Chapter 104: Feed the Fire
The question hung in the dark before him, flickering like bait. Seo-jin rolled his eyes.
'You couldn't have mentioned this?'
[News to me. Grimm's sub-system has never activated before, so how was I supposed to know?]
'You made him!'
[By accident!]
He blinked.
'Did you just yell at me?'
[You pissed me off. Do you expect me to know everything?]
'Kinda, yeah—but fine. Whatever.'
He exhaled through his nose and jabbed [Yes].
The panel shifted.
[Cost // 20SM]
[Proceed?]
[Yes / No]
Checking his UI—
[HP // 1279/1300]
[SM // 36/48]
He didn't know what waited at the end of the tunnel, or what was left on the beach, but he still had six soul stones and a reason to gamble.
'I'm not skipping this.'
He pressed [Yes] again.
The drain hit instantly. Soulmass ripped out of him in a rush that left his gut hollow. The current of power tore down his veins and into the hollow space in his chest.
[The Soulmass appears to be restoring him. It seems the cost was for regeneration. Odd his code lacks any formal healing subroutine.]
Seo-jin ignored the chatter. There was movement inside him, slow at first, then steady. A faint blue glow spread beneath his skin. It leaked out through his ribs, lines of fire crawling up his throat until a small, flickering skull slid free from his chest.
Grimm hovered there, silent but burning bright, his hollow sockets fixed ahead.
'He's healed! Is he gonna fight now?'
The tunnel filled with the pull of a shifting current. At its far end, the Styx turned. Its pale green flame constricted, dimming to a single hateful point as it met Grimm's ghostlight.
Seo-jin tilted his head, dark hair drifting in the ocean water. Something about the ghost fish caught his attention, and his eyes narrowed.
'It's afraid… of Grimm?'
From what the system said, the Styx wasn't much, just a spectral scavenger. Grimm, on the other hand, was barely more than a floating skull with a spine and some dangling organs. No claws. No jaws. Nothing about him screamed predator.
And yet...everything in the water had gone still.
Neither ghost moved. The tunnel hung silent. From where he hovered, Seo-jin couldn't tell if Grimm was even awake yet, but the Styx had gone rigid, its green glow shrunk to a weak pulse, fading like it was trying to disappear.
'He sees it.'
Grimm's blue flame froze. His skull turned, slow, deliberate, until the hollow sockets met the Styx head-on.
The fish twitched. Then bolted.
It didn't get far. Grimm's entrails lashed forward, whipping through the water like barbed cords, coiling around the ghost fish in a blink.
The Styx screamed.
Even underwater, the noise cut through him like shrapnel. Seo-jin grabbed his ears, teeth grinding as the pitch hit deep in his skull, a sharp, glass-breaking wail steeped in sorrow. For a heartbeat, the sound made him feel something close to grief. He crushed it instantly.
'Since when the fuck could he do that?'
Grimm dragged the thrashing fish in. His movements were cold, efficient. No manic twitch, no grin, just the blank precision of a thing that existed to consume.
The Styx's fire flared once in desperation, but it did nothing. Grimm opened his mouth. A haze of blue flame rolled out like fog, thick and slow, swallowing the fish whole. The Styx writhed inside it, bones bubbling apart as the green light collapsed.
'So he melts them down first. Interesting...'
Bit by bit, the skeletal mass dissolved into a blue slurry. When the last fragment fell apart, the miasma retracted, curling back into Grimm's gaping jaw. He closed it with a sharp clack.
Light bled from his skull, swelling until it hurt to look at. Seo-jin covered his eyes, squinting into the glare.
'What's happening?! I can't see!'
[He's digesting the Styx. The energy is being condensed...he succeeded. You can look now.]
The light dimmed. Seo-jin lowered his hand and kicked forward, excitement tightening in his chest. Grimm floated ahead, faintly glowing, and the sea itself seemed to hold its breath.
The ghost had grown. Not much, maybe an inch, but enough to notice. Where before he'd been nothing more than a skull with scraps of spine and intestine, now thin ribs curved from his sternum like tiny bone fingers reaching for shape.
The glow around him faded. Another one replaced it.
[System // Notification]
[Uplink Request // Accepted]
[Source // System By-Product: Grimm]
[Designation // User Pet]
[Sub-System Quest Available // Feed the Fire]
[Clear Condition // Feed 3 more Ghosts to User Pet (Grimm)]
[Quest Rewards // Unlock Pet Skill Tree]
[Accept?]
[Yes / No]
'Grimm can get skills?! Hell yeah!'
He didn't hesitate.
[Quest // Feed the Fire // Accepted]
The panel blinked out. Grimm hovered in its place, skull split in a wide, toothy grin.
Seo-jin grinned back despite himself.
'Feeling better?'
Grimm spun once, rising toward Seo-jin's head like he meant to perch again, but a raised hand stopped him.
'Not yet, bud. I'm in a bad spot right now—don't want you getting hurt again. See that wall?'
He pointed toward the far end of the tunnel.
'Go straight through. You'll come out in a big cavern full of short, hairy humans called dwarves. Pain and Snare are with them. Find Snare, stay put, and wait for me. Got it?'
Grimm hesitated. His blue fire dimmed as the loose tendrils of his guts went slack.
