Once he was outside of the cave Daimon covered his body with his battle aura, not even a second passed when he saw a little amount of red smoke coming from the soles of his feet.
Daimon remembered the last words of the woman and he carefully inspected his body, after not finding anything else he snorted.
“Turns out she was indeed related to a high ranked demon, but If you were trying to cause fear, you chose the wrong target bitch”.
Thanks to the Greenwich Sage, both humans and members of the beast faction insulted the undead referring to them as third-rate mages.
According to Erin, back when the Revy family was still in an open war with the undead, every victory was bloody and seemed to be meaningless, because the one that killed a noble from the undead… died not too long after.
The rumor was that the undead found a way to curse whoever killed them, so that they would follow them to the underworld, the time varied but the result was always the same in other words death.
The whole stellar chart was in fear thinking the undead developed a curse which could basically guarantee them to win the war.
Curses are one of the strongest kinds of magic, but they also have many weaknesses, light and lightning element are natural counters for most of them due to their inclination to yang, but contrary to all the records, those who were “cursed” by the undead even after being treated by the priests of the light faction died.
This belief continued bringing fear to others, for a long time until one day, the one who was supposed to die was the one who will soon become known as the Greenwich Sage, he revealed that the so called “curse” was nothing but smoke and mirrors.
The reality of the curse was a spell called “death mark” created and casted by a demon half emperor, the only function of the spell was to give away the position of the one marked with it, so that an assassin could finish the job later.
Before that, demons weren’t actively participating in the war, so all the attention was on the undead, and they used that to mount a little magic show, the spell needed to be casted by a half emperor and only the caster could decide who would perceive the mark.
At first everyone refused to believe the theory of the Greenwich Sage, the light faction especially accused him of defamation, because their half emperor affirmed having used detection spells on the victims and not finding anything.
Then the answer of the sage left them in ridicule, “Did you scan their clothes, weapons, storage ring and accessories?”.
That’s right, the trick behind the death mark was that it wasn’t applied to the body, instead it attached itself to the clothes, weapon or something which the victim wore, said thing was probably kept in a storage ring which never left the side of its owner giving away its position.
The priests never found about it because for the purifying session one needed to be naked, or wear a sterilized robe proportioned by them and nothing else, so the mark escaped their detection spells.
When Daimon shoved his sword into the chest of the woman, he was using his battle aura, so the mark she tried to attach to it was immediately erased, but when she spoke all that nonsense about cursing him to die, she attached the mark to his shoes.
Not all the undead nor all the demons had this mark applied on them because in exchange to the practically limitless reach, the number of marks which a half emperor can cast on their subordinates is limited, also nowadays it can be blocked thanks to magic formations nowadays.
This prison was one of the places which prevented the mark from working, so the woman expected that Daimon didn’t discover the mark which she thought, will lead to his death at the hands of an assassin in the future.
Unfortunately for her, Daimon’s sixth sense made him detect something which wasn’t there before on his shoes, and that’s how he discovered the mark which was eliminated not too long ago.
“Other prisoners won’t approach this place knowing that woman lives here, so I won’t have to worry about them if I just stay around this area, until the three hours pass”.
Daimon remembered the extremely sweet smell which filled the cave, undead tended to work at places where corpses and things like that were a common sight, so to counter that they used a special kind of incense which was elaborated with a three called “corpse sandalwood”, which had two functions covering the smell of death and poisoning those who smelled it and weren’t undead.
To emphasize the dramatic taste the undead, have, corpse sandalwood was hard to detect because it only grew about one meter and before being processed into incense it didn’t stand out by its smell nor appearance, it looked like any normal three which was recently growing.
The seeds of this three are strategic resources for undead because they require an extremely hard process to be created, which is unknown to other races and even to undead with the exception of those with high noble status.
“A corpse sandalwood would be a good gift for Erin to study”, Daimon recognized the smell of the incense because Erin taught it to him, after so many years in war with the undead, she managed to lay her hands on a few pieces of the incense but no one outside of the undead has ever owned a tree of it.
