Chapter 665: The secret of the black water lake (part 1)
It’s worth mentioning that this group of blood specters in particular was at the bottom of the barrel in terms of strength, not because the horned lizard was weak, the aura it radiated didn’t lose at all when compared to other Lord ranked blood specters.
But its subordinates were either low ranked, as in there were two early sixth star realm blood specters and two peak seventh star ranked ones in the group, but those two were clearly wounded which means that this group probably lost in a fight the past night.
And that resulted in their strongest members dying, so now they could only remain at the border of the food chain, to the point that they would have been an easy prey for the little tiger girl, with the only exception of the Lord ranked leading them which would probably require her to use a considerable amount of her lightning.
But Dana already has her ability for her challenge, and Daimon doesn’t, so he expected star ranked blood specters to put up some fight before going down, like it happened with Arianna who had to work alongside other two participants to take down one and two star ranked blood specters, back when they had just arrived.
So, imagine his surprise when after dodging the bite of the first lizard blood specter, Daimon closed his right hand which was cladded in that silvery light, to form a fist with which he punched at the second lizard that tried to ambush him.
The low ranked blood specters guided themselves with instinct alone, so this simple tactic was a common for them, something they had done countless time and has worked quite decently... until now.
Under both Daimon and Dana’s surprised eyes, Daimon’s right fist made its way right through the body of the sixth star ranked lizard, which screeched as its body faded away, it actually died with a single blow.
"Didn’t big brother Daimon said that he wasn’t getting reinforced by that silvery light?", mumbled the little tiger girl who was watching the fight behind that rock formation, while she enjoyed the snacks Daimon left for her.
Though the blood specters looked ethereal and all, hence why they were called like that, it’s not like they were actually non-corporeal, their bodies had mass and punching them was similar to do so with a normal magic beast.
Sure, even with the restrictions of the Blood Prison realm, Daimon still had a decent proportion of his monstrous body active, so going up against a sixth star ranked blood specter shouldn’t have been much of a challenge, however he didn’t even feel the impact of his fist against the lizard, it directly went through it without any resistance.
Luckily, given that the blood specters of this level were driven by instincts, another one was up for Daimon to test what was going on, right away.
This time with his left hand, Daimon punched one of the wounded seventh star blood specters, and as he expected this time his fist didn’t outright made its way into the body of the blood specter, but simply heavily landed on it.
"Booom!", still, the result was nothing to look down on, the lizard was sent flying a couple of meters by the impact of Daimon’s punch, and was directly unable to get up though it didn’t die on the spot, unlike its fellow from earlier.
’So, it was a phenomenon caused by that silvery light after all, next is...’, thought Daimon as the muscles of his legs tensed, before he pounced on the remaining sixth star blood specter.
"Crack!", this time Daimon put his back into the punch, and the head of the lizard which he punched with his fist, dent inwards due to the impact, this one was a kill for sure, but it wasn’t as clean as the one which he achieved with his fist cladded in that silvery light.
And in case you wonder, said silvery light disappeared after Daimon had used it against one enemy, he could still use it a few more times, but it would take him a few seconds to gather it once again.
A problem that will probably be solved as soon as he absorbs some of those red strands that the blood specters would leave behind after being defeated by a participant.
Speaking of which, the Lord ranked blood specter and the remaining seventh star one, screeched at Daimon, but surprisingly they didn’t directly jump at him, but actually went to finish off the wounded seventh star one which was unable to move.
"I guess you don’t have a strong sense of camaraderie", said Daimon as he saw the other seventh star blood specter devour big chunks of its fellow’s body, while the Lord rank ate the head in a single go.
It wasn’t as gory as it would normally be, since the blood specters had no flesh or organs, they were a solid agglomeration of energy, so instead of devouring each other, it would be more accurate to say that they absorbed each other in order to grow, just like those two were doing.
Of course, Daimon let it happen because he wanted to see the process of how a blood specter advances, and while the Lord rank didn’t show any reaction after eating its subordinate, the seventh star one did.
