Chapter 153: A Clash Of Kings
[I warned you, but noooo. Brought this on yourself.]
'Didn't think it'd spiral this hard. Maybe I can find him a teacher.'
Eyelid twitching, Seo-jin shook his head, eyes focused on Hex. Slims clustered around the demon, both of them smashing their skulls together in time while Hex hacked at his guitar like it owed him money. Noise everywhere. No structure. No restraint.
Still, the effect spoke for itself.
[War Dirge // Active]
[+15% Attack / +15% Attack Speed]
From the far side of the clearing, Min's voice cut through the din.
"Seo-jin! Check this out!"
Spotting her took no effort. She stood out like a flare in filth. What lay crushed at her boots, however, earned him a slow grin, and the thought of how she'd react if she realized Grimm was effectively perched on her head made it linger.
[This is what Grimm was throwing a fit over?]
'Looks like it.'
Seeing the human up close made the ghost's agitation easier to place, even if it still didn't sit right. Grimm getting riled over anyone but him stirred something old and unpleasant in Seo-jin's gut. Jealousy.
"Take her to Lynn."
Min clicked her tongue, annoyed at being pulled off the fun, and bent to grab Teal—only for her arm to jerk short, blood already running. A thorned vine cinched tight around her bicep.
"Zha-ith stays."
Kal-Ulith's snarl cut in as he squared up, one shoulder charred black. He'd eaten a piece of the lightning meant for them and only now regained his legs.
"Half-breed...now I see it."
Seo-jin tipped his head, studying Teal in a way that made her skin crawl.
Min didn't wait for permission. Aura flared as she flexed, muscle swelling until the vine tore apart with a wet snap. She stepped between Teal and the elf, eyes burning as her grin widened.
"You take her. I'll play with this one."
Given Teal's condition, Seo-jin didn't argue. A thought struck, and he turned his attention back to the elf.
"Sha-ith senek… zha-lur sheth ul-kor. Sunek."
Kal-Ulith's face twitched, surprise flashing before it set into something hard and ugly. He spat to the side, then roared as the vines burst longer from his flesh, coiling and readying as he surged forward. Whatever Seo-jin said shattered what restraint the elf had left.
The reaction was immediate. Min broke into a wide grin, the kind that only came when she was about to hurt something badly. She smashed her fists together, the crack swallowed by explosions, screams, and the grind of metal and bone, then charged straight in.
They collided head-on. The impact hit like colliding trains, shockwaves rippling through the camp. Min won it outright. Both bodies tore through huts, wood and mud bursting apart as they vanished into the churn of combat.
"Crazy woman."
Smoke rolled past as Seo-jin shook his head. Something detonated nearby, the air stinking of ozone and burning flesh. He turned back toward Teal as red and violet auras flared in his periphery.
"Consider yourself fortunate, human. If not for my companion, I'd leave you where you are."
She hadn't seen Min leave. Hadn't heard the crash. Her focus never wavered from him, eyes locked through the chaos, through the howling imps and snapping broodlings. When his words finally registered, they broke something loose.
"You're… real?"
Her voice shook, thin and cracking.
"I'm not dreaming?"
She pinched her arm again and again, skin splitting, blood streaking down as sparks of magic and burning debris flashed around them. Screams rose nearby. Something died loudly to their left.
Seo-jin frowned. Something was wrong with her, badly wrong, and Grimm's agitation pressed through the bond hard enough to itch. He needed her gone from the killing field.
He moved to grab her—
—and the ground surged.
Dirt buckled and split as something tunneled fast beneath the surface, ripping forward in a straight line toward them. Seo-jin didn't wait. He hooked Teal up against his chest and vaulted aside as the earth erupted.
A massive flower burst free where they'd stood, its stem tearing stone apart as petals peeled open with a wet scream. Black ichor sprayed outward in heavy droplets, hissing as it ate into wood, flesh, and soil alike.
Acid rain fell toward them.
Seo-jin didn't flinch. Through the broodlink, the response was already there.
