Kurapika looked surprised when he saw Shizuku's reaction. Unless she hadn't seen the same illusion as them, it was hard to imagine someone remaining so calm and collected after such an immersive doomsday experience. Even Liam, usually carefree, had been visibly shaken. But Shizuku's expression hadn't changed at all! Someone who didn't know better would think she was just looking at ordinary park scenery.
Liam didn't disturb Shizuku. Strictly speaking, neither he nor Kurapika had insisted on watching the entire doomsday vision. He wanted to know how long this vision lasted and how much Shizuku could endure.
A few minutes later, Shizuku's eyes seemed to flicker. She recovered and said, "Ah, it's over."
Are you disappointed or something?
Liam stopped Shizuku as she started to turn around, holding her in place.
Shizuku looked confused, then glanced down at her feet.
Kurapika understood. "Why did it end? If Shizuku's aura is still triggering the divine script, why did the ability contained in the script stop on its own?"
"Does it have a built-in cooldown?" Liam hypothesized.
Unfortunately, the other two present had little exposure to video games. Liam could only explain, "It's like a cooldown timer. After watching the cutscene once, do you have to wait a while before you can watch it a second time?"
Kurapika nodded and looked at the two pairs of divine characters on the empty ground on either side of Shizuku, where he and Liam had been standing.
"We'll know after testing it."
Liam and Kurapika stood on the script again, releasing their aura and trying to trigger the characters under their feet. Nothing happened.
"Is the cooldown not ready yet, or is it a one-time use, read-and-destroy kind of thing?"
Liam shifted his feet in confusion. The two lines of divine script hadn't been trampled or destroyed like the divine script space had been.
The same was true for Kurapika, who couldn't see the immersive doomsday scene a second time. After he stepped away, he spent a few minutes in silence, then drew two lines of divine script one after another. "Maybe with the ability contained in these two lines of divine script, I can only see the illusion once..."
Liam said in surprise, "Hold on. Pyon taught me the second one. How did you learn to draw the first one?"
"I saw you draw it a few times and accidentally learned it." Kurapika calmly stood on top of the two newly drawn lines of divine script, looking blank.
After a while, Liam asked eagerly, "What did you see?"
Kurapika took two steps back silently. "Nothing appeared."
"So either the cooldown hasn't finished, or the cooldown isn't on the divine script itself, but on the person viewing the illusion." Liam said.
"One person can only watch it once." Kurapika pondered, then looked at Shizuku with Liam.
Liam asked, "Shizuku, what else did you see after we stopped?"
"Nothing special." Shizuku said. "The sky shattered, the ground collapsed, and many strange people died... The images were actually very jumpy and disconnected. The meaning they wanted to express was too abstract, though some parts meant nothing at all."
"It's expressing the end of the world, so of course it'll be relatively abstract." Kurapika hesitated for a long time, then couldn't help asking, "It wasn't just an illusion. It should have had some kind of emotion attached to it. A highly contagious feeling of despair, desolation, and helplessness. All very negative emotions. Were you not affected?"
Shizuku looked at him even more strangely. "Your entire clan was wiped out. After experiencing something like that, you're still affected by external negative emotions that don't even belong to you?"
Kurapika choked, and his eyes couldn't help turning red. He took a deep breath. "Sorry. I can't control my emotions very well yet."
Liam patted Shizuku on the shoulder and said aside, "Because of that, the fact that even Kurapika was affected shows how contagious the despair attached to that illusion is, doesn't it?"
He'd almost forgotten that Shizuku was sometimes too blunt, bordering on sharp-tongued.
"Also, Kurapika." Liam addressed him again. "Where Shizuku comes from isn't as ordinary as this park or city, and it's not as sheltered from the world as the clan you once lived in, far from the hustle and bustle. That place is called Meteor City. Although I haven't been there yet, I'm guessing emotions like despair, sadness, helplessness, or even so-called doomsday scenes, should be quite familiar to many people in Meteor City."
"Meteor City?" Kurapika thought for a moment, remembered the name of this place, and murmured to himself, "We reject nothing, so take nothing from us..."
