Chapter 154: The Hunt
Power streamed out of the elves in ragged wisps, their bodies sagging as the king drank them dry. Azakh-Tur watched it happen with open interest. There was no pretense or ceremony to it. Just theft. Power ripped straight from living bodies until they were little more than meat that could still breathe. If he gave the word, his brood could butcher the lot of them without resistance.
All in. No retreat. He could respect that kind of decision. He just didn't fear it.
Keeping to the elf tongue, he let one cleaver rest across his shoulder and studied the king as the siphon ran its course.
"Impressive. Tell me something. What happens if I decide to slaughter everyone you're draining?"
The king barked out a laugh.
"More will come."
The pull ended.
The king's aura detonated outward, a surge of white pressure that slammed into Azakh-Tur like a blunt instrument. The force crushed breath, crawled into the lungs, pressed against the skull. Not true A-rank dominance, but close enough to make the air feel hostile.
The king smiled.
"It was a good fight, but all hunts must end."
Azakh-Tur lowered his cleavers, head canting to one side as if bored, then lifted one blade and pointed it at him.
"Then stop stalling."
The king flung his arms wide.
Wood tore through flesh.
Two jagged shafts burst from his palms and locked into place, bark splitting as they lengthened, edges forming along the grain. When he turned them into position, the blades caught the light.
[Careful. Those look sharp.]
Azakh-Tur's mouth twitched.
'Worried about me? That's cute.'
[Suck a—]
The king vanished. So did Azakh-Tur.
The first blow landed like a landslide.
Wood met cleaver and the world split. Azakh-Tur skidded backward, heels carving trenches through dirt and bone as the king drove him across the field. Each strike came heavier than the last. Not faster. Just raw power. Every swing carried the stolen weight of dozens, fed straight into the king's arms. Huts collapsed. Stone shattered. Bodies caught too close burst into red vapor and fragments that never finished falling. The ground didn't just crack, it heaved, coughing up roots and corpses as if trying to escape.
The Broodfather was giving ground. Again. Again. Again. Cleavers rang, sparks shearing off in hard arcs as the king's swords smashed down with brutal precision. Each impact thundered through the field, shockwaves flattening imps and elves alike.
Anything that couldn't flee fast enough paid for it in chunks. The king pressed, relentless, driving him through smoke, through screaming, through the reek of blood and torn earth. It was dominance. Clear. Overwhelming.
But something was wrong.
Through the chaos, through the constant pressure, through blows that should have caved his chest or split his skull, Azakh-Tur remained untouched. No blood. No stagger beyond what he allowed. Every retreat was measured. Every parry clean. Every step back deliberate. Cleavers slid just enough. His body bent where it needed to bend, his stance stable as the ground beneath him became chaos. The battlefield burned and died around them, yet not a single strike found him.
The elf raged as the demon laughed.
"What's wrong? Why haven't you killed me yet? Don't tell me you can't!"
The taunt tore across the field just as Azakh-Tur stopped giving ground. Defense vanished. He stepped in. Before the king could set his stance, a heel drove into his chest. Bone cracked. Air detonated. The elf launched backward like a fired bolt, armor and flesh tearing the dirt open as he vanished into the ground.
[+450 Damage Dealt]
The impact landed with a concussive thud, earth collapsing inward around the cratered body.
[Defense assessed: approximately 25% physical damage reduction.]
Six hundred base damage. Over three thousand health. His body felt unburdened, stronger, faster. Speed crested past eight hundred miles per hour, movement snapping clean between strikes instead of dragging through resistance.
Items.
With the added reinforcement from his new armor, every combat stat surged into A-rank territory. His vitality climbed higher still, flesh dense with stored violence.
