Chapter 770 - 770: A fundamentally different kind of enemy (part 15)

"Tsk, and here I thought we had overcome the problem of the barriers", said Laila as she slashed her burning sword which used the grimoire as it's base, at the grey-blue barrier that was protecting he first as of current.

"Holy Grimoire, White Burning Sword".

"I guess the result of a single one of them having the four parts is greater than the four of them working together", to which Sera added, as she slashed her bursting sword at a close area at which Laila had done so.

"White Brilliant Bursting Sword".

To no one's surprise the barrier rejected those two's slashes, bouncing the physical impact as well as the energy release into the distance, which resulted in two white energy streams flying into the distance until they landed on random pieces of floating ground, obliterating them on the spot.

"Hssss!", that being said and while they were indeed unable to break apart the barrier like they did before, white slashing marks were engraved on the grey-blue mana barrier and at the point where they crossed each other, grey-blue smoke was being released.

'Even if their light affinities are joining hands and exclusively targetting the darkness part of the royal fierce sea mana, to think that they actually managed to damage a barrier casted purely with lord Ereth's mana', inwardly thought the first who had regained his composure after the events that took place earlier, to then add to himself.

'Their darkness combined also managed to surpass the protections in my mind, I have to get rid of them, right here right now before they keep growing, otherwise they might become a hindrance to lord Ereth!'.

The first dusted off himself as he got up, having confirmed that the barrier resisted he calmly glared at those two who also had stopped attacking knowing that they wouldn't be able to tear through this barrier with their current power, even if they used their domains alongside their either double hero or double villain combo, which is what they used to finally surpass two of the most annoying aspects of the enemies, namely those barriers and the first's immunity to mind affecting techniques.

The first had used the lord blessing spell to both recover from the backslash he suffered after forcefully breaking away from Sera and Laila's darkness energy's mind manipulation effect, and to well, put it bluntly gain a second to breath by using the barrier to protect himself.

The lord investiture spell revealed its actual functionality, which was to use the power bestowed upon someone among the subordinates for the sake of another one, this wasn't limited to transform a random subordinate into a second in command, that part was a lie from the first to the others, he from the very beginning had the authority to do that, that's why the spell includes the word "Lord" in its name, when the first said it, he was referring to himself.

The other seconds in command were mislead because the first always called Ereth as "Lord Ereth", but that's normal, the term "lord" is supposed to be used on low ranked nobility like barons for example, but can be used for anyone below the rank of a duke, for which cases the term "grace" would be the correct one.

And why is that being explained, well, basically it is to clarify that the first played the other seconds in commands like fools, if he was actually going to use spells that were created and granted to him by Ereth, he would have had to use the spell he was about to cast before, the lord blessing and investiture only used some of Ereth's mana but were created by the first, that also explained why they were so far behind in terms of support when compared to Jasmine's ones.

Don't get it wrong, the light princess has the highest talent in terms of support magic that Daimon has seen or heard about before, Jasmine descends from the combination of a lineage on par with the one from which Ereth originated, namely the Brightstar one, alongside a highly unique lineage with unknown potential such as the Ivory one, not to mention that she is also a descendant of a system user.

But she has only started exploiting all that potential seriously recently, in a serious comparation she would have been equaled by a system user who has survived for so long such as Ereth, even if his focus is not support but battle, because he is that much of an annoying pain in the ass of a hero.

Perhaps, the multipliers of his original spells wouldn't be as crazy as Jasmine's ones, but the cooldowns and restrictions wouldn't be of let alone months such as it is the case for the first, but even weeks, at most daily limitations will apply, which is still quite a gap since Jasmine can use them with minutes to hours of cooldown mostly, with the exception of very special spells.

"Black Fierce Sea Shark, Hero King's Incarnation", as expected, when the first used his spell which required taking the other three aspects that were distributed among the second and the others, he raised in rank, from a "lord" to a "king", the amusing part is that the figure of Ereth appeared behind the first as he was gathering the powers of the other seconds in command.

It wasn't only his aura which now actually resembled that of Karla before she changed to start her fight with Freya, he also had the forearm and upper back mana condensed fins of the fourth, the regeneration of the third, the shark skin armor of the second and his own trait, all reunited on himself, he also had grown a whole thirty centimeters taller and had reached the peak of the Arch rank.

"Black Fierce Royal Sea Domain!", the first raised his trident and the domains of the other three seconds in command who despite their "deaths", remained out in the battlefield, all turned into grey-blue energy which mixed and gathered together, resulting in a single domain which summed up the mana and size of the four domains that were previously only working together.

