Seeing Daimon being lost in his thoughts, Jasmine hesitated for a couple of seconds before she asked what was in the mind of Sarah, Reyne and herself.
"Now that our challenge has officially started, are you going to leave to chase after those guys?", she mumbled while avoiding Daimon's eyes, making the latter shake his head.
"No, if my presence was needed, wherever those three bastards are as of current, my sea emblem would have taken me there, since my challenge is for sure related to them, so my priority right now is to help you three", he said.
As expected, those three's eyes sparkled on the spot, the crazy girl giggled as she stretched her body and then rubbed her face against Daimon's leg, like a cat who wants his owner's attention.
"Don't be shy, if you want to stay with me and little Jas, just say it~", she happily said.
As if their previous happy reactions weren't enough, Sarah's words made the Risha sisters feel their little maiden hearts fill with jealousy, at least until they felt a soothing and warm sensation spreading all the way from their upper backs, where Daimon's mana was being poured into them.
The Risha sisters went from being in a sour mood, to have reddened faces since Daimon was placing his hands on their backs, well that was the case for Yvonne and Leslie, while Liliana was resting her shoulder against Daimon's, any contact worked for them to receive Daimon's mana, but they certainly enjoyed having the base of their wings, caressed by Daimon.
'Next time, it will be my turn', said Liliana to her sisters, who limited to slightly nod with comfortable expressions on their pretty faces.
Daimon who could see their reactions from beginning to end, inwardly sighed.
'These three have become rather greedy, from being able to barely contain 5% of my mana reserves each, they can now comfortably store a whole 10% each and they haven't even reached the ninth star realm, luckily the rewards of their challenges were good, otherwise this might end up being a blood bath', he thought.
All the girls involved with the mission, had benefitted not only thanks to Daimon, but they also got huge rewards out of their challenges, sure Calvin and the others didn't end up empty handed, but in comparison their results surely paled, heck, Daphne not only recovered her voice, she got a cure for her mother's problem and even got an initial improvement in her lineage as well as a powerful ancestor to help her in the future, in the form of Ophelia.
'Well, they don't really need to be jealous, it's just that the girls involved with the missions you stole from those two, got lucky and the guaranteed opportunities caused by their proximity to you were triggered in the form of these "challenges", which is also why the difficulty for them went up a whole notch', casually said Evangeline.
'Wait a second what do you mean with "guaranteed opportunities", Eve?', asked Daimon in a hurry, only to hear his administrator giggling at him.
'Let's just say it's a compensation, your existence has a heavy impact on those around you, so unlike other system user, those close to you get a guaranteed opportunity to help them keep up with you'.
Daimon was genuinely taken aback by Eve's words, this also meant that he was slowly but surely loosening the restrictions, allowing her to tell him more about the system.
'I guess it makes sense, the high difficulty and high reward, applies to them as well, it might be dangerous though, this time I was able to lend a hand to them but it might be different in the future', said Daimon.
'Nope, there will be a mission triggered alongside the guaranteed opportunities, this time everything just happened to coincide, I don't leave loose ends~', she pridefully said.
'That means Eve wants Daimon to praise her, right?', asked Narasha nearly making Evangeline curse at her friend, especially because Daimon nodded at her.
'Humph', Eve limited to softly snort before she returned to silence, Daimon on the other hand, finally let go of the Risha sisters, he had finished giving them his mana some time ago, but he got too invested into his conversation with Evangeline, which ended up benefitting the Risha sisters, who felt a sensation of loss now that it was over.
However, the previous was enough to make them forget about the subject, at least on the surface, since they all had the same thought in their minds "I have to ask mom on how to gain advantage over other competitors".
Daimon cleared his throat and then tried to make Sarah let go of his leg, but ultimately gave up when he noticed Sarah's predacious eyes, aiming at his lap, he was sure that if he shook the crazy girl off, she was shameless enough to sit on his lap, or at least try to do so at every given chance, so he "sacrificed" his leg for the greater good.
"Before anything else, what are the abilities of the other titles and who is teaming up with who?", he asked, the first one to answer was Reyne who gave Calvin a death glare as she said.
"I have one rook, two knight and two bishops, in the same order they are that annoying guy, Scarlet, Leslie, Lapis and Julio", Daimon could only give Reyne and apologetic nod, Calvin was among the strongest in the group but dealing with him was... tough, so the serious and calm Reyne was suffering headaches at the time of dealing with him.
"As for the abilities it would be easier if they directly explain it", she added.
"I'm first, rooks as basically bodyguards, we can parry one lethal attack for others as long as we are within the designated range, our defenses and recovery ratio are greatly boosted and we can exchange our position with the queens, right Amber", jokingly said Calvin making Amber sigh.
"Yeah, that crazy queen threw me into the battlefield as a shortcut to get faster to young master's side", said the tanned girl, Leslie immediately took over as if she was afraid that Scarlet would explain before she could.
"Knights have a much simple ability, our boost is on speed and attack power, we also have the ability to use instant short-range teleportation, you should have seen me raining fire on those guys", said the fire crane girl.
Lastly, Lapis was about to speak when Julio who just fixed his glasses took the initiative to explain.
