Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System

Sure, you could argue that Tessa is the princess of the alfear race who supposedly descends from the elven race, and as such they are really close with nature related stuff, which is why the alfear are always born with water, wood or wind affinities while the elite among the royalty, have a chance to be born with “nature” affinity, which is a variant resulting of the combination of water and wood affinities.

And among the royalty, Tessa is considered to be the one with the highest potential ever, so based on the previous, one would be inclined to believe that such is the reason as to why those trees are acting subservient towards the alfear princess.

But there is a little detail that completely trashes the idea, these trees in specific thrive in places where death is abundant, they feed on death nether after all and thus they loathe anything that radiates a strong feeling of “life”, that is the reason as to why the thorn wood knight was especially hostile against the werewolf girl, her energy is related to vitality after all.

And something similar should have applied to Tessa, at most, thanks to her nature affinity, she should have been able to reduce her presence so that the trees wouldn’t attack her, and yet here she was, being revered as if she was their queen instead.

‘Unlike Arianna and Dana who arrived at the Blood Prison realm after having successfully, passed their own challenges, this is her challenge, otherwise that dormant darkness affinity of hers should have been active now’.

‘But even if that wasn’t the case, it wouldn’t have made a big difference, her darkness is not the corrosive elemental type, which might have gained a bit of the favor of those trees, but more of the mysterious mind affecting type though not like Ivy’s one, I would say’, thought Daimon as he gazed at the alfear princess.

Darkness is one of the strongest affinities Daimon has, because he was originally born with it and past that, he obtained the “Lover of Darkness” passive thanks to his relation with Erin, so he practically doesn’t need to put any effort to detect darkness in any form.

And with a single gaze, he realized that Tessa was pretty much the same as the last time he saw her, she hasn’t even advanced in her mage rank at all, which knowing how talented the alfear princess is, wouldn’t have been the case if she had gone through a challenge before.

That being said, she had energy on par with the peak of the Lord rank, so it’s not like she has been wasting her time.

“I have a safe place to stay, l also have a few things I want to ask, so let’s go there to properly catch up with each other”, said Tessa as she stole a gaze at Arianna, Dana, Lyn and Badr, whom for the alfear princess are “new faces”, since they weren’t present with Daimon the times she had interacted with him, to then point in a specific direction, making the trees in that area “open” up a path for them.

With a nod from Daimon, Arianna and the others started advancing with Tessa leading the way, a few meters ahead of them, while the wood thorn knight followed behind at a “respectful” distance, not out of respect for them of course, but for the alfear princess.

“I don’t mean it in a negative way, but are you sure she is trustworthy, the alfear race are one of the pillar groups of the Light faction, and unlike humans who are notoriously more of a benefit-guided bunch, those hypocritical bastards attack people from the White Fang galaxy indiscriminately because of our race’s alignment, while putting on friendly and justice-driven fronts, the only more annoying ones are the extreme fanatics from the Church of Light, and some of them are alfears as well”, said Arianna in a low voice.

To which Daimon shook his head in response.

“Don’t worry, she originally was in a team led by someone that basically embodied all of that but kept the mask of a “good guy” and I could see the disgust when said mask was peeled away by me”, he said, naturally referring to Adam, to which the werewolf girl nodded.

She isn’t one to discriminate due to race, she is Aura’s disciple after all, but alfear are actually extremely biased towards the natives of the White Fang galaxy, even children that are too young to have developed prejudice, either by having been influenced by their elders, are known to show clear disgust towards their peers from the White Fang galaxy.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there is open hostility between the alfear and all those races, in the open those guys are neutral and the authorities restrain their disdain towards the people from the White Fang galaxy, but there are renegaded alfears who have been “exiled” from their race, who surely express their disgust, in many bloody ways to this day.

And while they are officially wanted by both the alfear royal family and the Light faction, since they “disrupt” the peace treatment between the four galaxies, everyone knows that they aren’t seriously pursued by them, so even if she didn’t doubt Daimon’s judgement, Arianna couldn’t help but express her opinion.

She is older and has been present in official political events from the White Fang galaxy, unlike Daimon, because Aura tosses all those boring meetings to her father, the Supreme Elder who at the same time, passes all that work to his wife, Arianna’s mother while he basically acts as her bodyguard in such cases, despite him being the official delegate.

“Mm, okay”, listening to Daimon’s reassurance, the werewolf girl stopped worrying about the matter, if that “senior” brother of hers said so, then she was sure he has gone through great lengths to confirm it, he is that “cunning fox’s disciple” in her master’s words, as well after all.

Leaving that little conversation between those two aside, the more the group advanced through the jungle, the less trees could be seen, but contrary to what one would expect, the density of the jungle not only didn’t diminish, but it even increased, because the trees grew taller and thicker, their branches which were full of thorns expanded to the sides and downwards as well, creating quite the sight.

“If they weren’t bloodthirsty trees of death, this would have been quite the decent landscape”, said Badr as he warily observed their surroundings, he is in charge of defense here after all.

