Chapter 153: Evolving Jake so I can evolve too.
Jake stopped for half a second.
Victor tore his body out of the broken stone and stepped forward. Black Ice appeared beneath his skin in small plates, adjusted to the points Jake had struck the most. Black Lightning circulated between them, not as an offensive discharge, but as a reactive impulse. A network. A system. Each plate would absorb part of the impact. Each discharge would redirect the rest into movement.
It was not defense.
It was conversion.
Grace noticed.
"He is going to turn the blows into acceleration..."
Victor looked at Jake.
"Thank you."
Jake roared and attacked.
The punch came brutally.
Victor received it on his forearm.
The Black Ice plate cracked, but the energy did not stay there. Black Lightning absorbed the displacement, ran through his shoulder, crossed his back, and exploded from the opposite foot.
Victor vanished to the side.
Jake missed the second blow.
Victor appeared at his flank and struck the weak point in his abdomen.
BOOM!
Jake staggered.
Victor laughed.
"Again."
Jake attacked.
Victor received part of the impact.
Converted.
Moved.
Countered.
Jake’s next blow hit his shoulder, but Victor used the force to spin and strike his face with an elbow. The following strike broke a plate on his chest, but the discharge pushed Victor inside Jake’s guard, allowing a short punch to the liver.
Berserker was still stronger.
Jake still crushed defenses.
Victor still bled.
But now every blow Jake delivered began to feed Victor’s movement.
Not perfectly.
Not without cost.
But enough to change the fight.
Jake noticed too late.
He tried to grab Victor.
Victor let his fingers touch his shoulder.
He converted the pressure of the grip into downward acceleration, dropped beneath the arm, and struck Jake’s elbow with a short Black Ice blade.
CRACK.
The elbow dislocated.
Jake howled, and the Berserker aura repaired the damage almost immediately.
Victor looked at it with shining eyes.
"You are an incredible laboratory."
Jake advanced with his mouth open in a roar.
Victor smiled like a maniac.
"Let us continue until one of us breaks."
Grace released a low sigh.
"You two are completely insane."
The sentence was lost in the next impact.
Jake and Victor collided again, red against black, fury against adaptation, strength against learning. The forest around them continued to be erased blow after blow, while the Ascension Ritual approached a collapse that no one in the stands would be able to ignore for much longer.
And at the center of it all, Victor laughed.
Not because he was winning.
Not because he was safe.
But because, for the first time that day, someone was strong enough to make him evolve with every second.
The next collision did not throw either of them away.
It locked them in place.
Jake’s fist pressed against Victor’s crossed arms, while Victor’s feet sank into the shattered ground. The Black Ice plates beneath his skin trembled, cracked, and reformed. Black Lightning flickered between the fractures like nerves exposed to a storm. Victor felt the pressure travel through his bones, into his spine, across his hips, and down to his legs. Every part of him wanted to break apart.
He smiled wider.
"Good."
Jake’s face twisted.
He pushed harder.
Victor let him.
Not entirely.
Only enough.
The force entered through the plates. Black Lightning caught the displacement and dragged it through the network. His body turned half a step to the side, not retreating, but redirecting. The pressure that should have crushed his chest passed along his shoulder and exploded through his right fist.
Victor punched Jake in the ribs.
BOOM!
The impact was not purely his.
Part of it belonged to Jake.
Jake’s own strength returned to him, twisted through Victor’s body and sharpened by Black Lightning. He staggered for the first time in a way that had nothing to do with surprise. It was damage. True, measurable damage.
Grace saw it.
Her eyes narrowed.
"He completed the circulation."
Victor did not hear, or pretended not to.
Jake roared and came again.
This time, he attacked with both fists, striking from opposite angles. Victor did not try to block both completely. He received the first on a shoulder plate, let the second graze his side, and used the two forces to rotate. The movement was violent, almost unstable, but he held it together. His heel struck the ground, Black Lightning burst from his calf, and his elbow drove into Jake’s jaw.
CRACK.
A tooth flew.
Jake’s head snapped to the side.
Then came back.
The Berserker aura surged, repairing the damage, feeding the anger, pushing the body beyond what any sane vampire should tolerate. Jake’s breathing had become ragged. His eyes were almost entirely red. The Valentine noble was still there, buried somewhere beneath the fury, but every second he sank deeper.
Victor saw that too.
"You are disappearing," he said.
Jake answered with a punch.
Victor converted half of it, failed with the other half, and was thrown across the ground. He rolled, stabbed his fingers into the earth, and stopped himself before hitting a fallen column.
He laughed, but the sound came rougher now.
His body had limits.
Even with regeneration.
Even with Black Ice.
Even with the conversion system.
