A few minutes after Daimon and the others had grouped at the farthest point away from the entrance, the elevator finally returned to the lowest level of the secret lab, luckily before all this, Daimon had ordered Celia to close the door again.

Which both prevented anyone who came here to realize there was already someone inside this level and also acted as an alarm, since to be on the safe side, the range of vision of the infinity eyes with the assistance of Rita’s senses, has been kept to a hundred meters.

And just the door covered that distance, not to mention their current position was around a whole kilometer away from the entrance of the level, with plain sight, Daimon’s eyes were good enough to see through that distance, but the effects of the infinity eyes stopped at a hundred meters to prevent being detected.

“There are only two races to whom I could believe that woman would assign to do such… things, one of them is the Red String race and the other is the Black Spirit race”.

“The first is a male exclusive reptile race which was designed to be obsessed with Thalia, they are at her beck and call and would literally die to get as much of a glance from her, they are the top of the pyramid in terms of authority below her, since their loyalty goes beyond what contracts and lineage subordination can do, their mentality is screwed up and that’s why they can never advance past the middle Stellar rank by themselves, also they are all become knights in order to have a sturdy constitution, Thalia’s personal guards are exclusively conformed by them”.

You might think that such a mentality resembled the effect of the Terror Contract, but that’s not the case, since the latter allows the contracted to keep their personality, in order to not cripple the potential of the contracted to keep on getting stronger, their minds are kept intact, they only are unable to so much as harbor any ill intent towards their master, which has two functions and results.

Either they keep living with fear which adds up to Overlord’s Pride from which the Terror Contractor skill was derived, or they become true loyal subordinates.

“As disgusting as the previous sounds, I personally dislike the second race even more, the Black Heart race is a snake race, they value Thalia’s life and researching, nothing else… I have heard rumors of them using their own children as bait, to lure out and capturing members of the Dark Berserker’s army, they aren’t apt for battle but they are good at strategy since their blood is as cold as damn ice, I still remember they discarding one of the squads in which I worked, in order to get a hold of a strategic position in the battlefield, they are always mages”, added Zia.

Those were only two possible options of enemies, that will come out of the entrance, Zia didn’t speak about this earlier, because she lacked information to make a fool’s proof prediction, but after witnessing the scene from earlier, she got what she needed, since even her race which is quite loyal to Thalia, would question such experiments given enough time, but those two wouldn’t.

“Rita be prepared to isolate the whole room, shall the need arise to, Celia your priority is to protect those two and secondly to subjugate the target without killing it, at my order, Zia you assist her if needed”, said Daimon after processing the information given by Zia. S~eaʀᴄh the AnimeDaily.Net* website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Mm, leave it to me”, unhesitatingly said the undead head maid.

“Understood young master”, added Zia, as for the former Duchess, she was given the order to not talk unless it was strictly needed, so she limited herself to nod in a subservient way.

The previous took long to explain but happened in the expanse of time used by the other party to walk through the corridor connected to the giant door and the time needed to manually open the door.

‘It took less time for the door to open, so physically the newcomer is stronger than Celia, but not enough to be considered a knight, that or simple slacking’, thought Daimon, as he waited for the newly arrived other party to enter his sight range, which happened a moment later followed by the sound of steps, the figure of a lanky woman with sickly white skin, short black hair and a pretty much emotionless expression, became visible.

‘Second option it is, then’, said Daimon to Zia who nodded in response, the person in charge of the lab was a member of the Black Spirit snake race.

Under Daimon’s watchful eyes, the woman looked at the laboratory from the entrance before pulling a cart with a couple of barrels and a few metal boxes that could perfectly fit in the elevator, along with her, she gazed at the faded red array at one side before looking at the snake statue in one of the many cages to then speak out loud.

“So, are you finally going to speak, or is subject Q256 as unimportant to you as all the previous have been”.

“…”, being met with absolute silence, the woman clicked her tongue with an annoyed expression on her face, before taking out a metal harpoon which was placed on the pulling cart along with the large barrel.

“Oh well, this was still a successful “catch” after twenty thousand failed tries, so at least I’ll have something new to show to the queen, I wonder if this one’s dissection would be useful enough to design a new race, or if it will become summoning resources”.

And with those words and zero hesitation, the woman casually approached the cage where that damaged snake was passed out and stabbed the harpoon on its head.

“Clank!”, the cage shook up as the snake’s eyes opened on the spot, but things returned to normal a second later as life abandoned the magic beast, just like that an early-stage Stellar rank magic beast died.

