Now that he had some free time and his stamina had recovered to its maximum capacity, Daimon got up from the bed and walked towards the walls of the cave, more specifically to one of the parts where he saw his battle aura being dragged towards earlier.
Daimon placed his hand on the wall and softened a small part of the stone, before he punched a hole on it, almost immediately Daimon got a hand of a small nail sized dark green mineral ore.
Just by being on contact with it, Daimon felt slightly lethargic for a split of a second, before his usually lazy ass magic core, complained and moved just enough to counter the suction force of the stone which was trying to steal his vitality away from him.
‘Damn, this little thing will be such a hassle for knights’, though Daimon as he inspected dark green ore.
Apparently one of the reasons as to why no one has found this open space inside the hill, is because of this mineral, which was incrusted into some parts of the walls, so for anyone using mana sense to scan it, there were no signs of living beings, because the mineral blocked it.
The principle behind it was different to antinite, because while antinite will nullify all kinds of energy, touching it won’t make you weaker, it will only prevent you from using or circulating mana and battle aura, which is kind of unfair for mages as they depend on mana to strengthen their bodies, but knights don’t need to use battle aura to have inhuman strength, though it is vastly amplified by it.
In other words, this mineral Daimon found by accident was the an antinite focused exclusively for knights, and that was both good and bad news depending on the situation.
Good if it was as rare as antinite and it was inaccessible, unattainable unless someone had an incredible fortunate encounter, just like antinite which comes from the nucleus of celestial bodies, and was only discovered in a place where a meteorite fell thousands of years ago.
Up to this day antinite couldn’t be artificially harvested, and its existences were so law that a hand sized piece of it could be considered a legacy in low high ranked family, not to mention it’s regulated by the same council formed by Half Emperors, the Field Marshal and the Magus Kings who had an equal standing with them, which sealed away Disaster.
“Mellie, do you recognize this mineral?”, asked Daimon as he showed Mellie the small dark green mineral he had in his hand.
“Mm?”, Mellie inspected the nail sized pebble in Daimon’s hand and the activated her innate ability, making a yellow line to shine on her forehead, as she went through the books she has memorized, before her eyes widened.
Once she recognized what it was, she hurriedly knocked the thing out of Daimon’s hands, with the arch of her fiddle.
“That’s “Sea Devil Ore”, don’t let it touch your skin or it will drain your vitality away!”.
Mellie then proceeded to tell Daimon the story of this mineral, a king once found a rock the size of a hand inside the stomach of a Half Stellar rank sea bottom magic beast, which he found in a strike of luck and killed after a harsh battle.
Since the meat of the magic beast was so delicious and packed with vitality, he took the rock as a sign of good fortune and ordered a magic blacksmith to create a necklace for his wife.
As you can guess, not too much later the wife of the king fell ill and in less than a year died mysteriously, this was before the knight path was discovered so no one knew why she died, the king was busy during that year and the necklace looked as beautiful and vibrant as when he handed it to his wife.
So, he took it as a reminder of her, and used it himself, as a high ranked mage it took some time for him to start showing negative effects, so when he noticed it, he went to see a doctor and was told he was perfectly fine, just to die in a battle some years later due to sudden exhaustion.
The necklace was given to one of the princes, who happened to be one of the first knights and the one who solved the mystery of the death of his parents, needless to say but the necklace was destroyed, but a small piece of it was kept for research purposes in the royal vault.
It was then learned that this specific ore could only be found at the deepest parts of the sea, where only some races of magic beasts could reach, that beast which the king killed has eaten it because it was full of vitality, probably because another beast ate it before and was slowly drained from its life due to that, which ended in the new magic beast devouring it.
The cycle broke because that king killed the magic beast, but the mineral ended up taking the life of the king and its wife, that’s why it was named “Sea Devil Ore”, because its vibrant looks and “positive” effects which were temporal due to the excess o vitality stored inside of it, stolen from its previous owner, was like the whispers of a devil, tempting one.
“It’s been a few hundreds of thousands of years since that… and no one has ever been able to let alone find one, but even see one, where did you find it?”, asked Mellie.
Daimon who was delighted by her response grabbed the rock from the ground, the thing again tried to drain his vitality and was blocked by his magic core.
‘I’m the one predates on others, not the contrary so just resign yourself’, thought Daimon as he kept it in his “pocket”, obviously sending it to his inventory for later.
Aisha knew her son was immune to that kind of things, since he was able to tame Disaster, so she didn’t show any concern, but Mellie and the Risha sisters weren’t, so they were visibly worried about it, until he explained them.
“Don’t worry this thing can’t harm me, also I found it in the walls of this cave, you won’t be affected by its effect unless you touch it, so it’s not only harmless, but beneficial since it’s blocking others from being able to notice us”.
The girls were still a bit unconvinced but they decided to trust Daimon, and put the subject at the back of their heads.
Daimon offered to give them each one of the ores in the walls, which he would take out when it was time for them to leave this cave, but they weren’t interested on it.
