Jake stood over him for exactly two seconds.
That was all he allowed himself. Two seconds to look at Adil lying face-down in the corridor dust — blood from his forehead dark against the concrete, chest moving in shallow pulls that didn't sound right, the particular stillness of someone who had run completely out of whatever they'd been running on. Then Jake locked it down, crouched, and got him up onto his back.
Adil's weight settled across his shoulders. Solid. Real. Alive, technically, which was the only thing that mattered right now, and also somehow not enough.
You can't die on me. The words arrived from somewhere underneath the urgency, from the part of him that didn't perform anything for anyone. I still have to beat you. That's the deal. That's always been the deal.
He kept moving.
Behind his eyes, something pressed against the inside of his skull — a low heat, quiet and purposeful, like an ember that had been waiting for someone to stop smothering it.
He pushed through the medical room door with his shoulder.
Garu was at the hunter's bedside, hands working efficiently through the last of the bandaging, when the door opened. He turned.
He saw Jake first. Then he saw what Jake was carrying.
His hands stopped.
Not gradually. Not with warning. Just — stopped, mid-motion, the bandage still held between his fingers, every efficient focused part of him suspending itself at once. Something moved through his face that he didn't bother controlling because there was nobody in this room he needed to control it for.
Then it was gone. Locked down. Filed.
He crossed the room and helped lower Adil onto the nearest bed without a word — but his hands, when they settled Adil's shoulders against the mattress, didn't let go immediately.
Just a second longer than necessary.
Garu reached for the bandages.
His hands knew what to do. They'd always known what to do — assess, prioritize, act. It was how he operated. It was the only way he knew how to help when helping was the only thing left.
He pressed the cloth against the wound on Adil's chest.
Too high. He adjusted. Too much pressure on the wrong side. He adjusted again. The bleeding didn't slow. The bandage sat wrong, covered the wrong angle, and he couldn't understand why — because his hands knew this, he knew this, he'd read enough to know this —
He repositioned. Tried again.
Wrong again.
His jaw tightened. The bandage. The wound. The blood that kept coming despite everything he was doing. Simple. It should be simple. Why couldn't he make it —
A hand closed over his and moved him aside. Gently. But without asking.
The hunter sat up from the adjacent bed with the careful, deliberate movement of a man taking inventory of what his body still had available and choosing to spend it anyway. Not fully healed — that much was obvious in the set of his jaw, in the way one arm favoured itself, in the shallow quality of his breathing. But functional. Enough.
He took the bandages from Garu's hands without a word and got to work.
Garu stayed where he'd been moved.
He looked down at his own hands. They weren't shaking. He almost wished they were — shaking would have made more sense than whatever this stillness was
The hunter worked without speaking.
His hands moved with the efficiency of someone who had done this in worse conditions, in darker places, with less to work with. The kind of knowledge that lived in the hands rather than the head. He examined the wound first — pulling the torn fabric back, studying the edges with the focused attention of someone who had seen this specific damage before and was confirming what he already suspected.
He reached into his tactical vest and produced a small vial — dark glass, stoppered with wax, the liquid inside moving with a thickness that didn't behave like water. He broke the seal with his thumb without ceremony and drew it into a syringe from the same pocket.
"This will hurt," he said. Not a warning. Just a fact; he was delivering for the sake of completeness.
He injected it directly into the wound.
Then he dressed it — methodically, compensating for his own damaged arm without acknowledging it, adjusting his angle and pressure and grip, working around his limitations the way water works around stone. When he finally tied off the last bandage, he sat back and studied his work against a standard only he could see.
A slow breath through his nose.
"Done." Scraped thin at the edges. "The poison won't kill him now. But he needs rest — his body has to finish the work."
He reached for his dagger. Drew the sharpening stone.
The soft rhythmic scrape of metal on stone filled the room. But his eyes stayed on the boy in the bed for a moment longer than necessary — on the scars that had no business being there, on the body that read like a record of something nobody had thought to mention.
Then he looked away and focused on the blade.
The scrape of the sharpening stone filled the silence.
When the hunter finally said done and retreated to his blade, Jake looked at Garu.
"I think I deserve an explanation ?"
Garu didn't look up immediately. He was still looking at his own hands.
