"Yes, sir!"
A gunshot snapped everyone's nerves taut.
Roy kept a faint, gentle smile on his face as he stepped in front of Kastro to shield him.
"Master, watch out."
[Ren]
Milky-white aura wrapped around his body. The white-haired boy, half a step behind Roy, had been on edge the whole time. The instant one of the black suits pulled the trigger, Kastro lunged forward, swinging his fist in a wide arc. Wind roared like a tiger's howl as he smashed into the bullet flying toward Roy's face—
"Bang!"
The bullet bounced straight back and punched into the shooter's forehead. A split second later—
"Boom!"
He exploded on the spot. The blast radius shoved Kastro back, step after step, until he ended up right in front of Roy. Only by desperately clinging to [Ren] and relying on his naturally tough Enhancer body did he manage to tank the explosion without getting shredded.
If it had been a noncombatant—someone like Kortopi among the Troupe, or the girl lying on a garbage pile watching through a pair of stolen binoculars—that one blast would've left them maimed at best.
"They're here! That's Bolton's bomber squad!"
On the trash mountain, Shalnark and Chrollo shared a single cracked lens, taking turns with the binoculars.
Chrollo's brows drew together. Shalnark, by contrast, was practically buzzing with excitement. He even couldn't help looking at Bolton with a bit of envy—the handsome young man calmly eating his steak in the prayer hall, unfazed.
"Wonder what Bolton told those guys," Shalnark said. "To make Deon and the rest so willing to play suicide bomber for him."
That power—to control people, make them obey absolutely… Shalnark's eyes gleamed. He licked his lips. I want that.
"Are they really willing?" Pakunoda asked. She leaned in close to Chrollo, peering through the binoculars with him.
The "Deon" Shalnark had mentioned was hanging back at the edge of the hall with a steel baton, his shoehorn face twisted with fear and unease. He kept swallowing, sneaking panicked glances back at Bolton.
He didn't look "willing" at all.
"Master, something's off with these guys," Kastro muttered.
They were terrified, but they didn't run. Their comrades were literally exploding right next to them, but no one bolted—that broke the most basic instinctive rules of fear.
He forced himself to calm his blood, focused his gaze, and let a thin layer of aura coat his eyes—[Gyo]—to inspect the black suits one by one.
On each of them, he saw traces of thin aura—but not the way real Nen users carried it. It looked more like something had been planted in them, forcing them to do things that went against common sense.
"They're branded," Roy said quietly.
"You could also call it… a bomb."
His eyes slipped past Kastro and fixed on the young man deeper in the hall.
He hadn't expected to run into the owner of "Paired Destroyers" on day one in Meteor City.
[Paired Destroyers]: the mark of "Sun" on the left hand and "Moon" on the right. The user plants those marks on others; once the marked parts touch, they explode. Power scales with time; three to five seconds are enough to prime an explosion.
Limitations: he has to use both hands, and touching people too long makes it easy to get caught. Worse, when the user dies, the marks don't vanish—they get stronger. Once branded, they persist even if other abilities are used; you can't get rid of them.
In canon, Chrollo used this by stealing it and building an entire trap around it to blow up Hisoka in the arena.
The crucial detail there, though, was preparation—Chrollo did a lot of prep.
He stole Shalnark's and Kortopi's abilities with [Skill Hunter], then used antennae and [God's Left Hand, Devil's Right Hand] to create a mob of puppets, compressing Hisoka's movement space. Only after all that did the bombs finish the job.
Right now, Bolton was just sitting in the hall, making no move to touch his own men.
Even if he'd planted "Moon" on all of them ahead of time, how was he detonating "Sun" from this distance—without laying a hand on them?
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Explosions blossomed across the hall. Steel rods and bullets poured in.
Even knowing they exploded on contact, Kastro had no choice but to spread his stance and fight, putting his body between the black suits and Roy.
A fist, a kick—each move wrapped in small flickers of flame. He was using the battlefield as a training ground—
"Flame Breathing, First Form: Unknowing Fire… Second Form: Rising Scorching Sun… Third Form: Blazing Universe…"
He wove through the blasts like a flame dancer, honing his forms in real combat.
And as he moved, a series of prompts chimed softly in Roy's head:
[Notice: Your follower "Kastro" is growing stronger… Faith +0.1 +0.1 +0.1…]
[Note: Faith points can be allocated freely to any skill to increase its proficiency.]
"Boom!"
Another blast rocked the hall, the shock wave tugging at Roy's hair.
He said nothing, but new understanding dawned in his eyes.
Ever since that talk with Great-Grandfather Maha in the grave-filled dream, he'd chosen his path—the path of faith. From that moment on, his "growth system" was open, and as the Sun in his followers' hearts, whether he liked it or not, he was bound to them:
Kastro, Gotoh, Kyojuro Rengoku and his father… Vanessa and Old Koller…
He strong, they strong. One prospers, all prosper; one falls, all pay the price.
Just like Maha and the hundreds of thousands who'd followed him.
He was no longer fighting alone.
"Tch… tch…"
Footsteps echoed through the exploding hall.
In the middle of gunfire and shrapnel, Taiichi—Roy's clone—finally moved.
"Praise the Sun, Kastro," he said softly. "Can I leave the outside to you?"
"Leave it to me, Master!"
Kastro smashed a black suit's face with a flame-wrapped palm, shrugged off another blast, and laughed.
"Until I'm dead, nobody's getting near you."
Roy smiled; Taiichi stepped into a patch of conjured mire, vanished—
Then reappeared inside the church, behind the ring of gunmen.
