Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire

Chapter 176: Baler’s Acceptable Trade-off

Baler let out a breath and grinned as the fog that escaped his mouth frosted over before falling to the ground like snow.

Professor Raoul frowned at the icy energy he could detect but said nothing. He just looked over at Caius wondering if he would voice a protest.

Caius just smiled and then his eyes widened because the very next second, a practice sword was coming at his head. He raised his just in time and both weapons collided with a dull sound.

”Haha, feel it yet?” Baler asked, his breath chilling, ”You feel it creeping through you, yet? You feel your loss coming on fast, yet?”

Caius just chuckled.

”A Frost pill, really?” He asked nonchalantly.

The smile on Baler’s face slipped a bit.

”You know of it?” He asked.

Caius chuckled.

Of course, he knew of it.

The Frost Pill was for magic Augmentation.

It didn’t actually increase one’s magic circle which would have been a much more obvious and eyebrow-raising change. It just intensified the chill of one’s Ice Magic. It’s a trade secret of the Khione Family and works best with Females (like everything else with the Khione Family’s unique Element of Ice) and is meant to be used only for emergencies.

It also wasn’t something that was handed to someone on his way to Lochxen. It was a precious resource not meant to be wasted on something like a student duel. It had to have taken weeks of convincing for Baler to have it shipped to him at Lochxen. Or maybe he just reached out to someone who would do anything to help him and had just bided his time to ask for the duel.

Either way, this duel was a new development that hadn’t happened in the original story. Baler did use the ’Frost Pill’ in a student duel in [To Kill A Demon Lord...]. Just not in his first year at Lochxen.

Anyway, Baler heaved and pushed Caius back before swinging his other hand forward, a seal already formed so a spell circle appeared and conjured a pillar of ice that struck at Caius’s midsection.

This was of course, allowed.

It wasn’t a Mage-Knight Duel without Magic, after all.

Caius raised his practice sword just in time for defense and just barely managed to keep the pillar from making painful contact with his body. The force backing it still pushed him back though.

A thick layer of frost now coated his arms and was driving deep into his body, causing sluggishness of a level that he was finding difficult to simply shake off by shaking his head.

He took one hand off the practice sword and slammed it against the side of the pillar, letting a spell circle blaze to life as he cast ~Fireball~ directly against it.

Alas, while the flames of the spell took a chunk out of the pillar, what was left did not lose even a bit of its force. It also didn’t stop pushing Caius back. The chill that backed the spell was beyond what Baler should ordinarily have been capable of. And it was stronger than the Third Circle spell Caius tried to use to contend with it.

Caius blasted more ~Fireball~ spells. At least, he managed to blast one more before Baler’s leg went swinging at the side of his head.

*Bam!*

The kick connected and Caius went flying, rolling a few times on the ground but quickly back to his feet. There was a large bruise on the side of his face from that one kick and the corner of his lips was cut, and bleeding.

Only now did he notice that Baler’s leg was coated in ice to increase the effect of his kick.

Now, ordinarily, doing something like arming his body with ice was a spell itself and not something Baler could do at the same time as his pillar spell. But thanks to the Frost Pill, Ice Magic came more naturally to him. Giving him so much room to be able to keep up with different spells without compromising any.

This was the first time Baler had ever tried out the Frost Pill and it was quickly becoming something he’d like to make a staple in his repertoire for dealing with idiots that pissed him off like Calus did.

The pill also caused Baler’s balls to retract into his body temporarily and caused his ding-a-ling to shrink (permanently if there was continued use) but he believed that to be an acceptable trade-off to feel his leg against the side of Caius’ head.

Baler struck his feet against the ground and an icy platform rose to push him off the ground like a trampoline.

”AHHHH!!!”

Yelling out a battle cry as his voice lost a bit of its manly tenor, Baler had both his hands up in the air, forming seals at a rapid rate as multiple spell circles began to appear.

Thanks to the Frost Pill’s augmentation of the chill in Baler’s spells, he also gained proper Mana reserve Management. Casting this many spells—that he was only able to keep up all at once thanks to the pill—had cost only about half of his reserves even though it ordinarily might have sapped it all.

Caius had his head raised and saw Baler summoning all those spell circles to barrage him. This was a Combat Magic tactic and not that of a Mage-Knight but that, of course, did not really matter.

The fact that the spells, being so many, seemed to be more about killing Caius than getting him off the stage to win the duel was concerning through and Professor Raoul twitched, ready to interfere.

It would be so terrible, after all, for a student to die under his watch.

But Caius had a spell prepared.

One of the easiest he had in his arsenal and the first spell he learned since his arrival in this world;

~Blindness~

The purple veil went flying at Baler in the air. He was far too preoccupied with casting as many attacking spells as he possibly could, to avoid the veil or defend himself from it.

The spell struck him and he lost his sight.

’Doesn’t matter,’ he decided, and with a battle cry, he let his spells fall in a barrage.

Professor Raoul moved then but before he even got close, and before the spells got close enough to hit Caius on the ground, there was a flash of flame fueled by a gust of wind and Raoul’s senses lost ’sight’ of Caius for a split second.

The very next, he saw Caius was many feet away from the point where the spell barrages made contact.

He looked curious because the speed capable of getting Caius to safety seemed to be something past the Third Circle.

And of course, if Professor Raoul Raoul was confused about Caius’s escape, the entire class was mystified.

Delia’s eyes were wide in reluctant awe.

Aurelius’s brows were furrowed as he leaned forward.

Caius didn’t notice or know about their reactions because he had a plan and was forming the required seals to actualize that plan.

First, he had used ~Blindness~ to rob Baler of his sight, then he used ~Hellsong Stomp~ for a directionless escape that was good as long as it got him out of the range of the barrage coming down. And that was a daunting task because, the spell circles covered more than half and a quarter of the stage.

Fortunately, he knew the unstable movement spell of his was well up to the task.

Anyway, the ~Blindness~ spell was not to stop Baler from seeing him escape the barrage...

~Dark Missiles~

... it was to ensure his next attack was successful.

The spell circle appeared, carrying an Otherworldly feel as it conjured darts of Dark Magic that went flying at Baler in the air.

Without his sight, Baler didn’t see the darts and couldn’t attempt a defense on time. He was so hung up on the power he was feeling at the moment and only trained his ears to hear Caius’ cries of pain, that his senses didn’t detect the Darts.

Not before two of them struck him anyway.

”Ahhh!” He cried.

His mana attacked the veil over his eyes and he regained his sight. At the same time, he turned his senses away from the cry of pain that never came to the other darts still coming at him and managed to erect icy platforms to intercept one of them.

But it was one too little.

The others had made contact, their dark parasitic energy had corrupted his system and when his feet touched the ground again, he could feel his energy draining away.