Chapter 173: First Born Pride
'Dammit! What the hell is he thinking?!'
Seo-jin hovered in place, fists clenching at his sides as boiling heat rolled across his skin. Watching Pain was like watching a star fracture under pressure. He had no leverage, no way to interfere without making it worse. If he lost Pain now, it would be waste layered on top of failure, and he could already feel the bitterness forming in his throat.
He scanned the brood around him. None of them had the mind for this. If Snare or Synapse had been present, maybe there would have been an angle, a solution buried in their logic. The current brood, though loyal, offered little beyond muscle and instinct.
Then a thought hit him hard enough that his jaw tightened.
'The half-breed!'
The plates along his back shifted with a grinding scrape, peeling back as the twinback growths convulsed. They heaved, then began vomiting up bile and acid. Teal's body slid free in the mess, suspended in the water for a second before she formed fully.
She immediately began to drown.
Her eyes snapped open, bloodshot and wide. Her hands clawed at her throat, nails dragging across skin as her body convulsed. Water rushed uselessly into her sealed lungs.
'Remain calm, you'll be able to breathe shortly. Relax...'
The words carried, but they didn't reach her. Even without the shock of drowning, her mind was fractured. Too much time inside the growths, bathing in Seo-jin's [Corruption] had hollowed something out.
From the outside, he saw it clearly. The veins along Teal's neck darkened, swelling under the skin. They gathered and split the flesh in two clean lines. A set of gills opened, thin slits fluttering before sealing into shape.
Dragging in a breath, she coughed and hacked while her body jerked. The instant air filled her, she twisted, scanning wildly. Madness set in again as she saw movement, one of the lesser broodlings. She lunged without hesitation.
'Hold her down!'
Lessers swarmed, Panic joining in. Their combined strength pinned her quickly, even as she thrashed and snapped. Her muscles strained against them, tendons standing out in her neck.
'Keep her still.'
Seo-jin closed the distance. System light flared in his palm, and a flask of dwarven ale materialized. He dodged her teeth as she snapped, then caught her face, fingers digging into her cheeks to force her jaw open.
He bit down on the cork, yanked it free, and capped the opening with his thumb. Forcing the flask into her mouth, he sealed her lips around it and poured.
'Drink it down… there ya go. Nope, all of it.'
He kept the flask pressed to her mouth until the last of it was gone, watching her throat work as she swallowed. She fought for a few seconds more, muscles jerking under the grip of the lessers, but the red in her eyes began to fade. Her movements slowed. One final shudder ran through her, and she went limp. Passed out cold.
[She's been through too much.]
'She'll have to deal with it.'
The broodlings pulled back, releasing her. Seo-jin grabbed a fistful of her hair and hauled her upright, giving her a sharp shake before slapping her.
She jolted awake, blinking rapidly. The bloodshot glare was still there, but steadier now.
'Wha—water? Hold up… am I drunk?'
Her cheeks flushed deeper, a loose heat rising under her skin. Her head wobbled when he let go of her hair. He caught her by the shoulders, fingers digging in, and pointed towards Pain.
'Use your rank up. Put it into his Vitality. Now.'
'Rank up? Hmm…'
She squinted at the distortion of heat and bubbles ahead, brows knitting as if the whole scene made no sense. A slow smile tugged at her mouth. She lifted one hand and giggled.
'I can't rank up water, silly. You drunk too—ow!'
The second slap cracked through the water.
'Stop fucking around. If he dies, you die! Use your rank up. Pain is at the center of—'
'Pain's in my cheek.'
He raised his hand again. She flinched fast, both hands coming up in surrender.
'Alright! *Hic* Give me a sec!'
She blinked hard, leaning forward, eyes straining to focus through the shimmer of heat. For a moment she swayed, then her eyes snapped wide.
'There he is!'
She pointed with exaggerated confidence, almost tipping backward from the force of it.
