The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill
Chapter 134: The Collapse of the Underworld

Their footsteps echoed over cracked tile and faded asphalt, weaving through streets that didn't follow logic or memory but somehow still felt like they could have. The signs were bent at odd angles, their text slipping between Korean and a script that didn't belong to any language Jin knew. The air was dry and motionless, like the city had exhaled once and forgotten to breathe again.

They moved in silence. Not from fear. From instinct.

The city didn't hum with life—it pulsed. Not in any sound or motion, but in how the buildings leaned slightly in their direction. How the lamp posts curved overhead. How some shop doors had no handles, and others had too many.

Jisoo passed an alley and stopped. A flash—just a flicker—of someone standing at the far end. A woman in an apron, blinking at her with wide eyes. Then gone.

She didn't say anything. Just kept walking.

Yujin slipped ahead, claws half-formed at her sides, moving low and quiet over the rooftops. She didn't speak either. She didn't need to. She could feel the weight of being watched—but not from a fixed point. It was everywhere. The buildings had eyes. The air had memory.

Jin kept to the center.

The katana was still strapped across his back, motionless, but he could feel the hum of it under his skin. Muramasa. The weapon had changed when he'd ascended it—but so had he.

And this city didn't just test what he carried. It tested what carried him.

He passed a bus stop with three seated figures. All were blurry. None turned to face him. But one looked like a man he'd worked with before the world ended. The other two were smaller. Children.

He didn't slow.

The shadows stretched longer with each step.

The streets began to dip, the terrain warping more noticeably. The lines on the road bent into semi-circles. Glass from streetlights shimmered in strange ways, showing not reflections, but memories—Jin's old apartment key, Yujin's old school uniform, a sketchbook Jisoo hadn't seen in years.

None of them spoke.

Then, Yujin's voice dropped low over comms.

"Rooftops. Far east. Something moved."

Jin paused.

Jisoo pivoted on her heel. "Figures?"

"Didn't see clearly but they kinda looked like… us."

The sentence lingered in the air.

Jin said nothing, but his hand drifted up to the sheath on his back.

They kept moving, turning past a broken pedestrian bridge and down a slope into what might've once been a public plaza. Now, vines covered half the square—some frozen in place, others crawling slowly as if caught mid-animation. Lights blinked overhead from lamp poles that didn't exist seconds ago.

That's when Jin's boot hit stone.

Not concrete. Not tile.

Etched stone.

A wide circle in the center of the plaza, carved with faint runes that shimmered when he stepped onto them.

He looked down. The runes pulsed once. Just once.

Then a sound cracked through the air.

Steel. Cutting air. Precise. Fast.

Yujin leapt sideways just in time, claws out, as a flash of black metal sliced across the space she'd just occupied.

The impact struck the ground behind her—clean, deep, a perfect slash.

A single line, burned through stone.

Jin looked up.

Someone stood at the edge of the circle now.

Not walked in. Not stepped out.

Appeared.

Back straight. Head tilted slightly. A katana lowered in one hand.

Black uniform. Cracked metal vambrace. Blade humming faintly, veins of red heat beneath its surface.

Jin Yeong.

His face. His eyes. His posture.

But colder. Empty.

Yujin's breath hitched, half-growl. "What the hell is this thing? A clone?"

"No," Jin said, stepping slowly toward the center. "Definitely not a clone."

The shadow tilted its head the opposite way Jin did.

It stepped forward, the blade dragging lightly against the stone—not enough to make sound, but enough to leave another etched line.

Then it moved.

Not with speed. With rhythm.

One breath. One strike.

The katana flicked out, fast and clean—and not at Jin, but directly behind him, aiming at where Jisoo had shifted to flank.

A sacred technique.

Yomi-no-Kuzure. The Collapse of the Underworld.

The ground behind her cracked—not from impact, but from pressure. A jagged, cleaving line that split the tile in two.

Jisoo cursed and leapt back. "That's your move!"

"I know."

The shadow didn't look proud. Didn't grin.

It just readied its stance again.

Waiting.

Watching.

Perfect.

Jin took one step forward, hand resting on the hilt at his shoulder.

"All right," he said quietly.

"Let's see what you can do."

Jin didn't draw first.

The shadow didn't blink.

They circled each other once—silent, blades still.

Jin kept his stance loose. The katana across his back felt heavier than usual, humming not with threat but with memory. This wasn't a duel. Not exactly. It was a confrontation between now and what had already been decided.

