Chapter 63: The Final Phase Concludes
After confirming several times that his senses were not mistaken, Ross glanced toward the Vitality Surge Y sitting behind the counter.
Could it be a side effect of that?
He dismissed the thought almost immediately. A memory had surfaced: a scene from the original story set at a later point in the timeline, when Killua had already completed his Nen training and returned with Gon to Whale Island. There, Killua had used activated aura to bring a severely injured fox bear cub back from the edge of death. That fox bear cub, having survived through the brush with death, spontaneously awakened to Ten and became the rare category known as a Nen beast.
The standard methods for Nen awakening were three: gradual development through training, forced awakening through external aura pushed through another person's nodes, and a third path — crisis-triggered awakening at the threshold of life and death.
The picture assembled itself. The terror of that moment had reached down into something fundamental in Bodoro and triggered an intense will to survive. When Vitality Surge Y then took effect and his body's reserves were partially replenished, that same survival instinct caused his body to instinctively begin activating aura, accelerating the natural healing process on its own.
By that reading, Bodoro might actually have come out of this ahead.
Ross was genuinely pleased. It meant that even without continued treatment, Bodoro was not going to die.
There had been both deliberate reasoning and personal feeling behind the decision to save him.
In his younger years, watching the scene where Bodoro was sacrificed as a narrative device, Ross had felt almost nothing. His memory of the man had barely extended past that detail about Bodoro convincing other candidates on the airship that the final test was written. The next plot development had pulled his attention forward immediately.
But watching the same scene again as an adult, he found he could feel it differently. Someone whose dream was within arm's reach, whose entire story came to an abrupt stop simply because they were a background character. There was something about that which landed.
So when he had the means to do something about it, he acted. Having the ability was its own kind of permission.
That said, even with Nen awakened, Bodoro would not have any real fighting capability yet. And from what he had seen of the man's character, the probability that he would want to return to the competition was extremely high. Which meant...
...wait.
Something had just occurred to Ross. At that same moment, Bodoro's eyes opened.
An old man and a young one, staring at each other.
...
Hunter Association headquarters. Medical room.
Having read Lippo's report beforehand, Netero understood the floating wheel was Ross's ability. But learning that Ross had pulled a dying man into it and left word to wait four minutes was enough to produce a visible reaction on the face that had handled nearly every development of this exam without one.
Experience led him naturally to reason through what Ross might be trying to accomplish. The conclusion was that Ross was most likely attempting to use his ability to save Bodoro. This followed from how Ross had operated throughout the exam and what kind of person he appeared to be.
But how would he do it? With an ability built around playing games?
Netero had encountered a great deal in a long life. Even so, there were fields outside his experience where information simply was not available. People cannot picture what they have never encountered.
Four minutes, precisely. Ross and Bodoro materialized together in the medical room, which by now held only Netero.
The Chairman looked immediately to Bodoro. He had prepared himself for something. What he saw still startled him.
Not only was the man conscious, but the catastrophic penetrating wound in his chest was gone. Bodoro was visibly weak and barely steady on his feet, but he was standing there in front of him, and Netero's eyes sharpened on what he saw next: aura, flowing inside Bodoro's body.
"He's been saved, but he's at roughly half capacity. He'll need professional follow-up care."
Ross said this as though Netero's presence were exactly what he had expected.
"Of course. An incident like this is the Association's responsibility as well. We will see it through fully."
Netero agreed without hesitation, though his attention was clearly split. In reality the old man was considerably more shaken than he appeared.
Ross gave a noncommittal shrug, privately thinking his own thoughts. Netero had deliberately let the Hunter world's unforgiving reality put itself on full display in front of everyone in that room. Claiming he had failed to notice what Killua was doing before the strike, at his level of perception, was simply not plausible.
"Chairman, sir. I would like to apply to return to the competition and continue the exam."
This came from Bodoro, who four minutes earlier had been one step from dead.
The Hunter Exam was something Bodoro had spent the better part of his life working toward. For a man of his age, this was in all likelihood the single closest he would ever come to the dream he had carried. He was not going to let it go.
He also had not yet realized that he had just stepped into the dangerous and extraordinary world of Nen users.
"You truly intend to risk your life continuing this exam?"
Netero asked with full seriousness, having satisfied himself that Bodoro's urgency was entirely genuine.
"Even at the cost of this life."
Bodoro, without hesitation.
But as Bodoro made that declaration, Netero noticed something: a glance, aimed with apparent casualness in Ross's direction.
Ross tilted his head back and studied the ceiling with great interest.
Having formed a reasonable picture of what the two of them were planning, Netero agreed in the spirit of someone who had no objection to watching things get more interesting.
"Very well. In my capacity as Chairman of the Examination Committee, I authorize your return to the competition floor."
And so, under the collective disbelief of everyone in the room, Bodoro walked back in. A man who should have had no realistic chance of surviving, walking through the door.
Pale. Unsteady. Breathing hard after every other step. But visible through the torn opening in his shirt, where the wound had been, was nothing. The devastating injury was simply gone.
The room went loud.
A handful of candidates with sharp eyes and sharper senses had already turned to look at Ross, who had come back first and was talking casually with his two companions.
"Chairman! I request a delay before resuming the match! Bodoro's condition is still far from stable!"
Leorio, whose first instinct in any direction was to become a doctor, had about a hundred questions about how that treatment had been administered in so little time. He understood this was not the moment to ask them. And under no circumstances was he going to raise his hands against someone in that condition.
Bodoro shook his head and said something no one had expected.
"That won't be necessary. I concede."
Silence. Then, one by one, people started working through the logic.
The moment Bodoro spoke, the final phase was already over.
It traced back to Killua walking out.
In the normal run of the competition, whoever won Match 11 would have faced Killua next. But Killua had walked out without saying the words. Not saying them and not appearing were functionally the same as forfeiting the final phase.
By the rules, the final phase produced exactly one eliminated candidate. When that candidate was determined, all remaining candidates passed, regardless of whether they had competed in every scheduled match.
The logic was simple. It had been in plain view the whole time. The reason not everyone had immediately followed the chain was that the sequence of events, the surprise attack, the near-death, the healing, the return, the concession, had landed in too dense a cluster. When that much arrives at once, some processing capacity is simply taken up. Not being the first to untangle it was understandable.
The atmosphere in the room shifted visibly. Most candidates released the tension they had been carrying. Two did not: Kurapika and Leorio, both still with their thoughts on Killua.
Beans stepped forward.
"Of all thirteen candidates, only Candidate 99 Killua has been eliminated. The remaining twelve candidates have all passed."
"With that, the final phase of the 287th Hunter Exam has concluded."