Then came a backhand, the impact lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing through what remained of the fountain.

  Dominic didn't wait. He pursued, blood tendrils already forming behind him, ready to pin Dora down the moment he tried to rise.

  Lying in the rubble, surrounded by shattered stone and muddy water, under the shade of the building, Dora smiled.

  "Kid," Dora gasped, "make this easy for me will you? I don’t want to kill you, after all..."

  He stood. His body, which should have been broken in at least six places, straightened as if the punches had never landed. He stood in the school cafeteria, students screamed outwards, fleeing. The light above him flickered and went out.

  Dominic's blood tendrils shot forward.

  Dora moved through them like smoke. His body seemed to flicker, to exist in multiple places at once, before settling back into solid form.

  He stood calmly under the shade, smiling while putting a hand on his hip. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

  A blood spear, condensed to the density of diamond, drove toward Dora's heart from inches away.

  He caught it

  Same as before. Bare-handed. Sizzling flesh. But this time, his fingers closed around the spear and held it in place.

  The spear shattered. Exploding into a thousand crimson fragments that embedded themselves in Dora's face, his throat, his chest. A shotgun blast of blood and condensed mana.

  Dora staggered back, hands flying to his ruined eyes.

  Dominic immediately closed the distance. His foot swept Dora's legs out from under him. His knee drove into Dora's spine as he fell. His hands found Dora's skull, twisted, and kept twisting until something deep inside cracked.

  Dora went still.

  For three heartbeats, Dominic allowed himself to breathe.

  Then Dora's body began to move again. Slowly. Piece by piece. His neck straightened with a wet grinding sound. His eyes, still embedded with fragments of blood crystal, began to push them out, flesh healing around the wounds, expelling the foreign matter like a body rejecting a transplant.

  Dominic drove his heel into the back of Dora's skull.

  “You keep on regenerating, yet you’re barely running out.”

  The courtyard shook with the impact. A crater formed beneath Dora's face. His body went limp again.

  The regeneration accelerated under the shade, the mana expenditure spiked, the wounds closing faster with each blow, smoke rising from him

  Dominic stepped back, giving himself space to think.

  Dora rose. Slowly this time, like a man climbing out of a grave. His face was a mess of healing tissue, skin crawling over bone, eyes reforming in their sockets.

  "It seems like you’ve figured it out," Dora said. His voice had changed, deeper, more resonant. "My regeneration isn’t the same as yours, it isn’t some healing technique like Vitae Core, in fact I’ve never even learned it before, because I never had the need to.”

  “Yea, totally cool.” A pool of blood rippled from underneath Dominic and shot upwards, like a shockwave, allowing him to hide.

  Dora reached into his pockets, pulling out a firearm and quickly firing at the blood tornado.

  The tornado rippled and dissipated.

  [Huh?]

  Dora’s eyes widened.

  “Where’d he-”

  Dominic slid behind him, using the blood beneath his feet like a lubricant, he pushed his palm into Dora’s back.

  “Shatter.”

  The blood erupted from Dora's mouth in a crimson fountain, spraying across the cafeteria floor in a wide arc. His knees buckled, hands flying to his throat as if trying to hold in what was already spilling out.

  He straightened slowly, his yellow eyes gleaming.

  "That," he gasped, "was nasty as hell."

  “Make this more interesting for me will ya?” He was already moving, blood tendrils forming behind him in a whipping, razor-sharp net. The cafeteria's fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting strobing shadows across the overturned tables and scattered trays.

  Dora's wounds were closing. Slower than before, but still closing. He wiped his mouth, spitting out the clumps of blood that weren't his.

  “Cocky kid.”

  A net of blood came dripping down from the ceiling.

  Dora moved through it like water through a sieve, his body twisting and flowing between the razor-sharp strands with an almost casual grace. Where they touched him they cut, deep furrows opening across his arms, his chest, his face, but the wounds closed as quickly as they formed.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  [I can’t filter all the blood that comes into my body, he’s actively hindering my regeneration using his blood manipulation]

  [How do I beat him?]

  Dominic’s eyes widened.

  [Even with slower regeneration, he’s not dying. Do I have to kill him in one shot?]

  A blood spear formed in his palm, condensed to the density of diamond. He threw it not at Dora's body, but at the floor beneath his feet. The spear embedded itself in the tile, and Dominic pulled.

  The blood chain yanked Dora off-balance, sending him stumbling forward. Dominic met him halfway, his fist wrapped in a cocoon of compressed blood, driving toward Dora's solar plexus with everything he had.

  The punch connected.

  Dora's eyes went wide. For a moment, his regeneration seemed to stutter, the wound in his chest gaping open instead of closing. Dominic pressed the advantage, driving another punch into the same spot, then another, each strike landing with the force of a sledgehammer.

  Dora's body bent around the blows. His ribs cracked. His sternum shattered. Blood sprayed from his mouth in a continuous stream.

