After a couple of seconds of being surprised by the fact that the silver haired masked youth, which by the way was someone of whom he hadn’t heard anything about, could somehow interfere with the order within his own army, Travis decided to attack first and ask later.

“Execution Descend”, with a cold voice, red mana exploded out of Travis’s body.

From above, a sea of red mana rained down upon Daimon and the others, just to be met with a black water wall, backed up by a giant mountain range that materialized out of nowhere.

“Domain”.

“Mountain Wall”.

Two different voices could be heard behind the thunderous clash of mana that was taking place right now, Celia immediately summoned her domain as the frontal vanguard while Zia used a defensive spell along with flash cast to multiply it a few times, the previous because Zia was sure that her domain wouldn’t be able to keep up with the mana that Travis was radiating.

The atmosphere rumbled at the point of contact where their energies clashed, it’s worth mentioning that Travis wasn’t using his domain, that was just one of his offense type spells and it required Celia the use of her domain which might not be focused on defense, but still has quite a decent defensive property due to its dense water attribute, to block it.

And that was with Zia providing extra support to her domain from behind, not like it wasn’t understandable though, Travis is someone who can go head-to-head against the fake Thalia, and Celia has just entered the peak of the Stellar realm and it was through nether corruption originally, so she is barely superior to the average peak high stage Stellar as of current.

As a proof of it, Mirellia could easily destroy her even without using her Lamia form, as for Zia, her potential was on par with Rita and Horals but her focus isn’t head on battle, not to mention she is just an early middle stage Stellar rank.

That being said, while they have basically zero chances of winning against Travis, something that Daimon is sure off, stalling him is perfectly possible for those two, which made Travis frown, he couldn’t recognize Celia as her energy firm didn’t match anything he knows about, but he did recognize Zia as a member of one of the races subordinated to the fake Thalia.

What’s more, he saw a gloomy figure standing close to the masked unknown youth and a vein popped on his neck, just like his subordinates, Travis’s eyes got bloodshot on the spot and his already violent red mana got even fiercer.

“Booom!”, due to the increase on the output of Travis’s spell, the black water wall was pushed backwards and one of the mountains created by Zia, crumbled apart.

“Don’t underestimate me, Torrent Shield!”, with a loud shout, Celia’s black water half mana half nether, started spinning at high-speed forcing the sea of red mana backwards, regaining its previous standing, while Zia created another mountain to replace the one that was destroyed.

‘Five… no three minutes, block him for three minutes you two’, said Daimon, without waiting for their answer he sat down on the ground, a shadow cupule that emerged from the ground, enveloped him the next second.

The Lamia sisters exchanged gazes before they stood next to Daimon who was now covered by that cupule, while Thalia and terror contracted Nagas stood in front of them.

The previous message was transmitted to the terror contracted only, since Daimon didn’t want Travis to listen to it, as for why Thalia didn’t join the fray, Daimon placed his hand on her shoulder earlier when Travis attacked them, to stop her from acting.

After all, if she also left, who would stop Travis in case he bypassed the ones defending, the other enslaved Nagas weren’t even as strong as Zia, and he and Rita had to completely focus on their next move.

Speaking of the undead head maid, inside the black cupule, her upper body peeked out of Daimon’s shadow, as she watched him meditate in silence for a second.

“Are you sure about this, Daimon?”, she mumbled to which Daimon opened his eyes behind his mask, his sclerae had turned inked black, a proof that he was borrowing Rita’s senses.

“You have already done it in a minor scale by yourself before, so it should be fine”, said Daimon as he offered his hand to the undead head maid.

Rita’s eyes sparkled, she held onto Daimon’s hand and then sat next to him, that’s right that shy Rita who always remains either partially or completely hidden inside Daimon’s shadow, decided to fully come out of her own will, since it wasn’t required for what Daimon asked her to do.

Originally, dealing with Travis wasn’t in the plans at all, Daimon chose a territory ruled by the Dark Berserker clan which wasn’t particularly important, he just wanted to borrow some magic beasts from them for his purposes, but somehow a shark was caught in the net along the small fishes.

That being said, it’s not like that was enough to interfere with the meticulous countermeasures he made along with Thea and Mirellia, this was a battle that they couldn’t afford to lose after all.

Outside of the black cupule, the clash between Celia’s domain and Travis’s spell had finally come to an end, the red mana sea was worn out while Celia’s domain was still fiercely spinning.

Travis narrowed his eyes at the result, he hadn’t seen the strange mana that the woman protecting that masked youth, was using, ever before and was pissed off at the fact that someone so weak compared to him was actually able to fully withstand a serious attack from him.

