Damien emerged from the forest with a slight smile, the clearing was filled with mindless zombies that just stood still or walked in circles. Their last order from Alan was to kill the man, but he suddenly flew away!

Once Damien entered the range of a zombie, their heads all collectively looked in his direction.

“So they are like a hive mind? But with the connection lost to the ‘queen’ they are now just mindlessly following their last order…”

The horde of zombies all moved towards him, but they were laughably slow, “It seems their mana supply has been cut and they are running off pure stamina now…”

“Usually it's difficult to use spells directly on another person's body, due to their own mana moving to defend themselves and interfering with the spell… but if these zombies have no mana, then this should work.”

Damien turned on his Psychokinesis and his mana circuit groaned in protest, but it complied anyway. The area within a meter of Damien shuddered with mana for a second as he spread out his domain.

A zombie rushed at him, but his body paused a meter away. Instead of throwing the zombie away, Damien surged mana into the creature's body. The zombie's empty mana circuit had no mana to defend itself from the invasive mana, so it tried to absorb the Psychic affinity mana instead.

Inside the zombie's body, the invasive Psychic mana was like pouring boiling hot magma through plastic tubes. The zombie mana circuit melted away with little resistance and destroyed the body from the inside, as it couldn’t contain the foreign mana.

The zombie groaned in pain as its body swelled up, before exploding like a popped balloon, as its mana circuit imploded. Luckily Damien's domain protected him from the explosion but the force was so extreme it actually killed two more zombies that were nearby.

The explosion released a dense cloud of Psychic mana into the air, Damien sat down in a crossed-legged position and quickly absorbed the dense mana to recover his expenditure. His lazy trait also kicked in to help him with absorption.

Despite seeing one of their fellow zombies explode in such a horrific way, the horde continued to charge at him. Without even opening his eyes or standing up, Damien caught zombies within his domain and then exploded them, killing others nearby. He then reabsorbed the mana he expended to repeat the process.

The whole fight lasted ten minutes as the final zombie let out a disgusting screech as it became an undead firework.

Damien finally opened his eyes and surveyed the destruction around him, a river of rotten flesh and yellow blood flowed around his domain so he quickly stood up and ascended into the air with Levitation.

He breathed in a deep breath of the fresh air, “Nothing makes me feel more alive than leveling up,” he muttered.

[Damien Nightshade]

[Noble Vampire]

Schools Of Magic:

[Psychic Magic (B) -> (B+)]

Psychokinesis [B -> B+]

Levitation [D -> C] (New) - The ability to float or fly by mystical means.

Clairvoyance [F] (New) - The ability to see things and events that are happening far away, and locate objects, places, people, using a 'sixth sense'.

Automatic Writing [F]

Telepathy [E]

Pyrokinesis [E]

[Spatial Magic (D+)]

Phantom Form [D]

[Blood Magic (D)]

Blood Contract [F]

===

Mana Control [C -> C+]

He gazed into the distance and could see the city. Its imposing walls surround a huge palace in the middle, on top of a small hill. “It kind of looks like a medieval city from Europe, except the palace and walls, are much too tall, magic sure does help a lot with construction in this world.”

Damien also noticed the imposing form of the Mage Tower, almost as tall as the palace; it was made of a white stone that was covered in golden runic patterns; they likely enhanced the tower's defenses.

The top floor was dedicated to the tower's library and that would be the location of his future office after he wins the duel. Damien was very confident he would win, he knew Victor's secret, his mana circuit was likely heavily damaged due to his illness and he would struggle to form any strong spells. So long as nothing unusual happened during the duel it was a guaranteed victory. Damien was a B+ grade in Psychic magic now after all.

Damiens body began to burn again as it converted his stored blood supply into mana to fuel his Levitation skill. “Whoops, time to return to the city…”

He quickly but gracefully descended towards the car and smiled at the elves. To say they were terrified of him was an understatement. One of them fainted just from his gaze.

Beldroth emerged from the car and knelt before Damien, “Sir, I thank you for saving me and my useless men from this disaster.”

The sight of a flying vampire that could explode zombies with a simple wave of his hand was heavily imprinted on his mind. He had never seen such a terrifying usage of skills.

Damien felt rather guilty, he was only able to defeat the zombies in such a fashion since the elves had worn the zombies down to such a weak state, also the necromancer was out of mana and couldn't fight back.

He was in fact about to faint from blood loss, but his [Noble Aura] forced him to stand straight and act as if it was the easiest thing he had ever done. Of course, Damien was never going to reveal the fact he had a mental breakdown in the forest or how the sacrifice and effort his men made allowed him to win.

