Shizuku stopped mid-grip, her hand still wrapped around Liam's. Her lavender eyes studied him for a long moment, calculating. "What do you want?"
Liam's grin was sharp. "If I win, you recognize me as your boss. From now on, you work with me."
Another pause. Shizuku's gaze dropped to their clasped hands, where Liam's aura pooled thick and steady. The crowd around them had gone quiet, sensing something more than a simple arm-wrestling match.
She looked up. "Okay."
"Great." Liam's fingers tightened. "One, two, three, start!"
Their aura flared simultaneously.
The air pressure shifted. To the Muggles in the crowd, it looked like two people gripping hands. To anyone with Nen, it looked like a bomb about to detonate.
Aura was life energy. Spiritual power. It wrapped around flesh and bone, inseparable from the body, amplifying everything. A Nen user didn't waste time with push-ups or jogging. Why bother with inefficient physical training when you could just pump more aura into your muscles and let it do the work? Strengthen your Nen, and your body followed. Simple. Elegant. Overpowered.
Liam hadn't done a single sit-up since transmigrating. He'd just brute-forced his way to 6,000 aura through suicidal training montages, and his body had kept pace. He wasn't Killua, the kid who grew up eating poison for breakfast and getting electrocuted for fun, but he was strong enough that judging him by size was a mistake.
Same for Shizuku.
She wasn't muscular. Thin arms, narrow shoulders, the kind of build that looked like it'd snap in a strong wind. But Nen didn't care about biology. She gathered a torrent of aura into her right arm, and suddenly those thin muscles were outputting tons of force, literal tons, the kind of strength that could crush steel.
Liam's arm didn't budge.
Shizuku's eyes widened slightly. She pushed harder. The aura in her arm thickened, veins standing out, her whole body leaning into the effort.
Liam's hand shifted. Not down. Up.
Her arm started to lose ground.
His power is stronger than mine?
The crowd had gone dead silent. The two of them sat locked in place, aura trembling around their clasped hands like heat shimmer, the table creaking under the pressure.
Shizuku gritted her teeth. Her arm was being pressed down, slowly, inexorably. She poured more aura into it, but the counter-pressure kept building. Liam's grip was like a hydraulic press.
Finally, inevitably, her hand slammed into the table.
The wood cracked. Not a clean break, but a spiderweb of fractures radiating from the impact point.
Shizuku stared at the table. Then at her hand. Then at Liam.
"I lost," she said, shaking out her sore arm.
The crowd erupted. Half of them were cheering. The other half looked like they'd just witnessed a magic trick and couldn't figure out the secret.
"Did you see that?" someone whispered. "She lasted almost a minute."
"The table cracked. Did you hear that?"
"What the hell is that girl made of?"
The profiteer who'd sold Liam the Blue Moon Orb stood frozen, eyes wide, tears streaming down his face as he handed over a wad of Jenny to the person next to him.
Shizuku rubbed her arm, frowning. Then she used Gyo, aura gathering in her eyes, and looked at the table.
Liam's left hand rested flat on the wood. A thin layer of aura covered the surface beneath his palm, reinforcing the structure.
"If the table broke, we couldn't finish the match," Liam said, grinning.
Shizuku blinked. "You're good."
She tilted her head, genuinely curious. "I think my aura is stronger than yours. Why couldn't I win?"
"Fundamentals." Liam raised his right hand, the one that had crushed her, and let his aura flow.
Shizuku kept Gyo active, watching closely. The aura that had been evenly distributed across his body suddenly shifted, flowing like water toward his arm, pooling in his hand. Not all of it, maybe sixty percent, but enough to make his grip into a sledgehammer while keeping the rest of his body defended.
"Your total aura is higher than mine," Liam said. "Probably around 7,000. But my control is better. I can redistribute my aura on the fly. That's why I won."
He was a Manipulator. She was a Conjurer. Neither of them had an affinity for Enhancement, the Berserker school of thought that just made everything hit harder. They were on equal footing in that department, no advantages, no penalties.
Liam's internal estimate put Shizuku's aura capacity around 7,500, maybe 8,000. More than his current 6,000. Nowhere near her peak in four years when she'd be a full member of the Phantom Troupe, but respectable. Strong enough to matter.
And Liam had cheated. Not in a way anyone would notice, but he'd used Shu to reinforce the table halfway through the match, and if he'd really wanted to guarantee victory, he could've used Ko. Gather 100% of his aura into his right hand, zero defense everywhere else, maximum offense at a single point. One-shot technique. All-or-nothing.
Not that he'd needed it. Ryu alone had been enough to out-muscle her.
