Chapter 165: Reunion And Disaster
His mind took time to come to grips with what was unfolding. Seo-jin forced his breathing to slow and his thoughts to stay ordered. He knew it was an ability, a function, not birth in any real sense, yet the knowledge failed to blunt the weight of it. His mind accepted the logic. Something deeper refused to.
'They're not coming right now, are they?'
She smiled and shook her head.
'Not till I say.'
The tension in his chest loosened. The lowest reach of a B-rank dungeon was no place for spawning. That alone pushed urgency into his limbs, another reason to finish this floor fast and move on.
'Then they'll have to wait. We can't leave until this place is cleared. And it's not safe here. No pouting. Now get inside the growths. We need to find your big brother.'
'Okay.'
Her shoulders dipped as she pressed her palm forward and let the growths take her. When the crunching and wet swallowing finally stopped, the water settled into silence, broken only by the dull green glow spilling from Lynn's hands.
Split-jaw's wound had mostly sealed, skin pulling together where flesh had been torn away. A little more time and he'd be fine. The one paying the price was the healer. Lynn's face had gone pale, her body rigid, and even through the water Seo-jin caught the sharp tang of sweat. She was burning herself down to heal the man.
'That's enough. You can finish later after you've rested.'
Her body stiffened at the command, but her hands stayed locked in place.
'I'm fine. He just needs a bit more.'
'A bit more and you'll be the problem. Do as you're told.'
Jaw tightening, the glow finally faded and her arms dropped. Her balance shifted, knees dipping, but she forced herself upright instead of falling. He studied her for a moment. Even without caring much for human looks, he could see what others saw. Red hair drifting in the water, a body built solid and even, the kind of shape most men would stop and stare at.
He knew she was weak. Knew she watched him too closely. He just hadn't decided what use he had for her in the long run.
'I shouldn't have brought you. You're too weak. I should have treated you like it.'
She didn't argue. Tried to hold his gaze, but shame pulled her eyes down and held them there.
When his hand closed around hers, her body jolted like the contact alone might drop her.
'I want you inside the growths for the rest of this run. I'll pull you out now and then so you can drink. It might take time, but I need you to deal with it. Alright?'
Words failed her. She just nodded, breath still uneven.
'That makes me happy. Now be good, and get inside me.'
While her cheeks turned red as apples, her arm moved on its own. He guided her hand back, pressed it against a growth, and the teeth took hold, working fast as they pulled her in piece by piece.
[You really love fucking with her.]
'Carrot and stick works for her. Shame her shard's so weak. If she had strength she'd be an asset. As she is, she's just entertainment.'
Gripping the unconscious Split-jaw by his remaining arm, he dragged the old man in and fed him to the growths. The teeth closed, the pull finished, and in seconds Seo-jin was left alone.
Alone, except for the mass of lesser broodlings drifting around him like debris. Widow's brood held position nearby, their many legs twitching, while farther out nearly a hundred unassigned lessers lingered at a cautious distance.
'Follow me as best you can.'
[-6SM]
[SM // 40/52]
[Spider Step // Activated]
[Movement Speed increased by 25%]
[Duration // 120 seconds]
The water detonated outward as he launched, lesser bodies tumbling and spinning from the pressure wave.
[That took too long. You've lost his signal.]
'I'm heading toward his last direction. If it was any of the others, I wouldn't be so worried, but I need Pain to clear this place. Without him, my strength drops by a third.'
[More than that.]
Cold water peeled past him as he forced his senses through the broodlink. Around him, he saw nothing at first, then caught movement, not bodies, but auras, thin green traces pulling away the moment he closed distance. Even straining, he couldn't make out forms, only the way they fled.
'This darkness is doing something. I can't see through it at all. Snare might be the only one down here who can.'
[Whatever is venting into the water isn't just letting you breathe. From what I observed, it's also a nutrient source for the ecosystem. Its composition is likely interfering with visual processing. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to affect Soul Sight.]
'After this, I need to put together gear for each realm. Also need a list of consumables that should be mandatory for anyone stepping into a dungeon.'
[Look at you, thinking ahead. I'm almost proud.]
'Suck my horn. You should've thought of—'
[There he is.]
