For a few seconds everything went dark, but Daimon didn't need to do anything because the travel didn't last long, the scenery changed from the dimensional tunnel in which they appeared after jumping inside the portal to a dismal looking corridor.
"Mm?", Daimon's emblem which was floating and glowing a second ago returned to be inactive and fell on top of his hand.
But the darkness which reigned over the area was diminished once again, this time the illumination came from another source though, Daphne's emblem to be more accurate.
Daphne's eyes curiously gazed at her emblem which was now shining, the thing cracked which made Daimon frown, but it turned out to be a positive thing, a "layer" fell from the surface of the emblem which previously had a simple design and was of a grey blue tone.
The result was an intricately designed emblem that had runes in the form of arrows which formed a circle, also its color changed from that lifeless grey blue to a mix of light green and royal blue.
Daphne grabbed her renovated emblem and curiously inspected it, she looked at Daimon's emblem and realized that now its design was similar to his, in the sense that it had a runic engravement on its center.
Daimon on the other hand was slightly confused, not understanding the reason behind this change, according to Vincent the only way for an emblem to change its design is when it is completed, but the only thing that changes is that its design becomes more detailed, the color doesn't change.
Not to mention that even complete emblems don't have that runic engravement on the center.
"Let me see it for a second, please", said Daimon, Daphne nodded and handed the emblem to Daimon without a second of hesitation.
Daimon compared the two emblems and realized that the runic design was different not only in shape, the runic engravement on her emblem was "lifeless", unlike his as the runic shark moved around from time to time.
He returned the emblem to Daphne and then she pointed frontwards with her right hand, meaning she wanted to advance in that direction, to which Daimon agreed, his emblem wasn't reacting but Daphne's was, so whatever this place, she was the main character here.
As Daphne was about to use a wind movement spell to enhance herself, Daimon stopped her from doing so.
"Reserve your mana for later, something tells me you might need it, here hang onto me", he said as he pointed at his back.
Daphne's eyes sparkled remembering how Daimon carried all of them back at the three-art tournament, the difference is that this time Daimon wasn't going to use Will Manipulation, so she had to tightly hang onto him so she didn't fall.
The idea was for them to not use either mana or aura, so Daphne hugged Daimon from behind, and the latter started running, with his monstrous physique, Daimon could move at high speed with just physical strength without the need to use aura and his stamina wouldn't be reduced just for a bit of running, not after the hellish training Aura made him go through, as for Daphne, from Daimon's point of view she was as light as a feather.
Daimon who was running at high speed while using infinity eyes to make sure there were no traps ahead of them, felt Daphne's grip tightening, to move as fast as possible he was jumping and then using the walls of the corridor as support to continue moving like that, for Daimon it was a walk on the park, but for the Valas princess it was probably like a wild ride on a roller coaster.
Last time, none of the girls had any troubles because they were being kept static thanks to Daimon's aura after all.
"Hang on, we'll be out in a second", said Daimon.
"Mm", Daphne nodded and then leaned her head on Daimon's shoulder, as they flashed through the corridor in the direction where their emblem was guiding them.
…
The corridor seemed to be endless as it took Daimon around thirty minutes of running to finally see the "light at the end of the tunnel", but ultimately, they reached a different part of this place whatever it was.
The moment Daimon set foot outside of that corridor, he dodged to the left, avoiding a stream of green liquid that was aiming at their heads, when the liquid made contact with the floor, sizzling sounds were produced as it slightly melted the tiles.
"Tsk, they dodged it, if only you two didn't get in our way I would have eliminated some competitors", said the one from whom that attack originated, who was none other than a skelefiend, one of the members of their young generation and an early-stage Knight Lord to be more accurate.
At that skelefiend's side, there was also a young pirate, from the guys that were allied with Marcus, which was interesting since those two groups weren't in exactly good terms, on the other hand, both their bosses, in other words Marcus and Ereth both wished to destroy the Mermen Sea, so it was probably a temporary alliance based on their shared interests.
The two to whom the skelefiend referred, were even easier to recognize, one was none other than Ryan, one of the twin Keran princes and Daphne's half-brother, the other was also a relative to someone Daimon knew, as it was a guy who somewhat resembled Purplehaze, which meant he was a distant cousin of Sarah.
