What none of Marcus's subordinates or Marcus himself noticed, was that Milo was half dead when he returned, he wasn't even conscious anymore, there was a thin layer of a different "darkness" among the black mist which had fully infiltrated his body, which was keeping everything together.
And that layer of darkness disappeared the moment Milo was in Marcus's presence, it was then when his body crumbled apart due to the highly corrosive effect of the Nethereal's black mist.
Why couldn't anyone in a room filled with high stage Stellar ranks and a system user notice that thing layer of different darkness notice anything was wrong you might wonder, the answer is pretty easy, it's because that was Rita's mana.
One interesting thing Daimon got to know thanks to his tests on Roger, is that the black mist that Nethereals use is called Nether, and to everyone's surprise Rita is completely immune to it.
The self-claimed head maid of Daimon's household, not only is capable of detecting Nethereals even through their disguises, her darkness element which is oriented to shadows and whose most important property used to be making her undetectable even for Maximum Stellar ranks, also turned out to make her immune to Nether.
Unfortunately, she didn't know the concrete reason of it, but Horals didn't have that capacity, and there were many possibilities of why, for starters she was tied to Daimon through the system, she gained self-awareness before Horals too and that's why she reached the peak of the Arch rank before the bone general.
There was also the fact that while the two of them were originally undead, Horals had vitality since he actually awakened a life spark and became a knight, but Rita stayed as a mage, which made Daimon wonder if maybe undead were strong against Nethereals.
But that theory was immediately discarded, the scheming guy gave a technique to the Skelefiends that made them similar to undead, and knowing that guy he would never give others weapons that could threat it later on.
Ultimately, Daimon could only shrug and be happy to discover Rita's ability, those two's existences were unique, since as artificial undead they shouldn't have personalities, nor they should be able to advance, but for Rita and Horals that wasn't the case.
Even their terror contract was different than others, like others in a similar situation like that skin tailor, they couldn't harbor any ill intentions to Daimon, nor they could go against him and Daimon will know if they even felt like that, whether they did it consciously or not.
But unlike the others, they never had those intentions, they were 100% loyal to him, out of their own will instead of being forced to by the contract.
Back at the Flying Citadel, after Milo was dealt with, Lora was taken into custody by the angelfish clan, her magic core was destroyed personally by Miriam, so she no longer had any powers, even if they didn't kill her, she will die because the lifespan of an Archmage she had, died along with her core.
But she wasn't killed yet, because she will be used as an example later, given the current situation in which they were, Marlene took the decision of telling the young girls the truth, because she didn't want a second Lora to appear among her clan members.
In part now that they weren't limited to that cave, it could be said that it was a new beginning for the angelfish clan, and the first step was for them to learn about the outside world.
Leaving that aside, after those two were dealt with, they all went into the inner ring, while the young girls were given a mansion near the Main Residence, and while they explored the public areas of the inner ring, the two elders and Marlene followed Daimon and the girls to the Main Residence.
Once they were inside, after being amazed for a moment due to the Element Conversion Array, the two elders followed Marlene to the living room of the Main Residence, where they got to see Daimon's real face for the first time as he took off his mask.
For starters both Miriam and Laura were surprised that the young man behind the mask didn't have any sea magic beast characteristics, earlier they heard Marlene mentioning Annete and Vincent first among the ones who support Daimon, and also Thea said he was her newest general.
Though they also mentioned Aurora and the Light Palace, the aura that surrounded Daimon was similar to that of a magic beast direct descendant like Thea, so they were surprised that he didn't have any beast characteristic.
Not only that, but now that Daimon wasn't hiding anything with the Hollow Suit, they felt both mana and battle aura coming from him, and that wasn't all, he also seemed to be on the younger side as well.
Daimon could feel the awe from the two elders and he inwardly chuckled wondering what their reactions will be later, when Marlene tells them he isn't a native of Neptune, but that could wait for later.
Right now, his attention was focused on his own shadow, it's not like he was just ignoring Miriam and Laura contrary to what they believed, as they realized once the head of a woman peeked out of the silver haired youth's shadow, very much to their surprise.
Rita whose body partially left Daimon's shadow, slightly raised the sides of her dress towards her young master, an honor he personally granted her, mainly because she looked a bit strange kneeling down like Horals does, as she wears a side less dress.
After greeting her young master, Rita gazed at Daimon before saying.
"That piece of trash is dead, as young master asked me, my shadow clone did a quick scan before dissipating, there were too many firms of energy in that place to count them without letting any traceable signs of my mana, but there were at least ten people like that guy who controlled lightning and around five or so like him", said Rita as she pointed at Remi.
Daimon nodded, in other words, ten recently ascended high stage Stellar ranks, and five middle level high stage ones which is the realm Remi is in currently.
Rita's words were enough to make the angelfish elders worry to no end, what kind of concept was fifteen high stage Stellar ranks, one must know that in a whole sea the number of people that has reached the high stage of the Stellar rank can be counted with the fingers of one hand.
And those exalted people are often the right hands of the rulers, and are also related to the greatest figures in other words to the Maximum Stellar ranked, similar to Vincent's cousin who is the captain of the White's royal guard, or the ancestor of the Arcarius who is the sole person that holds the rank of Archduke.
Another good example was that guy who got punished by Aurora, one of Abaris's direct disciples, who is also a high stage Stellar, you get the idea, publicly at most one or two of those characters are known, so how come fifteen of those guys suddenly appeared was what they were wondering.
