The world was screaming. Inside the narrow crevice, the air was thick with pulverized stone and the scent of ozone. The Alpha Jackal had transitioned from a predator into a living jackhammer.
Thrummm. Thrummm. Thrummm.
The high-frequency vibrations from the beast's bronze quills were no longer just a sound; they were a physical force. Hanzo could feel the hum in his teeth, in his lungs, and most agonizingly, in the jagged ends of his shattered radius and ulna. Above them, a slab of rusted rock the size of a furnace groaned, hanging by a few stubborn veins of ore.
"Hanzo, it's coming down!" Lin screamed, her hands pressed over her ears, her face ghostly pale in the green flicker of the poison.
"Hold me!" Hanzo roared back, his voice cracking. "Pin my shoulder to the wall and don't let go! If I move an inch, the alignment will fail!"
Lin scrambled forward, her small frame trembling as she threw her weight against his right side, anchoring him against the vibrating stone.
Hanzo looked at his left arm. The Upper Core was flashing a sea of red warnings, but he ignored the safety protocols. He didn't have the luxury of a slow migration.
[Mental Command: Local De-Crystallization.] [Status: Lattice Lock Disengaged.]
He felt the biting cold of the Lunar-Zinc in his skin dissolve. Normally, moving the metal through the dense layers of muscle and fascia toward the bone would take hours of agonizing focus. But Hanzo saw an opportunity in the Jackal's assault.
He didn't fight the vibrations. He synchronized with them.
As the Alpha's frequency hit the rock, Hanzo timed his mental pulse to match. He used the external kinetic energy as a catalyst, letting the vibrations "shake" the microscopic Lunar-Zinc particles through his flesh. It was like sand being sifted through a screen, but the sand was made of razor-sharp alloy and the screen was his own living tissue.
He let out a sound that wasn't human—a raw, guttural howl of pure agony.
"Hanzo! Stop! You're going to kill yourself!" Lin sobbed, but she held on, her knuckles white.
He couldn't stop. He saw the wireframe in his mind. The silver particles were clouding around the fracture site. He wasn't a healer; he was a mason pouring liquid reinforcement into a crumbling foundation.
[Data Packet: 18% Alpha Geometry - Applied.]
Using the Jackal's own biological logic, Hanzo didn't just try to glue the bone back together. He began to weave.
He commanded the Lunar-Zinc to form thin, high-tension filaments. Under the influence of the vibration, these filaments wrapped around the four main fragments of his shattered bone. He forced the metal to "bite" into the calcium, creating tiny anchor points—the very same mechanical bolts he had seen in the Jackal's shoulder.
Pull. Align. Secure.
He felt the jagged bone ends grind against each other as the metal winched them into place. The sensation was so violent his vision went black for several seconds. When it returned, the Core displayed a new, flickering blue prompt.
[Internal Modification: Temporary Skeletal Bypass.] [Integrity: 64% (Projected).] [Warning: Biological rejection risk high. Metal-to-Marrow friction detected.]
He didn't care about the rejection. He just needed the arm to work. He forced the remaining metal to solidify, creating a rigid, internal "sleeve" of Lunar-Zinc that encased the break. It was a crude, brutal version of what he would one day call Iron-Bone.
Just as the metal snapped into its final, rigid form, the ceiling gave way.
A massive roar of shifting earth drowned out the Jackal's hum. A three-hundred-pound slab of rock slammed into the floor of the crevice, missing Lin's legs by mere inches. The dust was so thick they couldn't see, but the light from the entrance had widened.
The vibration had worked. The Jackal had successfully widened the gap.
A heavy, coppery paw—clad in sharpened bronze claws—slammed through the dust, reaching for them. It swiped the air, missing Hanzo's chest by a hair's breadth, the wind of the strike whistling in his ears.
"Get back!" Hanzo shoved Lin deeper into the narrowest part of the crevice.
He stood up. The agony in his arm hadn't vanished; it had transformed into a heavy, throbbing heat. He flexed his left hand. The movement was stiff, and he could hear the faint clink of metal against bone deep inside his wrist. But the arm stayed straight. It was no longer a limp weight; it was a reinforced pillar.
The Alpha Jackal lunged its head into the newly widened opening, its jaws snapping, its glowing orange eyes fixed on Hanzo with a terrifying intelligence. It thought it had broken the prey's spirit along with the stone.
Hanzo didn't retreat. He stepped into the light of the opening, his shadow falling over the beast's snout.
"You gave me the vibration I needed to fix my frame," Hanzo said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm register. "Now let's see how your frame handles the Midnight Star."
He didn't just swing. He used his newly reinforced left arm to brace his right, creating a triangular support structure that maximized his leverage in the cramped space. He wasn't fighting like a warrior; he was striking at a structural weak point.
The Jackal roared, its quills flaring out to vibrate again, but Hanzo was faster. He saw the rhythm now. He saw the "Nodes" where the vibration started.
"Lin, stay down," he commanded.
With a burst of speed fueled by the Core's overclocking, Hanzo drove his blade toward the junction of the Jackal's neck and shoulder—the exact spot he had analyzed in the 18% blueprint.
The hunt was no longer about survival. It was a test of who had the superior design.