Chapter 561: Challenges Marlene’s version (part 6)
Ignoring Agrak's conceited expression, Daimon could feel the worried gazes coming from the grades, his own shadow and even his mind, which belonged to the Angelfish princess, the undead head maid as well as Evangeline and Narasha.
It is understandable, they are used to he not suffering any kind of wound regardless of the enemy which he is facing, the Risha sisters had the same reaction after they fell into that forbidden area of the sea back when they arrived at Neptune.
It's not blind faith but a strong believe based on the fact that Daimon has shown to always have a countermeasure to deal with whatever comes his way.
Daimon inwardly smiled at those four, he already told them what was going to happen and they still showed concern for him, it would be a lie to say that he didn't feel his heart warm due to that, however the show must go on.
"Hey, what's the matter don't tell me that a little amount of pain left you speechless, or are you perhaps trying to keep on a strong front for that woman, mortal?", disdainfully said Agrak as he glanced at Marlene who was clearly worried about him.
"Those are some arrogant words for someone that is clearly not high ranked enough among Nethereals to have subordinates in Neptune, a mere lackey to the real noble ones", casually said Daimon with a slight smirk on his face.
His sharp words immediately caused a reaction on Agrak, the Netheral gritted his teeth, the scene of Walford disregarding his rules and telling him that he was a secondary priority was still fresh in his mind.
"Hmph, what would a mere mortal like you know, so what if those bastards from the Bane, Asmadian and Balax families used to be the designated leaders, my Belliel family isn't any worse, they were only selected because I'm younger than them!", he exclaimed.
"Oh really, that's not what I heard, if I remember correctly only, they have been allowed to leave this prison or interact with Neptune, any other Nethereal is but a mere trapped loser", added Daimon.
"What!", Agrak saw red on the spot, his body shivered due to anger but then he forced himself to calm down.
"Nice try, but do you think such a lowly tactic would work on me, for starters, there is no way you would know about what happened back then, and none of us would say a thing about it, how dare you try to trick me", he said.
Daimon softly smiled in response.
"If you don't even know that not only Nethereals are trapped in this place, then your position in the hierarchy would be even lower than what I originally thought".
Agrak's expression which just had gotten better after convincing himself that what Daimon was saying was a just a bluff, soured again.
'Damn it, so some of those guys consciousnesses's also ended here, but then why did those three didn't tell me about it… even now I wouldn't have known that this time's wave of newcomers was different if it weren't for the fact that I recently managed to improve my array, I wouldn't be able to retrieve the memories of the dead and might be on the dark and would have been destroyed along with this prison, damn scheming bastards!', he swore to himself.
'Your highness, are you okay?', the Nethereal heard one of his subordinate's voices in his mind, which returned him to the real world, a whole minute has passed since he was lost in his thoughts, so his subordinate intervened.
'Yes, I'm fine, activate the barrier, none of the servants from the other families is allowed to leave until I have a word with those cocky bastards', he answered.
'As you wish', with a short answer the conversation ended and Agrak focused on the game once again.
"I admit it for a mortal you are quite clever, I'll thank you in advance for your brain, it will be of great use to me, now let's continue playing", he said as two new cards were dispatched from the deck.
Daimon didn't say anything else; he just revealed his card and was honestly surprised at the result, the whole deck consisted on body parts so no matter what he pulled it would be bad, but compared to the previous it wasn't that bad, the word written in his card was "finger".
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He couldn't help but steal a gaze to the Angelfish princess, his eyes glowed for a second before his remaining index finger exploded.
Agrak on the other hand got a "toe" card so his right feet suffered a loss, the Nethereal didn't care, he beckoned and the next round immediately started, this time he revealed his card first and got a finger like the first round.
Daimon's result was different, he actually lost a bone, his femur to be more accurate, it was an interesting sensation, others might lose mobility on the leg due to that, but thanks to his insanely strong body, his flesh alone could act as support and keep everything together if the need ever presented.
Since one of the most common death causes for newbies during missions was the loss of mobility, Aura made sure to train him to be able to keep on moving even if his bones crumbled apart.
That being said, he was sitting on a throne so besides his flesh changing its composition to avoid any trouble that the bone disappearing might have caused, he didn't need to do anything else.
Amusingly enough, the undead head maid who was watching everything from within his shadow, made a slight modification to the throne to increase the support on that leg.