Bile slammed into place in front of him, his new bloodmask flowing and reshaping like molten gore as he raised his hands and triggered his skill.
[True Noh: Blood-Self Revelation]
In less than a heartbeat, the bloodmask ruptured outward. Liquid flesh spilled, snapped back, and sealed around him, sheathing Bile head to toe. His body thickened under the impact as the acid struck, every drop caught and absorbed by the living shell instead of burning through him.
Still, the damage was catastrophic. Bile's health crashed straight to one, but stopped, while a violent pulse of bloodlight surged through the broodlink, washing over every broodling and every human aligned with Seo-jin.
Seo-jin watched as Feed ignited through the link, dragging Bile's health upward as fast as it had fallen. He watched the same broodling who had knelt shaking a day earlier tear into the flower's stem, clawing and ripping it apart while encased in flowing crimson armor that steamed and reformed with every strike.
[His class is remarkable. Of all of them, it offers the widest functional range.]
A tug along the broodlink pulled his attention aside. Synapse moved through the fight, methodical and detached, swallowing severed plant matter torn from fallen elves between steps. Every few paces he'd slice an imp's face open, or an artery opened cleanly, then moved on without pause.
The pattern was consistent. Each strike was fatal, but none were finished. Throats were opened and abandoned, bodies left to collapse on their own. He treated enemies like terrain, obstacles cleared just enough to pass, stepping over them as if they were no more than broken stone in his path.
[You'll need a strategy for that one. You won't be able to leash him the way you do the others.]
'Working on it. For now, force will suffice.'
Power. Within the brood, it was the only currency that held value. No emotion required to acknowledge that truth.
His gaze dropped to the human. Mutilated ears. Scar tissue layered over scar tissue. Bruises old and new stacked across her skin. He noted it all and dismissed it just as quickly. He couldn't care less.
"Hand."
She didn't respond. Teal sat locked in place, eyes blown wide, breathing shallow and uneven, her mind stuck somewhere behind her face.
He exhaled once, impatient. One cleaver hung loose as his tendons connected to the handle stretched, fingers closing around her wrist.
"Never done this to a human. If you live, you can describe it afterward."
System light surged. In a blink the suit across his torso peeled away, muscle and skin laid bare. Broad shoulders, corded mass, raw and precise. Her eyes finally focused, just for a second, before he hauled her forward and pressed her palm flat against his back.
Inside her haze, inside the heat and ringing panic, something finally gave. This had to be a dream. The sight of her hand being eaten, then her arm, then her face swallowed by shadow couldn't be real. Night closed in, thick and absolute, and the world stopped resisting.
Seo-jin rolled his shoulders as the twin growths gurgled, finishing their work. She was still alive. He could feel her as hot air washed over his skin. Blood, smoke, and burned flesh filled his lungs. The sounds of his brood tearing the camp apart pressed in from every direction.
For the first time, he didn't leash the growths.
He gave them one directive.
Rage.
The battlefield was already drowning in it. Blood slicked the ground. Bodies piled where they fell. Open wounds smoked, muscle burned, bone showed through torn flesh. Every living thing still standing was locked in killing range, steel, claw, and fang colliding until screams and detonations blurred into constant noise.
Then something cut through it, and everything stalled.
It didn't matter what you were, broodling, imp, human, elf. Every body seized. Hands flew to ears. Spines bowed.
Those nearest to Seo-jin dropped outright. Friend and enemy alike convulsed on the ground, mouths foaming, blood leaking from their ears as if pressure had ruptured them from the inside. The twin growths had screamed. Not sound, but force. A raw discharge that tore through flesh and sense alike. Even he felt it, heat crawling across his back, his skull ringing hard enough to blur vision.
[What the fuck was that?!]
'Didn't know they could do that.'
He worked a finger in his ear, shaking his head as the world steadied.
Shaking it off, he smiled inside, and system light detonated around him. He was immediately drowned by bloodlight that surged upward in a violent column, pouring into the sky.
When it cleared, his suit was gone.
