Chapter 149: Growth and Death
The march dragged on, slow and punishing, and Bile felt every step of it. Herding the other two felt less like a hunt and more like babysitting. Widow kept breaking off to poke at every sound and shadow, while Synapse stopped at anything new, eyes locked, mind spinning. With Widow free from the burdens of leadership, and Synapse no longer suffering under him, somewhere along the way, both had forgotten why they'd been sent out at all.
When they stalled over a bush sagging under clusters of dark berries, Bile jammed his claws into his own eyelids and scraped hard, grinding irritation into pain just to stay sharp.
"At this speed, we'll never level. Fuck this, I'm not dying today."
He stomped forward and seized Synapse by the horns, yanking him along without ceremony.
"Mess around if you want. I'm finding something to kill. This freak needs levels before dawn."
Widow lifted his head, face smeared purple with juice, and whined through a full mouth.
"We've got time! Just wait—"
The berries hit the ground as Widow finally abandoned his snack and sprinted after them.
Bile released Synapse once they were moving again. The broodling's expression never shifted. No irritation. No fear. No annoyance. That, more than anything, set his teeth on edge. Synapse was sharp, sharper than most, but there was something wrong in how he carried it. Like he'd been born hollow, stripped down to thought and calculation, everything else reduced to noise.
Bile caught himself wondering what churned behind Synapse's eyes, what kind of machine passed for thought in that skull.
As they pushed on, the ground itself started to betray the city. Asphalt buckled and split. Bulges of dirt heaved up through concrete slabs, and massive stones jutted free as if forced upward by something buried and angry. The streets twisted into a broken maze, paths narrowing, sightlines collapsing into dead angles.
This time, he halted with the others. They circled one of the stones, its bulk looming over them. When Bile pressed his palm against the surface, heat bled into his skin. Carvings crawled across it, runes and warped figures etched deep, worn smooth by age or hands that no longer existed.
"Got any ideas?"
He drew his claws back as he asked, flexing his fingers.
"Based on observation alone, and what little I understand of earth's geology, these stones are not natural. Their placement and markings suggest origin outside this realm."
Bile stared at him, a familiar unease settling in his gut. Sometimes it felt like Synapse wasn't a broodling at all, but something adjacent. With a grunt, he grabbed him by the arm and started moving again, leaving Widow behind to lick the warm stone before scrambling after them.
"Why don't we cut into the woods? This place is dead. There's got to be some animals or something living out there we can kill."
"A fucking rabbit won't do shit for leveling. How about you keep your ideas—"
Words died. Three bodies locked up. Three heads snapped the same direction, nostrils flaring as a current of air slid through the ruins.
Widow and Bile moved without thinking, hands clamping onto Synapse as they broke into a sprint.
'Where the fuck did they come from?!'
The answer rode the wind. Sweat, old blood, death. A weight layered beneath it, harsh and deliberate. Killing intent. A lot of it.
They couldn't fight blind. They needed height. Somewhere to see, possibly strike first.
Ahead, a massive stone speared out of the ground, carved with a relief of a towering god facing down a kneeling host. It rose four stories high, useless for holding ground, perfect for eyes.
"Up there!"
Letting Synapse go, Bile surged ahead. Stone blurred under claw and foot as he vaulted from surface to surface, [Wall Crawler] biting hard while they raced up the carved face and hauled themselves onto the crown.
They flattened instantly. Bellies to warm rock. Every gaze locked west. Muscles coiled. Breath held.
Nothing at first. Just wind scraping through leaves, grit ticking across stone, debris shifting somewhere out of sight. Then, after a long, stretched beat, motion bled into view.
Motion that made their nerves light up. Motion they recognized the instant it broke cover.
"Widow. You remember what Snare told us? About where the Broodfather came from?"
Widow dipped his head, drool spilling freely now, stringing from his fangs as his breathing deepened.
"Are those…?"
Bile's lips peeled back.
"I think they are."
Synapse edged forward to widen his view, shoulder brushing Bile's as he leaned in.
"What are they? Share knowledge."
The answer came easier than Bile expected. He didn't even notice he'd risen to his feet.
"Imps. A weaker form of us."
