Receiving their orders from Daimon, the three Nethereals in the monitoring room traced the shortest and least guarded route to the garbage disposal room, at the same time, Zia who was still disguised as the receptionist, deactivated the effect of the Hollow Suit, they had to cross a couple of doors and each had a guard stationed, so a visible person had to lead the way.

‘It’s done young master, we also discovered that while there are no guards in the garbage disposal room, the surveillance on it under normal circumstances is too strict’, said one of the enslaved guys.

‘Okay, give Zia the instructions and inform me of anything out of ordinary’, answered Daimon.

Luckily, since none of the guards knew about the real purpose of this facility, no one would question why the receptionist goes to the garbage disposal room but just in case, Zia had the empty bottle of the potion she used.

Under the invisibility of the Hollow Suit, Daimon, the two Lamia princesses and Celia, followed Zia through the necessary corridors and doors, like Daimon predicted, the guards didn’t pay her any special attention, of course to be safe Daimon had asked Rita to keep an eye in case any of the guards that saw Zia, used a communication device.

But nothing really happened so after going through three different doors and a few corridors, they reached their destination, the garbage disposal room.

‘Wait a moment before disposing of the empty bottle’, said Daimon to Zia, he scanned the whole room and the first thing that became obvious, is the fact that there were arrays destined not only for surveillance but also for reinforcement, containing and restricting.

Of course, the previous could be excused under the pretense that some dangerous material might disposed off in this specific room, but combined with the roundabout yet strictly guarded surroundings, things changed.

‘I don’t see any spatial array, so…’, Daimon changed the spectrum of the infinity eyes, back to the physical layer and found the answer to his doubt.

Fifty meters of metallic wall behind the gate at the left that was used to deposit “regular” garbage, there was a hollow space and a mechanic system, akin to an elevator, and a vertical tunnel that led downwards, with the exact space for the elevator to move.

‘There are no arrays securing the thing, it’s purely a mechanical system, quite paranoic if you ask me’, thought Daimon as he evaluated the secret passage, this would be the equal of having zero electronics in a place where secret documents were kept, to prevent infiltration.

Daimon looked at the whole thing, there was a trap integrated into the elevator, connected to a really strong flammable solution, based on the fire laws that floated above the thing, meaning that if used without the proper process, it would explode.

After a whole 5 minutes, Daimon finally found the trick, besides her clothes which Zia was wearing on top of the Hollow Suit, Kria had only two things on her, the metal wristband which so far has been the “key” they used for everything, which would lead one to believe that it should be the case here as well.

But that was a trap apparently, since based on the internal functionality of the mechanical system, that would make the elevator explode, instead Daimon found an irregular surface, behind the gate, with a size similar to the other thing that Kria had on her, her communication device.

“That woman really doesn’t want others to find what’s lying down there”, mumbled Daimon, Kria’s communication device was independent from the arrays of this place, opening the entrance to the secret passage would most likely send a signal to whoever monitored the sole two people who knew about this place’s purpose.

“Worst case scenario we can blow this place up at the correct time to give mom and bis siter Thea a surprise window to land a hard blow on that woman”, said Naomi.

For a change, Daimon had to admit that the younger Lamia princess made a reasonable comment, however he still shook his head, his instincts guided him here, despite his original intention of being with Thea on the battlefield, meaning that what lied down there was at least of equal importance for her and also beneficial for him.

Also, unfortunately for Thalia, just like his infinity eyes made her non-technology security useless, Daimon had a solution for this as well, one that didn’t involve killing or torturing the receptionist to obtain the information in her mind, which would probably be noticed by the one monitoring them, even the Terror Contract would be unable to deal with that, since it severed any connection with the previous master, making it look as if the servant had died, like in Zia’s case.

“Rita, can you block this device’s signal?”, he asked to the undead head maid, the structure behind the gate was purely mechanical, so the signal had to be sent through the communication device, if that was blocked then their entrance wouldn’t be registered.

“Mm, no problem”, said Rita, to which Daimon nodded.

‘Zia, open the gate to the garbage disposal compartment, five meters to your right on the wall, there is a special surface, plug the communication device into it and wait until the entrance to the secret passage opens’, he said through the mental connection.

‘Mm, understood young master’, without even doubting or worrying that these orders might bring her demise, the newly contracted Zia, did as she was told, the gate opened and pushed the communication device onto the wall.

With a “click” the thing perfectly fitted into the secret compartment, Daimon saw how the wall pressed a secret button on the communication device, which would have sent a signal, had it not been by the invisible to the eye ethereal layer of Rita’s mana blocking its connection with the outside world.

