The afternoon sun beat down relentlessly on the cracked pavement of Vijarath, baking the air until it wavered. Nobunaga scratched his stubbled jaw, the rough sound loud in the oppressive heat. One hand rested lightly on the wrapped grip of his katana, while his free hand gestured vaguely at the dense, shifting crowd ahead of them.
"You are overthinking this," he said, his tone lazy and dismissive. "Uvogin is stubborn as hell. Once he gets focused on walking in a certain direction, you could fire a heavy cannon directly behind him and he would not even bother to turn around. It makes perfect sense that he would just keep walking without hearing you call his name."
Machi walked beside him, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her jacket. Oversized sunglasses hid her eyes, reflecting the harsh sunlight. Her voice came out entirely flat. "Are you an idiot?"
A muscle near Nobunaga's eye twitched.
"What you are saying," Machi continued, her pace steady, "is that someone is impersonating Uvogin. To what end? Think about it. If the real Uvogin was actually with us and someone transformed into him, would that not blow their cover immediately? It makes much more tactical sense for an enemy to pretend to be one of our suspected missing former members, does it not?"
"That is such a massive reach," Nobunaga shot back, scowling at the pavement. "Besides, your grand suspicion is based on nothing but intuition. You do not have a single shred of actual evidence."
Machi said nothing. She simply kept walking.
Which, Nobunaga reflected grimly, was exactly the problem. From the past until this very moment, Machi's intuition had never been wrong. Not even once. In a world where Nen existed, where sheer willpower and thought could reshape reality itself, an intuition that never failed could not be dismissed as simple good luck. It had to be some kind of natural talent. A genuine sixth sense she had been born with.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. Without a word, both of them pivoted and turned into a narrow side alley at the exact same moment.
High above, a white pigeon wheeled through the sky. It banked hard against the wind to follow them, its small eyes glowing a faint, unnatural crimson as it swept down into the shadows of the narrow passage.
The alley was completely empty.
The pigeon fluttered down, its claws clicking against the metal lid of a rusted dumpster. It cocked its head left and right, scanning the shadows. There was no sign of the two Spiders. There were only damp brick walls, scattered trash, and the heavy, humid stink of rotting food. Finding nothing, the bird ruffled its white feathers and took off again, flying straight forward toward the street as if it had just been passing through.
Still nothing.
Suddenly, something caught tightly around the pigeon's neck. The thread was nearly invisible in the dim light, finer than the thinnest fishing line, but infinitely sharper.
The pigeon's head separated cleanly from its body in a silent, frictionless slice.
Not a single drop of blood touched the Nen thread. Machi stepped out from the deep shadows behind a stack of crates, the glowing string of aura still connected directly to her fingertip. As a Transmuter who turned her aura into physical thread, her creations always had to remain attached to her body. She did not possess the detached range of a true Emitter.
"It is just a pigeon," Nobunaga said, emerging from the opposite side of the alley. His hand still rested casually on his katana's handle. He stared down at the headless bird lying in a rapidly spreading pool of dark blood. "You are way too paranoid."
As he spoke, the pigeon's body dissolved into thin air, leaving nothing behind in the blood. Only the severed head remained on the concrete, its crimson eyes still fixed unblinkingly on them.
"Intuition," Machi said coldly. She twitched her finger, retracting her thread back into her aura.
"Well, since it is your intuition..."
Nobunaga started to follow her out toward the main street. But in the half-second between his footsteps, he drew his blade and slashed. The katana moved far too fast for normal human eyes to track, cutting through the empty air and the pigeon's severed head dozens of times in rapid succession. When he smoothly sheathed the weapon and continued walking, the bird's remains had been reduced to dozens of microscopic pieces scattered across the wet pavement.
In that blinding flurry of cuts, the Star Mark hidden deep within the pigeon's feathers had naturally been destroyed.
Miles away, on a distant rooftop, Jaku the rock bird puffed all his feathers outward in a massive shudder of agitation, as if to say how incredibly thankful he was that they had not been following him.
Evening descended on Vijarath. The neon lights of the massive casinos blazed to life, painting the crowded streets in garish, pulsing shades of red and gold.
Kurapika pushed open the heavy door to their hotel room, stepping out of the hallway. "Do you still have any transformation talismans left?"
In the center of the living room, Liam and Shizuku sat across from each other at a low wooden table, completely absorbed in a complex game of military ceremonial Gungi. Liam glanced up from the board. "If you need talismans, I can always make more. But seriously, do you really need to run all over the city again tonight?"
Kurapika walked over and sank heavily into a plush chair, rubbing his temples. "I am not tired."
A delicate porcelain teacup floated gently through the air toward him. When he looked up, he saw Jade, Liam's Nen beast, hovering silently in the room. She carried a silver tray with a freshly brewed pot of steaming tea, serving each of the three people in the room with absolute mechanical precision.
