Black crows with red-tipped feathers descended from the sky before a human-figured was revealed. His body was covered in plates of ivory that protruded from his skin, covering each individual muscle like a protective shell. The bone mask protecting his face revealed a set of familiar eyes.

“Casper,” I said, nodding my head toward him in greeting.

I– no, he– remained silent, taking stock of the situation.

“Which one of us is real?” He asked, in what seemed to be an attempt to rattle me.

I would’ve done it if he hadn’t first.

“Does it matter?” I replied, ignoring the mind-altering implications his question carried and began creating an aura of blood around myself while segments of bones arose from my skin and covered me.

He did the same, but there was something that stuck out to me. It was as if he hadn’t created the Blood Dance to better wield his blood.

‘I wonder.’ Instead of just rushing forward, I performed the blood dance where I stood.

I moved my arms, sending waves of blood crashing into him. He crow-shifted and dodged, but I raised both of my arms up and sent a rising wall of crimson chasing after him. In the end, he soared well above my range so I pulled the blood back and letting it orbit around me.

He shifted back while in mid-air, half-astonished by the moves I performed, but sent dozens of blood arrows down at me without getting distracted.

I twisted my body and the blood moved in tune with me, a barrier that resembled a river absorbed his projectiles. I responded in kind, sending out several large arcs of blood laced with the fires of miasma, the purple glow illuminated the barren area as they struck his body. He let out a loud groan as he plummeted toward the ground and I was already on my way toward him before he landed.

I leaped forward, crossing tens of meters in a brief span of time before landing, bringing the rampant tides of blood with me. The moment my feet touched the ground, the blood had already struck the ground with incredible force, sending sand and stone flying to the air as it eroded everything it touched.

I brought my hands to my chest with a sharp pulling motion and pulled the massive wave of blood back to me, bringing the clone of myself with it.

He was in a daze, staring up at me from beneath the mask with shock, but I didn’t hesitate as I drove in sharp tendrils into his body, draining all of his vitality along with it.

The moment the fight ended, my body was reset and I returned to my original position.

I faced a newer version of myself, he appeared a few meters away like an apparition. Exhaling a visible fog of cool air which meant he used the Breathless Walk.

Instead of speaking, he clad himself in blood and used the Blood Dance with ease, in fact, it was slightly more practiced than my own use. Considering I had only just begun to develop it, I was taken aback but understood the gist of this part.

Our struggle began and we fought for control. Performing with more experience than I had, he made a leg sweep and sent a ripple of blood outward. It forced me into the air, he left me exposed and I was struck by an explosive surge of vermillion power that rose upward like a geyser. It knocked me off balance and he was there to capitalize on that opening before I could re-establish a rhythm.

He threw a punch before he arrived and a spiral of blood extended forward, bursting as it struck me. While still in the air, he flipped backward as if unaffected like gravity and the blood followed his movements. I felt as it struck me from behind, following his movements. Stretching his hands to the side, he continued to spin as he floated to the ground like a feather.

All I could see was a vortex of red that rotated so intensely I felt as if it were screaming at me. The miasma within the bloody whirlwind began to sear at my bones, even reaching my flesh as the rotations stopped.

I protected my weakened body with a barrier of blood and landed with a soft impact while my expression crumpled in agony. I staunched the pain of the wounds he inflicted on me, ignoring it, and began to piece myself together.

“That really... hurts...” I groaned painfully, feeling my bones snap back in place.

“Should I take it easier on you next time?” His derisive inquiry filled the ears.

The moment I was healed, I immediately rushed him and our entanglement began again. This time, I took a page from his book and covered the ground within my own blood everywhere within a 50-meter radius.

We fought for control over our environment, trading blows all the while. Arcs and waves of blood seemed to fly endlessly as our fight went on. I became more comfortable with using the Blood Dance and began to match him at every turn. I blocked his strongest attacks and countered with my own, noticing that he too began improving which meant the fight was bound to drag on until one of us caved.

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Not willing to face a battle of attrition, I made a feint, sprinting right for him. It looked real enough as he went right for the opening and formed a blood spear before thrusting it forward, impaling me straight through before I could reach him.

“Khk,” I let out a strange sound as my teeth clenched. The taste of iron filled my mouth as blood came spilling over my lips. I persisted, hardened the blood flowing through me internally and made use of the reddened ground. Four walls of blood formed around him and slammed shut, trapping him within.

I triggered the miasma and stepped back as violet flame covered the blood cage. He struggled while inside of it, but I interlaced my fingers and didn’t let myself slip up once.

I burned him until I couldn’t sense any more movements, but I continued on after that. I let the miasma chew away at everything, boiling the blood down into nothing but a vague mist that I quickly absorbed to avoid him coming back.

I dropped to my knees after it was over. It wasn’t supposed to be real and yet it felt as if I avoided death in this fight.

