Chapter 111: Three Faces Rising
The dwarves were faster than he'd expected.
Now standing at the edge of Lilid's territory, Seo-jin took in the mass of bodies and steel and felt his eyes widen.
'Where the fuck were they hiding?'
[Thragdur apparently keeps a few cards close.]
The forest off to the right was packed, no formation, no pomp, just raw bulk. Two hundred dwarves at least, each wrapped in plated armor and carrying weapons thick enough to break bone on weight alone. The number itself wasn't impressive. The sight of them was. A wall of beards, steel, and stubborn muscle dense enough to make Seo-jin quietly restructure half his plans for the clan's future.
Thragdur's voice cut through the thought.
"To think we've fallen this low. Siding with the enemy out of desperation tastes as bitter as spoiled ale."
Seo-jin snorted.
"Forgemaster, spare me the funeral toast. We all get what we want by sundown, so keep it simple. Let's start before your people piss themselves. Lilid says her children whisper of movement."
Lilid stood behind him like a blade sheathed in silk. Under his suggestion she'd folded her spider bulk into her humanoid form, armored at the chest and shoulders, draped in a dull-metal battle dress that flowed like liquid steel. Her smile stayed soft, but her eyes didn't blink.
With Seo-jin translating between them, the discussion came in short, clipped pieces. Even with a contract, neither side trusted the other. Every glare between the ranks carried the promise of violence if the plan slipped even an inch.
Their intel was garbage. Skirmishes. Tracks. Rumors about a leadership no one had seen yet up close. Nothing about their rituals. Nothing about their deeper magic. Nothing about what waited in the heart of their nest.
So the plan came down to brutality.
Spiderlings and dwarven ranged fire would open the fight. Arrows, bolts, spitweb, the whole curtain of pain meant to drag out the tribe's full numbers. Once the snakes committed, Thragdur's main force would charge, backed by the broodlings.
Lilid, Seo-jin, and Thragdur wouldn't engage until the enemy's strongest revealed itself. Whoever led the snakes would come last, and they'd handle it together.
The ocean at the snakes' backs made it simple. No retreat. No escape. A single push to wipe them from the island or die on their corpses.
Seo-jin had planned to keep the brood hidden at first. Have them stay within the growths, let them strike when Lilid dropped her guard, play the perfect betrayal to steal the island clean.
But that plan died the moment he leveled. His path changed. His future shifted. And now he needed every ounce of carnage he could get.
"One is satisfied. Let's finish this. From that look on your face, you'd think standing beside us rotted your soul. See it through, Forgemaster—then we can both be done with each other."
The last of the quiet insults had finally bled dry, leaving only forward motion. Their forces shifted as one, marching toward the nest with the weight of fate dragging behind them.
The opening move carved itself into Seo-jin's memory. Spiderlings poured from the canopy in torrents, down bark, through soil, between roots. A living flood of pale skin and legs, a spear-tip of skittering death claiming every inch ahead of them.
Behind that tide came the first dwarven line: lighter armor, bows and crossbows slung tight, rifles gripped with knuckles cracked from use. Their killing intent rolled off them in a pressure that felt almost demonic.
And threading between them, marched his brood.
Pain stood out like a flare. Seo-jin brushed the link, sending a silent command, and watched Pain's flames thin to a smolder. The white-hot blade in his hand still glowed like a star, no hiding that.
Snare had already entrenched himself, barking instructions at dwarves twice his bulk, his staff tapping bodies aside with absolute authority. Panic drifted in their wake, sliding fingers across rifles, blades, beards, anything that moved, eyes wide, grin stuck in place like he might eat the next weapon he found.
Seo-jin looked past them, searching for the smallest silhouette.
Hex stood near Pain's back, blindfold tight, head swiveling, nose working the air in frantic bursts.
[He's almost convincing.]
'Given who he is, I'd call it miraculous.'
Pain, at least, was taking his secret task seriously. His attempt at casual behavior was an obvious failure, but the important part held, Hex remained at his back, guarded without knowing. Even if he only needed his sight to tell.
The broodlings all marched in their new armor, woven webbing hardened to glossy plates, layered tight across arms, chests, legs. Full suits sculpted by spiderlings in a single sitting. Only Pain moved bare; his flames burned too hot for anything to cling to him.
Inspecting them earlier had given Seo-jin a moment of surprise.
[+30% physical damage reduction]
Across all three of them. And the armor carried a latent climbing trait, something close to their own Wallcrawler skill but rendered pointless by how naturally his brood broke gravity.
Almost wasted potential. Almost.
Lilid leaned close enough for her breath to touch his ear, her hand tracing his arm.
"He seems fragile. Should you truly send him out with them?"
She had mistaken where his eyes lingered. Seo-jin let her.
"He has yet to taste real violence. He was bred for it, shaped for it—but hiding him now would only stain him. If he dies, that's a cull, not a loss."
Heat rippled off Lilid, her claws tightening on his arm as a soft giggle crawled up her throat.
"Looking at the others, we see your methods bear fruit. You should let them join us next time, you could instruct them in other ways."
He swallowed the bile rising from his gut.
"Not my taste."
She drifted from him with a careless shrug—then stopped cold. Her expression drained to nothing.
"They've moved. Every child watching them has died."
No grief. No tension. She simply resumed walking, body loose, voice almost bored.
"Good. At least this won't be dull."
Seo-jin sent the report through to Thragdur, laying out the meaning in broad strokes. They didn't know the full shape of it yet, but the truth was simple, the enemy was ready for them. And they were close. Minutes at most.
Blood would spill soon. Butcher's Wrath pulsed under his skin, eager, heat climbing up his arms like they wanted out.
He rolled his sleeves to his elbows, savoring the tightening of the cloth. This part of the plan, this was the one he'd been hungry for. He angled himself so he'd catch Lilid's full reaction.
