With Rita flying them at high speed, the group flashed through the around four kiloters of tal filled levels before reaching the fifth one just in ti to see a giant dent appearing on the tal gate.
"Booom!", the gate managed to resist the impact but the tal churning sound was so loud that it made the younger Lamia princess cover her ears, probably because as a soone with a magic beast lineage she had sharp senses.
"Sotis I think it's not fair that only sis had the talent to be a knight…", mumbled Naomi, it's not like she was making a fuss out of nothing, the tal door was strong enough to contain the middle stage Stellar ranked magic beast that was trying to break out for at least half an hour if left alone.
So, the sound produced by the clash of such a strong tal and the brute strength of the magic beast, resulted in a sound that was like nails on a chalkboard for those with sharp senses and not the best physical defense or an active defensive spell which was specifically designed to filter extre sounds.
"Now, now, don't say stuff that makes you sound like an old bitter woman, if we were both knights our teamwork wouldn't be as good as it is now, right?", said Ferris as she patted her younger sister's head a couple of tis.
Leaving the Lamia sister's exchange aside, Daimon observed the door being constantly hit by the magic beast on the other side and he turned to see Zia to then say.
"I leave the middle stage ones to you, I don't want to waste too much ti and we are staying a couple of hours anyway, so feel free to use your domain to finish the fight as soon as possible, within the limits of this place's space of course".
"Celia, the two high stage ones are for you, Rita you keep blocking what is happening here from the outside and keep an eye on us, we'll take care of the Arch ranked mob, any questions?".
"No", the girls answered in unison and then with Celia taking the vanguard, the door which the magic beast was trying to forcefully open from the inside, was easily opened from the outside.
Unfortunately, the excited roars from the magic beast ca to an early end when Zia entered its sight.
"Mountain Shattering Hand", with a soft voice, a giant hand of around two hundred ters was summoned by Zia, grabbing the magic beast nearest to the door, a dark brown lizard with a missing eye and tal spikes shoved in many parts of its body.
"Screehhhh!", naturally, the mont the enemy's vanguard was attacked, the other magic beasts imdiately reacted, but so did Zia her light brown hair seed to glow for a second and before the other middle stage magic beasts could react, giant rock hands erged from the ground below them, completely suppressing them and dragging them towards Zia.
That was the Amber Asper Snake race's innate ability "Flash Cast", it allows Zia to instantly cast simplified versions of a spell, in this case she used it on "Mountain Shattering Hand", which is a single target spell, turning it into an area of effect one, without the need of having to go through the casting process again.
The result were the ten rock hands which were dragging the surprised magic beasts towards the east of this level.
In case you wonder how is such a strong innate ability not being abused to rain down hell in combat, the result could be seen on the last five or so rock hands, which were already being shattered by the magic beasts shaking their bodies.
Skipping parts of the casting process by using "Flash Cast" reduces the strength of the resulting spells, not to ntion it uses a whole bunch of mana in a sole instance, which is why Zia had to train a lot in order to not be affected when using her innate ability.
All those inconveniences made it so being a vanguard in the battlefield, would be inefficient for her race, but they were perfect for information gathering and communications, after all with a single activation of "Flash Cast" they could transmit a ssage or move through space, more than three or four tis the sa distance as others after the natural reduction on the efficiency of the spell, which is still a huge advantage over others.
Naturally the price in mana is astronomical, but in a war where communication devices are most likely going to be restricted and information has to be brought personally, Zia's race is a trump card, this innate ability is the reason as to why the sole other person in the whole lab who knew about the underground facilities, in other words the receptionist, is also from the Amber Asper Snake race.
The last thing Daimon saw from Zia was she smiling while she summoned her domain, trapping the ten middle stage Stellar magic beasts and herself within a giant stone sphere she condensed by using her domain, even if direct battle isn't her specialty that doesn't an she is weak by any ans, crowd control requires less strength but more wit and she is perfectly capable of that.
"I'll be back as soon as possible young master", said Celia as she summoned two giant streams of rotating black water which forcefully dragged a red snake with protruding fangs and sothing that looked like a purple giant salamander, those were the sole two high stage Stellar magic beasts.
Despite their high realms, they lacked wisdom which is it was so easy for Zia and Celia to bring them into their domains, thus preventing them from wreaking havoc in this underground level.
That being said, the beasts had already done so damage to this level, even if Daimon's response was way faster than what the one who thought of this safety thod predicted, the magic beasts were basically enraged after being tortured and experinted on, at this point they just destroyed everything on sight.
"Tsk, around 30% of this level's retrievable technology and information has been lost, Rita, can you record all the information available in this level?".
