It didn't take too much for Daimon to reach the next door, which unlike the previous ones was larger, also the color wasn't the usual brown wood-like, but a red dangerous looking one.
'If this was a videogame of some sort, wouldn't this be the boss's room, or something like that?', wondered Daimon.
He asked Liliana and Leslie to stand behind him, just in case, before he opened the door, and just as he expected a secret compartment on the ceiling above them suddenly appeared and a large black boulder fell from above.
Daimon simply raised his hand and caught the large boulder, these traps which aimed at the naturally weak bodies of mages were nothing for him, naturally the trap wasn't only that, while he was holding the boulder, a set of needles was shot from the sides of the wooden door.
But Liliana and Leslie used their weapons to deflect them all, Daimon saw their proud expressions and he inwardly nodded, those three have been training to show that they can stand at his side instead of just behind him, unlike the first time they met, also they were no longer tortured by the emotional trauma that the families of the light faction put on them.
Daimon casually tossed the boulder aside, making the floor tremble for a moment, though he made it look easy the thing weighted around 23 tons.
Only then he and the two sisters entered the room and were welcomed with a strange sight.
"Fuck, why are they only focusing on us?".
"Hey, Lord Minister this is cheating, why are the beasts ignoring that bit… aghh!".
"Shut up if you have time to argue, focus on blocking them!".
The current scene in the room was a complete chaos, there was a large scaled array deployed at one side of the room, from which magic beasts kept spawning, there was also a barricade blocking the exit.
The set up was as if the beasts were protecting the exit, so to surpass this room you had to make a way through them to leave.
But that wasn't all, the poor guys who were fighting the beasts were between the sword and the wall so to speak, because Yvonne who was floating with her wings spread on her back was shooting them from above.
So, while they have to defend against a swarm of magic beasts which weren't weaker than them, they were also being pressured by Yvonne.
"Why are you attacking us, if we lose then you can't get out of this room either, the room requires at least four people for the door to appear!", shouted the one leading the other team, which was a ninth star knight.
Besides him, there were four mages one from each of the other four teams, and also two female mages who were laying down on the floor with black mana arrows sticking out of their butts.
"Humph, those two bitches dared to say their captains were the best, you all can die for all I care; my knight will be here in a second so I won't even have to lift a finger", said Yvonne with a cheeky voice.
"Nightmare Demon Arrow, Blackout", Yvonne who was leisurely floating, pulled the string of her bow and then a rain of black arrows fell on both the group of people and magic beasts.
"Shit, dodge, she did it again!", the guy leading the team warned the others, but he was a second late and one of the mages was hit on the head.
Surprisingly the array didn't activate which made the temporal teammates to pale, but there was no blood or wound on the head of the mage and instead his eyes rolled backwards and he fainted.
Daimon's group arrived on time to hear Yvonne's declaration as well to see here using this technique she recently derived from the usage of her wings.
"Woah, the cheeky Yvi is quite scary, unless the arrays on the armor are prepared to stop mental attacks, those arrows can bypass them", mumbled Leslie.
"Sadist", quietly added Liliana.
Daimon chuckled, they were right though, Yvonne was floating far from the reach of the enemies, and she was also using a spell to hide her presence, similar to his dark curtain, but hers only avoided the senses of the beasts.
In other words, she allowed the enemies to see her to irritate them, they shouted and made a fuss, which attracted the attention of the beasts towards them, creating an opening for Yvonne to shoot them down one by one.
The beasts who saw their comrades being suddenly knocked out got mad, their eyes were bloodshot and they became fiercer applying even more pressure on the remaining three enemies in front of them.
'Well, she wasn't chosen as the strategist for nothing, they are being played with… still, I bet she is going to die out of embarrassment in a moment', thought Daimon, amused by the whole situation.
They didn't have time to waste so it was better to end the show, white flames appeared on his hand and then condensed into a spear, which Daimon threw to the battlefield without a warning.
"White Heavenly Javelin".
"Booom!", the white spear impacted the ground and a tsunami of white flames engulfed the whole area, the beasts which weren't protected by the life-saving array were reduced to black burned corpses, while the three remaining enemies were left out of combat, the very moment the javelin made contact with the ground, the away activated for them, since it judged them to be dead if they were to receive the attack.
It made sense, since that martial art contained around fifteen percent of Daimon's battle aura's reserves, as well as forty tons of momentum behind it.
Daimon whose senses were aware of the whole area, suddenly extended his arms just in time for him to catch Yvonne, who suddenly cancelled her wings and left her body fall.
"My knight finally arrived~", said Yvonne, she even sent a flying kiss to Daimon, very much to the surprise of Leslie and Liliana.
