Chapter 166: Black Lightning still doesn’t obey me.
The new training field was inside the great Central of the Valentine Family.
Serafall had requested the move on the very same day the Ascension Ritual ended. Requested might have been a generous word. She had looked at Victor, still covered in dried blood and with the expression of someone who wanted to sleep for three days, and said he was going to her palace. Victor tried to ask if that was negotiable. Serafall answered that yes, it was, as long as he won an argument against her, Carmilla, and Scarlet at the same time.
He packed his things the next day.
Serafall’s palace was different from the old residence. Larger, better protected, and much closer to the true center of Valentine power. There were long corridors, vast halls, meeting rooms that looked like disguised courts, and internal areas where servants, guards, and blood mages circulated with almost military discipline. Victor did not like the feeling of being so close to so many eyes, but he had to admit that the training field made up for part of the discomfort.
It was enormous.
Not like a noble courtyard made for elegant duels. This was an enclosed arena, reinforced by layers of barriers, absorption runes, containment pillars, and floor plates capable of withstanding attacks that would destroy entire mansions. The ceiling was far too high to be called a normal ceiling, with metal structures and red crystals embedded into stone arches. On the walls, magic circles reacted to released energy, measuring impact, dispersion, and risk of collapse.
Victor stood alone at the center.
At least, technically.
Carmilla, Scarlet, and Serafall had made it clear that "alone" did not mean "without supervision." He could feel observation barriers at several points, but no one was physically inside the arena. That was good. If something exploded, he preferred not to hear three scoldings at the same time.
Victor raised his right hand and let his blood circulate deeper.
White Fire answered first.
It always did.
A small flame appeared above his palm, clean, silent, almost elegant. Victor controlled it effortlessly, making it spin in a circle, shrink, grow, and then vanish. White Fire was aggressive, but honest. It burned. Consumption was its function. All it needed was direction, limit, and target.
Then came Black Ice.
He closed his hand, and the floor in front of him froze in a dark strip several meters long. The ice rose into a column, became a blade, then a shield, then short spikes. Victor opened his fingers, and the structure broke apart into fragments, falling like black glass before evaporating into energy.
Black Ice was also dangerous, but it made sense to him. It was shape. It was pressure. It was control over structure. Victor could force it, mold it, compress it, and rebuild it. The ice obeyed like something stubborn, but understandable.
Then he tried to call the Black Lightning.
The answer came like a bite.
Dark sparks crackled between his fingers and climbed up his forearm before he authorized them. The muscle contracted. The shoulder hardened. The discharge tried to cross his chest and reach his other hand, as if it were looking for a path on its own.
Victor clenched his teeth.
"Calm down."
The Black Lightning did not calm down.
It never did.
A dark line leapt from Victor’s hand and struck a containment pillar twenty meters away. The impact was not large, but the pillar vibrated and the red crystals on the wall lit up in response. The sound came late, dry, like a whipcrack inside a closed room.
Victor looked at his own hand.
"You are annoying."
Sparks answered between his fingers.
Unlike White Fire and Black Ice, the Black Lightning did not seem to want to become a thing. It did not want to become a blade, a shield, a flame, or armor. It wanted movement. It wanted difference. It wanted to leave one point and strike another, to cross space, flesh, energy, resistance. When Victor tried to hold it still, the force fought against his body. When he tried to concentrate it too much, it exploded. When he spread it too little, it lost effect. When he spread it too much, it began interfering with his own muscles.
It was the strangest power of his lineage.
And also the hardest to control.
Victor breathed slowly and remembered the fight against Jake. The Black Lightning had worked better when he did not try to treat it like fire or ice. During the battle, he had understood part of the principle: acceleration, impact, flow, impulse. The energy liked movement. More than that, it seemed to exist to alter movement. Not merely to run fast. It was not that simple. Black Lightning could increase the acceleration of a blow, correct trajectories, eliminate dead intervals between actions, and turn part of an impact received into displacement.
The problem was doing that without breaking his own body.
Victor bent his knees.
He started with the basics.
He let a minimal amount of Black Lightning circulate in his ankles. Not through his entire feet. Only around the joints, like small impulses ready to fire. He took one step forward.
The step became a leap.
Victor crossed ten meters in a fraction of a second and nearly slammed face-first into the stone target ahead. He drove his heel into the floor, created Black Ice beneath his sole to brake, and stopped a few centimeters from the surface.
The target lit up with a blue rune.
Victor looked at it.
"That was excessive."
He returned to the center and tried again.
This time, he reduced the energy by half.
The result was better. The step accelerated, but did not explode. He repeated the movement, first forward, then backward, then to the sides. With each attempt, the body responded differently. Sometimes the impulse came too early. Sometimes it lagged. Sometimes the right leg received more energy than the left, and the movement came out crooked.
Victor fell once.
Then again.
On the third time, he rolled across the floor and lay there staring at the ceiling.
"Ridiculous."
The side door of the arena opened.
Scarlet entered without asking permission.
Victor did not get up.
"I said I wanted to train alone."
"And I ignored you."
"Clearly."
She walked to the edge of the central area and stopped with her arms crossed. She was not in her fox form, but her gaze was the same as when she taught swordsmanship: sharp, impatient, and not very merciful.
"You are treating Black Lightning like physical reinforcement."
Victor sat on the floor.
"Because it reinforces."
"No. It pushes."
Victor went quiet.
Scarlet continued:
"White Fire consumes. Black Ice sustains. Black Lightning sustains nothing. It creates transition. If you try to keep it still in your body, it bites you. If you try to use it like muscle, it throws you. If you try to think of it as armor, it breaks your posture."
