Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System - Chapter 701

Chapter 701: Challenges, Alfear Princess version (part 6)
The moment the previous clash ended, the devil tree general as he preferred to be called like, now, thunderously laughed with a wild smile on his face, though he had casted a boosting spell, in the form of those gauntlets, he didn’t even use an attack type spell and yet he “easily” broke through Tessa’s first shield, half destroyed the second and even then she was forced to retreat, the difference between the him of a moment ago and his current self was abysmal, such was the charm of changing forms.

“Hahaha, so this is the power of the ultimate form master prepared for me, with a normal movement of my hand I tore through two of those annoying techniques of yours!”, he exclaimed as he turned into a black mana flash, which zig-zagged all over the area.

“Humph, Jungle Stride”, seeing the devil tree general mocking her by just flashing around without actually attacking her, just to flaunt his newly acquired power, the alfear princess used a movement technique to catch up to the enemy.

On the surface, it looked as if those two had disappeared from plain sight, but the truth is that they simply were moving really fast.

“Tsk, fine if you want to die that fast, I’ll be merciful as a way to thank you for your assistance and grant your wish!”, the devil tree general who wanted to keep bragging about his ultimate form, since he wasn’t supposed to attain it so fast, but managed to do so by cheating his way around the conditions, thanks to Tessa who resulted to be a fiercer enemy than expected.

But then midway, the tree who was acting “magnanimous” was reminded of the loses he suffered at the alfear princess’s hands earlier, not to mention that at close distance she wasn’t casting a defense technique, made the eyes of the devil tree become bloodshot on the spot.

“What can a one-trick bitch like you do without that damn mask!”, he shouted as he punched at Tessa’s chest, apparently this so-called ultimate form made the devil parasite turn even more aggressive than what it previously was.

“That’s rich coming from someone whose only note-worthy aspect is changing forms”, calmly said the alfear princess as she made a slight turn right before the enemy’s fist landed on her.

“What!”, the devil tree was in disbelief at the sight of Tessa elegantly dodging his punch, to then place her palm which was shining in a bright green light against his right side.

“Soft Nature Palm”, with a few words spoken in a calm voice, the green energy in Tessa’s hands concentrated in a single spot in the middle of her palm to then be released in a onetime giant burst.

“Aghhh!”, the devil tree which was hit by the sudden energy burst, was instantly sent flying into the distance, crashing against a few trees in the way snapping them in half due to the impact.

“Booom!”, the previous ended with the devil tree causing a loud explosion as he landed on the ground in disgrace, to be honest though some of the scales that conformed his skin had a few cracks and a slight trace of blood was coming out from the corner of his mouth, the mental damage was worse.

‘A new suffix again, was that mask not the only technique like that, are you fucking kidding me!!!’, screamed the devil tree to his insides, that palm which was soft at the beginning and horribly strong once released, actually hit him harder than the punch with the gauntlets and the mask on.

For a good reason, that was indeed a combination technique, one that needed the usage of two different movement techniques in a row and perfectly dodging an attack, so the alfear princess first used jungle stride to close the distance between herself and the tree, to then use forest stride in order to perfectly avoid the attack.

“Black Devil Sword!”, with a loud shout, the devil tree extended his right hand and dark red crystal condensed in front of him, to then take the shape of a sword, which was cladded in black mana.

“Go to hell, Black Death Slash Rain!”, since letting Tessa get close to him to end her with a heavy physical attack, ended up backfiring, the devil tree changed his strategy to launch a whole bunch of energy attacks in every direction.

‘Let’s see you weasel your way out of an inescapable net of attacks!’, cursed the tree in his heart.

What the tree didn’t know, is that the principle behind Tessa’s palm technique, which by the way she could tell was the last of the combination techniques she had yet to learn, is “conquering strength with softness”, and that isn’t limited to just physical impact attacks, but to… any kind of attack.

So, after using jungle stride to dodge the first energy slash and forest stride to avoid the follow up continuous slashes, bright green energy gathered on the alfear princess’s hands, yeah, this time in both of them.

“Soft Nature Palm”, Tessa extended her hands and actually used her palms to face the energy slashes, which deviated from their straight path to then be… smacked against each other.

“Booom!”, continuous explosions echoed through the place as Tessa danced through the battlefield, using the tree’s attacks against themselves, once she finished and as the green energy in her palms was fading, the alfear princess who was still holding onto one of the energy slashes released by the tree, disdainfully glared at him to then say.

“Sure, I was told to slowly rule out the tricks of enemies like you, but I don’t like to drag things more than needed, use everything you have right now, or you’ll die”, before the tree could even get angry, Tessa waved her hand at him and the remaining energy slash which actually now had bright green energy cladding the original black mana of the tree, flew back at him.

Well, it would be more accurate to call it “blinking” instead of “flying”, because the black-green energy slash basically disappeared for a second after Tessa let go of it, to then directly appear in front of the enemy.

“Damn it!”, feeling the threatening aura coming from the attack which the alfear princess returned to him with a little “surprise” added to it, the devil tree slashed his sword at in order to defend, just for the thing to be… split in half upon contact.

