Content Warning: There are a few highly graphic scenes, briefly described. Reader who don't prefer such scenes in their head should avoid the chapter. I will leave a brief description in the comments to help you understand the progression, and you can read along in the next chapter.
CH—36: Darker than the Hound ૮₍´｡ᵔ ꈊ ᵔ｡`₎ა
"This reeks of you," Bossy scowled. "Did you do it?"
"Mine?" Super Junior's smile turned wicked. "Why, Father—why do you always blame little old me?"
Bossy knew his son would be the death of him. Yet the idiocy of blood, that cursed bond, kept Junior alive for now. Someday, one death would erase every loose end.
Bossy still believed his logic could cage Junior's madness.
"Looks like fortune prefers lunatics," he said quietly. "Out with it. Before our insides decorate the floor." He clenched his wrist, strangling the urge to make destiny come early.
"Girl—"
"—Naturally," Bossy cut in with a snarl. "Isn't it always?"
"This one's different," Junior promised, a mad glint dancing in his eyes. "Oh—so different." He gestured lazily through the air. "You can have what's left after I'm done—but she fights back. Might snap your brittle bones."
He ripped open his shirt, revealing a scar that cleaved his chest nearly in half.
Bossy swallowed.
This—this was why he never used force on his maniac of a son. Junior's madness pushed his will past human limits. Death courted him again and again—and lost every time. And with each victory, Junior came back more unhinged, more daring, more dangerous… more daring.
Daring enough to provoke the reaper himself.
"Every single one of them died chasing her — except meee!" Junior giggled. "See what happens when you cheap out on my toys?" He pouted, eyes glittering with mock regret.
Bossy knew all too well the heartless bastard's soulless act. Junior wasn't born with emotion—and he celebrated that absence. Instead, he honed it. Took pride in it. Polished it. Turned it into a tool of terror for anyone reckless enough to stand against him.
If only Bossy could warn the world: Junior was always hunting for a trigger. He needed someone else to move first, so he could pretend his violence was earned. A sick custom that made murder feel justified.
Bossy almost blamed the boy's mother.
Almost.
Then he buried the thought, because giving Junior a human reason felt more dangerous than any monster he'd ever created.
Junior had no urges, no flicker of humanity, yet his eyes idled on the waitress like a passing distraction.
He had always achieved everything he had set his eyes on... Except for that one ancient itch he could never satisfy: the Hound.
Since brute force failed, he chose cruelty instead: Set the beast on the girl; Either the Hound died—an absurd fantasy—or Junior got what he wanted, with broken flesh as the tribute.
Bossy never believed he would say the words.
…And yet.
Under the avalanche of thought, the order slipped out raw and unguarded.
"Release the Hound," he croaked, staring at his own doom echoing back at him.
Bossy had found him long ago, back when the Hound still wore a human shape; towering, unstable, inhumanly large, yet still human. He—no, it—could've been famous. A legendary athlete. Worshiped.
If only the beast had ever learned how to be human.
Even as a child, the Hound had killed his parents for amusement; Chief Thomson was the one who put him in chains. For a time, fear of the Chief kept the beast in check — until even that legend shrank beneath what the Hound became.
Bossy used the Chief's name as a stick and women as a carrot to keep the Hound in check. His rise was sealed the night he fed his former boss and that man's family to the beast.
The beast didn't rush. It enjoyed them, right down to the last breath.
Their screams still stalk Bossy's sleep.
"I prefer it when the ribs snap first," the Hound said lightly. "Alleyways echo so nicely. Makes the screams richer."
It laughed—Ha-h—ha!—a jagged, animal sound no human throat should ever make.
From that moment on, Bossy stopped addressing the devil in person.
Morals do not build empires — Monsters do. The Hound was one such monster, one of Bossy's finest blades. And every victory it carved into the world left an identical wound in its master.
"Why so glum?" Junior sing-songed. "The fun's barely begun."
He wrapped his arms around Bossy with suffocating affection. "There's always a girl behind every grab for power." His lips brushed Bossy's ear. "And don't interrupt my thoughts again." He kissed Bossy on the cheek and skipped off like a carefree child.
"Is that—" Bossy faltered, staring into the shadows as if they had already answered him.
Sealed behind concrete upon concrete, a crude coffin housed one of the Hound's kills. Claw marks tore across the walls like frozen screams, each gouge a testament to the monster's power. The memories stayed buried, yet Bossy's heart still caved inward, and his eyes burned with a familiar heaviness. A weight he could never fully escape.
Was Junior's attachment to his mother real?
And if so…
Was Bossy the architect of something far worse than the Hound itself?
Word moved faster than the beast; The city knew before the monster moved: Gangs were redirected. Politicians tightened their grip. The cops cleared the streets under false pretenses, turning the city into a feeding ground where the beast could roam unopposed.
