The girls expected Daimon to ask them to stay, based on the fact that he went alone earlier, but to their surprise after looking at them for a couple of seconds and without them saying anything, Daimon nodded.
“We will all go this time, they can’t outnumber us as badly with Karmandi’s army, so the situation is manageable”.
‘Also, it’s not like you are weak by any means’, he thought to himself.
The Risha sisters have now learned to distribute the boost their wings give to them, to fight for a longer period of time at about the same strength Aleah would have without using her lineage, in a saw calculation they would be in the middle of the eight-nine star realm.
But their elements are strong enough to harm and kill early stage Lord ranks, which is the stapple to not be a pushover in this place, Aisha didn’t need to be considered, in this matter from the very beginning, just with her battle experience alone she is on par with Daimon in a lot of aspects and she even surpasses him in others, with the exception of Disaster or Core Synchrony of course.
Mellie is way fiercer than she appears to be, her spells can blow away mages, and inflict internal damage which is the bane of a knight’s defense below the Arch rank, not to mention she is a Lord ranked and can go up to the middle stage with her lineage activated, if anything her physical body is her weakness, but she had polished her close combat skills as Daimon previously saw when she attacked him with the bow of her fiddle.
And lastly Jasmine, she is the polar opposite of Mellie, her offensive isn’t high, something common among light affinity mages, but in exchange, her support and defense abilities are top notch, in fact if not for Adam pulling a fast one, making her use her remaining mana before abandoning her, she might have had a chance to flee, even after being on the run for quite some time without a proper rest or food, her vitality was high due to her affinity after all.𝑜𝔳𝑙xt.𝚌𝞸𝓶
The girls eyes lit up and they immediately went to prepare themselves, putting the armor which they had taken off to be comfortable.
‘Are you sure to bring those three darling, there might be a traitor in the group of that princess, so the situation can become chaotic?’, asked Aisha through the mental connection.
As the saying goes, a spear in the day is easier to dodge than an arrow at night, they were going to lend a hand to the princess because it’s impossible she is behind this as she is being targeted, but her subordinates on the other hand might not be clean.
‘Don’t worry, if I found a way to solve the previous problem, so that they can fight to their heart’s content now’, said Daimon.
He understood Aisha was worried about those three as their friend, and he wouldn’t have let them tag along to the many fights that were about to come if he didn’t have a way to look for them, just like he does for his mother.
Aisha smiled and didn’t ask anything else, if Daimon said he had it covered, she was sure he had it.
A few minutes later with Daimon guiding them, everyone jumped through the tunnel on the floor to descend to the second cave where the magic beasts were staying.
The girls were a bit surprised to see the numbers of the army Karmandi was leading, which Daimon had gotten to back them, from the original about 300 members around 10 were mildly wounded and needed more time to rest, but in exchange around 100 of the beasts from Ulkrear’s army had joined Karamndi, among which there were 3 peak Lord ranked ones.
Even the magic beasts organized themselves as they called themselves “army”, normally Arch ranks or sub generals lead the groups, but due to the promptness of the situation and the fact that many Arch ranks entering the trial area might call the attention of the Trident Marshal, each general only brought two Arch ranks with them, and the peak Lord rank beasts were the temporal leaders of groups of thirty magic beasts each.
From the 10 groups that followed Ulkrear, besides his two arch ranks which were the sea fleas, three of them defected to Karmandi’s side, so about 400 magic beasts of which the weakest were early-stage Lord ranks conformed the current army Daimon got the support off.
“We are ready, Kamir will stay behind to guard the fort and just in case the Ulkrear’s subordinate might try to pull something”, said Karmandi referring to the middle stage Arch ranked snake from his same race, the one which listened to Daimon’s request of capturing the sea flea.
“Ok, so who’s coming?”, asked Daimon.
“Originally, I though flying was the only option as I thought our destination was too far, but since we were just being tricked by the damn Sea Devil ore, Neal will be coming to make the path… as for the others, I’ll leave them to you to choose”, said Karmandi as he pointed with his tail to the team leaders on the peak Lord rank, who had formed a line in front of Daimon and the girls.
Daimon inspected the options and was convinced by them, none had anything to envy to the Bottom Shredders so they were eligible to fight against them should the situation come to the worse.
“Choose one each ladies, they’ll be your temporary companions for the upcoming battles”, said Daimon.
The girls looked at the beasts, there were a total of twelve including the three that came from Ulkrear’s army, as one of the team leaders from Karmandi’s army needed to recover, Daimon wasn’t worried they will betray them, because Karmandi explained the terms of their contracts, to form part of the army they needed to be loyal, but there were exceptions which allowed them to deflect, one of them being if their general made poor decisions which disregarded them, and Ulkrear fell in that category when he openly betrayed the Black Empress.
Not even five minutes later each one of them had chosen a magic beast, Aisha choose an eel for lightning purposes, Yvonne had bad luck as there wasn’t any beast with darkness attribute but she chose a centipede with poison that could be useful for her, Liliana chose a sea turtle with ice attribute, Leslie got the short end of the stick since there wasn’t any beast with an attribute that went along with fire, so she just selected a crab from the same species Daimon fought earlier, it was a good choice as it had a good balance of defense and offense.
Mellie chose a seahorse as she had experience with them, then Jasmine selected a purely offensive magic beast, but with a decent innate defense, a crocodile, which unlike other species had blue scales to camouflage in the sea instead of swamps or other non-salt water bodies.