After a few seconds which appeared to last way more than that, the wall smoothly separated, revealing an illuminated corridor that led to an elevator, also the communication device was ejected but the surface was still returning to its original state, so the passage would only be open for a short period of time.

‘Let’s go!’, with Daimon’s green light, Zia entered the corridor followed by the others, something curious is that pass this point there were no arrays, so either the one who designed it supposed it was impossible for an outsider to reach this far into the secret facility, or for safety reasons, arrays were banned down there.

Leaving that aside, Daimon softly snorted at the fact that there were many buttons and none had a number or any indicator to where they led, however thanks to the thermal layer of the spectrum, he could see the buttons that had been pressed recently and a decision had to be made based on that.

Either going to where the person in charge of the lab wasn’t present, there were no arrays so with the Hollow Suit it should be near impossible for them to be noticed, or go straight towards her with Zia as the cover to knock her out and then explore the lab.

‘This would be easier if I had a way to obtain information without the need of torture or a Terror Contract’, thought Daimon as he inwardly sighed, the problem is that he had zero information about the person in charge, so he had no idea if she had to follow a specific routine but considering the receptionist had to, it should be the same with the other one.

‘Let’s play it safe, we’ll go out at the same first stop of the person in charge and sort it out based on that’, concluded Daimon, the previous took long to explain but happened in a fraction of a second.

‘Zia, press the button at the upper right corner’, he said.

Zia obeyed and the elevator started moving, the thing was so carefully crafted and maintained that it made no sound while moving, which ended up working in Daimon’s favor, preventing the only other person in the secret lab from noticing their infiltration.

He also took advantage of the change in location to peek through the metallic walls of the elevator with the infinity eyes, his range was kept to a hundred meters just in case, unfortunately, besides a vertical tube which encompassed the elevator and the chains used to make it move, there was nothing else, besides some doors every certain distance, which led to the different levels of the secret facility

Unfortunately, there was still some distance needed for his eyes to reach the other side of said doors, as they all had corridors connected to them, similar to the one that led them to the elevator, but longer.

Finally, after moving down for a whole ten minutes they reached the stop assigned to the button Zia pressed, it was obvious that they weren’t placed in order like in a normal elevator, but since the person in charge first stopped here, there should be something important in this level. S~eaʀᴄh the nôvelFire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

The door of the elevator opened and corridor that led to another door appeared in front of them, following Daimon’s instructions, Zia kept the Hollow Suit effect’s off while keeping Kria’s disguise, just in case the only other person who knew about this place was inside this level.

Daimon and the others followed behind and after around fifty meters, Daimon’s eyes were finally able to get a glimpse of what lied in this level, to be honest he didn’t feel particularly bad about it, since this was something, he expected and wasn’t even remotely close to the worst outcome which had crossed his mind, that being said his eyes still contracted in surprise behind his mask.

But for a different reason than what made Naomi’s face pale, while her older sister frowned, the moment Zia opened the door ahead of them, a second later when Daimon confirmed that there wasn’t anyone in this level, she activated the Hollow Suit and now the whole group was invisible again.

Rita even deployed a mana barrier, because a couple of the present people were unable to keep silent anymore.

“What the hell is this!”, exclaimed the younger Lamia princess, even Ferris who would normally scold her sister for raising her voice, remained silent this time because she also had the same doubt.

Now, Naomi might be inexperienced but don’t forget that she has gone through an assassination attempt lately, fragile wouldn’t be a word used to describe her, her reaction was actually understandable from the point of view of people from this world of magic.

What lied inside this level, was what one would first come to mind when thinking about a mad scientist laboratory from fantasy, less the high technological stuff, giant tubes with unknown liquids in which living beings floated, more accurately spirit beasts, majorly snakes and reptiles but there were also some people and a few sea beasts native of Draim.

Some were clearly dead since they had no access to oxygen and the liquid was just preserving them, but others not too many, had tubes connected to their bodies, which took care of all their needs.

As a matter of fact, there was a giant complex machine connected to all the tubes, from which Daimon with his sharp ears could listen to engines moving, that thing supplied oxygen and vital support in the form of nutritive potions.

“I recognize those two people, they were the representatives of the Phillian race… they were supposed to have gone extinct during a “battle” with the Black Berserker clan a few years ago”, mumbled Zia as she pointed at the sole two people who were still alive inside those tubes.

“Do you recognize the magic beasts?”, asked Daimon to which Zia shook her head.

