Three years and four months.
Ji-hu was on patrol along the eastern ridge, the section of perimeter farthest from town and closest to the Zones. Easy route. Nothing ever happened here. That's why they gave it to him.
He heard the noise before he saw anything.
Screaming. Not human. Deeper. Angrier. The ground shook.
He crested a small hill and saw it.
An ogre.
Fifteen feet tall, grey skin, muscles stacked like boulders, carrying a tree trunk that it was using as a club. It swung at the patrol ahead—Defenders, four of them, people he ate with sometimes—and they didn't even have time to run.
The club came down. One Defender stopped existing.
The ogre roared and kept moving.
Ji-hu ran.
Not toward it. Away. He ran until his leg burned and his lungs screamed and he found a cave opening in the side of a hill. He dove inside, pressed himself against the cold stone, and tried to breathe quietly.
The ogre's roars faded. He was safe.
Then he heard the chittering.
---
He wasn't alone.
The cave went deeper than it looked. And from somewhere in that darkness, something was moving. Many things. Clicking and skittering and crawling on too many legs.
Spiders.
Not regular ones. These were the size of dogs, with glossy black bodies and eyes that caught what little light bled in from the entrance. They clung to the walls, the ceiling, every surface. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
Ji-hu had stumbled into a nest.
A spider dropped from above. Landed three meters away. Turned toward him.
He backed against the wall. No weapon. No way out.
The spider clicked and more answered.
They came from every direction, pouring out of cracks and tunnels, surrounding him. He pressed his back to stone and raised his empty hands and waited to die.
Then the water came.
---
It roared through the cave entrance like a river breaking a dam. Not natural. Not possible. A wall of white foam and dark current that slammed into the spiders and swept them away.
They tumbled and drowned and cracked against the stone.
The water kept coming until every spider in sight was gone. Then it stopped.
Hana stood in the cave entrance.
Seventeen years old. S-rank. Water dripping from her hands and hair and clothes. Breathing hard. Eyes locked on him.
Hana: Oppa.
Ji-hu stared at her.
Three years. Three years of watching her on screens. Three years of telling himself she'd forgotten. Three years of being useless and alone and waiting.
And here she was. Saving him again. Like always.
He smiled.
Not because he was safe. Not because the spiders were gone. Because she came. Because she still cared. Because for one moment, none of the years mattered.
Ji-hu: You still care for me.
Hana: I always cared. I always will.
He nodded. That was enough.
---
Then the cave shook.
More spiders came. Bigger ones. From deeper tunnels, from cracks in the ceiling, from places the flood hadn't reached. They poured out by the dozens, by the hundreds, surrounding them both.
Hana moved.
Water whipped around her like living things, lashing out, grabbing spiders, crushing them against stone. She killed ten in seconds. Twenty. But more kept coming.
Hana: There's too many.
Ji-hu: You're S-rank.
Hana: They're immune.
He saw it then. The water hit them but they shook it off. Kept coming. Kept pushing forward. Whatever these spiders were, they didn't drown like the others.
Hana kept fighting anyway. Spiders fell. She got closer. They pressed in from every side.
One leaped at her back.
She turned too slow. Saw it coming. Lifted her arm—
Ji-hu stepped in front of her.
The spider hit him square in the chest.
They went down together, him and the creature, tumbling across the stone. Its legs scrambled for purchase. Its jaws snapped inches from his face. He grabbed its body with both hands, pushed, held it back, felt its strength against his.
Hana: OPPA!
He couldn't hold it. It was too strong. The jaws inched closer.
Then something broke.
Not the spider. Inside him. A wall he didn't know existed. A gate that had been locked since the water, since the kill, since the moment he decided he would never fight again.
It cracked. It opened.
Heat flooded his body.
Not fire. Something else. Something that felt like it had always been there, waiting.
He pushed.
The spider flew off him. Not invisible force. Not magic. Just strength—strength he didn't have a second ago, strength that shouldn't exist, strength that sent the creature crashing into the cave wall hard enough to leave a dent.
Ji-hu stood up.
Hana stared at him.
Hana: What was that?
He looked at his hands. They were shaking. But they weren't empty.
Not anymore.
The spiders lunged again.
---
END CHAPTER 6