Free Web NovelChapter 128: The real skills he received.
Several hours had passed since the minor disaster involving the Primordial Blood.
The gigantic underground chamber no longer seemed as chaotic as before, but the atmosphere remained heavy with tension. Headquarters personnel still constantly circulated through the lower corridors reinforcing damaged structures, while priests replaced parts of the barriers destroyed by the monstrous pressure released by Victor earlier.
Even so...
No one could act normally.
Because the smell of blood still lingered in the air.
Heavy.
Predatory.
Like a constant reminder that something profoundly wrong had awakened in that place.
Most of the participants now avoided even looking directly at Victor. Some kept their distance out of pure instinct. Others pretended not to notice his presence while awaiting the next announcements of the Ritual.
Victor honestly found it somewhat amusing.
He sat alone near one of the enormous black columns of the underground chamber, calmly observing his own hands. The movement around him continued intensely, but in that specific area almost no one approached. Naturally.
After what had happened earlier, approaching him seemed like a suicidal decision to most.
Victor remained silent for a few seconds, staring at the palm of his right hand.
CRACK.
Small black rays slowly appeared between his fingers.
The dark electricity slid across his skin like some living creature before disappearing again seconds later. It didn’t produce ordinary heat. Nor normal light.
Those rays seemed to consume the surrounding environment as they existed.
Victor then partially turned his other hand.
FOOOOSH.
White flames slowly appeared above his left palm.
Silent.
Dense.
Wrong.
The white fire burned without producing smoke or natural light, as if that energy simply ignored several normal rules of reality.
Victor observed this in absolute silence.
Then he sighed lightly.
"...This is fucking weird."
Because it didn’t make sense.
Unique abilities were rare.
Extremely rare.
Even absurd monsters usually awakened only one main ability throughout their entire lives. Some of them evolved later, others became more refined with time and experience.
But this?
Victor had clearly awakened more than one thing.
The black lightning behaved completely differently from the white flames. The sensation produced by the two energies was also different.
The lightning carried pure destruction.
Absolute violence.
As for the flames...
The flames seemed like hunger.
A silent hunger.
Victor slowly closed his hands, extinguishing both abilities while partially resting his head against the column behind him.
"...I definitely didn’t awaken two unique abilities."
His voice came out low.
Thoughtful.
Because biologically that simply shouldn’t happen.
But the problem...
Was that it kept getting worse.
Victor remained seated, observing the distant movement of the participants for a few more seconds before slightly narrowing his eyes.
Then he discreetly looked around.
No one was paying direct attention to him at that moment.
Jake Valentine was distant, conversing with some members of his own faction. Emma continued reading some book while Charlotte seemed too traumatized to speak normally. Grace remained relatively isolated, observing everything in absolute silence.
The veterans of the Valentine Family were still monitoring the environment from the upper levels.
But no one seemed specifically focused on him now.
Victor then decided to test something else.
Something he hadn’t fully understood yet.
He took a deep breath.
And activated the third ability.
The effect was instantaneous.
The world lost its color.
Not gradually.
Instantaneously.
The entire gigantic underground chamber plunged into absolute shades of black, white, and gray before his eyes. The black walls became pale shadows. The blood-red lights scattered throughout the environment disappeared completely.
Everything seemed dead.
Silent.
Wrong.
But that wasn’t the most absurd thing.
Victor immediately felt it.
Everyone.
His body stiffened slightly as thousands of presences exploded within his perception at the same time.
Participants.
Guards.
Priests.
Officials.
Everyone.
Victor could feel every existence in a gigantic radius around his own position.
Hear nothing.
See nothing.
Feel nothing.
It was as if his brain had simply opened up some completely new biological perception.
The heartbeats became absurdly clear.
Blood flows echoed like rivers within his perception.
Breathing.
Muscle movement.
Body temperature.
Everything existed within his mind now.
Victor slowly widened his eyes slightly.
"...Fuck."
The range was absurd.
Far beyond the underground chamber.
Victor could feel people scattered throughout the upper corridors of the entire Headquarters.
The guards positioned at the outer entrances.
The monsters seated in the elevated boxes.
He could feel everything within a gigantic radius around him.
Twenty kilometers.
Maybe more.
But the truly disturbing detail emerged seconds later.
Red lines began to appear.
Thousands of them.
Each person within the reach of that monstrous perception possessed a thin red line connecting their own body directly to Victor’s perception.
Like threads of blood.
Some lines were thick.
Others thin.
Some pulsed violently.
Others almost disappeared.
Victor immediately grasped the meaning.
Biological compatibility.