“What!”, there was no cracking sound, nor energy explosion, the energy slash which originated from the sword, which meant that its power was nowhere near the sword itself, smooth and cleanly cleaved the sword in half right in its strongest part in the middle of the blade.

But just as the thing was about to reach the tree whose face was full of disbelief, he stomped his right foot on the ground, making strange black symbols appear around him to then disappear the next second, while Tessa’s attack landed on the ground, creating a though thin, large and really deep linear division in it.

…

During the time Tessa has been clashing with the devil tree general, let’s not forget that the wood thorn knight was assigned with the task of dealing with the other pitch-black tree.

However, despite their opponents being supposedly similar, their fights had gone down way different paths, the reason being that the other devil parasite was… different.

To begin with the second pitch-black tree was, even if almost unnoticeably, still smaller than the first one, its trunk and branches were thinner and it was a couple of meters shorter than the other one as well.

But that wasn’t all, throughout the fight with the wood thorn knight, the tree hasn’t undergone the same kind of transformation, in fact this tree didn’t have the same three different kinds of branches that the other one had.

The trunk was pitch black like the other tree and it had eyes with mouths all over its surface, but the branches were more of a dark grayish color and were completely eyeless.

Besides that, the most noteworthy thing one should mention is that, it had been defending only, which is why its trunk had a lot of cracks here and there and there were missing branches due to the wood thorn knight’s attacks, all the previous mentioned differences only showed up after Tessa had started fighting the first tree by the way.

“Clang!”, the wood thorn knight’s whip clashed against a dozen of the second tree’s dark grey branches, resulting in sparks and the sound of metals colliding being produced, as both the tree and the knight flashed through all their side of the battlefield, constantly exchanging moves, only for the tree to suddenly stop midway through his last movement.

“Crack!”, due to the previous, the wood thorn knight’s whip heavily landed on the tree, making a large crack appear right in the middle of the trunk’s bark, smacking it against the ground, which made the wood thorn knight to stop attacking out of nowhere.

“That… thing… is… coming… I… can… no… longer… suppress…it… kill… me”, the mouth of the second tree also looked more “humane” than the other one, at least his teeth weren’t spiked, that being said, the eyes did have black sclerae and red pupils, like the ones of the first tree.

Also, since a second ago, all the eyes on the trunk had been restlessly trembling and moving, to ultimately gather to form that same big eye at the top of the trunk that the other tree has, which is where the core of the devil parasite resides.

“Do… it”, interestingly enough, though the voice urged the wood thorn knight to attack him, the big eye at the top of the trunk was bloodshot and it looked really angry, it was as if the mouth was expressing one thing, while the eye clearly was against that.

But just as the wood thorn knight cladded its whip with gray-green energy to finish off its opponent and go watch over Tessa’s fight, the thing was surrounded by black strange symbols, which swarmed from every direction forcing the knight to use the attack it has prepared to defend itself.

“Booooom!”, a giant energy explosion engulfed everything in the vicinity, just in time for the devil tree general to emerge from the ground next to the second tree and claw his hand at the second tree’s trunk.

“What the hell are you doing!”, after taking so many attacks from the wood thorn knight during their fight, the second tree didn’t manage to react in time and the gauntlet cladded hand of the devil tree general, which had changed forms two times, easily pierced through his trunk.

“I’ll… take… you… with… me!”, the battered second tree wrapped his dark grey branches around the devil tree general in order to crush him to death, but it was futile.

“Crack!”, the devil tree general easily blasted all the grey branches with his fists, into broken pieces that landed on the ground, while snorting.

“Dream on, become my nourishment you, failure!”, with those words, mouths appeared all over the devil tree general, which dragged the pitch-black trunk of the tree into it.

“Hssss!”, the moment the second tree was consumed by the devil tree general, sizzling sounds could be heard coming from the vicinity, as the previously dark red crystal which gave the devil tree a solid humanoid looking shape, turned black inked, spikes grew on his shoulders and head as well, giving it quite a menacing appearance.

“Booom!”, an explosion could be heard coming from the vicinity of the tree, as the wood thorn knight destroyed the energy cloud which was keeping it trapped, which resulted in the devil tree general to be able to look at his “nemesis” face to face.

“Heh, for an expressionless, no, a faceless bastard, you “feel” quite angry, were you perhaps feeling sympathy for that idiot who thought he could trick my master by feigning to be obedient”, mockingly said the devil tree general as he stepped on one of the remaining grey branches that laid broken on the ground, to then add.

“From the very beginning, master only intended to create one of us, one that could easily crush you for daring to get in his way, unfortunately the circumstances of your creation couldn’t be replicated without the help of that woman related to the nature-loving bastards, so master created me and my “shadow”, only I would receive the special grafts, while the shadow was to grow and become my sacrifice”.

“For some reason, the original material of the shadow managed to hide from the parasite when it took over the tree’s body, looking for a way to fight, but the master knew it, he simply allowed it to happen for amusement!”, exclaimed the devil tree general as his smile full of spiked teeth widened, to then regain his cool.