The connection to Pain snapped back into place without warning. It wasn't ahead of him, but far off to the side. Seo-jin cut hard to the left, rolling his body and driving his legs, forcing more speed as he adjusted. Whatever Pain had been moving toward, he'd reached it. The signal had gone still.
'How big is this damn place? Haven't felt Snare or Synapse in a while. Last I checked, they were drifting my way. How far could they be?'
[At least they're alive. Knowing those two, they'll manage.]
'Knowing those two is exactly why I'm concerned. Snare thinks I haven't noticed, but he's been tense ever since I summoned Synapse.'
[Little monster probably thinks his position's at risk.]
Seo-jin smiled.
'Rivalry is useful. I just don't want it turning into something else.'
[You think Snare would kill him?]
'No. But I wouldn't be surprised if Synapse tried.'
The system didn't respond. That only confirmed his belief. Synapse was intelligent past the point of comfort, his thought process stripped of sentiment. If removing Snare increased his standing, or was a net benefit, he'd probably do it without hesitation. Even punishment would register as nothing more than a cost to endure.
'Maybe I should form a contract with him.'
[Could always try.]
But the thought of one of his own broodlings possibly outsmarting him shut that down fast. Control mattered more than clever solutions, and Synapse left too many angles uncovered. One way or another, he needed him leashed, and soon.
A pulse rippled through the broodlink. He was close enough now. Reaching out, he pushed a thought down the line to his firstborn.
'What's happening?'
'Apologies, Broodfather. I'm ashamed to say I don't know. Since I arrived, I've been trapped. My body doesn't function here.'
Seo-jin clicked his tongue. Another failure on his part. The irritation sharpened into something hotter, heavier, and he felt the urge to kill something just to burn it off.
'I'm heading to you. Report immediately if anything changes.'
'Yes, Broodfather.'
The connection severed, and his jaw worked as tension crawled through it. Even without seeing it, he could picture the situation. Pain was a living furnace, heat packed into flesh and muscle. Submerged like this, the surrounding water would be slamming into him, flashing to vapor and collapsing back in, over and over.
[No surprise he can't see. He's probably boiling everything around himself, and with this pressure, it's a miracle he's still conscious. He's lucky he's built like a tank.]
Calling up his panel, he slid to Pain's tab. The confirmation hit hard. All fifty of Pain's troops were gone. Whatever was happening to him had happened to them as well, and without his defenses or Vitality, they wouldn't have lasted more than moments.
Pressing down his own shame, he cleared the panel, checked the cooldown in his UI, and forced the curse active again the moment it allowed him to.
[-6SM]
[SM // 34/52]
[Spider Step // Activated]
[Movement Speed increased by 25%]
[Duration // 120 seconds]
Green auras still peeled away whenever he closed the distance, but beyond that there was only black. He'd seen the bugs clinging to the vents earlier and already knew they reacted to bloodlust, so with his state as it was, staying above the lower levels wasn't restraint, it was survival.
Five, maybe ten minutes of hard swimming followed. Long enough for the curse to cycle its three-minute cooldown, long enough for him to trigger it again without slowing, long enough for the pressure and resistance to stop feeling constant and start coming in waves.
The darkness thinned by degrees until structure replaced absence. Something he already knew was possible finally pushed into view, and the difference hit harder than expected. Knowing a thing exists never prepared you for standing in front of it. Something he'd experienced more than once.
Though the place barely qualified, a small, underwater city spread out ahead of him. Covered with numerous floating balls of soft, bioluminescent light.
Everywhere, dead vent columns jutted up from the seabed like snapped bones, their surfaces drilled through and hollowed out. Caves had been carved into the stone and then widened without care, stacked on top of one another wherever the rock allowed it. Nothing matched. Nothing aligned. Structures leaned into each other, braced with scavenged coral and slabs of shell.
Homes weren't built so much as claimed. Massive seashells lay half-buried in silt or wedged into the sides of vents, their interiors hollowed and reinforced. Everyone of them was cracked. Some pulsed, alive in ways he didn't care to understand.
Movement of aquatic beasts filled the city, dragging various loads between vents. Long-bodied things with harnesses pulled lines of cargo. Almost nothing swam freely without purpose. Everything here was owned, used, or waiting to be.
And the people. At least a few hundred of them.
