Referee Number 0 pointed a stubby, wooden finger directly at Mirror 11 and loudly announced, "Out!"
Is this really just considered an out? Liam thought, his eye twitching as he looked at the ruin of his puppet. This isn't an out. That guy is out of this world, right? He was literally blasted out of the mortal realm!
The death row prisoners standing in the crowd behind Razor were completely speechless. They stared in stunned silence.
What made the situation even more disturbing was the fact that Mirror 11 actually turned his head and gave referee Number 0 a polite, acknowledging nod. The puppet awkwardly clamped his remaining bloody stumps over the massive, gaping hole in his abdomen and began to slowly walk off the court. Everyone's eyes followed the thick trail of blood he left behind. They stared in horror at the horrific, fatal wound that was completely visible right through his back. He couldn't cover it up at all!
Mirror 11 finally reached the sidelines and heavily sat down on the floor right next to Mirror 1, who was still nursing his shattered collarbone. Mirror 11's head immediately dropped forward, his chin resting on his chest. It was entirely impossible to tell if he was actually dead or just resting.
Liam was not a masochist. The severe, agonizing pain of having both arms violently destroyed and a massive hole blasted through his chest and abdomen was technically bearable, given his tolerance, but it was completely unnecessary to experience firsthand. The moment the volleyball had connected, Liam had instantly released his first-person possession over the puppet. He smoothly switched to his secondary operation mode, remotely commanding Mirror 11 to simply walk to the sidelines, sit down, and go to sleep while the Star Mark worked on healing the catastrophic damage.
On the far side of the court, the ethereal Taoist nun Jade floated gracefully toward the heavily cracked, spiderwebbed concrete wall. She reached into the center of the deep crater and casually pulled the blood-soaked volleyball out of the stone.
When Razor saw the Nen beast move on its own, his eyes narrowed slightly. Is that an automatic-type Nen beast? Or is it a remote-control type?
If it was a remote-control type, it meant that if Liam was knocked unconscious or somehow lost contact with the creature, the Nen beast would automatically dispel and vanish. But if it was an automatic-type, acting on pre-programmed orders, then the Nen beast wouldn't be nearly as dependent on Liam's current physical state.
Jade turned back toward the court. As she drifted forward, the pale hand hidden inside the wide sleeve of her right arm gave a sharp, subtle flick. She carefully caught a freshly made talisman between her fingertips, keeping it completely hidden from view. She then floated silently back to her position behind Liam.
Following an unspoken command, the remaining controlled puppets—Mirror 8, Mirror 9, and Mirror 10—immediately moved forward. They clustered tightly together, forming a human wall that completely blocked Razor's line of sight to the Nen beast.
Liam reached his hand back without looking. Jade gently placed the recovered volleyball into his palm.
Liam stepped around the human wall and shouted across the court, "Hey, Razor!"
"Hm?" Razor grunted, his sharp eyes locking onto Liam.
Liam smiled slightly, a confident, challenging gleam in his eye. "If we are going to compete using pure aura, I refuse to admit defeat!"
"Is that so?" Razor challenged, his voice low and rumbling. He immediately lowered his center of gravity, bending his knees and bringing his massive, heavily muscled arms together in a flawless, textbook posture to catch a heavy spike.
Liam held the blood-stained volleyball directly in front of his chest. He weighed it in his hands twice, getting a feel for the weight. Then, with a sharp, echoing pop, he violently injected a massive, condensed surge of his own aura directly into the leather of the ball. The sheer volume of energy was so intense that the volleyball visibly trembled and distorted in his hands, looking almost completely unstable.
What incredible, condensed force...
The death row prisoners hired by Razor were all technically Nen users themselves. Even if their overall strength and aura reserves were relatively low, their eyes had been opened to the world of Nen. They could clearly see the terrifying, unstable power Liam was actively pouring into the simple piece of sports equipment.
Liam pulled his arm back and threw the ball with everything he had.
Boom!
The volleyball tore through the air, leaving a bright, searing trail of white light in its wake. It crossed the entire length of the gymnasium in a fraction of a second, heading straight for Razor's chest.
Every single person in the room locked their eyes onto Razor, desperate to see how the Game Master would respond to the attack. Such an incredibly violent, condensed throw contained enough raw destructive power to rival the output of a Nen user with twenty solid years of combat experience. Could he actually catch it?
Razor lowered his waist even further, bracing his legs against the polished floor.
The cannonball-like volleyball slammed violently into his forearms. The astonishing kinetic force behind the throw instantly lifted his massive body completely off his feet, sending him flying rapidly backward through the air.
