With the blade in his hand, it shifted constantly—
one moment turning red, taking on the form of Eclipse,
the next turning white, whiter than snow, becoming Snow Walker,
then shifting from white to black, black as ink, becoming Waning Moon...
It flickered as Roy held it, slowly raising it, the shape changing again and again. A faint solar halo flowed over it, impossible to ignore.
Buzz...
Outside, an invisible flood of drowsiness spread like clouds, gradually and steadily lifting both Silva and Roy into the sky...
The man and the boy closed their eyes together.
Like two tiny figures stepping out of a miniature world, they stood in Susanoo's palm and then suddenly went still, their consciousness sinking into the unconscious domain.
Seeing this, all the Zoldyck butlers and servants, including the Kurta siblings, stared blankly upward. Their faces were full of confusion; they still had no idea what had just happened.
By the clear pool, however, Netero and Zeno both narrowed their eyes at the same time. Their noses twitched as they caught a strange scent in the air.
It wasn't Heart's Ear of the Fist.
It wasn't Heart's Ear of the Sword either.
It felt more like... a catalyst. Something that stripped away the outer world and forcibly dragged people deeper into the spiritual realm.
"A dream?" Netero's white brows and beard stirred in the wind. Clad in his broad martial robe, he exchanged a glance with Zeno.
Then the two of them closed their eyes at once, entered meditation in perfect silence, opened their minds, and with the touch of the Forced Slumber Roy had cast through his Mangekyō Sharingan.
The next instant, the world spun around them—
and when they opened their eyes again, they found themselves standing in a hazy, boundless place where neither time nor space could be distinguished.
"So this is Roy's dream-space," Netero said quietly.
Netero narrowed his eyes and surveyed the surroundings. Everywhere he looked, all four foundations of existence seemed empty—time, hell, substance, dimension, all empty. Only he and Zeno's spiritual bodies remained, along with two vague figures in the distance facing each other in silence.
Buzz—
Another shaft of light pierced down from the outside world into the dream-space...
Maha descended along it, his bald head gleaming, both hands tucked into his pockets.
Netero and Zeno's expressions shifted at once, and they quickly bowed.
"Grandfather / Old Master..."
"Mhm."
The old man didn't bother with either of them. He only grunted and went off to one side, sitting cross-legged in a corner.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
As he settled down, the faces drifting out from the crown of his head leapt forth in waves.
Using the dream as a temporary vessel, they descended and took shape behind Maha, one row after another, showing their true forms.
At the very front stood three figures, the biggest and most imposing of the lot—
Brook Sell, Severus, and Blake Shaw, Maha's beloved generals from long ago.
Behind them stretched countless others, men and women, old and young, packed so densely they extended who knew how many miles.
If this place had possessed any real concept of space, not even a world would have been large enough to contain the tens of thousands of souls who had died unbroken.
"Hss..."
With the appearance of the final figure, a faint curl of smoke drifted in beside Maha.
She wore simple clothes. Her blonde hair was braided and hung behind her back. Her lake-blue eyes were clear as still water.
The moment she appeared, she smiled and looked toward Zeno.
Zeno froze.
Then, under Netero's surprised gaze, he bowed respectfully.
"Your grandson Zeno greets Grandmother."
Grandmother?!
A flicker passed through Netero's eyes, and he turned to Betty thoughtfully.
Betty Zoldyck swept her gaze around, glanced once at Netero, and said gently, "I came to bear witness with my compatriots."
At those words, Zeno straightened, and he and Netero both looked back at the countless masses standing behind Maha.
After a pause, they both answered quietly, "Understood."
They did not know these people's names.
But once the word compatriots had been spoken, no further explanation was needed.
Still—
to have an entire nation come witness a single battle...
Netero and Zeno exchanged a silent glance. What they felt, heavily and unmistakably, was this—
Maha and his people were paying even closer attention to Roy than either of them had imagined.
"Someone's here," Silva said.
His silver hair hung to his waist. He casually cast a glance around the endless shadowy figures stretching to the horizon, then looked back at Roy.
Roy held the blade, now Eclipse, now Snow Walker, now Waning Moon again, and said indifferently, "It doesn't matter."
Anyone who touched the dream willingly could enter it.
