Noctis continued forward after the eight golems had been destroyed, and Rengar followed behind him with both daggers still in hand, the faint crimson aura along their edges no longer flaring as brightly as it had during combat but still remaining present in a thin, controlled layer. The chamber behind them was filled with broken construct bodies that would no longer regenerate, and that difference had left a clear mark in Rengar's understanding. Cutting the body was not the same as ending the enemy. Speed, strength, lightning, frost, and blood-charged blades were all tools, but without knowing where to apply them, even repeated destruction could become meaningless.
The passage beyond the chamber sloped deeper into the mountain, and the dungeon responded to their advance with more resistance. Smaller frost constructs, crawling ice beasts, and malformed crystal-limbed creatures emerged from the walls and floor as they moved, but Noctis did not slow down for them. He walked at the same calm pace, hands relaxed, gaze forward, as if the mobs appearing around him were no more important than snow drifting across a road.
Rengar handled them without being told.
His body moved around Noctis like a crimson storm, never interrupting his master's path and never allowing any creature to enter striking range. Each time a mob lunged, Rengar's lightning augmentation carried him across the space before the attack could complete, and the blood aura along his daggers left long red streaks through the air as the blades crossed through limbs, torsos, and cores. The streaks did not appear as decoration. They marked the path of the blood-charged edges, thin lines of cutting pressure that remained visible for a breath after each strike before fading into the cold air.
A frost crawler launched itself from the right wall toward Noctis's shoulder, only for Rengar to cross the passage in a flash of crimson lightning and split it midair with a diagonal slash that left a red line hanging between the wall and floor. A crystal beast pushed out from the ground ahead, its forelimbs rising to block the passage, but Rengar appeared at its side before it fully stood, drove one dagger through the glowing core beneath its neck, and tore the blade free as the creature collapsed behind Noctis's steps. When several smaller constructs formed together, Rengar did not waste motion cutting them apart randomly. His eyes searched for the glow, his body entered their formation, and the red arcs from his daggers pierced the cores one after another while Noctis walked through the center without turning his head.
The contrast became clearer the deeper they traveled. Noctis moved as if nothing in the dungeon could inconvenience him, and Rengar moved as if nothing in the dungeon was permitted to approach him. Crimson streaks repeatedly crossed behind, beside, and ahead of Noctis, sometimes passing so close that the red light reflected briefly along the edge of his coat, yet Noctis never flinched. He trusted Rengar to do his part, and Rengar felt that trust through the absence of correction. Noctis did not need to praise every kill. He did not need to direct every movement. By continuing forward without concern, he made the standard clear.
Rengar's confidence grew through repetition, but it did not become arrogance. The previous fight had already taught him the cost of attacking without understanding. Every enemy he cut down now became another chance to sharpen the habits Noctis wanted from him. He no longer treated blood energy as something to remember after a failed strike. The daggers remained charged while he moved. The aura did not yet remain perfectly contained, and faint wisps of crimson still rose from the edges when he held the charge too long, but the skill was already becoming part of his rhythm.
The passage eventually opened into a much larger inner chamber guarded by a single construct that stood before a massive sealed door. This golem was nothing like the eight Rengar had fought earlier. Its body had the form of a knight, tall and broad, encased in layered frost armor that resembled heavy plate rather than crude ice-stone plating. A large sword rested in its hands, the blade nearly as long as Rengar's full height, and within its chest a core glowed more brightly than those of the earlier golems, buried beneath several protective layers of dense crystal and frozen metal-like stone.
Noctis kept walking.
The frost knight golem reacted to his approach immediately. Its core brightened, its body shifted, and its massive sword lifted overhead with slow but crushing force. The sword's edge gathered frost as it rose, and the chamber floor trembled under the knight's step as it prepared to strike down at Noctis.
Noctis did not stop.
He did not look up.
He did not change pace.
The sword began descending toward him.
Rengar moved before the blade reached him.
Crimson lightning surged through his body as he crossed the distance from behind Noctis to the knight's front. The movement produced long red streaks of light as his blood-charged daggers cut through the air, and the slashes did not follow a single line. They intersected across the knight's body from different angles, crossing over its arms, waist, legs, shoulders, and chest in rapid succession. Within one continuous motion, more than twenty crimson lines appeared across the frost knight's armored frame, each line marking a completed cut from Rengar's daggers.