It’s worth mentioning Daimon also chose one, a lobster, in defense terms it was weaker than the crab, but its agility was higher to the point that it was surprising a sea beast could move at such speed in dry land, it wasn’t for him though as he was sat on top of the centipede called Neal, to guide it towards the camp and just in case they bumped into another piece of the Sea Devil ore.
“Let’s go”, everyone rode on top of their respective magic beasts, and with Daimon’s green light, Neal started advancing and making the tunnel for the others to follow him, Karmandi who remained in that four meter form, sat next to Daimon too.
…
This time the centipede was allowed to move faster once they were far enough from their camp, so the travel only took about fifteen minutes until Daimon told him to slow down, as they were about to reach the place where the battle was taking part.
Karmandi also heard the sounds of battle and everyone could feel the blasts of mana generated due to the exchange of spells between the three parties.
“Mm?”, Karmandi suddenly moved his tail like a whip, a blue stream pierced the rock roof and fell from above right at where Daimon was sitting down.
Daimon inspected the composition of the blue stream as it reminded him to something he has seen before.
‘Air and water mana compressed into a laser-type attack, though weaker this was the attack used by that whale shark in the trial of the Lineage Temple’, thought Daimon.
A middle stage Lord ranked would have lost half of his life if that attack even slightly brushed him, but for the snake general it was as simple as waving his tail to redirect it.
“That’s the incomplete form of the Storm Stream of the Valas family, it puts the user through a lot of tension so Daphne wouldn’t use it unless it’s a must, the fight should be reaching a critical point”, said Mellie.
The girls saw the blue stream piercing a hole through the rock wall even after losing a lot of impulse, and being redirected by Karmandi, and they had to agree that it was an incredibly strong spell.
Daimon raised his head and his infinity eyes saw through meter after meter of rocks and compacted earth, to reach the surface.
And just as Mellie said, the battle was really intense, probably the pirates arrived earlier because they had the bigger amount of casualties, their Bottom Shredder was literally turned into minced meat which Daimon only recognized due to the remaining shape it had.
The Skelefiends on the other hand were more cautious, some were occupying the bodies of male nobles from the Mermen Sea, while others were in their normal forms, all of them were Lord ranked beings.
Daimon followed a large trace which was carved into the ground and found the actual target of the previous attack which ended reaching them, there laying on a crater and a pond of dark red blood, there was a Bottom Shredder whose body below the chest was missing now.
What caught Daimon’s attention the most is that the Shredder had those black marks all over its body.
‘That spell is as dangerous as I experienced back then’, thought Daimon, if not for him having blink the trial would have ended the moment the whale shark had gathered enough mana for that attack, it had a really wide area of impact and it crated an insanely strong shockwave too.
“But in exchange…”, mumbled Daimon as he looked at the left where a large rock wall was created to be used as a bastion for the people hidden behind of it.
There he saw a group ten people, eight girls and two guys, one of the guys had a missing arm, and three of the girls had arrows in their legs or shoulders, but the one who really looked as if a breath would knock her down, was none other than that tall girl with dark blue hair Daimon met back when the beast hunt was starting.
The only daughter of the king, the first princess Daphne Valas, to put context, her previously pale but pink skin tone had changed to an unhealthy one, and there were some bags under her eyes too, her chest was moving up and down and her breathing was a mess, in other words she was exhausted.
But it was understandable, she practically killed an enhanced Bottom Shredder, something even Daimon was unable to do back then, though he focused more in area and distraction, instead of condensing it to get rid of a single target.
And besides that trace and crater as well as the Bottom Shredder being half dead, the Skelefiends were perfectly fine, so she only targeted it.
“Young miss is awesome, your spell finished those horrible magic beasts”, said one of the girls who was supporting the first princess so she didn’t collapse.
The three wounded girls were unable to move, probably due to some kind of paralyzing poison applied on the arrow heads, and the guy with the missing arm was also sat trying to stop the bleeding.
The remaining four girls and the guy, kept launching different spells to keep the Skelefiends and pirates in check, the pirates were probably still terrified of that previous attack, so they didn’t dare to show their faces and were hiding behind a large rock.
“Didn’t that fucking bastard say she could only shoot that thing once, then what the hell was that!”, shouted the pirate leading the remaining two surviving pirates, as he erected an earth wall to block one of the many attacks that the teammates of the first princess were launching at them.
“Boss, those sacks of bones lied to us, they want to capture the princess for themselves”, answered one of the two pirates.
Seeing the hatred face of the leading pirate, Daimon smirked.
‘You guys aren’t the only ones who can play behind the scenes, let’s see how you like it’, he thought.
Karmandi saw Daimon grinning and he raised an eyebrow, he couldn’t see through the rocks and he couldn’t use his mana sense, since he didn’t want to give their positions away, in case there were some “fishers” waiting to reap the benefits of the battle currently ongoing, besides them of course.
Then under Karmandi’s surprised eyes, Daimon vanished as he activated the hollow suit, but he didn’t move from where he was standing.
Instead of that he simply used one of the earth spells he learned just to have something in his arsenal in case he needed it.
“Earth Spikes”.
“What the hell!”, one of the Skelefiends saw spikes raising below his feet and he unconsciously jumped to avoid them, but that put him in the way of three different attacks from the teammates of the first princess.
“Aghhh!”, the Skelefiend was hit and his body was sent flying due to the impact, resulting in an immediate death.
The leader of the Skelefiends which was in the middle stage of the Lord realm, gritted his teeth, he couldn’t feel where the attack came and the only one here with earth affinity that could do that, was the leader of the pirates.