Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System

Chapter 571: Challenges Thea’s version (part 7)

Inside of the dimensional tunnel, the queen who had recomposed herself after having her mana reserves suddenly drop due to the treatment, turned to see her daughters to then say.

"Despite all the preparations, things can always go wrong, so stay close to either me or miss Thea you two, Ferris in case everything goes wrong you know what to do, Naomi don't pay attention to whatever nonsense those old fellows say to provoke you, okay?".

"Mm", the younger Lamia princess seemed unconvinced but she agreed and then looked away, her older sister on the other hand nodded with a serious face.

"Understood mother", said Ferris, the queen then turned to see Daimon, they already had discussed how they will play things depending on the approach that the noble families would take, however most plans never survive through the first contact with the enemy, so she still said.

"I doubt you even need to hear it, but feel free to speak your mind later, we need to make the whole situation look real after all".

Daimon nodded, dealing with Thalia was the priority, the more time they waited the more she'll be prepared to fight against Thea, so he couldn't lose time with the Nagas and their conflicts, the faster they ended with this the better.

A few seconds later the group reached the end of the dimensional tunnel and appeared in a place that reminded Daimon of the Revy family's throne room, the place consisted on a tall single pillar with a row of seats on its top, placed in the center of an amphitheater.

Naturally Daimon's group which included the sole three members of the royal family, appeared on top of said pillar, which of course drew the attention of the other people in the place, the first ones to react were four people who were surrounding the pillar in the center.

"We greet her majesty the queen and the royal family!", they shouted in unison, Daimon could easily see through their level, the four of them were peak middle stage Stellar ranks, apparently just like back at Neptune, high stage Stellars were quite rare and those who had such a status, were given special positions in the kingdom, just like Karaam who was designated as the captain of the border guard.

And similar to him, there was another person who greeted the queen as soon as she appeared, a woman with dark green hair who was kneeling down in front of Mirellia and the others, while being allowed to be in the same area at the top of the pillar, the difference between her and the other four is that she is an early grade high stage Stellar, the captain of the royal guard and Mirellia's spokesperson, Nea.

Daimon and the others took their respective seats, the queen sat at the rightest seat which was of course a throne, then Ferris sat at her right and surprisingly the next one was Daimon, followed by Thea and lastly Naomi, the younger Lamia princess didn't feel excluded even if Daimon was occupying her usual seat, because she got to seat near her idol, Thea, as for the recently added Zia, she stood behind of Daimon at the left, very much to the undead head maid's envy, luckily she was assigned an important role by Daimon, which improved her mood.

The queen nodded at Nea who stood up and gazed at all the ones attending the meeting to then exclaim.

"Everyone, pay your respects to the royal family and our honorable guests from outside of Draim!".

Only then, the many leaders of the noble families as well as their accompanying guards bowed towards the queen to then introduce themselves.

Mirellia had already told Daimon about the hierarchy in the Meliun kingdom, for the Lamia race, besides the royal family which has never changed, there are three major noble families with their respective representatives who hold the title of Duchesses.

The three major families consist of, the Gramy family from which Nea comes, their representative is an old woman with light green hair who resembled Nea quite a bit, the Zullie family whose representative is a young-looking slender woman with short brown hair and lastly, the Allmere family whose representative is a dark blue haired woman in her thirties.

They represented all the other nobles of the Meliun kingdom, not only due to their high status as they descend from the Lamias who worked with the first ancestor, but because all the other noble families are somewhat related to them, as the queen stated, Lamias can produce offspring just by using blood, it can be their own or from other Lamias, the three major families had shared their blood with other outstanding Lamias and that's how most of the noble families were born.

After them, it was the turn for the Naga kings and queen, the Nascenti family represented by the duke of which Daimon had already heard about before, was the first one, a man with gray hair and dark green eyes, the Nascenti family was in a unique situation as their previous king died in battle, so his uncle the duke Nascenti took control of the clan as a temporary regent while the daughter of the previous king grows enough to inherit the throne.

Then we have the Valiun family, whose king is a bearded bulky man with black hair and brown eyes, then we have the Yillian family, the third king was a middle-aged man with red hair and eyes of a similar color.

And lastly the Mein family, represented by the sole female Naga queen, she had honey blond hair and dark brown eyes, she also had the less noble families sitting behind of her, and unlike the other three kings and their subordinates who shared quite similar characteristics like hair color, eye color and skin tone, the ones behind the Mein Naga queen looked rather diverse, different hair colors and even some scales of different colors.

