Chapter 116: A Thin Web
It had been two minutes of awkward horror. Seo-jin always imagined the brood growing strong enough to blanket a continent, but watching over two hundred lesser broodlings line up and wait to be eaten by the Twinback Growths made him realize he had a logistics problem he'd need to fix later.
The last broodling's leg vanished with a wet slurp and a final burp from the mouths. Seo-jin pressed the rune under his pauldron and collapsed the plates, covering the growths.
He ignored the dwarves' disgust, pushed it aside, and reset his focus. A few slow breaths. Hands tightening. Eyes steady. He checked cooldowns and UI. Only [Desecrate] and [Savage Feed] sat dark. Health and soulmass were full.
[HP // 1300/1300]
[SM // 49/49]
It had been a long time since he'd felt this coil under his ribs, like something demanding he prove himself again. Watching the broodlings growth had shifted something. If they were rising, he had to keep pace. He needed to prove his strength.
[She holds the advantage. Black Pit is useless up there. You'll need speed and total control if you want to match her footing.]
'If it proves too difficult, I'll just drag her down.'
His skin split. Tendons peeled back. Veins hooked metal as Butcher's Wrath tore free from his arms. Steam rolled from the blades. Their hunger beat against his palms like a second pulse.
"Don't worry. This time we're fighting."
He crouched to leap when a heavy hand clamped his shoulder.
"You're a fool. We could've killed her together."
"I was also a fool for letting your people come at all. If I knew this many were gonna die, I'd have picked a different plan."
He didn't wait for the Forgemaster's answer.
Behind him, Pain, Panic, and Snare stood in silence. No cheers. No pleas. No fear. Just that cold, sharpened confidence, the kind only the brood carried when they knew their father would win.
Seo-jin launched upward, threading through the hanging webs like loose roots. His feet hit the upper lattice without a wobble.
"Before we kill you, tell us something first. How does a demon like you wield a shard? It would be a waste if One gutted you and it slid back to that vile Network. Speak, and perhaps One will bother remembering your name."
Seo-jin stepped forward on the webbing like it was hardwood. With each stride the human shell sloughed off, peeling in strips, his true form pushing through.
"Fair question. But here's the problem—my shard says it wouldn't bind to a whore like you even if the alternative was snorting smegma. Hope that clears things up."
The air snapped. Her killing intent doubled until it felt heavy enough to sting.
"One wonders, are you even a demon, Broodfather? You speak like a human. You fuck like one. You even reek of them."
That one landed. Hard. His only reference for sex had been the real Seo-jin's memories, and he thought he'd done fine judging by her reactions, but the betrayal hit anyway.
"At least I didn't smell like a sun-dried corpse! Took forever to scrub your stink off my nuts!"
[Control yourself. She wants you reckless.]
Her laughter crawled across the web, making it shiver.
"You are a curious thing, Broodfather. Now One wants to peel open your skull even more. Come—let us find the secrets tucked inside."
'Shi—!'
She moved before the thought finished. Pure velocity. A blur.
He barely threw himself aside as she shot past like a fired bolt.
[She's getting an agility boost on her threads. Take the fight down.]
'Not yet!'
Sparks burst off the web as he parried one of her legs. Her chitin hit like forged plate, but strength favored him. He shoved back and swung for her thorax.
Nothing.
She snapped away on a thread, legs scraping as she reeled herself out of reach.
"Sluggish, Broodfather. Your swings crawl. Are you winded already?"
Her laugh rang across the webwork as she darted between strands, her body a streak of chitin and teeth.
He tightened his grip, eyes tracking her blur.
'I can't hold back.'
[-2SM]
[SM // 47/49]
[Fiendskin // Activated]
[+5% Physical Defense for 60sec]
With the curse layered under his armor, his defense settled at a clean thirty-five percent.
[-1SM]
[SM // 46/49]
[Hellfire // Activated]
[+10% Damage]
With [Hellfire] burning through his arms and his strength buff active, each swing of Butcher's Wrath carried a base output of four hundred twenty-six. He doubted she could take many full hits. The problem was landing one.
He snapped aside from a streak of webbing. His tail hooked a strand, swung him through the air—then everything stopped when she met him mid-arc.
Her charge blew through him like a ram. His back nearly broke a tree in half.