'I know I was the one who gave you the Apex Predator body constitution, but that's not enough to get this far in only 8 years, sometimes I wonder what kind of strange creature are you~', mumbled Evangeline.
'Mm, Daimon has a weird body', added Narasha, unaware of the fact that her words were quite ambiguous, which made Evangeline loudly laugh.
Daimon inwardly chuckled, he calmly glared at the Nethereal as if to challenge him, which made Agrak grit his teeth, right now he had lost interest in both Daimon and Marlene and was more worried on having a word with the other Nethereal Lords.
'Hmph, keep on the tough guy act, you'll be crying when you end up as a bunch of loose flesh', he sinisterly thought.
…
As the rounds continued, two constants were stablished, first and formal, for some reason Daimon kept on pulling bone type results, ribs, carpus, radius, vertebrae etc. While Agrak mostly lost fingers or toes, the previous would have normally made the Nethereal smile from ear to ear if it wasn't for the second constant which is the fact that the mortal he despised didn't crumble apart.
The black-haired masked youth kept sitting on that black throne, his back was straight like sword despite the important bones that he was now lacking, heck there wasn't even a sign of bleeding or discomfort of any kind.
'Whatever, this farse has to come to an end, I have more important matters to tend to', thought Agrak as he dispatched the last two cards, to then say.
"I admit that you have guts for a mortal, but this is the end, you two will become a part of my collection", his last card was the first real loss he suffered and it was only a hand, which was Daimon's opening loss, that being said, unlike Daimon, Agrak did show a tinge of pain upon his hand being destroyed.
As for Daimon before he could even reveal his card, the timer hit zero so the game had ended.
"Hahaha, I knew it, that guy was just bluffing, wanting our lives as collateral what a crazy bastard!".
"Luckily, Lord Agrak has taught him a lesson in our stead and we even won a few parts without having to do anything".
Similar comments, insults and cheers could be heard coming from the grades, all the Nethereals were celebrating the victory of Agrak, at least until a low "boom" interrupted them.
"W-What the hell, Zarlan exploded!", exclaimed a Nethereal who was close to the guy that turned unto a bloody mist out of the blue.
"Boom!", before anyone could tell what was happening, a second explosion caught their attentions as another Nethereal turned into red mist.
"The array must be misfunctioning, run!", shouted a Nethereal, it was as if someone kicked an ant nest, all the Nethereals sitting on the grades jumped out of their seats and tried to leave, just to be stopped in cold by invisible barriers that surrounded the whole area.
What they didn't know is that the same scene was repeating throughout the whole castle, the Nethereals that had no idea of what happened in the special area, started exploding and thus chaos unleashed, everyone tried to leave but was stopped by the barriers around the castle.
Agrak was shocked for a second, but he regained his senses and then shouted.
"Parker, what the hell are you doing, turn down the array and the release the barriers!".
"…", the humble answer that Agrak was waiting for didn't come, which was beyong his imagination, Parker was one of his original close subordinates and the only one that survived to serve him even in their current state, there was no way he betrayed him, which only left one possibility, that the Nethereal refused to believe.
Agrak slowly turned his head towards the black-haired youth who was calmly sitting on that black throne even now.
"With "Parker" you mean that guy who was supervising everything in that underground room, he was the first one to die, since he was the one that made it so you only got the best results", said Daimon as he got up from the throne.
"Y-You, what did you do!", shouted the Nethereal.
"Mm, nothing much, I simply won the game, and I'm taking my prize, that's all".
"Bullshit!", screamed Agrak to then add.
"Look at yourself, you are covered in wounds, I'm clearly the winner!".
"Wounds, I don't see such a thing", casually said Daimon.
The next second and to Agrak's horror all the wounds on Daimon's body disappeared, it didn't look like healing at all, it was more as if time itself was rewound and the wounds never existed to begin with.
"Illusion magic", mumbled Agrak in disbelief to then scream.
"Impossible, you might trick my eyes but you can't trick the game and the array, even if you managed to sneak in, by accepting to play you agreed to a Lord grade contract, your soul would be destroyed if you went against it!".
Daimon chuckled, to begin with contracts couldn't be forced on him, so even if he got those cards, the penalties wouldn't be able to harm him, then why did his hand, bones and other things ended up disappearing you might wonder, the answer is actually quite simple, he destroyed them himself.
Throughout the whole game, he destroyed his own body to make it look as if the array was administrating the corresponding penalties and then used "Mythical Regeneration" to recover to his original state a couple of seconds before the game ended, but covered it by using the illusion effect of the bracelet of the god of mischief.
