[Notice: "Swordsmanship" +1]
[Current "Swordsmanship" Level: LV4 — 87,431 / 100,000]
Two rounds of "ten-thousand practice swings," done with gratitude in his heart, came to an end.
In the training room, Roy watched the morning glow rise and the evening sun sink, closing out a full day of blade work. Yet his face wasn't flushed, his breathing wasn't ragged—his stamina wasn't even close to drained. His nen was full, and he didn't feel the slightest fatigue. With a casual motion, he used reverse materialization to store Snow Walk inside his unconscious domain.
Hearing that grating "1" in the panel's notification, Roy closed his eyes and settled into stillness by the floor-to-ceiling window, letting the mountain wind wash over him as he thought.
He quickly realized that as his strength grew and more of his skills leveled up, it had become almost impossible to gain the same amount of experience from the same amount of training the way he used to.
A tiny difference at the start becomes a vast deviation later; the higher you climb, the harder each step becomes. That was all there was to it.
Roy let out a long breath. When he opened his eyes again, a sharp light burst in his amber gaze. His instincts told him that between LV4 and LV5 lay a gulf that was nearly impossible to cross.
Like the gap from an ordinary Sharingan to a Mangekyō, a Mangekyō to the Rinnegan, a Byakugan to the Tenseigan—power that could destroy and create.
Roy pinched a shred of sunset between his fingers, faintly sensing that once "Swordsmanship" reached LV5, it would bring him a surprise beyond imagination.
That was why "nen," at its core, was ultimately mind over matter. Even with laws like "equivalent exchange" and "risk versus reward" enforcing internal logic, how strong someone could become—setting aside the natural limits of being human—depended entirely on imagination: on one's mental image and cognition.
Kurapika had his chains of revenge.
Hisoka had "Texture Surprise" and "Bungee Gum."
Netero borrowed Buddhist sayings to create Shingen-ryu, forging a martial dharma-image—the Hundred-Type Guanyin—breaking the "Enhancement" shackles. A single "Zero Hand" of Emission had nearly flattened Meruem.
Roy looked out and saw Kikyo pushing Killua through the garden. Understanding himself more clearly now, he realized his single greatest advantage over this world's "natives"—the only one that truly mattered—was rebirth across worlds, which had given him knowledge and perspective nobody else could imagine.
"Humm…" The Gate of Cognition trembled, as if resonating with him, as if answering him.
Right then, Tsubone rolled a cart in. Seeing him sheathe his blade, she called softly, "Young Master, dinner is served."
Roy gave a small grunt of acknowledgement. His eyes swept from Kikyo and Killua to Illumi buried in his pit, to Milluki sprawled out on the lawn, then returned. He turned and ate in the training room.
"Young Master, I prepared some for Gotoh as well," Tsubone said, hands folded, testing the waters. "I'm not sure whether I should feed it to him."
"Thoughtful of you," Roy said with a smile to the elderly butler who'd devoted her life to the Zoldycks. "Leave him alone."
"He's fine."
He speared a piece of steak and, with a thought, opened Gotoh's Follower panel.
[Follower: Gotoh (Note: Loyalty overflowing)]
[Status: Evolving…]
[Constitution +1 +1 +1 +1 …]
[Current: 335 → 435 (still increasing)]
[Visible Aura: C- (9,754 / 100,000) → C (37,415 / 100,000) (still increasing)]
[Potential Aura: C- (8,712 / 100,000) → C+ (14,578 / 100,000) (still increasing)]
[Type: Emission]
[Innate Nen Ability: Coin Conjecture]
[Embrace Ability: Awakening…]
[Evaluation: C]
[Note: By ant standards, your follower "Gotoh" now has ordinary Squadron-Leader level, and is advancing toward top-tier Squadron-Leader level.]
Top-tier squadron leaders… Leol and Zazan—fighters like that. Feitan and Uvogin at their peak, too. And today was only day one—six more days remained.
Roy could feel the causal thread between him and Gotoh thickening, strengthening. His gaze dipped to the bottom of the panel:
[Controllable Status — Absolute Dominion]
A quiet understanding settled in: if he wanted, he could treat Gotoh the way Muzan treated his demons—decide life and death with a word, and freely view, erase, or rewrite memories.
Blessings leaned on disaster; disaster leaned on blessings. Everything had two sides.
Embrace was powerful—but it still couldn't escape the rules of the world.
Roy lingered on the "Embrace Ability" line, curious what Gotoh would awaken beyond Coin Conjecture… then closed the panel without a trace, and finished his steak in a single bite.
Near seven p.m., the last reluctant strip of sunset was dragged beneath the horizon. After dinner, Roy wiped his mouth with the napkin Tsubone offered, nodded to her, and said, "You've worked hard."
He rose, left her to clean up the cart, and walked out of the training room—straight toward the basement as always.
Footsteps echoed through the ancient corridor.
His long silver hair drifted as he passed the garden. Under a windowsill, he spotted a cluster of blooming white chrysanthemums. He remembered Yoriichi's request—when the spider lilies bloomed, he should offer one to "Uta" and the infant child taken by demons before it turned one. Roy paused, picked a few—roots and all—then stepped to the basement door, where Scarface and One-Eye waited.
"Young Master."
"Young Master."
Roy handed a yellow chrysanthemum to Scarface. "This one is for Grandpa Zigg."
"Yes." Scarface accepted it with both hands. He glanced at the three remaining flowers and offered to help Roy plant them—but Roy refused flatly.
