Reincarnated With The Van Helsing System-Chapter 721: Challenges, Badr’s version (part 1)

While Lyn found her fight rather bland given that Rendon had no idea that simply being stronger than her meant nothing if said strength didn’t "belong" to him as much as her strength is hers, the reward was actually proving to be more challenging to accept.

As in the giant blue energy ring with which she had clashed in the sky, was creating a world-ending like explosion, which devastated the area below of it, and that was just the after effect, while the alabaster dolphin princess was subjected to the explosion at point blank.

It’s not like Lyn specifically wanted the make such a ruckus, but like previously stated since her mother’s generation the focus for the elite of her family is perfectioning themselves, since they clash their rhythms with the ones of their enemies, so they don’t advance until they had polished their mana/battle aura, affinities, innate abilities and the like to their utmost limit.

Which is why despite Lyn being the same age as Ophelia, used to have a slightly lower realm when compared to her, but still was confident in not losing even if her best friend were to use the strength, she had kept hidden through all her life, except for that time when she made Dian who supposedly was her equal, runaway for his life to then nearly one-shot Agrak.

So now that her energy which followed the same pattern, was advancing to the Arch rank, she was really making quite the fuss.

Naturally such an eye-catching phenomenon which unlike the one from the other participants of the Blood Prison realm’s challenges so far, happened in the sky, meaning that the trees couldn’t cover it up at all, was bound to get the attention of those in the vicinity.

There were only a few remaining though, since the surviving people which all belonged to Daimon’s group were busy in the middle of obtaining their respective rewards, and that leaves us with only Arianna and Badr as well as their opponents, who got to witness the previous.

And while the werewolf girl softly snorted to her insides while thinking "Of course her reward created such a huge commotion", we’ll go to Badr’s side first.

It’s worth mentioning that the time since Lyn’s fight started and the moment it ended, was actually rather short compared to the destruction it caused, it only took around twenty minutes, in part because Rendon didn’t struggle at the end and instead chose to seal himself into that ice sphere.

So, we’ll only rewind in time around fifteen minutes, which is basically what took Badr and the two Violence faction nethereals to reach their respective battlefield.

’As expected from miss Lyndis, luckily I moved all the way here, otherwise these guys would have rushed back to where we came from in order to find out what happened’, thought Badr as he felt the ground slightly trembling, which was accompanied by a flash of blue light as the blue energy ring in the sky went off due to Lyn clashing with it.

Neither Badr nor the nethereals he is fighting with are the fast type, they are heavy close combat fighters, so it took them a whole fifteen minutes to reach the battlefield.

The difference between those guys and Badr, besides the fact that the tall scarred nethereal originally focuses in defense, is that he has sharp senses which he inherited from his mother’s race, so while the enemies ignored the actual scale of the disaster Lyn has caused and dismissed it as just the aftermath of their teammate with the biggest body, in other words the snake, having a big clash with his opponent, Badr knew that Lyn had already finished her fight, quite fast as well.

That didn’t alter his own plans though, since he had his own challenge to overcome, speaking of which, the tall scarred nethereal returned to the real world as he saw a sharp dark grey flash accompanied by a dark brown meteor coming his way.

"Breaking Spear Thrust!", that was the battle spear wielding nethereal aiming to pierce Badr’s chest.

"Mountain Hammer Crush!", and that was the warhammer wielding nethereal swinging his hammer at Badr’s head without a second of delay in between.

"Gate of Protection", unfortunately for them, Badr simply crossed his arms and a translucent black wall appeared in front of him.

"Clang!", a loud metal against metal sound reverberated through the vicinity, as the metal battle aura cladded spear and the earth battle aura cladded warhammer landed on Badr’s gate of protection, trying to break through it only for the tall scarred nethereal to thrust his palm frontwards making the enemy’s attacks bounce back their way.

"Boooom!", a loud explosion happened when the redirected attacks landed on the ground the next second, since the enemies dodged them, however in the meantime Badr who made the black gate shrink to the size of an arm to then make it float in front of his left shoulder, tackled those two who were unable to react in time, so they blocked with their magic weapons.

"Crack!", the battle aura protecting the enemy’s weapons exploded on the spot, and those two were instantly sent flying into the distance, you might wonder how did Badr get two enemies with a single tackle and the answer is simple, he is nearly a whole meter taller than the already tall Violence faction nethereals, in fact when they clashed it looked like two small children trying to fight an adult man.

Of course, those two safely landed since they had used their battle aura and their weapons to reduce the impact on their bodies.

"You noticed it, right?", asked the spear wielding nethereal to which the Warhammer wielding one nodded in response to then say.

"Yeah, though he is using that weird energy as the base, there is nether mixed into it and it’s inherited type not awakened one, I can’t recognize to which faction does it belong though, but given his unusually tall build, it must be some subdivision of either Violence or Pride".

"Well, there were a bunch of peasant families with diluted lineages that sent their members to fill the lowest ranked positions in the warships, what surprises me is that he survived when they were used as cannon fodder during the whole war".

