The girls smiled at Daimon, though both Aisha and the Risha sisters couldn’t help but notice the small blood stains in his clothes, besides the fact that Daimon’s hair was a bit messy due to the chaos back at the battlefield.
But seeing that he was completely fine, they all inwardly let out a sigh of relief and welcomed him.
“Welcome back, come sit with us~”, said Leslie as she pointed at the only free seat at the table which was the middle one.
“Mm, we prepared breakfast”, added Liliana.
Daimon nodded and after taking out his jacket to take a seat, he introduced the girls to Karmandi.
“These are my companions, my sister Aisha, the Risha sisters, Yvonne, Liliana and Leslie, the younger sister of the queen of the Mermen Sea, Mellie and the princess of the Elemental Sea, Jasmine”.
Karmandi slightly bowed his head, while he isn’t knowledgeable about human culture, even he knew how to do a formal salute, mostly because that’s how he behaves in front of the Black Empress.
“I’m Karmandi, the third general at the service of the Black Empress, and the one who leads the Coral Army, it’s a pleasure”.
The girls slightly rose the sides of their skirts in response, in the meantime Daimon joined them for breakfast and the first thing he noticed was that the taste of the food had gone up a notch, the Risha sisters had taken a few lessons from their mothers and with Aisha’s help, they normally prepared some delicious things, but there was more to it this time.
‘The light princess offered up to help, imagine my surprise when I saw her bathing all the ingredients in light mana, I have to admit that the food tastes way better after that’, said Aisha as she noticed Daimon’s interested expression.
Daimon stole a gaze at Jasmine, just to see her smiling at him as if she waited to see his reaction after tasting the food.
𝑜𝔳𝑙xt.𝚌𝞸𝓶
Even Karmandi joined them, of course the amount of food they served wouldn’t have been enough to actually satisfy his appetite, but there was no need to it as he was still refining the piece of Ulkrear’s arm he devoured, he only did it for pleasure because even he thought the food was delicious.
Once they finished everyone moved to the some stone benches Daimon created using the spell terraforming, as it was time to get into more serious matters.
“So, anything that might explain why the pirates and Skelefiends are targeting these two?”, asked Daimon.
Karmandi’s snake eyes glowed as he inspected Mellie and Jasmine, but ultimately he ended up shaking his head with a defeated expression.
“Nothing that practically gets my attention as a magic beast, don’t get me wrong they are indeed different the “average” humans I have known, but I can’t see anything that would make Ulkrear go out of his way like that”.
“Ulkrear?”, mumbled Mellie.
“Ah right, I forgot to tell you the context, what happened was…”.
Daimon proceeded to tell the girls practically everything that happened, of course he omitted pretty much all Rita’s participation in the decisive battle, but besides that he shared pretty much everything else with them.
“So even the magic beasts are after us now”, Mellie sighed with an annoyed voice, this whole situation has been bothering her.
Jasmine was the sane, but her worries were more on the fact that some people from the sects who are supposed to protect her have offered to set her up to save themselves.
Daimon didn’t sugar coated anything of what he said, because the situation was pretty serious, there was someone pulling the strong behind the shadows, and based on what he has caught up so far, he could basically guarantee it was another system user and one which wasn’t as inexperienced as Adam and Marcus.
If it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t affected by limitations and restrictions of any kind, he would have been in a much tough situation just like Adam.
“I think we need to talk about this with my sister, if anyone knows something it should be her, Senior Karmandi would you mind coming with us once we are out of this place, I’m sure Uncle Vincent will guarantee your safety”.
Karmandi’s eyes widened a bit.
“Vincent… you mean the Trident Marshal of the Mermen Sea?”, he said with a surprised expression, to which Mellie nodded in response.
“Same here, I bet my grandma will be more than happy to reunite with general Karmandi, especially since you are joining hands with us”, added Jasmine.
Karmandi stole a gaze at Daimon, someone who was trusted by two Stellar Ranks, and two of the few maximum ranked in the Neptune, to take care of their descendants, couldn’t be normal.
‘Well, considering that woman protector who I couldn’t detect was at his complete disposition, he couldn’t come from a regular household to being with’, thought Karmandi.
Why is someone who already serves an Emperor ranked being so shocked about talking with other Emperors you might ask, well the answer is pretty simple, because even the Black Empress would consider those two as seniors, based on the fact that she is only a middle stage Stellar rank, while Vincent and Aurora are maximum ranked ones, the peak of the existence in Neptune, only a few can be considered to be on par with them.
“Ahem, I will have to ask my Empress first, but I would be honored to meet those two seniors”, said Karmandi.
The whole situation was strange to Daimon, if the Mermen Sea had so much trouble with the pirates, why didn’t they sign a contract with some of the strong Emperor level magic beast, that dominated the Maelstrom Sea to suppress them.
It was such a profitable business, imagine getting a guarantee that your ships could move through a specific route, as the magic beasts wouldn’t attack you and the pirates would be driven away by them too, it was a win-win situation.
“Now that I think about it, I remember that it was said your Empress had an agreement with the Silver Dawn pirates, how come you couldn’t reach something similar with the Mermen Sea or the Elemental Sea?”, asked Daimon.