"Mm, don't worry and fight without any restraints", said the undead head maid, to which Daimon nodded before gazing at Ferris.
"I already know the answer but just to confirm, you have no trouble dealing with multiple peak Arch rank enemies at the sa ti, right?", he said.
The older Lamia princess smiled in response before her body exploded in a strange combination of dark gray and tallic green battle aura.
"Acid… no, tal, but then why does it have two different colors", mumbled Daimon, while changing one's energy color is possible just for aesthetics, Daimon is sure that Ferris wouldn't do sothing so vain, but at the sa ti her battle aura had two different colors but its overall feeling was that of tal elent.
"So even you can be surprised, let tell you a little secret, sister is the sole person ever recorded in Draim's history who has been born with dual tal affinity", proudly said Naomi.
"Hoh, judging by the pride behind your words, one would think you are the one with such a unique talent", jokingly said Daimon, earning an annoyed gaze from the younger Lamia princess while she showed him her teeth.
"I'm joking, I must admit that it's a first even for , I know people with both light and darkness affinities and even a really special variant with an incredibly strong affinity, but double sa elent affinities, that's new", added Daimon, the air around him beca heavy before his body exploded in white flas as he activated Core Synchrony.
Seeing Naomi slightly shivering just by the proximity to his Demon Light, Daimon softly laughed, he really left a long-lasting impression on the poor Lamia princess, just to ss up with her a bit more, he allowed his current peak Lord realm aura to be visible for her.
"Ahhh, I knew it, there is no way you could be so strong with a realm lower than mine!", exclaid the younger Lamia princess, who was still trying to find an explanation as to why she a peak Early stage Mage Lord was so intimidated by a star ranked knight to the point that she felt like standing at the border of the abyss when she compared herself with Daimon.
"If that's what you think, you are in for a surprise, there are at least a dozen of people with lower realms than yours who aren't weaker than you", casually said Daimon referring to the Risha sisters and the others.
In a rough calculation, Daimon believed that Naomi should be able to fight against multiple peak Lord stage enemies on her own, which is not bad at all as she would be jumping two minor realms, however she still lacked if she wanted to cross a major realm and battle an Arch rack, while Ferris on the other hand could even if barely, fair quite nicely against half step Stellars.
"Don't bully her too much, Naomi is still quite young and she has yet to obtain her second affinity which is why she might appear to fall behind in terms of talent, but I can assure you that isn't the case, mages are rarer than knights in the Lamia royalty and they have it harder to reach higher realms, such was our grandmother's case", said Ferris defending her younger sister, in case you wonder, Naomi is currently a water affinity mage.
"Oh, that's sothing worth investigating later, but for now, I'll leave the ones at my left to you, I'll take care of the enemies at right, as for Naomi, you can offer support from afar if it's needed", with those words both Daimon and Ferris flashed towards the stampede of enraged magic beasts that was approaching them, leaving a rather sulking Naomi behind.
….
Around an hour later, the younger Lamia princess's sulking expression was gone and only shock could be seen on her pretty face, she skillfully created so openings for Ferris, with a few long-range spells from her, but she didn't have the chance to intervene in Daimon's battle at all.
Well, more accurately it's not like she couldn't have helped, but there was no need for her to do so, everything started when the silver haired masked youth used a similar technique to the one with which he suppressed the Naga nobles earlier.
What Naomi saw was Overlord's Pride aura being put in action, even the most irrational and mindless living beings preserve a primal instinct of survival, in other words they still fear death, otherwise why would they have bothered to try and escape from the lab.
As a ntal type of attack, Overlord's Pride works like a charm on unstable minds, so it wasn't hard for Daimon to instill fear on those magic beasts thus ssing with their reactions, so even started attacking everything on sight including their pack fellows, essentially nullifying the rule of the Stellar ranked magic beasts over them.
But as awe-inspiring as that was for Naomi, she has seen Daimon do sothing similar before and with higher ranked targets, so that's not why her little mouth was cutely agape in surprise as of current.
What caused such a reaction was that terrifying white battle aura which condensed into a three-ter broad sword that was then used to casually cut down Arch rank magic beasts like nothing.
'What the hell, it would be understandable if he used that dangerous black sword from earlier, but… he killed all those magic beasts with only a martial art!', inwardly exclaid Naomi.
Truth to be told she wasn't the only one surprised, Ferris who now stood over a pile of large sized corpses, half of which were sliced as if a tornado of swords had passed through this place and the remaining half of said pile were pumled to death, also stole a couple of glances at Daimon who was now absorbing what was left of the Cot Sword back into his body.
