Blood Online: Evolving Endlessly-Chapter 188: Improvements
Akhil met them in the center.
No defensive stance. No careful positioning. He simply moved into the space where the most attacks would converge and let his transformed body do what it had evolved to do.
His speed had increased beyond what Blood Step used to grant him—this was baseline now, his new normal, fast enough that the ninjas’ coordinated assault looked almost slow in comparison. He twisted between blade strikes that should have been impossible to avoid, his enhanced perception reading their trajectories before the weapons completed their arcs.
His hand caught one ninja by the throat mid-strike.
He didn’t use Instant Kill this time—that would end it too quickly, and the bloodlust wanted something more visceral, more satisfying than the efficiency of instant destruction.
He squeezed.
His transformed strength, amplified by the 120,000 blood essence burning through his veins, exceeded anything his normal body had been capable of. The ninja’s throat collapsed with a sound like wet branches breaking. Akhil felt bones shatter under his grip, felt the life drain from the body in his hand, felt the hot spray of blood as something ruptured internally.
He threw the corpse into two other ninjas, using it as a projectile, the impact sending all three tumbling across the chamber.
Another ninja materialized behind him, blade already descending toward his spine.
Akhil spun and caught the weapon barehanded, his white palm closing around the edge hard enough that the metal shrieked in protest. His other hand drove forward in a strike that should have been a punch but carried enough force that it functioned more like a spear.
His fist punched through the ninja’s chest armor—through the armor, through the ribs beneath it, through everything until it emerged from the other side trailing gore. He felt the heart beating once against his forearm before it stopped.
He withdrew his hand and let the body fall, blood steaming in the cold air of the chamber.
{Blood Essence: 100,000/120,000 - Stable}
The notification appeared automatically, monitoring his reserves, but Akhil barely registered it. His attention was entirely on the remaining six ninjas, on the way they were regrouping, on the calculations his enhanced mind was running about how best to break them.
The bloodlust sang in his veins, drowning out everything else—the worry about Nyla, the concern about what Jeren had intended, the fear of what he was becoming. All of it pushed aside by the simple, terrible satisfaction of violence that worked, of prey that couldn’t escape, of power that didn’t have to be rationed or controlled or held back.
Two ninjas came at him in perfect synchronization, their attacks designed to split his attention.
Akhil didn’t split his attention.
He activated the Shadow ability—Najim’s gift, now his—and his form blurred into darkness. Not completely, not as fluidly as the centurion commander had managed it, but enough. Enough to let him slide between the two attacks, to appear behind them while they were still committed to strikes aimed at where he’d been.
His hands found their necks simultaneously.
He activated a technique he hadn’t consciously decided to use, something that came from the Monarch’s instincts rather than his own training.
He felt the their blood right through their skin, as though calling onto him.
{Blood Essence: 95,000/120,000}
The ninjas’ blood rebelled against them. Every vessel, every vein, every capillary suddenly reversed course, pressure building catastrophically, blood forcing itself through skin that couldn’t contain it. They died screaming, bleeding from eyes and nose and mouth and every pore, their bodies unable to hold what they were made of.
Akhil let them fall and turned to face the remaining four.
They didn’t attack.
They stood at the edges of the chamber, weapons ready but postures carrying something that looked almost like hesitation. Not fear exactly—they were too professional for that—but recognition. The understanding that they were facing something that exceeded their preparation, that surpassed whatever parameters they’d been given.
The white-skinned figure with lengthened dark hair and eyes that glowed faint crimson in the darkness looked at them with an expression that promised violence.
And smiled.
The remaining four ninjas dissolved into shadow and fled, escaping through whatever passages had brought them here, abandoning the engagement with the efficiency of professionals who knew when a battle was unwinnable.
Akhil stood alone in the chamber surrounded by six corpses and more blood than any single room should contain.
The bloodlust was still there, still warm in his chest, still whispering that he should chase them, hunt them, finish what had been started.
But it was ebbing now, the immediate satisfaction of violence draining some of its urgency.
He looked at his hands—white skin stained with blood that wasn’t his, fingers that had killed with a casual efficiency that should have horrified him.
