Chapter 772 - 772: A fundamentally different kind of fight (part 2)

"Hsssss!", listening to the air vibrating in a vast area of the sky above them, and seeing the seconds in command who were about to try and escape from the incoming lightning, Arlion whose reaction time was faster than theirs, directly shouted.

"Do you not know to defend, block it you fools!", don't get it wrong, Arlion didn't care if the seconds in command died, they are not his subordinates after all, however, he couldn't have all of them die before he had learned about the powers of the enemy enough to not be taken by surprise and die with regrets.

"Black Seabed Barrier!", the fifth casted a defensive spell which consisted in both black sand, clay and black solid rock gathering to form a defensive sphere, which was replicated by the sixth and the ninth, just in time for the rain of lightning to descend from above.

"Crack!", a crackling sound as well as a shattering one were the result as the wide area lightning rain landed on the nine layered in total, round of three defense spells casted by the seconds in command, making the first two spells and six layers to explode but stopping at only burning through the sand layer and piercing the clay layer of the third spell, all this while Arlion watched from the distance.

'If she can block that guy's connection with those fools, then she should have the power to ignore the disadvantages of elements, that would explain why the eighth's earth mana was useless and why such a wide area technique still bypassed eight of the nine layers of defense casted by those three, no one died this time though, so…', he thought to then say.

"Looks like you won't die if you aren't directly hit by her lightning, you can't use your domains but the mana is still there, cast mobile defensive spells and don't stop moving".

Their defensive spells resisted against the wide area lightning rain, but Arlion was sure it won't be the same against the concentrated streams of lightning from before, so they couldn't remain static or they would become easy targets.

"Black Seabed Landslide Rotating Barrier!", once again it was the fifth the one to activate the spell which was going to be replicated by the sixth and ninth, the reason is that his dual earth and water affinities allowed him to have both high defense but decent flexibility unlike the case of the second for example.

In this case, the fifth created large amounts of sand, clay and rocks which were mixed with black water producing a high viscosity substance which rotated around them actively moving while protecting them at the same time, which earned the fifth a nod from Arlion.

'That should be enough to extend their lives enough for me to learn more about that silver haired woman's powers', he thought to then add to himself.

'Her lightning has some sort of killing effect but only if it reaches you, battle aura is stronger the closer it is to a knight's body, just with my protection I don't have to worry about her wide area attacks, and with my battle avatar I'll be able to deviate her focused ones, as expected going for the knight path is really helpful since the vast majority chooses the mage one…', Arlion's thoughts were interrupted by Aisha who raised an eyebrow at the sight of the seconds in command moving alongside that defensive spell which slowed them down, it wasn't to the point where they won't be able to dodge her lightning streams, but they would be absolutely unable to get out of the strike zone of her wide area attacks.

"Wait a second, did you seriously believe that was a technique?", said the silver haired vampire mother as she understood the reason behind the "strange" strategy that the seconds in command were using.

"From the moment you realized that you were within the killing zone of my lightning, you should have kept moving as much and as fast as possible if you wanted to extend your lives", added Aisha as she snapped her fingers.

"Silver Descend", casually said the vampire mother.

"Crack!", silver electricity arcs crackled high into the air and the sky was then illuminated in a bright silver color.

"Boooooom!!!", what followed was a nightmare, for the seconds in command and a slap right to Arlion's face, as building sized silver lightnings descended from above, raining down upon a whole ten-kilometer area.

The thunders produced by Aisha's lightnings drowned every other sound and the energy explosions produced by said lightnings destroying countless pieces of floating ground, or descending into the deep abyss below them, to then strike random corrupted blood specters, killing them on the spot, made it impossible to know what happened to the enemies, until the technique had ended.

"Whew, luckily I have "demonite field", otherwise everyone would have seen and heard that", said Aisha who was floating in the middle of what was now a completely empty area, neither floating pieces of ground, nor restrained corrupted blood specters hiding deep below the surface could be found, because her lightning had obliterated everything.