Armor layered his body instead. The chestpiece remained familiar, but new gauntlets locked over his arms, bright green and heavy. Dark violet plates sealed along his legs, segmented and dense. He shoved the flicker of irritation aside as his skin split and darkened beneath the load.
Stripped of suit, the equipment revealed itself for what it was. Tools chosen for function alone.
The change finished.
Azakh-Tur stood alone, bloodlight spilling skyward in a towering pillar. Power made visible. A declaration written in force.
A challenge thrown without words.
The sense of an oncoming break locked the field in place. No one moved.
Except Min.
She dropped from above like a comet, the impact cracking earth beside Azakh-Tur. In her grip hung the upper half of Kal-Ulith, the elf somehow still breathing, blood streaming where his body ended.
"Boss fight?"
The glow in her eyes matched the fever on her voice.
"Boss fight."
"Fuck yeah—let's—ah, fuck no. You wouldn't!"
She saw it then. The look he wore every time she was about to be cut out of something good.
"Sorry, Min. A boss handles the big problems. Otherwise, what am I here for?"
He stepped past her. The ground thudded behind him as she vented her frustration into the dirt, but he didn't turn back. He was watching the imps expressions instead.
While he still could.
As he closed the distance, every last one of them folded. Heads dropped. Bodies shook. Groveling came easy when survival depended on it.
A voice interrupted. One he'd been waiting to hear.
"Demon make fine prey. This hunt fill songs for many ages."
The voice carried weight. Thick with accent. Heavy with authority. Pale smoke lifted as the elf king stepped into view, his pale-white aura bleeding upward, eyes burning as he advanced.
Azakh-Tur measured him in a glance. Strong. B-rank. Power coiled tight beneath a lean frame, violence written into posture and movement alike. The white hair might have marked age, but the tusks tearing through his face told the real story. This was the peak of their kind.
Earlier, he'd let an elf scream long enough for the system to pin down the dialect. No reason to waste time now. He.chose to speak their language, shifting tongues cleanly, flicking a glance toward Synapse before he spoke.
"You misunderstand. This isn't a hunt. It's a feeding. And I appreciate you gathering yourselves."
Surprise crossed the king's face. It passed quickly.
"If you speak our words, then you know all things are a hunt to an elf. Before I take my trophy, give your name demon. Let it be remembered in song."
A grin cut across Azakh-Tur's face as Butcher's Wrath shuddered in his grip.
"I am the Broodfather. But you don't need to share yours. I don't care."
The elf king smiled...then they moved.
They hit like colliding blades.
Cleavers met fist, metal shrieked, and the impact tore a trench through the dirt beneath them. Azakh-Tur slid back a step, boots carving grooves as the elf king drove forward, tusks bared, arms moving faster than eyes should track.
Leaves flashed at the edge of his vision.
Thin layers of green had wrapped the king's forearms without a pause in motion, steel-hard and veined, plates knitting over muscle as blows landed. Azakh-Tur hadn't seen the growth happen. He'd only heard the change when steel struck flesh and rang like iron on iron.
They tore across the field.
Cleaver arcs chased white fists, each exchange ripping through anything too slow to flee. Imps burst apart. Elves vanished in sprays of red and green. Stone huts folded. Roots snapped. The ground itself buckled as the two carved lines through the chaos, neither giving ground for more than a breath.
Fast. Controlled. Both testing.
The king pressed with clean violence, every strike measured, every step feeding momentum. Azakh-Tur answered in kind, blades cutting short, brutal paths, watching how the plant-armored flesh flexed, how it absorbed, how it adapted.
Neither spoke.
They didn't need to.
The air thickened. Pressure rolled outward. Azakh-Tur felt it before he saw it, a familiar pull, a tightening thread tugging at the battlefield itself.
The elf king broke, Leaping back and gaining distance.
He spread his arms.
Voices rose.
Elves and imps alike shuddered as the siphon took hold, strength bleeding from their bodies in visible streams, pale and sickly, flooding into the king. His frame swelled, aura flaring white-hot as borrowed power stacked on borrowed power.
Exactly as expected.
Azakh-Tur smiled.