'Despite claiming they seek to produce a stronger race by uniting with the Lamia race, they aren't really welcoming of the mixed results but want those whose Naga lineage end up in the dominant side, so their objective is something else', concluded Daimon, just by observing how "poor" the Grym Queen's entourage looked when compared with the three kings.

Besides that, another thing that was painfully obvious was the hateful gazes on the eyes of practically all the male heirs of the noble Naga families towards Daimon, the same applied from the few male hybrid Lamia and Naga guys mixed within the Lamia nobility but that was to be expected, since the rumors would mean that their dreamed lovers, in other words the Lamia princesses were being taken away by an outsider.

Also, it didn't escape his eyes, that the adult Naga nobles were paying special attention to the queen's legs, contrary to what one would expect there was actually… discomfort behind their eyes, as for the kings they were more skilled to conceal their inner thoughts, but they still couldn't hide the interest they had in Mirellia.

Leaving that aside after the greetings that also served as introductions, the nobles remained silent hoping for Mirellia to start the conversation, unfortunately for them, the queen elegantly sat on her throne with a soft smile on her face.

This continued for almost a whole minute until the young heirs of the noble families, couldn't stand the sight of Ferris stealing some gazes at the silver haired masked young man sitting next to her.

The nobles felt the pleading gazes of their young generations and finally decided to bite the bullet, starting from the one who made the most noise due to the rumors that made all the major nobles ask for a meeting with the queen, Duke Nascenti.

"First of all, I thank her Majesty the Lamia queen on behalf of the Naga race for opening a space in her busy agenda…", the Duke took a second before continuing.

"Originally, what made my Nascenti family seek an audience with the Lamia royalty were some untasteful rumors that came to me through the mouths of the servants, stating something about a marriage that would completely disregard our kingdom's traditions, however, there is something that caught my attention and that is the fact that a slave of one of our enemies is standing there, behind our newest guest", he said.

Though Duke's words were rather elegant and his voice didn't have the slightest tinge of disrespect, the message he conveyed was incredibly rude, specially because in terms of position he wasn't an equal to Mirellia, the authority that the kings and queen of the Naga race held in the kingdom, was around a fourth part of that of Mirellia's, in other words the four of them had to agree to something in unison for it to be on par with the Lamia queen's orders, and that rarely if ever happened.

Unfortunately for the Duke, the one to answer him wasn't the Lamia queen but Daimon himself.

"Slave you say, Zia is my subordinate which means her status is higher than yours, old man, so be careful with your words"

"…", a sepulchral silence fell in the room, the Nascenti Duke's eyebrow twitched in anger, but he managed to remain calm to then say.

"And why would that be the case, young man?".

"Well, you don't even own a single planet, while I on the other hand have a collection of a hundred habitable planets, the valuable information that Zia has provided me after becoming my subordinate, it's enough to reward her with the management rights of one of my planets", answered Daimon, his role was to play as a noble "young master".

That being said, he does have ownership over quite a few unexplored planets, he is the young master of both the Revy and Argent families after all, so it wasn't a lie.

Naturally such a declaration took the nobles by surprise, their whole races have been disputing the reign of Draim with two other forces for a long time, and here was a member of the young generation casually speaking about bestowing a whole planet to his subordinate as if it was nothing, the reactions varied, some saw opportunities, other saw red flags and others simply saw red, the young males specially.

"Ahem, those are some grand words, but the premise behind of them lacks credibility, we have tried to get the slaves of those two to change to our side or simply to tear the information away from their brains before they turn into corpses, for hundreds of years to no avail and here you are affirming to have not only gotten said information but also the loyalty of one of them, pardon me if I'm skeptic about it".

Daimon smirked in response to then say.

"That can be easily solved, I have magic technology that you can't even begin to imagine, if you don't believe it, I'll offer you a magic contract that will render all your previous loyalties null and force you into submission, what do you say?".

A lot of the nobles took a deep breath of cold air, if such a thing existed, wouldn't a lot of their secrets be at risk of being exposed, luckily for them Daimon's next words made them relax, well everyone but the Nascenti Duke to whom said words were directed.

"Of course, such a powerful contract is extremely rare and also has quite a few restrictions, that alone makes Zia have a higher status than yours, since I deemed her worthy of one".

The young man next to the Duke finally couldn't keep it together, a loud sound echoed through the room as he smacked his fist on the table in front of him.