“Some of the snake and reptiles yes, however I have never seen or heard of some too, they could be discarded races, the newborns at the hatching areas are taken in by the personal guardians of Thalia, it is widely known that not all make it to the army, but no one knows where they end, so perhaps this is the answer to that”, she said.

Daimon nodded before focusing on the human form subjects.

They were both shaved clean and had a lot of stitches in different places, with scars left here and there, even without using his eyes Daimon could tell they were missing bones, parts of organs, muscle tissue and other things, which was weird in more than one way, people of this world have near to zero knowledge about medicine, still they can reattach or even regrow limbs, not to mention changing outer appearance without leaving scars behind, thanks to potions and healing magic, recovery of organs isn’t that much of an issue, unless we are talking about the magic core or there in a problem with the organ itself, since they don’t have the knowledge needed to make transplants with a decent success rate.

So, the fact that these subjects despite being kept alive where in such bad conditions, combined with nothing in this room using mana directly through arrays to operate, meant two things, the one who designed this was from a place where the civilization advanced in a different way than the magic one, like earth and second, using magic was either not allowed or not encouraged for some reason.

“I can understand that she is a heartless witch, but why keep these guys alive at this point, what if they escape, after all this torture they must hate her to the core”, added Ferris as she observed the half-vivisected beings.

“She doesn’t need to worry about it, their bodies are still functioning but their brains are dead, in other words they aren’t here anymore”, said Daimon, he wasn’t a doctor by any means, but he could directly see their brains and there were obvious signs of manipulation there.

‘Now that I look at them closely, some cuts have been reopened a few times and despite the damage, their organs are still working so they are healing them overtime, this is a farm’, concluded Daimon before saying.

“Just to confirm, none of you heard anything back when we were at the upper level, this question applies to you as well Rita?”.

The Lamia princess exchanged gazes before shaking their heads in unison, Celia did the same while Rita and Zia said in unison.

“I didn’t hear anything”.

Now what made him different than anyone else here, leaving the difference in gender which is the obvious answer, he is a… system user, that being said he was perfectly hidden by the items of the system and Rita, so that would mean there was an existence with senses above the Stellar rank, like Ophelia, imprisoned here, that or the message wasn’t directed specifically to him and he heard it by coincidence.

“I’m going to try something, Rita, keep an eye on my reactions, Celia and Zia on guard, you two stay close”, said Daimon to the others.

Receiving a nod from them, Daimon first changed the layer of the infinity eyes to the mana one and as he already knew by senses alone, noticed that the mana in this level was thin to say the least, the very small amount of it that lingered in the air was radiated by the tubes that were connected to the living subjects, which supplied them with potions.

‘Heh, they couldn’t even create a proper “sterilized void” without using an array, at least it means whoever did has barely any knowledge, or perhaps it’s imitating something they read about’, thought Daimon.

To the girl’s surprise, he covered his hand with mana without using it for any specific purpose, before sticking it out of Rita’s barrier.

For others nothing changed, but for Daimon it was as if the world slowed down, then an invasive train of negative emotions, including rage, pain, misery, madness and so on, tried to assault him, just to be blown away by Overlord’s Pride aura.

Out of all the presents, the two Lamia princesses felt a slight pressure with Naomi pouting, thinking Daimon trying to tease her, since this is what he used to teach her a little lesson when they met, Celia nearly fell to her knees due to the nature of their relationship, while Rita and Zia carefully gazed at Daimon only stopping after making sure he was fine.

Daimon ignored his surroundings, with his eyes closed and his Overlord Pride blocking all the noise, he focused on his thoughts exclusively.

‘This is place was designed to become an artificial area of death, similar to the result of an ancient battlefield where too many mages and knights have been massacred, disturbing even the natural flow of mana in the atmosphere, so those guys in the tubes were forced to suffer on purpose, but why?’.

Besides being a crazy bloody psychopath who enjoys making others suffer with no benefits whatsoever, getting a place like this carries more trouble than benefits, like the previous result of exposing your mana to it, which results in all those negative emotions engraved in the dead’s mana, assaulting you, which could result in going mad.

The previous is a known phenomenon, which was documented in the history the four galaxies, on places where the major wars among them took place, some planets became uninhabitable and had to be destroyed by Half Emperors to prevent the nearby mana from being affected, of course we are talking about places where thousands of millions of mages past a certain rank, were killed in battle.

The scale and strength here was on the lower side of course, but it was still enough to equal a Stellar grade mental type of attack, most of middle stage Stellar ranks don’t even have mental defenses strong enough to deal with an early-stage mental attack, so you can imagine the seriousness of this place.

