Chapter 149: It’s time to begin the end of the event.
Of course — I continued the scene while preserving the physical impact, the arrogance of both men, and the escalation toward a truly destructive attack.
Grace remained motionless behind Victor, the ice blade still pointed at Jake’s neck.
The tension between the three of them was so dense that even the air seemed hesitant to move.
Jake kept his foot trapped in Victor’s hand while Black Ice slowly climbed his leg. The dark cracks had already reached part of his shin, spreading enough cold to freeze the blood on the surrounding stones. Even so, he did not look worried.
In fact, he looked irritated.
Grace narrowed her eyes.
"Let him go," she said. "We need to understand what is happening before starting another fight."
Victor turned his face slightly.
"Grace."
She noticed something wrong in his tone.
"Yes?"
Victor smiled in an almost polite manner.
"Sorry."
Grace frowned.
"For wh—"
Victor struck her directly in the abdomen.
He did not use the sword.
Nor Black Lightning.
It was only the palm of his hand, accompanied by enough physical force to compress the air between them.
BOOM!
Grace was launched backward.
Her body passed through the frozen wall she herself had created, destroying the structure in an explosion of crystalline fragments. She flew for dozens of meters, struck an ancient column, and kept going until she disappeared among the rubble and trees at the edge of the clearing.
Victor followed the trajectory for half a second.
He had calculated the force.
Probably.
Maybe.
Then he turned back toward Jake.
"This worm is mine."
Jake remained silent.
Then he started laughing.
It was not a light laugh.
It was loud, open, and genuinely amused, as if Victor had just done the only reasonable thing since he arrived in the clearing.
"You hit her just so you could fight me alone?"
"She would get in the way."
"You are more idiotic than you look."
"Coming from you, that sounds like a compliment."
Black Ice still covered Jake’s leg.
He looked down.
Then he pulled his foot free.
The ice shattered with a thunderous crack, sending dark fragments across the ground. Before Victor could adjust his stance, Jake turned his hips and transformed the motion of freeing himself into a direct punch.
The fist struck Victor’s face.
BOOOOOOM!
The shockwave tore through the ruins.
The ground beneath their feet sank.
The nearest trees bent violently, and a cloud of dust, dried blood, and pieces of ice was thrown in every direction. The force would have torn the head from an ordinary vampire. Maybe reduced the skull of a prodigy to fragments.
Victor did not move.
Not even one step.
His head had turned only a few centimeters.
Jake kept his fist pressed against Victor’s face for an instant.
His smile faded.
Victor slowly moved his jaw.
A small red mark appeared on his cheek.
Then vanished.
He looked at Jake.
And laughed.
"Hit harder."
Jake narrowed his eyes.
The second punch came with more force.
This time, he did not use only his arm. The movement began in his feet, traveled through his legs, hips, back, and shoulder before reaching the fist. Blood energy condensed around his hand like a second layer of flesh.
The blow struck Victor’s jaw.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The entire clearing trembled.
A crater opened beneath the two of them.
The air exploded outward, tearing leaves from the trees and pulverizing the remains of the nearby columns. Victor’s body tilted slightly from the impact, but his feet remained anchored to the ground.
He did not fall.
He was not thrown.
He did not retreat.
Victor stood still for a few seconds.
Then he started laughing again.
The laughter was low at first, but grew as he slowly turned his face back. There was no blood on his lips. No broken bones. Only a thin layer of Black Ice covering part of his jaw and neck, almost invisible against his skin.
’Apparently, reinforcing the skin with ice is quite efficient.’
Victor had created the protection just before the first blow.
Not as a thick outer armor.
That would have been too slow.
He spread Black Ice directly beneath the skin, between layers of flesh and around the bones, reinforcing the structure of his face at the instant of impact. The cold absorbed part of the energy. The density of the ice distributed the rest through the skull, neck, and shoulders.
It still hurt.
A lot.
But pain and damage were different things.
Jake slowly lowered his fist.
"You cheated."
Victor raised an eyebrow.
"You tried to explode my head. There are no rules now."
"Do not complain when I do the same."
"I do not complain."
Victor closed his right hand.
Black Lightning appeared between his fingers.
It did not explode immediately.
It circulated.
It passed through his fist, climbed his forearm, crossed the elbow, and reached the shoulder. At the same time, a thin layer of Black Ice wrapped around his bones and joints, preventing the acceleration from destroying his own arm before impact.
Jake noticed.
His smile returned.
Victor stepped forward.
"My turn."
The blow started small.
A short movement.
Almost too simple.
But midway through the trajectory, Black Lightning exploded.
Victor’s fist accelerated brutally.
Not only forward.
Every part of his body participated in the attack. His foot turned against the ground. His leg pushed. His hips followed. His back compressed. His shoulder advanced. His elbow aligned.
All the force converged into a single point.
Jake’s face.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The impact destroyed the sound around them.
For an instant, there was only pressure.
Jake’s face deformed beneath the fist. His entire body was torn from the ground and launched backward like a projectile.
He passed through the first column.
Then the second.
He crossed the partially destroyed wall of the ruins and struck the forest.
Ancient trees exploded in sequence.
One.
Five.
Ten.
Dozens.
Jake’s body opened a straight line through the vegetation, destroying everything ahead before disappearing into a distant cloud of earth, wood, and stone.
The wind caused by the punch arrived afterward.
A violent wave crossed the clearing, pushing scattered corpses and tearing whole blocks from the ruins. The ground in front of Victor bore a long trench created only by the pressure of the attack.