Liam raised his own cup, letting the fragrant steam wash over his face, and smiled. "I like integrating my Nen training into everyday life. It makes the whole process much easier, you know?"
"Does training twenty-four hours a day not make it significantly harder?" Kurapika asked. He took a slow sip of the hot tea. The warmth spread through his chest, and the tight tension in his shoulders eased fractionally. "Where is Menchi?"
"Out visiting restaurants in the city," Shizuku answered, her eyes still locked on the Gungi board. She moved a black piece forward and spoke without looking up. "She said she cannot physically sit still. Every time we go somewhere new, she insists she has to taste all the local food and try all the regional ingredients. She wants to visit every single restaurant and meet every head chef."
The front door swung open again before Shizuku could even finish her sentence. Menchi strode into the room, her face flushed with energy and excitement. "Do you think I am lazy like you guys? I am a serious Professional Hunter. I am the kind of Hunter who could secure a one-star rating super fast if I wanted to."
Liam sniffed the air dramatically. "Smells like cheap hotel food to me."
"What do you know about the complexities of culinary aromatics?" Menchi demanded, putting her hands on her hips. "Can you smell exactly how many fine dining restaurants I visited today? How many exotic dishes I tasted? Do you know what rare ingredients and specific seasonings they used, or what traditional cooking methods they applied?"
Kurapika suddenly bolted out of his chair and rushed to the large glass window. His eyes flared a brilliant, glowing scarlet.
"What is it?" Menchi blinked, startled by the sudden movement.
Kurapika threw the window open. The cold night wind rushed into the room, scattering the Gungi pieces. Without a single second of hesitation, he jumped out into the dark.
"Brother, we are on the fifteenth floor," Liam said flatly. He stood up and casually strolled over to the open window.
Peering down into the darkness, about three hundred meters away on the neon-lit street, he saw the cause. A massive, towering figure had just torn someone who looked like a casino security guard completely in half. Blood rained down on the pavement as the surrounding crowd screamed and scattered in absolute panic.
A cold, familiar breath touched Liam's chest. In his mind's eye, the death energy panel flickered to life. One more point added.
Kurapika was already in freefall. A massive, glowing skeletal arm erupted from his back, its bony fingers digging deep into the hotel's exterior wall. Concrete shattered and groaned as the arm acted as a brake, sliding him down in a fast but controlled descent.
Liam calmly pulled a Wind Talisman from Jade's floating sleeve and tossed it out the window after him.
Kurapika caught the paper mid-air and crushed it in his fist. It immediately burst into bright golden flames. The magic took hold, and he seemed to suddenly glide through the night air. The wind caught him like a feather, propelling him toward the source of the bloody chaos at high speed.
"Is it Uvogin?" Shizuku asked, stepping up beside Liam.
"Yeah." Liam handed her a Wind Talisman as well, holding one for himself. They stepped off the concrete ledge together, the magic catching them instantly. They drifted down through the cool night air like falling autumn leaves, descending toward the screaming street below.
Ten minutes later, Kurapika walked slowly back through the darkened, blood-stained streets. His head was lowered, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. Police sirens wailed endlessly in the distance. People were still shouting behind police barricades, and red and blue emergency lights strobed violently across the glass facades of the buildings.
"He disappeared," Kurapika muttered, his voice trembling with frustration. "He just vanished completely after such a incredibly short distance."
Shizuku tilted her head back, looking high up the side of the hotel. Fifteen floors up, Menchi was leaning out the open window, cheerfully waving down at them.
Liam's jaw clenched in profound annoyance. "What an absolute waste of time."
The next day at noon, the atmosphere was entirely different. The luxury restaurant located inside Vijarath's largest casino hummed with polite, wealthy activity. No matter how much money the gamblers lost or won down on the main floor, they always kept their voices low in here. Well-trained, heavily armed security guards stood rigidly at every entrance. Nobody dared cause trouble in a place like this.
Unless, of course, you possessed something much more dangerous than security guards.
Menchi sat comfortably at a quiet corner table, casually sampling a beautifully plated dessert. A young chef's apprentice stood beside her, watching her reaction with a nervous, hopeful gaze. Suddenly, a loud argument erupted a few tables away. Menchi paused her fork and glanced over.
Several disheveled gamblers were crowding around a table, shouting aggressively at the occupants. Three people sat there calmly: two women and one man.
The man was gigantic and square-headed, featuring long, sagging earlobes and vicious, jagged scars across his face. His eyes were dull and entirely lifeless, giving him the exact aura of a muscular serial killer who had just escaped from a maximum-security psychiatric ward.