As in, it directly became an eight-star ranked blood specter, as a result of the previous, a small protuberance appeared on its forehead, that will probably transform into a horn it was to advance to the Lord rank in the future, unfortunately that wasn’t going to happen.
With a "swoosh", Daimon flashed from his previous position, which took both the Lord rank horned lizard and a certain little tiger girl by surprise, he had performed a movement martial art with his body alone.
’I know big brother Daimon’s vitality even surpasses that of sister Arianna’s one, but still... will he be alright?’, wondered Dana as she munched on a cupcake, though for obvious reasons martial arts can be somewhat executed without the need of battle aura, unlike spells which can’t be executed without mana of any sort, the backslash that one’s bones and muscles will receive is not to be ignored.
After all, you would be forcing your flesh past the human limit without relaying in any kind of energy or reinforce, the closest to that point are the bio-boosting techniques Aura taught Arianna, but even those don’t directly rely on one’s bare body, but maximize the results for a lower amount of battle energy by increasing the load on the body.
The point is that Dana was surprised to see Daimon not even flinch at what would normally cause scream-inducing physical pain, but not only did he not show any negative reaction, but without stopping even for a fraction of a second, he continued his assault on the Lord ranked blood specter.
Enough time has passed for Daimon to gather that silvery light on his right fist, which he swung at the Lord ranked lizard’s side, as if it was reminded of the fate of its subordinate, the Lord ranked lizard slashed its tail at the incoming fist.
"Hrshhhhh!", as expected, Daimon’s fist outright tore its way into the tail of the horned lizard, cleanly separating it from the body, on the other hand this gave a fraction of a second to the Lord ranked blood specter to get away from Daimon, by sending its sole remaining subordinate to block him.
’Heh, so Lord ranked ones have developed enough to start being afraid of death’, thought Daimon as he grabbed the jaws of the seventh star lizard which aimed to bite him, there was some remaining silvery light on his hand, apparently it was only completely spent if he killed the target with it and the horned lizard escaped by sacrificing its tail earlier.
As expected, Daimon’s hand dived into the head of the seventh star lizard without its teeth harming it, thus killing the lizard on the spot, and that left just the Lord ranked one, which to both Dana and Daimon’s surprise, had an interesting reaction.
"What is it doing?", mumbled the little tiger girl, as she saw the horned lizard first moving to get distanced from Daimon, to then turn around and walk towards him, it was as if it couldn’t decide whether to flee or attack him.
While raising an eyebrow at the actions of the lizard, Daimon remained still to see if the lizard was trying to set him up, but after a couple of seconds he determined its strange behavior to be legitimate, so he gathered that silvery light around his right hand for the last time, as in that was the last of it, that he had managed to draw out from his hair during those four hours of training.
’I really hope the quantity increases after absorbing those red strands of energy, or it’s going to be a pain to use this in a proper fight’, thought Daimon as he walked towards the lizard, who turned to see Daimon on the spot and surprisingly "offered" its head for him to attack it.
Well, it actually tried to bite him, but again that strange behavior was triggered and the attack was interrupted midway, so its head was completely open for an attack, an opportunity Daimon didn’t miss.
"Hshhhh!", once Daimon placed his hand which was cladded in silvery light on the head of the lizard, the thing screeched one last time, before its body faded away, leaving behind a Daimon who was more confused than before the fight started.
However, right now wasn’t the time for questions, but for rewards, as a part of the rules of the challenge, those strands of red energy won’t appear until the fight was deemed to have ended, probably a measure to prevent the blood specters from stealing the rewards of a participant without having to fight for them, since Daimon still doesn’t know whether killing another participant, gives the rewards they have accumulated, to the one that eliminated them.
There were other things Daimon wished to test, for example what would happen if a blood specter devoured another, in the middle of a fight, which is why he didn’t finish that seventh star and instead allowed its companions to devour it, and the result paid up.
"Oh, so you do get the strand of the one that devoured the other one, at the rank attained after it, and also get to have the one of the devoured blood specter, without its energy being reduced at all, that’s a good exploit I guess", said Daimon as he saw the strands of red energy appear in the nearby area.
