Naturally while the Adjudicators won the upper hand due to their surprise attack, managing to eliminate most of their priority targets and capturing a lot of suspects, the church didn't just stay still and took it.
Specially because not all the cities were aligned with the Valleris family, there were total of sixteen major border cities which were responsible of keeping the public order in the human territory.
Out of them, with old Ben using his own life as guarantee that the church was playing dirty, nine border cities listened to the call, destroying the branches of the church where it was needed and restraining.
The other six border cities were the ones with the highest influence from the church, including their main cathedral, on the other hand it's not like the whole church was part of the traitors, so once the suspects were secured, a ceasefire was ordered.
"Father, everything went well, the guys at the main cathedral are demanding to know why we attacked them, the city lords who remained neutral are also pressing the matter", said Oliver to his father.
The old Ben coldly laughed and then made a grasping movement, the three highest ranked members of the church in Tiria, in other words the Cardinal, Archbishop and the captain of their guards, were roughly dragged towards the old man, all the way from the ground.
"Tell them all to use their Humanity Assembly array, if they want answers, and also make sure to remind them that those who don't show up, will be treated as traitors and hunted down by all the others", he said.
Oliver nodded and then separated from the rest to send the message he was tasked to, in the meantime the old man turned to see Daimon.
'Even with that little demonstration I can't read that kid, just how strong is his backer', he wondered before saying.
"Thanks to you we have don't have to worry about the "ticket fare", it will take a few minutes before the array is prepared, so why don't we pay a little visit to these traitor's treasury?".
Daimon nodded in response, in part this is why he had to side with either Reyne and the others, or the church, he earlier saw a map of Kerrol and the Alzac volcanic zone was stupidly far from the human continent, normally a travel of a few days in carriage wouldn't be that much of a problem, but he had a time limit.
So the only option was using a long range transportation array, and due to the outdated rune mastering of Kerrol, the only ones who had such a thing were either the Adjudicators or the church, and he was right, Rita discovered arrays at the basement of both the Valleris's castle, where the old man spent his time, and below the church as well.
If they could be fueled through mana crystals, then Daimon would have just sneaked in and used them, but they needed beast cores and the amount needed was insane, it was easier to make a deal with the old man than to obtain/steal all the cores needed.
With Ben's help the group descended from the sky, landing at the now ruined entrance of the church, without the defensive arrays, the building was still quite tough, but not enough to resist the old man's mana.
Ben simply waves hid hand and a hole which seemed bottomless opened on the ground of the main hall of the church, without stopping the old man jumped into it, he had created a sphere with mana in which Daimon and the others were being transported.
Just as Rita informed Daimon, the cathedral had a really large underground area, which consisted in a miscellaneous storage, where there weren't any valuable stuff, but food and other daily necessities, next there were the dormitories, a training level, and lastly the "secret" level where the prison and "interrogation chambers" as well as the treasury were located.
Now that it was obvious that this branch of the church was cooperating with the flesh eating demons, that explained why the prison was empty, besides the smell of blood there was nothing there.
"To think you bastards became food providers for those monsters, fucking idiots", the old man though easy going, was really angry imagining how many innocents were framed, dragged here and then disposed as food for the flesh eating demons.
One of the most popular punishments for those who cooperated with the flesh eating demons, was actually being fed to them, the Adjudicators had some low ranked ones imprisoned, naturally they only ate meat of magic beasts, except when a sinner was captured, quite an ironic end, similar to what Daimon did to Jeremy, but the ones being used as food here weren't sinners.
This branch of the church, probably captured those who exchanged sinners with them, and offered them as sacrifices, which is what they would have done to Daimon if they could have capture him.
Once the group reached the deepest level, a giant golden and red colored gate appeared in front of them, ever since the old Ben entered the cathedral he didn't give a second glance to anything until now.
"Open it, unless you want to die", he ordered to the three that were being restrained by him, he already checked their bodies and their spatial treasures and couldn't find the key to the treasury.
