Chapter 776 - 776: A fundamentally different kind of fight (part 6)

Seeing Aisha raise an eyebrow at the sight of the four breaking javelins being stopped in cold by the barrier projected by the white-blue halo shinning behind of his back, Arlion snorted.

His figure though remaining like that of a young man in his late teen years just like Terry, changed, his long blue hair shortened until it had a much more stylish length just a bit above shoulder length, and some areas of it turned white colored as well.

That was Arlion's real appearance when he was around Terry's age, even his face changed a bit, Terry had this erudite and noble countenance, but Arlion while keeping the noble part, had a much more aggressive and sharp face, the changes weren't extreme because at the end of the day Arlion was Terry's biological father, but they indeed were different from each other.

"What, you thought you were the only one that could reach the state of a battle mage or magic knight?".

The breaking javelins have the sea devil ore property to suppress battle aura, so the fact that the four were blocked head on, without Arlion using anything but his energy, without using a special mean, martial art or something, was because he wasn't just using battle aura anymore.

That white-blue halo floating behind of him acted like Adam's angel wing, which allowed him to combine his battle aura with light mana from the atmosphere, so now just the property of the sea devil ore couldn't affect his battle aura as much as before, as it had mana mixed into it.

Don't get it wrong though, Adam was able to do so because of his archangel transformation, it was a temporary state and fell in the category of a boosting ability at the end of the day, that is because the light hero fool didn't train nor earn his power, so he followed the nonsense short-lived power up path.

Arlion on the other hand, rather than powering up, would be more accurate to say that he was returning to his normal state, that pendant was a medium for a ritual of sorts like previously stated and contrary to what one would believe, it was a medium for a curse… which was casted on Arlion himself.

'So that's how he avoided my darling and Eve's detection, well it would be more accurate to say that he used that curse to be out of the scope of their detection, it's interesting how he seems to have so much knowledge about "chosen ones" despite not being one himself, nor having supposedly interacted with one, prior to Ereth who would never share information with him'.

Just like how Arlion could sever his connection with the physical vessel he was inhabiting to avoid suffering damage, he severed his connection with "himself" so that he wouldn't be perceived as a system user candidate by others.

And that's not a measure that someone who doesn't have deep knowledge about system users, like a candidate to one as Arlion is, should have, after all this was done with the idea to not be noticed by proper system users, but how did he know that he would be noticed to begin with, remains a mystery.

'Well, darling's eyes aren't working at full capacity so he is not aware of what is happening here, but Eve is, so I can rub this on her face later~', thought Aisha to then say.

"The state of a battle mage or a magic knight is nothing special, every single person on our side will naturally reach it at its given time, I simply thought you were going to grow wings like Adam, but I guess despite the "white" in the name of your lineage, you are not a light hero candidate, but a water related one".

It is unknown why but apparently the whole angel theme is really tied to light hero type systems, just like how the spiked tooth, eyes and similar eerie theme was tied to the devil type systems.

Arlion kind of stopped listening at "the state of a battle mage or a magic knight is nothing special" though, he is a native of Neptune and as such, until a certain point where his life took a 180° degree, he lived with incomplete power paths, so the chances of him ever becoming a battle mage back then, when he was, according to history records a mage, and currently a magic knight as he is a knight, were pitifully low.

"Sure, it requires effort, but just knowledge about it or a bit of luck in terms of affinity is needed to put someone in the way to mixing paths, so that couldn't be what granted you the status of a chosen one candidate", casually added Aisha to then say with a serious voice this time.

"Did I not tell you that I don't want to be separated from my darling for too long",

"Hssss!", so far Arlion didn't show any reaction to Aisha's threat, judging by the green shade silver and violet lightning arcs that crackled around her right hand, she was using that technique which focused in dealing with battle aura, but he was beyond that already.

"Silver Ruler Breaking Javelins", as Arlion expected, two tri-colored lightning streams, as in silver, green and purple were shot by from Aisha's right hand, nothing new.

"Silver Ruler Obliterating Javelins", but then a new shade was added to the silver lightning that gathered in front of Aisha's left hand and mouth, it was unique shade of blackish blue he had never before.

