The bird dragged itself back up, exactly like he’d asked, and threw itself at his face with another of those screaming dives.

Hajin watched it come the whole way in, then tilted his head a few inches and let the beak punch through the air past his ear. He caught it by the back of the neck on the way past and drove it down into the ground without much thought.

None of this really counted as a fight, and they both knew it by now. He’d let it back up three times already, mostly out of curiosity, but every time it came at him with the same dive and met the same end.

There had been a time when something this strong would have put him flat on his back, bleeding, fighting for his life.

The Beast King had done exactly that, caving his ribs in and nearly putting him in the ground barely a week ago. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

He pushed a thread of mana into his eyes and finally took a proper look at the bird underfoot. Eight points of hard light sat buried along its chest and throat, cores he’d have called impossible for a gate monster not long ago. Eight shards, which put the bird almost exactly where the Beast King had been.

That was the part that actually made him stop and think for a second. A monster sitting just under the Beast King that had nearly ended him, and he’d spent the last few minutes using it as a warm-up.

The stream panel sat open in the corner of his vision, the chat scrolling fast.

[ ShadowMage44: ] bro is bullying it at this point 💀

[ ashley (Mod): ] is someone going to tell him that thing is basically a beast king?? hello??

He huffed out a short breath and let the panel fade back out of sight. He was a long way from the version of himself that nearly died to the Beast King, and he hadn’t even noticed it happening.

Part of him wanted to keep going, just to see how far ahead he’d actually pulled. The smarter part reminded him the others were still in the gate, and this had stopped being useful a while ago.

He stopped the bird’s next lunge with a boot to the chest and pinned it flat. The chain coiled down around its throat in a flash of gold, and one sharp pull finished it for good.

The body broke apart into the usual motes of light, leaving him alone in the wrecked stretch of forest.

"Well, that was boring," he muttered, rolling his neck until it popped. The whole fight had been over before it started, and he was still itching for something that could actually push him.

Two panels sat waiting in the corner of his vision, one his own and one carried over from Juna’s bond, so he opened hers first.

[ Summon: Juna — Solar Vanguard ]

[ Target eliminated: Rabbit Anomaly · 8 Shards ]

[ EXP gained: +824,000 ]

[ Bond Level: 96% → 98% ]

The rabbit was dead, and Juna was alive on the other end of the bond, which loosened a knot in his chest he hadn’t noticed forming. Then his eyes dropped to the EXP she’d pulled off the kill, and he went still.

"...Holy shit," he muttered.

She’d carried that third wing since the Beast King, Solar Vanguard sitting unused the whole time, and she’d finally spent it soloing an eight-shard on her own. He let that settle for a second, then pulled up his own panel.

[ Target eliminated: Bird Anomaly · 8 Shards ]

[ EXP gained: +806,000 ]

[ Drop: Tainted Core → Divine Tainted Core · Fragment’s Blessing ×10 ]

[ Ring III: 47% → 63% ]

Both numbers sat well past anything a normal gate had any business paying out. Even so, the two came up short of the Beast King, which had handed over a flat one point two million on its own.

That gap lined up neatly with what the cores had already told him. The rabbit and the bird had both been sitting just under the Beast King, exactly like the eight shards said.

Every gate he had ever cleared had folded in on itself the moment its strongest monster died, the way the Beast King’s had thrown them out and vanished. This one hadn’t so much as shuddered, still holding solid all around him.

That meant the rabbit and the bird hadn’t been the strongest things in here. Something bigger was still sitting deeper in, the real reason this whole gate had been built.

The corner of his mouth pulled up on its own before he could stop it. He rolled the chain back into his palm and started toward the heart of the gate, that old itch in his hands finally about to get answered.

He’d made it maybe three steps before a line of chat planted itself dead in the center of his vision.

[ ashley (Mod): ] uh, hello?? you left Juna to solo an eight-shard back there and now you’re running off after a BIGGER one?? go check on your team first, oh my god 😤

He stopped where he was, one boot still half-lifted off the ground.

She had a point, much as the itch in his hands hated to admit it. Juna had just taken on an eight-shard by herself, and he’d been about to walk the other way to go find something worse.

The boss wasn’t going anywhere, and the gate still standing told him as much. His team came first, and had since the day he started putting one together.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered at the panel, letting the chain dissolve back into his inventory. He turned around and headed back toward the pit where the others were waiting.

A row of little laughing emotes scrolled past in answer, ashley front and center.

Deep in the hollow at the heart of the gate, the spider-woman felt the second thread go out.

She had been sitting still since the two of them left, part of her senses always half-tuned to the pair of bright knots that marked her hunters. The rabbit’s thread had snapped first, there one moment and gone the next, sometime earlier. Now the bird’s guttered out the same way, and the hollow went still around her.

Both of her best hunters were gone now, snuffed out within the same hour.

She didn’t move from where she sat, and she didn’t grieve either. If anything, the corner of her mouth curved up by a slow fraction.

She had never truly expected either of them to come walking back to her. They had been her strongest, the best she had to throw at anything that made it this deep into her web. Both of them had still been put down without any real trouble at all.

That, in the end, had been the entire point of sending them.

She uncurled one long leg and tapped it idly against the floor, turning the thought over. Anything that could tear through both of them this fast was not some stray adventurer who wandered.

"Well now," she murmured into the hollow. "It seems our guests might be worth exactly what they promised after all."

She let the words sit in the dark for a moment, savoring the taste of them.

For the longest time she had wondered whether the bargain would ever come to anything. The ones who had come to her had offered so much, and shown so little proof of any of it. Whatever was carving toward her now answered that doubt better than any promise could.

She rose, all her legs unfolding under her at once, and turned her many eyes toward the tunnel the hunters had left through.

If her guests were so eager to reach the heart of her web, the least she could do was come and meet them halfway.