Amid every evil scheme unfolding without a hitch, even Zack's team was crushed into silence. None of his objections stirred the gang to help the mortals below. And when Solgrave appeared without warning, Zack was frozen like a voodoo doll, stripped of speech, breath, and thought. Unable to exist as anything but a witness.
"The timestream's locked," Solgrave warned. "So be silent and endure this. I will trade your life for this world without regret. Remember that."
"Excuses," Zack said coldly. "If you're going to kill me,"—his sword and shield formed within the soul realm he claimed as his own—"better not hesitate."
Zack's blind spot tore wide like a wound in space. One breath later, he was inside a cell. His sword, once weightless, grew monstrously heavy, dragging his arm down and welding it to the floor.
Azrith approached without a trace of emotion, her will wandering elsewhere. She wrenched Zack's sword free without triggering the shield. "Mortal matters were never yours to touch," she said; her serpents slithering over the weapon, sealing it shut.
"Save your god complex for your own universe," Virith scoffed, sealing Zack in his own realm with a soft, final click.
Orders flowed downward without mercy: The gang bent to Solgrave's will; Solgrave bent to Yash; and Yash moved only by the Soul King's decree. To break that chain was to call down annihilation. None of them would live through Solgrave's punishment, let alone exist after the Soul King took notice.
"Our group must be cursed," Psycho said. "Every leader dies before they ascend." He shot Lux a smirk.
"A good heart is why you'll never grow," Lux fired back.
"And why we bury all our leaders," Psycho snorted. "You're next, old man."
"If he's gone, I'm retiring too," Barbie raised both hands. "My goodwill has limits."
"You go, I go, we all go—pow!" DJ blasted his own head off with a simple gesture of finger guns.
"…You mean literally kill ourselves?" Pinky asked; a round of nods followed. "Cool. I'm in."
Lux's smirk deepened; This felt better than winning an argument.
"None of you thought about the crazy method at all?" Psycho tried to seed optimism into their shared memory, but it only shattered on contact.
"Only Zack still has a heart," Pinky said quietly as the group nodded in agreement. "We all started with meaning. That died. What's left… is each other."
"I once copied Zack's 'hero moment' and wound up in Solgrave's Soul Prison," Bazuka whimpered. "Idiocy at its finest… And now we're repeating history!" She sighed, releasing a small wish of protection into the universe.
Lux gasped as reality trembled—just barely, but enough for every Broken-Soul to feel it. "BAZUKA, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
"Just a wish! …Oh no. You didn't..
Lux paled. "I ABSOLUTELY did."
"Yo, me too," DJ admitted through clenched teeth. "Why you fools gotta be so soft? I thought I was our group's pookie-wookie!"
All three slowly pivoted toward Pinky, sensing no emerging wish-energy from her at all.
"You didn't!?" they shouted in unison.
"What can I say? I ain't a fool-fool-yo!" Pinky flailed her arms in a tragic attempt at rap. "So uh… when's our funeral?"
Meanwhile, a slight correction in Solgrave's memory made him prioritize his memory bank over disciplining the Soul Hunters, and he vanished into his core.
Solgrave's memory bank formed a labyrinth of floors, folding inward and outward; space distorting into impossible angles; every dimension bending to match his definition of reality.
As with his prison, this layer doubled as a labyrinth and a killing ground. Only Solgrave could roam its corridors unscathed, extracting memories without awakening the million traps waiting to devour an intruder.
From the deep, dark, long-abandoned cells, the space opened into a blinding room where every active stimulation was meticulously cataloged and preserved.
"Retrieve the broken rod," Solgrave commanded one of his clones.
"We share a brain," the clone groused, hauling out a cracked bar from the shadows. "You could've found it yourself, you know."
He inspected it briefly. "Worthless." He confirmed to himself and tossed it to another clone, chewing through metal like popcorn.
"Such an ass," Solgrave muttered, marching toward the chute that endlessly spat out rods.
"Wait," the chewing clone said, turning to the other. "Did he just call himself an ass?"
"I'm the original—I can call myself whatever I want," Solgrave taunted.
A fresh memory condensed into an engraved iron rod and clattered down the chute.
"Nope."
The clone stationed beside the chute twirled his baseball bat, read the inscription in a blink, and shattered the rod with a single swing—erasing the memory forever.
"Thanks," Solgrave said, tipping his hat.
"Hey, I've always got your back — or you've always got your own back," the clone said with a shrug. "No worries."
He swung and shattered the next rod rolling out of the chute.
"Let's not have that conversation again." He repeated himself.
!Crack!
He broke another one.
!Crack!
And another.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Thirty-Six. ———<>||<>———