see you two are doing fine", said Daimon, the atmosphere between Jasmin and Reyne wasn''t awkward anymore, they have apparently gotten closer thanks to whatever they have experienced so far.

    "Mm, besides that menace driving me crazy every five seconds or so, it hasn''t been that bad", said Reyne as she gave Daimon a quick hug to greet him, making Jasmine pout, her sister was way more daring than her.

    "Hey you joined the groupst, so me and Jas are your seniors, wait until Jas receives her dose of Daimon~", untactfully said the crazy girl, making Jasmine''s face turn red as an apple.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, Jasmine was quite more reservedpared to her sisters, so he simply ced his hand on the top of her head, words weren''t needed, Jasmine smiled at Daimon and the greeting time was over.

    "Ahem, young master, before we were interrupted, I had something to report¡­", mumbled Rita as she dispelled the shadow chains binding Sarah, against her wishes of course.

    "What happened?", asked Daimon as he dodged to the right, making Sarah end up hugging Jasmine, the crazy girl pouted trying to imitate Jasmine to see if she could get something out of it, but she was ignored by Daimon, which by itself made her happy.

    "Those women from the ck Night race, contacted me a moment ago, they said they could feel "something" strongly calling them from the north, also I bet Daimon already knows this, but practically all the other members of the team who we haven''t met so far, are here, including those four from earlier", said the undead head maid.

    Daimon nodded, he couldn''t directly pinpoint their positions unlike Rita, but he could feel their overall direction, Calvin, Michael, Haylee, Loren, Cassy, Chris, the Risha sisters and even Lance and his second inmand "Julio" were here, but they weren''t the only ones, Daimon was surprised to feel the presences of Scarlet and the others whom he hadn''t met since they separated before arriving at Neptune from the firstyer of the magic ruin, he wondered how did they ended up here.

    But that wasn''t all, there was another thing that didn''t with his understanding of the challenges.

    ''I thought only I was able to participate in the challenges of the girls involved in the missions, so howe these three are here at the same time'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "Can you show me, Rita?".

    "Mm", the undead head maid happily nodded as she shared her sight with Daimon, going through the different battlefield were Calvin and the others were finishing their fights, it didn''t escape Daimon''s eyes that Calvin and the others were not only moving and fighting on a level that far surpassed their realms, but also there were¡­hereals fighting alongside them.

    And that wasn''t all, the subordinates from the other participants of the Global Raid were also here, the pirates and beast guys from the Maelstrom Sea that worked with Marcus, the guys that were killed and then revived by Ereth, the young generation of the ck Fortress sect, among which it was worth mentioning that Skyme and Purplehaze were andst but not least the young nobles and royal guards sent by Arlion, including Walford which Daimon met earlier at Marlene''s challenge.

    ''What a mess, those bastards must have done something'', thought Daimon before saying.

    "So could you exin what''s going on?".

    "Mm", those three nodded, but then a trumpet echoed throughout the sky and they started to disappear, Jasmine hurried to snap her fingers and Daimon was transported alongside them.

    ¡­

    The next thing Daimon knew is that he appeared in a luxurious-looking living room and he wasn''t the only one.

    "Daimon!", three mellow surprised voices made him turn to his left, where the Risha sisters had just appeared.

    "Yo, I knew you would join in the fun sooner orter", said Calvin, it hasn''t been that long since they met Daimon so he wasn''t particrly enthusiastic, also it would be suicide to get in the way of the Risha sisters reunion with Daimon.

    Those three wanted nothing more than rush towards Daimon, but they saw all the others appearing here all of a sudden and had to stop midway, that being said they sat down on the couch and patted the seat in the middle of them, clearly wanting Daimon to sit with them, something with which he had toply, as he could see the bittersweet light in their eyes.

    ''I can practically read their minds "Why did hee to help those three but not us", you are in for some trouble~'', jokingly said Evangeline.

    "Young master", Scarlet, Ruby, Amber, Jade and Lapis approached Daimon and slightly bowed their heads towards him to greet him, Daimon nodded back at them and they took seat on the couch in front of Daimon, since they were being death-red by the Risha sisters.

    Lance and Julio simply lightly nodded at Daimon and remained standing at the corner of the room, Cassy did the same but Chris did approach Daimon with a slightly worried expression on her face.

    "Did you meet Daphne, is she alright?", she asked to which Daimon nodded.

    "Don''t worry, she passed her challenge without any problems, in fact I bet you''ll be surprised the next time you see her", he said with a slight smirk on the corner of his mouth.

    Chris let out a sigh of relief, she was worried about her friend''s wellbeing, but when she met Calvin and the others, she was told that Daimon probably met her before and that she should be fine, however she needed to hear it directly from Daimon himself to stop worrying.

    "How did you all end up here, did youe here after finishing your challenge, or is this your challenge?", asked Daimon to all the presents.

    Chris was the first one to answer, unaware that she stole the chance to exin from the Risha sisters, since she was still distracted by getting to know about Daphne''s situation.

    "We all had our challenges and some time after finishing them, we were brought to this ce", she said, after she passed her challenge, she had to stay to initially integrate the reward she obtained and when she finished with that and tried to look for a way to go reunite with Daphne, she was thrown into a dimensional tunnel that ended up here.

    The others nodded, agreeing with her exnation, that still left a loose end though, was this ce like this to begin with or something happened to change it, luckily Jasmine, Reyne and Sarah were arriving at the living room just now, to exin that part.

    "Sorry, we had to wait until the briefing of thest round was given to us", said Reyne, she proposed to sit next to Daimon only to be met with the sight of the Risha sisters sitting at his sides, making her exchange gazes with those three, but their staring contest ended when the crazy girl sat on the ground, right at Daimon''s feet.

    "Ahem, to answer your question from earlier, this ce wasn''t like this from the very beginning, me, Reyne and Sarah had our own challenge to deal with but¡­ not too long after starting, they somehowbined", said Jasmine trying to smooth things between her sister and the Risha sisters, while inwardly sighing at the sight of Sarah trying to hold onto Daimon''s leg.

    "More urately the boss of one of the guys who appeared alongside little Jasmine, broke into her challenge but couldn''t interfere so he went to north and his presence disappeared not too long after, then this cebined with the ones where those two were taking their challenges", added a voice which seemingly came out of nowhere, before the image of a woman with half white and half ck hair appeared behind Jasmine, it was Joanna whose core apanied Jasmine just in case.

    "Could you recognize who it was?", asked Daimon to the Light Pce''s ancestor, who giggled in response.

    "If you let little Jasmine sit on yourp, I''ll tell you~", she said, once again confirming she was indeed rted to Sarah, who actually gave her thumbs up from the ground.

    "A-Aunt Joanna!", eximed Jasmine with an ashamed expression on her pretty face as she tried to catch Joanna''s core.

    "Hahaha, sorry, sorry, I couldn''t help it, you really resemble my sister from back then, it was the guy who took control over the Clear Water kingdom", she said.

    ''Arlion, luckily he isn''t interested in Jasmine nor it was that bastard of Ereth¡­ though with Joanna''s help, Jasmine should have been able to at least escape, that being said, where did that bastard go'', thought Daimon

    "I can''t be a 100% sure, but I think that guy who killed the ckfin family probably passed through my challenge, I could only notice it because I sensed an aura simr to the one of the bitch, we fought with at Kerrol", said the crazy girl, referring to Ka.

    "Mmm, I''m not good with the identities, but I heard a guy arguing with woman who insulted him in response", added Reyne.

    "That should be Marcus¡­", mumbled Daimon, apparently Arlion, Ereth and also Marcus ended up showing up here, but they were unable to interfere with the challenges so instead they went up and did something before leaving, meaning that this wasn''t their final destination, which also meant that this wasn''t his since they were his opponents.

    But first thing first, if his ck sea emblem brought him here, then he had a role to fulfill in those three''s challenges, or in the challenge resulting from the mix of their original challenges, which brought us to Daimon''s next question.

    "Okay, since those three bastards aren''t here, then things shouldn''t be that bad, what is this challenge about?", he asked.

    "Mine was called "Toxic Domination", basically the ones participating had to choose from some sealedhereals and make them work for you, I was in the middle of choosing and the next thing I knew is that Reyne was a few meters away from me, ah right those girls who "smelled" like you appeared next to me out of nowhere~", said the crazy girl as she pointed at Scarlet and the others who by the way had changed quite a bit.

    Their previous unique skin tones, which went from red for Scarlet and Ruby, brown for Amber, light green for Jade and sky blue for Lapis, were gone, they now had human-like skin color, Amber looked like a tanned girl though, also their hairs were now painted with the same color of their previous skin tone, but that wasn''t the most eye-catching change they had gone through but the fact that they now¡­ were mages and knights.

    That''s right, those girls who originally couldn''t get stronger had found their way to, probably during the challenge they had gone through, not only that, they were early-stage Lord ranks already, with the exception of Ruby who was a four-star mage, probably because she was still quite young and Amber who had already reached the middle stage of the Lord rank, also she and Scarlet were the only knights on their group.

    "I see", said Daimon as he inspected those five''s mana circuits with his infinity eyes, the energy they were using wasn''t old regr mana, buther or something simr to it, there was a strong emotion mixed in the energy that circted through their bodies, but unlikeher, it wasn''t on the negative side of the specter.

    Scarlet and the others smiled at Daimon, they wanted to tell him everything about their adventure, especially the young Ruby, but they knew to wait until he had caught up with his friends, in any case Daimon saw they were happy and in high spirits and that''s all that mattered for now.

    Reyne saw that Sarah was getting all the attention and she pouted, she wasn''t shameless enough to sit on the ground right next to Daimon''s feet, to she simply cleared her throat to then say.

    "Ahem, my challenge was called "Dead Resources", we had to use the materials from the corpses of some strange magic beasts that were quite well preserved to fight with each other, I just finished choosing the magic beast I was going to use when that menace appeared not too far from me", she said as she pointed at the crazy girl.

    Last but not least, it was Jasmine''s turn.

    "Mine was "Bloody Strategy", the participants had to take control of some strange nk golems using either buffs or debuffs, to give them special functions, in order to capture the enemy''s leader, before the challenge started, I appeared next to Sarsh and Reyne, and then everyone else started arriving".

    "Did the challenges remained the same or they were altered after you ended up together?", asked Daimon.

    "Mmm, half and half, the individual rules of the original challenges remained, they respectively apply to each one of us, but there was also a change that applied to the three of us altogether", said Reyne.

    "We were given titles with assigned abilities, for me, Sarah and Reyne we got the "queen" tittle, with the ability to move as we please through the battlefield, we can assign one of the other tittles to our allies, be it knight, rook or bishop and we get an overall boost based on our allies, but it only works during the official round of battle, which is why we are staying in the safe zone, namely this mansion", added Jasmine.

    ''I guess that exins how that crazy girl bypassed Rita''s detection'', thought Daimon as he nodded, the new rules obviously resembled those of chess, but they weren''tpletely the same, after all counting everyone here there wouldn''t be enough pieces for the those three to have each a set of knights, rooks and bishops, though they did have all their "pawns" provided by their original challenges.

    "The other participants were turned into knights, rooks and bishops unlike us and we haven''t been able to see who is leading them now, there had only been some skirmishes here and the since we couldn''t start the real thing, until thest remaining "position" was assigned, the king~", said the crazy girl.

    "So that''s what you meant earlier, I thought it was just your usual rambling", casually said Daimon, making Jasmine giggle.

    "Hey ss rep, you must stand up for me, I told those three that I could y the role of king and they beat the hell out of me",ined Calvin, which earned him a death re from Reyne, Sarah and even the usually docile Jasmine.

    "Ahem, what I meant is that these threedies insisted on waiting for you", said Calvin in response to those murderous gazes.

    "I swear one day that mouth of yours is going to kill you", added Michael, which made Hayle and Loren chuckle.

    Daimon bitterly smiled, now that his attention was drawn by Calvin, he confirmed his previous supposition, he, Michael and even Haylee and Loren had advanced, Calvin and Michael were early stage seventh star mages!

    While Haylee and Loren became peak fifth star mages, the difference in advancement was probably because Calvin and Michael suffered the most during their time when they were captured, after recovering and then going into their respective challenged they were able to make multiple advances, it was normal.

    ''That stupid magic core of mine better wakes up soon, I can''t be left behind by everyone in my ss'', thought Daimon.

    Still Calvin''s newfound glory didn''tst long, with his new realm he would normally have been able to fight against any of the threehereal sisters, well with the exception of Sarah since she has started to learn about Will Maniption, courtesy of the strange atmosphere of Kerrol.

    Unfortunately for the young master of the desert coyote race, not only Sarah was stronger than him in her base form now, but Jasmine and Reyne had their respective boosting spells, so the three of them joining hands was more than enough to kick his ass, he also didn''t resist of course.

    In any case, his skin was quite thick both literally and figuratively, so contrary to hisins he didn''t really suffer¡­ too much.

    Daimon then felt bitternessing at him from his sides, where the Risha sisters who had the word "notice us" written all over their pretty faces, were stealing nces at him from time to time.

    Of course, they had also advanced and since they had some of Daimon''s mana still lingering in their bodies, they could tell he scanned Calvin and the others, but hadn''t done the same with them.

    ''These jealous girls¡­'', thought Daimon, still he knew exactly how to appease them.

    "Ahem, I can''t believe you advanced so fast, after breaking through not too long ago, you should be able to store more mana for your wings now, right?".

    The Risha sisters''s eyes sparkled, Daimon wasn''t just speaking empty words, he was indeed surprised, using the elemental conversion array of the Flying Citadel they had reached the fifth star realm in preparation for the Global Raid, and now they were peak sixth star mages, their growth was amazing.

    You might argue that Calvin and Michael advanced more, but they were focusing solely on their realms, while the Risha sisters put more focus on developing their wings, so arge part of their time was dedicated to that.

    Daimon who thought he was out of danger after appeasing the Risha sisters, was brought back to real world when three crown symbols, one purple, one red and one white,nded on him.

    "And with that you are our king, shouldn''t we start working on producing an heir as soon as possible~", said the crazy girl as she licked her lips, earning a cold re from the Risha sisters.

    ''Now imagine when they meet your fox and wolf girls, not to mention Aisha~'', said Evangeline who was really enjoying the drama.

    ''Don''t forget about me Eve!'', added Narasha, making Daimon worry about his future, but for now there was something else that was worth worrying for.

    Now that he received the "king" position from those three, he could somewhat feel the presence of the other kings and they had a certain familiar aura to them.

    ''Something is weird, they feel rather weak, I guess it''s time to "activate" that guy'', thought Daimon as he inwardly smirked.

 Chapter 588: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters version (part 3)

    Seeing Daimon being lost in his thoughts, Jasmine hesitated for a couple of seconds before she asked what was in the mind of Sarah, Reyne and herself.

    "Now that our challenge has officially started, are you going to leave to chase after those guys?", she mumbled while avoiding Daimon''s eyes, making thetter shake his head.

    "No, if my presence was needed, wherever those three bastards are as of current, my sea emblem would have taken me there, since my challenge is for sure rted to them, so my priority right now is to help you three", he said.

    As expected, those three''s eyes sparkled on the spot, the crazy girl giggled as she stretched her body and then rubbed her face against Daimon''s leg, like a cat who wants his owner''s attention.

    "Don''t be shy, if you want to stay with me and little Jas, just say it~", she happily said.

    As if their previous happy reactions weren''t enough, Sarah''s words made the Risha sisters feel their little maiden hearts fill with jealousy, at least until they felt a soothing and warm sensation spreading all the way from their upper backs, where Daimon''s mana was being poured into them.

    The Risha sisters went from being in a sour mood, to have reddened faces since Daimon was cing his hands on their backs, well that was the case for Yvonne and Leslie, while Liliana was resting her shoulder against Daimon''s, any contact worked for them to receive Daimon''s mana, but they certainly enjoyed having the base of their wings, caressed by Daimon.

    ''Next time, it will be my turn'', said Liliana to her sisters, who limited to slightly nod withfortable expressions on their pretty faces.

    Daimon who could see their reactions from beginning to end, inwardly sighed.

    ''These three have be rather greedy, from being able to barely contain 5% of my mana reserves each, they can nowfortably store a whole 10% each and they haven''t even reached the ninth star realm, luckily the rewards of their challenges were good, otherwise this might end up being a blood bath'', he thought.

    All the girls involved with the mission, had benefitted not only thanks to Daimon, but they also got huge rewards out of their challenges, sure Calvin and the others didn''t end up empty handed, but inparison their results surely paled, heck, Daphne not only recovered her voice, she got a cure for her mother''s problem and even got an initial improvement in her lineage as well as a powerful ancestor to help her in the future, in the form of Ophelia.

    ''Well, they don''t really need to be jealous, it''s just that the girls involved with the missions you stole from those two, got lucky and the guaranteed opportunities caused by their proximity to you were triggered in the form of these "challenges", which is also why the difficulty for them went up a whole notch'', casually said Evangeline.

    ''Wait a second what do you mean with "guaranteed opportunities", Eve?'', asked Daimon in a hurry, only to hear his administrator giggling at him.

    ''Let''s just say it''s apensation, your existence has a heavy impact on those around you, so unlike other system user, those close to you get a guaranteed opportunity to help them keep up with you''.

    Daimon was genuinely taken aback by Eve''s words, this also meant that he was slowly but surely loosening the restrictions, allowing her to tell him more about the system.

    ''I guess it makes sense, the high difficulty and high reward, applies to them as well, it might be dangerous though, this time I was able to lend a hand to them but it might be different in the future'', said Daimon.

    ''Nope, there will be a mission triggered alongside the guaranteed opportunities, this time everything just happened to coincide, I don''t leave loose ends~'', she pridefully said.

    ''That means Eve wants Daimon to praise her, right?'', asked Narasha nearly making Evangeline curse at her friend, especially because Daimon nodded at her.

    ''Humph'', Eve limited to softly snort before she returned to silence, Daimon on the other hand, finally let go of the Risha sisters, he had finished giving them his mana some time ago, but he got too invested into his conversation with Evangeline, which ended up benefitting the Risha sisters, who felt a sensation of loss now that it was over.

    However, the previous was enough to make them forget about the subject, at least on the surface, since they all had the same thought in their minds "I have to ask mom on how to gain advantage over otherpetitors".

    Daimon cleared his throat and then tried to make Sarah let go of his leg, but ultimately gave up when he noticed Sarah''s predacious eyes, aiming at hisp, he was sure that if he shook the crazy girl off, she was shameless enough to sit on hisp, or at least try to do so at every given chance, so he "sacrificed" his leg for the greater good.

    "Before anything else, what are the abilities of the other titles and who is teaming up with who?", he asked, the first one to answer was Reyne who gave Calvin a death re as she said.

    "I have one rook, two knight and two bishops, in the same order they are that annoying guy, Scarlet, Leslie, Lapis and Julio", Daimon could only give Reyne and apologetic nod, Calvin was among the strongest in the group but dealing with him was¡­ tough, so the serious and calm Reyne was suffering headaches at the time of dealing with him.

    "As for the abilities it would be easier if they directly exin it", she added.

    "I''m first, rooks as basically bodyguards, we can parry one lethal attack for others as long as we are within the designated range, our defenses and recovery ratio are greatly boosted and we can exchange our position with the queens, right Amber", jokingly said Calvin making Amber sigh.

    "Yeah, that crazy queen threw me into the battlefield as a shortcut to get faster to young master''s side", said the tanned girl, Leslie immediately took over as if she was afraid that Scarlet would exin before she could.

    "Knights have a much simple ability, our boost is on speed and attack power, we also have the ability to use instant short-range teleportation, you should have seen me raining fire on those guys", said the fire crane girl.

    Lastly, Lapis was about to speak when Julio who just fixed his sses took the initiative to exin.

    "For bishops the boost is focused on increasing energy reserves as well as the effective range of our abilities, the previous applies to both mana and battle aura as well as spells and martial arts", he said.

    Basically, rooks had short and long-distance abilities but they could only defend, knights had a much more reduced range of movement but their attack and speed were insane andstly bishops were neutral long-distance units, meaning that they could attack, defend or give support but in exchange the effects of their spells or martial arts weren''t boosted unlike rook''s defenses or knight''s attack power.

    Daimon nodded and then it was Jasmine''s turn to speak about her team.

    "My team is conformed by two knights, one bishop and two rooks, they are Liliana, Michael, Loren, Cassy andstly Chris", she said, her team was much more bnced in Daimon''s eyes, perhaps because Jasmine is more oriented to support than battle, unlike Reyne.

    "My turn, I got one bishop, one rook and three knights, mm I think they are Haylee, that tanned girl, the purple eyed birdie, the green haired and one and the spear guy", casually added Sarah, referring to Amber, Yvonne, Jade and Lance.

    "For thest time, my name is Yvonne!", eximed Yvi, feeling a headacheing her way.

    Luckily Daimon had already given a description of his original team mates, to all the ones he met in Neptune, so Sarah, Jasmine and Reyne recognized Calvin and the others as allies and after a few security questions which Daimon told them to use just in case, otherwise with Sarah being as annoying as she is, the Risha sisters would have fought with them.

    Daimon was amused to see Yvonne and also Michael having trouble when dealing with Sarah.

    ''Well, at least I''m not the only one'', he thought.

    In case you wonder why Michael, well, Sarah turned out to be surprisingly friendly with Haylee, probably because she also has poison affinity, so he was worried that the crazy girl could influence her in any way.

    Ruby who ended up being left out of any of the three teams, exined her own situation.

    "I''m a bishop, I wasn''t assigned to any of those three sister''s teams, I can''t go to the front, but I can help supervising the soldiers in sister Scarlet''s team", said the young red-haired girl.

    Daimon nodded, apparently Ruby was given a support role out of consideration of her young age and rtively low realm.

    "When is the next round starting?", asked Daimon, to which Sarah, Reyne and Jasmine exchanged gazes before they said in unison.

    "In an hour".

    "Though the rounds are done at the same time, they follow a strict order, my battlefield is always the first one to open, it might be different now that the challenge has officially started though", added Reyne.

    "Come, let me give you a private tour through the "barracks", said the crazy girl as she got up from the floor and grabbed Daimon''s arm, dragging him away from the couch and the Risha sisters at the same time.

    "Hey, since when do the rounds take more than fifteen minutes to start?", suspiciously asked Leslie.

    "We have gone through many rounds already and the time in between them never changed, that''s why our recovery is exponentially boosted in the safe zone", added Yvonne as she narrowed her gaze at thehereal sisters who avoided their gazes.

    Sarah gave Jasmine a knowing gaze and the Light Pce''s princess cleared her throat to then say.

    "Ahem, that was then, but the challenge changed now that Daimon joined, we were given an hour to prepare for the real thing", throughout the whole sentence she didn''t look at Daimon in the eyes.

    But of course, how could Daimon not notice that those three were lying, they could probably start the round at will this time, but wanted to spend some time with him, the problem is that besides the queens and the king, the others couldn''t go to the barracks, hence why the Risha sistersined.

    On the other hand, he did want to inspect every possible detail of the challenges before facing the enemies, considering that the ones in charge on the other side were now free to participate, so unfortunately for the Risha sisters, Daimon choose to turn a blind eye this time.

    "Rest and prepare for a real fight, who knows what other things might have changed, I''ll be back in a moment", said Daimon, making the Risha sisters pout.

    Before they could even say anything, Sarah smirked at them and with a snap of her fingers, she disappeared alongside Daimon and her sisters.

    ¡­

    After nearly a whole hour in which the others couldn''t even catch a glimpse of Daimon since those three kept him busy, showing him the "pawns" that they were given by the challenges, Daimon and thehereal sisters returned to the living room from earlier.

    Not even five seconds had passed since he returned and Daimon could already feel the using gazes of the Risha sisters piercing him like spears.

    "Ahem, since we don''t know what has changed, don''t act on your own, let''s see the state of the enemy''s team first and then we''ll decide a n of action, that''s for you Calvin", said Daimon, since Reyne''s team was first.

    "I''ll behave, one beating was enough, thanks", said Calvin as he was red at by Reyne, he knew that messing around when the npsi girl was looking to impress Daimon, was courting death.

    Not even a minuteter, the long-awaited sound of a trumpet echoed through the skies and everyone was sent to their respective battlefields, as they discussed beforehand, Daimon stayed with Reyne since her battle was first.

    Daimon looked around and found only Reyne floating in the sky at his same level, on the ground he confirmed the presence of Calvin, Scarlet, Leslie, Lapis and Julio, as for the "pawns", a row of perfectly preserved corpses of weird looking magic beasts which he found familiar, appeared floating a few meters away from them.

    ''Aren''t those¡­ the magic beasts that fell from the skies in the records shown by the ck sea emblem?'', thought Daimon as he saw those strange half bird half beast magic beast corpses.

    Based on what Ophelia told him, the Nethereals started infecting the local races to use them as cannon fodder, so these magic beasts were native of what used to be Neptune back then but they got changed due to whateverher was used with them and were ultimately killed during the war.

    As to why their corpses appeared here, they were probably kept by thehereals as emergency rations or to be used for their materials and they survived whatever happened after Agrak''s memories from back then ended.

    "It seems like I have to choose a new corpse to use for the challenge", said Reyne, not even a secondter, her opponent''s team became visible.

    At ground level, Daimon saw the pirates and pariahs which Marcus gathered under his g, as well as those magic beasts who worked for one of the emperors of the Maelstrom Sea, which had taken a temporary semi-human form.

    Though they weren''t weak, none of them had left asting impression on Daimon, so he didn''t bother to pay too much attention to them, until now, killing the titled participants was forbidden since the previous rounds weren''t the official ones, only the pawns could be destroyed.

    And that restriction was lifted now, resulting on the knights, rooks and bishops getting serious, the usually clown-like Calvin had a 180¡ã personality change, he jumped in front of the group and casually punched a knife and a spear that appeared out of nowhere with his left hand, to then extend his arms and grab the owners of said weapons by their necks.

    "You two slippery bastards are so dead", he said as he shed away from the battlefield, not even a secondter, a loud explosion could be hearding from southeast, as a sh of sand and rocks as well as water and wind mana was produced.

    "What an unreliable bodyguard", said Julio as he sighed.

    "Well, at least he took the rtively most dangerous enemies, away with him, it''s not that bad, I guess¡­", mumbled Leslie, unlike thehereal sisters, the opponents had all their respective pieces covered, in other words five were fighting against six, so Calvin purposedly dragged both enemy knights with him, to even things.

    "I''ll take one rook", limited to say Scarlet, her red eyes were glowing, it hasn''t been that long since she became a knight so she was still excited about her recently acquired strength, what''s more Daimon was here now, so she was raring to go.

    "I have a little feud with the other one, so leave it to me", said Leslie, a pretty pair of orange me wings spread behind of her as she flew towards the rook at the left, a magic beast in human form with water attribute.

    Scarlet on the other hand slightly bent her legs and then charged like a meteorite against the other rook, the methods were different but the result where two fire balls reaching the enemy''s rooks at the same time.