Victor looked at his own hand.
"Then it is a movement power."
"It is a power of state change."
He looked at her.
Scarlet pointed at the stone target.
"Still to fast. Fast to faster. Impact to recoil. Fall to spin. Block to counterattack. It does not like to remain. It likes to pass through."
Victor absorbed that without answering immediately.
State change.
The phrase made sense.
During the fight against Jake, Black Lightning had worked best when Victor let the force pass through him, not when he tried to trap it. It worked best in moments of shock, in intervals, in the points where the body needed to leave one condition and enter another. Accelerate. Dodge. Convert. React.
He stood.
"So I have to stop holding it."
"You have to stop trying to dominate it the way you dominate ice."
Victor smiled.
"That sentence sounds like criticism."
"It is criticism."
"Good criticism."
Scarlet raised an eyebrow.
"You are accepting correction too easily today."
"I got beaten by a three-thousand-year-old werewolf inside a ring. I am humble."
"You do not know what that word means."
"I am less arrogant."
"Also no."
Victor laughed and returned to the center of the arena.
This time, he did not try to accumulate Black Lightning in his ankle. He created a path. A short circuit. Heel, calf, knee, hip, back, shoulder, arm. Not to keep the energy there, but to let it pass through at the right moment.
He took a step.
His body advanced quickly, but with less violence.
Before completing the movement, Victor let the Black Lightning climb his spine and exit through his shoulder, rotating his torso. The impulse that would have thrown him forward became rotation. He passed beside the target and struck with his elbow.
BOOM!
The stone target cracked.
Victor stopped several meters later, still standing.
Scarlet smiled faintly.
"Better."
Victor looked at the cracked target.
"Much better."
He repeated it.
Step, rotation, blow.
Then step, brake, retreat.
Then advance, fall, spin, kick.
The Black Lightning still escaped at some points, burning his skin from the inside or contracting muscles that should not contract. But now there was logic. It was no longer a trapped beast trying to tear the cage apart. It was a violent river being forced through temporary channels.
Victor began to understand the cost.
The shorter the circuit, the more explosive.
The longer the circuit, the more control, but also the more strain.
If he passed the energy through his entire arm, the blow gained acceleration, but his shoulder suffered. If he used it only in his fist, the impact was smaller, but safer. If he activated it in his feet and back at the same time, his speed became absurd, but any posture mistake could break his spine.
He smiled.
"This is much more dangerous than I thought."
Scarlet crossed her arms.
"You are smiling."
"I like dangerous things."
"Unfortunately, everyone noticed."
Victor raised his right hand and concentrated a small amount of Black Lightning between two fingers. Instead of letting the discharge leap, he created an entry point and an exit point inside his own hand. The energy crackled, tried to escape, but circulated once before dissolving.
His finger split open with blood.
Victor observed the cut.
"Fine control is horrible."
"Because you are crude."
"I am efficient."
"You opened a one-hundred-kilometer ravine to kill one man."
"It worked."
Scarlet breathed deeply.
Victor tried again.
This time, the discharge circulated twice before tearing the skin.
Then three times.
Then five.
The pain was irritating, but useful. It showed where the energy bit. It showed the weak points in the circuit. Black Lightning did not accept confinement, but it tolerated direction when there was a clear purpose. Victor needed to give it a reason to pass through, not an order to remain.
He looked at the farthest target.
Fifty meters away.
Victor lowered his stance, let Black Ice form a thin protection over the bones of his legs, and prepared the circuit. Feet, knees, hip, back, shoulder, fist. A single path. One discharge. One strike.
Scarlet noticed.
"Do not overdo it."
"I never overdo it."
"Victor."
He smiled.
The Black Lightning fired.
The world pulled.
Victor crossed the fifty meters almost without realizing it. His body arrived before the thought finished. His fist struck the target, and the entire circuit discharged on impact.
BOOOOOOM!
The target exploded into three large pieces and dozens of smaller fragments. The arena barriers lit up red, absorbing the debris that flew in every direction. Victor stood at the point of impact, his arm extended and dark smoke rising from his fingers.
The bone in his forearm was cracked.
His shoulder hurt.
But the strike had come out clean.
Victor began to laugh.
Scarlet walked up to him.
"You broke your arm."
"Cracked it."
"Partially broke it."
"Then it cracked with ambition."
She looked at the remains of the target.
"But it worked."
Victor flexed his fingers, feeling regeneration adjust the bone.
"Yes."
"And what did you learn?"
He thought for a few seconds.
"Black Lightning is not speed. Speed is a consequence. It is forced transition. Movement pushed from one state to another."
Scarlet nodded.
"Continue."
"If I use it as continuous reinforcement, it destroys my body. If I use it in short circuits, I gain explosion. If I use it in long circuits, I gain control, but increase the cost. And if I combine it with Black Ice, I can prevent my body from turning into paste."
"Good."
Victor looked at her.
"Are you praising me?"
"I am recording that you are not completely idiotic."
"Is that affection in your language?"
"Do not abuse it."
He smiled and returned to the center of the arena.
There was still a great deal to test.
White Fire and Black Ice were already part of him in a clearer way. Black Lightning was not. Black Lightning was something new, unstable, aggressive, almost impatient. But now Victor had an entry point. He did not need to tame the lightning. He needed to learn to run with it without being destroyed in the process.
He raised his hand, and black sparks crackled between his fingers.
This time, they did not escape immediately.
Victor smiled.
"Again."
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