Descent of The Demon Master [EN]: Chapter 2044

The moment Jang Min felt the sensation from behind, every hair on his body stood on end.

It was a chilling feeling, as if a sharp razor blade had touched the back of his neck. Before his eyes could even move, his senses grasped what was happening.

‘What?’

The severed wires were flying back at him as if they were alive.

It was something even the great Jang Min could not have imagined!

Knowing they were coming from all directions, he instinctively tried to kick off the ground and retreat. No, that wasn’t a careless decision. If he couldn’t face every attack head-on, reducing the number of attack vectors was a wise choice.

However…

*Chwararararak!*

At that moment, the wires that had fallen beneath Jang Min’s feet suddenly rose up and wrapped tightly around his ankles.

‘You dare!’

Just as Jang Min was about to kick away the wires binding his feet.

*Kwadudududuk!*

The concrete beneath his feet heaved as if about to flip over, and dozens of wires shot up, wrapping around his feet and crawling up like snakes.

*Kwaduk! Kwaduk!*

The incredibly sharp wires dug into his flesh.

It was more accurate to say they were piercing and embedding themselves rather than just wrapping around.

But what was even more threatening than their sharpness was the force behind the wires. It felt as if a giant’s hand had burst through the floor, grabbing his legs and pulling him down.

“You!”

Jang Min’s eyes, filled with crimson energy, momentarily looked forward. Not far away, at a distance where his Jo Gang [a type of sword] could reach his neck if he swung it, Gongryeong was smirking.

The pale complexion and the sweat streaming down his face seemed to prove how much effort he had put into this one move.

*Chwarararararak!*

At that moment, the wires flew like snakes in the sky, piercing into Jang Min’s entire body.

*Uduk! Ududuk!*

The sound of the sharp wires digging into his flesh was clearly audible to everyone. But the wires, as if not satisfied with just that, fiercely rotated and wrapped around Jang Min’s body.

“Kuh!”

Dark demonic energy billowed from Jang Min’s entire body like a cloud. But even that demonic energy couldn’t completely block the silver threads piercing his body. Instead, the wires filled the empty spaces, blocking the demonic energy from escaping.

It was as if a giant spider was wrapping its prey in a web.

In the blink of an eye, Jang Min’s entire body was covered in wires. Seeing Jang Min, who had become like a small insect caught in a spiderweb, everyone swallowed hard.

Jang Min, who had been twitching, fell backward and collapsed onto the floor.

*Thud!*

Watching the scene, Gongryeong licked his lips.

“The way to catch a beast is obvious.”

Make it rampage, then set a trap.

Facing a wild beast head-on is not courage but foolishness. A skilled hunter knows how to agitate the beast and set a trap in front of it.

“A beast that’s rampaging like a boar that’s been hit by a stray bullet is the easiest to deal with.”

*Uduk, uduk.*

Gongryeong cracked his neck from side to side. The pale complexion and the sweat seeping through his face proved that this wasn’t as easy as he made it sound, but he had, in any case, perfectly executed his plan.

Watching Jang Min twitching, Gongryeong twisted his lips.

“It’s no use resisting. The wires have pierced your body. Every time you try to move, you’ll feel the pain of hundreds of razor blades thrashing inside you until you die. If you don’t resist, you can die peacefully.”

It wasn’t exactly a considerate remark.

No matter how specially made the wires were, if his inner energy wasn’t infused into them, they were just threads to Jang Min. Gongryeong, who had to maintain his inner energy until Jang Min died, didn’t want to waste his strength unnecessarily.

But Jang Min didn’t seem to understand his words.

Gongryeong frowned as he saw Jang Min’s body trembling.

“It seems you don’t understand. If you don’t know, I’ll have to show you.”

He lightly pulled on the wire he was holding. A light move that made the end of the wire tremble. But the result of that one move would be anything but light.

Hundreds of wires embedded in Jang Min’s body would all thrash at once. Although they hadn’t been able to dig deep into his body due to his resistance, it didn’t matter. Whether they cut deep or just the skin, the pain would be no different.

*Drip, drip.*

Red blood trickled through the tiny gaps between the wires.

Most of the wires would only cut the skin, but some of them were probably scraping against his nerves.

As expected, Jang Min’s body twitched.

Watching this, Gongryeong wore a sinister smile.

“The end of those who don’t think for themselves is obvious. What killed you was your own fanaticism.”

Lee Hyun-soo’s eyes were bloodshot.

“Guild Master.”

“Guild Master!”

When there was no response, Lee Hyun-soo turned to Kang Jin-ho with a distorted face.

“Shouldn’t we do something?”

“Huh?”

Until now, Lee Hyun-soo had never spoken of intervening in a match.

Of course, it was true that Lee Hyun-soo hadn’t felt any particular affection for the people here, but conversely, there were no people closer to Lee Hyun-soo than them.

Even when their lives were on the line, Lee Hyun-soo had never once asked Kang Jin-ho to intervene.

A match was sacred.

More than anything, life was important to Lee Hyun-soo, but he was smart enough to understand that his way of thinking was different from theirs.

