If you counted the generous amount of time Liam had intentionally given Battera and his revived wife to say their tearful goodbyes inside the castle, plus the agonizing amount of time he, Shizuku, and Bisky had spent waiting in the tree house at the landing site, their group had actually entered Greed Island only a few short hours later than Tsezguerra. Just a few hours.
Tsezguerra had officially entered the game late at night, crossing the threshold at almost three or four in the morning.
So how exactly had the seasoned, highly experienced One-Star Hunter gotten himself violently blown in half in just a few short hours of gameplay?
"Wait, do not die on me yet!"
Liam called out sharply, immediately sweeping forward through the dark streets like a gust of wind. Actively using the high-altitude field of vision from possessing Jaku, he accurately pinpointed the exact direction where Tsezguerra had fallen.
He moved with explosive speed, leaving a faint trail of sparks and crackling lightning behind him the whole way, launching into high-speed parkour over brick walls and tiled rooftops. The moment Shizuku saw him start moving, she adjusted her grip on her vacuum and followed him without a single second of hesitation. Even the massive beast Lumos leaped up from the ground. As the old saying went, clouds follow the mighty dragon, and the fierce wind follows the tiger. The massive Lumos jumped and ran across the town, truly moving like the howling wind, his white and cyan form disappearing into the dark in a flash.
Left standing alone in the street, Bisky stayed exactly where she was, a massive, metaphorical question mark hovering over her head. Sure, there had obviously been a lethal explosion over there, but was it really necessary for the boy to get this incredibly excited about it?
Young man, you are acting so unstable!
She sighed, her pink dress swaying. She pushed off the ground, and the dark streets and stone houses on both sides instantly became nothing more than blurred light and shadow flowing rapidly backward.
In the blink of an eye, she effortlessly caught up with the massive Lumos running ahead of her. She took a few more sharp turns, lightly stepping horizontally along the sides of buildings to maintain her momentum, and smoothly passed Shizuku. Finally, she jumped high into the air. Backlit under the dim, pale moonlight of the early morning, her two straight, bouncing blonde braids looked exactly like the long, twitching ears of the legendary Moon Palace Jade Rabbit.
With a soft whoosh, she landed lightly and caught up with Liam at the very front of the pack, arriving just in time to hear him muttering a ridiculous excuse under his breath:
"There is obviously much less wind resistance when you are incredibly small..."
Bisky landed silently right behind him and immediately kicked Liam hard directly in the ass.
Caught entirely off guard, Liam flew violently forward like a fired cannonball. He managed to gracefully flip himself in midair, catching his balance and landing smoothly with one hand braced against the hard dirt ground.
"Look, it is one thing for you to beat people up when they accidentally call you old," Liam complained, rubbing his backside. "But why do you still insist on hitting me when I clearly said you were petite and cute?"
He staggered a few times after landing, finally catching his footing. He walked a few more steps forward and finally got a clear view of the remote, abandoned area on the eastern outskirts of the city.
Tsezguerra lay there in the dirt, completely half-dead. Thick, acrid black smoke and intense, blistering heat were still actively rising from his ruined body, especially pouring out from the horrific, charred broken section exactly at his waist.
"Hey! Are you okay down there!" Liam shouted, dropping the jokes and rushing over to the body.
"Does he honestly look okay to you?" Bisky dusted off her fluffy pink skirt and walked over at a much more leisurely pace. "Half of his ass is already hanging on that dead tree way over there."
She raised a small hand and pointed. Sure enough, exactly twenty meters to the west hung a massive, withered dead tree, and the completely severed, bloody lower body of Tsezguerra was violently pressed against the splintered trunk, looking exactly like a large, violently extinguished matchstick.
"Do we actually want to save him?" Shizuku finally arrived on the scene, not even slightly out of breath.
Looking at her cold expression, she was clearly highly inclined not to.
With the absolute, miraculous healing power of Liam's Star Mark ability, as long as a person still possessed a single, lingering breath of life in their lungs, the extent of the physical damage didn't matter. Never mind the body simply being blown completely in two; even if the head of the victim fell entirely off their shoulders, the body could easily be held together by that last desperate breath and slowly, perfectly recovered to full health.
However, since this specific person could almost certainly be judged as completely beyond saving, and because he was absolutely not injured by the hands of Liam himself, if he just died naturally right here like this, wouldn't he be able to cleanly contribute a massive chunk of highly valuable death energy directly to Liam?
As far as Shizuku knew about his system, among the six fundamental Nen types Liam possessed, only the specific stat points required for Transmutation and Conjuration hadn't been fully completed yet. Both of those remaining categories required a massive influx of death energy to max out.
