A/N: To avoid new readers not wanting to read the work introduction, I'm writing it here as well.
This work is purely a personal interest project, powered by love, and mixed with a large amount of personal settings (made as reasonable as possible). Warning:
The protagonist is an ordinary person, so he will not be decisive in killing or neatly solving all problems, but he will grow gradually!
The protagonist is a transmigrator and does not know the anime's plot!
The protagonist has it pretty rough in the early stage, pretty rough, pretty rough! Important things are said three times.
Therefore, if some parts of the story don't suit your taste, if you don't accept cruel treatment of protagonist, think that not wanting to kill indiscriminately makes someone a saint, then for the mental and physical health of both you and the author, please leave immediately. There are countless novels—why waste time on one that doesn't suit your appetite?
Thank you for your cooperation.
(Discussion of the plot is welcome, but writing guidance is politely declined.)
This article is suitable for all readers who have watched the Hunter anime or not. You can read it with your brain on—the author will do their best to carefully consider things so that every character is written with a brain and the plot feels very "Hunter." But even if you read it without thinking, you'll gain a different kind of enjoyment~
(ps: brain storage area)
...
The wind swept up fallen leaves and gravel, knocking against the roof of the shack with clattering sounds.
The air was filled with the pungent stench of garbage baked under the blazing sun, mixed with a faint trace of blood.
A young man in a black suit slowly walked into the alley. At the end of the alley, in front of a shack whose entrance was hard to make out, he lightly knocked on the door, then pushed it open and walked inside.
Inside, the air was so stifling that not even a breath of wind could get through. It was dim and filthy. At what could barely be called a counter—the piece of wood with items placed on it—sat a disheveled old man.
"Sorry to trouble you. This time, I need four types of abilities."
The young man smiled and spoke to the old man.
There was a dark bluish inverted cross tattoo on his forehead. With black hair and eyes, his temperament was clean and clear, like an intellectual from high society or a university professor—completely out of place in the filthy Meteor City District Twelve.
The old man slowly opened his eyes—he had only one eye. His cloudy eyeball appraised the visitor, while the other eye socket, where an eye should have been, was nothing but a hollow void.
"Four abilities. Each ability costs ten thousand. The crafting fee is ten thousand. Total: fifty thousand jenny."
The old man spoke. His voice was terrifyingly hoarse, like two pieces of metal grinding against each other.
The young man placed a stack of ten-thousand-jenny bills on the counter. In the one-eyed old man's remaining eye, a light called greed flared up. He rasped,
"The customer might as well say if there are any other requirements."
The young man smiled gently.
"I want to see the person who makes the ability badges."
The one-eyed old man's expression instantly turned cold.
"That's against the rules—"
But the young man placed another stack of ten-thousand-jenny bills on the table.
Suspicion, hesitation, greed, and killing intent flashed one after another in the old man's eye. He stared fixedly at the young man, let out a cold laugh, and said,
"Follow me."
The young man nodded and withdrew the hand pressing on the bills.
He followed the one-eyed old man through a hidden door behind the counter, walked down a long corridor, and at the end of the corridor was a room. Just as they were about to reach the doorway, the old man turned back and locked eyes with the young man, his gaze carrying a warning.
The young man smiled, nodded, and spread his hands, signaling that he wouldn't move forward anymore.
Only then did the old man slowly pace to the doorway. Beside the door sat a wooden box one meter wide and one meter tall. He slowly squatted down and unlocked the lid.
From not too far away, and with the use of "Gyo" in Nen, the young man could clearly see what was inside the box.
Inside was a white-haired boy. It was impossible to tell his age, but his size was that of a seven-year-old child. He sat naked in the box. The bones of his legs and arms had been broken and bent outward. Chains were fastened around his ankles, and a heavy shackle was locked around his neck, securing him to the box wall. The bottom of the box was filled with filth mixed with bloodstains; the smell was likely comparable to District Eleven, the largest garbage dump.
The boy stared wide-eyed. His blue-gray eyes were empty and lifeless, like a doll that had had its soul pulled out and been played until broken. The moment he saw the one-eyed old man, his whole body convulsed and trembled, letting out whimpering sounds again and again.
The one-eyed old man gave a satisfied cold laugh. From a nearby shelf, he took down a piece of moldy bread. Half-squatting in front of the box, he held the bread up before the boy's eyes.
"Ah… ah…"
The boy's fear was replaced by hunger. He drooled uncontrollably, struggling to lift his already broken hand to reach for it. His eyes were fixed on that piece of moldy bread—and only that piece of bread.
The one-eyed old man raised the bread higher and tapped the box four times with his other hand.
"Four types."
The boy seemed not to hear, still reaching for the bread. The one-eyed old man grabbed the hand he had barely managed to lift and bent it slightly—
"Ah—ah…!"
The boy let out agonized moans. Snot and tears fell together as his body twisted and convulsed. The back of his head slammed again and again against the box wall, making dull banging sounds.
"Four types."
The one-eyed old man tapped the box four more times, producing heavy thuds, and repeated himself.
