Rakshasa remained seated a few ters away, her legs crossed on the ground still marked by previous tests, trying to maintain a posture that, in any other context, would seem perfectly composed. But it wasn’t. Her body was tense in a different way, not from threat, not from combat, but from sothing she clearly wasn’t used to dealing with. Her face, normally controlled and cold, now carried a noticeable reddish hue, especially on her cheekbones, while her eyes remained fixed on Victor as if ignoring it were simply impossible.
Victor didn’t seem to notice anything at all.
He was shirtless, his body still marked by previous training, muscles defined not for aesthetics, but for pure function. Each movent he made was direct, heavy, still lacking complete refinent, but charged with a force that distorted the surrounding environnt. In front of him was a training dummy that Rakshasa had created minutes before, molded from her own blood. The structure was dense, almost black in places, pulsing slightly as if still alive, reinforced with absurd resistance.
This wasn’t sothing that would break easily.
It was built to withstand.
And yet, each of Victor’s blows made the dummy recoil centiters, its surface undulating as if absorbing impacts that should have destroyed anything else. The sound of the blows wasn’t dry like wood or tal being struck. It was heavier, deeper, as if sothing alive was being violently compressed repeatedly.
Rakshasa bit her lower lip lightly, her fingers gripping her own knee with a little more force than necessary, while she watched the movent of his shoulders, the way the force was generated from the base and released in a still imperfect, but brutal way.
"I want to sit on his lap..." she murmured, too low to be heard, as if confessing sothing she didn’t even believe she was thinking.
She closed her eyes for a second, trying to control her breathing, but that only made it worse. The images didn’t diminish. On the contrary, the absence of sight only made her mind fill the spaces with even more intensity, creating scenarios she had never even considered in her entire existence.
Six thousand years.
Six thousand years without anything even remotely like this.
And now—
That.
She opened her eyes again quickly, as if trying to rid herself of her own thoughts, but returned directly to the sa vision: Victor spinning his body, launching another blow, the impact generating a visible distortion in the air before hitting the blood-soaked doll.
Rakshasa exhaled slowly, almost trembling.
"First ti..." she murmured again, but now there was a different weight in her voice, a strange mixture of disbelief and... expectation.
She brought her hand to her face for a mont, pressing lightly on her forehead as if that would be enough to reorganize her mind. It wasn’t. Nothing there was under complete control, and that, in itself, was sothing that affected her even more.
anwhile, Victor continued. Completely oblivious.
Each blow began to gain a little more consistency, small corrections erging instinctively as he tried to apply what she had explained earlier about directing force. It was still crude, there was still waste, but the progress was visible with each sequence. His body learned too quickly, adjusting details without needing direct instruction.
Rakshasa noticed.
And that only fueled that feeling even more.
"Ridiculous..." she murmured, but without any real tone of criticism.
It was admiration.
Dangerous.
Profound.
And then—
She felt it.
Before even seeing anything, her instinct reacted. Sothing was coming. Fast. Very fast. The presence wasn’t common, it wasn’t stable, but it was intense in a way that cut through the environnt like a blade.
Rakshasa turned her face slightly towards the forest, her eyes narrowing as she tried to identify it.
And then it appeared.
Like a red mist hurtling through space at high speed, Natasha erged, tearing through the environnt, her body practically enveloped in a trail of energy that distorted the air around her. There was no hesitation in her movent, no deviation. It was a straight, direct line, as if everything in her path was irrelevant.
Victor hadn’t noticed yet.
Rakshasa raised an eyebrow, her expression shifting imdiately from excitent to calculated attention.
"This is new..." she murmured.
In the sky, just seconds ago, Serafall had been moving at breakneck speed, carrying Charlotte with her usual nonchalant attitude, completely ignoring any protest she still tried to make.
The wind whipped around them with increasing force, making even communication difficult, but Charlotte still tried to focus on analyzing what was happening.
"This isn’t normal!" she shouted, gripping the briefcase tightly while trying to keep her head steady against the wind. "Her reaction isn’t just basic instinct! This is too deliberate!"
Serafall didn’t slow down.
"I already noticed!" she replied, her gaze fixed ahead. "She’s not just running! She’s being pulled!"
Charlotte frowned, forcing her mind to organize the theory that was forming.
"His blood..." she began, her voice heavy with urgency, "not only healed her! It completely dominated her system!"
Serafall tilted her head slightly, without taking her eyes off the path.
"Explain better."
Charlotte took a deep breath, trying to ignore the discomfort of the speed.
"When I analyzed the sample... it didn’t just regenerate! It consud!" she said. "It devoured other cells and completely replaced them! It wasn’t compatibility! It was imposition!"
Serafall narrowed her eyes.
"So you’re saying that..."
"That her body now responds to his blood as an absolute priority!" Charlotte interrupted. "If there’s an original source nearby... she’ll go there!"
The silence that followed was short.
But heavy.
"So this isn’t her choice," Serafall said, lowering her voice.
"Not entirely," Charlotte replied. "There may be a conscious part, but the main impulse... it’s not hers."
Serafall increased her speed even more. "Great," he murmured. "So she’s basically a missile now."
Charlotte grimaced.
"I’d rather not use that analogy, but... yes."
The distance was closing rapidly.
Very rapidly.
And down below—
Natasha was already arriving.
Rakshasa watched the approach with complete attention now, her body already slightly leaning forward, ready to react if necessary. The previous excitent hadn’t completely disappeared, but now it was mixed with sothing sharper, more focused.
"Let’s see..." she murmured, her eyes gleaming slightly.
Victor finally noticed sothing.
Not visually.
