Lucien Cain disliked opponents who smiled before the bell.
Confidence was understandable, pride could be measured, provoked, and punished, and even madness had predictable patterns once a man committed himself to it. Hisoka Morrow's smile belonged to none of those things. It seemed less like an expression and more like something the magician had slapped onto his face simply because he enjoyed watching people search for a reason.
rights down in the rebuilt arena still carried the scars of the previous semifinal. Emergency crews had replaced the most dangerous sections of flooring, but the centre remained scarred by collapsed stone and hastily reinforced seams. High above, temporary steel braces crossed the gaping hole Yuzuki had torn through the roof, leaving the ring wide open to the grey afternoon sky.
Lucien stood at the western edge of the ring in a sleeveless dark combat coat, his arms hanging loose at his sides. He had held his place among the Floor Masters for nineteen years. Eighty-seven successful title defences had taught him that spectacle was usually just a poor substitute for control.
Hisoka waited opposite him, dressed in pale trousers and a fitted shirt marked with playing-card suits. Bandages showed beneath the fabric along one side of his torso. Remnants of earlier matches that ought to have encouraged caution. Instead, he looked delighted.
The announcer's voice rolled through the stadium.
"Battle Olympia's second semifinal! The Uncrowned King, Lucien Cain, against the magician Hisoka Morrow!"
Lucien let the crowd exhaust itself, keeping his eyes locked on Hisoka's feet, shoulders, and hands. No visible tension. No concern. A deck of cards rested between the magician's fingers as though he had entered the ring for a street performance rather than a fight that could kill him.
The bell rang.
Lucien released his aura, and Atmospheric Press spread across the arena.
The field began lightly, touching the air with resistance rather than crushing force. Even so, the first card Hisoka threw lost speed halfway across the ring, fluttering past Lucien's shoulder without enough force to cut cloth before striking the floor behind him.
Hisoka tilted his head.
Lucien advanced.
The pressure deepened with every step. Air thickened around movement, turning speed against itself. A slow action remained possible, but sudden acceleration met heavier resistance. Muscles strained harder for less distance, and breathing quickly became work.
Hisoka threw two more cards. Both started fast, then slowed until Lucien caught one effortlessly between his fingers and allowed the other to drop.
"You've seen the recordings," Lucien said.
"Only the interesting parts."
"And what did you learn?"
Hisoka took a single step to his left. It was graceful, but Lucien caught the faint drag entering his leg.
"That you dislike being hurried."
Lucien turned up the field.
Hisoka's next step nearly stopped beneath him. The magician's smile widened, though his chest rose and fell far more sharply than before.
Lucien crossed the distance and struck.
His first palm targeted the sternum. Hisoka slipped aside, but the surrounding pressure robbed the movement of its usual speed. Lucien's fingers grazed his chest and still drove him back half a metre. A second strike followed toward the liver; Hisoka caught the forearm, attempted to pivot, and found the air fighting him.
Lucien drove a knee straight into his abdomen.
The impact lifted Hisoka off the floor and folded him in half. Lucien struck his shoulder before he could land, turning the fall into a violent sideways tumble across the stone.
Hisoka rolled once and came up on one knee, blood staining the corner of his mouth.
The crowd roared.
Lucien did not follow up recklessly. Instead, he widened Atmospheric Press, extending its full weight toward the edges of the arena. His ability did not create literal walls. It changed how movement travelled through space. The faster an object tried to move across the field, the harder the atmosphere resisted. Enough pressure could slow a bullet. Enough concentration could make breathing feel as though lungs were being squeezed flat inside the chest.
Hisoka straightened up carefully. "You're quite oppressive," he said.
Lucien ignored the bait. "You attached aura to the floor during the opening."
Hisoka's eyebrows rose slightly.
Lucien had felt it: several faint threads stretching from the magician's fingers to various points around the ring, placed before Atmospheric Press reached full density when quick movements were still possible.
Bungee Gum.
Lucien had studied the ability carefully. Elastic aura that could stretch, pull, and cling to surfaces. Simple in description, troublesome in practice. Hisoka hadn't thrown those opening cards merely to test the field; he had used the action to mask the placement of his anchors.
