Daimon saw Mellie returning and he nodded at her, before he tapped Neal’s head.𝑜𝔳𝑙xt.𝚌𝞸𝓶
“Let’s go, we have a lot left to do”.
As the centipede was about to dive into the ground, a girl’s voice could be heard coming from the east.
“Wait… please let us go with you”, it was Chris who was carrying Daphne, the maid was also tired so she was having a hard time doing it as she isn’t a knight but a mage and her physical strength isn’t really high.
Daimon asked Neal to wait for them and then helped both the fainted Daphne and the maid Chris to get up the centipede.
“Thanks”, Chris thanked Daimon before she also fell asleep, she has reached her limit a long time ago too, and she needed a place to rest and to keep the first princess safe, while she recovered, unfortunately they didn’t have mana replenishing potions and that has been a nightmare for Daphne.
Her race’s specialty was the use of spells with wide areas and high destroying properties, which of course requires a large reserve of mana, even then the Valas often uses mana replenishing potions which specially brewed for them, as they don’t get resistance against them which allows them to take a large number per day before their bodies need to rest as their stamina runs out.
Unfortunately, Daphne had no access to her ring, so she has been budgeting her mana throughout the whole time they had been here.
After making sure those two wouldn’t fall, Daimon gave the order and Neal dived into the ground.
The other magic beasts soon followed them, until only Karmandi was left.
“To think there will be someone with thoughts akin to the Empress among the humans, I guess everything is possible nowadays”, mumbled the snake general with a smirk before his eyes glowed and then everything in a radius of one hundred kilometers disappeared, leaving only a large crater, but without making any sound.
Thus, eliminating all the evidences of the battlefield besides the crater, now the only traces were a strong water mana which could belong to a lot of magic beasts, the snake general nodded happy with the result before he dived into the ground.
‘I must inform to the Empress… this might be the chance us beasts from the Maelstrom Sea had been striving for’, he thought as he caught up with the others.
The first battle of this strange alliance finally ended, with a crushing victory for Daimon and Karmandi, not only that, but they now had the higher ground, in the meaning that the three princesses were safe and sound, so the pirates and Skelefiends got nothing so far.
…
It didn’t take too much time for the group to triumphantly return to their hideout, Daimon made sure to collapse all the part of the tunnel which was near the battlefield, so that no one noticed they arrived moving underground.
A soon as they returned things got busy in the cave of the magic beasts, the ones that needed rest were helped by their healthy comrades, the sea flea was still imprisoned in ice and Ulkrear’s former subordinates didn’t cause any problem.
“I’ll deal with these guys, you also go take a rest, I want to be present for the interrogation if it’s not too much to ask”, said Karmandi as he looked at Daimon.
Daimon nodded as he answered.
“No problem, just keep an eye on them, I made sure they don’t have any kind of traceable device and the Sea Devil Ore is blocking any signs of life”.
Neal made Daimon one last favor and took them to the first cave which was above their, before leaving to have a well deserved rest, not without catching something Daimon threw at him with its mouth.
The centipede chewed on the thing and his eyes glowed, it was a poisonous pill, which for creatures with poison attribute would be considered as a medicine, the deepest wounds Neal had on its body immediately looked better, though they didn’t close they stopped bleeding, which saved the centipede a lot of recover.
Neal nodded at Daimon before it returned to Karmandi’s sides, of course that action didn’t escape from the girls eyes and they had different reactions towards it.
Aisha giggled, she was once worried that her son would grow to be a muscle head since he showed so much interest and talent in the knight’s path, but she could tell Erin taught her nice rational skills, the only problem is that she might have… “negatively” influenced him, in other aspects but it was worth it.
The Risha sisters were amused that Daimon basically bribed the centipede, though it could also be seen as a little thanks for having stopped Karmandi from killing the Bottom Shredders as they were information sources, even their corpses would probably be extremely valuable for researchers.
Jasmine was helping with applying minor first aid to Daphne and Chris on one of the beds, mostly because her mana levels were pretty low so this was the best she could do for now, so she didn’t see them.
But Mellie’s attention was attracted to a different thing, with the stupor of the battle she forgot Daimon had somehow access to an spatial type treasure, only now after she saw him giving a medicine of some kind to the centipede she remembered it.
“Chris only needs some rest, she’ll wake up in an hour or so and will be able to move and fight without any problem but… the first princess isn’t that lucky, she hasn’t had the time to let her mana to fully recover and the stress has affected her mana body, she won’t wake up until all her reserves have fully recovered and the more we wait, the worse she will feel when she wakes up”, said Jasmine as she approached Mellie and the others.
Mellie had a troubled expression in her face as she gazed at Daimon, but before she could say anything, Daimon grabbed her hand and handed her a couple of bottles.
“The first one is to improve her stamina recovery, the second one is a simple mana replenish one, the third one is to accelerate her body’s natural recovery, her body is all tensed up so it’s better to do it this way than directly healing her”, said Daimon.