"How did he do that, the mont he used that martial art, he beca an empty shell and yet there was no backslash no dizziness at all, he can use his whole battle aura reserves in a single go without consequences and then reabsorb what's left afterwards", mumbled Ferris.
'Phew, this was a controlled situation so I wanted to test the limit of Cot Sword, but it's too tiring to keep up such a large amount of energy condensed and in perfect balance like this', thought Daimon.
He basically condensed all of his battle aura and 75% of his increased mana reserves, thanks to being in Core Synchrony state, into a Cot Sword and used it as a replacent for a magic weapon, the result was amazing, the white fla sword easily burnt through the scales of the magic beasts, infiltrating their bodies and using their flesh and blood to produce more Demon Light in order to replenish the energy lost by the sword each ti.
That way, the Cot Sword remained as new as when it was created, no matter how many enemies Daimon killed with it, the problem is that the Demon Light produced by this thod was different than the one created by Daimon, Demon Light by itself is an aggloration of many elents as well as mana and battle aura, the slightest variation can produce unknown results, most of which would probably be quite violent, based on the nature of the "perfect" result which is Demon Light.
So, balancing the two different kinds of Demon Light is too taxing for Daimon as of current, not in terms of mana, battle aura or even stamina since more than ¾ parts of the energy he used to condense the sword returned to him, and for stamina, all he did was use blink to move around and stab the confused magic beasts with the sword once or twice so he wasn't physically but ntally tired.
Luckily, such a thing didn't count for the final bill at the ti of using Core Synchrony, so essentially, he would be perfectly fine when deactivating it, aning he can save his daily usage of Sanctuary for later, but instead of going through all this hassle, it was easier and more enjoyable to wield Narasha.
'Guess your "Eternal Sword" will have to be left aside again~', jokingly said Evangeline, which made Daimon clear his throat at such a lewd reference to his abnormally high energy for bed activities.
'For soone who fiercely affird to "Do everything her power to not even catch a glimpse of such vulgar acts", you seem rather inford', said Daimon, forcing Eve to either remain silent or admit that she spied on him from ti to ti.
Having won this round, Daimon slightly smirked, before reuniting with the Lamia sisters, who were busy discussing sothing among themselves, until they saw him arrive.
"What, did sothing happen?", asked Daimon, Rita was supervising the whole battlefield, including the enclosed spaces created by those two's domains, and she didn't inform him of any anomaly, so by all ans everything should be fine, which led Daimon to think they received a ssage from their mother or sothing like that, but apparently that wasn't the case.
"No, we were just having a sisterly talk", said Ferris with a soft smile, while Naomi avoided Daimon's gaze, like usual.
"I finished gathering each and every docunt as well as important looking material, in this lab, Daimon", said Rita from within Daimon's shadow, while it wasn't as good as the inventory since ti did pass for the stuff inside there, Rita could drag stuff inside Daimon's shadow with ease, after all even those girls from the Black Night clan were living… sowhere inside there while being "instructed" by the undead head maid.
Daimon could hear the "praise " hidden in Rita's voice and to be honest it was well-deserved, she used a re hour to go through each and every level of the underground lab, inspecting every nook and cranny, deactivating all the chanical traps and stealing all the records, logs and docunts she found, not to ntion she took at least one piece of every instrunt she saw, for Daimon's sake since she noticed he seed interested on that red array at the last level.
"Thanks Rita, did you find any other living being who can still move by themselves?", he said.
"No, these magic beasts were the only living ones, there level above us is filled with corpses being preserved in those tubes filled with liquid, but after inspecting them, there is nothing really eye-catching about them, I'll match their appearances and characteristics with Zia to separate "non-native" species from the bunch", happily said the undead head maid.
Daimon nodded, he was interested on the races that were brought here through the "summoning circle" after all, at the sa ti the isolated spaces created by Zia and Celia, dissolved to reveal their triumphant appearances.
Besides so scratches on Celia's clothes here and there, she killed her two opponents while limiting the mana output, she could produce, in order to not affect her surroundings, as for Zia she was perfectly fine, not even a speck of dust could be seen on her clothes.
"Very well, let's return to the lowest level, depending on the situation we might have to leave in a hurry so rest and recover but be prepared for it", he said as he distributed mana recovery potions for all of them.
'That woman looked at our fighting, more accurately to Daimon's fight, in secret, I didn't feel any ill intent though', secretly said Rita to Daimon as they descended from the fifth level to the last one, naturally she referred to the one inside the snake statue who claid to be the real Thalia.