The word Imp hit Synapse like a blade. The change was immediate. For the first time since his birth, something raw crossed his face. Not thought or calculation.
Rage.
"My urge to kill is rising."
Bile barked a short laugh.
"So you are one of us."
He cracked Synapse across the arm. Widow stepped in close beside them. Both wore the same expression now, bodies taut, muscle wound tight beneath skin. Synapse joined them and felt it settle into place. Something old. Something correct.
Instinct.
Below, the green-skinned host flowed into the swelling mass of imps, but the three did not retreat. They stood firm. Bloodlight began to seep from their bodies, thin at first, then heavier.
As if decided without a word, all three dragged in a deep breath...and roared.
The sound was brutal and ugly. High, tearing, meant to carry...and it worked.
The smaller knot of greenskins slowed, heads turning, vision failing them as they searched the dark for the source. The imps found them instantly. They had [Dark Vision].
Hundreds of eyes fixed on the trio.
For a breathless instant, everything held. Past grinding into future. Predator measuring predator. The oldest rule tightening its grip. Only the strong survived.
The pause shattered.
Bile launched first, body pitching forward off the stone in a blur of claws and momentum. Widow followed a heartbeat later, both of them dropping hard and fast, landing into motion rather than impact. They hit the slope at a dead run, screeching as one, sound tearing out of their throats like ripped metal.
The imps answered.
A carpet of bodies surged up to meet them, dozens of small shapes boiled forward, teeth snapping, claws scraping stone. The sound was unbearable. Too many mouths. Too many limbs. A living tide of hunger and noise.
Bile and Widow struck the front edge before it could fully rise.
They were faster. Level nine speed tore through the gap like a blade. Bile vaulted, spun, and landed inside the wave, claws punching through skulls and spines in rapid succession. Widow stayed low, ripping laterally, tearing legs free, opening bellies, snapping necks with short, brutal twists. A dozen imps came apart in seconds, bodies bursting and folding as if made of wet paper. Blood sprayed hot and black, slicking stone and flesh alike.
Then the mass hit back.
The wave swallowed them to the waist, then the chest. Imps piled over the dead without slowing, clawing up their legs, biting into shoulders, dragging at horns and tails. The sound became a shrieked choir, layered and frenzied, drowning everything.
Above them, Synapse screamed.
He dove headfirst into the surge, body folding into the fall, claws extended, impact vanishing beneath a crush of bodies.
The carpet rippled where he entered, imps bursting outward as he disappeared into the swarm, his screech cutting sharp through the chaos as the first real collision turned into a full slaughter.
The ground vanished beneath motion, the space collapsing into a churning mass of bodies where heat, blood, and screaming flesh folded together, turning the street into a living furnace that spat gore with every impact and step.
They were outnumbered beyond reason, three shapes buried inside a swarm that crested past a hundred, but two realities held the line. Even at its first rung of growth, a broodling outweighed an imp in strength, mass, and resilience by a brutal margin, and when fangs tore and flesh burst, Feed answered, flooding back through torn veins and shattered bone, recycling death into momentum before exhaustion could even register.
Bloodlight detonated from the center of the press as Synapse crossed the threshold, his first level, the surge ripping outward through the pile.
The reaction was immediate and violent. Imps shrieked as one and turned, abandoning targets mid-maul, bodies piling and clawing over each other as they hurled themselves toward the flare, madness driving them as they rushed the source of the pain, the swarm tightening and accelerating toward the glow.
At that moment, darkness bled outward across the stone and broken street, spreading low and fast.
The shift was immediate. The ground itself seemed to resist the imps while yielding to the broodlings, dragging clawed feet and shortening strides for one side as it loosened and propelled the other.
High above the churn, a single imp spasmed in Snare's grasp, its headless body hanging useless as his eyes burned and his will snapped into place, triggering [Shadow Relay] and [Mark of Dread] in tandem; he had never been built to watch without fighting, and even knowing his role, he refused to remain still while these abominations bled below.
With his skills anchored, his breathing slowed and his thoughts finally aligned, the chaos resolving into patterns as he sent a sharp pulse through the broodlink, pushing a warning outward with urgency...imps were here, and their father needed to know.
Below, system light burst through the crush as Synapse breached another level, the glow tearing through bodies.
