To understand what just happened we must return in time a couple of minutes ago, just when Daimon felt the presence of the queen approaching.𝚘𝐕𝒍xt.𝗇𝓔t
Narasha’s soft voice made its way into Daimon’s ears almost at the same time.
‘Daimon, I can feel a large amount of that green ore inside of one that lone ship at the back of the enemy troops and also there is another a few kilometers away into the sea’.
Daimon inwardly nodded in response.
‘Oh, these idiots have learned some tricks from the guy who’s behind all of this, thanks for the warning Narasha’.
Though Narasha had no physical appearance, Daimon could almost imagine laughing and jumping while being all excited of being helpful for him.
‘I’m only doing my job as you battle companion, besides it’s all thanks to you giving Disaster those weird rocks to assimilate~’, said Narasha with a happy excited voice.
Daimon smiled, it was hard to find more of the Sea Devil ore, but the hassle paid off, once he got about one kilogram of it, he suggested Narasha to give her half of it so she could try integrating it into Disaster.
Speaking of Disaster, the thing had developed a strange pickiness when it came to its “food”, of course it obeyed Daimon’s orders when it came to absorbing energy, any kind worked as nice meal.
But for materials maybe because it had “tasted” mithril, orichalcum and even antinite, it didn’t take in anything whose quality was too far from them, even if Daimon shoved the sword into blocks of some materials with decent properties, it refused to absorb them and only drained their mana turning them into useless brittle rocks.
As if it complained of it not being worthy enough to be integrated into it, which gave Daimon a headache as he thought it was a waste of potential, but then giving it a second thought, maybe there was a limit as to how many minerals the sword could integrate from time to time, or something like that, so he didn’t force it.
Also, during one of the many trainings in the wilderness Daimon had with Aura, Narasha one night made an incredible discovery, she felt a faint “dragging” sensation towards a specific cave deep into a forest, when Daimon and Aura explored it, they found a hand sized piece of orichalcum inside!
Apparently, Disaster had the ability of feeling the minerals which had been integrated into it, it was incredible as there is no way to detect nor orichalcum or mithril, it’s a part of why they are highly valued materials, either they are found by pure luck or they appear in really big deposits of other metals and minerals, mithril for example is known to appear randomly in silver mines, there is even a “sport” in which nobles participate in auctions to buy newly discovered silver mines, the prices can skyrocket as there is a possibility of mithril appearing.
Orichalcum is the same but it’s harder to find as there is no pattern, it can appear in mines of all the metals, big or small deposits, it can be as deep as hell or even at the surface of the mine.
Anyway, Daimon decided to give the Sea Devil ore a try, for two reasons, first, it was similar to antinite, the most precious mineral that he knows off and second, the Skelefiends and pirates had already shown signs of using it for their ambushes, probably because they got the advice of the mastermind behind them.
And Disaster’s ability to detect things it integrated into it, would be quite helpful, it was two birds one stone, of course with the amount he got it wasn’t enough for Disaster to use that ability to deprive and store vitality, but if the sword didn’t accept it, it was good to know from the very beginning as he would have to find another way, that or he was going to have infinity eyes adjusted to see it all the time.
To his surprise the sword “happily” absorbed the Sea Devil ore, and thanks to that he was able to find a few more pieces of it, though he didn’t give them to Disaster immediately and instead stored them in his inventory for later.
‘Get a room you two’, mumbled Evangeline with a sleepy voice, she clearly was woken up due to Narasha’s loud voice.
‘Eve is too grumpy lately, is it due to those times of the month Erin mentioned Daimon?’, innocently asked Narasha, making Daimon chuckle.
Erin once made a joke about it and of course the curious Narasha who doesn’t have a body asked, so for her, Evangeline’s reaction fit with the description.
‘Humph~’, Evangeline softly snorted, but she couldn’t get angry with her friend for being curious.
