The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill-Chapter 86: Echoes of Ruin

The battlefield was a wreck.

Massive cracks carved deep trenches through the earth, jagged stone formations jutted up like broken teeth, and chunks of debris teetered on unstable ground. Dust still lingered in the air, swirling lazily in the aftermath of chaos.

Yewon stood at the center of it all, arms crossed, surveying the destruction with a slow, deliberate scan. Her gaze flickered over the shattered terrain, the way the ground had fractured unnaturally, the sheer scale of it all. She clicked her tongue.

"This level of devastation... You must have some serious earth-based abilities."

Echo barely had time to register her words before he saw it—the way Jin, Joon, and Doyun, in perfect synchronization, turned their heads toward him. No hesitation. No second guesses. Just immediate blame.

Echo exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck. Of course.

"Not exactly," he muttered.

Yewon raised a brow. "Then what did you—"

All three of them pointed at him.

Echo groaned, shoulders slumping. "Okay, okay, I get it. Yes, it was me."

Yewon’s expression didn’t shift at first. She studied him, her gaze analytical, weighing something in her mind. Then, without missing a beat, she crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly.

"Then what exactly is your ability?"

Echo hesitated. Most people didn’t ask. They just saw destruction, chaos, things breaking apart, and they assumed whatever suited their understanding. But Yewon’s question was direct—genuine curiosity, not accusation.

"It’s sound-based," he said, watching her reaction. "I can generate, enhance, and amplify sound waves. My subskill, Resonance, lets me store sound in objects and release it later."

That was all it took.

Yewon’s entire expression changed in an instant. The composed, authoritative demeanor wavered, replaced by something else—excitement.

"Sound?" she repeated, stepping forward. Her eyes gleamed, her focus locked onto him with renewed intensity. "You’re telling me this was caused by sound?"

Jin and Joon exchanged glances. Doyun let out a slow exhale, clearly amused.

"Wait, wait—" Yewon lifted a hand as if physically halting the conversation. "So the shockwaves, the tremors, the sheer structural damage—this wasn’t an earth ability at all? This was Resonance?"

Echo blinked. "Uh... yeah?"

Yewon muttered something under her breath, her eyes darting over the cracked terrain again. Her fingers twitched slightly, like she was tracing invisible lines in the air.

"The vibrations must have compounded underground... bouncing back with amplified force... You must have hit a frequency that destabilized the terrain itself, turning the entire ground into a reverberation chamber..."

Her voice trailed off as she started pacing.

Jin raised an eyebrow. Joon folded his arms, watching her with vague amusement. Doyun, ever the instigator, smirked and turned to Echo.

"You broke the general."

"Shut up," Echo muttered.

But Yewon wasn’t listening anymore. She was fully engrossed in her own theory, talking to herself more than anyone else. "If that’s the case, then the resonance effect didn’t just spread—it rebounded. Meaning the energy didn’t just dissipate... it compounded. No wonder the tremors didn’t stop. You were caught in a feedback loop of your own making, amplifying the stored sound every time it cycled back into the terrain—"

She stopped suddenly.

A beat of silence.

Then she cleared her throat, straightened her posture, and clasped her hands neatly behind her back.

"Ahem. As I was saying—"

Doyun, deadpan, "No, no. Please. Keep going. You seem really into it."

Yewon exhaled, the last remnants of her earlier excitement settling as she shifted seamlessly back into her usual composure. She straightened her stance, rolling her shoulders slightly before fixing Echo with a steady, assessing gaze.

"Alright," she said, "if you’re dealing with resonance at this scale, you need to learn how to redirect it properly."

Echo arched a brow. "Oh? And you just happen to be an expert in sound-based abilities now?"

Yewon didn’t so much as blink at the sarcasm. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode toward a large, jagged chunk of earth that had been violently upturned by his earlier attack. Her boots crunched lightly against the gravel as she moved, eyes sharp as she studied the stone beneath her feet.

"Your problem," she continued, "is that you send waves into the ground, but you don’t account for how they travel back. So instead of dispersing the force evenly..."

She lifted her foot slightly and pressed the ball of it against the rock.

Then, with the gentlest of motions, she tapped it.

It wasn’t much—just the barest bit of pressure, nothing compared to the sheer destruction they had witnessed earlier. But beneath her foot, the rock reacted. A small vibration pulsed through it, subtle yet controlled. Unlike Echo’s earlier tremors, which had caused the earth to fracture and explode outward in chaotic bursts, this movement was different.

Instead of further breaking apart, the stone actually seemed to steady itself.

Echo’s eyes narrowed slightly as he watched.

Yewon removed her foot, tilting her head toward him. "You need to control where the excess energy goes," she explained. "Right now, you’re forcing the vibrations straight down, but you’re not thinking about how they reflect. When the force comes back up, it amplifies itself—like an echo chamber with no exit."

She tapped the rock again, lighter this time.

"But if you redirect the energy outward instead of letting it spiral back into itself..."

She dragged her foot lightly over the surface, shifting the force in a different direction. The subtle tension that had been building in the stone dissipated almost instantly, absorbed into the surrounding terrain rather than rebounding.

"You need to treat it like sound propagation," she continued, stepping back. "Your waves shouldn’t fight the terrain; they should flow with it. If you can control how your sound moves, you won’t just prevent destruction—you’ll be able to guide it exactly where you want."

Echo crossed his arms, staring at the rock, then at the massive destruction around them.

