Chapter 67: Womb-breaker
Fire ripped through Lynn's stomach, burning her alive from the inside. Shoving Panic's broken body off, she staggered upright. Her system panel shrieked in her vision, warnings spilling red, but she didn't care. She had to act.
The memory burned hotter than the mushroom tearing her apart. The night he saved her.
The night Wohan Seo-jin vanished into the rift.
She'd been there. The world cracked open, sucking everything inside. She should've been gone too. But he pushed her clear. Threw himself into death to spare her.
He couldn't have known what it meant. But to her, it was everything.
She'd never known a father. Her mother drifted between men until one day she drifted out of her life entirely. Fourteen years old, and she was already selling herself to survive. Stealing. Running scams. Clinging to anyone who could keep her alive one more day.
Then he saved her. The only good thing a man had ever done for her.
She'd spent months hunting for him, obsessed, feeding that single moment until it consumed her. She found herself a shard, E-rank, dirty and bought in blood. She leveled just enough to matter, bent herself to the Dead Hands, waiting, hoping for him to return.
Now he had. And she would not lose him again.
Her eyes burned. Tears boiled off her skin. Her veins bulged, body swelling like it would burst. Hunched over, she couldn't hold it.
The Deathcap finished its work.
Her head snapped back. Her scream tore out raw as green light detonated from her flesh.
The cavern lit like hellfire. The Matriarch shrieked, its hide blistering, skin splitting like the light itself was acid. The monster slammed its claws into stone, trying to burrow away, but its body cracked and smoked as the glow chewed into it.
To the rest, the effect hit different.
[Endless Tranquility // Received]
[+1000% Health Regen]
[Duration // 10 Seconds]
Almost at the brink of death, with his health in the single digits, Azakh-Tur blinked as his flesh pulled itself together. Not the usual agony of knitting sinew and bone...this felt warm. A rush of blood flooding back into hollow veins.
'What is this?'
His health snapped full. He tore himself free from the wall in one heave, gore trailing as he hit the stone. Across the link, his Brood pulsed strong again, Pain upright, fire bleeding off his skin, Panic whole, his missing parts regrown, Snare gawking like he was seeing a god.
Azakh-Tur's gaze cut to the source. Lynn.
Her body glowed with a power that set his teeth on edge. Something about it twisted his gut, not fear but unease. Still, he ignored it. What mattered was what else he saw.
A demon always feels life-force. And hers was bleeding away fast. Burning itself out.
All his cooldowns suddenly refreshed. His spawn back on their feet. The Matriarch's health plunging like stone.
He smiled.
'So eager to sacrifice herself. I couldn't ask for a better fool.'
Not a flicker of pity for the human. She was a tool, useful, nothing more. But for once, a tool that had proven its worth. Healing them was a gift, but not enough by itself. Without damage, they'd just get flattened again. Her light did more than heal. It burned the Matriarch raw, gave them a window to end it.
[Boss HP // 4238 / 12800]
[Boss HP // 3462 / 12800]
[Boss HP // 3117 / 12800]
Seo-jin knew Lynn wouldn't finish it. Her body wouldn't hold. If the beast was going to die, it had to be now. He sent the command through the link.
The Brood didn't hesitate. Even Snare, green and untested, snapped his gaze to his father and obeyed. Admiration, sharp and clean, hit the link. Even as he admonished himself.
'Why didn't I think of that?'
The three closed on the Matriarch. Her hide blistered and cracked under the green glare, pus and blood sizzling out of the ruptures. She buckled, writhed, but the Brood went for her rear. Panic led the charge.
The Matriarch felt them and convulsed, rage flaring, but Seo-jin was already moving. He slammed into her head, maces hammering, blood splattering in sheets.
"Get in!"
She swiped, claws shredding stone, but he flung dust into her eyes with his tail, buying seconds. Enough.
The Brood disappeared into the stretched, bleeding canal. Flesh tore, their claws sinking in, dragging themselves deeper.
Seo-jin leapt back, chest heaving. His job now was simple. Stay alive. Because unless she could rip them out of her own womb, this fight was finished.
[User seems to enjoy this tactic.]
"If it works, it works. The broodlings are perfect for the job. Though I doubt Pain's heat feels good in there."
[User has issues.]
"Maybe…"
He didn't relax. The boss was too busy thrashing over its violated womb to target him now, but he knew better than to assume it had shown all its tricks.
Backing off, he spotted Lynn sprawled across the stone. Her hair, once fire-bright, had dulled to rust. Kneeling, he brushed strands from her face.
"Still alive. But the cost was steep."
Her skin sagged, aged decades in moments. Wrinkles furrowed deep, lips cracked, her life-force bled almost dry. He weighed her against the fight.
"I should leave her…"
His hand twitched toward her throat. Her soul would buy him more time. But his fingers froze.
...It felt wrong. Yet he couldn't look away. Wrinkled, wasted, drained, but it was sacrifice carved across her face, devotion worn into her skin. She'd burned herself out for him. That made her more than a tool. She was proof of what he demanded: submission.
"She's earned it."
He hauled her onto his back. At a thought, the Twinbacks writhed awake, their jaws unhinging. They clamped down, chewing into her flesh as he walked. She didn't stir as teeth ripped and bones snapped, blood sliding down his spine.
'Broodfather!'