Apparently, the excessive aggressiveness problem was solved, which meant that he didn’t achieve a new form, but simply properly reached the ultimate form he was meant to get by eating the second tree, hence why only spikes and “horns” appeared on his body.

On the other hand, the mana he was radiating as of current was… at the peak of the Arch rank.

“Boooom!”, the black mana coming from the devil tree general clashed against the grey-green energy that the wood thorn knight radiated out of anger, producing a loud thunder-like sound as well as sparks to appear in the air right in the middle of the distance between them, that being said the energy of the wood thorn knight started losing terrain a couple of seconds later.

“Well, looks like master’s goal was perfectly fulfilled, a stronger being inspired on your existence was created by him, but of course since I’m the real one now, a fake like you must die!”.

“So, you really do have the bad habit of talking too much”, amidst the glorious monologue of the devil tree general, an elegant girl’s voice suddenly disrupted the intense atmosphere, that was Tessa who was calmly walking this way, in fact she passed not too far from the devil tree general to then stand next to the wood thorn knight.

“You think you can defeat me by fighting together, fine by me, that does spare me the trouble of chasing after you if you escape while I’m killing that bastard”, said the tree, as if he didn’t register what Tessa told him a second ago, very much to the alfear princess’s interest.

‘He prefers for enemies to band against him, just for the sake of feeling superior to them and gets annoyingly talkative the moment he thinks he has won… just like Daimon said’, amusingly thought Tessa.

Those two points were emphasized by Daimon, quite a bit, based on the fact that back at earth, be it in games, stories and the like, the hero always gathers a team with which he sets up his epic journey to vanquish the “devil king”.

Said concept aligned with how Adam’s missions pushed him to gather support from other people, though due to his personal preferences, the target or the key point to it, in all cases were girls, which by the way could lead to him missing on some good opportunities, just because he really despised having other men in his team, but that’s beside the point.

The way Marcus developed also perfectly fit with the concept of the “devil king”, because while he indeed has strong subordinates which sometimes are also called “generals”, they are under him, not at his side as a team and unlike the hero, he doesn’t actively participate, but moves in the shadows, waiting for the final confrontation.

Whether those two were aware of the previous and went along with it, for the sake of their missions, or simply were stupid enough to not notice that they were being led by their noses, remained a mystery for Daimon as of current, but knowing one’s enemy “behavior pattern”, is a huge advantage in a fight, so he told his teammates what to look out for, but he left the decision of using such knowledge to their advantage up to them.

And our pretty alfear princess, apparently decided to do so, judging by how calm she looked, when facing an enemy with peak Arch rank mana.

“I bet it didn’t even cross your mind why I have been using techniques with the suffix “forest guardian”, when we are in a jungle, but at the same time I do have “jungle stride” and more importantly, why… I didn’t use a whip technique”, said the alfear princess, her amber eyes lit up in bright green energy.

“Jungle Executioner Knight, Spirit Imprint”, with those words, bright green line tattoos appeared on Tessa’s body, all the way from her feet to her neck, giving her a “wild” and mysterious charm.

But the previous wasn’t the most interesting as of current, but the fact that the wood thorn knight turned back into roots which then surrounded Tessa, resulting in the alfear princess being cladded in grey-green smooth wood armor from head to toe.

What’s more, the whip which the wood thorn knight has been using all this time, was now being wielded by the alfear princess with her right hand.

Seeing that the enemy has waited until the last second to then “change her form”, of course threw the devil tree general out of balance, he was told by his master to make sure he brings despair to the enemies by only reaching his ultimate form after a thorough clash with them.

And for a second, he understood why, earlier when he was facing the angered wood thorn knight, he felt amusement and elation at the sight of the enemy, not being able to suppress him unlike a second ago, but then the enemy evened the playfield, it just felt… wrong.

“You bitch, you were playing with me from the very beginning!”, shouted the devil tree general with an angered voice, to which Tessa softly snorted in response.

“You think too highly of yourself, this is a challenge and you simply happen to be a whetstone, but if you want to know it, I’ll tell you that I… just learned this technique a second ago”.

“And thanks to that, I now understand why the tree became what it is as of current, unfortunately I have no intention of wasting more words with you, I have someone I really want to talk about this subject as soon as possible, after all”.

“Jungle Knight, Shattering Vine Whip”, the alfear princess’s voice which could be heard coming from below the smooth intricately designed wood helmet, resulted in the whip on Tessa’s hand to explode in fierce bright green energy, which “roared” at the devil tree general.

“B-Black Death Devil Armor!”, as if trying to imitate the alfear princess, the tree condensed black inked crystal armor all over his body, but then Tessa whose image flashed appeared above him to lash her whip at the enemy.

“Crack!”, just the pressure generated by the whip which hadn’t even landed on the tree, actually made the armor crack all over, before a blinding bright green explosion engulfed the devil tree general.

“Booooom!”, as if a thunder had come from above, this area of the jungle was overwhelmed by a loud explosion.