The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill-Chapter 111: Outward

The next vine came from above.

It dropped like a whip from the hollowed skeleton of a signpost, arcing in fast. Jin slid beneath it, his feet skidding against the uneven concrete, one hand bracing against the ground. He didn’t stop. There was no point. If he paused, the momentum would break. And he needed every inch of it.

The city stretched ahead in uneven blocks of cracked glass and twisted metal. The monster’s steps grew quieter behind him but that wasn’t comfort. It was calculation. It wasn’t rushing.

It didn’t need to.

The vines were doing the hunting now.

Jin ducked beneath a collapsed archway, the air tight with heat and the lingering stink of scorched spores. Green glow bled faintly from the alleyways around him, twisting and writhing in slow, deliberate pulses. Like a heartbeat.

No. Like breath.

The ground to his left exploded upward concrete splitting apart as a bundle of vines shot out, sharp as spears. Jin kicked off the wall, flipping to avoid them. One grazed his side; it tore cloth but didn’t cut deep.

He hit the pavement hard, rolled to his feet, and slashed in a single motion.

The katana rang against the vine’s core and severed it clean through. The end spasmed wildly, thrashing in its death rattle.

Jin exhaled. "You’re adapting," he muttered.

No one could hear him. That wasn’t the point.

They were learning. The vines. The monster. It was watching, reacting. Even this far from its body, its limbs moved with frightening awareness tracking him by motion, by sound, by residual heat.

It wasn’t just rampaging anymore.

It was hunting with purpose.

He pushed forward, deeper into the skeletal remains of an old shopping plaza, where the glass ceiling had long since collapsed and twisted beams of steel reached out like ribs from a sunken chest. The vines surged again, coming in faster, thicker. Two on the left, one from behind.

Jin twisted on instinct, blade flashing. He caught one mid-lunge, then pivoted hard, letting his momentum drag the edge through a second. The third wrapped around his arm and he turned with it, wrenching the katana back across his body, slicing upward and free.

His breath hitched.

Too slow.

Another vine wrapped around his ankle.

He went down hard.

"Damn it—" he hissed, trying to roll, but they were already coiling. From cracks in the ground, from holes in the ceiling, vines surging in like veins pulled by a heart he couldn’t see.

Jin slashed wildly. He caught one. Two. But another latched to his arm, another around his waist. He cut, twisted, kicked. They kept coming.

His back hit concrete. The blade clattered from his grip.

No.

Not here.

The vines surged up, pulled tight. His chest compressed. Air thinned. He reached for the katana, fingertips brushing the hilt, but the vines yanked his arm away and wrapped it again, harder.

The green glow spread across the ground now, a silent wave. More vines converged.

His vision tunneled.

Darkness edged his sight like a closing door.

He grit his teeth.

So stupid. He should’ve run. Or fought smarter. He couldn’t afford to be overwhelmed now. Not when the city still had people. Not when the others were counting on him to draw this thing away.

And yet he was stuck.

He could feel the heat returning. Not fire. Not from the buildings.

From the monster. Closer now.

The vines tightened, pulsing. His ribs strained. His thoughts slowed.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t have the breath.

Instead, the world went still.

And in the stillness, he saw him.

A shape across from him, translucent and calm, arms folded inside the haze of heat and pressure.

Muramasa.

Not a ghost. Not a hallucination. Just... there. Watching him with that same unreadable gaze.

"Tch," the spirit said, voice like a blade against stone. "Just when I was starting to like you."

Jin’s chest tightened.

Muramasa tilted his head, the faintest ghost of a smirk on his lips.

"And now you’re gonna die here? Wrapped up like a pig before slaughter? Hmph. What a shame."

Jin didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

But something in him flared.

Not power. Not magic. Just defiance.

He reached again. Pain tore down his shoulder but he reached.

His fingers wrapped around the katana’s hilt.

And this time, he did pull.

The blade came up fast, straight, tearing through the vines across his chest with a clean, practiced draw. He rolled, cutting upward, the steel arcing a clean half-circle around him. The vines shrieked not with sound, but with tension, snapping away under the force of motion alone.

He staggered to his feet, chest heaving, sweat burning in his eyes.

Muramasa was already gone.

Of course he was.