Snare's voice tore into the link, frantic.
'What?'
'Can I come out? Between the stomach acid and Pain's flames, I don't think I'll last much longer!'
Azakh-Tur checked the panel. Snare's health was nosediving, the only thing keeping him alive was desperate Feed.
'Out. Now.'
Snare burst from the Matriarch's rear in a spray of filth, hurled on to the cavern floor. He hit hard, sliding through a pool of gore, chunks of steaming flesh clinging to him. Acid smoked from his skin. He coughed blood, eyes wide.
Inside, Pain's fire carved flesh into charcoal. Panic's dagger shredded mucous lining, stabbing for organs while kits drowned in the flood of heat and bile. The Matriarch howled, her distended stomach bulging grotesquely as claws and teeth worked her from within. Every thrash sent sprays of blood and fluid bursting from her birth canal, raining over the stone.
Azakh-Tur almost laughed as Snare dragged himself free of the puddle, slick with things that weren't his.
"Just stay back and watch, Snare. When something's on the verge of death, that's when they become their most dangerous."
[4th Weapon Effect // Activated]
[Bludgeoning / Piercing Damage Converted → Slicing]
His maces stretched, handles warping, heads flattening into broad edges that split down the middle. The weapons thinned, their jagged blades dripping bloodlight as they locked into place at his sides.
[-2SM]
[Hive Pulse // Activated]
[All Broodlings // +15% Attack Speed]
The Matriarch shrieked, her body erupting like a furnace of meat. Bulges ripped across her stomach, dagger stabbing through from the inside as Pain and Panic shredded her organs like wildfire. Every second, something sharp punched free, teeth, claws, fragments of spine, bursting out in wet detonations before being pulled back in.
[Boss HP // 2899/12800]
Her legs staggered, vomit of blood streaming from her mouth. Not enough.
Azakh-Tur shot forward, bloodlight cracking the stone beneath him—
—and froze.
The impossible: the Matriarch ripped her own belly open, tearing herself wide to stop the slaughter within. A geyser of entrails blew out. Pain and Panic spilled from the wound in a flood of half-digested kits, scrambling free, dripping fire and acid.
Snare's voice broke the air, frantic.
"Her legs! Stop her legs! She's priming—!"
Azakh-Tur saw it. Muscles bulging, every tendon tightening, the same charge that had almost ended them before, but now doubled, her flesh ballooning with power.
Time collapsed to heartbeats. His Brood lunged. The Matriarch crouched, ready to obliterate them all.
He checked his panel.
[HP // 640/640]
[SM // 34/40]
Checked her health.
[Boss HP // 2645/12800]
No hesitation. Eyes locked, he dropped every ounce of restraint.
[Desecrate // Activated]
[Soulmass Sacrifice // 33]
[Damage Dealt // 1881]
'Not enough!'
The Matriarch froze mid-charge. Veins blackened, eyes burst in their sockets. Blood jetted from her ears and mouth as her body convulsed, soullight ripping upward in a flare of red.
About to close the distance and end it, a final notification stopped Azakh-Tur cold.
[Execution Effect Triggered]
[Instant Kill // Success]
[Boss HP // 0/12800]
Her scream snapped in half, crushed into silence.
[+3500 Exp]
System light burst through the cavern, jagged and violent. Levels surged. Even inside him, Lynn ticked up, a wrongness that scraped through his marrow, a feeling he'd never forget.
The Matriarch's body collapsed, bone and flesh smashing into the floor. Then, the chamber rang with a gong so loud it split the air, shaking dust from the ceiling. Followed by a voice, mechanical, male, detached. He knew it at once. The Network.
[Congratulations to all surviving Users.]
[Dungeon Cleared.]
[Instance closing in five minutes.]
[Distributing Rewards.]
The words cut like glass. Experience he'd take, but nothing else. Until his shard was registered, the Network would deny him.
"Broodfather? What's that?"
Pain's voice drew his eyes. He followed the broodling's gaze...toward the Matriarch's corpse. A chest shimmered into existence beside it, humming with the glow of loot.
Bitterness clenched his gut. The chest hummed beside the Matriarch's corpse, glowing like it had been placed there just to laugh at him. He even felt embarrassed.
[User survived. Losing out on rewards equates to an even trade.]
'Yeah, you don't get to say that when I'm the one bleeding, and for what? Not for this. Not for a fucking box I can't touch. All I want is the green. The world you showed me. The trees, the fields. Humans that weren't tearing each other apart! That's all I've chased since you opened my skull! And when I finally crawl my way here…every shit human I meet is rotted. Everything's already tainted. Now this? This glowing joke in the dirt?'
The words curdled into anger, shame, a young demon's complaint bleeding raw into the dark:
"Fuck this. I just want the green, everything else is bullshit."
Pain caught his look, confusion twisting his face.
"That making you upset? I can smash it if—"
"Wait—"
His voice snapped sharp, then his shock bent into a grin, thin, jagged, cruel. Closing his eyes, he let the twin mouths on his back scream. The noise broke into choking gurgles as their throats heaved.
They vomited Lynn onto the stone.
She hit with a wet slap. Her body rolled half-sideways, unconscious. Skin slimed in bile and stomach acid. Her rust-colored hair hung in clumps, matted to her skull, tangled with streaks of half-digested meat.
"I can't open it, but she can."