    "Booom!", Leslie''s weapon of choice a sharp metal fan, collided with the shell-shield of the enemy, as for Scarlet, until not too long ago her life consisted on escaping and hiding in order to survive, so she didn''t know how to properly use any weapon nor she has decided which one went with her, so she relied on her ming fists to crack the metal wall created by her opponent.

    This left two bishops, Lapis and Julio to deal with the enemy bishops, a pair of female pirates who after staring at each other, ran away on the spot, only to be chased by Julio who became a giant tornado and Lapis whose body disappeared into a water stream.

    "I guess that leaves us to deal with the "mysterious" enemy leader", said Daimon, Reyne''s fight hadn''t started since the other party''s queen hasn''t appeared yet.

    "So, you three finally found someone willing to die alongside you, that''s good, my Lord and I were getting tired of waiting", said a mocking voice whose owner was revealed a momentter.

    The voice belonged to a skinny woman with unkept hair and sickly pale skin, Daimon couldn''t help but frown in response to the appearance of the woman, even though she was created usingher instead of mana, she was an undead and to top it off, a Bone Sorceress, which was the race of undead to which Rita used to belong before she became Daimon''s head maid.

    Another thing that drew his attention is that she was alone, she was the enemy''s queen but the king didn''t show up.

    ''Why isn''t that guying, I can feel his presence at the north border of the battlefield'', he thought.

    As if Reyne could read Daimon''s mind, she turned to see her opponent and then said.

    "Tell your king toe and die, instead of wasting time", one had to give it to the npsi girl, she was soft when she needed to and quite sharp the rest of the time.

    "Humph, I alone am enough to kill you both, there is no need to bother the Lord¡­", before she could finish her sentence, Daimon interrupted.

    "Oh, so unlike me, he can''t leave his current position", he said, making the woman''s expression unconsciously confirm his supposition.

    ''So, whatever they did to interfere with those three''s challenges, did have a price'', he thought.

    The woman gritted her teeth and then directly chose one of the corpses floating in front of her, making the rest disappear.

    Reyne turned to see Daimon who smiled as he pointed at the corpse which he chose for her, needless to say but the npsi girl didn''t hesitate even for a second and selected the corpse Daimon chose for her.

    And so, with the woman mockingly gazing at Reyne for making such a bad choice, the challenge finally started.

 Chapter 589: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters version (part 4)

    Unlike what Daimon expected, the battle between Reyne and the enemy''s queen didn''t immediately start, in fact they were both restrained to not be able to move past a certain distance, by an invisible barrier which covered enough space to epass the magic beast corpse they chose.

    "We have to turn the corpse into the pawns we''ll use, only after their fight is over, we''ll be allowed to directly fight", exined Reyne, apparently the objectives, rules and other things rted to the challenge were just transmitted to the queens and he the king could basically do as he pleased as long as he didn''t interfere with other people''s fights.

    "Okay, you just focus on your own thing, I''ll guard for you in case someone wants to y some tricks", casually said Daimon making Reyne slightly blush and nod.

    "Mm~".

    And so, with a happy smile that didn''t match the fact that she had to process the corpse of a magic beast, Reyne summoned her knight''snce and put hands to work.

    Daimon on the other hand limited to chuckle before focusing on the ongoing battles, starting from Calvin''s side.

    From earlier Daimon''s attention was drawn by Calvin, why you ask, that explosion of mana caused by him and the two knights with which he was fighting, included sand and unlike his aunt¡­ Calvin couldn''t use the sand attribute.

    Instructor Richard had already said it, just like his grandfather, Calvin can''t use the usual fighting techniques of the Grish family, which focus on crowd control and deceit by using the advanced earth rted attribute of sand, instead he is a "ck sheep" that has learned the Rock Dreadnought fighting style that his grandfather created.

    The previous is because Calvin''s attribute is not sand but another advanced version of earth element, rock, it''s simr to the mostmon earth element as in it is used to create or manipte earth, but it exchanges the maneuverability of earth element for a higher density and defense property.

    A simple way to see it is that Zia for example can easily shape earth in whatever form she wishes so, hands, walls, spikes and the like, while Calvin on the other hand is limited to much more unrefined things such as piles of rock for example.

    Now that doesn''t mean he waspletely unable to use sand, but like anyone else that doesn''t have sand affinity, he could only do simple and basic sand attributed spells, which led to him be rather criticized within the Grish family.

    Or at least that used to be the case until now.

    "Hahaha, so this is what me and the old man were missing!", before the dust that was raised from the sh of mana from before could dispel, Calvin''s wildugh could be hearding from all over the ce.

    The two knights who managed to escape from Calvin''s grasp by releasing their mana at the same time and also using the instant movement ability granted to them as knight pieces, looked around trying to discern from which side was Calvin''s voiceing, but couldn''t pinpoint his location.

    "Damn it, what nonsense is that bastard spurting out, where is he!", said the water affinity guy to hispanion.

    "Protect me, I''m going to blow away all this damn dust", said the other one as he pointed his right hand towards the sky, making a fierce gust of wind raise from the ground and extend in all directions.

    "Raising Current!", the wind easily started to disperse the dust floating in the battlefield, but very much to the caster''s surprise, his spell was stopped in cold as if it had hit an iron te, what followed were clear and sharp tinkling noises from all over the ce.

    Listening to the continuous "clinks", the wind affinity mage frowned.

    "What the hell is going on, I can''t disperse this dust", he said with a wary voice, to hispanion, as knight pieces they were supposed to fight head on against the enemy, the boost they got only applied to closebat as well, so having their visibility reduced like this, was a really bad thing for them.

    The "dust" which the enemy wind mage couldn''t dispel was actually sand summoned by Calvin, as to why it wasn''t being blown away by the enemy''s spell, that''s because as a rook, his spell''s defensive properties were enhanced.

    "Come on, where did the spirit you showed when you were eyeing my Loren, go", Calvin''s mocking voice came from the left side of the battlefield, making the wind mage shoot a wind sh on that direction where he could see Calvin''s shadow, only for it to pass through the previously fortified dust and disappear into the distance, hitting nothing in its way, apparently Calvin could control the density of the sand at will.

    "Where are you aiming, idiot!", this time Calvin''s shadow appeared in multiple sides and his voice came from every direction, making both enemies shoot spells in every direction, unfortunately, each of the attacks passed through those shadows, without doing anything besides making them waste mana.

    Daimon who was observing the whole thing couldn''t help but be surprised by Calvin''s change.

    ''To think that the simple-minded Calvin is now using a divert tactic, did being captured caused such a change to him, or is it rted to the fact that he now also has sand affinity'', he wondered.

    As much as carefree as Calvin appears to be, Daimon could clearly see that both Miachael and him were furious after they were captured by the women from the ck Night n, not because of themselves, but because of Haylee and Loren.

    While their lives weren''t at risk at any moment since they had some hidden tricks, without relying on theirst resorts, those two could have escaped if they really put their everything into it, but they would have had to leave Haylee and Loren behind, which wasn''t an option, so that experience seemed to have helped them advance quite a bit.

    "Let''s get the hell out of here, find a point to break out!", shouted the water affinity mage as he dashed away in a random direction, only sh head on against the sand that was surrounding them and be sent flying back right away.

    "Aghh, what the hell is up with this sand!", the water affinity mage heavilynded on the ground, he looked at his right arm which was the part that directly made contact with the seemingly calmly floating sand, just to see abrasive wounds all over his shoulder and hand, a part of his skin was peeled away just now.

    "I don''t care anymore, go die you annoying bastard, Fierce Wave!", the water mage immediately lost it blue mana exploded out of his body as arge amount of water rose behind of him, hispanion also lent him a hand by adding wind to the wave to increase the current in a try to break through the floating sand barrier.

    Unfortunately for them, the moment the wave reached its destination, the sand actually fell to the ground, allowing the water to freely follow its way.

    And the surprises didn''t stop there, the ground below the feet of the two enemies suddenly changed its structure, turning into a sand pit, naturally the first instinct of the two mages was to use the teleporting ability of knight pieces, but to their horror a handing out of the sand held on their ankles each, before Calvin''s head popped out of the sand.

    "You can''t teleport when you are in contact with your opponent, right", he said with a mocking voice, making the two mages want nothing else but punch him on the face, but then an impending sense of doom came from above, making those two look upwards, their faces paled on the spot.

    "Abrasive Storm", with a simple sentence, an insane amount of sand rotating at high speed rained upon not only the enemies but also Calvin.

    The two mages immediately used mana to protect their bodies, their visibility and hearing became null, everything they could see and hear were the light brown tone of sand and the sound of the little grains shing against them, wearing out their defenses.

    They couldn''t even think straight enough to coordinate and teleport, such was the effect of the sand storm, and there was something else to fear besides that, they could feel Calvin''s presence close to them.

    "You are crazy, even if you kill us, you''ll die too, not even the defense of a rook can keep up with this kind of damage!", shouted the water affinity mage, as his mana started to dwindle and his body started to bleed in many parts.

    Only to be met with a mockingugh as Calvin ced his hand on his shoulder, making the enemy feel as if a mountain hadnded on top of him.

    "Blegh!!", while the enemy vomited blood, Calvin whose body was also being assaulted by the fierce vortex of sand, limited to say.

    "No problem, my skin is thick enough", he said, small cracks appeared along Calvin''s arm as ayer of his "skin" was peeled away only for it to be reced by another one as countless grains of sand were drawn towards his body and thenpacted against his skin.

    The enemy didn''t even have the chance to scream, his body was grinded into a pile of dust, leaving not even his bones behind.

    The water mage who was holding up better since his affinity had some advantage over sand, was terrified, cracks continued to appear all over Calvin''s exposed skin, it was certainly a strange thing to witness.

    From the enemy''s point of view, he was cruel enough to suffer in order to get rid of an enemy, the ssic "allowing the enemy to cut the flesh in order to cut the bone", what he didn''t know is that Calvin had many thinyers of rock covering his body all the time.

    But Daimon who observed the fight did know it.

    ''I guess this fighting style suits him better, it might appear to be a crazy thing to pour his everything into a spell that is devastating enough to even harm its caster, but he is actually maximizing the advantages of his innately high defense and the fighting style which he learned from his grandfather, while also applying the deceit and control aspects of the sand element at the same time, it seems like an annoying guy got an annoying power'', he thought.

    In simple words, Calvin surrounded the enemy with sand overloaded with his mana, then transformed it into a sand storm and used the rock armor to be able to abuse the enemies caught in his trap.

    As to why he could still orient himself in such a chaotic situation, that''s thanks to his grandfather''s training, in which he had to "get close" to earth, which basically consisted in being hit with rocks by his grandfather or being imprisoned or abandoned in the depths of a mountain for days.

    Back at the fight, the water mage saw Calvin walking through the sand storm as if it was nothing and he screamed in despair.

    "You dual affinity monster, you were ying around in the previous rounds!", he eximed making Calvin raise an eyebrow.

    "So, you guys were in contact with each other, whatever the truth is that I don''t know any proper sand spells, I originally was just going to drown you in a sand tsunami but I suddenly got this interesting idea", casually said Calvin as he shrugged.

    Apparently the enemy armies could talk with each other, which is something that Jasmine, Sarah and Reyne already took into ount since they were the same, so they reached the consensus to not take the previous fights seriously, well Calvin rarely took anything seriously to begin with.

    "¡­", that answer rendered not only the enemy but even Daimon speechless, Calvin deserved some praise since this "Abrasive Storm" turned out to be an original spell created by him, but he also could also empathize with the enemy whose eyelid was trembling out of anger.

    "No, I refuse to be killed by an idiot like you!", shouted the water mage, unfortunately his head was squashed by Calvin who extended his hand and manipted the sand to surround his arm in a rough shaped form to then crush the enemy into meat paste.

    While his attack wasn''t increased by the rules of the challenge, his defense was, so for the enemy it was like beingpressed by countless metal ques at the same time, he turned into a puddle of blood and flesh which was dried and dispersed by the sand storm.

    "Phew, what a shame others can''t see my glorious victory, I wanted to impress Loren with my new finishing move, oh well, I guess next time I''ll make it more refined¡­ damn, the old man is going to make me train my ass off when he notices my second affinity", said Calvin as he dispelled the sand storm, revealing the result, besides his clothes getting a bit worn out, simr to how he looked when Daimon met him at the ssroom back then, he was perfectly fine.

    As for the enemies, the only thing left from them were piles of sand that altered the surroundingndscape, Calvin had created a miniature desert around him.

    [Two knight pieces were eliminated from the game, congrattions to the Red Queen], an emotionless voice followed by the trumpet that always announced the start of a battle, echoed through the battlefield and then Calvin whose fight was over, was transported out of Reyne''s battlefield and joined the others who were observing the current battle from afar.

    While Calvin feigned to be in a bad state so that he would be taken care off by Loren, a n that miserably failed the second Michael told on him, Daimon changed his focus to the next fight.

    It was impossible for him not to do so, since he was "participating" in a sense, as it was the turn of the Fire Crane girl, Leslie, who could now store a whole 10% of his mana into her wings, the one who was causing the biggest ruckus among the battlefield as of current.

    On one side, since the Risha sisters could now store more of his mana, it was obvious that their prime status couldst longer, but that wasn''t all, Daimon saw how Leslie flew around while raining destruction in the form of round after round of feather shaped fire projectiles, all over the battlefield, making it obvious that she was paying less attention to the consumption of mana after going through whatever challenge she faced.

    ''Is it me or she is consuming less mana to use the spells exclusive to the "Feather Massacre" state'', thought Daimon.

    Her opponent, a water affinity knight who was ying the role of a rook, could only summon walls of water battle aura to block her restless assault, because every time he used the long-distance spatial movement ability granted to him by the rules of the challenge, to put up some distance between them, he was immediately caught up by Leslie who could fly and use short distance teleport thanks to her knight role.

    Such was the advantage of superior mobility thanks to the ability to fly, something that let alone a star ranked mage, but even a Lord rank, shouldn''t be able to enjoy under normal circumstances.

    "Damn it, she is not even at the middle stage Mortal realm, how is she flying and why the hell is her fire fiercer than before, she is cutting through my battle aura with mana of an element that should be at disadvantage against me!", cursed the enemy as he dodged the next round of fire feathers thatnded on the ground where he was standing a second earlier, turning it into a fire inferno and leaving behind scorched deep cuts on the ground.

    "I didn''t think you were crazy enough to even rake a punch from me in order to hide your real ability for the real battle, you guys are a bunch of psychos", said the water knight as he took a defensive stance.

    Leslie who was flying above softly snorted in response to then say.

    "I wanted to know my new limits, I''m now sure that I can deal with knights in a simr realm as mine but crossing realms without going all out is still a bit too much, meaning that I still have a long way to go if I don''t want to be left behind¡­ besides the one to whom I wanted to show my progress hadn''t arrived yet back then".

    Leslie who somehow could feel Daimon''s attention was on her, softly smiled at his direction and then made a quick turn on the air beforending in front of her opponent, her wings were absorbed back into her body and she then took out her weapon, a pair of metallic sharp fans.

    The water knight visibly rxed the moment he saw Leslie''s wings disappear, in the information he got from the ones who fought the other two girls that seemed to be rted with the fiery orange haired girl with which he was supposed to fight, there was nothing about them having the ability to fly, with reaffirmed confidence the water knight also took out his weapon, a chain with a spiked mace on one extreme.

    "Heh, I knew it, there is no way you can sustain such a reckless fighting style for too long, you even used extra mana to reinforce that little fire of yours and now you are forced to fight head on against a knight, bad luck¡­", the water knight who had started to spin his chain to attack Leslie, was interrupted by a burning and sharp painful sensation on his right cheek.

    The knight touched his cheek with his left hand and saw the scorched bits of blood that stuck to his fingers, with awe.

    ''She cut through my automatic defensive martial art just like that!'', he inwardly screamed as he saw Leslie pointing one of her fans towards his face.

    "He was right viins die because they talk too much", said Leslie referring to Daimon, also a slightly wild light shed through her eyes, making Daimon who was observing her fight raise an eyebrow.

    When those three used their legacy spells to manifest their wings, the first time, they suffered some extreme changes in their personalities, a side effect of stimting their lineages, Leslie went from being a bubbly and shy girl to be rather violent, Yvonne went from being a serious and strategic person to a much cheekier and yful version of herself andstly the cool and aloof Liliana became sensible and even timid.

    But that ended after they supposedly took Daimon as their "center" a concept that even to this day is a quite vague since their mothers hadn''t exined everything to him, however what Daimon does know is that when using his mana for his wings, they should be exempted from going through those personality changes, but now they seem to be back.

    On the other hand, he also noticed a difference, despite the clear desire for violence that burned in Leslie''s eyes, she was still in perfect control, she didn''t even take the initiative to continue her attack and instead made the knight angry so that he would engage first.

    And her n work, the water knight angered at the fact that he was wounded so easily by a young slender girl who is also a mage, swung his chain, aiming the spiked mace at Leslie''s chest, only to be amazed at how the momentum of his attack was redirected by Leslie skillfully rotating her body.

    Her movement was elegant and swift and before the enemy noticed the spiked head of his chain was smacked against the ground and Leslie had appeared right in front of him, her metal fan which had bright orange mes coating it, moved like a sh and cleanly cut through the enemy''s defense opening a twenty centimeter''s long wound on the knight''s chest.

    "Aghh!", the enemy felt a scorching sharp pain which returned him to the real world, his first reaction was to punch with all his might towards Leslie''s head, but she simply twisted her body and then jumped backwards, her pretty me wings spread out of her back helping her levitate on the air, before she elegantlynded, right where she was standing before, making Daimon chuckle.

    "This little girl, you wanted me to know that you can now deal with a water knight solely relying on "Phoenix Dance" without using your wings unlike before", he said, certainly back then Leslie had trouble against a knight with water element, but now her fire had grown stronger.

    That being said, there was something else behind all this, Daimon could see that the mana circting through her body was different than normal.

    Normally, his mana is only stored in the mana circuits on her back, it only moves through those specific circuits when her wings are manifested, which is why the spells rted to Feather Massacre originate on her wings, like those rains of fire feathers, the same applies to Yvonne and Liliana.

    But now, it seems like the mana circting through her whole body has some traces of Daimon''s mana mixed into it, the amount is really small yes, but it is still slowly but surely changing to the explosively strong mana that conforms her wings, but in a bigger scale.

    ''If all her mana bes like that in her normal state, then¡­ how much will her battle prowess increase when she uses her wings'', wondered Daimon.

    Still for now that was only an idea, even if it used small quantities unlike manifesting her wings, to make the previous happen, Leslie still had to rely on the mana given to her by Daimon which was stored in the mana circuits of her upper back, so while she can maintain this new status longer, she will still reach her limit at some point.

    Like she mentioned, Leslie just wanted Daimon to see how much she has progressed, now that she had achieved her goal, the water knight had no use for her.

    Leslie''s body exploded in fiery mana which was then injected into her wings, causing a change on theirposition, the origin of the me feathers became of a much more darker orange tone nearly reaching red tonalities, while the extremes suffered a contrary change, turning brighter and lighter in color.

    The result was that her wings looked like mes dancing behind her back, creating a magnificent visual illusion, that wasn''t all, red mana particles were being expelled by them, she had clearly overloaded her wings with mana causing this phenomenon.

    "Phoenix Wingfall", all the mana on Leslie''s wings was liberated at the same time, creating the beautiful image of an orange bird which the pped its wings, behind of her.

    The water knight''s scalp went numb, he poured everything he had into defending, knowing that he didn''t have enough time to use the long-distance teleportation ability given to rooks, a water sphere of fifty meters of diameter, surrounded him on the spot, only for it to be impacted the next sect by an orange sh.

    "Boooom!", ate explosion echoed through the battlefield, it wasn''t caused by the sh between them, but by Leslie breaking the barrier of sound the moment that me bird projection pped its wings.

    The result was that the water sphere which was now boiling due to the high heat, also dyed red, Leslie had cut the knight in half with her fans.

    The orange fiery sh in which Leslie had turned, disappeared, revealing her now slightly tired self, her wings returned to normal and then the water sphere lost its integrity and flowed in every direction, meaning that it had stopped to be sustained by its caster, for a valid reason, he was dead.

    [A rook piece was eliminated from the game, congrattions to the Red Queen], the trumpet and the announcement came just in time and Leslie still had the time to gaze in Daimon''s direction with a "praise me" look on her pretty face, before she was retired from the battlefield, allowing her to return with her sisters.

    ''Well, if you still had any doubts, you can''t escape from those three anymore, I wonder how are you going to exin their mothers that their mana has been "corrupted" thanks to yours~'', jokingly said Evangeline from within Daimon''s mind.

    This time Daimon couldn''t help but agree with Eve, this for sure was a new thing in the history of the Risha family, well ording their mothers there has only been two generations that sessfully awakened their wings, previous to them, the ancestors of their families and the mothers of the Risha sisters who found a way around the restrictions, by using themselves as the center of each other instead.

 Chapter 590: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters version (part 5)

    Now that that the attention seeking fire crane girl has gotten what she wanted, Daimon could change his focus to the next participant, which was none other than one of the girls which he rescued at the early stages of this adventure, when Neptune wasn''t even in the scope, Lapis.

    Back then, Scarlet, Amber, Ruby, Lapis and Jade, the five girls which were captured and tortured by the idiots from the tribes, whom by the way had vanished out of the picture after leaving the firstyer of the magic ruin, meaning that they didn''t end up in Neptune.

    Well, the ones near the entrance to Neptune were sacrificed by Adam and Marcus to open the portal, but there were other members of the tribes at the firstyer, ording to that one time he got in contact with that girl from the Snow Leopard race, Gina who was with Aleah.

    And since others who didn''t arrive at Neptune, like that vampire who died at Agrak''s casino, have appeared, then it wouldn''t be strange to think that they were transported to another ce, specially considering that Neptune was connected to others like Kerrol or Draim.

    Anyway, back then, those five were not only in a really bad state, but they couldn''t even get stronger, well in terms of mana, because mentally Daimon had to admit that their fighting spirit was praise worthy, even in that bad state they hadn''t given up and he was sure they wouldn''t have conceded to the wishes of their captors.

    Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they are the royals of their race and now those same "powerless" girls had undergone a really big chance.

    A steam explosion expanded from the current battlefield which Daimon was observing, as a water stream shed against a wall of fire, such was the result of Lapis chasing after her enemy, both were assigned bishop roles, meaning that their spells were granted an increase in range and a deeper mana reserve.

    "We are both bishops, why the hell are you chasing after me!", shouted the enemy mage, a guy with fire affinity, while he inwardly thought.

    ''Damn it, her casting time is shorter than mine, I need to put up some distance and then I will burn this bitch down''.

    Unfortunately for that guy, Lapis didn''t stopunching simple spells after him, while moving inside that water stream, in terms of mobility she outpowered her enemy, so while her spells had a lower offensive capacity whenpared to fire ones, she was slowly but surely wearing her enemy down.

    "Aghhhh!", the enemy finally decided to make his move, fire has practically no defense properties, so he took Lapis''s spell head on and was thrown backwards quite a few dozens of meters, but while he felt blooding out of his mouth due to the impact, he was grinning, all the mana he had secretly gathered was released at once.

    "You feel for it, Inferno Barrage!", the body of the fire mage exploded in orange mana and multiple fire balls were shot from his hand.

    "Booom!", continuous fire explosions covered the area where Lapis was standing, steam raised as a sign that fire and water mana were shing, but soon the fire had umted enough to be the only visible thing.

    This continued until the fire mage could no longer extend the duration of his spell, he even had blood sliding from the corner of his mouth as a sign that he overexerted himself in thatst attack.

    "Tsk, damn matchmaking¡­aghhhh!", the fire mage who just spat the blood in his mouth, was hit by something stopping hisins midway, he saw the origin of his pain and found a bloody hole on his right arm.

    ''No way, even if water can indeed have a high offensive power when used properly, it would be a cutting wound, due to its liquid state, also water attacks aren''t this fast!'', he inwardly screamed, only to hear a "whistling" sounding towards him.

    The fire mage immediately jumped away only for a heavy impact tond on his right leg, making him fall and roll on the ground for quite a few meters.

    "What the hell is going on!", the fire mage looked at his leg which now had a whipping mark, a sign that he was hit with the spell "Water whip", but that didn''t make sense, the sound he heard clearly belonged to a sharp and solid object.

    His doubts however only increased when he saw Lapise outpletely unscathed, after receiving an all-out barrage of attacks earlier, sure they weren''t heavy impact spells but the amountpensated for that, in fact the fire mage could only shoot out that many attacks without worrying because of the increase in mana reserves granted to bishops, otherwise that move would have costed him a fourth part of his normal mana reserves.

    Now while the fire mage was having a small mental break down, Daimon who saw what happened within that steam screen thatbined with the continuous fire explosions, blocked the sight of the fire mage, wasn''t that much better.

    ''What''s up with the energy she is using, it feels simr toher but quite different at the same time, also¡­ did she just change the spell she was using midway just like that and more importantly without having ice affinity?'', he thought to himself.

    As if Lapis could feel Daimon''s doubts, which was probably the case, since all of them are in a contract with him, meaning they share a master-subordinate connection, she pointed at her neck where a secondter a blue symbol lit up.

    "Harmony gliph", with those words the glow of the symbol diminished, allowing others to see what it looked like, it was a female figure in a cross-legged position, meditating, that extra glow from earlier reappeared but on her sky-blue hair.

    While the previous phenomenon was eye catching, that wasn''t what caught Daimon''s interest the most, but the drastic change which the energy within her body had gone through, originally while different whatever energy they were training in, still looked like mana for Daimon''s infinity eyes.

    Now on the other hand, it looked like a mix of two colors, simr toher, which for example for the women of the ck Night n, the ones who survived at least, was ck with a tinge of pink, for Lapis was white and sky blue.

    In this new state, Lapis casually pointed at the fire mage and a stream of water flew out of her hand andshed towards the enemy, it was the spell water whip again.

    Other might have trouble discerning whether it''s just a current of water with mana imbued into it, but Daimon could immediately tell thanks to the Infinity Eyes, also he was positively surprised to see Lapis using "Chant less magic".

    ''It''s not exactly a high ranked spell, but still for someone that has been able to use magic since a few days or a week at most, even if she only learned how to use water whip without chanting, that is more than enough to consider her talented'', he thought.

    Chant less casting isn''t a simple thing, there is a reason as to why most people shout the name of the spells, or martial arts, well in knight''s cases since they have a heavier physical presence, a shout from their reinforced bodies carries a strong presence that intimidates the enemy, so it works as both a help to cast the martial art and an attack of its own.

    But for mages, whose bodies aren''t especially strong, without relying on mana, unless they amplify their voice to disorient the enemy, shouting the name of their spell is counterproductive, giving the enemy a chance to prepare for the iing attack, of course monstruous reflexes are needed to actually take advantage of said thing, but that''s beside the point.