[Level // 22]
[Exp // 21772/22368]
[HP // 880/880 (3100/3100)]
[SM // 51/51]
[ATTRIBUTES]
[STR // 38+10+5 // A]
[VIT // 37+10+15+10 // S]
[AGI // 38+15 // A]
[INT // 24 // D]
[FLH // 31 // C]
[WIL // 27 // D]
[AP // 0]
The strength felt right. Long overdue. He drank it in and hated himself for waiting this long, but the rush didn't last. A cold edge cut through it. If he was only now stepping onto this tier, then the Woon's had started here. Whatever items the Chairman carried would not be solved with brute force alone.
A worry for later. For now, there was tusk and hide. Fist and bone.
At the edge of the ruined village, his forces held back, keeping clear of the kill zone. Pain stood closest, fire crawling hotter across his body as he watched. Panic clung near his shoulder, claws digging in, teeth gnawing at Pain's horns as the battle unfolded, chewing to bleed off stress.
"Should we help?"
Lynn said it before she could stop herself. The regret hit a breath later.
"Help, and you die."
The warning didn't come from who she expected. Synapse spoke without looking away, eyes locked on the Broodfather, tracking each shift of weight, each contraction of muscle. His voice stayed flat, measured, even as he marked Lynn for a liability.
Snare tightened his grip on the staff until the wood bit into his palms. He had been about to say the same thing. Hearing it voiced first sent a crawl of unease through him.
He stopped watching the Broodfather. He watched Synapse instead.
The elf king screamed, and the sound pulled tension tight across the group. A mass of vines erupted over the enemy camp, unfurling in a violent sprawl like some buried thing tearing free of the ground.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Trunk-thick coils hammered down in rapid succession, pulverizing earth and bodies alike. Each strike aimed to finish it. None did.
Slims bounced in place, jittering like he'd been dosed with stimulants, feet never touching still ground. Split-jaw cursed and shot him a look of annoyance, clamping a hand over a fresh gash as blood dried between his fingers.
A dull red wash lit the older man's face as Bile stepped in beside him. Split-jaw glanced over despite himself. The bloodmask churned, layered like overlapping hands pressed together, fingers shifting and sliding across Bile's face.
"Stop staring."
The words snapped him back hard. Split-jaw flinched, eyes jerking forward—
—just in time to see to see the Broodfather lean back, his body shaking. Laughter tore loose as Azakh-Tur squared up to the thing calling itself king.
"Good! Good! You surprise me! Show me more! Show me all of it, Elf King!"
Bloodlight detonated—
—and something inside the king fractured with it.
"How?!"
The shout came ragged.
"How do you have a shard?!"
He had taken them for relics at first. Gear. Forged power. External. But as the clash dragged on, his senses kept catching on something foul. He resisted the conclusion until it forced itself on him. The armor stank of the Network. That thin, disgusting residue clung to it. Unmistakable.
Normally it wouldn't have mattered. Armor was armor. Anyone could strip it from a corpse and wear it. But wearing wasn't using. Without a shard, there were no stat gains, no skill triggers, no resonance. Just dead metal.
Yet the power was moving. Flowing. Responding. The demon wasn't just clad in it, he was a User.
Fear burned away the king's discipline. Strategy collapsed. In a flash of heat and agony, his back swelled, flesh distorting as a massive bud forced itself into being in less than a heartbeat.
Azakh-Tur saw the cost in the king's face. Felt the damage paid to bring it forth that fast. He respected the resolve. He also knew it wouldn't matter.
He'd seen this before.
And he hadn't even used a single skill yet.
The night before, when the king's warband fell on the Dragon Beastmen, he had observed from afar. As the fighting turned and the king ripped strength from his own ranks, something clicked into place. A portion of his quest resolved itself. The bond had revealed its anchor. All that remained was to cut it loose.
Grimm drifted closer to scout, but Azakh-Tur had already seen enough. He watched the elf king unleash that swollen growth on the red dragon. The shape. The timing. The cost. He filed it away.
Now, as the massive plant reared up again and its jaws peeled wide, he set his stance and waited. While the king's face had lost all control, eyes burning with panic and rage.
"Broodfather! Die!"