"Screw you, you won't get anything from our sacred vault, it will self-destroy in thirty minutes, and even you will need more than that to brute force your way through it, your expression was worth paying so much to set up the mechanical trap…", the Cardinal who had a smug face, suddenly froze on the spot as he saw someone approaching the gate.
Daimon casually took out small golden key from his pocket, which made the Cardinal's face twist.
"Y-You, why do you have that!", he shouted, that was the key of the treasury which he personally hid, so that he could either return later to retrieve the contents of the treasury or keep it closed until it destroys itself.
Naturally, how could that guy's actions escape Rita's eyes, when they landed earlier, she had already retrieved the key and handed it to Daimon, through his shadow, everything without anyone else noticing.
Daimon inserted the key on the lock, without the arrays which were destroyed earlier, he only had to rotate the key and the heavy door opened for them.
"Kid, you surely like to surprise others hahaha!", the old man was enjoying the expression on the Cardinal's face, quite a bit, but there was also an important matter in hands right now.
Luckily for him, Daimon spoke first.
"You can have almost all the beast cores, the rest is mine, any problem?", he said.
"What the hell are you talking about, if it wasn't for grandfather, you would have been killed by the church, and now you want all the treasury for yourself!", exclaimed Eliot, even from the outside he could see some incredibly valuable things exhibited on the racks and shelves, like eighth generation beast equipment, which made his sword look like a toy.
His father did buy him one, but he could only use it in missions, the idea was that he saved for his own equipment, so that he would appreciate it, needless to say but he was inwardly drooling at the treasures, but then that masked guy casually declared that everything was his, he almost lost it on the spot.
Daimon didn't pay Eliot attention, he simply gazed at the old man, who limited to shake his head.
"You should be a merchant kid… sure, we wouldn't have gotten anything if you didn't have the key, so I'll gladly take the cores since we need them for the array", he said to which Daimon nodded.
"You'll still get a lot of profit from dismantling this place and the vault itself is quite pricey anyway, so it's not like you aren't getting anything from it", he said, making the old man chuckle.
"Grandfather, don't let him get away with…", just as Eliot was complaining, the old man glared at him and spat a single word.
"Enough", with just that, Eliot closed his mouth and remained silent with a hatred filled expression.
He wasn't the only one though, the Cardinal's eyes seemed to spew fire as he gazed at Daimon, who smirked at him.
"I told you, if I attacked you there won't be witnesses left, and your cathedral would be reduced to debris".
The Cardinal gritted his teeth so hard that blood dripped out of his mouth, but the old Ben knocked him out, since he was going to be used as evidence in a moment.
While the old man stayed outside along with Eliot, Daimon and Sarah entered the treasury, Jeanne, Emily and Reyne went with them too, since Daimon didn't have a problem with that.
"And here I was thinking I put a really high price to Dilan, but it seems I was too charitable", said Daimon as he observed the contents of the treasury.
There wasn't a single treasure in this room without a core embedded into it, all were beast equipment, and from the most recent models too, there were giant racks with row after row of Arch ranked beast cores, without a single Lord ranked present in the room.
"You can take something if it catches your eye", said Daimon to Sarah and the others, as he started sending everything else to the inventory, shelves and racks included.
The crazy girl was already holding a one edge light yellow sword, even before Daimon spoke, but nothing else got her attention on the short run, there were some poisons, but she had to check them, which would be left for later, she didn't doubt that Daimon was going to give them to her if she asked after all.
As for Jeanne, Emily and Reyne they also looked through the things displayed and took what suited them the best without any reserves, it was part of the "deal", if they needed anything which Daimon obtained, they simply had to ask for it, of course the same applied to them, the previous was limited to things that weren't needed by the other party, and that's how Daimon obtained some recipes and other things which Jeanne and Emily had among their belongings.
That's how Daimon distributed the loot obtained in his team anyway, it was a win-win situation after all.
"I'm done, you can take the rest of the cores", once Daimon finished emptying the dozens of thousands of savings of this branch of the church, he gave the old man the greenlight to take the cores left.