The Skelefiend in thar noble’s body had mentioned that Black Beard guy was involved in the ambush of the Silver Dawn captain, and they clearly wanted to frame the Elemental and Mermen Seas, to start a way with the Black Empress, meaning they didn’t want them to cooperate, but they have never did it to begin with.
“You don’t seem to informed about the relationships between the White royal family and the magic beasts of the Maelstrom Sea… Gabriel, I guess that’s good I was worrying thinking you were part of the royal family since you have two princesses at your side”, mumbled Karmandi, before saying.
“The White royal family despise the races that are native of the Maelstrom Sea, because they can’t control us, even their king can’t influence us unlike the races that share a bond with the Mermen Sea”.
“And to be honest we hate them too, because a long time ago they attacked us with no reason, just for fun, the painted the water with our blood and killed the old and the young… including a lot who were born not too long ago”.
Daimon shook his head, he could smell a scheme here, an easy way to win a war is create a rift in your enemy’s camp, and that would explain why the captain of the Silver Dawn pirates was attacked, among the “humans”, they were the only ones which had come to an agreement with an Emperor magic beast, so they set a precedent.
But now they were practically eliminated and the magic beast who worked with them, was being targeted too, so whatever could be the reason someone didn’t want them to join hands.
And if it was going to piss off, the guy behind the scenes, then Daimon was more than eager to do it, because an angered enemy is bound to slip, and a sole mistake was everything Daimon needed to catch the little scheming bastard.
“You bring your Empress and let me take care of our side, someone is trying to pull us by our noses, and you know it, Ulkrear is a good proof of it”, said Daimon.
The snake general sighed, he still had to give his Empress the news of traitors appearing in the group, many things were bound to change after/if they were able to leave this place.
“I can’t promise anything, but since it is you who is asking, I think it’s worth a try, the Empress will be able to see my memories of this whole situation, as long as I let her”.
“Now onto the most serious subject, what’s our next target, once my subordinates had recovered, will we break through their blockade, will we hunt them down one by one?”, asked Karmandi.
The girls also turned to see Daimon to see what his decision was, the two princesses specially, Mellie still wanted to save some of the nobles, the women who were captured due to her at least.
And Jasmine has some people she has known since she was a little girl, in the sects too, the girls with who her grandmother allowed her to play with for example, they were her original team, until she met Adam and formed a new team with him and the people he chose as their members.
“We need to capture an Skelefiend, I already have some hostages from the pirates, so now we only need an informant from the Skelefiends”.
“We will hunt the Skelefiends, and in the process I want to see what’s the origin of that weird enhancing method they are using now too”.
“If we find some hostages in the process, we’ll take them with us… but they will stay in a cage until we are in a safe position, I trust you understand why”, said Daimon.
Now that he had Karmandi and his subordinates back up, secured with a contract, he had no need of the nobles who weren’t trustworthy.
The princesses smiled, happy with the result, and the girls didn’t complain either, so everything was ready.
As Daimon was about to excuse himself to start looking at the sea flea, one of Karmandi’s scales illuminated.
“Gabriel, one of my subordinates who was too far to reunited with us, has contacted me, he says there is a small group of humans fighting with both pirates and Skelefiends, it’s pretty far away, enough for my mana sense to not be able to reach it due to my seal, but I think you’ll be interested on it… because he says they are fighting against a group led by a princess”.
Daimon raised an eyebrow, if Karmandi and Rita’s mana sense didn’t reach that group, then they should be really far from them… or there was something interfering with them.
“The Sea Devil Ore, ask your subordinate if there is some kind of thing we can use as reference to find him”, asked Daimon in a hurry.
Karmandi raised an eyebrow but he still did as he was asked, and a second later he said.
“Now there is, he changed the roof of a huge rock to look like me”.
“Rita, can you look for that?”, asked Daimon.
“On my way young master”, Rita extended her senses through the area, and she was surprised of what she found.
“I can see it young master, there is camouflaged camp near it, if my guess is correct, they are using those strange green rocks too, so I can’t tell how many enemies there are”.
Daimon nodded; the only princess left was the daughter of the Valas Duchess, so it had to be her.
“Daphne would never leave her subordinates behind… she probably raided the camp to rescue one of them”, said Mellie, with a tinge of worriedness on her face.
“Okay, I guess we have our next target, Karmandi are you up for a fight?”, asked Daimon to the snake general, making the latter laugh.
“Sure, I need to retrieve my subordinate anyway”.
“Okay, go prepare we leave in five minutes”.
Karmandi returned through the tunnel to the lower cave, he was going to take just a few of his subordinates with him, those who could fly to be more precise.
Daimon was left in a small predicament right now, judging by the determined expressions of the Risha sisters, and also Mellie they will be coming regardless of what he said.
‘Worry not young master, your most trusted subordinate Horals, will protect the young misses!’, said the bone general as he told Daimon a couple of things he discovered.
‘Oh, sounds interesting, Rita help him make it possible’, said Daimon, to which Rita limited to nod, she could see Horals’s mocking smile and she softly snorted.
‘Bonehead’.