"Idiot, the fact that the challenge hasn't started meant that we need all the participants, what will you do if the challenge is cancelled if we don't meet the required number of participants needed, savage idiots", said Ryan with disdain.
"She is mine", limited to say the guy from the Purple Haze sect.
Ryan who was facing the two who wanted to kill the newcomers, turned around, he caught a glimpse of Daphne earlier but only now realized, Daimon was here too, the vibe around him immediately changed.
"That guy is really dangerous, I suggest we get rid of him first, then we can fight to decide who gets what", he said.
Surprisingly the other three agreed, unfortunately for them the walls, floor and roof suddenly lit up with countless runes, and the participants were separated by transparent barriers that prevented them from fighting each other.
Their emblems flew from their sides and then the runes that were inside their respective areas, turned into spheres which were painted as shooting targets, naturally if that was all, then calling it a challenge would be inaccurate, so the spheres started moving at high speed and bouncing on the walls of the barriers as they approached the ones inside of them.
"Booom!", the impact of each sphere was surprisingly heavy and made the tiles explode on the spot, and that wasn't all, a circle of around thirty meters of diameter appeared around each participant.
There was no further explanation but the objective of this test was obvious, the participants were meant to destroy those spheres, but that couldn't be all, according to Galen, the tests faced by every person wouldn't be the same, it was weird that the participants met like this.
Not to mention that there were only five separated areas, and that circle appeared with Daphne as the center, meaning Daimon wasn't counted as a participant, as a matter of fact, his emblem didn't react and yet he was allowed to be inside Daphne's trial area.
While Daimon was considering whether he should help Daphne or not, the Valas princess gazed at him, as usual her eyes perfectly communicated her intentions, basically she was saying "Leave it to me".
"Fine, I'll step aside for now, have fun", said Daimon as he jumped backwards to lean his back against the furthest wall of the barrier.
Daphne sweetly smiled at Daimon, before she changed her focus to the incoming spheres that had accelerated after constantly bouncing all over the area, also at this point the other four participants had already destroyed a few of their targets.
But that didn't discourage the Valas princess, Daphne's eyes glowed for a second, her right hand gathered water which fiercely flowed around it, while the left one was covered in a sharp gale of wind.
Unlike the others who were using individual shooting type spells, like acid bullet, poison arrow or rupture, multiple times to accurately destroy the targets one by one, Daphne apparently was restricted to use wide area spells.
You might think that in a challenge which required them to destroy multiple targets, that would be an advantage, but that isn't the case, if the spheres have a shooting target, that means that hitting closer to the center will be better, and for that, individual type spells were better.
There is also the fact that spells bounced on the walls of the barrier, individual spells dissolved when they hit their target, but wide area spells won't, they will only disappear after exhausting the mana imbued in them, not to mention the space available for maneuvering wasn't that large, all in all, Daphne was in a tough spot for this challenge.
Or at least that was supposed to be the case, water surrounded Daphne's body as a large wave formed in font of her, at the same time a tornado came from above and landed on the wave.
The next thing that happened was that the tornado sucked all the water, turning into a hurricane, with a few gestures of her hand, multiple streams of water guided by gales of wind, accurately pierced the spheres through their central areas, destroying them on the spot.
Daphne then started moving her hands as if she was a master of ceremony, conducting an orchestra, her ten fingers were cladded in either wind or water mana, and with them she attacks that came from the hurricane.
'To think she'll use the wide area spells "tidal wave" and "tornado" to produce a rain of individual attacks, her mana control is quite something', thought Daimon as he saw Daphne completely obliterating the targets.
She started after the others and was using a method that required a lot more of steps than the others, and yet in a matter of seconds Daphne outclassed the other participants, changing an spells direction isn't something easy to do, which is why individual shooting type spells are popular, they can be continuously spammed until they hit the target.
The other option is using a wide area spell to cover the escape route of the enemy, and lastly the hardest but also more efficient way which was controlling one's spell to pursue the enemy, a technique that usually only Arch ranks and above can use.
