While Rita flew to find a good position to participate in the fight between Karmandi and Ulkrear, Daimon stayed on the ground and supervised the whole battlefield.
Whenever one of Karmandi’s subordinate showed some signs to be losing, he stepped in and killed the enemy, which earned him the gratitude of the magic beasts, while he also farmed points for the beast hunt.
Still, he had his eyes set on the remaining sea flea which was being suppressed by the Karmandi’s present strongest subordinates, but he was also curious about that enhancing process.
Seeing that the centipede and the snake were about to kill the sea flea, Daimon stopped them from doing so.
While the two magic beasts couldn’t talk in the common language like Karmandi, they could understand it.
“Wait, I have some things I want to confirm for which this guy needs to be alive”, Daimon didn’t reveal himself but he sent his voice directly to the centipede and the snake.
Needless to say, but the two magic beasts showed resistance to listen to Daimon, they had their orders and the sea flea kept trying to escape, so the next thing on their list was killing it.
“Your boss is going to need the information I will be able to get out of this flea’s body, besides his fight will end in a few minutes, so there is no downside to it”.
The snake which was from the same race as Karmandi and seemed to be more used to deal with humans, was convinced by Daimon’s words and then it made some gestures to tell the centipede to cooperate, after some hisses and low screeches they limited themselves to suppress the flea.
Daimon nodded, the battle was ending way sooner than it would have, because he pretty much killed almost all the early-stage Lord ranked magic beasts from Ulkrear’s army, and Karmandi’s ones which were free ganged up on the next enemy, accelerating their defeat.
‘Time to wrap things up’, thought Daimon as he looked at the sky where the really important battle was taking place.
…
Up there past the mist the large figures of a snake and a handfish floated at some distance from the other, their bodies both had some wounds.
Some of Karmandi’s scales were punctured by the rock spikes which covered Ulkrear’s body, at the same time the latter’s body had large friction wounds and cuts on his hand-like fins, resulting from the fact that Ulkrear had to use his hands to push Karmandi away when he wrapped his body around him.
“Karmandi why are getting in my way, don’t you want to break off the shackles of mortality, and reach the Stellar rank, to be able to travel through the sea of stars our ancestors spoke about”.𝑶𝐕𝓁𝒩xt.𝔠𝐎𝐦
“Join me and we can both get what we need to finally take the last step to volve into something greater, you Know that with the appearance of beings from another galaxies, Neptune’s days are counted”, shouted Ulkrear.
Just like how the Risha sisters descend from a magic beast, and they have inherited their innate abilities through their lineages, magic beasts can leave “messages” for their future descendants.
That being said, not all magic beasts can do it and not all the descendants can access to them, just like how Yvonne, Leslie and Liliana are just the third generation that had received the knowledge about their wings, and the first to be able to properly use them.
Karmandi snorted as his mana exploded out of his body.
“You can’t fool me Ulkrear, you are siding with those sack of bones because you want to kill the Empress to get a share of her beast core, and you are too much of a coward to try and advance to the Stellar rank without a safety net”.
“I Karmandi am no saint, but I would never repay kindness with betrayal, the Empress is honorable and has treated us fairly, if you want to backstab her it would be over my dead body!”.
The handfish gritted his teeth, besides the first two generals, the other four had similar strengths, so a battle between him and Karmandi would take time, time he didn’t have.
‘If my memory doesn’t fail, that strange guy told me that a blond-haired human with a sword was one of the impossible to calculate variants in the plan, and that if the targets were to be saved by him, then he wouldn’t be getting anything.
So, every second he was wasting fighting against Karmandi, his chances to reach the Stellar rank became smaller.
“Fuck it, if that’s how you want it to be, then you can all go to hell!”, shouted Ulkrear as his mana poured out of his body, and he started expanding his body, soon reaching about one hundred meters of size.
Karmandy frowned, previously they weren’t figthting seriously, just like how Aura and Erin had a really high control over their bodies after having reached the Half Emperor realm, Karmandi and Ulkrear could control their bodies.
In their case it was their size, their real sizes were about of three kilometers, since they were sea magic beasts where gravity didn’t limit them unlike ground magic beasts, size was one of their strong points.
But since they had sealed their Half Stellar powers away, they also had to reduce their sizes, because without the energy source moving such great physical bodies would exhaust them, also the pressure exuded by a magic beast of that size would make this underwater space become unstable and ultimately collapse.
But now Ulkrear was burning away his vitality as he couldn’t undo the seal, to regain some of his size.
As Karmandi was about to risk everything to stop Ulkrear, he got a message from the same woman who earlier suppressed his whole army.
‘Per my young master’s wishes, I came to assist you, prepare your best attack I’ll hold it down for ten seconds’.
Karmandi wanted to say something, but not only him but even Ulkrear had their attentions drawn by a sudden immense wave of mana that appeared out of nowhere.