Daimon inwardly nodded while he glanced at the still passed out, receptionist and the investigator, thinking how to deal with them, however he returned to reality since they arrived at the last floor once again.
'So, did you get to see what you wanted from my fight earlier?', asked Daimon in the frequency in which the woman inside the statue talked exclusively with him, with the exception that this ti he made it so Evangeline could listen as well, instead of having to obtain the information through Daimon's thoughts which were purposedly open for her to see, naturally the previous wasn't discernible for the other party.
'…', after a few seconds of silence, the statue seed to co to life, not in the sense that it gained mobility but in the sense that it radiated a barely noticeable but still existing, vitality, while still looking exactly like a lifeless statue it was honestly strange.
'Yes, either you genuinely have a really high realm at such a young age and an even higher battle prowess, or you possess an outrageously strong boosting innate ability with no side effects, in both cases and considering you can hear this specific frequency, it's enough for to believe that you are one of them', she said.
'So, what cos now, are you going to explain what happened here or…', Daimon's words were interrupted by the woman inside the statue.
'Before we get to that, you… are you a descendant of the Void Devouring Python race, a variant perhaps, you have space and darkness affinities but you are a man, why were there space laws from my race floating towards you earlier, why do you feel like one of my kind?', after rambling for a few seconds, the woman got to the doubt that was itching her mind ever since she exchanged words with the masked silver haired youth.
Daimon couldn't help but frown behind his mask, certainly he had both darkness and space affinities, like Thea, but that shouldn't be enough to make the woman in the statue, think he belonged to her race, much less if she was who she claid to be.
'My contract with Thea would explain the space laws from her race approaching , though I couldn't see them… but none of my lineages have any relation with Thea's race', thought Daimon, before an idea struck him like a lightning out of the blue.
'Ryner's last fang', he concluded, the gift that Thea gave him as a sign of friendship, originally Ryner didn't have the space affinity of Thea and Thalia's race, what he inherited from Thalia bestowing so of her blood to him, was darkness affinity which integrated with his original water one, however at the end of his days, Ryner managed to obtain space affinity.
And while it was too late for him to exploit the potential of the lineage from which his derived, Ryner left this opportunity to his future descendants, with the years the bones were used for multiple purposes but the upper fangs weren't suitable for anyone, so they kept accumulating mana, growing in power until they reached a level where they radiated a similar aura to the one of Thalia's race.
Which might explain why the fake Thalia was suppressed by Thea's spear, according to the empress herself, it was lineage suppression, now the problem lied in what to tell to the woman inside the statue.
'She really hopes that I am a mber of her race, maybe that's why her hatred towards system users isn't being directed to as of current, so if tell her otherwise, the reaction will probably be quite violent on the other hand if I lie, I might obtain so information out of her but… I have zero doubts that she'll discover the truth sooner or later, since she is soone that managed to screw over the hydra guy', thought Daimon.
Ultimately Daimon chose to tell her the truth, not for sympathy towards her, but because he was guided here by his instincts, when fully focusing on helping Thea with her challenge, so this encounter must be really important for her, also in his experience choosing the easy way out, might be satisfying on the short, but at long term you end up loosing more than what you won, just look at the corpse of the light idiot in his inventory.
'My lineage isn't related to yours', he said, in case you wonder why he didn't ntion Thea, he didn't trust the woman yet, right now she knew nothing about him and it was better to keep it like that, it would be easier to notice if she lied or tried to trick him this way, since she affird to be Thalia and he more or less knew about Thalia from two different sources, naly Thea and Marlene clan's records.
As expected, Daimon could feel the gaze from the woman in the statue, getting colder on the spot, but behind all that, what could be felt was disappointnt.
'In that case, I might as well tell you why I hate those like you… I was forcefully taken away from my natal galaxy by the one on which that array was inspired of, Dorian the user of the "Abyss Snake Tyrant" system'.
Daimon remained silent, he couldn't detect any lies in her words, also he finally discovered the na of the hydra guy, who caused so much troubles to Thea and Marlene's clans.
'So, he "summoned" you with an array like that one, but then why didn't you lose your sanity like those magic beasts?', he asked, to which the woman softly snorted.
'Humph, don't compare that degraded thing with the real deal, as a mber of one of the twelve royal families from my galaxy, I had already started the process to surpass the Stellar realm, I was in the middle of my advance when that despicable array appeared in my room and dragged into a chaotic dinsional tunnel'.
'Next thing I knew, I appeared in a room that only had a large bed, where that guy was sitting while I was chained to the ground by that array which was engraved on his chest, it costed my advance, a part of my magic core and having to detonate my protection pendant but I broke my restraints, half-tore his chest open and then escaped by jumping into the nearby ocean', she said, taking a mont before continuing.