A grey-blue sea with its seabed and strong currents all in one, which then surged frontwards was the result, this was accompanied by his mana pressure which had reached the peak of the Arch rank, the realm at which the first currently was after his transformation.

"Boooom!", the first's domain clashed with those two's light and darkness domains, producing countless loud explosions as they used the most primitive method to compare their power, simply making their domains collide to see who came out ahead.

"Humph, what a narcissist bastard, calling himself a hero king after all the nasty things he has done…", said Sera as she snorted.

"… Such titles are not to be self-claimed to begin with, they should be given by others only to those who deserve it", added Laila.

Those two had grown closer and could communicate with the other even while speaking, so continuing the phrases of the other had become as natural as breathing for them.

"Clang!", after having forced Sera and Laila's domains backwards almost a hundred of meters, the first very unpleasantly discovered that he couldn't push their domains back even an extra centimeter, his royal fierce sea domain seemed to be hitting an immovable steel wall, that's because the closer it was to the center of those two's domains, the more they supported the other and the stronger they grew.

'I'm still superior even when they are working together, but let's play it safe', thought the first as he raised his trident.

"Black Fierce Royal Sea King's Trident", the magic weapon he was holding, dyed grey-blue, it wasn't a boosting spell, the weapon itself changed, not only did it gain more resemblance to the trident of the storm which was in Daimon's possession now, but it also crossed the Arch rank, it stopped right before reaching the peak stage though, but still that was like having another peak Arch rank fighting alongside him.

Not to mention that Sera and Laila weren't even using magic equipment to fight, the grimoire and the winged sword were energy condensations.

'He's charging head on!', said Laila as she switched to light, while Sera was on her default light element already.

"White Bursting Sword!", the first one was Sera who slashed her winged sword frontwards.

"Holy Grimoire, White Burning Sword!", next was Laila who slashed her flaming sword sidewards.

"Black Fierce Royal Sea Step", and then the first who had basically blinked from his position to then appear in front of those two, swept his trident at them, he didn't use an attack type spell, but a movement one.

"Clang!", an ear-piercing metallic sound echoed through the battlefield as the two swords and the trident clashed at the same time.

"Crack!", Sera's winged sword remained strong, that's it's actual function, to work as a sword for the girl of the church of light, however, the demon grimoire is not supposed to work as a weapon itself and so the blade of Laila's sword started cracking after the initial physical clash against an actual magic weapon.

"Tsk, Holy Grimoire, White Burning Flare!", that being said, Laila also has her own advantages, for example she discovered that she can use the energy contained within the sword for a technique, this way she can skip the casting delay completely, she basically changed her sword into an energy blast technique, it's the equivalent of the winged sword's capacity to transform Sera's techniques into their "brilliant" versions.

"Ha!", speaking of Sera, she couldn't do what Laila did, but she could release the energy contained in her sword at the same time as her friend used her technique.

"Black Fierce Royal Sea Breaking Wave!", the first answered by casting a spell himself, releasing a huge amount of grey-blue mana with the trident as the medium.

"Boooom!", a tri-colored energy explosion took place as the techniques and spell were thrown at each other at such close range, engulfing everything in the vicinity, the first who had "blinked" again, appeared a few hundreds of meters away from the origin of the explosion.

Those two on the other hand had remained in their exact same positions, the only difference is that they now had white energy shields which were projecting barriers around them, floating at their side.

"White Barrier Shield".

"Hoy Grimoire, White Guardian Shield".

The name of the technique was different but the effect was the same, and the result of their barriers blocking the explosion was also similar.

"Crack!", for the first time since Sera had learned the barrier shield technique, the protection field projected by it, had reached its limit after taking an attack, the explosion produced by their energies and the first's mana clashing, was strong enough to surpass the capacity of the sole but also the strongest defensive technique those two had.

The first didn't look really happy though, why you wonder, well, he wanted them to jump into space as it was Sera's custom when she had to dodge strong and fast attacks, because he had used a spell to mess with the space in their vicinity, using the sand affinity of the third.

If his plan worked, then once they jumped into space, they would have been forced out while the explosion was still ongoing, but they didn't fall for it.

"Even when switching to light, you have some really sharp spatial sensing capacities, how weird", said the first.

He was right, Laila told Sera to block instead of getting away because she noticed the first's tricks, after all the fact that they switched concepts and affinities didn't mean they lost their own talents and traits, for example even when using darkness and the villain concept, Sera still had her radiant will lineage and thus was highly resistant to mind altering effects at system user level, even with only half of it.

