Wolf and Tiger (Two-in-One)

"Be good. Once we get to Chicago, take the train back to Edmonton. Bob will go with you." James spoke patiently to the sulking O'Hara.

After bidding President Lincoln farewell in Washington, he had headed south, partly to look for Victor and partly to see how things stood in the southern states of America. He wanted to investigate before buying land and planning his business investments later on.

But the war was not over yet, and while searching for Victor, he might well run into dangers beyond his expectations.

Had Victor been influenced by the vampires? What role had Adam played in all this? And what if they encountered the remnants of the blood clan? Taking a woman along while wandering around the southern states was simply absurd.

Seeing there was no changing his mind, O'Hara could only plead with James to spend a few days in Illinois before going to Chicago to catch a train back to the estate. James figured a few days would not hurt, so he agreed.

Joliet Town was not far from Chicago, and it had developed rapidly in recent years. It was on the verge of becoming a city, and there was even a train that ran directly from the town to Arkansas.

James had developed a sort of "building-sweeping" habit. Wherever he went, if he saw land or a city worth investing in, he could not help sizing it up and wondering whether he should buy a plot or something.

There were five of them in all, including the coachman. They settled into a quiet inn in Joliet Town, some distance from the town center. Supposedly, a slope beside the inn offered the best place in town to watch the sunset.

After the innkeeper's rather knowing and enthusiastic recommendation, James brought O'Hara there for a picnic. They enjoyed afternoon tea while waiting for the sunset.

Meanwhile, the other three old hands from the Howlett family had arranged to unwind at the liveliest bar in town, leaving the two of them to enjoy some private time.

"James, why do I feel like you haven't changed at all?" O'Hara cupped her cheeks as she watched James peel an apple for her.

"How could I have changed? You've known me for ages. What a silly thing to say."

"No, I mean your appearance. Look, if you shaved your beard, you'd look just like you did at twenty. And your skin is still so smooth."

O'Hara gestured at James's face, occasionally touching her own and comparing them.

The knife in James's hand paused. He casually denied it and brushed her off. O'Hara teased him, insisting that he shave his beard tomorrow so she could see. The two of them were laughing and joking when James's expression suddenly changed. He took a strange, deep sniff.

"O'Hara, get back to your room. Now!"

This was the second time O'Hara had seen James like this. The first had been when they encountered those terrifying vampire monsters. She seemed to understand and hurried back to the inn. It was only a few hundred meters away, not far at all.

After what had happened the first time, she trusted James to keep himself safe.

James stood and looked toward the woods to the south. He could hardly believe the scent he had picked up. It was still some distance away, but his nose had become especially sensitive to certain smells he had marked in his memory.

The scent was a lot like Victor's—but it definitely was not the Victor he knew.

The slanting rays of the setting sun fell across the woods. James waited patiently. After a while, a figure's shadow stretched longer and longer. Victor emerged from the trees and looked at James from afar.

"Good. Now I don't have to go all the way to Edmonton to find you." Victor seemed to have become more talkative.

"What have you done?" James's gaze grew frightening. Victor's scent had become very similar to Adam's, as if two different auras were entangled. There was also the fresh smell of blood.

Victor shrugged nonchalantly. "I finished what you left undone."

"You accepted Adam's power."

"No. I took his power. All of it." Victor grinned. His eyes began to change. Unlike Adam's eyes, which had been entirely black, Victor's had bright yellow whites and tiny black pupils. They were the eyes of a tiger.

"Roar!"

A furious roar burst from Victor's chest. In an instant, every hair on James's body stood on end.

Then it seemed as though countless writhing creatures were trying to claw their way out from inside Victor. They churned beneath his skin as he grew taller and his clothes strained and tore.

Crack, crack, crack! The grating sound of bones scraping together rang out. The bones of all ten fingers and their nails pierced through the flesh at once, growing together into a single structure. They became thicker, longer, sharper, and deadlier than before.

The bones at his elbows also broke through his skin, growing into spikes more than ten centimeters long. His four massive canine teeth grew further, and tawny fur sprouted along his spine, spreading across his back and into his hair. He grew even taller, his muscles bunching together like slabs of stone. His skin took on a faint, earthen-yellow hue and the texture of bedrock. Victor had become a true beast.

"Don't underestimate me, James." His vocal cords grated like coarse sandpaper, producing an ugly rasp.

Thump!

The grass around James was pressed flat. His heart pounded like an engine igniting, his flesh and blood beating out a drumlike roar. Seering heat radiated from his body, warping the air around him. His dark, shoulder-length hair rose and danced in the surging gusts.

James stared at Victor with a coldness he had never shown before and said nothing.