‘What the hell, first that masked guy confused my subordinates forcing them to fight each other and now that woman who is protecting him, is using a type of mana that is not losing against mine, if this is something that bitch has come up with, I have to prepare a countermeasure as soon as possible’, he thought before extending his hand to condense an insane amount of mana with it as the center.

“Execution Axe”, with those two words all that red mana took the shape of a dark red double headed long axe, surprisingly while Travis was a mage, his fighting style was more akin to that of a knight, in other words that attack from earlier while it was done with the serious intent of taking down Daimon and the others, it was still not how he usually deals with the fake Thalia when they clash.

But now things were different and Celia knew it, she had already compressed her domain to a small area in order to increase its density and endurance and also added rotation to sharpen her mana to resist Travis’s attack from earlier, it was tough but she forced that spell back, but now she felt overwhelmed by the strength radiated by that axe.

“Damn it”, she also had already given up on going against her “master” and instead was trying to earn his favor, so that she would in the future be allowed to heal the scars on her face, what drove her to become a nethereal were both desire for power and vanity after all.

Celia crouched down and placed her hands on the ground, a black substance was expulsed from the tips of her fingers, painting her water domain darker than before, just in time for the clash against the axe.

“Booom!”, the axe actually shaved off a piece of the domain, but very much to Travis’s surprise, the part that was cleanly cut apart, grew strings and attached itself back to the domain.

At the same time, a mountain fell from the sky, right at Travis, who simply swung his axe and casually obliterated it, but that was fine, Zia had cut off her connection with that spell, so she didn’t receive any backslash unlike Celia, also like this they earned twice the amount of time than just defending, by distracting Travis.

“Damn annoying pests, fine, I’ll simply catch a different target, you all can go to hell!”, Travis whose eyes had gotten bloodshot, suddenly exploded in red mana, making the atmosphere itself rumble as if the space was crying due to his mana pressure.

“Blegh”, Celia vomited blood on the spot, as the outer layer of her domain received the pressure directly, making it crack here and there, Zia refused to bow but her body half sank into the ground, making her grit her teeth.

“That’s enough you two”, then followed by a calm voice, the pressure disappeared as if it hadn’t existed to begin with, Zia looked backwards and saw Daimon coming out of that black cupule.

“Roarrrr!”, Travis who was about to blast this whole island into oblivion, stopped in cold as he listened to the anxious roars coming from all over the area, he turned around just to see that black hands which were sprouting out the ground all over the place, were strangling not only the magic beasts that had gotten out of his control, but even the ones that hadn’t.

Then as if countless threads were broken at the same time, the sound of a snap travelled throughout the whole place and Travis’s mind as well, the eyes of all those magic beasts lost their red bloodshot tone and Travis lost his connection with them, not long before they sank into black vortexes that appeared below them.

Travis enraged turned around and rushed towards the masked haired youth, to whom all those shadow hands seemed to be connected, just to see him smirking as his whole team disappeared into the ground as well.

“Booom!”, the axe landed right on the spot where Daimon was standing a second earlier, splitting a third part of the whole island on the spot, when the ruckus was over the trembling figure of Travis could be seen floating above the new shore, he created a second ago.

After a quick inspection that lasted less than a second, Travis realized that he couldn’t feel the presence of any of his subordinates in a two-thousand-kilometer ratio and as the count in his mind kept increasing, so did his anger.

“HOW DARE YOU!!!”, an enraged scream echoed through the vicinity before a red portal was forced to appear, Travis then jumped into the portal, following the traces left behind by the group he was previously fighting.

Inside a dark dimensional tunnel, the still shocked Lamia princesses as well as Celia, Zia and the rest of the enslaved Nagas, observed the parade of magic beasts that were quietly aligned in front of them with awe, before they glanced backwards at the one who caused this, or more accurately the ones.

The undead head maid had come out of Daimon’s shadow and was leaning against his shoulder, while she tried to catch up her breath.

“You did well, now rest, by the time you wake up, this battle will be over”, said Daimon as he placed his free hand on top of Rita’s head, making the latter smile. seaʀᴄh thё nôvel_Fire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Mm”, with a soft sound, her eyes closed and she actually fell asleep in that position, before sinking into Daimon’s shadow.

It was understandable, after all she used up practically all her mana in a single exhibition earlier, it was incredible that she remained conscious until now and Daimon knew that she did so, because she wanted to make sure that he had safely left their previous location.