One of the women was tall and blonde with an impressive chest, dressed sharply like a professional white-collar office worker. The other was a small girl with short white hair, who was currently ignoring the screaming men to happily steal a piece of cake from the terrifying big man's plate.
The gamblers were screaming specifically at the blonde woman. Menchi was a bit too far away to hear the exact words over the restaurant's ambient noise, but the apprentice chef beside her sighed and shrugged.
"They just lost everything they own downstairs," he explained quietly. "Now they are convinced she is some kind of master cheater. Complete mental breakdown makes people desperate and stupid. They look like they want a fight to the death." He smirked. "It is completely ridiculous. Nobody cheats in this casino and lives."
Well, Menchi thought to herself, taking another bite of her dessert, if you cheat using invisible Nen abilities, does the casino really count that as cheating?
At that exact moment, the white-haired girl finally looked up, clearly annoyed by the noise. She casually picked up a silver dessert fork and drove it violently upward, straight through the closest gambler's lower jaw. The metal tines punched cleanly through the roof of his mouth with a sickening crunch.
"We are trying to eat," she said, sounding genuinely offended by their lack of manners. "You are being far too noisy."
Casino security arrived in seconds, weapons drawn, immediately escorting both parties away from the dining area. Neither the giant square-headed man nor the blonde woman offered any resistance as they stood up. But the white-haired girl glared around the room, looking perfectly ready to murder anyone else who dared get between her and her stolen cake. The big man simply reached down and patted her head gently, and she instantly calmed down, dropping the bloody fork.
"What a vicious little brat," the apprentice chef muttered, his face pale with shock. "At least the two adults had the brains to know better than to resist the guards."
"Is that so?" Menchi murmured quietly, her eyes tracking the retreating group.
Ten minutes later, out on the scorching pavement, Franklin and the other two walked casually out of the casino's back security entrance. He reached into his pocket and handed Pakunoda a clean cloth handkerchief. She meticulously wiped the blood from her hands, then crouched down to gently wipe the red splatter from Yonger Hakel's cheeks and short white hair.
"They are so completely ridiculous," the white-haired girl said. She took the blood-stained cloth and blew her nose loudly. "I am not even human, but they were actually crying and begging me for mercy. A monster begging a hero for mercy. What is that even about? I really do not understand humans." She paused, her eyes darting to the side. "Oh. A cat."
She spotted a scruffy stray cat sitting on the hot sidewalk. Forgetting the blood and the gamblers entirely, she skipped over and began to pet it happily.
Pakunoda stood up, watching the girl play with the dirty animal for a moment, then looked at Franklin and shook her head with a soft sigh.
After the three Spiders finally left the alley, the stray cat remained sitting on the concrete. It did not run away. It just watched their retreating backs in absolute, unnatural silence. Hidden behind its left ear, a rose-gold five-pointed star pulsed faintly with Nen aura.
On the tall street lamp directly above the alley, a row of white pigeons perched in a perfectly straight line. Underneath each pigeon's wing, a tiny rose-gold star glimmered in the shadows.
Down the block, a stray dog completely ignored its pack companions digging through a garbage pile, sitting perfectly still to watch the street.
A pack of feral cats slinked deliberately through the manicured bushes of the city park.
White pigeons, small sparrows, and black crows numbered in the dozens, fluttering methodically across the vibrant sunset sky.
The city's rigid grid of streets and narrow alleys divided Vijarath into countless rectangular blocks. In every single district, hiding under every residential building and patrolling along every street, there were stray cats, stray dogs, wild rabbits, and birds. There were raccoons and desert foxes. In one bizarre instance, even a heavy black bear wandered past a dumpster. A massive ostrich strutted casually down a shaded alley.
Countless animals were scattered throughout the entire city, each one carrying a hidden Star Mark on its body. Their eyes all flickered with a cold, shared sapphire light as they quietly observed the dense crowds passing by, acting as a massive, living surveillance network.
Elsewhere in the city, the atmosphere inside a cramped, cheap apartment was suffocating. The original owner of the room lay collapsed face-first on his own floor. His body was crumpled and completely dried out like an ancient mummy. The skin was drawn drum-tight over his bones, every single drop of moisture and life drained away.
The small pet cat he had brought home from a shelter just two days ago was backed into the farthest corner, its fur puffed out as it stared in sheer terror at the strangers in the room.
The red-haired young man standing over the corpse clapped his hands together loudly. "Still not enough."
"Are you thirsty?" The handsome blonde guy sitting at the glowing computer desk did not even bother to look up from his rapid typing.
"Shalnark, are you implying that I am some kind of sick pervert who can never get full?" The red-haired youth stretched his arms, a wide, unsettling grin stretching across his face. "Yes. I absolutely am. As long as I am not completely satisfied, I will never feel at ease. So I need to eat more. I need to just keep eating."