For Daimon, he was practically immune to “harmful” mental attacks, since Erin’s charm still somewhat affected him, that or if he allowed it to affect him on purpose, as for Rita whose mana was in contact with the atmosphere, she even tricked this strange place to not detect her.

This also explained why arrays weren’t used here at all, they had to take in mana from the atmosphere to work, and the mana here would make them malfunction, which could be a disaster for the owner of this place, imagine a restraining array suddenly not working on an enemy.

‘I’ll clean everyone with Demon Light before leaving…’, Daimon’s thoughts were interrupted by what he has been waiting to hear, that voice from earlier.

‘H…e..l…p’, this time he could confirm that it wasn’t directed specifically to him, it was more of a distress signal, being sent in the channels that the one from which it originated knew about, still since Rita and the others couldn’t hear it, it meant that it “normal” people and even those affiliated to a system user weren’t included in the list of targets of the sender, but system users were, so this message was meant to be only heard by them.

‘Who are you’, inwardly said Daimon.

‘…’, after an uncomfortable silence, the same broken voice actually answered him.

‘A..r..e…you…here?’, this time Daimon was able to discern that despite sounding hurt, the major reason of the voice of the sender being broken was the low output she had to send her message, but now that she found someone to talk to, the quality improved, this also meant that the sender was using more mana and this conversation had to be short.

‘Answer my question first, if you lie this conversation will be over’, he said.

‘P..r..omise you won’t leave after hearing it’, she limited to say, to which Daimon inwardly nodded.

‘Go ahead’.

‘I..f… you are here then you already know my name for sure, I’m… Thalia, a certain island with a volcano, ten kilometers deep into the ground, come to find me only if you have a strong backer… please’.

With those words the connection was cut, meaning that the sender who affirmed to be Thalia, had probably ran out of mana and now the decision was for Daimon to make.

‘I didn’t detect any lies in her words, but that… would mean that the Thalia that Thea will be fighting is an impostor’, thought Daimon.

Not only that, this information would affect this challenge from its roots, after all Thea found her way to Draim thanks to the records left behind by Thalia, which would mean that someone was impersonating all the way to back then, but that by itself was hard, considering that the fact that the Hydra guy was defeated in part by Thalia wounding him, was confirmed through the history of Marlene clan’s ancestors, the reinforces that didn’t arrive leading to the Hydra guy losing big time, thus earning a curse to be cast upon them, well the ones who survived after the inner conflict.

‘The description obviously is of this lab, based on the times that my vision range changed when we were inside the elevator, we are around four kilometers below the ground…’, he thought.

Without using arrays to reinforce materials, the architecture of this world was quite limited, at earth without magic ten kilometers into the ground was the limit with the help of technology of course, here relying only on special magic materials but no arrays the limit should be around the same, in other words, the sender of the message was at the lowest level of the secret lab.

Ultimately, Daimon opened his eyes and under the surprised gazes of Ferris and the others, he crushed a communication device that he took out of his pocket (the inventory in disguise), this was a signal he discussed with Thea, sending a message through such a long distance without being detected was impossible with the current technology and techniques they had, including the connection stablished through the contract she made with Daimon.

But a wisp of Thea’s mana was stored inside the device and she would instinctively notice if it disappeared, which was the way to transmit her “Be careful”, survivability and escape was never in doubt, so this was the only signal that they discussed to use, Thea had one with Daimon’s mana in it, she would use it if Thalia was seen going in their direction, in his case it was to be used if what they found in the lab was specially dangerous and with just the tip of the iceberg being uncovered, that was already the case.

“This is only the surface, whatever they farmed these guys for, should be at the lowest level of this place, I’m going down there, do you two want to tag along or do you prefer to wait here?”, asked Daimon to the Lamia princesses who nodded without a second of hesitation.

“We’ll go”, they said, despite their initial shock after seeing such “obscure” technology and obviously evil experiments being held, they were rather strong minded, well Daimon expected it from Ferris, but he was honestly surprised by Naomi’s reaction.

“Let’s move then”, said Daimon as he walked towards the gate that led to the elevator, not without glancing at a certain object in the background before using his eyes to see if the elevator wasn’t there anymore, but the chains attached to it weren’t moving, meaning that the person in charge has already changed locations.

Changing to thermal vision, Daimon saw that the chain used to move the elevator was warmer on the roof of the elevator not the bottom, so the thing moved upwards.