"Good!" Victor opened his jaws in excitement and roared.

Boom! Boom!

They charged at each other, like two runaway steam trains rushing headlong toward a collision.

Victor raced across the grass on all fours, charging like a real beast. Every time he pushed off the ground, his claws carved two deep furrows through the lawn. James clenched both fists and moved with explosive footwork, as if gunpowder were blasting beneath his feet to propel him forward.

The distance between them vanished in an instant. Victor's tiger claw and James's fist slammed into each other at the same time. Victor staggered back two steps, his chest blown open with a bloody crater nearly ten centimeters deep. It had not pierced through. Given Victor's monstrous strength, the injury was bearable, and after taking all of Adam's Source Blood, his healing ability had improved markedly. It seemed to have surpassed James's.

James, meanwhile, was sent flying by Victor's tremendous strength. The bones from his shoulder to his collarbone were pulverized, and the tiger claw tore away a large chunk of muscle. He rolled twice across the ground before steadying himself in a crouch. He glanced at the bones and muscles already knitting back together, his expression more grave than ever.

Victor rolled his neck and examined his hands with satisfaction before pouncing again, giving James no time to recover.

They grappled, fists and claws tearing into flesh. Neither could die, so every attack was a lethal blow delivered without holding back. Their anguished, exhilarated roars provided the perfect soundtrack to the battle.

Crack! Boom!

Victor caught James's swinging punch in his tiger claw, then seized the chance to turn and drive an elbow into him. The spike at his elbow plunged into James's right chest, opening a fist-sized hole.

Whenever Victor got close to James, he still suffered the scorching, needle-like damage radiating from James's body. But Victor did not care. He let his skin and muscles melt as if corroded, while his enhanced healing ability allowed his body to keep pace with the damage.

"Why won't you accept yourself? Why?"

James fell further and further behind. Victor's physical attributes were now even greater than Adam's had been at his peak.

The saber-toothed tiger's strength and explosive power were especially formidable. Even with James's flawless combat technique to redirect and absorb the force, every blow still inflicted destructive damage. This was despite the further enhancement of his bones after his kung fu had reached the level of Huajin.

Victor kept asking James the same question, seemingly without reason. Each challenge was accompanied by an even more ferocious attack. The flesh on James's body had almost entirely grown back at least once. Since awakening Wolverine's power, he had never felt so helpless.

Crack! Boom!

Victor abandoned all pretense of defense. He took several of James's punches to the chest, his internal organs rupturing. As he spat blood, he gathered his strength and slammed both claws into James's head, then kicked him into a boulder more than ten meters away.

One of James's eyes had been smashed, and his face was so mangled it was impossible to tell what he had originally looked like. His neck had snapped in two places, his chest was caved in, and the boulder behind him had fractured into countless pieces.

He coughed up blood from time to time, unable to summon the strength to get back up.

"Still refusing to accept who you are? What are you afraid of? Afraid you'll become like me?"

Victor slowly approached, step by step.

James squinted with his one good eye. His lips moved faintly, as though he wanted to say something.

"What do you want, Victor? This?"

Clusters of flesh-worms writhed beneath the skin on James's arms. Two pairs of bone claws, nearly thirty centimeters long, slowly pierced out between his finger bones. Their surfaces were knobby and uneven, a ghastly pale white.

His body healed rapidly. Soon, even his shattered eye had recovered.

James's pupils became olive-shaped, seeming to glow green. His body erupted with Jing Qi once more. The bone claws were like steel blades tempered in fire.

"That's it! That's the real you!"

Victor saw the bone claws protruding from James's hands and laughed maniacally. He felt the greatest joy of his life, so pure and overwhelming—it meant he was no longer alone.

James clenched his fists, bone claws extended, and shot toward Victor.

Once his rage completely took over and his claws emerged, it seemed that his strength and speed increased as well. His Jing Qi grew even more violent and surging, as though anger was the natural source of his power.

Whoosh!

James's bone claws pierced through Victor's incoming tiger claw. He twisted his wrist, and Victor's elbow joint snapped with a crack. The saber-toothed tiger roared as James frantically stabbed at his body with his other set of bone claws.

Aah!!!

With every punch, James drove his bone claws deep into Victor's body, then slammed his knuckles into Victor's muscles, blasting out a crater of flesh with each burst of force. In an instant, he landed more than a dozen blows, turning Victor's massive body into a shredded mess.

Boom! Boom!

The saber-toothed tiger vented his fury with two wild blows from his other, uncontrollable tiger claw, striking the side of James's head. James paid no heed to the sharp crack of his neck breaking. His uppercut shot upward, smashing Victor's broad jaw, and his bone claws punched through Victor's lower jaw and mouth, plunging straight into his skull.

