Chapter 80: Teaching the Weapon of Blood.

The courtyard was quieter at that moment, without the constant impact of heavy training echoing through the walls. Victor was standing this time, breathing in a controlled rhythm, his body still under the absurd weight of the ankle and wrist weights, yet already functioning as if it were... normal. Not comfortable, not light, but manageable. It was strange even to anyone watching from the outside.

Scarlet stood in front of him, holding the sword with a natural ease that made it clear it had been part of her for a long time. It wasn’t just a weapon.

It was an extension.

The way she rotated her wrist, the positioning of her fingers, even the angle of the blade... everything had intent.

"Since no one here actually knows how to use a sword properly," she began, bluntly, looking him up and down as if deciding where to start, "I guess it’s on me to teach you."

Victor raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Carmilla doesn’t?" he asked.

Scarlet shrugged.

"She knows how," she replied. "But it’s not her style. She’s basically a blood mage. Solves everything with control, pressure, manipulation. A sword for her is just a secondary tool."

She tilted her head slightly, gesturing to the side with her chin as if including someone else in the critique.

"And your mother... you’ve seen her. She fights up close, cuts from a distance, does a bunch of weird things that don’t make sense—and somehow still work."

Victor let out a small "hm," agreeing.

It made sense.

Scarlet then lifted her own sword slightly, spinning it in her hand with ease.

"Me?" she said, and for the first time, something different crept into her tone. A certain... enjoyment. "I like cutting."

It wasn’t metaphor.

No embellishment.

Just direct.

"I like feeling the impact, seeing where it enters, how it tears, how the body reacts," she continued, her expression unchanged, but with a clear glint in her eyes. "My sword has seen over a hundred thousand bodies. I know exactly what it does."

Victor didn’t overreact, but he paid closer attention.

"I felt that when I used it," he said. "It’s... strange. Feels heavy, but it’s not hard to move. There’s something there."

Scarlet nodded immediately, like she had been expecting that.

"There is," she said. "Blood."

She raised the sword a little higher, looking at the blade for a moment before continuing.

"People treat blood like energy. That’s not wrong—but it’s incomplete. Blood is everything. Energy, memory... soul." She tapped the side of the blade lightly. "This one has absorbed a ridiculous amount of life. It’s not strong because of the material. It’s strong because it’s full."

Victor crossed his arms, genuinely interested now.

"Full of what?" he asked.

"Everything that passed through it," Scarlet answered simply. "Every death leaves a residue. Depending on the quality of the death, that changes. Swords accumulate that. Over time... they develop behavior."

Victor tilted his head slightly.

"You’re saying it has a personality?"

Scarlet gave a half-smile.

"Not like a person," she said. "But it reacts. Accepts, rejects, weighs, flows. You don’t force a sword like this. Either it accepts you, or you’re just someone holding metal."

Victor stayed silent for a moment, processing.

"And you don’t lend it because of that," he concluded.

"Exactly."

A short pause.

He looked at her.

"But you lent it to me."

Scarlet shrugged, completely unfazed.

"I didn’t," she corrected. "It wanted to."

Victor let out a small nasal laugh.

"Convenient."

"Real," she shot back, flatly. "If it hadn’t accepted you, you would’ve felt it. Wrong weight, bad edge, no response. But that didn’t happen, did it?"

Victor thought for a moment.

"...No," he admitted.

"Then there you go."

She didn’t elaborate further. For her, that settled it.

Scarlet adjusted her stance, becoming a bit more serious.

"Anyway," she continued. "Before I teach you real swordsmanship—and not that basic stuff I threw at you so you wouldn’t cut yourself—you need your own weapon."

Victor glanced around instinctively, as if expecting to find something.

"And where am I supposed to get that?" he asked.

Scarlet raised her sword, then slowly lowered it, pointing it at his chest.

"Here."

He frowned.

"...I don’t get it."

She let out a light sigh, as if it were obvious.

"Blood armament," she explained. "You’re not going to rely on external weapons. You’re going to create your own."

Victor uncrossed his arms, now fully focused.

"Like... materializing it?"

"More or less," she said. "It’s not just shape. It’s density, flow, control. You take your blood, condense it, shape it, and keep it stable. Sounds simple when you say it—but it isn’t."

She stepped closer.

"If you mess up, it either dissolves, loses form, or drains you more than it should. And if you’re stupid about it... you can even hurt yourself with your own weapon."

Victor let out a small sigh.

"Great. Sounds safe."

Scarlet ignored the comment.

