My Blood Legacy: Bloodlines-Chapter 33: Our training yielded delicious results!!

"Now..." he said, with a calmness that didn’t match the chaos around him. "...let’s see how long you can hold out."

Ethan Cross finally reacted.

His body could no longer keep up with the constant cutting, his regeneration was becoming overwhelmed, and the feeling of always being one step behind... was corroding any remaining confidence he still held.

So he did what any pressured vampire would do.

He forced his power.

The blood around his body condensed violently, as if crushed by an invisible pressure. In a brusque movement, he extended his hand... and a blade of blood instantly formed.

Ethan lunged forward with a roar, spinning his body and bringing the sword down with all his might, the blade cutting through the air with a grotesque sound, almost like a scream.

Victor... didn’t back down.

He raised his own sword.

And received the blow.

CRACK.

The impact echoed through the arena.

For a moment, it seemed the two forces were balanced... but that lasted less than a second.

The bloody blade... began to crack.

First a fissure.

Then another.

And then...

It simply... broke.

It exploded into red fragments that dissipated into thin air before even touching the ground.

Ethan’s eyes widened.

"W—"

Victor was already in motion.

One step forward.

His shoulder twisting.

The blade describing a perfect arc.

SHRAAAK.

Another cut.

Deep.

Precise.

This time piercing Ethan’s abdomen, opening it from side to side.

Blood gushed.

His body staggered.

Ethan tried to retreat... but his foot failed him.

The body was still trying to regenerate from the previous attack.

And Victor... gave no room.

He never did.

That’s what made it... overwhelming.

Ethan was forced to fight... while rebuilding himself.

Victor destroyed... while advancing.

It was a cycle.

Ethan broke.

Ethan tried to recover.

Victor broke again.

Faster.

Stronger.

More precise.

Each blow wasn’t just damage.

It was pressure.

It was control.

It was... absolute mastery of the fight’s rhythm.

Ethan tried to react again, releasing another mass of blood, this time shaping not one, but several blades around his body, spinning like an offensive shield.

He advanced.

Desperate.

The blades spun, cutting the air, creating a death zone around him.

Victor... entered it.

Without hesitation. A sideways step.

Another.

His body moved as if he were seeing everything in slow motion.

A blade passed inches from his face.

Another grazed his shoulder.

He spun his body... entered Ethan’s guard... and cut again.

SHHK.

This time, the leg.

Ethan lost his balance.

He fell to his knees.

His body could no longer keep up.

Regeneration was being pushed beyond its functional limit in combat.

And then...

Victor stopped.

For a second.

Just watching.

And in that instant...

The memory came.

—

[One week earlier.]

Scarlett was sitting on a rock, swinging one leg as she watched Victor train.

The field was isolated, something he had asked Chysis for a few days before she left on her trip. She had spoken about the existence of that place, and that had helped Victor a lot. It was a very quiet place, extremely quiet, broken only by the sounds of blades cutting through the air.

Victor advanced against an improvised target, repeating movements, trying to refine his technique... but there was still hesitation.

"That’s wrong." Scarlett huffed, throwing her head back.

Victor stopped, taking a deep breath.

"Wrong how?" he asked, confused.

She jumped off the rock, landing lightly on the ground, walking towards him slowly, her red eyes analyzing every detail.

"You’re still fighting like someone who wants to win," she said.

Victor frowned. "...And that’s bad?"

She stopped in front of him.

"It’s terrible." Before he could react—

She disappeared.

And reappeared in front of him.

Very close.

Too close.

Her hand gripped his face tightly.

"You don’t fight to win," she said, her voice low, intense. "You struggle to dominate." She pushed him.

Victor stumbled a step back.

"Winning is a consequence," she continued, her firm voice carrying an almost irritating calmness, as if each word had been carefully chosen to weigh heavily on him.

"Dominating... is a decision," she finished, making it clear that there was a brutal difference between fighting to win and fighting to control absolutely everything around her.

She then took a few steps back, with a lightness that contrasted with the intensity of the situation, as if she were merely adjusting the distance of a trivial conversation. Slowly, she opened her arms, exposing herself in an almost provocative way, inviting not only attack but also error, like someone who already knew exactly how this would end.

"Come," she said, simple, direct, but carrying an overwhelming confidence that seemed to transform the space around her into her territory.

Victor advanced without hesitation, but this time there was something different in his posture, something more serious, more focused, as if he had finally understood that he was not dealing with an ordinary opponent. The blade came swiftly, cutting the air with precision, a direct attack, without flourishes, seeking maximum efficiency.

