Chapter 154: In Various Ways**
Grunt's body cracked and split, turning like wood. He was originally a Demon Spirit of the wind, but the power he received from his former master had transcended his origins and transformed him.

Of course, he hadn't rejected it. Thanks to that power, he had been able to defeat a Lord and seal a Seed. That power was connected to him.

‘It crossed over through that connection…!’

That was how Grunt realized it. How the Seed had moved.

Physical distance didn't matter to it, but spiritual distance did. It couldn't just move to any random soul.

From inside the seal, it had broken the seal, traveled along that power, and reached Grunt, its root. Having successfully hidden inside Grunt, the Seed had exploded from within him, and now, it had driven a blade through him.

‘Was the seal insufficient? No, that can’t be! It can’t be…’

As his consciousness faded, Grunt desperately racked his brain. He felt like he was about to die, but he didn't stop thinking.

The seal had been perfect. He had checked it thoroughly. So how could the Seed have broken the seal and escaped?

Did it pretend to be sealed? Impossible. There was no reason for it to do so, and he had checked it multiple times.

And yet, it had escaped. That meant…

‘It was… eaten…’

As his thoughts grew sluggish, he realized the answer. The power of the Lord of Insects, Larna, was to consume and absorb strength and nutrients through predation. The Seed drawn to her possessed the same authority. The ability of Larna's Seed was the act of eating.

It had gnawed away at the seal from the inside. For a very long time, from the day it was sealed until this very moment.

He had certainly succeeded in defeating Larna and sealing the Seed. But in the end, he had only ended up empowering her.

Because the power he had received from his former master had been completely devoured from the inside…

‘My apologies…’

His vision rapidly narrowed, and his consciousness faded away.

Krrrrrrrr-!

The insects went into a frenzy, their movements growing even more agile. Grunt had been mistaken. He had thought the insects were swarming to reclaim Larna's Seed.

But that wasn't it. They knew their queen would be revived, and they had gathered to celebrate her return.

CRUNCH!

Grunt's body, now like dried tree bark, crumbled to dust. From within, she emerged.

Long, black hair. She was rather short, but her hair seemed to be twice her height. The black strands covered the upper part of her face, hiding her eyes, but her nose and lips were surprisingly neat. In a way, she looked almost childlike, but…

KANG!

A thick killing intent dripped from her sword. A power, and a will, to destroy and devour everything in sight.

A great power possesses a will of its own. To wield it properly, one needs a reason and intense instincts that surpass it. But Larna's ego, from the moment of her birth, had been no different from the will of the Seed.

To eat. She had lived solely for that purpose, and that hadn't changed.

It was because of who she was that the Seed of Predation, which had wandered countless stars, had settled within her. The connection between her and the Seed was so impossibly strong that it wouldn't be strange to say she was the Seed, and the Seed was her.

"You, who?" Larna asked in a surprised tone, looking at Jinwoo who had blocked her sword. The blade, thin as an insect's wing, was so sharp it could cut through anything. But Jinwoo's sword was unscathed.

"The Lord of Insects, Larna, I presume."

"That's right. You know me?" Larna said with a bright smile. Her innocent appearance showed no trace of hostility. But the killing intent was real. It was proof that she perceived Jinwoo not as an enemy to fight, but as something to eat.

Kugugugugung!

Just then, the insects' rampage intensified. By now, even Belkarim couldn't hold them back and was thrown aside. In any case, with the seal broken, there was no reason to protect the stem anymore.

"So noisy."

Larna swung her sword. From left to right. A single flash that seemed to cleave the world brought silence.

The ear-splitting sound of wings ceased all at once. The headache-inducing cries, and the worship for their queen that only she could hear, all fell silent.

Every insect in this place was dead. And their Black Flames were drawn into Larna. Even in death, they praised their queen and willingly chose the path of being eaten by her.

"Haaa."

The sheer quantity meant the amount being absorbed was immense. Even though she had eaten her fill by gnawing through the seal, she didn't stop eating. No matter how full she was, she could eat infinitely.

In the midst of that ecstatic ritual, Jinwoo's sword moved. He slashed through the massive flow directed at Larna, creating a scratch in it.

The flawlessly clean flow was disrupted by his action. It was cut, it exploded, and a portion of it was drawn into Jinwoo.

As their powers clashed, the flowing souls lost their way. They poured from the sky to the ground and surged from the ground to the sky, their source merely covering the surroundings, having lost its destination.

Larna, or Kang Jinwoo. Even though they had willingly offered their bodies to Larna, they could not completely defy Jinwoo's command. That hesitation created this space.

"You, what are you."

Anger tinged Larna's voice as she looked at Jinwoo, who had interrupted and made a mess of things.

KWAAAAANG!

The Hall of Souls. There, Larna's sword and Jinwoo's sword clashed several times. Despite it being a clash between two incredibly thin blades, the sound of explosions that shook heaven and earth echoed repeatedly.

‘She fights on pure instinct.’

That was Jinwoo's assessment of Larna's swordplay. A sword of pure, wild instinct, wielded without a trace of reason or theory.

