After Omokage finished speaking, the silence was heavy. His heart didn't seize, and the blood in his veins didn't begin to boil. He hadn't lied; he simply had no more information to give.
Kurapika gripped the fifth volume, "Judgment," in his hand. He looked up at the Spider suspended in the chains and asked one last time, "Your other eleven spider. Where are they?"
"Hehe." Omokage ran his tongue over his teeth, a dark, mocking sneer playing on his lips. "Come closer and let daddy give you a kiss. Maybe then I'll tell you."
The moment the words left his mouth, his face twisted in agony.
His body, bound tightly by the heavy iron links, began to shudder. His skin flushed a violent, angry red as if the very marrow of his bones had turned to molten lead. The flesh beneath his skin began to simmer and burn, inch by agonizing inch.
He opened his mouth to scream, but only a dry rasp emerged. He gritted his teeth, staring at the expressionless Kurapika with bloodshot, bulging eyes. Finally, his chest gave one last, violent spasm. The light in his pupils flickered out, and his head slumped forward.
The Spider was dead in his own web.
Kurapika stared at the corpse. He felt no pity for the man, but he felt no rush of triumph either. There was no pleasure in this revenge—only a crushing, soul-deep exhaustion.
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he saw them again: the corpses of his clansmen, their faces marred by the hollow, dark sockets where their eyes had once been.
He deactivated his Scarlet Eyes. As the crimson faded, his aura plummeted. The skeleton knight lost its glow, shrinking into nothingness. Kurapika stumbled, his knees nearly buckling.
"I used Absolute Time for too long..."
The perfect, hexagonal combat potential he gained by burning his own lifespan came with a brutal physical and mental tax. Without the Scarlet Eyes active, he could no longer sustain the dimension of the third volume. The "Abyss" began to dissolve, and Kurapika was pulled back into the waking world.
The courtyard in front of the villa was a scarred mess of craters and debris. Near the floating dolphin bookshelf, a sphere of aura manifested, and Kurapika stepped out of the void.
"Hey! Watch the hand!" Liam's voice barked immediately.
Kurapika looked down. Liam was sitting on the dirt, missing his left arm and his right leg, waving at him irritably. Kurapika realized his boot was planted firmly on a severed limb—Liam's left arm.
Knowing Liam's Star Mark allowed for rapid reattachment, Kurapika wasn't panicked, just startled. He leaned over, picked up the arm, and walked it over to him. From Liam's relaxed demeanor, it was clear that he and Shizuku had finished their business with the other Spider.
He looked over at Shizuku. She was squatting nearby, missing an arm herself, calmly inspecting a body.
Bambie lay in the dirt, but she was unrecognizable. Her body had withered, shrinking as if the very moisture had been sucked from her cells. Her skin was a translucent, shriveled husk. She looked as though she had aged a century in a heartbeat.
This is the work of Liam's guardian beast, Kurapika realized.
The Reflection's first strike devoured manifest aura, leaving the target weak. The second strike consumed the remaining reserves, leaving them helpless. But the third strike... the beast ate their very life force. This was Kurapika's first time seeing the third stage in person.
"Hey!" Liam snapped, snapping his fingers with his remaining hand.
Kurapika blinked, coming out of his trance. Liam was pointing at the severed arm Kurapika was still awkwardly holding.
"Oh. Right. Sorry." Kurapika handed it over.
Liam casually pressed the severed limb against his shoulder. He tore a strip of fabric from his shirt and tied it around the joint to hold it in place. The Star Mark's self-healing was already humming; if the alignment was slightly off, the mark would move the bone and muscle into the correct position on its own. It could even make limbs fly back to the body like magnets, but the parts were heavy, and Liam was too impatient to wait for the "slow crawl" of a flying leg.
Kurapika noted the eight-armed shadow armor still clinging to Liam, and the white ball of aura hovering beside him. The number in the ball was dropping fast—from 4,022 down toward 3,000.
He understood the strategy now. Liam used the "debt" ball to shatter the defense, then the Reflection triggered once blood was drawn. After the win, Liam's own aura was drained to pay the "Buy Now, Pay Later" debt, but the Reflection immediately began funneling the life force it had stolen from Bambie back into Liam to stabilize him.
"Your leg." Shizuku walked over, carrying Liam's missing limb like a piece of lost luggage.
"Oh, thanks." Liam reached over and grabbed a stray hand from the grass. "Your hand."
"Thank you." Shizuku took it back.
Blinky had vanished when her arm was severed, as Shizuku lacked the long-distance Emission to keep the conjured vacuum active once it left her physical contact.
Kurapika watched them in stunned silence. They weren't discussing horrific injuries; they sounded like they were handing each other a cup of tea or a TV remote.
