Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System
chapter-371

Daimon who was lost in his thoughts for a moment, woke up from his daze as he heard djinn which was possessing the corpse of he female assassin scream, with a pained voice.

"Ahhh!", the corpse which was still on fire started rolling on the ground, which made Daimon frown.

"It hasn't even been a minute, what the hell is going on", he mumbled, but then his pupils narrowed, the fire was overpowered by an eerie and repulsive looking black mist.

Daimon snorted, his body immediately exploded in white flames, that flooded the whole area, that was enough to extinguish the black mist since it had barely started spreading, but surprisingly the body didn't disappear along with it.

Instead, it started swelling, and it was then when Rita and Horals immediately interrupted.

"Shadow Heart Puppeteer, Cursed Doll House", with Rita's command, the miniature castle appeared and sucked in the corpse of the female assassin, the then jumped into Daimon's shadow and a shadow dome covered him.

But that wasn't the end, Horals also stepped in, he clapped and then yelled.

"Bone Manipulation, Skeletal Crush!", then one of the fingers of the one general separated from his hand, and became a flash of green light that clashed against the black miniature castle.

"Booom!", upon contact all the battle aura and vitality contained in Horals's bone, who was basically eight Arch ranks in one exploded at once, he was controlling it, since it was a part of his body that he self-destructed, so the explosion didn't expand, and instead concentrated in a small spot around the miniature black castle, erasing it from existence, along with a portion of the floor.

The explosion didn't last that long though, in a matter of seconds everything was finished, and Daimon didn't interrupt them, because although Dalton was as dead as one can be, following his orders, he still send him a report of what he could discover.

Such was the might of the terror contract, against wishes, survival instincts or even the probably horrible pain the djinn experienced, he had to follow Daimon's orders, and compiled the information he could until he met his limit and send it to him through the link they had thanks to the contract, not even a fraction of a second later Daimon stopped feeling said contract, meaning the djinn was dead.

Horals, then waved his hand and a current of wind was created due to his physical strength, dispersing the dust, so that it didn't bother his young master, he even snapped his fingers and a metal throne raised from the ground.

"Young master, please", said the bone general, Rita softly snorted from Daimon's shadow, the black dome integrating into the shadow and she came out of it.

Daimon nodded and walked towards the throne before he sat on it, Horals remained kneeled down in front of Daimon, while Rita stood at his side like a proper maid, despite their differences they knew how to act as soon as they perceived a threat.

"Let's see what did our friend Dalton discovered, to think you would interfere despite that woman being undead", mumbled Daimon as he went through the last message sent by the djinn.

Daimon frowned, the message was pretty chaotic, not because of how Dalton felt, but the memories which were quite blur to begin with.

Back at earth the existence of souls was uncertain, some said they existed, others denied it, but in truth both theories were mere speculations, no one had the means to confirm or deny it with full trust.

But in this world were magic existed, the soul was a certainty, though not much was known about it, at the very least its existence was confirmed, surprisingly it was thanks to necromancy that the base of many religion beliefs were proved right, as the artificial undead were different than the naturally born undead due to that.

In the world of magic, a soul wasn't something that was given by a god or something along the lines of it, for them it was an accumulation of knowledge, experiences and time, of which living beings are capable of, it could also be considered the origin of one's personality, and supposedly it also took a form in the body.

Just as a magic core was the form of mana, and a life spark was the form of battle aura, the soul was supposedly the form that one's ego took, and along with the life spark disappeared when one died, since the life spark was related to it in a sense too.

Or at least that was the currently most accepted hypothesis, anyway, the fact that a soul was missing from a body, didn't mean everything was lost, memories also lived in certain parts of the brain, such was magic a mix between fantasy and science.

Though for the people of this world, they put too much focus into the fantasy part, that's why guys like the Greenwich Sage who thought out of the box were bound to make history, as the say goes, a one-eyed man is king in a land of the blind.

Anyway, while others had no way to retrieve the information in the brain, despite knowing it would stay there for a short period of time, necromancers do have a way, which is using their methods to turn the corpse into an artificial undead.

Unfortunately the process takes too long, so 95% of the times they got nothing but an empty shell out of it, but the remaining and really scarce successes, ended in an undead with "memories", not personality, but more like reflects or muscle memory, as well as other basic patterns, but again one of those could easily overpower other undead in the same level and offer resistance against those stronger than them, which only followed orders.

Rita and Horals originals "races" were among those special artificial undead, a bone general who has the ability to command weaker undead since it was created using the corpse of someone who excelled in that aspect when it was alive, and a bone sorcerer who knows what spells to cast to better support her master, due to the research she did when alive, those were the basic requirements for the corpses used to make them.

What Daimon tried was different though, the djinns were ethereal beings, who could replace the soul of the former owner of the body, if the dead was fresh then they would literally take possession of everything the previous owner knew, of the killing method was a normal one.

But given the amount of danger Rita felt, she didn't only crush the body of the female assassin when she killed it, but she even attacked her soul, her affinity is darkness and darkness has the greatest capacity to affect ethereal beings and the mind, that's why Yvonne could torture stronger enemies than her to death.

Though Rita focuses more on control, she has that capacity too or she wouldn't be able to live in Daimon's shadow, or to bring Horals into a shadow as well, she could affect ethereal objects either in a positive or negative way, for Daimon it was the next step after illusions, the capacity to affect what is behind the mind, which is the soul.