Victor's brain was injured. He staggered a couple of steps like a drunk, blood running from his eyes. No trace of conscious thought remained; he roared on instinct. The tiger paw James had impaled clenched abruptly, its bones catching on the bone claws. Ignoring the pain, Victor twisted with all his strength.

Crack!

The bone claws on James's left hand were snapped off. Their three broken ends were uneven, exposing the reddish, marrow-rich tissue inside each claw.

He howled in agony, then stepped in and crouched, slipping behind Victor. Victor's reactions and speed had slowed, and after the slightest hesitation, James drove his right claw into Victor's neck. He clenched his left fist. Though its bone claws were broken, the fractured bones were enveloped in blazing Jing Qi, which still pierced Victor's back and sank precisely into his spine.

At that moment, the unexpected happened.

The marrow inside James's broken bone claws and Victor's spinal cord connected in an extraordinarily unlikely way. Both of them felt a suction force surge through their bodies, as if they were drawing marrow from each other. The pain of having their marrow extracted surpassed anything they had suffered in the entire battle.

Flesh and bone began to grow around James's broken left claw and Victor's back, tightly enveloping the connection until solid tissue joined them together.

James struggled desperately to pull his bone claws free, but the mind-shattering pain and the unusually tough new tissue, already almost grown together, bound them tightly. It was as if a desire buried deep in the blood of their bodies had finally been fulfilled.

They howled in pain at the same time, instinctively using every strength their bodies possessed to try to absorb each other's bone marrow.

James gathered in all his Jing Qi. Years of practicing fist techniques let him quickly get a handle on his qi and blood. He could clearly feel streams of energy-filled substance flowing from Victor's body into his bones.

It was an exhilarating feeling, as if his strength were swelling without end. The bones throughout his body quickly filled with an abundance of heat, then overflowed. James's bone cells began dividing, dying, and regenerating at a rapid pace.

Soon, all the bones in his body had been completely replaced. They had grown thicker and tougher, their density far exceeding that of ordinary bones.

His skeleton began to take on a new form. His spine transformed into three interlocking, twisted columns, a bizarrely beautiful feat of biological engineering. Similar changes continued throughout James's body. Next came the renewal of his flesh cells and the replacement of his skin, hair, and other tissues.

The bone claws on his right hand grew thicker and longer. They pushed out between the bones of his fingers, no longer attached to his knuckles. The skin on his forearm split open in narrow slits as ivory-white bone grew out beneath it, forming a shape like an arm shield that covered him from fist to elbow.

New bone claws thrust out from the shield, each over half a meter long. Three clusters of razor-sharp, shark-fin-like barbs jutted from the shield, and a long, pointed bone spike grew backward from his elbow, just like Victor's.

His bones took on a texture closer to metal. Only a few scattered knots and ridges marred the bone claws and arm shield.

Apart from the strength he had absorbed from Victor's bones, a portion of a cool, liquid-like substance also flowed into him. Unlike Victor's marrow, which fused seamlessly with James without rejection, this substance stirred a dark, bloodthirsty urge in his mind once it entered his body.

James had absorbed too much new power. He could no longer control the qi and blood in his body as freely as before, and his martial arts realm fell from Huajin.

Victor's body visibly shrank. His nearly two-meter-forty frame steadily grew smaller, and his broad, powerful shoulders narrowed. The hair on his head and his beard rapidly turned white, while his skin gradually wrinkled and sagged.

The flesh that had grown to join them was forced to remain connected until James had finished absorbing Victor's power. Then it quickly died and withered away on its own. Victor lay on the ground, barely clinging to life like an old man on the verge of death. His eyes had turned gray and cloudy, and his lips moved faintly.

James's body was filled with explosive power he could not control. The bone claws on his left arm had also grown into the same form as those on his right, yet he slumped helplessly beside Victor, dazed and staring blankly at his face. His lips moved faintly, and James unconsciously leaned closer.

"...Thank... you, Jamie. If only we could've fought like this a day earlier..."

James was at a loss, unsure how to face the situation. Victor had wanted him to confront his true self. He had wanted them both to set aside all their reservations and fight to their hearts' content.

Even with this outcome, Victor seemed satisfied. He had found someone like himself, and he had finally found a truly exhilarating fight.

His expression was more complicated than ever. There was reluctance in it, but also deep satisfaction and release. His cracked, wrinkled lips curved upward. The sun was finally setting, and the evening light fell across Victor's face as he smiled happily.

For the first time in his life, Victor Logan, the saber-toothed tiger, smiled.