Tom who had collapsed on the ground the moment he was assaulted by Daimon's aura, saw the miserable fate of Alan and his face paled.
Ric, Tom and Alan too, were also middle stage Lord ranks, but they had advanced using resources since they had money in hand, their realms were merely to show and minimal protection, because any battle or danger was left to their guards to handle.
So even for this place's standards, they had trash battle prowess, not being able to withstand Daimon's aura, when Ender and Tila who were in the same realm, could do it.
"W-Wait a moment please, we… I don't have anything to do with this!", shouted Tom, the target of the enemies was Alan, so he could die for all he cared.
"Oh really, because it seems like you three were celebrating our "deaths" with quite some joy, now you aren't trying to tell me that you merchants didn't know about us", casually said Daimon as he saw the terrified women who were also brought to their knees due to his aura.
Tom's face was drained out of any color, both he and Tom of course knew that Alan sent his guards to kill someone and bring his woman to him, it was a common thing for him, their association started because, they sent their guards to suppress and kill Ender's subordinates.
Alan who had a grudge with Ender naturally saw them in a better light, and chose to offer them things at a discounted price, in exchange for some benefits for himself, in fact they offered some manpower to Alan, which would have been Jake, but he refused because he believed that the team, he sent was more than enough to kill Daimon and capture Sarah for him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know that idiot had offended sir, please spare my life I'm willing to offer all my belongings in exchange for my life!", said Tom in a hurry, he never felt this kind of fear from anyone, including Ismael and Hal, or other peak Lord realm experts.
Which for him basically meant, he was in presence of an Arch rank, and judging by appearance, voice and overall vibe, it was quite a young one, the dark green haired woman who was toying Alan to death right now, was also monstrous.
'That damn bastard, why the hell did he have to provoke these monsters, let me be, so I can go to Jeremy and use that blood call scroll… then it will be your death!', poisonously thought Tom while he kept a submissive expression.
Unfortunately for him, Daimon's answer was a black sword stabbing him from his back, and coming out of his chest, nailing him on the ground.
"Bleghh!", while Tom had an expression of disbelief as blood flooded his mouth making him cough, Daimon activated Disaster's ability and the fat short guy was reduced to a dry mummy which crumbled to ashes a second later.
"For a merchant this one was quite stupid, why would I accept treasures for your life when killing you grants me all what you posses anyway, you done there?", said Daimon at Sarah who turned around and smiled at him.
"Yup~", she said as she returned to Daimon's side as she played with a storage ring, which she of course took from the pile of corrupted meat that used to be Alan, apparently the crazy girl slowed down the process, to make Alan suffer as much pain as possible before he died, as a result of that, he didn't turn into a puddle of black liquid, but ended as a pile of corrupted meat and bones.
At the same time Ender and Tila who had finished dealing with the guards outside, entered the room, Ender immediately recognized Alan's corpse, because he saw the ring with which Sarah was playing, and he couldn't help but bitterly smile.
"I thought you were going to give him a beating and then use him as a hostage… Hal is his father and they are related to the chief", said Ender.
Daimon shrugged in response.
"It was up to her how to deal with him, also there is no problem since that Hal guy will be going down soon too, but first…".
As Daimon stopped speaking, he took both Tom and Ric's rings and then walked towards the inner part of the house, where the vault of the two stores was located, the keys were actually Ric and Tom's rings.
"Heh, so the merchants don't have that kind of equipment in reserve, makes sense as not all their subordinates had them, unlike Ismael or Jeremy", said Daimon.
Daimon ignored the trash magic equipment which didn't have cores embedded, and just took the mana crystals, there were some potions which looked interesting too, though they seemed to only be usable for Lord ranks at max, who knows the formulas might be worth studying, Aliya is really into alchemy after all.
"You keep those, they'll come in handy later", said Daimon to Ender as he pointed at the leftover stuff in the treasury.
Ender doubted for a second, but he still did as he was told and stored all the equipment and other things, in his ring, as a captain he had saved enough for a ring with a decent space, and he emptied his ring every time, so it fit without any problem.
As for Alan's ring, Daimon didn't question Sarah about it, she was the one that the creep of Alan targeted, so the loot completely belonged to her.
"Gabriel these women…", asked Ender, with how these pair of people did things, he was afraid they will be killed just to silence them, naturally the women thought it too, so they bowed towards Daimon and begged.
"Esteemed sir, please spare our lives, we might not be comparable to your companion, but we have been trained and know how dance, sing, drink and entertain", they said.
'I should have melted these whores', thought Sarah as a cold glint flashed through her eyes, but she regained her cool when she heard Daimon saying.
"Not interested, Ender they'll be under your jurisdiction, you are going to need a lot of people to work in the town starting tomorrow".
"Excuse me, would it be okay to let me take them in, of course I'll make sure that they don't cause you any trouble", Tila who was dealing with the corpses outside, saw the current situation and decided to step in.
Her hands were trembling a bit and her heart was beating too fast, she was actually worried that Daimon would just kill her for interfering, the reason is that, unlike Ender and herself, Daimon and Sarah didn't seem to be affected by the sickening things they saw below the brothel, still she gritted her teeth and said what was in her mind.
"Sure", said Daimon.
Ender visibly let out a sigh of relief, and the women were visibly happy too, Tila was a well-known hunter, for them this was a chance to become something more than a plaything, a rare chance to gain a little control over their lives.
This time it was Tila's subordinates the ones dealing with the aftermath of the battle, Tila assigned some of them to take the women they found in the house, besides the six that were present in the living room where Alan, Tom and Ric were, there were another six who were the previous batch, chained on the basement.
