Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System

"Crack!", once again after a moment, the clash ended in those pretty ice rapiers breaking and Liliana being forced to retreat, however this time she only was forced backwards by exactly two tens of meters.

The previous was enough to make the red-haired guy frown, but what truly made him grit his teeth was what happened after that.

"…", Liliana gazed at the now broken rapiers which only had their hilts left and as if time was rewound, they returned to their original state, she kept holding one with her left hand, but the other two which were floating changed their position to align with the part of her wings that was the closest to her sides.

Since the ice rapiers had their tips facing downwards, it looked as if they had become "feathers" and given their position, they'll be tertiary ones.

"Humph, cheap tricks, this is how a real technique looks like…", said the red-haired guy as he exploded in battle aura.

"Special Operations Armor!", the dark orange battle aura condensed into an ethereal looking half-plate armor, it provided defense but without limiting mobility as much as a full-plate armor would, probably because the red-haired guy is a knight and he doesn't focus in defense, so he doesn't care about it.

In fact, this martial art he used, was designed to solely boost his strength instead, as the slight currents of wind caused by the red-haired guy when he stretched his arms, suggested.

"Now this is better, I'm starting to feel as myself again", casually said the red-haired guy, referring to the fact that with this boosting martial art he almost regained the physical strength, he as an originally peak Knight Lord possessed.

"Let's try again…", while still in the middle of speaking, the red-haired guy jumped upwards once again, advancing towards Liliana's left, he couldn't remain floating like the snow eagle girl but he could slow down his descend as a Lord rank and in order to move he needed a movement martial art.

"Fiery Trail", his image flashed and then he appeared at her right with his scimitar cladded in battle aura.

"Battleground Slash!", he swung his sword with all his might, causing a thundering shockwave, followed by an energy explosion, despite the fact that the snow eagle girl blocked with the four rapiers like before.

"Boooom!", this time there was no dead point, the explosion destroyed the three ice rapiers and sent Liliana backwards nearly a hundred meters, if anything she once again didn't suffer any visible wound, but at this point the red-haired guy attributed that to some sort of defensive magic treasure, since a non-defense oriented mage with a lower realm shouldn't be able to withstand direct physically clashing with an attack type knight like him.

Naturally after seeing Liliana repairing those annoying ice swords, the red-haired guy wasn't going to give her any time to recover, he turned into a red blur that flashed through the sky all the way to where Liliana was flown earlier, with his scimitar aiming at her chest like before.

'If three aren't enough then…', the bright blue eyes of the snow eagle girl glowed and then the ice mana around her wings increased another notch, something that didn't escape the eyes of the red-haired guy who snorted to his insides.

"No matter how many of those twigs you create, the result will be the same!", he shouted as he slashed at her.

"Ice Phoenix Sword, Quintuple", his battle aura cladded scimitar was met with four words from the snow eagle girl alongside four floating ice rapiers as well as the pair she was wielding with her hands.

"Booom!", the red-haired guy smiled with sufficiency as he saw the familiar sight of an energy explosion followed by the scene of that "ice block" girl being sent backwards, however his smile died down the moment he noticed the difference between this and the previous clash.

Not only had Liliana been forced backwards by only forty meters, but for the first time, her ice rapiers… didn't break, they did crack a bit though but such a thing paled with the meaning behind the fact that they were still in one piece.

"Weak", disdainfully said the snow eagle girl as the cracks on the newly added pair of ice rapiers closed themselves before, they aligned with her wings like the other did earlier, they took a position at the middle part of her wings though, which would make them secondary "feathers".

The red-haired guy had a vein bulge on his neck, not by the provocation itself, though he was indeed angered by being called weak by someone who was a whole major realm below him, but because what just happened didn't make sense for him.

'I recovered my damn physical strength almost to its original state, so how the hell did she reduced the impact by more than half by just adding to of those freaking things!', he inwardly cursed.

Don't forget that the growth in strength for a knight is exponential, which means that the increase in strength between a middle stage knight lord and a peak one surpasses the previous total attained by said knight, hence why it didn't make sense to him that just by using another pair of rapiers the enemy went from being pushed by a hundred meters, to only forty not to mention that the damn things didn't break this time.

While the red-haired guy was cursing Liliana, high up in the sky Daimon who could see the true behind her spell, couldn't help but praise her in his mind.

'She actually separated the physical and elemental aspects of her ice element in order to bring the strength of each one to the extreme of her current capacities… amazing'.

No matter which element we are talking about, there is always a physical and elemental aspect about it, of course depending on which one, one aspect might be way stronger than the other.

Let's say fire for example, its elemental damage is incredibly high but in exchange it has low physical damage by innate, however one can train it to change that, which is what the Fire Crane girl, in other words Leslie, did.

Ice however is one of the elements that by innate is good with both elemental and physical damage, of course that's not free, as ice is harder to manipulate than basic elements like water which also has an equally good starting point for both elemental and physical aspects.

Not to mention that depending on things like race, talent and personal preferences, the way an affinity is developed changes, Liliana for example, originally was inclined towards the physical aspect.

