Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System - Chapter 696

Chapter 696: Challenges, Alfear Princess version (part 1)
Seeing the masked silver haired youth not following up with his attacks, even after making him suffer a though small, still painful setback right at the start, Marcus gritted his teeth to then say.

“So, what if you obtained some light-related fortunate encounter thanks to Adam’s influence, how dare you not try to aim for my head right away when you had the chance”.

“Just so you know, I’m aware that those two bitches which Adam was fawning over as of current, who you stupidly believe you have a chance with, are the reason as to why you could catch up to me so fast, but that’s also why I ordered my subordinate to kill them in the most gruesome way possible!”, he shouted while thinking to himself.

‘Let’s see you keep that tough front while your mind is corroded wondering the horrors those bitches will be facing!’.

Naturally Marcus’s thoughts weren’t relying in a simple provocation, he used a spell alongside said words, which is why his expression soured when he saw Daimon’s body radiate a bright silver light, which made the previously invisible manifestation of Marcus’s skill to become visible.

A few strange snake-like black ominous mana streams appeared around Daimon’s head and chest, for everyone to see, they moved as if they were alive, wriggling like worms trying to move in order to invade Daimon’s body, while being completely restrained by Daimon’s silver light.

To then be burned into ashes the next second when Daimon snapped his fingers after taking a close look into that darkness energy application, which made Marcus exclaim.

“My “Devil Whispers” actually failed, that’s right he must have been given a damn mind protection treasure by Adam!”.

“What a poor excuse, did it never cross your mind that your mind and heart corroding ability is simply trash, in fact I know a certain someone who could drive other people mad without needing anything but normal words”, casually said Daimon obviously referring to Sarah.

Marcus was really barking to the wrong tree here, if anyone has resistance against provocations in this world, that is Daimon who has had to deal with not only Erin for quite a few years, but also Sarah in recent times, even if his silver energy didn’t interfere, the chances of his words having any effect, were absolutely zero.

“To begin with your approach is wrong, only Tessa is fighting against the source of your control over the jungle, because if Femi was helping her, the fight wouldn’t be a challenge for her at all”, he said as he shrugged.

‘What did this bastard just say!’, exclaimed Marcus in his mind, the lapse of time between him giving the trees the order to stall Daimon, and the moment when they stopped even attempting to, was of barely one minute, and while he couldn’t detect neither Tessa nor Femi from the very beginning, at most ten minutes passed since the moment Daimon’s group arrived in front of him.

In other words, if what the masked silver haired youth said was true, a single enemy, whose energy realm shouldn’t have reached the Arch rank yet, managed to force his couple of secret middle stage Arch rank subordinates, to not have the leisure to pay attention to anything else but their own fights, in such a short period of time.

‘It’s not fucking possible, I prepared those two after knowing that the alfear bitch somehow had control over a middle Arch rank and even took the dwarf bitch into account as well, so even if the three of them fought together, they would be crushed by them, so what the hell is going on!!!’, shouted Marcus to his insides, only to see red when Daimon casually added.

“You see, that’s how you make a poor bastard lose his mind without resorting to any special means”.

‘Hahaha, I can’t, you should have looked to bring this masked guy to your side before that hero bastard did it, he’s got all the knack for being a “devil” that you lack~’, add to the previous figurative slap on the face, that Lezabel didn’t hesitate for a second to rub salt on the wound and you get a Marcus whose eyes were bloodshot.

“Hssssss!”, as a result of the previous, dark ominous mana gathered on Marcus’s clawed black metal gauntlets, earlier he simply relied in his weapon thinking that it was enough to deal with the masked silver haired youth in front of him, which ended in him suffering a loss.

So, he decided to not play around and directly melt the enemy’s body with his mana while he made sure to crush every single bone in his body at the same time.

“Masked bastard!”, and so with an angered shout, Marcus turned into a black mana stream, which charged towards Daimon, who answered in kind by radiating a lot of silver energy to clash head on with the devil ruler user.

…

But we’ll continue with that later, for the time being let’s focus in the most impactful fight that was ongoing, besides Daimon’s one of course, in case you haven’t guessed it, it’s Tessa’s one.

Why is the most important one you ask, well, that’s because had she not being the one confronting the source of Marcus’s control over this side of the jungle, everyone else would have been annoyed by the thorned trees, during their own respective fights.

Sure, that doesn’t necessarily mean they would lose, but it would give the enemies opportunities to play tricks, which in case you have forgotten, is one of the worst possible scenarios when facing people under the influence of a system user, especially the kind that casually hands over things from the item shop like they are candies, without giving a damn to tell those close to them, to only use them if there are no other options, like Marcus.

Well, Adam was the same, but luckily, he had no chance to get people on his side as he was temporarily kept away from “conquering” Jas by Sarah first, and then permanently by Daimon, so he lost the support of the people from the Light Palace, which he was going to equip with a whole bunch of things from the item shop, later.

