The older assassin at the front took a step back.

"Retreat."

Too late.

Victor disappeared.

It was not like the Mist Steps.

There was no softness.

No elegance.

It was an explosion.

The ground where he had been kneeling sank all at once, opening a shallow crater, and his body crossed the distance to the assassin at the front like an arrow fired from a siege crossbow.

The vampire raised his blade.

Fast.

Very fast.

But not fast enough.

Victor struck the center of the guard with his fist.

BOOOOOOM!

The shockwave exploded on contact.

The assassin was thrown backward, his arms trembling violently under the force of the blow. The blade in his hands did not break, but the bone in his right forearm cracked under the pressure.

Victor felt it too.

The discharge rebounded through his own arm.

Numbness ran through his elbow, rose to his shoulder, and bit into his nerves like incandescent needles.

He frowned slightly.

"Bad flow."

A blade came from his left.

Victor tried to turn.

Black Lightning accelerated the movement too much.

He turned faster than he intended, lost part of his axis, and the strike grazed across his chest.

Blood sprayed.

The assassin tried to retreat.

Victor did not let him.

He grabbed the enemy’s wrist with his left hand and concentrated a small discharge in his fingers.

Less energy.

Less explosion.

More control.

CRACK.

The assassin’s wrist bones shattered like glass.

Victor pulled his body forward and drove a knee into his abdomen.

This time, he also used Black Lightning on impact.

BOOM!

The vampire’s body folded in half.

The shockwave passed through his back and blasted the tree behind him into vertical splinters.

The assassin was hurled away, coughing blood beneath his mask.

Victor watched for half a second.

"Better."

Then three needles came from the right.

He tilted his body.

Two passed by him.

The third pierced his shoulder.

Victor pulled the needle out and, before the coagulant could spread, burned the area with a small white flame.

The pain was clean.

The skin hissed.

The contaminated blood evaporated.

"This is irritating."

More shadows advanced.

Five at once.

Two from above.

Three across the ground.

They had changed their pattern.

Now they were not trying to face him directly.

They wanted to delay him.

Cut him.

Force mistakes.

Victor opened his right hand.

Black Ice condensed.

Not into stakes.

Not into shields.

But into a sword.

The blade grew from within frozen blood, black as obsidian, with edges too thin to seem natural. The air around it immediately became colder.

Victor gripped the hilt.

Black sparks ran along his fingers and up the blade.

The sword vibrated.

It did not break.

The corner of Victor’s mouth lifted.

"Ah."

The structure of Black Ice was stable enough to withstand the discharge.

Perhaps not indefinitely.

But enough.

The first assassin arrived across the ground.

Victor cut.

The movement was simple.

Horizontal.

But the instant the blade crossed the air, Victor released Black Lightning through his arm, shoulder, wrist, and sword at the same time.

The slash accelerated violently.

VRUUUUUM!

A black shockwave tore through the forest.

It was not an energy blade.

It was compressed wind.

Pure force.

The air was thrown forward in a brutal line, cutting leaves, branches, trunks, and everything in its path.

The assassin tried to duck.

He failed.

His mask split first.

Then his neck.

His head flew off before his body even realized it had died.

The trees behind him were cut in sequence.

One.

Two.

Five.

Ten.

The sound of falling trunks echoed through the forest like an avalanche.

Victor stood still for a moment, looking at the sword.

His right arm was trembling.

The discharge had been too strong.

But the sword remained whole.

Fine cracks appeared across the surface of the Black Ice, but soon sealed themselves, rebuilt by Victor’s blood energy.

"It works."

The assassins stopped for half a second.

It was brief.

But enough for Victor to notice.

They had finally hesitated.

Victor smiled.

It was not an amused smile.

It was not his usual casual, insolent expression.

It was colder.

Emptier.

More honest.

"I was testing you."

Black Lightning began circulating again.

This time, it did not concentrate only in his legs.

It ran through his calves.

Thighs.

Hips.

Abdomen.

Back.

Shoulders.

Arms.

Wrists.

Fingers.

Sword.

Still unstable.

Still irregular.

But every cycle was a little cleaner than the previous one.

Victor raised the black blade.

"But I’ve learned enough."

The three older presences moved at the same time.

One advanced from the front.

Another from the right.

The third vanished completely from his perception for an instant.

Victor closed his eyes.

He did not rely only on sight.

He felt the blood.

He felt the displacement of air.

He felt the wrong silence behind him.

Then he moved.

Black Lightning in his legs.

A short step.

Not an uncontrolled leap.

Not a maximum explosion.

Just enough.

His body slid forward with absurd speed, but without losing its axis.

The blade of the assassin behind him cut through empty air.

Victor swung the sword backward.

He did not use full force.

He used acceleration at the beginning of the movement and discharge only at the end.

The difference was immediate.

The cut came out clean.

More precise.

Less waste.

CLANG!

The Black Ice sword collided against the assassin’s blade.

The shockwave exploded between the two weapons.

The ground sank.

The assassin was pushed several meters back, his feet carving two lines through the soil.

Victor felt pain in his wrist.

But not total numbness.

"Even better."

The assassin on the right arrived.