After a couple of minutes of processing what he could understand and reviewing the message a lot of times, Daimon sighed, but then he triumphantly smiled.

"I win this one, you scheming bastard", he mumbled.

From the information he got, he could confirm a few suspicions he had, first Rita was right to directly not only kill but crush the soul of the female assassin, she had a trap hidden in her, so that at the moment of her death, she would not only self-destruct but blow away her soul and body, as to not leave any evidence.

But that wasn't all, she had a trigger to send a message to probably the guy who set the trap, and the condition was pretty interesting, "Someone similar to the hero", similar in what sense you might ask, a system user.

Though it wasn't described with that name, Daimon could deduct that a "God's favorite" was how the people from the ancient Neptune described a system user, it was the fantasy part of this magic world doing it again, though it made sense, since to be honest the things a system could do were outrageous, like bringing someone back to life for example.

The trap would activate if he was a system user, probably taking into account a few things that Daimon had in common with the hero, like the Black Armored Shark lineage, or other characteristics that the one behind the assassination try knew, in any case he could confirm that the hero was a system user, but the one behind this particular attack wasn't.

"That venerable ancestor from the White has entered the list again, the book that was taken away from the queen's father studio, it should contain something about that time, something only the queen's mother could read".

"That could explain why the king wants to bring Annete to his side so much… well since he is an idiot, he is probably just attracted to her, but the old monster probably motivated him when he was younger, since he wants her to read the book for him, hoping it can extend his life or lead him to the advance that has been avoiding him, or something like that".

"He probably knows it, but he is also being used by those creatures whatever they are, probably they descend or served an enemy of the hero, or something like that and now are making their move", concluded Daimon, according to Dalton's message, the bandaged guy went into the royal castle, using a spatial array of some kind, that was the last piece of information he could get from the maid.

And it was only there because she accompanied him, how did they slip away from Brandon, it happened the night before when she went to the "bathroom", she disappeared and then returned in less than ten minutes through that array.

Dalton described a route to follow all the way to a hidden door, but what laid there was missing, either the maid's memory was erased through some spell or that part disappeared along with her soul.

In any case this meant one of the players behind the shadows was practically confirmed, and the best part is that supposedly that same ancestor will be present in the banquet of the royal family that will take place after the three-art tournament, and in an even better luck strike, the old bastard was sleeping so the one in charge was the creature, which wasn't a servant but more of a collaborator, so he didn't know about its death.

'I need to do some preparations, let's see what you are hiding, White royal family', thought Daimon.

…

With this the experiments were over for today, Daimon was honestly a bit frustrated, but luckily the old ancestor wasn't as tricky as the guy behind the pirates and Skelefiends, probably because his time was ending and had to rush due to that, while the other didn't.

The girls then returned into the room, they were all a bit untidied, a result of what they were doing while waiting, even Marlene was like that, the only one who was perfectly tidied was Thea.

Luckily the room Daimon was using was soundproof and was reinforced so they didn't heard the loud explosion or the screams from earlier, still Daimon explained to them what he learned, obviously making some adjustments to the story.

But they got the gist of it, basically, the ancestor of the White royal family was sure to have done a deal with that strange creature that was replacing the shadow of the Blackfin family, and that he probably wanted what was written in the book Mellie and Annete's mother read, unfortunately that discarded the old guy as the one responsible of their death, but since it was in their father's studio, and was of interest for such a strong guy, then their father was going to have to answer some questions, one way or another.

Daimon also ordered Horals to split itself and Rita to send a piece of him to the shadow of all the girls, this time he told them beforehand, the head stayed in Aisha's shadow of course, he did it because the other party had a way to get to system users, using some sort of curse or other weird magic.

But Rita and Horals could detect it and stop it from activating, as for Thea and the other adults they didn't need his protection, as they were strong enough to counter it head on, the spell was clearly aimed at people from the young generation.

Speaking of them, they surprisingly returned earlier than what the Trident Marshal and judging by their expressions, what happened in the meeting wasn't up to their liking.

"Kid, the tournament's date was moved, that Minister bastard suddenly decided to change it to tomorrow, since many nobles simply weren't happy with the result of my best hunt event, so they asked him to, or that's the excuse he used, but since Triten was smiling from ear to ear, it's safe to assume the crowned prince made some kind of advance, be careful", said Vincent.

Daimon nodded in response.

"Don't worry, I need to access the treasury, so I'll win".

The Black Empress laughed with an approbatory expression on her face.

"The more you crush that idiot king's pride, the more this Empress will reward you", she said.

They then went to the dining room to have a meal together, in which Daimon took advantage of the moment to tell them what he discovered, Vincent and the queen immediately accepted Daimon's reasoning, since both had their suspicions from the very beginning.

Annete and Mellie were especially thankful, that Daimon got a new hint regarding their mother's death, even if they didn't get the responsible, they had an idea on who to interrogate to learn the truth.

If you can't directly defeat the big boss, the correct way to proceed is to aim for their lackeys.

'Those two idiots are going to have a rough time soon', thought Daimon, seeing that both Annete and the Valas Duchess now had cold dead serious expressions on their pretty faces, the king should have more information that they could use to solve the puzzle and since he is the weakest link, he has become the next target along with the Blackfin Duke.