“I bet they’ll be happy when you gift those three a different kind of gem~”, Aisha of course took the chance to tease the Risha sisters, but besides blushing the three didn’t complain at all, in fact they were smiling and giggling between each other.
It also didn’t escape Daimon’s eyes that Jasmine was just feigning to be asleep, she had her eyes closed but her breath and heartbeat gave her away, though it was understandable, the last time she went to “sleep”, she had already resigned to death after all.
Still, it wasn’t his place to say something, so he just laid down and chatted with the girls about random stuff, he had no intention to die in this place, and he wasn’t going to let any of them die as well, so for him this was just another day.𝑶𝐕𝓁𝒩xt.𝔠𝐎𝐦
Daimon’s confidence and calmness was comforting for not only the Risha sisters, but even Mellie and soon they felt sleepy, probably because they also ate quite a bit, and without noticing they entered the land of dreams, leaving only Daimon and Aisha awake, Jasmine was too but she was facing the wall and had her eyes closed while she tried to overcome the idea of not waking up tomorrow.
‘Darling?’, Aisha saw Daimon’s eyes changing to have that vertical yellow line in them and she asked what was happening through their mental connection.
‘Just a little test’, answered Daimon, previously when he was feeling “bad”, Jasmine’s eyes changed and he was “healed”, but unlike him, she has no control over her ability and her eyes hadn’t changed back, so he decided to give it a go and try to repay the favor.
And to his surprise it worked, not even five minutes later he noticed Jasmine’s breathing getting slower and stabilizing, as she fell asleep and that wasn’t all, thanks to his lineage he could feel when she had her ability active, the same applied for Mellie, so knew Jasmine had deactivated hers before falling asleep.
‘All these lineages and their relationships… just what in the world is this magic ruin hiding’, thought Daimon before he focused his attention on the charming beauty in front of him.
Since they were in a safe place, Daimon had taken out the mask of the hollow suit and also took off the outer layer of his outfit, keeping his pants and shirt only, the girls did the same to be more comfortable.
So right now, Aisha was only wearing her dress without any other accessories, they were also using a blanket to cover themselves since the temperature seriously dropped after that mist appeared, Aisha put on a mischievous smile and then moved her body so that her son was spooning her, with her back resting on Daimon’s chest.
“I’m feeling a bit cold darling, hug me~”, she whispered at him.
Daimon chuckled, they Risha sisters, Mellie and Jasmine were in the room with them, and here she was teasing him, and to top it off, it was working.
‘Damn she smell so good’, thought Daimon as he caught a whiff of the fruity scent of Aisha’s shampoo, her body was soft everywhere, all in all it was a bliss to have her close to him.
But he also knew this wasn’t the moment for this, so he simply placed his hands on Aisha’s belly and cuddled with her, while he sneakily kissed Aisha’s neck.
“You’ll have to make up with this for now”, he said whole he softly caressed his mother’s belly, making Aisha giggle.
After ordering Rita and Horals to be on guard, just in case what he was thinking became true, he fell asleep with Aisha in his arms.
…
The hours passed and while Daimon was sleeping, he suddenly had a strange sensation, which ended up waking him up, but before he opened his eyes, he heard his mother speaking directly to his mind.
‘Girls nowadays are pretty daring… or maybe this is your effect on others, darling~’.
Daimon opened his eyes and besides Aisha who had changed her position to snuggle on his chest, the second thing he saw was that Jasmine was standing next to him, looking at him with those pretty light green eyes of hers, which had white halos in them.
After exchanging gazes for a couple of seconds without saying anything, Daimon broke the silence.
“Do you need something?”.
Jasmine looked at Daimon’s eyes as she answered.
“It was you right… you were what helped me sleep, how did you do it?”, she asked with a curious voice.
Daimon nodded.
“Yeah, I was just returning the favor, since you also helped me with something after your eyes became like that, so I thought that just by doing the same it will help you to calm down to sleep”.
Jasmine contemplated things for a second, she sat on the edge of the bed before saying.
“When I fell asleep, I heard a voice telling me about me having found someone worthy, I honestly can’t remember it all, but there was something about an oath and it being beneficial to both of us and I have been wondering about it… you have inherited the Black Armored Shark lineage right?”, she asked.
Daimon was slightly surprised at her words, he chose to not have any characteristic and use his original hair color, because that was completely different to what the hero mentioned by Annete was, and yet somehow this girl managed to guess it.
There were just a couple of minutes before the date changed, and the mission was completed, so he simply nodded.
“You could say so, can you tell me how did you notice it, I think I have zero resemblance to the only one before me who had it?”.
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed a bit, as she answered.
“It was just a hunch, that yellow line in your eyes is different to the one of the Royal White family, and you are a male, meaning you can’t be part of the other lost lineage… so that only leaves the Black Armored Shark option”.
Before Daimon could even answer, the sound of a notification rang in his ears.
[Ding]
The mission was completed.