Anyway, to understand why those thorned branches stopped a few meters before reaching Daimon back then, we must go back in time around fifteen minutes, let’s start from the very moment when Tessa parted ways with Daimon and the others.

After saying her goodbyes to Daimon and the others, the alfear princess dashed through the jungle towards that area which even from afar radiated quite an ominous aura, of course the more she approached it, the more the thorned branches of the trees started attacking her.

But Tessa wasn’t travelling alone, the roots of the giant tree were following her from below the ground, and so whenever Tessa was surrounded by attacks from every direction, the thorned roots intervened to open a way for the alfear princess to keep advancing.

In other cases, Tessa simply used a movement technique to dodge the incoming attacks, so a couple of minutes and many clashes between the thorned branches and the roots of the giant tree later, the alfear princess found herself in front of an open space in the middle of this side of the jungle.

After taking a quick glance, Tessa realized that this was the exact opposite of the area where the giant tree is placed, at the other side of the jungle, so as she thought, the source of the enemy’s control over the trees should be here.

“Ughh…”, after bypassing the last couple of trees and entering the open area, the alfear princess couldn’t help but slightly wrinkle her small nose in disgust, as she caught wind of an especially foul smell lingering in the vicinity.

It’s worth mentioning that it wasn’t the one of death nether, in fact unlike Lyn for example, who found this jungle as a whole disgusting, maybe because the high concentration of death nether in it, Tessa was rather neutral towards it.

Perhaps, because even if not life oriented like most plants, the area was filled with trees at the end of the day, not to mention that she has darkness affinity as well, which is why she didn’t feel discomfort by innate, just because something had a negative oriented nature, very unlike of an alfear and a royal one at that by the way.

No, the source of the frown on Tessa’s pretty face and her clear disgust, was another thing, which ironically had the shape of a tree, that being said, besides the shape, that thing didn’t have any other resemblance to a tree from Tessa’s perspective.

What lied a few of hundreds of meters in front of the alfear princess was a couple of pitch-black trees, which besides having their bone thorns arranged in a strange line pattern all over their branches, didn’t look that different from the other trees, besides the fact that they were around half the size of the giant tree at the other side of the jungle, each.

But things changed once you took a more careful gaze at them, and saw the thin red, vein like things which came out of those trees and dived into the ground, extending all over the vicinity, those things were pulsing in intervals, giving the trees an eerie sensation.

Add to that the fact that the moment Tessa stepped into the open area surrounding those trees, the things shook a bit before the slit thorn patterns all over their surface trembled, before they… opened, revealing their true nature, all those were actually eyes, with red pupils.

That’s right, those pitch black “trees”, had countless eyes spamming through their surfaces, so it’s obvious that whatever they were, trees weren’t the correct term for them.

“What did that bastard do…”, mumbled the alfear princess, feeling anger filling her chest for a second, before she took a deep breath, it’s obvious that after being forced back by the giant tree which was assisting her, Marcus created his own version of it.

Of course, the method was completely different, after all what she did was an accident, she simply fed a dying tree some of the nature related energy which she had obtained through the Blood Prison realm, to a dying tree, because it was the sole one that didn’t show any hostility towards Femi when they were passing by and casually was the one that took the blunt of Laila’s technique, which forced the other trees to go berserk, before they were absorbed by the current giant tree.

The result was still a tree, though with a much clearer “conscience” and a higher realm than others, while whatever Marcus did, simply resulted in an abomination shaped like a tree.

What’s more, the foul smell which Tessa detected, originated from those red vein-like things, which Tessa concluded was the reason as to why this side of the jungle was under Marcus’s control, after all the thorns on the trees on this side, were a mix of black and red, instead of the white bone color of the normal ones.

In other words, Tessa was right to have come here, because if she dealt with those things, then the enemy would lose the “field advantage”, still, the alfear princess was indeed surprised to see that those things radiated energy at the middle stage of the Arch rank, meaning that Marcus had prepared another pair of such strong subordinates, in secret.

But it’s not like she didn’t come prepared for a “challenging” fight, in fact that’s what she wanted, since her instincts told her that such a situation would be for her benefit.

“Wood thorn knight”, with a short sentence, the alfear princess called the thorned roots, which actually remained outside of the open space, making them emerge from the ground, to then entangle and compress, taking a humanoid form, which then walked until it was standing next to Tessa.

Apparently, the thorned roots of the giant tree couldn’t move underground in this spot, probably because of those red vein-like things, but in this humanoid form the roots separated from the ground, so they weren’t in contact with whatever lied below the black soil here.

Of course, in exchange for such mobility, there was a limit to the time that the wood thorn knight could remain, before it had to return to its root form as it used the energy contained in it, but that was fine by Tessa, because she didn’t plan for the fight to las that long.