It might seem incredibly foolish to him, but for them, it might be something more important than life. Intervening in such a match could be a humiliation worse than death.

‘But this is clearly different.’

This wasn’t a match. This wasn’t a martial artist’s fight, but a thorough hunt.

No, even if you called this scene a match, hadn’t the result already been decided?

There was no reason to sit idly by and watch Jang Min die in agony here.

“Guild Master!”

It was impossible for him, but Kang Jin-ho could subdue Gongryeong and rescue Jang Min right now. As far as he knew, Kang Jin-ho had already beaten Gongryeong to a pulp once, so Gongryeong wouldn’t even dare to think of opposing Kang Jin-ho.

But Kang Jin-ho, who fully understood Lee Hyun-soo’s intentions, just took a long drag from the cigarette in his mouth.

“Shouldn’t you do something?”

Lee Hyun-soo’s face contorted as Kang Jin-ho silently blew out smoke.

‘Damn martial arts philosophy!’

Lee Hyun-soo tried his best to understand everything about Kang Jin-ho, but at times like this, he really couldn’t understand him.

His head turned sharply. To someone who seemed more likely to understand. But Wiggins, who received his gaze, also remained silent.

“This…”

Lee Hyun-soo gritted his teeth.

He couldn’t understand it at all. What was so important about a match that they had to watch a perfectly healthy person die before their eyes!

Just as he was about to take a step forward, Kang Jin-ho reached out and grabbed Lee Hyun-soo’s shoulder.

Lee Hyun-soo turned to Kang Jin-ho with a face full of anger.

“Wait.”

“No. I can’t wait. I’m not interested in your damn martial arts philosophy.”

Kang Jin-ho shook his head.

“It’s not that.”

“…Huh?”

Kang Jin-ho’s gaze shifted past Lee Hyun-soo to Jang Min, who had collapsed.

“The one who despises that the most isn’t you, but Jang Min. Jang Min doesn’t think of himself as a martial artist, nor is he obsessed with matches.”

“There is no such thing as an honorable defeat for Jang Min.”

Lee Hyun-soo’s eyes were filled with confusion.

“Then why?”

If that was the case, he couldn’t understand it even more. Why wasn’t he saving him?

Right now, Jang Min was experiencing pain that was chilling just to imagine.

The pain of an arm being torn off in one go was nothing compared to the pain Jang Min was experiencing now.

How could someone who hadn’t experienced the pain of razor blades embedded and rolling around inside their body even imagine it?

“A hunt…”

A sneer formed on Kang Jin-ho’s lips.

“That guy, Gongryeong, is certainly used to hunting. He’s skilled.”

Just as Lee Hyun-soo was about to distort his face at Kang Jin-ho’s sudden words.

“But Jang Min is even more used to being hunted.”

“…Huh?”

“Jang Min is the one who has survived for three hundred years while being hunted. Compared to the pain he has experienced so far, having his flesh cut off is nothing.”

Kang Jin-ho gestured with his chin forward.

“It’s not over yet.”

Lee Hyun-soo’s head turned sharply. His eyes caught the sight of Jang Min, who was twitching on the floor.

‘No, even so.’

What could he possibly do in that situation…

At that moment, Lee Hyun-soo’s eyes widened.

It was then that Jang Min, who they thought could no longer resist, moved.

‘Shall we finish this?’

Gongryeong put strength into the wire he was holding.

The most cautious moment in hunting is right before you cut off your opponent’s breath. Even skilled hunters often lose their lives to the fangs of a beast that was pretending to be dead when they approached carelessly to cut off its breath.

But Gongryeong wasn’t such a fool.

Slowly, leisurely, but surely.

His method was to cut off the breath after completely draining the opponent’s strength.

Gongryeong, having confirmed that the resistance felt at the end of the wire had clearly decreased, grabbed the wire. He would make the wounds deeper and drain more blood. No matter how superhuman one was, it was obvious that they couldn’t survive if they lost most of the blood in their body.

“Farewell.”

It was the very moment Gongryeong was about to grab the end of the wire and pull it.

*Tingle!*

“Hmm?”

Gongryeong, feeling a brief, electric-like pain in his fingertips, paused in confusion.

But it soon became clear that the pain was not a delusion.

*Kwaduduk!*

“Kuh!”

A gasp escaped Gongryeong’s lips. The muscles in his hand, which was holding the end of the wire, were twitching uncontrollably, a sight clearly visible to his eyes.

‘What is this…’

*Kwarururururu!*

At that moment, a burning energy began to surge from the wire wrapped around his fingertips. The energy that had pierced his hand circulated through his body, and a hellish pain, unlike anything Gongryeong had ever imagined, swept through his entire body.

“Gurgle…”

Gongryeong’s eyes rolled back, leaving only the whites visible.

Faced with an indescribable pain, all he could do was tremble without even being able to scream.

‘Th-this?’

The dark, ominous energy that had pierced his body through the wire was burning him from the inside.

‘H-how?’

At that moment, Gongryeong saw it.

Black…

A dark demonic energy, so dark that even the soul trembled in fear, was flowing down like thick tar between the wires surrounding Jang Min.