    What''s important is that Lapis was perfectly taking advantage of basic spells such as water whip, which can be confused as the basic water maniption of a water affinity mage, to attack her enemy thanks to chant less casting, of course a proper spell had way more power than simple water maniption and Lapis counted with that.

    While the fire mage didn''tpletely lower his guard, he didn''t use a spell against Lapis''s attack, a grave mistake which he realized when the water whip was only a few meters away from him.

    "Dream on bitch, I''m not getting hit by that again!", yelled the fire mage as he swung his weapon, a sword which was d in mes, against the iing spell, since it was toote for him to cast a spell, he went with the next best option to parry a spell, a magic treasure imbued with mana.

    "Tsssss!", the moment the ming sword made contact with the water whip, thetter was evaporated, making the fire mage grin, as he prepared to retake the lead and bombard Lapis with a strong spell, or at least that was his n which died the instant the water which was evaporated and now floated as seemingly harmless steam, behind the fire mage, was suddenly reced by an icence which nailed the fire mage''s right foot to the ground.

    "Aghhhh!", the cold pain made the fire mage scream, he immediately shed his towards the icence, melting it into a puddle of water mixed with his blood.

    "Another dual affinity monster, but when did she cast that icence and how did she make it pass my mana sense", said the fire mage as he jumped away to put some distance between himself and Lapis.

    Or at least that was the idea, until he was stopped midair by a water chain that came out of the ground and smacked him against the ground.

    "Damn it, what is going on!", screamed the fire mage, his body exploded in mes getting rid of the water chain, this time he didn''t move since he noticed that Lapis wasn''t chasing after him.

    She was there calmly standing a few dozens of meters away from him, which made the fire mage go mad, he couldn''t tell how she was casting all those spells in such a short period of time, without chanting and without him noticing.

    But while that guy was wrecking his brain trying to uncover Lapis''s trick, Daimon had seen everything from afar, that didn''t make it less impressive though, because while he could see the result he couldn''t understand the process behind of it.

    For Daimon, after Lapis used that Harmony gliph, she has only casted a single spell and it was the "Water whip" which the fire mage parried with his sword, which made sense considering that Daimon could tell that Lapis only had one affinity as of current and that is water.

    And that makes one wonder, then how an icence nailed the fire mage''s foot to the ground if she doesn''t have ice affinity and then how a water chain caught and smacked him against the ground, if Lapis had only casted the spell "Water whip".

    In both cases, Daimon could see Lapis moving her lips but there was no sounding out of them, or more urately he couldn''t hear anything, which shouldn''t be the case, Daimon''s hearing might not be as sharp as the infinity eyes, but he trusted his ears enough to listen at this distance.

    Anyway, thanks to said eyes, Daimon could still easily read Lapis''s lips to know what she was saying and in all the cases, it was the same word "Change".

    The timing in which she mumbled that word in that inaudible voice, perfectly matched with every "spell" that messed with the fire mage, so thatbined with the fact that Daimon could see Lapis''s energy circting through her body every time she said that word, made him conclude that she was controlling that sole spell she used to be something different every time.

    ''Changing "water whip" to "mist screen" before the sword could actually parry her attack, as a divert tactic is still understandable, it would require a lot of practice and precision but it is doable since mist screen is a low ranked spell from the water element¡­ however, condensing that same mist into "icence", liquifying it and then using that for "water chain", that''s a whole different thing, especially when she doesn''t have ice affinity'', thought Daimon.

    It''s not a matter of skill, icence might not be a really advanced spell, but not only is from ice element an affinity that Lapis doesn''t have, but she also created it with such ease and smoothness, that it shouldn''t be possible.

    If she used chant less magic, Daimon could have seen the spell being casted, but instead what he saw was that same water whip changing into apletely different spell every time, it was apletely new thing, something that Daimon hadn''t seen nor heard about before.

    What''s more, given the connection between Daimon and those girls, if Lapis wanted to, she could have already exined what was going on, in fact based on how she just giggled in Daimon''s direction, she was keeping the secret on purpose.

    ''I guess this is their little "revenge" since I spent all the preparation time with those three and didn''t listen about their challenge'', thought Daimon.

    It made sense, Scarlet and the others were quite eager to tell him about their little adventure, since it changed their lives.

    ''Those three sure got me in trouble with the others'', amusingly thought Daimon, first the Risha sisters and now even Lapis and the others held a grudge against him, due tock of attention.

    Back to the fight, Lapis saw that the fire mage wasn''t running anymore and she smiled, the fire mage which was on the edge already, literally exploded.

    "Come on, you wanted to kill me,e here!", he shouted.

    Lapis softly snorted, she for a change spoke in a voice that everyone could hear.

    "Stream slider", with a little turn, Lapis was surrounded by a water stream like earlier, this was her movement spell of preference, which was actually a high stage Lord ranked water spell that provided not only an incredible mobility but also defensive properties.

    The fire mage answered in kind, he dashed towards Lapis, trying to put an end to the fight with a single move, thus he injected all the mana he could into the spell "Fire Meteor" in which he and his sword were dded, that was his sole advantage over Lapis, she didn''t have a weapon.

    Well, to be more urate, she didn''t know how to wield one, because Daimon handed each one of them, a long variety of training magic weapons, so that they could determine the one with which they feltfortable.

    ''What an idiot'', thought Daimon, he didn''t need to see the result of the sh to know the result of the fight, but he didn''t change his focus, because this time, Lapis was willingly showing him the process of how her innate ability worked.

    As the water stream and the fire meteor approached each other, the sh which the fire mage expected didn''t happen, instead of that, he suddenly felt a chill running down his spine but it was toote.

    "Harmony Change", with a couple of words, spoken by a mellow and pleasant to ear, voice, the water stream which surrounded Lapis, suddenly changed its form.

    "Aghhhh!", instead of putting off the fire which would have been the result of the water stream shing against the fire meteor, the fire mage found himself impaled and surrounded by ice spears, that was a high stage Lord ranked spell called "Ice Punishment Prison".

    "Y-You, how did you do that, you didn''t cast another spell¡­" said the fire mage as he vomited blood.

    Lapis whose lower body was still surrounded by water, that''s right, only the upper half of the water stream turned into the ice cage that was killing the fire mage, controlled the water tond on the ground before saying.

    "Well, water particrly hated you, someone with a sea magic beast ascendence but with fire affinity, otherwise with my current level I couldn''t have used three different elements in such a smooth way".

    The light disappeared from the eyes of the fire mage and the ice melted on the spot, the trumpet echoed through the sky and Lapis smiled at Daimon before she was transported out of the battlefield, not without sending him a message.

    ''We have a gift for you, if you discern how our new powers work, good luck young master~''.

    [One bishop piece was eliminated from the game, congrattions to the Red Queen]

    And with that, Lapis returned with the others, Amber, Jade and Ruby immediately weed her, those three could feel Daimon''s interested gaze on them, which made them giggle, well everyone but Amber whoughed out loud without restrictions.

    ''They surely got livelier after getting a bit strong, maybe some "discipline" would be nice, so how about you show them some love~'', jokingly said Evangeline from within Daimon''s mind.

    ''Leave them be, they deserve at least this'', said Daimon, he could understand the thirst for power, born out of the impotence of not being able to protect someone you care about, the only reason as to why he didn''t celebrate having obtained the system and bing able to use magic himself back then, is because he was afraid that it was everything was dream.

    After all, Aisha died and was revived practically the same day, so he wasn''t in the mood to think on anything else, but those girls were different they obtained their lifelong wish and were excited about it, it was understandable and Daimon was happy for them, they seemed to be in a way better mental state now than when he met them.

    Before their goal was to survive but now, they had a much healthier one, to live, but enough of that for now.

    Daimon epted their little "challenge" and it was perfect, because the next fight was Scarlet''s one, originally Daimon felt more curiosity towards Scarlet and Amber, because they were the only knights in the group.

    He could understand Amber, whose race''s physical body was outstandingly tough, but Scarlet''s physique was rather neutral, in fact judging by how the mana circted in Ruby''s body, their race was talented in the mage area and still Scarlet turned out to be a knight instead.

    And Scarlet''s peculiarities didn''t end there, Daimon''s attention was drawn to the sudden continuous shockwavesing from Scarlet''s battlefield.

    "Boooom!", the sound of metals colliding was deafening, the origin of it were Scarlet''s punchesnding on the defensive martial art of the rook with whom she was fighting.

    "For a knight piece, your attack power is quite disappointing, it seems like your life spark is wed, which is a shame, you can never break through the battle aura created thanks to my Solid Rock life spark, without an offense-oriented life spark unless your realm his higher than mine", said the knight whose affinity was earth.

    Or more urately his affinity was rock, simr to Calvin with the difference that this rook guy was a knight instead of a mage.

    "Humph, those are some bold words for someone whose defense is crumbling away by the punches of a recently ascended Knight Lord who not only isn''t using a martial art but also has a battle aura that doesn''t increase physical strength", said Scarlet, making the rook grit his teeth.

    "Crack!", his defensive martial art indeed crumbled apart the next second, revealing the many melted parts on the inside of the rock shell, while Scarlet dispelled the red battle aura which covered her though pretty looking, dangerous hands.

    Unlike Lapis, she apparently didn''t have the time to even learn an attack type martial art, but only knew a movement type one, which was a smart thing to do from Daimon''s perspective.

    After all what''s the use of a high attack power, if you can''tnd a hit on your enemy, and so far, it was working for Scarlet, even if the rook guy shielded himself, she could st through his defense with her bare fists covered in battle aura.

    But her surprisingly high innate physical strength wasn''t Daimon''s focus anymore, but the words "battle aura that doesn''t increase physical strength", since so far, the only knight he knows is subject to such a condition, is him.

    While different types of life sparks and battle auras exist, creating a vast and diverse catalogue of knights with unique strengths, they all share one thing, be it at a smaller orrger quantity, a knight''s physical strength increases whenever he uses battle aura.

    It might be on the smaller side, due to their life spark either not focusing on offense, like the rook guy in front of Scarlet, whose focus was defense, hence why he wasn''t really returning any attacks to Scarlet, since hecked in terms of attack power.

    Or due to a poorly created life spark, however the rule of always increasing physical strength, stands in both cases and then we have Daimon, whose battle aura has a zero percentage of physical boosting, but is special in many other aspects, like the fact that it''s the core of his Demon Light.

    ''Life sparks are universally epted to be divided into, attack, defense, support and elemental types, I originally thought mine was an elemental type until I saw Aura''s one, which refuted that theory, now it seems I found another life spark with an unknown type", he thought.

    As their category imply, each type of life spark grants certain properties to one''s battle aura, attack types focus on physical strength, defense on the property of the same name, support is more diverse, it could be speed, flexibility, healing or something like that, as for elemental, it enhances the element imbued in one''s battle aura to cause changes.

    "I do admit that the heat radiated by your battle aura is incredibly high, unfortunately you chose to be a knight instead of a mage, otherwise you could have sted me away like that fire bird girl in your team did to mypanion", said the rook guy with disdain.

    It wasn''t a lie though, considering the high temperature produced by Scarlet''s fire affinity, she could have been in a smooth path to be a really strong mage, but she became a knight instead.

    "Oh, really?", Scarlet''s red hair started glowing, simr to what happened with Lapis, but this time the glow was red, also the words that came out of her mouth were different.

    "Determination glyph", unlike Lapis, the emblem on Scarlet''s body wasn''t visible, however there was a fierce red glow that could be seen even through the chest te protecting her upper body,ing from the left side of her chest.

    "Lapis showed a bit too much, so this battle will have to be a short one", with those words, Scarlet dded her arms with battle aura and charged towards the rook guy.

    "Didn''t I just tell you that you can''t¡­ aghhh!", confident in his defense, the enemy activated his defensive martial art, which covered his body in a rockyer, reinforced with battle aura, but this time let alone stop a bunch of Scarlet''s attack before crumbling apart, the thing couldn''t even withstand a single punch.

    Scarlet proudly smiled as she saw her fist passing through the rook''s defense and sting a hole through his shoulder, since the enemy managed to react at thest second, preventing his lungs from being destroyed on the spot.

    The rook whose survival instincts had kicked in at thest second, discarded his defense to stall Scarlet and immediately used the long-distance teleport granted to his piece, to disappear on the spot.

    Naturally Scarlet didn''t stay there and gave chase using both her movement martial art and the sh type movement ability of the knight pieces.

    The rook guy who was in a panic-stricken state right now, over almost dying due to a simple and pretty much unrefined casual punch from a girl whom he considered a talentless knight that chose the wrong path, immediately ran away, while he scanned his own body.

    ''How did she do that, after she used that strange ability, her presence did get stronger, but there was no other effect, her physical strength didn''t increase nor did she use any martial art at all, so how did she utterly destroy my defense!'', he thought as he touched his shoulder just to immediately retrieve his hand feeling the remaining heat burning his fingers.

    "I get it¡­ it''s a damn curse of some sort, she must have casted it when she used that ability, to weaken my defense, hey bishop, use cleanse on me!", shouted the rook guy, referring to thest remaining bishop from the enemy side, the one who will be fighting with Julio, when he catches up with him, since he has been putting distance between each other from the very beginning.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow, so far no one had interfered in the fights of each other, in part because the respective pairs of opponents where quite far from each other at this point, also it was an unspoken rule, so the moment that rook guy decided to go against that, Daimon''s eyes glowed behind his mask as he prepared to cancel whatever help that bishop could give the rook.

    Only for him to see Scarlet smiling at him from afar, making Daimon sigh, he moved from his previous position after Lapi''s battle, not too much but enough so that Scarlet couldn''t tell his current position based on the direction in which Lapis gazed at the end of her battle.

    ''These girls surely have it easy to spot me nowadays'', thought Daimon, it''s not like he was actively hiding, but there was a really big distance between them, not to mention that he was floating high into the sky, since that was the stage of Reyne''s own battle and yet both Lapis and Scarlet could find him with ease.

    Anyway, since she didn''t want him to interfere, heplied and held his hand, the bishop actually doubted whether to help or not, because if he stopped to cast a spell, he would lose a big portion of the distance he had managed to put between himself and Julio.

    "Hurry up damn it, once I kill this woman, I''ll help you deal with that guy!", shouted the rook guy, clearly throwing away the mutual agreement of no interference between battles.

    The bishop looked backwards and saw Julio who was clearly a battle-oriented knight, while he was a support-oriented mage and knew that alone in a 1v1 fight, Julio will destroy him so he took his decision.

    "Clear Purify!", the bishop raised his hand and a blue stream of water was shot from it, thanks to his bishop role, his spells got a muchrger effective range, making it possible for him to easily reach the rook guy in a matter of seconds.

    The rook was sshed the next moment and with a sizzling sound, as he expected he stopped feeling that burning sensation on his shoulder, not only that but the wound on his flesh started healing at a visible rate.

    With reaffirmed confidence in his defense, the rook guy turned around and faced Scarlet once again, of course he changed the martial art he was using, battle aura exploded out of his body as he used his trump card.

    "Immovable Mountain!", the projection of a rock mountain was condensed with battle aura around the rook as he tackled Scarlet, he even secretly used the attack-nullifying ability of a rook just in case.

    Only for him to lose his mind when he saw Scarlet casually extending just her index finger which was covered in battle aura, to meet his tackle, head on.

    "Crack!", not only the image of Scarlet''s arm being thorn apart due to the impact, didn''t appear, but that thin elegant finger of Scarlet pierced through the mountain projection and the momentum, brought the rook in front of Scarlet, just in time for her to pierce his chest just with the tip of her finger.

    "Booom!", the result however was that the whole upper part of the rook''s body was blown away into smithereens, the nearby ground melted intova and the remaining part of the corpse turned into charcoal, before turning into ck dust.

    The trumpet sealed the destiny of the rook, the guy was as dead as possible without understanding how.

    [A rook has been eliminated from the game, congrattions to the Red Queen]

 Chapter 591: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters version (part 6)

    Amidst the chaos produced by whatever ability Scarlet used to blow up the whole upper body of a defense type earth element Knight Lord and a rook, Daimon tried to organize the few hints he got about these girls''s newly acquired powers.

    ''So, in normal circumstances the energy they use is essentially the same as mana, despite sharing simrities with theposition ofher which I know off, they are also quite talented in their respective elements and paths, given Lapis''s rtively fast casting time for someone who just became a mage and the high destructive heat of Scarlet''s battle aura'', thought Daimon to then inwardly add.

    ''Then when they use those "glyphs" the other part of their energies which is normally inactive,es to life and grants them certain abilities, for Lapis, she somehow could change a spell for anotherpletely different one, including the element even if she doesn''t have the respective affinity as for Scarlet¡­ I only know that the red glowing from the below her chest te circted all the way to her finger when she shed with that rook ''.

    Unlike the enemy knight who didn''t know how was it possible for him to die just by the finger of an enemy who didn''t increase his strength with battle aura, nor used any martial art and was also on the same realm as him, Daimon could tell things weren''t as simple as they looked.

    While Scarlet''s ability seemed way simpler and less shy whenpared to Lapis''s one, that wasn''t the case, under normal circumstances he would have also thought that the rook''s defense getting "weaker" was caused by a curse or debuff of some sort.

    The rook guy thought it was a curse since unlike debuffs, curses are harder to detect unless one specializes or has proper knowledge about them, so at hisst moments that guy supposed that Scarlet''s life spark was a support type one and she just hid it for the right moment.

    Which is why when he received the cleansing spell from the bishop, which allowed him to heal the burning sensation, he got regained his confidence thinking that Scarlet''s ability was just mirrors and smoke, unfortunately he was wrong.

    ''And what if contrary toher, their power puts extreme focus on themselves instead'', wondered Daimon.

    Nether it''s thebination of one''s mana and a strong desire felt by the person in question, usually of a negative nature.

    At the castle of the women from the ck Knight race, Daimon saw those arrays which used other people''s emotions to produceher and at Agrak''s casino he learned thather can be used to influence others without them noticing, making them feel that same emotion, whichplements the array mentioned before, it''s a vicious full cycle.

    So, his theory was that Scarlet and the others, obtained an inverted version of that, instead of affecting others negatively, they would be affected positively.

    ''Mmm, it would make sense, Lapis''s voice supposedly made others have a good impression of her, but on a neutral way since she couldn''t force it, that could be called harmony''.

    ''Also, now that I think about it, I didn''t ask Scarlet about her and Ruby''s own unique characteristics, while Amber, Jade and Lapis did mention them since they happened to be rted to the ces where those needles were used on them, I guess I''ll know it after seeing the others fighting'', concluded Daimon.

    Scarlet and Ruby were just tortured in general without a specific direction, if anything, Scarlet was given special "attention" because she insulted that guy from the tribes by not epting his advances, so this is as far as Daimon could guess with the information he had.

    As if Scarlet could read Daimon''s thoughts, she took the initiative to look in his direction to then say.

    ''Since Lapis did as she wanted and showed off a bit too much, I''ll also give young master a hint, pay special attention to each one of our glyphs''.

    Daimon raised an eyebrow in response, Lapis''s glyph was visible, so it was understandable if Scarlet asked him to see it, but hers was hidden below her chest te and they didn''t spend enough time together to know about how special were his eyes.

    Once again, Scarlet showed how sensitive they were towards Daimon by adding.

    ''That purple haired girl told us that young master can see through physical things like¡­ clothes, so we didn''t bother to use clothes and armor that didn''t cover our glyphs''.

    Daimon felt a headacheing his way, he actually forgot that they were left with the crazy girl Sarah without surveince, what''s more the crazy girl herself even mentioned that Scarlet and the others "smelled" like him, so who knows what barbarities has she told them.

    ''Okay, don''t believe even half of whatever she has told u¡­ my eyes can indeed see through physical objects though, but it''s not like I use them for such things'', said Daimon.

    Seeing Scarlet''s doubt filled eyes, Daimon inwardly sighed, who knows how much has the crazy girl "corrupted" them, perhaps she got friendlier with them since their energy did resembleher, which she awakened back at Kerrol, simr to how she approached Haylee since she also had poison affinity.

    That being said and just as Scarlet was being transported, Daimon followed her advice and while every cell of his body was telling him that he was falling in Sarah''s trap, he saw through Scarlet''s chest te since he wanted to take a peek at the glyph that was still glowing on the left side of her chest.

    Of course he stopped there to not see through her clothes, he had gotten this much control over the infinity eyes, but even then, he couldn''t help but feel as if he was doing something bad.

    ''That damn crazy girl'', he thought as he scanned Scarlet''s glyph, unlike Lapis''s one which was a light blue female figure sitting cross legged in meditation, Scarlet''s glyph was a standing red female figure surrounded by mes.

    It was faint, but Scarlet noticed Daimon''s gaze on the area where her glyph was located and before she was taken out of the battlefield, her face slightly blushed, but by the time she appeared near Lapis and the others she had regained her cool.

    Back at the battlefield, Daimon could feel Evangeline and Narasha''s gazes on him and he cleared his throat to then change his focus to thest battle, he wasn''t particrly interested in Julio and whatever he had gained from his challenge, if anything he felt interested in how stronger had Lance gotten, but Aisha told him to not use the infinity eyes on Julio, there must be something going in with him.

    "Let''s see, where are they now¡­", mumbled Daimon as he looked for the remaining two participants, after the bishop casted that cleansing spell on the rook guy he ran as if his life depended on it because that is the case, only for him to see how Scarlet easily killed his hope of easy survival.

    That being said and while he knew he had no way to win Julio in a fight, he continued escaping, with the hope of making it to the time limit of the round, hence why Daimon had to look for them, since they had actually gotten further into the distance due to all the chase.

    Surprisingly the remaining bishop, who is a water support mage, managed to put distance between himself and Julio once again, perhaps because he was continuously spamming movement spells while also casting water barriers in Julio''s way.

    "Tsk, the increase in mana reserves and faster mana recovery is really annoying to deal with", said Julio, his attribute might be wind which is known for enhancing one''s speed but he is a knight and his life spark is an attack type one, so unlike Michael, Juliocks that high-speed mobility, which is why his team mates casted buffing spells on him back when he fought against Aisha.

    Also, Julio''s fighting style focused on closebat, despite his slender frame, all the previous contributed to the fact that his opponent was still alive, that being said, he was starting to get pissed off by the enemy.

    "Get away from me, your team already won so leave me alone!", shouted the bishop as he casted a water wall in Julio''s way.

    "de Hurricane Fist", wind battle aura gathered around Julio''s forearms as he punched frontwards, the water on his way was immediately forced aside by the traction power of the wind rotating at high speed, making the bishop feel the urge to cry.

    ''Out of all the possible elements, he had to have the one who has advantage over mine, damn it, I can''t let him catch up with me otherwise I am dead!'', he inwardly cursed.

    Daimon who was observing the chase, couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow, so far, he couldn''t see any difference between the current Julio and the one before the Global Raid started, unlike the others so far.

    Calvin not only increased his realm, he even awakened a second affinity, Leslie got an improvement in her lineage''s ability besides the increase in her realm as well, Lapis and Scarlet were the same, increase in realm and lineage ability.

    On the other hand, Julio is the first participant who already was in the Lord realms previous to the Global Raid and has already integrated the reward from his challenge.

    ''Perhaps direct realm advancement isn''t part of the rewards prepared for Lord ranks and above'', thought Daimon.

    Back at the fight, Julio who has been gathering energy since earlier finally gave it a use, his body exploded in green battle aura as he shouted.

    "Cyclone Armor", wind from every direction was drawn towards him, before all his body was covered by a semi-transparent green armor made out of battle aura, it was a rare sight, caused by a full body strengthening martial art!

    Buff spells are rathermon, they mainly focus on enhancing one specific aspect, then you have those rare spells such as the ones used by the royal linage of the Light Pce, like Jasmine whose buffs can bring major multiple benefits.

    The same applies for martial arts, except that even the single benefit buffing type ones are much rarer, to the point that they are transmitted as family legacies and this martial art which Julio was using, went beyond that, since it covered his whole body, it wouldn''t be an exaggeration to say that it was a martial art that could be the cornerstone to create a powerful family or force.

    Of course, the requirements were equally hard, it took Julio all the time that has passed since the round started until now to use this martial art, he used almost a fourth part of his battle aura reserves in a single go and judging by the inaudible for most people, creaking noisesing from his bones, the toll on his body was insane.

    Julio put on the semi-solid helmet that was created by the martial art, which covered his upper face and his hair which used to be quite short, grew until it reached his shoulders, in a close inspection it was actually wind battle aura that acted as an extension of his hair.

    The bishop who only now noticed that his opponent stopped chasing after him, turned his head around and when his gaze reached Julio, his face paled, while the distance between them was increasing, the sensation of doom also increased.

    "Water Walls".

    "Water Disruption".

    "Tsunami!".

    In a hurry, the bishop, casted threerge area effects in a row, disregarding the amount of mana which he had to use, the first one created multiple walls of water in between himself and Julio, the second one re-amodated them so that they weren''t in a straight line but in three different directions, that perfectly hid the bishop from Julio''s sight.

    And thest one created arge wave of water that engulfed the bishop, the idea was clear, avoid being hit by Julio at all cost.

    Unfortunately, things weren''t going to work the way the bishop wanted, Julio closed his hand and then pointed his fist frontwards.

    "Cyclone Breaking Fist", unlike his original martial art, he reced the "hurricane de" for a "cyclone breaking" and the result was also different, a rotating horizontal current of wind was shot from Julio''s fist, producing a wind tunnel that pierced through the water walls all the way to where the water tsunami was.

    Before the bishop could react, Julio jumped into the wind tunnel and he turned into a green sh, elerated by the fierce wind currents, within the wind tunnel, Juliounched another attack, resulting in another wind tunnel being created.

    "Aghhh!", the second punch grazed the bishop''s upper back and nearly blew out his right shoulder.

    Since the wind was dragging the water from the tsunami spell, towards it, dispelling it, he jumped out of the tsunami and started running once again, only for him to suddenly feel as if an elephant had stomped him.

    "Blegh!", the bishop vomited blood as a wind currentnded on his back, ripping his defenses apart and sending him flying a few dozens of meters frontwards.

    With a dull sound, the bishop heavilynded on the ground, despite his wounds he turned around just to see Julio arriving at the vicinity and knowing that he couldn''t escape from this one, he used all his remaining mana in a desperate attempt to take Julio down with him.

    "Water Friction Saw!", that was the only proper offensive spell that the bishop knew, it consisted in creating two water streams that flowed in opposite directions, the friction generated acted as a cutting force, he was proficient on it despite being a support type mage, because that spell is also used for construction to cut material.

    Julio was slightly surprised to feel the pressure from the two currents of water approaching him, however he simply extended his arms and actually stopped the spell with his bare hands.

    "Crack!", at the same time the armor on his arms crumbled apart and disappeared, ripping the sleeves of his shirt in the process, but the explosion of wind battle aura was enough to dispel the sharp streams of water used by the bishop.

