This is the Republic of Padokea.
This is Kukuroo Mountain.
This is the Zoldyck family's territory!
You can't just come and go whenever you feel like it—there's no such thing.
Riiip—
Ripples suddenly appeared in midair. Maha's bony hands flared with a deep, eerie light. He grabbed the space in front of him and tore it open with his bare hands—reality shuddered, and a gap was ripped wide.
Face dark, he dove straight in.
Zeno, Silva, Illumi, and the others all looked grim.
"Roy," Silva said heavily, eyes fixed on the wooden box in Roy's hands. "I think you owe us an explanation."
The rift sealed. Space smoothed over. Maha was gone.
Zeno, Illumi, Milluki—even baby Killua in Tsubone's arms, eyes half-open in sleepy curiosity—stared at Roy.
Roy frowned at the box. A familiar, déjà vu-like pulse was leaking off it.
"I've only met him once," Roy said. "It was in a seabed ruin about three hundred nautical miles off the western coast of Yorbian…"
He gave them the short version: how he, Ging, and Razor had explored the undersea ruin, hunting the "reverse materialization" method; the displaced mirror arenas where everyone was forced into duels; and the final moment when the mysterious skeleton, together with the Chimera Tapir, swallowed the whole cathedral into the void.
The younger ones—Illumi and Milluki—listened like their brains were shutting down.
That skeleton's "vanish into the void" trick? They'd just seen it.
But… fighting Ging?
Silva and Zeno exchanged a look.
"Don't misunderstand," Roy added. "The one I killed was fake Ging."
Even so—
"A fake Ging is still Ging," Illumi said coolly. "I've heard the official side intends to list him for 'one of the world's Top Five Nen Users.'"
Zeno chuckled. "Not 'intends.' It's already decided," he corrected, glancing at Roy. "Results are out. They're just waiting to announce it."
Netero had mentioned it in passing a few days ago.
If that was true, then fighting a Top Five Nen User and not losing—even killing him—even if it was only a "mirror," weaker than the original…
Silva stood with his broad back to the window, staring at Roy. The boy had grown so fast he was nearly up to Silva's nose.
And, against all reason, Silva felt something ridiculous—
A sense of danger.
How absurd. Silva had killed countless people and fought countless battles; he didn't even know how to spell "danger." He exhaled sharply, crushing that feeling to pieces.
"A year isn't long," he said, forcing his posture straight again. "We're not here to talk about that. What matters is figuring out who that thing is."
And right now…
"Only Grandfather can handle it," Zeno sighed. He and Silva were both Transmuters—compared to Maha, who could tear open space with his hands, they were still… too green.
Roy didn't answer.
He studied the box, thinking.
Then he said quietly, "Maybe I can try following him."
A bunch of eyes snapped to him at once.
Roy spread his hands. "Obviously I'm not at Great-Grandfather's level. I can only try a workaround."
"How?" Illumi asked.
"Like this." Light flared.
Roy's whole body erupted into dazzling gold, blending with the sunrise's radiance. In a blink he light-formed, merging into the sunlight, sliding along the edges of space—
Gone.
Then he reappeared beside Illumi and clapped a hand over his head like a joke.
He grinned at them. "I've got an ability that lets me turn into light and move through empty space. If Great-Grandfather didn't go too far or too fast… I might catch up."
Silva: "…"
Zeno: "…"
They were momentarily speechless.
"Becoming light… moving through the void…" Calling it "taking a shortcut" was ridiculous. Nobody with eyes could be fooled by that.
Zeno exhaled, forcing calm. "Forget it. That level of battle isn't something we can join. Your great-grandfather told us not to move for a reason—he didn't want us getting in his way."
"…Yeah." Roy released Illumi.
Illumi swayed and, as usual, melted into a corner's shadow, obsessing over the box again.
But Roy's fingers kept brushing the box's surface. That eerie familiarity only grew stronger.
Then—
Killua suddenly wailed.
That tiny cry shattered the corridor's stillness.
And with it—
Boom.
Something detonated inside Roy's mind. His feet carried him out of the shadows, straight toward the baby.
When he got close enough to finally see the newborn's face, he said, "Let me hold him."
Tsubone hesitated, worried Roy wouldn't know how. She glanced at Silva.
Silva, expressionless, gave a small nod.
Tsubone's pink pigtails swung as she carefully handed Killua over. "Young Master… be gentle. One hand supports the head, the other supports the bottom…"
Roy hummed acknowledgement.
And the instant his hands touched Killua's tiny body—through that fierce bloodline tether—Roy finally understood what the "familiar pulse" from the box really was.
It wasn't "power."
It was cause-and-effect.
Bond.
And also—
A mark.
A Nen ability that could use "something" to mark a target, then track them—maybe even see what they were doing right now.
Yes. On the box's surface patterns, a Nen effect had been laid down.
Roy's armpits suddenly sprouted two more arms—Arm Regeneration—as he held Killua and fidgeted with the box, sinking into the strange logic of this "marking" ability.
And then his interface unfolded.
