Ch.56Chapter 56: Vampire (12)

“Grrrr!! I’ll throw your body piece by piece to feed my children! I’ll make you feel the pain of being torn apart alive!!”

BOOM!!

As Roxa shouted, aura burst forth from her body.

‘Not eighth floor. I can handle this.’

Rustle rustle rustle-

The alien sound of insects moving continued from the bushes.

“Hmm… bugs…”

One of the main reasons bug controllers use insects is for their poison.

Especially here, there are countless insects with deadly poisons different from those on Earth.

Roxa extended her hand, and thousands of insects swarmed toward Valt.

“Die!”

Whoosh-

A formation resembling a black cloud.

Valt casually raised his hand to create wind.

Whoosh-

As expected, the insects couldn’t even approach through the wind Valt created.

“Is this all you’ve got?”

Just as Valt was about to feel disappointed.

Roxa’s body moved quickly, positioning herself behind Valt.

“Did you think it would end with just bugs? Let’s see how you handle this, you muscle-pig bastard!”

Snap-

A strange dagger shaped like an insect’s stinger. Despite the darkness, the blade gleamed purple, clearly coated with poison.

“A coordinated attack with insects… certainly effective.”

But something was strange. The aura thread level Valt sensed from Roxa was only at the sixth floor.

‘She must need power to control the insects. This… isn’t threatening at all?’

Valt could easily withstand sixth floor aura threads, and mere insects were nothing to him.

Rumble rumble rumble-

Valt’s body was covered with magic armor, thoroughly defending against any potential poison from the insects.

Of course, mere insects couldn’t penetrate Valt’s muscles, but there might be poisons that could seep into his body through the skin.

Roxa made an incredulous expression as she saw Valt instantly transform into something like a giant robot.

Clang!

Roxa’s attack bounced off meaninglessly, and her surprised voice followed.

“W-what is that??”

“You can’t catch me with aura of that level and these pathetic insects.”

At that moment, Valt activated the sonic buster he had created earlier, directing it toward the insects.

BOOM!!

The sound was even more massive due to the magic armor he wore.

The insects instantly dropped dead from the massive sonic shock wave, and Valt immediately leaped toward Roxa.

‘I haven’t fully recovered yet. I need to press the attack.’

As Valt began his attack with incredible speed despite his massive body, Roxa started to panic.

In truth, Roxa was a seventh floor aura user, but her abilities were more specialized for group battles, information gathering, assassination, intimidation, and torture rather than one-on-one combat.

Still, she was a seventh floor powerhouse, and the insects she controlled had shown excellent performance in combat against humans, making her formidable in most situations.

However, that combat effectiveness only mattered if her poison and insects could affect her opponent.

In other words, she was specialized in fighting multiple weaker opponents rather than a single strong one.

Against Valt, the insects’ stings were ineffective, and since she needed to control the insects, she couldn’t fully utilize her aura threads, limiting her output.

Now Valt had become a perfect counter to Roxa.

Clang!

Boom!

Crash!

After several exchanges.

Roxa was pushed back and spat out a groan.

“Ugh, damn it!! Where did this bastard come from?!”

Eventually, Roxa had no choice but to give up controlling the insects.

There was no point in persisting with attacks that weren’t working.

The insects began to scatter throughout the forest, and even those that had been clinging to Valt’s body disappeared without a trace.

“Damn you, if bugs don’t work, I’ll kill you myself!”

Woong-

The final stage of aura thread before reaching aura blade.

A privilege of aura users that even Valt would be injured by if hit directly.

The seventh floor aura began to gather in Roxa’s dagger.

Seeing this, Valt deactivated his magic armor to conserve mana.

He prepared for Roxa’s attack with his muscle gauntlets and satellite stone palms.

‘Hmm… so she uses aura to create something that controls insects. Not magic. Some kind of wave? Frequency? That must be it.’

Having guessed Roxa’s secret, Valt boldly provoked her.

“Come on. Let’s see how strong someone who just controls bugs can be.”

Despite his words, Roxa was strong.

She seemed to use insect carapaces for defense, making her impervious to ordinary attacks.

The first attack had worked because it was unexpected, but after that, things weren’t so easy.

‘I need to break through that bug armor… it’s not easy. What’s a good method…’

Crash!

Clang!

Scrape!

After a series of attacks, Valt finally received a small wound on his side.

“Kyahahahaha!! I’ll grind you to death like this.”

Valt had been worried about poison, but it didn’t seem to be penetrating.

“It would be so much better if you’d just quietly get poisoned. Now I have to tire myself out beating you to death.”

‘Hmm, I see.’

Roxa’s poison couldn’t withstand sixth floor aura or higher.

Seventh floor aura would be enough to burn away all the poison.

Now he understood why Roxa wasn’t using seventh floor aura or higher.

“Hup!”