Rita’s figure slowly came out of a black portal above Ulkrear.
“Shadow Heart Puppeteer”, Rita’s soft voice echoed through the whole area, making the two Half Stellar ranks, army of magic beast and Daimon who was watching from below, to look at her.
With Rita as the center a black projection expanded to all the directions, not before she said a few more words.
“The Conqueror Suppressing the World”, an almost unnoticeable smile flourished on Rita’s normally expressionless face, as the black mass changed its shape.
Before Ukrear could react a pair of arms of about two hundred meters grabbed him, practically imprisoning him between their palms.
“What the hell is this!”, Ulkrear which was being grabbed like a toy despite his still growing size, and he accelerated his growth despite wasting more and more of his vitality.
Unfortunately, the black figure which was now holding him had a total height of six hundred meters from head to toe, so he was like a child fighting against an adult.
Needless to say, but Ulkrear was furious, he a magic beast who is revered by its strong and guant body, was being toyed with, he spawned more of those rock spikes that were covering his body to pierce the hands of the creature which was holding him, but to his surprise his attacks just went through the hands.
Karmandi who was in a lost for words a moment ago, suddenly snapped he concentrated half of his mana in front of his snout, and the water stream that used to cover his body was dragged in to the mix, creating a thirty meters ball of rotating water.
“Hold it like that woman”.
“Tidal Vortex!”, Karmandi bit the ball of water and then spit a stream of insanely pressured water and Mana towards Ulkrear, from a certain point of view it was similar to the legendary ability of a dragon “breath”, but it was done externally since Karmandi couldn’t produce water in his body, but manifest it from the humidity and water mana on the atmosphere.
Ulkrear felt a chill running down his spine, water can wear down rocks, if Karmandi’s attack fully landed on him, he had no doubt it will drill a hole through his defense and pierce his body, and since he expanded his body but couldn’t move, he essentially became a bigger and easier to hit target.
“I will remember this Karmandi, yours and that bitch’s days are counted!”.
As the water stream hit the black hands, a loud lung-tearing scream could be heard coming from them, the attack stopped there for a moment before it passed through the black hands, hitting a mountain a kilometer away blowing it into pieces and disappearing into the horizon, not stopping even after that.
Even now, Karmandi was obviously holding back, that attack was at most at the peak of Arch rank, because if he had used the power of a Half Emperor… he would have blown away the whole place, but in his current sealed state it was among his most destructive attacks.
“He sacrificed his vitality and escaped”, mumbled Karmandi.
Half Stellar ranks had started to get in contact with the space laws, and while in Neptune not everyone had that ability, the six generals of the Black Empress did, so even if suppressed by the isolation magic array created by an Emperor, by paying a hefty price Ulkrear “squeezed” himself through a little breach in the space.
It was similar to how Aisha once fled using a forbidden spell, despite she only being an Arch ranked, but as a consequence her magic core cracked and she nearly died in the process.
The six-hundred-meter black figure bent down and left an object at Daimon’s feet, a huge magic beast’s arm, and Ulkrear’s right arm to be precise, while Ulkrear managed to activate his escaping ability, he was hit by Karmandi’s attack in the last moment and one of his arms was torn away due to the impact.
Daimon placed his foot on top of the arm, because many magic beasts eyed it as soon as it was left at his feet, they couldn’t avoid it, it was the flesh and blood of a Half Stellar ranked being, just a bit of it was enough for a Lord ranked beast to strengthen its lineage a lot.
And completely consuming it would help an Arch rank of the same attribute to increase the chances to become a Half Emperor, not guaranteeing it, but according to Erin the chances for the average mage are about 10% and that is for those who manage to reach the “breaking point” or the absolute maximum state possible for an Arch rank, which can’t be achieved by external means.
With a fuel of the Half Emperor realm like this arm, the chances will go up to about 30%, it was an absolute treasure.
Karmandi and Rita descended from the sky, the latter landing kneeled down in front of Daimon.
“Sorry young master, that ugly fish slipped away from me”, she said with an apologetic voice.
Daimon shook his head; he raised his head and saw that huge black figure and bitterly smiled.
Why do you ask, because it was molded based on him, in fact it was like a reflect of him but in black shades, essentially a giant copy made out of shadows with his form.
Rita noticed Daimon’s curiosity and she smiled.
“What do you think young master, this is the biggest shadow puppet I can create, but with time and train I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to make it bigger and bigger, one day young master’s enemies will see your face as their planet is grabbed and crushed by you~”.
Daimon didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry, she clearly created this spell to mess with Horals, Archknights can project their battle aura in large constructions, the bone general uses that fighting style, it can be considered basic but it’s extremely effective.
So, Rita basically adapted that to a spell and gave it his form.
‘Well, she is indeed pretty creative’, thought Daimon as his “shadow clone” dissolved and was absorbed by Rita who then returned to his shadow, where she felt at ease.