    Before the guy could say anything, Julio shed and used his right hand to punch the bishop on the chest.

    "Hurricane de Fist", he probablycked battle aura to keep using the martial arts that came with the Cyclone Armor, so he finished the enemy with his usual martial art, Julio''s fist pierced the bishop''s chest and the wind battle aura gathered around his arm drilled a hole through him.

    Of course, the bishop died on the spot, allowing Julio to let out a sigh of relief, his body rxed and the remaining parts of the armor disappeared, except for the helmet.

    "Phew", while panting due to exhaustion, Julio looked in a certain direction, of course wasn''t looking at Daimon but at Lance who was also observing the fight, when the armor dispelled, the damage to his clothes was revealed.

    The sleeves of his shirt werepletely gone all the way to the shoulder, also the neck of the shirt was half shredded as well, but that''s not the important part but the white bandages that could be seen below his clothes, which got slightly loose changing the "shape" of Julio''s chest.

    The helmet slowly disappeared and while the extension of hair was gone, he for the first time removed his sses and his face suffered some minor changes, however whenbined with the bandages that had loosened enough for a couple of "bumps" to be obvious on Julio''s chest, things changed.

    ''Oh, so that''s why mom told me not to look at him¡­ her'', thought Daimon.

    To be honest, Julio looked rather "delicate" but thanks to those bandages which were now revealed to be used to give a much squarer shape to his chest and the sses which modified some aspects of his face, he simply looked like a thin schr.

    While this revtion wasn''t directed at Daimon, he couldn''t help but realize that it was done on purpose, to look like an ident, it would be too much of a coincidence that his clothes stopped shredding before showing anything too extreme, but that it was enough to make it clear that he was actually a she.

    "Yo, and here I thought I was the worse for almost falling in that trap at our challenge, but it looks like I am not the only blind one", jokingly said Calvin as he gazed at Lance who was in awe at the sudden revtion.

    "You are still the worse, you were almost seduced by that "mermaid", who was actually a male monster in disguise, you were lucky that I arrived in time", casually said Michael, revealing Calvin''s shameful past mistake.

    "Gaaah, shup up you shrimp bastard, we ended up there due to your mistake to begin with!", eximed Calvin, just to see Loren with a smile which wasn''t a smile, making him curse Michael in his heart.

    Ignoring those two''s usual arguing, Lance was lost in his thoughts upon the revtion that Julio was actually Julia, the many close "brotherly" moments they shared together flooded his mind and he nearly facepalmed himself after realizing that he should have noticed it way earlier.

    They trained, ate and even slept in the same room, it was only their bathing schedule the one that casually never "matched" at the barracks of the Neo Noble faction, also Julio''s hair grew quite fast so he had to cut it almost once a week and he slept while wearing his sses.

    ''I guess that''s why the general alwaysughed at me without any motive¡­'', he thought, Julia was general Dominic''s niece, of course he knew she was a girl and he knew she was pursuing Lance and helped her be his right hand so that they could spend more time together, in hopes that he would notice her secret, but ultimately, she had to reveal it herself, since the future of Neptune was uncertain and she didn''t want to risk to die without letting Lance know that she was a girl.

    And without giving Lance even an extra second to prepare for what wasing, the trumpet echoed through the battlefield and the announcement came after that.

    [A bishop has been removed from the game, congrattions to the Red Queen, all the enemy pieces have been eliminated, the Red Queen will be given the first move privilege]

    While Julia was sent out of the battlefield, leaving Lance to deal with her, Daimon listened to the announcement which was different this time and he flew back to where Reyne and the enemy queen were.

    Daimon arrived just in time to see those two finishing the preparations to use the materials from the corpse of the magic beast they chose, the results were naturally different, the enemy queen had a pile of bones devoid of any flesh or other material which could have vitality in it.

    Reyne on the other hand, had arge bucket filled with the blood of the corpse which she bled fry using her knight''snce to make multiple small piercing wounds all over it.

    The moment Daimon returned the battle started, normally the enemy queen would have fiercely taken the first attack, but since her team was wiped out, Reyne was given the first move so she could do nothing but watch until Reyne has made her decision.

    Speaking of which, Daimon still didn''t know what the rules were, since they were apparently changed for the official round, they just had to create the eight "pawns" they were going to use and send them towards the enemy, they could use them to fight against each other or go straight to the queen.

    But even that has changed, now they had to take turns to make the pawns and the dynamic between them will be different, the pawns can only fight other pawns, in exchange they can gain the powers of another piece with the exception of queen or king, if they reach the base of the enemy, the rules somewhat resembled those of chess but were also different at the same time.

    "Having the first turn is an advantage but it''s also a problem, she can make her first pawn after seeing the result of mine", mumbled Reyne with a slightly worried voice.

    Daimon chuckled, he knew that the problem wasn''t that, due to the discrimination that Emily suffered back at Kerrol, Reyne kept her Npsi lineage powers a secret, it is true that she used her blood affinity openly back then, but that wasn''t a proof of her race being quite far from what can be considered human.

    While rare, blood element isn''t exclusive to vampire races like the Ghouls native from Kerrol, humans and some races talented in the knight path can also be born with it or obtain it, since it''s rted to vitality at the end of the day.

    However, the ability she was about to use, was apletely different matter, if others saw her, she would have been considered a Ghoul like Emily, which isn''t true but there was no room for discussion back at Kerrol.

    ''She is usually so calm and level headed that I nearly forgot she is as young as Jazmine'', thought Daimon.

    Reyne is usually quite mature, her demeanor is akin to that of a young nobledy, except when she deals with Sarah who makes her loose her patience, or when she is with Daimon, since she acts like a little girl in love, something she has inmon with Jazmine.

    But that doesn''t mean she doesn''t have her own worries and insecurities, like right now when she was hesitating to use the other side of her exclusive ability as a Npsi for her benefit.

    Though she already told everyone in the group about her race, and she also has stablished somewhat of a friendly rivalry with the Risha sisters, that didn''t mean she epted it herself, it was normal given how she had to live most of her life.

    "If you keep limiting yourself you won''t be able to join my ss once we go to my ce of origin, normal people are the rare ones there, just look at Calvin", he jokingly said.

    "Mm~", Reyne softly giggled as she nodded at Daimon, the tense atmosphere disappeared as she was reminded that none of the people, she cared about put importance on one''s race, heck Daimon could practically be a part of the race he wanted, in fact he was a vampire like her, which reminded her of something that has been running around her mind since some time ago.

    ''Is it true that vampires experience an incredible happiness when they drink their partner''s blood'', she thought as she closed her eyes and the next second when she opened them, her pupils had gone from that emerald pretty green color to a bright blood red one.

    The blood in the bucket undted as if it had gained self-awareness, with an elegant gesture from Reyne, a stream of blood left the bucket and took a vague human shaped form.

    "Blood Knight", with a simple sentence, a cluster of battle aura left Reyne''s hand and was absorbed by the bloody human shape, which then produced a solid metallic looking exterior in the form of a knight''s armor, the helmet had a slit from which a pair of lights could be seen.

    The thing had some simrities with Horals the Bone General, which made sense as it was a type of undead, that''s right, Reyne had the ability to create undead using the blood of others, it''s worth mentioning that her mother(s) didn''t have this ability, even if they also had blood affinity and were Npsi, this was an ability exclusive to Reyne and the reason was still unknown.

 Chapter 592: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Reyneâ€™s version (part 7)

    Daimon''s purple amethyst eyes glowed behind his mask as he scanned the undead created by Reyne, whatever method she used is something he had never seen or heard before and that is a lot to say considering that necromancy is a wide spread subject back at the four gxies.

    The usage of artificial undead is amon practice among most low and middle-sized forces, especially those that operate in the shadows, so those from noble families are taught about them, this is especially true within families and forces that have had conflict with the undead races, like the Revy family so Daimon had a solid formation in the basics of necromancy.

    The first rule is that a base material is always needed, then you need a type of energy and a reanimation spell, for the first requirement, there are two options, bones or flesh, the choice depends on the final purpose for which the undead will be used.

    If it is for things that require physical strength, then bones are the best choice, if it''s chores that require magic, then aplete body is the best choice since a magic core is needed.

    However, Daimon has never heard about a blood based undead, undead created withplete corpses don''t have a need for blood, their bodies are maintained with mana that circtes through their bodies to prevent them from rotting.

    In fact, for the vast majority of cases most of their organs are removed since unless the necromancer is really skilled, they deteriorate over time resulting on the undead bing "unsightly".

    Undead whose bodies are intact are incredibly expensive so they are only created at the request of the buyer, an interesting fact is that Rita belonged to that category, that merchant Falco whom she was protecting along with Horals, wasn''t her final owner, he was transporting her for a client, when he had the bad luck of meeting Daimon, which resulted in his death.

    Anyway, Daimon got interested in Reyne''s undead creation ability, because one of the side effects of Rita bing a terror contracted, was that her body regained all her functions, her heart started beating once again instead of being only a decoration and she had blood running through her veins as well, by all means she was alive.

    Horals was simr though in a weirder sense, since the previously Bone General undead became able to use battle aura, meaning that he had vitality, despite him being a skeleton, the mes in his skull were actually his life spark, the only other undead known to be able to use battle aura was Szar Inferas, the Lich Emperor, but that guy was rumored to have been born a human who then transformed himself into a lich, while Horals was an undead who technically gained life, theplete opposite.

    And while the Blood Knight created by Reyne wasn''t at that level, it was created with vitality in the form of blood, so Reyne''s ability was of a higher rankpared to the necromancy known at the four gxies.

    ''I remember that the noble ghouls had different blood rted abilities, there was even one who could turn corpses into puppets, but this is different she took a bunch of blood and bestowed it her battle aura to make it an undead capable of independent movement, what''s more that armor was created using the vitality contained in the blood, it might be a degraded version, but that''s the principle behind battle aura'', thought Daimon.

    Reyne who could feel Daimon''s interest in her ability was all smiles right now, the previous worries that clouded her heart werepletely gone now, but for now and against her wishes she focused her attention on her opponent instead.

    The enemy queen, who was also surprised after seeing the strange undead created by Reyne, snorted to then say.

    "Even if you change the reanimation technique you use, the result will be the same, my race''s innate talent is necromancy and I was personally chosen due to my high talent by my Lord, with his blessing, there is no way your creations can outss mine".

    Seeing that Reyne''s undead had an armor, the enemy queen chose a high strength undead, arge number of bones from the pile she had prepared beforehand, floated away as she made some gestures.

    "Bone Brute", the bones selected by the enemy queen were covered in a ck substance, that was casted by her, dying them ck and turning a bunch of bones into a tall imposing four-meter-tall figure holding a bone club.

    "Humph, you were only able to gain the upper hand because I was restricting myself but not anymore", said Reyne with a determined voice.

    Apparently in the previous rounds, instead of creating those blood undead, Reyne controlled blood to make puppets with the bones of the corpses she used, simr to the corpse puppet ability used by that ghoul, naturally she suffered simr inconveniences, as she had to control them manually.

    "You say that, but you couldn''t even make a weapon for your so-called Blood Knight, my creation will crush it with a single attack", said the enemy queen, as she mocked the Blood Knight whose height was barely half that of her own creation.

    Reyne didn''t bother to continue the discussion, she instead gestured with her right hand and a stream of blood came out of the bucket, unlike what the enemy queen expected, Reyne actually used less blood than with the Blood Knight for her second unit.

    "Blood Knight", once again she bestowed a certain amount of her blood battle aura to the human shaped agglomeration of blood, transforming it into an undead, this time it was a slender one with a female shape, light armor that protected the legs and the chest only, it should be an agility focused version of the first one she created.

    The enemy queen frowned, during the previous rounds, Reyne only used one type of undead so she was taken by surprise after seeing that she could create a second type, that being said she put on a mocking expression as she took out her magic weapon, a long bone staff.

    "This is the difference between you and me, Bone Sorceress", the enemy queen tapped the ground with her staff and arge amount of that ck substance was produced by her, the thing moved and dragged some bones from the pile, to then turn into a female shaped undead with ck inked skin.

    "This is my Lord''s blessing, if I wasn''t chosen by him, I would have been like that thing a mere soldier, instead of evolving into a Bone Queen who can even create other mage type undead", she said.

    While Reyne didn''t care about the enemy''s words, as she proceeded to repeat the process of creating the male version of the Blood Knight, Daimon observed the undead created by the enemy queen.

    ''Those undead created with that ck substance feel awfully simr to what Ereth did to the people from the ckfin family, no doubt this is the energy of that grim looking guy'', he thought, referring to one of the threemanders of the Nethereal army that appeared in Agrak''s memories.

    The other two were supposedly, Jazmine, Reyne and Sarah''s fathers, but the third one while not involved in that aspect, was the one who produced all the artificial Nethereals which appeared at Neptune.

    ''I wonder why those three bastards hadn''te out of their bases¡­ whatever, with me here, they can''t do anything to them'', thought Daimon, if it isn''t obvious enough considering how the enemy queen keeps saying Lord this and Lord that, the though weaker than what Daimon expected, energy firmsing from the enemy bases, belong to the Nethereal Lords.

    Feeling the special attention that Daimon was paying to the undead created by the enemy queen after showing interest to the Blood Knights created by Reyne, a certain head maid felt her chest flood with jealousy.

    ''I can change my focus to necromancy if put my mind into it, that was the original talent of my race after all¡­'', she couldn''t help but say from within Daimon''s shadow, making Daimon bitterly smile.

    ''That would be a shame, where would I find a head maid that can be at my side at all times, said Daimon, making Rita giggle.

    ''Mm, if young master says so, I''ll remain in the shadow path~'', she happily said.

    ''Well, at the very least I didn''t have to order her to put value to her own life¡­ unlike with Horals'', thought Daimon, the Bone General originallypletely disregarded his life, if his death could bring even the slightest benefit for his young master, then he would proceed without hesitating.

    Rita on the other hand, reached the conclusion that if she died, she wouldn''t be able to continue serving Daimon and that''s something she can''t allow to happen, she stillcked a bit ofmon sense but she was much more logical than Horals for sure.

    ''For now, we can see the "potential" that the original path of your previous race, followed'', said Daimon to the undead head maid, the strongest mage type artificial undead known at the four gxies were Bone Sorcerers, but the one in front of him called herself "Bone Queen".

    Also, while restrained to the early-stage Lord realm due to the challenge, the enemy queen was at least an early-stage Ster rank mage and Bone Sorcerers could at most reach the middle stage of the Archmage realm, meaning that he was seeing the next stage of a Bone Sorcerer, it was valuable information to bring back.

    ''Even if she evolved into an upgraded version, I can beat her easily'', mumbled Rita, to which Daimon chuckled, while she is sure that she isn''t a Bone Sorceress anymore, her new race hasn''t been specified, meaning that whatever the requirements for her evolution might be, she hadn''t fulfilled them yet.

    In part this is also why he wanted to learn more about the enemy queen, that could show him how to help Rita with her evolution, he didn''t want to mention it for a good reason¡­ Horals was already undergoing said change, he could feel it.

    Back at the real world since Reyne and the enemy queen just finished making their pawns, from the enemy''s side, she had seven of those Bone Brutes and a single Bone Sorceress, as for Reyne she had four male shaped Blood Knights and four female shaped ones, a much more bnced team.

    On the other hand, the enemy had a mage unit in her team, which might be devastating in a team fight, since Reyne couldn''t produce a mage unit, she is a knight after all.

    Now that both sides had finished creating their pawns, the barrier that separated them finally dispelled and they were now allowed to fight each other.

    "Go crush those who oppose our Lord!",manded the enemy queen as she shed towards Reyne, she wanted to kill her with her own hands while also demonstrating that her undead were superior in every way.

    "Block them", Reyne gave her order and she also used the spatial movement ability granted to queen pieces, to go meet the enemy.

    Speaking of the enemy queen, that same ck substance which she used to create her undead, covered her body acting as an armor of some sort, after all she didn''t dare to sh head on against Reyne, a knight, without using a buffing spell.

    "ck gue Armor!", the enemy queen punched towards Reyne with her right hand which had gathered arge amount ofher.

    In response, Reyne''s delicate looking hand exploded in the same red battle aura she used to create the Blood Knights from earlier, her blood battle aura then took turned into a red wed gauntlet with which she wed towards the enemy queen.

    "Crimson w".

    "Booom!", the result was a thunderous shockwave followed by an energy explosion, half of the sky was lit up in a red blood colored light while the other got dyed ck by theher of the enemy.

    The result was that both Reyne and the enemy queen were sent flying backwards, however Reyne only stepped back twenty meters while the enemy got sted away a whole forty meters.

    It was understandable, not only is Reyne a knight but her innate physical strength, is much higher than average talented people, back at Kerrol she won in a direct confrontation against another knight and that was when she was using her fire element battle aura, which doesn''t focus on increasing her physical strength, but using heat to burn everything in her path.

    ''So, this is her real power in Npsi mode, in terms of physical strength she should be able to go head-to-head against Sarah'', thought Daimon as he carefully used the infinity eyes to peek at Reyne''s lower abdomen.

    Of course, what he aimed was at her life spark, back then he didn''t know that Reyne would end up joining his group permanently along with Jeanne and Emily, so he didn''t run a deep scan on how her powers worked.

    And after leaving Kerrol, there hasn''t been a chance in which Reyne had a need to enter Npsi mode and also use the battle aura exclusive to this state, which was a blood element one, that being said he did look into her life spark when she is in human form back then.

    ''It''spletely different¡­ does she have two life sparks?'', wondered Daimon as he saw the red solid looking life spark shinning within Reyne''s body as of current.

    Back at the fight, Reyne proudly stood in her ce while mockingly looking at the enemy who she pushed backwards twice the distance than what she was forced to move, making the enemy grit her teeth in anger.

    "What''s up with that look, you should see your arm before considering this mere warm up as your victory", she said.

    Reyne looked at her right arm and saw that she had a few drops of that ck substance staining her, the thing was actually eating through the thinyer of battle aura covered her skin.

    Reyne frowned, she tried to st the ck substance away with liberation of battle aura, but the thing actually increased its size instead.

    "Mm, so it feeds on vitality", she mumbled to which the enemy queen mockinglyughed at her.

    "My Lord created this to deal with knights like you, so enjoy¡­", the enemy queen stopped midway, when she felt the overall aura around Reyne change.

    Her blood red pupils turned green again and then her arm shone in a dazzling fiery orange light, the air around her was distorted due to the high heat she was radiating, smoke was immediately produced by the ck substance.

    "Hissss!", the ck substance started sizzling before it was calcinated and turned into ck dust that fell to the ground the next second.

    The enemy queen was momentarily at a loss, during the previous rounds the queens had not fought directly even once, their only interactions have been through the pawns so the enemy queen whose name is Rachel by the way, didn''t know that Reyne also has fire affinity.

    ''Impossible, she eliminated my ck gueher, how can she have such opposite affinities and control them without any side effect!'', inwardly screamed Rachel.

    Her shock was understandable, blood affinity at its basic form is an element on the negative specter, and Reyne''s blood affinity was used for necromancy meaning that her blood element was on the extreme of the negative side of the specter.

    Fire on the other hand is a much more neutral element, it can be positive or negative depending on its nature, if Reyne''s fire was of a destructive nature then Rachel could still find sense in her having affinity on it.

    However, Reyne''s fire affinity didn''t produce mes, her battle aura produced extreme heat and also light and for a good reason, her life spark when she was in human form was an elemental type one.

    Add to the controversy that besides her two affinities being on theplete opposites of the specter, the fact that blood by principle aligns with water which would most of the times enter in conflict with fire and then you can understand why Rachel couldn''t help but curse, the enemy she was fighting wasn''t like the usual random people that ended up stranded in the territories ruled by her Lord, which she captured and offered as sacrifices all the time.

    ''I have to admit it, these three little girls have the potential to bring the innate talent of my Ivory family to a new level, I can''t imagine what kind of monsters would their offspring be~'', Joanna who had remained silent while guarding Jazmine in secret, jokingly said in a voice that only Daimon could hear.

    ''Ahem, have there been people in your family with two different life sparks before?'', asked Daimon while ignoring her obvious suggestions.

    ''Nope, in fact in the whole history records of my family, all the members of the royal lineage who awakened the "duality" and managed to obtain an affinity on theplete opposite side of the specter, were mages¡­ so little Reyne is the first, little Jazmine and little Sarah are equally unique though'', said Joanna, to which Daimon nodded.

    Two different life sparks, of two different types, the fire is a rare elemental type while the blood one is a support type that allows her to use a special type of necromancy while still increasing her physical strength as much as an attack type life spark.

    "Judging by your dumb face, I assume you believed that blood was my main focus, unfortunately for you, not only it hasn''t been even a year since I became able to use it, but prior to this challenge I had never used necromancy in my life, in other words what you are having trouble to deal with is only my starting line", proudly said the Npsi girl.

    Fire has been her focus for the vast majority of her life, not only because she had to hide her identity as a Npsi, but also because her fire affinity was especially effective against Ghouls, as it originates on the light element, she is Jazmine''s sister after all.

    Only recently she has started to actively explore her Npsi side, in part because she doesn''t need to hide it anymore and in part thanks to Daimon being a vampire as well.

    Reyne''s eyes once again changed to a blood red tone, the only inconvenient she has as of current is that she can''t use her fire affinity in Npsi mode, just as how she can''t use her blood affinity when she is in human state.

    So, in human state she can''t give new orders to the undead she created, something that the enemy queen who was now trying to find a way to turn the tables after seeing Reyne not needing to resort on spending around twice the amount of energy whenpared to theher she wanted to dispel, which is the usual norm, noticed.

    "Though I don''t know why is that fire battle aura of yours so effective against myher, to the point that you didn''t even need to use a martial art to deal with the effect of my gue Armor, there are other ways to deal with you", said Rachel, she then shed towards the area where the pawns were engaging in a fierce battle.

    Two Bone Brutes guarded the Bone Sorceress, while the other five were fighting against six of Reyne''s Blood Knights, all the male shaped ones and two of the female ones, respectively.

    While the Bone Brutes had a higher physical strength whenpared to Reyne''s Blood Knights, they were rtively slow, the male shaped Blood Knights were much more bnced, so with the help of the female shaped Blood Knight which is incredibly agile for a Lord ranked undead, they were keeping the five Brutes in check.

    As for the Bone Sorceress, every time she tried to cast a spell, the two remaining female shaped Blood Knights attacked her from afar to interrupt her casting, unlike what Rachel thought, the Blood Knights did have weapons.

    It''s just that they produced them using blood, their arms turned into the weapons they used to be more urate, for example the two female shaped Blood Knights that were harassing the Bone Sorceress, forcing those two Bone Brutes to remain at her side to guard her, had transformed their right hands in a bow and a crossbow respectively.

    The one with the crossbow had a faster attacking ratio, she continuously shot blood bolts at the two Bone Brutes to keep them upied while the knight with the bow focused all her attention on the Bone Sorceress, forcing her to interrupt her casting midway to use the spell Bone Wall protect herself.

    This way, the advantage on the enemy''s side, namely the capacity to use magic, something that Reyne''s Blood Knights weren''t capable off, was negated thanks to superior agility and flexibility.

    The previous however worked like a charm when Reyne was in her Npsi form, since she could keep an eye on the battlefield through the Blood Knights and help the four male shaped ones to exchange between using tower shields and war hammers to besiege the Bone Brutes while the female shaped one used a dagger to pierce through their solid bone bodies, slowly but surely damaging them.

    Their rhythm was interrupted when Reyne changed to human form and while they weren''t losing, their team work slowed down resulting in a stall.

    "You two charge towards the ones hiding in the back, I''ll support from the rear", said Rachel as she pointed at the two female shaped Blood Knights that were controlling the battlefield.

    "Dream on", Reyne who just arrived, directly attacked the Bone Sorceress who was the major problem in Rachel''s team, in a try to get rid of her, just to see a ck fist aiming at her head.

    Reyne clicked her tongue, took out her knight''snce to block the iing attack from Rachel, while she wed towards the Bone Sorceress who casted a bone spear in Reyne''s direction.

    "Booom!", the sh between those three created a loud explosion, however this time Rachel wasn''t sted away, she managed to hold her ground, not because she had gotten stronger but because Reyne had to divide her attention in two, after all she had to defend herself against the Bone Sorceress as well.

    ''Humph, so what if you are stronger individually, my Lord''s specialty is to fight quality with quantity, let''s see how long can you hold on while being attacked from every direction'', thought Rachel.

 Chapter 593: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Reyneâ€™s version (part 8)

    Reyne gazed at hernce and couldn''t help but frown as she saw that ck substance from earlier, staining it just like it happened to her own arm, just as she was about to change back to human form and use her fire battle aura to turn the ck gueher into charcoal, her instincts warned her of dangering from below, making her jump backwards.

    Just in time for her to dodge a dozen of ck skeletal hands that came out of the ground, though she managed to avoid being restrained by the spell of the Bone Sorceress, the danger didn''t end there, as the nearby ground dyed ck due to substance that was covering the bones.

    Feeling the mocking gaze of the enemy, Reyne stomped with her right foot towards the Bone Sorceress.

    "Booom!", the ground shattered due to the strong impact and a crack expanded in the direction at which Reyne aimed, forcing the Bone Sorceress to summon a bone wall to defend herself.

    Naturally, Rachel didn''t miss the opportunity to sneak attack the Npsi girl, she turned into a ck sh that appeared behind Reyne and aimed her staff which was dded inher towards her sides.

    "ng!", a loud metallic sound echoed through the battlefield as Reyne blocked the enemy''s attack with hernce, seeing the mocking smile on Rachel''s face, the Npsi girl softly snorted.

    "Humph".

    "ck Marsh", the Bone Sorceress manipted the ck substance that was staining the ground in a try to surround Reyne, but thetter''s quick reflexes allowed her to avoid the ck substance current that moved underground and turned the spot where Reyne was previously standing, into a dangerous looking ck pond.

    "You won''t be able to dodge forever, you are bound to slip at some point", said Rachel, the ck substance was absorbed back into the ground, leaving a lifeless patch ofnd behind.

    Compared to other parts of the battlefield, the earth which was touched by that ck substance current turned grey and practically lost all the vitality that naturally inhabits a ce with abundant mana, in other words that ck substance made the nutrients in the soil die.

    Inparison, Reyne saw that while there were more stains of that ck substance on hernce, the thing wasn''t affecting her magic weapon at all.

    ''Mm, so herher only works on things that contain vitality, but only these two can use it and in different scales¡­ I see so that''s the so called "blessing" she received'', thought Reyne.

    The Blood Knights which contained the vitality she granted them through her battle aura were shing head on against the Bone Brutes and they weren''t being infected by that ck substance, meaning that only Rachel and the Bone Sorceress were capable of using producing thather, even if the others were revived using it.

    Rachel saw the light of disdain shing through Reyne''s eyes and she grinned.

    "To think you''d still have the nerve to gaze around after witnessing the glorious power that my Lord granted me", she said, to which Reyne answered with a mocking voice.

