"This place was quite difficult to find. We had to put in a lot of effort."
A highly discordant voice echoed from the corner of the underground bunker.
The Ten Dons, the absolute rulers of the underworld, snapped their heads toward the sound.
Two figures had appeared in the locked room. One was a young man with pitch-black eyes, a purple cross tattooed on his forehead, blue earrings, and a dark coat bearing an inverted cross. The other was a man dressed like a clown.
Chrollo Lucilfer and Hisoka.
"Who let you in here?! Get out! GUARDS!" a massive, blonde Don roared. He was a former Hunter himself, though years of sitting in a plush leather chair had made him forget what it meant to actually hunt.
"Guards! Get in here!"
"Damn it! How did they get past security?!"
"Freeze!"
The other mafia bosses panicked, pulling gold-plated revolvers and aiming them at the intruders.
But as the blonde Don's shouts echoed into the hallway, the silence that followed made the Dons' blood run cold.
A faint, metallic scent drifted into the room. A thin stream of dark crimson blood seeped beneath the crack of the heavy steel doors.
The elite bodyguards stationed outside were already dead.
The Dons turned pale. These weren't the Shadow Beasts, but every man outside was a highly trained mercenary, the equivalent of Special Forces. Yet, they had been slaughtered without making a single sound.
"Die first!"
The blonde Don, realizing the gravity of the situation, charged at Chrollo. He slipped spiked brass knuckles over his fingers, his aura flaring visibly as he unleashed a punch with the kinetic force of a cannonball.
BAM!
The punch connected.
But the Don's massive fist was stopped dead by a single, pale hand.
The two-meter-tall, muscle-bound Don looked like a raging bull, pushing with all his might. The veins on his forehead popped, and his face turned red, but he couldn't push Chrollo an inch backward.
Chrollo didn't even blink. He casually waved his hand.
CRASH!
The blonde Don was casually swatted away, his massive body smashing into the reinforced concrete wall, leaving a human-shaped crater.
It was a bizarre display of effortless power.
Then, behind Chrollo, the air shimmered.
A massive, skeletal fish materialized out of thin air, swimming through the room as if the air were water.
The Dons watched in absolute horror.
The ghostly fish swam directly toward the blonde Don pinned in the wall. It opened its jaws and violently ripped off a large chunk of the man's arm, swallowing it whole.
But the most terrifying part wasn't the attack itself.
Even though a chunk of his arm was gone, exposing muscle and bone, the blonde Don didn't bleed. He didn't even scream in pain. He just stared at his missing arm, completely numb.
Chrollo pulled up a leather chair and sat down, his dark eyes calmly sweeping over the sweating, terrified men in front of him.
These were the legendary Ten Dons. The emperors of the underworld. Millions of people lived and died on their orders.
But in Chrollo's eyes, they were just insects.
In the face of absolute power, wealth, status, and authority were nothing but illusions.
On the wall, the blonde Don's initial shock finally wore off, replaced by raw, hysterical terror. He watched the [Indoor Fish] take another bite out of his shoulder. Still no blood. Still no pain. But he could see himself being eaten alive.
[Indoor Fish].
A Nen ability Chrollo had stolen using his Bandit's Secret.
These conjured fish could only survive in a sealed room. While they feasted, their victims felt no pain, shed no blood, and could not die. Even if their bodies were reduced to a skeletal torso, as long as the brain was intact, the victim remained perfectly conscious, forced to watch themselves be slowly devoured.
It was the ultimate psychological torture.
"Don't worry, he won't die that easily," Chrollo said softly. "He will get to fully experience the final moments of his life. Now then, allow me to introduce myself. I am Chrollo Lucilfer. The leader of the Phantom Troupe. The man you just put a bounty on."
The room went dead silent, save for the frantic, wet chewing of the fish.
The Dons gasped, their hearts hammering against their ribs. Two of the weaker bosses collapsed to the floor, their legs giving out.
They had just been discussing how to exterminate the Spiders, and now the Head of the Spider was sitting in their bunker.
How is the Phantom Troupe this powerful?!
"I don't particularly enjoy explaining myself to ants," Chrollo said, his voice smooth. "But I will say this: we are victims here, too."
Behind him, the blonde Don's screams turned into a wet gurgle as the Indoor Fish bit into his throat. The sound was horrifying. It served as the perfect background music to Chrollo's polite introduction.
Hisoka sat on a nearby desk, watching Chrollo's performance with a sick, delighted grin.