Abyssal races moved through the city in slow, deliberate paths. Thick-scaled figures clung to stone with clawed hands. Pale, elongated shapes drifted between structures, their limbs webbed and scaled. He spotted an elf pressed into the crowd, eyes wide and alert as he moved with forced calm. Further along, three dwarves worked together near a vent wall.
Slaves. Prisoners. Survivors. He couldn't tell where one ended and the next began.
Seo-jin's gaze lifted towards the center of it all, to a place where the water churned.
A gathering had formed around a wide basin cut into the stone, bodies hovering at a careful distance. From it rose a constant stream of bubbles and distorted heat, the water warping around the source.
He didn't need Soul Sight to know. That boiling column of gas. That unstable heat. That refusal to settle. It was Pain.
Looking over the gathered mass, the auras told him most of what he needed. Green dominated, weak and scattered, with a few yellows mixed in. If that was all there was, he would've already cut through the water and ended it. But as his focus narrowed and his senses pushed deeper into the crowd, something pushed back, hard enough to make him slow.
His vision locked, and across the churn of bodies and drifting silt, he met its gaze.
An aura bled outward from a shape he didn't recognize, heavy and subtle, clinging to a race he'd never seen before.
It's color was red.
----
Almost at the far end of the Vent Cathedral, Snare gnawed on the shaft of his staff while perched on a large rock. Bloodlight seeped from the corners of his eyes as his stare stayed fixed on the source of his irritation. His youngest brother.
Claws gouged stone as Synapse worked at a seam in the rock bed, levering at a larger slab to free a smaller piece trapped inside it. The fragment he was after glowed green from a light held inside it.
Distance had become a rule. Snare's troops knew better now, their number reduced to forty-nine, each of them carrying the memory of one of their own losing its head in a single bite. No one got near their commander when his eyes leaked like this.
'Would you mind assisting me? The work would progress faster if you put in some effort.'
'Put in some—?!'
The surge of violence hit hard, then stalled as he forced it back down. Snare rose in a rough motion, muscles locking and releasing, the tremor in his body coming from restraint, not cold. His words scraped out through clenched fangs.
'We are supposed to meet up with father. The longer we take, the angrier he is going to be.'
'Nonsense. How are we supposed to find him when we cannot sense his direction? The logical choice is to hold a limited area, secure as much information as possible, and wait for the broodlink to reconnect. Moving without data is inefficient.'
'We wouldn't have lost the signal if you hadn't stopped to examine fish shit!'
Synapse glanced back, his expression flat and genuinely puzzled.
'An opportunity to study the waste of a species you are actively hunting has value. I'm surprised you don't see that. Father will.'
He turned away again, claws biting into stone as he resumed his work.
'That's it! I'm not staying around you another second! Die alone in the dark you, you… Na-forgik kor-dur!'
Snare twisted and kicked off, water collapsing behind him as he surged away. Synapse stalled mid-motion, frozen for a single beat.
'Na-for—what language is that?'
'Dwarvish ya kor-skarn!'
Synapse's head snapped around, eyes flaring as he tracked Snare's retreating shape.
'You speak dwarvish? How interesting.'
The stone slipped from his grip and vanished into the dark as he pushed off in pursuit, closing the distance with ease. Synapse had a dozen questions ready, but Snare stopping mid-stroke and his eyes locking on something had killed them all, leaving only one worth asking.
'What do you see?'
Synapse followed the angle of Snare's gaze and found nothing. Just the same suffocating dark pressing in from every side.
But his brother saw something else. His vision reached farther, deeper, cutting past flesh into the current beneath it, and what he caught there locked his body in place. Just beyond the edge of perception, with no visible source, a glow strained against the darkness, fighting to exist.
A soul.
The largest soul Snare had ever seen.
It burned wide and solid, its presence heavy enough to bend the water around it, vast in scale, almost rivaling the bulk of Woon Tower itself.
Then the water moved with sound. A voice rolled through the depths, as if spoken from the planet's core.
'Demons? Since when did they start jailing your kind? Don't try to run. It's pointless.'
From the dark, a hand emerged, broad enough to blot out what little space they occupied, bronze fingers spanning wider than the Dead Hands warehouse as it reached for them.
Neither of them moved.
They both knew the voice hadn't lied. Running was pointless.