    "Those are some big words for someone that relies on an external source of power to get the attack power needed to face me head on but still fails to keep up with my speed", she said to then jump sidewards, preventing that ck current from earlier to ambush her, since the Bone Sorceress of course didn''t sit still while Reyne and Rachel exchanged words.

    Rachel gritted her teeth in response, it was true that theher which she was using to sh against a knight like Reyne, while being a mage herself, didn''t originate on her, but that''s not what angered her the most, but the fact that Reyne clearly looked down on the power which her master personally granted her, Rachel basically saw red on the spot.

    "Enough, I didn''t want to ruin you too much as I was going to present you as a sacrifice for the Lord, but I have changed my mind, your bones will have to suffice, gue Charge!".

    With a loud shout and a bunch ofher gathering around Rachel''s body, she pointed towards Reyne and all theher which she gathered was injected into the ground, which then rumbled giving the Npsi girl a bad premonition.

    Reyne covered herself in blood battle aura and turned into a red sh, putting distance between herself and the enemy, but the spell used by Rachel had a huge area of effect.

    "Tsk", the Npsi girl clicked her tongue as she used hernce to smash a series of ck spikes that raised from the ground blocking her way.

    "Booom!", the metalnce destroyed the ck spikes which in a close inspection were made of multiple bones that stuck together and were then dded into that ck substance.

    Unfortunately, the bone fragments which flew in every direction, gave birth to new ck spikes of the same size as before, they didn''t need any ground to appear and actually manifested even midair, surrounding Reyne in every direction and making Daimon who was observing the fight, raise an eyebrow.

    Back at the fight, the surging ck spikes cut off Reyne''s path of retreat, of course Rachel knew that she could still use the spatial movement skill of the queen piece to escape, but she counted with that, the Bone Sorceress had a surprise prepared for her the moment she did, so imagine her displease when she saw Reyne standing still while being swarmed by a rain of ck spikes that came from every direction.

    The result were continuous "ngs" as if a bunch of metal projectiles were shing against a metal wall, the pained wails and the sound of flesh being ripped apart that Rachel expected didn''t happen.

    Once the attack ended, the image of Reyne covered from head to toe with a spectral blood red armor, was revealed.

    "Crimson Guard", a melodious voice came from the imposing red metallic helmet that covered Reyne''s head, before the armor turned into red particles after havingpletely blocked a direct attack from Rachel.

    "Y-You!", speaking of Rachel she was furious, she expected Reyne to be able to block her direct attack, what she didn''t expect was for all theher that attached to the armor to be utterly useless since the armor disappeared leaving Reyne in the same exact state as she was, before being attacked by the ck spikes.

    In other words, the previous spell was rendered useless as it didn''t even manage to infect Reyne withher to force her to change to human form in order to cleanse herself, causing an interruption in the rhythm of her Blood Knights, a chance which Rachel wanted to use to gain the upper hand.

    ''That''s good alternative but I doubt that was what she had in mind when she created that martial art'', thought Daimon.

    Reyne faced a big problem with her blood affinity, unlike Emily, she couldn''t use the same principles of the blood element martial arts that existed in Kerrol, which were created, tested and improved through countless generations by the Ghoul race.

    So, she had to create her own martial arts, add to that the fact that she only recently awakened her blood affinity and you get a pretty muchcking repertory of martial arts at her disposition.

    Which exined why all the ones she had used are one time activation ones, like the movement martial art, the attack one and this defensive one as well, they were "basic" martial arts that couldn''t be maintained and had to be activated every time, which wasn''t efficient.

    Take for example that wind armor used by Julia, the martial art remained active as long as she provided energy to it, reducing the amount of battle aura she needed to use it since the activation is what uses the most energy, of course the toll on her body was bigger, but it was worth it.

    ''Mmm, perhaps the knowledge of the Nosfear family could be of use to her, their blood affinity is different than the one of the Ghoul race after all'', thought Daimon.

    He could see the slight tinge of frustration in Reyne''s face, though she was unfolding with flying colors in this fight, it is also true that it wasn''t an easy battle, for the first time in her life she had to use the defensive type martial art which she created after all.

    ''Ughh, I had to show such a wed martial art to him'', the sole thought of using that armor which could only block one attack and had a poor design since it hasn''t been refined properly, in front of Daimon, made Reyne feel anger deep in her heart.

    She red at the Bone Sorceress, who felt an instinctive sensation of fear, forcing her to rush the casting of the spell she has been preparing all this time.

    "gue Field!", with those words, a ck inked cloud appeared above the battlefield, pouring countless drops of ck liquid all over the ce, the spell was perfectly calcted to avoid Reyne''s current position so that even if she used her fire battle aura to st the rain away, she couldn''t prevent all the rain from reaching its destiny.

    And soon, Reyne found herself surrounded by a grey and lifeless wastnd, which boosted Rachel''s power, as the sudden increase from the early to the middle stage of the Lord realm, suggested.

    That being said, the Bone Sorceress couldn''t move anymore and fell on her knees, she was created by Rachel using that highly concentratedher of hers, resulting in that ck inked appearance and while she could use it as well, it seems like there was a limit which she has reached after using thatst spell.

    Still, the Bone Sorceress was smiling, since she had contributed to this victory, so there was a chance that she might also be rewarded like Rachel.

    "What do you think, amazing right, even if it''s of a low quality and artificially created, a dead battlefield like this one is the atmosphere preferred by my Lord and anyone who serves him, a ce where a lot of deaths has taken ce is our paradise", she said.

    To which Reyne frowned, since besides the recently deceased pieces of Rachel, no one else has died in the battlefield, as if she could read Reyne''s mind, Rachel casually said.

    "What, did you think your group is the first one to ever appear here, no, many people have ended up stranded here, from mages to random civilians, since the rules of this ce allow anyone who enters to use powers of the early Lord realm, then there were no restrictions regarding who came here, some despaired and died while others had tried to make their way to my Lord''s castle and they were all killed by me".

    "With the pass of the years, enough of them helped my Lord to interfere with the rules, it''s amusing that regardless of whether they wanted it or not, they all ended up serving for my Lord''s purposes", she said as she stole a gaze at the Bone Sorcerer who was having a hard time keeping the ck inked mantle that surrounded her, since she has used too muchher.

    Rachel snorted as she tapped her metal staff on the floor, all the ck substance that had stained the battlefield, was activated by her in a single go, at the same time an angered scream could be heard from the side.

    "What is this, my power is being stripped away!", shouted the Bone Sorceress, to which Rachel casually said.

    "You already fulfilled your purpose, but don''t worry I''ll be sure to tell the Lord about your contribution".

    ''What a joke, did you think I didn''t notice your desire to receive the Lord''s blessing permanently'', she thought.

    The Bone Sorceress whoseher was being forcefully taken away, tried to insult Rachel but the words didn''te out, at thest seconds of her existence a strange thought shed through her mind.

    ''Why did I help the bastards that killed me''.

    The ck inked mantle that covered her waspletely absorbed by the ground and the Bone Sorceress turned into a lifeless pile of bones which then sank into the ground.

    "gue Graveyard, Horde Surge", with those words, the ck substance trembled and the ground was split apart as countless skeletal hands surged from below.

    ck skeletons emerged from the ground until Reyne waspletely surrounded, in a rough scan around a hundred of them had appeared and while they were all star ranked undead, they were radiating ck smoke spreading that infectiousher.

    Reyne frowned in response, not due to being surrounded but because this should be against the rules, as if Rachel could read her mind or more urately, she seemed to be used to this kind of reaction, she exined.

    "The rules state that we can only create eight pawns from the corpse we selected and we aren''t allowed to take the materials needed to create more, out of any kind of spatial treasure, however this is the special trait of the blessing granted to me by my Lord, "Death Recall", which basically allows me to use even the smallest remnants of any dead being to temporarily create a gue horde".

    "Of course this can''t evenpare with what my Lord is capable, but it works perfectly, after all others wouldn''t be able to use nail sized bone fragments to create undead and there are countless tons of grinded bones, buried underground".

    Reyne softly snorted, basically the whole battlefield could benefit Rachel or more urately the Nethereal Lord behind of her, also the countless bones buried which she mentioned probably belonged to the poor bastards that hade here before.

    It was understandable, after the Bone Sorceress used her strongest spell, Rachel forcefully raised her powers to the middle stage Lord realm,bined with therge horde of undead, against the enemy and eight pawns, it would be a one-sided ughter.

    Ironically, the Bone Sorceress was turned into a part of this so called "graveyard" after Rachel had no more use for her, since she clearly treated her as a tool, despite being originally from the same race.

    Seeing the confident enemy who even had the luxury to give a grand speech, Reyne''s red eyes glowed, at the same time Rachel shouted.

    "Go, drown her in the glory of the Lord!".

    The ck skeleton horde which was spreading that gueher in every direction, swarmed Reyne from every direction while Rachel prepared to block Reyne from escaping through spatial movement, only to have a bad premonition at the fact that Reyne didn''t seem to be even considering dodging.

    "The rest of you, form a protective circle around me", she said, making the remaining part of the horde which she had purposedly kept hidden underground, toe out and form a circle around her, to block any kind of retribution from Reyne.

    ''She shouldn''t have any long-distance martial arts, so even if she uses that annoying fire element to breakthrough the horde, I can strike her down from afar¡­''.

    Rachel''s train of thought was interrupted by a sudden painful sensationing from her back, she slowly turned her head around just to see that two of the ck skeletons had used their sharp hands to pierce her back.

    But that wasn''t all, before she could react, all the undead that were surrounding her, grabbed and restrained her before pinning her down against the ground.

    "Let me go you lowly tools¡­ aghhh!", Rachel who used herher to try and st away the ck skeletons nearly managed to escape, only for many other ck skeletons to raise from underground to restrain her.

    "Booom!", Rachel was smacked against the ground and the held captive by countless skeletal ck bone hands, so that basically only her face was visible, the look of panic and confusion in her face was obvious.

    "L-Lord did I do anything wrong, please give me another chance!", she eximed in a hurry, only her Lord was higher in the hierarchy for the hordes created with "Death Recall".

    Unfortunately, the one who answered wasn''t her Lord, but the Npsi girl, whose mellow voice could be hearding from the hundreds of ck skeletons that were surrounding her.

    "Don''t tell me you can''t even recognize the energy with which simple skeleton undead are being maintained".

    The horde split apart, opening way for Reyne who casually walked towards Rachel, making thetter look at the skulls of the ck skeletons only to nearly suffer a heart attack when she saw a red fiery mist floating where theher, she used to revive the horde, should be.

    "What did you do, where is theher my Lord granted to me!!!", she screamed as she struggled to get the horde off her, only for the countless skeletons to tighten their hold on her body, not only that the moment she tried to use the spatial movement ability of a queen piece, a couple of the skeletons stabbed her body with their hands, forcing the process to be interrupted.

    Daimon whose interested in the current situation had increased by a few notches, due to what he just witnessed, gazed at Reyne.

    ''She absorbed theher gathered not only in the horde but¡­ in the whole battlefield, just like Sarah back then'', he thought.

    Rachel didn''t see it, but Daimon did, a few seconds ago, when the horde had surrounded Reyne to swarm her, her magic core became a ferocious beast which devoured all the nearbyher in a single go.

    Simr to how Sarah stole theher used by Ka back at Kerrol, before turning into a crystal cocoon.

    For Sarah the process started back when she absorbed theher that escaped from the spatial rift below Thea''s castle and ended with the previous, the amount ofher was more or less the same as theher that Reyne just absorbed, in other words this was the start of the process for her.

    That being said, things didn''t add up from Daimon''s point of view, while as far as Daimon understood one didn''t necessarily need to be a Nethereal to useher, Sarah was only able to absorbher with a simr energy firm to the smooth looking Nethereal Lord from Agrak''s memories, in other words her father.

    That''s right, theher used by Ka had a simr property to the one used by Sarah''s father, probably because she put a lot of focus in regaining her beautiful appearance from when she was aplete being.

    Besides that, Sarah only absorbed theher which was stored in the curse marks that branded her body, sessfully turning them into nutrients, the sole exception was that pureher which came from the spatial rift below Thea''s castle.

    ''Reyne is for sure Jazmine''s sister, Freya recognized her, but then how was she able to absorb theher of the third Nethereal Lord¡­ I guess the situation which led for Jazmine''s mother and Reyne to end up in Kerrol is moreplicated than what I expected'', concluded Daimon.

    Anyway, for the time being he put that subject at the back of his head, there were other big doubts to focus on right now, all theher rted stuff could still be exined but Daimon had no idea of how she took control of the undead created by Rachel.

    "Crimson Crown", Reyne who arrived at Rachel''s position, mumbled a couple of words, the next second a liquid blood crown manifested above her head.

    ''No way, that feels simr to the power of the Lord!!!", inwardly screamed Rachel.

 Chapter 594: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Sarahâ€™s version (part 1)

    Being gazed at from above by Reyne who looked imposing with that red blood crown floating above her head, made Rachel who was already being held against the ground, feel low as if her existence was insignificant.

    Not that Daimon couldn''t understand why, since the blood battle aura that conformed that crown was different than the one Reyne has been using so far, normally Reyne''s battle aura is of a bright red tone, resembling blood which is brimming with life and vitality.

    But that crown was of a dark red tone and the reason behind the difference in color and the sensation of insignificance that Rachel was experiencing was the same, it was because that martial art which Reyne just casted, usedher!

    Reyne wasn''t showing it, but she was as surprised as Rachel, she didn''t create this martial art, nor she knew anything about it until a moment ago, it simply appeared in her mind out of nowhere when she found herself surrounded by the gue horde.

    When she was swarmed by the ck skeletons in every direction she intended to change back to human form and st them away with her fire battle aura, but instead of that, her magic core absorbed all theher in the vicinity.

    Only then, Reyne used Crimson Crown since her instincts urged her to do so, the result was that she somehow overwrote the control that Rachel had over the gue horde and made herself their ruler, of course while Rachel couldn''t see any of that, Daimon witnessed everything with the infinity eyes.

    ''I guess it was to be expected for these three to have lineage memories like Ivy and the others, that still doesn''t exin why Jasmine''s sister is instead rted to theher of the Bane family''s Nethereal Lord, when her father is that other guy'', thought Daimon.

    Back at the battlefield, Reyne closed and opened her hands a couple of times, feeling the difference in her body, her realm didn''t increase but she did feel stronger.

    ''Mm, is not quite there yet¡­ I still can''t reach the level of that crazy woman'', she thought referring to Sarah, Jasmine didn''t notice it because she doesn''t consider Sarah a threat due to their close rtionship, but Reyne just met her and they still don''t get along exactly good, since their personalities arepletely opposite.

    So, the moment they reunited in thisnd whereher is abundant, Reyne could feel how strong Sarah really is and as much as she hated to admit, she wouldn''t be her match in a real fight.

    It wasn''t her fault though, because Sarah had already absorbed enoughher to awaken herhereal side, while Jasmine and Reyne hadn''t undergone through that process, not to mention that the crazy girl seemed to be especially talented withher.

    "That reminds me that I haven''t seen her usingher to fight, she was already dangerous enough with battle aura", said Daimon as he stole a gaze at the crazy girl who, immediately noticed it and smiled at Daimon''s direction.

    If Reyne had a martial art which worked withher, there is no way Sarah doesn''t have one, that being said Daimon isn''t sure about whether he wants to see it or not.

    Anyway, back at Reyne, the Npsi girl snapped her fingers and a few dozens of gue skeletons swarmed the Bone Brutes which were still putting up a fight against her Blood Knights.

    What followed was as expected a ughter, the Bone Brutes were held back by the small gue hordes and while they managed to destroy some of the skeletons, the resulting many fragments of bones, turned into new skeletons, but the new ones were different as in the mist they radiated wasn''t ck but red.

    It was an interesting sight, to see skeletons covered in a blood red mist swarming other undead, unfortunately Reyne didn''t have the leisure to study if they gained any new characteristics, she could feel that this state of hers wasn''t going tost much, so with a silent order the Blood Knights attacked their enemies through their own allies, destroying both the skeletons and the Bone Brutes.

    What''s more the ckher which was used to create the Bone Brutes, was freed the moment they were destroyed, the ck substance from earlier actually tried to escape back to Rachel, which caused a tinge of excitement to sh through her face, only for her newly found hopes to be extinguished as she saw with horror, how the thing was forcefully dragged towards Reyne.

    "Mm?", the Npsi girl this time had the chance to see the process, the ck substance moved against its original trajectory andnded on his hand, Reyne unconsciously closed her hand and the ck substance was absorbed into her body.

    "No!", what followed was a hysterical screaming from Rachel, since she felt the connection between herself and the "blessing" that her Lord granted her, being severed on the spot.

    It was different than what happened with the gue horde, because though she usedher, that was what she and the Bone Sorceress gathered, not the original ck substance which allowed her to evolve.

    As a matter of fact, the moment Reyne absorbed thather, two things happened, first the dark blood crown floating above her head, became more realistic before disappearing, turning into red particles that returned to her body and second, Rachel''s previously boosted realm, returned to the early Lord realm.

    "Aghhhh, how dare you steal the blessing of my Lord!", but that wasn''t all, Rachel''s body trembled, her previously ck inked skin turned gray and her hair dyed white, that was the basic appearance of every Bone Sorceress, in other words she regressed to what she used to be before receiving the favor of ahereal Lord.

    Reyne ignored the curses of the now Bone Sorceress Rachel and proposed to kill her with hernce, since now that the blood crown had disappeared the gue horde which she controlled had started to disappear as well.

    Only for hernce to be stabbed on the ground, instead of Rachel''s body, the many ck skeletons where still there but their hands were empty now since Rachel had disappeared into thin air, which made Reyne frown.

    ''That wasn''t the spatial movement ability of a queen piece¡­'', she thought as she scanned her surroundings looking for Rachel, also the ck skeletons all returned to what they used to be, a bunch of bone fragments that fell to the ground a secondter.

    No matter how hard Reyne looked around, she couldn''t find a trace of Rachel, which probably meant that whatever means she used, were past the Lord realm, strangely enough, she didn''t have to do no anything to solve the problem.

    "Ahhhh!", a pained scream drew Reyne''s attention back to the ce where Rachel was being held down, earlier.

    To her surprise, the Bone Sorceress actually came out of the ground right where she wasying down before, there was a difference this time though, this time there were a bunch of wounds on her body, she had lost any capacity to move and could only give Reyne a poisonous gaze as she said.

    "Impossible, this is an escape ability which I received thanks to my evolution, even if you stole my Lord''s blessing, there is no way a mere Lord ranked knight who hasn''t gained the capacity to control space, could stop me from leaving!".

    "Well, that''s an easy to solve mystery, I didn''t do it", said the Npsi girl, while she couldn''t see how Rachel escaped earlier, she did manage to catch a glimpse of how she reappeared and a certain person came to her mind.

    Rachel''s face twisted with anger on the other hand.

    "All that talk about external powers and you had to rely on the same thing to win, no matter my Lord will avenge me".

    Reyne casually stabbed hernce on her head, not without proudly saying.

    "You are a mere pawn while I am a trustedpanion, we are not the same".

    She changed back to human form and used her fire battle aura to turn Rachel''s corpse into ashes and then turned to see Daimon with a smile on her pretty face.

    ''Thanks'', she limited to say.

    In case you wonder what happened earlier, Rachel actually escaped using a shadow movement spell, which is why Reyne couldn''t perceive her, but was stopped midway by Rita, at Daimon''s request of course.

    What a joke, the undead head maid was now a half step Ster ranked and had gained the spatial ability that came with that, whichbined with her original shadow teleportation, giving her a unique spatial movement technique thatbined both, what for Rachel was an emergency lifesaving method was mut a mere daily chore for the undead head maid.

    Besides, using the shadows to move in Rica''s presence was practically asking to be humiliated, as the countless wounds that covered Rachel''s body when she was forcefully expulsed out of the shadows by Rita, suggested.

    ''Humph, trying to escape through the shadow realm in front of me, you chose the wrong person to serve¡­ follow'', thought Rita, thatst part referred to herself and she actually for a change put herself on a higher status than that of a subordinate at least for a couple of seconds before her face blushed as she returned to her usual self.

    Back at Reyne, she retrieved hernce and then gazed at the area where thest enemy should be, with visible hostility in her pretty green eyes, her hatred for the Nethereal Lords grew after she listened to Aurora''s story, though she didn''t get to meet her "original" mother, in other words Jessica, she knew that they made her suffer and also caused her to end up in Kerrol, which wasn''t exactly a good ce to live.

    So, every time she listened to Rachel say the word "Lord", the Npsi girl felt her heart burn with anger, unfortunately things were different than what she expected.

    [A queen piece was eliminated from the game, congrattions to the Red Queen for earning the right to challenge the Death King, please return to the waiting area until the next rounds finish]

    Apparently, for they had to defeat all the pawns of the Lords before even getting to see them, the enemy queens included, something Daimon already guessed, since the three castles that he could see from afar, were connected through an array.

    ''Those three really did use everything they had umted through the years, to change the challenge for their benefit, whatever even if they want to stall for time, they can''t hide forever'', thought Daimon.

    The fact that those three were resorting to little tricks to stall for time, piqued Daimon''s curiosity, since this wasn''t his final destiny, however the ck Sea Emblem brought him here for a reason and his own challenge hasn''t been revealed yet anyway.

    "Let''s go back, you need a nice rest", he said, it''s not like he was looking down on Reyne, the Npsi girl was tired after usingher for the first time, even if she didn''t show it, it happened to Sarah as well.

    With a small nod, Reyne was transported back to where the others were, while Daimon casually floated all the way there.

    The Npsi girl was weed by a smiling Jasmine and a smirking Sarah, which she tried to ignore while she approached her sister, unfortunately while trying to ignoring the crazy girl might sound easy, it is practically impossible to not pay mind to her words.

    "Heh, to think that miss "goody two shoes" would end up awakening the ability to useher rted to death, after showing adverse towards mine, how ironic~", she yfully said

    From afar Daimon could listen to the poor Npi girl''s blood pressure rising upon hearing Sarah''s obvious provocation, still knowing that the crazy girl will "win" if sheshed against her, Reyne took a deep breath to then calmly say.

    "I''m not againsther as a whole, just against yours which is a menace".

    Jasmine sighed at her two sisters eternal quarrel, but contrary to what she expected, Sarah giggled as she threw something to Reyne.

    "Mm?", the Npsi girl caught the object with her hand and couldn''t help but frown as she saw the vial with a light purple liquid inside of it.

    "What is¡­", before Reyne could finish her sentence, Sarah interrupted her.

    "Drink it, your head must be killing you right, usingher for the first time is mind-taxing, I wanted to crush someone''s neck when I first used it, that''s a rxing potion", said the crazy girl.

    Reyne was rendered speechless, sure there wasn''t really a fed between herself and Sarah, but they weren''t exactly in friendly terms either, the only thing they had inmon is that the two of them treated and appreciated Jasmine their little sister, which is why they tolerated each other''s existence.

    So, it was mind blowing to see the usually indifferent and quite blunt crazy girl, taking the first step tofort Reyne, unfortunately this touching moment was destroyed by Sarah as she added.

    "Well, it is actually the prototype of the one I prepared for Jas just in case, so it''s actually a "mind fogging" poison, but it works the same, now if you excuse me, I have some urgent matters to tend to with my king~", before Reyne could even react, Sarah had shed and appeared next to Daimon.

    "I swear one day I''ll stan her with mynce", cursed Reyne to which Jasmine softlyughed as she rforted her sister.

    "She means no harm so don''t take it to heart, she might not say it, but I saw the worry in her eyes when you suddenly usedher out of nowhere¡­ out of the three, Sarah is the one who has suffered the most due to it after all", mumbled Jasmine.

    Reyne couldn''t help but sigh, she had nothing to refute that, Aurora also told her about Bell and Sarah''s situation, how they were practically sentenced to death due to the cursed casted withher on them and yet they kept it a secret while protecting Jasmine in the shadows.

    ''Ah damn, I can''t even get truly angry at her, how hateful'', thought the Npsi girl as she drank the content of the vial and felt the immediate relief of the pressure that was assaulting her mind, disappear as if it never existed to begin with.

    Sarah is not only the one of the three sisters who has suffered the most due toher, she is also the one who understands it the most and the one who seems to be more talented on it.

    Speaking of the crazy girl, she appeared next to Daimon and made a few turns around him while licking her lips as if she was looking for a chance to jump on him.

    "Enough messing around for now, those guys canmunicate between each other, so now that they had gotten a much more realistic scope of the average strength of our team, they will be prepared to deal with them, not to mention that they will assume you can useher as well", said Daimon.

    Sarah nodded and then in another surprising turn of events, instead of trying to jump on Daimon, she slowly approached him and held onto his arm, earning a questioning gaze from thetter.

    "So, if I destroy them without the need of any assistance, can I get a reward?", she asked with an honest expression on her pretty face, which made Daimon get even more wary of her, it was so strange to see the crazy girl acting "normal" that it was actually scary.

    Reyne who managed to get a wind of what Sarah was saying, felt he urge to stab her with hernce but Jasmine calmed her down, as for Daimon he couldn''t pinpoint what did the crazy girl wanted but since she was at least being much more tame than normal, he agreed.

    "As long as it is "reasonable", we can talk about it".

    "Mm, thanks", she cutely said to then let go of Daimon and change back to her usual self.

    "Let''s go Haylee and everyone else, we have some bastards to kill~", she said, earning a snort from Ivonne, besides the Night Sparrow girl which is a knight piece, the other pieces consisted in Haylee, Amber, Jade and Lance, a bishop, a tower and two knights respectively.

    ''At the very least she didn''t call Yvi, "bird girl", I guess that can be considered an improvement'', thought Daimon as he saw the group being transported to their respective battlefield to then follow behind.

    Sarah and the others, were immediately met by the enemy queen and her subordinates, among which the remaining Keran twin, Bryan could be see, well he didn''t know that Daimon had killed his brother not too long ago, based on how he had a predatory gaze when he looked at the enemy team which was mostlyposed of girls.

    That being said, any pretense he had was shattered when his eyesnded on Lance who casually met eyes with him to then ignore the Keran prince, which made thetter grit his teeth.

    ''A lowlymoner dares to look down on me, a royal, just wait, I''ll crush the so-called pride of the neo nobles'', he thought.

    Besides Bryan, there was another familiar face in the enemy team, Sarah''s cousin, Purplehaze, whose eyes were filled with hostility.

    "Where is she!", he eximed to which the crazy girl giggled as she casually said.

    "If you are talking about Jas, she is enjoying a nice "rest" in thepany of her a certain person, something that shouldn''t worry someone who has nothing to do with her~", while Sarah''s words were rather normal, her suggestive voice made it sound extremely naughty.

    And for some reason that had an angering effect on Purplehaze who seemed to be about to explode, until the enemy queen red at him.