The boy trembled. He slowly closed his eyes. With his movement, a four-cornered badge surfaced in front of him, gleaming with metallic luster in four colors—cyan, blue, red, and yellow—each color occupying one section. The light dimmed, and before the badge could fall to the bottom of the box, the one-eyed old man snatched it with lightning speed.
The one-eyed old man stood up and turned to face the young man, trembling as he handed the badge over to him.
The young man raised his hand to take it.
The next second, a cold flash of light passed.
The one-eyed old man couldn't bear to part with the tens of thousands of jenny, nor did he want to let anyone who had seen the secret leave alive. But the dagger that had appeared in his hand at some point clattered to the ground with a crisp sound.
The young man's figure crossed past the one-eyed old man. With his hands casually clasped behind his back, he stood beside the box.
His eyes met the boy's inside the box, and then he realized in surprise that the boy's eyes were not truly blue-gray—the gray had merely been a shadow covering the moon.
At this moment, the shadow dispersed. The silver-blue gaze was no longer empty or hazy. Reflected within it was the one-eyed old man lying on the ground, and beyond that, endless anger and killing intent.
The young man chuckled softly. He reached out and placed his hand on the bloodstained box.
The one-eyed old man shakily struggled to his feet. Clutching his broken right hand, he stared at the secret that was about to be released and shouted in shock and rage,
"Don't touch him—! You're not allowed to touch him—!"
"Interesting."
The young man also tapped the box and said,
"A box that seals Nen. Only after the box is opened can Nen be used, and even then, only the permitted portion."
He glanced at the chains.
"These chains probably won't be that easy to undo."
In the one-eyed old man's eyes, the young man's reflection looked like a demon. He screamed hysterically,
"You're not allowed to touch him! Don't—don't—!"
Yet he didn't dare step forward to stop him.
The young man looked at the boy in the box. The boy's gaze fell on the shackle around his own neck. Following his line of sight, the young man looked at the collar and spoke,
"Is it enough to just remove the one around your neck?"
He paused.
"It's not impossible. Then how are you going to repay me?"
Pretending to think for a moment, he smiled.
"Little guy, after you come out of the box, give your ability to me."
The next instant, the young man pressed his fingers against the shackle, which was as thick as a baby's arm. With a sharp crack, the shackle was crushed just like that.
The young man slowly stepped back.
The boy in the box slowly lifted his head. Moving his broken hands and feet, the corners of his mouth curved into something that could not be called a smile.
The young man saw that smile.
Strangely enough, this crippled boy—someone he could crush to death with ease—actually, for a brief moment, felt like his own kind.
The one-eyed old man watched the boy, who was using all his strength to hook his elbow over the edge of the box to keep himself from collapsing. His entire body trembled violently, just as the boy had trembled when he was locked inside the box.
Dragging his body, heavily injured by the young man's single strike, the old man turned and staggered toward the doorway. But as if he had slammed into a wall, he crashed into the hidden door leading out and was bounced back into the corridor.
In shock, he saw that the door had somehow been covered in Nen. Enraged to the extreme and terrified to the extreme, he turned his head and saw the young man he had led into the corridor slowly closing a black notebook in his hand.
Before he could curse with the foulest words in the world, he saw a white-covered book appear in the boy's hand.
The boy opened his silver-blue, empty eyes and gently raised one hand.
The one-eyed old man was drowned by flames and whirlwinds filling the entire space, by rock spikes thrusting inward from all directions, and by ice spikes dancing through the air.
...
The Nen rampage stopped after one minute. The boy hanging onto the box wall fell to the ground.
The one-eyed old man no longer resembled anything he once was.
Spikes that had burst from the ground pierced through his spine. Large portions of his body were carbonized, causing the ice spikes—half melted—to fail to lodge properly and fall to the ground. Lumps of flesh and vaporized bloodstains covered the area around the corpse.
The Nen box that had trapped the boy was burned to ashes by raging flames filled with endless anger. The boy didn't even bother to dodge the Nen fire that burned onto his body; he only wished that the flames would burn away all the filth clinging to him.
After the Nen rampage ended, the boy's face was deathly pale. He gasped for breath again and again. After an unknown amount of time, he remembered that there was still someone else here. He lifted his head and met the gaze of the young man who had been smiling down at him all along.
The young man floated in midair. Flames, rock spikes, whirlwinds, and ice shards from all directions packed the corridor, which was less than a meter wide, yet not even a single wrinkle appeared on the young man's clothes.
"Ah… uh…"
The boy seemed to want to speak, but he had forgotten how to speak. A confused expression appeared on his face. After thinking for a long while, what came out were still meaningless monosyllables.
The boy gave up.
He tried to stand, but fell back to the ground. After remaining silent for a while, he simply closed his eyes, and his Nen slowly withdrew back into his body.
The young man bent down and cautiously reached out to touch the boy, but the moment his hand made contact, the boy—like someone who had lost all the bones in his body, which was indeed the case—collapsed toward him.