***
"So... we all have a system? Like in-game?" Jake tried to open his verdict.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NAME
[Jake]
NUMBER
[721]
VERDICT
[Ignite]
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NAME
[Garu]
NUMBER
[998]
VERDICT
[Eclipse]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"I don't think it's like a game system," Garu said, looking down at his system interface.
That alone was enough to confuse them because it's more like judgment notes. Garu was going to ask about Jake's verdict.
"I think your friend is awake," Hunter said, scraping his dagger against a stone.
Garu quickly rushed over to the bed to look at Adil.
"Ah... my head. Am I in heaven?" Adil groaned.
Garu stared down at him. "No, idiot."
"Oh... so I'm in hell."
Jake crossed his arms. "Even in this state, you still have that arrogant smirk."
"Says the one who was missing the whole time," Adil replied, looking at him with a deadpan expression.
Jake opened his mouth to defend himself, but Garu cut him off bluntly. "He was taking a nap the whole time."
"Jake, I think you deserve a Nobel Prize," Adil said with geniune surprised.
"It's called being efficient," Jake replied with a bitter smile.
"What kind of plot armor does he have?" Adil muttered, exchanging glances with Garu.
Meanwhile, Garu was peering through a small hole in the door, watching a horde of Zogs wandering around outside. A single question burned in his mind: Where the hell did they come from?
Jake stepped up beside Garu, looking through the gap as well. "What are those?"
"Those are the creatures Adil was fighting earlier," Garu answered.
Jake turned to look at Adil, puffing out his chest. "If he can fight them, then so can I."
Adil looked Jake up and down. "Jake, if you fight one, your first instinct is probably going to be to punch it, right?"
Jake nodded proudly. "Yup."
Adil said an obvious fact, "Yeah... that's the problem."
...
"So, what's the plan now?" Jake shook his head, looking at both of them.
Adil waved his hand casually toward the hunter. "Hey, Hunter."
The hunter stopped scraping his blade and looked up, raising an eyebrow. "Hunter?"
Adil shrugged. "Well, I don't know your name, so based on your getup, that's the only one I could come up with."
Amused, the hunter replied, "Fair enough. Call me Eron."
Adil pointed a thumb at his own chest. "I'm Adil."
He then gestured to Garu. "That's the Depression DLC."
Finally, he pointed at Jake. "And that's our Professional Sleeper."
All three of them stared at Adil in dead silence.
"Alright, alright, kidding," Adil sighed, waving a hand. "That's Garu, and that's Jake."
Adil paused, leaning back. "So, what's the plan?"
Jake glared at Adil, his mind screaming, Isn't that literally what I asked two seconds ago?!
Eron pulled out a worn map from his tactical pouch and began quietly observing it, ignoring the banter.
Jake looked at Eron and said, "Ask him about the history of this world."
Adil glanced at Eron. "What does a hunter do?"
"Hunt," Garu replied flatly.
Adil turned back to Jake. "Right?"
Jake frowned. "Yeah…"
Adil said in a deadpan, "Don't write a journal about the world."
"You don't watch isekai?" Jake asked.
"I prefer Dragon Ball," Adil replied.
"…Death Note," Garu added quietly.
Jake stared at both of them. "I'm surrounded by weird people."
Adil lay down on the bed again, then suddenly.
______________________
Inventory opening time completed
______________________
Adil looked at his screen.
And took out the corrupted shard, which he clenched in his hand and closely observed it but a strange smell drifted from it.
Why...does it smell like shit
Eron folded the map and turned to them. "We need to move now."
"But there are Zogs wandering outside," Garu replied.
Eron looked at him. "How many?"
"Ten."
Eron rubbed his chin. "Not a big deal… but it'll cause a bit of trouble, given my current state."
Adil blinked. A bit of trouble?
Eron caught the look on his face.
"Zogs are the weakest creatures in this region."
Silence.
Jake looked at Adil. "...The weakest?"
Eron ran through their weaknesses in a few clipped sentences — soft joints, slow reflexes, no coordination past a straight charge.
Adil just shrugged. Yeah. I already figured that out the hard way.
He rose from the bed and stepped onto the floor. His body felt heavy and slightly disconnected, like it was still catching up to him. A dull ache pulsed across his chest where the claws had torn him, and a lingering cold sat deep in his muscles — leftover from the ghost attacks, leftover from the poison. His legs held his weight, but they trembled faintly, reminding him he'd pushed them well past what they were willing to give. Still. Enough to move.
