Chapter 130: The Iron Womb
The Bulgasari towered in front of them, iron-clad and groaning beneath its own weight. Its body was a grotesque mosaic of swords, shattered shields, and dented helms, welded into a shape that barely resembled a beast. Every step it took dragged metal against metal, a grinding echo that clawed at the ears.
Jin stood ahead of the group, katana already drawn, black steel gleaming with fractured lines of faint light. The blade didn't hum. It breathed.
"Doyun, right side. Sujin, keep the alleyways closed. Yujin, take the rooftops. Mina, on my mark."
The four behind him peeled off without question.
The young Bulgasari—smaller, hunched forms still coated in rust-flecked fur—burst from the wreckage around the main one. Their limbs twitched unnaturally, eyes glowing, jaws full of iron shards as they scampered and leapt forward.
"Go," Jin said.
Yujin shifted mid-sprint—her frame lengthening, pupils narrowing, claws erupting from her fingertips. She launched off a bent car, slashing through the throat of one pup and landing in a slide that took her under another.
Sujin struck her palms to the ground. Vines erupted along the side of the street, curling into a spiked barrier that snapped shut behind Yujin just as two more younglings charged.
"They're fun," Yujin called, kicking one hard into a rusted streetlight. "Fast, too."
"Don't let them eat," Doyun barked, already moving. One of the pups gnawed at a pipe—he spat, the stream of acid catching it across the face. It screamed, steam pouring from its eye socket.
"Confirmed," Mina said, stepping in. She pressed her palm to the side of a parked van. Heat rushed into the metal until it turned red, then white. When a pup leapt onto it, the surface collapsed beneath it with a hiss, its claws sinking into molten metal.
Jin moved past them all without looking back.