Chapter 167: Frustrated, Helpless, And Hungry
A few minutes after Granny Boil and her dog left, Cardinal Chelk finally moved. His shoulders jerked, then he bent forward and coughed thick ropes of golden blood onto the shattered concrete until his lungs burned and emptied. When the fit passed, he drew in a slow breath, ribs expanding against the weight
"There is always someone stronger."
White light bled back into Chelk's eyes as he turned his head toward Gregor. Limbless and bound, the human's body hung slack, yet a weak smile still pulled at the corners of his mouth.
Chelk wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, and picked up a small pebble between his fingers.
"There is always someone stronger. Very true. Very true. Unfortunate that saying applies to a bug like you most of all."
With a casual flick of his wrist, the pebble tore through the air like a round from a rifle, punched into Gregor's shoulder, and burst out the other side in a spray of bone and blood.
Gregor's teeth locked as the impact drove through him, muscles spasming against the ropes, yet the grin clung stubbornly to his face.
"It is humorous—I always felt there was something—"
The words fractured as a cough ripped up his throat, veins standing out along his neck while his body fought to pull in air.
"Something wrong—with the Church. I just did not think the truth was so ugly. Not in...wildest...dreams."
His chin dipped as strength drained from him; the tension left his neck and his eyes rolled back, consciousness finally slipping.
Chelk exhaled through his nose and dragged a hand across his round face, smearing away the last of the gold. Extending a finger, he traced a short line in the air; a thin beam of white light snapped from it and speared into Gregor's torn shoulder, flesh knitting and sealing around the wound in seconds.
"Can't have you dying yet. Bald monkey."
Settling back into place, he set his hands on his thighs and closed his eyes. The clash with the black dog had left damage beneath the surface, he needed to mend before the main event. His pride would not allow him to break Seo-jin unless both of them stood at full strength.
It had started with the words Gregor forced through broken teeth after Chelk tore off his last arm. That he would not act so bold if Seo-jin were here. That he was weak. That his authority only existed because of the church.
Empty words, he knew that. Still, they lodged under his skin and would not dissolve. Whether by luck or design, the human still lived because Chelk wanted him to see it, to watch with clear eyes as his so-called savior was dismantled piece by piece.
The thought lingered longer each day.
It was no longer irritation. It was becoming an obsession, tightening quietly with every hour he waited.
----
Agility had never been a stat Yu-na valued, something she regretted now as her boots hammered pavement and she tore through the city toward the docks. Death Witch was not a class built for sprinting or endurance, but she drove her body anyway, lungs burning, muscles straining. Even so, she moved fast enough to blur past streetlights and shattered storefronts, as if something ahead demanded she arrive before it was too late.
She had spent the last week sealed inside her rooms, poring over the records her father placed before her, committing every name and anomaly to memory while tempering her mind in meditation. The only reason she was out now was chance; on her way to question her father, she had crossed paths with her sister and heard the report directly.
The Dead Hands had been erased.
The words had barely settled before she turned and ran from Woon Tower, descending stairwells three at a time, then launching into the streets to confirm it herself.
'You dumb bastard. You better be alive.'
Salt thickened in the air as she neared the coastline, the moon reflecting off restless water while broken cranes and dock pylons came into view. She gathered herself to surge forward into the ruin, only for a voice to cut through her thoughts and halt her mid-step.
'Go back girl. I don't have patience for company right now.'
She didn't know the voice, but she knew the pressure behind it; even with limited intel, there was only a few men in this city who could project that kind of control without effort.
"Cardinal, apologies, I simply wish to confirm—"
'Silence!'
The command didn't echo; it landed. Followed by an immense aura crashing onto her shoulders, forcing her knees to bend. Even from the distance she kept, his strength pressed into muscle and marrow, every thread of it soaked in open bloodlust.
'Last warning. Take another step, and even your father won't be able to save you.'
Yu-na locked her legs and held her ground, teeth grinding as she forced her spine straight. The heat in her veins had nothing to do with the Cardinal's aura; it came from anger, anger at her own limits, at the man she had only just begun to care for, and most of all at her father for allowing this to unfold.
"Sorry for the offense Cardinal. May the Light guide and protect."
No answer followed, but the suffocating weight lifted as abruptly as it had fallen.
As air rushed back into her lungs, a sharp, ragged gasp rose from beneath a heap of rubble a few feet to her right. She almost attacked, but the sound held a quality to it that she instantly recognized. The voice of a child.
Fingers curled tight, she knew she couldn't stop the Cardinal from sensing her presence, but she could distort it, thicken the air around herself so his awareness couldn't see her.
[Miasma Of The Damned // Activated]
[Lowers enemy detection by 70% for 3 minutes]
It wasn't a real spell, just a system skill, but it would be enough if she kept the radius tight and the duration short.
Black smoke laced with thin crimson wails bled from beneath her boots, rolling low and dense as she compressed it inward, forcing the shroud to cling to her body and the rubble at her feet rather than spill outward. The haze swallowed light and bent sound, dulling her outline.
Crossing the broken concrete in three long strides, she reached for an aged tarp pinned beneath splintered wood, fingers already hooking into the fabric when a pulse of purple flared in front of her face.
"Don't worry little soul. I'm a friend."
Triss hovered there, small body beneath an oversized head, teeth bared as her back arched and the air around her trembled. Even as Yu-na extended her hand in a slow, deliberate motion, the ghost hissed and snapped in warning, but Yu-na read the posture for what it was, defense, not attack.
