Chapter 773 - 773: A fundamentally different kind of fight (part 3)

'I could still believe that her wide area techniques were an exception, but what is up with the size of her focused attacks, is she not using those weird energies… no she is, that's not mana, but then how are her damn attacks surpassing the reach of Karla's ones!', inwardly cursed Arlion.

Like previously stated, the way the fifth died, made him drop any pretense of superiority, because he who originally was an enemy to Ereth and Karla, actually only got to actively clash with Karla and fought her on equal stand, could say that Aisha's attacks had a bigger reach than hers.

Of course, the previous was when Karla was in her normal state, her strength probably changed after she turned to "mermaid" mode to fight with Freya, but even so, as someone who obviously didn't follow the rules of the blood prison realm, the reach of her attacks was suppressed, even if she is an Arch rank too.

Therefore, Aisha remained undefeated in that aspect, so Arlion who considered himself to be around the same level as Karla, knew that the enemy surpassed him in that aspect as well, especially because he is a knight.

"Silver Piercing Javelin", Aisha's answer to the appearance of Arlion's battle avatar were two, one-kilometer-wide streams of lightning shot right at him.

"Clang!", the result was different than one would expect though, using the forearms of his battle avatar he smacked away the incoming streams of silver lightning.

Earlier the partial manifestation of Arlion's battle avatar crumbled apart after blocking Aisha's silver descend which is a wide area attack type technique, but apparently it can endure the impact of the javelin head on now that he has properly manifested the whole thing.

The reason is that in full body manifestation, Arlion's battle avatar has extra features, normally a battle avatar is just a giant replica of its owner, the more it resembles its owner, the stronger it is, since it's a proof of the knight's specialized energy manipulation capacity improvement, which in case you have forgotten is harder for a knight to achieve when compared to a mage.

But that's not the only way to measure the strength of a knight's battle avatar, just like how there is an advanced technique to shape a mage's domain for a specific purpose, which gives said domain extra properties, there is an advanced technique to increase the strength of a battle avatar.

In fact, there are "two", or well, to be more accurate there are two applications of the same technique, the first one you have already seen it before, it's to use the battle avatar as a medium to cast martial arts, this is to make up for the usual short range of a knight's attacks when compared to a mage.

The second application, is one that you hadn't seen before properly, you remember the Lord rank trait of a knight right, Will Manipulation, which basically allows a knight to control, empower and better familiarize with anything he is in contact.

Daimon used it to "attach" the girls back at the maze tournament to himself, that's also what knights use to move through air prior to reaching the Arch rank, they are actually controlling their equipment to float and change their direction while airborne rather than flying perse, similar to how Lord rank mages basically glide and move around with mana, which is why wind affinity people aside, "flying" below the Arch rank is often clunky and hard to use in actual battle.

Anyway, just like how a mage's Manifestation Phenomenon is a preparation for the future creation and control of a domain, Will Manipulation also has a reason of being for knights, which aligns with the similarity principle mentioned before.

Like previously stated, in its natural state the more a battle avatar resembles its owner, the stronger it is supposed to be and unlike mages who tend to use low if not no noticeable equipment, such as hard armor for example, because they aren't close to be as physically outstanding as knights, a common sight for knight's "fashion" is to be seen wearing full armor at all times, not to mention that they also use large and or heavy weapons, some even use gauntlets and boots reinforced for battle instead of just for defense, alongside their main weapon.

This trend exists for a reason, it's just that its origin is not really known by the vast majority of people, not only in Neptune where Lord rank traits were not really known since their mage and knight paths were seemingly incomplete, in exchange for their "facility" to cross to the Stellar rank, but even back at the four galaxies.

And that also has its proper reason, which is related to why the advanced technique for battle avatars is divided in two, the known and used casting of martial arts through battle avatars, and the much harder to achieve replication of "familiarized" objects through the battle avatar.

