While the Risha sisters at this point believed nothing was an absolute impossibility when it came to Daimon, the latter knew his limits and a peak Lord ranked magic beast was out of his league.
If not then back when he had to fight the djinns, he wouldn’t have had to activate core synchrony, without it even if he used Disaster the most, he could stretch his battle prowess was the middle stage of the Lord realm.
“This thing wasn’t weak enough for me to get rid of it so easily, it was lethargic but…”.
The girls listened to Daimon and then saw him walking towards the corpse which was still burning, the white flames were dispelled and then Daimon flipped the corpse over to reveal that the back of the creature was a mess.
It had so many cuts and deep scars, that even after being burned the wounds were still clearly visible.
“Those whip wounds”, mumbled Aisha.
Mellie who wasn’t following what was happening in front of her, shook her head before saying.
“Wait, are you implying someone enslaved that thing?”.
“That would explain why its vitality was so low, despite being a magic beast of some kind, also the aura that this creature gave off was similar to Blacktooth’s one, so I think it’s pretty safe to assume we ended up in the underground part of the reef that connects with the Maelstrom Sea”, said Daimon as he kept destroyed the corpse of the creature.
Still Daimon couldn’t help but had a bad premonition, and he wasn’t the only one, Yvonne frowned for a moment before she said what was in her mind.
“No one could have guessed an irregularity such as “Gabriel” would participate in the beast hunt… but Adam practically announced his participation, and then a high worth but weakened dark element magic beast like this casually appears, it looks too convenient for me”.
Daimon nodded, this looked a bit forced, but if this was a trap the result wasn’t as the other party expected, unlike Adam’s light which left marks on Marcus when he wound it by accident, Demon Light doesn’t leave anything behind, so if they were trying to frame him with that magic beast the plan miserably failed.
Also, per Daimon’s calculations that beast equaled Adam in physical strength, even in its weakened state, so a fight between them would have required more time, he was able to finish it in such a short period of time due to the really low amount of vitality it was left.
“The Devil Stingray pirates”, mumbled Mellie, they were one of the reasons as to why Annete wanted to postpone this event, their base is the Maelstrom Sea and the Wild Tide Reef connected with it, though there was a magic array to identify the things that entered a certain range, there are simply too much mysterious and eerie things hidden beneath that sea, and she was sure that creature wasn’t supposed to be here.
Mellie doubted for a second before her eyes became determined, as she grabbed the crystal plate that was given to them by the Trident Marshal.
“We can communicate with uncle Vincent through this, in case of a real emergency, don’t worry if anything I’ll be disqualified but the team won’t be punished for it…”.
Mellie’s expression changed in a split of a second, from serious to worried, because she realized the emergency communication array wasn’t activating.
She immediately tried to take something out of her storage ring, as they were allowed to bring food and daily necessities… but the result was the same, it didn’t work, she even tried to summon her tamed magic beast to eighter ask it to protect them or trigger the forceful teleportation out of the event, but it didn’t work.
Aisha and the Risha sisters tried too just to realize their rings didn’t work too, but then they looked at Daimon as they saw him took out that black sword which he still had in his hands right now.
Aisha knew he had the inventory, and it was practically impossible for any external mean to cut off his connection with it, but Mellie and the Risha sisters didn’t.
“My sword wasn’t in my ring, it’s a bit hard to explain, let’s just say that, that restriction doesn’t affect me, but it doesn’t really matter because any kind of communication won’t be able to contact the other side, also my beast pouch doesn’t work at all too”.
“I don’t know how but whoever is behind all this, managed to leave the scoring function available so that the spectators don’t suspect anything is wrong”.
“Give me a second”, said Daimon as he jumped into the water to the surprise of the girls, the water was pretty clear so they saw him dive to the bottom gaze at the tunnel from which they came and frown before returning to the surface.
“What happened, is the current too strong for us to return through the same way we arrived?”, asked Leslie.
But Daimon shook his head in response.𝑂𝑣𝗅𝒩xt.𝗇𝓔t
“No, we can’t go back because there is no tunnel anymore, and judging by the debris that is now blocking the tunnel, it was done by something with earth affinity and an insane reserve of mana, plus the capacity to breath underwater, instead of using a magic array which is easy to detect with mana sense, it was a “magic beast” which didn’t ring any alarm, due to the nature of the event… and also a rune master at least as strong as that old man must be involved”, said Daimon referring to Vincent.
‘And I couldn’t detect it with my infinity eyes either’, he thought to himself.
“So, they got us good”, mumbled Liliana.
