Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System - Chapter 700

Chapter 700: Challenges, Alfear Princess version (part 5)
Seeing the fierce flame-like form which Tessa’s bright green energy took and feeling the pain coming from his leg and his right side, the pitch-black tree gritted his teeth, he circulated the black ominous mana through his body, but the pain didn’t diminish at all.

‘Was that fucking battle aura, or why does it hurt so damn much!’, inwardly screamed the tree.

Battle aura is the weakness of mana, just like how mana is the weakness of battle aura, therefore, the tree thought that Tessa had gone from using the energy provided by the Blood Prison realm to use nature battle aura.

And as if Tessa could read the pitch-black tree’s mind, she softly snorted to then extend her hands and gather bright green energy.

“Piercing Ash Spear”, Tessa’s energy took the form of a bright green energy spear, which completely refuted the theory of the tree about the alfear princess, resorting to the use of battle aura to hurt him earlier.

‘Are you telling me, that in my armored form, that bitch actually bypassed my defenses with just the damn energy provided by the Blood Prison realm… nonsense’, screamed the tree in his heart.

The whole body of the tree lit up in black ominous mana, and then countless red veins spread from the trunk, to then channel all that mana into them, forming a couple of dozens of new energy branches, but that wasn’t all.

“Black Death Feast!”, with a few words, half of the energy branches were consumed by their peers, causing pain to the main energy branches which remained at the back, but didn’t dare to make a sound after seeing the end of the armored ones.

And now, after those branches consumed their own kind, a dozen of reinforced energy branches remained, and instantly started radiating black ominous mana, which condensed in corrosive puppets that wielded different mana weapons, swords, spears, hammers and even bows.

“Black Death, Corrosive Army”, said the pitch-black tree with sufficiency, as if saying “you are not the only one who can wield different weapons”, what’s more, the dozen of reinforced corrosive puppets stood in between Tessa and the tree, so to reach the tree, she would have to kill all of them.

And earlier, she had to use one technique, namely the harpoon to restrain it, to then kill it with another technique, the blooming spears, that was just to get rid of one them with such ease, so the tree refused to believe that Tessa could repeat her feat with a dozen at the same time, after all she should only be able to use one technique at the same time with each of her hands.

For a change the tree was right, the weapon and equipment techniques of the alfear princess needed a casting point of origin in specific, be it her hands, legs, face and so on, in other words she was limited in regards how many techniques she could use.

Of course, there were exceptions, like the blooming spears for example, or the combination techniques like the defensive tree, the vine or the wide area spear attack, this was the other part of the “compensation” that Tessa had to pay for the unusually strong power of this techniques, and it was something the tree had to pay a hefty price to learn.

“What now, bitch, there is no way in hell that you have had the time to increase the proficiency of all those damn techniques!”, shouted the tree, as he made the reinforced corrosive puppets charge at the alfear princess.

With a light tap from her right foot, Tessa’s image flashed, she used jungle stride to surprisingly not bypass the small army of enemies, but actually appear in front of them.

Naturally, such a “stupid” choice, made the tree frown, but the reason behind Tessa’s actions was explained the next second, as her face was covered once again by that ethereal bright green energy mask.

“Wild Willow Mask”, with those words, the energy spear which she was wielding with both of her hands, suddenly lit up in a fierce bright green flame-like light, which gave the tree a bad premonition.

“Dodg…”, unfortunately before the tree could command the reinforced corrosive puppets to retreat or simply move out of Tessa’s way, the alfear princess thrusted her spear frontwards.

“Boooom!”, the spear released countless rays of energy from its tip, which instantly pierced the reinforced corrosive puppets, landing on the ground to then explode the next second.

“Hssss!”, the corrosive puppets which were hit, ended up riddled with holes, to then instantly burst into bright green light, releasing black smoke and producing sizzling sounds as they “died” alongside some of the red veins.

Of course, the mask crumbled apart the next second, and the bright green energy spear turned into light green particles which disappeared into the air as well, however out of the twelve something puppets, ten were destroyed in a single movement by the alfear princess.

“If I were the type that could be easily defeated just with quantity, I wouldn’t have been given the important task of evening the playfield”, casually said Tessa as she extended her right hand.

“Serrated Ironwood Sword”, that dangerous looking bright green energy sword with serrated edges made its appearance once again, however that was not what the pitch-black tree was the wariest of right now.

‘What the hell is that mask, the realm of her energy isn’t going up at all, so why… why can’t I defend against her attacks!!!’, screamed the pitch-black tree in his heart.

It’s normal for him to be confused, to begin with the willow mask technique used by Tessa, despite being an equipment one, it’s actually a combination type, in other words she has to fulfill some previous conditions to use it.

The difference between that and all the other ones she has discovered before, is that Tessa only needs to use any other technique, be it first or before using the mask, which isn’t really a hard condition to meet but there is a catch, she has to be genuinely angry, which is why it’s called “wild willow mask”.

