Gotoh had a dream. A very, very long dream.
In the dream, it was as if he had returned to the embryonic stage of his life. From a single fertilized egg, he kept dividing and developing—into a morula, then a blastocyst. Then, with a soft plop, it was as though he had fallen into water, and implantation began…
He was only an embryo, not even properly developing yet, without organs or a brain—but somehow, Gotoh recognized it at a glance. That tiny, round little thing settling into the uterine wall… was him.
Was I reborn?
Or remade?
Gotoh drifted outside the embryo, watching it all from a godlike perspective. Involuntarily, the image of Roy smiling at him with that head of silver hair surfaced in his mind. In silence, the butler kept watching… as the blastocyst, which should have simply continued developing, was suddenly infused with a warm, gentle ray of sunlight haloed in a faint glow…
Crack.
At once, Gotoh felt as if something deep within his body had broken. A vague understanding rose in his mind.
As the "sunlight" poured in,
Gotoh looked again and could clearly feel that, compared to before, his blastocyst self was more active now—and slightly larger too.
His heart stirred, and that blurry revelation rapidly became clearer—
that was the sound of his [genetic shackles] breaking, being torn apart and reforged by someone else's hand.
It was the young master…
That drop of blood he gave me…
That drop that looked ordinary, but actually contained… the [power of the sun]…
Warmth spread through Gotoh's chest. As time continued to move, he quietly kept watching his smaller self. Sure enough, after the blastocyst stage, organs soon began to form. Limbs followed. He was full of life—rolling over, swimming around, treating the amniotic fluid like a pool, burning through endless energy with every movement… completely unlike an ordinary infant.
And that difference was exactly what his talent, his genes, had given him—
something extraordinary that had begun before he was even born.
Soon enough, ten months passed, and Gotoh realized he had finally entered the world crying. There he was in swaddling clothes, just like before, discarded like trash in some inconspicuous garbage heap in Meteor City. As his awareness turned, he couldn't even clearly see what his mother looked like… or how she had found the resolve to throw away her newborn child so ruthlessly…
But then he remembered what kind of place that was.
Meteor City.
A hell where most children didn't even live long enough to reach adulthood.
Watching that frail figure slowly disappear into the night after abandoning him, Gotoh gradually… let it go.
Later, Tsubone found him.
He entered the Zoldyck family and began learning butler skills and Nen as a trainee butler.
Years passed.
Then one day, he was assigned to care for the young eldest son.
For the first time in his life, Gotoh saw someone whose smile could be that warm… that bright…
"Hello."
That day, the young master—back when he still had black hair—had taken the initiative and held out his right hand to him.
That day, trembling with reverence, Gotoh pressed his right hand to his chest, knelt on one knee, and swore his loyalty—
determining the one and only master of his life.
Buzz…
For some reason, the dream, peaceful until that point, suddenly began to tremble. Everything he was seeing and hearing was abruptly interrupted. One moment, Gotoh was still kneeling before Roy and swearing his loyalty. The next, he raised his head again and narrowed his eyes toward the cracked edge of the dream…
There, not far away, with only a door between them, stood three figures quietly talking to each other.
At some point, the youngest of them noticed his gaze and pressed a hand down in a calming gesture from afar.
"Don't panic. I'm here."
Just like when sunlight had entered him in the embryonic stage, Gotoh—lying inside the blood cocoon—recognized Roy in a single glance.
And at once, reassured, he closed his newly opened eyes again.
[Notice: Believer Gotoh's evolution process continues…]
[Current progress: 5/7 days]
[Two days remain until evolution is complete…]
Roy soothed Gotoh with one hand, then, as usual, glanced at the panel.
[Believer: Gotoh (Note: Loyalty overflowing)]
[Current Status: Evolution in progress…]
[Physique +1 +1 +1 +1…]
[Current: 1274… increased by 900 points from pre-evolution level (Note: Still increasing)]
[Manifest Aura Quantity: C (37415/100000) → C+ (15784/100000) (Note: Still increasing)]
[Potential Aura Quantity: C+ (14578/100000) → B- (200000/1000000) (Note: Still increasing)]
[Type: Emission]
[Initial Nen Ability: Coin Conjecture]
[First Embrace Nen Ability: Currently awakening…]
[Awakening Progress: 78%]
[Rating: C+]
[Note: Compared to Chimera Ants, your believer "Gotoh" has already reached the level of a top-tier squadron leader. His current combat ability is roughly on par with peak-condition Kite, and he is continuing to advance toward B- rank.]