The "breaking" word is used for the devil sea ore property metal energy added to Aisha's attack type techniques, because battle aura is a type of energy whose tendency is to compress and solidify, and thus it basically becomes a physical object past a certain point, and devil sea ore metal energy works like a hammer designed to break through it.

Mana on the other hand instead has the tendency to spread and expand, past a certain point it becomes ethereal, because though you might not see it, it is there, floating in the atmosphere and residing inside every single thing in existence.

And for that same reason, the word Aisha chose for the metal energy property that antinite which is like an eraser designed specially to eliminate till the last trace of mana in a certain area, is "Obliterating" instead.

"What!", Arlion's eyes nearly popped out of his sockets when he saw that just two of the enemy's attacks, one with a green silver shade and other with that blackish blue tone, landing on the barrier projected by the white-blue halo floating behind of him, made the barrier crack.

"Crack!", then when the second pair reached it, they directly broke through the barrier and advanced towards him.

"Damn it!", cursed Arlion as he extended his right arm making his battle avatar do the same to then slash the white-blue sword replica at the javelins.

"Boooom!", the sword smacked the lightning streams to the side making them explode the next second, but the sword didn't come out unscathed, some small cracks spread on the edge which Arlion repaired the next second.

'Are you kidding me, she can do the same with mana!', exclaimed Arlion to his insides.

As a past king of the clear water kingdom, he knew basically all the precious ores and materials that existed in Neptune, maybe he didn't get to see and use them all, but at least he had heard of them, but there was nothing with an effect on par with sea devil ore oriented to mana among that, otherwise his anti-mage equipment would have been of a much higher level, just like how that tower shield is almost a cheating code against knights.

Which is normal, antinite doesn't exist in either Neptune, Kerrol or Draim, this was confirmed by Daimon who of course informed himself about the precious materials he could obtain from the places he visited.

In fact, while Ophelia, Thalia and other girls who come from higher ranked places, didn't seem surprised by Disaster's appearance, they also didn't seem to recognize the coating which worked as the capricious sword's safety limiter and snack given that Disaster slowly but surely kept eating said layer when it felt like it, which created the theory that antinite might be a resource maybe not exclusive to the four galaxies, since the universe is limitless so the chances of them having something no one else has, are infinitely low, but it might be something that can only be found in very specific places.

"Silver Ruler Obliterating Descends".

"Silver Ruler Breaking Descends".

Anyway, back to the fight, seeing that the half devil ore and half antinite property techniques worked like a charm, Aisha proceeded with the same combination, but this time for a round of four wide area techniques, when they were the same technique, Aisha could use a single casting by just changing the last term to plural.

"Crack!", seeing the familiar world-ending lightning arcs crackling high into the sky, Arlion gritted his teeth.

'This bitch, really has a lot of tricks up her sleeve, fine let's see who laughs last!', he exclaimed to his insides as he made his battle avatar fly upwards, yeah that's right, instead of running from the incoming lightning rain, Arlion this time ran towards the origin of it.

And no, he didn't lose it and become suicidal out of nowhere, you got to see the Arch rank trait of a battle mage courtesy of Marcus, during his fight with Daimon, but Adam was too lazy and being fair, it was too early into the mission for him to have reached the level to use it too, though things would have been different if he had genuinely listened to the advice of Ariel, perhaps he could have forced himself to use the state of a magic knight properly.

Luckily, we get a chance to see what we missed back then, now, courtesy of Arlion, when a knight uses their battle avatar, unlike a mage they don't have to call it out, one of the advantages of a battle avatar over a domain, is that focus and casting is not needed for it to manifest and maintain itself, this is something that remains the same even for battle mages as we saw when Marcus manifested his devil castle thing, perhaps it's because knights don't specialize in precise control after all.

Not to mention that a battle avatar is easier to control, given the relatively smaller usual scale of a battle avatar and the fact that their owner has to always be inside of it for it to work at full strength, well, with the exception of a certain lamia queen and her older daughter who is also a knight, but apparently the same doesn't apply to the Arch rank trait of a "magic knight".