The accumulated damage was beginning to pile up. Bones could be realigned. Skin could close. Blood could return. But the impact of so many blows left echoes in the muscles, in the organs, in the nervous system. Victor could feel those echoes now, each one warning that his experiment had a price.
That only made the result more valuable.
He stood again.
Jake was already running.
Victor inhaled.
Black Lightning spread through the plate network.
Black Ice formed beneath his skin, over his bones, around his joints, and in small nodes along the places most likely to receive impact. The system was ugly. Improvised. Painful. But it worked.
Jake struck.
Victor moved.
The punch hit his forearm and became speed.
The knee struck his ribs and became rotation.
The elbow struck his shoulder and became a step forward.
Victor entered Jake’s range instead of leaving it.
His fingers, coated in Black Ice, struck the weak point on Jake’s left side again.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each strike was short, precise, and cruelly measured.
Jake roared in pain and rage.
Victor’s smile became thinner.
More focused.
"Your left side really is slow."
Jake slammed his forehead into Victor’s face.
The blow broke Victor’s nose and shattered the ice around his cheek.
Victor did not move back.
He spat blood onto Jake’s face.
Then laughed.
Jake froze for a fraction of a second, not from fear, but from pure animal confusion.
Victor used it.
Black Lightning exploded through his right arm.
White Fire appeared for a single instant around his knuckles, thinner than before, controlled almost to a thread.
He punched the wound on Jake’s side.
BOOOOOOM!
Jake was thrown across the clearing and crashed through three dead trees before slamming into the ground. The blood aura behind him distorted, then recovered, but for the first time it did not immediately grow stronger. It flickered.
Grace saw the change.
Victor saw it too.
"There it is."
Jake rose slowly.
His body trembled.
Not from fear.
Not from pain alone.
From overload.
Berserker converted rage into strength, pain into rage, injury into fuel. But even fuel needed a container. Jake’s body was being forced beyond structure, beyond rhythm, beyond the limits of what it could stabilize. The ability was monstrous, but not infinite.
Victor rolled his broken shoulder and felt it snap back into place.
"You are not just getting stronger," he said. "You are burning yourself."
Jake did not answer.
His mouth opened, but what came out was only breath, harsh and steaming, mixed with blood. The red beast silhouette behind him expanded again, but its edges trembled. The aura wanted more. The body struggled to provide it.
Victor walked forward.
Slowly.
Not because he was unhurt.
Because he wanted Jake to see it.
"You thought rage made you invincible."
Jake’s fingers dug into the ground.
Victor continued.
"It only makes you loud."
Jake attacked.
One more time.
Faster than before.
Stronger than before.
More broken than before.
Victor met him head-on.
The impact shook the remains of the ritual dimension.
This time, Victor did not merely convert the blow.
He accepted it.
The fist struck his chest and broke two more plates of Black Ice. Pain exploded through him. His heart stumbled. His lungs compressed. But Black Lightning seized the force, dragged it downward, curved it through his spine, and returned it through his fist.
Victor’s punch struck Jake’s sternum.
BOOOOOOM!
Both were thrown back.
Victor slid several meters, one knee touching the ground.
Jake crashed into the far side of the crater and remained there for a second longer than before.
One second.
Then two.
Victor slowly stood.
His breathing was heavy. Blood ran down his chin, his ear, his neck. His left arm hung lower than it should. Several plates beneath his skin were broken and had not yet reformed.
But his eyes were clear.
Jake rose with difficulty.
His eyes were not.
Grace lowered her ice blade.
She understood the shift.
Jake still had more raw power.
But Victor had taken the fight away from brute force alone.
He had turned it into a process.
Observation.
Adaptation.
Conversion.
Punishment.
And Jake, in his rage, had helped him do it.
Victor looked at Grace for a moment.
"Still watching properly?"
Grace’s expression remained cold.
"You are disgusting."
Victor smiled.
"Thank you."
Jake roared again, but the roar cracked halfway through.
The Berserker aura surged, failed, surged again.
Victor turned back to him.
The smile remained, but there was no longer simple amusement in it. There was a promise. A cruel, precise, terrifying promise born from everything he had learned during the beating.
"Come on, Valentine."
Black Lightning crawled across his body.
Black Ice plates shifted beneath his skin.
The broken ground around him trembled.
"Teach me one more thing."
Jake charged.
Victor charged too.
The collision that followed swallowed the sound of Grace’s next breath, erased the last standing stones in the clearing, and sent a shockwave through the ritual dimension strong enough to reach the distant stands.
Far away, the vampires watching the Ritual of Ascension would soon understand that something had gone very wrong inside the trial.
But in the destroyed forest, neither Victor nor Jake cared.
Jake fought to kill.
Victor fought to learn.
And that difference, slowly and brutally, was beginning to decide the shape of the war between them.
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