Absolute Defense!
"Damn it, told you to wait for me — you go charging in alone and nearly got yourself wrecked." Zhao Manyan arrived just in time.
With a Sacred Shield already covering him, Mo Fan had the full protection of that powerful Light Element magic at his back. He could afford to ignore every attack Vampire Nie Dong threw at him, and stood his ground, tracing the Lightning Element Star Chart right where he stood.
*Blazing Fist couldn't finish off this beast — fine. Let lightning do the job. Lightning and Light Element are distant cousins, after all.*
"Qianjun — Thunderbolt: Yaksha!" Mo Fan completed the Star Chart and leveled a finger at Nie Dong's head.
A blinding bolt ripped down through the space between floors. The tempered glass walls lit up with the reflection of that searing arc of electric fire, a lightning dragon plunging from on high.
Halfway down, the Thunderbolt splintered into five branches, spreading wide into a claw-like lattice of forked lightning.
Nie Dong's reflexes were sharp — but forked lightning was an area strike. When it hit, his vampire body convulsed violently, countless thin arcs crawling and dancing across every inch of him.
The lightning rattled his bones to jelly. If not for the sheer physical resilience of a vampire's constitution, a discharge that powerful would have blown him apart entirely.
"Mo Fan, keep hitting him with lightning," Zhao Manyan called from nearby.
Even as he spoke, a blue Star Chart bloomed beneath Zhao Manyan's feet. Countless water elements were tearing through the air, converging on him in a frenzy.
"Tidal Surge — Flood Roll!"
Blue water cascaded down like a river poured straight from the sky — fierce, churning, swelling into a torrent that swallowed nearly the entire street.
The flood surged forward and crashed over Vampire Nie Dong just as he was trying to recover, sweeping him under.
The roiling Tidal Surge drove him back nearly a hundred meters. Water's impact carried an inherent weakening effect; Nie Dong tumbled and thrashed through the churning wave, barely clawing his way through — only to have a purple-black Thunderbolt materialize directly above his skull and crash down onto his head.
Soaked to the bone, electricity still arcing through his body, Vampire Nie Dong couldn't get back on his feet for a long time. His eyes burned a blazing red, fixed on Mo Fan and Zhao Manyan with bottomless fury.
"You two pathetic Mages dare to stand against me, Nie Dong?!" He finally hauled himself upright and screamed at them.
Nie Dong spread his arms wide and slowly raised both hands. His claws stretched to half a meter in length — blood-red, razor-edged — and he drove them savagely through the air in a wide, crossing slash.
A crimson cross of claw-force swept the street. Every streetlight on either side was sheared clean in half simultaneously; the poles toppled and crashed to the ground, scattering showers of sparks across the asphalt.
"Defend yourself — how are those claws that *long*?!" Zhao Manyan shouted.
There wasn't a shadow anywhere near Mo Fan, and the claws were moving fast. Even Shadow Fade might not have been enough to dodge them clean.
Mo Fan didn't deliberate. He raised the Nether Separation Shield.
**Claaang~~!**
The claws screamed across the shield's surface. Mo Fan, crouched behind it, was sent flying backward ten-odd meters whether he liked it or not.
When the force finally bled away, he raised his head — and stared. Deep claw gouges ran through the entire stretch of street across those ten-plus meters, extending far into the distance.
On the other side, Zhao Manyan had used his Sacred Shield to protect himself. But the instant he moved to cast his next spell, Vampire Nie Dong appeared silently at his back. A jolt of cold terror shot through him.
Zhao Manyan understood in that instant: his position happened to be draped in shadow. Nie Dong had used his Shadow Element ability to phase through space with eerie precision.
Those half-meter claws drove toward Zhao Manyan's chest — a thrust designed to rip out every organ in one brutal motion.
"Water Control!"
Zhao Manyan was, in truth, a Mage with almost no offensive power. His arsenal of defensive skills meant he could hold on even in desperate situations.
Water Control deflected the vampire's raw strength with ease; the thrusting claws quickly lost their bite. Zhao Manyan seized the opening. His other hand completed a basic Light Element spell in an instant.
"Light Radiance — Blind!"
A ball of scorching white light detonated in Vampire Nie Dong's face. At that range, most Demon-Beasts caught by Light Radiance suffered stinging blindness for a long stretch of time — and vampires already shrank from the light. This strike came close to searing Nie Dong's pupils from their sockets entirely.
"AAAAAAHH!!!!"
Vampire Nie Dong clapped both hands over his eyes and howled in agony.
Blood Fang slid from his mouth, growing longer. He lunged at Zhao Manyan in a blind frenzy, snapping wildly.
He couldn't see his target anymore, but he could still sense his location. The Water Control had faded — one bite would leave Zhao Manyan with barely half his life remaining.
Zhao Manyan didn't flinch. The mark within his soul activated, and a golden shield emblazoned with a guardian-wing motif materialized before him.
**Klang~~!**
Whatever that shield was forged from, it was hard as steel. Vampire Nie Dong's Blood Fang left only shallow impressions in the surface — most of the impact rebounded straight back as pain.
"I will *kill* you!!" The humiliation of repeated failures against this one Mage drove Nie Dong's fury past the breaking point.
He seized Zhao Manyan — shield and all — with his bare hands and lifted him bodily off the ground, as if he meant to tear him apart by sheer force.
What he didn't account for was that Zhao Manyan was covered head-to-toe in defensive Enchanted Gear. Out of caution, the moment the golden shield went up, he had already activated his gleaming golden Armor Enchanted Gear.
The Armor Enchanted Gear was clearly high-end merchandise. Fully donned, it made Zhao Manyan look imposing and resplendent — a golden warrior encased in gleaming plate.
No matter how much raw strength Vampire Nie Dong threw at it, he could not tear open an opponent wrapped in Armor Enchanted Gear. By the time he thought to call on his Blood Form power to cut through the golden defense, Zhao Manyan had already completed a mid-tier Light Element spell in the thick of the crisis.
The Sacred Shield snapped closed around Zhao Manyan. Nie Dong's blood-formed scythe struck it — and died on contact.
One defense. Two defenses. Three defenses. Four defenses. And when the fourth fell away, another magical defensive skill was already complete...
Vampire Nie Dong was losing his mind. He had faced plenty of intermediate Mages — but never one like Zhao Manyan, whose entire kit seemed to exist purely to keep him breathing.
Against any attacking Mage, he would have won long ago. Yet here he hadn't managed to touch a single hair on this man.
Like a ferocious tiger throwing itself at an iron-shelled mountain tortoise — there was simply nowhere to bite.
Furious and growing wary of the Sacred Shield's burning touch, Vampire Nie Dong could only hurl Zhao Manyan away as hard as he could. The farther he got this kind of Mage away from him, the better.