“That magic beast wasn’t rational despite its rank”, mumbled Daimon, this situation was eerily similar to the one of those snakes and reptiles in Thalia’s army, something of which no one had information about, according to Zia, Thalia’s subordinates were either born with human form or were magic beasts, the second would never obtain wisdom and human form.

It was an unspoken rule was to not ask about it to anyone, the team captains like Zia were given an upgraded identity token, with which they could command their subordinates, but the real authority was on Thalia’s hands.

As to why Daimon didn’t act to save that snake, it didn’t align with his plans, earlier he had seen through the bigger barrel and it was completely empty, as for the other one it was filled with a viscous mix of blood and based on the fleshy bits he could see, organs as well.

Bringing an empty barrel to a place where an array made out of blood was laid, could only mean one thing, the woman was going to harvest the blood of the now dead snake magic beast.

And as if following a script, the woman walked towards one of the many tables and took a thick hose connected to a pump, which was then connected with staff of the harpoon on one extreme and the lid of the barrel on the other.

The woman moved the pump a couple of times and flowed through the hose into the barrel, due to the big size of the snake it didn’t take long before the barrel was full, the woman disconnected the hose but left the harpoon to block the wound, perfectly sealing it to prevent the corpse from bleeding, clearly this was a refined process.

Despite not having preserving arrays to prevent the corpse from rotting, the temperature down here was rather low and also magic beasts had strong vitality into their flesh, so it would take at least a few days before the corpse even started decaying.

“Let’s start with Q257 right away, you’ll make things easier for us if you stopped playing dead and gave the queen what she wants”, said the woman as she dragged the cart along with her, towards the cage with the snake statue.

She grabbed a knife and scratched the surface of the statue, shaving a thin layer of it and collecting the resulting dust into a tray to then throw the dust into the contents of the smaller barrel.

‘K…u…hh’, unlike any of the others in the room, Daimon heard a forced teeth gritting hurtling sound coming from the statue, meaning that even if it was in this state, the one inside of it could feel pain.

That being said, the statue had no superficial marks of wounds, nor cracks, so it was a bit strange that just having its scales scraped with a knife, made someone who supposedly fought and defeated a system user, feel pain, at least under normal circumstances.

‘In the diary, it said that she separated her soul from her body to extend her lifespan after suffering a fatal wound, but assuming that at least half of it was a lie and considering that the Hydra guy was able to cast such a powerful curse on Marlene’s clan, then this might be the result of a curse as well, something to weaken and immobilize her to a certain extent’, thought Daimon.

The thought of she trying to get empathy from him, didn’t cross his mind, there would have been a different feeling to it if that was the case, what Daimon could get from it, was humiliation and hatred, not the desperation or pleading behind a call for help or begging for one’s life, even earlier when she asked for help, the only thing Daimon felt from her was the desire for freedom.

“Be prepared, that woman is going to perform with the array, after she had activated it, there should be a window of opportunity in which her focus will be on the result, we’ll take her down in that moment”, said Daimon.

He wanted to see the process of that array working with the infinity eyes, his instincts told him that this was beneficial for him.

After seeing the others nod at him, Daimon focused on the woman again, she pulled her cart all the way towards the giant array and used a mop-sized brush to fill in the purposedly erased parts of the thing, starting from the further corner and advancing from that point until she left the array.

The borders were painted with the blood extracted from the recently killed magic beast, but the central parts of it, were completely drawn with the combination of blood, organs and the dust scraped from the statue, Daimon fully observed the whole process using a different angle with the infinity eyes.

And when the woman drew the last rune as she left the array, Daimon immediately burned the image into his memory since there was a big possibility that the array would be messed up during the confrontation that will take place in a moment.

Also, the moment the array was finished it started glowing in an eerily red light, trying to draw mana from the atmosphere but failing to do so, since there was too little of it in this place for obvious reasons.

“That should do the trick, now we just need some fuel” said the woman as she grabbed one of the metal boxes on the cart, opening it to reveal a bunch of really high ranked mana crystals, perfectly sealed into a case inside of the box, to prevent any leaks of mana before she threw the whole case into the array without opening it.

“Damn, those things are only found on the deepest part of the mines, it’s lucky if one can get a dozen of them per year and she just threw a couple of hundreds of them like that!”, exclaimed the younger Lamia princess.

Luckily, they were inside Rita’s mana barrier, so her loud voice was undetectable, but still she earned a scolding gaze from her older sister, even Daimon spoke with a low voice earlier after all.

