The hall had gone mad.
Shigure's body had barely hit the stone before the entire Hunter Exam collapsed into screaming movement. Staff rushed forward from every side. Some tried to reach the body. Some tried to reach Hisoka. Some tried to do both and accomplished neither.
Mizaistom had already left the arena just before Yuzuki's match had begun, called away by some matter involving exam oversight and the riot from the previous phase. If he had still been there, perhaps the chaos would have looked different.
But he wasn't.
And so there was no law in the room.
Only panic.
Only blood.
Only Hisoka.
Hisoka stood in the middle of it all with Shigure's blood still fresh on his fingers, smiling as if the entire world had finally started making sense again.
"I can't wait anymore," he said softly.
His eyes were fixed only on Yuzuki.
"You're not fully ripe…" Hisoka admitted, voice trembling with excitement. "But you're close enough. Close enough to taste. ♠"
The hall seemed to contract around those words.
Ponzu's face went white. "Yuzuki—!"
Hanzo was already moving, but one of the staff caught his arm and barked, "Don't! He'll kill you too!"
Yuzuki stood in the ring, breathing slow and deep, his whole body still humming from the fight with Shigure. He had barely had time to register that he had passed. Barely had time to feel anything at all.
And now this lunatic wanted to kill him.
Yuzuki stared at him for one long second.
Then, slowly, he reached up to his face.
His fingers hooked the arms of the sunglasses.
And pulled them off.
The Six Eyes were revealed.
The entire hall felt it.
Even those who did not understand what they were looking at understood, instinctively, that those eyes were wrong in the way the sky would be wrong if it suddenly opened and stared back.
A cold, crystalline blue.
Too clear.
Too deep.
Too perfect.
Hisoka's smile froze.
For one brief heartbeat, genuine awe passed through his face.
Then his pupils tightened with feverish ecstasy.
"Ohhh…" he whispered. "There they are. ♥"
The hunger in him sharpened into something nearly painful.
The eyes.
The aura.
The way Yuzuki stood there bloodied from one battle already and still accepted another.
The boy was unreal.
And that only made him more irresistible.
Yuzuki rolled his shoulders once, then tossed the sunglasses aside. They skidded across the ring floor and disappeared into the rubble near the wall.
"You wanted this," Yuzuki said, voice flat. "So come take it."
Hisoka shuddered.
Then vanished.
The first attack came not from directly in front, but from above and behind. Hisoka's card already slicing for Yuzuki's neck while Bungee Gum anchored him to a broken support beam overhead.
Yuzuki saw it.
The world sharpened.
His Six Eyes read the Nen itself, the tension of the gumline, the exact angle of the card's edge, the path of the killing intent behind it.
He bent at the waist just enough for the card to whistle over him, then drove his heel backward.
Hisoka was forced to release the overhead anchor and twist midair to avoid the kick. He landed in a crouch and Yuzuki was already there.
Blue bloomed around his fist.
He punched.
Hisoka crossed his forearms to block and still got sent sliding across the floor hard enough that blood sprayed from the corner of his mouth.
Hisoka's eyes widened.
Then narrowed in delight.
"Yes."
He lunged back in.
This time it was raw exchange. Both of them knew what this was now.
Hisoka's cards flashed in silver arcs, slicing through broken stone, benches, and the hanging cloth banners around the arena. Bungee Gum stretched invisibly through the battlefield, turning debris into projectiles and angles into traps. He bounced from ruin to ruin with obscene fluidity, every movement threaded with murderous purpose.
Yuzuki answered with precision.
Not brute force alone.
Precision.
Steps that changed his vector mid-stride. Punches that didn't just hit. They collapsed distance at the point of impact. Tiny gravitational distortions under his feet to keep balance on blood-slick stone. Smaller, more refined pulses behind incoming debris to drag them off line before they could become true threats.
A shattered pillar hurtled toward him.
Yuzuki glanced at it once and flicked two fingers.
Blue pulsed behind the pillar and twisted its axis.
The stone spun past him by inches.
Hisoka was behind it.
Cards in one hand. Smile split wide.
Yuzuki raised his aura output.
Infinity caught the first card.
Hisoka's aura was denser than his, stronger in the broad sense. To deny him, Yuzuki had to force the threshold upward at the exact point of contact, amplifying the concept of "not reaching" with brute output and microscopic control.