"He is completely hopeless," Bisky said coldly, glancing down at the ruined upper body of Tsezguerra.
When she and Liam had first run over, his bloodshot eyes were still weakly turning in their direction, barely able to move with the tiny fraction of breath remaining in his crushed lungs. But now, as they stood over him, his dilated pupils were completely unfocused and blank. The absolute last, lingering hope of life was nearly cut off.
Liam pressed a hand firmly against his own chest, physically feeling the steady beat of his heart. He looked down at the rapidly dilating, lifeless pupils in the eyes of Tsezguerra, which still held an expression of profound, frozen shock on his face, and said quietly, "He is not actually dead."
Bisky crouched down gracefully beside the body. She extended a single, pale finger and pressed it firmly directly against the ruined chest of Tsezguerra, searching for a pulse. She pursed her lips, shaking her head. "His heartbeat has completely stopped. This man—"
Before she could even finish her definitive sentence, a blindingly bright white light suddenly emerged directly from the charred corpse of Tsezguerra.
The intense white light moved exactly like a physical flame, rapidly burning across the remaining half of his body. No, it wasn't just his upper half. Liam looked over and saw that the severed lower body still hanging on the distant tree twenty meters away had also burst into those exact same white flames.
The flames burned fiercely for a fraction of a second, then quickly extinguished themselves on the spot.
When the light faded, both distinct parts of the mutilated body of Tsezguerra had completely, entirely disappeared without a single trace.
Shizuku stared at the empty patch of dirt, raising a massive mental question mark in her mind.
Lumos padded softly behind them, walking up and curiously circling the exact place where the body of Tsezguerra had just vanished. The massive beast lowered his heavy head to sniff the dirt from time to time. The intense, lingering heat from the explosive blast and the metallic scent of fresh blood from the corpse still lingered heavily in the night air, proving the man had definitely been there.
The little gray bird, Jaku, flapped its wings and descended from the dark sky, landing lightly directly on the broad shoulder of Liam. It used its sharp beak to calmly comb its ruffled feathers.
Tsezguerra was dead.
That was a biological fact. Because, exactly as Bisky had confidently stated, the man had died completely before Liam could ever manage to plant a healing Star Mark on his skin. His heart had definitively stopped beating. No matter how incredibly powerful and miraculous the Star Mark of Liam was, it absolutely could not reverse the absolute laws of life and death and perfectly resurrect a fully dead corpse. Oh, excuse me, two brutally mutilated corpses.
But at the exact same time, Tsezguerra wasn't actually dead.
Liam knew this for an absolute fact because he didn't receive a single drop of death energy from the system. Unless Tsezguerra had completely, instantly severed his own vitality when Liam was still over a full kilometer away, the resulting death energy would have naturally escaped into the atmosphere long before Liam ever got close enough to absorb it. But that specific scenario was entirely impossible. Liam had been actively watching the entire confrontation from above through the sharp eyes of Jaku, keeping a close, uninterrupted eye on Tsezguerra until the exact second he died. He hadn't even bothered to let Jaku follow the fleeing person who had actually killed Tsezguerra.
The person who had so violently blown Tsezguerra to death was highly likely to be the infamous Bomber. More specifically, it was almost certainly Genthru, the ruthless leader of the Bomber trio.
Liam looked down at the scorched ground where only the radial, blackened remnants of the explosive blast remained, and said suddenly, "Well, it certainly looks like Tsezguerra is actually a highly skilled Specialist."
Bisky nodded in agreement, crossing her arms. "The six major Nen types are highly distinct. If you broadly classify Emission, Enhancement, and Transmutation as the upper three, direct strike-oriented types, then Manipulation, Specialization, and Conjuration sitting at the bottom can be collectively called the lower three, rule-oriented types. And the practitioners of the complex rule types absolutely love to produce incredibly weird, highly specific Nen abilities heavily involving abstract concepts like prophecy, absolute life and death, and so on."
When Liam heard this breakdown, his mind naturally went straight to thinking of Kite.
He remembered the highly complex Nen ability of the roulette weapon Kite wielded, Crazy Slots. One of the absolute hardest, rarest weapons to successfully draw from the clown—the specific one that supposedly guaranteed the user absolutely cannot die—seemed to carry some kind of profound reincarnation or survival effect. Specifically, according to the highly inconsistent, vague statements from that arrogant golden-haired kid in the manga, the ability could be summarized as this: as long as Kite truly, deeply did not want to die in his heart, he would absolutely never die.