But by the change in the air.
He stopped the strike mid-movent, turning his face slightly toward the approaching pressure at high speed.
The impact ca the next instant.
Natasha crossed the line of remaining trees and entered the open field practically without slowing down, the ground giving way beneath her feet with each step, creating small craters that marked the direct path to him.
The air around her distorted with her arrival.
Victor turned completely around now, his gaze focusing on her for the first ti.
The impact wasn’t just a loud sound or a common collision between two moving bodies.
It was a dry, heavy thud, one of those that seem to compress the very air before releasing any audible noise.
The ground beneath Victor’s feet gave way instantly, creating an irregular depression that spread in rapid cracks, as if the force had been discharged directly against the base of the terrain.
At the sa ti, an explosion of dust rose violently, not red like the trail Natasha carried as she crossed the forest, but gray, dense, ripped from the very ground by the absurd pressure of the impact.
Visibility disappeared in a matter of seconds.
The dust spread in a wide radius, completely enveloping the training area, rising in thick layers that blocked any direct view of what was happening in the center.
Small debris was thrown along with it—pieces of earth, fragnts of stone, remnants of previously uprooted roots—all swirling within that opaque cloud that now dominated the space.
Rakshasa didn’t move.
She remained exactly where she was, her body still in position, her eyes fixed on the point of impact, even though she couldn’t see anything beyond the dense mass of dust. Her face no longer carried the sa intense blush as before. The excitent hadn’t disappeared, but it had been partially replaced by sothing more focused, more analytical, more interested in what was about to be revealed.
She tilted her head slightly, as if trying to listen through the dust.
No clear sound ca from inside.
No screams.
No sequence of blows.
Only the echo of the initial impact still slowly dissipating into the air.
"Interesting..." she murmured softly, more to herself than anything else.
Above, a few seconds later, two figures cut through the air with extre speed, breaking through the top layer of dust before abruptly slowing down as they perceived the state of the terrain below.
Serafall appeared first, halting the advance with precise control, her body hovering in the air for an instant before descending more steadily.
Charlotte was still clinging to her body, gripping the briefcase tightly, clearly uncomfortable with the abrupt change of pace.
They landed a few ters behind Rakshasa.
The impact of the landing stirred up even more dust around them, but not enough to significantly alter the already chaotic situation. Visibility remained compromised, the cloud still dense, swirling slowly as the air tried to stabilize again.
Charlotte coughed slightly, raising one hand to cover her face as she tried to see sothing.
"What happened here?" she asked, her voice muffled by the dust.
Serafall didn’t answer imdiately.
Her gaze was fixed ahead, trying to pierce through the opaque curtain, her body still slightly tense, prepared to react if necessary. She could feel Victor’s presence there, but there was sothing else too. Sothing new. Sothing that hadn’t been there before.
Rakshasa was the first to speak.
"She arrived," she said simply, without looking away.
Serafall narrowed her eyes slightly.
"I noticed," she replied, her tone low and controlled. "The question is... what exactly did she do?"
Charlotte adjusted the position of the briefcase against her body, clearly uncomfortable with the lack of information.
"She shouldn’t have crashed like that," she murmured. "Her body was moving directly, but it wasn’t an attack trajectory... it was more like—"
"Search," Rakshasa finished, without looking at her.
Charlotte blinked once, surprised by the answer.
"Yes," she said. "Exactly that."
Silence fell between the three for a few seconds, all focused on the sa point, waiting.
The dust began to dissipate slowly.
Not all at once.
But in layers.
First the highest layers, carried away by the light wind that began to return to the environnt. Then the denser layers, descending gradually, revealing blurred silhouettes before any clear detail.
Serafall took a small step forward.
Rakshasa didn’t move.
Charlotte just tried to see better.
And then—
The shapes began to appear.
Two.
One standing.
Another... clinging to her.
The dust continued to settle, gradually revealing more details, as if the environnt itself were reluctant to show exactly what had happened inside.
Victor stood in the center of the area, his body still firm, showing no signs of having been knocked down or displaced by the direct impact. His posture wasn’t combative at that mont. It was static. Surprised. His arm was still half-raised, as if it had been interrupted mid-reaction.
And clinging to him—
Natasha.
She clung tightly to his body, her arms wrapped around his torso as if letting go wasn’t even an option. Her head was pressed against his chest, her entire body pressed against his, not aggressively, but with an almost childlike emotional intensity.
The dust finally cleared enough to fully reveal the scene.
Victor blinked once.
Then again.
Clearly processing.
Confused.
Very confused.
He looked down, trying to understand exactly what was happening, what exactly was clinging to him like that, and why.
His hand moved slightly, as if considering pulling away, but stopped mid-movent, undecided.
"Soone..." he began, his voice heavy with genuine doubt, still trying to make sense of the situation.
He glanced over his shoulder at the three won watching.
"Can you explain who this is?"
His tone wasn’t angry.
Nor aggressive.
It was simply... lost.
Like soone who clearly wasn’t prepared for this.
Natasha tightened her embrace a little more at that sa instant, as if the re possibility of being pushed away was unacceptable. Her body trembled slightly, but not from weakness. It was sothing closer to emotional intensity, sothing that was still settling inside her.
She slowly lifted her face, without letting go of him, her eyes still a little wide, but now focused.
Directly at him.
"Master..." she murmured, her voice low, almost too soft to match the force with which she was holding him.
The silence that followed was... strange.
Charlotte was the first to react.
"What?" she said, completely lost.
Serafall didn’t say anything.
But her gaze—
It changed.
Rakshasa, on the other hand, just observed.
And then...
She smiled slightly.
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