Xiyou tilted his head upward, silently counting the number of ability users who had attacked him.
Six, most likely.
The one raining Nen bullets from above. The swordsman below using En for precision strikes in a tight radius. The one controlling the waiter. The one who had fabricated the entire building. And the pair with similar abilities—one man, one woman—who had crashed in through the window.
Straightforward frontal fighters did not concern him. Specialists of this variety were the real annoyance.
He drove the Ruyi Staff straight up through the ceiling and began climbing at speed.
Below, the Troupe members started ascending just as quickly.
Two of them remained outside the building: Kortopi, still maintaining the duplicate structure that held Xiyou trapped, and Hisoka, phone in hand.
The first wave inside consisted of Nobunaga and Franklin.
They located Xiyou first. Franklin's machine-gun hands erupted, pouring a dense storm of Nen bullets toward him.
The Vision Monkey materialized behind Xiyou. It caught the Ruyi Staff he had tossed back and spun it into a blurred disc, batting every incoming bullet that would have struck him cleanly aside.
Nobunaga accelerated. He did not try to pass the monkey. The moment he closed distance he shifted into a drawing cut, long blade flashing from the scabbard straight at the creature's neck.
In the instant before the strike landed, the Vision Monkey reached up and pulled the red ribbon free from its eyes.
A pair of brilliant, piercing eyes met Nobunaga's gaze as the ribbon fluttered away. His draw stalled. The sharp focus in his own eyes scattered.
In that same fraction of a second the monkey flung the staff behind it and hurled its own body into the oncoming hail of Nen bullets.
The Vision Monkey's form was shredded in an instant. A thunderous shout erupted from the space behind the dissolving corpse.
At the same moment both Nobunaga and Franklin felt a sudden heat bloom at their ears. Their heads went heavy and swimming.
The Hearing Monkey and the Mute Monkey had moved together.
One had removed the headphones. The other had opened its mouth and roared.
The headphones that had been locked on Chrollo's head vanished the moment the Hearing Monkey reappeared. He understood immediately: Xiyou had canceled the restriction on him and redirected the ability.
Nobunaga and Franklin's kneeling figures entered Chrollo's line of sight a heartbeat later. Blood ran from both men's ears. Even as they forced themselves upright they swayed like drunks.
Three large monkey corpses, torn apart by Nen bullets, still lay on the floor ahead.
Constructs formed from hair and Nen… and they had not vanished at once.
Chrollo, Pakunoda, and Machi never slowed. They did not stop to examine the injuries. They simply continued upward after Xiyou.
While they climbed, Chrollo finished mapping the ability.
Vision Monkey. Hearing Monkey. Mute Monkey.
Each could strip the corresponding sense from a target on contact. Each could also remove its own restriction to unleash a special effect. The cost was immediate and visible: when those secondary powers activated, Xiyou's own eyes, ears, or mouth underwent the same change.
Worse, once a monkey used that power and was then destroyed, it entered a prolonged "death" state. During that window Xiyou could fight only with his own body.
The single critical question remaining was simple.
With all three monkeys temporarily offline, what exact condition was Xiyou in right now?
One clear look at his face would answer it.
Xiyou's condition was poor.
His eye sockets were empty black hollows. His ears had vanished completely—even the canals sealed shut. The lower half of his face was a smooth, unbroken plane where the mouth should have been.
No sight. No hearing. No speech.
Yet his climbing speed showed not the slightest hesitation. Inside his mind the count continued without pause.
Forty-five. Forty-four—
Once the monkeys expended their special abilities and were destroyed, a one-minute backlash period locked him down.
He had already calculated every direction and every obstacle in advance. As long as he followed the plan, the countdown would end the moment he reached the rooftop.
The Ruyi Staff punched upward again. The ceiling shattered. Debris struck near him; he felt the impacts through the vibration in the floor.
Knees flexed. He leapt.
Sixteenth floor.
The hotel rose twenty-four stories. The creator of the duplicate could not freely rewrite the interior layout on the fly. That limitation gave him room to work.
Two steps. Staff again.
Seventeenth.
From the broken ceiling below, Chrollo could not see Xiyou's movements. En confirmed the man was not waiting in ambush at the hole. The three monkey corpses still had not vanished. That fact alone supplied extra margin.
Fourteenth.
Fifteenth—
When Chrollo's group reached the eighteenth floor, Xiyou was already on the twenty-first.
The gap had closed enough that both sides could sense each other through En.
No one relaxed. Chrollo's brow tightened. Xiyou's movements remained too fluid, too precise. The theory that the man was operating completely blind, deaf, and mute began to fray.
Pakunoda raised her revolver without a word.
The shot cracked. The bullet punched through the ceiling and continued upward.
Xiyou's advance paused for the first time. The count in his head had reached seventeen. His foot stomped hard. Chunks of floor, wrapped in Nen, shot upward and intercepted the incoming round.
In that same instant Nen threads slipped silently onto his floor and began coiling toward him.
Machi.
The threads were under In. Sensing them through En was nearly impossible. Only Gyo—sharpening the eyes' perception—could reveal them.
The moment the threads brushed his body, the Ruyi Staff that had just smashed the ceiling twisted. It slid between the tightening coils and his torso before they could lock.
Nen surged along the staff, reshaping the wood into a keen edge. In a single motion the blade severed Machi's threads.
Even so, by the time Xiyou reached the twenty-second floor, Chrollo's group had already gained the twentieth.
The distance had narrowed again.
More critically, the instant Xiyou stepped onto the twenty-second floor his entire body locked.
His hand froze at his waist, fingers closed around a thin antenna.
Less than ten centimeters from those fingers, a second antenna stood upright.
The one clutched in his grip had come from Machi's severed Nen thread.
The second had appeared from nowhere and pierced straight into his body.
If his eyes had still functioned, he would have seen the perfect circle of Nen thread drawn across his waist.
The antenna was planted dead center inside that circle.
A short distance away, Chrollo finished climbing onto the twenty-second floor.
One hand held Bandit's Secret, a bookmark already slid between the pages.
The other hand held a short blowgun.