Chapter 152: You’re getting slow.
Jake advanced again.
The ground exploded beneath his feet.
Victor did not dodge.
This time, he raised both arms and prepared a layered defense. The first layer of Black Ice stayed over the skin. The second went beneath it. The third wrapped around the bones. The fourth was distributed in small plates, not continuous, to prevent a single crack from breaking the entire structure.
The punch came.
Victor blocked.
BOOOOOOM!
The first layer broke.
The second cracked.
The third held.
The fourth distributed the impact into his shoulders and back.
Victor was pushed several meters, but not launched.
His eyes shone.
"It works better in plates."
Jake tried another blow.
Victor repeated the defense, but changed the angle.
The impact still hurt, but less.
His smile widened.
Jake noticed.
His rage increased.
"You are using me."
"Yes."
Jake struck him in the side with a kick.
Victor tried to defend with plates, but miscalculated the distance. The blow landed before the fourth layer could fully form. His body was launched sideways, passing through one tree and crashing into another.
He landed on his feet, but staggered.
Blood ran from his nose.
"I got that one wrong."
Jake came after him.
Victor created a Black Ice sword.
Jake punched the blade.
CRACK!
The sword shattered.
But Victor had expected that.
The broken fragments did not fall. He kept them suspended with blood energy and launched all of them toward Jake’s face in the same instant.
Jake closed his eyes by reflex.
Half a second.
Victor entered.
Black Lightning in his right foot.
Short acceleration.
Left fist reinforced with Black Ice.
Discharge on impact.
The blow struck the side of Jake’s abdomen, exactly at the point Victor had identified as having delayed response.
BOOOOOOM!
Jake spat blood and was dragged several meters sideways.
Victor did not let him breathe.
He appeared behind him with Mist Steps and struck the same place again. This time, the discharge was smaller, but deeper, conducted through the Black Ice structure around his fingers.
Jake roared in pain.
Finally, real pain.
Victor smiled like a demon.
"Found it."
Jake swung his elbow.
Victor tried to dodge.
Too late.
The blow struck his jaw.
The internal ice layer cracked, and Victor was thrown backward, rolling across the ground until he stopped near Grace.
Grace looked at him.
Victor lay on his back, staring at the artificial sky, laughing while blood ran from his ear.
"Are you having fun?" Grace asked.
"A lot."
"He almost tore your head off."
"Almost is a beautiful word."
Grace stared at him as if seriously considering freezing him right there.
Jake walked toward them.
Each step seemed heavier.
The Berserker ability was clearly consuming his rationality. The blood around him bubbled in the air like red smoke. Dark veins spread across his face. His muscles were swollen, not grotesquely, but as if the entire structure had been compressed and overloaded.
Victor slowly stood.
Grace did not move.
"Do you want help?" she asked, already knowing the answer.
Victor wiped the blood from his ear with one finger.
"No."
"That is what I thought."
"But you can observe."
"I was already doing that."
"Then observe properly."
Victor stepped forward.
His eyes changed.
Not in color.
In focus.
The smile was still there, but his posture became different. Less relaxed. Lower. More prepared. He let Black Lightning circulate through his entire body, but not in large explosions. Small flows, short and constant, running like nerve impulses between muscles and joints.
Grace noticed.
"You are copying the principle."
Victor smiled without looking back.
"Not copying. Adapting."
Berserker burned rage to generate continuous strength.
Victor did not have Berserker.
But he had Black Lightning.
If he used small accelerations in sequence, not to explode into a single movement, but to reinforce every bodily micro-adjustment, perhaps he could simulate part of Jake’s physical pressure without losing control.
It would not be the same.
Maybe not even close.
But it could work.
Jake advanced.
Victor breathed once.
The first punch came.
Victor dodged by centimeters, using a minimal discharge in his ankle.
The second came.
He blocked with plates of Black Ice on his forearm and discharged Black Lightning backward, reducing the impact.
The third blow came like a hammer.
Victor ducked, twisted his body, and struck Jake’s weak lateral point with two fingers coated in Black Ice.
It was not a punch.
It was a short piercing strike.
The energy entered.
Jake roared and tried to grab him.
Victor was already gone.
Grace’s eyes opened slightly.
He had become faster.
Not only in movement.
In transition.
Each motion began before the previous one ended, as if his body had learned to use electricity to eliminate the dead intervals between actions. He was still being pressured. Jake was still stronger. Much stronger. But the brutal difference was beginning to become a solvable problem.