Smiling faintly, he flexed his fingers. Crimson system light erupted from his body. When the glow thinned, fading like embers in a dying forge, the sight waiting on Lilid's face was exactly what he'd hoped for.
"Broodfather… you're—a User?"
Lilid's voice thinned to a whisper. Color drained from her face, her lips parted, her whole body trembling like something struck at the spine.
Seo-jin adjusted his chestpiece like nothing unnatural had just happened, voice flat.
"Questions later."
Blood split down his arms as Butcher's Wrath slid out from beneath his skin, wet and eager. Bloodlight crawled up his body in slow, rising sheets. His hunger sharpened, scenting the air.
"Ready yourself. They're just ahead."
They crossed deeper into enemy ground. Every step should have had her on edge, the Snake Tribe capable of striking at any moment...but Lilid only stared at him. Breath shaking. Skin flushed. Watching the sway of his shoulders, the glow under his skin. One of her hands drifted down her stomach, lower, the rapid tremor of her wet fingers loud even over the marching dwarves.
"Impossible…"
Her breath rising.
"It shouldn't exist. We want it. We want more…!"
He felt her lust bleed out like rotgas, unwanted results, but effective. A rattled queen was easier to gut. Revealing the system to her now would keep her unsteady right up until the moment he cut her open.
At their side, Thragdur marched without a word. Stone carved into the shape of a dwarf. His eyes didn't shift once. He stared ahead until something in the terrain sparked behind his gaze.
"Prepare to engage!"
The roar snapped Lilid back to the present. She reached for her children through the link—then froze, face shifting.
"Where are they?"
Seo-jin halted mid-step.
"What do you see?"
"One sees nothing. Not a soul."
Ahead stood what passed for a village, crude huts ringed by sharpened stakes, runes carved deep, offerings crusted with age and filth. Totems hung like dead limbs. All the signs of habitation were there.
But no Snake Tribe.
"I've seen this before."
Seo-jin sneered, eyes narrowing.
"They're using curse magic to hide themselves."
Lilid stepped forward and the ground shuddered as her thorax tore free behind her, violence pouring from her spine in a wet, seismic convulsion. The demon half of her snapped awake, legs flexing, stance widening until the soil cracked beneath her weight.
At that same instant, a chunk of their frontline surged. A hundred spiderlings screeched as one and broke into a charge. Their feet hit the earth in a rapid, chattering rain. Behind them, dwarves lifted bows, drew crossbows, cocked rifles, an entire wall of metal and killing intent bracing to fire.
Seo-jin watched them advance, his vision burning into [Soul Sight]. Crimson coal-light spilled from his eyes as he swept across the village.
Nothing. No aura. No shadows. No spark of ambush. Just spiderlings digging through empty huts, chittering as they searched.
He narrowed his eyes and stared into the village center. The moment the first wave reached the huts—he saw it.
His bloodlight exploded.
"Retreat!"
Thragdur and Lilid faltered a step behind him. They hadn't seen the massive red aura ignite under the entire village.
Then the world broke open.
The earth convulsed upward in a violent detonation. Soil and bone and wood blasted skyward. Huts collapsed as if punched from below. Dwarves vanished under falling slabs of ground. Screams cracked through the dust.
"Pull back! Fall back to me!"
Thragdur's voice hit like a hammer, trying to drag order from the chaos.
Debris hammered the battlefield. Spiderlings were crushed mid-scuttle. Armor dented. Bodies folded wrong.
Seo-jin didn't move. Rocks slammed down around him, but his gaze stayed locked on the thing rising from the explosion.
Lilid appeared at his side, face carved from ice. Her voice barely carried over the roar.
"What do you see?"
"…A-rank."
Her mask cracked. Just for a heartbeat.
Heavy footfalls closed in from Seo-jin's left, the Forgemaster, armor grinding like an avalanche. Behind him came the harsh, eager breaths of the broodlings.
As the monstrous shape continued to rise, Seo-jin exhaled once, low and steady. He almost felt relieved he'd left Grimm behind.
Almost.
Part of him wished the little ghost could've seen this horror unfold firsthand.
Something exhaled, and the dust parted in an instant.
A shape uncoiled from the crater, thick, scaled muscle sliding up through shattered earth. Thirty feet of serpent body rose first, each plate of gold-green scales grinding against the next with a sound like wet stone being crushed. Then the torso followed, humanoid only in the way corpses sometimes resembled the living.
One neck lifted beneath a giant hood.
Three faces unfurled.
Each jaw opened wide, lined with hooked fangs slick with venom that smoked on contact with air. Four pupils narrowed to slits as all combined locked on the army below.
Burning sigils glowed on each forehead, pulsing emerald like fresh poison.
The stench hit next.
Acid. Old gore thinned with swamp heat. Every breath the thing exhaled rolled across the battlefield like a humid tide. The dwarves flinched, Lilid's children skittered back.
The monster finished rising, its full height blotting out the sky. Ribs flared beneath the scaled chest. Dead man's trophies of skulls, jawbones, and vertebrae, all hung from woven straps of sinew rattled as the giant inhaled.
Seo-jin's bloodlight flickered.
This was no cold aura, no simple presence. This was pressure, raw violence pressing down on the treetops, cracking branches, crushing the ground in a widening ring.
Then it leaned back.
For one heartbeat, three sigils flared.
Its roar detonated.
A triple-voiced bellow, layered in shrieks and thunder, blasted across the field. Trees tore free from the roots. Soil peeled upward. Spiderlings were hurled screaming into the air. Dwarves braced behind shields as the shockwave blew past them like a physical wall.
Seo-jin stood in the middle of it, bloodlight whipping back from his skin, cleavers trembling in his grip.
But not from fear.