Disaster-Level Player Is Too Good at Broadcasting-Chapter 75: « Demonic Angel, Azrael »

"Focus the left wing! It’s regenerating from the tar!"

Sasha Kim’s voice sliced through the cacophony of shattering glass and whistling bone-needles. She didn’t wait for a reply. Her white trench coat flared as she vaulted off a fallen pillar, her palms glowing with a harsh, emerald light.

"I have the center!" Kim Jin shouted back.

He didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at the corpses of the three Siberian warriors currently being dissolved by the floor. He was a blur of maroon and red static. Twelve holograms—double his previous limit—swarmed the Silent Arbiter. They weren’t just distractions anymore. They were meat grinders. Each red blade carved into the Arbiter’s four wings, shearing off feathers that dissolved into foul-smelling white gas.

"Hyeonwoo, get the survivors to the staircase!" Sasha commanded mid-air. "The second Commandment is wearing off, the sound is coming back!"

As if on cue, a localized sonic boom erupted from the Arbiter’s hooded head.

SCREE—!!!

The sound wasn’t a scream. It was the noise of tectonic plates grinding together. It blew out the eardrums of two lower-ranked players instantly. Blood leaked from their helmets as they collapsed, clawing at the stone.

"Not today!"

Park Jin-ho, the Blue Dragon ranker who had used the Zodiac ability earlier, lunged forward. He was pale, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps, but he wouldn’t stop. He held a massive broadsword with both hands, the blade still flickering with the dying embers of the bronze ’Aegis of Aldebaran.’

"I’ll open the path! Kim Jin! Finish it!"

Jin-ho ignited his remaining mana. His body glowed with a frantic, suicidal gold. He sprinted directly into the path of the Arbiter’s staff. The marble hands reached out, their fingers elongating like pale spiders to snare him.

CRUNCH.

The hands clamped onto Jin-ho’s shoulders. He didn’t flinch. He drove his sword upward, straight through the center of the interlocking fingers, shattering the golden crystal in the staff’s head for the second and final time.

"NOW!" Jin-ho coughed, a spray of red coating the Arbiter’s cloth-bound face.

Kim Jin appeared above the Boss. The twelve holograms merged into his physical body, turning his maroon coat into a shimmering, dark-red armor of pure kinetic energy. He brought his blade down in a vertical arc.

SPLIT.

The blade didn’t just cut the Arbiter. It erased the space the Boss occupied.

The Silent Arbiter froze. The six golden eyes hovering above its head shattered like lightbulbs. The four wings stiffened, turned gray, and then slumped. The massive entity fell to its knees, its staff turning to sawdust.

With a final, sickening squelch, the Arbiter’s body toppled forward into the black tar.

Silence returned, but it was heavy. It smelled of ozone and burnt hair.

"Jin-ho?" Sasha landed softly, her eyes searching the center of the terrace.

The golden glow was gone. Park Jin-ho lay beneath the weight of the Arbiter’s collapsed torso. The marble hands of the staff were still buried in his chest. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were open, staring at the dim, gray sky of the Floor.

"He’s gone," Kim Jin said. His voice was flat. He stood over the body, his blade dripping with gold ichor. He didn’t offer a prayer. He didn’t close the dead man’s eyes. "He overtaxed his core to break the Commandment. His heart literally melted."

The survivors stood in the wreckage. Out of thirty-three rankers, only twenty-four remained standing. The cost of the first layer had been a Top Ranker from Blue Dragon.

"Check the loot," one of the White Stars members muttered, his voice trembling. "We need to move before the respawn."

On the upper ridges of the sinkhole, hidden in a reinforced bunker of stone, the White Stars Media Crew sat behind a wall of monitors. The hum of cooling fans and the smell of stale coffee filled the cramped space.

"Did you catch that?" the Lead Technician asked, his fingers flying across the console. "The Jin-ho death? We’ve got three different angles. The ’Sacrifice Play’ tag is trending on Chirp already."

"The numbers are exploding," the Drone Operator replied, his eyes glued to the livestream feed from the T1 Specter drones. "We’re at fifty million concurrent. People are losing their minds over Kim Jin and the Zodiac reveal."

The Technician leaned closer to the screen. "Wait. Look at the chat."

The side-bar of the monitor was moving so fast it was a blur of white text, but a specific pattern began to emerge.

[USER_441]: LOOK BEHIND YOU.

[USER_HEON]: LOOK BEHIND YOU.

[TOWER_SIMP]: THE ANGEL IS MOVING. LOOK BEHIND YOU.