[Control Status — Under Absolute Control]
Roy silently felt the line of causality connecting him to Gotoh still thickening and strengthening.
Then he heard Netero say quietly, "Your butler is quite sharp."
Roy stood beside him, still maintaining [Heart's Drop: Sword Listening], and smiled.
"He's always been a careful, thoughtful person. Otherwise he could never have become a butler."
Netero gave a low, approving hum. Then he looked once more at Gotoh, who had fallen peacefully asleep again, and through the reflection of Gotoh's heart, seemed to witness a tremendous transformation…
It was the difference between a fleeting meteor—one that had prepared itself to burn out in an instant—and a planet, one with its own stable orbit, slowly revolving around a central point.
The difference in mass, size, magnetic field, and vitality was almost beyond comparison.
And all of that had happened in less than two years.
As Netero's thoughts drifted, he cast Roy a quiet glance. That young butler, whose upper limit had once been obvious at a glance, had transformed to this extent… and there was no way that had nothing to do with the warm-smiling boy standing before him.
A mountain breeze blew in through the open window.
Gotoh slept peacefully.
Netero, still in his out-of-body state, did not immediately withdraw. At one point, he raised a hand and swept it lightly through the air before him…
In an instant, the second-floor hallway changed.
In its place appeared a world covered over by projections of the mind—a world where only consciousness could remain for a short time…
Buzz—
The many gazes converging on the place were instantly cut off and repelled.
Caught in the storm where [Heart's Drop: Fist Listening] and [Heart's Drop: Sword Listening] collided, everyone but Maha—including Silva and Zeno—felt their bodies jolt slightly as Netero's will brushed past them and forced them out.
Silva and Zeno each fell silent for a while, standing where they were without moving for a long time.
Tap… tap…
By then, the sun had fully risen above the horizon, and the summer heat was beginning to climb. In the dim little room, Maha kept listening to cartoons, rocking lazily in his chair, tapping the armrest with complete ease. He simply lay there, allowing Netero's sweeping consciousness to pass over him, utterly unmoved.
Inside the world of [Heart's Drop: Fist Listening],
Netero narrowed his eyes and could only laugh helplessly.
"The old man's still as stubborn as ever."
Then, deciding to simply leave Maha be, he flicked a hand.
A few small stools appeared, along with a calm lake reflecting shimmering waves, quietly set out before Roy.
Roy's nose twitched. The breeze drifting over the lake carried a familiar scent.
Taking one of the stools at random, he sat down and said, "This lake should be Ging's mental projection—the one he left here back then."
Roy's gaze swept around. Beside the empty stool to his right was a fishing rod stuck crookedly into the ground. At the point where the line met the float, it was fixed with a red bead… exactly the same fishing rod Ging had used by the sea before.
At once, Roy's mind flashed to scenes from the original story—Gon using that rod to catch giant fish… using it with Leorio to hook onto rock and swing across the sea onto the deck of the Sea God…
Roy opened his right hand, and glimmers of light surfaced there. In the next moment, he used [Wood Release] to manifest a straight rod in his hand. With a casual flick, a Nen line shot out—
plop—
and sank into the lake, splashing up little flowers of water.
Netero swept his wide sleeve and sat down on the empty stool to Roy's left. Watching the lake ripple, with fish darting beneath the surface, he said quietly,
"Ging is one of the very few people I've ever met who has an especially deep affinity with nature."
"This lake… the fish in it… the birds and beasts drinking at the shore… all of them are impressions he left on me."
The essence of [Heart's Drop: Fist Listening] lay in a clash of minds and wills.
Words could lie.
Eyes could lie.
But thoughts reflected into mental space in the form of "manifestation" could not lie at all.
Roy followed Netero's gaze to the birds and beasts, and then thought back to the day he and Ging broke Razor out of prison. Ging had shown an ability that let him briefly borrow the talents of magical beasts through [contracts].
Calling him "close to nature" was no exaggeration.