He stood calmly in the ruined prayer hall, facing the altar.
"A Nen user?" Bolton's slit eyes narrowed.
Roy—through Taiichi—didn't bother answering. He opened his right hand, and motes of light coalesced into a familiar katana: Shallow Hit. He gripped it gently.
"Oho," Bolton said. "A Conjurer."
He popped the last piece of steak into his mouth, casually tossed the knife and fork aside, and rose to his feet.
In an instant, his [Ren] flared—
"Boom!"
The aura crashed against Taiichi like pressure from a bomb: dense, choking.
It was different from Roy's, different from Silva's—Bolton's Nen was spiking, surging higher in steps, each blast outside adding another beat of power.
Taiichi grimaced slightly at the pressure and glanced toward a side chapel.
"So," he said. "The mighty Kakin Empire can't keep its filth at home—so you've slithered all the way to its junkyard instead."
"Illya, was it?"
"Tell your mistress Morena this for me: Meteor City is a trash dump, not a plague nest for her to spread her 'virus.'"
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Outside, the fight reached a fever pitch.
Living men, with their own free will, could never match the suicidal resolve of Chrollo's puppets.
Still, Kastro's hit-and-run tactics were taking a toll. He darted through the black suits like a flaming assassin, cutting them down one by one.
Bolton, hearing Roy's words, finally reacted.
His eyes snapped open, sharp and cold.
Another presence stepped out from the shadows of the side chapel: a middle-aged man in a tailored suit, hair slicked straight back.
The two men flanked Roy in a loose triangle.
"What impressive [En]," the newcomer said, clapping once. "I was wondering who kept tugging at my attention."
The Seventh Elder—Illya, "the Controller."
Pakunoda went rigid on the garbage mountain.
This was the man, like a mountain himself, who'd blocked Boss Berus's reform plans again and again.
But for Roy, neither "Elder" nor "mountain" meant much.
As Taiichi stood there in his priest's robes, Nen aura brimming quietly, he smelled something familiar on both Bolton and Illya—
Faith.
A viral faith.
"You know Morena?" Bolton's face didn't change, but his eyes sharpened.
"Then you should know," he said, "that for 'patients' like us, this place is paradise."
"After all—"
He spread his hands lightly, listening to the explosions outside.
"This is the only place where we can kill as we please—no questions asked."
"What do you say, Reverend?"
Morena Prudo—King Nasubi Hui Guo Rou's bastard with a mistress, and the hidden backer of Fourth Prince Tserriednich's faction. One of the three underground rulers of Kakin, true head of the Heil-Ly family.
Her ability [Etude of Love]: through a kiss, she can infect someone with a "virus" and turn them into a PATIENT.
Those patients—herself included—have a maximum number of 23. Killing a normal person gains 1 level, killing a Nen user 10 levels, killing a Prince 50 levels. At Level 20, they awaken a personal Nen ability. At Level 100, they can become a "0-Class Patient," like Morena herself, capable of infecting others and building their own sub-factions.
"Virus" as faith. Infection as "conversion."
In Morena's worldview, PATIENTS are followers, the virus is belief, the cap of 23 is simply all the backlash from Nature she can stomach.
Roy thought of her future line aboard the Black Whale—"The only point of my existence is to destroy everything"—and how she unleashed her PATIENTS in a mad war against everyone onboard.
Yeah. That woman was well on her way to becoming a walking disaster.
All that flashed through his mind in an instant.
Bolton's taunting question hung in the air. Roy didn't answer.
If it were Yoriichi here, he'd probably rage and demand, "What do you think a life is worth?"
Roy had no interest in arguing. He just lifted his sword.
"Bolton," he said, voice flat.
"Patient No. 17. Level: 41. Visible aura: C– (14,581 / 100,000)…"
"Illya. Patient No. 5. Level: 50. Visible aura: C (57,414 / 100,000)…"
If the level system worked the way Morena promised—1 level per civilian, 10 per Nen user, 50 per prince—and each level cost exponentially more lives…
Then each of these men had several hundred, maybe thousands of deaths on their hands.
Roy's eyes darkened.
Shallow Hit pulsed in his grip, blade reddening, flames roaring along the edge.
Illya felt the heat and didn't flinch.
He glanced at Bolton.
"Careful. His [En] reads minds. Block him before you move."
"No need for you to tell me that," Bolton snapped.
"Same deal as always," he added. "We kill him, we split the EXP."
"Bang!"
He slammed his fists together. The sun sigil on his left hand and the moon on his right crackled—
And a shadowy "arrow" streaked away from his hands like a snake.
It bit down on an unseen point in the air in front of Roy—binding to an explosion already primed—and hurtled toward Roy's face.
Roy drew, flame dancing along his blade—
And met the arrow tip-on.
A split second—
"BOOM."
The explosion was far stronger than any of the black suits' self-destructs.
The entire church shook. Dust and shards rained down.
Outside, Kastro and the black suits continued their deadly dance.
On the trash mountain, Chrollo, Shalnark, and Pakunoda all went wide-eyed.
Even the ever-calm Chrollo would never forget what he saw next.
Inside the blasted nave, Roy was still standing. In his hands, Shallow Hit vibrated faintly.
He looked at it with a tenderness that didn't match the chaos around him, two fingers brushing along the flat of the blade.
"My bad," he murmured. "Been neglecting you while I've worked on tricks."
His eyes hardened.
"Let me make it up to you."
"Faith, full release. Dump it all into Swordsmanship."
"Bankai."
~~~
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