Scarlett dodged with absurd, almost insulting ease, as if she were moving even before the attack was fully underway. One step to the side, another back, and she was no longer where she should be, always remaining out of reach by mere centimeters, as if she controlled her own sense of distance.

Victor didn’t back down; on the contrary, he pressed even harder, increasing the speed of his blows and trying to force any kind of mistake, any minimal flaw that could be exploited. But Scarlett simply didn’t miss, showed no hesitation, and seemed to operate on a completely different level from that confrontation.

She wasn’t just reacting or defending; it was as if she were playing another game, with different rules, while Victor was still trying to understand the basics. Every movement of his seemed predictable to her, every intention transparent, every attempt futile in the face of that perfect reading.

And then, in the midst of that increasing pressure, she decided to act.

The counterattack came without warning, a short, direct movement, almost too economical to be noticed in time, but loaded with devastating precision. Her hand struck his chest with a dry impact, without visual exaggeration, but with an absurd force concentrated in a single point.

BOOM.

Victor was thrown several meters backward, his body ricocheting against the ground before rolling a few times until he came to a stop, the impact echoing not only in the environment but inside him, as if he had been dismantled from the inside.

He stood up with difficulty, coughing, his body trying to grasp the reality of what had just happened, while still trying to catch his breath and focus.

"...You didn’t even use a weapon," he said, disbelief escaping along with the air he was still struggling to stabilize.

"I didn’t need to," she replied with a simple shrug, as if it were obvious, almost boring, as if he were finally realizing something he should have known from the beginning.

She then pointed at him, the simple gesture carrying more judgment than any physical attack could convey.

"Look at you."

Victor looked down, analyzing his own state more closely, hoping to find something broken, something destroyed, some critical damage that would justify that overwhelming feeling of defeat.

But there was nothing of the sort.

Nothing was broken, nothing seemed irreversible, no serious injury physically limited him from continuing to fight.

And yet... everything was wrong.

He was out of position, out of rhythm, completely misaligned with the flow of the fight, as if he had been pushed out of his own ability to react or understand what was happening.

Scarlett crossed her arms, observing him with a calm gaze, but one laden with an absolute certainty that left no room for doubt.

"You tried to beat me," she said, her firm voice marking each word with surgical precision.

"I dismantled you," she finished, making it clear that it wasn’t about strength, but about total control over every aspect of that confrontation.

She began to walk slowly around him, her soft steps barely making a sound, but each movement seemed calculated to further pressure Victor’s mind. It wasn’t just a walk, it was a silent demonstration of absolute control of space, as if she had already decided where he could exist within that fight.

"Advantage in a duel isn’t about who hits harder," she explained naturally, as if she were teaching something basic, something he should have understood long ago.

"It’s about who controls what happens after the blow," she added, implying that brute force, by itself, was only the beginning of a much more complex game.

She stopped behind him without him realizing exactly when it happened, her presence appearing like a shadow that simply repositions itself without warning.

"If you cut someone...," she said, tilting her head slightly as she observed every small reaction of his body, "...what happens next?" she asked, as if testing not his answer, but his reasoning.

Victor was silent for a second, not for lack of an answer, but because he was trying to fit it into the logic he always used in combat.

"...He recovers," he finally answered, still clinging to the straightforward idea of ​​cause and effect, without realizing the trap in the simplicity of that conclusion.

"Wrong," she said immediately, without hesitation, the correction coming swift and firm like an invisible blow, breaking not his body, but the way he thought about fighting. In an instant, she was in front of him again, as if the previous position had never existed.

"He tries to recover," she corrected, emphasizing each word with a slightly harsher tone, as if forcing someone to see an essential detail.

"And that’s where you come in again," she added, making it clear that Victor’s mistake wasn’t acting, but stopping acting too soon.

She raised a finger slowly, as if building an inevitable sequence he couldn’t ignore.

"You break," she said, the simple gesture transforming the idea into something almost visual, almost inevitable in his mind.

Another finger rose, marking the next step with the same precision. "He tries to recover," she continued, describing the natural behavior of any opponent who still has the capacity to react, reinforcing the cycle she wanted him to understand.

Another finger.

"You break again," she said, her tone now laden with a cold certainty, as if this weren’t a strategy, but a basic law of combat he had been ignoring until now.

She smiled slightly, but there was no gentleness in that smile, only the satisfaction of someone who knows exactly where the real advantage lies.