Yup, that's right, after having infused one's battle aura into certain objects for a long period of time, it is possible for a knight to replicate them when manifesting their battle aura, and we are not talking about just condensing battle aura into their shape, nope, it's proper and actual replication of equipment with the respective properties it has.

It sounds incredible right, and it is, since you can think of it as a knight having access to equipment at all times, but for that same reason it's the hardest part of the advanced Arch rank trait to achieve, which is why the vast majority of people doesn't even know about it.

And here you might think "Wait a second, didn't we see the Lords do something like that before?", and the answer is both yes and no, they used royal abilities and spells, or martial arts to create equipment, and like it was stated earlier, this is not that.

The white armored appearance of Arlion's blue battle aura avatar, was its natural state, because he has achieved that replication technique which no other knight we have seen before has shown to have.

Not even the two strongest knights that are on Daimon's side, who are of course the bone general Horals, and the Lamia queen Mirellia, though they both have proper reasons for it, the roof for the first half of the advanced technique for their battle avatars is way higher than for the average person.

Horals can create multiple battle avatars by separating his bones, without any of them weakening due to the previous, and he had yet to achieve complete similarity between himself and his battle avatar for that same reason, not to mention that by the start of this mission he was only at the middle stage of the Arch rank.

All that combined with the fact that the undead head maid has been confirmed to have higher talent than him, is the reason as to why she was ahead of him in this aspect.

As for the Lamia queen, she has both a similar problem and a unique problem as well, the former is that her battle avatar can change its shape from being in Lamia mode to being in human mode and to reach full similarity she would have to be in the same form as her battle avatar at all times, which is too restrictive for her liking.

The latter trouble is that unlike other knights, her battle avatar can completely go separate ways with her and even act on its own, so her "closeness" with it is different than for other knights, so reaching this step demonstrated by Arlion would require much more effort for those two.

The case of the Lords totally wasn't that though, the Byron that Daimon and those three met was created from the empty husk of the original one, he didn't have the memories of the real Byron, therefore he could not use replication to manifest the equipment the real one was familiarized with, also as a degraded copy he knew that reaching that level with the advanced technique for battle avatars would be really hard, so he instead leaned for the ancient armament techniques to make up for it.

And there you have it, based on all of that, Arlion whom Aisha was facing currently was stronger and much more talented than the copy of a Lord, and the one who was considered the most talented among the three as well.

And Arlion was fully aware of his achievements, which is why despite being honestly taken aback by Aisha's power, he didn't use a defensive martial art but still directly fully manifested the advanced version of his battle avatar, which was covered with that white armor.

"Don't treat me like one of that guy's lackeys", said the past king from the clear water kingdom, it's worth mentioning that due to the restrictions of the blood prison realm, his advanced battle avatar was only around seven hundred meters tall, which made it look "small" in comparison with the one-kilometer-wide streams of lighting which he just smacked away, giving his serious declaration a rather comical effect.

"Silver Piercing Javelin", luckily for him, Aisha wasn't interested in mocking him, so her answer to the previous was another round of the javelin technique, but that wasn't all.

"Crack!", a crackling sound reached Arlion's ears as lightning arcs filled the sky, a sight which had become familiar for him at this point.

'Damn it', cursed the past king as he extended his left arm upwards, just in time for countless building sized lightnings to descend all over the place in a ten-kilometer area.

"Silver Descend", naturally Aisha could use multicast, otherwise why would she have bothered to develop many casting spots on her body, so besides using the javelin technique, she used her wide area one at the same time.

"Booooom!", that seemingly world-ending silver illuminated scene from earlier repeated as everything within a ten-kilometer area was covered in Aisha's silver lightning.

That loud explosion from earlier shouldn't have happened though, because Aisha had already destroyed everything solid within the area by using silver descend before, and the distance for her lightning to hit anything deep down the black abyss below them, if there was anything else left to hit, would be more than ten times larger than before at least, so the sound of the explosion wouldn't be so loud, if it even escaped from the attraction of the deep abyss.