Lucien shifted the pressure directly beneath the nearest one.
The stone cracked. A thread of pink aura snapped taut and tore free with a sharp sound, jerking Hisoka's right hand forward as the recoil travelled back through the line.
One anchor gone.
Lucien altered another zone, compressing the resistance around the western wall until the attached section of stone broke away. The second strand recoiled, and Hisoka spread his fingers to absorb the snap. The smallest finger bent back too far, popping with a wet click.
He didn't cry out. Instead, he stared down at the crooked joint with mild interest.
"Rude."
Lucien attacked before he could set it.
The field pressed inward around Hisoka's legs while Lucien left the air around himself slightly looser, crossing the ring with a speed that appeared terrifying only because Hisoka was so thoroughly slowed.
A straight punch caught Hisoka in the cheek, snapping his head sideways. Lucien followed with an elbow aimed at the temple, but Hisoka dropped beneath it and swept a card toward Lucien's knee.
The card slowed mid-flight. Lucien stepped over it and kicked Hisoka flush in the chest.
Hisoka skidded backwards, his shoes carving twin lines into the floor. A thread of Bungee Gum caught him before he went down, stretching behind his shoulder to an anchor near the northern barrier.
Lucien saw it clearly this time: the strand had absorbed part of the kick's momentum, and it remained stretched tight even after Hisoka regained his footing.
Lucien understood. The magician wasn't merely anchoring himself. He was storing the force of Atmospheric Press inside the gum. Every attempt to move through the field stretched the elastic aura further, and every blow Lucien delivered added more tension to the lines. Hisoka was letting the field load the trap for him.
Lucien shifted the pressure instantly, compressing the northern zone around the anchor point until stone groaned beneath the strain.
Hisoka flicked his wrist. The gum detached before the wall broke, but the recoiling strand whipped across his forearm, tearing skin away where it had adhered too deeply. Blood ran from his wrist down to his elbow.
Hisoka glanced at the raw wound, his smile intact.
Lucien had fought men who enjoyed pain before. They were rarely difficult once the damage became real. But Hisoka was different. Pain didn't excite him because it hurt; it excited him because it changed the shape of the fight.
That made him dangerous.
Lucien narrowed the field tight around him, compressing the air against Hisoka's chest. The magician's next breath stopped halfway, his ribs expanding into pressure that denied his lungs room to fill. He coughed, one hand briefly touching his side where earlier injuries had reopened.
Lucien stepped in behind the pressure. His palm struck Hisoka beneath the chin, snapping him upright, and a follow-up blow drove straight into his ribs, cracking bone under the impact.
Hisoka tried to retreat, but every step was slower than the last. Lucien grabbed his wrist, twisted the arm, and slammed him shoulder-first into the floor.
The stone split beneath him.
Lucien stood over the fallen fighter. "Submit."
Hisoka lay with one cheek pressed against the cracked floor, his breath coming in shallow gasps. "Already?"
"If I increase the pressure around your lungs, you will lose consciousness."
"That sounds promising."
Lucien drove the field downward.
Hisoka's body flattened hard against the stone. Blood pooled beneath his scraped forearm, his fingers curling slowly as if even that small movement demanded immense effort.
Lucien waited, watching Hisoka's eyes shift past him. Not toward the audience or the referee, but toward the arena floor.
Lucien followed his gaze and saw nothing beyond cracked stone and several fallen cards. Then, one of the cards shifted.
A thin strand of Bungee Gum connected it to a damaged section of wall. Another strand ran beneath Hisoka's body, and a third had been slapped onto Lucien's coat during their brief exchange inside the pocket.
Lucien slashed his aura sideways, and the pressure tore the card-anchor clean off the floor.
Hisoka pulled first.
The gum attached to Lucien's coat contracted. Not enough to drag him, but just enough to throw off his balance. In that same instant, the line beneath Hisoka snapped him sideways, jerking him out from under the densest part of the field.
Lucien caught himself after a single step.
