He tightened his aim, focusing on the shadowy figure in the distance, trying to catch a clearer glimpse. The figure stilled, as though sensing his gaze. Its head turned toward him—not with the warmth of an ally, but with a cold, hostile weight that pressed against his chest.

Movement flickered behind it. Jin Shu shifted his scope, narrowing in.

Clatter!

His rifle slipped from his suddenly slick palms, crashing against the wood. The noise jolted Bing Hou awake. She bolted upright.

"What?!" she gasped, scanning for enemies. When nothing leapt out at her, she slumped back. "We won, right?"

Jin Shu shook his head, his expression grim. He drew in a breath of cold air that scraped his throat raw.

"RETREAT!!" he bellowed.

The disciples and treants froze, staring up in confusion. But before questions could come, the forest roared. Trees toppled. The ground shuddered.

Three monstrous shapes burst from the treeline.

Jin Shu's gut turned to ice. Two of them he recognized—the broodmothers, identical to the one he had killed before. The last one's deathrattle had birthed the spiderling horde. But the third…

The third was worse.

A nightmare given form. A spider so immense it dwarfed its escorts, its swollen body blotting out the moonlight. Each step caved the earth. Its chitin shimmered like black steel, and its countless eyes gleamed with a cruel intelligence.

"B-b-broodqueen?!" a disciple shrieked.

Her cry rippled through the ranks. Horror gripped the women like chains. Even Bing Hou—normally unreadable, her face like stone—paled as if the blood had been drained from her. Jin Shu didn't know what a "broodqueen" was, but her reaction told him all he needed: this was a foe beyond reason, beyond survival.

Thump!

He glanced down just in time to see Li Xue collapse in a dead faint. Two disciples hauled her back as the formation crumbled into a panicked retreat. Even the treants lumbered away, their towering forms awkward but swift with desperation.

All seemed lost—until the ground trembled again.

The ancient treant, the colossal one that had stood dormant for so long it had been forgotten, began to move. One stride carried it hundreds of yards, its bulk blotting out the battlefield as it stepped over the fleeing women. Towering, it loomed eye-to-eye with the broodqueen, its bark-crusted limbs creaking like mountains shifting.

For a moment, hope surfaced.

But Jin Shu's heart sank. Even if the ancient could hold its ground, the broodmothers would spawn swarms upon their deaths. Two fresh tides of spiderlings would crush them all. Unless they were annihilated in a single strike, the horde would never end.

"Any thoughts?" Jin Shu whispered to his two souls, desperation cracking his voice.

"…"

Silence answered him.

Then—

Nano's voice. Calm, clinical, but laced with hesitation.

"You still have your railgun. Theoretically, it has the power to punch through meteorites. Even a weaker version such as yours should pierce their outer shell." He paused. "However… theory also means risk. There is a very real chance it could overload—and explode in your hands. Killing you before the enemy."

He shivered at the thought of blowing himself up—of dying again—but if this was their only hope, then so be it. Only… would it even work?

"Even if I can kill them, what good does that do? The broodmothers will just spawn two more swarms. We barely survived the first."

"Well," Nano replied, clinical as ever, "if the weapon works—and if you don't die—it should punch straight through their cores. Kill both the beast and its spawn in a single shot… in theory."

Jin Shu gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "Hell with it. Dead either way. Let's try."

"Huh?" Bing Hou stirred beside him, catching the mutter.

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"You should retreat with the others," he said, voice firm. "Get as far back as you can."

Her head tilted, though it might have just been exhaustion dragging it sideways. "Why's it sound like you're not coming?"

"Because I'm not. I'm about to do something dumb. Again."

She studied him for a beat, then shrugged. "Your funeral."

"No. All of ours—if we don't do something."

"...true." She gave a weak nod, then a ghost of a smirk. "Good luck."

Her hand tapped his shoulder, light as a falling leaf, before she vaulted from the tower. She landed rough, nearly stumbling, but forced herself into a jog toward the retreating line.

Jin Shu exhaled, long and steady.

