Chapter 200: Ulrich Against Valdris [3]

Frightening.

That was the only word Valdris could find to describe what Ulrich was just doing right now.

Frightening.

He had heard stories about Ulrich van Rubenhart before coming to Skargardia.

A young nobleman who lost his mother young. A genius expected to become one of the Kingdom’s notable foreign mages one day. Then, according to the reports Valdris had received, Ulrich’s mana core had blossomed broken. His potential had become useless. His future had narrowed. He had withdrawn from the world and later reappeared as an obscure Count following his father’s death.

Valdris had expected a man bitter about what he had lost.

He had expected a mage who clung to basic spells because he could not afford anything greater.

He had not expected this.

The genius was real.

Valdris could no longer deny it.

The manner in which Ulrich controlled mana, formed runes, and changed spell structures in the middle of combat belonged to a genius. No ordinary mage could rebuild a formation so quickly while defending against an opponent of Valdris’s strength.

But the broken mana core?

That part made no sense.

It could not be real.

A crippled core could not produce mana with such speed. It could not sustain repeated spell formations with this level of control. It could not allow a man to weave, destroy, and rebuild reinforcement spells while fighting with every part of his body.

Valdris’s eyes narrowed.

"Your mana core is not crippled," he said.

Ulrich did not reply.

"You cannot perform magic at this speed with a damaged core," he continued. "It is impossible. The reports were false."

Still Ulrich gave him nothing.

His silence answered more than words would have.

Valdris’s smile returned slowly.

Perhaps his informants had been mistaken. Perhaps Ulrich had hidden his true condition deliberately. A nobleman with enough influence could conceal much if he wished. Or perhaps the Count had found a way to repair the damage and had kept the matter secret from everyone around him.

Whatever the answer, Valdris would no longer treat him as a weakened mage.

"You leave me with few choices, Count Rubenhart," he said.

Ulrich lifted his sword slightly.

Crimson runes continued to form around it.

Valdris jumped backward, creating distance between them.

Ulrich did not pursue immediately. He watched the commander land near the far bank of the stream, boots sinking into the soft earth. Valdris’s black coat hung damp around his legs, and the cut on his cheek had begun to bleed more freely.

Then Valdris turned his head toward the black-armored knights scattered throughout the camp.

"Take the serum," he ordered.

The Valmorian soldiers reacted at once.

They broke away from their immediate exchanges with the Rubenhart knights. Some stepped backward with shields raised. Others used sudden bursts of force to create room, shoving their opponents away with the shoulders or striking hard against their blades.

Hendrick noticed the movement.

"Do not let them regroup!" He shouted.

Two Rubenhart knights tried to press forward, but the Valmorian soldiers had already reached inside their armor.

Small glass vials appeared in black-gloved hands.

Each one contained a dark liquid, nearly black beneath the firelight. The substance clung thickly to the glass when the soldiers moved it. A faint red glow stirred at the bottom of the vials, dull and unpleasant, like embers buried beneath ash.

Ulrich’s gaze hardened.

The Valmorian knights removed the stoppers.

One after another, they drank.

The effects came quickly.

A knight near the campfire bent forward sharply, one hand gripping his helmet as though pain had driven through his skull. Another staggered near the supply wagon, his sword nearly falling from his grasp. A third inhaled deeply, his chest expanding beneath the black armor.

Then mana erupted around them.

It did not resemble the clean, controlled mana Ulrich had seen from trained mages.

This was violent.

Dark blue light flared around the first knight, followed by streaks of red. The mana poured from the joints of his armor, from beneath his gauntlets, and from the narrow spaces around his helmet. The grass near his boots flattened beneath the sudden pressure.

Another soldier’s aura burst outward and struck the side of a tent, making the canvas snap violently.

The Rubenhart knights took a step back.

Even Hendrick’s expression changed.

Ulrich watched as the enemy soldiers straightened again.

Their breathing had grown heavier. Their shoulders rose and fell beneath their armor. Some of their hands trembled around their swords, but their eyes now burned with a dangerous intensity behind the slits of their helmets.

The pressure coming from them had changed.

Ulrich narrowed his eyes and looked toward Valdris who just smiled.

Mana began to gather around his body.

At first, it appeared as faint lines of light around his boots. Then it rose around his legs and waist, circling him in broad waves. The air near him distorted. Water in the stream pulled away from his feet as if an unseen force had pressed downward upon it.

The pressure spread through the clearing.

Ulrich felt it against his skin.

The campfire bent sideways, its flames pulled toward Valdris before snapping back upright. Loose pieces of cloth tied around the supply wagons fluttered without wind. The broken fragments of Ulrich’s crimson mana trembled in the air before fading.

Hermione gasped from behind the line of Rubenhart knights.

Airam placed an arm in front of Esther to shield her.

Esther clutched the back of Airam’s nightgown with both hands. Tears still shone in her eyes as she looked toward Valdris and Ulrich standing across the stream.

Valdris lifted his black sword.