In case you wonder why didn't he just use the bracelet to fake the wounds, Agrak might clearly be weaker than Ophelia but up-close there was a chance that he noticed if an illusion was used and for Daimon's plan to work, the Nethereal had to keep his guard down.
Agrak didn't put too much attention on Daimon since the last three rounds, because for him the win was already in the bag, as a result he didn't notice that he recovered during the last round and that the wounds were just illusions which meant that he lost.
"There is no nether in you, which means that the array couldn't affect you but then… you destroyed your own body, what the hell are you!", exclaimed Agrak in disbelief, the Nethereal couldn't help but take a couple of steps backwards, he couldn't begin to imagine what someone who was capable of being so cruel towards himself would to an enemy, in this case him.
Unfortunately for him, Daimon had no desire to explain his strategy to an enemy, even to one that was going to die in a moment, so he limited to say.
"I'll thank you in advance for your memories, they will be of great use to me", unconscious to him, two yellow lines appeared in his pupils, originally when he used the Dracolevia lineage a vertical line would appear in the middle of his pupils, but this time a second one appeared and horizontally crossed the vertical one, forming something similar to a plus sign "+", with the difference that the four ends were pointy and sharp.
Agrak's pupils shrank like needles, a terrified expression appeared on his face as he screamed.
"You are related to that crazy woman!", before he even finished his sentence, he had already turned around to fly away, he could have tried to take Marlene hostage or something but he ran away without a second of hesitation instead.
Daimon raised an eyebrow, the new stigma of the Dravolevia lineage disappeared as soon as it appeared, anyway his attention was instead drawn towards Agrak, the black core which was his real current appearance, actually exploded on the air, but his presence didn't disappear, meaning that he wasn't dead.
Instead of that, a strange emblem shaped like a treasure vault spilled with blood and covered in black chains appeared on the air.
"Crack!", a breach formed on the space and air as well as other things that weren't heavy enough started to be dragged towards it, that breach looked like a portal but a really unstable one, since it was dragging everything towards it instead of functioning as a mean of transport.
"I'll remember this insult, forcing me, a noble prince of the Belliel family to abandon my foundation and almost all of my lifespan and return in disgrace, just you wait!", shouted Agrak who was now a blurred shadow that was sucked in by the space rift.
'Daimon…', Rita who was ready to act the moment her young master asked her to, saw the Nethereal entering the space rift and she was about to offer herself to drag Agrak back, but Daimon simply shook his head in response.
"Don't worry, he can't escape without paying", he said with a smirk.
At the same time, inside the chaotic dimensional tunnel, Agrak who was moving as fast as he could while enduring the pain of having used his last resort, suddenly froze.
'What is this, I can't move!', he inwardly screamed as he was unable to even speak out loud, his fears and doubts were answered when a pretty voice echoed through the chaotic space inside the dimensional tunnel.
"Acting all high and mighty towards my dear host and even calling him "mortal" in front of me, when let alone a mere former Star King like you, but even Realm Overlords wouldn't have the guts to do so, humph, know your place, trash",
"Aghhhhhhhh!", what followed was a simple and primitive pained scream that came from Agrak's figure as an invisible hand crushed his already damaged image into broken pieces.
The vast majority was condensed and then dragged towards the entrance of the space rift, however a very small wisp of the Nethereal flew deeper into the chaotic space, disappearing into it the next second.
"Mm, that should be enough", mumbled Evangeline's voice, before the entrance to the space rift closed.
Daimon didn't watch nor hear what happened inside that space rift, however he did see a silver-colored sphere of light coming out of the rift before the thing closed.
'What a troublesome host, making me work too often, you better treasure me~', said Evangeline to Daimon.
'Well, he made a deal with me, meaning he made a deal with the system, if he ran away without paying, your reputation will suffer right', answered Daimon, which made Evangeline pout.
'You could be a really successful scammer you know, to think you led a member of that guy's race by the nose like that, I wonder who is the villain here~', said Evangeline, getting back at Daimon to then add.
'Anyway, take that, this time there is no need to trade it through the system, I think you'll like what you'll get, I'll go to sleep'.
Daimon slightly shook his head; he grabbed the silver sphere of light and a notification appeared in front of him.
[Ding!]
[Congratulations, you have obtained "Seal of Greed"]
[A new skill has been created due to a specific action]