Chapter 93: Control, Impact and Force

Rakshasa didn’t move immediately after Victor managed to minimally adjust the impact. She watched another repetition, then another, until she was sure it wasn’t an isolated accident. Only then did she decide to speak again, now in a slightly more technical tone, but still direct, without any attempt to soften what needed to be said. "Now that you’ve stopped wasting force ridiculously, we can start talking about something that really matters," she said, crossing her arms while keeping her eyes on him. "Redirection."

Victor stopped the movement mid-swing, lowering his arm slowly as he turned his face to her. The term wasn’t unfamiliar, but it clearly wasn’t something he had used until now. "Redirection... how?" he asked, still trying to connect it to what he had just done.

Rakshasa made a short gesture with her hand, as if dismissing the superficial question. "All you have now is raw power," she replied. "A lot. More than most will ever have. But you don’t control that power. You just unleash it." She pointed with her chin to the destroyed area around them. "That wasn’t applied force. It was force leaking out."

Victor frowned slightly, looking back at the damage. The word stuck in his head. Leaking out. It wasn’t exactly wrong, and that bothered him more than direct criticism.

Rakshasa continued without giving him time to defend himself. "Redirection is simple to understand and difficult to execute," she said. "You don’t generate more force. You decide where it goes, how much it goes, and what happens to the rest." She paused briefly before adding: "Because there’s always some leftover. And it’s that leftover that’s destroying everything around you."

Victor looked back at his own hand, opening and closing his fingers slowly. He was beginning to realize it wasn’t just about hitting harder. It was about what happened to the force after the impact.

"When you punched that tree," Rakshasa continued, "most of your force didn’t go forward. It scattered. Some went into the ground, some into the air, some just exploded around because you didn’t direct anything." She tilted her head slightly. "If you had total control..."

Victor looked up.

She finished without changing her tone. "You would have gone through that tree, the ground behind it, and probably hit a mountain in the distance. And shattered it."

The silence that followed was immediate.

Victor’s eyes widened clearly this time, unable to hide his reaction. "A mountain?" he repeated, more quietly, as if trying to confirm he heard correctly.

"Yes," Rakshasa replied simply. "A mountain."

He opened his mouth to respond, probably to question, doubt, or try to compare it to something he knew—

But she cut him off.

"Don’t try to compare," she said dryly. "You have no frame of reference for that."

Victor closed his mouth.

She continued, now with a little more weight in her voice. "You’re trying to understand something using parameters you don’t have. You’ve never measured your strength. Never tested real range. Never applied it to something that required precision." She stepped forward. "So don’t try to reduce what I’m saying to what you think you understand."

Victor took a deep breath, holding back his response. Not because he fully agreed, but because he knew he had no basis for argument.

Rakshasa noticed this and continued. "And before you think about asking why nobody taught you this..." she paused briefly, looking directly at him, "...it’s because nobody can."

Victor frowned. "What do you mean?"

She answered without hesitation. "There’s a pact," she said. "Among those who truly know how to teach something. Techniques aren’t passed on to those still in the raw training stage." She made a slight gesture with her hand, indicating him from head to toe. "You."

Victor was silent for a second.

"Serafall can’t interfere at this level," Rakshasa continued. "She can give you a base, she can push you, she can put you in absurd situations... but she can’t teach you real technique. Not yet."

Victor looked away for a moment, processing it. Some things started to make sense now, especially the type of training he had been receiving until then.

Rakshasa finished. "And I can’t either."

He looked back at her.

"Can’t?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I can’t teach you technique," ​​she said. "But I can teach you control. And that doesn’t break any rules."

Victor remained silent for a few seconds, absorbing it all.

Control.

Not technique.

That completely changed the focus.

Rakshasa uncrossed her arms and continued. "And that’s exactly what you need right now," she said. "Because the way you are..." she paused briefly, quickly assessing him, "...you could probably fight a five-hundred-year-old vampire."

Victor’s eyes widened slightly again, but this time the reaction was different. It wasn’t pure surprise. It was more... assessment.

"Probably?" he repeated.

She nodded. "Yes. Probably," she said. "In brute strength, you’ve already reached an absurd level. Your body can withstand pressure that most couldn’t even exist within. Your brute impact is enough to crush many things that should be out of your reach."

She tilted her head slightly.

"But that doesn’t mean you win."

Victor remained silent.

Rakshasa continued. "Because you don’t have complete control of your body," she said. "You don’t fully understand how to move, how to distribute force, how to react without wasting energy." She paused briefly. "And worse than that..."

Her gaze became more direct.

"You have no real combat experience whatsoever."

The silence that followed was heavier.

Victor didn’t respond immediately. He knew it was true. Training wasn’t combat. Repetition wasn’t real adaptation.

Rakshasa took another step forward, further closing the distance between them. "You can hit hard," she said. "But you don’t know when to hit. You can withstand impact, but you don’t know how to avoid unnecessary damage. You can keep fighting for an absurd amount of time, but you don’t know how to finish a fight efficiently."

Victor clenched his fingers slightly, as if trying to organize all of that at once.

She continued without letting up. "Against someone experienced, this quickly becomes a problem," she said. "Because it doesn’t matter how hard you hit, if you don’t land properly. It doesn’t matter how much you can take, if you take blows you didn’t need to take."

He took a deep breath.

This time, more controlled.

Rakshasa observed this.

"So we go back to basics," she said. "But not the idiotic basics you were doing."

Victor made a small sound through his nose, but didn’t argue.

She pointed to his body. "You’re going to start understanding this," she said. "Every muscle. Every movement. Every weight transfer. You don’t know how to use your own body yet."

Victor looked up. "I know how to move," he replied.

Rakshasa immediately shook her head. "No," she said. "You know how to move. It’s different."

He remained silent.

She continued. "If you really knew how to move, that first blow wouldn’t have done that," she said, pointing to the destruction around them. "It would have done exactly what you wanted. Nothing more."

Victor looked again at the destroyed environment.

And this time... he didn’t seem impressed.

He seemed bothered.

Rakshasa noticed this.

And that was enough.

"Now we really begin," she said, taking a step back again, making space. "No technique. No tricks. Just control."

Victor nodded slightly.

His posture changed.

Not completely.

But enough to show that, for the first time since he started—

He understood that strength wasn’t the problem.

It was the way he used it.

And that...

Was much harder to correct.