Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire

Chapter 561: To finish what I started...

The last syllable of the alternating speech was still hanging in the air when the Saber-wielding Klever vanished and reappeared within one foot of Aurelius.

Aurelius raised his spear and parried the saber by sheer reflex. As the ring of the clash of both weapons sounded, Klever vanished again and attacked Aurelius from the side, and try as he might, Aurelius was unable to avoid the saber slicing open his side.

"Ngh!" Aurelius groaned, but he endured the pain, unleashing resplendent light that struck out with enough force to slam into Klever and force the demon back.

But Klever didn’t get pushed too far back—it didn’t look pushed at all—as it simply twirled, moved past the blast of resplendent light, and came swinging at Aurelius again. And just so, the two became locked in combat and a fluid back and forth.

Saber-wielding Klever was fast—even faster than the spear-wielder—but its attacks were less impactful. In that, Aurelius saw a chance. Imbued with his Divine energy and his Mana, he was pushing his might well past the Fourth Circle and holding his own. If only barely.

Altogether, the situation was not yet too terrible. Yes, there was enough Klever to go around now, but so long as the matchups were equal, they still had a chance of victory.

Even as he and Klever crossed weapons, Aurelius kept glancing at the coiled horn above the demon’s head. He knew now that any sign of shrinkage would announce the arrival of another perfect copy of Klever— an Effigy of the Demon capable of acting independently of its other selves.

His goal now was to reduce the number of Klevers still standing before the demon decided to summon another...

’Shit!’ Aurelius exclaimed in his head.

Klever’s horn had shrunk again.

Another Effigy was on its way.

...

As soon as Aurelius and the saber-wielding Klever became locked in combat, other pairs of battles commenced as well.

Kaya now faced off against the Spear-Wielder on her own, Eloise became targeted by the Staff-wielder, and she welcomed the challenge while Aylin took on the Broadsword-wielder.

Now that Aurelius was preoccupied and couldn’t press the Spear-Wielder in close combat, it was free to charge at Kaya. It moved so fast and with such purpose that the claws on its feet ripped up the ground as it moved.

With a frown, Kaya raised her staff, and a massive collection of vines erupted out of a spell circle she cast on the ground. The vines became a seat that swept her off her feet and moved her before Klever could stab her with its spear.

As the demon’s weapon stabbed nothing, Kaya counterattacked with her vines. Klever leaped and landed on a vine, riding it to safety away from the other attacking vines.

"Come on, girl," Klever cracked, "You can do better than that!"

Kaya’s lips betrayed a smirk. Klever caught the look, but before it could act, the vine it was riding began to bubble with green sap. The sap was teeming with life energy that should have had a healing and bolstering effect, but when infused with Kaya’s divine energy, it acted like acid, irritating Klever’s skin.

"Argh!" Klever cried out in pain and tried to move but found that it could not. The sap had a gluing effect that left the demon stuck to the vine.

"Mngh!" Kaya let out a groan of effort because Klever’s attempts to break free of the vine were placing a strain on her, but she endured. If for nothing more than to get back at this bastard that had put Delia so close to death’s door.

Kaya caused the vine to rise high into the air until she slammed Klever against the roof of the sealing cube, and then she brought the vine and Klever crashing down at breakneck speed.

*BANG!!!*

It was a testament to how busy everyone else was that no one flinched at the powerful sound of Klever’s crash into the ground.

"Ah, you bitch!" Klever snarled.

The crash had caused the vine that Klever had been stuck against to burst into nothing, freeing the Demon. Klever stood upright, looking only slightly unsettled as it glared at Kaya with its demonic eyes.

Kaya gave no response; she just interlocked her fingers together around her staff, which was glowing with Nature energy.

Klever heard a bubbling sound and then realised it had been crash-landed into a trap. The ground bubbled like a swamp— a swamp filled with that gluing sap. Klever sank at the rate of an inch every five seconds.

The sink was only so slow because the Demon was powerful, and now that it was aware of what was happening, Klever began to try to pull itself free, but besides slowing down the speed of its sinking even more, the swamp retained its hold on the demon’s body.

