While they were on the run from the pack of magic beasts that were chasing after them, Daimon secretly nodded at Jasmine and her pretty eyes glowed in response as a white halo appeared on them.
Daimon's body then covered itself in white flames as he activated Core Synchrony, in preparation to both the intense though short battle that was about to come, as well as to increase the range in which he could communicate with Aisha through the mind connection they had as soulmates.
'Mom, we are about to start here, how is it going at your side?', asked Daimon.
After a couple of seconds, Daimon could hear Aisha's playful voice in his mind.
'We are almost there darling, as you expected give us ten minutes then I'll give you the greenlight, be careful~'.
Daimon inwardly chuckled.
'Okay, be prepared, by the way how is Karmandi doing?'.
Daimon could hear his mother's pretty laugh, it was like little silver bells ringing in his ears, an auditory pleasure without a doubt
'He is saying this is such a "sneaky human scheme", but he is playing his role pretty well, as expected of a snake type magic beast'.
Daimon shook his head and then cut contact with Aisha to focus on his side, since the whole army of Skelefiends were arriving just now.
The large boulder which was about eight hundred meters from them suddenly exploded, the attention of both the magic beasts as well as the human couple was immediately drawn to the origin of the ruckus.
Then from within the hidden cave, about four hundred Skelefiends most of them in the Lord ranks, appeared led by a woman in her late thirties whose teeth, sclera and nails were black inked, and her skin had a unhealthy pale tone.
Normally by the time a Skelefiend reached the peak of the Arch rank, it fully develops a flesh layer to protect its real body, but they don't look how they see themselves in their skeletal form, also by doing so they actually lose a bit of strength since their flesh bodies increase the vitality, which is a weakness of Skelefiends.
But these new bodies some of the high status Skelefiends were "wearing", were dead tissue molded to their liking and reanimated so that they could insert themselves into it, it aligned perfectly with their negative and chaotic oriented nature, as if they were meant to develop this way but for reason couldn't do it by themselves.
Daimon looked at the woman and he frowned, from his point of view she was worse than an undead, as they at least are one with their bodies, in a sense they are "alive", maybe created with a death body but their existences get a new "rhythm" and mana firms, as they are a completely new being separated from the previous owner of the body they were created with.
But that woman wasn't like that, her mana firm was ugly and chaotic, also for Daimon whose smelling sense is pretty sharp, her existence itself reeked of rottenness.
'Whatever that guy gave these idiots, is some serious shady stuff', thought Daimon.
Still for his purposes this was perfect, because he will be getting an investigation subject which is also a source of really valuable information and a hostage, it was a win no matter which angle one saw it from.
'I guess only the hard part remains, to capture her', thought Daimon as he put on a "wary" expression on his face.
Besides the woman, the other Skelefiends had normal incomplete flesh bodies, so it was obvious they were Skelefiends thus enemies.
"What do you want?", mumbled Daimon as he placed his arm in front of Jasmine, as if he was protecting her from the Skelefiends.
The woman evaluated Daimon, he was wearing some light armor and had a sword hanging from his waist, also those white flames clearly were light oriented.
Shirel nodded with an affirming expression on her face.
"Do you think wearing mask can hide that strong light affinity and the sword gives you away, you are the guy that Lord warned us, the arrogant fool who's playing to be a white knight for the Light Palace's princess, but didn't even bother to dye your hair color, do you think my Skelefiend race is that easy to trick humph".
Daimon had the urge to laugh out loud, but he controlled himself, that's right he was impersonating Adam, though the girls didn't see it he was using the effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief to make the Skelefiends think his hair was blond like Adam's, also the mask of the hollow suit changed to cover his whole face, he then unsheathed the sword that was hanging from his waist which was none other than Disaster in Gram's form.
While it's style was a bit wilder than Adam's sword, being that Gram was a broadsword big enough to be wielded with two hands, it's refined and elegant appearance made it pass as a classy knight's sword without any problem, the fact that it was fully cladded in light helped to complement the act too.
Daimon then put on a slightly exaggerated but pretty much convincible cocky voice, just like that idiot hero who hates anything related to the darkness and negative oriented nature things.
"You lowly filthy beings dare to get in this young master's way!", he shouted as he leaked out a large amount of white light mana from Gram.
Jasmine, Neal and Kamir who were serious a moment ago, nearly laughed at Daimon's act, but they managed to keep her cool and waited, for their signal to jump to action.
The Skelefiends of course felt really insulted by Daimon's words, so their eyes got bloodshot, and they looked at him as if they wanted to tear him apart.
Shirel gritted her teeth, but she didn't act out of anger, that Lord had told them that the light guy had some dangerous "tricks" up his sleeves so she didn't let her anger cloud her mind.
She instead turned to see Neal and Kamir who were clearly the ones leading the pack of magic beasts, before saying.
"Let's make a deal, how about you help us get this guys and we get you enough resources to jump to the peak of the Mortal realm, recently the queen of the Bottom Shredders did a big advance thanks to her being rewarded by her "allies", what do say?".
Shirel thought that if the pirates could get some free thugs in exchange for resources, why couldn't she, every soldier will count in the upcoming war after all.
The centipede and the snake exchanged some gazes and then looked at Shirel with dubitative expressions, which made the latter smile from ear to ear, since she got their attention now, she just needed to add something to seal the deal.
She took out two small bottle which contained a black inked liquid from her pocket, it was obvious this was valuable for her since she had a slightly unwilling light in her eyes as she said
"This is the strength that person has granted us, side with us and it's yours, of course these two will be handled by us, but there will be more rewards for you two, who knows maybe you'll even be able to reach the Stellar rank in the next thousand years and secure a path for your offspring".