The sword stopped before reaching Noctis.
The knight's body separated along the intersecting lines.
Armor plates slid apart, limbs split, the torso opened into sections, and the massive construct collapsed across the floor in broken pieces while Noctis continued walking until he stood near the intact core that remained floating above the shattered body.
Rengar landed beside him, daggers lowered but still charged, his gaze fixed on the core. He was already preparing to destroy it, but Noctis acted first.
Crimson chains shot up from the ground and wrapped around the floating core, binding it tightly in the air before Rengar could move. The core pulsed, and the frost knight's body began to regenerate around it despite the restraint. Broken pieces lifted from the floor and pulled together, armor plates reformed, limbs reattached, and the knight's body reconstructed itself around the chained core. When the regeneration completed, the knight tried to move, but the blood chains still bound the core itself, and because the core remained fixed, the entire body could not advance. The knight strained violently, but its movement stopped at the center point held by Noctis's chains.
Noctis turned slightly toward Rengar.
"Beyond this door is the titan golem," he said. "As you are now, you cannot defeat it."
Rengar looked at him with clear confusion, not because he doubted Noctis's judgment, but because he had just torn apart the knight golem in a single exchange.
Noctis understood the question without needing him to speak.
"Your attacks, even with charged blood aura, will not beat its defense."
Rengar looked toward the sealed door behind the knight.
Noctis continued, "It is too late to learn completely new skills, so we will improve your current ones. We will use this knight golem as a target."
The chained knight struggled again, trying to pull away from the restraint, and its massive sword scraped across the floor as it attempted to raise the weapon toward the blood chains binding its core.
Noctis formed a dagger in his hand.
"You like using your blood-charged daggers," he said. "Charging them is only the basic level. Now I will show you the advanced level."
Rengar focused immediately.
The knight finally lifted its sword high enough to attempt cutting the chains. Noctis pulled Ruin from its holster without turning around and fired once. The blood bullet struck the knight's head and destroyed it instantly, scattering frozen fragments across the chamber while the body remained held by the chained core. Noctis holstered Ruin again as naturally as if he had brushed dust from his sleeve.
Rengar did not react to the shot. His attention remained on the dagger in Noctis's hand.
"But you showed me Oblivion Rend," Rengar said.
"Yes," Noctis replied. "My Oblivion Rend is an advanced skill, and you should be able to create something similar. But you have not reached that level yet."
The knight's head began reforming as he spoke.
Noctis continued without looking at it. "So we will use another method first. Less advanced, but better for you now. You need to learn how to manipulate the blood energy already inside the dagger."
Blood energy flowed into Noctis's dagger as he spoke. The crimson aura covered the blade, but instead of remaining clean, it rose from the surface like smoke, drifting upward in thin strands that constantly escaped into the air.
"This is your current level," Noctis said. "The blood energy covers the blade, but it leaks."
The knight's head finished reforming, and it roared while raising the sword again. Noctis drew Ruin and shot the head apart a second time, then fired twice more and destroyed both arms before they could bring the sword down. The limbs broke away from the body and crashed onto the floor, but the core remained bound, forcing the construct to begin regenerating again.
Noctis holstered Ruin again and continued as if the interruption had not mattered.
"When the aura rises like smoke, energy is escaping. That means you need to keep pouring more blood energy into the dagger to maintain the charge. The effect works, but it is inefficient."
Rengar looked down at his own daggers and saw the faint crimson wisps escaping from the edges. Until that moment, he had only understood that the blood aura made the blades stronger. He had not paid attention to how much energy was being lost while holding the charge.
Noctis adjusted the aura around his dagger.
The smoke-like strands stopped rising.
The crimson energy compressed inward and wrapped around the blade in a smooth bubble-like layer that covered the entire weapon without leaking into the air. The coating did not flare. It did not drift. It remained sealed around the dagger as a contained shell.
"This is containment," Noctis said. "The energy stays where you place it."
Rengar understood the difference immediately. His current charge continuously leaked power. Noctis's contained layer preserved it. The amount of energy did not need to increase. The control changed everything.
Rengar opened his mouth to ask something, then hesitated.
Noctis smiled faintly.
"You want to know what comes after this."
Rengar looked surprised, then nodded.
"Then observe."