He got two early stage sixth star strands, one peak seventh rank one and one early stage eight rank one, however while the previous sounded like a possible exploit, the reality is that letting your opponent level up in the middle of a fight, it’s a bad idea.
At least, it’s not something Daimon would let happen in front of him without a proper reason, this time he was running a test and also the difference between a peak seventh star and an early stage eight star rank, was nothing to worry about for him.
Leaving that aside, Daimon questioned why the reward for the Lord rank lizard was taking so long to appear, among the blood specters that the little tiger girl killed the other day, there were a few Lord ranks, and their red strands appeared at the same time as the star ranked ones, but this one was taking more time.
’Don’t tell me there is no reward because that strange behavior made it easier for me to kill it’, thought Daimon, fortunately, the red strand belonging to a Lord rank blood specter did appear the next second, but it wasn’t alone.
"Huh, is that a black strand, I don’t remember that little girl mentioning anything about such a thing?", he said, and in an even more surprising turn of events, while the red strands floated towards him in order to be absorbed like they should, the black strand was burned by light emitted by the red sun.
How did Daimon know that the red sun was the cause, well, that black strand quite literally exploded in red flames of the same color as the sun, the result was a violent sizzling as the black strand was burned away in a fraction of a second.
While Daimon was wondering what was going on, his attention was drawn towards the black water lake a few hundreds of meters away from his current position, where the water at the area of the shore which directly faced where he was standing, suddenly trembled.
"Screee!", a bird-like blood specter which had descended to drink the black water of the lake, was suddenly dragged into the pitch black water, only managing to let out a loud chirping sound, before its figure faded into the darkness of the lake, apparently the bird blood specter didn’t get to resist once inside the black water, because the surface of the lake didn’t agitate at all, meaning that once it was dragged into it, the outcome was set in stone.
Also, it happened really fast, so much that even Daimon who looked in that direction didn’t manage to see what dragged the bird into the lake, but he did manage to somewhat determine what was its realm, how you ask, considering he can’t use mana sense and has been relying on only his bare eyes and instincts so far.
The answer is simple, it took a moment to happen, but his body was now completely covered in that silver light, similar to what happened the past night, the difference being that the amount of it was a bit more than twice what he obtained back then.
However, instead of being absorbed by his hair like before, this time the silver light covered a part of his face, from his forehead to the area of his eyes to be more accurate, and during the split of a second that it lasted, it was as if he had used the infinity eyes to expand his range of sight.
Of course, it was missing a lot when compared to the infinity eyes, but he now had a way to reinforce his senses, like the little tiger girl could do, that being said, no proper skill was awakened even after he absorbed four star ranked blood specters and one Lord ranked one.
"I’m really going to hate myself for jinxing it, but it seems like there won’t be an ability for me until I have covered my whole body with that silver glow", said Daimon as he sighed, there must be a reason as to why the silver light was absorbed by his forehead and eyes, instead of his hair this time.
’Well, it’s not like you have any problem dealing with enemies that will appear for the time being, with your current strength, not to mention that there is an "all you can eat buffet" in front of you’, said Eve as she yawned.
’I guess that’s right, there is also that black lake which seems worth investigating, before leaving this area’, answered Daimon before he returned to the real world, due to the little tiger girl who had rushed from the top of that hill, all the way to where Daimon was.
"Was I seeing things, or that Lord ranked blood specter left behind something else besides its red strand?", asked Dana to which Daimon nodded.
"Yes, a black strand that apparently wasn’t supposed to be absorbed unlike the red ones, did you and Arianna see something like that happening before?", he said.
"No, we have fought some of those lizard-like blood specters before and there were even Lord ranks among them, but none left a black strand behind after being defeated, not to mention that I don’t remember any blood specter acting in such a strange way as that horned lizard", mumbled the little tiger girl as she shook her head in response.
"I see, there is still the possibility that something has changed after the last "night", so let’s do the following, we’ll hunt a total of three of those groups each, let’s see if any of the blood specters you defeat leave that black strand behind, of course I’ll give you as much food as you need to recover after that", he said which made Dana’s eyes sparkle.