They were still alive and sane, but had clear signs of abuse, since their owners had gotten bored of them, so they would have ended being sold to Jeremy, to be turned into meat.
"What's the next target?", asked Ender, inwardly praying that the treasure of the chief's store won't be looted like Tom and Ric's as well as Jeremy's and Ismael's which was going to be looted for sure.
"Next it's the town's granary and storage", said Daimon, which made Ender feel relieved, Daimon didn't have anything against the store of the chief, it was Alan the one who tried to kill them, that being said he planned to ask them to give him the mana crystals they had, as they had no use for them, but were valuable for him.
With a small nod, the group started moving towards the center of the town, covered by the lightless night.
At this point the people of the town had somewhat realized there was something going on, the sound of walls breaking, swords clashing and spells landing on their targets, weren't exactly low after all.
Still with Rita's mana sense practically covering the whole town, there was no escape for any of the marked targets, which were being arrested by Ender and Tila's subordinates, on the streets.
'Daimon, that guy has noticed there is something going on and has activated one of those strange arrays as a defense, as well as group of fifty guards', said the undead head maid from within Daimon's shadow.
Daimon nodded, and then informed the others as they jumped though the roofs, moving towards the center of the town.
…
The center of the town was the most developed area of all, only those related to the chief or with a high standing could live there, Ender and Tila had private houses there, but only them or their direct relatives could live there, their subordinates couldn't, so they mainly stayed at their headquarters.
And at the inner part of the center of the town, there was a large mansion with a rock fence, that was now in turmoil, the staff ran through the corridors bringing weapons, potions and other things to the front.
At the largest room of the mansion, there was a tall man with shoulder length brown hair, and an unsightly expression on his face, he had a bad feeling since earlier, but ignored it and only now tried to contact some of his business partners and found himself unable to reach them.
"Fuck, what the hell is going on, even Ismael isn't answering", said Hal as he gritted his teeth, he and Ismael were the sole peak stage Lord ranks, Ismael was a knight and he is a mage.
They have been disputing and fighting each other for a long time, and he was sure that their forces were on equal standing, one was the strongest hunter while the other was in charge of guarding the most important place of the town, the granary and the storage where the emergency rations, funds and treasures were kept.
With such authority he of course pocketed a lot of things, earning a lot of benefits, he was a relative of the chief too and his son was appointed as a manager of a store, he had everything he wanted, so of course he wanted more.
And he started accepting bribes to turn a blind eye to certain things, like Jeremy's business, and slaves bought purely for butchering, slaves weren't illegal as long as they were used as workforce or pleasure, only using them as food wasn't allowed, such was the state of the "order" in this world.
A wild supposition suddenly struck him like a bolt out of the blue, someone who could defeat Ismael without having a fight that would level half of the town, had to be way stronger than him.
A peak Lord rank had enough power to cause a lot of damage to any of the towns on the border of the wastelands, since there were one or two in each of them, so to suppress such people so cleanly.
"An Arch rank… damn it, did that idiot of Jeremy drew too much attention and an Adjudicator was sent from the central cities", he mumbled with a dead serious expression, his previous wishes to defend evaporated like that.
He wasn't stupid enough to try and fight an adjudicator, even if there was a minimal chance that it was a recently designated one, meaning it was a peak Lord rank, like him, he was sure he will lose in a direct confrontation.
"I have to get the hell out of here, I can just look for another town to stablish…", unfortunately the moment Hal proposed himself to escape through an underground passage, his family had built a few generations ago.
A horrible clash assaulted the mansion, Hal saw the roof trembling as dust and small pieces of rock fell from it, dark grey lines appeared on the walls just to start blinking a second later.
Hal no longer cared about taking any of the assets that were left in the treasury of the mansion, he directly turned around and ran towards the basement, but then the roof of the mansion collapsed, burying him under many tons of materials.
"Aghhh!".
"Booom!".
Screams accompanied by a loud explosion and a curtain of dust were the result of the roof collapsing on top of their heads, the second third, second and first floors of the mansion were destroyed by structural failures.
The origin of all that was a silver haired masked man who was slowly descending from the sky, wherever the masked young man passed, the air trembled and when he landed, the ground below him cracked and compacted.
Sarah who graciously landed next to Daimon, intensely gazed at him with predacious eyes, while Ender and Tila who arrived a bit later, were in awe, as they didn't feel any mana or battle aura being used to take down the mansion.
"D-Did he do that without just physical strength?", asked Ender in disbelief.
"No, even if he didn't use his battle aura, there will be some traces of vitality if he used his physical body to destroy the mansion…", mumbled Tila.
Let alone them, even Daimon was surprised, his Overlord's Pride was just a tiny bit away from reaching level 3, so he wasn't sure if this change was caused only by the influence of this place, or not, but the new effect was crazy.
Daimon came out of his daze when he saw some debris moving before Hal came out of it, with a mansion collapsing on top of him, of course he now looked miserable, even if he used a boosting spell and a defensive spell as well as the effect of his armor, the mansion was extra reinforced and so the debris was too.
His previously glorious armor was full of dents, and there was blood coming from his right shoulder and left leg, the core on his shield had already shattered too.
Now imagine his surprise when he noticed that there wasn't even a peak Lord ranked, in the group that was surrounding him.
"I-I surrender!", he shouted as he raised his hands, trying to test the waters first, he hasn't participated in any deals with flesh eating demons, so that adjudicator wherever it was, couldn't kill him.