“H-How did you do that, others didn’t notice it, but there is no way that guy and me wouldn’t?”, mumbled Thalia who had remained silent until now.

It was short-lasted for sure, but earlier she felt Daimon’s presence drowning everything in a two thousand kilometer’s distance, that kind of cover and with that level of intensity is not something that someone with Arch rank battle prowess can achieve, no matter how monstruous one can be.

Thalia had already seen Daimon using Core Synchrony, she wouldn’t be surprised to see him crushing Arch rank magic beast head on, nor intimidating some Stellar rank ones, like when they arrived at the Dark Berserker clan’s territory.

She was already at her wit’s end when she saw Daimon interfering with the order within Travis’s army, a sign that the aura he wielded was insanely strong, but even then, it shouldn’t have been enough to overwhelm that guy like this.

“In terms of sensory powers, not even a Maximum Stellar ranked can defeat Rita in a short confrontation, she by herself learned how to imbue my aura into her mana sense, so I simply asked her to go all out while I actively cooperated this time, the result is what you saw, we broke that guy’s connection with them”, said Daimon as he pointed at the magic beasts ahead of them.

Basically, Rita amplified Daimon’s Overlord’s Pride aura, it didn’t last long, but the intensity within the designated coverage, surpassed that of Travis for that short moment, managing to steal the command over those magic beasts.

‘It also helped that the way that guy is keeping these magic beasts on a leash, is somewhat similar to my Overlord’s Pride, though’, inwardly added Daimon.

Thalia and the others were taken aback by the revelation of how advanced Rita’s senses were, the Lamia sisters were specially surprised, since in the whole history of the Melliun kingdom, only the first Lamia queen managed to reach the Maximum Stellar rank.

And now, they were in the presence of someone that could best someone like that, in a specific aspect, while having only recently put a step into the Stellar realm, not to mention someone like that was serving under another person, it was surreal to say the least.

“Isn’t it time for you to use what the queen gave you; we got delayed by that guy after all”, said Daimon to Ferris who returned to reality the next second, she nodded and then took out a thumb sized case from a secret pocket on her right sleeve.

The older Lamia princess took out the content of the case, a nail sized blue crystal with a similar tone to the snake eye gem which Mirellia was using, for a good reason, it was a piece of it.

Ferris’s arm tensed before she threw the crystal towards the border of the dimensional tunnel, the result was a blue glow that covered the whole group, magic beasts included, making them flash through the dimensional tunnel at an insane speed.

…

Quite far from the previous scenery, the battle at the Snake Tyrant’s headquarters had escalated quite a bit and pretty much to the surprise of the local army, the scale had inclined towards the Melliun kingdom’s forces.

At the center of the battlefield, Nea used her Warhammer to crush the left arm of the fake Thalia’s second in command, forcing her onto the ground before rushing to finish her.

‘Damn it, who would have thought that these bastards would be this strong if they joined hands, what happened to internal conflict between them!’, inwardly screamed the woman whose left arm had become meat paste.

By the time the fake Thalia arrived at Draim, fractures had already started to appear between the Lamia and Naga races and with the years, the internal conflict escalated, further weakening the Melliun kingdom, hence why neither the fake Thalia nor Travis paid too much attention to them, not wanting to be the ones to deal with a dying civilization’s last stand, which would weaken them for the benefit of the other.

But that ended up backfiring, as it turned out that when working without any reservation between each other, the elites of the Melliun kingdom were actually having the upper hand against the officials of the Snake Tyrant army.

Unfortunately, said years of internal conflict did have an impact on the Melliun kingdom, while in terms of high ranked officers they could match up to the Snake Tyrant’s ones, in terms of army size they would be overwhelmed, which is why the plan was a surprise incursion on their headquarters, where that endless stream of magic beasts wasn’t present.

And just as Nea’s Warhammer was about to fall on her enemy’s head, a tower shield appeared on her way.

“Booom!”, a thunder-like impact echoed through the battlefield, interrupting the flow of the battle, everyone looked at the newcomer, a tall bulky man wearing dark brown armor and wielding double metal shields.

“The general of the south has arrived!”, a hoarse voice came from the brown armored man who blocked Nea’s attack, followed by roars and magic beasts pouring out from the south.

“Tsk, I was one second too late”, Nea, clicked her tongue, she nearly finished the enemy’s representative, and now the variables of the plan had arrived, that’s right, she knew this guy would come, in fact she and the Lamia Duchesses as well as the Naga kings and queen, gazed at the remaining three cardinal points, just in time to see one person arriving from each one at the same time.

