Chapter 57: The Fourth Phase Officially Ends
Evening. A lakeside.
"This is infuriating! Why do you both have your points and I still don't!"
Yusuke, in a state of barely controlled frustration, skipped a flat stone across the lake surface and watched it bounce more than a dozen times, leaving expanding rings in its wake.
"Nyahahaha! This just proves I'm better than you, Yusuke!"
Kuwabara crowed at him without a shred of mercy.
"Shut the hell up!"
Yusuke was red in the face and threw a punch.
"Here. Two more points and you're through."
Ross flicked Kazemaru's round badge at him with his thumb.
Around nightfall, Kuwabara, wandering by pure instinct, had drifted into Ross and Yusuke by chance. When he learned that only Yusuke hadn't secured six points yet, the teasing started immediately.
In fairness, it was less that Yusuke had been unlucky and more that Kuwabara had been genuinely impressive and Ross had been thoroughly underhanded. Kuwabara's six points were clean: raw strength over Musashi, earned honestly. Ross had essentially used Yusuke as bait, drawn Rando in, and then swooped in to take the kill.
Rando's assigned target, after all, had been Yusuke.
"Don't stress about it. This is day one. There are six whole days left."
Ross attempted some reassurance. It had no effect. Yusuke and Kuwabara had already locked up into the kind of wrestling hold you'd only see in a gritty sports manga.
Still, it was clear enough that Yusuke's mood wasn't actually as bad as it looked.
Rando's death had also completed Yusuke's detective mission, which meant the Sky Arena 200th floor front-row ticket Botan had dangled as bait was legitimately his. And as Ross had said, six days was six days. Even if Kibano never turned up, grabbing two points from ordinary candidates wasn't particularly difficult.
Yusuke just didn't want to lose face in front of his friends. At his core, he was still a teenager.
As they say: once three or more men are in the same place, someone will automatically become the group's idea man. Ross, the oldest in both actual age and mental age, filled that role. The result was that the three of them turned the remaining six days into something resembling wilderness survival training.
Eat well, sleep well, then you have energy for everything else. That was Ross's operating principle. Even with a game he loved, he would never sacrifice sleep to grind through the night. The same applied here.
Unfortunately, Yusuke never found Kibano. Even Kuwabara's instincts couldn't locate him.
What he did find was two points from elsewhere.
Against ordinary candidates, a Nen user was an absolute steamroll. The one Yusuke took them from was Badge 89, Sisitre, a character who appeared in the original manga only once, in a candidate roster chart at the beginning of Phase 4, with zero story involvement whatsoever. A pure background extra.
Sisitre happened to be carrying Badge 362, which didn't belong to him. Neither the owner of 362 nor Sisitre himself was Yusuke's assigned target. It didn't matter.
None of this mattered much once the foghorn sounded from the direction of the landing point, loud enough to carry across the entire island, followed by the broadcast: "The fourth phase is about to officially end! All candidates please return to the starting point immediately!"
"Additionally, badge records will be registered upon arrival at the starting point. Any badge transfers occurring on-site will be considered invalid!"
From every corner of the island, the scattered candidates began making their way back.
In the interest of fairness, the Association staff recorded each candidate alongside the badges in their possession.
The three had started from some distance out, so by the time they reached the starting point, nearly all passing candidates were already assembled. After checking the badges in their hands, the staff member carefully wrote each number on the whiteboard in permanent marker, one stroke at a time.
Ross read down the list from top to bottom.
Thirteen people had passed.
All nine from the original were there. But Ponzu, the bee girl who by all rights should have been eliminated at this stage, had somehow scraped together six points.
Ponzu's breakdown: Badge 103, snake charmer Bourbon, assigned target, worth three points. Badge 198, one of the Amori brothers, one point. Badge 145, professional assassin Kuroda, one point. Badge 281, Agon, one point.
Hisoka's breakdown had also shifted from what Ross remembered. Badge 23 was there, but Badge 281 was missing. The missing one had become one of Ponzu's points instead.
Hanzou's breakdown had changed as well. He'd taken Badge 197 for a clean three points, without the scramble for two extras that he'd needed in the original.
Ross looked at Ponzu's name on the board with an expression he couldn't quite identify.
In this significantly altered version of the Hunter world, whether the bee girl would still walk toward the same tragic end, he genuinely did not know.
All thirteen stood quietly watching the horizon. The familiar airship was approaching Zevil Island at speed.
...
Hunter Association airship. Afternoon tea with the Chairman and the examiners.
"Thirteen people, ten of them newcomers? Not bad at all! Hohohohoho!"
Netero was absolutely delighted.
According to historical records, there had been stretches of up to ten years without a single passing candidate, and those droughts typically preceded a sudden influx of exceptional talent. This year was shaping up as one of those years.
"There's one additional matter of some importance, Chairman."
Lippo set down his teacup and began his report.
"It has been confirmed that Badge 66, Shaolin, was the false identity of the spider demon known as the Technique Plunderer, Rando, responsible for the deaths of at least ninety-nine humans. He was killed by a candidate on the first day of the fourth phase. The body has been recovered by our on-site invigilator and is being held in cold storage pending further processing."
The other examiners stopped what they were doing. The room went quiet except for the sound of breathing. Only the Chairman remained visibly untroubled, with almost no reaction at all.
The Technique Plunderer Rando was a name even non-bounty Hunters had heard. A killer demon who targeted Nen users specifically, with the ability to steal others' techniques: his level of danger required no elaboration.
For professional Hunters without exceptional combat ability, Rando was a serious threat.
But because of his sophisticated disguise and his practice of never leaving survivors, even bounty Hunters had found him consistently difficult to catch.
And now this demon, who gave professional bounty Hunters difficulty, had simply died in the Hunter Exam, killed by a candidate without even a license.
"Which candidate?!"
Menchi, the more temperamental of the examiners, shot to her feet. Her mind had gone immediately to Hisoka, Badge 44, because only he had been radiating provocative killing intent throughout the entire exam. If anyone could have killed Rando, Hisoka was the obvious suspect.
"Badge 406. Ross."
When Lippo said the name, something flashed briefly through his eyes.