Chapter 126: Roy's Nen Beast × Three-Legged Golden Crow
Specks of light manifested and gathered into the shape of the short blade, reappearing on the south wall.
Giyu Tomioka and Sakonji Urokodaki, who had not yet fallen asleep, got up and lit the oil lamp to examine it closely. The latter ran his fingers along the blade. "It is Eiichiro's short blade, no mistake."
Everyone exchanged glances.
They looked at one another, speechless. A blade that could "travel" on its own—just like Eiichiro himself, absurd through and through.
After a moment, Sabito said, "Let us ask Eiichiro tomorrow morning."
He was certain this had something to do with the boy.
But the boy was sleeping soundly, leaving a roomful of adults who had worried themselves sick over his blade at a complete loss for words.
"Everyone sleep," Urokodaki said. It was only a few hours until dawn. The old man could wait.
Giyu nodded and blew out the lamp himself.
The cabin rustled for a while longer before falling silent again.
Hunter world.
Q&A Town.
Roy dismissed the short blade and gripped the cane-sword planted in the ground once more.
He smiled at Nakajima Sachiko. "I will not disturb your proctoring any further."
His ears twitched. Faint footsteps echoed from the alley entrance—probably the other candidates who had followed close behind him. Sachiko smiled and nodded. Through the shared vision of the "children," she saw two boys emerge from the forest on either side and stop at the town entrance.
On the left, a boy with a face full of needles and a blank expression. On the right, a boy with a katana at his waist, a blue cap pulled low, and sharp eyes. Neither looked easy to deal with.
Sachiko sighed inwardly. This batch of candidates was truly troublesome. She turned and instructed the "children" to open the gate to the next stage of the exam, then forced a smile at Roy. "There is a cedar tree on the mountain. The guide lives there."
Whether the "guide" would actually guide these kids… Sachiko could not guarantee it. After all, the guide had a special identity, and she did not even have a phone number.
Rumble. The heavy stone door rolled open, revealing a deep passage.
Roy nodded slightly at Sachiko. Under the watchful eyes of Illumi and Kite, who had just arrived, he stepped through first. Gotoh and Rika flanked him on either side.
The stone door closed.
Only Illumi and Kite remained, facing Sachiko with thoughtful expressions.
"Young Master, someone has been monitoring us the whole time," Gotoh said as they ran through the dark passage. He could faintly hear mechanical whirring sounds. Ever sensitive to cameras, he had keenly noticed several positions.
"That is normal," Rika said, following his gaze. A few red lights flickered and vanished. She struggled to keep pace with Roy, panting as she spoke. "The exam started the moment we boarded the ship."
"Official or unofficial—it is just rhetoric, the Hunter Association can change at any time."
Rika quietly edged closer to Roy. A woman's sixth sense told her the cameras were all following her. She glanced up suspiciously.
Aboard the airship, Netero noticed the girl's gaze and chuckled. "Sharp little thing. That outfit is no ordinary attire."
"She is Kurta Clan," Beans said, his vast knowledge allowing him to identify Rika at a glance. He stole a careful look at Zeno and chose his words cautiously. "These ancient peoples live in dire circumstances. That girl is probably taking the exam, hoping to become a Hunter and support her tribe."
Beans spoke delicately, but his words subtly warned Zeno that the girl's motives were impure.
Zeno stood with his hands behind his back, expressionless and utterly unconcerned.
Who cares what clan she is from? As long as her hips are wide enough to bear children, if anything happens, the Zoldycks will flatten whoever stands in the way.
What concerned him more as a grandfather was Roy.
Netero had been right earlier. The boy had chosen the sun as his visualization. His ambition was staggering. Conjuring a Nen beast would not be easy.
Like the dragon to Zeno, or the Hundred-Type Guanyin to Netero—the stronger the object born from "questioning the heart," the harder it was to manifest a Nen beast or develop a Nen ability.
He frowned, saying nothing.
At one point, his ears twitched. Netero, as if reading his mind, said quietly, "Combining the sun and a beast… this old man cannot imagine what that would correspond to."
Dragons and Guanyin both had real-world counterparts. The former truly existed—the Zoldyck family kept one. The latter drew from Buddhist saints, and statues could be found in any believer's home.