“Sorry…”, mumbled Naomi as she grabbed Ferris’s arm and half hid from Daimon who was frowning, behind of her

Unfortunately for her, Daimon’s focus was completely used on the array right now, so her unconscious reaction only made Ferris softly laugh at her.

Leaving the younger Lamia princess aside, Daimon’s frown was caused because the moment the case which was supposed to perfectly isolate the mana crystals from the outside, the array started forcefully draining the mana from them and in a couple of seconds, both the case and the crystals shattered.

And that wasn’t all, thanks to the infinity eyes, he saw each and every piece of the meat bits mixed with blood, used for the center of the array, wither away and disappear, resulting in a whole bunch of vitality being momentarily released just to be absorbed into the array as well.

‘An array that uses both mana and vitality… no that’s closer to battle aura!’, thought Daimon, unlike mana which­ is practically an all-purpose energy in its pure element less form, making it perfect to power practically any kind of array unless your array uses a specific element to work of course, battle aura is the result of the mix between a living being’s life’s spark in other words the unique manifestation of the vitality one possesses and mana that circulates inside one’s body.

And so, while at the four galaxies there exists arrays that use vitality, they are practically focused on either healing or nurturing the body, the most outstanding use for it is reserved for the richest families and forces which use them to help their talented young generation improve their lineages as an extremely valuable reward in special occasions, since the way to gather vitality in the four galaxies is by growing vegetation with nature properties or using strong magic beast’s blood.

The previous isn’t because the rune masters at the four galaxies are prolife or anything even remotely close, but more because so far refining battle aura artificially is considered to be impossible, after all while mana can be gathered from the atmosphere, condensed and refined to create or refill mana crystals, though lacking in comparison with the ones produced naturally, battle aura as it is, doesn’t exist in the atmosphere even if its components do.

So, unless a high ranked knight volunteered to dedicate himself to produce battle aura for other people’s usage, which is incredibly inefficient, arrays that work with it are but a mere dream, the best outcome was limiting to use vitality for the previously stated purposes.

And yet, here Daimon was witnessing an array that not only used both mana and vitality, which though considered possible at the four galaxies, it wouldn’t be realistic in such a big scale not to mention that the vitality used is closer to battle aura than to the former, in other words, this array is something that goes beyond the limits of the Stellar rank.

‘Do any of you two have something to say about that array?’, inwardly asked Daimon to both Eve and the angel girl Ariel, the only way he could think about someone obtaining such a thing was through a system and it shouldn’t be something available on the shop, but probably a special reward kind of thing.

Well, there was the possibility that someone from a higher ranked place brought it here, but considering that the woman living in the snake statue claims to be the real Thalia and she clearly only knew the name of the array, it would mean that even she hadn’t heard of this level of rune mastery, also Ferris was as surprised as she could be and Celia was the same, so the Lamia and Naga races could also be written off from the list.

‘I’ll tell you this time since your administrator is fiercely glaring at me, because she can’t but… consider this a one-time thing, we aren’t in a contract yet after all’, mumbled the angel girl from within the feather pendant hanging around Daimon’s neck.

It might sound ungrateful considering she is travelling with Daimon, but it is true that she doesn’t owe him anything, after all unlike Freya who is in the process of receiving “origin” from Daimon in order to enter a mutually beneficial contract with him, Ariel set a condition to become his ally and until that happens, she is just an observer, the only exception being when dealing with the “Devil Ruler”, which was the verbal promise she made with him in exchange for Daimon to keep her with him for as long as she could stay.

To begin with the angel girl isn’t exactly talkative, she does make minor comments here and there, but when it comes to serious matters, she can help if she wishes to, but she can also decide not to interfere, something the light hero idiot didn’t understand back then, this is also a tacit understand between Evangeline and her, since knowing some things before meeting certain conditions brings more harm than benefit, though this time it wasn’t the case, it was just that Evangeline was being restricted by the system over some measly reasons that she didn’t agree with.

‘You obtained something really “valuable” when you became a system user, that thing is based on something of that caliber’, limited to say Ariel before returning to being silent.

‘Thanks, Ariel’, said Daimon, leaving aside the whole contract thing, she sounded sleepy, based on what he knows and deducts from Eve’s usual behavior, administrators sleep to recover and save their strength and since Ariel isn’t obtaining origin from him, she has to make do with what she saved when she was tied to Adam and that has to lasts her until Daimon faces the “Devil Ruler”.

‘Humph, playing hard to get, I already want to see your expression later’, thought Evangeline, but she still felt grateful towards the angel girl and instead blamed Freya for still being under the process to receive Origin from Daimon, making the sleeping metallic silver haired girl inside the ethereal silver armor protecting Daimon’s vitals, slightly tremble due to anger.

