Judul: "DEATH MORTGAGE: The Hunter's Liquidation"

Chapter 2: Crawling Through a Pool of Blood

A drop of neon green acid fell from the Shadow Weaver's fang.

In the fraction of a second before the deadly fluid could melt his face, Jihan's instincts took over. He threw his upper body to the right with a brutal pull of his muscles.

CSSSHHH!

The acid hit the stone floor exactly where his head had been a second ago. It hissed loudly and burned a two-inch-deep hole into the surface. The smell of sulfur filled Jihan's nostrils.

But Jihan had no time for relief. That desperate roll came at a terrible price. His right shin bone, already broken and sticking out, was dragged directly across the rough stone.

The pain was no longer just an ache. It was a bomb detonating inside his skull.

The veins in Jihan's neck bulged, nearly bursting. He opened his mouth wide, but he refused to let a scream escape his lips. He bit down hard on his own forearm. Blood seeped from the bite mark, choking back the hysterical scream trapped in his throat.

"I can't die. Not yet."

The giant spider clicked in confusion. The prey that should have been resigned to its fate had escaped its jaws. It turned its massive body, its eight red eyes sweeping the dark cave floor, searching for the source of the fresh blood scent from Jihan's leg.

Jihan knew he had less than ten seconds before the monster found him again. He couldn't run. Standing was impossible. If he used his hands to drag his body, the trail of blood from his mangled leg would be a red carpet leading straight to him.

His adrenaline-fueled brain worked at a frantic pace. In a dark corner of the corridor, not far from where he had fallen, Jihan saw a pile of small monster corpses, a pack of Hobgoblins that Bagas's team had slaughtered earlier.

Jihan dragged his body, crawling toward the pile of carcasses. Every inch of movement was torture. The torn flesh of his leg scraped against the dusty ground, but he kept moving forward on his elbows.

Once he reached the pile, Jihan pulled out a Hobgoblin corpse whose stomach had been split in half. The putrid smell of feces and rotting meat hit him in the face. His stomach churned, threatening to vomit, but he swallowed it back down.

With a trembling, bare hand, Jihan reached into the Hobgoblin's abdominal cavity. He scooped up a handful of thick, purplish blood that smelled like a sewer, and smeared it all over his face, neck, and chest. He even squeezed the monster's intestines directly over his own compound fracture.

"This smells so fucking bad… ARRRGGGHHHH!" Jihan screamed in his mind as the foul monster blood touched his gaping, open wound. Infection was a problem for later. Right now, he just needed to cover the sweet scent of his human blood.

After his body was covered in Hobgoblin guts, Jihan forced himself under the pile of corpses. He pulled two thick carcasses over himself, leaving a tiny gap between the rotting flesh to see and breathe.

Click… click… click…

The sound of sharp leg tips tapping on the stone floor returned. Slow. Rhythmic. The Shadow Weaver was hunting.

Through the gap in the carcasses, Jihan saw a giant, hairy leg step past him. The monster's breathing rattled like a broken locomotive. The cold radiating from its body froze the pools of blood around it.

Jihan held his breath. His chest felt like it was about to explode. He pressed his lips together tightly. His eyes bulged as he stared at the black shadow now pacing right in front of his hiding spot.

"I don't want to die here," Jihan whispered inside his head. "I refuse to die protecting trash like Bagas."

The spider stopped. One of its red eyes, as large as a dinner plate, was aimed directly at the pile of Hobgoblin corpses. The monster sniffed the air. Its clacking jaw slowly opened, dripping saliva that let off a thin smoke when it hit the stone.

It smelled something. The scent of Jihan's blood wasn't completely gone, just masked by the more dominant stench of rot.

The giant monster raised its two front legs high into the air.

STAB!

One leg, the size of a steel pillar, plunged into the pile of corpses, just two inches from Jihan's right ear. Hobgoblin blood splattered onto his cheek. Jihan didn't flinch. He didn't even take a breath.

STAB! STAB!

The second and third stabs plunged randomly into the corpse pile. The monster was testing. If anything moved, it would be eaten alive.

One of the stabs pierced the carcass directly over Jihan's stomach, its sharp tip tearing a small rip in his cargo shirt and scratching his skin. A stinging pain spread, but Jihan's body remained as still as a statue.

For an ordinary person, this terror would have been enough to make them scream or faint. But Jihan wasn't an ordinary person living a comfortable life. His mind wasn't filled with the fear of death itself. In the seconds that the monster's leg was about to split him open, Jihan's mind replayed a far more terrifying memory.

He saw the cold face of the hospital administrator. He heard the beep of the ventilator attached to his sister, Dian. He saw the endless bills with their impossible strings of zeros.

"If I die, there's no insurance." Jihan dug his fingernails into the dirt until they broke and bled. "The Association will wash their hands of me. Bagas will file a false report. And tomorrow morning… that bastard doctor will pull Dian's breathing tube because I'm behind on payments."

That thought was far more terrifying than the monster's fangs in front of him. Poverty and helplessness. Those were the real monsters that ate away at Jihan every single day. He didn't care if his leg had to be amputated after this. He just needed to live. To go home. And to demand his pay.

The monster pulled its legs from the corpse pile. It let out a disappointed snort. It hadn't found any struggling, fresh meat. Its animal instinct concluded that this mound was just a pile of stale carcasses not worth eating.

