As they walked towards the merchant’s district, Daimon observed the city, spying on the realms of some of the bystanders that happened to be walking all over the place.
A city that has such a complex prison that connects with the border of another sea can’t be a non-important place, so it would be not bad to assume they were in an important spot of the Mermen Sea.
‘The concentration of Arch ranks is pretty much similar to a major city at Lykos, so leaving aside the Emperor ranks, they are in the same level as us’, thought Daimon.
It didn’t take them long to reach the merchant’s district, it was easy to notice because the streets that conformed it, were pretty much crowded, with lines forming at some locals, and some street stalls too.
Something that caught Daimon’s attention was that there were cages which contained members of the skelefiend race, but all of them were the humanoid type instead of the one that had a tail instead of legs, like the one he killed by destroying its protection back at the dimensional tunnel, which’s corpse he managed to keep in his inventory before they everything the tunnel split apart.
“Don’t answer to anything they ask, just act curious and they’ll see us as people that either arrived from a secluded place, or sheltered nobles”.
After giving the Risha sisters a little warning, they entered a four-floor building, on the outside it looked rather plain, no emblems or decorations with the exception of a sign that said “Blackfin Track”.
As soon as they entered, they looked at the insides of the store, there were racks which displayed newspapers similar to the one the guy at the counter of the inn was reading, but that was only in the first floor.
The second one had series of people sitting on tables where others would approach to ask them whatever questions they had, in the open.
The other two ones were different and couldn’t be seen from below normally, but with his infinity eyes, Daimon saw through the concealment formation and there were a series of private rooms in them, the third one had nearly twenty that could accommodate ten people at most, and the last floor only had one single room that occupied the whole floor.
In the last one he managed to caught a glimpse of a man in his late twenties, it was pretty much a human besides the fact that he had a shark’s black dorsal fin on his back at the same level of his shoulders.
‘A peak Archmage’, the sensation Daimon got from that shark guy was on par with the one he got from Liz, and that was a lot to say considering Liz stood on the top of the list in terms of strength at this point.
All the previous might have taken some time to describe, but it happened in just a couple of seconds, and Daimon stopped using infinity eyes, because he noticed the shark guy instinctively raised an eyebrow, there were other people entering the store at the same time as them so even if he noticed something, there was no problem, but one can’t never be too cautious.
They then walked towards the racks and started looking at the different newspapers whose frontal pages were displayed in a glass showcase.
But judging from the titles, most of it were generic news, besides some warnings about strong tides and something about people from what he supposed were important families achieving things, there was no much there, just a bunch of social things, like important events.
On the other hand there were small book guides with maps and the basics of society, which were more useful for them.
‘Well, I guess this place is something like a kingdom’, thought Daimon, as he quickly leafed through the two different editions of the guide book, they were actually free so he took one of each.
“Welcome mister, is there something in specific need from our store?”, noticing they weren’t getting anything from the racks, a guy with the head of a catfish wearing clothes similar to the ones of a librarian approached them, and politely asked if they needed something.
“I want the latest important news, as well as the most interesting places to visit, distance doesn’t matter”, Daimon had previously decided to portrait him as a noble travelling, despite him being in a random appearance, the manners of a noble that were taught to him by Elaine and Aisha, differentiated him from others.
And the catfish merman who was instructed in what clients he should guide to the upper floors, immediately noticed it, he pointed at the stairs that led to the second and third floors and spoke in a humble voice.
“Perhaps, young master would like to have a more private service, as it seems to be a first time, how about giving a try to the high-level rooms on the third floor”.
Daimon nodded and the catfish merman, inwardly smiled, if the person in front of him weren’t a noble, he would have asked prices, so he confirmed his theory, he was dealing with an inexperienced noble exploring the major cities of the Clear Water kingdom.
“Please follow me”, the catfish merman escorted them all the way to the third floor, most of the people on the second floor were the type of merman that had pretty noticeable sea creature characteristics, and some of them gazed at them going to the third floor.
Ignoring the unwanted attention, they arrived at the end of the stairs of the second floor and the merman catfish took out a hand bell, after ringing it, a gap opened in the concealment formation, revealing a way to get into the third floor.
The other side was pretty different, there was a single corridor with wood doors that led to separated rooms, the decorations were quite luxurious, there were even girls wearing maid uniforms standing here and there calmly waiting outside of each door.
