Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System

Surprisingly the one to break the silent atmosphere was Ereth.

"I understand why Freya wants to kill us and since there is now a connection between you and her, why this fight is taking place, but why did you change from that angel girl to her, sure as an administrator she was lower in rank but you can’t keep Freya with you, her system is a female-exclusive one after all?", he asked, only for Daimon to answer.

"You managed to sort things out without an administrator for some time, so why shouldn’t I be able to, besides if we are going to be making questions, I’m more interested in why did you go against those two, hero and princesses pair up quite well if you ask me", he said referring to Freya’s users.

Those two were the downfall of Ereth, and being logical he had no real reason to turn against them, as a hero his mission should have been oriented to get those two to support him rather than killing them, such was the case of Adam’s opportunity which Daimon stole, while the opposite applied to Marcus’s one.

In Daimon’s case, the whole "conquering" aspect of the hero’s opportunity was completely eliminated, in fact he didn’t even have to play hero for the hidden gems and legacies, what counted for his mission was truly "helping" them, maybe not in the way they wanted it but they way they needed it, as it was seen with Jasmine, who at the start was confused by the fact that Daimon ignored her past having saved her life, unlike Adam who was all over her trying to earn her favor.

But that is because Daimon’s system is different, his missions adapt to his wishes, that’s also why the opportunity from Marcus went from killing or ruining the hidden gems and legacies on that side, to helping as well because none of them deserved that.

"Nice try "strategist", but I’m not giving you any hints to uncover what my concept is", said Ereth, he had deduced that the one who got the idea on how turn the tables on them earlier was the masked silver haired youth in front of him.

"Is that so, but I don’t think it’s something as deep as you make it sound anyway, considering the type of trash you are, it was probably because you don’t consider allies as your own power and getting rid of them would have made you directly stronger or something along the lines of it, some heroes power up when their "close ones" die after all", said Daimon.

"Heh, so you are the type that thinks he knows everything about others, not to mention that you probably benefited from letting Freya devour that angel but now you call me things like "trash" what hypocrisy, quite a low-level hero-like trait", said Ereth to which Daimon smirked behind his mask.

"Your priorities do align with my theory quite well though", he said making Ereth frown.

...

Far from the area where Daimon was in a mental clash with Ereth, towards the west to be more accurate, Sera and Laila who were moving alongside the average ten subordinates from Ereth and Karla as well as the remaining four seconds in command, suddenly saw "Ereths" appear above them wielding tridents which were aimed to their heads.

"He is too fast!", said the girl from the church of light.

’Tsk, I won’t make it in time’, thought Laila who was in charge of spatial awareness due to her darkness related energy, like previously stated they were currently too weak to stand against someone that clearly surpassed Marcus’s level, still this ambush didn’t spell death for them, but those tridents were going to at least disable one of their arms.

"Clang!", if they got to them that is, because at the last second, those two shone in a white-silvery light which then changed to two different colors as two figures similar in shape appeared in front of them, one bright green wielding a shield while the other was copper colored and had gauntlets on his arms with which they blocked the incoming tridents.

Those were energy condensations created by Daimon with Tessa and Femi’s energies, unlike the one he made with Dana’s one, these two were defensive type though.

"See, your priority wasn’t to cover those guys but to attack my teammates", said the bright green energy Daimon, to which the metallic copper one added.

"And that’s why I don’t feel like a hypocrite when I call you trash".

"Gregor, Samuel, Brandon, Daniel, failure isn’t an option, kill these two for me", said both Ereths as they disappeared without releasing any energy sign just like before.

"The nuisance is gone now", said the bright green energy Daimon.

"Enjoy your fight", added the metallic copper energy Daimon as they both dissipated into light particles that then returned to their original white-silver color and rained upon Sera and Laila.

’I didn’t know he could do that at distance, how cool!’, thought Sera as she saw the silver energy cover her body for a second.

’What a monstrous energy manipulation ability, he transformed that silver energy into two different types of energy, condensed them, casted a technique on each and controlled them in parallel’, thought Laila.

Like Daimon stated, with just the powers he obtained through his fight with Marcus, it wouldn’t be enough to defeat Ereth, unfortunately he couldn’t get new energies nor obtain techniques for his own one without someone to fight because that’s how his challenge worked apparently, so he put all his focus in control and this was the result of it.

After all, raw strength is not everything that counts in a fight, knowing how to use one’s strength can allow the weak to defeat the strong.

"So that’s why you bastards were following us without causing trouble, and here I was thinking that you were simply acting by the cliché of not going all out because you think the opponent is weaker than you", said Laila to Ereth’s subordinates.

"That’s a hero side effect though, it might be my bias after getting to know "Gabriel" but I doubt they will show hero defects considering the kind of guy they serve", added Sera.

