Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System

Chapter 748: Showdown Devil VS Demon (part 20)

Unfortunately for Marcus the awe and terror that he expected to feel coming from the masked silver haired youth didn’t appear, though Daimon indeed felt interested in this so called "battle domain".

The reason for the previous is simple, both Marcus and Adam did become a magic knight and a battle mage during their fights, however to reach that point they had to be at the Arch rank and they attained those states with external help.

On the other hand, Daimon knows a lot of people who has shown progress on both paths way below the Arch rank, of course there are others that have reached or surpassed the Arch ranks and haven’t become magic knights nor battle mages, but it’s not because they couldn’t, they simply lacked knowledge about it.

Even the grimoires of the soulmates while granting aspects of other paths at the stage they were judged to be needed the most for those two, didn’t specify about how to become a dual path powerhouse, this is because said knowledge was included into the rewards of the global raid.

Anyway, the point is that what Marcus thought should be shocking for the masked silver haired youth was rather common for him, not to mention that Daimon himself was both a mage and a knight at the same time, so he was barking up to the wrong tree here.

"Mmm, so this is the result of integrating aspects of a knight into a mage’s domain, in average, it should be around six to eight times stronger when compared to a domain that has been modeled by its owner’s will, well, that would be the case for someone that achieved this naturally, this one is only three times stronger I would say, though in front of a talented enemy it would barely be two times stronger", concluded Daimon after looking around with the green energy mask technique.

Like Badr stated, magic knights or battle mages become exponentially stronger than single path powerhouses starting from the Stellar realm, though Marcus is only a half stellar, the dagger and the pages from his devil grimoire got him covered in that end, that being said his result is still weaker than what he could have achieved if he did it by himself or at least put effort alongside the support of the system.

Daimon might have not seen a battle domain or its counterpart from the knight side before, since Adam couldn’t reach the complete form of the archangel transformation because he sucked that much as a hero, but he has seen the advanced version of a domain executed by the undead head maid.

So, in a rough calculation, once Rita reached the perfection of her advanced domain, Marcus’s battle domain would be at most twice stronger than Rita’s domain at the same stage.

And this is when Rita is fighting "alone" if she were to draw power from Daimon’s shadow, he calculated that the undead head maid would be able to equal him for a period of time.

In other words, were Rita to obtain a battle domain, she would absolutely destroy Marcus’s battle domain at the same stage, this was the gap caused by the difference between relying in external assistance and one’s own effort.

"Shup up, who do you think you are to judge my battle domain’s potential...", just as Marcus was retorting to Daimon’s evaluation, the ghost-like administrator girl interrupted him.

"What potential are you talking about, even if you add more hellscapes to this thing, the most you will reach is doubling its power and that would take three times the number of hellscapes you used to create it, what a letdown", said Lezabel with a cold light shinning in her bright red eyes.

’Fucking bitch, can’t you be content for once and give me some rewards, do you know how hard it was to set this up!’, inwardly cursed Marcus to then glare at Daimon.

"Let’s see you mock my battle domain after this, Royal Black Devil, Hell Disaster Cannon!", the atmosphere within Marcus’s domain trembled as mana from all over the place gathered on the devil castle forming a sphere of black mana that was crackling, in front of it.

The sphere exploded and turned into a massive mana stream four hundred meters tall and three hundred meters wide, it was a stupidly large amount of mana that was being shot as a spell in a single go.

The green energy knight kicked the royal devil guards that were fighting against her to then flash just in time to avoid being hit by the huge mana stream which immediately consumed the devil guards turning them to ashes on the spot.

The armored giant wolf while still entangled with the other group of devil guards, placed itself in front of Daimon and the green energy knight who had appeared next to him, taking the spell head on.

"Crack!", the copper energy armor which had been reinforced thanks to Daimon finishing tempering his body was destroyed after a couple of seconds and then the body of the giant wolf followed, however before disappearing it did manage to twist the trajectory of the mana stream to the side.

"Booooom!", the spell passed a few dozens of meters away from Daimon who didn’t move in the slightest, blew a hole on the wall of Marcus’s domain and then landed on the ground into the distance releasing a huge explosion that turned an area of half a kilometer into a disaster zone.

When the energy explosion finished its rampage, the sight of Daimon who was perfectly fine with the green energy knight next to him, while they were surrounded by green energy shields in four directions, was revealed.

