Blood Online: Evolving Endlessly-Chapter 197: Transformation
Nibo moved forward to meet it, weaponless now, but with enhanced strength that turned his body itself into a weapon. He caught the opponent’s axe strike with his bare hands—didn’t try to stop it but redirected it, turned the momentum against itself, and drove his fist into the existing chest wound while the creature was recovering from the deflection.
His enhanced fist punched into the wound like a spear, driving deeper than the axe had gone, breaking whatever internal structures had survived the previous damage.
The opponent’s counter came automatically, reflexively, the double-bladed axe reversing course to catch Nibo while he was extended. One blade caught him across the back, carving a line that went deep enough to expose spine.
{HP: 43/100}
Pain exploded through Nibo’s nervous system, the kind that made vision grey and breathing difficult and continuing seem impossible. But Titan’s Ascension didn’t care about pain—it was designed to push past that, to keep fighting beyond the point where the body screamed to stop.
He withdrew his fist from the opponent’s chest and drove it back in, deeper this time, fingers closing around something that felt important and pulling.
{Opponent HP: 7/100}
The opponent dropped its axe—dropped it because the arm could no longer hold it, whatever Nibo had just pulled having been necessary for that limb’s function. But the other arm still worked, still formed a fist, still drove forward to strike Nibo in the face with force that broke his nose and split the skin over his cheekbone.
{HP: 38/100}
They were face to face now, both weaponless, both catastrophically wounded, both held upright by momentum and will more than physical capability. Blood covered both of them—Nibo’s red and bright, the opponent’s that strange not-quite-right color—mixing on the ground in patterns that suggested neither would be standing much longer.
The opponent struck again, its functional fist driving into Nibo’s wounded side.
{HP: 32/100}
Nibo headbutted it, his reinforced skull meeting whatever the creature had for a forehead, the impact producing a crack that might have been bone or might have been stone beneath their feet.
{Opponent HP: 4/100}
Another exchange, simultaneous strikes, both landing, both dealing damage that pushed health bars toward critical thresholds.
They separated by mutual exhaustion rather than conscious decision, both staggering backward, both on the edge of collapse.
The opponent tried to move forward again—that same empty purpose driving it past the point where its body was functional—but its leg gave out halfway through the step. It fell to one knee, then both knees, that flat red gaze still locked on Nibo with intensity that promised it would keep trying until consciousness failed completely.
Nibo stood swaying, his vision blurring, Titan’s Ascension finally fading as his body reached the limit of what even divine enhancement could sustain. The wound across his back was still bleeding, deep enough that he could feel air touching things that should never be exposed. His thigh wasn’t supporting weight properly. His arm—the one that had taken the axe strike—was barely functional.
But he was standing.
And his opponent was on its knees.
Nibo took one step forward. Then another. Each movement cost more than it should, required willpower to override the body’s very reasonable insistence that moving was a terrible idea.
He reached the kneeling opponent, looked down at those flat red eyes that still tracked him with undiminished purpose, and raised his boot.
"Good fight," he said quietly, meaning it.
Then he brought his foot down on the opponent’s head with every remaining ounce of enhanced strength.
{Opponent HP: 0/100}
{Match Complete - Victory: Nibo}
The notification appeared and Nibo collapsed immediately, his body finally acknowledging that it had nothing left to give. He hit the ground beside his defeated opponent, breathing in ragged gasps that sent sharp pain through damaged ribs, vision swimming with the effects of blood loss and exhaustion.
{HP: 25/100}
Around him, the platform looked like a battlefield after siege warfare. Cracked beyond repair, stained with blood in quantities that suggested multiple deaths rather than a single fight. His axe lay somewhere in the debris, the opponent’s double-bladed weapon beside it.
Through his fading vision, Nibo could see other platforms. Could see Aria collapsed in victory. Could see the frost around Nyla’s space finally clearing, suggesting her fight had also concluded. Could see other battles still raging, other fighters still locked in their own crucibles.
’Made it,’ he thought, the satisfaction dulled by exhaustion but still present. ’Still standing. Barely. But standing counts.’
He closed his eyes and let his body rest, trusting that the system wouldn’t let him bleed out after already winning.
Above, in the divine realm, gods watched with the satisfaction of seeing exactly what they’d hoped to see.
Raw strength pushed to absolute limits.
A warrior forged in violence who refused to break even when breaking would have been easier.
A weapon that could stand against a Monarch.
Maybe.
The tournament continued around Nibo’s still form.
Meanwhile, back in the basement. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞
Akhil stood on legs that should have given out minutes ago, his white skin split in dozens of places from accumulated impacts, his transformed body pushed past every threshold it had been designed to handle. The titan loomed over him with all four weapons raised, that masked face showing no satisfaction or mercy or anything except the mechanical certainty of something completing its assigned function.
’I can’t win this,’ Akhil’s mind acknowledged with the cold clarity that came from exhausted desperation. ’The coating adapts. Gets stronger from powerful attacks. My abilities can’t penetrate it. My transformations can’t bypass it. I’m losing blood essence faster than I can regenerate it through combat. If this continues for another minute, I’ll be too depleted to heal and the next strike will kill me.’
The titan’s weapons descended in coordinated assault, all four aimed to end him simultaneously.
Akhil made a decision.
He stopped fighting the hunger.
The Monarch’s instinct that he’d been suppressing since his transformation, that he’d been denying despite the constant whisper in the back of his mind, that he’d refused to feed despite knowing it was the solution—he released all control over it.
And looked at the blood covering the basement floor.
His blood. The ninjas’ blood. The dark not-quite-blood from every wound he’d managed to inflict on the titan. Gallons of it, spread across stone in patterns that told the story of violence accumulated over sustained combat.
All of it carrying power.
All of it available.
All of it calling to him with the same urgency breath called to drowning lungs.
’I need it,’ Akhil thought, and the thought carried none of his usual resistance. Just acceptance. Just hunger finally acknowledged. ’All of it. Now.’
He activated absorption.
Not carefully. Not with the controlled precision he’d used against Najim. With absolute, ravenous need that exceeded technique and became something more fundamental. Every drop of blood in the basement responded to his will, pulled toward him with force that made the liquid stream across stone like water finding downhill.
The titan’s weapons were inches from connecting when the first blood reached him.
It didn’t flow into his wounds the way normal absorption worked. It vaporized on contact, became crimson mist that his body inhaled, drank through skin, absorbed at the cellular level. Power flooded into him in a rush that made his previous transformations feel gentle by comparison.
{Absorbing blood...}
{Analyzing composition...}
{You have absorbed divine blood!}
The notification blazed across his vision in letters that pulsed with the same rhythm as his accelerating heartbeat. Divine blood. Not from a god directly, but from something that had been touched by divinity, enhanced by it, carrying traces of power that mortal biology wasn’t designed to process.
The titan’s blood—the dark not-quite-crimson that had seemed wrong from the beginning—had been divine all along.
And Akhil had just absorbed all of it.
{Processing divine essence...}
{Integration complete}
{You have leveled up!}
{You have leveled up!}
{You have leveled up!}
{+100,000 Blood Essence}
{Current Blood Essence: 145,000}
{Awakening Progress: 23% → 47%}
The power didn’t flow into him—it detonated. Every cell in his body suddenly carried more energy than it knew how to handle, systems that had been barely functional a moment ago flooded with vitality that exceeded their design specifications. Wounds healed instantly. Broken bones knitted. Torn muscles reformed. His white skin, which had been split and burned and battered, sealed itself without scar tissue.
But the healing was the least significant change.
His transformation had only just begun.