From his space earring, he drew the weapon he had never dared to use—the railgun. Its black frame thrummed faintly in his grip, like a beast roused from slumber. He had left it untouched since its creation, fearing the same thing he now prayed against: that it would tear him apart as easily as it tore through stone.

He pulled free a single javelin-shaped dart, its runes faintly glowing along the shaft, and slid it into the barrel. The weapon gave a low, resonant hum, as though hungering for release.

Leveling the railgun at the distant broodmother, he set his sights down the length of the weapon. His breath slowed. His pulse thundered in his ears.

One shot. That was all. One shot to decide whether the monster died—or he did.

Jin Shu cast a quick glance toward the ancient treant's clash with the broodqueen. They had vanished deeper into the forest, where the elder giant summoned roots as thick as houses to coil around the monstrous spider, binding it in place while its titanic fists hammered down with earth-shaking force. Yet the broodqueen's gleaming shell refused to yield. Blow after ruinous blow landed without leaving so much as a scratch on that ghastly hide.

That sight chilled him, but there was nothing he could do. His mission was here: the broodmothers lumbering toward the retreating defenders. If they reached the line, everything would be lost. The only blessing was their agonizingly slow crawl.

He steadied his breath, sighted down the railgun, and squeezed the trigger.

Click!

A hollow sound. No recoil. No thunderous shot.

"…It didn't work?"

"It isn't a gunpowder weapon," Nano replied evenly. "It needs electricity. Use your lightning affinity to power it."

"Oh. Right… I knew that…"

Drawing from deep within, Jin Shu pulled at the core of his lightning affinity and fed it into the weapon's runes. The railgun answered at once, whirring awake with a shrill, rising buzz. The runes along its frame flared to life, arcs of electricity leaping across its glossy surface.

This time, when he pulled the trigger, the hollow click was replaced by a mounting, vibrating roar. The dart inside began to spin, faster and faster, until its shriek cut through the battlefield like a banshee's cry. Sparks cascaded off the weapon as the charge built to a breaking point—

BOOM!

The dart vanished in a flash of black-and-white lightning.

He barely blinked before the broodmother shuddered. A neat, smoking hole punched straight through its skull, its body collapsing lifelessly to the earth before it could even give a death scream.

And still the dart did not stop. It tore on, boring through trunk after trunk, leaving a clean, glowing tunnel through the forest, a path carved by pure destruction.

Jin Shu blinked in awe, eyes fixed on the fallen broodmother. He waited—tense, expecting the body to rupture into a fresh swarm. But nothing came. No hissing spiderlings, no nightmarish rebirth. Only a river of green ichor spilling across the grass, painting it an eerie neon glow.

Distant cheers finally reached him, dragging his attention back toward the survivors gathered near the lake.

"It… worked…" he whispered, hardly believing it himself.

The remaining broodmother froze mid-step. Its countless eyes flicked to its dead kin, then to the smoldering scar the dart had torn through the forest, and finally—on him. For a heartbeat, Jin Shu swore he saw fear shimmer in that monstrous gaze.

Then it turned to flee.

But halfway to the trees, its body jerked unnaturally. Limbs spasmed, joints bent wrong, and with a grotesque twitch the spider wheeled back around—its legs dragging it forward as though some unseen puppeteer forced it to march toward the camp.

Jin Shu didn't know if madness had seized it, or if fear had simply never been enough to root in its twisted mind. Either way, it was coming back—to kill him and everyone behind him.

He raised the railgun again, this time sighting down bare iron. Lightning flared in his veins, flooding the weapon, making its frame buzz with hungry static.

He pulled the trigger.

The dart shrieked into the night, its banshee wail drowning out even the clash of titans in the forest. In an instant, it bored straight through the broodmother's bulk, leaving a gaping cavity from mandibles to abdomen. The creature convulsed as if even it couldn't believe it had died so quickly, before crashing down with such force that the shockwave uprooted trees around it.

The survivors' cheers redoubled, triumphant and wild. For them, victory was finally within reach. All that remained was the broodqueen—and surely, they believed, the railgun would end her just as cleanly as it had the others.

But Jin Shu felt an ominous twist in his gut. Something was about to go wrong. A third time.