"Tsk, controlling my own affinities plus external types of mana is annoying, still with a single shot that tough wolf construction of yours was destroyed, so what will you do to deal with a dozen of them, not to mention that you won’t be my only target", said Marcus with a cruel smile on his face.

This time, the tremor in the atmosphere intensified more and the mana drawn towards the devil castle was even larger than before.

"I wonder, will you help that traitor or will you save yourself!", with a quick gaze and the assistance of the green energy mask, Daimon saw exactly twelve gathering spots around the castle, just a second later the black "cannon balls" previous to the activation of the spell formed in those exact same spots.

Only five of them were pointed at Daimon and covered the four directions and the front as well, in other words, Marcus was aiming to create an attack with an area wide enough to prevent Daimon from dodging.

"Royal Black Devil, Hell Disaster Cannon Barrage!", the twelve mana agglomerations around the castle exploded, releasing all the energy contained inside of them, turning into twelve streams the same size as the one from earlier, only five were shot in Daimon’s direction though, the other seven all soared into the sky advancing towards a familiar oriented direction as in the area where the lioness and the snake flew to continue their fight earlier.

And here let’s take a short-lived pause from Daimon and Marcus’s battle, to see how things are doing on the lioness’s end.

...

"Domain!", the snake who had lost a part of its tail as well as an eye which now had a large five claw slashing mark on it, due to the fierce attacks of the lioness, couldn’t keep up with her anymore, so he used his domain on the spot.

"Abomination Blood Sea!", all the small snakes on its body exploded turning into a red blood mist that condensed into a red sea, the reason as to why the snake hadn’t used his domain so far is because it came with a price, he needed to replace each snake lineage he had as they will be completely exhausted for this.

And the problem is that Marcus held the method for that, with the initial empowering he got, the snake held more value but if he used it all up, he would have to depend on Marcus’s mood completely, it was not a wise bet on his side, unfortunately he had no choice as the other option was being ripped to shreds by the lioness’s claws.

"Black Sky, Shooting Star!", without a second of hesitation the lioness’s body exploded in black mana with white bright spots as she charged towards the snake which was now encased in that red blood sea, however midway through her charge, the lioness’s instincts gave her two contradictory warnings.

They were "keep going" and "dodge", they came practically at the same time as well, the lioness has never been indecisive so it didn’t take her any time to make her choice, which was charging straight towards the enemy.

At the same as she continued advancing, the clouds below those two’s battlefield were blasted away and seven huge black mana streams which were all aimed at the area where the lioness used to be and where she is positioned as of current, emerged from below.

"You are dead now you stubborn bitch, Blood Abomination Corrosive Tsunami!", the snake saw that the lioness would be soon engulfed by those huge mana streams and added his own attack just in case she managed to survive.

"Clang!", however at the same time as the lioness was about to be reached by those seven mana streams, seven objects only two hundred meters large appeared in front of her, stopping said attacks in cold.

"What!", the snake couldn’t help but exclaim in disbelief, however he let out a sigh of relief at the fact that he had also used his attack, because the red tsunami alongside his own domain were about to melt the lioness into a puddle of blood.

"Crack!", that unfortunately for the snake wasn’t the sound of the objects that were still blocking the huge mana streams by the way, breaking, that was the sound of the lioness charging though the snake’s spell and his domain, breaking a hole through it.

"Blegh!", the snake vomited blood on the spot, since his domain was damaged, he suffered backslash, but that was the least of his worries right now, the lioness had appeared above him, her wings as well as the ones of the manticore majestically spread as much as they could.

"Partial Domain, Black Firmament, Starless Calamity!", the lioness’s wings projected a huge area that was covered in darkness, the characteristic white bright spots of her star energy were missing this time though.

"N-No mercy aghhhhhhh!", the snake’s horrified screams could be heard coming from that completely dark area, before they faded into nothing alongside the snake because once the lioness’s wings stopped projecting that partial domain, there was nothing left of the snake.

This took long to explain but happened in a matter of a couple of seconds, by the moment lioness turned around to see what had saved her from those cowardly and familiar feeling attacks, they had disappeared along the mana streams, however she did notice that another seven huge holes were blasted on the clouds that had gathered after being dispersed earlier.

...

And now we return to Daimon’s side, the devil ruler system user who felt the seven mana streams he had shot at the lioness not being blocked anymore after a second had the urge to laugh out loud, thinking that the lioness had died after only enduring his attacks for a moment.

