Chapter 159: Beginning the End.
Launched directly toward the Ritual’s artificial sky, as if a gigantic force had emerged from below and decided to expel him from the earth. His body crossed dust, clouds of fragments, and the remains of the ruins, rising in a brutal line while black waves spread through the air.
Grace raised her arms to protect herself.
The wall of Black Ice between her and the fight dissolved into thousands of fragments, but none of them fell. They rose.
No.
They were not fragments.
They were shards.
Enormous shards of Black Ice began to appear in the air around Jake, formed by the very energy released by the explosion. Each one was several meters long, irregular, sharp, and dark as bones torn from some underground creature.
Jake tried to move in the air.
Too late.
The first shard pierced his thigh.
The second pierced his shoulder.
The third entered through his abdomen and came out his back.
Then dozens arrived.
Jake’s body was pierced from every side.
Black Ice pierced arms, legs, ribs, abdomen, and shoulders, pinning him in the sky like a brutal offering. His blood ran down the dark fragments, but froze before falling completely, forming red lines over the black surface.
Grace remained motionless.
The dust began to settle.
At the center of the newly formed crater, Victor was still standing.
His chest was whole.
His body was covered in blood.
His left hand was still raised.
The ring remained on his finger.
And the smile on his face did not seem completely authentic.
Grace took a step back without realizing it. "Victor?"
The question came out low, almost lost in the cold wind crossing the destroyed clearing. She did not expect an immediate answer. In truth, part of her did not even know if she wanted one. What stood before her still had Victor’s body, Victor’s face, Victor’s voice, but the feeling leaking from him in that moment was far too different.
His power had increased.
Not a little.
Not gradually.
Victor’s presence, which had already been heavy, sharp, and predatory before, now seemed to have gained depth. It was as if something hidden beneath his blood had opened its eyes for a single instant. The energy around him did not merely circulate. It pressed against the world. The Black Ice in the air trembled as if responding to a will greater than his normal technique. Black Lightning ran in thin lines over his skin, no longer as uncontrolled sparks, but like dark veins of a storm about to be born.
Grace felt her own ice instinctively retreat.
That irritated her.
Her ice never retreated.
Victor slowly lowered his left hand.
The rusty ring was still on his finger. For an instant, Grace had the impression that small opaque lines ran across the surface of the metal, but when she tried to focus better, they vanished. Perhaps it was only reflection. Perhaps it was interference from the energy. Perhaps it was something much worse.
Then Victor staggered.
The strange glow around him flickered.
He took half a step forward, as if trying to maintain his posture, but his body finally demanded the price. His knees gave way, and he fell to the ground with one hand braced against the destroyed earth, breathing heavily, irregularly, like someone who had just returned from somewhere far too distant.
Grace moved by instinct.
"Victor."
He raised his right hand, stopping her from approaching.
"No."
His voice was still hoarse.
But it was his.
Grace stopped.
A few seconds later, Jake fell.
Not like a warrior.
Like a disgusting mass of rage and torn flesh.
His body plummeted from the artificial sky and struck the ground with a wet, brutal impact. The stakes of Black Ice still pierced his arms, legs, ribs, abdomen, and shoulders. Some broke with the fall, others sank even deeper into flesh, pinning him against the earth like an insect impaled by gigantic black needles.
Blood spread around him in a thick pool.
Part froze immediately.
Part evaporated beneath the hot aura of Berserker.
Jake was still alive.
Somehow.
His body trembled in violent spasms, trying to break free from the stakes, but each movement only tore more flesh. His right arm, pierced in three different places, contracted until his fingers sank into the ground. His left leg bent at a wrong angle, then began returning to place with wet, grotesque sounds.
Grace stared at it with controlled revulsion.
"This should have ended."
Victor took a deep breath and slowly stood. His body was also in a deplorable state, though regeneration had already erased the most visible damage. There was still blood on his face, torn clothes, and black marks beneath the skin where Black Ice had formed in excess. Even so, he looked at Jake calmly.
"It is over," Victor said.
Jake answered with a roar.
Not a word.
Not something human.
A sound of pure, raw hatred tearing through his ruined throat while the stakes of Black Ice vibrated inside his body. The red aura around him swelled, deforming the air. Berserker had not stopped. On the contrary. It seemed to be trying to consume what remained of his reason to keep the body moving.
Grace raised her hand.
Ice began to form around her fingers.
"He will not stop."
Victor glanced aside.
"Let him."
Grace frowned.
"Victor."
"Let him," he repeated, this time more firmly. "There is something I want to check."
Grace looked at Jake, then at Victor. For an instant, she seemed about to argue. Then she noticed his gaze. It was not simple arrogance. Nor was it only cruelty. Victor was observing. Analyzing. The fight, the transformation, Berserker’s limits, the way Jake’s body kept responding even after being destroyed.
He was still learning.
Even now.
Grace slowly lowered her hand.
"You are sick."
Victor smiled faintly.
"You only noticed now?"
She did not answer.
The two remained silent while Jake began to rise.
The first movement was horrible.