'Don't pout. Be good. When this is over, we'll take a day—just you and me. Deal?'
The little skull lit up again, flame burning bright. He wiggled his intestines like a wave, spun in place once, and darted into the wall, vanishing through stone.
Seo-jin stared after him until the faint glow disappeared. The tension in his chest eased...only a little, but enough.
[Strange for a demon to form such attachment. It's almost cute.]
'See? That right there—that's why you're getting replaced the first chance I get.'
He kicked off the stone, swimming hard toward the exit, snatching the tails of three copper-scaled corpses as he passed.
[All talk. You'll need to reach the world dungeon first, dumbass.]
As a vein began to buldge at his temple, he decided to ignore the system and instead pulled up his panel. Three AP waited. He quickly made up his mind and pushed all of them into WIL. It was his weakest stat, and being tied directly to the Network, it wasn't a stat he could continue to ignore.
The glow of his interface lit his face in the dark as he swam, blood trailing from the corpses behind him like ribbons in the current.
Seo-jin studied the new panel, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. The numbers looked good, but not enough. Never enough.
[ATTRIBUTES]
[STR // 37+10 // C]
[VIT // 36+10 // C]
[AGI // 37 // C]
[INT // 22 // D]
[FLH // 27 // D]
[WIL // 24 // D]
[AP // 0]
With the Forgefather's Mantle boosting his strength and vitality, he was now sitting in Thragdur's tier. He'd felt that difference since putting it on, the raw, crushing weight behind each swing, and he wanted more. The faster he finished this island mess, the sooner the Forgemaster could start his commissions.
And after seeing Brundar's golem, the urge burned hotter than ever.
He slowed as he neared the tunnel's end, still decently far ahead just in case. Closing his stat screen, he brought up the one he really cared about.
[Class Skill // Corpse Harvest]
[Type // Active]
[Category // Summoning Skill]
[Rank // E]
[Sub-category // Brood Creation]
[Description]
[Convert a corpse personally slain by the user into lesser broodlings, provided the soul remains intact. Broodling count scales with corpse rank.]
[Cost // Soul of Corpse]
[Effect]
[F Rank // 1 F Rank Broodling]
[E Rank // 3 F Rank Broodlings]
[D Rank // 5 F Rank Broodlings]
[C Rank // 10 F Rank Broodlings]
[B Rank // 30 F Rank Broodlings]
[A Rank // 100 F Rank Broodlings]
[S Rank // 1,000 F Rank Broodlings]
[S+ Rank // 100,000 F Rank Broodlings]
[Note]
[Broodlings are permanent summons capped at E Rank. They cannot evolve, mutate, or gain classes at this tier.]
[Cost // Soul of Corpse]
[Duration // Permanent]
[Cast Time // Instant]
[Cooldown // None]
["From rot and silence, the brood is born. Flesh feeds flesh. Death answers its maker."]
His grin widened as he read the final line. Looking to the corpses, he could see their souls were just about to fade completely. He was close enough now.
'Time to multiply.'
He triggered the skill three times.
The water blackened. The corpses twitched, skin splitting apart as thick streams of shadow spilled free. From that churning mass, shapes began to crawl, small, and twisted.
He ignored the system prompts, and his urge to Inspect one, there was no time. The newborns had no air to hold their breath. They were dying the second they opened their mouths. Born in panic, and without an enemy, they writhed and scraped against each other, a mass of claws and teeth.
'Move! Out the tunnel—now! Spread and swim!'
His command tore through the Broodlink. Every lesser broodling thrashed forward, swarming toward the exit like a black cloud.
Seo-jin's Soul Sight had been sweeping the water ahead, but nothing. No light. No aura. No hint of life waiting beyond. That silence made his skin crawl.
'Good. Go first. If something's waiting, it should go after them before me.'
His limbs stretched taut, claws cutting the water. Every muscle locked for speed. The swarm surged ahead, vanishing into the open dark.
He waited. One breath. Two.
No movement. No sound.
The tunnel mouth stared back, wide and still.
'Fuck it—'
He shot forward, tearing out of the cave in a burst of white bubbles...then froze.
His body stopped. Muscles turned to stone. Even his lungs refused to move.
Something vast had stirred.
Bloodlust thickened the water, pressing in from every direction. Suffocating. Absolute. Crushing his mind, strangling instinct, and leaving only one thing. The same cold, helpless emotion he hadn't felt since crawling through the Maw...terror.
System warnings screamed, text flooding too fast to read. He didn't care. His eyes were fixed on the void ahead, on the single shape in the dark, a horizon darker than the sea itself, as if the ocean had split wide open.
Then it moved.
The distant horizon split in two.
He caught only a fraction of it, an open maw vast enough to swallow continents, its teeth jutting like mountains larger than the island above. A sudden pull seized his chest, dragging him forward before he could resist.
The current surged. Drowned broodlings swept past him, their bodies vanishing into the dark. A boulder ripped from behind him and clipped his head.
The pain snapped him awake for one desperate instant.
Just enough.
[Rotmark // Activated]
His vision shattered as his body began to collapse, flesh peeling into ash that dissolved into the water.
The last thing he heard before the dark took him was a roar. Low and endless, deep enough to tear the ocean apart.
It didn't echo. It devoured.
And somewhere inside that sound, something attacked his soul.