The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill-Chapter 109: Kindling the Wild

They moved again, vanishing into the dark.

The city around them was barely holding itself together. Collapsed signs leaned against broken windows, storefronts gaping open with dust-choked silence. Each step echoed too loudly, and each breath felt borrowed.

No one said a word as they pushed forward, weaving around the hollowed-out skeletons of the street, cracked pavement, and walls freckled with spores. The rot thickened with every step. Jin’s hand never left his blade.

Echo’s head tilted suddenly, his body still. A low hum echoed around them, barely audible; it was like the pressure in the air had shifted. "It’s circling closer again," he said, voice low. "We’ve got maybe five minutes."

Jin nodded, eyes flicking around for anything they could use. "Alright, split up."

No one hesitated. They peeled off, smooth and silent. They’d done this enough to move without second-guessing now, not perfectly, unlike professionals, but with enough trust to make it work.

Jin veered toward the skeleton of a half-collapsed convenience store, ducking beneath the leaning metal beam that cut diagonally across its open entrance. Dust swirled inside, lit only by the flickering emergency light still barely alive above the fridges.

The shelves were warped, and most items had been picked clean weeks ago. But Jin wasn’t searching like a scavenger. His hands moved fast, guided not by logic but instinct, his skill sharpening his mind.

He snatched a half-full can of deodorant off a shelf, then two more. Broken batteries, scattered on the floor, he gathered those too, sliding them into his jacket pocket. Behind the counter, a scorched rag was soaked in something oily. Jin grabbed it without a second thought.

Echo’s voice crackled softly through the comm. "Left side—don’t go past the freezer. There are spore clusters on the ceiling."

Jin paused, eyes narrowing. A faint bulge pulsed above the freezer. Almost invisible unless you were looking for it. He backed up, carefully retracing his steps.

Outside, Echo stood watching the street like a hunter. His fingers tapped once against the wall, then again, sending out a brief ripple of sound that shimmered invisibly forward. He tilted his head, tracking it as it bounced back to him.

"East is clear for now," he murmured.

Jin stepped out, handing over one of the spray cans. "Flammable enough?"

Echo weighed it. "Should be." Then he looked down the street. "Seul’s on the rooftops. She’ll drop it when we’re ready."

Jin gave a tight nod and kept moving.

Seul was already airborne.

She didn’t launch herself straight up, not at first. She ran, faster than she’d ever moved, her gravity lowered to a whisper, just enough to keep her grounded while her feet skimmed over the ground like she was skating on air. Then, with one push, she launched herself upward, her body light as smoke.

The wind whipped past her face as she rose, heart pounding in her chest. It was the first time she’d tried this much lift on herself, the first time she’d ever tried flying for more than a few seconds. But she stayed steady, legs drawn slightly inward, arms spread for balance. The roof welcomed her like a second skin.

From her new vantage point, she could see it.

The monster moved like a dying tree, dragging its roots. Tall, warped, laced with patches of twisting plant matter and jagged wood-like armor. It tore through walls as if they were cloth, dragging its spore-heavy limbs across every surface, leaving a trail of rot behind.

She saw the damage. Saw the few survivors still hiding. One crouched beneath a table inside a café. Another clutched a child behind the broken blinds of an apartment window. They were trapped and too scared to take action.

We can’t mess this up.

She knelt low, focusing, and reached for gravity again.

Below, Echo passed her the materials Jin had gathered—canisters, soaked cloth, sharp scraps of broken metal as well as broken pieces of furniture she saw around her, one item at a time, lofted just high enough for her to reach with her pull. She strained, teeth gritted. It was the heaviest weight she’d ever moved like this.

But it rose.

Slow and steady.

The cluster floated, suspended just above the monster’s expected path. She shifted slightly, adjusting their position. Closer. Closer.

Jin signaled from the far end of the street, stepping out from cover. The moment he did, the creature’s head twitched. Then it began to move.

Joon stood on the opposite roof now, kneeling just behind a rusted ventilation shaft, electricity rippling quietly from his palms. The metal spheres that always orbited him spun faster now, reacting to the charge he pulled into himself. He narrowed his eyes, syncing his breath to the current, listening to the hum of power behind his ribs.

He could feel it. The path. The distance. The angle.

