Si Hon swallowed hard, sweat… somehow a sweat even though it's cold… was mixing with the freezing air on his neck, watching their shadows stretch long across the snow as their grins widened and their bodies dropped low, crouched and ready to pounce.
He glanced at the little girl beside him. "Yea… I know what's my command now… MAKE THEM GONE!!!!! FADTERR!," he commanded.
She blinked once, then nodded— and disappeared.
Gone, the air snapping shut behind her like someone had torn a page clean out of reality.
Then— PLOP.
The MUNCHES that had been inches from his face were suddenly standing several meters behind him instead, wobbling on their huge legs, confused, like someone had rearranged them mid-nap.
Si Hon's eyes went wide right as the girl reappeared silently back in her spot. "No— wait no, I mean kill, like kill kill! Like erased!!!"
The MUNCHES froze mid-stumble, slowly turning their giant heads toward him, blue-ringed eyes widening first in shock, then fury, then pure hunger.
"HUUUUMAAAAN…" they screamed, voices vibrating the snow beneath everyone's feet. "MAGIC… YOU CHEAT."
One slammed a fist into the ground hard enough to send snow exploding upward in a white column. "NO RUN ANYMORE… CATCH HIM!!!"
"SHIT," Si Hon breathed, and ran full speed, the MUNCHES roaring behind him, smashing straight through trees and shaking the ground with every colossal step.
His breath tore out in white clouds as he sprinted. "Why— why the fuck are they so FUCKING fast?!? They're gorillas with bats too!—"
Then he glanced back and found the girl wasn't running at all. Wasn't even panicking. She was walking— slow, unhurried, like she was taking a peaceful stroll through a park that just happened to have a small army of murder-gorillas in it.
"ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!" He skidded to a stop, spun on his heel, and sprinted straight back toward her. "I— shit! Come here!"
He scooped her up without thinking twice, one arm under her legs, one behind her back, full princess carry, her expression not shifting an inch even as the MUNCHES behind them roared louder and the ground trembled under their charge.
Si Hon, absolutely done with everything about his life at this point, shouted over the noise. "OKAY!!!! we're doing this now— hold on, okay? Or I— I don't know, just don't fall, don't even THINK about touching the snow."
She blinked. "I will not fall."
"Good, because I might."
He bolted, branches whipping past his face, snow exploding under his boots with every stride, cold air stabbing into his lungs like a fistful of needles, the girl in his arms looking perfectly serene the whole time, like she was being carried across someone's living room instead of a death forest actively trying to eat them both.
Behind them the MUNCHES howled in unison. "RUN HUMAN RUN HUMAN RUN HUMAN. WE LIKE WHEN YOU RUN."
"Yeah, well I don't!!!" (Fucker…) And Si Hon tore through Snowfall Mountain, ribs screaming, breath burning, mind spiraling, carrying an emotionless walking nuke disguised as a little girl, silently screaming into the void of his own (:skull: why is my life and luck like this!!!) He thought…
****
He didn't know how long he'd been running.
His lungs were on fire, his ribs screamed with every breath, and his legs had gone somewhere past exhaustion into full soggy-noodle— but he kept running anyway, straight into the deeper forest, deeper than he was ever supposed to go, deeper than anything with functioning survival instincts should ever willingly go.
The trees thickened around him, the snow grew heavier underfoot, and the air turned into something that stabbed instead of just chilled.
"Ah…. Legs… shit, MOVE LEGS, DON'T DIE YET!!!"
He stumbled through a wall of low branches, slipped hard on a slick of buried ice, caught himself on pure reflex, and kept going.
The girl stayed weightless in his arms through all of it, completely calm, completely unbothered, and completely, unhelpfully useless.
Eventually the trees broke open and a steep, snow-covered slope rose up in front of him like a wall made of white nothing.
A mountain.
Si Hon stared up at it, chest heaving. "Shit…"
This time— he genuinely didn't have a choice.
Behind him the forest trembled as something enormous slammed into a tree and ripped it clean out of the ground, roots and dirt and everything, the sound that followed less a roar than a wall of noise—
"RAHHHHHJAJSJJAHEEHJDHDBSVWFHSKSNSB!!!"
That made Si Hon flinch on pure instinct. "Oh… okay I get it, I get it, I'll run, I'll do this, just stop screaming, that's creepy as hell!!!"
He bolted for the mountain, adjusted the girl in his arms mid-stride, then froze. "No. No, this is stupid— hold on."
He set her down for half a second, breath shaking hard.
"Listen. Hug me. Like, wrap your arms. And legs. Tightly, okay? Like a human koala. Please."
She blinked once, then obeyed without a word, small legs locking around his waist, arms wrapping his neck, head settling calm against his shoulder like this was the most normal request she'd gotten all day. Which, yea it is normal…
Si Hon let out a short, disbelieving laugh. "Yeah… okay, this works, this is fine."
THUD.
Another tree fell somewhere behind them. "Oh… Alright, okay, alright. GO TIME!"