Daimon on the other hand now understood how was that array so innovating, the things he obtained when he became a system user were the way to bring Aisha back to life and the Apex Predator body, both were lifechanging rewards, even if it was an imitation the thing in which it was based was quite high ranked.

‘Wait if the base for that array was a reward to be used by a system user, that means it is imitating a living being… an array that imitates a living being to work, that would explain the need for the organs and an insane amount of mana to activate it just for a short time, as well as being purposedly half erased after being used to prevent it from “rebelling”, but why was the dust scraped from the statue and the blood of that snake, specifically needed?’, wondered Daimon before he focused back on the woman from the Black Spirit race.

The woman opened the last box which she brought in the pulling cart, taking a scaled mask out of it to then put it on.

“To the land, the skies and the void, this call I make, bring me a suitable result according to the offering I made, summon!”, shouting a really embarrassing sentence, the array light up as if it was finally completed, red sparks came out of the many drawn lines on the ground before a blood red portal opened on the air in front of it.

“Hishhhhh!”, a pained and angered sound came from the portal as a lizard-like ten-meter head peeked out of the portal, before it started slowly but surely being dragged out, but to the anger and disappointment of the woman from the Black Spirit clan, the array suddenly started blinking and the portal collapsed and the body of the lizard was severed at shoulder frontal legs length, killing it on the spot.

With a loud “thud”, the half-burnt piece of the lizard fell to the ground, the array activated its last effect, which erased a part of it, thus finishing its function, also the already lanky and sickly pale woman, appeared to become even more emaciated, but that didn’t prevent her from angrily shouting.

“DAMN USELESS THING, WHY DID YOU TRY TO RESIST!!!”, in the midst of throwing a fit, Daimon saw her focus loosening enough for a surprise assault to have the highest chance of succeeding.

‘Now!’, he shouted to Rita, Zia and Celia though the mental connection, for Naomi she only saw a flash and a mana barrier appear, while Ferris managed to see Celia appearing behind of the woman who was crazily shouting a second ago while Zia focused on protecting them.

But Daimon managed to see the whole thing as he pushed his senses to the limit, in front of his eyes, Celia casted a dark water spinning sphere around the woman in order to take her out, but she was still a fraction of a second late to prevent the other party from taking action.

The surprising thing is that not only the woman didn’t try to defend herself, but that with one hand she pressed her communication device while with the other she aimed a dagger to her head while she also threw a few of them in many directions, in other words she was determined to inform her superior that someone had infiltrated, even if it meant having to die for it.

What followed next was the whole walls of the room being as well as the communication device on the woman’s hand being enveloped in an invisible layer of Rita’s mana, while at the same time black water spheres restrained the woman’s legs, arms and head blowing away the mana she had gathered just right before she casted an all-out offensive spell.

With a few “clanks”, a couple of daggers thrown by the woman clashed against Zia’s mana barrier, actually making a few cracks on it, despite having been casted with practically a third of Zia’s mana reserves, but ultimately the surprise attack was blocked.

Still, Daimon managed to see the lips of the woman slightly curve upwards, before she passed out due to the lack of oxygen and the black water sphere around her head rotating at full speed forcing her to lose her consciousness.

‘Damn it’, inwardly cursed Daimon, as he instinctively looked at the roof of this level, one of the many daggers which the woman threw in seemingly random directions, hit a specific spot.

However, the lab didn’t collapse or anything like that, now that the sole information leaking source was out, he directly expanded the range of the effects of the infinity eyes, reaching all the way to the roof, seeing right through the part where the dagger was stabbed and surprise, the thing hit a hidden spring.

Now, all signals were blocked by Rita so the thing didn’t send any message, it was a purely mechanical thing, a spring that connected this level all the way out of Daimon sight’s range, which was around two thousand kilometers thanks to borrowing Rita’s senses, so he had no choice but to ask the undead head maid to where did that spring led to.

‘Rita, where does that thing end?’, he asked.

‘To the level above us at four kilometers of distance, it triggered a button on that level that opened all the cages on it… I can see many magic beasts of different ranges going crazy and escaping their cages, rushing to the corridor connected to the thing that brought us down here’, said Rita referring to the elevator.

“Heh, so the plan is to use those magic beasts to both alert the surface and destroy anything stored in the upper levels”, said Daimon, which made the undead head maid as well as Zia lower their heads with a gloomy expression on their faces, they failed to prevent this situation from troubling Daimon, Celia on the other hand felt ice cold, being afraid of Daimon punishing her for screwing up.