You could think that if the vertical descending lightnings didn't cause it, then it should have been the javelins which move horizontally, they simply clashed with one of the descending lightning pillars and exploded, or they landed on Arlion's battle avatar and exploded, but Aisha knew that wasn't the case.

The first option was actually out of question, because she could control her energies so that they wouldn't get in the way of each other, which means that if she wanted to, her attacks would pass through each other and remain completely unaltered by it, she could even transfer the energy of one attack to the other.

That was one of the effects of her reward from the blood affinity related challenge, an innate ability called "Perfect Harmony Hybrid", don't forget that Aisha isn't just from the day walker vampire race, she is the only one besides Daimon who inherited that lineage from that special ancestor indeed, however she is also from the Silverheart family.

Aisha's lightning affinity comes from the day walker race which is immune to the weakening that positive oriented energies have on an extreme negative oriented race such as vampires, Aisha's lightning is actually positive oriented, that's why it has the property to produce such a high heat and it dazzles with such a bright light as well.

Her metal affinity on the other hand comes from the Silverheart lineage, despite Aisha hating them, she didn't have any reserves in using its power in the slightest, her domain from back then was of both lightning and metal affinities, not to mention that she liked to study different magic metals and their properties to replicate them with her mana.

So, it's not like she actively didn't take advantage of her powers, if she had done such a thing, she wouldn't have been able to survive her youngest years, not to mention escape with Daimon back then.

However, and this is something which made her honestly laugh out loud when she learned about it, but the day walker lineage has a way higher standing than the Silverheart's one, therefore the quantity and quality of the power she can obtain from them is of course different.

As you have seen before Aisha likes to combine different techniques from different elements for explosive increase in power that goes further than just addition, but results in exponential boosting, that's not a simple thing to do in the slightest, it requires balance between the involved parts as to not have the result crumble apart.

And until not too long ago, to balance her lightning with her metal energies, she had to put more effort on the metal side due to the previously mentioned reason, but the reward of her blood related challenge, changed that.

You might wonder how does a blood related reward fits in the previous if we are talking about energies, well, that's because Aisha's energies are tied to her lineages, and "Perfect Harmony Hybrid" makes it so that said lineages she has synchronize, the weaker ones synchronize with the strongest one to be more accurate, they won't oppose or reject each other in the slightest, and the same applies to the energies tied to them.

So, you are looking at a Silverheart vampire whose lineage is as strong as that of a day walker vampire, it was that leap in the level of her silverheart lineage what gave her those pretty silver wings of hers, they are a trait that only a silverheart with a blood purity on par with the one of the day walker ancestor from back then, could manifest and Aisha was the first ever known in the four galaxies to have them.

What's more, as far as Aisha knows, if she were to receive an even higher ranked lineage, the others would then synchronize with it, which sounds outrageous and it is, but there are also limitations of course, this is strictly restricted to vampire lineages but that's also fine, Aisha is not like Daimon who can integrate multiple completely different and even opposing lineages into himself, in fact her lineages won't combine, they co-exist instead, in the future, Aisha might become an ancestor of each vampire lineage she has access to, that is if the rewards obtained in the blood prison realm, remain after leaving though.

Anyway, back to the fight, now that it has been stablished that Aisha's different energies won't get in the way of the other, so long as Aisha doesn't want them to of course, meaning that her descending lightings didn't make the javelins explode by clashing with them.

The other option was that the javelins landed on Arlion's battle avatar and exploded due to that, and that can be discarded as well because the javelins could be seen traveling into the distance, and what's more their trajectory was different without Aisha having done anything for that to happen.

The actual reason for the previous explosive sound was revealed once the silver light illuminating the battlefield, toned down, allowing Arlion's battle avatar to be visible again, the thing was now holding onto a large triangular white shield in front of it, which was the origin of the explosive sound from before, that was the impact caused by the javelins reaching said shield.

