Kailan Grand Hotel.
Ryker returned to his suite, casually informing Kurapika that another Spider had been exterminated.
"Brother Ryker..." Kurapika choked up, his voice thick with emotion. This was his revenge, his burden to bear. Yet Ryker was risking his life to slaughter the Spiders for him. It was a debt he could never repay.
"Captain! We have a major problem!" Dalzollene suddenly shouted, bursting into the room.
As a professional bodyguard, Dalzollene regularly monitored the Dark Web for intelligence. The moment he logged into the Hunter Blacklist, he was greeted by a massive, flashing banner that took up the entire screen.
"The highest bounty in history just went up! 100 Billion Jenny! The target is... you, Captain!"
The screen displayed a high-definition photo of Ryker.
"100 billion?!" Squala gasped, feeling the blood drain from his face.
"Who the hell would place a bounty that high?!" Baise asked, trembling.
"Damn it... at that price, every assassin and mercenary on the planet is going to be hunting us," Basho gritted his teeth.
The appearance of this astronomical bounty meant they were no longer just fighting the Phantom Troupe. They were fighting the entire criminal underworld.
"They put a bounty on me? Heh," Ryker chuckled, his eyes narrowing slightly as he read the screen. "It seems the Spiders are finally getting desperate. No matter. I have plenty of time and energy to play with them."
Ryker wasn't worried. He had anticipated a large-scale retaliation. Days ago, he had scattered invisible [Lightning Beasts: Spiders] all over Yorknew City, specifically placing them around Gon, Killua, and Leorio to ensure he could teleport to them instantly if they were targeted.
"Captain! I hear footsteps!" Melody suddenly cried out, pressing her hands to her ears. "Many of them! Their heartbeats are aggressive! They're enemies!"
Before Dalzollene could order his men to check the perimeter, the reinforced glass windows of the suite shattered.
Several black canisters clattered onto the floor.
"Gas grenades! Don't breathe!" Dalzollene roared.
These weren't standard tear gas canisters. They were military-grade nerve toxins, highly restricted even among top-tier Mafia families.
The canisters hissed, rapidly filling the room with thick, white vapor. Outside the suite, a few hotel staff members inadvertently inhaled the gas. Within seconds, they dropped to the floor, violently clawing at their own throats as their faces turned a horrifying shade of purple. They suffocated in agony.
"Don't panic. Gather around me," Ryker ordered calmly.
Hearing Ryker's steady voice, the panicked bodyguards immediately complied, drawing their weapons and forming a tight circle around him.
An invisible, spherical barrier of pure Nen expanded from Ryker, creating a ten-meter safe zone. The deadly white gas crashed against the barrier, completely unable to penetrate it.
"Incredible! Is this an application of Ten?!" Baise marveled.
"Brother Ryker!" Kurapika shouted, pointing out the window.
The entire hotel was suddenly engulfed in a raging inferno. The attackers weren't just using gas; they were using incendiary bombs and explosives. They intended to burn the entire building to the ground with Ryker inside.
BOOM! BOOM!
Deafening explosions rocked the foundation. The bodyguards braced themselves, realizing their enemies intended to leave no survivors.
Outside the Hotel.
A silver-haired man with a jagged scar across his face grinned sadistically. He stood among a loose coalition of dangerous-looking individuals.
These were Nen users. Elite assassins, mercenaries, and lone wolves who had flocked to the hotel the second the 100 billion Jenny bounty went live.
Surrounding them were hundreds of heavily armed Mafia foot soldiers, deployed by the Ten Dons to exact revenge on the Troupe (though they mistakenly believed Ryker was the target they needed to kill to appease the Dons).
"Heh heh. That should take care of them," the scarred assassin laughed. "How do we split the bounty?"
"Don't be naive," an older mercenary scoffed. "A monster worth a hundred billion doesn't die from a little fire and gas. But he should be severely injured."
"Whoever takes his head gets the money. No splitting," a third assassin declared, drawing a pair of curved daggers.
"Agreed!"
The shadows around the burning hotel were filled with unseen predators, waiting like hyenas to tear apart the lion's prey.
Inside the Inferno.
The Kailan Grand Hotel was collapsing. The heat was unbearable, and the structural integrity was failing.
Yet, Ryker stood perfectly still.
The bodyguards surrounding him looked around in absolute awe.
The invisible, ten-meter sphere around Ryker was completely untouched. The floor beneath them wasn't even scorched. The roaring flames, the toxic gas, and the shrapnel from the explosions all bounced harmlessly off the absolute defense of his Nen.
"S-So strong..."
"Captain is incredible!"
"Thank god we stuck with him..."
The bodyguards felt a wave of profound relief. If they had been alone, they would have died ten times over. But standing next to Ryker was like standing inside an indestructible bunker.