You could consider it that since they were the ones deciding how to use those powers, they didn't lose "themselves" while doing so, hero or villain, they were still Sera and Laila, which amusingly enough was the whole point of this challenge.

It might sound cheesy, and it would probably be justified to be considered like that, if they were normal people, but in case you have forgotten, they were artificially created as "copies" of the daughter of the arch cardinal of the church of light and the leader of the church of calamity, their personalities and powers were different because of the reasons as to why they were created and the experiences they had lived, but they were still beings whose existence was based on other existing people, so, something as simple as individuality is for others, was really meaningful for them.

"Of course, that's something that despicable woman didn't "set" for me, I obtained it myself and so, no one can take it away from me!", said Laila, she kept the communicative trait of a hero, but the holy grimoire had returned to its normal state and so did her affinity which was darkness again, to which the first raised an eyebrow obviously not knowing what she was talking about, but he rather ignored Laila and instead gazed at Sera who has been getting on his nerves since earlier as he added.

"And you, I don't get why you keep lashing at me for how I treated those fools, weren't you subordinated to a hero yourself, you must have done a lot of nasty stuff for his sake as well, the more honorable and good someone needs to be, the more they need someone to dirty their hands on their stead, it's not realistic for a hero to be successful without that".

"You can keep your pathetic mind tricks to yourself, while I was supposed to only resist "charm", I worked hard so that neither "domination", "breach", nor "suggestion" affected me either, that aside, a real hero would have the guts of dirtying his hands to do what's right, those that only care about keeping a white smiling front so that they are admired by others, shouldn't be called heroes", calmly answered Sera, she had kept the composed trait of a proper villain despite her winged sword and affinity having returned to its flashy white bright color.

The first was using Ereth's mana and so, he was bestowed with a portion of the power of a hero, you can consider him a candidate for a hero in his current state, after confirming that even when switching to light, Laila kept traits of her darkness original affinity, he aimed to "charm" Sera by trying to find a common ground with her, in this case the fact that they were both subordinated to a hero, but he miserably failed of course.

"That was probably the worst play you could try, just so you know, Sera fought with teeth and nails to go against the direct orders of an actual hero as much as she could, because she couldn't stand the unfair suffering caused to those he targeted, unlike a coward like you, we would have rather died than be kept as slaves", said Laila.

"In other words, we are not like you", added Sera, then under the eyes of disbelief of the first who blinked and tried to pierce Sera's head with his trident, the white and black energies at the central area of those two's domains stopped simply floating next to the other, and instead actively moved, twisting and mixing with the other, until it formed a single spherical shape, neither white, nor black but grey colored.

"Clang!", and now it was time for the first to experience the frustration of facing an impossible to break barrier, as his trident which was stopped in cold by that grey energy sphere, suggested, and the bad news kept coming.

"Partial Domain, Black Brilliant Demon Sword!", despite the one who casted the technique being Laila, the one who received its effect was actually Sera, her second permanent sword which had remained in its "blank" state until a second ago, dyed of a black color, yeah, it was a darkness element sword, it also had a winged guard but instead of feathered angel-like wings they were feather-less bat-like wings, what's more, the sword had runes which meant "Justice" engraved on its blade, and they were shinning in neither black, nor white, but grey light instead.

"Partial Domain, White Slaughter Holy Armor!", of course Sera couldn't leave all the fun to her friend, she also casted her technique which similar to Laila, didn't reflect on her but on her friend, a white imposing armor with a clean but rather wild design, covered Laila from head to toe the next second, it was made of light energy, but it had the runes which meant "Slaughter" engraved on its back, which were shining in grey light as well.

The grey sphere which was now occupying the center of those two's domains was the initial stage of the advanced domain shaping technique which was firstly demonstrated by the undead head maid, and those two had casted their newest techniques in which they used the last cliché that came to their mind.

It was one of the most annoying ones ever too, the "I was like you" cliché, which can actually be used by both villains and heroes, though with different intentions, form the villain side, it is used by the villain to break the hero's conviction and affect his mind, by making him realize that he is one bad decision, tragedy, or simply one bad luck day away from becoming a villain himself.

On the hero's side, the cliché is used by the hero to stir the villain's emotions in order to make him stop fighting, that doesn't sound so bad, the problem is that this only happens after the villain has done so much damn harm to completely uninvolved or innocent third parties, that whether his original anger or hatred were justifiable, it doesn't matter anymore, the worst part is that this might lead to pieces of trash that absolutely should receive punishment, to be forgiven without really paying for their deeds.

