After a couple of minutes, Daimon felt his breathing stabilizing, every time he used Core Synchrony the recoil diminished, even if it was just a little bit, the difference was noticeable, it was caused due to his body being brought to the limit and adapting itself to the extra tension.
His eyes slowly opened as he looked at the log of the system, Thea had already gotten rid of the curse of loyalty by Daimon's request.
But this time they did it in a different way, with the previous Nethereals, Daimon didn't bother to hide the process of Thea erasing the curse, because they will notice the pain caused by it.
With Aurora's newly discovered way to use her light mana, she kept the black core in constant pain, while Thea secretly erased the curse, it was done like this because Daimon discovered why the Nethereals were available for Terror Contracts, but required more effort to do so.
In part it was actually Fabio the one that guided Daimon in the right direction, to discover how to deal with Nethereals.
The fact that the bizarre appearance that artificial Nethereals adopted, was caused by their own corrupted minds, and their rush to obtain what they wished for, showed Daimon that Nethereals aren't meant to be immune to pain by innate.
Now that Daimon knew that their black core was just a magic core covered in that black material, it is normal to believe that the artificial ones would end up like the others, so it is possible for a "Commoner" Netheral to become a "Lesser" one.
In other words, even the ones with a black core are like any other existence, they have wishes and emotions, and that includes pain, it was that black layer around their cores what was preventing them from suffering any pain.
Then why was Daimon able to make them feel pain you ask, the answer lies in his knight path, Demon Light is formed by six different things yes, but it was created when Daimon lit up his life spark, so ultimately its base is his battle aura.
Battle aura is created by the mix of vitality and mana within the body of a knight, with the life spark deciding what the property would be, for example it can be a defensive oriented battle aura, or an offensive one among others.
The black mist that the Nethereals use, follow a similar process in the meaning that, it is formed by the combination of mana and those weird body parts they develop, that's why those who are too greedy, end up looking bizarre, more of those body parts mean more production of black mist, in other words, more power.
But that makes them prompt to be unstable, those without a black core don't really feel anything but pain when burned by Demon Light, which isn't something to underestimate anyway.
But those with the black core, experience a horrifying sensation of dread, and that throws them out of their game, little by little small breaches appear on that black layer, and that's it, after not being afraid of pain for who knows how many years, they suddenly get to experience it once again.
They are of course crushed by fear, which is taken advantage of by Daimon's Overlord's Pride, and the result is the notification that Daimon was reading right now.
[Ding]
[Lesser Nethereal "Akim" has offered his loyalty, do you wish to accept it Y/N]
Daimon nodded and a collar of black spikes formed around the core, but the black layer wasn't included, it could be seen that only the original pale gray core was the one that was being restrained.
In case you wonder what Aurora changed to be able to inflict pain to Nethereals, it is also related to Daimon's discovery, what she did was condense her light and add a little surprise to it… anger, the anger she feels after discovering her daughter was killed by them.
Both mana and battle aura can be positive or negative, as they can cure or bring harm, the same applies to elements, water can nurture life but it can also drown life, Aurora simply infused the hatred she felt towards Nethereals into her light, to modify her mana.
It is similar to the Corrosive Light, that the Light Faction of the Blue-Sky galaxy created, but Aurora focused on Nethereals specifically, of course it wasn't as simple as it sounds, which is why even as a Maximum Stellar rank, she was having troubles torturing Akim's black core.
But with some training that will change, not to mention she has offensive type light mages and knights at her disposition, who will have it easier than her as she is a support type.
"Akim, what will happen to you if all the black layer is peeled away?", asked Daimon, while he was sitting on the shadow throne, it's worth mentioning that Sarah was still clinging to his leg.
"Answering to the young master, I don't know, when I came to my senses, this was the form that the core of my existence had, I think that if the whole black layer is removed, the current "me" will cease to exist", a voice could be heard coming from the core a couple of seconds later, unlike before, it was filled with respect.
Daimon frowned, at this point he has gotten used to the fact that, whenever he gets an answer of Neptune's situation, two new questions appear, this time he managed to discover the base of Nethereal's existences, which is this black material, but then how come this same material decompose into a degraded version of the black current that came out of the spatial gate, it is degraded, because though Daimon only used a small piece of it to erase a part of the curse on Sarah.
It is a piece of the core of a high Stellar ranked Nethereal, against a curse on a Lord rank, but there is another possibility, which is that not only the black energy produced by decomposing the black material, is of a lower quality than the one that came from the spatial gate, but maybe the curse was casted by a higher ranked Nethereal… like one of the ones that are called Lords.
Which is problematic, because that will put Jasmine and Sarah's fathers at the same level as the scheming guy, considering the so called Representative Garrius works directly under him.
"It doesn't look like your powers diminish after losing the black layer, am I right?", casually said Daimon, to which Akim nodded.
"They don't, I only lose the ability to ignore pain".
"Very well, I want you to discard 80% of that black layer, as soon as possible, also what do you need to get a new body?", said Daimon.
"Understood, I should be finished in six hours, as for the second matter, I just need blood and flesh to reconstruct my body, or the young master can provide me a new body for my core habit, either way, it will adapt to my existence", answered Akim.
Daimon nodded, he then turned to see Remi, before saying.
"You will be in charge of keeping all the pieces of the black material in a ring, as for the blood and flesh needed, you know what to do".
