Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System-Chapter 715: Challenges, Alabaster Horned Dolphin Princess Version (part 2)
"Why are you getting so angry, it’s not like you were actually the number two in Dian’s group even before Claire entered the picture and you should be grateful for it, because if that wasn’t the case, it would have been your head instead of Dian’s younger brother, the one I crushed back then", casually said Lyn, which made the guy inside the two-headed snake to stop his tantrum.
The reason behind him suddenly sobering up is simple, he was reminded of whom he was facing... a monster, Lyn is someone that as Throne candidate can stand on par with confirmed heirs like Ophelia for example, at least in battle terms since heirs do have extra tricks thanks to their status.
"Black Ice Devil Valley!!!", a huge amount of mana poured out of the snake’s body, resulting in the ground trembling as the scenery changed from the jungle to an open rocky zone with black ice peaks placed here and there, in a matter of seconds the enemy had changed the environment to his liking.
"Mmm, I see, so that’s why the energy firm you gave off rivaled that of the peak of the Arch rank even though you clearly are at the middle stage, you actually have two magic cores, not like it matters much, a bigger pile of trash is still a pile of trash after all", casually said Lyn as she landed on one of the many ice peaks, naturally the sky-blue haired girl had dodged any ice and rocks that could have harmed her.
"Shut up you crazy bitch, I specially obtained ice affinity to kill you since I knew that Ophelia was sealed in another place so only you stand in my way to escape this damn place!", shouted Rendon.
"Hsssssss!", a black cold mist started being radiated by the snake as the scales on its body were covered in black ice, which only made Lyn snort with disdain. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
"Humph, so that’s why you froze the whole lake on the spot, if you were that afraid of me you should have said so, I’m not using water as a transmitter right now, I’m participating in the Blood Prison realm’s challenge after all", said Lyn as she jumped from the high ice peak to gracefully land a second later.
In case you don’t get what those two are talking about, it’s actually quite an easy subject, water is a way better transmitter for vibrations than air, to give you a simple example of it, sound and vibrations travel more than four times faster in water than air.
Therefore, when Lyn fought in a place with rich water element mana, like most of the territory of the Northern Sea Stellar Kingdom, even if she would have been in the same weakened state, her attacks would have been more than four times stronger... like previously stated, combat-wise, she is a monster.
And that’s why Rendon immediately froze both the black lake and his own body, sealing up the water and water mana which she could have used to amplify her strength, because the body of living beings also contains a decently large amount of water, and Rendon has seen Lyn making some poor bastards explode from the inside.
Not like it was needed, the "weakness" which Lyn is turning into an opportunity by participating in this place’s challenge is the difference between using her vibrations through air when compared to water, which is also the reason as to why her energy’s ability is is concentrating her power in those blue energy rings which she can shoot and manipulate at will, instead of in her own flesh like usual.
’She doesn’t seem to be lying, back then only when she released her domain, did her mana become easy to see, a lot of us thought she was a damn knight given how she ripped apart other people’s bodies with her bare hands...’, thought Rendon, not like he cared about whether Lyn was playing around of not, he didn’t have the leisure to do the same.
"Don’t be so eager to die, I have some questions to ask you, I knew where Claire was at all times but you disappeared before the final battle...", Lyn’s words were interrupted by the snake’s body exploding in brown mana.
"Black Mountain Nest!", the ground in the vicinity trembled as a giant mountain raised from the ground destroying everything in its way while surrounding the snake as a shield.
Despite what the name of that spell implied, the mountain didn’t have any holes out of which the snake could come out, but the answer to that doubt came a second later when the snake made its way out of one of the faces of the mountain.
Apparently, the enemy could control the black soil to the point that the snake could basically "swim" through it, without causing any noticeable sound nor vibrations, which means that Rendon indeed has been preparing to face against Lyn.
Especially because the head that came out of the ground is not the one from which Lyn felt the presence of that guy, the thing could move the joint from which the second head popped out at will which is not that surprising since it is a blood specter and not a flesh and blood living being.
"Black Ice Spear Rain!", while the earth affinity head was distracting Lyn, the ice affinity one came out of a different area of the mountain with cold black mist gathering on its mouth as it casted a spell.
"Tsk, how annoying", seeing the large amount of black ice spears that were suddenly shoot her way the alabaster dolphin princess clicked her tongue, a blue energy ring the size of an arm appeared behind of her at the height of her upper back to be more accurate as she snapped her fingers.
"Crack!", all the spears in a certain range with Lyn as its center, cracked on the spot to then explode.
"Boooom!", that was both the sound of Lyn destroying the spears that could have hit her and the explosion caused by the remaining spears raining down on the vicinity.
"Don’t tell me that a grown-up bastard like you doesn’t understand that the more you increase the area of your attack, the weaker its concentrated power becomes?", casually said the alabaster dolphin princess as she "shooed" away the cold mist resulting from she destroying all those ice spears.
"No even you aren’t that stupid, ah I see... you thought that lousy wide area attacks like those would work now that I’m manifesting my power in energy form instead of through my "Explosive Echo Physique", what a fool", added Lyn whose eyes were glowing in a pretty sky-blue light.
