The elevator rose rapidly.
The digital display above the door blinked as the floor numbers jumped in quick succession, racing from fifty floors underground, to forty, to twenty, climbing all the way to the first basement level. The low, heavy hum of the lifting mechanism sent steady vibrations through the metal floor.
In the back corner of the sleek elevator car, two men sat slumped against the wall. Both wore the crisp suits and official uniforms of the Special Voyage Bureau. Their heads rolled forward, their bodies completely limp. It was impossible to tell if they were unconscious or dead.
Shizuku stood perfectly still in the center of the elevator, her hands empty and relaxed. She turned to face the polished metal doors, using the reflection to adjust the stolen suit she had just put on. Running her fingers through her medium-length black hair, she swept it straight back into a severe, slicked-back style. She straightened her posture, pushed her heavy glasses up the bridge of her nose, and listened to Liam's voice echoing in her mind through the Moon Mark on her ring.
"Just imitate the vibe of a sophisticated, white-collar criminal," Liam told her.
The elevator reached the first basement level. The mechanical hum faded into a soft chime, and the heavy doors slid slowly open.
The security personnel stationed at the lobby checkpoint immediately spotted the two slumped figures. Panic rippled through the corridor. Half of the guards rushed into the elevator to check the vitals of the downed men, while the others drew their weapons, their eyes darting wildly to scan the perimeter. A guard unclipped his walkie-talkie, his voice tight with urgency. "Security breach at the A-2 elevator..."
"Stop. Right there."
In the dim, monitor-lined main control room of the Special Voyage Bureau building, a delicate hand pointed sharply at one of the glowing screens. The monitor displayed the live feed from the A-2 elevator lobby. The female supervisor leaned forward over the console.
"Rewind it. Go back. Too far. Play it slower," she commanded. "Five times slower. No, make it ten times slower. Do you see it?"
The suited technicians sitting at the control desks stared wide-eyed at the screen, completely dumbfounded by what the heavily slowed footage revealed.
As the elevator doors began to part, a narrow gap appeared, barely wide enough for a single person to slip through. In that exact fraction of a second, a dark blur shot out of the gap and vanished past the edge of the camera's frame. In one frame, the doors were just opening. In the very next frame, the dark shadow was already through the crack. By the third frame, nothing remained but the faint, blurry trailing edge of a suit jacket.
In just two frames of ultra-slow-motion video, the figure was gone. There was no face. Not even a clear silhouette. Just a ghost passing through.
The speed was completely inhuman.
Liam had once crossed paths with Machi from the Phantom Troupe, and by his careful estimation, Shizuku's current physical capabilities were easily on par with, if not superior to, the pink-haired assassin's. Shizuku's total aura capacity hovered around twenty-five thousand. She possessed incredibly solid foundational skills, having followed Liam into countless life-or-death situations over the years. Adding to that, her recent intensive training sessions under Biscuit Krueger had pushed her physical and mental qualities far beyond what she would have achieved as the Phantom Troupe's Number Eight in the original timeline.
Guided by Liam's constant, silent communication, Shizuku moved like a formless shadow. She slipped through the winding, brightly lit underground corridors of the Special Voyage Bureau. She passed so close to the working civil servants that the displaced air gently fluttered their hair, yet none of them ever looked up.
Whenever she approached the field of view of a security camera, she adjusted her angle and maintained her blistering speed. Even with the highest-grade security technology, any captured footage would be a meaningless, unidentifiable blur. Liam was feeding her all the evasion techniques and blind-spot calculations he had observed from Silva Zoldyck. She adopted the legendary assassin's methods effortlessly. The speed, the angles, the completely silent footfalls, the Zoldyck technique of walking without displacing sound had become her instinct, baked into her muscle memory.
Shizuku rapidly approached the main exit of the first basement level, the final set of doors leading up to the surface. Suddenly, her ears twitched. Through the thick metal, she picked up the faint, rhythmic sounds of heavy breathing and shifting gear. Footsteps were approaching, but they were light and highly coordinated. These were trained professionals, heavily armed and waiting in ambush.
Shizuku kept her face perfectly blank. She did not even slow her pace. Extending one hand, she released a dense ball of aura, manifesting her Chainsaw Woman construct.
The heavy corridor door violently exploded outward. The tactical soldiers waiting on the other side instantly opened fire, flooding the smoke-filled corridor with a deafening hail of bullets. They kept firing until their magazines ran dry, but as the dust settled, there was no one there. Even their high-end thermal and infrared imaging goggles failed to pick up a single heat signature.
"I thought you were just going to fight your way out of there," Liam's voice echoed in her mind.
