Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System-Chapter 357.1: Preparations for the tournament (part 1)

Not even a minute after Daimon asked the princesses to tell their backers to find emblems, he heard someone knocking on the door… repeatedly.

"Ah, I'm going don't break the door!", Daimon said in a loud voice as the knocking got worse.

As soon as he opened the door he was met with a plethora of gazes on him, Vincent, Annete, the Valas Duchess and even the Black Empress were outside of the door.

"Oi kid, what's with the "bring emblems or the seas will be destroyed" message we just got?", asked Vincent with a dead serious voice.

"Little Jas directly woke up and came to join you not even an hour ago and the world is ending now?", said Aurora.

After falling asleep during the lunch, Jasmine didn't take too much time to recover, when Aurora went to the roof of the mansion, her granddaughter had already woken up and joined Daimon and the others when they were going to their room, she didn't even send Aurora a message and just left a note saying "I'm in Daimon's room", of course she was fuming.

"Yeah, me and sister Ann were having some fun torturi… I mean, interrogating Horrorclaw's wife, when we received such a message from little Mellie", added the duchess.

The queen was also pouting, she had an expression like the one of a child who is told "it's time to go" when having fun in a park.

The Black Empress on the other hand seemed oblivious to the situation, she instead looked at the inside of the room and gave Daimon a knowing gaze when she saw the three sisters and the two princesses as well as Aisha all in the beds, which were placed next to each other, she then nodded in an approving way before saying.

"Oh, so you are kind that looks innocent but is dangerous on the inside, not bad boy, you managed to trick this Empress, here let me offer you a toast…".

Before Thea could finish, she was dragged away by the white snake general Lina, who bowed her head with an apologetic gaze, apparently once Thea had started drinking, she'll stay in that carefree way for the next half day at least.

In fact, she didn't receive a message from anyone, she was just wandering around the halls after escaping from Lina, and felt the waves in the space caused by Vincent transporting himself, the queen and the duchess at the front of Daimon's room, so she casually tore the space with her spear and jumped to where the others were going in such a hurry.

Not without mocking Lina as she escaped from her, so now she was being forcefully dragged to her room to sober up.

Only now Aurora noticed her granddaughter was laying down on the bed next to Daimon's and her eyes saw red, but Vincent placed his hand on her shoulder to restrain her.

'Ahem, do you think little Annete would have allowed little Mellie to join them if the kid had such intentions… honestly I prefer the gentle and demure "mask" you use in public, think, even the array of my family was corrupted but he took care of them, there is no safer place than this room in the mansion'.

Aurora inwardly clicked her tongue, in public she might be called a saint and all that, but the truth is that back at home, she personally gave a beating to the fathers and uncles of the male heirs that tried to court her granddaughter without her knowledge, you could say Jasmine was her reverse scale, for a variety of good reasons.

And she was still wary due to what happened with Adam being fresh in her memory, that being said she wasn't blinded by that, Vincent's logic was perfect, according to the records of her ancestors, anyone who attacked the hero head on was met with a "casualty" that made the attack fail, it was as if he couldn't be directly killed, but had to be set up or ambushed.

Karmandi scratched the back of his head, during her drunk state, his Empress had the bad habit to stir up troubles by mistake.

"Sorry for the trouble, but this seems to be an important situation, so I'll stay in representation of the Empress", he said.

And that's how the current strange situation in which Daimon, the Risha sisters, Aisha and the princesses were sitting on the border of a bed, while the respected Trident Marshal, the matriarch of the Light Palace, the sharp and cunning queen as well as the proper and serious Valas Duchess were sitting on a small couch in front of them, Karmandi preferred to sit down on the floor.

Daimon sighed, he didn't want to have more meetings today, he was literally falling asleep and just wanted to cuddle with Aisha, he turned to see the princesses with an accusatory gaze.

Which the three of them to look away.

"Don't look at me like that, uncle and sister arrived before I sent them the second message explaining more about the current situation", mumbled Mellie.

"Mm", Jasmine and Daphne nodded agreeing with her.

Daimon sighed in response.

"I guess I can't blame them, I'll go straight to the point, in seven days what you have been expecting to happen will start, and to participate we need at least an incomplete emblem, apparently the result of it will decide which sea survives".

"…", as expected, everyone was speechless, Vincent raised an eyebrow at Daimon before saying.

"It's not that I don't trust you, but why didn't you mention such an important thing earlier, we need to start preparing then".

Daimon shrugged.

"I didn't know it, it was this little thing what told me… after eating the Devil Emblem and around sixty millions of sea crystals", he said as he showed Vincent his black Sea Emblem.

Vincent was first shocked about the number of sea crystals Daimon's emblem just ate, second he was now even more convinced that the emblem wasn't a Sea Emblem, or at least it wasn't like the ones he has seen or heard about.

