"What does this look like to you?"
Kurapika stared at the towering structure before him. The voice drifted down from above, casual and light. Ging Freecss was perched somewhere in the upper reaches of the stone, as relaxed as a cat on a fence.
"From the boat, I thought it was a lighthouse or a spire," Kurapika said, tilting his head back. The structure pierced the mist like a jagged, pointing finger. "When I landed, it felt like a mountain. But up close..."
He stepped forward, running a hand over the surface. Time had been cruel here; the stone was raw and weathered, carpeted in thick moss and draped with vines that hung like forgotten nooses. But beneath the debris, through the gaps in the greenery, he saw them. Sharp, geometric patterns. Ancient, pulsating lines.
Divine script.
Kurapika reached out to brush away a clump of moss, then hesitated. The precision of the carvings was breathtaking. He feared a single careless scrape might mar the integrity of the symbols.
Thump.
Ging dropped from the tower, landing behind him with practiced ease. He kept his hands in his pockets, his posture entirely loose. "You noticed, huh?"
"The divine characters?" Kurapika asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"I'm talking about this big bastard." Ging patted the stone surface with a thud. "You know much about the script?"
"Only the basics. A friend showed me," Kurapika admitted, his brow furrowing. "It's a remarkably efficient system for channeling aura. I'm surprised more Nen users don't study it."
Ging flashed a grin. "Only the Association puts in the real hours for research. Even then, most people lack the intuition to use it for anything practical. It's a dead language to anyone without imagination."
Kurapika fell silent, his eyes tracing the sheer height of the structure. He remembered Liam's description of the archipelago—the concentric rings, the six Nen types layered like an onion.
"Do you know the depth of the ocean here?" Kurapika asked.
"Already connected the dots?" Ging's smile widened. "This 'island' isn't sitting on a shelf. It plunges a thousand meters straight down into the abyss."
Suddenly, a violent eruption of aura flared from Ging's body. It didn't just radiate; it coalesced, manifesting into a massive Skeleton Knight. It had four arms and stood three times the height of Kurapika's own summon.
"I drop by here sometimes," Ging muttered. "Just to see if I can nudge the damn thing."
The four-armed knight reached out, its massive skeletal fingers wrapping around the moss-covered structure in a bizarre, crushing embrace.
"If this thing is what I think it is..."
Ging went rigid. His knight began to climb, its arms tightening around the stone with bone-creaking pressure. The ground beneath Kurapika's feet groaned and shuddered. Pebbles began to rain down from the heights.
"Stop! You'll ruin the script!" Kurapika shouted over the roar of shifting earth.
"Don't sweat it. These characters are carved into the marrow of the rock," Ging grunted, his jaw tight. His aura surged further, a fountain of golden light that seemed bottomless. "Besides, the script covers the whole shaft. One or two scratched strokes won't kill the spell. Come on... move, you stubborn—!"
The ground beneath Ging's feet splintered into a spiderweb of cracks. The sheer pressure of his Nen forced Kurapika to take an involuntary step back, his lungs burning from the atmospheric weight.
Is this the capacity of a single human's aura? Despite that terrifying display of force, the structure remained unmoved. Not a millimeter of shift. It stood there, unshakeable and eternal.
The Skeleton Knight flickered and dispersed. The surge of aura flowed back into Ging, who looked more annoyed than tired. He swore at the tower and gave it a petty kick. "Boring piece of junk."
Suddenly, the structure shook.
It wasn't a heavy thud, but a high-frequency vibration. A resonance.
"Wait... that wasn't you." Kurapika spun around.
Across the five ring-shaped islands, the black mist was boiling, rising into the sky like a thunderhead. Even with the jade pendant's Cone ability, Kurapika's vision was being snuffed out by the density of the fog. A massive, looming shape was standing up in the darkness of the outer rings.
The structure beside them hummed in response, swaying slightly.
"It's not me," Ging said, his voice dropping the playfulness. "Something's happening in the fog. Someone just made a massive, desperate oath. The surge of aura woke up whatever's been nesting in the mist."
Kurapika didn't wait for an explanation. He broke into a sprint, heading toward the black mist where the giant figure had risen.
"Oh? The kid has friends out there?" Ging scratched his head, looking thoughtful. "Right. Kite. I should probably check on that."
Kite was in the middle of a nightmare.
It wasn't that the enemies were overwhelmingly powerful—it was their numbers and their sheer, mindless persistence. The fog had thickened into a soup of residual thoughts, condensing into ghosts that swarmed like ants.
"You holding up?" Kite called out.
He manifested Crazy Slots, his scythe reaping through the specters like dry wheat. He glanced at his companion.
Liam was in a bad way. He was slumped on the ground, clutching his chest, his face contorted in a grimace of pure agony. It looked as though the mere act of drawing breath was a battle. Despite the pain, Liam was still snapping his fingers rhythmically, firing invisible bullets of aura that blinked ghosts out of existence.
At least the ghosts weren't "living." Their dissipation didn't trigger Liam's deadly absorption of death energy, or he would have been dead minutes ago.