'Who would have thought that the bastard of Dorian would then chase to the end of the world in order to "ta" , I only understood why after seeing the monstrosity in which he had transford himself by forcefully integrating all those magic beasts into his body, he wanted my space affinity'.
'Luckily it was his own greed what helped ultimately driving him away, his previous victim from which he obtained darkness affinity wasn't completely gone and in the middle of the battle in which he finally managed to corner , she ssed with him for a second, giving the chance to land a fatal wound on that bastard, forcing him to run with his tail between his legs… unfortunately my already wounded body started to succumb to the side effects of forcefully destroying the connection he tried to force onto ', she proudly said.
Daimon's eyes glowed behind his mask, her story matched with what he knew, but there was still an unsolved mystery.
'If you defeated him, how did you end up trapped here?', he asked, just to hear the woman gritting her teeth in response.
'Because even after his death that bastard ca back to haunt , I had built a place to recover and even obtained trustworthy allies, but I… lowered my guard after getting news of that guy being killed and it was then when "she" infiltrated my body, stealing my control over it while trying to use to invade my world through a space rift that I was investigating back then'.
'My followers noticed it and most distanced themselves from , but they weren't strong enough to stop , so I decided to take things in my own hands, after leaving a "safety asure" as a last gift for them, I used my last resort which essentially turned my physical body into a prison, interrupting her midway and forcing us to wander in the dinsional tunnel for quite so ti, along with the ones that were tricked to follow her'.
'Unfortunately, while she was tied to my now petrified physical body, she still managed to find a place to stablish herself and controlled those guys to develop her own organization, I hibernated a few years and when I woke up, I saw that disgusting array once again, she started summoning magic beasts to use them for experints and ultimately created a though inferior, still related lineage to mine, in order to escape this prison'.
'From that point onwards, she has been torturing to obtain the mories of my galaxy, since she is trapped her as she lacks that special space rift from back then and the magic beasts, she summons basically lose their mind, ah right, she also tried to obtain the mories from the races of those two girls, but there was no progress is that area'.
'I see, so you gave your blood to soone else besides Ryner, so that there would be a descendant with the strength to oppose the one who stole your body, if she ever returned, right?', asked Daimon.
'Yes, it was in a hurry but that girl had such a firm determination in her eyes so I… WHAT DID YOU SAY!', the woman who was calmly answering, stopped midway before she finally realized that Daimon said Ryner's na.
'H-How do you know about that, don't tell this aura… you killed their descendant!', she exclaid in horror
And with that Daimon was convinced, because her reaction was genuine, now imagine how the temperature dropped when he took out Ryne's fang, allowing the misunderstanding to further develop.
Daimon could see the statue shaking, the woman was clearly enraged thinking that he had done sothing to Ryner and that girl's descendant, still he decided to stop her before things got serious, after all he could feel mana secretly coming from the deepest parts of the statue, when before there was no such a thing.
Of course, at this point just words would be aningless, so he instead allowed her to feel the contract he made with Thea, because while the aura she felt indeed ca from Ryner's fang, it was easy to discern the kind of relationship he had with Thea, based on the mutual-trust link that was stablished between them.
'No way, that is the "Knighthood Pact" of the royal families and it was properly stablished on top of it!', Thalia exclaid in surprise, the suicide attack she was preparing, dissolved on the spot, what's more the snake statue glowed for a second before a few yellow light particles erged from it, to then gather before taking human form.
A tall slender girl descended in front of Daimon, it was a young girl of around 17 years old, looking not even a day older than Aisha or Sarah, she wore a black sundress made out of condensed darkness mana, which allowed her frail looking shoulders and pretty bare feet visible, similar to Thea she had amber snake-like eyes, her face also shared a certain resemblance with the empress, to the point that they could be confused as sisters.
However, there were a couple of really important differences, first and formal, she looked younger than Thea who appeared to be in her middle twenties, which was weird considering Thalia should be older than Thea and second, her hair wasn't of that deep black inked color like the empress, but completely white, which didn't go along with the fact that she had darkness affinity.
Also, her skin was quite pale, giving her a sickly fragile appearance, though that last part was understandable, considering her vitality was like the blinking fla of a candle in the middle of a storm after all she has gone through.
"Allow to introduce myself again, I am the second princess of the Neris royal family, Thalia Neris", she said out loud as she pulled the sides of her dress, allowing the other girls to listen to her for the first ti since their previous conversation started.
Before Daimon could even answer, the familiar sound of a notification rang on his ears.
[Ding]
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