Daimon nodded and the message disappeared before a collar made out of black bones which only Daimon could see, formed around the neck of Caldras.
The lizardman suddenly felt shivers running through his spine, he tried to scream but his voice didn’t come out, his eyes widened, no matter how much he tried his body didn’t move.
Daimon didn’t need to say his orders out loud, the collar was linked to him so with just a thought, Caldras was deprived from his freedom.
“Let him out”, he said to Dimas.
The ice cage opened, this time the other students were paying all their attention to the lizardman, especially Liliana, but contrary to what they expected Caldras didn’t speak in that disdaining tone, in fact he just stood still until Daimon spoke.
“Let’s start from the beginning, your name and race”.
Deep inside of his mind Caldras tried to resist, but his body didn’t obey him.
“I’m Caldras, a member of the fire djinn race under the command of lord Efres… a noble of the spirit faction and a dark ifrit”.
“Djinn, spirit faction?”.
All the other students reacted the same way, they were surprised, in the wonder myriad stellar chart such a thing as spirit races or a spirit faction didn’t exist, even the undead which specialized in the study of dead entities, had no way to manipulate souls.
Calvin shook his head.
“We already have enough problems going on between ourselves and now outsiders are coming for us… damn”.
Daimon agreed, the strongest people of the wonder myriad stellar chart were half emperors, and according to Dimas they would be considered children in the scale of power out there.
“Whatever I can just advance step by step, eight years ago I would have been defenseless against a mage lord, but here I am ordering around one, while I’m only a five-star ranked knight”, he thought.
Evangeline smiled, “No one is strong from the very beginning, so being weak isn’t bad, what’s bad is remaining weak”.
“Eve is right Daimon, we’ll become the strongest with you”, added Narasha.
Daimon’s eyes glowed, if he wasn’t strong enough, he just had to train more, if that wasn’t enough, he will double the pace, if that wasn’t enough, he will triplicate it, but right now he had other things to take care of.
“Caldras, how many of you came to this place, what is your mission, how strong are them?”.
Caldras tried to not answer but his monotone voice could be heard after less than one second of futile resistance.
“We ended in this galaxy by accident, me and Fredran… the guy who died a moment ago and another eight of us are part of the same scouting team, we were exploring an isolated cave in an island we found at the star sea and magic formation activated, the next thing we knew was that we appeared in a deserted place”.
Calvin asked Michael to hand him his knife and then used it to draw something on the ice ground, it was some kind of tree without leaves and spikes all over the trunk, leaving aside the fact that Calvin artistic skills weren’t exactly good, the draw was decent enough to be recognizable.
“Do you remember having seen a tree that looked like this?”.
Caldras saw the drawing but he didn’t say anything.
“Answer the question”, with Daimon’s order the collar around Caldras neck made him experience a piercing pain before he immediately replied.
“Yes, they were all over the place, we found these hosts near those trees!!!”.
Calvin nodded.
“That tree is called thorn juniper, it grows in the native planet of the rock lizard clan, so they landed at Gurun”.
Michael shook his head, “I know the Ghrish family is at the top of all the desert races, but how are you so sure that it wasn’t another planet?”.
Calvin looked at Loren and then coughed a couple of times.
“Ahem, that tree has no properties for anyone but the rock lizard clan… the aged sap of it works as an aphrodisiac for them, no one else cultivate it so it grows enough as it needs large quantities of water and other cares to produce sap”.
Leaving that aside Caldras continued with his story.
“We are only disposable scouts, so no one is looking for us we are all middle stage mortals… but our captain is an illegitimate son of lord Efres, that’s how he has reached the peak of the mortal realm, our mission was to look for hidden realms and things like that”.
“Our race is especially sensible towards ice affinity creatures, and our captain felt a remarkable presence of that kind at this planet, so we killed these lizards and possessed their bodies”.
“The captain apparently knew the race of that serpent, because he looked really excited when we arrived at this tundra, he probably wants to kill it and offer the corpse to lord Efres to win his favor”, said Caldras as he pointed at Dimas.
“Ice mirage Basilisk, stupid fire spirits can’t you see my handsome appearance!!!”, apparently being called a serpent is some kind of insult because Dimas was angrier at that, than the fact that they aimed for his life.
“How strong is that Efres guy”, asked Daimon.
Surprisingly Caldras resisted to continue for a couple of seconds before the collar forced him to talk.
“Lord Efres has reached the Reality… arghhh!!!”.
Liz suddenly created a barrier with her mana, a red lightning fell appeared out of nowhere and impacted Caldras making his body explode into little pieces or black coal.
…
Red currents of electricity dazzled on what was left of Caldras until even that transformed into black thin dust.
Yvonne’s face was a bit pale, she turned to see the roof of the cave but there wasn’t any hole on it.
“What the hell, that lightning appeared out of nowhere!!!”.
Dimas laughed out loud.
“That fool actually decided to kill himself in one of the worst ways possible, being struck by regulation lightning means dying without a grave”.
Daimon frowned his brows remembering what Dimas mentioned earlier, “Speaking of everything above the planetary subjugation realm is prohibited”.
Unlike Dimas, he knew that Caldras didn’t chose to die, he now confirmed the extent of the authority he had over those under the terror contract, Caldras knew he was going to die and still he followed his order.
“What a useful skill”, he thought.
Liz let out a sigh of relief as she dispelled her barrier, that red lightning didn’t attack them at all, it only focused on destroying Caldras and then disappeared.
Daimon turned to see Dimas with a smirking expression.
“What do you say if we bring that captain here to ask him a few questions, apparently, he knows about your race, so he might have information on how you ended here?”.
Dimas contemplated things for a moment, although thousands of years were just a nap for him, he was getting really bored, but if he cooperated with Daimon, he might have someone to talk with.
Leaving the magic formation was out of question, because someone who managed to imprison him without him noticing had to be way above the people of the wonder myriad stellar chart.
Dimas nodded, his scales illuminated and a fortress made out of ice rose from the ground.
“Hide in the fortress, I will bring all of them at once, while the others won’t be able to resist, the peak mortal fire djinn will be troublesome to deal with… fox sister can you lend me a hand, your fire is a good counter for them?”.
Liz looked at Daimon nodding at her, and she accepted, all the others entered the fortress and Liz’s body covered in yellow/orange flames, which made Dimas reaffirm his believe that Liz wasn’t a native of this place.
Inside of the ice fortress Daimon silently activated core synchrony the range of their connection depended on his mage realm, so his unusually high realm as a knight didn’t help, but if he activated core synchrony things changed.
Aisha which was next to her son, Liz which was outside of the ice fortress, Narasha which was hanging from his waist in Gram’s form, Aura in her office at the wild claw academy, Elaine and Erin which were doing their tasks at the Revy family grounds.
Everyone of them felt the sudden change in their magic cores as core synchrony activated but it didn’t last long because Daimon only spoke a few words before cancelling the skill.
“Aura come to the frozen fields of Halia, use your eye spell to look for something that looks like an ice wall, we are inside of it”.
“Okay”.
“I want to go too!!”.
Besides Aura, only Erin spoke but Daimon shook his head.
“Only Aura… I have present for you Erin, but we’ll talk about it later okay”.
“Mm”, with a half-convinced sound, the conversation ended.
A loud explosion made the fortress tremble as the whole roof of the cave suddenly exploded, many ice cages fell from it, along with an ice block.
“It’s starting”, said Dimas to Liz.