"For bishops the boost is focused on increasing energy reserves as well as the effective range of our abilities, the previous applies to both mana and battle aura as well as spells and martial arts", he said.
Daimon looked around and found only Reyne floating in the sky at his same level, on the ground he confirmed the presence of Calvin, Scarlet, Leslie, Lapis and Julio, as for the "pawns", a row of perfectly preserved corpses of weird looking magic beasts which he found familiar, appeared floating a few meters away from them.
'Aren't those... the magic beasts that fell from the skies in the records shown by the black sea emblem?', thought Daimon as he saw those strange half bird half beast magic beast corpses.
Based on what Ophelia told him, the Nethereals started infecting the local races to use them as cannon fodder, so these magic beasts were native of what used to be Neptune back then but they got changed due to whatever nether was used with them and were ultimately killed during the war.
As to why their corpses appeared here, they were probably kept by the nethereals as emergency rations or to be used for their materials and they survived whatever happened after Agrak's memories from back then ended.
"It seems like I have to choose a new corpse to use for the challenge", said Reyne, not even a second later, her opponent's team became visible.
At ground level, Daimon saw the pirates and pariahs which Marcus gathered under his flag, as well as those magic beasts who worked for one of the emperors of the Maelstrom Sea, which had taken a temporary semi-human form.
Though they weren't weak, none of them had left a lasting impression on Daimon, so he didn't bother to pay too much attention to them, until now, killing the titled participants was forbidden since the previous rounds weren't the official ones, only the pawns could be destroyed.
And that restriction was lifted now, resulting on the knights, rooks and bishops getting serious, the usually clown-like Calvin had a 180° personality change, he jumped in front of the group and casually punched a knife and a spear that appeared out of nowhere with his left hand, to then extend his arms and grab the owners of said weapons by their necks.
"You two slippery bastards are so dead", he said as he flashed away from the battlefield, not even a second later, a loud explosion could be heard coming from southeast, as a clash of sand and rocks as well as water and wind mana was produced.
"What an unreliable bodyguard", said Julio as he sighed.
"Well, at least he took the relatively most dangerous enemies, away with him, it's not that bad, I guess...", mumbled Leslie, unlike the nethereal sisters, the opponents had all their respective pieces covered, in other words five were fighting against six, so Calvin purposedly dragged both enemy knights with him, to even things.
"I'll take one rook", limited to say Scarlet, her red eyes were glowing, it hasn't been that long since she became a knight so she was still excited about her recently acquired strength, what's more Daimon was here now, so she was raring to go.
"I have a little feud with the other one, so leave it to me", said Leslie, a pretty pair of orange flame wings spread behind of her as she flew towards the rook at the left, a magic beast in human form with water attribute.
Scarlet on the other hand slightly bent her legs and then charged like a meteorite against the other rook, the methods were different but the result where two fire balls reaching the enemy's rooks at the same time.
"Booom!", Leslie's weapon of choice a sharp metal fan, collided with the shell-shield of the enemy, as for Scarlet, until not too long ago her life consisted on escaping and hiding in order to survive, so she didn't know how to properly use any weapon nor she has decided which one went with her, so she relied on her flaming fists to crack the metal wall created by her opponent.
This left two bishops, Lapis and Julio to deal with the enemy bishops, a pair of female pirates who after staring at each other, ran away on the spot, only to be chased by Julio who became a giant tornado and Lapis whose body disappeared into a water stream.
"I guess that leaves us to deal with the "mysterious" enemy leader", said Daimon, Reyne's fight hadn't started since the other party's queen hasn't appeared yet.
"So, you three finally found someone willing to die alongside you, that's good, my Lord and I were getting tired of waiting", said a mocking voice whose owner was revealed a moment later.
The voice belonged to a skinny woman with unkept hair and sickly pale skin, Daimon couldn't help but frown in response to the appearance of the woman, even though she was created using nether instead of mana, she was an undead and to top it off, a Bone Sorceress, which was the race of undead to which Rita used to belong before she became Daimon's head maid.
Another thing that drew his attention is that she was alone, she was the enemy's queen but the king didn't show up.
'Why isn't that guy coming, I can feel his presence at the north border of the battlefield', he thought.
As if Reyne could read Daimon's mind, she turned to see her opponent and then said.
"Tell your king to come and die, instead of wasting time", one had to give it to the nelapsi girl, she was soft when she needed to and quite sharp the rest of the time.
"Humph, I alone am enough to kill you both, there is no need to bother the Lord...", before she could finish her sentence, Daimon interrupted.
"Oh, so unlike me, he can't leave his current position", he said, making the woman's expression unconsciously confirm his supposition.
'So, whatever they did to interfere with those three's challenges, did have a price', he thought.
The woman gritted her teeth and then directly chose one of the corpses floating in front of her, making the rest disappear.
Reyne turned to see Daimon who smiled as he pointed at the corpse which he chose for her, needless to say but the nelapsi girl didn't hesitate even for a second and selected the corpse Daimon chose for her.
And so, with the woman mockingly gazing at Reyne for making such a bad choice, the challenge finally started.