More than two years had passed since the Kurta Clan tragedy. The boy seeking revenge had naturally collected any information he could find about the Phantom Troupe frantically.
Not to mention, many news reports about the genocide at the time had mentioned a so-called message left at the scene: "We reject nothing, so take nothing from us."
The Kurta orphan's eyes turned red unconsciously. His emotions became uncontrollably agitated. He stared at Shizuku and demanded, "Tell me. This Meteor City that Liam mentioned, is it the same Meteor City where those words were left at the site of the Kurta tragedy?"
Shizuku said, "Don't look at me with those eyes."
"Are you also—"
There was a heavy thud, and the red color in Kurapika's eyes went out. His eyes lost their highlights and rolled white. His body went limp. Liam, who couldn't help but hold his forehead in exasperation, caught him just in time and laid him flat on the ground.
Shizuku had materialized Blinky at some point.
Just as Kurapika had gotten worked up, she'd summoned the vacuum cleaner and knocked him unconscious.
Shizuku gripped the vacuum cleaner and said to the knocked-out Kurapika, "The second rule of The Ten: companions help each other, don't interfere with each other, and don't betray each other."
Liam said, "I don't think that counts as betrayal, does it?"
"He really doesn't seem able to control his emotions very well." Shizuku said seriously. "So I took precautions to prevent him from further harming his companions."
"That makes sense!" Liam nodded and asked, "Hey, what if he really goes crazy and impulsively attacks you or me?"
Shizuku said naturally, "In that case, he wouldn't be a companion."
"Kurapika might get excited, but he shouldn't be so impulsive as to actually attack randomly." Liam said earnestly, patting Shizuku's hand. The two sat down side by side. "This basic trust is still necessary."
"Do you trust me like that?" Shizuku suddenly asked.
"Oh, not really," Liam said.
The two sat side by side.
After one year of accelerated growth, Liam had progressed rapidly from zero years old to twelve or thirteen. Although he'd grown impressively, he'd once been catching up to fifteen-year-old Shizuku's height. However, Shizuku, now actually over fifteen and halfway to sixteen, was in the stage of rapid pubertal development. Her height had unknowingly grown by a head...
"Shizuku, do you feel like you can see things more clearly and can see farther?"
"It seems like it..."
"Is this the true function of this divine script?"
"Seems like it."
"This Old King guy. A normal person would just explain things, but he insists on leaving riddles everywhere for people to guess. Don't you hate this kind of person?"
While Liam muttered, he dragged Kurapika along, Shizuku following.
The little gray rock sparrow Jaku flew down to the ground, hopped a few times, and tilted its head to look at the divine script on the ground. On its gray wings, a dark eight-armed phantom appeared.
The rock sparrow scratched with its claws and shoveled away all the divine characters on the ground, then flapped its wings and took off, catching up with the three people leaving the park.
Kurapika opened his eyes groggily. This time it wasn't the ceiling of the hospital, and there was no sound of beeping medical equipment in his ears.
"You're awake." The same voice appeared. "The operation went well. I changed something for you this time. If you have any questions later, you can call this number."
"..." Kurapika stared at the ceiling speechlessly for a few seconds. This should be a hotel room. "The same joke won't be funny the second time."
Liam said in surprise, "This isn't the same joke. It's a sequel!"
Kurapika sat up and rubbed his head. Shizuku's strike had been decisive and heavy.
As someone as smart as him, he'd naturally figured out why Shizuku would knock him unconscious when he got worked up.
"But if Shizuku knocks me out, doesn't that count as attacking a companion?"
Shizuku just opened the door and came in.
Liam asked, "What's the second rule?"
Kurapika said, "Companions help each other, don't interfere with each other, and don't betray each other..."
"See? So she was helping you, not attacking you." Liam smiled. "Do you feel better?"
"No." Kurapika looked at Shizuku, who sat quietly beside Liam as if nothing had happened. "I still want to know about Meteor City. Many people say the Phantom Troupe comes from Meteor City."
Shizuku said, "That's what I heard too."
Kurapika didn't quite understand.