[-92HP]
[HP // 1208/1300]
[Demonic Will // Activated]
[Stack // 0]
Her forelimbs pinned him. Her jaws on her thorax opened.
Too close to miss.
[Severborne Array // Activated]
[+48 Damage Dealt]
[+48 Damage Dealt]
[+48 Damage Dealt]
[+48 Damage Dealt]
[!! Critical !!]
[+72 Damage Dealt]
All five blades punched into her, the last burying itself in an eye. She tore backward, screeching as metal ripped free.
[-1SM // Hellfire]
[SM // 44/49]
[Severborne Array // Deactivated]
The blades snapped back into his shoulder. Breath surged into his lungs. A quick check of his UI made him grin...every strike of the blades counted as his own.
He launched forward, legs bulking, body cutting across the web like a bolt.
[She'll block.]
'I'm counting on it.'
[Conditions Cleared]
[Forge Strike // Activated]
[+100% Critical Damage]
[-2SM]
[SM // 43/49]
[Rend // Activated]
[+15% Slicing Damage for 5sec]
He twisted mid-charge, both cleavers arcing down with everything behind them.
She moved exactly as expected, blocking high with one front leg.
He wasn't aiming for her body.
He was aiming for that leg.
[!! Critical !!]
[+852 Damage Dealt]
[+425 Damage Dealt]
[-1SM // Hellfire]
[SM // 42/49]
A normal crit stacked fifty percent extra. [Forge Strike] doubled the entire attack after achieving five consecutive hits. Her limb took the whole thing. Bone and chitin sheared. The leg spun away, slamming to the earth far below.
"You fiend!"
"You bitch—!"
He swung again, cleavers tearing a wide gouge through her web instead of her body as she vaulted back into the strands.
He broke into a sprint. Knocking aside clustered shots of web as he tried to close the distance, but Lilid kept slipping away, firing as she danced along her threads.
[Rend // Deactivated]
[She's healing.]
"I can see that!"
He skidded, rage burning through his teeth as his blades shrank.
"Grunt! Her health!"
The goggled dwarf didn't hesitate.
"Just over nine thousand! She juiced up after eating that snake!"
Lilid's aura twisted, smug.
"One should never reveal a woman's secrets!"
A clump of web spat from her thorax, stretching to a needle mid-flight. It shot straight for Grunt.
Thragdur smashed it aside with a gauntlet, sparks skating off steel.
"Hurry up and kill her! We want to start drinkin'!"
At nine thousand, Azakh-Tur would need close to twenty clean hits unless he struck something vital. Staying up here on her threads only kept her in control. He needed to take ground back...or break her rhythm in one violent stroke.
The idea hit like thunder.
'Can't cut the whole web. She'll rebuild faster than I can ruin it. I need to rip her down, fast, before she expects it.'
He swatted another bolt of webbing, Hellfire ticking hotter, then slammed into a full sprint. Her shots weren't as fast as she was, if he kept moving, he could focus. His mastery of the next skill had been trash so far, but distance was the only way forward.
[Severborne Array // Activated]
The cerabum blades snapped out, drifting behind him as he ran.
Lilid laughed over the strands, mocking through the hiss.
"That trick worked once! It will not work again! We are Lilid! Queen of spiders! Consort of Demon Lord Qukl'tan! We will rip your shard and your secrets from your cor—!"
She jolted aside as a blade cut through where her eye had been.
"Pitiful—!"
Another knife screamed past, close enough to peel chitin from her side.
[Section your mind, treat them like fingers. They should respond, not be commanded.]
Still sprinting, dodging her counterfire, he forced himself to obey. The feeling was difficult, blurry, imprecise, like trying to flex limbs he'd only just grown.
But death sharpened instinct. His thoughts scattered, loosened, thinned. Not control. Reflex.
The blades shifted with him.
Shot after shot, his grip on them didn't tighten...it faded. Step after step, they slowly stopped following commands.
They were following him.
Swatting aside another needle of web, he actually started to drag his aim back a bit. He still had a performance to maintain, any hint he was steering her would ruin everything.
'Little more… almo—'
He sprang off a thick patch of webbing. The instant his body lifted, a cold spike of dread punched through him. He'd been careless.
She wasn't as occupied as he'd hoped.
He twisted mid-air, crossed Butcher's Wrath in front of him, and braced for the charge.