Flex!

The muscles on Valt’s side moved, immediately stopping the bleeding.

Roxa’s eyes widened at the incredible sight.

“Are you crazy? Instant hemostasis?”

Valt grinned and said.

“It’s muscle sealing magic.”

The so-called Muscle Stanch.

It was Valt’s unique magic that swelled muscles to seal wounds.

It was indeed magic. It used mana similar to the method he used to inflate his arms.

“You monster!! Die!!”

“Look who’s calling who a monster…”

Valt wanted to use a big technique, but Roxa wasn’t giving him any openings, making things slightly difficult.

When fighting in tournaments, he had more opportunities to use techniques because the battles were in prepared situations, unlike real combat.

Sometimes they even set up the arena specifically for techniques to be used.

But in life-or-death combat, enemies wouldn’t give Valt such openings.

‘Rock Hammer could deal significant damage, but she’s incredibly fast even after taking impacts. She really is like an insect.’

Roxa’s movements were like those of a swift insect. With her flexible body and high speed, Valt hadn’t been able to land a proper hit since his first sonic magic.

‘In that case!’

Valt realized he just needed to take away her mobility.

But it required gathering a lot of mana.

That’s why Valt was now enduring Roxa’s attacks with Muscle Stanch.

“Hup!”

Slash!

Slice!

“Kyahahaha! You’re no different! You can’t catch me in this forest! You might be tough, but you’re slowly dying!”

Small wounds accumulated on Valt’s body due to Roxa’s bizarre movements and because he couldn’t properly defend while gathering mana, but none were fatal.

Roxa was concerned about the enormous mana gathering in Valt’s body, but since she had observed that massive amounts of mana had been gathering every time he stopped bleeding, she assumed the large mana was for healing and didn’t pay much attention.

“What good is gathering mana? Kyahaha, it’s just for stopping bleeding, not even healing!”

Scrape!

After slicing Valt’s thigh, Roxa tried to attach herself to a tree trunk using spider silk.

“HAAAH!!”

With a powerful shout, Valt’s right leg swelled enormously.

Immediately, Valt jumped after Roxa.

“Huh? You think I’ll be hit by that?”

Valt jumped higher than Roxa and brought down his swollen right leg toward her.

But Roxa easily avoided Valt’s attack and moved to another tree.

“I told you it’s useless!! Brute force is meaningless unless you can hit—!”

Despite Roxa’s evasion, Valt’s massive right leg plunged straight into the ground.

“HAAAH!!”

This was exactly what Valt had aimed for.

She uses trees? Then make it impossible for her to use them.

Valt’s imagination visualized stomping the ground to collapse the surroundings.

An Earth Quake would be ideal, but he instinctively knew he couldn’t match the power of an eighth circle Earth Quake.

However, he could produce Earth Quake-level power in a localized area.

Having completed the image, an incantation flowed from Valt’s mouth.

He later discovered that incantations played a significant role in his physical magic.

Incantations were word spirits (kotodama), words themselves carrying human will and activation phrases to express magic to the world.

Though not as powerful as dragon language, they definitely influenced magic.

“EARTH!! STAMP!!”

Valt’s leg, as thick as a massive tree, plunged into the ground, creating an enormous sound.

BOOM!!

CRASH!!

Immediately, the tremendous mana Valt had gathered in his leg was released, shaking the surrounding earth.

RUMBLE!!

Simultaneously, the trees Roxa had been using began to tilt and fall.

There was no point in removing trees one by one if Roxa could just move to where there were more trees.

So Valt chose a method to collapse trees over a large radius simultaneously.

“You crazy bastard!! Earth Quake?!”

Roxa’s expression darkened as she mistook Earth Stamp for Earth Quake.

A magician who could use Earth Quake would be an eighth circle powerhouse.

In that moment of distraction.

Valt ran straight toward Roxa, whose posture had been disrupted on the spider silk attached to the tree.

He instantly created a massive stone hammer.

Using the earth that had broken and risen due to Earth Stamp, Valt formed it into a giant stone hammer and brought it down on Roxa.

“You lunatic! If you do this, you’ll be buried alive too!!”

Valt, bringing down the stone hammer, grinned.

“‘Buried alive’ means you’re still living. You’ll just be buried dead.”

Roxa had no time to react to the terrible wordplay.

The ground had collapsed, leaving nowhere to stand, and Valt’s Rock Hammer came crashing down on her along with piles of stones.

Realizing the situation and sensing her death, she let out a sharp scream.

“N-no!! KYAAAAAAAH!!”

BOOM!!

The ground, deeply sunken from Earth Stamp. The earth that had risen up came crashing down, burying both Valt and Roxa.

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

THUD!

Whoosh-

A scene like a bunker buster explosion in modern terms.

As Valt and Roxa disappeared into the ground, the forest became deathly quiet.