"W-What is this place?!"
"Are we inside a video game? How did we get here?!"
"Machi! Where are you?!"
"Shizuku! Kortopi!"
The three Spiders shouted into the void. Slowly, their vision cleared, and the absolute blackness dissolved into a hyper-stylized, neon-lit landscape.
They were standing on the cracked pavement of a futuristic, post-apocalyptic metropolis. Bizarrely, their clothes had completely changed. They were now wearing heavy, pixelated combat armor and wielding strange, oversized sci-fi weapons instead of their usual gear.
[BEEP! Welcome to Lord Aizen's Game World: 'Zenless Zone Zero'!]
[Please enjoy the game. Remember, if you die here, you die in the real world! Clearing the stage is your only chance of survival!]
A cold, mechanical voice echoed through the sky.
New Eridu.
Before the trio could even process the rules, they were ambushed.
Over a dozen bizarre, glitching, crystalline monsters—Ethereals—spawned from the shadows. Without a sound, the creatures lunged at them, swinging jagged, ethereal blades.
The Spiders reacted purely on instinct. They fought back, hacking and slashing through the horde. Eventually, the monsters shattered into digital pixels, but not before the Spiders took several hits.
Machi clutched her bleeding arm, her face pale.
"The wounds... they hurt. The damage is real," Machi realized, her tactical mind racing. "We've been dragged into a Nen-constructed game world. And if the rules are absolute, dying here means total ego death in the real world."
"Wait, it said we're in 'his' Nen space?" Kortopi asked, looking at his pixelated hands.
"Shizuku! Try using Blinky! Can you vacuum up the environment to break us out?" Machi ordered urgently.
"I... I can't," Shizuku looked down at her hands, her expression miserable. "Blinky isn't responding. My Nen ability is completely sealed."
"Mine too," Kortopi said grimly, trying to touch the fading pixels of a dead monster. "I can't conjure any copies. We're completely stripped of our Hatsu."
They were trapped. Powerless. Forced to play a death game rigged by a god.
Meteor City. The Real World.
Aizen stood elegantly in the center of the throne room. The three Spiders had completely vanished, sucked entirely into the small, hovering console.
What a fascinating ability. They get the honor of being the first beta testers, Aizen thought, the corner of his lips curling into a satisfied smile.
Peace returned to Meteor City.
Far away from the throne room, standing atop a rusted radio tower overlooking the junkyard slums, were two silhouettes.
Chrollo Lucilfer and Hisoka.
The shadows obscured their faces, making them look like venomous snakes lurking in the dark.
"Sosuke Aizen..." Hisoka murmured, his golden eyes narrowing. "He made three elite Spiders vanish in a single breath. That kind of spatial manipulation is incredibly rare."
Chrollo hadn't intervened. Ever since he had unleashed the mafia and the Blacklist assassins, he had been watching from the shadows.
The prophecy had dictated his path, but his pride as the Head of the Spider had demanded he try something. Now, seeing the absolute futility of their struggle, he knew the prophecy was absolute. The Spider was being systematically dismantled. Fleeing East was his only chance at survival.
"Hisoka," Chrollo said, his voice quiet and heavy. "Did you notice any similarities between this 'Aizen' and the monster we're fighting?"
As the leader of the Troupe, watching his family get slaughtered piece by piece was an agonizing torture. But he couldn't fight Ryker. Machi, Uvogin, Feitan, Phinks... their peak combat power wasn't far off from his own. If they couldn't even scratch Ryker, Chrollo knew his chances of winning a direct confrontation were essentially zero.
So he hid, observing the enemy like a snake. And in doing so, he noticed something terrifying about this new ruler of Meteor City.
"Similarities?" Hisoka blinked, his head tilting.
Then, a glint of horrifying realization flashed in his eyes.
Without Chrollo mentioning it, Hisoka hadn't put the pieces together. But now that he thought about it... the speech patterns, the overwhelming arrogance, the casual dismissal of human life, and even certain micro-expressions... Aizen and Ryker were disturbingly similar.
"Could it be...?" Hisoka muttered, the color draining from his face before returning in a flush of manic excitement.
He didn't want to believe it. If his theory was correct, then the "unripe fruit" he had been planning to harvest had grown into a world-devouring World Tree. If Ryker could casually create or summon entities on the level of Sosuke Aizen... he was a walking apocalypse.
"What's wrong? Are you scared?" Chrollo asked, a dry, humorless smile on his face.
"Scared? Oh, no, no, no~," Hisoka covered his face, his shoulders shaking with twisted laughter. "Death is the final destination for us all, isn't it? To taste the ultimate fruit... or to be crushed by it... either outcome is simply intoxicating~."
"Let's go, then. We have one last thing to verify," Chrollo said.
Instead of moving to save his trapped crew members, Chrollo turned his back on Meteor City. He and Hisoka vanished into the shadows, heading East.
Yorknew City. The Slums.
Two figures sprinted desperately through the dark, rain-slicked alleys. One of them was sobbing uncontrollably, cursing the heavens.
"Put me down, Bonolenov! Just leave me! Let me die!" Phinks screamed, tears streaming down his face. "Shalnark and Franklin stayed behind to fight that monster! If we keep running, he's just going to hunt us down one by one anyway!"
After unleashing his ultimate Ripper Cyclotron, Phinks was completely physically drained. Bonolenov was currently carrying him over his shoulder, running for their lives.