’Damn it!!!’, inwardly cursed the guy inside the ice affinity snake, the thing with Lyn is that even though she acts like a violent muscle head, she is crazy good at using her brain, she is always analyzing everything at every second, especially when something catches her attention.
Therefore, ambushes and schemes are basically useless against her, something that though Claire failed to understand, Rendon is absolutely aware off.
’The only realistic way to defeat this damn woman is fighting her head on, but then... why is she still so damn strong even when being restricted to act as a participant of that challenge nonsense!’, cursed Rendon to his insides.
The subtle twitches on the snake’s face as well as the obvious hatred in his eyes made Lyn smirk, she could basically read the enemy’s mind as her next words suggested.
"The answer to your doubts is actually quite simple, the fact that I have become "weaker" doesn’t mean you have gotten stronger, in other words even when I’m training in a new aspect of my powers and my realm is lower than yours, you are too trash to close the gap~", she casually said.
And that was the drop that broke the camel’s back, but not for Rendon who already knew how "destructive" Lyn’s words are, but for the other snake head which surprisingly could also talk.
"Why the hell are you exchanging words with this bitch for, let’s fucking kill her already!".
"Black Death Exterminating Range!", with a loud shout the earth affinity snake head casted a spell which for starters didn’t use mana unlike the ice affinity head in which Rendon resided, but nether.
"Crack!", the result was that all the black earth and black ice which Rendon had created so far, cracked on the spot to then... explode.
"Boooom!", the massive release of the mana contained in the rocks and ice, as well as the debris that accompanied the explosion, engulfed everything in the vicinity, since the spells used by Rendon had covered quite a decently large area, the explosion continued for actually a few seconds before it disappeared.
"Hey, Henry, this is my fight so why the hell are you interfering?", said Rendon’s ice affinity snake head, to the earth affinity snake head which apparently did have a name unlike the lioness, albeit one that was given to him by Marcus instead of one he chose by himself though.
"Humph, why are you whining when I helped you kill the enemy you were so afraid of", answered the other snake head to which Rendon said.
"Bullshit, if she was that easy to kill do you think I would have been so wary of her, you simply did what she wanted you to do, you ignorant blood specter bastard".
"Huh, who are you calling ignorant, you the fool who betrayed the ones who won the war!", retorted the other snake head.
Unfortunately, their bickering was stopped by Lyn who came out of the dust cloud that was left after the explosion subsided, completely unscathed.
"How interesting, turns out you are the number two in command even when it comes to your own body", casually said the sky-blue haired girl, which made Rendon grit his teeth.
Still, he forced himself to swallow his anger because he knew that at the slightest slip, Lyn will blast away his head and instead communicated with the other snake head in a way that only they who shared the same body could hear.
’See, what did I tell you, I bet she now knows how the dynamic between our spells works because you rushed things up’, complained Rendon.
’So, what, that panther might have the highest mobility but we are the strongest in terms of attack power among master Marcus’s subordinates, why should I, the strongest unsealed blood specter be afraid of a mere peak Lord ranked enemy!’, retorted the snake.
All the strong middle stage Arch rank blood specters have been corrupted by the Lords, therefore they can’t be out in the open, as for peak Arch rank blood specters, their time to roam the Blood Prison realm has yet to come as well, they can only slip out at night.
So, by all means, this snake which until not too long ago was at the early stage of the Arch rank but had a stronger battle prowess when compared to its realm, considered itself to be the strongest blood specter out there.
’Just listen to me this time around, that monstrous woman is driven by curiosity, she wants to know about our situation so she will first analyze our fighting style, dynamics and the like, we can use that to our benefit...’, Rendon hadn’t finished convincing his other half when Lyn landed a "critical hit" on the snake’s ego.
"The arrogant gaze in that snake doesn’t make sense to me though, in a 1v1 fight that snake would be absolutely destroyed by the "panther" I saw earlier", casually said Lyn.
The calculations which the snake did, were based in the usage of the altar spells, but let alone the snake, even Marcus didn’t know that Reyna had awakened her own altar spell, maybe his administrator realized though, but that ghost-like woman enjoyed messing with Marcus so of course she wasn’t going to give him that information.
"Don’t fall for it, she is trying to provoke you!", shouted Rendon, but the snake’s eyes were bloodshot at this point.
"To hell with that, Black Death, Earth Annihilation Altar!", the earth affinity snake exploded in black-brown nether as a dark brown bone altar raised behind of him.
Interestingly enough, the altar wasn’t exactly like the ones given by Marcus, not only because the snake used nether which means that at some point it was related to the Lords, well, Aslan to be more accurate.
But because in the middle of it was a snake’s head carved in dark brown stone, which somewhat made it look like the first altar used by the lioness, the difference being that she used exclusively devil mana for it.
"Hoh, nether, traces of energy from a blood specter and mana... of some kind", mumbled the sky-blue haired girl.
Amusingly enough, Lyn didn’t try to attack the snake, not because of the invisible barrier that was protecting it, which she knew was there since the very second it came to be, but because this is another one of the aspects that drew her attention about this enemy.