But the sun and a beast? Separately, they were easy to find. One rose every day, the other was everywhere. Together, though, it was hard to pinpoint a symbolic reference.
"Old age dulls the imagination. Understandable," Zeno said, though it was unclear whether he was mocking Netero or himself, or both. His gaze swept the screen, always locked on Roy. The boy walked and pondered, clearly wrestling with the same question.
Rika and Gotoh both noticed his distraction and wisely stayed silent.
After about an hour, a faint light appeared ahead at the end of the passage.
They quickened their pace. Emerging from the tunnel, they found themselves facing a small lake, its surface glittering with ripples.
A small boat was moored by the shore. Gotoh and Rika took up the oars without being asked.
They looked back at Roy. The boy leapt onto the bow, still deep in thought, and the boat swayed as it moved toward the far shore. His mind kept turning over what Nakajima Sachiko had said: "Because of the deepest longing in her heart, she unconsciously conjured the doll."
His thoughts gradually anchored on his visualization: the sun.
Just as Biscuit desired youth and conjured the humanoid Nen beast Cookie-chan, and Razor loved volleyball and conjured the Fourteen Devils…
Nen beasts were not random. Everything followed the heart. "So in the end, I must return to the sun. Use it as the template to conjure a Nen beast uniquely my own."
Roy felt as if he had grasped something. His thoughts cleared, his gaze sharpened. He scanned his surroundings and noticed stone tablets floating on both shores and even in the water, inscribed with unknown symbols.
"These are writings left by the ancient Mo Tribe. They once had a glorious civilization, or so it is said," Rika said, gripping her oar but not rowing—slacking off, essentially.
Gotoh glared at her and realized he had no real recourse against her.
Noticing Roy's gaze, the girl explained further. "I do not know the details. If you want to know more, Young Master, I can look through the history books when we return."
"No need," Roy said.
"There is an expert here."
He suddenly turned toward the forest on both sides. Gotoh immediately fired a coin wrapped in Ten, grazing Roy's ear and striking the spot where his gaze had focused.
"Young Master, it looks like a fox!"
Clink. The coin was deflected by an elongated claw and spun back into Gotoh's hand.
The young butler shot to his feet, about to act, when a milk-white Nen thread pierced the air, moving far faster than the coin. Whoosh. It wrapped around one of the creature's legs.
Amid its panicked shriek, Roy yanked it over. Thud. It crashed at his feet.
"It really is a fox!" Rika's eyes went wide.
The fox was enormous, nearly twice the size of a grown man. It seemed to have fleshy wings under its ribs. Could it fly?
"Ow! That hurt! Is this how you treat a guide?"
"Guide?" Gotoh frowned.
Rika: "…"
The fox scrambled to its feet and transformed into a woman, glaring "fiercely" at them. "Yes, I am!"
She bared her teeth at Roy, the one who had "arrested" her. The Nen thread was still tied around her ankle, held in the boy's hand.
"Damn brat. Young, but your Nen training is excellent."
She had been subdued in the blink of an eye. Not to be underestimated.
"Daring to bare your teeth at the Young Master," Gotoh said, eyes narrowing. He turned to Roy. "Young Master, we should just kill her."
A mere magical beast thinking it could impersonate a guide just because it could turn human? Absurd.
Rika frowned but said nothing. She had a feeling the "fox girl" was telling the truth.
Roy retracted the Nen thread and looked at the woman calmly, his gaze lingering on the mark on her wrist. He was not worried she would run. He asked directly, "Are you the Kiriko mother or the Kiriko daughter?"
In the original story, a family of Kiriko lived in a cabin beneath the cedar tree on the mountain—parents and children. Since she had transformed into a woman, she was clearly female.
The fox girl was visibly startled. Her eyes grew wary as she looked at Roy.
Roy smiled. "I mean no harm. I would just like to ask—what is the connection between the mark on your body and these Mo Tribe symbols?"
A lost civilization and a magical beast seemingly "guarding" the ruins. Roy felt he had caught a glimmer of something, but could not quite see it clearly.
