Chapter 114: The Weight of Motion
The Gugwe-mok shifted, its long limbs scraping against the ground, leaving deep grooves in the concrete. With each step, the vines slithered forward, sharper than before, some now laced with bark-like thorns that shimmered faintly under the fractured light. It no longer moved like a mindless thing. There was calculation in the way it advanced now, purpose behind every inch of its towering form.
Jin didn’t wait.
He surged forward, blade low, cutting clean through the first set of vines lunging toward him. They moved with a new speed, but he was faster. Not just in motion, his body knew the rhythm now. He moved in the same stance he’d seen Muramasa use. One cut. Pivot. Two cuts. Step. His feet moved with deliberate grace, a brutal mimicry of ancient swordplay.
"Left!" Echo’s voice snapped behind him.
Jin dropped just as a vine swept horizontally through the space his neck had been. Echo blurred past him in a streak, flickering in and out of sound as he rebounded off the side of a half-destroyed vehicle. His hands snapped forward, no weapon, no blade, just a sharp whistle and a double clap that rippled out.
The shockwave struck the vines mid-arc, throwing them into disarray. They writhed, thrown off balance by the reverberating pulse.
"Joon, now!" Echo shouted.
Lightning cracked.
A bolt arced through the air, launched from Joon’s chest and redirected by the orbiting spheres at his sides. The ball curved sharply in the air, shooting between Jin and Echo before slamming directly into the beast’s leg.
The impact wasn’t enough to bring it down, but the bark scorched, blackening in jagged veins, and the monster reeled slightly, its foot punching a crater into the earth.
Above them, Seul landed hard, gravity reduced to a whisper as she descended from a leap that had launched her over the rooftop. Her hand slammed into the ground. A pulse of gravity exploded outward, launching vines into the air as if a crater had reversed itself.