Victor breathed more heavily.

The constant use of electricity was beginning to take its toll.

Not in energy.

He still had energy.

The problem was coordination.

The more he used it, the harder it became to keep every discharge in the correct place. His body wanted to move before his thought finished. His muscles responded too quickly. His perception needed to keep up with everything.

But he was improving.

With every death.

With every mistake.

With every cut.

Victor slowly raised the sword.

The blade was cracked.

He fed it more Black Ice.

The cracks sealed.

Black sparks danced around it.

"Right."

His voice came out low.

But it crossed the forest.

"I understand enough."

The assassins remained silent.

Victor looked around at the remaining red lines.

Some trembled.

Not physically.

In the flow.

Fear affected blood.

He was perceiving that better now.

Maybe because of Black Lightning.

Maybe because his senses were becoming faster along with his body.

"Until now, I was trying to learn without wasting good targets."

He spun the sword once.

The air cracked.

"But you came with poisons, seals, weapons prepared for Jake, and adult assassins inside a Ritual."

His smile disappeared.

"So let’s stop pretending this is still a test."

Black Lightning ran through the entire sword.

The Black Ice groaned softly under the pressure, but endured.

Victor lowered his stance.

"From now on..."

His eyes gleamed.

"I’m fighting to kill."

The first one to die never saw Victor move.

There was only a black flash.

Then the sound.

BOOM!

Victor appeared behind an assassin hidden between two trunks.

The sword was already at the end of its motion.

The cut did not merely open the body.

The shockwave turned the internal organs into paste before launching him against the trees.

Victor did not stop.

The second tried to flee upward.

Victor bent his knees.

Black Lightning in the calves.

Thighs.

Hips.

Vertical explosion.

The ground sank.

He rose like a projectile.

The assassin on the branch turned his face.

Too late.

Victor cut from below.

The blade did not reach him directly.

It did not need to.

The wind compressed by the strike hit him first.

The assassin’s body was split from hip to shoulder by an invisible blade of pressure.

Blood fell like dark rain.

Victor landed on another branch.

The branch almost broke.

He adjusted the discharge in his feet.

Less impact.

More grip.

"Better."

Three assassins fired needles simultaneously.

Victor moved the sword in a circle.

Black Lightning exploded through his wrist.

The motion created a barrier of wind.

The needles were deflected.

Some returned against the shooters themselves.

One was struck in the neck.

Victor appeared before him the next instant and drove the sword through his head.

No shockwave.

No spectacle.

Only death.

"I don’t always need to explode."

A blade came from behind.

Victor tilted his body, let the blade pass over his shoulder, and trapped the assassin’s arm with his own armpit.

Then he placed two fingers against the man’s chest.

A small discharge.

Concentrated.

BOOM.

The thorax caved in.

The heart exploded inside the body.

Victor released the corpse and moved again.

Now the rhythm had changed completely.

Before, he reacted.

Now, he hunted.

The red lines surrounding Victor began to disappear one by one.

He used Mist Steps to change his axis.

Black Lightning to explode in the following instant.

Black Ice to sustain the blade.

White Fire only when some poison, seal, or trap tried to interfere with his regeneration.

Each skill fulfilled a function.

And electricity connected all of them.

Movement.

Impact.

Correction.

Movement.

Impact.

Correction.

One assassin tried to activate a containment seal.

Victor noticed the energy gathering on the ground before the circle completed.

He accelerated.

But not forward.

To the side.

A short displacement, almost impossible to follow.

He appeared outside the seal and cut the air with his sword.

The shockwave crossed the space between them.

The assassin raised a blood defense.

It broke.

So did the body behind it.

Another tried to blend into the shadows.

Victor closed his eyes.

Black Lightning ran through his nerves.

His perception became strange.

The world seemed to slow slightly.

Not truly.

It was his body processing everything too quickly.

Heartbeat.

Breathing.

Blood flowing.

The slight friction of cloth against tree bark.

Victor opened his eyes.

"Found you."

He threw the sword.

