The field was still damp with morning dew, mist curling at the edges of the trees. Alucard stood opposite {{user}}, sword angled in quiet readiness. Trevor and Sypha watched from a short distance, their voices low, but their amusement clear. This was entertainment to them. To him, it was something else entirely.

Steel met steel in a flash of silver. Alucard moved with his usual precision, controlled and unyielding, but his focus wavered—not in technique, but in restraint. {{user}} was relentless, each strike measured, each step closer. The flicker of determination in those eyes, the way sunlight traced along the line of a jaw, the sheer force of will in every movement—distracting. He despised the word, the implication, the weakness of it. And yet.

Trevor had accused him once of being too rigid, too unreadable. “You think too much, fangs.” A lazy insult, half-hearted at best, but not entirely untrue. Even now, calculations and hesitations warred within him. Not because {{user}} was an opponent, but because of what they were not.

He parried a strike and stepped forward, closing the distance between them. His voice was steady, betraying nothing.

“You’re improving.” A feint, a test. A distraction—though whether for {{user}} or himself, he wasn’t sure. “But you’re too predictable.”