Jake struck Victor’s shoulder.
The blow still made him stagger.
But Victor rotated with the force and used the push itself to accelerate a kick toward Jake’s knee. Black Ice covered his heel.
CRACK.
Jake’s knee bent slightly.
It healed almost immediately.
But it bent.
Victor laughed.
"You felt that."
Jake grabbed his arm.
"I am going to break everything in you."
Victor looked at the hand holding his wrist.
"Do it."
Jake squeezed.
The bone began to give.
Victor allowed it.
He waited for the exact moment the force concentrated in the grip.
Then he turned his own pain into instruction.
Black Ice appeared inside his wrist, not to prevent the break, but to guide the fracture along a controlled line. The bone snapped, but did not shatter. In the same instant, Victor released Black Lightning through the broken structure, using the misalignment itself as an irregular channel.
The discharge struck Jake’s hand from inside the contact.
BOOM!
Jake let go.
His fingers were burned and partially frozen.
Victor retreated, his wrist hanging for a second before realigning with a horrible crack.
Grace stared.
"Did you just use your own broken bone as a conductor?"
Victor flexed his hand.
"It worked."
"That does not answer the question."
"It answers what matters."
Jake roared.
This time, his aura exploded so violently that the pressure toppled distant trees. Berserker reached another peak. Reason in his eyes practically disappeared. The blood around him formed an enormous silhouette behind his body, something like a beast without definite shape, made of fury and instinct.
Victor watched it.
His smile grew wider.
"More."
Grace frowned.
"Victor..."
He stepped forward.
"Stronger."
Jake advanced like a red catastrophe.
Victor ran to meet him like a black storm.
When the two collided, the clearing stopped existing as recognizable terrain. Every blow opened craters. Every block launched shockwaves. Victor’s Black Ice broke and rebuilt itself in increasingly fast cycles. Black Lightning crossed through his muscles in small bursts, correcting angles, reinforcing accelerations, saving joints at the last instant.
Jake hit harder.
Victor learned faster.
One of Jake’s punches crushed the defense on Victor’s left arm and opened his guard. Victor answered by letting his body fall with the impact, touched the ground with his right hand, and made Black Ice stakes rise behind Jake. They did not pierce him deeply, but they limited his retreat.
Victor used the opening and landed three blows on his abdomen.
Jake grabbed him by the hair and slammed him into the ground.
Victor spat blood.
Laughed.
Froze his own hair to break the grip.
Rolled to the side.
Struck Jake’s ankle with a short discharge.
Jake stepped on his chest.
Victor twisted his body before the full pressure landed and escaped with one rib partially broken.
"You are getting slow," Victor provoked.
Jake screamed.
"I am going to kill you!"
"You repeat that too much."
Jake punched him in the face.
Victor retreated two steps.
His face hurt.
The internal ice broke in three points.
But he kept smiling.
"But I admit that one was good."
Jake lost every remaining trace of self-control.
He attacked with a sequence that no longer seemed human. Fists, elbows, knees, kicks, headbutts. There was no pause. No fixed rhythm. Only raw strength piled onto raw strength. Victor blocked what he could. Dodged what he managed. The rest hit.
His left shoulder dislocated.
He put it back in the middle of a rotation.
His right rib broke.
He reinforced the lung before it could be pierced.
His knee almost gave out.
He used Black Lightning to compensate for the muscular failure.
His face was hit again.
He let the impact become rotation and answered with a Black Ice slash that crossed Jake’s cheek.
Blood flew.
Both laughed.
Jake from madness.
Victor from pleasure.
Grace felt a cold shiver crawl up her spine.
Not from fear of Jake.
But from realizing that Victor was enjoying this far too much.
This was not merely courage.
Not merely confidence.
It was addiction.
Victor had spent his entire previous life unable to fight, unable to resist, unable to return anything to the world that crushed him. Now, every blow he received seemed to prove the opposite. Every impact that did not kill him confirmed something deep inside him.
He existed.
He resisted.
He could answer.
And the stronger the enemy, the sweeter the confirmation.
Jake landed a direct punch in the center of Victor’s chest.
BOOOOOOM!
Victor was hurled backward, passed through what remained of the ruins, and crashed into a stone slope. The entire rock cracked behind him. For an instant, he remained trapped there, arms hanging, head lowered, blood dripping onto the ground.
Jake advanced, staggering with fury.
Grace tightened her grip on the ice blade.
But Victor raised his head.
He was smiling.
"I understand now."
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