Just think about her fighting style, she cut, pierces, stabbed or shredded her enemies with her sword, ice spikes, ice peaks and the like, also despite being a mage, due to her race's innately strong physical body which manifested in a tall and athletic build, her physical strength and physical defense were quite high, she despite being a mage was a nightmare for mages in battle.

Of course, she also froze some poor bastards here and there, but she didn't put much focus into it… until recently.

In case you wonder what changed, it was the appearance of her rival from the Nethereal sisters, in other words Reyne as she is the sister in the middle just like Liliana, as well as the little "demonstration" that Aisha gave them, which made her think on a way to improve herself and that along the reward from her challenge resulted in this.

Since she couldn't obtain the results, she wanted in both aspects with one ice rapier, then… she just had to use two, if that wasn't enough, then she just needed to use four and so on, her wings were fundamentally different than her sister's ones anyway.

As in both Ivy and Leslie's ones were obviously elemental oriented, since they had no physical form, while hers had a solid frame of ice, though the "feathers" were made by an agglomeration of ice mana.

And so, she created the "Ice Phoenix Sword" and then made two variants of it, one which had ice fully focused in being as physically strong as she could make it as of current and one which was the complete opposite focusing on the elemental aspect, so depending on the combination she used she could become a nightmare for mages, knights or both of them.

Which made her similar to a certain Nelapsi girl, who had high elemental damage thanks to her fire battle aura and high physical damage thanks to her blood battle aura, speaking of which, at the resting area, Reyne couldn't help but frown as she saw Liliana clashing against a knight head on like that.

"She… became really strong", mumbled the Nelapsi girl, her rival already had an element which was the complete opposite of hers and now she has improved in order to deal with knights, unlike Sarah who liked to mess with her rival in other words Ivy, she took the matter in a much more serious manner, as that was her nature, Reyne was the responsible and serious one among the three sisters.

"You have nether now, so just be a bit more aggressive in other "aspects" to surpass your opponent, little Reyne~", jokingly said the crazy girl making the nelapsi girl softly snort at being called "little Reyne".

But she didn't say anything and instead focused on the ongoing battle and she wasn't the only one, though another of the people paying special attention wasn't a part of Daimon's team, but the one representing the Balax Lord, in other words Erika.

'Don't lose it now you fool, I already told you to expect the enemy to have a bunch of tricks up her sleeve, don't you dare to lose, okay?', she said directly to the red-haired guy who cleared his throat to himself as he answered.

'Ahem, sorry, I got a bit heated… big sis', as their similar appearances suggested, those two were "related" in the sense that the materials used to make them were related, which resulted in them treating each other as siblings, the red-haired guy whose name is Ethan is the younger one, while Erika is the older one.

Having regained his cool, the red-haired guy descended from the sky at high speed, putting quite the distance between himself and Liliana, which made the snow eagle girl frown as she didn't understand why he did so.

"What's up with that confused face, there is no reason for me to fight in a battlefield that is of advantage for you, I get to choose, if you don't want to come down then… I'll make you", said Ethan as he raised his hand which then released battle aura, forming a small sphere that then exploded in flames.

Since the atmosphere of the battlefield was overloaded with nether, not only mage nethereals had it easier to use their spells but even knights could take advantage of it, since they could make the nether in the air react with their battle aura, if they were skilled enough for it and Ethan was the first non-queen piece who could take advantage of it.

"Battleground Throw!", with a loud shout, the battle aura projectile which seemed to imitate a mage's fireball spell, but with a solid impact added to it, due to the presence of the battle aura sphere at its center, turned into a shooting star that appeared in front of the snow eagle girl in a fraction of a second.

"Crack!", naturally Liliana slashed the thing down with just a pair of her rapiers, an ice one which extinguished the flames and the real one which cut the sphere of battle aura at the center of it.

But then in the fraction of a second that it took Liliana to get rid of the long distance martial used by the red-haired guy, a whole bunch of projectiles had appeared on the air a few meters away from her.

Normally knights don't use scatter type long distance spells, like mages do, they instead focus their attack in a single point, like Ethan has done with his scimitar which shot a devastating mass of battle aura in a single direction, which resulted in it basically crossing the battlefield from side to side, but since the snow eagle girl has proven to be incredibly skilled in countering a knight's fighting style, he decided to change his approach.

"Battleground Barrage!", this is a martial art that can be used with any kind of throwing weapon within the Balax army, but it could also be used with battle aura alone, if one had a high enough mastery over it and Ethan has faced an exceptional enemy which could fly without having reached the later part of the Mortal realm, in other words the Arch ranks.

He simply didn't think he would need to use it against a mere early Mortal realm enemy, but has now discarded that pretension, the important thing was crushing the enemy and for that he first needed to bring that winged girl down to the ground.

Unfortunately, the sight of the white-silver haired girl being overwhelmed by the amount of battle aura projectiles he shot, to then be forced to descend from the sky, didn't happen.

"Phoenix Dance, Blizzard", with three words, the snow eagle girl moved through the sky, bypassing a large part of the battle aura projectiles which flew into the distance, impacting the ground or the barrier around the battlefield as they descended after losing their impulse.