According to the personal understanding Liam had of the chaotic system, it essentially meant the ability triggered a complete corpse dissolution, a demonic disintegration, or basically screamed to the universe, I am completely throwing this round, I am changing my account, and I am starting over from scratch!
The known Nen ability of Tsezguerra certainly wasn't weak in terms of utility, but his actual physical, frontal combat strength was undeniably somewhat lacking for a man of his supposed rank. After watching his performance in several previous fights, Liam and Shizuku had already quietly made some educated guesses about his true capabilities.
Now, seeing this supposedly elite guy get so easily and violently blown up by the Bomber like this, actively producing absolutely no actual death contribution to the system, plus the bizarre fact that his mutilated corpse completely vanished into thin air... if it weren't entirely because of some highly specific, deeply hidden special Nen ability, Liam would gladly eat the metal Greed Island ring right off his own hand right now.
Yes, he noticed. Not only had the physical body of Tsezguerra completely disappeared from the dirt, but his highly durable game ring had vanished right along with him.
"In other words," Shizuku said, adjusting her glasses as she analyzed the scene, "the absolute rules of the game system determined that he wasn't actually dead. Because he wasn't dead, the ring naturally left the island with him. It looks like his deeply hidden, special Nen ability can actually give him a guaranteed second life."
"There may not be only a single second life available to him," Bisky corrected her, shaking her head. "A single use simply doesn't fit the psychological habits and long-term planning of seasoned Nen practitioners. Generally speaking, rational Nen users will develop abilities structured like, I paid a massive, ongoing price in exchange for a permanent Nen ability that allows me continuous rebirth, rather than simply stating, I paid a massive, one-time price in exchange for exactly one single chance to be reborn."
She held up a finger to emphasize her point. "The sheer stupidity of the latter design immediately becomes a massive, crippling side effect in itself. And the longer that single-use ability goes entirely unused, the greater that psychological side effect inevitably becomes. Because long before the ability actually takes effect and saves their life, the Nen user will inevitably become more and more terrified of losing it. They will become more and more hesitant to ever engage in actual combat."
She lowered her hand, looking at the scorched earth. "Isn't that an infinitely bigger, heavier price that just keeps accumulating every single day? If this incredibly rare Nen ability is never actually put to use in their entire lifetime, wouldn't that simply mean the Nen user is forced to live an entire life of crushing anxiety, constant hesitation, and absolute fear? Simply only being able to be reborn exactly once—how could that possibly be worth paying so much of your potential for?"
Bisky shook her head repeatedly, dismissing the concept entirely. If she were in that position, it would be far better to just completely forget this broken, stressful ability and focus her aura on developing a entirely different combat branch.
Liam listened to her lecture and quietly translated the profound philosophy in his own mind: What kind of perfect ending would actually be worthy of all the brutal ups and downs you suffered along the way?
"If what you say is true, then his highly special Nen ability likely dictates that every single time he is successfully resurrected, he has to pay a massive, specific price," Liam pondered aloud, rubbing his chin. "Well, that certainly explains a lot. No wonder he wanted to physically defeat me so badly before, but absolutely never once used his true Nen ability during the fight. It turns out he wasn't just arrogantly hiding it by choice. He really, physically couldn't use it..."
After all, he couldn't exactly just jump up in the middle of a spar, drop his guard, and let Liam literally beat him to death just to proudly show off his ultimate survival skill, right?
This realization also seemed to perfectly explain why Tsezguerra, a highly senior Professional Hunter and even an esteemed One-Star Bounty Hunter, couldn't even begin to compare to complete rookies like Gon and Killua in highly basic, physical attributes like raw vertical jumping power. Those two were just kids who had only just started learning the absolute basics of Nen...
Forget simply being categorized as a Specialist. The highly specific derived Nen ability he possessed still provided absolutely zero frontal combat effectiveness or tactical advantage. If a guy with that kind of build wasn't actively pulling his own team down in a fight, who was? He was absolutely pulling them down!
Shizuku tilted her head, asking curiously, "He seems to care so incredibly much about securing massive financial mission rewards. Could the specific resurrection price he pays actually just be money?"
"If that were actually the case, wouldn't the restriction be far too simple and easy to exploit for a Hunter?" Liam expressed immediate doubt.
Bisky smiled knowingly, her eyes gleaming. "But what if there is a highly specific, strict restriction placed on the funds? Something exactly like: the money paid must absolutely be his own legitimate, personally earned labor compensation?"
Liam thought about the brutal logic of that restriction for a moment and strongly agreed. "Trading your own hard-earned money to buy back a hard-earned life. I really like it!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~