That being said, Tessa was still the calm and responsible in her usual team which consists in Femi and herself, so she didn’t rush in without any plan, the reason as to why she called the wood thorn knight, was so that she could gain some intel without being interrupted in the process.

“Guard me, please”, she said as she crouched down to then place her right hand on the ground, bright green energy gathered in her pretty amber colored pupils, before she closed her eyes not without saying.

“Nature’s Memory”, thin waves of bright green energy came out of Tessa’s hand, to then deepen into the ground, which immediately made the eyes of those two pitch black trees, to focus on Tessa.

Their branches which became flexible to then entangle taking the form of seemingly smooth, tentacle like extremities, which of course charged towards the alfear princess.

“Clang!”, naturally the wood thorn knight immediately fulfilled its duties by lashing its thorned whip at the incoming pitch-black branches, clashing against them the next second, which produced the sound of metals colliding.

“Hrashhhh!”, but then while the clash was still ongoing, the eyes on the branches split in the middle, revealing mouths with spiked teeth which were hidden in between, quite the disturbing sight by the way, which only exalted the current hideous nature of the trees.

The spike toothed mouths that opened on the surface of the tree branches, let out a screeching sound, before ominous black mana was shot out of them, in response the wood thorn knight answered in kind by cladding its thorned whip in a combination of bright green and ash grey colored energies, that was Tessa’s nature energy and the tree’s own death nether, which had escaped the influence of Aslan’s one.

“Booom!”, the ominous mana expelled by the trees and the wood thorn knight’s energies collided, resulting in an explosion, apparently they were quite volatile when faced against each other, despite sharing some common origin in the form of death nether.

Still, the wood thorn knight managed to defend against both of the trees, since it’s focus was defending and not attacking, which was good, because it took Tessa nearly a whole minute for her technique to properly activate.

Speaking of which, “Nature’s Memory” is something she obtained in the Blood Prison realm, and it’s not based in any spell she has learned, read or even heard about before.

Its function was to imbue her energy with her senses and then send it into the ground, looking for an “entry point” where she could inspect, the memories of a plant, tree or anything of the like, quite an interesting technique to be honest.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, Tessa had to find a “cooperative” vegetation, which she could use to take a peek of what happened in the surroundings, that’s why it wasn’t guaranteed for it to work and it took her time to look around, also it would be more accurate to call what she would obtain “flashes of information” rather than memories.

Luckily, after almost a whole minute, the alfear princess managed to find a tree a bit far from this area, but with a decently clear sight of those two things, which agreed to cooperate and thus, a few not so clear, but still very useful images and sounds flashed through Tessa’s mind.

In them, the alfear princess saw Marcus ordering the girl from the church of calamity, to feed a couple of trees which were born next to each other, with her death nether, just enough to strengthen them without them going berserk, everything was relatively fine until that point.

But then, Marcus started taking vial after vial with strange viscous liquids and powders with different colors and appearances, some dark red, others blue or black and the list went on.

He spread all those liquids on the soil around the trees and then used those powders to draw a magic circle, he also tossed a few… limbs of different sizes and even shapes, as in not all belonged to humanoid races, into the finished magic circle, and for the end he made a slight cut in his index finger and let a drop of his own blood, fall into all that mess.

With the magic circle lightning up in a black ominous energy, all the materials melted and fused together, taking the form of a black viscous shapeless thing, with a bunch of eyes on its surface which then made its way into the trees.

Normally, what Tessa can obtain by using this technique is limited to images and some sounds, but in this particular case the emotion felt by the tree which was cooperating with her, was so strong, that it reached the alfear princess, namely, hatred.

That tree which’s nature was a violent one while it also fed in death, actually showed such a strong enmity towards another negative oriented being, one which Tessa could confirm surpassed the reaction shown, by the trees against a life-oriented energy, like Arianna’s one for example.

The images ended here, and so Tessa opened her eyes, to then mumble what she managed to hear from Marcus.

“Devil Flesh Parasite Tree”, she said, that was the name of the things that were allowing Marcus to have control over this side of the jungle, based on what she heard, that black goo with eyes was the real form of the enemy, it became a tree by fusing with one, so it wasn’t part of the vegetation by innate but a parasite that took control over them.

That and the fact that it fed in life filled objects, is probably why the tree which cooperated with Tessa showed such clear hatred towards it, also just like Tessa thought, it was those red-vein like things what were influencing this side of the jungle.

Basically, any tree that didn’t obey those things, was isolated and had its roots attacked from below, so they either listened to Marcus or died, what’s more, even after death, the red veins took over their husks, giving them new “life”.

The alfear princess stopped her technique got up and dusted her hand to then gaze at the wood thorn knight

“Let’s rip them to shreds, don’t assist me unless it’s strictly necessary”, said the alfear princess, she wanted to fight one of the trees properly after all, to which the factionless and genderless wood humanoid ultimately nodded, respecting Tessa’s wishes.