The plant discharged. A tidal surge of corrosive filth poured forward, thick and choking, stripping the air as it came. Azakh-Tur didn't dodge. Didn't shield.
[Savage Feed // Activated]
In the king's eyes, horror replaced fury as the demon's mouth tore open, expanding far beyond bone and flesh. A vast black maw unfolded, layered with endless teeth, swallowing the torrent whole in a single closing snap.
"What?!"
The king howled, but the exchange had already resolved. The timing perfect for the shocked monarch.
[Savage Feed] lunged for a second bite, but the growth had collapsed in on itself, its fluids spent. The jaws missed. The skill disengaged as the bud withered, leaving the king exposed and reeling.
The elf king's thoughts snapped into motion. Instinct took over. This was no beast to be crushed through force alone. This was prey that demanded thought.
In less than a breath, he tore the exchange apart piece by piece. His strike had been erased. Not resisted, but removed. If the demon truly was a User, then what he had just deployed was likely one of the humans' so-called trump cards. The kind burned once, paid for dearly, and couldn't be used repeatedly.
As the demon's massive jaws drew back and shrank, time seemed to stretch. A grin crept across the king's face. He praised his own patience. Praised his choice to stay out of the fray until the dragon had been fully digested.
Grimacing as bone and muscle slid back into place, Azakh-Tur felt the familiar ache of [Savage Feed] still crawling across his face, when something shifted. Deep within the withered growth on the king's back, an ember flared to life.
This time, the laughter was the king's.
"Burn!"
The bud snapped open and fire erupted. A wide cone of flame roared forward, swallowing Azakh-Tur whole.
A scream tore loose from the edge of the field as Lynn dropped to her knees.
Heat detonated across the battlefield. Even at a distance, hands flew up in reflex. Everything within the elf camp caught and vanished. Corpses. Survivors. Elf and imp alike. Reduced to drifting ash.
As the blaze thinned, before the attack fully bled out, something unexpected took shape. From her place in the dirt, Lynn blinked hard.
"He can fly?!"
Above the dying fire, Azakh-Tur rose as if the air itself held his weight. Green and violet light bled from his armor as he lifted Butcher's Wrath, both cleavers sheathed in [Hellfire].
"Rend!"
The elf king looked up just in time to see twin blades wrapped in bloodlight plunging straight down toward his skull.
The twin blades carved straight through him.
Steel met flesh, plant, and bone without slowing. The bud split. The body split. Blood and sap atomized as the cleavers slammed into the ground beyond, detonating stone and soil in a rising wall of dust.
Silence hit hard. At the edges of the battlefield, everything tensed. Brood, humans. No one moved as the dust boiled and rolled, swallowing the place where the king had stood.
Snare stepped forward, staff grinding against the rock. His eyes flared faintly as he stared into the cloud. His jaw tightened.
"Something's off."
The words barely left him before the air screamed.
A violent whoosh tore outward as Azakh-Tur swung the massive cleavers wide, using them like fans. The dust ripped apart, the cloud shredded and hurled back.
Nothing. No corpse. No blood. No ruin worth the strike.
'No damage. Where'd he go?'
His eyes burned brighter as [Soul Sight] snapped open.
'There.'
A thin trail. Weak. Fading. Light bleeding out through the ground itself.
Azakh-Tur followed it with his gaze, tracking the dim line as it slid away beneath the battlefield. Far off in the distance, the earth swelled. Soil split. Roots twisted. A shape forced itself upward, reforming like a plant clawing back into the world.
The elf king.
Rebuilt. Thinner. Slower. Aura shredded and leaking, pale smoke barely holding together. Whatever he had used had torn years out of him.
An escape, and a costly one. The king staggered and turned, retreating deeper into the broken land. Azakh-Tur didn't chase.
He lowered the cleavers and started walking instead. Slow. Deliberate. Each step cracking the ground beneath him as his aura bled into the air.
"Widow's gonna be happy."
He laughed as he imagined her expression. Bloodlight lifting in waves.