"Enough, how dare you look down on one of the founding families of the Naga race, your Majesty pardon my interruption, a mere crude Lord rank isn't worthy of being with the princesses, please allow me Tiff Nascenti to fight for the honor of the Meliun kingdom!", he exclaimed.

Such brave words, invigorated the other hot blooded young nobles who were of course dissatisfied by the rumors and soon different voices, from different nobles of both races could be heard throughout the room.

"Alden Allmere requests a duel on the name of the Allmere noble family!".

"Zack Zullie…".

"Fern Valiun…".

"Gerard Yillian…".

The adult nobles related to the young guys who were all declaring the right to fight for the honor of their families, hesitated to stop them, certainly it was disrespectful to raise their voice in the presence of the queen, but at the same time they also felt that the silver haired masked youth was too arrogant, even if he had the capital to be like that, he should have thought about their faces as well, that is a golden rule among nobility.

It's worth mentioning that no one related to the Gramy and Mein representatives, said anything, the first made sense since the closest person to the queen outside of her family, in other words Nea, came from the Gramy family, they were loyal followers of the queen, but the Mein Naga queen and her subordinated nobles not speaking was a bit weird.

At least for others, Daimon perfectly understood why they behaved unlike others, because Karaam, the captain of the border guards was sitting near the Mein Naga queen, meaning he was part of her followers, so he probably informed her fellow nobles of the dangerous silver haired masked youth that arrived at the Meliun kingdom.

And his precautions paid off the next second, when black shadow hands holding a plethora of different magic weapons, appeared out of the bodies of all the ones who were declaring their intentions to fight, pointing said weapons at their necks.

All the guards who were supposed to protect the now endangered members of the young generation, immediately stood up but didn't dare to act out of fear of causing a tragedy, while the parents and relatives of the hostages gazed at the origin of this phenomenon.

"What is the meaning of this!", they exclaimed in unison, only for a mellow but cold as ice voice to answer them from all directions.

"They are showing clear hostility towards my young master, so they must die", Rita's voice was deprived of malice, as if it was meant to be this way.

Naturally the fact that someone had slipped through their mana sense, instincts and the arrays of the room, combined with such words, made the atmosphere tense up on the spot, at least until Daimon casually said.

"It's fine, I'll let it slide this time".

"Mm, understood young master", answered Rita, the shadow hands absorbed the weapons into them and then they disappeared.

"I apologize for that, since I came to support Empress Thea, of course I brought some help, you just met my head maid who was tasked with guarding my back, don't take it against her, after all the punishment for threatening me would normally be immediate execution", he added.

Such terrifying words made more than half of the ones who were raising their voices, break in cold sweat, their lives nearly ended just because they were perceived as a "threat", not even the haughtiest and mightiest nobles of the kingdom had such authority, as twisted as it might sound, this made their image of Daimon go up quite a few notches.

Duke Nascenti who had lost the initiative and was furious that his son was the only one with more than one weapon pointed at his neck, cleared his throat in a try to keep his cool, even he couldn't react on time earlier, so that "maid" must be at least as strong as him, the problem is that if one was hidden, what assured him that there weren't more, so he decided to give his son the chance he wanted.

"Ahem, at the Meliun kingdom fighting doesn't necessarily mean engaging in battle, we take pride in our advanced rune techniques, among which we developed the "Bloodline Coliseum Array", which is what we use to determine who is outstanding enough to be granted a high position, since you want to court the princesses of our Meliun kingdom, you must also follow the tradition, in other words you have to proof that your compatibility with the Lamia race surpass ours", he said.

Daimon raised an eyebrow on the outside, but he already knew that the nobles would rely on the "traditions" to drag things over, in the past one of the many queens agreed to the petition of a Naga king, basically if the members of the Lamia royal family were to ever consider having offspring the good old way, the first ones to be considered should be the Naga race.

That being said, this tradition was just a verbal agreement not a law or anything, but in this situation, not abiding by it would cause troubles for Mirellia, so she asked Daimon to play along, in any case it aligned with the result that they needed to put execute their plan.

Still, that didn't mean that Ferris who hated being treated like a trophy, couldn't speak on her own behalf.

"That is a mere verbal agreement from a long time ago, we are free to choose who to relate with and both my sister and me have rejected each and every one of the ones that want to fight "in our honor", if I wish so, I'll marry Gabriel and there is nothing anyone of you can do about it, I am the future queen of the Lamia race after all".

That was the signal, Daimon smiled and then got up from his seat while placing his hand on top of Ferris's shoulder.

