The Noble Orc Bugogan. The Ghoul King Vandalieu. The scene of the two of them preparing to fight each other looked incredibly stupid.

At first, while Vandalieu was covering himself in black Mana and casting his【Impact-Negating Barrier】and【Magic Absorption Barrier】, Bugogan was simply staring at him blankly.

「Fugoh!」

As Vandalieu finished casting his spells, Bugogan gave a short chant. A spear of earth suddenly appeared from below Vandalieu. It looked as if it was going to turn him into a skewer, but the moment its tip touched the【Impact-Negating Barrier】, it turned back into fragile dirt.

Combined together, the【Impact-Negating Barrier】and【Magic Absorption Barrier】absorbed all of the power from any attack that originated outside the barriers. Electrical energy would be absorbed from lightning, heat energy would be absorbed from flame and, of course, Mana would be absorbed from spells.

Bugogan’s spells were quickly rendered useless.

「Bufu, bugah!」

With that, he had likely discerned the effect of the barriers. Thinking that unarmed combat would be more effective than magic, Bugogan raised his magic sword.

「Bugagah!」

And in the next instant, he had closed the distance between himself and Vandalieu. With a speed that was unbelievable coming from his enormous body that was three meters in both width and height, he swung his magic sword down.

His attack looked like it could cut a rock in half as if it were paper, but it was blocked by the【Impact-Negating Barrier】and didn’t even land a scratch on Vandalieu. The【Impact-Negating Barrier】absorbed not only the Mana, but also the kinetic energy of the weapon.

Kinetic energy is the energy needed to make a physical object move. To move a ten-kilogram dumbbell, ten kilograms of energy is required*. As that kinetic energy was absorbed by the【Impact-Negating Barrier】, Bugogan’s magic sword could not reach Vandalieu who was behind it.
TLN*: If you’ve ever done high school physics you’d know that this is wrong in so many ways…



In response to the strange sensation of having his weapon repelled by a soft wall, Bugogan’s face twisted in confusion.

With Bugogan’s blade stopped right in front of his face, Vandalieu looked at Bugogan with no expression on his face, but this is what he was thinking.

(This is bad, I’m going to die.)

On the surface, it seemed that Vandalieu was surrounded with an impenetrable defense. However, that impenetrable defense wouldn’t last forever.

(Stopping that one preliminary attack that wasn’t even a martial skill or anything cost me fifty thousand Mana.)

Vandalieu had been using his Mana excessively since the battle began; he had already spent half of it. He still had more than 50,000,000 remaining, but… If Bugogan attacked with a martial skill, it would cost tens of thousands of Mana to block it… Possibly even hundreds of thousands.

Of course, martial skills also consumed the user’s Mana, so they couldn’t be used endlessly. However, Bugogan could also use magic, so he would have much more Mana than his sons. And his Stamina would be even greater than that.

If Vandalieu ran out of Mana and his barriers disappeared, he would have no way of escaping Bugogan’s attacks.

(I’m weak, after all.)

Are you strong? If someone were to ask Vandalieu this question, he would answer,「No, I’m weak.」

He could use death-attribute magic that nobody else could use.

He possessed over 100,000,000 Mana.

Because he was a Dhampir, at two years of age, he possessed more physical strength than an average adult man.

But he was weak.

If one were to separate everyone in Lambda into the strong and weak, Vandalieu would undoubtedly fall into the weak category.

Death-attribute magic was more restricted than other attributes of magic; there were limits to what Vandalieu could accomplish with it. There were almost no spells that dealt direct damage to the target like【Flame Spear】,【Earth Axe】and【Wind Strike.】Its defensive capabilities were being demonstrated by Vandalieu right now, but since he could never go on the attack, he would be defeated eventually.

And whether he had 100,000,000 Mana or 200,000,000 Mana, he would die if his vitality dropped to zero.

His physical strength was barely stronger than an adult man’s; there was no way that it would be a match for this monster that could even challenge a Dragon.

That was why Vandalieu was weak.

Vandalieu did not possess a permanent strength that worked in any situation.

But that didn’t mean that he had the choice to give up and die.

「Get up.」

First, he turned the ground beneath Bugogan’s feet into Golems to try to destroy his footing. His plan was to stop his movements until Basdia and the others got here, and then have them throw endless long-ranged attacks until Bugogan died.

「Buh!」

However, Bugogan quickly crushed the Earth Golems under his feet as they began to move. He stomped downwards with the unarmed martial skill【Kicking Strike】, and each stomp caused multiple Golems to crumble.

It was only a tactic to buy time, but Vandalieu was surprised that he could only buy a few seconds by spending tens of thousands of Mana.

Next, Vandalieu fired the no-attribute magic spell,【Mana Bullet.】This was a simple spell where he hardened his Mana into a ball and threw it at his target, but since it didn’t have any attribute, it was a spell that one could expect to work to some degree against any enemy.

He fired off multiple【Mana Bullets】the size of his own body containing about ten thousand Mana each, aiming for different parts of Bugogan’s body with different timings, and then topped it off with a single, extra-large【Mana Bullet】containing a hundred thousand Mana.

Regardless of Bugogan’s huge size, this barrage would send Bugogan flying to the edge of the village if they hit.

But Bugogan blocked all of them with his magic sword.

「BUOOOOOOOOOH!」

He moved his magic sword with incredible speed to repel every single【Mana Bullet.】The martial skill【Instant Response】increases the user’s reaction speed. Bugogan used a superior version of the spell,【Super Instant Response】, and a defensive spell where the user deflects magic with a sword called【Magic Breaker】consecutively while channeling Mana through the blade of his weapon.

Vandalieu was astonished to see him perform this feat that even a first-class swordsman would find difficult. He was the father of that weak Bubobio; why was he this strong?

Vandalieu’s【Mana Control】skill was low relative to the amount of Mana contained in the deflected【Mana Bullets】, so the Mana quickly dispersed without affecting the nearby terrain. For some reason, Vandalieu could sense something inside the house that Bugogan had emerged from with his【Sense Life】spell, so he was being careful about where he fired.

「BUOWAH!」

After repelling all of the【Mana Bullets】, Bugogan raised his magic sword in the air and used the martial skill,【Cross Cut.】The【Impact-Negating Barrier】made an unusual sound.

The barrier hadn’t been able to absorb all of the destructive power in the magic blade in an instant, so the blade had made it halfway in.

(I can’t hold back here.)

It seemed that Bugogan had intended to finish things with this attack, so his eyes were wide open in surprise. Vandalieu looked down at him as he poured Mana into the【Impact-Negating Barrier】to repair it and strengthen it even further.


(Chapter 21)