"Mom…" Victor asked as they descended a seemingly endless spiral staircase. His mother had told him they were going to train in secret, but… wasn't this too secretive?
"We're almost there," she said calmly as she descended the stairs. "It's just that I can't appear anywhere outside the barracks and castles without being followed by thousands of vampires." She spoke calmly. "So, the best option is to train in the most hidden place possible."
"Hm?" "What do you mean?" he questioned. In his past life, the disease had progressed too quickly even before the Coming of Age Ritual, where he would receive a role and then have access to important information from the Clan.
"I can't talk about that yet, but let's just say Mom always has an army of idiots behind her that prevents her from doing things without thinking." She said, giving a small laugh.
Before Victor could continue questioning, she said, "We're here," as she opened a large steel door and pushed it open. The sound was too loud; the door scraped the floor as if it hadn't been opened in millennia.
She entered, and he followed.
What did he see before him? It wasn't anything spectacular, just a large dungeon of ancient stone bricks. It was long, perhaps 400 square meters? It was quite simple, with four large columns supporting the ceiling. At the end, a huge door.
Serafall looked and nodded, "Well, we have some space here." She said, and he continued looking. All around, but everything was really simple and dusty.
"Victor, I can't teach you anything relevant. I've already explained the rules, right?" She questioned, then looked deeply into his eyes. "But that doesn't mean I won't teach you useful things."
Victor nodded with a determined look. If there was one thing he was absolutely sure of, it was that his mother's words were law.
Then she began to undress—
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" He turned his face quickly as she pulled up the zipper of her dress.
"Hm? What's wrong?" Serafall tilted her head. He wasn't looking, but the dress was already on the floor.
"Why are you taking your clothes off?!" he asked, completely tense.
"Well. We're going to train." She replied naturally, as if it were obvious. "You can't fight in a tea dress, can you?"
"But taking it off in front of me like this—" He tried to argue, but his words got tangled.
"So what?" "My body is all yours, if you want to look and even touch, feel free. I already told you, you are my world." She replied calmly and then said in a very cheeky way, "Come on, a peek at your mommy's sexy body." She said.
And Victor's inner man was awakened, he turned slowly with a small slit in his eyes but… when he looked… what a disappointment.
She was wearing a firm, functional, nothing extravagant sports top. Dark, reinforced combat leggings. Light boots. Her hair tied in a high ponytail.
"Hahaha!" Serafall laughed loudly at her son's deadpan expression. "What exactly did you expect?"
"I didn't expect anything!" he replied too quickly.
"Of course~" she hummed while pointing to the center. "Come on, stand there." "Enough distractions." She stepped forward.
"If you want to get stronger, you'll start by learning something basic." She began, more like a teacher than his mother.
Victor obeyed and went to the center.
"Noble vampires instinctively know how to use their powers from birth," Serafall said. "However, your blood is something peculiar that made me apprehensive. It usually awakens as soon as you're born, and the only problem we have is 'controlling' the intensity with which these powers are used. After all, depending on the noble vampire's lineage, their power can reach absurd levels." She explained didactically.
"Because of your delay, I believe it's difficult to control your powers, right?" she questioned, and Victor nodded.
"When I did that with those boys, I acted purely on instinct, but I felt my body sluggish and disconnected, it was as if—" Serafall finished, "As if there was a delay in your decisions."
Victor nodded, "Basically, as if I had never used them before."
Serafall nodded. "The awakening of a vampire's blood is automatic; there are various blood types and lineages that accelerate and decelerate it. I believe this is because of your father." She spoke without giving many details.
"My father?" he questioned, but saw her face, a face of disgust. So he decided not to question and shook his head. "Continue," he said.
She nodded and turned away. "I'm going to teach you a little about controlling your powers. I believe strength is something that comes naturally from our Bloodline, so I won't focus on something that hasn't fully awakened yet."
She looked, and then. "I'll only say this once. The Basics are the Center. If you're lost, go back to the basics and learn everything again." She commented.
Then, Serafall walked to the furthest point of the training hall. Her steps were light, but each movement carried refined control. She stopped near one of the marble pillars that supported the arched ceiling.
"First, Speed." Serafall said, "I'll run normally."
Victor frowned… Normally? The next instant—
Her body was enveloped in a thin, dark mist, like smoke dissolving in the night air. The silhouette lost its outline.
And then she disappeared.
There was no sound.
There was no wind.
She simply ceased to be there.
Victor's eyes widened—and she reappeared before the farthest pillar.
In the same second, she was back at her starting point. The mist dissipated gently around her.
"See?" Serafall commented casually, as if she had only taken an ordinary step. "That's a basic skill of any vampire."
She crossed her arms. "As creatures of the night, we can camouflage ourselves in the darkness. What I demonstrated now is called 'Walking in the Mist'."
Victor's face became difficult to read.
It was the first time he had witnessed this with his own eyes.
For most of his previous life, he had been confined to a bed, weakening day by day. The vampire world was something distant… stories told, powers he could never touch.
Now… Now he understood. He understood how he and Serafall from the past had survived the invasion of that mansion, several years ago.
"That was…" he began, still processing. "Cool."
He took a deep breath, pushing away the bitter memories that tried to pull him back. "Can all vampires do that?"
"Yes." She answered calmly. "It's a basic skill."
She raised a finger, enumerating. "A vampire's basic abilities are: Mist Walk, Bat Transformation, Night Vision, and Claw Manifestation." As she spoke, small black claws appeared at the tips of her fingers for an instant before disappearing.
"In addition, we have natural bodily capabilities—super-regeneration, super-speed, and partial immortality." She tilted her head slightly. "But that's not exactly a technique. It's biological structure."
Victor absorbed every word… every detail. The world that had been denied him for years was finally being presented to him.
Serafall watched him intently. "Now," she said, her eyes taking on a serious glint, "I'm going to teach you how to transform this simple thing into…"
Before she finished, several Serafalls began to appear. Victor immediately noticed a slight blur in their auras…
It wasn't an aura, no… "Are you creating an afterimage?" he questioned.
It was so fast, it left her standing there as if she were cloning herself; it was an incredibly quick technique. Incredibly destructive if used correctly.
Serafall stopped immediately and looked at him in surprise, "How did you understand so quickly?" she questioned.
He looked at her confused, "Shouldn't you notice? It's so obvious. You leave a blurred trail in the eyes when you run to the next image, so it's easy to find the difference," he said calmly…
Serafall looked at him as if she were seeing a monster. "Honey, only the high-ranking can tell who I am when I use this. Finding mistakes is less than half of it."
Victor just shrugged.
"Okay, let's continue," she said, trying not to think too much.
So, several hours passed that night while Serafall taught him the technique she called "Blood Remnant."
Initially, Victor had difficulty not with the Blood Remnant, but with the Mist Walk. Unlike vampires who are born knowing it, apparently the delay in learning came from the distant awakening of his bloodline. Serafall, however, didn't give up.
"Again." She ordered, these words were heard more than twenty times, until he finally mastered the Mist Walk.
Thus, some more time passed and surprisingly, after learning the Mist Walk completely, everything accelerated.
"Okay, that was fast." she said as she saw the first mirage. He had managed it… that fast?
'It took him a while to learn the Mist Walk, which is something natural, but once he learned it, he evolved astronomically… That means he's quite brilliant, at least above all the Valentines of the last hundred years… no, learning the Blood Remnant, even in a reduced form, is already a feat that takes a hundred years.' She thought calmly before smiling, 'My son has the potential of a King.'