The tarp came free in her grip and she dragged it back.
Ash lay beneath it, unconscious, skin drained of color and slick with blood that had soaked through cloth and pooled beneath him. One leg ended in a mangled stump where a foot had been, flesh torn and crushed rather than cleanly severed. Her jaw tightened at the sight. It was brutal, but not rare. Normally she would have left him; not from cruelty, but because triage demanded it. She couldn't salvage every body the city broke.
The fabric was already half-lowered again when something caught her eye.
Stitched over his chest, fresh thread biting into fabric, a patch showed a skeletal hand gripping a black cube—the mark of the Dead Hands.
"You just lucked out kid."
Ignoring Triss's continued hissing, Yu-na crouched, slid one arm beneath Ash's shoulders and the other under his remaining leg, then lifted. His weight sagged against her as unconscious muscle failed to assist, forcing her to adjust her stance to keep the stump elevated and from dragging.
Before she moved, she looked once at the ghost.
"Should I leave him here to die?"
Shaking her head, she didn't wait for the answer. The miasma tightened around her as she kicked off the ground, black wind coiling at her heels.
Refusing to abandon the boy, Triss shot forward in a streak of purple, teeth clenched and form flickering as she burned through her remaining strength to keep pace.
----
Pitch black stretched in every direction. No edge. No horizon. No sound beyond the absence of it. Only him.
Seo-jin didn't know how long he'd been walking. The motion registered only when his awareness caught up to it, like waking mid-stride and realizing your legs never stopped. There was no memory of starting. Only the act continuing.
Surprise never came. The dark pressed close, but it didn't threaten. It wrapped. It held. There was warmth in it.
His thoughts dragged, thick and unformed. No plans. No names. Only sensation. Step by step, something gathered around him. It was warm and dense, rising along his legs and pressing at his chest as he moved.
It wasn't water, it resisted differently. Clung. Yielded slow, and familiar. When his sense of smell returned, it hit all at once. Iron flooded his senses.
"Blood? What—where am I?"
He reached for his head on instinct. His hand moved. Touched nothing. No scalp. No bone. No outline where his skull should be. The absence registered a heartbeat late, then shock tore through him.
He grabbed at himself, neck, shoulders, chest, but found none of it. No body to ground himself. Only thickness shifting as he disturbed it.
"System. What the fuck is going on? System… system!"
Silence.
No response. The void where the system should have been cut deeper than the missing flesh.
"Still so weak."
The voice cracked through the space. The blood around him convulsed as if struck, pressure building in rolling surges that forced him backward.
Recognition hit fast.
He had stood here before.
The instant the memory locked into place, the dark collapsed. It tore away, stripped down to what it had been hiding.
Endless crimson violence.
"Speak it."
The word struck and bone shifted under it. Piles of fresh corpses rolled from their own weight, torsos splitting as they tumbled. The basin of blood surged upward and closed around Seo-jin's chest, ripples hammering into him as pressure blasted out from the sound.
He lifted his gaze.
Saw it.
Him.
"Speak my name."
The command rolled down from above, heavy enough to bend the air. Seo-jin tracked it to its source and held the stare. The demand meant nothing to him, but he would answer it.
His blades had earned that much.
"Butcher's Wrath."
Seated on the highest mound of bleeding flesh, above bodies so large their proportions warped perspective, the demon sat. A massive body of charred black muscle stood layered with cords that twisted like roots, veins burning through it in lines of molten blood. Two vast horns arced outward from its skull, thick at the base and curved wide enough to frame the sky behind it. At its brow a crimson core pulsed, and a second blaze burned in its chest, light pushing through cracked plates of hardened flesh. Crimson fluid climbed from its crown and licked the air above it. Long claws hung at its sides, each finger ending in hooked talons that scraped bone when it shifted.
Seo-jin had stood here once, as an imp still clawing for survival in the Maw. That memory settled and passed. Heat ran through him now, sharp and focused. Anger tightened his jaw.
It was his weapon. Yey it sat above him.
"Why are you so weak?"
Blood streamed from Butcher's Wrath's mouth as it spoke, thick and steady. Its eyes fixed on Seo-jin, black pits set beneath the burning gem in its brow.
Seo-jin laughed.
The sound tore out of him and carried through the corpse field. The thought came fast and clean, and once it formed he couldn't stop it.
"Weak? Then what does that make you?"
The throne shifted as the demon rose. Blood that had been sliding from corpses around it locked in place mid-fall, suspended by the force of its movement. Its jaws parted to answer, then paused.
A grin cut across its face, wide and deliberate.
From Seo-jin's body, bloodlight surged. It rolled off him in waves and shoved the basin back, carving space around his frame. The liquid death retreated under pressure.
"I don't know why you dragged me back here. I don't care. Tell me something instead. Why are you up there while I'm down here?"
He stepped forward and the blood parted, splitting around his legs and sealing behind him.
"Let's fix that."
Claws flexed. His tail snapped and cracked, bone tip carving through a corpse and cleaving it in two as he advanced. Heat built in his limbs. A current ran through him that he recognized from an older time.
Then he dropped.
Fangs bared, spine low, he launched on all fours. Hands and feet tore into flesh and bone as he drove himself upward, body moving without restraint.
The imp inside him surged to the surface as he climbed.