And in case you believe that, such a thing is not even a condition, take into account the fact that the alfear princess, is a composed and calm girl by innate, luckily the tree did a good job reminding her about the whole Adam fiasco and here we are.

As to what the effect of the mask is, and why the results of her techniques are different now, despite her realm not being boosted, that’s simple, the mask deepened her connection with “nature”, so while her energy’s realm didn’t increase, in terms of quality, she could for a brief moment reach the Arch rank.

So, the techniques she used while she had the mask on, produced the effect they would have if her energy was at the Arch rank as well, thus her movement technique now allowed her to blend with her surroundings, avoiding the detection of the enemy, and her attacks attained a second effect.

For the gauntlets with which she punched the trunk of the tree and one of his legs, the new temporary effect was that her punches caused inner damage, the spear turned into a wide area shower of attacks in an instant.

And to top it off, the mask wasn’t limited to a number of techniques in specific, its limit was of time, so while it lasted if Tessa wanted to, she could cast more of her reinforced techniques, as to why she didn’t do it, that’s because the consumption of energy also increased.

Also, she didn’t have enough control over her techniques, to mix too many of their advanced versions, the movement one, one equipment and one attack were her limit as of current, but that was more than enough as the tree was about to learn.

“Wild Willow Mask”, with a few words, the mask which had become the tree’s nightmare, once again appeared on Tessa’s pretty face, at the same time, she had casted jungle stride without calling its name, so the alfear princess disappeared from plain sight.

“Damn it, Black Death Feast!”, knowing that the reinforced corrosive puppets were no match for Tessa with just their mana weapon, the tree made one of the remaining two devour the other, as a result the red veins that controlled the eaten one, joined the remaining one.

The result was that mana armor appeared on top of the reinforced corrosive puppet, just in time for Tessa to appear in front of it in order to slash the serrated sword towards the new type of corrosive puppet.

“Kill her, Black Death Slash!”, apparently the newly acquired ability of the fully equipped corrosive puppet, allowed the tree to cast spells through it now, so the puppet used its own mana sword to release a half moon slash at pointblank, aiming to behead the alfear princess.

“Humph!”, with a fierce light flashing through Tessa’s pretty eyes, she met the corrosive puppet’s slash head on with the serrated sword.

“Crack!”, the serrated edges of the sword started moving at high speed, releasing sparks as the sword actually cut through the puppet’s mana attack, and while this time the tree managed to order the puppet to get away and the puppet did move fast enough to do so, it simply couldn’t get away.

“What!”, the tree cursed out loud as he saw the serrated sword slice through the armored corrosive puppet, destroying it on the spot, not understanding why in the name of the devil did the thing not move.

The answer to the previous is simple, the advanced effect of the serrated ironwood sword is to immobilize the enemy upon touching its energy, so if Tessa used it to block an energy attack, like she did, then an opening for her to slice through said enemy would appear.

Of course, it could be resisted, or forcefully dispelled, but the tree got cocky thinking that just by reacting in time, he could prevent the puppet from being destroyed, so that second of not knowing what was going on, costed him the last of all those energy branches which he had manifested not too long ago.

On the other hand, the mask once again crumbled apart and despite having bested the tree two times in a row, the alfear princess didn’t look as happy as one would believe she should be.

‘I can only use willow mask one last time, before having to wait for half an hour so that I won’t harm myself, I have to force that guy to enter its “ultimate” form with the last one’, thought Tessa.

Such an “overpowered” technique had to have conditions, since the quality of Tessa’s energy jumped to the Arch rank, but her realm didn’t, it of course took a toll on her body, it wasn’t detrimental to her, so long as she didn’t take it too far, in fact thanks to these short-lived tastes of the Arch rank level of her energy, the process when she ranks up, will take way less time when compared to other girls that haven’t experienced such power before, like Arianna for example.

“Jungle Stride”, not wanting to give the tree a moment to create more trouble, and in order to not give away the way she was planning to attack, the alfear princess fulfilled the condition of having to use a technique, with a movement one.

Of course, since she didn’t have the mask on, the pitch-black tree was able to somewhat track the trajectory of the alfear princess, and of course prepared for it by reinforcing the crystal scales on the area which was prompt to receive an attack, with his mana.

Unfortunately for the tree, Tessa counted with that, which is why, while she was gone from plain sight, at the last second, she casted the willow mask, this time without calling it out, because she had understood it enough for that after having used it just a couple of times!

And in case you forgot about it, when jungle stride was used while she had her mask on, the tree was unable to notice her, so the prediction the tree made was… useless.

Long story short, her tracks were a feign, which made the tree reinforce the base of the trunk where his legs started, which were a point of interest, because reducing a strong enemy’s mobility is a good way for a “weaker” person to increase their chances to overturn the table.

