While Daimon prepared a tragic scene of "betrayal" between Marcus and the scheming guy's forces, Thea and Marlene flew towards the entrance of the angelfish clan's hideout.
Naturally in her current state Marlene couldn't fly so Thea was helping her to, which made Thea question her friend.
"Why haven't you returned the "Arch" ranks, with the time you have spent at the main residence of the Flying Citadel it should have been enough?".
Though Marlene seemed to have been just lazing around on her bed, besides the times when she was chatting and playing with the other girls, the truth is that she also meditated, akin to her carefree attitude she didn't have to adopt the sitting cross-legged position that most mages have to use to be able to concentrate, until they reach the Arch ranks where they can gather mana all the time, like Daimon.
"I tried to but… it's not working, mother told me that if I used that ability things will be much more complicated, but I didn't know it will be to this extent", mumbled Marlene as she looked at herself.
Thea nodded with a contemplative expression on her face, there is so many strange things in the world, and they know so little about their lineages, her included, that is not rare to find new things about themselves.
Unfortunately, this is a bad moment to be stuck on the Lord ranks, for someone that has a clan to protect, which has put a lor of strain on Marlene's shoulders.
Deciding to leave this conversation for later, they focused on the positive thing that they had in front of them, which is the fact that practically the whole angelfish clan is safe and sound.
The young girls of the angelfish clan saw Marlene and Thea arrive in front of them and they all happily welcomed them, the two elders were also relieved to see that the enemies were defeated.
Thea rolled her spear and then pierced the space in front of her, after some effort she ripped apart a two-meter line on the structure of the space and a black portal that led inside of the barrier that was protecting the hideout formed.
The control of the barrier was destroyed earlier thanks to the quick thinking of one of the girls that was on guard, so even if Lora somehow altered the array, she couldn't open the barrier like how she brought outsiders with her, despite she not originally possessing the authority to do so.
And ironically the girl which frustrated the traitor elder, was one of the members of the marine angelfish branch, as her dark green with some black hair bangs of hair suggested.
Thea and Marlene entered the hideout using the portal, once inside while Marlene went to meet her clan members, Thea casually slashed her spear at a white cube that wad floating near the entrance of the hideout, that was the control of the barrier which had been shut down using the emergency function.
Once that was activated it won't respond to any command for the next 24 hours, so it was futile to try and make it work, and Daimon already explained that they couldn't leave anything behind, so it was better to destroy it.
Thea's spear ignored the barrier that had appeared around the control device and pierced the white cube, which then shone in red light before it crumbled apart.
"Crack!", the sound of crystal shattering echoed through the nearby area as the invisible barrier that was surrounding the hideout was destroyed.
In the meantime, Marlene was received by the two elders, though technically they were her subordinates, for Marlene and for all the others they were more like their mothers or aunts, so rank didn't matter in this case, at least not for Marlene.
"Lass, its good to see you are fine", said the two elders as they both hugged Marlene, Miriam who is Marlene's foster mother and the elder of the Bellus angelfish branch is tall, reaching around 1.9 meters of height, she has gray and blue hair as well as blue eyes, despite her role as a mother figure she looks quite young as it appears to be in between her late twenties and early thirties, like all the members of the angelfish clan she has quite decent looks.
The other woman who is hugging Marlene right now is the elder Laura, who belongs to the Altum angelfish branch, her hair color is a mix of yellow and dark grey as well as light amber colored eyes, which makes her look rebellious similar to Marlene, while Miriam has always been the strict and responsible figure, Laura is a bit more laid back having the vibe of a young permissive aunt, she seems to be in her late twenties and similar to Miriam, she is quite pretty, though shorter on height being just a few centimeters taller than Marlene who right now barely reached 1.75 meters of height.
Leaving aside the happy moment, they let go of Marlene and then turned to see the peaceful "sleeping" figure of a woman who was laying down on the ground near them, everything would have been fine if not for the fact that she had a wound on her chest, which had been cleaned and patched by the two elders, but it was too late as her lack of breathing suggested, something worth mentioning is that she was smiling.
That was the elder of the Flame angelfish clan, Tara, who died due to the surprise attack launched by the Nethereal army, she had orange and black hair, and was the second oldest of the clan after Miriam.
