Xiyou was strong.
That fact had already been carved into every member of the Phantom Troupe the moment the assault began.
But strength like his was never absolute.
Sensory-deprivation abilities could decide a one-on-one fight in an instant. Against seven coordinated opponents, the same tools simply could not deliver the result Xiyou needed.
Chrollo, stripped of hearing, never sensed the blind monkey that appeared behind him. The attack still missed. Nen threads already laced across his body—left there by Machi from the first second of the fight—yanked him clear. The monkey's strike tore empty air.
In that same heartbeat Chrollo registered that Xiyou's presence had vanished from the floor.
He ignored the three oversized monkeys completely. One step carried him to the exact spot where Xiyou had stood moments earlier.
The floorboards there were already shredded. Franklin's bullets and Nobunaga's blade had done most of the damage, but the feature that made Chrollo's eyes narrow was the clean, man-sized hole punched straight through the center.
That hole had not been aimed at Nobunaga.
It had been Xiyou's escape route.
He was going to be disappointed.
The floor below was not an exit.
It was a maze.
From the opening move Chrollo had predicted the only rational choice a fighter of Xiyou's caliber would make under seven-to-one odds: disengage, regroup, then strike again when the numbers favored him. That was why Kortopi had been stationed on the lower floor from the start—to turn the entire building into a cage the target could never leave.
Xiyou's mouth reappeared on his face. His expression had gone hard.
The instant the attack landed he had already decided a mutual slaughter served no purpose.
More accurately, it served the wrong purpose.
As a professional bounty hunter he would have been happy to claim every head in the room. Each one carried a multi-billion Jenny price tag. The problem was simple arithmetic. One against seven left him no reliable path to taking all of them. The correct play was to read their abilities under pressure, break contact, and choose the counterstrike later.
As for Beyond—any deals or favors between them could end right here.
He had never expected Beyond to be the one who set the trap.
They were not strangers. Each knew the broad outlines of the other's power. They had even agreed to travel to the Dark Continent together. Looking at the current situation, that agreement now felt one-sided.
Unless Beyond was still testing him.
Or testing the Phantom Troupe.
If the Troupe managed to kill him, they would have passed Beyond's examination. If they all died or allowed him to escape, Xiyou still could not simply walk away from Beyond's organization—not if he intended to reach the goal he had already set for himself.
Typical Netero-family thinking. They played with people in the open and never feared the moment the toy finally snapped. They seemed to enjoy the helpless rage.
No wonder Beyond and Pariston got along so well.
Xiyou's thoughts stayed cold while the Ruyi Staff smashed sideways into the nearest wall. At the exact instant the staff left his hands he drove one foot down with explosive force.
Wall and floor shattered together.
Beyond the broken wall was another identical room. The floor, however, opened onto something new.
Not an illusion-type ability, then.
Xiyou dropped his center of gravity, spun the staff, and drove it into the floor again. He fell.
His original floor had been thirteen. The first collapse put him on twelve. The second drop brought him to eleven. He kept going, punching through five more levels in rapid succession before another wrong detail forced him to stop.
Except for the floors above, the entire building registered as empty of living auras.
That should not have been possible.
While Xiyou remained trapped inside the structure, the street outside had already descended into chaos.
An identical hotel had appeared directly beside the original, pressed so tightly against it that the road itself warped. Traffic slammed to a halt against the sudden wall of concrete and glass.
The architect of the duplicate stood a short distance away, wrapped in white cloth that left only one eye visible.
Kortopi.
He had touched the entire hotel the moment Nobunaga's first attack landed. After that he simply walked out. When the signal came from Hisoka, he created the second building out of thin air.
The two towers stood flush against each other. Every aggressive move Xiyou made after dropping to the twelfth floor only transferred him from the original structure into the copy.
The sole difference between the buildings was the presence of people.
Kortopi's replica was empty—an absolute cage. He did not even need to enter it. The copy itself functioned as an extension of his En; every location Xiyou occupied inside it registered clearly.
Chrollo appeared beside him, the rest of the Troupe already withdrawn from the real hotel and following in his wake.
"The space isn't that large," Chrollo said. "Do whatever you want. We keep the pressure on."
Kortopi gave a small nod.
He was certain Xiyou could not leave. Whenever the target reached a window, the view outside was only the interior of the neighboring tower.
Sirens wailed along the street. The first officers to arrive stared at the impossible second building with the blank expression of men who had just seen a ghost.
Inside the replica, Xiyou finished his own assessment.
Someone was manufacturing architecture on demand, forcing him to move forever through interiors that never opened onto the real city.
Two possible weak points remained.
Underground.
Or the roof.
He did not believe even this ability could fabricate a parking garage beneath solid earth. Reaching the original building's basement from his current position, however, bordered on impossible.
That left only one practical option.
The rooftop.