Hisoka rolled to his feet several metres away, panting. His dislocated finger hung at an ugly angle, and the skin along his forearm was stripped open. He grabbed the crooked finger, pulled, and snapped it back into its socket with a dull click.
The crowd reacted with a mix of cheers and revulsion.
Hisoka flexed his fingers twice. "Better."
Lucien ripped away the section of his coat carrying the gum and tossed it aside. "You're running out of anchors."
Hisoka glanced around the arena. "Am I?"
Lucien scanned the ring. The visible web had shrunk, but that didn't mean the hidden one was gone. Cards lay scattered everywhere. Some embedded in barriers, others buried under rubble. Some were loaded with gum; others were likely bluffs meant to keep him guessing.
Lucien broke Atmospheric Press into separate zones rather than maintaining one continuous weight. The floor around Hisoka grew heavy, while two sections near the perimeter loosened.
Hisoka immediately threw cards toward both open spots. Neither attack came close to Lucien, but both struck the low-pressure zones and travelled far faster than the previous throws.
Hisoka watched them land.
Lucien realised the test a second too late and shifted the zones.
Hisoka threw again. One card high, one low, followed by a feint to Lucien's right. The cards weren't meant to hit; they were probes, mapping where the resistance spiked and where it slackened.
Lucien altered the pattern before Hisoka could finish mapping it, causing the next card to drop like a stone.
Hisoka laughed softly. "There you are."
Lucien forced down a flash of irritation. He had expected Hisoka to hunt for a weakness in Atmospheric Press. Every ability had one, and his own was unavoidable: he still needed air to breathe.
The field could only crush an opponent's lungs because Lucien maintained a narrow, lower-pressure corridor connecting outside air to his own mouth and chest. The path moved whenever he did. Thin, carefully masked, and easy to mistake for an ordinary fluctuation in the field. If he closed it entirely, his own pressure would choke him out.
Hisoka didn't know the corridor's exact shape yet, and Lucien intended to keep it that way.
He altered his breathing rhythm. A shallow inhale, a long pause, two quick breaths through the nose. The lower-pressure corridor shifted with each breath, entering from different angles as Lucien adjusted the field to cover it.
Hisoka kept throwing cards. One drifted into the corridor and accelerated instantly.
Lucien shifted before it reached him, but the card still grazed his upper arm. It was a shallow cut, but the crowd erupted anyway at the first clean wound Lucien had taken all match.
Hisoka's eyes sharpened.
Lucien clamped the pressure around him until the next incoming card stopped dead in the air, then compressed the zones holding the remaining gum anchors. Three strands snapped free at once. The violent recoil tore Hisoka's shirt and ripped strips of flesh from his back and shoulder, jerking his body forward. He threw a hand down to catch himself, and two fingers bent backward under his weight with a sickening pop.
This time, Hisoka hissed, his smile briefly slipping.
Lucien closed in.
He moved through his own low-pressure path and slammed both palms into Hisoka's chest, launching the magician back into one of the temporary glass barriers. The reinforced glass fractured on impact, and before Hisoka could drop, Lucien pinned him against it with the field.
Atmospheric Press locked around his torso.
Hisoka's chest stopped moving.
Lucien held the pressure. One second. Two seconds. Three.
Veins stood out along Hisoka's neck as his face darkened, his lungs fighting uselessly for air.
"Submit," Lucien repeated.
Hisoka's eyes stayed fixed on him, the corner of his mouth lifting into a bloody grin.
Lucien felt the gum a fraction of a second too late.
The magician had attached lines to the barrier behind him before the match had even reached full density. The impact had stretched those lines to their absolute limit, and dozens more connected the shattered frame to cards and rubble scattered across the ring. An uneven web that Lucien's own strikes had been loading all fight.
Hisoka hooked his broken fingers into a line.
Lucien shifted the pressure to snap it, but Hisoka refused to let go. The strand tore open the skin on his fingers and pulled the joint further out of alignment, but the anchor held.
Lucien compressed another zone, shattering a section of the barrier, but the web only tightened. Hisoka hadn't been trying to build a perfect web; he had built one designed to survive destruction.
