They arrived in four minutes.
Soo-yeon first — she had been in Sector 5, closest. Then Bae and Oh Tae-young from the dead zone. Then Park Jin-wook at a run, Cho the barrier mage two steps behind. Then Elena from Sector 11 saying I'm staying on comms, I'm not combat-rated for this and Jinsu saying I know, stay on the crystal and Elena staying on the crystal.
Then Sang-min.
4.2 million units blazing at full output, the golden armor catching the Sector 6 Friday morning light, the specific presence of the finest hunter of his generation arriving at a run and stopping at the radius boundary and looking at the compliance bars spiked at 100% above every person in the four-block radius.
He looked at the person-shaped hole in the rendering.
He looked at Jinsu.
"What is it," he said.
"A Harvester," Jinsu said. "One of the entities that actually consumes the mana after the Harvest mechanisms process it. The Founders sent it directly." He looked at the hole. "My deletion mechanics don't work on it. Erasure, Absolute Arrest — zero efficiency. It exists above the System's framework."
Sang-min looked at the hole.
At his own 4.2 million units blazing around him.
At the fact that the Harvester was oriented toward the largest mana signature in the radius with the patient, absolute, impersonal attention of something that had been consuming mana from cultivated worlds for longer than anyone in the radius had been alive.
"It's looking at me," Sang-min said.
"Yes," Jinsu said.
"Because I'm the most cultivated thing in this radius."
"Yes," Jinsu said.
Sang-min looked at the hole for a long moment.
Then he drew his broadsword.
"Okay," he said.
Jinsu looked at him.
"I know it won't work," Sang-min said. "But if it's going to look at me — I'd rather it look at me moving than standing still."
Round One lasted forty-seven seconds.
Sang-min moved first — S-Rank speed, twenty years of combat training, the specific devastating efficiency of a Vanguard who had spent his career as the point of contact between hunters and things that needed to stop existing. His broadsword blazing with 4.2 million units of golden mana, the strike carrying enough force to vaporize the kind of targets that B-Rank hunters spent their entire careers never facing.
The blade passed through the person-shaped hole.
Not deflected. Not absorbed. Passed through. The way a sword passes through smoke. The Harvester's absence registering the impact the way empty space registers impact — by not registering it at all.
The mana on the blade diminished.
Not by the strike. By proximity. The Harvester consuming the mana coating Sang-min's weapon at the specific, patient rate of something that consumed by existing rather than by acting.
Sang-min struck again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike blazing with more output than the last — the specific, instinctive escalation of a combat professional whose attacks aren't landing trying to find the threshold at which they will. There was no threshold. The geometry of the problem didn't have one.
The Harvester continued orienting toward Sang-min.
Soo-yeon fired.
Void-frequency rounds — the specific ammunition she had been working on with the Broker since the operation. Arrows that existed at the intersection of standard mana and the void frequency she had absorbed from proximity to Jinsu's static over weeks of operating together.
The rounds hit the person-shaped hole.
[Void-frequency contact: Efficiency — 4%]
Four percent.
Not zero.
Something.
Soo-yeon fired again. And again. A sustained rate of fire that the Harvester's absence registered at 4% efficiency per round — not enough to stop it, not enough to slow it, not enough to do anything measurable at the operational scale.
But not zero.
Jinsu filed the 4%.
Park Jin-wook engaged from the left — A-Rank Vanguard, the still hunter who had been quietly building a framework for three years and had finally started using it. His strikes were different from Sang-min's — not overwhelming force, precise targeting. The specific combat intelligence of someone who understood that if direct impact didn't work, angle and follow-through might produce different contact physics.
They didn't.
The Harvester consumed Park's mana at the same patient rate it consumed everything else in the radius.
Park's capacity reading dropped from 720,000 to 680,000 in thirty seconds of proximity.
He stepped back.
Oh Tae-young tried his support skills — the specific C-Rank support ability set that included mana suppression and field disruption and the particular toolkit of someone whose value in a team was making the environment harder for opponents to operate in.
The Harvester consumed the suppression field the moment it manifested.