Daimon then sent a message to the queen as the communication devices were working again, since the isolation array has suffered some breaches.
‘Last ship at the left, ambush, also five kilometers south from my current position, bring someone who can stand up to a Stellar rank’, it was short simple message, but its meaning was really important, the enemies had a couple tricks up their sleeves.
Daimon left the decision of how to handle it to Annete, since he was sure she’ll know what to do, of course that didn’t mean he just carelessly left his safety and more importantly the girls safety in other people’s hands, he had his own backing plan in case it was needed.
And the result was within his expectations, once the ship exploded, he caught a glimpse of little green shards sinking into the water and the next thing he knew was that a Stellar ranked was directly aiming at them, that wasn’t all, judging by the slight resemblance he had to Ellemy, it was safe to assume he was seeing the captain of the Devil Stingray pirates, Sting Blackheart.
When Daimon saw that the queen hadn’t stepped up before Mellie’s seahorse was attacked, he turned to see her just to realize he couldn’t find her, but then her mellow voice made its way to his ears.
‘Who would have thought the arrogant captain of the Stingray Devil pirates would act as an ambush, I’m preparing a big “gift” for him, can you get me a couple of seconds… if not I can call Daphne’s mother but he’ll notice my presence?’.
Daimon nodded almost unnoticeably.
‘Sure, but don’t take too long’.
Their interaction was too fast, and Sting was too furious after being noticed by his cousin that four hundred of his high ranked subordinates were wiped out due to the blond guy he was warned of, coordinating with the magic beasts, and he couldn’t find it so he wanted to vent out his anger.
But then after being blocked, a dreading sensation made the hearts of both Sting and Blacktooth who recognized that sensation, sink.
The queen appeared out nowhere above Sting, in his forehead there was a dazzling vertical yellow line, also the blue band wrist she was wearing in her left arm shone and then a pretty lyre with two sirens carved in a blue mineral as its arms, appeared in front of her.
“Shattering Resonance ♪”, Annete’s mellow voice was the last thing Daimon and all the people in the battlefield heard for the next couple of seconds.
There was no explosion unlike what Daimon would have expected, judging by the insane amount of mana he saw gathering around the queen.
What he could indeed feel was that once Annete became visible, an ethereal dome covered the whole battlefield.
‘Domain!’ he thought before his eyes widened upon the next scene.
Sting as well as some of the other pirates that were fighting the nobles, suddenly trembled before blood exploded out of their mouths, noses, ears and eyes, some fainted on the spot and fell from the sky, while others managed to stay awake but were captured or killed by their opponents.
Of course, such a strange and terrifying spectacle, made both enemies and allies show some wariness towards the origin of it, a beautiful woman with white hair and aquamarine eyes, who slowly descended next to a silver haired youth on top of an unknown Half Stellar magic beast that popped out of nowhere.
“Cough!”, Sting who was experiencing a living hell right now turned to see the woman who is known for being a genius strategist and he coughed up blood due to anger this time.
“I should have known it, of course if someone was going to get in my way it was you, how long have you been in cahoots with the magic beasts you bitch!”, he shouted.
Annete had absolutely no idea what was Sting talking about, but since Daimon returned with a Half Stellar Blacktooth, she supposed this whole thing about magic beasts was related to him.
Of course an enemy had no need to know that, so she simply sweetly smiled as she said.
“Who knows~”.
Sting gritted his teeth, in response, his eyes got bloodshot, which combined with the fact that he still had blood on them made him look really terrifying.
“I don’t care anymore, you all go to hell!”, he yelled, his pressure akin to a middle ranked Stellar rank exploded out of his body, making Blacktooth shiver, the light of one of his six claws disappeared at the instant.
‘Damn there goes one, just the pressure is going to crush me’, he thought but he didn’t dare to complain with that terrifying woman standing on his head.
But then another shocking scene unfolded in front of the eyes of those who were watching the separated battlefield that was created due to the newcomers and the queen.
