Razor only saw a blinding flash of white light cross his vision. The scenery of the bright, echoing gymnasium shifted entirely in a fraction of a second. The heavy pressure of the game vanished. When his vision cleared, he realized his feet were resting on the painted wood of the sidelines. Standing right next to him was his own massive puppet, the one that had merged into Number 28 just moments ago.
Because his entire team had been removed from the active playing field, the rules of the match were absolute. His personnel were cleared, and the game was lost.
Razor stood in complete silence, staring blankly at the empty space where he had just been standing.
Referee Number 0 pointed a stubby wooden finger directly at Liam and the others on the opposite side of the court. The puppet announced in its flat voice that the challengers were the winners.
"You are entirely too kind," Liam said with a bright smile, rolling his freshly healed left shoulder. He swung his arm in a wide circle to test the joint, looking completely relaxed.
"There is nothing kind about it," Razor replied, his deep voice echoing in the quiet room. "If you lose, you lose."
Razor raised his large hand and waved it dismissively toward the court. The towering Number 28 puppet instantly lost its rigid posture. It silently disintegrated back into the seven original puppets, tall, short, fat, and thin. They stood for a brief second before slowly sinking directly into the polished wooden floorboards, vanishing without a trace.
After listening to Liam and Bisky explain exactly what had happened during the brief window of time when he had disappeared into the sleeve, Razor turned to look at Bisky. He studied the tiny girl in the frilly pink dress with genuine surprise. She looked entirely harmless, exactly like a delicate porcelain doll. He gave a slow, respectful nod, fully admitting his defeat.
Since she had the raw power and technical skill to casually catch the ultra-violent, aura-infused throws generated by the combined force of his seven puppets, Razor knew the truth. Even if Liam had not used the Nen beast to trick him, he probably would have lost the dodgeball match eventually anyway.
A few feet away, Shizuku stood quietly, thoughtfully turning the blood-stained volleyball over in her pale hands. The heavy leather felt slightly warm to the touch.
"This ball was completely reshaped and reinforced by your aura, right?" Shizuku asked, looking up at Razor with mild curiosity.
The reason she sounded so absolutely sure of herself was because of what had happened at the very end of the match. She had fully intended to cooperate with Bisky's block by using Blinky to safely suck the deadly volleyball out of the air. But her vacuum had completely failed to pull the ball in.
The only things her vacuum could not collect, aside from living, breathing creatures, were items directly constructed from or heavily saturated with Nen. If people and animals carrying aura were regarded as living Nen constructs by the vacuum's rules, then the two distinct categories of things Blinky could not absorb were actually the exact same thing.
Bisky crossed her arms and let out an exasperated sigh. "I really should have figured that out earlier. What kind of standard sporting goods store volleyball could be violently smashed around by high-level Nen users without instantly tearing into shreds? You are an Emitter, right? The volleyball flying around the court had to be maintained at all times. To keep that level of aura blessing active on an object separated from your body, it could only be achieved through high-level Emission."
Razor crossed his massive arms and looked down at her. Are you still trying to pretend you are just a little kid?
Bisky immediately widened her large, watery eyes. She clasped her hands together in front of her chest and offered him an incredibly pure, innocent expression.
Razor stared at her in deadpan silence for a long moment. "It is time for you to receive your rewards for clearing the level, he finally said, turning away."
"Before we do that, I actually have a quick question," Liam said, raising his hand slightly. "Is that member of the Spider dead?"
Razor paused, glancing back over his shoulder. "I asked him where the other members of his group were hiding, and he refused to tell me. I offered him a chance to stay here with me and work as an assistant. He still refused. After a few days of being locked up, he realized he had absolutely no way to escape the island, so he chose to commit suicide."
Liam offered a small, knowing smile. For someone acting like a programmed game manager, you certainly remember the specific details of that event very clearly.
"It is time for you to collect your clearance rewards," Razor repeated, his face completely expressionless.
"You know, it is a little too late to try and pretend to be a mindless NPC now," Liam pointed out, dropping his hand with a chuckle.