His smile however froze as the five mana streams that were about to reach Daimon who by the way remained still with only the green energy knight projecting a defensive barrier around them like earlier, clashed with seven mana streams descending from the sky, which halted their advance and dragged them towards the ground.

"Boooooom!", the twelve mana streams dived deep into the ground before they exploded, causing a large amount, of debris to fly in every direction, some of the black soil even melted due to the high heat of the explosion.

"How, those were my own attacks!", exclaimed Marcus in disbelief, after the momentary stalemate he felt of his attacks being blocked, he stopped receiving feedback from them but he did sense a terrifying darkness reaction coming from the relative direction at which he shot them, so by all means everything pointed at his attacks destroying their target, namely the lioness.

And it was right at this second when the connection between the snake and Marcus broke, which in other words meant that the snake was... dead.

’What the hell is going on!!!’, the unknown is always the most terrifying, so Marcus who saw the masked silver haired youth calmly floating on the same spot as before, after his own attacks somehow ended up blocking for him, exploded with anger.

"Kill him!", this time he didn’t need to call the spell, also it wasn’t a barrage, all the twelve casting spots gathered in front of the devil castle and actually combined, mana condensed into a single but many times larger than before black sphere which then turned into a one kilometer of diameter black mana stream.

"Gate of Protection", a familiar but also strange energy radiated out of Daimon’s body, it was Badr’s energy, however it was different from the one used to amplify things, this one was dark red colored and was solid instead, as it formed eight, one-hundred-meter sized gates that were then clad in four different colors, copper, bright green, bright yellow and red two gates per color.

Those four energies expanded and connected the eight dark red gates, ultimately forming a single one eight hundred meters large in total which had dark red as its base but was glowing in the other four other colors.

"Clang!", at this moment, the one-kilometer-wide mana stream landed on the gate in front of Daimon only to be completely blocked, not even a drop of that mana spilled to the sides, it was being perfectly contained, what’s more Marcus who nearly had a heart attack as he felt that more and more of the mana stream was escaping his control, lost it when he saw the mana forming a sphere in front of that gate, to then have the four energies covering the gate clad it.

"What!", the four colored clad black sphere exploded and a stream of the exact same size as the one Marcus shot at Daimon, was returned towards him, this one had a thin layer of four colored energies around it though.

"Boooooom!", a thick black barrier with pulsating dark red veins appeared around the devil castle blocking the mana stream, the barrier cracked and crumbled apart by the moment the attack ended, as for the huge gate, it separated into eight smaller gates that then turned into dark red particles.

"Hoh, you used seven of those smaller gates to block the attacks he aimed at that lioness, if I’m not wrong that gate technique’s effect is to block and return energy attacks, so to make him think that the mana streams had reached their target you covered his mana with those other energies to then send them back, using them to block the mana streams aimed at you, all this while keeping the eight gate to defend yourself just in case, right?", said the ghost-like administrator with an interested voice, which made Daimon raise an eyebrow, she was completely right.

The moment Marcus aimed to attack the lioness, he met the requirements for Badr’s main technique, which was gate of protection, his version was different than Badr’s one though, it only worked on energy attacks, but in exchange he could add his own energies to them and give them some fun effects, like cutting their connection to the one that casted them for example, which is what Daimon did, tricking Marcus into believing that he had gotten the lioness.

"Yes, that’s basically what happened", ultimately said Daimon, making Lezabel nod to then add.

"I do have one question about all this, how did you know to cast that gate technique first at that lioness’s direction, the distance between the devil castle and her is way larger than between the devil castle and you?", she asked to which Daimon casually answered.

"That’s simple, he is such a predictable piece of trash, the kind that wouldn’t resist showing his opponent how their close ones "suffer" if he has the chance, so of course his attack was going to reach the lioness first".

"I see, so you have not only analyzed his mana thoroughly but also his personality and choice-making, how devilish~", said the ghost-like administrator girl as she giggled, all this under Marcus’s disgusted expression.

He could understand if his mana was analyzed by the masked silver haired youth as he has used it a lot through the fight and he could have asked Adam about it, however neither the hero nor the devil system user knew each other personally in depth, so to get such an accurate conclusion over his personality and choice making to the point that he could literally predict his next move, the masked silver haired youth must have met him many times before and he must be a natural strategist as well.

’This doesn’t make any sense, I only met this bastard once before entering this place, but he had a better understanding of me than Adam, what the hell is going on?’, thought Marcus, at this point he wasn’t angered but actually afraid, he was wondering whether the masked silver haired youth was an enemy from his past.