Vitality.
Power.
Perhaps even emotions.
He didn’t fully understand it yet.
But he could clearly sense which presences were dangerous.
The threads connected to the Destroyers were monstrous.
Heavy.
They seemed like entire rivers crushing his perception simply by existing.
The thread connected to Rakshasa felt like a living storm.
Kayn Valentine’s...
Victor frowned slightly.
It felt like an abyss.
A void so absurdly heavy that even looking directly at it caused instinctive discomfort.
Then—
Victor sensed something else.
An absurd presence, much further away.
Far below the main structure.
Too deep.
Too ancient.
His eyes narrowed immediately.
Because that red thread...
It was gigantic.
No.
It was colossal.
It seemed to pierce through the very underground world beneath Headquarters.
Victor immediately deactivated the ability.
The world returned to normal in an instant.
The colors returned.
The sounds became normal again.
But Victor remained motionless for a few seconds.
Processing.
"...What the hell was that?"
His heart was still beating slightly faster.
Because that ability was absurd.
It wasn’t just for tracking.
It seemed like absolute predatory perception.
As if he had become capable of locating any living being within a monstrous range. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Worse.
Victor was almost certain those red lines meant something deeper.
Something related to blood.
Maybe even weaknesses.
Maybe biological connections.
He didn’t know yet.
But this was definitely too dangerous.
Victor slowly ran his hand over his face while letting out a small sigh.
"...Okay. So I have black lightning, white fire, and now the vision of a supernatural serial killer."
This was honestly starting to get ridiculous.
But it didn’t end there.
Victor slowly raised his hand again.
This time concentrating on another different sensation arising within his blood energy.
The surrounding environment immediately cooled.
CRACK.
Small black crystals began to appear above his palm.
Victor watched in silence as the ice slowly took shape.
But this didn’t look like ordinary ice either.
It was too dark.
The edges had a black hue mixed with extremely deep bluish reflections. Small frozen particles slowly fell to the ground as the temperature around him plummeted violently.
Then a small sword began to take shape.
A short blade.
Elegant.
Completely made of that absurd black ice.
Victor held the weapon silently as he observed his own creation.
The cold produced by the sword was monstrous.
Even he could feel it.
Part of the nearby ground slowly began to freeze as small black cracks spread across the stone.
Victor analyzed the blade for a few seconds.
Then he murmured softly:
"...Black Ice."
It seemed different from his other abilities.
More stable.
More refined.
But also much more deadly.
Victor could clearly feel that this ice wasn’t just for freezing things.
It seemed to consume thermal energy directly.
Perhaps even blood energy.
He didn’t know completely yet.
But honestly...
It was really cool. Victor slowly made the small sword disappear while observing his own fingers.
Then he sighed again.
"...There’s something else."
He felt it clearly.
The awakened abilities weren’t complete yet.
There was something else hidden within his own blood now.
Some ability that hadn’t yet fully manifested.
Victor remained silent as he tried to organize his thoughts.
The problem was that it was difficult to concentrate normally.
His senses were absurdly amplified now.
The smell of things had become almost unbearable.
Victor could smell the metallic scent of blood circulating in the people nearby.
The emotional scent had also worsened.
Fear.
Anxiety.
Desire.
Everything had a smell now.
And it came on too strong.
A thousand times more intense than before.
Victor could smell the perfume worn by someone on the other side of the underground chamber as if it were right next to him. He could smell the metal of the guards’ weapons. The damp smell of the old walls. The smell of blood running through the underground rivers beneath the structure.
It was almost suffocating. Victor partially rested his head against the column again, closing his eyes for a few seconds.
"...Primordial Blood, huh? What the hell did you put inside me?" He questioned, not knowing much.
Fire, Ice, and Lightning. Plus a sixth sense he didn’t yet understand. Unlike the others, he was the only one who showed his powers because he lost control.
"Am I at a disadvantage? Bullshit, it makes no difference." He muttered.
The test was clear.
Everyone there was ridiculously weak.
Except for those five, the rest were scum.
Victor knew this and fuck it, he didn’t care. He just wanted to get through this as quickly as possible and go home. After all, Carmilla and Scarlet were waiting alone. That was more important than beating the crap out of idiot kids.
"Ha..." he exhaled, finally relaxing a little. "I want to see Rakshasa... her father being there worries me," he admitted.
The Celestial Demon, huh... "What a drag," he said, getting up, but as soon as he looked down, he saw Grace approaching.
Her cold eyes met his bloodshot ones. She nodded and said, "Can we talk?"
Victor looked curious and sat down again, "I’m listening."