“The general of the north has arrived!”.

“The general of the west has arrived!”.

“The general of the east has arrived!”.

The other three also declared their arrivals, the Snake Tyrant’s army was the one that occupied the biggest part of Draim’s explored area, so they of course had to have someone strong dispatched in every direction to protect their borders, and so a peak high stage Stellar with a respective set of guardians assigned to him, were stationed here and there.

The south general being the strongest, since the Snake Tyrant and the Dark Berserke’s forces, collided there the most, fun fact, Zia belonged to the guardians dispatched under that brown armored man’s jurisdiction.

Anyway, the four generals arrived at the headquarters after more then two hours of open conflict, that’s how far they were from this place and while they couldn’t bring their subordinated guardians, as there was a possibility of the enemy invading the borders, they did bring a portion of their famous magic beast armies, each.

For starters, the four generals spread through the battlefield, taking the place of the four bodyguards that were carrying the fake Thalia’s palanquin earlier, who were being blocked by a duke/duchess or a king, all this time.

“This has been dragged too long, go to her majesty’s side already”, said the south general, the four bodyguards nodded and flew into the sky, Nea wanted to stop them, but her way was blocked by both the south general and the second in command who had somewhat recovered.

‘Be careful, some flies had escaped the net’, with a short message, Nea focused on the enemies in front of her, everyone had their roles and orders, and the whole army was aware that they would be swarmed by the magic beasts of the enemy, so while their arrival did tilt the scale on the Snake Tyrant’s side, the Melliuns’ army remained strong, even when facing multiple enemies at once.

The high ranked armor and equipment they were all wearing, would make up for the difference in numbers on the short term, but it is also true that the longer the battle dragged, the higher the pressure they would need to endure, since this was only a part of the beast army.

…

Leaving the battle on the ground aside, high into the sky, inside a giant conglomeration of energy which had taken the form of a sphere, thunders and flashes were taking place right and left.

A bright green giant battle avatar was clashing head on against a silver flash, the former being Mirellia and the latter being the fake Thalia.

“Damn annoying bitch”, shouted the fake Thalia as she was forced backwards to then theow the weapon she was using aside, once again as she saw the thing melting after a few clashes with Mirellia’s battle aura imbued gauntlets.

She didn’t dare to be in contact with Mirellia’s battle aura for too long, in part because its acid property had already melted away a dozen of the magic weapons she had stored in her spatial ring and in part because Mirellia fought in a strange and quite savage way.

Normally, knights use their avatar as an extension of themselves, they clad themselves on it and gain a larger range and enhanced strength, defense, endurance and power to rival a mage’s domain, fighting as a giant entity, after all it was designed based on the colossal bodies of magic high ranked magic beasts.

However the Lamia queen used her battle avatar in a different way, she summoned her avatar to fight alongside her, in other words she wasn’t inside of it, but the thing was still connected to her.

Now, the previous while theoretically possible based on the knowledge at the four galaxies, or even Neptune for Thea’s case, would be extremely taxing on the body and mind of the knight, since it would require the attention of the latter to divide, as a battle avatar wasn’t a separate being.

And yet, Mirellia showed no sign of fatigue after forcing the fake Thalia to retreat quite a few times already, it probably had something to do with the fact that while she was in Lamia form, her avatar kept its human legs, her waist was the point of connection between herself and her avatar.

So, when Mirellia clashed with the fake Thalia, the latter had to block her gauntlets and then dodge unless she wanted to take a mountain-like punch from the Lamia queen’s avatar, to the face, preventing her from retaliating at all, long story short, she was taking a one-sided beating.

Things wouldn’t be so bad, if the fake Thalia could still use her biggest advantage, the fact that she has space affinity, to dodge Mirellia’s attacks, unfortunately every time she tried to move through space, a black spear crushed the entrance to the dimensional tunnel she would be using.

Thea wasn’t just lazing around, she flew through the battlefield, spear in hand, while blocking the fake Thalia’s space domain with hers, and blocking any chance she had to move through space and also launching surprise attacks from time to time.

Mages and Knights have both a big rivalry and a great chemistry and those two were making a great team, suppressing the fake Thalia far more than what anyone has managed to in a really long time.

‘Damn it all, what are those useless bastards doing, had I being a normal “mortal” these two would have already pummeled me to death!’, she inwardly screamed, but then a creepy smile appeared on her face.

Mirellia whose eyes sparkled just at the same time as she smiled, punched at her right, launching a martial art that blocked the area in front of Thea.