The group left the gymnasium and followed the winding stone corridor up a flight of stairs. The air grew cooler and smelled heavily of sea salt. A large square window was cut into the thick stone wall, offering a clear, bright view of the sandy beach and the crashing ocean waves not far away.
The same female NPC who had trigger the dodgeball mission earlier was standing perfectly still by the window, waiting for Bisky and Shizuku.
The cave is a very sacred place, the young woman began, her voice completely devoid of emotion. Only a small handful of local fishermen know its specific location. The so-called treasure is just based on what others say.
She continued to recite a long block of pre-programmed cutscene dialogue without taking a single breath. When she finally finished, she leaned slightly against the stone frame of the square window and looked out at the rolling sea. Suddenly, she let out a soft, scripted sigh and vanished completely in a burst of bright white light.
A single game card materialized out of thin air, floating gently downward until Shizuku reached out and caught it.
It was Designated Card Number 2, Plot of Beach. The acquisition difficulty and rarity rank was SS-3.
Any experienced player familiar with the underlying mechanics of the Greed Island game would immediately pull out a spell card called Clone. They would use it to perfectly duplicate the Plot of Beach card twice, allowing their team to permanently occupy all three of the game's strict transformation limits for that specific item. If they did that, even if another group of players managed to defeat Razor in the future, those new players would be entirely unable to turn the item into a usable card.
However, neither Shizuku nor Bisky cared about the competitive meta of the game. They had absolutely no thoughts about monopolizing the card slots. Shizuku simply tucked the rare card away into her binder.
They turned away from the window just as Liam came walking up the stone steps to join them.
"What were you doing down there?" Bisky asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I went to see exactly where Razor buried that Spider", Liam answered casually, dusting off his hands.
"Where did he bury him?" Shizuku asked, her dark eyes blinking in mild curiosity.
"Buried at sea", Liam replied, gesturing vaguely toward the ocean outside the window.
Liam was honestly quite surprised that Razor had bothered to ask the captured Troupe member what the rest of the Spiders were up to. Was it out of some misplaced sense of justice? That was a ridiculous thought. Razor himself was a convicted, brutal murderer long before Ging Freecss dragged him onto Greed Island to act as a game administrator.
Maybe Razor just wanted to drag the entire Phantom Troupe over to the lighthouse so he could force them all to play beach volleyball with him as permanent sparring partners.
The mental image of Chrollo and the rest of the cold-blooded Phantom Troupe wearing matching sports uniforms and desperately playing dodgeball was incredibly bizarre, but it made Liam smile.
"What is so interesting about a random corpse anyway?" Bisky asked, completely unamused by his detour.
"The guy was a Conjurer, and his specific Nen ability involved copying things", Liam explained smoothly, casually mentioning the dead Spider's ability to duplicate items with his left and right hands. He let out a long, disappointed sigh. "I figured there was a small chance his Nen might have remained active after his death, or maybe he left behind a permanent conjured item. If I could just pick something like that up off the beach, wouldn't that be pure profit?"
That is a very beautiful thought, Bisky said, clicking her tongue in loud annoyance.
Speaking of thinking, Liam muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets as the three of them finally made their way out of the heavy wooden doors of the lighthouse fortress.
The warm afternoon sun hit their faces, and the sound of seagulls echoed overhead. As for the other random players Liam had controlled with his Star Marks, he had already sent them walking far away down the beach. He had given them a built-in command to automatically remove the marks once they were safely out of sight.
"The female NPC who gave us the mission kept talking about Razor and the Fourteen Devils, "Liam said slowly, kicking a small stone across the paved road. "We can safely presume the so-called fourteen devils she mentioned refer directly to Razor's puppet Nen beasts."
"But he only summoned seven of them during the game", Shizuku pointed out, looking over at him.
"Maybe the other seven devils are just the combined forms of the original seven", Bisky suggested calmly. They might not actually exist as separate entities.
