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Chapter 82: Corpse? Just a Figurine!
BOOM!
The water encasing the hotel churned violently as a massive pillar of spray erupted from the top.
Beneath the surface, the water temperature skyrocketed!
However, the heat didn't spread far, nor did it boil the entire volume of water. The sheer mass of the liquid suppressed it.
The cause of this thermal spike was the bomb dropped by the toy plane.
It wasn't an incendiary bomb; it was a pure explosion of concussive force and radiating super-high temperatures.
On the 18th floor, Chrollo realized the danger the moment the water surged.
It was too late to recall the Super Fortress. In the crisis, he grabbed Kortopi near the window and shouted for Pakunoda to retreat deeper into the room.
The deluge smashed through the broken windows instantly, but that wasn't the worst part.
Chrollo knew exactly what the bomb would do.
Even closing Skill Hunter now wouldn't stop the detonation. The bomb dropped by Super Fortress was triggered to explode the moment it made impact—in this case, with the water!
He gave Kortopi a single command: "Cover us!"
Simultaneously, the pages of his book flipped to a new ability.
Kortopi touched the wall with his left hand, his right hand activating Gallery Fake. Copies of the wall materialized behind the retreating trio, forming a layered barricade against the intruding flood.
More walls appeared like building blocks, boxing them in.
However, this makeshift bunker had gaps, and water began to jet through the cracks!
Chrollo finally released Kortopi and fired his Nen toward the fissures.
Once the aura left his body, its properties shifted rapidly, becoming sticky and thread-like.
This was the ability he had stolen from the Shadow Beast named Worm.
The adhesive web sealed the gaps in the walls, stopping the water from filling their sanctuary. Pakunoda, crouching, touched the puddle that had leaked in.
"It's warm!" Her expression changed as she realized what Chrollo was defending against.
Outside the hotel, the towering water pillar began to collapse. The massive sphere of water, having lost its containment, crashed down and surged outward, washing everything in its path into the surrounding streets.
Ronin, however, was encased in a shark-shaped construct of water, moving through the current at high speed.
Water Style: Water Shark Bullet Technique.
This was Kisame Hoshigaki's signature jutsu. By shaping Chakra into a shark of water, the user could travel rapidly underwater and even glide briefly through the air.
Amaterasu and Susanoo were Chakra hogs. More importantly, using them drained Ronin's ocular power.
His eyes were still in the Mangekyou state.
His vision would recover slowly, but Ronin decided not to use the right eye's Amaterasu again for now. He would switch to his left eye's ability.
Overusing the eyes could lead to blindness.
Everything seemed to align with the Naruto manga's lore regarding the Mangekyou Sharingan. What he didn't know was whether continuing to fuse with Scarlet Eyes would solve the deterioration issue.
If fusion worked, he might eventually unlock the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan after accumulating enough eyes.
If it didn't... well, obtaining the Eternal Mangekyou would become a serious problem.
In the manga, the Eternal Mangekyou required transplanting the eyes of a blood relative—preferably a sibling.
But Ronin was different.
He could fuse eyes endlessly. With over twenty pairs of Scarlet Eyes remaining, he felt he could eventually find a compatible match.
And if he couldn't find one, he had a dark thought: I'll just create a compatible pair!
Inside the Water Shark Bullet, Ronin wasn't alone. He was carrying Kurapika's corpse.
But something felt wrong about the weight.
As he sped out of the floodwaters, he felt the corpse in his grip changing.
A layer of Nen surfaced on the body, and it began to shrink rapidly.
Ronin's heart skipped a beat. He immediately coated his body in Ken.
Did someone tamper with Kurapika's body?
Before the thought could fully form, Ronin realized his hand was empty of human weight. Instead, floating inside the water construct, was a small object.
It was an exquisite, doll-sized figurine of the dead Kurapika he had seen lying on the street.
Ronin froze. A mix of joy and annoyance surged within him.
This "death of Kurapika"... it was a performance.
A performance staged entirely for him!
Ronin recalled telling Kurapika that his eyes had hit a bottleneck—that fusing with more kin might not be enough, and that he needed intense emotional fluctuation to break through.
He had explained this to justify why his eyes shifted from Scarlet Eyes to the Sharingan.
Emotion.
Violent emotional turbulence was the key to evolution.
He hadn't considered it a dangerous secret to share. He thought Kurapika might help him brainstorm.
He just hadn't expected Kurapika to be this proactive.
He remembered Kurapika's question from the night before: "If you were forced to relive that day, would it help you break through?"
So, he had been planning this from the moment he got the intel!
At the time, Ronin didn't know the answer. Now he did.
The key wasn't remembering the massacre of the clan; it was the unacceptable reality of Kurapika's death.
That was the trigger that evolved his Three Tomoe into the Mangekyou.
Over three months, he really had come to see Kurapika as his family in this world.
That brat.
Whoosh!
Ronin burst from the water, landing on a dry section of the street not yet swallowed by the flood.
The Water Shark Bullet dissipated. He clutched the small figurine tightly. Glancing back at the hotel, Ronin created a Shadow Clone and sent it sprinting toward Neon's location.
Meanwhile, he turned his gaze to a Phantom Troupe member being swept toward him by the floodwaters.
It was Isrli!
But before Ronin could strike, a figure leaped from the top of a nearby building.
It was Silva Zoldyck!
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