The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill

The spores pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

Brighter.

And then everything flashed green.

Seul didn’t wait to see what came next.

The moment the light flared above them, she pulled.

A silent command to gravity rippled outward from her, folding the space between them in an instant. Joon jerked sideways from where he’d been crouched behind a wrecked sign; Jin, halfway to shifting his stance, was yanked off-balance mid-step. Even Echo, alert and always in motion, was dragged back as if the ground itself tilted inward.

They collided around her in a rough knot of limbs and breath.

Seul raised her hands and pushed outward.

It wasn’t like the other times, lifting debris, shifting weight, bending gravity to create motion. This was different. Something inside her snapped into place, a pressure coiling at her core and rushing to her skin like molten iron. It wasn’t warmth, exactly, more like density, like a second skin wrapped tight around her body and then swelling outward in a pulse of force.

There was no visible dome. No shimmer of power.

But suddenly, everything stopped.

The sound cut out.

The blast hit them, but it didn’t. The world around them rippled, distorted like heat haze pressed against glass. Energy slammed against the invisible field she’d conjured and broke apart in waves, cracking like thunder on an ocean cliff. Debris, flame, and violent bursts of compressed air struck the barrier and disintegrated mid-air, caught in a crushing orbit of force that repelled everything outward.

Inside, the four of them stood frozen. The pressure bore down like the inside of a collapsed tunnel. Every breath was shallow. Air didn’t move properly in here.

They didn’t speak, they couldn’t.

Not while the sky burned green around them.

Outside the bubble of warped space, the blast raged. Buildings shuddered as shockwaves rolled through the city. Windows fractured all at once. Farther away, the detonation seemed to bloom in several directions, where more of the fallen spores had landed and ignited, their vines catching fire mid-growth.

But here, at the epicenter, Seul held the line.

Her jaw clenched, arms straining. Sweat clung to her forehead. The shield was heavy, not in weight but in cost, and she could feel it leeching her stamina with every passing second. The moment she let it drop—

She exhaled sharply and did just that.

The gravitational field collapsed with a soundless twist. Pressure snapped back into place, and air rushed into the space around them with a violent, collective gasp.

All four of them stumbled apart, coughing from the sudden shift.

Jin bent slightly at the waist, hand braced on his thigh, drawing in a rough breath. Joon swore under his breath and wiped at the corner of his eye where smoke had stung. Echo turned in a slow half-circle, hands low and ready, his head tilted as he listened for more.

Seul steadied herself, feeling her pulse in her teeth.

"...That," Jin managed hoarsely, "was mighty useful."

She didn’t answer. Her chest rose and fell in quick bursts, but her expression stayed sharp, unreadable. It wasn’t pride she felt. Not even relief.

Just readiness.

They stood in the aftermath of it all, silence stretching between them. Smoke drifted through the broken streets like morning mist. A red-orange glow burned faintly in the distance where fire still licked the sides of buildings.

The city hadn’t gone quiet, not exactly but there was a stillness now. A pause.

As if the explosion had silenced even the chaos for a moment.

Then came the screaming.

It wasn’t close, maybe two blocks away. High-pitched, panicked. Several voices. People.

Jin’s head jerked up.

He glanced to the left, where a few buildings still stood upright despite the blast. His hand went to his weapon out of habit, but he didn’t move right away. A thought tugged at the edge of his mind.

A memory.

Days ago, when they were moving through this same district scouting routes to the fire station, he remembered passing by a quiet alley with boarded-up windows. No movement. No sound. But just as they’d turned the corner, he’d caught the briefest glimpse of two figures watching them from behind a second-story window. They hadn’t called out. Hadn’t moved.

He hadn’t thought much of it then. Thought maybe they were just watching to make sure they weren’t hostile.

Now he knew better.

"They weren’t simply passing through, they were hiding out in the city the whole time," he said quietly, not really to anyone.

"I saw a few people running earlier," Seul added, her voice low. "Before we lit the fire."

Jin’s jaw tightened.

No one said what they were thinking, but it didn’t need to be voiced, the blast had covered more ground than they expected. And while Seul’s shield had saved them, no one knew what had happened to anyone caught farther out.