Noctis willed the blood energy around the dagger to change shape. The smooth layer extended forward, lengthening beyond the dagger until it became the shape of a sword. Then it retracted back, shrinking until it matched the dagger's original blade. After that, it condensed into an extremely thin layer, almost like a sheet of paper wrapped along the edge, so compressed that the crimson line seemed sharper than before. Finally, the aura reshaped itself into a saw-like edge along the blade, and the teeth began rotating around the dagger with controlled movement.
Rengar stared at the shifting aura.
Noctis did not strain. The transformations happened smoothly, as if the blood energy were no different from a flexible material in his hand.
"The next level is free manipulation," Noctis said. "Once you reach this level of control, you can change the shape according to what you need."
The knight's head regenerated again, and its body began pulling against the chains more violently. Its sword arm was halfway restored, and the construct strained to move despite the core remaining bound.
Noctis lifted the dagger lightly.
"Once you can manipulate the aura freely, projectile slashes become easy."
He swung the dagger casually to the side.
A crescent-shaped blood slash flew from the blade and crossed the chamber. The knight's newly reformed head had just finished taking shape when the slash passed through its neck and severed it cleanly. The head fell away before the body could complete another roar.
Rengar watched the attack carefully, following the line of the slash back to the dagger.
For some reason, despite knowing the frost knight was only a construct, he thought he heard something like a whimper coming from it.
The crescent slash Noctis released from the dagger crossed the chamber and severed the frost knight's newly reformed head with such clean control that the cut looked less like a strike and more like the natural result of the blood aura obeying its owner. Rengar watched the head separate and fall while the knight's body remained bound by the blood chains wrapped around its core, and although the construct began regenerating again almost immediately, his focus no longer rested on the knight itself. It rested on the path the blood energy had taken from Noctis's dagger, the way it had stayed compact after leaving the blade, the way it had maintained its crescent shape without scattering, and the way it had cut through the target even though the physical weapon never touched it.
Rengar looked down at his own daggers. The crimson aura coating them still carried the same problem Noctis had pointed out earlier. It covered the edges and strengthened the blades, but faint wisps continued escaping from the surface like smoke rising from hot iron. That leakage did not prevent the daggers from cutting through ordinary enemies, but now that he had seen the difference between basic charging and controlled containment, he could feel the waste more clearly. The blood energy was not leaving violently. It simply seeped outward in small threads, and every thread meant the charge had to be fed again to remain strong.
Noctis did not speak after the demonstration. He simply stepped aside and let the blood chains keep the knight's core fixed in place. The silence told Rengar enough. The explanation had already been given. Now the rest belonged to practice.
Rengar inhaled slowly and drew the blood energy inward before guiding it down both arms into the daggers. He did not try to release it immediately. He watched the coating form and focused on keeping it close to the blades. At first, the result changed little. The aura still rose in thin strands, and even when he forced it downward with his will, the energy responded unevenly. One side of the blade tightened while the other leaked. The edge near the tip grew brighter, but the base thinned. He adjusted again, not with frustration, but with the same instinct he had used as a wolf to correct footing on unstable snow. When a paw sank too deeply, the body adjusted weight. When lightning overcharged a muscle, the body dispersed it. This was the same principle, only applied to blood energy.
He continued working.
The knight regenerated its head and shoulders while the core remained bound in the air, and once its mouth finished forming, it attempted to roar again. Ruin appeared in Noctis's hand and fired once before the sound fully formed. The bullet destroyed the knight's head and left the chamber quiet again. Noctis holstered the pistol without looking away from Rengar.
Rengar barely noticed the interruption. His attention remained on the aura around his daggers.
He compressed again. This time, instead of pressing the energy downward from outside, he imagined the aura wrapping the blade as a skin rather than a flame. The wisps reduced slightly. The coating became smoother along the middle section of the dagger, though the tip continued leaking. He shifted the flow, slowed the feeding of blood energy, and allowed the coating to settle before adding more. The change was small, but it remained longer than before. The smoky strands did not vanish completely, yet they rose more slowly.
Noctis watched in silence.
As Rengar continued practicing, Noctis's thoughts drifted briefly toward his earlier battles, especially the fight with Kaiser when Kaiser had still been a serpent-like existence rather than the evolving dragon he was now. Looking back at it, Noctis understood clearly that he could have ended portions of that battle much faster if he had empowered the Bloodfang Reapers with properly compressed blood aura. Kaiser's defenses had been powerful, but not beyond the reach of sharpened blood energy guided through weapon constructs. If Noctis had chosen to coat those reapers with the same principle he was now showing Rengar, the defensive scales and hardened body Kaiser relied on would have been far easier to break.