Daimon on the other hand simply chuckled, the side effect of Yvonne's wings formed with only her mana was a shameless and haughty attitude, at least with enemies, but apparently when dealing with him, she was pretty flirtatious, last time she greeted and winked at him, during the tournament and at that point, Yvonne hadn't cleared her feelings for him, but now, she had, so she became even more daring… at least for the couple of seconds that took her to return to normal.
"S-Sorry, put me down please", mumbled Yvonne, making her sisters laugh at her.
Daimon also couldn't help but laugh at her current expression, Yvonne seemed to want to find a hole to hide, all that bravado she gained thanks to her wings vanished and when she reacted, she was in Daimon's arms, let alone such an intimate action, they haven't even started anything yet and were normal friends, so she was embarrassed.
Still, he let her down and then said.
"I need my arms so I can't carry you like that, but hold onto me, we are breaking through that wall".
Yvonne whose face was red as an apple saw Leslie and Liliana, mocking her as they held onto Daimon's arms and she felt a vein popping on her neck.
'You two seem to have gotten pretty comfortable with him huh', she thought as she grabbed Daimon's shoulder.
Daimon's body exploded in lightning and then, he flashed towards the wall that was blocking the exit.
Daimon simply retracted his arm and punched frontwards.
"Booom!", the wall which prevented even a ninth star knight accompanied by four mages to advance, shattered into pieces with a single punch, and then Daimon's group went through the door successfully leaving this room.
Outside of the maze the public was in awe, first of all, Yvonne's power display was as incredible as Leslie and Liliana's ones, she could be considered to be on par with a vice-captain without any problem and she was the strategist only, besides that, the martial art used by Daimon and his abnormal physical strength caused waves among the knight spectators.
"What the hell was that, was there such a fierce martial art in Neptune?".
"Forget about that, martial arts can be created with time and experience, but didn't he use three elements!".
"Such a strong light element, does he belong to the Light Palace sect, that would explain why he was at the side of the Light Princess".
And similar comments could be heard across the whole area, dual affinity mages were rare but still one per every hundreds of thousands of people appeared from time to time, a knight with dual affinity was rarer, because that meant his life spark was special, in a way knights create their own source of energy unlike mages who use the mana of the atmosphere in the early stages.
And now they saw a knight who could use three elements, such a thing has never been heard off.
At the judge's skybox, the Minister had an unsightly expression, he glared at the queen who was calmly drinking her tea with a mocking disdainful smile on her face, and then he saw Vincent who finally couldn't hold back his laugh anymore.
"Old turtle, your face is so worth seeing right now hahaha!".
"So, what, you found a rare talent and nurtured it in secret, I don't buy that triple element affinity crap, light and lightning are related, just like how earth affinity mages have the chance to evolve to metal affinity with the correct resources and training!".
There were some elements which were tightly related to others, so the Minister thought that Daimon originally had fire and lightning affinities, and he was given some sort of precious resource from the Palace of Light sect, which allowed him to get light affinity as well, resulting in this ultra rare triple affinity knight.
'Shit, I didn't think Aurora would join hands with this old bastard, even if they are old acquittances, she has never given him any help to maintain the line, so why!', inwardly swore the Minister.
Tideus who was silent until a moment ago suddenly spoke.
"Vincent with all the money you dumped into an outsider, why didn't you help your own family instead!".
The process of helping someone to comprehend an advanced version of an element, was a complete bet, even after absorbing a precious resource of such element, there was a high chance of not being able to refine it properly, technically every living being had all the affinities, but the compatibility with them was amazingly poor, with the exception of one, so the chance of success of such process was below the 1%.
Vincent smirked in response.
"Even if that was the case, what I do with my money is my problem, not yours Tideus, unfortunately I didn't have the chance to contribute to the incredible warrior you are seeing today, also don't forget your position", said Vincent as he leaked his pressure, which made the whole room shake.
Tideus gritted his teeth and his face paled a bit let alone a Duke like him, even the king had to show respect in front of the Trident Marshal, it's just that Vincent normally doesn't care about such a thing, unless he is angry.
The Minister frowned and then his pressure countered Vincent's, though he is still one lesser realm lower than Vincent, in terms of defending, he is second to none in the kingdom, and he can block Vincent.
Vincent ignored the Minister and instead focused on the mirror plate that showed Daimon, who was speed running through the maze, no matter the traps that tried to slow him down, he was perfectly dodging or surpassing them as if nothing could stop him, not to mention the three girls who were now holding onto him, which didn't diminish his speed at all.
'Such good battle reflexes, I wonder if he is going to carry all the others like those three, if not, catching up with the other captains it's going to be a bit hard', he thought.