Lucien drove the pressure around Hisoka's lungs to its absolute maximum. The reinforced barrier behind him groaned, and Hisoka's face contorted under genuine strain.
Still, he didn't submit.
Instead, he flicked a card.
The movement was weak and clumsy under the crushing weight. Lucien watched the card float uselessly far to the left, nowhere near him. A second card went high over his shoulder; a third skimmed the stone floor.
More feints. More mapping.
Lucien shifted his breathing corridor with every inhale, but Hisoka's eyes were tracking the cards, not Lucien.
The first card slowed. The second stalled out. The third cut through an invisible pocket of weak pressure, picking up speed for less than a metre before the weight caught it again.
Hisoka had found the entry point.
Lucien moved the corridor instantly.
Hisoka threw two more cards. One curved unnaturally. Drawn by a thread of gum on its corner and slipped into the weakened air near Lucien's left side. The other came from above.
Lucien shifted the corridor again, only to realize Hisoka was no longer looking for a static path. He was timing the drops in resistance.
Every inhale.
No matter where Lucien moved the corridor, the pressure had to yield somewhere long enough for air to reach his lungs. Hisoka had mapped the rhythm.
Lucien abandoned restraint.
Atmospheric Press surged across the entire arena. The remaining cards slammed flat, dust was crushed against the floor, and Hisoka's knees buckled under the sheer weight of the air. Lucien narrowed his own breathing corridor to a hairline thread; he would end the fight before Hisoka could exploit the timing.
Hisoka dropped his head and wrapped both hands around the lines beside him.
Lucien saw the tension ripple through the entire web. Pink lines flared across the ring. Beneath rubble, across shattered barriers, and between dozens of cards scattered during the opening sequence. Lucien had broken several anchors, but plenty remained, and the crushing field had spent the entire fight storing kinetic force inside them.
Hisoka let go.
The arena echoed with a sound like a snapping cable.
Bungee Gum contracted from every direction at once. Broken stone shot across the floor, cards ripped free from the walls, and the barrier behind Hisoka shattered completely as the gathered tension yanked him forward.
Lucien shifted the pressure to meet him, and the heavy air caught Hisoka with brutal force. His shoulder dislocated under the opposing vectors, skin tore away beneath the gum stuck to his back, and blood sprayed into the air.
Yet his momentum didn't stop.
The remaining lines violently redirected his flight. One pulled from the northern wall, another from a card embedded in the floor, and a third from above. Hisoka's body changed direction twice in mid-air, slung through the dense pressure like a stone ricocheting through water.
Lucien blocked the first trajectory, but Hisoka curved around it. He sealed the second, but the magician dropped low, yanked sideways by another line.
Lucien recognised the destination: his breathing corridor.
He tried to shift it, but Hisoka had timed the release perfectly to his inhale. The weakened path was already open, and sealing it completely meant cutting off his own oxygen while the rest of the field operated at maximum intensity.
Lucien sealed it anyway.
For a single instant, the field became uniform, and crushing weight slammed inward on both of them. Lucien's lungs locked up, unable to expand.
Hisoka burst through the corridor just as it collapsed.
He hit Lucien at an angle he hadn't left open intentionally. Shoulder-first, spinning wildly under the drag of three contracting gum lines. The collision drove them both backwards across the stone.
Lucien raised his guard. Hisoka's dislocated arm struck it uselessly, but a playing card flashed in his other hand.
The edge sliced low across Lucien's rib margin, cutting through the muscle where the diaphragm attached and ruining the mechanics needed for a full breath. The cut wasn't fatal, but sharp pain spiked through Lucien's chest the moment he tried to draw air.
He struck Hisoka across the face, snapping his head back, but pink aura touched Lucien's mouth.
Bungee Gum sealed over his lips and nose in a single elastic sheet.
Lucien clawed at it, but the substance only stretched under his fingers. He tried forcing air through the tiny gaps near his cheeks, but the gum pulled tight, sealing the seal.
Atmospheric Press was still active. Without his breathing corridor, the field turned against his own chest; the damaged muscles beneath his ribs spasmed, and his lungs managed only a shallow, useless twitch.
