"It doesn't taste like lamb, though. More like spider meat."
Jang Yu finishes filming and grins to himself. Didn't think a few clips of the shadow realm would blow up like this. At this rate, I'll be famous before I know it. Turns out there are tons of people making awakened content. Weird. Wasn't this stuff restricted before?
The panel blinks into existence without warning. Jang Yu jumps. He steadies himself and reads it. He gives the air a frustrated punch. "You pop up just to scare me over nothing."
Then his eyes lock on something right there on the panel. A countdown.
One hundred hours.
The bottom drops out of his stomach. Why do I only have a hundred hours left to live?
Then the earlier warning comes back to him. Is this the risk that came with the Hunter rank title? You call a hundred-hour death clock a certain risk?
He forces himself to breathe. Okay. Calm down. There has to be a way out of this.
He thinks it through. Based on the description, as a hunter, he has to keep killing to keep living. That means every aberrant he takes down buys him more time.
He taps the panel. Life and death are the hunter's domain. Perhaps you will find immortality through endless slaughter. Or perhaps—
Jang Yu stares at the screen. So if I keep hunting, I might actually live forever.
The hunter rank title is unique. Even if the physical body perishes, existence continues in another form. As an aberrant.
That stops him. Wait. What does continues as an aberrant actually mean?
And unlocking this ranked title grants you a few more days of life.
A few more days? That's it? If I can't hunt down an aberrant in time, I'll have to go crawling to Uncle Li.
His eyes land on the aberrant spider snoozing in the corner. Guess that one's up first. Time to earn some time.
He props his phone up on the floor. This is too good to waste. Might as well film it and get some views. Besides, Uncle Li set up this account through Night Watch back channels. Nobody's tracing it back to me.
He raises his hand. Shadow form surges over him, swallowing his figure into a dark, shapeless mass. The phone gives a soft beep. A shadow figure gradually fills the stream frame. Chat explodes immediately.
He speaks to the camera. "Hey everyone, I'm Shadow. One aberrant spider. Just me. We've got this. We're going to move in nice and quiet. Get close, then give it one good hit. I'll go silent now. Don't want to wake it up."
Even as he speaks, he's already edging toward the spider. He hoists the solid steel rod, the expensive one, with unknown metal studs bolted to the head, and swings it hard.
The spider jolts awake. Its bloated body swings left and right, searching, but Jang Yu has already slipped into the blind spot directly behind it.
His heart is hammering. The spider keeps looking, finding nothing. Jang Yu's eyes light up. Even from this close, it can't find me. Shadow form is incredible.
Now. Shadow execute. Find me the weak point.
A massive red indicator blooms on the spider's rear end. Finding enemy weak points. That's what shadow strike does.
Jang Yu's focus sharpens. He lines up the rod with that exact spot. A slow, smug grin spreads across his face. Let me put you out of your misery.
The spider seems to shrug off whatever it sensed. Eh. This spot feels off. Better find somewhere else to sleep.
But it only gets a few steps before a chill shoots up its back. No time to turn around. A tearing, searing pain rips through its rear end. It shrieks. The spider short-circuits entirely. A lightning bolt of sensation from top to bottom, all at once.
With that single strike, something inside Jang Yu floods outward. A rush of force he can't quite name. The sheer release of it nearly tears a shout from his throat.
He hefts the now red-stained rod. Nice. Down to forty percent HP after one hit. A couple more should do it.
Then a spider leg comes crashing into him. The dark silhouette shoots across the room like a comet and slams into the wall. Buildings in the shadow realm are solid beyond belief. The wall barely dents. He hits the floor. He braces for the pain.
There isn't any.
The spider is still writhing, letting out that horrible, unnatural shriek. Jang Yu watches the spider thrash and shake and watches its HP bar tick steadily down. Good. The rod is still in the weak point. It's bleeding out.
He steps forward. Shadow strike activates. Darkness erupts from his body in every direction and he sinks slowly, completely, into the floor.
He holds still, taking it in. The world around him looks like the bottom of the ocean.
He's stunned. So this is shadow strike. I can actually slip into the shadows like the vanguard. No need for a head-on fight. Just patience. Like a hunter in the dark. Wait for the moment, then strike.
The ability he once thought was strange now feels like it was made for him.
The spider rages, blind, furious, unable to find its target. Something shifts in Jang Yu's eyes. He reaches back and picks up the second steel rod he'd left nearby.
Let's go. The hunt begins.
Meanwhile, a pretty girl lounges on her couch, scrolling aimlessly. What is this garbage? Do streamers have nothing to post anymore?
Then something catches her eye. A pair of pitch black legs fills the screen. The camera pans upward. Two dark shapes blur past. Unnatural. Impossible to track.
Li Xiaoyi sits upright. No way. Was that an aberrant? That's insane.
On screen, the dark figure laughs and points back at the aberrant spider behind him, walking the audience through it all. The comment section, however, has completely lost the plot.
I'd buy him an apartment if I could afford one.
Cook for me, please. No chili, no pork.
Li Xiaoyi reads the comments and feels her teeth grind. She decides it is her personal duty to restore order. She opens the top offenders' profiles and forwards their comments directly to their own followers. After all, you never know who among them is a sibling.
After a busy moment of digital vigilante justice, she hesitates. Then she types it anyway. I'm available.
At that exact moment, the dark figure on screen slowly dissolves into the shadows and vanishes completely.
Li Xiaoyi's eyes go wide. He just disappeared. Is this streamer actually an awakened? This just got interesting.
She taps into his other videos. In one clip, a massive grotesque spider roars on screen while the dark shadow has already slipped around behind it. Then he leaps. Both feet come down hard on the steel rod buried in the spider's rear end. Metal bites deep. Blood sprays.
The spider lets out a wretched wail and spins around, deeply offended by what has just been done to it. It raises a razor-sharp leg and swings hard at the shadow that violated it.
The shadow vanishes. The leg smashes into the floor instead. Dust and haze billow up. The spider looks pleased with itself until the haze clears. Nothing. No body, no damage. Its already limited brain struggles to process this.
Then a light poke, right in the rear end. From behind.
The spider wheels around instantly. There stands a figure black from head to toe, casually patting the spider's body with one hand while flashing a smug little grin at the camera. "Hey. Over here. In shadow form."
Jang Yu dances left and right with a cocky smirk. "Miss again. Eight legs and you still can't land one hit. Pathetic."
That moment, effortlessly cool, completely shameless, sends Li Xiaoyi into a fit. "He's so fast," she shrieks, eyes blazing, "and so good-looking. How is he both?"
Driven to the edge of rage, the spider spits. A foul, reeking glob of venom. It hits the floor. A sizzling hiss follows immediately. The venom pooling around it begins to spin faster and faster until a deadly whirlpool of poison churns across the ground. The spider practically beams. Truly, it is undefeatable.
Then a cheerful voice rises from behind it. "You think covering the floor in spit is going to stop me?"
The spider spins. Up on the rooftop, a lone figure stands tall against the sky. Jang Yu grins. "Shadows are everywhere."
He drops, arrow straight, plummeting from the roof like a shot fired downward. The spider spits again, tracking his descent. He flickers out. The venom splats against the wall. His voice echoes from every direction at once.
He finally sticks a landing on a street lamp and immediately hisses through his teeth. "That actually hurt. Looks like I need a lot more practice with shadow wire."
He pulls up the countdown. Seven days.
He stares at it with a flat expression. Only three days added. That's way less than I expected. Seven days sounds like breathing room, but aberrants aren't exactly lining up to be hunted. If he hits a dry spell, he's finished.