Jin tightened his grip on the blade.

The vines surged again.

And he surged right back.

His steps were clean now. Purposeful. The weight of the blade didn’t burden him anymore—it anchored him. Every motion a cut. Every breath a calculation.

He didn’t have power like Joon. Didn’t have Seul’s gravity.

But he had a blade.

And he had will.

By the time he reached the edge of the ruined district, his arms burned. His breath tore from his lungs. But the vines no longer chased him.

They retreated.

He paused beneath a shattered lamppost, katana dark with grime and heat, and turned just in time to see the monster’s silhouette shift through the smoke.

Still massive. Still glowing.

And now... closer than ever.

Jin squared his stance.

No words.

No thoughts.

Just the next step forward.

He exhaled slowly, then shouted, voice raw and sharp against the wind.

"Echo!"

No answer. Just the pulse of green through the vines around him, the low groan of a city that was still breaking.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and called again, louder, more urgent. "Tell the others that we need to pull it away from the city!"

No plan, no time to explain. Just instinct. If this thing kept advancing through the urban sprawl, it would bring everything down with it. They needed to drag it somewhere, anywhere, with fewer lives to destroy.

Then, faint, so faint he almost missed it came a click.

A high, pure note. Almost like a bird call, but sharp and deliberate.

Jin exhaled.

Echo had heard. The others would know.

Time to move.

The vines slithered nearby, wary now. They weren’t striking randomly anymore—they were learning. Watching. Waiting.

Jin didn’t wait back.

In one clean motion, he sheathed the katana and tapped his inventory rune.

The sword vanished in a blink of light.

And from the same shimmer, he pulled his weapon of choice, the cold, jointed metal of his three-section staff snapping into his grip like it had always been waiting.

He twirled it once, the polished steel catching the moonlight overhead. Then twice, one section detaching, whip-like and catching back as he reassembled it mid-spin. Fluid. Sharp. Familiar.

This was his element.

The building ahead was half-toppled, its angled spine broken open like ribs. Pipes and beams jutted out from the walls, slick with dust and ash.

Perfect terrain.

He charged forward, vaulting over a cracked barricade, spinning the staff low to knock aside a vine that lunged from the side. It slapped against concrete with a hiss, retreating fast.

Jin didn’t slow.

He leapt onto a half-fallen sign, drove the tip of his staff into a jutting beam, and launched himself upward, body arcing through the air.

A rusted metal railing met him mid-jump. He caught it, used the staff like a pivot, then hooked it around another pipe and swung himself up to the next ledge.

His boots slammed down against the angled roof. He dropped low, rolling to steady his landing, then stood, already spinning the staff again, this time defensively, the motion buying him space as another vine cracked out toward him.

He countered with a strike, crack, the reinforced tip slamming into the vine’s center and knocking it away like a broken whip.

More were coming. But not fast enough.

He reached the top of the wrecked structure. From here, the full devastation lay before him. The city was still burning in places, stretched outward in broken geometry. Lights flickered in the distance. Rooftops glinted under a hazy, smoke-drenched moon. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

But further out, beyond the last line of intact buildings... darkness. Open ground. Scattered wreckage. Uninhabited zones.

That’s where they needed to go.

Get it away from here. From the people.

A sound boomed behind him. A sickening, splitting crack of wood and weight.

Gugwe-mok.

He turned and saw it in the distance, still pushing through the urban wreckage like a glacier made of hate. Its limbs tore through concrete like paper. Its vines slithered out with growing hunger. It was accelerating. Reacting. Learning.

"Yeah," Jin muttered under his breath, gripping the staff tighter, the metal cool and steady against his palm. "Keep coming."

He shifted his grip, bracing the staff’s end against the rooftop, then slammed it against a rusted sheet of metal jutting from a ventilation duct. The clang rang out loud and hard, cutting through the murky air like a thrown spear.

One. Two. Three—clang. Clang. Clang.

A sharp pattern. A message only Echo would catch.

Sound-based direction.

A beacon.

He paused just long enough to listen. In the distance, something shifted. Not the monster—lighter, more human. A short, metallic note answered back from the dark between buildings. Echo’s signal. It wasn’t close, but it was enough. Echo had heard. The plan was still in motion.