Chapter 124: And Still, It Stood
The ground quaked under the weight of their momentum, feet pounding, blades flashing, skills sparking. Dust curled around them like breath from an exhausted beast, thick with smoke and the smell of split vines.
Jin ducked a lashing root, pivoted low, and slashed upward. The katana in his grip hummed, striking true, but not deep enough. The vine split, only to regrow at the edges, curling back with a hissing pulse.
The monster was learning.
Again.
"Left!" someone shouted, Echo, voice resonating sharp across the battlefield. Jin shifted without thinking, just as a jagged limb tore through the space where he’d stood. He landed beside Areum, her arms covered in glittering cuts of hardened glass, each one sharpened to a weapon’s edge. She flung a crescent blade toward the monster’s core, and it struck, only to bounce harmlessly off the barklike plating.
Hanuel shot past them both, twisting mid-air with his staff fully extended. A flick, a twist, and he cracked the edge of a vine coiling behind Daeho. The hulking man didn’t even flinch as the vine shattered beside him, too focused on barreling forward, his fists like battering rams.
But for every vine they severed, two more slithered out from the earth.
Detective Jun-taek slid across broken stone beside Joon, snapping his fingers to direct a curved blast of redirected velocity toward a massive root that had risen to trap them. The force exploded outward, launching the root into splinters.
"Try to keep pace!" Jun-taek called out, spinning one of his shell casings between his fingers before snapping it forward. It ricocheted off the ground twice then smacked the base of a vine, making it snap upward just as Echo landed and hit it with a high-frequency pulse.
The combination turned the vine inside out.
"Nice," Echo muttered.