Chapter 168: Hunter And The Hunted
As Seo-jin's claws drove into swollen torsos and split them for handholds, he felt his mouth pull into a grin. Each decision he had carried in the waking world pressed on him with weight and consequence, each choice dragging behind it a line of lives and outcomes he had to measure.
Here, there was only ascent.
Muscle tightened in his forearms as he ripped upward, tendons in his shoulders flexing to haul his body higher. Limbs tore under his grip, spines snapped when he used them as leverage, and the climb demanded nothing except strength and intent.
This felt clean. Pure.
Above him, Butcher's Wrath stood against the corpse-lit sky, its face a slab of darkness cut by bloodlight. The crimson core in its brow bled steadily, and the blaze in its chest pulsed through cracked flesh like a forge venting heat. Even from below, Seo-jin saw the curve of its jaw, the lift at the edge of its mouth.
It was smiling.
"Come! Do not disappoint!"
The demon opened its arms wide, talons spreading as blood climbed its horns and rolled down its shoulders. It leaned forward on the throne of skulls, claws flexing in anticipation, blood dripping from its fingers in heavy strands.
Seo-jin dug in and surged upward, claws tearing through the last barrier of death between them. He cleared the mound in a spray of blood, launching himself straight at the throne.
Butcher's Wrath met him halfway.
They collided without preamble. No opening strike. Just impact.
The force split the skull-throne. Bone and spine shattered as the two demons crashed through it and hit the corpse-pile below. Flesh burst. Blood fountained. The ground convulsed from the weight of them.
Claws tore, sinking into shoulders, into ribs, into whatever gave first. Teeth snapped for throats. Knees drove into stomachs. Tails lashed. It was a pile of limbs and hunger.
Seo-jin bit first.
His fangs closed on Butcher's Wrath's forearm, punching through hide that felt like cooled magma. Blood flooded his mouth, thick and scalding. He ripped sideways.
The arm didn't sever.
It drove into his face instead.
A backhand cracked his jaw and sent him tumbling through a slope of bodies. He hit, rolled, caught himself on all fours, and charged again before the pain could settle.
No pause.
Butcher's Wrath was already there.
A claw punched through Seo-jin's shoulder and lifted him. The talons twisted, grinding through muscle.
"Where is it?!"
The weapon growled.
"Where's your strength little—!"
Seo-jin answered by driving his tail upward.
The bone tip speared into the demon's ribs.
The grip loosened.
Tearing free, Seo-jin left meat behind. He landed low, sprinted in a tight arc, then slammed into Butcher's Wrath's knee. The joint buckled.
That was enough.
Claws raked up the weapon's torso, carving channels through burning flesh. He hooked fingers into the glowing core in its chest and pulled.
The light flared.
An explosion of bloodlight blasted him backward.
He hit hard, skidding across a carpet of corpses until he slammed into a mound and buried halfway through it. The impact cracked ribs. He spat blood and pushed himself up, shaking chunks of gore from his shoulders.
Butcher's Wrath stood straight again. Blood roared higher from its brow. The wound in its chest sealed in a slow crawl of molten tissue.
"You hesitate."
Seo-jin bared his teeth.
He didn't answer.
He sprinted.
This time he didn't go for the chest. He dove low, vanished beneath the demon's reach, and tore into its thigh with both hands. Flesh split. He buried his face into the wound and bit.
He did not try to disarm it.
He tried to eat it.
Butcher's Wrath roared and hammered down with both fists. Each blow cratered the corpse-field around them. The third caught Seo-jin across the neck and drove him flat.
Something shifted in that instant.
The pressure.
The weight.
The blows kept coming, each one harder, each one trying to force him down into the blood, into the mound, into submission.
"Get up!"
Another fist slammed.
"Get! Up!"
Seo-jin's claws dug into the corpse beneath him. Cartilage splintered under his grip. His shoulders trembled.
For a fraction of a breath, the weight of leadership, of calculation, of restraint tried to surface.
He burned it away.
Rolling with the next strike, he let it glance off. Then lunged upward headfirst, and drove his horns into Butcher's Wrath's stomach.
They punched through, and he didn't pull out. He forced himself deeper. Hands found ribs. Fingers hooked. He split them open from the inside. Blood poured over him, hot and thick, blinding and perfect.
Butcher's Wrath laughed in approval.
Its hands closed around Seo-jin's skull, yanking his horns out and slamming him down into the blood lake. The impact sent a tidal wave across the field.
Seo-jin came up snarling.
They crashed together again, no throne left, no height advantage, just two monsters locked chest to chest, trying to rip the other apart before the next heartbeat.
And this time—
Seo-jin didn't slow.
Every mouthful of burning flesh sealed torn muscle and knitted split bone, the stolen mass converting into strength as fast as he could tear it free, and each blow he absorbed fed the same cycle. Damage taken, rage sharpened, body rebuilt.
The imp that once bled out on a spear shaft was gone; the creature driving forward now had endured dungeons, warlords, angels, and pressure enough to crush cities. He moved with the weight of that history in his claws.
No spike would hold him in place. No volley would reduce him to carrion.
