Chapter 75: A Hunter's Bargain
A few hours before sunrise, the docks stank of salt, oil, and rot. Dead men had been dragged off hours ago, though their blood still blackened the boards in long streaks. Gregor moved among the crews without a word, his coat catching the sea-wind.
Min barked orders at the laborers, her laughter booming between commands. Broken planks were ripped out, nets restrung, beams hammered back into place. Patrol lines shifted wider, doubled at the choke points. No one complained, not with her grinning at them, daring them to slack.
The worst of it was done. The dead dumped, the wounds in the dock at least bandaged. Gregor's eyes kept drifting east, though. Toward Wire Dog turf. Toward the smoke that hadn't settled yet.
When the last crew broke for water, he gathered a handful of men, lean shadows in patched armor. He didn't bother explaining. They knew.
Boots struck in rhythm as they followed him off the docks, down the silent streets and out into the dark.
The Wire Dogs' den waited. And Gregor intended to see it with his own eyes.
He chose a small crew—Split-jaw, Slims, Yugo, and Yan. Including himself, five men total, boots scuffing quiet down the broken street.
Slims, youngest and jittery, filled the silence with his mouth.
"Did you see how he cracked his skull?! Fuckin' badass!"
"We were all there, shit-brain."
Split-jaw rolled his eyes, spiked red hair catching the moonlight.
"Screw you, old man. You're just jealous Min's got her fuck-buddy ba—"
The words cut short. His view flipped. One moment the street ahead, the next the sky. A knife edge kissed his throat, cold enough to lock his breath.
Gregor leaned close, whisper sharp.
"Talk less. And you call her Big Min."
Then the blade vanished, along with the man holding it. Slims blinked, scrambled to his feet, and bolted to rejoin the line.
"Idiot."
"Idiot."
The twins, Yugo and Yan spoke together, smirking back at him. Both smaller, slim, matching long black hair, pulled back.
"Yeah, yeah, big idiot. Sorry, boss, I was just joking, ya know?"
"Quiet."
Snickering from the others burned his ears. Slims flushed red, hazel eyes dropping. Twenty-one, soft features, too pretty for the world he walked. Problem was, his mouth killed any goodwill before it could stick.
The group went silent after that. Enemy turf demanded it. West side, Wire Dog ground. Same coast, but the tides here twisted, waves breaking without pattern.
The target rose in front of them: a gutted office tower turned gang den. Concrete patched with scrap, windows bricked or boarded. Every wall screamed makeshift survival.
Closer now.
First impression of the place hit them all at once.
It was quiet.
Gregor lifted two fingers, signaling. Yugo and Yan peeled off, receiving quick words before splitting opposite ways, vanishing into shadow.
The three remaining pushed for the entrance. Gregor drew twin pistols from his inventory, their barrels dull black and hungry. Split-jaw's skin rippled, hardening to stone along his fists and forearms. Slims muttered something under his breath, arm glowing as a clunky repeater crossbow fused itself to his wrist.
The stink hit before the sight did. Slims stumbled on something soft, looked down...and nearly fell on his face. A hand. Just the hand. The stump was gnawed, tendons dangling like chewed rope.
"Gross, what—!"
His voice broke. Face paling, he swallowed hard as he scanned the room.
"Hey...guys. I think they're all dead."
The first floor was carnage. Furniture burned in heaps, scorched frames collapsing in slow groans. Bodies lay scattered like butcher's scraps. Blood soaked into cracked tiles, fat sizzling where it dripped into fire. One corpse had its chest caved in like wet clay, another split clean in half, intestines spilling in glistening ropes across the floorboards.
Gregor didn't flinch. He stood still, eyes closed, aura spreading thin like smoke through the building. A moment passed. Then he moved, silent as the corpses.
"With me."
He didn't look back. Slims followed, realizing too late his own boots squealed with every step, every crunch of bone beneath him screaming compared to Gregor's silence.
He edged close to Split-jaw, whispering low.
"Hey…what's his class? Everyone treats it like a big secret—"
"It's not a secret."
Split-jaw's jaw twitched, eyes scanning the rot around them.
"We just don't talk about his business."
Slims frowned.
"Why?"
Feeling on edge from the amount of death that surrounded them, Split-jaw felt the need to fill the air with some noise, so he didn't mind sharing.
"There was a guy once. Got stuck in a drop with Gregor. Made it out, and started runnin' his mouth about what happened inside. Gregor pulled him aside."
Split-jaw's stone fists flexed.
"Now the guys doesn't talk so much."
"He…he killed him?"
"No, you idiot. The Wire Dogs saw to that. Now keep it down."
Slims bit his tongue, shame mixing with bile. He was still fresh, an initiate. No colors yet. He thought maybe this job would be his chance to earn towards them. That thought choked and died as they reached the second floor.
Even Split-jaw went pale.
One corpse had been crushed so hard its skull was shoved down into its chest cavity, the spine bent backward like snapped wire. Gregor crouched, dipped two fingers in the mess, and lifted them to his nose.
Slims' stomach turned. His heel slipped on a coil of intestine, the slick wetness sliding under him. He gagged, almost spewing on the wall, but forced it back down. His throat burned.
"Boss…what the fuck happened here?"
Gregor didn't glance up. His pistols were already pointed toward the stairs.
"Stay on guard. Something still breathes on the top floor."
Slims froze. The words hit harder than the smell. Still alive? In this slaughterhouse? His legs wanted to lock, to cement him here, but Split-jaw was already climbing. Gregor didn't hesitate. And Slims, barely E-rank, had no choice but to follow.
The third floor erased whatever courage he'd scraped together.