The Shadow Weaver turned its body, shifting its attention to the massive iron gate that Bagas had sealed. The monster crawled away, preparing to smash through it.

Jihan slowly let the foul air into his lungs through his clenched teeth. Oxygen flowed back to his brain. He had done it. His tactic of swallowing his disgust and pain had worked. He just needed to stay hidden until help from the outside arrived, or until the monster gave up and left.

Jihan closed his eyes, letting his body relax for the first time since his leg was shattered.

Suddenly, a very loud electronic sound broke the absolute silence of the corridor.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Jihan's eyes flew open. His heart felt like it was going to leap out of his ribs.

The sound was coming from his waist. It was the cheap Hunter communicator the Association handed out to Porters. Its green indicator light was flashing brightly in the darkness, visible through the pile of Hobgoblin flesh.

Someone from outside the gate had activated the Emergency Call feature at maximum volume.

"Test… test… Porter? Are you still alive, or are you a corpse?"

Bagas's voice came through the crackling speaker of the communicator. His tone wasn't panicked. It was cold, calculating, and purely malicious.

"Bagas, you son of a bitch! He's using the tracker on purpose!" Jihan raged internally.

Bagas wasn't calling to save him. The bastard was intentionally setting off Jihan's communicator to lure the monster. Bagas needed to make sure the monster was focused on tearing Jihan's corpse to shreds so he and his team had enough time to escape Sector A without being pursued. Jihan was being used as a final sacrifice.

The Shadow Weaver, which had been about to smash the iron gate, froze. Its massive body spun one hundred and eighty degrees in less than a second. Its eight eyes locked onto the flashing green light and the voice coming from the pile of corpses.

Jihan didn't have time to turn off the communicator. His hand had only moved an inch when the massive shadow shot toward him with a speed that defied the laws of physics.

The pile of Hobgoblin carcasses covering Jihan was swept away with a single flick of the monster's leg.

Jihan was now completely exposed. Lying defenseless, his face smeared with filth and his leg shattered.

The monster stood towering over him. Its jaw trembled with rage, furious at being tricked by an insect. It didn't bother sniffing or stabbing randomly this time. It aimed directly at the center of Jihan's chest.

A leg as sharp as a giant spear plunged downward.

Jihan stared at the descending tip without blinking. He didn't beg for mercy. His eyes blazed with a vengeful fury. "I curse you, Bagas…" he hissed through his teeth.

JRAAASHH!

The monster's leg pierced the right side of Jihan's chest. It shattered his ribs, tore through his lung tissue, and pinned his body to the stone floor, driving deep into the ground beneath.

"GHKK…!"

Jihan's body convulsed violently. His mouth opened wide, but instead of a sound, only thick blood gushed out, soaking his face and chin. The pain was beyond the limits of human tolerance. Jihan felt like his body was being ripped in two.

The monster pulled its leg back. Blood sprayed from Jihan's chest like a fountain.

Jihan lay broken. His eyes stared up at the dark cave ceiling. His breaths sounded like air bubbles popping in liquid.

Gurgle… gurgle…

Cold. So cold. The pain was strangely beginning to fade, replaced by a numbness that spread from his toes to his neck. His vision started to fill with static. The colors around him faded to gray.

"Sorry, Dian… I failed…"

His heartbeat slowed.

Thump… Thump…

The blood pouring from his mouth felt colder and colder.

Thump…

His consciousness was on the edge of the abyss. The monster opened its maw, preparing to swallow Jihan's head whole.

But just as its jaw was two inches from Jihan's face, something impossible happened.

Time froze.

It wasn't a figure of speech. Time literally stopped. The drops of slime from the monster's jaw hung suspended in the air. The floating rock dust stopped moving, like a three-dimensional photograph. The sound of the monster's breathing vanished. Even the throbbing pain in Jihan's chest ceased.

The world became black and white, silent like the vacuum of space.

Jihan couldn't move his body, but his eyes could still see. In the absolute silence, a distortion of light appeared directly in front of his face. The light wasn't from dungeon magic. It was made of lines of binary code assembling themselves.

In seconds, the light formed a rectangular virtual screen. Its color was a transparent neon blue, a stark contrast to the gray world around it. The design wasn't ancient or mystical. It was modern, clean, and intimidating.

The screen didn't make a sound like an RPG game. Instead, lines of text appeared in a very formal and rigid font, exactly like a corporate contract designed to trap its customers.

[AUTOMATED DETECTION SYSTEM: CLIENT'S PHYSICAL CONDITION HAS REACHED THE LIQUIDATION POINT (DEATH).]

[INITIATING EMERGENCY OFFER PROTOCOL…]

Jihan stared at the screen with the last fading remnants of his consciousness. His brain was too broken to comprehend this hallucination.

The text on the screen typed itself out again, quickly.

[DEATH BANK CREDIT OFFER]

Client: Han Jihan (Status: Dying)

Loan Facility: God-Tier Power (Temporary Access)

Terms & Conditions: Borrower agrees to the full surrender of rights to physical pain, age fluctuations, memories, or absolute life seizure in the event of default at maturity. All forms of complaint are not recognized by the Dimensional Authority.

Primary Collateral: YOUR LIFE.

At the very bottom of the panel, a red box flashed brightly, waiting for one confirmation from the man who was at death's door.

[Do you wish to apply for a loan? Accept? Y/N]