Because just like Adam, he had of course trampled over a lot of people during his raise from a normal member of the devil race to a system user, they too awakened as users later in their life like Daimon, with the difference that in their cases there was no danger whatsoever, according to Eve some users were born with their systems already awakened, this has nothing to do with the power of neither the user nor the system, but the concept instead.

’Whatever, I’ll know once I remove that damn mask from his dead corpse!’, concluded Marcus to then say.

"Black Devil Contract, Royal Devil Castle!", this spell was used on Marcus himself, and the result was that an oppressive atmosphere spread around the devil castle and its vicinity.

"So, large scale spells don’t work against that energy, it doesn’t matter, my devil castle can’t be destroyed externally, you’ll have no choice but to cross its defenses by foot and even if you do get into the castle, there is a big "surprise" waiting for you!".

"So that’s the major difference between a domain and a battle domain, you get to set "conditions" through the use of laws, in a sense integrating aspects of both paths gives one’s trait a partial advantage of a whole major realm then", said Daimon who had gotten an idea of what the Star Lord realm represented, thanks to the little tongue slips some of his allies have had.

Advanced domain shaping might grant new properties to one’s domain, but they are limited to the mana used by the person in question, for example Rita, she can probably increase the size and boost the strength of her domain with Daimon’s shadow, but that is still shadow mana.

Marcus’s battle domain on the other hand, had gained powers that weren’t directly related to the mana he used, well, these new powers did relate to his royal devil mana in a sense.

As in, the devil castle presented a cliché situation for when a hero fights the devil king, the hero’s party always goes through a lot of hardships to even reach the devil king, they for some reason never try to blow the thing away alongside the devil king as if it’s "impossible to be destroyed externally" yet it is easily damaged during the fight later on.

Then, they have to fight their way instead of being able to directly teleport inside the damn castle so they have to "cross it by foot", once inside, the hero still has to deal with the strongest subordinates of the devil king and this is where the party must suffer some casualties so that the hero can advance.

Daimon has zero doubts that Marcus has the "four heavenly kings" waiting for him inside the devil castle, because not all the proxies of the hellscapes died, there was a wraith left in the mind burning hell, the imp from the golden opportunity mountain hell, the black lion armor that incarnated the power of the beast colosseum hell and unlike what Marcus thought, Daimon did notice that one of the devil royal guards, the one closest to the throne was stronger than the others and he didn’t make one like that earlier.

"Dying because a contract with yourself keeps you from leaving that castle unless you kill your enemy or drive him away, how pathetic", said Daimon.

"Nonsense, you can’t reach me while I am here!", shouted Marcus while adding to his insides.

’Besides, in just a few more minutes the ability of the devil tattoo will be up to be used, then even if you were a peak Stellar, you’ll die!’, he thought, only for a mocking female voice which he has never heard before to reach his ears.

’Even your strongest move has clauses and conditions in exchange for its overwhelming power, that’s the problem with the devils, well, the trash ones at least, they limit themselves to contracts and all that boring stuff, demons on the other hand... they do whatever the hell they want~’.

Marcus was then hit by a familiar sensation of dread coming from everywhere, because the one who just spoke to him was none other than Eve, who of course couldn’t help but brag about her own user.

And then he was hit by an even stronger sensation of dread, he could identify the origin of this one easily though, the masked silver haired youth.

"Sorry, I’m not an idiot like Adam, so I have no reason to play with your rules", said Daimon.

He had dispelled everything, the green energy knight and even the energy constructions that covered his body, creaking sounds came from all over him before a black halo with a white large border appeared above his head.

"Y-You were a hero all along, no that’s not a halo, what the hell is that!", shouted Marcus as he saw the energy ring floating above Daimon’s head which somewhat resembled the halo of an angel, however unlike Adam’s one, small crystals orbited Daimon’s one, five of them to be more accurate and they were of familiar colors as well, copper, bright green, bright yellow, vivid red and lastly dark red.

’As expected of her, this is such a flashy technique’, thought Daimon to then point his right palm at the devil castle.

"Crack!", all the way from the flaming walls to the black castle that resided on top of a mountain, cracked and then shattered on the spot, turning into mana particles that dispelled into the air, leaving behind a dumbfounded Marcus who was now sitting on the air where his throne used to be.

"Boooooom!", then his domain followed along and the reaction that should have come to him earlier, happened.

"Aghhhhhh!", wounds opened all over Marcus before blood spurted out of his whole body basically.