"It ate a Devil Emblem and then gave you an advice or a warning about the future… is that its ability, but then sixty millions of sea crystals, the previous record belonged to the hero's golden Sea Emblem and it was of thirty millions to activate the ability of ordering sea magic beasts with certain limitations", said Vincent as he stroked his long beard.

But then Daimon's next words nearly made him spit blood.

"That's not this guy's ability, apparently it was just inactive due to it being "hungry", I still don't know what it does, but I'm pretty sure it needs a ton more of sea crystals to use it".

Vincent felt his soul leaving his body, he could see his military budget flying away, Aurora was in awe too, emblems have ranks too, the highest ever found belonged to the hero and the other three that arrived with him, and they were middle ranked, so if the black-haired youth in front of her was telling the truth, then… it had to be superior to those.

"This might be just my assumption, but is your emblem perhaps categorized as high ranked?", asked the old woman with a serious voice.

Daimon casually nodded.

"Yes, that seems to be the case, maybe that's why it requires so much sea crystals, just to wake up".

Vincent felt a headache coming his way, while the way Aurora saw Daimon changed a bit, middle ranked emblems weren't just lifeless tools, they had a certain amount of "consciousness", in the form that they didn't work with anyone, but chose their bearers, she knows this herself, because her husband the shaman of the Elemental Sea has one and he nearly died just to be chosen to bear the emblem, but if Daimon has an ever higher ranked one, then what kind of impossible hellish trial did he have to go through, she wondered.

"Okay, so how many emblems do you need, I have some in my collection, I'm pretty sure Aurora has at least three and little Annete has two, so that would be, eight of them", said the Trident Marshal.

Daimon rose two of his fingers, which made Vincent let out a sigh of relief thinking Daimon only needed two, until he heard Daimon saying.

"Twenty, the raid party I'm allowed to have, is of twenty people, so I need twenty incomplete emblems".

A sepulchral silence fell on the room, there was an unknown number of emblems in Neptune, but they weren't easy to find, they appeared in dangerous areas or they could just randomly surface.

Honestly for the average person clearing the trial that came with an incomplete emblem was a death sentence, so they were seen as a bad omen by commoners and most of people, with the exception of nobles like Vincent that had an interest in collecting them.

The queen tapped her finger on the armrest of the couch, before her voice filled the room.

"There are some in the royal treasury, they have been offered as tribute and I'm pretty sure they are just accumulating dust, you can just take them all if you win the three art tournament too, I'm sure that idiot will be more than happy to not lose anything from his treasury other than incomplete useless emblems~", Annete's cunning smile made Daimon chuckle.

Vincent also nodded.

"Let's go with that, in any case I'll send my subordinates to look in the black market, little Annete if you can get any intel, I'll be glad to check it out".

Karmandi also added.

"I think the queen once found one of those and threw it into her ring, I'll ask her about it".

Daimon was also reminded of something important thanks to Vincent's words, he hasn't gotten a response from the device he created to track his classmates, probably they weren't using their sigil lectors as they were together, or maybe the territory was too large to be mapped in just a couple of days.

But now he had one of the rulers of the Elemental Sea in front of him.

"I need some help to find my teammates, miss Annete can you please give the information to senior Aurora".

"Mm", the queen nodded, and then all the adults left, but not without Annete and the Valas duchess turning around to look at their sister and daughter respectively and saying.

"You two stay to sleep here, we'll be out of the mansion working", then without letting Daimon say anything they vanished into thin air with Vincent.

Aurora nearly tripped down when she heard that, she could feel her granddaughter's gaze on her back and she ultimately sighed, all were going to stay together and she didn't want Jasmine to feel excluded.

"You too Jasmine, don't leave the group… I'll return tomorrow morning", she said as she became a flash of yellow light.

The girls were happy to spend more time with their newly met friends, Daimon on the other hand just left his body fall backwards on the bed and closed his eyes, his vision was blurring at this point.

"Wake me up for dinner", he managed to say as he fell asleep, Aisha nodded and then accommodated her son who was deeply asleep, before she hopped on the other bed with the other girls.

"So now that he is asleep, shall we have a decent girl's talk", said Aisha with a playful smile on her face.

The sisters blushed a bit, remembering the times they have had such conversations when they bathed at the training facilities of the academy, since those conversations mostly started with Daimon as the focus or somehow ended up talking about him one way or another.

The princesses stared at each other, Daphne and Mellie more or less knew each other, but they didn't spend enough time together to consider themselves friends, Daphne had her maids, but only Chris who was now with her family, was her actual friend.

As for Jasmine, she also only had one real friend, which was the daughter of the patriarch Underwood, so this was a new experience for them.

…

While the girls were giggling and chatting, no one noticed that the emblem in Daimon's pocket was a bit restless, the eyes of the rune shark which was engraved on it, glowed for a couple of seconds before it returned to normal.

Daimon frowned in his sleep, but then he eased and just continued resting.