Steam rose from the Vampire's body in hissing plumes, but Jay didn't wait for the creature to finish whatever transformation was occurring. He instantly enchanted his right leg, using the Incinerate Anthem to replicate the spell on his left simultaneously.
With flickers of purple embers at his heels, he lunged. The burst of speed was so immense that even Jay felt a jolt of surprise at his own velocity.
He was a blur, a dark streak aimed at the Noble's throat. However, just as his fingers were about to make contact, leathery wings erupted from the Vampire's back with a violent tear of fabric. The Noble ascended with terrifying grace, narrowly dodging the strike.
"Hahaha! You filthy human! I thought you-"
The Vampire's taunt died in his throat. Jay didn't let him finish. In a flash of purple light, Jay teleported directly behind the creature in mid-air. He tripled the reinforcement in his right leg and delivered a devastating kick that sent the Vampire hurtling back toward the earth like a plummeting carcass.
Before the Vampire could even find his footing in the dirt, a flicker of purple embers signaled Jay's arrival. He was already standing there, waiting. As Jay reached out, a dangerous sensation flared in his mind. With a predatory hiss the Noble Manthar lashed out, his clawed hands whistling through the air, inches from splitting Jay's face in half.
Jay leaned back just enough to let the claws pass.
His spell warned him.
This was the reason why, alongside Teleportation, his Domain of His Own was the most vital spell in his arsenal. It served as his primary defense, but It was not merely a spell to reinforce his body so that incoming attacks would deal less damage and felt less hurt, it was a defensive technique he personally favored.
It functioned as a 360-degree "hawk-eye" Not through visual sight, but through mana receptors that sent instant signals to his brain. This spell is made through Jay understanding that mana was a continuum of energy, existing in both a micro and macroscopic sense. Hence it is possible to create an instant receptor in the fabric of space.
Any movement the Vampire made created a ripple in that fabric. Jay didn't need to see the attack, he felt the displacement of space a fraction of a second before it happened.
Jay stepped back to create space, his movements efficient and cold. He watched with clinical detachment as the Vampire swung his other hand in a wide, desperate arc to force a gap between them.
Meanwhile, Xenovia and Irina were huddled near the edge of the clearing. Irina was weeping silently, her hands glowing with a faint, trembling gold light as she tried to stabilize the most heavily wounded of their comrades.
Xenovia stood guard, her body shaking from blood loss and wounds, but her eyes fixed on the man in the black cloak.
"Who is he?" Irina whispered, her voice a fragile thread. "He's... he's fighting a Manthar with nothing but magic. No ritual, no circle... just... him."
Xenovia didn't answer. She saw her sword, it is a large uniquely-shaped broadsword with a blue blade and a golden edge. The sword has a semicircular guard on the left side of the handle that extends to the bottom just above the pommel, with a small extension on the right side of the handle.
The Holy Sword Durandal
Its lying in the mud fifty feet away. It was a holy relic, a fragment of divinity, and it felt like a betrayal to see it discarded in the mud while a stranger fought her battles. As a holy word wielder she also failed, as an exorcist she also failed, but the worst thing is she failed as a leader.
She gritted her teeth, clenching his hand and forcing her leaden legs to move. She had to help. She had to reclaim her pride.
She limped forward, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she trying to stepped into the battle and grab her sword. But before he could do that.
Jay didn't turn around. He stayed locked in, silence confrontation with the Vampire as none of them moved and calculating their move.
"Let me handle this," he said.
Xenovia froze. The voice was deep, steady, and filtered through the mask of the hood, but there was an unmistakable resonance of youth in it. He didn't sound like a wizened master or a veteran priest. He sounded like... a boy. Someone who couldn't be more than a few years older than her.
"But... this is my mission!" Xenovia protested, though her voice lacked conviction.
"Your mission ended when you lost your sword," Jay replied, his tone flat. It's harsh and cold truth, that makes Xenovia just stared with a complicated look.
Her body just stopped moving forward.
After silence, Jay and the Vampire then collided again, but this time, the air didn't just ripple.
It torns.
Jay was pushing himself into a state of hyper-focus. He had spent two weeks in a basement exploring the "logic" of reality through magic, and now he was finally applying the fruit of his study despite it being such in a short time into a real battle.
He wasn't using the Incinerate Anthem to simply burn his way to victory as he was using the Vampire as a live test subject for his magic.
'This guy is faster than my activation speed, i need to close the range.' Jay thought, his mind working like a high-speed processor.
He flickered. To the Vampire, Jay was a stuttering image in reality. One moment he was ten feet away, the next he appeared directly above the Noble's head. Jay didn't swing a fist as he pointed two fingers downward.
'Light Magic.'