He had not done so.
At the time, he had wanted to test the combat ability of his body directly. He had wanted to understand movement, reaction, force output, durability, timing, and the limits of the form he was using. Overwhelming Kaiser with empowered weapon techniques would have given him victory, but it would have reduced the value of the experiment. That was one of the differences between fighting to win and fighting to learn. Now Rengar was standing at a similar threshold. He already possessed strength, speed, and elemental ability, but if he only used blood energy as a sharper coating, he would never reach the level where his weapons became extensions of his will.
Rengar's aura stabilized further after repeated attempts. The smoke-like leakage finally reduced into a thin shimmer close to the blade. It was still not as smooth as Noctis's containment layer, but it no longer constantly escaped upward. The aura clung to the dagger in a tighter shape, and when Rengar moved his wrist, the energy followed without lagging behind. He tested both daggers separately, first the right, then the left, then both together. Each attempt revealed a different imbalance. The right dagger stabilized faster because his dominant motion favored it. The left required more attention near the outer edge. When he charged both together, the flow occasionally became uneven, causing one blade to glow brighter than the other.
He corrected that through repetition.
Minutes passed inside the chamber with only the sound of the knight regenerating, struggling, and being silenced whenever it became too disruptive. Each time the knight's head reformed and its roar began, Noctis shot it apart with Ruin so quickly that the disturbance never reached Rengar's concentration. When an arm recovered enough to raise the sword toward the chains, Noctis fired again and destroyed the wrist, then the elbow, then the shoulder, all without interrupting his silent observation. The frost knight remained alive only because its core remained intact, but it had been reduced to a restrained training target whose attempts to escape were removed the moment they threatened the atmosphere of practice.
Rengar moved from containment into shape.
At first, he only tried to extend the aura slightly past the dagger's edge. The crimson layer stretched, thickened, and collapsed back onto the blade. He tried again, this time extending only a thin line. It held for a breath before rippling and shrinking. He narrowed his focus further, using imagination the way Noctis had told him. Not force. Shape. The aura did not need to be pushed like lightning or spread like frost. It had to be willed into form and maintained long enough for the weapon to act as its center.
A thin crimson edge appeared beyond the right dagger. It looked almost like a second blade layered over the first. Rengar held it for several seconds before it flickered. He repeated the process with the left dagger. That one collapsed sooner. He did not growl or show frustration. He simply adjusted the flow and tried again. His instincts began mapping the new sensation the way they had mapped terrain, prey movement, and elemental release over countless battles. The blood aura had weight. When extended too far, it dragged against his control. When compressed too tightly, it became unstable. When spread evenly, it responded.
The next stage was release.
Rengar stepped before the restrained knight and slashed with one dagger, attempting to send the extended aura outward. The blood energy separated from the blade, but the moment it left contact, it lost structure and dissolved into scattered red mist before reaching the target. He tried again with more force. The aura traveled farther but spread too wide, striking the knight's armor like a weak smear of energy rather than a cutting arc. He tried a third time, using less force and more shape. A short crescent formed and flew forward, but it twisted midair and broke before impact.
Noctis's expression did not change much, though the faint curve of his mouth suggested approval at the direction of progress. He did not speak. He did not need to. Rengar already understood that the problem was no longer charging or containment. The problem was maintaining shape after separation.
Rengar returned to the beginning of the motion. He charged the dagger, contained the aura, shaped the edge, then released. Each attempt carried a small difference. One crescent lasted longer but cut shallowly. Another was sharper but collapsed too soon. Another struck the knight's chest and left a thin mark across the armor before dispersing. The knight's body regenerated the damage quickly, but the mark proved the method could work.
He practiced for a long time.
The chamber slowly filled with faint traces of red energy dissipating into the cold air after each failed or partial release. The floor in front of the knight showed shallow cuts where unstable crescents struck low. The armor across the knight's torso carried repeated lines that regenerated and vanished. Rengar's breathing remained controlled, though his hands began adapting to the repeated motions. His shoulders adjusted. His wrists learned the angle that released the energy cleanly. His stance shifted lower, allowing his torso to add structure to the slash without overpowering the aura.