The card shuddered in air.
Stopped.
The second card came in lower.
Yuzuki had already moved.
He stepped inside Hisoka's range and drove a hook into the clown's side.
Hisoka gasped as the force tore through his ribs and launched him sideways into the wall.
Stone cracked.
Hisoka dropped to one knee.
Then he laughed.
Laughed and coughed blood onto the floor.
"Wonderful… ♦"
Yuzuki did not let up.
He understood one thing now.
If he gave Hisoka time, the clown would stack angles and traps until the whole ring became unlivable.
So the path forward was neither full defense nor reckless offense.
It was suffocation.
He rushed.
A feint to the right.
Blue at the heel to carry him left.
A jab high.
Hisoka moved to parry.
A body blow instead.
Hisoka twisted. Half-landed.
A knee.
An elbow.
A spinning backfist carrying a compressed swirl of Blue that ripped the air with it.
Hisoka ducked just in time and retaliated by snapping Bungee Gum to Yuzuki's sleeve and the arena floor behind him.
Yuzuki felt the pull the instant it tightened.
Hisoka yanked.
Yuzuki's body tilted backward.
And that was when Hisoka struck. Fist driving straight for the heart.
Yuzuki spiked his aura output just in time.
Hisoka's fist slowed.
Stopped.
The pressure between them screamed.
Veins rose at Yuzuki's temple.
Sweat broke across his back.
Hisoka felt the resistance and grinned with blood on his teeth.
"So that's what it takes for me… ♣"
Yuzuki answered by using Blue through his own planted foot to tear free of the gumline and slam a palm strike into Hisoka's chin.
The impact lifted Hisoka off his feet.
He landed, rolled, and came up laughing.
Around the ring, surviving candidates and staff had given up trying to intervene.
No one wanted to be near that.
Hanzo stood at the edge of the wreckage, jaw clenched, eyes wide despite himself.
"They're really trying to kill each other…"
Ponzu hugged herself tightly, fingers trembling. She wanted to look away. She couldn't.
Back in the ring, Hisoka's breathing had changed.
He was still smiling, still taunting, still beautiful and grotesque all at once—
But he was working now.
Really working.
Yuzuki had forced him to.
And that, more than the pain or the blood, made Hisoka's whole body sing.
His hunger was becoming unbearable.
Watching Yuzuki grow through the exam had been intoxicating.
Fighting him while he bloomed under lethal pressure?
That was nearly enough to break Hisoka's composure entirely.
"Ahh…" he whispered, pressing a hand briefly over his face. "You really are… making this difficult. ♥"
Then he snapped his hand down and attacked with murderous speed.
Bungee Gum stretched between three broken pillars.
Cards flew in cross-patterns.
Hisoka turned the arena into a web.
Yuzuki saw it all.
His eyes caught the hidden lines, the faint distortions in aura flow, the exact point where each trap became real.
He moved through the lattice with impossible economy, ducking one card, stepping over another, using Blue to yank a fallen spear of broken stone into the path of a third.
Hisoka expected him to break through the left corridor.
Yuzuki did not.
He punched the floor.
Blue detonated downward and the entire slab tilted just enough to ruin Hisoka's support angle. The Bungee Gum web slackened for half a second.
That was enough.
Yuzuki was inside.
He drove three blows in immediate succession. Liver, sternum, jaw.
Hisoka blocked one.
Absorbed one.
The third landed clean and snapped his head back with a spray of blood.
The clown's expression went blank.
Then thrilled.
He answered with his own burst.
A knee slammed into Yuzuki's stomach.
A card carved a line across his shoulder.
A second line slashed through his side.
Then Bungee Gum latched to Yuzuki's wrist and neck at once and Hisoka used his own bodyweight to swing around him, driving both feet into Yuzuki's spine and sending him crashing into the far wall hard enough to bury him in fractured stone.
The hall shook.
Dust filled the air.
Hisoka landed lightly, breathing hard now, smile fading at the edges into something shakier.
"Come on…" he said softly. "Get up. ♠"
Yuzuki did.
Slowly at first.
Then fully.
Blood ran from his mouth and shoulder. One sleeve was torn away. The cut at his side was deep enough to matter.
