Published at 10th of September 2026 8:54 am

Chapter 247: Giants Meet At Last

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Chapter 247: Giants Meet At Last

Straightening, John shook hundreds of dead bugs from his arm. More quickly crawled in to replace them, filling the damaged chitin, but he knew he couldn't keep that up forever. No matter how big Shatterbay was, there were only so many insects.

And tons of them were already dying in the chaos of Seo-jin and the Cardinal's battle still raging across the city. He could feel each and every loss.

'We'll provide support. Focus on getting him to reveal his abilities for now.'

Hissing and clicking in irritation at Snare's command, John could only obey.

Roaring into the sky, he gathered his aura and flooded his body with green miasma. The ground trembled as waves of poison poured across the street, building into a massive cloud that tore toward Ivan. The man never slowed. Blue and red aura burst from his body, forcing the toxins apart as they rushed harmlessly around him.

The human looked calm. Too calm.

"You are strong, but I can tell you are new to A-rank. I am not sure how a demon came to possess a Shard, but you should be able to feel it. How vast A-rank is."

Seeing that his poison couldn't even make contact, John pulled his aura back. He tried to ignore Ivan's words, but he couldn't. Watching the human approach with red and blue aura raging around him, John could feel the distance between them. They were both A-rank, yet Ivan Cho was on a whole other level.

He should have been scared. Instead, the difference sent a thrill through him.

"First the Woon sisters, now you."

Raising one hand, John extended his fingers toward Ivan as insects churned beneath his armor.

"Praise the Broodfather."

All at once, a cloud of insects erupted from the surrounding ruins and crashed over Ivan. Wings buzzed loud enough to fill the street as the human disappeared beneath a writhing mass of venom and bodies.

John closed his hand, and the swarm exploded

Unseen, Ivan had already closed the distance, his fist slamming into John's chest before he could react.

As shredded insects burst outward behind them, John shot backward through the street, smashing through everything in his path. As the city flashed past him, he caught sight of Min for a brief moment. She was completely encased inside a giant blood crystal, with Bug and Law at its base. Both stopped mid-swing and looked up just in time to watch John zip past.

Still flying backward, a strange cooling sensation spread across his back. He suddenly felt the need to stretch, and just before he crashed through another building, he flexed. Two sets of insect wings burst from his back and snapped open, stopping John's flight instantly.

"Amazing."

Laughing again, he felt immediately familiar with his new appendages and easily took flight back toward his enemy. The sensation of the wind across his body was intense. Breaking from his path, he swept past the blood crystal and left a chunk of his arm against its surface. The instant it struck, the mass of insects began devouring the crystal, much to Law and Bug's surprise.

Observing the area around Ivan as he flew back, John connected to Snare.

'Have Slims and Gregor provide cover, I'm gonna try to'

Flying past a high-rise at least thirty feet above the street, John rounded the corner and was immediately met by a roar. The face of a red demon slammed into him.

He fell like a meteor, his body already being consumed as unnatural red flames spread across his chitin. He crashed into the ground hard enough to form a crater, and before he could recover, a demon-faced mass of blue fire plunged in after him.

The flames joined, and John's scream ripped through the city.

It felt like burning fists hammering him over and over. Blue and red flames crashed against his body, crushing bugs and burning them to ash faster than they could move. He tried to fight back, tried to gather his aura, but the constant impacts kept breaking his concentration.

With less than half his body remaining and his armor dented and melting into slag, he still felt no fear. If this was death, John was satisfied to face it like this.

Unafraid.

"Who said you could die?"

Even from inside the flames, with his body being savaged, John recognized the voice instantly.

The Firstborn.

Pain stood outside the crater, his massive bulk radiating enough heat to soften the concrete beneath his feet. The fangs across his chest pulled open, and as if obeying his command, the blue and red flames tore free from the crater and rushed into his body, disappearing completely into the burning dimension within.

Floating down with his hands held reverently before him, Sin stepped lightly onto the ruined street. The demonic runes engraved across his body pulsed with unholy light, and as he raised a palm toward John, that same unholy energy spilled across the demon's ruined body.