"Not to mention that he somehow gained enough strength to defend against the two of us attacking together", added the spear wielding nethereal.

It’s worth mentioning that all the previous conversation happened in a really disdainful voice, it’s interesting that before realizing that Badr has nethereal ascendence, they showed no emotion towards him, besides the obvious desire to kill him as an opponent, since he looked strong but now, they were openly looking down on him, despite the previous.

"I expected as much, so, you guys come from the Balax led faction within the Violence clans, but if that’s the case how come you are serving under someone other than a royal clan?", said Badr, which actually threw those two out of their game.

Badr doesn’t look like someone who’ll fight with words after all and that was a really good retort, since within the Violence faction those that put the most weight to ascendence, gather with the Balax family at its center.

In fact, while Agrak’s family was the one that tipped the Violence faction about the whole situation of Badr’s family, the ones that were sent to kill his father were all related to the Balax family, who then sold Badr to a slave merchant from the Greed faction.

Anyway, the point is that with just that, Badr basically ripped off their masks of superiority, since though they are nethereals from the Violence faction and more accurately from the purist group within it, they were serving someone from another race who doesn’t even have Violence related nether.

"Shut up, you filth, allying with others during a war is within the code of a warrior!", exclaimed the spear wielding nethereal who seemed to be the most affected, considering how he was gritting his teeth.

"Don’t listen to him Dan, so long as we bring back victory to our families, who would care whether we teamed up with a third party", said the hammer wielding nethereal who probably was the one that convinced his friend to join under Marcus in order to escape the Blood Prison realm.

The reason they chose to work for someone other than the Lords is also really simple, these two weren’t particularly high ranked within the nethereal side, they weren’t low ranked either since they do come from families affiliated with the Balax, but were trapped in the middle being nothing outstanding neither among warriors nor among officers from noble families.

Therefore, they knew that the Lords wouldn’t particularly prioritize them when it came to break out of the Blood Prison realm, also they didn’t participate in the jailbreak attempt, so by law they could be degraded or outright executed for disobeying orders, most faults within the Balax army could be solved with "glory" though, so they could redeem themselves by winning battles or contributing to the grand plan of the Lords.

Which is why they joined Marcus under the clause of not directly going against the Lords, they could kill other nethereals because that’s actually not forbidden for those of the Violence faction, where the golden rule is strength, but they had a certain line they won’t cross, it remains a mystery why Marcus took them in, or maybe not, he probably felt pressured to be lacking strong subordinates with Ereth around.

"Blood Steel Battle Spear!".

"Bone Crushing Rock Warhammer!".

It became obvious that the enemies were furious about being seen though their hypocritical mask of superiority, because they who were previously "testing" Badr to confirm whether he had nethereal ascendence with just their weapons, battle aura and simple attack type martial arts, now changed to empower said weapons.

And that was only the start, after nodding to each other both nethereals flashed from their previous position, the force produced by their movement martial arts made the ground below them explode, but that was nothing compared to the loud explosion caused by their weapons clashing against Badr’s gate of protection.

"Steel Breaking Charge!", the battle spear which was now fully cladded in dark grey battle aura which increased its range and lethality, slashed the black translucent wall which Badr had expanded to block in front of him like before, diagonally from above.

"Bone Crushing Rush!", as for the Warhammer, which was now cladded in a dark brown rock-like layer of battle aura that increased its weight, it fully landed in the central area of the black translucent wall.

"Booooom!", as if they didn’t care about the fact that Badr’s technique has shown to have the property to bounce back the enemy’s attacks, those two exploded in battle aura as they tried to push through the wall.

"Crack!", for a change they actually managed to make cracks appear on Badr’s defensive technique which is not that surprising considering we are talking about two attack focused Violence faction nethereals who have powered up thanks to Marcus and were now at the early stage of the Arch rank, and Badr’s technique had already been used to block once since he didn’t cast a different wall.

That being said, their martial arts exhausted the momentum behind of them and now came the backslash, which as expected was terribly strong, as in the two weapons flew out of their owner’s hands.

The previous sounds like something that a warrior should prevent by all means, but Badr found himself frowning at the fact that those two not only didn’t seem startled, but they actually smirked before flashing from their previous spots. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"Clang!", sparks and the sounds of metals colliding resulted as Badr was attacked from both sides by the nethereals who had flashed away to then appear at Badr’s right and left, respectively.

The interesting part is that their weapons which flew away a moment ago were now being wielded by them again.

"So, you purposedly let go of your weapons to redirect the backslash that way and then used Will Manipulation to retrieve them, not much of a warrior-like decision if you ask me, but then again you belong to the "two faced" faction, so I should have expected it", said Badr who had created two smaller walls, to block at both of his sides to then extend his arms sidewards.

"Gate of Protection".

"Boooom!", the weapons alongside their owners were repelled this time, since the lag for the technique to bounce the attacks back was reduced by Badr to its limit, for a simple reason, the enemies were now using the full extent of their powers to the Lord rank, so he did the same.

