The young attacker team leader had some time to rest as Hisoka was looking around and thinking about how boring people like them are without nen.
He got up and forced himself to run as he ordered the remaining people.
"Retreat! All of you, retreat to base!"
What he had witnessed was no longer something that he could handle.
He felt the force, the strength of Hisoka, firsthand.
"I am not dumb!"
"I can see with ease that he is holding back, and it is not a small amount of power that he is hiding," the young team leader thought as he kept on running.
There were monsters in the world.
He had heard stories during his time as a soldier about supernatural masters, about hunters, about individuals who stood above conventional limits.
"I never expected those stories to be true."
"At least I thought I would have a chance to fight back," he thought.
But seeing one move like that, carving through twenty trained applicants in seconds, shattered the distance between rumor and reality.
"This isn't human," he thought as he sprinted.
Behind him, the remaining people scattered.
And behind them
Hisoka walked.
But inside him, something stirred.
"Running prey..."
"It feels more exciting if they are running."
The thin thread he had been clinging to—the rule of the exam, the playful restraint, the amusement of "just knocking them out"—began to fray.
Ahead, one of the fleeing applicants was slower than the rest.
He stumbled slightly on uneven rock.
That was enough.
Hisoka vanished.
To the runners, it felt like lightning had struck behind them.
A sharp slicing sound cut through the air.
The man running at the rear froze mid-step.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then his body collapsed forward.
His head remained slightly behind before sliding off balance, nearly separated from his neck by a brutal diagonal sword strike.
Blood sprayed against the cave wall.
This picture and action changed everything about the exam and what kind of a reality it held.
"He killed him!"
"He killed an applicant!"
The screams echoed through the tunnels, magnified by stone.
The young team leader, now at the very front of the retreating cluster, felt his stomach twist violently.
The exam rules were clear.
Murder was prohibited.
"He has snapped; he does not care about passing the exam anymore."
"He is just here to murder..." he thought as he kept running and fear was filling him up inside.
He screamed with everything left in his lungs.
"He is killing applicants! Examiner! Help us!"
His voice bounced down the cavern corridors.
Behind them, Hisoka stood still for a moment, watching the blood pool across the rock.
His eyes glowed faintly.
He licked a thin smear of blood off one of his cards.
A smirk curved across his face.
"So warm…"
He took a step forward.
He was about to blur forward again to take down one of the people again.
But then someone appeared in front of him.
Togari.
Hisoka tilted his head slightly.
Togari stood firm.
"You killed an applicant," Togari said evenly.
"Which is grounds for immediate disqualification."
Hisoka's smile widened.
"Oh?"
"So you're going to stop me?"
Togari didn't respond verbally.
That was answer enough.
In the next instant, several razor-sharp cards shot from Hisoka's hands like bullets.
They whistled through the cave air with lethal intent.
Togari moved fast, far faster than the fleeing applicants had.
He twisted left.
Then right.
The cards embedded themselves into stone behind him with explosive cracks.
Without hesitation, Togari unsheathed a long scimitar.
Unlike the original series' portrayal, he carried no daggers, just this single weapon.
But the aura gathering along its edge told a different story.
Focused entirely on stopping the threat in front of him.
"I need to stop this guy," Togari thought.
"Or he will keep killing."
He launched forward.
The scimitar cut downward in a fast arc.
It was clear that Togari knew how to use his blade, and it was not just a weapon but also something that he put a lot of work into to learn how to wield with mastery.
Hisoka stepped back half a pace.
The blade sliced through air where his neck had been a split second earlier.
Stone shattered behind him as the sword's residual force struck the wall.
Hisoka's eyes lit up.
"Oh…"
His aura began to rise now.
"So you're interesting."
Now that Hisoka was fighting against a hunter, a nen user, he did not feel like holding back too much.
Togari followed with a horizontal slash, forcing Hisoka to duck low.
Hisoka countered with a sweeping kick aimed at Togari's knee.
Togari hopped back, blade pivoting defensively.
Further down the cave, Blue Team's defenders felt the clash of aura.
Elicia's face went pale.
"That presence…"
She turned toward the direction of the disturbance.
"That's not just applicants fighting anymore."
While she thought about what was happening.
Conrad, who was waiting for everything to start, smiled and nodded.
"So, it is time."
"I am sure Hisoka is fighting with Togari right now."
"When all of this is over, he should be disqualified."
Conrad thought for a moment and then said to himself.
"Now that people are disturbed and everything is in chaos of some sort, I should go and take the flag."