[-152HP]
[HP // 1056/1300]
[Demonic Will // Stack 1]
[+6% Pain Reduction // +1.5% Health Regen]
[+19HP // Demonic Will]
[HP // 1075/1300]
The second they hit, her severed leg convulsed, a new limb bursting out and driving forward like a lance. Punching straight through his unarmored shoulder.
They slammed into the web. Lilid stopped instantly, anchoring both of them against a strand thicker than his torso. Pinned, he wrenched one arm free and swung—
[-159HP]
[HP // 916/1300]
[Demonic Will // Stack 2]
[+12% Pain Reduction // +3% Health Regen]
—but before the blade fell, something he hadn't planned for happened.
Lilid's human torso lunged out of the thorax's gullet like a second predator and drove a hardened web-spike through his arm, pinning it to the strands.
"Apologies, Broodfather. This kiss is going to hurt."
Teeth clicked beneath her, but her smile froze when she saw his face.
"Smiling? Don't attempt to sour this! It will only make us—!"
"Why would I sour this? You did exactly what I wanted."
Her eyes widened. His jaw widened. That was all it took for his bluff to work.
Her mind flashed to the Maw that nearly tore her in half. She abandoned the attack instantly, ripping herself free and throwing her body back. His pinned limb tore loose as she fled, and his flesh started knitting, he shot up to track her jump.
Estimating where she'd land, he smiled... and braced.
[-3SM]
[SM // 35/49]
[Bone Oath // Activated]
[-95HP]
[HP // 860/1300]
[Right Femur // Fractured]
[Healing Disabled // 90sec]
Even with [Demonic Will] dulling the pain, the crack of his femur echoed through his spine like a snapped pipe, but he didn't blink.
So he caught every detail of his attack landing.
Just before she landed, her back leg, the one she extended to land first, snapped on impact. The break hit her like a hammer. She screamed as the web sagged beneath her weight, her balance shredded.
She stumbled right where he wanted, onto the gouge he'd carved out earlier with Rend.
He grinned. Thragdur's image flashed through his thoughts.
[-5SM]
[SM // 29/49]
[Core Reforge // Activated]
[+400% (True Damage)]
Faster than light, the five cerabum blades slammed together mid-air, forming a single spear. They fired as one, bright as a cutting torch, driving straight through Lilid's side.
[+1890 Damage Dealt]
[Core Reforge] didn't care about armor or resistances. True Damage didn't ask permission. It just ripped.
The impact punched straight through her and hurled her off the web. She dropped like a stone, too stunned to catch herself.
Her mind reeled with pain, a shattered leg, then that spear of light. She hit the ground hard enough to rattle the island.
"Children! Save—!"
Her command broke off. A shadow dropped over her.
Two maces. And a demon.
"BROODFATHER!"
"Should've stayed in hell!"
B-BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOO—UGCH!
KRNGH! SQCHNK!
The earth buckled under each strike. Azakh-Tur hammered in a nonstop blur, perched on top her torso, his maces rising and falling like pistons. No technique. Only violence. His blows landed faster than her body could break.
Damage prompts stacked.
Blood sheeted off him.
Chitin burst. Wet chunks slapped the dirt. Gargled cries tore. Flesh pulped.
Spiderlings surged in desperation, screeching as they poured over Pain, Panic, and Snare. The brothers cut through them without slowing, but the swarm didn't care, they threw themselves through claws and gunfire like a living tide.
Only Thragdur held still.
He didn't raise a fist. Didn't shout. Didn't even flinch when spiderlings dropped dead mid-lunge as system light filled his eyes. The Forgemaster stared through the storm of gore and heat, breath held...and his face drained.
He'd lived centuries. Fought horrors older than memory. But what stepped through that haze...horns glowing, cleavers steaming, bloodlight rolling off him like a furnace, was something that clawed old instincts awake.
Not fear of death.
Fear of what came after.
Two black horns rose through the spray. The Broodfather straightened, back cracking as he dragged air through fanged jaws and unleashed a roar that made every dwarf besides their leader, drop to their knees and clutch their ears.
[+1900 Exp]
[EXP // 17772 / 17528]
[Level Up +1]
[Quest // Duel of Severance // Completed]
[Rewards Distributing...]
Azakh-Tur stood alone on the corpse.
His duel was won.