"Oh," Shizuku said, nodding like she'd just learned something mildly interesting. She didn't look upset. "I lost."
"Then I'm your boss now?" Liam said, standing.
"Yes."
"And you have to listen to me."
"Okay."
Liam clapped his hands, addressing the crowd. "Show's over! Stall's closed!"
He picked up the Blue Moon Orb, handed it to Shizuku. "Here. Boss's gift."
Shizuku took it without hesitation. She really did like shiny things. Her lavender eyes, usually flat and emotionless, glimmered slightly as she held the orb up to the light. The soft blue glow reflected in her glasses.
They walked together through the amusement park, past spinning rides and screaming children and the smell of fried dough. Liam kept his hands in his pockets. Shizuku clutched the orb like it was treasure.
"I'm putting together a small organization," Liam said casually. "Nothing serious. Just for fun. I'm calling it 'The Ten.'"
Shizuku glanced at him, curious.
"The Hunter Association has the Twelve Zodiacs, right?" Liam continued. "Twelve elites, each with a zodiac code name. So I figured, why not make something similar? But instead of twelve, we do ten. Simpler. Easier to manage."
He grinned. "As the boss, I'm Number One. You're the first recruit, so you're Number Two."
Shizuku looked down at the orb in her hands, then back at Liam. "Aren't you part of the Hunter Association already? Why make a separate organization?"
"What does it matter?" Liam said, shrugging. "Professional Hunter is just one job. Plenty of Hunters have other careers. Elite lawyers, judges, doctors, whatever. This is just a side project. A crew. Doesn't interfere with anything."
"Oh." Shizuku nodded, accepting this without further question.
Liam's smile widened. He knew exactly why Shizuku had tried to gamble for his Hunter License, but he asked anyway. "So, what did you want my license for?"
Shizuku pointed ahead. "I saw a Ferris wheel. They said only people with a Hunter License can ride it."
The Ferris wheel loomed in the distance, a massive dark silhouette against the neon-bright amusement park. Unlike the other rides, it wasn't lit up. No one was riding it. It sat still, ominous, like a piece of the park had been quietly quarantined.
Liam had led her here on purpose. Two of his marked crows had guided her path, subtle nudges toward the fountain square, toward the Ferris wheel, toward this exact moment.
"I haven't ridden it either," Liam said. "Let's check it out."
Shizuku pocketed the Blue Moon Orb and followed.
At the entrance, two Blanchett employees stood guard. They looked bored until Liam handed over his Hunter License.
The first employee took it, examined it closely, then looked at Liam. Then back at the license. Then at Liam again.
"This is real," he muttered, handing it to his coworker.
The second employee checked the hologram, the registration number, the stamp. His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "You're... how old?"
"Old enough," Liam said.
The two employees exchanged a glance. They'd probably heard stories about the company's founder, Alain Blanchett, one of the richest men alive and a Professional Hunter himself. The Hunter world was full of weirdos. Child prodigies. Freaks of nature. People who could punch through buildings or read minds or summon dragons made of nightmares.
A kid with a Hunter License? Sure. Why not. Nothing surprised them anymore.
"Go ahead," the first employee said, stepping aside.
The second employee jogged ahead to the control booth. A moment later, the Ferris wheel shuddered to life. Gears groaned. The massive structure began to rotate, slow and stately, and one of the cabins lit up from within, a single glowing box among the thirty-odd darkened compartments.
Shizuku looked up, fascinated. "Why only one?"
"For some reasons," the employee said vaguely, "only that cabin is available for tourists."
He smiled, a little awkward. "Not many people come here with a Hunter License anyway."
Liam nodded. "Makes sense."
They waited. The illuminated cabin rotated down, slow as a falling leaf, until it stopped at ground level. The door opened with a soft hiss.
Liam stepped inside first. Shizuku followed.
The door closed. The Ferris wheel resumed its rotation, lifting them into the night sky.
And then, simultaneously, Liam and Shizuku both said, "Huh."
Shizuku looked at her hands. Then at her arms. Then at her body, like she'd just noticed something was off.
Liam did the same, glancing down at himself. His aura felt different. Warm. Like it was being gently heated from the outside.
He took a few steps away from Shizuku, putting distance between them, and looked around the cabin.
The walls were ordinary. Padded benches. Safety rails. A window looking out over the amusement park.
The floor, though.
The floor was covered in symbols.
Liam crouched down, running his hand over the surface. Black characters, dense and intricate, woven into patterns that looked like circuitry. Or runes. Or a language he didn't recognize. They covered every inch of the cabin floor, spiraling out from the center in concentric rings.