“Acid Torrent”, the stream of bright green battle aura, stopped the four “rats” that sneaked into the sphere of energy created by the clash of Thea and the fake Thalia’s domains, clashing, from ambushing the empress who frowned at the fact that those guys had gotten faster and stronger compared to before.

The empress soon understood what happened as she noticed the empty bottles that each one of her assailant’s hands, the four bodyguards got a head taller, their muscles bulged and their realms which were previously stuck at the peak of the middle Stellar realm, had gone up to the high stage realm, it was a temporary boost using some kind of potion.

In that fraction of second, the four bodyguards rushed to their queen’s side, surrounding the fake Thalia in every direction.

“What is this, dear ancestor, don’t tell me you are already feeling cornered”, said Thea with a slightly mocking voice.

The fake Thalia felt her blood boiling, but remembering how the wound on her face, which by the way hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, was infringed to her, she forcefully calmed down, that being said she extended her hand and grabbed the neck of the bodyguard in front of her.

“Crack!”, Thea and Mirellia frowned, seeing the fake Thalia snapping the neck of her bodyguard, the most surprising part was the fact that the other three had jealous expression on their faces, which those two found particularly unpleasant to the eye.

“You lowly pieces of trash had started to get on my nerves, so I have decided to start taking this seriously, that’s all”, limited to say the fake Thalia, once she finished her sentence, the necks of the other three bodyguards also snapped.

And then the chest plates of their white armors exploded to reveal that each one had a quarter part of a circular array engraved on their chests, which started to glow in an ominous red light.

Contrary to what one would expect, those four weren’t dead, in fact their bodies were radiating an insane amount of vitality, more than what even a high stage Stellar knight should produce in the same amount of time.

And all of that was absorbed into the partial arrays engraved on their chests, which then produced a red circular array with those four at the center.

Thea and Mirellia got close to each other and rose their guards, feeling the strange and unpleasant sensation coming from that array, the first one to notice the changes brought by it was none other than Thea.

Her pretty snake-like pupils contracted a bit as she felt her domain which was solidly occupying half of the energy sphere produced by the clash in domains, being suddenly pushed almost half of that, now the distribution was of around 70/30, on the fake Thalia’s favor.

And that meant that the empress could no longer seal the fake Thalia’s spatial movement, by default, she could still get rid of the portals she created with her spear, but that left a big hole in their fighting strategy.

And the bad news kept coming, the fake Thalia flashed from her previous position, her newly equipped weapon, a white withered bone bident clashed with Thea’s spear, making sparks fly all over the place.

Mirellia didn’t sit still, she charged at the fake Thalia, punching towards her with her gauntlet armored right hand, while her avatar did the same but from the other side, the idea was to force her to retreat, but the result was different.

“Clang!”, the sounds of metal colliding echoed through the battlefield, both Mirellia’s punch and the one from her battle avatar were blocked.

The flat circular array which had the four bodyguards as its core, actually followed the fake Thalia acting as a shield for her, that wasn’t the most surprising part, but the fact that it took a punch from both Mirellia and her avatar and it was made out of battle aura!

“You two aren’t the only ones who know how to fight as a team”, said the fake Thalia as she used her bident to make Thea take a step backwards, the shield array also pushed the arm of Mirellia’s avatar aside, while the Lamia queen changed her position to be at Thea’s side.

“That isn’t a team, she is using a contract/curse to make those idiots willingly burn their lifespan and radiate their vitality to activate that array, I don’t know what it is, but the array is producing some sort of energy that is boosting her”, mumbled Thea whose right eye had turned red for a second.

That was one of the effects of her “Nine Malefic Evil Eye”, the ability to see through contracts, unfortunately she instinctively knew she couldn’t erase them with her current eye’s ability, even if they were to be still and cooperate, which was a first.

Mirellia frowned, earlier they have gotten a summarized version of what happened at the hidden lab, courtesy of Zia using a long-distance communication spell along with flash cast, which Daimon asked her to use right before they left through the portal opened by Rita at the bottom of the last level.

So, they more or less understood that the fake Thalia knew how to use vitality to produce battle aura and power an array with it somehow, but that didn’t explain how she suddenly became stronger, since the new energy that Thea and Mirellia could feel coming out of the array, wasn’t battle aura, the shield was made out of it, though.

“Of course this is a team, don’t you see how they are honored to give their lives for my victory, in any case, their memories will be inherited to the next generation of bodyguards, like always, their loyalty deserves a reward after all”, said the fake Thalia as she charged towards Thea with her bident aiming at her spear.

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