What confused Daimon was that they were all the human type with gills or scales on their necks, like the Archmage they dealt with inside the prison.
‘I thought they were the nobles’, he thought, some with sea creature heads he saw on the street were the center of their circles, but most of the time it was the other kind leading, what he did notice was that it was common for them to be mixed, and groups with only one kind like the one they were impersonating were rare, maybe that contributed to this kind of treatment too.
“The private room number three is available, please enjoy your stay”, the catfish merman respectfully excised himself after saying that, probably he wasn’t allowed to enter the third floor.
Daimon and the girls entered and the maid that was standing at the door of the third room, bowed before she opened the door for them.
“Welcome, esteemed customers, please enjoy your stay”.
They entered the room and the maid introduced the many amenities they had, she pulled chairs for each of them at the same time.
“A senior informant will come in a moment, in the meantime feel free to try the local specialties of our Blackfin city, for the young misses I would recommend calm current tea, as for young master the shark blood liqueur is the most popular among the nobles of our city, being served in the events upheld by the city lord”.
After saying that, the maid placed a tea pot and a small bottle on the table as well as some small snacks and then excused herself, closing the door to leave them alone.
Daimon inspected the room, surprisingly there weren’t any spying arrays installed, only privacy related like sound isolating formations as well as a door at the other side of the room.
Besides that, a large table with space for up to ten people, and a very well decorated room, there was nothing else.
“There is no one listening, you can try the tea and the other things if you want to”, mumbled Daimon, to be honest the pastry looked pretty good, like the kind served at high level events.
“Mm”, the girls poured tea for themselves and a sweet and relaxing smell spread across the room, even Aisha decided to give it a try after smelling it.
Daimon smiled seeing the girls enjoying the tea, all of them also were taught proper table manners, so just seeing them doing so simple as drinking tea was a pleasure to the eyes.
He also opened the small bottle, personally he wasn’t interested in alcohol, because he couldn’t get drunk due to his abnormal vitality and metabolism anyway, but the concentration of mana in that little thing was crazily high, reaching the same amount of an elixir that could affect Arch ranks, drinking it would normally be a suicide for a star rank and yet it was served to him, so that was what got Daimon’s attention.
After pouring a fourth of the content of the bottle in a glass, Daimon inspected the honey-red liquid, although he couldn’t recognize most of the ingredients, he could notice the main one was indeed the blood of a magic beast.
Daimon took a sip of it and his eyes glowed as a warm sensation ran down his body, his knight realm which had been stagnated after he reached the middle stage of the five-star realm, without advancing in the mage path… loosened up.
The effect was pretty soft too, Daimon gulped down the content of the whole glass and could feel his body using the liqueur to strengthen itself, and then a familiar sound mad its way into his ears.
[Ding]
[The apex predator constitution has detected the concentrated vitality of a being in with ancient roots, entering the body of the host, the “Lineage Temple” has been unlocked]
[Lineage Temple: certain blood types contain traces of races worth being assimilated into the Apex predator, continue to find and absorb them to unlock race exclusive abilities]
[Current lineages acquired]
[#&%$# 1%]
[Apex Predator: 1%]
[Vampire: 10% concentration (Originally 100%) <!>]𝗈𝑽𝐋𝐞xt.𝒸𝒐𝓜
[Black Armored Shark: 0.01% concentration]
Daimon couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, first of all, he was supposed to be completely a vampire, although he got the apex predator body constitution, but apparently that wasn’t the case it was reduced for some reason, that explained why he didn’t feel the need to drink blood though, also with the lineages listed didn’t sum to 15% in total even.
Let alone Daimon, even Evangeline was at a loss as she saw the new function unlocked, she didn’t know all the functions, she got information about some as they appeared, and although this one was in her books, what made her bitterly smile was the lineage listed at the top.
‘The apex predator took over as the system was awakened, he should have reached at least 5%, also another chaos tier… damn what kind of monster are you’, she mumbled as she looked at the sky of the space, she resided in.
Another of those ominous chains let out loud cracking noises as it started to show signs of breaking.
‘Well, I guess we are in the right direction, two functions in a row, you really like to make me work… Daimon’, thought Evangeline, with a wave of her hand she destroyed a notification that popped up in front of her, which made the area where her chest was blurred to move up and down, showing signs of tiredness.
In the outside world, Daimon came out of his trance as he heard the door at the other side of the room opening.