Chapter 304: Vlad vs Noah

"Do you really want to do it?" Vlad asked Noah, looking back over his shoulder.

"What do you think?" Noah answered his question with a question of his own, his sword’s edge touching the skin of Vlad’s neck.

Vlad released a sigh. In a sudden motion, he pivoted on his feet, swinging his sword in a vertical arc from below.

Clang!

Still in its scabbard, it crashed into Noah’s blade, sending sparks erupting from the collision.

Meanwhile, Chloe turned around and began gathering the tokens from the ground, clearly uninterested in their clash since she already knew the outcome.

Noah had no intention of underestimating Vlad. He had already been beaten by him twice. Moreover, if it was Vlad, Noah didn’t need to hold back. He could let himself loose without worrying about injuring his opponent.

The moment his sword was forced upward by the clash, glacier-like, bright bluish energy coated the blade from base to tip. The temperature of the surrounding air dropped as the blade grew to nearly twice its size.

Vlad’s thumb immediately pushed against the scabbard, sending it flying outward and releasing the sharp steel blade.

Noah swung his sword, slicing the scabbard in half before continuing toward Vlad.

It struck empty air. Vlad was already gone.

The two pieces of scabbard fell with a light thud, their sliced surfaces frozen over with ice.

"That was an expensive scabbard, you bastard," Vlad’s annoyed voice came from behind Noah.

Noah’s eyes widened. He hadn’t even sensed Vlad until the latter spoke. Instinctively, he swung the sword backward in a wide horizontal arc.

Vlad had already ducked low by the time Noah’s blade reached him, his fist hurtling toward Noah’s gut at a blurring speed, bolts of crimson lightning dancing around it.

"That will sting," Chloe murmured to herself, having already collected all the tokens and now watching the battle.

Bam!

The fist landed squarely on Noah’s abdomen, forcing the spit from his mouth and lifting his feet off the ground.

He landed half a metre behind his original spot, his unbalanced feet trampling the flowers. "D-damn..." Noah muttered as broken shards of ice fell to the ground. Just as the fist was about to connect, he had coated his abdomen in a thick sheet of ice. Yet Vlad’s punch still sent a shockwave through his whole body, despite never reaching his skin. "It feels like I have been hit by a cannon."

The corners of Noah’s lips curled into a wide smirk. His blue eyes began glowing, his silver hair swaying backward in the breeze. "Again!" he exclaimed, bolting at Vlad.

Vlad grabbed his sword with both hands. A veil of thick, opaque energy bled into the blade, turning its color from silvery-grey to crimson. Flickers of lightning danced along its edge.

Noah’s lips parted in shock mid-charge. Vlad’s Sword Aura was approaching its perfect form, with the energy barely leaking from its surface.

Yet, instead of feeling afraid, Noah seemed even more determined to clash with him. "You are definitely the only one who can handle me," he declared as he swung his blade.

Tang!

Ripples of chilling white energy erupted from one side, freezing the grass and flowers behind Noah, while bolts of crimson energy burst out behind Vlad, scorching the flowers.

Noah’s blade was pushed back, a shocking vibration spreading through his arm from the collision. Before Vlad’s sword could overwhelm him, he formed a wall of ice between them with a sway of his free arm.

Vlad’s sword cut cleanly through the wall like a hot knife through butter. Still, it gave Noah enough time to prepare his next move.

"Silva Sword Art: Frozen Graveyard!"

Noah plunged the blade into the earth. A wide network of sharp pillars erupted from the ground beneath Vlad. He leapt into the air to dodge them, but Noah had already predicted as much.

"Silva Sword Art: Frost Crescent!"

With a horizontal swing of his blade, a sharp arc of frost shot toward Vlad, who was still midair.

Vlad’s lips curved into a faint smile as he met the crescent head-on, swinging his sword in a vertical arc.

As the two arcs collided, Vlad’s thick Sword Aura sliced the crescent in half. The halves dissipated after travelling only a few metres in the air.

As his body descended toward the sharp pillars under the force of gravity, he bent his knees and slipped the sword beneath his feet.

His toes rested on its flat surface while the opposite flat struck a pillar. Only a crack had appeared on the ice pillar when bolts of lightning formed around Vlad’s feet.

"Lightning Step!"

His body burst forward at lightning speed, scattering the ice shards.

Noah’s widened eyes reflected the approaching punch, which was coming for his face before he had even sensed it.

Fshhh!!

The punch stopped just inches from his face, hurling his silver hair backward. Not just his hair: the ground behind him had been stripped of its flowers and grass, revealing the dirt. Such was the speed of Vlad’s punch.

What followed confused Noah even further. Vlad immediately returned the sword to his storage ring, slid the mask to his face from his head, and announced in a respectful voice, the same tone he had been using unde the persona of the Masked Maniac.

"Lord Noah, I stole the tokens from the juniors and left the message on the tree, word for word, as you ordered."

He drew a couple of Hunter tokens from his pocket and continued, "Here are the Hunter tokens I stole from the worn-out hunters on your orders."

His voice began trembling, as if the man behind the mask were terrified and on the verge of tears. "Could you please let me go now?"

"...huh?" Noah blinked, completely baffled by the nonsense Vlad was suddenly spouting.

"So it was you..." a female voice called from the bushes in the distance. "So you were the one pulling the strings."

Noah’s eyes followed the source of the voice, finding Aria standing before the bushes with a darkened expression and clenched fists. Behind her stood the eight hunters, and around the entire boundary of the bushes covering the flower field, nearly two hundred survivors, the entire first-year batch, had already surrounded the area.