Amusingly enough, besides wanting to have a technique that would prevent enemies from escaping, since that was a recurrent subject that weighed in Daimon's mind, another of the reasons as to why Aisha created "demonite field" was so that she could fight without causing troubles to her own allies.

You can see why though, the powers obtained within the blood prison realm are not those of neither a mage nor a knight, one can reach the arch rank in terms of energies, but unlike a mage or a knight, the size of the phenomenon created will be smaller, in exchange the energies have extra properties that one can't normally find in neither mana nor battle aura, which even things up at the moment of fighting against those that don't follow the rules of the blood prison realm, what's more the energies for some reason seem to be tailored to fit to their user's traits, lineage and even personalities, you could think of it as quality over quantity.

However, Aisha's techniques did have the usual reach of an archmage's spell, a special trait she obtained after completing her third challenge, it was nowhere near her old reach when she was at her prime, but an "average" outstanding archmage reach instead, but that's still incredible.

So far, the one with the largest energy reach was the werewolf girl Arianna, her energy could grow many hundreds of meters large to form the wolf manifestation, but her limit would still be below one kilometer of size for the manifestation and less than two of them for techniques casted through said manifestation at its maximum output.

The same would apply to the lioness who used Daimon's version of Arianna's energy to create the manticore manifestation, and well, the reach of Aisha's wide area techniques was ten times that, so yeah, there is no point of comparison.

Her energy reserves are also massive enough to allow her to fight in such an absurd way, the problem in her case is that everyone would see her powers the moment she used them, for that same reason, it wasn't a matter of control, silver descend was her smaller wide area technique and she concentrated the lightning as much as she could so it wouldn't spread past the area it covered earlier already.

"Crack!".

"Blegh!".

Two different sounds, a shattering one which was produced by a blue battle aura arm, a partial manifestation of a battle avatar which was crumbling apart as we speak, was the first one.

Once the arm disappeared, the sight of Arlion whose face was covered in sweat, was revealed.

'Holy hell, if I hadn't used my battle avatar, that fucking lightning would have reached me!', he screamed to his insides, those huge lightning pillars came out of nowhere from his point of view.

Because he thought that the lightning rain from before was Aisha already using a wide area attack type technique, but nope, that was just casual elemental manipulation from the silver-haired vampire mother.

Don't get it wrong, Arlion is not within the instant killing zone of Aisha's lightning, so just being reached by it won't kill him, which is why he wasn't trying to run away unlike the seconds in command did, but still, being reached by such a destructive attack will hurt like hell.

So he hurried to manifest a part of his battle avatar in order to properly protect himself, still the impact surpassed his expectations given that the arm of his battle avatar crumbled apart, if he had known such was going to be the case, then he would have also casted a defensive martial art.

The second sound belonged to the fifth, who was the sole survivor among the second in commands, before being hit by one of the many lightning pillars of earlier, the seconds in command all managed to cast another defensive spell, besides the landslide barrier which they were continuously supporting, a solid one this time.

But then the fifth whose reaction time was faster than that of his companions, realized that even with eighteen defensive layers, they were all going to die, unless all of them were reduced in size and concentrated in a small area.

So, the fifth who was fist in terms of authority among the seconds in command present, took over the spells of the others and stacked them up all in a single spot, namely around him.

Of course, that meant that the sixth and the ninth were suddenly left unguarded and were obliterated by Aisha's lightning on the spot, they died while cursing the fifth and even Ereth since their power was incomplete without the connection to him.

The fear that Aisha instilled on them in such a short period of time, combined with the interference of the demonite field, allowed her to achieve what took Sera and Laila quite a bit of effort, in a matter of minutes.