"Magic Avatar, Clear Water Royal Guardian Beast!", with a loud shout, a whole bunch of white-blue battle aura was radiated from Arlion's battle avatar, which then absorbed water and light mana from the atmosphere, to take the form of a… shark.

It was a three-kilometer large white great shark-like shaped battle aura and mana condensation, differentiating itself from a normal great shark magic beast because it had spikes on its sides, and sharp scales on its lateral fins.

Amusingly enough that was a white disaster shark, you could see that Arlion wasn't really obsessed with the race from which his lineage descended, he didn't look down on it either though, but treated the white disaster shark lineage as a servant of the clear water kingdom.

In other words, he was the king and the white disaster shark was a protector, or guardian beast, you can tell that Dian didn't know about this either, because he would have lost his stuff at Arlion if he did, after all, the white disaster shark race was one of the top clans of the northern sea stellar kingdom, so for it to be treated as such by a degraded descendant born in a "lowly mortal" plane like Neptune, would have been unacceptable.

Dian probably knew of the next though, when Arlion manifested his "magic avatar" which was that shark, his battle avatar also suffered a change, not in appearance, since it now looked like the real Arlion from around Terry's age, since earlier, but it also grew in size by taking in mana from the atmosphere, until it doubled its previous size which was just a few hundred meters shorter than one kilometer, as he was being restrained by the blood prison realm.

And in case you wonder how come there is mana in the atmosphere if Aisha had demonite field isolating the battlefield, that's because of the abyss below of them, Aisha couldn't create a sphere, it was a cupule because the abyss below extended for who knows how much of a distance, besides her focus was not the mana in the atmosphere, but blocking specifically annoying things like connections between enemies outside of the field and those inside of it, as well as blocking the space to prevent enemies from escaping at the last second.

"Booooom!", just at this moment, the four wide area techniques casted by Aisha descended all at the same time, but Arlion didn't stop flying upwards, he pointed his right hand at the incoming lightning rain and the shark magic avatar opened its jaws and dragged all the lightnings falling in a three-kilometer area with it as the center, into its stomach, effectively "guarding" Arlion from suffering any harm.

The strange part is that the shark ability to do the previous was quite effective on Aisha's energy, but the silver-haired vampire mother easily connected the dots.

"So that's what you used with Daphne and miss Grace, a magic avatar with a permanent curse especially crafted for anything lineage related imbued into it, or well, considering how fierce those two are and that you must have lacked the magic avatar and only had the curse, you got a half-baked result", said Aisha, which made Arlion's eyes contract like needles.

'So that's how she knows so much about me, that dolphin girl must have caught my tail due to that failure of back then… tsk, I would have eliminated those two if I didn't feel that invisible threat which forced me to act much more slowly and less aggressively when compared to before', thought Arlion, referring to Annete first and then to Daphne and Grace.

Giving the fact that despite her lost voice, Daphne remained a strong warrior and how Grace didn't lose her mind, Daimon already guessed that they must have resisted against whatever curse Arlion aimed to use on them, but he also had the doubt about why they were left alive after that.

After all, Daphne was directly sentenced to death by Arlion, so he clearly didn't spare her on purpose, apparently, he was forced to not do such large movements for some reason, but let's leave that aside for now.

The blood prison realm, as it names state is closely tied to lineages, the blood specters that inhabit it are remnants of magic beasts whose lineages were separated from them and sealed here, the energies of those that participate in here are the same, they ere not mana nor battle aura but lineage related instead.

As the root of it, a curse especially crafted to deal with lineages, was quite effective on the energies, at least it allowed the shark magic avatar to overcome the strong suppressive effect of the sea devil ore and antinite properties in Aisha's metal energy.

"You don't seem to be able to appropriate what you steal from others but instead probably use it for a different end, though even if that wasn't the case, I just need to make it so that there is nothing left for you to use", said Aisha as she snapped her fingers.

"Boooooom!", with Aisha's order, the lightning inside the shark's stomach suddenly grew incredibly violent to then explode.

"Roaaar!", the shark magic avatar let out a loud roar as the lightning exploded inside of its stomach, soft shattering sounds could be heard coming from its sides for a moment, but the explosion subsided before real damage was done to it.