“Ahem, don’t worry about the trees, they won’t even think of attacking with me present here”, said the alfear princess as she noticed the wariness in the tall nethereal’s eyes.

It was for a good reason though, all those trees radiated the strength of the peak of the Lord rank and there were hundreds of them in the area, sure not all of them could attack them at the same time, since their range wasn’t that big, but still, they would be troublesome enemies to face within the jungle.

Which might be the reason as to why there are zero traces of blood specters in the vicinity, if they appeared here, they will be turned into dust by a rain of thorned branch whips coming from every direction.

Luckily just like Tessa said, despite the trees paying “attention” to the group, especially to the werewolf girl, nothing happened and they soon reached the first ever open area within the jungle.

Well, open as in the trees formed a perfect circle with a diameter of around three hundred meters, at which’s center stood a towering tree, more than a hundred meters tall, even Arianna’s red giant wolf, looked relatively small in comparison, which made the werewolf girl softly snort to her insides.

Anyway, despite the obviously attention-catching tree, the next most interesting thing, is that the base of its trunk, lied a strange “construction” that resembled a castle, but completely made out of branches, it’s obvious that this was the safe place Tessa mentioned earlier.

With a gesture of her hand, the alfear princess made the gate of the “castle” open and just as Daimon expected, what welcomed them was the sight of a white haired girl with red eyes, a horned black metal crown, as for any other distinctive characteristics, her ears were also longer than that of a human and had pointy ends, however unlike Tessa’s ones, they extended to the sides, instead of upwards, that was naturally the dwarf princess, Femi.

“Next time at least tell me it’s a good notice before leaving, when I saw you jumping out of the window to then jump from branch to branch of the trees into the distance, I thought those guys had surrounded us or something and nearly had a heart attack you know”, complained the dwarf princess to her best friend.

Amusingly enough, those two always ended up together, and apparently that was also the case this time, because just like Tessa, Femi was the exact same as the last time Daimon saw her, besides having energy at the peak of the Lord rank which she gained for her stay within the Blood Prison realm, in other words this was her challenge, just like for the alfear princess.

“Good to see you, D…Gabriel, there is a mutual “old friend” of ours here, so I was wondering when were you going to appear”, said Femi to Daimon, nearly forgetting to call him by his alias, when around people she doesn’t recognize from back then when she got to meet Aisha and the others.

“They are trustworthy so no worries, but let’s go inside first, just in case”, said Daimon, besides Claire whose life was in his hands, Lyn and the others already knew his real name, though he hadn’t told them about his identity and all, still the dwarf princess was quite straightforward just like usual, in comparison with the much more tactful Tessa.

“Who told you to be napping in the middle of the day, if I waited for you to wake up, it would have been too late”, said the alfear princess as she sighed, she arrived literally a second before Arianna and the wood thorn knight started trying to destroy each other.

Led by Tessa the group entered the wood castle, which’s gate closed behind of them, contrary to what they would expect, the wood thorn knight actually didn’t follow them, well it became obvious why once they were inside of the castle.

“I see, so that one is formed by the roots of… this giant tree”, said the werewolf girl as she felt the same exact hostility, from the wood thorn knight, coming from the walls of the castle.

“Sorry about that, it seems like it really considered you a huge threat, perhaps because your energy is basically vitality”, said Tessa, to which Arianna pouted as she pointed at Daimon.

“That’s not fair, look at him, he is not only a perpetual moving machine but his energy purifies nether, so how come I’m the ultimate villain, instead of Daimon”, she said, making the little tiger girl giggle.

“Well, certainly my vitality aspect has been improved here, but that and the energy I gained for the challenge are two separate matters, as for the purifying part, it’s not “life”, nor “death” oriented and it’s not an offensive type technique, though I use it as such, so at most I should look annoying, but not ferocious and threatening like a certain “big bad wolf”, that is completely made out of life force”, said Daimon as he shrugged.

Leaving Arianna who was feeling defeated, aside, the alfear princess guided the group to a big spacious room to then tap her feet on the floor a couple of times, making a table and chairs made out of wood to form on the spot.

“That sure is convenient, so, what is going on here?”, asked Daimon to those two as he sat down, followed by the others, though Claire was simply tossed to the ground by Badr, unconsciously, Tessa didn’t make a chair for her anyway.

“Well, even if you ask me, I have quite little information myself, but to begin with, we do know you met with the others before getting here”, said the alfear princess, before the dwarf princess continued.

“We were trapped in the damn dimensional tunnel until a few days ago, and sometimes we could “notice” your presence in the dimensional tunnel for a few seconds, but that was it”, said Femi.

“It wasn’t that much of a bad experience though, we got to feel a bit of space mana which will be helpful in the future for sure, and the flow of time was different there, so while it might have been many days for you and the others, it was around twenty-four hours for us”, added Tessa.

“It was a bit boring if anything, luckily we could take things out of our rings, or it would have really sucked, like how I can’t eat anything in this damn place”, mumbled the dwarf princess, to which Daimon chuckled behind his mask as he waved his hand.