"Sister Marlene the elder… she pushed me away, the attack would have killed me if not for her", said a star ranked and one of the youngest looking girls of the bunch, that belonged to the Marine angelfish branch, in other words to Lora's branch, she was accompanied by a girl on her late teen age who was missing an arm, they both bowed down towards Marlene.
Turns out that when they were attacked, it was Tara's turn to supervise the little girls on their daily time outside of the hideout, the elder saved this girl in exchange of her life, she couldn't dodge in time anyway, but the attack might have had missed her vitals if she didn't move.
That's why Milo and Fabio were discussing earlies, Fabio launched a surprise attack that wasn't in the plans, with the intention of "marking" his prey, he never thought that one of the elders would sacrifice herself to protect a mere star ranked little girl, that wouldn't have endured a "suppression" attack.
In a sense that scene also made the guard in turn, which is the older sister of that girl, decisively risk her life to shut down the barrier, despite Lora shouting the members of her branch to not do anything, which resulted on their plans being frustrated and them being captured right now, also the guard girl lost her arm because she was hit by one of the many attacks.
Marlene took a moment to calm down, before patted the head of the little girl, to help her stop sobbing.
"It's fine, you didn't do anything wrong, aunt Tara protected you with her life, so the best way you can repay her for that is continue living, treasure this opportunity she gave you", said Marlene, which made the little girl break down in tears.
That also helped the knot in the heart of the other members of the Flame angelfish branch disappear, their mother figure died because of a member of the Marine branch, these girls who were too sheltered got to know hatred today, and some were wrongly directing it to their clan companions that were part of Lora's branch.
They couldn't be blamed though, they were in pain right now, but after listening to Marlene they realized the other members of the Marine branch were innocent, they were attacked too after all, the only one to blame was Lora.
"Aunt Tara will be properly buried with all the honors later, for now bring only the important things you have, we are leaving in fifteen minutes", ordered Marlene.
All the young girls whose expressions were a bit more relaxed now, rushed to their respective rooms, previously they didn't bother to take anything, since they were all going to explode along the hideout, but they all had personal things they treasured as they were legated by their mothers and ancestors.
The two elders remained at Marlene's side, the riches of the clan were divided on the persona rings of the four elders, and they always had their things with themselves, so they didn't need to pick anything else.
"This is Tara's ring", said Miriam as she handed Marlene the storage ring of the deceased elder, which Marlene heavily accepted, she also noticed both elders clearly had questions to ask, which she pretty much expected to begin with.
"Go ahead, you two", she said, the first one to talk was Miriam.
"Lass, what's the deal with that masked kid, he said he was your friend?", she asked, the Marlene she knows would have not become friends with a man so easily, so she wanted to know what could have happened to change that, over such a short period of time.
"I can tell you the whole story later, but basically I lost not only most of my powers but also my memory, even my appearance changed everything in exchange of saving my life, and he was the one that saved me, even Thea couldn't recognize me back then", she said.
The "Marlene" that was bought by Pablo wasn't her, she didn't have her memories, but after she changed back, she preserved the memories of that period of time, so she knew what would have happened to her, if Daimon wouldn't have appeared, her innate ability would have run out of options at some point after all.
"Also, he has gotten the trust of the queen and the Trident Marshal of the Mermen Sea as well as the Matriarch of the Light Palace, I previously entered the alliance as an individual thanks to my relationship with Thea, but now…".
The two elders understood what Marlene tried to say and they were surprised, earlier they supposed Aurora was from the Light Palace, but only now they realized she was their Matriarch, in other words one of the few Maximum Stellar ranks, not to mention even they know about Vincent, which makes two Maximum Stellar ranks, and judging by Marlene's explanation that wasn't everything.
"Why would he help us, we have nothing to offer", said Laura, they couldn't take things lightly, the fates of all the other girls were in their hands after all.
"Because Marlene is our friend", their conversation was interrupted by four girls that entered the hideout, the one who talked was none other than Aisha, next to her there were, Mellie, Jasmine and Daphne.
