Bloodsteel Hunter
Episode 5 – The Choir Cracks
The sky fractured like glass under pressure.
Every shard was sound, every crack a scream. The Warlock Queen's mouths—two still howling, one silent and bleeding—ripped the air apart as her choir's broken harmony clawed for dominance. Black fire burned her robes, half her crown hung shattered, but her level still glowed 102 like divine mockery.
I stood at the center of ruin, body dripping liquid steel, breath steady, eyes silver and cold. Beneath my boots, the number 2 burned faint but permanent, a whisper compared to her inferno.
The HUD pulsed across my skull:
[Mission: Warlock Queen of the Sable Choir]
[Target Health: 71%]
[Warning: Resonance Exceeds Safety Threshold]
[Modifier: Dimensional Gauntlet — Active]
My smirk carved itself into my face. "Seventy-one. You're bleeding slower than the last fucker. Guess that makes you durable… or just pathetic at dying."
Her voice, doubled now, thundered across the cathedral-world. "Blasphemer. Child of false steel. You will be absorbed into the Choir."
I exhaled, a hiss of silver steam, and rolled my neck. "Lady, I don't even do karaoke."
⸻
The Next Wave
The towers pulsed. Warlocks still alive in their pipes swelled their throats, mouths distending until their jaws cracked, pouring new sound into the battlefield. The Queen lifted her skeletal hands, and the chorus became a weapon.
It wasn't just noise anymore. The song took shape—black serpents woven from pure vibration, writhing across the sky. Each hiss a syllable, each coil a chord.
They dove at me, hundreds of them, screaming snakes of resonance.
I didn't dodge.
My body liquefied, legs pouring into the stone until I was knee-deep in steel flood. From that flood rose spires, jagged and tall, each one a tuning fork of silver. The serpents struck them, and the sound bent back, warped, clashing with itself. The battlefield became a feedback loop, a concert of broken echoes that made the Warlocks choke on their own voices.
Her serpents shattered. The Queen screeched, clutching her chest as if the reversal had struck her heart.
The HUD blinked: [Target Health: 64%]
I grinned, cigarette reforming between my lips, lit from the friction of my own blade. "What's the matter? Don't like hearing yourself sing?"
Retaliation
She descended. Not floated—descended. Her body stretched, unraveling like a tapestry. The robes fell away.
What stood beneath was no queen. It was a choir stuffed into one vessel. Dozens of mouths stitched across her torso, each one screaming. Hands sprouted from her ribs, clawing the air, each holding fragments of instruments—bone flutes, skin-drums, stringless harps—all shrieking with her.
Her voices combined into one colossal blast.
I braced too late. The sound hit like artillery, a wall of resonance slamming me off my feet. My body shredded, torn into a spray of molten steel. I reformed, coughing smoke, my chest caved inward.
She stalked closer, her many hands reaching, her mouths frothing with sound.
"Submit," she shrieked, her two voices overlapping in maddening dissonance. "Join us. Your scream will echo forever."
I spat a glob of liquid steel into her face. It sizzled, searing one of her mouths shut.
"Bitch," I growled, reforming my chest, "I don't join bands. I break 'em up."
⸻
Counterattack
I split myself. Literally.
My body fractured into dozens of shards, each forming a jagged doppelgänger. Steel clones, rough but fast, surrounded her in a circle. She lashed out, her claws tearing three apart, but for every one she destroyed, two more formed from the puddles.
We moved as one. Blades extending, claws snapping, wires lashing. She was a storm of voices; we were a storm of steel.
The clash ripped the battlefield apart. Towers toppled. Choir mouths fell silent, sliced clean by wires or caved in by fists of iron. My clones died in droves, but I didn't care—they weren't soldiers. They were distractions.
The real me flowed underneath, a river of steel weaving through cracks in the ground.
I rose beneath her, liquid erupting into a massive blade the size of a cathedral spire. It punched through her chest, lifting her into the air. Black blood rained.
She shrieked. The HUD ticked: [Target Health: 51%]
Halfway.
The Queen's Wrath
The Queen ripped herself free, tearing the blade apart with her claws. Her body reknit, though slower now, blood sizzling as it hit the ground.
Her crown reformed in black fire, her two voices shrilling louder than ever. The sound didn't just attack—it invaded. My HUD flickered, letters scrambling, systems glitching. My vision doubled.
She wasn't just screaming anymore. She was rewriting.
I staggered, steel limbs twisting out of sync. The ground pulsed beneath me, warlock runes burning into my liquid flesh. She was binding me, dragging me into the Choir.
Chains of sound wrapped around my arms, my throat, my chest. Her skeletal hands closed, and the chains pulled me toward her open mouth, wide enough to swallow me whole.
"Submit," she howled, two voices splitting the sky. "Be consumed!"
The Break
I let her drag me.
Closer. Closer. The stink of her breath, the hum of her resonance splitting my skin. My steel body writhed under the bindings, every atom vibrating on the edge of collapse.
Then I smiled.
"You really don't shut the fuck up, do you?"
My body erupted outward.
The chains shattered as I liquefied completely, flooding her mouth, her lungs, her ribcage. I poured inside her like molten iron into a mold, filling every cavity, coating every organ, every cursed choir-mouth inside her flesh.
She shrieked. But her shriek was mine now.
I hardened.
Every shard of me became a blade. Every surface inside her turned to razors.
The Queen convulsed, black fire spilling from her eyes. She clawed at herself, tearing skin open as my blades shredded her from within. Her scream turned from attack to agony, a discordant wail that cracked her own towers.
The HUD pulsed: [Target Health: 28%]
Finale of Discord
She ripped me out. My steel spilled onto the ground, reforming slowly, weaker than before. My body steamed, gaps opening in the liquid frame, cigarette missing this time.
But she was broken. Her body was collapsing in on itself, mouths silenced, her crown gone. She staggered, blood pouring from every hole.
I stood, blade reshaping in my hand. My voice was calm, cold, absolute.
"Choirs end. Screams fade. All that's left is silence."
I moved.
Level 2 speed made the world crawl. Her claws swung, but I was already inside her guard. My blade split her throat, my wires severed her limbs, my body pierced her chest.
One clean strike across her crown, and the Queen of the Sable Choir fell in two.
The HUD screamed its verdict.
[BOUNTY KILL CONFIRMED]
[+1 PERMANENT LEVEL]
[CURRENT LEVEL: 3]
[SPEED INCREASED]
[PAYMENT ISSUED — Choir Resonance Fragments (SS-Rare), Black Fire Crown (S-Rare)]
The choir fell silent.
For the first time in this world, there was peace.
⸻
Aftermath
I lit another cigarette from the embers of her burning corpse, inhaled deep, and exhaled silver smoke into the quiet.
Level 3 glowed under my feet, brighter than before. The speed boost thrummed through me, the world slower, my thoughts sharper.
I looked at the broken towers, the sea of dead warlocks, the ruined queen.
Then I chuckled. "Guess I'm a solo act after all."
The HUD pulsed again, offering new contracts, new worlds, new blood. Infinite. Always infinite.
And I stepped toward the next portal, dead-eyed and grinning, ready to carve silence out of screams.