    "Enough, control yourself damn it", she said, to no one''s surprise she shared some characteristics with the women from the ck Night race which Rita captured, a seductive well proportioned body shape and dark pink hair.

    ''She is probably one of the leaders of the settlements of the ck Night race, which made enough "contributions" to be promoted by that guy'', thought Daimon.

    ording to the women from the ck Night race, those who contributed enough to gain the favor of their Lord, were transported to his side to directly serve under him, that was the major reward they all aspired for.

    The other pieces of the enemy queen were either sea magic beasts, subordinated to one of the rulers of the Maelstrom Sea or pirates from Marcus''s team.

    "I''ll pick first if you don''t mind", said Yvonne as she manifested her ck feathered wings and flew towards one of the pirates, just to be intercepted by one of the sea magic beasts, a tower piece to be more urate.

    "I''ll be your opponent", said the magic beast, the pirate which Yvonne was targeting was a bishop, she wanted to show off the improvement of her long-distance fighting abilities, after all she is a bow user.

    But apparently the strategy which the enemy team nned to use, was to not let them pick their opponents this time, Yvonne didn''t care though, she nodded and then both of them were taken to their own battlefield.

    Next was Lance, who was immediately paired with Purplehaze and a pirate, since thehereal sisters only had five of the 6 pieces, one of each of their teams had to take on two enemies at the same time, for Reyne, it was Calvin, as for Sarah it was Lance.

    In case you wondered, it was actually decided through a coin toss between both queens, the winner got to choose who would face two opponents, Reyne lost by the way, but Rachel was tricked by Calvin''s fool outside appearance and choose him, without knowing that he was the hardest nut to crack in terms of group fighting.

    In Sarah''s case, she won and while Yvonne wanted to be the one fighting two enemies, the crazy girl ignored her and chose Lance, not because he is one of the renowned three male geniuses of Neptune, no, but because he fought against Daimon at the tournament and the crazy girl wanted to mess with him, of course she also knew that Lance is quite outstanding within the team.

    "So, it''s you two this time, fine by me", limited to say the taciturn neo noble, his mind was still assimting the fact that Julio was actually Julia.

    "Tsk, I wanted to kill thatmoner, whatever, I''d rather "enjoy" my fight", said Bryan as he gazed at Jade and Haylee, only for his sight to be blocked by Amber.

    "Oh well, you''ll make do for the time being", said the Keran prince, leaving only Haylee and Jade behind.

    "I want the bishop", said a magic beast guy as he red at Haylee who shrugged in response, as for Jade her enemy was a pirate.

    With the pieces having their enemies assigned to them, Sarah and the enemy queen were brought upwards into the sky, where they had to wait for the pieces to finish their battles before starting their own.

    And so, Sarah''s challenge began.

 Chapter 595: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Sarahâ€™s version (part 2)

    Up in the sky the crazy girl who was leisurelyying down on the air with a bored expression while stealing some nces at Daimon from afar, felt the re of the enemy queen and casually turned her head around.

    "What, do you want to give up?", she said.

    The provoking and clearly mocking tone of Sarah, naturally made the enemy queen feel as if her blood was boiling but given that they had already exchanged words during the previous non-official rounds, she knew that if she were to let the crazy girl anger her, it would be her victory, the enemy queen instead grinned to then say.

    "You surely look to be having an easy time, are you so sure that your pieces will survive, I have a prepared something special for you¡­", the enemy queen was interrupted midway by Sarah who waved her hand towards the enemy queen.

    A metallic "ng" followed by the sizzling sound of something being corroded made the enemy queen grit her teeth, Sarah casually threw a poisoned needle towards her face, of course it was stopped by the barrier that prevented them from fighting before the conditions were met.

    "Ahhh, this is so boring, why can''t I just rip off your head to exchange it for a nice reward", mumbled the crazy girl,pletely ignoring the enemy queen who seemed to be about to explode.

    ''This bitch, how dare you try to ruin my beautiful face which was personally praised by the Lord!!!'', she inwardly screamed, throwing away any thoughts of keeping a cool attitude, that being said and as much as she wanted to kill Sarah, she didn''t try to attack her.

    "I would like to see if you can keep that nasty attitude after you see the result of the first fight", she said as she pointed towards east.

    Sarah didn''t bother to say anything, she simply looked at the first battlefield, where three people had just appeared, naturally they were Purplehaze, the pirate who tagged along and Lance.

    Then a strange scene unfolded, the pirate which was a bishop piece, immediately ran away, it was not to make use of the increased range of effect granted to him due to his piece, but he instead seemed to be running as if his life depended on it.

    The answer to the previous strange situation was given a secondter when Lance heard cracking soundsing from Purplehaze''s body.

    "Mm?", Lance frowned, he saw Purplehaze taking out a sword to then charge towards him, it is widely known that he the trump card of the neo nobles is a closebat expert, not to mention he has earth affinity, while Purplehaze has darkness and poison affinity and excels in long ranged battles, in other words everyone knew that in a direct confrontation, Purplehaze would stand no chance against Lance.

    That being said, a second previous to the sh, Lance noticed something strange in Purplehaze''s eyes, the brown half of his two-colored spear which was repaired after Daimon broke it during their fight back then, shone and an invisible connection was stablished between it and the ground.

    "Boooom!", both weapons met and the result was quite unexpected, a small mound in the vicinity exploded as if it was hammered by a giant, sparks flew from the sh between Lance''s spear and Purplehaze''s sword, not to mention that the ground below them cracked due to the impact

    "Tsk, so you did notice in the end, I guess it is still too hard for me to conceal it", said Purplehaze as he stopped the sh by throwing a stream of darkness mana towards Lance forcing him to take a step backwards to dodge.

    Lance didn''t lose track of that random attack from Purplehaze and saw how it pierced a hole through the solid rock where itnded, unlike what one would expect it didn''t corrode the stone but directly shattered it, in other words it was a physical impact.

    ''Darkness mana with physical impact instead of corrosion¡­ no that was theher mentioned by Daimon, that still doesn''t exin that strength akin to a knight though'', thought Lance.

    That''s right, during the previous sh, Lance judged Purplehaze to have used physical strength on par with a middle rank knight lord, the problem is that Purplehaze is a mage and he isn''t a magic beast descendant so there is no simple exnation for him to have obtained such physical strength.

    It''s not like mages can''t have high physical strength, Lance himself is a mage who fights in closebat after all, but he obtained the capacity to do so through abination of ssic old physical training as well as his earth element affinity.

    "Is that strength the ability you obtained due to that energy calledher?", asked Lance to which Purplehaze smirked.

    "I thought you would take a few attacks before realizing, amazing right, granting a mage the ability to sh head on with a knight without the need of any boosting spell nor the use of magic weapons¡­", unfortunately for Purplehaze, Lance interrupted his great monologue.

    "It couldn''t have been easier to notice, you haven''t properly integrated this new strength into your fighting style properly, or perhaps you were this lousy to begin with", he casually said as he rolled his spear a couple of times.

    Purplehaze felt a vein pop on his neck, his gaze changed once again, the ground cracked below his feet and the next thing that happened is that he had turned into a blur that appeared in front of Lance.

    "Let''s see you surviving this "lousy" fighting style!".

    "ng!".

    "Booom!".

    What followed was Purplehaze''s sword shing against Lance''s spear like before, once again the ground in the vicinity took the impact thanks to Lance''s innate ability, the difference was that the impact was stronger as the countless pieces of broken stone that flew everywhere, suggested.

    That and the fact that Lance found himself attacked by two ck streams of energy, forcing him to stamp the ground and raise a rock wall in order to buy enough time to retreat.

    "Booom!", naturally a simple rock wall which wasn''t even a spell couldn''t block that attack and was destroyed in a second but it was enough for Lance to recover his stance, as the rock wall crumbled, he saw the origin of those two streams ofher from earlier.

    Unlike the first time they shed, Purplehaze didn''t let go of the grip on his sword tounch an energy attack, those attacks came out of nowhere hence why they took Lance by surprise.

    "The fact that I am now physically strong doesn''t mean I have lost my capacity to use spells, after all I specialize in middle distancebat", said Purplehaze.

    Lance previously slightly excited expression disappeared as he saw the pair of ckher arms that extended from Purplehaze''s shoulders.

    Not having obtained the reaction he expected, Purplehaze frowned.

    "What, weren''t you the one who wanted to see the fighting style in which I trained the longest, so what''s up with that expression!", he shouted.

    "It was my fault, for a second I thought you were able to cast magic from other parts of your body, like him, but I guess I expected too much so I felt disappointed after seeing that cheap trick", said Lance as he gazed in the generic direction where Sarah and the enemy queen were floating.

    Purplehaze didn''t need to think too much to know whom was Lance referring to, after all he saw the fights of the previous round and knew that Daimon observed the sh between the queens quite closely.

    And he saw red,her overflowed out of his body like a broken dam and then Lance sawrge number of ck streams gather from all over the vicinity, surrounding the area of fifty meters around Purplehaze.

    Far from there, up in the sky, Sarah saw the sudden appearance of a ck space and she raised an eyebrow, remembering the scene from back when Purplehaze fought Daimon.

    "That is¡­", she mumbled while she red at the ckher which had a tinge of red mixed into it.

    The enemy queen whose name is Shei by the way, saw the crazy girl''s reaction and grinned.

    "I was also surprised, a Lord ranked with the capacity to use a smaller version of a Domain, but as talented as that guy might be, he was only able to perfect this capacity after my Lord granted him a blessing".

    Daimon''s attention was momentarily drawn by Purplehaze, back then he had managed to forcefully elerate the creation of a "Manifestation" after absorbing a lot of magic resources which were given to him by Abaris, resulting in a half-assed version of the Manifestation used by the talented natives of the four gxies.

    But now that changed, in many ways, for starters he wasn''t resonating with mana like a normal Manifestation would, but withher, under normal circumstances thetter has a much more destructive power yes and it alsoes along with other special effects, however unlike mana,her doesn''t naturally exist in the atmosphere.

    At least not in Neptune, Kerrol or the four gxies, the exception would be Draim whereher can be found within some dimensional tunnels, which extends all the way to Neptune through said tunnels, like the one that exists below Thea''s castle at the Maelstrom Sea or other cracks in the space that appear there as well.

    So, theher that gathered around Purplehaze came from the atmosphere of this ce, it was the advantage of being the local force.

    Also, Daimon had seen the artificialhereals of the Arch rank have their Domains corrupted due their transformation, but this was the firsther Manifestation he has seen and it was different, in his eyes Purplehaze didn''t look like an artificialhereal who was transformed from another race, he wasn''t still there but his energy firm somewhat resembled that of Agrak, in other words he had it on him to be a full-fledgedhereal.

    On the other hand, it''s not like it didn''te with a price, the poison element that used to be present in Purplehaze''s Manifestation from back then, waspletely eliminated, only darkness as well as whatever trait he used to awakenher, remained.

    "Do you know why the bishop ran away as soon as he could, that is because he didn''t want to be caught in the middle of that and that is the power my Lord offers you", said the enemy queen, making Sarah who was lost in her thoughts, return to the real world.

    "What you offer me to be weaker, that idiot lost his poison affinity", casually said the crazy girl, to which the enemy queen snorted.

    "Humph, what do you know,her is way more vtile than the mana used by mortals, since a strong emotion mixed into it, only the Lord and his peers can wieldher based on different elements and emotions".

    "You should feel honored that your race has a goodpatibility withher and that my Lord values that talent enough to grant your cousin such a blessing, give up and worship my Lord and you''ll get something even better!", she eximed with a blindly excited voice, only for the crazy girl to smirk in response.

    She didn''t even bother to say anything and simply held onto Daimon''s right arm while mockingly gazing at Shei, making the enemy queen''s chest fill with anger.

    Ignoring the fact the crazy girl was using the enemy queen as an excuse to cling onto him at every given chance, Daimon found interesting that the enemy queen didn''t seem to know about Sarah''s identity as the daughter of the Lord she served.

    "Stop ying around and kill him already!", shouted the enemy queen.

    ''This bitch, if the Lord didn''t want me to bring you alive to him, I would have killed you, whatever, only she has to survive'', she thought before looking in Purplehaze battlefield''s direction.

    Back at the fight, Lance saw theher that had gathered around Purplehaze, shrink sidewards to then extend frontwards, at the same time Purplehaze turned into a ck sh thatnded in front of him, his sword pointing at his neck.

    "ng!", sparks flew as Lance intercepted the iing sword which was dded inher, with his spear, he didn''t have the time to counterattack before a pair of ck streams threatened with piercing his chest.

    With a swift maneuver, Lance jumped backwards dodging theher streams shot by the pair of energy arms that came out of Purplehaze''s shoulders.

    "What happened, weren''t you looking down on my closebat abilities, so why are you running!", shouted Purplehaze, his image shed and he appeared behind Lance with his sword aiming towards his waist.

    Unfortunately for Purplehaze, Lance saw through him and while using his spear to parry the sword, he kicked Purplehaze before theher arms on his shoulders couldunch their energy attacks.

    "Aghh", Purplehaze felt as if he was hit by a mountain and was thrown backwards, he didn''t expect Lance to interrupt hisbo by attacking him.

    He quickly rposed, giving Lance a chance to see that the area where he kicked had a ck membrane made ofher covering his skin, in other words he usedher to lessen the impact, that being said he couldn''t block itpletely and a bruise was left as a result.

    "Even real knights whose battle auras don''t focus on defense have to train like hell in order to reinforce their bodies and here you are, a mage who suddenly decided to fight in closebat as if it was something easy", said Lance as he rolled his spear and calmly changed his stance.

    Lance is quite a calm andposed person, he rarely gets angry, but Julia who was watching the fight could tell that he was furious, as for the reason, neo nobles in general take pride in their fighting prowess, they aremoners who achieved a great status based solely on the strength of their fists after all.

    And Lance as the one who represents the young generation of the neo nobles, trained like a madman until he became one of the strongest within his range of age, he became a mage who can fight head on against even magic beasts and isn''t afraid of knights, so he found Purplehaze''s current fighting style insulting.

    ''This bastard, he is mocking me!'', inwardly cursed Purplehaze, the gaze in his eyes changed like before, something that didn''t escape Lance''s sight.

    Lance''s pupils contracted a bit, his instincts told him to raise his guard just in time, the area where Purplehaze was standing exploded raising a curtain of dust and the next thing he knew was that a whistling sound came towards his face.

    "Boooom!", Lance used his spear to block the sword which violently descended from above, his feet sank into the ground due to the sh, but he didn''t falter, since the majority of the impact was transferred to the ground in the vicinity which caused a tremor.

    This time released the grip on his right hand and threw a punch towards Purplehaze''s chest, he had already confirmed that theher the enemy used wasn''t defense oriented, so his attacks were critical for Purplehaze.

    But this time the attack didn''tnd, to Lance''s surprise another pair ofher arms sprouted out of Purplehaze''s body, this time the origin were his sides, more urately at the lower part of his ribcage.

    Lance''s punch was stopped by the new pair ofher arms and the other pair which came out of his shoulders finished preparing their stream attacks.

    "Go to hell!", Purplehaze wildly eximed, he had held Lance in ce so he couldn''t dodge and his spear was busy blocking the sword and, in this position, he couldn''tunch a strong kick.

    But then, the expression of despair that Purplehaze expected to see on Lance''s face as the ck streams ofher were shot right at his neck, didn''t appear, instead of that he casually said.

    "Sweep", with that single word, the light green half of his spear shone and a strong current of wind deflected the ckher streams, dragging them far from Lance and giving him a chance to break out of Purplehaze''s imprisonment, by destroying the secondary pair ofher arms with sheer brute force.

    "Try and block this!", the two pair ofher arms pointed at Lance and four ck streams were shot towards him, at the same time he fiercely rushed towards Lance, this time he attacked from afar and only then approached for closebat, in other words Purplehaze had thrown out the pretention of defeating Lance in the fighting style in which he had expertise.

    Lance deflected theher attacks with a strong whirlwind and then intercepted Purplehaze''s sword with his spear, the two of them shed through the battlefield while exchanging blows, causing a disaster wherever they went.

    The bishop who had run as far as he could to distance himself from Purplehaze, was pale as a paper sheet.

    ''That crazy bastard, he would have turned me into mincemeat with those attacks of his¡­'', he thought only to be screamed at by Purplehaze.

    "What the hell are you doing you useless piece of trash, follow the n if you don''t want to be killed by me!".

    The bishop returned to the real world upon listening to the threatening voice of Purplehaze.

    "Damn it¡­ I don''t care anymore, Mirage!", the bishop, a water mage raised his staff and casted a strange spell, given the current situation.

    Mirage is a Lord ranked water element spell, it has no attack power nor any special effects, it simply created an illusion on those who are targeted by it.

    Surprisingly the spell wasn''t aimed at Lance, who put some distance between Purplehaze and himself, just in case, the spellnded on Purplehaze''s back.

    ''Infighting¡­ no it was aimed at him on purpose'', thought Lance.

    Purplehaze who was looking downwards a second ago, red at Lance, he exhaled a ck current ofher which made Lance frown.

    "That gaze again", he mumbled.

    This time Purplehaze didn''t resort to mockery, he violently exploded in ckher and the Manifestation that surrounded him, intensified and moved to block Lance in every direction.

    "Booom!", this time the sound of the ground exploding came a secondte, since Purplehaze had broken the barrier of sound at the moment of charging towards Lance who blocked with his spear.

    "ng!", the spear vibrated due to the strong impact, surprisingly even after transferring the attack to the ground with his innate ability, he couldn''t prevent his spear from being affected.

    What''s more, Lance was pushed a few steps backwards, Purplehaze showed no reaction unlike before, the previously vaguely shaped pairs ofher arms which had turned into much more solid and strong looking arms with ws at their ends shot ck streams ofher at the same time.

    "Sweep", Lance casted his wind spell deflected two of the four ck streams sessfully, as for the remaining two, he stomped his right foot and a stone wall raised, blocking them.

    "Booom!", the stone wall was immediately destroyed and Purplehaze, recklessly crossed through the rain of broken rocks to continue his barrage of attacks.

    Once again, they became a stream of destruction that devastated the battlefield, the difference being that Purplehaze had the upper hand this time around, also the poor bishop had started to run once again, since Purplehaze guided the battle in his direction.

    From afar Daimon who had Sarah stuck to him like bubblegum, raised an eyebrow after spying into the mirage that the bishop was making Purplehaze see, he couldn''t help but look at the crazy girl to then say.

    "You already knew it right, what was the emotion used for that guy''sher?".

    Sarah giggled in response.

    "Of course, that''s why I said he is a loser~", said the crazy girl.

    The mirage that the bishop used and that caused Purplehaze''s strength to soar in this way, was Daimon, his image was oveid on Lance, in other words Purplehaze''sher was somewhat rted to his hatred for Daimon.

 Chapter 596: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Sarahâ€™s version (part 3)

    The enemy queen saw Daimon suddenly paying attention to Purplehaze while he had more or less ignored him so far and she smirked.

    "You have started to feel it right, when one''sher reaches a certain purity, those rted to the emotion with which it was created will start to be affected even if they aren''t in contact with it", she said to then add.

    "Talented or not, with the blessing of the Lord he would have gotten an above averageher anyway, but thanks to you he became a monster, I don''t know what you did to him but you should be prepared to die in a horrible way!".

    Shei red at Sarah while she was speaking earlier, she had already scanned the masked youth to which the crazy girl was clinging to and was surprised and angered to find out that he was a mere early-stage mortal realm trash.

    ''How dare you to appeal to such a miserable mortal when my Lord is offering you a chance to serve him, I''ll deliver his head as well as yourself to him!'', she thought only to be brought back to the real world by Daimon''s words.

    "I doubt it", he limited to say not wanting to waste his breath.

    Naturally the previous made the enemy queen grit her teeth, she was being looked down by not only Sarah but also by the masked youth.

    "Why the hell have you not finished your dam fight!", she screamed in Purplehaze''s direction, she felt her sanity crumbling down with each second she spent near those two.

    Quite a few kilometers away at Lance''s battlefield, a disastrous scene had taken over the previously though barren still habitable terrain, giant craters all over the ce, pieces of debris here and there and a huge storm caused by the sh of mana andher in the atmosphere.

    In the middle of the deadly storm that was sweeping away everything within the battlefield, two figures fiercely shed.

    "Boooom!", Lance blocked Purplehaze''s sword with his spear, four ck streams ofher followed but were deflected by a strong whirlwind and next both parties retreated.

    Lance rolled his spear a couple of times and then calmly stretched his body with a bored expression, despite him previously being pressured by Purplehaze''s sudden increase in strength and the appearance of the secondary pair ofher arms, the more they shed the harder it became for Purplehaze to get any advantage over him.

    "Why, why haven''t you died yet!", shouted Purplehaze, just right know he got Shei''sin delivered directly to his ears, which added to his already angered self.

    "You might have gotten stronger but suppressing me without using any spells or martial arts is still out of your reach, so get serious at once so we can finish this", said Lance as he snorted.

    Besides those ck streams ofher, Purplehaze hasn''t made use of his Manifestation to cast empowered spells which is the whole purpose of it, that''s also why Shei wasining, he wasn''t using his strongest moves.

    But it was for a good reason, if even as of current, he had to use them against Lance, someone that has lost against Daimon, then that meant that he¡­ was still too weak to go against Daimon, in other words his change and power up would be mean nothing.

    "Damn it, each and every single one of you, how dare you mock me!!!", with a wild scream that resembled that of an enraged beast, Purplehaze''s Manifestation actually shrank down and was absorbed into his body.

    "I was keeping this for that bastard, but whatever I''ll get stronger after killing you, Dark Crawler Beast!", shouted Purplehaze, his body was then swallowed in a dark cloud which disappeared the next second leaving nothing behind.

    Lance''s pupils contracted like needles, a ck blur appeared in front of him and shed a sword from above with the idea of splitting him apart.

    "ng!", Lance''s spear managed to block the attack, sword but two wed hands aimed at his shoulders confusing him, why you ask, well, that''s because there were already two pairs ofher arms charging energy attacks in his direction.

    "Booooom!", an earth-shattering explosion swallowed everything in fifty meters around those two, small pieces of broken rocks rained all over the area and a cloud of dust was raised due to the impact but was dispersed by a brown and green light spear being swung.

    The dust dispersed to reveal two figures, Lance whose body was covered in a bronze green light and Purplehaze whose state was rather strange, his body waspletely covered inher, besides the two pairs of extra arms that were made ofher, his legs and arms became those of a beast.

    ''A boosting spell of some sort and a really strong one but¡­'', thought Lance as he saw Purplehaze''s current state.

    Purplehaze whose eyes were bloodshot, saw Lance finally entering his strongest state and grinned like a beast, earlier he forced Lance to use "Sweep" while he only attacked by charging without any extra spells or anything.

    In other words, he got what he wanted by suppressing Lance without the need of any spells, besides the boosting one he was using as of current of course.

    "Dark Charge!", with renewed confidence, Purplehaze used one of his newly created spells,her gathered from the vicinity and integrated with the boosting spell was using, turning him into a dark sh that devastated everything in his way.

    ''Unfortunately, I can''t use this for too long, but it''s worth it to kill that bastard¡­'', Purplehaze''s inner monologue was stopped in cold when a giant mana spear appeared in front of him.

    "What the¡­ aghhhh!", at such a high speed, Purplehaze couldn''t stop his spell so he only barely managed to move to his right, avoiding the attack but the spear still tore off his left arm all the way from his shoulder, alongside the extra two energy arms on that side of his body.

    "Booom!", the spear continued its way and pierced a giant hole through a mountain a few hundreds of meters away from the area where they were fighting.

    "Bronze Titan Thrust", Lance''s voice finally reached Purplehaze''s ears, the previous attack was so fast that it broke the speed of sound.

    "What the hell, wasn''t that a defensive spell!", screamed Purplehaze, he recognized the spell used by Lance, it was the same with which he deflected a part of Daimon''s final attack from back then, the difference is that his attack hadn''t even reached his target instead the spear came for him.

    "Certainly, the strongest aspect of Titan Thrust is its deflecting defensive property, however, you aren''t worthy of me using it as a defensive mean", casually said Lance.

    "Aghhh!", a pained screaming from afar drew Purplehaze''s attention, he turned around just to see that the bishop piece had his chest pierced by a very familiar spear, only now he realized that Lance didn''t have his spear on his hands.

    He let go of it earlier along with the thrust, the spell propelled the spear and uratelynded on the bishop who was supporting Purplehaze from afar.

    The bishop tried to remove the spear but the thing made its way through his heart killing him on the spot, to then return flying to Lance''s hand.

    "Y-You", Purplehaze stopped seeing Daimon''s image on Purplehaze the very moment the bishop died and his already diminishing vigor, was nearly cut in half, making the secondary pair of energy arms, or arm in this case since he lost his own left arm along with the energy ones, earlier, to disappear.

    [A bishop has been removed from the game, congrattions to the ck Queen]

    The announcement that the bishop had died, returned Purplehaze to the real world, he looked upwards and then shouted.

    "Do it now!".

    Up in the sky, Shei was trembling due to anger, after all that, not only Purplehaze didn''t manage to defeat the enemy but the bishop which was specifically prepared for him, was killed and she was the first to lose a piece, it was a humiliation for her who wanted to perform for her Lord.

    "What an idiot, fighting with the style of a beast against someone who specializes in fighting magic beasts", said Daimon, making the enemy queen feel the urge to scream.

    ''It was supposed to be used as a trump card to eliminate two pieces at once!'', she inwardly thought before saying.

    "Battlefield Exchange", with those words and with Lance''s spear about to reach Purplehaze''s chest, thetter disappeared, and to Lance''s surprise his battle counted as finished since he was starting to be transported back.

    "Tsk, how boring", he said as he disappeared, though he did use his improved abilities result of the challenge he overcame, he didn''t get the chance to use what he gained from it.

    "Hey, only I can y dirty, what was that", demanded the crazy girl, to which the enemy queen snorted.

    "Just a little gift from our Lord, it wasn''t mean to be used like that, but I guess getting out of a bad matchup is still worth it, what''s more¡­".

    Shei looked in another direction, making Daimon raise an eyebrow in doubt, as that particr area was Yvonne''s battlefield.

    The Night Sparrow girl who was finally allowed to fight against her opponent, since Lance''s fight had just ended, frowned, she saw her enemy stopping in cold with a shocked expression.

    "Why¡­ aghh!", a pained scream escaped the guy''s mouth as a ck arm emerged from his chest, the figure of Purplehaze became solid behind of him and the body of the tower piece who just died was drained and turned into a mummy.

    Next, Purplehaze''s left arm actually grew back and that wasn''t all, a ck barrier covered the area of three hundred meters, limiting the mobility of those inside of it, which forced Yvonne who was flying in the sky to descend.

    "Aren''t you surprised, using a little help from the Lord, I prepared this trap!", eximed the enemy queen.

    ''Castling but with an illegal aspect, I guess'', thought Daimon.

