Vlad clenched his fists and drew in a long, steady breath before finally shaking his head. The weight pressing down on his chest had not vanished, but he could no longer allow it to control him.
"I need to overcome this," he muttered quietly. "I have to regain my ferocity. I can't allow myself to hesitate in battle—no matter how strong the enemy is, no matter how exhausted I become."
He repeated the words in his mind, engraving them deep into his soul. With a final nod to himself, Vlad turned toward the distance and vanished in a flash of distorted space, reappearing at the designated gathering point.
The moment he arrived, his senses sharpened.
"There's already someone here," he thought. "It seems I wasn't the first to win."
It did not take long for the familiar figure of a small yellow cat to come into view. Vlad arrived just in time to witness the final stage of the ritual as the Lord-tier Demon Soul surged forward and plunged into Jormungandr's heart.