'Rank up! I don't have to say it, ya know—just fun.'
A short giggle slipped out, but it died when she caught Seo-jin's expression.
'Sheesh. Who died?'
'Is it done?'
She hiccupped again, gesturing lazily toward Pain as she lowered herself onto the stone.
'All done. Juss gonna take a lil nap now. Wake me when it's time to eat.'
A small burp and a bubble escaped her. She curled into herself, tucking in tight. Within seconds, her breathing evened out and soft bubbles drifted into the water.
Sneering, he gestured to a few lessers. They moved at once, lifting Teal's limp body and carrying her farther back, away from the rising heat. Her snores trailed behind her, faint and uneven. Grabbing one of them, the thing almost fainted from the touch, but ignoring the display, Seo-jin bit down on one of his nails, and yanked it free.
[-8SM]
[SM // 44/52]
[Rotmark // Active]
[Anchor 1/3 // Set]
Having marked the nail, he handed it to the shaking lesser, and instructed him to secure it at the edge of the ruined city. The broodling swam off like a fish in water. To the point Seo-jin wondered if the lessers were somehow adapting to the environment. A question for later.
He pulled up Pain's profile and scanned it, eyes moving quickly. Vitality had ranked up, a clean jump of ten points. Health had surged from eight hundred to twelve hundred and fifty. The numbers steadied something in his chest. Nearby, several lessers were already tearing into corpses, chewing and feeding, channeling the gained health toward Pain.
'Think of anything else?'
[Nothing. The rest is up to him.]
The heat continued to build. Water flashed and vaporized, scalding against his skin. Stone popped and cracked under pressure. Seo-jin held his ground, muscles locked despite the burn. Whether his flesh blistered or not didn't matter. He wouldn't look away. If there was a moment to act, he needed to see it.
As he watched his firstborn strain against collapse, a single thought settled in, loud and practical.
He needed a real healer.
----
Inside the seething mass of heat and crushing pressure, Pain burned in constant agony. Every inch of him throbbed, skin stretched thin as the ocean pressed inward. He understood one thing with sharp clarity...if his output faltered even slightly, if the flames dipped for a breath, the weight above would collapse him flat.
He didn't fully understand what he was attempting. When he felt the agitation spike from his father through the broodlink, something raw and shameful, he reacted. He had to do something.
So he chose the only answer he knew.
Burn.
If the world meant to crush him, if the ocean wanted to grind him down into nothing, then he would burn until there was nothing left. He was the Broodfather's flame. The firstborn. Simple water was not enough to end him.
But pride was turning against him. Even now, he felt his reserves thinning. Every pulse of aura cost more. He shoved all his will into shaping it, unknowingly trying to mimic what Seo-jin had done against the shard entity. Instead of control, he found only excess. Heat without structure. Fuel without form.
He was bleeding power.
'Snare! Think like Snare!'
His mind tried to split, to compartmentalize, to analyze. He forced a portion of himself to step back and observe. Nothing came. No clean angle. No sharp solution. Only noise. Only the roar of his own anger.
'I must live! The brood needs me!'
He pictured Panic stepping into his place, the oldest by default. The image made his flames flare unevenly. He imagined the brood unraveling, violence without direction, chaos spreading in every direction. His father enduring it all, grinding his teeth through another headache.
Snare surfaced in that thought, calm and steady. Even if Panic lost control, Snare would correct him. Bile was growing stronger by the day. The brood would not collapse.
His father would not be alone.
He would not be missed.
----
Watching without blinking, Seo-jin felt the tension coil through his body as the flames around his son began to falter. The heat bubbled across his skin, blistering at the edges, but even still, he could feel the edges begin to dull.
'You fucking lose, Pain, and I'll kill you myself! You hear me! You're not allowed to die! You give up, and your place at my side is lost!'
He didn't know how much of it carried through. He wished he could shout it with his real voice, let it tear through the water instead of bleeding through a strained link. The feeling twisting in his chest tried to name itself. He corrected it immediately.