This wasn't chaos. This was arrangement. Bodies displayed like trophies. Spinal columns dangled from the rafters like grisly chandeliers, skulls still attached, jaws hanging slack. Skin had been flayed and nailed wide across walls like crude banners. A ribcage had been pried open and stuffed with severed arms, fingers spread in mock applause.
Slims pushed through a curtain of dangling vertebrae, bile climbing his throat.
He regretted joining the Dead Hands. He regretted breathing.
"This is insane… what kind of sick fuck could do this?"
Slims' voice cracked low, almost swallowed by the silence. The words barely left his lips before the real fear set in. He knew who had done this. His boss.
Three severed heads were stacked neatly on a desk, eyes gouged out, sockets hollow and wet. Slim stared into the empty holes, and the memory of Seo-jin saving them on the docks hit like a hammer. The summoning, the swarm, the impossible timing, it had felt like the shit parents used to spin in bedtime stories.
But no hero carved towers of skulls.
"Hey. You alright, kid?"
Slim jerked, not realizing he'd been frozen. His throat rasped dry as he shook his head.
"Nope. This is—I don't know, man. I don't know if I can—"
Split-jaw cut him off with a sharp crack across the arm, his stare enough to choke the rest down.
"You'll be fine. Eyes open. Mouth shut. Keep it simple."
Slims swallowed, nodding. He understood the real warning...Dead Hands didn't forgive betrayal. He remembered the shot Gregor fired at one of theirs during the Wire Dogs raid. He remembered the fear. If he slipped now, he'd never see tomorrow.
He forced himself up the next flight, head down, refusing to look at the "sculptures" littering the walls. The first one had been enough. Skin flayed, bones bent, arranged like art. He didn't care if something lunged at him now. Better to die from an ambush than keep staring.
Gregor didn't slow. He kept the lead, his back tight. His jaw ached from holding the smile down, keeping it hidden from the others.
'Is this him? Allies? Summons? No… too far to control.'
His lips threatened to curl. Doesn't matter. Whoever did this is strong. That's all that matters.
He climbed higher. On the landing he paused, drawn to one display. A man and a woman, their bodies bound together, spiraling upward like a twisted willow trunk. Flesh fused into flesh, arms threaded like vines. Their faces carved into serene masks, sculpted to fit each other, grotesque harmony.
Gregor's chest tightened, though not from disgust.
'Sorry, Seo-jin. You were weak. Same as me.'
Behind him, Slims dropped to his knees, vomiting until his ribs heaved. Split-jaw hadn't moved—frozen stiff, tears spilling silent. Neither could follow.
Gregor didn't notice. Or he didn't care.
From the stairwell leading to the fourth floor, the twins finally stumbled up behind them, faces white, then both turned and vomited into the wrecked hall like the rest—guts and stomach acid arcing across the floorboards. The room answered back with quiet, private retches and the scrape of shoes on blood-slick carpet.
A sound crawled down from the final floor: slow, deliberate, a noise that tugged teeth loose with fear. Every head snapped up. Every muscle wanted to run.
Gregor was laughing.
Not a chuckle, an ugly, high, hoarse thing that rattled the rafters. He stood before the only intact wall in the room, frozen in rapture. The sight there had unstitched whatever remained of his restraint.
Two giant clawed hands were nailed to the plaster, carved from skin and sutures. Sheets of flayed hide overlapped like shingles, threaded through with tendon and nerve, knotted with bone. Gripped in those hands, a body had been assembled, three dog-like torsos grafted into one crooked spine, organs braided together, spines fused into a single throat. The whole monstrosity ended in a single head: a man still breathing, eyes pouring blood, sockets full of wet, patient terror.
Gregor's laugh broke and thinned into a ragged whisper. He stepped back and wiped his face with the back of his hand; he was shaking, hands trembling with something like worship.
"I have to do this. I'm sorry, Elia. I can't wait any longer."
[Bargaining with a demon is one of the stupidest ideas you've ever had, you know that, right?]
"Da."
[Then as long as you admit it, I'll make sure you don't fuck it up.]
"I've waited too long to fuck this up. Far too long."
[This is a first, though—]
One of Gregor's pistols vanished into grey system light; the barrel of the other aimed towards the man's eye. The man's lids fluttered; blood tracked down his cheek like a slow confession. The shot detonated, clean and obscene.
[Unlocking the Demon Hunter class, only to make a contract with one.]
Gregor let a small, terrible grin split his face as the bullet's smoke curled away from his hand. He turned back toward the stairwell; his stride hummed with plans.
"If it gets me what I want, I don't care what he is."
He spat the words like a curse.
"A demon with a shard should be impossible. If he has Seo-jin's, he can grow it to A-rank."
[Even if he's a low-tier demon, add a shard—it's like putting wings on a lion. Terrifying.]
His mind ran through contingencies and betrayals, chess moves and slaughter. Excitement made his voice thin with hunger. He had waited. He had measured. Now every path led the same direction.
Gang color would bleed. Turf would burn. The Dead Hands would rise.
Gregor descended, steps steady, mind still caged in plans. Every move stacked on another, lines of control, routes of blood, ways to set the Dead Hands above the rest. His jaw worked quiet as he turned it over, blind to the ruin around him.
The crash tore him from his thoughts.
Two bodies burst from the hallway ahead, hurled like broken tools. The twins hit hard, bone and flesh scraping across the gore-slick floor until they stopped at his boots.
Gregor froze. His aura shifted. Gun oil, sweat, and the hammer of too many hearts beat through the building. His senses widened, every breath pulling the truth tighter.
He fucked up.
They weren't alone.