The End of Gods (A Welcome to the Underworld Novel, Book 4) (13 page)

He applied a bit more pressure around her throat, further constricting the limited air that was reaching her lungs.

Soo Jin saw that she was close to forcing him over the brink of sanity, and she loved every second of it. This was the way it should be. A God should never be controlled. He should be liberated; he should be free to exhibit his true powers.

“Every fiber in my body is telling me to kill you right now for what you did to my mother and all the trouble you’ve caused in my life,” he said with conviction.

He appraised her, a thousand different emotions plaguing his eyes. Just when she thought he would apply more pressure, she felt him loosen his grip while carefully allowing her feet to touch the ground. She knew that there would be no marks around her neck nor would she have trouble breathing tonight. The King of Serpents was too careful with her, even when he seemed ready to kill her. He freed her neck from his grip and simply shook his head at her.

“You will never beat me. I’m not fighting you, Soo Jin,” he dismissed, turning around and walking away from her. “Just stay away from me and stay out of my life.”

“Kwon Tae
Hyunnnnn,
” Soo Jin uttered in a singsong voice, watching him proceed to his chair to retrieve his guns. She began to retreat backwards towards her own throne. “Are you really going to turn your back on me now?”

He refused to say anything to her. The only sound that emitted from him was the aggravated stomping of his feet.

Anticipation, exhilaration, and fury were biting through Soo Jin’s nerves as she watched him move further and further away from her.

She smirked to herself.

There was no way in hell she was letting him leave.

Ascending up the stairs at the quickest of pace, Soo Jin effortlessly jumped onto the cushion of her throne and stood up straight. She extended her hands out and formed a grip over the two pointed gold spindles that were sticking out of the throne as embellishments. She rapidly pulled the gold handles out, revealing two one-inch blade swords that shimmered once released from the golden throne.

“You should know,” she began under her breath, “that I don’t do well with rejection.”

As if feeling her near presence, Tae Hyun’s eyes enlarged once he reached his throne.

Swish!

He leaned backwards, ducking just in time before the sharp blade of a sword could slice off his neck. His instincts coming to life, Tae Hyun swiveled around his chair. He wrapped a hand around one of the gold embellishments and whipped out a sword of his own. With quick reflexes, he was able to position the sword just inches above his face. In that same second, Soo Jin’s double swords came down upon it, its blades hungry for his skin.

The earsplitting shrill of metal hitting metal resounded through the air as Soo Jin, who was clearly elated that Tae Hyun had also been aware of the weapons that Ju Won hid in the thrones, wielded her swords with ease. She swung each sword to the side in an attempt to slice into either one of his hips.

As if already anticipating her move, Tae Hyun swiftly blocked one of Soo Jin’s arms with his free forearm and blocked her other sword with his own, successfully deflecting both swords away from him. In a rapid move to defend himself, Tae Hyun was able to disentangle her blocked arms from his and use that split second to elbow her hard in the stomach, leaving her to tumble towards the steps leading up to the platform.

“Now that’s more like it,” Soo Jin said approvingly, walking backwards into the center of the rotunda. While doing so, she twirled each sword in her hands with ease. No longer having use for the weapons that were merely disguised as a way to provoke her hardheaded opponent, she threw them both aside, accurately burying the blades into the gold pillars on either side of the ballroom.

“I was getting bored of you, King of Serpents. I’ve been anticipating this match for a while. You’re not going to disappoint me now, are you?”

He panted to himself as he watched her. He clearly did not anticipate that Soo Jin would provoke him to this degree.

Unfazed by his reaction, Soo Jin mumbled to herself as she stared around the elegantly decorated room. Dissatisfaction hung over her. Something had to be done about this room . . .

“Now to set the stage,” she announced, pulling out her two gold guns from her pockets.

Tae Hyun smirked, his handsome face mocking. He tilted his head at her. “You’re bringing toys into this duel now?”

Soo Jin laughed, shaking her head.

Authentic fighters rarely employed the use of guns when they wanted a real battle to see who was more skilled. She had too high of standards for the King of Serpents than to resort to using guns.

“Guns would be an insult to the type of fight I want to have with you,” she replied. “I’m simply trying to set the mood for tonight.”

Before giving him time to decipher what she was up to, Soo Jin, unable to withstand the elation streaming through her like an electrical current, lifted her guns up in the air and started shooting upwards towards the glass dome ceiling above them.

The entire time as she did this, Tae Hyun watched her in raw fascination.

Boom!

A myriad of sharp shards of glass started tinkling down like crystals as she ran through the room, shooting upwards nonstop before having to reload another round of bullets into the guns. Once fully loaded, she started firing another round before jumping onto her platform and pointing both guns at the grand chandelier hanging above them. She shot at it and effectively extinguished all the lights around them, leaving only the feeling of the cold air and the natural moonlight to stream into the now dark, quiet, and hazardous ballroom.

“You’ve thought this confrontation out thoroughly, haven’t you?” Tae Hyun asked mindlessly, gazing up at her handiwork.

The glass ceiling was completely destroyed, and if one wasn’t careful underneath it, then it was quite possible that a couple pieces of loose glass would fall from the heavens and stab the hell out of one’s head. Below, the marble tiles were littered with shards of glass that glimmered under the moonlight.

It was the perfect stage for a fight.

Soo Jin released a satisfied sigh. “I actually envisioned that my historic battle with you would take place on the roof of a high-rise building in the center of the business district. We’d be surrounded by the entire Underworld, who would watch the entire affair in the various buildings that wrapped around the roof. In this scenario, we’d fight under the heavens, amongst the Gods.”

She began to walk down the stairs, her boots stepping over the assortment of glass that was still twinkling under the night’s sky.