  "That hurts you know?" Dora gasped between impacts. "You’re not even giving me any chance to think."

  His hand shot out, fingers closing around Dominic's wrist. The grip was iron, unbreakable, and Dominic felt his own blood respond to that touch, felt it trying to reverse its flow, to abandon his body and join Dora's.

  "Did you think," Dora breathed, his yellow eyes inches from Dominic's. Striking his face in the fraction of a second.

  A bullet the size of a building.

  That was what the punch felt like.

  Dominic was launched into the wall, blood dripping from his forehead, his eyes blurred as his chest heaved.

  [What is this…this absurd power boost? Is it because he’s out of the way of the sun?]

  "Your technique is beautiful," Dora continued, his voice almost dreamy. "Blood manipulation. Teach it to me, something like that will make my regeneration even stronger."

  Dominic’s arms twitched.

  “Vitae Core.”

  Dominic's wounds sealed with a wet, grinding sound. Muscle reknit. Bone fused. The gash on his forehead smoothed over like a wound that had never existed.

  He rolled his shoulders, testing the weight of his own arms. They felt light. Too light.

  [Vitae Core takes too much. I only have two more full heals before I run out of reserves.]

  Dora watched him with something approaching genuine interest. The cafeteria's shadows clung to him like a second skin, deepening the hollows of his face, making his yellow eyes gleam like coins at the bottom of a well.

  "That’s not a very easy technique is it?," Dora asked. "Without much control, you’d lose quite a bit of mana, I’ve never learned it myself since I never had the need to anyways.”

  [I never used it since I was never in danger most of the time so my efficiency isn’t on par with Lucy. I’ll need to pair it with blood manipulation as well. Recreating blood from mana costs quite a bit]

  Dominic was already moving, his feet sliding across the tile with the previously scattered blood from Dora’s punch. The crimson pool widened, thinned, and began to climb the walls.

  Dora's head tracked him. "You’re trying to surround me?"

  He moved.

  The speed was absurd. One moment he was standing thirty feet away, the next he was there, his fist already halfway through its arc, aimed at Dominic's temple with enough force to pulp concrete.

  Dominic's blood responded before his brain could. A wall of crimson erupted between them, thick as a bank vault door, dense as diamond.

  Dora's fist punched through it anyway.

  The impact sent shockwaves through Dominic's entire body. He felt his feet leave the ground, felt the world spin, felt the wall meet his back with a crack that might have been tile or might have been spine. He couldn't tell anymore.

  [He's getting stronger]

  Dora stood in the hole his fist had made, pulling his broken arm free of the blood-wall with a wet sucking sound. The wall began to collapse, crimson slumping to the floor in sheets.

  "Not even I’m immune to my own strikes.” He stepped through the remains of the barrier, his bare feet leaving prints in the blood. "There’s this one person that pressured me, that Vice Principal of yours, I could never reach that level of strength, maybe because I haven’t faced Sophia."

  He lunged.

  Dominic threw himself sideways, felt the wind of Dora's passing ruffle his hair. He came up in a roll, already spinning, already gathering more blood from the pool beneath him. It rose in tendrils, ten of them, twenty, a forest of crimson reaching for Dora's limbs. “I’ve got you!”

  Dora didn't dodge. He let them wrap around him, let them sink their hooks into his flesh, and then he pulled.

  “Hmm?”

  Dominic flew toward him like a fish on a line.

  Dora's knee met his stomach with the force of a cannonball. Dominic folded around it, felt something inside him tear, felt his own blood trying to escape through the rupture. He grabbed Dora's shoulders, held on through the pain, and drove his forehead into Dora's nose.

  Blood sprayed. Dora's head snapped backwards, blood dripping from his forehead, and his grip loosened.

  Dominic twisted free, quickly putting distance between the two of them. A ring of blood surrounded him.

  Dora touched his nose. It was already healing, the cartilage regenerated.

  "Why are you here anyways?" Dominic asked. His eyes brows raised, his mouth gaping open like he was mocking him. “Out of anywhere, you chose this place, a place full of witches rather than some bank, some smart crook you are.”

  “I’m not a crook.”

  “I mean, you could’ve fooled me.” Dominic shrugged and smiled.

  “You’re an annoying brat, you know?”

  Dominic stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyes.

  “Not the first time I heard that.”

  “I’m not allowed to kill you, she still has some plans for you.”

  “Who?”

  Professional witches are ranked using levels as a measure of strength, but this may not be very accurate, the level system only accounts for destructive power. This measure of strength ignores any technique that doesn’t do direct damage, this also doesn’t account for mana efficiency.

  Dora’s regenerative abilities and strength under the sun are reduced to ? of its original capabilities.

  The system fails to account for Dora’s abilities without the sun.

  Because under the shade, Dora is effectively immortal.

  “May Lady Jaune assist me, Zenith of Pride, Fluorescent Adolescent.”