Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System

With their magic weapons in hand, the fourteen enemies, led by the four seconds in command flashed towards Sera and Laila using their movement spell without chanting it, that being said they did chant to use their attack type spell.

After appearing around those two with their tridents pointed at them, black water mana gathered in front of the trident’s prongs.

"Black Sea Piercing Currents!", and now three piercing thin currents of black water mana per trident were shot at Sera and Laila surrounding them from every direction, besides up and down of course, however don’t forget that those guys can use multicast alongside their weird ability.

"Black Sea Wall", this time they didn’t encase those two but instead blocked their ways of retreat and attacked in every other direction.

"White Bursting Sword!", at the same time as the black water walls blocked up and down, white light energy gathered in front of Sera to form a long sword which she instead of using to slash like one would expect, simply raised upwards.

"Boooom!", all the energy of Sera’s technique was released in a single instance destroying half of the piercing black mana currents with its attack.

"Crack!", as a bonus, the wall blocking upwards cracked as it was hit by the explosion of Sera’s technique and damaged due to it.

"Black Sea Current Step!", at the same time, those guys using the window of time appeared next to those two, in the directions where their attacks had been destroyed to prevent Sera and Laila from escaping their blockade.

This time they didn’t use an attack type spell though, to prevent Laila from slipping through their spells by tricking their mana, they used physical attacks, in other words, they simply thrusted their tridents at her, the spells were aimed at Sera instead.

They actually had managed to created a simple but effective tactic to deal with the strong points shown by those two, after seeing how their energies worked once, nothing like the enemies they had faced before.

"Watch out!", but then just a fraction of a second before both the tridents and the spells were about to reach those two, the first of the seconds in command suddenly shouted to warn his companions.

"Black Sea Rotating Shield!", another of the seconds in command directly used a defensive spell, just in time for the remaining black water mana currents to suddenly turn against their casters.

"Crack!", the spell they had used was a defense breaking one, the range wasn’t wide as their power was concentrated in thin condensed lines, so the currents shot from the trident’s prongs broke through the rotating shields quite easily, it was slowed down due to them though, but had the shields not been there, the attacks would have reached those guys directly.

"Heh, you guys are really not easy to kill", said Laila whose hands were covered in black silk-looking gloves which dissolved into energy particles the next second.

"Are you kidding me, she changed the target of a spell that was already casted?", said the third second in command to which the fourth one added.

"There were some threads connected to those gloves which touched our spells, that was a technique on par with the sword that destroyed half of our attacks, I don’t know how she used such a strong technique without chanting when they are obviously new to those energies though".

Those guys were right, just like Sera used a technique which condensed a sword with really strong attack power as a technique, why a sword you ask, well, that’s the weapon of preference of a hero in her mind, so this technique came to her due to that, it’s worth mentioning that the shape of her technique wasn’t a normal single handed sword, like Adam’s one, but a great sword more similar to Gram, because it’s an "honest" design created for frontal and fierce combat.

As for Laila, her technique was the opposite, very much unlike Marcus’s gauntlets that were obviously created for head on clashing as their metal components and attack power focused design, suggested, her energy formed a silk-like condensation in the form of gloves out of which black threads whose origin couldn’t be pinpointed easily, spread, in other words those techniques gave one time weapon condensations for a "justice’s ally" that fought upfront with bravery and to an "evil mastermind" who properly manipulated things behind the scene.

"It’s kind of unfair that you don’t have to chant due to the nature of your energy, an advantage of a "villain" I guess", mumbled Sera to which Laila shrugged at her friend as she answered.

"Well, your attacks get stupidly stronger if you call out the name of your techniques, quite a hero-like trait, so I will call us even".

"White Piercing Step!", Sera’s legs exploded in white energy which shot spikes at the enemies as she flashed towards them, while Laila’s body "blinked" to then appear in front of them.

"That’s an illusion, don’t pay attention to it!", said the first of the seconds in command at the subordinate who almost casted a spell at the "Laila" in front of him, only to see the illusion smile as it was stabbed by that subordinate with his trident magic weapon instead.

Naturally as that was only an illusion it disappeared when it was attacked, Laila did fulfill her purpose though, because while the first of the seconds on command could somewhat react faster to the illusions she created, he couldn’t tell where she hid unless she revealed herself.

So, her existence behind the scenes, prevented them from using their advantage to the fullest, in other words they couldn’t simply cast attack type spells in barrage as they are used to, because they could be taken over by Laila if they weren’t careful.

"White Bursting Sword!", accompanied by the attacks her movement spell released alongside it, Sera appeared in front of those guys and condensed a white energy sword which she pointed frontwards this time, releasing all its power in a single instance.

"Black Sea Current Step!", using movement spells the enemies flashed to avoid Sera’s technique and the incoming secondary attacks shot at them, or that was the idea at least.

"Black Sea Rotating Shield!", the third of the seconds in command directly casted a defensive spell and it was replicated by everyone else, the reason was that all of Sera’s attacks suddenly took weird angles in order to change their trajectory to reach them.