But Liam's heart was hammering a frantic, erratic beat. He could feel the familiar, terrifying sensation of his body beginning to change—the buildup of specialized aura was reaching its limit. The last time this happened, he had aged decades in an instant.
He blinked through the sweat. In the dark mist behind Kite, a figure emerged. It wore the same uniform as the woman who had committed suicide, but his body was a map of surging, ink-black Nen.
Is that... an adult Gon transformation? Liam thought dizzily. Wait, why is a blackened soldier coming for Kite? Wrong target, man...
Kite sensed the threat. He spun, his scythe trailing a line of actual sword-light—not just aura, but a condensed cutting force.
The soldier was the captain Shizuku had seen. His subordinates had fed him their lives, their oaths, and their post-mortem Nen. He was a walking skyscraper of buffs.
Liam slapped his own forehead, trying to stay conscious. Green shoots of grass were beginning to sprout through the stone cracks around him, fed by the leaking vitality of his uncontrolled Nen.
Kite and the blackened soldier became a blur of afterimages. The fog was too thick; the ghosts were too many.
Wait. The bird.
Liam remembered Jaku Kurapika had sent. He had hidden a Reflection charge on it, a dormant star mark.
Chainsaws suddenly roared through the fog. Shizuku appeared, her blades clearing a path through the spirits with clinical precision. She saw Liam's state and her eyes widened behind her glasses, her pace quickening.
Liam pointed feebly toward Kite's battle. He couldn't tell who was winning, but if either of them died now, the resulting wave of death energy would be the end of him.
Then, Kurapika arrived. He took in the scene instantly, his Skeleton Knight manifesting to intervene in the deadly duel between Kite and the Kakin soldier.
But they were all too late for the main event.
From the heart of the black mist, a colossal hand made of pure, shadowy aura reached out. It was so massive it made the blackened soldier look like a toy. The hand snatched the soldier out of the air and dragged him screaming into the fog.
A sickening, wet chewing sound echoed through the archipelago.
Kurapika turned to see Shizuku holding Liam. The boy was fading fast, his body beginning to emit that strange, lush aura.
"Something is wrong with this kid," a new voice said.
A man stepped out of the mist behind them. "Hey, girl. What's the deal with this guardian beast? Could he be...?"
Shizuku raised her vacuum cleaner, Blinky's bulging eyes fixing on the newcomer with a wary growl.
Liam looked up, saw the man's face, and managed a weak, knowing smile. Of course it's you, he thought, before his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness completely.
With Liam out, the Reflection ability he had pulled from the bird became unstable. Deprived of a conscious host, its hostility began to leak out, targeting everyone in the vicinity indiscriminately.
Ging Freecss stepped into the clearing, and an invisible pulse of Nen rippled through the air. He didn't flinch. He looked into the depths of the fog with eager, hungry eyes.
"Wangu Hui Guo Rou? Is that you, old man?" Ging called out.
The massive shadow in the mist didn't answer. The chewing stopped.
Kite lowered his weapon, visibly relaxing at the sight of Ging.
Wangu Hui Guo Rou? Kurapika couldn't believe it. But what was more staggering was what he saw through his Cone vision.
Floating above Kite's head was a green bar. A health bar.
He saw one above his own head, and even one above the massive, lake-sized shadow in the mist.
But there wasn't one above Shizuku. And Liam...
Kurapika's breath caught. Shizuku was sitting on the ground, her arms empty. Liam had vanished. The "guardian beast" was gone. The fog was thinning at an impossible rate.
"Hey! Don't run off yet!" Ging shouted at the dispersing shadow. "We were just getting to the—" He stopped, turning to Shizuku. "Where's the boy?"
"He's gone," Shizuku whispered, her voice hollow. Did he age so fast he turned to dust?
Ging reached up and swept the health bar from above his head as if wiping a chalkboard. He looked at Shizuku's empty arms, then back at the mist.
"Was that kid part of the Kakin royal family?" Ging asked.
Shizuku just looked at him, her eyes vacant.
"I'm Ging. Ging Freecss," he said, offering a small, sympathetic smile. "Listen, don't panic. My guess is the big guy in the fog just grabbed him. If that's his ancestor, he probably won't eat him. Probably."
The island beneath them suddenly bucked. A violent earthquake rippled through the archipelago.
"Teacher, look," Kite said, pointing toward the central sea.
"I told you, just call me Ging," he muttered, but his eyes followed Kite's finger.
The structure Kurapika had mistaken for a tower was roaring. The entire central island was disintegrating, falling away like a shell. As they watched, a massive stone shaft—hundreds of meters long—was pulled from the floor of the ocean. It rose into the sky, shedding water and moss like a leviathan.
"It wasn't a tower," Ging laughed, his eyes bright with wonder. "It's an arrow."
Manipulation Type: Ready Player One
In his youth, Ging Freecss often escaped into the logic of games. Without even realizing it, he had shaped his Nen to treat reality as a playable interface—granting him the ability to view the world through the lens of a "Player One" in a cosmic RPG.