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"Clang, clang, clang..."
Illumi, his fingers on both hands brought together to form hand-blades, attacked Bradley in a flurry of afterimages. The latter accurately defended against his repeated attacks with his Tachi.
While sparring, they were also testing how long Illumi could maintain Kō and Ken.
"Shua!"
Suddenly, both of them stopped their movements simultaneously.
Illumi looked at his hand-blade; a thin line of blood appeared on his little finger, fresh blood seeping out and slowly trickling down.
"One hour, that's enough."
He could already maintain Ken and Kō in a combat situation for an hour, which was sufficient to deal with most Nen users.
Illumi had spent seventy days mastering the advanced application techniques, excluding En, but he was still far from the level of a Nen master.
And for the remaining twenty days, he would focus on advancing towards the advanced technique of En.
"Let's end the sparring here."
Illumi looked at Bradley, casually wiping the bloodstain from his little finger as he spoke. For his physique, such a minor injury would heal in a day.
"Understood. Then I'll go prepare food."
King Bradley turned and headed towards the forest. During this time, whenever Illumi rested, Bradley would go find food.
"I need to get the others out quickly."
"Keeping King Bradley by my side all the time is truly too much of a waste of his talents."
Illumi thought to himself as he watched Bradley's receding figure.
King Bradley was a leader-type figure. Whether it was his personal charisma, his methods, or even his looks and aura, they all exuded the air of someone who had long been in a high position.
Ordinary people, the moment their eyes met his, would understand that he was a leader.
"However, the most important thing right now is training."
Illumi sat down cross-legged. First was Ten, stabilizing the aura flowing throughout his body, gathering it into a sphere, and converging it towards his own body.
Then Ren, taking the aura gathered within his body and, in a circular manner, diffusing and releasing it in a 360-degree range around him.
Illumi was now practicing En, an advanced combined application of Ten and Ren, allowing aura to expand outwards with oneself as the center.
"Imagine the aura as a sphere, then let this sphere expand, continuously diffusing and releasing outwards in all directions."
And in Illumi's deliberate imagination, the aura gathered into a sphere within his body began to change. The aura started to spread outwards in an unstable circular shape.
A semi-transparent sphere formed by white aura enveloped Illumi. The surface of the circular aura undulated, seeming as if it might collapse at any moment.
"Fifty centimeters."
Illumi savored this feeling of completely perceiving everything around him, this sensation of even the air flowing past him being detectable, which intoxicated him.
Power can make one lose oneself, but it can also make one firm in one's goals.
Illumi's heart was truly grateful, grateful to this world, grateful for the power of this world. It was truly wonderful to have come to this world.
The feeling of possessing power was truly intoxicating, making one unable to extricate oneself.
Therefore, he wanted to climb higher, to possess even stronger power.
Accompanied by this soaring emotion, Illumi's En once again expanded outwards by another circle, its range reaching sixty centimeters.
"Thump..."
King Bradley dragged an adult horned wild boar to the vicinity of the camp. Looking at the increasingly solid aura on Illumi, a red gleam flashed in the depths of his eyes.
Time flies like an arrow, days and months like a weaver's shuttle.
In the blink of an eye, time reached October 20th. The three months of training had come to an end.
"It's time to set off."
Illumi, dressed in a black t-shirt and long pants, slung his gray backpack over his shoulder and looked back at the simple tent that had been his home for three months.
King Bradley was still wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, though it now looked very worn out.
After extinguishing the firewood in the camp and pushing the tent off the cliff, eliminating most traces of their stay, they turned and left.
The Hunter Exam began on January 7th, and the boat departed on January 1st. To ensure he arrived before the boat set sail, Illumi started ten days early, using seventy days to cross the Mingbo Republic and the Republic of Padokea.
Not by airship, not by car, but with his own two feet.
Not by running on highways, but by crossing mountains and ridges, a straight-line traversal.
"Shua!"
The two figures flashed, transforming into streaks of light, and sprinted wildly along the top edge of the Vasily Grand Canyon from east to west.
If one looked down from high above, they would see two streaks of light, one black and one white, with trailing afterimages, moving at extremely high speed towards the [Jebel Danna Plain] on the western border of the Republic of Padokea.
Time: December 30th, 12:33 PM.
Location: Mingbo Republic, Ushuaia Highway.
This highway, renowned as the most beautiful in the Mingbo Republic, welcomed two uninvited guests today.
"Omoteura Ittai~~"
In a red convertible, a stylishly dressed man in white, wearing sunglasses, was swaying his "plump" body to the music.
"Shua!"
"Shua!"
Suddenly, two successive sounds of breaking air were heard.
Two figures, one large and one small, looking rather disheveled, appeared on either side of the convertible, "running alongside" him.
"Woowoo"
The man in white hummed a song, his head swaying from side to side. His gaze inadvertently swept past Illumi and King Bradley.
A second later, his face froze, the corner of his mouth twitched, and his sunglasses tilted.
"Ah! Ah?"
His head, as if he had taken ecstasy pills, darted back and forth between the figures on either side, looking as if he had seen a ghost.
"Tch."
Illumi glanced at him. Driving a convertible in such cold weather.
He reached out his arm, casually plucked the tilted sunglasses from the man's face, and put them on. With a "shua," he transformed into a streak of light and disappeared from the white-clothed man's sight.
"Seen a ghost."
The man in white looked dumbfounded. When he came back to his senses, he found his sunglasses were gone.
One hour later...
At the end of a street in Delgada City, people were sporadically walking back and forth, still dressed in summer attire.
Coastal cities cool down slowly; the climate here is warm in winter and cool in summer.
"Hmm?"
A thin man dressed in a colorful floral short-sleeved shirt felt that there seemed to be something strange on the highway in the distance. He stopped where he was, squinting his eyes as he looked towards the end of the highway.
"What's wrong?"
His companion beside him, seeing him suddenly stand still, asked in confusion.
"Hey, you guys, did you see anything?"
The thin man pointed towards the end of the highway, looking as if something was about to arrive, and said.
Several other passersby who happened to be nearby, hearing his words, also stopped curiously and looked in the direction he was pointing.
They saw two black dots suddenly appear on the highway about a few hundred meters ahead.
If someone were looking from the side, they would see two streaks of light, almost overlapping, dragging afterimages, like an F1 racing car, kicking up a dust cloud over ten meters long.
"Shua!"
A moment later, the few of them only felt their vision blur, and a gust of wind mixed with dust rushed towards them, forcing them to close their eyes.
When they opened their eyes again, two figures, one large and one small, looking utterly disheveled, were standing in front of them. Apart from the sunglasses on the teenager's face, they looked like two savages.