High Fever Backfires, Trapping Her in Peril; Haku Uses Her Body Heat to Protect Her Frail Form

"Click."

The final rusty bolt was slid into place by Haku, who poured every ounce of her remaining strength into the effort.

The dull metallic thud sounded like a fragile line drawn between this cramped underground space and the world of blood and fire outside.

Safe.

For now.

The moment this thought surfaced in Mizuki Han's mind, the nerve he had been forcing to stay taut to its limit finally snapped under the unbearable strain.

His body, leaning against the cold iron door, could no longer maintain a seated position. As if his bones had been pulled out, he slowly and silently slumped to the side, collapsing heavily onto the pile of moldy, tattered quilts.

"Han... Brother Han!"

Haku, having just finished disposing of the corpse on the stairs, turned back to witness this horrifying sight. She shrieked, scrambling toward him on her hands and knees.

The basement was dim, devoid of any lamp. The only light came from the thin ventilation gaps in the iron door, filtering in as a crimson glow reflected from the raging inferno outside.

Under this eerie red light, Mizuki Han's face displayed an unnaturally intense flush, forming a terrifying contrast with the deathly, cyan-white pallor of his lips.

Haku reached out with a trembling hand to lift him, but the moment her fingertips touched his forehead, she recoiled as if she had brushed against a red-hot iron.

So hot!

It was more scorching than the midday sun!

But as her gaze drifted down to his left arm, hidden beneath his gray coat, an opposing chill crawled up her spine. A thin, visible layer of white frost had actually condensed on the surface of his clothing!

Half fire, half ice.

Two diametrically opposed states were waging a brutal war within the body of this already battered boy.

"Urgh... cough, cough..."

In his unconscious state, Mizuki Han suffered a painful spasm. His body convulsed violently, and the deep, forcibly frozen wound on his chest burst open. What welled out was no longer bright red blood, but foul-smelling, semi-coagulated, purple-black clots.

Every breath he took sounded like a broken bellows, dragging out hoarse, agonizing rattles. Every heartbeat caused his crystallized left arm to emit a faint "click-clack" sound of bone grinding against ice crystals.

This was the most terrifying backlash of a Bloodline Limit.

Forcing an overload, even overdrawing one's life force to drive Ice Release, resulted in a total collapse of physical and spiritual energy. The self-mutilating forbidden technique, "Zero-Distance Heart Burial," which Han had unleashed at the final moment, had catalyzed this backlash to its absolute extreme.

The purest, extreme-cold chakra—meant to strike down enemies—had lost the restraint of its master's will. It had transformed into a vicious beast, crazily gnawing at his own meridians and cells.

Meanwhile, his body, in a desperate attempt to counter this abnormal "freezing," instinctively mobilized all remaining life energy, triggering a fatal high fever.

The strangulation of ice and fire was grinding his life force into dust, bit by bit.

Haku was in a complete panic.

She knelt beside Han, at a total loss. She was only a child of seven or eight; aside from a negligible talent for Ice Release, she knew nothing. She understood no medicine, nor did she possess even the most basic common sense.

She only knew one thing—Han was dying.

And if Han died, she... would not survive either.

In these cannibalistic slums, or even within the entire Village of the Bloody Mist, a young girl with a Bloodline Limit who had lost her protection would face a fate ten thousand times worse than death.

"Water... need water..."

Haku recalled what the adults in the village used to say when someone was sick. She scrambled to search the room, eventually finding a broken wooden bucket in the corner containing half a bucket of rainwater. She cupped some in her hands and carefully brought it to Han's lips.

However, the moment her icy fingers touched his lips, the bone-chilling cold made her shiver.

No!

There was ice inside him; she couldn't stimulate him with cold water!

But what could she use to dispel the chill that was devouring his life?

Haku looked around blankly. In this dark, damp basement, there was nothing but moldy quilts and cold walls. No fire, no medicine, not even a piece of dry wood to be found.

Despair, like the cold dampness of the basement, seeped into every fiber of her being.

She watched Han twitching in agony, watched the cyan-white patch of death on his face spreading, and an unprecedented terror gripped her heart.

She could not let him die!

The thought struck her like a bolt of lightning.

Not out of loyalty, nor out of any bond. Simply because he was her only hope for survival.

This boy, who had killed his way out of hell while dragging her along—though cold, cruel, and viewing her as a tool—was the only piece of driftwood she could cling to in this ruined wasteland.

Haku gritted her teeth. For the first time, a near-obsessive determination flared in those eyes that were always filled with fear and tears.

She stripped off the filthy outer garment she had scavenged from a corpse, which was already soaked through with rain, leaving only a thin undergarment. Then, she lay down beside Han. Mimicking the way her mother used to comfort her when she was sick, she carefully pressed her own thin, trembling body tightly against his.

Cold.

That was her only sensation.

Han's body was like a massive block of ice burning from within. His exterior was terrifyingly hot, but the crystallized chill emanating from the depths of his marrow was constantly eroding her body temperature.

Haku's teeth chattered from the cold, but she did not retreat.

She wrapped her slender arms around Han's body and pressed her cheek against his scorching neck. She curled her small frame into a ball, using every ounce of her strength to transmit the tiny, insignificant warmth of a living person into him.

She intended to use her own body heat to melt the ice within his.

She intended to use her own heartbeat to awaken his, which was on the verge of falling silent.

Time lost all meaning in this isolated basement.

The sound of rain outside gradually ceased, and the clamor and slaughter on the distant streets slowly died down, replaced by a deathly silence.

Haku did not know how much time had passed.

She only knew that she was growing colder and her consciousness was becoming increasingly blurred.

Meanwhile, the temperature of Han's body in her arms was slipping away at a terrifying speed. The scorching high fever was receding, but what followed was not a sign of recovery, but the icy chill of a life-fire about to be extinguished.

That layer of white frost, representing crystallization, had spread from the stump of his left arm to his shoulder; even on his neck, delicate, snowflake-like ice patterns had begun to emerge.

His breathing grew weaker and weaker, as if it might stop at any moment.

It's over...

Only these two words remained in Haku's mind.

She could no longer feel Han's heartbeat.

She, too, was reaching her limit. Her body had begun to go numb from the prolonged exposure to the low temperature, and her eyelids felt as heavy as lead.

Just as she was about to sink into the darkness of despair and abandon this futile effort, a cold, otherworldly voice, composed purely of mechanical logic, boomed without warning directly into the depths of the deeply unconscious Mizuki Han's mind.

[Detected: Host has completed the hidden quest chain — "Death Row Survival"]

[Quest Rating: S (Perfect)]

[Rating Criteria: Under the conditions of sealed chakra and critical injury, the host achieved a counter-kill, an extreme escape, a reverse hunt, the destruction of enemy core facilities, and the successful elimination of a Jōnin-level enemy.]

[Calculating quest rewards...]

[Rewards distribution commencing...]