He didn't fly backward because he was overpowered. He could have easily planted his feet and withstood the raw force of the impact head-on. But by intentionally allowing himself to fly backward with the momentum of the ball, he successfully bled off a considerable amount of the initial, destructive impact force.
Bisky's eyes lit up with genuine professional admiration. She secretly praised Razor's flawless grasp of the ball's incoming angle and his perfect timing in releasing the kinetic energy. Pulling off a move like that required not only immense physical strength and durability, but also a deep, fundamental understanding of sports mechanics and an absolute familiarity with the ball itself.
"Razor! You are completely shameless!"
A young man's loud, angry shout suddenly echoed from the sidelines on Razor's side of the court.
Razor squinted, a confident, relaxed smile spreading across his face as he continued to fly backward through the air. "Oh?"
But the exact second his own voice left his throat, a sudden, sickening premonition flared to life deep in his chest.
Across the court, Liam raised his hand and offered a cheerful, friendly wave goodbye.
Razor hit the ground in a controlled roll and immediately spun around, his eyes wide.
Standing directly behind him, having silently materialized completely out of nowhere, was Liam's Taoist nun Nen beast. She was already raising her wide, fluttering left sleeve, aiming the dark, gaping opening directly at him.
Whoosh.
Before Razor could even attempt to react, his massive body instantly dissolved into a streak of pure white light and was aggressively sucked directly into the Universe in the Sleeve.
"Hey! Watch out behind you, Razor!"
It was only then, a full second too late, that a panicked warning finally sounded from the group of death row prisoners standing on the sidelines.
It wasn't that the prisoners had reacted too slowly. The entire sequence of events had simply happened far too suddenly. From their perspective on the sidelines, Razor had successfully caught the heavy, cannon-like throw. The exact moment the volleyball bounced slightly upward toward the ceiling, a blinding streak of white light had suddenly erupted directly from the ball itself. The light had instantly flown around to Razor's blind spot as he flew backward, reforming into the Nen beast.
Liam smiled slightly, entirely satisfied with the outcome. He raised a hand and gave Lumos a playful, congratulatory slap on the shoulder from across the distance.
The stack of Seventy-Two Transformations talismans he had meticulously accumulated from the giant tiger earlier had finally come in handy!
While the controlled puppets had formed a wall to block Razor's sight, Liam had instructed Jade to hide directly behind him. He burned one of the talismans, ordering the Nen beast to use the stolen Transmutation ability to flatten her own body into a microscopically thin, completely undetectable layer of rubber. She then wrapped herself seamlessly around the surface of the volleyball before Liam threw it.
What is a cunning illusion? This is a cunning illusion.
The volleyball finally hit the ground, bouncing harmlessly away.
Referee Number 0 pointed his wooden finger toward the empty spot where the Game Master had just been standing and loudly announced, "Razor is out!"
"So, it really is a fully automatic-type Nen beast," Bisky murmured to herself. She looked across the court at the seven numbered puppets, all of which were still standing completely still on the opposite side of the dividing line. She then glanced sideways at the referee puppet, who had just completely emotionlessly announced that its own creator and master had been eliminated from the game. "That confirms it. Judging strictly from its performance and lack of reaction, it must be operating on a pre-set list of automatic rules."
Jade wide sleeves fluttering gently around her, calmly bent down, picked up the volleyball from the floor, and floated silently back to Liam's side of the court.
Razor was currently trapped entirely within the isolated space of the Universe in the Sleeve. While the ability couldn't actually cause any physical harm to his body, it was completely impossible for him to escape the void and return to the field to fight before the game officially ended.
Liam chuckled quietly to himself. He took the volleyball back from the Nen beast and weighed it in his hands again. Without any warning, he snapped his arm forward and hurled the ball directly at the incredibly short puppet marked with the number 1.
However, before the ball could connect, the heavily muscled puppet marked with the number 11 suddenly lunged forward, extending a massive arm to easily catch the speeding volleyball with a single hand.
Shizuku blinked, her eyes widening in surprise.
The exact moment the ball Liam had thrown was about to knock the Number 1 puppet entirely out of the game, the puppets marked Number 2, 3, and 4 instantly dissolved into pure, glowing aura. The three streams of energy aggressively merged directly into the small body of the Number 1 puppet. The influx of raw power caused the puppet to rapidly expand and mutate, condensing into a significantly larger, much stronger entity that was now marked as Puppet Number 10.
The fierce, suffocating aura currently exuding from Puppet Number 10 was actually slightly stronger than the raw aura Liam had spent a full 10,000 points to create his own Taoist Nen beast.
"..."
Puppet Number 10 slowly lowered its head, staring blankly at the volleyball clutched tightly in its oversized hand.
"Rescuing the main body is now designated as the absolute first priority," Puppet Number 10 stated, its voice entirely flat and robotic.