Hisoka hung from several slack lines in front of him, battered, bloody, and broken. One shoulder sagged out of its socket, two fingers were bent back at unnatural angles, and blood ran down his arms, torso, and face.
Yet his smile was back.
Lucien struck him again. Hisoka let the blow turn him sideways, using the movement to pull the gum tighter over Lucien's face.
Lucien's vision began to spot.
He could release Atmospheric Press to free his lungs and tear the gum away, but dropping the field would leave him wide open at point-blank range while starved of air. Or he could hold the field and fight for a few more seconds before passing out. At which point the ability would collapse anyway, leaving Hisoka to decide how the match ended.
Lucien had survived eighty-seven title defences because he knew the difference between pride and stupidity.
He raised one hand.
Hisoka watched him through blood-matted hair.
Lucien closed his fist, then extended two fingers toward the referee.
Submission.
The whistle blew.
Lucien dismissed Atmospheric Press, and air rushed back into the arena. The heavy resistance vanished instantly, and the remaining tension in the Bungee Gum jerked Hisoka sideways before he released the lines. Both men nearly went down.
Hisoka peeled the elastic sheet from Lucien's mouth and nose.
Lucien dragged in a ragged breath. Pain flared through the slice beneath his ribs, but oxygen reached his lungs. He stayed on one knee, pressing a hand to his bleeding side as the referee stepped between them.
"Lucien Cain has submitted! The winner of the second semifinal is Hisoka Morrow!"
The stadium erupted, but the roar of the crowd sounded distant to Lucien. He looked up at Hisoka, who stood a few metres away, one arm hanging limp as blood dripped from his fingertips.
Medical personnel swarmed the ring from both sides. Lucien allowed them to support his arm, though he forced himself to stand. Across the stone, Hisoka ignored the first physician who reached him, turning instead toward the upper levels of Heaven's Arena.
He wasn't looking at the cheering stands. His eyes were fixed on the distant section of the tower housing the private medical suites.
The announcer's voice echoed over the loudspeakers. "The Battle Olympia final is set! Kagetsu Yuzuki will face Hisoka Morrow for the championship!"
Hisoka's smile widened.
Lucien followed his gaze, realizing that their match had already vanished from the magician's mind. The pain, the broken fingers, the lost blood. It was all just proof that the path ahead was still worth walking.
Lucien had been a king inside his field for nineteen years. To Hisoka, he was just a locked door standing before the room he actually wanted to enter.
Yuzuki watched the broadcast from a hospital bed.
His left arm had been reset and bound tight against his chest. Fresh bandages covered the missing flesh on his shoulder, while heavy wrapping stabilized his cracked ribs. The knife wound in his right side had been cleaned and stitched, though every breath pulled painfully against the thread. A dark cloth covered his eyes, shielding his overloaded vision from the harsh light of the room.
Bisky stood beside the bed with her arms crossed. Three separate physicians had already told Yuzuki that fighting in the final was suicidal, and Bisky had used even less polite language.
Neither had formally withdrawn him.
On the screen, Hisoka stood in the middle of the ruined ring, barely paying attention to the medics probing his hands and shoulder. His gaze remained fixed upward, locked onto the exact section of the tower where Yuzuki lay.
Yuzuki couldn't see the screen through his blindfold, but he could feel the distinct texture of Hisoka's aura even through the broadcast feed. It carried the same suffocating anticipation he remembered from the Hunter Exam.
Chrollo had nearly killed him through meticulous preparation. Hisoka had already done it once out of sheer appetite.
Yuzuki rested his right hand against the blanket and listened as the announcer repeated the final matchup.
'Of course it was you.'
He had feared Chrollo's stolen abilities, Lucien's oppressive field, and every unknown variable in Battle Olympia. But from the moment the tournament bracket was revealed, one shadow had hung over all the rest.
The man who had killed him.
The man who had been waiting ever since to see what grew back in his place.
Through the small speakers of the television, Yuzuki heard Hisoka laugh softly.
---
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