"Pathetic!"
Bile drove his arm through a chest and ripped free what it held.
"Weak!"
A twist, a wrench, and a head separated cleanly from its spine.
"Little ashkin! Little demons!"
He seized another by the tail, pivoted his weight, and smashed it against a boulder until it liquefied, then launched himself forward to bite down into the face of the next; timid away from blood, this vanished once combat claimed him, moving with the same reckless hunger Min and Pain wore like skin.
In contrast, Widow stayed low and close to the ground, slipping through gaps Bile tore open, fingers and teeth finding throats, spines, and exposed joints, snapping necks and crushing skulls from behind with practiced economy, each kill clean, deliberate, and final.
"Five seconds until reinforcements!"
The initial frenzy burned out of Synapse as awareness sharpened, his attention splitting between the dying imps and the approaching elves, his early attacks broad and feral, now, after thought and analysis, they tightened into purpose, palms driving into exposed joints, fingers jabbing eyes to force openings, claws cutting arteries before he moved on without pause.
The waste disappeared from his motion, each strike feeding the next, each kill rolling forward into position and timing.
System light erupted from him once more, the surge finally drawing something close to a smile across his face as he stayed in motion.
Finally, the elves broke through the outer crush, bodies forcing space where none should have existed, crude glaives and clubs hacking aside imps as short swords flashed in wild, overcommitted arcs. They came in roaring, voices raw and animal, feet slipping on blood and meat as they hurled themselves into the churn without hesitation.
None of the broodlings answered the charge. No signal passed between them, no glance exchanged, yet all three peeled away at once, feet finding gaps where elbows and knees should not fit, speed carrying them through corridors of bodies and stone the elves couldn't hope to follow.
Steel cut air where they had been a breath earlier, weapons dragging through piles of imps instead, the brood slipping past to keep killing what fed them fastest.
Imps continued to die in bunches. Bile tore through the densest knots, striking and vanishing before the elves could turn, Widow stayed just behind the moving fronts to harvest stragglers, and Synapse flowed between both, cutting paths that closed the moment he passed.
Bodies stacked, footing worsened, and the elves slowed further as their numbers pressed into terrain that favored nothing with reach or weight.
Above it all, Snare watched the pattern settle into place and dipped his head once, approval in his eyes. They were choosing growth over pride, feeding where the return was highest, letting the heavier threats burn time and stamina for nothing.
Then his expression tightened.
One of the elves stumbled mid-swing, weapon lowering as his arm began to writhe on its own, flesh rippling as if something alive was moving beneath the skin.
Snare leaned forward, eyes narrowing, as the thing inside the limb started to claw its way out.
"A flower?"
The flesh at the elf's wrist split with a wet snap as a thick green vine tore outward, studded with tight purple blooms, the growth erupting fast enough to fling blood before the plant whipped forward and cinched hard around the haft of his weapon, fibers crawling up the blade, biting in and locking it in place as if it had always belonged there.
Then the moment passed. The growth stilled. The elf surged ahead, stride lengthening, the weapon swelling with unnatural mass as pressure rolled off him in a way that reached even Snare.
The count had thinned enough. The return from the imps had dulled. Widow felt it and made the call, angling toward the charging elf, he went in low to attack, just as violet crept into the edge of his vision and every instinct he possessed screamed at once.
He twisted away, but the cut was already committed. The impact slammed him to the ground, momentum dragging him through gore as both legs vanished at the knee, the severed ends already boiling with purple vapor while flesh collapsed.
"Synapse!"
Bile broke for him on instinct, tearing through bodies without thought, but the press was too thick, the distance too far, and he knew it even as he ran that he wouldn't reach his brother before the next swing came.
Synapse saw the trajectory, the angle, the timing, and made no move to intercept. He kept killing. Kept feeding. In his calculations, his brother was already a loss.
Widow could do nothing to stop the elf...only rage.
The weapon descended—
—and bloodlight greeted it. Death never landed.
Seo-jin stood where it should have, the elf's descending blade caught between two fingers, the metal and vine screaming.
"Interesting."
The battlefield locked.
Those with eyes stared. Those without still felt it. The air crushed down, instinct screaming louder than thought...most of all among the imps.
The Broodfather had arrived.