"Or maybe that bastard Razor still has a secret trick up his sleeve to artificially suppress the difficulty of the level", Liam calculated, his brow furrowing as he did the math. "He really looks down on people. Think about it. If the Number 1 puppet holds roughly a thousand aura, and Number 2 holds two thousand aura, then following that exact pattern, a Number 14 puppet would hold fourteen thousand aura all by itself. If you add up the aura of all fourteen of those damn puppets, it comes out to a staggering one hundred and five thousand aura points. And Razor still had plenty of aura left inside his actual body to maintain his own speed, plus the constant drain of reinforcing the volleyball. Just how much fucking aura does that guy have?"
People with constantly squinting eyes are always terrifying, Liam muttered, taking a deep, steadying breath of the salty ocean air.
Bisky shook her head, disagreeing with his logic entirely. "The total amount of aura a person possesses varies wildly from individual to individual. Some people are just born with incredibly abundant aura reserves, and it grows rapidly as they train. It is not that big of a deal. Besides, who explicitly told you that Puppet Number 1 has exactly one thousand aura and Puppet Number 7 has exactly seven thousand?"
"So, how much do they actually have?" Shizuku asked, her head tilted slightly.
Bisky hummed quietly, recalling the heavy pressure she had felt during the match. She estimated the output carefully. "I would say you need to apply a twenty to thirty percent discount to those numbers."
"Is it thirty percent off or twenty percent off?" Liam asked, sounding highly dissatisfied with the vague answer. A ten percent error margin on those numbers is a difference of a full ten thousand aura points.
Bisky rolled her eyes at him, crossing her arms as they walked. "Let us look at it thoughtfully. Razor probably had somewhere between ten thousand and twenty thousand aura left securely inside his own body. Assuming he really does have Puppets Number 8 through 14 hidden away under the ground and just chose not to bring them out, then his absolute total aura pool can be safely estimated to sit somewhere around eighty thousand to ninety thousand points. Let us be generous and assume he maxes out around ninety thousand."
"And if he does not actually have another seven Nen beasts hidden away, then we have to subtract that imaginary amount", Shizuku added smoothly. She held up her pale hands, counting the invisible numbers on her fingers. "Ninety thousand minus the fifty or sixty thousand required for the higher level puppets. That means his actual, realistic total aura sits somewhere around thirty to forty thousand."
"Well", Liam said, a slow, relaxed smile spreading across his face. "That is just about the exact same amount as me."
Bisky let out a long, loud groan of absolute exasperation. "You are a Manipulator. Why in the world do you feel the constant need to compare your total aura reserves to an Emitter?"
They were laughing and talking easily as they walked further down the bright, sandy coastline. Suddenly, the metal game ring on Liam's finger let out a sharp, electronic ping. A second later, his heavy game card book materialized out of thin air with a loud pop.
The book floated at eye level in front of him, and a mechanical voice chimed from the pages." Other players are currently using the Contact spell on you."
Liam stopped walking. A massive, invisible question mark seemed to hover directly over his head.
Why does this specific situation and the timing of this call feel so incredibly familiar to me? Liam thought to himself, narrowing his eyes at the floating book. Could it be...
A real voice filtered through the communication channel of the card book. It was a man's voice, sounding calm and polite. "Hello, Liam. This is the first time we have officially met. Do you happen to know who I am?"
Liam completely ignored the question. He reached out and physically flipped open the heavy cover of the floating book. He turned past his item slots and went straight to the starting pages, the section dedicated to recording the names of every single player he had ever crossed paths with inside the game. He dragged his index finger down the long list of names, skimming past Shizuku, Bisky, and the various random names of the countless passersby he had encountered over the past few weeks.
"Are you currently scrolling through your card book looking for my name?" the voice from the binder asked, sounding mildly amused by the silence. "Let me save you some time and give you a hint. My name is Genthru."
Liam's finger stopped dead on a specific name printed neatly on the page. Genthru.
It really is him.
Genthru. The man was infamous for being one of the Bombers, a ruthless group of player killers.
When did I ever actually meet him? I do not have a single memory of crossing paths with this guy, Liam thought, genuinely confused by the game's mechanics. He gestured silently for Shizuku and Bisky to summon their own books. Within seconds, both women found the exact same name, Genthru, listed clearly in their own encounter logs.