"And that patch over there?" Roy sat calmly by the lake, fishing without a hook, and glanced toward a patch of shaded grass on the shore where faintly glowing things sparkled like gemstones, scattering rainbow colors in the sunlight.
He already had a guess—
and immediately thought of a certain old woman who loved pretending she was young.
"You guessed right. That's the impression Bisky left on me."
An [impression] was almost the same thing as a [psychic impact]. It was only because the impact was so strong that it became impossible to erase.
Netero copied Roy, picking up a dry stick from the ground to use as a fishing rod, and began fishing without a hook.
"Girls liking gemstones is only natural. That student of mine has loved collecting glittering things ever since she was little."
"Ho ho ho… sometimes they were piled all over her room so badly that even I couldn't find a place to stand."
Yes. That really did sound like exactly the sort of thing that old lady would do.
Roy let his gaze drift away from the gemstone patch and continued looking farther into the world of the lake.
In the distance, he could see dust billowing, war chariots roaring, gunfire flashing… and now and then, shells dragging long tails of flame into the sky.
This time, before Roy even asked, Netero explained on his own.
"That's the impression Botobai left on me."
Botobai—a one-man army.
As the widely acknowledged strongest person in the Hunter Association beneath Netero in the original story, it was hardly surprising he would leave behind an impression like that.
Then Roy saw forests, strange rocks, drifting flowers, and snowy moonlight…
Until an old, weathered amusement park suddenly came into view.
The boy's body tensed.
At once, he noticed that the abandoned amusement park was blocked off by a huge rusted iron gate, sealed shut with a heavy lock.
Roy abruptly turned his head and looked at Netero.
The old man's eyes were deep, layered with memory, sorrow, and complicated feeling.
"You're right. That was the impression your grandfather Zigg left me back then."
As expected.
Roy silently set down the fishing rod, stood up, and said directly, "Can I take a look?"
Netero was silent for a moment. Then he lifted a fish out of the lake and answered, "No."
With that, he tossed it back into the water.
"Why?" Roy asked calmly, his silver hair shining, the glazed gold at the ends glowing in the breeze. "That place isn't just your mental projection. It holds Grandfather Zigg's as well…"
Netero didn't look at him.
"It's because Zigg himself is guarding it and refusing to let anyone in."
Roy: "..."
For a while, neither of them spoke.
After a long time, a green leaf drifted down and landed in the lake, spreading rings of ripples.
Roy stayed silent for a while before asking again, "Has my great-grandfather seen it?"
Before Netero could answer, a cold snort traveled along the mental thread and reached Roy's ears.
Maha's voice said, "The old man couldn't be bothered to look!"
That single line made Roy and Netero look at each other in silence, both of them speechless.
"Ho ho ho… looks like the old man's not getting over his temper anytime soon…"
After a while, Netero forced a laugh, lifted his stick again, and caught another fish.
The fish thrashed hard, splashing water and wetting one corner of Roy's clothes.
Roy stayed silent for a long while, giving the locked amusement park one long, deep look.
Then he withdrew his gaze, losing interest in continuing to measure the landscape of Netero's mind.
He turned to look at Netero again—
and then froze.
Dong—
A deep, resonant bell rang in Roy's ears like an ancient temple chime.
As his gaze settled back on Netero,
two divine lights flared from Roy's amber eyes.
And he saw clearly—
behind the old man in his loose robes, behind those drooping earlobes and white brows, behind that relaxed posture—
stood a towering, majestic Buddhist hall.
It was supported by dozens of thick pillars.
There were no couplets.
No Buddhist verses.
Not even a wooden fish drum.
Looking through the double doors, all that stood inside was one enormous, solemn statue of Kannon.
She wore a jeweled crown.
A necklace adorned her throat.
Her brows curved like willow leaves.
Her eyes were half-open.
Her lips gently pressed together.
Her earlobes were full.
Her cheeks round.
Her expression faintly smiling, dignified, looking down from above…
Holy. Majestic. Sacred.
And yet, perhaps because of her sheer size, that faint smile seemed to regard human beings like insects.
One could only look up at her.
Only by straining the neck could one see, beyond her shoulders—
the hundred arms suddenly extending from behind her back.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 50 Chapters Ahead of Others!