Chapter 171: Death By Lantern Light
Seo-jin felt the weight of the attack building in front of him. The pressure pressed against his skin, raising it tight across his shoulders, instincts flaring hot and immediate, but his thoughts weren't on the dragon. Even as he stared at the flood-dragon's open jaws and the growing light inside them, what he saw wasn't Liao Tzu's technique. It was another strike entirely.
The one that had split the dream world in two.
The battlefield went still. Dust hung suspended. Blood drifted in thin ribbons through the water. Only Liao Tzu moved, his massive tail carving trenches through broken coral.
'You should have just stayed put! All this death is on your hands! Now you will die without a corpse!'
The words slid past Seo-jin without purchase. He didn't blink. Didn't shift. His gaze remained fixed beyond the dragon's face, past the glowing throat, as if tracking something no one else could see. That empty focus twisted something in the shard entity.
'Prideful beast! Die!'
Sound folded inward. The hum in the dragon's maw spiked, then the gathered energy detonated forward in a single, blinding release. A beam of condensed orange force tore across the shattered city, vaporizing water and ripping stone from the ground as it passed.
Every eye locked onto it. Lesser broodlings froze mid-step. Prisoners braced against walls. Even the elf, breath hitching, thought this was the end. Whatever the outcome, the fight would finish here.
Seo-jin remained where he stood, arms loose at his sides, stance grounded, feet feeling the cracked stone beneath him as cold water was drawn into his gills. The beam closed in, but it didn't blur. It didn't vanish into speed. He could see everything, every detail. Today his mind was empty. No interface flicker. No numbers. No noise. He had stripped it all away and narrowed everything to one point.
If Butcher's Wrath could carve the world apart, so could he.
The light swallowed the last stretch of distance.
And just before it struck—
He finally moved.
The world detonated into white. Liao Tzu's breath struck and burst outward, the impact punching the ocean floor hard enough to tear it open. Water spun instantly into a violent whirlpool, dragging rubble, bodies, and broken beams into its pull. Stray arcs of lightning snapped through the churning current, cracking against stone and armor as if the sea itself had forgotten its rules. Anyone still standing grabbed at coral walls or embedded pillars, boots scraping for purchase as the suction tried to rip them free.
Liao Tzu reared back through the glare, scales reflecting the blaze from his own attack. His chest heaved once, aura flickering thinner than before. With a sharp coil of his tail, he hooked around a half-buried boulder, anchoring himself as the waters spiraled around him.
It all unfolded in less than a heartbeat. Before the whirlpool could complete its pull, a second light flared from the city's center—hotter, tighter, fighting against the orange surge.
Pain erupted from the bubbling mass like a blast furnace breaking open, steam and blood mist spraying outward. His roar tore through the chaos, traveling through the water as if the ocean meant nothing.
"ALL PRAISE BROODFATHER!"
The words barely finished before the clean, unmistakable sound of steel cut through everything.
A thin strand of bloodlight carved straight up through the explosion, parting flame and water alike. It traveled in a single, decisive line, splitting the whirlpool from bottom to top as if the ocean were cloth.
For one suspended instant, the entire Vent Cathedral stood divided. A corridor cut through the sea where no water touched, only raw air and burning red light holding the halves apart. Then gravity reclaimed its place. The two walls of ocean slammed back together, the impact tearing through the prison city in a spiraling collapse that flung debris in every direction.
At the center of it all, Seo-jin stood unmoved. Water and rubble curved around him and shattered past. Laughter tore from his throat, rough and bright against the roar of collapsing currents.
One arm hung gone at the shoulder.
Half his face was stripped and broken, bone visible beneath torn flesh.
He didn't react to it.
His remaining arm stayed raised, Butcher's Wrath held high as he studied the blade, bloodlight still trailing from its edge.
'Mine...all of it.'
He lowered the cleaver slowly, chest rising through ragged breaths as the moment replayed behind his eyes.
He had mirrored the motions again and again during their early clashes, testing angles, testing timing. As the fight stretched on, the structure behind it sharpened. His aura hadn't been decoration. Bloodlight wasn't just pressure or rage, it was a blade that needed forging and direction.
Just as he had needed it.
Thinking back to his clash with Butcher's Wrath, the memory settled into place. The weapon hadn't been swinging wildly. Every cut, every adjustment, had been instruction. Whether it meant to or not, it had shown him the truth.
His vision steadied. The ringing in his ears faded beneath the crash of distant stones. Breath slowed in his chest. He let the revelation pass.
He couldn't linger on it. Not yet.
Someone still had to die.
When their eyes met, Seo-jin saw it clearly. The dragon's pupils had tightened. The scent in the air shifted, sharp and sour beneath the brine and blood. Fear. It leaked from the flood-dragon in waves.
'What's wrong? You look upset.'
The waters began to settle, currents smoothing into their natural rhythm, dragging debris in slow circles. Nothing remained upright. No huts. No towers. Only flattened ruin and drifting fragments.
Liao Tzu's color drained further as he watched torn flesh knit and bone seal beneath Seo-jin's skin. The wounds that should have ended him closed in visible increments.
'How? You should be dead...HOW?!'
His aura, which had thinned to a flicker, surged outward again in jagged bursts. Scales flexed. Muscles swelled along his serpentine frame as emotion overrode control.
'I refuse to believe it! It's a trick! You're just a demon, even with a shard this is impossible!'
He roared the words, pulling at what remained of his strength, yet even as he did, his massive body shifted back through the churned water.
Seo-jin took a step forward.
'Impossible? No. Not even close. What's impossible, is you getting out of this alive.'
Before words could be spoken further, Seo-jin dissapeared.
'Pathetic!'