Cho's barrier — A-Rank grade, the strongest defensive architecture available to the team without Jinsu's deletion mechanics — held for eleven seconds before the Harvester's proximity reduced its mana supply below the threshold required for structural integrity.
Eleven seconds.
The barrier fell.
The Harvester was now at the center of the formation.
The mana density in the four-block radius registered at 19% of standard.
Jinsu activated Void-Step and pulled Park Jin-wook out of the immediate proximity.
[Void-Step: -1% Stability]
"Withdraw," Jinsu said. "Everyone outside the radius."
Nobody argued.
They withdrew.
They stood at the radius boundary and looked at the person-shaped hole moving through the commercial district's empty streets — the civilians had cleared the area in the forty-seven seconds of combat, the System's compliance architecture having smoothly redirected everyone out of the immediate zone without any of them understanding why they had decided to leave.
The mana density inside the radius was at 17% and falling.
Jinsu looked at his team.
Park Jin-wook at 660,000 capacity — down 60,000 from proximity. Recovering slowly as the distance increased and the consumption pressure reduced.
Cho with a migraine from the barrier's collapse. Functional. Angry.
Sang-min at 3.8 million — he had burned output trying to strike and the Harvester had consumed some of the excess. Still blazing. Still more capacity than anyone else on the field.
Soo-yeon with four remaining void-frequency rounds.
Bae and Oh Tae-young uninjured — they had stayed outside direct engagement range, the correct call, the specific wisdom of people who understood their role in a formation and had not let pride override it.
Jinsu at [Stability: 56.3%] and falling.
He looked at the hole.
"It's not going to stop," Soo-yeon said.
"No," Jinsu said.
"And we can't hit it," Park said.
"Not with anything we have," Jinsu said. "Except—" He looked at Soo-yeon. "Four percent."
She looked at him.
"The void-frequency rounds," he said. "Four percent efficiency. Everything else was zero." He looked at the hole. "That means the void frequency can touch it in a way that nothing else can. It's not enough to stop it. But it's not zero."
"What does four percent get us," Soo-yeon said.
Jinsu looked at the hole.
He thought about Nil's message.
About what the 27% in the basement had told him.
About the specific, impossible property that Nil had — the only entity in the story that existed simultaneously in the Harvest framework and outside it.
"It gets us a frequency the Harvester can receive," Jinsu said. "And that's all we need."
He activated the crystal.
"Nil," he said. "We need you."
The response from the basement in Sector 4 came back in three seconds.
I know, Nil said. I've been watching through the System's architecture since it arrived. A pause. I know what you need me to do.
I know what it costs.
Jinsu looked at the person-shaped hole in the rendering.
At the mana density at 16% and falling.
At his team at the radius boundary.
At the city around them — Friday morning, compliance bars still spiked at 100%, the civilians cleared from the immediate area but watching from the edges, the specific arrested motion of people who have encountered something that doesn't fit their morning.
"Nil," Jinsu said.
"Yes," Nil said through the crystal.
"You don't have to," Jinsu said.
A pause.
"I know," Nil said.
Another pause.
"Zero," Nil said. "The city from the rooftops. The three hours."
"Yes," Jinsu said.
"It looked like a place worth protecting," Nil said. "I said that on the rooftop. I meant it." A pause. "I still mean it."
"I know," Jinsu said.
"Then let me protect it," Nil said.
The crystal went quiet.
In the basement in Sector 4 — two blocks from the Iron-Blood Guild, above the basement where the Inheritor program had run for twenty-two years — something that had been holding an equilibrium for three days released it.
Not catastrophically. Not the specific dissolution that proximity to the backup had produced. The deliberate, considered release of something that had decided what it was for and was using itself for it.
The 27% of Nil's remaining architecture unfolded from the basement into the city's infrastructure. Not physically — through the System's architecture, the void-adjacent protocols extending through the maintenance layer, reaching through the city's nodes toward Sector 6.
Toward the Harvester.
Toward the Harvest frequency that the Harvester operated at.
From the inside.