After all she as the vanguard and the servant with the highest realm, was supposed to perfectly restrain the enemy but she failed to do so, also, she was perfectly aware that her status was that of a mere servant, while Rita and Zia were treated as allies instead.

That being said, Daimon didn’t blame any of them, well Celia was indeed at fault for not following in terms of speed with her enemy who was also a peak high stage Stellar rank, but for Rita and Zia, they perfectly fulfilled their tasks as much as their abilities allowed them to do so.

Rita cut off any signal from being sent in the really small fraction of time that took the communication device to activate and also isolated the device, while keeping an eye on Daimon and the Lamia princesses, her realm was the lowest among the three but her insane senses allowed her to follow up with the speed of a high stage Stellar’s actions, even when the latter was disregarding her own life to achieve her goal.

On Zia’s side, despite not being a combatant she blocked the attack of someone a whole stage above hers, burning a third of her mana reserves in less than a second, it was praise-worthy that she wasn’t shaken in the slight over such an abrupt change in her mana reserves, Daimon can casually spawn high mana cost spells, since he is also a knight, so even if his mana diminishes too fast, he wouldn’t feel the setback brought by it, but Zia isn’t like that, for those who are only mages to use those kind of spells at such high speed and not feel the recoil, it required them to have a high mastery of mana manipulation.

While not as “talented” as the undead head maid as of current, she hadn’t gotten her new abilities due to the special Terror Contract, so this was a proof that she wasn’t a slacker but an elite, who wouldn’t fall behind Rita under the same conditions.

‘Cheer up you two, the priority goals which I set up were perfectly fulfilled, that woman threw any chance of escaping or surviving away in exchange of achieving her goal, so it’s understandable that she managed to get something through, if you hate being surpassed by such enemies focus those emotions into improving so it doesn’t repeat’, he said to Rita and Zia.

‘Okay~’.

‘Understood young master!’.

While the undead head maid swam in the limitless dark void inside Daimon’s shadow with a happy expression on her pretty face as she answered, Zia’s eyes sparkled with enlightenment and excitement as if she had understood something important.

Leaving that aside, Daimon could feel some of the strongest auras of the beast that were going out of their cages above, there were a couple of early high stage Stellar beasts and around ten middle stage ones, the rest were middle or peak Arch rank, probably the early stage Stellars were used as resources for the array, just like that snake which now lied dead inside the cage at the corner of the room.

Rita was isolating all the way from this to the fifth level, in other words she expanded a barrier of mana that covered five kilometers, something possible thanks to her recent advance to the Half Stellar realm, still stretching it more than that would diminish its effect so they had to move.

It’s worth mentioning that above the lowest level in which they were, there were four kilometers of solid metal with nothing in between, in other words instead of ten levels, there were just six, from one to five, then four kilometers of metal and the sixth level or tenth one depending on how you counted them.

“We have to move ladies, let’s deal with that beast riot before anything else”, he said to the others.

“Perfect, I was getting stiff over having nothing to do”, mumbled Ferris as her previously carefree attitude disappeared, her muscles tensed as she entered an offensive stance, just like a snake ready to bite off the throat of its prey.

Naomi also seemed interested in fighting, as for Rita and Zia they were more than eager to get rid of the evidence of their “”failure””, Celia didn’t count but she was thanking all the stars in the sky that she wasn’t being actively blamed for the current situation and felt a deep burning rage towards those beasts, for opening a chance for a path in which she might end up being punished.

There was another person present in the room though, a voice which now everyone could hear, came from the lifeless statue.

“Is it okay to believe that you’ll come down here after dealing with them…”, she asked.

“Yes, I don’t plan on leaving before a couple of hours anyway, so we’ll have a nice conversation after I deal with those guys, if you need one of them alive, now is the time to speak”, answered Daimon

“No, after all that has been done to those poor beasts, it would be mercy to put them out of their misery”.

Daimon nodded at the statue and ignoring the Lamia princesses’s curious gazes, he rushed towards the elevator and burned a hole on its roof using Demon Light, before saying.

“Rita, take us to the fifth level using a barrier”.

“Mm”, with a soft sound a black mana barrier covered the whole group and immediately rushed upwards, in case you wonder the now restrained and passed out woman from the Black Spirit clan was kept in a much smaller barrier, which was filled up to 80% with Celia’s black water rotating, to keep her passed down while still allowing her to breath every now and then.

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