"And again," she added, reinforcing the repetition as the true deciding factor, not the intensity of a single blow.

She took another step forward, further closing the distance between them, invading his space as if it were irrelevant.

"And again," she repeated, now closer, as if she wanted those words to stick not only in his mind, but in his instinct.

Finally, she stopped right in front of him, her gaze fixed on his without any deviation, as if she were finishing a lesson that allowed no misinterpretation.

"Until he can no longer keep up with you," she concluded, making it clear that the goal was not to win quickly, but to render the other incapable of continuing.

The silence that followed was not empty, but heavy, as if the weight of it had finally reached Victor completely. It wasn’t just an explanation; it was the dismantling of everything he thought he knew about combat, presented in a simple and impossible-to-ignore way.

Victor understood, not just logically, but with that unsettling feeling of realizing he’d been fighting wrong all along, that he’d been seeking victory where he should have been seeking control, and that this explained every moment he’d been outmatched.

Scarlett then stepped back, turning her body lightly, as if that conversation had been just another movement within something larger.

"Want to dominate?" she asked, throwing the question into the air without pressure, but with a clear and unavoidable meaning.

She smiled broadly, now more visible, almost provocative, as if she were challenging not his strength, but his mentality.

"Then stop fighting pretty," she finished, making it clear that style without control was just an elegant way to lose.

—

[Currently...]

Victor advanced without hesitation, his body already aligned with the intention even before the movement began, as if there were no longer any separation between decision and action. Ethan didn’t even have time to understand what was happening, his perception always arriving late, always a step behind what Victor had already defined.

The sword descended again, cutting the air with cold precision, striking with even greater depth and intent than before, as if each blow carried not only force, but a calculated purpose of destruction. The cut was deeper, more destructive, not only wounding, but dismantling any attempt at stability that Ethan still tried to maintain.

Ethan tried to react, his body forcing an instinctive response, trying to keep up with the absurd rhythm being imposed on him, but Victor was already on the next move before the reaction could even fully form. Another blow came in sequence, followed by another brutal mutilation, tearing off another piece, further reducing Ethan’s ability to respond.

There was no room for recovery, no time to reorganize his own body or mind, because it followed exactly what Scarlett had taught, without deviations or hesitation. There was no pause, no breath, only a continuous sequence of actions that crushed any attempt at recovery the moment it arose.

Each attempt at regeneration was immediately punished, each opening was exploited with surgical precision, and each mistake, however small, was amplified until it became a critical failure. Ethan was no longer truly fighting, because fighting required space, it required choice, and all that remained for him now was to survive.

And survive... badly.

Victor’s blade cut again, this time with a more decisive, more direct movement, striking with enough force to completely sever Ethan’s other arm. The limb detached from his body and fell to the ground with a grotesque weight, while blood exploded around it, painting the scene with the raw violence of that moment.

Ethan fell to the side, his body trembling uncontrollably as he desperately tried to regenerate both arms simultaneously, pushing his own limits. He tried to gather energy, focus, anything that would allow him to rebuild what he had lost, but he couldn’t stabilize the process.

It was too much for him to handle at once, too much to coordinate under that constant pressure that didn’t even allow him to think properly. The regeneration failed, interrupted not only by the damage but by his own inability to keep up with the pace of destruction being imposed.

Victor stopped in front of him, not out of exhaustion or necessity, but simply because he chose to stop at that specific moment. His breathing was controlled, steady, without any sign of excessive effort, as if it were nothing more than a well-executed exercise.

There was no rush in his movements, no urgency to finish, just a cold mastery of the situation, like someone who already knew exactly the outcome and was simply guiding the process to it.

"You’re slow," he commented, his casual tone contrasting brutally with the scene, as if he were evaluating a common training session.

Ethan looked up, his eyes filled with despair and disbelief, trying to find some logic to justify what was happening before him.

"This... isn’t possible...," he murmured, more to himself than to Victor, as if denial was the last form of resistance left.

Victor tilted his head slightly, observing that reaction with an almost indifferent calm, as if he had already expected exactly that kind of response.

"It is," he replied simply, without needing to justify or explain further, because for him, it was already obvious.

And then he raised his sword again, the movement fluid and natural, as if it were merely the inevitable continuation of everything that had already happened.

"You just haven’t understood how it works yet," he finished, making it clear that the difference between them was not just power, but understanding.

And without giving any space for more words, more reaction, or more hope, he advanced again, resuming the cycle that Ethan simply couldn’t keep up with.