A low rumble echoed through the street.

Jin turned, his gaze cutting through the smoke.

The monster still stood in the distance, half-shrouded in drifting green haze. The fires clung to it in patches, licking across the edges of bark and vine, but already the flames were thinning. Dimming. Not dying out completely but no longer spreading. More like sinking into its form.

It crackled faintly, an ember caught in flesh. The same way coal did when it wasn’t ready to give up its heat just yet.

Jin narrowed his eyes.

His instinct told him something he didn’t want to admit.

"It didn’t work," he said aloud, voice rough.

Joon looked over, confused. "The fire?"

Jin nodded once. "It hurt it. Burned through some of that bark. But it didn’t slow down. Not really."

They all looked now past the broken rooftops and rising smoke. The thing still stood tall, still twisted and hunched over like a ruin carved out of a forest. But now there was something different. Something off.

Its body pulsed again. A faint green shimmer flickered across its limbs not from the spores anymore, but from within. Like veins lit up by heat.

"I thought that was supposed to kill it," Joon muttered. "Fire. Plants. It made sense."

"It made the most sense," Jin said. "But this thing... it’s not just plants. Not really."

There was no satisfaction in watching it smolder now. No triumph. The moment had passed, and what remained was an unease crawling down his spine.

Then, they saw it move.

At first it was subtle a lean, like its weight shifted deeper into the earth.

Then came the sound.

Not a roar. Not a screech.

A crack.

Like a tree snapping under its own age, slow, splitting, wet. The bark split at its joints. The massive form leaned back, wood creaking like bones under strain, then leaned forward again.

Its limbs, those massive, vine-twisted arms, hung heavy at its sides.

One of them moved.

It didn’t swing or thrash. It lifted.

Deliberate. Slow.

It pointed.

Right at them.

A chill lanced down Echo’s spine. He didn’t need sight. He didn’t need sound.

He felt it.

"It sees us," he said quietly, almost disbelieving.

Jin took an unconscious step back, his hand gripping the handle of his blade tighter. "It doesn’t even have eyes."

Seul didn’t speak. Her breathing had only just returned to normal, but her posture shifted again, not from exhaustion, but preparation.

The monster wasn’t lashing out now. It wasn’t thrashing in wild arcs like before.

It was... focused.

One step.

The ground shuddered.

Another step.

Cracks spread through the pavement beneath its feet, the surface buckling under its weight. Vines dragged behind it like skeletal tails. The fires still clung to it, but they weren’t eating through anymore. They were sinking in, flickering dimly in hollows along its chest and sides.

It had stopped destroying the buildings around it.

Now, it was walking straight for them.

"...We poked it too hard," Joon muttered. "Way too hard."

Jin didn’t disagree.

They hadn’t killed it.

They’d woken it.

Or maybe it had always been awake — just not paying attention to them before.

Now it was.

"Split," Jin said sharply, without turning his head.

Seul and Echo both moved the second the word left his mouth, scattering to opposite flanks, already vanishing between buildings. Joon hesitated only long enough to look back toward Jin — not for reassurance, but in mutual understanding.

There was no time to argue strategy.

They needed to draw it out, confuse it, split its focus.

Joon peeled off next, vanishing down a side street.

Jin ran the opposite way.

Behind them, the monster kept coming.

Its steps were slow, deliberate — and wrong. Not clumsy like a beast. Not aimless like before.

It moved like something following sound. Or heat. Or memory.

Something that had recognized them.

And chosen.

Jin’s breath came fast as he ran, the blade in his hand still warm from earlier.

The pavement cracked behind him not just from the thing’s steps now, but from the vines spreading out like veins across the street, glowing faintly green. They slithered unnaturally, pulsing with residual heat, snaking across rubble and curling up walls. One snapped toward him, fast.

Jin didn’t hesitate.

He pivoted hard, the katana flashing as he brought it down in a smooth, slicing arc. Not the instinctive hack he’d have used days ago — this was Heian-style, deliberate and sharp, even if rough around the edges.

The blade cut clean through the vine.

He pushed forward, breath steadying.

He had to keep moving.