"Clang!", continuous clinking sounds then echoed through the air as Liliana "danced" through the projectiles which she couldn't bypass, as she cut through them with her rapiers, this time she used the six of them, creating a fierce yet beautiful performance.

Like previously mentioned, Liliana's mother, Anya, had managed to adapt the Phoenix Dance from the Fire Crane clan for her use, naturally due to Anya's lack of interest in bragging about it or even make it publicly known, or perhaps because she refused to share her creation with anyone but her daughter, she didn't even give it a different name, it was still Phoenix Dance, unlike Ivonne who added the word "Nightmare" to the title, alongside the name of her movements.

Anya simply put names for the movements she created which were, "Blizzard", "Snowfall", and "Hailstorm", apparently Liliana reached the level where she could use the first one of them, a movement spell that worked both at the ground and when flying.

That also explained why the snow eagle girl who "counted" her words, had to speak, she needed full casting to use that spell because… it's something that was designed to be used after one has reached the Lord realm, even Anya who created it, became able to use it only after she had reached the peak of the eighth star realm, alongside the use of her wings.

High into the sky, Daimon raised an eyebrow at the beautiful deadly performance of the snow eagle girl who dived into the barrage of battle aura projectiles.

'Since she separated the two aspects and brought each to the extreme, she became able to sort out certain requirements for spells, it could be called a "trick" and it won't work all the time, but it's an indirect way of boosting her battle prowess, her battle instincts are top notch, just like that lioness girl', he thought referring to Aleah.

'Mm?', Liliana who was flashing through the barrage of projectiles, suddenly felt a blissful sensation overlap with a warning from her instincts, the source of the positive feeling was easy for her to recognize, it was because she could feel Daimon's gaze on her a second ago.

But the warning only became clear a fraction of a second, before a large scimitar cladded in battle aura appeared at her left, disrupting her "dance", that being said she inwardly snorted as her performance which was meant for the one, she liked to enjoy, was interrupted midway and slashed her rapiers at the scimitar.

"Booom!", naturally the weight and surface of the scimitar were larger than that of those projectiles, so the impact caused by it was bigger, after gaining impulse due to the throwing martial art of the red-haired guy, even after Liliana blocked it with the three pairs of rapiers, she was forced a total of seventy meters this time, also cracks appeared all over the rapiers.

"Fiery Trail", and that wasn't all, Ethan appeared right behind the position where the snow eagle girl ended, with his battle aura cladded fist aiming at her back, to which Liliana skillfully made a turn to block his attack with her damaged rapiers.

"Crack!", the result was that the snow eagle girl was once again forced to retreat and her rapiers which had no time to repair themselves, were destroyed, but right now the snow eagle girl's attention wasn't on her rapiers, but on the fact that the enemy's weapon was… returning to Ethan's side by itself.

"Finally a nice reaction from a block of ice like you…", seeing Liliana's pupils contract like needles, the red-haired guy smirked, since he had changed his approach for the fight he decided to use one of his trump cards and it seemed to be paying off, based on the reaction of the enemy.

"Ice Phoenix Sword, Nonuple", however his sentence was interrupted by the snow eagle girl who had a fierce expression on her usually emotionless pretty face, appearing in front of him out of nowhere with ten rapiers slashing at him.

"Booom!", the result was a loud shockwave, followed by an energy explosion, however this time the one that was sent flying was… Ethan.

"What the hell!", the red-haired guy who was taken by surprise by the sudden explosive increase in the physical impact coming from the enemy's swords, roared as he forcefully stopped his retreat by releasing battle aura, he looked backwards and gritted his teeth at the sight of the ground being a couple of meters away, he was almost smacked against the ground by the enemy!

Now imagine his expression when he saw the small ice crystals that had grown on his arms and the handle of his scimitar, he actually lost in both physical and elemental clashes earlier.

However, he also saw the white-silver haired girl descend from the sky, to then let out a sigh as she landed on the ground a few dozens of meters away from him, her wings turned into light blue particles that returned into her body through her back, though the eight ice rapiers remained floating behind of her, while she held onto the ninth one with her left hand.

They were arranged so that Liliana had four rapiers acting as "primary" feathers which were the furthest from her body, and one pair of tertiary and secondary ones respectively, they outline could still be seen since they were united by the mana coat which still covered the snow eagle girl from head to toe.

'Heh, she must have used too much mana in that attack from earlier, so it ultimately worked as intended', thought Ethan as she released battle aura to break and melt the ice crystals that attached to him.

"Booom!", but then, the sound of his battle aura explosion was overwhelmed by a bright blue mana outburst, which raised into the sky.

"Hssssssss!", under the surprised eyes of the red-haired guy, the ground more than two hundred meters around the white-silver haired girl, was instantly covered in ice which released a huge amount of mist due to the extreme fall in the temperature caused by it.

Liliana who was looking downwards a second ago, raised her head, her eyes were filled with murderous intent as she glared at the enemy, which caused Ethan to feel a chill running down his spine.

'No way, am I actually feeling threatened!', he screamed in his heart as he felt the change in the aura around the enemy.

It wasn't his fault though, so far Liliana has been… using only her own mana after all.