Tserriednich's recent life had settled into a narrow routine: palace to hotel, hotel to palace.
Fresh "merchandise" still arrived whenever he wanted it, yet even that entertainment eventually grew dull. The new bodyguards—several of them well-known specialists—had given him a measure of confidence he had lacked before. He had even considered whether he should develop real personal power of his own.
The thought of First Prince Benjamin, who trained like a living weapon every single day, killed the idea at once. Tserriednich preferred using his mind. Turning that mind into muscle held no appeal.
The car left the palace grounds and headed for his hotel. The streets were already quiet.
"Have they still not caught that damned assassin?" Tserriednich disliked the silence that had settled over the capital. For more than a month the entire city had lived on edge.
In the passenger seat sat Reid, the tattoo artist whose arms were covered in dense ink.
"No leads at all," Reid answered, scrolling through his phone. "After the two failed attempts he simply vanished."
The driver kept his eyes on the road, expression tight. His ability had triggered again. Exactly as before, he could feel the gaze but could not pinpoint its source. The sensation had become almost constant these past weeks. The assassin was still watching, yet the long silence without an actual strike had worn the entire detail thin. Every time the invisible eyes returned they had to assume an attack was only seconds away.
The feeling returned now. Was the enemy finally looking for an opening?
Brake lights flared on the car ahead.
The driver felt a sudden wrongness and stamped on his own brakes. Reid's hands went still; his posture shifted into full alert. Tserriednich sensed the change in atmosphere but never had time to ask.
The car shuddered, then lifted straight upward.
"Ambush!"
Shouts poured in through the shattered windows. Tserriednich grabbed the overhead handle, trying to steady himself. Glass scored his arm and cheek. Through the broken frame he saw what held the vehicle aloft.
A massive earth dragon.
Something that large had no place in the real world. For a moment he wondered whether he was still asleep.
Reid did not share the doubt. Even while the car rocked he reached back with perfect balance. The tattoos on his arms stirred as if alive, forming a withered skeletal hand that clamped around the prince.
A heavy impact slammed into the roof. The metal caved inward. Tserriednich cried out. Reid used the same motion that seized the prince to slide cleanly from the front seat into the rear.
The driver released the wheel, drew a pistol, and fired a single round into his own arm. Blood sprayed. Outside the car a second enormous arm erupted into existence and seized the earth dragon by the head.
The dragon shattered. The car dropped.
A figure was already diving to meet it—one of Ronin's shadow clones.
From the moment Tserriednich left the palace, every movement had been under observation. The ordinary carrier of the first scroll had reached the ambush point early, bitten his finger, and smeared blood across the paper. The residual life energy in the blood served as the perfect trigger. The seal on the stored clone broke.
The released clone retained fifty percent of the original's chakra at the moment of sealing.
Minutes later the motorcade rolled into position. The clone finished its seals and unleashed Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bullet. The dragon burst from the street and lifted the prince's car skyward.
A second technique followed at once—Earth Style: Falling Clay.
Suspended in mid-air by Earth Style: Super Lightened Boulder Technique, the clone watched the driver sacrifice his own arm to summon the Nen beast that destroyed the dragon. Bodyguards poured from the surrounding vehicles. At least five of them were ability users. They locked onto the floating clone the instant they appeared.
One of them drew a long blade and drove it into his own abdomen without hesitation.
Space behind the clone rippled. A claw shot out, reaching for his back.
The clone's right arm was already sheathed in Earth Style: Rock Fist. Weight flooded the limb. The punch met the claw in mid-air and detonated it. Below, the bodyguard who had summoned the claw vomited blood and collapsed, lifeless.
In that same heartbeat two figures burst from the falling car—Tserriednich and Reid.
Before they could fully clear the wreckage, another figure exploded out of a side street. Blue lightning wreathed the second shadow clone from head to toe. Its target was every Nen user in the detail. Lightning Style Chakra Mode gave it the speed it needed to erase the ability users before any transfer technique could activate.
As Tserriednich's feet touched the ground, a third arm erupted from the pavement and locked around his ankle.
The prince never saw it coming. Reid's tattoos writhed again. An ink-black hand the size of a man's torso formed and smashed downward toward the arm that held the prince.