“This is why tonight will merely be a warm-up for us to better introduce ourselves to one another.” She pursed out a thoughtful lip. “Of course, if I accidentally kill you, I won’t cry about it either. It would just suck for the Underworld citizens because I think they’re dying to watch the fight of the century.”

“You’re playing with fire, An Soo Jin,” Tae Hyun admonished darkly, walking down the stairs with his sword outstretched in his right hand. He tossed it aside as he approached her. The sword fell with a loud clink when he reached her. “I keep giving you chances after chances to leave unharmed. Considering how much anger I harbor for you, you should be counting your blessings that I’m giving you this much allowance. But, like a fool, you keep on pushing me and pushing me. Do you really want to force my hand like this?”

“I can be pretty convincing,” she amended coolly, bouncing in her stance. She loved fighting with guns, swords, or any other types of weapons, but for their first match, she was all too excited to fight fist-to-fist. There was no better way to assess an opponent’s skill than through hand-to-hand combat. “Let’s play.”

With no further warning, she rocketed towards him, more than ready to start the night off.

Extending her leg out, she bestowed a reverse roundhouse kick to his face. It was an attack that left Tae Hyun momentarily disoriented. With eagerness, she finished the attack by planting her palms on the marble tiles (and ignoring the sharp shards of glass eating at her palms) and performed a low reverse roundhouse kick on the floor that had Tae Hyun falling off balance, his back meeting the glass-covered tiles with a big thud.

“Augh!”

He let out a tortured groan as the pieces of glass etched themselves into his shirt and stabbed into the flesh of his back. Blood started to seep through his expensive white shirt.

Smirking, she seized the opportunity for another attack. She had planned on giving him a swift kick to the face for good measure, but sadly for her, this time around, Tae Hyun wasn’t letting her get away with hitting him so easily.

“I don’t think so,” he muttered before pushing himself up. He propelled himself to his feet and caught her leg before she could get a side kick in.

“Ugh!” Soo Jin groaned in frustration.

Competitive blood—as well as her prideful killer instincts—pumped within her veins, causing her to go from zero to a hundred miles per hour. She went crazy performing all the various types of attack moves under the moon, only to have him successfully hinder them every which way by constantly moving his body, keeping his hands opened, and holding his arms stretched out at an oblique angle.

Soo Jin growled under her breath.

It enraged her that he wasn’t fighting back. Soo Jin used the boney tip of her elbow and swept it across Tae Hyun’s cheek, fury mounting inside her. Once the attack connected, she slashed another elbow bone across the left side of his face. The assault left him to tumble backwards as blood started pouring from his mouth. He fell, but not before attacking with a spinning back kick to her chest that had Soo Jin gasping painfully for
air.

“Ugh!”

She spun momentarily in the air and collapsed onto the glass-strewn ground at the same time as Tae Hyun.

Boom!

Two loud, rumbling thuds echoed into the night as both muttered curses at the shards of glass that were burrowing into their skin.

“
Motherfucker,” Soo Jin growled, groaning at the small pieces of glass that made it inside her flesh. In the past, having broken glass litter the floor was one of her favorite accessories for a battleground. She realized now that she only appreciated it because she rarely, if ever, fell to the ground when she fought an opponent. But now, with Tae Hyun giving her a run for her money and throwing her every which way, she was seriously regretting shooting up the dome ceiling. The hungry shards of glass didn’t discriminate in terms of whose skin it ate, and she was realizing it all too clearly as she felt them inside her own body.

Soon, her resentment for the glass was overshadowed when she saw Tae Hyun rise up from the corner of her eyes.

No!

A gush of adrenaline entered her body. Refusing to give him the upper hand, she bolted back towards him. Soo Jin extended her legs out inches before she met him and purposely slid on the tiles. As she slid on the left side of her body, she felt every bit of the pieces of glass that attached themselves to her hoodie and ran into her skin. She fought through the pain, her only focus being Tae Hyun. Once she reached him, she skillfully spun herself up in a diagonal motion in mid-air and kicked him across the jaw with her right leg.

Bam!

His teeth brutally clacked together from the intensity of the kick. He tumbled backward, struggling to maintain his equilibrium while panting for air.

She took advantage of his disorientation and ran over to him with the intent of getting another bone-cracking kick in. She was sorely disappointed when he caught her leg in mid-air, twisted her body up, and then kicked her in the stomach, leaving her to fly into the flight of stairs that led up the upstairs quarter.

Boom!

She groaned at the spikes of pain that materialized in her back after her collision with the hard edges of the stairs. She could’ve also sworn she felt every nerve in her body vibrate in agony. That was the thing about fighting: people had this unrealistic notion that skilled fighters no longer felt pain when they fought, which was completely false. One may have had a slightly higher tolerance for pain, but it was still an agonizing experience. Unfortunately for Soo Jin, what was beginning to piss her off more was that despite the pain, she knew that none of this fighting even equated to the type of battle she knew Tae Hyun was capable of.

“You’re going easy on me, aren’t you, King of Serpents?” she sneered, shaking off the shards of glass that were stuck in her hands. She gripped onto the railing and pulled herself up, her eyes staring at him without deviation.

Even through the insurmountable pain, she recognized that this battle could be worse. She noted the tenseness in the muscles hidden underneath the affluent clothes he was wearing. He was holding his power back so much that she wondered if he was hurting himself in the process. It was clear that he was constraining his own strength to keep himself from instinctively hurting her.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” he whispered, stepping onto the stairs. “I’m not even fighting you right now. This is merely self-defense.”

She grimaced, having enough of this bullshit.

She wasn’t going to walk around eggshells with him any longer.

She was going to exploit his pain.