She had detected a mix of different types of energies, different in kind and much more advanced than what Claire did back when they fought, lately she was interested in this subject, because she now knew that people like Daimon who can use both mana and battle aura and of extreme opposite sides of the spectrum, exists.
"The mana feels "foreign" to the host, I guess it’s that guy’s mana, let’s call it devil mana then", concluded Lyn, which made Rendon frown to his insides.
’I purposedly shortened the word "devil" of all the spells I had used, did she hear it from one of the others, or what?’, he thought.
The answer was way simpler than that, Daimon told them the "tittle" given to Marcus’s system, which is Devil Ruler, according to Eve, knowing the name of other people system’s concept won’t influence them even as much as being close to him, so they could receive such information without having to worry.
Which makes sense, the concept of Daimon’s own system hasn’t been revealed to him even, so the difference between those guys and himself is clearly large.
"Death Graveyard Sacrifice!", under Lyn’s interested gaze, countless tombstones with different kinds of snakes engraved on their frontal faces, suddenly emerged from the ground.
There were no names, but one could distinguish the many different kinds of land snake races based on the shapes of the engravings, despite their detailed appearance, they all cracked and then crumbled apart as the snake head carved at the front of the altar opened its mouth, making the tombstones turn into currents of black nether which were absorbed by the altar.
The result was also different than other altars so far, because the snake didn’t fly towards it, nor did the altar release some kind of energy stream to power up the snake, no, the altar itself flew towards the snake, landing on top of its head to then... disassemble into countless bones that extended all over the earth affinity snake’s body.
"Black Death Earth Snake King!", with the earth affinity snake calling out the result of his altar spell, which was armor of some kind, the barrier also disappeared and an invisible pressure spread in every direction.
The ground below Lyn’s feet cracked on the spot, she could feel the air around her tremble for a second, until she casually snapped her fingers.
"Crack!", that was the sound the snake’s nether which has spread in the vicinity, being destroyed by Lyn’s energy.
"Using your manifestation phenomenon as an attack mean, not bad, it’s still nowhere close to the one of a certain someone though", said the sky-blue haired girl.
The earth affinity snake could use the death nether particles he gathered from the atmosphere to pressure his opponents, besides using them to enhance the power of his spells of course, an interesting application which resembled the suppressing power of a domain, while still within the Lord realm trait of a manifestation.
Which certainly is something new for Lyn, however when compared to the multielement, multiuse manifestation Daimon supposedly has, which she has heard from Arianna, this wasn’t enough to surprise her.
"I was wondering why you also looked familiar, you are that earth "worm" which sided with the Lords when they corrupted the native land snake races, right?", said Lyn with a disdaining voice.
Unfortunately, due to Dian’s interference with the intel of the exploration army, they discovered the fact that the Nethereal’s side was corroding the magic beasts native to the place where they were fighting, after the process had already started.
What’s worse is that the Megalodon general had to guard the fort so he couldn’t pay a visit to the leaders among the native magic beasts, so they made their own front to fight off against the invaders.
’Pheli asked time and time for an audience with the leaders of the magic beasts, but her requests were intercepted by that worm-like bastard, which led to them treating us as enemies as well... ultimately resulting in the complete enslaving of the magic beasts by the nethereals since we couldn’t send help to their front and because we had to kill them in battle whether we liked it or not as there was no way to cure them without their cooperation’, thought Lyn.
When it came to people, the nether infection could still be somewhat treated by destroying nether with a strong exposition to mana, of course the one treated then needed rest and further treatment to recover, and for that the patient had to cooperate, but of course magic beasts that hated both the nethereals and the members of the Northern Sea, wouldn’t sit still and let an enemy radiate them with large amounts of mana, which caused so many unnecessary deaths.
This is something that Lyn learned only after everyone was imprisoned, during the time the nethereals tried to jailbreak, she captured a couple of nethereals and interrogated them, it was intel of "low importance" so even those guys who didn’t have high standings within the nethereal army knew about it and that was the most important piece of information she got from them.
In other words, there was a traitor in the magic beast’s side, someone that had decided to willingly side with the Lords, tempted by the power they offered, and the description she got was that of a dark brown snake that had received nether from Aslan.
Said traitor sabotaged every try from Ophelia who as the youngest among those in charge of the army, supervised the "low importance" tasks, to establish contact with the native magic beast’s leaders.
Amusingly enough that was also what lead to the failure of Dian’s ultimate plan to empty the storage and replace Ophelia as someone in command, which would have allowed him to bring the enemy to the inside of the Northern Sea’s camp, because a responsible princess as Ophelia took her failure really seriously, which led to her paying extra attention to every single action from everyone, allies included.
"Worm... go to hell you crazy bitch, Black Death Stalactite Rain!!!", with bloodshot eyes, the bone armored brown snake released a bunch of nether upwards, creating dozens of giant stalactites which then descended from the sky.
Despite how angry the snake was, he obviously didn’t commit the same mistake as Rendon, in other words, the stalactites didn’t spread but instead fell in a close area, it was to the point that they clashed before reaching the ground.
"Booooom!", the force with which the giant stalactites descended was such that upon contact they exploded, releasing a rain of debris in every direction, long story short, a rock disaster fell upon Lyn.
