Free Demon Deathchase by Hideyuki Kikuchi

hair-raising beauty said
     in a voice of steel from atop a cyclopean block of stone that loomed by the side of
     the road.
    No reply was given, but a flash of brown shot out. The spot it touched blasted apart,
     and in the midst of the scattered chips of stone D flew through the air like a mystic
     bird. Had his gelid gaze caught the mark the pole left on the rocky surface?
    In Nolt’s hands, the staff that plowed through almost diamond-hard stone like it was
     clay changed direction easily and raced for the airborne D.
    There was a glimmer in D’s right hand. The arc of brown was countered by a flash of
     silver, and there was a dull thud. Not giving Nolt time for a second attack, as soon
     as he landed right in front of the Marcus brother, D swung his blade down.
    Tasting the blood-freezing fear of that blade all the while, Nolt leapt backward.
     The attack he unleashed as he leapt was not a swing but rather a jab, and his staff
     seemed to grow without end as it struck for D’s face. Though he didn’t seem to move
     a muscle, the pole missed D by a fraction of an inch as he launched himself into the
     air.
    A flashing sideways slash. The blade that would’ve put a diagonal split down the middle
     of Nolt’s face bit instead into the pole that shot up, and the two figures broke to
     opposite sides.
    The end of his staff still aimed at D’s chest, Nolt was breathing hard. Tidings of
     his fear. A thread-thin line of vermilion ran down the middle of his face from his
     forehead, and it widened at his jaw. That was the work of the blade D brought down
     as soon as he’d landed.
    However, the blood trickling down his face wasn’t Nolt’s only concern. His hexagonal
     staff wasn’t a mere piece of wood, but rather its center was packed with a steel core
     that, despite its thinness, could still deflect a high-intensity laser beam. Yet the
     pole was missing about a foot off one end. Realizing that it’d been chopped off while
     he was in midair, Nolt lost much of the fever in his blood.
    “You son of a bitch,” he growled, finally managing to say something. “So I guess you
     ain’t no plain old dhampir, are you?”
    “I’m a dhampir,” D answered, still holding the same pose in his opponent’s blue eyes.
    Nolt’s mouth twisted up in a smile. “Is that a fact? Then how do you like these apples?”
     With these words, his staff spun in a circle and struck the ground next to him.
    With a gut-wrenching rumble, a chunk of ground a yard in diameter collapsed in on
     itself. This was no ordinary hollow. Maintaining a depth of about a foot, it became
     a ditch running all the way to the river.
    About to pounce once again, D turned his eyes to this subsidence. Madness gripped
     the once calmly flowing water. As it coursed down the ditch from the shore, the water
     gathered intense speed, and, slapping up against the banks, it rose like a living
     creature. In great rolls, the water gushed into the space between the two of them.
     First the ankles and then the boots of both D and Nolt sank below the surface.
    “How about it, dhampir? Can you move?” Nolt asked with a smile. It was the smirk of
     a victor. “You know, I’ve thrown down with your kind before. And this is what I did
     then. When a part of a dhampir gets wet, it kinda gets all stiff, don’t it?”
    D didn’t move. Perhaps he couldn’t move?
    “Die, you bastard!” Nolt screamed as he charged forward. Getting a solid grip on the
     bottom part of the staff, he brandished it like he was going to bring it straight
     down and smash D’s head open. The water splashed from his feet, and he kicked off
     the ground.
    Black lightning raced up from below. Higher and faster than the staff, it danced up
     over his head. The last thing Nolt saw was the thick water stretching up from the
     ground like a tenacious predator clinging to D’s black boots.
    Split by D’s blade from forehead to chin, by the time Nolt had fallen back to earth
     he wasn’t