The Ducati roared like a dying beast, its engine echoing off the corrugated iron walls of the abandoned slaughterhouse district before cutting into silence. The headlight died, leaving Jin sitting in the gloom, the cooling metal ticking beneath him.
He was in the center of a concrete courtyard, surrounded by the skeletal remains of industrial hooks . The smell here was ancient—old grease, dried blood, and the metallic tang of oxidized iron.
Headlights swept across him, blindingly bright, as the convoy of sedans drifted into the yard, kicking up clouds of dust. Doors opened in unison. Twenty-three shadows stepped into the light.
They were not the street thugs or the disorganized ghouls of the hotel. These were trained. They wore tactical leather mixed with ancient aristocratic flourishes—a pauldron here, a family crest there. They carried traditional weapons: broadswords , spears , and staves glowing with blood magic. They fanned out, their movement fluid and silent.
Jin remained seated on the bike, his hands resting loosely on his thighs. He looked at the leader, a vampire with a scar running through his lip, holding a zweihänder sword with effortless grace.
"We both know how this is going to go," Jin said, his voice flat, carrying no hope, only certainty. "I had no reason to kill you all. I actively tried getting out of your way, to avoid this fight and the killing. But at the end, here we are." He looked up, his eyes already shifting, the tomoe of the Sharingan spinning slowly in the crimson iris. "At last, only one of us comes out alive."
The leader didn't blink. He raised his massive sword, the tip pointing at Jin's throat.
"Let's get to business. Kill him ."
The air snapped.
Jin kicked the bike. The heavy machine skidded across the pavement, acting as a spinning projectile that swept the legs of the front three attackers. Before the metal even sparked against the concrete, Jin was airborne.
He crashed into the first line of vampires. His right hand, hardened to the color of obsidian, caught a descending spear shaft. Wood splintered with a sharp crack. Jin didn't stop; he drove his clawed hand straight into the lancer's throat.
Touki flared—a white-hot injection of pure life force.
The vampire gagged, smoke pouring from his mouth as his insides boiled. But he didn't die. The flesh of his throat sizzled, turned black, and then—horrifyingly—began to knit back together. The vampire snarled, his regeneration fighting the touki, and clawed at Jin's face with fierce resistance.
High level, Jin noted, seeing the wound close around his fingers. They resist the Touki. They heal just like I do.
Jin pivoted, grabbing the spearman's body and using it as a meat shield. Three swords buried themselves in the dying vampire's back. Jin kicked the corpse forward, launching himself backward onto a rusted catwalk.
"Don't let him gain height!" a mage screamed.
Five vampires leaped, their claws extending, scaling the pillars like spiders.
Jin met them on the iron grating. His Sharingan spun, tracking the micro-movements of their muscles. He saw the tension in a shoulder, the shift of weight in a hip.
Left. Duck. Ribcage.
He wove through a flurry of claws that would have shredded steel. He caught a wrist, twisted, and threw the attacker off the walkway into the path of a blood-bullet fired from below. He hardened his elbow and drove it backward, crushing the nose of a vampire trying to flank him. The nose shattered, then snapped back into place with a wet crunch as the vampire lunged again.
They were relentless. A sword user, a master of fencing, lunged with a rapier. Jin hardened his skin, intending to tank the hit, but the blade glowed with a corrosive green light. It bit into his obsidian skin, sizzling.
Acid coating.
Jin twisted, the blade grazing his ribs instead of piercing his heart, taking flesh with him and left acid there. He abandoned defense. He stepped in, his hand glowing with a chaotic, vibrating aura. Tremor.
He slammed his fist into the fencer's chest.
CRACK.
There was a sound like the atmosphere cracking. The vibration didn't push the vampire back; it traveled through him. The vampire's armor remained intact, but his back exploded outward in a spray of spinal fluid and gore as his internal organs were liquefied by the shockwave.
Jin tossed the limp body aside, dropping back to the ground floor. The circle closed in instantly.
"He's reading us!" the leader roared, parrying a kick from Jin. "Take his vision!"
The tactic shifted. They stopped trying to duel him. They sacrificed.
Two vampires rushed him, arms wide, embracing death. Jin impaled them both, his claws tearing through their chests, but they didn't stop. They gripped his arms, their strength unnatural, locking him in place for a split second.
"Now!"
A whip made of crystallized blood, wielded by a specialist in the back, cracked. It wasn't aimed at Jin's body. It snapped with pinpoint precision across his face.
The world went black.