“Captain Beldroth it was a simple matter, however since you failed your duty to protect me and required the client to save his own escort I expect payment. I will discuss the payment with the Princess when we return.”

Beldroths face was extremely shocked but he nodded quickly. “We won’t delay Sir Damien any longer.”

“There will be no more mistakes Captain,” Damien said in a tone that allowed no contention, “I am already disappointed with the Princess's lack of regard for my safety.”

Beldroth nodded and all the elves that looked near death quickly stood up and surrounded the car in a pathetic formation.

“Tsk.” Damien cursed as he climbed back inside the car and collapsed into the comfortable chair. Walter just gulped loudly and began moving the car with his water jets.

***

A young woman was nervously tapping her hand on the sofa’s armrest while she took a sip of her fourth cup of tea today. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner only heightened her tension. “Any news?” she asked for the hundredth time in the last hour to the maid standing beside her. The girl just gave her master a tired shake of her head. “No, my lady there is no news.”

“Maybe we should order the guards to move…” she said for the tenth time, and the maid replied, “They are only an hour late my lady, we still don’t have justification to move the private guards.”

“But the journey is only supposed to take thirty minutes at most! How can they be an hour late?”

“Princess please be patient, they could be arriving any minute now.”

Princess Emilia just gave the maid a worried look but took another sip of tea to calm herself.

“Princess I have news!” a voice shouted through the room's door, Emilia shot up from her seat and ran towards the door herself. She opened it too quickly and almost scared the maid to death “Tell me!”

“Y-yes… they have arrived and are heading this way, it's just there's a slight problem…”

Emilia’s face went deathly pale, this operation couldn't afford any losses yet there was a problem?

“Only nine of the knights have returned…” but seeing Emilia's face she quickly added, “Including Sir Beldroth.”

Emilia let out a deep sigh, “Tell Beldroth to report to me immediately in my office, I need an explanation.”

The maid bowed and left. Emilia quickly hurried to her office and tried to calm her turbulent mind. Those were all promising recruits they had been training for months, they also had been wearing expensive armour. She would have to replace both the armour and compensate the deceased knight's families. “What a headache,” she muttered as she walked through the halls.

A few minutes later a very exhausted Beldroth trudged into Emilia's office. “So what happ-” Emilia tried to ask but was quickly interrupted.

“Emilia, what did I always tell you? Intel is the most important factor in any operation. I trusted the intel you had!” He screamed, scaring Emilia out of her chair.

“Cousin… what do you mean?” she asked, she had never seen the short man so angry before.

“You made that Noble sound like a nobody! A simple escort mission!”

“But… It should have been?” Emilia was so confused, what could have happened?

“Emilia that noble is not human, he's a Vampire and not only a Vampire but definitely a noble one. Do you know what that means? He is a descendent of Kazimir Nightshade! He is a royalty of the Vampires! Not only that he is a terrifyingly powerful Psychic mage that could kill with a simple wave of his hand!”

Emilia gripped the table behind her, “So he killed our knights?” she asked with confusion. She had told the knights to use force to bring the noble here so she could only imagine the scene…

“No, a necromancer attacked us with a hundred zombies, no matter how many times we defeated them they stood back up. After half of us died, the Noble finally got bored of the delay and went to kill the necromancer personally. He then wiped out the zombies in minutes with just waves of his hands!”

Beldroth took a deep breath and then continued his rant “He was deeply disappointed that the Princess sent such a weak escort and demanded payment! Can you pay it, Princess? Can anyone pay for a descendent of Kazimir to do anything? He looked young, but for all we know he is a 500-year old A grade mage!”

The Princess finally understood the situation. There were no diplomatic relations between Kassinki and the vampires in the Kazimir mountain range. She had no idea what his demands would be. Would he demand she becomes his blood slave and fuck her like a toy every day? Maybe that's the best-case scenario compared to the destruction of the kingdom?

“I'm sure we can work something out…” Emilia said while her voice trembled.

“I sure hope he is reasonable otherwise forfeiting your life, might be a sacrifice we have to make for offending a Noble Vampire and a powerful mage.”

“Wait, you said he's a vampire that can use Psychic magic?” Emilia asked and Beldroth nodded, “Don’t vampires only use blood magic?”

“Oh, I think I saw him using Phantom Hand as well so add Spatial Magic to that list…” Beldroth said with a horrified expression.

Emilia collapsed onto her office floor and clutched her head. “We are so doomed.”