The voice from the floating book continued, completely unbothered by the lack of a response. "First of all, allow me to offer my congratulations. You were actually able to clear the lighthouse and get the Plot of Beach card. There is no need to try and pretend otherwise. I just checked the global game data using the List card. The exact moment your group walked out of the lighthouse, the total number of acquired Plot of Beach cards permanently increased from zero to one."
Liam did not answer the man, nor did he make any sudden movements to look around their immediate surroundings. Instead, he simply exchanged a very quiet, meaningful glance with Bisky and Shizuku.
It was completely normal for an opposing player to use a spell card to track global item drops and know they had secured the rare card. But it was incredibly strange for the man to know the exact physical moment they had stepped outside the lighthouse doors. The only logical way he could know that specific detail was if Genthru was currently hiding somewhere very nearby, quietly observing them with his own eyes.
A few hundred yards away, hidden safely behind the crest of a grassy hillside, Genthru kept his eye pressed firmly against the lens of a high-powered monocular telescope. He was watching the three humans and the giant white tiger standing on the beach. Since he still had not received a verbal answer over the comms, he simply kept talking.
"Under normal circumstances, the very moment a competent player gets their hands on the Plot of Beach, they should immediately use a Clone card. One single person can directly capture all three available copies of the card. But your group did not do this. Did you just not expect to win, so you didn't prepare? I do not think so. First, the two little girls traveling with you clearly have absolutely no interest in actually playing the game and collecting cards. Second, and most importantly, it means you simply do not have a Clone card in your inventory."
"I told you a long time ago!" Bisky's voice suddenly erupted from the speaker of Genthru's card book, sounding incredibly shrill and genuinely furious. "I explicitly told you that you needed to prepare a Clone card before we fought the boss!"
Through the lens of the monocular telescope, Genthru watched the scene unfold. The tiny blonde girl suddenly burst into violent action. She jumped high into the air and threw a vicious punch directly into Liam's chest, causing the tall young man to stagger backward into the sand with a loud grunt.
"If you just listened to me for once in your life, we would not be in this stupid kind of trouble right now!" Bisky screamed, continuing her physical assault.
Taking full advantage of the massive commotion Bisky and Liam were acting out on the beach, the small rock bird, Jaku, quietly made its move. The bird smoothly morphed its physical body into a faint, blurry gray shadow. It launched itself off Lumos's back, flying fifty meters away while staying incredibly low to the ground to avoid detection. Once it was clear of the group, the bird caught an updraft and quietly lifted itself a hundred meters high into the bright sky.
Jaku spread its small wings, hovering silently on the wind. The bird twisted its head, scanning the terrain below. A thin, transparent membrane slid over the bird's dark eyeballs, and a brilliant sapphire light began to dance wildly within its pupils. Using the visual network of the Star Mark, Jaku quickly scanned the area. It instantly locked onto the physical figures of Genthru and his two Bomber companions, who were currently crouched down behind the nearby grassy hillside, secretly observing the beach.
"Well, it is incredibly fortunate for you that you do not have a Clone card, because I happen to have one right here," Genthru said, holding the monocular steady with one hand. A confident, highly strategic smile spread across his face. "I can easily help you copy the other two versions of the Plot of Beach. In exchange for my services, you simply hand one of the copies over to me. Everyone walks away happy. How does that sound?"
Down on the beach, the physical argument suddenly stopped. In the circular picture of the telescope lens, Genthru watched as all three people stopped moving and looked directly toward his exact location. The tall young man, Liam, raised his arm and pointed his finger with flawless, terrifying accuracy right at the patch of grass where Genthru was hiding.
"You are pretty ugly", Liam's voice echoed smoothly out of the card book. "But you sure have a very beautiful imagination."
Genthru flinched, genuinely startled by the sudden callout. He dropped the monocular and spun around violently.
He expected to see an ambush. Instead, he saw his two trusted Bomber companions rushing directly toward him with blank, lifeless expressions on their faces.
Perched perfectly balanced on the top of the head of one of the approaching Bombers, the tiny gray bird fluttered its wings twice. It looked quite pleased with its own silent, flawless work.