Liao Tzu roared as steel and claw met—
But his talons never finished their arc.
Butcher's Wrath traced a clean red line through one. No grinding resistance. No stall. Just a tight, controlled slice and the sudden absence of weight as one of the dragon's talons separated at the joint.
Liao Tzu's massive body recoiled, coils whipping through the water hard enough to send shockwaves. A deep, distorted roar tore from his throat, bubbles ripping free between his fangs as blood clouded out in thick streams from the stump.
He twisted to see—
Seo-jin's jaws were already locked around the severed talon before it could tumble away. Teeth crushed through scale. The taste of iron flooded his mouth as he tore free a chunk and chewed.
At his arm, flesh surged. Bone extended with a sharp internal snap. Muscle layered over it in tightening bands. The missing arm forced its way back into shape, skin sealing as gills along his ribs fluttered once, pulling water through in steady rhythm.
The new forearm split down the center.
From within, metal pushed outward.
A second Butcher's Wrath tore free, the blade sliding into his regenerated grip as tendons tightened around the handle. Blood thinned in the water around him, drawn inward as the weapon settled.
Seo-jin spat the last shard of scale aside. The severed finger drifted down into the churned debris.
He swallowed.
Water flowed past his teeth, through his gills.
He smiled.
Then he drove forward again, both cleavers cutting through the current as he charged.
'You'll pay!'
Liao Tzu roared, the sound warping the water around him as both horns flared. Symbols along his scales ignited in sequence as he coiled then launched.
The distance between them vanished in an instant.
Their impact churned the ocean floor back into motion, sediment blasting upward in a violent column. Within a breath, a dense cloud swallowed them both, thick and blinding, reducing the world to muffled tremors and flashes of light.
Inside it, they tore at each other.
Claw raked. Cleaver answered. Tails whipped through water with bone-breaking force. Teeth snapped shut on scale and flesh.
Blood burst outward. Orange light detonated. Thin arcs of bloodlight sliced through the cloud in sharp, clean lines before vanishing back into the dark.
The entire cathedral watched.
Broodlings froze mid-motion. Prisoners clung to broken structures. Even the vent bugs hovered in uneasy suspension. No one moved. It felt like the world itself would turn on them if they looked away.
Within the storm, shapes flashed and vanished. A tail cracked across something solid. A blade carved low. The ocean floor cratered again and again under blind, savage exchanges.
They weren't sparring.
They were mauling.
The cloud bucked violently—
Then something massive shot out of it.
Liao Tzu's body tore free from the murk, spiraling end over end. His scales were shredded and hanging loose. Both horns were snapped down to jagged stumps. His lower jaw had been cleaved cleanly in two, hanging open as blood streamed from the split.
He rocketed backward and slammed hard into a dead vent tower. The impact crushed the structure, stone collapsing around his body as cracks raced outward across its base.
The cloud left behind split in a straight line.
From within it came a beam of condensed bloodlight, cutting after Liao Tzu like a fired spear.
At its center—
Seo-jin.
He rode the beam as if it were solid ground, both cleavers angled out, body leaning into the momentum.
In the next breath, he was standing on the dragon's skull.
Pressing his heel in harder, Seo-jin leaned down until his shadow fell across Liao Tzu's fractured face. The bone beneath his foot flexed and cracked under pressure.
'Wanna know something funny? You can thank yourself for all this. Before you tricked me, I might've been foolish enough to help you all escape this place. But you taught me a valuable lesson. One that showed I had strayed too far from my path. So thank you, Liao Tzu. From the bottom of my black heart.'
Pinned beneath him, body broken and coils twitching weakly, Liao Tzu felt the weight of those words settle. His split jaw trembled. Something behind his eyes gave way.
'Please! Have mercy! I'll do anything you—!'
Crunch!
Seo-jin didn't wait for the rest. He drove his foot down, forcing his talons through the dragon's skull. The impact traveled up his leg in a dull jolt. He stomped again, and again, each step sinking deeper as brain matter gave way. The dragon's body convulsed with every strike. The collapsed vent tower shuddered under the assault. Around them, the remaining prisoners flinched at each heavy boom.
Liao Tzu went still.
But Seo-jin did not.
He dismissed Butcher's Wrath. The blades slid back into his flesh, metal vanishing as skin sealed over them. His palm ignited with system light, heat crawling across his fingers, and a black-iron lantern formed in his grip, its weight settling solid against his hand.
Lifting it, he pressed his free palm to its front and closed his eyes. Water brushed past his gills in slow rhythm. A heartbeat later, the lantern flared to life with a sickly green glow that pushed back the murk and lit the ruins.
Liao Tzu's soul hung there.
A massive, translucent flood-dragon, caught in the lantern's radiance. No sound carried through the water, but the terror twisting across his ethereal features needed none. His body writhed uselessly against the invisible hold.
Seo-jin raised the lantern higher. The green light tightened, condensing around the fleeing spirit, locking it in place. The dragon strained, claws scraping at nothing, but the pull intensified. Then, as easily as stripping a petal from a flower, the soul tore free and was drawn inside. The lantern flickered once, then steadied.
Stillness settled over the Vent Cathedral.
Water drifted. Debris sank. No one moved.
Just in time for Seo-jin to ruin it.
The twinback growths split open.
Muscle and bone twisted and reshaped in seconds. Hex clawed his way free first, then Bile, Panic, and Widow followed, their forms locking into place.
'Kill everything. Leave the elf alive.'
The broodlings surged forward immediately.
In a matter of hours, this place had shifted from promised freedom to mass grave.
Seo-jin lifted the lantern closer to his face. Inside, a tiny dragon-shaped soul battered against its prison, frantic and useless.
He smiled.
Today had been a good day.
For him.
And for Grimm.