Victor lowered his body, letting the blade pass over his head, and struck upward with the sword.

The discharge came out late.

Mistake.

The shockwave exploded after the cut.

The assassin managed to retreat, but the compressed wind still tore part of his arm and ripped away half of his hood.

Victor clicked his tongue.

"Delayed."

The one in front appeared next.

A kick hit Victor’s chest before he could recover his stance.

BOOM!

He was launched backward.

But this time he did not collide clumsily.

Black Lightning circulated through his back, legs, and heels.

Victor dug his feet into the ground and used the force of the impact itself to accelerate his counterattack.

His body stopped for only an instant.

Then returned.

Faster.

The assassin clearly did not expect that.

Victor appeared before him with the sword already in motion.

A diagonal slash.

Black Lightning in the shoulder.

In the elbow.

In the wrist.

In the blade.

Release at the final point.

VRAAAAAAAAAAA!

The cutting shockwave tore through the assassin’s defense and the air ahead of him.

The vampire crossed both blades to block.

The weapons resisted for half a second.

Then they were ripped from his hands.

The impact struck his torso.

The stealth clothing, enchanted and reinforced, tore like wet paper.

His body was thrown backward, opening a furrow in the ground before crashing against a moss-covered rock.

The rock split.

The assassin fell to his knees.

Alive.

But with his ribs caved in.

Victor walked toward him.

Two lesser assassins tried to intercept him.

Victor did not even look.

The sword moved twice.

Two short cuts.

Two small discharges.

They were not giant waves.

They were concentrated impacts.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The first lost his arm, shoulder, and part of his chest.

The second had his head crushed against his own helmet before the Black Ice passed through his throat.

Victor kept walking.

The kneeling assassin tried to stand.

Victor appeared before him.

Not by Mist Steps.

By acceleration.

A dry, brutal, short movement.

The sword descended.

The vampire tried to speak.

He could not.

His head fell.

Victor looked at the body.

"Two."

In truth, there were more than two.

But he was only counting the strong ones.

The shadows around him retreated again.

This time, there was fear.

Small.

Controlled.

But fear.

Victor took a deep breath.

His body was still wounded.

The needles had left regions numb.

The blade in his back had slowed his regeneration.

The paralysis seal still caused small spasms in his muscles.

But Black Lightning was helping.

Not healing.

Compensating.

Forcing movements that his body should not have been able to execute so efficiently in that state.

It was dangerous.

Every wrong acceleration could tear muscles.

Every miscalculated discharge could injure his own nerves.

But Victor understood one thing.

Black Lightning did not demand the absence of mistakes.

It demanded immediate adaptation.

If he made a mistake, he corrected it in the next movement.

If he went past the limit, he reduced it.

If he was late, he anticipated.

If he exploded too much, he distributed it through his body.

Test.

Mistake.

Correction.

New test.

As always.

A red circle lit up on the ground.

Then another.

And another.

Seals.

Victor looked around.

The assassins had spread inscriptions during the fight.

They had not merely been attacking.

They had been preparing the terrain.

"Ah."

Chains of blood erupted from the ground.

Dozens of them.

Thick.

Fast.

Covered in symbols.

Victor leapt.

At the same instant, chains emerged from above, attached to the branches.

One wrapped around his right arm.

Another around his left leg.

Another around his neck.

The pressure came immediately.

Not to pierce.

To bind.

Victor tried to discharge Black Lightning through the chains as before.

The inscriptions glowed.

The energy was dispersed.

Not reflected.

Dispersed.

Victor narrowed his eyes.

"They learned quickly."

A voice answered from afar.

"So did you."

Then they pulled.

The chains dragged him down.

Victor crashed against the ground with enough force to open cracks.

Before he could rise, four assassins appeared around him.

Each one held a short blade.

All aimed at specific points.

Tendons.

Joints.

Spine.

Neck.

Victor released White Fire by instinct.

A clear explosion emerged around his body.

Two assassins retreated.

One had part of his clothing burned.

The fourth insisted and managed to drive his blade into Victor’s thigh.

The seal on the blade activated.

The leg became heavy.

Victor smiled.

"Good strike."

The assassin tried to retreat.

Victor grabbed his face with his free hand.

Black Lightning concentrated in his palm.

This time, he did not release everything.

He compressed it.

Held it.

Waited for the contact to stabilize.

Then let it go.

BOOM!

The assassin’s head exploded inside the mask.

The body remained standing for a second before falling.

Victor pulled the chain on his right arm with brute force.

Black Ice spread over it, freezing the structure of blood.

Then he channeled Black Lightning through the ice.

The dispersion of the symbols failed.

Because the energy was no longer traveling through the original chain.

It was traveling through the layer of Black Ice created over it.

The discharge ran to the other side.

A muffled scream echoed among the trees.

Victor pulled.

The hidden assassin was ripped out of the darkness, trapped by his own frozen chain.

Victor partially stood.

His thigh failed.

He almost fell.

Black Lightning compensated.

The leg moved anyway.

Violently.

Victor advanced and cut.

The black sword passed through the assassin’s body from shoulder to hip.

Then the shockwave came.

The corpse was launched in two different directions.