Like previously stated, Sera’s attacks were really strong but they followed clear patterns, which is why they suddenly changing direction like that took those guys by surprise, but wait things weren’t over with that.

"What!", the third of the seconds in command had his reaction time surpassed by Sera’s attacks which not only accelerated but twisted to dodge the shields created by the seconds in command.

"Crack!", naturally the shields made by the subordinates were weaker so they weren’t a match for Sera’s attacks in a 1v1 situation and were instantly destroyed, luckily the first of the seconds in command was faster than his peers.

"Black Sea Crushing Waves!", fierce black water mana emerged from that guy forming high current waves with him as the center, which was replicated by the other members of his team.

"Booooom!", a few rounds of waves were dodged by Sera’s attack twisting in strangely intricate ways, a few others pierced through the waves but ultimately the technique was destroyed before it could reach its target.

"Hey what the hell, that’s no longer "just" altering the target of a spell, she changed the whole damn nature of that light sword attack", said one of the subordinates, the one who would have been hit by Sera’s technique if the first of the seconds in command didn’t react in time, for a second there he almost lost an arm.

"Forget about that, wasn’t that darkness user woman supposed to have low attack power, why did the sword stream got stronger out of nowhere, our shields didn’t even slow it down", added another of the ten subordinates.

"No, that darkness user woman didn’t add power to the sword technique, the control and sudden acceleration were her deed but there was no more energy injected into it, the technique got stronger by itself, I don’t know how it happened though, neither of them has gotten stronger as far as I can tell, what do you think, first?", said the second of the seconds in command.

The first one was clearly different than the others, in terms of battle prowess all the seconds in command were the same, however the first one had keener senses and was the smartest out of them all so he was recognized as the leader by Ereth.

"Lord Ereth made some "tests" on the energies granted by the blood prison realm to decide whether we were to use them or not, due to their restricted nature they weren’t apt for us, but I do remember that they can have some weird principles, perhaps their energies get stronger if they work together, then it would make sense that they were paired by that masked guy", said the first.

’Heh, he almost got it, well the result is similar but that’s now it works, for the time being at least’, thought Sera.

This time, the credit was for the girl of the church of light, because it was her idea to have Laila take over her sword technique with her black glove’s one, as a result Laila gained control over it and changed it from a straightforward attack to one that could offer a few surprises to the enemies.

However, it’s not like the previous happening didn’t cross the mind of the seconds in command, they had just seen Laila change the trajectory of their spells so while a though much more complex and complete application of the previous did take them by surprise, it was not the mastery over it that Laila showed what really made them worry for a second there.

On the other hand, the sudden increase in the power of Sera’s energy came completely out of nowhere for them and that weighed in those guy’s minds a lot, so they were squeezing their brains to try and reach a conclusion about it with the help of the first of the seconds in command.

’For being the followers of a hero, they really are clueless when it comes to the negative "aspects" of one, or perhaps it’s because that Ereth guy has managed to avoid them that they don’t see them as easily as us’, thought Laila.

Like Sera thought, that first guy reached a decent conclusion about her energy, he failed to understand the process though, her energy got stronger because after having to clean after Adam for a few years, she knew that "the power of a hero causes a lot of harm when misguided by the villain".

Adam was a piece of trash and he caused a lot of tragedies but they normally stopped at personal level, because he didn’t sought territories, fame or riches, heck he didn’t even sought power directly, his target were girls if they gave him any of the previous that was more of a bonus for him, that’s why he was such a low-tier hero but for a change that contributed to humanity in a sense, because he didn’t take the initiative to cause trouble in large quantities like ruining a planet for the sake of a girl or something like that, the losses he caused stopped at relative or close one levels this was also thanks to Sera’s efforts, not that it makes it actually right, but it was indeed way better than the other possible options.

However, there was a single instance in which that wasn’t the case, it was an accident in all the meaning of the word, as in Marcus actually managed to pull the strings behind the scenes without intending to do so, he caused Adam’s target, the princess of a country to realize she was being tricked and a civil war broke in the country of said princess, between the faction that supported Adam thanks to his hero charm and those that didn’t fall for it, the result was a dead count that surpassed the eight digits and at the end neither Adam nor Marcus gained anything despite all the harm they caused, all because of a random occurrence between them, "luckily" it was a planet where mortals were the vast majority so no one paid attention to what happened.

"It’s not that bad to use those disgusting "things" for a good reason, don’t you think~", said Sera to her friend, now they had a much clearer idea on how to make progress in their challenges, besides the part they hadn’t deciphered which is how those guys fitted in the picture.

"Mm", Laila limited to nod, but her interest was also piqued as she put a villain’s "cliche" to work on their favor with the help of her energy.

"Black Sea Current Step!", the third of the seconds in command used a movement spell to flash towards those two and he was followed by his whole group, but then just as the fourth of the seconds in command was about to cast an attack type spell using his trident as the medium, someone was faster than him.

"Black Sea Rotating Shield", one of the ten subordinates called out a defensive spell and everyone else replicated it.