"You already manipulate blood at a basic level," she continued. "Now you’re going to stop treating it like a loose tool and start giving it structure."

She raised her free hand, and a small stream of blood began forming above her palm, slowly rotating.

"First step: draw blood without disrupting your internal flow," she said. "Second: maintain cohesion outside the body. Third: give it form. And the most important... sustain it."

The small stream began to stretch, taking the shape of a blade—thin, precise, without wavering.

Victor watched without blinking.

"Is that... just control?" he asked.

"Control and understanding," she replied. "If you don’t understand what you’re doing, you’re just forcing it. And forcing it here means losing efficiency."

She dismissed the blade with a simple motion, the blood returning to her as if it had never left.

"We’ve got five days before gravity increases again," she said, looking directly at him now. "Until then, you’re going to learn how to do this properly."

Victor tilted his head slightly.

"In just five days?"

Scarlet gave a small smile—sharper this time.

"You like speeding everything up, don’t you?" she replied. "So speed this up too."

He let out a small laugh. "Fair."

She pointed at his chest again.

"Start," she said. "Pull a small amount. Don’t try to make it pretty. Just don’t let it slip."

Victor took a deep breath once, focusing.

His body was already used to absurd physical strain—constant pain, continuous pressure... but this was different. More internal. More precise.

Still—

He tried.

And the subtle movement of blood began to respond.

Victor spent a few seconds staring at his own hand, where moments ago he had materialized the sword, as if still trying to understand exactly what he had done. The process itself hadn’t been complicated. In fact, it had been too simple. He just pulled the blood, shaped it, solidified it and... that was it. It worked. No resistance, no failure, no trial and error.

It just happened.

Across from him, Scarlet watched in silence.

No expression.

No reaction.

The kind of look that doesn’t praise, doesn’t criticize... just judges.

She stepped forward, tilting her head slightly as she analyzed the "weapon" in his hand for a few more seconds, as if giving it one last chance to justify itself.

"...That," she said at last, in a completely neutral tone, "isn’t it too simple?"

Victor frowned slightly, looking back at the blade.

"What do you mean?" he asked, rotating his wrist to get a better look. "It’s a sword. It works."

Scarlet let out a small breath through her nose.

"Working isn’t the problem," she replied. "Anything can work if there’s enough energy behind it."

She reached out without asking and took the sword from him.

The touch was direct.

No care.

She lifted it to eye level, examining it closely, subtly turning her wrist as she observed the shape, density, the internal flow of the solidified blood.

"...This has no identity," she continued. "No intent. No real structure. You just... made a long, pointy object."

Victor crossed his arms, still watching.

"You said a sword," he countered.

"I said your weapon," she corrected immediately.

Scarlet tilted the blade slightly, as if testing its weight.

"This," she continued, lightly tapping the side of the blade with her finger, producing a dry, hollow sound, "looks like a crooked stick pretending to be a sword."

Victor narrowed his eyes.

"...You’re exaggerating."

"I’m not," she replied, flatly.

And then—

Without warning.

She turned her body in one clean, fast motion and brought the blade down in a single strike.

The impact made no loud sound.

No resistance.

The blade simply... broke.

It split in half as if it were made of something too fragile to sustain its own shape.

The upper half fell to the ground with a light, almost weightless sound, rolling slightly before stopping.

Silence.

Scarlet looked at what remained in her hand.

Then let it go.

The remaining piece fell beside the other.

She looked back at Victor.

"See?" she said.

Victor stayed silent for a second, staring at the pieces on the ground.

He didn’t look exactly annoyed.

But he wasn’t satisfied either.

"...Alright," he muttered. "So what do you want me to do?"

Scarlet crossed her arms.

"Creativity," she answered.

"That doesn’t help much."

"It does," she said, already starting to walk slowly around him. "You’re thinking of this as ’making a sword.’ That’s the problem."

Victor turned slightly to keep her in view.

"So how should I think about it?"

She stopped in front of him.

"As ’making something that cuts,’" she replied.

A brief pause.

"Something that represents you."

Victor went quiet for a few seconds after that.

His gaze dropped again to the pieces on the ground.

Then back to his own hand.

"...That’s kind of vague."

"It’s supposed to be," Scarlet said. "If I give you a mold, you’ll just copy it. And this isn’t about copying."

She lightly pointed at his chest.

"It’s about pulling from inside."

Victor let out a small breath.

"Alright... so basically I have to come up with something that works and still has ’personality.’"

"Exactly."

"And that doesn’t break on the first hit."

"That would be a good start," she replied, dryly.