Again, I returned to my original position and felt every painful sensation disappear as well as any fatigue. I ramped myself up, preparing for the next fight, feeling good about knowing that I was growing further with each engagement.

Except… no one appeared.

I waited and as the minutes went by I almost began to think I was meant to reflect on what I learned. Then, the rain started. I looked up and saw little droplets of red falling down. I cupped my hand and caught one, discovering the swirling dark blood was being manipulated.

Alarm bells rang in my head so I immediately erected a dome-shaped barrier and waited to see what happened next.

Like clockwork, the next version of myself made his appearance. As puddles of blood formed, he rose up from one of them his body covered in a dark luster of blood. He slowly raised his head, revealing that one eye was perpetually using Spirit Vision while the other was simply normal.

He examined me before making a ‘come hither’ gesture and I felt my muscles contract. The blood flowing through my body was temporarily reversed and the recoil made me feel sick. I expelled blood from my mouth before I was pulled forward, smashing through my own barrier and landing in front of him.

I gasped for air as I felt my veins swell, struggling to understand what happened.

‘What the fuck was that?’ I cursed inwardly, staring up at him with clear confusion painted on my face.

“You let a drop touch you,” he explained as if reading my mind.

I crow-shifted and flew backward but he immediately reacted, firing incredibly small pellets of blood at each one of my crows before striking me and forcing me back into human form.

He plunged his hand into his abdomen and a bone-crunching sound rang out as he retrieved a rib. He swung it downward and a war scythe that dripped with blood appeared in his hand. It seemed he was set on using it, but took another look at me and clicked his tongue, throwing it aside as if I weren’t worth it.

“Just die, okay?” He said coldly and then took a step forward, disappearing in that moment.

I watched as several red afterimages were left imprinted in the air before reflexively creating a blood shield to defend myself. The near-imperceptible strike sent me flying backward and I knew what was coming next.

Tall waves of blood engulfed the area, making it completely his domain. The sanguine tides crashed into my body with enough force to shatter bone. He was there to greet me as I tumbled around the ever-shifting landscape.

He moved like a storm, throwing out punches and kicks that I hadn’t ever performed. He rotated his body and performed a precise spinning kick that struck the side of my head. My momentum shifted to the right, but I crashed into a scarlet wave that hardened as I arrived. He continued his assault, continuously landing blows that sent me in every direction.

In a moment of clarity, I realized that he isolated the area to a few hundred meters of range and achieved control of 360 degrees of range. He jumped forward and sunk into the ground, reappearing behind from a bloody puddle. He drove his fist into my back and then grabbed onto my legs with red tendrils, pulling me down in the same breath. The miasmic fire began to appear in bursts as the area grew more chaotic. It began to resemble the bloodscape I had first witnessed and I was shocked to see how dominating it was, but I couldn’t linger on it as I needed to protect myself.

I tried my best to defend but he was everywhere and didn’t relent if it looked like I was catching my breath.

“Is that enough?” He asked, throwing several blood lances at me that impaled me into a solid wall of crystallized blood.

I couldn’t see out of my left eye, my jaw felt numb, my right arm was gone, and I was completely riddled with internal injuries. It hurt to draw breath, but this wasn’t the first time I experienced this.

‘Focus,’ I reminded myself, slowly repairing the most fatal wounds before getting to the less threatening ones.

‘Wait!’ My right eye widened in shock as my healing began to slow to a crawl as if someone was interfering with it. When I forced my head to raise, he was standing there with two fingers pointed toward me.

“This our authority of blood, Casper. Well... it's not like telling you matters,” he said while making a twisting motion.

As the area turned into a sea of maroon, I saw something rising to the surface. It twisted and writhed, its cerise-colored skin blended with the ruby waves, but the white bones protruding from its serpentine length served to outline its slithering body. Something burst from underneath and I caught a glimpse of an ivory head that was narrow and pointed like an arrow. It opened its mouth and my vision went dark.

…

I wasn’t meant to win the last fight. I realized that when I opened my eyes and found myself on another level, far higher up than when I started. Looking back, each fight was significant in how it played out.

One was incredibly easy, I fought a version of myself that didn’t know the Blood Dance which allowed me to see the difference when I hadn’t developed it. The second was against a version which had more experience than me and it was a close fight, I saw where I could improve and did so while fighting with him. The third was… as far as I could tell, it was a product of my imagination and subconscious thought. It wasn’t a concrete representation of future growth, but rather an idea of where I could go.

‘Still, ‘Authority of Blood?’’ I wondered about that part.

“You’ve climbed quite a distance, friend,” Oliver started, peering over the edge as he spoke.

“It doesn’t feel like it.” I looked up and found myself closer to the peak than ever.

“Do you truly need enervation to in order to feel a greater sense of achievement?”

“No… I guess not,” I gave my honest reply, more than content with the understanding I gained so far.