Shizuku, safe in her hidden position and rubbing the Heavenly Path ring on her finger, replied mentally. "You are not here with me, Liam. If I kill them, we do not get to collect any of their life energy. It would be a complete waste of resources."
"Hey, what exactly do you think I am?" Liam asked, sounding slightly offended.
Shizuku simply sent a mental feeling of a question mark. She had practical reasons for holding back. While she was incredibly fast, she was not quite fast enough to completely decimate a heavily armed tactical squad in a narrow chokepoint without leaving behind some physical evidence or getting slowed down. Yes, her Chainsaw Woman could easily tear through normal humans. Yes, she could summon Blinky and vacuum up the entire building and everyone inside it. Yes, the Star Mark made her practically immortal.
But her goal was not just to escape this basement. She had to travel across multiple continents, and possibly an entire ocean, just to reunite with Liam. Slaughtering everyone in this building might be easy in the short term, but the long-term consequences would be a massive headache.
The Special Voyage Bureau was directly affiliated with the V5. The V5 represented the five absolute peak superpowers of the human world. These were the politicians who could casually summon Isaac Netero, the Chairman of the Hunter Association, over a pleasant lunch and order him to exterminate the Chimera Ant threat like it was a minor pest control issue. To the V5, an apocalyptic threat like the Ant King was just dinner conversation. They had even provided Netero with the Poor Man's Rose, a catastrophic weapon they casually pulled from some dusty, forgotten inventory warehouse.
Provoking the V5 was a terrible idea. Even if Shizuku had wanted to go on a mindless rampage, Liam would have firmly ordered her to stand down.
After using the Chainsaw Woman to create a loud diversion at the main exit, Shizuku doubled back into the complex. She planned to find a quiet corner, use her Seventy-Two Transformations talisman, and walk out the front door in a completely different disguise.
But as she rounded a corner, she slowed to a halt. Someone was following her.
It was not a normal guard. This person had not only managed to spot her amidst the chaos but possessed the physical ability to keep up with her movements. It was a Nen user.
"Shizuku, the sun is almost up," Liam warned. Once dawn broke, the sheer distance between them would sever the Moon Mark's connection completely.
Maintaining her cold composure, Shizuku raised her hand and dug her fingernails sharply into her own palm. The pain instantly triggered the Star Mark's self-healing function, creating a bright flare of aura that strengthened Liam's spatial sense of her exact location.
"Shizuku, relax your aura," Liam instructed. "I think I can possess just a small part of your body. I will only borrow the vision of your left eye. I will not interfere with your motor functions or anything else. I just need to maintain the absolute minimum level of control to bridge our abilities."
"Is that even possible?" Shizuku asked, genuinely surprised.
"It should work," Liam replied, though he did not sound entirely convinced himself. It was not a matter of trusting Shizuku. But Liam knew that if he actively logged into the Star Mark and took partial control, he could use Shizuku's body as a physical anchor to project his own Nen abilities. It would give Shizuku access to his powers, acting as the perfect cover.
Shizuku's left pupil pulsed with a faint, unnatural lavender light. Her face remained a mask of total apathy. After leading her pursuer through a confusing maze of identical corridors, she casually pushed open the door to a nearby women's restroom. She walked over to the porcelain sinks, turned on the faucet, and washed her hands. She pulled her hair tie loose, letting her black hair fall naturally around her face, and splashed a little cold water onto the strands to complete the casual look. Then, she moved to hide and waited.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The footsteps were incredibly light, clicking softly against the tiled floor as the pursuer entered the restroom. A pair of women's shoes slowly paced past the row of enclosed stalls, clearly searching for the exact door Shizuku had hidden behind. However, looking under the gaps at the bottom of the doors revealed absolutely nothing.
Inside the middle stall, Shizuku was silently hovering. She sat completely cross-legged, perfectly balanced on the thin edge of the toilet seat, keeping her feet far above the floor. The aura in her left hand condensed, transforming into the jagged, heavy blades of several Nen chainsaws. In her right hand, she summoned a dense sphere of aura that instantly expanded into the terrifying, fanged mouth of her vacuum cleaner, Blinky.
The soft footsteps outside paused. The woman retraced her path, stopping squarely in front of the middle stall. The metal latch clicked, and the door was pulled wide open.
"I knew it was you, Shizuku," the woman standing in the doorway said, her voice steady. "Why are you here?"
"Oh?" Shizuku murmured.
She had been a fraction of a second away from swinging Blinky forward, but she froze. She did not stop because of what the woman said. She stopped because of the sudden, loud shout echoing in her mind.
"Huh? Menchi?!" Liam yelled.
Through Shizuku's glowing left eye, Liam stared in total shock at the woman blocking the door. It was the Gourmet Hunter, standing there with her unmistakable, wild hairstyle.
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