Chapter 216: The Deadlock
Saiyu was strong.
That fact was now permanently etched into the minds of every remaining member of the Phantom Troupe.
But his strength was not an absolute wall.
Sensory deprivation was a terrifying Hatsu in a duel, but in a seven-on-one skirmish, it failed to produce the decisive result Saiyu needed.
Though Chrollo's hearing had been stripped away, he didn't need ears to sense the approach of the blindfolded monkey, Mizaru. On Chrollo's body were Machi's Nen Stitches. With a sharp tug of her fingers from the other side of the room, she yanked Chrollo out of the path of the monkey's hammer-fist, making the beast strike only air.
During the maneuver, Chrollo noted that Saiyu's physical presence had vanished from the 13th floor.
Instead of hunting the three Nen monkeys, Chrollo blurred across the room, appearing at the spot where Saiyu had stood seconds before.
The floor was a ruin of shattered wood and dust.
Franklin's bullets and Nobunaga's slashes had done their part, but what drew Chrollo's attention was a perfectly circular hole punched through the structural foundation—large enough for a man to drop through.
Saiyu's earlier strike with the Nyoi-bo hadn't been aimed at Nobunaga at all. It had been a demolition strike to create an escape route.
He's trying to kite us, Chrollo analyzed.
But Saiyu was destined for a rude awakening.
The floor below wasn't an exit. It was a labyrinth.
Chrollo had predicted Saiyu's choice from the start. In a one-on-seven scenario, no matter how skilled the Zodiac was, the only rational move was to retreat and reset.
That was why Chrollo had placed Kortopi in the basement before the assault began. His job was to create a prison that Saiyu could never leave.
Inside the 12th-floor hallway, Saiyu's mouth rematerialized on his face. His expression, however, was grim.
The moment the ambush started, he hadn't planned on a heroic last stand. He was a professional; dying for a bad contract wasn't his style.
As a Blacklist Hunter, he found the Spiders' heads quite attractive—each was worth billions. But his primary goal was to survive the night, map their abilities, and counter-attack when he held the advantage.
As for Beyond Netero... the debt and the "favors" between them were officially settled. This was a betrayal.
He had known Beyond for years. They understood each other's limits. They had a pact to see the Dark Continent together.
Was this always the plan? Saiyu wondered. Or is the old man still testing me?
Saiyu suddenly stopped walking.
Something was fundamentally wrong. He had smashed through three separate walls, yet every time he emerged on the other side, he was standing in the exact same hotel corridor.
When did it start? What kind of ability can loop a physical building?
He had zero leads.
A new theory formed in his mind: Beyond wasn't testing him. He was testing the Phantom Troupe.
If the Spiders could defeat a Zodiac, they proved themselves worthy of being Beyond's "tools" for the upcoming voyage. If the Spiders died or let him escape, Saiyu would simply continue with the team as planned, his position as an elite unshakeable.
Trust a Netero to treat human lives like a game of chess, he thought bitterly. No wonder he and Pariston get along so well. They're both addicted to the sight of an ant struggling in a jar.
Saiyu slammed his staff into a side wall while simultaneously delivering a reinforced kick to the floor.
BOOM!
The masonry and floorboards disintegrated. Beyond the wall was the same room he had just left. Below the floor, he dropped into another identical corridor.
It's not an illusion, Saiyu realized, feeling the grit of the dust in his mouth.
He had started on the 13th floor. He had dropped to the 12th. Now he was on the 11th. But he felt no closer to the street.
He descended five floors in rapid succession, only to find another anomaly.
The building was empty. Aside from the floor above him where the Spiders were, he sensed no other life. No guests, no staff, no heartbeats.
He stopped his descent.
Still not right.
While Saiyu was trapped in the loop, the streets of the Kakin capital were in an uproar.
Pedestrians and drivers stared in disbelief. Beside the towering luxury hotel, a second, identical hotel had materialized out of thin air.
The street buckled as the new structure squeezed into the grid. Traffic was cut off, and sirens began to wail in the distance.
The architect of this miracle was Kortopi.
He stood in the shadows of an alley, his face hidden by a curtain of hair, one hand touching the foundation of the original building.
While Nobunaga was initiating the strike upstairs, Kortopi had already completed his physical scan of the hotel.
After receiving a signal from Shalnark, he had activated his Hatsu: Gallery Fake (Divine Left Hand, Demonic Right Hand).
He had duplicated the entire skyscraper.
The two buildings were now fused side-by-side. Saiyu's "escape" into the lower floors had simply led him into the vacant, labyrinthine interior of the copy.
In the copied building, there were no people. But it was a perfect cage. Kortopi didn't even need to be inside; because he had created the building, the entire structure acted as his En. He knew exactly where Saiyu was in the 11th-floor hallway.
"The play-area is limited. Do as you wish. We're resuming the assault," Chrollo's voice echoed near Kortopi.
The Spider's Head, followed by the rest of the unit who had withdrawn from the "real" hotel, stepped into the copied lobby.
Kortopi nodded once.
He was certain Saiyu couldn't escape. Every time the Zodiac reached for a window, he would find himself looking into the interior of the adjacent building. He was trapped in a recursive loop of stone and steel.
Police lights began to flicker on the nearby streets, but the arriving officers simply stared at the impossible twin towers, looking like they had seen a ghost.
Saiyu realized it then.
Someone was literally manifesting architecture to keep him running in circles.
But every "rule" had a boundary.
There were only two places a copy of a building would likely fail to account for: the deep foundation and the sky.
He couldn't go back up to the basement through the Spiders. His only path was up.
The Roof.
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