"Absuo, your whole pervert routine genuinely reminds me of someone," Shalnark muttered, hitting the enter key. He finally looked up as the red-haired young man took a slow step toward the only living thing left in the room: the trembling pet cat. "Leave the cat alone, okay? Look, I know we are not exactly model citizens, but let's try not to act like completely psychotic movie serial killers who just murder everything in sight, including innocent pets."
"Are we not?" Absuo crouched down slowly, reaching out to run a single finger along the top of the terrified cat's head. "Then what exactly are we?"
Shalnark sighed and leaned back in his rolling chair, crossing his arms. "Our main occupation? We are unemployed. Our side gig? We are occasionally thieves."
Absuo threw his head back and laughed, a sharp, grating sound.
A tall figure wrapped entirely in dirty bandages walked completely alone through a desolate, remote suburb of the city. He was a member of the Phantom Troupe from the Gyudondond tribe who had lived deep in the junk heaps of Meteor Street. The Peeling Crusher Bonorenofu Ndongo trudged forward at a slow, rhythmic pace, never pausing, his final destination entirely unclear in the gathering dark.
At a silent intersection he was just about to cross, Kurapika stood perfectly still in the shadows. He had been waiting there for a very long time. As the bandaged man approached, Kurapika lifted his head, his eyes burning red, and stretched out his hand, ready to summon his chains.
A massive, heavy hand clamped down violently on his wrist.
Kurapika whirled around, adrenaline spiking. His scarlet eyes reflected the stoic, lion-like face of Silva Zoldyck.
Silva did not say a word. He just held Kurapika's arm in an absolute, iron lock, keeping him pinned to the spot until the bandaged figure slowly disappeared around a distant corner. Kurapika gritted his teeth and struggled against the grip, but it was like trying to move a mountain. When he finally wrenched his arm free and turned back to confront the assassin, Silva was already gone.
All that remained in the alley was a vague, fading human shape made entirely of pure aura, visible only because Kurapika was actively using Gyo.
Later that night, the mood back at the hotel room was tense.
"He has not found the specific target he was hired to kill yet," Liam said, leaning against the wall. "You cannot just go alerting thrm without his permission. Kurapika, you cannot let your anger scramble your brain like that. Your mission here is not to blindly charge at every single Spider you happen to see on the street."
Shizuku was sitting on the sofa, lazily flipping through the pages of a glossy fashion magazine. "He is right. We still have not found the leader of the Spiders. For you, finding the head of the group is much more important than picking off the legs, is it not?"
Kurapika closed his eyes tightly, taking a deep, shuddering breath. When he opened them again a few seconds later, the furious, blazing red flames in his irises had finally dimmed back to their normal color. He let out a long sigh, his shoulders slumping. "You are right. I am sorry."
"Do not apologize. Just focus on completing your mission." Liam pointed a finger at him to emphasize the point. "And do not forget, the charity exhibition officially starts tomorrow morning. Everything changes then."
The early morning sun finally broke through the thick layer of fog that perpetually clung to the desert casino city. Today, Vijarath buzzed with a frantic, electric energy, far more intense than ever before. The massive, opulent building hosting the charity exhibition was already swarming with wealthy tourists, collectors, and security personnel from all over the world.
Out on the crowded pavement of East Street, two figures moved smoothly through the dense sea of people. One was tall and imposing, the other short and completely obscured by a high collar.
"Everyone is finally here, right?" Feitan said slowly, his eyes scanning the crowd from the shadows of his coat.
Phinks cracked his neck, then rolled his broad shoulders to loosen the muscles. "Definitely. It is happening today."
"I meant the guy who has been constantly watching us from the shadows," Feitan clarified, his voice dangerously soft.
Phinks let out a harsh sneer, his hands resting in his pockets. "There is no doubt about it. He will make his move today at the latest."
Meanwhile, over on West Street, Liam's group stood gathered together in a quiet alcove away from the main foot traffic.
Kurapika held the heavy fourth volume of his Dolphin Bookshelf, Revelations, open flat in his hands. The glowing pages displayed a complex, shifting map of the city. As he stared down at the moving dots, his eyes widened in absolute shock.
"How is this even possible?" he murmured, trailing a finger over the page. "I have only been able to find eleven of them on the map. So who exactly is this extra person showing up? I feel like I have definitely seen their energy signature somewhere before..."
"It seems like the extra target showing up on your map might actually be the one person you have never been able to track down until now," Liam said casually.
He turned his head to scan the street behind them, only to immediately spot the faint, shimmering shadow of yet another one of Silva's Nen clones standing silently near a vendor's stall. Liam groaned loudly, rubbing his forehead. "Holy crap, how many invisible duplicates does this guy actually have?"