“Arghhh!”, a pained growl echoed through the whole area, the very moment when Sting tried to gather mana to cast a spell to get rid of the nuisances that were preventing him from getting the two princesses, his face paled and blood splashed out of his chest as if some of his veins had exploded out of nowhere.
Besides Blacktooth whose expression was grim as if he was remembering some unpleasant memories, and the Trident Marshal who was fiercely clashing with Black Beard everybody else had no idea of what was happening.
Even Daimon was no exception this time, he was preparing to use switch if needed, as the queen was here so she could be the alibi for the eyes of all the high ranked people here, when he saw the mana of Sting going berserk and backfiring him, he could bet that what exploded wasn’t only some of his veins but even some of his mana circuits.
“What did you do to me!”, shouted Sting.
Annete softly snorted in response, but she still answered, while her lyre floated next to her.
“Everything has a certain “rhythm”, it’s the result of a large number of things, heartbeat, the sound of one’s blood running through the veins, the vibrations of mana when it circulates in the mana circuits and so on, I simply interrupted that, those who were affected are the guys related to you since their “rhythms” are similar”.
The queen saw the expression of disbelief in the face of the pirate and she disdainfully added.
“If you are too much of a simpleton to understand it, just imagine someone breaking a glass with its voice, in this case I’m the person and you are glass, so every time you try to excel anything which I affected… well you can imagine the result, that’s what you get for trying to bully my little Mellie”.
Besides Mellie who was pouting due to her sister treating her like a child, the rest were in awe, but they weren’t paying attention to the real surprising thing.
Daimon on the other hand was, he wasn’t surprised of the honestly terrifying ability of the queen, though he was for sure going to ask about it later, right now he was more interested in why she bothered to answer Sting.
‘If I learned something with Erin, is that strategist and street mages have a really big thing in common, while one hand draws your attention, the other screws you over’, he thought.
And pretty much as he expected, the queen’s next words confirmed his theory.
“By the way, I’m not the only one out here for your blood, good luck”, said Annete as she snapped her pretty fingers.
Before Sting whose senses and body were numb could react, a few meters away from him, a tall beautiful woman with dark blue hair and an angered expression appeared out of thin air.
The woman slightly opened her lips and a couple of soft but dead serious words escaped from her mouth, as she extended her left hand at the pirate
“Chaos Stream”.
“Boooom!”.
An ear-deafening thunder explosion, followed by a huge blue stream of five kilometers of diameter which hit Sting’s body directly, blowing him away was the result of those words.
But that wasn’t all, the attack impacted exactly at a spot five kilometers at the south of Daimon’s current position, creating a huge shockwave, a blue flash of light and a seaquake that resulted in a one-hundred-meter-tall wave.
The woman who just literally sent a Stellar rank flying with one hand, casually descended next to Daimon and the queen, while she nodded at them.
“Thanks for the help sister Ann, Stellar rank or not, how does he dare to try and kidnap my princess”.
Daphne who was standing next to Mellie sighed upon hearing the woman, showing a slightly embarrassed expression on her usually calm face.
The woman was of course none other than the Valas duchess, the mother of the first princess and a peak Half Stellar ranked.
Daimon couldn’t help but admit that ability was as insane as always, he had the right to think so as he experienced what being shot that blue stream is like back at the trial of the lineage temple, but this time he managed to see a way stronger version of it.
‘I knew it, someone related to that crazy woman can’t be normal… a Half Stellar ranked sending a Stellar ranked flying away just like that, damn!’, screamed Blacktooth in his heart, the poor shark felt his heart in his throat having two terrifying woman standing on his head.
“What are you waiting Blacktooth, take us to the shore while that guy is down”, ordered Daimon, making the shark go out of his trance.
“Yes, young master!”, immediately said the shark thinking that if he completed his task as soon as possible, he’ll be sent back into the beast pouch away from these two beauty-shaped monsters.