"They are?", Miriam turned to see Marlene and asked her who the newcomers were, because she could tell they weren't simple, she an early-stage Arch rank, felt threatened by these young girls after all.
"Gabriel's sister, and the princesses of the Clear Water kingdom as well as the Light Palace", mumbled Marlene.
Daimon knew Marlene's clan members will doubt about his motives, but if he just said that he did as he pleased, they will of course have a hard time believing him, so he sent the girls to speak on his behalf.
Just in time for the young members of the angelfish clan to return from their rooms, because they were ready to leave, their eyes were naturally attracted by Aisha and the others, they never got to interact with others after all.
"He is also my newest general", added Thea who had finished what she had to do.
The two elders stared at each other and then nodded at Marlene, they were going to follow her anyway, but they wanted to know who will they be going with.
"We'll continue our conversation later, lady Aurora brought the legacy treasure of the Light Palace and we'll be temporarily staying there", said Marlene.
The eyes of the other members of the angelfish clan sparkled, they have heard some stories from the elders about some of the most interesting things of the outside world, and the Flying Citadel is one of them, so they were of course curious about it.
With Thea and the two elder's help, all the girls flew towards the rock formation where the Risha sisters and the others were waiting, they left the hideout just in time to see Daimon appearing on the air while he had Milo grabbed by his neck, with a wave of Daimon's hand the ships that weren't used to recreate a tragic battle were brought into the inventory.
After that Daimon's image flashed and he appeared next to Aisha and the princesses who were standing on top of the blood bat, taking not only the young girls by surprise, but even the two elders as well as Marlene and even Thea.
They haven't seen Daimon using blink before, unlike Mellie and the others after all.
"That was a spatial moving technique", mumbled Miriam, out of all the members of the angelfish clan she was the most informed, besides Marlene of course, movement techniques don't allow Lord ranks to move upwards.
Lord ranks might glide by jumping and then using a movement spell to advance frontwards, but they will end up a few centimeters or even a meter downwards, compared to their previous position, but Daimon was in a lower spot when used blink to appear on top of the blood bat, which is impossible to do with a movement spell, when one is midair without anything to use as support to jump.
Thea's eyes sparkled as she gazed at Daimon but she didn't say anything, while the young girls from the angelfish clan curiously looked at the masked silver haired youth, it's not like they didn't know about men, but this is in fact the first time they see one in person.
Well, they have seen Karmandi from afar a couple of times when Thea came to visit, but the snake general wasn't in human form, so it doesn't count.
Daimon nodded at Marlene as she pointed at Milo who was hanging out of the back of the blood bat on the air, being grabbed by his nick by Daimon.
"We'll use this guy's flames and Roger's black mist to destroy the whole area so that the "scenery" is completed, if those two think the other had captured your clan, they will aim at each other's throats to get them back, worst case scenario they will stop looking for them, thinking that they are dead", said Daimon.
"Mm, thanks", said Marlene with a sweet smile on her face, though their home will be destroyed, it will be for a good reason, which is divert the attention of their persecutors from them.
Once they reached the rock formations where the others were standing, all the gazes fell on the miserable looking green haired elder, Lora, she was soaked and shivering due to having been floating on the cold water, there were traces of blood on her mouth and nose, from when she was hit by Aurora's pressure, and the hatred on her gaze made her look like an evil spirit.
But her punishment could wait, so after coldly glaring at her, Marlene gave one last gaze at her childhood home, before she nodded at Daimon.
"Hurry up and do it", said Daimon as he tightened his grip on Milo's neck, making the latter cough.
The black and orange haired guy produced flames and threw them at the hideout, while Remi who was grabbing Roger in a similar way as Daimon, did the same, obviously the proportion of damage caused by the flames was lower compared to the one caused by the black mist.
But that's what Daimon wanted, for his plan to work the scheming guy should be the "winner" of the imaginary battle that he created, because he wanted to mess with Marcus's pride, the idea was to provoke him so that he will harshly react and attack the other party.
In part because they somewhat reached a mutual agreement this time, and that is something Daimon doesn't want to see, so with this, such a situation will never repeat again.
Naturally he still had a last personal touch for that, which made Milo sudden feel a shiver running down his spine.
