Chapter 145: Possibilities Are Endless
Scanning Hex's updated stats, a twitch ran through the broodlink. Seo-jin turned—and recoiled.
Panic was mid-butchery, sawing a wide slab of flesh loose with manic focus, except his head wasn't on the work. His eyes were locked on Hex, stretched wide, pupils blown, jaw slack and drooling. Every tremor in his arms screamed restraint. He was seconds from abandoning the carcass to crawl all over Hex like a rabid scholar, but discipline barely kept the blade moving.
"How do you feel?"
Hex exhaled a thin plume of vapor. Crimson light pulsed beneath the wraps binding his face.
"Stronger."
Seo-jin reached for the cloth, smiling.
"You don't need to blind yourself any—"
Hex jerked back so hard it startled him.
Seo-jin paused.
"Why pull away?"
The broodling winced, then forced himself upright, posture stiff with effort.
"I know I'm not as clever as Snare, but I think if I take them off now, I'll lose something."
Seo-jin studied him, then nodded. The instinct wasn't wrong. Not cleanly reasoned, but close enough. The hunger to prove himself bled through every word, sharp and obvious. Seo-jin exhaled.
"Fine. Keep them on. Now go stand with your brothers before one of them snaps."
Hex nodded fast, already turning, shoulders squaring as he headed toward Bile and Widow, only to stop dead.
"Panic first."
Hex froze. A visible shudder ran from his neck down his spine.
Seo-jin bit back a chuckle as Hex slowly sagged, then turned, defeated, toward Panic...who had stopped cutting altogether and was now staring at him like a starving surgeon who'd just discovered a living miracle.
"Snare. Have the lessers feed. Two bodies only."
Snare dipped his head. A breath later, the lesser brood surged as one, tearing into two ape carcasses in a single flowing mass, teeth and claws moving with practiced hunger. Flesh vanished under them the way meat disappears beneath a river of blades.
The humans recoiled on instinct, boots scraping back as the sound hit them. A few went gray. Seo-jin cut the moment short, motioning them away and giving them a reason to put distance between themselves and the feeding frenzy.
Min stomped over, soaked in blood and grinning like she'd won something. She slapped Split-jaw between the shoulders as they walked.
"Don't think I missed that save, old man. How're the arms?"
He laughed thinly, pain tucked behind the sound.
"Worry about yourself. You even feel that?"
He pointed.
Min glanced down and burst out laughing.
"Nope!"
A slab of skin the size of a hand had been torn from her calf. Muscle glistened wet beneath it, the wound flexing and slapping with every step.
"Hold still!"
Lynn rushed in, dropping to one knee. Green light spilled from her palms as she pressed them to Min's leg.
Min rolled her eyes. Her hand flashed yellow for a second, then she tossed something toward Seo-jin as he stepped in.
He caught it. A palm-sized plastic case, ridged on one side, buttons set into the face.
He turned it in his hand.
"What's this?"
Before Min could get a word out, Slims was already in Seo-jin's space, talking over her.
"No way. No fuckin' way. You're stupid lucky, boss. That's an antique."
He spun on Min, eyes lit.
"How many tracks?"
She grinned, shoulders squaring.
"Two hundred."
Slims let out a long, reverent whistle.
"Mine only had four. Still flipped it for a fortune. Play something, boss."
Seo-jin turned the object in his hand, thumb tracing the worn edges, then looked back at Min.
"I don't get it. Why give this to me?"
"It's not for you. It's for your im—broodling. Heard ya say he pulled a music class. No way that freak knows a decent tune. This'll help him grow into it."
Seo-jin blinked. That actually stopped him. The fit was too clean. Useful. Thoughtful. Especially for her. He didn't comment, just stared at the buttons a moment longer, then found the worn play symbol and pressed it.
**https://youtu.be/XNjKN0_wx3s?si=C7QyTRSCTNVKnRaT**
The device barked to life with a wall of sound. Thick, violent guitar tore through the air, low and grinding, all teeth and weight.