As it spoke the words, the remaining puppets on the court—Number 6 and Number 7—instantly turned into streaks of aura and violently poured themselves directly into Number 10's body.
The puppet's physical form expanded rapidly once again. It grew significantly taller, its muscles bulging and shifting unnaturally. The bold number printed on its chest aggressively morphed and changed, settling on the astonishing number 23.
"Okay, that combined number is actually a little bit scary," Liam murmured, his confident smile finally slipping.
Even though the towering, heavily mutated puppet across the court was wearing a hat pulled down low enough to completely cover the upper half of its face, Liam could clearly feel a heavy, suffocating gaze locking directly onto him. It was a gaze entirely saturated with pure, unadulterated murderous intent.
In order to eliminate the threat and successfully rescue the real body of Razor, this newly formed puppet's next throw was absolutely guaranteed to be a fatal, killing blow!
The puppet reared back and threw.
The volleyball, now completely overfilled with a terrifying, lethal amount of aura, shot forward like a round fired from a heavy siege cannon. It crossed the distance so fast it seemed to hit Liam the exact same moment the deafening boom of the throw finally echoed through the gym.
A sickening, wet crunch echoed sharply across the court. The sound of the bones in Liam's arm instantly shattering was unmistakable. A thick spray of fresh blood splattered loudly against the polished floor directly beneath the point of impact.
The volleyball ricocheted violently off Liam's broken arm, bouncing high into the air toward the ceiling.
Before anyone could react, a deafening, furious tiger roar shook the entire stadium. Lumos launched his massive body off the floor, springing high into the air after the ball. While still mid-air, the giant tiger instantly triggered the Seventy-Two Transformations, aggressively morphing his entire massive body into a thick, heavy skirt made entirely of reinforced tiger skin. The skirt completely enveloped the spinning volleyball.
The heavy, tiger-skin wrapped ball slammed back down onto the wooden floor with a heavy, wet thud. The thick padding completely absorbed the kinetic energy. It didn't even bounce. It simply collapsed against the floor and rolled lazily until it bumped gently against Liam's shoes.
Snap. Snap.
Liam stood perfectly still, his left arm hanging completely limp and useless at his side. Thick streams of blood dripped rapidly down the defined lines of his arm muscles, pooling at his fingertips before dropping steadily onto the round, tiger-skin ball resting by his feet.
"Is this sequence of events officially considered a valid catch?" Shizuku asked, turning her head to look directly at the referee.
Referee Number 0 stared blankly for a second before raising his wooden hand. "It counts as a valid catch. No one is eliminated."
Liam didn't flinch. He calmly used his perfectly fine right hand to reach down and pick up the heavy, tiger-skin ball from the floor. He raised his eyes, ignoring his ruined left arm entirely, and spoke directly to the ball.
"Can you sense Razor's current situation from inside there?" Liam asked Jade.
Without waiting for an answer, Liam reared back and violently smashed the volleyball back across the court using his good right arm.
Is now really the appropriate time to be casually asking about the status of your prisoner?
Even the hardened death row prisoners watching from the sidelines were completely speechless at the display. You should absolutely be focusing on treating your own violently shattered arm first! Don't just let it hang there and bleed out! You are wasting it!
However, standing a few feet away, Bisky's eyes were wide with sudden, intense realization. She was deeply moved by the implications of the exchange.
After Liam's Nen beast sucked someone into the isolated void of the Universe in the Sleeve, the person trapped inside seemed to be completely, flawlessly frozen in time. No matter how much time actually passed in the outside world, their physical and mental state would remain exactly the same as the exact moment they were captured upon release.
So, what did that mean for these fully automatic, puppet-style Nen beasts? In their limited, pre-programmed perception, what exactly was the current state of their creator's body at this exact moment?
Did they perceive Razor's sudden disappearance as no different from him instantly dying? Or did they perceive that frozen moment in time as an infinite eternity?
She didn't know if pondering the exact philosophical mechanics of Nen beasts was too brain-intensive for a dodgeball game.
Regardless of the philosophical implications, the massive Number 23 puppet standing on the opposite side of the court did not offer an answer. Instead, it immediately made its next move. The only remaining puppet on the court, Number 5, which had been standing quietly behind the giant, instantly dissolved into pure aura and aggressively merged directly into Number 23's back.
The newly formed, even taller, and massively stronger Number 28 puppet stepped forward to intercept Liam's straight throw, which had been significantly more fierce and aggressive than his previous attempts.
The giant puppet didn't even brace itself. It simply reached out one massive hand and gently plucked the violently spinning ball directly out of the air. The puppet was so incomprehensibly large now that the standard-sized volleyball looked like a tiny baseball resting in its palm.