It might not be as hard as learning to use other mana circuits to launch spells, like what Daimon did back at Kerrol, but that doesn't make it less praise-worthy, as it required a hell ton of practice and a fast reaction time.
It becomes easier for Archmages to do it since their compatibility with mana is naturally enhanced when they advance, but Daphne is just an early-stage Mage Lord.
The moment Daphne destroyed her last target, she dissolved her spells and the targets that the others failed to destroy so far, disappeared, then a number appeared on the barriers of each participant.
Daphne destroyed the whole one thousand targets, next was Ryan who got seven hundred of them, then there was the guy from the Purple Haze sect which got six hundred and fifty, the pirate with six hundred and the skelefiend only got five hundred.
Daimon who limited to observe, clapped a couple of times, Daphne destroyed those guys in terms of score, unfortunately the challenge wasn't over as the gate that appeared at the exit of the individual barriers separating the participants, suggested.
Daphne nodded at Daimon and then walked towards the gate, followed by him, Daimon felt a hatred filled gaze falling on him, which originated from Purplehaze's cousin, while Ryan also glared at him with wary filled eyes, which made him smirk.
"You should be grateful that Daphne asked me not to participate, otherwise I would have killed you all at this point", he mockingly said as he entered through the door, leaving behind an angered group of people that stared at each other.
"My whole team was trashed by that guy before, however here his strength is limited, and we all have obtained new strength, it's a perfect chance to get rid of a future source of trouble", said Ryan.
Since he now had knowledge, he didn't, back at the tournament, despite his wary nature, he thought that Daimon had stopped being a problem after meeting Arlion, unaware of the fact that the one who screwed up Arlion's thousands of years of plotting, was Daimon.
The other participants agreed, for a variety of reasons, and then they all entered through their respective doors, to appear at the other side.
The second part of the challenge was a giant battlefield, each participant was separated from each other, and was given a small fort which they apparently had to defend, from who you ask.
Each fort was surrounded by a large group of "enemies" in the form of golems, but that wasn't all, all the golems were equipped with crossbows and bolts, they also had long ranged siege weapons, like catapults.
It was easy to notice the reward for the winner of the previous test, since Daphne's fort was in a better geographical position, being at the top of a hill, which made it harder for the enemy to reach it and also gave Daphne a better view of the battlefield.
With a loud drum sound, the five armies of golems, started advancing towards their respective targets, the golems all reached the crossbows with which they were equipped and then started shooting bolts toward the forts.
At Daphne's assigned fort at the top of the sole hill in the battlefield, Daimon saw all those "long range" weapon users and his eyes glowed behind his mask, they were basically free experience for him to unlock the other aspect of the skill Cosmic Weaponry.
But he didn't let greed blind him, this was Daphne's challenge so she was in charge, Daimon didn't want her reward to be diminished because of him.
Luckily, this time, Daphne's restrictions were different, she tugged Daimon's right sleeve and pointed at the arm that was coming from the north and east sides of the fort, she was telling Daimon that he could destroy the golems on that side.
Daimon chuckled, he nodded and then said.
"Don't push yourself too hard", leaving those words behind, Daimon became a white flash that landed in the middle of the golem army.
"Booom!", a loud explosion followed by a giant curtain of dust was created due to the impact, Daimon didn't even leave the golems aim at him with their crossbows, he directly flashed and used his fist to punch a hole through the chests and heads od a dozen of golems on the spot.
While Daimon was running wild in his side of the battlefield, Daphne calmly stood on the watchtower of her fort to gather mana for her strongest spell, the best way to deal with this situation was using her lineage's innate ability and cast the Storm Stream, that will blow away a large batch of the golems.
Daphne who was gathering and mixing the required mana to use her spell, suddenly felt a strange sensation of oppression on her chest, which forced her to stop casting her spell.
Strangely enough, that sensation disappeared as fast as it appeared, but for Daimon who was down in the battlefield destroying golems right and left, stopping wasn't enough to trick his eyes.
'For someone that puts on airs for being "smarter" than his brother, you used your trump card too openly', he thought as he sent a message to Daphne using mana, to then carve a path through the golem army.