"Brother Ryker... the Mafia is definitely involved," Kurapika analyzed. "And a lot of professional assassins. We need to break out..."
"Don't worry," Ryker sneered, his eyes flashing with a bone-chilling, predatory light. "The show is just starting."
If they want to play dirty, I'll show them what a real massacre looks like.
Outside.
The Mafia bosses overseeing the demolition laughed as the hotel finally began to cave in.
"Boss, he's dead for sure! We can report back to the Dons!"
"I want a body! Even if he's charcoal, bring him out! Let these assassin dogs fight over his head!"
"Heh. Anyone who crosses the Ten Dons has a short lifespan."
The fire illuminated their cruel, greedy smiles.
But then...
BOOM!
A secondary explosion, infinitely more violent than the first, erupted from the center of the collapsing hotel.
It wasn't a standard explosion. It was a shockwave of pure, condensed flames.
The fire didn't just spread; it lashed out like thousands of hungry, fiery tongues, sweeping across the surrounding perimeter in a fraction of a second.
Agonized screams instantly shattered the night air.
The Mafia foot soldiers closest to the blast were splashed with the flames. Instinctively, they tried to pat the fire out, drop and roll, or strip off their burning clothes.
But the fire wouldn't go out.
It clung to their skin like napalm. It fed on their panic. Within a single breath, the men were transformed into human torches. They ran blindly, screaming, their flesh melting like wax.
In an instant, hundreds of Mafia members were engulfed. Even a few of the weaker assassins were caught in the inferno. Being Nen users, they lasted slightly longer, but no matter how much aura they pumped out, the bizarre flames continued to devour them.
The survivors watched in absolute horror as the burning men were reduced to skin, then muscle, then charred skeletons, before the flames finally dissipated.
"What the hell was that?!"
"That's not normal fire! We can't put it out!"
"It's a Nen ability! Fuck! Why didn't the bounty mention he controlled fire?!"
"SCATTER!"
The remaining Mafia thugs broke and ran in sheer terror. Only the hardened assassins remained, holding their ground, though their confidence was severely shaken.
From the center of the fiery explosion, a figure slowly walked out.
Gulp.
Hundreds of mercenaries swallowed hard, sweat pouring down their faces as they stared at the man emerging from the flames.
It was Ryker.
His shirt had been burned away, exposing his perfectly sculpted, muscular physique. But there wasn't a single burn mark on his skin. He was wreathed in fire, looking like a Demon King strolling out of purgatory.
"H-He's a monster!"
"How is he not burned?!"
"Shoot him! SHOOT THE BASTARD!"
The panicked Mafia bosses screamed, drawing their weapons. Driven by pure, primal terror, the remaining thugs unleashed a hail of gunfire at Ryker.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Thousands of bullets tore through the air, screaming toward Ryker's chest.
And then, they stopped.
Every single bullet froze in mid-air, suspended inches from Ryker's body by an invisible force.
"..."
The battlefield went dead silent. The clicking of empty magazines was the only sound left.
To the normal Mafia thugs, this was beyond comprehension. Guns were absolute power. A gun made you a king on the streets. But this man had just rendered their ultimate weapons completely useless just by standing there.
Ryker snapped his fingers.
Snap.
The flames dancing around his body surged forward, instantly superheating the suspended bullets. The lead and copper melted into liquid metal.
Under Ryker's terrifyingly precise Nen control, the molten metal stretched and hardened, transforming into thousands of razor-sharp, red-hot steel needles.
Even Kurapika and the bodyguards, watching from the safety of the ruins, were dumbfounded.
To manipulate thousands of individual objects while simultaneously changing their physical state required an astronomical level of Nen mastery. It was the mark of a transcendent monster.
Ryker looked up at the trembling army before him. His eyes burned with an inner fire, and he flashed a brilliant, white smile.
It was the smile of a reaper lifting his scythe.
Ryker waved his hand.
SWISH!
The thousands of red-hot needles shot outward in every direction, moving faster than the human eye could track. It looked like a sudden, horizontal rainstorm of crimson light.
The elite assassins frantically threw up their Nen defenses, their faces pale with fear.
But the Mafia thugs had no such luxury.
The needles pierced their bodies instantly. The men didn't even have time to react. They just stood there, frozen like statues, their expressions locked in a permanent state of shock.
A second later.
Tiny, perfectly round holes appeared all over their skin.
Like a plastic water bottle pierced by a hundred pins, blood violently erupted from every single puncture wound simultaneously.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
A horrifying, synchronized bloom of crimson painted the street.
Hundreds of men, and even a few of the weaker assassins, were instantly transformed into human blood fountains, spraying the night red in a macabre, breathtaking display of absolute slaughter.
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