Min's aura flared on instinct, her head snapping into rhythm as her shoulders started to roll.
"Fuck, I love this one!"
Near the Alpha's corpse, Panic still had a foot planted on Hex's face. The sound hit him mid-motion. He froze, head turning toward the noise.
Mistake.
From under Panic's foot, Hex triggered his class for the first time.
A raw shout tore out of him, force detonating upward and launching Panic skyward, the broodling spinning and laughing as he went.
Hex surged to his feet in one motion, ears twitching hard, every muscle tight.
Each note slammed into him like impact trauma. Each chord tore straight through his chest. When the vocals cut in, unfiltered, ugly, full of heat, something inside him cracked open.
Possibility.
Hex had never heard music like this. Hadn't known sound could hit that hard. Control slipped. He bounded forward, nearly colliding with Seo-jin as he stopped, swaying and jerking to the rhythm.
"Show him how to use it!"
Barking over the noise at Slims, Seo-jin's eye twitched as he shoved the device into Hex's hands. The broodling took it with shaking care, like it might vanish if he breathed wrong.
Shaking off the vibration crawling through his skull, Seo-jin stepped aside until he stood next to Min.
"All your music hit like that?"
She laughed, still moving, still riding the beat.
"Nah. Got all kinds of shit. Rock, rap, even some reggae."
"The fuck is reggae?"
"Yuh don know reggae, mon?! Rude boy rastafari madness!"
Every head turned to Split-jaw.
Silence. Then color rushed into his face. He cleared his throat hard, jaw tightening.
"…Fuck off."
Min lost it. Lynn doubled over. Slims howled. Even Seo-jin cracked a look of interest.
Then his head tilted, just a fraction, eyes tightening on something else entirely.
'What're they doing?'
He'd clocked the signatures earlier, clusters of aura sliding through the ruins. Mostly yellow, a smear of green, no red anywhere. They were converging on the aftermath, on the noise and the blood. He was prepared for another rush of bodies, but it didn't come. Instead, the auras stalled short of the field, holding position, peeking from cover. A few peeled away and vanished altogether.
"Min. You tracking that?"
She followed his line of sight without comment.
"Yeah. I see it."
Jaw tightening, he held the pause too long before speaking again.
"Why aren't they pushing?"
She snorted.
"Because of you. Or more like—"
A hand flicked toward the brood.
They were finishing the last of the carcasses, claws scraping bone, teeth cracking joints. Bellies swelled. Breathing slowed. The frenzy bled out of them as health settled back into place, the sound of feeding fading into wet, satisfied quiet.
She stepped in and took the device from Slims's hand, thumb rolling the volume down. Hex's shoulders sagged in open protest. She ignored it, passed the player back, and turned to Seo-jin.
"Being this close to the city, we're gonna keep runnin into low-rank trash. With our numbers and the noise we're making, we won't see another one like that unless we push farther in. Only reason they attacked was this was probably their territory, otherwise they would have probably avoided us."
She tipped her chin toward the Alpha's corpse. Seo-jin followed the gesture, then frowned. Panic wasn't where he should've been. His gaze swept the field and landed just in time to catch the broodling slamming into Hex, riding his blinded brother like a board across the blood-slick ground.
"Enough! Get back to work!"
Panic froze mid-laugh, then bolted back to the corpse. Seo-jin exhaled and looked past them, back to the watching auras beyond the rubble.
"Makes sense. Only the ones with brains would last long out here."
Nothing survived these lands by choice. Dungeon breaks vomited creatures into a shifting kill-zone where terrain changed, prey fought back, and strength alone burned out fast. Thinking kept you breathing.
He rubbed at his skull, eyes lifting to the setting sun, the decision settling without resistance.
"We camp. No movement after dark. John—take those three and find us ground."
As he pointed out the extra bodies, cold tugged at his chest, a familiar pull at the edge of thought.
'Stick with them. I don't want you roaming.'