"Damn it!", the spear wielding nethereal saw red on the spot, he rolled his battle spear once to then explode in dark grey battle aura as he disappeared from sight the next second, he had used a movement martial art without calling it out, for the sake of his next attack.

’That fool, getting so worked up over that’, thought the Warhammer wielding nethereal.

The enemy overcharged himself with a lot of battle aura and even added extra momentum by gaining speed, all to cast the next martial art.

"Steel Breaking Hundred Thrusts!", the grip of the enemy on the shaft increased so much that the veins in his hands bulged as he thrusted it continuously, releasing a barrage of dozens of battle aura projectiles towards Badr.

"Booooom!", continuous explosions blasted the whole area where Badr was standing, but before the enemy could flash either away or towards Badr as a follow up, the dust veil which rose high into the air due to the continuous impacts, was blasted away un countless directions.

"Gate of Protection", though the technique’s name was the same, similar to before, the translucent black wall had its form changed by Badr, this time however, the tall scarred nethereal really... showed off.

"What!", the spear wielding nethereal was in awe at the sight of the incoming exact same number of impacts, as the one produced by his barrage of thrusts, this counter originated in the hundreds of palm sized square shaped black walls that were floating around Badr.

What’s more, the spear wielding nethereal obviously didn’t expect Badr to return all those attacks to him, which is why he used that technique, but the tall scarred nethereal turned out to be way more skilled at manipulating his techniques than the enemy.

"Bone Crushing Rock Warhammer Impact!", with a swing of his Warhammer, the other nethereal created a large dark brown shockwave which blasted away the hundreds of bounced back attacks, blocking for the spear wielding nethereal, however that was a missed opportunity to attack Badr, so the hammer wielding nethereal didn’t forget to say.

"Control yourself, he is provoking you on purpose, don’t forget about those idiots who blindly fought as they were told by their families, they died while we not only survived but got stronger", exclaimed the hammer wielding nethereal, which actually helped his friend calm down, at least until Badr added.

"Ah right, I forgot the most important part of the warrior code of the purists from the Violence faction, completely discard all that empty talk about "glorious victories" when not dealing with someone weaker than you and never fight someone strong alone, because how could you feel secure of winning otherwise".

Unlike the previous taunting words spoken by Badr, he really meant that one, so it felt personal since that was actually the case, thus, this time both nethereals felt insulted.

"Booooom!", both nethereals exploded in dark grey and dark brown battle aura, which expanded to condense into battle aura versions of themselves which were surrounding their bodies, those were battle avatars.

Thirty-meter sized ones to be more accurate, since despite having become Marcus’s subordinates, it’s not like they were completely free from the restrictions of the Blood Prison realm.

The important part here, is that those two outright jumped to use their Arch rank powers, they even started floating as a sign of it, Badr didn’t look impressed at all though.

"Only thirty meters, I expected more from those who supposedly do "everything" for the sake of keeping the Violence faction strong", added Badr, which made the hammer wielding nethereal finally explode.

"Who the hell are you, I don’t remember a counter focused family existing within the Violence or Pride factions, and no nethereal would dare to say such things out loud anyway!", he shouted to which Badr casually answered.

"I don’t remember ever saying that I considered myself a member of the nethereal race, though I do have nether myself".

"That’s enough, this is why filth half-bloods should be killed on the spot, so that they don’t bring shame to our race!", added the spear wielding nethereal, being from noble families themselves, and having never been taken into account due to their average talent, of course they hated the fact that a random guy whom they couldn’t recognize, which meant that he had to be not worth remembering, in other words a servant working in non-battle related stuff within the army, was insulting them in such a way.

It was a strange phenomenon that happened within some families of the different factions, where they actually had the minimal amount of respect to those that were not from their race, but who shared the same concept of "strength" as themselves, in this case battle prowess.

Which is why originally those two were indifferent towards Badr, but if the other party was also from the nethereal race, then lineage’s purity overwrote the previous, which is why now they looked down on him, it’s probably a negative trait developed due to way they have conducted themselves over many generations, since not all of the nethereal races even within the same factions are like that.

Those like Badr’s paternal family acted with more moderation and their overall attitudes were more neutral, though that doesn’t mean they were let alone good, but even decent people, his father’s family didn’t help when they came for him, as he wasn’t from the main branch and he married someone from another race, against the elder’s arrangements.

Also, it’s not like those from the Violence faction look down in professions like cooks, maintenance and the like, however there is a difference between being a warrior who takes care of said tasks, and being given said tasks due to poor battle prowess, which is more like a humiliation type of punishment received by those deemed as weaklings, like all the guys sent by low ranked families, which these two had convinced themselves was the origin of Badr.

"Steel Breaking Piercing Spear!", while holding onto his magic weapon with his real hand, the spear wielding nethereal created a spear with condensed battle aura for his battle avatar.

"Bone Crushing Mountain Warhammer!", the hammer wielding did the same, by creating a giant Warhammer which looked as if someone had put a shaft to a giant rock.