Before Karmandi dropped all the formalities to seek blood for his subordinate, which he now realized was death long ago, but was somehow disguised as a living being so perfectly that even he wouldn’t have noticed, if not for the silver haired young man with which he signed a contract earlier.
He retracted its tail brough what was inside the sea turtle’s stomach, a Skelefiend on the peak Lord realm, until he was seeing it upfront.
“What did you do to Archi, you piece of shit”, demanded to know Karmandi.
Maybe other magic beasts wouldn’t know all their subordinates, but he recruited each and all of them, and was sure of their potential, so for him it wasn’t just a soldier’s loss, but a personal one, and even his corpse was profaned by some kind of evil magic, he was furious.
Daimon who was looking from the sides, confirmed his theory, that the people in Neptune didn’t know about undead at all, back at the Wonder Myriad Stellar Chart, there was a period of time where the other races had a hard time due to, they being unable to differentiate the undead, who could be created using corpses of all races, from citizens of their cities or academies.
It didn’t help the fact that demons who specialized in schemes helped them, but after the humans and more specifically the Greenwich Sage put the effort into developing techniques to identify them, everything returned to normal.
Neptune was now undergoing something similar, what surprised Daimon was that this undead creation process was one that didn’t exist back at his native Stellar Chart, so it wasn’t brought by an “outsider”, and instead it was created here.
And that was worse, because there were no undead previously in Neptune, while at the Wonder Myriad Stellar Chart, they have always existed, so the question here was, where did this method came from.
The Skelefiend who was being crushed by Karmandi’s tail right now, refused to talk, and instead stole a gaze at Ulkrear, making the latter inwardly grit his teeth, as much as he didn’t want to do anything he had to, but he tried to take a different approach.
“Ahem, Karmandi, don’t you think we should keep this Skelefiend as a prisoner, to make it talks, he is probably tied by a contract so if he talks it will die as a penalty, but the Empress can dissolve the contract for us”, said the handfish with an urging voice, as he slowly approached the snake general.
But Karmandi who was already angry, simply let out some of his mana pressure as he shouted at Ulkrear, with a condescending voice.
“This thing killed one of my subordinates, you have no right to get in my way so get lost Ulkrear!”.
The handfish had a twisted expression, he a Half Stellar ranked being, had to act low and humbly and was still yelled at by someone he despised, he nearly started a fight at the spot, but was stopped by the death-serious expression of the Skelefiend who refused to spill the beans.
‘Stop you fool you’ll make this snake get suspicious, based on the profile you gave my Lord of this guy, he won’t kill me until he gets some answers about what happened to his “precious” subordinate’, said the Skelefiend thanks to a connection he had due to a contract with Ulkrear.𝑶𝐕𝓁𝒩xt.𝔠𝐎𝐦
And the Skelefiend was right, the only thing stopping Karmandi from crushing him pieces, was the fact that he wanted to know what they did to his subordinate, so now they were stuck, because Ulkrear hadn’t make his move yet.
Daimon who was contemplating about some of the things Ulkrear said, more specifically the fact that the Emperor ranked magic beast Karmandi served, had the ability to dispel contracts.
‘A race ability perhaps’, thought Daimon, as he noticed the predicament in which the snake general was.
‘Force that guy’s hand, tell him…’.
Karmandi’s eyes glowed as he listened to Daimon’s plan, he had to admit that this alliance was paying off.
…
The previous might have taken some time to explain, but it was a batter of a couple of seconds, so Ulkrear and the Skelefiend didn’t notice anything.
That is, until Karmandi tightened his grip around the Skelefiend’s body, with a sinister smiling expression.
“You are a tough one huh, fine I don’t know how others didn’t notice you, but such a lousy disguise is nothing for me, you Skelefiends are like rats, if there is one there is more, I’ll just go and get all of them, someone will spill the beans, now go to hell!”, shouted Karmandi to make the situation more real.
“Fuck, help me Ulkrear, this bastard needs to be eliminated he knows too much!”, shouted the Skelefiend noticing Karmandi was serious about killing him.
Ulkrear wanted to swear, the Skelefiend blew his cover away, so he was forced to betray the Black Empress publicly, because he could have left the Skelefiend to die as long as he was ready to pay a price, but now he had no option.
“Shit, Ligel!”, Ulkrear suddenly exploded in mana as rock spikes raised all over his body as he pounced towards Karmandi, trying to take him by surprise.
But his plans obviously failed, a strong water stream enveloped Karmandi’s body rotating at an insanely high speed
“Ulkre… aghhh!!!”, the first thing that happened was that the Skelefiend was blown away into small pieces due to the water stream, then both Karmandi and Ulkrear clashed.
Regardless of rank, the most liked method for magic beasts to fight was close physical combat, in fact the closest to “Magic Knights”, that exists are magic beasts, though they can’t produce a life spark for some unknown reason, their bodies are innately strong and they store mana in their flesh, blood, skin, bones etc.
So, to a certain extent they have both the capacity to use mana and vitality, like Daimon, that’s also why Karmandi thought Daimon is closer to a magic beast than to a human, because he is using his knight realm as a part of his disguise, and his vitality was really strong, despite it being hidden by the hollow suite, he looked outstanding for Half Emperor and Emperor level beings.
“Booom!”, a loud explosion along with a shockwave was created upon clash between the two magic beasts, in a split of a second both Karmandi and Ulkrear grew to be about fifty meters tall.