"How's yours?" Liam asked, shoving his right leg back into its socket and tying it to his hip with a makeshift bandage.
Shizuku slid her arm into her sleeve, lining up the wound. "It's fine."
Kurapika finally spoke. "He refused to talk. The effect of Judgment killed him."
Liam's mind whirred. He realized that even though the fake Uvogin had died, no death energy had hit his heart. It seemed Kurapika's alternate dimension acted as a perfect insulator.
"We didn't ask her anything either," Shizuku added.
"If we'd stopped to chat, we probably would've been the ones dying," Liam said rationally. He looked at his bandaged leg and scowled. "When she got hit the third time, I wanted to run for it, but it's hard to clear a thousand meters on one leg."
Kurapika realized that Liam's obsession with the thousand-meter distance wasn't cowardice—it was a necessity. Liam didn't want anyone dying within that radius. He filed that information away for later.
"Let's talk about it when we're clear," Liam said, noticing Kurapika's gaze.
Kurapika nodded. "I'll take care of the body." He signaled the dolphin, which swam over with the bookshelf. He opened the third volume and let the "Abyss" swallow Bambie's shriveled husk. She would spend eternity in the ruins of the Kurta village.
"Are you collecting them for the bounty?" Liam asked.
"I don't know," Kurapika said softly. He looked back to see Shizuku hoisting Liam—who still couldn't walk—onto her back.
Liam hooked an arm around her neck and flashed a grin. "I bet you just want to show your clan what happened to the Spiders once you resurrect them."
A complicated, bittersweet smile touched Kurapika's lips. "Liam, Shizuku... thank you."
"Save the speeches. We need to move before the guard rotation hits us," Liam said. He closed his eyes, projecting his mind into the rock bird above. Where are you, Jaku?
Using the bird's-eye view, he quickly mapped out an escape route through the chaotic manor grounds.
The wedding was a scene of total pandemonium. Gangsters with headsets and submachine guns scrambled through the gardens, their nerves frayed by the explosions.
In the shadows of the peripheral walls, two figures—one carrying the other—moved with a speed that defied the human eye.
"Damn!" Liam yelled suddenly.
Shizuku tensed, thinking more death energy was hitting him. "Are you transforming?"
"No! I forgot the Scarlet Eyes!"
Kurapika, running ahead, didn't look back. "It doesn't matter. We put a Star Mark on them before we gave them. We can track them down whenever we want."
"Blinky already got the gifts," Shizuku noted. During the chaos in the room, the vacuum had followed its last command, swallowing every luxury item in the vault before the Spiders could even react.
Liam smirked. "I just wanted to scare him. Shizuku, put me down."
Shizuku felt her right arm regaining sensation; the nerves were reconnecting. She slowed down and let Liam slide off. His leg was already knitting back together.
That healing speed is terrifying, Kurapika thought. His own "Redemption" book could heal wounds, but reattaching severed limbs with such casual success was unheard of. Usually, the nerves and vessels would misalign, leading to necrosis. The Star Mark was in a league of its own.
"Incredible..."
Essi sat in a hidden corner of the garden, watching his shrapnel wounds close in real-time. A small gray bird stood on his head, pecking him relentlessly.
"Okay! I'm staying still! I won't move!" Essi cried.
He didn't know how he'd survived. One minute he was looking at a woman chewing gum, the next, the world had exploded. He'd crawled away, bleeding out, until this bird had landed on him. Now, he felt better than he had before the party.
This bird is a miracle, he thought as Jaku took flight and disappeared into the smoke. I must be a truly good person to deserve this.
Liam opened the car window as Jaku flew inside.
He'd spotted Essi from the air and decided to throw him a bone. They were acquaintances, after all. He'd left a Star Mark to patch the guy up and moved on without a word.
The "getaway car" was a black sedan they'd liberated from the manor's parking lot. Kurapika, looking like a high-end car thief in his tattered white shirt, expertly hotwired it and sped away. The passenger door was bent, slamming and clicking with every bump in the road.
As they drove, Liam began to explain the nature of death energy to Kurapika. The more he spoke, the more horrified Kurapika became.
"You mean you were that small just a year ago?" Kurapika asked in disbelief. "If you keep absorbing this energy, you'll just... keep growing?"
"It's just physical age," Liam said, pointing to his temple. "In here, I'm still me."
Kurapika wanted to argue that he would never have let Liam help if he'd known the stakes, but Liam shushed him.
"Quiet. Something is happening on the other end." Liam's eyes went out of focus.
His attention shifted to the "tool man" he'd sent to pick up a certain package in another city.
Someone is following him. And they don't look like mobsters.