Standing before the iron gate, facing the path that led to the Dark Continent's doorway, Roy said in a low voice,
"The rest are for Old Mark… for Little Maddy… and for Madam Nora."
Scarface and One-Eye froze, exchanged a look, then bowed and said nothing more. They opened the gate.
Beyond it lay the same gloomy passage, lined with sickly green lamps stretching into nowhere.
Roy stepped through, then paused with his back to them and said quietly:
"If the family asks… tell them the truth about Old Mark, Little Maddy, and Madam Nora."
"I'm mourning the silent majority among all living beings."
He lowered his eyes so they wouldn't see the remembrance there, and added silently:
…and the person I used to be.
Then his figure blurred and vanished into the green-lit corridor, leaving Scarface and One-Eye behind.
In the underground's chill—separated by a single corridor from the hot summer night above—the two guards stood stunned for a long time. Repeating Roy's words in their hearts, they felt a rare warmth rise from somewhere deep.
"Someone remembers the old master… and someone remembers us too," Scarface said softly. He smiled at One-Eye. "When you die… maybe you'll even get one of the Young Master's chrysanthemums on your grave."
"Heh… heh…" One-Eye chuckled under his breath, then stared into the dark corridor and sighed.
"With you, there's me. I hate to admit it, but after Master Zigg… he's the second person who's ever said they'd remember us."
He paused, full of feeling.
"I just never imagined… it would be Young Master Roy."
A warm wind—no longer winter-cold—moved through the entrance.
Deep in the passageway, the airtight door opened. Seeing the familiar tentacles again, Roy crushed the chrysanthemums in his hand and used reverse materialization to send them ahead into his cognition world. As his awareness began to sink, he locked eyes with the giant pupil—and, in that vast iris, he thought he saw a figure.
The man looked a little slow… but his silver hair stood up like a hedgehog, loud and stubborn, declaring his wildness. When Roy stared in shock, the man grinned at him.
"The silent majority… well said, kid."
In the monster eye, the man smiled with pure approval.
"If you've got that kind of resolve, you won't get lost like your grandpa did…"
Lost—
"Is that you… Grandpa Zigg?"
Roy's pupils tightened as he blurted it out, and the familiar electronic chime rang in his ear.
[Ding… re: Game of the Dead has begun]
[Loading save…]
His vision went black. The world spun. When it steadied again, he was standing in a vast, verdant forest of towering trees—
The Uzuki Great Forest.
It had been a long time.
A wind swept in, carrying damp earth and rot.
Roy's gaze dropped to his feet.
There—permeated by a faint stench—were two skeletons picked clean by scavengers.
Old Mark. Madam Nora.
[Notice: Detected lingering "monster scent."]
[Monster Codex opened — inference…]
[Carrion Vulture]
[Rank: D]
[Innate Nen Ability: Corrosion — saliva contains nen-poison. Likely similar to Lower Five "Rui"'s "Spider Venom." Extracting it may increase host poison resistance and poison-crafting ability.]
Roy's heart tightened. It confirmed what he'd already suspected:
re: Game of the Dead wasn't a game at all.
A "save" was simply Zigg using some method to return himself to a previous location—like Greed Island's spell card "Accompany."
Roy narrowed his eyes and looked toward the big tree where Andrew Cooper and Lonr'gon had died.
Their remains were gone.
If carrion vultures hadn't carried off Old Mark and Nora's bones, then there was no reason they'd have taken Andrew and Lonr'gon's. Which left only one possibility—
Someone had collected them.
And then Roy remembered the figure in the monster eye… and those half-explained words.
His expression turned sharp, cold as steel.
re: Game of the Dead has teleportation, but no "time limit."
Or at least—for him—there was no time limit.
In other words…
He'd been exposed.
Roy's silver hair fluttered. He tilted his head up, drew a slow breath—
Then snapped his wrist.
A high-temperature Nen Bullet, condensed with the "true meaning of heat," flicked from his fingertip and shot into a pine-like tree a hundred meters behind him.
Shhhk!
The bullet pierced straight through, leaving a neat hole the size of a finger.
And through that hole, Roy clearly saw a hat brim flip up—
A deep brown gentleman's hat.
"Clap, clap… Emission type?"
"Sharp bullet!"
A man's applause sounded beside the hole.
"Friend—don't misunderstand. We're on the same side!"
Roy's finger lifted. He turned to look.
From behind the towering tree stepped a man in his forties, wearing a top hat and a flamboyant coat patched with playing cards—2 through A—with the Jokers stamped over his left and right chest.
A thick black mustache curled upward like hooks.
For a split second Roy thought a deck of cards had gained a human body and walked out of the Big Joker.
"I don't remember having a friend like you," Roy said flatly.
The playing-card man winked, then pulled a leather flask from his coat and said in a lower voice,
"I know this is disrespectful to the dead, but… I think you'll recognize this, won't you?"
How could Roy not?
How could he ever forget?
Roy stared at the flask—made from Little Maddy's skin—and said coldly:
"You're right. It's disrespectful."
"She wasn't a flask."
"She was three lives."
The man sighed. "See? That's why I said we're friends."
He pointed behind him at a patch of uneven grass.
"I'm guessing you're looking for them."
The moment his finger stopped—
A gust roared past his ear.
Then he saw it:
A human-shaped streak of light that merged into the sun, passed straight through his body, and reappeared on the patch of grass he'd indicated.
"Goish!"
"What speed is that?!"
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 50 Chapters Ahead of Others!