He didn’t need a perfect line of sight. The balls moved where he wanted. That was enough.

The monster stepped closer. Right beneath the suspended cluster of debris.

Joon exhaled. "Let’s do this."

The charge burst through him, down his arm, through the first ball, into the second. A brilliant arc of light screamed from his hand, catching the edge of the cluster like lightning catching dry leaves.

And in the same breath—

Fire.

It erupted upward, a wave of heat and smoke blooming midair. The burst lit the monster’s back and shoulders, catching on the spores and wooden patches laced through its form. It didn’t roar—it howled. A sound like metal being split apart echoed down the street, and the buildings around them groaned under the force of it.

Flames clung to its limbs like parasites. It stumbled, writhing, and the fire clung tighter, crawling up toward its neck, around its face.

Below, the heat washed over them like a wave. Jin squinted through the smoke, his blade still drawn, muscles tight with anticipation.

"Did it work?" Echo asked.

No one answered at first.

The creature staggered again, then stopped moving altogether.

And as the fire climbed higher, burning green and gold along the fungus-streaked skin, the monster let out a sound deeper than anything they’d heard.

A sound that shattered the windows of the three nearest buildings.

Then its body pulsed slightly with light.

Once, twice.

And slowly, it began to glow.

Not brightly nor all at once. It was more like the light was leaking from somewhere deep inside, pushing outward through the cracks in its bark-like skin. A greenish luminescence crept along its limbs, slinking over the vines embedded in its back and curling around the spores like veins lit from within.

Then the fire surged.

Something flammable must’ve caught deeper along the monster’s limbs—an oily hiss filled the air, and the flames roared upward, climbing its body like a living thing. Its bark crackled, blackening fast. The entire street lit up in flashes of orange and red. Smoke churned around it, cloaking the alleyways, catching on the shattered glass of nearby windows.

The creature let out a sound, not quite a roar, not quite a scream.

It was wrong.

Too many pitches, layered on top of each other, like trees snapping in slow motion mixed with the groan of collapsing steel. Windows exploded from the vibration. Street signs bent backward. Birds burst out of hiding in the distance, scattering like a black cloud.

Joon flinched. "Is it dying?"

"No," Echo said quietly, eyes fixed on the thing’s spine.

The spores, dozens of them, were twitching violently now, their outer skins splitting.

And then, like something had been set off, the spores launched from its body.

One by one, they shot into the sky in sharp arcs, trailing faint green residue behind them. Some zipped high, higher than the rooftops, others lobbed outward in wider curves, carried by momentum and whatever internal pressure had fired them off.

"What the hell—" Jin started, stepping forward.

"They’re not just launching," Echo said, his voice steady but low. "They’re ejecting. Shedding them like it’s shedding armor."

They watched as the spores reached the peak of their arc... and began to fall.

Hundreds of them. Like burning snowflakes.

Except instead of fire, they were glowing faintly green. Dim at first. Then brighter.

Pulsing.

One beat.

Then another.

Echo’s gaze sharpened.

"...Something’s about to happen."

They all turned sharply toward the monster.

The fire had caught fiercely at first—raging up its limbs, licking at its hunched back—but now it seemed... dulled. Dimming. Like the flames were being swallowed into the thing’s skin, smothered from the inside out.

Where there should have been smoke, there was only heat-haze and a strange shimmer.

Seul narrowed her eyes. "Why’s it not burning anymore?"

Joon clenched a fist. "It was working. It was working."

"No," Jin muttered, stepping forward a half step. "It still is. But it’s changing."

Above them, the spores still floated gently down from the sky, hundreds of them, suspended like seeds in windless air. The green glow that pulsed from their cores had grown stronger—brighter now than the streetlights flickering across the ruins. Each breath they took was filled with the scent of heat, of plantlife curling at the edges.

One dropped beside Echo’s foot, landing with the gentlest thud.

He stepped back immediately, sharp eyes locked on it. "They’re not just glowing."

As if in response, the fallen spores all around them began to hum.

A vibration in the air. Faint. But rising.

The monster’s body gave a twitch. Then another. And the last trace of fire on its skin vanished entirely—sucked in like water disappearing into dry soil.

Jin’s eyes widened.

The spores pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

Brighter.

And then—

everything flashed green.