A reluctant pulse answered. Then Grimm tore free, stretching as he drifted upward. The ghost twisted like something waking from a long coil, hollow eyes flaring as he glided after John, trailing his swaying entrails behind him.
"And us?"
Lynn's voice cracked despite herself. She looked at Seo-jin with cheeks flushed, her neck slightly tilted.
"Stay focused. Once they've found a spot we move."
His attention slid back to the horizon. Hunger pressed at him, sharp and demanding. He wanted to go deeper. Wanted to tear into whatever waited beyond sight. But pushing now would cost bodies, and bodies were assets.
He had time. Time to go over gains, time to do a bit more shopping.
Out here, patience wasn't optional.
The Freelands made sure of that.
----
The sun slid low behind Shatterbay, bleeding orange through a skyline that no longer remembered how to stand straight. Skyscrapers sat hollowed and split, their glass long gone, ribs of steel showing through concrete skin. Entire floors yawned open to the air. Wind threaded through broken corridors and empty offices, carrying grit, smoke, and the distant stink of salt and rot. The city didn't glow so much as smolder, heat clinging to stone and metal as daylight bled out.
As the light died, the old veins woke up. Neon signs flickered and stuttered back to life in pockets across the ruins. Pink. Cyan. Sickly green. Some burned steady. Others spasmed, throwing light in broken rhythms across streets that hadn't seen traffic in a century. Power lines hummed where they'd been revived, jury-rigged and stolen, feeding bars, dens, chop shops, and worse. Nightlife crept back in the way mold did...quiet, persistent.
Impossible to kill.
Down by the water, the docks breathed again. Cranes towered like skeletons against the darkening sky, cables swaying in the wind. Rusted hulls knocked against concrete pylons. Generators thumped in irregular patterns. Voices carried in short bursts, sharp and guarded. Shatterbay never slept. It just shifted gears.
At the heart of the south end docks, the main warehouse of the Dead Hands rose above the sprawl, a slab of reinforced sheet metal patched with steel plating and old scorch marks.
Gregor stood on its roof, boots planted near the edge, tracksuit snapping in the wind. He didn't move. Didn't speak. His eyes stayed fixed on the sky beyond the city's broken crown.
A dungeon cube was descending.
It cut through the clouds in slow, deliberate silence, edges glowing as gravity dragged it down. Space around it warped, light bending wrong, shadows stretching toward it like they wanted to be swallowed.
He squinted, teeth grinding, a thin edge of relief cutting through the tension when he saw where it was falling. Far from Dead Hands ground. An A-rank drop was out of his crews capability, and tangling with Woon's raid teams was a special kind of misery he had no interest in courting.
The descent told him the rest. The smaller the cube, the slower it fell, the worse it was. That cube crept down like it had all the time in the world, heavy with authority and teeth. Which meant one thing. The bastard he despised more than anyone else would answer the call. Ivan Cho. Gregor could already feel the itch behind his eyes.
[I've been meaning to ask. If you survive this. If you make it through. What then? You ever think about that?]
That future wasn't his problem yet. He kept his eyes on the sky, shoulders set.
"That's a question for later. Worry instead about what's in front of us. You know how strong they are. This city doesn't move forward without sacrifice."
[You don't know that.]
He exhaled through his nose and dragged a hand down his face, eyes closing for half a second.
"Every big thing costs something, and this one's going to be big. I can feel it. The city's winding itself tight."
[She wouldn't want to see you like this. No matter how long it's been—]
The thought cut off mid-sentence. Not by him.
The system overrode itself, voice slamming into his skull like a siren.
[Proximity Warning]
Gregor dropped low without thinking, eyes snapping to the streets. He traced the broken road towards the source, guided by his system, past rubble and collapsed storefronts, until movement caught his eye.
White and gold reflected the dying light.
A single figure walked the ruins, robes untouched by ash or grime, heading straight toward the docks.
[Heavenly Host Detected]