    Castling is a chess move that allows to exchange the position of a rook with the one of the king, of course what Shei did wasn''t exactly that, others might had have it hard to notice but Daimon''s infinity showed him what happened earlier in detail.

    The moment Purplehaze was forcefully transported out of his own battlefield, the rook who was supposed to fight Yvonne, was restrained byher chains, thus allowing Purplehaze to kill it with ease, to then absorb his vitality to heal, in fact Purplehaze who used to be a knight was now a rook piece.

    In other words, for the previous to work, a rook had to be sacrificed, this was probably a trick created by the Lord to which Shei served, simr to how the enemy queen who fought Reyne could use the bone fragments buried into the ground to her advantage thanks to her Lord messing with the rules.

    ''That''s not the one I ordered him to go after though, damn useless bastard, I''ll ask the Lord to punish him'', thought Shei.

    As if Daimon could read her mind, he smirked to then say.

    "He didn''t follow your n right, you wanted to put him against one of our bishops but he changed the target".

    Shei felt a cold chill running down her back as she heard the masked youth casual''s voice, feeling as if he could see through her, now imagine how she felt when the crazy girl mockingly added.

    "Anyone with half a brain could have known that~".

    The enemy queen gritted her teeth not understanding what Sarah meant, she couldn''t be med though, Daimon hadn''t fought yet, so how could she know that the mana used by the Risha sister''s wings, was originally his.

    Purplehaze didn''t know it until a second ago either, he was originally going to follow up Shei''s n, but he felt a familiar energy firming from one of the other battlefields and since it belonged to the one, he hated the most, of course he chose to go there.

    "Whatever, I don''t believe a second bad matchup can save you, the mobility of those winged women is useless in a reduced and closed space, so the result will be the same as the one nned", said the enemy queen to which the crazy girl giggled as she said.

    "That wasn''t a bad matchup, it was just that idiot being too weak but this one is one hell of a nightmare matchup~", she said.

    Listening to the crazy girl''s mocking words, Shei had a bad premonition but she then inwardly shook her head.

    ''No way, I paid special attention to those winged bitches, this one uses the bow and fights at long distance but now is trapped inside the barrier, there is no space to maneuver in the sky and being forced to fight against that guy in closebat is a death sentence for her'', she thought.

    Back at Yvonne''s battlefield, the night sparrow girl gave a disgusted re to the guy who just interrupted her time to show off.

    "You, you have his mana, die!", Purplehaze''s eyes got muddy and the secondary pair of energy arms which was gone when the bishop died earlier, appeared once again, apparently, he used the fact that Yvonne had traces of Daimon''s mana in her, to pump himself up again.

    Yvonne saw the four ck streamsing for her and her pretty dark feathered wings sprouted out of her back, as she raised into the sky to take some distance, though she couldn''t go too high due to the barrier, it was still enough to dodge Purplehaze''s attack.

    "It''s those wings, he gave them to you, then if I tear them off, he''ll be angered right, he''ll suffer, that should suffice to get back to my prime", rambled Purplehaze, he couldn''t use Manifestation nor his boosting spell anymore since he had used most of hisher, he only recovered in the physical aspect after draining the rook piece.

    With a "swoosh", Purplehaze used the long-distance teleportation granted to rook pieces, to appear behind Yvonne and punched with all his might towards her neck, or at least that was the idea, Yvi''s ck feathered wings shone in a pretty dark light which made Purplehaze lose his aim and fail his attack.

    Yvonne then shed downwards, not without taking out her bow and shooting a dark arrow at Purplehaze who shook his head to get rid of the dizziness caused by Yvonne''s mana, the two pairs of energy arms caught the mana arrow and crushed it with ease.

    "Petty tricks, you can''t run forever, just one punch will be enough to get rid of you!", shouted Purplehaze as he prepared to rush towards Yvonne, only to see the night sparrow girlnd on the ground a few dozens of meters away from him to then dispel her wings.

    Yvonne''s body glowed in a pretty purple light for a second as she circted Daimon''s mana throughout her whole body instead of using her wings, simr to what Leslie did earlier, to then re at Purplehaze with contempt.

    Thebination of being looked down and the traces of Daimon mana he perceived from Yvonne, made Purplehaze''s blood boil, but at the same time he felt hisher recovering at a faster ratio than before.

    ''Stupid bitch, I''ll crush your skull in front of that guy'', he thought as he charged towards Yvonne.

    "Booom!", the ground cracked under Purplehaze''s pressure, unfortunately his attack was easily dodged by Yvonne elegantly moving to the side, the four energy arms alsounched theirher streams but didn''tnd on the night sparrow girl who simply made a few twirls like a feather dragged by the wind.

    Up in the sky, Daimon couldn''t help but be surprised by Yvonne, she was using the "Phoenix Dance" exclusive of Leslie''s family branch, or more urately it was a revised version of it, which reduced the explosive and energetic rhythm used by Leslie and instead increased efficiency.

    ''Despite how easy she seems to be dodging that guy''s attacks, the concentration needed to pull that off is quite high, she isn''t losing in terms of battle sense whenpared to a knight'', thought Daimon as he saw Yvi fluttering around taking the less amount of moves and using as small amounts of mana as possible to keep up with Purplheaze''s fierce barrage of attacks.

    Let''s not forget that she is still a Star ranked mage who is fighting against a middle stage Mage Lord that could put pressure on Lance in closebat, at least to a certain extent.

    Purplehaze saw his attacks notnded as was reminded of his previous battle with Lance, he gritted his teeth and then shouted.

    "Stop running you, slippery bitch!", Yvonne who was happily enjoying the feeling of Daimon paying all his attention to her disy of improved skills, frowned, she stopped in cold, which gave Purplehaze an opening for him tond his attack.

    "Finally go die!", he forgot about energy attacks and focused everything into his right fist, dding it with mana as he punched towards Yvonne''s face.

    "Boooom!", the fistnded against something and made the ground explode due to the impact,her was dispersed in every direction resulting in a dark cloud that dispersed a secondter to reveal an Yvonne who was standing there with her right arm extended in front of her.

    Her pretty index finger was extended frontwards, blocking Purplehaze''s punch head on, making thetter feel as if his brain had stopped working.

    "You are merely a target for me to disy my improvement in front of him, so¡­ know your ce", Yvonne''s nail painted ck and the next thing that happened was a loud lung-breaking scream, being forced out of Purplehaze''s mouth.

    "Aghhhhh!".

 Chapter 597: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Sarahâ€™s version (part 4)

    The previous scene caused quite a varied number of reactions, first of all Purplehaze pained scream followed by him retreating as if is ass was on fire, he managed to use the long-distance teleportation ability of a tower to sh away from Yvonne.

    Naturally, since there was a barrier covering the battlefield there was a limit as to how much distance he put between them, but it was enough for him to recover from the previous shock and then look at his right hand.

    ''What the hell was that!'', he inwardly screamed, contrary to what the excruciating pain he experienced a second ago, would suggest, he didn''t suffer any visible wound, if anything his back was drenched in cold sweat.

    Purplehaze returned to the real world after realizing that Yvonne wasn''t following up with the battle, he gazed at his opponent just to see the night sparrow girl casually standing there looking at her nails which had now been dyed ck.

    This of course made Purplehaze feel his heart boiling with rage, however he didn''t dare to blindly charge against her like before, instead of that the two pair of energy arms charged their attacks and he shed to then appear at Yvonne''s right.

    "Boooom!", the four energy streams blew up a piece of the ground into smithereens, however Purplehaze didn''t stop there, his own arms aimed at the sky and as he expected, Yvonne''s pretty figure soared upwards as her ck feathered wings had appeared on her back once again.

    Purplehaze''s eyes glowed and a wild smile appeared on his face upon the sight of Yvonne''s wings, because thanks to them the presence of Daimon she radiated became stronger, since all the mana he gave the night sparrow girl, was concentrated there.

    "Dark w Shredder", Purplehaze wed towards Yvonne, shooting a pair ofher shes in her direction, while he prepared the next round of attacks from the energy arms, in the direction where he judged Yvonne would move in order to dodge.

    So, imagine his surprise when a condescending smile appeared on the night sparrow girl''s face, Yvonne snapped her fingers and Purplehaze''s spells exploded in the air, at such a distance that not even a single lock of Yvonne''s hair was affected.

    But that wasn''t the end of it, four darkness arrows which were shot by Yvonne''s other hand when she snapped her fingers, arrived at Purplehaze not even a second after his previous spells failed to reach the night sparrow girl.

    "Damn it!", after experiencing a loss at Yvonne''s hands or more urately one of her nails, earlier, Purplehaze didn''t want to take her attacks head on, so he shed using the teleportation of a rook, managing to dodge the four arrows from before.

    Unfortunately, before he could react an arrownded on his back, the impact actually smacked him against the ground.

    With his face covered with dirt, Purplehaze trembled due to anger, he clenched his hands breaking the ground with his fingers, the physical impact of Yvonne''s arrow didn''t hurt him at all, the arrow was shot without much strength behind it since Yvonne shot the arrow with extreme speed.

    However, the angle was especially calcted so that he would be smacked face first against the ground with no other purpose but to humiliate him, or at least that''s what he thought.

    "You bitch how dare you¡­ aghh!", Purplehaze got up and roared like an angered beast but was interrupted midway by Yvonne casually snapping her fingers, what followed were sizzling sounds produced from the area where the arrownded, a hole was melted into Purplehaze''s back, forcing him to radiateher in order to subdue the corrosion caused by Yvonne''s darkness mana.

    Speaking of Yvonne, the voice of the night sparrow girl who was elegantly gliding through the air with a condescending expression on her pretty face, reached Purplehaze''s ears not even a second after he finished pushing away Yvonne''s mana.

    "Heh, why is someone who lost all dignity as a darkness mana user trying to fight at long distance".

    Yvonne''s condescending voice, burned almost as much as the corrosive wound which was left on Purplehaze''s back.

    In exchange for obtainingher, not only he lost his poison affinity but even the original property of his darkness affinity which was corrosion was lost, he went all in in explosive destructiveness, the contrary to what the naturally elusive darkness is supposed to represent.

    And here he was, engaging in long distancebat after changing his fighting style to specialize in closebat, it was utter humiliation.

    "That''s enough, ck¡­", Purplehaze got back but his spell was stopped midway as he saw a rain of darkness arrowsing at him from every direction, making him interrupt his casting to continuously sh away in order to dodge the seemingly endless rain of arrows.

    ''Damn it, if long distance is her specialty, how did she stop my punch earlier!'', he angrily thought, he was supposed to be the one suppressing the enemy and yet here he was dodging continuously, what''s more he found the barrier being an obstacle for him, since he couldn''t get out of Yvonne''s fire range.

    Which isughable, the barrier was especially designed to limit the mobility thus rendering the advantage of being able to fly that the Risha sisters had, the problem is that it only worked if their enemies were to fight them at closebat.

    High up at the sky, the enemy queen was about to lose it after seeing Purplehaze not being able to pummel a star ranked mage to death, even after setting up a stage that waspletely advantageous for him.

    He was instead being chased around like a dog all over the battlefield, the arrows that missed him weren''t even corroding the ground, but only leaving shallow marks on the ground meaning that there wasn''t much strength behind of them.

    "What the hell are you doing, stop dodging and freaking kill her at once!", she screamed

    ''What strength equal to that of a Lord Knight, he can''t deal even with that weak girl, useless piece of trash¡­", Shei''s inner cursing was stopped midway by Sarah''s mocking voice.

    "Even when he focused on long distance, in terms of pure skills, he wouldn''t have been able to defeat that birdie, what a loser, but it''s also your fault for not spying on others properly~".

    Shei who was already in a bad mood, felt her blood pressure going through the roof after being looked like an idiot by the crazy girl, unfortunately for her, Sarah hadn''t finished speaking.

    "What kind of idiot sends her subordinate to fight an enemy who has a stronger, more talented and waaay more beautiful version of said subordinate in his same team~", she added with a yful voice, while letting out a bit of her battle aura while still holding onto Daimon''s arm.

    As if something clicked in Shei''s mind, she was reminded of a very basic and simple fact, something that she knew even before she met with Sarah for the first time, she is Purplehaze''s cousin.

    ''T-That bastard, he lied to the Lord, he didn''t obtain any illumination for closebat due to the memories in his bloodline, he simply copied this bitch''s fighting style!'', she inwardly screamed.

    Purplehaze''sher was created and powered based on the hatred he felt towards Daimon, he wanted a way to be able to surpass Daimon in what he thought was his field of specialty, since everyone thought that Daimon was a knight after the tournament.

    Naturally, Purplehaze had never trained in closebat fighting, he was a mage so suddenly changing his focus without any foundation should decrease his battle prowess, but then he grew close to Sarah, the most talented knight of the young generation in the within the Elemental Sea, or more urately he grew up being beat up by her every time he approached Jasmine, so it''s normal that some of her fighting style stuck up to him.

    And that''s what gave birth to the closebat fightingbination with long distance elements, the difference being that Purplehaze used thoseher stream attacks instead of the poison needles that the crazy girl used.

    "It seems like I really underestimated you as a queen piece, to think you taught others how to counter your own fighting style just because your cousin was in the enemy team¡­", Shei''s words were stopped midway by the crazy girl giggling at her.

    "What the hell are you talking about, while I noticed that loser was imitating me from the very beginning, I didn''t say a word about it, he just happens to have really bad luck, to think that out of those three, he''ll go after the one that I''mpeting against with for the big prize~", she said.

    The prize she mentioned was Daimon of course, speaking of Daimon, he couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow at the crazy girl, it was the first time he heard about the Risha sisterspeting with thehereal sisters.

    ''I can only think that mom has something to do with this'', thought Daimon, besides the Risha sisters who have admitted to have romantic feelings for him, Reyne has openly shown interest on him, while Jasmine is in the middle of thinking what she wants, as for the crazy girl¡­ if it was up to her, she would have already sealed the deal, so apparently those six had formed some sort of rivalry due to that.

    The enemy queen felt humiliated, not only the "champion" assigned to her by her Lord didn''t go along with her ns but couldn''t even deal with one of the strong members of the enemy team, not to mention that the target she was supposed to capture for her Lord continuously mocked her.

    Naturally, the crazy girl who never wasted a chance to rub salt on the wound, casually added.

    "I told you; the previous round was just that loser being weak, but this one is indeed one hell of a bad matchup~", she said.

    Shei finally couldn''t hold herself back, her body exploded inher, she put her hand into one of her pockets and secretly grabbed a small ck crystal to then inject some of herher into it.

    Back at the battlefield Purplehaze who was being chased around by a rain of arrows no matter where he went, suddenly stopped midway.

    ''Aghh¡­ what is this!'', Purplehaze tried everything in his power but his body didn''t listen to him, instead of that, theher he had managed to recover after being chased around by the night sparrow girl whose body had traces of Daimon''s mana, in other words the one whom he hated enough to awakenher, rushed through his body, forcing him to use the boosting spell from earlier.

    The problem is that this special state was destroyed by Lance, damaging the mana circuits used for it, so by activating it without having properly recovered, he experienced a living hell of pain, that being said and while blood wasing out of his mouth, nose and even his eyes, thanks to the vitality he drained out of the sacrificed rook piece, he was healing at the same time as the damage was being done.

    So, the only downside was the hellish pain he was experiencing, well, that and the fact that he had lost control over his own body, speaking of which he didn''t understand what was happening, until a deep angered voice echoed in his head.

    ''You have a lot to exin to the Lord, but for now, enough ying around, kill that bitch, don''t worry as long as there is still something left of you, the Lord can patch you upter'', following Shei''s dead serious order, Purplehaze''s body, against his will, turned around and rushed towards the night sparrow girl who had been chasing him since earlier.

    Yvonne frowned for a second, she felt something was off about Purplehaze, but she paid no mind and simply drew her bow to then release a rain of darkness arrows on his directions.

    With an emotionless expression, Purplehaze dived right into the rain of mana arrows, but unlike earlier, he was fast and coordinated enough to dodge most of the arrows while shing through the air to reach Yvonne, not only that he actually punched the few arrows which he couldn''t dodge and ignored the sizzling sound caused by the darkness corrosion on his flesh.

    Seeing Purplehaze charging at her in such a reckless way, made Yvonne snort, mana circted through her ck feathered wings as she flew away at high speed, only to stop midway as she was stopped by the barrier, she changed her direction with an elegant maneuver but was met with the barrier once again.

    "What¡­", the night sparrow girl snorted, the barrier had shrunken all the way until the spot where she was floating, cutting her way of retreat, she wasn''t surrounded by it but the only direction in which she could advance was the one from which Purplehaze wasing, in other words she was forced to sh head on against him.

    Practically at the same time when the barrier intercepted Yvonne for the second time, Purplehaze appeared in front of her, his body covered withher in that beastly form he used to fight against Lance.

    "Booom!", without any cast or sound, Purplehaze punched frontwards, his fist seemed to roar due to the air pressure caused by it and the next thing that could be heard was a loud explosion.

    Yvonne who took advantage of the impulse caused by injecting more mana into her wings, managed to dodge the attack by a bit, she looked at her previous position and saw Purplehaze whose attack had teared a hole into the barrier while at the same time his fist became a bloody mess which started healing at fast speed.

    "There is no way a weak-minded trash, actually ignored pain and used such a strong attack in a skilled way, who are you and why are you interfering in my fight", said the night sparrow girl.

    The technique behind that attack surpassed what Yvonne judged Purplehaze to be able to do with his current level of closebat experience, he went from being a mere copycat of the crazy girl, to an experienced fighter with his own style in a matter of seconds.

    "Impressive, to think you could notice it based in just a single random attack, the more reason to get rid of you I guess", Purplehaze''s mouth opened but his lops didn''t move at all, also the voice that came from his mouth was actually that of the enemy queen, in other words Shei, apparently, she could not only force Purplehaze to act against his will, but also control him.

    Purplehaze shed and appeared next to Yvonne, his right fist aimed at her chest forcing the night sparrow girl to dodge to the side, just for her to be intercepted by the two sets of energy arms, the first aimed to grab onto her wings while the other aimed at her face.

    The night sparrow girl shed using the teleportation ability of a knight piece, but found herself in a dead end by the barrier changing to block her way while Purplehaze had already caught up with her.

    "Booom!", like cannons, his fists caused explosions when he punched in Yvonne''s direction, just the impact was enough to make the barrier shake, in case you wonder why he didn''t put this much strength in his attacks when he was fighting Lance, it''s not because he didn''t want to, but he couldn''t.

    Technically, anyone could pull off an attack a few levels above his current realm, the problem is the consequences that said attack would bring to you, forbidden spells work that way.

    In this case, with every of those heavy punches that Purplehaze threw, the flesh of his arms ripped apart and so did his mana circuits, they were restored the next second though.

    "You see this is how you should have fought from the very beginning, you think the strength the Lord granted you was for your petty obsession with that mortal girl, no, it was for you to fulfill the mission assigned to you!".

    Seeing Purplehaze finally making advantage of the barrier and the castling trick which she asked her Lord to prepare for her, She was ted and directly made him go on a rampage.

    Thunder-like explosions echoed all over the sky as Purplehaze pursued Yvonne, she didn''t even have the change to draw her bow before being forced to dodge one of those mountain-shattering punches.

    This continued for around a minute before the barrier had reduced enough to barely cover fifty meters.

    "You are trapped like rat now, prepare to¡­", Shei''s words were stopped midway by Yvonne whose voice had taken a much more condescending tone.

    "Prepare to what?", she skillfully dispelled her wings and fell from the sky, elegantlynding on the ground, to then calmly walk towards Purplehaze.

    ''There it is, that look in her eyes again, take distance!'', inwardly screamed Purplehaze, seeing Yvonne''s amber eyes shine with pure unadulterated contempt.

    "Nonsense, rip her to shreds!", listening to Purplehaze''s wary voice, Shei snapped, she was the one controlling him now and just with that, she brought his battle prowess to another level, to the point that she regretted not having done so from the very beginning.

    It wasn''t her fault though, she truly had high expectations for Purplehaze, since he was quitepatible with her Lord''s blessing, but he turned out to be a disappointment

    Purplehaze turned into a blur and appeared in front of Yvonne, his six arms all drew backwards as he prepared tounch an all-out attack with the intention to turn the enemy into a pile of minced meat.

    But then Shei''s triumphant smile froze as she saw Yvonne casually pointing her index finger towards Purplehaze.

    "Aghhh!", a pained scream could be heard from high up in the sky, that was Shei whose connection with Purplehaze was suddenly broken, she immediately looked on the battlefield''s direction.

    "Nightmare Phoenix Dance, Mage Crushing Stance", just in time to see Yvonne''s pretty lips moving to let out a few words as she calmly dodged the first two punchesing from the energy arms, with an elegant turn, she positioned herself at Purplehaze''s side, her left index finger touched his shoulder and the two sets of energy arms disappeared, leaving behind bloody wounds on Purplehaze''s back.

    Purplehaze turned around, his fists aiming to finish what he started, but Yvonne''s right index finger blocked hisher dded real fists, just like earlier the impact was dispelled like it was nothing, she proudly spoke the name of the technique she used, loud enough to make sure that Daimon listened to it.

    "Nightmare Phoenix Dance, Knight Crushing Stance".

    "Blegh!", just like before, Purplehaze felt an ungodly amount of pain, which added to the toll on his body, forcing him to vomit blood, the shock got rid of the leftover control that Shei had over him, which forced him to continue thest order given to him earlier, he tried to turn around to flee, but was stopped by¡­ another Yvonne?

    This one however waspletely made out of darkness mana, that being said this second Yvonne was able to speak as well, she turned into a ck sh that appeared behind Purplehaze a secondter.

    "Nightmare Phoenix Dance, Soul Crushing Stance", by the time she finished her sentence, purplehaze''s eyes turned backwards and he copsed on the ground, foam and blooding out of his mouth.

    "Weakling", casually said Yvonne as she prepared to pierce Purplehaze''s head with an arrow.

    "You, if you could overpower him this easily then why didn''t you do it earlier!", Shei''s scream reached Yvonne''s ears a secondter making the second Yvonne which was made out of darkness mana to smirk.

    "That would have been too good for him, that trash dared to bare his fangs at thisdy''s lover, so onlyplete humiliation was enough to make up for it~", after saying that the second Yvonne turned into a ck stream that returned to Yvonne''s body, not without winking at Daimon''s direction while throwing a kiss at him.

    Yvonne who could feel a bunch of gazes falling on her right now, inwardly cursed this new lineage ability of hers.

    "Ahem, don''t pay attention to that, I had to adjust my technique since his mana flow changed thanks to that woman''s interference, otherwise this would have ended sooner", she said with an obviously blushed face, not only because of what the other Yvonne said but because she was half lying and knew Daimon could tell.

    Up in the sky Daimon didn''t know whether tough or cry, that darkness mana Yvonne was the spitting image of the narcissist and cheeky personality change she underwent when she used her wings with her own mana.

    ''First Liliana and now her too, did my mana triggered something?'', he wondered to then re at the enemy queen, who had taken advantage of the moment to try and pull off the same trick from before, in other words, sacrificing a rook to save Purplehaze.

    "It seems like you have forgotten, I''m a king piece as well", with a snap of Daimon''s fingers, the invisible portal which had opened below Purplehaze''s body, preparing to transfer him in secret while Yvonne was distracted, was blocked by a certain undead head maid''s shadow portal, allowing Yvonne''s arrow to pierce Purplehaze''s head, killing him on the spot.

 Chapter 598: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Sarahâ€™s version (part 5)

    It was as if time had slowed down for enemy queen, she couldn''t process the fact that not only the castling-based trick that she asked her Lord to prepare for her, was negated by the masked silver haired youth, but she didn''t know how it happened.

    Then the shock turned into anger, not by Purplehaze dying, but because he was the "champion" assigned to her by her beloved Lord and yet he was defeated by a lower ranked enemy, someone that ording to her own measurements, should be at most the fourth of fifth ranked in terms ofbat prowess within the enemy''s team.

    ''Useless scum, oh well even trash has its uses¡­'', Shei who was about bring Purplehaze''s corpse out as soon as Yvonne was transported out of the battlefield, saw the corner of the night sparrow girl''s suddenly turn upwards as an expression of unadulterated disdain bloomed on her pretty face.

    "You had the audacity to ce me in a lower priority whenpared to her, unfortunately I can''t be the one to deal with you, so this will have to suffice".

    "You lowly mortal, don''t you dare!", feeling a bad premonition, Shei shouted to then try and directly charge into Yvonne''s battlefield, just for the barrier created by the rules of the challenge to stop her in cold.

    "Nightmare Demon Arrow, Extinction", under Shei''s angered gaze, the ck arrow on Purplehaze''s head, sank into his body which then turned inked ck.

    "Crack!", sounds akin to a mirror shattering in thousands of pieces echoed through the sky as Purplehaze''s body crumbled into small ck crystal-like shards from which a ck-pink stream of energy escaped or at least tried to do so.

    With a snap of Yvonne''s fingers, the ck-pink current of energy which was actuallyher, first lost all color turning into a semi-transparent blur before it dispersed, as if it never existed to begin with.

    [A rook has been removed from the game, congrattions to the ck Queen]

    As if it the rules of the challenge actually waited for Yvonne to act, the announcement of her victory was given after she did, whatever she dealt with Purplehaze''s boy and then she was transported out of the battlefield, not without gazing at Sarah before smiling at Daimon.

    At the same time, the ck crystal inside of Shei''s pocket turned into dust, making her body shake due to anger.

    Speaking of Daimon, he had to admit that he was surprised by Yvonne''s disy of improvement.

    ''So that technique was the reason as to why her mana reserved hit the bottom when she shot that arrow to Purplehaze, even after she recovered quite a bit by absorbing back that mana clone or¡­ whatever that dark Yvi was'', he thought.

    After the fight ended, Yvonne still had around a third of the mana he had given to her, and half of her own, but then when she shot that arrow his mana waspletely depleted while her own mana reached the bare minimum needed for her to not suffer backsh.

    ''It might look the other way around, but while Leslie''s advance focused on explosive power, Yvonne''s improvement focused on the mind, she chose to maximize the result by using less to achieve more, very darkness affinity wise'', he amusingly added to himself.

    Unlike others, Daimon could see how Yvonnepletely suppressed Purplehaze, no matter how talented the Risha sisters might be, they are still star ranked mages, even with their wings, they can at most reach middle stage Lord rank battle prowess for a long-term battle, while being able to spike up to the peak stage once or twice when using their strongest spells, but that of course will need to be the end of the battle, because they wil run out of mana.

    While Purplehaze was an inexperienced closebat fighter, he still had achieved strength on par with an early-stage Arch rank, he just sucked at using it due to inexperience, limiting himself to be on peak stage Lors rank unless he went all out, which is why Lance crushed him in a frontal sh, however it should have been enough to put Yvonne in a hard spot even if he wasn''t at his prime due to his previous defeat and lowher reserves.