Liam added, "Although the name is Meteor City, don't think that place is as small as a city block. In fact, it can be called the 'Meteor City Autonomous Region.' Do you think that just because a gang of thieves came out of a small country, all residents of that country must know them very well?"
"I understand what you mean..." Kurapika sighed. "I'm sorry."
Liam said, "Don't mess up your pace. Your priority should be Scarlet Eyes recovery first, improving your strength should be second, and revenge should be last."
Kurapika nodded.
"If you've figured it out, why don't you get out of bed and keep training?" Liam said. "There's about a week left until the gang wedding, and there are at least two pairs of Scarlet Eyes waiting for you to retrieve. You don't want to miss this opportunity because you weren't strong enough, do you?"
"I understand." Kurapika threw off the covers and got out of bed.
"Your frontal combat ability is still a bit weak, and I also want to ask your smart little brain to help me figure out the new ability I want to develop." Liam flicked his hand, and a ball of aura popped out of his palm, hovering steadily half a meter above. "How can I swap places with aura released outside my body? Ideally, I'd like to swap places with aura a thousand meters away..."
After all, for now, Kurapika should be the only one among them who had experience with spatial teleportation.
Although Kurapika had been the one forcibly teleported...
A certain city, a certain building.
Inside and outside the building, in every corner of every corridor, people in black suits patrolled and stood guard.
A new group of people in black suits came around the corner. The leader was a stern-faced middle-aged man with slicked-back gray hair. He led the people behind him and those on the left and right toward the room at the end of the corridor. The sound of black leather shoes walking in unison gave the impression of an army, despite being only a dozen or so people.
"Oscar, you take the others outside. Purple Ape, follow me in." After the gray-haired middle-aged man finished speaking, the others dispersed in two lines.
Purple Ape noticed the boss didn't push the door himself, so he reacted and stepped forward to help push it open. The room seemed somewhat dark.
A huge oval conference table with exactly ten seats.
However, when Purple Ape followed the gray-haired middle-aged man in and sat down, one seat remained empty.
These were the so-called Ten Dons?
Purple Ape glanced casually around the conference table. The other eight seats were occupied by middle-aged or elderly men who looked about the same age. Behind each of them stood a muscular man radiating power. These were probably the standard Shadow Beast members that came with the Ten Dons, just like the "Purple Ape" he was currently possessing.
Shadow Beasts. Their code names were all related to animals.
The impressive monsters like Porcupine and Earthworm from the manga hadn't appeared yet.
He remembered that before entering just now, Purple Ape's boss had asked another person called "Oscar" to stay outside. It seemed each of these Ten Dons' subordinates wasn't limited to just one Nen user like the Shadow Beasts.
The Shadow Beasts were more like the title given to the strongest Nen users in the Ten Dons' gangs. Otherwise, it would be ridiculous for gangsters standing at the top of the underground world to have only one Nen user under their command. In comparison, the gang families in the Kakin Kingdom had bizarre Nen users running all over the place.
"You're late," eight other middle-aged or elderly men said with dissatisfaction.
"Someone's even later. Why are you in such a hurry?" The gray-haired middle-aged man who'd come in with Liam glanced at the last empty seat and looked at his watch. "I'll wait 10 minutes. If he comes, we'll talk. If he doesn't come, or doesn't bring anything, then I think he's not the only one who can fill the last vacancy among the Ten Dons. What do you all think?"
"We waited for you for more than 10 minutes!" One of the Ten Dons complained.
At that moment, the door was pushed open again. A high-spirited middle-aged man in sunglasses walked in. "Are you waiting for me? I'm just one old man. There's no need to be so formal..."
"Boss, wait a moment." Suddenly, the Shadow Beast who followed him in grabbed him.
"Prison Elephant, what's wrong?" The tenth Don, the middle-aged man in sunglasses, stopped at the door.
The Shadow Beast known as Prison Elephant looked into the room warily, scanning the nine Dons and the nine Shadow Beasts at the long conference table one by one. His gaze especially lingered on Purple Ape for a while, doubt in his eyes.