Neal and Kamir put on a convinced expression and then with some low screeches and hisses, they both slid towards the right side of the Skelefiend's army, standing behind Shirel as if they recognized her authority, which made sense since magic beasts respect the strong.
Shirel laughed and then throwed the bottles at her two new "pets", before she turned to see the blond haired couple in front of her, her eyes specially focused on Daimon as she spoke.
"You see boy, there is no such a thing as eternal enemies, just eternal benefits, that Lord asked us to bring you to our side alive and safe as far as possible, why don't you come with us, as long as you step out and let us get the princess I can even put a good word for you, I know you covet women and resources, we have a cage full of noble girls from the Mermen and Elemental Seas, join us and a quarter of them will be yours along with whatever they have in their storage rings".
Daimon inwardly snorted, this confirmed his theory that whoever is behind this has did some investigation regarding important targets, to the point that it had managed to see through Adam's gallant façade, they should have been watching him in the shadows since they arrived at Neptune probably through the pirates or spies in the Elemental Sea, the fact that Adam was supposed to be brought back instead of eliminated at the spot, supported his belief that the mastermind behind this was a system user, if he could steal from other system users, there was a chance others could do it too after all, if not, there was a lot of ways to take advantage of a system user anyway.
"As if I would fall as low as to accept a deal with a filthy being like you!", shouted Daimon with an upright voice, as he gazed at Jasmine, wanting to confirm if he was impressing her.
Jasmin did her part too, looking flattered and moved by his knightly self.
Shirel snorted and she then pointed at them.
"Capture them, if that idiot tries to stop you kill him, that Lord will still reward us if we get him, his corpse!".
"Ohhh!", the army of Skelefiends and magic beasts which summed about 800 Lord ranks and four Arch ranks immediately advanced following Shirel's command.
But then Daimon smirked as he shoved the tip of Gram's on the ground, at the same time Jasmine tapped her staff on the floor as she casted her spell.
"Silver Spear", Jasmine's mellow voice was buried by the war cries of the enemy's large army, but Daimon felt a comfortable warm feeling running through his body as a silver spear's image appeared behind of him.
Not even a second later, he unleashed about 90% percent of his battle aura and 50% of his mana reserves in at the same time, creating a white pillar which reached about one kilometer into the sky.
Shirel had a sudden bad premonition, which was soon proven right as a tsunami of menacing white flames flooded the whole battlefield, focusing on the Skelefiends mostly.
"What the hell is that!", shouted Shirel, at first she disdained the attack of a Lord ranked, until those white flames were near her too, she as a Half Stellar ranked judged that those white flames were strong enough to dangerously wound a middle stage peak Mortal level, in other words a middle stage Arch ranked, which were the leaders of her army, nor to mention the whole lot of Lord ranks subordinate she'll lose with that one attack.
"What a monstrous attack, however in front of a Half Stellar rank it's nothing!", she shouted as she casted an acid shield in front of her army to protect them from the white flame tsunami.
Sizzling sounds echoed through the battlefield as the white flames evaporated the acid shield, destroying a big part of it but ultimately failing to affect the army behind it, also making Shirel triumphantly mock at Daimon, just to see him grinning, as he snapped his fingers.
An expression which didn't fit the description she got from Adam, she somehow now noticed some green almost unnoticeable crystals tied to those black metal spheres, she saw Daimon throw at the magic beasts earlier, unfortunately before she could put two plus two, she felt the ground trembling and before she could react an ear-deafening explosion came from behind her acid shield.
"Boooooom!", the explosion was so loud that she felt a bit dizzy due to the sound, but that's not the worse part of it, but he fact that the flames released by that explosion were white, just like the attack she just protected her subordinates from.
Shirel's pupils contracted, she proposed to dispel the flames to save as much as she could but then a menacing presence fell from above her.
There hidden in the large column of white flames released by the explosion, she saw a woman with light gray skin and a black dress decorated with some skulls, coldly glaring at her.
"Shadow Heart Puppeteer", Rita mumbled feeling shy to be subjected to, too much attention, but she still did what her young master asked her to, Rita joined her hands in front of her and then softly said.
"Cursed Doll House".
Shirel tried to move, but a pillar of white flames assaulted her from below, forcing her to dispel it, which created an opening.
Her arms, legs and neck were then imprisoned by black chains that manifested out of thin air, and as she tried to break free by using a large scale attack without caring about blowing away her subordinates and enemies equally, four black metal walls raised from the ground and soon a black dismal castle had imprisoned her.
"Aghhhh!", soon bloody screams as well as small explosions could be heard coming from the castle, before the thing shrank until it was about the size of a soccer ball, which then flew towards Daimon's hands.
'Young master, did Rita did it good?', she asked in a sleepy voice.
Daimon nodded.
'Yes, don't worry and rest a bit, I'll take it from here'.
Rita who had a tinge of tiredness in her face smiled happy to be complimented and then became a line of black light that integrated into Daimon's shadow, and then Daimon shouted making sure the Skelefiends who survived listened to him.
"Let's go, we have to save the other girls!".
"Mm".
Jasmine nodded and then her staff illuminated with a soft white light, before a silver floating city's image appeared behind of Daimon.
"Silver Citadel", Jasmine's spell immediately recovered his mana to full as well as a third of his stamina.
Jasmine then grabbed Daimon's arm and under the surprised and horrified expressions, the human couple vanished from the battlefield, with their leader along them.
And thus, the first part of Daimon's plan had succeeded.