If anything, the fact that not attacking them while they moved to a proper area to have their fight, was not because of a cliché like the one mentioned by Laila, but because of Ereth’s plan to aim for the weakest among the enemy’s side after having confidently assigned opponents and also staying behind, reinforced the warning Daimon gave to those two "The enemies we’ll face are fundamentally different than Adam and Marcus".

And as a further proof of the previous, the four seconds in command and the ten normal subordinates didn’t split up in teams of two and five respectively to target Sera and Laila separately, but remained together and moved as a whole.

"Black Sea Current Step", what’s more a dynamic that Sera and Laila didn’t expect was put in display, just a few of them used movement spells but the thing activated for the whole group, so the fourteen enemies had their legs clad in black water mana as they flashed to then appear close to those two the next second.

"Black Sea Torrent", the same repeated but this time with an attack type spell, a few among the enemy group casted the spell but it activated for all of them.

"White Piercing Step", the first one to react was Sera, her white light energy gathered on her legs and both turned her into a flash of light while she released white energy spikes towards the enemies.

"Booom!", of course a single technique against fourteen spells would not be able to counter them, especially when Sera and Laila are around the level of strength of a single second in command each, however her technique did slow down the incoming spells.

"Black Veil Step", and this is where Laila entered the scene, her whole body "dissipated" in black energy particles to then appear next to where Sera had appeared a second ago, which made the enemies adjust the trajectory of their spells.

Only for the fourteen black water mana currents to pass trough "Sera" and "Laila" making their bodies undulate before they disappeared, which took the four seconds in command by surprise.

"You guys aren’t the only ones that know how to coordinate", said Laila as she became visible.

"Lifelong "enemies" that have known each other since they were children can fight side to side as well as lifelong allies with a bit of communication~", added Sera.

It wasn’t only the fact that they actually synchronized pretty well but their energies were quite interesting too, Sera’s light energy contrary to the "good" she has been exposed to, was upfront and fierce, instead of approaching with a fake gentle façade to then reveal its true colors behind of scenes, it expressed its intention towards its target quite clearly.

Now, you might consider the previous a weakness after all it would make it hard for Sera to do things like ambushes which diminished her efficient range in terms of battle, however this "clearness" wasn’t without a reason.

In exchange for the lack of surprise factor, Sera’s energy was insanely strong in frontal clashes, don’t forget that with a secondary effect from a technique that’s not even an attack type one, she managed to slow down fourteen attack type spells head on, four of which were from enemies at the same level as her, in other words the seconds in command.

Then you have Laila, her darkness energy unlike the "evil" to which she was exposed which was supposed to work behind the scenes but was too unrestrained to do so and instead started fires all over the place, she smoothly diverted the attention from her real goals, which ended with the enemies wasting their efforts.

One would believe that Ereth’s subordinates would be harder to trick and that is actually the case, but Laila’s energy while low in attack power, in exchange excels at support and especially at sensory interference, with a secondary effect of her movement spell, she tricked the perception of those fourteen guys even if it was only for a moment, enough to create an illusion resulting in them changing the trajectory of their attack towards an empty space.

Amusingly enough, those two basically exchanged roles, Sera is a support-attack type mage in that specific order as she has healing and purifying capacities while being hard to alter or lose control of herself due to the Radiant Will lineage she was given by the church of light, she was meant to heighten the existence of Adam after all, not to eclipse him in any mean.

Laila on the other hand is a full attack type mage, she was meant to be a subordinate of Marcus, the one to plan was supposed to be him, she only needed power to execute her orders and that was it.

But their energies completely went against the roles that were assigned to them since birth, at the same time these limitations are rather noticeable now because they just started their challenges, once they had progressed enough to turn their "weaknesses" which are also areas of opportunity into strengths, their original strong points will converge as well, that’s how things work for those that take on the challenges.

’Is the fact that they are capable of working together as well as us, what made facing them be our challenge?’, wondered those two as they looked at the enemies who once again used their movement spell to flash towards them.

"Black Sea Current", a few of the subordinates casted the attack spell which resulted in black water mana gathering to form multiple streams that travelled towards those two on the spot.

"Black Sea Barrier", however this time the enemy used another tactic, another one of the subordinates casted a spell and fourteen black water barriers surrounded Sera and Laila, cutting their way of retreat, all this while the other spell was still ongoing.

They actually could do multicast alongside that weird ability they had to only need one of them to cast the spell for it to be activated by all of them!

"White Burning Point!", Sera pointed her pretty index finger upwards and white light energy gathered in that direction to then be released in a single instance.

"Crack!", the result was a white sphere which burnt through ten out of the fourteen barriers, still, seeing the enemies still had to go through four more barriers, allowed the seconds in command to secretly let out a sigh of relief as they saw their attacks reach them the next second.

