At first, there was only silence.
A heavy, stunned kind of silence.
The sort of silence that only came after something impossible had already happened and everyone present was still waiting for reality to correct itself.
Yuzuki's body twitched.
Just once.
Then his fingers curled against the blood-slick stone floor.
Ponzu's eyes widened so much they almost hurt. Hanzo, who had been halfway into motion, stopped dead in his tracks. The Hunter Association staff who had been rushing toward the ring slowed one after another, shock rippling across every face.
Even Hisoka froze.
Yuzuki's chest rose.
Then again.
Blood still soaked the front of his shirt. It still painted the floor beneath him. The wound where Hisoka had absolutely, undeniably, positively killed him was gone.
Gone.
As if it had never been there.
Yuzuki's eyes snapped open.
Those icy, inhuman, impossible blue eyes.
The Six Eyes.
He inhaled sharply and rolled onto one elbow, his hand immediately flying to his chest.
Flat.
Whole.
He pressed harder.
No hole. No fresh blood pouring out. No raw pain of a fatal wound. Just torn fabric, dried blood, and the faint soreness of a body that had died and somehow decided that was optional.
'...What?'
His thoughts came back all at once.
The void.
The God.
The yelling.
The pettiness.
The threats.
Yuta's template.
He sat up fully now, still breathing hard, and looked down at his own hands.
Then at the blood.
Then at his healed chest.
'No. That wasn't a dream.'
His jaw tightened.
'That bastard really revived me.'
Then his expression darkened.
'He lied to me.'
That thought had barely finished forming before Hisoka moved.
The clown's shock lasted only a moment.
Then delight swallowed it whole.
His smile split wide, blood still drying at the corners of his mouth. "You survived. ♥"
And then he attacked again.
Hisoka crossed the distance like he had been yanked forward by fate itself, cards already flashing between his fingers, intent to kill completely unchanged. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Yuzuki reacted on instinct.
He rolled sideways, Hisoka's hand slicing through the space where his head had been a heartbeat before. Broken stone screamed beneath the force of the missed strike.
Yuzuki sprang back to his feet.
His body felt… different.
Not weaker.
Not exactly.
Just wrong in new ways.
Hisoka came again.
Yuzuki raised his aura—
Infinity.
It came up.
Held.
Then—
It flickered.
And died.
Yuzuki's eyes widened behind the cold clarity of the Six Eyes.
'What?'
He backstepped hard, just barely avoiding Hisoka's follow-up card.
Infinity had worked.
But only for a moment.
Hisoka saw the hesitation.
Saw the adjustment.
Saw the timing error.
His smile sharpened. "Something changed. ♠"
Yuzuki didn't answer.
He didn't have time to answer.
Hisoka's next series of attacks came in viciously fast, each one probing the new shape of Yuzuki's defense. Card. Palm. Kick. Card again. A string of murderous rhythm.
Yuzuki dodged, ducked, twisted—
And counted.
Five seconds.
That was all Infinity gave him before dropping out.
His breath caught.
'Five seconds? Are you kidding me!?'
He tried to bring it up again immediately.
Nothing.
The concept was there. The pathway was there. The control was there.
But the system itself refused.
Cooldown.
A dead zone.
'No, no, no—'
Hisoka's fist screamed past his cheek.
Yuzuki ducked under it and skidded backward across the broken ring.
Then he felt it.
The interval.
A window opening again.
Fifteen seconds.
His expression went flat with outrage.
'That god…'
Another dodge.
Another twist.
Another almost-fatal brush with a sharpened card.
'He didn't take away my Gojo arsenal.'
His eyes narrowed murderously.
'He made it worse than before.'
Hisoka stopped pressing for half a beat, more curious than cautious now. He licked a line of blood from his lip and stared at Yuzuki as if he were a miracle someone had gift-wrapped personally for him.
"How did you survive?" he asked, voice low and delighted. "I know I killed you. I'm certain of it. ♦"
Yuzuki's eye twitched.
'You did.'
That same outrage from the void surged back through him.
The god.
The lies.
The passive Infinity crippled into a timed defense.
The fact that he had apparently been dropped back into a death match with a clown before even processing his own resurrection.
And then something else clicked.
His Hatsu.