Mana wrapped around the weapon without touching its blade directly. It formed a dark aura around the metal, dense enough to make the moonlight disappear from its surface.

"It has been a long time," Valdris said, "since someone forced me to use magic."

Ulrich watched him carefully.

The pressure increased.

Valdris’s mana spread farther through the clearing. It touched the grass near the stream, and the blades of grass folded flat against the ground. The water trembled. Stones beneath the current began to crack under the weight of the aura pressing down around him.

Ulrich did not move.

The crimson runes around his sword continued to glow, layered reinforcement formations running from guard to tip.

Valdris smiled and raised his empty left hand.

A Formula Ring appeared before it.

The circle was not drawn on the ground. It formed in the air, wide enough to cover the space between Valdris’s shoulder and the stream. Three concentric rings of dark red light rotated slowly around a central node. Runes ignited across the inner ring first, each one forming with the clarity of carved metal.

Ulrich recognized the pattern almost instantly, having memorized library-worthy spells in his mind.

Fire-unity.

Not the ordinary Flame rune used in basic fireballs. This rune had a longer lower stroke, hooked at the end like a claw. It was the Rune of Inferno, one of the more violent members of the fire family. Once mana entered it, the rune did not produce a steady flame. It created hungry fire, unstable and aggressive, built to consume fuel and burst outward.

More runes appeared around it.

Putting aside the affinity runes, such as the elements, to make a spell and shape it however you wanted it, there were other families of runes, such as Control-Runes, which are used to direct behavior for triggering releases, delaying releases, but also Form-Runes simply to shape the spell, accompanied by other families.

These families of runes together are what make magic real and create spells by binding them together.

Urlich quickly analyzed the runes Valdrid was using.

Sphere.

Compression.

Heat-High.

Range-Medium.

Propulsion-Forward.

Ignition-on-Impact.

The spell was taking form quickly. Eight runes filled the circle, creating a basic attack spell. Yet Valdris did not release it.

He added more.

Two modifier runes joined the second ring: Velocity-High and Pressure-Condense. A stabilization rune followed. Another rune shaped the outer release path into a twisting spiral rather than a direct line.

Eleven runes.

Rank 2 spell.

Ulrich did not wait for it to be complete.

His left hand rose.

A pale blue Formula Ring appeared before him, smaller than Valdris’s but more complex. The inner ring held a Water-unity rune, though not the common rune used to summon drinking water or create a simple wave. Ulrich chose the Rune of Flowing Current, a water rune that favored movement, redirection, and continuous force.

The second ring filled with Shape-Arc, Density-High, Range-Short, and Split-Three.

The outer ring received a control rune.

Return-to-Caster.

Then Ulrich added an unusual modifier to the path between the rings. The mana would travel through the water rune, enter the shaping sequence, split into three arcs, and return along a curved loop after release rather than fading after its first attack.

Eleven runes.

Another Rank 2 spell.

Valdris’s Formula Ring completed first.

The release rune blazed.

A sphere of fire appeared before his palm.

It was the size of a man’s head at first. Then the compression rune released its stored pressure, and the sphere tightened until it became a dense, bright mass of orange-red fire. Heat distorted the air around it. The grass beneath it blackened without being touched.

Valdris thrust his hand toward Ulrich.

The fireball crossed the clearing.

Ulrich released his own spell.

Three streams of water rose from the river in curved lines, as though unseen hands had drawn blades from the current. They did not rush directly at the fireball. Ulrich sent them around it.

The first stream struck from below.

The second wrapped around the right side.

The third swept over the top.

Steam exploded across the clearing.

Valdris’s fireball did not go out. The Rune of Inferno had been chosen for a reason. Its heat was too violent for a simple burst of water to extinguish. But Ulrich had not aimed to extinguish it.

The water streams forced the projectile off its original path.

The fireball curved away from Ulrich and struck the ground several paces to his left.

BOOOM!

The explosion tore through the grass.

Flame burst upward in a wide cone. Dirt, stones, and burning pieces of brush scattered through the air. The shockwave struck Ulrich’s side and drove him a step backward, but he remained standing. The looping water spell returned at once, circling back toward him in three thinning ribbons before falling harmlessly into the stream.

Valdris watched the maneuver.

"Water against Inferno," he said. "A poor choice if you meant to stop it."

"I did not."

Ulrich moved.

He crossed the stream with three quick steps, using the remaining smoke and steam as cover. Valdris saw him through it anyway. He raised his black sword and swung toward the shadow emerging from the vapor.

Ulrich’s crimson blade met it.

Clang!

"You are a crafty man." Valdris narrowed his eyes.

A genius swordman and a genius in magic who could recognize, analyze, and decipher a spell by a single look.

The more Valdris learnt about Ulrich, the more frightening he looked.

Valdris narrowed his eyes.

’He needs to die.’

He really had a bad feeling about him.

He had closed the gap between them within a few minutes after finding a solution to the Anti-Mana sword, and now he was slowly taking over him.