He didn't intend to survive untouched. He intended to mark.
If he fell here, it would be after carving deep enough that the memory of him would linger in tendon and soul, a reminder etched into the weapon itself of who was the hunted, and who was hunter.
The two tore at each other, forearms grinding, jaws snapping, blood spraying in thick sheets that ran in heavy ropes down the piled dead.
Butcher's Wrath threw his head back and laughed.
The sound punched through Seo-jin's bloodlust, and in the same motion a hand like forged iron clamped around his throat.
Something was different.
The grip tightened, fingers digging through muscle and sinew, and the pressure multiplied until vertebrae creaked and vision warped; the strength behind that hand was deeper than before, controlled, measured—now released.
"So this is what you have become?"
Butcher's Wrath rumbled, lifting him as if he weighed nothing.
"A collector."
Seo-jin clawed at the wrist, driving talons into it, but the flesh refused to part.
A short toss in the air, and the instant of weightlessness ended with a kick.
Heel slammed into Seo-jin's chest, ribs folding under the impact, and he shot backward like a cannon shot, tearing through corpse mound after corpse mound, bodies detonating around him in red bursts as he plowed through them.
"You gather humans like trinkets—"
Butcher's Wrath called out, stepping forward as mountains of dead shifted under his stride.
"You build broods. You speak of futures."
Seo-jin stopped after he hit another rise, rolled, and came up on one knee, blood pouring from his mouth.
"You speak of green..."
The weapon continued, laughter low and steady.
"As if a demon was meant to cultivate gardens."
Another step.
"You were born for slaughter."
The words carried weight.
"You think yourself a father? A leader? A king?"
A sneer curled across the blood-soaked face.
"You are meat with ambition."
Seo-jin spat out a bloodclot and pushed to his feet.
Butcher's Wrath spread his arms.
"You dream of changing the world. Childish."
His forearms split.
Skin tore without blood, and from within his own flesh two massive black cleavers ripped free, metal screaming, edges jagged and wet with fresh crimson.
"THIS—!"
He roared, lifting the blades.
"—is all that matters!"
The first swing never touched Seo-jin.
It struck the air.
The shockwave flattened the corpse field in every direction, bodies crushed into pulp, limbs snapping like dry twigs as the ground leveled in a rolling ring.
Blood rose.
A column of red shot skyward, expanding, boiling, until it hung above them like a second sun.
When it fell, it fell in silence.
The world had been carved flat.
Only the two of them remained standing in a field of churned flesh and slick bone.
Seo-jin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at the cleavers.
He didn't blink.
He didn't hesitate.
He raised a claw and pointed.
"Those are mine."
Butcher's Wrath tilted his head, black eyes narrowing, a grin splitting his face wide.
"Then come and take them."
But Seo-jin didn't budge.
"No. Those weapons...are mine."
Just as Seo-jin finished speaking, bloodlight began to lift from his broken body.
It bled out through torn skin and split muscle, dragging scraps of flesh upward before snapping them back into place. Bruised tissue shifted under the surface. Exposed muscle tightened and reformed. The pool of blood at his feet began to tremble, its surface buckling as pressure built from beneath.
Butcher's Wrath stilled, cleavers lowering a fraction as his eyes widened, not in fear, but in recognition. A grin spread slowly across his face, stretching wider as the tremor in the blood intensified.
The field detonated outward when Seo-jin threw his head back and roared. His forearms split without hesitation, flesh parting along old seams, and two massive cleavers dragged themselves free from within his own arms. Metal ground as they tore loose and locked into his grip.
Butcher's Wrath barked a laugh, lifting his own blades.
"You believe you can wound me with myself?"
Seo-jin didn't react to the taunt. Blood ran from his nose. One eye had swollen nearly shut. His chest rose and fell in slow, heavy pulls.
"Enough talking. I'm getting bored."
Bloodlight surged from both of them at once, rising in twin columns that bent the air and pressed the flattened corpse field into the earth. No signal passed between them, no challenge given. They moved on instinct.
Both vanished.
The first collision erased sound. Cleaver met cleaver and the impact tore a seam through the field, a canyon of pulverized meat ripping outward in both directions as the force split the ground.
Seo-jin felt something shear past the side of his head. A horn spun away into the air, followed by a chunk of skull, and hot blood poured down his face. His knees dipped as his balance faltered, vision tilting while the world lurched beneath him.
He bit down hard enough to pierce his own lip, pain anchoring him in place, and forced himself upright before the stagger could turn into collapse.
Across from him, Butcher's Wrath lowered his head slightly. One of his own horns was gone, blood running steadily down his midnight features. He touched the broken edge with his fingers, studied the blood coating them, then looked back at Seo-jin.
A slow breath left him.
"Not enough."
He stepped forward once, the pressure from his body alone pushing the blood away in waves.
"Not even close."
Seo-jin tried to lift his weapons again, but the bloodlight around him flickered and thinned. His grip weakened. The field swayed.
Butcher's Wrath's voice cut clean through the fading red.
"You're still weak."
Darkness closed over Seo-jin's vision as his strength gave out, and the world collapsed into black.
He had lost once again.