'Tsk, even if the energies are lineage related, there are still elements imbued into them, just the guardian beast is not enough to suppress her', thought Arlion as he made his battle avatar fly to then land on the back of the magic avatar.

"Clear Water Royal Guardian Mount", that was a martial art with the effect of manifesting a saddle on the back of the magic avatar shark, which was then used by Arlion's battle avatar to sit.

"So, the arch rank trait of a magic knight is not a second avatar, but more of an extension of the original one, you just can't use it as a whole by default so it is divided in two separate halves", casually said Aisha.

She was right, like previously stated the Lamia queen is an exception, a knight is not supposed to separate from its battle avatar, so it was strange that Arlion had that shark move independently, but now it was revealed why, he might have achieved the state of a magic knight, which sure is outside of Neptune's scope, but he barely did it and was lacking in technique.

"How amusing, despite all the shady stuff you must have done to reach this point, even without my darling ever appearing in this place, your feats would have been surpassed by at least five people from the recent generations and at a younger age too", added Aisha referring to Annette, Sarah, Mellie, Lance and Daphne.

That doesn't mean Jasmine, Cassie, Chris and other talented girls from Neptune were worse than them, but Aisha was absolutely sure those five would have done it without putting any effort, achieving said feats quite fast, the rest would have needed to develop one way or another which would have taken them some time, for example Jasmine had basically no strong attack means prior to being influenced by Daimon.

"Save that superiority complex for when you had seen what my magic avatar can…", Arlion's sentence stopped midway when he felt as if a mountain was pressing down on his chest.

"Let me tell you a little something about my darling… he never underestimates anyone, in fact, no matter how pathetic and how much of a piece of trash someone might appear to be, his plans are designed to deal with versions of the enemies many times stronger than what meets the eye", she said to then add.

"And that's why this is disappointing, you are still within "A plan" range strength after all, therefore a composed technique of my normal state should be enough to deal with you".

"Silver Eclipse, Violet Dawn", following Aisha's words, the origin of the pressure which had made Arlion's body alongside his magic avatar to freeze on the spot, was revealed.

A ten-kilometer sized silver metal "sun" with silver crackling lightning around it appeared above Arlion, to then radiate a violet ray upon him.

"Booooom!", the violet ray engulfed Arlion and his magic avatar and then travelled deep into the black abyss, illuminating a few dozens of kilometers into it, before it hit something and then exploded, releasing a giant pilar of violet light which travelled all the way into the sky until it was stopped by the demonite field.

You see, so far you have seen techniques which are powered by more than one type of energy yes, but they are a single technique at the end of the day, and in case you have forgotten, Aisha's specialty is to combine techniques themselves, combining elements is mere child's play for her.

Well, outside she combines spells to be more accurate, but the principle remains the same, silver eclipse is the result of combining a descend and a javelin technique by the way, as for the violet dawn part, that's because she used her blood energy for the main attack, which is why Arlion was frozen in place earlier, he got overwhelmed by the authority projected by Aisha's composed technique.

"Black Eclipse, Silver Dawn", Aisha snapped her fingers and this time a ten-kilometer black metallic "sun" with silver lightning crackling around it appeared high into the sky, to then project an incredibly fast silver ray of light all over the area.

"Enough you bitch!", Arlion whose magic avatar was actually perfectly fine after being engulfed by the violet dawn of earlier, came out of space to then explode in white, blue and yellow mana and battle aura which he directed towards his sword replica.

With a "swoosh" the sword was slashed at Aisha's technique and an interesting sight was displayed as a result, the silver ray of light which was supposed to engulf everything in a ten-kilometer area, was deviated on the spot, completely missing its target.

At the same time, the shark magic avatar once again opened its mouth and dragged some of the siler ray into its stomach which's insides were coated in that white, blue and yellow mana and battle aura, which once again produced a different result than earlier.

The moment the shark closed its mouth after taking some of Aisha's silver ray away, she actually had her connection with that portion of energy, severed on the spot.

Probably it was a measure to prevent her from leaving Arlion with nothing to work with, how did he do it was the question here though, his interference had surpassed the rule of the blood prison realm over energy after all.