"Okay!", with excitement all over her pretty face, the little tiger girl rushed towards a group of blood specters, and as one would expect it was as if a tiger had been freed into a pack of sheep, Dana outright moped the floor with the star ranked blood specters in a matter of a couple of minutes.
This also allowed Daimon to see how she faired under normal circumstances, and one had to admit that for her first mission outside Leena’s watch, Dana had quite a good performance.
’Her battle instincts are better than Alexander’s, she is just lacking experience, but that can be solved with some training, not bad’, thought Daimon as he saw the little tiger girl suddenly exploding in yellow lightning, which she used to kill the Lord rank blood specter that was leading the first group she had attacked.
Just in time for Daimon who was paying more attention to her fight, than to the enemies in front of him, to also wrap things up, this time he didn’t use that silver light to attack the blood specters.
Also, the ones that Dana destroyed were those lizard-like specters, but Daimon fought a group of the ones that looked like birds, the result were five strands of red energy for each of them, which further reinforced Daimon’s theory that a black strand only appeared when he killed a Lord ranked blood specter while using that silver light.
Or at least that’s what he thought until he chose a group of lizards as his second target, but even after getting rid of the Lord ranked one by cladding his right hand into that silver light, there was only a red strand of energy left behind.
’It could be that not all Lord ranks have it in them to produce that black strand, but that also might mean that it’s not limited to the lizard-like ones, or the ones I personally kill’, thought Daimon.
There was a good reason as to why he was interested in discovering which blood specters produced a black strand when defeated, the amount of energy contained in the red strand that the Lord ranked horned specter which he defeated back then, was more than 30% larger than the one contained in the strands he absorbed from the next two Lord ranked blood specters, even if they were equal in strength and of the same race as well.
If there was a way to increase the benefits obtained from hunting the same number of blood specters when compared to others, of course Daimon wanted to use it to give himself and more importantly his team an overall boost.
And with that in mind, Daimon took a break from his own fight to go to the little tiger girl’s battlefield, the third group she was fighting consisted in ram-like blood specters whose horns had spikes on them.
"Is there a problem, big brother Daimon?", asked Dana as she dodged the charge of a seventh star ram blood specter.
"I just want to test something out, attack when I give the signal", answered Daimon, his image flashed the next second, he had used a movement martial art like before, to appear next to the Lord ranked ram leading the group.
The Lord ranked ram grunted as if it felt the danger coming at him, however its reaction was too slow, so Daimon achieved his goal, he severed the horns of the ram with a slash of his right hand which was covered in that silver light.
"Now", listening to Daimon’s command, bright yellow lightning radiated out of Dana’s body, turning into a tiger that used its right paw to claw at the ram, turning it into shreds in a second.
The lightning roar wide area attack she used when she reunited with Daimon was reserved for emergencies, because while it was her strongest attack as of current, it used up a lot of energy, also a single early-stage Lord ranked blood specter didn’t need her to go to such lengths.
Anyway, what’s important is that the moment the leader of that group was killed, the fight was considered over and the rewards started to appear, in the form of those red strands of energy, the ones from the star ranked specters immediately flew towards Dana and were absorbed by her the next second.
However, and to Daimon’s interest, the reward from the Lord ranked ram, was taking longer to appear, and the result was as he expected, besides the red strand which floated towards Dana, meaning that she was recognized as the owner of the reward even if he had some participation in the fight, a black strand also appeared, and just like before it was burned by the red sun the next second.
"Woah, the amount of energy contained in that strand was almost half times larger than the one of the other Lord ranked blood specter from earlier!", exclaimed the little tiger girl, which made Daimon nod in response.
And that wasn’t the end of the results brought by that ram blood specter, like before Daimon saw ripples appear on the surface of the lake, this time it was a lizard the unlucky winner, which was dragged into the pitch-black water of the lake to never be seen again.
’One time is mere luck, two times it can be a coincidence, but three... that would be a pattern’, thought Daimon as he locked onto the third group he has chosen in order to finish his test, one that was composed by blood specters that he has seen have had a turn at drinking the water of the lake.