"So what's the plan?" Adil asked, feeling the ache settle deeper with every breath.
Eron gave his dagger a single, sharp swing. The blade caught the dim light and let out a soft metallic whisper as it cut the air.
"Direct ambush."
Adil stared at him. The silence in the room suddenly felt heavier. "…So no plan."
Jake cracked his knuckles. "I think it's a pretty cool plan."
Adil sighed and started scanning the medical room for glass bottles.
Garu's eyes followed him, already knowing exactly what he was about to do.
Adil broke the bottles against the edge of a table, wedged the sharp fragments between his knuckles, and bound them tight with strips of bandage. He swung his arms once, testing the weight.
"Then let's do it."
He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and pressed it into Garu's hand.
"A pen?" Garu looked down at it. The same one that had nearly gone into his throat two chapters ago.
Jake looked at Adil. "What about me?"
Adil stayed silent for a beat, then said, "Jake, you're already gifted with a strong body. You don't need a weapon."
Jake felt pretty good about that — rubbed the back of his neck, chest puffing slightly — right up until Adil added, "Except you're predictable."
It took Jake a few seconds to process what he'd actually just been told. "What?"
Garu murmured, "You seem pretty confident about him."
"Because he's strong," Adil said. "Fun fact — every time we fight, Jake holds back."
Garu frowned. "Why? Doesn't he always want to beat you?"
"If he didn't hold back," Adil said, "he'd probably break my bones."
Garu went quiet, letting that sit exactly as heavy as it was meant to.
Eron was already at the door, hand resting light and ready on the rusted handle. "Ready?"
"WAIT." Adil pressed the heel of his palm into his temple, wincing — a pulse of pain, or maybe just a completely unhinged idea finishing itself. "I've got an idea."
Jake raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Better to show than tell." Adil tested the weight of the glass wrapped around his knuckles.
Eron studied him, voice low and cautious. "How sure are you this works?"
"Ninety percent."
"Why ninety?"
Adil wiped a smear of dried blood off his jaw. A sharp, dangerous grin cracked across his pale face. "Because if it fails, I'm the one taking the hit."
"Garu — left side of the door." He was already moving, already commanding the room. "Jake, Eron — right."
Garu didn't question it. He slid into position against the cold concrete, knuckles white around the pen.
"Everyone stay quiet. Wait for my signal." Adil's voice dropped low.
He grabbed the rusted latch, yanked the door wide, and stepped straight into the doorway. Then he filled his lungs and screamed into the dark corridor:
"YO! UGLY BASTARDS! COME AT ME!"
Ten pale heads snapped toward him in the same instant. A chorus of guttural, screeching roars tore down the hallway, and the whole pack surged forward — a frenzy of claws and teeth funneling straight for the open door.
Eron and Jake froze for a full second, paralyzed by the sheer suicidal lunacy of it.
Garu didn't flinch. He just shut his eyes for half a beat, quietly accepting that his so-called brother was, in fact, completely insane.
Adil backpedaled deep into the room, baiting the frenzy like a matador with nothing to lose. The Zogs poured through the doorway in a tangled, screeching mass —
He waited. Counted them without counting, the way he counted everything now. Waited for the exact half-second the last one crossed the threshold —
— and threw his weight sideways, sliding low across the dusty floor.
Carried by their own momentum, the entire horde slammed headfirst into the far wall with a sickening crunch, plaster dust exploding into the air.
Adil was already moving. "NOW! OUT! FOLLOW ME!"
Jake, Garu, and Eron slipped past him into the corridor. The second Adil cleared the threshold behind them, he wrenched the heavy door shut and drove the lock home, sealing all ten Zogs inside.
They ran.
Eron's eyes stayed fixed on the back of Adil's head the entire way, his thoughts moving faster than his footsteps.
That kid has absurd instincts. The corridor swallowed the muffled shrieking behind them, fainter with every stride. Why didn't I think of that? It's so simple it's almost insulting. And still — it takes a genuinely strange mind to pull something like that off under pressure.
Eron shook his head, a flicker of quiet respect cutting through the disbelief, and kept running.