Chapter 103: The Phantom Troupe's New Target: Dracula's Personal Stash
"The winner! Hisoka!"
"A stretcher! Where's the stretcher!?"
Hisoka, who had lost both arms in the process yet still ended his opponent, turned and walked away with perfect composure, as if the severed arms had belonged to someone else entirely.
At the same time, a group of Sky Arena staff were scrambling in controlled panic to lift Kastro onto a stretcher. He had more than a dozen hardened playing cards lodged throughout his body, bleeding from everywhere, his life force visibly beginning to fade.
The exchange had been faster than expected, and the intensity had been maxed out from the start. From the audience's perspective, Hisoka had sent Kastro off at the cost of his own severe self-mutilation.
Still breathing. Barely. But in worse shape than Bodoro had been with his organs impaled.
What appeared on the surface to be only a dozen playing card wounds was not the extent of it. The malevolent Nen embedded in those cards was continuing its work, squeezing the last of his remaining life force.
Kastro's first crushing defeat, his only real loss at the Sky Arena, had come as a kind of baptism at Hisoka's hands. This time, Hisoka had personally chosen to harvest and eat the fruit he had been cultivating for two years.
Partly because he was genuinely hungry. Partly because he had found a new fruit to cultivate elsewhere.
But just as the still-bleeding Kastro was being wheeled through the backstage corridor, Ross, who had already been crouching there in wait, moved.
He was clearly planning to replicate what he had done for Bodoro.
This time, however, he didn't use the Competition Roulette. Instead he directly shouldered aside the medical staff, and under their stunned and outraged stares, pulled a canned Vitality Surge Y from his pocket and force-fed it to the man who was one breath from death.
His right hand's Nen struck the throat, forcing back the blood that had been surging up from the damaged organs and clearing a path. His left hand, wrapping the liquid in the Spirit Wave Style's gentle Nen, pressed it down the throat and into the stomach.
Most of the staff didn't understand Nen. But they had been working at floor 200 for a long time and knew that certain people had abilities beyond imagining. When they watched Ross stop the fountain of blood from Kastro's body with just two actions, they paused their own movements and watched him tensely.
As Ross's external intervention forced Kastro to passively swallow, the Vitality Surge Y activated.
This bottle of Vitality Surge Y had been carried out through completing prerequisites inside the Secret Realm.
The carry-out condition: in one complete 5-event all-around competition, purchase and use one bottle of Vitality Surge Y in each of the five events.
The condition looked simple. In practice it required consuming exactly one hundred Gold Medals total. Carrying out Vitality Surge Z would have required one hundred and twenty-five.
Additionally, only one bottle of each could be carried out at a time, and a new one could only be collected after the previous one was used.
But this carry-out method didn't conflict with the Competition Roulette, which was at least something.
Honestly, the farming was genuinely labor-intensive. Operations executable perfectly in a game inevitably produced considerable deviation when done with an actual body. But the Sonic Secret Realm as a Gold Ring resupply channel gave Ross significant reserves, cutting out much of the dedicated Medal-grinding effort.
The well-funded player fears nothing.
As the Vitality Surge Y took effect, Kastro's life force began rapidly recovering. The wounds on his body started visibly closing. While the drug was still active, Ross's fingers moved like lightning, pulling every last playing card out of Kastro's body.
Each card pulled produced a full-body twitch from the unconscious Kastro. Purely instinctive. Even the surrounding medical staff flinched with each one, as if they were feeling it themselves.
"That's... rough."
One staff member muttered quietly, and immediately got poked in the ribs by someone beside them. Don't say something unnecessary.
Nen users were unpredictable. Even though this person who had appeared out of nowhere was currently saving someone, that didn't mean killing was off the table. If a wrong word irritated him, nobody here could stop it.
Ross naturally paid no attention to this. While pulling the cards he also injected Nen to stimulate the body's own healing process.
The reason he hadn't used the Competition Roulette: first, too many eyes around, better to keep certain cards close; second, the gradual effect of the healing potion in the real world allowed for a gentler recovery process.
Two months of training under Genkai had given Ross something of a healer's perspective.
The heart resumed beating. Breathing stabilized. And most importantly, the Navigation Arrow showed a reaction. Ross knew he had pulled another critically injured person back from the threshold.
The Navigation Arrow began scanning. It swept Kastro's hands with targeted precision, then his forehead, and when it returned it carried two new searchable keywords:
One [Tiger] and one [Clone]. Exactly what Ross had predicted.
Was this a critical hit on a heal that dropped double loot?
Keywords secured. Ross immediately and unhesitatingly left, taking nothing else with him, leaving the medical staff staring at an empty spot in the corridor.
He saved someone and then ran. What exactly was this person after?
"Mm... mmm..."
Kastro's faint groaning snapped the staff back to action. They hastily resumed transporting him to the emergency room.
At the same time, in Hisoka's room, an entirely different kind of treatment was underway. Limb reattachment, to be precise.
Machi, pale complexion unmoved, was producing needlework with divine precision, suturing Hisoka's severed wrists at high speed with technique dazzling enough to be hard to follow.
"Nerves, bone, muscle. Suture approximately one hundred percent complete."
She pushed the reattached hand upward and lightly bit through the Nen thread.
Hisoka's hand, which had been entirely severed moments ago, was already moving all five fingers as freely as if nothing had happened.
"Beautiful work."
Genuine appreciation showed in Hisoka's eyes. He truly admired Machi's suturing from the bottom of his heart.
The second hand was completed in turn.
"Every time I watch this technique of yours I find it simply astonishing. Perhaps the reason I allowed my hands to be severed at all was to have the privilege of watching your Nen thread suturing at close range."
"Save it. Left hand twenty million, right hand fifty million. Pay up."
Machi, who also had a healthy appreciation for money, had no time for Hisoka's flattery and simply held out her hand.
"Of course, of course."
Hisoka, for whom this amount barely registered, was already preparing to transfer via phone.
"Oh, and one more thing."
As if she had just remembered, Machi carefully packed away her needle kit and raised her head, meeting Hisoka's eyes directly.
"Additional orders."
Hisoka's eyes narrowed slightly at those words.
"By noon on April 15th. Anyone with free time is to go to Transylvania in the Ochima Federation."
"The Ochima Federation? One of the five major nations? What business is there?"
Hisoka was genuinely curious. This was entirely new territory for an assignment. But looking at the "anyone with free time" qualifier, the priority level seemed lower than the Yorknew City events.
"According to the leader, an ancient castle complex has risen up from underground there. Suspected to be some kind of supernatural phenomenon, possibly the collapse of a ruin. High probability of a substantial collection of unusual treasures inside. The leader wants to move first and see what can be found."
"A castle that grew out of the ground... does this castle have a name?"
"The locals apparently call it Castlevania."