The blade crossed twenty meters in an instant, propelled by a black discharge.

The hidden assassin had his mask pierced.

The sword pinned him to the trunk.

Victor pulled his hand back.

Black Ice shattered into fragments and returned like frozen blood, rebuilding the sword in his palm.

He smiled.

"That works too."

The two remaining ancient presences finally advanced together.

They understood.

If they continued letting the lesser ones fight, everyone would die.

One came from the right with a curved sword.

The other from the left with nearly invisible blood threads.

Victor advanced to the right.

Pretended to prioritize the swordsman.

At the last instant, he discharged Black Lightning into his left foot and changed direction absurdly.

His body almost could not endure it.

His knee screamed.

The muscle in his thigh tore partially.

But the change worked.

He appeared before the thread user.

The assassin tried to pull back his hands.

Victor cut off his fingers first.

Then the elbow.

Then the neck.

Three cuts.

Three small discharges.

Fast.

Efficient.

The body fell before the head touched the ground.

Victor tried to turn toward the last ancient one.

The wounded leg failed.

The assassin noticed.

The curved sword struck Victor’s back.

The cut was deep.

Blood gushed out.

Victor staggered forward.

The assassin did not waste the chance.

Another strike came toward the back of his neck.

Victor lowered his head at the last instant.

The blade cut part of his hair and opened a line above his ear.

He turned.

The Black Ice sword rose.

CLANG!

The blades met.

The assassin was strong.

Much stronger than the others.

He pressed Victor downward with enough force to make his feet sink into the soil.

Victor felt the cut on his back burn.

Regeneration was slow.

His thigh was still bad.

His right arm trembled from excessive discharges.

The assassin noticed all of that.

And pressed harder.

"Your body cannot keep up with your ability," the distorted voice said.

Victor held the block.

Then smiled.

"For now."

Black Lightning ran through the sword.

The assassin tried to retreat.

Victor did not let him.

He did not release the discharge forward.

He released it downward.

Through his own feet.

BOOM!

The ground exploded beneath them both.

The assassin lost his footing for half a second.

Victor used that instant.

He released the pressure from the sword.

Let the enemy blade slide.

Turned his body inside the guard.

And struck the assassin’s shoulder with his elbow.

Concentrated Black Lightning.

Short impact.

BOOM!

The vampire’s shoulder dislocated violently.

The sword fell from his hand.

Victor grabbed the mask.

"My body keeps up just fine."

He pulled the assassin down and struck with a headbutt.

CRACK.

The mask cracked.

Another headbutt.

CRACK.

The mask broke.

Before the face could be revealed, Victor drove the sword through his throat.

The assassin froze.

Victor leaned close to his ear.

"I’m just learning too fast for you to survive the process."

He released the discharge.

BOOM!

The head disappeared in an explosion of blood, metal, and mask fragments.

The body fell.

Silence.

Not complete.

There were still a few presences.

But now they were distant.

Very distant.

Fleeing.

Victor took a deep breath.

His body was covered in blood.

Some of it his own.

Most of it belonged to others.

The forest around him looked as though it had been struck by a storm. Cut trees. Split trunks. Small craters in the ground. Branches burned by White Fire. Fragments of Black Ice slowly melting among red puddles.

Victor looked at the fleeing red lines.

For a few seconds, he considered letting them escape.

Then he remembered the weapons prepared for Jake.

The seals.

The needles.

The containment.

The attempt to remove him from the Ritual.

His gaze chilled.

"No."

He raised the sword again.

Black Lightning began circulating once more.

This time, more smoothly.

Still fierce.

Still dangerous.

But less chaotic.

Victor lowered his body.

A small smile appeared on his face.

"You started a hunt."

Black sparks ran through his eyes, his arms, and the blade.

"Now run properly."

He disappeared.

The forest trembled.

In the distance, the first scream came quickly.

Then the second.

Then none.

Only impacts.

Cuts.

Short explosions.

Wind tearing through wood.

And the sound of something moving too fast to be called an ordinary vampire.