This wasn't a parent's fear. It was a leader's disgust.
If Pain had created this mess through arrogance alone, he would have let him solve it or die learning. He would not have moved to intervene. But this wasn't separate from him. Pain stood here because of him. Every action that led to this pressure traced back to Seo-jin's own choices.
Waste was unacceptable.
Especially waste he caused.
So when the flames within the chaos brightened again, when the heat pushed harder against the water, he allowed a fraction of the tension to ease from his jaw. Only a fraction.
----
Pain didn't catch every word.
'You… lose, Pain… kill you…! You hear me! …not allowed… die! You… place… lost!'
Fragments reached him through distortion and pressure.
It was enough.
The exact meaning didn't matter. It could have been curses wishing him dead. The intent alone carried what he needed.
He knew how violent the heat around him had become. Since his mutation, his senses toward temperature had sharpened to a frightening degree. He could feel the subtle shifts in thermal currents, detect the warmth of blood beneath skin, separate it from the body around it.
Which meant he knew exactly how much damage his father was taking by staying that close.
Seo-jin was still there.
Still standing in it.
That alone ignited something new. His rage stopped scattering outward. It tightened. Compressed. For the first time, his fire felt pure.
In every previous battle, something had muddied it. The need for approval. The need to be seen. Rivalry with his siblings. Fear of failing. The weight of being firstborn.
Every flame had carried impurities. Now, there was only one thought.
He was the Broodfather's flame, and a flame that could burn the world did not die.
'I am the firstborn son! I am PAIN!'
Heat exploded from his core, driving outward with violent clarity.
For the first time since it began—
The water pressure stopped.
---
From the outside, Seo-jin had to lift his forearm to shield his face as the heat intensified. It pressed against his skin, stinging flesh raw. Then something pushed through the chaos. Pure intent struck him like lightning across the broodlink.
His son. Focused on one thing.
To burn without end for the Broodfather.
The next instant, light swallowed his vision. Pain erupted like a ruptured star. Seo-jin had already kicked backward the moment he felt the surge spike, or the blast would have taken him with it.
He hit the silt bed hard, skin on his face and hands missing, flesh exposed. Feed had barely kept his eyes intact. Through the blur and glare, in that split second after the detonation, he saw it—
Pain's aura suspended in midair, centered inside a vast pocket of air. In less than a heartbeat, he had flash-burned every drop of water in a twenty-meter radius.
At the center, his son hung there, flames guttering down to embers. No longer a sun, just a smoldering coal.
[Move!]
He didn't hesitate.
Like a crimson spear, Seo-jin tore forward, breaking into the vacuum just as the surrounding ocean began to surge back. The sound built in a single violent swell.
Mid-flight, he twisted and drove his back into Pain's body, biting into him with the twinbacks as the ocean collapsed—
BOOOOOMMM!
The impact tore through the cathedral. Lessers and commanders alike were dragged forward in the vacuum, then hurled backward as the pressure slammed shut.
The shockwave rattled bone and ruptured lungs. Bodies tumbled through the water. Some were crushed flat against stone. Others were flung into vents and split apart. The flash of heat from the collapse seared everything near the center. Widow's scream cut short as one of her legs vanished in the burn.
Most of them managed to right themselves within seconds, coughing and dragging water through bruised gills. Panic recovered first. He forced himself upright, heart hammering, eyes darting across the churned ruins.
All he saw was debris and drifting blood.
He shut his eyes and reached through the broodlink, ignoring the ringing in his head.
'Broodfather!'
The signal flickered, weak but present. His eyes snapped open. He spun toward it and kicked hard, silt bursting beneath him as he tore through the water. Bile and the others followed close behind, pushing just as recklessly as they converged near the edge of the shattered city.
They found him there.
Half-buried in silt and broken stone, Seo-jin lay motionless.
Everything below the waist, gone.