Roy had sensed Netero, Zeno, and Maha the moment they split off their thoughts and came in.
The only thing that surprised him a little was...
that Great-Grandfather had brought his ministers and citizens in with him too. To have an entire nation watching him like this was honestly a little overwhelming.
Roy casually spun the blade in a flourish.
"Has Father ever heard the saying: in dreams, I am king?"
He stepped forward with his right foot. His striking silver hair, tipped in glass-gold, swayed freely in the air.
"Here, I make the rules."
Silva narrowed his eyes. A fierce light burst out between his lashes as he clenched a fist.
"Then let me see what kind of strike dares call itself nuclear."
"Heh heh heh... let this old man widen his horizons too..."
Maha's voice floated over from afar.
The old man's gaze was deep as he smiled at Roy.
Roy bowed slightly with his sword in hand.
"Forgive me for making Great-Grandfather laugh."
Then he straightened up, raised the blade high, and slowly closed his eyes.
Buzz—
A dim light began rising from Roy's body.
Level 5 swordsmanship activated.
It carried Roy's mind upward and upward—
past the clouds,
past the atmosphere,
straight into outer space,
then through countless orbital rings,
pressing toward the center of the nebula, toward the sun that endlessly sprayed light and heat across the universe.
Just as he had when crossing blades with Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni and awakening through the sword, Roy emptied himself and threw his consciousness into the sun.
Very quickly, he saw solar flares.
He saw sunspots.
He saw solar wind.
Then he passed through the photosphere and went deeper still, observing the sun from impossibly close range, until he saw endless streams of particles colliding, fusing, and swallowing him whole...
Then Roy's eyes snapped open.
The two suns that had been burning slowly in his pupils exploded into brilliant, blazing light.
Bankai—
Atomic Fusion Slash!
Shhk—
The blade rose high in Roy's hands—
and then came down hard!
The solar halo wrapped around the sword shifted in an instant from soft to violent.
It locked onto Silva—
and in front of Netero, Zeno, Maha, Betty, and the countless tens of thousands who had once followed Maha into national destruction together—
it swallowed Silva whole.
"Heh... hahaha...!"
At point-blank range, Silva's silver hair flew wildly upward.
He laughed without restraint.
With a savage roar, he shouted, "Perfect!"
Boom!
He exploded with every last bit of his aura, concentrating it all into his right hand to form a blazing Nen fist.
Without dodging, without retreating, he smashed that fist straight into Roy's descending blade!
Boom!
Fist met blade!
An immeasurable flood of light erupted from the point of impact.
Visible to the naked eye, a giant mushroom cloud rose into the sky, carrying a massive shockwave that spread outward at frightening speed, reaching Maha, Betty, Netero, and Zeno in an instant!
Hard!
All four of them changed expression and raised Hard at once, forming shields in front of themselves.
But the impact from that explosion was far too great.
When it hit them, it was like having an entire mountain dropped on their heads.
In the blink of an eye, everyone except Maha was blown backward.
Scrape... crackle...
Netero and Zeno kept sliding back—one forced back a hundred meters, the other a hundred twenty.
By the time they barely managed to steady themselves and look up again, only Maha remained unmoved, holding onto Betty.
As for the others, even Brook Sell, Severus, and Blake Shaw had all been forced back dozens of meters.
And everyone else—apart from a handful standing directly behind Maha in the second row—had been blasted clean out of the dream by the explosion, turned into ash, and returned as memory into Maha's body.
"This power is no weaker than the Poor Man's Rose..."
Heat lingered everywhere. The afterglow of the explosion spread outward in waves like ripples.
Netero finally stopped moving and stared deeply at the center of the blast, his emotions surging with shock and disbelief. In a single instant, Roy's strike had truly startled him.
Alarm bells rang in his heart.
The strongest human quietly touched his chest and took a deep breath.
And what he saw ahead was—
two ruined figures, both still standing inside the nuclear blast.
One had lost half its body and could only barely stay upright by leaning on its sword.
The other was riddled with holes, as if the enormous energy of the blast had pierced straight through him from all directions. Even so, he still refused to fall, and with his one remaining eye, he stared at Roy.
In that gaze was pride.
Approval.
