The Hunter Monarch

Pain was the first architect of Lin Yu's new reality. It was a symphony of agony, with each part of his body playing its own excruciating instrument. A sharp, piercing torment from his ribs screamed with every ragged breath he took. A deep, throbbing ache resonated from his skull, a phantom echo of the coma that had stolen his life once before. A hundred smaller, sharper pains from cuts and bruises sang a chorus over the deeper bass notes of his broken body. For a long moment, he simply lay there, curled on a bed of alien moss, letting the pain wash over him, his mind too fractured to do anything else.

Slowly, sense by sense, the world began to bleed through the fog of his suffering.

The air was the next thing he noticed. It was thick, heavy, and wet, so saturated with humidity that it felt like breathing through a damp cloth. It carried the overwhelming scent of a thousand different kinds of vegetation all blooming and decaying at once—a sweet, cloying smell of rot layered with the sharp, green scent of crushed leaves and damp earth. It was the smell of life, but a savage, untamed life that had no place for something as frail as a human.

Then came the sounds. The jungle was not quiet. It was a cacophony of alien noises. There was a low, guttural roar in the distance that was so deep he felt it vibrate in his bones. The high-pitched chittering of unseen creatures echoed from the canopy above. A strange, rhythmic clicking sound, like massive castanets, came from somewhere off to his left. Nothing was familiar. Nothing was safe.

With a groan that tore at his throat, Lin Yu forced his protesting muscles to move. He pushed himself up, his arms trembling violently under the strain. His vision swam, black spots dancing where the after-image of the portal's light had been burned. He blinked, forcing the world into a semblance of focus.

He was in a cathedral of nightmares.

Giant, twisted trees, their bark a gnarled, sickly grey-green, soared hundreds of meters into a sky he couldn't see. Their colossal trunks, some as thick as a small building, were woven together in a dense, suffocating canopy that blocked out almost all light, casting the forest floor in a perpetual, emerald gloom. Thick, ropy vines, some covered in wicked-looking thorns, hung down like entrapped serpents. The ground was a springy, damp carpet of phosphorescent mosses and fungi that cast a faint, sickly green glow, providing the only real illumination. Everything was oversized, primal, and infused with a palpable aura of menace.

This wasn't just a forest. It was an ecosystem that had been left to grow, unchecked and wild, for eons. It was a world that had never known the axe or the plow, a world where he was an intruder, an invasive species, and undoubtedly, at the absolute bottom of the food chain.

The holographic notification still hovered in the air before him, a stark, digital pronouncement of his doom against the primal, organic backdrop.

[Welcome to Layer A-7: The Verdant Maw.]

A-Rank.

The letter hung in his mind, a single, damning character. He had only ever read about A-Rank Layers in the most sensationalized Hunter reports. They were places where elite, high-level parties—teams of warriors decked out in legendary gear with skills that could level city blocks—trod with extreme caution. They were monster-filled hellscapes where a single mistake meant annihilation. They were not a place for a party of five. They were certainly not a place for a party of one. And they were, most assuredly, not a place for a Zero with a second-hand iron sword and a single piece of C-Rank armor.

The Transit Hex. Zhao Hu.

The pieces clicked together with horrifying clarity. This wasn't an accident. This wasn't a one-in-a-million transit error. This was a premeditated execution. The chaos, the diversion, the cold sting on his back—it was all a deliberate, perfectly orchestrated plan to send him here to die. The sheer, calculated malice of it was a cold weight in his stomach, heavier and more painful than any of his physical injuries.

Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to overwhelm him. His heart hammered against his broken ribs, and his breathing came in short, ragged gasps. His first instinct was to run, to scramble back the way he came, to find the portal that had spit him out. He spun around, his eyes wild, searching for the shimmering silver curtain of the exit.

There was nothing. Only an ancient, moss-covered cliff face, slick with moisture. The portal was gone.

The rule that every Hunter knew slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. One way in. The only way out was to find a natural Exit Gate, a near-impossible task in a Layer of this size, or to kill the Layer's Guardian. The thought was so ludicrous it bordered on black comedy. The Guardian of an A-Rank Layer would be a creature of immense, almost god-like power. He couldn't even defeat a C-Rank Grotto Creeper.

He was trapped. Utterly and completely.

A rustling sound from a nearby thicket of giant, blood-red ferns made him freeze. He slowly, painfully, drew his iron sword. The simple weapon felt flimsy and pathetic in his hand, a toothpick against the monstrous scale of this world. His entire body screamed at him to run, to hide, to curl up in a ball and wait for the end.

But then, the image of Su Wan's horrified face flashed in his mind. He thought of her unwavering belief in him, the quiet strength she offered, the vambrace on his arm. He thought of Chen, Li Mei, and Tao, the first real team he'd ever had. And he thought of Zhao Hu's triumphant, sneering face.

The panic did not subside, but something else rose to meet it: a spark of defiance. A single, furious thought that cut through the pain and the fear.

No. I will not die here.

He would not give Zhao Hu the satisfaction. He would not let this savage, indifferent world be his tomb. He didn't know how, but he would survive. He would live. He would get stronger. And one day, he would find his way out of this green hell, and he would return.

The rustling grew louder. He tightened his grip on his sword, the worn leather of the hilt digging into his palm. He turned to face the sound, his body a symphony of agony, his heart a frantic drumbeat of terror. He was no longer a Pack Mule. He was no longer a Hunter. In the deep, suffocating gloom of the Verdant Maw, he was only one thing: prey.

And the hunt was about to begin.