He pulled his right arm, ripping one of the Black Ice stakes out of his own shoulder. Flesh tore. Blood gushed. Regeneration tried to close the opening, but the energy of Black Ice resisted, delaying healing and freezing the edges of the wound.
Jake screamed.
"Victor!"
The name came out distorted, loaded with hatred.
Victor tilted his head.
"Yes?"
"I am going to kill you!"
"You are getting repetitive."
Jake pulled out another stake.
This time, it pierced the side of his abdomen. When it came out, it brought pieces of flesh with it. Even so, Jake did not fall. His body swelled further. The muscles of his back expanded grotesquely, tearing what remained of his clothes. Red and black veins climbed his neck and reached his face, spreading like roots over the skin.
Grace watched with growing attention.
"He is losing his human shape."
Victor nodded.
"Yes."
"Is that normal for Berserker?"
"I do not know."
"You do not know?"
"I am finding out."
Grace looked at him with irritation.
"Naturally."
Jake tore out another stake and fell onto one knee. His head was lowered, but his aura continued increasing. The blood around him began to be pulled back into his body, not in a refined way like ordinary vampiric blood magic, but as if Berserker were devouring any available material to keep functioning.
Jake’s skin darkened in some areas.
His fingers grew thicker.
His nails lengthened.
His teeth, visible when he opened his mouth to breathe, looked sharper.
It was not an elegant transformation.
It was a physical corruption caused by too much force being pushed into a structure that could not bear it.
Jake raised his face.
His eyes were almost completely red.
"You think you won?"
Victor looked at the stakes still embedded in him.
"Visually, yes."
Jake laughed.
The laugh came out broken.
Full of blood.
"You... you think you are special?"
Victor stayed quiet.
Jake placed both hands on the ground and began to rise, even with one stake through his thigh and another still lodged near his clavicle.
"You are trash. You always were trash. A mistake. A defect in the lineage. A broken piece that gained power through luck."
Grace noticed the intention.
He was trying to provoke Victor.
But Victor merely watched.
Jake continued, each word more loaded with fury than the last.
"My uncle should have torn off your head sooner. Should have sent more assassins. Should have burned you in the cradle, along with that pathetic mother of yours who spent her life protecting a failure."
The temperature of the clearing dropped.
Grace looked at Victor.
His smile disappeared.
There was no explosion of aura.
No dramatic reaction.
Only silence.
A far worse silence.
Jake noticed it and smiled, even with his face deformed by rage.
"That’s it. Look at me like that. You think you can judge me? Think you can laugh at me? Think you can speak of Rakshasa as if she were yours?"
Victor did not answer.
Jake ripped the stake from his thigh with a roar and took a staggering step. His body grew a little more, his shoulders widening in a way that did not look natural. His spine curved slightly forward, and the red aura around him took the vague shape of a skinless beast trembling behind him.
"I am going to take everything," Jake snarled. "I am going to take the points. Take the victory. Take Rakshasa. Take your head and deliver it to my uncle."
Victor released a small sigh.
Grace realized he was irritated now.
Truly.
Jake took another step.
"I am going to crush you until nothing is left. I am going to make everyone remember that Victor Valentine died as the trash he always was."
Victor finally spoke.
"Are you finished?"
Jake roared.
The last stake embedded in his shoulder exploded into fragments when he forced his body forward. The Black Ice shattered around him, and his Berserker aura rose like a bonfire fed by flesh and hatred. His body was grotesque now. Still recognizable as Jake, but larger, more brutal, more twisted. His jaw seemed wider. His arms hung with excessive weight. His skin was covered in red and black marks and pulsing cracks.
Grace felt a shiver.
Not from fear.
From disgust.
"He is destroying himself."
Victor watched Jake’s body with cold eyes.
"No."
Grace looked at him.
Victor continued:
"He is choosing to destroy himself."
Jake advanced.
Each step crushed the ground.
The distance between them vanished in an instant, and the deformed fist came toward Victor’s face with enough force to erase everything in front of it.
Grace almost raised her hand again.
But Victor did not move.
He only looked.
At the last second, a wall of Black Ice rose between them.
Jake drove his fist through the wall.
It broke.
But it broke in layers.
One.
Two.
Five.
Ten.
Each layer stripped a little force from the blow, diverting the angle by the smallest fractions. When the fist finally reached Victor, he tilted his head to the side.
The blow grazed past.
The pressure opened a cut on his cheek.
Victor raised his hand and grabbed Jake’s deformed wrist.
The remaining impact still pushed his feet across the ground.
But he held on.
Jake widened his eyes.
Victor tightened his fingers.
Black Ice began to climb up his arm.
"You wanted me angry," Victor said, low. "Congratulations."
Jake tried to pull his arm back.
He could not do it immediately.
Victor looked directly into his eyes.
"It worked."
Then Black Lightning ran through the Black Ice attached to Jake’s arm.
Not as an explosion.
As a current.
Jake’s grotesque body locked for a fraction of a second, muscles contracting violently, Berserker aura wavering like a flame struck by wind.
Victor smiled.
"Now let us see how far that ability of yours holds out before turning you into useless meat."
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