Swatting a massive slab of concrete and rebar aside as he walked towards them, Ivan Cho stood almost completely lost within his aura.

"I am glad you decided to join. Makes hunting you easier."

Crimson and blue crashed around him in a violent vortex, leaving little visible beyond the black of his eyes.

A new voice joined the battle.

"He looks like fun!"

Dropping beside Sin, Panic's Restraints wound tight around his chest as he leaned forward. Blood still coated the retracted tendrils, feeding upward through the glowing cracks in his skin like liquid flowing through tubes. Behind him, his lengthened tail flexed with defined muscle before tapering into a vicious barbed hook.

Standing sideways against a collapsed building as if gravity were optional, Widow pushed off and landed beside her brothers with a heavy boom, her weight cracking the street beneath her feet.

"Too bad there's only one."

She straightened into a distinctly feminine silhouette, her skin pale as moonlight against the surrounding ruin. Six glowing green eyes framed her face, blinking independently and out of sync as they studied Ivan with a mixture of lethal intent and intense interest.

A gossamer-thin, semi-sheer dress of black silk draped over her voluptuous body, while multiple jointed spider legs flexed and swayed from her back like a living mantle. Her palms split open, spraying dense strands of spidersilk that rapidly wove themselves around her body into thick armor before the remaining silk gathered between her hands, twisting into a long spear.

"Can I have his head?"

A few of her eyes winked at Ivan.

"I want to fuck it."

Blushing, she practically shook with anticipation as the rest of the Brood joined them.

Hex, Tomb, Fang, Synapse, Law, and Bug. Broodspawn and Broodlings. The entire family now stood before Ivan.

Rising from the rubble, John felt his health restoring, though not nearly as much as it should have. Lost bugs couldn't be replaced with simple healing. The moment he climbed from the crater, the heat rolling from Pain forced him several steps away. He couldn't stand that close to the Firstborn.

"He's strong."

Pain snorted at John's assessment.

"Good."

Chains began snaking between the teeth across Pain's torso, scraping against one another as flames licked through the gaps. John was forced to retreat another few steps. As more insects shifted beneath his damaged armor, he started to wonder if bugs from Earth were really his limit.

Bloodlight and fire pressed against Ivan's aura, splintering the ground between them as the concrete began to melt, when Snare finally joined the group. He stepped forward from behind his siblings, he end of his staff tapping steadily against the broken street while waves of bloodlight drifted from his body.

Stopping just ahead of the Brood, Snare tapped his staff once

"Show yourselves."

His golden horns shone bright, and his third eye slowly opened.

Pitch-black with a blood-red pupil, the eye wept a single crimson tear before red light burst from it, washing across the entire area.

As the glow passed over, more than a hundred men in black suits were ripped from invisibility. They stood scattered across the surrounding streets and ruins, swords, spears, guns, and skills already raised and ready.

Snare only smiled.

"Kill them all."

Tomb roared.

In the blink of an eye, his body surged upward, ash-colored flesh stretching over steel-hard muscle as his frame exploded in size. Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty. The street cracked beneath his rocketing weight, nearby buildings trembling as his massive horns climbed past their upper floors.

Before he'd even finished growing, he lifted one foot, and the Brood scattered.

Widow launched herself sideways on strands of silk while Hex and Synapse broke in opposite directions. Fang vanished into shadow, Bug and Law sprinted clear, and John snapped his wings open as the ground beneath them disappeared beneath Tomb's shadow.

Sixty feet tall, the giant's raised foot came down.

The impact swallowed the street.

Concrete collapsed beneath his heel as a wall of force ripped outward, pulverizing pavement and throwing rubble and Woon soldiers into the air. Buildings shook hard enough to shed glass while a rolling cloud of dust consumed the battlefield.

Through it all, Pain, Panic, and Snare remained completely still.

Pain's flames tore the dust away before it could touch him. Panic leaned against the shockwave, grin widening as his tendrils snapped violently behind him. Snare simply stood with both hands resting on his staff, black robes whipping around his legs.

Across from them, Ivan hadn't moved an inch. The concrete surrounding his feet had been destroyed, leaving him standing atop a small island of untouched ground. Red and blue aura rolled from his body as chunks of debris bounced harmlessly away.