Daimon was safe as Rita protected him from the impact, but some of the weakest magic beasts were sent flying backwards due to the shockwave, despite them being protected by the middle stage Arch ranked magic beasts of their respective groups.
The clash between Karmandi and Ulkrear, created a growing sphere of mana a consequence of their powers trying to push the other back, so in a smart move, Karmandi wrapped his body around Ulkrear and ascended into the sky, not without shouting.
“General Ulkrear has betrayed the Empress, soldiers of the Coral army, put the Rock army under arrest, if they resist kill without mercy!”.
“What are you waiting you fools attack them!”, in response Ulkrear also gave his order as they both disappeared into the mist that functioned as clouds within this underwater space.
The highest ranked beasts which were the four middle stage Arch ranked ones, divided in two from Karmandi’s group and two from Ulkrear’s, a sea centipede and a smaller snake from the same race as Karmandi on one side, and two sea fleas on Ulkrear’s side.
As magic bests which haven’t unlocked their wisdom, nor have reached the Half Emperor realm, they mostly guided by their instincts in the wild, but as Arch ranked beings under a contract with a Half Emperor, they had gained a certain amount of rationality, at least enough to think to a certain extent, listen and execute instructions.
The four magic beasts looked at each other and growled at each other, perhaps it was a way to communicate which they had, but wasn’t understandable for others.
Then apparently, they weren’t able to reach an agreement, because with some loud roars, the four magic beasts group started battling each other.
Biting, scratching and using their strong bodies to tackle others, it was savage and primitive but extremely effective, as soon the whole area had started to be stained with blood, the batter was bitter with both forces being practically as strong as the other.
Or at least that would have been the case, if Daimon wasn’t involved, now that the Half Emperors were busy in their own battle, he was like a wolf in a pack of sheep.
With the hollow suit still hiding his presence, Daimon became a flash of death, using Disaster which was the perfect counter to any living being, he appeared over Lord ranked magic beasts which were attacking the ones he memorized were part of Karmandi’s army, and stabbed their foreheads.
Soon the Arch ranked sea fleas, noticed that the “cannon fodder” of their group were dropping dead one after each other, and they became fiercer, making it hard for their enemies to hold them back.
“Oh?”, Daimon who just killed his 20th Lord ranked magic beast, noticed the sudden change on the sea fleas and he frowned, they jumped backwards and devoured the corpses of their comrades before their original brown color changed to black, they also grew about a third part of their original sizes and red symbols appeared all over their backs, it was similar to how the Bottom Shredder was enhanced.
The centipede and the snake started to be constantly pushed backwards after their enemies underwent that change, Daimon noticed that the mark the sea fleas got from the magic array, classified them as red stars, probably because although their realm didn’t change, their battle prowess increase quite a bit.
‘Let’s do a little test’, thought Daimon as he pointed at one of the sea fleas, he gathered half of his battle aura and half of his mana on top of his hand forming a white spear.
“White Heavenly Javelin”, contrary to his black hell javelin which is composed of darkness and lightning mana thus making it a spell, this version only consisted in Demon Light and an extra of light battle aura in other words it was a martial art the technique of a knight, with the intention of making it more like a concentrated laser than the fire consistency Demon Light usually has, Daimon got inspired by Aliya’s theory, and without realizing he has gotten closer to the “concept” she mentioned.
The spear constricted itself until it became a one-centimeter line of white light which Daimon then threw with all his strength, once it hit the carapace of the sea flea, the thing was pushed a couple of meters by the impact, but nothing really happened, until it started screeching in pain.
“Screeeeech!”, the sea flea retorted on the ground as the symbols on its back started burning all of a sudden, the centipede saw its chance and used its innate ability to shot a poison spit at the sea flea, melting its limbs and accelerating the rate at which the symbols burned, until there was just a black lifeless skeleton left.
Needless to say, but Daimon was speechless right now, he just wanted to test the limit he could reach using that idea he got from Aliya, and although the result was really good piercing a small breach into the carapace of an Arch ranked magic beast, it was obvious his attack was ultimately useless.
He couldn’t even kill the late-stage Lord ranked enhanced Bottom Shredder back when he used all his reserves, so this was just a small test to see how destructive could a martial art created by him would be.
Daimon saw that the bones of the spinal cord of the sea flea had melted to a certain extent due to those symbols burning, and he noticed that the major damage was done at the exact height where he hit the magic beast with his attack.
“So, a destructive external force can use that strange enhancing method as powder, how interesting”, mumbled Daimon with a grin, still he didn’t have to support the snake to kill the other sea flea because the centipede helped it, in a 2v1 situation the sea flea was suppressed.
Instead of that, Daimon looked at the sky, his infinity eyes allowed him to see through the thick layer of mist which was covering the fight between two peak Arch ranked magic beasts, apparently after sealing their powers they couldn’t just undo the seal as they pleased as it required a certain procedure, so the integrity if this place was safe for now.
Still Daimon didn’t want the battle to drag on too much, he remained near the snake and the centipede and then ordered Rita to help Karmandi suppress Ulkrear.
“Try to immobilize the fish, so that Karmandi can fully land an attack on it… but don’t risk yourself”, ordered Daimon, Rita specialized in long distance combat as a mage unlike Horals, so if she received direct impacts from a Half Stellar magic beast’s body, she could end up suffering a lot of pain.
“Understood young master”, said Rita, Daimon’s shadow became less dark as a black blur came out of it, soon disappearing into the sky.