Jinwoo himself wasn't without a tendency to rely on his senses, but his swordsmanship ultimately had a foundation. There was the sword his past self had wielded, the sword theory Rona had taught him, and his own unique style, established by overcoming all sorts of trials.

All of that formed a single framework for Jinwoo's sword, completing a resilient style that never lost its center, no matter the situation.

‘This one is the complete opposite.’

Larna was the exact opposite. She had nothing that could be called a framework. Her swordsmanship had no discernible origin. In a word, her sword moved however she pleased. To put it crudely, it had no foundation. That made it difficult to predict.

‘Fast and strong.’

And dazzling. It didn't just come in a straight line; a single swing contained dozens, even hundreds of variations. It spoke to how whimsical a being she was. It was a style that would be all the more difficult for a more upright person to face.

It was a completely different style from both Jerakson and Cain. Both of them were types who unleashed their innate wildness, but even they didn't fight with such pure, unadulterated instinct.

"I asked who you are." Larna snapped in a sullen tone. She was angry. Angry that he had interrupted her feast, angry that he was just swinging his sword without a word. And above all, angry that her sword wasn't working on him at all.

"Can't you talk? Then can you scream?"

Her body accelerated. Her sword vibrated, and the air trembled. The mana did as well. The flow that had been established until now scattered all at once, and a chaotic jumble of mana filled the surroundings.

She slipped through that chaos and charged. It was truly like watching an unpredictable insect. And since that insect had fangs that could kill a person, it was exceptionally troublesome.

Puk. Larna's sword stabbed Jinwoo. For a moment, she smiled brightly, but she soon realized there was no feel of impact. What she had stabbed was a momentary afterimage created by a difference in perception.

"Die."

Jinwoo uttered one last word and swung his sword. Larna, having missed, retracted her sword like a lightning bolt to swing it upwards, but she was a step—no, half a step—too late. Jinwoo's sword was slightly faster, slashing across her entire body.

"Ah!"

She reacted sensitively and immediately created distance. With a single backstep, she opened a gap of over 20 meters, then bent over, clutching her abdomen.

"Owie…"

It hurt. The pain of the blow reawakened the sensation of pain in her for the first time in a long while. It was an unpleasant yet strangely welcome feeling, a complex and subtle emotion. True to her emotions, she didn't get angry or happy, just tilted her head in confusion.

Conversely, Jinwoo's eyes narrowed. He had definitely cut her. But there was no wound.

‘Just a little bruise and that's it?’

He had intended to slice her in half. At the very least, he had meant to create an entrance for her intestines. But far from a wound, there was only a blue bruise. The only thing that had been cut was her fluttering clothes.

This was the first time he had failed to cut something he intended to cut. There had been times when the wound was shallower than expected, but never a time when he couldn't cut at all. Even when he cut Jerakson's neck, he had been unstoppable.

This wasn't a simple matter of her body being tough. Jinwoo's sword cut souls. Naturally, he had intended to cut Larna's soul just now. But her soul had not been cut.

‘Has she completely merged with the Seed?’

If he couldn't cut her, that was the only possibility. He had felt that the connection between her and the Seed was abnormally strong. But seeing this now, it seemed it wasn't just a connection; they were completely fused.

For Jinwoo, who had always cut down Lords and extracted the Seeds within them, this was a new kind of opponent. It was as if the Seed itself had become his enemy.

"What, so you can talk."

Larna smiled brightly and twirled her sword. The bruise on her abdomen seemed to have already healed.

'Alright, what should I do…'

It had been a while since he had fought a swordsman this proficient. The opponents he had fought recently were all monster-like creatures.

From Silbaern to Jerakson and Prycia. Cain had been a fairly skilled martial artist, but the power difference had been too great for it to be a proper fight.

Just then, an idea occurred to Jinwoo. If she was truly that strongly fused with the Seed. If she wasn't a Lord who used the Seed, but a being who had become the Seed itself.

From within Jinwoo's body, the auras of each of his Seeds began to unravel. Four strands of energy, unwinding like thread from a spool.

They didn't mix with each other. But they intertwined, forming a thicker ring. They were inherently strong-willed beings, but they did not disobey Jinwoo's command.

If she was a Seed, then wouldn't she be similar?

Larna charged. The sword in her hand looked transparent depending on the angle. A blade so thin you could see through it. If he were cut by that, even Jinwoo would not emerge unscathed.

The ring of four intertwined Seeds swirled inside Jinwoo's body.

"Kneel."

At that moment, Larna's body staggered.

"Huh?"

She didn't completely prostrate herself, but her body tilted. Her own ego clashed with a command that could not, and should not, be ignored, causing her body to lose its balance.

KWAANG!

In that opening, Jinwoo closed the distance and brought his sword down. A powerful impact sound echoed, but Jinwoo's expression was not satisfied.

"Huh…"

He hadn't been able to cut her this time either. It seemed he couldn't cut her so easily.

‘I guess I'll have to try cutting her in various ways.’

Jinwoo approached Larna, who had been sent flying into the distance. Her long, black hair was spread out on the ground like a carpet.

"Wait, just a minute."

Seeing Jinwoo approach, she hurriedly got up and started to back away.