Then, under the surprised eyes of both Tessa and Femi, warm dishes appeared on the table, and while Tessa wanted to ask him how come he had access to a space storage even in this place, a doubt that also deprived Claire from sleep by the way, because she thought it was another aspect of his lineage.

And she was going crazy trying to imagine what kind of lineage had such overwhelming purifying capacities, and also space related abilities, just wait until she gets to know about the capacity Daimon’s silver light has to boost other people’s aspects.

“Thanks for the food!”, Femi directly started stuffing her face with food, she even actually chewed on the fork and contrary to expectations, the thing broke and she even swallowed the metallic parts alongside the food, something that has happened before by the way.

“Dear mana, it’s been less than a week since you ate, and it’s not like you were starved, due to your energy, control yourself a bit”, said the alfear princess, unfortunately Femi wasn’t listening to her anymore, so Tessa continued with the story on her own.

“After being trapped in the space tunnel for some time, the “emblems” you gave us suddenly acted on their own and created a portal together, so we arrived at this place together”.

“There was some weird thing ongoing though, when we were descending from the sky, we got to see a bunch of energy reactions, and when we landed there were a lot of those weird ghost-like beasts waiting for us”.

“We managed to defeat the weakest of them, but that attracted the attention of the stronger ones and we had to escape while being chased by them”, said Tessa, making the little tiger girl be reminded of some bad memories, because something similar happened to her.

‘Yeah, let’s keep it a secret, that the sudden forced teleportation which grouped blood specters together but separated the others, was probably caused by my arrival at this place, well, not like it was specifically my fault, but that little thing’s one’, thought Daimon as he looked at his right pocket where the black sea emblem was calmly resting after having feasted on the nether and remains of the chains back at the nether farm.

“Phew~”, the dwarf princess who had just finished her eighth plate of food, took over from here.

“After being chased by almost a day, this forest suddenly emerged around us, and well, we took advantage of the chaos that the thorned roots were causing between the blood specters to kill enough of them to get to the Lord rank, which allowed us to protect ourselves”, she said as she extended her hand which shone in a dark gray light, as a result a small piece of metal formed on the air in front of the dwarf princess, before she continued.

“But then night came, the blood specters weren’t that hard to trick, we simply dug a hole which I covered in metal, to use as an improvised shelter, the problem is that the bastard who was playing “frenemies” with Adam and his group of lackeys, appeared in the middle of the night and caused a ruckus, making both the blood specters and the trees go crazy”.

“It ended up with our shelter being destroyed and that Marcus guy managed to see us, so he sent his subordinates after us, of course those losers got completely destroyed by Tessa and me while we used the terrain to our advantage, ah right, back then the trees weren’t so strong and there weren’t that many of them either, so it was much easier to navigate through the jungle”.

“Unfortunately, before we could kill any of them, that woman from the Church of Calamity, intervened and took those guys away, not without using her energy which is death related, very fitting for someone from that bunch of psychopaths, to stimulate the grow of the trees so that they would go crazy in unison, this tree is the one that took the impact of the attack, and was half destroyed, while the ones in the surroundings were the ones that received the benefit”, she said as she tapped her right foot on the wood floor.

“Then Tessa suddenly got all weird and used her energy on the half-dead tree, as a result it was healed and it also absorbed all the other trees that were affected by that woman’s energy, resulting in this huge tree that only listens to Tessa”.

“It’s worth mentioning, that while this tree can order the others, it only works on half of the jungle, the other side was tampered with by those guys when they saw the giant tree appear, and so we have been fighting with them since that moment, they launch surprise attacks from time to time, somehow that guy has some blood specters under his command too, so it gets annoying”.

“But the worst part, is that even if we defeat them, the woman from the Church of Calamity and after the last clash when the tree created that wood thorn knight, the woman from the Church of Light, always intervene, so we haven’t been able to advance at all”, she said, to which Tessa added.

“Ahem, I didn’t get “weird”, the tree wanted to live and we needed help, so I used my energy to strike a deal with it, though it seems like the result was much better than what I expected, because it has been protecting us since then”.

“Also, I suggested we waited for you here, because that guy hadn’t left either, even though we have blocked him from doing anything, as if he…”, before Tessa could finish her sentence, Daimon did it for her.

“Had something he needed to obtain from here”, he said.

“Mm”, to which the alfear princess nodded in response, it wasn’t hard to guess, Marcus probably was in the middle of getting rid of the seal on the two nethereals that were in this place, which meant that he had managed to convince them to come to his side, because otherwise he would have killed them already.

What got Daimon’s attention is that Sera, in other words the woman from the Church of Light, was cooperating with Marcus, though she and Adam were travelling alongside Marcus and the woman from the Church of Calamity, Laila, their backers and even their systems are enemies.

And considering how the crystal feather pendant where the angel girl resides, shook a bit but she remained silent, it’s not like she doesn’t want to talk about it, but more like she can’t talk about it.

‘Tsk, damn restrictions’, thought Daimon, like usual he’ll do with what he has.