This time, Daimon hit the jackpot, the Valleris practically led the Adjudicators, and while this wasn't the headquarter of the church, the cathedral of Tiria was the second richest one, as to why they lacked an old monster like Ben guarding the fort, there used to be one, but he recently died after his lifespan reached its end.
And a replacement hadn't arrived yet, and wouldn't have arrived probably, since this branch was cooperating with the flesh eating demons, and if someone new arrived, there was a chance for them to be discovered.
"Damn, as always working with those monsters is really too profitable", cursed the old man, as he observed the insane number of cores that were left, Eliot who was allowed to enter now, was also baffled too.
'This is what he left, how many cores did he kept for himself!', he inwardly swore in his heart.
There weren't mana crystals in the treasury, but instead there was a massive number of cores, the flesh eating demons seemed to have a use for mana crystals, though heir arrays were fueled with blood, their rune mastering was more similar to the one Daimon knew about too after all.
And since the church was cooperating with them, it's obvious thy exchanged the crystals for beast cores, that the flesh eating demons didn't use at all, since they hated everything related to magic beasts, in a sense the two races actually could have a really good commercial relationship thanks to the cultural difference.
"Father, we are ready, I have reunited the selected captains at the entrance of the mansion", old Ben received a message from Oliver and that marked the end of the looting.
"Let's go", with a wave of his hand, the old man covered everyone with his mana and flew towards the mansion of the city lord.
A couple of minutes later the group landed in front of Oliver and a group of thirty guards, who had different armors than the rest, surprisingly 28 of them were middle stage Arch ranks while the last two were peak stage ones, though they were weaker than Oliver, this was the strongest group Daimon has seen ever since he arrived at Kerrol.
The Valleris weren't one of the two principal leaders of the alliance for nothing after, these were only the forces stationed in Tiria, there were more Arch ranks in other cities in the central reign, but not all will be coming of course.
"Beck's squad will come with us, while Raul's will stay to guard the city, we have brought the "evidence" with us too, who else will be coming?", asked Oliver.
"It will be a good experience for little Eliot, bring him with us too", said old Ben, besides them it was obvious that Daimon and Sarah were coming.
And to Oliver's surprise, Jeanne and Emily who never involved in anything regarding Adjudicators also tagged along, Reyne was the same, he even noticed hat they looked somewhat merrier for some reason.
Ben handed the ring in which the beast cores he got from the treasury of the church were stored, making the city lord temporarily freeze at the number of them, it was way more than what he expected, and it was a gift from the heavens, because the array they were about to use burned a lot of cores per person.
Oliver placed the ring on the ground and a huge array lit up on the ground, due to the outdated knowledge they had in runes, they used an unnecessarily complicated array just for a travel in the same planet, in comparison back at the four galaxies the arrays could take you to other planets and even other galaxies, since there weren't spaceships… yet.
…
After confirming that they had everything they needed, the group disappeared from Tiria, to Daimon's surprise, despite the huge inefficiency in terms of the energy needed to power the array, the travel was instantaneous.
So, in less than five minutes, they appeared in a different place, they very much reached the same level of spatial movement expected from a Half Emperor, from Daimon's point of view, but again this much was expected considering how many cores they burned for a single use of the array.
Daimon casually observed his surroundings, they were inside a huge hall with two tables, one in front of the other, there people already waiting for them, but he didn't pay them attention.
Not on purpose, but because he could now feel Jasmine's current position quite accurately, his eyes glowed behind his mask and his filed of vision bypassed the walls of this place to observe the outside.
'Well, I should have expected this much from a volcanic area… we'll be here soon', he thought as he observed the series of active volcanoes, rivers of lava and the scorched land in general, especially an area at east from here, where there was a particular "hill" which was surrounded by people.
"She is here", he mumbled, letting the crazy girl whose eyes sparkled, hear him.
"Old Ben, come sit, those guys will arrive in a moment", an old voice could be heard coming from the table where a slim old man with a small moustache was waving his hand at Ben.