The shadow moved.

Fast. A flick of the wrist, a forward lean, the exact mechanics Jin would use to open distance before a lunge. The blade followed, smooth and sharp—one fluid arc across the air, aimed not to feint, but to end.

Jin caught it.

His arm snapped up in perfect timing, drawing Muramasa's obsidian blade in one sharp motion to deflect the strike. The sound that rang out wasn't steel on steel—it was deeper. Like two thoughts clashing.

The rebound vibrated through his arms.

He pivoted on his heel and followed the block with a sharp twist, driving his elbow forward into the shadow's jaw—but the thing leaned back in tandem, not stumbling, not reacting. Just observing.

It swung again.

Jin ducked. Cut low. Let Muramasa's edge draw sparks off the stone as he moved in a tight, controlled arc beneath the strike.

Then—he planted his foot.

And rose.

"Sacred Form Six—"

He didn't shout it.

He breathed it.

"Yomi-no-Kuzure."

The blade sang.

Upward.

Black steel swept like a rising fracture, the edge burning with a faint red pulse. The sacred technique didn't roar—it resonated. A clean, upward cut through the shadow's core. Not with rage. With finality.

For a second—just a second—the shadow's head tilted.

Then—

The figure split.

Cleanly, down the center, from hip to shoulder. Not with blood. With smoke. It peeled apart like ink separating in water, the edges unspooling in wisps.

Silence.

Yujin let out a slow breath, claws still half-formed. "Is that it?"

Jisoo frowned, eyes narrowing.

"No," Jin said.

The smoke didn't rise.

It sank.

The parted halves melted into the cracks of the arena floor—sliding downward like a shadow returning to where it belonged.

The runes beneath their feet glowed green for an instant.

And the air changed.

A pull like gravity shifting. The sound of wind without air. A whisper made of weight.

Then—

Jisoo's double dropped from above.

A blur of movement—one moment, empty rooftop. The next, a form in midair, legs tucked, arms out, face locked in stone. It slammed into the plaza with a sharp, ringing impact, shattering tiles beneath its boots. The moment it landed, it moved.

A straight-line burst, faster than sound.

Jisoo rolled sideways just in time, narrowly avoiding a body-check that would've splintered ribs. Her double passed through where she'd been standing, dust spiraling behind it from the pressure.

"Reflexes are dead-on!" she barked, already on her feet. "It's like fighting a recording of myself—on a better day!"

Yujin didn't answer.

She couldn't.

Because her own double had arrived.

It didn't walk. It stalked.

Emerging from the edge of the plaza, four-legged now. Its bones were hers, but rearranged. Muscles bulked. Shoulders wide. Its face still carried her features—distorted slightly by the muzzle, by the fur—but unmistakable.

It was her. Shifted. Fully. Predatory.

And it charged without sound.

Yujin moved too—but not back.

She sprang forward, meeting it mid-lunge.

Claws extended, her frame adjusting. Her arms thickened, legs reshaped for spring strength. Her own partial transformation met the full beast's weight mid-air—and they collided like hammer to hammer.

Jin saw them crash out of the corner of his eye—fur and muscle, claws and speed—and didn't need to look again. She was in her element.

Jisoo, meanwhile, had been hit once already—just a glancing blow, but hard enough to knock her a few feet sideways.

Her double turned immediately, bursting again with that perfect, familiar dash—but this time, Jisoo expected it. She flared her own power, burst to the right—only to see the shadow flicker and redirect mid-dash.

It anticipated her dodge.

She barely ducked beneath the second burst, sliding low across the fractured tile and spinning up into a backstep.

"I hate how it feels like it knows what I'll do before I do," she muttered.

"It does," Jin called calmly. "It is you. As you are."

Jisoo gritted her teeth, rolling her shoulder. "That's not terrifying at all."

Across the arena, the runes pulsed again.

More shadows moved.

Not fighting yet—just… appearing.

Across broken balconies. Half-seen behind windows. Atop cracked pillars.

Jin watched, counting.

They were being surrounded.

Not by monsters. Not even by enemies.

By mirrors.

His own shadow stood again now, clean, composed, walking from the center of the arena like it had never fallen. No wound. No mark. As if the first duel hadn't happened at all.

It didn't charge.

It just watched.

Waiting.

Testing.

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