Pain, white-hot and searing, exploded in Jin's skull as his eyes were slashed. Blood streamed down his face, blinding him completely.
The vampires roared in triumph, rushing in for the kill. Swords swung, aiming for his neck, his heart, his joints.
Jin didn't freeze. He sniffed.
The smell of rust. The smell of sweat. The sharp ozone of magic preparing to fire. The coppery reek of the blood whip retracting.
He dropped low, a hair's breadth under a decapitating swing. He couldn't see, but he could hear the whistle of the steel. He could smell the position of the bodies.
He spun, a leg sweep that shattered the ankles of the swordsman. He grabbed the falling body, sensing the heartbeat, and ripped the throat out with his teeth, spitting the chunk of flesh at the warrior charging in.
Jin's regeneration factor screamed into overdrive. Steam hissed from his eye sockets as the nerves knit back together, but until they did, he was a feral animal relying on primal senses. He blocked a sword with his forearm, the blade biting deep into the bone, and used the leverage to headbutt the attacker, his hardened forehead caving in the vampire's face.
"Pile on him! Crush him!"
They swarmed. Six vampires threw themselves onto Jin, burying him under a mountain of limbs and armor. They stabbed, bit, and tore. Jin felt flesh ripping from his shoulders, felt ribs cracking under the crushing weight. They were trying to suffocate his movement, to tear him apart piece by piece.
Beneath the pile, buried in darkness and blood, Jin's breath hitched.
Too close.
He gathered every ounce of strength, channeling the Tremor ability into his hand.
CRACK-BOOM.
The mound of vampires erupted. It was like a grenade detonating inside a meat locker. Bodies were launched into the air, bones pulverized by the point-blank vibration. Three of them hit the ground dead, their insides turned to jelly. The others landed broken, coughing up pieces of their own lungs.
Jin stood up from the center of the carnage. His eyes were open, fresh pink tissue reforming around new, angry red irises. His vision blurred, then sharpened.
He saw the mages in the back, preparing a massive volley of blood spears.
Hand signs flashed. Blur. Blur. Blur.
"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu (Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique)."
He exhaled. A massive sphere of roaring flame engulfed the backline. The mages, expecting physical attacks, were consumed. Their screams were high and shrill as the fire burned through their magical defenses.
The numbers were thinning. But so was Jin.
His clothes were rags. His body was a patchwork of regenerating wounds. His Touki getting spend, his chakra reserves were getting lower by time.
The remaining vampires—the elite swordmasters and the leader—didn't flee. Their faces were contorted into monstrous masks, fangs fully extended, movements jerky and adrenaline-fueled.
The battle dragged on. Minutes turned into an hour.
It stopped being a fight of skill and became a battle of endurance.
Jin punched a vampire's jaw off; the vampire simply snapped it back into place and bit Jin's forearm. Jin tore an arm off an attacker; the attacker picked up his sword with his remaining hand and kept swinging.
Blood painted the concrete floor in a slick, crimson layer. It sprayed in arcs, coating the rusted machinery. The sound of the fight was wet—the tearing of meat, the snap of bone, the hiss of regeneration.
They were grinding each other down to the bone.
Finally, the end began.
A vampire stabbed Jin through the stomach. Jin didn't flinch. He grabbed the vampire's ears and head ripped the head from the shoulders.
Another slashed Jin's hamstring from behind. Jin fell to one knee. He punched the attacker in the groin, shattering the pelvis, then drove a fist into the throat, crushing the windpipe permanently.
Jin was backed into a corner, framed by two massive meat hooks. He was panting, his breath rattling in his chest. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, the nerves severed, slowly reconnecting.
Ten vampires remained. They stood in a semi-circle, heaving, covered in the gore of their kin and their enemy. They looked at Jin not as a target, but as a calamity. They had killed him a dozen times over. He had killed them a dozen times over. But he was still standing.
"Why..." the leader wheezed, leaning on his broken sword, his own regeneration slowing to a crawl. "Why won't you die?"
Jin spat a mouthful of blood. He grinned, a horrific sight with broken teeth and a torn cheek.
"Because I haven't won yet."
The Dungeon - Castle Sant'Angelo
In the cold silence of the basement, the golden light of the Sephiroth Graal flickered erratically. Valerie Tepes sat frozen, her eyes wide, reflecting a horror that wasn't in the room.
Her face was pale, drained of all color. She had seen violence in her family. She had seen cruelty. But she had never seen this.
"He's..." Valerie whispered, her voice trembling, she watched the monster cornered in the slaughterhouse. "He's eating them alive."