"You think this will work?" Klever grunted as the sap, still infused with Divine energy, scalded its skin. And then, its Spear oozed pulsating Demonic energy that fired at Kaya, but her seat of vines carried her to safety.

"This is for Delia!" Kaya said with a snarl of her own and cast a spell to complete her trap, erecting poison-green thorns dripping with the gluing and scalding sap to skewer Klever within the swamp.

"Arghh!" Klever groaned in pain, and then it laughed,

"Admirable spell casting... But, where was this all along?"

"This is not something I can do on a whim," Kaya said, deciding answering the Demon’s question before she killed it was fair enough,

"Takes some planning and foresight. It’s also limited in range. So you see, you did me a favor by coming so close to me."

"Yeah, sure, sure," Klever cackled, "So I killed your friend, and yet you stayed calm enough to conceive a ’trap’ for me?

Hmm, that’s far too levelheaded for my liking.

But I suppose hope can bring calm."

"What are you talking about?" Kaya asked, her annoyance causing the thorns to grow larger and longer, stabbing deeper and making even wider holes in Klever’s body.

"Nghhh," Klever groaned, but it sounded more like a mewl, like it enjoyed the skewering,

"Is it not obvious? You encased her in those vines, healing her, did you not? You think she’ll survive. That gives you hope. That makes you calm.

Take away that hope by, say, finishing that kill, and I might just get to see the real you. Not this falsely composed visage you’re presenting."

And before Kaya could ask what Klever was talking about, the demon’s horn shrunk. A phenomenon the others noticed on the heads of the Klevers they were battling.

The phenomenon that had caused Aurelius to exclaim ’Shit’.

There was a tearing sound and a fifth Klever tore itself free of the Spear-Wielder, armed with a gigantic Warhammer. Again, it was perfectly identical to the other Klevers down to the much smaller horn they now spotted above their heads.

"Her weapon of choice, right?" The new Klever asked in a taunting voice as it waved its massive Warhammer as though it chose to arrive with this weapon just to make that taunt.

Soon, the Warhammer-wielding Klever was completely free of the Spear-wielder’s body and perched on its shoulder like it weighed nothing.

"Now to finish what I started," the Warhammer-wielder cackled and launched into the air.

It rose until it neared the roof of the sealing cube, and then it turned upside down in midair until it was pressing its feet against the roof of the cube right above the encasement of vines protecting and healing Delia.

"No," Kaya said in a worried whisper. It was clear what the Demon was planning to do and she could not— would not allow it.

She made to cast a spell but was interrupted by a harsh laugh from the Spear-wielder, which was followed by a powerful arch of Demonic energy flying at her chest.

Kaya moved aside, but more arches followed, forcing her to be constantly on the move. Still, she prepared a spell to intercept the move of the Warhammer-Wielder, but she never got the chance to use it as an Arch that she just narrowly dodged exploded, smacking her in the side with a dreadful heat.

"Argh!" Kaya cried as she was thrown clean off her seat of vines and slammed her back against a stone formation.

And there, weak and groggy, she watched as an intense demonic aura rose around the Warhammer-wielder’s body as it grinned so wide that every single one of its fangs could be seen.

And then, it went flying down, swinging its hammer in an attack that promised to connect with enough force to create a massive crater in the ground. The greatest show of force Klever had shown all day.

Aylin and Eloise tried to move and stop the attack but, just like Kaya, their Klever opponents kept them occupied. This was also the case for Aurelius, whose back was pressed against a stone formation as he used his Staff to try and keep Klever’s saber from cutting a deep, deathly gash across his chest.

No one could stop what was about to happen.

But then, a split second before the hammer struck, a dark cloud appeared above, stretching over the entirety of the Sealing Cube’s roof. It crackled malevolently and then, faster than Klever’s Warhammer strike could hit, lightning struck...

*KRAKA-BANG!!!*

... Engulfing Klever and the vine-encased Delia in an earsplitting explosion that shook the Sealing Cube with its earthshaking might.