No—
His Hatsu had changed.
Or evolved.
Or been forcibly modified by that insufferable divine fraud.
He could feel it now, layered into the pathways of his aura in a way that hadn't existed before.
A dangerous opposite.
Hisoka stepped forward again.
"Tell me," he said, smiling, "was it a trick? A vow? A miracle? I don't care which, as long as you show me. ♥"
Yuzuki planted his feet.
He could feel the timing of Infinity reopening again, but he didn't use it.
Not yet.
Instead, he raised one trembling arm.
Aura surged.
Backward.
Reversed.
Condensed.
His Six Eyes traced it all with brutal clarity.
It hurt.
Even before release, it hurt.
But now that he knew it was there, he understood instinctively what it wanted to become.
Hisoka saw the charge build and his own excitement spiked.
'New. It's something new. ♠'
Yuzuki's hand shook.
Then he spoke.
"Nen Technique Reversal: Red."
The world detonated.
There was no subtlety to it.
Red was rejection given force. A violent expulsion. A reversed pressure so dense and so abrupt that the air itself seemed to scream.
A crimson-tinged blast erupted from Yuzuki's palm and hit Hisoka point-blank.
For the first time since the fight had begun, Hisoka's face truly changed.
Shock.
The blast swallowed him.
Then launched him.
He tore through the far end of the hall like a human cannonball, smashed through stone, obliterated a support wall, and disappeared into the structure beyond with a thunderous crash that shook the entire building.
Dust exploded everywhere.
The hall went dead silent again.
Then Yuzuki's arms nearly gave out.
Pain ripped through both of them at once, brutal and immediate, as if his bones had suddenly remembered they were never meant to channel something that violent. He staggered, clutching one forearm with the other hand, teeth gritted so hard his jaw ached.
'—Ah, damn it!'
He sucked in a breath through his teeth and glared upward as if he could somehow see through dimensions.
'You fraud of a god—'
His arms were still attached.
But the recoil was real. Deep.
'He didn't just change it,' Yuzuki thought furiously. 'He turned it into a self-harm option.'
He flexed his fingers once and pain lanced all the way up to his shoulders.
'If I use Red again like that, I might lose my arms for a while.'
Wonderful.
Absolutely wonderful.
The building Hisoka had been launched through groaned.
Then a silhouette emerged from the settling dust.
Hisoka stepped out slowly.
Bleeding.
Badly.
Part of his torso had been torn open. One arm hung wrong. Blood ran freely from his hairline, mouth, and side. He looked like he had just been hurled through divine judgment and somehow found the experience romantic.
And he was still smiling.
No—
He was radiant.
Eyes wide.
Breathing rough.
Body trembling from pain and ecstasy in equal measure.
"That," Hisoka said, voice shaking, "was magnificent. ♥"
He rolled one shoulder with an ugly, wet sound and took another step forward.
His aura rose.
Murderous.
Beautifully unhinged.
He was ready to rush Yuzuki again.
And Yuzuki knew, with awful clarity, that if Hisoka got inside his range right now, with his arms in this condition and Infinity on a timer, things would become very bad very quickly.
Hisoka bent his knees.
Then—
"Enough."
A new voice cut through the hall.
Mizaistom entered.
Fast.
Already holding a yellow card between two fingers.
Hisoka turned just in time for the Nen ability to activate.
A grid-like prison snapped into existence around him, locking his body in place mid-step. His muscles tensed against it immediately, aura flaring in violent protest, but the structure held.
Cross Game.
Yellow.
Detain.
Hisoka's smile vanished into open irritation. "Cow man. ♣"
Mizaistom adjusted his tie, expression as severe as judgment itself.
"I leave for a brief administrative matter," he said coldly, "and return to find an examiner dead, the exam in ruins, and you attempting to murder a candidate."
Hisoka tested the grid once more and clicked his tongue.
Yuzuki, still holding one damaged arm and flexing the other through pain, stared at the clown from across the wrecked hall.
His chest was healed.
His eyes were still his.
His arsenal was broken in new and fascinating ways.
And Hisoka was still alive.
Yuzuki closed his eyes for one second.
Then opened them again and muttered under his breath,
'I am going to kill that god first.'
---
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