People from the young generation would normally drink healing potions over any wound like idiots, without knowing that when their bodies are new to be put through tension, and then they just let go of all that by using a potion, it’s a source of inner indetectable wounds.
Think of it like this, when you stretch a rubber band and then letting go, it would have a strong recoil, and while ultimately it will keep its shape, there will be micro tears in it which will lead to it breaking later on, in comparison when you instead slowly let it return to its original size, there will be no damage.
This is something Aisha taught her son back when he was little, knowledge that descends from the only person in the Silverheart family that treated Aisha like family instead of an asset, her grandmother who isn’t around anymore, and also a former alchemist that specialized in treating people with fragile bodies… like Aisha when she was a baby.
“Once you had given her the three, wait 45 minutes and then ask Jasmine to use a regular healing spell, she’ll wake up in less than 20 minutes after that”.
Daimon then handed Jasmine some potions too, so she could recover her mana faster, of course he did the same to the other girls, he kind of forgot to give it to them prior to the battle, he already had secured a safety net for them, so it simply escaped his mind.
The girls gladly accepted the potions and threw themselves on the bed to rest, Aisha included.
Jasmine sat on the edge of her bed to meditate while she absorbed the effects of the potion, while Mellie stood there with a contemplative expression.
“Are you sure, we don’t know where we will be leaving, giving away this kid of things is a bit…”, she mumbled, to which Daimon scratched the back of his head.
“Don’t worry I have tons of this things… I just forgot to give you all some before we left”.
“Pfft”, Mellie couldn’t help but giggle upon hearing Daimon’s words, he was clearly embarrassed to have overlooked such a thing, in his defense the group with which he is used to fight are often the one taking care of him not the other way around, since all the girls with the exception of Aisha are way stronger and experienced than him.
Mellie’s mellow voice laughing was like little silver bells ringing, a please to the ear, and this was also the first time Daimon has seen her acting like a normal girl her age, when she finally was able to stop laughing she apologized.
“Sorry, it was just too funny, I was starting to think you were some kind of old general in disguise instead of someone from the young generation, thanks for helping Daphne, she is probably the closest to a friend I had ever had, besides my sister of course, unlike the other princes she acted like an older sister when I was younger, so I have a reason to help her”.
Mellie stopped for a couple of seconds before saying.
“But you don’t… so why did you lend her a hand?”, mumbled Mellie with a slightly shy voice, she has never expected anything from anyone nor asked anything from anyone.
And yet she found herself indebted to Daimon on a regular basis, it was a strange new thing for her, also she believed to have “analyzed” Daimon at this point, why he acted like he does, and the like, just to be proven wrong every time.
For example, he went and saved Jasmine although she was with someone, she realized was Daimon’s enemy, and so far, he hasn’t shown any disdainful or negative attitude towards her, nor her has tried to manipulate her at all.
Also, she thought he didn’t like unnecessary problems and yet, while he had the chance to just take Daphne away, he decided to clash with the Skelefiends and the pirates
Daimon shook his head in response.
“I could say the same of you, all the people here accepted my leadership and followed me to battle, you trusted your lives to me, so it’s my responsibility to protect you to the best of my capacities and bring you all back safe and sound”.
“The first princess is a decent girl and you wanted to save her, I don’t need ay reason to lend a hand if it align with the original goal anyway”, said Daimon as he shrugged.
Mellie was taken back by Daimon’s response, ultimately, she could only chuckle in response.
“You are really a strange guy, killing without a second of hesitation but at the same time being able to show so much concern for other people’s lives~”, said Mellie as she went to the other bed to feed Daphne the potions to help her recover.
‘Not that I dislike it’, she thought.
Daimon hopped on the bed next to Aisha and also focused on rest and recover his battle aura reserves, he held Aisha’s hands without anyone noticing as he thought.
‘When you have resolved to protect someone, you don’t leave them die no matter what’.
Without Daimon knowing, inside the space where Evangeline resided, the latter was observing at the sky that was above her, which was filled with countless golden spiked chains.
“Crack!”, another one of the countless chains had stared to show signs of breaking, what’s the big deal with it, if it has already happened once before you ask, the reason is very simple.
Among the sea of chains, there is a large variety of sizes, small, thin, large, wide and narrow ones, previously the one that broke was among the smaller and thinnest ones, but this time… it was one of the largest, one of the ones that came from the very sky of this space.
‘I wish I could say it is as I expected from my host but to be honest, this fully surpasses what I calculated… you old bastards were wrong and will pay for it, I only wish I can be there at his side when it happens~”, she mumbled as she waved her hand, shattering a notification that popped in front of them a moment ago.
In a rare occasion the blurred figure of Evangeline instead of showing signs of being tired, she was happily humming right now while she was resting on top of a white cloud.