"Mmm, the javelins landed but didn't explode, it's a replication of magic equipment especially made to deal with mages I guess", said Aisha.

She was right, Arlion couldn't only manifest armor, he could manifest full equipment as his battle avatar reaching for his back to then unsheathe a large white sword, which was now mounted on the back the battle avatar, suggested.

The interesting part about this is that the past king from the clear water kingdom, was, according to the intel which Annette had gathered for Daimon when he became interested in Arlion after he learned about his participation in the tragedy of the angelfish race, not to mention the whole thing regarding Daphne's voice and Grace's curse, a mage.

Not only that, through Agrak's memories, Daimon confirmed that somehow the White's ancestor Dian, is the one who was in contact with Arlion and ultimately took his old body to reappear in Neptune, which gave him access to knowledge and powers outside of Neptune's scope, since he came from a Stellar Kingdom, and the specialty of the White Disaster Shark's race, which is the name of Dian's race, are indeed curses.

It's not like a knight can't use curses, since mana is not the preferred type of fuel for them, sacrifices are most of the time used to power the strongest curses, it doesn't need to be exactly lives, things that are precious to others can become sacrifices, the options are wide, but indeed the mysterious category which includes things like curses and rituals, are better handled by a mage who by innate has precise energy manipulation capacities rather than a knight who tends to be rough in such aspects usually.

Which makes it weird for Arlion to have the ability to manifest not only the armor, but also a shield and a sword as well, because it takes time for a knight to familiarize enough to do that with a single equipment, so, unless he was way more talented than even Horals or Mirellia, there is no way he could achieve this state, by normal means.

Considering that he was half dead when he reappeared and possessed Terry's body to recover his youth, as that's what he was prepared to, from the very beginning Terry was created to become his new vessel.

"White Wave Breaking Slash!", the hand of Arlion's battle avatar tightened its grip on the handle of the white giant sword which exploded in blue battle aura as he casted his martial art, as a result a five-hundred-meter large slashing light was released by the sword, but that wasn't all.

"White Wave Breaking Step!", the past king used his movement martial art, this time through his battle avatar, making it flash from its previous position, reaching Aisha's vicinity alongside his previously released slashing attack.

"White Wave Breaking Crush!", the shield wielded by Arlion's battle avatar exploded in blue battle aura as he bashed it at Aisha, it was a triple attack, the slash released before, the shield bash and he was also slashing the sword with his other hand.

"Clang!", to Arlion's disbelief a silver solid field was suddenly projected by Aisha, well, it was projected by her wings to be more accurate, the lightning version of it, is what she used to move at high speed, lightnings randomly produced by that version could kill peak Arch rank blood specters as Sera and Laila saw before.

What they didn't know is that there were more versions of said field, that was the ability of her wings, this metal one was automatically created to protect Aisha, in other words it was meant to be used for defense.

"Crack!", of course since when has that fierce vampire mother known to take a passive stance in a fight, electricity crackled all over the solid metal field which was surrounding Aisha.

"You shouldn't put me at same level of that guy's bitch either", casually said the vampire mother, referring to Karla which made the past king's eyes contract like needles, because his estimation of the enemy's power was seen through by said enemy.

"Silver Lightning Nova".

"Booooom!".

With Aisha as the center, a silver energy explosion expanded until it covered a whole five-kilometer area.

"Crack!", by the time the explosion started to die out, the sight of Arlion's battle avatar whose armor was full of cracks was revealed, the shattering sound from before didn't originate in the armor though, that was caused by both the white shield and the white sword which he used to protect himself, alongside a defensive martial art, when they both crumbled to pieces.

'What the hell!', inwardly screamed Arlion as he saw his replications be destroyed so easily.

Why did Aisha's newest technique have such a strong power you ask, that's simple, that was the first time she used an attack type technique which combined both her lightning and metal energies.