The first true crescent came from the right dagger.
It was small, only a short arc of blood energy that flew forward and cut across the knight's chest before fading, but it maintained shape long enough to be called a real projectile. Rengar paused only long enough to register the result, then attempted the same with the left. The left crescent wavered, but after several more tries, it also formed. Neither matched Noctis's slash in size, sharpness, or stability, but they existed. They were not scattered energy. They were projected cuts.
Rengar then began testing both blades together.
That introduced a new problem. When he released both daggers at once, the two aura flows interfered with each other. One crescent formed while the other collapsed. If he released them too close together, the energy collided and scattered between the blades. If he separated them too much, the motion lost the crossed shape he wanted. He adjusted the timing, letting one blade lead slightly and the other follow through the crossing path. The result created two uneven arcs that passed the knight on different lines. He tried again, bringing the timing closer. The arcs crossed, but one dissolved at the intersection.
Noctis continued watching.
His silence gave the training weight. Rengar could feel that Noctis was not withholding help out of neglect. He had already shown the path. If Rengar could not cross this step through his own instincts, the technique would remain borrowed rather than becoming his. That understanding made the practice more meaningful. He was not trying to copy Oblivion Rend. His body did not move like Noctis's. His weapons were not the same length. His combat instincts were not human. He fought with dual blades, speed, and predatory crossing angles. A single crescent slash was possible, but it was not his natural shape.
The answer came from the motion of his body.
When he attacked prey as a wolf, he did not always strike from one direction. He crossed angles. One movement diverted. The second finished. As a lycanthrope with twin daggers, that instinct remained. His strongest close-range attacks came from intersecting lines, where both blades converged on the target from opposite sides. Trying to release two separate crescents as if they were independent skills made the energy unstable. They needed to be part of one motion.
Rengar lowered his stance and crossed both daggers near his body.
He charged them together, not right then left, not one after the other, but as a paired flow. The blood aura formed across both blades, and he compressed it evenly until the smoky leakage vanished into a contained crimson coating. Then he shaped the edge on both daggers, extending the aura slightly beyond the physical blades. Instead of preparing two releases, he imagined one crossed bite. Two fangs closing from different angles.
He slashed.
The first attempt created an X-shaped surge that broke immediately after leaving the blades. He adjusted and repeated. The second attempt traveled forward but opened too wide. The third crossed properly but lacked cutting density. The fourth struck the knight and left shallow intersecting marks before fading. The fifth cut deeper. The sixth held shape longer. Each attempt brought the motion closer to what his body wanted.
Rengar's breathing deepened, and the blood aura along both daggers became steadier. He no longer tried to force the energy out. He let the motion carry the release. His arms crossed and opened. His wrists guided the edges. His torso supplied structure. His mind held the shape. The aura separated from the blades in paired crescents that met and crossed in front of him, flying forward as a linked attack rather than separate projectiles.
The knight regenerated its head again and seemed to twitch as the next attempt formed.
Rengar slashed both daggers in a clean crossing motion.
Two crescent-shaped blood energy blades flew forward from the daggers, crossing over each other in an X-pattern. The arcs were not as large as Noctis's Oblivion Rend, and their edges still trembled slightly at the outer ends, but they held together. They reached the knight and cut across its chest, slicing through armor and exposing the layers beneath before fading.
Rengar remained still for a moment, studying the result.
It had worked.
Not perfectly.
But truly.
Noctis smiled faintly.
Rengar looked at his daggers, then at the crossed wound on the knight's chest. The technique was rough, but it belonged to him. It came from his weapons, his motion, his instincts, and his blood energy. It was not Oblivion Rend. It was something else.
A name formed naturally from the shape of the attack and the predator instincts behind it.
Twin Wolf Fang Slash.
Rengar did not speak the name aloud yet, but he held it in his mind as the first true form of his own blood-rend technique. The knight's wound began regenerating, but that no longer mattered. The purpose of the chamber had been fulfilled.
The pressure beyond the sealed door remained steady, and now that the training had quieted, it felt heavier than before. The titan waited deeper ahead, larger and stronger than the golems, and the technique Rengar had just formed was only a beginning.
Noctis finally turned toward the door.
Rengar lowered his daggers slightly, the contained blood aura still wrapped around both blades, no longer leaking like smoke but resting close to the edges in a thin crimson layer.
The next test waited beyond.