Panic's grin stretched wider.

"Oh, I really like this one."

Then the Woon soldiers attackedonly to stop almost immediately as booming laughter exploded across the battlefield, loud enough to make several of them cover their ears.

"Sorry I'm late! But better late than never!"

The grinding shriek of metal against metal joined the voice as something massive plowed through a nearby building, tearing straight through its walls and bringing the rest crashing down behind it.

An enormous tank charged through the settling rubble and onto the battlefield, its treads chewing through broken concrete as it closed in. The top hatch suddenly flew open, and the Puppet Master popped out wearing an old leather helmet.

"Let's get 'em, boys! Yeeeeee-haaaaww!"

Leaping, crawling, and running, what looked like hundreds of puppets chased after their master. Some appeared completely human, others more robotic, but all moved with inhuman grace. None bothered avoiding the rubble, smashing straight through whatever stood in their way.

With the new addition to the Brood forces, the fighting started again.

Suddenly outnumbered, the Woon soldiers immediately pulled back and reorganized, tightening their formation as they refocused the field. Hovering above them with his wings buzzing, John could tell the Woon men were all highly trained.

A flash of yellow caught his eye, and he quickly spotted Min. She was in her half-shark form, a man trapped between her jaws while each hand held another by the throat.

Besider her, a massive wave of Vent bugs flooded from Bug as her body began to twitch and break. Within moments, the Matriarch broodling's limbs stretched longer and a stinger grew from the end of her tail. She waded into combat alongside her children, the swarm moving with her as a living tide of death.

Everywhere John looked, the battle raged at a level that rivaled anything he'd ever seen. Multicolored skills tore across the field like cannon fire while bodies flew through the air and others grew massive enough to surround Tomb. Everywhere he looked, dying was easy.

About to summon a horde of poisonous insects, John stopped when he noticed something strange. A group of Woon men stood completely still, their faces straining as if fighting against something, yet not one of them could move an inch.

Eyes glowing red, Law moved between them, slashing their throats as easily as breathing.

A humanoid shadow appeared behind the broodling and raised an arm, only for Law to quickly turn. His eyes flashed again, and the assassin froze like the others before dying the same way.

It was a slaughter.

The Brood was taking damage, some of it bad. Tomb was already missing his tail, though he'd apparently decided the severed, clubbed thing made a perfectly good weapon. A new one was already growing behind him.

The damage the Woon soldiers dealt couldn't outpace [Feed]. It wasn't long before they were being forced back beneath the combined pressure of the puppet army and the Brood.

Less than a minute had passed since the battle started, yet through all the death and chaos, the group at its center still hadn't moved. John's eyes locked onto them. His help wasn't needed elsewhere, and something inside him screamed not to miss a second of what was about to happen.

Finally, he saw movement.

Pain stepped forward. The instant his foot touched the ground, a circle of molten concrete spread from it. Even from high above, John felt the temperature spike. Several men caught too close to the broodspawn burst into flames, but their screams didn't last long.

"Let's see how you handle this, Ivan."

The insects inside him practically danced, but the moment Ivan moved, every one of them went completely still.

It suddenly felt extremely cold.

Confused by the change, John's brow creased before his eyes widened.

The bugs inside him were shriveling, their bodies slowly turning to cinder, then ash.

Reacting immediately, his wings screamed behind him as he shot farther back, just as Ivan's voice somehow rose above the sounds of battle.

"Your fire is weak. Try mine."

A warning surged through the Broodlink, and John dove as fast as he could, dropping behind a mound of rubble.

The moment he did, every single bug making up his body burned away to ash, and his mind went blackthen immediately snapped open somewhere else in the city. Suddenly, he was staring at the Woon sisters, Yu-na and Hye-jin standing over Ji-yoon's corpse.

'What happened?!'

Spreading his cockroach wings, he shot into the air and looked back toward the distant battle

'What is that?'

Two intertwining pillars of red and blue crawled into the sky. Surrounding them, a massive section of the city had been turned into a sea of flowing magma.

John couldn't imagine anything surviving that. Human, or Brood.

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