"Don't be an idiot! Going back is suicide! We should have listened to the Danchou from the beginning... we never should have fought that monster..." Bonolenov gritted his teeth, deep regret gnawing at his soul.
Before today, they believed they held all the cards. But fighting Ryker was an exercise in absolute despair. A monster that could instantly regenerate severed limbs? A monster that could casually swat away Phinks' ultimate attack without taking a scratch?
It was like fighting a raid boss with infinite HP. Running was their only option.
"Phinks... we have to get as far away from him as possible. If we stop, he'll kill us. I can't reach Machi's team. I don't even know if they're still alive..." Bonolenov panted, the dread heavy in his voice.
Who could have ever imagined that the legendary Phantom Troupe, the boogeymen of the underworld, would be reduced to crying, fleeing stray dogs?
Phinks fell silent. He had no counter-argument. He was just so blindingly angry and profoundly helpless. Watching his family die while he ran away was driving him insane.
"Phinks... have you noticed a pattern in how he hunts us?" Bonolenov suddenly asked, his voice trembling.
"A pattern?" Phinks asked bitterly. The Phantom Troupe being hunted on a schedule. What a sick joke.
"At first, he killed one of us a day. But today... he killed two. The frequency is increasing. But when he first attacked us, he clearly had the speed to wipe us all out at once. He... he's playing with us," Bonolenov deduced, swallowing hard.
Phinks' eyes widened.
It was true. Ryker wasn't just hunting them. He was toying with them. He was letting them run just to give them false hope, only to crush it again tomorrow. It was the ultimate humiliation.
Yorknew City. The Mafia Underground Bunker.
The three surviving Dons of the Ten Dons stared at a bank of security monitors, their faces ashen.
They had attached hidden body cameras to the elite mercenaries and mafia squads they had sent to the hotel. They had watched, in 4K resolution, as Ryker systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, melted bullets into needles, and vaporized elite assassins without breaking a sweat.
"That... that guy isn't human. He's a demon. We never should have crossed him," the Don with the golden mustache trembled, wiping cold sweat from his forehead.
"What's the point of saying that now?! If we didn't follow the Troupe's orders, Chrollo would have killed us on the spot!"
"What do we do now?! Everyone we sent is dead!"
KNOCK. KNOCK.
The heavy steel door of the bunker suddenly rattled.
The three Dons froze, their blood running completely cold. Who could possibly be knocking on a top-secret, heavily fortified blast door?
Before any of them could speak, a figure simply phased through the solid steel door as if it were made of water.
[Trait: Short-Distance Teleportation (Purple)]
The Dons' eyes practically popped out of their skulls.
It was Ryker.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Without a single word spoken, the three most powerful men in the criminal underworld simultaneously dropped to their knees and began violently kowtowing, slamming their foreheads against the marble floor.
"Heh."
Ryker stood with his hands in his pockets, calmly watching the old men beg. He waited until their foreheads were bruised and bleeding before he finally spoke.
"Enough."
The Dons instantly froze, looking up at him with pathetic, tear-filled eyes.
"Lord Ryker! We had no choice! The Phantom Troupe forced us to do it!"
"The men we sent... they were just following orders! We swear we didn't want to target you!"
"Please, spare us!"
The corpses of their fellow Dons still littered the room, a grim reminder of their fragile mortality. Without the Shadow Beasts to protect them, they were just fat old men with deep pockets.
Ryker raised a single finger.
"One hundred billion Jenny," Ryker said smoothly. "That is the price of your lives."
"Ah?! One hundred billion?! We—we accept! Yes! Of course!" The Dons immediately agreed, practically weeping with gratitude.
"No. You misunderstand," Ryker smiled, his eyes flashing dangerously. "One hundred billion Jenny each. Paid annually. That is your life tax."
The Dons' jaws dropped. Cold sweat soaked through their expensive suits.
Three hundred billion Jenny a year?! That was an astronomical extortion. Even as the kings of the underworld, maintaining their empires was expensive. Draining 300 billion a year would turn them into nothing more than glorified cash cows working purely for Ryker.
"Of course, you can refuse," Ryker offered politely. "I really don't mind..."
"NO! NO! We accept! One hundred billion each! Every year! We swear it!"
"We accept, Lord Ryker!"
The Dons panicked, terrified that Ryker would change his mind and just kill them. They had watched him slaughter thousands. Their money was useless if they were dead.
Trembling uncontrollably, the Dons scrambled to their feet, rushing to their personal safes. They transferred all their liquid assets to an untraceable Black Card. But cash alone wasn't enough. They had to frantically appraise and sign over deeds to priceless antiques, properties, and artifacts just to hit the 300 billion mark.
"L-Lord Ryker... we have transferred 300 billion Jenny," the golden-mustached Don stuttered, handing over the card. "From now on, we are your loyal dogs. But... the Phantom Troupe... they might come back and kill us for failing..."
The other Dons nodded anxiously. They were trapped between two gods.
"Relax," Ryker sneered, taking the card. "I will leave a clone here. If the Spiders return, I will deal with them. But remember... if my payment is short by even a single Jenny next year, I will come back for your heads."
Ryker waved his hand. A tiny, crackling white lightning spider dropped onto the mahogany desk, instantly camouflaging itself and vanishing from sight.
Ryker's body dissolved into a flash of lightning, and he disappeared from the bunker.
300 billion Jenny... Ryker thought as he reappeared on a rooftop across the city. Robbing the rich really is the fastest way to make a living.
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