“Well, I don’t think it was specifically directed at us, if the pirates are behind all this, they are probably aiming at all the participants of the two seas”, added Yvonne.
Mellie saw that despite the incredibly dangerous situation in which they were, Daimon and the girls were pretty calm, and then she noticed she was the same too.
‘How weird, back when at the forest I had already accepted that I was going to die, and to be honest this situation is worse, then why do I feel as if there is nothing to worry about… is it because of him’, thought Mellie as she stole a gaze at Daimon before she looked at the pendant that hanged from her neck.
After contemplating things for a moment, Daimon finally took a decision, so he clapped to get the girl’s attention.
“Based on what we know as of right now, this event has gone from a simple beast hunt to a survival kind of situation, we can’t stay in a place for too long, so let’s try to leave this cave and then we’ll decide what to do, don’t let down your guard and we’ll be fine”.
“Mm”, listening to Daimon’s reassuring words, the girls nodded and after that they started walking into the cave, with Daimon being a step ahead of them.
‘Horals, Rita, if something on the Arch rank shows, and is possible to restrain it do it, if not eliminate till the last trace of it’.
‘Understood young master’.
‘Those pirates don’t know their place, Horals requests permission to wipe them all out in the name of young master!’.
As always Rita was pretty reasonable, while Horals was a bit too enthusiastic, probably because the bone general couldn’t leave unless it was absolutely necessary as they could be being watched right now.
Luckily since the terror contractor skill allowed him to directly speak with his subordinates, there was no need for them to leave their hiding places which were able to trick Emperor realms, as nor Vincent or Aurora noticed anything.
‘Well at least, the strongest enemy isn’t stronger as the strongest “ally”, I guess that’s something to celebrate’, thought Daimon as he led the girls through the cave, he kept Disaster in his hands, just in case.
The further they ventured into the cave the darker the place got, it was clear this place was a disadvantage for light affinity people as light mana was scarce here, but with two darkness affinity mages plus Aisha who as a vampire had a decent relationship with darkness element, there was no problem for them to navigate in the darkness.
“I can see there is something ahead of us, fifty meters to the left it looks like… a corpse”, mumbled Yvonne, her eyes glowed with a dim yellow light, meaning she was using her special eyes.
Even after death, the mana flow of a person will still work for a certain amount of time, depending on how strong was said person when it was alive, in fact the artificial undead were the result of a reanimation spell applied on corpses whose mana flows hadn’t withered yet, eighter due to how recent was the death of the “material”, or due to some preserving methods.
So, for Yvonne’s eyes, the still ongoing but weak mana flow blinking at the side of the road was easy to spot.
Daimon nodded, and after inspecting the area to make sure it wasn’t a trap, he walked towards the area pointed by Yvonne.
Leslie, Liliana and Mellie couldn’t see in the darkness, so they held onto the others and just walked in rhythm with them, Leslie offered to illuminate the area but that would make them an easy target so it was discarded.
Once they reached the area pointed by Yvonne, Daimon saw a wide tall rock pillar that raised from the ground, all the way to the roof of the cave, it wasn’t carved but a natural rock formation eroded by the water that dropped from the roof.
What Yvonne mentioned was at the other side of the rock pilar, there was a bloody scene, a middle-aged man was leaned against the pillar, with about ten different weapons stabbed on his chest stomach and even a couple on his eyes and one on the mouth.
‘There is no bad smell yet so it hasn’t been even a day since this happened’, thought Daimon as he grabbed one of the many weapons, just to notice there was some kind of transparent odorless liquid smeared all over the weapon.
Luckily, he was using gloves so the liquid which was probably poison, didn’t touch his skin.
“Mm?”, Daimon then noticed that the hand of the guy was tightly closed but there was a small bump popping out of his palm.
Daimon carefully cut a hole with Disaster’s blade on the hand of the guy, and after a couple of centimeters he felt it touched something.
But as he crouched down to take out the object hidden in the hand of the guy; something flew out of his pocket.
“You again”, mumbled Daimon as he saw the black badge with the rune shark swirl around the hand before it dug out the object… another badge.
For a moment Daimon thought maybe the badge bearer from the vampire race had bitten the dust, and someone stole his, as Adam and Marcus where the other badge bearers and he was sure they were alive.
But he then noticed that unlike the ones he has seen before, this one was of a lifeless gray color and had a much grimmer design, with some bones an spikes decorating it.
The black badge did a whole turn around it, before it lost interest on it and then returned to Daimon’s pocket.
“You little thing, can’t you give me some answers for a change?”, mumbled Aster as he sent the gray badge to his inventory, if the guy practically hid it in his body even when he was killed, then it can’t be worthless.