Instead, the alfear princess with that ethereal bright green mask covering her pretty face, appeared above in the air, right in front of that big eye which belongs to the devil parasite.

“Forest Guardian, Radiant Lignum Lance!”, by pointing her hands towards the big eye of the pitch-black tree, a concentrated sphere of bright green energy appeared in front of Tessa, to then turn into a three-meter large lance, similar to the one used by the Nelapsi girl, which then expanded in both circumference and length, turning into something worthy of being called a giant “pillar”, but with a pointy extreme of course.

“Hsssss!”, what’s more, just the mere proximity to it, made the black mana of the tree produce sizzling sounds, since this technique was created with the extremely positive oriented part of the alfear princess’s energy, similar to the cedar shield, a characteristic that the techniques with the suffix “radiant” shared with each other.

Of course, having his eye which is the core of main body of the devil parasite targeted at pointblank, made said parasite use any mean to block the incoming attack, and the only thing it could dispose of, besides his own branches, were the main energy branches, which were left, so of course the parasite chose to sacrifice them.

“Hsrhshshshs!”, the energy branches which were forced to become a shield by the eyeless branches of the parasite, screamed in pain as Tessa’s lance landed on them, instantly piercing the crystal scales to then burn the mana with which they were cladding themselves.

“Boooom!”, the result was an energy clash followed by a loud explosion, which obscured Tessa’s view for a second, but that was fine, because after destroying the armored branches, she was hit by their scream and the alfear princess knew that something similar might happen this time around, which is why she immediately flashed away from her previous position, even if that meant giving up the chance to land another attack on the tree, Daimon told them that safety should be their highest priority alongside accomplishing their respective goals of course.

Surprisingly, not only did a scream not assault her pointy ears, but the tree didn’t even launch a counterattack, in fact the moment the energy explosion died down, the face of the pitch-black tree whose spike-toothed mouth was smiling from ear to ear, was revealed.

The thing was munching on the remains of the energy branches, while creepily smiling at Tessa, just in time for a red line of light to descend from above and land on the alfear princess, making the latter frown.

“Thoroughly savor it, the dying effect of the “Curse Red Puppeteer Vine” graft”, said the tree as he laughed at the alfear princess, who had a strange red zig-zag pattern appear on the back of her left palm.

The effect was immediately identifiable by Tessa, that red mark sealed away one of her techniques, the willow mask to be more accurate, which is why she couldn’t help but look at the tree with disdain.

He was so wary of the mask, that he wasted the chance to take away either her stapple movement technique, or her strongest attack type one, which was the lance as of current and instead went for the one that she had no plans to use for the rest of the fight anymore.

“Let’s see how long does that arrogant expression of yours remain!”, cursed the tree as a black substance started to spread throughout his body, filling in the small slits between the red crystal scales that covered his body.

“Crack!”, the ground below the tree cracked on the spot and then different cracking sounds could be heard coming from the body of the tree as it… shrank and lost all of its branches, leaving behind basically a trunk.

After a fraction of a second, the result was out for everyone to see, from his original height of around fifty meters, the tree had shrunken to around three meters, a proper human-looking face which actually somewhat resembled Marcus, appeared at the highest part of the tree’s trunk, and that wasn’t all.

A black viscous substance covered the tree, creating legs, arms and even a head, everything was then encompassed by dark crystal scales, successfully creating a humanoid statue-like creature, this was the final form that the tree could take, which was meant to equal the wood thorn knight that Marcus had seen Tessa commanding.

“What do you think, master graced this form with the name of “Devil Tree General”, not only am I completely free to move unlike that guy following you around like a dog, but I even have a face, voice and everything, quite decent, right?”, said the tree as he closed and opened his right hand.

Of course, since the body was composed of mana and was encompassed in the dark red crystal armor, the original three-meter size of the tree, ended up in a five-meter sized humanoid form, so it lost in that aspect when compared to the wood thorn knight, which could freely manipulate its height to not get in Tessa’s way.

But the important part, is that the tree could now fight the same way Tessa did, instead of relying on his branches, and since it had devoured both the armored and the energy ones, it was expected for him to have their abilities, or worse, stronger modified versions of them.

“Black Death Devil Gauntlets!”, with black ominous mana exploding all over his body, the tree had dark red crystal grow all over his harms, to then shape it in the form of gauntlets, it was obvious on what was this spell inspired of.

What’s more, the now humanoid pitch-black tree disappeared from plain sight the next second, just to appear in front of the alfear princess in order to slash his clawed right gauntlet towards her.

“Radiant Cedar Shield”, of course Tessa reacted by creating shields to wield with both of her hands, in order to block the incoming attack.

“Crack!”, still, the clawed gauntlet directly broke through the first shield and got stuck midway through the second shield, forcing the alfear princess a dozen of meters back in the process.