Puppet Number 28 slowly raised its head, locking its gaze directly onto Liam once again.
It clearly regarded Liam as an absolute, existential threat that had to be completely obliterated in order to save its creator's frozen body.
This time, a truly astonishing, suffocating wave of pure, condensed aura erupted violently from the puppet's massive body. The sheer pressure of the energy actually cracked the wooden floorboards beneath its feet. It then rapidly funneled every single drop of that terrifying, localized aura directly into the tiny "baseball" resting in its palm.
The resulting raw, killing momentum radiating from the ball was so overwhelming and deeply terrifying that several of the hardened death row inmates standing on the sidelines actually began to violently tremble. A few of them lost control of their legs entirely and collapsed to their knees in pure, instinctual fear.
The unhinged, completely crazy look radiating from this Number 28 puppet was honestly far more terrifying than the heavy, oppressive aura Razor usually naturally exuded. It felt as though the puppet could effortlessly and violently crush absolutely anyone who dared to stand in its way at any given moment.
The last, significantly weaker throw from the puppet had already completely shattered one of the boy's arms!
Who in their right mind would ever dare try to catch this ball?
Puppet Number 28 did not hesitate for a single second. It ripped its massive arm forward and violently smashed the aura-filled "baseball" directly toward Liam's face. The ball moved with the terrifying, unstoppable kinetic force of a meteor violently striking the earth.
However, before the ball could connect, a small blur of pink flashed across the court. A tiny figure stepped smoothly and calmly directly into the path of the incoming strike, placing herself right in front of Liam.
"Bisky?" Shizuku gasped, her eyes widening in genuine shock.
It was a terrifying, murderous volleyball explicitly designed to violently blast through absolutely anything that dared to stand in its way.
But the exact moment the devastating projectile hit Bisky head-on, it was exactly like watching a heavy, thrashing mud cow slowly sinking into a bottomless sea.
Absolutely no sound of impact was heard at all.
The group of death row prisoners standing on the opposite side of the court had a perfectly clear, unobstructed view of exactly what was happening. Their jaws collectively dropped to the floor in utter, disbelieving shock.
The tiny little girl, who looked exactly like a fragile porcelain doll princess, had rapidly gathered a massive, concentrated ball of her own aura directly between her open palms. In an instant, she had transmuted that raw aura into something thick, viscous, and slippery, exactly like heavy essential oil.
The incoming volleyball, carrying the violent, unstoppable momentum of a falling meteorite, had crashed directly into the floating ball of Nen oil suspended between her hands. It was exactly like a rampaging beast blindly ramming itself headfirst into a deep, inescapable swamp.
The ball was trapped deep within the oil. Even though it still possessed all of its terrifying brute force and forward momentum, it was completely unable to utilize any of it. It was violently spinning and thrashing wildly against the slippery, frictionless Nen oil, but it was completely trapped, forced to perfectly follow the smooth, guiding trajectory of Bisky's small hands.
Bisky moved her hands in a smooth, continuous, circular motion, effortlessly turning the ball over and embracing the kinetic energy rather than fighting it. The heavy volleyball continued to spin fiercely within the protective sphere of Nen oil in her palms. Finally, after bleeding off the last of the destructive momentum, she reached out and casually balanced the formerly murderous volleyball perfectly on the tip of her slender index finger.
It was spinning lightly, exactly like a standard basketball. It was completely peaceful.
"Why are all of you looking at me like that?" Bisky asked, a bright, cheerful smile spreading across her face as she looked back at Liam and the other two. "I already told you earlier today. I am much better at defense than I am at offense."
Liam stood frozen, staring at the tiny girl in absolute, stunned silence for a long time.
Finally, he found his voice and shouted, "Who the hell taught you how to use Tai Chi?"
"What is Tai Chi?" Bisky asked, tilting her head in genuine confusion.
Without waiting for an answer, she casually tossed the spinning volleyball high into the air above her head.
Bisky jumped up and spiked the ball with a sharp, echoing crack. The volleyball rocketed back across the court, heading straight for the massive Number 28 puppet.
Bisky's chosen aiming angle was incredibly tricky and complex. No matter how physically strong or fast the opponent was, it would be absolutely impossible for the giant puppet to cleanly catch and hold the ball in its massive hands as easily as it had before. It would only be able to block the impact.
Bang.
The heavy spike slammed directly into Number 28's chest without causing any actual physical damage. Number 28 grunted, immediately reaching its massive hand out to grab the volleyball as it began to violently bounce away from its body.
Just as its fingers were about to close around the leather, the puppet clearly heard a calm, even voice echoing from the other side of the court.
"Blinky, suck that volleyball in."