He threw himself at the mountain, hands digging into snow, boots slipping, legs trembling, cold stabbing straight through to the bone with every handhold.
He climbed— not gracefully, not heroically, just a man who really, deeply did not want to die, hauling himself upward while carrying what basically amounted to a living apocalypse strapped to his chest, death gorillas screaming somewhere below.
「He's just a man who doesn't wanna die. Or like a man carrying a living apocalypse koala while death gorillas screamed behind him.」
"Shut up…"
「But please don't die, Si Hon. You're the chosen, so please survive— I just need to go do something real quick.」
"WHAT?!"
The window vanished before he could get an actual answer out of it, and he kept climbing anyway, breath wheezing out in ragged little clouds. "Ah, god, whats wrong with my life…" he felt his knee buckle. "Oh, my lord… come on… come on… please… don't die now… not like this… my feet."
He dragged himself upward, slipping every few steps, muscles screaming in every direction, until finally his hand caught the top edge and he hauled himself over it and collapsed face-first into the snow in a heap of pure, exhausted misery.
He wheezed against the ice, arms trembling, body somewhere past half-dead, and then slowly felt that the girl was still clinging to him— still hugging him, still perfectly calm, still wrapped around him like a backpack that had migrated to the front.
Si Hon lifted his head just enough to glare at her. "You're not even saying anything. I'm literally… ah, fuck. Nothing. Why aren't you letting go anyway?"
She blinked once, expression unchanged. "Then command me to let go, Summoner."
Si Hon sighed. "Down."
He nodded once and let go immediately, and he lay there afterward, snow freezing into his cheeks, chest heaving like he'd grown three extra hearts just to keep up with the demand.
"Ah… I can't do this anymore, aigooo… someone please, anyone there… I would rather be in an naturish apocalypse or trapped in ocean."
The little girl settled beside him in the snow, patient as ever, and Si Hon slowly pushed himself upright, groaning like a man twice his actual age.
The mountain answered with silence.
He squinted through the falling snow, and that's when he saw it— far, far in the distance, the [TOWER?].
Barely visible through the sheet of white, it stood like the spine of some dead god driven straight through the earth into the sky, and even from this impossible height its dark, massive silhouette dominated the entire horizon, tall and ancient, carved from stone that no world should naturally be able to produce.
It didn't just stand there— it radiated, the air around it shimmering faintly, bending light like heat over desert sand despite the freezing cold pressing in from every direction, like reality itself was straining just to hold the thing up.
Every floor inside that black monolith held its own ecosystem, its own laws, its own nightmares.
And now, from this distance, the tower looked almost small enough to pinch between two fingers, and yet Si Hon could still feel its weight pressing behind his ribs, a low, constant reminder that everything circling these mountains existed because the tower wanted it to.
The tower wasn't a building. It was the anchor holding this entire hell together.
Si Hon let out a weak laugh and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Haha… damn." He exhaled slow. "We're so far, and holy fuck… why is it daytime, am I HIGH?"
Then he finally looked down at the girl beside him and noticed a small, thin cut on her arm, a single bead of blood trickling down pale skin.
Gasping, Si Hon spoke. "So you do get injured."
She looked at the cut with the same mild curiosity someone might give a smudge on a window.
"It appears so," she said.
He sighed. "Of course. Of course you can get hurt. Great. Amazing. Let me add that to my list of problems…. Aren't you supposed to be Invincible?"
He gently patted her shoulder anyway, sighing again, and then— THUD.
A tree fell somewhere in the distance below.
Si Hon froze, turned his head slowly, and let out a small, broken laugh. "Fuck…"
「The MUNCHES.」
"I know… welcome back."
「Oh wait, I need to go again.」
He sighed. "You're so useless right now… but wouldn't matter if you're here anyway, you're just a floating interface."
After a while.
He spotted them— not three this time, not even close. Ten. Maybe more.
They stepped out of the tree line one by one, huge shadows breaking the snow, breath steaming off matted fur, bats dragging long furrows in the ground as they approached slow, unhurried, clearly enjoying every second of this.
One tilted its head, grinning wide enough to show off every cracked stone-looking tooth. "Heheheee… human climbed high…"
Another leaned forward with a low chuckle. "Play on mountain now…"
A 3rd tapped its bat against the snow in a slow, deliberate countdown— thud, thud, thud —and then all of them, every single one, spoke together in a low vibrating chorus that shook the air itself. "RUN… LITTLE HUMAN…"
Si Hon's whole body trembled. "Wow… yea, of course there's some above the hill too…"
And the girl in his arms whispered softly, matter-of-fact as ever. "Your heartbeat is elevated again, Summoner."
Sii Hon's eye twitched. "Yeah. I know, no shit."
For a second nobody moved, the standoff stretching thin across the ridge while wind howled between the two groups like it was picking a side.
Si Hon's brain, thoroughly fried at this point, latched onto the only thing it had left— sheer stubborn spite.
"Okay," he muttered, mostly to himself, pushing up onto shaking legs. "Okay okay okay. Ten of you. One of me. Oh my god… love that".