Victor remained with his arm extended.
The Black Ice around his fist was completely cracked.
Some fragments fell from his fingers.
He opened and closed his hand.
The bones were still intact.
"Better."
Behind the rubble, Grace coughed.
"You bastard..."
Victor glanced quickly in her direction.
Grace began climbing out of the pile of stones, her hair disheveled, blood at the corner of her mouth, and an expression of such cold hatred that the ice around her began growing on its own.
"You are fine," Victor commented.
"I am going to freeze your organs."
"Later."
"There will be no later."
Victor ignored the threat.
His attention returned to the open box.
The rusted ring was still there, resting on the destroyed fabric as if nothing had happened. The pressure from the fight had not displaced it. Not even the shockwave from the punch seemed to have affected it.
That was suspicious.
Very suspicious.
Victor approached the box and picked up the ring.
Grace saw him.
"Do not put that on."
Victor examined the object between his fingers.
It was cold.
Light.
Completely ordinary, at least at first glance. There was no visible energy, no runes, and no reaction from his blood. Even so, twenty-five vampires had died protecting it.
Jake had also come directly to that place.
Victor placed the ring on the middle finger of his left hand.
Grace remained silent for an instant.
Then her expression worsened.
"Are you incapable of following one simple instruction?"
"I am making sure it does not get lost."
"Put it in your pocket."
"My pockets are torn."
Grace looked at his clothes.
Part of the side had indeed been destroyed during the previous battles.
"Then hold it."
"I will need my hands."
"For what?"
Victor looked in the direction where Jake had disappeared.
The forest was still covered by a thick cloud of dust. Trees continued falling in the distance. Stones rolled along the trench opened by his body. At the center of that destruction, an extremely dense red point remained alive.
And it was beginning to rise.
Victor smiled.
"For this."
He raised his right hand.
Black Lightning responded.
At first, a single spark appeared between his fingers. Then another. And another. Small dark arcs began to travel over his skin, cross his arm, and spread through the air above him.
Victor did not contain the energy.
This time, he fed it.
More.
The black point grew above his palm.
The sound changed.
It was no longer a simple electric crackle. It was a deep, heavy noise, like hundreds of chains being dragged through the inside of a storm. The space around the energy began to vibrate.
Grace stopped complaining.
She watched the formation carefully.
"Victor."
He continued.
Black Lightning expanded above his hand, taking the shape of an enormous, irregular spear. Secondary discharges struck the ground, opening small craters and turning stones into dust.
But Victor was not finished.
White Fire appeared along his arm.
The flames wrapped around Black Lightning.
Normally, fire and electricity should have competed for the same space.
Those energies did not.
White Fire clung to the surface of the lightning like a living mantle, filling the irregularities and making the structure even more unstable. The white light did not illuminate the surroundings naturally. It erased the shadows nearby, leaving everything pale and without depth.
Black Lightning became bathed in fire.
Cold and heat.
Acceleration and consumption.
Impact and destruction.
Grace took one step back.
"Have you tested this before?"
"No."
"Of course not."
Victor felt the muscles in his arm beginning to give way.
Black Ice immediately appeared beneath his skin, reinforcing bones, nerves, and joints. Even so, the weight of that energy was absurd. It was not physical weight, but the sensation of holding something that wanted to destroy everything, including the hand supporting it.
In the distant forest, Jake stood up.
Even from hundreds of meters away, Victor could see the blood running down his face. The punch had torn open part of his cheek and broken several teeth. Jake spat blood onto the ground, raised his head, and looked directly at him.
Victor felt the aura.
Rage.
Killing intent.
And something else.
The memory of what Jake had said before.
Rakshasa.
The idea of searching for her.
Of visiting her.
Of approaching her as though Victor did not exist.
Victor’s smile vanished.
Black Lightning grew larger.
White Fire roared around the structure.
The artificial clouds above the dimension began to rotate slowly, drawn toward the energy. The ground beneath his feet melted, froze, and cracked at the same time.
Grace watched his face.
"Victor, what did he do?"
Victor kept his eyes fixed on the distant figure.
When he spoke, there was no humor in his voice.
"He thought he could go after her."
"After whom?"
The energy reached its limit.
Victor lowered his arm, pointing the gigantic spear of lightning and fire toward Jake.
"I am going to kill you for daring to think you could go visit MY Rakshasa."
He threw it.
The world turned white and black.
The bolt crossed the forest in a straight line, wrapped in a spiral of White Fire. Its speed was so absurd that the discharge arrived before the sound. Everything in its path vanished.
Trees.
Stones.
Ruins.
Earth.
They were not broken.
They were consumed and pulverized.
An empty line appeared through the dimension, as if someone had cut away part of the world.
Jake raised his arms.
The Black Lightning bathed in White Fire struck him.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion swallowed the horizon.
A gigantic dome of white light was born inside the forest, crossed by black cracks spreading like veins. The shockwave returned to the clearing and struck Victor and Grace with enough force to drag stones, corpses, and entire trees across the ground.
Grace created three walls of ice.
The first vanished.
The second broke.
The third managed to protect her partially.
Victor remained standing before his own explosion, his arm still extended and the rusted ring fixed around his finger.
For one brief instant, the metal glowed.
Not red.
Not white.
But with an ancient, muted color, almost impossible to notice.
Victor did not see it.
He was too busy watching the place where Jake had disappeared.
Waiting to discover whether he would need to attack again.
Comments