"W-We can pay you! We'll buy our lives!"
"Yes! Let's negotiate! If you kill us, the entire underworld will collapse into chaos! We'll trigger dead-man switches! You'll be hunted forever!"
"Let's clear this misunderstanding! How about a hundred billion Jenny?! We'll pay you the bounty we just posted!"
The Dons scrambled to bargain. They had reached their positions of power not through raw strength, but through manipulation, wealth, and politics. Like Light Nostrade, they believed money could solve any problem.
But money meant nothing to a Spider.
"The Ten Dons..." Chrollo mused. "I suppose you're the Nine Dons now. Actually... I think nine is still too many."
The moment those words left his mouth, a few of the more ruthless Dons snapped. They knew a death sentence when they heard one.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
They pulled their triggers, firing a hail of bullets at the two intruders.
But they witnessed something they would never forget.
The bullets stopped in mid-air.
Hisoka stood in front of Chrollo, his hands outstretched. An invisible, elastic membrane of Bungee Gum caught every single round.
Swish!
Hisoka flicked his wrists. The Bungee Gum snapped back, returning the bullets with twice the kinetic force.
Splat! Splat!
Two of the Dons were instantly turned into Swiss cheese. Two others, who managed to throw up a desperate layer of Nen, survived the initial volley, though they were badly bloodied.
Before they could even sigh in relief, a flash of red light caught their eyes.
Thwip.
They felt a slight sting on their necks.
Then, a fountain of blood erupted from their throats. They dropped their guns and desperately clutched their necks, trying to stop the bleeding, but the razor-sharp playing cards had severed their arteries perfectly.
The emperors of the underworld fell to the floor, thrashing like fish suffocating on dry land.
The remaining Dons watched in absolute horror as their peers bled out. There was no joy in seeing their rivals eliminated. Only bone-chilling, soul-crushing terror.
"We..." one Don started to speak.
Thwip.
A red card buried itself precisely in the center of his forehead. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
"..."
The room was a slaughterhouse.
Only four Dons remained. They trembled violently, the pristine luxury of their bunker now a bloody tomb.
"It's very rude to speak before you're given permission," Hisoka smiled sadistically.
Chrollo remained completely expressionless.
"..."
The silence was deafening. The four survivors were utterly broken. Behind Chrollo, the blonde Don was now just a screaming head attached to a half-eaten spine.
Chrollo picked up a gold-handled dagger from the desk. He looked at the remaining four Dons the way a shopper inspects produce.
These were the kings of the dark world. But right now, they were no better than stray dogs. Normally, Chrollo wouldn't even bother looking at them. But the Troupe was facing an existential crisis. He needed the influence these men wielded over the normal world.
Shnk.
Chrollo casually threw the dagger.
It embedded itself in the skull of the Don sitting furthest to the left. The man didn't even have time to register what happened before his head slumped forward, dead.
The remaining three Dons nearly suffered heart attacks.
This man killed without blinking. He didn't negotiate. He didn't care about the consequences. He just killed. For the first time in their lives, the Dons understood the terror they had inflicted on countless innocent people. Karma had finally caught up to them.
"I don't eat beef," Chrollo said calmly.
(A reference to a classic mafia movie line, implying: "I don't tolerate bullshit / I do whatever I want, whenever I want.")
"..."
None of the three surviving Dons dared to speak. They trembled, looking at Chrollo with the subservient, pathetic eyes of beaten dogs. Their dignity as Dons was entirely eradicated.
"Good. It's quiet," Chrollo said.
He reached into his coat and tossed a stack of photographs onto the blood-stained table.
Photos of Ryker. Gon. Killua. Kurapika. Leorio.
"I need you to use every resource, every man, and every weapon at your disposal to hunt down and kill this man. And if you can't kill him, capture them," Chrollo commanded.
The three Dons nodded furiously, their heads bobbing like chickens pecking at grain. They had no choice.
"Excellent. Don't disappoint me," Chrollo nodded.
He turned and pushed open the heavy steel door. A gust of cold air carrying the scent of blood rushed in.
The Indoor Fish let out a strange, ethereal cry and vanished.
Without the fish's Nen to sustain him, the blonde Don—now just a mangled head and spine stuck in the wall—finally felt the pain. He let out one last, agonizing, blood-curdling scream before he died.
The three surviving Dons watched in silence as Chrollo and Hisoka walked out into the dark.
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