"Booooom!", the high impact black water mana currents converged where Sera and Laila were standing and then exploded engulfing till the last centimeter within the space contained by the barriers.

"This time no matter where they hid, they should have been hit by our attacks, either directly or indirectly", said the second in command called Daniel.

Speaking of which, though their facial features, body shapes and the like were different, both the seconds in command and the normal subordinates all had the exact same deep dark blue hair and eye color, which made them look quite similar in a different sense than they should.

They used to all be a part of the family of the Blackfin duke whose son’s body Ereth took over, so they were relatives, however their hair and eye colors were quite varied, after all they belonged to branches that had married with other families from the Clear Water kingdom, only their personalities had dulled due to whatever Ereth had to them back then.

But now, they seemed quite normal, their eyes weren’t dull and lifeless as before, but they had those similarities previously mentioned, there were less of them but that could be explained by the initial clash between Ereth and Arlion before they reached an agreement.

"Black Sea Cleansing Wave", the second in command called Samuel casted a spell and it was replicated by the other thirteen forming "soft" black water waves which expanded in every direction, getting rid of the barriers and the ongoing energy explosion, the idea was to get a better view of the enemies that should be in a bad state after their previous attacks, but those guys frowned upon not feeling their mana touch anything besides the remains of their own spells.

"Look out!", another of the seconds in command, the one called Brandon shouted as he saw a bright white light coming from the right.

"White Burning Point", like previously stated, Sera’s light energy is bad at acting behind the scenes, so Laila’s illusion was dispelled before it should have been as a side effect of it, allowing that guy to realize they were being attacked too early.

"Black Sea Rotating Shield!", and since the others didn’t need to know where the attack of the enemy was coming from, because the spells they used were replicated by everyone else, one of the normal subordinates casted a black water mana shield and another thirteen appeared at the same time.

"Boooom!", Sera’s technique expanded and burnt through half of the shields with its single instance high output attack power, but it was ultimately stopped by the enemies.

"She is perfectly fine, but how, the barriers weren’t completely destroyed, they should not have been able to escape unscathed, did the darkness user block the attack for her?", said the second in command called Daniel to which the one called Gregor who had remained silent until now answered.

"No, they escaped the barriers we used to isolate them before the attacks reached them, that woman’s darkness... tricked our mana".

He was right, Laila’s darkness energy has an abnormally high perception altering property, she tricked those guy’s mana into believing they were their owners so that they could bypass the barriers and leave undetected.

As to why she didn’t do that from the very beginning and had Sera break through most of the barriers before doing so, that’s easy, like previously stated Laila’s energy has a low attack power, so she couldn’t have done so through all fourteen barriers.

"Are you sure, those talented with illusions usually outstand in the ways to trick other people’s eyes, minds and senses, but that would mean she used her darkness to cast an illusion on themselves and make their energies pass as our mana", said the second in command called Samuel.

"Not to mention that the light user destroyed the four rotating shields we personally casted, had her attack been taken on by the defensive spells of the others, she might have reached us with that", added the second in command called Brandon.

"Lord Ereth already told us that the "energies" granted by this place were strange, but this is a bit too much", concluded the one called Daniel.

On the other end, Laila who became visible next to Sera was also frowning.

’I know it’s a recently obtained energy and that my mastery over the "Black Cloak" technique is superficial but to think they saw through it just after a single instance, Daimon was right, that Ereth guy is nothing at all like Adam or Marcus’, thought the girl from the church of calamity.

"Even the lackeys are not easy to deal with, that’s a new experience for me", said the girl from the church of light as she reached the same conclusion as her friend.

With both parties having tested the waters, the real battle could start, after all, those guys now knew that Sera’s energy was hard to block head on and that Laila’s energy was unpredictable, at the same time those two knew that the enemies could multicast so fourteen spells at the time weren’t their limit.

That being said, let’s not forget that these guys are using mana, so they are not participants of a challenge, therefore they don’t need to follow the rules of the blood prison realm, so long as they can endure the repercussions of doing so.

"All of you, take out your magic weapons", which they did considering that a second later they were all wielding weapons, the exact same ones which to be more accurate were tridents.

"Woah that Ereth guy has quite the ego, even his subordinates all use those giant forks...", mumbled Sera to which Laila added.

"I think it’s more of an unfulfilled caprice, they look exactly the same as the ones with which he was going to attack us earlier".

She was right, the trident of the storm which was now in Daimon’s inventory after the nethereal sisters stopped needing its assistance by the way, used to be Ereth’s promise level treasure.

Maybe it had a deeper value to Ereth than what one would believe, because those mana tridents he used to attack Daimon and those two, looked exactly like the trident of the storm and the magic weapons which were being wielded by his subordinates also looked like it.

It was only in terms of design of course, they weren’t promise level treasures, that being said, unlike with Marcus’s subordinates, all those tridents were... Arch rank magic treasures.