"Since miss Ferris finds this "tradition" untasteful, let's make it like this, I'll play along but this will be the first and last time I hear anything about this thing, also I don't want to lose my time, so all the ones who want to participate, take a step ahead, I'll deal with all of you at once".

The confidence in his words was absolute, so much that the older nobles frowned, after witnessing how their young generation was taken hostage without them being able to do anything, they grew wary of the new guest that the queen brought.

Of course, after being rejected by Ferris and also looked down upon by Daimon, Tiff and the others were raring to go, they bowed towards their elders asking for their blessing to fight.

"Fine, from the Naga race, the four kings will provide their blood", said Duke Nascenti, the other two kings nodded and the Naga queen sighed but she still agreed, no one from her side will fight, but she had to comply with this request.

"From the Lamia race, I will provide my blood", added Mirellia, very much to the surprise of others, normally for these events one of three Duchesses would take this role, the queen has never done it, since the blood of the royal family is considered a treasure.

The five blood donors made a slight cut on their fingers and extracted a sole drop of their blood, with a few gestures a red rune circle appeared on the ground, the thing blinked until the five drops of blood fell on it making it stable.

Then a total of ten contenders jumped into the blood circle, before Daimon did the same, this array had a simple function, seal every force besides the bloodlines related to the ones selected by the casters of the array, the participants will then fight using only said bloodlines.

Tiff saw Daimon landing on the ground a few meters away from him and his eyes saw red, he has been courting both princesses for a couple of years and was harshly rejected every time, and here some random guy who appeared out of nowhere seemed to have won them over.

'So, what if you have a high status outside, here in Draim we the Naga race call the shots!', he inwardly screamed as he stimulated his Naga blood, making a few dark gray scales appear on his arms and legs, they shone for a moment producing a forty-meter image of a humanoid scaled creature of some kind.

"Oh, not bad, young master Tiff's lineage projection has grown to over thirty meters, even princess Ferris who is considered the most talented knight of her generation is around fifty meters", said one of the nobles subordinated to the Nascenti family.

The other contenders followed through, their lineages produced similar illusions thanks to the support of the array, but the largest was Tiff's one.

"If you don't manage to create your lineage projection in the next minute, it will be our victory…", Tiff's sentence was stopped in cold by a single word from Daimon.

"Kneel", what followed is a spectacle that will be forever engraved in the hearts of the present nobles, well, the ones who will survive to this day's events.

Though illusionary, black inked water poured out of Daimon's body until a giant wave above two hundred meters raised behind him, from within the black nightmarish wave a pair of yellow sun-like eyes shone, next the sound of glass shattering followed by screams, echoed through the room.

"Crack!".

"Aghhhhhh!"

The projections of the contenders exploded on the spot and their respective owners vomited blood and fell to the ground in pain.

"Impossible!", the backers of the contenders screamed in unison as they rushed towards their young generation to confirm their status, all of them but Duke Nascenti whose son was still conscious but half kneeled on the ground.

The burden of Daimon's lineage projection was shared among the ten contenders, who had in average a projection of twenty meters, so Tiff received less pressure compared to others, that being said, the veins on his whole body were bulging due to the humiliation, he a prince of the Naga race obeyed the order to kneel in front of an outsider, whose realm is lower than his!

"Go to hell!", he shouted as he rolled out of the circle which allowed him to regain his middle stage Archmage realm.

In his anger, he forgot that earlier he was handled like a toy by Rita, but Duke Nascenti didn't, which is why he jumped into the action to interfere.

"Stop Tiff, the one in the shadows, hold your hand!", he screamed, but he was a step too late.

"Aghhhh!", Tiff's miserable scream drew the attention of all the presents, his arms and legs were twisted in a strange angle making him fall to the ground, to then be restrained by dark chains, before he could continue screaming his tongue was teared off as well, finally forcing him to faint.

Duke Nascenti trembled from anger, but before he could speak, Mirellia's voice acted like a bucket of cold water being poured on him.

"Attacking the other party in the array is punishable with death, young master Gabriel has graciously spared your son's life, don't you have anything to say Duke Nascenti?".

"T…Thanks young master Gabriel", said the Duke while gritting his teeth, the queen nodded and then said.

"Well, now that you have witnesses such a crushing victory, I'll make my official declaration over your doubts regarding those rumors, they are fake", such words brought hope to the heats of all the young make nobles present, only for that to be utterly crushed the next second.

"The one marrying our dear guest in the present, will be me, as for my daughters they will be engaged for the time being".