[RANK_WATCHER]: BEHIND THE MAROON GUY. BEHIND HIM.

[USER_992]: LOOK BEHIND YOU.

[USER_992]: LOOK BEHIND YOU.

[USER_992]: LOOK BEHIND YOU.

The drone operator frowned, his hand twitching on the joystick. "What are they talking about? The boss is down. We saw the kill notification. Kim Jin hit the vital point."

"Switch to Drone 4," the Technician whispered. "The one with the thermal filters."

They switched the feed.

On the screen, the pile of corpses—the Arbiter and its single-winged Generals—looked like a heap of cold ash. But as the thermal filter calibrated, a deep, bruised purple began to pulse from the center of the pile.

"Oh god," the Technician breathed. "What is that?"

Back on the terrace, Kim Jin wiped his blade.

"Woonhee-ssi, bring the porters up," he called out toward the staircase. "We’re moving to the second spiral. We don’t have time to mourn."

Woonhee stepped out from the shadows, her hand tight on Yechan’s shoulder. She stopped. Her eyes weren’t on Kim Jin. They were on the pile of white feathers behind him.

"Jin-ah..." she whispered.

A sound began to rise from the floor. It wasn’t a roar. It was the sound of wet meat being slapped against cold stone.

Squelch. Pop. Tear.

Kim Jin spun around.

The corpse of the Silent Arbiter wasn’t dissolving. It was unravelling. The white feathers were lengthening, turning into muscular, translucent tendrils that reached out toward the corpses of the one-winged Generals scattered across the terrace.

One tendril wrapped around a General’s head. It didn’t just pull it; it absorbed it. The skull of the General was dragged into the Arbiter’s chest cavity with a wet crunch.

The smell hit them next. It was the scent of a stagnant grave opened in the middle of a summer heatwave—rotting meat mixed with a metallic, acidic tang that burned the back of their throats.

"Get back!" Sasha screamed, her emerald light flaring to life. "It’s a fusion!"

The rankers scrambled away, but the fusion was too fast. The four wings of the Arbiter didn’t just grow; they multiplied. Dozens of wings sprouted from the central mass, but they weren’t white anymore. They were covered in a black, oily film that dripped onto the stone, hissing as it ate through the rock.

The "Arbiter" rose.

Its body was a horrific patchwork of limbs and feathers. The cloth that had covered its face was gone, revealing a head that was nothing but a cluster of dozens of human mouths, all of them sewn shut with golden wire. Above the mouths, the six eyes had returned, but they were no longer golden. They were hollow sockets leaking a thick, black sludge.

The hands on its staff—the circle of interlocking fingers—had grown into a massive, three-meter wheel of grasping, twitching arms. In the center, the golden crystal had been replaced by a pulsing, raw heart that beat with a sound like a hammer hitting a drum.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

The black tar on the floor suddenly rose, forming spikes that impaled the corpses of the fallen players, dragging them into the central mass.

『[SYSTEM]: AN UNEXPECTED EVOLUTION HAS OCCURRED.』

『[NOTICE]: THE CRITERIA FOR ’ETERNAL AGONY’ HAVE BEEN MET.』

A new window appeared in front of every player, glowing with a malevolent, flickering purple light.

『[BOSS]: THE DEMONIC ARBITER, AZRAEL (RANK: CALAMITY - EVOLVED)』

The mouths on the entity’s face began to vibrate. The golden wires didn’t break; they stretched, the skin tearing as the mouths tried to scream.

"...SAVE... US..."

The voice didn’t come from the air. It came from inside the players’ heads. It was the voice of Park Jin-ho. It was the voice of the warriors who had just died.

The Demonic Arbiter raised its wheel of hands. The ground beneath Kim Jin’s feet turned into a mouth, teeth made of stone rising to snap at his legs.

"Formation!" Sasha’s voice was high-pitched, almost panicking. "Don’t look at its face! It’s a mental pollution type!"

Kim Jin stood frozen for the first time. He stared at one of the single wings protruding from the monster’s shoulder.

The Demonic Arbiter took a step.

The air around it turned into a freezing fog of despair.

『[NOTICE]: THE ABYSS IS CLOSING ITS GATES.』

『[STATUS]: ESCAPE IS NO LONGER AN OPTION.』

The monster’s six hollow eyes fixed on the remaining rankers. The heart in its staff-wheel pulsed once, and a wave of black light washed over the terrace, turning the world into a monochrome nightmare of teeth and feathers.