Chapter 80: Blood Manipulation

There has always been a fundamental question asked across the sprawling territories of the continent, debated endlessly within the prestigious military academies and top mercenary guilds of the Ranker world.

Why do talent grades exist?

In a world governed by bloodlines, magic, and sword ascension, talent grades are not merely arbitrary labels conferred by imperial scholars.

They represent the precise ceiling of a combatant’s authority over the world around them.

A measure of how deeply an individual’s soul can impose its will upon the physical universe.

• E-Grade Talents: The absolute floor of human awakening. These abilities offer minor physical adjustments or subtle sensory tweaks, such as low-light sight or baseline fatigue reduction.

They consume virtually no mana, but they lack any capability for combat evolution or conceptual impact.

Superhumans with such Talent could never be a Sword Master.

• D-Grade Talents: Low-level active enhancements. These grant localized, single-purpose boosts like short physical sprint bursts, basic elemental weapon coats, or minor kinetic impact absorption.

They provide a foundational edge for standard Superhumans, but are easily shattered by higher-class mana fields.

• C-Grade Talents : Mid-level structural manipulation. At this stage, talents begin actively bending environmental rules through short-range spatial blinks, localized illusions, or focused elemental projections.

They grant immense tactical adaptability, though bound by hard cooldowns and strict resource costs.

• B-Grade Talents : High-level rule-setting abilities. Rather than simply boosting raw output, B-Grade talents introduce conditional paradoxes to combat—manipulating momentum, causality, or damage reflection.

They allow skilled users to systematically bypass standard martial power gaps.

• A-Grade Talents : The sovereign peak of standard awakening. These rare talents directly force physical laws and biological perceptions to bend.

They carry high conceptual authority—capable of multiplying user velocity or hijacking an enemy’s neurological feed—though still bound by the laws of reality.

• Unique-Grade Talents : These are extremely rare, uncopiable anomalies tied exclusively to singular lineages or soul origins.

Unlike standard talents, Unique-Grade abilities influence the laws of reality to a distinct degree, establishing absolute personal domains that completely override lower-graded mechanics (E through A) regardless of the opponent’s raw stat advantage.

• Special-Grade Talents: The legendary zenith of power, often referred to by ancient texts through another name.

Mythic-Grade.

It is practically impossible to find a superhuman with an awakened Special-Grade talent in the current era.

Where Unique-Grade abilities influence reality, a Mythic-Grade talent flat-out defiles the fundamental laws of reality itself, rewriting existence, time, or space on a divine scale.

And Craig von Darkstar owned four of them.

***

Back in the smoke-veiled clearing, the heavy silence following Code 290 and Code 291’s sudden execution hung like a suffocating shroud.

The Sword Sage leader stood frozen, his eyes wide behind his bone-white mask as he stared at the bloody remains of his elite operatives.

Alongside him, Code 289 swallowed hard, his grip on his katana trembling slightly.

They were cold-blooded Rankers, yet the sight of two seasoned Sword Runners being systematically slaughtered in seconds by a fellow Sword Runner had shaken them to their core.

However, as the Sword Sage leader shifted his gaze past Ser Damian, his eyes locked onto Craig.

The crippled Seventh Successor was no longer lying prone in his own blood.

Fueled by his stabilized Initial-Stage Sword Runner breakthrough, Craig’s shattered ribs were visibly knitting together, his broken frame rapidly mending as warm, draconic mana surged beneath his skin.

"Code 289!" the Sword Sage leader barked, his voice instantly snapping back into ruthless, cold focus. "Ignore the Dragonknight! Execute the Seventh Successor right now before he recovers!"

"Understood!" Code 289 shouted back.

Abandoning his hesitation, Code 289 exploded into motion, blurring across the ash-covered earth like a shadow straight toward the recovering Viscount.

"Step back, rat!" Ser Hughway roared.

The veteran Sword Master kicked off the earth to intercept the assassin, his heavy longsword swinging down with enough kinetic force to split the horizon.