Should have.
But didn’t.
’What am I becoming?’ he thought, and the question felt important even if he couldn’t quite make himself care about the answer.
The blood on the floor was still calling to him, still begging to be absorbed.
He kept refusing it.
But it was getting harder.
’If I absorb more blood, I feel this will continue.... So I’d rather avoid doing that. If I’m going to face the others too, I’d rather not be at full strength’ Akhil thought to himself as he looked around the basement again.
The ninjas had fled, but he was certain that it was yet to end.
He wasn’t wrong, and he didn’t have to wait too long. Right where the ninjas had dissolved a large shadow spread across the earth.
Akhil could sense divine energy emanating from the darkness, something similar to Najim... Or rather more than.
-----
The arena had become a symphony of violence.
On her platform, Aria moved like wind given form—her long blade cutting through the air in arcs that left visible distortions, pressure waves that materialized as razor-sharp crescents of compressed atmosphere. She’d stopped holding back the moment the fourth opponent had demonstrated abilities that matched her own, stopped rationing her stamina and divine gifts for some hypothetical later challenge.
There was no later if she died here.
Her blade caught one ninja mid-dodge, the wind-enhanced edge carving through armor that should have resisted conventional weapons. The body fell in two pieces, and Aria was already pivoting toward the next target, wind gathering around her in a visible aura that made her movements blur at the edges.
{Divine Gift Activated: Tempest’s Favor - Speed +100%, Attack Power +80%}
She became a storm contained in human shape, striking from three directions simultaneously through wind-clones that were solid enough to kill, her real position impossible to track among the afterimages. Two more ninjas fell, their defenses overwhelmed by attacks that came from angles physics shouldn’t allow.
The fourth and final opponent on her platform tried to retreat into shadow.
Aria’s wind caught it mid-phase, the pressure differential literally ripping it from the darkness and slamming it against the barrier wall hard enough to crack stone. Her blade followed, the final strike carrying enough force that the impact echoed across the entire arena.
{Match Complete - Victory: Aria}
She stood breathing hard, wind still swirling around her in dying spirals, and allowed herself a single moment of satisfaction before her eyes found Nyla’s platform. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
---
The temperature on Nyla’s platform had dropped so far that frost was forming on the barrier itself, crystalline patterns spreading outward from her position like frozen fractals. Her four opponents had learned quickly that getting close meant death—two of their number were already ice sculptures, expressions frozen mid-strike—but maintaining distance only delayed the inevitable.
Winter’s Breath had evolved into Winter’s Domain.
{Ability Activated: Absolute Zero}
The cold stopped being environmental and became absolute. Not the gradual freeze of normal ice manipulation but instantaneous transition from one state to another. The third ninja, attempting to flank from above, simply stopped mid-leap—flesh becoming crystal, momentum preserved in perfect stillness, a statue of a warrior forever frozen at the apex of their attack.
The fourth tried to use shadow-manipulation to escape, to sink into darkness beyond the cold’s reach.
Nyla’s blue eyes tracked the movement with the same precision Akhil’s transformed vision had shown, and her hand moved in a gesture that looked almost dismissive.
The shadow itself froze.
Not metaphorically. The darkness that the ninja was trying to phase into crystallized, became solid, trapped the assassin half-emerged like an insect in amber. Nyla walked toward it with measured steps, frost spreading from her footfalls in expanding circles.
"Interesting," she said quietly, examining the way her abilities had evolved to affect even intangible concepts like shadow. "Very interesting."
Her blade touched the frozen shadow.
Everything shattered—shadow and ninja both, reduced to fragments that sparkled as they fell.
{Match Complete - Victory: Nyla}
Meanwhile, on Nibo’s platform, subtlety had died in the first exchange and been buried in subsequent violence, they stood no chance.
The orc had stopped using technique entirely, stopped relying on anything except raw strength amplified to supernatural levels. His axe moved in arcs too fast for weapons that size should manage, powered by muscles that had been enhanced beyond normal limitation.
They had improved over the cause of the tournament, and that much was noticeable.