Of course before he blew the cave he inspected it and didn’t found nothing similar to a tree, the woman had to had a seed of the corpse sandalwood because all her belongings were confiscated, so there was no way she brought incense from the outside, but a seed could have been contrabanded… in her stomach, under her nails etc.
While Daimon scanned the whole area and removed the brambles and weeds, to look for the tree, he decided to clear a doubt which has been pestering him today.
“Evangeline… tell me if the system is interfering with my mind, if I was a native of this world then I would probably not think this whole thing is weird, but since I come from earth, it’s not normal for me to not feel anything about both the woman which was in the cage, and the one I killed”.
Evangeline shrugged, “The system isn’t allowed to directly influence you, but I do get what you say, it’s probably a condition of the apex predator physique… what predator would have mercy of its “prey” after all”.
“It’s helping you adapt to the cruel reality of this world, but it doesn’t make you blood thirsty, ultimately the decision is up to you”.
Daimon nodded, up to this day he hasn’t noticed any change on his personality, he only doubted today because he didn’t feel a thing about what he witnessed a moment ago, not like he pitied them, but honestly, he expected feeling nauseous or maybe some kind of unease and that wasn’t the case.
“Look what we have here”, Daimon smirked, hidden between tall weeds he found a little tree of about forty centimeters, he also noticed there was a self-immolating magic formation engraved with red ink on its trunk.
In a rare occasion Evangeline took the initiative to lend Daimon a hand without him asking for it.
“Undead really like to keep secrets, if someone which doesn’t have similar blood to the one used for the magic formation approaches the tree it will burn, if you try to destroy one of the runes it will burn, if any external element touches it… it will bu she said.
Daimon agreed with her, this level of magic formation is not something a star ranked mage can achieve, probably the seed had the magic formation engraved by at least an Archmage rune master, before it was handed to others.
Still, he just pointed his hand at the three and white flames mixed with grey covered it, the formation tried to activate but as soon as the runes glowed, the flames consumed the blood which acted as the energy source nullifying the magic formation.
Seeing that his plan worked, Daimon looked at the tittle tap of the system.
[The one who has overcome destiny]
“What an incredibly useful thing, the chances of failing when I created demon light were 99% and yet I succeeded, there is no way they have a way to counter it”.
Demon light is a result of Daimon becoming a knight, when a knight has more than one elemental affinity, they had to choose which one will be the one integrating with their battle aura, although rare there have been knights who have managed to create another battle aura for their secondary affinity.
But Daimon did something outrageous, fire, light, lightning, darkness and battle aura, all were combined to create demon light.
Evangeline shook her head, “Even your battle aura is monstrous, having several affinities and integrating them in a functional way are two completely different things you know?”.
Daimon laughed out loud, with a wave of his hand the whole tree and a portion of earth disappeared entering into his storage, since the old man will scan him and his belongings before he leaves the island for safety reasons.
Evangeline sighed.
“Well now you have a souvenir for your fox wifey, so let’s leave this disgusting place already”.
Daimon took out the coin which the old man handed him, according to his instructions after three hours inside he would be able to leave, the coin turned green and he broke it, a magic formation appeared on the ground and he disappeared.
The next thing he saw was the old man heating some kind of soup on his campfire, but this time the girls were also there waiting for him.
The old man nodded took a sip of his drink, without any warning he used his mana sense to scan Daimon, not finding anything he nodded.
“Kid show me your storage ring and the badge you were given before”.
Daimon handed the ring and the badge to the old man which seemed apathic as ever… until he saw the color of the badge.
His eyes widened, he looked at the badge which now was completely black and had a horn and bone, then looked at Daimon to see if there was any visible wound and didn’t find anything.
The old man smiled, he took out a little medal and threw it towards Daimon along with his ring, but kept the badge.
“Kid if you ever get into trouble with the military, show them this medal… you got rid of one of the worst in the first level”.
Daimon nodded and they left, leaving behind an old man which figure blurred before he disappeared leaving behind one last phrase.
“A one-star mage killed a peak two-star mage and a variant of demon and undead… young generations nowadays are freaking scary”.