"Jeremy, what the hell do you think you are doing!", shouted the fourth in command who was interrupted by his subordinate.

"Hahaha, what do you think, fulfilling my mission!", shouted the subordinate who casted the defensive spell, which by the way happened to be the one that used his trident to destroy Laila’s illusion earlier, as he moved his shield aside opening the previously knit-close defensive area created by the fourteen spells, exposing everyone to danger.

That’s the villain’s cliché Laila went with this time by the way, the "no matter how close the side of hero might be, there is a spy planted among them" one and while normally this is used to cause trouble in secret in order to not reveal the identity of the spy, once there is suspicion or if the spy knows he is going to get caught, the solution is always the same, one last big betrayal without caring if they live or die, in the cliché version of it of course.

And it was beautifully timed for Sera who had two white energy swords appear in front of her which is a hero cliché by the way, because the shape that her technique took is that of a great heavy sword, using two of such swords at the same time not only is impractical in actual battle but in the cliché version of it it’s also wrongly associated to an "unstoppable offense" fighting style.

Now, there are extremely rare exceptions that can pull it off, like Aura for example, but, she uses her speed and swift slashing techniques and her swords are light and extremely sharp instead, not to mention that her affinity is a rarity among rarities that combines wind and lightning’s speed and cutting power and that she is a battle maniac that has broken through every limit she has set in her mind by using training that is not far from self-torture, that contributed more to her actually known impossibly hard to block offense rather than she just being a dual sword wielder.

A fighting style that actually focus mainly in dual wielding with swords would consist in asymmetrical pairing, in other words using a long sword and either a short sword or a dagger for parrying or trapping and even then, it requires quite a lot of coordination to pull it off and since there is no shield to protect the body, defensive measures like armor or defense spells/martial arts continuously covering that weakness, would be a must.

"Dual White Bursting Sword!", but here Sera was transforming that cliché into power for her, so we can ignore all of the previous and the power of her technique which should be the same per sword but doubled in total as she was using the technique twice separately, instead made the swords explode with more than thrice the attack power they should have each, therefore attaining "unstoppable attack power".

"Booooom!", a blinding white light engulfed the battlefield as the energy in those swords was released in a single instance swallowing those guys for a fraction of a second at least.

"Domain!", knowing that their defenses were surpassed, the fourth of the seconds in command directly used his domain, like Daimon said, these guys were different and didn’t drag things on.

The fact that none of them had used their domain is not because they were underestimating those two, you can see it as they right away took out their magic weapons which were all Arch rank magic tridents by the way, they were trying to analyze Sera and Laila’s energies, fighting styles and the like to then make a sure-kill move against them.

But just like they were enemies outside of the usual, Sera and Laila weren’t average people either, so like most of the plans, theirs didn’t survive contact with reality past a few steps before needing adjustments to be made on the spot.

"Hssssss!", a sizzling sound accompanied by steam was produced as a black sea shaped domain blocked Laila’s attack ultimately consuming it.

"Capture that fool, what mission bullshit, he was controlled by that darkness user woman!", said the fourth of the seconds in command, as he pointed at the subordinate that caused their formation to nearly fall apart, who was also the one to receive the blunt of Sera’s attack and had lost an arm and a leg, but was still alive thanks to his trident blocking a part of the impact for him, which resulted in cracks appearing on it.

"Yes!", another two subordinates held onto that guy as black water chains appeared from the domain to restrain him, interestingly enough it seemed like their domains were not affected by that weird ability which made the spells one casted to be replicated by others.

"How weird, they were made to be "similar" in a way that normal relatives wouldn’t be, know the same spells with the difference that the power contained in them differs depending on whether they are normal subordinates or seconds in command and yet, there seem to be aspects unique to each second in command", said Laila, which made the first second in command, in other words the most perceptive out of them to frown.

’Why is the darkness user woman saying that, wasn’t she the type to keep her thoughts to herself, unlike the other one?’, he thought.

And he is right, Laila’s pretty pink lips suddenly were dyed of a black color as her energy coated them, it was as if she had applied lipstick to them, which fit her quite nicely by the way, but the aesthetic aspect it’s not what matters here, but that she had used a lighter version of the "villains die because they talk too much" cliché, on herself.

Since it directly included "death" on it, she toned it down to "villains lose their advantage because they talk too much", which might appear to be the same as the "monologue" cliché, but it is not, the conditions to use it are different and the repercussion for incurring on it is also different, Layla was indeed interested in the properties of her energy but she had learned to be careful.

Anyway, the effect of the technique Laila used based on said cliché was shown the next second when another of the remaining nine subordinates suddenly had black threads pierce his lips before words were forced out of his mouth.

"That’s because our four leaders must fulfill different purposes for the sake of Lord Ere...cough!", surprisingly, or not really to be honest, the technique was broken when that guy tried to speak Ereth’s name against his will, probably a safety lock that pain in the ass of a hero had set up in these guys to prevent situations like this from happening, intel about his actual goals wasn’t that easy to acquire.