‘The penultimate button it is then’, thought Daimon as they entered the elevator to then point their next destination to Zia.

Just like before the elevator started moving downwards, and Daimon observed every second of it, at first doors leading to other levels appeared like normal, however once they moved through a kilometer, things changed.

Even after a whole kilometer there were no more doors and the same repeated for the next four kilometers, until they reached exactly nine thousand meters deep underground, then the smooth metal wall was replaced by the upper center of a giant gate that continued pass Daimon’s current range of vision, in fact there were gates facing both sides of the elevator.

Also, the surroundings expanded to match that, leaving a lot of free space around them, which made no sense, the elevator was only so big after all, but that question was answered when they reached the end of the way, the elevator landed on a solid surface for the first time and Daimon who looked downwards saw that a giant cage laid at the bottom, below the elevator.

Since it couldn’t move upwards for obvious reasons, the cage was obviously meant to move sidewards, meaning this level was connected to somewhere, luckily the rule of only two people present in the facility knowing about this, still applied, there was no one in the vicinity, the giant gate on the other hand was so big and heavy that an Stellar rank was needed to open it, without an array, after all mechanics weren’t advanced enough to produce such an amount of strength here.

“Celia, your turn”, said Daimon, the former Duchess obeyed and even though she isn’t a knight, opening the door without using mana was still within her possibilities, that being said she was barely able to open a thirty-meter sized path between the hundred-meter-thick metal gates, before she started sweating.

“That’s enough”, with those words and Zia becoming visible, to be used as an excuse, the group advanced through the giant metal doors, the Lamia princesses couldn’t help but be amazed at such a giant construction not involving the use of any array.

Even moving slowly, it didn’t take long before Daimon could peek at what was at the other side of the doors and this time, the surprise in his pupils was evident behind his mask.

But he didn’t have to say anything, the blood smell coming from the destination to where the doors lead, which assaulted the girl’s noses gave them an idea of what lied ahead.

Confirming that the person in charge wasn’t inside the room, they rushed at the other side and were welcomed by a giant storage-like place, the roof was exactly a whole thousand meters above the ground.

Despite the incredibly vast space that occupied this level, most was used for two things, first a giant red array that occupied almost the whole right side of the level, the smell of blood came from there, meaning that the array was painted with blood.

And most of the left side was occupied by giant cages, similar to the one Daimon saw earlier below the elevator, however only two had something inside.

The one at the rightest side of the row of cages had a pretty wounded snake of some kind inside, the thing had a lot of patches and lost a lot of scales and blood, but it was sedated.

The only other cage which had something inside was the one in the center, which coincidentally pointed at the exact center of the red array on the ground which by the way was not operational, something that didn’t escape Daimon’s eyes, a line that crossed the whole thing was erased on purpose, since the array wasn’t engraved but painted that made the whole thing useless.

Inside that cage was a giant statue of a snake, or at least that’s what appeared to be on the surface, however based on the faint traces of aura that Daimon could feel coming from it, which somewhat reminded him of Thea’s… that would be Thalia’s original body and the surprises didn’t end there, as Zia suddenly spoke.

“Young master, that snake, there is no way it’s part of that woman’s army or experiments, even now that I’m no longer tied to her, I can feel those who are, the “living” subjects up there were tied to her, but this snake isn’t and it is still alive, not to mention the aura it gives off isn’t far from the high stage Stellar rank!”.

Daimon used the infinity eyes to change his point of view, so now he was looking from a hundred meters into the air, downwards to the ground, it was enough to cover a quarter of the total area occupied by the red incomplete array.

“There are space-oriented runes included, I don’t recognize them though and this isn’t a space portal either… what the hell is going on”, mumbled Daimon only for him to hear a tired feminine voice, speaking to him in a frequency that others couldn’t hear.

‘That’s a “summoning circle”, or at least that’s what that disgusting filth who stole my identity called it’.

Daimon turned his head towards the origin of the voice, which unlike before was detectable for him, his eyes landed on the giant snake statue which until a second ago had no signs of life, something he made sure off when they first entered this level.

Before he could say something all the signs of life disappeared from the statue again, at the same time, Daimon saw the elevator which had gone upwards earlier, coming downwards again and based on the current situation, there was a big chance that it was coming here.

“Everyone gather, someone is coming, we’ll move to the end of the free space and observe, don’t move unless I say so”, said Daimon, the Lamia princesses rushed to his side while Zia and Celia stood at both sides of those three as they moved to the furthest part away from the sole gate which was both the entrance and the exit to this level.

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