A corner of it surfaced—
[Notice… detecting an "unknown Nen ability"… Monster Codex deployed… tracing…]
["Targeting Grass": a plant-type "rare beast"]
[Rank: A]
[Manifest Aura: A (7.84 million / 10 million)]
(Ant scale reference… Squad Leader D, Battalion Commander C, Royal Guard B, King B+)
[Potential Aura: S (14.25 million / 100 million)]
[Racial Nen Talent: "Targeted Tracking": plant the cause, reap the effect. "Targeting Grass," as the name suggests, can plant causality and track a target in a fixed direction… The method of planting causality isn't limited—any "traceable thing" works: nails, blood, skin tissue, anything that can be shown.]
[It is revered as the "Guiding Angel," a monument of tracking.]
Roy froze at the words "Guiding Angel."
Somewhere in his memory, it overlapped with a childhood cartoon gadget—so sharply it made his scalp prickle.
[Notice… extracting Targeting Grass racial Nen talent…]
In Roy's cognition sea, the waves churned.
Beyond the already-open Demon Slayer Door, the Naruto Door, and the door that had once cracked open—the Shinigami Door—
another door began to take shape, faint and dreamy.
On it was a cartoon blue cat—round and chubby, a bell at its neck, a pocket sewn into its belly.
It looked harmless.
But when you stared into it…
it felt like a bottomless abyss.
A voice—oddly accented—seemed to drift out:
"... it's Doraemon…"
Roy snapped back.
The "Cognition Door" flickered, and he returned fully to reality. The interface chimed again:
[Notice… Targeted Tracking has been extracted.]
A stream of information flooded in—and Roy seized it, stuffing it into his mind.
From confusion… to understanding… to familiarity… to mastery.
Roy exhaled slowly. He passed Killua to Illumi, his extra arms retracting.
Then he looked down at his own chest.
From his heart, countless causal threads spread outward—some thick, some thin; some warmly red with intimacy, some sickly black with dislike—stretching into infinity.
Roy's mind moved.
He casually plucked the thickest, reddest thread… and followed it.
At the far end: the butler mansion. Gotoh pushing a cart toward him.
Gotoh had grown a rugged beard like in canon. He looked steadier, more seasoned. His strength had climbed too—already around an "elite ant squad leader," not far from commander range.
Roy released that thread and touched another, just as thick and bright red.
The far end was Illumi holding Killua.
Illumi didn't react at all.
Unlike Heart Worms, which could be noticed, this A-rank "Targeted Tracking" sat above Heart Worms in "status."
And of course—Roy was only B-. How could he compete with something whose potential was S?
Roy cycled through more threads—Silva, Zeno, Netero, Bisky and Wing, all kinds of people he'd met…
and the black ones too:
Hisoka. Pariston. Orc General. The Thunder Archbishop Benjamin…
Endless.
It showed him the past, and it also let him touch the edges of future paths.
"Where there's light, there's shadow… Even the sun isn't only bright. It has a dark side, too. It casts shadows that reveal filth and ugliness…"
Time slipped away like water.
A minute. Two. Five. Ten.
Fifteen minutes had passed since Maha left.
The corridor atmosphere shifted from calm to worry to agitation.
"What time is it?" Silva asked again.
"Reporting, sir… it has been fifteen minutes since the old master pursued." Tsubone answered.
Zeno paced the corridor, frowning hard.
Killua cried again—hungry, or wet. Tsubone took him back into the bedroom.
The door opened, then shut.
Roy felt Silva and Zeno's mounting anxiety, Illumi's restless unease.
He reached toward Maha's causal thread and followed it—
Into a storm of warped space.
There stood a skeleton, the Chimera Tapir, and Maha.
They weren't fighting.
They were… weirdly calm.
And Roy heard them speaking.
"I didn't expect you could chase me here," the skeleton said, one hand on the tapir as it waved away a surge of void turbulence.
"And I didn't expect to meet a fellow traveler here," Maha replied, his body glowing with deep violet light—his aura shell holding firm against the storm. He looked at the skeleton.
Then both fell quiet.
A "fellow traveler"—someone who had walked the same road.
What road? In a sky stained with blood, rivers full of corpses… the kind of road you don't come back from unchanged.
The skeleton stroked the tapir, head lowered like it was remembering something long dead.
At last it said softly, "Yes… and that's why you understand. When we old monsters see a new fellow traveler again… we can't help ourselves."
"We wanted to give a gift. Please… understand."
Maha's voice stayed flat. "Gifts given without clarity make people uneasy. Especially when it involves my grandson. I followed you here. I hope you understand that."
The skeleton's ancient sigh traveled through the turbulence like a thought.
It answered, "It's only a friend's 'remains.' I saw fate in the young one, so I passed it to him."
"If he studies it carefully… in three to five years, perhaps he'll gain something."
"Remains?" Roy's mind flashed. Is he talking about Targeting Grass's extracted talent?
But before Roy could pursue it, the skeleton's gaze sharpened and it barked:
"Who is spying?!"
~~~
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