Remi nodded, among the prisoners, there were pirates, assassins and other scum who didn't have any use, as they weren't even skilled fighters, but they could still be of help, they came with the intention to capture and enslave Marlene's clan, if they would have won then they wouldn't have shown them mercy, so the same goes for them, such is the law of this world, the winner takes all.
Daimon then tried to get up to leave because he wanted to sleep a bit before they returned to the Elemental Sea, but he then noticed that Sarah wasn't letting go of his leg.
He tried to shake her away by walking while dragging her, but that only resulted on the crazy girl smiling, while she was dragged through the ground, which made Daimon's eyebrow twitch.
"Hey, I'm going to Jasmine's room, so behave for a change", said Daimon.
Sarah's eyes glowed, she mumbled a few things and then stood up from the ground to dust her shirt off, her clothes were still messy because she didn't even bother to fix them, after she raised the back of her blouse earlier, which made Bell sigh.
Daimon felt a headache coming his way, but ultimately, he decided to ignore the crazy girl, who was now gazing at him while she accommodated her clothes, Remi was about to put hands to work, so everyone but him as well as Roger and Fabio left the prison.
They walked towards the main residence, where Aisha and the others were staying, with the exception of Aurora who went to the captain's cabin to keep an eye on the route.
Daimon opened the door of the main residence and soon reached Jasmine's room, from which the voices of the girls could be heard.
Daimon headed straight to his bed, since he was still tired after using Core Synchrony twice, if the legacy of the hero was like the legacy left by Thalia, then he was going to need to be in his maximum condition, just in case, so a rest was a good idea.
Aisha saw Daimon laying down on the bed and she softly laughed as she placed his head on her lap, Daimon felt the soothing sensation of Aisha's body and his eyelids felt a bit heavy.
But the moment he was about to enter the land of dreams peacefully, Sarah's voice drew reached his ears.
"Look Jas, Daimon managed to cure me and he just had to see me naked, touch me and burn me with his flames~", said the crazy girl as she showed her back to Jasmine.
Naturally Sarah's ambiguous words earned Daimon a few gazes from the girls, so he had to defend himself.
"What naked, I only saw and touched your back to erase the curse", he said, to which Sarah giggled.
"Really, I remember your mana sense spreading on my back, ah the sensation was like being touched all over my body and some of your flames even entered my body~", she said as she hugged herself.
Daimon was speechless, he indeed had to use mana sense to guide the black mist to more of the purple marks to maximize the effect of the treatment, but he didn't go further than that, being inspected with mana sense can be uncomfortable though, if one isn't skilled enough it does result in a sensation similar to being touched all over oneself, that being said, it was clearly all Sarah's imagination.
"I should have turned you into ashes as well", said Daimon, it was futile to keep discussing with a crazy girl.
"Thanks for helping her", Jasmine put on an apologetic smile as she slightly bowed towards Daimon, to thank him for curing Sarah, she could notice the changes on the crazy girl, and she wasn't the only one.
Mellie as well as Aisha, Tessa and Yvonne, in other words, the ones with the sharpest senses could feel that Sarah's vitality had increased compared to before she left earlier.
Daimon nodded with his eyes closed.
"No problem, just chain her up or something, I used too much energy to be dodging in my sleep", he said, which made the girls softly laugh.
Before noticing, Daimon fell asleep while using Aisha's lap as his pillow, the girls continued doing their own things, while they only lowered their voices down a bit.
The rest of the travel went on pretty smoothly, the girls meditated with the help of the Elemental Conversion Array, while Daimon actually slept for around the twelve hours that took them to return to the Elemental Sea.
Normally Daimon only needs around three to four hours to decently recover to around half of his capacities, even when he abuses of Core Synchrony, the reason as to why he slept for more than twice that, is that after having a nice rest he found himself dreaming.
"You know, back at earth I don't remember ever having a dream, but it sure does get boring to have the same one quite a few times", he mumbled.
He was into that open sea area, in which his black Sea Emblem has been taking him into a few times before.
These dreams were like small clips, he couldn't interact with them until they finished, last time the clip showed a rain of corpses of some unknown creatures, so he wondered what will he be seeing now.
And the answer came pretty fast, the sky suddenly darkened and then from within the clouds a giant portal appeared, Daimon thought it was just going to be another rain of corpses, but that wasn't the case.
What came out of that portal was a giant meteorite, which impacted the sea, but the result wasn't a tsunami as it should have been, instead of that, the surface of the sea trembled before the water level started decreasing.
Then the water started boiling, as magma and mountains raised from below the water, the whole place was in turmoil, with new islands forming, part of the sea disappearing and other rock formations raising.
"So, this time it's the formation of Neptune's formation", mumbled Daimon, once the chaos ended, what laid in front of him wasn't an infinite sea anymore, there were islands and large continents that were newly formed.
Still not everything was just a beautiful landscape, apparently the corpses that fell from the sky were still present at the bottom of the sea, because along with the waves that crashed at the newly formed shores, many small broken pieces of bones that were clearly worn out, appeared.
The dream came to an abrupt end, when Daimon suddenly opened his eyes, Aisha was laying down next to him, having a little nap, it was past 5 PM and now they were arriving at the Elemental Sea, due to the long night of the Maelstrom Sea, they missed the sunlight once again.
But that is good too, it's better for no one to know where they will be landing, in other words the area where the legacy of the hero is supposedly kept.
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