"So instead of forcing the earth down, I let the vibrations spread naturally?"

Yewon nodded. "Exactly. Think of it like music. A proper note resonates with its surroundings. A bad one creates discord. You’ve been playing the wrong notes, Echo."

Echo scoffed. "I didn’t realize we were turning this into a music lesson."

"I can dumb it down for you if you’d prefer," Yewon shot back smoothly.

Jin, watching the exchange, hid a smirk. She adapts quickly. The moment she found out his ability wasn’t earth-based, she switched gears effortlessly, not dismissing what she didn’t understand but instead absorbing it, analyzing it, and offering a solution.

Echo rolled his shoulders. "Alright. Let’s see if I can fix what I broke."

Joon clapped him on the back. "Yeah, you better. I’m not about to get swallowed by the ground because of your screw-up."

"No pressure," Doyun added dryly.

Echo inhaled deeply, centering himself. The energy inside him hummed, eager to be released, but this time, he wouldn’t let it run wild. He wouldn’t force the sound downward like before—wouldn’t trap it inside the earth like a caged beast desperate to escape.

Instead, he exhaled, stretching his ability outward in careful pulses.

A deep thrumming filled the air. Subtle, but steady.

The violent tremors had long since faded, but the ground still held the echoes of destruction—uneven formations of stone, deep fractures in the earth, unstable ridges that threatened to crumble at the slightest disturbance.

The low hum shifted as Echo adjusted his focus. Slowly, the deep cracks stopped widening, their jagged edges smoothing out. The raised chunks of land, once twisted and fractured, began to level themselves. The soundwaves pulsed outward instead of downward, carrying the trapped energy safely into the open air instead of letting it build up within the terrain.

The ground, once restless and chaotic, finally settled.

Joon, watching the shift unfold, let out a low whistle. "Damn. So you can actually undo your disasters?"

Echo smirked, stretching his fingers. "Looks like I’m not all destruction after all."

Doyun crossed his arms, unimpressed. "Yeah, well. Next time, try not to level an entire battlefield just to figure that out."

"Noted."

Jin rolled his shoulders and glanced around at the lingering damage. Even with Echo stabilizing the ground, there was still a ridiculous amount of wreckage left to deal with.

"We should clean this up," Jin said, already stepping toward a fallen slab of stone. "Let’s not leave it worse than we found it."

Doyun sighed but moved anyway. "We’re really doing this? Didn’t we just fight these guys?"

"And now we’re fixing what we broke," Jin countered, already hauling a broken piece of concrete out of the way.

Doyun scoffed but didn’t argue. Instead, he knelt down, gripping a smaller boulder with both hands and hoisting it to the side.

Not long after, a few more people arrived—locals from the territory. Most of them looked wary at first, keeping their distance as they took in the scene before them.

Yewon raised a brow at them. "You’re late."

A woman in the group shifted on her feet. "Didn’t think we’d need to step in, but... seems like you left quite the mess."

"Which is why we’re fixing it," Yewon replied smoothly. "So help out."

The group hesitated, eyes flicking to Jin and his team.

It was a tense moment. These weren’t their people. Just a few hours ago, they had been enemies, locked in battle.

But then one of them—a man with short dark hair—stepped forward and raised a hand. A gust of wind swirled around him, kicking up loose debris and sending it away in a controlled stream.

Another, a woman with calloused hands, pressed her palms against a fractured metal structure. The metal glowed faintly before shifting, bending back into place as if being molded like clay.

The rest of the group followed suit.

Without another word, the clean-up continued.

Jin lifted a broken beam alongside one of the locals. Joon swept away loose rubble. Doyun, despite his earlier complaints, worked in tandem with one of the others to shift heavier debris.

Even Areum and Hanuel pitched in where they could, moving smaller pieces out of the way and assisting with the more delicate areas of repair.

Little by little, the battlefield was restored—not to what it once was, but at least to something stable.

Jin watched the scene unfold, something unreadable flickering in his expression.

As the work continued, Jin noticed Yewon standing slightly apart from the rest, arms crossed, gaze distant. She wasn’t just supervising—she was observing. Watching.

Jin stepped up beside her, brushing dust off his hands. "Something on your mind?"

She exhaled slowly. "Just thinking."

"About?"

Yewon gestured slightly toward the group—Jin’s team, the recruits, the locals.

"Before the world changed, you would never see something like this," she murmured. "Strangers from different backgrounds, different allegiances—working together like this. But now? When everything is falling apart, we suddenly remember how to cooperate."

Jin hummed, considering her words. "Maybe people just needed something worse than each other to fight against."

Yewon scoffed, but there was no real bite to it. "That’s a bleak way to look at it."

Jin shrugged. "Doesn’t mean I’m wrong."

She didn’t argue.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then, with a small shake of her head, Yewon turned her attention back to the group. "Regardless," she said, "we should focus on fixing what we can before we start debating human nature."

Jin chuckled. "Fair enough."

After nearly an hour of effort, the battlefield was finally stable. It wasn’t perfect, but the worst of the damage had been handled. The cracks were filled, the terrain leveled, and the broken structures reinforced as much as possible.

Yewon nodded, satisfied. "That’s enough for now."

Jin stretched, muscles aching. "So. You said you had a healer?"

Yewon glanced at him before turning on her heel. "Not far. Follow me."

Without another word, she started walking.

Jin, Joon, and Echo exchanged glances before following suit.

They didn’t say it out loud.

But they were all thinking the same thing.

Could it be her?