As a result of the previous, the fifth managed to survive but to his surprise, all those defensive layers were still destroyed and while the lightning didn't reach him, the shockwave produced by the spells being destroyed, sent him flying into the distance, and he was now half buried in an almost destroyed piece of floating ground, vomiting blood and small pieces of his innards which ruptured due to the explosion of Aisha's lightning.

'What the hell was that!', screamed the fifth to his insides as he reached towards the inside of his upper body armor which was in tatters, and brought out a small container which was attached to a chain that hanged from his neck, he also looked into his pocket where another three similar containers were kept.

"To think that my lower rank will be helpful at a time like this… cough!", said the fifth as he unplugged the four containers which had a familiar looking grey liquid inside of them, which the fifth drank in a single go.

"Hssss!", the wounds that covered the fifth's body healed at high speed and he then exploded in grey-blue mana.

If the enemy was the fourth, third, second or even the first, he would have been at the end of the rope right there, because demonite field even blocked the limited access that the seconds in command had to Ereth's inventory, that's why none among the seconds in command in this battlefield had taken out their magic weapons, which of course were replicas of the trident of the storm as well.

Well, they also honestly didn't have the mind for it at the beginning, considering how Aisha started by killing five of them on the spot, but later there was a moment before she used an actual technique to attack them, when the fifth and the others tried to take their tridents of the single slot storage treasures, they were given by Ereth to keep their weapons safe, and failed to do so, because of demonite field.

The lock in space was so strong that if the fifth had kept his bottle with the reactive needed to stimulate the black fierce sea shark lineage inside of him, even if it was kept in Ereth's inventory, he would have been unable to retrieve it.

Luckily, since he wasn't in the top four, Ereth didn't grant the fifth that privilege, or perhaps within the preparations of that annoying hero guy, there was a plan for a situation maybe not exactly like this, since Ereth probably didn't expect a non-system user who isn't way above him in terms of realm, to be able to interfere with his powers to this level.

But still a situation in which the space interference messed up with the inventory, so he didn't put all the eggs in a single basket so, starting from the fifth and all the way to the eight, who were the ones that were able to release the black fierce sea shark's lineage, they instead had their reactive container on them physically at all times.

Which might make you wonder how come the fifth had four of them, that's simple, the containers were naturally not just glass bottles, they had special functions and high durability, with the fifth's authority he could retrieve them if he saw it was needed, that's how he had the reactive assigned to the eight and seventh who were killed by Aisha before.

As for the one of the sixth, by the moment he tried to drink his reactive, when he saw the fifth take over his spell, his reactive was already gone.

'Sorry sixth, neither of us would have stood a chance with just lineage release…', thought the fifth as he shouted.

"Black Fierce Sea Lineage Overload!", grey-blue mana exploded out of the fifth's body, expanding until it covered a whole kilometer.

"Black Fierce Sea Shark, Regent's Incarnation", the fifth suffered a similar transformation as that of the first after he took the power distributed to the second, third and fourth, he gained shark skin armor, the mana fin condensations and the regeneration which was shown earlier, plus his own power of course.

Naturally, he wasn't as strong as the first when he reached his king's incarnation, in his case, the spell used the word "regent" because a regent doesn't have to be from royal lineage, basically the requirement for a regent is to be powerful, it could be in politics as prime ministers could function as regents, or it could be in terms of combat as generals could be regents as well.

And that was the position in which the fifth was, he wasn't given the royal lineage of Ereth, but he was given the royal lineage of Karla, so he could achieve this state, as to why the first didn't do the same as the fifth and instead killed the others but didn't steal their reactive, that's because this method is imperfect and will basically kill the fifth once his transformation is over, as he overloaded himself with the reactive to force the transformation.

This capacity was exclusive to the fifth too, since he was supposed to function as another first, but for the secondary group of seconds in command, also, right now he didn't care about the future, the fifth was fighting to save his life in the present.

'It's gone, I don't feel the absolute dread of death coming from that lightning anymore, but this is not enough', thought the fifth, he was out of the instant killing sone of Aisha's lightning now, but he was honestly traumatized by experiencing the power of her silver descend, so he didn't stop at just this.