    So why was hepletely suppressed by Yvonne then, the answer lies in Yvonne''s eyes, literally, the technique she used to dispel Purplehaze''s punches, cancel his spells and knock him out cold to the point that he didn''t even react when he was shot an arrow to the head at short distance, was one and the same.

    ''Instead of just seeing other people''s "mana flow" she can now read, predict and manipte it'', he concluded.

    That''s right, the reason as to why it looked as if Yvonne was inplete control of the fight, was because she could see through each and every move that Purplehaze''s mana did, when it circted to his muscles for closebat or to his mana circuits for spells, she could discern it.

    Of course, it''s not as simple as it sounds, otherwise she wouldn''t have had the need to fly, dodge and y with Purplehaze''s mind by unting Daimon''s mana at every given chance, though she might have done that even if there was no need to.

    She had to analyze the opponent''s mana flow and understand it, which is why she faced trouble when Shei took over Purplehaze''s body, the flow changed, however it is still a nightmare-inflicting ability for those who fight in closebat like¡­ knights.

    Which reminded Daimon of the iing headache he felt when he got to know that Sarah and her are rivals now, he couldn''t refute the results though, Yvonne whose specialty was control and wide area battles, now integrated closebat against stronger but few in number opponents.

    "What apetitive birdie, to think she would get so far in such a short period of time and also develop a technique to deal with knights in such a way, I guess I did "motivate" her quite a bit back then", mumbled the crazy girl which made Daimon sigh.

    ''I don''t even want to ask¡­'', he thought, to then be brought back to the real world by the crazy girl who held onto his arm while giving Daimon puppy eyes.

    "You won''t count blocking that portal as help to me, right, you did it for the birdie~", she cutely said, in a rare asion the crazy girl seemed to be genuinely worried of receiving a negative answer from Daimon, instead of finding it thrilling.

    Daimon felt a shiver running down his back, it was so weird for him to see the crazy girl acting in such a "normal" way, since he had gotten used to her usual chaotic self to a certain extent after their time in Kerrol.

    "I took the initiative, it won''t count so stop it", he said.

    "Hehe, thanks my king is the best~", the crazy girl returned to her usual self and even mockingly gazed at Shei while putting emphasis on the word "king",

    At the resting area, Leslie and Liliana received Yvonne whose breathing was heavy, with both proud but also slightly angered smiles on their faces.

    "So, did Ms. "let''s just show him a bit of how much we improved", enjoy showing her ultimate spell?", asked Liliana with her innately cold and emotionless voice.

    "Humph, I even limited myself to only use "Flutter" you know", added Leslie, which made Yvonne''s face redden a bit.

    "I-It wasn''t my fault, it was "her" doing¡­ besides my fight was different, out of the three, only I was assigned to my opponent''s team and she is the most annoying one too", mumbled Yvonne while she fought to remain standing to then see a crystal bottle with a light blue liquid inside of it, appear out of a nowhere on the air in front of her.

    Of course, the night sparrow girl didn''t need to think who sent it, since the mana of said person inhabited in her wings, it was a healing potion straight out of Daimon''s inventory, sent through Rita''s spatial movement ability.

    "Hey, that''s not fair", eximed Leslie, just to see Yvonne grab the bottle at the speed of light and gulp down its content in a single go, as if she was afraid that others will snatch it from her.

    "Selfish", limited to say Liliana. Enjoy new adventures from m-v l''e|-NovelBin

    "Leave me alone, all the mana he gave me is gone and you two still have it", answered Yvonne, which those two couldn''t refute, they found the sensation of beingpletely out of Daimon''s mana rather ufortable now.

    Unfortunately, the harmony which had just returned to the Risha sister''s mood, was broken the next second when, coincidentally the sentence "My king is the best" reached their ears with an especially high tone of voice, making the three of them feel their chests fill with anger.

    "I''ll take the win for us", limited to say Liliana as she changed her focus to Reyne whose eyes were ignited withpetitivity; after seeing how much Yvonne improved, she felt interest in Liliana''s advance as well, since she is the one she ended up paired with.

    ¡­..

    Back at the fight, the next battlefield was activated, the participants were the remaining one of the twin princes from the Keran family, well, technically he wasn''t a prince anymore since it was revealed that his father wasn''t Triten, but Arlion not like it really mattered at this point though.

    And at the other side, there was the tall and tanned skin girl, Amber.

    "Useless bastard", coldly snorted Bryan after listening to the result of Purplehaze''s fight, unlike the other subordinates of Shei, he knew about the castling trick, because he wasn''t a direct subordinate of her, but was just teaming up with her due to Arlion''s orders.

    From the very beginning he disdained Purplehaze since his obsession with Jasmine, drove him to be stupid enough to not realize he was being used in exchange for getting power in the short term.

    Of course, this was a point of view he obtained thanks to Arlion telling him that awakening/reinforcing the ability to useher through one of the Lords without a formal contract of equal standing, was basically begging to be controlled by them.

    ''Oh well, I guess, he did have some uses'', thought Bryan as he felt the angered gaze from Shei, focusing on him.

    "What, are you willing to negotiate now?", he asked out loud, apparently the phrase "My king is the best", didn''t just anger the Risha sisters, but the enemy queen as well.

    Daimon was directly involved on how both of the gifts that Shei received from her Lord and the crazy girl kept treating him on a simr level to her Lord, no, to be honest she has continuously hinted that Daimon is far better, while flirting with him in her presence, which was unforgivable as her mission was to bring her to her Lord''s side.

    "Your opponent also carries the mark of that masked man''s mana¡­ kill her in the most horrible way possible and the Lord will give you aher core, without any strings attached", she said, her voice devoid of emotion, since she has passed the point of being angry.

    "Deal", with a wild smile on his face, Bryan nodded at Shei to then turn to see Amber and scan her from head to toe.

    "I prefer the soft elegant ones like that green haired girl from before, but you aren''t that bad I guess¡­", Bryan''s sentence was stopped midway by the tanned girl Amber''s disgusted voice.

    "Luckily just like with Mellie, you aren''t my type".

    Bryan froze on the spot, he totally didn''t expect to hear that from Amber, his confusion didn''tst long before it turned into anger as he noticed that Amber¡­ seemed to have no idea of what she was talking about

    ''That bitch!'', inwardly cursed Bryan, the only ones that could talk with those that were currently fighting through mana transmission were the queens, so he instantly understood that the previous was something Sarah told Amber to say.

    Speaking of Sarah, high in the sky, Daimon gazed in a questioning way at the crazy girl who was stuck to him like bubblegum to his arm.

    "Ahem, it wouldn''t be fair if only the birdie went all out", mumbled Sarah with a strangely shy but serious voice, which took Daimon by surprise.

    The only times ever when Sarah took things seriously where when Jasmine''s wellbeing was involved, otherwise let alone her allies, she had a rxed attitude even when dealing with her enemies, so seeing her taking Yvonne seriously was indeed something Daimon didn''t expect.

    ''Though she is still making fur of Yvi, there is for sure a change in how she treats her, is this what mom was aiming for?'', wondered Daimon, up to this day he was at a loss when it came to dealing with the crazy girl, but apparently having a rival did the trick.

    "You shouldn''t divulge other people''s private matters like that though", said Daimon, Mellie probably told the others how Bryan and Ryan pursued her, at one of the times where they stayed upte night chatting and eating snacks during their time travelling on the flying fortress.

    Of course, there is no way Mellie shared that story specifically with the crazy girl, but she probably heard it and now used it to mess with Bryan.

    "No problem, dead people are good keeping secrets~", jokingly said the crazy girl, to which Shei snorted from the side.

    "As much as I hate to say it, but unless that tall woman is as strong as the spear user guy that idiot faced first, then she won''t even stand a chance", she said.

    "Heh, you should have chosen him to do your dirty job instead of that loser then", retorted Sarah, to which Shei gritted her teeth, making the crazy girl giggle.

    "I see, so he rejected your Lord''s "generosity", how embarrassing, a mere mortal didn''t want the power he offered even if it was for free~".

    Sarah''s mocking words were like knives stabbing the rationality of the enemy queen, if she could she would strangle the crazy girl, unfortunately the barrier read her intentions andpletely encased her, preventing her from even trying to do so.

    "Don''t waste time, if you want the core then do your job!", she yelled at Bryan, who frowned.

    ''I don''t receive orders from you¡­ in fact I won''t receive them from anyone in the future'', thought Bryan to himself.

    "You know, just like the idiot of Purplehaze, I was easily defeated by that masked bastard and I''m pretty sure that bitch Mellie had spread her legs for him at this point, just like the woman that Purplehaze wanted, so I guess we were pretty much alike, but what made him a loser is that he couldn''t get over it", he said.

    The next second, his hair grew longer and changed to blue before it paled, resulting in a light blue tone, rather simr to the one which Terry attained after having his lineage reinforced by Arlion.

    Unlike Terry however, his realm didn''t increase, nor did he lose his rationality, he did get taller and gained some muscle, but his transformation was noticeable simpler, that being said and while his presence did get stronger, from Daimon''s point of view that wasn''t enough for him to fight at Lance''s current level like what Shei mentioned.

    Bryan surpassed his twin brother Ryan, who had gained wind affinity but couldn''t use this special state, which was basically caused by the White family''s lineage reaching a certain level.

    ''He is at most at the peak of the Lord realm and I don''t see him being able to use Manifestation, so there must be something else going on'', thought Daimon.

    "I was going to only do it because of the deal, but now, I''m going to enjoy humiliating you in front of that bastard", with those words, Bryan unsheathed his sword and pointed it towards Amber.

    "Pressure Thrust!", with those words, an invisible force gathered at the tip of Bryan''s sword, to then be shot towards Amber who covered her body with ayer of dark brown battle aura.

    "Booom!", the impact caused a loud explosion as well as sparks to fly from the point of sh, Amber was forced backwards, her feet left a deep trace of broken rock as a sign that she tried to use her weight to stop herself, but it didn''t work, in fact she saw that small cracks had started to appear on theyer of battle aura that was protecting her from Bryan''s attack.

    "No matter how good is your defense, my mana will pierce through it, that''s the property of the Shooting Narwhal race", he casually said.

    Amber frowned, she covered her hand with battle aura and pped the pressure stream, sessfully getting rid of it, or more urately redirecting it, since the thing dived into the ground, leaving a one-meter-wide circr hole on it as it exhausted the impulse behind of it.

    The weakness of the Keran family''s pressure spells was that they could only attack in a straight frontward line, of course this disadvantage could be dealt with, with speed and the twin princes happened to be born with wind affinity.

    "Just so you know, I can pierce holes through mountains now, let''s see how many thrusts can you take before turning into a bloody pile of meat", Bryan who had shed, appeared behind of Amber and thrusted his sword frontwards.

    "Booom!", this time however, Amber didn''t let the pressure currentnd on her and instead punched it away with her aura covered right fist, just to see Bryan smiling as he turned into a blur that blinked around shooting pressure currents from multiple directions.

    His triumphant smile froze on his face, when he saw Amber moving with at an incredibly high speed to then punch all his attacks away, sending them towards the ground.

    ''How the hell is an earth element knight moving so fast, she is a rook piece too, her boost should only affect her defense so what the hell is going'', inwardly cursed Bryan, in that second where he was cursing to his insides, a brown dded figure had appeared in front of him.

    Feeling the imminent danger and having his sight blocked by the imposing tall figure of Amber, Bryan pointed his palms frontwards and channeled arge amount of mana as fast as he could.

    "Pressure Break!", arge shockwave was released out of his palms and met with Amber''s fist, causing a loud impact that shot debris in every direction, a pair of figures were shot in opposite directions.

    Bryannded a few meters away while Amber was forced nearly thirty meters, that being said she lookedpletely fine, while Bryan felt his palms numb a bit.

    Seeing the calm and aloof expression on Amber''s pretty face, made Bryan snort.

    "Tsk, I guess directly dealing with defense focused knights with an iplete lineage is still a pain in the ass", he said to then add.

    "But you shouldn''t lower your guard just because of that", as he finished his sentence, a white shark bite mark appeared on Amber''s right upper hand.

    "You are not the only ones who can y with curses, coincidentally turns out that the White family''s rarer talent is not the strong body that Terry was so proud off, but the ability to use curses", he said as a pair of translucent shark heads covered emerged out of his palms.

 Chapter 599: Challenges Daimon & Nethereal sisters, Sarahâ€™s version (part 6)

    For the first time since the battle started, Amber showed a reaction by frowning as she gazed at the shark bite mark that had appeared on top of her upper hand, there was no wound, in fact the mark wasn''t even touching her directly but was floating a few millimeters above her skin.

    ''Is it etched onto my aura?'', she thought to herself.

    Amber dispelled the aura armor with which she had covered her entire body, to see if the mark would disappear alongside it, but it didn''t, even if it wasn''t applied directly on her body, it seemed like the curse was stuck to her.

    "Ridiculous, you really thought that a curse from the White family could be dispelled with such a barbaric method, I rmend you to not let go of your defenses though", mockingly said Bryan

    Amber saw the shark bite mark suddenly getting brighter and she reconstructed the aura armor from before in a hurry.

    "Crack!", not even a secondter, the aura armor on her arm started cracking, but stopped when the shark bite mark stopped glowing, which were around two seconds after the curse activated.

    "Heh, so your aura could armor actually withstand the effect of the "White Mark" curse, if anything you have quite a tough physique, as expected of a defense type knight, but¡­", the ground below Bryan''s feet exploded and the next thing that Amber could see was a barrage of pressure thrustsing at her from every direction.

    With a "swoosh", the tanned girl shed out of the way of the iing attacks, appearing a few hundreds of meters away from her original position, but then at the same time she felt dangering from above and looked upwards just to see Bryan pointing her palms in her direction while smirking at her.

    "Pressure Rain!", mana umted at the tips of Bryan''s fingers before being shot in the form of ten water streams apanied by currents of pressure, which elerated the speed of the previous.

    Knowing that she wasn''t going to be able to dodge them all in time, Amber reinforced her armor and dded her fists with aura to then punch the first seven or so attacks, deflecting them to the side while she dodged the eighth one.

    Unfortunately, thest two attacks bypassed Amber''s reaction time and then actually separated into two different spells, the first was the "pressure thrust", which Amber already knew about, but the second one was new.

    It consisted in the water streamspressing themselves into a water ball, the pressure currentsnded on her right leg and stomach, while the water balls exploded on the air at the same time.

    "Booom!", the water which had beenpressed gained so much pressure that the resulting countless drops of water that scattered when the water balls exploded, actually pierced through the solid ground in the vicinity, creating a sieve pattern around Amber, alongside countless of bullet-like drops of water.

    Most of them were punched away by her with her aura dded fists, but some still managed tond on her, resulting in continuous clinking sounds as they were blocked by her armor.

    But that wasn''t all, the pressure currents also sent Amber flying backwards, her aura armor cracked in both locations forcing her to p them away, the result is that even before she managed to stop herself, her aura armor crumbled apart as a whole.

    "Humph", with a soft snort, Amber applied strength on her legs to stop her fall back, then she dded herself in aura armor once again, which made Bryan smirk.

    "Your armor alongside the extra defense of rooks made it possible for you to resist the effect of one bite mark, but how about three of them", he said, as he snapped his fingers, next another two shark bite marks appeared on Amber''s body, one on her left leg and the other was on her shoulder.

    The three marks shone at the same time and the newly created aura armor started cracking overall, forcing Amber to inject more aura into it, unlike before two seconds fully passed and the effect of the bite marks was still ongoing.

    Of course, after arrogantly looking at Amber for a moment, Bryan resumed his attacks by turning into a water stream that moved around Amber like a snake surrounding its prey.

    "Come in, let''s see how much will it take for you to be devoured!", he shouted as he shot multiple barrages of "pressure rain, making it virtually impossible for Amber to dodge unless she used the teleportation ability of rooks, but even then, it wasn''t something that could be used continuously, so that wasn''t a viable option in the long run and she knew it.

    Up in the sky, Shei was smiling from ear to ear due to the scene of one of her team members finally getting the upper hand in a fight, though it wasn''t a subordinate of her Lord.

    ''Whatever, even if he isn''t bound to obey the Lord, in order to gain the power, he wants, he will still have to side with us at the end'', she thought to then re at Daimon who seemed to be lost in his thoughts while observing the current fight.

    "What, no reaction at all, I guess those "colorful" girls aren''t as important to you as those winged bitches, or maybe you need to see some blood first", she viciously said, just to see Daimon beingpletely unaffected by her words.

    Unfortunately for Shei, Daimon is a man of action, why wasting time on arguing when you can break your opponent''s neck at the first given chance, that was Aura''s contribution to his formation.

    Of course, there are times when he allows himself to participate in such activities are situations when mental games, such as taunts and provocations are helpful, like when dealing with system users, that was by the cunning twilight fox Erin''s contribution.

    Of course, it''s not like there was no retaliation to Shei''s words, since insulting and provoking others was the natural state of a certain crazy girl who was holding onto Daimon''s arm as of current after all.

    "Those are some pretty big words for a useless queen that hasn''t won a single round so far~", she said with the most innocent and maliciouscking face and voice she had, which due to everyone knowing her crazy and shameless real personality, made it even more insulting.

    It took Shei everything she had to not visibly show her anger, she simply clicked her tongue and focused on the fight once again.

    Daimon on the other hand never stopped paying attention, to them, first of all he was interested in Amber''s new abilities, after all he still couldn''t understand the power that Scarlet and the others had gained thanks to whatever challenge they had faced while being separated from him.

    ''Mmm, I can''t determine what type of life spark she obtained nor its effect, just like with Scarlet, an unknown type like mine¡­'', he thought.

    The infinity eyes made it easy for him to see the effects of one''s life spark, as long as it belonged to the main divisions which he had studied and learned about, curiously enough he hasn''t met anyone with a life spark like his during his time at the four gxies and that is a lot to say considering he has gotten to know a lot of half Emperors and people from high ranked families as well as some with special statuses, like Marcus.

    Even he, a system user who is a knight has a known type of life spark, which Daimon has seen through during their previous encounters, and now, all of a sudden two more like him appeared, it was normal that his interest was piqued.

    On the other hand, Bryan was also using some interesting powers, curses, and he was too drunk in his newly acquired strength that he didn''t realize he gave out important information regarding Arlion, earlier, the fact that the main talent of the White''s lineage is curses.

    ''It might be worth obtaining the knowledge of the White, in order to deal with Arlionter'', thought Daimon, unaware that the eyes of the undead head maid which was living in his shadow, sparkled as his desires and intentions were unconsciously transmitted to her.

    Back to the fight, after shing throughout the battlefield while being attacked by Bryan and asionally finding the chance to retaliate, Amber found herself having ten shark bite marks on her body, while Bryan had only received damage properly a couple of times.

    One when Amber charged through his rain of attacks, taking him by surprise andnding a punch on his chest, which broke a couple of his ribs and the other was a kick which he took to the back.

    ''What is up with this stupid woman, why is she so damn tough, the curse has activated more than ten times already and she still hasn''t suffered any real wound so far'', thought Bryan as he spat the blood that had gathered in his mouth, while ring at Amber from the distance.

    Still, his bloody mouth turned upwards in a grin as he wiped the blood, to then say.

    "You ended up being more of a challenge than what I thought, you know it right, that the effect of the curse doubles every five marks".

    "So what?", casually said the tanned girl, making Bryan click his tongue, still he didn''t get angry and instead answered.

    "You can barely keep up with the usage of battle aura to maintain your armor and continue to fight, due to the curse''s effect, to the point that you can''t even use martial arts, sure your defense will allow you to continue fighting but for how long", he said to then add.

    "So why don''t we make a deal".

    "Hey, what the hell are talking about, you bastard!", shouted Shei whose smile disappeared upon listening to Bryan''s words.

    "These weren''t originally life and death fights anyway, so as long as both sides ept the surrender then it''s over, you are the one asking for a favor here, I have my own ns so shut up", he said.

    ''Damn, how does this bastard know so much, was that shark guy so knowledgeable'', inwardly cursed Shei while gritting her teeth, but she didn''t say anything, honestly, regardless of the method, she just needed a win, the humiliation part of the deal was something she added herself to get back at Daimon and the crazy girl.

    "Now where were we¡­ ah right,e under me, your tough physique and defensive abilities could be really useful, in fact I''ll make you my private "assistant", of course you''ll be properly rewarded for your loyalty", said Bryan with a smile on his face.

    Amber was unfazed by his words, her body exploded in light brown battle aura to then sh towards Bryan, her fist aiming at his head.

    "Tsk, fine, the rebel ones like you must be tamed the hard way, given that you are tough you won''t break easily unlike the others so I''ll y with you, let''s see you defend against this!", Bryan frontwards to meet with Amber, head on.

    ''Previous to her, even the unruliest ones could only endure up to the eighth bite mark before begging for mercy, however the shock from the tenth one is on a whole new level'', thought Bryan as he snapped his fingers, making the ten bite marks on Amber''s body to lit up like the sun, the light radiated by them was quite a few more times brighter than before.

    Bryan sped up even more than before, the idea was to use the opening caused by the curse marks destroying Amber''s aura armor tond a heavy blow on her, past the seventh mark the armor was instantly destroyed even if she increased the amount of aura she used to create it, but she was able to reconstruct it fast enough for it not to be a problem even if she was in the middle of being attacked or attaching.

    That being said, the number of times she had to rece the armor increased and so did the aura usage ratio, since the effect of the curse extended with each extra mark and that''s something with which Bryan counted.

    "You keep speaking about defense and have gotten quite arrogant due to being able to destroy my aura armor, but I don''t remember ever saying that I was a defense type knight", a few meters away from shing, Amber''s voice reached Bryan''s ears.

    Bryan''s pupils contracted like needles as he saw Amber''s auburn hair shine in a pretty light brown light, before that same light gathered on her abdominal area, just like Scarlet her clothes which consisted in a white top with bare off shoulders and a long-tailed skirt on top of shorts, everything with light armor decoration, covered the area where her glyph was condensed

    ''Damn Sarah'', thought Daimon, as he knew he was going to have to peek below Amber''s clothes to see her glyph, it had the form of a straight standing female figure with her arms crossed below the chest.

    "Fortitude Glyph", the moment those words left Amber''s mouth, Bryan felt his chest tightening before a mouthful of blood was forced out of him.

    "Blegh!", instead of Amber being the one showing an opening due to a strong shock, it was him the one to have his rhythm interrupted.

    "Shi¡­ aghhh!", naturally Amber didn''t let the chance slip away, her fist reached Bryan practically at the same time as when he vomited blood andnded on his face, sending him flying a few hundreds of meters away.

    That being said, Amber looked at her fist and saw a new bite mark stuck to her, which meant that Bryan managed to partially block the damage with his pressure attributed mana at thest second.

    As if to confirm that, Bryan who heavilynded on the ground, got up at once, his eyes were bloodshot and the right side of his face had be swollen, he even had one tooth punched out of his mouth, but he didn''t seem to have suffered serious damage.

    "My bad, I actually forgot about that annoying curse technique of yours", he said as he rubbed his chin, though he didn''t show it he was screaming of pain inside, not because of the punch to the face, he created a pressure barrier at thest second, what really affected him was when Amber manifested her glyph, which somehow not only interrupted the activation of the shark bite curse but also counterattacked him.

    ''A mana depriving course which messes up the mana circuits of the enemy, quite a fitting technique for a knight'', he thought to then say.

    "For not being a defense type knight, yourst punch was rather light, or perhaps you ran out of battle aura".

    While he was surprised by Amber dering that she isn''t a defense type knight, he didn''t think that her offensive power was a great deal, otherwise the pressure barrier wouldn''t have held out.

    "But I''ll give it to you, just with my iplete White lineage, I won''t be able to defeat you, but it is the perfect counter to that little curse of yours", he said as he manifested those illusory shark heads out of his palms to then use them to bite his own body.

    "Shark Blessing", the shark''s teeth sank into Bryan''s flesh and dragged a few spheres of brown light, which were actually Amber''s battle aura.

    "Phew, that''s better, luckily casting and cleansing curses is within the possibilities of the White''s lineage, and now¡­ let''s finish this", Bryan then gazed at the area where Amber''s glyph was still glowing, even through her clothes, the area below her navel, before he licked his lips.

    Amber softly snorted at the clear change in Bryan''s gaze, which made Bryan smirk.

    "It took quite a bit of "effort" to gather this much, so I didn''t want to use it so early into the game, but whatever, you''ll help be recoverter so there is no loss I guess".

    With those words, ck mist was released out of Bryan''s body, his white/light blue hair, then suffered another change, gaining a few ck strands here and there.

    High into the sky, Daimon frowned at the sudden change in Bryan''s appearance.

    "That is¡­her", he said, to which the crazy girl nodded to then add.

    "Mm and unlike that loser from before, it wasn''t awakened with the help of those guys".

    ''Seeing Terry having his body stolen over by Arlion without him being able to even resist must have left quite the impression on him'', thought Daimon.

    "Your cousin might have had a really highpatibility with the Lord''s power, but the driving force of hisher was too shallow, so it was naturally devoured by the Lord''s, that guy on the other hand, awakened it on his own", said the enemy queen, while she screamed on the inside.

    ''Last time he could barely condenseher temporarily, now that I think about it, he had a few chained women following him when he arrived, I thought they had left since when that Arlion guy went ahead they were nowhere to be seen but¡­ it seems that wasn''t the case''.

    The wound on Bryan''s face was immediately healed and his skin actually became fairer, he was originally quite decent, but now he could be called handsome without a doubt.

    "I must admit that this power is indeed quite addictive, I don''t me that guy for losing himself into it, what a fool if he wasn''t obsessed with just one target, then he wouldn''t have been used like that", said Bryan to then add.

    "In this state I''m immune to curses, so let''s try again", he said, half of the previously white shark bites on Amber''s body turned inked ck.

    ''I wonder what face will you make after seeing one of your partners long for another man'', thought Bryan as he gazed in Daimon''s direction from the corner of his eyes, before snapping his fingers.

    The ck and white marks both lit up, but contrary to what Bryan expected, Amber¡­ didn''t even flinch at all.

    "Huh?".

    With a confused expression, he snapped his fingers again and again, but nothing happened.

    ''What the hell, is the curse not properly activating'', he thought just to be brought back to the real world, by Amber''s voice. Explore stories at §Þ??

    "It is activating, you are just not strong enough to even "shake" me", she said, her hair dyed white all the way from the top of her head to her lower back, what followed for Bryan was as if time had slowed down, he blinked and Amber was gone.

    "Reverse", Amber''s voice came from behind Bryan, who tried to move but found himself unable to do so.

    "Booom!", a loud shockwave, followed by a huge release of light brown battle aura, caused a deafening explosion, a meteor-like figure was sent flying towards the sky, the dust raised by the impact suddenly settled in an unnatural way as if it was attracted towards the ground, revealing Amber''s tall figure, meaning that the one sent flying was of course Bryan.

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