Daimon on the other hand wasn't surprised of that outrageous number, most of those guys were probably middle stage Stellar ranks that received some kind of benefit from Marcus, which allowed them to overcome whatever bottleneck which was preventing them from advancing.
How does he know it, well because he as a system user managed to do something similar, with someone he never expected, the Devil Goblin Shark, Blacktooth, which was sleeping in some kind of cocoon inside of the beast pouch, after informing Daimon he was evolving.
The new form it acquired which basically gave the shark a pair of arms and the power of a half step Stellar ranked, was a stopping point, because he was interrupted as Daimon called him out when he needed him.
That's why the Goblin Shark changed his attitude towards Daimon, he realized that serving the silver haired youth, seemed to have brought new life to its long-stagnated cells, allowing it to evolve as long as he had the correct fuel, without any barriers!
Daimon still didn't know if it was a bonus effect of the Ruler of the Sea, or if it was because of the system, his soulmates won't meet any bottleneck but that is because they have a grimoire, Daimon is the same but for him the cause is his Apex Predator body, so there are many possibilities.
Anyway, Daimon wasn't worried about Marcus having all those guys as his subordinates, this was within his calculations, as Marcus and Adam were supposed to have people to aid them in their missions, prepared beforehand for them, they literally just needed to find them and their systems will do the rest without them having to do anything else.
The door of the main residence opened and all the attention was directed to the newcomer, who was none other than Aurora.
"We are floating above Raki mobile island, where the informant is currently staying, that guy is said to change its location every hour, so it would be better to go down as soon as possible", said Aurora.
Daimon nodded, the conversation about Marcus's forces could continue later, before they paid a visit to Thea's territory, he wanted to meet the best informant of the Maelstrom Sea, to see if there was some sign of Calvin and the others in this sea, and he also wanted to know about that underwater castle mentioned by Arianna, because it was practically confirmed that it wasn't in the other three seas at this point, at least according to Aurora, Annete and Armando's intelligence network.
"Miss Thea and Remi will accompany me, does anyone else wants to come?", asked Daimon, surprisingly the girls all softly laughed and shook their heads, Aisha included.
"They are interested in the Blood Bat, so we'll play with it for a bit~", said Aisha, which made the poor blood bat which was previously calmly resting on Aisha's shoulder, shiver, the thing gazed at Daimon as if it was saying "help me" but was ignored.
'Sorry, better you than me', thought Daimon, mostly because even the crazy girl Sarah was interested on the Blood Bat.
The only exception was Marlene who also had something to ask to the informant, so she tagged along, after leaving Aisha in charge while he was gone, Daimon nodded at Aurora who took them out of the inner ring, where Remi was already waiting for Daimon.
"I'll stay to guard the fort, be careful, the informant only goes to the most horrible and dangerous mobile islands, so Raki isn't as cheerful as Entra", said Aurora.
After listening to Aurora's warning, Thea opened a portal and the four of them entered through it.
…
The dimensional tunnel didn't last long, because Thea only took them out of the Flying Citadel, but they appeared a couple of hundreds of meters above a small sized mass of land.
Thea didn't take them directly into Raki, because there were no empty spaces to appear in, unlike Entra which had some alleys here and there, the space of the island was quite reduced, so evert meter counted, even at the alleys there were temporary tents where people lived.
Besides there was no need to sneak into Raki, evert person that came here used masks or some kind of disguise, because this was one of the cities that enslavers loved the most, the birthrate was too high for such a small island, and unless one could afford to pay for the space that a new child will use, then it was sold, that's the kind of city Raki was.
Naturally, Thea and Marlene put on some generic masks, similar to Remi, they just landed together at the entrance of the city which was a rundown wooden port, there were guards stationed there, but they were just some Lord ranks with rusty weapons, the strongest people worked as private guards here.
Following Daimon's instructions, Remi threw a few low-quality sea crystals to the guards and they were allowed to enter.
Aurora's words made Daimon have zero-expectations about Raki, and still the place surpassed his previous idea, it's not that the whole place was as rundown as the port, the correct term will be "unbalanced".
Basically, because the city was clearly divided into two sections, the outer area which occupied the vast majority where the houses were made of a plethora of second-hand materials, and the inner area where there were some regular houses as well as a few mansions.
And of course, as one would expect, the informant stayed in the inner area, so guided by Remi who had visited a similar place once before, they walked towards their destination.
They soon reached the checking point, this time the guars were actually peak Arch ranks, a clear difference compared to the entrance to the island.
"Halt there, pay the entrance fee, only then you can meet the informant", said one of the guards, which made Remi frown.
The informant only took money as it answered to the respective questions, there was no such a thing as an entrance fee, that should be something that the owner of these mansions decided by itself.
However, Remi didn't want to waste his young master's time, so he approached the guard to pay, only to hear that they wanted a hundred thousand sea crystals, which isn't that much, until you hear that they want that per person.
In other words, they were asked to give nearly half a million of sea crystals, just as Remi was about to send these guards to the afterworld, he heard Daimon's voice in his mind, and his tone was… happy?
'Pay them', it's all Daimon said, Remi limited to follow orders and paid the price, which made the guards softly snort, as if they have gotten away with what they wanted.
But they had no idea of the nightmare that awaited everyone in this mansion, the only ones that realized it the moment they left checking point were Marlene and Thea, and the reason is very simple, they saw Daimon having "that" smile on his face again, which meant someone was about to suffer.
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