These techniques which required those two to go from basic domain manifestation, to advanced control over it, were attained because the first committed the huge mistake of trying to find common ground between himself and Sera, which was impossible.

After all, even while under the church and Adam's control, Sera fought her way into lessening the victims of their orders as much as she could, when it would have been easier to just go with the flow while excusing herself behind the idea of "I'm not in control, so it's not my fault", and that's what made her worthy of help in Daimon's eyes.

The first on the other hand, not only didn't care about going around hunting people for Ereth to turn into his subordinates after willingly accepting the transformation, with the condition to be allowed to keep his original self, but he directly used the excuse of doing the dirty job of a hero to justify his actions.

As to why that also allowed Laila to access a new technique when she wasn't the target of the first's trick, that's because she and Sera lived similar situations, their roles, personalities and even powers might have been the direct opposite of the other, but their frustration and longings were so alike that they could get along so well at every given chance they had alone, even before being freed.

"Dual Brilliant Judgement Swords", Sera slashed both of her winged swords frontwards.

"Black Fierce Royal Seabed Fortress!", but unlike what the first expected as he casted his strongest defensive spell, which was based on both the second and third's powers, the attacks of Sera's swords weren't aimed at him.

"What is… bleegh!", the first who felt a strange sensation running down his body, looked upwards just for blood to be forced out of his mouth, nose, eyes and ears at the same time, that was one hell of a backslash, and the worst part of it is that he didn't know what caused it.

Well, he did obviously suppose that it was due to Sera's technique, but he didn't know what their slashes attacked to produce such a reaction on him, unfortunately he won't have the chance to investigate about that.

"Demon Execution Nova", Laila disappeared from her previous position, when she became visible again, she was standing in front of the grey-blue castle with a small black flame sphere with grey borders floating above her right hand, which she then placed against the frontal wall of the castle.

"Boooooom!", not even a fraction of a second later, the castle and everything a whole kilometer behind of it was engulfed in a grey energy explosion, this included of course the domain of the first, which was obliterated on the spot.

And you might think, why did Laila use a technique that also caught her into its explosion, and the answer could be seen once the energy cloud was dispelled a moment later, revealing a Laila who was perfectly fine, courtesy of the white energy armor which was radiating grey light in order to protect its owner, the first on the other hand wasn't so lucky, considering what was left of him was a single hand holding onto a tattered grey-blue trident.

The hand turned into grey-blue energy which was absorbed by the trident that then suddenly recovered a perfect appearance, but then the thing which tried to shoot itself into the distance was retrained and "sewn" to the space where it was floating, by grey energy threads which had come out of nowhere, but all originated from a certain girl wearing a full body white energy armor.

"Heroes specialize in making comebacks but villains are really good at escaping, so of course we aren't naïve enough to consider an enemy dead until there is nothing left of it", said Laila as she closed her fist making countless grey energy threads reinforce the restrain on the trident, which had eyes and a mouth appear on its shaft.

"You bitches!", that was the first speaking, he apparently had put his conscience into the trident to escape death, but more importantly he gathered the power that was bestowed upon the seconds in command into it and planned to return it to Ereth when he escaped.

"And there is another difference between you and us, you are irrelevant in the bigger picture, which is why our goal is not to defeat you, but to spit on that guy's face~", added Sera who had come out of space, appearing above the restrained trident while wielding her winged swords as she slashed downwards.

"Dual Brilliant Bursting Swords!", the girl from the church of light right at the end finally managed to use the dual wielding brilliant version of the bursting sword, she removed the "white" part of the technique's name, the power of it wasn't diminished by that in the slightest though.

"Crack!", the black and white swords landed on the trident and cut through it on the spot, but that wasn't all, the energy contained in them was released the next second.

"Aghhhh!", this time there was a pained scream coming from the first, as the trident alongside his existence were eliminated for the good.

"Phew, how annoyingly tiring it is to deal with that Ereth bastard", said Sera as she let go of her swords to then let her body fall backwards.

"Yeah, but aren't you amused about the expression he is about to put?", said Laila as she descended from the sky to then sit next to her friend.

"True~", said Sera as she giggled, both of their bodies were bathed in white and black light separately which then started mixing to form a grey sphere that enveloped both together.

In case you wonder why they looked so tired if they quite easily destroyed the first after having successfully overcome their challenge, which is why they were now in the process of receiving their reward, that's simple, from the moment they achieved their partial advanced domain which required them to combine their individual domains, they weren't fighting against the first anymore, but against "Ereth".

Speaking of which at a battlefield far away from the one of those two, a tall youth with long black hair who was enveloped in fierce grey-blue mana, suddenly frowned.