"Are you out of your mind?" Michelle hissed at him but Ashton ignored her.
He did not expect someone like her to know why he was doing what he was doing, even if he explained to her word by word about his plan to smoke out some pussy-wolves.
"So, when do we start?" Ashton asked the princesses with a smile.
"Right NOW!" Verina roared and lunged at him, closely followed by Irina.
Both of them were using rapiers, while not giving Ashton any chance to even retrieve his weapons. The crowd dispersed as the sisters began their relentless attacks. None of them wanted to get caught in a fight that wasn't there and lose a limb or two.
"Wait this goes against the rules of duels!" Michelle did whatever she could to help out Ashton, even though he had caused the mess all by himself.
"Who said it was going to be according to the rules?" Griffin replied and crossed his hands in front of his massive chest, "The assassins who attacked Kai wouldn't have waited for the boy to get ready before attacking him."
Hearing that, Michelle knew she couldn't do anything. After all, Griffin was right. If Ashton wanted to prove that he had the strength to kill 13 vampires all by himself, then he had to be prepared for everything. Including a sudden ambush from multiple enemies.
The only thing she could do was to put her faith in him and hope he actually had a plan for doing all this. The royal knight, on the other hand, didn't know what to do? Their king had sent them along with the Baron to make sure he returned safely.
But judging by what was happening at the moment, it was highly... questionable whether any one of them would be making their way back to Lycania or not.
"The dog is gonna die for sure." One of the counts scoffed, "They aren't the kingdom's brightest swordswomen for nothing. There isn't a single swordmaster throughout the empire in its entirety who hasn't taught them their secret techniques."
"Yeah, the boy is in big trouble. Oh well, he kept running his mouth acting like a king, so it's only fair that he was put to his place by someone."
Ashton could hear all of them talking about how great the two sisters were and to be honest, they weren't that bad. Both of them were at level 30 and probably pursuing their evolution tasks. Which technically made them much stronger than him... that is if he was an ordinary brat.
Despite having wonderful skills, they were getting a bit too confident, all because they weren't allowing him to bring a weapon out of his inventory. As soon as he managed to fool one, the other would jump in to cover for her place. It was so... annoying!
"I gotta admit, your coordination is top class." Ashton praised the sisters as Irina managed to graze his shoulder, "Considering the fact that neither of you spoke a word before attacking me, It's most likely that both of you can read each other's minds."
Alucard was intently watching the duel unfold. He could see Ashton was talented after judging him by his sudden but to-the-point evading manoeuvres. But merely dodging the attacks wouldn't work against his daughters.
"Are you just gonna talk or fight?" Verina smiled before thrusting her sword towards him.
Ashton managed to evade her attack at the last moment but ended up being in Irina's line of fire. It all happened so quickly that no one knew what happened there. Irina had lunged at him and it didn't seem like Ashton would be able to dodge the attack. Yet he was nowhere to be found?
"Where did he go?" Irina cursed through her gritted teeth, looking all over the room.
"Where you looking at?" Ashton's voice echoed through the room, and the next moment, Irina was kicked right in the abdomen.
With one kick she was forced to take a dozen steps backwards before she could regain her balance. Irina was in pain but hid it without much effort. She was... smiling, as soon as she recovered from Ashton's kick.
However, the next moment she disappeared into thin air as if she never existed in the real world. The crowd was baffled but Verina didn't waste any time and rushed in to keep attacking Ashton.
"Nice try, but that level of deception won't work against me..."
Ashton sighed before slipping under Irina, grabbing her hands and threw her towards Verina. Verina couldn't stop her momentum suddenly and was holding her sword in front of her chest.
If she were to collide with Irina like that, her sword would definitely pierce her back. Which meant, Irina would end up getting severely injured.
"Damn it!" Verina cursed under her breath and threw away her rapier as well.
Irina hit her with incredible force and a moment later both of them found themselves kissing the ground.
"Ah, I realise why your moves were synchronous. It's amazing how much of a difference a weapon can make." Ashton mumbled while playing with their swords, "These swords are quite unique. To be able to transmit the wielder's thoughts to the wielder of the other one. The weaponsmith who made this must have been a ruler of all weaponsmiths. Here, you can have them back."
He threw their weapons back toward their owners. The sisters grabbed the swords, but rather than fighting, they put the swords back in their inventory. Confusing everyone in the room except Alucard, who was smiling himself.
"Um... what's going on here?" Ashton voiced what everyone was thinking, "Why did you put your weapons away?"
"Because the fight is already over," Alucard replied and stood between his daughters, "You won."
Alucard then playfully nudged the ladies forward. The sisters took a couple of steps toward him before getting down on one knee. What happened next sent a shockwave of emotions through everyone in the room.
"Ashton Bismark, will you marry us?"
"WHAT!?"