A thin, blindingly bright spike of light shot from his fingertips. The Vampire hissed and twisting his body mid-air with a flexibility that defied human anatomy. The needle of light grazed his shoulder, instantly cauterizing the flesh and leaving a smoking black line.
"Fucking annoying dog." the Vampire snarled, his wings beating the air into a frenzy. "You're honestly just annoying in every possible way."
The Noble disappeared in a burst of crimson speed. Jay's Domain of his own immediately sent a signal.
Rapid distortion. 4 o'clock. Low angle.
Jay didn't turn. He didn't have time. He poured mana into his left leg. "Enchantment: Kinetic Burst." He stomped the ground, the enchantment exploding outward and launching him six feet into the air just as the Vampire's claws raked the space where his shins had been a millisecond prior.
While airborne, Jay twisted his torso. He saw the Vampire's white hair whipping as the creature looked up in shock.
Jay "locked" a point in the air behind the Vampire in a milisecond using a tether of mana, he yanked himself toward that point, effectively reversing his momentum instantly. He swung a heavy, enchanted kick toward the Vampire's temple.
CRACK.
The Vampire raised a leathery wing to shield himself. The kick connected, the reinforced kinetic energy tearing through the wing's membrane and sending the Noble skidding across the dirt.
'How is he even able to master the spatial magic to that extent!' the Vampire shrieked, his eyes glowing with a manic, blood-red light. Jay fighting style is too unpredictable and too absurd for him to even predict.
Jay landed silently, but his vision flickered for a brief second.
'My mana is just around 40 percent, i need to think another way,' Jay calculated.
He could feel that the effect of using teleportation spell back to back to back in such short period of time cause a negative feedback both in his mana reserves and also his body.
Spatial magic mana consumption is almost astronomical compared to his enchantment and light based magic. Not to mention, he also has used in it multiple time to teleport place by place from Verona to this place.
And also there is a slight nausea that came from forcing his body through the fabric of space too many times in a short window. Glenda had warned him that spatial magic was the most taxing discipline for a reason.
The Vampire saw the slight hesitation. He didn't charge directly this time. He began to run in a circle around Jay, his speed increasing until he was nothing more than a blurred ring of snow-white hair and red afterimages.
He realized that Jay always steps ahead of him, and reacting his attack like he can predict the future. So he changed his strategy,
'If he predict one or two attacks, let's see how he would respond to this!!' He thought.
The Vampire was trying to overload Jay's Domain.
Ripple. Ripple. Ripple. Ripple.
The signals were hitting Jay's brain too fast. It was like a hundred people whispering different directions at once.
"Can you track this?!" the Vampire's voice echoed from everywhere at once.
Suddenly, the Vampire lunged. Jay prepared to teleport, but his Domain picked up a secondary, silent ripple from the opposite side.
'A bait!?' Jay widened his eyes, but before he could process the signal he receive.
The Vampire had thrown his heavy, Victorian coat to one side while moving at high speed, creating a false thermal and spatial signature. The Manthar Noble was coming from the blind spot.
Jay tried to pivot, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. The Noble's claws found their mark.
SHRED.
The sharp nails tore through the heavy fabric of Jay's cloak and bit deep into the muscle of his left forearm. Red hot blood and vivid sprayed onto the grass.
Jay didn't scream. He used the momentum of the hit to roll away, putting distance between them. He stood up, clutching his bleeding arm as his breathing finally turning heavy. The wound was deep, he could feel the Vampire's necrotic mana trying to seep into his bloodstream to slow his heart.
"There it is," the Vampire purred, landing gracefully and licking the blood from his claws. "The scent of mortality. You're fast, kid. But magic is just math. And in nature, the predator always outruns the mathematician."
Jay stared at his bleeding arm, then at the Vampire. His hazel eyes didn't show fear. They showed a cold and clinical irritation.
'The magic isn't enough,' Jay realized. 'I have the knowledge, but my body lacks the capacity to bridge the gap in raw physicality. I need a medium to hold the equations for me.'
His gaze shifted to the side. There, fifty feet away, the bluish blade of Durandal was still stuck in the earth, vibrating with a low holy hum.
In a flicker of violet embers, Jay teleported. He didn't go for the Vampire. He reappeared directly over the hilt of the bluish sword stuck in the dirt.
He gripped the hilt.
The Vampire froze, a wide, mocking grin splitting his face. "Hahaha! What is this? A magician reaching for a sword? You don't even know which end to hold, boy! You are a scholar trying to be a warrior!"
Xenovia gasped. "No! Don't touch it! Durandal will reject you! It's a Holy—"
She stopped.
As Jay's gloved hand closed around the hilt, the sword didn't spark with holy rejection. Instead, the massive broadsword, which Xenovia found heavy and cumbersome seemed to hum in Jay's hand.
His gaze then arrived at the Vampire as he thought.
' Let's finish this. '