But his eyes—
Those eyes were brighter than ever.
Hisoka trembled.
'He's still getting sharper.'
Yuzuki stepped out of the dust cloud and wiped blood from his chin.
Then he smiled.
Small.
Cold.
Hisoka's pulse hammered.
That smile said the same thing his own did:
I understand you now.
Yuzuki had it.
He understood that Hisoka thrived on anticipation, on rhythm, on dragging opponents into a dance and devouring them when they finally matched his tempo.
So Yuzuki did the one thing Hisoka never quite expected from geniuses.
He became ugly.
He rushed in wrong.
Not elegant.
Not controlled.
He threw a chair.
Kicked rubble.
Used Blue in rough, brutal ways to turn debris clouds into cover and cover into blindside acceleration. He forced the fight into chaos and then navigated that chaos better than Hisoka could.
Hisoka laughed aloud in disbelief as a broken slab smashed into his shoulder from an angle he hadn't favored enough to monitor.
A second later Yuzuki was on him, driving a fist into his gut hard enough to buckle his posture.
Hisoka retaliated instantly. Bungee Gum snapping around Yuzuki's ankle, dragging him off balance—
—but Yuzuki had anticipated exactly that.
Blue surged from his free hand into the floor behind Hisoka.
The pull didn't target Hisoka's body.
It targeted the space behind his stance.
Hisoka's heel lost its support.
His balance broke.
Yuzuki's next punch came straight through the opening—
and nearly blew through Hisoka's chest.
Nearly.
Hisoka twisted at the last impossible instant. The fist tore through muscle and shattered ribs instead of puncturing the heart.
Blood erupted.
The hall gasped.
Hisoka staggered.
Actually staggered.
One hand flew to the wound.
He looked at the blood there, then at Yuzuki.
And smiled.
"Enough."
The word came out like a prayer answered.
Then Hisoka went all out.
His aura surged so violently that several examinees near the ring stumbled backward from the pressure alone. Cards rose all around him, held not by fingers but by aura tension and Bungee Gum anchoring them in a floating halo of death.
Yuzuki saw them.
Too many.
Too fast.
He raised his own aura.
Infinity.
Everything he had.
For one ringing heartbeat the world narrowed to one concept:
You do not reach me.
Hisoka attacked.
The storm hit.
Cards screamed into the invisible denial, slowing, shredding, forcing against it. Hisoka himself came in behind them, using his greater aura to punch where the card barrage had weakened the shell.
Yuzuki held.
His temples throbbed.
Blood ran from his nose.
His eyes burned.
Hisoka forced harder.
Smiling.
Bleeding.
Moaning softly through clenched teeth from the sheer ecstasy of it.
"This... this is it... ♥"
Yuzuki roared and used Blue through both fists at once, not outward but inward, collapsing the distance between his own hands and Hisoka's chest as he punched.
The impact exploded through the ring.
Hisoka flew backward.
Skidded.
Stopped.
And then—
laughed again.
He was broken open now, ribs ruined, shirt soaked red, one eye swollen.
And he was still standing.
Yuzuki took one step.
Then another.
Then the world tilted.
Too much output.
Too much damage.
Hisoka saw it.
Of course he did.
That was all he needed.
Bungee Gum snapped from four angles at once.
Wrists.
Ankle.
Shoulder.
Neck.
Yuzuki tore free of two.
Missed the third.
The fourth tightened.
Hisoka yanked with everything he had left.
Yuzuki flew forward.
Hisoka met him with one hand already lined in cards, aura, and murderous intent.
The strike drove in—
through chest.
Yuzuki's body jerked once.
The Six Eyes widened.
Then stilled.
Hisoka held him there for a second, shaking with adrenaline, blood, pain, and horrible satisfaction.
Then he let go.
Yuzuki hit the stone.
Hard.
He did not rise.
The hall fell into absolute silence.
Hisoka stood over the body, chest heaving, half-destroyed and grinning through blood.
"You weren't ripe yet..." he whispered. "But you were enough. ♦"
Ponzu's face had gone completely white.
Hanzo looked ready to lunge and knew it would be pointless.
Staff began moving again, cautiously, fearfully.
And on the blood-streaked floor of the ruined ring, Yuzuki lay still—
dead.
---
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