Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire-Chapter 71: With a Bang!

Delia’s kick was identical to the one she had landed on Caius to knock him out last week in Mage-Knight Training. As one of the students who had been present then, Aurelius recognized the move but it was too fast for him to dodge...

*Bam!*

... But he still managed to raise an arm to block it before leaping a few steps back with his rope of light still wrapped around Delia’s wrist. However, after a second passed, the adrenaline rush from blocking the attack waned enough for him to feel his arm shake a bit and he realized how much he just might have underestimated Delia’s physicality. ƒrēenovelkiss.com

Delia smirked and finally gripped the rope, charging her hands with mana that tingled with an electric flair before she pulled at it until it snapped and melted into nothing. Freeing her wrists.

"Thank you," she told Aurelius, "That shook me out of my funk. I was stuck in that terrible Mage mindset for a second."

Delia took on a fighting stance then, holding up both her fists, moving her shoulders, and floating from side to side like a martial artist ready to duke things out.

"Let’s do this," she said then and a blue spell circle appeared at her feet. It transformed into a surge of water that slid her so fast that she was back within a foot of Aurelius’s face and tossed out punches at his face.

Aurelius raised his arms and blocked more attacks, gritting his teeth at how much weight they carried and how, in a battle of physicality, he was almost certainly sure to lose. He allowed one of her punches to push him back and went sliding a few feet away, using the time before Delia caught up with him again to form a seal that created a spell circle that he slapped into the ground as he went down on one knee.

*Crack!*

With the sound of the ground breaking apart, the concrete floor of the arena seemed to break apart as multiple ridges appeared in a straight path directed at Delia and would have surely caused her to lose her footing even if she was gliding on water. But she saw it coming and moved out of the way.

Aurelius wasn’t disappointed. If anything, that was exactly what he wanted. It was all about giving himself some breathing room and space to prepare something bigger... Something larger.

There were powerful flares of light then directed at both paths Delia was going to have to take after sidestepping the ridged ground so she was unable to avoid it.

"Ah!" She cried out. The light didn’t just blind her, it felt like it stabbed right through her eyes and aimed for her brain. It forced her to stop as she placed a hand over her face but only for a second before she adjusted and was ready to move again.

But it was too late.

A second was enough time for Aurelius to prepare a much larger attack so right after the light flares were gone and Delia began to adjust to the pain it caused, a pillar of light struck out and slammed her in the stomach.

It lifted her off her feet, off the platform of water she was standing on, and had been using to glide. But that was not all. While she was about three feet in the air, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of her, she was then pushed down until her back hit the ground with a *Thud*.

On the ground, the pillar of light didn’t vanish. Instead, it splayed apart into smaller rods that all remained connected at the center and were still pressed into Delia’s midsection. The other ends of the rods spread apart then and stabbed into the ground. In a second, it looked like Delia had been pinned to the ground by spider legs.

And then, she saw Aurelius ascend into the air, lifted by two footholds of light. He had one hand stretched out toward her and a golden spell circle was in front of it as he kept the ’spider-leg’ spell active to keep her pinned.

He raised his other hand toward the sky with his fingers splayed as he cast a second spell circle that was a golden-brown color and conjured a massive Earthen Hammer primed for a powerful descent.

"This was fun!" he said with a wide smile and then brought his hand down to let Earthen Hammer fall.

...

Speaking of Earthen Magic...

No one faced it more than Kaya Aeisling.

Doran Langston came at her riding on a slab of earth and was already forming seals before he was within two feet of the dome of vines she had created. Two spell circles appeared in front of Doran’s palms and mana transformed into rocks that all came together to create two gigantic fists that he slammed into the Dome.

For the first few minutes, while the other pairs of fights were ongoing, that was all that transpired between Doran and Kaya. This had to be the largest-scale defensive spell Kaya had ever cast so it was taking a lot to keep it up. She had to keep concentrating, so she could do nothing else but wait things out. At least for now.

And then, the fists struck such powerful blows that they pushed the dome inward, creating a sort of dent. Vines broke apart then, snapping like twigs like they could no longer endure the relentless attacks. Doran took advantage of those breakages and controlled the fists to unfold so they could dig their fingers into the opening that had been created, gripping the vines as hard as they could, and pulling until a larger opening was created.

"Phew," Doran said and would have wiped his forehead of sweat if any of his hands were free, "Finally!"

It had taken a surprising toll on him to break through the vines even though he was smacking them with a bunch of rocks but he had finally done it. Now all that remained was to step through the opening and juke it out for control of the ’base’. Or so he thought.

Kaya wasn’t deluded that the dome would last forever. She was merely biding her time. The moment it was broken through, she cast a spell circle that took control of the vines before they could flake away due to her losing concentration. The vines came down from their Dome shape and wound around her, undulating ever so slightly and ready to make a move. They only had to undulate for a second though because Kaya already had a purpose for them. She wrapped multiple vines around the Earthen Fists, restricting their movement and keeping them rooted while every other vine slithered toward Doran.

With his brown eyes wide, Doran used his slab of earth to move out of the way only to then realize the rouse and that he was being herded in that direction when vines burst out of the ground and wrapped around his waist.

"Ah!" Doran cried out as the thorns along the vines pricked his skin. And then he began to feel his energy waning. The longer the thorns spent in contact with his body, the weaker he became.

It felt like he was being siphoned.

"When I said I could handle it and keep you out, I meant it," Kaya said with a smile as she controlled the spell circle that made this all possible and moved the vines to raise Doran off the ground and off his slab of earth.

"No!" Doran yelled like he could tell already what was about to happen and, likely due to fear, he shook off the weariness caused by the thorns pricking him and found the energy to act.

Even with his arms so tight to his body, he managed to form the required seals, infusing them with Mana to create a spell circle that conjured a shell of Earth around him.

The shell was unable to cut through the Vines that were wrapped so tightly around him but they gave him a protective layer. And just in time too because after Kaya lifted him about ten feet into the air with her vines, she brought him crashing down fast and hard...

*Whoosh!*

... until he hit the ground with a *BANG!*

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