"Black Fierce Regent Sea Domain!", the large mass of mana gathered around the first trembled and then after a moment of struggling it took the form of a black rock seabed, covered with black clay, black sand and lastly black water.

He had lost access to the domain granted by the connection he had with Ereth, but with the lineage release he gained his own domain, think of it like this, he lost access to "internet" but with the black fierce shark's lineage stimulated, he gained access to a "local network" as in the information codified into the lineage, and with the overloaded power of the reactive, he fought his way into shaping a domain.

"Silver Piercing Javelins", but then just as the fifth was about to start his counterattack, for which he had left the sixth and ninth die, because he genuinely believed that so long as he survived, he could ask Ereth to bring them back, which was of course a lie, Aisha's next words as she pointed her pretty right index finger frontwards, drowned him into despair once again.

The fifth had omitted a little detail, silver descend wasn't only the first wide area technique Aisha had used during the fight, it was also the first attack type technique she had used during the fight.

"Black Fierce Sea Landslide Step!", the fifth had a space movement spell, but he knew it wouldn't work since the lock in space was too strong for him, so he instead used an explosive speed increasing movement spell to flash away from his current position.

"Crack!", unfortunately, with a non-spatial movement technique, he couldn't outrun the two, one-kilometer-wide silver lightning streams that were shot by Aisha, ah right, it's worth mentioning that the silver-haired vampire mother had progressed in developing her casting spots, but in a different way compared to Daimon.

You see, Daimon has developed dozens of them all over his body, so that he can shot focused spells from every angle, even from his back, if he wants to, Aisha on the other hand has the normal hand casting spots, the normal next to be developed by mages which are the ones placed on the head and the chest, and her extras which put her above the average, in Aisha's case she chose the legs, because she likes to combine enhancement and movement spells, so with that set up she had casting spots to cover her whole frontal body.

And then, instead of training to increase them in number, she went with increasing the number of spells she can cast from each spot, which takes more time than the other option, as a sign of it she has only developed the casting spot of her right hand, which is how she was able to shot two instances of a single focused release attack technique, such as a javelin type, with a single cast.

What's more she had some flexibility over them, as the first javelin which had its trajectory adjusted after being casted, so that it blasted the domain of the fifth which moved slower than him, suggested.

"Booooom!", that was the sound of a domain being completely destroyed on the spot.

"Aghhhh!", and that was the sound of the fifth suffering backslash to then get caught in the second javelin, which Aisha also moved upwards to reach the enemy who had moved from his previous position at high speed.

'I see, this wasn't a battle we could take part from the very beginning…', was the last thing that appeared in the mind of the fifth before lights went out for him.

Amusingly enough, since all of the previous happened before those two managed to start killing the subordinates, the seconds in command on this side never realized how their comrades were being beaten by Sera and Laila, despite the first, second, third and fourth being on their side.

As for Ereth, even he couldn't tell that his subordinates died, because the demonite field was interfering with his senses, but he could feel that something was wrong on Arlion's end, which is why he tried to send one his copies only to lose contact with it the moment it approached Aisha's battlefield, since the thing despite being in stealth mode was hit by a silver lightning.

That combined with the fact that he didn't receive any feedback, nor notice any energy signs from his subordinates on this battlefield, is what led Ereth to pay the first and the others a second visit, and tell them to hurry up and kill Sera and Laila to then go help the "fool of Arlion", later.

Speaking of which, after witnessing the previous, Arlion dropped any pretension, because unlike the silver descend which was ultimately blocked by his partial battle avatar manifestation, the javelin would have pierced right through it to reach him.

"Boooom!", the past king from the clear water kingdom, exploded in battle aura which reached high into the sky, to then expand and create an armored replica of him, well, it was a replica of Terry since he had taken over his body, though.