And endless relief.
"So it really was... a nuclear slash..."
Silva coughed blood. His body shook like a leaf. At last he could no longer stand, and with both arms spread wide, he slowly tipped backward.
The man looked released, as though something stubborn inside him had finally been freed.
"You win, son..."
Blood spilled from the corner of Roy's mouth too. The remaining half of his face twitched as he staggered and nearly collapsed.
That one slash had drained all his aura. Just as Yamamoto Genryūsai had warned him long ago, once this strike was used, there would be no strength left for anything after.
Roy forced a smile.
"I accept the concession, Father."
Then he could no longer maintain the illusion.
He let it go on purpose,
and the dream-space immediately began to collapse.
Crack... crack... crack...
The dream split like a mirror.
Leaning against Maha, Betty said softly, "Maha... do you know? Maybe he really can do it."
Step... step...
"You're right, Your Majesty."
"Congratulations, my king. You truly have an heir."
Amid the collapsing dream, Brook Sell, Severus, and Blake Shaw led the few old retainers left standing. Like mountains toppling and jade pillars falling, they all dropped to their knees behind Maha and shouted their congratulations.
Nearby, Netero and Zeno watched in silence.
Maha's little hunched body was so small now it didn't even reach Roy's neck.
He said nothing.
He just slowly lifted the corners of his mouth wider and wider, then burst out into hearty, unrestrained laughter.
"Heh heh heh... hahaha...!"
The laughter pierced through the dream and shot up into the sky, lingering and lingering until—
pop—
the dream shattered,
and everyone returned to reality.
Buzz...
The ocular power spreading over Kukuroo Mountain dispersed. The Sharingan slowly faded from Roy's eyes.
As his consciousness returned, the aura in his body was completely drained, and Susanoo could no longer be maintained. The moment Roy weakly opened his eyes, it began to collapse.
Crack... crack... crack...
"Sis, that giant looks like it's breaking apart!"
From a tree deep in Kukuroo Mountain, Kurapika looked up at the sky through the Gyo Kuraging had lent him and noticed Susanoo crumbling from head to toe. He turned to look at his sister.
Her high ponytail hung behind her back.
She said nothing.
Waves of emotion shimmered in her beautiful eyes as she stared at the pale-faced boy in the sky, her whole heart fixed on him.
"Lady Tsubone, the young master... he'll be all right, won't he?"
"You're not asking whether he won or lost?" the old butler replied, looking down at Kuraging. "If the young master loses, the position of head of the family may not be his..."
"But I don't care about that." Kuraging smiled brightly. "As long as the young master is safe, wherever he goes, I'll go too."
Tsubone froze.
Then she reached out and gently stroked the girl's forehead, smiling kindly.
"You're right, child."
"None of that matters. The young master deserves something better... and already has it."
The old butler gave Kuraging an envious glance, then cast a sliver of her gaze toward the butler villa.
Halfway down the mountain, in Gotoh's room inside the villa, a beam of blood-red light suddenly bloomed from the cocoon, filling the room with interwoven scarlet brilliance.
"Young Master..."
The murmur disappeared into the wind.
High in the sky, beneath the blazing sun, the clock struck the hour.
Nine in the morning.
The red sun had fully climbed the sky and was beginning to scorch the earth.
Through the rising heat, Silva felt a wave of dryness.
Struggling out of the dream-space, he opened his eyes and looked ahead to see that boy—so much like a younger copy of himself—smiling at him with difficulty, then stumbling and falling headfirst toward the ground.
Silva's figure blurred.
His perfect Dark Step activated.
In a blink he reached Roy, caught him in one arm, and—breaking precedent for the first time in his life—smiled at him.
"This hug..."
"Will you make fun of it later too?"
Roy, weak to the point of collapse, forced the corner of his mouth upward.
"Please allow me to defend myself. I never intended to make fun of Father."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Hm."
Silva said nothing else. He only kept smiling as he descended with Roy in his arms on spiraling currents of wind.
Not long after, they landed again on the clear pool.
There, a head of waist-length black hair approached across the water.
"Who won?"
Illumi walked up through the lake and stopped in front of Silva and Roy.
Father and son looked at each other.
Then they answered in unison:
"I lost."