BOOM!

Before Hughway’s blade could touch Code 289, the Sword Sage leader materialized out of thin air, thrusting his dark katana upward to parry the blow.

The resulting shockwave cratered the ground twenty feet around them, trapping the Indestructible Knight in a high-intensity duel of blades.

"Your opponent is me, Hughway!" the leader sneered, his aura flaring to keep the veteran pinned.

Seeing Code 289 closing the gap on his incapacitated sovereign, Ser Damian’s dark eyes flashed.

Triggering his spatial momentum, the First Dragonknight shot across the clearing like a silver thunderbolt, aiming to plant himself directly between Craig and the incoming killer.

Damian was fast enough.

He crossed the distance in a microsecond, appearing right in front of Craig with his heavy broadsword raised in a defensive guard.

"I won’t let you pass—!" Damian began.

SWOOSH!

To Damian’s utter shock, Code 289 didn’t collide with his guard or attempt to parry.

Instead, the assassin’s physical form slipped right through Damian’s body like a intangible ghost, completely bypassing the First Dragonknight’s spatial block without dropping an ounce of momentum!

"What?!" Damian gasped, his eyes widening as his sword swung through empty air.

Even Ser Hughway, clashing furiously with the Sword Sage leader a short distance away, felt his heart drop as he witnessed Code 289 phase effortlessly past their front line.

Code 289 materialized directly in front of Craig, a triumphant, lethal grin hiding behind his white mask.

Standing just two feet away from the young Viscount, the assassin elevated his katana with both hands, channeling every ounce of his aura into a single, decapitating downward slash.

"Die, Seventh!" Code 289 hissed, bringing the blade down with absolute, executioner force.

Then... everything stopped.

Mid-swing, the assassin’s curved katana froze mere inches from Craig’s forehead.

His arms locked in place, his legs stiffened into stone, and his entire body trembled violently as if caught in invisible iron vices.

The Sword Sage leader’s eyes flickered away from Hughway as he noticed the sudden freeze. "Code 289!" the leader roared in frustration.

"What are you doing?! Slay him at once!"

Code 289 didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

Sweat poured profusely from behind his white mask, his eyes bulging with sheer, primal terror as he tried with every fiber of his being to force his fingers to close around his hilt.

Craig slowly lifted his head.

The bleeding from his mouth had ceased, and his dark golden eyes were now glowing with a strange, dark-red hue that pulsed in tandem with the blood splattered across the clearing.

"He can’t move," Craig spoke softly, his voice echoing through the quiet grove with terrifying, calm authority. "Even if he wanted to... his body no longer obeys him."

Craig casually stepped forward, closing the remaining distance between himself and the paralyzed assassin.

He raised his right hand, his fingers lightly gripping his refined arming sword.

"Because the moment his blade drew my blood..." Craig murmured, his eyes locking onto Code 289’s terrified gaze, "...his blood became mine to command."

Without a single hint of hesitation or wasted motion, Craig gave a simple, elegant flick of his wrist.

CSHHH!

A clean, horizontal line of crimson force flashed across the air.

Code 289’s head slid smoothly off his neck, airborne for a brief second before crashing into the dirt, followed immediately by his limp, headless torso collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.

Absolute silence descended upon the grove once more.

Ser Damian stared in absolute bewilderment, his mouth slightly agape.

Ser Hughway froze mid-stance, and even the Sword Sage leader took a slow, subconscious step back, his composure completely shattered.

None of them could comprehend what had just transpired.

There had been no physical struggle, no mana shockwave, and no defensive mechanism.

They had no idea that they were witnessing the activation of Craig’s newly awakened Unique-Grade Talent.

An ability born from devouring the 2nd-Tier Alpha Red-Scaled Deer’s core while merging it with his Divine Draconic Physique.

Blood Manipulation.

Craig lowered his blade, wiping the stray crimson drops from his cheek as a dark, dangerous smile spread across his face.