The fox girl backed away cautiously. She had not expected this boy to see through her identity at a glance and even know about her clan. She swallowed and said, "They are sacrificial texts to the 'god.' The same as the mark on my body. Born with it. My father said…"
"It involves our ancestors' worship of the 'god.' As long as we believe in the god and make offerings, the god will send down oracles and grant blessings. This mark is proof of the blessing."
God. Worship. Roy's brow furrowed. He chewed on those two words. In the original story, this very woman had told Kurapika about the marks. What she said now was almost identical to what she would say in the future.
Splash. "Young Master, she jumped in the water!"
Seizing the moment while Roy was lost in thought, the woman dove into the lake and swam rapidly toward shore.
Cunning as a fox indeed.
Gotoh moved to chase, but Roy stopped him halfway.
"Let her go. We will see her again soon."
The woman had been right about one thing: she really was the guide. Not just her—her brother and her parents too.
"So she was the guide after all," Rika said, catching the subtext in Roy's words. She looked up at the boy and froze.
Roy paid no attention to the Kiriko daughter's escape. His mind kept turning over the words "god" and "worship." He stared blankly at the glittering lake surface ahead, lost in thought.
"That is it. God. Worship. These ancient magical beasts and peoples all have ancestor worship, totem worship." As a transmigrator and reincarnator, Roy realized he had been gradually forgetting his past life as he integrated into the Hunter world.
But it was his past life that had opened the Gate of Cognition. How could he forget?
One must live in the present and look to the future, but one must not forget the past.
In the world of his past life, myths and legends about the sun were not uncommon.
Like Kuafu Chasing the Sun.
Like Helios Driving the Sun Chariot across the sky each day.
Like Ra Sailing His Boat across the Sky, battling the serpent Apep each night.
Like Amaterasu Hiding in a Cave, plunging the world into darkness.
Like the Golden Crow Pulling the Chariot.
"Golden Crow… Golden Crow…" Two suns flared to life in Roy's dark eyes. A faint smile curved his lips. His gaze burned brighter than ever before. "In the sun dwells a three-legged crow, in the moon dwells a jade toad. The Golden Crow rides the sun chariot. The sun and the divine beast…"
"My Nen beast shall be the Three-Legged Golden Crow!"
Enlightenment dawned.
His thoughts flowed freely.
Boom!
His aura nodes burst wide open.
The boy, struck by revelation, unleashed Ren in a torrent, forming a crimson storm with him at its center.
Before Rika could even understand what was happening, two blazing red hands extended and carried her and Gotoh to the far shore. The two of them turned back in a daze. At the center of the lake—
Roy spread his hands. Scorching Truth flowed across his palms. He closed his eyes and began constructing the form of the Three-Legged Golden Crow in his mind.
Hiss.
The lake water heated, boiled, bubbled, evaporated.
Crimson aura surged. Everywhere it touched began to smoke, ignite, burn, and melt.
The Kiriko daughter, who had just climbed out of the water and scrambled into the forest, suddenly felt heat on her back. She turned, and her long, narrow fox eyes went wide. She missed her footing and tumbled down with a shriek. "Fire… it is on fire?"
"What the hell is that red aura?"
Fear of the unknown crashed through her. The forest behind her ignited. The cameras hidden within began to wail under the unbearable heat.
A series of shrill alarms rang out.
Even through the monitor, it was clear they were about to fail.
Aboard the airship bearing the giant Hunter Association logo, one old man sat bolt upright. The other's pupils contracted. Both stared at the boy on the screen, transfixed. They could faintly see massive wings flowing with golden light and blazing heat unfurl from the boy's back with a whoosh.
Then came a cry that shook the heart and soul.
Like a great bell tolling, it swept in all directions. As if someone had taken a mallet and struck a bronze bell right beside their ears.
Gong. Ears rang. Hearts trembled. Brief deafness.
"Are you stupid? Cover your ears!"
"Are you blind? I already did!"
Faced with Gotoh's reminder, Rika had been even faster, covering her ears at the first instant.
Now, standing in a sea of fire, the lake steaming before them and the forest burning behind, the two could find no words to describe what they felt. They could only stare blankly at the center of the lake.
Wings of light spread from the boy's back. Slowly, a massive golden bird emerged.